A/N: Next installment. Next week's chapter needs to undergo a mammoth revision, but I expect it to update on time. I hope you enjoy! Leave a review if you did, as always. Also, I've put up a poll in my profile. If you would give me your answer, it'd make me terribly happy - and it'll just take a few seconds for you.

o O o

Act VI

o O o

Mjirn had been reading much. For days, he had barely crawled out of the House of Shadows. He had devoured treaties on the principles of magic, on the fundaments of abjuration and evocation, he had consulted basic guides to crafting and he had taken notes upon notes on enchanting.

And when he had felt too tired, when his head had been about to explode, when the scrawling diagrams had made his eyes water and he could no longer distinguish the characters on the page… then he had kept on reading: the founding of Mithuth, the history of Haven, the political interactions with the neighbouring powers, the tension between the two most important cities in the island Kingdom - Sharessia and Kortuga, which apparently was an old Zhentarim post he'd yet to visit – and the different laws and customs governing each.

He had even bothered to read a play, The ghost of Conyberry, and a collection of tales, Wind by the fireside.

Still, all that reading wouldn't have kept him alive if Valerie, Merrick and another drow male hadn't found him when they did.

After spending every last copper to his name, to the point where he could no longer afford the daily ration of stale bread which had sustained him while he studied, he had boarded the small skiff to Sharessia hoping to capture enough loot to afford him another investigative jaunt, and that much was normal.

However, he never went to Goblin Island.

His old parchments had shown him something better, if only he dared to take it, and so dare it he did.

Chauntea's Hold was a small islet, close enough to swim to Sharessia if need be, where once upon a time a small druidic settlement had been built. But then, about two decades prior, something had happened and at the time only charred land and a few blackened planks remained. Mjirn couldn't care less about that tragedy, though: he was concerned with the speculated cause. What nowadays was the so-called Chauntea Underground had, at some point, been the laboratory of a mage and, going by his alleged experiments, he had been a powerful one. The notes Mjirn had found pointed to advanced works on golems and other forms of intelligent life – mostly successful, too, up to the moment when one test had gone awry and had utterly destroyed the wizard, most of his facilities and the druidic settlement.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting to find in there: perhaps notes, ingredients for spells or enchantments, a scrap golem or two… it would have been better than the trash hoarded by the goblins.

What he had found, though… The power controls of the lab had broken. The structures, once seeping energies from the elemental planes and conducting it towards the wizard's experiments, were gaping wounds in the fabric of the Prime Material and maddened, wrathful weirds of fire and earth nested in the deserted corridors. Half baked projects fought their way free from the elaboration chambers, and mithral hybrids of man and insect stalked the sealed rooms. Gargantuan iron golems who hadn't forgotten the will of their long dead master guarded the entryway to collapsed tunnels, once important. And rust eating monsters. The high presence of iron and other metallic alloys had called the little buggers forth from wherever they were hiding, and they lurked in every shadowy corner, acid dripping from their cockroach-like mandibles.

Mjirn had become good, oh so very good at his trade. There was will, and purpose, and perfectly shaped tendrils of the Weave behind every spell he shot. There was also intelligence in his choices, as he pelted fire with sleet, and used acid to undo the earth, and sent shocks of lightning to wash over conductive steel.

But always, always, there is something new to learn.

Mages run out of spells. They invariably do.

Mjirn never knew what hit him last. He never figured out how the others managed to drag him out of that hellish place. After the unending darkness, his only feeling was that of infinite warmth spreading from the core of his being to his numb limbs as the healing magic mended him.

For once, he did not curse the sun when its bright rays stung his eyes, and focused instead on the face looming over his prone form.

"W… why?" he managed to croak at Valerie's lopsided grin.

"Merrick saw you heading off to Chauntea earlier in the day, and when he told us we all decided that it might be a good plan to check the place out," she replied with a shrug.

Mjirn closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep, shaky breath. Merrick must have known about the labs and figured to share in the spoils, but…

"That does not answer my question at all," he said, pushing himself to a sitting position and scanning his surroundings out of habit, "but I shall not press the point."

Valerie sat back, a smudge of blood adorning her high cheekbone, and looked back to her two companions. Merrick merely shrugged and proceeded to keep on shifting to a backback, and the other one, a male drow unknown to Mjirn, remained silent and vigilant. The woman chuckled a bit to hide her confusion and shrugged again.

"What do you mean? You came to the isle alone, were gone for the whole day, we learned of this fact and decided to come and check on you. What else do you want me to say?"

Mjirn took his eyes off of the other drow and offered a small smile to Valerie.

"That is why you came to Chauntea's. It does not tell me why you chose to help me, and that was my original inquiry."

"What else were we supposed to do? Watch and enjoy!"

"This is not the Underdark, brother," the other drow interrupted then in a soft tone. "We sought to help for the act of helping itself, nothing else."

Eilistreean. The word rose in Mjirn's mind, unbidden, and he looked at the male sceptically. He knew a bit of his creed, even though it was only what was taught to all drow and what was whispered in the alleyways, and it had always sounded so… weak.

