The Companions of Tartiël (35 page)

Xavier and I went to bed abuzz with chatter about the game. It was fortunate that neither of us had classes until the afternoon, because we didn’t close our eyes until it the sun was already brightening the light filtering in through the blinds.

XXVII.

Due to the rude interruption of spring break after that last session, in which we had met someone who would become an integral part of the campaign and who would further rend Kaiyr’s already conflicted and torn heart, Solaria, we would not meet again for about two weeks. Far be it from me to imagine anyone else more disappointed by a respite from the five-page critical analyses of books never actually read—paraphrased in online notes at best.

I say spring break interrupted our playing, but I still blame Dingo for the timing of such a recess from our all-important storytelling and rolling of dice and insulting of each others’ mothers (we love you, really). Even though I know it to be untrue, I am and forever will be convinced that he planned that last encounter just before a two-week vacation so that I would agonize over how my character should respond to the revelation that the awoken Astra was not, in fact, Astra.

Who was this Solaria? Was she benevolent, or was she to be another malicious force like Luna had been? What was the connection between the obviously-themed group of Astra, Luna, and Solaria? Was Galaxia next?

It became clear to me that by the way Kaiyr was handling his emotions, he clearly felt a great debt to Astra, who had now made the ultimate sacrifice for the good of our party. Was Kaiyr falling in love with Astra? I decided that he probably was, due to his increased respect at her uncharacteristic but recurring selflessness that contrasted so beautifully with the secretive and egocentric façade she showed everyone else.

But then, what to do with this new character? If she turned out to be kind, would Kaiyr place her on Astra’s pedestal? Or, since resurrection from death in Dungeons & Dragons is usually just a function of how much gold the party has, would I be able to bring Astra back? Perhaps Caineye could begin to forge a relationship with Solaria, in that case. After all, especially with the massive haul we had just taken off of Sayel’s body before burning it and tossing the ashes overboard, affording such a ceremony wasn’t really a question. But my over-imaginative mind (which I’ve learned to trust) kept telling me that even though I could easily afford
raise dead
, which costs 5,000 gp but requires the body of the deceased to be present, the fact that Solaria now inhabited what might have once been Astra’s mortal vessel would cause the spell to fail. Small deal, since I could also afford the 10,000 gp necessary for
resurrection
, which requires only a small portion of the original body (Dingo assured me that the excess parts of Astra’s incinerated corpse that came off before Solaria’s birth would count for this). Even if that hadn’t worked, I almost had the 25,000 gold for
true resurrection
, which needs only a name and a number to bring back the desired soul into a reconstructed body.

These things and more I pondered during spring break in the moments I did not spend viciously fighting for victory in Nintendo GameCube’s
Super Smash Bros. Melee
against Xavier and some other friends back at my parents’ house. I assure you, I did not spend every waking moment with my mind wrapped around the game. Just every
other
moment. Except when I went to visit the young lady I was seeing at the time, who could hear when I was thinking about the game too loudly. …Probably because then I started talking about it.

We picked everything up at just about the moment we left off. Solaria, we would soon discover, had a secret ambition: to be a streaker. It took Caineye (Kaiyr was too distraught to interact with anyone for quite some time) a long while to convince the “newborn” nymph that running around naked in public was more than the shell-shocked survivors of Sayel’s mayhem could take.

Our group, during a moment when Kaiyr felt the need to get up and move around, discovered Thelia unconscious in a room. Her entourage had all been killed by the big-mawed creatures’ surprise attacks, and somewhere along the way, the deposed elven princess had lost an arm. Also, it would soon become clear at least to me, she had lost her sense of logic.

“
The book says here that whoever wears the captain’s ring is the captain of the ship!
” she informed the group impetuously after hijacking the airship and turning it in a different direction.

“Dingo,” I growled in exasperation, “this is such a
Calvin and Hobbes
moment. Seriously, ‘I have the captain’s hat, so I get to be the captain?’ What kind of bullshit is this?”

