Disclaimer still going - Bioware owns everything except Jaiyan. Also, updates should speed up again, since we are now guest-less, and I have most of my evenings to myself again.

Chapter Twenty-One – Deeper In

Tunnels wound beneath the great temple, descending down from steps near Sodalis' chambers. Past a room dominated by two huge black dragon statues – which made Deekin mutter dire imprecations about what might be lurking beneath the temple – and through another set of stone doors, before the floor dropped away in twisting, turning tunnels. The air down here was close and warm, almost uncomfortably so, and Jaiyan felt sweat beading her skin beneath her clothes.

She matched pace with Valen, while Deekin scurried along in front, a tiny dot of magelight hovering beside his shoulder, throwing juddering light over the curve of the roof above. "What do you think's down here? More vampires?"

"Dragon, Boss."

She scowled. "Underground? Deeks, we've talked about this."

"Dragons adapt, Boss. Deekin remembers reading book about Hero of Neverwinter. Big red dragon in that lived in fire giant place, underground."

She rolled her eyes. "And I suppose the Hero of Neverwinter killed it?"

"Yep."

"Single-handedly?"

"After Daelan Red-Tiger was knocked out."

"Typical."

Deekin threw her a reassuring grin. "If there be dragon down here, Boss can kill it."

"Thanks."

Valen glanced down at her. "I thought you wanted to kill a dragon."

"Oh, gods. Not you as well." She strode past them, staring ahead as the ceiling arced up above them, revealing tall columns bracing curving stone. Directly in front of them, the floor dropped away, showing nothing but blank, uninviting darkness. "Hmm. This looks fun."

Cautiously, she padded up to the huge hole and peered down. Warm air moved across her face, curiously rhythmic, and making her think of some huge creature breathing slowly. Maybe there is something big down there, she thought uneasily. The encounter with Sodalis had left her wary and prickling; whatever used a vampire as guest-welcomer could not be simple or sweet.

The darkness fled away as Deekin's magelight floated over the hole, uncovering the sharp edges of rock, plunging down into more shadow. And, hanging innocuously, and lashed around a pillar, a rope.

Jaiyan frowned. "Now that's just too helpful."

"You told us Sodalis said you'd been chosen for something."

"Yes." She rubbed one arm reflectively, and recalled the vampire's cool breath on the back of her neck. "Yes. He seemed very enthusiastic about it."

"So they must bring people down here." Valen shrugged. "I don't like it, but I don't think we have much choice."

"Alright." Jaiyan squared her shoulders, checked that her sword was buckled on properly, and eyed the rope. "Let's find out what's down there, then."

"Boss?"

"Yes, Deekin?"

He hopped up to the edge. "Can Boss maybe speak more…like an epic?"

She laughed. "Sorry. How about…let us strike out into the unending darkness, and discover what terrible fate lies beneath, waiting to slash through the tenuous threads of our trembling, fragile lives?"

Deekin's eyes narrowed. "Boss be making fun of Deekin."

"Not at all." Jaiyan joined him on the brink of the hole, and her stomach lurched. "Oh…that's a long way down."

"My lady does not care for heights?" Valen inquired innocently.

"Not unless she's looking up at them, she doesn't." She crouched down, wrapped a hand around the rope, and shuddered. Not giving herself time to think about it too much, she swung her legs over the edge and dangled for a heart-stopping moment.

"Boss should be careful," Deekin said. "It be very big deep hole."

"Thank you." She waited until her feet settled against the rock. She glanced up at the knot in the rope, and hoped that every god who might be watching would be kindly enough to not let it slip loose. Hand over hand, walking herself down the sheer rock face, she moved carefully down the rope. The shadows closed around her as she edged lower. The rope creaked beneath her hands, and she was horribly aware of the empty space between her and the floor she could not yet see.

Above, Valen's horned head was silhouetted as he watched her. "Are you alright?"

She nodded and switched her gaze to the flat rock in front of her. "Fine," she called up, breathlessly. "Head on down whenever you feel like it. Could do with some light down here."

Far enough down that her shoulders ached with every movement, she noticed the faintest gleam of light from beneath. Tiny, soft pin-points of silver, doing nothing more than teasing the darkness. She twisted her head around and focused instead on the pits and marks on the rock in front of her eyes.

I'm climbing down a rope into a pit, underground in the Underdark, and Deekin thinks there's dragons down here. Mother would be so proud.

Her feet brushed solid floor, and she yelped. She glanced up, saw the rope moving as Valen climbed down behind her. He slid down quickly, apparently uncaring of the depth or the darkness. She grinned as she noticed that his tail was wound around the rope beneath him. He landed beside her with easy grace, and Deekin flopped down not long after.

