They had walked for miles without a word.

Sara didn’t know what to say, and Raven didn’t give her anything to work with. Despite walking side-by-side in the gloom, Sara felt more on her own than she ever had.

The tunnels here were much darker than the ones above. Thick, sticky spiderwebs began to appear more frequently, clinging to the damp stone walls. Raven hadn’t needed to pause for a break once, despite holding April’s limp body like a baby in her arms.

The crunching of their boots on the stone suddenly stopped as they entered the soft, moss-covered cavern ruins of the Northdark. Dilapidated stone buildings of various sizes were abandoned all over the massive cavern floor.

Sara took a deep breath, trying to force her heart to stop hammering against her ribs. The Plunderdark was a place that Mark did very little homebrew-changing to, simply because their party never actually went there on Earth. Most of their tabletop adventures were above ground, so he had to make his weird shit up for the surface. That meant almost everything down here was unforgiving, brutal, canonical D&D lore.

“Raven,” Sara finally broke the suffocating silence. “I was so scared. Back there... I was so afraid I was about to lose you.”

“I understand,” she said, her voice entirely flat, offering no further response.

Sara wanted her to say something real. Anything. “Let me take her body. Let's just turn around. I can’t let them take you.”

“You can’t stop them,” Raven said, staring straight ahead. “And neither can I.”

“What do you mean?” Sara shook her head, matching her pace. “You just go back to the store, and I will deal with them if they come looking.”

Raven paused and turned, her pale eyes hollow. “You want to stand face-to-face with Lolth? A literal goddess?”

“No,” Sara said, trying to steady her trembling hands. “But if someone has to, it's going to be me. I did this.”

“No, Sara,” Raven said, turning and continuing her march. “You need to go back right now, because this doesn’t end well for you.”

“Does it end well for you?” Sara demanded.

“No.” Raven responded simply.

“Then I’m going with you.”

After a long moment, Raven sighed. “Suit yourself.”

Sara stopped walking. “Why are you doing this?”

“I told you,” Raven said, her grip tightening on the corpse. “She’s my—”

“No.” Sara interrupted, her voice rising in the quiet cavern. “Why are you being so short with me?”

Raven paused, but didn’t turn around. “You killed my sister, Sara.”

“I wasn’t trying to!” Sara cried out, the guilt clawing at her throat. “She was going to murder you!”

“I know.” Raven said. She started walking again without another word.

Sara swallowed hard. She really fucked this up. Just like everything else. Her emotions always ruined things. She had to think of something fast, or she was going to lose her forever to the dark.

Out of all the partners she’d had on Earth, she’d never felt this way. Raven was easy. She never pressed, never pressured, never tried to control… she simply existed next to her and never tried to steer the relationship. Men always tried to steer, even the good ones who didn’t know they were doing it. Sara didn’t know about girls. She’d never let her guard down around them before. It felt like she had been in this hellish world forever already, and Raven had been the only tangible thing keeping her grounded.

“Raven, please,” Sara begged, her voice thick with desperation.

Raven stopped and slowly turned around. “Can we do this later?”

It was hard to argue with her while she was physically carrying her dead sister, but Sara couldn’t just let it go. “No. I just need to know that I didn’t completely fuck this up.”

Raven sighed. She gently placed April's body on a nearby bed of soft, glowing moss and turned fully back to Sara. “You are about to meet Falsari, the Matron Mother of House Muninn. And, if you are extremely lucky, you won’t meet my uncle Karl Axel Foley. It was only because of him that I was able to leave in the first place, but it was under the strict condition that I never come back. Of course, Mother wanted me back anyway to punish me. That’s exactly why April kept chasing me.”

A hammer blow hit Sara in the chest. “So she wasn’t…”

“Oh, no,” Raven said, a bitter smile touching her lips. “She was absolutely trying to kill me. She wanted my seat in the hierarchy.” Raven looked down at the body and shook her head sadly. “But she was still my sister.”

Sara hung her head. “I know. I just…”

“Sara,” Raven stepped forward, stopping her. “I really care about you. A lot. I haven’t cared about anyone like this since… Jaheira. And I know your intent back there was to save me, but it doesn’t change the political facts. It doesn’t change the fact that my sister is dead.”

