The group hobbled in to the cavern (warily, with Dynaheir detecting magic in the lead). Edwin was actually sitting up beside the entry wall of the cavern, which meant dispelling the wards had never been outside of his reach. He looked tired, and though his location was optimal for ambushing interlopers, it was also clear he lacked the strength to hobble back to his previous spot across the cave.
"And the circus returns," he muttered angrily.
Though no one in the party was particularly happy with him, they largely avoided him. Jaheira, Montaron, and Branwen shot him dirty looks. Montaron glanced at Imoen and saw she was managing, so he hurried over to stoke the fire and settle to boiling water. It was going to take a few minutes. Aegis went and settled Garrick down. The paralysis was lasting hilariously long.
Xzar skipped over to his pack and set to digging out supplies, humming merrily to himself. Branwen offered her blanket for Xan to sit down on, and then soaked a cloth in water so he could wipe off his face and arms. Xan took the offered cloth thankfully and the vigorous force with which he rubbed his skin free of grime suggested a much more spiritual need for cleanliness than simply physical. Whatever had happened to him, it was best not asking about,
"Aha!" the necromancer cooed, earning a wary glance from Xan and Branwen. Aegis rubbed her temple with a sigh. Then she blinked in horrified wonder when Xzar actually pulled out a wrapped package and hopped his way over to where the elf enchanter was sitting. He knelt down and unrapped the bundle, revealing it to be of waxed paper and to be filled to bursting with lightly picked collar greens. He offered it wordlessly to the elf.
Oh dear Oghma. He is actually attempting to be nice to someone other than me, Aegis realized. Montaron shot the necromancer an equally baffled expression.
As for the elf, Xan gaped at him for a moment and then looked up to Branwen, who looked equally baffled; and then he looked to Aegis, who shrugged helplessly. "It's not... poisoned if that's what you're wondering," the ranger answered. "It's just cabbage. I don't like like pickled food, though, so I can't exactly vouch for the taste without bias."
"It tastes wonderful! Like me!" Xzar told Xan and patted the elf's hand. "Don't worry about me, either; I'll eat the rest of the liver instead. It won't be good raw for much longer, anyways."
Any sane human being could easily tell they ought to turn Xzar down. And Xan was most definitely sane. Sane, prudent, rational, paranoid, and realistic. So he was a little confused when several minutes later he found himself scarfing down the offered greens with tears in his eyes. Maybe it had just been too long since the last time he'd gotten to eat vegetable matter. Anyway, the pickling had been done recently with nothing more insideous than some red wine vinegar; the food was practically fresh. And it was good.
"Poor elfy," Xzar muttered soothingly, petting the elf's back and earning nearly convulsive twitches and quivers each time he did it. Branwen looked up at Aegis, who was at a loss for what to tell her.
"Um, just keep an eye on them," the ranger suggested. "I have no idea what is going through his head, but it appears to be friendly."
..
Imoen smiled at the conjurer the moment she entered the room; and since his way was also a convenient place for her to stop, she hobbled over and slid to the ground beside him. The Red Wizard sneered, glancing up from his spellbook. "If you say one word to me; if I have to endure a single syllable-!" he warned her.
Imoen winked and closed her lips tightly, holding up her finger in a hush gesture. Then she leaned back into the wall and heaved a mute sigh. She needed to relax after running so far on a bad leg.
Edwin glowered at her, glanced at her bloody trouser leg to see she hadn't been lying, and then turned with a huff to study his spell book.
"Edwin?" Aegis was coming up to them.
"Here comes the queen gorilla, master of dull conversation. What is it now?" the wizard complained.
"I wanted to say thank you, and to apologize you had to hold down the fort alone for awhile. I appreciate we had a camp to come back to."
"Yes, well," Edwin said blithely, "Isn't that cute of you, trying to make everyone feel all valuable and appreciated; pretending things are happy when we're taking jabs at eachother left and right? I'll just have to hide the wards better next time. Hopefully a good fire will prevent your skewed interpretation of events, and your laughable attempts to curry loyalty, from bothering me next time."
Aegis lifted a brow and glanced at Imoen, who shrugged. The ranger realized handling the Thayan was perhaps a task better suited to her sister. Aegis wasn't near clever enough to banter properly with the wizard, and one way or another, Imoen had gotten him to stand down his defenses. It felt like she knew what she was doing. But.
