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[Blue-Inked_Frost]

Summary: Saradush is hell this time of year. Korgan Bloodaxe works with an unlikely collaborator, while Saradush falls.

A/N: Written Yuletide 2013 for xiuxi.


--

Saradush was hell.

Choking dust clouds smothered the air and settled over the city, the air too hot and still to sustain any breeze.

Dull roars every time a vast fireball burst against the city walls, and the shaking of more dust and ashes.

The shuddering ground below, the rumbling of an army of massed fire giants waiting for their opportunity to destroy the city. Yaga-Shura the son of Bhaal had come to destroy his brother, and would not rest until the last brick of the city was razed.

And a vast barrier protected Saradush like an iron hand crushing a butterfly. It trapped at the same time it protected. There was nothing anyone could do about it, not even the Bhaalspawn.

The cloaked, slight figure waited in the tavern, more powerful than any would have guessed by a glance.

"Swordfish," her contact announced with a scowl, scooping up change from the bartender and grabbing a tankard of bad beer in the same motion.

"The flowerpot ran away with the whale," she replied.

"Let's be done with this." The dwarf drained his beer with a scowl. The two of them left the tavern through the back door.

--

"Through here."

Though Aerie was small even for an elf, she had to duck below the lintel. Her companion drew out a set of blackened, rusty keys and tried them on door after door, before he lost patience and brought down the last thick setting of rotten wood with his axe.

Children. He was telling the truth.

It was a miserable scene, in the dark, dirty bowels of forgotten Saradush. They were below the half-ruined temple to Waukeen in the catacombs by the sewers. One priest stood there with his charges. Not one of them was able to say anything, all tired and exhausted. Aerie saw about a score of dwarven children with the lone Waukeenar priest. They were thin, much too thin, with soot on their cheeks. Some of them had bright, hectic eyes almost the same colour as Doreda's. And perhaps also eyes like Doreda's twin brother Malredo, the leader of Korgan's party as his sister was Aerie's.

The Bhaalspawn had come to Saradush. These were dwarven children far from home: Bhaalspawn, for Bhaal had died only ten years before; and children of older Bhaalspawn; and some only suspected to be Bhaal's children. They were too weakened to do anything but stare at Korgan and Aerie.

Elf, yer soft and weak-willed enough to do as I ask! Korgan's original message to Aerie had run. There are children in the matter, and I can't seem weak in front of my friends, so it be your weakness that best serves my needs. Only needs two for the task, so say nothing to your own friends or I split your spine with my axe!

The last time Aerie saw such despair as these children's faces she was in a slaver cage being sold to the highest bidder. She wanted to reach down and scoop up as many as she could in her arms to give them a little warmth, but she knew they were very frightened of the newcomers.

"Sit down, ye fool lily-livered longlimb," Korgan said to the Waukeenar, "your contact be me." Then he switched to dwarvish to speak to the children. Their eyes brightened. Aerie forced a hopeful smile on her face.

Spells of silencing and concealment protected them as they hastened through the streets. The children were cloaked and covered. Aerie led the way while Korgan kept them together from the rear.

"Ye can do it?" Korgan asked suspiciously as they neared your location. "They say ye became powerful, but seems too much to believe! I would've broken ye like a tiny twig in the old days."

"But I've c-changed since then," Aerie said. She still had her speech impediment, but that mattered nothing, especially compared to her faith in Baervan Wildwanderer. Baervan, the Masked Leaf, the kind-natured gnome deity who came to her aid and made her his priestess. Aerie also had her mage studies from Uncle Quayle to help her, her work combining her divine and arcane powers--and so much help from her friends.

Gromnir Il-Khan had fallen, but thanks to the elven Bhaalspawn Doreda and her companions Saradush had not fallen yet. Doreda was an expert abjurer, whose magics were all for protection and power. Her sister Imoen was a no less formidable archmage. Nalia the noblewoman mage had become greatly skilled since the fateful meeting in the Copper Coronet, and now had sweeping plans to use her archmagery to change the world. Jaheira the Harper druid and Mazzy the paladin of Arvoreen both possessed divine power. Saradush's magical protections remained in place, for now, by the efforts of Doreda and her companions working together.

