A soothing voice near my face mutters, “Hey sweetie, my Hero. You’re okay now. You’re okay.”

My skull aches as if it’d been under a hydraulic press for several hours. I flex my jaw and struggle to open my eyes, but end up groaning in pain, incapable drumming up the energy to even lift my eyelids. The voice coos, “Shh, shh, it’s okay, take your time. I’ve got you, we’ve got you.”

For a moment, I worry that my chest may be melting away, from the necromantic energies I’d been hit with, due to the intensity of the pain around my torso, but it seems like my Valkyrie chestplate took the brunt of it. I reflexively equip the armor at just about any sign of danger these days. Still, the impact of the necrotic blasts feels like it has caved in my sternum, even if it hasn’t. Trying to breathe feels like I’m fighting with a six ton elephant sitting on my chest. I ache as if my whole body were one giant bruise.

As my eyes roll about in their sockets, behind closed eyelids, I begin to recall what I’d been about to do. Yawning, I stretch slowly, using telekinesis for the most part, rather than trying to physically move my muscles. I lift myself from the grasp of my comforting rescuer, and turn to face her. Struggling, fighting with what seems like far too much effort for such a simple task, I open my eyes, revealing a red crustiness that had been sealing my eyelids shut together. I let my eyelids sink back closed, and I take a familiar ovaloid hunk of pumice to use, proferred by the woman in front of me. Tapping myself with it, I find myself clean, so that I’m not forced to possibly grind the bloody crust into my eyeballs while trying to clear it off of my eyelids. I return the soap stone to Luni, when I can finally look her in the eyes.

Luni and I share soft smiles, and she takes my left hand, lacing her fingers through mine for a brief moment. I’m still struggling to loosen and flex most of my muscles, especially my jaw, but Luni capitalizes on my distraction to plant a kiss on my lips. I can’t help smiling further as I chide, “Dirty pool my dear, that’s cheating.”

Luni sticks her tongue out at me as she withdraws, offering a, “Nyeh,” so I set one hand upon her face, which she chases away with her hands. I set the other on her face in retaliation, and she chases that one away as well, and then the other returns, and we repeat the cycle again and again until we’re both giggling.

Luni leans tightly against me as she holds me close, after our Shellcracker Family Slap Fight, and mumbles, “I’m so glad you’re still you, that you haven’t changed, or been too hardened by your journey. Always come back to me the way you are, please. You’re My Hero.”

I begin to respond, but Luni interrupts to continue, “We’re okay, you’re okay. Plus, you’ve got this, always have, and always will. Lady Kinzul and the others are a couple tunnels further down, let’s catch up.”

I raise an eyebrow as I query, “How’d you convince Te to leave me while I was down for the count?”

Luni wears a devious grin as she answers, “I preyed on her ego a bit, told her we needed the strongest of us to watch the prisoner if they were powerful enough to knock you out. You’ve only been out a few seconds, maybe a minute or two honestly, they’re not that far ahead of us.”

I sigh as I shake my head incredulously, loosing a half-laugh, half-sigh. My grin spreads across my whole face as I continue shaking my head at Luni. As we’re about to begin heading down towards the others, I lean in and kiss her softly at the corner of her mouth, near her left cheek. I take the briefest of moments to rest my forehead on hers, before I lift the two of us with telekinesis to begin floating towards the rest of our party.

Luni teases, “I can walk you know. I’m sure you can too.”

I loose half a laugh as I respond, “Less likely than you might think on that latter one. I didn’t go into detail about how hard it is to control my muscles with the nerve damage I’ve got.”

At that, Luni frowns, her gaze takes me in top to bottom and back, and her face is etched with concern as she asks, “Really sweetie? How are you coping with that? Do you have any plan for recovery?”

Gnawing on my lip, I ramble, “Well, coping by just dealing with it, circumventing it with the tools at my disposal. It doesn’t really register to me, just how effed up it is that I continue facing various disabilities, and I happen to have a magic workaround for them. I’ve got no idea how the hell to recover from having my insides burned away like this. I’m not sure it’s even possible, because of the Felgre blood that got mixed up with enchanted wood, and somehow subsumed into my body. Tiktik’s recovery seemed to revert back to her worst injured state, every week or two, like some sort of curse prevents her from fully healing. I figure something similar is going on with me, maybe.”

