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16. A Harper and her Charge


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#1 Guest_Oryx_*

Posted 17 January 2003 - 07:11 AM

16. A Harper and her Charge

13 FLAMERULE 2000
UNDERNEATH THE GNOLL STRONGHOLD – TUNNEL TO THE UNDERSEA PALACE

The party was descending the long circular stairway that led down through the gnoll stronghold, down into the earth beneath. The stairway at one point ceased spiraling, and straightened out into a stairway leading diagonally further down still, pointing west, the direction of the Sea of Swords. The passageway was utterly dark, but Onyx at the head of the seven-strong party held aloft Daystar to light the way, and just behind him came Jaheira, using the white light of the cavalier’s sword and the infrared light of his body to peer forward with her keener half-elven vision. Behind them came the shadowy Valygar Corthala and the mighty Minsc. The mountainous Rashemanian nearly filled the entire passageway, blocking Daystar’s light from the rear three of the party. But next walked Buffy the Undead Hunter, holding her own sunblade Goldenedge aloft to light the way for herself and her sister in faith Dawn Raybringer. Behind the Lathanderian paladin and priestess came Arra Flyte, Harper Agent 006, swordswoman, sneak, and sorceress, easily able to follow with her elven eyes.

“This is one of the many times I envy your infravision, Jaheira,” Onyx muttered lightheartedly as they walked along.

“I thought you had a ring?” the druid inquired, stepping up beside him.

“Yeah, but my fingers are occupied, so to speak. And anyways, I’ve got you to keep a lookout for warm bodies for me,” Onyx smiled at the half-elf.

Jaheira gave an uncharacteristically bashful eyes-shut smile before rejoining, “Yes, but if this place is populated by undead and golems as we suspect, there won’t be any save us.”

“There’s the Jeweler himself,” Onyx added. “Well, I’ve had enough of fighting living, breathing monsters for one day anyway.”

Jaheira nodded thoughtfully, as if she understood much more than he said. “It wasn’t your fault,” she spoke finally out of seeming nowhere.

“Well, technically it was my blade that – wait,” Onyx stopped as the oddity of her comment dawned on him, “What are you talking about?” he asked with a furrowed brow, though truly he knew.

“You know what I mean, Onyx. Regretting killing Gnamesh; you had to,” Jaheira said, then bit her lip and looked at him apologetically.

Jaheira nodded in anticipating of the Onyx’s following, “But I never told you I regretted it! Or his name! I-” the cavalier stopped as something else dawned on him. “But..I did...silently.”

“Yes,” Jaheira nodded. “Sorry…I…couldn’t help it…”

“I…could feel you in there, like I couldn’t get you out of my thoughts,” Onyx tapped his forehead, “I had thought it was just me unable to stop thinking about you,” he tried to explain, drawing another smile from her. But that’s also true isn’t it, he thought to himself, and then suddenly noticed her try to hide her now wider smile. The cavalier looked at his feet, embarrassed, feeling naked. “I mean…nevermind,” he said aloud. After an awkward silence, he added, “I…admire your powers. I admire what you’ve become, Jaheira.” Not that I haven’t always admired you though. He cursed aloud as he could see her reactions to his thoughts on her face.

“Thanks,” she said aloud with chagrin.

Onyx tried to stifle his thoughts of her, she noticed, and he turned them back to the gnoll chieftain he’d been thinking of before; of what Gnamesh had said to him. Onyx breathed deeply and thought about it with deliberateness, as if making his thoughts as clear as possible.

“Why you here, human? Gold-hunting adventurer? I see your holy sword; you ‘paladin.’ You come wipe out gnolls? I can feel the pain of your ‘holy avenger weapon’ – it hurt me more for by beliefs. You think it ‘righteous’ to hurt me for beliefs? Think it noble to wipe out non-humans, human?”

“Why you go where not wanted anyway? This gnoll home! Not human home! You come here and kill when you could stay in on human towns. You just like group that came last year, wiped most of us out! Someday, someday Gnamesh fear all places will be human towns, and no place left for gnolls. Then gnolls and orcs and other large beings will all be gone. Maybe you kill elves and dwarves and others too, leave only humans? That your way. You call us ‘monsters’, come kill us in own home because how we look different from you, even when we not come attack you. You the monster.”

“You humans have too complicated concerns. Drag us into it. Make your problem everybody problem. Make us your problem. You think all gnolls problem. I say you weak, but I know truth. Humans very curious, clever, aggressive. Maybe good trait, but not for us. You are better than us, I know. Gnamesh is one gnoll smart enough to see. Some day the rest of us will all be gone. Only humans left. I lived good gnoll life. Much eating, battle, mating. I near death anyway; gnolls not live long. I happy to die; not want to live in future, in your world. Someday, only you remain. Your children many generations, famous paladin man, tell their children stories about monsters of old, stories their parents told them, about how you kill evil monsters. They not understand our world. But we understand, you human and I gnoll. We know that once, we were monsters.”

