Calamity upon calamity. Ularan was saved from his battle with the dragon soul trapped in Uthtower, but at the cost of losing Idris. The paladin took the soul in and contained that ancient dragon soul to himself to save Ularan from it, only in turn to make a deal with it. He is gone, flown away to wherever he would go, with the dragon in charge.
The group has fractured.
We might have saved Idris by stopping the dragon before it left, except that the group didn't do that. Siax attacked Ularan first despite me telling him that it wasn't Idris in charge, although he did change his actions later. Effie was too scared to do anything and sat in a gaseous form for the entire fight, but it was Arya whose actions bothered me the most. She, instead of targeting the dragon in Idris' body, attacked both Ularan and his creature instead, making them waste time that could have been used to focus on getting Idris back, not to mention not helping with the dragon. So yes, the dragon is gone, Idris is lost to us now, and I am entirely frustrated and angry over all of this.
Yet another failure.
Ularan said that the group is like a hydra, with its many heads all trying to do different things, and I can see the truth in that. I told him that they were likely to start biting the other heads off over his ritual, but in truth it was the fate of Idris, and the group's response, that did that deed.
Siax wants to go after Idris. No surprise there, but he called into question a bond and debt to Idris that he feels was owed by me. I told him otherwise, and we clashed verbally over it, much as we did at Falcon's lodge over going after Zenari. Then as now he would not be swayed, and neither will I. Going after Idris, when he made his decision to leave the group in preference to befriending a dragon, it leaves me with no feeling of duty or agreements left hanging. It was not I who failed to uphold my agreements, but it is both Idris to a lesser extent, and Siax, who have done so.
Siax flatly refused to acknowledge or honor his agreement to the Three, and that assertion is abhorrent to me.
But all that is hardly a surprise. I had seen that sort of disagreement coming a long while ago, and in many ways was ready for it. Arya acting as she had, I was not. But there is more to worry about than merely the group. They can go and chase after Idris if they wish, but my focus has to be on honoring my agreement with the Three, and that seems like it is only through Ularan now. He has all the cards in this game, all the power, and all the knowledge. I have very little, and no firm grounding for negotiation.
Much of this situation is frustrating to me. 'Be not the leaf, but the scythe' Bane had said to me, one of a couple of times that the Three have attempted to get me to be more active, more driven for what I want to do. Even Jergal, in his own way, encouraged the group to live vibrantly and put their drives into action, and yet it is now, when I had made my peace with putting myself forward towards action greatly beyond my comfort in order to see things through, that I find myself with a lack of autonomy if I am to keep to my word. To bring the Three back, I need the power and knowledge to do so, and Ularan holds both, especially now that Idris is gone. He will not give up his quest to save this world, that much was abundantly clear, and has flatly refused to do anything else. What, then, are my options? To kill him and attempt to take the shards myself? I lack the power and resources against someone like that. It might have potentially been possible if we had attacked him during the fight with the dragon, but I had told Naralis that I would go and aid Ularan at the time, and while small and limited as an agreement, that felt important enough not to renege upon. I do not break my word. But if it was a slim possibility then, it is an impossibility now that he has regained himself, even now my agreement with Naralis no longer applies.
I said to Ularan, when Idris was still holding the dragon, that all this could be sorted neatly if he let a death god ascend, who would then deal with the dragon and sort the problem with the world being disorderly. He flatly refused. What recourse is there? What other option am I to take, when I can see well enough that attempting to stand against his wishes, actively in whatever manner, will not gain me anything, and merely return me to death or true destruction, or have my will overruled should he turn his power over the dead against me? That does not help the Three. And so I am left standing without any true option but to help him on his quest, no matter my feelings on that particular matter, and hope that he does not break his word as Siax has done. Arya, I believe, does not trust him to do so, and yet he has kept his word so far in other ways. He had not told us the whole truth in the past, but what he has said he would do, he has done. However, I know the agreement I have with him left a lot of room for him to slide out of it if he chooses. No matter how many I set down here in this journal, I know words are not my best asset. I failed to make my boon with him ironclad, and that is on me.
Something that was said also stays with me. It brought me in mind of the fact that while there were gods on this material plane before, minor ones such as Naralis perhaps, the stronger gods, including Jergal, came afterwards. Jergal is not native to this world, and who is to say that it would function and degrade if he was once more gone? Is it his presence that requires the cycle to work in this way? I had thought him native before, and had an innate right to how things run here, but that might not be the case. But does that even matter? Innate right is something that is rarely ever seen in the world. Power tends to be the deciding factor, and he is powerful. That aside, who is to say that he is not part of a larger scale of the cycle, and this world is merely a part of it, which would make him be native, in a way. Does an ant know the ways of the world on the other side of a mountain? Truly, I wish I could speak to him and ask.
Jergal said that once the end of the material plane was concluded, he would turn upon himself and end himself, hoping for rest, or at least to be made into something anew as everything else was, or words to that effect. But if he came from another world to this one, that didn't happen the last time unless he was created by something on this world and came into existence here.
Truly, even for me, it is confusing without all the knowledge, and who am I to ask? Ularan, who has a vested interest in having me side with his plans? The Three, who even if I could reach out to them when near Ularan, have their own goals, and may not know. Jergal, who I know the Three do not wish me to speak with in case it starts to wake him more, if he would talk to me again at all?
I have been made into this piece on the board, blocked in on all sides by other's wishes, and unable to step beyond them because it would end in yet more failure. Permanent failure. Bane's words stay with me, as I look at the circumstances around me, and I can only guess his disappointment in the standstill I have ended up in.