For the past two days, Rhydian had been acting strangely. His old fun joking behavior was missing, replaced by a grumpy expression. He spent more time at taverns with a bottle of whiskey in his hands. Dancing and drinking had consumed his life and his level of violence seemed to rise. Normally he would ignore people who insulted him or acted rudely but recently he had been smashing people's heads with bottles or getting into fistfights. Rhydian was still gentle with Jazrael but he wouldn't ever be able to explain what was going on with him, as he genuinely didn't know. The thing that made it crystal clear something was terribly wrong was the fact that he had dropped making drinks and instead focused on indulging in the drinks rather than making them. His passion had died for drinks in two days. Rhydian had spent several years building up his skills for this job and now had completely forgotten it. 

It wasn't until the announcement by the Goddess Serafina, that things started to make sense. The city of Cameroon was a wreck due to the crowds who had consumed this Luxurium. Rhydian himself had fallen victim to this drink, as he never gave up the opportunity to try something new. His dragon ability half protected him against the magic, though it was far stronger than him, he was able to delay the effects so that he would generally maintain his sanity while only succumbing when the night came. The next morning he would be able to reign in himself but there was only so much time he had left. 

When Jazrael heard about the cure, she appeared to be determined to get the ingredients. They planned to head out near the area of Cameroon to search for the ingredients in the morning. Rydian arranged for them to sleep in separate rooms out of fear of any violent tendencies. So far, he hadn't harmed Jazrael or even came close or even made threatening gestures but his fear was big enough that he would try to keep himself away from her when he was vulnerable against the Luxumrium, which he was unable to stop drinking. He always had it nearby as the addiction was more than he could bare. 

Morning came quickly and Rhydian awoke, finding himself in the corner of the bar of the inn with tall pile of bacon on his head. He felt the hangover headache and pushed himself to his feet, feeling queasy. Apparently he spent all night drinking, partying, and getting into barfights. There were other people in the inn, on the floor or hanging from the ceiling by a rope around their leg. Rhydian had no clue they were even up there. He looked around for any sign of Jazrael, though it would be best if she avoided the crazy crowds at night. 

When Rhydian’s behavior had shifted, Jazrael had immediately become concerned. At first, it had seemed like a lot of fun. The pair had gone back to Onnen, to Cameroon, to wind down after the trials they had gone through, and the revelations about who they really were to one another and the relationship that seemed to be blooming between the two of them. They had started out with drinking together, dancing, and having fun… but then, it seemed as though Rhydian’s behavior had shifted for the worse. He stopped caring about the crafting process of making the drinks, which had seemed to be his favorite part of being in the tavern. Then, the violence started, and this was something with him that Jazrael had hardly ever seen. The only time she had seen him resort to any sort of violence was when he had been fighting to protect her, or protect himself. The barfights and brawling were completely out of character for him, and she had been concerned.

Jazrael, on the other hand, had been having a great time. The miserable thoughts of the things she had done in her past had faded, and all she wanted to do was keep having a good time. She had an urge to drag him to a room in the tavern and lock the pair away for days, but she had managed to fight that urge, chalking it up to the newly blossoming romance between the two. She didn’t want to rush things and jeopardize that, but the thought still remained there.

Everything made sense when Serafina, the goddess of Death and Debauchery, made the announcement to the land of Revaliir of what had happened. It seemed that she had been experiencing the good side effects, while Rhydian was leaning towards the darker parts show. Of course, her first thought was that the cure needed to be procured, and she was more importantly focused on getting it for Rhydian. When it got to the point that he wouldn’t even stay in the same room as her, she became even more worried than she already had been.

