In the mid-morning, they went to the bank. Aestith opened an account and deposited much of his gold from the sale of the estate. That evening, they announced to the brothel workers that the business would be under new management at the end of the month. The news was received with several questions and some grumbling as they laid out what they knew of the Jewelbox's plans.

As the evening began, Tirowan went to the brothel owners and Nix, who were venting frustrations with the Jewelbox. She positioned herself in the light so that her dark hair glistened and she presented only her best angles. She said, "I need the evening off, darlings."

"Sure. What are you up to?" Kairon said.

Tirowan preened. "There's a Red Wizard in Waterdeep, looking to join the Zhentarim. I want to stop him." The high elf raised a perfectly arched black brow. "Assistance is always welcome."

Kairon titled his head. "What's the pay?"
She shrugged. "Five hundred."

"Yeah, sure."

Nix said, "Each?"

"Total."

He made a face. Aestith frowned. "Stop him? I will help, and forego my payment if I may have the wizard for my own purposes."

"Sure," Tirowan said, knowing full well what Aestith intended.

Eilora rose. "Out." She escaped up the stairs.

Deekin puffed out his bagpipes. "I have a performance due." The bronze dragonborn excused himself. Dee, still moping over the Jewelbox, sulked off to order drinks from Rhyder.

The others followed Tirowan and her lead to the bar. She said, "I tried to find him out yesterday, but did not have much luck on my own."

Aestith glanced at the highborn elf in her silver gown and glistening hair. "I imagine not."

The bar was the sort of place whose reek permeated the boards so that no amount of cleaning would ever cleanse the deep odor. The dung sweeper's guild frequented the bar, and it looked like the sort of place that catered to them.

Kairon wandered up to the barkeep. "Hey, does Grezelda ever come in here?"

The barkeep looked at him a long moment. "Who are you?"

"I know her father," he said with a beaming grin.

"I'm sure you do, tiefling." The barkeep continued scrubbing out chipped mugs. Kairon grumbled and went back to the others.

"Who's Grezelda?" Nix said.

Aestith said, "Boartusk's daughter."

"I'm going to miss Boartusk," Kairon said wistfully. Boartusk was the half-orc bouncer at their brothel, though he had really wanted to be a chef.

Aestith didn't know how long he could stand the odor. "What time was he supposed to arrive?" he asked Tirowan.

"I don't know. I just know he frequents this place. For some reason."

Aestith glanced across the street. From the windows of the opposite bar, they could see in. Well, someone who wasn't a drow could; it would be dark soon and in infrared, the glass would be a wall. "Does the bar across the street smell better?"

Tirowan shot to her feet. "Let's see."

Nix folded his fingers together. "I'll stay here."

Kairon stared at him. "I'll keep an eye on Nix."

Aestith frowned. Kairon had one sending stone, Aestith the other. He went with the high elf to the other bar. Someone was in the window table. Aestith would have sat down across from them and waited for them to become uncomfortable and leave, but Tirowan was with him; she strode confidently forward and batted her lashes, made some noise about how her delicate constitution needed the fresh air by the window and the man fell over himself to give her the table. Aestith thought about going elsewhere, just to be further from the high elf, then dug in his heels and followed her; it was, if nothing else, amusing that a high elf and drow would be amiable toward one another, on the surface at least-which was a sort of drow joke.

When Aestith and Tirowan spoke, which was rarely, their comments were barbed but polite, petty but never rude. To anyone not listening closely, they may even sound friendly.

Aestith removed a book from his satchel. A glass of subpar wine sat beside him, marked by his lipstick. Tirowan watched the window. Aestith's presence kept men from soliciting her.

"What are you reading?" Tirowan asked. They had been there a long time.

He did not look up. "A novel."

She made a noise that could be classified as a snort, except that she had spent decades perfecting it to sound "cute". "Isn't that a bit frivolous, for a drow I mean? I thought you'd read books about war or suchlike."

"Lolth explicitly forbids war among drow." He turned a page.

She tilted her head. "Interesting. I would not have suspected such deep insight."

Aestith tried to let the comment wash over him, but he could feel his temper rising. He took a breath and let it cool. Feeling emotions like that should have been rarer for him. He had almost lost his temper twice in a handful of days-why? He was accustomed to only feeling emotions distantly and rarely. His confusion at his own emotions made him ignore her comment. "Well. You can't be expected to know about such things."

