Fire and Silk (closed for Apollo Wilde)

[Baelnorn]

Valen Teliir examined his left hand again. He carefully prodded the swollen gash across the palm, his face contorting into a grimace at the pain. He had earned the injury three days ago in an ill-advised attempt at climbing up to a higher level in another cave. The smooth bluish-grey tone of his hand had turned a dark, angry purple, with a few streaks of black starting to show where the granite had cut into his flesh.

The young wizard knew that this was bad, but he worried less about the infection gestating within the wound, waiting to send him into a shivering fever. His immediate concern was how much flexibility he had lost in the fingers of his left hand because of the injury. The loss of manual dexterity would severely limit his options, forcing him to drop or stow whatever he was holding in his right hand if he wanted to cast almost any of his spells.

Valen furrowed his brow in frustration and cursed himself, ruing the second he had had the idea of climbing that cliff face. It hadn’t even been that tall, less than ten meters, and it didn’t look any more difficult than the obstacle courses he had to run as a part of his military training in service of House Teliir.

He thought he could manage, and he had little choice, since he had devoted almost all of his spell reserves to warding spells to cover his escape. There just wasn’t anything left for an incantation that would have helped him scale the wall. That, and the walls he had to climb once every few weeks with his fellow soldiers didn’t sport hidden razor-sharp edges that were out of sight from below.

“Kalash naktol,” he hissed through gritted teeth while swiping away the seeping blood with the already heavily soiled sleeve of his robe and reapplying the improvised bandage.

If only he had succeeded, then he could have forced the Matron Mother’s bloodhounds to split up and delayed them by several hours, potentially days. The upper level would have opened several more possible paths he could have taken, while the lower level continued to funnel him along into only a few narrow, winding tunnels.

But not all was lost; there was still some hope in him for a successful escape. Not much, but not nothing either. At least not yet. Mostly because Valen knew that they had to track him with mundane means, or at least were unable to bring their full arsenal to bear against him.

Otherwise he wouldn’t be alive. If the city’s priestesses had located him he would already have been killed – or worse, captured – several days ago. A single wizard on the run, no matter how careful, was no match for a whole Mergonnar hunting party.

He was barely done wrapping the bandage when he felt it. The familiar mental impact of another scrying ritual slamming into his wards with the subtlety of a charging landshark. It was a daily occurrence, sometimes happening even multiple times between his rests. He knew those rituals weren’t cheap, so if they knew where he was they wouldn’t keep wasting good gold and gems on trying to locate him.

But the young drow wasn’t prone to delusions, even in his current wretched state. He knew that he was playing a dangerous game and that eventually his luck would run out. His wards had to hold every single day, but their rituals only needed to break through once. If he couldn’t get away far enough, fast enough… he didn’t want to finish that thought.

With a resigned sigh Valen stood from the ground where he had rested for an hour. He hefted his backpack onto his shoulders, wincing when out of habit he still grabbed one of the leather straps with his wounded hand. It would take him more than three days to stop doing that.

He had to press on, no matter the cost. Mergonnar’s influence was sizable, but it didn’t reach far beyond its fortified walls. At some point they would let him go. They had to. They just had to. Spending so many resources on desperately chasing down a single runaway was all but an open admission of defeat, a clearly visible demonstration that he had successfully wounded their pride. And he had learned the hard way that Lolth despised such displays of weakness.

And so, Valen continued. He randomly chose his path through the few tunnel intersections, having left behind the territory he was even remotely familiar with from his patrols days ago. By now, he was treading unknown ground, uncertain of which dangers and horrors might lurk around the next corner. Valen tried his best to not stumble blindly into what he thought would be obvious traps, but he was certain that if there was anything waiting in ambush for him in his current condition, he’d be dead without seeing it coming.

Meanwhile, his hand had gotten worse. His fingers had swollen and were aching in every joint and with every tiny movement. The black streaks reached to his wrist now, and he was going through waves of feeling too hot and too cold, sweating and shivering as he stumbled along. The wizard’s head similarly alternated between feeling as if it were wrapped in cotton and ringing like a struck anvil.

It was in one of the few moments when the fever’s fog lifted from his mind that he realized his mistake. With a gasp he turned around, looking back down the slowly ascending spiral path he’d been following for… he didn’t remember how long. It must have been hours at this point. He didn’t recall any branches or intersections, and if he tried to go back and search for another way he’d probably run headfirst into the bloodhounds.

