The hasty stroke goes oft astray.
-Aragorn
58. Seeing Red
“Greetings little one,” said the prim blonde swordsman to the braided-brunette who towered over him like so many trees, “You have the look of an experienced traveler, and indeed a fine warrior. My name is Melium; I’m the Sword Coast’s most skilled swordsman. You may have heard my name, I’m quite famous after all.”
Like many of the land’s wilder adventurers, the woman’s face was speckled with strange tattoos, a purple diamond upon one cheek and across the other eye, both distorted as she snarled down at Melium. “If you’re such a good swordsman, why are you wandering about the wilderness dressed in what amounts to rags?” She laughed, and shoved the man right in his frilly collar.
“Are you insulting me!?” he cried, barely keeping himself with a backstep of a thigh-high leather boot, “You had better now dare to insult me, or I’ll show you the metal of my blade. Once I’ve drawn my sword, I’m honor bound to whet the blade!” Hands in sleek steel-and-leather gauntlets, the fingers of one wiggled close to the hilt of his rapier.
“Well then, useless male dungheap,” the woman grinned ferally, stepping back and reaching over her head for the two-handed grip of the enormous sword that hung there, “Why don’t you draw your puny little tool so that we can see who’s the better swordswoman!”
“Now you’ve done it!” Melium’s voice cracked as he danced back and drew the rapier, sinking to a low stance and putting forth the blade. “You’ll be sorry for doubting my skill…so very sorry. Enguarde!” He lunged with a precise strike at the left breast of the warrior woman, but it skitted off one of the studs of her leather. He screamed echoing a horrid chord of cracking and squishing sounds as the woman’s boot flew up to meet his fancy-pantsed groin. Melium dropped his blade and collapsed to his knees, and looked up just in time to see the edge of the great steel blade hammering down. “Mommy…”
--
Jade stopped short, boots planting in the soft grassy earth, as an extraordinarily hulking woman, taller and beefier than herself or Branwen by far, matching her brother perhaps of even that mountainous simpleton ranger friend of his, rose from her reclining place in the shade of a tree, and raised an open steel-and-leather gauntlet. “Hold travelers,” came her burly, growling voice, as she cast her disdainful eyes over the seven party members. “I challenge your best warrior to a duel. I don’t fight women, so only men should step forward.”
Jade shrugged. “What’s to gain, and what’s the catch, Lady…”
“I am no lady, I am Sharteel!!” her bellow echoed, and she put the gauntleted hands to her hips. “I win, and you shall give me twenty gold. In the unlikely event that one of you beats me, I’ll pledge my sword to your cause.” Jade looked over her shoulder at her companions while Shar-Teel continued, “Will your champion step forward? Don’t entertain any thoughts about cheating. If any of the rest of you try to interfere in this fight I’ll kill them outright!”
Under Jade’s gaze, Edwina squeaked, “I don’t count anymore!” and waved her well-manicured hands in surrender. Xzar and Montaron each shuffled nervously, but Kagain and Kivan looked at one another, shrugging, as if they’d be willing to do so but didn’t quite care one way or the other.
Edwina looked at Jade, quite seriously, “Would you like to borrow my belt for a bit?”
“Eww….” the young fighter wrinkled her nose, at the thought of sprouting facial hair and…stuff. “I..eh..wouldn’t fit my armor…”
“It came from a man,” Edwina intoned.
“A male elf…they don’t really count…” Jade giggled, then froze when she looked at Kivan. “I mean…uh….in size...of torso…”
“We are lean,” Kivan spoke, unoffended, indeed he even cracked a smile which was rare in itself.
“..But skilled and agile warriors,” Jade offered politely, still blushing at the elf. “Great shots.”
“Thank you,” he gave her a humorous satire of a courtly bow.
“AHEM!” Shar-Teel screamed.
Kivan gestured to Jade. “Might I borrow my blade’s companion?”
