A/N: Hi. :) Here I go again, with another one of my surreal concoctions. Please, if you like Idrielle and his story, review and let me know. It really makes me happy, and every writer is a sucker for praise. You know it. :D Grab something hot to drink, muffle up in your favorite blanket, and enjoy this tale on one of these cold, snowy winter evenings. If there is no snow for you... well, I bet there is some icy juice in your fridge. ;D

Disclaimer: The Forgotten Realms as a whole don't belong to me. However, all the names, characters, places, spells, things, creatures and simply everything you don't recognize belongs to me and me alone. Don't touch! Idrielle will hex you, the shiivi will leech out your soul, Avernon-l'Arque will sue you and Araltar will drown you in petitions! And you really don't want to know what Midnight will do... :D

I. The Wheelchair

25 of Eleasis 1361 DR, the Year of Maidens

There was nothing, Idrielle thought as he silently kept on packing his bag, that would force him to bow. Nothing. And if no-one lived to recognize his right for an independent mind, it was all the more important for him to hold on to his self-esteem.

Even it that meant breaking bonds he had been drilled to respect.

Even if that meant leaving Sealtriel on his own.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and, stopping in the doorway, looked one last time at his room.

The chamber was large. Once, it had been a chamber fit for a noble of the highest birth, with the walls paneled in light, creamy wood and the canopied bed spacious enough to accommodate four persons, its covers deep red and mahogany and intricately embroidered with golden threads. Next to the bed, on the left, a window taller than he was had offered a breath-taking view of solicitously maintained gardens. The rugs, imported from Calimshan and other worlds, had soothed the eye with their rich greens and golds. The vaulted ceiling, painted blue with silver patterns of stars both local and foreign, had the Great Wheel imprinted on the background, the mercury links between the planes glowing softly at night. Books had lined the polished shelves, bound in dark leather, bright silk, in thin plates of precious metal. Paintings of scenes and wonders never seen, never dreamed of on the Prime Material had hung around the room, their authors ones of the most famous otherwordly artists ever known. They'd hung there so casually, a portrait of a dark-eyed, proud githyanki princess, her face sharp and beautiful in the way that a hurricane is beautiful; a panorama of a fiery castle situated in the ever-changing landscape of flames in Ignan; an underwater city with high, slim towers of blue-gray stone covered in patches of green moss, the embracing, alien ocean all turquoise and tranquil and lovely – all of them beloved, all of them acquired during travels distant and unbelievable, during dearest adventures well worth their danger and exertion, yet not awe-inspiring nor uncommon for residents of this house in those times.

There was nothing of the former splendor left in that room now, only wounded pride, deep nostalgia, a sense of profound loss. Gone were most of the rugs, sold for ridiculous fragments of their actual value to keep bread in the larder. The walls cracked and distorted in some places over the years. The expensive armchairs went to auction, all the servants were dismissed, the gardens grew wild, ivy covered the white plaster outside and some of it even fought its way into the room itself. There was poverty and there was bitterness. But the books and the paintings stayed.

And everywhere, everywhere the air of a mage's workroom lingered still, in small details and more distinct ones… even now, even eighteen years later. Old maps, rendered unreadable by merciless time, lay scattered on the broad oaken desk sitting under the window, its ornate legs carved with unobtrusive runes of power. The remaining antique cabinets held the last, broken pieces of occult paraphernalia, the splintered shards of glass, crystal and silver dispersed on the worn shelves, hated and scorned. On a round table, no longer there, a bowl of pears brought from Celestia had used to sit, once upon a time… or so he had been screamed at, on one of the lately-not-so-rare occasions when his mother went into a rancorous, tortured fit of temper.

His eyes were cool. Reserved. He refused to live her memories any longer.

Even if that meant leaving her alone to cope with her angry grief.

"Kay," he said.

"Here."

"We're leaving." With that, he turned around and quietly made it down the stairs.

He wasn't afraid of being caught. His mother couldn't move on her wheelchair without help – she couldn't move from her shoulders down at all. And she would rather die on the spot than show her weakness by attempting to do so. His father would never hear him, submerged as he was in his cosmological theories, now more than ever a refuge where the embittered mind of his wife nor his own humiliation could follow.

And Sealtriel… Sealtriel was sleeping. He would know when he awoke. He would have to understand and learn to fend for himself. He could do it. Idrielle had managed it – so could his brother.

He silently crossed the drawing room, empty at this hour of night, old splinters of furniture cluttering the corners. His only stop was at the piano in the middle of the parlour. Kay's soundless shadow halted next to him and patiently waited while he ran his fingers along the lacquered ebony, as fine and smooth as on the day it had been fashioned, one of the few rare things in the house whose emotional value was higher than the bills waiting to be paid. He would love to hit at least one key by way of saying goodbye, but that was something he couldn't afford. Not only it could wake his parents, it could wake Sealtriel, who had always been a light sleeper. And if, as was not a rare case in the past years, Roald Ebbryn and his mob of thugs were milling around the run-down estate again, eager to trail him in hopes of witnessing some imagined abhorrent crime that would finally get him hanged, he saw no reason to warn them about his presence.

And so it happened that there were no goodbyes for him. He took it as a sign of his new life, as an opportunity to carve out a place he deserved. The way of the world was that sacrifices were required for every gain worth having. Emotions, sentiment or conscience never succeeded in stopping his chosen course of action, for Idrielle belived that every man held responsibility for himself in the first place, and failing that, he wouldn't be deserving of faith of those he respected nor of deference of those under him.

