The mighiest man may be slain by one arrow.

-Pippin

I'm still the prettiest!

-Legolas, The V. Secret Diaries



39. Kill Drizzt

Jade's party did not rise with the dawn; they had run late into the night, fleeing their possessed party member, Xan. And when their paranoia was finally surpassed by fatigue, they camped hidden amongst shrubs and trees. Their dreams were not pleasant, but what the Greycloak had truly done at that late hour surpassed even the worst of their nightmares.

Jade crawled past a snoring Branwen out of their tent, blearily making out the bright crimson blob that she knew to be her party conjurer, Edwin. But as she rubbed and blinked her emerald eyes, she was treated for a shock – some dark-haired woman was crouched over a morning campfire, helping herself to their foodstuffs.

"Thief!" Jade snarled, springing up and closing the yards from her tent to the campfire. The woman started, but before she could move Jade had her arms around the neck from behind, grasping around a necklace to squeeze the throat. "You walked into the wrong campsite, bandit wench!"

"Gag-aieee!" the woman shrieked, "It's meeeeee! Eddieeee!"

Jade snarled; the woman had stolen Edwin's precious robes and necklace. "Edwin!" she shouted, hoping to wake her fellow. "Everyone, to arms, to arms! Bandit!"

Tents were already rustling, woken by the earlier noises. Branwen had slipped out after Jade, ready to answer the call with her magical weapon of choice called right into her hand. The bawdy snoring from the short pup-tents that Kagain and Montaron fit into were cut short; the halfling scuttled out with a dagger between his teeth, and the dwarf crawled out of his artificial cave with a hatchet in hand. They converged on the screaming woman, ready to pound, hack, and stab her into a nice bacon-breakfast until Xzar, clutching a headless teddy bear, popped out of the tent and screeched, "Waaiiaiaiaiiaiaiait!!! Lord Lollipop commands the good puppets listen!"

The rest turned, Jade lightening her death-grip just enough for the woman to take in a great heaving sigh.

"Where's Edwin?" Jade demanded, looking into Edwin's crimson-with-gold-trim tent (she reminded herself to force himself to by something less conspicuous once they finally made it back to a town).

"Right there…" Xzar pointed his decapitated plush toy at the woman. "Here's right there. Well….most of him is, anyway."

"She…" Jade looked in disgust at the woman. "Did you eat him?" she resumed shaking the woman. "DID YOU EAT OUR THAYVIAN??"

"No, no!!" Xzar bounded over, and waved Jade off.

The woman sat there, grasping her red neck. "You…" she caught her breath, and then hissed, "I am Edwin, you inbred sow! (Really, you'd think these yokels had never heard of Transmutation. It may take a rear coach seat to certain others schools I could name, but ignoring its existence is taking things a touch far. Now, Divination, that the world could do without.)"

Jade frowned. "Is this…some wizard thing?"

"To the point," the woman with the waterfall of curly midnight hair began, brushing down her robes, and adjusting the purplish amulet in her bosom, "A magical item thing. I have been polymorphed into a female of our species. (Though, technically, I suspect these westerners took a jaunt down a more primordial branch than my esteemed ancestors chose. Ah well, burden though it is, someone's got to be the master race.)" She stood, and curtsied, in what was most certainly Edwin's adventuring robes. "Allow myself to introduce…Edwina."

Xzar giggled. "It seems, mommy, our very good young friends – no no we hate the bully we hate him –" he slapped himself on each cheek, then blinked, smiled, and resumed, "Stumbled across a magical girdle in their own travels – mere hours after we first parted ways with them outside Candlekeep on that merry Mirtul day – two, actually, one was a protective belt Imoen has been wearing since, and it is rather fetching I must say, as well as invaluable if Monty ever feels the need to stab her…"

"Aye! She'll'a deserved it, sugar-hasted li'l pixie!"

Jade snarled at the halfling. "Touch her. Ever. And die."

"Ah, lighten up missy."

"…anyway," Xzar cocked his head, "The other, let's just call the Gender Bender Girdle, is 'cursed', which doesn't necessarily mean it's something bad, but…a bit more difficult to remove."

'What!?" Jade snapped, and scowled at 'Edwina'. "You idiot! We always use identification spells! What if it slowly turns you into something like Xan!"

