Chosen of Eilistraee

by Anja Kidd

Far beneath the doomed city of Waterdeep, Eilistraee's unlucky Chosen (and his minions) find themselves set on a collision course with destiny. Rated M for language, sexual content, drow humor, and violence. This story is cross-posted on AO3 and Inkitt.

15. Knowing

Credit be unto Trisa_Slyne for editing this drivel and making it shine.

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BINNE

That gormless, barmy, mingebag of an airy-fairy Knower had led us in the wrong direction - I was certain of it. Our luck was due for another turn. Tymora's grace only carried you so far. Then again, we apparently had Eilistraee guiding us all along. My life was definitely a cosmic farce. I tried not to focus on it. It frustrated me so much, but I was coping on the inside.

After a brief but much-needed stint of warming our hands (and tails) in front of a velox-fire in the shadow of an ice-cliff, we decided to venture on (more or less Nathyrra's decision that none of us objected to since she was the one with the ring) and trudged through the snow toward an uncertain end. If it weren't for the good company, I would have no doubt that I'd be confined to Hell for eternity, but something about Solaufein and Beth's faith and sheer determined bull-headed-ness (on her part, anyway, since she still had nothing nice to say about any of the gods) was infectious. Despite the general feeling that we had the ability to actually accomplish our task, I fully expected my dread father to show up any second and ruin everything for everyone - the other shoe would drop any moment, and it would all come crashing down. I wanted desperately, if not for my sake than at least for Deekin's, for us to succeed in our mad task. I'd certainly seen us achieve equally unlikely ventures, or so I tried to tell myself.

I could tell Deekin was feeling down about our prospects. We'd had more of a lead than we'd ever had before - and an actual arrow in the right direction according to Nathyrra, who apparently while wearing the puzzle-ring could see black and red arrows leading her on through the icy cliffs. But Deekin was silent most of the time now, and I could tell that not being able to use his hands properly was nagging at him. Aribeth was happy enough to be his scribe for the time being, at least, and I was grateful to her for that.

Damn it all, but I missed Boon. I had become so accustomed to his appearance and presence that without the hellhound lollygagging behind me, it felt like something was missing. Luckily Valen was still there, with a ready and shy smile whenever I glanced his way. I knew a little of what he must have been feeling, as part of his very being tore at him to cut loose and kill every devil he saw. He seemed to have overcome that urge in regards to me completely, at least, so my method of sleeping with dangerous people to get them on my good side was still working fine and well as ever. It also helped that he was so adorable that I couldn't help but smile back, in spite of the fact that we were trapped in an icy Hell and half-frozen to death. I was starting to really, dearly love that man.

I contented myself as we marched on watching Solaufein's form ahead of us as the snowdrift beat around him, tossing the folds of his cloak. I loved him dearly too. There was no contest or division, it just was. It had begun to hurt less and less to look at Solaufein, but I still remembered. I couldn't quite forget what I had done, nor could I divorce myself or my memory from the action, so I forced myself to watch him and tried to feel that calm he used to instill in me. I thought of the corners of his wine-dark eyes crinkling up in those mysterious smiles of his, the feeling of his hands threading through my hair, his touch on my neck that time he'd cut my hair in the bowels of Undermountain . . . Sometimes when I thought of those things, I'd feel Enserric in my chest for a moment, and it would momentarily steal the breath from my lungs.

But I stared at Solaufein regardless, because he cut a dramatic dark figure and was as easy on the eyes as ever. That slender helmet suited him, and I was glad - after the battle for Lith My'athar - that at least he was donning one. Of course, I'd had trouble keeping my eyes off him ever since I first took a gander at him. Between him and Valen, I had plenty to look at to keep me moving and motivated. Of course, to my frustration, Valen continued not to wear a helm, but I wasn't going to lecture him. I wasn't his mother. It was common bloody sense.

Nathyrra stopped up our line suddenly, to my chagrin since moving was my only respite against the cold that had now seeped into my bones, and she held up a fist. I squinted at it, and noted her hands rapidly shifted a few times. It was in the silent language, something Solaufein had been teaching us. 'Enemies,' she signed. 'I/me, scout.' A spell of invisibility fell over her and she pranced off, leaving only footprints behind until even those faded in the drift.

Solaufein made his way back to us, and Beth closed the circle as we all stood around each other for warmth and waited for Nathyrra's return. Solaufein glanced behind him a few times, as if to reassure himself that Nathyrra was indeed gone, and huddled closer to us. Deekin shivered at one of his sides, and rubbed his little fingers together in their mittens. Aribeth alone remained unbothered, uncloaked, the snow whipping about her translucent - yet somehow solid form (and when exactly was Nathyrra going to figure out the explanation for that one for me?) and tossing what few locks she hadn't bound back in a braid into the air. Her eyes were still the same gray of Cania's looming storm clouds, and she looked strangely calm with her hand resting upon her sword in a guarded posture I found identical to Valen's. The sword itself was at least solid, to my consternation - but the armor she wore was not. (How did the bloody rules regarding the dead work in this bloody mad realm? Why was there no one with an explanation about this?) Valen stood closest to me, across from Solaufein, and was as guarded and impassive as ever - but his eyes glittered like lapis catching the sun, and his hair was the color of sunsets, and he was beautifully, breathtakingly making me nostalgic for home.

I wished again that Boon was with us. He could at least start a fire. My dread father seemed to have nullified my control of hellfire, for whatever reason - or he altered my pact, as its maker or initiator. Either way, I could still summon and command eldritch energy, and I could feel it inside me waiting for a release like a ballista creaking as it was aimed against an enemy's walls, ready to fire. It worried at me, how much control Mephistopheles had over me, but for now at least he didn't seem to be doing anything about it, or just didn't care what I got up to. I expected he felt confident enough in his hold over me that we would remain banished here, forever. I didn't know anything about True Names beyond what the Sensei had told us, really, but it sounded fairly final if even the Reaper of Solaufein's pocket-realm was bound by one. He had control over doors to all the different planes and could resurrect and fully regenerate people without consulting the gods - and even a being with his power was slave to Mephistopheles' whim. Who knew how deep my dread father's machinations ran? It didn't bode well for us, despite our progress.

As I ruminated while my tail twitched about anxiously, Nathyrra ambled back to us within a few minutes and reported that there were ice giants ahead, ice trolls too, and a fortress even further ahead that was full of both of them. I expected fate would throw us some winter wolves while we were at it, because it fit the theme, and I was right.

I wasn't much of a 'plans' girl; I was more horns than brain and I'd rather be pointed at a problem and solve it my way than with another's direction, but when it came to battle I was deferring to the others' expertise. I was the heavy hitter, along with Valen and Beth, and my long scythe was the only long weapon we had that could keep enemies at bay from getting too close and personal with our spell-casters. Nathyrra and Deekin remained behind me as they spelled us all into invisibility, and we would do our best to get the drop on our ambushers.

Per our idiom, our plans naturally went awry as soon as they involved me. For whatever reason, as soon as the ice giants caught sight of me after I cast a summoning spell (and boy was Mata nastily surprised to suddenly find herself floating over the heads of ice-giants in a skimpy outfit, caught in the coldest of Cania's snows), they started to target me. And I mean full-on rock-chucking targeting - I would have been pummeled by rocks to death instantaneously if Valen hadn't pulled me out of the way and found me cover behind a crag some distance away. This left Deekin and Nathyrra to scramble for cover, but they were thankfully still invisible. The rocks crackled and burst against my covering with the force they were thrown - I clamped down on my helmet with my mittens and didn't have enough words to thank Valen for his quick reaction.

Beth and Solaufein charged ahead - I'd hit Solaufein with my spider-walking spell beforehand and he simply ran up the ice-cliffs to the higher ground where most of the ice-trolls were camped out doing the rock-chucking. He shimmered back into visibility halfway up the cliff as he nearly slipped and fell and had to stab into the ice with Enserric and his boot dagger to avoid falling. My heart pounded in my chest - I could even hear Enserric criticizing him as he quickly righted himself and made the rest of the distance in two leaps. Beth had to go the long way, because the other spider-walking spell I had stored I was saving for an emergency get-away and she wanted to flank them anyway, so she kicked and leapt through the snow, managing to half-run-half-march her way up the hill.

With the rock-chuckers distracted, I poked more than just my head and horns out of hiding and decided to go for it when I saw that the enemies had been diverted from me. Mata was distracting the other half of the ice trolls and giants (and whoever heard of giants and trolls collaborating? Or were they fighting each other? It was hard to tell in the chaos), and Nathyrra was casting chained lightning bolts and fireballs into their midsts, making sure to keep her targets far from her allies. Valen dove out quickly from behind the cover he'd found for us once the rocks stopped, and charged after Solaufein and Aribeth.

As Beth made it up to the higher ground and started to rip through the giants from behind, I felt a bit more confident about my chances of not being pummeled and fully stepped out into the open to start casting. I wasn't sure what would be entirely effective, and without my hellfire I felt crippled, but hellfire didn't make the warlock.

"You fucking lunatic! Now it's an army of ice giants?!" Mata's strident voice somehow made it to me from overhead, cutting through the whistling wind. I could perfectly picture her dumbfounded and furious expression.

"Love you too!" I called out, knowing her highly sensitive ears could pick up on it.

She had flown over the battle and picked her targets wisely - there were a few shaman-type trolls who could have been threats had they been focused on us, but they were largely preoccupied with Mata and Nathyrra's swooping and spell-casting respectively. Deekin was shooting what fiery bolts he had left into the fray as I followed his example and started tossing chunks, spears, and lances of eldritch green energy at our enemies. Anything that dared approach us, I sliced open with my scythe. Limbs and heads flew and rolled - I might have been in love with Rizolvir a little bit, at least by the end of that battle. It was by far the lightest, most effective, strongest, deadliest, sharpest, and shiniest mithral scythe I'd ever laid hands on, and my what a pleasure it was to lay hands upon its duskwood haft. How on earth he'd managed to even find a piece of the infamous Luskan wood in Cania, I'll never know, but it was probably courtesy of the dragon's horde.

Mata flapped down and landed next to me at the end and gave me a dubious look. However, she glanced over my shoulder, whistled appreciatively, and disappeared into a plane-shift just as Valen caught up to me, and Solaufein not far behind him. I knew I'd owe her a few stories over drinks later, for all of Mata's trouble, and she always appreciated living vicariously through my escapades. I was her only current pact-holder as far as I knew, and she didn't always love the idea of being summoned at random by annoying mortals, but when I did it for battle-or-liquor-related reasons she never seemed to mind.

Nathyrra came up from behind me and moved to my other side. "There is a fortress of them up ahead. This was, what is the word, preliminary?" She guessed.

"That was a proper welcoming party, then," I summarized lightly. "How many in the fortress?"

"There could be dozens," Beth estimated.

I thought about this. "I could drop Barbara on top of them," I offered.

Nathyrra seriously considered it for a moment. "She may turn against us . . . But you may banish her, yes?"

"Who's Barbara?" Beth asked, but I didn't answer immediately.

"Only if this isn't her home plane," I made the caveat. I turned to Valen, knowing he might be more aware of these things than I. "They're native to the Abyss, aye?"

"Bebilith? Yes," he confirmed with a nod. "I've never seen one on Baator, except when it was summoned and chained."

"A bebilith? You want to summon a bebilith?" Beth was now alarmed.

I turned to Nathyrra with a bright, but pained smile, because I was starting to lose feeling in my toes. "I vote we sit back and watch Barb take care of this one!" I cheered.

Nathyrra turned to Solaufein, and I fidgeted under both of the drow's regards. I still had trouble meeting Solaufein's gaze, so I flickered between his and Nathyrra's. Her eyes were the hue of fresh blood, almost pink they were so vermilion, and Solaufein's were of course my favorite color of deep and dark red wine - I'd never really took note of the subtle differences between the two drow, but really there were so few of them that they may as well have been siblings. Even their bone structures were eerily similar to my eyes. I started tapping my toes in my boots to keep them moving, to fight against the cold. "Also, we're going to need a fire soon," I added, looking down to my toes. I could feel my tail thrashing in an expression of the pain in my feet that I was repressing.

"Deekin agrees with Ladyhorns, fires be goods for Deekin's little toes," the kobold bard asserted. "And Deekin not feelings his toes anymores."

"Perhaps we should rest now, then," Solaufein offered, "and better plan our attack."