At length Onyx spoke aloud. “Gnamesh, himself, was evil. I needed no divination powers to tell me that. Still though, I did respect him.” He showed her the memory of how he’d given Gnamesh a proper cairn burial. “And in the end, I heed not the messenger, but the message, and I believe he spoke wisely. Jaheira, do you remember one of our first fights together – we had just come south from the Friendly Arm Inn, past the milestone which pointed west toward Candlekeep, the way Imoen and I had come, and continued south. Just after that, in the low cliffs before Beregost, we came across a camp of xvarts. They had a hearth, and a fire, it was their camp and their home, but we killed them. Then the same again on the way west, one of first trip to the gnoll stronghold, ironically, again. I remember the words of the one there. ‘You kill us when we do nothing to you! You monster!’ Now, it’s true that in both cases, and the many others, they attacked first; did xvarts or gibberlings or kobolds or tasloi or any of them ever not attack us on sight? And yet, if it was their land, or their home, and we were trespassers – though I know not how we would determine such things in the wilds – then perhaps, we were at fault; perhaps it was we who were the monsters.”

Jaheira smiled wider than she ever had before. Without even realizing it, she reached out to hold his hand, and only in the nick of time consciously thought better of it and drew away, even though she couldn’t help noticing that perhaps the cavalier’s hand had just done made the same maneuver. “You show much wisdom, dear Onyx,” she said happily. “It warms my heart to hear you thinking of such things. I can see in your words – and between them, in your thoughts, which it gladdens me to no end to feel you wanting me to know – that you uphold those concerns dear to myself, but in a way consistent with those of your own stated ethos.”

The cavalier thought carefully. Whence comes the charge of a paladin? The defeat of evil – be it containment, conversion, or destruction – is a means, not an end. The end is the defense of the innocent. The defense of rights. It is equal to the moral obligations of a state, and shares the same moral boundaries as well. There are two confusions to be made, the first commonly differentiates paladins and druids, with rangers lying usually somewhere in between, the second occurs easily within each ethos; and that is the confusion of rights and privileges. A paladin will often confuse them when he allows a thief to steal in the name of desperation or hunger – letting entitlement become a right. A druid will often confuse them when she destroys one thing to make space or food for another, which she believes is the more embattled or endangered, once again letting entitlement become a right. The two examples are indeed actually the same example, for the only difference between them, is the choice of an example between demihumans or other, ‘lesser’ beings, and that is the distinction that brings us back to the first confusion. This is to be found in what the paladin includes in his definition of the innocent, or a druid in her definition of nature. The paladin who does not include, say, a bear as an ‘innocent’ because he extends rights only to ‘higher’ beings will then so no harm in what is done to the bear, for it has no rights. The druid will make the symmetric distinction when she does not include demihumans in her definition of ‘nature,’ and thus see no need to protect them. Of course, she may say that they are, and that she is only trying to balance the rights, possessions, or numbers of demihumans to those of other, less successful creatures, but often that will in fact be her making the first confusion; for it is the course of nature that some things will be more productive and proliferate more than others. The cause of the second confusion, then, turns out to be what differentiates almost any two conflicting creeds: that each is defined by whom they are trying to help, a subclass of beings at the expense of others, and otherwise there is little different between them.

I want us to get along, Jaheira, Onyx now thought directly to her. Philosophical differences shouldn’t stand in our way.

Swinging his empty left hand forward again as he walked, Onyx showed no signs of surprise as it met Jaheira’s and they clasped, nor as he found he could now hear her thoughts as well, even through their gauntlets. If we ‘speak’ of this much longer, Jaheira thought, we may find we have no differences at all. You show much wisdom for your age. Jaheira then bit her lip. Their age difference, several human generations, was not something she liked to deliberately bring up, but it so was much easier to inadvertently think of such things Then Jaheira sighed as she realized that thought he could hear this too. Her next thought was to gain a greater appreciation for the vulnerability she now joined him in feeling.

Thank you, Onyx thought in response to her first thought, and Jaheira was relieved that he didn’t seem to be dwelling on the later ones.

We’re the same reverse-age though, almost. You’re a superhumanly healthy young man, barely out of your teens, I’m a half-elf of middle age, we will from here out age much the same. In other words, we will grow old together. Jaheira blushed an uncharacteristic rose red. That was a thought she’d had a number of times, but never shared until now.

You’re right, you know, I’ve thought of that too, Onyx rejoined in spite of himself, and more Jaheira-centric thoughts began to pour into his mind, the sorts of thoughts that are memories of previous thoughts. Jaheira found that their physical touch made the link far more acute from her side too, and in the space of a few seconds the greater part of the thoughts, designs, dreams, and fantasies that the cavalier had ever had regarding her poured into her mind. If the steps they trudged down had not been so regular, she would have surely lost her footing as her mind was taken far away from her physical surroundings and led through some of the most intimate recesses of the young man’s psyche.

“I’m sorry,” he said aloud and suddenly withdrew his hand, just in the middle of a particularly private but enjoyable recalled thought, and turned his mind forcefully to the steps in front of his feet, severing her journey through his mind. “I can’t go on with this.” But he offered no further explanation, either aloud or thought, keeping his mind on other, irrelevant things.