Saradush was a prison, but for now it was the best Aerie could do.

Which was precisely why Aerie was able to exploit a loophole. Her divine magic merged seamlessly with arcane as she created a single, narrow pathway. After a cautious, nervous glance as if to reassure himself of its security, Korgan consented to walk through.

Aerie took an unobtrusive breath when they walked out from the darkness into a plain some distance beyond Yaga-Shura's fire giant army, smouldering in the night like a city permanently set on fire. She'd done her best to shorten the distance, and her new transportation spell had worked! A young dwarf stumbled on the unfamiliar ground. She dared to help the girl up on her feet and cast a small healing spell on the grazed knee. The child even reached up a hand to look at one of the blue beads in her hair; Aerie spoke a few soft words in elvish. Maybe after this, she thought, I will have children of my own--but I have to know that they will never suffer as much as this, never be captured by slavers and never know hunger and want...

"Ye be fooling around, elf! Get on the march!" Korgan looked around fiercely. "Still half a league away, blasted witch. Ye think I'm made for grubbing around through nature like you sodding tree-shaggers?"

He'd taken two of the children on one shoulder each, giving them a piggyback ride. Aerie decided not to remark on this at all, or even to think about it. He was supposed to lead the way to a tunnel to dwarven underground that he knew from long ago.

"D-did you grow up near here, Korgan?" Aerie asked cheerfully. She was now bringing up the rear and gently getting the straggling children forward. They walked with amazing determination despite their weakness.

He gave her a black look in the dark. "Don't try anything on me, girlie. Yer weak and whining enough that I'll snap ye in two for it. Last whore I bedded she--"

A couple of the children looked at him as if they did know some of those words in Common. Korgan said something else in dwarvish instead.

In time Korgan nodded at a long brown rock they'd reached that looked no different from any other rock. He tapped it with the haft of his axe in several locations and looked as if he was listening carefully. Aerie had never seen the bloodthirsty, impulsive, barbarian man concentrating before and it was a very odd sight. Then he inserted the haft below a section of it and heaved to widen the gap.

"Don't ye stand there gawping at my muscles, girlie!" he gasped. "Cast some spell and make yourself useful!"

"I'm happy to help my friends," Aerie replied. An Holy Power prayer should do it! With Baervan's strength in her, she felt herself raising the heavy rock with one hand as if it was nothing.

(The strengthening hammer that she carried at her side, Crom Faeyr, based on the power of frost giants, also assisted.)

She glanced at the walls closing in and around her and the children. The dwarven children seemed comforted rather than imprisoned by the very tight space with no natural light, only the waves of earth closing in. Aerie had all an avariel's dislike for tight, confined spaces--she hated to be caged or trapped--

But she'd faced all the Underdark could throw at her with her friends at her side. And these children regarded the narrow tunnels as shelter and protection.

Four dwarves in heavy, sturdy clothing came to them. Their hair and beads were braided with stones and gold. One wore the emblem of Clangeddin, a dwarven deity who was both strong and good. He stepped forward.

"These are the children to take care of."

"Ye'd better show that ye mean it," Korgan said menacingly. He eyed the group suspiciously.

He is actually correct to do so! Aerie thought. We cannot give these children away to a potentially worse fate. She cast a clandestine spell of divination, so that Baervan would help her see the basic energies lurking around the dwarves and have a sense of true and false. These spells could be deceived and were often subjective, but they were useful as an additional source of understanding. These four had benevolent expressions and were gentle as they went among the children to introduce themselves.

"Tell the elven twins," the priest of Clangeddin said, "that Yeslick, once of clan Orothiar, now of clan Hammerhand, sends his regard. He remembers the Cloakwood."

Aerie had heard the name from her leader Doreda. Back near the city of Baldur's Gate, when Doreda and her twin brother Malredo still travelled together. The twins flooded a mine in the Cloakwood while they were trying to solve the iron crisis of Baldur's Gate, caused by Sarevok Anchev, another deadly Bhaalspawn. Now that same Bhaalspawn was returned from the dead and travelled with Malredo and with Korgan; it was unlikely that this Yeslick would welcome this news.

