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“Why is it always Szass Tam?” asks Edgin, sitting across from a Harper agent in the House of a Thousand Faces, who sips at their pint, having just delivered the news that they have a mission for him. “Unless I’m wrong and you mean a different Dread Ring?”
“One and the same,” they say, beaming at him. “Take it you’re already familiar? Brill!”
“You can’t possibly be serious.”
“Am, yeah.” They slam a pouch of gold and a map down on the bar. “This should help you get outfitted, and this tells you how to get to the place. Go, give it a look, ensure no one’s using it – got stories about weird lights and such, you know – ’s supposed to be abandoned, but. Nothing new under the sun, so far as Szass Tam’s concerned – you know how these things go.”
“I do?”
“That’s the spirit.”
Clapping him on the back, they stand to go.
“Can I at least ask why it’s me again?” Edgin calls after them. He doesn’t really expect an answer, so the fact that they turn back toward him, still grinning, is a bit unnerving.
“Already dealt with his people more’n once, haven’t you? Got more experience than the rest of us put together? There you go.”
They’re gone, slipping out of the tavern before he can formulate a protest.
“Hells,” he mutters.
Holga’s in, of course. Kira tries to volunteer too, though Edgin shuts this down quickly (“Absolutely not”, with reasoning following afterward, and a promise that she can in fact go and stay with the Emerald Enclave, who are hosting some kind of Solstice celebration). Simon’s in, though he mumbles something about the Solstice, while Doric sighs and says that she can’t make any promises, but if she’s available (considering that it’s her group that’s all supposed to hold hands and sing songs together in the woods), she’ll come.
“Don’t know that the two of us can do it alone,” Holga points out, wisely, and so Edgin takes a deep breath and does that which he has been dreading, namely: asking the hero of the realm if he’ll come along, too. Xenk Yendar isn’t exactly his first choice of traveling companion (believing Edgin to be capable of a level of goodness that he finds makes him itchy), but he does know an awful lot about Szass Tam, and he might have insights that no one else does.
Finding Xenk is easier said than done. Edgin asks the Tyrites, who point out (rightly) that he is not one of their Order.
“He has aided us, of course, in many of our endeavors, but he is not a knight of our faith,” says the woman in heavy armor he approaches following one of their practices. “He is his own man, naturally, and keeps his own counsel.” Which is a polite way of saying she has not a clue, naturally, given she tells him as much when he presses: “I have heard he is still in Neverwinter, but I cannot say that we have seen him in some days.”
Edgin’s a Harper, and this should be easier – would be easier if he or Simon knew Sending – but he’s not exactly keen on asking the other Harpers for help, not with what should be the easiest part of the mission, and so it is that he resorts to the usual: going to different inns and taverns around the city and making a nuisance of himself. Everyone has a story about Xenk Yendar, hero of the realm, and through piecing this together, he’s able to eventually track him not to a tavern or an inn at all, but to the shrine of Ilmater, where the priest (who also makes it clear that Xenk is not a member of his Order) tells Edgin, cheerfully, that he’s gone to the market to fetch what’s needed to make supper for the two of them.
“An excellent young man, that one,” the priest says. “Makes an excellent cheese omelette.”
This is information that Edgin didn’t need, and yet –
“Thank you,” he says. “You wouldn’t happen to know which stall he prefers to buy his cheese at, would you?”
One thing leads to another, until Edgin himself is in the market too, looking down the row of cheesemongers and hoping that either he will start sneezing (allergic to armor polish, after all, or perhaps the simple way that Xenk radiates righteousness) or that he’ll be half-blinded by the gleam of sunlight off either the other man’s teeth or his sword.
As it turns out, Xenk spots him first, waving to him and asking what it is that brings him to the market in search of cheese. “I did not realize you were in Neverwinter still, or I should have sought your company,” the paladin says. “How is – your Holga?”
“Not mine,” Edgin says. “Look, it’s – do you have a moment?”
Xenk settles up with the cheesemonger, who seems disinclined to take his coin (“for you have done so much for our people, and I still recall how you helped my cows!”), finally settling for dropping the silver owed onto the wood of the booth, where it lands between a wedge of cheddar and a waxed paper sack of curds. “For you, Edgin, yes.”
