Chapitre Onze: Quand la Lune d'Automne est Brillante
The scene at the base of the tower was a nightmare. Fire smoldered on debris and on the grass in every direction, all the way from the tower to the edge of the lake. Rather than the usual mist, it was choking, greasy smoke which hazed the air. The smell was indescribable; not only grease and smoke, but burning hair and meat and ozone. A few pieces of burning cloth were still fluttering down in ashy flakes to settle over the scene. Aside from the crackle and pop of burning things settling and cracking, everything was overlaid with the most ghastly keens of pain Valentina had ever heard in her life.
She sprinted forward, wearing only the tunic she had snatched off the floor. Rosaire’s. It had been easier to pull on than her dress. She hit her knees, heedless of the splinters which stabbed into her skin and the boiling hot liquid that seared it.
She was staring at a black lump. A body. It was humanoid. Unrecognizable. She couldn’t tell which one of her friends was lying there, charred into a black mummy and curled up like a dying bug. Surely none of them were that small. She was the shortest member of the group aside from Illyan. Surely this was some kind of mistake; nothing should have been able to make one of her friends look like that. She was seeing it wrong. In a moment, she’d see that this wasn’t a body at all, just something that looked like one, and…
Romaric sprinted past her, his unbelted trousers flapping. “Ze antimagic field!” he snapped as he went by. “Zey ‘ave to be furzair away for ze magic to work!” In order to leave their bubble of safety, he had put back on his disguised accent. He hadn’t had the time to grab his hat, however, so his face was forced to remain in its original state. He would just have to hope that they had a little time before Strahd’s attention was drawn by the explosion.
She didn’t know when she’d begun to cry, but Valentina had to clear her throat of mucus before she could wail, “I can’t!” She didn’t know any revival magic yet.
“I can!”
He could? Valentina leaped to her feet and followed. She had to detour around the smoldering wreck of the vardo. There wasn’t much left at all, but the closer you got to where it had stood, the denser and more dangerous the debris was. Even going around, Valentina wasn’t able to avoid it. She discovered that aside from splinters the island was now a veritable field of broken glass the hard way. She limped rapidly to the next-closest body.
Rather than too small, this one was too large. It was also the source of those horrific squeals of pain. One of the horses, she couldn’t tell which. The other was tangled half-beneath him, still and silent. The blasted, burning wreckage beside them were all that was left of the Morning Glory. The smell was even worse, here. The blast hadn’t been enough to kill both outright, but it was clear that even the one still making noise was not long for the world. The burns were so extensive and so severe that it looked half-flayed rather than burned, all bright red skin shining with blood and pus. Valentina choked and stumbled backwards.
Someone caught her arm. With a sob, she threw her arms around Sveta. The kresnik looked filthy, but unhurt. Her pale hair and skin were gray with soot, her sleek bob of hair fluffed up into a wild-thistle tangle. She returned the embrace with loose arms and a few awkward pats on the back.
“Who…?” Valentina couldn’t ask.
“Myself and Aeon were too far away. Not hurt. Oskar and Illyan were right next to vardo. Jinghua… I do not see. Was with me, but on closer side of campfire.”
“Oh, Sun of Righteousness… Lord of Morning…”
“He’s alive!” Aeon’s voice called out. Valentina had never heard it so loud and commanding before. “Over here!”
Releasing Sveta, she reached where the chevalier crouched in two leaping bounds. He was on one knee, his hand pressed to the neck of a limp, unmoving Illyan. Much like the horses, the genasi was in an awful in-between state. He’d clearly been facing away from the blast when it had gone off and been thrown several yards away, landing on his front with his limbs strewn all over. His right hand and arm were blackened and shriveled like burnt wood. Spreading from there, the burns transitioned into that awful, raw, bloody-meat look, all across his shoulder, sides, back, hips, and neck. It even spread up the side of his face, as if he had turned towards the noise in the second before the blast. The dim flicker of his hair blended into the surrounding wreckage. His clothes were all but destroyed, coming off in stiff flakes. The Morninglord’s mercy was that Illyan did not tend to wear quite as much jewelry as his kinsmen; the jewelry he had been wearing was melted and fused to his raw, weeping skin. Valentina could barely suppress a scream at the sight.
Her hand trembled as she reached out. “M-Mine to receive… and… happily mine t-to give…”
The wash of dawnlight was an instant balm. The spell could not restore his whole body, but those massive swathes of burns shrank at the edges like puddles evaporating in sunlight. Gray skin sealed together into peachy-white new skin in uneven patches. Valentina could not suppress her sob of total relief as Illyan’s facial features were made whole once more. Still textured from that older burn scar, but whole and undamaged. His nose, his lips, his eyelids, all restored to their normal, healthy shapes.
His right arm was not quite so lucky. The epicenter of the burn, it remained bloody and raw. Valentina repeated the incantation again, desperately, watching the light smooth new skin farther across his body. His arm swelled as it regained muscle and flesh beneath the burned skin, no longer skeletal and black. He was still injured but he was not maimed. Thank the dawn, he was not maimed.
A stronger, healthy squeal drew her attention. Drusille, the fat little gray, threw her head and paced in terror just next to the grass causeway, her tail lifted straight up. She looked terrified, but unhurt. Nearby, Rosaire knelt beside a body which looked closer to the first one she had seen than to Illyan’s. How, when Illyan had obviously been closer? It must have been his elemental heritage, the fiery blood in him which resisted heat and burns. Otherwise, he’d have looked just like those two. Oskar and Jinghua. Those bodies were Oskar and Jinghua…
Romaric was spreading out a ream of parchment across the body’s chest. It was stiff and crumbly at the edges, yellowed with age. Inked across its surface were dizzying concentric circles of tiny runes, surmounted by the shape of a rising sun. A spell scroll. He pressed it against the corpse’s body with both hands and said, in a steady voice, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”
The light from this was no gentle dawn, but a scorching noon. Yellow-white, it filled the air with a light so bright that Valentina had to close her eyes against the colored spots which filled them. It was so bright that she flinched from the expectation of heat, though there was none. Only a tingle, as if of a breeze so exactly room-temperature that it could only be felt in the movement of the hair on her body. Even once it had subsided enough for her to reopen her eyes, the world was awash with green and orange blots for several blinks. When they finally cleared enough for her to make out Romaric again, the spell scroll covering the body had vanished. That body was petite and lithe, covered in soft gray rabbit fur and a red tunic. As whole and intact as she had been upon their first meeting in the mists, Jinghua drew breath.
