Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

One dark and stormy night, the small village of Ruinspoke played host to a water-logged adventurer.

In fact, it played host to dozens of water-logged adventurers. It had played host to both water-logged and dust-dry adventurers by the hundreds in the months before, and by the thousands in the years before that. There were ruins of the elden and mysterious variety nearby, which was like catnip to the average curious-as-a-cat and decently-armed wanderer. More importantly to the Ruinspoke townfolk, when a recent infestation of kobolds discovered that the town guards were not as invested in defending the handful of neighboring farms as the kobolds were in raiding said poor farms, adventurers became the go-to defenders. Generally speaking, it made for a decent balance.

Because it was a dark and stormy night, the regulars grumbled when the old wooden door swung open to admit a gusting wind and pelting rain. From its howl, a tall, broad-shouldered dragonborn swayed in. His heavy, hooded cloak stuck close to his frame, and nearly tripped him on his way to the nearest, shadowiest corner-table. Though the stool he crashed into attempted an escape from its occupant, he caught himself on the table edge at the last moment. Thus secured from the rain by the tavern’s warmth, he slouched himself against the wall with an air of exhausted gratefulness and stalwart do not speak to me.

A regular rushed to close the door that had failed to shut against the storm. When he succeeded, he politely limited himself to merely a grouchy glare toward the newest adventurer before he returned to the bar at the front.

One of the tavern’s regulars had been an adventurer herself before she discovered she could make just as much coin with a much longer life expectancy if she kept a stool warm and played a decent song. That particular regular improvised a verse about bad omens, open doors, and the virtue of poor reputations for cozy taverns, which elicited a hearty chuckle from her ale-soaked audience. Temget, the dwarven owner of Ruinspoke’s best and second-most popular tavern, shook his head from the bar.

Time passed. The tavern-goers enjoyed homebrewed beer as well as far worse ale.

Resolute to not let one stool go without profit for an evening, Temget eventually approached the adventurer directly. He then sold, in rapid (and overpriced) succession, three mugs of the homebrewed beer and an entire loaf of wheat bread. He thereafter left the dragonborn alone.

Another regular, a slender dragonborn named Uadjit who always brought her own game to pass the time, eyed the newcomer.

When the hood was finally put down, and two mugs’ worth of beer and the bread were gone from his table and into his stomach, Uadjit gathered her cards and approached him.

“What brings you here, adventurer?” she asked.

“Just passing through,” he replied. “The storm caught me by surprise.”

“Caught the farmers by surprise, too,” she said. “It was supposed to be dry until the day after morrow, can you believe it?”

“I can’t, I suppose.”

“But really, what brought you here?” she pressed. “Was it not the ruins? What of coin or heroism?”

His nose twitched. His eyes went round. “Do you have a need for heroism? Is that why you ask?”

“I haven’t,” she said. “But Almer Hikath from up the street does. Well, not the heroism you’d imagine from a storybook, but the sort of heroism common to us small-folk. He’s also got coin for any who assist.”

“That’s the important part, certainly.”

“It sure is.” She smiled. She knew his type, and she was glad to have finally found an adventurer that didn’t travel in a herd. The more hands involved, the more expensive it became, and Almer didn’t really need that much help. “He runs the general store here. He has a milk cart that needs filling. Specifically for you, that would mean he needs help transporting it to a farm that’s not so far away. He’d do it himself if he had any chance with a sword; I’d do it for him if only I fared any better. I’m his friend, you see, and I’ve had to hear him belly-aching about that empty milk cart for nigh on tenday.”

The adventurer’s nose twitched again. He paused, for long enough that she feared he was thinking of a nice way to tell her to buzz off.

“He’ll pay you fairly,” she hastened to re-emphasize. “Half upfront, then half when you reach the farm.”

The adventurer asked, voice too-light, “Pray tell, what trouble is he expecting if he feels the need to be handy with a sword?”

“Nothing guaranteed!” She waved her hand as if to swat the notion away. “Just some rumors, you know, of kobolds and the like. Pesky rumors, probably nothing. Thing is, he’s the ‘better safe than sorry’ sort. Surely you’re handy with a sword, thurirl?”

