Dragon Harem Quest - Or: Saying You Were Gay Wasn't The Conversation-Ender You Hoped For

You should go see Mother. You just made serious headway and you have a proper, Dragon-y reason to be taking up her time. There'll never be a better time than right now. All you have to do is just... walk right up to that penthouse door and... voluntarily be in her presence and...

and... you should... be worrying about the others right now anyway. It just makes sense right? They need you. There's still matters to attend to at the spire other than the Takara thing that haven't been dealt with. Like the fact that Lyrros, Datu and Jun-ho are all still patiently waiting on you to make time in your schedule to have one-on-ones with them and properly welcome the former two into this Thing and-

Shrinking down to a mortal guise as you leave only makes the sour knot in your stomach worse. You buy some street food along the way but it doesn't sate you. You drop by the Adventurer's Guild and the prospect of swallowing all the gold you made on that last expedition seems like the least appealing prospect in the world right now, so you arrange to have it delivered straight to your door instead. Because fuck it, right? At this point who cares who knows where your spire is, they all know who you are anyway.

You sing One Hundred Bags Of Gold On The Wall in your head on the way back. That doesn't help either. The shadow of Mother's tower seems to stretch out beyond the city limits, a great grasping claw that pinches you tightly by the hindleg no matter how far or fast you fly. You remind yourself that she's probably watching your holdings closely enough that she already knows about the arrangements anyway. That doesn't make you feel better either.

The great doors of your spire creak open with a nudge from your great scaly brow. You slip your already-shrinking body through, down to bipedal form by the time they're even half-open. They swing shut again behind you just as ponderously, setting against the gatehouse with a muted thoom. You're not alone in the cavern - well, not alone besides your beautifully-glimmering golden hoard. Jun-ho is sprawled out on his side along the wall in his true form, stretched out almost completely flat from nose to tail - for all you can guess at where he ends and his tail begins that is. He utterly dwarfs Lyrros, who sticks out like a blotch of pure glossy black and sickly dash-of-black grey-white by comparison to the dragon's vibrant colours. And seems to be combing Jun-ho's hair. It seems that once again your fears that your boyfriends would be lonely and bored were once again unfounded. Once again they seem to have been having a lovely time all on their own.

"Eldingar!" Jun-ho exclaims, scrambling upright. Lyrros lurches away in surprise and, startled out of your thoughts, you almost do the same. The exceedingly long dragon trots over to you.

"Jun-ho!" you reply with forced cheer. "Just the dragon I was hoping to see."

"I was hoping to see you too!" Jun-ho says. "Not that I was sitting around waiting for you to come back or anything, I mean I did a little around the middle of the day, but then Lyrros came up to talk and we've been having loads of fun! You know he used to be a wandering minstrel back before he turned into whatever-he-is? He was telling me all sorts of stories from when he was alive all over the continent and he's really good at telling them too (and he thinks my hair is nice that's unrelated but I don't know it was nice)"

"Oh? That so?" you say, because it's nice and neutral and doesn't take any valuable energy away from the howling storm in your skull.

"And anyway we got to talking and since we're both pretty much foreigners here, me from across the sea him from like a hundred years ago, we've decided to go on a date!" Jun-ho presses on breathlessly. "Into town -Söfnun right?- to kind of figure out what it's all like on our own! Isn't that great?"

That was your idea. Not concrete, not yet, but it was the obvious solution. Söfnun is your city, your lair away from lair, the one thing you know -or thought you did- as well as your spire. You could have seemed wise and knowledgeable and carefully steered him to all the best places and-

"G-great!" you reply, the word forcing its way past your lips to spare you any more of that thought as vomit would spare your stomach poison. "Fantastic! Sounds like a lovely time for the two of you to get to know each other better!"

Jun-ho blinks once, excited energy visibly bleeding off as he notices the first cracks in your facade. "Were- did you come back to take me on a date? It's okay, you still can! Lyrros and I were planning on tomorrow or later!" The energy comes back but it's more anxious now. It's fretting. You didn't realise how exhausting fretting was from the outside looking in. He literally wrings his foreclaws, the nervous gesture seeming downright absurd from a dragon his size. "I-I mean you shouldn't feel any pressure or anything y'know?"

"Pressure? What? No pressure, no pressure at all!" you reply what you think is confidently. You turn your head this way and that, as if physically searching for something to grab so you can shield yourself from the waves of panic washing over you. "I will just... need a moment, is all. I manage the odd investment in expeditions sent by the Adventurer's Guild you see, and I need to wait for my dividends to be delivered here. But then I will more than make up for the ah, attempt that led to meeting Datu!"