Valentina pressed her fists to her mouth, chest jumping uncontrollably. Oskar. That tiny, curled-up body by the tower was Oskar. Everyone else was alive, they were okay even, the only traces left were some scars on Illyan’s arm, but Oskar…
Romaric’s eyes pierced into her. “Ma chérie, can you drag eem out ‘ere and ‘eal eem?”
“I can’t,” she whispered, through her fingers. “I can’t cast a revivify spell. It’s too high level for me.”
Aeon made a shocked, devastated noise. “...I can’t, either…” What healing ability Mother Night granted him could only refresh the living, not restore the dead.
“I cannot also,” Sveta said. “Romaric?”
Pity was etched into the lines of his face. “Zat scroll was all I ‘ad. I do not ‘ave anyzing else prepaired. By ze time I am able to prepair eet, eet will be too late to work.”
The horrified silence which followed was broken by a groan. Illyan shifted, trying to come upright. Aeon moved to support him. Dazed, yellow-and-red eyes blinked at the burning hellscape before them. They brimmed over with tears.
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They had Aeon lay Oskar’s body on an intact section of the ruined second floor. The third floor was too broken to support much weight, and nobody wanted to cram in with it on the ground floor. Illyan lay down carefully on the other side of the tower on another intact piece of floor, unwilling to sleep on the same floor as Stripes. Valentina and Rosaire retreated back up to his bedroom. Everyone else leaned against the walls, crates, or golems on the ground floor, trying to find a comfortable place where they could sleep without bothering the large tiger. Poor Drusille was left alone on the island, tethered within the antimagic field on the other side of the tower from where the explosion had occurred. Nobody wanted to leave her by such a scene of carnage, with the smell of dead horse in the air, but there was no room for her in the tower. Even if they had been able to coax her in, it was just as cruel to shove her in next to a tiger as to leave her outside. Luckily, she calmed quickly once she was out of sight of the fire.
Hardly anybody had fallen asleep by the time the wolves began to howl.
Illyan in particular had been curled shrimplike on his side, unable to stop looking at the horror of Oskar’s charred body. It was impossible to believe, impossible to reconcile. Oskar, who had been so large and so strong and so vital. Now he was as small and fragile as spun glass. He’d survived so many things. So many dangers, so many fraught battles. And what had taken him out had been a booby trap.
As they’d filed back into the tower, Illyan had put forth the theory that Esmé had left that trap for Romaric. Romaric hadn’t been able to refute it with certainty. All the speculation truly accomplished was to make him look almost as hurt and upset as the rest of them. Illyan regretted saying it aloud, but they couldn’t help but keep wondering if it was true. She’d known that her foster father was living in this tower, clearly. She’d come to the valley to find him. Why on earth would she have left a bomb on his doorstep? There had been at least a hundred broken glass vessels among the wreckage. Her vardo had been filled to the brim with flasks of alchemist’s fire, rigged to fall and burst when the door snapped a tripwire. Who would leave that kind of trap in their own vardo?
Illyan’s own hurt swirled wildly between anger and an awful, sick kind of relief. Anger, because he had argued against breaking into that vardo. Hadn’t he told them to stop? Why had that stupid fool let Sveta pester him into doing it? Why did Valentina have to kick them all out from where they were safe just so she could get it on with that goofy hunter? Relief, because… he was upset. He was so full of hurt and anger and regret and that mind-breaking feeling of trying to reckon with the magnitude of this loss. That meant that… whatever was broken in Illyan, whatever had been wrong with him since that first death, it hadn’t made him a total psycho. He could still hate and fear death. He could still feel the agony of it bone deep. He wasn’t yet a total monster.
When the wolves began to howl, it was almost a relief. A reprieve from lying there, consumed by his thoughts and regrets.
Also a reprieve from the noises which were clearly audible from upstairs. Lathander only knew where those two were getting the spirit for that kind of hanky-panky from. Growing up in a camp, he’d heard many such noises in his life, but never from someone he considered a sister. Illyan supposed it was life-affirming for her or something, but all it did for him was make him feel like a pervert.
They hauled themselves over to a dirt-caked window and squinted through it. The thing was so filthy it was hard to make out any details in the darkness. He thought he saw shapes moving down below.
A rattle of iron chains announced the arrival of the elevator from the bottom floor. Sveta, Aeon, and Jinghua, crammed together on the tiny platform, simultaneously gestured for Illyan to join them. Together, they ascended to the den of iniquity which was Rosaire’s bedroom. They spent the whole way up loudly announcing their arrival and discussing the merits of pants. The hint was taken, judging from the way Valentina was clad in her dress and armor upon their arrival, though hair hair was a wild mess. Rosaire, too, was in his armored coat and trying to smooth his hair back with both hands. They stood at a window which had the glass removed, peering down at a sea of nighttime mist below. By now, the full moon was high in the sky, casting a silvery glow on the dark woods and water where they peeked through the swirling mist.
“Any idea what’s goin’ on?” Illyan asked, joining them.
“Wolves on the causeway,” Valentina reported.
“Jewelry wolves?” A gleam entered Sveta’s eyes.
