#caedogeist

Here's how Essek champion of the Luxon can still win

Is it Thursday yet? Hunter Bonyun, Jourrael, the Caedogeist (with detail). In Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn (Darrington Press, January 18, 2022).

critical role + guest HDYWTDT

bonus: Matt

she wakes to the sound of wheezing, carefully kept quiet but not fully silenced. in the dim light of the inn, she can see a huddled shape and turns towards it, moving faster as she sees, faintly, the red hair, the pooled cloak.

the inevitable end, the caedogeist, jourrael, moves one hand from where it clutches at her stomach to grasp the hilt of one of her daggers.

“don’t,” she snarls, and pushes herself back against the wall in the dark. “don’t come any closer, angel.”

she freezes in place, halfway risen from the bed, and just listens to jourrael’s ragged breathing. she knows— has seen— how fast those daggers can leave their sheathes. she thinks of the non-frumpkin cats she’s seen, how their ears flatten and they make that funny hissing sound when something moves towards their face, and so she just waits.

“i just need a minute,” jourrael says. “to recover. you’re the only person i can find now.”

“jourrael—“

“don’t call me that. i haven’t been that in a long time.”

“you’re not the caedogeist either, though, are you? an assassin without a mark. without a master.” it feels cruel, spilling from her mouth, but she suspects jourrael would be suspicious of anything kinder.

“what do you care?”

she sighs.

(“mollymauk?”

“hmm?”

he’s like a liquid, she thinks, just lets himself fall backward softly so he can look at her upside-down, cards held to his chest.

“why did you help me?”

he blinks.

“when you found me near felderwin. why did you help me?”

mollymauk smiles, then, pushes off with a foot (and a muffled protest from further up in the wagon) so his head lands in her lap and he’s gazing up at her with those red eyes.

“you looked like me.”)

“you’re like me,” she says. “obann, he didn’t just take people who couldn’t die.”

“no?”

“no,” and she feels the truth of it in her bones. “he took people who he thought had nothing else.”

“yeah, well,” jourrael wheezes. “maybe he was wrong about you, but he picked the rest of us just fine.”

“but you don’t need to have nothing.”

jourrael laughs.

“it’s not that easy. you can’t make something out of nothing.”

“no,” yasha says. “but you don’t have nothing. i’m offering you help. that’s not nothing. you can choose to take it.”

she moves, then, breaks the spell and cups her hands together until they start to glow. she crawls to the edge of the bed— in the faint light, jourrael looks small, curled against the wall. a dark stain spreads from her on the floor, like a horrible flower.

she looks frail. she looks afraid. she looks like all of them.

“jourrael,” she says again. “i can help you. you can choose something.”

jourrael doesn’t crawl away when she walks over and kneels down. she flinches when yasha presses her hands over where jourrael’s lay flat and sticky against her stomach, but doesn’t pull away, and it is choice enough for now.

(“i’m sorry,” she says. “for everything.”

jourrael turns away with a huff. “you didn’t do anything.”

“no,” she says, feeling more than seeing the wound close. she’s almost tapped, she knows. this will need a better healer, or rest, and jourrael won’t wait for either. “but he never said it. you deserve to at least hear it from someone.”

”i don’t need it. i don’t need anything.”

“no?” she parrots, the glow of her hands for emphasis.

“you offered. i could leave right now, angel.”

“yasha. and maybe you could, but this isn’t going to close on its own. you’ll be back, in a few hours, days if you’re lucky, or you’ll be dead.”

“i can’t die,” and jourrael laughs this thin, awful laugh. “that’s the whole point.”

“you can be split, though. and you can hurt. and you don’t need to do either.”

jourrael laughs again. “when you’ve been alive as long as i have, hurting is the only way you really know you can still feel.”