"If I'm bringing the big spider out to play, the plan so far is mostly just to sit back at a fire and listen to the sounds of our enemies die at a safe, healthy distance," I shot out.

"I desire not to get close to such a creature, even if it is leashed by you," Aribeth tentatively agreed.

"'Leash' is a strong word," I struggled to explain. "Better to say I gave her a name and I'm letting her out of her cage. We'll be lucky if she doesn't come after us, but I'll banish her in that event."

"Then I like this plan," Beth nodded. If I needed confirmation that she had definitely quit being a paladin, it was that she looked completely at ease at the idea of her enemies being torn apart by a bebilith.

"I found a place we could safely have a fire, but we will have to kill or banish elementals," Nathyrra said as she turned to trudge off in the snow. Solaufein turned to follow her, so the rest of us trailed after him. I hung back with Deekin at the rear of the line, worried about the little guy and his toes in those boots he wasn't used to wearing.

"You hanging in there, master bard?" I queried, after waiting for the wind to die back down as it had momentarily gotten back up to a mighty howl.

"Deekin just be glad to build big, big fire back in Waterdeep whens we gets back!" Deekin chirped, looking up at me with a toothy grin. It warmed the cockles on my barnacled heart to see that he was still maintaining his optimism, despite things. I felt myself faltering at times, but Deekin never seemed to completely. There were times when he was down, but he bounced back swiftly or was simply a master of masking it. There was so much bravery in such a small body. I was glad he was with us, even if it meant he was probably also still dealing with the memories of his most recent death.

That had me curious. "Are you feeling . . . Well, after, uh, Mephistopheles . . . Killed you?" I asked bluntly, after internally debating on what to say and settling on just being honest rather than mincing words that Deekin might get confused, since Common wasn't his first language after all, like it was mine.

"Deekin die worse times, like whens Undrentide fall," Deekin shrugged his little shoulders, sending his pack creaking. "Being crushed to death by fallings city is way worse. So Deekin just think abouts all the worse times he could have died or did die, and Deekin is grateful it was quick!"

I hadn't given it much thought, because I didn't know the full Undrentide story, but hearing Deekin say it so casually had me staring thoughtfully at Solaufein's back again. Hadn't he died there too, with Deekin? Were they alone? There was much I didn't know, and I wasn't sure if Deekin's book was entirely accurate. I'd rather hear the story from the source, and drag it out of Solaufein over morimatra when we got out of here.

It then struck me for a moment that unlike Deekin, I hadn't given any serious thought to what I'd do when I got out of Hell. I had been expecting to remain trapped here, for our task to be hopeless, and I'd trudged along with it without any hope at all that things would get better simply because I didn't know what else to do with myself. It felt like I'd found a good thing and just kept doing it, out of a lack of options.

What would I do, if - when - we made it back? I wondered. Was there any future for me, at Solaufein's side? Could I even imagine that? Mephistopheles' hold over me felt absolute. The tentative future where we got out of here and successfully foiled his plans did not. Add to that was my internal frustration over the rune Blackstaff had given me - stuck somewhere in my hand or body, inaccessible by my current means and lack of imagination. What good was it if I didn't know how to use it? If I didn't remember the story Sharwyn had told me, how could I learn how to? And what would I do with it, if I could go back and change any one thing of the past? Would I stop myself from killing Solaufein? Save Brega? Kill Cyric as a mortal? Those options seemed obvious, but what if those tasks were impossible? I knew too little about it.

"Ladyhorns? You be alright?" Deekin's voice took me out of my thoughts. I didn't realize I'd stopped for a moment, and haltingly began walking again after the others, who had yet to notice my momentary pause. Deekin trailed behind, worriedly.

"I'm alright, love," I told him with a smile. "I'll be alright." I didn't want him to worry.

It didn't take long for Nathyrra to lead us in a circuitous route to a strangely warm area that had me grateful in the extreme, or alternatively terrified that I'd now gotten frostbite and was feeling the effects. Nathyrra stopped ahead and let us draw close so we could hear what she had to say. "There is a small lake of lava, seeping from underground ahead. There are several fire elementals about, but we can handle them, and clear the area. It is an excellent place to camp due to its natural warmth."

I was saving Barb the bebilith for a big show, but I had a few more summons under my belt. Ice spells would be more handy, which I knew Nathyrra and Deekin had. Deekin piped up, "Deekin cans cast spells to help, but Deekin also rather not have fireballs thrown at his face."

"Then it will be our duty to keep them distracted," Aribeth declared.

"I'm not bad at range either, though I may be feeling frostbite in my toes," I added. The natural warmth of the area was starting to cause me to tingle in my toes uncomfortably.

"Why did you not say something earlier?" Solaufein demanded to know, like it was a crime I hadn't mentioned my possibly-frost-bitten-toes earlier.

I shrugged and threw my hands in the air. I didn't know the answer. It hadn't really occurred to me to say something until I couldn't feel them anymore, and now all I was feeling were strange and painful tingles. It wasn't debilitating, but it was distracting enough that I didn't want to engage in any fancy footwork with Valen, that was for sure. (I vaguely recalled him being far better at dancing than I, despite me being the one to drag him into it.) I was certain I'd fall on my face sooner rather than later if we didn't build a fire in time. Solaufein looked frustrated with me, which was a new and charming look for him that I hadn't realized I adored until I saw it and was hopeless to defend myself against the feeling, and then he turned to start giving orders to people like he was born for it. Knowing what I knew about his background, it was entirely possible that he was.

He and Valen charged ahead and started ripping into four fire elementals that were, by the look of them, lazily lounging by a small creek of lava. I tried to banish them initially but it didn't take. Banishing was a shot in the dark, besides. It hadn't worked on the rakshasa of Undermountain either. On the other side of the lava flow were three others that immediately started flinging fireballs at our boys, that they had to dodge. I started chucking eldritch energy bolts at the ones afar, and managed to lasso one with my whip and drag it through the lava to the other side where Valen smashed its head open with his flail like a fist to a grape. Chunks of molten rock went flying willy-nilly, which resulted in the rest of us having to dodge and me having to brush some off my armor like dust, since it didn't hurt me as badly. Nathyrra got the other two with a cone of cold, which managed to also nearly get Solaufein, but he dodged in time. Beth stood guard over Nathyrra and Deekin during the whole affair, taking her protective duty entirely too seriously as she stood ready with her sword in both hands the entire time and didn't budge. The final elemental Solaufein simply beheaded as it approached and tried to fight him, and all in all it was rather effortless for people of our skill.

We picked a spot far enough away from the lava that it wasn't too hot, but warm enough that we could comfortably take off our winter clothes and shake them out of snowflakes. We let our cloaks and gear dry out a bit closer to the lava, and started distributing rations amongst each other.

I parked myself away from camp, nearer the small little lava-river and pulled my feet out of my boots, and examined my toes in the faint gray light. They didn't look black, but they looked a few shades darker than the healthy red they should have been. I winced and held them closer to the lava flow- not too close - but enough that the tingling started up again something fierce and became painful. Had I done permanent damage? It was hard to tell. Da was missing a few toes from a time when he got stranded in a blizzard. The thought of losing my toes didn't bother me as much as it probably should have, but that was since I knew I could hobble around despite. After all, he managed to do it. I was stubborn enough that it wouldn't get me down for long.

As I was trying to cheer myself up, I heard the sound of footsteps behind me and wasn't alarmed, figuring it was just Valen or Deekin coming to check on me, but I stiffened when I realized it was Solaufein. He stopped in his tracks when he caught my gaze. It wasn't that I didn't want to see him - I enjoyed looking at him when it didn't hurt to . . . But subtly, insidiously, my thoughts tended toward that dark memory of the Valsharess' battle, of him dying in my arms, of Mephistopheles' laughter, of stabbing myself with Enserric and the talkative sword singing half-forgotten songs from his human life as he sat lodged in my chest with one of my own fists clenched around the hilt . . . . Unable to move. Unable to breathe. Unable to do anything but slowly die in utter despair. I rubbed at the place where a scar wasn't on my chest and wondered - not for the first time - if Solaufein had a scar, if he had trouble forgetting, or if everything he'd been through in his life made his most recent death just more fuel for his reverie. What haunted him? I wondered.

I knew he'd probably tell me anything, if I asked, but I wasn't sure if I had the right to. He approached slowly and sat down beside me, close enough that our arms and hips were touching, and he stared down at my feet in consternation. I didn't want to be lectured, but he wasn't the type to do that. He was the worst type - just the type to give me disappointed looks, hurt glances, and love me unconditionally in all the ways I didn't deserve. Without warning or preamble, a silver light emitted from his hands, engulfing my feet, and the tingling went away replaced by warm bliss. I was impressed that I'd gotten used to his paladin-like aura over time - such that his healing spells no longer rubbed me the wrong way.

I closed my eyes, and basked in the feeling for a moment. It wasn't just the warmth of Eilistraee's light coming through his hands, or the fact that I was receiving his attention and lingering in it like a cat in the sun, but also the notion that I could still sit next to him like this with our easy manner.

"Oh just say something, you dunderhead," Enserric piped up from Solaufein's leg. I snorted out in unexpected laughter, and Solaufein glared at his sword.

When I had stopped laughing, I said simply, "Thank you. My toes feel much better."

Solaufein nodded. He seemed to be struggling with words for a moment, and then tried gently, but almost harshly in that rasping voice of his, "Do not suffer in silence. I will always help, if you only ask."

Unwillingly, tears stung at the corners of my eyes and I wiped at them quickly and turned away. "Ah know tha'," I said, in a rough approximation of words that came out as more of a garbled sniffle. His fingers gently entered my periphery as they tangled in my hair, which had long since fallen into disarray. I was struck by the familiar feeling of his hand on my scalp, and leaned into his touch instinctively.

"May I fix it?" the question rumbled out of his chest.

"Please," I said. "I'm a bloody mess without you making sense of it all." I meant that about the hair and everything else, although I wasn't sure if he picked up on my subtext or not. Solaufein sat behind me and threaded his fingers through my hair, gently tugging free tangles by first the ends and then the roots. He took his time, but he was methodical as ever in his work, and the steady rhythm of his hands working their magic on my head and hair took every doubt and fear out of my head and dumped them into the lava.

There were shadows in my mind, as I was sure would ever now be, but I was genuine when I turned to Solaufein after he was finished with his work, and smiled. His look was a mystery however, somewhere between wistful and pained, and I wasn't sure what I'd done to provoke such a reaction. "Are you—" I worried for a moment, but cut myself off. I didn't doubt that he was haunted - by what, I couldn't name, but I could guess. I had killed him, after all. I withdrew, feeling strange about the sudden distance there was between us. I threw up a mental wall against the feeling and smiled anyway, trying not to let the hurt show. "Nevermind," I said instead. I stood, and offered him my hand. "Let's enjoy our potentially last meal while we still can, aye?"

He took my hand and stood, and kept it in his all the way back to the others. I sat down first, dragging him down with me and let go of his hand only when I had to grab a small bowl from Nathyrra of rations that Deekin had bargained for like a champion for us from the blue dragon, and passed it over to Solaufein. He focused on his food for a while, as did I, and I caught Valen sneaking a concerned glance in our direction. I wiggled my toes and gave him a bright, reassuring smile that he shyly returned. I used to view Valen's guarded nature as a challenge to overcome, but now I just found it endearing. Every shy smile was still a victory that I wanted to mark on a calendar.

Beth cleared her throat suddenly, getting all of our attentions. I had almost forgotten she was there, sitting amongst us and staring at her feet while we ate. It was a little disconcerting to be taken out of the moment I was in and remember - oh yes, I was trapped in Hell, my father was an arch-devil, this was the lost soul of Lady Aribeth in front of us, and we were on a mystical quest to find a winged fellow who would tell us about the key to our freedom. "I have a thought," Beth spoke up, once again diverting my scant attention. "We are assaulting a fortress next, are we not?"

"I'm going to drop a demonic spider on them, and let Barbara do all the work," I said around a mouthful of food.

"Some may still run away or attempt to escape. I am quite skilled with a bow, if we have one amongst us," she offered, looking contemplative. "Although it has been many a season since I last fired one, I do not believe my skill has diminished significantly. I believe Deekin also has a crossbow, and Nathyrra has a wealth of ranged spells. Between the three of us, I am certain we may off anyone who attempts to escape the destruction caused by your bebilith."