Korgan eventually concluded, gruffly, that these dwarves were to be trusted. Yeslick and his friends gathered up the children who could walk no further and helped the rest.

"There are priests who shall keep them safe in this time. Dwarves who have lost a child will welcome newcomers," Yeslick told Aerie.

She pressed a bag of holding she'd assembled into his hands. "T-this is all I was able to do. I hope that it is able to help."

Had she seen Korgan, furtively, do something similar with a pouch to one of the other dwarven leaders? Never mind. She'd packed some healing tinctures, water, waybread, bandages, uncut gems, and an icon of Baervan for blessing. In the ruins of Saradush survival resources were the most scarce of any kind of goods, but she hoped that this would be enough.

Their mission was completed.

"Korgan, I r-respect that you saved the children," Aerie ventured. They must walk back in the open air to where she could gate them back to Saradush and close the loophole.

He swore vividly--something about his grandmother's offal and at least two dead goats. "I kill every kind of twolegs that walks and if it be drow I torture it first. But any who'd harm children be not worth my spit." He watched her through slitted eyes. "Ye'll tell none of my acts tonight."

It was small wonder, Aerie thought, that he didn't want his companions to know. Perhaps Malredo had some affection left for his two sisters raised in Candlekeep with him, but he had cut a ruthless, bloodthirsty trail through Athkatla and beyond. Malredo shared a bed with the renegade Cowled Wizard Ramonica, a human woman who was thrown out of the organisation for excessive brutality; recruited a half-orc Blackguard with a warrant on his head for mass murder; brought his dead brother Sarevok the Bhaalspawn back from the dead with a geas to bind him to eternal servitude; Korgan; and his final associate was Lucette, the renegade ex-Harper thrown out for bad poetry and indiscriminate assassination.

Aerie felt a current of the Weave suddenly change direction somewhere behind her, a black whip striking through the air. She laid hands on her spell components.

"What I meant was," Korgan said with satisfaction, "ye won't betray me, girlie, since ye be dead by dawn and I be rich! Har HAR!"

Aerie could vaguely see at least three figures who moved at an impossible pace. They flung a black net at her through the Weave, wrapping vague dark fingers around her. Soon she could see nothing at all and fell into a blank brown sea.

--

"Traitorous scum."

Aerie found herself awake and in pain. She couldn't reach her hands--the slavers had her again, why wouldn't someone come to save her! Then she remembered that she could fight to save herself now, even now, even here. A rope embedded with cold iron fragments and dangerous runes was wrapped around her wrists, binding them painfully high behind her back. She couldn't reach her magic--she couldn't pray to Baervan. Another slap echoed loudly in the scrub clearing they were in. She felt the pain only after the sound died away.

Her captor was a dark-haired elf with pale, silvery skin. His face looked like it was made from melted steel. His hands were long and skeletal compared to the rest of his body, the skin barely stretched over sharp cold bones. He wore surface elven battledress and wore the hilt of a sword on his shoulder. He looked a little like Xan, a Moon elf Aerie had once met, who had always talked about his own doom.

Aerie was surprised to see Korgan again, further on, trussed up like a chicken for slaughter and gagged as well. There was another elf who stood by him, a wild-looking elf who wore woodland paint on his face and a bearskin for a cloak. Then there was a female elf with dark brown skin, who looked younger than the others from the way she stood but had an aura about her that suggested dangers.

And there was more. Aerie's heart skipped a beat as she saw them and wondered if this were a dream. The two in the back of the clearing were elves who had wings, two pairs of vast white wings folded behind their backs. One was a handsome blond warrior with a glass spear. He looked like all of Aerie's memories of home gathered into one, like her father and like her uncle and like several of her older cousins. Then there was the second, a southern avariel with epicanthic folds in her eyes and high cheekbones. She also carried distinctively avariel weaponry, a sword, a spear, a bow, and at least ten translucent knives bristling from her chiton, all looking like that which Aerie had grown up seeing...