“Of course!” Jade smiled, and with a smooth haste drew Icingdeath from its curved sheath, and laying it over her palms offered it pommel-first to Kivan, who clasped the handle in his left hand, already brandishing its Twinkle in his right.
“You dual-…” Jade gawked, eyes wide and bright. Just like Drizzt. Shar-Teel snorted, and Jade shook her head, scarlet bangs whipping. Forget Drizzt. What a fop. If I could go back to Candlkeep, only to tear down from my wall that drawing.., the thought made her blush, and anger somewhat. As Kivan waltzed forward, spinning the scimitars in fluid arcs each across both sides of himself, Shar-Teel twitched, betraying a chink in her own confidence, and with a guttural snarl clutched her own bastard sword and the hand-grip of her round steel shield.
The elf flew into her with a waterfall of falling slashes, scimitar whipping by only to circle about, pivoted by shoulder and wrist both, and Shar-Teel was hard pressed to parry off sword and shield. Jade watched her elven companion agape, he seemed to keep Shar-Teel on the defensive with the many graceful techniques he had been showing her, swords sweeping this way and that in tapering curves like the path of falling leaves while his foe bashed each off with her shield and bastard sword.
Lunging and ramming her sword and shield too far inside the elf's blows, Shar-Teel hit his forearms so hard, bruising his right with her shield and rending open his left with her sword, that he was disarmed of both scimitars and found her bastard sword smashing into his collar, then skitting aside his neck and drawing a line of blood. The elf did not yield, rather feinted his throat away from the blade more quickly than Shar-Teel could press it, but already, at the moment the edge had gone against the elf's throat, Jade had gone pale and cried to Shar-Teel, "Enough!!"
"Well then, little girl," Shar-Teel chortled and stepped back, resting the flat of her bastard sword over her shoulder, "That will be twenty golders....or your own head..."
"Double down..." Jade scowled defiantly at the large woman and balled her fists, "Double down!"
She snickered, and jerked her head dismissively to Kivan, whose face was withdrawn; unhappy he had been surrendered. "Against your sissy elf-male again? Gladly..."
Kivan gave the warrior a gentlemanly nod, "It shall be my pleasure..."
"Iiiii will duel her..." Xzar sang, fingers rapping over one another as he gaze Shar-Teel a macabre grin. He drew the Revenant's dagger, and leered over the shining tip at the woman. "I seeeee you....."
Shar-Teel threw her head back in laughter, clanging sword and shield together, "My pleasure..even weaker than the elf..." and advanced.
"Aieeeeee!!!!" Xzar shrieked at the top of his lungs, and turned about, hiking up his robes and scampering off.
"Coward!" Shar-Teel screamed, charging after him with her sword held overhead. "Stand and fight, boy in a dress!" She wove between trees, grunting as she lost sight of Xzar around one for a moment, but a few seconds after that he popped out again, crushing a rotten egg in his hand and pointing. The area all about Shar-Teel clouded in hazy green gas and the most horrible of stenches. "Coward..." she groaned, leeing drunkenly as she advanced, "Come...fight...sissy...boy..." her face turned a purple to blend with her tattoos, and she flopped forward, groaning, “Sometimes the smell of a man makes me sick to my stomach.." and crashing off one shoulder and rolling over on her back, her tongue and much drool rolling out from her mouth, eyes shut.
"You smelt it, you dealt it!" Xzar giggled, pouring out half his canteen over the sleeve of his robe, which he pressed over his nose and mouth. He crawled into the stinking cloud and clutched Shar-Teel's leather collar to drag her beyond its edge. He took a bladder from one of his spell components pouches and poured out its contents over her throat, a wash of old stinking dull-red blood, then stepped back, and tapped her head with the toe of his boot.
Shar-Teel came to about as the stinking haze dissipated in the air, and she growled for a moment, but then hands went to her throat, and she screamed out, "I am killed! I am slain!”
"Boo!" Xzar wiggled his tongue and hands over her, "The blood isn't yours, angry lady! But you can keep it if you ask nicely..."
