Quick A/N:
Welcome! For those of you who have read my other NWN fic, Dancing with Shadows: hello again; Mae'rillar might look familiar to you.
Although my Hero of the Underdark is also featured (as a cameo really) in my other story, you don't need to have read Dancing with Shadows to understand this fic. We do, however, begin with a brief overlap where Mae'rillar is called away from a minor role at Crossroad Keep back to the Underdark by a suspicious letter, ten years after the events of HotU. And what follows will remind Mae'rillar and Sharwyn of the events of Hordes of the Underdark, the primary narrative of this fic (with a few twists, naturally ;) ).
This has been slightly augmented (prelude, clearer marking of years etc.) since its original posting.
Reviews are greatly appreciated (especially in an old threat like this) and always make my day. :3
Crossroad Keep, Eastern Neverwintan Lands,
The Frozen North
1375 DR, Year of Risen Elfkin
Hammer 'Deepwinter'
…she asks for you every day. Please come to us, Brother. Our Lady does not have long left, and I know in your heart you will regret this if you do not see her at the last. She says she sees a dark shadow waiting for you in your future if you do not come to us, and there is a red hunger closer at hand, torn asunder long ago and now slowly reforming, an evil as ancient and dangerous as the shadow it fights. We beg you, come to the Seer before she dies. Do you not still love her as you once did? We wait in the Promenade of the Dark Maiden. You know the way. She smiles as I write…she knows you will heed me.
The letter weighed like a stone in Mae'rillar's hands as he watched Neeshka and her companions riding back in through the gates. From this distance he could see her relief clearly, even through the misty window of their house's bedroom in the keep's main bailey with the glaring sunlight burning at his sensitive eyes; something about the set of her shoulders, the flick of her tail, the lightness of her footsteps as she dismounted. His lover of the past year or so did at least have some form of grudging friendship with Qara – both were young, though the Tiefling rarely showed it these days – but it was not a surprise to see Neeshka looking so tired of the company she had been keeping. It made the Drow feel even more guilty that he would not be able to stay and keep her company. He would be abandoning her to them again without Isaviel to cheer her, for their Knight-Captain (Neeshka's closest friend) would be gone for maybe another tenday more, and who knew the horrors of war that would come in her wake.
"I have no choice," he sighed softly.
Crumpling the letter in his fist he turned away from the sight of his returning lover before she inevitably looked for him standing at that window. The letter had been waiting on his table the night before, and as soon as he had seen it he had understood that he really had no choice. There was no way that Nathyrra would have dared to contact him, not after everything. She had told him that their Seer had been attacked in a Drow raid near the holiest of Eilistraee's temples. Though he had not learned Nathyrra's methods of weaving the truth behind spoken almost-truths like Sharwyn had, he could tell there was something…else going on here. The Seer must have been injured, or threatened severely. For such blasphemy to occur at the Promenade of the Dark Maiden itself, the enclave of Eilistraee's order… The thought of it made the exiled Drow warrior shake with rage, and once he had read through Nathyrra's words another time he had known that he could not let it stand. He had to go.
Mae'rillar did not allow himself to look back. Pulling his pack on over his cloak, he covered his head with his deep hood. He had expected to be leaving for Neverwinter, not Waterdeep, but the information the Guild had sent him no longer seemed so important. Neeshka would have to find someone else to deal with the problem. Past love called him elsewhere. So instead he would be returning to the City of Splendours after more than ten years away. And it had been even longer since he had needed to pass through Skullport. A master of stealth, trained in the treacherous Underdark, where one wrong movement and one audible step could result in swift death he knew how best to leave unobserved.
He strode to the back door quickly, intending to head straight for the northern wall, where he could climb over the edge easily unnoticed and it would take only a little more effort to get below the overhanging ridge of the cliff there to climb to the ground. The Drow weapon master knew that if he told Neeshka his reasons for leaving and why he would not be returning any time soon, she would be angry and unhappy…and she would also try to go with him or to stop him. Neither option was one he would take.