“I thought Drow killed each other all the time?” Sara asked, desperately trying to make sense of the Plunderdark logic.

“We do,” Raven said. “But you aren’t Drow. And you know I swore off killing. I have so much blood on my hands from my past, and I can’t wash it out no matter how hard I try. I need time to heal. Time that I’m sure we don’t have now. When we walk into Hazbruhharassin, Sara, it’s for good.”

“What?” Sara shook her head, panic setting in. “For good?”

“Yeah,” she nodded slowly. “If Mother is in a good mood, she just turns me back into an Arachne monstrosity, and she makes me kill you to prove my loyalty. You really don’t want to know what she does when she’s in a bad mood.”

“Then why are you even going?” Sara shouted, gesturing wildly at the dark. “Let's just bury her here and go home!”

Raven sighed and shook her head. “I can’t, Sara.”

“Why?” Sara pushed, stepping closer. “I can’t lose you!”

Raven hung her head, her voice breaking. “That’s not your choice to make.”

Sara’s heart cracked completely in two. Hot tears welled in her eyes, and she started trembling violently. The crushing weight of the world, the guilt of the murder, the sheer terror of losing the only person she wanted—it was actively overloading her system, and she couldn’t contain it.

“AAAAARRRRGHHH!!!!” Sara screamed into the cavern, a raw, guttural sound of pure frustration.

Suddenly, a targeted spotlight flickered on from the shadows above and stopped, illuminating Sara perfectly.

Sara’s eyes went wide as she looked up to see the source. Hovering silently in the air above the ruins was a massive, fleshy orb. But instead of magical eyestalks, ten small, segmented arms sprouted from its crown, each one holding a frosty can of cheap beer. The arms swiveled, focusing their cans on her, before a giant central eye snapped open in the middle of the orb.

Raven turned, instantly recognizing the horrific homebrew creation, and dashed back toward April’s body. “Beerholder! Run!”

Before she could reach her sister, the monster's central eye flared. A beam of sickly yellow magic shot out, passing just over Raven's shoulder and hitting April’s corpse directly. The flesh instantly turned to solid, gray rock.

“April, no!” Raven screamed.

A second beam shot from the eye, striking the petrified body and violently shattering the stone statue into a hundred pieces.

Sara had to think fast. Krav Maga wasn't going to work against a hovering aberration. She tapped into her Bardic magic. “Rainbow Pattern!”

A swirling, hypnotic pattern of glowing rainbows appeared in the air directly in front of the Beerholder. It worked. The monster was instantly fascinated, its central eye dilating as it stared blankly at the pretty colors.

“It won’t last long!” Sara yelled. “Let’s go!”

Raven shook with absolute, blinding fury, her pale fingers gripping a jagged chunk of her sister’s stone body. She roared and winged the heavy rock right at the monster's central eye. It connected with a wet thud, instantly knocking the Beerholder out of its magical daze.

Fuck. The monster turned its massive body to charge. Sara saw an opening as Raven foolishly stood her ground, screaming and taunting the beast. The Beerholder pointed its central eye directly at the Drow.

A high-pressure torrent of what smelled exactly like stale Bud Light erupted from the eye, blasting toward Raven.

Using her Level 11 agility, Raven jumped smoothly to the side, dodging the alcoholic blast. She leaped into the air, grabbed the massive central eye with both hands, violently yanked her body weight downward, and whipped the entire floating monster head-first into the stone foundation of a nearby ruined building.

Holy shit. Sara capitalized on the opportunity instantly. She pointed a finger at the crumbling base of the massive stone ruin the monster was pinned against, took a deep breath, and sang a single, impossibly low, resonant note.

“Sympathetic Vibration!”

The magic caught the natural frequency of the ancient stone. The foundation rumbled violently, cracked, and completely crumbled. Tons of heavy cavern rock toppled down onto the Beerholder, crushing it flat under a cloud of dust.

Instantly, a warm, golden rush of magical energy flooded Sara's veins. She felt entirely refreshed, her muscles stronger, her mind sharper. What the hell? “Is it…”

“You leveled up, didn’t you?” Raven asked, her voice hollow and clearly broken by the adrenaline crash. “That doesn’t happen unless they die. So, congratulations, we officially killed a Beerholder.”

