Captain Incredible – Still got a couple more chapters before I get to the point where I stopped before, but this is where Jess and Imoen got dropped off. I haven't really decided yet how the change in age is going to affect the Slayer's manifestation, but I can't shake the image of a much shorter monstrosity whose voice cracks when it tries to bellow...
Theodur – Oh, I'm definitely arranging for Jess to meet up with the rest of the crew before she hits puberty again. Way too much entertainment potential to do otherwise.
Idal – The Slayer definitely had his reasons for speaking up, which this chapter should illuminate considerably.
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OOO
Castle Tethyr had for centuries been the seat of royalty in the kingdom and one of the most renowned structures in Faerun; generations of kings and queens had overseen additions and expansions, not haphazardly, as was the case in some lands, but in carefully planned stages, always ensuring that the new complemented the old. The result had been a structure that was expansive without seeming sprawling, with towers that rose as gracefully toward the sky as any of the ancient trees of the Wealdath and battlements and embrasures crafted to blend easily into the architecture even as they provided potent defensive capability.
The interior held splendors gathered from the width and breadth of Toril: rugs and tapestries from Cormyr and Tashalar; furniture of stone and wood from the craftsmen of Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep; sculptures, paintings and pottery from Chessenta and Rashemen; incense, perfumes and silks from Calimshan and Kara-Tur.
Defenses built up with skill and care over centuries had been overcome in a few nights of frenzied attack, aided by magic and treachery. The castle itself had changed hands many times over the subsequent decades, as factions fought for supremacy, and much of the structure lay in ruins, the towers crumbled to the ground, their jagged stumps jutting upward like the charred remnants of trees felled by fire. The riches within had long since been looted and sold, leaving little more than an empty shell behind.
All of that would change, Fenaulf Boraun promised himself as he stood in the central courtyard, surveying the ruins of what had once been the most magnificent building in Tethyr. His forces had occupied it for several weeks now, after finally driving Rhindaun's ragtag rebels into the trees to await the final killing blow.
Rebels, he repeated to himself. That was all they were: obstacles to peace, to his assumption of a crown that was his by right, earned in thirty years of combat, and he would prove his fitness to rule by restoring the castle to its former glory and beyond. Already, he had drafted workers from the surrounding lands to haul away the fallen stone, sorting it into pieces intact enough to be used in rebuilding the castle and those that would be broken up and used for other, lesser projects.
"It's looking better already."
Fenaulf glanced up at the young man descending the stairs from the remains of the battlements over the main gate, his expression giving no hint of his thoughts.
"That it is," he agreed with a nod of acknowledgment as the other reached him. "Travant."
"Uncle," his nephew responded, bowing in a suitably respectful manner, though his eyes, as always, held the barely visible mocking contempt that only Fenaulf was permitted to see.
Not for the first time, he wondered if this had always been the plan, even thirty years ago when Rastagir had first approached him with his seductive talk of power and sedition. Travant had not even been born then; the Time of Troubles was still a decade away, but Fenaulf thought it likely that the demon lord, Graal'thun, whose blood ran in the wizard's veins as well as his own, had in some manner foreseen the events that would unfold in those chaotic months and set in motion his own chain of events to capitalize on it. The dilute tanar'ri taint in the Boraun bloodline had been a closely guarded secret for several generations, and the occasional throwback that was born with obvious physical traits was almost invariably reported as a stillbirth.
Rastagir was not so far removed from his planar grandsire: perhaps only three or four generations, and although he appeared human, the magics that he commanded were far beyond anything that Fenaulf had ever witnessed. Such power gave greater weight to his words, both the promises of reward and the threats to confirm the rumors that had long circulated among the nobles of Tethyr. The combination of greed and fear had been too potent a mix to resist, and Fenaulf had betrayed his King in a conspiracy that he slowly (and too late) began to realize that he had only a small part in.
He had no doubts whatsoever that it was not mere chance that had caused his wife to die in childbirth along with what would have been his son and heir. Nor was it chance that had kept him from fathering a child in the years since. The tall, broad shouldered and darkly handsome young man who stood before him was his only heir, and Fenaulf Boraun knew in his gut that it had always been intended thusly.
His sister, Galenne, had been a plain woman (homely, if one were being perfectly honest), and her hunger for attention far exceeded anything that would ever come to her on the basis of her looks alone. He had given little thought to her involvement in the Bhaal cult beyond gratitude for the distraction that kept her from carping at him about the loss of their family fortune in the uprising and the resultant paucity of suitors (money being the only lure likely to bring her a husband). When she had come to him babbling about the 'honor' that had been conferred upon her, he had been convinced that she had gone insane. Even when her pregnancy had become evident, he had remained skeptical…until the deaths of Bhaal, Bane and other deities had shaken the Realms to their foundations. Only then did Rastagir confirm to him the truth of Galenne's claim and reveal the greater plan of their mutual forebear. By that point, he was in much too deep and far too dependent upon the mage's uncanny powers to even think of refusing; besides, the ultimate reward went far beyond anything that he had ever dared to imagine.
His sister, of course, fully intended to birth the child and sacrifice him to facilitate the rebirth of her Master and lover, convinced that she alone of all of Bhaal's concubines would be chosen as his consort. Pathetic. It had been an act of kindness to kill her before she could be stripped of her delusions; the demon lord had other plans for his tiny descendant.
Travant had grown up strong and well favored, with a natural skill in combat and a taste for cruelty that he kept carefully concealed from most of Boraun's followers. Fenaulf remained the nominal head of his army, Rastagir his chief advisor, and Travant played the role of devoted nephew to perfection, at least in public. In private, however, the closer Graal'thun's plan drew to fruition, the more subordinate Fenaulf's position became. He wasn't even certain why his nephew still bothered with the pretense of respect when they were alone, unless it was because it appealed to his perversity. He didn't really need his uncle anymore, and if not for the fact that Travant's ambitions lay well beyond Tethyr, Fenaulf had little doubt that he would be dead already.
"How long before we are ready to take the Wealdath?" he asked the younger man.
"A week, perhaps ten days," Travant replied with a careless shrug. "The newest troops need more time to get acclimated." He gave his uncle a sly wink.
Fenaulf managed not to wince. He had never been one to keep his soldiers from enjoying the spoils of war, but the demonic half-bloods that Rastagir's breeding program had produced were beyond savage, and the things that they did to the women that fell into their grasp were enough to induce revulsion in even the most battle hardened of veterans. His human troops had already begun to stay well away from the new 'recruits'.
The planetouched Bhaalspawn regarded him with a knowing smirk. "Don't worry, uncle," he said with a dismissive wave, turning to stare through the open gate at the war-torn landscape beyond. "Peasants breed like rabbits; Rastagir has proven that. Once my army is gone from here, they'll repopulate Tethyr in no time."
My army. Not even an attempt at pretense now. "And after that?" he wanted to know. "I'll be inheriting a kingdom of ashes. It will take years to rebuild."
"And you will have those years," his nephew replied calmly. "Once I have claimed my father's Throne, I will have the power to grant you the reward that you were promised. Tethyr will be yours, along with immortality."
He turned back to face Fenaulf, his normally grey eyes gleaming golden as the setting sun cast the courtyard into shadow.
"Everything else will belong to Graal'thun."
