„The Comet"
„Xan of Evereska? I'm sorry, I'm looking for Xan of Evereska!" a high voice of an elf in green robes of a battle mage brought little discord into their camp as they prepared to head back to Athkatla. The newcomer brought smell of wood and mud on their glade, trying to maneuver among half-packed tents and leftovers from today's breakfast.
"I'm here." The enchanter was finally found, coming out of one of the tents. "Who… Ricar?"
"One and the same!" A small smile appeared on tired and sweated elf's face. The mage looked as if he had a long way in the forest behind him and it didn't seem to be a relaxing trip.
"I should have expected to see you here. We are close to Suldanessellar, after all." Xan greeted his friend with his usual dour expression.
"How come you are here?" The elf asked, not even commenting the enthusiasm he was welcomed with. "I heard that a Moonblade wielder from Evereska came to our camp, but not much more. Were you sent by the council?"
"I am sure that there's no need to recount this story again. Daria here has been questioned for long enough already. Suffice to say we have a mission here."
"Daria? That Daria?" Ricar asked incredulous. "Are you traveling with a Bhaalspawn? Xan, what has become of you?" The temperature suddenly dropped in the camp, though Daria didn't even raise her head from over her scrolls she tried to arrange in neat order.
"I suggest you choose your words carefully, or not at all. I will not tolerate you slandering her name again." Xan himself was surprised how much Ricar's words angered him. From the moment they learned about Daria's heritage, all the elves became wary, as if they let a monster into their camp. All the suspiciousness, the interrogation, the guards accompanying their every step inside the encampment - it wasn't about the drow in their party anymore, or about the fact that they came through one of the caves leading to the Underdark. All of it was based on the fact of who her father was. It was Daria's first appearance in any settlement of the People and the only kinship she was allowed to experience was this pitiable façade of trust, caused only by of Suldanessellar's desperate need of help. And he knew from the very start it would be like that. It would always be like that.
"Back in Academy, you never used that tone." Forced smile disappeared from Ricar's face. "You changed a great deal, Xan."
"Yes, we have all changed. In any case, how come you are aware of Daria's heritage?" The commander has told him, of course. He knew better than to honor a word given to a Bhaalspawn.
"I traveled to Athkatla briefly and heard the rumors. But, considering your companion's heritage… may I ask?" Ricar turned to Daria and she raised her head with a composed face betraying no emotion. "Daria, are you the infamous… er, the Bhaalspawn who was rumored to have spent some time in Irenicus' capture a while ago?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I… commander Elhan didn't allow me to reveal anything." Daria's face stayed as frozen, no reaction on Ricar's words visible, but the wood elf felt the temperature dropping even further, now even more glares centering on him.
"We sent messengers to human lands after the attack" he tried to say at least what he was allowed to. "Queen Zaranda of Tethyr is our most probable ally, and we count on her help, despite the events that transpired around a century ago, when king Erillam of Tethyr perished on elven lands. However… Well…" The elf paused to think. "Irenicus" he accented the word hatefully. "…whilst he was still… tolerated, had stolen most important documents from the Queen's archives. We have been searching for them all the while, but our search was fruitless. I was among many scouts to search for the… for Irenicus. We found more than one abandoned laboratory, but there were no traces of the letters, journals or chronicles there. However, we never got to the place where he kept you – am I correct in my guess that it was beneath Athkatla? Since it was his last permanent abode, then the documents must be there."
"Why are you so sure Irenicus does not possess these… papers on his person? And why are those papers so important?" Xan asked to fill the silence that was Daria's answer to Ricar's tale.
"Some of there… accounts could make our potential allies turn away from us. There was nothing dishonest in our dealings, ever. However, accidents and misunderstandings happened, and if they were known widely… you understand, I hope. So it makes no sense for Irenicus to take these papers to Suldanessellar: on the contrary, he will use them, and send messengers to our allies, so his revenge is complete.
Most probably, these papers are still in his abode. We need your aid, Daria. The dungeon's entrance is blocked, as you are probably aware of. But if I and Xan unite in communion for a few seconds, and you open your mind to us but a little – Xan will make sure I will not see more than I am meant to – I will be able to build a portal that will take us there."
"I will not stand for this. Daria has been through enough already." Xan interrupted him and the elf quickly shifted his eyes from him, as if that meant he couldn't hear what the enchanter said.
"What say you, Daria?" The elf turned to the Bhaalspawn, as if she was to have the final word. A scent of strong emotion filled the air and Daria realized that Ricar wanted to check the dungeon almost frantically. For a moment she expected one of her flashes to show her a fragment of the past, the reason for this anxious search, but of course nothing happened.
"I will do this." She decided to find out the hard way. "Xan?"
