In the corner of the sunstone-lit chamber, Aerie is heaving.
Everyone else is asleep; and so should be Aerie. In her place, Kriemhild should be guarding the sleeping party together with him; but—
“—I told Minsc to wake up Kriemhild and have her change with me,” Aerie explained into his surprised face once he affirmed that no, he did not need her help in healing the bleeding. “T-they needed some time together alone,” she added cheerfully. “Don’t you think that it’s sweet that they have found each other?” she asked in the end, and he carefully feigned lack of surprise. The last time he checked, matters definitely had not yet gotten half that far.
“She is my wife, elf,” he pointed out cautiously, looking at the sleeping half-orc figure. His wife; she deserved better—
“W-well, you should better do something before you lose her!” Aerie giggled, interrupting his reverie; after the dream, at third hour in the morning, the high sound pierced his ears like a gibberling’s mating call— Then, the absurdity of the first news of day hit him in full, and he almost burst out with laughter himself; apparently, he was being cheated upon.
The husband always learns the last, they say.
-----
Now, Aerie is being sick in the corner of the ancient worship chamber; once done, she wipes her mouth with a small, determined hand. He hands her a water flask when, slow, careful, pregnant-like, she has sat down beside him; behind the demarcation line of the overturned statue, the darkness their enemy twists and coils, and watches the party as closely as he watches it. He smiles, vaguely entertained: a question: what does a monster see when it looks into the abyss? An answer: the abyss is infinite. Two negatives do not a positive make; the shadow of a shadow is still darkness; ergo, Altair was wrong. It is not the halfling he fears, if he fears a thing.
By him, Aerie looks around, shudders, and sighs, “Being underground is just… not for the avariel.”
They are not underground, but the windows and skylights are all curtained with shadow— “This is merely the influence of the negative energy, elf,” he replies, stirring the small fire as Aerie adjusts her warm wood-brown cloak on her shoulders. “It will pass once we leave the temple. And I,” he adds, thoughtfully, “will kill my bird.”
Aerie knits her brow. “Why?”
A sleepy eagle raises her head. Why?
“For a metaphor,” he replies, with feeling, looking straight at the drowsy beak; beside him, Aerie, unfortunately, giggles, ear-piercingly, again. “You can’t kill Altair! She’s your familiar.”
She points this out as if she were rehearsing talking to her child, he smirks within; yet the point catches his attention. “Imoen told you?”
Aerie blinks. “Y-yes, she did… When she didn’t know we two would meet,” she tries to defend his sister; he finds this quite amusing as he decides, “My sibling would do well to control better the flow of information around her.”
The sibling in question is now, like all others, sound asleep; Nalia and she would take the last watch together— “Well,” he looks back at the elf. “Since we did not have a chance to finish our previous conversation, you never told me how you started working in the circus, avariel.”
Aerie looks at him for a fairly long moment; at length, she blushes. “I— I-I—” She blinks, and decides, surprised, “It’s not important. I-I have scars, but…” She blinks again; he lets her experience her private epiphany, whatever that be, exactly, in peace. The impossible alternative would be, perhaps, to admit— “Imoen didn’t tell me how y-you two have met?” he hears, at last, a desperate plea to change the subject matter; and smiles. “It, too, has scarred, perhaps.”
Aerie cocks her head. “Perhaps? Y-you do not know?”
“We do not know each other well enough, elf,” he reminds her coolly, avoiding the issue.
The pretty creature smiles at him, sincerely. “Y-yes, I know. You refuse to be the…” A deep breath. “The butt of self-con—” A small unhappiness around the mouth; then, another deep breath, this time with closed eyes; then, the large eyes open. “—self-congratulatory compassionate Ilmatari condescendence,” Aerie recites briskly, like an actress; and, fairly impressed, he toasts her—only with water, unfortunately. “Precisely.”
She almost starts to laugh again; then, reconsiders, and says, in full seriousness, “E-everyone needs help sometimes, Sarevok.”
“Even a god?”
Aerie shakes her vixen-like head firmly. “Yes. Or you.”
He smiles, not overly offended. “The stone is Ilmater’s doing, is it not? He wanted to make sure that we would be able to survive and help Amaunator. That is why you were there, in that hut.”
