The Enemy you Know

The interior of the inn was dark and musty smelling. Sputtering torches lit up the place with a fickle light that played off the shadows and made them seem alive. The bar gleamed black, and the person behind it appeared to be human. On the wall behind him were bottles of booze and glasses neatly lined up in rows. Behind that was the stuffed head of some demon. The head was black and had large horns curving back from its brow. One eye dominated the face, and it was a brilliant orange color. It looked like it might still be alive – its eye seemed to follow me as I approached the bar.

"What'll you have?" asked the barkeep.

"What have you got?" I said as I swung myself onto a stool. The demon head on the wall was giving me a serious case of the creeps. I surreptitiously glanced around. It seemed to be the only mounted head on the wall. Thank the gods for small favors.

"We've got just about everything, as long as you like whiskey." He smiled a gap toothed smile, his teeth black and rotten in his mouth. He absentmindedly wiped down the gleaming black surface of the bar with a rag that truly deserved the name.

"Whiskey it is, then."

He plopped down a glass that looked like it hadn't seen water or soap in three years and poured some whiskey from a bottle. As he moved to put the bottle away, I grabbed his arm. "Leave the bottle." I said.

He held out his hand and I placed a few gold coins into it. I stood up, grabbing the glass and the bottle, planning on finding someplace secluded to sit. Then it hit me: a prickling sensation along the base of my neck, moving down my spine. Someone was watching me. I used to get that feeling all the time back in Faerun, whenever Bishop was around. I swung around, scanning the booths along the wall.

He sat there, halfway down the wall from the door. His eyes locked onto mine in that predatory gaze of his. He made a gesture that could have been interpreted a hundred different ways, but I knew it to mean I was to join him, if I liked. I thought about it for a microsecond. You know what they say – the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don't. So I walked across the floor and sat across from him at that dirty table, never taking my eyes off him for a moment.

OOO

Chance Meetings

"Wondered if you'd show up, Captain," he sneered, downing his drink in one gulp.

"Bishop. Can't say I'm surprised to see you here."

He looked me right in the eye and leaned forward a little. I wasn't sure, but he didn't seem quite his confident self right then. He looked a little, well, discomfited.

"Where ever here is. Do you know where we are?" His voice was low – almost a whisper. He obviously didn't want to let on that he didn't know what had happened. I couldn't really blame him. I'm sure he expected to wake up in one of the hells. That would have been scary enough. But to rise up from the dead here was something else entirely. It didn't really look like what you'd expect one of the hells to look like, and yet it didn't seem as if you'd miraculously been spared and sent to someplace a little better, either.

I laughed. "We're in Carceri. It's not hell, but it's close. In some ways – it's worse. They call it the prison plane. It's the place where betrayers go when they die. That's why we're here, anyway." I polished off my drink and poured myself another. I was going to need the courage the alcohol would provide, if I was going to deal with being in Carceri and finding Bishop all at the same time. I was still handling his betrayal of me quite poorly, even though it hadn't been unexpected.

"Hmph," he said, his hand holding his chin. His eyes never left me as I drank. They were penetrating, urging me to divulge all of my secrets to him. I hadn't fallen for that back home, and I didn't plan to here. After a long while, he shifted in his seat.

"If this is the place that betrayers go when they die, why are you here? Some dark secret in your past? Or something you did after I left?" Bishop asked, his steely gaze still pinning me to my spot.

"In the end, it came down to expediency – survive as the King of Shadows' partner, or die with the others. I chose the King of Shadows."

"So what happened then? Did he kill you for your trouble?" He tried to look nonchalant, but there was an interest he couldn't disguise in his eyes. He wanted to know – no, needed to know what happened after he'd been killed.

"No," I answered. I could have expounded on that answer, given him a little of the information he so desperately wanted to know. But I decided that he needed to ask: if only to assuage my own pain from his betrayal of me.

