WHO Laudna (The Sun Tree & small appearance by a ~patron~) WHERE Xhorhaus grounds WHEN This evening, during the dinner party. May 20th WHAT Laudna … sees an unexpected piece of her history. STATUS Narrative! I think Jade claimed a spot to have someone check on her, will update! WARNINGS Dark, sad, heavy mentions of a previous death, trauma, PTSD. SPOILERS for Campaign 3!
“Don’t you remember this? It was a bit more desolate than you might recall, but the foundation is the same. The branches still just as strong.”
It wasn’t a surprise for Laudna to have that voice in her head pop up, not considering where they were and what they were doing. Everyone had been paranoid about this dinner party on Laudna’s end, and she adored them for it. Protective friends that she loved dearly.
They couldn’t have predicted this.
For Laudna to need a moment to herself, to want a little air and quiet, and a place where she could freely tell Delilah to shush, I’m trying to have a good time.
All of that had been forgotten, abandoned, left on the path behind her as her feet carried her forward.
Forward, until the soft soles of her shoes hit a large root in the ground. There were stairs to her left, and Laudna started towards them, slowly, almost as if she did not have control over her body.
As she looked up, the evening sky wasn’t quite able to reach her, to peek through the lush branches of the large, foreboding tree above her. Around her. Within her.
Laudna instantly regretted not having Imogen come with her. It was easy to coast through things, to leave the worries and the stress and the horrors behind, back in Whitestone.
It was foolish of her to think that they were in another world, Whitestone would remain behind. Foolish, when it followed her everywhere. That little voice in the back of her head. Nagging. Poking. Foolish to think she could escape it. Her past, her life, her death.
Now, here it was. The two things that connected her, the tree she had hanged until the strange magic had caused her to wake, the very same strange magic that granted her these gifts, the life, the magic.
Delilah Briarwood.
Now she haunted Laudna, the quiet revere she’d had for so long was broken with a few of the members of Vox Machina being here. The ones that somehow escaped a fate they shouldn’t have, and Delilah was bitter, angry, annoyed. She fussed and whispered and made promises Laudna tried to ignore. Quiet threats of harm and death that Laudna pushed to another small area in the back of her head.
Delilah held no power here.
Right?
Laudna wished she knew the answer to that. She hoped. She was so sure, until she wasn’t. Until she found herself stepping up the stairs to the large trunk of this very alive tree, a tree that had met a better fate than she had.
Normally, when Delilah talked to her, all taunts and barbs, Laudna brushed her off with jokes and a light mood. Now instead, she whispered quietly. “I remember.”
“I thought you might. What a wonderful evening that was. One I’ll never forget.”
It was personal now, and Laudna sucked in a breath that didn’t quite fill her lungs, it never did. She tried to force that mood back up, to not let Delilah get to her. “Oh, darling, I think you and I have a different definition of wonderful.”
But that didn’t help, it made Delilah hiss, and Laudna felt it as a piercing sound to her temple. It didn’t make her hurt go away, it didn’t make the flashbacks any less vivid.
Every single time she looked up, she saw herself. A phantom image, a ghostly pale girl-- so young, had seen so little outside her little farm and her life. All she’d known or years was fear, and then what was supposed to be a celebration! A dinner party to remember! It had become the worst night of her life, instead.
It was supposed to be behind her. Not here, under her fingertips. Not here, in the building not far away, clinking ale and wine glasses together as they laughed at told stories.
Not in her head, whispering taunts and taking out her annoyances on Laudna.
Even the force of Delilah Briarwood couldn’t keep Laudna on her feet, slowly she sunk to the ground, her knees hitting the wood below her as she collapsed with gentle ease. Leaving, pretending she hadn’t seen this very scion of her death, looming overhead.
Instead, she didn’t have the power to do more than reach out and touch it, almost as if she was desperately trying to pull from the life that it contained now.