Chapter Text
"What the fuck, are you already here?"
Anaxaster narrowed his eyes bemusedly at Chezzaran. They were both in their humanoid disguises and at the city center of Silverymoon, having just arrived in the city again for the first time in five years. What his sister referred to was the scent on the air, coming to them from a distance but not a great one. It did smell like him. But he was right here, and he hadn't been anywhere else in this city for years.
"Did you lose some scales the last time we were here, or something?" Chezzaran continued.
"No," he said, the annoyance in his voice not because of her but because of the anxiety and confusion of the situation, "I didn't even shift out of humanoid disguise once."
"Are you really here? Are you casting Mislead to fuck with me?"
"Yes! Aran! I mean not that I'm-" He breathed in quickly, frustrated and scared. "Yes, I'm right here!"
"Alright," Chezzaran said, taking his arm in hers in a comforting gesture, "We should see what this is, then, huh?"
They cast Invisibility once the trail led them to a particularly high-class residential area near the governmental district. Passing close to the government buildings had been anxiety-inducing, his thoughts racing that he'd had his blood or scales stolen for the purpose of scrying on their inevitable extra-legal activities. It was somewhat relieving but more confusing to end up at a grand manor estate completely unfamiliar to either of them.
"Inside?" His sister prompted him, and he squeezed her arm in return. They rounded various entrances to the house and waited until one was opened wide enough they could both slip through before it slammed shut behind them. It turned out to be a servant's entrance, and the smell was relatively weak until they got out of the servant's quarters and into the main house.
They clung to each other while hugging the sides of corridors, hoping not to bump into anyone while they searched the house. Then a door swung open in their faces and they jumped back as one, even as the scent became extremely present.
"Young Master, the Young Lady ought to go down for her nap soon--"
"Hmph!"
"She can nap in my arms. I don't mind," said the young nobleman emerging from the door to the servant trailing him.
"Not gonna nap," said the young girl in his arms, her face buried sulkily in his neck.
The young man smiled fondly at the top of the young girl's head. The trailing servant clearly repressed an impatient sigh. I know you, Anaxaster thought, eyes lingering on the young man's face, matching them to a face he'd seen some five years before, late at night in the depths of the arts district.
This close up, the scent wasn't quite as like his as it'd seemed from afar. It smelled as like him as he and Chezzaran both smelled like Mother.
Her hand yanked him back and away as the nobleman and the child came forward and he did not move out of the way, entranced by the tiny plump cheeks and furrowed black brows forming a petulant little expression as she stood firm in her resistance to naptime.
His sister had to all but drag him back out of the house away from invisibly watching his daughter go about her day (she eventually succumbed to napping, in Mavis's arms) so that they were clear of the house by the time Invisibility expired.
"How long can we make Invisibility last?" He said, lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling of the inn room they'd gotten to share.
"No longer than twenty-four hours, but I'm sure you could get it there," Chezzaran said, bemused. She did pause to do the math, though. "If you wanted to exhaust your ability to stretch spells for the day, you could get Greater Invisibility there, and be able to cast some spells while staying hidden in case you get confronted or otherwise need to make a quick escape. On that note, both durations hit a point where they're at sixteen hours right before doubling to over twenty-four, and it's probably a better idea to just leave it at sixteen and save some of your energy."
"Yeah," he said softly.
She bounced hard onto the bed beside him, and stuck her face into his line of sight. "Or, you could confront the bitch who's been hiding your kid from you for five years and negotiate some time with her."
He blinked, eyes clearing, and frowned at her. "Don't call him a bitch."
"Oh!" She collapsed into the bed beside him. "So sorry. I'll make sure to be really sensitive towards the person who didn't think to mention that he had my brother's child."
"He might just not have been able to find us!"
"He would have known he was pregnant before we left town," she said, "The first thing he should have done was go to you."
"We don't know that he could have been certain-- I mean, that I was the only option to consider."
"Uh-huh. Sure. I guess. He's had five fucking years in the interim, Aster, and not a word. It's malicious."
"No," he said, but he didn't have anything to follow up with.
"You should make him feel bad about it. Maybe the guilt will make him give you a better time agreement."
He pulled one of the pillows from beneath him and smacked her with it. "Stop."
