Prologue
Dark clouds, covering the starless sky in the middle of the night...Calm silence, disturbed only by the seldom howls of the wolves outside the city gates... the wind, whispering around her and making her black cloak wave around in a very dramatic manner... surely the situation was very romantic, but Cayla didn't really care about the atmosphere that surrounded her. There were more important things like now – like her own life. And what an interesting life it was!
A town in the middle of nowhere? Check.
Graveyard? Check.
Midnight? Check.
Shovel? Check.
Pale moonlight and dark clothes? Check! It looked really gothic, thus she hated this, but when you go unburying corpses, you don't want the local citizens to see you. Even someone duller than her could see that the rashemi would not be exactly happy if they see you trying to scamper away with the spirit of their grandmother, who happens to be a telthor berserker.
Spirit eater curse? Check. With one of her boots propped up on a gravestone, Cayla sighed and sticked the shovel in the wet soil – the lack of the spirit eater curse...or gift, as the Many called it, would've been a rather disturbing thing right now. It actually grew on her after the first month she spent in Rashemen – the fact that you had the power over people's souls was rather...pleasurable. It made her feel so powerful, even... godlike! Except for the fact that she had to scavenge for spirits in the middle of a graveyard every night, that is. So where was she? Oh, yes...
Bloodthirsty homicidal undead construct with multiple personalities? Check. She wanted to take Gann with her tonight - at least she could have a normal 'I-hate-you-so-much' conversation with him, but his alibi had been 'Well I'm really sorry, but I'm having a bad hair day, if you know what I mean, so I can't help you right now. I don't want anyone to see me right now – my hair's a mess and that would ruin my reputation! And you know how much I care about my reputation blah blah blah blah' All of this whispered behind a locked door in the Sloop Inn... Well, the end of his speech wasn't quite like that, but Cayla preferred to think that all of his "Look how handsome I usually am" talks had the same ending. But...Gann having hair problems? His hair was always as perfect as the hair of a servant of Neverwinter she once knew...long, long ago. Her Gannayev-to-common dictionary translated for her that Gann was in fact lying - he had probably found a farmer's daughter with dreams unravished by him and he wanted to have his fun with her. "And I hope that she's an ugly one!", her consciousness added with a streak of jealousy. So it was either the winged zealot of a cleric (who tried to give Cayla religious pamphlets whenever possible) or One of Many. And she'd take the Many over the zealot any day! Still, she wished that Safiya hadn't run away to some distant land in order to hide from the half-celestial and her Wall Speeches.
So, time to make some spirits angry!
.:Dark Mistress, why are you standing still with a blank expression on your face?:. asked the Many.
"Wha...? You ruined my dramatic reminiscences of the day, you dolt! Now give me that shovel and start helping me dig a grave, unless you want me to eat you too!" Cayla snarled back. Her choice of words wasn't good at all and she was sure that Gann would've been delighted by it if he could hear her right now.
.: As the Mistress wishes. Dark Mistress, would you mind if the Many join you in this feast:. humbly asked One of Many. This was getting very suspicious, she though – the Many were never meek and never called her 'Dark Mistress' before. Cayla really tried to make them do it, but alas, her persuasion skills were limited to 'Please?' and 'Pretty please with a spirit on top?' –the charming smile did all the suasion needed when she was dealing with the living. But it seemed to have no effect on undead and because of that she had thought that she was stuck with "Master" for life...until now.
"Sure, whatever." Cayla mumbled as she started digging a fresh grave, the soil on it still soft... She was getting really hungry and there haven't been any spirits near the city for a long time, so she was forced to dig graves at night in order to satiate her hunger.
A spirit rose from its grave. Something in her chest stirred and before she knew she was feeding on a ghostly child, probably a girl-it was hard to tell because its body had been disfigured by scars. It had a scared expression on its face, teddy bear in one hand and a thumb in its mouth. Cayla sensed how the Many were smiling behind her back, the rustling of ghostly tentacles getting louder as if the creature was shaking.
.: No regrets, Dark One?:.
"What do you mean?" – she asked without even turning back to face One of Many.
.: The Many were just pointing out that the Mistress just fed on an innocent child. As far as the Many remember, that is considered a sin in most societies. :.
"She was already dead, you know." Cayla sighed.
.: So the Dark Mistress doesn't remember? You killed this girl last week. You thought it to be an uthraki, disguised in order to transfer your gift on itself. The Many still remember how you laughed triumphantly over its charred corpse. :. – One of Many was now chuckling and soon the air got filled with distant echoes of mad cackles and hysterical laughter.
"That child?" Suddenly Cayla turned and faced the undead construct. "Well...I guess it was a real human girl after all." She tried to look indifferent and failed. "Hey, I guess I have something humane in me after all..."
"Uh...I remember it now – sitting on that mossy stone near the road, staring at the empty space that the sky is. If that is not suspicious, I don't know what is!" her voice got louder and more high-pitched than usual. "And you're right - I have no regrets." Suddenly, she sat on the nearest gravestone and threw the shovel away in one swift movement. "I'll do it again if I have to – I am more important than the simple peasants in this place. Right now I'm an endangered specie and that's what matters - there are a lot of peasants in this country and just one spirit eater, as you may know." Her elbow was now resting on her knee and her chin on the base of her palm.