"Garrick claimed he did identify it," Edwina insisted, studying her fingernails, which hadn't changed at all. "Apparently, either his village gossip or his street magic was a bit mistaken. (Divination. Unprofessional, unreliable stuff. I make my own point yet again.)"

Montaron snickered. "O' perhaps he be playin' a little trick on ye…I would na blame him!" He chuckled until Jade silenced him with a glare.

"'Twas less than wise, but what's done is done," Branwen spoke up. "I shall pray for a spell to remove the curse, but my judicious Lord has yet to grant me divine powers of that tier."

"Gods," Kagain spat. "No better'n governments."

"Thank you," Edwina glanced at the cleric, while tucking his amulet pendant into his cleavage, and admiring one or the other, "But I suppose there are worse bodies to be trapped within. Yours, for example."

"You…kna- you wench!" Branwen gasped.

"This won't interfere with your spellcasting?" Jade asked.

Edwina smiled. "The arcane tongues may be spoken at any pitch, and my somatics shall be as graceful as ever. And do not think that because I am female I am now frailer!"

Jade smirked. "You're scolding quite the wrong lady, lady. But it's nice to see you thinking like one." Branwen joined the smirk.

Jade appraised the voluptuous 'woman' skeptically. "How come your robes still fit? Heck, how'd you plunge the neckline so fast?"

"Oh mommy," Xzar giggled, "It's just like the Favorite Color Rule. 'Tis simple a Wizard Thing."

Edwina stroked a lock of her curly hair, and smacked her lips, vaguely annoyed neither Jade nor Branwen carried cosmetics. "Now the Wychalarn truly has nothing on me. It might be magic, but I'm still the prettiest!"

"Alright, alright," Kagain sighed, and turned to gather his things. "Equal opportunities for all, I'm sure. Let's get a move on before that demonic elf catches up."


--


An hour later, the snarls of a dozen gnolls were audible from over a hill. As the party crested it, their ranged weapons were readied, but Jade called a halt. There was a lake before them, but on the near shore was the gang of beasts, among which one very different figure dashed about, evading each swing of a halberd with ease. Branwen noted with a sneer that he resembled Viconia with his chiseled ebony face, flowing white hair, and the nimble movements of a thin body. His cape flashed out as he spun and ducked by the brutes, scimitars flying out from each hand and amputating or gutting with nearly every swipe. With the uncanny senses his people and their surface kin were infamous for, his head jerked at one point, even while one blade parried a halberd and the other impaled a different gnoll, to look up at the party on the hill.

"All I wish is to continue my journey!" he declared, both manner and movements like a stage-fighting bard as he ripped the scimitar out of the gnoll to plant it in the one he had parried with, then spun the parrying scimitar about over his head to rip out the throat of a third gnoll before it ran him through. "Friends await, while I must suffer this tiresome dance? Does the mere mention of Drizzt attract your ilk?" He spun away again, slicing out the leg of one gnoll while blocking overhead the halberd of another, then yanking out the severing scimitar to carve an icy arc through the air that sliced clean through the waist of the parried beast.

Jade gaped. "Is that…"

Xzar, Montaron, and Kagain were all groaning. "Yesssss, that's Drizzt. " In a dreary schoolboy's unison, they recited, "Drizzt Do'Urden, the Drow Ranger. Swashbuckling Dual-Wielder and Student of…"

Montaron rubbed his chin. "What was his name?"

Xzar shrugged. "Drizzt isn't that famous."

Jade was still staring. "Wow."

"Ah, for the love of money," Kagain shook his helmed head, "Just one more of these self-style mavericks, good enough to be a hero, just roguish enough to be still risqué. Buncha elf-arse hogwash if'n ya ask me. I'll take a paladin's preaching over that slicker-n'-though maverick routine any day."

Jade looked at the dwarf. "But it's…Drizzt Do'Urden! I used to read about him. He really is one of the most famous adventurers in the Realms, isn't he?"

"Yeess…" Kagain, Montaron, and Xzar droned.

Edina huffed. "Even I haven't been altogether spared rumor of his exploits. Though he's not exactly a 'hero' to us."

Jade smiled. "Well, he is to me." She nodded, and her party moved forward.

This apparent living legend was by now wiping the blood of the last felled gnoll from his blade. "Hail, friends," he flashed pearly teeth that gleamed against his dark skin. "So valiant an entrance, but fear not! Few are fast enough even to aid Drizzt, much less oppose him."