But he realized his even greater folly, the one that sealed his fate. With a weak whimper he dropped to his knees as his throat tightened. In his haze he had forgotten to renew his wards. Panic surged in his mind and threatened to drown out the last bits of reason, and for a moment he almost wanted to give in to despair. To just lie down and die, ending his escape, ending his pain. Maybe even save the bloodhounds the trouble and himself the suffering, and help it along with his dagger.

The stubborn part of his mind rebelled against the mere idea. He hadn’t defied the Matron Mother of his own house, thwarted her plans to feed him to a rival as a political bargaining chip, and escaped certain death by torture, only to now lie down and wait for death like a wounded animal.

“No. No! Not like this!”

With gritted teeth Valen forced himself up again, stumbling into the path’s roughly hewn wall. He looked ahead, his blurry vision following the spiral way in front of him. If he really had been climbing this path for hours he must be close to the surface.

A gentle shiver ran through his body, and he couldn’t tell if it was from the infection or the thought of really going to the surface. He assumed his kin wasn’t well received there. He couldn’t imagine otherwise, considering how often Mergonnar had sent raiders and slave hunters to the upper world in the last few decades. But still, the fate awaiting him there was less bleak than the one lurking in the dark of his former home.

The drow took a deep breath and staggered onward. Step after step after step, he forced himself to continue walking towards whatever or whoever awaited him at the end of the spiral.

 

[Apollo Wilde]

The rattling of an ancient temple bell made a brow twitch.

Perhaps it was a trick of her mind, pushed too long and too hard from being at her study. She thumbed to the next page.

The bell rattled again; sounding more insistent than before. It echoed deep within the recesses of her cave. No matter where she was in her territory, she would be able to hear it. Surely it wasn’t a figment of her imagination. The third time it rattled, sounding like bones inside of brass, she was up.

She set her book aside with the care one would give an infant, and snorted. It had been long, long years, decades, since something had triggered her ‘alarm system.’ Had been strong enough to do so, anyway. For a moment, giddiness flickered beneath her stoic form. A visitor; that was exciting. Not that she was bored, or lonely. She was beyond such things. No, the novelty of something new to break up the long study sessions, to give her an excuse to stretch her limbs that wasn’t an alarm of her own creation, that was something.

Stretching, limbs high overhead, her wings soon joined, and she rumbled in contentment. There was a bit of protest in her shoulders; she’d sat for too long. “A sound mind in a sound body,” she murmured to herself. What good would all the knowledge in the world do for a body that was too sluggish, too ill-used, to command it? And what if this new visitor (so she preferred to think) was someone who had malicious intent towards her? The thought made a small flicker of flame come to her mouth. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility, though she’d thought that the wars had long ended. But what was the life of humans, if not constant war? Conflict over something or the other, blood spilled and land lost and land regained and treaties sealed in marriage. And surely the world had progressed past the point of hunting her kind for acts of valor.

Best be prepared all the same.

As she meandered (for there was never need to rush into anything) through her tunnels, motes of light, triggered by her presence, flickered into warm dots. Not that she would need them; she knew her home well enough to be able to venture through entirely blind if circumstances had fallen that way. She’d been blinded a few times - it only took the first time for her to make the necessary adjustments. That had been long ago, long, long time ago. How many of her memories, her ‘adventures’, had passed from oral tradition to written history? The thought, fleeting as it was, made her chuckle, loosening the tightness in her shoulders.

Much like the lights, the rattling bells varied in pitch - louder as she got closer to the source of it, quieter as she moved further away. As she continued her journey, she would pause for brief moments, taking in the air. The closer she got, the more she would be able to tell the precise nature of what was coming for her. Poor visitor; it would be a shame if they were coming in malice. It would be over before they knew it. So many different ways to kill an intruder - at one point, it had been exciting for her to show her power, to let it crash over any and all in a sheer tidal wave; a force of nature that couldn’t be escaped. Fascinating, the look on sentient beings faces, when they knew that their end was at hand.

It might be better to think positively, she mentally chided herself. Beings could be, ultimately, surprising in how they addressed things. And, as the bells grew louder, she could pick up the scent of magic. Her nose wrinkled. It’d been ages since she smelled anything like this. Sour, it was, redolent of rot and dark damp places. Not that sharp, pleasant smell of river rocks or leaves returning to soil on the forest floor.