"Indeed not."

He shifted in the hard wooden seat and stared at the page, willing it to pull him back into the story. He rarely read horror novels, because they were too much like real life and anyway, he couldn't understand why the main characters were uniformly stupid. He liked murder mysteries though and, curiously, very badly written romances-they made him laugh. This one was mostly a murder mystery with a touch of romance wherein the heroine would inevitably be betrayed at the most climactic part of the tale.

An hour later, he closed the book. "No sign of him?"

Tirowan sighed, defeated. "No."

"It's late. Let's get a carriage home."

She nodded her agreement and went outside to flag down a carriage. Aestith peeked into the other tavern, but didn't see either Nix or Kairon. He asked the bartender about them-a tiefling like Kairon did not go anywhere unnoticed.

The barkeep looked at Aestith. "Left. You must have missed him. An hour or so ago."

It was interesting that the pair had barely waited for Aestith and Tirowan to leave. Aestith glanced around the filthy tavern, and to the backdoor. He moved away and grabbed the sending stone. "Kairon?"
"Yeah?"
He frowned. "Where are you?"

"Back at the brothel."

Aestith stared at the stone. "Prove it."

"Hey, Boartusk. Aestith is talking through the stone."

Boartusk's coarse voice seemed a bit distant. "Kairon, that is rock. Rocks don't talk."

Kairon said into the stone, "See?"

"Where's Nix?"

"He ran off."

Aestith sighed. "Fine." He dropped the stone into his pocket and went outside. Tirowan had found a carriage and waved him over. He sat down in the seat opposite her. When it was rolling, he said, "Kairon went back to the brothel. Nix wandered off alone."

"That always goes well for him."

He supposed she had noticed the state he had come back in the other night. He shrugged. "I'm a bit confused that they never mentioned it to us."

"Aestith, you scarcely tell us anything."

He dropped the matter, though he couldn't help but feel it was weird. Nix had returned by morning and seemed disproportionately pleased with himself. Aestith cornered him on the stairwell. "Nix, what did you do?" he hissed in Undercommon.

Nix's eyes widened. "What?"

"You left and abandoned me with Tirowan for an extra hour. Why?"

Nix relaxed by degrees. "I guess we forgot to mention it."

Aestith raised an eyebrow. "You're lying. Badly."

Nix held up both hands. "You're the one who said I needed to get contacts. I went looking for contacts."

Aestith took a step back, eyes narrowed. Then he shrugged. "Fine. Don't be stupid about it this time." He trotted down the stairs. It was probably too much to hope that Nix could plan ahead longer than a day or so. He was smart at some things, and good at negotiating prices and selling items, but he could be incredibly short-sighted.

Eilora was drinking at the bar again and flirting with Rhyder. She must have gotten back from her excursion and was in better spirits. Aestith requested a drink and sat down. "So you were raised by badgers," he said.

Eilora sighed. "Better than raised by Drow."

Aestith rolled his eyes. "So it's true then?"

"Yes. Why are you asking, Aestith?"

"Well, do you know what killed them? Your family, not the badgers, I mean."

A long pause. "No. I was a little kid."

He drummed his fingers on the counter. Rhyder slid a drink toward him. "Do you remember where your village is?"

She stared off into some middle-distance for a long moment and took a drink. "Yeah."

He flashed a grin. "Great. Well, if you bring me a skull of someone slain, I can cast a spell so we can ask them about it."

She set the glass down. "Aestith. Can I ask why you're interested?"
He sipped from his own glass, then stared down at the contents. He chose his words carefully, conscious that she was over-sensitive. "Well. To be frank, I'm not having the best time on a mental and emotional level at the moment. So I'd prefer to focus to keep myself occupied."

She raised an eyebrow. "You know what? I'll take it." She drained the glass. "The village isn't even that far from here. We can make it there in a couple of days."

"That's fine."

Kairon and Nix came with them and Eilora led the way. Aestith hated camping and traveling, but they rented horses and Kairon rode on Franklin, which improved things ever so slightly. At the forest line, the horses proved more a nuisance than otherwise. Eilora and Kairon spent some time building them a paddock and left Franklin to watch them before the small party traveled into the forest.

