Act 2, Scene 6: Bodaway's Choice

Ayduin went into the woods to meditate, while Bodaway and Osrin returned to the main tent, and Ri-An and Sylvain tested out Grghshnq's mending abilities on Sylvain's torn clothes. As it turns out, Grghshnq is an even better seamstress than Ayduin! While Grghshnq worked, Ri-An and Sylvain had a heart to heart regarding rules and why Sylvain was incapable of following them — Ri-An unknowingly echoing conversations various authority figures have initiated with Sylvain over the years.

By the end of the conversation, Ri-An's trust in Sylvain had perhaps not been mended as efficiently as Sylvain's clothing had been, but the first few stitches had been sewn. Inside the tent, Bodaway and Osrin had their own heart-to-heart, less verbose than the one outside. Ayduin tried and failed to get to know the local flora. As Ri-An and Sylvain prepared to re-enter the main tent, they were greeted by a messenger: a raven with a note tied to its leg. It seems that Danica and the Martikovs were alive and well enough to send a hello, and after sending back a brief reply by the same means, the party went inside.

Some of our heroes thought it might be worthwhile to try bargaining for some additional reward in exchange for bringing wine back to the Vistani, and though Sylvain disagreed — in an absolutely unprecedented instance of Sylvain, a literal mercenary, finding payment for his job distasteful — he made his best pitch to Luvash, who promptly shut them down. As the Vistani already had a centuries-old deal with the winery, asking them to pay the party for helping the winery fulfill their obligations was, he cheerfully informed them, absurd and insulting.

Somewhat disheartened but quickly moving on, the party continued their preparations for the winery, with Ri-An searching for a pearl with the assistance of Arabelle, and Bodaway and Osrin making inquiries about furs. All the answers laid with the Dusk Elves, with Kasimir offering Ri-An a pearl he had on hand, and the Dusk Elf Formerly Known as Toma agreeing to treat the dire wolf hides and provide enough fur for a hat for Ri-An, along with a fur-lined coat for Bodaway and a fur-lined cloak for Osrin, in exchange for a total of 6 gp or trade.

As they settled in for the evening, Sylvain began to casually deface coins with Strahd's face on them, doing his part to beautify the Barovian economy, and Arrigal and Arabelle came to join the party, with Arrigal asking about our heroes' backgrounds, before offering to tell them a story. The story, it seems, was a creation myth of Barovia, centered around three women: the Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone. It was the Crone who favoured the Vistani best, and who left them with three lessons: never harm a raven; don't trust the straightest path to the knowledge you seek; and bury your dead deep, so the mother's roots can embrace them.

Arrigal asked what stories the party had in exchange, and Ayduin offered a song, with Ri-An and Arabelle rising to dance together. In lieu of a story, Sylvain offered a game, promising a tale only if someone got the answer: could any of them guess what his former occupation was? With no one guessing precisely, the story was shelved for another time, and shortly thereafter Arabelle asked if Arrigal was flirting with the party, which led to a somewhat flustered Arrigal suggesting it was past Arabelle's bedtime, and bidding our heroes a good night.

That night, Bodaway dreamt, and chose a sky full of stars... at first. After a brief exchange with Khirad, Bodaway apologized and said he was unable to accept Khirad's offer without more information. His choice made, he found himself thrown into a series of visions about Arrigal:


 * The last time you were here, you walked unhurried through the desolate landscape, confident that your feet would take you to where you needed to be.


 * Tonight, you run.


 * This is not flight before a pursuit — you are running to, not running from, driven forward by a sense of urgency that you know is not your own even as it floods your limbs with adrenaline.


 * You reach the tower, as before, and you ascend, your footsteps echoing in the tight spiral of its staircase, your heart pumping hard, your nerves singing as you run higher, and higher, not sparing so much as a glance for the floors you pass — you know these are not the floors you are meant to reach tonight, and that makes them less than meaningless to you.


 * Finally, you reach it, barreling out from the staircase, breathing hard, eyes wild, gaze already flitting around the walls of this cold grey room, watching as the shadows shift and form a cylinder of memories around you, whirling all in time, mixing together and separating again, as dynamic and unreliable as those of any mortal mind.


 * There is an assortment of boys, mostly dark-haired, though one has fiery red hair that glints even in the meagre grey light of a Barovian afternoon. The red-haired boy is clearly the oldest, and clearly the leader, though you can see two of the younger boys don’t look happy about this — they are barely half his size, but one of them launches himself at his brother nonetheless. You can see the bright colours of Vistani wagons and clothing in the background, and adults taking notice of the scuffle, even as another of the younger boys jumps into the fray and the fourth tries to break up the argument — four brothers, two mothers, one father. Though you don’t know them well, you can pick out the men they will become in their dirty, scowling faces: Lech, the eldest of the four; Luvash, the boy who leapt at him; Arrigal, jumping to back his brother’s play; Grigori, the hat-maker, with his futile attempts at keeping the peace.


