A/N: Good evening there, sweethearts. Here is the second and final part of the first story arc, so to speak - may it brightens your day as something good enough to devote a few minutes of your reading time to. :) I am already concocting the next chapter, so we'll see what evil I can bring to life this time... Feel free to rant in your reviews - it's the only pay I'll ever get. :D

Also, it is quite late at night now, I went to sleep at 4.00 in the morning yesterday and I am incredibly sick for the second time this autumn, which is a small miracle allright, as, usually, I have a very good resistance to such things. What I meant to say - please, excuse any grammar mistakes, as it is more than possible that I was hallucinating at the time. ;)

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The Darkness Nightly

II. Lost

Soulafein walked the streets of Menzoberranzan, and no-one recognized him any more.

Merchants, slaves, priestesses, a hive of things bent onto themselves, all of them crowded the lanes, filled up the Bazaar, flocked around shops and taverns, soldiers stood silent and ominous by the borders of their respective noble Houses, and all that ever changed were the faces.

How much can nothing change in fifty years?

Soulafein walked slowly and didn't look around. He imagined he felt eyes on him, and shadows kept leaping at him from behind the corners, magic flickering between his delicate fingers every time. There were those soft, shimmering violet flames everywhere he glanced, only to discover it was just purple faerie fire the next moment. The citadel loomed in front of him, and then it did not, and he felt anger, and then calm, and then his sanity, and then nothing again.

This damned city, this damned life he'd thought was a hallucination of his tired mind, all of it came rushing up to him after half a century of living a darkness, and it wasn't even a bit more real than the first time around.

He couldn't believe it.

He couldn't believe he was allowed to live again.

That he needed someone's allowance!!

Loved it or hated it, once he'd had a life almost worth living. He'd had power, he'd had influence and, most of all, he'd had magic stronger than borders of worlds. And he'd had dancing, all those times ago… until it all shattered like the fragile crystal it had been.

He stared at his right palm for a moment, liquid shadow coalescing, then dissipating in the gloom.

Lying had always come naturally to him. He didn't consider it difficult to fool the Archmage, however dangerous the man might be… he wasn't alive long enough to start caring yet. He would, eventually.

Nobody wants to die.

But there was more than just one archmage in this city of wonders and eternal night… certainly there had been fifty years ago. Soulafein felt weak now… all that he used to be sapped by the Plane of Shadows, washed away, his soul stripped, sick… vulnerable. The insanity of his cursed bloodline finally getting that free reign it had always craved. He wasn't stupid – he knew.

Maybe there were ways to gain again… He summoned the shadow matter once more, running his fingers through its intangible substance. Maybe there were ways to live again. A different kind of existence… but an existence nonetheless. The Planes had touched him, and such caresses tended to stay. But he could redirect his power sources, take the darkness for his own, and combine both Weaves into one. He could do a thing like this. He could…

Was he even a living being any more?

He lifted his eyes and almost smiled. The turquoise gleamed softly in the dusk.

---

Gromph stood in the corridor and silently looked at the corpses. A few of the Masters of Sorcere lined the hall's edges behind his back, indrawn and neutral.

"Why are the three of them dead?" The Archmage's voice was quite serene, unlike the small ruby flames igniting in his eyes.

Jhailrin Ariondath calmly surveyed the neat, clean scene in front of him. "It doesn't look like they'd posed much of a problem, anyway. If you're inquiring about the cause of their early demise, it had turquoise eyes and lightning-fast reflexes."

"What happened?"

"A young male blicked out of shadows in the corridor and went on a killing spree. I imagine they just kept trying to prevent him from leaving the building. Probably thought you had been a victim of an assassination or something."

"In that case, they would have been applauding, not hindering him," Gromph murmured.

"Bullshit." Rhyess from the House of Barrison Del'Armgo pushed his way through the small gathering and halted in front of the Archmage with a gloomy scowl gracing his harsh face. "Like hell they'd tried to stop him. Just go. Go." He vaguely gestured in the general direction of an adjoining hallway where the classroom section of that floor began.

The Masters lifted their eyes as one and stared at the nearest corner. Gromph glanced at them once, then assumed an annoyed, no-nonsense look and purposefully strode down the corridor, the back of his cloak flashing angrily as he turned the corner.

Another two corpses.

"Well, little one," Gromph frowned a little. "I am beginning to feel concerned."

---

He didn't go back there. What for? There was no-one who'd stay alive in his memory, and he didn't need to see the remains of something buried in the background of Menzoberranzan's rustling subconscious for so long. It was something that belonged to the first life of his, the life spent in a lively curiosity, an endless, unalloyed fascination with magic, when he'd thought that the worlds were his to conquer and wonder at, and the music had been spinning its intricate webs for his ears alone.

What did it matter. He didn't care. How could he? Why would he?

The purity… There used to be something pure about those days. Uncomplicated. The Archmage thought he was clever? That he became a House Wizard at forty-eight? Oh, how short his ageless memory was. He had forgotten so easily… every one of them had. That was the way of this place.

Soulafein passed through the north-western city gates without a second thought, flicking to Shadows and out again, barely even registering the change. Were he to realize his action, he would have been scared – he would have, despite not being scared by anything, ever. He would have shivered, his chest constricted, and, anxiously, he would have waited for the Citadel to reveal its forbidding form in the outlines made of night, a blurry, smudged picture of black mist far away.

However, as it was, the guards never noticed. No-one had.

In a sense, it was more scary still, the ease with which the shadows heeded his will.

Wasn't it?

Where are you going now, little one, little child, lost alone, forgotten, in the grip of the night?