He had one strapped to his side under his cloak. She only saw its red-gold hilt, but truthfully, she hadn’t even really needed to see it. Adventurers like him always had a sword, or a rapier, or a dagger, or anything else with a sharp end that could fit in a kobold’s eye.

Again, that hesitance. His mouth twitched up, then down. His head cocked to the side. He looked to his remaining mug, and frowned.

It wasn’t a no.

But the non-response did last a little too long. Just as she gathered her breath to break it, he looked back to her and smiled.

“Of course we’ll help.” He became so full of energy. His teeth gleamed and eyes, bright red, glittered. The rainwater had left his white scales shiny and bright in the tavern’s yellow light. “Honestly, if he can promise us a warm place to lay our heads for the next three days, that’s all we would ask for. It needn’t be anywhere or anything extravagant – a stable would do, truly.”

Something in her squirmed uncomfortably under the look, but she shook it off for the more pressing issue.

“Oh. We?” she tried to rally, though she couldn’t help glancing around his otherwise empty table. “Are you traveling with others…? Are they still out in the storm?”

That set him to coughing. He then shook his head, glanced away, and spoke with a soft, but self-deprecating chuckle. “Ah– no! I apologize, that was a force of habit. I travel alone… now.”

Aha. Ruinspoke had plenty of half- and quarter- and looking-for-new-parties, so that made sense. He must have been very handy with the sword, if he outlived his companions.

Since he’d agreed to help, she gave him a sympathetic wince. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What’s your name?”

“Wyll,” he said, then winced, himself. “... An odd name, I know. Or so I’ve been told.”

It was extremely odd, especially for who she had assumed was a fellow dragonborn that was local-ish to Tymanther, but she wouldn’t say that. She’d been raised in the middle of nowhere, not a barn.

“I think that’s a fine name. It’s nice to meet you, Wyll. I’m Uadjit. I’m afraid Almer’s likely asleep right now, so I can’t promise you a place for tonight, but if you go to his store first thing in the morning, I’m sure he’ll be happy to show you the cart and the route. He might have a few more questions for you, but let him know that I sent you.”

“Fantastic. Thank you, Uadjit.”

Small and kind, he smiled again. Unlike before, it was nothing but reassuring. Something in her settled, and she decided she wouldn’t mind learning a bit more about him before he went off to work her friend’s errand. Since she’d secured the help, she also needed to make sure he wasn’t absolutely bonkers.

Ruinspoke wasn’t picky, but her people could stand to be, sometimes.

“Before I have to leave for the night,” she slid into the stool opposite him, “would you want to play a game of cards?”

“I’d–” he coughed again, but recovered quickly with a, oh, don’t mind me, just recovering from the plague, at least I cover my mouth sheepish grin, “-- I’d love to. Your pick, as long as you don’t mind explaining the game to me.”

As his good cheer remained for the entirety of the game, and didn’t worsen even after he finished his third mug of beer, she didn’t mind at all.

“Shit. Fuck. Godsdamn it.”

“This could have gone better–”

“Godsdamn it!”

“-- But it could have gone a whole lot worse, too, if you stop to think about it.”

“Maybe not now, Gale.”

“Godsdamn it all–”

“Enough!” Lae’zel clasped her hands around her wrists. The sudden snap, combined with the physical jolt, bought her a few precious seconds to speak. “Focus and cease the needless squabbling. We need only right the jars and continue our journey, as we had agreed.”

Though she fiercely desired to fix the situation herself, as she would surely perform the duty with greater efficiency and precision, they had agreed that one of them would take the lead in this humiliating errand, and it hadn’t been her. Going against that pact now promised peril, to include extended whining and endless delay.

And so she fought back her instinct and instead prompted, “Karlach?”

Behind her eyes, she felt the collective pause. While only one of them ever needed to remember to breathe at one time, it seemed all of them held their breath.

After far too long– entire seconds of silence–, Karlach breathed out.

“... Shit.”