The elf closest to her pressed the sharp end of a cold steel knife against her cheek. "Speak, apostate," he said.

"W-why are you doing this?" Aerie's words were a frightened burst of sound.

She could already have a guess. Two words that were supposed to strike fear into hearts that heard them.

Eldreth Veluuthra. Elven terrorists who operated in secret, sworn to destroy any who were not true elves or who helped encroach on elven territory.

Aerie had wanted to think that elves like these were a myth.

"Firstly, because you are an abomination." The words were a hiss out of the silver elf's delicately shaped mouth. "An avariel who allowed herself to become a lesser being. An elf who grubs in the dirt with a gnomish deity." Deliberately, he reached to Aerie's neck and took hold of a Baervan medallion. He pulled the chain painfully against her neck until she choked. The string broke with a snap and a whip of pain. He flung the raccoon's face in the dirt below Aerie's knees and ceremoniously crushed it into the ground.

He might destroy the symbol of a god but it was impossible to destroy His power. Even though she could not call on her abilities, Aerie found the thin thread of calm faith within to bear this blasphemy.

"Secondly, for you serve an even greater abomination." The tip of his long knife glinted silver in the moonlight. "One of the so-called elven Bhaalspawn.

"We are the Eldreth Veluuthra, sworn to end these wrongs."

Aerie could tell that the runes sketched in the dirt near her feet were enough to create a sacrificial altar. To take a sapient life--any kind of sapient life--on such a place created a wave of powerful energies that could be consumed by the one who made the sacrifice, and delivered to a blood-soaked god to grant them power.

She stared at the two avariel. Surely two of her own people could not willingly participate in a horror like this! She stared at them and asked a few words, stumbling heavily over the language she'd thought she would never be able to speak again...

"Slavers called me Aerie but my family name is Airliliea of Faenya-Dail, my mother is Fayanna, my father is Cytorissos! I was born with wings! Please, do you know their fate?"

"I know their fate," said the blond avariel warrior. "Was not Fayanna the noble avariel sculptor who crafted the Vision of Three Bells? First they were heartbroken that their daughter disappeared. Next, the fate that befell them was terrible, their only child lost to filthy humans, becoming lower than an earthworm. And then, even worse, Fayanna..."

He stopped. He knew Aerie's mother--knew what happened to her! Aerie jerked forward in her bonds, but was stopped when the knife blade pressed against her cheek once more.

"The time is come to destroy both elven abominations," the leader said. "Then the Fire Giants will destroy Saradush, increasing Yaga-Shura's power base. The drow abomination will be forced to come out of hiding to challenge her brother, and she shall lose. The rest of the Bhaalspawn may break human and halfblood Tethyr in two if they care to, and the Eldreth Veluuthra will be the better for the cleansing.

"Where is the gateway to Saradush?" he asked Aerie.

"Where is my mother? Where is Fayanna?" she repeated.

The next blow knocked her to the ground.

"Please," she said, "Doreda and Malredo did not ask to be born. I know my crimes, what are theirs?"

"Fool," said the woodland elf. "They were raised by humans! Their names alone are proof of that. They are Bhaalspawn. And the male cohabits with a human whore..." His face closed down. "Hurt the traitor until she gives us Saradush!"

Aerie glared at Korgan. "The dwarf is a traitor too. He sold me to you, did he not? He also understands the gateway to Saradush!" Korgan's trussed up shape shook in protest.

"She lies about that," the younger female elf said. Her eyes were widely set and light like the sky at sunset. She spoke to Aerie. "Before the orcs and the drow it was the low people of earth who were our chief enemies. He thought we would pay him for you. He will be sold to the old witch who lives near here, as a source of spare parts."

Korgan yelled something else below his gag.

"You...have a m-mighty divine power," Aerie said to the light-eyed elf. She seemed to be around Aerie's own age, at least relatively speaking. Aerie let her eyes widen in intimidated appreciation.

"I am Ayalla of Shevarash and someday all will know my name," the elven girl replied proudly. "All of my family were murdered by filthy humans like those you claim to protect. The Black Archer never forgets the need for vengeance. Before you die we will scribe the reasons why you were executed upon your skin."