“Or werewolves,” Illyan suggested.
“There’s no way of telling while they’re in wolf form,” Rosaire informed him, absently. “They would have to transform for us to be sure.”
As he said this, one of the hulking, lupine shapes advanced out of the mist and onto the marsh of the island. He was a pitch-black wolf, though Sveta noted he was possessed of both ears. He had an oddly short snout and wide shoulders, almost more like a bear than a wolf. As he stepped forward, his front paws lifted from the ground, bones crunching as his body shrank and re-formed into that of a man with copper skin and shaggy black hair. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called upwards.
“Is anybody ‘ome?”
“Sod it all,” Rosaire murmured.
“...Should we answer…?”
Valentina cupped her hands around her own mouth. “Yes, we’re here! Who’s calling?”
“Kelian, second in command of the Mont Beauvais Pack. I was out on patrol when I ‘eard a terrible commotion. You alright up there?”
The werewolf’s accent was Barovian, for the most part, with just the faintest hint of a twang to it. It wasn’t dissimilar to a Vistani accent, though it wasn’t quite the same, either. His dress was certainly different. Even in a human body, he was mainly clad in fur and hide forming a rough vest and pants. His facial hair had not seen grooming in years, if ever. It straggled around an unfriendly smile.
“How common of name is Illyan?” Sveta asked.
“Not common,” Illyan bit out. “‘E said Killian, though.”
“...Isn’t that your father…?”
“He said ‘Kelian’,” Rosaire said, quellingly. “Someone please answer him so that I don’t have to do that ridiculous voice.”
Valentina hollered, “Oh, just fine. That was an accident. Don’t mind us!”
“Well, we’re just curious. Nobody’s lived in that tower for years. Why don’t you come down so we can talk and get to know each other? We’re neighbors, after all. My pack ‘as lived in these woods for generations.”
“Absolutely not,” Sveta said. “Is trap.”
“They’ve already got us like crabs in a bucket,” Illyan pointed out. “All they gotta do is sit on that causeway and we’ll starve to death in ‘ere. They ‘ave the upper ‘and and they know it.” There was something of Arceneaux in the smugness of that werewolf’s smirk.
“In the regular course of things, I’d say we could assail them from the tower without fear of reprisal,” Rosaire sighed. “Unfortunately, the antimagic field complicates that somewhat. At least poor Oskar destroyed the back way in before the explosion. Unless those wolves muster up siege weaponry, we may be at a stalemate.”
Illyan eyed the buttresses. “I could build a platform that goes ten feet out?”
“With what wood?” Sveta asked.
“Aw, zut.”
“You still there, good lady?”
“Uh, yeah, here!” Valentina called back. “I don’t think I feel very safe coming down where you are!”
“That’s a shame. We just wanted to talk a little. If you change your mind, we’ll be ‘ere all night.”
Just as they’d thought. The wolves retreated to the far end of the causeway, but they could still be seen lurking between it and the forest. They yapped and tusselled amongst themselves freely, like puppies without a care in the world. They truly had all night.
Within the tower, Sveta turned from the window. “Good night, then.”
“I beg your pardon?” Rosaire blinked.
“Is no point going to fight now,” Sveta said. “We are tired, we are hurt. Good night’s sleep will fix. If wolves are still there in morning, we fight at full strength.”
He barked a surprised laugh. “Sound logic. Very well. Good night, then.”
“Get real sleep,” Sveta advised, while the others joined her on the elevator platform. “No more horny girl shit tonight.”
“If I must!” Valentina waved as they sank out of sight.
Illyan had no idea how he was supposed to get to sleep now.
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She slipped through the underbrush silent and quick as a fish in the water. The hooded cloak which covered her body was as gray as the sad, half-dead leaves around her, blending her into the misty forest night. After so long in these woods, she knew them like the back of her own hand. She hadn’t been nearby, but that explosion had echoed across the whole of the valley and left a smear of smoke above the mist to mark its location. She had set off immediately, drawn by the most life this place had shown in years. Her flight through the woods took her down from the mountains towards the lake in a matter of minutes.
When she was at the very edge of the trees, she stopped. Low to the ground, she slunk around the perimeter of the clearing, scanning for whatever had made that noise. Her intent was not to reveal herself to whoever had done it; quite the opposite, she intended to remain hidden as long as possible. The people of this valley were not her allies and the outsiders who came through were unreliable at best. She worked better alone. She wasn’t here to make friends, only to keep an eye on whatever situation was unfolding.
The tower at the center of the lake hadn’t collapsed. She’d wondered if that was it. The ancient thing still stood as tall as ever, limned by silver moonlight. A quick whiff of the air brought her the overpowering scent of smoke, grease, and cooked horseflesh. Some kind of fire, clearly. Alchemy, maybe. A few tiny embers still glowed in the blackened grass at the tower’s foot.
Beneath the smell of the explosion, though, there was another scent. Faint, coming from her side of the lake though removed by a matter of many yards. Canine. No, lupine.
Werewolves.
There was light in the tower windows. She thought to herself, stupid rookies. If they were outsiders come to challenge Strahd, they’d made it further into the valley than most did, but clearly more on the merits of their luck than their wits. She surmised they had made that explosion either accidentally or during a fight and had drawn the attention of the local werewolves. Whoever they were and whatever they’d been trying to accomplish, they’d trapped themselves in that tower.
The very thought made her pelt crawl. She pushed down memories of being trapped in the freezing cold and the dark that tried to claw their way to the front of her mind. It wasn’t the same. That place was hell. This was just… a standoff. Practically open–air. Open-invitation, certainly.
Did she want to get involved?
In general, no. Not at all. The very thought of having to talk to and work with stupid, naïve rookies who hadn’t seen the horrors she’d seen made her lip curl.