"You..." Shar-Teel sat up, and clenched her now-bloody fists."...fruitcake!"
"A resourceful fruitcake," Jade stepped up and patted her necromancer and childhood friend upon the shoulder. Smiling down at Shar-Teel and offering her hand, who refused to take it in rising, she added, "Don't look so wounded. You'll take to us, Shar-Teel, indeed we're the outfit for you. I'm sure you'll prove your worth."
"Of course I'll prove my worth!" Shar-Teel growled, "It won't be too hard, in this group."
She fumed, and Branwen came up beside Jade, and nodded respectfully to the warrior. "You are valiant of action, Shar-Teel. A pity your spirit is mismatched." Before Shar-Teel yelled something back, she glanced over to her fellows, "Though she seems to have more spine than a lot of the men in this party."
Shar-Teel chuckled, sheathing her sword over her back and glancing dismissively at the others. “Steel is the only thing a woman can depend on.” When Jade jerked her head northward, she fell in alongside Branwen. As they marched overland, Jade told of her and her party’s adventures so far, in sometimes discreet terms as she tried to gauge if Shar-Teel would as soon try and take her head for the bounty. Once she came to their escape from the Nashkel mines and assault by ‘The Amazons’, Shar-Teel nearly chocked on air, and gasped, “Lamalha, Zeela, Telka, Maneira?”
“The same…” Jade sighed. Kagain coughed, and the young woman’s eyes bulged as she recalled what the dwarf had said in that same parlay. That there had been a fifth…her hand tightened on the hilt of her scimitar, prepared to defend herself against her fleeting ally.
“They were my last outfit!” the beefy she-warrior laughed, “A fitting end for the lot of them!”
“Uh…yeah…” Jade grimaced, relieved at her take to the news, but wondering if next tenday Shar-Teel would be laughing at their deaths in a similar fashion. “So why’d…”
“Because they whored themselves to the Iron Ceiling!” she snarled. Despite the lonely wilderness she lowered her voice to conspiratorial tones, “My father is a Fist captain but in the Throne’s pocket. I would not deign, or dare, to deal with him again, save in crossing swords.”
“Whatever lies in your past, Shar-Teel,” Jade frowned, not quite wanting to press further now, “I am sorry.”
Branwen added, “You are a strong warrior. I respect that.”
Under the beating sun her brother worshipped, Jade was not put out as the land grew only better and better forested, nearing the depths of Larswood where the bandits were thought to be camped. Kivan strode ahead, scouting, as he so often did, and raised a hand as he heard faint voices ahead now, low and droning, like that of spellcasters. This he whispered to his companions as they caught up.
“Druids?” Jade asked.
“There is in these parts a stonehenge circle where they pray,” the elven ranger spoke, “But it is not so close, nor is this a druidic chant.”
All stood quiet then for a moment, straining to listen, and Xzar squeaked, “It is arcane…”
“And the accents…” Edwina murmured, “…are familiar.”
“Like your own, bonny Edwina,” Xzar giggled, and the conjuress wrinkled her nose, but nodded. She realized then, how long it had now been since she had been among her fellows…months, truly, and nigh a tenday even if she counted Boris who had not died so far from here.
“How familiar?” Jade bored eyes green as her necromancer’s robes at Edwina.
“Very,” Edwina gave a nod, stroking her smooth chin.
“We’ll circle wide,” Jade jerked her head right.
“I really…ought to report,” Edwina shifted; not nervous for her companions, but for these probably superiors.
“Then do it yourself,” Jade told him, “If the majority of the lunatics in this wilderness see fit to attack us on sight, which they have, I expect no less from four of your oh-so-nefarious Red Wizard brethren.”
