meeting june

Linus Vorth
Chapter One
1505 DR (ARK)
	The first thing Linus had had to get used to was that this hospital couldn't see a sun.  Not even the normal one he already expected, the one that was a huge portal to the Elemental Fire Planes, with its territorial colonies of Salamanders and Fire Newts.  No, not any sun at all.

	The lack of brilliant glare from the light over his head had been surprisingly hard to accept.  The rest of the place was even more alien, in its own way.  The strange architecture, the huge and diverse population, the uniforms.

	Yet, somehow, Linus could feel the place calming him.  The entire Ark felt soothing.  To him, and to the ten thousand other patients.


	Linus turned from the view outside his window and sat down on the chair in the corner of the room.  His guest, more accurately his doctor, was already seated, and she waited patiently for him to adjust and sip his water.  “How have you been sleeping, Linus?” she asked after he had settled down.

	“I mean… not well,” Linus said.  He cleared his throat.  “It’s been rough.  You know.”

	“I do,” the woman replied.

	She had been another thing for Linus to get used to.  Juniper wasn’t human.  That wasn’t so odd, of course, most of the people he knew weren’t human.  She, however, was vulpalia.  Linus had never heard of them before he had checked himself in to the Ark.  She had fox-fur red hair, with light brown skin, and glittering orange-gold eyes.  She had a vaguely vulpine angle to her nose and neck.  She didn’t have a tail, as most vulpalia did, but the elements were there.

	Juniper – June, she insisted – noticed Linus’s discomforted expression.  “Is there anything else I can do to help you relax, Linus?” she asked.

	Linus grimaced.  “Actually… yeah, there is,” he said.  “You mentioned the other day that there are magical means of aiding these discussions, right?  Spells?”

	“There are indeed,” June affirmed.

	“Could you… I don’t know, can you use one?” Linus asked.  “This… fuck, I don’t know.  I want to talk about this, but I don’t want to talk about this.”

	“By all means.”  Juniper rose and stood beside him, taking his hand between both of hers.  Linus felt his nerves rise as she loomed over him, but he forced himself to unclench his muscles.  It was patently absurd to see her as a treat.  Just because she was unfamiliar, didn’t mean she was a threat.  He had compelled himself to remember that mantra for days.

	Juniper’s soft golden eyes focused on him.  She had very faint vulpine traits, all right, alongside her more elvish – maybe human? – traits, but she had the most disarming, charming smile Linus had ever seen.  “May I have your consent to cast a spell that would make it impossible to lie?” she asked him directly.  “This is not a measure of prevention against dishonesty, but we find some patients more comfortable when they can’t lie to themselves.”

	Linus smiled thinly.  “So, it is a measure of prevention against dishonesty, then,” he pointed out.

	June didn’t answer verbally.  She just quirked an eyebrow and waited.  Linus wilted.  “Sure.”

	Juniper cast the spell, and Linus didn’t resist.  “There,” she said.  She walked back to her own seat and sat down.  “That chair adjusts, by the way,” she said.  “If you’d prefer to have your feet on the ground or raised.”

	“This is fine,” Linus said.  He rubbed his eyes as June sat back down.  “Alright.  So… I mean, I told you the basics.”

	“So far, you have told me of your early training and your graduation,” June said.  She adjusted her own seat and met Linus’s eyes again.  “You have told me of your home, your journeying across the Sword Coast, and the adventure you had fighting Tiamat’s cult.”

	“And that gets me!” Linus said angrily.  “I literally died fighting Tiamat’s dragons, and it didn’t fuck me up as much as the Conyberry thing.”

	June noted that on the little book she carried.  “Perhaps you could tell me more of the time between that affair and the Conyberry incident,” she said.

	“Sure.”  Linus squeezed his eyes shut.  “It… okay.  So, to understand that… you need to know something I didn’t know at the time.  I think it could have mattered a very great deal if I had known.”

	June just crossed her hands in her lap and waited.  Linus sighed.  “So… the group of adventurers I was a part of dissolved after we fought the Cult of the Dragon,” he started.  “Barnswallow and Eve disappeared first, then the others drifted off one by one.  Eventually, Anders and I decided there was no point to keeping us together.  He left, to go back to his home in the North, and I moved back to my hometown, Rassalantar.”  Linus snorted.  “That was a huge mistake.”

	June tilted her head, but Linus continued without prompting.  “My parents and my sister lived there still, at that point.  That was a surprise.  My sister lived there, after she had basically run away from the family.  I bought a very large house in the village.  The largest, actually,” Linus admitted.  “I suppose I was lording it over them.  That was dumb.”