Drow, came the thought, noting, filing away. How odd. The next thought, little more than a fleeting thing. Those kind stuck to their own ways and their own depths. Though she would consider herself somewhat out of pace with the moving world, she hadn’t heard anything about them being on the move.

Just the one, her nose told her. Male. Wounded. For beneath the dampness, there was a different rot, organic, threaded through with blood. Worsening by the moment, and taking a toll on this male. She grimaced - inasmuch as her snout would allow her to. Some expressions (learned from humans, she had to admit), did not transfer well onto her natural form. Not that there was anyone around to see it.

As she came round a corner, the path rolled steadily, gently, downwards. Well, downwards for her. He’s traveled quite a bit, to make it this far. The last she checked, her den was decidedly isolated; the kind of isolated that made most sentient beings avoid her territory with a wide berth. She lived in a deep wood of legends, of ghost stories. Of spirits older than the trees, as old as the stars, sacred in its untouchable nature.

Had she played a part in setting up such tales? Why, of course she had. How else would she ensure that the land that she wanted would remain hers? Well, hers, and the animals. It had taken several generations for her and the forest creatures to become…used to one another, but over time, it had happened. She wouldn’t say that she was friendly with any of them, but they, like humans, had learned something close to worship, knew, intrinsically, to whisper news and of happenings to the underside of leaves so that the Red Beast would know. Few were brave enough to approach the main entrance, to peer into the darkness, and shout their announcements there. It tickled her.

It could’ve been considered odd that no one had announced this man’s presence, but he was so far from anything that could be considered ‘living.’ On a forgotten fringe of her land, buried so deep, not even earthworms would know of him. Clever, if he were trying to hide. There was remnants of magic on him, magic that made her raise her brow ridges. The smell of it was faint, lingering smoke after the camp fire had long gone out, but the fact that any lingered this far, well, that was something of note.

Soon enough, she would be upon him. And as old habits died hard, she kept herself hidden. Willed the lights to dim, the bells to stop. If he was strong enough, had that whisper of interest, he would hear the last of the bells fade away with the sound of wooden bones falling onto the floor.

“Do you mean harm?” The voice boomed, thrown against the walls to violently bounce back against the male’s ears. “Best speak of it now so we can finish this quickly. I was in the middle of something.”

The flickering light around her, responding to her will, painted her form in long outlines. Even in the dimmer light (far lower than when she used it to navigate), her immense size was readily apparent. That, and the sparkle of immaculately polished scales, rows and rows of deep fire opal, iridescent even in the low light. Talons of bronze, the small curls of smoke that escaped from the sides of her mouth, lined in fangs so white they seemed carved marble. In the midst of all of it were those eyes, molten gold, copper, and bronze, melting and twisting, one color into another, around the black slit pupil that studied him measuredly. She kept her wings folded against her back, knowing that her presence alone would render -most- beings into stillness.

 

[Baelnorn]

The booming voice assaulted his senses and made him turn away, while he desperately tried to cover his ears. Valen staggered as if he had been struck by a monk’s fist, and the sheer volume of the voice forced him back a few steps. His head rang for a long moment even after the last echo faded, the fever turning his usually cunning mind into a sunken, sluggish morass that refused to follow his intentions. Once he was capable of holding on to a coherent thought, he replied with a shaky voice.

“I-I mean no harm, I merely seek passage. I beg forgiveness for my intrusion, I didn’t realize these parts of the tunnels w-were inha-”

Valen’s tongue stopped dead in its tracks when his mind finally caught up. He was responding to the unseen party in his own language out of habit and instinct, somehow assuming that in these tunnels he would naturally be understood. But a creeping thought took root in his mind – that was not the language of the disembodied voice. The voice had spoken in Draconic, the language of arcanists and – of course – dragons. As he realized it, an icy dread seized his chest.

“Were inhabited and claimed…,” The drow finished in Draconic, his voice quiet and trailing off into fear. He swallowed the bile threatening to rise in his throat, and summoned every ounce of courage he could find.

There was still a possibility that he hadn’t stumbled into what he feared he had. A chance, no matter how small, that he was beset by a trickster using magic or technique to make their voice louder and more potent than should be possible. A prospect of finding a deep gnome or mountain dwarf around the next bend, rather than certain doom with scales and claws.

