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19. Palace of the Apes


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#1 Guest_Oryx_*

Posted 30 January 2003 - 06:57 AM

19. Palace of the Apes

14 FLAMERULE 0500
THE UNDERSEA PALACE

“Meow! Meowwwwww!!!!”

Jaheira stopping in her tracks (after running for five solid hours), and close behind her halted Valygar Corthala, Minsc (nearly tripping over the stalker as he skidded to a stop), Dawn Raybringer, her little sister Bucki, her other “little sister” Buffy, and the elf Arra Flyte.

Jaheira had spotted a puffy white cat ahead, and kneeled down, half-closing her ears, and reaching out to it. “Heeeere kitty kitty…..” she cooed hypnotically.

“No no Boo!” Minsc cried, hiding the hamster sitting on his shoulder with an enormous hand. “Jaheira does not mean you, Boo! And best you not go visit her right now, when a cat is headed her way!! When you are a hamster, cats are eeeeeevil!!!”

The feline immediately meowed and bounded into the druid’s arms, purring happily. Jaheira placed an index finger lightly on its forehead, and closed her own eyes. “Mr. Bigglesworth…” she muttered in a trance, “You…you came from Jarek and Onyx! Let’s go back there, Mr. Bigglesworth, c’mon kitty, let’s go back….”

She set down the cat, which turned to meow to Jaheira and cock its head, as if beckoning to follow, and follow she did, with her six companions in tow.

**********

Onyx popped his eyes open and the swords he held fell to the ground with each a single heavy clang, that seemed to echo across the chamber, through the rest of marble-and-crystal undersea palace, and even the very ocean outside.

“Are you quite alright, my good man?” Jarek Bond arched an eyebrow at him.

The cavalier looked down at the swords on the marble floor. Ancient longswords, cumbersome and ill-balanced, never meant to be held by a humanoid. “The Burning Earth…The Searing Sky…so heavy,” he sighed.

“Antique charm, eh?” the swashbuckler smirked.

“The Burning Earth was not so unwieldy for me when I felt it before, but now…I suppose it’s the pommel gem…”

“Mayhaps it’s a two-hander for apes like us?” Jarek inquired.

“No…the weight is the same no matter how it is wielded. And yet, to hold it without wielding it,” the fireproof paladin demonstrated by carefully picking up the Burning Earth by the blade, “It is just another load.”

“To hear a frost giant of a man say such things,” Jarek responded with uncharacteristic gravity, “It must be burdensome indeed. Perhaps only our extinct friend,” he motioned to the decapitated body of the slain Tyranodon, “Was meant to wield it.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Onyx nodded, but opened his bag of holding and slipped them within.

Jarek was about say something, but a sound came from across the crystal-walled chamber and both men turned their heads. The lifeless body of Cyran sprang suddenly up from its puddle of blood at the edge of the chamber, and grabbed two daggers sheathed on his person. He looked up at Jarek with one eye, the other one lost in the massive bloody slash that now ran down the left side of his face. “KAAAIIIII!!!!!!!!!” he shouted and flung them straight at swashbuckler.

Jarek’s bracers flashed bright white, and with blurring speed, he calmly sheathed his own katanas and let his left hand drop forward to grab the shortbow on his belt while the right hand stayed a moment longer over his shoulder to pluck an arrow from the quiver across his back. The kensai continued screaming as his knives flew through the air, his back against the transparent crystal wall of the chamber that looked out to the vast ocean. Jarek strung the arrow to his bow and lifted the feathered shaft to his cheek. The swashbuckler looked along the smooth shaft and the bright-orange-colored tip, using it like a sight and lining up Cyran’s heart.

Without a sound, Jarek’s thumb and forefinger drifted apart, and the arrow was let go. The bowstring snapped forward with hundreds of pounds of force, pushing the arrow straight down its master’s line of sight. It sailed through the cold air, between the flying knives. The hastened thief turned sideways, and one dagger whizzed right over his chest while the other skirted around his back, and he twisted forward again to watch as the arrow sailed easily through the kensai’s black fighting suit. But just as it touched his skin and was slowed ever so slightly, the bright orange tip of the arrow exploded. An enormous fireball occluded the kensai from view, and blew him back with tons of forces.