Eilora was perfectly at home here, showing the others paths they would not have found otherwise, spotting edible berries or nuts. She danced lightly over terrain that Aestith tripped on and was perfectly at home in the dirt with bits of forest in her hair.

The forest felt oppressive to Aestith, like a weight pressing him down. The air seemed to resent his breathing it and roots seemed to rise up to meet his ankles. Despite that he was nearly a foot shorter than Eilora, every branch and vine seemed to hit him and catch on his hair and clothing. Kairon and Nix faired no better.

They walked through an old campsite long since abandoned, but the distinct shape of a campfire and ash marked it. Eilora casually pointed out where a couple had rested. Aestith found graffiti on one of the trees that was, curiously, Drow. Not in the way that he would recognize Undercommon, for various races spoke the tongue, but culturally, he recognized it for being Drow.

"How long ago were they here?" Aestith asked.

Eilora tilted her head, looked over the trampled grass. "Best guess, over a month ago, maybe two." She pursed her lips. "Whoever they were, they knew fuck all about camping."

He looked at the campsite and back at the graffiti and couldn't understand why it was here, of all places. As it wasn't pertinent to the situation, Aestith said nothing about it.

Aestith looked for places a cave or a hole might be, remembering how he himself had crawled out of the Underdark. He saw places such things could be, but did not waste his time poking at them when they had other things to do.

Something about the air of this place made it difficult to breathe. Not as if there was a pressure on his chest or a poison seizing his lungs, but as if the very air resented him drawing it in.

Eilora stopped suddenly. "We should have found the path by now."

"Path?"

She nodded. "My village had a few paths to get to. They moved and took you to the village. I mean, they only opened for my people, but, they should open to me now."

Aestith picked a leaf from his hair. "Does anyone else feel like this forest resents them?"

Kairon and Nix chirruped agreement. Kairon said, "Eilora, do you think that maybe it's just not allowing non-wood elves?"

Nix's form shimmered and he turned into a wood elf. He frowned. "No, still feels oppressive."

"I don't think it works like that," Eilora said.

Aestith looked around. "What if Eilora goes on her own? We'll make camp and wait." He hesitated. "Ah… Eilora, can you find a suitable place to camp?"

She laughed. "Sure." It took another hour, but she found a small clearing before she and her badger struck off on their own.

Kairon made a fire and Aestith worked on dinner. Nix paced around the camp. "I think it's Sylvanis."

"What?" Aestith said.

"Sylvanis. He's like a forest god. I think it's him that doesn't like us."

"Because we aren't wood elves?"

Nix flashed Aestith a strained grin. "Because we're 'evil'." He raised his fingers to make the quotes.

Aestith rolled his eyes, but it made as much sense as anything. He saw no reason that a being like Sylvanis might not shun the three of them.

Kairon snorted, but offered no alternatives. The Mephistopheles paladin worked at setting up the tent. Nix paced.

The changeling said, "I wonder if I can convince the forest god I'm not evil."

Aestith snorted as he sliced into the next mushroom. Surface mushrooms were bland and tasteless compared to Underdark mushrooms, but you could still find some varieties that were palatable. "This is a stupid idea."

Nix, blatantly ignoring Aestith's opinion, raised his hands skyward. "Oh, great forest god Sylvanis, I worship thee!" He wrapped his arms around the trunk of a nearby tree.

Kairon stared. Aestith looked up in time to see Nix drag his tongue across the tree bark. He looked back at his cooking and tried to ignore Nix running about embracing trees and rolling around in the dirt in an effort to not appear evil, or whatever he thought he was trying to do.

Aestith tested the curry and sighed. He complained, "Nothing I do ever makes it taste quite right. I really need Underdark mushrooms and ground lichen to make an appropriate flavor and texture."

"As opposed to?" Kairon drawled.

The cleric waved his hand over the pot. "These inferior surface mushrooms and the rice."

"Ground lichen instead of rice? Why do you think that's superior?"
"It's more nutritious, lower in fat, lighter, and has more flavor." He poured himself a bowl of curry and rice anyway. Kairon helped himself.

Nix was still attempting to frolick, but didn't quite know what he was doing. He stopped suddenly. He stared into the wood, at some humanoid creature that seemed to be half tree. She beckoned to Nix.

Nix started toward her. "Guys, I think it worked. I think Sylvanis accepted me, look."

Kairon stared at him flatly. "Sure, Nix."