She picked it up and spiked it at the ceiling so it dropped onto him. "You're not mad enough, so I have to be mad for you."
"You're right, I'm not mad." He sat up. "I'm really happy."
The frown on her face twisted. She looked away, then back. "Yeah. Well, you should have had the chance to be five years ago," she said, but it was half-hearted this time.
Rather than their usual routine of playing around the city on arrival, they spent their first few days doing research into who they were dealing with and thus what his daughter's life had been like up to this point. Juliana. Juliana Fulmine, no middle name, daughter of, purportedly, Kennyth and Sylva Fulmine. Younger sister of the family heir, Mavis Fulmine.
"This isn't making me like him more," Chezzaran said.
"It's completely fair to not want to have a pregnancy out of wedlock on your reputation before you're even an adult," Anaxaster countered. "You saw how he looked at her. It doesn't mean he's ashamed of her or loves her any less."
"It does make it more likely he neglected to contact you on purpose," Chezzaran countered back. "Harder to keep up that ruse with the other parent involved."
He blew a lock of hair into her face with a cantrip. She did it right back to him, and it got stuck in his glasses when he tried to fix it.
"So here's the really bad news," Chezzaran continued while he struggled with it. "Lady Sylva Fulmine is Sylvanus Alwas."
He blinked at her, uncomprehending, and she sighed. "She's on Mother's list."
He blanched. Mother kept a list of adventurers proximate to their territory who were powerful enough they had the potential to kill them. Something adventurers were liable to do just to learn from the experience of it. Many an adventurer had tried to kill Mother and learned it was a mistake, but the two of them didn't have half her power, and so she urged them to keep away from those who could do them real harm.
"Not to mention, they're a noble family, so they have a small army of guards."
"So we just have to tread very carefully," Anaxaster said.
"I think you should talk to him. Ideally while he's away from his house," Chezzaran said.
"Yes," Anaxaster said, slightly nervous. "Yes. Tail me but don't come close."
"No?"
"You're gonna be mean! You already don't like him. I don't want that in our first coparenting conversation."
"Ugh. Fine."
Luckily for them, Mavis was still known to slip away from his household and its supervision. Anaxaster managed to find him amongst a crowd of people at a night market stall browsing jewelry.
The moment he caught his eye, he knew he did not remember him. There was not an ounce of recognition there, none at all. He bit the inside of his cheek. That would make this slightly more difficult, but at least it was a reason not to have reached out to him that might satisfy his sister.
Had they been that drunk? Had only Mavis been, and he didn't notice? He felt a dusting of warmth on his cheeks, embarrassment and discomfort, and the beginning of guilt--
"Hi?"
He swallowed. Of course, he'd just been staring into Mavis's face without explanation. "Hi," Anaxaster returned, smiling slightly.
"Do I know you?" He said, more curious than annoyed, examining Anaxaster's face.
"Yes," he said, "You do."
Mavis's eyebrows rose.
"We met, um, not far from here actually, Chaotic Eva was touring from Waterdeep and appeared at the concert hall. It was about five years ago? Almost exactly, in fact." Nine months before your four-year-and-three-month-old sister was born, he didn't say, though he should have, as Mavis continued to look at him blankly.
"Huh," was all he said. "That sounds kind of familiar? The show, I mean. Did we hang out?"
"We had sex," Anaxaster said, face burning now.
"Oh." Mavis's eyes went wide. "I'm sorry? I mean..." He trailed off.
Anaxaster examined his expression and registered nothing but discomfort. No realization, no curiosity.
"I think you have the wrong person," Mavis eventually said. "But if you don't, I'm sorry? I don't remember that at all."
"No, I'm sorry," he said quietly, still looking at his face. "You're right, I must have."
"How'd it go?" Chezzaran said, already wary at the sight of his glum expression.
"He's not interested in talking about it, I think?"
"What does that mean?" She asked, steely.
"I... alluded to it, and he appeared to not know what I was talking about--"
"Wait, wait," Chezzaran said, "I'm not here to defend this guy, but what do you mean alluded to."
"I brought up the fact that we slept together right at the time his daughter would have been conceived and he was completely incurious. I think he might not want to know."
"And that's all you said."
