Chapter Text
Cazador was frenetic the night you were captured. Something was different. Had been for days, weeks, maybe even months or years, perhaps as the drip of time had stop being so distinct, blurring into a steady stream as each new night after night punctuated only by a different face and a different body and a different set of hands on you.
You stopped paying attention a while ago, but this was something else. Odd. It unnerved you, put you on edge in the miasma of orders that compelled you as your master paced and barked commands, both incensed and overjoyed and frantic.
Like something was going to happen. Like something was going to change.
You didn't ask. You stayed out of his way. You left the moment he told you to, the second you were given the specifics of what kind of person he was looking for because to hesitate would make it all the worse on you.
It wasn't about your wants. You didn't have those. Only the need for modicum of safety from the knife and the crumb of freedom you could scrape out on the streets. They'd be gone if you failed or if you didn't come back or even the moment your foot stepped over the threshold of the palace but what little you could have you took and you kept it close as you stuck to the shadows, looking for a target.
You don't remember much else of the night. Just a stillness in the air under the raucous laughter and conversation drifting out of the Mermaid as you approached. Just the moon you knew too well shining under the clouds as that blotted out the rest of the sky.
Just the nautiloid appearing. The face of the mindflayer and the pod they thrust you in. The tadpole, biting, burrowing past your eye and into your skull.
The fear. The panic. The need to get out, get free, get back-
There's an ache in every part of you as the rush of water greets your ears. In your neck, your arms, your legs, your spine, but no more so than in your head. A biting searing pain that is alien in comparison to the hard, warm ground under your bruised and bloodied hands.
With a great effort, you push yourself to unsteady feet, coughing from the smoke pluming all around you. Your eyes sting from it, and you blink back tears unbidden from the smog plucking them out. A warmth pervades you, too soft for the fire of the ship crashed behind, too sweet for the hells you came from and as you rub clarity back into your vision, you see it's origin.
The sky is turning a blue you’ve only seen glimpses of though cracks in curtains and boarded windows. The sun bright and peeking through the acrid smog that surrounds you. A new dawn has broken out over the river, over you.
You stumble away from the pod and its broken glass. From the ruins of the nautiloid. Through sparse grass and bush poking through brown packed dirt to see the water of Chionthar glittering orange and pink as the first sunrise you’ve seen in two centuries creeps its way over the horizon.
You should be burning. You should be running for cover, cowering in fear, and yet as you stand, watching the daylight take ownership over the night, it bathes you in an unfamiliar, yet wonderful warmth. Caresses you like a lover you hadn't known.
Smoke billows with the breeze around you. The scent of burning organic material scorches your nose from the ship broken behind you. The sun continues its climb into the sky and you watch it and you bathe in it.
Until the march of boots and the notes of conversation break you out of the spell and you remember what you are. Where you aren't. There's a dagger on your hip, and you keep it in mind as you brace yourself for what's stalking through the smoke and lumbering up the hill.
Dragonborns weren’t always around. You don’t remember when exactly the whisperings began around the city, rumors of draconic men appearing in Faerûn You didn’t see one for another decade or so, a beastly reptilian envoy dressed comedically in finery and being taken about Baldur’s Gate and you observed from afar, curious at something new but not enough to waste more than a minute.
You had lambs for the slaughter to shepherd, after all. The drunkards and the vagrants and the lonely hearts weren’t going to make it to Cazador’s guest room by themselves.
It should have been obvious to anyone that it would be unwise to try and bring one to Cazador. Even as more found themselves in Baldur’s Gate in the coming years, they were still an oddity, still a rarity yet some of your siblings seemed to believe it would bring favor to them to present such a gift to your master. You left them to it, disinterested in the little competition that cropped up between then when all you needed was one of them to fail to earn favor of your own.
And fail they would.
Someone brought a gold woman home, a regal thing with sharp little teeth and frills on either side of her head. She set fire to the guest room and Cazador’s anger was one of inconsiderable measure. The woman had to be returned, memory magically altered to not bring undue attention to the palace and the spawn in question spent five months strung up for it. Better him than you.
You were all forbade from bringing any others. Cazador found them unsightly, something you could agree with, and there was no stealing one away in the first place. A human or a dwarf or an elf goes missing, and no one bats an eye but dragonborn walks into a room, and everyone in the room notices. A dragonborn goes missing, and the whole city starts looking, so you left them be. Ignored them even when an opportunity presented itself, steadfastly uninterested in bright smoldering eyes gazing at you longingly across the tavern when there were easier targets right in front of you.
Ignored them until the one who marched along of the corridors of your mindflayer captor’s ship found you on an overlook staring out at the Chionthar.
You wave them over, feign fright at an imaginary creature, assessing your would-be assailants. The half-elf woman you recognize from the nautiloid, the human you do not, and the dragonborn…
A brass thing with a horned head and a spiked jaw, built like laborer, a dock worker, a blacksmith; someone who works with their hands in the dirt and with tools, hauling something heavy and eating enough to compensate. Taller as he is wide, the dragonborn exudes a kind of physicality you would avoid in your targets; not only due to Cazador's aesthetic preferences but also for your own safety. A situation turns sours, a mind sobers up, an eye spies a sharp little fang, and it’s easier to cut and run if the body entwined around yours couldn’t snap you like a twig, either from its girth or the strength hidden beneath it.
The horned beast in question is perceptive as well, spying your attempt to get the upper hand in time to dodge it and staring you down as you hold the dagger to him with the air of someone who’s been in this position before. Perhaps with someone more threatening or with a bigger blade. Or both. Hells, the other two standing behind him seem more put off than he does as he crosses his tree-trunk arms over his broad chest and glares down at you as if you were no more a cat spitting at him.