Slowly he crept forward, inching along the wall until he could see around the next corner. And once he did, he wished he hadn’t. All hope abandoned him as he stared death in the face. The beast’s eyes glowed like orbs of molten metal, shifting currents of gold and copper and bronze slowly twisting and turning, endlessly flowing into each other. Its polished scales shimmered with the faint glow of smoldering coals and painted the shape of the dragon in fire and flame against the dark backdrop of the cavern walls.

It was magnificent. It was beautiful. It was terrifying.

Valen scrambled back from the hall-sized dragon, his eyes inescapably locked with those captivating molten orbs. He descended into a mental spiral, desperately trying to escape from this predicament. The wizard took inventory of his reserves and the spells he had prepared, the items on his body, how quickly he thought he could run – but then a terrible realization began to set in and he just stopped.

None of it mattered.

The spell to turn invisible? It didn’t matter since the dragon’s breath would flood the entire pathway with flame, either incinerating or asphyxiating him. The spell to protect against elemental damage? It didn’t matter since the dragon’s flame was hot enough to melt rock and metal into slag. Turning and running? It didn’t matter how fast he moved, when the dragon could leap forward and be upon him in the blink of an eye.

And even if he tried, his injured hand and swollen fingers would likely fumble the spells anyway.

Valen sank to the floor, the sleeve of his tattered robe snagging and tearing further on the rough rock of the wall beside him. A terrible sound escaped his throat as his resolve finally gave out, the pain and terror of the past nine days made audible. He wanted to curl into a ball and wish everything away, but it wouldn’t change the outcome.

This time there was no second wind of defiance. This time his luck had finally run out, but not the way he had thought. Perhaps it was the fever that had sapped his strength and grit, or the constant throbbing pain from his wounded palm. Whatever the reason, he couldn't summon another bout of determination. This was where he would die.

He had evaded the bloodhounds just long enough to run right into a dragon’s lair. There was nothing he could do anymore, no spell, no trick, no bargain, no cunning strategy to see him through. At least his death would be quick, he hoped.

“I…”

His backpack pressed uncomfortably into his shoulders, and he almost laughed. Such an insignificant thought in his final moments.

“I won’t struggle. Please… just make it quick.”

 

[Apollo Wilde]

He certainly sounded repentant enough. He was stumbling over his words - and she could not initially smell any sense of deceit. No, there was a further stink; that pungent oil of fear. That couldn’t be faked.

But he had presence enough of mind to switch languages. She felt herself lifting her brow ridges. That had been unexpected.

All the same, he was struggling to draw water from a well long since emptied - and though he had enough skill to set off her alarms, if left to his own devices, she suspected that the wound on him would eventually win out. She could, theoretically, simply leave him there.

The smell. And then the pests.

Think of his putrefying body and the creatures it would attract - a small curl of smoke escaped her nostril. Disgusting. He’s been polite enough to not warrant that at the very least.

Rolling his pleas about in her mind, she lowered the great head, her snout impossibly close to him. She moved as if she had all of the space in the world, and somehow, the tunnel seemed to shift and mold to her, growing, shrinking. Even the ground beneath him seemed to roll him upwards, all the closer to be inspected by an eye that was the size of a large boulder. At a distance, her size could be, failingly, described as a trick of the light. There was no way something so large could move so quietly, so easily - and yet here they were, and she was close enough to fill every one of his senses.

She smelt clean - of river stones washed in clear cool water, set out to bask in the sun. The static smell of earth warmed by the sun, perfumed by life. There was a faint trail of incense, kitchen herbs. Rosemary, mint, the dusty vanilla of old books. And obviously, she found him as no threat as she lowered her head to look at him. She would be putting herself within harm’s way, risking damage to her eye. His scent told her she had little to fear more than his words had.

Look at this little thing. Without fully realizing it, she delicately, little more than the touch of cotton, nudged him with her snout. So small. So pathetic. On the mighty neck, the head swiveled, her eyes raking over him as tangibly as if it were her claws. Her gaze was no less gentle than her physical touch. A wounded drow, imagine! At the moment, she was all the world a great cat inspecting prey that had landed in her lap.

His wound is festering, information she already knew, and he smells. He is weak.

“…At the very least, if you are going to be in my domain, we will have to get that smell off of you.” There was no imperious edge, no masterly command. If anything, there was the suggestion of a lip curled in disgust. “Up you go, then.”