Everyone looked to Deekin automatically, because he had the most gear. "Well, Deekin did find a nice bow whiles we were ins the lava puzzle with all the flying monsters." Augh, hearing that sentence reflexively made my brain hurt. Deekin put down his food on the ground - which was so warm that the snow had trouble sticking to it rather than melting automatically - and swung around his bag of holding to his front, so that he could ransack through it. One giant pile of armor and spare weapons later, and he emerged with a magnificent looking longbow that he had trouble pulling out, so Valen had to help him. The real question was how he'd gotten it into the bag of holding in the first place. It was at least as tall as Aribeth so I wasn't sure how she was going to fire it, and we had trouble finding arrows for a few minutes so we had thought about summoning the d'jinn - but once Nathyrra identified the bow, we discovered that it conveniently had its own energy-based arrows that it would fire once the string was pulled back. Aribeth tested this feature out on a nearby cliff for the next two hours, firing glowing blue round after round and honing her not inconsiderable skill. I could tell she was hitting her target most of the time, but something about the draw frustrated her. Until she 'got used to it,' she said, she wasn't quite comfortable using it in combat. We had plenty of time, still resting and eating, and were in no rush to storm the ice-fortress quite yet.

There was an urgency to our task, certainly, as we knew Waterdeep was holding out against the forces of doom that assailed it. Deekin was by far the most eager of us to return to Prime simply because he wanted to see the Waterdeep cavalry in action. However, there was no reason for us to rush into a battle un-prepared and hungry. We didn't stop for sleep, even though I admitted I desperately needed a nap, but the food re-energized me enough to make me willing to go along with whatever everyone else decided.

Once my clothes were dried out, I geared back up and sidled up to Beth, who was still firing strange blue-glowing arrows into the ice. The things we happened upon while adventuring - it would never cease to amaze me. Then again, we'd found Enserric in a dungeon too - and picked up Valen and Nathyrra in the Underdark, the strangest place of all. I didn't say anything when I approached her, but I knew she could hear me. After a while, she turned to me with those luminous gray eyes until I couldn't help but speak, if only to fill up the silence. "I was imagining every arrow in the ice was another one in Bishop's arse. It was a lovely fantasy."

That made her lip twitch up, unexpectedly, and she actually let out a faint chuckle. She turned back to her target practice, and kept firing. After two arrows thudded into their marks, she drew another back and aimed, and said, "I don't think our aims are comparable - I was never a hunter. Only a killer. His bow was too large for me, besides."

"If you think he was anything but a killer, you're mistaken," I couldn't help but add. I was Bishop's friend, sure, but all of the people cursed to call him a friend could freely admit that he was an awful person to care about, and very difficult to love on his best days. Our friendship had been founded upon insulting each other, fighting, and drinking. It never ceased to surprise me how pure his aim really was, though, sober or drunk - it never seemed to affect him adversely, unlike me, who turned into a slobbering mess after two draughts of morimatra.

"That is fair, I suppose," Aribeth conceded. She fired another few rounds, and then turned to me. Thwip, thwip, they hit their target, one right next to the other. "Are we ready to leave? I feel confident about our chances."

"Oh, we'll all rip them a new one. Hopefully Barbara doesn't decide to charge us instead, though. You never know with these things."

"How did you manage to bind one? I am familiar with warlock pacts," she added, upon seeing my dubious look. She smiled benignly. "My years of education as a paladin included diverse subjects, and I met with several warlocks who came to Neverwinter's aid during the city's quarantine."

"Oh, we found it in a cave, which itself was in a hole, in the middle of a beholder den, and couldn't just leave it alone, you know us," I summarized with a wave of my hand. "It's a long story for another time. Maybe Deekin will write a book about it. He was there. Incidentally it's how Nathyrra got that fabulous haircut."

I babbled about a few of our other misadventures as we walked back to the others, who had torn down our little camp and stamped out the fire. The surrounding area was still warm enough to be comfortable, and I had no desire to return to the cold again . . . But the devilish part of me was ever-hungry for a good and bracing battle.

I would regret that thought a few hours later when I was thrown into a stone wall by an ice giant's club, thankfully sustaining very little damage beyond getting the wind knocked out of me completely. I needed to be in a clear sighted area of where I wanted to summon the bebilith, which unfortunately meant fighting into the thick of it and then running away as fast as possible. There was no way I'd be able to achieve a summons - especially a new one - while I was getting actively assaulted by ice giants.

Thankfully, Valen intercepted the one that clubbed me and started pummeling its knees into bloody ribbons, forcing it to crash into the ground. He leapt right onto its chest and head and destroyed it in one violent blow, and quickly moved to the next target, never losing momentum. His eyes were burning red. Arrows and bolts sailed over my head and I got up, caught my breath, and ran after Valen's bloody trail, knowing he'd at least make a bigger target than me.

This was part one of my plan - send the fiendlings in to carve a swath to the center, run inside if they need assistance, but essentially wait until I successfully did the summons, and then get the Hells out of the way. I had to remain within sight of the thing to banish it, and I didn't want it to plane-shift out of reach on me - who knew what trouble it would get up to? I was damn sure that Barbara would kill everything in sight, but I wasn't sure if that included me or not. We didn't exactly start off on the best foot. Pacts can be entered willingly or unwillingly, depending on the nature of the creature being bound. I would never describe Barbara's pact as 'willing'; Mata's was, as was Hugo's and Boon's, but none of my others were - just part of the travails of being a warlock.

I spied a few spell-caster type giants on the battlements of the icy fortress, and I wasn't sure how to get up there to get them, so I figured that made a good enough target - I reached into the Weave, barked out the abyssal command I'd tethered to the venom-barbed creature I'd half-seriously but quite proudly named Barbara, and pointed the circle right at the battlements. At first I wasn't sure it would take, but then after a brief flash of green eldritch light Barbara appeared, enormous, fangs dripping with clear venom, and extremely pissed at being woken up from presumably her nap.

Barbara let out an unearthly screech that set the teeth of everyone who heard it on edge, and certainly caught everyone's attention. The giants started to panic. Valen's eyes flashed back to blue abruptly as he turned to look at me, and he started to run toward me just as Barbara chittered and scaled the battlements toward the spell-casting giants. The bebilith tore through them with a gory frenzy that I was in awe of and could not help but watch, caught in helpless splendor as it made the quickest work of our enemies that I'd ever seen, aside from that dragon sitting on all those soldiers and orcs that one time. (I'd rolled out of that death-ditch when the big red dragon took off and looked out on a sea of squish. It had effectively ended the battle for all three sides.) I hadn't realized how good of a lucky chance we all had possessed against Barbara the first time we'd fought her, when we'd presumably caught her by surprise. I thought a surprised bebilith was just as deadly as an unsurprised one, and had deep down suspected it was sheer luck that had guided us in that battle, as well as every battle since. Perhaps it was not just Eilistraee on our side, but Tymora occasionally smiling on our fate.

It mattered little; the bebilith tore on. Barbara stopped for nothing, and I was unable to stop her from plane-shifting to the other side of the fortress abruptly and almost out of sight. I had to run to catch sight of her as she started tearing through the scattering ranks of giants, laying down flaming webs on whole crowds of them, grasping one in her mouth and ripping through two more with her legs. It was an utter, awful massacre.

The ones that managed to get away found themselves filled with Beth's arrows and Deekin's bolts. There were no survivors.

When Barb had killed the last one, I saw her beady little eyes turn on me. I was terrified. I blurted out the banishment command, hoping to Tymora that she'd be banished back to the Abyss where she belonged, but she didn't budge. She just twitched her fangs, lifted her front fore-legs for a moment up - then down - and then, she plane-shifted.

And she was gone.

It was a subtle difference, banishment and plane-shifting. Plane-shifting was generally something that you did to yourself, to travel through the planes. I'd learned this in Blackstaff's very own lecture room. Banishment was something imposed upon you by an outside force. Barbara had resisted my command completely, effortlessly, and disappeared of her own volition to another plane of existence. It was as if she had said, 'thanks for the meal, now ta' and popped off.

I stared at the spot she'd occupied and didn't come to until Valen was shaking my shoulders. "It's gone, Binne, you did it," he was saying, but I shook my head.

"No, no, no, no, she shifted. She resisted me, then she plane-shifted the fuck out of here. She's not in Cania, not in the Abyss either where she's normally bound, but who knows what plane she pushed herself into? She could be anywhere!"

"That sound like that be someone else's problem," Deekin piped up.

"I hate to agree with Deekin here, because it sounds a bit callous, but it does indeed sound as if the bebilith is no longer a problem," spoke up Aribeth from her position where she was picking off winter-wolves that the ice giants had kept in a pen, as they mindlessly charged at her. I was in awe of her for a second before I realized what I was panicking about in the first place.

"What if she's back in Prime?" I panicked. My hands rose up to the sides of my head and gripped my helmet in my panic. "Tearing through Waterdeep's battalions, I—I should have—"

"You did what you could, and you cannot control that," Solaufein tried to reassure me. It was difficult for him to do because he momentarily was distracted by a charging wolf and had to tackle-stab it with Enserric before it could bite his throat. He stood after and brushed the snow off his cloak, almost annoyed at the interruption. He then continued after, "It is not your fault, Binne."

I shook my head, and took off my helmet. I turned my face up toward the snowy sky and felt the snowflakes dissolve as they hit my cheeks in tiny little pricks of ice-cold. I breathed, then put my helmet back on. I knew deep down Solaufein was right, but I felt guilty for setting such a monster on the loose to some random place. Bebilith didn't roam the planes as they pleased - they were bound to their home-planes, the same way most lower level demons and devils were. I didn't know how she'd resisted my command, but I needed to study further if I were to ever master such a summons. "We should move on. Nathyrra? Where's the magical arrows now that only you can see? Oh, that one hurt my brain too," I grumbled.

Valen placed an arm over my shoulders sympathetically and walked alongside me. Mine and his tails seemed to instinctively intertwine with another, like vines. We kept up the rear of the group as Nathyrra turned away to lead us onward. We trudged through icy canyons until we happened upon an open, windswept battlefield - I knew it was such from the halberds and banners sticking out of the ground, and the bodies of fiends half-covered by the snow.

The tiefling warrior beside me stopped in his tracks, and clenched his jaw just as he grasped his flail in one hand. He let go of me and sniffed the air. "I know this place. No. This smell," he said with an expression of utter disgust. It was such a peculiar way to describe a scene that I puzzled at his meaning until I turned and really took in the sight before me. The bodies of demons and devils went on, and on. The battlefield stretched out into gray oblivion, past anything I could see - where only the blizzard remained, and you could see nothing but your feet beneath you and not even the path before you. We only had Nathyrra's very clever mind and that ring to lead us now. "The Blood War still wages on, here," Valen concluded decisively.

It struck me that I'd seen this battlefield before, in dreams - perhaps several - but at least one recently, that Bishop of all people had led me through. Or perhaps it was merely indistinguishable from the outskirts of Beorunna's Well, where the battle had first begun to rage and then poured south. Although I couldn't imagine spending countless years as a battle-slave, knowing nothing but the violence of war - and I certainly couldn't imagine coming back from that into anything resembling a life - Valen had somehow accomplished these feats and remained intact, and beautiful for it. I admired him intensely, in that moment. "Yeah, reminds me of home too," I told him with a wry grin. "You ready?" I asked, quite seriously, but I offered my hand to him, and rotated my scythe in my other hand so I could hold it by its strap.

He let go of his flail for a moment and contemplatively eyed my hand before grasping it firmly and marching onward with me. His blue gaze was troubled, but there wasn't any red in it threatening to take over. The others had paused to wait for us, but continued on when they saw us catching up. I knew I could march for a while longer at least - I felt re-energized after the battle, and my feet weren't suffering terribly despite the wintry landscape. Plus, I always felt quite safe next to Valen - there was no feeling safer than having his hand in mine.

As we marched on, Valen's hand stiffened as the sounds of conflict began to come clear through the snow. I had thought that by what Valen had said, that we had happened upon an old defunct battlefield. It hadn't really occurred to me that Valen was smelling fresh death and blood, and that's what clued him in. I smelled the same thing he did, but didn't identify it over the wind - it didn't hit me until we were face-to-face with baatezu and other devils battling hezrou and tanar'ri, each side viciously tearing and scorching chunks and holes into the other. It began as a shadowy battle until the winds batted enough snow away for us to more clearly see what was going on. I was in awe, and horror.