Aestith stirred his curry. "Nix. Leave that forest tart alone and come have some curry."

Nix looked at her and back at the other two, as if being lured to his death or not was actually a difficult decision. He reluctantly plopped down by the fire and spooned up dinner.

Eilora did not return by full dark. Kairon took the first watch, Aestith the middle-which was to most the least restful and therefore most unpleasant shift, but it was the darkest. Nix took the last. Whereas Kairon and Aestith had uncomfortable but dull watches, Nix constantly complained of illusory wolves, haunting laughter, and lights out in the distance.

Aestith told him while he made breakfast, "Perhaps you will learn your lesson about attempting to lie to deities." He handed Nix a plate of pancakes. "Fae like sweet things, because they're inferior. Give this to them as an offering to leave you alone and apologize."

Nix muttered to himself and wandered off to leave the plate at the base of a tree.

Aestith said, "You were supposed to bring the plate back. Now we are one plate short. You may eat off of the ground in the future, I suppose."

Nix blinked. "What?"

Aestith stared at him. "Do you really think that we bring extra utensils?"

He frowned, not at all accustomed to this sort of treatment.

Kairon tilted his head. "Nix. Did you ever say what you did before we met? Beyond that you were from Thay?"
Nix brushed dirt from his lapels. "I'm a merchant."

"And?"

He made a face. "My caravan was attacked."

Aestith snorted. "And you always had servants doing everything for you. No wonder you are so useless for menial tasks. Wash the dishes."

Nix used magic to accomplish the chore. Eilora still had not returned by the afternoon. When they tried to reach her on the Sending Stone, no message seemed to get through. Aestith tried a Sending spell, which was more difficult to cast than it should have been.

You've been gone all night. What's taken you so long?

No I haven't. It's only been an hour or so. I'm looking around my village. It looks like it's only been a couple weeks.

Sometimes, talking to Eilora was difficult and confused, owing largely to the fact that she had grown up mostly talking to badgers. If Eilora thought only an hour had passed, she had clearly slipped into some other plane with a time dilation. A couple weeks since what? Since the massacre of her village?

Aestith paused, thought about attempting another Sending, but relayed it to the others. Kairon said, "How in hell is that possible?"

Nix's brow furrowed, features subtly shifting to look like some kind of wizened wizard. "She's been gone since yesterday, but says it's only been an hour, and it looks like her village was only destroyed a few weeks ago?"

"That's what she said."

He stroked the beard he had grown. "Well, did Eilora ever mention that her village was connected to the Feywild? Because that sounds like the Feywild."

Aestith made a face. "Well. Shit. It is a small wonder we could not follow." They discussed, for a time, the value of waiting for her, but without much indication of how long they would be waiting, opted to go back to town. Unfortunately, none of them knew much of forests.

After some bickering, Aestith levitated above the treeline to look. He shaded his eyes from the glaring sun and squinted at the world. Why did everything have to be so bright?

He twisted around this way and that, but with how unpleasant the sun was, he could not be sure which way was the city. He should have levitated Kairon or Nix-why had he gone himself?

A glimmer off the horrible line of the horizon made him turn his head and took him a long moment to recognize it as a distant sea. He rose higher, trying to be certain that it was what he thought it was. He could not say if he had really seen the ocean, at first, but as he looked, and glanced around again at the dull surface landscape, he finally realized that the inky blot was Waterdeep. So the glimmering had to be water. He floated gently back down and informed the others. They struck off. The going was significantly slower without Eilora to guide them to deer trails and level ground. She wasn't there to warn them of stinging nettle or thorns. Yet, at the same time, the forest was eager to force them out, so while it was unpleasant, it did not twist and turn and doubleback on them, but instead seemed to funnel them to its outskirts like an unwanted guest.

The three were miserable by the time they clamored out of the wood. They were a fair distance from the corral, but Kairon knew which way it was by the direction of the sun and Franklin, so led them along the treeline toward it. They rested for a while, tired after the miserable trek. Aestith picked bits of leaves and twigs from his hair and Nix tried to use cantrips to clean his boots, which was a wasted task as long as they were outside in the dirt.

Kairon had to saddle the horses, which he did after the other two complained that they could not lift the heavy saddles. Instead, Aestith and Nix had to brush the creatures and put on the bridles, which neither of them quite knew how to do.

