Well, it has been quiet, hasn't it? Even more so than an average weekend. I suppose there are always ups... and downs... and ups! And downs. 
I owe almost everyone I know an email, and consider this a formal apology to anyone who falls under that heading.
Here's another one of my patented weird formatting stories. It's fairly bizarre, but what can we do? There's not much to say this time, other than that there's an unusually low ratio of Minsc insults to inner monologue today. Or maybe I'm just tired.
Lara, be happy, we've got Yoshi.
Mark, never say I didn't Tell You Another Story. Now, don't you regret asking?
Much thanks to zan for her invaluable assistance in working with this evil bugger of a story. I'm still self-conscious about it, but a good bit less than before (and thinking about "things left unsaid" got me to revise the conversation a bit, too.
Some of the italic sections are partially pulled from a previous installment of CoM. The others aren't.
Damn I'm nervous. ;X
Well. Without further ado...
The Story So Far...
Darvith (Our "hero", the spectacularly vain Ward of Gorion and Child of Murder) killed his brother, Sarevok, along with help from his companions Montaron, Viconia, Eldoth, Edwin and Shar-Teel. After the battle, however, they began to go their separate ways, and in the end, it was only Darvith and Viconia (his longtime lover.) Together, they were mercenaries in Baldur's Gate, soon joined by Darvith's foster sister Imoen and long-abandoned "guardians" Jaheira and Khalid. And after a time, Viconia too, left (CoM Prologue.) Darvith continued to work with Jaheira, Khalid and Imoen but unknown to any of his companions, Darvith had put his passion for death and poisons to work at a far darker profession after hours. Only Khalid suspected there was danger beneath his friendly guise (CoM1.) In time, Khalid confronted Darvith, and was killed in the ensuing struggle. Before this could come to light, the lot of them were kidnapped by Jon Irenicus (CoM2.) For an indeterminate period of time, Irenicus tortured Darvith, who escaped the pain through a series of dreams/hallucinations before being rescued by Imoen(CoM3.) Together he, Imoen, Jaheira, and Imoen's friend Minsc began their escape (CoM4.) Over the next hours, they encountered a mephit room, a riddling genie (CoM5) and a room of semi-dead men in bottles (CoM6.) After Darvith assassinated a dwarf, they managed to re-equip to some degree in Irenicus' armory, as well as reclaim the Sword of Chaos which had once belonged to Sarevok (CoM7.) Unfortunately, though progress seemed fine, Imoen was not. Finding Irenicus' bedroom, complete with a half-done painting of Imoen, triggered a confrontation between brother and sister that left Imoen near catatonic and Darvith overcome with rage. He left her with the dryads to calm himself, and her (CoM8) and he, Jaheira, and Minsc investigated a round bedroom, finding the key to a portal the dryads described as the way out. Darvith retrieved Imoen (CoM9) and together they encountered a captured cambion whom Imoen, in a trance of sorts, nearly freed from captivity. As they left, they were confronted by clay golems. After throwing Imoen through the portal, Darvith was just barely saved from death by the actions of Ulene, the leader of the dryads. The battle, however, left his hands severely injured. Stumbling through the portal, he found himself on the floor, surrounded by his companions and being watched by Yoshimo, who was up against a wall with Darv's dagger to his throat, when last we left them...(CoM9) And here we are.
Child of Murder
Chapter Eleven: The Torment That Echoes
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
-Paul Gauguin-
Yoshimo?
“Assistance?” I hiss in his ear, “You certainly do not behave as one worthy of our assistance. Indeed, I would say your behavior is more in line with an agent of our foes. Friends do not skulk about in shadows, mm?” Strands of his hair are tangled around my fingers, cutting off the circulation. Blood dribbles down my wrists. My palms ache and throb.
Yoshimo stands like a cat frozen in contemplation of danger. “Calm yourself,” he says, “I had no choice but to watch and confirm that you were not in league with the evil that dwells in this unholy place.” He maintains his composure admirably, even with a dagger to his throat.
