Rasaad's brow furrowed and he thrashed his blanket in his sleep. He was dreaming about the Cloud Peak mountains. The wind howled so viciously that he could barely hear and his skin stung from a constant assault of falling ice.

Arrow was there, looking just as she had when they had first climbed the peaks, before her head was shaved. She was pointing excitedly toward the Dark Moon temple. Rasaad tried to warn her not to go, but the snowstorm drowned out his words.

He was trying to follow her but deep quilts of snow were dragging at his legs and he could not keep up. Though a swirling icy blizzard almost hid her from his sight, he tracked her to the peak of the mountain. There, on that hateful, moonlit ledge where he had been forced to slay his brother, she stopped and her hair fell out. With her back to him, she raised white-gloved hand to touch her newly bald crown. She stared out over the edge of the world, and said in a cold voice:

"She's coming. It's almost time."

When she turned back to face him, Rasaad found himself looking not at Arrow, but at his brother Gamaz.

"Gamaz, why are you doing this?" asked Rasaad, his voice cracking.

The frosted mountain air was cutting through his skin and tightening his chest so badly that it was difficult to breathe. He shivered, but Gamaz seemed to feel nothing. He uncorked a grey bottle of numbing potion, releasing another wave of icy cold from the neck as he did so. As he drank it the temperature seemed to drop even further and when he replied his voice sounded distant and far away.

"Becoming more powerful was the last thing I really cared about before... before I stopped caring," came Gamaz's strange reply. "So I just carried on… but you know that now don't you?"

"Brother that is insane!" cried Rasaad. "I do not understand! If you no longer care, then why are you doing this?"

"Why not?" Gamaz asked vacantly.

"How could you do this to me?" Rasaad howled, knowing with despair that there was nothing he could do to help his brother. Maybe there had been once, but now it was far too late. Gamaz collapsed before his eyes, dead, leaving a man shaped groove in the deep snow. The monk ran forward to dig his brother out but when he reached the snowy grave he found that it contained not Gamaz but Arrow.

Her long dark hair that he loved so much had regrown, but she looked different. She seemed somehow more confident in death and she gave off an aura of glacial power. Her eyes were closed, her face blue and frozen but strangely her death was not the only thing about her that felt viscerally wrong.

"Why are you doing this to me?" he whispered into the grave.

Arowan's eyelids shot open but the eyes beneath them were not her own. Instead of kind and brown they were a solid pupilless gold. The eyes of a god. She smiled up at Rasaad, a twisted half-smile.

"Why not?"

Rasaad woke up screaming, and looked around to find himself sleeping in the streets for the first time since the Sun Soul monk in Calimport had first taken him and his brother in. He had to remind himself that he was no longer a small, vulnerable boy, and while he may have no gold there was no danger of a beating from the local yobs. A disgruntled beggar who had been woken by his cries gathered up his sack of meagre possessions and limped away, muttering crossly.

"Psst!" a man hissed, poking him in the back with a crutch. With a jolt, Rasaad recognized him as the beggar man to whom Arrow had given a hundred gold pieces on her way into Baldur's Gate. He seemed to have purchased himself some warmer clothes and looked better fed than the last time he had seen him. The beggar pressed his finger to his lips, glanced around conspiratorially, and pressed three of Arrow's gold coins into his palm. Then he fled as fast as his uninjured legs would carry him.

"Wait!" cried Rasaad, jumping up and running after him, but clearly the beggar did not trust him not to steal the rest of his fortune. The monk was faster but the beggar knew the back alleys and rooftops of Baldur's Gate and was easily able to lose him.

He was left standing alone with the gold coins in his hand, watching the morning light reflecting off of them. At least, until the shadow of a man appeared before him and blocked the light out.

"Rasaad yn Bashir," the Hooded Man said coldly. Rasaad could just make out his face beneath the hood. It looked unnaturally pale and stretched. Hard veins criss-crossed it, but these were not so unnerving as his hard drill-like eyes. "I have been searching for you. You are close to the ranger Arowan are you not? I am sure that you would not wish to see her harmed."

"You dare threaten her?" cried Rasaad. He aimed a strike at the Hooded Man, but the wizard immobilized him with cold indifference. The monk froze mid-kick unable to do anything but curse him.

"My name is Irenicus," the man said. "And I come to you with an offer. I only need one Bhaalspawn for my purposes and I'd rather it be Freya. Deliver her to me alone, outside of the city walls. If you do, I will leave Arowan alone."

"I'd die before I'd help you!" snarled Rasaad, though the words came out unintelligible through his frozen lips. Irenicus seemed unfazed by his refusal.

"How noble you are," Irenicus said with a sneer. "How unlike your brother. I have just returned from a trip South to view Gamaz's workshop for myself. I admit I was quite intrigued after Eric described it to me. I have been considering a similar investment myself."

Rasaad could not move his arms but his hands balled into tight, angry fists around Arrow's coins.

"I took his experimental notes for recreational reading, they were very extensive," Irenicus continued icily. "Gamaz was an interesting man. It's a shame you killed him."

The monk thrashed uselessly against the magical bonds holding him.

You, however, are not an interesting man," Irenicus went on indifferently. "So I will take my leave of you now. Remember what Arowan was almost subjected to in your brother's workshop and rest assured that mine will be exponentially worse. Meditate on that and on my offer. My associates will be in touch Rasaad… just in case you change your mind."

~Fin

Continues with The Bitch of Baldur's Gate