Chapter Text
The air was sharp and briny. It invaded her senses before consciousness fully returned, followed by a faint prickling sensation crawling up both legs. Recognition came slowly, piecing itself together from fragments: sand beneath her palms, the distant crash of waves, the acrid taste of smoke lingering at the back of her throat.
Where was she?
More pressingly—who were they?
Shadowheart jolted upright, heart hammering against ribs with violence that threatened to crack bone. They were watching her already. A pair of eyes—sharp and cautious. Pointed ears, long limbs, brows honed like blades. An elf. Unmistakably so. And judging by the pale green tint to her skin—subtle as moss on stone—a wood elf specifically.
Well, that was already vastly preferable to a githyanki.
She moved like a whisper, but there was weight in her silence. Not the kind born of fear or uncertainty, but something else entirely. Something honed through years of practice Shadowheart could only guess at.
She narrowed her gaze. The Elf hadn't spoken once since their paths crossed. Not a single word, not even a grunt when she'd nearly been gutted by a cambion's blade—just a flick of wrist, flash of steel and arrows singing through smoke-thick air, then quiet again. That same unsettling, complete quiet.
Yet something about her presence disturbed Shadowheart in ways she couldn't articulate. Not dangerous, precisely. Not threatening in any conventional sense. More like encountering a memory she couldn't quite place, a melody half-remembered from childhood, a prayer left unfinished, words that had once held meaning now dissolved into fragments.
"Well," Shadowheart said, forcing her voice to carry confidence she didn't entirely feel, "I think we're rather lucky ones to have survived the crash, don't you think?"
The Elf exhaled heavily. Had it not been for her upright posture and the shimmer of moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes—unshed tears or simple exhaustion—she might have assumed the woman was moments from collapse.
And yet, considering this stranger had just survived a fall from considerable height aboard a crashing nautiloid—likely sustained a concussion at minimum, perhaps cracked ribs, certainly bruised spine and organs—she appeared almost... vibrant. As if she'd merely returned from a pleasant afternoon hike through mountain trails rather than plummeting through dimensions while mind flayers performed cerebral surgery.
Why don’t you speak, Shadowheart wanted to ask.
But she didn’t. Not yet. She’d learned to wait, to watch, to let silence reveal more than questions ever could. Patience, after all, was its own form of power.
From that moment forward, they were never truly apart.
***
The nights at the improvised camp offered rest, but did little to ease the suffocating awkwardness. At first, there were three of them. Truth be told, Shadowheart couldn't decide what grated more severely against her nerves: the Wood Elf's impenetrable silence or the Pale Elf's endless litany of complaints. Both wore on her patience in their own distinctive ways, eroding what little composure she'd managed to maintain since the nautiloid's crash.
Sleeping among strangers in the moonlit shadows inspired little trust. Any sane person would have kept one eye open, one hand on their weapon, waiting for the inevitable betrayal that traveling companions so often delivered.
Yet the Wood Elf seemed remarkably at ease in the hush of the woods. No surprise there—her kind knew every root and branch of Faerûn’s forests with the same intimacy others knew their lovers' bodies. Stars served as their lanterns, and fallen leaves felt more familiar beneath their backs than feather mattresses or silk sheets ever could.
She preferred to stay near the oak tree, carefully rewrapping a wound on her shoulder. Everyone kept to themselves those first nights maintaining careful distance, but she insisted on checking each of them for wounds. Not with confidence or ease, but with the skittish determination of something half-wild that had forgotten how to be among people but couldn't quite forget how to care for them. Every approach was an act of courage. Every touch, a risk she chose to take despite instincts screaming to keep her distance.
Her method was peculiar: gentle tugging at sleeves, meaningful looks, fingers pointing at bloodstains or torn fabric. Not quite requests, more like quiet commands that somehow carried more weight than shouted orders. Thanks to her stubborn vigilance, none of them suffered the creeping infections that claimed so many adventurers in the wilds.
She could cook, too—though roasted crickets seasoned with wild herbs didn’t win anyone over.
