Time is flying by in a flash as Teuila and I take comfort in each other, and share our excitement as we approach our goal. The speed at which time seems to be slipping through my grasp in a fleeting manner is somewhat disheartening, but at the moment, I’ll take what I can get. We avoided a major settlement at the edge of the foothills that seemed deserted. Neither of us wanted to find out if it was yet another city with everyone’s souls having been stolen.
One of the most surprising things about the foothills though has been how many small heat signatures I’ve been registering at the edges of my sensory ranges when I take moments to pause time and analyze the pictures that I capture with my thermal senses. Based on their locations, and heights, and their width, or lack thereof, I’m fairly certain that they’re kobolds. I know it’s a guess, but based on clues and information I’ve picked up along the way along our Rayileklian journey, I’m fairly confident that it’s either an accurate assessment, or a solid retrocognitive intuition.
One of the least surprising things about that particular surprising thing, is that the heat sources seem agitated, and likely hostile. I’m certain that the kobolds here are under thumb of various dragons, and some of them may have witnessed us galloping through on our steeds, so I’ve got to start planning for that. I think we’re only a day or so away from the Mountains of Solace and Solitude, and my genre senses are screaming at me. Things have been going too smoothly. Events are about to have an upset.
Teuila can sense that I’m on edge, and she understands why, but we both need to continue preserving our strength, and resting when we can. As seasoned adventurers, we should definitely stay awake while the other sleeps, but that would be torture for the one of us that remains awake. Heh, like my early journeys with Lil. I’m expecting to be ambushed in our sleep tonight, but for some reason, I’m not worried. I don’t quite get that, but between my various sets of senses, and time-frozen analyses, something is telling me to expect an ambush, but not to despair, or even lash out. I have to remember, that not all dragons or kobolds would be loyal to Terrorzin.
Teuila and I sleep tightly clinging to each other, almost afraid that we haven’t seen dragons yet, and knowing how short my time is. I’m putting faith in the plan. If we reunite with Lil, Lu, and Lucky, and there are no massive shocks to my heart, I should have a few days, around half a week or so left. I need to try to remain calm. I expect to be woken. I know we’re going to be ambushed. Teuila trusts my judgment in allowing it to happen, so we both drift fitfully off to sleep.
Despite knowing to expect it, being awoken as heavy nets land atop me and Teuila still startles me, and literally shaves hours off of my life. Another thing shaves hours, perhaps days off of my life, since I was expecting kobolds, but instead, there are humanoid dragons, and an actual dragon looming over us. I don’t mean human forms of dragons like Astridus took, but some sort of reptilian beings that are twice the height of kobolds, with long tales, ridged scalps, predatory eyes, sharp teeth, and forked tongues.
There are several of these draconic individuals, and at least one of them is vaguely feminine in appearance, her slender form is almost gangly. Her coppery orangeish scales are sleek, almost comely in the way that they come to a soft point that forms her snout. The reading glasses perched on her scaled face are a bit of a surprise, as are the soft robes that she appears to be wearing. There are others, but the bookish one draws my notice first and foremost.
She, the bookish draconic woman, states, “Yes, I do believe you’re right. They do match the descriptions, relatively. It’s highly unlikely any other humanoids would have been so foolish as to venture this far anyway. I fail to see why there was any emphasis on necessity of me leaving the library for such trivial applications of identification.”
An acid dragon, sleek in all her majesty, but most definitely not Astridus, growls out, “Watch your tongue Nala.”
The bookish draconic woman, Nala apparently, apologizes, “Erm, right, yes Lady Kinzul. My apologies. I beg my leave of you, if I may.”
The most impressive specimen of draconic majesty I’ve ever laid eyes upon, Kinzul apparently, responds, “You may have it. The rest of you, see to it that our guests make no trouble, as you rescind them to their accommodations. You two, do not speak just yet. You will have your opportunities to defend yourselves, when warded within the cells of my personal prison.”
Kinzul is focusing on something, as if she, like me, is casting her senses about. At that, I gulp. We can play along, but a prison break wasn’t something I’d been planning on staging when I’ve got such little lifespan left. Teuila and I glance at each other, but in thinkspace I continue urging her to play along. We remain silent as we’re further trussed up in the nets that bind us within our sleeping bag. My heart races as we’re swiftly dragged up a hillside, and into a mountainside near the sound of a crashing waterfall. We’ve made it. We’re at the Mountains of Solace and Solitude. I honestly hope this mountain’s name is Solace, for the symbolism, because I’d rather it not be Solitude, for the same reason.
