Author's Note: I have taken some liberties with the characters. Nevalle's profession may or may not be what I have portrayed it as here. I also wish to state that I do not own the characters or the setting, those belong to Obsidian and Atari. Enjoy! Comments and critiques are always welcome.

They say you can never go home again. Once you leave, you change; your home changes, and when you return it is different than you remember. The people and the buildings may be the same. They may haunt the same places and do the same deeds that they did before you left. But they are imperceptibly different. It is no longer home, as you remember it. The comfort and welcome is gone, a shadow of its former self. You have changed, and the world has changed with you.

OOO

The keep looked the same – newly quarried stone gleaming in the wane light of twilight. Pennons flapped in the brisk wind from towers that weren't even there a fortnight ago. The place bustled with activity: Grey Cloaks walked the walls; messengers entered and left by the gate; farmers worked in the fields. It was a busy, vital outpost of civilization in a sea of wilderness. It was hers. Her home, if any place could be. But since that day she'd been forced by circumstances to leave West Harbor, she hadn't felt truly at home anywhere. Especially not here, at this keep. Yes, by title and deed it belonged to her now. But the walls enclosed her, made her feel vulnerable and weak. The stone surrounded her and cut her off from the web of life. It was no small thing for a druid to own property: it was frowned upon in druid circles. It was not done. But she had done it, in service of a greater good and in the name of keeping the balance.

The path that led her here had been perilous and fraught with surprise. Companions had joined her, seeking safety in numbers on a dangerous path. Planar beings hunted her, searching for shards of a silver sword. A city had cried out for her aid, when no one else would give it. She had acquiesced to it all, the slowly building burden of responsibility for others; for land; for a purpose. It chafed her to be in charge of other people. Always she had felt her path lay in the ways of Nature. The only role she had sought was one of protector of the wild. Then in one life shattering night, a purpose had been thrust upon her. A destiny forged when she was but a babe, and one she could not out run or ignore. Now here she was, a knight of Neverwinter: owner of Crossroad Keep and the only thing standing between civilization and complete annihilation. She was 20 years old, and her frame felt too young to bear this kind of service and responsibility.

Beside her walked Zhjaeve and Qara. The Githzerai was implacable, as ever. There was never a hint of any emotion on her face. Whatever she thought was hers alone: there was no reading her through her facial expressions. You just had to wait until she deigned to speak to you of her wisdom. Qara was almost her opposite in that regard. Tempestuous, fiery and arrogant, the young sorceress seemed to feel that the world owed her something. Why she still bothered to travel with them, Kylie didn't know. She had her uses, but her lack of control had fried them all on many occasions. She had been strangely subdued in their walk back to Crossroad Keep. Now that their destination was finally in view, however, Qara was returning to her brash demeaning manor.

"Why don't we have horses? Then we wouldn't have to walk everywhere like servants. We could just ride here and ride there and it would take a lot less time!" she said, flinging her arms about as she talked.

"No stables," Kylie answered. "Are you in that much of a hurry to face the King of Shadows?"

"N..No." Qara said. She shot Kylie a fiery look. "But that still doesn't explain…"

"Enough, Qara. Just be happy we got back in one piece. That elemental had your name written all over it, after all. I might as well not have even gone on that little expedition. All Sidney Natale wanted was you dead and Zhjaeve to read those names to her. I was just background, this time."

"Without you, know that we would not have succeeded in gathering these names to us," the zerth said. "Know that you were necessary, so that we may all survive."

"Well, thanks, Zhjaeve, but I still think I could have stayed at the keep. Maybe I should have sent Casavir with you, or Khelgar. They could have kept you alive just as well as I did: perhaps better. It's what they're suited for after all."

"Maybe you should have sent the paladin or the dwarf. At least then we wouldn't have to be returning to find that man here," Qara piped in.

"We needed another sergeant. He'll do. I have to remember to get him assigned to some duty tomorrow. Don't worry, Qara, you won't have to interact with him, unless you want to." She gave the sorceress a sly look. Qara was red faced and looked flustered. Kylie smiled to herself. A man might be just the thing that Qara needed to gain some stability.

The three walked on in easy, if not quite companionable, silence. Soon they were passing through the farm fields leading up to the keep. When they had all first come to this place, the fields were overgrown with weeds and saplings and full of rocks. Now they were plowed and planted with all kinds of crops, ready and waiting to feed the hungry mouths living in and around the keep. Part of her had cringed at the transformation from unkempt wildness to cultivated rows. It screamed against her druidic nature. But as the lady of this keep, the cultivation and order were necessary to feed her growing populace. It was another one of those concessions against her nature she'd had to make in order to fight this war.

Too soon they were inside the walls. Ammon Jerro was waiting by the gate, as if he had known they would return today, at this time. Well, maybe he did at that. The man was enigmatic. He knew things that he shouldn't, and he applied his considerable talents to get his way in matters. But the truth was he probably saw them from the walls as they made their slow approach. When they had left on this journey, he had made it quite clear that he would be anxiously awaiting their return.

"Did the Natale woman have anything of interest?" he asked, his voice grating on Kylie's last nerve.

As they spoke, Qara slunk off towards the main building. She enjoyed spending time in the library, which was odd. She had often railed on and on about the indignity of having to learn sorcery from books. Kylie personally thought there was something about Sand that intrigued Qara, but whether it was love or hate she didn't want to know. Sand was often in the library, and Qara was often skulking around outside it. It had to be where she was heading to now. Kylie really didn't think Aldanon was the one holding any pull for the sorceress.

"She did, actually," and with that Kylie and Zhjaeve spoke of what they'd found to Ammon. As they talked, the sun set and the sky flared red and purple. Just as the last light was fading from the purpled clouds, their conversation finished. Kylie walked up to the keep, and into her room.

Exhaustion hit her. She had been 4 days on the road, and one of those days had involved a fight for her life and the lives of her companions and the new sergeant she'd recruited out from under Sydney Natale. The Luskan mage was dead, but that didn't mean their troubles with the Hosttower were over. The reality of their situation hit her hard. They had very little time left to muster defenses against the King of Shadows. No one was coming to help them. In the end, the battle would fall here. It would be up to her to etch a victory out of the coming darkness.

She removed her travel stained leathers and laid them outside her door for the servants to clean and mend. The only thing on her mind right now was some rest and relaxation, and not in that particular order. Donning a simple pair of breeches and a brown tunic, she left her room to find some solace in a mug at the inn.