I'm...not sure I have enough skin, Aerie thought, in brief consideration of the morbid problem.

"Are there more s-slavers..." She gazed at the two avariel. Seeing their wings made her heartsick and desperately longing at the same time, even through the pain of her interrogation. "Have slavers come to the avariel sanctuaries? Is that why you f-fight by the Eldreth Veluuthra?"

There, by a bush near Korgan, Aerie saw a dull pile of equipment covered by a cloak. She and Korgan both had weapons worth a lot of coin, even if corrupted by being wielded by a fallen avariel and a dwarf. Their enemies were not above plunder.

"The avariel have more reason to keep ourselves pure than any other kind of elf!" the female avariel said. "Have you seen what happens when a halfbreed creature with malformed wings plops out of its mother? Coelium and I have. It dies. In pain. And then there are the human wizards who think they can buy our bodies for spell components. It's our duty to make the avariel race into the unbeatable warriors we used to be."

"You should have died the day you lost your wings," the Faenya-Dail avariel said. "Look at Vanaliel, now look at yourself. You shame your race's existence by pretending to be a hunchbacked, malformed gnome. You will thank us that you no longer brand your parents."

Their leader moved in. He placed a cold hand on Aerie's chin and forced her to look him in the eyes before he spoke. "Remember," he said, "that Lord Rivaiel of Evereska sent you to the hells you deserve." Slowly, his knife blade met her collarbone. "Now where is that Saradush breach?"

Inside Aerie's core of peaceful faith in Baervan lay a small, secret smile, just like the giant divine raccoon Chiktikka Fastpaws when he pulled off a successful prank.

Like many Amnian women and a few Amnian men, Aerie followed the fashion trend of braiding one's hair with as many beads and feathers as possible. But unlike most people, some of Aerie's ornaments had practical uses.

While Lord Rivaiel and his friends were talking, Aerie had reached up to a large blue bead with a sharp edge and slowly sawed through most of the ropes binding her hands.

Some bad people did so much enjoy talking a lot about how bad they were, if you could get them going.

Aerie threw herself away from Rivaiel's knife, pointed her finger in Ayalla's direction, and summoned a quick contingency.

The other elf's reflexes were very fast. Ayalla darted out of the way and raised a divine shield to protect herself. But in fact Aerie had hit exactly what she was aiming at. An instant later, Korgan pulled himself out of his burning bonds, leaped for their possessions and drew an axe. With a battlecry that sounded even through his gag, he flung himself on both of the avariel warriors before they had even drawn their weapons.

Aerie had many other problems. Rivaiel abruptly dropped the knife and reached for the hilt on his back. When he drew out his sword, it glowed an ethereal blue. A Moonblade, wielded by the chosen defenders of elvendom. This along with his claimed title raised questions that Aerie couldn't afford to think about right now-- She avoided his blows with all the agility she'd learnt from practicing with her friend Imoen. His sword whistled a strange melody as it swept through the air a tenth of an inch from her face.

She was free now to call on her spells from Baervan. She gestured--Masked Leaf be with her now--and the scrub around them followed her request, putting forth vicious thorns and vines to imprison Rivaiel's feet. This spell of entanglement was highly difficult to control, but Aerie was light and nimble enough to race free from it.

"Drousel!" the leader called, and the woodland elf already had raised his arms from his bear mantle. He wasn't a forester--it was arcane magic he chanted. Aerie heard enough syllables to hope and pray to Baervan and Aerdrie Faenya she was protecting from the right things...

Thank you, Doreda. Thank you, Doreda, she thought to the Bhaalspawn abjurer who'd taught her so much. A cascade of lightning bolts and missiles whistled all around Aerie but she was spared.

She saw Korgan fighting--she saw bloodied, hacked avariel wings, cut into so many pieces they would never fly again, while the psychopathic dwarf brought down his axe to cut off those wings entirely--

Aerie added an alteration to her entanglement spell, a careful piece of natural lore she'd learnt from the druid Jaheira. Thick leaves and grasses suddenly burst loose from the plants, swirling in the wind and giving her cover, where she didn't have to see what Korgan was doing any more.