“She probably forged that rule into the book, anyhow,” Matt agreed just before I told Dingo that having had
quite
enough, Kaiyr grabbed the book from her hands and threw it overboard before returning the ship to its original course. After all, the passengers would probably be very confused and afraid if they suddenly arrived at a port other than their destination. Thelia, as she described it, was taking them somewhere safer, though, in keeping with the frustratingly arbitrary decisions of Dingo’s female characters, she refused to tell the party where she intended to take the ship. It wasn’t until we questioned the survivors that we discovered she had told
them
about her plans, that we were headed toward Ik’durel, a closer floating city than Is’thiel, and that the remaining passengers had all voted and agreed to this without our knowledge.

It might sound ignorant on our part, but we had our own problems to deal with. Wild’s propensity for acquiring other peoples’ rings finally got him into trouble when he stole Sayel’s ring, the one that had let her generate an amber sword in weak imitation of the blademasters’ soulblades. Her ring, as it turned out, had a will of its own, and it began twisting Wild according to its designs. This we discovered while Kaiyr and Caineye were having a quiet discussion about what to do with the deceased; Wild, under the ring’s influence, saw fit to push a passenger (remember that man in black robes? Yeah. Him.) overboard. After assuring us (via some ridiculous Bluff checks) that the man had been threatening Wild’s life, we backed off until the halfling started offing other passengers. Then it became a race against the crafty fellow, who literally came within inches of burning the airship to cinders with barrels of oil and a torch. We all thanked Chapter 8 in the
Player’s Handbook
for the rules on sundering objects after I used them to great effect and divested Wild of his tools.

So, while we were tying Wild up in the vain hopes that he might win the battle of wills against the ring, Thelia was pulling her shenanigans on board the ship. This was one of the (thankfully few) moments that I questioned Dingo’s roleplaying and representation of realistic personalities. Because of the way some of the characters arbitrarily decided to give misinformation and withhold vital knowledge from the party, it felt less like we were interacting with people and more like we were fighting against a computer game whose NPCs were programmed to take particular actions no matter how illogical, no matter how unnecessary, no matter what the interacting PCs said or did.

However, the fact that we stuck with the game (indeed, we went on to play further campaigns with Dingo at the helm), says much about how well the game otherwise ran, and perhaps how players need to be forgiving. Everyone has bad roleplaying days. I know I do.

In-game, things got settled a bit once we cut off Wild’s hand, the only way we could remove the ring from his body, after promising the thrashing Wild that we would get his hand regenerated once we reached civilization. So it was that we turned the ship back toward Ik’durel at the behest of the beleaguered passengers.

We decided that our characters were in dire need of some R&R, and since Sayel had given us nary a clue as to the whereabouts of or how to combat her “master,” there was no better moment than when the
Flaring Nebula
put into port in Ik’durel.

XXVIII.

Caineye let out an exhausted sigh as he flopped unceremoniously onto a divan in the main room of the suite the group had rented out for the next week. After the events on that fateful airship ride and a thorough grilling by the local authorities when they wanted to know why the unscheduled airship had arrived with a handful of battered passengers and a cemetery full of dismembered bodies, he was ready to collapse into an unconscious heap.

Kaiyr, silent as he had so often been after Astra’s death and the sudden “birth” of Solaria, glided over to the double doors leading onto the balcony, stepped out into the evening air, and closed the doors behind him. Caineye craned his neck backward over the divan and watched, upside-down, as the heartbroken blademaster settled down on the balcony floor.

Wild, also without a word, picked one of the four available bedrooms more or less at random and disappeared inside.

Watching him go, Caineye’s expression turned glum when Wild’s stump caught the druid’s eye, reminding the human of what had had to be done and what was yet necessary. Although they had promised him while he was still under the influence of the ring, Wild fully remembered the duo’s assurance that they would restore his hand in Ik’durel.

Vinto padded over and sat down next to Caineye, who stroked the wolf’s silver fur while the last member of the group, beautiful Solaria, entered and closed the door behind her. She turned around to face the quiet room, looking so much like a lost puppy, Caineye thought, trembling in Kaiyr’s old robes, which were far too big for her. The sleeves fell past her hands, which she shyly held near her mouth. One pale leg showed enticingly where the blademaster’s robes overlapped.