We caught up to the others, and Valen slipped his hand out of mine as he approached Solaufein. "Does the path lead on through here?" He asked Solaufein first, then turned to Nathyrra as if remembering she was ostensibly in charge of this part of the adventure.

"Xa," Nathyrra confirmed.

"Kyon ulu kma'at dosst zhaunil," said Solaufein.

It never really hit me that Valen was multi-lingual until I heard him pick up on things like this. Drow language was probably just another one he'd shoved under his belt, being a planar his whole life. I wouldn't be surprised to hear he spoke every language in the Hells. "We kill everything standing in our way," Valen declared, clenching his fists. I was reminded instantly of Mata's pep-talk, when she'd told me Cania would swallow me alive. "Nothing will give us any mercy, so we give no mercy to them. There is no winner in the Blood Wars, only endless death. If we have to fight through, I suggest you let me be point."

Solaufein and Nathyrra looked at each other in silent communion, and then turned to Valen as one and nodded. "Very well," Solaufein agreed. "You and Nathyrra, lead us."

We were somewhat on the periphery of this part of the Blood Wars. I knew very little of the ongoing conflict between the layers of the Hells and planes, but I had been born to be a part of it whether I liked that fact or not. The scene before us was a warlock's fever dream - an endless battlefield of bodies, bones, and entrails strewn out for anyone to grab and bind if they so chose. I didn't have the time or inclination, however, and the last thing I needed was more summons than I could handle. Barbara had been an awakening moment, both when I realized my power and regretted it.

Without Valen at my side, I felt a little lonelier, but I contented myself by watching everyone's back and keeping an eye on the conflict in the distance. Valen was leading us far around it, hopefully so that we could avoid being noticed entirely - although sneaking across a battlefield was no small feat, and I had no doubt that we'd be spotted soon unless hiding under a cloak of invisibility. The others seemed to not want to waste one of their spells on such an endeavor, when the wind and snow would surely give away our position anyway.

We managed to get around most of the major conflicts - there was a fight that a vrock was losing against an Eryines that we simplified by ending the lives of them both, Solaufein and Valen took them down in two blows each. We tiptoed over their bodies and on in the general direction of Nathyrra's arrows and found ourselves staring across a warm crevasse with a river of lava down the center of it. Why this area was so rife with volcanic activity was anyone's guess, but I figured it had something to do with Mephistopheles' twisted imagination. He wanted you to either freeze to death, or burn to death by tripping into the lava below. Made a certain sense from a madman's perspective.

Nathyrra solved the issue by finding purchase on the other side with her demonic hand, scaling across, and leaving a tied rope in her wake for the rest of us to follow. We made our way with minimal incident, although there was a frightening second where Deekin almost fell down into the lava and had to be retrieved with the demonic mimic's hand when he lost his grip on the rope. Luckily Nathyrra was watching out for us all - I nearly had a heart attack and wrapped Deekin in a bone-crushing hug when he was back with us and nearly refused to let go. It would have been an ignoble end for our master bard.

"Ladyhorns be crying?" Deekin queried.

"I'm not crying," I sniffled, obviously lying. "Just icicles frozen to my cheeks! Shush. I just don't know how or if we could've even resurrected you if you fell. You would've been all molten bits! Don't scare me like that, Deekin!"

"Deekin try not to," the little bard offered magnanimously, and patted my bum which was a strange sensation, but that was about as high as he could hug on me. I let him go immediately and wiped at my nose and eyes. Deekin ransacked through his pockets for a brief moment, and victoriously emerged with a slightly greasy handkerchief. I took it gratefully and scrubbed at the icicles that my tears had become on my face, nearly freezing my cheeks. Crying in a blizzard was a bad idea. I handed it back, gratefully. It had been an emotionally rough journey, I figured I was due for a good cry again, but it wasn't the time or place.

As Nathyrra led the way, we found ourselves in a strange clearing around which the air was a bit more still, which made utterly no sense at all. On edge immediately because of this, I expected something heavy to get lobbed at our heads for daring to walk so openly, or a more sophisticated return to form by being teleported out from under our feet to our enemy's base. I stopped walking and put the butt of my scythe in the snow and whirled around it, looking around for the nearest enemy to jump out at us. If only I had true sight! My hackles were suddenly raised and like a hissing cat, I was immediately wary for the next fight . . . Any second now . . .

"What are you d—" Valen was about to ask me, but got interrupted as something answered his question in the form of a red light that streamed down from the sky and hit the ground before our feet.

I was immediately put at ease again for probably all the wrong reasons. "Haaaaaaa—I knew it!" I cried out victoriously as a group of perhaps seventy, no, eighty devils appeared all around us, with a giant pit fiend wielding a sword leading them. They made a red array all around us, snarling and howling in the bitter breeze.

"You knew what?" Valen was confused, and less alarmed perhaps than he should have been. Then again, he could probably win against all of them, just himself in a battle rage. Who knew what damage he'd sustain, but he'd get the job done.

"I felt like things were getting a little too easy for us for a second," I struggled to explain. "It's just instinct. Something was bound to happen. Just happens to be our luck that it's a small army of devils."

Valen smiled and talked back to me, just as casual as I was about the fact that there were about a hundred enemies surrounding us. "Your instinct is honed to detect what, when things just aren't difficult enough for you?"

"It's a fine instinct," I argued back. "It lets me know whenever bullshit is abound. And look at all the bullshit that's surrounding us now!"

As more of them streamed from the sky as crimson beams hit the earth, Valen shrugged. "I've been in worse," he confessed.

I looked at him, both believing in him and being disturbed by that fact. Just what sort of life had he led? It was nearly as ridiculous as mine. "Think you can take the left flank? I think I've got the right," I offered.

"Do you have another bebilith up your sleeve?" Valen raised one red eyebrow.

"Nah, I was just going to drive them all mad and make them fight each other," I told him with a wild grin. "They'd be too busy killing each other to really notice us killing them."

The last time I'd used my wider-range madness spell, I'd aimed it at a cafeteria of students and had been subsequently suspended for a week for all the shenanigans. Thankfully there were plenty of dispels lined up in contingencies and wands by the staff, or people would've been seriously hurt. I'd say I didn't know what I was doing, but I did. I had been missing Brega and wanted to see what would happen. I was unrepentant after my suspension, but at least I didn't do it again when I could've. Against a swarm of devils, I was sure I could do some serious collateral damage.

"I can kill whatever isn't affected by your spell," Beth offered suddenly, turning to me with a small smile. "If we're keeping score, I'll even let you count them as yours."

I grinned. "A game is it? Who else wants to play?"

"Deekin just wants to survive this latest crazy," the bard threw in nervously. "Can Deekin hides behind Ladybeth and spell-cast from there?"

"You are more than welcome to," Beth offered generously. "I will defend you with my life! Er, as it is," she added, perhaps remembering that she was in fact dead. I couldn't help but laugh at this.

While we'd been chatting, the pit fiend from the back of the army started to bark out orders. My ears picked up on an objection - apparently some of the ranks had heard of us and didn't want to fight us. It was a first, for me, as I'd never developed a reputation enough to be heard of by my enemies. Everyone else seemed nonplussed, except Deekin who looked nervous, but I was fine with it. It was strangely flattering. "I think they're scared of us," I realized. "Let me try to talk to them, maybe we can clear this up."

Solaufein, who had been silently watching our exchange with amusement, gestured before him for me and stepped back. I walked in front of us and cleared my throat. I didn't have an amplification spell to make my voice carry, so I hoped that they would hear me when I shouted at the top of my not-inconsiderably-sized-lungs: "I AM THE HEIR OF CANIA! STAND DOWN AND YOU WILL BE SPARED!" It was an uncomfortable admission, but it was technically true. The old man had left me in charge when he fucked off - he told me so himself. It was his elaborate, sadistic punishment and I was going to take advantage of it if I could.

The pit fiend hustled through the ranks until he got within ear-shot, and shouted back to me, complete with a rude gesture: "YOU'RE THE HEIR OF BALLS! CHARGE! KILL THEM ALL!"

I looked back to my friends and shrugged. "Worth a shot!" I turned back quickly to the army and made a certain twisting gesture with my fingers and flung the energy that had pooled there deep into the ranks of the enemy.

I still wasn't entirely sure the 'why' or even the 'how' of my powers working. I knew that at some point, I'd entered into a pact in my forgotten youth, and that Mephistopheles was perhaps responsible. If he held my pact, however, then he could control my abilities - he could nullify them if he so chose. The fact that I still had abilities but no access to hellfire indicated he did have some kind of control over my craft, but he didn't have control over all of it. Some of my powers came from something else, even if just the hellfire came from him. One day I'd worry about it, but for now I'd take advantage of it.

I had pulled the spell into my hand the moment I'd thought of it as the devils had started appearing, and had been waiting for the right dramatic timing. Action exploded all around us as some of the devil warriors charged, with skull-faces and bat-wings, and others hesitated and some even fled. I aimed at the right flank, keeping my word to Valen, and saw him charge left with Solaufein as Nathyrra stepped back and started to spell-cast from behind them.

My spell took a few moments to find its target, which was the area of effect in my eye-sight somewhere in the back ranks, near the fiend in charge. He wasn't affected by the spell, but seemed to recognize it immediately and started cursing loudly as it took effect in a cascade all around him from its epicenter.

Some of the enemies stopped in their tracks to scratch their heads or rub their eyes. A few fell down and took naps. Some fell down giggling, some crying. Others started screaming and clawing at the ground, or even their own faces and bodies. Some started attacking each other or anything around them with their weapons in blind panic. Not a single warrior caught in the area of effect was totally unaffected, and the resulting varied madness that settled over everyone scattered the ranks and broke them.

It gave us a tremendous advantage. I heard Enserric cackling with glee from behind me as I cut through the enemies in great swaths with Rizolvir's scythe. I was in my element, the same element I'd found back in the war - in the city streets of the plague-ridden Neverwinter - in the many battles for Lith My'athar - and I felt like myself again, as bloody and unpleasant as it was. Battle honed your focus, cleared everything else away and left room only for survival. I glanced at the others around me and found them moving in synchronicity with each other - we had achieved something very rare together: being formidable as fuck. Anyone would be mad to cross us on even our bad days.

The small army didn't seem to have any ranged fighters, or if they were they were affected by the spell and incapacitated. I saw out of the corner of my eye Valen cutting through the center and trying to get at the fiend, his eyes nearly already red, but the massive fiend just teleported away some distance to keep himself safe and watch from afar. Beth fired a few arrows into his flank, disrupting this plan of his and he plane-shifted out of sight after taking a few hits.

I kept next to Aribeth and Deekin and fought off anything that got too close to them. She stuck to her bow, even using it as a melee weapon to club devils around a few times, and nearly strangled one with her bowstring until I got it. She seemed to now prefer it to her sword, despite her sword being as fine a weapon as could be made in any of the planes. Nathyrra had switched to melee and was assisting Solaufein. Together, the two drow had choreographed a deadly, fluid dance that mowed down everything around them in sight. For a while they were engulfed by one of their own spells of darkness, and when the globe of darkness fell, everything inside of it - except for them - was dead, with fatal assassin's blows. Their enemies started to back away from them, attempting to retreat.

As the ranks broke and scattered before us, more than half of the small army had already died. We were a deadly bunch, and they were clearly unprepared for us. We gathered together slowly, and as we did, the pit fiend appeared again. I absently wondered what rank he was in my dread father's employ, and how many others like him we'd have to kill before I got to sleep again. If I ever slept again.

He snarled, and wasted no time in attacking us. He went for Beth, Deekin and I first, but Valen cut him off with a nearly flying blow that caught him right in the jaw with his flail, and dislocated it so far that it nearly ripped his mouth open. A green light engulfed the fiend suddenly, righting his jaw, and he charged us again, trying to swat Valen aside like an annoying gnat.

This was a mistake. It left him completely open to the supremely speedy Solaufein, who managed to scale the bastard's back by grasping onto his wings and climbing. He thrust Enserric into the fiend's neck before the fiend could even react, and then pulled it out, and before a healing spell could take effect he kept stabbing again and again while Enserric howled disturbingly in tune with the wind. As he fell to the ground, the fiend's head was almost completely severed - Solaufein pulled Enserric out one final time and gave a mighty swing that sent his enemy's head flying off. Solaufein rolled off of the pit fiend as he completely collapsed into the snow, and righted himself on steady legs as he casually brushed his still-clean but now-wet from the snow hair out of his eyes. He never ceased to amaze me.