But his back was right against the hard brittle crystal of the window wall, and within a second white cracks radiated out in all directions across the clear crystal, and it shattered, and the force of the explosion pushed the man’s body through the widening hole it had created and into the ocean outside. Jarek watched in amazement as the heavy water of the ocean where the kensai now floated lifelessly began to pour in, pulling at the cracked edges of the hole, breaking them further and enlarging itself.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, paladin!” the swashbuckler shouted, and as he spun on his heels, he saw that Onyx was already wasting no time in bolting alongside him for the chamber’s exit. “Follow me!” he yelled, and led the cavalier down the halls, which had become regrettably familiar to him during his stay here. As saltwater, and sea creatures within it, poured into the large chamber and then began rushing down the halls behind them, the cavalier and the swashbuckler ran down one hallway after another, over marble floors and past crystal windows, taking sharp turns and occasionally going up staircases; ascending to one level just as the one behind them became flooded.

“What the bloody hell!?!?” Jarek demanded as he and Onyx ran up to the end of a wide hallway, which dead-ended in a smooth diagonal ramp, “This is the only staircase leading up from level!”

“Was,” the cavalier corrected, “It transformed into a slippery chute when we set foot upon it.”

The swashbuckler looked back down the long hallway behind them, the sounds of rushing water echoing. Without a word, he grabbed a potion of speed at his belt, guzzled it down, and tried to sprint up the ramp, but as soon as he stepped onto it proceeded to run in place, before falling back down with a controlled roll a few moments later.

“It’s magically slippery,” the thief cursed. “Of all the bloody enchantments in the world! We’ll never climb it.”

“We could fly,” the paladin suggested, “I can summon a deva and…”

“No, the chute is too narrow,” Jarek pointed up to the open space in the ceiling where the stairless stairway ascended, “She couldn’t fly us through.”

“We could float up it with the rising waters?” the cavalier suggested, even as an inch of rushing water gathered about their feet.

“Too torrential,” the swashbuckler opined, looking down at the mighty splashes even the thin layer of water lapped about his boots. “It’d as likely drag us back down the chamber before it’d drag us to the stairwell.”

A fish swam between Onyx’s boots through the now-ankle-deep water. “The top of the ramp is even visible from here,” he sighed, pounding his hands together in thought, “So close and yet so far.”

“If those sea elves we rescued from the circus are ever going to return the favor,” Jarek mused, “Now wouldn’t be a bad time..”

“ONYX….ONYX…..” a determined, womanly voice echoed down the chute from the floor above.

“Speaking of elven friends,” the cavalier lit up and ran to the foot of the ramp. “Down here, Jaheira!” he called back up.

As he looked up, and Jarek beside him, they could see a beautiful half-elf’s face appear at the top lip of the ramp above. “Onyx!!!!” Jaheira cried. “Jarek? Jarek!! You’re…you’re both alive!”

Another female face, long purple hair whisping over it, appeared next to the druid’s. “Jarek!” she shouted down.

“Hello, darling Bucki,” the swashbuckler bowed politely, “I expected you’d find your way into our good company.”

“I thought she was the one who kidnapped you,” Onyx asked skeptically out of the corner of his mouth.

“We had some…quality time since,” Jarek smiled sleazily back at him, “Why, she practically let me escape. I thought she’d come around soon.”

“You’re both alive!” Bucki shouted gleefully, echoing Jaheira.

“Not for long, my dear,” Jarek shouted up, “If we don’t get out of here punctually.”

“Stand back, girl,” Jaheira ordered Bucki, and the assassin disappeared from the lip of the ramp. “They’re not taking you, Onyx!!” she shouted down defiantly, and began to speak in tongues.

“Who calls Chan, prince of air!”

“I do, Chan,” the druid answered as she completed her chant, looking down at the billowing air elemental that hovered halfway up the ramp, a tornado of blades whirling about him. “Give my friends a lift! And don’t cut them to pieces.”