As the others retained their wits and didn’t fight to verbalize the last word, she relaxed. She released the grip around their wrists and shook out their hands. She checked her neck, and patted the necklace there absently. She sighed. Perhaps she intended the noise to whistle to drive home her annoyance, but their body’s limited and needle-point teeth turned it into a drawn-out hiss.

Then she groused, “I swear by Tyr’s war bitch, this was supposed to be a simple mission, guys,” which infuriatingly invited rebuttal. Lae’zel summoned her strength to tell her what a fool she was and that she should just get on with it, but then Karlach made the surprisingly astute decision to continue with, “Fuck, why can’t anything ever be easy? Ugh. Okay. Right. Let’s save our feedback for one another until after we’ve had the chance to enjoy a nice, warm bath and its accompanying nice, soft bed with nice, solid walls.”

As Astarion had lost their camping supplies in a river six days past, thus forcing them to travel two of those six days across flat plains in a torrential downpour, that sounded tempting indeed. Besides, there was no shame in reaping one’s reward for a task completed, no matter how trivial the task was. It felt especially true because, as a stupid rule, Lae’zel’s no-longer-new company tended toward menial tasks, anyway.

Karlach, as was her wont, continued speaking even as she set to fixing their mistake.

“Who knows? There may even be more to drink.”

The milk cart that they had been assigned to escort and deliver had turned onto its side. It had turned onto its side because one of its four wheels had fallen off. One of its four wheels had fallen off because when Karlach threw a jumpy kobold off her back, it had knocked into the cart’s side and toppled the empty milk pails stacked within. The cart had tumbled with it and, being of a poor make, lost its wheel.

The kobold had bled pathetically over four of the pails. Karlach eyed the offending body and the besmirched metal, her gaze jumping left-right-left-right with dizzying, zig-zagging attention. After such lightning-quick contemplation, she turned from the pails and instead righted the cart (with effort, as the body hadn’t the strength she or Lae’zel were used to) and fetched the stray wheel.

“If we play our cards right, I bet we could get a free bowl of that delicious-smelling stew from the tavern…”

The others listened, Lae’zel knew. Most, anyway. Those not wallowing in self-pity, or sulking in stubbornness – they listened.

Mercifully: because they listened, they did not interrupt.

“... Maybe even run a few other easy errands, save up enough to replenish our stocks…”

The stray wheel slotted back onto its spoke deceptively easily. After giving the cart’s side a two-handed nudge to check its stability, Karlach slowly re-stacked the pails within its confines.

“And those errands really will be easy. No surprise kobolds. No fights. Just delivering things. Playing messenger between two swooning lovebirds, saving scaredy cats from trees, stuff like that. It’ll be grand. It’ll net us next to nothing, but it’ll be easy.”

There was no universe wherein they remained at Ruinspoke that long.

But Lae’zel felt the edge Karlach teetered on. Felt her fragile grip on her so-called cool, and the icy-taloned grip the looming despair had around her heart. Their blood ran hot, their heartbeat too loud in their ears for how long it had been since the last kobold fell. It disgusted Lae’zel to feel such weak thoughts and self-doubt; but Karlach felt her feelings so strongly, there was no use interfering.

“Stupid kobolds,” Karlach muttered as she hefted the last pails into place and then wiped, half-heartedly, at the blood. She succeeded only at smearing red across the surface. “What did they think would happen? We’re not that scrawny-looking. Jeez. It’ll be fine. It’s barely noticeable. If it becomes noticeable, the farmer can say it’s… strawberry milk, or something. Yeah.”

Amusement broke through the despair. Karlach, Wyll, Astarion, even Shadowheart – they found the notion funny, apparently.

Ridiculous. Lae’zel just wanted it to be done. They had routes to discuss. The skeleton’s trail had gone cold at the nearby ruins. They needed to recover their energy, restock their supplies, and move on.

The despair that wasn’t hers retreated almost entirely from Lae’zel’s awareness as Karlach finished re-securing the pails. She muttered, “I hear you, Lae’zel, I hear you. I’m movin’ fast as I can.”

Move faster, Lae’zel thought, with as much focus as she could.

That elicited an under-the-breath laugh, which hadn’t been Lae’zel’s intent. The despair completely disappeared, however, which had also not been her intent but was a fine enough boon that she didn’t harp on it.