Jade shifted a little, but extended her hand. "Jade."

"Jade.." Drizzt sheathed the scimitar, and rather than shaking the hand, bent and kissed it. "Pray tell, Jade, what trouble brings such a lovely lass to such barbaric lands?"

"I'm a warrior too!" Jade protested. "Just like you! I-"

She cut off, looking hurt and angry as Drizzt's intent gaze abruptly left her, passed over Branwen quickly, Montaron, Xzar, and Kagain even more so, but then rested on Edwina, specifically her amulet pendant. "Why..." he flashed the identical grin he had Jade, "…but here a comely nbole maiden in her elegant gilded dress do we have!" He reached out, snatching up Edwina's hand before she could withdrew it, and planted the requisite kiss. "So far from deserved comforts you have come, the reasons must be dire indeed. But fear not, Drizzt Do'Urden never leaves a princess in peril, and your entourage shall now be graced by his presence…and his blades."

"Y-" Edwina cut off her snarl as Montaron gave him an intricate wink and hand signal from behind the ranger. She smiled, giggled vacuously, and raised her other hand to her beardless, round and feminine face to hide a blush that did not grace it. "Why, I'm honored, noble sir Do'Urden, I…I believe I shall faint. (Actually, I believe I shall vomit. This is one stepping stone to eventual but inevitable Zulkership that I shall expunge from my boundless memory.)"

Drizzt slid around to catch her. "Perhaps a rest is in order, my lady. Let us tend to your needs, and perhaps become better acquainted before the long journey need resume."

"Why thank you…" Edwina sighed. "My hero. (They owe me. Immensely. And in blood.)"

Jade was somewhere been jaded, stunned, and livid. A childhood hero…sure, he leveled a dozen gnolls in an eyeblink, but that done he had transformed into an egotistical charlatan who spoke in the third person and stared into the cleavage of polymorphed men, treating a conjuress of some skill like a hapless damsel in distress. Where the heck is the distress? She glanced to Montaron, and gave a subtle nod.

Edwina sighed. "Dear Drizzt, I feel cool water would do me well."

"But ask, milady, and an epic hero is at your beck and call," the ranger proclaimed with a practiced drama, made a show of hoisting her up in his arms, and marching to the lakeshore, with no more notice of the rest of the party than he'd made since first doting on Edwina.

The other five waited, silently and patiently, until the drow fellow had carried her out of view around a copse of trees near the water. Then, she nodded, and Montaron scurried off to the back of the copse, magical boots of stealth rendering his footfalls utterly soundless.

He waited a few moments, listening patiently while arming his crossbow, and then crept forward, right under branches and bushes. He was silent and quite unnoticeable, save for one moment when he nearly retched at the sight of Drizzt sashaying his hips and slowly, rhythmically sliding that shimmering shirt of azure mail over his head to reveal a chest that had the muscular but feminine build of many male elf warriors. Montaron shook his head, regretting that he had to keep his eyes open. He couldn't see Edwina over a rise in the ground, but he could hear her vacuous giggles as the drow male performing his striptease.

Resting his crossbow on the ground, Montaron grasped the handle, sliding a short finger over the trigger, and looked over the bolt. He could feel his Zal's bracers now doing their work, guiding and steadying his arms.

Wait'll Alora sees ol' Montry now , he thought, It be she doin' the striptease then. He squeezed the trigger. The bow twanged while the bolt slid off the shaft and whistled through the clean air.

While gyrating his hips rapidly, Drizzt arched backward at once, blood spraying out of his throat until his hands flew up to grasp it. He fell back over himself. "No!" he gurgled to the sky while Montaron dashed out of hiding, "You are naught but pipsqueak adventurers! I am Drizzt Do'Urden and I am an epic hero who cannot be so easily-"

"…killed?" Montaron finished, firing a bolt almost point-blank into Drizzt's forehead. The ranger fell from all-fours to complete collapse, mercifully silent and still. "A bolt can kill anyone, earth-pansy."

The party came around the copse, with varying but extreme emotions at the sight.

Jade was in awe. "I…killed…Drizzt Do'Urden…"

Xzar clapped his hands excitedly. "Drizzt-Deadened! Oh, wonderful work Monty! The Lollipop Lord is truly smiling now!"

