Part 1: Hail The Hero
Early Eleasias, 1372 Dale Reckoning (Year of Wild Magic)
They were a weary, bedraggled group winding their way through the cavern. Walking rearguard, Valen could tell which of the drow had never been to the surface before. There was just a faint tickle of fresh air up ahead, and heads lifted to feel it - but many of the drow tipped their heads all the way back to look at the ceiling, as if they could already feel the sun above them, feel the layers of rock giving way to surface and sky.
He couldn't. Overhead and underfoot and all around was just rock, solid weight. He tried to turn his face into the wind and imagine what it would feel like to stand under the sun, but he couldn't. There were too many drow in front of him for the air to be anything like fresh, for the wind to feel like anything except one of the breezes that crossed the open spaces of the Underdark.
It had been a long time since he'd stood on the surface, so long that the memory of the warmth of the sun - of the particular hope of the sky - was all in shadows and grey veils in his mind.
Nathyrra, though...She hadn't stood on the surface before, but at least hid it better than most. She disguised uneasiness by stepping out of the long column and prowling up and down the passage as if anticipating an ambush.
Maybe she was: this was still the Underdark, even if it was close to the surface. Looking past the drow to the passage itself, Valen shifted his weight, lagging back a few steps as he studied it. A silvery band worked into his helm held an enchantment of infravision, letting him see the world as the drow did, and after more than a year underground with the Seer, he was used to reading the world as the contrast between warmer air and cooler stone - though it still gave him a headache that was made worse by the drow waltzing through and not noticing they viewed the world differently.
He didn't really like the way the tunnel honeycombed up ahead, either; it spread out into a cavern like a river meeting the sea, stalagmites and stalactites forming pillars and arches, offering a hundred different routes across. Physically, there were shadows, and the flow of warmer air through all those passages meant some of them looked to be a heart of heat for a living creature; it created shadows in their infravision as well as their darksight, places where a creature might hide and be undetected, dismissed as only part of the cavern.
He could think of something within each shadow of darkness or warmth and not have to repeat creatures until more than halfway across, none of which were peaceful - from creatures that were only territorial to intelligent beings who meant the ambush with all maliciousness implied by their actions.
Nathyrra had drawn up beside him, and when he looked down at her, her wry expression told him as much as the words her hands formed in the silent code that was the drow's second language. He huffed at her plan, but he didn't have a better one; he gestured assent, but managed to be sarcastic about it. She smothered a smile that was the equivalent of an outright laugh under the circumstances, and stepped to the side, easing around the first column.
He gave her three long breaths to fade into the tangle of warmth and shadows, and then headed off after the line of drow again; he moved no faster than he had been, but he wasn't trudging anymore, and now he had room to fight. His hand drifted down, brushed against the hilt of Devil's Bane at his side, and the burn of cold power up his arm turned the grey veils into ash, leaving nothing but here and now.
The world slowed, an eternity in each beat of his heart, more than enough time to look over each and every alcove and side-passage among their path. The breeze whistled through his helm even if he couldn't feel it on his face, carrying with it the ever-present drip of water, echoing from somewhere in the cavern. Beneath his boots the stone was solid, gritty instead of glossy, and while he didn't like how close the stone pillars were, most of them had thin centers that would shatter with one good blow from Devil's Bane.
He could sense, something beyond mere sight and sound, the moment the rest of the drow picked up on the danger of the passage, their unease at the surface above them turning smoothly to wariness. Weary they might be, but it was a weariness that came from months of fighting in the dark; like him, they were battle-hardened and probably glad to drop their hands to weapons and watch for an ambush. Those still able to fight eased to the outer edges of the column, grouping lightly around the vulnerable levitating sledges of supplies and wounded and dead in the center; the scouting vanguard fell back to the main body of the remnants of a drow army, the sharp tip of a spear.
They drew deeper into the web of passages, and Valen's heart sank at the sight of crude barriers of boulders - cylindrical logs, as if they'd been wood instead of stone - dropped in front of the widest of arches. It wasn't enough the company was forced apart from their close marching order to weave their way around the pillars; someone actually was turning this into a trap.
Being right didn't make him feel better.
Nor did being prepared truly help. Not when half their number were past a choke point, the other half easing the heaviest sledge through a narrow opening, and all the warning they got was a faint click of nail on stone. Howls of rage echoed off the ceiling, and a swarm surged out of the blackness above and below the sledge, crashing against the drow like a wave of heat.
Valen actually rocked back on his heels, staring at the centers of yellow warmth until he saw details: hundreds of diminutive figures, wearing nothing but loincloths as they jabbed at silvery armor with crude spears and cruder knives.
Goblins. Nothing more than a hoard of goblins.
Valen snarled, and the smooth hilt of Devil's Bane slid through his hand until he gripped above the clawed pommel, the heavy heads swinging freely. They had survived duergar and beholders and illithids and the overwhelming magic and assassins of a drow army, the worst the Underdark could throw at them and more, and goblins were attacking them nearly within sight of the surface.
The indignity fed into his rage, and he seized it the way he seized his weapon, and the next thing he knew, he was in the middle of a pack. Their spears scraped along his armor, as ear-piercing as their gibbering, and he didn't care. He lashed out with Devil's Bane, swinging the flail high and bringing it crashing down on the mass of goblins pressing against him.
With his first blow, he broke their spears, and the second, their skulls. Shoving through the bodies, he struck again, crushing one goblin between flail and rock formation; blood splattered hot on his face and armor as he ripped the spiked head free of the body, swung backhanded, air whistling through the chain louder in his ears then the gibbling of the goblins as they ducked and rushed backwards with as much frenzy as they'd rushed against him.
