Bastian's sudden arrival and his plea for a private conversation hung in the air, thick with unspoken implications. The fire, which Ozin had so casually created, crackled softly, casting long, dancing shadows that made the clearing feel both intimate and conspiratorial.
"Alright," Delores said, her gaze sweeping over her companions. She looked at Barin's tense posture, Rael's worried frown, and felt the low, protective growl rumbling in Ozin's chest. "It's fine. We'll talk." She then turned to Bastian. "But not here. We'll walk."
She gestured towards the edge of the clearing, and the two of them began a slow circuit around the perimeter of their makeshift camp, their footsteps muffled by the thick layer of leaves and pine needles on the forest floor. Barin, Rael, and Ozin remained by the fire, their reluctance to let her go alone palpable. Delores could feel their eyes on her back, Barin and Rael occasionally cutting sideways glances in their direction, while Ozin's intense green gaze never wavered.
Once they were a comfortable distance away, their voices low enough to be just a murmur against the backdrop of the night, Delores stopped. She turned, craning her neck to look up at the tall, slender, blue-haired man, and raised a single, skeptical eyebrow. The height difference was almost comical, but her expression was anything but.
"Okay, Bastian," she began, her tone direct and leaving no room for evasion. "Let's be upfront. Who are you, really? Who is this Valerie you seem so terrified of?"
Bastian let out a long, weary sigh, the sound misting in the cool night air. He ran a hand through his striking cobalt hair, his usual composure seeming to fray at the edges. "To be honest, Baroness," he started, his ice-blue eyes avoiding hers, instead focusing on some distant point in the dark woods, "I don't think there's too much I'm allowed to divulge."
"But you do know who she is," Delores pressed, not letting him off the hook.
Bastian finally met her gaze, and for the first time, Delores saw a flicker of something ancient and deeply weary in his eyes. He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. "I do." He hesitated, choosing his words with immense care. "There are… tasks. Things that she cannot, or will not, attend to personally. Matters in this realm that require a physical hand, a discreet agent to observe, to influence, to arrange things."
Delores's mind flashed back to The Ram, to Grok, to the convenient discovery of the book in the first place. "You mean you work for her?" she asked, her confusion deepening. "You're her agent?"
"Agent? Emissary? Slightly willing friend?" Bastian gave a short, humorless laugh. "The titles are inadequate. Let's just say that long ago, I found myself on the losing end of a disagreement with her. She was… persuasive." The understatement was so profound it sent a chill down Delores's spine. "In exchange for my continued existence, I occasionally perform these tasks for her. I am her eyes and ears in places she cannot be bothered to look herself."
This only confused Delores more. A powerful being who needed a merchant to run her errands? "But if she's so powerful, why can't she take care of things herself? Why does she need you?"
Bastian looked at her then, a strange, almost pitying expression on his sharp features. "Because," he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "Valerie is a prisoner. And the prison she inhabits is partially of her own magnificent, terrible design."
Delores's mind raced. Valerie. A name that invoked fear in a man as composed as Bastian. A powerful being who needed an agent to do her work. A prisoner in a prison of her own design. The mysteries were piling up faster than she could process them. But one piece of the puzzle felt immediate, tangible, something she'd witnessed herself.
"Alright, let's put a pin in Valerie for a moment," Delores said, changing tactics. She crossed her arms, her gaze sharpening as she studied him. "Let's talk about you, Bastian. Your arrival back at our camp, it wasn't normal. You mentioned you ran, but I heard it. A whoosh of displaced air, right before your footsteps. Normal people don't do that."
Bastian's composure, which had been slowly returning, faltered again. He looked genuinely surprised that she had noticed such a subtle detail. He seemed to weigh his options, then let out a sigh of resignation.
"You are perceptive, Baroness. More than most." He turned his gaze towards the canopy of the dark forest, as if searching for the right words. "My true name is Bastithrax. I am of draconic origin." He let the words hang in the air, then looked back down at her. "What you would call a dragon. My kind, we refer to ourselves as the Draconials."