He put his head in his hands. "Why is now the time to stop being overexaggeratedly in my corner, I'm so embarrassed--"
She pulled his hands away from his face, took him by the shoulders, and shook him slowly. "You have to confront him directly."
She let go of him and turned away when he didn't respond. She lit a cigarette and leaned against the alley wall.
"What if I didn't?"
"You do want to get to know your daughter."
"Of course I do," he said, narrowing his eyes at her. "But I don't strictly need his permission to see her."
Chezzaran took a long drag, then pointed her cigarette at him. "Kidnapping?"
"No!"
She took another drag. "More breaking and entering?"
"No," he said, with a pause. "No breaking. We have Dimension Door."
She looked at him long, and then she smiled. He smiled slowly back.
On Chezzaran's advisement he cast Greater Invisibility on himself for just four hours and sixteen minutes, instead of the base one minute or the sorcerous maximum of twenty-four hours. Her reasoning was that he should probably not be there through meal times, when the whole family was together, and this was about the most time you could get between them. Rather than risking the ducking through doors strategy he used short-range teleportation to get into the building, though he did have to duck through the door to Juliana's room. Once he saw her, he stopped and looked for a moment. She was playing, at present, with a smartly dressed little doll and a stuffed owlbear. As he watched, the girl doll appeared to be jumping up and down on top of the owlbear's stomach. It also caught his attention that she was wearing a sapphire bracelet on her left wrist, which he'd seen at the jewelry stand Mavis had been browsing the night before.
He had had to duck in with a servant, who tucked an armful of laundry into her dresser and left without interacting with Juliana. He looked long at the door. He couldn't hear any nearby approach. He moved into his daughter's line of sight, held his breath, and cast See Invisibility on her. It was astounding that such a spell didn't require his concentration, but he was grateful for it.
"Woah!" Juliana looked up from her dolls at him. He flinched, but she hadn't been that loud. She put her dolls down and stood up, put her little fists on her hips and looked him up and down. "You're sparkly."
He blinked. His robes did have a shimmer to them. And he was standing in a beam of sunlight from her window.
She walked up to him and took his hand on two of hers. He froze; his heart leapt into his throat. He stood still as she pushed up his sleeve to better see the pattern of scales on his arm that remained even in his humanoid disguise, smatterings of blue that concentrated at the wrists.
"It's like you have a bracelet but forever," she whispered.
He smiled, though tears were threatening his eyes. "They do look like one, huh? I like your bracelet, too."
She perked up and looked at his face, letting go of his hand and clutching her own braceleted wrist proudly. "Thank you!! I love it. Mavis got it." She cocked her head looking up at him. "Are you a teacher?"
"No?"
"Are you a maid or a gover-ness?"
"No," he said, "I don't work here. I..."
She blinked her little dark eyes up at him, waiting.
"I just wanted to meet you," he said, flush collecting at his ears, hoping not to say something that would upset her.
"Why?" She asked simply.
"I think you're really great," he said, quick and quiet.
She beamed and hugged her arms around her chest. "I am! That's true. Do you want to play with my dolls?"
He nodded, relieved, and knelt down beside her as she sat back down in front of her dollhouse.
"Were they fighting?" He asked.
"No!" She said with offense. She sighed loudly, and began pointing out other toys in the dollhouse. "Her mom and dad," she pointed out a toy cat and a stuffed snake wearing a little bow tie, "wouldn't let her jump on their bed." She pointed out a very nice dollhouse bed, one he was sure a real pixie or sprite could sleep very comfortably in. "So he," she held up the owlbear, "said, 'I'm very big and soft just like a bed!' And she said, 'Yay!!!'" Juliana resumed the little girl doll jumping up and down on the stuffed owlbear.
He nodded. "I see now."
She nodded back, and put those dolls down. "So that's already done, though. We do something else now." He watched her consider. "They should go on an adventure! Let's... kill a dragon!"
"No!" Anaxaster said, high-pitched with dismay.
Juliana put her fists on her hips. "They can do it! They're a girl and an owlbear, they're very strong."
"Sure, but, don't," he said helplessly.
She frowned at him, which made his chest pang. "Why not? Do you think girls can't fight dragons like daddy thinks?"
He blinked, and swallowed the emotion summoned by hearing her say daddy. "No, it's just, shouldn't... Your family is dragonmarked, so one of your ancestors had a friendship with a dragon at some point...?"