With a shake of his head Mae'rillar opened the back door of the house he had shared with his Tiefling companion and stepped out into the bright white glare of the snowy Frozen North. At least he would not have to suffer the cold or the sunlight for much longer. Not for some time, anyway.
"Forgive me, sweet Neeshka," he whispered into the howling wind, wrapping his dark cloak about him and stepping away into the snow.
Tower of the Hero's Troupe,
Sigil,
1375 DR, Year of Risen Elfkin
Hammer 'Deepwinter'
The letter fluttered to the ground unnoticed from Sharwyn's suddenly limp fingertips. The Seer mortally wounded? Nathyrra, begging for help? The Drow mage had promised in her note that she had sent a copy to Mae'rillar and Valen as well. The old friends…the ones who had shared the horrors of Cania and played a part in that glorious victory for Waterdeep; a glory she, Sharwyn, dedicated bard and scholar of heart-rousing propaganda, had helped to instil afterwards upon the story.
"Gods, I don't believe this," she sighed aloud. After everything she had endured, after all that toil and stress and the effort she had exerted afterwards into making the tale seem so tamely heroic, she had surely earned a time of peace?
Her lips trembled with momentary indecision as her eyes drifted across the lavish room, draped in fine silks from across the Planescape, tapestries pinned to the wall depicting battles and other heroic scenes through history. Even her marbled table bore upon its surface a wondrous white light gem reportedly brought all the way from Celestia in the Upper Planes. She had come up here into her study to perform a final read-through of her newly bound novel, the one into which she had poured the truth, all of the truth and only the truth. No propaganda. No overdone valour.
She had stepped through the archway, upon the first of the thick, lavish rugs, revelling in the cheerful light created from the enchanted 'skylight' set in the painted roof to give the illusion of a real sun up above, sending a warm glow throughout the little domed work room, given a multi-hued radiance in this place of hanging kaleidoscopic draperies. The window beyond the desk belied the truth of the city outside, where no sun did shine, nor night ever fall. Were one to look up into the 'sky' they would see just what they saw all around them; the never-ending grey and red and blue and pink and burnt orange of Sigil, the ring shaped City of Doors.
Bustling, labyrinthine, loud and full of heady scents both awful and wonderful, teeming with all the languages of the planes from Celestial to Infernal and everything in between with every race of creatures one could conceive of, all living in enforced peace in this place, the crossroads between the Planes. Sharwyn loved Sigil for all of this, and for its automatic tolerance of every creature whether good or bad, and its admittance of any belief and history, so long as the peace was kept and no worship was held. It was her escape from her birthplace, the Prime Material Plane, and in its gentle heat and the unconquerable enthusiastic bustle it perpetuated she could find solace from the lingering memories of dreadful Cania.
Now Nathyrra was telling her that the Seer had been attacked and she must return to the Prime Material Plane, to the Underdark no less, and meet Mae'rillar in Skullport before heading to the Promenade of the Dark Maiden to say final farewells to their former mistress? Only, Sharwyn understood Nathyrra's code, and the underlying hint that something was not quite as it seemed was clear: that the Seer probably wasn't mortally wounded at all, but something was very wrong and the former Rebels needed her help.
"Oh to the Hells with it all, what choice do I have?" the bard cried at last, fairly stamping her foot with the frustration of it. She could not very well leave Nathyrra alone, could she?
It would be…strange seeing Mae'rillar again after not a hint of contact over the last few years (she hardly blamed him; the outcome of events had been least favourable for him, their 'hero' after all). It would be better to meet him in Skullport first, before Valen met them further on. A little strand of dread ran through her at the thought, though it would be heavenly to see her Tiefling again after too long.
Well. The theatre troop would just have to look after itself for a…while. Maybe several Prime Material months, even. Come to think of it, maybe it was time to don her armour, sharpen her blade and check through her little spellbook again. Maybe she had missed adventure, after all. She could drop off her finished novel at The Yawning Portal on the way. Now, where was her portal key to Waterdeep…