I virtually vibrate with anxiety as we’re dumped into a cavern that appears to be carved out like some sort of guest room. The two draconic individuals that had been carrying us carefully dump us out of the net, unwrap us, and actually bow as they take their leave. There’s a stone shelf that likely functions as a bed, and it appears as if there’s even some sort of irrigation ditch that might function like a toilet. There are soft blankets, and pillows, and no heavy iron grates that I’d imagine a prison cell to contain. It’s honestly rather plush accommodations all told, so Lady Kinzul’s hospitality and fairness doesn’t seem to have been an act.
As three figures enter my sensory range, I fall to my knees and weep. Teuila cocks her head to one side as she follows my thought train. She worries for my emotional state regardless. Suddenly Teuila connects the emotion with the number of approaching figures, and she also weeps openly. After all this time. After everything. We get to see them again. We finally get to see them again. The rest of the SAP, the Shellcracker Adventuring Party. Lil, Lucky, and Luni.
The sisters reunite at a run that ends with them leaping into each other’s arms. The sight has me bawling my eyes and heart out. Her adorable rounded features that sit framed beneath her lovely dark bob-with-bangs hairdo is now situated atop an alluring, full-figured feminine form, wearing curve-hugging, clingy robes that accentuate her charming body’s curves. Luni is as beautiful as ever, and she’s full of cheer, wearing no other emotion on her face, unlike Teuila, or unlike myself, as the two of us are blubbering our brains out.
Teuila recovers first, and Te chortles as she hugs Luni. She excitedly states, “Luuu, I want to chew you out so bad, and you too Lil. Ugh, I’m just so happy we’re back together. You too Lucky, you big lug. Me and Air both, right A-“
Luni excitedly interrupts, tossing Teuila’s arms aside as she bounces giddily, “You remember Air?!”
Teuila wraps one arm over Luni’s shoulders as she brings her into a noogie position. Teuila and I exchange incredulous glances as Te states, “Uh, yeah, they’re right next to us. Why are you asking that like Reggie isn’t even here?”
Luni looks fit to burst with excitement, but she also appears as if a worry is overtaking that excitement as she painstakingly asks, “Okay, Te. I need, I -need- you to tell me why you’re calling Reggie Air.”
Teuila wears a grumpy suspicious expression as she responds, “Uh, because it’s short for Airhead, duh. Maybe I should move that nickname over to you and go back to Dink for Reggie, ya airhead.”
Luni virtually deflates as she slumps, her excitement vanishing completely as she pouts, “It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.”
Teuila looks taken aback as she she prods, “What isn’t fair Lu? If you don’t like the nickname or the teasing, I’ll stop. I never meant to hurt you. You are after all, my favorite little sis.”
Teuila frees Luni from the headlock, and Luni sniffles as she rests her face on Teuila’s shoulder. Lu feebly pounds Teuila’s torso with one fist after the other, repeatedly, as she silently cries. Teuila looks heartbroken, lost, and helpless as she just holds Luni tenderly.
I could swear I hear Luni mumble, “It’s so weird that we’re sisters this time.” No one else seems to have heard it though, so it might just be a trick of the wind as a pitch rides along on her nearly silent sobs.
Teuila asks Luni, “Lu, what’s this all about? What’s wrong babe?”
Luni’s eyes light up momentarily as Teuila calls her babe, oddly enough. Lu’s response is slightly terrifying though, “I can’t tell you, or your brain will literally, and I mean that completely literally, explode. I don’t want to lose you Te. I can’t tell you. Please don’t press me on it. I’m sorry.”
What the hell sort of knowledge is Lu hanging onto that could cause our brains to actually explode? What burden does she still bear for us? Hell in a handbasket. My Anchor, struggling against the weight of all the worlds. Wait, I wonder. Is this like the thing that’s hiding information from me? When I tried to face it, parts of my mindscape cracked, and I was struck with several intra-cranial contusions and hemorrhaging across my brain that started leaking out my nose, ears, and eyes. Wait. I remember coming to a conclusion. She’ll die if she learns it. What was it? Oh! Teuila really is—.
Luni’s telepathic avatar drags my brain into a fritzed and broken thinkspace, us having not reestablished telepathy yet with the others. She virtually shouts, “Stop! P-please. Don’t finish that thought, don’t let yourself remember. If it didn’t come naturally, if your brain hid it from you, just stop. Please. I don’t want to lose you. Not again.”