Luni ponders aloud, “Maybe Tiktik somehow overdrew on mana? Maybe the Felgre blood keeps overdrawing her mana? Without radiance, and, or when you took on energy debt, your recovery was always way slower.”

I half frown as I nod at the hypothesis. Luni’s sharp, and has a wealth of knowledge and memories to draw on. If that is the case, for either of us, then the cure would be something like a constant influx of mana over the course of several weeks of resting. That’s something I definitely won’t have time for, any time soon, and even then, for me, that would only serve to allow the process of healing to begin, with no guarantee that my nerve tunnels would regenerate. And worse, it’d be as detrimental as it is helpful, because I’d need to filter that same mana and its residue out those same cored out nerve pathways that I’ve been using to channel excess mana out, so that more doesn’t build up on my inner self.

Here’s hoping that Tiago can provide some sort of potion, or poultice, or something, capable of infusing Tiktik with enough mana for several weeks. Hell, here’s hoping he even thinks to do something like that, after examining her lack of recovery. I flex my jaw again, causing another pop and crack at my left mandibular joint, just as we’re entering the room where the interrogation is about to begin.

Kinzul asks, with no particular target, “Can you wake her?”

So the intruder was a woman after all. Her body type would be fairly masculine for a human, but once again, I have no knowledge of Draconian physiology, so I’m uncertain if that’s a frequent occurrence or not. Nala seemed almost spindly, perhaps a bit waifish, or at the very least, lanky, gangly, and fairly feminine though. So my sample pool doesn’t really help matters any. The intruder’s face does have some seemingly feminine softness to its lizard-like appearance, as much as a reptile can have such things anyway.

Teuila seems to answer Kinzul by pulling out a water skin, and squeezing it out over the intruder’s face. After a moment of sputtering and shivering, the Intruder gazes around the room, and curses in Draconic. At least, I’m pretty certain it’s Draconic. That alien, brain-melting hiss that dragons, kobolds, and Draconiacs seem to be capable of.

Each of the intruder’s limbs are individually bound to the chair they’re seated in, including her tail. The restraints serve to prevent her from being able to craft runes or utilize her hand-based mnemonic, which is a very good thing. I make certain to telekinetically pat down the intruder’s armor, seeking out any pockets or hidden objects. Apparently our party and Kinzul both missed some trinkets, and a small blade. It’s shorter than even a dagger, more like a scalpel. For some reason, it’s incredibly difficult to grip the objects with my telekinesis, despite being able to sense them.

Kinzul, bearing her most intimidating presence that sends shivers even down my spine states, “We’ll start with something easy. Your name.”

The Draconiac spits derisively, refusing to answer. Uh oh. I feel the power welling up within Kinzul, and I urge my party to edge backwards slightly. Lady Kinzul mirrors the derisive spitting, landing a thick gob of acid on the intruder’s right bicep. The sizzle is immediate, as is the screaming. I wince, and avert my gaze as the intruder’s scales give way to the tender flesh beneath, and then that gives way beneath the acid’s assault, all muscle and tissue is eaten away, leaving clean, bare bones exposed. I nearly vomit at the sight of it. It’s as if someone cut a cylinder out of her arm, ate the meat from the bones, and stuck the bones back together.

Until now, it was almost impossible as I was trying the entire time, to telekinetically remove the objects from the Draconiac intruder, but after a few moments, during the interrogation, as she’s screaming about her lost arm, I manage it. Kinzul eyes the objects floating away from the prisoner with feigned disinterest, though I can sense the momentary surprise beneath the surface of her emotions. I’m grateful for the distraction from the torturous visuals. Lucky sniffs the air, and turns his head away in displeasure. Luni and Lil grimace, but don’t turn away, apparently used to the fact that Lady Kinzul is indeed an acid dragon. Teuila just hardens herself against any emotion, and glares daggers at the prisoner, for having hurt one of us.

Lady Kinzul reiterates, “Once more. Your name.”

Tairkul, apparently, answers, “Tairkul, you mass of excrement. Pissrotter quimravenous pussbuckets of pain this gorram hurts.”

The statuesque, cut-marble-physiqued woman that is our leader suddenly reverts to her true draconic form, equally as beautiful and terrifying as she had been, only now with a much more massive presence. Kinzul barks an order that demands an answer, “Allegiance!”

A strange pall falls upon Tairkul’s features. She answers as if in a daze, “Long live Terrorzin.”