Edgin drags him to one of the booths at the edge that does tea, reasoning that it’s quicker than finding a tavern and actually settling to have a pint, ordering for both of them and thrusting the clay cup at Xenk, who naturally knows the way to doctor it properly, making the tea-vendor coo over him too, saying that if she had known it was for the hero of the realm, she would never have charged him, of course. “I still recall how you helped stop that smuggling ring that was stealing from us independent merchants of Neverwinter!”
“Yes, wonderful,” Edgin snaps, dragging him away before the merchant can say anything more, or worse, try to refund his coin after all (only for Xenk’s cup, naturally, and not for Edgin’s). “Right, so – I have a proposition for you. It’s – ah, business for our mutual friends, if you’ll hear me out, please? Nothing too pressing, but…I could use your help.” Which is painful too, truly, admitting that he needs the aid of the hero of the realm again.
Xenk, of course, says yes without reservation, which makes it all the worse, and so it is that four days later, Edgin finds himself standing on the edge of Neverwinter Wood just outside of Helm’s Hold with both him and Holga, all three of them shouldering adventurer’s packs and setting off less for fun and adventure than “a rather nasty sort of clean-up” of the sort that the Harpers are so fond of sending their members on.
“We’re supposed to be all about political intrigue – you know, ferreting out secrets and such, finding out who’s up to what and stopping them before they can upset the balance of power in Faerun – but too often we end up doing mop up duty,” Edgin grumbles, as they make their way through the dense woods. There’s not a track to follow, of course, and no road – only a horrid sort of winding path that is hardly there, seeming to disappear when he squints and tries to follow it under the trees.
“Preventing further evil from arising is a noble duty,” says Xenk. “The Harpers are correct in their course of action.”
This of course does not help, but does leave Edgin feeling rather worse about the whole state of things, which makes him sulky (for being aware of sulkiness makes it all the more likely that it will translate to something obvious). Holga elbows him, which also does not help matters any, until by the time they have arrived at the fortress – or where it’s meant to be – he’s in a very fine mood, with the sort of false cheer to his voice that makes her look at him askance and sees even Xenk (utterly unrufflable most of the time, difficult to upset) taking a step back and murmuring something about examining interesting plants.
“Come on,” Holga says. “Get it together.”
“I have it together.” This is a lie, of course, and they’ve known each other too long for her not to be able to tell. “Well – I mean –”
She elbows him again.
“Oof.”
“You’re scaring Xenk.”
Xenk, who is currently bent over examining one of the ferns that lines the forest floor, does not look scared. “I doubt that.”
Holga gives him a look. “Fine, you’re annoying me. Come on.”
This is fair, though Edgin wishes he could complain about it. “It’s more of the same. Go in, eliminate traps, verify that there’s nothing left behind in the way of actionable plans or the like – there won’t be – and then onto the next thing. Do you ever wonder what happens if we tell the Harpers no?”
“We stop getting paid,” she says. “C’mon.”
“We hardly get paid as it is” – though she does rather have a point. “Hells.”
“Do you want to go back to thieving?”
This question, at least, has the effect of shutting him up – for thieving is what had nearly lost him Kira to begin with. “Fine,” he says. “But the next time they ask us to investigate a creepy ruin, I’m sending you and staying home with Kira.”
Holga sighs, but doesn’t say anything, which he chooses to interpret winning the argument. They continue walking, the forest growing darker and more foreboding as they continue following the map that the Harpers had given him, the tree-cover becoming almost total, until they are walking in a twilight gloom that does nothing to help with his mood. The trees here seem to whisper almost in an unseen wind, their branches rustling, while there are clear signs of giant spiders and other nasties of the sort that he would rather not deal with, even if he is with Holga and Xenk.
“Gods help me if I need to be rescued,” he mutters. Holga would never let him live it down if she had to save him from spiders, and while Xenk would undoubtedly be noble about any rescue mission, Edgin is all too aware of how the story would eventually get out, undercutting his own credibility as “savior of Neverwinter” (not that anyone has called him this, though honestly, given everything that had happened to put him back in with the Harpers, they ought to) and instead positioning him as a damsel in need of saving.