Aerie blinks, several times. “I-I don’t know what you are talking about.”
He watches her closely, for a moment. “No. Perhaps you do not,” he decides in the end. “Amaunator is dead, and could barely incarnate, even in this temple. Your god wanted to ensure that the stone would find its way to us.”
“You did not have to buy it,” Aerie points out guilelessly.
“No. I did not. And that is what did not fit, initially: had I not, the whole party would be dead now. I could not believe that an allegedly benevolent god would have taken such a risk: eight lives wagered on an uncertain choice. However, you were there. You would have acquired the stone if I had not, Ilmatari.” Comprehension brings no satisfaction at this early hour; only bitterness. He appreciates the lesson: benevolence is not tantamount to stupidity. He must admire the ease with which he was manipulated. But he must also resent that, illuminated, his private choice vanished into yet another divine design.
Next to him, the pregnant elf frowns. “I-I suppose so, yes. But,” she smiles timidly, “this isn’t the point, is it? Y-you eased the pain of those people…” Vaguely, he wonders if Aerie knows that he has already heard this particular sermon from the halfling.
Perhaps she does; she grows serious again. “Y-you’re laughing at me, inside, a-aren’t you?” she asks sadly; she has hunched slightly, as though she expected to be beaten any moment soon and wanted to protected her part-demon child. “You’re not saying a-anything, but y-you’re laughing at me. B-but it’s all true. T-that’s why Nalia and I h-helped you. W-we just think that everyone needs a bit of help, sometimes.” She looks at him with… a tincture of equal fright, defiance and determination, perhaps?
—In the end, he decides that he will only precipitate the inevitable. “Nalia, elf, wants me to secure her castle and assassinate her fiancé for her.”
Aerie, wide-eyed, gives out a stifled gasp. “No! You’re lying!”
For a moment, he almost regrets that he is not. “I am not lying, elf. Ask her about it. Perhaps you will even learn that she is doing that for you.”
The end, curt, was spoken in the hope that with it, his involvement in this particular matter of Imoen’s is over; predictably, the hope was vain. “F-for me?” Aerie blinks, nonplussed, and a part of him he does not need at this particular moment emerges unbidden and wants to fulfil the pregnant elf’s every earlier expectation and, simply, brutally, hit her for her slowness and her naïveté. “But I don’t…”
“Ask her,” he repeats, forcing himself under control, privately sneering: not all sins of the son can be blamed on the fathers, after all— Aerie looks at him with her large, pretty, blue eyes, and, suddenly, viciously, he lashes out, “Has anyone ever told you that you are like poison vine, elf? You want support. You take support. But you are angry when you are supported against your will. Either stand on your feet, or admit that you will never do so. But then, do not presume to criticise when someone protects you against your will. And even less so, to question their methods.”
Then, the anger is gone, vanished as if it had never existed, and belatedly, he remembers where they are, in this black hole of negative energy; if the elf starts to cry here— The optimal course of action would be, perhaps, to wake up Imoen, admit to the critical mistake, and let her clean up after him, again. The very idea smarts.
“I-I’m scared.” Aerie’s voice trembles, and when he looks back at her, she isn’t looking at him, but at an indistinct spot on the marble floor. “T-the last time… Haer’Dalis talked like you do. That I can do everything. Be anyone I want. Just act, m-my dove, and people will believe the pretence, h-he used to say. And then, he left me. Just like that. B-because he could. Because I h-had to be free to f-fly, and he c-could only pull me down, h-he said. And I was alone. A-all alone… And I—I must have people around me. But not to tell me what to do! Just t-to help me. I-if I fall. But—oh! It’s so easy… once you’ve been a slave, to just t-take c-commands. Even from your friends…”
There is a deep sigh, and he decides that, painful or not, he is waking up his sister; then, he hears, “I-I’ve recovered, and I’m standing up, and I don’t know how to tell them that I am grateful for what they’ve done for me, but I-I will need less of their help from now on…” Then, suddenly, Aerie looks up from the floor. “Baervan, and Ilmater, and the Winged Mother, they are all there to help me, and…” Angrily, she finishes, “I don’t want Nalia to kill because of me! I-isn’t it enough to put that… that horrible man… into prison?! And I-I don’t want—” She falls silent, suddenly; and frowns, “Y-you’re laughing at me, again, aren’t you?!”
