Chapter Text
The Elf was the first living being Sable saw since they woke up on that godforsaken beach, but he didn’t seem as relieved to see them as they were to see him.
The grove they had ventured into looked as though it may have loved once upon a time. There was evidence of life littering every wall and cracked paving stone. Upon entry through a gate suspended in mid-air they saw travelling carts ransacked of their supplies, and a point at which they imagined trading once occurred, now smeared with blood and stripped bare of anything valuable enough to pass more than a cursory glance towards.
The acrid smell of leftover smoke greeted them as they ventured further into the canopied enclave – gunpowder clung to their nostrils with an oily and saccharine thickness, mingling with the iron stench of spilled blood. Hints of sulphur preceded their first sight of a dead Tiefling draped over a child and beside a bloodied halfling.
The Tiefling didn’t look like a warrior. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out that whoever had attacked this place had done so without prejudice or care for innocence, given the mauled young one, but it still brought a sense of discomfort over the bones of Sable. These bodies didn’t look like they’d fallen in battle. They looked like ragdolls, their faces still trapped in a contortion of horror, their limbs splayed in alien directions at painful angles, bones jutting and skin stretching, like they had been slaughtered by somebody who had undertaken the individual acts of each particular murder with the kind of revelry that made Sable’s stomach turn with dread. Each person – whether they had a broken sword or a decapitated teddy in their hand – had been unmade with a level of disrespect unbefitting of a soldier but perfect for a psychopath.
And there, in amongst all of the limbs and the severed swordhands was the great, hulking Elf, unmarred but trembling.
Instinctively Sable reached for their sword but halfway into the action they changed their mind. This man, though scarred as he was, looked shattered. This was not the culprit of the slaughter that had happened here, and likely not the reason that Sable had seen no other living beings on the road that had brought them to this place, either. Though his limbs were like tree trunks and his torso was as wide as a barrel and sturdy as a slab, he looked as small and as weak as a child in the moments before he noticed Sable, his eyes filled with regretful tears, his shoulders shaking under the weight of all that he had failed to do.
But then he looked up, and there was a moment where Sable saw a flicker of hope in the tearful eyes of the stranger they’d come upon. Perhaps he thought that they were an old friend, or an ally, or an acquaintance who had happened to survive the slaughter that had taken his people – but as soon as it had arrived the expression hardened into a granite rage. He stood with a sudden, overwhelming force, his Shillelagh at his side, and he addressed them with the freezing cold tone of a man who had nothing left to lose. “Get back,” he said.
They held up their hands and shook their head in a gesture they prayed to all the gods would be seen as placating. “I mean you no harm,” they said. “Whatever happened here had nothing to do with me. I swear it. I’m lost. You’re the first person I’ve seen since I arrived here, I understand that we are different and something terrible has happened here, but –”
“Quiet. The innocent facade may work on others, but I am no stranger to your kind. Cruelty comes to you like air in the lung,” he stepped forward and they stepped backwards. “Have you come to gloat, Lolth-spawn? Come to see what ruin your sister has made of the Emerald Grove?”
Sable’s eyes flickered between the bodies on the ground and the druid who had been standing vigil over them. They could have commited to the preconception he had of them – intimidated their way out of this situation by making some comment about how he’d be next if he didn’t see sense and bend the knee, but the thought made them feel ill. This Elf looked like he’d prove difficult to strike the fear of the gods into, and even aside from that, he was in pain, and his convictions were wrong, and though they were indeed a Drow, they were by no means a willing supplicant to the often depraved whims of their people.
“A Drow did this?” They asked, moving around the confrontation with a question they hoped he’d answer. “Which one?”
His eyes narrowed. “Minthara,”
“Of the House of Baenre?” The question was mostly rhetorical, and spoken reflexively as they tried to find a way out of being murdered at the end of this conversation. “I’ve heard of her. Killed her mother, poisoned her lover – but I’ve never met her. I swear to you, I have nothing to do with her. I’m no worshipper of Lolth. Quite the opposite, in fact, I was –”
“Quiet!” He slammed the Shillelagh into the ground, and curiously, when they flinched at the shout his face flickered with something akin to regret. “I do not care for your life story. If you are not here to finish what your kin started then leave.”
They looked at the Elf and his exsanguinated people, then at the exit, lit by the rays of the morning sun Sable had only ever really heard stories about. Leaving was certainly the best option, and the one least likely to get them pierced through the heart with a druidic weapon, but… “I am truly, deeply sorry about what has happened to your people, and though I would love to allow you to mourn in peace, you are the first living entity I’ve happened upon all day,” they said softly. “I don’t know where to go. And… Forgive me for being so forward, but I don’t think that you know where to go either.”