.: Dark One, the Many truly admire your way of perceiving the situation:. She notices how the Many were getting closer and closer with every one of her nervous drawings of deep breath. She was panting – being forced to dig out a grave isn't that hard or tiring, but after each day the affliction was getting worse, the spirit hunger more restless and her body more and more exhausted after every night in the company of spirits. After all, Cayla wasn't some sort of muscled barbarian lass, but the most powerful spellcaster ever to be born. Or at least that's what she thought about herself – high self-esteem is a vital part of being a sorceress.
"Have you heard about personal space, One of Many? Stand back!"
.: We were promised to feed as well. And now the graveyard is silent because you already fed and the spirits are scared! So no soul would come to the Many:.
"And?" 'Well this is going to get awkward', she thought.
.: And we are hungry!:. The undead construct growled and got even closer.
"I see that. And your point is?" Being a sorcerer, she wasn't very bright and definitely not very wise. If she were, she would've immediately started casting a spell, while the Many weren't so near.
.: So the Many will feast on you, Dark One, if they don't get anything to feed on:. It howled and charged down upon her.
'Oh great, now is the best time for his loyalty to start wavering!'she thought and started casting a spell in order to protect herself. However, she couldn't concentrate as slimy tentacles and claws grasped at her feet and hands and her upper body got pinned to the gravestone she was sitting on before the sudden attack.
Wait, why wasn't it attacking? The sorceress saw in horror how her own shadow was now visible even though it was night – it was darker than the darkness around her even though the moonlight wasn't bright enough for that. She sensed how her own creation, a part of her, tried to take control of her mind, of her hunger...
One of Many was now even closer than Cayla though to be possible. The grotesque body pressed to hers stirred her hunger again and just as she was trying to let it loose and save herself from the unexpected assault, the Many embraced her and a wave of negative energy flooded through her body. Claws grappling the place where the shard used to be... 'It's not trying to eat my soul! It's trying to consume the hunger itself!'-she panicked. The voices of the undead construct seemed a lot clearer now – not distant echoes, but one and many in the same time, as if she was in a crowd. And then everything went dark...well, darker and she fainted.
Everything around her was black. 'Maybe I'm supposed to open my eyes', Cayla thought and decided to do it. Bad idea!
The colors around her were painfully bright. Purple, pink orange, red, green...every color that could possibly exist was spinning around her, swirling in a maelstrom which made her eyes hurt, but she couldn't close them – her body felt limp and she had no control over it. The sorceress tried to get up but didn't succeed. Deja vu... the last time that happened, she ended up in a barrow with a creepy red wizard and a creepier bear king. The wizard ran away and the bear spirit she killed without mercy – she now thought this to be a big mistake.
"Uuuuh, where am I?" She groaned and tried to get up a second time, but her body refused to obey her.
"Well well, it seems that the new addition to the Many is a drama queen. Great." A dark brooding voice, filled with arrogance answered her from behind. "Nobody asks such a question when they wake up after fainting." Actually, it sounded bored to death too.
What happened? Someone was here with her? But then again, where was 'here' exactly? Her vision was getting clearer and she wasn't sure if that was a good thing.
"Huh...Why am I floating around in mid-air?!" Cayla panicked and got up unbelievably fast. There wasn't any ground below her, neither was there a sky or anything else above and around her. Just glowing stars and dense darkness around her, some of the stars disturbingly close. "What... where... why?" She started to turn around in panic when she saw the owner of the voice.
It was a man, that's for sure. An extremely tall man having long ram-like horns above his head, a tail, long dark hair and wings red like blood. "You're a demon?" She started backing up with no avail other than falling down again.
"You should stop that", the man warned her with a wicked half-smile as if he was enjoying her illogical horror. "There is no such thing as space here. But if you're having fun with that, please continue – you have all the time in the world, after all." He got closer and helped her get up. "And no, I'm not a demon, I'm a half-demon – as you may see, these two things are a little different.", the tone of the man was now clearly showing how annoyed he was.
"Why am I here? What happened?" When she found out that the person with her was a demon...half-demon, she started raising her voice in panic, but now she was screaming. Funny thing – Cayla thought that she was one of the most powerful beings ever to walk on the face of Toril, but now she was so afraid of the unknown that she was feeling like a little girl.
"Once I had a little sister who asked a lot of needless questions. She stopped asking them right after I killed her... You remind me of her... just think about what you remember and you will get your answers." The half-fiend sighed and somehow managed to sit in mid-air.
'Okay, concentrate. The Many attacked you, then what? What happened?' Cayla remembered the sudden attack and then the nothingness...
"Ow! It hurts when I try to think!" She moaned and pressed one of her palms on her forehead. The man sighed and spoke with a slow, bored tune:
"Sit down and I'll answer your questions if you really wish to know all of that."
"Sit down?!" Still, she tried and to her amazement, succeeded. "You told me there is no such thing as space here!"
