Back in the infirmary at the Academy of Shapers and Binders, Adahni held her breath as she smashed the orb against the side of the cot that her lover lay on, much as she had done with Ammon Jerro. The light, green instead of orange, crept up his face, where it dissipated into his head. His eyes flew open and he sat up, sucking in air.
"Gods damn it all!" he exclaimed. His eyes darted this way and that, and he flailed out wildly with both hands, but after moment, focused on her. His breathing slowed. He reached out for her hand, and she grasped his, feeling the racing pulse beneath his wrist calm for a moment. "You did it," he finally said, "You actually fucking did it."
"I suspect we've got a few years before we die again," she replied, "If we're lucky." She handed him a water flask and he drank the whole thing. He tossed it aside and drew her close. She felt a knot inside her that had been tied tighter and tighter every day that she had walked this strange land alone, loosen.
"Tell me there's an inn nearby. Something with food."
"I suspect that can be arranged."
"Maybe it's time to hang up my bow," he sighed, letting her go, standing slowly and testing his limbs, "That was closer than I've been in years… and closer than I care to be."
She helped him limp from the infirmary, back up to the Sanctum, where her companions were waiting, passing around a bottle of clear Rashemi liquor.
"It's done?" Safiya asked.
"It's done."
"And the tomes?" Adahni asked.
"In my vault. For when you're ready," Safiya replied.
"So I hear congratulations are in order!" the bear god rumbled, looking at Adahni and then at Bishop, "Hm. I thought you'd be taller."
"Congratulations? For besting the God of the Dead? I should say so," said Addie, making eye contact with Okku and slyly drawing one finger across her throat. She'd thought on how to have that other, very important, conversation, but certainly not somewhere in the middle of a red wizard lair.
"Wait," Safiya said, putting down the bottle, "Someone is coming. Sh."
"I don't like the sound of that," murmured Gann, though he did not take his eyes off of Bishop.
As the six of them fell silent, Adahni indeed heard great clopping footsteps echoing through the halls outside, and a voice, male and very deep, though far away enough she could not make out what he was saying.
"Who is it?" she whispered, "What's he saying."
"He's not saying anything," Okku said, "I think he's singing."
I drink to him and he drinks to me, and she drinks to you and you drink to her, and if you will not drink with me, I beat you with two sticks!
"Not one I know," Addie shrugged.
"Oooh," groaned Gann, "That's a Rashemi drinking song. And when the Rashemi sing, you know you're in trouble…"
Long live you and long live me, and all of us together, and if you will not drink with me I beat you with two sticks!
"Is that…" Kaelyn wondered, just as the ancient magic door to the inner sanctum was kicked open with a bang.
"Hullo my friends!"
"Oh gods it's Yuri again," Gann said.
And indeed, there the son of the ice hag stood, his massive frame filling the doorway, his curly white hair sagging somewhat in the arid Thayan climate. In each hand was, as his song had suggested, a rather large stick. Around him, Addie felt thankful that the air was somehow cooler.
"How did you even get here?" asked Kaelyn, lowering her eyebrows skeptically.
"I follow you!" said Yuri, "Well, I follow the pretty bald lady. No offense, Madame of the Feather, but… you're not my type. I don't like being Kepob, but when I'm him I can still follow a trail. And, you see, there are demons in the hallways here," he continued, shaking his head, "Not very safe, you know. But it's all right! Yuri has beaten them. With two sticks. It is safe now, and thanks to Yuri, we all may leave."
"I actually think," Safiya said, "That I must stay. I feel… strange. Like parts of me I didn't know I was missing are flooding back to me."
"I suspected that this would be the parting of our ways," the bear god said regretfully.
"But we were only getting started!" Yuri protested, "Well, I suppose if there are demons here, I must stay as well. For protection."
"He's better than a gnoll," Addie pointed out.
Safiya rolled her eyes, but her smirk said that she was not entirely against this idea.
"Look," Adahni said, "He can't be the wisest creature I've met it my wanderings, but he has a point here. We go back to inn, we all get drunk, and then we all sneak out so nobody has to say goodbye."
"I don't think that's the best…" Safiya began.
"What did Yuri say about two sticks, great wizard?" Okku pointed out.
