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The final goblin leader is felled with an unusual mercy.
Shadowheart hovers behind the party, arms still poised in a Bless spell, and expects Minthara's head to cleave from her shoulders as Felyne presses forward, sword raised high. Instead, in a manner that's almost shockingly gentle, she shifts her grip at the last second and uses the hilt to knock her out cold.
Minthara's taut, proud features slacken in a bizarre transformation as Felyne lays her down flat. Shadowheart catches no sign of shock in Felyne's dark purple eyes. Her long, white hair stays perfectly tied even after hours of battle, a few stray strands billowing across her dusk grey skin the only sign of effort.
Lae'zel seethes, eyes ablaze, driving her greatsword into the ground. The stone splits with a thunderous crack. Felyne stays still, a mountain in the face of Lae'zel's fury.
"Tsk'va! What is the meaning of this treachery, drow? Simply because she is one of your own? Must I cut you down too before the tadpole fully ravages your senses?"
"Calm yourself, Lae'zel," Felyne says in that constant, steady voice of hers. "My sword does not hesitate blindly. The rising heir of House Baenre in Menzoberranzan, now sworn to this Absolute. Had I been facing Minthara with her mind intact, I would have performed my duty."
Felyne's hand automatically fists against her chest, where it would have lain over the gleaming symbol of Eilistraee had she been wearing her usual ensemble. But her hands land on the jagged triangle emblazoned with the crude skull of the Absolute instead. Fingers jerk away from her stolen disguise as though touching hot iron.
"But the Lolth-sworn soldier was absent. There is no devotion, no pleasure in slaying a person when their mind has been entirely taken."
Shadowheart stares at Felyne's clear, steady eyes, and finds herself looking away.
Lae'zel nods once, sharp. The greatsword lifts from the ground. "Very well, is'tik. A warrior's vow. Do not forget, or my own blade shall be your reminder."
She shifts her stance and lunges forward, bisecting a goblin with its spear raised high. Hot blood splatters across her face.
Gale laughs nervously. Shadowheart tuts, the wizard's tells with his dislike of conflict all too obvious. "Well, glad I didn't have to charm you both to finally get a move on. Let's get out of this bloody, stinking place shall we— "
Fire bursts out from an open palm.
"— Ignis!"
Screams fill the air, quickly swallowed by hungry flame.
"Oh for Mystra's sake - the smell never gets better."
Shadowheart blinks.
She then rushes forward, almost forgetting herself. Felyne has already initiated her usual deadly dance, felling goblins left and right, humming something Shadowheart cannot quite catch. Her mind stays on Felyne's eyes. Even Lae'zel had backed down. Why —
A sharp pain bursts from the wound in her hand, glowing violently.
Shadowheart clamps down a cry, crushing a goblin down with her mace. She hammers its skull until the spikes of her mace drive down into stone, instead of flesh. Her arms ring with each impact, emanating towards the hollow in her skull, but she only grips the handle tighter, knuckles bone-white as she launches for her next target with a harsh scream. Shar's mark continues to burn.
They are still fighting.
The stream is endless. For each goblin Shadowheart cuts down, three more seem to spawn in its place. And she heals when she can, but her spellpower is wearing thin. She taps Lae'zel's shoulder. A ragged gash closes up, and she grunts in acknowledgement (there is no word for 'thank you' in Githyanki,' Lae'zel had said), before closing in on her next target.
She chants a soft incantation and Karlach's breathing resets itself, her chest expanding to its full capacity as her ribs click back into place. She shoots Shadowheart a sheepish grin. "Nice one, Shads!"
Felyne weaves between each enemy, but even her movements are getting sluggish. A goblin blade knicks her across the arm. Without stumbling, she heals the cut and takes down the offender in one swoop. Some goblins have seen sense and fled from battle, but others still press on; the grass soaked with blood and spilled booze.
An unnatural sound vibrates in the air, cutting through the bloodlust. Shadowheart's stomach drops.
An owlbear cub, the very one they spotted in the cave a few days ago, is cowering beneath the posts near the eastern gap. Its eyes dart wildly, trying to flee within all the chaos. Shadowheart frantically tries to recall her memory. What happened? How did they miss this?
The owlbear coos desperately, shying away from a stray spell launched from a goblin warlock.
Shadowheart turns her attention back to the battle in front. A goblin cleric bellows from the wooden bridge above, three arrows stuck in his chest. "Not one!" He shrieks. "Don't leave anything here alive! That's the least we can do for our Absolute!"
And he falls.
The remaining goblins cry out and fight on with a new, deranged fervour. The owlbear is at the edges of the camp now, finding its way through the gap in the eastern wall, and despite herself, Shadowheart can feel her shoulders drop with tentative relief.