“I’m sorry too,” the druid sighed and looked at his face with a look that showed both guilt and pain, “You..don’t have to hide. I shall turn my mind away from yours, as well as I can help.”

“It’s fine,” the cavalier exhaled apologetically and met her gaze, but said and thought no more on the matter.

Incidentally, they had finally come to the last step. From the end of the stairwell of natural stone shot forward a level hallway of very smooth carved marble, which had a faint greenish hue. What should have been a hallway as utterly dark as the stairwell was not without light though, even beyond that of the two young paladins’ sunblades. Though the marble didn’t quite seem luminescent, there seems to be some sort of sourceless light, matching the greenish tint of the marble, now in the air, but as the party continued down the hallway, it grew also ever colder.

At last they came to a truly breathtaking sight. The walls and ceiling of the hallway turned from marble to a clear crystal, very nearly like glass, and through them the party members could see the ocean itself. They could see also the underwater land, and see that their hallway was a sort of tube that shot out of the side of the land, deep underwater, and continued through the ocean. Far ahead in the gloom, they could see that this tube connected to others, and Arra with her keenest vision could make out the shape and structure of the undersea palace. It was not a solid building by any means, but an enormous weave of free-floating chambers, hallways, and stairways, running around and connecting to each other, but with empty ocean between parallel hallways and levels of the palace, which was made like their hallway all of clear crystal and greenish marble. It was almost like a mass of coral on a giant scale; though of mostly straight lines and right angles.

The party was awed at the otherworldly beauty of the sight, but marched forward still, and at last came to the branching hallways of the palace, which were like tubes shooting around through the ocean and connecting to each other here and there. They made mostly-arbitrary choices at each juncture, keeping mental maps and with Arra scribbling a written map along as they went.

“Funny we have seen nothing yet,” Valygar remarked, “The Skald said there were lots of golems and undead about, but we’ve seen not a soul.”

“…literally,” Dawn added with a warm laugh.

The others nodded in silent agreement, and soon the party came to a stairwell. Like the hallways, the stairway was of greenish marble and the walls and ceiling over it of clear crystal, and it seemed disjoined from the rest of the palace except where it began on the top floor. It seemed to go down diagonally past other levels of the palace, to which the party members could see no apparent route, and they could also not see its end either by looking right down the stairs or through the water.

“Perhaps we’ll see more company on the lower floors,” Onyx remarked. “Might as well proceed, we’ll have to find a way down somehow,” he shrugged, and took a step onto the stairs. No sooner had he planted his other foot on the second stair, however, than a click was heard within the marble stairwell. Immediately, every stair in unison swiveled downwards, and what once had been a jagged stairway was now a smooth diagonal marble ramp. “Whoa-oa!” the cavalier gave a shout as his feet slid out from under him. He crashed onto his back on the ramp, and before he could reach overhead to grab the ledge of the hallway the rest of the party was on, his smooth dragonscale armor immediately sent him sliding down, down, to what end none of the others could see.

“Onyx!” Jaheira shouted in upset anger, running to the edge of the ramp and peering over, “Onyx!!!!”

The other party members stood in stony silence, looking at and past her to where the cavalier had disappeared. Jaheira sniffled once and then spun around, staring angrily at the other five remaining members. “Well don’t just stand there like simpletons!” she shouted at them. “We’ve got to follow him!”

“Not until we know into what,” Arra responded calmly.

“It’s your fault, you little thief!!” Jaheira screamed and stared her down. “It was you job to be looking out for little traps like this, with your oh-so-great purebred vision!”

“Well, he didn’t exactly give her a chance before bounding cavalierly down the stairs,” Valygar shrugged in the elf’s defense.

“I’m sorry nonetheless,” Arra met the other Harper’s gaze impassively, “But there’s no need for insults.”

“There is for action!”

Arra responded methodically, “Yes, but if we look for another route to wherever he’s gone to, rather than jumping into the same trap, we have much better chances of ever rescuing your dear cavalier.”

Jaheira grew livid at the elf’s wording, her mouth quivering as if she were barely able to hold back something harsh (even by her standards). Instead, she wordlessly spun around toward the ramp again, nearing whacking Arra in the face with the scimitar hilts sticking up over her shoulderblades, and stepped to the very edge of the ramp. She craned her head around and looked back at her companions out one long-lashed eye, then turned to face the ramp.

“Don’t, J!” Valygar cried, dashing past his other companions toward her with his hands outstretched. “It could be certain death!”

“Wherever it is, I’ll be with him,” she only said. A mere moment before Valygar grasped her, she hopped off the edge of the ledge, landing on the ramp on her feet, which were quickly pulled out from under her just like Onyx’s had been, and slid down on her thighs and butt after him down the ramp.

“That fool!!!” Arra screamed and pulled her own hair. She looked at Valygar as he stared dumbly at his empty hands. “I thought you said she was always the voice of caution and wisdom in your party!”

“I thought that too,” the stalker shrugged hopelessly.