He twisted, sliding the hilt of Devil's Bane through his hands, keeping the momentum of the flail through the recovery move. There were no goblins in range, but instead, he struck at the closest pillar.
It shattered, spraying chips of limestone over the goblins who still lived and faced him. Gray-green skin bleeding from many nicks, they very visibly rethought if they really wanted to face him, and clustered back away from him. It gave him a moment's breathing space, just enough time to look over the rest of the drow.
Ahead of the trapped sledge, the vanguard had created a barricade out of the other supply sledges, and those who were able filled in the gaps between them with quick spears and swords; even the wounded Eilistraeeans could kill goblins in nearly the same number he could. But still the goblins kept coming, surging forward again and again so that none of them could turn from their position and vault over the crude-but-effective barriers to help the others, not without opening holes in their line that would leave their comrades vulnerable.
The rearguard, including him, were on their own. Hoarse shouts called for aid as the drow fought goblins on all sides; the spaces between the pillars of the cave were filled with goblins, and stepping to attack any of them forced the army still farther apart from each other. Only the Seer and Imloth had managed to stay near the sledge, but they were as hard pressed as the rest.
He got three steps towards them, whipping Devil's Bane left and right to batter his way forward, but then was stopped in his tracks by a piercing note rose above the screeches of the goblins. A clatter of spears dropped to the ground, the goblins screaming as they cowered back, hands clamped over their ears.
In spite of the circumstances, Valen grinned at the sight of the diminutive kobold standing on the sledge, claws plucking over the base of a lute; he wasn't sure if the ungodly noise was supposed to be a spell or an actual song, but damned if it wasn't effective. He half wanted to cover his ears himself, but that was his normal reaction to the bard, ever since he'd arrived with-
Valen's eyes fell on the gold shroud at the kobold's feet, bright amid the silver ones even in the black of the Underdark, and his heart twisted around itself. He shoved the pain aside. This wasn't the time, or the place. There were still goblins to kill; the retreat wouldn't last long.
It gave him enough time, though, to shove through the goblins and around the pillars, scattering more packs from where they harassed individual drow. It gave Imloth and the Seer space for her to scramble - somehow elegantly - onto the sledge with Deekin while the drow commander fought his way forward to Valen's side.
They both had just enough time to exchange a nod, understanding each other, and Imloth fell in at his side, commanding the rest of the drow who were slowly making their way to them with flicks of his blade and subtle gestures with his free hand.
Valen almost dared hope he would get something like a wall of blades in front of the Seer, the same way the vanguard had. They could hold off an army of goblins if they were only being attacked from one side.
Then the scent of ice, clean and cold, washed over the cavern, silencing the kobold's screech and leeching the warmth of hope. A voice boomed out, "No, my dear cousins, no! Fear not the dark elves - we, working together, are mightier than they! On! On to victory!"
"Nine fuckin' hells it's a mage," Valen swore in one breath, whirled and snapped Devil's Bane to break the knees of the goblins who took their leader at his word and advanced. Looking over the broken bodies, he saw the warm figure, arms waving, and recognized the general form as a hobgoblin, larger and stronger than the goblins it commanded, but still only a hobgoblin.
A hobgoblin with magic, anyway. The air crackled again, and he flinched to the side, not quite far enough; the lightning that sizzled from the hobgoblin to the sledge branched off to play over his armor. Pain flared along his chest and down his arms, and worse, his hands went numb, impossible to flex. Devil's Bane's hilt slipped through his fingers and dropped heavily to the ground. Knowing it was a useless movement, he dropped to a knee, swung an arm towards it, willing his fingers to move, to close around the hilt even if he couldn't feel where they were.
Cries around him told him the drow hadn't been spared from the lightning, and then the re-inspired goblins were on them all. They pressed on him, many small bodies filling his senses with heat and the foul stench of decayed vomit, their many spears level and jabbing at him, scraping along the armor; he twisted, used the vambraces of his armor to turn what blows he could aside, but there were too many to block completely.
The spears were crude and his armor was good, but as he knelt beside Devil's Bane, unable to better defend himself, there were so many chinks that were exposed. And they only needed to be accurate or lucky a few times.
The only mercy was that the hauberk underneath added some protection as well as padding. There was still the unexpected flare of pain as a spear sliced through the quilted fabric and along his shoulder, deeply enough to hurt even above the numbness that had come from the lightning. Worse was the low gasp that came from alongside him, telling him that Imloth was hurt as well, and badly enough to wrench a noise from the stoic drow.
Valen felt his mouth twitch into a snarl, felt the pain clear the numbness, enough that he knew where his fingers were and could force them back over his flail's hilt.
Not today. Not now. The sledge held enough dead in their shrouds. He would not have more because of mere goblins.
It was not his most graceful attack, but it worked: he flicked the heavy flail forward, caught an attacking goblin a glancing blow that had it staggering sideways, and that was enough space to get back to his feet. His hands still didn't feel right, but he could keep them tight around the hilt, and then unlike a rapier, all a flail needed was strength and will.
He lifted the flail and swept it down, and killed the goblins pressing him. Whirling as their bodies dropped, he thundered down on the goblins stabbing the fallen drow, and broke their bodies between Devil's Bane and the pillars of the cavern. A pocket of space opened up around them. "Can you stand?" he asked, the only question that mattered.