Delores's jaw went slack. Her mind, which had been struggling to keep up, simply stopped. A dragon. The giant, soaring blue creature they had seen from the sky… that was him? She was casually talking to an actual, living dragon. Her earlier feeling of being out of her depth suddenly felt laughably inadequate.
Bastian continued, seeing the shock on her face. "We are an ancient lineage. And an exceedingly rare one now. There are fewer than ten of my kind remaining in this known sphere of existence."
Delores finally found her voice, a small, awed sound. "You're… Ozin called you a cranky old lizard who prefers stories to gold."
A rare, genuine smile touched Bastian's lips. "The flame-leopard is also perceptive. He knows what I am, though we have an unspoken agreement to ignore one another. And he is correct. My hoard is not of gems and coins, but of stories, of histories."
Delores shook her head slowly, a disbelieving laugh escaping her. "Wait until Rael finds out about this," she muttered, a wide grin spreading across her face. "He is going to have so many questions about your biology and how draconic magic works. He might actually pass out from excitement."
She then caught herself, a blush rising to her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm… that's a lot to take in." She paused, then a new connection clicked in her mind, prompted by Bastian's own magical nature. "Alright. Now this might make more sense. I found a rather interesting book back at the bandit camp. Old, high-quality, but completely blank. It has an elaborate, gilded 'V' on the spine." She looked at him intently. "The thing is… it's not blank anymore. I wrote in it, and someone or something wrote back. They signed it 'Val'. It's currently back at Oleg's homestead for safekeeping."
Bastian's brief smile vanished instantly. His face went pale, a stark contrast to his vibrant blue hair. The air around him seemed to grow colder. "A gilded 'V'…" he whispered, his voice suddenly strained. "That could be one of her trinkets. A direct line. You may have been communicating with Valerie."
"So she's a prisoner," Delores pressed, "but she can still communicate through enchanted books and have a dragon run her errands? What kind of prison is this?"
Bastian's ice-blue eyes were filled with a deep, ancient fear. "The most powerful kind, Baroness," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "The kind that holds a being who is a threat not just to kingdoms, but to the world itself. Maybe even the gods."
"A threat to the gods themselves?" Delores repeated, the words feeling heavy and unreal on her tongue. "But she's a prisoner? How does that work? How do you even communicate with her to receive these tasks?"
Bastian gestured vaguely back in the direction from which they'd come. "My lair, my warehouse as I call it. It is not just a massive cave. It is situated in a place of great power, where the veil between the mortal realm and other planes of existence is naturally thin. Her prison… it exists adjacent to that veil." He looked deeply uncomfortable, as if speaking of it was a transgression. "When I am there, within my hoard, she can reach out. Form a mental link. Mostly at her will, not mine," he added with a grimace. "I have little say in when or if she decides to converse. She makes her needs known; information she requires, an object she wishes acquired, an event she wants observed, and I… I fulfill the task. It is the nature of our arrangement."
The picture he painted was of a being with immense power, trapped yet still capable of projecting her will across realms, using a terrified dragon as her reluctant hands in the mortal world. Delores was about to ask another question when a sound from the direction of their camp cut through the night's quiet. It was a small sound, just the snap of a twig under a heavy boot, but in the stillness of the forest, it was as loud as a thunderclap. Delores and Bastian both froze. Delores slowly turned, her eyes scanning their clearing. The fire was still crackling merrily. Ozin was still sitting exactly where she had left him, a silent, fiery statue, his green eyes glowing in the dark. But Barin and Rael were gone. Their bedrolls were empty.
Delores furrowed her brow, cocking her head to the side. Ozin hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound of alarm. The flame leopard simply sat there, staring back at her. Then, his vivid green eyes flicked subtly to a spot in the dark woods just a few feet to the left of their camp, then back to her. A silent, pointed message.
A long, exasperated sigh escaped Delores's lips. Of course.
She turned back towards the indicated spot, a look of profound annoyance on her face. She held out her hand, palm forward. She didn't reach for her focusing stone this time; the connection to Ozin, the warmth still lingering at her side, felt like a much deeper well of power. Tapping into it felt surprisingly natural, almost instinctive. She focused, drawing on that inner flame, and a small, sputtering ball of fire, more flashy than powerful, erupted in her palm. With a flick of her wrist, she sent the weak fireball sailing towards the empty patch of darkness Ozin had indicated.