But.
Edwin's words were fighting words, and Aegis realized she had no alternative but to assume the role of an authority figure and hope her sister could handle the fallout. Edwin was getting out of control, and Aegis needed to nip an altercation in the bud.
She stepped up closer to Edwin, crossing her arms over her chest. "Edwin. If kobolds had been pursuing us and we were moving too fast to scan for wards, little man, your spell would have killed us and the kobolds would have charged in unharmed and slain you. This time your bad temper didn't kill anyone. It was tolerable. Almost cute,"
The Thayan had been affecting to ignore her or construct a witty reply, but at those precise words his eyes flit upward and he glared at her as if he might cast a prestidigitation and somehow make it squeeze her heart to pulp within her chest.
"but if you ever do something like this again and get someone hurt? You won't be laughing at the consequences, Edwin."
"You think those insults are acceptable? You don't give me orders," the Red Wizard told her. "Be careful what you say, ranger. (You don't want to push me any farther than I've been pushed this day, I assure you.) You know exactly why I follow you, and my reasons are not yours. Furthermore, it is not my fault if these fools leave me behind while injured and I must construct my own defenses. Have I made myself perfectly clear? Or do you need me to repeat it in baby words and animal grunts so that your minute, insectoid little brain can comprehend?" He shifted to look back to his book as if the argument were done with.
"No. While you are here, you will abide by everything I tell you. Because if you aren't mine, then you're some dangerous, short-tempered outsider. And an assassin who wants to kill one of my party members. Which, Edwin, I am rather sure, makes you fair game for the entire party's aggression."
He tensed, clawed fingers tightening on the edges of his spellbook. "You dare," he hissed. "You dare threaten me? Threaten me with them? Right after I let you freely pass my wards? After I was abandoned by them to whatever fate I constructed? I am fortunate I am more competent than that. But if you dare threaten me again, you will see just exactly how competent I can be."
"I am not threatening you; I am offering you an ultimatum. Either swear to respect my authority while you are with us and to give explicit notice in advance of any aggression if you are leaving; or else when morning comes you are to leave our company and consider yourself at odds with us for as long as Dynaheir is with us."
Clawed fingers tensed.
"You already know my rules, Edwin. You know they are small in number and lax. But I need some better assurances that you are going to follow them." Aegis stepped back. "Tonight I will arrange the watches carefully, and inform the entire party that any word of Draconic you speak is to be treated as a threat. Decide where you belong, Edwin. I don't have patience for any more infighting."
Aegis turned away and moved back to join the rest of the party. Imoen looked over at Edwin and saw that he was quaking with rage. She though of reaching out to touch his arm; then though better of it. Instead she picked up a stone from the cave floor, took a moment to translate the words in her head, and then leaned over to write on the floor in front of them.
When Edwin finally noticed the strange noise and glanced over to see what the insufferable hell-child was doing, he found her to be writing. He was just about to- he wasn't sure: drag himself away? threaten her? strangle her? roast her alive in front of her gods be damned 'sister'?- when he realized she wasn't writing in the Thorass alphabet. Rauric characters spiraled over the ground; an entirely different written system for an entirely different set of languages.
A chill wave of interest blew through his anger, replacing the snarl on his face with a look of surprised curiosity. How had he not foreseen this capability? Of course he could have anticipated this; if he'd let her continue rattling off languages the other day most certainly she would have mentioned Mulhourandi!
"Nna sepi, sehmi sawau pa'a," she had written in his native tongue. {It was my fault.} Though equipped with no more than a stone and incapable of executing the brush flourishes that would have made the sigils attractive, her handwriting remained impeccable. {I was seen while sneaking.}
How? Why learn these languages? What did I miss? He glanced at the violet girl, remembering her bizarre comment of liking to 'look' at a wizard's spellbook without actually being interested in learning. She's a bookworm, he realized with more than a little surprise; as the trait was incongruous with the rest of Imoen's undisciplined and buoyant character. And getting her to steal the necromancer's spellbook may be easier than I realized. As will using her against the witch.