He didn't know where he was going; perhaps, a little voice inside of him whispered, you are not so brave after all. Perhaps you want to end it all…?

…and return to darkness.

Wasn't it where he belonged now? Dead things should not return from beyond. Relics should stay forgotten… to be found by those who knew where to look.

Going to, going from, what do you care for me? I was born, like yourself, to find my destiny.

If you have some left, some left, and if you have some left at all… When she'd told me, I had believed.

Since when did mages, of all the beings in the multiverse, care what was natural? The answer was easy there – they didn't. He didn't, either. After all those things, he still didn't.

He stopped when he came to a deep chasm cutting through the short but wide cavern, the chilly draft rising out of its depths holding him at bay.

Cold was making his heart stop. He couldn't stand it. Couldn't breathe it.

He looked around in a kind of a feverish defiance. The ceiling was high and ragged. The walls, covered in glittering, greenish glow of faerzress, reflected an eerie light off his hair, eyes and tiny flakes of mica scattered all around.

Wilds of the Underdark... wilds of this world. No-one dared travel through there alone. The air was still. The darkness, despite the shine, thick.

I am my own master. I bow to no-one. I have freedom at last. I will do… what I…

Drohorreur's blade sparkled, wreathing his forearm in its mist as he slashed his wrist.

---

"Are you really that weak?"

The voice cut through the cave like a snap of a whip.

The Archmage stood under the glow of the enchanted moss, his arms crossed on his chest, watching the scene in front of him with a scowl.

Soulafein turned, his eyes empty. Suddenly, he laughed.

,,Death like this is lost to me," he said, his words flat and toneless. "You think I haven't tried? You think I haven't taken the pains to try hard? A hundred times? A thousand times?" The curved dagger flashed green as he held his arm for Gromph to see. The slash, deep and clean, was seeping a writhing darkness instead of blood, the surrounding skin already beginning to heal. Then the dagger flashed again as it was flung at the Archmage.

It halted in midair and Gromph's eyes flared up with anger. "Are you trying to attack me?"

Soulafein turned again from his position with his back to the other male, his own irises kindling with a bright ruby fire. "Yes! With a dagger! Can't you see it's the famous Dagger of Vanquishing Bullshit-asking Foes?!"

There wasn't any warning.

The two spells crashed together halfway between the mages, the whole cavern shaking with the force of the explosion, bits of rock and faerzress crumbling from the ceiling as they negated each other in a violent shiver of raw power.

Gromph's eyes widened slightly.

Soulafein sneered.

And then, there was a whirl of a dark piwafwi and a hand grabbed his left forearm, twisting it roughly behind his back. Drohorreur clinked as it's silver hilt hit the ground. Someone yanked at his wrist, bending his spine into a painful arc.

Soulafein, despite the angry flicker in his eyes, didn't try to defend himself.

"Is this your gratitude?" the Archmage hissed, his slender fingers gripping the dark blue velvet of the younger mage's coat and the tensed flesh underneath with a chilling force stemming more out of pure confidence rather than any actual physical strength.

Soulafein growled softly, then abruptly smiled. "I only counterspelled." His voice was so quiet that it only rose and fell due to the soft cool breeze wafting all of a sudden out of the chasm.

A sharp crack of bone resounded throughout the cave. "I could easily break the rest of your fingers now."

Although wincing in pain, Soulafein still didn't struggle. He bowed his head, random strands of silvery hair slipping over his shoulders. "I'd not break a life debt born under these most unique of circumstances." There was almost laughter in his words. For a second, Gromph wondered how would such a thing sound like without the reckless tinge of bitter madness.

"Five Masters of Sorcere lie dead in the corridors. Care to explain?"

Sapphire earrings glittered and sparkled and danced with light. "I felt like casting. They felt like dying."

A gelid freeze shot up the young drow's throat, choking the breath out of his lungs, clasping his throat with the ruthless force of a furious ice elemental.

Gromph leaned close, his breath misting the silver of the other one's piercings. "You lied to me," he whispered into Soulafein's ear. "And you're lying now. What's more, you don't even try to seem that you are trying to do it properly. What a waste of such a rare young talent."

Hands… hands are the life of a mage. Injured or permanently damaged, they mean an end to any wizardly career, which is equivalent to a death sentence in the indifferent realms of the Underdark.

Soulafein could feel the Archmage's delicate touch on his own cool skin.

For him, losing his hands, and, subsequently, losing his magic in the process, would mean enough to commit immediate suicide.

Not that the Archmage knew that. Yet.

"How could I dare to disagree." His smile was small and held things of shadow and eyes of silver long lost.

Because there are debts that bind infinitely more than any mere debts of life. Like those of desperate escapes. Of liberation. Of sanity.

"You'll work for me." Gromph's voice was calm.

"I will."

"You'll be loyal to me and me alone. You won't betray me. Ever. You will do as I say."

"I will."

"You will yield your magic to me."

The other male immediately stiffened in his arms.

Where are you going now, little one, little child…

"You will leave your essence in my custody," Gromph continued, unperturbed, "along with the better part of your power. No-one's that good of an actor, and we can't let them know. You can't play your part as you are now. Because I remember you, archmage Soulafein Ilphrin Az'ssVrei, third son and Elderboy of Eclavdra Az'ssVrei, Matron Mother of the Third House of Menzoberranzan. And I remember your end."

Going to, going from, what do you care for me? I am bound, spoken for, as it was meant to be.

Gently, Soulafein disentangled himself from the constraining hold and turned around, his lips twitching in a sad smile. "I said 'everything.'"