"NOW!"
Ten bows come up from behind the far wall, and the volley looses.
Shadowheart is already moving. Has read the angle of the arrows. Horror seizes her so entirely that her body reacts without conscious permission. She launches over the collapsed parapets and throws herself on top of the owlbear cub. Her arms tighten over its middle. Her back tenses up as she rises to cover as much as she can.
The first arrow drives through between her shoulder blades. The breath is driven from her lungs as she tips forward, the cub's screech ringing in her ears.
The second lands between the gap of her arm. The cub howls in pain. Shadowheart tries to push forward as much as she can. Please let it be —
Thud, thud, thud.
Three more land on her back before she can finish that thought. Her body rocks violently with each hit. Her legs still somehow pushing them both over the gap, carried by the momentum of the impacts. One step. Two, three. Shadowheart refuses to let her legs drop. The cliff drop is steep and painful, but it will be safe.
Thud. Another arrow drives into the owlbear's leg. Shadowheart doesn't have to push anymore; the cub howls again and hobbles forward in a desperate sprint. Her vision whites out with each shift of an arrow on her back.
Thud. Pain blooms on Shadowheart's lower back. She doesn't have enough breath left to make a sound. The edge of the stone comes up fast in Shadowheart's darkening vision, and she's tipping, tipping, tipping until —
They both tumble over.
The camp's southeastern wall crumbles into rough ledges and jutting rock, and Shadowheart's world blurs. Her shoulder slams into a jagged edge and she feels a sharp crack, the joint wrenching sideways. Her arm goes numb and for a second her world goes mercifully silent; floating in a sea of nothing.
She hears the crack before she feels it, her hip catching another ledge as the world splits into two and slams back into one.
Whoosh.
Something slams into her left flank, the force of it spinning her over in the air. Shadowheart refuses to let go of the feathers beneath her fingers. She briefly registers the force of another arrow, before her face slams into the ground with a sickening crunch, the cub screeching beneath her, absorbing the impact.
The arrows jolt in deeper on her back, tearing everything in its path, and Shadowheart's world goes dark.
The dark melts away to a pool of Shadowheart's own blood.
The taste of it —copper and dirt— congeals thick in the back of her throat. Blood streams down freely from her broken nose as she turns her head to the ground, gasping. With each ragged inhale she's breathing in fire, bloody spit trailing down her chin. The ground beneath her shifts, and suddenly Shadowheart realises the ground isn't the ground at all, but instead is the cub - whining and scrambling to get free. She scrabbles her working hand around a fistful of grass and pulls, but her nerves connect to nothing.
The owlbear screeches once more, and with one final heave, shifts Shadowheart onto her side as it crawls out from under her weight. The cub cries as it moves forward, leaving a bloody trail from the arrows stuck on its upper back and leg.
Shadowheart turns her cheek in the dirt. Her back seizes with the agony of the arrows tearing deeper. Each breath is getting harder to take, the texture becoming wetter and wetter. She attempts to muster a quick healing spell, the usual incantation on the tip of her tongue, and finds herself unable to even form the shape of words. The only thing she can focus on is a blurry shape of a cub in front of her, limping and howling. But alive. Alive.
The cub growls, its whimpers of pain turning into a growing fury. Despite its wounds, it whirls towards Shadowheart, widening its stance to appear as threatening as possible. The tensing of muscle spikes a gush of blood. It continues to move forward, hobbling, despite the arrows digging in further.
"… Don'… m…" Shadowheart forces her mouth to work. Even when it produces more blood than sounds. "… move. Do...n't…"
The cub lets out a screech, eyes wide, feathers puffing out with each exhale. It leaps forward and digs its talons into Shadowheart's forearms. Digs past the vambraces and leather, almost into bone.
Shadowheart hisses. Slams her eyes shut. Opens them up again. Her palms still splayed wide open. Breathes through the pain. Something gurgles in her chest each time, getting heavier and heavier.
She forces her jaw to move again. "It's… okay."
Swallows back a mouthful of blood.
The owlbear's eyes are frightened and wild, its claws digging deeper and dragging down.
Shadowheart lies still. Focuses on only working her jaw. "'s… kay…"
The owlbear slowly jerks to stop. Its ears flatten, the talons lying still in her arms. It looks at Shadowheart's back, then seems to survey her face. Deep growls lighten into gentle trills.
Then Shadowheart seizes.