"So are you part monkey along with everything else in that muddled heritage of yours?" she asked archly.

Valen blinked. "Part…monkey?"

"A monkey is a small creature that essentially uses its hands for feet and its feet for hands, and has a tail that wraps around things and helps it climb up trees and things." She frowned. "Now that I've had to explain it, it doesn't seem so amusing."

"Oh." He looked past her, following the light of Deekin's spell. "Jaiyan?"

She heard the warning tone in his voice, and turned in time to see four figures emerging from the shadows. All of them were tall and broad, and their pale, grey faces were sickly somehow, and their eyes burned.

One of them smiled. "Do you come from above?"

Where the hells else would we have come from? "Yes," Jaiyan answered warily.

"Did Master Sodalis send you down?"

"He did." She managed a quick smile. "We had a nice glass of wine and a talk beforehand."

"Ah." The first figure slid closer, and its sunken eyes shone. "So you have been chosen."

"And what does that mean?" Jaiyan grasped her sword hilt.

"You do not know?" The figure paused and glared. "You do not know that you are to be taken to Vix'thra? That he will take your bones, and we will have your blood?"

"What if I want to keep my bones and my blood?"

The figure's lips peeled apart, revealing sharp teeth. "Blood for the Elders."

The other figures loomed behind. "And bones for Vix'thra."

Before she could draw her sword, Valen launched past her. His flail swung out and took off the nearest figure's head. He spun, crashed into the second, driving his elbow into its chest. Jaiyan jolted herself into motion, leaped to his left side, and plunged her sword to the hilt in the third's stomach. She straightened up in time to see Valen smashing his flail into the last one's throat. Blood gushed, thick and oddly dark, as he yanked the weapon free.

Jaiyan stared down at the fallen figures, and her skin turned cold as mist seethed up from torn flesh. Hissing across the floor, the billowing mist crawled along the edges of the stone walls, seeping into small holes and thin cracks.

"Vampires," Valen said, unimpressed.

"Not strong vampires," Deekin commented. "See, Boss? They run and turn into mist."

"That means coffins." Valen shouldered his flail. "Let's get moving."

He was being efficient again, she realized. Efficient tiefling guide who can hit things very hard. In order to keep her safe, and by extension, Lith My'athar and the Seer, he would always throw himself at enemies first. She quickly glanced sidelong at him as he marched beside her, gesturing her towards the tall doors that reared up at the far end of the chamber. Was her own overactive imagination playing with her? She had thought…never mind.

"Boss?"

She felt Deekin's dry nose touch her wrist. "Sorry, Deeks. Did you say something?"

"Nope." He blinked solemnly up at her. "Is Boss alright?"

She nodded absently. "Fine."

Through the doors, Valen led them into a labyrinthine section of twisting, connected rooms. The walls were running with water, and the air was damp and hot. Clumps of moss and lichen gleamed, and every breath taken tasted wet. Jaiyan shifted uncomfortably. She had grown up in the north, and hot weather – whether dry and harsh, like in Anauroch, or moist and slippery, like down here – made her sweatily angry.

They found a half-blocked-off storeroom, and Valen briskly chopped through the leaning planks. He salvaged a handful of jagged wood spikes while Deekin peered into the storeroom.

"Anything in there, Deeks?"

"Dust."

"Hmm." She had been hoping for gold, or at least weapons, or something shiny that could have made this trip beneath Drearing's Deep worth it. But no, of course not. Vampires and dust and damp air.

Further in, past locked stone doors and tall pillars inscribed with strange runes, they followed a line of black steps down into the sweltering darkness. The corridor opened up on both sides, revealing pale candles and long, elegantly carved coffins. With little ceremony, Valen started heaving the nearest huge stone lid off. He leaned in, and Jaiyan heard a shriek and the sound of bubbling flesh as he swept his makeshift stake down.

Some two dozen coffins and too many twisted screams later, Jaiyan trailed him rather dazedly beneath another archway. Their stakes were thick with gore, and the air stank of rotten meat. She knew – knew to the core of herself – that vampires were evil, were eerie with their waxen skin and dead, gleaming eyes, and wide-lipped smiles. And yet the way they thrashed, pinned to their coffins, while black blood gushed between their teeth; she shuddered, and tried to force the images from her thoughts.

Think about something nice instead. Ale. Deekin. A warm taproom. Not the Underdark.

Valen smiling.

No. Stop. He doesn't trust us, remember?

Well, how about how his skin felt when you kissed his cheek?

She shook her head furiously and tried to banish such unhelpful thoughts.

"Jaiyan? Are you even listening to me?"

She flinched, and looked up into the tiefling's pale blue eyes. "Sorry?"

He sighed. "I said, do you want to call a halt? Deekin found a room that we can barricade."