Trying to placate, himself above all, he replies, “I believe, elf, that I do. If you do not want all this, what do you want, instead? You will have a child: where will you have it?”
“Him,” Aerie interjects angrily. “It’s a he. And his name is Quayle.”
“Quayle, then,” he replies lightly. “Where will you have him? Who will care for him when you must leave him alone? Have you considered this? I do not want to know,” he warns, suddenly; and then, pre-emptively, smirks. “And will give you no help and no advice.”
For a while, he hovers, waiting for the inevitable I don’t need any, not from you; but, though the offended Aerie bristles, no retort strikes the gap he left for her tender and wide-open. Hence he remembers that they are in this place not for idle chat, but to watch the darkness their enemy; and, leaving the elf to her ruminations—he turns to the demarcation line, the shattered statue of the sun defeating the shadow.
-----
Beside him, Aerie is thinking, frowning and unconsciously clenching and unclenching her tiny fists; and he wonders, lazily, if her three gods and she will manage to draw up any practical plan; or if her mind, too little used to independence, will fail at the simple task— Himself, he is feeling mildly better. The damage proved not irretrievable.
Now, lost again in the languid, slothful early-morning thought, he paints with his memories: Aerie, besides everything else, is also his mistress Cythandria’s colours in his hatamoto’s frame— Aerie sighs quietly. “Sarevok…”
Blinking and yawning to start thinking again, he asks, “Yes?”
“I-I think I will need someone to b-be a father for Quayle. B-but not like Haer’Dalis…”
The hesitation is very polite, and he completes, “…or me. I agree. You have Minsc, I believe. And?”
Aerie blinks several times, rapidly, like a bird fluttering her wings; of course, now, he knows why the trite comparisons have imposed on him since he met the elf— “Minsc. Yes. I’m his witch, am I not?” she asks rhetorically, as if she understood something only now; “Minsc,” she repeats; then, suddenly, “C-can I ask you something? P-promise that you will not laugh at me?”
Amused, he looks at the vixen face between the two pointy ears, and says, “No.”
Now, Aerie is very, very angry. “Fine,” she decides. “But… Why don’t y-you meet him again?”
Cernd’s voice: she is a vixen, and little escapes her— He freezes; “Nalia… um, told me?” Aerie explains, with the polite, unhappy pause which perhaps means that Nalia yelled; and he must think that Imoen is not the only one who would do well to control better the flow of information around her.
“He is a paladin,” he replies flatly, because he owes her that much, perhaps; and irritated, because the choice was straightforward and correct, and, he would even like to think, a good one: a lifelong career, not a yearly, or two-yearly, at most, affair. Even Mazzy Fentan could not deny that. So all that—
(the memory of a face and a smell and a voice but not a taste, again, the heartburn he would it were the trite indigestion rather the mundane unrequited love, again, the bittersweet lawless inappropriate pride he has no right to feel, again, the pure plain desire, again; an errant emotion no one has really ever needed, and least of all the mercifully ignorant paladin himself—because now, the squire is a true paladin; he must be, if his superiors are true paladins, after all that happened—but of that—no—back—)
—yes: all that is merely regret after a choice already done and made; and that is supremely useless, harmful even, to his human self; as is every regret and as are all regrets. He has, in short, done a second-rate, measly, simply offensive job of recovering, compounding the problem rather than solving it; and so, having just flayed an elf for impracticality, he must treat himself to equal standards; and he suddenly feels the weight of Aran Linvail’s gift on his neck; and recoils, swiftly, to escape—
It is not hard, for that one, too, he misses, and sincerely; and Aran Linvail, at least, he will yet meet; he can yet meet—without abject hostility; possibly so; for Aran Linvail is urbane, insincere, a thief and a politician, and as willing to betray one as he is to take one in— Sleek, slick, skilled, ruthless, unfeeling and tender; and there is the geas—
—And, of course, the cure is as pestilent as the disease, and not in the least practical; for neither is Aran Linvail here with him; hence, since the elf is Aerie and Nalia is Imoen’s— Speak of the duchess. “What have you two been going on about for so long?” Nalia d’Arnise asks suspiciously behind his back, and he is grateful to her, because he must, and can, gather his wits and fight again; he has an adversary, if not a Ryan Trawl.
