"Hello, Imoen."
The soft voice spoke straight from her youth, and Imoen smiled despite herself.
"Heya." She stepped through the jagged portal, gnarled hands clinging to her staff for support as she climbed over stones still glowing from a magical assault she herself had led.
"Alone?"
"It's just me." Imoen nodded, squinting across the ruined hall but seeing nothing. She raised a hand to send a sparkling wisp of light to cling to a ragged tapestry. The spell highlighted crumpled furniture and crumbling stone in pale blue.
"And are you sure that's going to be enough?"
Imoen's smile faded. "It's... good to see you, little brother."
There, perched atop a three legged table, sat Ravayu Atar, the saviour of Baldur's Gate, hero of Suldanessellar, and former scion of murder. His fingertips idly ran across the back of the aged cat stretched across his lap, its once black coat streaked with silver, showing the age its master wasn't. He gazed at her with the same dark rimmed grey eyes peering out from under the same scruffy black hair.
"Aye. I wish I could say the same." Ravayu pushed a strand of hair behind his slanted ear before tapping the cat lightly. It stood and stretched with a disgruntled yawn, sharpening its claws on Ravayu's tunic while presenting its backside to Imoen before finally crawling into a pack on the elf's shoulder. "Still, ascension is in vogue right now, isn't it? I suppose Elminster's hands are full right with old Larloch right now so he sent the three of you to kill me instead."
Imoen blanched. She'd agreed to go in first, hoping Neera and Jaheira could sneak in undetected if she couldn't… Well, she wasn't quite sure what she was going to do.
Ravayu hopped down from the table, the motion sending it tilting over with a crash that was deafening against the oppressive silence that stretched between them. Imoen flinched back behind her staff reflexively.
"It's a shame. I rather liked this tower." Ravayu gazed up at the glowing tapestry, harsh shadows falling across his sharp features. "So how long has it been since we last saw one another?"
"Since you stopped visiting." Imoen frowned.
"Can you blame me?" Ravayu raised a slender eyebrow as he looked her up and down.
"Well I'm sorry for making you so... uncomfortable." Imoen's own silver brows furrowed.
Ravayu snorted. "Fifty years too late for that, don't you think?"
"I shouldn't have to say I'm sorry for getting old, little brother."
"And I never asked you to. I never asked you for anything." Ravayu stood closer now, barely a sword's length away, though Imoen couldn't see any weapons on him. "I'm asking you now, though. Get out."
"You know I can't do that." Imoen gritted her teeth.
"I don't want to hurt you."
"Is that what you said to Mazzy?"
Ravayu looked away, biting his lip. "She wouldn't listen."
"And you'd do the same to me?"
Ravayu chuckled, his eyes cold as he gazed back at her. "Guess."
"... You've changed." Imoen narrowed her eyes.
"No, I haven't." Ravayu pointed at his face with a crooked half smile that Imoen didn't mirror.
"Then why are you doing this? You let our father's essence go, you walked away."
"I walked with you. You walked away." Ravayu snapped. "And this? This was always the plan."
"What?" Imoen's mouth fell open.
"I was a baby, Ims. Not even fifty years old, and suddenly that was it? Join some human pantheon? That would have been awkward." Ravayu shook his head, hair falling back across his face which he absentmindedly brushed back behind his ear once more. "Honestly I only planned to give it a decade or two, but then the spellplague came."
Imoen shuddered. The worst ravages of the spellplague were still fresh in her mind even now, the chaos, the collapse of magic itself.
"So... you just wanted divinity on your own terms?" She frowned at her sibling.
"I wanted a life!" Ravayu stepped forward, stopping just short of Imoen's wards. "And I tried! Oh how I tried. But- but you're all so… Brief! And the elves! Goddess save me from the elves. If they'd had their way I'd have been 'prenticed to some wilted sage for half a century. Me!"
Imoen nodded, fingers clenched tight around her staff. She'd heard his complaints before, a lifetime ago. "Like a child!" he'd shouted, flecks of magical energy sparking from his fingers as he stormed around her in a huff.
"I thought I would change. I thought I'd grow up, gain some deep understanding, or… mature, you know?" But I'm still just me." Ravayu tilted his head, hair falling off the rounded stump of his left ear, a wound older than she was. " I never learned to be Elven, Ims. And I'm a terrible human being."
"You were one of the best people I ever knew." Imoen stepped back, levelling the tip of her staff at Ravayu's chest. "Before you carried on his experiments because you felt like you didn't fit in."
"Oh please." Ravayu rolled his eyes, still not bothering to draw a weapon of his own. "I went from apprentice to archmage in less than two years, you think after this long Jon's research means anything more to me than any of those lackwit sages who thought to educate me? Oh no, his methods were far too crude - and easily disrupted."
Imoen's eyes widened. "You-"
"Oh yes, it's still going on as we speak. My dungeons are surprisingly well fortified." Ravayu flicked his head towards a beshadowed archway with an indulgent smile. A bent candelabra flickered into life, illuminating a spiral staircase. "Ah ah, I don't think so."