Before he could protest, bury himself lower to the ground, he was being righted. The entire tunnel would grow dark as she enveloped him - really, leaning over further to grasp his backpack (and him) in her jaws. Suspended high above the ground, he would’ve looked as a wayward baby dragon being herded back to the nest.

With him securely in her jaws, she lifted her neck, and peered down the tunnel from whence he came. Though his drow stink and wound stink and all the tangled threads of magic he’d woven filled her nostrils, her senses were sharp enough to detect if there was anything else directly behind him. A flaring of the sharp scales, the warmth of her breath exhaled over him as she scented deeply, once, twice. A third time, and then, silence. The bells had stopped - the source of their agitation discovered - and she could not sense or scent anything behind him. There would be time for questioning him later. But first, she would need to get him into a state in which questions could be lobbied.


With less of a satisfied grunt and more of a resigned sigh, she turned and headed back towards the heart of the tunnels.

____

She could’ve blindfolded him, or, in retrospect, cast a spell to hamper his memory. Of course, such things didn’t occur to her until after she had plonked him, gently, down into a small-ish cavern. Small as it seemed to cage her in, the space breathing as she did - but she still managed to move this way and that.

It would be hard to tell what all glamours she cast in the cavern. All the same, it was….quaint, really. Frighteningly so. As if he’d been deposited in the center of a stylish cafe. The walls were lined with bookshelves carved into the stone, the floor covered in layers of jewel-colored carpets. A high backed chair, the wood shining from use, was pulled in close to a small table covered in a delicate lace table cloth. One almost expected a maid to suddenly appear, ushering in with a tray of treats and tea. However, it was just the two of them in the room, the light warm.

“I’m going to grant you the gift of modesty,” she murmured as she kept her head lowered to him, all the better to stare him down, “Unless you are so infirm that you require a bath attendant?” There was a sharp hint of humor there. It could be part of the joke - her leading him to what amounted to a library, no bathing chamber in sight. “Behind that curtain there,” her eyes shifted to a deep red curtain which seemed to have just materialized, “There is a heated pool for bathing. Wash yourself, and your wound. I can tend to it once you’ve become more palatable to be around.”

Less of an eyesore, came the uncharitable thought. Though perhaps “eyesore” wasn’t as accurate as “sad, nearly dead being.”

“There should be soap, linen, clothing, for you to attend to yourself. Should be, as it’s been a while since I’ve been this way. Rarer still for…guests.” The way she held the syllables on ‘guest’ suggested that she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with him. “I shall wait here, should you need assistance.”

If he thought she was going to leave him entirely to his own devices, well, surely must have been touched in the head. She lifted her head away from him now, watching him from her full height. The curtains billowed in an unseen wind, carrying the fresh smell of cedar and steaming water.

 

[Baelnorn]

The tunnel seemed to warp and shift as the dragon walked closer. It bent, stretched, grew to accommodate the approaching looming form. The beast effortlessly used its bulk to trap Valen against the pathway’s wall, and began to study him in a way that reminded the drow of a butcher examining a hanging carcass, with one of the dragon’s eyes coming so close it filled his whole field of view.

Valen could almost physically feel the dragon’s gaze caressing him, scrutinizing him to his very core. The giant molten orb moved with purpose and intent, leaving no spot on him unobserved. He flinched when the snout nudged him, a fleeting memory of giant spider pets and mounts in Mergonnar feeling and prodding their prospective meals serving as a painful reminder of who played which role in this encounter.

At this point Valen didn’t – no, couldn’t – care anymore. Whether he was torn apart by teeth the length of his arm, or had his flesh melted from his bones by fire, soon it would be over and he would never hurt again. He only tried to retain as much dignity as possible while waiting for the end with eyes firmly shut.

However, the pain he expected didn’t arrive. Instead he smelled fresh soil, herbs, and spices.

“Up you go, then,” the voice thundered again, but more like the heavy, rolling growl of a distant landslide this time. He understood fragments of it through the veil of despair and resignation, and suddenly felt the stone underneath his back and legs move and shift, pushing him upwards. A heartbeat later something caught his backpack and his clothes, and lifted him, eliciting a very undignified yelp from his throat.

Valen dared to open his eyes and immediately regretted it, as he saw himself being half-carried in the dragon’s maw. And from this close the teeth suddenly didn’t look like such a merciful end anymore, dealing a serious blow to his stoic acceptance of death from a few moments ago. A weak whimper escaped his lips as he was helplessly carried along high above the ground.