Leaving five dead kobolds in their wake, they started off again. The farmhouse would appear around the next bend, or so said the shopkeeper. At a steady clip and without any further interruptions, they would make it well before noon. As they’d departed Ruinspoke at dawn, they would then be able to return before dark and reap their body-restoring reward. The entire errand should have taken only the morning, but even after days of practice, they were slow-moving at the best of times.

Of course, the cart just had to prove her suspicions right and lose its wheel again not twenty paces in.

Karlach cursed and put it back together before the pails did more than ominously tip to the side. Not wanting to waste any more of their time, she beseeched Gale’s assistance to fuse the wheel back on before they continued. Wild magic came easily to the body’s hands in a way axes, swords, and wizarding spells did not; subsequently, his more precise spells took a fair bit of energy out of them.

They successfully delivered the cart and thereafter returned to the shopkeeper just as the sun set at the horizon. He then rewarded them with a paltry room above the store, equipped with: a rusted tub that the shopkeep had thoughtfully filled before their arrival, a wooden rack ostensibly meant for weaponry, a traveler’s trunk with a broken lock, a discrete chamber pot, and one sagging, straw-filled mattress.

They moved as one into the room, shut and locked the door behind them, and then– stood, as the mattress and tub called equally to separate parties.

They stood.

And stood.

And stood.

“-- Excuse me,” Karlach finally grit out, their body shaking with indecision, “I want out of these stinking clothes. Let’s wash. Then sleep. My day, my decision.”

That rubbed more than a few people wrong, as they had distinctly decided against anyone owning a particular day or timeslot. Lae’zel had grown weary of arguing. The others had too, perhaps, or they were simply learning; and so, smartly, they washed first. The water proved to be lukewarm - the shopkeeper had also expected them back by noon - but that was tolerable.

In any case, it was far better to sleep clean than not, Lae’zel thought. There was no telling what diseases kobold blood could give dragonborn.

They stripped. The necklace remained on. They washed. They dried off with the cleanest parts of their bloodied clothes, did their level best to wash said clothes in the dirtied water, then wringing them out and hanging them on the tub’s edge. Their sword, dagger, and potion-slash-gold-slash-alchemical-ingrediants-that-certain-individuals-insisted-on-collecting pouch - the sole remaining survivor of their previous supplies - on the rack, and finally, finally, collapsed onto the bed.

Atop the bed laid a single, thin blanket. Though Ruinspoke’s weather had been mild aside from the storms, the night brought a draft that left them shivering. Karlach bundled up as well as she could with the blanket. She threw it over their over-large form, curled into a tight ball, and covered her face like a child. The shivering did not abate, the cold from the lukewarm water and drafty room sinking into their bones.

Lae’zel had noticed that it had been many nights since Karlach had last marveled at the ability to become and remain both cold and wet. Certainly, she did not rekindle her amazement on this particular night.

Eventually, to the unremarkable sounds of a sleeping farm town, they fell asleep.

Shadowheart woke to songbirds.

To some, perhaps more interestingly, she woke to a forest that she hadn’t fallen asleep in. Tent walls kept out the sun’s worst, while the leaves from the tree directly across from said tent casted thin, dancing shadows across said walls. The air was woodsy, light and crisp with the promise of morning dew to be found on any grass blades. Distantly, a river gurgled; even more distant, a waterfall. For a moment that stretched longer than she’d like to admit and which mattered to her far more than it should’ve, Shadowheart watched the shadows skip and scatter in the morning’s light breeze.

They would have been boring, except she’d discovered their trick. That trick was: they danced the same dance every time she woke to this particular dream.

The only thing that wasn’t the same every time she woke was what particular brand of argument her companions decided to have.

“... Karlach, my fine, fiery friend, with all due respect for your pail-piling prowess: what had your knickers in such a bunch?”

“Come off it, Astarion! You were as frustrated as I was.”

“I was feeling mildly inconvenienced that Wyll had decided to volunteer us for another quaint jaunt for minimal payment. You, however – gods, you were on the edge of a melt down when there hadn’t even been spilt milk to cry over.”

