Post by Tom M on Oct 21, 2023 16:54:55 GMT
(After the events of Sins of the Father.)
Created alongside and compiled by Jaz
Digs almost speaks up to Zola a number of times on the journey back, but decides against interrupting the solemn silence.
He waits until after Blessed’s body is handed over to the Healing Pool to tug at Zola’s sleeve.
“I, umm… I know things didn’t work out p-perfectly, but after hearing what happened when you were young… I’m g-glad you got some payback.”
Zola glances down at Digs. Her lips quirk into a sad smile as she shakes her head. “I wasn’t there for payback. I mean, okay, it felt kind of good to beat up my dad, but… that’s not what I came for.”
“Just… kind of good?”
“Yeah. I… didn’t really want to hurt him. Even though he deserved it.” She looks back at the healers lifting Blessed’s body onto a stretcher. “I don’t think I could’ve found it in me to kill him. I can’t deal with that much baggage, y’know?”
Digs looks disappointed by this reply. Following Zola’s gaze to Blessed, he puts a hand on the pommel gem of the broken sword on his back and takes a deep breath.
“So if you d-didn’t want to hurt him after everything he did to you… what were you there for?”
Zola sighs softly. “I’d only learned of his existence very recently. I didn’t know my parents were alive, let alone… what they are. I guess I didn’t have enough time to form a grudge? I just wanted answers. Closure. But why do you ask? What’s it to you?”
“I’m not some b-brave adventurer or something. Not like you,” he says, looking down at the floor. “But my family… hurt me too. I just w-wanted to know how it feels to hurt them back.”
Zola kneels down to be at eye-level with Digs, her face creased with sorrow. “I’m sorry to hear that, Digs… Do you mind me asking, what did they do to you?”
Digs opens his mouth to instinctively lie, but catches sight of Blessed out of the corner of his eye. “They… tried to sacrifice me to a dragon that took over our tribe.” He hesitates and then starts speaking rapidly, “It’s not like your thing, you didn’t do anything wrong. I-I fucked up.”
“What do you mean you fucked up? Sounds like you were in a fucked up situation!”
“I, umm… the dragon, Vodrax, took over and everyone was just… okay with it. They just fell in line. Some adventurers came and I thought they could help us and it… didn’t work out.”
“Aw, Digs… That was brave. You were brave to try. You didn’t do anything wrong — in fact, you did the right thing, resisting the dragon’s tyranny.”
He looks away as if that causes him physical pain to hear and speaks without a stutter, “That’s what the owner of this sword said.” He draws a broken knightly longsword, little more than a metal shard sticking out of a decorative hilt. “You remind me of him a bit.”
Zola reaches out a hand, hovering above Digs’s shoulder, her one good eye searching his for permission. He meets her gaze and freezes for a second, but doesn’t skitter away. Her hand lands on his small shoulder and squeezes gently, a warm and comforting presence.
“The bravest thing one can do is to stand up when everyone else is bowed down.” She smiles. “Now, I don’t know if you’ll feel the same as me if you get back at your family… Families are complicated and messy. But I’ve killed someone I loved before, and it ruined me.”
He takes a step back and clenches his fists “No, you don’t get it. I’m not like you. The guy whose sword this is? We were both tied to stakes on that hill. They stood up, they shouted defiance… I slipped out of my ropes and nobody even noticed because everyone was looking at them.” He looks at Blessed, lying motionless on the stretcher, covered by a white sheet. “I left them to die.”
Zola purses her lips and thinks for a moment. “Well obviously, I don’t know this knight at all, but if you say that I remind you of him… maybe he did that just so you could slip away? To save your life? That’s what I would’ve done.”
Digs takes a few seconds to consider something that had never occurred to him. “Huh. That does sound like something someone like you would do…” He looks down at the sword. “So someone like you… would want me to run?”
“I’d want to protect you. I’d want you to save yourself. I can’t know for sure if that’s what your knight had in mind… But I know that in order to honour his sacrifice, you’d have to slay that dragon.”
“Yeah, but I’m not, I mean… I want to. You don’t know how much I want to. Well, maybe you do actually.” He remembers the day’s events and who he’s talking to.
She gives a solemn nod. “Call on me when you’re ready, and I will stand by your side. You have my word. You’ve done me a great service today, Digs.”
“What, you’d just say you’d fight a dragon? Just like that? I didn’t even tell you how big it is and it’s big.” He shakes his head violently, trying to even fathom this mentality. “Zola, you seem really nice. I have literally never told anyone about this stuff and that says a lot, but that’s crazy. I keep this as a reminder of what happens when you try and be a hero.”
Zola stands back up, puts her hands on her hips, and shrugs. “I’ve fought a dragon before. A big, undead one with mushrooms growing out of its body. It was easy.”
“No, it’s not easy! People don’t just do things like that. This is how people talk before they go and-and do something stupid and die, Zola!”
Digs’s eyes widen as he realises that his mask has entirely slipped.
“I… I guess you’re not wrong, Digs.” Zola glances over her shoulder again but Blessed is no longer in the room, having been carried away to be cleaned and embalmed. “Sometimes you have to approach things with caution, cunning, and subterfuge…like a poisoned wine bottle…” Her voice trails off.
“Okay, now that I can help with. Oh yeah, that reminds me: I don’t think these healing potions are actually healing potions.” He opens a sack containing bottles of red liquid that they had pilfered from the Rhomdaen villa.
“Oh… that makes sense.”
Digs forces a smile “If you want a hand with that kind of stuff, seriously let me know. And if I ever lose my mind and decide to go after that dragon… I’ll be in touch. Deal?”
“Heh. You’ve got a deal, Digs. And remember, we fey take deals seriously. Besides, is it that crazy to go fight a dragon?” she wonders aloud as she rolls her shoulders. Getting hit with a disintegrate beam square in the chest has caused an ache in her muscles.
“Yes, it’s crazy. That’s an objectively crazy thing to do, but… crazy seems to be working out for you pretty well so far, I guess.” He tries to grin nervously, but can’t because he made a deal with a different fey. “Please don’t take that as encouragement to keep it up, though. As I said, you seem nice.”
“Okay, I’ll try to be less crazy. But I’m not gonna sit around in the face of evil either!”
Digs breathes a sigh of relief that his advice has been heeded. “Yeah, that tracks.”
“By the way…” Zola bends down and her voice drops to a whisper. “Um… did you fake your stammer?”
His initial reply is a string of hissed profanities followed by: “I-I j-just… fuck it. Yeah, I got worked up and forgot. Normally do it in fights, but nobody notices. I just… prefer it if people don’t know what I can do until I do it.”
“But… why? What’s the aim?”
Digs feels a bit ashamed saying it out loud, but has opened a bit of an honesty gate. “Because… if there’s someone like you and someone like me in front of a bad guy, I want them paying attention to you and not me. I’m not what a hero looks like, Zola.”
“Heroes comes in all shapes and sizes, Digs. If you want to be subtler about it, that’s all good with me.” She gives him a good-natured wink. “You can’t see it because I have one eye but I just winked.”
Digs snorts a hint of a laugh and rolls his eyes sarcastically. “Yeah, sure. You’ll keep this between us, right?”
“Of course! Pinky promise?”
Unsure if he’s being mocked, Digs squints and waits to see if Zola actually does this. This whole day has been very jarring for him.
And she does. The drow warrior earnestly holds up a pinky finger to him. He returns the gesture with a tiny metallic blue pinky, curling around hers.