Mazzy Fentan the paladin had done her best to teach Aerie a little strategy. Aerie cast a sanctuary spell on herself, a very quick spell to vanish from others' eyes. It wouldn't last long, but Baervan let it last enough.

Drousel's divination chant finished, but at that very moment Aerie hit Ayalla on the head with a branch using another move she'd learnt from Jaheira. The woman crumpled to the ground like a dry twig.

Korgan, a battle-rage in him, hit Rivaiel from behind. Aerie did not see what happened, but she heard the dwarf's battlecry:

"So much for fancy swords wielded by girlymen, har har! Your life be done, elfling!"

Aerie and the other wizard circled each other in the clearing. Contingencies, counters, blasts and protections flashed in both of their heads. They each reached for the perfect arcane combination that would sweep an opponent's shields into nothing and fireball them into the Nine Hells. Aerie feinted to the left, he to the right, and around the clearing they shifted--

Then Drousel's hands flashed up for a Cloudkill spell, a blast of acrid gases that choked the life out of anyone who breathed inside it. Aerie summoned an ice storm. Thank you, Nalia, for letting me read your expensive spells. Her cold winds and icicles froze the air between them. Back and further back she pushed the Cloudkill's toxic gases. Her ice storm, so fierce as to be now almost out of control, forced the gas back down Drousel's throat before she even knew it.

Drousel fell to his knees in the sacrifice circle. A bloodied icicle pinned his hand to the rune. He was choking, close enough to dying to trigger the magic. He tipped over the line.

To take a sapient life was always a dire matter, and on a sacrificial altar vast energies were released by this. It was a foul method practiced only by evil priests. The Eldreth Veluuthra had meant this fate for Aerie, but she was no less horrified that she had committed the blood sacrifice herself. She screamed wordlessly, and the power came through her like a tidal wave. Her own magic became bright as the sun. Aerie surged with twice and more the power of the mage she had killed. Her ice storm became a blizzard, the Cloudkill a hurricane carrying everything but her at the epicentre.

Korgan, axe dripping with blood, was taken by the storm winds, utterly at Aerie's mercy after he had betrayed her to these.

Aerie released her power and calmed the storm. She saw that both avariel were murdered, their wings nothing more than a pile of bloody chunks. Rivaiel and Drousel were also dead. The Shevarashan priestess was the only one who still breathed. Aerie went unhurriedly to the pile of possessions and took up her Crom Faeyr once more.

Aerie looked at Korgan, and let him know that the power in her was still ready at a moment's notice behind her eyes.

"Show it to someone who's impressed, girly," he said. He turned his back on her to root through Rivaiel's cloak.

"You killed both avariel! Why did you do that? We had to talk with them!" Aerie couldn't look at the dead bodies. They were bringing nausea in her stomach and memories she thought she'd buried. And the man had spoken of her mother, that something terrible had probably happened... "Answer me, Korgan!"

He turned from his plunder, which now consisted of breaking Rivaiel's jaw to check for gold teeth.

"An' let them fly off in the air? Case ye haven't noticed, neither ye on those unsightly stumps of yours nor my bandy legs could've caught them without me! Useless prissy elven arse, whinging about a fight already settled but for pissing on the bastards' corpses."

"You sold me to them. I let you live because you fought now," Aerie said.

"Ye should learn to be less trusting," Korgan said. "Didn't it cross yer mind that having ye gone's what Malredo wants come the final confrontation over Bhaal's throne?"

"That could be settled some other way than fighting!" Aerie said. She did not like nor trust the Bhaalspawn Malredo herself, but she knew that her friends Doreda and Imoen hoped for a solution where they did not kill the brother they'd grown up with. "Did he order you to do this? At least tell me that!" She let her eyes glow green--a fairly cheap trick that reflected a chief emblem colour of a priest's deity.

"Used me initiative, see." Korgan flashed her a grin that was disgustingly like a leer. Aerie shuddered. "Ugly longlegs like you be a blight on the landscape. A boil on me arse that's best lanced."