Even if he had paid attention, he’d have a hard time remembering the path they took. Left, right, left again, mostly up, but also a short section downward; it seemed that the dragon’s lair was a maze very unlike anything the wizard had imagined or read before. By now, the adrenaline had stopped surging in his veins, and the infection’s pain and fever had pushed to the front again, muddling his perception of time and space.

Some time later – Valen really couldn’t tell how much – he was set down. He stood on shaking legs and looked around, confusion contorting his expression when he found himself in a sort of library. The walls were covered with rows upon rows of books and the floor was layered with colorful, soft carpets. How did this fit in a dragon’s lair? He couldn’t even guess.

The dragon gestured at a red curtain Valen was sure hadn’t been there before, and told him to wash and make himself presentable. Cleanliness wasn’t foreign to him as a soldier, but it struck him like lightning that he hadn’t properly taken care of himself for several days. Since the fever’s haze had settled over his mind, causing him to wander aimlessly and making him forget his wards, he hadn’t cleaned himself or his clothes with his magic.

He must have reeked of that sickly sweet stench of sweat and disease. Shame bloomed on the drow’s cheeks as he imagined how badly his presence had to offend the dragon’s unnaturally keen senses.

Without protest he shuffled towards the curtain, and ducked under it. On the other side he found exactly what his host had promised – next to a pool of steaming water were various implements of personal hygiene arranged in neat rows: several bars of soap in different colors and scents, a washcloth, stacks of towels, and a simple white shirt and pants. He staggered deeper into the room and looked at the sight before him, when suddenly a chuckle burst from his throat before he could even think about stopping it.

This had to be a dream. Perhaps he was really dying in some gods-forsaken tunnel, the carrion crawlers already closing in on him. Perhaps the infection had reached his heart, and the notion of being taken in by a dragon and asked to bathe was nothing more than his failing mind’s last best effort, a feverish phantasm conjured in its final moments.

Valen decided with a weak smile on his face that if a hot bath was to be his last memory he wouldn’t fight it, and released the buckles and straps of his backpack and set it against the wall. With strained motions he began peeling off his ruined clothes. The boots went first, followed by his soiled and torn robe, his sweat-soaked shirt, and his dirty pants.

He glanced at his badly bandaged hand and remembered the dragon’s instruction that he also had to wash his wound. With gritted teeth he unwrapped the bandage, wincing when the crusted fabric took some of the gash’s scab along with it and sent a thin rivulet of blood trickling down his arm.

Fully naked, he took a deep breath and carefully stepped into the pool. The hot water immediately attacked his skin, and he let out a gasp. The water was hotter than it had looked, but there was no way back now. He moved in further, looking for a place to sit, and then finally sank into the pool. A deep, strained moan echoed in the chamber while his body soaked in the water.

After spending a few silent minutes just sitting there and letting the heat infuse his abused flesh, he remembered his task. Knowing that delaying wouldn’t help, he lowered his injured hand into the water. The throbbing pain in his palm momentarily intensified, but after some moments the sensation began to ebb and he visibly relaxed again.

With newfound determination Valen reached for the washcloth and a soap bar smelling of lavender and bergamot. He dipped the fabric in the pool and lathered it up with the soap until thick globs of foam clung heavily to the fibers, and then set out to scrub the grime and sweat off his body. Washing his injured hand still hurt so badly it drove tears into his eyes, but he dutifully performed his cleaning nevertheless.

When the worst of the dirt was gone, the drow quickly dipped his head below the pool’s surface and took the soap to his hair. Soon the oily and grimy mat gave way again to soft silvery fibers that flowed through his fingers like strands of silk. He scrubbed his body for a second time, not wanting to risk the dragon’s wrath by not performing to its satisfaction.

After about half an hour he was done, feeling clean and better than he had since… since… since before he fled. He stepped out of the pool and toweled himself down as best as he could. Seeing that his own clothing was currently in an unwearable state, he dressed in the simple clothing prepared for him and slowly shuffled back to the previous room.

“Hello?” he carefully called out in Draconic a moment before returning from behind the red curtain. “I did as you ordered.”

 

[Apollo Wilde]

“Ah, wonderful,” the voice that answered him was distinctly female - and not responding in Draconic at all, but rather, in Drow. “We can speak this way, if it’s easier for you to answer questions. Which, rest assured, I have plenty of.”