“Minsc and Boo will not abandon their good friends!” came a boisterous cry from behind them. “Where paladins and druids go, so will rangers and hamsters! They had best leave clear a patch of evil’s behind where Minsc can plant his boot upon!” A squeak issued from the ranger’s pocket, and he continued, “Ah yes, and room for the incisors of Boo!” Yet another, higher-pitched squeak rejoined it, and Minsc added “And Bebe!” With that the enormous man took a stride off the end of the ledge, but instead of being swept onto his own decidedly non-evil butt, began tumbling head-over-heels down the ramp. “Oof…ouch…oh….Squeak!!!…..” the sounds of the ranger crashing down the slide at increasing speed echoed back up to the remaining four adventurers.

“Hey wait!!” Buffy ran to the edge and shouted after him. “You still have my purple eyeshadow, Minsc! I need it back! Aaah!!!” the young undead hunter squatted down at the top of the ramp, hesitantly stuck her legs down it, and with a push from both her gauntleted palms went sliding down after the still-audible ranger. Her voice also echoed back up, “This…wind…is…bad…for…my…haaair…..”

“Lathander help us,” Dawn sighed and fastened her morning star at her hip, “Gotta take care of my adopted kid sis. And Onyx too.” With that she repeated Buffy’s motions and soon was sliding down after her.

Valygar looked down the ramp impassively for a second, then spoke in his usual stoic manner. “What the hell, my cursed bloodline needs to die out sooner or later,” he sighed and with an athletic leap flew through the air onto the ramp, landing with his legs straight and his arms at his sides, and slid down with impressive speed.

Arra looked around at the now-deserted hallway. She looked down over herself. Her elven frame was thin but muscular, sculpted but not shapely, female but not feminine. She rubbed her elegant but scarred face and let out a lonely sigh. “Fuck you, Anomen Delryn, and you, Jarek Bond, and all the rest I go on endless goose chase after goose chase with, for some larger, abstract Harper causes, never coming out on the other end with anything to show for it. Or anyone.” Like someone about to walk to a welcome death, she strode off the end of the ledge, deftly and nonchalantly pulled her legs together in midair and landed ready to slide on the ramp, and shot down into the darkness leaving no one behind.

For minute after minute the elf slid down the smooth marble ramp, clear crystal walls zooming by on either side and showing the ocean around her. It was nighttime far above on the surface of the sea and the land, and no sunlight pierced the water, if it would to this depth anyway, but she could make out the soft red glow of warm-blooded sea creatures in the water around her, many of them swimming together in schools; looking with her infravision like clouds of bright red stars moving together in unison. As the minutes passed and she kept sliding by, she gave another lonely sigh.

At last something other than darkness became visible down the steep ramp ahead of her, and she could make out a number of large glowing red bodies piled up below. She tried to lean back and press her arms and back against the smooth ramp to slow herself down as best she could, but it was to little avail.

“Oompf!” she cried as she crashed into Valygar’s back at a harmless but uncomfortable speed, crowning a large pile of adventurers. She looked around. Jaheira was standing before them, apparently having gotten out of the way. A good thing, as the enormous Minsc had been the one crashing down behind her. The Rashemanian ranger and the Lathanderian paladin and priestess, however, were buried under Valygar and herself.

“Well that wasn’t sooo bad,” Arra, greatly relieved by the seemingly harmless end to the ride, laughed with an agile hop off of the pile, landing on her feet at Jaheira’s side.

Jaheira scowled fire at her. “I thought you were the brainy one…or perhaps all the fighting and thieving leaves no room for much upstairs,” she glared rudely. “You don’t notice anything – or anyone – missing?”

Arra rolled her eyes and tried to ignore the insult. She looked around. The ramp ended, spilling into a wide window-walled chamber that spread out interminably far in one direction. Through the crystal in the wall behind them, she could see the diagonal tube they’d slid down, and also the ocean around it and to either side. The adjacent sides were fairly wide apart, like in a large banquest hall, but as he gaze followed them she saw that the chamber stretched away out of sight in the fourth direction. Though the air here still had the faint sourceless light, it was not bright, and she could not see nearly as far down the long chamber as her elven eyes should have been able to. But the salient point, she realized, was that no one else was around. She finally answered, “Oh – Onyx.”

“Very astute, oh cunning mage,” Jaheira nodded with heavy sarcasm. “I believe he is below us. As I was sliding down, I saw a motion far below me. A marble slab slid out of this floor to meet the stairwell-turned-ramp, blocking me from sliding further,” She indicated to a seam on the floor around the bottom of the ramp, and Arra nodded. “As it shut right in front of me, I believe it let Onyx slide further to some lower floor, and then caught the rest of us on this level.”

“But what could the Jeweler possibly want with him?” Arra frowned.

“Well, we could have asked the same of Irenicus,” Jaheira smirked haughtily, “but he did.”

“But he’s no longer a Bhaalspawn, yes?” Arra asked.

“Perhaps the goal is simply to split us up one at a time,” Valygar suggested as he crawled off the heap, Dawn and Buffy groaning as he regretfully kneed and elbowed them in the process.

“Or perhaps it wasn’t him, but something of his,” Arra mused.

“Hey I think I know!” came a shout from where Minsc lay on the floor, but it didn’t sound like the ranger (nor his amorous hamsters).