“It is impolite, duchess, to eavesdrop on private conversations,” he first imparts Mazzy Fentan’s wisdom on her estranged second-in-command; and then, lightly, adds his own smug nugget of insight, “And imprudent to admit to doing so.” By the noble, holding on to her, closely, his sister raises an eyebrow, “My brother wins this one, Nalia;” and, shutting down, shutting out and shutting off the last of his regrets, he smirks in accord: because, of course, the fault is not his that Nalia d’Arnise does not know the elven tongues—
But Imoen has awoken, and he remembers his dream.
-----
The dream repeats; yet it does not.
Around him, the skeletons of houses: the city, his safety, it is dead. A lesson in poetic irony could be found here: you plotted against the safe shelter of others; your own home is now dead and no more; who wields the sword, dies by the sword. But the dream does not purport to teach: it is the call of his Father. It wills but to maim and to spoil. Him, now.
And the city… The dead city is, naturally enough, the city-under-the-city, back in Baldur’s Gate; he remembers it well, these rotten frames of households ruined by flood and mudslide. There should be the undead here; they used to find some small amusement in hunting them, once, Tamoko, Semaj, Cythandria and he; but this city is only a fake, an imitation and a replica, and only drawn out of his mind by the bleak temple in Amn— This way; and, for a moment, a heavily-armoured man’s heavy footsteps break through—no: add to—the sound of silence.
The gate; beyond it, the door. The temple: another facet of a god’s home. His home, once. It is perfect, tonight.
Perfect: drawn and described in perfect, loving detail: tall. Majestic. Ornate. Imposing. Sinister. The adjectives amass: yet, presently, they fade. Only two, those that bear any significance at all, remain: a-hated. And beloved— The dwarf his sister his victim Gorion’s child is inside, waiting for him in the back, as always sitting on the altar; her short legs are, as always, dangling off it. “Hello again, Sarevok,” she says, as always, as a way of greeting.
“Welcome back, sister,” he replies; as always, standing squarely in the centre of the massive, dark hall, on the emblem of his Father; the grinning skull surrounded by the daggers.
Irene, with her chin on her hands, announces happily, “You’re such a masochist, you know? Always and always, coming back for more. Haven’t you had enough?”
“Haven’t you, sister?”
Irene cocks her head, and laughs. “Of killing you? One word, dear brother: Never.”
He advances, delicately, feeling a fool. “Why? It serves no purpose, save Father’s.”
“Because, brother,” Irene smiles, “we are the same. Dead or alive, mortal or shadows, we will never be free. And you know that.” The roguish grin behind the beard is completely out of place: in life, his spies once told him, the dwarf was not an unserious person.
“Imoen says that you do not hate me,” he tries to reason, still; Irene, by reflex, fires magic missiles at him; the stone skins he raised absorb them just in time, and he saw a trace of uncertainty in the dwarf’s brown eyes. “She does, doesn’t she?” Irene laughs throatily. “She’s lying.”
The man smiles, finally understanding. “Yes, I know. I care not, sister, for freedom or prophecy. I order you, instead: go. Leave. Leave this place. Leave me— And tell this to my Father: Be the face of my sibling and the place of my defeat the two last sights he ever leaves me, I will never love them. I’m not that much of a masochist, sister.”
Irene disappears.
-----
As the four wizards begin their preparation for the coming fight—“A dragon,” Aerie, fumbling around the loose, life-giving belt on her waist, sighs despondently, “Don’t worry, Aerie, you’ll be all right,” Imoen, sliding her pink Arbane’s sword back into its sheath, comforts her, “Just remember your spells, little thing, and it will be just like any other fight,” Nalia adds with a little smile; then, as the smile turns more private and to Imoen, opening her spell-book, and she decides, “We need a coherent strategy to present to Mazzy;” and Sarevok watches the three merrily bobbing female heads, before agreeing completely with the duchess’ idea—
—elsewhere: in Athkatla—another strategy is being finalised. “Yes, brother,” a bored vampire tells a mirror, eyeing her newfound army, “This will draw them out. It must.”