Now in a cold sweat, Edwina whimpered, “Yes, but...they may be aware of us as it is…you’d do better not to chance being encountered without me…and I’ll look like I’m hiding something…”
“Speaking of which,” she stepped up to the conjuress and stared her down, “If there are any details of your own agenda, which you just happened to forget to explain to me…I suggest you exercise your memory now.” She put her arm over Edwina’s shoulder, and waltzed her off from the others.
“I told you already!” Edwina quivered, “I don’t even know, I just need to find out what the witch is after!”
“And then find it yourself? Take it yourself?”
“If it’s in Thay’s interests, yes! (More precisely, Thay’s interests in my inevitable promotions.)”
“….don’t forget your commitment to mine. One year…and as unpalatable as bro and Immy’s new pals may be, we are all in league. And in spite of everything, I love those two.”
Edwina balled her fists and lifted her nose at the fighter. “I will find ways! Their involvement may even prove advantageous, if the goodly have one weakness it is their naïve loose tongues. Oerhaps we can pry that bard of theirs at some point…or your chattermouthed childhood girlfriend…”
“Perhaps…” Jade smiled. “It is your charge, not mine…but I have grown curious.” She narrowed her eyes at the Thayvian. “And perhaps if you refrain for slighting Imoen again, I won’t pommel you silly.”
Edwina relaxed despite this last, and threw back her hair to air her sweating skin. “Perhaps my own superiors might even…offer eventual opportunities to my new allies? There isn’t much money in revenge...”
“He killed my father!” Jade hissed, and whipped her finger through the air like a rapier. “He should prepare to die!”
“Eventually, you myopic monkey!”
“Your Reds would as soon slit one’s throat as reward them,” Jade sneered, and stepped lightly on Edwina’s boot, gradually shifting her weight to it. “And they sicken me. How many slave girls did you take in your days, Edwin? Oh wait…” she snickered. “How many your esteemed father? Your Tharchion uncle? I’d sooner join the mob of Monty and X.”
She paused a second, then scoffed and released her foot. She pointed her finger at Edwina, then north, as they returned to the party. Edwina helmed as they marched on, fiddling underneath her robes at the waist and not even breaking stride as she suddenly sprouted a beard, shoulders broadening, chest flattening, and hips narrowing, magical adventurer’s robes shifting contiguously to conform to the changing shape. They broke through the trees, and found a ruin; it was crumbling, but quite pretty. A single rectangular raised plaza of marble, with two lines of broken-off columns aside where the steps led up; vines and flowers had claimed the place and it now looked arboreal; almost like the elven places Kivan had told her of, Jade thought, though it did not actually seem like elven architecture should be.
Far more salient than the environmental details of the clearing, however, were the four boldly red-robed humans standing within the columns, inward facing in a circle where all gesticulated and chanted. Jade recalled Edwin speaking of circle casting as prominent among the Red Wizards, she assumed this was it but wondered what it was for. She also remembered Edwin saying only more experienced and powerful Red Wizards circle-cast…and so their doing so now, made her uneasy. They were two men and two women; although between the loose robes and bald heads it was a chore to discern. All at once tapered off their group casting, looking much put out at this, and squared to face down the party imperiously from their raised stonework. Flourisher her red robes, Edwin strode to the foot of the steps, and curtsied, but halfway through froze and reddened to the shade of his robes, and bowed instead.
The fronting of the four wizards, whom Edwin knew as the Invoker, Denak, stroked the inverted triangle tattoo upon his chin, and rose what would have been his eyebrow. “Good day travelers. Mmmmm…Edwin. I did not expect to see you so soon. I hope your…business has been attended to Edwin, for if it hasn’t, then you should do so soon.” The dark coals of his eyes rolled upward, marching across each of the young conjurer’s companions like a magistrate his line-up of criminal suspects. “I think that Zulkir Nevron would be most disappointed if he were to hear that you failed. That is all that really needs to be said. Good way again, and goodbye.”