“Lile?” Jaheira arched an eyebrow. “Grim is the hour when we turn to you for wisdom.”

“I’ve actually known some very intelligent talki- er, sentient swords in my time,” Arra laughed. “Mostly moonblades though.”

“Well, Lilacor hardly qualifies as sentient, much less intelligent,” Jaheira laughed back, her misdirected anger finally melting. “Definitely talking, though!”

“Hey!” Lilacor shouted indignantly from Minsc’s back as the massive ranger got to his feet. “Just because my friends tricked me into attacking a tree once….oh, nevermind! The point is – hey, Val, you were with Onyx when you interrogated the Skald, you remember what I’m talking about!”

Valygar averted Jaheira’s scornful gaze at this reminder, and said, “Yes, you mean archaic flame-sword? The Skald did say someone was looking for it.”

“Oh, stow the elaborate theories,” Jaheira sighed. “Does any of this really matter to our current predicament? The point is, we’ve got to try to work our way down through this aquatic eyesore of an underwater castle and find Onyx, as well as the Jeweler.”

“Speaking of which,” Dawn spoke up, “I’m surprised we haven’t seen any of his minions.”

Right on cue, a booming sound could be heard from down the hallway.

Buffy smacked her forehead. “Like, who didn’t see that coming?”

Arra squinted down the wide chamber. “Yep. Hard to make much out in the dim, but I see a row of big lumbering creatures. Look like they’re made out of some sort of stone, maybe the same marble as the floors.”

“Golems,” Valygar scowled and gnashed his teeth, “Cursed magic-made abominations.” He lifted one shoulder, pulled his mana longbow off his back along with an orange-tipped arrow, and strung it. “Blast ‘em all,”

“She could have lent it to you, Val, but Aerie just had to keep Crom Faeyr, didn’t she,” Jaheira sighed, reaching over her shoulder and pulling the rod of smiting off her back. “By Eldath, how I hate that little bitch.” She swung the golem-destroying quarterstaff through the air, and some of her companions found themselves wondering whether it was the constructs or the avariel that she was picturing herself whacking.

“Say no mean things about our witch!” Minsc cried with indignation, and and two agreeing squeaks issued from his pocket, “She is nice and sweet and loves to hammer evil heads almost as much as Minsc!”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry Minsc,” Jaheira verbally apologized.

“I see some man-sized shapes coming up behind them,” Arra peered down the hall, “Not getting any infrared from them either; probably undead.”

“Yes,” Dawn confirmed, “I can sense the negative energy.”

“I can make them out now,” Arra added. “Ghosts. A few vampires, too.”

“Vampires!” Minsc cried. “Vampires are mean! Minsc and Boo hate vampires. They hurt poor little Aerie too! Minsc will stomp on them, and kick out their fangs with his great boots, and pound their cold bodies with his great maces, and push wooden stakes through their still hearts with his great hands, and….” He yanked the strongarm longbow of his back and strung a red-tipped arrow in it.

Buffy reached for the crossbow at her belt and loaded a similarly-colored bolt, and then began yammering protection from evil spells upon each party members with a strange slangish air, while Dawn and Arra concentrated and began chanting preparatory spells of their own.

“Who needs negative plane protection?” Dawn asked with eyes of concern as she glanced around at the other party members.

“I’ve got an amulet,” Jaheira informed her.

“Ditto,” chorused Arra Flyte and the eight mirror images surrounding her.

“I’ve my runehammer,” Valygar said boredly as he stared down the shaft of his drawn arrow at the oncoming force.

“Minsc has a very nice mace of disruption! Found in the lair of a very mean vampiress. Boo says it is funny that a vampire would keep such an item around. Perhaps Bodhi was dropped on her head a lot as a child…”

“Like, ditto! I’ve totally got one too.”

Dawn shrugged and protected herself, then began bestowing a number of Lathander’s other blessings and boons upon the party. She then exchanged glances and nods with Jaheira and Arra.

Nearly in unison, the cleric, and druid, and the mage each began chant much harsher-sounding spells, and then cast forth each a fiery orb. They sailed through the air, and landed equally-spaced just behind the front line of advancing monsters. Three enormous clouds of fire blossomed from the opposing ranks. The marble golems continued marching as impassively as ever, but the ghosts wailed in terror as magical flames licked at their ethereal forms, and most of them disappeared. Two fireballs followed these up a rep-tipped arrow and bolt flew from Minsc’s bow and Buffy’s crossbow and landed among them. At the same moment, Valygar’s orange-tipped arrow sunk into a golem and the creature exploded into stone shards.

“I am Sunnis, Prince of Earth!”

The enormous prince of the earth elementals sprang to life just in front of Jaheira, and a deva and a planetar soon appeared to either side, in front of Dawn and Arra. As the three extraplanar beings marched forth at the oncoming horde of enemies, more missiles and spells whizzed past their heads. Sunnis began pounding a stone golem with his enormous rocky fists and the deva and planetar engaged the constructs on either side of him with glowing swords. More golems marched around them, as the interspersed ghosts fell under fire spells and holy smites, and soon came close to the line of warriors. At last Valygar tossed his longbow onto his back again and reached for the two hammers at his belt. Screaming with uncharacteristic emotion, he charged forward with his large mallets raised high, leapt into the air, and came down smashing them on the front of a marching stone golem, causing cracks to radiate across the stone being’s body moments before it shattered. The one to its left splintered as Jaheira brought her quarterstaff down upon it in a two-handed overhead swing.