As the fiend slowly bled out and the rest of our enemies plane-shifted out if they could, or simply ran away when they couldn't, Solaufein stared down at his sword in consternation. "You are entirely too vocal in battle," he criticized the sword. "It is distracting, and disturbing."

"I can sing if I want to," Enserric objected, and then started literally singing.

"Please muffle him, I've heard enough of that to last a lifetime," I plead. Solaufein immediately sheathed him.

"Solaufein," Valen said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His tail lashed behind him in frustration. "Why do you keep leaping on top of things to kill them?"

"Am I too reckless for you, abbil?" Solaufein wondered with a sly smile. "You do the same just as often."

"That's me, I'm allowed to be reckless. I'm more disposable than you are," Valen objected with a cute frown.

"I would never dispose of you," Solaufein also objected, perhaps misunderstanding.

"I think he means you nearly gave him a heart attack," I realized as I stared at Solaufein and Valen, enjoying the new dynamic that had blossomed between them. Valen was concerned for Solaufein. It was utterly adorable to watch him fret over the drow in a way that I just couldn't.

"Just, try not to endanger your life more than once an hour," Valen asked tiredly. "And Binne, you're just as reckless, just in a different way. But, at least you don't leap on top of things to stab them to death."

"I am over three hundred years of age," Solaufein said, with a small petulance to his tone.

"And I'm not half as bad as him," I defended, and scoffed. "I de-wing one dracolich, and I'm as reckless as he is?" Valen gave me and Solaufein a look that suggested his heart was having difficulty keeping up with us. I felt for him, for a moment, but I think we were good for him. He was more open now that he had decided to trust us, and those shy smiles were worth everything.

"Deekin just be glads we all survived!" The bard cut in happily. He didn't look too pleased with all the gore we were casually standing and talking around in, but he was cheerful in spite of it. "We be great heroes - baddies not even stands a chance!"

"They stood the chance of a candle in this snowstorm," I assessed. I looked around, feeling a bit off, which is when I realized Nathyrra was standing some distance away and staring at an undisturbed mound in the snow a distance away, for some reason. "Nathyrra?" I called out.

She turned her head, but did not approach, so we went to her. She kept staring, looking consternated. "Vel'bol inbal dos muth?" Solaufein asked of her.

"The arrows end here," she mused, tapping her covered chin with a glove. Her voice came out faintly muffled as she had wrapped her furred cloak about her to keep the cold out. "There must be something buried beneath, perhaps an entrance or portal stone," she surmised. "I will transform into an elemental and try to move the snow," she announced.

I thought of any summons I had left in my repertoire to help, the ancient earth elemental perhaps, but none of them were particularly helpful diggers. Better for smashing, it was so large. "Good luck," I decided instead, and took a step back to watch. "Let me know if you want Aivee to help," I added, referring to my pocket elder earth elemental, and Nathyrra nodded. I could only summon Aivee once a day per our agreement, so I wasn't exactly eager to waste it on a pile of snow when we might have a pile of enemies for them to fight in our future.

As we moved to give her space, Nathyrra took out the small silver amulet that Sensei Dharvana had given her. She held up it, twisted it a few times in the dim light, and then shifted. Her body disappeared as giant rocks became her limbs, and a boulder her head. She stood nearly three or four times as tall as any of us now. She dug her rocky hands into the snow and started shoveling it off of the pile, never stopping, never tiring, for several minutes while we all tried not to freeze to death and wiggled our hands and toes. Finally, in her shoveling, she hit something solid that cracked through the air as she struck it. Her size shifted, and she was once more Nathyrra kneeling in the snow, standing on shaking legs.

We approached her and I took in what was really before us as we did. It was a small, glacial prison. Daddy dearest loved imprisoning people in ice it seems, and Aribeth was not alone in her punishment. I glanced around, noting that there were many piles in this clearing. Were they all prisons of sorts? There was what appeared to be an impact crater of a fireball spell, and beneath it nothing but smooth ice. The ice was as clear as it was solid, and below it I could see the shape of a winged form below. That must have been our Knower. She would need a good de-frosting.

"How do we free her? If we try to smash the prison, we might smash her," I noted. "If only one of us was a dragon," I lamented.

"Fire from above might just cook her," Valen reasoned. "We can chip away at it, to avoid destroying her."

"Is this how you freed me?" Beth wondered.

"You don't remember? No, we just melted you with a velox fire," I told her, and rubbed my now-cold hands together. Solaufein saw my gesture and grasped my hands in his, and frowned. "I'm alright," I reassured him. "Just, now that the battle's over I'm realizing how exposed we are and how cold I really am. This weather is the worst in creation, I swear."

"We should start a fire," Solaufein announced. "We will plan then how to free our Knower from her prison."

We found a good spot some distance away that the cliffs kept the wind off of, and broke out three berries for a nice fire. We shot ideas back and forth for a while before we realized we were all equally stumped. Nathyrra had the suggestion of buying several scrolls of burning hands, but there's no guarantee that spells would last long enough. We thought about picking away at the ice with an ice pick and taking turns, rotating out whoever wasn't in front of the fire every so often, but that would take too long. There was no easy way to go about it.

Nathyrra seemed determined that the prison was enchanted and that there was a way to break it with spell-casting. She was silent in her contemplations while I just racked my brain, trying to think of any spell I had that would help. If the Knower was cursed to be in there, I could de-curse her. I could potentially summon a small army from all the bodies of the devils we had slain, and use them to dig the Knower out, but that could take days if I had to micromanage them and undead weren't known to be very dextrous, especially when armed with ice picks. I could scry her to see what it looked like inside the prison, but what good would that do when we could already see her down there?

Valen was in favor of smashing up the prison himself, and was confident he could do it. Deekin thought it'd be better if we got an ice giant to do it for us, but unfortunately we seemed to have killed all of them (or Barbara did, and we quietly took credit). Solaufein was quiet mostly, considering every idea put forth magnanimously, and Nathyrra and Beth were almost entirely silent. The prevailing idea was to smash it up using two earth elementals and hope we didn't destroy her in the process.

After a few moments of eating jerky, an idea struck me with such force that I stood up rapidly and cried "AHA!" and startled everyone. I felt a little sheepish at all the attention before I sat back down and cleared my throat to clarify. "I mean, ahem. I might have a way to contact the Knower in her prison. I don't know how to free her just yet, but maybe she knows how we can free her, right?"

Nathyrra perked up. "How?" She queried.

I went on eagerly, "Well I've only used it once experimentally," I left out the part where I'd done under duress in prison, "but like that amulet that the Sensei gave you, I can enter someone's dream. I couldn't pick up on thoughts or read someone's mind like she could, but I can at least see what's going on in their mind when they're unconscious and get a message across. That's if she believes I'm not just a part of her dream, though."

Solaufein nodded, not without consideration. "What do you need?"

"Just some space, some company perhaps, and maybe my torch to keep me warm," I added, looking to Deekin and holding out my hand. He had stored my torch in his bag of holding and reached his full arm inside to rummage around for it, emerging after a few seconds. I snapped a velox berry from our collection into the torch and crushed it, and the hellfire erupted and warmed me.

Solaufein stood to accompany me, and I'm not sure why it surprised me. I could sense on some level that he badly wanted things to just be the way they used to be between us, and so did I. I just didn't know how to get my brain back to that point anymore. Too much had happened for me to simply ignore and pretend that I was doing swell and dandy, and I didn't know how to address any of it. I just wanted to run away from it entirely. I knew I couldn't, not forever, but I mulled over what to say in my mind as Solaufein and I had a rare moment alone, walking to the Knower of Names' prison.

I thought about my conversation with Valen back in the Inn, how he'd admitted he trusted me, and I couldn't help but wonder why. What had I done to earn that trust? That love? I was a lazy lush of a warlock with more summons under her belt than she knew what to do with. And here I was, trying to communicate by dream-trance with an ancient baatorian who knew the True Names of every living being. My father was an arch-devil, I was a kinslayer, and here was Solaufein just casually reaching for my hand and squeezing it gently to get my attention - it felt like my hand belonged there, in his, and I struggled against the tears that wanted to betray me by falling. I wasn't sure why I wanted to cry. Something just twisted in my chest, like Enserric had been lodged there again, and I forced myself to look at him without shame.

"Is this dangerous?" He turned to me and asked once we got to the prison. His eyes sought out mine. There was nothing but him in them. Why was I so frightened by this nearness? I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

I adjusted the torch in my other hand and focused on it and not him as I said to him, "No. Probably not. But who knows, with a creature such as the Knower of Names?" I mused. "How old is she? Where is she from? What could a being such as her dream of? I doubt it's going to be as easy for me as it was Nathyrra navigating Jo's dreams. It might take me a while, but I've noticed that a lot can happen in a dream while very little goes on outside. I don't expect time moves the same way in the mind that it does outside of it; much like Undermountain, and the outside world, time sort of . . . Dilates, inside it."

"It gets runny," Solaufein corrected with a smile. I looked at him and couldn't help but smile back, at the memory he'd summoned of when we met. Strange that such a memory should be pleasant now, even though I'd been naked and enslaved to a pack of ogres. He gave my hand a squeeze, let go, and then said, "I will stay with you until you wake."

It reassured me more than anything. I realized that my discomfort wasn't born out of distrust for Solaufein, but myself. I didn't believe in myself in the same way I had before my most recent and unfortunate death - nor was I sure I ever had, in hindsight. I'd just improvised and bungled my way through just about my entire life, and it had somehow landed me here. Somehow I'd turned out into a whole person, even if I was an unmitigated arse at times. "Make sure I don't freeze to death?" I joked, more than actually asked.

He took it seriously. "Xa. I will keep you safe," he promised.

I believed him. He might not always be safe around me, not while Mephistopheles held my True Name, but I knew I'd be safe around him. I found myself a comfortable spot to sit above the Knower's prison - I didn't want to be right on top of her head, and it was so odd that I could look down and see the top of her blond head but not much else down there frozen in the ice. I saw wing-tips of white and something silver, and her hair, but little else. I supposed once I entered her dream I'd find out much more. "Here I go," I tried to cheer myself up, and sat more or less in front of her on the edge of her ice prison, gave Solaufein the torch, and took a deep breath.

The first time I'd done this, it had been by accident. I didn't want anyone to think I was some amateur warlock, so I kept that detail to myself and pretended like I knew exactly what I was doing. It wasn't like wizardry, it was more gut instinct than anything. I had a desire, a will, and power, and that's all I needed to cast.

I remembered how I'd done it, though. The first step was listening. I'd had someone's breath to listen to before, and used that to lull my mind into theirs quite subtly. It hadn't been by purpose, but once I'd figured out where I was, I'd used it to contact the baatezu I'd later called Hugo. He'd been napping in a cell next to mine, trapped behind a circle. I'd made a pact, in a dream, and summoned him out of his prison, and he'd ended up liberating me in return. So I closed my eyes, feeling the snowflakes catch in my eyelashes, the wind kissing my cheeks, but I focused not on the feeling but the sound - the howling of the winds of Cania, distant and near. There was a note in it, far and above that intrigued me. A clarion cry in the upper atmosphere that the winds alone knew the note of. I wondered how long the snow had fallen for, if Cania had always been more miserable than Auril's cunt, and if the Knower of Names remembered a time when it was different. Was it just my father's will that turned it into a winter wasteland, or had he inherited it? Only her kind knew now what secrets this place could hold.

I let my thoughts wander to and fro, down and down, until they came to rest upon the blond crown of the Knower of Names. I could feel the energy of her prison thrumming through my body, and deep down, down to the bone I could sense her power. Her age. Her sacred, forbidden knowledge, like a distant heartbeat. Even the gods had True Names, and only this woman knew them and could master them.

And here she was, stuck in a hole in the ground, right in front of me.

Just like that, flowing from one thought to the next, I was standing on warm paved stone amidst a frozen garden carved delicately out of icicles. Plants were everywhere, hanging, dripping, growing, thriving, but none of them alive - all of them carved perfectly from ice. It somewhat amazed me until I spotted my most hated biological father walking down a carefully tended path with the blond, silver-armored, positively celestial Knower of Names by his side.