"Theoretically, yes. But if there were no space, how could you and me exist right now? We wouldn't even be flat, because flatness needs at least one dimension too. There is some sort of space inside the Many, but it couldn't and shouldn't be reduced to any limits – there is no space and there is endless space here in the same time. And it can be said that there is no such thing as real time here...ahem, this is if anything that exists or doesn't exist could be labeled as real or unreal. Because one thing can't be two opposites at the same time and if it actually is, then it doesn't really exist. Still, existence is ..." It seemed that his speech was going to be endless. It was even worse that Kaelyn's Wall talks!
"Just answers my questions, would you?"
"Okay, okay, calm down – I'll explain everything. We, and by "we" I mean the Many, tried to feed on you. But every creation is a slave of its master, so we couldn't really harm you if you didn't want us to. Thus we unified with you though your spirit hunger in order to get some of your power. Do you understand this?" he asked and she nodded. "Good! So you're a part of us now. Not physically, of course, because it's more of a soul link stronger than the one you had with us before." The man had a kind, but twisted smile on his face. "Go on, ask your questions." And now he got up and stood still, while looking around, as if he was expecting something to happen. The place really creeped her out, but this half-fiend was the worst part of the story – she didn't even know him and thus didn't know what to expect from him. Not to mention that his way of talking with long, unintelligible sentences was annoying as hell.
"So you're a part of the Many?" It was actually obvious as he said it numerous times, but Cayla had never been famous of her witticism or intelligence.
"I am. Not one of the dominating souls, but if you ask nicely the Child, I could gain control of the Many for a while - just ask for "The Other One"."
"Dominating souls?"
"The one in control of the body that Many inhabit is a dominating soul. The others just watch. But then again, the Many always watch on you, because we are a part of you and your mind."
"You WATCH me? All the time?! Even...while I'm taking showers?" Oh great, one crazed stalker in her life had been enough.
"Err...no?" Now he was obviously blushing. "We are not that twisted."
"So you're evil enough to kill hundreds of innocents, but not evil enough to watch me while I'm taking showers?"
"Yes!" he sighed with relief. "Now do you have other questions, spirit eater?"
"I guess I have lots of questions. Like how can I go back to the graveyard, am I really inside the Many, what's your name, why are you here...and other ones too..."
Questions rained down on the poor demonspawn, but he tried to answer to all of them with the stoic expression of someone who just doesn't care about anything at all. So he tried his best with them while the sorceress was watching the bored lashings of his tail dumbfounded.
"You can get out anytime you want – you are the Master of the Many and we obey to your commands...most of the time. And I have no use for names – they are for the living," he paused here and looked around nervously. "And I've been here since...well, forever. I got burned in the furnace for slaughtering my family and my neighbors a long time ago. Most of the Many have done something like that before they ended up here."
"No, don't get me wrong!" The fiend continued and his tail did one final, nervous lash in the air. - "I'm one of the few evil spirits that inhabit the Many. Most of us aren't really evil, unlike what you might think. But death, as the opposite of life, brings hatred like life brings love. A hatred so strong that it prevents any thought that one is supposed to have – the burning desire to bring death to those around you is what drives the undead, just like most of the living want to create life. The Child wasn't really evil, just unfortunate to do the right thing in the wrong time. It became malicious after it died – because few can resist the hate brought in the afterlife. So don't expect any thoughts from the Many. Only when we are in our own place here we can be what we really were when we were alive - the current dominating soul is not even supposed to be sane." Is his talk about death going to be endless, Cayla asker herself, but aloud she said:
"Your...own place?"
"Look around you. What do you see?" – the half-fiend waved a hand in the air in Cayla's general direction.
"Err...stars? Wait, those aren't stars...they're hollow orbs, aren't they?"
"Yes. Each of us has a place here. Some places are inhabited by more than one spirit, if that's what you're asking yourself now. Here...we have no contact with the horror that the undeath is – we are just dead. When one of us become the dominant personality, they unite with the undeath."
"I should introduce you to one of my friend, a cleric from the Seven Heavens. Just like you, she likes to give lengthy speeches about the misery that life is..." Now completely bored, Cayla stood up and saw how the demon spawn did the same. "Can I go home now? Pleeease?!"
"As you wish. I enjoyed your company, I really did. Being alone for a long time can make you enjoy any company..." He shook his head and started walking towards her, capturing a lock of her long, hazel hair in his fingers. "Just close your eyes and think about exiting the orb you're in...it should work, you are still alive and after all, you are the master of this place."
"Oh, and just one more thing," he continued. "I know that you don't think before speaking your mind out, but at least try to think before doing something, okay?"
And before she could answer, once again everything went dark.
End of Prologue. The real story starts in Chapter I – this was more of a chapter that explains the whats and whys of my semi-AU story. Still, you're probably asking right now: why a demonspawn and not the Brute or the Child? In the beginning, when MotB was announced, the rumors were that OoM was going to be a half-demon. And I still want that half-fiend NPC!
In the next chapter you should expect drama, action, romance and shirtless Gann!