Yeah yeah, I know magic doesn't exactly work this way in FR. Please forgive me.
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Drizzt saw Brionne falling in his peripheral vision. He was quick enough to get under him in time to slow, if not stop, his crashing to the earth. The horse, a veteran of combat, stopped walking and turned around to regard them. Nala slipped from the steed, clinging to his mane to lower herself to the ground before running to Brionne's side.
The slender form in his arms twisted in agony, and Drizzt watched as the collar pulsed its dark energy through his body.
"I have you," he said, knowing his soothing tone was more important that the meaning of the words. "I have you, you are safe."
Brionne's head tilted back in his thrashings. He had a heartbeat to gasp air, and then writhed again. Drizzt held him, helpless to do anything else. He looked down, and saw Brionne's teeth were dark with blood, that he must have bit his lip or tongue as he fell. The young man gasped again, and the inhaled breath sounded wet and wrong, but he was in too much pain to even cough.
Nala was clinging to Brionne's hand, and he to hers. His knuckles were white, yet she didn't make a sound of complaint. Drizzt rolled him over, trying to let the blood run out of his mouth instead of down his throat. He supported the young man's shoulders with one arm, and held his head with the other.
It seemed to last forever, but he knew the fit had left Brionne when his chest started to heave with deep breaths and choking coughs. Drizzt stroked his hair, letting nature work to clear Brionne's lungs of the thick fluid. Finally the young man rolled over, sitting up and turning his head to spit. Drizzt tore a strip off of the end of his undershirt and folded it up, passing it to Brionne to hold against his cut mouth.
"Brionne...." Drizzt began, searching for words. "How can this thing, this collar, be stopped?" Silver eyes regarded him, uncomprehending. "The collar," he began again, touching it with light fingers. "Broken how?" Half of the question was in Brionne's language, half in the common that Drizzt knew from the land he called home.
Brionne shook his head, and forced his tired body to its feet. Dark fingers closed around his wrist, firm. "Brionne, I will make the collar broken if you can speak the way," he tried again. To see this and not be able to help was maddening.
Brionne shook his head. "It won't be broken. It won't be cut." He tried to pull away in frustration, but Drizzt wouldn't let him. He fell back to his knees in the damp leaves beside Drizzt. Nala watched, white teeth fastened on her lower lip as if trying to decide if she should step in and help her friend.
Drizzt was catching a few of Brionne's words from the context. "The collar hurts me," Brionne said, twisting his face into a re-enactment of his recent torment. "Every day," He pointed to the sky, to the course the sun took. "Until I go back to my Master and be a slave." He tapped his own chest, and pointed back down the path the way they had ridden. Blood ran down his chin, and his eyes were fierce.
"Why?" Drizzt demanded, trying with desperation to understand. "How?"
Brionne looked down to where his pale wrist was held in the dark hand. Without a word, he raised his silver eyes to Drizzt's violet ones, no expression at all on his face. Drizzt became aware that he was still holding Brionne's wrist in his tight grip. Self-conscious, he released the young man's arm, appalled to see color rush back to the white marks his fingers had left on the fair skin.
"Why?" he asked again, his voice softer, gentler. "How?"
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Alustriel studied the portal she had found in the caves. Built in an archway that led to nowhere, it was old, perhaps the oldest she had ever seen. Tentative, she sent out a tendril of her magic, of her self, to the structure. Yes, it had been active in the past ten-days. Somehow its magic had interacted with the wizard's, to perhaps disastrous effect.
/Where?/ she heard it whisper back to her. The voice was an ancient rasp, thin and ragged.
"Repeat the last journey." She instructed it.
Words of a spell flowed from her fine lips, her hands moving with sure skill as she called up a spell of scrying, trying to see where the portal would lead.
A vision of a seashore opened up in the archway of the portal. Gulls flew through the air, their screams silent. She could see the ocean spread out to one side, cliffs to the other. In front of her, far away, sprawled the wall of an ancient city.
"I'm not seeing th' durned elf." Complained the dwarf behind her, and she wished for just a moment that this side of the portal were as silent as the other. There was a sound of a hand smacking the dwarf's armored shoulder, and things fell quiet again.
Stretching her concentration, she took the magical locket out of the tiny pocket in her sleeve. From the cool metal she felt a tiny spark. He lived. With arcane words, she stretched the scrying spell, changing it, forcing it to /fit/ the locket. The seascape began to shimmer and fade, and she waited to see what it would reveal.
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/ Does it matter?/ Brionne wanted to protest. "How?" Drizzt asked him though, and "Why?" And there was such deep emotion in his violet eyes, such desperation to understand and help. There would be no putting this moment off, no avoiding it at this time.
"There is…" Brionne began, searching for a word that he could describe in gestures, a word that could be understood, "A leash." He made a gesture from his collar to his hand. He moved his hand in a jerking motion, and followed with his neck, as if the two were connected. He looked to Drizzt, and saw that so far he was being understood.
Controlling his impatience at the amount of time it took to explain, he told Drizzt how distance from the "leash" caused the pain. He explained how a stone could be a leash. It was frustrating, and it seemed to take forever. The moment he dreaded arrived. "When Nala and Drizzt are free, safe in the Free Cities, Brionne will go back." He looked up at Drizzt, his silvery eyes pleading for understanding.
For just a heartbeat, Drizzt's face betrayed his surprise, the sting of rejection he felt, confusion. And then his face steeled, growing firm and determined. "No." He said, voice calm.
"What?" Brionne asked, startled at this reaction.
"No." Drizzt repeated. "Nala will be safe. Drizzt and Brionne will go back. We will find the 'leash' we will take it and we will go again to the free cities." The Fey gestured with his hands, making his meanings clear. His voice fell to an impassioned whisper. "Brionne will be free."
The words cut. Hope of this type, loyalty of this type, was something he never asked for, something unknown and frightening. He felt vulnerable in a way he couldn't remember ever feeling.
"Drizzt…" he whispered. His eyes were burning. "If they catch you they'll make you a slave too." Drizzt's black fingers cupped his cheek. His thumb brushed at the skin under Brionne's eye.
"The will not catch us." Drizzt told him. Brionne believed it.