Pressure builds, builds and builds until it hacks out of her lungs in a spray of blood. She retches and retches but the burning fist clenching her chest won't let go. Cruelly tightens its grip. Shadowheart barely registers a shrill shriek, a pattering of steps. Something pointy and wet is nudging her face, then her hair. A low whine vibrates against her skin. She clutches onto the warm feathers like a lifeline, as though somehow they can breathe life back into her choking lungs. They don't.
Felyne sees Shadowheart disappear over the edge, and her nerves turn icy cold as every sense in her body is shaken alive.
"Shadowheart's down!" She yells. "Everyone— "
She flinches, nose inches away from a goblin scimitar. Then twists back on her heel and strikes the offender dead in the heart. He falls with a slight gurgle. Felyne doesn't even catch his face. Her eyes are trained on the southern cliff drop.
"Go!" Felyne is almost startled to see Lae'zel suddenly at her side. "We can hold off the rest. It would be a heavy blow to lose the Sharran."
Felyne nods, lips pursed. Then makes for a dead sprint towards where she saw Shadowheart and the owlbear fall. She launches herself over the rocks, skidding through the undergrowth, and finds herself on a smooth ledge next to the sound of rushing water. The currents roar, crashing and frothing through the forest. It is loud enough to almost mask the soft sound of gurgling blood. Her spine grows cold. And her eyes follow the path that her ears unwittingly pave.
Shadowheart is convulsing on a mass of feathers, fists knuckled white. Her long, dark hair hiding everything except the crimson splattering down with each desperate heave. Goblin arrows shine cruel and dark in the setting light as they dig deeper into her back. Felyne tears away her vambraces. Summons silver light into her palms as her legs automatically march towards the horrific sight.
The ball of feathers bristles and whines and Felyne is suddenly staring into the eyes of a terrified owlbear cub. The silvery wisps gathered in her fingers fade, and she lowers herself to her knees. Palms facing outwards, head dipped.
"I am here to help," Felyne says, voice steady. Her throat tenses. Forces her muscles to relax. Felyne cannot frighten the cub with the storm that's lashing inside of her. Not now.
The cub trills, a series of high-pitched hoots. It curls into Shadowheart further and raises its head high. Shadowheart's head also lifts with the movement. Felyne keeps her gaze clear and steady. Shadowheart's face is smeared with blood and grit; her nose crooked, eyes dim. Felyne hears a half-choked gasp of relief. More blood dribbles down her chin as opposed to clogging her airway.
"You have been doing a very good job," Felyne continues. Her voice a strained whisper. The cub's ears twitch. "But you are hurt too. And I am a friend, and she needs my help. You both need tending. Let me help her, please. "
The owlbear stares at Felyne, head raising even higher as though poised to attack. Felyne doesn't move. Takes shallow breaths. Refuses to look away from its wide, green eyes. Then the cub rears down. It shifts, Shadowheart slowly sliding off its back. Felyne rushes forward, catching her head in her lap.
"Shadowheart." Felyne begins to shake her shoulders, but freezes as the arrows shift slightly, producing a low whine. Felyne's hands hang uselessly in the air. Then settle around Shadowheart's jaw in a gentle caress. "Shadowheart. Can you hear me? Are you awake?"
Shadowheart's head twitches in her lap. Cloudy green eyes look into wide, purple ones.
"Good." Felyne takes another breath. "Do not answer. Save your strength. I need you to stay awake. Can you do that for me?"
A sluggish blink. Then awareness seems to sweep back into her eyes. "Is—"
"Hush." Felyne holds her face tighter. "Do not speak. You are severely injured, and judging by the sound of your breathing - a lung is punctured. Do not speak. Save your strength."
"Is… the cub." Shadowheart forces out. "Safe. I was. I needed…"
Felyne stares. "The cub is safe. Its injuries need tending, but not as severe as yours."
Shadowheart shudders, her brows uncurling slightly.
Blood roars in Felyne's ears, like a sea of devastation swallowing a rocky shore. Her hands begin to lose their steady grip. She masks it by rummaging through her field pack, until her fingers find a small flask. It takes three tries for Felyne to pull it out.
"Drink." Felyne orders. She tips a healing potion with one hand and coaxes Shadowheart's jaw open with the other. More goes down Shadowheart's chin than into her mouth, but Felyne is satisfied with the few tiny gulps that she manages to swallow.
Felyne gently rolls Shadowheart until the arrows sticking from her back are within arms' reach. She gnaws the inside of her cheek. Rinses her hands with the remaining water. Felyne bites, bites and bites until she swallows back a mouthful of blood. The throbbing sting focuses her vision, then her hands - which have finally stilled. Felyne lowers her arms over Shadowheart's back. Her elbows braced.