They started early in the morning, and by mid-afternoon, following the map, they have crossed into what Edgin is willing to believe is evil creepy forest. The feeling of gloom and oppression has grown, the sense of unease prickling at the back of his mind increasing in intensity until it takes all he has not to simply turn and walk away, not willingly approaching the ruin (for they can see it now, the outside of it covered in the bones of the dead – adventurers who drew too close, perhaps, and were thus trapped, their bodies used to patch the walls of the fortress – which is awful, naturally, and also the sort of disgusting and quite frankly ridiculous posturing that Szass Tam and his people are fond of). Even Holga (who is usually unrattled) and Xenk look uncomfortable, though Edgin does notice that the feeling of unease lifts the closer he stands to the paladin.
Great, he thinks, as they reach the edge of the clearing that contains the ruin. Just what I need – he literally radiates goodness.
“This is the place,” says Xenk, as they approach the main gate – or what must have been the main gate at one point, the outer ring of the fortress half-collapsed and crumbling. The bones that make up the outer walls are splintered and broken. Edgin finds himself wondering, uncomfortably, given the arrangement of them, if they were broken while the adventurers were still alive, bodies shoved and contorted into the wall to patch where stone had failed.
Whatever he wanted to say – whatever grumbling – falls away in light of this.
“The work of Valindra Shadowmantle,” says Xenk. Even he sounds rattled. “Cleared by the Neverwinter Guard twenty years ago.”
There’s a note to his voice that makes Edgin wonder if he wasn’t there – if he hadn’t helped with it somehow, not that he’s going to pry. “Right,” he says. “So we just…walk in?”
“It’s got to be trapped,” says Holga, looking at it. “Wouldn’t you trap it?”
“No need,” says Xenk. “The Undead that patrolled this place would stop any trespassers long before a trap ever could.”
Again, it sounds like he knows about it. Edgin shakes his head. “Right,” he says. “So we just, what, go inside, make sure that no one’s here, that the – portal to the Shadowfell is, in fact, closed, and then…?”
“We leave before nightfall, making for some part of the wood which has not been touched by evil, and report to the priests of Helm and Tyr that they may cleanse this place,” Xenk says. “Yes.”
“Great. Let’s get on with it, then.”
Xenk walks through the broken gate first, something that Edgin’s all too glad to let him do, Holga following after, and him following after her, practically stepping on the backs of her boots not to be left behind. Inside is no better than outside. Someone’s put some effort into burying the dead, at least – he can see markers, here and there, where they have been laid to rest, marked with the symbol of Kelemvor – but there are so many dead, so many bones, it is impossible to have sanctified and buried them all. More than anywhere else he’s been, this is a place that strikes Edgin as being completely and utterly dedicated to evil, with no other purpose in mind.
They skirt around what is obviously a filled-in pit, also marked with the holy symbol of Kelemvor (a skeletal hand holding a pair of golden scales, which should be soothing but mostly fits the aesthetic here, more’s the pity), around the edge of some scaffolding, largely collapsed, past more gravesites, more memorials, until –
“This is the way,” says Xenk, nodding at it. It’s an enormous iron door, mostly rusted. “I do not know what lies beyond it.”
So he was here before. “Great. Do we just…open it?” There’s no obvious mechanism, but it must have been meant to open at some point.
Holga walks to it, giving it a shove. There’s a clanking, grinding noise, the sound of rusty hinges squealing, before it swings open just enough to admit them, one at a time. “There you go,” she says, satisfied. “Who wants to go first?”
“I will,” says Edgin. Later, he’ll regret that, but – “No traps, right? Undead were enough to keep trespassers out?”
“I believe so,” says Xenk. “Step carefully –”
He walks in. The interior is gloomy, filled with more bones, the stone tiles of the floor (marked with different, horrible symbols, and he is choosing not to think about these) covered in stains and dust of the sort he doesn’t wish to contemplate the origins of. “Right,” he says. “So, easy does it –”
Edgin takes a tentative step, onto a tile marked with a skull with bleeding eyes. There’s a soft click as he does, but nothing happens. “All right, so – I think these are safe? Look for the…bleeding-eyed skulls.”
