"Yoo-Hoo! Mr. Dekarios!"

Oh, how overjoyed I am to finally find him. I swear, I've searched every inch of Faerûn. Important things truly are in the last place you look.

He steps out of his tent. His face looks somber until he sees me, and brightness returns to his eyes.

"Tara!" He holds out his arms in welcome. "How on earth did you find me?!"

"It was quite simple, Mr. Dekarios. I trusted my instincts, as I always do."

I flutter elegantly into his arms, and my purr rattles me despite myself. I press my paws into his robe, kneading him gleefully.

"I can't tell you how happy I am to see you."

"What happened to you? One moment you're sitting, watching the sea, and the next moment I'd lost you! I cannot help but chastise myself for being so careless."

"I was taken." His face twists with a mournful disquiet. "There is a lot I need to tell you."

He carries me to his tent and I leap from his arms, finding a spot on his bed roll. He sits and takes a deep breath.

"It was a nautiloid. I'm not sure what it was doing in Waterdeep. As it flew past, I was brushed by a tentacle, and ended up in a wretched pod."

"A nautiloid? If I didn't know better, I'd call you daft for spinning such a yarn." I coil my tail around my paws.

"Trust me, I wouldn't have believed it either." He sits back and goes quiet, in the way he usually does when he's about to tell me something important.

I focus. "What is it, Mr. Dekarios?"

"Tara. I'm... infected."

My skin bristles. Even the fur on my tail stands on end. "Mystra's Mercy. Yet another problem that you must manage. And we will manage it." I walk up to him and study his face. "You look like yourself, although I can't fully tell with that ghastly beard of yours. Why don't we shave it off so I can get a proper view of you."

"Tara." He grumbles.

"One day you're going to look back on this phase and realize I was right all along."

"It's not a phase!" He runs his hand along his whiskers, and they make a scratching sound.

Like boar hair.

"And what about your existing condition?" I nod toward that blight in his chest.

"Oh. The orb. It's fine, I have plenty of magical items to manage. I'd collected several when I landed here."

"Perfect, let's have a look. I'd like to know how long you have before I begin hunting for more."

He goes stiff, and his face becomes crooked. "Well... they're kept in a communal chest. I don't exactly have direct access to them."

"Communal chest you don't have access to? That's hardly communal."

"I'm given what I need, when I need it. That's all that matters. Don't worry about the orb, Tara."

"Preposterous. Pray tell, who has access to this 'communal chest'?"

"The paladin. He manages the camp's assets. It's safer that way."

He says it stiffly, clearly hiding something from me. He doesn't want me to meddle, but he knows better than that. I am one of the greatest meddlers on the Sword Coast.

"I'll be speaking with this paladin at once."

"Tara, no!" He grabs at me like an animal.

"Mr. Dekarios! I'll ask that you refrain from lunging at me in future."

"I apologize, but please. I don't need you getting involved. I can manage perfectly fine on my own."

"Are you saying you're no longer in need of my services?"

"No! That's not what I'm saying." He watches me as he tries to find the words. "...He's not well. I can't have you getting hurt over something as simple as my cache."

My nose turns up. "I won't get hurt Mr. Dekarios. I've been around long enough to know how to handle such things."

I flutter off. It seemed like Gale was reaching for me again, but I know he would never do something so undignified.

Gliding around camp, I find a comical hodgepodge of characters.

A githyanki warrior is camped close to Gale. She's polishing her armor to a mirror finish.

A tiefling ranger is practicing her aim with a crossbow. Her partner tosses a clay disk into the air and she looses a bolt that cracks through it cleanly.

A cleric of Shar is engrossed in a game of fetch with a dog, while an inferno shaped like a beautiful barbarian encourages them.

The barbarian spots me. "Shadowheart! Look at that!"

The cleric glances up. "Isn't that a rare sight." She gives me a modest wave. "Welcome!"

The dog stops with the ball in his mouth, tail wagging, spittle running from his chin. He tries to speak but refuses to drop the ball.

At the very far end of the camp sits a beige monstrosity. Blank canvas pitched meticulously. Corners squared. Guylines straight. A paladin's refuge, I have no doubt.

The wind carries me in, and I land softly on a table in the middle of the tent. I'm immediately struck by a strange rippling in the Weave.

Something's off.

A large tiefling man sits hunched over a piece of paper, scribbling away. An aristocratic man has his feet propped on the tabletop, engrossed in a book. The Sanguine Arts. Subtle. The paladin is resting his free hand on the aristocrat's ankle. They each have a goblet of... I catch the scent of iron.

They're drinking blood.

Of course they are. I roll my eyes and sit, coiling my tail tightly around my paws.