From far behind the melee and fireworks, down the chamber, echoed an evil, haunting female voice with a thick Thayvian accent. “Vladimir dear, I told you zat if ve vanted zis done right…..,”

“..yes, yes, Natasha, zat ve’d have to do it ourselves. Spare me ze told you so’s,” came a similar male voice.

In between spells, Dawn looked up in awe as she could now see, floating forward above the marching golems and floating ghosts, a pair of vampires. Both had flowing red capes whisping around them, despite the utter lack of wind in the chamber, under which glimpses of archaically-styled red clothing could be seen, and above which popped pale-faced and black-haired heads. One was a bearded man’s face, the other a long-haired woman’s, but Dawn didn’t have to be cleric to be able to tell they were vampires.

“Look on ze bright side, dear,” Vladimir continued, “Ze more formidable ze adventurers, ze better ze meal zey make, I always say. Ah ah ah ah!”

“Very vell,” Natasha sighed as she continued floating forward alongside her undead partner, “But I call dibs on ze two elven ones! ”

As if protesting, Arra cast a swarm of magic missiles up at her, joined by physical missiles from Minsc and Buffy, but they all glanced off the vampiress, who laughed merrily. “Tsk, tsk, children,” she taunted, “you obviously haven’t learned your history – of ze Count and Countess, Vladimir and Natasha Dlakura! Ve vere powerful vizards in life, among ze founders of Thay. Zen, vile our colleagues became disgusting liches to extend zeir lives, ve found a much more…delicious…calling – vampirism!”

“Ah ah ah ah!” Vladimir laughed along with her. They both bared their fangs, turned horizontal in the air, and began to fly forward at a much higher speed with their claws outstretched and their capes flaring. Dawn issued a Lathanderian epithet that caused undead-repulsing waves of energy to emit from her very body, and the two vampires began flying backwards with visible dismay.

While Valygar, Jaheira, and the summons continued shattering their way through the oncoming golems and the occasional ghost who had survived the fiery assault, Buffy cast a holy smite up at the vampires but they feigned back even further back, riding the repulsion waves to avoid it, and Arra grabbed two wands of spell striking from her belt. Holding one in each hand, she blasted them up at the vampire couple, sending pierce shield spells at them. She twisted each one around in her head, and then fired a pair of breach spells.

“Curse her! She has dispelled my favorite abjurations!” Vladimir muttered from one side of the wall, keeping as far as possible from the repulsion waves as he tried to fly back up the chamber toward the adventurers.

“Oh, shut up you fool,” Natasha shot back from across the chamber, where she was doing the same upon the opposite wall. Then she yelled something incomprehensible and held her palms forward together, and the yellow-white orb of a power word stun shot from them and beelined across the chamber.

“Take zat, veak elfling!” Vladimir laughed as Arra Flyte froze midchant. “Ah ah ah ah!” He was stopped midlaugh, however, when Buffy’s bolt sunk into his chest and a small plume of flame issued from the wound. “Ack! I no like fire! Take zis, succulent adventurers!” He began chanting, and a fiery gate opened just over the heads of Minsc, Buffy, and Dawn. A large and rather irate looking pit fiend stepped through, but as he dropped to the ground, he looked around in confusion, staring right through the adventurers.

“Good work, Buf!” Dawn whispered to the undead hunter, and the teenaged girl smiled back while hooking her crossbow to her belt and drawing out longswords, her sunblade and a holy avenger, in each hand.

“HEEEEEEEEEEY DEMONFLESH!!!!!!!!!!!” Lilacor shouted with glee as Minsc held the (semi-)sentient sword aloft and then brought it down right in the ugly face of the fiend. It snarled and reached toward the offending weapon with its large claws, but then snarled again when Buffy’s longswords sank into its back. Yanking his now-dripping-with-dark-demon-blood greatsword out of the fiend’s face and beginning a fast spin, Minsc whizzed around once with his blade and sliced open the demon’s throat, then on his next spin plunged it deep into the beast’s chest, twisted it, and pulled it out with a beating leathery demon-heart impaled on the blade.

“GET THIS OFF ME! IT TASTES TERRIBLE!” Lilacor protested, and Minsc complied by swinging Lilacor and sending the still-beating organ through the air, which seemed to be pumping fire as well as blood, and thus conveniently burned an advancing ghost into nothingness upon “impact” with said uncorporeal being.

A warning squeak issued from within Minsc’s armor, and Dawn shouted in common “Minsc watch out! She’s coming down on you!”

Minsc quickly pulled his arms back over his head and stuck Lilacor in the large sheath on the center of his back, but just as his hands shot down to reach for the two maces at his belt, the vampiress was upon him. Her red cape flew wide and she landed right on his chest, wrapping her pale legs around his waist, stabbing into his breastplate with her claws, and then moving her head hungrily down at for his neck. Flexible chainmail ran down the area between his helm and shoulderplates, but the vampiress’s long fangs pierced the mail as she bit, and Minsc wailed a deep but terrified cry as she began to make ghastly sucking noises.