At this exact moment, however, she hesitated. She’d heard rumors of an artifact, one which had once belonged to the Saint Anselme and had the power to repel that stinking devil himself. It was in this valley, behind the walls of that damned city. Even those brainless idiots who guarded the gate wouldn’t let in someone who looked like her. If she helped these hapless idiots, they’d owe her. Maybe she could get them to retrieve it for her, or at least to get her in the door. Surely she could repress her disgust long enough to accomplish that.
She lurked on the fringes of the woods until sunrise, debating silently. Not long after the true dawn, which was hidden behind a screen of rain clouds, a second, more visible dawn seemed to burn away the mist above the causeway which led to the island. Lupine howls and human shouts and the clang of armor drifted to her across the still water.
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Mind made up, she slipped into the lake. Her cloak spread out behind her in the water like fins. Silently, she swam towards the bridge.
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The wolves were still there in the morning.
Rosaire touched first Illyan, then Valentina, and finally himself gently on the forehead, murmuring each time, “Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?” He stepped back, grim behind his smoked lenses. “That will provide some measure of protection, but only once.”
Valentina said, “Give me the splendid, silent sun, with all his beams-full dazzling. Rise, my soul, and meet the benediction of the sky.” Her silent sun hovered over her shoulder, ready to swing at her command while her shield of faith surrounded her with a faint dawn light. With not quite her usual cheer, she said, “At least I’m not going to die a virgin.”
“Were you one before tonight?” Illyan teased.
Her smile was lopsided. “Nobody knows.”
Rosaire pecked her on the temple. “I have an idea.”
“...We should go,” Aeon said, sword unsheathed at his side.
They advanced towards the causeway, five humanoids and one armored tiger. From the other side of the hundred-foot-long bridge, sixteen wolves rose to their paws in readiness.
They met beneath the steel gray sky in a blaze of morning glory.
“An angel robed in spotless white, bent down and kissed the sleeping Night! Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone! Men saw the blush and called it Dawn!”
These wolves, unlike the last pack they had faced, were hardly phased by the burst of radiant light. Valentina’s spiritual sun swung, smashing into muzzles and legs like a literal morningstar. At the front of her team, she was almost immediately surrounded by the thick of the enemies. Sveta burst from her own skin in a shimmer of moonlight, so that the cleric was flanked by a huge, pale wolf on one side and a huge, dark tiger on the other. Aeon’s sword spat sparks of starlight like a brand as he set among the wolves closest to him. Above, Ivoire circled, spitting darts of compressed air out of her brass beak while her inventor stood below, lashing fire from his hands. “These ‘earts of living fire that beat below!”
A few of the wolves reared back, bringing their front claws to bear like grizzlies. They didn’t totally reform into men, but stayed in this half-wolf form so that they could fight with hands and jaws alike. Others remained on all fours, snapping and shaking and knocking their foes from their feet. Sveta snarled as two seized her legs and tried to bring the larger wolf down just like a pack hunting a moose. She danced on her two remaining legs, snapping and teetering.
Suddenly, a dark shape rose roaring from the waters of the lake.
“To fight aloud is very brave!”
A strange spell impacted one of the wolves. It was purple and smoky, but not the gaseous, airy curls which true smoke formed. This spell seemed to trace arcane, geometric shapes as it traveled through the air, as if written by some godlike hand at incredible speeds. Where it hit, it stamped a rune into its target’s hide.
The source was a humanoid figure in a concealing cloak who had leaped from the water. In the hand which had not cast a spell, they held a dagger, which they stabbed into the closest werewolf. As quickly as this stranger had appeared, they dove back into the water, disappearing with a series of spreading ripples.
They hardly had time to wonder at this newcomer. The werewolves shook off nearly every blow they were dealt. Those wolves which remained four-legged proved weaker, and were quickly dispatched beneath Sveta’s teeth and Stripes’s claws. The bipedal ones were unstoppable.
“Wake! Wake! Ah!” With a shriek, Valentina was pulled off of her feet. Her sun winked out.
“Valentina!” Romaric roared. He had slid a sword from his cane and wielded it as a fencer did, stabbing and slashing while keeping his body sideways to his foe. Where before he had lingered behind Aeon, he now fought his way forward, teeth bared like a wolf himself. He’d donned his circus ringmaster disguise once more, but even despite it, managed to look like the fearsome monster hunter he truly was underneath. Jinghua leaped forward to join him, only to be stopped by a werewolf who seized her in both arms. In a parody of a vampiric bite, he held her there while he bit deeply into her clavicle. Unlike a vampire, he snarled and shook his head, worrying the bite and spraying blood in all directions. Jinghua’s scream was piercing.
Valentina thrust her hands up from supine, thumbs touching, fingers spread. “The ship of sunrise burning stands upon the eastern rims!” The fire which spewed from her hands caused the werewolf which loomed above her to reel back, snapping in pain. Romaric had enough of an opening to slip in and aim his own blows at the burnt wolf. But it was no more than a momentary surprise; there was hardly a burn on him. Almost contemptuously, the werewolf knocked Romaric off of his feet with a backhand. Sprawled on the ground beside one another, he on his front and she on her back, he and Valentina shared a desperate look.
They were losing this fight.
All the while, the stranger continued to pop out of the lake unexpectedly, stabbing at legs and throwing out that same odd spell blast, harrying and distracting as best they could. Aeon gritted his teeth, caught in the mechanical motion of slashing, slashing, slashing, despite how little effect it was having. Blood streamed down his face from a claw which had raked across his scalp. Illyan threw desperate words of healing, unable to reach his imperiled comrades. They had yet to fell a single werewolf.
“Retreat!”
