37. O Captain, My Captain

The thoughts of Onyx and Imoen were bittersweet for resting on their wayward sister and angry pal. Though her ends remained their own, they wondered at her means. The company she now kept was evil and mean, and Jaheira had lectured them of the supposed implications of their affiliations. Onyx, for his part, had noted that they themselves harbored a Sharran, and his guardian's response had made no secret of her regard of the drow in question, who had, of course, overheard, and made her opinions of the half-elven druid equally plain.

It was only Garrick and Minsc who were talkative or in a light mood, then, as the day waned to its end and they came upon a foul sight – the strewn wreckage of a caravan, and the mangled, fly-swarmed remains of its occupants. The party's faces went grim, save Viconia's, which was merely curious.

Two living figures were about – an armored man further off, beyond the wreckage, and a blonde woman before it, bearing on them now.

"Please!" she cried in every sense, "I beg of you to go no further! Brage is there, strewn about with the carnage he has wrought! I have tried to reason with him but it is as if he is possessed by another's soul. It was all I could do to flee the swing of his tremendous blade. Please, unless you wish to witness madness in a once-good man, leave him be and pray the spirit leaves him in good time."

Onyx frowned. "Who is this Brage you speak of?"

"Before this curse befell him, he was Captain of the Guard in Nashkel. I am his cousin, Laryssa. For all the bonds of love and blood, save him from his present agony if there be a way to do so."

The party's humor chilled; they had heard this news in the town's tavern, on the night they met Minsc.

"He is hardly our concern," Viconia opined.

Onyx looked at her through thin, unamused eyes. "There was a reward, you know."

"Then by all means, paladin, do the noble thing."

"Have you yet to notice, Sharran, how oft it brings profit?"

"Your sister's dwarf noted that such rewards come oft from taxes. 'Twoud seem people are more generous with others' purses, than their own."

Onyx faltered, then looked back to Laryssa, and past her; making out Brage in the low light, who stormed about in his armor, chuckling madly and swinging his sword through the air.

" 's a lot like Bassilus…" Imoen cringed.

"We know how that ended," Jaheira sighed.

Onyx's eyes bored harder, divining. After a moment, he announced, "The evil lies in the sword, not the man."

"A cursed blade," Viconia smiled, "How quaint. A drow warrior would never fall for such a remedial ruse."

Jaheira glared. "Have you the power to remove it, dark cleric, or is racial preening a compensation for weak faith?"

Viconia snarled at her.

"That'd be a no," Jaheira smirked.

Onyx winced, and looked at Laryssa. "I will do what I can."

The woman smiled with a new calm. "We all do."

Leaving Varscona in its scabbard and his shield upon his back, he marched forward alone, with raised, empty hands, scrunching his nose against the rancor of death. Brage continued to prance about in some murderous fantasy. Onyx stopped at a comfortably distance until he was noticed.

The madman grinned. "I pray you left a trail of crumbs to lead us all back again. The others did not, so they have decided to stay. Shall we try to find the way home together?"

"Yes, my friend, noble Captain Brage," Onyx answered, nearly gagging on the rot-stench, "Let us go home."

The man recoiled suspiciously, and pointed a single index finger skyward. "A riddle! I pose you a riddle, the answer to which I once knew, but I now cannot perceive. Remind me, and we shall all return unto the day. Fail, and stay with me in the dark, forgetting whence we came…"

"…IT has neither mouth, nor teeth. Yet, it eats its food steadily. It has neither village, nor home, nor hands, nor feet; yet it wanders everywhere. It has neither country nor means, nor office, nor pen; yet it is ready for fight – always. By day and by night there is wailing about it. It has no breath, yet to all it appears."

In spite of the dire nature of the situation, Onyx actually rolled his eyes. Riddles weren't so uncommon in Candlekeep, and Xzar had been a great fan of playing the 'riddle-posing madman' in Paladin-Princess-Evil-Wizard.

"Ahem!" called the reedy blonde boy from the top of the library steps, waving his staff and skull menacingly. "Cower before me, simpleton villagers! I, Xzar the Black, the Wizard of Death," he held his skull up extra-high, "Have kidnapped your beautiful princess…"

Onyx thought for a moment more, and smiled. "Death."