“A light task of little gravity for mighty Chan!” the elemental laughed, and his globe of blades swirled into nothing.

“…literally,” Jarek grinned, and Onyx rolled his eyes. Chan whooshed down, and the two men found themselves caught up in mighty gusts of air. Jaheira dove out of the way as they skyrocketed through the air up the ramp, flew out the top and landed on their feet face-to-face with a smiling elf woman and a huge bald-headed man.

“Let the winds of heroism blow!” the purple-tattooed berserker declared and nearly crushed Onyx in a bear hug.

“Mmmpppf…..always, Minsc,” the cavalier gasped back.

“Ah, darling Arra, so good to be graced by your presence once more,” Jarek smiled sleazily and tried to kiss the hand that the elf promptly withdrew.

“You may be alive, 007, but your charms can go to hell,” the Harper scowled and spun away.

No sooner had Minsc let his paladin pal go, than the knight found himself in the more reasonable (and enjoyable) embrace of the half-elf who had rescued him.

“Onyx…you’re alive!” she pulled off his helmet, and leaned her forehead against his as she pressed their bodies together. Their eyes, inches apart, met, and the cavalier noticed a harsh edge to her gaze. “Don’t…you…ever…do…that…again!” she snarled at him, and he arched his eyebrows and twisted his mouth in an apologetic facial gesture, and her gaze softened and tears continued to well in the corners of her eyes. He began to part his lips to speak, and hers did the same, and for a moment that seemed eternal there they hung, arms squeezing and lips moistening.

“Look, water! Boo and Bebe hate water! When you have fur, water is eeeeeeeevil!!!”

The paladin and the druid snapped apart, and looked down the chute to see water splashing against the ramp and beginning to spray up into their chamber. Sheepishly brushing back loose stands of sun-blonded hair, Jaheira looked up at the massive ranger, who peered back with a look that seemed slightly less innocent and oblivious than his typical empty gaze.

The ranger grasped the druid in a great bear hug now, and laughed, “Minsc is happy to see his paly pal again, and his witch will be too! Isn’t that right, Boo?”

“I don’t know about you good people,” Jarek spoke up, “but I for one didn’t bring my swimwear, and suggest the upper exit. Shall we?” Taking Bucki’s hand, he turned to run, followed by Onyx and Jaheira, with Minsc quite close behind them, followed by fellow ranger Valygar Corthala, Lathanderian crusaders Dawn Raybringer and Buffy the Undead Hunter, and elven Harper Arra Flyte. The swashbuckler led the nine-strong party down hallways and up stairs as passageways continued to flood behind them. Looking through the crystal windows down through the empty ocean at the flung-out halls and wings of the undersea palace below, the party members could see them not only flooding, but beginning to fall apart as cracks radiated down passageways and across chambers, the force of the incoming water tearing ever larger holes for itself. The large room where the chaos had begun was now utterly destroyed, and outwards from it the entire palace was getting ripped to pieces by the unfathomable force of the ocean in which it had lain calmly for millennia.

At last the party came to the top floor of the palace and the last, long, lonely hallway that shot out from the underwater land and connected the undersea palace to it. The nine sped down this hallway as it was torn to fragments of crystal and marble right behind them and the water roared at their heels; and at last they passed into the underground tunnel beneath the coastline, and jogged up the steadily-steepening stairway which they had come down only hours before, the water level rising behind them; and at last, the stairway began to curl around itself and lead straight upwards in a spiral staircase, to the gnoll stronghold aboveground. But the water was rising in the dark passageway quickly, and as the party spiraled up around themselves, it reached them, and one by one they were swept off their feet on the spiraling stairwell, and began treading on the rising surface of the water as it shot up the cylindrical shaft of the stairwell, up and up, until at last a disc of sunlight was visible above them. It grew larger and larger as they looked up from their quickly rising bath, and at last it was upon them.