Imoen looked up Edwin, noticing that the rare and fearsome peacock dragon had simmered down a little bit, his ruffled wing feathers settling back as he considered the implications of her writing. Hehe! None shall stand against the warm, golden, buttery goodness of Imoen the Pink! Was that lewd? Oh boy, I sure hope not. Yuck.
{Don not be angry,} she wrote, taking blame for things she obviously could not be blamed for, and in doing so diffusing the Red Wizard's anger through misdirection and contradiction.
When Edwin responded, it was aloud, and it was not in Common. {You wrote in my spellbook,} he muttered angrilly at her. Imoen blinked and leaned over to write. {No! Speak, stupid child! Don't write- that would be insufferably slow! Or did you not develop the verbal skill, library girl?}
Imoen hesitated. {My pronunciation will be bad,} she hazarded one word at a time.
He laughed. {Disgustingly so. But still better than the sound of a barbarian tongue like Thorasta. You wrote in my spellbook. Do you realize what sort of things I am going to do to you in exchange for just that? Never mind the stunts you pulled while we were entombed.}
{I wrote it with-} she fumbled for the correct word, ransacking a memory of dictionaries {-disappearing... ink!} "It'll fade to nothing if you leave it in the air for just a few minutes, or in a few days otherwise, promise!"
{Oh, will it? I am not so sure I trust such an ignorant fool. Your question, for instance: you wrote to ask why I did not use a Sepia Snake Sigil instead of Explosive Runes.}
He forced her back into Mulhourandi by refusing to speak in anything else. {Well the first time I went through your stuff, the book was not warded! You warded it recently and you were specifically trying to catch me, weren't you? You would have-} she struggled with the idiom {-blown me to bits!}
{As I told you I would! (Did I not tell the child? No, I did. In multiplicity, I am certain.)}
{But that is dangerous!} Imoen protested. {What if I had sneaked a peak near you while you were sleeping? Besides, it doesn't make any sense! You are a conjurer. The Sigil is conjuration; The Runes are abjuration!}
{And a Fireball is invocation; do you think any truly competent mage casts only from one school?! Conjuration is the ideal; its counter in divination is the most useless of all schools. Studying it also yields significant boons in the control of outsiders!}
Imoen pouted, her fluency developing rapidly. {You tried to kill me! What would you have done if it worked? Fled? The Sigil would have imprisoned me instantly; I would have been frozen in place for days for you to humiliate and parade around as punishment for my evil thieving ways! No one in the party would have looked twice at you for it! But instead you go to abjuration and try to explode me!?}
{This only serves to demonstrate how unerringly uninformed and illogical you are! I did not specifically try to kill you; I safeguarded my things as any fool harassed by a meddlesome thief and opposed to a dangerous witch should do! Why would I waste time, funds, and energy on making harmless the apprehension of a thief to whom I had already delivered two very specific and lethal warnings about touching my things? A Thayvian whelp would know better without one! For your information, you unfathomably inane brat, the Sigil requires spell components valued in excess of five hundred gold!}
Aegis leaned near Xzar, who was brewing tea. "What language is that?" she asked the necromancer, trusting her counterpart to be better versed in intelligent matters than herself despite his omnipresent madness. Edwin had gotten loud enough to overhear, and he definitely wasn't yelling in Thorasta.
"Mulhourandi," Xzar responded, surprised Aegis was ignorant of her own sister's capabilities.
"Can you understand it?" she queried, and Xzar shook his head.
"Only a little. But I think he likes her," the necromancer added that last in an amused mutter. "Eegee, taste this tea so that the poor elfy will know I didn't put kobold brains in it."
"I have so many new nicknames," Aegis sighed, lifting up the cup and taking a sip. "Xan? Hey. The crazy one wants me to give this to you. I have inspected it, and I would like to reassure you that it only contains harmless quantities of flora. And honey, I think."
The elf looked uncertainly at her a moment. Then he took the cup hesitantly from her fingers and sipped on it. At the initial smell of the vapors he seemed to relax a little. The taste put him at ease. Aegis winked and turned back to Xzar.
"What did you put in there?" she asked quietly.
"Klamath weed*," Xzar answered. "I might have tried nightshade for nerves, but I think elves are immune to its effects. It's hard to remember so many details."