Someone opens their mouth to respond, and blissfully it isn't Jun-ho. Unfortunately it's Lyrros.

"What sort of business were you conducting in town?" he asks, and it's not that he means anything by it. By that tone of well-feigned interest he's just trying to make conversation, hoping to tease something out of you that he can be actually interested in. And it almost works. Thoughts of Nana Illvithri's looming party spring to mind unbidden, and your lips part as if to blurt out something to that effect, then your jaws snap shut like a steep trap. That's not for Lyrros, not yet. You barely know him. How would it come across, just springing that on him when you haven't even been on a date yet? It would seem so presumptuous, so demanding! No, no think of something else, he can't know yet-

"Oh, uh, you know," you reply lamely. "Business things, paperwork. I do own the majority of a Merchant House in town even if, ah, I visit somewhat infrequently. But sometimes bookkeeping must be done."

Jun-ho's brow furrows, eyes narrowing. He leans into your field of view. "Were you planning something today?" he asks.

You don't sweat, never tried it either, but somehow you know that if you could you would. "N-no, why?"

"Because you seem really jumpy and high-strung about something!" Jun-ho protests. "You don't want to talk about what you did all day and you started acting different when you thought Lyrros and I had a date tonight." He pauses, then gasps, eyes widening into two perfect emerald orbs. "You were planning something for me, weren't you? You feel bad about that time you tried to take me out and we wound up at the sunken temple and you're planning something to make up for it!"

Not strictly true but it's close enough that that fake sweating feeling only gets stronger. It feels almost like tiny bolts and arcs of lightning crawling up and down your body, hopping from scale to scale. You glance down guiltily to check that isn't actually happening, then snap your gaze right back up. "I don't know what you mean!"

"I just..." The handwringing's back again, his eyes are averted - Jun-ho is the very picture of contrition. "It's not your fault that went all life-threatening and scary. You didn't know! And things have been so hard for you what with Takara and the map and Makram-"

Each reminded failure another dagger slipping between the scales and into your heart, cracking your smile bit by bit.

"-and I know it's been hard to deal with... everything about this from day one so I just want to tell you honestly I don't think you should worry about it," he keeps going, shyly looking you in the eye. "I mean it was kind of lonely here at first but it's not anymore y'know? It's been really fun spending time with Datu and Lyrros and Abzu that I don't feel lonely at all! And with Belial probably coming back soon and Issachar maybe visiting at least and Makram out of the lamp any day now it's alright, y'know? You don't have to fuss! I'm happy already!"

It feels like a piece of iron in your chest, bent too far and finally snapping. It feels like a pane of glass cracking from corner to corner and finally shattering. It feels like every conversation you never had with Mother about this polyamory business is echoing around inside your skull, and oh it's so easy to imagine dialogue for her. Mocking you for being so foolish. So inadequate. So easily overwhelmed. You can feel your breathing quicken, your heart race. It feels like fear but it's not, but it's close enough, it's just close enough to feel the twisted knot in your guts run cold as ice with shame.

Jun-ho notices. His expression changes. "Are you alright?" he asks.

Pitying you.

You. Are. A. Dragon. You are above pity. You are above being 'overwhelmed', above need, above loneliness, above the very concept of struggle. Your hoard is your heart and you guard your heart more securely than any armour, any shield, any lock or wall or barrier. Your every whim becomes reality, the earth shakes beneath you and the sky above trembles and bends to your will. The twisted, sour knot in your stomach thaws. Your wings fly open with a gust of gale-force wind, your lovers's hair dancing in its wake.

"Fine," you snap in a low, metallic rumble. "Two of you may have deserted me already, one may never wake again, I may have business that draws me away from home time and time again but I am not about to crumble like some edifice of sand."

"Two?" Lyrros asks. "Did something happen to Belial-?"

"E-Eldingar I don't like the way you're talk-" Jun-ho starts at the same time.

"But you are right," you hiss, cutting them both off as easily as swiping your hand through water. "I have been planning. I have been 'preoccupied'. No longer. I have long-overdue business to attend to with a certain fox-" you spit the word like acid "-and if you are so happy with your arrangements you should have no objection to my leaving immediately."

