Knights of the Platinum Dragon: A D&D Story

Chapter 23: Bonding over Books

The huge, ornate clasps on the opening side of the book rattled as Ren unfastened them, the silver cool against his fingers. Glancing up for a moment to check around, he placed the book on one of the low tables and took a seat before it in an armchair whose upholstery was patched in places, especially along the arms.

Ren didn't mind, however - he'd sat and read in far worse conditions.

In the light of the rising sun, the dust on the tome's cover seemed to brighten and become more visible. Clearly, this tome hadn't been read in a while, though given it was in Romain's library, he didn't think their host would need to brush up on this topic.

The book was titled 'The Complete History of the Kingdom of Milisevre until the year of 1492 DR, by Geoffrey de Troyes.' Ren didn't know the writer by name, so he quickly made an educated guess that Geoffrey must be a Milisevran.

The 'de' just before the surname seemed to be a feature of their nomenclature, though what exactly it meant, the wood elf hadn't yet figured out.

One thing at a time, he supposed. And besides, his brain seemed a lot more active this morning – chiefly because he'd slept better after both their fine meal last night and their battle with the chimera, both of which had exhausted him to the point that, before bed last night, even lifting a limb was painful.

Ren had fallen asleep the instant his head hit the pillow in his room. The nightmares had come, as they always did, but they were less severe, so he was able to get more than whatever rotten few hours of rest he could squeeze out of his nights before the sun came up.

That must mean it was further away now. Ren hoped that his pursuer had lost his tail completely now... but he'd dared to believe that before, and it never came to be.

The attack on the inn was no coincidence; Ren could feel it in his bones that the monster who haunted his nights and dogged his every step was behind the gnolls somehow.

Even after all these years, he wasn't free of... it.

His fingertips began to shudder as a chill shot through them, like he had plunged his hand beneath the surface of a frozen lake. Tremors then began to quake inside his arms, and every meagre patch of hair on Ren's smooth skin stood on end. He felt his windpipe clamp down upon the air he had just sucked in, squeezing and squeezing as though that creature's very hand was locked about his throat.

'I will not think about it...' he said as he desperately tried to regain some semblance of control over his own mind. 'I will not.'

A small burst of something warm flared within his heart just then, but it was not enough to banish the icy touch of fear. Hoping to distract himself, he twisted his head about on his scrawny neck, eyes searching for something to make his mind wander.

The room he was in within Chateau Toussaint was small, compact and rather cozy in truth – two windows on the north side of the building bathed the chamber in the warm light of the rising sun, and on top of that, there was a fireplace that could be lit for reading on dark winter evenings. Seven double-sided bookshelves filled to the brim with tomes, some of which were nowhere near as dusty as the history book Ren had picked up, indicating that their host read them somewhat regularly.

Romain's library was nothing to scoff at, especially for a knight. It didn't compare to the great arcane archives that Ren had visited throughout his education, but it was still far more than he'd expected to see.

From his experience, most knights and warriors took a dim view to academia, seeing it as nothing more than worthless rubbish practised by wimps who didn't have the stomach for bloodshed and violence. In fact, some of the people Ren had come across in his travels after he departed Waterdeep hadn't even been able to read... and a few of them, when they learned that he could, gave him sketchy looks and spat as he passed.