 * Another scene — the father, now, who you only saw in a glimpse before, now fully in focus as he laughs and jokes with another man. The other man, another Vistana — this one you do not recognize, but you know at a glance he speaks with the easy persuasion of a man who’s never had to live with the consequences of his smooth speeches. You do not pick up the particulars of the conversation. These are memories, not a play, and it’s the impressions that come to you, not exact words. Still, you know: change. It’s all very well and good to mind traditions, but times change, people grow. Why shouldn’t a man protect this camp? Don’t the women have enough to worry about? For just a moment, you glimpse Madam Eva’s face, though you know she wasn’t there — and then it is Arabelle’s, and then a woman you haven’t seen before — crone, maiden, mother — and you want to weep for their ignorance, you want to knock sense back into their thick skulls with your own scarred knuckles.


 * Your eyes go to another scene — Arrigal and Luvash alone now, seemingly in their teens. Arrigal has not yet grown into his features, and his lank hair and pimply skin make for an awkward young man; he holds himself with the discomfort of someone who does not quite know what to do with all their newfound limb yet. Luvash, by contrast, is the sort of handsome you’ve seen get plenty of young men into trouble over the years, and you can see from the way he carries himself that he knows it. They enter a tent, mobbed by their peers — though no Lech or Grigori to be seen, this time — and you see them acting out the same pattern you’ve witnessed in your nights in the Vistani tent: Luvash the center of the attention, laughing and joking among many friends, while Arrigal hangs back at the sidelines, watching, waiting.


 * Your attention shifts again. They are a few years older, no more, and playing out much the same scene, though Arrigal has begun to grow into his looks, his long, lanky form and glossy hair, dark as raven’s feathers, drawing more than a few looks of desire as he leans back against a tentpole. If he notices, he doesn’t show it, but you don’t think he does — his eyes are locked firmly on the other side of the tent with a look you know all too well. He has the kind of longing in his eyes people ruin lives for — their own, others’, whatever it takes. You follow his gaze and see Luvash again, surrounded by laughing friends, and now he has a woman at his side: young. Pretty. Light brown hair, soft features — you realize, all of a sudden, that there’s no way this woman is anything but Arabelle’s mother. Not just because you recognize her from the memory of a few moments ago — mother, between crone and maiden — or because Luvash, too, is looking at her like if she asked him to chop his dick off his only question would be whether he should use a serrated blade or not, but because the wry quirk of her lips as she murmurs a low joke is the exact same as Arabelle’s when she gets to sassing all of you, and you can’t help but say a prayer for all the hearts that little girl’s going to break if she gets half a mind to.


 * Again, further now. You see Arrigal in the woods, camouflaged, gaze intent. He can’t be more than a few years older than before, but he looks to’ve aged at least a decade by the focus in his face, and the hurt — the kind of hurt you only get if you spend at least a couple years sleeping with your teeth grinding the day’s worries to a good choking powder night after night after night after night. He’s following one of the dusk elves — the same one, you realize, he was with when you brought Arabelle back to him. Something in Arrigal’s face hardens, and you turn to see what he’s looking at, and even here, in this dream, in this place of summoning, you have to fight down a wave of nausea at the sight of her. Memories don’t need specifics so long as they keep the feeling right, so the specifics fade from yours as soon as you feel that bile rising, but you know, innately, what happened to her — what happens to all Vistani women foolish enough to wander into Vallaki expecting gentlemen to fawn over them. You feel his anger coursing through your veins as surely as if it were your own.


 * The last scene is hard to focus on — like shadow and mist play across it, obscuring even the vaguest details. You try to pay attention, but your mind drifts, like skimming over the letters of a language you never learned to read. You do get this, though: Arrigal went looking for protection. Like the Lady Wachter, he knew the threats his people faced, and he knew who had the power to protect them. Whatever you might make of him by the light of day, for this moment, you are in Her realm, and the gods have different conceptions of morality, so in this moment, you know that he is not an evil man. You also know he would do a great many evil things, if that’s what it took to protect her. The vision fades as he walks away from the castle into the drizzling rain, and you do not hear any voice — you know She has none, any more than She has a face — but you feel her will:


 * Keep him close.

With Ayduin keeping watch — thankfully, no children shrieked in distress that night, at least not in the Vistani camp — and Ri-An trying to teach Chuckles how to communicate through the art of dance, Sylvain was still asleep and Osrin just waking when Bodaway suddenly sat up from sleep, announcing that he'd be right back in monotone before standing and marching out of the tent, towards Kasimir's cabin. When Kasimir opened the door, Bodaway's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and black ichor began to flow from his nostrils, ears, and the ragged lines of his stitches as he announced in a flat voice: "You were heard. He will come for you. If you want to escape his punishment, you will have to leave now."

And, this message delivered, Bodaway collapsed to the ground, laying unconscious for some minutes. While Kasimir, Ayduin, and Osrin waited for him to wake up, they shared a glass of fine breakfast wine, and Kasimir announced his intent: he would stay and await his fight. His people had already had to pay the price for the choices his family had made before; he wouldn't risk Strahd's wrath falling on them again. When Bodaway awoke, he offered the Raven Queen's message about Arrigal to Kasimir, and he and his companions returned to where Ri-An was watching over Sylvain's rest, waiting to begin their journey to the winery.

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