Aegis made a face, realizing she hadn't misinterpreted her necromancer's behavior; he really was being nice. Weird.
Imoen considered what Edwin had just said. The fact that he'd stressed the warnings stood out to her. {Wait,} she said. {So since you couldn't afford the Sigil, you warded the book lethally; but since you knew it would make me go boom you decided to give me a ton of warnings because you thought that would keep me from hurting myself? Instead of just letting me blunder in to it and wiping your hands of the matter? Aww... Edwin! That's very... considerate of you!"
The mage stared at her, a muscle throbbing in his clenched jaw, his eyes as deadly as razorblades. Imoen giggled.
"-I mean, in a totally backwards, egotistical, overbearing, and perverse sort of way?" she amended, needing to use Thorass so she could use the exact words she wanted.
{Whatever you are doing,} the mage spat in a low voice, {it will not work. I have no care or interest in you, neither you nor your wretched looseness. Leave me be.} He turned back to his book.
{Looseness?!} Imoen stared at him, uncertain if she had heard him correctly when she had only rarely ever heard Mulhourandi spoken before. Without her tutors at Candlkeep, she would have no ear for the language at all. But when she was sure she understood him, she cracked up laughing {If you think I'm at all interested in sex with you, you have got another thing coming!}
{You would receive no request for such; though it is well your taste has already proven inexplicable. I shudder to think what should exist betwixt those legs that it should be suitable for the use of an odorous halfling. But as for your disdain? Ha! As if you know what you miss. These virtues have left hundreds of concubines gasping under my erotic onslaught-}
Imoen was laughing so hard that she drowned the Thayvian out. {If you were ever polymorphed by a druid, you would turn into a gigantic, fat... peacock!} she snickered.
{I am reminded of a quote about gratitude involving mustard oozes and urine...} he hissed at her, because he'd opened the wards to let her annoying rear end inside.
{Not everything is about you, Edwin! I am not 'doing' anything to anyone! I am just me! Imoen!}
{I see, I see, so you are simply naturally insufferable!} he snarled viciously.
{Yes. Edwin, don't leave.} Her tone changed. She was deadly serious. He frowned, looking back at his spellbook. {You have never explained why you joined us, but you did not come all this way across Faerun to stalk one unimportant Wychlaran girl on her worldly enlightenment journey. That kind of mission would be beneath your talents.} The Red Wizard stiffened but did not look up from his book. {So whatever you are doing, keep doing it. Keep using us. Whatever it is you need us for. Stay with us.}
Odesseiron looked at her slowly from the corner of his eye, distrustful but curious. Imoen knew she had to continue talking first, now, before he imagined the reason behind her words for himself and ruined the impact. He needed to hear the words from her; not in his own head. But she drew out the moment just a longer than was safe.
Then Imoen smirked, and delivered her big reveal. {Dynaheir knows Invisibility. I did not come to you because she lacked it. I came to you because I needed the best or it would wear off halfway over the bridge. And you, Edwin Odesseiron, are the best. }
The mighty, elusive peacock dragon straightened up a little bit, taking the complements this time with some introspection and grace and significantly more vanity than he deserved. She didn't laugh at him, letting him have his moment of feeling powerful, indispensable, and above all else needed. He took the bait hook, line, and sinker; swallowed it whole for the very first time; and found it surprisingly palatable. {Well, I suppose you chimps at least are making progress when every other band of fools to attempt this venture has ended up painting the mine floors scarlet or servicing a half orc.}
Imoen just smiled, reaffirming his glory. At last! The first grappling hook of friendship had successfully caught hold!
After a moment she looked up as Montaron approached her to re-bandage her leg. He glanced at the wizard irritably and then knelt, pulling back the previous bandages to assess the wound. It needed to be washed out, and he decided he'd apply another healing potion rather than risk an infection by morning. "Yer an idiot, Pink," is all the grumpy halfling said. "Hold still and don't fuss, and maybe I won't have ta hamstring ye in an effort to keep ye put."
..
*Klamath weed is another name for St. John's Wort (I didn't feel comfortable using the name 'St. John's Wort' in a fictional setting XD). St. John's Wort is widely prescribed even to this day as a remedy for depression.