“Pardon? A place to stay is hardly the worst bargain for that quick trip.” By the sounds of it, Wyll had his arms crossed. Astarion was likely extremely unimpressed, while Karlach likely agreed.

Though Gale’s response shouldn’t have carried so easily to her tent, it did: “We should have specified that it would be a warm place to stay.”

Lae’zel’s silence translated to either her unspoken agreement with Gale and Astarion, or her annoyance that they were arguing about this at all. Before Shadowheart could wonder too long, if she’d even wanted to, Lae’zel proved it to be the latter, as she cut in with: “Are we beginning the feedback portion of this night? If so, I have more than a few points to discuss. First being, that was hardly a quick trip. We should have demanded a greater reward if we were going to waste our entire day on the road. Now we must find more wasteful ways to spend our time, if only to gain what we could have already taken.”

Restraining a sigh (it would have been far too self-indulgent in her present position), Shadowheart sat up from her bedroll. As was the way of dreams, she was already dressed for the day. Though she needn’t, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she unlaced her tent’s flaps and stepped out into the camp proper.

It looked almost exactly as it had before they’d left for the shadow-cursed lands all those moons ago. Open, warm, sunny. It always looked almost exactly like a memory– and one that she couldn’t help noticing they all shared.

While she walked down the slight hill to reach where the others gathered, Wyll uncrossed his arms to throw up a hand.

“We can’t just take these people’s stuff. They live meal to meal. We can’t be sure we wouldn’t be leaving someone hungry.”

Lae’zel clicked her tongue. “If they are fool enough to leave the items undefended, then the consequences are their rewards.”

“The trip wasn’t that bad.” Karlach rolled her eyes at Lae’zel’s stare. “It wasn’t! We should’ve expected the kobolds. We’d heard they’d been raiding the nearby farms. That misstep was on us.”

Lae’zel jerked her chin up. “Our synchronization is sorely lacking. It impacts our ability to defend ourselves. We must fix that immediately.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Shadowheart asked, at last joining the group. “I propose that we’ve discussed that particular topic to death. We should instead focus on deciding our next destination, since the Untheran ruins were unfruitful.”

When Lae’zel turned that stare on Shadowheart, she responded by merely raising a challenging eyebrow.

Again, she clicked her tongue. “If we find the skeleton without being able to adequately hold our own, we’ve already lost whatever we might have had to gain.”

To the side, Gale made hmm-hawing noises and see-sawing gestures that Shadowheart took to be protests. When they looked at him, he stopped the see-sawing and cleared his throat. “The notion that we could defeat Jergal’s avatar in hand-to-hand combat is, frankly, ludicrous. I’d also posit that it wouldn’t be helpful, as we’re hoping he’ll help us, not hurt us.”

Wyll noted, “We aren’t even sure if the skeleton is related to Jergal.”

“That’s true,” Gale conceded, “but since we found him in an ancient tomb behind a statue of that particular ancient God and, moreover, we haven’t any other leads to go on, I’m sticking to the educated assumption that he is, at minimum, related to Jergal.”

“Which, to remind us all, is a forgotten God that nearly no one in today’s age knows about, let alone worships, thus limiting us to finding the damned bag of bones after it had apparently decided to return to either being dead or, more likely, being non-existent.” Astarion set a hand on his hip and a gee whiz, I hate it here smile on his face. “Do you all ever grow, I don’t know, bored of pursuing the most impossible tasks?”

Determination set Gale’s face into a near-glower. “If he can be found, we’ll find him.”

“If we ever have it simple,” Shadowheart said, “I’ll know we’ve actually reached our ends and that we’re all just a merry piece of each other’s personal hells.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, for the record,” Karlach said. “If we get stuck in the hells, I mean. Which we’re not. At the moment.” She paused. Shuffled her feet. Twitched her tail. “Small blessings, yeah?”

For a second, they fell silent.