Kinzul makes a derisive spitting sound, thankfully without actually spitting forth another gob of acid. Our Lady mutters, “No one will be living long if Terrorzin isn’t put down.”

Lil nods in agreement with his mother’s muttering, and Luni shares a single trembling nod as well. Teuila simply grits her teeth, and Lucky scratches himself behind the ears with his left hind-claw. I stifle a chuckle at how simplistic it makes Lucky seem, like he’s almost just an ordinary dog.

Kinzul demands, “Enlighten me on what you hoped to accomplish today.”

Tairkul grits her teeth and glares at Kinzul, defying her, and refusing to answer. During the pause, I sense the frustration welling up within Kinzul, but she maintains her placid facade outwardly. I can also tell that Kinzul is thinking about the list of spells I told her that I have access to, especially the ones I haven’t learned or mastered yet.

Kinzul shows no emotion as she simply telepathically orders, “My Schism, you will endeavor to expand your repertoire into tearing apart enemy minds for information at once. My Muse, bind the prisoner’s wound. My Sun, and my Hound, you hunt at daybreak starting at the east slope of the Mountain of Solitude, begin with Yisstendahl’s dwelling, recover as much as you can. I’m certain Ka’thul will be helping herself to his trove to the supposed benefit of our tenuous alliance as we speak, and worse, agents of the loyalists may lay claim as well. My Tenith, you will guard the prisoner.”

I nod my assent as all of us save Luni and Teuila begin to leave Tairkul bound and rotting in the lowest caverns. Moments later, Kinzul returns to her human shape along the way towards the surface, and after several turns, far out of earshot of the prisoner, she slumps against a wall and wails in sadness. Lil looks startled to say the least. I’d say I was surprised, but I felt the grief festering and bubbling beneath the surface of Kinzul’s emotions. Lucky, for his part, stands at Kinzul’s side, pressed carefully against her to offer her the reassuring presence of physical contact.

Lil approaches Kinzul and asks, “Momma, what’s wrong?”

His mother’s response, after a mere moment’s sobbing, is, “Our Seer and Scholar have fallen, been taken from us, my son.”

Lil’s visage is horrified and grief-stricken as he stutters, “N-no. Not Amez. No. Aymestue, she was just, just a kid. No, no! Dmitriv too? How? No! I don’t believe it, they can’t be gone.” Lil’s denial trails off into a saddened whimper, that then devolves into gulped-back sobs.

My bottom lip quivers as I fight to keep my breathing even and calm. My poor best buddy, My Heart. My Lady, Kinzul. Both were fond of two members of the order that are now apparently slain. Worse, even those deaths might not have been everything the enemy tried to accomplish. If I were someone crafty and evil enough to set this up, I’d have had another objective as well, information and object gathering and retrieval. I don’t want to intrude upon Kinzul’s grief, nor Lil’s, so I stand patiently, practicing runes for the detect thoughts spell. It’s not nearly as powerful as Kinzul is hoping for, and it sets back my priorities and ability to offer her more telepathic links, but I’ll follow her orders without hesitation unless she gives me reason to question her judgment.

Several silent minutes pass as we mourn the losses we’ve already received, and, lamentably, the assuredly more to come. There’s a startling fury in Lil’s eyes as he suddenly resumes his draconic form. The fury colors his eyes from within though they are also ringed by sadness. Lil’s stout lower jaw juts out in an underbite with strong mandible bones, almost in defiance against his own emotions. Lil’s form is crimson armored scales atop well-defined muscles. His eyes, though creamy green in color, flicker with the tumultuous emotions within. Lil spreads the firm dactyl leather of his wings with a loud crack like that of a whip as he flexes his wings in a swift snapping motion. From seemingly nowhere, Lil dons a cloak, goggles, and a girdle, the magical equipment he’s had since Can’Z’aas. The cloak rests atop Lil’s emerald dorsal ridge, and the goggles disappear once in place about his face.

As I realize what Lil’s doing, I attempt to sense what time it is by way of intuiting how much time has passed. Ah, yes, it’s almost dawn of September Seventeenth. Lil manages a draconic whistle, an incredibly eerie sound, and Lucky transforms to one of his more powerful forms as well, nearly full size. The two set off up the tunnels, incredibly quickly, following Kinzul’s orders, unable to spare any further time for grieving.