With a decisive motion, Valentina rolled off of the causeway, hitting the water with a splash. She sank in a billow of pale fabric and pale hair, cascading silver bubbles trailing from every joint of her armor. Water rushed across her skin and down her ears, roaring like a beast. All but blind and deaf, Valentina kicked out as if to push the enveloping water away from her body. Her arms reached upwards, vainly seeking the sun. It was behind so much water, the dark lake and the dark clouds, but the morning would break soon. It had to break soon. No matter how dark the day or the water, the sun would return…
Air slipped across her face in brief, unsatisfying sips as she hit the surface. She struck out, hoping that she was heading away from the werewolves. She inhaled as much water as air, whether it was through nose or mouth. Her wet hair smothered her, trying to cling to her face to block the air every time her face broke the surface. The day was truly as dark as the water was. Her eyes stung no matter if she was above or below the surface. She could only tell which way was up by the relentless, dragging tug of gravity on her armor. It was a supreme effort of will to keep kicking. It was the kind of effort where the goal grew smaller and smaller. No longer could she focus on escape, or even on staying afloat. Her goal was only to keep kicking. The rest would have to happen on its own. As long as she kept kicking.
Valentina didn’t need anyone to tell her how to survive. Her body had known it from the moment she had been born. Nobody had had to teach her how to breathe or walk, and nobody had had to teach her how to seek out food when she was hungry. How to conceal extra food so that she could eat it later. How to snuggle up to the older girls when she was cold. How to wheedle and charm adults into giving her what she needed. Did anyone really need someone to tell them that a smile and a compliment could be turned into a shared meal after a few days? Did people need to be taught that if you acted helpless, people would help you? For Valentina, logic and instinct were more or less the same impulse. She didn’t do things that didn’t make sense, and she didn’t do things that didn’t keep her alive.
This was the same as always. Her body knew what was needed to keep her alive. Keep kicking. Keep kicking. Suck in a breath when you can. Keep kicking. The water will end eventually. The dark will end. The dawn will break.
For once, though, a new thought spoke in the back of Valentina’s head. It fought back against her body’s instincts, trying to convince her to spend effort on things that were not purely to ensure her own survival. Logic, apart from instinct but no less powerful in a body unused to separating the two. It whispered, Where is Romaric? Where is Sveta? Illyan? Jinghua? Aeon? You need to check if they need your help. You have to help them if they need it to escape. You all have to escape together, this time!
It wasn’t survival instinct. If anything, it was the opposite. Once, Valentina had allowed herself to be beaten unconscious by the flood of the shambling mound purely based on logical calculation: She would die if Illyan wasted his healing ability on prevention, and she would also die if they lost enough able-bodied people to carry the injured to safety. It was both logical and the only way to survive, to fall there and be revived like the dawn. This was illogical. She didn’t need the others’ help. She was already free of the fight. All she needed to do was kick.
So why couldn’t she stop hearing that voice? Why couldn’t she stop her eyes from darting back and forth through the darkness, searching desperately for a glimpse of her companions? Why did her fingers flex with every thrust not in search of the bank but in search of cloth or flesh?
Valentina had sought luxury her whole life, grasping for every bit of it she could hold on to. The luxury of time to introspect was not one she yet possessed. Without being able to identify or control them, frantic emotions enveloped Valentina even more securely than the lake. She couldn’t kick through these. She couldn’t do anything but feel.
Through the dark lake waters, Valentina kicked.
Days or weeks later, her fingertips finally sank into soft mud. Gasping air and muddy water alike, Valentina clawed herself forward. Her boots sank in as well, the mud and the exhaustion both becoming lead weights tied to her ankles. Spluttering and dripping and tangled by her own hair and clothes, Valentina hauled her body further into the shallows and finally up the bank. Soft mud became scrubby grass and stony earth. Before her, out of the mist and the darkness, seen through the curtain of her soaking hair, was Romaric’s tower. She had made it back to the island.
Out of the water and free of the need to kick, Valentina lost control of her survival instinct. She scrambled to her feet, raking at her hair, looking all around herself. Where was Romaric? Where was Sveta, Illyan, Jinghua, Aeon? She didn’t know what her body was going to do if she couldn’t find them. Those illogical feelings had her by the nape of the neck, puppeting her body without her say-so. She needed to find them like she needed to breathe.
She didn’t have to worry about hypotheticals for long. Almost as soon as she began looking, her eye fell on the crumpled, thin form of a man lying nearby, half-floating in the shallow water. Romaric. It was Romaric! He must have followed her into the water. Even as she choked and dribbled lake water over her chin, she lurched towards him. He choked, too, as she hauled him further onto the bank, writhing to escape her hands. Merciless, she pulled and stumbled until the both of them were coughing and staggering towards the tower. Broken glass crunched underfoot from the shore to the door.
Behind them, up the land bridge, came the werewolves. Ahead of the tide was the sprinting form of the hooded stranger, eating up the ground in massive strides. Just behind them, Sveta’s direwolf shape, bounding along with a limp Jinghua in her mouth like a retriever bringing back a hunted hare to her master. Beside her, Stripes, following in long leaps. Barely ahead of the loping wolves, Aeon and Illyan with their heads down and arms pumping. The werewolves were extremely fast, only behind the human and genasi at all because they had started from further away. Those crucial seconds of head-start would be enough, just as long as…
“Open the door!” Valentina hissed.
Romaric coughed a moment more, before lifting his arms. Sopping wet and at high speeds, he mimed the opening sequence of motions. Lake water flew from his fingertips. She couldn’t stop a swell of fondness for this silly, silly man.
No sooner had the door rumbled open than the hooded stranger was throwing themself inside. Valentina and Romaric piled after them, still hacking for breath as they collapsed on the elevator platform. They had to make room for the others. The huge wolf and the huge tiger, not to mention four humans. Romaric signaled the golems to hoist them up quickly
It was extremely unfortunate to remember that the second story was where they were storing Oskar’s remains. Valentina rolled off the platform the moment it was more or less level, barking for the golems to pull it back down. She found herself lying next to his body, reeling from the frantic handful of seconds between gaining the shore and gaining the tower.