The dawn was quiet that morning upon the rubble-strewn gnoll stronghold, its denizens dead or fled. The stairwell pit that had been opened the evening before was open still, and at last the tranquil morning scene was disturbed by loud noises of rushing water echoing up from it, and the few birds or beasts nearby quickly ran and flew away at this uncanny disturbance. And then, a geyser shot out of the hole, spraying oceanwater all over the deck of the stronghold, not to mention nine soaked and flailing adventurers who were popped out of the hole along with the advent of the water, and each went sprawling in a different direction upon the deck.

Laying on his back with saltwater and seaweed falling around him from the new geyser, Onyx sprang to his feet, pulled off his gauntlets, and emptied some water and a few small fish out of them. He looked around at his companions. “Is everyone alright!?” he shouted.

“Minsc and Boo and Bebe have bounced to safety once again!” boomed a deep but childlike voice.

“Other than soaked dreadlocks, I’m fine,” came the impassive voice of a slightly peeved stalker.

“Avalanches, genocide, extinction…have we not affronted nature enough in the past twenty-four hours, now we must reroute her oceans as well?” asked the voice of an irate half-elf.

“Well, you might say we just finally washed ourselves of this mission,” quipped a debonair rogue’s brogue.

“Like, this is sooooo far out! Awesome…..omigod! I broke a nail! I BROKE A NAIL! AAHHH!!!!” came the screams of a teenage paladin.

“Don’t worry dear, you and I are headed to the Morninglord Spa, the best salon in Amn, pronto!” sang a sunny laugh.

“Good, I can get this black and purple dye out of my hair,” sighed a similar but slightly younger voice.

“Well, yet another mission completed, a few more bad guys slain, more friends and another man in and out of my life…now I guess I have to report back for my next assignment….oh joy, the life of a Harper,” came the very sarcastic under-the-breath utterances of an elf.

All the party members came to their feet, stepped away from the fountain, which was now spewing random fish and seaweed as well as ocean water, and gathered around each other at the opposite end of the stronghold, shaking the saltwater out of their hair and armor.

“Mission accomplished, 006,” Jarek Bond winked at Arra Flyte.

“Congratulations, 007,” she couldn’t help smiled back.

**********

14 FLAMERULE 1800
NASHKEL

“So Lords K. Otic and E. Vil had me on this platform that’s lowering itself – really slowly, I might add – into a pool of weresharks, I’m completely tied down, and they seal the door of the chamber and then activate the self-destruct sequence.”

Outside it was darkening and rainy, but Jarek Bond was regaling his eight companions around a dinner table at the Belching Dragon Tavern with one of his many tales of diabolical plots, international intrigue, exotic or erotic experiences, and narrow escapes. After leaving the newly geyser-sporting gnoll stronghold, the party had made its way back to the foot of the rocky spurs of Stronghold Mountain, found safe and sound their seven horses, which Jaheira had the day before beckoned to stay put with an animal empathy more effective than any rock- or tree- bound leash, and with Jarek and Bucki sharing the horse lent by Dawn, who rode instead with Buffy, they rode down the foothills of the Cloudpeaks through the plains and scattered forests to Nashkel, where they now supped.

“Weresharks!?” exclaimed the Rashemani ranger who was listening enrapt to this story of evil-stomping. “How did you escape?”

The swashbuckler smiled. “Why, by cutting through my bonds with the retractable blade in my chrono-bracelet, getting to the door from the platform by assembling the grappling-crossbow components hidden in my boots, just before it sank into the wereshark-tank, opening the sealed door with the explosive jelly I use for hair-gel on missions, and dashing out of K. Otic and E.Vil’s underground island lair moments before it exploded and collapsed, and then spending the next two days floating back to the mainland in a small raft containing just me, K. Otic’s stash of champagne, and E. Vil’s henchwoman, the Talosian priestess Clouden Electra, of course.”

“Ohhhhh,” Minsc nodded intently and scratched his bald head, “We should have seen that one coming, Boo!”

Jarek chuckled smugly and continued, “This adventure of ours, my friends, will make no less a fascinating tale…”

“…which you can use to pick up spy babes on your next mission,” came the sarcastic, bitter voice of Arra Flyte from the end of the table.

