What True Fear Is
Vaniesa had been afraid many times before, but when facing Tiamat, she realized that she hadn't actually known what fear truly felt like.
It would be a lie to say she never felt scared, especially in her line of work. There are a multitude of things that can scare one when you’re dedicating your health, time, and abilities to help the world at large. Vaniesa had seen suffering she was powerless to relieve by the hands of those who brought nothing but death and destruction. She had faced people, creatures, monsters that had made her afraid for not only her own life, but for the life of her daughter and of her friends. There have been times where friends did die and she had been unable to save them in time. Death is something she had faced herself on a couple occasions. The final month before their march to the Well of Dragons was laced with unease and, when they saw the forces they would soon have to face, fear. Being scared, afraid, fearful was not unknown to her.
In one moment, she was flying through the air and firing spells at one of the half-dragons that refused to relent. In the next, electricity suddenly coursed through her body and Vaniesa found herself on the ground in a heap against the wall. Breath attack, she thought in a daze. Pulling herself up against the wall, she looked up, and froze solid with eyes wide. Although Vaniesa knew the sounds of battle raged all around, she couldn’t even hear them now, deafened by the sound of her own frantic heartbeat. She scarcely dared to breath, as any breath she took may be her last. The Dragon Queen, the mother of chromatic and evil dragons, Tiamat now stood so close that Vaniesa could almost touch her. All she could do was stare in awe and horror at the sight of one she knew to be a god, a god who wanted her dead.
In this moment, she realized that every time she had ever felt afraid in the past did not compare to what she faced right now. Even if every moment combined itself into one terrifying event, it would be eclipsed utterly by the absolute terror that gripped her now. She’d had a brief taste of it when a tear had opened in the space high above her, and five sets of eyes had stared wickedly at her. Vaniesa had felt terror then, but this was something different still. The creature whose many sets of eyes had once stared through a tear in the world was now standing above Vaniesa, cornering her against the wall. This was the culmination of everything she had done, the consequences for every choice Vaniesa had made these last 4 years. She had not initially thought of what stealing a dragon egg from the Cult of Dragons would mean for her when she had committed herself to the act, but she had eventually come to know once word had spread of her attempts at “taming” a black dragon. She had tried to push aside the thoughts of what it would mean when she and her party faced Tiamat with Illiandrus in tow.
Vaniesa could physically feel the hatred and the rage radiating from Tiamat. It was fury at the sheer audacity of some worthless elf who dared corrupt a chromatic dragon. This is what it meant.
She couldn’t move, she couldn’t think. She was going to die. Everyone was going to die.
It was only when Tiamat let out a ferocious roar that shook the earth under her feet that Vaniesa finally found herself able to act. A guttural scream tore from within her. Throwing herself to the side through the door she had opened in the space beside her, she was suddenly hundreds of feet away, hiding behind another wall.
She knew that wasn’t enough to keep her safe, just as well as she knew that she couldn’t stay here no matter how much she wished to. They were here to stop the Dragon Queen from destroying their world and if she did not act, they were doomed. It would likely be only a matter of seconds before Tiamat would be upon her once again, and if not her, it would be one of her friends, or the corrupted dragon child Illiandrus. Everything in her screamed to take Illiandrus and teleport far away from here.
She wiped at her face, numbly noting how wet her hand was when she pulled it away. When had she started crying?
“Ioun,” she whispered hoarsely, sobs suddenly threatening to completely overtake her. “Ioun, if you can hear me, please... please give me guidance. I don’t know what to do. We’re all going to die.”