[i]good[/i] [b][i]/ɡʊd/[/i][/b] [i]adjective[/i] 1. to be desired or approved of. [i]"it's good that he's back to his old self"[/i] 2. having the required qualities; of a high standard. [i]"a good restaurant"[/i] “Again.” My fingers tighten on the hilt of the greatsword. Everything is numb and cold and exhausting. I can’t even lift it off of the ground anymore, steel scraping away the top layer of wood across the training hall’s paneling. I take a breath. [i]‘Focus, Khruzat,’[/i] my mind whispers. I don’t think of the ache or the chill or the fear snaked around my spine. I consider the balance of my weapon, unwieldy but well-crafted. She’d bought it from someone, a dragonborn blacksmith deep within the heart of the city. She’d rather be caught dead than buy from an [i]inazivaleiz.[/i] I think of the muscles that are pulsing with pain beneath my scales. The bicep, possibly even the flexor carpi radialis and/or ulnaris. I dunno, maybe those weren’t the ones affected by lifting stuff. Something in my forearms. Not like I ever got an official lesson on which ones to use. Man, I want to read those medical records again. Whatever. Whatever! I shouldn’t be thinking about that. I just need to lift. Sword up, sword swing, dummy is hit and I can go to sleep. That sounds nice. Maybe if my body was cooperating, I could even do it! It shouldn’t be hard. Just lift, Khru. Lift. Lift. [i]Lift.[/i] “You’re stalling.” Her voice echoes in my very soul, claws drumming against my poor little heart like a threat. Shit. I flinched. Don’t cry Khru, you’ll just get a bigger, worser punishment. That’s not right. Just worse. Maybe even [i]the[/i] worst. But I can't be thinking in superlatives yet. That’s defeatist. A coward waves his flag before the battle’s over, that’s what she always says. Fuck. It’s not going up. I’m not stalling, I promise, I [i]swear![/i] It’s just the stupid sword and my stupid brain and my stupid flexor carpi whatever. I’m trying ma’am, I swear, just give me time, I just need t— “Khruzat.” “I’m trying, [i]fuck!”[/i] Oh. Oh, no. That was the wrong thing to say. No, no no don’t come over here please I’m sorry I didn’t mean it I was just don’t d0nt DOnT PLEASE— [center]—[/center] I wake with a start. The first thing I notice is the distinct lack of a fire and the cold seeping into my bones. With a grumble, I throw off my blanket and stand, rolling my shoulders until I hear that [i]crack[/i] as I walk towards the mantle. “Stupid fuckin’ wind,” I grumble under my breath. I reach for a fresh piece of wood and throw it into the ashes, not even bothering to shield my eyes from the resulting ash cloud. Instead I purse my lips and blow, lightning crackling towards the wood in bright blue sparks and kick-starting another fire to replace my old one. I grin. “There we go.” It always felt good to use my breath weapon, like I was exercising my draconic might: the one I’d earned at birth. No matter what anyone said, they couldn’t take this away from me, nor could they twist this into something [i]wrong[/i] about me. Every dragonborn has one, even ‘weaklings’ like me. My face falls when I lift off the floor. Ugh. Weakling. She always liked to say that. I yawn, pulling out my chair from my desk and all but falling into it. Damn, when was the last time I thought about her? Scratch that, when was the last time I had a night terror about her? The worst person I’d ever known yet I couldn’t erase her awful lessons outta my head. Ah well, at least they made me tougher. I hook my legs around the chair’s, laying my head atop my table. It was weird, though, thinking about her again. Yeah, the memories usually come back when I fall asleep cold or pissy or melancholic for whatever reason, but they’ve been rare, at least recently. Maybe I’d just gotten too used to getting a good night’s sleep, letting my guard down and all that. That, or I haven’t been getting pissy or melancholic or cold. Huh. I haven’t been getting pissy or melancholic or cold. The cold I understood. I always kept a fire running before I went to sleep, even ensuring it’ll run until I wake up. Yeah, some members complain that keeping a fire running all night looks suspicious as hell, but I worked hard to get where I am today! I deserve to break the rules a little. The fire going out tonight was a weird coincidence, but that by itself doesn’t trigger a bad night’s sleep. I’ve had that happen before and the only result was me being a little less even-tempered in the morning. That left my mood to be the culprit. I squinted at the books precariously stacked on my desk. Have I been feeling shittier than usual? But why would I be? I’ve been working hard, going on a lotta missions, talking to— Oh. Yeah. I haven’t visited the DeLegumes in a while. Annoyance reaches me before anything else. Goddamnit, since when did visiting that big dumb mansion start making me feel good about– [i]stuff?