“Put that down.”
It’s said slow, low, a growl of a command, no room for question or argument, yet you still manage to wriggle some in for the novelty of it before a twinge wracks your skull. Your objections fall short, cut off as images flash of the ship, the heat, the smoke, imps clawing at you, your body falling to the shore, the mindflayer dragging itself on the ground under you, pleading with you until your boot finds its way through its skull.
You ask what was that, blinking back an unexpected pain behind your eyes.Your new leash seems to be the answer.
It’s an eclectic group, you’ll give it that. A wizard, you, and two clerics traipsing around the wilderness with worms in their heads and not a single interesting thing to say to each other. Nor a single one who notices anything off about you, but you suppose the direct sunlight warming you and the capacity to cross shallow streams and the threat of sprouting tentacles keeps any inkling towards identifying vampirism far from their minds.
Safety is found merely in the shadow of possibly the worst thing that could happen to you. Aside from the other worst things that have already happened to you and will happen to you more the moment Cazador has his hands on you. How very wonderful for you.
That knowledge of ceremorphosis impending on each of this band of less than merry men is palpable to say the least. It stays your new companions’ tongue, haunts their very eyes, weighs down your shoulders on this march to who knows where.
Or at least, it haunts most of you, it would seem.
In the small talk of first greetings as names and talents are passed out, you let slip a penchant for being handy with a lockpick and that dragonborn, Ronan, hauls the lot of you halfway across the beach, not another word said until you find yourself before a great oak door recessed into the side of a cliff face. Shadowheart huffs and clicks her tongue as he rounds on you, the full span of his massive form shadowing you from the sun for a moment. There’s an intensity in his orange eyes, a heat radiating from him that pulls you into taking a step back, just to get space.
“Can you open this?”
His speech is slow, as if it takes a minute for the thoughts to form on one end of his massive skull and travel to his tongue. You nod, yes, of course, that’s all he wanted and that’s all within your capability. So long as he isn’t so abruptly in front of you, you take the excuse to edge around him to the door and there’s a hum of satisfaction that thrums through you from deep within the beast’s chest despite the space you’ve eeked out between you.
“Is this really necessary? Haven’t we already wasted enough time on this door?” Shadowheart asks, arms crossed an hip co*cked.
“We need supplies.” Is Ronan's answer, as if that means to be the end of it.
“From what looks to be a crypt?”
“Oh, I don’t know." Gale chimes in cheerily, "Common burial practice to leave gifts with the dead depending on the god they are associated with. I question the morality of it, but I suppose our current need far exceeds the rites of the deceased in these extenuating circ*mstances. Besides, I’m a little strapped for coin at the moment, and most clerics charge for their services in my experience, at the very least.”
Good to see there's already a yes man showing his hand. Ronan grunts at that, most likely in agreement as Shadowheart sighs heavily, and you'd join her if your attention weren't elsewhere.
The lock is complicated, but nothing you can’t handle as you take out the tools required. Tools that clatter to the stone steps as a hand touches your shoulder. It’s reflexive to flinch away as the whispering guiding prayer fills you and Ronan steps back, watching, his head tilted.
“Thank you.” You bite out, picking up the tools and getting back to work in lieu of several other more poignant rebuttals that you’d rather spit at him.
The prayer does make the lock seem simpler even as the fading burn of his touch itches on your shoulder down to your bone. Simple enough that barely a few seconds tick by before it clicks open under your expert touch. When you stand, the beast seems pleased. He doesn't touch you again though, choosing instead to reach for the door.
You shouldn’t be here. Not in this temple. Not in this wilderness. Not this far from Baldur’s Gate.
Like a constant droning as you follow the group past the trapped antechamber and into the temple, you remind yourself of what could be waiting. Of what is waiting. Of what’s biting inside your skull and what wants to smash it against the floor in the kennels back at the palace.
He can’t get you. He can. He could. He will.
Whatever twist of fate is granting you this reprieve will relent eventually. Hand you right back into Cazador’s embrace. These people can’t help you. The tadpole that’s gotten you here will turn you.
Why are you here? Why are you following these strangers through dank ruined halls? Why are you listening to them discuss a god you’ve never heard of in this place where no one can help you?
Plants peak thought ancient stone, growing despite what stands to stop them. Acolyte’s lay dead and rotten for time everlasting besides them. Sunlight you never thought you’d experience again peaks through the cracks in the ceiling to make you flinch on reflex when it plays on your pallid skin, a strange contrast to the hunger building with each step you take.
What else could you be doing?
When those yellowed bones rise on some unknown command and you make to defend yourself with your new companions, it becomes clears what else the worm has done. The dagger in your hand feels awkward, your body weaker, your reflexes slower, and in comparison to fire-breathing beast and the half-elf at his side, you may as well have just clawed your way out of the grave this morning. You were never a combatant, Cazador had no reason for you to be, but there’s a valley between how you were ten days ago and how you are now and the rusted sword catching your side from man dead and without ligaments for decades is proof enough of that.
You reel from the unexpected pain of it, unbalanced from it and the skeleton bears down on you on this overgrown patch of grass in the light of the day you’d only just met once more. Another blow is to be expected but a mote of fire slams into the robe of the undead, followed by the crack of a mace resounding against it’s ribs. It crumples to the ground, Shadowheart panting beside it’s shattered, burnt form.
She ignores you. Turns away. The last of the undead are dispatched across the room and the chamber falls into peace once more.
What else are you capable of doing, you have to wonder as you examine the shallow slice just across your ribs. Ronan approaches, catches you off guard as he silently holds out a bottle sloshing with a red potion. You drink it, the pain ebbs, and you follow the others as they peer into the room revealed.
