„Bedazzled"

Through the glass the room looked distorted, but Daria could still recognize various torturing equipment laying in neat order on the tables, along with the strange mechanisms the purpose of which remained unknown to her, even if not for long. The numb feeling after being knocked unconscious was still present and she was honestly thankful for that. At least she couldn't comprehend what was happening to her while in this indifferent state. It was the only luck she had, that she wasn't forced to fully understand what being captured by Irenicus again meant.

In other glass tubes like the one she was locked within, were trapped other inmates, but they either couldn't or didn't want to communicate with her. All of them appeared even more oblivious to where they were, crouching in their transparent cages, most muttering to themselves some incomprehensible gibberish. Irenicus was also present in the laboratory, reading incantations from a scroll over a machine of some sort. Seemingly checking everything one last time he looked around the room and then uttered the last power word.

One of the captured inmates yelled suddenly and fell on the bottom of his glass tube. Daria watched the last moments of his agony with terror finally breaching through the disorientation. One… Two… Three…

The second man screamed and fell just like the first one. The third rose from the ground and began to pound his fists on the glass. One…

"No! I'm not going to end like that!" he shouted through the glass.

Two…

"I don't want to die!"

Third second passed and he fell with a piercing scream. All of them died one by one.

One… Who was to die now? All the prisoners were already murdered by Irenicus' spell.

Two…

Ah, there was her.

Three.

She screamed sharply, feeling the spell drilling through her spine, the scream reaching even the higher levels of the cellars where they were captured, the cells of her friends. She screamed long and high, desperately, the scream of someone who wanted to wake up from a horrendous nightmare of this torment, and couldn't.

"All this time I was trying to unleash your potential I was relying on the blood of your father making you more vulnerable to certain emotions, should I say… urges" her captor stoically lectured her, watching with the sun elf with calm curiosity as she was trashing wildly in a glass tube, breaking her fingers desperately trying to grasp anything in the perfectly plain layer, trying to smash the enchanted glass. He had the look of a devoted collector, who was finally delivered an exceptionally rare species of insect to his collection and was now watching it move before sticking it with a pin.

"I realize now that it was a mistake." He paused to recite another verse of the spell.

She could barely yell through the pain tearing her heart and clenching her lungs. She didn't listen to a madman raving about his supposed discovery.

"Of course Yoshimo helped me in proper reassessing your personality" he continued, calmly. "Though indeed the taint of dead Bhaal is said to make its carriers more prone to violence, it also had an impact on your personality from quite a different perspective, all due to the fact that you were aware that your father was a god of murder, unlike Imoen." Irenicus looked down at his victim, now lying on the bottom of the glass cage, too tormented to even move, her muscles seizing in last moments of agony.

"It isn't anger that drives you, like it drives her now." The madman knelt by the tube, looking into her eyes. "Waking the taint inside her was much easier, but then again breaking you gave me so many more opportunities to learn." He moved even closer, now almost whispering to her ear through the thick glass, as if wishing for his face to be the last thing she ever saw. "You are driven by fear and guilt, child of god. And now your spirit is mine."

The world erupted in pain.

They say that your life flashes before your eyes before you die. Daria only saw Candlekeep, dead and forgotten as in her dream and just as empty. It was a graveyard of her childhood and was probably soon to become her grave as well.

Imoen was once again there, with dark rings under her eyes and tangled pink hair, as haunted as Daria saw her in the waking world, minutes before Irenicus emerged from the portal to seize them. Her dirty clothes probably seen the whole time her sister was imprisoned in the Spellhold, guarded at first by the Cowled Wizards, and then by the madman who captured her underneath the Waukeen's Promenade. Just like in Daria's dreams Imoen was standing beyond her grasp, only steps away, a distance impossible to cross for someone trapped in a nightmare. This time her sister recognized her however, her true sister by the rights of blood, not just a named one. Imoen had the taint of Bhaal flowing inside her veins, just as Daria, if what Irenicus said was to be believed.

"Where are you going? What is happening?" Daria cried, seeing her sister moving away. The landscape was surreal, but as real as anything else she could see, touch, smell. Candlekeep has never been an impossible maze for her. It wasn't a nightmare though, she could move, she could chose, she could curl into a ball on the ground, trying to get rid of everything, not to remember what was happening.

Imoen disappeared in the gates of the great library, hiding within the inner sanctum of the small stronghold, where all its treasures lied. Daria tried to follow her, but after she made the first step the world behind her trembled and disappeared into nothingness. Wherever she had to do, there was no way of turning back. She only had one choice to make, her last one.

The way inside the Great Library lead through sacrifice, she knew it subconsciously, but she didn't remember what she had to sacrifice to enter. The halls of the library were always dark, the monks didn't allowed the fire to be lit so close to the precious tomes, and little sunlight filtered through the narrow windows, but in her past the shadows were friendly, hiding her from others looking, and could be easily banished by a Light cantrip every mage who came to Candlekeep knew, the first spell Daria learned. Now the darkness was heavy and alien as if it belonged to someone else.