“Bleeding-eyed skulls?” Holga’s voice sounds far off, distant. “What?”
“Bleeding-eyed skulls.” He steps onto the next one, then the one after it. There’s a door across the room – he can see it, marked with a ring of spokes, as though it’s a wheel, or – “I think I can see the doorway to the inner sanctum.”
“Bleeding skulls,” says Xenk. “I…yes.” He steps in after Edgin, following him, hopping lightly from skull to skull (and how he manages to do it lightly, despite the weight of the armor he wears, is a mystery that Edgin knows he will not get an answer to), joining him at the edge of the room, where the tiles are no longer patterned but plain.
“Skulls,” says Holga. “Sure.” She steps through the door, too, and that’s where everything goes to pieces. “Bleeding eyes?”
“Yeah,” Edgin calls back. “You’ll be able to tell, uh – they’re detailed?”
“Got it.” She hops onto a square, but loses her footing as she does, her toe skidding on one of the little bits of bone that’s on the tile. She rights herself, but not before she touches the other pressure plate. There’s an ominous chiming noise, like a low bell. They all look at each other, alarmed, but when nothing happens, each of them breathes a sigh of relief.
“Not much of a trap,” Edgin remarks. “Meant to tell them that unwelcome visitors arrived? Just sounds?”
“I would not underestimate the cleverness of the Red –” Xenk starts, before the tiles he and Edgin are standing on (the blank ones, nearest the door to the inner sanctum, what’s supposed to be safe) start to glow, lighting up an unearthly, eerie blue before the two of them are transported somewhere deeper into the ruin of the fortress.
The first thing Edgin sees, when he comes to, is the face of Xenk Yendar, kneeling over him, alarmingly close.
“Uh,” he says, blinking rapidly in the way he hopes means what are you doing and not, yes, please lay on hands and save me, o hero of the realm. “So, what was that about no traps?”
Xenk leans back on his heels, his face impassive. “I was incorrect.”
“Yeah.” He sits up slowly, swearing, for he’s atop his pack (dropped on his back, apparently, and it with him), and it’s not exactly the most comfortable of things to rest upon, and takes a look around. They’re in a small room without (so far as he can tell) any doors, the sole exit being a small high window at least twenty feet above their heads. There’s a circular ring of white tile (or at least Edgin hopes it’s tile) in the middle of the floor, gloomy light from the forest outside coming through the window. The room is roughly ovular, though something about the way it’s constructed, the hewn stone stacked haphazardly, makes his head swim. Great, dungeon decor for the discerning lich. Confuse your enemies and confound your foes! Excellent stuff. “Any idea how –”
“I do not know how we get out,” Xenk says. “It is my impression that most did not.” His tone is measured, though Edgin can tell there is a hint of something beneath his carefully chosen words.
“Most did not?” He squints at the gloom, trying to determine what it is the paladin is talking about. “Oh, no –”
Stacked in the corner is yet another pile of bones.
“Yes,” says Xenk. “So.”
“We’re sure those are people who were imprisoned here?”
“No, but it stands to reason that this is the fate of those that try to break into the inner sanctum.” Xenk rises slowly to his feet. “I said a blessing for the dead, but I fear…”
Before he can finish with what he fears, the pile twitches, moving. “I take it that’s not a rat,” Edgin says. “Great. So –”
“I have a sword, and I will stop anything that tries to attack us, but I am not certain that they are bent on attacking.” Xenk nods at the pile, which continues to twitch, bones slowly coming together, attaching to one another with no logic Edgin can see, though there must be something to it, smaller bones attaching to larger ones, for there are two figures rapidly becoming clear. “If they are not, it may be best to simply – watch and wait.”
He blinks. “I thought all of your people were against undead and other, uh, abominations that aren’t meant to walk the material plane?” That sounds remarkably wizardly, but it’s what he’d read in one of the Harper’s books, once upon a time, and anyway, the Tyrites never shut up about it. “I’m pretty sure skeletons count for that?”
“There is some magic upon them I do not recognize,” says Xenk. “It is better to understand a puzzle and attempt to solve it than to smash through it.”
