AN# 1: It's kind of weird to look back on all my old fanfic now that I'm several years older and a whole lot wiser (and, I suppose, jaded). Brindhal was great for that time – steady, stalwart, and honest. But these days, I'm attracted a darker kind of hero – a Batman, rather than a Superman – with more shades of grey who does earthly things, and has earthly emotions.
Hence, when I got around to playing BG:EE, instead of gravitating to a Paladin and someone who was LG, I immediately made a thief who was NE and all was well until I accidentally saved my neutral-aligned game over it. Oh well… I guess I won't ever know what happened to the ticking time bomb that was Korgan, Bell, Edwin, Jaheira, Viconia, and Yoshimo. Anyway, feel free to enjoy my less wholesome and lawful interpretation of things this time around.
Sunlight.
Ahead, there was sunlight, and Bel didn't remember the last time she'd seen something so beautiful. It took her breath away and she paused in the tunnel, still in the half-darkness, looking at it spilling over the pavement and the sides of the buildings outside. Jaheira, Minsc, and Imoen realized a few steps ahead that she wasn't with them anymore, and Imoen – kind, gentle Imoen – went back, held her hand for a few seconds, and guided her back to everyone else.
Jaheira's expression wore a ghost of a smile, the first expression of anything remotely happy on her face that she could remember. "Beautiful, is it not?"
"My Gods," was all the girl managed to breathe. Normally she wasn't such a gentle soul – Jaheira had often referred to her as "hell on wagon wheels" – but with that they'd all gone through, between the deaths and torture, that moment of silence while watching the setting sun let them all temporarily forget.
Then, they stepped out into a battlefield.
"What – " Jaheira had just opened her mouth as a ray of some sort whizzed past her temple. She craned her head to see what the target was when Imoen, more practiced at arcane spellcasting than any of the rest of them, pulled the group to the ground behind some shattered wall left from part of a store. Moments later, the seeds of a Fireball spell exploded, taking brick, mortar, and what looked suspiciously like bits of person with them.
"Stay down!" the young woman hissed.
"Who is that, throwing such spells around?" the druid asked, her face back to normal. She tried to stand again, angling to get a better look when, this time, it was Bel that pulled her down.
"Irenicus." Bel said the name like it was poison on her tongue, and reached for her daggers, but Imoen blocked her hands.
"Bel… stay down. Let me deal with him – better to fight spells with spells, eh?" She laughed somewhat weakly.
"Better to fight it with a sword, I say!" Minsc returned, unsheathing the weapon he'd found in the mad wizard's compound. He was fast and strong and perched on the wall as if he was going to leap into battle – the redhead looked up and gave the giant of a man a shake of her head.
"Let me help, Im." Bel pushed the other girl's hands away, her own resting on the hilt of her daggers.
"I can't… " Imoen wet her lips. "Whatever Irenicus wants, it has to do with you, Bel, and I won't let him take the closest thing to family I have. Now all of you: stay down! I'll signal when it's safe to come back out." She muttered a few words and a shimmering field of magic surrounded her. "I mean it. No tricks!" The sound of her stomping across the gravel, dodging spells covered up what Bel had to say next.
"We need to help her!" the woman addressed Minsc and Jaheira. "Im's small, she's not some crazy archmage - she can't go up against him!"
"You heard her!" Jaheira responded back with equal fervor. "She's trying to save you and help us escape! Stop being obtuse!"
"Me?" Bel blinked. "I'm a child of Bhaal, what makes me even worth saving –"
"You dare attack me here?" the mad wizard's voice boomed. His voice, a deep baritone that was melodic, yet disgustingly arrogant. "Do you even know whom you face?!" He raised his hands and – without any verbal component to accompany it – the masked and cloaked figures nearest him shattered in a spray of gore, dropping their weapons
"OI, ASSHOLE!"
Irenicus' assailants, the rest of the party, and the mage himself looked up at Imoen's distraction. He glanced at the redhead, then followed the path she'd come from to spy Bel, Minsc, and Jaheira hiding in the rubble.
"So, godchild. You have escaped," he drawled. "You and your ilk are more resourceful than I thought."
Imoen flushed a scarlet that competed admirably with her hair. "You talk to me, wizard, not her. You're not going to torture us any longer!"
His focus shifted. "Torture?" His tight face managed something akin to a smirk, and he chuckled mirthlessly. From anyone else, the gesture would be unsettling. From Jon Irenicus, it was downright chilling. "Silly, silly girl, you just don't understand what I'm doing here, do you? If you only –"
"I don't care what you think you're doing, let us go!"
The brunette couldn't stay still any longer. "He's toying with you—" Bel yelled out, but Jaheira tackled her, clamping a delicate hand over her mouth and dragging her behind the wall once more.
The amusement drained from his face; again his expression was stony, distant. "I won't let you leave, either of you. Not when I'm so close to unlocking your powers! Had you an inkling of the –"
"We don't want anything from you." Imoen cut him off and began casting, ending his monologue. Bel recognized the spell immediately – the explosions of electric pink light flew forth from her fingertips and hit him square in the chest. He looked down, then back up at the younger woman and narrowed his eyes.
"I will no longer listen to the babble of ignorant children." Swirls of magic appeared around his fingertips, which released into the air, forming a swirling blue shield around him. "You will come with me, or –"
"Rahhhh!"