"AUGH!" I cried out at the top of my lungs. I hadn't expected to run into something so awful within seconds of entering the dream, but then again, I'd caught Hugo in the middle of a sex-dream which had been a bloody nightmare that I'll never forget. My luck with this spell was abominable! I'd never cast it again, after this, I swore it. "Please tell me this isn't going to lead to a sex dream?" I cried out toward the sky. "I know I'm a pervert but I do not want to see that."

"Who dares trespass in my garden?!" Mephistopheles reared his head and I instinctively shrank back.

"Oh wait, you're a dream," I remembered, and shot an eldritch bolt at him which dissipated him completely. It was incredibly, almost sexually, satisfying. "Yes, I'm real, I'm above your prison in the ice, try not to faint," I said to the Knower of Names who had been standing next to my dread father.

I got my first good look at her, and it wasn't what I was expecting. She was hardly a great beauty in the sense that perhaps Beth was, but she was vibrant and radiant. She had a clear and pure angelic aura, but it didn't hurt me the way other celestial auras did. Her blond hair was a halo in the faint wind that blew through the frost garden, she wore a practical but delicately and intricately etched breastplate with strangely floral designs, and she regarded me with something between recognition and irritation with eyes that were as black as slate. There was no white to them, but I could tell that she could see me. Her pristine white wings fluttered restlessly behind her. I wondered what exactly she saw, when she looked at me.

When she said nothing for so long, and simply stared at me, I started babbling. "Er, right, so I'm trying to figure out how to break you out of your ice prison, oh the name's B—"

"Binne," she interrupted in a gentle, trembling voice that fell like rain on my ears. "We have met. But you were older, then. I see now. This is the first time you have met me, but not the first time I have met you."

I stared at her like she'd grown a unicorn above her brow. "Eh, what?"

She did not answer and merely looked around at the garden around her. She knelt down, and touched one of the sculptures. "Yoggaa is a master sculptor," she commented idly. "I like to remember it this way, when things were beginning. I should tell you that in all my time here, I have given up on the idea of freedom."

I stared at her again like she'd grown a third eye, in addition to a few other appendages. "Now that's rubbish," I scoffed. "You just need a good drink and a rebound, love. Trust me, there are better men than Mephistopheles to weep over. I could introduce you to some once we get out of here and back to Waterdeep."

She looked up at me sadly. "You have come to free me," she acknowledged. "But what if freedom is not what I desire?"

"Then you're an idiot," I declared.

"How convincing," she said drolly.

I couldn't help but laugh. This encounter hadn't been at all what I'd been anticipating, but then again, I tried to anticipate nothing. "Look, I don't know exactly what you're talking about, but if you're dreaming of him so long after he left you here, it can't have been an easy breakup. I'm his daughter, I would know something about how much of an arsehole he can be."

"I know who you are," she insisted.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, you're the almighty Knower. Just listen to me, alright? If you still want to be stuck down here by the time I'm through with you, power to you, we'll all fuck off back into the Wastes. Sound fair?" She looked away, but nodded. I took that as a 'eh I'll tolerate you,' so I went on, "I know my miserable arse of a father must have told you dozens of lines about how he would care for you and love you, and I can't imagine what your relationship to him must have been like - but I can tell you right now that he doesn't love you. Someone who loves you wants to be by your side, to support you. They don't shove you in an icy grave when you outlive your usefulness, or because they're scared of your power. And personally, I think you're far too attractive to be giving him even the time of day. No, what you need is a nice dose of freedom as well as a good romp in the hay with someone handsome and kind."

The Knower of Names, to my astonishment, burst out in raucous laughter that swiftly devolved into tears and had her on the ground, weeping helplessly. I knelt down to her level and hugged her because I didn't know what else to do, and she clung to me until she calmed down. I felt that this encounter had taken a strange turn. "I met you on the day I was imprisoned," she told me, which astonished me. I had no idea of its implications. "You asked me for a name most foul, and said that one day you would come to free me - but on that day, I would not wish to be free." She sighed, and pulled away, standing herself up and brushing the snow off her knees and hands. "We have come to the full circle, it seems," she assessed with finality.

"How can you have met me all the way back then? Did I—" and then I realized what that meant, and stared down at my hand where the rune had disappeared. "So at some point in the future, I travel back to when you were about to be imprisoned . . . And learn a name from you? I wish—I better not ask," I cut myself off. "Who knows what sort of reality-breaking damage this rune can do? I don't want to fuck it up. No, don't tell me more!" I told her as she opened her mouth to speak. "You've done enough damage!"

"I was going to say, I know how you can free me," she offered after a few seconds of silence.

"Oh," was all I could say to that. "Well, come on then!"

As she turned to walk out of the frost garden and I followed her, the world shifted all around us and became once more the wastes of Cania. The ice-blue sculptures melted away into the ground and the snow fell in droves from overhead. The winds were particularly still, however, in a way they'd never been in reality. We stood atop her icy prison, looking down at her own frozen form beneath, and something about it seemed different for a moment. I noticed something about it that I hadn't before - a small, silvery-white stone lodged on top of her head, with strange carvings onto its surface. The clouds parted overhead for once and I noticed that the sky was actually dark - that it was in a permanent state of night. Where the light came from was up for debate as far as I was concerned, but for the first time I noticed that the snow itself was particularly . . . Bright. Almost as if the light came from the snow itself and not the reflection of light off of it. In the distance, the clouds reflected a bluish light from the ground that lit them gray.

I didn't know what to think, so I noted out loud, "This place is a bloody circus. At least I'm not a naked clown anymore, there's my silver lining."

"Cania's climate is subject to the whims of its ruler, but has its own secrets deeper than any of its rulers could ever find," the Knower revealed to me. "We Knowers are the last of the ancients that once inhabited here. Only ruins remain, crushed beneath the blue and mighty glaciers."

"If I'm in charge, does that mean I can change it so it's less fucking windy?" I grumbled.

She smiled benignly at me. "Affecting the weather took Mephistopheles many centuries of mastery. The discovery and mastery of hellfire, another several centuries. Do you have that time?"

"Probably not," I decided. "Alright, so tell me how to free you."

"We must break the wardstone. I will exert my will upon it, as you do the same," she suggested, and pointed down to her form. I noted again the faint rock that had been obscured before to my sight. "Your energy should be enough to shatter it, because it is close to the energy of its creator."

"Mephistopheles put you in here, right?" I inferred, having guessed that already. If you were dating someone who knew all the True Names in creation, and you used her power to your benefit, eventually you would feel threatened by what your enemies could do with their power against you. It only made sick sense for him to keep her on ice, the way he had done with Aribeth. I couldn't help but wonder just how long she'd been down here, and how much time she had missed out on. Centuries? A thousand years?

She nodded. I had no idea why she was so hung up on him, if so. I tried not to read too much into her statement about our "energy" being the same, and figured it was a genetic thing I had no control over.

"So, we break the stone. Then what?" I asked.

"That should be enough," she confirmed.

"What happened to not believing in freedom?" I asked, morbidly curious as to her sudden change of heart.

She smiled mysteriously. "Sometimes, we must take a leap of faith," she said, "and trust that the universe will place us where we need to be. You said this to me. I know many things, but not the future. Until now, I did not believe you would return. I had no faith. I was wrong."

"Well, it sounds like my usual hogwash, so I'll believe you," I decided grumpily. "May Tymora be with us, but I'll blast that stone with everything I've got," I promised, and I awoke.

It wasn't as if I was actually asleep, so it was a more subtle shift of consciousness than the jarring experience of waking up from a deep sleep. I was in a trance, half-awake and half-dreaming, sort of like a fantasy or daydream just as you drift off. One second I was standing there talking to the Knower of Names inside her head, and the next I was sitting above her underneath the Canian skies with the wind whipping all around us. I was surprised to find that I felt less frozen than I did before, because Solaufein had started a fire next to me, and I turned to face it and him as I snapped out of my trance.

He was sitting across the fire from me, gazing into the reddish velox-flame. His helmet covered most of his face, save a curving open elven sliver that shaped around his jaw and cheeks, revealing his eyes, nose, and mouth, and the way the fire lit him up for a moment took my breath away. I always forgot how beautiful he really was, until I got a good gander at him. This time, looking at him didn't hurt or summon any uncomfortable memories, so I more easily smiled at him. "You return," he noted. "What have you learned?"

"There's a wardstone keeping her down there," I reported. "It's situated near the top of her head in the ice. She seemed to believe that I could break it with her help, if we both focused enough magical or eldritch energy upon it. It's worth a shot I say, and hopefully won't take as long as manually shoveling her out."

He nodded, and stood, stretching his limbs out. "I will get the others," he said. "It could be dangerous."

I considered a potential energy backlash, winced, and nodded. It would be good to have the other spell-slingers around, in that case. Between Solaufein, Nathyrra, and Deekin, I was sure they could magically protect me from any harm should the Knower not have known what she was talking about. That was dubious, given her name, but I wasn't about to take any chances with my newly-resurrected life. Especially after I'd nearly gotten charged by my own bebilith.

My ears picked up faintly on Solaufein explaining the situation to the others, and soon enough everyone was in position all behind me, waiting for my signal. It felt strange, to be in charge of such an important thing. I wasn't used to it at all. I felt like I could fuck up at any second, but couldn't afford to, so I swallowed that feeling as best as I could and positioned myself above the wardstone. I knelt down on top of the ice prison and brushed away the snow that had fallen while I was in my trance, and when I squinted, I could see the ancient silver stone beneath, situated near the crown of her head. It glinted in the faint light, or perhaps glowed.

When I closed my eyes, I could feel the thrum of her energy, like the high and howling note in the wind above Cania's atmosphere. She was nearly as old as this place was, and her power had synchronized with the world around her, forming it, shaping it. She was part of the prison, part of Cania as much as I was, a baatorian that predated the devils that squatted and squabbled over this land. She was older than hellfire itself. Thinking of it that way, I wondered how she hadn't been able to break out of her own prison cell . . . Maybe as she said, it was because she had given up on freedom. She had succumbed to despair.

I knew that despair wasn't the end, though, based off of what she had told me. I had to have at least traveled back in time once to meet her, to let her know that I'd be freeing her this fateful day (as much as that boggled my mind, it was the only explanation that made sense). That meant that I had to be the one to free her - me, and only me. It was my energy that would have to be the catalyst. I was the heir, the ruler of Cania, and had mastery over this realm even if I didn't know how it worked. That meant it was within my power to free prisoners and pardon them from their supposed crimes against my father, and that meant that I wielded the power that could free her.

"I'm, uh, not sure how to do this," I admitted out loud to anyone who cared to listen, because that was the truth and the more I thought about it the less I understood my task.

"Deekin be thinkings you just shoots magic at the thingie," Deekin piped up helpfully. "If that not work, Ladyhorns just tries different spell!"

I supposed it was as good enough a guide as anything. Nathyrra even agreed. "Any offensive spell aimed at the wardstone should work, if the Knower is to be believed," she added.

It felt too reckless for such an important task. This was everything we needed, everything we'd fought through Cania for, and I was just supposed to shoot it with very volatile magic? I let the energy coiled in my body pool into my gut until my hands started tingling and shaking, and emitting faint green light that crackled. I placed my hands on top of the prison, poised right over the wardstone, and concentrated my hardest on sending my energy into it. I felt it traveling and trickling down and out of my body like a bottomless well feeding it, and the energy started to pool inside the stone instead. Cania's winds whipped around us and I could still hear that faraway note, reaching a crescendo in my ears as the winds howled even louder.

I could see the eldritch energy now, green and vibrant, and thought - no, this couldn't come from Mephistopheles. My pact was formed with something else - a higher power than him, something he had no control over. There was no way that he expected me to master the realm of Cania in time to do anything about his conquest, and certainly no way in any of the Hells that he'd give me the power to free the Knower of Names. This had to be either a suspiciously convenient mistake, or genuine providence. I didn't know the Abyssal or Infernal name of my benefactor, but I supposed it didn't matter in the moment as long as it helped me complete my task. I couldn't help but wonder, as the energy crackled in my hands and became a stream of lightning into the wardstone, if and when my due would come.

A mighty, deep crack resounded through the ice below me, and I stood up instinctively, stepping back as I was afraid it would suddenly cave beneath me. The energy kept pouring from me though, drawn out of my body, and I stumbled backward into Solaufein who caught me. I tried to make it stop, but the stone kept taking and I couldn't communicate what was happening because the breath was robbed from my lungs as the trickle became a stream, and then a raging river. I was suddenly a conduit for the eldritch energy from my pact, nothing more than sieve for it to pour through as it eroded away at the wardstone. All I could see was green fire all around me - I hoped it didn't hurt Solaufein.