The morning they were to head out in search of the ingredients, Jazrael woke in her room, alone. There was a small urge there to go straight to the bar and get some more of the wine, but she was strong of mind enough to know that wouldn’t be a good idea, and shook the thought away. She got ready rather quickly and went down the hall to the room that was Rhydian’s. She knocked, waited a few minutes, and after there was no response she let herself in, seeing the room was empty. In fact, it looked as though he hadn’t even slept there. She frowned, feeling rather worried, and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

Jazrael headed to the tavern portion of the establishment, and as she descended the stairs, she could see people scattered around the tavern. Most were passed out either from drink or exhaustion, and there was someone hanging from the ceiling, though it didn’t see as though they were mortally wounded as they were laughing quietly. After looking around frantically, she spotted Rhydian in a corner of the tavern, with what appeared to be a pile of breakfast meats on his head. She walked over to him, frowning. She had never seen him like this before, and she did not like it.

When she got to him, she pushed the bacon off his head and crouched down next to him. She could tell that he hadn’t been awake overly long, and surmised that he most likely wasn’t entirely sure of what was going on. ”Morning,” she said to him, before standing up again. She certainly wasn’t in her happy demeanor, and her tone didn’t have the syrupy, romantic tone that one would speak to a new lover with. Instead, she almost sounded annoyed. ”We need to get a move on if we’re to get this out of your system,” she said, offering her hand to Rhydian. Unless he fought it, she helped him up, and then walked upstairs with him for him to grab his gear.

However long it took them to get ready, afterward they walked out the door of the tavern into the streets. Cameroon looked much different than it usually did, the revelers having spilled out into the streets of the city. ”Let’s get moving,” Jazrael said once they were outside. As they walked towards the outskirts of the city, a very drunken man came towards them. He immediately walked up to Jazrael and slapped her on the behind abruptly. She was so taken aback by his brazenness that she stood there, having gasped out of shock, staring at the man as he rudely propositioned her. She got a bit nervous and looked to Rhydian, realizing he probably wasn’t going to be too pleased about that whole situation.

The second he heard her annoyed voice, he knew that he had finally pissed her off with his behavior. Some small part of him wondered if this was all the cause of that strange drink or if that drink was just bringing to light some of his worst habits. Throughout their time spent with each other, Rhydian had constantly been trying to present all of the best sides of him. How did she see him now? He let out a small sigh and took Jazrael's hand, standing up on his own two feet. His head pounded like someone had smashed it against the hard wooden walls of the tavern. Maybe he got into a barfight? He could remember having a couple of drinks and overindulging himself in them, then somebody was making bets… the rest of it was lost to his memory. 

"Yeah." He simply said in response.

Rhydian knew that it would take more than an apology to make up for the past couple of days. The only way he could really make it up to her was to get those ingredients, get himself cured, then use the next month to make it up to her. Rhydian made his way to his room and began packing up. He could remember the time they spent on the ship and in that locked room, and how close they were. That feeling of trust she had for him and that closeness they had. He longed for that moment once more. The only way to get it back was to get this drink out of his system. He grabbed everything he needed for the journey and met Jazrael outside. 

"I've got everything I need." Rhydian said with a small smile. 

Lightening up the mood for this trip would be difficult, but he was determined to try. He didn't want this trip to become an unpleasant memory. They walked towards the outskirts of the city and Rhydian noticed a drunken man approaching them. There had been many drunkards inside the city thanks to that drink so he wasn't surprised by the man's presence. Yet when the man walked up towards Jazrael, Rhydian felt a rage boiling underneath his skin. The second the man slapped Jazrael on her behind, he snatched the drunken man by the throat and threw him against one of the stone walls of a building.

His right hand curled into a fist and slammed straight into the man's face. Rhydian's eyes had turned the shade of bright orange as his fists became covered in blood. Each punch was thrown right after the other and the drunken man was on the ground, trying to hide himself from the beatings. It wasn't until Jazrael caught his eye and he saw the look on her face that he stopped and dropped the bloody beaten man, who was still breathing but whimpering from the pain. 

"Lets… lets get going." Rhydian sighed as he began to move on. 

Had this been the old Jazrael, the way she had been before Dalanesca had fallen and subsequently died, the scene that played out following the drunkard slapping her rear would have been right up her alley. However, this was not the old Jazrael. This was the Jazrael that seemed to be more human than demon, the Jazrael that had now allowed herself to fall in love with another person, which was something she had never thought she would be able to do, something she had never seen herself doing.

