Marieya’s Grief

Content Warning: Light mentions of self-harm

As Vantar’s bellows stopped wheezing, and the gears in his body locked up, signalling the end of his life – in this body at least. A sombre mood washed over us all as we reeled in the aftermath of what seemed like a simple task on our journey. Honesty switched between itching to finish off the small dragon that was with the gremlins, and making sure the vital components inside Vantar’s immobile body were retrieved intact, the rest of us just sort of… watched…

I could’ve done more…

After the memory gears and soul gem were retrieved, the captain, a goblin, came in to check on how we had done, and, whatever we were feeling he picked up on as well, and offered us our passage fee back as compensation for the loss of an ally, along with offering a warehouse to store Vantar until we could repair him.

It’s your fault…

Jørgen tried to reject the offer, rationalising that the captain is a tradesman and shouldn’t give up the gold for the journey. The captain refused to budge, giving us all our eleven gold back. I silently took it, and then made my leave from the hold, not saying a word to the others.

He’s gone, because of you…

I found a quiet part of the ship, near the rear, somewhere where I wouldn’t be bothered or disturbed. Being alone with my thoughts didn’t seem like the best idea, but, I couldn’t face the idea of talking to the party.

Especially because I could’ve helped.

I’m the cleric, I’m the healer, I’m the one who’s supposed to help people, helping people is the one good thing I have left in my life after those forsaken dragons took everything from me. Instead I tried to go beyond my station, I tried to think I could handle combat better than the people who have the equipment for it.

Getting a new trident didn’t save Vantar, stabbing blindly at the gremlins didn’t save Vantar.

Marieya takes out her shortsword, and pricks her finger, wincing slightly at the pain before letting a few drops of her blood into the ocean, her tears joining it soon after.

I offered you gold before the journey started, hoping for an uneventful passage, I’m offering you blood now as an apology, I’ve offered you everything ever since the day I found you… and why… please… tell me why…

Why couldn’t I have saved my new friend?

Because now, he’s gone, and whilst he can be repaired, who knows when we’ll get to do that.

He’s gone.

And it’s all.

My.

Fucking.

Fault.

Inspiration

This… is definitely a bit more of a personal write than anything else, and I’ve mainly written it as a way of working through some difficult feelings I’ve had over the last night.

I’m currently in a D&D campaign with some good friends of mine, and it’s my first time playing a proper campaign with people. It’s definitely taken some time to get used to things and how different systems work (along with remembering to speak/interact with the world around me), but I’m having fun at various points.

The character I play is called Marieya Ebontide, she’s a water-based cleric with access to some pretty decent offensive spells with good healing capabilities. Slightly on edge most of the time, with a severe phobia of anything relating to dragons, but she does what she can to help out.

Last night… we had our first party death, and whilst the party member is a Gearforged, and so we can repair him after a while; both myself and Marieya have taken it a bit harder than was expected. Mainly because I’m supposed to be the dedicated healer, especially because it was only after the fact that I remembered I had Healing Word, which I could’ve used as a bonus action to try help this party member out.

Things should work out, but I needed to write this to get these feelings out of my head, and to try reconciling with them.

And if I can give Marieya a bit of character development at the same time, that’s a definite plus