Dawn motioned to cast some sort of spell, which surely would have helped him or hurt her, but she never got the chance. Vladimir had sent a flock of magic missiles from his fingertips as he sailed through the air, and they slammed straight into the rosy disk emblem on her chest and sent her sprawling to the floor. The vampire landed just over her and bared his fangs and claws, but then let out an “OMMVVVPPP!” as the mace of disruption that Buffy now held instead of her holy avenger smacked the back of his head and sent him sprawling to the floor himself.

“Better luck next time, little girl, I live yet!” he laughed as he sprang to his feet again and faced her. “Vell, not ‘live’ in the literal sense, you know, but….ah nevermind…” he trailed off as he dodged a swing from Buffy’s sunblade and came back with a swipe of claws that raked across the side of her (very stylish) helm. “Tell me dear,” he began as he feigned back from the next swing of her mace and then made another swipe, “I don’t suppose you’re just letting the fact zat I’m a vampire and you are an undead hunter stand betveen us. I couldn’t help noticing how very stylish and shapely your breastplate is….”

“Shut up, you creepy old…creep!” Buffy snapped at him, and managed to score a hit across his forearm with Goldenedge.

“Yes, do shut up, you lascivious buffoon,” Natasha looked up from Minsc’s bleeding neck to snap at her undead husband.

Vlad looked peevishly at his wife. “You seem to be getting pretty cozy vith that muscular fellow yourself!”

“You’re just a dirty old man!” Buffy brought his attention back their own fight with a clang of her mace on his claws.

“A few thousand years old, my dear!” he laughed in stride, and managed to slash through her gauntlet and draw blood just after her next swipe with her sword fell short.

Minsc groaned as Natasha pressed herself against him and drained his life, and stood weak and dumb, but then a series of desperate hamsterish squeaks came from within his armor. Groaning, he reached down with his right hand, and managed to find and grasp the handle of the mace of disruption that hung there.

“Bleh!” Natasha spat with disgust and fell backwards off him, “Your blood stinks ov holy vater!” She wiped her bloody lips with the back of her pale hand, but as Minsc swung the mace down at her, she did a graceful backwards roll and sprang to her feet again, slashing at his helm with her claws. The ranger grabbed Stormstar from his belt with his left hand, and swung it quickly up into her stomach, sending electricity through her. “Ieieieieieieieie!” her mouth chattered and her long black hair suddenly stood on end.

“Boo says now you look more like the Bride of Flangenstein than Countess Dlakura!” Minsc laughed at the frazzled undead woman.

“Silence, big dumb Rashemanian man!” she hissed at him, gnashing her fangs and swinging her claws. “Flangenstein vas Thayvian too!”

As they continued to circle each other, making swings with claw and mace, so did Vladimir and Buffy. Dawn Raybringer got to her feet, chanting a healing spell to recover from the magic missiles, but before she could cast a spell to assist her embattled comrades, she heard a sliding noise behind herself.

She turned to see a dark figure sliding down the ramp that her party’d come down earlier. The figure, which seemed to be a ponytailed woman clad in shapely purple leather, sprang nimbly off the bottom of the ramp to her feet.

“Greetings, priestess of Lathander,” the woman laughed dissonantly in a voice that was musical like Dawn’s, but seemed attuned to a minor key. She tapped the dark sun emblem on her chest. “I am an assassin of Cyric. Shall we dance?” With that she swiftly grabbed a black whip that hung at her belt, and before Dawn could finish a spell, had struck with it, disrupting the cleric with a rap on the right hand that caused the morning star to fall from her grasp.

The priestess calmly reached to the white whip at her own belt and grasped it. “We shall,” she answered. She swiftly whipped it at her opponent, who blocked the flicking tip with the buckler she had drawn in her left hand.

The cleric and the assassin circled, whipping at each other, but dodging with feign and step or blocking with buckler and shield. Bucki Ryder spun around, trailing her whip in a wide sweep along the floor, and the end wrapped twice around Dawn’s ankle. The thief then tugged her weapon and pulled her adversary’s foot out from under her and sent her sprawling to the floor. Dawn’s previous strike went astray, but she swung her right shoulder around in its socket and managed to pull her whip around in a circle and then strike forward again, and it wrapped around her opponent’s neck. The assassin gave a choked cry and Dawn pulled hard, causing her to trip over her own whip, which was pulled taught against Dawn’s ensnared ankle, and fall onto the ground right next to her. The cleric wasted to time in deftly flicking her wrist several time to catch several more loops around the thief’s neck, then pulled hard, causing her muscles to bulge under her armor as she did..

Dawn could hear the assassin, who now stared her right in the face from her mask, gagging and choking. The thief swung at Dawn’s head with her buckler, but the cleric let go of her shield and reached up just in time to grab the woman’s wrist. They struggled, nearly equal in strength, and both began to grow tired.