Caineye shook that thought from his head, though he frowned when he noticed the nymph’s gaze lingering on the shadow outside the curtains over the balcony door. “Are you all right, Solaria?” he asked. “You’re welcome to use any of the rooms here. There are even baths in each room, so we won’t have to take turns.”

Rubbing one bare foot against the plush rug, Solaria raised the floppy sleeves even higher on her face, so that only her eyes showed. “I… am I really allowed to stay?”

Finding an increasingly-rare smile come to his face, Caineye nodded and gestured to the rest of the room with the hand that was petting Vinto. “Master Kaiyr booked these rooms for four, not three.” Vinto grunted impatiently, and Caineye obediently dug his fingers back into the wolf’s fur. “Sorry, old friend,” he said to his animal companion, “but you were extra. I don’t think this place is used to having druids bring wolves into their fancy suites.”

Solaria exhaled and strode past Caineye to stand next to the divan, where she continued to stare at Kaiyr’s form outside. “But… why? Why would he let me stay, when he seems to hate me so?”

Caineye tossed his legs over the side of the couch and sat up. “Solaria… Lady Solaria, I honestly don’t believe my… my friend hates you. I know that your brief time with us has been difficult and too much to learn all at once, but you remind him—remind all of us—too much of a friend who gave her life for us. It is still a fresh wound, for us all,” he told her, his voice trailing off as he deflated, reliving again the moment that Sayel’s minions burned Astra upon the cross. After a minute of silence, he sighed. “I cannot imagine how difficult it must be, though, suddenly thrust into this world to discover someone so cold toward you.” He glanced down at Vinto, frowning. “I don’t mean to imply that Master Kaiyr is cold, mind you,” he amended. “You still haven’t found a trove of hidden memories, I take it?”

She shook her pale blue hair. “No,” she replied, turning back toward Caineye and settling onto one of the comfortable armchairs across from the divan. “I’ve been trying to think of everything, to try and see if I can find that kind of knowledge. But something tells me I’m not going to find any, Caineye.” She looked up at his mismatched eyes, and the druid’s heart melted, stunned at her beauty and innocence as he was every time he made eye contact.

Then the moment was over, and her gaze traveled slowly to settle on Kaiyr again, to Caineye’s chagrin. “I really do feel as though I am comprised of two people, like you suggested the other day. But, unlike your stories of Astra and Luna, I do not feel conflicted with myself. I… feel at peace, in a way.” She swallowed, and the motion of her neck nearly made Caineye swoon with desire he severely wished he could either quash or fulfill. “But it disturbs me that both of my halves seem somehow attracted to… to
him
.”

A wave of disappointment washed over the druid. Oblivious to Caineye’s reaction, Solaria sent a gentle expression in Kaiyr’s direction. “It is frightening to feel a connection to someone so joyless and uncaring. He scares me, Caineye.” She turned her kind features to him, and Caineye forgot his former discontent in the face of her radiance.

Burying the feelings he knew would lead nowhere, the druid focused on scratching Vinto’s ears so vigorously that the wolf ducked out of the way and nipped at Caineye’s hand. He remembered that he was speaking about someone with whom he had grown close, and almost through gritted teeth, he said quietly, “I think that if you give him some patience, you will find he is not uncaring, Lady Solaria. Joyless… we are all grieving the deaths of more than just Astra. I witnessed the deaths of an entire pack of Terth’Kaftineya, and Master Kaiyr… well, that is not a story for me to tell, I don’t think. It is something best heard from his lips, when the time is right.”

Solaria merely nodded wordlessly and sighed, staring at the floor for many long minutes, leaving Caineye to do the same. At length, she stood and stretched, nearly knocking Caineye unconscious as forbidden thoughts invaded his mind yet again. “I’m sleepy. Good night, Caineye,” she said, turning and tiptoeing into the nearest empty bedroom. Then she paused in the doorway. “And thank you, for your insights into your friend. And for your patience. I… must be quite a burden.”

Caineye raised his hand to wave away the comment. “Not at all,” he said, but her door was already closed. Sighing, he looked ruefully down at Vinto, who replied with a helpless look. “Well, that wasn’t symbolic at all, was it?” he asked dryly. “But I guess it’s about time we turned in. Let’s hit the hay, old friend.”