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After their first meeting on the New Year’s Revel in Silverymoon and the following day they spent collectively recovering from their hangovers, the two adventuring parties bade each other farewell and did not see each other for another three months. They did, however, occasionally cast Sending back and forth to inquire about the other group’s activities. Abner’s group was in Faerun for business, and as it was their first time on the continent, they often deferred to the other group for advice on how to best assimilate.
When Abner offhandedly revealed in a late-night sending that he and his friends were heading to Waterdeep to meet someone, Iraelias was quick to give directions on the best ways to get to the coastal city and to mention that they usually lived in Waterdeep, leaving them intimately familiar with the city and its people. Flare even went as far as to offer them lodging in the guest rooms of Trollskull Manor, though Iraelias had his reservations.
This is what led to a three-day cleaning spree of the entire manor in preparation for the other adventuring party’s arrival, as the manor had fallen into some degree of disarray after nearly a year of neglect while they recovered from the incident in the Anauroch. Leucis had been largely unhelpful, staying in his room and doing everything he could to make it obvious that he did not want to be sharing his living space with a group of almost strangers without saying it outright, which eventually caused Flare to kick him out of the house like a dog, telling him to either get lost or get cleaning. Determined to do the opposite of what she wanted, he spent the next two days hanging around Waterdeep’s shadier areas purely to spite the woman.
When the other party arrived, it was a quiet morning, the crows calling distantly on the windowsills, and Leucis was doing his best to relax in the common room despite the headache behind his eyes. Whatever he had taken from the sleazy human man the other night was not leaving his system as quickly as he would like, and he squinted when the wind parted the curtains over the open window, flooding the room with sunlight.
He heard noise clattering upward from the floors below him, the sound of knocking and the front door opening, followed by cheerful greetings. He sighed, grinding his palms into his eyes. He made his way down the stairs and remained on the last step to observe the first floor, watching Flare, Iraelias, and Dreden greet the other party, who were laden with traveling gear and expressions of exhaustion. They apologized for the mud they tracked in on their boots, looking like they had walked most of the way to Waterdeep.
“Don’t worry about it.” Iraelias waved them off, closing the front door behind them. “Were you unable to catch the wagons in Amphail?” he asked, and Moses shook his head.
“No, we were… held up.” He spat the last two words with frustration, glaring daggers at Wilbur, who was prancing around the room, securitizing the tavern’s interior like an undiscovered ruin.
“Well, you must be tired then if you made the trek on foot.” She eyed Leucis and waved in his direction. “Leucis can show you to the guest rooms so you can put your bags away. In the meantime, we were about to make breakfast. Do you want any?” There were several nods and compliments about being gracious hosts that made Leucis’s eyes roll, but he decided to do as he was told just this once, the growling in his stomach overriding his desire to be oppositional. The group made their way to the stairs, and Leucis let them walk past him before ushering them on ahead.
“There’s a stupid number of rooms in this house, there’s four bedrooms on this floor. Take whichever ones you want; don’t go to the higher floors, there’s nothing for you there.” He said, opening some of the doors so they could get into the bedrooms. He watched them ogle at everything, eyes wide in a way that reminded him of how he must have looked when he entered the house for the first time. He knew this was different, however, as they seemed overjoyed to get to spend time in this kind of luxury, while Leucis had spent months struggling to even stand in the rooms for more than thirty minutes without his skin crawling and the walls closing in on him. He thinks he spent more time on the roof of the manor than he did inside it for the first year, the rough shingles and open sky soothing the caged animal within him.
“How did you guys manage to afford this place?” Moses asked bluntly, and Leucis shrugged, having asked himself the same question before. “We didn’t actually buy it, it was a gift for helping some broke guy a while ago. He couldn’t pay us back, so he just gave us the property. I think he was glad to be rid of it honestly, the inside was trashed, not to mention the poltergeist here that was almost more trouble than this place was worth.” Leucis twisted his hair around his fingers absently, pretending not to notice how they began to look around anxiously at the mention of a rogue poltergeist.
