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“What is that?”
“Gurtok Demon, for the monstrodome.” Suzie Gryphonbane is laying out glowing shards of animus, each faintly reflecting a piece of the monster contained within. “Regina and I are testing out building our own dungeons and the Gurtoks offer a decent challenge for most of us. Marla has been bringing me animus from the two that hole up in the Great Spyre elevators.”
“Right.”
After another few moments of silence, Suzie sighs and sets down the piece she’d been trying to align. “Did you need something, Malorn? This isn’t really have a chat kind of work.” There isn’t any hostility in her tone, maybe a little weariness, she knows what he’s going to ask. “We can both stop dancing around the subject. I don’t know where Duncan went. He hasn’t been back since I let you and the new life kid know where he was staying.”
Malorn looks a little sheepish at those words. Suzie knows he hasn’t been trying to annoy her, but whatever guilt he’s harboring about Duncan’s actions has resulted in their every interaction being frustratingly vague. “Why did you tell us?”
“Because I wasn’t getting anywhere and I knew a heads up that Ambrose was looking for him properly would come better from you or even the wizard than a member of the city guard.” she says, crossing her arms and adding “I don’t know what happened after Darkmoor, I don’t know why he went missing the first time, but if you know anything about where he’s gone now I would appreciate being let in on it.”
Duncan had slept for two and a half days when he’d finally passed out. After which he’d been just as non-communicative as before. Though admittedly a little less prickly, and a little more willing to ask about what everyone else was doing. So when Mellori had come asking about him—
“I told them you were here.” Suzie braces for the reaction to the words, but the explosion she’s expecting—doesn’t come.
Duncan just looks like he’s considering something. Weighing options. “You said it was a new student, right?”
“The wizard brought her back from Polaris. Her name is Mellori.”
“Then it’s probably the wizard who will come looking.”
“You don’t sound as angry about that as I’d have thought.” Suzie pauses, “Are you…going to tell me what happened?”
“We dueled, they won, they told me to hide.” It’s sharp and quick, like he’s hoping to move beyond them without any more comment.
—a part of her regrets not pushing him further. But she’s not an idiot, and she’d known Duncan her whole life. It wouldn’t have gotten her anything more. So as Malorn explains what little he knows beyond that, it just adds more disconnected puzzle pieces to the pile. Some kind of doomsday group, unstable and forbidden kinds of magic, connections tying all the way back to Malistaire’s theft of the Eye of History.
“He wouldn’t have joined up with a group like that—not if they were the ones pointing Malistaire down the path he took…here.” Suzie believes the words as she says them, Duncan idolized Malistaire, she’d seen firsthand how it had broken him to find out what his old professor had turned to in grief. Had fought back against the truth for so much longer than anyone else. Desperate to find the Professor Drake he was familiar with amidst horror stories of titans and tides of undead.
“I don’t think he knew.” Malorn replies “The wizard and I found Malistaire’s journal, Duncan never got his hands on it. Whoever he was learning this stuff from—whoever was guiding him—I can’t see him staying if he’d known.”
Suzie has to stifle a laugh. Inappropriate timing, but she can’t help the affirmation that—yes—Duncan was indeed wrapped up in some flavor of mess that read exactly like what the wizard ran around doing. That it had led him right into the wrong side of a battle with them. That it seemed not to be the first time either. “So…” she begins, knowing this is likely her only course for more information. “I’m guessing you haven’t heard from the wizard lately either?”
“No. They were supposed to keep in touch with me, Penny too—but…”
The rest hangs unsaid.
But you know how it is.
You know how they are.
How they have to be.
“I guess it’s just a waiting game then.” That’s fine. Suzie can do waiting. She’s got plenty to occupy her time here. “The Spiral hasn’t dissolved so we have to assume they’re doing what needs doing—and that they’ll both come back when they’re ready.”
~*~
The heat of Dragonspyre was always a little overwhelming at first. The wizard had tried to warn Dyvim—though he’d cited the Khonda Desert as a testament to his resilience—the sulpherous air and heaviness from the lava fumes were a far cry from the dry arid heat he had experienced before.
“You’re sure it’s alright for you to be away this long?” they ask again, as they had done before leaving the Myth tower.
“Things have settled more since your last visit, I promise I can spare an afternoon. Though I’m beginning to understand your warnings about the heat—is the air here always so foul?”
The wizard smiles, it’s small and soft, but it’s there. Pulling at their face and reminding them it’s an expression they are in fact still capable of. “It’s better on the academy grounds, you can actually see the sky there instead of the ash cloud. There’s a portal just downstairs, so you won’t have to endure it long.”
Dragonspyre has never felt lighter to them.
For the first time it is neither an invitation to imminent violence, nor a bitter reminder of the damage they’ve had to cause. The wizard steps out of the Academy teleporter with Dyvim beside them, sees the grounds dotted with their old classmates, and is struck by such a wave of fondness that it brings their pace to a halt.
“Spellbinder?”
“I’m alright—I just—” just what?
They spent so many years hating the very idea of this place. Even after Darkmoor it was still a reminder of the mistakes they’d made. The celestial calendar whispering doom. The look on Duncan’s face when they’d threatened to fight their way past him. And granted—things with Duncan are not mended. But they are no longer shattered or sharp.
There is a future here.
“—it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to look at this place and not feel…haunted by it.”
Something is healing.
Slowly. So much more slowly than they would like.
But healing nonetheless.