What a bleak couple these two make, but vampires have a tendency to coagulate. Ahem. Congregate is the word I'm looking for.

Gale does not belong here.

"I'll be with you in a moment." The large man mutters. He speaks clear and precise, but in a fashion that feels… uncanny, rather than comforting. "If you're in a hurry, then Astarion can assist you." He doesn't look up from his letter.

The aristocrat, however, does grace me with his attention. He drops his feet, leaning forward. "Well. I can't say I've seen a tressym in an age."

"Tressym?" The man finally looks up, rendered speechless by my beauty.

"Indeed." The tip of my tail flips gently.

He places his quill into its well and slides the paper to the side. "May I ask who sent you?"

"Sent me? Please, good sir. I go where I wish. However, I am here on behalf of Mr. Dekarios."

"Gale?" His lip twitches, and his fingers develop a subtle tic. "I am curious as to why a tressym is speaking on his behalf."

The vampire slowly props his feet up once again, barely hiding a smirk behind the book.

"That is irrelevant. You must be the paladin in charge of this camp?"

The chair creaks as he leans back. He places his wrist on the table, thumb picking at his finger. "Yes. My name is Vash Neel. And you are?"

"You may address me as Tara."

"Tara." He says bluntly. "The wizard, Tara."

"Of course! I'm sure you've heard Mr. Dekarios speak of me."

"He hasn't mentioned you."

"Excuse me?"

The aristocrat, Astarion, leans in. "He talks about her all the time, just not to you, obviously."

Vash grunts a crude acknowledgement. Like an ogre.

"Still," I purr, "I'm not surprised my reputation has preceded me. I am quite magnificent." I turn, tail lifted, wings tucked properly against my back, so he can get the full scope of my majesty. "It has come to my attention that you are in possession of Mr. Dekarios' property. I've come to retrieve it for him."

Astarion lets out a sharp, mocking laugh.

Vash remains silent, despite my declaration. Clearly he's struggling to keep up.

"The confiscation of his cache was to ensure the safety of the camp."

"I'm certain you truly believe that, but you cannot expect him to maintain stability if you've taken away the means to do so."

"We have an understanding."

"Well I don't understand, Mr. Neel. If you aren't going to give him his cache back, then you've forced me to simply take up the mantle of doing what I've always done. Fetching magical items for him."

"Is that what you do?"

"It is."

"What else do you do?"

"What kind of question is that?"

His unseemly mustache smirks at me. "A curious one." He thinks he's being clever.

A quasit comes barreling into the tent, screeching.

"Master Neely! Shovel wants to play with Tanzy, but Mrs. Lady won't summon her!"

He suddenly looks exhausted. "If Bex says no, then the answer is no. Find something else to do that doesn't break anything."

The fiend lays its beady eyes on me. "OOOHHH!" She climbs Mr. Neel's lap. He instantly picks up the inkwell and quill as she clambers onto the table, reaching for my wing.

"I beg your pardon!" I take flight and land neatly onto a cot nearby. "I will not allow myself to be fondled by a gremlin."

Shovel stomps her foot, rattling the table. "I no gremlin! Shovel is fack… fack…"

"Factotum." He corrects her.

"Yeah!!!"

"Factotum?" I sniff incredulously. "A factotum is paid for their labor."

"She is paid."

"What could a quasit possibly do with coin in the Abyss?"

"I do not pay her in coin. She is paid in time in the material plane and corpses."

"...Corpses." He says it as if they were as casual as apples. "How uncouth."

"It is very couth, but I will take your unsolicited judgement to heart next time Shovel and I have business."

The quasit taps over to Mr. Neel, climbing into his lap. "Master Neely is good master! He's only killed Shovel twice!" He gently strokes between her ears.

"Indeed." My ear flips. "Focusing on the matter at hand. Gale's cache. You will be returning it to him."

He picks up his quill once more, tapping the excess ink on the edge of the well. "I'll consider it."

I scoff at his audacity. "What is there to consider?"

"Plenty. You're lucky I'm even entertaining your request amongst everything else I need to manage."

"I am not being entertained, Mr. Neel. You're stalling. If you must take your time to get used to the idea, so be it. I expect Gale's property returned to him by end of day. Do you understand me?"

I've stunned the man into silence with my phenomenal negotiating skills.

There is a clatter as a clumsy pigeon tumbles onto the table. Shovel leaps from Mr. Neel's lap and dashes out.

My instincts spike and I aim for the succulent bird. I leap, but the back of a hand strikes me out of the air.

I land elegantly on my feet, but something in the air has shifted.

"Tara." Mr. Neel slowly rises. "As a guest in this camp, you will not jeopardize my operations."

"Mr. Neel. It was hardly necessary for you to strike me." I lick my paw and begin cleaning my face.

