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-
yesss, embrace the cowardice
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,
wait shit this might be worse than i thought
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.
...
"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)"
brushie brushie~
"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-
Okay, pausing here to point out - for all that it's running into the problem of Eldingar's emotional state being best likened to a looming garbage fire right now, this is a good sign. Remember Belial's talk about the difference between a harem and polyamory? Yeah, this is Jun-ho and Lyrros taking care of each other, which means the polycule is
working as people form bonds with each other rather than only being here for Eldingar's sake. Unfortunately, it does mean that you run into the whole, "
what is polyamory? Scheduling. So much scheduling." problem, but hopefully Eldingar will be able to be happy about this once life calms down a bit.
"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!"
Bless your insight, Jun-ho. Wiggleboi is many kinds of good. He is The Goods.
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."
Welp. That stung.
All in all though I kiiiinda feel okay about it? Our lovers mostly seemed concerned about us and each other, we don't seem to have irreperably put our foot in it with any of them, and we've opened up some room to bring in important lessons about polyamorous relationships next time we have a serious talk, which will help Eldingar forwards and provide good material for bolstering his mood, aaaaand we didn't expose him to his mom. Mm, yeah, I'll call this painful, but much more bearable than the alternatives I'd envisioned.
Okay, votes.
[ ] 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.
Haha how about
no. Unlikely to work (what the hell will podunk villagers know? I mean okay they probably know quite a bit that's relevent to their lives, but "where is a specific shapeshifting thief" isn't high on that list), probably puts us on Xiomara's radar whenever she finishes trashing that dungeon, may do bad things to Eldingar's headspace (just because you can't spell 'slaughter' without 'laughter' doesn't make it a good time), may hurt our lovers' feelings if they hear about it, feels wrong for Eldingar in general. He just doesn't read as the type of guy who bullies the helpless when he's in a bad mood.
[ ] 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.
This one actually interests me. Like, I don't think any of these options is excessively likely to
work, (Eldingar hasn't demonstrated any particular affinity for magic, and I'm pretty sure his current mood is not conducive to thoughtful creation) so I'm looking at them for ancillary benefits, and this means more of a look at the magic of this setting and Eldingar trying something thoughtful, which has the potential to be interesting. Buuut I think at this point we're past the stage of trying something because it just looks interesting, we need something to shore up Eldingar's flailing mental state.
[ ] 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.
Logical, methodical, feels the most like Doing Something, but relies on being able to pick up their trail. May produce clues about Petros, who is good and wholesome, also liable to be a bit of a slog.
[ ] 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.
Let's not just be the guy who throws money at the problem. That way probably lies more "oh no i'm broke" story beats, and Eldingar's dealt with that 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]
Iiii would actually probaby call this the most likely option to succeed? It'll take the longest, and possibly maybe start a witch hunt by adventurers,
but siccing a bunch of expert bounty hunters with the narrative backing of telling a story of tracking down a deceitful betrayer behind them seems like a potent argument. Probably too passive to make Eldingar feel better, though.
[ ] 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]
Also no. Eldingar needs to at least
try to get something.
Hmm...
[X] 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.