Minsc scowls in his ridiculous fashion. “We serve no evil mages, no sir!” he says, “But Boo looks upon you with suspicion, little man.” The hamster squeaks, and I attempt not to growl under my breath. “Never have I seen his whiskers quiver so!”
…Perhaps if I were to cut out his tongue…
Well, there will be time for that later.
Jaheira grips her scimitar. “You skulk in the shadows like an assassin, and with all we have seen and suffered, we have little reason to trust in strangers.”
I press my blade closer to Yoshimo's throat. He does not flinch.
“Still,” Jaheira continues, her voice firm and her eyes on my hand, or his throat. I am uncertain which. “It is uncharitable to leap upon the man as though he were already convicted of treachery. We should hear him out.” Hear him out. Oh very well, Jaheira, why not? After all, we have not wasted enough time, just yet.
“Very well,” I say, “You are correct.” Jaheira nods in response as I speak into Yoshimo's ear closely enough that I am intrigued by his ease of stance. “Tell me. How did you come to be here, mm? Does this sorcerer collect any idiot who wanders into his path?”
The man grimaces. “I am no idiot. I am Yoshimo!” He pauses, looking at me from the side of his eyes, then frowns. “You know. Yoshimo?”
Imoen rubs her arms as if chilled. “I've never heard of you.”
His shoulders slump slightly, and he sighs. “You must be new to Athkatla.”
Jaheira raises an eyebrow. “Athkatla?” She asks. The shadow of hope falls over her face. I suppose she is familiar with the place, then? Harper business and such.
“We have never been to Athkatla,” I say. “Are you saying that is where we are now?” A thought both intriguing and off-putting; I do not appreciate being on unfamiliar grounds so soon after such an experience as this. Even so, it is good to connect our physical position to an actual city rather than an unknown “somewhere.”
The man pauses for a long time, licking his lips. “I am unsure. When I arrived I was drugged, or unconscious. If it were the former, there is no telling how long I have traveled. If it were the latter, I doubt I could have been carried far.” He looks at me for a moment. “I would be grateful if you would remove the dagger from my throat.”
I stare at him. His face sparks memories. I push them aside and return to the business at hand. “You cannot be serious. You have done nothing to prove yourself trustworthy.”
Imoen's hand rests lightly on my shoulder. “Come on Darv. What's he gonna do with all four of us here?”
Ah Imoen, you would be quite shocked at the capabilities of one man. And regardless of one's prowess, there is always another of greater threat. Of course it is unlikely that this Yoshimo is a living legend in disguise, and thus unlikely that he is particularly dangerous to the lot of us together, but even so I pull the dagger from his throat only reluctantly. I watch every breath and every movement as Yoshimo relaxes and touches his neck.
Freed from immediate threat, he takes a deep breath and glances up at me. “My thanks. I find my neck quite useful in continued speech, as well as continued life.”
I look him over again. “You remind me of someone I once knew,” I tell him. “A woman, Tamoko. Kara-Turan, are you? She was the same.” He is fairly petite, though in impeccable shape, and his darkly stained leather armor has been fit specifically for his body, I am certain. His garments are hardly the tattered uniform of Irenicus' prisoners. Strange that he would still carry his personal equipment, when ours was so thoroughly stripped away.
“Kozakuran, my friend,” he says, his voice slightly stiff though I cannot imagine why. “I came to Faerun in pursuit of my fortune. My profession is quite overrun, at home.”
“And what profession is that?” Jaheira asks, folding her arms over her chest.
“Those of Faerun call me 'Bounty Hunter,'” he says with a crooked grin, “But do not worry. There is no bounty on your head.” Anymore. “I have gained quite a name in this area. Perhaps I crossed the wrong man, however, as one night I went to bed, and awoke in a strange room with a very sore head. I do not know how long I was there before awakening.”