Astarion, in particular, hadn't eaten in days. Truth be told, he looked the most depleted of them all, though he wore his deterioration like a gentleman wears mourning clothes—with style that couldn't quite disguise the rot beneath. His already sharp cheekbones had hollowed further, carving shadows into his face that made him look less like an elf and more like a beautiful corpse. Pale skin had turned translucent, veins visible beneath like dark rivers on a map. Sweat beaded along his brow despite the cool nights, and tremors occasionally seized his elegant hands.
His condition affected more than his appearance—it corroded the group's cohesion. Irritation sharpened his tongue. Complaints multiplied. Petulance chipped away at morale with the persistence of water wearing stone. And the Elf's silence—that maddening silence—only deepened his frustration until it festered into something approaching genuine hatred.
One night, still young and quiet, Astarion lounged by the fire with affected casualness. Propped on elbows, posture suggesting boredom, though his eyes remained alert as a cat watching mice. He tracked the Elf's movements with undisguised hunger.
She had just returned from scouting, clothes torn and tangled with leaves and twigs, scratches decorating her arms. No sound accompanied her return, no complaint escaped her lips. No sigh of exhaustion. Only shadow passing across her face as firelight caught her features.
"You know," Astarion said at last, voice dripping with false sweetness that barely concealed venom beneath, "most people say something after nearly getting skewered by goblins. Even just a colorful curse or two."
Without acknowledging him, she sat across the fire, pulled a leather-bound journal from her pack, and began to write. Her quill scratched against parchment with soft persistence—the only sound she made.
Astarion clenched his jaw. This game was wearing dangerously thin. "Is this your little act, then? Playing the mysterious one?" A harsh laugh escaped him. "Huh. I've seen it before, darling, and trust me—it gets old and boring.”
Silence.
"Oh, come on," he leaned closer, firelight painting his face in gold. "You're a bard, aren't you? I've seen the flute strapped to your pack. You sing, you speak, you perform! Is this some kind of pathetic performance art? Method acting taken to absurd extremes?"
The fire crackled, spitting sparks into darkness. Wind whispered through leaves overhead. Somewhere distant, a nightbird called.
"You think silence makes you mysterious?" His voice dropped to something sharper, crueler. "Hate to break it to you, but it doesn't. In fact, it makes you tedious. A bore. The kind of person everyone forgets the moment they leave the room!"
Finally, she looked up. Her eyes met his—and something in that gaze made him wish that he'd kept his mouth shut. Not anger, though fury certainly lived there. Not hurt, though pain colored the edges. Something older, something that recognized him in ways he didn't want to be recognized.
Then she crumpled the page she'd been writing on, compressed it into her palm with deliberate violence, and hurled it at his chest. The paper struck him with all the force of a child's throw—negligible physically, devastating emotionally.
From her tent, Shadowheart's quiet chuckle drifted across the camp, barely audible but unmistakably amused.
Astarion's teeth ground together hard enough to ache. "Fine," he bit out. "Keep your little tragedies to yourself, then. See if I care."
Of course, he did care. They all did. That was the problem.
***
Then there were five of them.
Each dawn brought uncertainty and fear. The tadpole in their skulls raged with all its might. They woke with headaches and strange voices in their heads, and slept with daggers beneath their pillows, waiting for the inevitable transformation that would turn them into the very monsters they fought.
The battles were short and brutal. Goblins, trolls, spiders—everything felt closer than their own past. They wandered through swamps where fog hid traps, and across sandy plains where the sun burned their skin.
In between fights, they somehow learned to trust each other. Shadowheart cured poisonings and served potions. Gale firebaled the life out of enemies. Astarion and Lae’zel covered each other’s backs. The Wood Elf sat nearby when the world grew too loud. And though the fear remained, it no longer felt solitary.
How the Elf gradually became their de facto leader remained something of a mystery, even to those who followed her. Perhaps it was the precision of her movements in combat, efficient and never wasted. Perhaps it was the skeptical arch of her brow when someone proposed a particularly foolish plan. Perhaps it was simply that she listened—truly listened—in ways the others had forgotten how to do. No one knew what kind of life she'd lived before the nautiloid, what experiences had shaped her into this silent, watchful creature. But it became increasingly clear that she knew how to lead. With a single gesture, she could draw them into formation. With a single glance, she could command trust that speeches and promises never earned.