Edgin, recalling a certain bridge in the Underdark, sighs. Right. He figured that out; he can probably figure this out, if given enough time, or you can help. It’s Szass Tam’s people. They all went in for aesthetic and – disgusting undead flair over unsolvable puzzles. Right? “Just tell me what you need me to do.”
“Sit quietly, observe the – cell in which we find ourselves, and report anything unusual you see,” Xenk says. “If there are handholds, for instance, with which we could climb out, a hidden latch – anything.”
“Right.” He rises to his feet, squinting in the gloom of the room, taking a look about. The white ring of tile (Gods, I hope it’s tile and not bone, but considering the Red Wizards I can’t be certain about that…) is surrounded by black letters, written in a script he cannot read. They glow with an eerie white light as he approaches, as though aware that they are being looked at. Edgin studies them for a moment, and after nothing becomes immediately apparent, sighs. “What about this? Any ideas?”
Xenk crosses to where he is standing. The letters, as though annoyed by his presence, suddenly go out, once again indistinguishable from the dark stone. “I saw them,” he says. “They – if they were made by the Red Wizards, there is a chance there is an enchantment upon them that will not allow me to read them.”
Because you’re too good, he thinks, annoyed yet again. “Okay. I think I have – chalk or something. Flour, if nothing else.” Chalk, because it’s useful, and flour because Holga insists that he helps carry some of the foodstuffs, too. “Something I can mark them with, trace over them so you can read them – would that help?”
“Yes.”
“Great.” He shoulders the pack off, dropping it onto the floor of the dungeon as the letters light up again, no longer sullen and hiding with Xenk a good ten feet away. “Stay back there, I’ll mark them.”
He rummages – Holga would say something about how untidy he is, and she wouldn’t be wrong – eventually producing a tin with the chalk in it. He tries tracing over the letters, which isn’t effectual, for the enchantment on them seems to burn whatever he puts down away, but writing above them doesn’t seem to upset the circle, until – “There.”
Xenk walks over, the letters go out again, but the chalk remains. “Ah,” he says. “Yes.”
“Yes as in, ‘ah yes Edgin, I can read this, let me translate for you’, or ‘yes’ as in, ‘I recognize that these are letters and likely that they say something, but alas for us, I cannot read them’?” he asks. “Because one of those is helpful, but the other is –”
“Yes, I can read them.” Xenk pauses for a moment, then: “It’s written in Thayan, using the Infernal script. It is not meant to be legible to anyone except those that are loyal to the – people who built this place. I…would imagine that those in the corner are the remains of those that died here.”
The bones rattle as though agreeing with him. Edgin, watching them, suppresses a shudder. There’s a glint, even in the low light, of something small and metallic. He doesn’t look harder, for he can guess already what it is: one of the Harper’s pins, those that mark them as belonging to his order. None of them can read Infernal – or not the ones in the field. Pity. Massive oversight, that. “Great! What does it say?”
“‘That which you most fear will be your salvation.’” Xenk looks up at him, meeting his eyes. “What do you fear, Edgin?”
Gods, what doesn’t he fear? There’s all the common things everyone’s afraid of – death is the big one, of course. Leaving Kira without a father, again, more permanently this time. That whatever he has with Holga – the bond between them, not romantic but something deeper than friendship, family, for all that they are not married nor related by blood – will end, and she will choose to go her own, separate ways. That he is not as good as he thinks – that the years of petty thievery and larceny have taken their toll, and the reason the infernal letters don’t fade for him is because, in his soul, they can tell that he is wicked, too.
“Spiders,” he says, after a second. There’s a large one – one of the biggest he’s seen without earning the name “giant” – weaving a web in the window that looks out over the forest. “I guess if I can get up to the window and get past it, uh…”
“That would certainly be one form of salvation,” Xenk agrees.
Silence, for a moment. “So I admitted to it,” he says, looking at the letters on the floor. “Do I just…?”
The wall is made of rough-hewn stone, all cut to different sizes and stacked haphazardly. Here, at least, the crumbling walls have not been rebuilt with the bodies of those that tried to thwart the Red Wizards. That’s something, I guess.