So, when Rhydian laid into the man, throwing him against the wall after accosting Jazrael, she found herself taken quite aback. She didn’t want to egg him on – in fact, she almost lunged forward to pull him off of the man – until she remembered that he was just as strong as she was, if not stronger. She didn’t much want to get in a fight with him, not now and not ever. ”Rhydian!” she exclaimed, out of shock more than anything else.

Soon, Jazrael was watching in horror as Rhydian had taken the man down to the ground and was pummeling his fists into his face. She had known that he was capable of acts of strength, but she had never really seen him do anything violent unless the situation deemed it absolutely necessary to protect himself or someone else. This time, it seemed, the Luxurium’s effect on him had overwhelmingly turned him towards his darker side.

Fortunately, this was something she was able to come to terms with. As a demon herself, she had done far too many things that were incredibly violent, and what Rhydian was doing didn’t even come close. It seemed that he still had a grasp on himself, however, when he pulled himself away from the bloodied man. She could see the look in his eyes. This wasn’t truly who he was.

”Yeah, let’s,” she said, catching up with him and looking back at the man writhing in pain on the ground. When they had gotten a fair distance away, she stopped Rhydian, tugging on his hand, which she could feel was sticky with the man’s drying blood. ”Here,” she said, and pulled a cloth out from the satchel she carried with her. She dumped a bit of water out of her canteen onto the cloth and wiped at the blood on his hands, trying her best to clean it up off of him.

When she was satisfied, she crumped the cloth back up and shoved it back into the side of her satchel. ”Listen, I know that… wasn’t all you,” she said, trying to keep her voice cheerful. She couldn’t say that it wasn’t him at all, because the Luxurium merely amplified things inside of someone. Though she had fallen for him, she hadn’t really known Rhydian all that long. There was a multitude of things he didn’t know about her own past, so why would it be any different with him. She leaned up on her tip toes and planted a brief kiss on his lips. ”Believe me, I’ve done far worse than that, in my past… far worse,” she said, her words trailing off rather darkly at the end.

The pair continued on, heading towards the direction they knew they would be able to find the ingredients they needed to find. As they walked, Jazrael made a decision. If Rhydian wanted to know more about her past, she was going to willingly share it with him. After all, she wanted to be honest with him, and what better way to promote honesty than sharing something such as what she was thinking. ”Would it make you feel better if I told you about something horrible I did, not all that long ago?” she asked him, as they grew closer to the indicated area.

His eyes stared in the distance as they walked away from the scene. He barely noticed when Jazrael pulled on his bloodied hand. When he did feel her, he stopped for a moment and looked at her, wondering what exactly to say. The cloth was cold but was enough to clean up the blood surrounding his fists. Rhydian received the kiss warmly, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close.

After a few moments, he freed her and they continued in the direction they needed to go. He kept his mouth shut but his mind was a swarm of thoughts. This wasn't the first time he'd been violent before and undoubtedly wouldn't be the last. Rhydian's discomfort made him wonder what was so wrong this time. When he occasionally acted out, he would just sweep it under the rug like he always did. Why did he care so much this time?

"Sure." He responded after a moment with a small smile.

The sun was warm and the breeze surprisingly gentle, as though all the world was trying to calm him down. He always knew that Jazrael had a dark past, he knew what she was since day one. Yet it was never something he pushed on or tried to pull out of her. She would tell him when she was ready. It seemed that today would be that day. As they walked through the grass and over the land, he listened to every word she said.

While she had secretly hoped that Rhydian would decline her offer of storytelling, Jazrael was prepared to share with him just a small taste of how cruel she once was. Truthfully, she could only be held so much at fault – she was a demon, after all, and until something had changed within her after Dalanesca’s demise, she had no reason to act as other than such a thing. She came to a stop in the grass as they walked, her hand falling from Rhydian’s. She took a deep breath as though she were calming herself. ”I’ll preface this with, if you want nothing to do with me after hearing some of the things that I’ve done, I will completely understand,” she said, her mouth having drawn into a rather tight line across her face. It was clear that she was not proud of what she was about to say.