In the chair, her nose in a book, was a woman.

Well, not quite. She was human in form - two arms, two legs (partially hidden beneath the table), but there was no disguising the flared horns from her brow, or the unnatural sun-brilliance of her eyes. “I thought that this form would be better to discuss in,” a quick glance down to her body. “Less imposing.” A bit of imperiousness there, a quiet command for his appreciation of her going out of her way to make things easier for him. This form was of a handsome woman, her age truly indeterminable in the way of classic grand dames. Classical attractive, with features that brought to mind dusty paintings lining the hallway of a castle. All that seemed to be missing was a diadem marking her as the “royalty” she should’ve been.

Brown-skinned, long necked, with features symmetrical and sharp. Her hair was a mass of curls - swept up in an ornate updo. Shades of red, orange, yellow - dancing flame, unnatural and lustrous. Long curls were left stylishly loose on either side of slightly elongated ears, not so unlike his own. A small beauty mark at the left corner of her bow-shaped mouth, matching a second beneath the right eye. The attire she was in also belonged to an era long past - cut décolletage to further showcase the fine lines of her neck, shoulder, collarbones, the pillowy tops of breasts. The dress was satin yellow, a cheery color, trimmed in tan lace that ornately mimicked the curves of rose petals amongst the greenery.

Even under the faux candlelight of the room, she appeared dusted over in a fine mist of iridescent copper, lending her skin an ethereal glow. In his absence in the bath, she had set the table with refreshments - befittingly, tea and shortbread cookies. Across from her had appeared a second chair. At its place at the table was a small china cup and saucer, a plate for sharing the cookies. In the center of the table, next to the tea tray and cookies, were two ornate bottles, delicate as a butterfly’s wing and almost as brilliant in their gem-colors of blue and violet. “I took the liberty of bringing a few potions for that hand of yours. The blue is for healing, the violet is for restoration. Or it could be the other way around. Either way, neither will cause you harm. Tea?”

 

[Baelnorn]

Valen stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the scene in front of him with wide eyes. The sight of the woman – no, the dragon, as he had to forcefully remind himself – sitting at the table stole his breath, not only from shock but also from attraction.

He gaped at her form and drank in every detail, uncertain whether what he was seeing was real or a feverish hallucination. She was just as imposing, dominant, mysterious, and terrifying in this shape as in her true form. But the horns growing from her brow, the radiance of her eyes, and the subtle glow of her skin elevated her to a level far beyond mortal standards. This being was easily the most alluring woman he had ever laid eyes on, effortlessly eclipsing the cold, cruel beauty of every Matron Mother, Handmaiden, or priestess.

But the drow had learned the hard way that beauty and cruelty often went hand in hand. The regal dress sensually worshiping her every curve contrasted starkly with the plain clothes covering him, and reinforced the gnawing thought that he was nothing to her. He was a pauper before a queen, more nuisance than guest, and who knew what she’d do to him once she had the answers she was seeking to those many questions of hers.

Perhaps death by teeth or fire wasn’t completely ruled out yet, merely postponed.

Valen swallowed hard, and slowly, almost reluctantly, approached the empty chair. He examined the table, cataloging the items presented on it: a fine porcelain tea set for two with steam rising from the pot and curling gently into the air, an intricately decorated plate stacked with cookies, and two exceptionally ornate bottles holding liquids of blue and violet.

“...Either way, neither will cause you harm. Tea?”

He stared at her again, and after a few moments nodded.

“Yes, please,” he said, his voice sounding not nearly as confident as he would have liked. Carefully he sat on the chair, watching her like cornered prey expecting the fatal strike. He tried to calm himself with a deep breath, but to no avail. Every instinct screamed at him, trying to warn him that this would not end well.

When a Matron Mother or Handmaiden treated you well, there were always and without exception ulterior motives. You were either set up for a particularly cruel trap or punishment that would not only flay your flesh but also crush your spirit, or you’d be asked to sacrifice yourself for some political game the females were playing with your life at stake.

But since he was already in this situation, he might as well play the hand he’d been dealt. He tentatively reached for the two potions, instinctively using his left hand before he realized the futility. He pulled back his infected hand and reached out with his healthy one, his gaze carefully monitoring the dragon’s face for any sign of disapproval. When none came, he grabbed the two small bottles and pulled them into his lap, hurriedly working on opening the violet one first.