	“What was your greeting like?” June asked.

	“Cold.  They had heard I died, and they managed to express some basic human sympathy for that, and then it was like the past nine years hadn’t happened.”  Linus sighed wearily.  “I just don’t… I don’t even remember why they hate me.  It may not have even been the same reason the second time.”

	“Did you ever get the feeling they envied your successes?” June asked.

	“Sure.  Pair of immigrant farmers, scrabbling the dirt, then their son gets filthy rich and famous by ignoring their career advice?  You bet they envied me,” Linus said.  He snorted.  “Even tried offering them a slice of the plot next to theirs.  They didn’t bite.  Fuck ‘em.”

	Linus heard the scratch of June’s pen in the little book and flinched.  “Anyway.  I got the wanderlust.  Bought up the estate, sure, bought some land, hired some people to keep it profitable, that was that.  Spent less than a year in Rassalantar before I was sick to death of it, and I left.”

	June nodded.  “Did you leave somebody to steward your land, or did you sell it?”

	“I hired a seneschal.”

	“Do you own the land now?”

	“As far as I know.”  Linus rolled his shoulders.  “Look, I’m… can we move on to the part I’m pretty sure is the problem?”

	“Certainly,” June said.  “We can discuss how it happened later.”

	“Right.”  Linus thought back to when he had returned from the Neverwinter Woods, flown to Waterdeep, and…

	“Actually, no, we can’t, can we?” Linus groused.  “I have to start at the beginning.  You would have no idea of what I was describing.”

	June fixed her eyes on him.  “Linus, recount your experience at the pace that leaves you most comfortable,” she said firmly.  “No faster nor slower.”

	Linus stood up and paced over towards the window.  Both people were silent for a moment as he gathered his thoughts.  “Is it strange that I feel like I’m… being judged?”

	“Not at all.  You spent the last ten years all but alone, and the first thing you do after you return to civilization is go to a place where you must recount your innermost, direst pain,” June pointed out.  “Of course you feel judged.  It would be odd if you didn’t.”

	Linus snorted, feeling some of his tension evaporate.  “Right.”

	“Besides the obvious, of course.  I’m not actually judging you,” June said firmly.  “I am here, and you are here, solely that you might be healed of the mental pains you suffer.  You are a man of exceptional physical health.  Your wounds are wounds of the mind, not the body.”

	“Would you speak like that to any patient?” Linus asked drily.

	“Certainly not.  But you are a military man, Linus Vorth,” June said.  “Thus, you appreciate directness.”

	“Damn right.”  Linus sat back down and planted his feet on the floor.  “Right.  Fine.  Okay.  The beginning.”  He took a deep breath.  “Well.  Two years after I slew the Cult of the Dragon forces attempting to bring Tiamat into the world, I was out adventuring again.  I don’t mind saying it: they were the best years of my life.”

	“How so?”

	“I was free.  Totally free.  I could fly on Noble, my Celestial Pegasus, anywhere I wanted.  I could buy anything my heart settled on,” Linus said wistfully.  “I could fly home and check on the estate.  I could go take adventuring contracts.  I could go to the cities and enjoy a fine meal, or go to the villages and help the healers… I could go do jobs for the Lords’ Alliance.  I was free.”  He paused.  “I guess that’s why I disagree with your assessment of me being a military man.  The military is all about orders, following drill and hierarchy.  I didn’t have any of that, and I loved it.”

	“Noted.  How would you describe your discipline, your leadership, and your fighting style, then?  If not military?” June asked.

	“I’m a warrior,” Linus said.  “Soldiers follow orders, warriors follow causes.  I’d help the armies of the cities and towns, sure, but I was never a soldier.”

	“Fair enough.”  June picked her book back up.  “So, then, when did this freedom come to an end?”

	Linus sighed.  “So… I was assigned to a project.  A long project, by a ranking member of the Lords’ Alliance,” he said.  “How much… do you know the politics of Toril?  My home planet?”

	“I do not.”

	“All right.  The Lords’ Alliance is a coalition of member nations, states, and towns, that trade with each other and sign a mutual defense pact,” Linus said.  “But they also sponsor elite agents like me, who travel the world looking for threats to the Alliance.  Spies, criminals, monsters, fifth-column elements… that sort of thing.  They pay well, and their agents have extra-legal powers.”

	“I see.”

	“And one of their leaders… formerly the leader… was a man named Dagult Neverember,” Linus said.

	“Formerly?”