I had no clean name for what lived in me after Nashkel.
Rage, maybe. Shame, if I was being generous. Exaltation, if I was being honest in the ugliest way possible.
For years after Seravain’s death, I traveled with Mira and Darian through a world increasingly stained by Tiamat’s return, and the first night after I burned that settlement to shadow was the quietest night we had ever shared.
Or perhaps that is only how memory arranges it now, stretching one silent night until it feels large enough to contain all the years that followed.
No laughter.
No bickering.
No obscene little sounds from Mira and Darian’s tent that made me question every mercy I had ever granted them.
Nothing.
They did not touch each other that night. Not where I could hear. They barely looked at me while we made camp, and when dawn came, we packed without a single word passing between us. Even Mira, who could sharpen silence into an insult if properly motivated, said nothing.
That should have troubled me more than it did.
Instead, I let the quiet sit.
Our next destination was less a place than a direction. Seravain’s maps, ledgers, and ritual notes had burned with the mansion or been destroyed by our hands after her death. Whatever trails her children left behind were ash and blood now. Finding the rest of Liliana’s brood would have been nearly impossible if Tiamat had not erupted across Faerûn like a wound reopening.
So we followed devastation.
Cultists. Dragon flights. Half-dragons moving through settlements under false banners. Villages emptied. Roadside shrines turned into feeding grounds for faithless zealots. Every ruin whispered the same thing: Tiamat was gathering worship, and Liliana’s bloodline was crawling out of its hidden holes to kneel.
Mira and Darian whispered behind my back for days.
Darian’s anger was easy to understand. Mira’s silence was worse. She watched me like someone measuring the distance between loyalty and duty, and each night I wondered which side of that distance she would choose.
They thought I did not hear them.
That was almost insulting.
A week after Nashkel, we caught a small band of cultists escorting a young green dragon toward Beregost. It was quick work. Too quick, perhaps. Darian took the dragon down before it could get fully airborne, Mira broke the cult leader’s jaw with the heel of her boot, and I cut through the rest before any of them could finish praying.
When the last body hit the road, Mira finally snapped.
“What the fuck was that, Lendys?”
I looked at her over the edge of Judgment, still slick with blood. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like I’m the one being unreasonable because you’ve decided to turn every fight into an execution.”
I raised an eyebrow. “They were cultists.”
“They were running.”
“They chose poorly.”
Darian went still beside her.
Mira took a step toward me. “And Nashkel? Did they choose poorly too?”
Ah.
There it was.
I wiped the blade clean on the dead cultist’s cloak, more carefully than necessary. “Speak plainly, Mira. If your sarcastic ass has an issue with my methods, I’m sure you can manage to say it without circling the damn thing.”
That should have drawn fire from her.
It didn’t.
Darian was the one who moved.
One moment he stood beside Mira. The next, he had me by the collar, fist twisted in the fabric of a shirt I had taken off a well-dressed cultist less than an hour earlier.
I glanced down at his grip and sighed. “Why is it always the collar? I just got this.”
His eyes searched my face.
Whatever he found there unsettled him.
Good, some bright, vicious part of me thought.
The thought excited me.
That was worse.
Mira shoved closer, jabbing a finger into my chest like she was scolding a child too dangerous to leave alone and too beloved to abandon.
“You have gone off the deep end,” she said. “An entire town, Lendys. Gone. Because you decided they were unworthy. For what? Throwing stones? Being scared? Being stupid mortals?”
Each word struck harder than I wanted to admit.
For a moment, I saw them again. The faces in Nashkel. The anger. The confusion. The way they clung to the shape of a lie because freedom had come too violently for them to know what to do with it.
Then I remembered the stones.
The first impact.
The lack of fear.
“They didn’t bow,” I said quietly.
Mira blinked.
I looked at her then. Really looked. “They didn’t fear us. Didn’t praise us. Didn’t even greet us as the ones who had cut the rot from their town.”
Darian’s grip loosened, but he did not let go.
I continued, colder now. “They became unworthy the moment the first stone was thrown.”
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He released me like the fabric burned his hand.
Mira stared at me, fury and hurt fighting across her face.
“You know that isn’t right,” she said. Her voice was softer now, which somehow made it worse. “You’re supposed to judge fairly. Not… not like that.”
There was pain in her words. Disappointment too.
I hated both.
For one dangerous second, I wanted to dismiss her. To tell her she didn’t understand. To remind her what Seravain had done, what Liliana’s brood had made, what the cult would have become if left to fester another month.
Instead, I breathed in.
Then out.
And the thing I said surprised even me.
“I am lost, Mira.”
The confession dropped between us like a blade.
Mira’s expression faltered. For once, she had no immediate answer.
Darian did.
“Not yet,” he said.
I turned to him.
His face had gone grim, but not cruel. Never cruel. That was Darian’s infuriating gift. Even when he hated what you had done, he could still speak to the part of you he believed might answer.
“You’re not lost yet,” he said. “But if you keep acting like this, you will be. We’re here to stop Liliana and her brood. Not kill everything that brushed against their shadow.”
I nodded because he deserved that much.
Maybe more.
“All right,” I said. “At the next location, I’ll follow your lead.”
