The Dragon They Were Looking For

The first fight in the portal chamber did not end because anyone won.

It ended because Walter became visible.

Victor, barely back on his feet and still relying on a disguise that was more ambition than proof, summoned his dragon companion into the cramped room. The Githyanki noticed at once. The moment sharpened. Their attention moved from the party's intrusion to the creature beside Victor, and the words that followed made the danger plain.

A dragon. It was what they had been looking for.

The room was still a mess of steel, psychic force, bad footing, and worse decisions. Darius roared, and for one beautiful moment the Githyanki remembered fear. Jonah kept people standing even while being mistaken for a fighter by enemies who did not understand clerics or manners. Ash hit hard when he could, missed when the room refused to cooperate, and caught the water skin that Dhaz had thrown through the portal from the other side.

Victor saw the only path that might stop the room from becoming a grave.

He talked.

The Githyanki offered terms with the kind of mercy that sounded like ownership: put down the weapons, give them the dragon, and there could be discussion. Victor lied as smoothly as the situation allowed, trying to frame the dragon not as property to be surrendered but as something that required negotiation. He asked to keep the group together. The Githyanki refused that much, but allowed him two companions.

Victor chose Jonah and Darius.

Before leaving, he sent Maine a Message cantrip with the emergency word: abacus. If Victor shouted it, Maine and Ash were supposed to come help.

Then the split happened.

Victor, Jonah, Darius, and Walter were escorted into the fortress corridor by the red-headbanded Githyanki. Maine and Ash remained in the portal room, wounded and watched. A gazer drifted in to babysit them, one of the small beholder-like creatures from the farm conflict now turned jailer. It did not speak so much as repeat, mimicking words back in an unnerving little echo.

Maine, treating the thing with the careful optimism of someone approaching an unpredictable animal, showed it a healing potion before pouring it into Ash's mouth. The gazer repeated him. Ash woke with a water skin in hand and no immediate idea where everyone else had gone.

Down the hall, the fortress revealed pieces of itself. Darius saw dragon imagery carved into the stone, old symbols and draconic shapes worked into the walls. He could not read them, but he knew enough to recognize the theme. This was not merely a random Githyanki room beyond a random portal. The place had history. Dragon history.

The party was divided now: one half escorted toward negotiation, the other held under alien watch in the portal chamber.

Walter had not saved them.

Walter had made them valuable.