The mad captain shrieked, and fell to the ground, the blade dragging on the dirt. "The end of night!" he cried, shielding his eyes from the paladin. "Where the light shines unto mine eyes and I can see clearly once again! What hath I wrought? 'Tis horrible, HORRIBLE!!!"

Onyx stepped forward, reaching out an empty gauntlet, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the captain's hand might peel from the accursed blade, and take his. "Come, my brother," he whispered. "Nashkel. It is safe, it is secure, and it is home." In his mind's eye, he saw not the hamlet, but the sealed walls of Candlekeep.

"Oh, yes!" Brage screamed. "I will welcome the block that must await me at Nashkel! How could I live with what I've done! Please, thou must guide me to the town that I might pay for my crimes! I fear I can keep my senses for only so long, and I must not be allowed to do this again! Too many good people have lost their lives to me! Please…"

"We shall see you back safe," Onyx declared, "Killing you will not help those that have died. We shall take you to the temple of Helm there, in hopes you may be healed."

Brage still refused the hand, and doubled over the hilt of his clutched weapon, weeping. "I fear I can do nothing for those I've wronged whether I live or die, and I still know now what led me to this. It's like a foul presence in my mind! I can only image that I have finally succumbed to battle fatigue. Take my weapon!" he shouted, "That I might not harm another!"

He undoubled, strength rising again, but his eyes clearer, and he pushed the blade outward, freeing his hands from the handle in one push. It thunked on the soil, and Onyx did his best to clamp his boot over the blade with a calm step.

"Use it if thy wish," Brage nodded, noticing, misinterpreting, but not averse to the move, "Though I'd rather it be destroyed. Innocent blood on everything! I'd only just acquired the sword. Such a waste this has been. Take me to Nashkel, I can bear this no longer…"


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"…no!" Captain Brage shielded his eyes again as the open gauntlet of Helm loomed large, above the double doors of Nashkel's house for the Watcher. "I cannot show my face after what I've done!" Jaheira and Khalid held the doors open wide, Onyx and Minsc gripped the humility-crazed captain firmly and, in truth, immobile as they dragged him up the steps. "Just give me to the guard that I might take my punishment as I should! Do not disgrace me further in front of Helm!"

"Calm yourself, Brage!" commanded a voice that echoed throughout the marble hall, and Brage went pale, as if the voice of Helm himself had uttered this edict with a flash of lightning. It was merely the town cleric, Nalin, a regal sight in his own right, standing tall in his vestments at the altar. "Helm sees all that he wishes, and knows much of what you do not. IT was your hands indeed that did many a foul deed, but it was not your will alone. Intent is vital, and yours was influenced without your knowledge. Justice will be done, but with atonement, not punishment."

"But my crimes!" Brage bawled as the ranger and paladin set him down to kneel before the altar. "My family! I don't want to go on!"

Nalin's shake of the head dismissed this plea. "If you are returned to the garrison, yours will be the only willful killing that has occurred about this matter. It would be a waste of your life which, fractured though it is, can still contribute much. Helm will see you through. As for our intrepid friends here," the priest's gaze lifted to the eight adventurers, "I shall exceed the reward offered by Oublek. After all, it was the same task of bringing Brage to justice. The Temple is in your debt for the return of its lost son."

Imoen grinned ear-to-ear, and Garrick applauded. Onyx tipped his helmed head. Were this a house of Lathander, he would have knelt. Jaheira and Khalid nodded politely, and made an odd but friendly gesture that Nalin seemed to make nothing of.

"Boo says a good deed is its own reward, but any gold will shine the Boots of Justice, and evil backside shall be visible in the reflection as it grows nearer and nearer. Stand vigilant, heroes and Watchers, villains in the mirror are closer than they appears!"

Dynaheir, nonchalant to her bodyguard's enthusiasm, performed an exotic, regal curtsy in her indigo robes, hinting at a dusky calf and thigh through the split. "Voluptuous sow," Viconia scoffed. Before the witch could return a dismissive frown, the drow turned and purred to the village shaman. "So…exactly how much reward are we talking?"