Propping his sword on the cavern floor, Imloth managed to push himself to a knee, a hand clamped on his neck. Scarlet blood ran freely between his fingers, down his silvery breastplate, mingling with the greenish goblin blood splattered across it. "Fought with worse," he gritted out.
Being a drow weaponmaster, he probably had. Valen gave a curt nod, and stepped in front of Imloth, snapping Devil's Bane in a figure-eight, giving Imloth space and time to struggle back to his feet. His eyes lifted across the cavern, fixed on the hobgoblin mage, and his mouth twitched into a snarl. There was a cavern between them, a cavern filled with goblins and pillars, but all that meant was that it would take longer to get there than it would to kill him.
Valen actually got a step forward. But Nathyrra - reminding everyone she was a mage as well as an assassin - got there first.
The hobgoblin lifted his hand, and red sparks flared over his fingers and down to swirl around his chest. Instead of crowing with magical delight, he smacked at each, shaking his hand in the hair between, as if they pained him.
A shadow rippled behind them, and then there was a sword sliding under his arm, deep into his armpit; the shadow resolved into Nathyrra's elegant lines, and she reached around the hobgoblin's body and closed a hand over his throat. Twisting the hobgoblin, in one wrenching gesture she ripped the rapier back out of the hobgoblin and let him drop to the cavern floor, into the spreading pool of his blood.
Whether because a mental command had been cut or out of terror of seeing what was to them a god-king so efficiently killed, the hoard of goblins broke off attacking, gibbering and creeling as they milled about.
Valen glanced over his shoulder, and Imloth was already falling back to the sledge with remarkable grace in spite of the bleeding; eyes on the mass of goblins, Valen followed him backwards.
Retreating was almost as difficult as advancing had been, though in this case they merely needed to push through the goblins like wading through a swamp. But at last they could regroup, and even Nathyrra was able to join them, slipping her way around the pillars and bodies of goblins; they finally able to form a single line in front of the sledge, protecting the wounded and vulnerable.
Which did not include the Seer or Deekin, though they also stood behind the crescent of blades. The kobold jangled a merry little tune on his lute as he sang that they were all doomed, and the Seer responded with a rolling phrase in an archaic from of Ilythiiri that he couldn't translate without thinking harder than he had time for. One or the other had Imloth letting out a long breath of relief, and had his shoulder cooling, itching a moment as skin knit together under armor and hauberk, and then even the smallest pains were gone.
While he felt mildly better with blades to the left and right of him and a cleric behind him, it didn't change the fact that there was still a gibbering horde of goblins surrounding them, regrouping in clumps, apparently trying to decide if they had the advantage; everyone in the cavern, goblin and drow alike, knew that numbers could tell against even highly skilled opponents.
The noise of them pressed against them all, far greater than the weight of their bodies had been, high-pitched and echoing in their multitude. One voice rose above the mass, filled the cavern, piercing a single word. The goblins fell silent, and started stepping back. The word came again, impossibly louder, held longer.
And the goblins started turning and stumbling off into the shadows, pushing each other, high-pitched voices forming around what sounded like the same word. In minutes, even the echoes of their footfalls were swallowed up by the cave. Straining to hear where the goblins had gone and if they were just circling around to come at them from another angle, Valen stepped forward, the heads of Devil's Bane a pendulum at his side, the quiet rattle and click of the chain links as loud as the distant drip of water, eerie in the sudden silence.
"Get the sledges moving," he ordered, eyes still sweeping over the columns and paths of the cavern, giving Devil's Bane a restless flick that hit nothing, but let him feel the weapon's weight moving under his hand.
"Quickly," Imloth said, his words quiet and swallowed up by the cavern, but still far too audible. Just as Valen was conscious of the drow shifting around him, of bodies stepping back to deal with the sledge, leaving gaps in the line the goblins would - should - exploit.
The fact that they didn't made his tail lash, a counter-point to Devil's Bane. It was worse when the drow eased the sledge all the way through the column, and the goblins still didn't swarm down on them. The drow fell into their marching order, and he really didn't like how easy it was; surely the goblins knew enough to not let them settle into defensive positions.
Shoulders tense, he finally followed the drow through the gap in the columns, took his place at the rearguard, where he could see everything. Nathyrra fell in at his side again, and this time she actually spoke aloud in a hoarse whisper: "Why break off the attack?"
He shook his head. "Does it matter?" he asked, his voice as low and rough as hers, tightening his grip on Devil's Bane.
"It would suggest where they will come from next," Nathyrra pointed out with all the cold logic of a people who were weaned on wars of deception.
"Does it matter?" he repeated, biting out the whisper. "They're coming back. There's no good way to fight them in this cavern. Strategy is irrelevant."
Nathyrra's body twitched, the faintest hesitation in her stride, but if she meant to argue more or change the subject or turn her attention back forward, he never found out.
A noise echoed out of the tunnel ahead, a quiet scrape of a footstep against rock ahead of them. The entire column of drow, Seer to sledges, flinched. Valen recovered first, shifted to the side, striding up the line with Devil's Bane brought up to keep out of the way of his steps. As he drew up alongside the Seer, the shadows and pockets of warmth of the cavern finally eased, merging back to one single broad tunnel.
He had just enough time to feel a pang of relief before two drow stepped out of the shadows and soured the feeling. Female and male, both armored in silver chain over black leather, the female with a sword and the male with a harp in the crook of his arm: Valen took them in at a glance even as he stepped in front of the Seer, swept the flail in front of him in both an intimidating gesture and the opening move of a strike.