Below, Stripes was a rattling river of steel pouring into the tower. Sveta’s furred bulk crammed itself into the entryway after him. She spat out Jinghua before squeezing around to fill the entire door, teeth bared. She just had to defend the door for a few seconds, just long enough to get everyone inside. Blood streamed from her flanks, and her breath came in great heaves, but her eyes glinted with centuries-old determination.
The guys and the wolves hit the tower at nearly the same time. Claws lashed and slashed, trying to shove their way into the building where their prey had trapped itself. As best she could in the limited space, Sveta dodged, dancing and weaving on her paws so that blows tore harmlessly through handfuls of fur instead. Aeon fell to his knees, shaking, almost as soon as his foot hit the threshold. He was almost trembling too badly to crawl beneath her belly to the safety of the first floor on the other side. Sveta scooped her front legs like a dog burying a bone to shove him through, ducking beneath the swipe of a werewolf’s claws that tore through the tip of her ear.
Illyan flattened himself to the doorjamb, Sveta’s shoulder slotting into the dent in his ribcage, his body all but subsumed by the fluff of her fur. His hair flickered at the ends as if embers were smoldering within Sveta’s pelt. Gasping for breath, frantic, Illyan paused there to look for a way to close the door. Sveta had no hands at the moment. It had to be him.
He was having nasty flashbacks to pelting through a dark, wet tunnel, pursued by an avalanche of rotting vegetation. The portcullis hanging above him. He’d died there. He’d died, he’d died…
There was a plain iron ring on the inside. Illyan seized it with both hands and threw himself backwards, heedless of the wolves on either side. At any moment, he expected pain to once more tear through his ribs and steal the breath from his body, submerge him into the dark waters of madness.
The door clanged shut. Illyan fell onto a warm bed of blood-damp fur. It pulsed beneath him with the force of Sveta’s panting breath.
They had made it. Safely trapped once more.
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“This is a nice tomb you’ve found for us,” the hooded stranger snarled. Their voice was a husky, hissing contralto. She was dripping wet from her lacustrine stealth tactics, and yet she made no move to either remove her cloak nor even lower her hood. The edge of it shadowed the upper half of her face, but her nose and mouth protruded far enough to make it clear that this was a tabaxi. The square shape of her snout was leonine, as was the scruff of her short whiskers, but her fur was completely white and her nose pale gray-pink. Her hood had cutouts which allowed her round ears to stand up through. Beneath the cloak, she appeared to be dressed in the ragged remains of what was once leather armor, so battered and shredded by battle that it was now more accessory than outfit. The necessaries were still thankfully covered, but a lot of pale fur showed through.
“Nice assist. Who’re you?” Illyan panted.
“You can call me… Emily.”
It was obvious to everybody that this was a lie, but nobody cared enough to pursue the issue. Illyan wondered at the obvious similarities she shared with their so-recently-late friend. A lioness tabaxi with pale fur… How could it be a coincidence? At the same time, he worried that it was reductive of him to think so. Illyan himself shared certain visual similarities with lots of other Vistani. It didn’t mean they were all blood related, just swimming in a similar gene pool. And even if it was true… What kind of cosmic joke would it be, to run into her now? Just one day after that stupid accident that had cost them their friend?
There was a quick way to stress test it, at least.
“Enchanté, Emily. I’m getting away from the tiger. Feel free to come upstairs, just know we got a… Well, you’ll see.”
Emily did indeed ride the elevator up to the second floor, along with Illyan and Aeon. Sveta remained below in wolf shape with Stripes and a barely-conscious Jinghua. If he had expected her to have a strong reaction to Oskar’s remains, he was disappointed. Emily hardly glanced at the charred remains. Illyan supposed that it was racist to expect that every tabaxi would know every other tabaxi, even if this stranger and Oskar were the only two he had ever met. Regardless of their similarities. Maybe it was just a feature of the valley, actually, that totally unrelated strangers kept finding their almost-doppelgangers here? That would sure validate Valentina.
In any case, they all quickly relocated up to the fourth floor of the tower due to everyone’s adamant refusal to gather on the third. Through the windows, they could see the werewolves circling the base of the tower, sniffing around for any alternative way in. They quickly discovered the collapsed scaffolding. Thank goodness for that disaster, otherwise the tower would have been overrun very quickly. As it was, their war council currently consisted of four people: Rosaire, Valentina, Illyan, and the hooded stranger. Aeon was present, but currently had his back to the wall, face buried in his armored knees. It couldn’t have been comfortable. Sveta was too big to squeeze up and Jinghua was not in a fit state to be moving around. The air which hung over them all was tense with silence.
“...Problem is still the antimagic field,” Illyan said. “Without that, we could be takin’ potshots at them from up ‘ere. Cantrips never run out. Guaranteed win, as long as they can’t shoot back.”
“Can you turn it off?” Valentina looked to Rosaire.
He shook his head. “If Khazan left any way to dispel it, I have not located it. The only things here upon my arrival were the golems and this armor, both of which seem to be exceptions to the field in some way. Speaking of which, there is another, more pressing problem with the tower’s defenses which may become ours very soon.”
“Great, just what we need. More problems. What is it?”
“If anyone attempts to break through the front door by force without performing the key, the tower will magically summon a young, blue dragon to defend it.”
They all took a moment to digest this.
“That is not good,” Valentina summed up.
“You can’t control it?”
“If anyone could, it was Khazan. Once here, the dragon will likely be free to kill all of the tower’s intruders, including us.”
“I used all my spells in the fight earlier,” Illyan despaired. “I can’t do much more than make a li’l spark now. I will not win a fight against a dragon, me.” He glanced out the window at the stone griffons on the buttresses below. “If only we ‘ad a plank. If I could just get out there…”
“I don’t mean to add problems on top of problems,” Emily broke in, “but how many of you were bitten during that fight?”