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Once the moon loomed straight overhead of the High Hedge, the thing that was the union of the lost power Kozah, and its chosen vessel Xan, was upon the place too. It bowled over a troupe of skeletons ambling under the midnight sky by ripping the skull from one and smashing it through the next. A pack of flinds, creatures beastly and even less organized than their cousins, the gnolls, heard the noise and made their own territorial howls. This goaded the thing, which jumped into their midst, carving through crude armor and thick hide with the Moonblade that either could not recognize how far from elvendom its possessed possessor had strayed, or knew but was powerless to resist The triumphant beast indulged its unending hunger upon their blood, muscle, and marrow, and then turned to what it truly craved, the magical power radiating from within the octagonal fortress.

From wooded shadows at a great distance, the night-eyes of second elf watched all this in silent reverie, one of the few individuals who could have found levity in his thoughts being turned from their melancholy waking dreams to the ghastly sight played out in the present.

Xan ripped the great Hedge doors from their wrought-iron hinges, and flung them over his shoulders. He marched through with his Moonblade coming in hand again. Flesh golems barreled down the hallways flanking the anteroom, and through the inner arch in front, the runecast dais of Thalantyr crackled with heightened energy while the man himself was already very much aware, and had raised a half-dozen abjurations to protect himself from sword and spell.

While the flesh golems reached the anteroom and pounded their ham-fists down upon the alien elf, Thalantyr launched a quintet of magic missiles. They flashed useless against the enchanter's magical shield while he rolled away from the falling fists, then snapped up, carving through an arm, then cutting back and severing skinless muscle and tendon until the creature's halves fell aside. The other smashed its fist from both sides, and Thalantyr flung arrows of flame through the archway. Xan leapt into the air over the fists, an uppercut of the magical sword opening what would pass for the creature's chest and then swiping around horizontally to remove what passed for its head. The magical arrows hit the elf in flaming bursts, but burned much less than they should, and their target took no heed as he fell to the floor again, dragging his sword through the flesh golem once more. Once his feet touched the ground, the construct was only so much meat once more.

"Begone, dark lord of a dead age!" Thalantyr bellowed in defiance, his lair's magics echoing his voice like a god's, as his hands calmly worked the somatic components of his next spell, "The sands of time swallow you once more, and forever!"

"THE BRACERS…..NETHERIL…." Kozah bellowed as it stormed through the archway, punching out stone. "MY BRACERS… THIEF….YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT UNDER SANDS, THALANTYR, IF THERE YOU WANT I…HO HO HO HO HO…"

It then pulled from its indigo robes the head of archaeologist Charleston Nib. Gripping it by the gray hair, it flung it over the dais and the crystal. Thalantyr swallowed as he recognized the face of the man that was the grain of truth behind 'Neverwinter Jones', and an old colleague and friend.

The wizard now cast upon the creature's mind rather than body, trying to wrest control from what now held sway with a bombardment of psionic rays. The reawakening avatar would have none of this, and leapt up onto the edge of the dais, then crouched, and sprung clear atop the giant crystal.

"YOUR MIND TRICKS FOOL ONLY THE WEAK-WILLED," it laughed, now capturing the chamber's deific acoustics for itself. "HO HO HO HO HO..."

Thalantyr's forehead beaded with sweat, but his arms and voice weaved spell without error while Kozah plunged Xan's moonblade down into a top face of the crystal, which emitted a high, whining scream , and its glow dimmed. The crystal went dark as the blade was drawn out again, itself now glowing no longer electric blue but now a pure but hollow white.

Thalantyr launched his lightning bolt at the flying creature. His aim was true, but the creature swung its mutated moonblade into the bolt and batted it straight back for its caster. The bolt passed into one of the Hedge wizard's globes, doing naught to his body as it made its way out the other side, and then the elf fell, landing on the near edge of the and slashing the white-light blade through the spheres, cylinders, and discs of protection enshrouding Thalantyr. They flickered and vanished, and he turned to flee, but the thing leapt upon his back, driving the Moonblade between his shoulderblades and out through his chest. It jerked the magical blade, and pulled with its other arm. Thalantyr's head popped from his shoulders, the spine slithering out with it while the mouth froze in its ceased last scream.

A freckled, robed young man appeared in the far anteroom, right before this spectacle.

"M-master…?" Melicamp asked sleepily, having sensed something amiss even through the silencing ward of his modest chambers. He ceased rubbing his eyes and looked out of them instead. He squawked once, froze up, and went pale.

Xan leapt upon the apprentice, and began to feed.

"TASTES LIKE CHICKEN…." It bellowed from a blood-spattered maw.