Imoen looks at him. “It can't have been that long. He would've taken your stuff.”
Yoshimo blinks. “Ah yes, that is a good point, young one,” he says, a line of thought appearing on his brow. “Perhaps my old commissions have not yet dried, then. I do not know how to escape this place, but if you would assist, I am certain you would not regret it,” He looks over our scraps of armor and sub-par weaponry. The only things of true use we possess are Minsc's ill-fit armor and the Sword of Chaos, strapped to my back. “We are more likely to escape together than alone”
Are we, really? I am not so certain of that. Still, it is better that he is before us than behind.
I nod briskly. “Very well.” As he moves away from the wall and toward the center of the hall, I follow him with my gaze. “But I will watch your every move.”
“My apologies,” he says, and his smile sends wrinkles spreading from the corner of his eyes and mouth. “But I am not terribly interesting to watch.”
“For the next handful of minutes at least,” I say, “You are the most interesting thing in the bloody world, to me.”
I am suffocating in all this quiet. Every step seems muffled by the oppressive silence. Were we free this could be a weapon if used properly, but here it serves only to remind me how unfamiliar a place this is, even compared to the previous stretch of prison. The walls have changed, the floors have changed and now even the echoes have shriveled into nothing. I have grown accustomed to the noises: grinding, laughter, and footsteps in the distance. Each one told us we had left something behind, or had something yet to meet. Here, there is no way to know what lives inside these halls. Perhaps it is nothing.
Perhaps.
The door before us stands open. Stepping over the threshold I scan the room, a cursory look for any obvious dangers. More bookcases and display cases. Crates in against walls, or in the center of the room (well, one knows for certain the man has sufficient storage space.) Black metal cages. Bottles filled with liquid. Shelves filled with oddities. The preserved corpse of a bat. The dissected corpse of a rabbit. There is death everywhere. The room smells like nothing.
Surgical equipment lies abandoned on large, man-sized tables. Streaks of blood stain the floor and this room is so cold I see only what any human would. It is fortunate then that the room is illuminated, though only barely, by ever-present balls of magical light. I have grown to rely too strongly on infravision.
Yet even in the dimness I see the corpse lying on a table, organs I presume to be his kept in jars along his side. Imoen grips my arm, and looks away.
“Don't make me see anymore death,” she whispers. There is yearning in that voice, as well. “Don't make me see this death. Not again.”
This death? I look across the room. In the dim light, I see a small-boned hand, and brown hair spread around slightly pointed ears and a hollow-cheeked face.
In my mind, I hear his voice.
“I l-looked in your room, when you were gone. I f-found these.” Paper at my feet. Maps. Notes. He looks at me as though he expects repentance, or apologies. He will get neither.
Now I know whose corpse this is.
I move toward the table and Imoen's hand holds me back for a stretch of two steps, refusing to let me proceed. Finally, she snaps away. Footsteps walk with mine, too light to be Minsc, too heavy to be either dear Imoen or our new “friend.”
“You a-accept Him as your f-father. You accept B-Bha—” He moves toward me, awkward even in anger. I study his every movement. “I accept myself. Can you say the same?”
There are knives scattered everywhere. Across the floor. On the table. On bookshelves. Some are clean, some covered in black blood that clings to their surface or chips off into flakes and powder around the blade. The clean ones glimmer.
Jaheira's wail tears from her throat, the sound of intermingled anguish and rage. I stare down at the face on the table, if one could still call it a face.
“I accept my d-duty. My duty to myself, and to G-Gorion. He tried to make you a g-good person, no m-matter what you were, and where your b-blood came from. He f-failed, and so did I.”
Greenish-red skin covers his head and neck. Blisters mar his exposed flesh. He is bloated and disfigured. His chest is open and his skin peeled back to expose decaying muscles, and emptiness where organs should be.
Jaheira screams again.
“J-Jaheira and I were to g-guide you. We were to h-help you become a m-man who would make Gorion p-proud.”