"Besides, I wanted to help because I cared," Valerie interrupted smoothly. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for Mjirn in the long run, she remembered well how susceptible he was to discussing religion and so she shifted the conversation with a question of her own. "Why did you enter there alone, anyway?"

Mjirn rose to his feet and, after a heartbeat of consideration, held out his hand to help her up in a rather uncharacteristic gesture.

"I hoped to learn something from the ruins. The sheer scale of the research done below this island guarantees the finding of a salvageable scrap or two."

Valerie took his hand, realizing for the first time that it was no bigger than her own, that the male pulling her weight off the ground was almost a head shorter than her, and lighter by quite a few pounds… and that it still seemed an effortless gesture to him.

She shook herself and smirked down into squinted red eyes.

"Well, who isn't answering the questions now? I asked why you came alone, not why you came at all."

Mjirn couldn't help but laugh at her reply. It was true, wasn't it? But then, that was the problem: he had grown used to never lying, for it never ended well when truth-detecting priestesses were nearby, but to hide the truth within the truth, even when it was not necessary.

"I did not have the means to hire out an escort, but the need to find some resources had become rather pressing."

"Hire? You could have told us!"

The way she kept saying 'us' was not lost to Mjirn, and he darted a glance between her and her two companions. Merrick was oblivious to the conversation, shifting through junk – junk Mjirn recognized as having found and collected in the Underground himself – and the other male remained ever vigilant, studying him with intensity from just a few paces behind the priestess of Sharess.

Where they a team now? How had it come to be?

He frowned a bit, his hand reaching up to brush some stray hair out of his eyes.

"I am sorry. I did not want to impose… I did not even know if my request would be welcome."

Valerie seemed to be on the brink of either striking him or pulling her own hair out and she turned a pleading look to her silent drow companion, who offered a small, serene smile.

"His mind has not left the Underdark yet. It will take him some time to get used to our ways, just as it will take his eyes some time to get used to the light," he said. "Believe it or not, this friendly behaviour is as alien to him as midday sun."

There was truth in that comment, of course. Perhaps because it was right, it irked Mjirn so much. Our ways, friendly behaviour, alien… So condescending. Again, he was judged and found wanting. It truly was no different: this male still thought himself his better. Different ways to justify the distinction, perhaps, and instead of pain and punishment his failure was met with the kind of sympathy reserved to infirm people. It was not as if his position was deemed insufficient: his whole judgment was considered impaired, as if he were not a complete person, not able to reach the standards.

The worst part? He could not offer a single thing to prove him wrong.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and Valerie smiled at him encouragingly once more.

"It's okay," she told him. "You'll get used to having friends and relying on us. You'll just have to spend less time holed up in your study, down in that city."

Mjirn knew the two of them were patronizing him, but still his lips curled with a sincere smile and he nodded. It might be wishful thinking, but he quite thought that the prospect of spending more time with her could make his lonely days of research a little more bearable.

"Hey, elf," Merrick's voice called out all of a sudden. "I hate to interrupt your little tête-à-tête there, but… What in the Abyss did you want to do with this crap?"

The human was holding up several long, narrow scraps of a dark alloy, almost black. Mjirn smiled. They were the remains of a few contraptions, they were whatever scant spare piece he had found, and they were the first step towards the completion of his goal.

"Adamantine," he replied with the unabridged truth and a long, surprised silence followed. "If I am not severely mistaken, what you hold in your hands should be enough to refine at least one ingot of workable adamantine, mayhap more. I had hoped to use the other items you have already pilfered through to pay the local smith and to have him craft something for me."

"Oh," Merrick looked decidedly uncomfortable for a moment and Valerie giggled at his crestfallen face, but he recovered with remarkable ease and cleared his throat.

"Well, as it is, I know Sharessia's smith quite well and I'm sure he'll make this something for free, since you provide the materials and are kind enough to give him whatever adamantine's left afterwards…" he said.

Mjirn was shocked, but in a pleasant way. The human was keeping the little gold and the few cheap broken gems he had found, sure, but he had also contributed to save his life and was offering to help with the smithy. Surely there was an ulterior motive, but…

"That's settled, then," Valerie chirped, shouldering her mace and shield and dropping her free arm around Mjirn's shoulders. "Let's go order this… whatever it is, and then it's time to drown a few pints at the inn."

Merrick nodded, grabbed what now was his own backpack and started away towards the spot where the small skiff linking the place to Sharessia waited ashore.

"This time the booze's on you, woman. You could drink a damn dwarf under the table!" he called out in a good-humoured way.

The young woman laughed and started to follow, only to stop after a couple of steps and turn back towards the Eilistreean drow.

"You coming, Izzhris?"

The male shook his head.

"Since we came all the way here, I am going to take a look at the place and pay my respects at the old settlement. I shall join you later, though."

Valerie nodded and moved towards the awaiting Merrick, hugging Mjirn a little tighter and inadvertently digging the ridges of her armour into his side.

He did not complain. It felt good to be in his place.