"Wait." The Seer laid her hand on his shoulder, the lightest of pressure to shift him to her side. Even through the armor, he could feel her touch, but only hurt seared into his tense back, the hurt of being overruled and ignored, and watching someone he cared about harmed - again. This was not the same, he told himself. But maybe it was enough to feel the same.
"I recognize them, if you don't," the Seer continued, a trace of aching relief in her calm words.
"In the name of the Dark Maiden, I swear your eyes do not bear you false," the female said, spreading her hands out and displaying them empty of weapons - not that that meant much for a cleric, Valen knew. "Matron Mother," she added, bowing deeply to the Seer. "Weaponmaster," she added with a shallower bow as Imloth stepped up to the Seer's other side.
Imloth gave a short nod, acknowledgement instead of honors. "I challenge your words," he said, rather blandly.
"And we are happy to answer," the female's companion said, speaking for the first time. He shifted the harp on his shoulder, and showed one hand, spreading the fingers wide - those fingers that remained. On each hand, his fourth finger was only a stump, and his smallest curled crookedly towards his palm; his gestures were still elf-graceful as he loosened the mouth of the pouch at his side, reached in with two fingers and drew out a silver disk to hand to Imloth.
Imloth turned the silver disk over, and his shoulders sagged with relief as well. "It is good to see you again, Yasolu," he said with feeling as he handed the disk back. "And you as well, Priestess," he added to the female, bowing properly to her.
The sight of the hands and the sound of the names and titles had memories, hazy and red-veiled, swirling into Valen's mind. The female, Vierae, was a blade dancer - a priestess of Eilistraee. Properly, where the Seer was the Matron Mother of the Eilistraeean enclave, she was its High Priestess. Yasolu was married to her, and was the enclave's chief composer in spite of his crippled hands - though Valen would admit that it was less unlikely than a kobold bard. Both of them had taken responsibility of leading the enclave during the Seer's absence in the Underdark.
For them to be here meant that they were truly close to the surface. The thought had Valen's heart doing a queer lift, hope and peace in spite of the weight that lay around him. It seemed his history with the enclave couldn't help inspire the softer memories, the same way hallmarks from the Underdark inspired more painful ones.
Not all that long ago, after a long and frantic search of a strange Prime, in a peaceful forest enclave of worshippers of a drow goddess, he had finally found the dark elf woman who had looked into his soul during that long-ago battle. He'd dropped to his knees before her, wounded and exhausted and utterly relieved when she hadn't said a word, simply reached out and laid a hand between his horns, the first time in his memory that he'd been touched without pain to accompany it.
The Seer had initially kept him isolated as she healed his wounds and coaxed out his humanity from the demonic rage that still too-often seethed inside him, but eventually, when he had more control of his temper, she had let him meet some of her followers - especially as they all started preparing for the war in the Underdark the Seer foresaw. Then, he'd been grateful for a way to thank her by using the skills he was best at, instead of trying to dance to the polite words of the drow, but now he wasn't sure what the war had earned him, much less if he'd helped anyone at all. As much pain as he felt over failing the ones who mattered most to him, it was far worse to feel the foundation cracked and uncertain beneath him.
"It seems we have indeed come in a good hour," Yasolu said, his words more wry than polite, gesturing with his harp to the cavern behind them. "And we are fortunate that goblins are so willing to follow suggestions to flee."
"More accurately," Vierae said, "in the great World Above, the hour draws close to dawn. The rest of the community are encamped in the forest, awaiting your return," she added with a tip of her head for farther down the tunnel, "but we thought to come and find you."
The Seer nodded, and Valen understood the point they raised just as well as she did: after so long in the black of the Underdark, their eyes would need to be gently reintroduced to light before they encountered the full glory of the sun.
He understood it, but as Vierae and Yasolu lead them down the tunnel to where the passage opened up around a deep pool, he didn't like it.
It was one of the better caverns they had camped in, with narrow enough tunnels that the body of the sledges could wall them in and still leave enough space for them all to spread out so they didn't have to sleep side-by-side. But all Valen could feel was the stone walls curving up to a low stone ceiling, all the weight of the mountain pressing down on his horns.
He shoved it aside, focused on determining who was best able to stand a watch, but the lashing of his tail and the guarded respect of the salutes of the walking wounded he approached told him he didn't do nearly so well concealing his temper from his eyes as well as his tongue.
Vierae and Yasolu were true Eilistraeeans: compassionate, and practical to their bones. They had brought packs of fresh food, rare as light in the Underdark, and while Yasolu saw to it's distribution with a cheerful word and touch for those he moved among, Vierae joined the Seer in looking after the wounded, healing who and what she could.
She ended with Imloth, though she had pull him from his inspection of the sledges, order him to sit on the edge of the sledge of the slain so that she could inspect the half-healed wound, firmly tipping his head to the side as she leaned in to inspect the gash. Valen had the misfortune of being within earshot as she glanced at the shrouds midway through peeling his bloody hauberk off of the gash in his neck. "So many dead," she remarked.
"We are fortunate there are not more," the Seer said as she brought them all over mugs of water, purified but still icy from the pool. "And indeed, there should have been, had not Eilistraee sent us a champion."
"Fortunate indeed that one of her chosen in the Underdark was able to come to your aid," Vierae said, laying her hand firmly over Imloth's wound. Soft light, elusive as moonlight, rimmed her hand, twisted around Imloth's neck and shoulder, slow to fade even after she removed her hand. "And if you are fortunate and do not misbehave," she added to Imloth, "I shall not need to stitch this closed."