“Maybe…” Xenk says. He sounds skeptical. “If you try to climb…”
Edgin sighs, stretching, and eyes the wall. Athletics isn’t exactly my forte, but gods, what is? Not as though I can talk the horrible dungeon into letting me go: “yes, of course, so sorry for the inconvenience” – that’s not happening.
“Right,” he says. “So…”
He tries to climb it. It’s surprisingly easy: there are plenty of hand and toeholds, and the window isn’t very far off the ground. He gets up to where the spider is, trying to ignore it (he really doesn’t like them, though he wouldn’t say he’s properly afraid, just aware that they have too many legs to be trustworthy.
The window is only inches away. Edgin grips the sill, pulling himself up, reaching for it – and is promptly thrown back, the repelling ward on it throwing him back before he can so much as make a sound.
Xenk catches him, naturally. Insult to injury.
“Not spiders, then,” he tries to joke, as the paladin sets him down. “Uh.” It feels impolite to go, what are you afraid of, but it’s the next logical step. Think harder, Edgin. What are you missing? You can’t read Infernal, but he sounded pretty certain about it…
There is a sound as of bone scraping on rock as two of the skeletons – who are now assembled as skeletons – rise to their feet. They don’t look as though they’re quite assembled properly, made of whatever bones could be pulled out of the pile, but they are standing. One of them has a Harper’s pin on its cloak – Edgin can see it from here – while the other is in very rusted and battered armor that looks suspiciously similar to what Xenk is wearing.
They look at him, twin pits of blue fire in their eye sockets, nodding at him slowly, their bones creaking, before they begin to embrace one another in a parody of what Edgin is fairly certain is meant to be –
Kissing.
He clears his throat, hoping Xenk hasn’t seen. He needn’t have worried – the paladin is still looking down at the writing on the floor, the infernal script copied out in chalk. There’s – I mean – I can’t be –
The skeletons, locked in their embrace, pay him no mind.
There’s been other people since he lost Zia, of course. Nothing long-term, no one he’d want to introduce Kira to – well, no one besides Holga, who doesn’t count, because whatever they have is separate from Edgin’s romantic (well, sex, for there's no romance, but she's also firmly outside of that) life – but there have been others. Not in a while, of course, because he’s been busy with the Harpers and everything that followed disrupting Sofina’s plan and trying to put things to rights in Neverwinter, but –
Oh gods, there’s no way. I’m not – “what which you fear most will be your salvation”. What do I actually fear?
Xenk puts him on edge in a way that makes him uncomfortable. It’s not the Thayan thing, though it had been at first. He’d thought, honestly, that it was the goodness the man radiated. Hadn’t he told Holga as much? Underneath all the talk about armor polish, the begrudgingly admitting that the hero of the realm was as good as everyone said he was – hadn’t there been the fear, deep down, that Xenk had judged him and found him inadequate?
Edgin had thought, of course, that this was because of his own past – the things he had done that had resulted in nearly losing Kira, how he had, to some extent, lost himself. He’s on the right path again, and he won’t step off it again – not without good reason – but there’s still that discomfort around Xenk. Hadn’t he gone out of his way to make it as difficult as possible to find him, after all?
Why is that? I’m not – I can’t be – there’s no –
He looks over at the paladin, hoping to quiet the internal sputtering. He’s handsome, certainly; Edgin can admit that much. He’s not bad-looking. In a different outfit, maybe –
What if he were naked? his mind helpfully supplies. Both of you, naked, him on top of you, the two of you wrestling to see who’s the one to take the lead…
Edgin can picture it, is the worst part. Xenk would win, of course, but Edgin’s wily; he’d put up a good fight. There’s every chance that it would be more fairly matched than either of them expected, especially if there was a chance of being able to distract him with banter. Talk about feelings, of course, because that’s always –
Are there feelings?
Edgin’s internal monologue stutters to a halt just as the two skeletons in the corner begin to do what might be described, charitably, as frotting. They’ve both produced bones from somewhere – Edgin would prefer not to think where – and are rubbing them together, the scraping sound awful in the dungeon, their heads thrown back and mouths open as they carry out their pantomime.