“It’s not still here, is it?” Abner asked, his glowing blue pinprick eyes darting around. “Who knows.” Leucis shrugged again and smirked, knowing it was long gone. He waved them to follow him after they set their bags down, watching them out of the corner of his eye as they returned to the tavern floor, where Iraelias was pushing together the tables to make room for eight to sit together. Not long after they were digging into a hardy spread of bread, porridge, and fruit, sausages piled on a plate closest to Leucis and Tam. They had learned the day after the New Year’s celebrations that Tam, like Leucis, could only eat meat, and that her preferences were even stranger.
“Dogs or cats?” Tam whispered to him, her antennae twitching suggestively- or as close to suggestive as she could manage, and it took Leucis a moment to realize what she was even referring to before he exaggerated scratching his chin, deep in thought.
“Dogs. Cats are stringy.” He smirked, and somewhere to his right, Flare mimed gagging.
They began to part after breakfast, both parties having their own business to attend to, Flare waving the others away to their guest rooms to catch up on some rest while they cleaned up. “We’ll take care of it. How long will you be here?” She asked Abner, who was trying to wipe sticky fruit juice from Wilbur’s face, the smaller man struggling as if he were enduring torture. “Oh, the ship we’re taking across the Trackless Sea is arriving in three days, so until then, if that’s alright?” and Flare nodded. Leucis narrowed his eyes, realizing they had yet to really determine where this group came from.
“Traveling back to your continent?” he asked, and Abner nodded. “Yes, we only had to come here to retrieve something for someone. Not much I can say, but it wasn’t something we could find in the Nations Under Tymora.” Leucis scrambled to think of where he had heard that before and realized he hadn’t. “Where is that?” He asked, and Moses answered instead. “Slightly south of Maztica?” He offered, and Leucis just frowned, also unfamiliar.
“You’re all from there?” Dreden asked, and they shook their heads. “No, while the Nations are quite diverse, it’s much smaller than Faerun, so most people immigrate there from surrounding lands.” Abner informed. “Tam is from Kara-Tur, for example, though we met her in a small town near Murkwell, in the Nations Under Tymora.” Leucis supposes that was a sound explanation, though his skin still crawls at the thought of letting these people sleep two floors below him. Knowing where someone came from didn’t really tell you much about them. He was proof of that.
He watched the group disappear upstairs, standing with a pile of plates in his hands, his tail flicking behind him. “Remind me again why we’re doing this?" He asked Flare lowly, and she stopped wiping down the table to also watch the party climb the stairs. “Because it wouldn’t kill us to make some allies.” She sighed, rolling her eyes at the face Leucis was giving her. “Is there a reason you feel the need to suddenly distrust them?” She asked, and he followed her with the plates into the kitchen.
“They haven’t exactly said anything to make me trust them. And what do you mean suddenly? It's not like we were friends and now we aren’t. We spent one night with them.” He argued.
“Well maybe if you hadn’t been pissed ten minutes into the night, you would have realized they weren’t so bad. They’re nice people, they seem honest.” And Leucis crossed his arms after putting down the plates. “You can seem honest and still be a liar, it just means you’re a good one.” He pointed out, and Flare jabbed at him with a finger, done with his attitude. “Quit it. Stop treating the rest of us like we don’t know what we’re doing. You think I would put the rest of you in danger?” She snapped, and he stayed silent, because no, he knew she wouldn’t. She shook her head and turned away from him, cleaning the counters. “I know it’s probably impossible for you, but try to relax. Besides, if they turn out to be a band of serial killers, I have no doubt we could deal with them. Call it a hunch, but they don’t seem as experienced as us.” She glanced back at him and smiled, but he didn’t return it, too distracted by the heat on his cheeks that made him feel like a scolded child. She often had this effect on him, and he loathed it. “Whatever.” He said, turning on his heel before she could try to soothe him, leaving the kitchen and going up the stairs. He spent the rest of the day in his room, ignoring both the voices of his friends and the other adventurers that echoed through the halls and bounced off his bedroom door.
They spent the next two days in relative comfort around each other, barring Leucis, who somehow turned himself into a shadow along the walls the moment anyone besides Dreden, Flare, or Iraelias was in the room. Abner found it eerie, but he tried not to show it for fear of offending their hosts. It was obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that it took a lot to get on Leucis’s good side and that his prickly behavior was deeply ingrained. It instilled the same sadness in the skeletal man that he felt when he comforted Wilbur when he cried out for his children as if they were truly missing or when Tam came back from a night away reeking of sex he wasn’t sure she really wanted. It was the empathy he felt when he was forcibly reminded that misfortune found its way into everyone’s lives, and some people were forever changed by it.