Grimacing, Imloth slid off the sledge. "If you are done with me?" he asked dryly, already turning to the next sledge in the row and gesturing over one of his soldiers.
As the two male drow quietly started discussing the state of the supply of bolts for the hand-crossbows, the Seer stepped to Vierae's side to separate the two conversations. As interested in the state of the supplies as he was, Valen found himself listening to the Seer's voice. "Not one of her worshippers," she corrected. "Nor one from the Underdark."
"A surfacer?" Vierae asked, looking over the cavern.
Valen felt the spear enter his heart, swept a glance over the cavern himself, no matter it was were no strange faces among the drow, certainly no human women. She would not be rising from tending to a wound, would not be dipping her hands into the cool water of the pool, would not be standing a watch because she was alive and so many were not. That was all impossible.
"Here," the Seer said, and laid a hand on the head of the gold shroud. "She is here. She gave her life for us," she said in the aching silence. "And went to the reward of her god."
Valen's stomach twisted around the water, something rising in his throat that was either bile or the need to scream that it wasn't a reward, how could death be a reward? Paladin though she was, why would she choose Lathander's realm, eternally dawn, when she could return to life, return to…
He'd never told her. He hadn't told her so much. Why wouldn't she have come back so he could tell her?
"How far is the surface?" he demanded.
Surprised by the interruption, Vierae glanced at him, then gestured down the tunnel. "Three miles further down the passage, a shaft leads up to the mountainside," she said. "But while the rest of us wait at the base of the mountain trail, in the forest, the enclave is nearly a half-day's march down the mountain."
He didn't care about the enclave. He didn't even care that there were other drow waiting not far from the cave's mouth. All he cared about was that it was somewhere that was away from here, out from under the tons of rock pressing down on his head, far out of sight and earshot from the stories of the dead. "I'm going to scout the path."
"There's hardly a need," Vierae said, still practical and nearly soothing. It made his horns itch with distaste. "Nothing from the cave above could survive the drop down the shaft to these caverns, and the goblins will hardly return to attack, not with the hobgoblin dead."
"Need or not," Valen snapped, "how do you intend to stop me?"
"I should think the hundred foot sheer rock chimney would," Vierae answered, a new, sharp edge to her voice. Drow females could make males back down with that threat in their voice, mostly due to the knowledge that even Eilistraeeans were more than capable of making good on what they threatened.
He ignored the warning. "Assume what you will." Now that he knew just how close they were, he needed to be out of here, as if the long year underground had finally become too much, and everything that hadn't bothered him before now grated over him, like a spear over armor: he could feel the cavern's ceiling pressing down on his horns, felt stifled and smothered by the flat, lifeless air, felt his skin yearn for light.
And Vierae was standing in his way. All his attention honed, focused on the problem in front of him; the world went still, as it had just before the ambush.
It was a sign of trust and her own abilities that Nathyrra could seem to appear out of nowhere, even through his battle-focused senses.
"Though it would be easier if you had assistance," Nathyrra said, her fingers lightly brushing the clenched muscle of his arm; the delicate trace, the lightest of pressure to bar his path from Vierae. With some surprise, he realized he could feel the smooth hilt of Devil's Bane in his grasp, tight with the same intent that had him pitting himself against the High Priestess.
And that was folly. He knew Vierae was not his enemy, certainly didn't deserve death just because she countermanded him with a fair point. It was just easier to be angry with her than feel the truth of the matter.
Since when had his life been able to take the easy path? Valen let Nathyrra ease him a step back and step in front of him, and tried to shake off his temper, if not his mood, focusing on loosening his grip on Devil's Bane.
Nathyrra's face was turned towards Vierae, but Valen felt that her words were as much for him. "I know a spell of Levitation that can carry both of us up that far, and doing so will allow me to see the terrain in enough detail to create a dimensional door so that we don't need to levitate the sledges tomorrow."
Vierae studied her; she likely knew as well as they all did that Nathyrra could have done the same thing just before they needed to move the sledges. But then she looked over, and met the Seer's eyes, and even Valen could feel the silent communication - something beneath even the hand code - that passed between them.
"Very well," Vierae said at last. "It certainly wouldn't hurt." Even if her expression clearly thought that she still found it foolish, she knew better than to go against the will of the Matron, who didn't need a threat to make her authority felt.
How long would it take her, Valen wondered as he turned to gather up a travel pack, before she settled back into her usual rank, one step behind the Seer? And how long would it take before a female drow, a priestess born in the Underdark, was tempted to fall back on the traditional method of gaining power among the drow? Eilistraeeans were different, but there was nothing to say that Vierae had to remain Eilistraeean.
It was almost comforting, to think of how people might murder and betray. He knew how to look for knives aimed at the Seer's back, and could even say that he was good at preventing them from striking home. It meant that at least his life still had purpose now.
Thinking of guarding the Seer rang hollow in the place under his heart, but he told himself it was enough - it had been enough for him before. But that had been before he'd gotten a glimpse of something else, even if he couldn't swear that it would have been something more.
That thought made him uneasy far more than the thought of Vierae turning back to Lolth. But at least he was getting used to pushing it aside as he waited with the sentries facing the tunnel leading out of the Underdark. Nathyrra strode up a few minutes later, arm deep in her bag, frowning to herself as she fished around for something; at her heels trotted Deekin, which had Valen raising an eyebrow.
"Deekin coming to surface, too," the kobold announced, tucking his lute more securely under his arm. "It be too dark down here; Deekin need good light to write."
