„The Last Stand"
A gentle melody of a stone harp intertwined with strong sounds coming from a horn held by a statue was all that saw them off to the last battle, as the passage behind a waterfall inside the palace of once mighty Suldanessellar opened before their eyes. The Tree of Life spread its branches to allow them free passage to the place where the Exile sunk his poison into its leaves and roots.
"The Tree will guide us" Jaheira said, leaning on her quarterstaff, rough bark climbing up her fingers to cover her skin. "Mother Nature is on our side, we're not the only ones who depend on stopping Irenicus' corruption from spreading."
"Helm guide you" Anomen was whispering his prayers. He didn't leave them despite his duties being completed with the destruction of Bodhi's coven of vampires. It was a righteous cause, one his superiors in the Order would certainly approve, as he said. He continued chanting, enveloping them in more and more layers of blue light of protective energies. "May His All Seeing Eye watch our steps, may we be vigilant in battle against our enemy…"
"Be ready, sis" Imoen lost the playful spark in her eyes that was always her giveaway, no matter how hard she tried to pretend she was serious. Instead Daria saw that she had a powerful archmage as her ally and sister, more so because of this seriousness and intelligence in her eyes, than magic robes and staff covered with runes.
"He is aware of our intrusion and confident in his advantage. The Tree of Life protects him, but I can sever this link" the diviner whispered, entering the path among the branches.
"Daria." Jaheira just said one word. No question, no doubt.
"I know how. I can see how." It was all so strange and yet so natural, like it was always meant to be this way. Daria had no spirit of her own, she couldn't use the art of divination, and yet so little was unclear, so much was obvious. The world was sparkling in silver threads in her eyes, even though her pupils were violet like the day she was born. The spirit of the Tree was slipping into the void inside her.
And then Irenicus come into sight ahead of them, visible through the branches of the Tree, the sacred branches weaving to create a path for those it chose to be its saviors. He was standing on one of huge wounds on the wood created by cutting of one of the greatest stems, proud of his work. Wrapped in a cocoon of energies no mortal should possess, energies he harvested, stole destroying the order of world, he couldn't see that beyond the gates of the palace his influence was coming to an end. And yet, even if every one of his servants and slaves would perish he could still achieve his final goal. Godhood.
They came to stand before him and he did nothing to stop them. As a matter of fact, he was smiling.
"I am surprised you're still alive, Bhaalspawn. So long, despite all of your spirit torn away. It must have been so painful."
"I came so you would not take anything more away, Shattered One." What was the name? She didn't know, but it seemed right the moment it left her mouth. "And you won't, this I swear."
"Your swears and curses mean very little right now, spawn of Bhaal, just as your life. You should have found a pleasant place to spend your last moments before becoming one with your father, but instead you chose to follow me. This stubbornness…"
"RARRGH!" Minsc interrupted the speech neatly. Drawing Lilarcor and charging at the mad mage screaming. "IT IS HERO'S JOB TO KICK EVIL BUTTS!"
"Couldn't have phrased it better…" Daria muttered moving behind Minsc to give the berserker support. Just in time – she saw Irenicus beginning a spell, one that could kill her friend should she allow it to end. She wasn't planning to.
As in their carefully prepared strategy Jaheira and Imoen took care of offense magic, while she took care of defense. That particular spell her opponent was casting she knew and worked out in a matter of seconds. And in not much more time than that, she began to disrupt it. Reaching into her pouch of spell components the diviner began to chant, her voice sounding like a perfect echo of the madman standing not far before her in a cocoon that so far resisted all melee blows. The magic from her nightmares, the incredible gap of power that sent tremors across her body not that long ago, didn't seem to exist anymore, as if it was just a product of imagination and fear. He was still more powerful and she knew it. But she also knew she wasn't alone.
Now. Calmly. Controllably. The spell ruptured and for a second Daria felt the presence of a great Spirit within the Tree of Life, like a smell of grass in midsummer or sound of a chirping bird, the raging energies of a spell transforming into a flock of rainbow-colored butterflies that flew into the air inappropriately undisturbed. The presence was just a quick feeling, in might have not even been there, but the stun on Irenicus' face was authentic. He looked at his hands and then back at her.
"I see you have learned now tricks, Bhaalspawn." He smiled at her, cruelly, with some interest. "But not nearly enough." With two sharp waves of his palms he summoned a shadow gate disappearing from her sight.
"Anomen!" Daria called, but the priest already knew what to do.
"In Helm's name!" he drew forth his holy symbol of All Seeing Eye, banishing all illusions. With an frown of growing irritation Irenicus appeared once again, in the middle of another incantation.
This was the moment Jaheira finished her own chant.
"Avarae!" the druidess shouted, calling a swarm of all kinds of bugs to crawl over the mad mage's shields, looking for a smallest dent to get inside. In the approaching swarm Imoen's completed spell went unnoticed, until it smashed into the barrier creating a crack in the cocoon.
