Terms Before Dragons

The knock at the prison door ended the argument before the party could decide whether the window was an escape route or a bad idea with snow in it. The Githyanki opened the door only slightly. They were not there for the group. They were there for the mainlander who had come with the dragon. Victor was called out. He left the prison room with the others behind him and the hole in the wall still fresh in everyone's mind. In the hallway, another gazer waited at the far end, a reminder that the fortress watched with more than guards and blades. The Githyanki wanted an answer to the same question that had dragged the party into this mess: how had Victor gotten their dragon? Victor corrected him where it mattered. My dragon. He did not say it aloud at first. He pushed it into the Githyanki's mind with Message, private and pointed, then spoke in his normal voice with the demand he wanted on the record: before any discussion could happen, the party needed their belongings back and they needed to be released freely. It was an impossible thing to ask from a prison hallway. Or it should have been. But Victor finally found the shape of the argument. The same voice that had failed in the armory caught now, sharpened by the fact that the Githyanki still wanted Walter and did not yet understand what Victor would or would not give them. He was not pleading. He was setting terms. The demand landed. It did not solve everything. The fortress did not simply open its doors and apologize. The Githyanki were still dangerous, still armed, still tied to the Lich Queen's hunger for dragons. But the roll of the moment changed the balance. Victor had forced the conversation to matter. The party's first negotiation had ended in Fog Cloud and chains. This one ended with a cliffhanger. For the first time since the portal took Maine, My Alchemical Romance had something other than panic, bruises, and bad options. They had a bargaining position.