A single red rose in a crystal vase, the last piece of crystal in the whole house, stood on top of the piano, its petals velvety and soft. He let his touch linger for a moment, then, without the faintest hesitation, headed to the side door. The thought of taking the rose never crossed his mind.

The evening air outside was fresh and smelled of first yellowing leaves. The sky was clear, the constellations bright on the backdrop of pure, deep black.

Idrielle smiled a little, gazing at the stars. Black was his favorite color. It didn't play at anything. It was as it was – simple, intense and elegant.

The walk to the gate was slow, but steady. He didn't hurry – he wasn't running away like some street urchin afraid of his father's belt. He was leaving. That made a difference. Leaving in the way befitting his rank and birth, like in travelling to other countries to see any interesting job offers, visiting strange places and ruins of this world to learn their secrets, making a journey to foreign cities to further his studies. He just didn't deem it necessary for his family to know.

From the shadow of the gateway he could see the street through the ornate grating of the residence's main portal. When he was small, he often imagined that it was a cell door. Beyond it lay the world that had imprisoned him, set him apart, only it didn't know that his prison was a way better place than any on the other side of the bars. He would sit with his books on top of the old cracked wall running around the estate, shaded from view by an old birch tree, and read about magic and the old Netherese Empire while the bustling activity of Iriaebor went on and on all around him, unaware.

Behind him, the house stood silent and still.

With his going, he knew he was taking the very last remnant of magic out of his mother's life along with himself. Sealtriel would never be a mage, and even if he wanted to, he would never reach the heights of Idrielle's talent. His mother knew it as well as Idrielle himself.

He was willing to fail to remember for this night.

Kay's thick snowy fur shone in the dark, the silver markings on his snout and back sparkling in the starlight.

"Shall I see if there's an ambush?" he asked.

"Of course there is one. They have been skulking around playing at witch-hunters for the last three nights in a row. I thought they were suspiciously quiet before that."

"Shall we hunt them?"

"If they come near me, yes."

Of course, Roald Ebbryn's motley pack was lurking in the shadows, deeply convinced of their utmost stealthiness. They could not see Idrielle and his familiar from their current vantage point, hidden as the two were between a small grove of trees in the garden and a gate pillar.

Idrielle wondered briefly if he should cast an invisibility spell upon himself, then decided against it. He didn't need to run any more. He was not six years old again. They couldn't do anything to him now, neither had they overtly tried since that day almost six years ago, when they for the first time truly understood that the magic he wielded was for real. There had been an occurrence another six years before that, but they'd been all too small then to remember it for very long.

Their worlds hadn't been the same from the beginning, but as time flowed by, they gradually grew so much different from each other that there necessarily came a point when none of them could actually see the other side as living, breathing beings any more.

They saw him as a wizard, a dark one at that, someone with a bad reputation and even blacker mind. What's more, he was right there in their midst, he did never really belong, and so, logically, he needed to be disposed of, the sooner the better.

He saw them as a nameless mass of faces that used to torture a helpless child, in those days when magic had kept refusing to serve him at such a young age. That was something most contemptible in his opinion, and so his scorn for them wasn't feigned. Yet, almost eighteen years old now, he still felt a slight sense of panic, a discomfort, anytime he was forced to interact with Roald Ebbryn in any way, and that thought angered and humiliated him both at once.

For the same reason, his reluctance to hide from them was only understandable. However, there was also plain common sense speaking, and it was telling him that if they could see him leave, they could also point out the direction of his journey to anyone who asked. Now, there wouldn't be many eager seekers following his trail, but one would, and it was the very one Idrielle didn't want around. Sealtriel had to find his own way now.

He took a side entrance which led him onto the main street mere feet behind his watchers.

No-one noticed. Idrielle was very good at moving silently.

The night was warm and a slight breeze tried to ruffle his plaited hair. The high towers of Iriaebor loomed on either side of the street, crooked and reaching into the wide dark sky as bent fingers of a spell-caster in the middle of a difficult incantation.

His step was light and leisure, deceptive as all of his life. Kay's alert senses scoured the shadows for any rustling stalkers.

And then they just ran out of any more streets to pass through. The road snaked across the rolling, golden fields toward a nearby forest, its firs softly creaking in the wind. Idrielle changed.

The telltale midnight shimmer of a black shiivi's coat glimmered in the moonlight. Large silver eyes with black vertical pupils graced the narrow head of a slender, beautiful horse-like being with a long, radiant mercury mane and small, round silver hooves. The tail resembled that of a unicorn, except there was one more tuft of argent hair halfway down its length. A silver mark of a stylized sun was branded on its forehead.

The illusion of tranquil elegance was shattered in the moment the tongue of a snake flickered out, revealing a pair of very long, vicious-looking vampire fangs, and Idrielle felt the familiar thrill of his senses shifting when the shiivi part of his soul broke free.

He didn't dash into the sky mad with freedom, however, as would have been usual for one of the demonic horses. Instead, he remained on the ground and set out in an even, measured lope. After a while, he turned north-east and headed for Avernon-l'Arque. Kay, the bag now fastened on his back, trotted alongside him, his ears erect and blue eyes glittering.