"This might all be for nothing if I can't find my bag of regents," Nathyrra said distractedly. "I know I had it at the final assault, but surely I didn't-"
"Why do you need light to write?" Valen interrupted, looking down at Deekin; he would much rather hear anything from the kobold than think about why Nathyrra might have dropped her bag of magical spell components.
He'd dropped Devil's Bane, and it's echoes had been swallowed up by the Valsharess's empty throne room. The weapon that had been with him all through his time in the Abyss and the Underdark hadn't mattered nearly as much as the crumpled body in the center of the room.
"Because when Deekin try to write without light, all Deekin gets is a black page of scribbles." The kobold's voice cut through his thoughts, brought him back from that moment nearly a tenday ago, and he could have kissed the reptilian.
Instead, he rolled his eyes, because dramatics, at least, the kobold seemed to be able to pick up on. "What is it that you are writing?" he asked with what he thought was an impressive amount of patience.
"Sequel to Deekin's first book." For the first time in their acquaintance, Valen saw Deekin wilt. "It be book of adventures of Boss and fearless kobold companion."
Boss, he knew, had been Deekin's name for Ser Iswen Redhelwar, paladin of Lathander. The Seer had called her Champion. He'd come to call her friend, and there had been as much weight to that term as the others. "You can't write another book about her," he said, voice harsh with all the things he was trying not to remember, trying not to feel. "No one wants to read a book where the hero dies at the end."
Deekin shrugged. "Maybe, but Deekin still needs to be writing it. It be only way to remember Boss. And only way people know why she died."
Now he felt like an ass. Deekin wasn't wrong; he thought that the only thing that would make her death worse would be for people to dismiss her sacrifice as just another foolhardy adventurer wandering into the Underdark. She'd only been forced by the geas to come to the Underdark; he'd come to see that he'd given her heart to the Seer's cause every bit as much as he had, had been fiercely willing to fight for them. He hadn't thought much of paladins before her, but she hadn't been full of sanctimonious piety like ones he'd met before; she'd been a soldier, as much as he was, willing to kill to defend those who couldn't defend themselves, and called it merely her duty, the right and thus only thing to do.
He did not doubt that she had been just as willing to give her life for them, to stop the Valsharess's stab of conquest at the surface as much as to save all their lives.
But that didn't make it any easier to think of how Deekin's book would end. She had won; he'd given the other body in the chamber only a glance, but that was enough to see that the first of the dead was the Valsharess, sprawled inelegantly in a pool of blood, a look of surprise still on now-immobile features. She'd won, but when he'd reached her body in the center of the chamber, he'd touched her and felt that her skin had already grown cold without her heartbeat beneath it.
She'd won, and they'd lost her. He'd lost all the hope she'd brought him.
"Ah, here," Nathyrra said, lifting the red, rune-encircled pouch out of her bag and slinging the haversack over her shoulders. "Now we can go. To the surface." There was just a note of uncertainty in her voice, her too-brisk tone.
Because she would only bristle if he drew attention to it, Valen only gestured beyond the narrow gap between the sledges and the tunnel beyond. "Lead the way."
There was something very familiar about all this, as they passed beyond the sledges, the sentries standing watch, and into the darkness of the tunnels; the quiet echoes of the camp lingered for longer than he'd expected, even after being underground for so long, but then the tunnel twisted around a bend, and there was only the deep expectant silence of the Underdark, the faint plonks of water in the distance as loud as a heartbeat.
Nathyrra paused in her tracks, head lifting, then gestured for them to hold in place; he'd barely stopped and she was vanishing farther into the tunnel, swallowed up by the shadows, and when even the sense of her heat vanished, he knew that the tunnel curved more ahead, or perhaps even branched; Vierae had not said it was a straight path to the exit shaft, after all. It left him waiting for Nathyrra to pick the path, a kobold at his side.
And he knew why this was familiar. There was an empty space a half step ahead of him, a silence where there should have been a drumming of restless fingers on a sword hilt or soft hummed melody, a darkness when there should have been a light to guide them. Those traits had set his teeth on edge when they had first stepped out of Lith My'athar and sought the nest of Beholders wreaking havoc on their supply lines.
He'd never quite been able to convince her to stop, or stopped hearing the noises she made. They'd just come to be a comforting part of a journey, for more reasons than just a promise of another capable blade at his side.
"Goat-Man think it be much farther? Deekin's back be tired."
He wouldn't quite say that the piping voice from somewhere in the vicinity of his elbow was comforting, but at least he knew Deekin was talking to him, and that was better than being left with his thoughts. "How is it," he mused, "that someone who was raised in a cave keeps getting lost down here?"
"Underdark be bigger than Deekin's home," Deekin said with a shrug. "Everything down here smell like dead mushrooms. And old socks. Though that could just be Deekin running out of clean socks."
Because it wasn't exactly untrue, he had to chuckle. It didn't quite lighten the mood, but at least it distracted him from his thoughts. "You are, without a doubt, the strangest companion I've ever traveled with," he said, gentler than he'd said anything else to the unlikely bard.
"Aww, Deekin like Goat-Man, too," Deekin said, then rummaged around in his pack and produced a battered journal and a charcoal stick. "Deekin going to revise his description of you for book."
"You had already-" There were some things, like the plots of devils and the gowns of drow, that didn't bear contemplation. He rather thought Deekin's descriptive ability for someone he called 'Goat-Man' fell into that category. "I've changed my mind - I don't want to know."
Deekin grinned up at him, and Valen had never seen a mouth full of tiny sharp teeth look so charming. "See? Sometimes it just be a waste of time to be broody."