“Maybe he’s just really kinky.” Tam suggested it when they were alone in the common room and Moses had made a comment to them about the handprint burned into the flesh of Leucis’s throat. Abner tried not to think about the kind of cruel precision required to pull that kind of damage off and glared righteously at Tam.
“You, of all people, cannot seriously think that.” He hissed, and he watched her large eyes squint and the feelers around her small mouth curl in the way he knew meant she was grimacing uncomfortably.
“No, I don’t. Sorry.” She said, and they ended the conversation there, as if Leucis might phase through the wooden walls and confront them.
While Abner’s group explored Waterdeep and its endless tourist attractions, Leucis and his friends were deep in the inner workings of a heist on behalf of one of the bigger crime syndicates of Neverwinter, pouring over the large annotated map that made frustratingly little sense to any of them. Dreden was the best equipped to decipher it, poring over books like the perfect student he had once been, but even he was at a loss. The four of them stood with the map spread out on a table in the middle of the second-floor library, which is where they did most of their planning, when they heard feet hammering against the stairs and a blur of brown fur and flapping fabric pelted into the room. Leucis had to forcefully peel his fingers away from one of the many daggers he kept hidden against his skin when he realized it was Wilbur, who manically jumped onto the table they were standing around to elevate himself to their height.
“My dearest, dear friends, Smeagis and I have a riveting tale to tell you!” He threw up his arms, ignoring the dumbfounded and frustrated looks of the people around him, and certainly not seeing the way Dreden nearly cried when the harengon pressed his dirty feet into the map they needed. “Wilbur get out, this room isn’t to play in!” Flare said, waving the man away, but going entirely unacknowledged.
“The void is calling, yes, yes, and it’s telling me about bison, big ones, little ones, but it’s bison meat that really is the problem. Terrible!” He squawked, the passion in his voice betrayed by the utter nonsense coming out of his mouth. He continued to rant about the dangers of bison meat—whatever that meant—despite Iraelias and Flare picking him up, each holding one arm, which gave Leucis enough time to pull the map away from Wilbur’s feet. Again footsteps were heard on the stairs and Leucis groaned, distinctly remembering how he marked the third and forth floor as off limits to their guests, when Abner appeared in the doorway, out of breath.
“I’m terribly sorry, I don’t know what set him off. Sometimes he just gets these wild ideas, we really don’t know where they come from.” Abner said, reaching for Wilbur, who kicked at the man with his surprisingly muscular legs. “The void! Smeagis says you cannot see, so I must make you! Wait, it’s not bison, there are no bison in Thay, it’s the children! They are eating the children!” He shrieked, causing Flare and Iraelias to drop him and step back to watch the man thump his rabbit feet against the ground like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Leucis edged between Dreden and Wilbur, the mention of Thay pushing him away from discomfort and into suspicion. Abner was sternly talking to Wilbur, picking the smaller man up and restraining him, avoiding his swinging horns and snapping jaws. It was like picking up a feral raccoon, Leucis thought. Wilbur eventually stopped fighting, his legs hanging limply from where he was pressed against Abner, the larger man having wrapped his arms completely around Wilbur’s upper body like a vice.
“Again, so sorry.” Abner panted, appearing truly embarrassed and much more frustrated than they had seen him when dealing with Wilbur before. “No one’s eating any children, and there is no Thay,” he reassured, though it was mostly directed at Wilbur, who was pouting.
“Thay is the city of Red Wizards in the far east of Faerun,” Iraelias said suddenly, frowning. “Not that I recommend going, it would be a death sentence. You would be hard pressed to find a friendly Red Wizard. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were eating children.”
Abner tilted his head and eventually lowered Wilbur to the ground to let the man wander around the room. “Oh well… Maybe he heard of it from somewhere? According to… er, his wife," He glanced at Wilbur, but the man was absorbed in the rows of bookshelves against the walls. “He’s never been to Faerun, though he was quite the traveler during his career.”
“Career?” Flare asked, and Leucis shifted uncomfortably, subtly adjusting the papers on their table so that they were less visible to Abner.