[/i] Just because I got to see Greenbean and Fran and White sometimes doesn’t mean I liked visiting their tacky-ass house. If anything, the house was the worst part. Being hounded by the stares of their millions of servants, all looking at me like I’m an exhibit. Keep walking lady, I’m a dragon, get used to it. I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. My initial aggravation melts, slightly, as my claws tap out a consistent rhythm. [i]“Why haven’t you left the cult yet?”[/i] The question simmered hot in the back of my brain. Such a simple inquiry, yet one that’d nonetheless caused me to blow up on him the first time he asked; the same that caused me to bolt from his home the second time around, tail between my legs. It’d been weeks since the aforementioned ‘fleeing’ incident and I couldn’t help but return to it. Why had I run when he’d asked me again? Why hadn’t I just screamed at him like the first time? It wasn’t as though I was scared of starting another fight. Even if the last one had been a bitter affair, it’d at least stopped him from pestering me about it for a while. Isn’t that what I wanted? To be left alone? My hand tenses subconsciously and I scratch another mark into the wood of my desk, accompanied by countless others. Of course I can’t leave the cult. I’ve worked too hard to get here, right? Years off of my comparatively short life, dedicated to tearing my way to the top. I’ve run missions, I’ve survived constant danger, I’ve made myself the perfect soldier. Strong. Indispensable. A monster. Just like she always wanted. I scratch another mark. It feels like I’m scraping it against my ribcage. “Why do you care anyways?” I mumble. “Your cult got you killed.” [i]‘Maybe that’s the point,’[/i] my thoughts mutter back, a low thrum compared to the usual wild energy. [i]‘His cult got him killed. Yours—’[/i] “I know what I signed up for,” I snarl in response. “Unlike you. Unlike her. I wanted to be a monster, well now I fucking am one. I’ve proven it to you, I’ve proven it to Holo, I’ve proven it to everyone except the people it mattered to the most and now I’m here.” [i]‘He still cares.’[/i] My fist slams against oak. The pain radiates up my arm. “Well maybe he [i]shouldn’t.”[/i] My voice strains against the urge to scream. Shame hurts, yanks at my heart, and it hisses that I can’t be found out. “I don’t need people to mourn me when I die, I need to fight, I need to kill those fuckers, I need to–” The dam breaks, far, far too delicate now that I’ve spent so long away from the only people I’ve wanted to put effort into caring about. I’m crying and fuck, [i]fuck[/i] it hurts when I don’t have anyone to share it with. I want to rip someone’s throat out, thrash and scream and [i]burn[/i] everything away, all these worthless pains and aches and guilt. Holo and Franie and Bean, they’re good because they try; every day they [i]try[/i] to be good, whether they started when they were born or after they died or maybe they don’t even realize they’re trying. They deserve to live, to carry on free of expectations, to find the people they’ve lost. I don’t deserve anything, not like them, because I’m not a good person. A good person wouldn’t give up on being good. I’ll die a monster, surrounded by death and cold, just like I deserve. Just like my mentor will, just like Jargon will, just like every single person in that damnable clan will. I resigned myself to my fate years ago, when the cold froze me over and the cult thawed me out. No kid is gonna make it out of the Qyxparhgh clan again. No one like [i]me[/i] is gonna be made again. “I’ll make sure of it.” A timid knock at my door pulls me out of my thoughts. “Mr. Khruzat?” A shaky voice calls out from the other side. “Your presence is r– requested.”