“You’ve got my ankle, I’ve got your neck,” Dawn told her, as they peered deep into each other’s deep blue eyes from under mask and helm, “It’s over.”

“Over for – GAK- you,” the assassin rasped, “Look at your wrist.”

Dawn glanced down at the wrist that the assassin had struck first struck, and noticed that the strike had pierced her armor and even her skin, and she was bleeding slightly. “Big deal,” she smirked, “So you had barbs on your whip.”

“More than bards, fellow whip-mistress,” the assassin laughed, “Poison.”

Dawn looked down at her ankle, and the black whip wrapped around it, and noticed that indeed the very tip of the whip had barbs coated with a sticky purple substance.

“It’s over for both of us,” Bucki laughed. “Don’t bother with your simple little priest-prayers. The draughts of Cyric are potent indeed. But don’t worry, there will be no pain, in fact your mind while be in psychotic euphoria before you die.”

“Too bad you won’t be around to see it,” Dawn scowled, her voice angry but cracking as she prepared to face death, and pulled her whip even tighter around the other woman’s neck. The thief managed to get her wrist free of Dawn’s grasp, and brought the buckler down to crash against the cleric’s helmed head. Dawn beat her there, however, and the tiny shield glanced off her left gauntlet. The cleric then reached for the thief’s face to inflict some pain of her own, but as she grabbed at it, the woman tilted her head back, despite the effective noose she was in, and Dawn grasped only the mask before she pulled.

The assassin’s mask came right off, and Dawn reached for her face again with her fingers, but all the anger melted from her own as she looked upon it. “Bucki? Bucki! Sis!”

“Dawn?” the unmasked rogue peered back at her opponent. “Is that you?”

Dawn pulled her helmet off with her free hand and smiled. “Yes, it’s me!”

“Dawn!” Bucki cried with joy, “I missed you so much! I…..” she stopped suddenly, glanced down at the whip around her neck, and at the blood on Dawn’s wrist. “I…I don’t wanna die, big sis.”

“Neither do I, little sis,” Dawn stared back, tears welling in her eyes. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Buc.”

Bucki sniffled and tried to choke back her own tears. She let her buckler drop from her free hand, and reached into her leather armor, then pulled out a pink vial and held it toward her sister and spoke. “Drink this. Please.”

Dawn smiled, beginning to feel strangely weak but giddy. “To open it I’ll have to take my hand off your noose, won’t I? It’s a deal, sis.” Dawn let go of her whip, used both her hands to take the vial, unscrew the lid, and roll onto her back and gulp it down. The strange feeling began to dissipate. She got to her feet, and Bucki reached to her ankle and untied the black whip around it. Dawn then pulled her sister to her feet, and untied the white whip around her neck. And then they hugged.

“I love you, Bucki,” Dawn smiled from other her sister’s shoulder.

“I love you too, Dawn.”

The two broke their embrace and, holding their whips down at their sides, looked back at the battle. Minsc and Natasha were still dueling, as were Buffy and Vladimir. The four combatants all had numerous marks from claw or sword or mace, but no one seemed to have yet had the life, or the undeath, knocked out of them. Dawn and Bucki noticed they were facing the vampires’ backs, and the sisters exchanged nods, and smiled. They each cracked their whips forward, and Dawn snared Natasha around her ankle, and Bucki snared Vladimir around his. The two whip-wielders then jerked back in unison, pulling the red-cloaked Thayvian vampires off their feet and bringing them sprawling on their faces, their heads hitting the hard marble and ringing with the sounds of fangs cracking on stone.

The ranger and the paladin wasted no time. Buffy swung Goldenedge down swiftly and beheaded the prostrate Vladimir, and Minsc swung each mace down from the side with frighteningly powerful swings, crushing Natasha’s head to a pulp between them. As Buffy rolled Vladimir’s headless body onto its back and drew out wooden stakes, she tossed one to Minsc, who caught it as he easily rolled Natasha over with one hand. Two stakes came down in clenched fists and pierced two vampire hearts, and terrible screams issued forth but were then suddenly silenced.

Bucki and Dawn then looked back over their shoulders to see Valygar bashing the last ghost out of existence with his runehammer just as Jaheira brought her staff cracking down upon the last stone golem and smote it to rubble.

“Thanks, Sunnis,” the druid smiled as she turned to face the now-idle earth prince.

“Ho ho, anytime, druid friend!” the enormous elemental bellowed heartily, and vanished along with the deva and the planetar.

Arra Flyte unfroze and the other party members all took a moment to catch their breath while Dawn and Jaheira went about healing all who needed it. After restoring a drained but exuberant Minsc, Dawn noticed the trepidations looks her companions were giving Bucki, whom she then warmly introduced as the long-lost runaway younger sister, Bucki Raybringer, that she had been and now was again.

“Congratulations on your reunion, Dawn,” the party’s druid smiled kindly (to the surprise of many of her companions), “But we still have one more due - with Onyx.”

Bucki piped up, “Two more. I uh, sorta let him get loose last night,” she blushed, “but I was the one who kidnapped Jarek Bond.”

Arra Flyte 006 shook her head, chuckling in spite of herself. “Good ol’ Harper 007.”




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