There was something in her presence that stirred even the most guarded hearts. Something that made Shadowheart's carefully constructed walls feel suddenly, dangerously inadequate.
She saw in the Elf a force that defied reason. Not divine, not quite magical. Something darker. It clung to her like a second skin, invisible but never absent. There was a tension in her silence, as if she carried the weight of the phantom. Shadowheart felt it before she understood it. A chill that settled in her bones whenever the Elf drew near. A flicker of pain behind her eyes when their thoughts brushed.
She didn’t speak of it—not to Gale, not to Astarion, not even to herself aloud in the privacy of her tent. But the feeling lingered. She tried to reason with it.
It’s exhaustion. It’s the tadpole. It’s the weight of too many battles, too little sleep.
But none of that explained the way her palm itched when their eyes met.
With the arrival of new companions, the camp’s atmosphere began to soften. At some point during their third tenday together, Shadowheart realized it might actually be worth getting to know her companions as people rather than simply combat assets.
She struck up conversation with Gale, discovering that beneath his occasionally pompous exterior lived genuine passion for knowledge that reminded her uncomfortably of her own younger self. He loaned her curious tomes for quiet evenings—grimoires on forgotten gods, treatises on planar mechanics, even a surprisingly engaging romance novel he swore he was "only reading for the historical accuracy."
She shared a glass of rich, dark wine with Astarion one evening, the bottle he'd somehow acquired from a merchant they'd passed. The vintage was exceptional—complex, layered, probably worth more than most people earned in a year. Her throat burned for an entire day afterward, though she wasn't certain if that was the wine's quality or something else he'd slipped into her cup.
One meaningful glance from Lae'zel sent her scurrying past the githyanki's tent without a word, deciding that some companions were better admired from a distance.
Then her attention settled on the Elf. Setting hesitation aside like a cloak removed at day's end, Shadowheart approached, letting her footsteps rustle deliberately through fallen leaves so as not to startle.
Among ink-stained pages and broken quills scattered across the ground, the Elf lingered in her usual spot. Seated by the fire's edge, she bent over a leather-bound journal, quill moving with focused intensity. One leg stretched forward, the other tucked beneath her in a position that suggested long familiarity with sitting on hard ground. The fire crackled intermittently, and the rhythm of her pen against parchment created an oddly soothing counterpoint to the forest's night sounds.
“All’s well, I hope?” Shadowheart asked.
The Elf nodded, offering a faint smile.
“I realized I never thanked you—for not letting Lae’zel kill me on the spot. She seemed rather enthusiastic about the idea.”
Their eyes met as recognition passed between them.
"Honestly, communication would be significantly easier if you at least told me your name. I'm running out of ways to think of you. 'The Elf' is becoming tedious even in my own head."
Before she could move, the Elf seized her wrist. The tadpole stirred and a spark ignited in her pupil. Then came the searing pain.
Shadowheart’s body arched, as if pierced by flaming arrows. The Weave surged through her veins like a flood breaking its banks—wild and merciless. Her throat locked in agony. She tried to scream but no sound escaped. Only the crushing weight of isolation. Vision blurred and forest dissolved. Reality restructured itself around different coordinates entirely.
In her hand, she held a lute; a touch that was her birthright became foreign. She turned around to a crowd of wealthy, important faces, twisting their smiles into snarls. And saw herself. Warped, distorted by fear. A face she couldn’t recognize.
The vision shattered.
Pain faded slowly, like embers cooling in her chest.
Shadowheart sat utterly still, her wrist tingling where the Elf had gripped it. Blood trailed from the woman's nostril in a thin crimson line.
The surge still lingered—the way the Weave had torn through. It wasn’t a spell. Not exactly. It came from magic, but definitely was way more dangerous. It felt older. Hungrier. Its teeth are sharp, biting to the bones.
"What—" Shadowheart gasped, "What was that? I felt it... it was eating me. From the inside out."