Behind the invoker, Brendan, a Transmuter, rather tall and burly for a wizard, sniggered, and the two androgynous wizardesses, Diana the Necromantrix and Lasala the Enchantress, were quiet. Edwin bowed again, but as he stepped back Xzar bounced around his companions, raising a bouquet of the plentiful wildflowers and his free had waved happily at the Red Wizards. His free fingers twisted across the flowers, and each petal became a bold red.
Brendan shot clustered magic missiles into the chest of the blonde necromancer, and he went off his feet and prone.
Edwin’s eyes widened as the ref flowers flew up in the air, scattering and lilting their way down again. “Oh…no…” he nearly passed out; rammed with the inevitable.
Two arrows flew over his head, and all four of his superiors spellcast. Lasala bent forward, a feathered shaft in his chest, but translucent spirit armor formed around Diana and reflected the other arrow. Denak and Brendan each spawned four mirror images, one of the transmuter’s vanishing a moment later from a bolt.
While Montaron’s fast crossbow drew itself back by some minor magic and he reloaded his next bolt, Jade and Kivan released their next arrows. Shar-Teel, eager either to spill blood or prove herself or both, ran between Xzar and Edwin and up the steps, Kagain on her heels. Branwen cast a hold spell upon all four enemy arcanists, but only the already-wounded Lasala halted. Diana unleashed horror into the ranks of the adventurers, Brendan a slow spell as he lost two more mirror images, and Denak a ghastly green stinking cloud, odiously worse, Shar-Teel decided as she collapsed at his feet, than Xzar’s had been.
Kagain, forcing an exhale from his barrel chest, made wide hacked at Denak, pragmatically trying to put the lie to as many of the mirror images as he could. Dance as they would, the second caught in his chop was the true invoker, but the axe cut strangely shallow into the wizardly robes. Denak danced back and behind a marble column to commence his third spell.
The rest of his allies were caught in all three spells; Montaron yelped and fled, albeit sluggishly; Kivan bolted sideways, lucid but struggling to escape the cloud of fumes and finding himself also slowed in both footwork and next draw; Branwen scattered right though she dropped within three steps. Jade charged in anger, throwing down her bow, but as she reached for her scimitar dragging her arm as if underwater, she too was nauseated, and a swirling blackness crawled from the corners of her vision. She fell forward, barely putting an arm between her face and the first stone step before blacking out. Edwin panicked, and raced to the corner of the raised plaza, kneeling and clutching it, whimpering and letting free tortured cries.
Imitated by only a single image after Montaron’s last shot, Brendan cast in his own panic as Kagain hacked at his now-nearest foe. The transmuter finished as he found himself deserted by his last illusory clone. On his backswing, Kagain had the strangest thought, that he was not truly a dwarf but a squirrel, but dwarf he remained, and though feinting back Brendan lost his right arm above the elbow to Kagain’s axe, and blood hosed the next pillar. The dwarf tore out his throat with the spike of the axe on his backswing, then charged Denak.
The invoker’s hands curled as he released a lightning bolt at the dwarf. While the nauseated Kivan’s final arrow flew past Diana’s shoulder, she hurled a skull trap that exploded behind Kagain. Bone fragments rained in force upon the back of the prostrate Shar-Teel as well as that of the dwarf, the lightning bolt coursed through his chest, and he halted, body and armor rattling, fingers spasming off and on the handle of his axe. The invoker and necromantrix shared a victorious glance, but Diana shrieked as a moment later, Kagain recovered and closed with her, and his overhead swing split open her gaunt face and batting her body over the back of the plaza. He turned to the four manifestations of Denak, each casting, and the real one released a second lightning bolt through his head.