Mira’s suspicion did not ease. “And if something goes wrong?”
“Then I won’t hold back.”
Darian glanced at her.
She held my stare for a long moment, jaw tight, then gave one sharp nod.
It was not trust restored.
It was a truce with a knife under it.
Good enough for the road.
The journey toward Beregost had its merciful stretches. Clear skies. Decent weather. A few merchants willing to share news in exchange for protection until the next crossroads. We heard more rumors of Tiamat’s cult spreading north and west, and every tale carried the same pattern: whispered promises, stolen blood, draconic symbols, and mortals willing to trade judgment for belonging.
Mira and Darian also returned to their usual routine.
By which I mean they began tormenting my sleep again.
Apparently my behavior had been the only thing standing between them and their nightly campaign against restraint. Once they decided I was not going to immolate the next town for poor manners, they took that as permission to resume being unbearable.
On the second night, I lasted until Mira made a sound that startled birds out of a nearby tree.
I sat upright in my bedroll, stared at their tent, and said to the darkness, “Absolutely not.”
Darian’s muffled voice followed. “Sorry.”
Mira laughed.
That was it.
I packed my bedroll, slung my gear over one shoulder, and walked a mile down the road before making camp by myself beneath a crooked oak. If they needed me, they could find me after they had finished attempting to repopulate Faerûn by force of enthusiasm.
The distance helped.
For one night, the world was calm.
The air smelled of damp grass and cooling stone. The road stretched pale beneath the moon. No cultists. No dragons. No Mira making a mockery of Darian’s name loud enough to wake old gods.
I slept.
Then the dreams came.
Lairs we had destroyed rose around me one after another. Mirefen’s acid-stink. Vesperyx’s illusions collapsing into screams. Othalyss’s chimes trembling under holy light. Seravain’s lake reflecting fire. Every victim reached for me from pools of blackened blood, fingers slick and desperate, their mouths open around my name.
Not prayers.
Accusations.
You weren’t enough.
You were too late.
You should have done more.
I woke before dawn with sweat cooling on my brow and helplessness lodged beneath my ribs like a broken spear.
The sun had only begun to crest the horizon.
For several minutes, I did not move.
Then I sat up, ate dry rations because hunger is a vulgar, persistent thing even after nightmares, and waited beside the road while merchants passed in both directions. A few offered me space on carts heading toward Beregost. I refused.
I was still waiting when I heard the clatter.
Not hooves.
Wheels.
Mechanical, uneven, and accompanied by the distinct shriek of a gnomish engine arguing with physics.
A squat auto-carriage rounded the bend, smoke puffing from pipes at the rear, its brass fittings rattling as it rolled toward me at an offensively cheerful pace.
Mira sat on the back with her legs dangling over the edge.
Darian sat beside her, looking like a man who had already been punished for sins he had not yet committed.
I stood in the road and crossed my arms.
“Really?” I called as they approached. “You couldn’t stand to walk a few miles into town?”
The gnome driving the carriage glanced between us and wisely kept his eyes forward.
Mira leaned back on her hands, smiling with wicked, lazy satisfaction. “Nope. As you’re so aware, my ass took a pounding last night, and I desperately need the rest.”
Darian turned scarlet.
Utterly, magnificently red.
For half a second, there was silence.
Then I laughed.
Not a chuckle. Not a controlled breath.
A full, helpless, undignified laugh tore out of me so loudly that two passing travelers veered to the other side of the road. The gnome driver startled, then started cackling too, slapping one knee as the carriage slowed.
Darian jumped down before it fully stopped and came to walk beside me.
“Lendys,” he muttered through clenched teeth, “please shut up, or I will never hear the end of this.”
I wiped tears from my eyes.
Actual tears.
That only made Mira’s expression shift from smug to irritated, which made the whole thing worse.
“Oh,” I said, breathless. “You wanted to stun me.”
Mira’s eyes narrowed.
“You thought I’d be embarrassed.” I glanced at Darian, then back at her. “But instead, you’ve given me a gift.”
“Lendys,” Darian warned.
I slapped a hand onto his shoulder. “No, no. You are a good man, Darian.”
“Do not.”
“Such a good man, in fact—”
“Lendys.”
I drew in a large breath.
Then shouted to the road, the gnome, the merchants, the birds, and every god unfortunate enough to be listening, “He’s such a good man that his woman screams his name every night!”
The effect was immediate.
Heads turned.
The gnome nearly drove into a ditch laughing.
Several mortal men nearby slowed, looked Darian up and down with sudden reverence, and began gathering around him like he had discovered some lost martial discipline.
One asked, “Is it training?”
Another said, “Diet?”
A third, older man leaned in solemnly and asked, “Is it a blessing?”
Darian looked ready to walk into traffic.
Mira had gone red now too, though hers was fury rather than embarrassment. She was pouting. Actually pouting, like a little girl who had lost a game she started.
I climbed up beside the gnome driver, who was still wheezing with laughter, then turned around and whistled to get Mira’s attention.
She looked up.
I mouthed, very clearly,I win.
Her answering glare promised violence.
For the first time in days, I found myself smiling without blood on my hands.