Just a small crack, but it was a start.
Daria felt the Tree of Life shivering underneath her feet. The Tree and Irenicus were now linked, hurting one meant harming the other as well, but it had to be done, a dent had to be made, to give her a chance to do what she had to. She took a last glance around the battlefield to make sure she was covered. Valygar was nowhere to be found, he was sparing strength, just as in plan. All was in place.
She kneeled and let her fingers penetrate the rough bark on the branch. She quickly closed her eyes.
The Tree was fractured, hurt. She was hollow, fractured, hurt. And Irenicus also was hurt.
They were there, the three of them, linked. Her link with the mad, the shattered – the link of her spirit, stretched painfully like a rope with each end in their hands. The link between the madman and the sacred Tree, the link of dark corruptive magic that was force upon Suldanessellar. And that meant that also she and the Tree were linked, now that there was a fracture she could reach out, extend her own will there. Knowing that in this state her awareness of the passing time was changed Daria let herself melt into the bond with the Tree of Life, to see what was on its other side. And to her surprise she discovered a vivid mind of another life. Gently, she touched it and…
Her hand in his, a balcony, the mighty Suldanessellar before them…
…if couldn't be before him, than would be crushed under his feet.
A kiss, the taste of his sweet lips, the glint of his eye, a smile in the morning sun…
…more and more mornings and days and yet neither worth even one thousandth of that minute in the morning.
"Joneleth…" his name, the only one I want to hear.
"Ellesime…" I mutter, vivisecting yet another clone. It's not the real thing and even it knows that.
Daria wailed and woke up, almost lost the connection to the Tree, but quickly clung to it. A vision, right now, a sharp, painful vision, one she never wanted to see, one that explained so much about thing she wished now never existed. The woman on the other side of the link was looking at her with sadness. It wasn't real, she couldn't be there physically, but the magical battle was raging against her friends all around her, the world did not pause for her to have time for severing the link. Daria hastily pressed her hands into the threads weaving the Tree and Irenicus, ignoring the visage of a woman before her. She quickly tried to comprehend what this link was and how to unweave it. That was the most important now.
A ghostly hand touched her cheek like a feather and Daria looked up again. The visage was beautiful. Her face was perfect by any cannons of elven beauty, it was as if it was shaped by the hands of an inspired artist with no equal. And at the same time there was only sadness on this perfect face. There was another bond Daria felt between them, one Irenicus in no way could reach.
"You understand…" the elven visage placed her palms on Daria's, still deep within the threads of energies overflowing the sacred place. One by one the threads began to break and vanish into the air. When Daria realized what was happening she did her best to help.
"It has to end… Joneleth is no longer… Now he's just Irenicus… For the Tree and… for you… it has to end…"
Ellesime left a light kiss on her forehead and disappeared within the magic of the Tree. The battle paused as Irenicus stared in space where his protections should be.
"How dare you?"
It was the morning and that meant she was fighting somewhere right now, while he sat on this balcony in the middle of a ravaged city, mockingly safe. The palace wasn't far, he could see the tangle of the trees covering its roof, but the odds of him making there on time were hopelessly low already. Should he decide to follow those who were his traveling companions only a day ago, and have some luck, he would find their bodies along with the madman's. And if he had no luck, which was by all means more likely, he would find Irenicus as a sole survivor and follow his companions one last time.
He couldn't help her. He didn't want to leave her. These contradicting feelings were the source of his miseries and he struggled so long unable to find an exit from this maze that even Daria lost her patience.
He wanted to go with her, even to die by her side, but that meant also that he could he could die by her hand. Simply staying with her was all he wanted, but it meant the never-ending torment of avoiding her eyes, pretending not to look at her, not to think of her. Impossible. Hopeless. And meant less than last year's snow to her.
If he wouldn't leave now, he would never leave. She needed him now, but he didn't delude himself thinking that this is the last time she would need him. There would never be the last time, as long as she was alive the world would be ready to spawn another Sarevok, another Irenicus on her way, each worse than his predecessor. Daria would not run out of enemies unless she wiped out every sentient being on surface of Toril and beneath. Maybe one day she would try. But her life was destined to be a constant flurry of being hunted, of carving her way through enemies, of escape to go on living. Her life was meant to be ruled by the blood of her sire.
And that was why she would always need him.
Irenicus was taking damage. They weren't safe anymore.
There was truth in this fact. As long as the mad mage felt safe, he would play with them without causing any serious damage until he'd get bored. Now it was a battle he could get wounded in, he could be defeated in, though his arrogance blocked out the last possibility from his mind, and that made the Tree of Life a battleground of a magic battle that few mortals had a chance to see since the fall of Netheril.