[justify][i]He’s not dead.[/i] The words echo in my head. With it, memories rush back to me. Memories of a woman handing me a letter, of a girl telling me her name, of another person sharing her despair with me. Franie, she told me to call her. Because even though her name was Francis and even though he called her Flower, she was still letting me call her Franie. Maybe because she considered me close enough to a friend. Maybe because we’d both been hurt by his death. [i]He’s not dead.[/i] I’m hunched over a spellbook’s page, silently cursing out a man who can’t hear me. The idiot, the traitor, the bastard had the gall to up and die and leave me with nothing more than his shitty, useless book and its shitty, useless leaves that made some shitty, stupid leaf juice when it was steeped in water for a while. Or maybe it tastes nice. I don’t know. I take a mental note to try and make my own tea if I ever finish this project. A vice tightens around my lungs. He won’t be there when I take my first sip. [i]He’s not dead.[/i] I’m crouched in the guts of a half-mechanized, half-organic giant. Its metal wiring scrapes against my scales where I’ve brushed against it, necrotic energy emanating from its core and slowly withering me away, yet I continue to yank at whatever I can in hopes of revealing more. In hopes of finding something. ‘He’s not here,’ my thoughts berate me. I know it’s true. I know he’s not. I continue to search anyways. [i]He’s alive.[/i] A smile worms its way onto my face. My head feels light. Later, I’m glad Bean wasn’t there to see it. Being happy he’s alive. Embarrassing, really. [center]—[/center] [i]Missed you.[/i] He missed us. He missed [i]me.[/i] He was… Something in my chest has gone warm and fuzzy and distantly, I recall a southerner saying about hearts. It was dumb, since you felt things in your brain and not your heart (hearts are just organs that pump blood, after all) but it feels strangely accurate in this current moment. A shoulder bumps against mine as someone pushes past me into the tavern, and with a jolt I realize I’d just taken out the second Sending scroll. The one I’d dedicated for emergencies, and the one I’d said should only be used to gather more information. Not to send a four word message. Not to waste on stupid sentimentalities. With a punishing bite of my tongue, I shove the scroll back into my pocket. Idiot. He’d better have meant that. [center]—[/center] A single door. One door is all that stands between me and that stupid green idiot. Without thinking, I place my hand against the blockade keeping me from passing through. [i]‘It’s just one explosion and an alarm,’[/i] I think. [i]‘That’s not bad. I’ve gone through worse.’[/i] A single door. [i]‘Dispel magic on the arcane lock and I can get through.’[/i] That’s all it’ll take. [i]‘I’ll have an extra to deal with any other precautionary locks.’[/i] I just need to cast the spell. [i]‘And I can finally tell him I’m sorry.’[/i] The admittance of wrongdoing on my part, or as close as [i]I[/i] can get to it at least, snaps me from my contemplative stupor. The cold, cynical, self-serving voice that’s usually always there to stop me from thinking about shit like this wakes up, slipping quickly into its assigned role of Logic. [i]‘Of course it wouldn’t be that easy,’[/i] it growls. [i]‘And it’s not like Green is worth getting a face full of fire for. You should just go back to Holo and tell her about the door. You don’t need to rush this.’[/i] I’m right, because I’m always right, but the sense behind my own words feels vague and distant. There’s still that tug towards the door, a quiet whisper telling me to just do it, and my fingers are numb against the dark steel. I walk away from the door nevertheless. Not yet is better than never, and the space where my heart should be is sated by that reassurance. [center]—[/center] The climb down to the meeting hall feels like it's both too long and too short simultaneously. Words are exchanged between Holo and our guide, the door opens with a heavy creak, but it all passes by me in a blur. Because I’m still at that door. I’m still looking at the dark, almost black metal, the darkness swallowing my claws where I’ve laid them against steel. Just one door. He was up there. He [i]is[/i] up there. It was one thing to know his location and it was another to hear his voice but he is [i]there.[/i] He’s locked in an invisible tower and he cared enough to miss us and he’s probably worried about his sister and Franie’s going to be [i]furious[/i] when she finds out I didn’t bring her and I still have to apologize for treating him like shit and I have to tell him I respect him as an equal and My thoughts stumble over each other, each scrambling to be the frontrunner in my mind. I haven’t been this panicked since I was a child, rushing to do the right thing and say the best words to keep my mentor from being disappointed. Since then, I’ve always had that same cold voice sorting things through for me, organizing my feelings and pushing down whatever wasn’t useful with the same efficiency she always had. I’d never had a chance to dwell on something because she never let me, [i]I[/i] never let me, because to dwell was to be still and if I wanted to achieve my goals I always had to move, [i]keep moving[/i] Khruzat, and if I ever stopped completely then I’d be as good as dead. But Bean isn’t dead. He’s here. He’s alive. “And what do you want?” “Bean.” The words leave my mouth before my better sense of judgment can stop me. It takes every muscle in my face to stop myself from cringing. Well. I guess this is the plan now. [center]—[/center] The moment I see him walk into the room, everything stops. My senses dull as I watch him rush through the chaos of the church and duck behind a pew, throwing out a spell before disappearing. He’s taller, I’ll realize later. Taller, with metal where skin should be and an echo where there should be a soul and a second voice where there should only be one. But none of that matters, because he’s here. I turn my back to the enemy. [i]He’s here.