“Calm down!”
“N…no, let me go, Imoen. This cannot be. Khalid!”
I smirk just a bit.
Jaheira's thrashing throws a bottle falls to the floor and it smashes. It is empty, save for embalming fluid.
“Well then. I suppose you did fail, didn't you?”
“Illusion… dream! It cannot be real…” Another scream. No, this one is a mangled sob. It is often difficult to tell the difference.
“Y-yes.”
The corpse is almost unrecognizable. Almost. There is enough of him remaining that we cannot have been here too terribly long.
“Damn you. Damn you.”
“But I can st-stop you now.”
Or perhaps he kept the body fresh.
Jaheira's fists pound the table at Khalid's unmoving side.
Minsc's form moves forward a step. Imoen blocks his path. “No Minsc,” she says. “Don't.”
“Damn you for leaving me…”
The freezing air bites my skin. Preservation, I realize.
“I will have the heart of the monster who has done this. I will tear their… I will. No. No….” She sobs and screams and I watch.
“You fail again," I say, "But this time, you die.” Khalid's blood pools beneath him, staining the carpeting below him. Whatever will I tell the cleaning staff?
Imoen grabs Jaheira's shoulders. “He didn't suffer. I-I saw it… I saw it done-"
“You saw… you saw this… done to him?”
His blood stains my fingers, my blade, my shirt.
I touch bloodstains on the remnants of the shirt. His blood, or mine?
“He was already dead. He was already dead when—“
“I won't hear this. I will not listen.”
His last word is stumbled out, like everything he has ever said.
“Khalid…”
“J-Jaheira…”
“It seems he is gone,” I say, softly. Stating the obvious of course, but to a reasonable effect. She flinches when I say the word. “I had suspected he might be.”
She shrinks away and glares at me with eyes of ice. “You! You suspected. Why? Why?”
“It seemed a possibility.” My words are chosen carefully, and spoken gently. “And a rather great one. He was not with us. He seemed to be nowhere.” She stares at me blankly. “I was prepared for this,” I tell her. And it is, of course, true. “But I am sorry for your loss.” Perhaps not so true.
“Stop! No more words. Words are nothing. What do you know of words? What do you know of loss?”
“Idiot,” The words come before I can stop them. “Do not ask such inane questions. I watched my father gutted before my eyes. Never ask me what I know of loss.” I hear my own voice, cutting and uncontrolled.
“You saw him die but you did nothing,” Jaheira shrieks, her hands in fists at her side. “How dare you compare?”
“I could do nothing. The fool died protecting me – he threw himself on a blade for my sake.” Breathe deeply. Calm yourself. I look away from her, to Khalid, lying still.
It has been some time since I last looked on a man's corpse at any length. The clichés are a lie. He does not look at all asleep.
“Do not look at him,” She screams, “You do not deserve to see. Bastard! Heartless bastard! You insult your father for protecting you? My Khalid is dead. If it had been me, if I had the chance … I would have thrown myself in front of the blade to save him.”
What? I stare at her.
“Do you have 'feelings,' abbil?” Viconia asks me, “I wonder sometimes, when you speak of your father. Such ice in your voice. I have not heard such heartlessness since I left Underdark.” We are reclined inside our shared room in Feldepost's Inn, and her slim fingers trace patterns on my chest.
Jaheira is still sobbing. “I did not have a chance to see… I did not have a chance to… to… shut up. Just shut up. Leave me. Everyone leave me. I do not want your voices. The only voice I wish to hear is… is dead.”
Viconia's eyes are blue diamonds against the oblivion of her skin. I stare into her unflinching gaze. "I watched him die again and again." Those images are burned in my mind. They repeat in my dreams. "I grew used to the sight." At first, when he fell, there was only emptiness.
Jaheira slides to the floor at the side of the table, and I watch as she speaks her prayers to Silvanus below her breath. I hear her voice, thick and stumbling and empty. She clutches herself and stops, and then starts again.