There was another, deep-sounding crackle beneath the ice, and then it suddenly stopped and I could breathe and see normally again. Solaufein hadn't let me go, unhurt or unaffected by the energy I'd been a conduit for. The earth rumbled beneath us as I caught up on my breath and three great black semi-circular stones appeared out of the ice, breaking it apart just in the place I'd been standing before. In the center of the triangle of stones was the Knower of Names, shaking the icicles from her wings with mighty beats and staring up at the sky with those eyes of solid black. She wore the same armor I'd seen in her dreams, and looked like she had just stepped out of them. I let Solaufein help me stand up on shaking legs, but I only had eyes for her as she slowly descended her gaze upon me and we really met for the first time (well, for me).

She smiled, and stood on strong legs despite their disuse. The wind that had been whipping about us slowed to a breeze as Cania calmed for the first time. She extended her hand out before her and caught a few snowflakes, crushing them between her fingers and letting the water drip off as she watched in fascination.

I didn't know what to say to her, so I stumbled out of Solaufein's grip, stepped forward, and said, "Hello!"

She looked at me, and a sound emerged from her mouth that I'd heard once from Mephistopheles and only him. I hadn't remembered what he said, but her voice rang clearly in my head even as she spoke the words. It was the sound of a scythe sheafing through grain, the shift of gentle wind through fields, the babbling of brooks in the Neverwinter wood - it was the sound of home. I knew what I'd heard in that terrible moment when Mephistopheles had taken control over me. I hadn't understood what it was. It was my True Name, and when she spoke it to me gently it was beautiful. "Scythia the Unbound, Light of Cania, I name you," she spoke, and the meaning sang through my entire being as my heart sped up and I was warmed down to my toes. Divine energy coursed all around me, not even hurting me for the first time. "I free you from your fate. Know this name, and none shall be able to hold your actions against your will ever again." Her wings fluttered softly in the silence that followed her statement, sending snowflakes flying behind her in tufts.

I knew I'd never forget that name as long as I lived. I felt it suited me, and grinned wildly. Then, I remembered why we'd come. "Oh, we came to ask for a different True Name, actually," I told her. "Well, maybe one or two names," I corrected, remembering Jo's request that I felt the need to honor, since the sleepy bastard had led us here after all.

She nodded, and approached our group. She was at least as tall as I was, including my horns, which was a feat, and basically towered over everyone in celestial glory. I was consistently surprised that her aura didn't harm or irritate me none, when even Beth's did, to a degree. She turned to Solaufein, and addressed him first. "What is it you seek?"

Solaufein considered this for a moment, and looked around at us. We all awaited his answer, unsure of what he would say precisely. "I will have the name of Mephistopheles," he finally decided.

She was startled. And displeased. The rest of us were fairly surprised too, since we had expected him to ask for the Reaper's name. Perhaps Solaufein had bigger ambitions. "This, I cannot give you," she struggled to explain, wringing her fingers together nervously. "Mephistopheles commanded me once, with my own name, to never give another his to use against him. It is not within my power to disobey this. Is there any other name you wish?" She asked instead, obviously uncomfortable.

"You may give me yours, then," Solaufein all but demanded.

The Knower was silent for a while, and stared at him as if staring alone could make him take back his request. ". . . You would ask me this, knowing what I have endured, having followed the path laid out before you . . . Do you even know what you ask of me?" She wondered, a little bitterness in her tone. I wondered at Solaufein's game.

"You must know my name," Solaufein reasoned, "as you know Binne's. We are unequal, in this relationship. You offered me a name - and I will take yours. I will have no other."

"Pyreshi the Knower is my True Name," she bit out the noise, and it ripped out of her mouth and lungs with enough force to stir the wind around her in a sonic wave. "And you can be very cruel, Salilhala the Blessed," she added, uttering what must have been Solaufein's name right after. It hummed a bit differently - sang, almost - like ringing of a pristinely sharp sword through crisp night air just before it hit its target. "With your name I bind you to never hurt Mephistopheles," she commanded.

"You little—" I was about to call her every name under the sun, but Nathyrra slipped behind me and put her hand over my mouth quite tellingly. I glared at her for a moment, but she stared back, wide-eyed and wondering just what I was going to do to stop her. I did nothing, because I knew that's exactly what I could do. Nothing at all. She had hit me with a silence spell. She wouldn't have done so without good reason, so I tolerated it and calmed down, wondering if she and Solaufein had planned this whole thing.

"That is fair. Pyreshi the Knower, I command that you give me the True Name of the Reaper in the nexus, and the True Name of Mephistopheles," Solaufein said quite simply. The name rolled off of his tongue somewhat unnaturally in his voice, piercing the air with the same tone if not force that the Knower had spat it out in. Stared defiantly, openly at the black-eyed Knower, in full cognizance of what he'd asked and its weight.

She stared at the ground, and tears pricked at her eyes. "This demands a price," she said through gritted teeth. "I cannot give you another Name without an offering."

"What is it you require, then?" Nathyrra wondered.

The Knower of Names looked to Nathyrra, and held out her hand. "The ring and amulet, if you please."

Nathyrra was startled by this request, but nonetheless slipped off the Sleeping Man's ring from her finger, and took out the Sensei's amulet from a pouch. She gave them to the Knower without hesitation. The Knower put them on, closed her eyes, and uttered: "Hecugoth the Abandoned waits for you in the nexus. Thra'axfyl the Ambitious . . . Awaits you in Waterdeep." The last name she practically hissed out, and it reminded me of the sound of steam escaping a volcanic vent - deep and crushing, dark and waiting for release. I hated it, and him, and tried my best to remember the sound of it, but it kept slipping from my mind. Maybe it was for Solaufein's ears alone, since he had been the one to ask.

Solaufein nodded. I hoped to hell he remembered those names, because the energy that was released every time they were uttered dumbfounded me and made the name slip right from my mind, like water in my hands. I would remember Solaufein's, though, and mine. Those stuck out in my memory unlike anything ever had - it was as if they had been seared onto my consciousness, and made for my ears.

I looked over to the others, who all looked like they were in various stages of confusion, and I realized that Mephistopheles had time to plan this out. He'd gotten my name in advance, probably taken it from the Knower the way Solaufein had taken his. If that had happened, then what was to stop him from getting Valen's Name? Nathyrra's? Deekin's? And there was still the matter of Jo's true love.

"What's the price for learning all our names?" I asked the Knower, who seemed happy enough to turn her attention back to me and not Solaufein, whom she was presently glaring at.

"The price is individual," the Knower struggled to explain, "and contingent upon each person's definition of value. You must give of yourself, to learn a True Name. Power requires sacrifice, and the cosmos demands equivalence."

Each of us had a True Name, that the Knower of Names spoke to us in exchange for offerings. I wasn't clear on the subject of offerings, but she tried to explain it to me as a cosmological equivalence of value - at least, that was how she saw it. Something of value in exchange for a True Name, something of uncountable importance. It felt like she was just outright robbing us. Nathyrra had to part with her enchanted scroll case, which I hadn't realized was an item of value to her. She played her cards close to her chest, and had simply never bothered to confide in any of us that the scroll case came from her father and had been fashioned specifically for her, the only gift that he'd ever given to her. She explained this quite casually as she emptied out her scrolls, handed them to Deekin, and placed the case in the Knower's care. The Knower strapped it to her body and uttered the words, "Góyańa Sky-Seeker," which hummed in the air like one of Nathyrra's deadly spells, before fizzling out.

Valen was the most hesitant, as the Knower's demanded offering for his name was a green ribbon that he had kept in his pocket for many, many years. My heart sank into my shoes for him as I realized whom it had belonged to, and his hand shook as he parted with it and held a conflicted expression. The Knower tied it into her own blond hair, which kept it from flying into her eyes, and she spoke, "Oeskathine Fiend-Slayer," when she addressed him, the sound emerging from her lips like the rush of a river down a mountain, like a cascading wave on a shore, crushing against the rocks and flowing away.

Aribeth claimed she had nothing of value to give, but still wished to know her True Name, and the Knower thought about this for a while before she extended her pale hands out, face-up, and demanded that Beth hand over her powerful bow. Beth was more than hesitant, but I shot out, "eh, we'll buy you another one," and she nodded, hesitantly. Gently, delicately, she placed her new favorite bow in the Knower's hands. The Knower slung it over her shoulder like she now owned it, which she did, and told Beth her name: "Rúnara Shadow-Walker." This name struck me with its quiet thunder, compared to the others that had such vivid perceptions attached to their speaking - Beth's was as the shadow of a distant storm on the horizon.

Deekin's idea of value was apparently more traditional and gold oriented, but we had an abundance of valuables so that wasn't so much an issue. It was a little silly when the Knower demanded he hand over his most valuable gem, a diamond he'd found in the puzzler's dungeon that he'd apparently intensely coveted like a dragon, and Deekin was more than a little sad when he had to hand it over. The Knower tucked the diamond away in a pocket, knelt to Deekin's level, and addressed him as, "Ixthyria Scale-Singer . . . You are among the bravest of souls. I wish you well in this universe." His name rang like a sweet harpsong in the air.

"What're you gonna do with that bow and all those things?" I asked her, trying not to stare at the mint ribbon in her hair.

The Knower of Names thought about this for a moment. "I do not know. I suppose I will make my way in this world, and escape it if I can."

"Oh!" I recalled suddenly that the Sleeping Man had been the one to send us on the mission, while I stared at the ring that was on the Knower's hand. "One more question for you, sort of the thing that actually brought us here - you don't happen to know the True Name of the Sleeping Man's love, do you? He's desperate to find her. Like, put-himself-into-a-coma, kind of desperate. We owe him."

The Knower of Names' attention became arrested on me. "Ashira Dream-Walker . . . It has been some time since I have thought of him," she uttered presumably the Sleeping Man's True Name without second thought, and then tapped her chin consideringly. "Yes, this will have a simple price, I think, if you wish to know it. But I can only give it to you." I looked around at the others, feeling confused, but nodded when all I received were shrugs and pointed stares in response. "Your amulet, if you please," she indicated, pointing to the solitary black stone at my neck.

It took me a few seconds to register that she was demanding Brega's necklace in exchange for this sacred knowledge. At first I wanted to baulk and scream no, no, that it was mine, that I would never give it up, that I hadn't fought all those ogres in the dungeon with Solaufein's help just to give it up to some nameless woman touting herself as a great 'Knower' . . . But had it ever belonged to me? Did I even deserve to wear it? I held Brega's memory in my heart, and didn't need this childhood reminder of him hanging about my neck every second of every day. It was morbid at times, how attached to it I was. In a way, it would be freeing to let it go . . . And I already had the memory of the wound in my chest to remind me of my wrongdoings against loved ones. I didn't need this stone as well. So I rubbed it with my fingers one final time, smoothing the onyx beneath my fingers and memorizing the feel of it, undid the clasp, and handed it over to the Knower of Names without a second thought. The Sleeping Man had waited centuries for his answer, and he had given up his quest for ours. We owed him this much, at least.

She placed it on her neck. It was short enough that it was almost a choker on her. It matched her eyes. The Knower closed her onyx eyes, inhaled the cold Canian air, and whispered to me, the True Name spilling off her tongue like a snake's hiss that sent shivers up my spine, "Her name is Ayuma Star-Shatter. She walks the world as a mortal, and is separated from him by time. When he meets her in Cania, she will be one of the lost, and will not know him."

I shuddered and did my best to memorize the name. I felt naked without my necklace, and could only compare it to how everyone else felt without their most prized possessions. I stepped back, into Valen's company, and his arm came to rest around my side and drew me closer to his, warming me. His Name thrummed through my mind like the beat of a war-drum. I would remember his True Name too until I died, I was sure of it. It suited him admirably. I didn't know what to make of the Knower's statement, but I committed it to memory for Jo's sake.

"Nathyrra," Solaufein spoke up suddenly, startling us all into paying attention. "A portal back to the city, qualla."