It's the best you can do for yourself, at least for the moment.
Considering how the last few days have gone, the appearance of a well-spoken and lucid ghoulish type seems to be the least fantastical. At least to you. It's almost charming in comparison to the hosts that had you for however many nights in their fleshy, tentacle ship and several degrees less shocking than waking up to sunlight while also not being a pile of ash under it.
Frankly, you'll take needless existential questions from a bejeweled mummy any day.
And it seems your companions agree. Or, at least, the suggestion of making camp as the day winds to a close is met with more vitriol than letting the ghoul waddle away unscathed did. For a second, you are delighted to see the gith Lae'zel, who was recovered from a cage not an hour prior, might rip one of the beast's spikes off his draconic face as she grabbed it to yank him down to better threaten him eye to eye for not pushing through the night to go find her 'creche'.
She doesn't rip it off and Ronan doesn't burn her alive, which is a shame but probably for the best. And you can't complain too much about taking a rest. There's an exhaustion to you, bone deep and no doubt made worse by the tadpole and the crash and-
You can’t think much as you sit around the fire Gale practically conjured with your fellow afflicted. The hunger gnaws at you, scratches your throat, itches at your teeth. The others eat slowly, chewing food that means nothing to you under the grim understanding that this meal could be one of their last.
Except for Ronan. He seems… nonplussed as he puts back bread and dried meats with an air of business as usual. As if he’d often found himself in the perils of the wilderness while in the midst of facing his own transformation into a tentacled monstrosity.
When they all break off to do as they please, you hang back near the fire, the distance preferable as your eyes keep wandering to blue veins and long throats. When was it you last fed? Starvation isn't an unusual state for you, not when it pleases Cazador, but it wouldn't due to ruin this tentative alliance, ruin this freedom you found with your baser desires.
You're better than that. You've been surrounded by more blood and with more time between the last drop for yourself. You're not some animal, not-
Ronan returns to you after sometime, his top half bare for the evening, larger scales glistening gold in the fire from his bath and his journal in his hand. He eyes your patched-up side with a tilt of his head. Nods to it, beastly face as illegible as the rest of him.
“Are you doing alright?” Even when not doling out commands or grunting simplistic responses, his voice is deep, cavernous, each word underlined in the barest hiss as if his mouth wasn’t made for the language.
There’s a twitch under your eye at it and the no doubt fake sympathy its wrapped itself in. You don’t want it or his ‘care’ or whatever price may come associated with it. You tell him to leave you to your brooding and he does, simple as that.
You watch him lumber across the grass, tail swinging heavy behind him, to the gith sharpening her blade instead before turning your attention back to the fire. Without the sun overhead, a familiar cold has crept back into you. Huddling closer only helps so much, and the temporary relief of the day is assuaged to the bitter reminder of what you still are.
The shadows seem so long around the camp. The breeze blowing through the trees and the grass mingling with the chirping insects muffling any kind of footsteps or rustling of something happening upon them should that happen. Far away in the middle of nowhere, but still the illusion of safety, of kilometers between you and what you were saved from dissolves in a moment as you eye the edges of your vision, past the light of the fire, past the strange companions you’ve found yourself with, and into the expanse yet explored and dark under the clouded moonlight.
Does your head hurt from the ithilid worm lodged inside it or from something calling to you? You watch. You wait. Mind and ears straining for a command, one you know too well and you expect at any moment.
Any moment and you’ll be compelled to move. To walk. And walk. And walk across fields and bushes and rushing water and stone baked hot in the sun until your feet are bloodied from the distance your legs have carried you.
Will carry you no matter how hard you fight to make them stop. No matter what hunger weakens the rest of you. No matter how much you scream.
You wait. The fire continues its pleasant dance in its slow chaotic consumption of the wood it is wrapped around. The people in this ramshackle camp settle down to rest and invigorate themselves with sleep and the food they ate for the coming days. A hunger gnaws at your throat, itches at your teeth and you sit as still as the cliff face this arrangement is nestled against and you wait for a command.
But it never comes.
Cazador haunts you in your trance. Taunting you. Reminding you of the rules you’ve broken.
You come out of it with a start, leaping to your feet, searching in a panic for the familiar figure of your master and his staff in the shadows outside the bounds of the dying fire. But there’s no one. Just the people you’ve yourself in the company of sleeping as serenely as the open wilderness allows, save for Lae’zel standing resolute some ways away with her sword in hand.
Your panting recedes, the cold panic ebbing. There are days between you and Cazador. Days with a sun you can stand in and water you can cross. Perhaps even homes you can enter.
An edge. Ever so slight. He isn’t here. He can’t get you just yet.
Armor clinks and boots march across compact earth as those incessant rules pound through your thoughts, guilty in the way they resound.
“Your watch isn’t for another hour.” Lae’zel hisses, staring down at you with a lip twisted in disgust. “Do you mean to be awake now?”
Her head is canted to the side as she observes him. Miles of green neck on display. Hunger tears into your own.
“Hm? Yes, yes, I can-”
“Good. See that you wake that one for hers.” She gestures to Shadowheart as she steps carefully to her own bedroll. “Painfully, preferably.”
Thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures.
Lae'zel undoes her armor efficiently as she seems to do everything. Unclasps it all with a practiced ease and a disinterest in you being capable of perceiving. Sets it aside as she is left in her casual garments before settling down to sleep.
Unguarded. Uninformed. Unaware.
Thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures.
Or shall you? The night is still, the breeze from earlier in the morning having ebbed as the moon shines gently overhead. There's no one watching, no one to observe your misdeeds save for the bugs that chirp in the bushes and along the rocks.