"I'm sorry." She whispers.
Then Felyne grabs the arrow between Shadowheart's shoulder blades and pulls.
Shadowheart's back arches as she strains to push herself away, a ragged gasp escaping her lips, her eyes blown wide open. Felyne doubles down, locking Shadowheart into her lap. The arrow comes free with a wet squelch. Felyne slams the arrow into the dirt so hard it snaps in two, then gently covers the bleeding wound with glowing hands until she feels the hole seal shut. Shadowheart's head is limp on the ground. Her breaths now more measured and controlled.
Felyne wrenches out the second, third, fourth, fifth - each hurled away with such force that it splinters on impact, or smashed with a closed fist.
Shadowheart doesn't make a sound. Her nails rake into the dirt.
Felyne steadies her hands on the final arrow on her back, then pulls. It catches, suddenly ramming into solid bone. Shadowheart jerks. Felyne stills. Steadies her hands, finds a different angle, and tries again. It saws between her ribs. Shadowheart slams her face into the ground, teeth grinding into dirt and grass with a muffled scream.
"I'm sorry." Felyne gasps.
She cannot seem to make out her own hands. Felyne leans down to get a closer grip. Feels warmth splash down her cheeks and onto Shadowheart's back below.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Felyne gently adjusts the angle, Shadowheart's scream only a distant echo, and pulls the arrowhead free despite the grating on bone.
She quickly moves to stem the gushing wound, Eilistraee's light stitching up the worst of it. Felyne finally lets herself breathe. Small, controlled breaths, gaze still locked on the arrow in Shadowheart's left flank.
"Shadowheart." Felyne lightly taps her jaw. "Still with me?"
Shadowheart's face is still in the dirt. Felyne turns her over, a finger under her nose. Light, shallow breaths. Whistling and cracking with every second, blood pooling in her open mouth.
Felyne doesn't hesitate. She closes her fist on the wayward arrow and slowly, slowly starts to slide it out. She cannot risk puncturing her lung even further. Shadowheart is thrown into the waking world with a keening gasp. No longer facing the dirt, her jaw works again and again in a desperate fight, which Felyne breaks by shoving her own arm between Shadowheart's teeth. She bites down hard, globs of blood pooling with each indent, teeth almost sinking into bone. Felyne doesn't lose her rhythm at all.
The arrow finally comes out.
Shadowheart's teeth grind in deeper as the arrowhead wrenches free. Then relax, inch by inch, as the pressure ebbs.
Felyne's face is still grim. She presses her hand against Shadowheart's side, the silver light shining brighter than ever before. She coaxes the silvery wisps deep, deep, deeper into the wound. By extension of her magic, Felyne feels the inner wall of Shadowheart's chest and forces the light to absorb all the viscous liquid leaking out.
She does not think about the feeling of wet meat shuddering and stitching itself back together. She does not think about Shadowheart's muted scream - coming through even with her teeth buried in Felyne's arm - breaking into hiccups. Tears mixing in with the crimson. Felyne pushes and pushes with her magic, ignoring the way her arm shakes and her ears ring, until it meets the soft flesh of Shadowheart's lung. A proper healer would have been more gentle in their control, but Felyne can only move forward with ruthless efficiency.
Then the lung inflates back to life. Tendrils of magic draw back as Felyne, finally, finally lets her light go dim.
Shadowheart's teeth snap back from Felyne's arm, leaving a trail of spit and blood. She draws in a breath - a full one, the clean texture of the sound sweet music to Felyne's ears - and shudders. Felyne tracks the rise and fall of Shadowheart's chest. Up, down, up, down. No erratic rhythm. Her features calm with a deep exhaustion rather than pinched in unconscious pain. Up, down, up, down —
"Felyne! By the gods."
Wyll kneels down next to her.
"She is stable," Felyne says. Her voice sounds very far away. "It is dangerous to move her in this state."
Her legs make no effort to get up. The only thing she can focus on is the steady up and down of Shadowheart's breathing. Wyll's hand ghosts her ravaged arm, feather light, but pulls back when Felyne makes no motion at all. Not even a turn of her head.
"I'll get the others to set up camp here. The goblins have been dealt with."
He shuffles away. Felyne keeps staring forward. Something nudges at her legs, and Felyne sees the cub again. Cooing and whimpering, nuzzling the skin around her bleeding arm.
"I have not forgotten you, little one," Felyne says. Her ears ring against her skull, but she summons one last bit of light. "Let me look at your wounds."
And she continues to work.
Night falls.