-----
“Valygar and I think that the Shade Lord hid himself from us,” Mazzy Fentan says as soon as the whole party have finished eating; Sarevok, following the halfling’s and his joint interest, ordered his wife not to stray away from him. “Are you jealous, brother?” Imoen remarked then, pleasantly, privately; and he must laugh together with her at the ridiculousness of the very concept—
“He created illusions of walls from the shadows,” Mazzy continues; a duchess who should be Mazzy’s lieutenant shoots a look of distaste at the silent Valygar. “We must check them by touch.”
Aerie sighs. “By touch? A-all of them? I-I don’t think I can keep away the shadows long enough!”
Minsc is sitting by his beloved witch now, and looking—rather disconcerted? Irrelevant; Sarevok frowns, “It may not be necessary. We are in the temple of a solar sect. So far, we saw the altar of dusk, where we met,” a nod to the man, “Corthala—”
“And it was the one in the right-hand passage. I get it brother. This is the left passage, and the paintings show dawn!” Imoen interrupts. “So… We’re lacking the whole day!”
“The noontide, more likely, sister,” he corrects. “The main altar. The hour of triumph.”
The beginning of the decay, he adds privately; and then, smirking, the Rule of Threes repeats, again; but Imoen already finishes, “The middle passage. It should be right in front of the main entrance to the temple, Mazzy,” she announces with the delight of breakthrough and discovery.
-----
The passage is; and then, the staircase is; the party, singularly unmolested, pass through a thick wall of shadows and ascend it slowly. Amaunator, the triumphant, the victor, the unconquered, was not a merciful god.
The steps are yellow marble, and covered with shreds of yellow carpet, and the ceiling and the walls of the stairway are painted yellow and gilt with gold; and the inclination of the steps is perhaps just such that on the noon of the summer solstice, a month from now, the light would fill the passage in full. But the party travel up a dark shaft of cold shadow, and it is only a tiny flicker of light and warmth which illuminates the faces of the enemies, tied, writhing in pain under the god’s harsh gaze; or, sometimes, the faces of the heretics, cast away into darkness from the god’s yellow presence. All this, skilfully wrought by the faithful in gold leaf, sunstones, tchazars, yellow diamonds and kings’ tears; for a moment, Sarevok considers, absently, if the child priestess Amuana’s was the first blood on the holiest of altars.
The silent congregation awaits the living on the temple’s roof: wraiths and shades, the court of the Shade Lord and his concubine, standing on the low steps which lead to the desecrated altar, far away; away enough that it is lost to the darkness. A faint, ethereal whisper moves the air lightly: the beating of a dragon shadow’s wings. Do you see it, Altair? he asks, No, master, she answers, Take the cat and hide, he commands; Minsc would not give up Boo. Altair obeys.
“Do you see anything, Aerie?” Mazzy Fentan asks. “Anchev?” “No,” they both reply in unison. “Minsc, if you can see Merella, shoot her,” Mazzy orders; and now, a voice which must be the Shade Lord’s, for now it is raspy, sexless and old, and now a young woman’s flat, lifeless tone, flows from the gelid heart of shadow, through the gloom, over the heads of the stock-still human shades. “My grim undead hunter has escaped and brought friends, I see? I am glad. Come, join us. The more the merrier.” But merriment, in the voice, there is none.
“Boo sees no Evil,” Minsc reports. “But Minsc hears Evil!” The disembodied monotone bores on, pitifully, “Valygar? Why won’t you answer Merella’s plea?” The man shudders, but does not reply, beyond a private grunt, “Undead. All the same. See one, see them all.”
“Grim hunter, halfway, you are al—” The rest of the sentence drowns in a sudden shriek; the innards, perhaps, Sarevok decides, for all the Treant’s heartwood within Pinn O'Reffen’s bow sincerely admiring the Rashemi’s blind accuracy; the arrow was Imoen’s, barbed and poisoned, and the host will die within minutes, at most.
A mass of hissing follows—
“Thaxll’ssillyia!”
—and the battle is not over.