And they’re all asleep, dreaming fitfully of what’s to come and what has come before now. It would be easy, so very easy, to take what you’ve made to. Just a quick bite, nothing more, just enough to stave off the tearing, scratching in the very core of you.
You stand over them, not sure when you moved. Fingers twitch at your side. Muscles tense in your legs, prepared to bend, to move, to take.
You do move. But not for the unexpected company blissfully unaware. It’d be easy to have them, but even easier to get caught and you doubt any of them would show you any less mercy than a stake rammed lovingly into your heart.
And that just won’t do, considering the gift you’ve been given; a taste of freedom, packaged with shackles unlocked and the tadpole burrowing into your skull. Given under threat of a fate worse than death, but given all the same. Why jeopardize having those shackles removed on the first night before you can begin to enjoy what its like to move without them?
They don't notice your return, nor does Shadowheart see much a miss with how flush you seem from the boar blood warming you. She takes her watch with a roll of her eyes and you fall you finish your rest, thoughts blissfully quiet and the aches of the day soothed from a kind of meal you've never had. One you were never allowed to have until now.
When you rouse, there's no one else awake; whether to a change of guard being missed or Gale having just fallen asleep for his portion, it is a blessing as you carefully slipping away once more. Its more than a curiosity that drives you, more than a passing whimsy moving your legs as you rush to the cliffside. Something deeper, both elated and terrified that pushes you forward, climbing up higher to a better vantage point where you can properly see the blackened night sky giving way to the new day along the horizon.
Was this all a fluke, you have to wonder as you watch the orange beginning to burn into the darkness that’s been your home for centuries. Just a temporary breath of freedom granted? A miracle for a day only to be ripped away and leave you burning in the sun you got to feel one last time?
The stars fade. Black gives into purple to pink to orange and the suns creeps over the horizon bringing with it a deep endless blue. Temperature shifts, the cool dew of the evening giving way to the warm tickle of the sunlight as it reaches you, plays on your skin.
A new day has dawned and here you are, more satiated than you've ever been and drinking it in as greedily at the boar a few hours prior.
Ronan doesn’t ask where you were when you return to the encampment. Just continues strapping on his chain armor over brass scales bright in the sun, eyeing you as you gather your own ensemble. When he is appropriately attired, he lumbers your way across the patchy grass and compacted dirt only to stop in front of you and press a little bundle into your frozen hands.
“You should eat. When you can.” He orders, not meeting your gaze before he leaves you again.
Wrapped in a cloth is a portion of bread, dried meat, and an apple the beast had no doubt found. That hunger, sated for a moment by the doe you feasted on hours prior, slams back into you, still gnawing at your chest, at your esophagus, practically gagging you as it roars dully throughout every fiber of your body, but this could never satisfy. As you re-wrap the food, already planning on discarding it the first chance you get, your attention is drawn to Ronan crouched some yards away, gathering his pack as he tosses his colossal head and shifts his shoulders to better set the chain mail of his armor.
Thou shalt not drink-
What does a dragonborn taste like, you wonder. As beastly as the cleric is himself? It can’t be any worse than rat or as cold as hapless sewer kobolds.
His throat is so red, a rich rusted color that is vibrant in the sun and a spotlight by the warm fire at night. Impossible to ignore as he stands to his full towering height. You think it could be redder.
It's one thing to watch the beast fight skeletons who've been collecting dust for centuries, and another entirely to see him rend flesh and blood. With the undead scribes, he was methodical, almost bored in the way he engaged them, the way he spewed fire upon them as if he were going through the motions. Here, in the ruined chapel as they are set upon by looters none too happy about the intrusion, its as if Ronan is a different creature entirely.
There’s something exquisitely predatory in how he homes in on the man with the club, eyes locked on him as he stalks toward him past Lae'zel and Shadowheart already engaged with someone else. A swing in Ronan's direction is blocked by his shield, only to be followed by his own mace. It rings true on the man’s jaw, the crack of bone shattering resounding over the combat around them.
The man falls, bleeding, struggling as his club rolls across the stone floor, and with a glee etched in sharp little teeth gleaming in the candlelight, Ronan follows him down. Another crack, wetter than the first puts an end to a hand reaching shakily for a broken mouth, the rest of the man's body lying twitching on the floor. Ronan straightens, pausing for a moment despite the fighting still happening around him, great chest heaving, maw twisted in a deep satisfaction as he observes just what’s left of a head oozing by his feet.
There’s blood on his jaw. His nostrils flare, smoke emanating from them as he breathes deep. He opens his mouth, a red angular tongue quickly lapping at the drip of red before he turns and that burning focus finds a new target in the archer stepping out of the room to your left, pointing an arrow at him.
An attention that changes to you as that archer crumples to his knees, throat split from your dagger. For a moment, that fiery gaze is just as mad, as hungry, as predatory as it was for the man dying gurgling at your feet. Perhaps more so as you brace yourself for the flames burning in Ronan’s throat to find themselves curling around you, eating you alive as if recompense for your borrowed hours in the sun.
The smoke curling from his nostrils ceases. The small scales around his eyes relax. The snarl falls from his mouth and he nods to you. Acknowledges you and you could swear he is impressed before he turns away to see the final looter dying by a greatsword cleaving through them.
“Good work.”
It pulls you from the blood on your dagger, from the blood all around you, tickling your nose and gnawing at your tongue. The boar from the night before satiates you, but clearly not enough to keep you from mourning what you must wipe off the steel of your blade and what coagulates on the stone floor. Perhaps it is good the beast approaches you, keeps you from giving into a baser need.
You glance up at him, schooling your face to something pleasant, something amused as you take note of where the rest of your companions are. Not far off. Checking bodies and rooms, but close enough.