The cracking of firewood and bubbling of stew swallows up the quiet atmosphere. Lae'zel is not sharpening her sword, the whetstone left untouched. Instead, she is sitting in front of her tent, legs crossed, eyes pensive. Karlach mirrors her stillness in the tent opposite - the tiefling's rambunctious fire tempered and withdrawn.
The two clerics are veiled, almost a world away behind a closed tent.
Felyne is kneeling by Shadowheart's bedside. Inspecting and prodding every sealed wound, ensuring that they won't rip open as she sleeps. Her own arm is loosely bandaged, red in the grotesque shape of bite marks seeping through the cloth. Felyne deflected every unasked question with a tired, baleful stare, as she shifted Shadowheart into her tent.
If the marks still bleed in the morning, Felyne reasons, she'll seal them up. Shadowheart none the wiser. Somehow, she thinks this particular incident is better left forgotten to Shadowheart, who was half-crazed with agony when she bit down on Felyne's arm. Better her arm than Shadowheart completely biting off her tongue.
Felyne draws up the bedroll covers until they sit just below Shadowheart's chin. Free from its usual, severe braid, Shadowheart's hair is longer than she knew. Fanning out from her head, it almost goes past her hipbone. Felyne wonders if the delicate strands will feel like silk beneath her fingers.
Felyne tears her gaze away and stands. Reaches for the flaps of the tent, legs tingling with every step as it gets used to moving again. She senses the stares, loaded and questioning, and walks past the edge of the camp instead. Wild reeds weave with tall grass and budding flowers, illuminated by the soft moon above. The glitter of running water peaking out beneath the threads.
Shrouded by the wilderness, she carefully strips down to her smalls; face flushing despite herself. Before this whole adventure, she completed this ritual completely alone. Always. Here, she has to shield herself from the curious stares of her companions. And she will rather not try to explain the more… finer parts of Eilistraeean customs.
She folds the stolen ensemble of the Absolute neatly by the river. Now that it has served its purpose, it will make great kindling for Gale's next cooking endeavour.
Felyne breathes deeply next to the river, and lets the light of her goddess shed the day from her skin. Goosebumps ripple across her skin as she weaves into the dance of the Evensong, an ancient melody humming from her lips.
Eilistraee, hear me. I offer thee…
She twists her heel, toes lightly launching herself off the ground. Her right leg sweeps across the grass in a gentle arch, arms reaching towards the night sky, glittering with stars. The most instinctive emotions and memories she can grasp, she offers them to her goddess on this night, like every night before.
Compassion is weakness. Eyes frenzied, unblinking. Words spat out like a curse. Lady Shar's disciples discard such useless sentimentality from our first night of worship.
Felyne trips forward. Her breath stolen in shock as her bare feet tumble into the icy river.
The freezing cold does nothing to calm the tempest in her chest. Still, she keeps her form steady, and breathes in, and out, in and out. Siphoning the storm out little by little.
Felyne arches her arms towards the river, head dipped down as her legs counterbalance the forward movement. She lets each rising emotion flow through her fingertips. Each tense of a brow and clench of jaw gently disperse with the rhythm of her dance. But no matter how much she releases, the storm keeps growing. But Felyne will persevere. She will dance until dawn if she must. She will —
Compassion is weakness.
If Felyne hadn't sealed her wound in time, the collapse would have been permanent. With half a set of lungs, Shadowheart would never run again.
A sob breaks out from her lips. Ragged. Her chest heaving and heaving without her permission. The riverbed drops away beneath her feet, and the only thing Felyne is aware of is that she cannot let whatever this is manifest in the naked night air, in the eyes of her goddess, and the world turns dark and cold as her knees collapse in one final betrayal and the sound of her sobs is swallowed clean by the river.
A rush of white bubbles swarms against her face. Her lungs burn as she embraces the blistering inferno in her chest. She holds, holds, holds and holds.
Felyne wants to rip out her own throat and crush it between her fingers. Her head pounds, on the cusp of bursting within her skull. Rushing to the surface of her mind is the memory of an Eilistraeen priestess, dancing and singing and dancing, her form never breaking, her steps never faltering, even when tears streamed down her cheeks and her voice shook and trembled with each breath.
Darkness creeps into her vision and Felyne's head comes rushing back up, splintering the surface with a rattling gasp.
The priestess danced the Evensong from dusk till dawn, even though her child was born dead just the night before. Felyne never took her eyes off her.
She retches. Hands digging into the moss of the riverbank, chest shuddering one last time. Felyne stares numbly at the water droplets snaking across her skin. Tracks the liquid as it splashes onto stone.
She will never be a step behind again. Never.
Sopping white hair falls across her face. Head lowering until it almost touches the stone.
Never.
Never again.