-----
Imoen throws a handful of dust high up into the air; for a moment, a talon and a wing’s edge are set off in gold against the sky, and Sarevok can almost, almost make out a dragon shadow’s silhouette— The spectre has vanished.
“In the name of Ilmater, the Broken God, the Crying God, I command you: sleep!” Aerie intones, watching the gathering of shades, “In the name of Aerdrie Faenya, the Winged Mother, Her of the Azure Plumage, I command you: sleep!” Her gods shield her and her child against negativity, against fear, confusion, against hurt; and so, when the dragon shadow breathes, Aerie intones still, “—In the name of Baervan Wildwanderer, the Forest Gnome, the Masked Leaf; in the name of Amaunator, the Yellow God—I command you: sleep!” And the restless shadows, who cannot sleep, do.
The dragon shadow breathes as it glides towards them; and the silent breath which is not mere coldness, but absolute lack, engulfs the party and drains them of life (but not him, for he is protected; to be considered in free time: how to inflict this rare protection on Imoen). The shadow wings move, and the lightweight women are swept off their feet; and they are all tied one to another, to prevent anyone from leaving the safe spot of light around Amaunator’s stone—
Cured, hastened, the archers hunt the stealthy shadow, blindly: blindly shooting arrows, fire arrows which pierce the ethereal body and reveal it to the wizards; who, in turn, pursue it with abjuration spells and with chain lightning and lightning bolts and fireballs and magic missiles and Melf’s Acid Arrows which he shoots from a sequencer even as Mazzy Fentan puts another arrow on her yew bow; the spells explode overhead, a feast of sounds and colours against the graphite sky and the incarnadine death fog and killing clouds which Nalia and Imoen summoned— “Oh, my!” Aerie, excited, says in passing, “This is… This is better than the circus!” And, though weakened, Nalia laughs, “I told you!” and so does Kriemhild, firing another oil-covered, blazing bolt from her heavy crossbow.
Thaxll’ssillyia, now perfectly visible for the fire arrows burning within it, circles again to return over their heads; and again they prepare for the wing pummel— This never comes: as soon as Mazzy Fentan’s last arrow reaches the shade, it explodes.
-----
The dragon has breathed its dying curse; shreds of the curtain its body, still with the fiery arrows within, still smouldering, are falling around the party, slowed down for the fighters’ haste. The tinnitus has died out in his ears, and he can see again, and he wants to kill the halfling.
The halfling— Does he really want to kill the halfling? Yes: of course he does. The halfling loathes him, and she strikes at his groin with her short sword in a perfectly meaningful move; he fires off magic missiles at her, and unsheathes the Edge of Chaos; Corthala snorts, “Wizards!” and attacks Nalia, who is attacking Imoen—he knew his sister was wrong to welcome that bitch into her bed—but Imoen is here, just behind Mazzy, and her, the competitor, the sibling, he must kill first— With a cry of, “Butt-kicking for goodness!” Minsc attacks Aerie.
Movement behind. Corthala must take him for a complete fool, to think Sarevok didn’t notice— Aerie is muttering some spell, and Imoen is about to hit her, is approaching the elf with murder, not kill, in her eyes, but Kriemhild, enraged, hits Minsc on the head and the man falls in Imoen’s path— She walks over him, as befits a future goddess; Sarevok brushes off Nalia to get her out of his own way— The way where, exactly? It does not matter. To kill his adulterous wife, possibly.
Then, Aerie dispels the magic and ends the chaos, and, amidst a chorus of contingency stone skin spells, Sarevok emerges into reason.
He is killing Valygar Corthala: a katana, however spirited, is woefully inadequate against the full impact of a Deathbringer’s assault; and the man, grim, depressed, is frozen in his spot, and awaiting death with terror customary for Sarevok’s victims. Muscles strain and scream their furious protest; but Sarevok has committed his entire strength into setting into motion the heavy mass of the Chaos Edge; to stop it, now, in full swing, is impossible. Even Kriemhild’s femur club has been only a slight hindrance.
The delay has been long enough. A brief, tactless push, and Valygar has been sent reeling to the security of the floor, under the dragon shield— “This one begs excuse for interfering, husband,” his wife is now saying calmly; then, more curious than anything else, inquires, “If the weakskin is, in all truth, to die…?”