Years ago she could hide in those shadows, get lost for a day looking for books and her favorite novels, reading in secret until some of the monks found her and sent her to her classes. Her most beloved hideout was a blind alley bounded by heavy dark shelves made of dark wood, with dusted tomes of Alaundo prophecies, the only place in Faerun where all of them were gathered. Those prophecies weighted over her head since the early childhood, but then she felt the massive shelves were a protection.

The surrounding darkness blackened when it came, and Daria's memories began to fade into dark and scary oblivion. It was surrounded with the shape resembling Sarevok's armor, with long sharp spikes coming out of the metal, which he wore in the night of their battle underneath Baldur's Gate, but what was inside the armor certainly wasn't Sarevok. It was familiar, something she knew from the day she was born, but would only realize it was there if it disappeared. The instinct of murder stayed when her spirit was being torn from her, and now was filling the empty space.

"It's strong, but together we might have a chance." Imoen spoke, appearing inside her memories, though she looked that she wouldn't be able to even stand on her feet for long, even without anything attacking her. Daria didn't feel any better. Something was slowly tearing parts of her and stealing them away, taking them somewhere else. Her time was running tight.

There, in the place she felt the safest, under the shelves of Candlekeep library, with her sister, her most trusted companion Daria's mind made its final stand against Irenicus' spell stealing her elven spirit and the instinct of her father taking its place. The sun elf raised her palms to cast, hearing Imoen already beginning her chant.

Miserable Magic Missile was all she managed, before the thing cut her deeply, sending her on the ground. She wasn't bleeding, it was all happening inside her mind, but she had to watch as the thing somehow absorbs Imoen, with blackness they both shared. And then her consciousness fell to pieces.

Her heart was beating and she was cold. All was quiet and not even Irenicus could be heard. There was no glass tube surrounding her.

She made an attempt of standing up, but failed. Her hands, arms, legs… all were functional, only she couldn't gather the will to move them. She began to wonder why she would need to move them at all.

"You will die Bhaalspawn…" Bodhi whispered to her ear. Even an attempt to flinch the sun elf couldn't manage, hearing the hiss just by her ear. What would the vampiress do here? Or was it only a hallucination? It felt like the reality ceased to be of any importance, swallowed by the nightmares.

"…But let it be an interesting death" the vampiress ended. A quiet flapping of a bat's wings was all the sound Bodhi made when disappeared in the darkness of the large labyrinth built underneath Spellhold. It was a present she got from her brother, her playground. And now she got a new toy to play.

Daria managed to stand up after a long moment. So much indifference… Captured by a madman and a vampire, trapped underground and being experimented on, she should at least feel fear, remember the torture, but no, nothing. Nothing inside her cared for what was happening.

Her friends… it took her a while to remember about them. Looking around she saw no one else but her, in a large chamber with high ceiling, with four corridors leading each in other direction, every passage equally narrow and dark, with thick layer of dust, not touched by a foot for years, covering the stone floor. No one was or has been in the chamber for quite some time. The vampiress left no footprints. Or maybe she was never there.

"Xan! Jaheira! Imoen!" Daria shouted without genuine conviction. To just stand and wait? Or to choose a corridor and began to walk? Where to get determination to do anything from?

She tried to make few steps forward and then stopped. Her legs didn't feel quite right, stiff and hurting. She must have lied on the cold ground for quite long. Come to think about it she remembered she broke at least two fingers trying to break through the glass tube. Looking down at her hands she realized fingers were indeed broken, bruised and swollen, only too cold to emit pain she'd feel though the numbness. Most likely she needed healer.

A corridor just like any other led her to another chamber, this on the other hand not as empty. Fragile bodies of dead mephits were stashed around it, with single carcass of a rakshasa smelling foul in the middle. The numerous bloody footprints on the dusty floor showed that whoever killed the monsters went through the passage to Daria's left. She decided to follow them. If it were her friends' maybe they could heal her, if it were not, then maybe at least it would make her be afraid it, feel anything. She tried to call her friends' names as she walked, but soon she lost the purpose of it.

She stumbled upon a camp the exact moment she lost the count of her steps. A poor shelter it was, just a corner shielded with dirty rags that barely passed for tents, with an orb of magical light floating in the middle, giving little warmth. None of her friends was asleep yet, though they probably tried to find some rest, huddled in their cloaks, without any camping equipment or bedrolls. Minsc was on the watch with his eyes vigilant despite the fatigue and some strange sadness, only once before present in berserker's eyes. It was the same as when Daria and Imoen found him in the cage in Irenicus' dungeon and learned Dynaheir's fate.