"It was. The birds in this camp are not to be harmed. Especially Courier Cherami. She is invaluable to me."

The one-legged pigeon fumbles but rights herself. "I'm invaluable? Oh." She croons softly.

The grizzled thing hardly looks reliable enough to carry herself to roost.

He remains fixed on me. "If this is something you cannot agree to, then we are at an impasse."

"If I'm forbidden from hunting birds, then how exactly do you expect me to eat?"

"That's Gale's concern. Not mine."

My whiskers press forward, unable to stifle a yawn. I'm feeling quite tired of the conversation. "Regardless of whether you return the cache, he will be relying on me for magical items going forward. As he always has. I will not fail him. Good day."

I walk out, tail high, though I feel his eyes on me as I leave.

His voice carries as I hear the creak of his chair. "Are you okay?"

A light stroll would be far more ideal than flying. Surely. I feel relief as I distance myself from that man. I saunter back into Gale's tent, finding him sitting anxiously on a stool just outside, though he's pretending to be fixated on tightening the hilt of his rapier.

He sees me and quickly sets it down. "Tara! Thank goodness. How did it go? Did you speak to Vash?"

I leap into his lap and purr. "Yes, Mr. Dekarios. I did. And I think I understand your concern. He is a paladin, but he seems... well the best I can say is? Like an Oblex replicating what it thinks a paladin should be like and getting it wrong."

"You're not too far off. The man has no memories beyond waking up on the nautiloid. Though, since traveling with him, he seems to know more than he's letting on. I don't know how, we're in the middle of nowhere." Gale shifts in his seat, as if he were ashamed. "He knew my name. He shouldn't have known my name, but he did. Gale Dekarios. He knew about the orb. He found out somehow. Likely a contact of his." He begins to mumble in the way that I hate. "Why would he feel like he needs to dig around in my past? He's probably done it for everyone. I wouldn't put it past him."

"Perhaps we should do some digging of our own. Whoever he is, we need to get to the bottom of it, for all our sakes."

"Please, Tara. If we're going to do this, let's proceed with caution. He may seem like an oddity, but he's dangerous."

"I am well aware, Mr. Dekarios. Vampires usually are."

"Vampire?"

"Yes. You should know better, it's not like he's being subtle about it."

"It's not something he's confessed to. It's no secret that my other traveling companion, a man named Astarion, is a vampire spawn. There's no reason for Vash to keep his own vampirism a secret. Curious. Alarming. How did you find out?"

"I found him drinking a goblet of blood in his tent with this Astarion."

Gale grows quiet, before muttering. "Where did the blood come from?" He stares blankly at the ground.

I reach out a paw and press it onto his arm. "I promise, I will step carefully."

"Please do." He sighs deeply. "Even if we get the answers we seek, I cannot leave."

"And why's that?"

"Because he holds a prism that keeps us all from turning into illithid thralls."

"You know as well as I that an infected person remains cogent until they change. Why would you turn into a thrall?"

"There is an entity that has been controlling the infected. She's called the Absolute, and it seems each initiate into her cult is infected with..." He stands abruptly, forcing me to leap from his lap. "An elder brain." He finally stammers. "The Absolute is an elder brain. Of course. I was so caught up in everything that's been going on that I didn't see it."

"Good heavens! I never thought I would see that day…"

"You see why I am trapped. For whatever reason, the prism chooses who to protect, though I'm still not sure why."

"Of course it would pick you. You're one of the most brilliant wizards in Faerûn. Let's fetch it, the safest place for it to be is under your care."

"You've just stumbled into yet another problem, Tara. The prism cannot be stolen. It chooses who possesses it, too. It used to be held by our cleric, Shadowheart, but for whatever reason it moved to him. He did something, I'm sure of it. Tricked it somehow. I feel he'd been planning this all along."

"Speculation, Mr. Dekarios. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I know you may feel trapped, but when playing lanceboard, you haven't truly been cornered, you're merely overlooking a move. First things first, we need to understand Mr. Neel."

Gale gives me a welcomed smile but then glances up. Footsteps approach, followed by that uneasy feeling in the Weave.

Mr. Neel approaches. Back stiff, shoulders square, and an off-kilter cadence that makes you think he has a pebble in his boot. Fingers tap arrhythmically on the bottom of Gale's cache.

He hands the chest to him, and Gale takes it tentatively.

"Th-thank you, Vash."

The paladin bows his head politely before lumbering back to his tent.

"What did you say to him?"

"I merely told him exactly how things were going to work." I lift my chin with pride, purring even louder. "He had no room to argue with my superior logic."

Gale opens the chest but after only a moment he slowly lowers the lid, lips tight.

"He kept half…"