He threw her a look full of worry. He saw already many of her returns to the dungeon, when she was delirious, deep in her nightmares. The screams… he would probably never forget the screams. Was she truly willing to go to the place of her torment again, only for the sake of an elf she just met? Or did he forget again, neglected how empty she was without her spirit?
"If you can do it sister, than so can I!" Imoen lifted her backpack filled with components for magic, from the ground. So far she kept silent, probably a habit she worked out in Ust Natha. Knowing her sister Daria doubted she would keep that custom alive for long.
"Yes, I will go as well." Jaheira's features gained new sharpness.
"Minsc and Boo will go too! No evil will harm Daria and Imoen, when Minsc is near!"
"I will take care of the camp" Valygar sighed.
Daria felt someone standing behind her quietly. Solaufein wasn't planning to let her go without him either.
"Well, then…" Ricar counted them quickly, preparing to cast the spell. "Form a circle. Xan, take Bha… Daria's hand and give me yours. Everyone ready?"
Warm black palm squeezed Daria's hand.
"Yes" she said.
"Open."
"I…"
The hooks were hanging from the ceilings, swinging slightly now, after a wave of transporting magic stirred this dead place to a moment of activity, like a corpse animated to short leap of undeath. Rats panicked, fleeting from the newcomers back to their holes, leaving the gnawed bones of those not fortunate enough to last till a chance to escape.
A cage drew Daria's stare, a small metal cage with crude bars, an old body crouched in it, a mutilated body of an elven woman… She blinked. It was just a shadow, the cage was empty. Something like smoke crawled through the bars, escaping the cage. It was indeed herself she saw inside, the part she left here, the part that couldn't escape. The part of her that has now been freed.
"Your cage, sis… Do you remember? I will never forget…" Imoen whispered, her voice low not to wake the horrors of this place.
All was as Daria saw it the last time, only older. On two wooden tables tools of tortures, covered with dried blood she left on them. The third table with cuffs on its both ends. The moist walls. The smell of long death and rotting.
It didn't scare her this time. She escaped. After a full circle, the time when she lived in constant fear, going through her torments over and over again, unable to get free, now she came here again, but without the shackles. For too long she dreaded this place and its mad master, and now she was completely burned out, but ready to move on. Someone's hand found hers and closed around it.
"Don't look." Solaufein stepped in front of her, close enough for the gruesome torture chamber to disappear from her sight completely. "Don't look at those hideous things. Look only at me."
Some gentle warmth in her chest, surprisingly resembling an emotion, woken inside her. Her hand closed around the night-black palm and she smiled again. Solaufein must have been the only person who could make her smile now. But it wasn't the place they were searching for. She turned back to Xan and his friend.
Xan was pale, white as ghost, one of many that were very likely to be trapped in the dungeon. He was shivering as a leaf when his eyes were darting all over the torture chamber, unable to find any rest, any bit of solace in this place built only to deal pain. And then he looked at Daria.
"This place… The echoes of pain… Daria…"
"It's alright, Xan." She overused this phrase so badly in the past that it almost lost its meaning. But it was alright now. She let go of Solaufein's hand for a moment to place it on Xan's shoulder, his eyes clearing a bit. "Let's go further" she proposed. "We will find no documents here."
"Further…? There's… more?" Xan's voice faltered.
Yes, there was much more, but there was no need for him, for any of them, to see it. The sun elf turned to Ricar again.
"There's a library and a bedroom, and also a room where he kept most of the treasures. Can you teleport us there?"
"Yes, of course." The elf looked at her, but with pity this time. "Just open the link."
An empty shell of a woman he loved looked at him with her hollow eyes, watching him from the moment they reappeared in the camp, the mess they left almost untouched by Valygar during their escapade. An entire day they spent inside the horrid dungeon, searching through the dusty archives, trying to find any useful information in the tomes of darkest magic and lore that should never be brought to day's light. It was dark already now, that Ricar's spell brought them back to the surface, in their hurried escape from that place's guardians. They found no documents, only dust and dark necromancy left in Irenicus' laboratory. And Daria was calm.
She must have been gone for long already, he realized, nothing but a memory of her remaining, her form, sustained by the essence of Bhaal, now just a place where she should be, filled with random elements. She was to be lost even before they met again in Athkatla, he knew now, after seeing the dungeon. No one could escape this place without losing sanity, and very few without losing their life. She was like a flower, severed from where it was growing, torn asunder to reveal her captor a way to her spirit. No matter how tended to and cared for such a flower without roots was to wilt, it was only a matter of time.
Days, weeks he spent caring for her. She looked fragile, hurt and in need. Her body was scarred and in pain, but that he couldn't heal. Her spirit was haunted and unable to rest - with that he tried to help. But it was vain from the very beginning.
He underestimated what was done to her. Even despite the scars and her fragileness, even despite he thought he couldn't imagine anything worse happening to her... It only proved how little he knew. She couldn't be sane after going through that hell. He had barely kept his senses, only standing there for few minutes. And she was tortured there... how long?