Kairon glowered at them. "Why are both of you so inept?"

Aestith stared at him flatly. "You just rub down a riding lizard, and anyway, I always had slaves for that."

"Slaves," Nix said with a nod.

Kairon's lips curled in disgust. "I grew up with servants too, but I still know how to saddle my own horse."

Aestith shrugged. He knew how to test the straps and saddle it correctly, even if he hadn't done it himself, as the saddles had been too heavy for him as a child, and now for that matter. It was too easy for someone else to sabotage one's saddle, and people died all the time from being thrown or falling. But a riding lizard saddle had straps to keep the rider in place, and the shape was entirely different from a horse. In a tunnel, one needed to sit farther back on the lizard, because the rider needed to drop to its back at a moment's notice and could be there for a long time, depending on the tunnel. Because of a lizard's anatomy, the rider also had to either have the legs carried forward, for leisure, or back, for speed. Neither accommodated quick dismounts, so it was important that each rider knew how the straps worked, even if they didn't do it themselves.

"Kairon, where did you grow up?" Aestith said.

He made a face. "Waterdeep."

"With servants?" Nix said, intrigued. "You're a noble?"

Kairon lifted one of the heavy saddles and dropped it onto a waiting mare. "I was adopted."

Nix tilted his head. "Interesting. Seaward?"

He snorted. "Yeah."

Aestith raised an eyebrow. "Yet you were at the adventuring guild in the docks. Why?"

Kairon glared. "Is it so wrong that I wanted to get away from my, frankly insane, adopted father? I hate gnomes, and he's why."

Aestith howled with laughter. Kairon was notorious for his hatred of gnomes and halflings. "You were raised by a gnome?"

The tiefling's tail flicked in irritation. "At least I wasn't raised in a hole."

"Enainsi is hardly a hole. It's a city boasting forty thousand drow. But more interestingly, you're a Waterdavian noble. I had no idea." Aestith smirked. If Kairon had been a drow, or a little more apt in the way drow sparred with words, he would have recognized the jibe for what it was.

He snorted. "You'd prefer to live in the docks too if you had to deal with my father for a tenday, let alone your entire life."

The Traveler's Club had made a bit of coin in their absence. The workers were understandably angry at the brothel's closing, but stayed on at the promise of a bonus if they didn't suddenly quit.

Eilora did not arrive back for several more days, contacting them on the Sending Stone about their absence, and demanding to know why they wouldn't wait "a couple hours" for her to get back.

It took all three of them and several cups of tea to explain to her, once she was back in Waterdeep, that she had been gone for days.

"Did you find out anything useful?" Aestith said, noting that she had not come back with a skull like he had asked; he needed it as a component for Speak with Dead.

She paused. "Yeah. Someone buried the bodies."

He stilled. "Who?"

She shifted, and looked like she wasn't certain she should be telling him. Then Eilora seemed to come to a conclusion. She said, "The village crazy lady. I guess she escaped and came back after. She buried everyone and put the village leader's soul in a tree so he could watch over the dead. Which is a little fucked up, but he thinks it's a punishment for failing to protect everyone. He's the one that told me about it."

Aestith considered this seriously for a long moment, then shrugged. "Weird. Anything else?"

She frowned. "I guess… I'm going to try to find the other survivor." Her jaw clenched tight for a moment, a flash of anger in her eyes. "So we can kill whoever did this."

Why did so many other races so fervently seek revenge? Lolth forbid it, because it consumed the individual and left them nothing but bloodthirsty, obsessed, and utterly useless for anything else. When revenge was gained, what was actually gained from it? Aestith didn't understand. He couldn't imagine feeling a hatred so intense that it drowned out everything else for so long. His own emotions were so distant past his wants and desires, felt sometimes during sex or in prayer, but so far away. He wondered what it would be like to have so much anger it overwhelmed him like a fire and not be able to hold it close and cherish the emotion before it slipped from him like water leaking between his fingers.

What was it like to feel something so passionately? The only thing he had ever felt with so much passion was his devotion to Lolth. It was what he held the most dear, and could it be that one of the reasons for that was because it granted him that passion that others felt with more mundane emotions? Aracnelxeth had told him that what inspired him to turn to Lolth as a deity was Aestith's own fervent passion for his goddess.

Arcedi had said, I've never felt anything that passionately, and I just want to be near it.