“Yes, I can hold my own, shockingly enough.” The dagger now clean, you slip it back into it's sheath to begin wiping down your hands properly. "Amazing was a night's rest can do for you after careening into the countryside on a burning ship."
Ronan hums, a strange guttural sound that raises the hair on the back of your neck in how it hisses and reverberates off the stone. He’s looking at you again. He seems to do that a lot, the tip of his tail wriggling strangely behind him.
“You seem… happier, than yesterday. More focused.” He notes, tone deadpan and factual.
In the dark of this chapel, you hope the beast misses the twitch of your lip. The way the rag in your hand pauses just a moment on your skin. He was asleep when you went off last night, wasn't he?
“You know,” You start, snatching onto the first thought you have and tilting your head just so to be sure your collar covers the mark on your neck. “For a cleric of Bahamut, you seem quite happy as well when cracking open a man's skull.”
He snorts, the side his mouth twitching. Tail flicking even faster. Your back is to a wall, you realize. Why did you put the dagger away, you wonder.
“As happy as you are adept at opening a man’s throat, I would think.” It’s said low, muttered for only you to hear, his gaze holding yours and no doubt catching the way your eyebrows raise in shock before you can school your face.
“Whatever do you mean?”
There’s a hint of a smirk on his maw as he stalks closer to you. You flinch at the weight of his paw on your shoulder, fighting not to duck away, the sickening heat exuding off him like a roaring fire seeping into every fiber of you as he leers down at you.
“We all have our pasts, magistrate .”
The final word is growled like an insult, thrown back into your face as the hand on your shoulder squeezes once. Like it means something. Like he knows something.
“Don’t touch me.” You sneer back, shrugging him off, striding past him in favor of Gale already rummaging through dusty tomes in the library nearby.
He lets you go, no doubt watching your escape. What does he know? What could he know?
A question you aim to find out as another fruitless day of exploring comes a close. A few more supplies have been found thanks to the looters left to rot in the chapel: bedrolls, cooking ware, materials for tents and what have you... Enough to make the little nook the lot of you have decided to claim as your own for the time being a bit more homely. Cozy even.
Well, relatively speaking. You can't claim to have known an ounce of luxury for yourself despite being denied as a part of Cazador's power play for so long, and not being anywhere near all of that is a luxury in of itself but you would trade half of the people for a proper bed and a bath. Or at least Gale. He has to be worth something.
After a dinner made of ingredients judiciously swiped from the chapel, you find it's simple enough to steal that journal Ronan's always scribbling in once he has begun his nightly routine by the water and the other’s are distracted with their own. By the firelight, you flip through it, unsurprised by the tight concise script he writes in, no doubt similar to his cleanliness and his efficiency. He can present himself as shiny and educated as he wants, but at the end of the day, the cleric is still a half-giant with a kobold's head affixed to his shoulders.
You have little interest in him before your meeting, but skimming along the few weeks before the crash seem mostly to speak of a temple to the south and a journey to Yartar that led him here. With some flipping, you find the passages of the past two days, told in a mostly dry in tone, flavorless retellings of the days events with little questions on would be best tackled the next day. Somehow, Ronan has made the nautiloid and crashing into the riverside read like business as usual, his technical version of the story no more interesting than the amateur drawings of a few plants and a bird you’d seen him pause and ponder before Lae’zel yelled at him for wasting more time.
Your name crops up a few times, the description of you neither flattering or insulting or suspicious. You have pale hair. You have red eyes. You have a funny scar on your neck you try to hide by fiddling with your collar. Your face is-
Whatever the word is has mostly been scribbled out, the text continuing after, but not in Common like the rest of his journaling. Instead, harsh and illegible Draconic take its place for a few lines before transitioning once more to detail how you came into the crypt with your skills at lockpicking praised and your battle prowess admonished next to more positive opinions on the rest of this little party.
You frown at that. Well, that and the insult to your capabilities. He's very judgmental considering the whole of him. Given the circ*mstances, you'd say you did just fine in comparison to a wizard, a githyanki soldier, a cleric, and a second cleric built like he ate half of the dock workers in the Grey Harbor.
Rolling your eyes, you flip to the next day, or today rather, and the Draconic script happens again, more so, in fact. The entire day is detailed before a long few paragraphs in that unfamiliar alphabet fills an entire page.
Infuriating. What could he be saying? Is it about you or does he have secretive thoughts about the rest of your unlikely compatriots? It's hard to tell as you reread the parts you skimmed where meeting them is detailed, but nothing jumps out at you.
Perhaps Lae'zel might know how to read Draconic. She's spoken of red dragons before. Or even Gale, considering he has the disposition of someone who spends most of his time studying pointless things in order to appear more interesting, like every wizard you've mistakenly taken up conversation with over the centuries in lieu of a vagrant.
He might even know a spell to translate it...
“Finding anything interesting?”
It’s astonishing that neither the journal nor yourself end up in the fire. As you control the urge to reach for your dagger, you whip your head around to find not a vampire lord come to reclaim property but the towering dragonborn barely a meter from you, staring down at you with all the passive interest of someone watching an ant creep to their plate. How is it possible he’s the loudest thing on two legs most of the day and yet fully capable of creeping up on you with the poise of a tightrope walker?
“No, actually.” You bite out as you stand, snapping the journal shut with a muffled and utterly unsatisfying thump. “You seem very adept at making the most extraordinary circ*mstances impossibly boring. I'd say it's quite the talent if it weren't so dull.”
Ronan hums. Takes you in as is his wont. As if the meat of his brain needs that long to make a judgment call and it is difficult to not fill the silence between with your own voice.
“My apologies.” He says finally, thankfully, holding out a rusted red palm expectantly. “I will… endeavor to be more entertaining tomorrow.”