At first he said nothing, which Sable thought was mostly a good thing, as he hadn’t done anything either, and that meant they remained alive, uninjured, and without the berating tones of some overworld Elf in their ears. The stillness that had overtaken the man before them though was the kind of lethargic rot that set in after the greatest of bereavements, and they knew in their heart that it was an ailment never solved by isolation, and they thought that perhaps he was coming to the same conclusion.
“I am Halsin,” he said. “The First Druid of the Emerald Grove…” He waved his hand at the area surrounding them with a false, almost ironic flourish. “And the last.”
“Sable,” they offered in return, stepping forward. “I don’t really have a title. Some Myconids gave me a nickname once upon a time, but they’ll dish those out to any gullible old wanderer capable of doing them a favour.”
Halsin laughed, a singular and one-note noise tinged with bitterness, but a laugh nevertheless. Though he still seemed wary of the Drow before him, and emotionally crushed by the bodies surrounding him, there was a level of guard being released. “We should leave this place,” he said. “Beyond the viscera, I fear they’ll return to loot the bodies come morning, and I don’t know what I’ll do if I look them in the eye.”
“Who were they?” Sable asked. “Who came here?”
Halsin shook his head. “Minthara led a raiding party of Goblins here with a view to slaughter any who stepped in their way. They were looking for an artefact of some description – what, I do not know, but it stands to reason that they were led here,” he shook his head and began to walk, gesturing for Sable to follow him out of the grove’s exit. “I am not certain. I was imprisoned at the Goblin’s camp at the time, but there was talk of new presences in the camp. A Dragonborn and his followers. When I escaped my imprisonment I caught a glimpse of him on the way to one of the chambers, and he looked at me, and he smiled." He shuddered. "It was not a sensation I would be desperate to ever feel again."
Thankfully Halsin seemed to know his way around the area surrounding the Emerald Grove, and he made quick work of leading them into a smaller, closed off area away from the crashed ship and the scattered, mangled bodies and into a clearing that he made quick work of setting up as a campsite. As he pinned tents into the ground, Sable watched and pondered over what he had said. A Dragonborn – a wily memory dashed through their mind, too quick to grasp at. The sound of something squealing with agony, and the sensation of falling into a great abyss, gripped by something terrible, looking into the flat iris of a being they could barely even fathom as it breathed stale, sweet air into their face, and then the sound of an almighty crash, and the terrible, terrible feeling that they were awfully late for something.
The tents were soon set up. Two sitting across from one another, equidistant from the unlit campfire and yet still rather far from each other. Sable blinked the memory out of their eyes and considered Halsin for a moment, who was unpacking his belongings slowly and methodically. He hadn't really looked at them since they'd left the grove together. He'd imparted what little knowledge he had on the Dragonborn and then fallen into the comfortable silence that had been sitting between them ever since, but as they watched his tensed shoulders and his pensive face, Sable was struck by a twisting sensation of doubt.
"I'm not like my kin," they said.
"I'm certain that you believe that," said Halsin a little too quickly. He breathed in, then looked over at them. "I apologise. That was..."
"Unnecessary?" Sable snipped. "I would be inclined to agree with that."
"I have encounters with your people before, and they weren't pleasant," the ghost of a wince passed over his face, as if he had been psychically pained by a distant and old memory.
"Oh, I have no doubt about that," they laughed. "I've had encounters with my people too, Halsin, and I can guarantee you that they were not of the pleasant kind either. I was exiled from Menzobarrenzen decades ago. You don't need to tell me about my people."
Halsin's eyebrows rose. "You were?" He paused. "What did you do?"
They shook their head. "The Lolth-worshippers you would paint with the same brush as myself are not as fluid with the concept of gender as others tend to be," it was a vague and convoluted way to obscure their history, but it seemed to resonate with Halsin just enough to turn his tense expression into one of curious regret. "I was exiled rather soon after I came to the conclusion that my truth was at odds with the beliefs and the teachings of the people I lived amongst."
Halsin nodded slowly. "I see," he said. "For what it's worth, I believe that all things under nature are..."
"Please," Sable said with a tight smile. "I don't need your platitudes. Trust me or don't. It makes no difference to me. But don't assume that I am anything like the other Drow you've met."
"Fine," he conceded, but did not apologise. Good. Sable didn't really think they wanted him to just yet. They had made their point; it was yet to be proven. "We should see if there are any other survivors in the area. It's possible they know something about the Dragonborn that we don't."