"Sixty-seven days" she told him once. She didn't elaborate and he didn't push. It was his foolish wish - to help her leave this torment behind her by listening to her and being there, whenever she needed someone. He went after an illusion, thinking that his care could change something, that two months of tortures could be erased by some foolish attachment of a doomed man. He deluded himself that when an hour of her death would come, he could delay it, even if only a little bit, even if it cost him his life. But of course his life meant less than he gave it credit for. And for her it meant nothing.
Clutching to Jaheira, to him, to Minsc... she was a wilting flower with only days to live and they gave their best to keep her alive, for as long as they could. And when Irenicus took her spirit she stopped to clutch. When Irenicus took her spirit she stopped to care.
"I love you" he told her many times on the board of Galante, looking at the sea. And he lied every single time. He was too scared to love her, he only had enough courage not to hurt her.
"Please don't look at me like that" Daria asked him now, making him finally realize he was staring at her all that time. "I'm not dead yet."
"Not yet..." he repeated. Or was she? At times she was like a human – eager to leave the few remaining days she had as intensely as she could, as if it could make up for the long life if an elf she couldn't live. Ignoring the risks, the damage she was dealing to herself, she was leaping into the fray of the battles in the arena of Ust Natha, its nets of betrayals and manipulation. She was venturing into places, where no elf should be, searched for emotion and excitement where no elf would ever find it. There were moments when she seemed desperate to feel.
And there were moments when she was not, when she was as lifeless and unresponsive as a rock. She just existed, and empty vessel until the taint of her father would take over again. He could see nothing of Daria in this empty shell.
"We will not die." Her usual answer to his doom saying, this time uttered sternly, the way a commander would say it. They weren't going to die not because she believed they wouldn't, but because they were well equipped and experienced, aware of the enemy's presence and had allies.
"We will." No allies or weapons could ward off death, no experience could stop its blade. "We will die, Daria. To assume the opposite is as futile as to expect sunrise in the middle of the night."
She looked deep into his eyes as if she was still expecting to find some hope in them.
"Amaontoth" she replied. Xan's eyes widened when he recognized the spell instantly, its ccharacteristing being this firs word, unlike any other magic. It was the spell he only heard about, read about, but never saw, didn't even consider studying. "Ganglia stellae, ganglia solea..." she continued, opening her arms wide and then joining them together. Fluent movements of her palms, her entire arms weaved with the words of the evocation.
"I-it is not possible…" he only managed to stutter seeing something brighter appearing on the evening's sky.
"Come!" she shouted and all of sudden the firmament began to lighten, from clouded obsidian to blue and then red. It was not a time for dawn!
"Come!" she cried out again, throwing her arms in the air to greet the fiery orb that appeared on the sky above their heads.
"Stop it!" Xan screamed, trying to disrupt her spell. If she brought it down here, they would be all doomed! The glade was now as lit as if the sun was indeed coming in the middle of the night. The falling comet was so close now that its roaring blaze washed over all of them, finally waking the panic, all eyes turning to the burning sky. The entire encampment stirred to run away from the place of the collision. Xan heard Imoen calling their names and he began to run, but Daria wouldn't move. He tried to pull her hand, but she was like frozen in place. In last desperate attempt, in the heat he thought was going to turn him into a crisp in a matter of moments, he threw himself to shield Daria. 'Pathetic truly' he only had time for a thought. His ragged cloak against a comet, his body against such heat...
The impact came.
The burning fire washed all around him, probably setting the small forest on fire in one swoop. He didn't look, too absorbed with his final thought.
"We are not going to die." A soft whisper sounded by his ear. The cold wind blew, and there was no trace of the blaze. Daria in his arms dropped her arm stretched up the sky. He risked opening his eyes.
The forest was like the way it was before, not even a bit of his cloak was smoldered, not one tent in their camp destroyed, unless you count the trampled equipment. Daria watched him, undisturbed despite his arms pressing her to his chest. There was a stone in her hand, an irregular metallic rock, only a bit smaller than elf's fist. A faint orange light was surrounding it. 'It should be boiling hot' he thought and yet the elven woman held it in her unprotected palm. It was the burned-out comet.
He let go of her taking a calm step back. She could evoke a comet, the fact that she was holding it now so casually was less surprising than that. She evoked a comet and then stopped it before hitting them. She controlled its fires and now held it like a stone one could find on a road.
She took his palm and opened it, and then placed the comet in it. He felt it was chilly instead of hot.
"I will not let us die." She made a promise and he felt its weight in his hand. "I've became much stronger and I know you have also. I will fight and I will get my spirit back. I promise."
'When hell freezes over.' He thought, but didn't dare to say it out loud.