So he does have a sense of humor. And it only took two days for him to find it.
“See that you do. I've wasted enough of my time on your drivel.” You make to hand it back, letting his his finger graze the leather in a tease before you yank it back, some part in you delighted as his thumb closes over nothing but his own empty scales. “Though... you could make it up to me.”
There’s a snort, an exhale of hot breath you can feel, and something pinches in his face. He keeps his palm open for the book to be returned, but tilts his head. Curious as he says nothing else.
Excellent.
“Considering what we’re going through, it just seems in poor taste to be keeping secrets from the rest of us.” You open the journal, flip to the page from yesterday, and step to his side, letting your shoulder brush his arm as he lets it fall. “You didn’t write much in Draconic before yesterday. What exactly is the point of starting now, I wonder?”
“Hmm, a measure of privacy considering my current company.” He growls as he reaches over, slips the journal from your hands with ease.
“Current company?" You ask as you round on him. "What ever do you mean by that?"
“What do I mean by that indeed, magistrate.” He says wistfully as he walks away from you, the journal under his arm.
You watch him go, flinching at the sudden scrape of Lae'zel sharpening her sword fills the silence. Watch him sit against a rock and open his journal to presumably scribble some more or draw another bird he saw.
He doesn’t know. He couldn’t. If he did, you’d be nothing more than ash, a smoldering waste on the compacted dirt, blown out by the breeze to the river that used to scald you.
Right?
Continued caution is warranted, you would think. Perhaps a little charm as well. You’ve no idea how long you’ll be in the company of these people, of this cleric in particular, but for now, you need them.
And they don’t need you. And you can't hide what you are forever if this drags out for too long.
It couldn’t hurt warming them up to you. Make yourself trustworthy. Make yourself indispensable. At least for the time being.
There's really only one guaranteed way you know of to win over the hearts and loyalty of someone. Like a muscle well practiced in an art, something so mindless to flex that it's less of a plan, and more of a prodding that you implement the next day. See who's receptive. Who might give you an in.
Shadowheart, the most aesthetically pleasing of the bunch, seems more strong willed than initially assumed as any kind words or probing, yet vague flirtations are rebuffed and laughed at in turn. Gale, for his part, seems annoyed by you, and really it’s a mutual feeling considering his insistence on jabbering on about his tower and his accomplishments and speculating about every little potential symptom of the worms in your collective heads in an infuriating amount of detail while generally hanging off the beast’s arm as they crash through bush and rock as loudly as they please. And the gith…
“Speak to me again in such a familiar tone, istik, and I shall rip your spine out from your back.”
Well she’s as lovely as the rats you’ve fed upon in the sewers under Baldur’s Gate and twice as kind. You could not fathom why Shadowheart doesn’t enjoy her sunny disposition.
You leave her to her midday meal, the ground under you hard and uncomfortable. It's not as if you can partake in the fruit and dried meat and cheese the rest are partaking in anyways in this short rest. No, with little progress made and no one willing to engage much with you, it's better to go see what the beast is doing.
Ronan has kept himself a little ways away from the rest of your travelling companions, seated leaning against a rock on the ground, journal in hand as he scribbles furiously in it. Probably more Draconic to vex you. Perhaps he's even stopped writing in Common altogether just in case.
Or he could be drawing another bird. Anything really. He's an odd creature.
You leave him to his inane scratching. It's for your best interest, after all. Were he to have any inkling toward your true nature, it would be best to limit time spent with him alone.
He isn't a target to you. Not really. How could he be? There's something distinctly off-putting about him, not just with his draconic features and his inability to engage in a conversation for longer than a few grunted words.
You wouldn't even know where to begin with him. Does he even fancy himself with anything outside of his fellow dragonborn? Is that even appropriate for them or is it beneath their rather high opinion of themselves you've heard about in snippets of conversation over the decades they started popping up around Baldur's Gate?
Not that you'd want to even begin the process of finding out. The thought of finding common ground in conversation with him is daunting. The idea you may fawn over him insulting. The nightmare you might have to bed him disgusting.
With the smoke in the distance rising from the druid’s hovel becoming closer and closer with each step and a possible healer to be bartered with held within, you may not even need these people much longer. And if you do, one of the other, less scaley one's will give you an in eventually.
It's near mid-afternoon under a cloudless blue sky you find the gate to the grove and, you will say, the ambush of goblins attacking it is rather exciting. Exhilarating in the random burst of violence and viscera. You’d never say no to a chance to gut a goblin or three, even if Ronan barking orders at you for where to go and who to gut ruffles your feathers a bit.
Not that you don’t listen. Don’t follow the direction to take out the archers on the jutting rocks. It makes sense in retrospect, and seeing their little bodies fall several feet to thud into the ground, creating a splattering of their own blood after you kick them off the edge is delightful, but it does dampen some of your enjoyment knowing it’s at the express order of someone else.
Something like him.
It’s a quick scuffle with the aid of the people at the gate and the warlock with the rapier, who all shuffle inside the moment the fighting is over. Your fellows busy themselves with their own weapons and wounds as you hop down off the rock, shockingly unscathed. There's a thought playing in your head as you stow your blade to see what the goblins could be carrying on them; they are dead after all and any goods or gold would be better in your pockets, you would think.
You kick at one of the two you killed, rolling it on its front with your toe. Grimacing at the blankly staring eyes and the bloody face streaked from days without a whiff of soap, you think better of rooting through it's clothing. Not only would it not be worth the space in your pockets, no doubt the people inside those gates may have something more worthwhile. And cleaner.