Addie nodded inwardly. She had so many other things to worry about, but still, she was not looking forward to bidding farewell to those who had helped her along the way. And so, for the last time, the odd band set forth for the comforts of the local tavern.
They did however, have to say goodbye. In a lively barroom, filled with the crew of the Dance of the Damned, they found a moment at a table in the corner.
"I feel so… so free," Safiya said, after about another bottle of the clear liquor. Adahni learned - perhaps for a second time that night - that it was, indeed, distilled from potatoes. She wondered a bit why, with the abundance of potatoes on the Sword Coast, nobody had figured that one out.
"The voices are quiet for the first time that I can remember. I'm… I'm myself once more." Safiya continued, shaking her head, pouring another small tumbler, and drinking it down. "And yet, all I can think of is returning to where I began. Where all of this began. There's about a hundred years of things to set right."
"And no better pretty bald lady to do it!" Yuri exclaimed, "Drink!"
Each poured a measure into their cups - except for Okku, who was drinking from a bowl on the floor that Yuri obligingly kept full - they drank, all except for Adahni who had begun to feel queasy at the very sight of a liquor bottle.
"We have done more than I dared hope," Kaelyn said, the drink making her a bit morose. She folded her wings upon herself as though she were cold, "The Crusade was a victory. It may seem a symbol, but symbols, like Akachi and the First Crusade, lend strength to others. They have given strength to me. You have shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that this Wall can be ended, removed from the planes. And I shall live to see it fall."
"Really, Kaelyn," Gann quipped, "That's your takeaway."
"That's my takeaway," Kaelyn said, in a mocking tone, poking one middle finger over the top of her right wing,
"Drink!" Yuri exclaimed. And they drank.
"And you, bear god, what will you do?"
"Whatever the fuck I please," the bear said, "I am a bear, after all. I think perhaps I'll do some wandering. Take in the sights. Shit in some new woods. Perhaps I might… even accompany you, Addie, wherever you go. Find some unmarked territory."
"Drink!" called Yuri, "To shitting in the woods!"
"To what now?" Gann sneered.
"Oh, stop it, brother! You've grown attached to me," Yuri said, slinging one tree trunk arm around the slighter hagspawn's shoulders.
"Like a foot fungus I can't seem to get rid of," Gann sighed, "Although I have to say. This was quite an adventure."
"It sure was," Addie sighed, "And you'll have many more."
"But none more with you, my lemming. At least, not when you're awake."
"You really need to stop with the creepy shit," Adahni said.
"Drink!" Yuri cried out again, interrupting what was about to be quite an uncomfortable silence.
After the lot of them had descended into an argument about a fat lot of nothing at all, Adahni did as she had always intended, and snuck off without saying goodbye. She didn't sneak far, after all, just upstairs to the room she'd rented for the next several days, to give Bishop time to recover, and figure out what the next move was. He'd excused himself after wolfing down several portions of food, and retired there. When she entered, he was still awake, sitting by the fire.
"I see you finally have time for me," he said. The words bit, though she didn't think he intended them that way, "Sit with me. Let me look at you."
She didn't protest, but sat on the floor with her legs tucked up, facing him.
He gazed at her, put his hand up to her face and traced the dark circles around her eyes, the arc of red starbursts underneath. "What happened to you, Addie? These aren't wounds of war. Are you sick?"
"There's no point in hiding it, and there's no good way to say it, I guess. I'm with child. Four months now."
Bishop looked at her with an inscrutable expression for a long while. He opened his mouth to speak a couple of times, but thought better of it. Finally, he asked "So will you finally stop climbing the fucking rigging?"
"That's what you want to know? Not… I don't know, any number of other relevant questions? Like what this means for… I don't know, any of it?"
"What it means is that in a few months we're going to have a kid, if we're lucky, if nothing goes sideways," he said, "That part seemed fairly obvious."
"We?"
"I mean, it's mine, right? Wait… is it mine?"
She sighed, "Haven't thought about a man except you since that night in Bezantur. I also didn't realize the wizard fixed my lady parts along with my leg. But, I just figured you'd probably… oh I don't know, abscond into the wilderness for the next twenty years or so."
"Why? This is what happens to ordinary people, right?"