“No!” he replies, slightly too loudly, realising what her raucous orcish argot actually means. “No,” he repeats; Kriemhild, without one further word, puts that shard of bone which remains of her father’s weapon back into the Peridan’s sheath, unsheathes her scimitar, and, purposefully, walks away. Himself, he is still dazed, almost as much as his victim manqué.
-----
A moment later, sword still in hand, but with his control recovered, he looks around to survey what other damage the brief bout of insanity has wreaked.
Imoen, pale, ashen-faced, unhurt, is looking at him with relief rivalling his own; Imoen’s cat is trotting up to her; Minsc is getting up from the floor; his shoulders are suddenly taken by an involuntary spasm— “I am shamed,” he tells Aerie, taking off his helmet, “I would offer my head for the taking, but for that I have lost it! Again! I am worthless!” The elf is watching him with wide-open eyes, putting a small hand on his large one, telling him, “D-don’t worry, Minsc—” The hamster, judging from the squeak, survived; Kriemhild is lifting Nalia from one of the holes in the floor which is the ceiling of the temple below; so he almost killed the duchess, too— But no; she was bound to the rest of the company.
“Drat!” Nalia d’Arnise swears, heedless of her paleness, her exhaustion, her emaciated face, her near-death experience; then, with her entrained politeness, she halts. “Thank you, Kriemhild— But drat! We told you, Mazzy— Mazzy?”
“Mazzy?” Valygar Corthala repeats.
“The shadows,” Sarevok replies; they are stirring.
-----
Mazzy Fentan, it is promptly discovered, has in her confusion cut the rope which used to join her with her party; and has wandered away, in between the sleeping shades. Now, she is a shadow to Altair’s eyes; a shadow standing before the shadow of a desecrated altar on the other side of the shadow crowd, over the shadow of a woman’s body whereto the shadow of the woman’s soul is still bound, with an umbral parody of an umbilical cord; like a slave girl, a consort, to her master.
“Knight, you will be the sweetest of my concubines,” the body of Merella rasps with the Shade Lord’s warped promise; the swirling slave shades which Aerie decided yesterday to spare, rise, and thicken, and grow. The party reforms to face them, instinctively: four fighters first, three wizards behind them— Mazzy Fentan’s faint, solitary voice reaches them through the gloom. “No! I am a good person!”
The party, unanimously, start towards the altar, fast; as fast as they can. But soon, that is not fast at all. How far away are you, Altair? Sarevok frowns.
I don’t know, master. Far. It is… heavy, here. Heavy heart? Despair.
Through the thick bleakness, each step takes a century; they, one feels, will never reach the altar. “The laws of chaos order… The noblest souls in life have the most delightfully depraved shadows…” beyond the horizon, the Shade Lord now threatens, now announces, now coaxes, now gloats; and then, he does not, and instead, a grain of pure darkness leaves Merella’s body.
Mazzy takes a wild, futile jab at the parasite as it heads towards her. “I—” she speaks her mantra and her shield, insistently, “I am a good person!”
“Anyone doubts that?” on the party’s side, Nalia d’Arnise asks with mild shock. “I mean—”
“Besides Mazzy, that is?” Imoen retorts acidly; Valygar Corthala sharply turns his head towards her. “What do you mean?” He does not finish; Minsc announces, perplexed, “But Mazzy is a hero! Why—” Before them, unseen by them, in the heart of darkness, Mazzy Fentan is eyeing her short sword with sudden, mad intent.
We are, indeed, heroes, Sarevok silently curses his company: for the vote is cast and decided already. For propriety, he asks, “Wife?” “This one follows, husband,” she reminds him, orcish words in human tongue; Aerie looks oddly at the pair of them. “Aerie?” he finishes, pleasantly, “Mazzy? The stone?”
“Y-yes,” she nods. “I-I think s-so… Minsc, c-could you, please… Throw it to her?” the elf makes a little, unhappy mouth; quite unwilling to bother, indeed.
-----
He yells to attract her attention. “Fentan! The altar—”
Darkness falls.
The world erupts with white, cleansing pain.
