"The layers [of the Hells] fit together like puzzle pieces, and each new descent allows a traveler greater understanding of how the puzzle comes together."
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Manual of the Planes (1987), Jeff Grub
"I'm still not sure I can be much help to you," says Zevlor, the reserve in his voice audible even over the Elfsong's end-of-the-tenday crowd, though he accepts the proffered mug of ale, regardless. "I played only a very minor role in most of the adventure, after all. Surely, one of the others," - here, he glances past the booth's privacy curtains, as if hoping to catch sight of one of the city's saviours lurking in a corner, or, more likely, courting a crowd of admirers at the bar - "could supply you more details? The sort worthy of a bard's song, at any rate."
"It's not just a song," Alfira corrects indignantly, plunking her own mug on the table then dropping with similar decorum onto the bench opposite. "It's an epic! A proper lay lyrique. Or it will be when I finish it, anyway. And I've already spoken to everyone else I could … I mean… everyone left to speak to…"
A sober cloud seems to sweep through their booth, briefly dampening the cheerful tavern sounds and dulling the flames of bardic passion dancing in Alfira's ochre eyes. It makes her look older, Zevlor thinks, and for a moment he, too, feels the weight of everything - everyone - he has lost settle back across his shoulders. He rolls them surreptitiously and reaches for his drink. The sudden movement breaks the spell. Alfira clears her throat and ducks down below the table, returning with a sheaf of what Zevlor recognises as composition parchment - the evenly spaced lines crammed with music notes, the margins with equally indecipherable words - and a battered ink-and-quill set.
"Anyway, I've already interviewed everyone else I can," she repeats briskly, flipping over a few pages to reveal more lines of tiny, hectic writing. "I know all about the mindflayer tadpoles, and the netherbrain, and the chosen of the Dead Three. It's quite the story, isn't it? I wouldn't have believed it could all be real if I hadn't lived through some of it myself. It has everything! Action, adventure, mystery, tragedy…"
The young bard rattles off the genres with all the fond reverence of a parent reciting their children's names - the old soldier's eyes glaze as he reaches for his tankard.
"But … I am missing one very important angle … romance."
Zevlor chokes on his drink. Alfira slides her precious parchments back along the table - a safer distance away from where the other tiefling clumsily deposits his tankard - and waits for him to recover.
"And you think," he asks as soon as his throat can push out the words, "I am the person to help you with that?"
Alfira's supercilious expression is an answer in itself.
"You can't possibly think it was a secret. The whole camp knew. It was our favorite bit of gossip before the Shadow-Cursed lands."
This information settles uncomfortably in Zevlor's stomach beside the sour ale.
"Look, I don't need any graphic details," she adds with a blush, not quite meeting the older man's eyes, "but the romance is an important part of the story. Without it, the rest just falls flat. A true epic needs pathos, passion."
Zevlor laughs - a short, hoarse bark only a few notes shy of bitter.
"You'll be disappointed, I'm afraid. If there was anything resembling romance, it was certainly not the kind bards spin into tales. We were far too busy with the business of surviving to think of such things at the time. Or," he adds at Alfira's raised eyebrow, "to act on those thoughts, at least."
Again, shades of regret and half-healed hurts seem to creep out from the shadows cast by the tapers bracketed to the tavern's panelled walls. Zevlor's fingers twitch convulsively. With deliberate care, he lifts his tankard to his lips again - a shield against the past and Alfira's probing gaze, alike - and deflects.
"I suppose in hindsight, and compared to all that came after, the journey from Elturel no longer seems like such a trial. But I would have expected you to remember better. You were there. It was hell." His fingers spasm again and he tightens his grip on the smooth, cool pewter. "The whole road to Baldur's Gate was just one hell after another. Like we hadn't escaped Avernus after all, but fallen through it, to some more deadly layer of the Hells. Like we were falling a little more each day."
He flashes the young Elturian a dark look over the tankard's rim - the sort that would have cowed any lower-ranking officer. But, apparently, not a bard.
"Oh, that is brilliant! Can I write that down?" Alfira uncorks the inkwell and swills her quillpen through it before Zevlor, disarmed by her enthusiasm, can decide how to reply. Sorting through the composition parchments for a blank page, she adds, "Tav did say you had a way with words."
It's an obvious, calculated flattery. Zevlor knows it. But he cannot stop the effect it has on him anymore than he can rewrite time.
"Tav said that?" He says her name the way clerics pronounce the names of their gods, and it works a similar magic: unknotting his shoulders and smoothing the creases at the corners of his eyes and the center of his brow. His hands relax around the tankard. "When?"
"At Last Light," Alfira replies in distraction, quillpen scratching across parchment in a frantic line. "She said a lot of nice things about you then. And later. Trying to repair your reputation, I think. You might look at this as your chance to return the favour." She glances up and, at Zevlor's look of wary confusion, sheaths her quill in the ink and explains: "I mean, there's plenty of rumours about her making the rounds, now. More than one bawdy tavern song, too. Help me with my epic, and, together, we can set the record straight!"
But this argument finds no purchase in the long-time-Commander.
"Rumours are an occupational hazard of notoriety," he says grimly, and returns to his drink.
"Maybe, but is that how you want history to remember Tav?"
That stops the tankard halfway to Zevlor's lips. Alfira hurries on.
"Songs and stories - they're how we remember heroes, yes. But they're more than that. They're also how we honour the people we love!" There's an urgent, lilting cadence in the bard's voice now, and the little bells along her collar jingle in accompaniment as she leans across the table, as if to press her plea into Zevlor's suddenly slack hands. "Tav wasn't just another hero - she was our friend! She didn't just save the world - she saved us. And I think after all she did, she deserves better than a shanty at the Low Light or some fantasy of Volo's. She deserves for history to remember her as the person she really was. That's the picture I want to paint of her. But I need you to help me get it right."
The tavern's other chatting, laughing patrons fill the sudden silence as Alfira stops to gulp down air - her impassioned speech has left her breathless. Zevlor, too, is surprised to find his heartrate increased. And his resolution shaken. This is a more poignant plea, and a more persuasive argument, than the ex-Hellrider has come prepared to fight.
"You're … you're right," he concedes at last. "That is what Tav deserves. And," he adds more to himself, " I think… what she would want."
"Does that mean you'll do it, then? You'll help me?"
Alfira's tail twitches behind her in anticipation of the story she can smell now, like an oncoming rain. Zevlor stares into his tankard, considering contents and courses of action with similar solemnity, then lifts it and pulls from it deeply, as if the weak alcohol will lend him the necessary strength. Perhaps it does. Or perhaps it's his memories of Tav - too bold and bright to ever be wholly extinguished by time or tragedy - that warm his limbs and loosen his tongue.
"What exactly would you like to know?"