Jun-ho opens his mouth to question, but you don't give him the opportunity. Your wings flap once, twice, thrice, you take off and you're already shifting as you rise. Wings billowing out like great leather sails, air whipped up into a stormy frenzy that plucks at Jun-ho's thin moustache, Lyrros' billowing cape, even sets loose gold coins on a mad, jingling dance across the cave floor. You swoop up and through the widened cave mouth high in the spire wall, bursting out into the late afternoon sun and wheeling around on an updraft to catch the wind south. Your wings beat with a sort of mechanical, inexorable precision, driving you onward at the exact pace only the muted yet furious can set. Your gaze is set dead-ahead, locked on the horizon as clouds and earth slip by above and below, as thoughts whirl and swirl and spiral within your skull in a mad, deafening cacophony.

The sun sets, stretching the shadows far below you and painting the clouds flame-gold. You come to your senses as if waking from an unexpected sleep. You're flying south. The land beneath you is unfamiliar. The few stars beginning to peek through the sky's mantle are just a little bit off-centre. You look left, you look right, you look straight ahead and crane your neck to look where you came. You have absolutely no idea where you are.

The righteous, furious energy that once filled you has drained to the last drop. You can barely even keep your wings flapping so you just... don't. You let them go slack, edges ruffling in the wind as you glide on and on and on, slowly losing altitude with every passing moment. Your legs hang loose and limp beneath you, no magical treasures or other such supplies to keep a tight grip on. The canopy of some forest or another slowly rises to meet you and you greet it like a vast, green blanket. Branches snap off like dry, dead twigs beneath your bulk and leaves cascade over your scales by the score as you break through and just sort of... gently grind to a halt in the dirt below. Gouging out a greater and greater furrow until the last of your momentum fades away and you stop with a gentle flump.

There's a few fading sounds in the undergrowth as whatever animal life you disturbed wisely flees before you rise. Slithers and skitters and galloping hooves, disturbed birds chittering in anger or fear or excitement in the dense web of crisscrossing boughs above you. Your nose is pressed flush against the trunk of a great old tree, partly uprooted by the impact. You slowly drag yourself up, bit by bit by bit, eyeing the ancient tree contemplatively.

You tear it out the rest of the way like pulling up a weed, turn it around, and slowly grind the root-end into your brow as if hoping to drill the toxic miasma out of your skull. It doesn't work too well. A few seconds of fruitless worrying and you let it fall to earth with a rumbling crash. Any birds that were still gamely holding on flee in a flurry of flapping and feathers.

You're already imagining it. You can picture them back at the spire, clear as day. Confused and hurt and worried. Or just angry. Irritated. Waiting impatiently for you to burn yourself out and come crawling back. You can picture Issachar coming to visit, hearing about what you did and sagely shaking his head like he always expected this. You can picture Belial coming to you in your dreams and finding you like this, sprawled out in the dirt like a bug. You can even picture Makram regenerating, bursting free of the bonds of his lamp, to find you gone. Or even worse - back, without even finding the one who nearly killed him.

What's done is done and all you can do now is decide what you do next. If you slink back to the spire then what then? Nothing. You'll have put on that show, made yourself look the fool, all for nothing. But if you find Takara? If you find that thieving, lying, murderous fox? Maybe then you'll still be able to call yourself a dragon.

Which is all well and good to think but the reality is you're almost utterly lost with nothing to your name, not so much as two gold pieces to rub together. You can triangulate your vague position based on your internal compass bearings for the spire and Söfnun, but that doesn't do you much good unless you're running home with your tail between your legs. You have to think. You don't have much light left no matter what you do.

[ ] Terrorise nearby villages with the full might of your draconic presence. Intimidate them into telling you what you want to know and appeasing you with what they have, and follow Takara's trail with that.
[ ] Try to track Takara magically. Sure you don't have any formal training in the arcane arts, but you don't need them. You're a dragon, power flows through your veins as thickly as blood. You can surely fashion some runestones to follow.
[ ] Try heading straight for the last place you remember the other lights being, or near enough between them, and start from there. Takara seems to want to use the map rather than just sell it - but you might just waste time getting yourself even more lost in the process.
[ ] Take a mortal guise and use your House Elding line of credit to pay your way. Buy what you need, buy your information, buy silence if you have to, and strike at the opportune moment. You'll have enough.
[ ] Get to an Adventurer's Guild and put the word out for information on Takara - as much as you can for a shapeshifter. Describe their preferred form, the commonalities, the tells you noticed. Wait until you hear something solid and race off to confront them yourself. [x0.5]
[ ] Admit defeat. Go home, or at least to Söfnun, and wait for it all to end. Maybe scrounge up the courage to return before someone comes looking for you. [x0.33]