Random memories of his life below the ground and above collaged in Kagain’s thoughts, all discolored and distorted, but blind for the moment he forced his legs forward and swung through space with his axe. Denak feinted around his column and the blade chipped the stone, but the invoker was sweating; the damn dwarf simply would not go down. Fortunately, he had lined Kagain before the opposite column in his cast, and now the bolt ricocheted back, striking the dwarf, coursing through his axe to the near column, and jumping right back through him a third time. Kagain’s body went perfectly still, yet still upright, flesh peeling and cooking in seconds as a roast over an hour, beard caught fire, golden wings of his helm melting, and twice more the bolt danced back and forth through the dwarf, and he dropped. With a thin smile Denak turned to face down the stairs. The halfling had fled for the hills, all the other westerners were collapsed in his nauseous cloud, and Edwin was cowering at the base of the plaza. Denak commenced a fireball, one empowered by metamagic, when tested upon his slaves inevitably not burning the flesh, but melting it to waxy liquid. He would annihilate within it the three women, the green wizard, and the elf, and deal with Edwin…individually.
The cowering conjurer stood up straight, and shot three magic missiles. They erupted upon his superior’s upper arm and chest. Denak howled, disrupted, and squinted his coal eyes, throwing out a ringed hand. A blast of ruby energy left its gem, and sent Edwin off his feet, crying with a steaming blackened circle between his eyes. Denak growled and flourished his robes, taking possession of more sulfur and guano and began a second fireball, prepared inside his brain just like the last.
Edwin’s outburst brought Jade too, and keeping her lower face pressed into her left arm as she had fallen, she rose, drawing her scimitar in her right, and leapt up the first step, pushing against the slow spell. Denak and illusory triplets were deep in his cast, seeming so fast, drops of blood trickling down her gashed forehead and over her eyes and the bridge of her nose, running over her upper lip and filling her senses with the hot iron smell. All went tinted like the invoker’s robes, the ghost of Mulahey danced among the images, and the mad tea party song of the two Zhents rang in her ears. She screamed and nearly tripped over herself when her legs freed from their slow, and the chanting of somatics of Denak fall from their fevered pace. Up two steps she leapt, and still the motions and mumbling of the Red Wizard decelerated, his fingers lazy, voice largo, and the nuances of all about were not right; the flowers growing up the flanking columns fluttered to slowly in the breeze, she made out the individual wing flaps of a nectar-drinking hummingbird, ludicrously oblivious to and fearless of the humanoid violence.
She leapt up the last four steps and over Shar-Teel’s body at once and landed a stride beyond, planting her right heel amidst the four visages of Denak. A spark ignited between his dancing hands, and with a high-pitched scream of “Kiya!” she pivoted over her leg with her own momentum, left leg flying up straight with her waist, right scimitar swooping back across the right side of her body like the hummingbird’s wing, each finding two of the red-robed foes in their hemispherical arcs. Her boot toe crunched into the solid ribs of Denak, and he stumbled back, hands flying up as igniting fire consumed his own body, and he screamed as the flesh melted from his bones. His agony ended half a circle later of Jade later, the edge of Icingdeath snuffing flame as it flew from shoulder to shoulder and his head flew, a flaming skull when it hit the plaza and rolled.
The body fell back, and with a scream Jade stumbled forward, burying her scimitar in the chest of the held Lasala. Jade sank to her knees devouring a deep breath as the world returned to normal and the hummingbird flitted away. Her vision focused on the smoking body of Kagain, and her round high cheeks scrunched her eyes and she cried.
The dwarf, though, not even conscious to know it was regenerating slow and sure, body working like a relentless dwarven mine working through meaningless day and night, barely still able to reconstruct the burns of organs within and flesh without. While the air before the ruin cleared, Shar-Teel’s first conscious act was to grimace at the bone splinters and demand the attention of Branwen, who knelt over and healed Xzar. Thinking her well enough, Kivan ran past up the stairs and rested his hands on the shoulders of the sobbing Jade. A blushing Montaron strolled out of the forest, but Edwin looked over the surface of the plaza and leaned weakly against it, clutching the edge and staring at the mangled bodies of his superiors. He turned away and slumped down to a kneel, back to the stone, and he fumbled in hapless frustration at his belt. “I can never go back…” he whimpered, and then he rammed his elbows back into the stone and screamed through the forest, “I can never go back!”