A twitch catches your eye, thoughts of convincing Gale to root around in the goblin's pockets banished for the other body laying its side with it's back facing away from you a few meters away. You approach it, watching carefully, steps making not but a sound on the red-soaked dirt under then, and over the clanking of plate armor and the muttering of clerics, you hear the smallest pained groan. The body shudders, gasping, the goblin still alive and gurgling and slowly, weakly reaching out for his sword in the shade of the rocky expanse from above as you come to a stop behind him.
You stare down at him, the smell of living blood filling your mouth with saliva it hits your nose. Fingers twitch at your side as the goblin whines under his breath, unaware of you and rolling onto his front to try and drag himself closer to his weapon, no doubt exacerbating the slit you made in his stomach and the hole you put in his chest. You could grab the weakening body, bite into the small expanse of neck, so much wasted on the ground as he continues to worm his way to some manner of defense.
Hunger has never felt so visceral, so present. So long, the ache for something more than beasts and insects was an old splinter, something so familiar in every waking moment, you’d all but grown used to its presence, its inescapable sting. Standing over the bleeding, heaving form of a goblin, seeing what you could have, satisfaction so close, just one little bite-
The flash of a boot coming down on the goblin’s throat has you flinching, the wet snap of it’s neck drawing out a shocked sound from you. Stumbling back, you realize the shadow that’s been cast over you is the beast stamping the life out of the creature under his foot with his tremendous weight. His generally placid face twisted into a cruelty, nostrils flared and little teeth on display in a snarl.
For an eternity, you are both staring at his boot, still crushing the limp goblin before Ronan lifts his great, horned head. You balk as you catch his gaze, a fear he knows of your hunger washing the warmth from the sun overhead out of you coldly.He’s glaring at you again, blood on his mace, on his face. Eyes burning. Angry.
Hungry. Flitting in his smoldering gaze as if he means to close the scant distance between you and swallow you whole. There and gone again as he breathes, the burst of cruelty fading and he is the illegible dragonborn towering above you once more.
And you're disappointed to see it go.
Of course the tieflings past the gate need help. Everyone needs help, but what business is it any of yours? Considering the severity of the tadpole issue lurking just around the corner, you’d think your own problems would outweigh any of theirs.
Gale doesn’t seem to agree, putting on a caring wide-eyed pout as Zevlor tells the beast of his peoples’ woes. You can't tell if Ronan's noncommittal grunting at the tiefling is meant to convey disinterest in the affair or if he means to volunteer your little band to the task. Either way, there’s a palpable sense of relief from you and the two women when no promise of heroics are doled out, merely the vague shrug in the direction of speaking to this Kagha person on your way to your healer.
Better to not waste time on these people at any rate. There’s plenty of them. They can figure it out.
Though the Hollow is a startlingly refreshing sight. Not for the dusty dank aesthetic of a glorified cavern, but just the amount of people in it. Not that you have much interest in engaging with a bunch of helpless refugees clamoring for someone to do something about their misfortunes, but it is nice to see someone other than Shadowheart rolling her eyes at you or Lae’zel breathing down your neck, searching for a twitch of ceremorphosis.
You know. Normal people. Relatively.
Perhaps you could even sneak into here after nightfall for a snack if you're feeling brave. Something to consider as Ronan hurries the lot of you to the grove.
You’re certain the beast is going to kill Kagha.
You can see it in the tension in his stance as she cares not for the child Ronan convinced her to let go. In the tightness around his eyes as she suggests he rid her grove of the refugees. In the thin pillar of smoke trailing black and acrid from his nostril as she dismisses the lot of you coldly, rudely.
It wouldn’t take much. All he’d have to do is open his mouth, the spew of flames festering there as the smoke thicker. You can smell it, see it in your mind’s eye when Ronan pauses just a second longer than necessary, holding Kagha’s glare, his rusted throat bobbing, bulging with words or fire or…
Ronan waves for the rest of you to follow, past a smug druid and her rats towards the druid's chambers, in search of this apprentice Nettie. As you approach, grimacing at the mud slopping under boot, a hand touches your elbow, staying you just as you reach the entrance to the antechamber. The others continue on ahead and you fight the urge to flinch from the broad palm on you, to snap at the cleric but you hold yourself back as you catch him peering at you with an intense curiosity.
“You have a penchant for… discretion.”
It’s not a question. Never a question but an observation and you’re too curious to be annoyed by it.
“Well, it almost sounds bad when you say it like that.” You purr, reflexively before you remember you don't have to, scrambling to add: “But I am capable of it, yes.”
One side of his maw twitches into something resembling a smirk. His touch is steady, burning, even over your thin armor. The embers boring into you as he stares and stares, clearly thinking, has your legs straining not to move away again before relief is found as he slowly lifts his horned head. Gazes to the druid’s servant's quarters with that rumbling hum drumming out of his chest.
“I wonder what secrets the First Druid may have.” He mutters, slipping away and the cool dank air of the Inner Sanctum saps what heat he leaves behind in an instant.
Mud splashes under his boot as he joins the others watching a druid fiddle with a bird, leaving you on the threshold of the antechamber. Kagha and the others are already wrapped in a heated conversation, too passionate about the topic of the child now safely away from the First Druid's viper to pay much attention to you quietly moving to their servant's quarters.
What secrets does she have, you wonder?
It's easy to skulk into the other chamber, unnoticed, unseen. Easier still to find the little hidden crevice behind the bookshelf. The lock on the chest means nothing to you, not when the thrill of discovery and the delicious anxiety of possibly being found guiding your steady hands.
You return with the note you find in time for the dwarf, Nettie, to open some auxiliary chamber, the grinding of the stone door covering your tracks. Doesn't really matter as she doesn't notice your worming your way into the pack. Ronan certainly does as you all pile into the workspace, hanging back for a moment to let the other's pass with touch to your elbow so light, so unobtrusive, you barely muster up the want to shake him off.