This can’t be happening. I’m not – I’m not in love with Xenk. I barely know him. Do I want him? I mean…gods below, do the Red Wizards even think about sex? I thought they were all in on the “evil death cult for power and lichdom” thing – sex doesn’t seem like it would figure into that. You’d have more backless outfits meant to show off your assets and less red robes that cover you head to toe if that was something they were about –
The Harper skeleton turns to look at Edgin, the twin flames that are its eyes fixed on his as it nods at Xenk before deliberately returning to kissing the skeleton of the paladin in its boney arm, its other hand of course holding what appears to be an arm bone (or what he thinks is an arm bone) between its legs, thrusting it over the other skeleton’s in a crude imitation of sex.
Fine. I want him. Sure. I can accept that. If I accept that and…do something about it, does that suddenly…will that free us?
“Edgin,” Xenk says. “I believe I know what we must do.”
“Great!”
“I am not certain that you will enjoy it,” Xenk warns him. “I will need to touch you.”
“Uh.” The skeletons in the corner nod at the two of them. Edgin blinks. “Sure?”
“I believe this will work,” says Xenk. He tugs him over to the circle in the middle of the room – the portal – and, once they are facing one another, takes a deep breath. “If this is not welcome, I apologize.”
With that said, Xenk leans forward and kisses him.
As kisses go, it’s not going to rate in the top ten for Edgin’s life. Not even the top twenty, if he’s honest, for he’s kissed a lot of people, and this hardly deserves the name: a quick brush of the lips and nothing else. Life or death situation, both of us trying to figure out how to get out of the trap we’d been put into, determine how to survive – and this is what he does? Gods. I’m going to have to teach him how to –
This last thought is, of course, interrupted. The same eerie blue light flares; the circle disappears, and they are suddenly back in the room with the tiles, looking at the now-cracked door to the inner sanctum, Holga having been busy in the time they were away.
“Oh good,” she says, as they reappear. “I found a way in.”
The stone door is cracked in two, a wide gap leading into what must be the inner room – where the lich Valindra Shadowmantle had once made her lair, what had been a portal to the Shadowfell before its destruction.
The portal, which is supposed to be defunct, is currently humming with crackling energy of a sort that Edgin knows is a very bad sign.
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat. “That’s, um. That’s certainly one way to do it. Good work, Holga?”
“Yeah,” she says. “You two all right? Where’d you go?”
“Trap,” Edgin says. “Explain later. Ah – we’re not supposed to – all we need to do is report back on this, yes?”
“Yeah,” says Holga. “Though, I think…” She points to a stone plinth, where two things rest: a cracked green gem, as well as a smooth and polished orb of stone.
“The control stone,” says Xenk. He leans forward, drawing his sword as he does, and nudges it from the plinth. It falls to the floor, the portal closing as he does. “We thought it lost” – which definitely answers the question of whether or not he’d been present when the fort was raided by the Neverwinter Guard.
“Great!” says Edgin. “So, we can destroy it and call it a day? What’s the gem?”
“The seat of Shadowmantle’s power.” The paladin frowns as he says it. “Whoever has been coming here is someone well-connected to the Red Wizards. We would do well to take both and leave this place, now.”
No one has to tell Edgin twice. Xenk picks up both the gem as well as the control stone, tucking both into a pouch on his body, and the three of them take off, out of the forest and toward Helm’s Hold.
It’s of course not that straightforward – the Red Wizard they’ve angered tracks them through the woods, leading Xenk to have to fight him hand to hand (for naturally he doesn’t want to engage with either Edgin or Holga, having a grudge against the hero of the realm), though this at least is straightforward, and when he’s not looking (when he thinks that he’s gotten Xenk in a vulnerable position and takes a moment to monologue in Thayan about gods-know-what), Holga clonks him over the head with her ax, stunning him long enough for Xenk to get up and finish the job.
“Would’ve won if he hadn’t talked so much,” she comments, helping Xenk bind his hands and feet, stoppering his mouth with a length of cloth. “Wizards.”
“On that point, I find I agree.”