Though the dream gifted each of them their bodies as they remembered them, it did not require them to fulfill their particular needs. They could eat, if one of them wanted to cook and feel full; they could drink, if they desired, and get drunk; anything except blood yet tasted like ash to Astarion, just as Karlach felt too-hot to the touch. But hunger didn’t plague their stomachs, nor thirst their throats. Even stranger, though the camp reflected their early days, their bodies kept their changes from their travels. Shadowheart’s hair was white; Gale swore he felt the orb in his chest, but that it was somewhat safely locked away; Wyll had his horns and devils-touched skin; and Karlach, though warmer than any tiefling, did not burn whomever she touched.

Outside of the dream, the only specialized needs that plagued them were their host body’s. For the most part, those were the needs common to any dragonborn sorcerer.

For the most part.

(She did not look toward the Cave.)

… Unrelated to their host: Mizora had approached them in the first week of their newfound and accursed union. She hadn’t a hold on Wyll before then, and they hadn’t allowed her the chance to see if she could regain it by accepting her assistance.

She hadn’t approached again, which was a borderline miracle. Shadowheart wasn’t sure they all would have been as quick to refuse her, a full month later.

Each of them rationalized the situation in their own way. None of them had definitive conclusions, though Shadowheart felt fairly confident in her assessment.

“We could venture to Thay.”

All eyes turned to Gale. Most were incredulous.

“You want us to beg for assistance from liches and slavers?” Wyll asked, as one of the more incredulous individuals. “Have you gone mad?”

Gale spread his hands out, open with palms up. Beseeching.

“I know, I know. Thayans have a reputation of being notoriously unhelpful toward the living. But they’re also the most likely to have dabbled in something similar to what is plaguing us.”

“Our issue isn’t exactly related to the undead or undying,” Shadowheart responded, drawing each word out slowly, as if to a toddler. Her initial response was as strongly negative as Wyll’s, though for a multitude of reasons. She wasn’t entirely sure which one she wanted to sharpen into an arrow first.

“Unless you’re talking about one undead in particular,” Karlach muttered, then threw a cheeky grin in Astarion’s direction. “That one’s a right pain in our ass.”

Matching her grin, he wiggled his fingers in a little hello! back at her, then tsked and refocused on Gale.

“Part of it is related to the customary magic of a trained necromancer, though, isn’t it?” Gale had the beginnings of a mullish glint to his eye. His shoulders squared up. “As far as we can tell, we’re a bunch of souls packed into the wrong body. We need someone, or something, capable of not only creating functional bodies; they must then separate each of us from the undoubted tangle that we’ve become, and transfer us - safely and precisely - into new hosts. They also need to make sure to leave our friend in his body, none the worse for wear.”

Shadowheart kept her eyes on Gale.

(The Lady Shar had done more than a few great wrongs against her. Unfortunately, she’d also been right in a great many ways. Some things were better left to the darkness.)

“That’s a big ask for anyone, let alone the complete strangers we’re bound to find who are able to help. Unless someone has a previously unmentioned aunt or uncle who would be skilled in this arena?” Gale didn’t wait for the sarcastic replies - he pressed on. “Exactly. So. One thing Red Wizards can be trusted for, at least insofar as I have ever been told, is their hunger for knowledge. I’d say we present a rather interesting case study, and may temporarily sate their appetite.”

“Isn’t that true for most of Mystra’s followers?” murmured Shadowheart. “Surely we needn’t resort to Red Wizards, who are just as likely to stick us to a table and dissect us as they are to do anything meaningfully helpful, when we could venture back to lands more familiar, such as… say, Waterdeep?”

As he had before when this proposal was brought up (for they had talked all of this to death, then brought it back to life, just to kill it again), Gale winced.

“Unfortunately, I may have burned a few bridges in that particular area.”

“But they don’t necessarily know that we’re Gale of Waterdeep. We appear to be just a simple dragonborn.”

“With a skilled wizard at its helm, the Weave is unlikely to hide anything for long…”

“... For now, let’s stick to finding the skeleton.” Wyll, ever the peace-keeper. “Since our current trail has gone cold, we could begin a trek back to the Sword Coast. Perhaps we will journey on to Waterdeep, perhaps not. At least we will be back in familiar territory.”

“I agree with the Blade,” Lae’zel said. “Now that we know for certain this region has nothing to offer us, it is better that we return and exhaust our known resources before they depart.”

