never surrender

@reigniite asked: 〝 I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to see how bad it is. 〞

Vax'ildan was gathering his rest at the campfire before progressing further into Shadow-Cursed lands, somewhat when others felt heavily effected by going further deeper into where blight was. He remained almost unbothered, was that Raven Queen's blessing in disguise .ᐣ Maybe.

〝 Whatever you think is important regarding of me at this moment can't go to hell. We have something else to focus on. 〞

He spoke rather harshly, pulling the sleeves of his armor down before Aerryn could take a better look at them, she most likely seen them as he spaced out.. looking into the campfire, having another vision of his matron haunting his mind, he wants to focus on that. He would rather not displease his goddess once again, not after she had shown him what results in him standing up against her wishes and orders. That divine curse was a lesson but why does she had to make him suffer so bad.

〝 The imbalance between life and death had been lasting too long while Ketheric is still up and standing. I see lost souls needed to be sheparded towards the afterlife.. more and more of them coming. It has to end. 〞

like the dawn of a new day unbothered by winds racing across the surface below, aerryn allowed vax's outburst to brush past her, and she remained unbothered, her head bowed and eyes closed in silence. after a moment's pause, she reached behind her cuirass and showed him the amber pendant she wore, engraved with the holy symbol of lathander. the morninglord tolerated the undead and the cheaters of death as well as the raven queen, which was to say, not at all.

“i agree with you more than you might believe. i, too, have found a holy mission in this place, vax'ildan. the morninglord would see ketheric thorm struck down just as surely as your mistress, and i intend to see his will be done, and to burn away the rot of undeath with every fragment of power he will lend me. but neither of us will see it done if we're felled by something else before that battle comes to pass. so, let me do my job as a healer, and i will fight at your side to strike him down, once and for all, with all the power of mighty lathander.”

Essek is the most disheveled he's ever been. One silver ear cuff is gone, his hair is askew, his robes dirty from waking up unconscious in the middle of nowhere. But still, he drifts. Feet slightly pointed towards the ground, not quite touching the dirt. Drifts all the way into the wrong side of a conflict with some cultists.

though rhys' face remained stoic and unchanging, one of the other drow's words caught his attention -- we. and yet he saw no one else around but dead cultists and those with whom he was already traveling. he noticed once again that the man did not walk but floated, and he recalled the levitation training that he, his sister, and everyone else he knew had been given as children. interesting.

“you said we and us, but i see only you,” he responded. though the other man did not seem an immediate threat, one could never be too careful. if he was a wizard trained at sorcere, it would not matter what he seemed like; rhys knew how powerful drow wizards were, more than enough to upend the entire power structure on the surface if they had any interest in taking it. but he had already given rhys information, intentional or not: more than one traveler, heading home, disoriented. being so open was dangerous, even on the surface. was he... not aware of that? “as i said, the only road left to baldur's gate is cursed.”

@reigniite asked : 「 LINGER 」 : for senders touch to linger on the receiver.

The half elf rogue somewhat after the longer time passed grown more comfortable around Clare.. which meant he didn't had to keep his guard high around her anymore. Whenever the blight had grown under specific situation, she had asked him to see how further it was progressing and seeing if any different changes had developed on the blight.

the moment the words left his lips, clare's fingers recoiled, her hand pulling away and returning to her side. a momentary slip borne of familiarity and a growing sense of closeness, but she knew that attempting to forge any real bonds here in faerûn would just end in inevitable heartbreak when she eventually returned home - whenever that would be. a cousland always does her duty, and clare's list of duties felt never-ending.

clearing her throat with a touch of awkwardness, she dug through her pack until she found what she was looking for: a little glass bottle filled with a powder, white and red, and a vial of a somewhat viscous liquid that shimmered an eerie, otherwordly sort of blue, like it had once been blood. visible inside were various vials and pouches of liquids and powders in different colors and textures. they were labeled in a language unknown to faerûn.

“lyrium,” she said, and held the vial up for him to see. “the raw essence of magic, a conduit for it, where i'm from -- diluted to a safe level, because the real thing would kill both you and me the moment in touches bare skin. now, i can't do magic, and there are far better alchemists than myself who can... but i can bottle it for a bit of science. this,” she held up the glass bottle, “is the powdered form of a flower, called andraste's grace. it grows mostly in the swamps in the southern part of my country, but you can find it elsewhere on occasion. it's an incredibly hard to obtain and powerful healing herb.”

clare then sat down in front of vax, doing her best to stay focused on her explanation and the ingredients she held in her hands, but the slight flush to her cheeks gave her away. “at the war camp, i met a mercenary leader who explained to me that mixing this flower into an ointment can help -- well, it can help.” the dog hadn't been blighted like she was, not truly; just poisoned by darkspawn blood. but she didn't know if vax's blight was anything like hers at all. would it even work?

she flicked a glance up at his eyes. “unfortunately, my education was in governance, warfare, and politics - not the arcane and healing. but i'm going to do my best anyway. the only way we'll find something that might work is if we try different things and cross out what doesn't. are you ready?”

by the maker, if she could cure him, or even halt the progress of his blight? it would be worth everything.