Edgin, who had been entirely useless during the fight, naturally, is tasked with helping to carry him – though this mostly translates to ensuring that his gag stays in place (for a wizard who can speak is a dangerous one), and then talking to the guard of Helm’s Hold as they approach that city, telling them (for they are naturally suspicious) that the man they have captured is in fact a dangerous Red Wizard, an agent of Szass Tam, and won’t they please let them into the city so that they can take care of the problem?
Either he’s very persuasive, or else the guards want nothing to do with whatever mess they’ve landed in, for he flashes his Harper’s pin, and they sigh and let them through, though one of them does insist on escorting them to the Cathedral.
The priests of Helm take one look at Xenk and fall over themselves thanking the Hero of the Realm for his aid in some endeavor or another, though they do at least take the Red Wizard (as well as the gem and the control stone), with a promise that in the morning, they will assemble a force (possibly with the help of the Lords’ Alliance) to go and destroy the fortress entirely. “Now that we have Shadowmantle’s gem, of course, it may be possible to consecrate that place after all…” – as well as a good deal of other information that Edgin does not need or, frankly, want – though naturally the Harpers will expect a full report.
It’s several hours before they are released. Holga asks someone or another, getting directions to a tavern – Venturer’s Rest. “The Old Dirty Dwarf, as it used to be known,” says the woman who scrawls directions for them. “Finest place in the city, once. Still not bad.”
“Pint,” says Edgin. “Somewhere to get a bath” – for he’s still covered in the dust and grime of the fort.
“Supper,” says Holga. “Let’s go.”
He’s expecting that Xenk will stay at the Cathedral, and so it is something of a surprise to see the paladin murmur something to the priests before jogging to catch up with the two of them. “If I might join you,” he says, at Holga’s raised eyebrow. “There is something I should like to discuss with Edgin.”
Right. The…that. He doesn’t want to talk about what happened in the fort, of course – the trap they’d sprung was a stupid one, but Xenk’s solution had worked; “how’d you figure out I’m afraid that I want you” is not a question he wants to ask the hero of the realm, for he doesn’t want an answer to it.
“As you like,” says Holga.
Edgin scowls at her – not that she pays him any mind, pushing ahead and leading the both of them to the inn.
Once they arrive, she walks inside – presumably to secure a room for the evening – while Edgin is left standing outside, with Xenk.
“About the trap,” he starts, before Xenk can say anything. “Look, it’s –”
“I should have been more forthcoming,” Xenk interrupts. “I am not – I have not – my life is not one which lends itself to exploring my own desires.”
“Um.” He blinks. “We don’t need to –”
“I never should have kissed you if it had not been a matter of life and death.”
Ah, there it is. “Look, Xenk –”
“I assure you, I should have discussed the matter with you before, had I thought you were amenable, but it is my impression that you would rather I not share my feelings with you, and so I apologize for my actions.”
It takes a moment for the meaning of this to sink in. “What?”
“The – kiss,” Xenk says. “It – I know what I am afraid of, at least, or what I was, and I wish to apologize for – forcing my suit.”
Edgin blinks. “I – wait, you wanted that?”
“Yes,” says the paladin. “I thought it obvious. It was my fear and not yours, that saw us trapped there. If I had kissed you before you had confronted the spider, I do not know that it would have worked. I am glad that it did – that you were braver, in that instant, than I.”
His thoughts stutter to a halt. Xenk thinks it was…his fear? Of me? Of wanting to kiss me? Touch me? What?
“I –” Some things are easier shown than talked about, even for Edgin. He takes a deep breath. “There’s no need to apologize. I can – it’s easier if I show you. Can I touch you?”
Xenk blinks, but nods at him. “If – it would be easier, I suppose –”
The second kiss is easily one in the top ten. Top five, maybe, if Edgin’s ranking them only by first kisses (well, first proper kisses). Good pressure, decent depth and rhythm –
“I see,” says Xenk, as he pulls back. “I am glad to know I am not alone in this.”
“Definitely not,” says Edgin. “C’mon. Inside. Let’s get a pint, and – talk?”
“Talk.” Xenk is red – a color Edgin does not know he has ever seen on him. “Yes, about what happened, what we found, what happens next –”
I’m going to have to kiss him again to get him to stop talking, Edgin thinks, tugging at Xenk’s hand to pull him into the Rest.
The thought is a good one.