She nodded and began spell-casting. I turned to the Knower of Names, who was watching us all with interest and shifting the bow along her back. I wasn't entirely sure if the Names we'd paid for had actually been worth those items, or if she'd simply demanded them from us for her own strange reasons. What sort of cosmos would demand sentimental objects and wealth in exchange for True Names? It struck me as odd. Then again, I wasn't the Knower of Names, and couldn't judge. Even if her statement about the cosmos itself demanding a price was false, she had more than earned the paltry items she had asked for, and now had the means to navigate Cania and defend herself. All in all, the Knower made out like a bandit.

Nathyrra's portal opened up as a night-colored splice in the air, and she awaited our entrance, holding up one blue-glowing energized hand to keep it open. "Come with us," Solaufein addressed the Knower of Names, who looked startled by the offer.

"Prime is not my place," the Knower withdrew a little defensively.

Solaufein shook his head. "Not to Prime. To the nexus, the Reaper's realm. From there, you may go where you will."

What was he plotting? The Knower blinked her sable eyes and nodded, hesitatingly, and stepped through Nathyrra's portal before us. We filed in single-file, and Nathyrra closed up the ranks behind by entering last. I was glad to be rid of the biting wind of Cania's deepest wastes, and more than happy to put this entire adventure behind us as we took the fight presumably to Mephistopheles. I felt more than a shred of hope now, for our task - I felt the first terrifying tingles of certainty. We actually stood a chance at success, with the new power we'd acquired under our belt.

The portal led to the center of the city, near one of the obelisks. The temple of the Sleeping Man wasn't far, and I felt like we owed him the True Name of his love, so I asked for a moment after running toward the building as fast as I could through the snowdrift. The others trailed after me at a more sedate pace - I wasted no time, wanting to get back to Waterdeep as soon as possible, and tore into the temple, ran down the halls, and stopped only until I was in the central chamber that we'd left Jo in.

He was still there, sitting on the altar now, but definitely awake and not sleeping. He eyed me hungrily, but I was out of breath and had to double over for a little while to catch myself. "Woo! Sorry, ugh, ran all the way here. Hah! I got a Name!" I announced.

It then occurred to me that the Sensei was standing right behind me, and staring angrily at my head. I did my best to ignore her, but I could see her yellowy eyes boring into me from my periphery and it was distracting. I didn't want her to hear the Name, since she hadn't earned it really, not having done all the legwork we had to actually find the Knower of Names. I motioned Jo closer, and he got up off his altar and knelt down next to me, exposing his neck and ear for me to whisper into.

"Her name is Ayuma Star-Shatter," I repeated, and found the Name slithering off of my tongue and away from my canines just the way I'd heard it. I knew as I spoke it, I'd forget it, but at least it was out of my ear and in someone else's. It was uncomfortable, holding that many True Names in one's mind. They were powerful things, like great spells that required only the evocative phrase to be released into the world. It was a very strange sensation that I was completely unfamiliar with experiencing, and I felt a whole-body shudder overtake me after I'd uttered his true love's name.

Jo stood and his expression positively lit up. "You have honored your word," he stated, and smiled at me.

I took a step back, because his celestial aura was starting to give me even more tinglies and that was unpleasant. "Er, yeah, woman of my word here. Um, you may want to know what else the Knower of Names said to me," I added. When his expression turned curious, I added, "right, she said that you were separated by time? Her words. She was very specific about that, and that your true love apparently walks the world as a mortal, and won't recognize you when she inevitably winds up in Cania. Don't know what to do with that information, but that's yours. I'm out, and hopefully will never come back to this hellhole again. Yes, that's right Sensei, I'm finally leaving for good," I added, turning to Sensei Dharvana who continued to glare at me openly and with hatred. Then again, I'd helped sever her leg tendons when last we'd interacted, so that was only fair.

"You are going to battle Mephistopheles, yes?" Jo spoke up, surprising me.

He'd been sleeping so long - he must have caught up on current events while we were out in the wastes. "Aye, that's the plan, take the fight to daddy-dearest and knock him back to Hell," I said. I did not mention that Solaufein had acquired my dread father's True Name, because I still planned to kick Mephistopheles' arse into the next world, True Name or no.

"You will go to the world of mortals, and will have need of allies in this fight," Jo decided eagerly, "so I will fight with you, to repay my debt."

This surprised me, but I wasn't going to jinx it or second-guess him, so I just shrugged and said, "Alright, sounds good. We'll see you in Waterdeep. You can plane-shift, right? Or do you need a portal?"

"I will find you there," Jo promised mysteriously, and suddenly plane-shifted out of sight. The Sensei stared at the place he'd disappeared from in shock.

I made my way out of the temple as fast as I could because I just didn't have the energy for the Sensei's crisis of faith, and hurried back to the others who hadn't even caught up to the door yet. I didn't want to curse anything accidentally, so I stuck to Valen's side like glue and kept my mouth shut as we entered the Reaper's quiet, gray Limbo-realm through another portal of Nathyrra's. The winds stilled as the portal snapped shut behind us, and I clutched at my scythe with suddenly sweaty hands as my heart pounded. Here was the moment of truth. The Reaper stood before a pool of water in a tall basin, and probably hadn't budged an inch since I last saw him, and his hood was as shadowy as ever. At this point, I really didn't want to know what he looked like. I was content with the unknown.

Solaufein approached him, standing before us, with the Knower of Names right behind him, still with that bow slung over her shoulder. I could see Beth staring at it longingly in my periphery. Solaufein spoke, "Hecugoth the Abandoned, I free you now and forever from the will of Mephistopheles."

The Name rang out with a crack through the air, snapping a cord - something - an invisible tether perhaps? Either way the magical energy was released and the Reaper's posture suddenly slackened, as his shoulders perceptibly went down and he bowed his head. "Wayfarer," the Reaper spoke in his deep monotone, "I thank you for freeing me."

"Do not thank me yet," Solaufein said a little dismissively, "for I leave you in the care of another. Knower, this realm once belonged to Mephistopheles, as did its guardian. Now they are yours, after we leave. You will want to find your sister, the Knower of Places - we could not have found you without her help."

"The ring might lead you to her, or the Sleeping Man perhaps knows the way we took," Nathyrra proposed.

The Knower of Names looked startled, but pleased. "My sister . . . ? I suppose she is, in a way," she mused. "Strange. You would entrust me with this nexus?"

"Aside from Enserric, with whom I will not part even past death—" and was that a victorious sound from Solaufein's sheath? "—this nexus is all that I have of value to give you in exchange for the Names you have given us," Solaufein explained a little haltingly, as he tried to find the right words in Common. "The relic - does it still exist?" Solaufein wondered, looking to the Reaper. I hadn't realized he'd lost it. I thought it had been magically glued to him.

"The relic was a part of Mephistopheles. Part of his horn," the Reaper explained, "enchanted and keyed only to him. I will make a new one, for the new Wayfarer if she chooses it, out of an object of her choice."

Solaufein looked to the Knower of Names, who towered above us all and even the Reaper. She approached the cloaked figure and stared at him contemplatively. Then, she turned to Solaufein. "I accept this gift, in exchange. We are even, you and I," she decided. She looked to me then, with a strange expression as if to imply that she and I yet had unfinished business. I knew that one day I'd have to use the Word, but still was unclear on the 'when' 'how' and 'why' of it all. I decided I'd have to have a talk with Ol' Khelby once we got back to the Prime material plane and touched down in Waterdeep.

Speaking of, I addressed the Reaper and asked, "Mind opening a door to Waterdeep? We've got a war to win."

Deekin craned his head up and crowed in joy. "Woooooo! We gets to see griffons cavalries! Little Deekin is so excited!"

The Reaper waved a hand at one of his many blank and empty doors behind him, and it lit up like Nathyrra's portal. As we approached it, I feel a faint breeze and heard the distant sounds of crackling spell-fire and shouts of battle. There was no way of knowing what we were walking into, but Valen and Deekin were by my side, and Solaufein was ahead of me, and Nathyrra and Beth had my back. I could hear Beth's starsteel sword being slung out of its sheath in a shining hiss.

"One last matter," the Reaper spoke suddenly, and actually approached us - or rather, he approached Beth. "The lost are forbidden to return to to the Prime material plane," he explained.

Her face fell, as did her sword. "I understand," she said, somewhat bitterly, and looked back to us. Then, for the first time, I could actually see her face more clearly than ever, more vivid than any painting of her that had been taken down or burnt back in Neverwinter. The Reaper simply waved his hand over her and she became solid again. Her armor, once she had first donned Rizolvir's replacement, had looked as translucent as the rest of her, but no longer. It took her by surprise, I could tell, because she didn't notice her lack of translucence at first. Her resurrection was hardly noteworthy, it took all of a second, such was the Reaper's power. I stared at his cloaked figure while she simply stared, and then as she breathed, she reached a hand up to her chest in shock and stared down at her hands. "I—I can—you—" she was speechless.

The Reaper's generosity was subtle, as was his gratitude. He said nothing, merely stepped back, and let her breathe. I had been wondering about the conundrum of Aribeth's undeath, given that she had already been judged, but if the Reaper was capable of resurrection, perhaps I understood less about the cosmological wheel than I thought. I had assumed, like Nathyrra said, that it was simply beyond our power to restore Aribeth to life. Apparently it was not outside of the Reaper's power in his realm. Just what were the limits of his power, anyway? What exactly was he? I supposed it didn't matter, and I might never know.

More instinctively than deliberately, I stuck out my hand to Beth. She let her hand fall away from her chest and grasped my hand after a moment firmly, and I gave her hand a gentle squeeze and shook it as if I were meeting her for the first time. "Welcome back to life, Beth," I greeted with a grin.

She smiled tentatively back at me. She seemed almost frightened. "I, I did not anticipate this at all," she confessed. She turned to the Reaper and let go of my hand. "Thank you, guardian. I am forever in your debt. I do not know how to repay you."

"You have repaid me with my freedom," the Reaper said. "Your fate is in your hands."

Beth nodded and there was steel in those gray eyes of hers once more. She looked more confident than I'd ever seen her, and gripped the pommel of her sword tightly. "I will not waste it," she vowed.

With that matter finally out of the way, we stepped through the portal after bracing ourselves, and back into the clattering, clanging, night-time world of Prime, in the heart of the city of Waterdeep. The smell of blood, death, sewage, and a thousand other unnameable scents flowed past my nose as the smells of the City of Wonders' ongoing war greeted me. We had appeared outside of the Yawning Portal that had degraded into a lights-out, dilapidated shack, in the middle of the street, and no enemies or allies greeted us upon our arrival. The stars from the Sphere glinted overhead and the moon poked out of the clouds as Selûne's tears trailed off into the horizon. The bright silver lady herself was partially obscured by clouds, but full and still visible. Nathyrra gasped out loud and she and Valen stared up at the sky and the sights all around them with open fascination and bafflement. Off in the distance I could hear what sounded like distant howls and roars of battle - I could hear voices on the air carried over the tops of rows of houses and buildings that had been built into each other. I knew somewhere my parents were gazing up at the moon and stars, not knowing if I was alive or dead or staring up at the same ones - though hopefully my mother's divine insight might assuage their concerns.

Suddenly I could hear Deekin guffawing and calling out in amazement and awe, and there was a piercing bird-like cry from overhead as a leonine griffon dove toward the ground out of the clouds, nearly cresting the tops of our heads, and then sped off into the night on its massive wings. The moonlight glinted something silvery on its back, illuminating an armored figure with a massive glowing-runed spear that was lifted in position to be thrown at the first enemy it saw. Waterdeep was out in force, protecting its own.

I took a deep breath. I could taste salt and blood on the breeze. The stars of the Sphere glinted overhead, illuminating the night in their vast field. It felt like coming home. "Ah, the fresh smell of a city at war. Nothing quite like it. Now, let's go find Mephistopheles and kick his arse back to Hell where it belongs," I suggested. No one smiled when they looked at me although I was grinning like a madwoman, but they all nodded and clenched their hands around their weapons, drawing them. We were ready for action.

Solaufein started to take off toward the defunct Yawning Portal and we all moved to follow, except for Nathyrra, who was staring up at the moon in something between adoration and disbelief. I had to grab her by the hand to get her attention, and she silently acknowledged me and followed without a word. Maybe she was speechless. I wondered how it had been for Solaufein, first coming to the surface - Nathyrra had been plainly dumbstruck for a moment. We carried on together, as we had so far, ready for whatever came next.

---

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

Kyon ulu . . . Bequeath your wisdom unto us, Valen!
Vel'bol inbal . . . Bitch, what you staring at?