"I wouldn't know," she said, "I wasn't exactly born into an ordinary family."
He raised his eyebrows at her, and she looked away.
"I've had a lot of time to think. To do nothing but think. I used think that the things that made me," he said, and stopped. "The things that failed to unmake me," he corrected himself, "That they were somehow part of me. Part of my nature. That the only way for me to keep from corrupting everything around me was to keep far away from everything and everyone. It seemed that I would always have two choices, do something terrible, or run away. So I would run away."
"That changed, though."
"I was just a kid," he said, his voice strained, "I see that now, looking at Rafa, and Shiren, Shiren especially. She's just so damn sure of herself, thinks she knows everything. But so did I at her age. And so did you. And I know to you it seems not all that much time has passed since you broke my nose at the Sunken Flagon, but to me… it feels like another life. I was just so brand new back then. Overnight, people were expecting me to know what to do, how to be. But nobody had ever shown me what to do with all that pain."
Adahni narrowed her eyes at him, wondering what he was getting at.
"Of course I was beholden to things I didn't choose, didn't understand," he said, "Back then, you know what made me turn around when I heard the caverns collapsing, that day in Mere?"
"I thought I did know," she said, troubled.
"I realized that I was the same age as you were when you let the Circle of Blades take me," he said, "And at that moment, I understood you. Because I had just fucked up, worse than I ever had before. And I realized that back then, you were the same as me, trying to do what you thought would work out best, and not always getting it right. And yes, you fucked up, you definitely did, but then you came out of it. You turned it around. And I realized at that point, for the first time, standing knee deep in the muck while the ground behind me collapsed, that I had more than two choices."
"Gods almighty, I'm glad I didn't leave you in there any longer," Addie said, "You'd be out here lecturing on the great philosophers."
"I'm being serious, woman," he grumbled, "Look, I've - we've - had a shit run of it. Both of us have nearly died on several occasions in the last year alone. But we've got money now, probably more than most villagers have seen in their lifetimes. And really, what's keeping us from just doing… you know, what everyone else does? They get married, they have babies, they take up peacetime trades and let their swords go dull."
"Did… did you just fucking propose to me? Gods, three months in the Wall of the Faithless and you've turned soft," Addie chuckled.
"You just fought a God for me," he said, "I rather think marrying me would normally have been several steps before that. And one of us has to be soft, or the kid's going to turn out like you." He got up from his chair by the fire and crawled into the rather capacious bed that the innkeeper had graced them with.
"And one of us has to turn everything into a joke as a defense mechanism against being vulnerable due to being raised the only child of an emotionally distant father," Addie said, curling up beside him and laying her head on his chest, "So what do we do about that whole… wanted dead or alive thing? We didn't go on the lam for shits and giggles. They were going to kill you, after all."
"It doesn't have to be Neverwinter. Or even the Sword Coast. We go back on the Dance of the Damned. We find a port we like, and we stay there," he said, "Or I suppose there's no real reason to leave the ship, but… really you're going to have to stop it with the climbing."
"Only for a few months," she protested.
"I swear, woman, you're going to be an old crone with wrinkles and gray in your hair and I'm still going to have to keep you from going off to kill yourself because you want to see something interesting," he grumbled.
"You'll be around then, will you," she chuckled.
"I've been trying to get to you since I was seventeen years old," he said, "I'd be a fool to give up now that I'm finally winning.I just got you to fight a God for me. Who else can say his girl loves him like that?"
"Akachi," Addie said, "And that didn't turn out so well for him."
"I suppose I'm a luckier man than he was," he said, "So what say you, shall we give it a go?"
"All right," she said, "Normalcy. I don't think either of us has ever tried that before."
"Not… normal. I don't think we have it in us. Just… maybe fewer near-death experiences."
"Yes, I suppose you have a point there," she said. She put her hand over her belly and, for the first time, was rewarded with a distinct kick, "Oh, that feels so fucking weird," she observed. She grabbed his hand and put it over the same spot.
"They can do that?" he flinching as he also received a kick.
"I guess so…" she said.
"We really have no idea what we're doing, do we," he sighed.
"Not the slightest," she said.
"I guess we'll figure it out," he said, "We always have."