Sara waited in the settling dust, watching what Raven was doing. Raven walked slowly back to where the last few remaining stone pieces of April lay scattered on the moss. She bowed her head silently for a long time.

Then, she turned back to Sara.

“I don’t know what to do.”

It was the most vulnerable, honest tone Sara had ever heard her use.

Sara kept her distance, her worry overriding the thrill of the level-up. “What do you mean?”

Raven deflated completely, her shoulders dropping as she turned to face the Tiefling. “About you. I don’t know what to do about you.”

Sara shook her head, not understanding. “What do you want to do?”

Raven's pale eyes pierced straight through Sara’s soul. “I want to love you, Sara. So much.”

The confession staggered her. It was exactly what she wanted to hear, but the timing was so incredibly wrong. “I…”

“But I’m fucking terrified!” Raven cried out, suddenly unable to make eye contact. She looked away into the dark. “I… this… this was my way out.”

Sara’s new heart cracked. “Why? Because of April?”

“No,” Raven shook her head, fresh tears spilling over her dark cheeks. “She was just the excuse I needed.”

“You…” Sara took a long moment to feel the absolute, crushing weight of Raven’s words. “You would have rather walked into Hazbruhharassin and been turned back into an Arachne monstrosity… than stay and be with me?”

Something happened that Sara hadn’t seen before. A sob tore from the Drow's throat. “No, I… yes… no… I just… every time I finally tell someone I love them, they die, Sara! They always die!”

Sara stepped forward, closing the distance between them. She studied the terrified, powerful woman hard. “Can I tell you something about me?”

“Yeah,” Raven looked up, swiping at her eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sara said, her voice an absolute anchor in the dark. “Do you know how many times life on Earth has tried to kill me? Always. And I am still here. I have been through literal hell and back, and even when I actively wanted to die, whoever or whatever the fuck is in charge of the universe wouldn’t let me. If there’s one thing I’m actually good at, it's surviving. I’ve given up on thriving. That’s out of the picture for me now, as much as I hate it. But surviving? I’m incredibly good at it.”

“But Sara, you have no idea what my family—”

“I just killed a fucking Beerholder with a song, dude,” Sara said, shaking her head. “By all rights, I should be in April’s place right now, but I survived. You know how?”

“How?”

“You,” Sara said firmly. “Not just because you physically threw that fucker into the building, but because I refuse to let anything hurt my family.”

The word visibly stung Raven. “Family? But we aren’t…”

“Raven,” she said, stepping entirely into the Drow's personal space. “I don’t have to be fucking you to call you family. Don’t get me wrong. I would love to fuck you. But I want it to be right. Because I…” She trailed off, thinking about how to properly word the absolute chaos of her own heart.

“You what?” Raven whispered.

“I need it to be right,” Sara started over, her voice low and fierce. “Because I’m the type of girl that, once I’m actually in a relationship? I can get crazy. I’m the type of girl that will get stoned, put on Beartooth’s Disgusting album, and fuck you stupid until Caleb Shomo gets sober. And I… I’m not comfortable doing that with just anyone. I protect myself, too.”

Raven nodded slowly, a tiny, genuine smile fighting through the tears. “I understand.”

“Do you?” Sara said, her frustration bleeding into fierce affection. “You know what? Will you be with me?”

Raven got nervous, taking a half-step back. “I…”

“No pressure to fuck right now,” Sara clarified, setting the boundary immediately. “Just keep going exactly like we are. But I get to show you what it’s actually like to be with me. I get to show you that I'm not going to die on you.”

“Sara, I—”

“Yes or no?” Sara set a firm, immovable boundary. She wasn't asking; she was offering a lifeline.

Raven looked at the stone remains of her past, then looked back at the Tiefling offering her a future. After a long moment of thought, Raven took a breath.

“Yes.”

 

[SYSTEM ALERT: Elite Encounter Cleared.]

[XP Awarded: 24,000]

[Level Up Available! Unspent Attribute Points: 14]