“...Not me,” Illyan said.
“...Just claws…” Aeon mumbled from his ball.
“They never got through my armor,” Valentina said.
“Nor mine,” finished Rosaire. He adjusted his glasses. “...I hate to speak of those not present, but I did see them bite Sveta’s legs. And Jinghua’s case hardly needs explanation.”
“They didn’t get me, either,” Emily reported. “But the rabbit and the wolf are in danger. As soon as the moon rises, we’ll be trapped in the tower with them.”
Valentina wrung her hands. That feeling was welling inside her again, restless and without an outlet. “I don’t know how to cure lycanthropy.”
“I do,” Rosaire assured her. “It’s a magical disease. Spells which cure disease will work on it. Do you know any?”
“No.” No revivify, no cure disease… Valentina felt so helpless. She didn’t have anything she could give to her friends. Nothing that would make their lives easier.
Again, Rosaire saved her. “I do. I can cast it a few times. The problem will be getting to them without risking getting bitten myself.”
“We can figure that out if it ‘appens,” Illyan decided. “We don’t know either of ‘em is gonna wolf out at all. None of us turned vamp after they got bit by Dorian. Maybe they’ll fight it off.”
“So what do we do until then?” Valentina wondered.
“Potshots the old-fashioned way,” Emily answered. She stepped up to the window, unclipping a hand crossbow from her belt. Illyan remembered his own, collapsible model, folded away on his supply belt. Not to mention Ivoire and her air darts.
It was a long, tense day. Between the two marksmen and marks-homunculus, all of the ordinary wolves were eventually picked off. The werewolves, however, continued to be immune to most forms of physical damage. Their bolts weren’t any more annoying than the sting of a bee. Only Ivoire’s darts seemed to hurt them at all, and she could only hit rarely while keeping the necessary altitude to prevent being hit back. The only good thing they could say about their hours of trading off shifts at the window was that none of the werewolves attempted to break down the iron door.
Eventually, Sveta came out of her wolf shape. They explained the situation to her through the elevator shaft, so she and Jinghua remained on their lower-floor quarantine even after Sveta had healed the both of them back to alertness. Illyan wondered if it wouldn’t have been more merciful to leave the harengon oblivious to her impending fate. He couldn’t stop picturing it, himself. If Rosaire couldn’t cure them, if they became mindless monsters, would they have to put them down? He tested the thought again and again, like probing a sore tooth with his tongue. Did it bother him? Surely the idea of killing his friends still bothered him.
The idea of them being gone bothered him. It wasn’t that death itself no longer mattered to Illyan. Oskar’s loss was a constant sting, so surreal that it was hard to focus on. He kept slipping into the assumption that his friend was just out of sight, on another floor, doing something else. Not lying there, motionless, burned all but to a skeleton. The idea of Sveta and Jinghua dead did bother him. But did the idea of killing them?
He wasn’t sure. Maybe he wasn’t picturing it realistically enough. Maybe once it came down to it, he’d be repulsed and unable to go through with it. Right now, he was just picturing putting a monster down. Just like he was shooting at the werewolves through this window. That was why the thought wasn’t scaring him. It wasn’t real yet, that’s all.
Unexpectedly, Valentina said, “I love you guys.”
Emily, sentinel at the window, said, “This relationship is moving a little fast for me.” Even while sniping wolves from the top of this tower, she kept her hood raised. Illyan had taken pity and dried it for her in the first hour of her shift.
Illyan, taking a break on the floor, looked up, startled. “That’s outta nowhere.”
“It is for me, too,” Valentina pouted. She sat on the bed, kicking her feet. Rosaire had stepped out of the room to take care of nature’s call on the third floor. Illyan hoped he was aiming out of the gash in the wall for the wolves below. “I told Rosaire just yesterday… You guys know I never had a family. I’ve never loved someone before.”
“Those are two very different statements,” Illyan pointed out. “What is love to you, Nini?”
“Well… when you love someone, you give them things. Things that make their lives easier,” she explained. “The Morninglord loves me. I know because he gives me spells. Power, dreams, magic. The nuns at the orphanage loved kids, so they gave them food and shelter. Strahd loves me because he thinks I’m Irénée, and he gives me jewels and money. I’ve never loved anybody before so I’m scared. I want to give you guys things and I don’t know where I’ll stop. I don’t know if I’ll put myself in danger trying to help you and I… I’m so scared that I don’t have anything to give you at all. I couldn’t help Oskar, and I can’t help Sveta or Jinghua now… I’ve never had to worry about anyone’s life but my own before. I’ve tried so hard to make people love me, but I don’t know what to do now that I…”
Unseen, Emily’s ears perked up at the sound of the word ‘Strahd’. Illyan was too busy scooting over so that he could lean against her knee. He patted her leg comfortingly, trying to channel all those times in his childhood that Maman had had to hug him out of a fit of anxiety.
“Valentina, chut now. You don’t ‘ave to give anything. You do plenty. We’d ‘ave been sunk so many times without you. And you’re outta your mind if you don’t think we love you back. I don’t know what’s goin’ on with Irénée or this Tatienne person, but I’d think of you as a sister even if you looked like an owlbear’s backside. Chut, now, it’s just stress.”
“I feel so bad for Oskar. And the horses. And the Morning Glory,” Valentina sniffed.
“...I miss ‘im too. We’ll buy new ‘orses. And you’ve been ‘aving some morning glories yourself, ain’t you?”
She giggled, dully. “It’s a good team name. The Morning Glories.”
“It’s been a ‘ard-’ard day, Val. Why don’t you take a li’l nap? I’ll wake you if anything ‘appens. Go on, now.”