Before he could think of anything to say in response, Nathyrra wandered back to them, her confused expression suggesting that she'd overheard at least some of their conversation. "Vierae was right - it's just about a straight path to the shaft up through the mountain, and from there it's not much farther. I could smell that the air was…" she hunted for words. "Cleaner?"
"You don't need to come up with us," he said, looking into eyes that had lines of worry, when elves never looked unruffled. "Not if you don't want to."
"I do," she said, too swiftly to be anything but a lie. "I do want to," she repeated. "I want to see the surface, and I want the first time to not be in front of everyone," she admitted in a rush.
As the last part at least was true, he nodded, and gestured onward. "Then let's go see the sky."
It was a simple spell to levitate them, no matter that it was a long shaft; Valen knew that it felt longer than it actually was, just as the rest of the journey today had felt plodding-slow. Nathyrra had taken the time to assure him that the spell would last long enough for them to ascend high enough. He was grateful for it only after they started up, and there was nothing but the blue spell-light beneath his feet and a long drop below.
But he couldn't say that was the reason he grabbed the ledge as they drew within reach, pulled himself up out of the shaft and to the cave's floor with a scrape of metal on stone. Nathyrra had been right: now when he took a deep breath, the air was clean and light, and he couldn't describe the scent on it as anything other than green.
It was a true cave that connected the surface to the shaft to the Underdark, not one of the massive subterranean caverns that had comprised much of the terrain in the world below. Its walls were narrow and jagged, ceiling stooping even as the floor rose up underfoot. That could have been someplace in the Underdark: the difference was, he could see the walls, see the floor. Not enough to tell colors, or even enough to navigate by, but enough to know that it wasn't heat-shadows forming his vision, or the rare luminous fungus or a mage playing with lights.
He couldn't move fast enough, didn't even care if Deekin and Nathyrra were following him. The passage narrowed enough his armor scraped over the rock as he wiggled free, but then the walls fell away and the ceiling was gone.
The wind pulled at him, sharp and clean, and Valen filled his lungs with a shaky breath, tipping his head back to the source of light; the sky was as black as the Underdark's ceiling, except for the blazing glory of the stars, high and remote and singing of the freedom that came from being so far above the earth. There on the mountain side, on a narrow ledge in front of the cave's mouth, there was nothing around him but air and sky.
He'd never felt this alone or this small in the Underdark, pressed not with stone, but with empty space so that he was achingly aware of where he ended and the world began, and that there was nothing in all the rest of the world.
Especially not the one thing he wanted most at his side, a bright star long out of reach.
Something bumped past his hip, and he glanced down to see Deekin scuttle a little ways down the ledge before plopping down and dangling his feet off the mountainside; the kobold opened his journal on his lap, rooted around in his bag until he extracted a crooked quill pen and a half-empty bottle of ink, and only looked up when he sucked thoughtfully on the tip. "Hm - 'It be dark and starry night over Waterdeep, and Boss arrived at inn, unbeknownst brave kobold companion already there…'"
"I don't think that's how you use 'unbeknownst'," Valen said without thinking if he even knew how to spell 'unbeknownst'.
"First Deekin be writing," Deekin said, "Then he get good editor this time, not cheap quack who be all praises."
The thought of someone actually editing Deekin's writing bumped his contemplation of the vast world above his shoulders to something simple and ordinary, something that let him have his breath and sense back, let him feel himself return to his skin and his place in the world. While undeniably beautiful, and while the starlight was greater than anything there could have been in the Underdark, the world was still thick with black shadows, shades of black creating forms and lines of a landscape visible to his eyes, but unremarkable.
But he'd seen the surface before, even if the stars had never been so beautiful to his eyes. He looked over his shoulder to the cave mouth, and could just make out very wide red eyes, glowing with the drow's ability to see shades of heat with infravision. When she didn't emerge after a few more moments, he stepped back into the mouth of the cave, ducking his head reflexively.
"I had read that they were made of fire," Nathyrra said, very fast and crisp, a mage's intellectual curiosity with just an edge of a knife underneath, a refusal to be vulnerable.
Valen looked over his shoulder at the stars blazing in the dark sky from horizon to horizon. "They give light like fire, but if they give heat, it is not one that we can feel," he said, knowing that wasn't actually her concern.
For him, the night sky was a beauty that his memories could never have matched; for her, it was one she had never imagined. He couldn't name the green plants and damp earth he was smelling on the breeze, not more accurately than that; she had never had clean wind ruffling her silvery hair. He didn't know where home was, but he knew he belonged here; she might have turned from the worship of Lolth and all she knew, but the Underdark was still familiar.
But there was no going back for either of them, no point in even looking over their shoulders. Silently, he held out a hand, offered it to her. Nathyrra hardly needed the assistance, but she still took it and gripped. With great care, she stepped over the illusory boundary of the cave, let him draw her to his side, into the subtle light and shadows of the stars.
He gave her a moment, and more, standing there at the mouth of the Underdark, looking over the world beyond it. She was frozen in place, just as tensely hesitant as within the cave, head tipped up not in defiance or confidence, but in an attempt to keep everything above her in view at once.
"Come," he said, tightening his fingers around her once before guiding her around him to the ledge. "Better to sit and stare than stand and stare; makes you less of a target."
It got a smile from her, a quick curve of her lips in acknowledgement of the point. She picked her way around Deekin, and slowly lowered herself to the ledge to dangle her feet over the side with all the confidence that came from knowing she could slow her fall with a few quick magical words.