She scrunched her face up in thought. "Make friends with a dragon?"
"Yeah!"
"Is that a good adventure?"
"I think it'd be a great adventure."
She looked unconvinced.
He turned toward a blank spot on the floor near them and summoned a minor illusion or a blue dragon, himself, curled up on top of a sand dune, glimmering in the desert sun. The illusion was in a similar position and size to a house cat.
Juliana gasped and pounced forward. She brought her face very close to the illusion, examining individual details. "It's so pretty!"
He smiled, eyes still tight with concern. "Yeah! Right?"
"Okay." She nodded solemnly. "We can make dragon friends. What do you do when you go to a dragon's house to hang out?"
"Well..." His mind went to things Mother did at home, because she was the one who the territory belonged to-- develop her hoard, perform experiments. Both promising play options, though it might be better to have more and different materials to work with. What did he and Chezzaran do when they were young children?
"Wrestle," he said. "While flying?"
Her eyes lit up. "Yes!"
When the door opened, they were still miming flying the dolls through the air whilst intermittently having them run into each other. Anaxaster brought the owlbear doll quickly down to the ground and hoped the person in the doorway didn't notice it had been floating. Wait, was the toy invisible while he held it? When he set it down would it pop into existence--?
"Mavis!" Juliana set her doll down and rushed at him. With a practiced motion he bent down and scooped her with just one arm, though he visibly strained to bring her up high enough to wrap her arms around his neck, leaning heavily on his cane. Anaxaster hadn't made note of the cane before, though he'd had it at the night market and the first time they came to the house, he thought. Not five years ago, though. He wondered if he'd sustained an injury.
"I made a new friend!" Juliana said.
Anaxaster blanched. But this had been inevitable. He was prepared to teleport out.
"Yeah?" Mavis said, cocking his head.
"He's blue and sparkly," Juliana said.
Anaxaster smiled. Mavis smiled, too.
"Is that right?" Mavis said.
"Yeah! We played dragons in the desert! Oh I don't have a dragon toy Mavis can I have a dragon toy?"
"Absolutely you can," Mavis said. "Should it be blue and sparkly?"
"Yes!!!" Juliana grabbed his face and shook him with the force of her excitement. "You get it."
Mavis laughed. He didn't seem to suspect anything at all.
The next day that he came, Juliana was excited to see him. It melted his heart.
She also asked his name.
"Anaxaster," he told her. It might have been wiser to lie, for fear of her repeating it to others, but wisdom wasn't a strength of his.
She counted out four on her fingers, then grinned up at him. "We have the same amount of sounds in our names!"
"Yeah?"
"Jul-ee-ah-nuh," she said, raising a finger with each syllable. "And-!" She stopped to think. He opened his mouth to repeat his name, but she said, "An-egg-sassed-her."
He blinked down at her for a moment, then covered his mouth as he tried to suppress the laughter coming up out of him. He failed, mostly. His shoulders shook with it, and thankfully, she started laughing, too.
"I'm good with words, the teacher says," she said. "I've got a spelling lesson. Do you know how to spell?"
"I do," he said.
"Hmmm," she said, "All words?"
He pressed his lips together, laughter threatening to escape again. "Certainly not."
She smiled again. "Then we can learn together! You can sit with me."
He did sit for her spelling lesson with her, silently giving her the most apologetic look he could when she prompted him in front of the teacher. After the woman left, he fulfilled her request and showed her how to spell his name.
"Axe!" She shouted excitedly, underlining that syllable with her finger. She began miming chopping at the wall with a hand axe, and he gave her one with a minor illusion, to her delight.
"Axe took my spelling lesson with me," she told Mavis a few hours later, sitting on his lap while Anaxaster sat silently, invisibly opposite them.
"Who's Axe?" Mavis asked.
"My new friend!"
"Another new friend? You're so popular."
"No!" She scoffed like she couldn't believe he'd misunderstood. "It's his name!"
"Oh, this is your blue sparkly dragon friend?"
"Yes! Axe."
"That's cool. Why is he called Axe?"
She made a face. "Why are you called Mavis? It's his name!"
Mavis smiled. "Mother and I sat down together and decided I'd be called Mavis. I liked it."