She nodded vaguely and cursed the slow blush creeping into her face. "Yes. Sorry."

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Jaiyan sat with her back to the wall and listened to the slow, unending drip of water down the stone. The room proved small and generally inoffensive, but the thick layers of dust made her think of almost-killed vampires, and she wondered if she would sleep at all down here.

"Boss?"

"Yes, Deekin?"

The little kobold fluttered one wing awkwardly. "Deekin's wings be aching."

"Really?" She leaned forward. "Maybe you should be using them more. To fly, or something."

"Fly..?" He peered over his shoulder at the red arches of his wings. "Deekin not sure. Deekin be heavy."

Valen grunted. "In competition with a grasshopper, perhaps."

"Do we have any of that salve left?" She hooked up her pack, started rummaging. "The one that smells like lavender."

"Deekin likes that one. Smells like flowers."

She dug her hand deeper into her pack and felt her way past wrapped bread and badly-folded clothes. Her fingers brushed something else, and then the cloth inner lining. "Gods, I've got to learn to cram things in here in a more organised manner."

Valen raised a red eyebrow. "Then you wouldn't be cramming things in, would you?"

"Damn your logic." She pouted at him, then upended the pack, and observed as the contents spilled across the stone floor. "Oh. That's where I put that." She leaned down and scooped up a small book, lying next to a swathed bottle. Nearby, she found a small jar, tied closed. "Here, Deeks. Try this on the wings."

She tossed the jar to him and noticed Valen's bemused stare as he gazed at the collection of clothes and weapon oil and bottles and trinkets and junk on the floor. "What? I like to think I travel light."

"Light? Only compared to your kobold, perhaps." Valen pointed at a lump wrapped in greasepaper. "What's that?"

"Oh, even tieflings get attacks of curiosity, hmm?" She hooked up the item in question, and balanced it on her palm as if it was a spider. "I'm not sure, actually."

"There has to be a story behind that. Care to explain?"

Addressed by her own words – huh, who'd've thought he would've remembered that? – she faltered a little. There certainly was a story, but it was strange, rather than exciting, and even slightly embarrassing. "When Heurodis made the city – Undrentide – made it fly, she sealed off the temple where she was. The keys to get in turned out to be three winds, trapped in glass."

"Unusual," Valen remarked flatly.

"Just because you grew up in Sigil doesn't mean you have to make fun of me," she protested. "Floating cities were a pretty big thing back then. Anyway, one of the winds was in a wizard's tower."

"The Dark Wind," Deekin piped up. "The Dark Wind trapped in the Arcanist's Tower."

"Yes. And to get to it, we had to play jumping games with shadow portals and mirrors." She shivered, remembering how the world had seemed drained of colour inside the portals, and through the mirror's blank surface, where they had discovered pale creatures and emptiness that tasted of old dust. Her skin and hair had been bleached white in that odd realm, while her eyes had been gray, Deekin had cheerfully informed her. "In the mage's room, we found…this thing."

Gingerly, she peeled the wrapping aside, revealing an uneven globe. It pulsed, as it always seemed to, and the texture of its surface felt disturbingly flesh-like. She passed it to Valen, and noted with some satisfaction that he frowned. "We were just gathering up anything we could carry for loot, and that came along too. Strange thing is, even when I think I've lost it, it's always there, at the bottom of my bag."

Valen eyed the thing. "Have you ever tried to throw it away?"

"No." She shuddered. "I'm always afraid that if I do, I'll find it in my pack again. And I don't think my nerves could take that."

He turned it over, letting the magelight flood across its almost smooth curves. "It feels…almost alive. Like it's…waiting to breathe."

"Thanks for that. Like I need to be spooked by it any more."

"Does it do anything?"

She cringed. "I knew you were going to ask that. Yes, it did. No, it doesn't, anymore."

"And that means what?"

"Well, on our way back to Waterdeep, we were attacked by bandits."

"Deekin killed six of them," the kobold interjected.

"Yes, you did." Jaiyan threw him a quick smile, but her memory opened up on that half-forgotten day. Rain clouds overhead, the air damp and drizzling, and suddenly filled with shouts and running feet. A crossbow bolt had clipped her shoulder, sent her stumbling, and another had ploughed almost as quickly into her stomach. "The embarrassing part of that was…well, I died."

Valen's tail twitched. "You died."

"Yes." Oh, stop looking at me like that. It's not that unusual. Adventurers cark it all the time, and sometimes get brought back if they're lucky enough not to be entirely dismembered. "I remember falling forward with a bolt in my gut, and I woke up in a dark stone room, with someone standing over me."