Heartless bastard, she called me. Heartless for not throwing myself on Sarevok's blade when Gorion sent me away. Heartless for not dying in his stead. He would never have allowed me to. I would never have wanted to. Heartlessness is relative. Everything is relative. I look away.
“Yes.” I say. “I have a heart.” I am losing myself in her gaze. How detestably weak-minded. I look away.
Yoshimo shifts uncomfortably.
“Khalid of my heart,” Jaheira whispers, “Let my love… let my love guide the way…”
Viconia sneers as she stands. White sheets fall away from bare skin as she grabs for her robe. “Such a shame,” she purrs, in that voice like razors in honey. “I was beginning to think you admirable.”
Imoen pulls me away from Jaheira. “Give her some privacy, okay? I think she maybe needs a second to think.”
“We do not have time,” I say, still watching Jaheira. “Irenicus could return at any moment.”
Yoshimo nods. “It is true. But perhaps a moment is not too long, ne?” He looks at me so oddly, and I raise an eyebrow. “I have lost a sister recently,” he says, “When I heard she was gone, I was filled with rage. But with time alone, I soon found that I knew what I must do.”
“Avenge her?” I ask. It is all I can imagine could be done.
“Yes,” he says. “That is precisely it.”
Jaheira stands suddenly, and approaches us, her hands still shaking, and sweat on her brow. “Come. Quickly. We must go. We do not know how much time we have. Let us escape this… this grave, and seek the light above.”
“Wait, Jaheira,” Imoen bites her lip, and takes a breath before continuing. “S…shouldn't we try to get him back? I mean, it could work.” Damn. That is all we need. That is all I need. A raised Khalid bumbling over his words, tripping on his feet and telling tales best left unspoken.
“I, more than anyone, know the ways life can return,” Jaheira says, then moves toward the door. “But there is a line which… cannot be crossed. He has been… desecrated, not only killed. No. I will honor him with vengeance. There will be payment for this crime… and I will not rest until it is collected.”
Well. That is better then.
Imoen shakes her head. “I still think we should try to –“
Jaheira spins around, her lips a tight line, her eyes blazing. “Your opinion is that of a fool who thinks magic and spells are the only forces which shape our lives!” Oh my, what venom. “You will learn that… that some things are unalterable and that I cannot… Enough. I would leave this place.”
Jaheira disappears down the hall.
Minsc watches her leave, strangely silent. When he looks back, his face is not the befuddled daze it has always been. His mouth is set in a slight frown, and he shakes his head. “Minsc knows loss as well,” he says, “I will go and watch over her.” He wanders through the door. For a moment, the entire doorframe seems eclipsed by his bulk, and then he is in the hallway and moving farther away with each passing moment. His gait is not unlike some lumbering beast, and like such a beast, his steps shake the ground underfoot.
Yoshimo follows a few steps, then stops and looks back me, and at Imoen. “Why do you think she would not raise him?” he asks, “If I had been there when my sister died, I would not have allowed anyone or anything to stop me from bringing her to a temple.”
I shrug slightly. “I could not say. She is capable enough of raising men on her own. Perhaps she knows him to be beyond salvation. Or perhaps it is against her beliefs in the wonder of nature.” I try to keep the sarcasm from my voice, but likely fail. This place wears on my nerves, and the tide of emotion drains at my patience.
Imoen wrinkles her nose. “Don't be mean. I think she should have tried… but he doesn't look like…” she sighs. “I can't talk about this anymore. I don't want to think about it anymore. Come on, let's go.” She slips her arm onto mine. I wave my hand, prodding Yoshimo forward, and he steps in front of us, nodding just slightly. Better before than behind, after all.
I match my pace to his, staying far enough back to be outside his reach, and yet close enough to react if he should do anything… unwarranted. “I am curious, Yoshimo,” I say, “about this sister of yours.”
He does not answer.
Parallel Journeys - Nyx's Archive and St