“What is it about bitter elvish Harper women?” the rogue grinned devilishly, easily drawing an infernal scowl from the druid across the table. “Eh, my good man?” he winked pointedly at the cavalier next to her.

“So tell me, thief , what next for you?” Onyx pointedly changed the subject with a calm scowl, reaching under the table to gently restrain Jaheira’s hand before she lifted it to lunge over the table and throttle the male Harper.

“Oh,” Jarek mused as he reached under the table himself with the hand nearer Bucki Raybringer beside him, “I think I’ll stay the night here…” he added as he caught the purple-haired girl’s eye, “And report back to the Harpers in good time.”

“That was about our plan,” Dawn spoke, and her younger sister next to her smiled. “We’ll depart for Lathander’s house in Athkatla just after dawn.”

“Cool!” Buffy chirped on the priestess’s other side. “Just gimme time after prayers to do my hair, k?” She blew a bubble with the weird gummy stuff in her mouth, and Boo, nibbling a piece of cheese and sitting with Bebe on the shoulder of the large ranger next to the undead hunter, squeaked excitedly when it popped.

“I’ll leave tonight,” Arra said flatly. “The dark’s no problem for me,” she muttered as she looked away with stereotypically elven aloofness.

“But you’ve not slept!” Dawn protested.

“Technically, we elves don’t,” Arra wrote it off without meeting the cleric’s concerned gaze.

“Actually,” Onyx spoke up as if he’d just remembered something, and smiled charismatically at his companions, “I too, as wonderful as your company is, was planning on leaving after dinner myself.” The druid beside him looked at the ceiling, scowling; but the cavalier turned his attention to his ranger buddies.

“Ah yes!” Minsc lit up as he handed Boo and Bebe another slice of cheese. “Evil’s butt is very sore - for now – and Minsc and Boo and Bebe and Onyx will surely see there fellow heroes in Athkatla very soon, but for now Minsc must return with Onyx to Candlekeep, to protect his witch!”

Valygar thoughtfully nodded and spoke, “Yes, my strong friends, we should reunite with…the mages.” He exchanged nods with Onyx, and both glanced at Jaheira, who had a face of stone.

Jaheira sarcastically replied, “Valygar Corthala, eager to see mages? Well that’s a new one. What gives?” and gave an expectant look.

The normally stoic stalker grew fidgety and shifty-eyed, but it passed when Onyx answered for him, “Val’s right, J. We need to get back – to the rest of our party.”

The druid looked back at him, her lips pulled tight into a little frown. Then, without a word, she sprang up from her nearly-untouched dinner, and marched through the crowded room out the front doors of the Belching Tavern into the rain.

“Jaheira, wait!” Onyx shouted, then hopped up and ran after her, charging around the many other patrons gathered in the tavern on this rainy night, past an extremely buxom and immodestly clag waitress without a second glance.

“Go get her, stud!” the serving girl laughed.

“Well hey,” Jarek called out to the young lady, smirking with a lascivious gaze that was not lost on Bucki, “It’s her party, she’ll cry if she wants to…”

Buffy, seemingly oblivious to the tension, started drumming the table and singing, “Cry if I want to, cry if I want to….,

Overcast dusk was upon the world outside, and the rain was heavy and blew hard from the west, right into Onyx’s eyes as he charged out the front door of the Belching Dragon. It’ll be raining in Candlekeep most likely, it’s a big mid-Flamerule storm, he thought almost reflexively.

“Jaheira!” he called, shielding his eyes and peering through the deathly weak dusk light. He saw her ahead, trudging through the mud down the hamlet’s main thoroughfare, and sprinted up to her.

“It’s your party now,” she called back without slowing down or turning around.

“Jaheira, wait! P-please!” he called again. Tempus’s teeth! he thought, I’ve never stuttered before in my life! I sound like Khalid!

“A valiant and kind warrior stolen away by a pathetic, crippled, and selfish elf-mage? Yeah, I’d say you do,” Jaheira spat bitterly as she turned to face him.