[/i] A gust of wind brushes my cheek as a fist flies past me. [i]He’s here.[/i] The air is heavy underground, but I feel as light as a feather. [i]He’s here.[/i] It makes jumping over the pew easy. [i]He’s alive.[/i] As I crash into his chest, I wrap my arms around him with tears streaming down my face and begin to babble everything I should’ve said to him before I thought he was dead. [center]—[/center] It’s weird having people to talk to outside of the cult. A few weeks after the rescue mission, Holo and I managed to safely return Bean to his sister. She’d been overjoyed, obviously, though not after a fit of screaming that I can still feel ringing in my ears. Holo left the cult after saving Bean. I think talking to that touchy guy underground made her realize something, and she made herself scarce around Ankhapur. I got a few questions about her disappearance, at first, but my flippant explanation of ‘I dunno’ eventually got on their nerves enough for them to stop asking. We might not have always gotten along, but I at least owed her that much. I still drop by the DeLegume place. Franie’s refusing to let Bean leave the house, insisting that he recuperate from his ‘possibly-death’ experience. While I’d usually judge her actions as being annoying, overbearing and unnecessary, for some reason I find myself agreeing with her. Bean’s out of the cult game too, of course. Even if he did want to get back in, neither Franie nor I were going to let him do something as monumentally stupid as going back to the thing that got him maybe-killed in the first place. I see Holo around too sometimes. Her and Franie get along a lot better than I did with either of them, and I think Holo just likes talking with someone who’s young and spirited. Maybe it reminds her of her ‘daughter.’ I dunno. I always ask her how she’s doing too, when I see her. I don’t make it a habit to be curious about other people’s lives, but I think I broke that seal when I brought Bean’s spellbook to Franie. Whenever I ask, Holo gets this weird look on her face. A mixture of something lost and something tired, locked behind eyes that have experienced far too much. “Still looking,” she’d say. “You’ll find her,” I’d reply. The words come easily, because I know they’re true. I talk to Bean a lot more though. Something something, realizing that at any moment either one of us could die and so if I really wanted to get to know him I should do it now, something something. Our conversations are still snappy and biting, but I find myself enjoying his jabs more knowing there’s intent behind them. The first time I tried tea, I learned I did not like tea. It was far too bitter for my tastebuds, making me splutter and cough as the liquid forced itself down my throat. Bean had laughed at that, almost spilling his cup as he bent over in his chair and clutched his stomach, but the servant who'd been made to clean up my mess had found less humor in it. Eventually, we discovered that I did like tea as long as it was paired with honey and sugar. I learned I had a preference for peach tea, and that I liked it cold over hot. It’d been a rough time trying out different teas during the search for something I could stomach, but it made it worth it when I saw Bean’s face light up and my empty teacup. After a while, I remember I hadn’t actually ever asked him to be my friend. I’d just sort of invited myself into his house and started talking with him. I wasn’t really sure how friends worked, since the closest I ever got was being someone’s ally, but surely it wasn’t as easy as just spending time with them. So, the only logical conclusion was that you had to ask. That made sense, seeing as that’s how all other relationships were officiated. (Partners. Party members. Contracting mercenaries.) The problem came with asking. Whenever I try to bring it up casually, something would wind itself around my neck and tighten [i]riiiight[/i] as I’m about to get the word ‘friend’ out. It’s annoying. Annoying, and weird. I never get nervous. Frankly, I resent the idea that I could ever get nervous. But I know this feeling is nervousness (because I realized a while ago that maybe, possibly, I needed to get better at sorting through my feelings) and it’s infuriating. I shouldn’t be nervous, because being nervous implies that I cared about what that stupid metal loser thought of me and I don’t… … alright, so maybe I do care about what he thinks of me. Just a little. It’s just that— I’d never had someone to talk to like him before. Whatever relationships I’d forged with people were always either antagonistic or purely for my own benefit. I didn’t care about what other people thought of me, because caring took time and patience and I only had time to focus on one goal for my entire life. I only cared about my standing with others when it was important. When it affected me. Caring about people for their sake was ridiculous. It was stupid. Useless. But that trick had to fail eventually. Of course it would fail when it came to him. So I can’t explain my trepidation away. Big deal. I’ll just let it pass then, like I did every other time I was feeling down or melancholy. That doesn’t work either though, and this time I know exactly why. I don’t like letting things lie, and one of my best traits is that when I want to do something, I do it immediately. But this anxiety comes into direct conflict with that bluntness, and it’s left me with an itch to do something but with a complete inability to do it. It’s annoying and it’s contradictory and I fucking [i]hate it.