The fireball hissed through the air. Just before it reached its target, the empty space shimmered violently.
"AAGH!"
With a panicked yelp and a deeper, more surprised grunt, Barin and Rael materialized out of thin air, diving in opposite directions as the fireball sizzled past where their heads had been and harmlessly extinguished itself against a damp tree trunk. Rael's invisibility spell had vanished completely. Barin landed in a heavy, clattering heap of armor, grumbling curses under his breath as he tried to untangle his limbs. Rael, on the other hand, landed more gracefully but was struggling, and failing, to suppress a fit of guilty laughter at their situation.
Delores stood with her hand on her hip, tapping her foot impatiently, the very picture of a disappointed leader. "Eavesdropping, gentlemen?" she asked, her voice dangerously sweet. "Was the conversation that interesting?"
Barin froze mid-scramble, caught red-handed. Rael, for his part, had the decency to look slightly ashamed, though he was still trying not to laugh.
"Well?" Delores asked, her hand still on her hip, an expectant look on her face.
Barin and Rael hesitantly picked themselves up, dusting off leaves and dirt, and trudged towards Delores and Bastian like chastised children. Rael, at least, had the grace to try to look apologetic.
"My sincerest apologies, Baroness," Rael said, bowing his head slightly, though his golden eyes couldn't help but dart overtly curious glances at Bastian. "Your conversation was compelling. My curious nature got the better of me."
Barin, on the other hand, just folded his massive arms and grumbled something that sounded vaguely like "S'rry."
Delores sighed. "I didn't quite catch that, Barin." She reached up on her tiptoes, hooked two fingers around the top of Barin's ear, and gave a sharp tug downwards.
"Ow! Alright, alright!" the half-orc dwarf yelped, leaning down. "I'm sorry! Happy now?"
"Moderately," Delores replied, releasing his ear. The sight of the tiny gnome disciplining the hulking warrior pulled a sudden, genuine chuckle from Bastian. The sound was surprisingly warm, a stark contrast to his earlier tension.
"Remarkable," Bastian said, a hint of amusement in his ice-blue eyes as he looked at Delores. "You remind me of her, you know. Valerie. That same… unflinching authority." He paused, his smile fading slightly. "Minus the terrifying, soul-crushing well of oppressive power she constantly emanates, of course. A significant improvement, in my opinion."
Delores found that detail both interesting and deeply unsettling. Rolling her eyes at her companions' antics, she gestured between them. "Bastian, these are my wayward eavesdroppers. The apologetic one is Rael D'Gar, our cleric and magical scholar. The one with the sore ear is Barin Strongsunder, our guardsman from the Citadel." She then glanced back towards the fire. "And the one currently pretending to be a log," she called out, "is, as you know, Ozin."
In response, the campfire flared slightly brighter for a moment, and two vivid green eyes opened within the flames, regarding them with feline indifference before vanishing back into the blaze. Ozin was clearly not interested in socializing.
Bastian nodded politely. "A pleasure to meet you both properly." He extended a slender hand first to Rael, who shook it with a mix of reverence and curiosity. Then he turned to Barin. As Bastian took Barin's large, gauntleted hand to shake it, he paused. His ice-blue eyes narrowed, his focus shifting to Barin's chest, where the top edge of the dark plate was just visible poking out from beneath the straps of his breastplate.
"By the First Draconial Breath" Bastian whispered, his polite demeanor forgotten. He gently released Barin's hand and, with a scholar's intensity, reached out and lightly tapped the exposed edge of the plate. "This material… I haven't seen this in over three hundred years."
He looked up, his gaze sharp and confused as he stared at Barin. "This is Star-Forged Obsidian. A relic of a lost time. Where in the nine hells did a guardsman from the Citadel get a piece of it?"
Barin shrugged, completely unfazed by the revelation. "Been in my family forever, I guess. It's supposed to have my name and my folks' names on it. At least, that's what I was always told."