“Oh yes, apparently he was an archeologist, and a good one at that.” Abner turned to look at Wilbur. “But that’s in the past now… I like to think he’s happy where he is given the circumstances.”
The four friends shared a look, and Leucis ignored the urge to leave the room and go smoke, if only to cleanse himself of the depressing mood that had taken hold of all of them, when Abner glanced down at the table. “Working on something?” He asked, eyes glinting, and Lecuis scowled despite himself.
“Nothing that concerns you.” He bit out, ignoring Flare’s look of disapproval.
“What he means to say is we’re working things out for a job, it’s taking a lot more planning than we expected, but we’ll figure it out. I’m sure you won’t fault us for being private.” Dreden said amicably, and Abner nods.
"No, no, of course, but the least I can do is offer support considering everything you guys have done for us.” He gestured around the room, and while his friends shared thoughtful looks, Leucis only narrowed his eyes at Abner. There was always the chance Abner was simply fishing for information, but Leucis had nothing but his paranoia to prove this.
“Well, I don’t suppose you know how to read a map like this.” Dreden said, pulling the map out of Leucis’s hands after receiving some resistance and laying it out on the table. The map was old and faded, with strange symbols and barely legible annotations scrawling in the corners. It was clearly a dungeon of some sort, but the map was so complex they were unable to determine how many floors were depicted or what any of the rooms were for. Abner leaned forward to examine the map, rubbing his bald head, before shaking his head.
“I haven’t the foggiest,” he chuckled, as if he had expected this, before gesturing toward Wilbur. “But he might.” He said, calling the other man over from the paperweights he was stacking.
“No offense, but… I don’t see how that would be the case.” Iraelias said as delicately as he could, though his face betrayed his disbelief. “Trust me,” Abner assured, “I know it’s probably hard to see now, but he’s dang helpful. We never enter a cave or a fight without him.” He put his hand on Wilbur’s shoulder and guided the man to stand in front of the map, and Leucis couldn’t help the curiosity that bloomed within him as if he were about to watch a circus man perform a fantastical stunt.
Wilbur seemed confused at first, asking Abner why they were standing there and having to be asked to focus multiple times, and just when Leucis could tell he and his friends were all beginning to think this would end in disappointment, Wilbur’s normally unfocused eyes sharpened. He stared intensely at the map, and despite his twitching ears Leucis thinks this is the most still he has seen the harengon.
“Ask questions, quickly.” Abner encouraged, and Flare shifted and breathed a disbelieving sigh. “Uhm… how many floors are there in the dungeon?" She asked hesitantly, and Wilbur tilted his head. “What dungeon?” he asked, and Flare scoffed.
“This one” Abner said patiently, tapping the map as if Wilbur hadn’t just been staring at it.
“Eighty-five, of course!” Wilbur said confidently, and Leucis felt his eyes widen and jaw drop against his will.
“Where is the prison?” Flare asked, before adding, “On the map.” And repeating Abner's tapping. Wilbur reached across the table to point to a large section of the map in the lower portion of the map, which until then seemed like just another room.
“Incredible.” Iraelias whispered, and Wilbur beamed up at him, perhaps entirely unaware how impressive this feat was. They spent the next two hours having Wilbur walk them through the dungeon as if he had been the one to build it, interpreting the symbols and handwriting as if he had written them. He knew what the rooms were for, and how they were most likely built, information pouring from the gaps in his psyche, which he gave in the most round-about ways possible.
“You speak Dwarvish?" Dreden asked, and Wilbur tilted his head. “Draconic?” he asked, blinking. “No, Dwarvish, this is definitely dwarvish.” He was almost certain it was Dwarvish, though Wilbur had forced him to second-guess himself constantly since entering the room.
“Yes, the dwarves made this in… seven hundred DR!” He exclaimed, leaving them stunned. “And you can read the Dwarvish?” Dreden repeated, though he didn’t get an answer.
“Yes, a dwarf wrote this.” Wilbur said, pointing to some of the illegible script, answering Dreden’s question without really answering it.
They continued until Wilbur was twitching and pacing around, unable to stand still even when Abner physically redirected him to the table. “My head hurts! "There are worms in there!” he whined, holding his head. His hands pushed his fur to reveal a scar, which Leucis could see by standing next to him. It looked old and deep, an irritated, knobby thing that stretched from the top of his head, wrapped around the base of his left ear, and extended down toward his jaw. He caught glimpses of it before, but it appeared particularly severe now, and Leucis averted his eyes.
