Chapter 4: Creed
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The black warren trapped them by unnatural labyrinth. Once it had been all dark green moss rather than this foulness. Jaheira battled a horde of statues come-to-life, black stone as Khalid's—
She had thought herself strong but Gorion and Reviane and Otets, father she had called always by formal name but no less love for him until that day of fires and hiding so long ago now, they had made her wish for heartlessness and it was Khalid's action that had saved—
Her vines grown from scattered seeds, so thick with thorns as to be sharp as morningstars, swept and strangled and pierced the stone.
She was strong. Her prayers to Silvanus rung rich with green blessing, everything she shaped herself to be, fierce druid and doubly protective wife, guardian of the foolish children even though they failed to listen so many times, they might be foolish but still deserved protection.
Seeds of living flame were gifted to her hand, and Jaheira flung these in the face of an enemy who sought her dead.
The truth was that Khalid was her right hand, her left hand, her legs that bore her up, and the truth was that the whole of the two of them was greater than the simple sum of druid and warrior Harper. The truth was that Yaga-Shura lay dead of water-poisoning upon his fiery-maned head, and the truth was that through Melissan they found the lair of yet another Bhaalspawn in need of slaying before she spread further evil from her power.
She held her quarterstaff with only one hand, and an iron-skinned punch with the other sent one of the black statues flying whilst she lashed about her with the staff's length.
The truth was that Sendai needed to feed the Earth and serve the balance.
Jaheira forced her way through the last of the black statues about her and to the drow herself. Sendai was pierced and tattooed, clad in grey, her weaponry two sets of long curved claws slipped over each hand, the metal seemingly planted painfully inside her flesh and dripping a liquid coloured blackish green. Renegade, for a drow: and what that turned out to be was still worse than the spider goddess. Still worse than the dark worship of that other renegade drow.
Talonite.
Jaheira ran forward, hoping to split her skull. The claws of the drow's right hand lashed out, twisted; strength she had not expected from the short and frail-built abominable worshipper of the Mother of All Plagues. Jaheira rebuked herself that of course even a caster of that nature could make themselves strong as a giant—she wrenched away her staff and more cautiously attacked. The claws of Sendai's left arm slid across the iron flesh of her upper arm. Quick but unable to harm, Jaheira thought; but then she knew that to be wrong, for some poison upon them ate through even the metal of her arms, designed to attack the very hidden parts of one, no doubt foul arcane as well as the work of that goddess.
She pronounced the words of her spell against poison, and Silvanus came to her aid. A powerful purification was needed, and speedily pronounced; it took some of her strength but much yet remained to her. In the same moment, Sendai raised a green sphere about herself, and her unnatural mouth chanted the words of another casting. Jaheira brought down her staff upon the shielding, again and again: she could not allow that. The words of the chanting faltered when the surface blistered: Talonites who pierced and poisoned and stunted themselves were foolish in their crimes against nature.
She heard a quick squeal from Della; a drow archer or mage must have aimed through, she supposed, for the girls and the bard cast next to each other, summoning creatures to draw the attacks. Hobgoblins and skeletal warriors and a pair of horses from Della of all things, slender high-stepping white-maned animals that were inevitably massacred. Perhaps she ought not to condemn the girl too far, for in her claim to be an illusionist Della had concealed them all by layers of invisibility impenetrable enough to reach Sendai's inmost sanctum, though Jaheira doubted her dedication to a genuine mage's speciality.
Jaheira's staff drove through the shielding even as Sendai started her casting again, and hit the drow's ribs. Sendai's hoarse shriek was crow-like, less natural than the cry of any carrion bird—for carrion was indeed what she ought to be.
"I will triumph," Jaheira heard the drow whisper, "you think me less natural than the little mongrel?"
She was a Talonite. It was very simple, and deserved no reply.
"Die in your delusions, lorugvith'rell," Sendai spoke. Foul language; that she had natural relations with trees.
To talk was the response of an amateur; Jaheira chose only to fight. Her staff hit again, and this time the small-boned drow fell to her blackened stone. How pathetic. And yet there was a sharp pain in her side, something that pierced her protections. She whirled, her staff striking out again; a black statue in motion that had been invisible, bearing a long stiletto that glimmered a strange shade. Poison, yet again. Jaheira struck with the strength that remained to her, and flung the statue to where Khalid fought. He knew her as well as she knew him; his sword reached out and impaled it while it was yet in motion, and as easily he returned to fight a set of three casters. She lowered her hands to her wound and spoke again her quick poison incantation while his sword wove its graceful tapestry, setting spellcasters to stuttering more than he at his least collected.