Bastian's eyes were wide with a mixture of disbelief and fascination. "Your family name is carved into this relic?"
Delores, seeing Barin's blank look, stood up on her toes again and cupped a hand to Bastian's ear. She whispered, not so quietly, "He can't actually read it."
Barin grunted in annoyance at being called out, but didn't deny it. Bastian stared from the ancient artifact to the illiterate half-orc dwarf wearing it, and then to the gnome baroness who led him, and a slow, profound understanding dawned on his draconic features. The story he had stumbled into was far more complex and interesting than he could have possibly imagined.
Barin shifted uncomfortably under Bastian's intensely curious gaze, clearly eager to change the subject from his ancient, unreadable dog tag. "So," he grunted, crossing his massive arms. "What's the real reason ye came trackin' us down in the dark, dragon? Don't seem the type to take a casual stroll through bandit-infested woods."
Bastian's attention finally broke from the plate, and he straightened up, his professional demeanor returning, though it was now colored by a newfound respect for the strange group before him. "A fair question, Master Strongsunder," he admitted. "When I heard the commotion from The Ram's camp and my senses detected the sudden, potent flare of unfamiliar magic," he glanced at Delores, "I was concerned. I needed to ascertain whether this was an act sanctioned by Valerie, or if you were an independent party. I have a vested interest in not stepping on her toes. Or having my hide tanned for interfering with one of her plans," he added with a humorless shudder.
"And now that you know?" Delores asked.
"Now I know the situation is far more complicated, and that you are not her direct agents," Bastian replied. "Which means my part in this immediate affair is concluded. My advice is to watch yourselves around The Ram. He acts rashly, especially when his pride is wounded, and he holds a grudge like a drowning man holds a rock. Your escape will not be forgotten." He took a step back, preparing to depart. "I must return to my… warehouse. There are stories that need cataloging."
Delores offered him a genuine smile. "Thank you, Bastian. For the warning, and for… the clarification." The dragon in disguise had certainly clarified a great deal. "I hope we see you again in the future. And if you ever tire of your dusty cave, you're always welcome at Oleg's homestead. He makes an excellent stew."
Bastian paused at the edge of the firelight, a thoughtful, almost wistful expression on his sharp features. "That time may come sooner than any of us expect, Baroness." He gave them a final, enigmatic look. "The world is growing louder. Old things are stirring. Stories like yours… they tend to attract attention."
With that, he turned and began to walk away into the darkness. He took three steps, then four, and then his human form seemed to… unravel. His slender frame expanded with an audible rush of air and the crackle of immense, transformative energy. Elegant blue clothes dissolved into shimmering, sapphire-blue scales the size of shields. Arms elongated into powerful legs, a serpentine neck stretched towards the night sky, and massive, leathery wings unfurled with a sound like a ship's sail catching a hurricane.
Delores, Barin, and Rael stumbled back, speechless, as the nine-foot-tall merchant was replaced by a colossal, ancient blue dragon, its sheer size blotting out the stars. The power rolling off him was immense, a static charge that made the air hum and the fire in their camp cower.
The dragon, Bastithrax, turned his massive head, his now-huge, ice-blue eyes, glowing with inner light, fixing on Delores for a final moment. He gave a slow, deliberate nod. Then, with a single, impossibly powerful downbeat of his wings, he launched himself into the sky.
The resulting blast of wind was like a physical blow. It tore through their clearing, nearly extinguishing their fire and sending embers, leaves, and dirt flying everywhere. Delores was knocked completely off her feet, landing in a heap with a surprised yelp. Barin braced himself, digging his armored boots into the earth, while Rael was thrown back against a tree, his robes whipping wildly around him.
They watched in stunned silence as the magnificent, terrifying creature climbed into the night sky, its massive form quickly becoming a silhouette against the moon before disappearing from sight.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Barin was the first to break the silence, letting out a low, shaky whistle as he helped Delores to her feet.
"Well," the half-orc dwarf breathed, staring up at the empty sky. "That's… one hell of a merchant."