Valentina obeyed, without removing her armor. It looked uncomfortable, but she was asleep within minutes, curled on her side like a little girl. When Illyan looked up, Rosaire was next to the elevator shaft, apparently having scaled the chains on his own rather than calling for the elevator. He was watching her with an unreadable expression.
No, that wasn’t true. Illyan just didn’t like him. It was a fond expression.
Couillon, he thought. Talking as if anyone who met Valentina didn’t end up loving her. How silly, for a girl who shone so bright to say she had never loved anybody else before. It was a good thing Illyan had met her in this godawful valley. He’d set her straight.
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The clouds had more or less cleared by nightfall. As much as they ever did in Barovy, anyway. Thin streaks of silver fluff stretched their fingers across the twinkling stars and the royal blue sky between. It was beautiful. Almost peaceful. They’d be able to see the moment the moon rose.
The werewolves had, thankfully, retreated. Ivoire’s tireless assault from the air had either wounded or annoyed them enough to flee shortly before sunset. Kelian and his pack vanished into the woods as if the last two days had been nothing but a nightmare.
The whole group minus Sveta and Jinghua gathered at the top floor window. Illyan went from person to person, stitching a fluffy little circle of white down onto each of their armors at the shoulder. Rosaire and Emily were not excepted. He explained as he did so, “These are from an experiment like my leeches I did in my teens. Bred the chicks on a mana-rich diet. They didn’t survive long, but I kept the feathers for Ivoire. They make things float. For ‘er, it keeps ‘er in the air. For this, I’ll be able to activate ‘em with a key phrase. If you’re ever falling, I’ll be able to slow you down.”
Aeon, a little steadier than he had been that day, said, “...The plan is to drop Rosaire out the window…?”
“We’re gonna wait until we hear either the all-clear from the ladies, or… Well, the sounds of an out-of-control werewolf or two. Stripes will be able to pin them down for a few seconds. Then we float Rosaire out of the tower, he opens up the door, and cures any werewolves he sees.” Valentina made a popping motion with her hands, as if to indicate that this would be simple and easy. Or possibly that there would be a second explosion.
“...We should put a rope around him,” Aeon suggested. “In case we need to pull him back up for any reason…”
“Good idea!” Valentina did so. Illyan took over midway through, showing her how to loop it around his torso like a harness so that the rope would be less painful and less likely to slip off his legs while bearing his weight. The other end they tied to the suit of armor, since it was heavy and stable. It was eighty feet up the side of the tower to the window, after all, and among them only Aeon had what could truly be referred to as biceps. They did not want to risk dropping the most famous monster hunter in the world.
After that, it was tense waiting. All eyes were riveted to the sky, waiting for any hint of moon.
They heard it before they saw anything.
A furious, rattling growl. The kind which was almost a keen, it was so vocal and coming from parted jaws. They’d heard this sound a dozen times throughout the day and during the morning’s fight. They’d even heard it from Sveta, before.
They’d never heard her make such a sound while still shaped like a human.
The growl broke into pained noises. There was the sound of crunching, of tearing flesh. Stripes suddenly joined the racket with a furious roar. Below it all, a humanoid voice said something lost to the hellish symphony of pain and fury. Jinghua. It sounded like a mantra or possibly a prayer.
Then, it too, broke into a thin howl.
“They’ve both turned,” Rosaire said, grimly. “You’ll have to let me down.”
Around the sick lump in his throat, Illyan said, “Upward roll.” He could hardly watch as Valentina farewelled the hunter with a hug, then helped him climb over the sill. His leather coat flared dramatically as he fell, safety rope unspooling behind him in a long wave. For eighty feet, he fell as if simply skipping a riser on a staircase, landing with a gentle thump and a small crunch of broken glass.
“That is never gonna look dignified,” Illyan noted, as below, Rudolphe de la Rosaire, feared monster-slayer, began to dance.
“I think it’s endearing.”
“Course you do.”
Rosaire watched the iron door swing open before him. He stood motionless, framed by the vestibule. Beyond the torn curtain, he could see the dull flash of fur as Stripes grappled with something large and white. Both combatants released awful, animal noises of anger. Still he did not move. He didn’t want to go in, but he didn’t want to stand here and watch Stripes be mauled to death either, if he could prevent it. The tiger had done nothing to earn such a fate. It was Rosaire who had turned him into a weapon. Animals didn’t have a say in the way they were used by men, just like the people of this valley didn’t have a say in how they were corrupted by their vampire master. Rosaire had been foolish to believe he could separate the guilty from the innocent. He was watching the innocent become the guilty right before his very eyes.
Calmly, he said, “Sveta, Jinghua, would you join me outside for a moment?”
The growling within ticked up a notch. A crash, as Stripes was thrown aside, and then the pounding of feet. A hulking, bipedal white wolf lunged through the vestibule and out the tower door. Every single one of her teeth was on display, spittle dripping in long, sticky strands from her lips. Her red eyes rolled, utterly blinded with aggression.
Rosaire flipped his sheathed cane out before him and tapped the silver cap against her nose. “Profane,” he said, “to think thee any thing but thee.”
The werewolf froze. That sawing growl trailed off into a whine, then a whimper. The moon rose above the trees and spilled a gentle wash of moonlight upon her. Beneath its glow, her edges blurred and faded. The werewolf sloughed away to leave only Sveta, willow-lithe and willow-white, swaying in its place. She blinked, drowsily.
“What is happen?”
Rosaire lowered his cane and smiled. “You’re cured. Just pop aside for a moment so I can see to Jinghua, would you?”
Sveta hesitated. “...Is no sound from inside.”
As one, they turned. Stripes lay in a heap on the ground floor, beside the motionless clay golems. The moon spilled in through the vestibule across flagstone floors, the elevator platform, and the carelessly stacked crates.
Jinghua had vanished for the last time, beyond any reach of a cure.