With that, the glitchy, broken connection fades, and I’m left reeling. My Anchor is holding herself, tightly gripping her own ribs with her arms crossed. Luni, precious Lu is shrinking in on herself, and crying, and I’m not allowed to know or remember why. My own brain is the one doing the hiding? I—. I thought it was an external force. I’m doing it to myself? What the hell me? Thoughts and conclusions that could lead to others, that would reveal—. Oh. Ow. My head is throbbing, and my pulse is racing. My heartbeat thumps so hard I’m rocked side to side. Revelations I’m not allowed to have, controlled by myself, my own subconscious, are saving me from catastrophic brain explosion, by hinting at the possible damage, and wiping clean any conclusions that I come to that might have further revealed that knowledge.
More minutes, hours of my life are stripped away as my heart hammers too hard in anxiety. The understanding of the nature of the risk, the gravity of the situation is another heavy weight upon my heart, my already failing, weak heart.
Trying to break the sudden tension, Lil starts out, “Hey pal, been a mega long time, a mega mega mega long time. Sorry it took so long. I got a mother! I had to stay! Kinzul, that’s Lady Kinzul to everyone else, is my mom.”
I blink several times and clean out my ears, making certain I heard Lil right, and they chuckle at my overreaction. Lil obtained a mother? Do dragons work in reverse? No, that’s ridiculous.
Lil, almost reading my thoughts, giggles before filling me in, “She adopted me, ya goon. Part of that means I kinda sorta have to do a thing if she ever dies, but I don’t wanna, I’m not gonna do it. It’s, it’s sacrilege, it’s wrong. I don’t understand it, and I didn’t really agree.”
As Teuila and I both furrow our brows in concern, Lil explains, “She says I have to eat her heart when she dies. I mean, first of all, I don’t want her to ever die, second of all, ew, third of all, that’s, that’s like, like desecrating a grave or something!”
I gulp in apprehension as Teuila and I exchange worried glances. How is Lil going to react when they hear the news of my condition? I try not to hyperventilate, and take a moment to compose my thoughts in a moment between moments. I dive into the non, to try to clear my head, to revel in the absence. It’s a struggle, and it wears on me more than it helps. At this point in time, I want nothing more than to have a loving, tear-filled reunion with the rest of my inner circle, my party.
Lucky comes over, and fluidly shrinks into the shape of a small blue hound, that nudges and presses up against my legs for affection. I stand up and extend straight so that he doesn’t get the idea to bowl me over. I scratch behind his ears absentmindedly as I try to figure out how to say what I’m going to say. I look towards Teuila for any sort of input, or guidance, and she sees how conflicted I am, how hurt I am, how worried I am, and she takes over for me.
Teuila starts out, “We’re happy to see you guys, more happy than anything, really, absolutely. It means everything to us, especially right now, because Reggie’s, well, Reggie is, dangit. You went to the Enochian Enclave, you had to have met Alanea. Reggie and her are the same, um, subspecies or whatever. The type of Changeling Fae that they are is never supposed to use magic, without using their natural shapechanging way more. It builds up a mana residue inside them that makes them sick, and kills them.”
Lu gasps and shakes her head in disbelief before muttering, “No, no, oh Reggie. No, not again.”
Lil asks, “What’s that got to do with my pal? They just have to do more shapechanging? No big deal, right.”
Luni offers, “Lil, you don’t understand, Reggie had been using millions of mana, that’s, glp, that’s why—.”
Teuila finishes, “That’s why Reggie’s skin cracks, and they projectile bleed, and vomit light and blood everywhere.”
Lil grumps, “Gross, but okay, fine, then we just clean out this residue or whatever, and get Reggie to start shapechanging more, yeah? No biggie. The inner circle is back together, we can handle whatever silly little side quest this is going to take.”
I struggle to explain, “Lil, um. W— when, when we got here, in Rayileklia, we made friends in The Brook. They, um, were being harassed, extorted, put in danger, and sometimes harmed, by a group of people that were led by an evil dragon named Kozzurth.”
Lil raises a scaled brow, unsure where I’m going with this, so I try to continue, “We didn’t learn until after, how what I did happened to save my life. To save people, I had to kill an evil being Lil. She was a dragon, but she was evil.”
Lil shrugs and offers, “Yeah, okay, fine, I don’t like it, but yeah, we have to do the same up here when the war starts. We’ve been planning for a long time, and it’s going to start soon in the open. Everything’s been all stupid secret sneaky stuff so far, boy does digging get old fast. How does this have anything to do with you being sick pal?”
Teuila and I gulp and exchange a worried glance. Luni’s gaze flits between the two of us, and her hands go to her mouth as she likely guesses the obvious conclusion. I hesitantly, shakily, nervously answer, “S-she died, by me beheading her, from the inside, glp. Then, then I sawed open her chest, and put my hands on her heart, and, and I guess I absorbed what’s called her dragonforce, and it’s kee-“
Lil blurts out, interrupting, “You what!? That, that’s, that’s sacrilege! I, I forgave you for, well. Okay, maybe I didn’t need to forgive you for some stuff because it wasn’t your fault. But, but now you’re going around eating dragon hearts!? What kind of monster has my best buddy become? What’d you do with my Reggie!?”