Abner placed his hands over Wilbur’s eyes, which the man covered with his own, and bid them farewell. “I think that’s enough for today. I hope it was enough, but I think he needs to rest.” The glowing man said with a smile, and the others nodded.
“Of course. You’ve both helped more than you know, I think we can take it from here.” Iraelias reassured them, and they watched the two turn and leave the room, creaking down the stairs back to the second floor.
“I can’t believe that just happened. Who would have thought.” Flare said, speaking for all of them.
Iraelias rolled up the map, humming in thought. “Sometimes the brightest people turn out to be the ones you expect it from the least.” He mused, and Leucis couldn’t help but find himself agreeing. Even though he had to fight with himself just to remain in Wilbur’s erratic presence, he was impressed. He struggled to reconcile the images of Wilbur with his family and the descriptions of an esteemed archeologist with the raving man that jumped on tables and rambled about Red Wizards eating children, and part of him felt somehow more uncomfortable with the fact that he had never met someone more damaged than him until now. For the first time he was faced with someone who was not just falling apart but had been completely undone, and its proximity and familiarity terrified him viscerally.
The last day Abner and his friends spent at Trollskull Manor ended in a night of drinking and feasting, the tavern overflowing with the aroma of roasted vegetables and meat.
“If you keep feeding us like this, we won’t want to leave.” Tam said, “Surely this meal alone must have cost a pretty coin.”
Flare shrugged, smiling into her glass. “Not really, it was Leucis’s turn to grocery shop, so somehow I doubt we actually paid for any of it.” And there were some laughs shared around the table as if this was just something amusing to be expected of the tiefling. The man in question found it jarring to be seen, or to have people think they saw him, and sank lower into his chair. Wilbur challenged him to cards again, but he declined and instead sat back and let the conversation drift over him. Abner eyed him but said nothing, which Leucis noticed the other man doing often.
“So you started traveling together by coincidence?” Dreden asked. And Moses nodded.
“Indeed. I especially had no intentions of joining anyone on the road, my holy mission was too important to risk distraction.” He sniffed, and Tam rolled her large eyes. “When he says holy mission, he means sucking every spare copper from the people he convinced would be 'giving to the temple of Savrus.'" She said bluntly, and Moses steamed in his seat. He pulled his robes around himself and spoke into his plate.
“I allowed myself to be…momentarily distracted from my original path.” He said, avoiding Iraelias’s heavy gaze.
“Well, at least you figured things out eventually. Iraelias and I were together on the road first, old friends, and we picked up Flare soon after. Someone told us about Leucis when we needed a fourth person to get a noble to sign a contract for us, and things just fell into place from there.” Dreden said, and Leucis scoffed quietly at the severely oversimplified retelling of things. He could, however, appreciate that his friends didn’t immediately point out the conflicts in their early relationship—most of which were caused by him.
They continued to share their experiences, and they were able to confirm that Abner’s group was much newer to adventure than them but had partially made up for it with the significance of their first journey together. In their first adventure, they had traveled nearly the entire continent they were from and even jumped planes, clashing head-on with gods—or people who claimed to be gods. They also claimed that despite often being a massive liability, Wilbur actually killed almost all the enemies and creatures they faced, often purely by chance.
“Maybe you’ll see it one day, but when he hits, he hits hard. So hard in fact that no one else even gets the chance to attack. I don’t think he has even the faintest idea how his magic works, he just casts the heaviest hitting thing he has on hand and boy howdy, does it work.” Abner chuckled while Moses and Tam sat green in their seats. Wilbur laughed too and jerked in his seat, throwing his hands up and miming an explosion, sound effects and all.
“That would be interesting to see, who knows, maybe one day the eight of us will be traveling in the same direction.” Flare pondered aloud, the idea settling comfortably in their minds.
“Who knows?" Abner smiled. “Maybe.”
They said goodbye early the next morning, their backpacks heavy on their shoulders, waving back toward Trollskull Manor as they disappeared into the dusty streets, the rising sun trailing after them.
Leucis watched them go and had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time they saw the other group, an idea that didn’t bother him as much as he thought it should. Maybe he could risk making a few friends, just a little bit.