She continued to walk in the direction they had been going, slightly ahead of Rhydian. She didn’t place her hand back in his, as it just didn’t seem right with what she was about to talk about. ”So, when Lady Dalanesca still reigned over Inferos, I was an incredibly powerful messorem. We sought out valuable souls to bring to the realm for the Reaper, we were procurers essentially. I was known as her left hand, the best of the best. I went in without remorse, and sometimes I went a bit overboard on who I brought in… but I never failed to procure what was asked of me.” She paused for a moment, knowing that this information in and of itself wasn’t going to be all that surprising to Rhydian. After all, she had been forthright about who she was from the very beginning. The problem was how he would feel about the particular methods she used to complete her job.

”I remember this one shopkeeper I had made a deal with in Itjivut,” she said. ”He used his store as a front, kidnapping and selling young women for, well… you get the gist of it,” she said. ”I promised him the ability to conduct his business without interference. Those who utilized his services, they went to the ninth circle of Inferos, the ruiners… It was a good set up for us. An unending supply of disgusting souls. However, he began to get sloppy, and it turned out he was just letting the girls die after use, or even letting those who paid for their ‘company’ kill them. He kept their bodies, decomposing, in a pile in his cellar, right next to the girls who were still alive and chained up.”

She stopped walking again, this time turning to look at Rhydian. It was clear that regret was visible in her eyes. ”I went in to collect his soul – that was all I had to do. I could have let those other girls go free, but instead…” she trailed off, as though she could not continue. She cleared her throat after a minute and turned away from Rhydian. ”I killed them, in cold blood, with no remorse, not at the time. And then, I proceeded to use my powers to make the man rot from the inside out, as painfully as possible,” she said, the memory of the man in such advanced decomposition flickering in her mind. Of course, the memory went on further, but she didn’t want to go into further detail, not yet.

Perhaps it sounded worse to her than it truly was, because she was the one who had committed it, but she knew it couldn’t be a good thing that she just had shared this with him. She half expected him to leave her on the spot, but there was a part of her that hoped maybe he would understand she was different now. After all, she had shared the information with him to try to detract from whatever it was that was going on with him that was making him succumb to his darker urges.

Rhydian listened to every single word she said. His calm expression never changed but he was thinking deeply about what she had experienced and what she did. There were so many things wrong with that, including the allowance of letting the girls continue to be tormented by the slavers. In the end the slaver got what was coming to him, but the victims never saw the light of justice themselves. Only the light of flames.

"That's terrible." He said. But instead of moving away from her, he moved closer to her and grabbed her by the hand. He was not so dishonest as to claim that everything was fine or that her dark past wasn't terrible. Yet, he knew that the woman standing by his side would not do such a thing again without good reason. Perhaps she would be tempted, as he was, to do something awful and perhaps those violent feelings would never fade away. But, his trust in her ran deep.

"If you're scared I'll leave you then put those worries to rest." He said, "Who you once were and who you are now are two very different things."

With a mischievous smirk, he reached towards Jazrael and picked her up, carrying her like a princess. In that moment he knew that she could walk but he wanted to hold her close. He wanted to make certain that she knew he would never leave her, even if her past was drenched in misdeeds and cruelty. The woman he held in his arms was the one who he loved. Her past was important but it would never match the importance of her. Rhydian smiled and gave her a light kiss on the cheek, as a full on kiss would be difficult to do while he carried her. 

"You've shared something. So I guess its my turn now." He said, "Back when I was a teenager, I was involved in territory wars with other dragons.  In order to get their respect, I ended up killing any dragon who ended up in my territory. A mother dragon had made the mistake of laying eggs in my territory. When I found out, I hunted them down and killed her freshly hatched babies. My reasoning was that I needed to weed out the other dragons from my territory. If I left even a single one of those children or the mother alive, they would come back for revenge. That was my excuse at least." 

