Hello, Everyone!
Last time, after being betrayed and abandoned, our friends were left in the ruins of the Dragon's holding cell. They sent out a few messages, trying to do some damage control, and Aurum said he wanted to talk to Balaine Endoras, whose head was currently resting in a sack nearby.
Carefully, Aurum pulled the head of Balaine Endoras out of the sack and placed it on a pile of rubble. The Elder's hair was clotted with long-dried up blood, and half of his face was blackened and burned. The wound on his neck was horrifically torn, as if the blade it was made with was blunt or jagged.
The moment Aurum rang the Dyrum bell, the head opened its only good eye, and looked at him with a milky-white gaze.
Mary clenched her fists. She marched away and sat in the rubble, pressing her head onto the cold stone wall. The few feet of distance didn't silence the whole conversation, but at least she didn't have to see the head speak.
At the start, Aurum asked Balaine Endoras about his death.
"She appeared in my office out of nowhere," the head said with a hollow voice, "wielding lightning and a horrible axe." He paused. "Tesaya is much stronger than we realized."
He was right. Mary'd been thinking about that, too. Back in Myth Adofhaer, their hostess had seemed exhausted from just fighting Dorina or Kloth, and now… her arm had been cut off, she’d been damaged by Golems, pierced by spikes… and yet, none of that had made her slow down.
Was she suddenly stronger because of Trax'rion's proximity? Or had she always been strong, and she had just been very good at hiding it?
While Mary was pondering on that, Aurum asked the head about Balaine's bow. It knew that Tesaya had taken it but nothing more.
Thinking about the bow made Mary remember Endoras' office. Last time they were in there, she was worried that there might be someone eavesdropping on them. How else would that elf Clement know to disappear, right after they'd pointed him out to the Elder?
Mary frowned with a sudden realisation. Tesaya was very insistant that they didn't look into Clement's case. She called him a ‘small fry’, and ‘unimportant’, but… now everything she'd said suddenly felt very suspicious. What if he was doing something important for Trax'rion's plan and she wanted to avert any attention off of him?
"Ask him about Clement," Mary said. "Did they find out how he fits in all of this?"
"I don't have evidence," the head said when Aurum repeated the question. "But I think he was under Tesaya's influence."
Mary didn’t know what to do with this information. If Clement was working for Tesaya, why would he be helping the Duergar? Did they have anything to do with Trax’rion’s release, too? Or was he stirring something else completely?
"Do you think there's a way to bring back your soul?" Aurum continued.
Mary gaped at him. Why would he ask something like that?
"Remember the one who's already done it," Balaine's head said.
Oh, Mary did remember! It all flashed before her eyes. The undead, standing in the crowded cell, waiting to be used as sustainance. The four girls, chained to a dungeon wall. Her mother's body. Olivia Enry's unnatural grin.
"Does he even want to come back?" she cut in, turning to look at the others. "Maybe that's the more important question!"
"You're right," Aurum said and repeated it to the head.
"Everybody wants to live…” the head replied, “but not at any cost."
With this final answer, it closed its eye and went quiet.
Mary breathed a sigh of relief. So Balaine Endoras didn’t want to live by hurting others. She could never forgive herself if she took part in such a deed!
“We should keep the head,” Aurum said. “Ask it more stuff later, and maybe find a way to bring Balaine back to life.”
Mary jumped. "Are you crazy? We're not bringing the head of a dead person with us!!"
"You won't even notice it in the Bag of Holding!"
"It’s my bag, I said no!"
Rain was still falling in the chamber through the missing ceiling, with the occasional lightning piercing the sky. Mary remembered reading about really old dragons and their lairs. They were said to create supernatural effects in the places they inhabited, and extreme weather was only one of them. She felt stupid for thinking the dragon was Red. A thunderstorm was so typical for a Blue dragon that they were almost synonymous.
“Sooo, anyway,” Aurum said. “We should go. I don’t think it’s safe to linger here. Even if what Tesaya said was a lie and the Order didn’t want to free the dragon, they may just as well come to check how the prison is doing. I wouldn’t like to be here when that happens.”
“How do we leave?” Mary said, glancing at the door behind them. Tesaya’d put a magical barrier there and all the while they’d been talking, the Golden Golem had been pummeling it, trying to push through. ”Do we fly?”
“I have a better idea,” the bard grinned. "I had a pretty good look at the teleportation scroll that Dynatos gave me, and I think I can replicate the spell."
“Oh! It’ll be great if you can do that! We can go to Orswald in mere seconds!”
“I was thinking of somewhere closer… to the heart,” Aurum said. “What would you say about Zerakas tol?”
“Why there, of all places?” Bruno asked.
"Because it's the safest location we could be in," Aurum said. "We could ask Edmund and Franchesca for help. They might be our only hope. Besides, the Dry Hand is supposedly going North, right? That's the northernmost point I know.”
Oh! Oooh! We're going somewhere new! Zerakas tol, here we come! I'm so waiting forward to meet THE Francesca Findabair and the boy-Emperor!
But we'll have to wait for a whole week until then, because the next post is going to be something special - a 'here's what you don't see' type of post where our DM tells us something that's going on in the world while our heroes are chatting with Balaine's head.
Take care and be well!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide, the Glossaries (Part 1 and Part 2)
and the Map for the series. You're welcome!)
An important disclaimer: Mary Windfiddle's story is my notes from a D&D game turned into a narrative. All the worldbuilding and NPC encounters belong to our DM, and all the actions of the other main characters (Aurum, Bruno and Agatha) belong to my co-players. My contribution to the story is only everything Mary-related (actions, reactions, inner thoughts), as well as the writing itself.