He had been the Reaper, and she could never remember if he had told her that, or if she had simply decided it. She saw some unreadable emotion flicker over Valen's face as she explained that the Reaper had called her Sojourner, and had pulled her to her feet with cold hands. She had looked down, and seen no crossbow bolts, no blood. After quietly informing her that yes, she had been killed, the Reaper asked if she would care to be returned to her own world, whole and breathing.

"And you were alright?"

"Not a mark on me." She shrugged. "I came to in the same place, and saw that Deeks had killed all the bandits."

Deekin sniffed. "They tried to hurt Boss."

She squeezed his shoulder. "We took the thing…"

"The Relic," Deekin said, a little brighter. "The Relic of the Reaper."

She winced. "Alright. We took the Relic to a wizard when we got to Waterdeep. All he could tell us was that it teleports its user or its owner to a specific place. I guess, the place where the Reaper is."

"And as its owner, does it work only for you?"

"I think so."

"So if you die down here," Valen said quietly, "You'll get teleported away and saved?"

"I don't know." She saw the fierceness in his eyes and squirmed. "Thing is, the wizard told us it had to have been powered by something. He figured a jewel or jewels of some kind. And it turned out we'd…misplaced a couple of rogue stones along the way."

"And Boss never loses rogue stones." Deekin shook his head emphatically. "Rogue stones worth too much."

Valen's hand tightened around the Relic. "You don't have any rogue stones now."

"No." She forced a smile. "And besides, I don't like that thing. It's creepy."

"But it could save you," he said firmly. "We should see if Gulhrys has any." His gaze flicked up, almost accusing. "Why didn't you mention this before?"

"What? I didn't think it was necessary."

"Necessary? We might have a way to keep you from death, and it wasn't necessary?"

She scowled at him, rattled. "Don't growl at me. Do you know what it's like to be ripped away to somewhere else because of some spooky arcane thing that you know nothing about?"

"Which is a perfectly fair trade, you foolish girl!" Valen exhaled slowly. With deliberate slowness, he pressed the Relic into Deekin's hands. "Don't you understand? The survival of Lith My'athar hangs on you surviving."

"I know that," she snapped. "Me still breathing means your city and your Seer and your rebels live. You've told me enough times."

"We're finding you some rogue stones," he snarled. "And I don't care if I have to tie them to you."

"Valen, don't be an idiot…"

"No, you listen." He leaned forward, blue eyes blazing. "I don't care if you're scared of this thing. You will use it if it means keeping you alive. Do you understand? For the city, for the Seer, and for me. Do you understand?"

She stared into his face, taken aback. "Yes," she muttered, not quite able to think of anything else. "Fine."

"Good." He linked his arms around his shins. "Do you have any other potentially life-saving artifacts on you?"

"No. And anyway, you all neglected to mention the Valsharess has a pet arch-devil, so why should I give you a running inventory of the strange things I carry around?"

"I know, and I'm sorry about that." His lips thinned as he looked away. "That was…not my decision. I would have preferred that you were told everything when you arrived."

She blinked. "Oh. Well…thank you. Nathyrra told me, eventually."

He nodded. His eyes were flickering, not quite meeting hers. "Good. I…should have told you myself."

"No, it's alright." She shrugged, started to gather up her belongings again. "You had enough to worry about. Surfacer, prophecy, grumpy drow, saviour, getting cast to one side, attacking allies of the Valsharess, having to listen to the Doom Song. I understand."

He stared at her for a long, uncertain moment before he smiled, then grinned properly. "Yes." His gaze sharpened as he studied her. "Definitely enough to worry about."

The silence stretched, and Jaiyan shifted. "So…are we going to have dinner down here and pretend that we didn't just spend the afternoon driving small pieces of wood into vampires?"

Much later, she lay on her side, staring into flickering flames. Deekin sat on watch, his wings rustling gently in time with his breathing. On the other side of the fire, Valen slept wrapped in blankets, one side of his face leaning on his crossed forearms. Drifting on the verge of sleep, Jaiyan's gaze lingered on the severe lines and angles of his face, the hollows of his cheeks. She wondered idly if his horns made lying on pillows uncomfortable or risky, and immediately tried to redirect her thoughts.

She remembered the Reaper's tall, shrouded figure, stepping out of swirling mist, and the way his voice had echoed. His hands had felt like polished glass, or stripped bone. The face beneath the folds of his cowl had been blank, unreadable; or simply not there. She shivered and turned over, dragging the blankets up to her chin.

And what had he said, when he had returned the life to her body?

He had clasped her hand briefly, and his voice had sounded amused, touched with laughter from lips she could not see. She had protested wildly and tried to insist that she would never need to see him again; that she would never be in any kind of debt to him.

"But, Sojourner," he had said, softly and without malice. "Of course I will see you again."