A strangled scream came from the rogue's side, where Minsc had also heard enough – he sprung into action, eyes blazing and cheeks flushed, greatsword aimed square at the mad wizard's torso. His battle cry was enough to give pause to the two women he had sheltered with as well as Imoen, who skipped a beat and gave Irenicus just enough time to finish his shield spell before the true battle started.
Jaheira looked torn between the fight and her charge, but she maintained just enough control over herself to hunker back with Bel, wrapping her arms around her tightly, simultaneously keeping her from jumping into the fray and shielding her from the debris that flew in from the wizards' firefight when a singularly unusual feeling – a type of magical shockwave – came over them.
"This is an unsanctioned use of magical energy!" A heavily accented man called. "Amnian lands are a strict no-magic zone. All parties involved will be detained for questioning; this disturbance is over!"
Imoen stepped back, hands raised mid-spell; Irenicus looked furious. "Must I be interrupted at every turn?" he yelled. "Enough of this!"
A disintegrate beam flew true and struck the interrupter between the eyes – his form dissipated, scattering to the wind, and the other four wizards looked to one another and quickly cast a sequence of spells between them, needing neither verbal nor somatic components to bring them into existence. In short order the area was silenced and beams of light – dispels and blindness, Bel saw – arced through the air, targeted at her former captor. This seemed to have little effect on him, though, and after a quickened chain lightning and a seemingly impossible number of missiles, the other four fell. Their deaths triggered portals – three more teleported in.
All the while, Imoen threw what she had their former captive. Acid arrows and magic missiles… paltry spells, and when those ran out, she braved the melee and attempted to touch him, hoping in her desperation to get off one of her necromantic dweomers.
"This mage's power is immense," one of the three new wizards called out. "We must subdue him quickly!"
Counterspell.
"He's immune to our metamagics!" Another one called. "We haven't enough time to circle cast and his spell supply is immense…"
Finger of death; the first speaker dropped unceremoniously to the ground.
"Call in the reinforcements – we will hold him off as well we can…"
"Enough! I haven't the time for this."
One more wizard fell, again triggering the teleportation spell. The new wizard that emerged was different from the rest – cloaked, hooded, but dressed in black rather than the drab grey of the rest. He also came out enveloped in a flickering sphere, which crackled when stray rays and bolts of lightning from the firefight around him hit it.
"You…" he pointed to the mad mage. "You will cease your spellcasting and come with us!"
Irenicus looked around, pausing in his attempts to obliterate the people around him and – unexpectedly – dropped his hands to the side. "Our numbers are many, strong one – you WILL be overwhelmed eventually."
"You bore me with your pathetic displays, mageling."
A tense silence. "So you surrender?"
Irenicus' eyes darted between the Cowled wizard in charge, Bel and Jaheira, who were watching in horror from behind the ruined wall, and Imoen. Finally, he said, "You make take me in, but you WILL take the girl as well."
Imoen's eyes widened and she stepped back towards Bel and the rest of her group. "What?! No! I've done nothing wrong! I was trying to help –"
"Nevermind what you "tried" to do, you've been involved in an illegal use of magic – you will come with us too."
She looked to Bel with scared, widened blue eyes. "I'm not going with him – I'm not! Help me – anybody - please!" One of the remaining grey-clad wizards seized her by the arms and began to cast teleport. "Help!"
Imoen's last word rang out in the sudden stillness of the levelled part of Waukeen's Promenade. Jaheira released her hold on the rogue, who lurched onto her feet and over to the spot where Imoen had been only moments before.
"She's… gone–" The rogue tried to find her voice to say what had happened aloud. Whirling suddenly upon the druid, she repeated, "She's gone. She did that… for me."
Minsc, on the other hand, looked ready to chop someone in half. Jaheira exchanged looks with Bel – who, while shellshocked, was lucid enough to register Minsc's anger - and put a hand on his massive shoulder. "This is not right! The murderer of Dynaheir flees from righteous butt-kicking vengeance – and he takes Imoen with him too! Something MUST be done, Arabella."
"Do you think I don't know that?"
"We MUST find this wizard – all that is goodness cries out for this! Even little Boo, although he cannot cry out quite so loudly!"
Bel put her head in her hands, but felt a hand upon her hair moments later. Jaheira apparently had decided Minsc would behave and turned her attention to her charge.
"I find it odd that this Irenicus would leave of his own volition," she said quietly, half to herself and half to Bel. "And why take Imoen, when it is… it is not her he is so obviously interested in?" She censored herself slightly – Bel was shaken enough. "Perhaps he expects us to give chase…"
"I'd wager so," the rogue agreed.
Jaheira silently stroked Bel's hair. "We must step carefully, then, child. We know so little about him… who he was fighting, who took him… even where we are, though I've a good idea about that."
"No, we must go quickly and save Imoen!" Minsc interjected. His innocent face contorted in horror and rage. "The wizard may be leering over her evilly even now!"
"Do not be foolish, Minsc. We must know our enemies… and the extent of our danger, here… before we rush into anything." A pause, then, "Bel? Child?"
In her mind, she was watching the life drain out of Gorion, and heard Sarevok's voice chiding her:
You stand idly by while I kill Gorion – who was a father to you – and now you let Irenicus take the closest thing you have to a sister.
You, Arabella, are a fucking coward.