"Woah, you got to pick your name?" She looked aghast at him. "I didn't get to pick mine!"
"What would you pick?" Mavis asked.
She put her fist to her chin and looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought. Then she turned back to him with a big grin. "Juliana!"
Anaxaster spent as much time as he could at the Fulmine house for the weeks that they were in Silverymoon. He stretched Greater Invisibility to eight and then sixteen hours, hiding when Juliana's grandparents were around. He experimented with casting True Seeing, as opposed to casting See Invisibility once an hour. Juliana did a double take. "...Axe?"
"Yes," he said, with a hint of concern.
"Woah..." She came up to him and walked all around him in a circle. "You're all sparkly..."
He realized his mistake-- was she seeing his true form? It would take up more than the whole room, though, and she seemed to still see him as occupying the same amount of space. Did he appear as a humanoid-sized dragon? One would think she'd comment on that, too. Did she see his true form condensed into the space of his humanoid form, or a silhouette cut out from his true form? Those seemed the closest to what she was reacting to.
"Pick me up!" She said after doing a full circuit around him, putting up both of her arms. He picked her up under the arms, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
"You don't feel sparkly," she said, slightly disappointed, "But I'm like I'm in the sky! Surrounded by blue all over!!"
He spun her around, holding her close to his chest. It would be so dangerous if anyone walked in and saw her just hanging in the empty air, but he couldn't bring himself to let her go once he had her. Tears fell behind his glasses as he held her close and she marveled at the patterns of his scales that only she could see.
"We can't stay in this city forever," Chezzaran said, "And you can't just secretly live in their house! Eventually, you're going to get caught."
They'd been in Silverymoon for two months, and he'd seen Juliana every day since his first proper visit.
"I don't want to leave her," he said quietly, helplessly. He knew she was right.
"You're going to have to actually eat something substantial, eventually," she said, softly, because she knew he knew. "If you stay here, someone in the very magically rich city government is going to get wise and kill you for it, even if Lady Sylva Fulmine never finds you in her house."
He put his head in his hands. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed.
"Once we both learn seventh-level spells, we can Teleport here and back whenever you want," she said comfortingly.
He perked up, and pushed his glasses back into place. "Do you think we could find some Teleport scrolls in the interim?"
"Seventh-level spell scrolls are really rare," she said, "I doubt we could come by two a day."
"We could ask Mother if she has anyone who knows how to cast Teleport?" he said, "If they thought they were powerful enough to kill a dragon of her power, they might know seventh-level spells."
"Yeah," Chezzaran said, squeezing his shoulders again. "And you know what's comparatively much easier to get is a third-level spell scroll! There's that spell that only non-innate casters can learn, that can send messages across long distances. Then you could at least talk to her every day."
"Yes," he said, nodding and swallowing. "Okay. Okay."
"Look at you, reaching so high now," Iymrith said, reentering the main chamber of her lair. She wrapped her storm giant form's arms around his draconic neck, then pulled back to hold out an open palm filled with papers. "And a father at that. Congratulations, little one."
He shrunk to humanoid form in order to properly take the scrolls. She was three times his height, then, and she chuckled to watch it happen.
"Thank you, Mother," he said, his voice thick.
"Oh, of course, my dear, it was no trouble. I have at least one wizard who knows what's good for him." She threw her head back and gave a short laugh. "I am disappointed you did not bring this granddaughter of mine here to meet me."
"I know," he said. "I wish I had. No, I wish I could. Maybe in a few years."
"Hmm, yes, she would be simply too small now, wouldn't she. Not a single thing would fit her."
He pressed his lips together to suppress a smile, and nodded.
Juliana. I'm sorry I can't be there today. What are you up to? And can you count twenty-five words in your answer?
Axe!!! Yes I can! Oh that's four. Like me! Can you see me? Mavis got me a dragon toy! It's so pretty! It's covered in
His heart hurt when she cut off. He picked another scroll, the first one disintegrating in his hand.
I stopped hearing after twenty-five words. Tell me what the dragon toy looks like again?
It has real jewels for the eyes and the spine and the claws!!! The rest of it is soft and it's the perfect hug size.
That was a perfect twenty-five words!
I know!!! I'm very good at words!