Montaron grinned. "We be getting' a promotion, that be for sure."

Kagain's eyes glistened, reflecting the shiny armor. "Mithril…"

Branwen held back, folding her arms, and looking darkly at the carnage. "These actions are not of warrior born."

Jade looked pleadingly at her friend. "You know I hate this stuff too, but…you saw what he was."

"Merely a braggart and cad! That hardly makes it right!"

Jade slumped onto the ground by Branwen while the rest of the party descended like vultures on Drizzt's belongings. "I know, I just..." she put her hands in her face. "It's like this, Branwen. Like with the First whose platemail you wear, with the witch-hunter at the carnival where I found you, or the double-crosser at the dig site. And there...there was an incident back in Candlekeep, when I was younger. It wasn't my fault, okay?"

"When I get mad at people, I can kill them. I don't mind, it's even right, it all makes sense then…and after, really. There's usually a good reason, like they wanted to kill me or someone else, or arrest me for nothing, or they were bad people. Where my father might say I should talk to them and my brother might do that, but I just think it's safer and faster to kill them, and it's their fault. It usually comes to that anyway. You heard his stories and Immy's."

"As offensive as his manner was, this one would seem to be a new liberty to your standards."

"I know…" Jade convulsed once, and then pounded the ground with her fists. "Look, you don't understand! I worshipped him once! I know it sounds stupid, but I think a lot of girls like me did. He's really famous in places that are actually civilized! You wouldn't understand. And now he's… he's destroyed it all, it was all a lie. It's just like all the stuff they tried to cram down my throat in Candlekeep!" she flung her hands out, northward. "Do this, do that, don't do that, be a good girl, nice manners now, ENOUGH!"

She flew up on her feet, grabbing a rock and throwing it clear across the pond. Then she collapsed, and convulsed, hiding her face in her hands while Branwen rose behind her, and rested firm hands on her shoulders.

"I'm not my father," Jade sobbed, "And I'm not my brother. I'm me."

"Ooo-hoo-hoo…" Xzar was rubbing his fingers over Drizzt's body, and then drew out the Revenant's dagger. "We were getting low on spell components, weren't we? A wise choice, mmmm…" he began to cut.

Kagain needed no divination magic to know the weapons and armor of Drizzt's Do'Urden. "Well, well, well," he chuckled, "A might fine shot, Monty ol' pal, and his weapons and armor here'd put us up like kings for good, though I suspect our adventurin' days aren't over yet just for sure."

Montarony licked his lips, no less familiar with mind-numbing tales. "Yes, let's see. Icingdeath," he pointed for the benefit of the foreigner, Edwina, "A thrice-enchanted Frostbrand scimitar. And Twinkle, yeech , who names their weapon 'Twinkle'. I be thinkin' he had such a pet name fer somethin' else. Anyway, it be a fively-enchanted blade!"

Edwina's eyes widened.

"Yep!" Montaron grinned. "A 'Defender', likely to defend Drizzt's other precious Twinkle. Unfortunately," he pointed at the handle and made a hexing gesture, "It be one o' those…morally narrow type pieces."

"It's lousy," Kagain snorted. "Our craftsmen shouldn't be our clergymen."

Edwina sneered. "Disgusting. Downright Rashemani."

Jade approached them, and looked down for the suit of mithril chainmail, her emerald eyes glistening with the reflection of the sun onto the shiny metal onto her tears. "Wow…this…is amazing. And perfect ." She unfastened her existent suit of enchanted steel chainmail, and after a minute had uncaged her sweaty tunic and shorts. "I've never fancied heavier armors than chain, and this... this is Drizzt Do'Urden's mithril chain ..."

The rest of the party watched, murmuring in only heightening approval, as she donned the bluish mail, then reached for Icingdeath, and slashed through the air, leaving a frosty arc like of breath on a winter's day. She held the blade out before herself to admire it, and smiled. "I'd always dreamt of specially learning curved blades. But in classical Candlekeep, such learning was not to be found." She dashed and hacked through the air, strides light and strikes fluid in her shimmering light armor.

"KAAIIIII!" The tree-trunk before her became Drizzt Do'Urden, and one slash with the scimitar took off his head.

The party startled, but then only gasped in awe when it became clear the tree was falling safely away from them.