My tears stream forth at Lil’s outburst, I choke back a sob as my jaw drops. I can’t control the expression on my mortified face. That they, that Lil would accuse me of being a monster, someone else entirely in this instant. I’m stricken. A jagged blade of ice has pierced my heart and is twisting. I sink to my knees and drop my face into my hands to weep. I suck down ragged, sobbing breaths. I can sense Teuila’s fury rising towards Lil, and even Luni looks mildly upset. Lucky just leaps to put his paws on my shoulders as he tries to bowl me over to lick my face to clean off the tears, the big lug.
I croak out a stuttering ramble, “I, I--, it wasn’t even--. Kozzurth was eating people, planning to kill and eat every last humanoid that wasn’t serving her. Every single one. I, I had to end her. There was no changing that fact about her. I didn’t even know touching her heart would absorb it. I, I thought maybe I, I, maybe like in the lore, it would be a powerful thing that might be able to create a gateway between worlds.”
I nearly convulse as I fight back choking on my own tongue to continue pleading my case, “I was doing it in the hopes of getting us, all of us home. If a, a, a door opened, I was going to beg Teuila to take on a mad dash to the east to try to catch up to you and bring you to it, possibly holding it open myself somehow if I had to. I’m dying Lil. I only touched the heart. I didn’t know I’d absorb it. Buddy. Please don’t hate me. I, I can’t bear dying knowing that you hate me. Please. Please buddy. P.pp..Please. M-, m-, glp. My, My Heart.”
I break down into blubbering sobs and begin coughing as my tongue swells with mucus and gets stuck in my throat. I double over onto my side, wracked with pain, guilt, and remorse. I even held Teuila back from going to seek dragons to kill them for hearts to heal me or to prolong my life. I’ve, I--. I gaze inward again. The aura from Kozzurth’s heart is flickering weaker and weaker, it’s barely existent at the moment. It will fade any day, any minute, any second now. I don’t know how long before I die when the toxic mana residue resumes strangling my inner self. It might occur instantly, or nearly instantly.
I choke out, rambling mostly to myself as my mind reels, “Lil, Lil is, again, after all that, again, they, they hate me again, they’re--. My, my best, they—“
Lil interrupts to grump, “I’m a boy now Rej.”
My tongue flops back into my throat and gets stuck, causing me to cough a moment and cough more as I apologize, “I, right, of course, of course Lil. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You, he, he hates me again. I can’t. I can’t take it.”
My heart pounds faster and harder, the dragonforce from Kozzurth’s heart’s aura flickers nearly to the point of fading under the strain of keeping me alive. My terrified, saddened, racing pulse is too much strain for what little power is left. The shock of having Lil’s anger directed my way once again, and then their interruption of my lamentation hits too hard. The last of Kozzurth’s dragonforce fades. Within me I hear a very familiar clinking, tinking, shattering sound, and time begins to slow, stretch, dilate, distort, warp. No. No. No please. This can’t be it. This can’t be how it ends. Not while Lil hates me. Not before I can make it up to th— him.
In slow motion, a terribly deep, low cadence I hear Lil grumping to the rest of our inner circle, “Rej can be such a drama queen. It’s not like they’re really dying right this very second. I’m pretty sure I’d know. They always think they are, but my buddy’s basically immortal. Te, my It’s-A-Secret? Why are you crying so much?”
Lil turns towards me, all movement still in agonizingly slow motion, anger and fear in his eyes. The distortion in his voice continues as he pleads, “Pal? Pal what’s wrong? Lu? Why are they freaking out? Pal it’s okay. I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. Talk to me buddy. I’m. Rej? Reggie? Reggie please. You’re scaring me. M-. Glp m--.” Lil’s scaled lips quiver as he cries out, his cry eventually becoming a screaming plea, “Mom, Momma, Mommy! Pp, please, please, please help!”
Lil’s chest spasms, as the connection between our hearts finally tells Lil the truth, that I am dying. His turn in this slowing of time is likely as fast as he possibly can move, yet Teuila’s own turn towards me is much faster, her own blazing speed fighting the time dilation, but even she is not fast enough. The cascade of tears down her face says she can feel it happening. Luni looks aghast, stricken. Lu is wildly shaking her head in disbelief, positive that this can’t be happening somehow. Lucky is baying in confusion.