Don’t speak of Aerie like that! Onyx snarled on the inside, and he let his face fall into a hurt sneer as he realized all his charisma, as genuine as his motives might be, would be for naught here.

“Don’t worry,” Jaheira shrugged sarcastically, “You already chose her over me, that’s what you’re supposed to say back. That’s your duty, right? That’s your chivalry, yes? That’s your devotion, is it not?”

“Stop it, Jaheira,” Onyx declared firmly, “You speak to me like an enemy. I’m your friend, Jaheira. I thought we were supposed to be soulmates.” Jaheira’s look turned sad and inwardly bitter, and tears began to flow freely over her rain-streaked face. “You will always be my companion. I love you, Jaheira, in every way it is possible for me to; as much as Imoen; and in some ways, closer than her, or Aerie.”

“But not in that way. It’s just because you’re growing up, Onyx, and I am a woman. Aerie, like Imoen, is still a girl. You are like two of yourself, the man and the boy, both taken from different times and caught together in this time. Would the boy I saw who’d come from Candlekeep that same day, have taken my heart, or I his, even without a Khalid? I think not. Would the man who is now going to go there this night, if this all started now, have taken my heart, and I his, even with an Aerie? I think so. But it all happened in between, the day we began in a mad elf’s lab and ended in a mad gnome’s circus. And the man and the boy were ever at war, in all things. I’ve seen them war the fourteen wonderful and terrible months I’ve known you; and I’ve seen you grow up, and now you’re finally understanding the world, as you’ve been proving even more within this last, long day. The man is winning in your head, Onyx, but the boy already won in your heart.”

The youth nodded and the half-elf continued. “And I’m sorry, dear Onyx, but I can’t stand it anymore. I just can’t. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not really fair to me either. At first, I never really believed you’d go for the whinepigeon, with or without me, who still absorbed with my own concerns. I’m sure I’d have seen the signs on your face, I’m good at these things, but I was so absurd; and I was in denial about it, as I was about my husband, and myself and my feelings. Then, when it happened, I wrote it off as a fling, an unrestrained urge; and nursed the memory of Khalid and ignored it. Then it subsided with you and her, as I thought it would, and I was willing to let him go. But when the flames leapt again, finally I admitted it, and I saw the love that it was. But then she was taken away, and guilt racked away any thought of opportunity, and soon enough she was back again.

“And then I hated her, and I felt hate for you. Scorn, for your boyish passions and simplistic views, and all throughout the war, the anger kept it all away. I thought I was over it, and a good thing, because we needed out focus for the battles we fought then. I was sure I was over it. But now, Onyx…you can tell that, on this adventure, I lost that. If you’d kept giving me the cold shoulder and the rhetorical one-liners, I could have too, but now you’ve become wiser, and so nice and kind and compassionate, and I can’t hate you anymore, I can barely stay angry, and I’ve been forced to quit denying that I still love you. And I can’t stop seeing that you love her. I promised not to spy on your thoughts, but in only the few hours since, the power has grown, and now I can’t stop. I’m sorry! I can’t look at you, or even be around you, without feeling, seeing, your love for her, and so I can see there isn’t a shadow of a hope for us. It hurts too much, and so I have to go, away from you, and from the friends that I hardly get along with anyway. You’ve grown up; and are no longer my charge, and will not be my lover, and I cannot be just your friend. Do not follow me now, do not have the rangers track me later, this is where our road ends. This is goodbye, Onyx of Candlekeep.”

The cavalier felt a blow upon his chest more powerful than any he knew. Several images of past battles flashes through his mind, and it was as if all at once he were slashed by the sword of Sarevok, burned by the breath of Firkraag, blasted by the magic of Irenicus, lashed by the tentacle of Demogorgon, skewered by the harpoon of Amelyssan, impaled by the holier-than-thou avenger of the Jester, and then devoured in the maw of Tyranodon.

He fell to his knees, clutching his hands over his heart, and looked up at Jaheira, tears streaming freely.

“I’m sorry,” she said, with a face as red and sad as his, and with a look of pain and sorrow, turned away.