The Elf's hand trembled as she reached for her journal. Quill scratched across parchment with shaking strokes, forming words that looked like they'd been carved rather than written:
“I’m sorry.”
Shadowheart stared at those two words. Small letters, slanted slightly to the right, elegant despite the tremor that had shaped them. She looked up, searching the Elf’s face for explanation, for context, for anything. But the woman sat quietly, shoulders lowered.
Her voice came out softer than intended. “How long ago did it happen?”
The Elf hesitated, then wrote: "Almost a century ago."
Shadowheart pressed her lips, turning toward the river. Moonlight carved a path across the waves, and the sky glittered with starry diamonds. The wind brushed her cheek, soft as breath. It smelled of moss and distant flowers that bloomed after sunset. She inhaled deeply, allowing herself a brief moment of peace. She had imagined the silence was a choice, some kind of control or defiance.
It was far worse.
Loss. Pure, simple, devastating loss.
“I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I thought you were just… keeping your distance.”
Her gaze dropped to the journal still resting in her lap. Pages brimmed with music—songs that would never be sung, verses that would never be voiced, melodies that existed only on parchment and in the composer's memory.
There was no crueler fate for a bard. Even the brain-devouring worm squirming in their skulls seemed less tragic by comparison. At least the tadpole promised a relatively quick transformation. This? This was a death that lasted decades, killing ever so slowly.
Shadowheart reached out, giving the Elf time to withdraw if she wanted. When no objection came, she touched the edge of parchment.
“We need to come up with a better way to communicate,” she murmured. “"Using the tadpole clearly isn't ideal—not when your body reacts like that to the connection. In battle, I seriously doubt you'll have time to write eloquent explanations before someone attempts to split your guts open."
The Elf's lips parted slightly, but of course no sound emerged. Only firelight danced across her features, painting shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes.
"We'll find another way. We have to."
And they did.
Beneath the stars and the hush of sleeping tents, they sat together and began to sketch. Symbols, gestures, rhythms: a language born of necessity and trust.
They sketched symbols on spare parchment, testing and discarding, refining and expanding. The Elf drew a spiral to mean danger. Shadowheart suggested a triangle pointing upward for safe passage. They grinned when a crooked squiggle accidentally came to mean Astarion is being dramatic again. The Elf demonstrated how placing two fingers against her temple meant pain or headache. Shadowheart showed how crossing her arms at the wrists indicated stop or wait. They developed rhythms—patterns of taps that could convey urgency, caution or reassurance.
Each evening, they added to their private language. Each morning, they tested what they'd learned. And though no words were spoken, something passed between them.
It was... nice. Unexpectedly nice.
It was nice to have a friend.
***
Their journey followed no clear path—only a direction shaped by the need to survive. They wandered through forests where trees whispered in ancient tongues, and ruins where stones remembered blood.
By the time they reached the druid grove, the tiefling refugees were already preparing to flee. Desperation among them was obvious—parents clutching children, elders gathering what few possessions they could carry, young warriors sharpening weapons with the grim knowledge they'd likely die defending the helpless.
The druids greeted the newcomers with caution but not outright hostility.The moment the group stepped onto grass still damp with morning dew, it was hard not to notice the Elf’s quiet amusement. Leaves rustled overhead in what might have been greeting. Every sound felt familiar to her in ways the others couldn't fully comprehend. Tension that had lived in her shoulders since the nautiloid began to ease.
The druids recognised her as their sister. They saw in her what Shadowheart had felt but couldn't articulate: kinship that transcended blood, connection that ran deeper than chosen allegiance.
They tried to help. Of course they tried.
Masters of natural magic approached with reverence; they touched her skin with hands that had coaxed life from barren soil, whispered incantations in languages that predated Common by millennia. They led her to sacred springs where water ran clear as crystal, where the boundary between material and spiritual grew thin.
Shadowheart watched from a distance as they worked. She saw how the Elf let them believe they could succeed. There was kindness in that permission.
She also watched them grow weary. Saw their eyes dim as hours passed without result. Observed them step away one by one, quietly admitting defeat through silence more damning than any spoken acknowledgment.