Daria was heavy pushed on defense, despite Anomen's help, who was healing the front line fighter's injuries in the middle of a small blizzard while they continued to slam Irenicus' stoneskins. Whenever the Shattered One used illusions, she protected her friends' minds, when he tried to bring down a rain of fire, she was already chanting to protect them from raging elements, the moment he drawn a summon from a distant elemental plane her Banish spell sent it back. Because the experience she gathered in her journey and the taint fueling her, the elf was able to stand up to the older wizard, but it was tiring and her strength was not limitless. On the other hand despite the determined efforts Jaheira and Imoen couldn't break through with offense. The pinkish Dispels and Breaching magic couldn't even give one clear shot for Minsc Jaheira's fire elemental, while the druidic curses didn't last more than split seconds against the mad mage.
'We need to find a break in his defenses soon,' Daria thought frantically. 'Or soon we won't have the strength to exploit it. Wait…' An idea popped to her head. Irenicus was intelligent, he already saw through their strategy, he only expected defense from her. More so, they used all their magic against his alterations that protected him from harm, trying to breach the shields, not him, personally. That meant if she disguised a magical attack as one more counter-spell and targeted him, she had a chance to get him, wound him, maybe paralyze him for few moments Imoen needed to gain an upper hand and crush his resistances. The flaw of this plan was that if she faked a counter spell it wouldn't work. It was a gamble.
Irenicus wasn't stupid, he knew that she was keeping the entire group from harm and because of that most of his spells so far were targeting her. If she failed… If she was eliminated, the rest of the party would be defenseless long enough for him to win this battle. If her plan failed, it would mean their death.
A sudden flash of light sent Minsc into the air. The giant berserker hit the trunk of the Tree and fell on the ground unmoving. Jaheira cursed badly and sent her elemental to cover for Minsc. Anomen was already on his way to the fallen comrade to bring him back on his feet. His face was almost grey from exhaustion.
Daria cursed using the exact same word as her foster-mother. Minsc was just by Irenicus, clashed in a short distance trying to break through his spells with rough strength. It was the hardest position for Daria to cover. That meant one thing. They were running out of time. She needed a spell to strike Irenicus. Badly.
And she had one. Something from the Candlekeep Library she could recall only when her form was so much like the Slayer's. She wrote it down the last night spent in Underdark trying to recall all her lost memories and finding no difficulty in doing so. A spell that granted her a detention from the great library for a month. Something she found in a book Gorion never intended for her to read. Unfortunately for the sage, his step-daughter was an elf with a good memory that could now recall all those once meaningless runes.
The moment was right. She feinted a spell of protection from magic with exact same first verses she could use for her invocation. Whatever came next she wouldn't be able to do anything about it. But it was to be Irenicus' last chance to do any harm.
The spell was complete. 'Eyes!' Daria screamed and her companions all covered their eyes, a team that went through countless battles acting as one body.
The heaven opened to let a ray of light so bright it was impossible to tell its color, freed itself from its embrace. It was magic only an archmage could leash and it was pure. No shield or amulet could protect Irenicus once a mass of unadulterated mystical energy hit him from the sky making the entire Tree of Life tremble up to its highest branches like an aspen leaf. Jaheira's elemental perished in an instant just because of the proximity to this phenomenon, but no one else was that close.
In three seconds the arcane radiance ended as sharply as it began. Irenicus was standing as he was, but wounded, the higher parts of his armor literally melted right on his body, its magic extinguished into nothingness. Everybody was looking at him stunned. It seemed like a miracle, but he was still standing. He was half-dead and he was still chanting, his spell uninterrupted.
He was not a novice caster. He was a genius of magic, a sadistic torturer and a master of discipline. Who knew more about pain than him?
'No one. But I was close' Daria thought seeing the completed spell spinning towards her in a snail's pace. The entire battlefield slowed to a peaceful rhythm of a relaxed morning. The spell – Bigby's Crushing Hand, closed around her body unhurriedly, immobilizing her hands, pressing them to her sides and squeezing all the air from her lungs along with the last scream. Slowly, contemplatively, the elf's ribcage shattered like an ant in wheels of a clock. She saw Valygar, sneaking behind Irenicus' back. He could have tried to interrupt the evocation. He didn't. He had no chance to kill the enemy with one blow.
Imoen was screaming someone's name.
"Xaaaaaan!" Imoen screamed at the top of her lungs. As if he needed a reminder to hurry. He cast an unfinished Dispel on Daria and surprisingly it was good enough to shed off the transparent limb crushing the woman he loved. He caught her before she fell despite the wet slippery blood on her robes pouring from the wounds shards of her own ribs made in her chest. He forced the strongest healing potion he had on him into her mouth despite the fact that she clearly wasn't able to drink it.