Imoen was with them as well, still looking haunted, but saner than before. At last her sister was within her grasp, but just as well it could be a total stranger sitting in her place, so little she cared. All her friends looked terrible, the maze and Irenicus' 'hospitality' already left its mark on them. Jaheira, with her hands clenched on the air, resembling hog's claws, Valygar staring into the shadows like if expecting someone to jump out of them, Xan, his face hidden in his palms…

Daria walked straight into their camp, from the darkness concealing her from their eyes. They would heal her, they would make her feel…

"Daria!" Jaheira as the first one noticed her. The whole party sprung to its feet, hearing the druidess' cry.

"Child, what happened? By Silvanus' horns you're freezing!" Jaheira moved to support the frailer elf, covering her with her blanket. Daria forced her eyes to move and look at her step-mother, and drew her broken hands forward. She couldn't do much more, she wanted to wait for her friends to make things right.

"Xan, make this damn fire stronger!" the druidess barked and the enchanter with his swollen eyes shining moved at her command. Viconia was already whispering something over Daria's bruised fingers. The sun elf didn't even flinch when the drow set the broken bones.

"Sis, I'm so sorry. You tried to save me and you almost…" Imoen whimpered by her side. The pink-haired thief threw another blanket around her shoulders. She didn't dare to touch her elven sister's hand, aware of the damage done to her fingers.

The fire bloomed rapidly, warming the whole chamber and lighting all its darkest corners. Daria was swept in someone's arms, warm after heating the fire, her head cuddled to a comfortable chest. Within her favorite heart pounded, and the warmth of the magic blaze finally reached her. A soft kiss got lost in her hair.

"Wow…" Imoen stared at Xan as if he grown an extra head, holding his sister definitely not in a way he used to before. "She finally blurted out to you, didn't she?"

The elf threw her an unknowing look, but didn't pay her much attention, all his thoughts centered on one he held in his arms.

He was afraid, terribly afraid. The fear was there all the time they spent in the inmate cells where the mad mage locked them, from the moment Yoshimo revealed his true intentions and the poison mixed with their food on the board of Galante stirred in their veins, or even earlier, when he followed Daria downstairs, on the morning when they entered the Spellhold with a real possibility that one of them could die inside. Closed in a cell with the rest of the party except for the treacherous bounty hunter and her, taken by the mad mage, he was certain that she'd be the one to die and this thought made him want to break his head on the stone wall. They all heard the distant cries of the tortured inmates and from the depths of his heart he wished none of these voices belonged to her, even if it meant she was no longer alive. All this time, by every scream, the fear was rising and rising.

And now he held her, feeling even more afraid than in his cell. Her hurt form was squeezed tightly in his arms and yet he felt nothing. There was only an empty hole in the Elven Spirit where she used to be.

'Undead!' all his thoughts screamed and he held her tightly, closing his eyes, praying he'd never had to open them and notice that her skin was grey, or the pointed teeth that were now in her mouth, the predatory glint a vampire could have in its eye…

"I can't breathe" she whispered and he had to let go of her. She took a deep breath and her skin wasn't much paler than before, there were no sharp teeth, no glint. And she still wasn't there.

"What have he done to you?" he whispered as loud as he dared.

Daria sobered only enough to hear Imoen answering the question.

"He took her soul."

The maze was a work of a madman, now inhibited by various beast and undead, brought here by Bodhi. If one wasn't already insane before descending into the labyrinth he could certainly lose his sanity along with his way in the countless secret passages and dark blind alleys of the underground. Daria stopped counting how many times a monster was spawned by darkness to interrupt them on their way out. Mummies, yuan-ti, umber hulks and kobolds, all these creatures found their home underneath the asylum. Vampires as well, Bodhi's offspring most likely, as mad as anyone who came too close to Irenicus.

The sun elf felt better, as much as she could without feeling anything. Jaheira covered her in new warm clothes, healed all her bruises and breaks and fed her with one of the edible creatures the party slew on its way. Safe, protected, cared for, Daria managed to slowly fight the shock and stutter about all what happened in Irenicus' laboratory.

She was dying, it took them some time to process the information. She was dying, but they still had time to rescue her if they managed to get out and intercept Irenicus, that was much easier to accept. It didn't matter that they didn't have any weapons, using what they managed to scavenge from the maze instead, the fact that the mad mage has already bested them twice didn't hold any meaning either. There was a chance to win yet.

Another corridor ended with a statue demanding an answer for a simple silly riddle they had to answer after tearing through a pack of werewolves. It was the tenth already. They were all beginning to doubt that there was an exit at all, but no one dared to speak it out loud. But then a faint breeze of the sea reached to stroke Daria's skin, as if it came through a window somewhere before them…

They entered a large hall with a huge statue of a Minotaur standing in the middle.