Silvanus' gift cleared the contamination from her veins. She saw Safana fling a throwing dagger at Sendai, saw the drow dodge. The thief was running from Sendai's servants, taking shelter behind Jaheira's husband. Jaheira readied herself to end the Talonite, let this battle be over so quickly. She brought the drow to the ground with her first blow.
Sendai hissed; and this time her casting did not take long. A roiling cloud erupted from where the drow's body lay, and forced Jaheira back. She could easily cast to purify the air about herself, and did so by Silvanus' name; but within that cloud something stretched and reformed itself, to giant...
A scorpion, nigh the size of Yaga-Shura. Poison creature of the desert, a barbed tail, pincers unnaturally black and writhing... No. Four scorpions. It split itself upon a mass at the base of its tail, one almost the size it had first appeared, three simply the size of large basilisks. Jaheira chanted a summons of her own: she could call nature herself to this place, to protect them all.
They were high in the Talonite's lair. None but stone long soaked by poison and cursed to the mistress of disease surrounded them. This was no place of Silvanus. Jaheira spoke the familiar words to call animals to aid her, and none were there: she found nothing. In her brief moment of confusion, a tail of a scorpion struck down: pain through her shoulder and chest, black fire that drove all out of her head and made her feel only pain. Her knees gave way and the stone hit her forehead.
"J-Jaheira! No!" she heard Khalid's cry in the darkness, and that gave her what she needed to continue. Silvanus, drain this poison from me to the earth. Silvanus, allow me to fight.
The only way to protect nature was to take an active role in the world, Jaheira had always believed, and the Oak Father had granted her prayers. Yet this place hurt her; there was difficulty in drawing the power to her, as if she sought to drink water through a broken reed. And the scorpion's poison was strong. Jaheira gathered it up from her heart, thrust it back through her veins; let the ground take it. She flung the blackness away and sought to close the wounds.
You may take no more power to neutralise against poison, she knew suddenly, though Silvanus' voice was not as clear as to give words. She had exhausted her abilities; other castings remained in her head, but Sendai's poisons were too violent for her to further...
Which meant that she must cause these creatures to fall. A squad of Imoen's hobgoblins already surrounded the one of the scorpions, firing arrows into its armoured hide, grimly organised with more summoned from the planes to take the place of those already dead by its strikes. They'd thought her dead and done for; but Jaheira had protections remaining to her casting strength, seeds in her pouches by her side. First she renewed skin of iron and bear's strength, panther's swiftness and wolf's natural fury. Then she took her grass seeds in hand, and flung at the scorpion closest to her: and cast.
Silvanus bring nature to this place, since I have fetched it!
The vines sprang to her command. They took the scorpion's legs, entangled its pincers: bound it and strangled the joints of its neck. Khalid she saw standing among the fallen mages, as if he had suddenly killed all in front of him to try to reach her: he took his longbow from his back, and she saw him aim at joints upon the head by the eyes of the giant scorpion. He knew such creatures better than she, from his homeland; it was the clear natural vulnerability... Jaheira gestured, and the vines no longer imprisoned only but sought to kill. The thorns pierced one of the eyes of the creature she held, and its pincers and tail writhed in what must be pain. (Pain to a Talonite. They had unnatural tastes for it.)
Garrick's voice sung with frantic urgency. Jaheira grasped her staff herself, and rushed to assist: the casters were almost unprotected, their shieldings worn away and their summonings slain, and the scorpion by them. She saw its black sting swoop down; she would be too late. Della was trying to run, but the blade on the edge of the scorpion's tail would find her, slit her throat by its poison. This she could not allow, for Gorion—
It was Garrick who thrust himself in front of the girl, as if to take the blow for her: pale and frightened, but his voice grew stronger. And as Jaheira reached it, something took hold: pale lines appearing between the sleek black of the sting, cracks running up and through it like lines of white smoke, a drill of song racing inside the beast and shattering from the inside out. She saw Garrick sink to his knees, but the scorpion fell apart in pieces. Then Safana fell to the ground, cut badly by the stinger of the scorpion of Sendai, and Jaheira knew her duties. A summoned kobold rushed in front of Safana as a brief distraction for the thing; Jaheira bent down hastily, and chanted enough of a healing spell to preserve flesh—but the poison, she needed to block the poison from the woman somehow. Jaheira cast, and sought for the way for this.