He looked at Jazrael in the eyes. 

"I'm a very different person from then. And so are you." Rhydian said, "Territory wars… they seem so silly now." 

When Rhydian told her that what she had done was terrible, Jazrael felt a sickening sensation in her stomach. This was it, she knew this was the moment he was finally going to have had enough about her being a demon. This was when he was going to leave her, leave the new relationship they had forged – the relationship that was so fresh, so new, that it had hardly had time to grow from what it had started as.

When he began to speak, she closed her eyes, bracing for what was coming – but it didn’t come. Instead, Rhydian reassured her that he was not going to leave her. He seemed to be understanding that this was no longer who she was – of course, it was an important bullet point to her past, but it no longer served her.

She let out a bit of a yelping laugh as Rhydian scooped her up, carrying her as though she were his very own princess. The closeness to him certainly helped ease any trepidation that had befallen her while she had told him such a trying story of her past. She closed her eyes, snuggling her face into his neck as he carried her. A breath through her nose drew in his smell, and she reveled in the comfort that it brought her. When his lips brushed her cheek, she felt a flush rise into her pale cheeks. That moment, regardless of the topic of discussion, felt absolutely perfect to her.

When Rhydian began speaking again, Jazrael opened her eyes, fixating them on his face as he spoke, telling her of a time he did something he was not proud of, something that was terrible as well – perhaps not on the same level as what she had done, but something harshly awful nonetheless. As his eyes caught her own, she smiled, even though the situation may not have called for it. Rhydian was right – neither of them were who they had been long ago, perhaps much better people now than they had ever been. She felt as though she had him to thank for that, at least for herself.

”I never directly participated in any kind of territory wars, but I did get my kicks egging opponents on from the sidelines against one another,” she said, a bit sheepishly. As Rhydian carried her, she raised a hand, tracing one of her fingers around his jawline. ”Hard to think I went from being the right hand of the Goddess of Death, to being bridal carried around by a dragon,” she said with a laugh, still gently touching his face. ”But, I have to say, even with the incredible power I had when I was at Dalanesca’s side, I’ve never felt as complete as I do when I’m with you, even with whatever it is that’s going on right now,” she added quietly.

She nuzzled her face into his neck once again, falling silent for a few moments before speaking again. ”I supposed we had better get looking for those ingredients before too long has passed, shouldn’t we?” she asked. ”Though I have to admit, if I could stay like this forever, I would,” she added, a softness to her voice. It was the truth – she wanted to stay like that with him, but she knew that there were other, more pressing matters they needed to attend to. ”We’d best head that way,” she said, pointing in the direction they had been told to go. Whether he continued to carry her or not was up to him.

He gave Jazrael a smirk as she traced one of her fingers around his jawline. She talked about how she went from being a right hand of a goddess to being bridal carried by a dragon.

"I suppose you're very lucky then." He said, "As am I."

Before he met her, he was just a wandering bartender with no goal or anybody to stand by his side. Now he knew he would never need to be alone again. The beautiful woman he was carrying had changed his life for the better. He hoped he had done the same for her. He continued to carry her as he began traveling in the direction she was pointing. Her weight was nothing for a half-dragon and he didn't mind the free exercise. Rhydian was still under the influence of the drink but his mood had swiftly changed to a more positive one.

"Is the place far away?" He asked, "I could steal us some horses if it is."

He was not above petty thievery, especially if it could save them some time. Although her words had calmed him, he was still afraid of potentially hurting Jazrael. He would never lay a hand on her on purpose but he knew all too well how easy it was to accidentally hurt someone. And he wanted to be able to share a bed with her without fear of going too far.

"If I remember right the ingredients were a chamomile flower, a leaf, and a root." Rhydian said as they walked, "Maybe I could make the cure into a drink itself. I'd make a big ol barrel of that stuff and roll it right into the infected taverns!"

He was partially joking. Chamomile was difficult to work with as an ingredient and he was uncertain if the cure required a sober touch.