Assuming that she could cast the same spell on him should there be a need, Valen eased his way to the ledge, and settled down as close as he dared in armor. Pulling off first his gauntlets, he set them aside, and then finally could remove his helm and set it atop them. Tipping his head back, he drew in a deep breath, and felt something like a chain around his heart loosen, but there was almost desperation beating behind it, not the sweetness of freedom.
Deekin and Nathyrra were beside him, solid presences as the ledge yawned down from his feet, but all he could feel was the gap on his other side. She should be here. The bitter, desperate thought came easier here in the Underdark, because it was more true here. Iswen, a surfacer who worshiped the dawn god, should be walking out of that cave with them, sitting with them here to feel the clean air and the fragile light of stars on her face.
She, out of all of them, should be here, and she wasn't.
Looking up, he found Nathyrra looking over Deekin's head and busily scratching pen, a small smile on her lips, the wind ruffling her sleek hair, something terribly knowing in her red eyes. "She promised me she would show me this," she said, gesturing to the sweep of the horizon.
Knowing it was true still made his heart hurt, like a spear thrust. Throat tight, Valen nodded, looking away. "She promised we would walk the streets of Waterdeep together," he said roughly, and felt something stretch and fray within him, fragile and sharp as glass. "She said she knew where they sold the best hand-pies in all the Sword Coast."
"Deekin know that place," the kobold piped up, looking up from his paper. Even the bard's voice was more subdued than his usual inane chatter. "They chase out Deekin, but Boss bring out blackberry pies to share."
Perhaps he could still find the shop on his own, if he ever went to Waterdeep, but he knew without tasting them the pies would not be near so sweet, without her triumphant and eager smile as she shared one with him.
Valen took shuddering breath, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. He couldn't let the chains around his chest snap and unleash whatever terrible force was seething inside him or he would be good for nothing, not even the duties that had been so much his they were simply a part of him.
He could not lose his ability to fight and protect, not even because he felt her loss the way he would feel a missing limb. More, she wouldn't want him to fall into that pit of despair; if he knew nothing else about her, it was that she wielded hope like the double-edged sword it could be, piercing the darkness. She hadn't given up in the face of overwhelming odds; she wouldn't want him to brood so much on the cost of victory that he forgot they had won. He had to believe that, even if the thought of a victory without her was painful.
Taking another deep, steadying breath, he looked back up at the horizon, and realized that he could see more of the trees below, could make out the lines of the treetops where there had only been shadows minutes before. Vierae had said that it was close to dawn; now he could see that the stars were fainter and the sky lighter. If there was a time to retreat back to the Underdark, it was now.
But he couldn't. He couldn't bring himself to return to that darkness, not even for the sake of his eyes. Nathyrra, though… Clearing his throat, he looked over at her. "Dawn is like everything you have been warned," he began.
"But is it everything that she said it was?" Nathyrra countered, and there was something in her eyes that was not just the challenge of a drow wanting to be right, but something softer around the edges, a need to be right.
She was not going to be moved, certainly not back to the safe shadows. It wasn't a challenge, nothing nearly so personal as a determination to not let the surface drive her away. She, like him, needed to be here, on this ledge, watching dawn come over the forest.
Because Iswen wasn't here, because she had died down in the darkness, so far from her dawn. Watching her dawn was the only thing they could do for her, as little and poor a thing as it was.
None of them spoke. They really didn't need to. Even Deekin's quill stilled, his head lifting and nose twitching with the breeze. Valen caught himself holding his breath, but when he tried to remember to breathe, it seemed too loud, to harsh, for the moment.
It took time. And none at all. He'd never really taken the time to watch the dawn, though he was often awake before it. It always seemed as though one moment it was dark, and the next, the sun was up. But that wasn't quite right. There were shades and stages to the dawn.
The light came first. The black of the sky turned gray, all along the horizon, light that sharpened the shadows, and etched the rest of the world into being, light that might very well have created the rocks and the trees beneath them, now that they could be seen. Light that was faint but still could have filled every corner of the Underdark until it burst open with glory.
And then came the colors. Soft, so gentle: a blush of pink, an edge of gold, the hint of a lighter blue in the sky. And in a matter of breaths, they deepened, strengthened, resolutely glorious and beautiful, impossible to delay or destroy. Beneath the sky, the forest at their feet bloomed - not green as he thought it must be, but autumn gold and red to match the sky above. Somewhere in the distance, a bird trilled, and then was joined in chorus by more than he ever could have imagined existed.
Valen didn't pray. But watching the reds and the golds strengthen in the lightening blue sky, he felt his heart lift towards something, and could finally see how Iswen would have connected this moment to hope, to the promise of a new beginning, and worshipped it strongly enough to pledge her sword and her life to seeing these moments fulfilled.
She had pledged her life and given her sword to them, too. She had made it possible for them to be here, silent and still as they watched the sun come up over the horizon.
"What was the song…" Nathyrra breathed.
He didn't need to ask what she meant. It was on his mind, too. "Come forth in joy to greet the morn," he recited, swift and low. There was more to it, he knew there was. But that was all he could remember, her voice lifting through the melody of the opening as if she could see the dawn even in the Underdark.
It wasn't a prayer, anyways, not mere words that would that would go unheeded by a god. It was an evocation to her memory, and a blessing to her spirit; she could not be here with them, except as they called her forth in their minds.
Hail the hero, strong and true
Who fought the fight and saw it through
Who swore he ne'er would be a slave
And gave his life, our land to save
-"Hail The Hero (Mo Ghile Mear)" as preformed by Celtic Thunder