He flicked his wrist before Imoen could take so much as a step, and a razor thin blade of blackness came between her and the stairwell, piercing neatly through her wards without so much as a moment's resistance. "You know, it's funny. If I'd taken the offer, maybe I could have saved Mystra? Maybe Cyric would have been so busy scheming against me that the spellplague would never have happened." Ravayu pulled his hand back, twirling the blade of nothingness in a lazy arc. "Maybe Aerie would still be alive?"
"You can't blame yourself for Aerie's death." Imoen edged back from the deadly sword, fresh protective spells flashing around her. Wasn't the black blade a lost spell?
"Oh, I certainly don't." Ravayu raised a hand and was lost within a kaleidoscope of identical copies, each merging and separating with one another as he stood. "But not to worry, I'll be having words with the one responsible in…" The legion of images each pulled a small hourglass from their pockets, where glittering crimson sand flowed upwards from the bottom bulb to the top. "About an hour?"
"No." Imoen's eyes widened. They had to stop that ritual. "Last chance, Rav. Get out of my way."
"You couldn't stop me in your prime, Imoen. You sure you can manage now?"
"I'm an archmage. I am in my prime." Imoen swept her staff forward, sending a dozen magic missiles hurtling towards Ravayu followed by a wave of raw force. She saw barely the hint of a grin as the missiles rippled against an unseen barrier before the mage tumbled backwards as the force wall crashed into him, landing on his feet amidst the rubble before slicing it in two with his blade.
Imoen was already heading for the stairs, lips moving silently as she went, flicking a handful of dessicated spiders from her pouch across the rubble. A pair of giant spiders erupted from the earth, their furry mandibles dripping with venom as they hurled themselves towards Ravayu.
A bolt of blinding lightning scorched through the air before Imoen, leaving her stumbling backwards, clutching her eyes and leaning heavily on her staff. The room filled with the smell of burning hair, and a second later frantic chittering was followed by a hissing sound, and then… silence.
Imoen shook her head, blinking to clear her vision as she hurriedly spoke an incantation she could barely hear over the ringing in her ears. A bubble of shimmering colours blossomed around her, one of the few barriers left capable of standing against that disastrous blade.
"Did you really think you could just walk away again?" Ravayu's voice filtered through the sphere to her, almost bored. Several Ravayu stepped daintily around her, carelessly dragging their blades along the floor beside him. One of them left a deep furrow as its destructive force tore through the stone. The real one. "Seems my friends disagree."
Imoen felt a hand close around her ankle, chilling cold radiating out from where it touched and her strength began to ebb away. Reflexively she snapped the butt of her staff downwards to the ground, sending out a shockwave of thunder, and the hand released its grip. She peered down to see shadowy arms dissipating from the force, and still more shades crawled from the cracks in the stone outside of her shield, glowing green eyes the only feature on their faces as they circled her globe.
Ravayu raised his free hand, intoning the words of a spell in a sing song voice.
Imoen's eyes widened. Disjunction? Another lost spell. She raised her hand, a lance of hissing acid hurtling from her palm to strike the real mage square in the chest. Ravayu grimaced in pain, finishing the incantation through gritted teeth as smoke billowed from his tunic.
The moment he finished the last syllable a burst of magical energy blazed out from Ravayu's hand, his images winked out of existence, then Imoen's prismatic sphere, the blade of darkness and the candelabra, even the magical glow of the rocks dimmed before finally Imoen's light spell winked out, plunging the interior into gloom. Imoen reeled from the power, one of the magical rings on her fingers cracked and the stone's colour bled away to leave colourless glass.
Ravayu's pained breath came from the darkness behind her.
"Sic 'er."
Green eyes silently surged toward Imoen from every direction. She raised her staff, sweeping blindly at the charging shadows as she loosed a fiery burst from the other hand, . The head of her staff blazed brightly as she swung, revealing the growing tide of darkness pouring from every corner of the room. Ravayu stood amongst them, his hands moving to form another spell.
"Nature! Take the life she gave!"
Fire erupted around Imoen, blasting a mass of shadows to nothingness. A second explosion burst from the stones beside her as a tiny projectile shattered against the floor.
"Now it's my turn to save the day!" Neera's familiar pink haired form burst through the entryway, surrounded by a vibrant corona that both illuminated the room in fiery orange and seared any shadow that ventured too close. Jaheira followed a moment later, instantly hurling her last acorn at Ravayu. He slipped to the side, and it exploded on the wall behind him, igniting the table and sending shadows scattering from the heat.
"About time you two turned up." Ravayu leapt back onto the edge of the burning table, heedless of the flames licking at his boots as he slapped his palm against the soot encrusted wall behind him.
"It is over, archmage. Surrender!" Jaheira slammed her shield into a shade and drew her scimitar.
"What, no 'hello'?" Ravayu's fingers pressed between two stone slabs with an audible click. "I'm hurt. Why not stay awhile?"
"Get down!" Imoen barely had time to get the words out before the entryway behind them exploded into a shower of sharpened stone and dust, knocking her to the floor. Everything turned to choking darkness, and Imoen's consciousness faded.