The grove accepted the Elf as one of its own. Shadowheart could feel it in the way plants leaned toward her, how animals approached without fear, the manner in which even the stones seemed to warm beneath her feet. But acceptance wasn't healing. Nature recognized her as kin, but it could not restore what had been stolen.
When word came that Archdruid Halsin had been taken prisoner by goblins, freeing him transformed from simple rescue mission into desperate hope. Perhaps someone of his power, his connection to nature, his centuries of accumulated wisdom could achieve what others couldn't.
Perhaps he would be their answer.
Yet when Halsin was finally freed Shadowheart felt no relief.
He sat on weathered stone at the grove's heart, leaning against his staff as if it were an old friend whose company brought comfort. His posture radiated calm, grounded presence that suggested nothing could truly shake him. But his lined with age eyes held an attentive stillness that made Shadowheart wonder how much he already knew.
“She doesn’t speak,” Shadowheart said, not as a question, but as a truth laid bare.
Halsin inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. Extended one massive hand in invitation, gesturing to the moss-covered ground beside him.
Shadowheart hesitated. Then she lowered herself onto soft moss that yielded beneath her like living cushion. The air around them was thick with the scent of wildflowers and the hum of ancient magic.
"We tried," Halsin said after a pause that stretched just long enough to become meaningful. “Every ritual we know, every healing spell, every prayer to Silvanus himself. She permitted us to reach into her pain, to touch the wound. But it remained closed to us."
"Is it a curse?" Shadowheart asked, though she already knew the answer. Had felt it herself through the tadpole's unwanted connection.
Halsin didn't respond immediately. When he spoke, his words came carefully chosen, weighed. "It's ancient, certainly. But not all wounds originate in flesh. Not all damage can be measured in broken bones or torn skin."
"If it is a curse," she pressed, "then it can be lifted."
"Perhaps. But we must also ask—should it be?"
Shadowheart frowned. “I dont' understand. You said it wasn't her choice. Her voice was taken. Her body betrayed her will. That sounds precisely like a curse that deserves breaking."
“I’ve seen curses that scream,” Halsin replied. "Curses that burn from the inside out, that rot flesh and corrupt spirit, that leave permanent scars on the land itself. This one... It’s quiet. It doesn't lash out or spread its poison. Almost as if she's already made peace with it."
He turned to face her fully. "Curses lodge in the heart forever unless the bearer fights to banish them from within. The external force that created them can be countered, yes. But if the victim has woven that curse into their identity, accepted it as immutable truth about themselves..." He trailed off, letting implication finish the thought.
Something cold and heavy sank through Shadowheart's chest, settling in her stomach like a stone swallowed whole.
"You don't believe she can be healed."
"I didn't say that," Halsin replied with gentleness that somehow made it worse. "What I question is whether she believes she can be healed. Whether she even wants to be anymore."
***
Opalite sky deepened toward onyx night. Stars emerged one by one, patient as death.
Shadowheart lay in her tent, hands folded beneath her head, staring at canvas ceiling that blocked her view of those same stars. Halsin's words echoed through her mind, refusing to fade.
Eyes closed, she let her thoughts wander. Could there truly be wounds that shouldn’t be healed? Pain so deep it was better left untouched?
Every wound has a root, she thought. And if you find it—you can pull it out.
But something in Halsin’s voice carried the weight of lived truth. Experience that couldn't be argued away with logic or faith.
She remembered how the Elf had looked at the sacred spring. Her features held no hope to brighten them, only quiet acceptance to dull them further. She'd permitted the druids to touch her, to try their healing, without expecting anything to change. Her eyes didn't plead for salvation, didn't beg for mercy. They simply allowed, passive as stone accepting rain.
Shadowheart's teeth ground together hard enough to ache.
I need to speak with her. Now. I need to tell her I won’t give up, that I’ll keep searching. That she’s not alone.
She stood abruptly, scanning the camp. She remembered seeing the Elf sitting beneath the ancient oak earlier. Remembered Astarion lingering nearby with his usual affected disinterest that fooled absolutely no one.
The place where they’d been was empty.
She moved through camp, checking every shadow, every dark space between tents.
Nothing.
No sign of either of them.