"Come on, Daria, come on…" he urged her barely able to catch his breath after running to the palace. He wasn't lucky. He was as unlucky as he could get. He got right into the middle of a storm of arcane battle, almost got permanently blinded the moment he entered and now was looking as the one he came here for was dying. That was his luck, he could have thought about this. He got here just in time to witness her death.
The elf in his arms stirred and began to gulp down the bluish liquid despite the obvious suffering it was causing her. It was not possible. No mortal could be conscious in this state… At this point Xan was actually happy she wasn't fully mortal.
The moment the mist in Daria's eyes cleared because of the effects of the potion, they went wide and she rolled him underneath her, covering them with her cloak. Wild flames roared over their bodies. Xan screamed.
"Get up." Daria was on her feet the moment the flames died out and at once she stumbled backward. The potion wasn't THAT strong. He supported her getting up, but she wasted no time and began chanting. His sudden appearance wasn't worth even a comment now.
Xan didn't wait for it. With renewed determination he showed a bit of his art, in half of a precious minute turning all the monsters Irenicus' summoned against him. Minsc was back on his feet and the enchanter turned his attention to him, starting from the most powerful buffing spells he had in his repertoire. He always worked more effective with supporting magic. Daria coughed out some blood, but soon stood by his side, continuing the previous chant.
In the rain of Imoen's lightning arrows and the flames and frosts of many, many spells of this battle, Xan decided that it was a good place to be their last stand.
The tides have turned and they gained an upper hand. They stood a chance to win this battle yet.
Valygar was watching closely from the shadows the leaves were granting. There was no indication that the madman was aware of his presence and that worked perfectly for him. On the other hand, Valygar could get to him in less than two seconds thanks to the boots enchanted with a haste spell and if not for the faltering stoneskins and other protective magic, Irenicus wouldn't even have a chance to fight back. But the spells were waning rapidly and soon the time would come to strike. In one moment it was dangerous, Minsc was knocked out and Daria almost died, but the surprising rescue came right on time. Valygar didn't feel any relief. If Daria died just then, it would solve many future problems.
He was rested, so far he took no part in battle, staying just out of range of magic targeted at Irenicus, stepping back when things were becoming heated, but then returning back on his post. Irenicus was also his enemy, like every mad mage, which he considered every spell user, but he was not his target today. He wasn't the worst danger they might have to face today. The real problem was Daria. He needed his strength to fight her.
If they won she would get back her soul. That was clear from Imoen's example. But no one seemed to consider that it could change nothing, or even make matters worse. The way he saw it the Bhaal's taint was literally – a taint. As long as it was dormant it didn't affect Daria's actions and didn't influence her soul, that was why Imoen was safe. But now that it has awoken it might began to corrupt its owner's soul the very moment it returns to its owner. Now she was soulless, had little motivation, was mostly dispassionate about the happenings around her, except the moments when a stray emotion from the past would resurface. But once all the feelings and emotions were back in their places there was no guarantee that instead of friendship and loyalty, she would feel a draining hate and violent need to murder everyone around her, caused by her taint. There was no telling what would happen.
These were the worst fears she confessed of having. And then she reminded him of his parents. Of love and madness caused by the magic. Valygar didn't see the point of asking how she knew so well things he only vaguely mentioned in few conversations. She told him that what he did was the only right thing he could do, and asked him, if he would be able to do the right thing this time as well. He was silent throughout all of her speech. 'Yes' was the only thing he said to her. The last words she said to him were annoying though.
"I'm sorry" Daria lowered her head looking humble. There was nothing to convince him of her sincerity. She obviously couldn't feel humble. "If my worse predictions come to be, it will complicate a lot between you and Imoen. I don't want to cause and bad feelings between you, but Imoen may not understand your intentions. Watch out for her."
He was determined not to talk to her, but it was a close call when he almost told her what he really thinks of Imoen. This little pink mage would not get an ounce of care from him. And he definitely wouldn't sway his blade for the care for her sister. If that was her plan than it would most certainly fail.
"You… how…?" Irenicus looked at the blood shooting out of his arm in a place where a hand was only a moment ago. Lilarcor squeaked in delight at the damage he caused. "This is not… possi…" he said nothing more because Valygar's katana was already on his throat. He ended it with one swift cut.
The giant branch of the tree gave up the last bit of endurance it had. Stricken with various elements, poisoned by the Shattered mage and tormented by the pain brought upon the Queen of elves, its life ebbed away and the sacred wood died underneath their feet. Valygar had a chance to get to a next living stem, but the others were too far away from the main trunk of the Tree of Life. He wouldn't leave them like that. He drew out his hand trying to catch someone and get to safety on time.
"Valygar!" Imoen screamed when the wood slipped from underneath her feet. He dove forth to catch her, letting go if the living stem. The branch he held for safety was breaking.
"Daria!" Xan called, but she did not respond. Even before the giant branch broke away from the sacred tree to crush on the ground countless feet lower, she was already falling.