“Will I ever see you again?” he asked as he cried.

“If you do,” she turned back and looked over her shoulder at him for one last glance of both regret and foreboding, “You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

As she took her first step, she seemed to crouch to the ground, and began to shapeshift, her beautiful but muscular frame becoming thinner and shorter, her hair and clothes and gear becoming like fur, and then she was a wolf, and dashed away and was gone.

The cavalier knelt and wept until at last he felt a hand, warm and gentle and light, upon his shoulder, and looked up to see before him the angelic figure of Dawn Raybringer. She was bright, even in the falling darkness, almost mystical, as if haloed in sunrays.

“I failed,” he squinted through his tears up at her, and he found that the rain ceased to fall upon his face, even though it still fell around him, and saw also that it did not seem to be pelting the priestess. “You told me this might happen, and what do to, and still I failed.”

“No, dear Onyx,” she spoke down to him with mercy and kindness, “You did not. I said what would happen if you did not reach out to her, but not if you did. You did the best that you could, and nothing that you should have done could have prevented it. You have walked a fine line between faithfulness to your true love, and compassion to your closest companion, and walked it well. Look forward, not back, for being true is not enough, now your true love needs….well, the love, and attention and compassion, as does your sister. As much as I regret to part company with you so soon, dear Onyx, when you leave tonight with your rangers for the north and I leave in the morning with my sisters for the south, I feel optimistic that I shall see you again soon, in the house of the Morninglord. And,” she gently lifted his chin up with one curled index finger, and catching his gaze, winked down at him playfully, “I should not be your only reason for returning to our Lord’s Athkatlan home in due time.”

She wordlessly coaxed him to follow her gaze up to the dark, pouring sky. “This storm has fallen upon the entire Sword Coast, and will not pass idly or soon. Go to Candlekeep; in your absence your lover has seen sorrow and strife, as has your sister. They are strong and overcome them, but shadows fall across even their good and innocent faces, and no less does their friend long for your and the rangers’ return. And you have yet to confront the spectres I foresaw.”

**********

14 FLAMERULE 1700
CANDLEKEEP

“Ewww!! This rain is just terrible for my hair!” whined a slight, almost feminine, man with long blonde hair spilling over shiny armor that bore the looking-glass of Sune.

“Why we out here now anyway? It far too dark to see nothing!” bellowed a huge man with greasy black hair, impatiently thumping his armor, which bore the scales of Tyr.

“I told you, you dolt! To explain your positions!” griped a medium-height man with curly black hair and a goatee, folding his arms condescendingly over a breastplate that bore the gauntlet of Helm.

Another man fitting exactly this description sighed, “You want yourself and Adonis to hide on the walls with crossbows? Isn’t that a bit….assassinish?”

“Y’know,” Adonis, the blonde-haired knight, said as he waved a wrist, ‘I heard last night some actual Shadow Thieves did that to peg that de’Arnise girl.”

“Silence, insubordinate fools!” cried the first Helmite. Turning to the other, he hissed, “You have my orders, Anomen! You and Judas meet him in the courtyard, Adonis and I will be on the ramparts! It’s simple!”

“If you’re ranking officer…” Anomen mused, “Shouldn’t you meet him, Puritus?”

The fellow Helmite grew shifty-eyed, “Well, uh….Adonis and I are the b-best with the bows and..well, you know him personally, and Judas is more of a melee type and all, and uh…”

“How you even know where he come?” Judas scratched his head, befuddled. “What about the rangers or others with him? What if he meets up with the mage girls first?”

“Simple,” Puritus grinned, and licked his lips. “We just keep our watch for him, as usual. Now, when they see him approaching, Anomen, you tell Jondalar that what’s-her-name is in the library and wanted our mark to know when he arrives. If I know our man, he’ll want to see her first - alone, and he’ll send his woodland pals to play with the horses or something. Once he’s alone, you and Anomen here call him over, to this spot here, and then say what I told you, and Adonis and I will be up above in case things get…hairy. It’s brilliant! I’m brilliant! Dad will be so proud!”




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