The poison beat through Safana's riddled flesh, and no matter what she thought of the woman she must aid her. She prayed to Silvanus for strength, the Talonite, the unnatural scorpion who sought to poison her Khalid as well, that they would heal... Upon Safana's belt were potions of antidote; Jaheira poured one upon the scorpion's bite and finished the chant of the basic healing spell. Safana was weak, but there was no time and she could heal the woman after the battle. Was there more she could do? She was separated from Silvanus by these foul environs. It must be his will to destroy the Talonite enclave, not for any Bhaalspawn but for that alone. She and Khalid had seen this place when dark green moss rather than this foul stone had triumphed, where it had been true nature rather than poisoned mockery only ten years before. Melissan had shown them the way to eradicate this abomination, and for that at least she appreciated the woman's warnings. The giant scorpion that was Sendai flanked her with its smaller child, and she could read in its eyes: No mercy, druid. You and I would have this fight if there were none other than us.
"For the fallen!" Jaheira called her battlecry. For all the life you have destroyed here, Sendai! For the others gone before their natural! For Gorion, for Dermin, for Reviane and Lord Firecam! She brought her staff to one of the legs of the scorpion before her. Its body was thick; missiles of the spellcasters merely scorched its hide, Khalid's arrows only enraging it. He fired one shot into the eye of the giant one. It reared and bucked, and Jaheira rolled down and away from that stinger. She should not be trapped between two of them; at least her own vines held the other for the moment. Safana lay unmoving; Garrick was silent.
Khalid laid down the bow and came with his sword and shield. Light encompassed him, his own warm purple-yellow aura covering him like a blanket from the shield's powers of protection. He sliced into the smaller scorpion, and Jaheira used her staff to brace against the wild-swinging tail. At least its ferocious movements cleared the way from the statues that remained. She and her husband fought next to each other, the way they had in a thousand battles; not even a Talonite's grotesque form could separate them now. Khalid defended, attacking only when he saw a clear path to a vulnerability; Jaheira fought with less discrimination, forcing the foes away from them.
Silvanus, come to me, she prayed; Silvanus, where is the nature in this place?
She caught the glance of her Khalid, looking at her as if he expected her to act as a druid. The form of the third scorpion broke free from its vines, ripping free of them when they could not have possibly have been rooted to stone. Nature was not in this place. It came quickly, too quickly; her Khalid flung himself at her back to protect her, and the stinger ripped the shield from his hands. He did not falter but stabbed forward, his body in motion that distracted the foes and sought the precise place of their weakness.
Silvanus. Imoen's castings sought to bring the creatures to magical vulnerability; Della cast for her pair of prancing horses once more to stand in front of her. It is not arcane that will destroy this Talonite—
Jaheira and Khalid stood side by side and fought against the three scorpions that surrounded them, and it was impossible to tell which of them was slightly slowed, which of them whom after both their woundings was not quite as fast as the other anticipated, not quite within the rhythm they both knew as the beat of their hearts. The pincers of the giant scorpion cut across Khalid's armour, ripping plate to shreds; and then the stinger of one of the smaller pierced his flesh.
Silvanus— She had no time to cast a proper healing spell—the poison—
Silvanus! Oak Father do not fail me now! It was irreverent to address a god so, but: Silvanus you will heed me and aid my husband now!
Jaheira found the answer she sought. All places belonged to nature. The Talonite was nothing to begin with.
There was stone all around her, and she chanted to rouse it. Silvanus rose in her and she knew it to be right, to be natural: stone was untainted at its heart, poison broke against stone. She drew the stone to herself and to Khalid as armour, forced the poison in him to seek stone rather than flesh, and to there dissolve itself far more quickly than it could wear away the rock of Silvanus. She did the work of the Oak Father, she knew beyond a doubt with the chantings that she was granted. The scorpion tails struck, but they could not pierce the rocks themselves.
"Fall, creature, and feed the earth!" she cried to the Talonite, and brought Sendai's own crude statues to rise against her. All rock was Silvanus': she released it from the unnatural purpose. The stones from the very roof fell upon the scorpions, and above them was the open sky at last. Jaheira made herself the centre of a hurricane, the force of a driving wind, calm within the storm of stone: Silvanus aided her to reclaim. Nature took the life she gave.
The drow was returned to her natural form, crushed, a piece of rock driven through her forehead and her eyes staring up at nothing; and she crumbled to dust, her creatures dead with her. Jaheira looked up at a starry night, the moon the pale blue of seafoam.
"You've d-done it, dear," Khalid said, looking up at her where the stone she had pulled around him left his eyes visible; and first she healed him before taking care of Safana and the young ones.
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