[/i] This internal struggle all comes to a head one day when I finally decide I’m going to do it, courteously or not. On a sunny day, when the light is shining on Bean and his sister chatting in the hallway, the birds chirp in tandem with the screaming voices clamoring in my head. Through sheer stubbornness alone I shove them all down, thoughts trained solely on the back of Bean’s head, the feeling of too-plush carpet on my feet as I stomp towards him and the brush of his shirtsleeve against my fingers. “Beansprout DeLegume,” I announce. “I would like to be your friend.” Bark brown eyes widen. My voice had cracked at the end. I feel like dying.[/justify]

I don't know when exactly I started storing other people's spellbooks in my library. A lot of them contain spells I've never taken a second glance at, let alone considered adding to my own. There are even a few I can’t read. Yet I still find myself flipping through their pages occasionally, setting up a fire in my room and just letting their bindings remind me of people that've passed in my presence. What started as a passing whim had worked itself up to a tradition. I run my fingers over their spines sometimes, letting my own scratchy Draconic handwriting stare back at me from the tags I’ve attached to them. It's soothing, in a way, knowing that I still know the names of the people I’ve worked with. I don’t always remember who they were as people, but it’s… nice to know I can at least remember their names. I dunno. Bean’s was one I found myself coming back to relatively often, even weeks after the demigod battle. I hadn’t even recognized it as his at first. It was a simple, leatherbound copy, a far cry from its formally dressed writer. On its spine is a piece of parchment I tore from my own spellbook and stuck on. His name is one of the few I’ve taken extra care to look nice. I’m not sure why. When I first opened it, I couldn’t even read it. It pissed me off at first, thinking ‘the bastard found a way to make my life inconvenient even in the afterlife.’ The snort from my snout turned into a laugh. It’d echoed around my room back to me. Something funny wedged itself in my chest. It took me a few days to learn how to read his handwriting, a skill I found no pleasure in improving. As I deciphered his horrible Common, I sometimes found myself rubbing the pages of his book. It was made from something high-quality, a softness I hadn’t seen from other wizard’s spellbooks before. It was an elegant sort of extravagance. Eventually, I learned that the notes and the strange little leaves in his book were actually tea herbs. However, some of the pages were missing herbs, or some of the herbs had gotten bent with my (admittedly) somewhat rough handling of his book. I’d frowned at that. Thus began my journey to find replacements. Some were exorbitantly priced, speaking to the green idiot’s affluence, but I doled out the cash anyway. At least those were easier to get than the ones that were so rare I had to go hunting for them myself. Those were many weeks spent [s]interrogating[/s] politely asking tea experts some questions and getting my ass handed to me by nature. At one point, I asked myself why I was going through the trouble. It was while I was handling some glue as I tried to attach one of the more delicate herbs to the book. My claws were unpleasantly sticky and the leaf refused to stay stuck to the smooth, fancy parchment. I’d almost thrown it into the fire (late nights were common during this project and nights were cold), but something had stopped me. I didn’t know why. I don’t know why. I just felt like it, I guess. It was also during this project that I noticed the back of the front cover. In my (admittedly) blasé skimming, I’d completely missed it. On it was a picture. It was a simple portrait of two people. Bean was beaming (hah) alongside the woman with him. It looked pretty stupid with his tusks. Honestly, that picture haunted me for a while. Whenever I opened the spellbook in my self-imposed nightmare quest to find a bunch of stupid, shitty leaves, I’d pause on that picture. I’d just stare at them, the pair of people who I barely knew, yet they still managed to evoke a weird little twinge in my chest. He looked really happy. So did she. I wondered who she was, like an idiot. I get that thought again, standing in front of a giant house on a porch I have no business being on, shielding a spellbook that doesn’t even belong to me, waiting in the rain for a stranger. Why am I doing this? How does this benefit me? I had to go through a lot of trouble collecting information about Beansprout DeLegume, stalking Right Hand members and high-society assholes. All this trouble for what? A tea-drinking doofus who had the gall to betray [s]our team[/s] the cult? It’s dumb. I’m dumb. This whole thing is just a waste of The door opens to a frazzled looking servant. I grit my teeth and affix my best impersonation of a polite smile. “Does Franie DeLegume live here?”