>>5299131“Calm yourselves,” you call out as you enter the main chamber again. “It was only me.”
This draws some confusion, but you explain, and see the confusion deepen, and blossom into astonishment and wonder.
“Mightier every day,” the Novice sniffs, “but no wiser. What were you THINKING, oh Meatheaded One, to affect an earthquake while WE are WITHIN the EARTH?”
She taps her claw upon your breastplate with each emphasized word, drawing up to her full height and getting right in your face. She at least had the common sense and decency to draw you aside and out of sight of the others before doing so.
“Didn’t I just instruct you to clam yourself?” you mock. “Panic ill-suits you, oh Eternally Smug One.”
The Novice takes a few long breaths, still lightly gripping your armour as if for stability, or for comfort.
“I loathe you,” she mutters, barely audible, but you can tell the familiar ritual of back-and-forth banter has helped to soothe her in some queer fashion.
“Are the potions ready?” you ask.
“No thanks to your show of braggadocious force nearly toppling my apparatuses!” she says, hands on hips. “Luckily for you, and for us all, I was swift to secure them all.”
“Yes, I suppose it is a good thing that you can sometimes fake professionalism,” you agree solemnly, drawing a hiss and a swat of her tail. You stifle a laugh.
“Let us administer them, then,” you say. “It is time to move on.”
The two of you dole out the potions to your retinue’s injured members. The Pit-Guard’s injury was already in recovery, and the potion seems enough to render it fully-healed. Archer Oluwadamilare seems a bit more spry for his dosage, but despite an attempt to engender confidence and the right to accompany you to Bloodrise, you can stills ee that he favours one leg heavily over the other.
“You will return to the Drow,” you reiterate, to his shamefaced disappointment.
As for the Pit-Guard’s Apprentice, it is only with the administration of this healing potion that he even awakes. He is still groggy, his entire body a mass of interwoven bruises, red and purple mingling across and beneath his scales in a pattern beautiful and hideous.
“I failed,” he grumbles, when you explain what happened, and how long he ahs been unconscious—and where he will be going next, rather than with you. “So much for my part in the new Age of Scales.”