His eyes bore into me, willing me to give further details about my death. I met his gaze with an equal ferocity, the black of my eyes meeting the brown of his, willing him to give in first. It was a sign of just how shaken up he was that he gave in and looked down at his hands after only a few minutes. Back home he would have held my gaze for a painfully long period of time. Quietly, so quietly I almost didn't hear him, he asked, "How did you die, then?"

I was feeling magnanimous. I decided to give him the details he wanted. He'd been subjugated enough. "When I turned on them all, I could see the look of shock and betrayal that went through them. I think even Ammon Jerro was surprised at my sudden abandonment of the cause. But in the end, Casavir was the one who wielded the killing blow. By then, he was the only one left standing. The rest were dead by my hand.

The last thing I remember was that hammer of his connecting with the side of my head. He hit me so hard it knocked off my headband of intellect. The look in his eyes was one of pure hatred and rage. I never thought to see the like on his face. But there was a divine wrath behind it all, like he was fulfilling some great cosmic destiny by slaying me. And he smiled at me – smiled – as he drove his hammer into my head."

The look of shock in his eyes quieted me a little. It had bothered me that Casavir had been the one to swing my death blow. The righteous paladin – righteous until the end. Still smiting evil with that damn hammer of his. Unfortunately for me, I was the evil that last time around.

"Humph. I would have figured Khelgar would have felt the most betrayed by you, seeing as how he'd been with you the longest. Would've figured he'd be the one to strike that blow. "

"Oh come on, Bishop. We both know that Casavir had feelings for me. For a while, at least until my true nature came out. Once I betrayed them, his anger was greater than any of the others. But it's over – I'm sure they all passed into their own afterlives soon after I did." I greedily gulped down another drink. Talking about how I was killed wasn't exactly my favorite line of conversation.

"How is it that you know where we are?" he asked, his tone a little more accusatory than I liked.

"I'm literate, Bishop. I read. I had more than a passing interest in my infernal heritage. I read all I could about the planes in that library in the keep, and in Neverwinter. I asked Aldanon a lot of questions. Hells, I even spoke with Ammon at length about the lower planes, since he'd been there. It didn't take me long to parse out the fact that this was Carceri once I arrived. The lurid crimson light and the smell gave it away," I said, downing another drink. The bottle was half empty, and I hadn't even been sharing with Bishop. I really ought to slow down.

"Listen." I leaned closer to him, smelling the beer on his breath and the faint odor of the Illefarn ruins clinging to him. "We're trapped here. There's no way out, not for people like us. There are ways off this plane, but since we're petitioners, it's doubtful we'll find one. I don't know what our next move should be, but it would make sense to stick together." My heart was beating fast. Even though he'd betrayed me, he was still the only familiar thing in this whole damn plane. I wanted to be with him, if for no other reason than he was comfortable – he was a known. I found myself unable to say anything further until I knew what his answer was. I hoped he would choose to stay with me. But in the end, it was his choice to make.

"Agreed," he said, and something in my chest loosened up just a tiny bit. "I can think of worse people to be in Hell with, after all." Then he did something completely unexpected – he reached out his hand and placed it over mine.

There had been casual touches in my uncle's tavern, back when we had been there. Touches meant to insult or inflame me, but usually just ratcheted up my desire for the man. This was different. There was a tenderness about it that I hadn't expected from him. It was then that I knew he was scared. We were both in over our heads, in a place we knew very little about.

"I say we get a room and get some rest," I said, although I didn't feel particularly tired.

"Separate rooms, or one room?" he asked, that wry grin creeping up in the corners of his mouth.

My heart was doing flip flops in my chest. "Well, our money would go farther if we shared a room, and it would be safer," I offered, knowing that it was just an excuse, if an accurate one. I really just wanted to spend some time alone with the man, away from everything we'd ever known. We couldn't get more away from it all if we tried. If we were going to survive here, it might just depend on the two of us trusting each other. But I wasn't about to tell Bishop that. I didn't think it would sit well with him. I wasn't all that sure it sat well with me.