"...But I do."
"We have to go after her!" Damon said, rising after the fae, "they have fae dust, it will give her the power to..." The feline he'd been holding - Jereez, finally managed to get out of his grasp and leapt to the ground, stalking away from him with her tail in the air.
"We don t have time," Ridley argued, stopping the bard, "we have to stop that Empress of yours before a breach occurs."
"Or we could do nothing," Marina suggested unconcernedly, also standing from her previously seated position. Everyone looked as the mage as though she'd suddenly sprouted a second head.
"What?" Ridley asked, stupified.
"I believe a breach has already occurred," Norda confirmed, watching the mage carefully as Marina sniffed and looked around the cave almost boredly.
"That only makes it worse," Ridley replied, partially horrified. Sure, they'd saved Marina from death, but her emotions were slowly being sucked away into the void of the neutral realm, and he couldn't guarantee that it was much better than death.
"The fae dust," Damon reiterated stubbornly, but while everyone looked back sympathetically, each one knew that even if their loyalties had not lain with Ridley, it was his course of action they would have agreed with.
"Fine," the male bard told them through gritted teeth, "I'll go myself," and began to stalk off in the same direction the fae had left deeper into the cave. Oddly, he didn't even take the small black cat with him. Perhaps he automatically assumed it would follow on its own.
"I guess we'll have to go on without him," Ridley said, and was about to continue until Norda interrupted.
"Wait," she said, "let me speak with him." When Ridley nodded in acceptance, she began to thread her way after the bard. She found him not much farther into the system of caves, staring angrily into a pool that had formed inside a large cavern. His own reflection glared back at him.
Norda cleared her throat and sat down next to the bard, crossing her legs rather gracefully considered they were armoured to the knees. It must have been a part of her elvan blood. Damon looked irritated and stirred away his image in the pool.
"I know you care very much for Jereez," Norda told the bard as she relaxed herself. She was about to be sly, and Damon could sense it.
"Foolish imp," he muttered, in some sort of vague effort to guard against it. It was like knowing you were going to lose an argument before it began.
"Let me see if I've understood this correctly," the elf continued, "you held the dragon's eye for several hours, in the belief that no one knew you'd taken it, and yet you still followed us, recognising that at some point, someone would realise it was missing and you would be forced to get it back." Damon looked dumbfounded at the suggestion, but ultimately, it was correct. He could have bolted with the riches, but he hadn't.
"Jereez may not know the importance of that, but I do," Norda told him, "there will be time to help the imp later, but if we do not stop the Empress, and repair the breach in time, there may not be a world to help her back to." Damon sighed and finally turned to look at the elf.
"I've always hated it when an elf is right," he admitted, "and more often than not, they are... We'd better go, we're wasting time." Norda nodded, not taking any offense as none was intended, and accepted a hand up from the bard. They began to make their way back to the main chamber, to rejoin the others and resume their quest.
As they went, a small black cat stepped out from behind a large boulder and blinked its feline eyes lazily.