He looks down at you and you up at him. It's a nod you give, a small bob of the head that'd be easy to miss. Ronan does not, the pinch in his brow softening and his gaze glittering with an elation you feel being answered back in yourself.
Something being understood. A language being shared. A compliment, an appraisal you didn’t know you wanted, needed to feel being delivered in the smallest smirk on such a strange face before Ronan turns from you, leaves you to find himself in front of the questioning Nettie holding some stick aloft.
You can still feel that touch on your elbow. Like before, the cold of this chamber snatches the impression it leaves from you. Strange how you almost miss it.
That elation follows you into the evening when the decision to make camp is made, a strange lightness to your limbs despite the hunger exacerbated by so many livings being fighting to weigh you down. Made all the better when you hand over the letter you found and Ronan takes it with a quiet ‘thank you’ and a nod of deference.
Maybe you were quick to judge Ronan. He’s not as difficult to understand as he seems and he is delectably violent when he wants to be. And he fashions himself as the leader type, your companions clearly ready to follow his direction without much more question than the usual grumbling and griping.
If there was anyone here to guarantee your safety for however long you may need it, in case something secret of yourself came to light, it would be him.
A plan begins to form as a location for a more permanent camp is set up closer to the Grove and the Hollow. As Gale makes dinner once again and there’s a more relaxed and friendly banter as Wyll joins the group. As Ronan wanders off after eating his fill to start his nightly preening routine with Gale on his heels to take up more of his time.
You could follow them to the water, find out what Gale is talking to him about as he washes himself, but instead, you ready yourself. Mull over the words you might say, plan the practiced motions and gestures and careful positioning of your form to best suite your needs. Night falls once more as you slip into the same old song and dance you’ve never found comfort in but you know all the steps to far too well.
You’ve done this countless times before. What’s different about this now save for the fact you aren’t bringing the beast home but trying to keep yourself out of there?
It’s predictable that Ronan approaches you stargazing as you are laid out on your back on the hard ground, a tantalizing display for anyone, no doubt, even him. He stares down at you, keeping a respectable distance and his gaze at a respectable level, listening to you muse that this little venture may be over if you find this Halsin and, oh, what will you do from there?
It doesn’t really matter what you're saying, so long as you have his attention. And you do have it. Try as he might to remain respectable as you speak of going your separate way, the nearby firelight dancing in his shining scales reveals the way his eyes dart down the length of you. From the part of your top, along your legs, between them.
You can tell if it is greedy or unconscious as he growls you don’t have to stop traveling together. His tail is flicking behind him when you says that’s good, as you list the trials and tribulations he and you have been through. How appropriate the first instance of emotion to be legible on Ronan’s face this evening is one of visible confusion as he listens to you.
“I’m not easily impressed by people, but you’re stronger than I gave you credit for.”
When you stand, it doesn’t make the disparity in the sizes of you anymore equal, nearly insulting with how the top of your head barely clears his shoulder. The girth of him, the weight of him, the sheer presence of him is daunting in a way that is vexing given what you may have to do. You find it difficult to not think about as you step closer, the various ways he is capable of breaking you should he find adequate reason to do so.
He lets you into his space. Doesn’t step back. Doesn’t balk at the intrusion. Instead he considers you, curious once again.
“I assumed you took... exception to me.” He says finally, the deep vibration of his mutter reverberating though you as you are but an arm’s length from him.
He can’t make this easy, can he?
“You have your charms.” You all but whisper back, lifting a hand to lightly lay it on his bare chest with a smile you hope reaches your ears. “More than you think.”
There’s a twitch of his head as he takes that in, a tilt so minute you think it may be a trick of the firelight. His body is burning, feverish under your palm, the scales leathery and almost pleasant as you wait just a hair to long for comfort, failing to keep your attention from falling to the rusted red of his long throat, just barely out of reach. But Ronan’s shoulders relax, the hard edge to his brow softening and you feel as though you may as well until his arm raises and it is against every instinct not to duck away.
“We should get to know each other better then.”
A claw, gentle and filed to dull point, kisses your temple. Catches a stray curl of hair. Tucks it easily, slowly behind your ear and the shiver it elicits sickens you.
He has to feel the way you tense at the touch. Has to see how your smile falters as you struggle not to move away. Has to know how the laugh you force out of the knot in your throat shakes.
“A delicious thought but-”
There’s a ghost of a smirk on his maw as his hand falls. He steps back, a smug fire dancing in his eyes, and you can’t help but feel…
“Relax.” Ronan says, “I’m joking.”
Seen.
“Hmm?” There’s no blood to flush your cheeks in embarrassment, but it does not stop it from gripping the back of your neck. “Yes! Of course, me too.”
You tell him you need to clear your head before your watch, bidding him good night in the process before slinking away, well aware you are being watched with every quickened step you take.
This should have been easy. How many times with how many people have you done this song and dance, had lost souls eating out of the palm of your hand to be led to their deaths and yet here, you hesitate. This used to be easy, simple as breathing; the words, the mannerisms, the touches pouring out of you as if it had been written into your very bones.
It used to be easy, when you had no other choice.
You have a choice now, don’t you? Does this even count as one; hedge your bets by endearing someone to you or be tossed aside when the truth of your condition is reveal? But if you don’t, if you aren’t being useful with your body to one of these people, then are you really good for anything else?
You need to think. Get your head back in order and banish the whisperings that sound too close to the master you’ve left behind. The others will soon be asleep, your first watch starting when the last of them fall to their slumber.
The last breath of something dying under your teeth should be enough to set you right again.