“That’s a great goal for the long-term,” Astarion said, “but what about our foodstuffs? We’re not going to get very far without something to eat.”

Lae’zel turned to him. “As you caused the loss, you should devise the manner in which we fix it.”

He looked affronted. “Me, losing our gear? I hadn’t even been piloting at the time. It was Wyll’s fault for thinking he knew how to forge a river, and then slipping on some random log.”

“You had distracted me by insisting on moving our feet at the worst possible moment–”

“That was because I had pointed out the log, but it had fallen on deaf ears–”

To interrupt the bickering, Lae’zel took a step forward, leaning hard in Astarion’s direction. “Do not distract from this issue, as you distracted him then. However you want to reclaim what we lost, do so at morning’s light. We leave this town by noon. No later.”

“... If I’m fixing the problem,” Astarion finally said, half-turning away and slouching into a near-pout under Lae’zel’s insistence, “we’re doing it entirely my way, and since I’m working with these clumsy claws, I feel it important to note that I work best at night.”

“We have the room for two more nights,” Gale pointed out. “Might as well enjoy the respite. I, for one, could do with a bit of civilization before we’re back on the road– not that Ruinspoke is exactly the pinnacle of sentient life.”

Shadowheart saw the muscle jump in Lae’zel’s jaw as she ground her teeth. She did not want to wait. She was sick of waiting. She was coiled, tense as a cornered hellcat, and would surely snap sooner than later.

Shadowheart saw all of that, and– understood. She, too, was sick of their forced stagnation. It wasn’t about Ruinspoke, or the gear, or even their impossible task– it was that they were stuck, well and truly, in what felt like square one. It seemed even the camp’s appearance mocked them: though they’d ventured far from the Nautiloid’s crash, though they’d defeated the Dead Three’s Chosen and Netherbrain and conquered a good portion of their personal demons besides, they were exactly where they’d started.

After a staredown that lasted far too long, Lae’zel curled her lip to show her teeth and, when Astarion didn’t flinch or back down, finally ceded with a begrudging, “Very well. At dusk, you begin collecting what we need.”

“Deal,” Astarion said, with such big-eyed earnestness that Shadowheart knew that he felt like he’d won some big argument. “I promise, I won’t disappoint.”

He hadn’t, though. No matter what they tried to decide as a group in these dreams, no matter how thoughtfully or intentionally they tried to use their time as distinct individuals, the waking world had a way of upending their plans and setting them to squabbling. Astarion would start the night with a plan and in primary control, but one of them would take umbrage with it and then, after one annoyance led to another, he’d be ousted, and they’d be frozen in their stalemate.

It was all so…

Exhausting.

After another small silence, Gale proposed that he cook something new. They had supplies in the dream - the same basic ingredients they’d received from the Druid’s Grove after they’d helped with the Goblin Camp, every night - and so coming up with something new was a challenge. He elected Karlach to assist him in picking out the base palette, who jumped at the chance to lighten the mood with an almost-not-desperate ease. She then roped in Wyll and Astarion, which meant Lae’zel took to starting the fire. Every time, five pre-cut logs sat next to the firepit. They could only go so far into the forest, but there were plenty of trees to cut down near the camp to make more. They usually didn’t need to.

Time moved oddly in the dream – it was always finite, but it was difficult to tell when exactly it would end. Certain signs consistently popped up to warn of imminent waking, but they were easily missed if not sought.

For whatever morose reason, Shadowheart couldn’t find it in herself to engage with the festivities. She took a seat on the large rock nearest the firepit, and re-examined the scar on her hand, as she had so many times when it had actually pained her.

Shar’s gift. Impossible to forget, impossible to ignore.

Never absent, whether she looked at it - thought about it - felt it, or not.

(She did not look at the Cave, but she felt it – felt it watching them – all the same.)

Lae’zel, blessedly, did not interrupt her contemplation. Ever since their joining, they had very few opportunities to themselves. Even in silence, she remained surrounded. Nonetheless, the appearance– the lie, that she could have a moment to herself- it was, she supposed, something.

It was appreciated.