She tried to give him a stare like her ice storm. "Today I saved you when you were a prisoner and chose to lift my hand when I could have seen you dead for betraying me. Remember that, Korgan. When the c-cards are on the table I may call in my stake someday."

The elf they'd captured was waking up, tied to a nearby rock. Aerie went to her, Korgan standing nearby with his axe.

"Your friends are dead," Aerie said. "Talk to us. I need to know about my mother."

She leant close to the Shevarashan, ready to weave spells to help her. She could use a charm--she felt desperate enough to wipe out another's free will for a short time. She remembered the names of the avariel Eldreth Veluuthra. "Did Coelium and Vanaliel tell you about my mother Fayanna? Tell me! I need to know what happened to her! We will show mercy, we can show mercy, just speak. My mother..."

"Kill me." Ayalla stared at Korgan. "Split my throat with your axe. You unelven filth. I won't say a thing to betray our cause. Kill me now!" Her eyes burned like embers and her voice carried a fanatic's scream. "Kill me!"

Korgan did not move.

"Tell me!" Aerie chanted.

Ayalla strained against her ropes so much that her face changed to an expression of unbelievable anguish.

"Shevarash, grant me the Black Mark!" Ayalla screamed. It was not a spell. It was a cry of ultimate despair. Her slack body fell forward, limp and vacant. Aerie lifted her only to see that a blissful smile was on her face. She ripped open the Shevarashan's tunic to cast a spell and restart her breathing, only to see an emblem burnt on Ayalla's chest like a brand. The Black Arrow of Shevarash. To spare his followers from being tortured by enemies, they could call the Black Archer in their hour of final need for a last swift mercy. This arrow on the heart was the last of any kind of mortal existence or enquiry.

Aerie screamed in frustration.

Mother! Mother, help me! They're cutting my bones away! The memory took her, for only an instant but that instant too long--the knives, the brands that sterilised the flesh left on Aerie's back when they cut them off, the torturers, her broken wings...

Aerie raised her head stiffly, pulled together her pack, and bent to scoop Baervan's medallion carefully from the ground. It was a little bent, but it could be mended someday. She began the walk back to Saradush's portal, not looking at Korgan following behind her.

Aerie walked back through her loophole and closed it thoroughly behind her. The dwarf followed her into Saradush's dark streets.

"Better hope that mother of yours be already dead," Korgan said, "for one look at yer weak whining face and she'd kill herself out of shame."

Aerie had had enough. The words erupted out of her with the force of a fire giant's catapult from an exploding volcano.

"How dare you, Korgan? How dare you! Be quiet for once in your piddling little life! You're worth less than lizardman diarrhea, and much less sanitary! You're a disgusting, filthy, unwashed, bigoted, stupid, thuggish, nauseous, shallow, pathetic, hypocritical, backstabbing, puerile, cerebrofecalithic, complete bloody psychopath! If I ever see you scratching at that revolting tiny syphilitic crab-infested thing between your legs again, I'll cast a spell to permanently turn it inside out! I hope someone sodomises you with two dead donkeys! You have no redeeming qualities whatsoever! Your mother was a grub and your father was a deformed one-legged pig with leprosy! You're more worthless than a dolphin with wheels, you bastard! You're a gully dwarf with, with no manners at all!"

Korgan was quiet after Aerie had finished. While she stood there and panted, he laughed a long, leisurely cackle. "Bet you your cheeks'll be red for a week after you realise what ye've said, girl. Ye've proved to be worth something after all. My work here is done."

"It wasn't your work, don't flatter yourself," Aerie said, still breathing hard and her face scarlet with exertion. "I grew because of my friends. Not because of people like you saying cruel things."

Korgan didn't bother to reply to her. "I'm looking forward to the last battle between Bhaalspawn and Bhaalspawn," he said. "For a long while I've been wanting to fight something worth my time."

He tipped the elf a wink as he walked away. Fire giant catapults still shook the landscape every quarter-hour or so.

Saradush was hell this time of year.

--