“You… you said you had questions for me?” Valen asked while struggling with the restoration potion’s seal. Trying to open it was much more difficult than he had expected, with his left hand reduced to an aching, throbbing lump of flesh. His manual dexterity was a far cry from what he was used to, and so it took several moments before the seal finally gave with a low pop.

 

[Apollo Wilde]

She stood his modest gaping without so much as a raised brow. If anything, she would merely acknowledge it with a languid blink, far too unconcerned with the world to be fully human. It had been quite some time since she had taken human form; much like slipping into a new pair of boots. The fit was there, if not a bit tight. In time it would feel much more comfortable.

“Excellent. I find that a bit of tea does wonders for healing the soul in addition to occasionally the body.” She reached over with the practiced elegance of royalty, and begin to pour him a cup. The tea, wreathed in steam, fell in a smooth arc without so much as a drop to mar tablecloth or saucer. “Rosemary and vanilla,” an answer to a question unasked. “Do you take yours with cream or sugar?”

He was still nervous. That was natural. Anticipated. And honest. The soap had done wonders for him - as had the water. It was easy to pick up on the cedar that clung to his skin, beneath the lavender and bergamot from his soaping. The old smell of clover and folded sunlight in his shirt and pants. For a moment, she was no longer there in the room. She was under the noon sun, flapping out recently wrung dry laundry, the light cutting and white among a sky so blue it glowed. There was laughter in the distance, the smell of crushed grass and sting of dandelions picked. Voices of other women around her, speaking around each other, around wooden clothing pegs in their mouths, teasing. Further off was the smell of woodsmoke, and the promise of roasted chicken.

Another languid blink, and she was back into the present, studying him, studying the fine embroidery around the collar of his shirt. The stitching on the left side was clumsy; threads not quite staying within visible lines. To her, it was giggles captured in floss, the warmth of steadier hands correcting inexperienced ones.

“But before that,” she was up, reaching across the table. Noticing his difficulty with the bottle, she chided herself briefly for being so unobservant. He’d worked open the violet one, so she took the blue one and with the deft flick of a thumb, opened it. Setting it down on the table before him, she had taken her seat. If her horns had not quite given her away, that smell of sun-warmed river rocks and herbs would.

“I should’ve opened that for you; my apologies.” With the way she was sitting, it hardly seemed that she had moved at all. A trick of the light, perhaps, as she flicked the corner of the table cloth, and from within the depths of the table, a small sugar bowl and cream pitcher shuffled to the top. They were of the same delicate china as the tea set, and she glanced down at them, then to him, indicating that they were free for him to take from.

Without waiting for his response, she would add sugar and cream, stirring with a dainty golden spoon that, too, seemed to have been birthed by the table cloth. It was not generative magic; not for items that already existed, but the causal magic of calling things to her from a distance. A kitchen magic, she would’ve called it, heard it called before. It didn’t apply to things that she did not already own, things that were not imbued with a bit of personality, if not love, from being well-handled and cherished. Small things, but a talent granted to her by the Goddess all the same.

“And yes, I have questions. Wouldn’t you?” Pointing to him with her spoon, she set it down on her saucer with the softest of clinks, before reaching for a shortbread cookie. There was a variety of them - plain in the shape of trefoils, checkered with the checks in chocolate and strawberry, some shaped as a hound laden with chunks of candied ginger. They were, of course, warm, lifted from some great and invisible oven. Picking up one shaped like a dog, she took a small bite, before her mouth crinkled in what could be described as nothing other than sheer pleasure. The butter rich cookie melted into her mouth with the first bite, leaving the bite of candied ginger.

“I love a good sweet,” she gushed, her left hand, unoccupied by a cookie, cupped her left cheek as she actually beamed. “Please, while they’re still warm. I insist.”

Could this not be what he expected? A part of her knew that it wasn’t. Well, larger than a part of her. She could scent the doubt, confusion, wafting from him as certain as the lingering scent of his soap. There was still the pain of the wound, but…bewilderment. She supposed that she could kill him. It would be no great thing to do so. And have him dying after a bit of kindness after a rough road traveled would, in some circles, be considered an absolutely lovely and charitable way of getting rid of intruders. And perhaps, were this many, many years ago, she would’ve. As things were now, she felt that she had no reason to. Chaos wasn’t something she chose to pursue anymore.

“So, I will start with something simple. What is your name? It would be good for me to know how to address you.”