Well, crap.

Despite being brought back from the dead, it appears my brother is taking his second chance to slack off, because now I have to deal with this. Maybe this is partially my fault, I don't know. It probably is.

So, the Solar sends us to Saradush. We appear in the city - exactly, APPEAR- and catch some brutes about to cut down some peasants. Now, at this point, I've had a long day. I smell like dead spider that's been left out in the sun, I'm splattered with blood, and I gave up a chunk of my soul to revive my former arch-nemesis brother. Long, long day. The guards, they see me, and they know right then and there that I'm a bhaalspawn.

Gee, really? What gave me away, being soaked in blood up to my elbows after performing surgery on my sister, or the other people's blood from when they tried to kill me? Maybe the fact I teleported into a city under siege that has proven inescapable to some of the finest magical minds in Amn, hmmm?

So, I turn to them, and I say, "Guys, I'm tired. Just leave these nice people alone."

Sarevok is positively bristling beside me, like some huge, angry dog. He's not a dog, though. He's pretty bright, for a bloodthirsty maniac. If he wasn't, I wouldn't have spent six months trying to escape his assassins, machinations and general malice. These guards, however, were not particularly bright, which might explain why they were guarding a locked door instead of running a merchant's consortium. They sneer, make a few remarks. So, Sarevok takes the first step. He moves me aside - a shove, nothing more- and reaches out. He grabs the closest guard by the throat with one hand, and hauls him off his feet and about a yard into the air. The four other guards just sort of watch as their leader dangles there, choking, halberd useless. Sarevok's got this rictus grin on, and we hear a cracking sound. Blood starts running down my brother's hand as the guard goes limp.

The others, they draw their swords, and so do we. The battle was as mercifully brief as it was horrifyingly gory. Sarevok asserted himself as just as frighteningly violent as I remembered. So, covered in people bits, we tried to nonchalantly walk away from the sanguine gates of Gromnir's fortress. However, a near miss from a catapult drew some attention to us. Namely, that we somehow survived. We picked ourselves up, dusted off our armor, kept going.

Someone didn't. There was this kid, and his dad...

He couldn't have been more than eight, just trying to shake his dad awake and trying to ignore the fact that his head was leaking blood all over the place. It was clear that this guy was slab meat. It was just so pitiful...

Aww, crap. Crap. Crap.

The Rod of Ressurection cost me. It cost me huge. Ten thousand gold. I had one charge left, just one. An insurance policy. Crap. It could have saved one of my people…but I couldn't let this guy die like that. Or leave the kid crying on top of him as I walked away. I couldn't live with myself if I did that.

I placed it on the guy's chest, and felt the power of life itself sink into him. The wound healed, and with one huge, gasping breath, he came back to life.

He thanked me, of course, and we all smiled, told him Bhaalspawn weren't all bad...and kept on going. I mean, flaming boulders were falling from the sky, right? Then, this old woman named Melissan, she appeared from nowhere. She introduced herself, explained the plight of Saradush. Yaga-Shura had laid siege to it, no one could get out, and Gromnir Il-Khan was only making things worse. She asked me to give the city a hand...but to be honest, I was having some serious trouble giving a crap. I was tired and dirty and hungry. But I nodded, I smiled, and I asked where the nearest bar was none the less. She pointed us down the steps, towards a squat building. Above us, a ballista bolt sailed through the air, which all of us took as a sign from the gods that we should hurry up and get to safety.

So, we get into the bar. The ground is shaking, and the innkeep is looking mighty pissed. Gromnir's men (who so far have been seen doing nothing but bullying the weak) are picking on a waitress. So, I turn to Minsc.

"Minsc, we need to step in here."

"Yes, this cannot be allowed to continue!"

"Minsc, by 'we', I meant 'you'. I'm not in the mood for diplomacy, so if I go over there, I'm going to kill them."

"Ah...Boo understands."

In hindsight, committing a member of a Berserker Lodge to diplomacy was not my best option. It was probably all the same, actually. Minsc went over there with a smile on his face, extended his hand. The guards didn't look over, they kept groping the woman. Jaheira headed over, staff in hand. Before she could get there, one of them did something stupid. The leader of the three miscreants turned around, said something to Minsc. Something that Minsc didn't enjoy. In a flash, my best friend headbutted the biggest one, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and bounced his skull off the nearest table. Sarevok watched, grinning.

"See how alike we are, brother? Had I known this was how you went about stopping me, I would have simply joined up with you to begin with!"

Big brother grinned, cackled. The fight was, once again, mercifully short. I shook my head, walking over the innkeep as the floor shook from the impacts of the brawl. I sidled up, sat on a stool as the fat man stared past me.

"Hey, me and my friends need a room, hot meal, beer...how much?"

I felt something wet splatter onto my back, heard Sarevok laughing manically.

"Uhhh...fifty gold."

"Is the cleanup figured into that?"

A sound like someone jumping up and down on a chicken, a strangled cry.

"Yes...yessir."

"It's better not to watch, man. It'll just give you nightmares. Oh yeah, got baths?"

"H-hotsprings. Hotspings underground."

"How much?"

"Another ten."

"Good, I'll take a bath. I smell worse than a week-old pile of dead gobbos."

"Very good, sir."

"You don't have to call me that just because me and my friends are war machines. In here, we're just customers," I advised him, handing him a healthy-sized gem. I stretched a little, and he pointed me down a set up stairs. The floor shook, and patrons shook their heads. I beckoned over Sarevok, trying not to turn around and see what he had done.

"Yes, brother?"

"Sarevok, I need a favor."

"What?"

"I need you to ensure that no one- NO ONE- disturbs me. Understand?"

"Why?"

"Just do it, Sarevok. Really. Just. Do. It."

"Fine. No one will be permitted to see you while you bathe."

He shook his head as I descended into the hotsprings. The caves below the Tankard Tree were lit with small lanterns, and small pools of hot water bubbled. The baths were separated by stylish bamboo walls. It seemed like positive heaven. No one occupied any of the other baths...I guess the danger of crossing the streets didn't make it worth it. But it was worth it to me.

I sunk into the salty water, and grinned. It felt great. I cleaned myself automatically, mind elsewhere. The past two years seemed like a blur, but so much came back right away. Laughter around campfires, advice, fights, pranks. You can't fight beside someone so long, so hard, and not end up loving them in some way. They become brothers and sisters, cousins and nephews, aunts and uncles. Surrogate fathers and den mothers. I remembered drinking bouts, spats, hunting for rabbits with Khalid. It was strange...Sarevok, the eternal enemy, was integrating himself into our little family already. Suddenly, I snapped out of my reverie as I hear a towel fall.