The Black Canary: Diptych Two, Part I

"Hell, or the devil, had had no power on thee."

-Marlowe's Faust

It felt weeks before he woke. There were moments that he was vaguely awake, or less drugged into a stupor, but he never attempted to open his eyes. Even when he had the strength, it was as if his lids would part to a nightmare, to hellish flames blazing around him, his nose assailed by the stench of sulfur and choked by blackish, volcanic smoke. He anticipated shadow, hell, the Abyss- and her. Axarthys sin Saintrowe.

But awaking to reality was far less dramatic than what Nevalle expected. His vision was greeted with the pale stone walls of a bedchamber, illuminated brilliantly with daylight pouring from windows taller than he stood, their sailcloth shades fluttering as the breeze outside poured in, wafting the scent of grass and dew with it. The sights and smells were unmistakably those of his ancestral estate, Swychcreste. Every suite of the castle was familiar to the knight, every paddock as recognizable to him from the window as if he strolled in them at that very moment. Indeed, nestled beyond the Neverwinter Wood, the city wasn't discernible from behind the grove of trees lining the farthest reaches of the estate.

Neverwinter! Nevalle remembered it, and a shooting pain in his leg reminded him of his displacement. He'd dueled, lost, and recalled only the face of his demon as he slipped into nothingness. Scanning the room, he was surprised when Casavir faded into his view. The paladin dressed in a simple tunic that poorly disguised the bandages beneath it. He was seated at the foot of the bed, a volume removed from the mantle tucked in his hand. He paid little heed to it, for the breeze- and not his fingers- flipped the pages restlessly.

"You no doubt wonder why you are no longer in Neverwinter," Casavir greeted. The knight pawed at his weary eyes, before dragging his torso up from the mass of pillows behind him. The paladin winced, cautioning, "I would move as little as possible, to save yourself the pain of your wounds. Do you… even recall what happened?"

The knight grumbled, "To put it rudely, you kicked my ass."

"I suppose it is difficult to forget being smashed with an exceptionally large hammer," Casavir chuckled nervously, scratching his head. His shoulders tensed, and he disengaged his gaze with the knight. Nevalle, sensing the paladin's unrest even in the dizziness of drugs coursing thickly in his body, growled quietly.

"I apologize for removing you from Neverwinter, but there was far too much spectacle. I brought you home, where your servants and family could oversee your healing. The Nine could not safely manage the fragility of the royal court if their primary concern was protecting you in your vulnerable state." Casavir explained softly. His tone lacked the professional finality so typical of the paladin, and the knight questioned his peer's report with a quizzical glare.

"You've clearly dealt me quite the physical blow, Casavir," he threatened between gritted teeth as a wave of pain tore through the numb blockade of pain medicines and healing potions, "And I believe you're failing to inform me about something."

The paladin frowned, repentant. He murmured, "Three days have passed since I defeated you at court. You have my apologies and my sympathy, Nevalle, but you were injured so badly that your mother, and I, felt it best that you remain sedated. Your leg was shattered, so badly that you cannot walk. And neither of us wanted you to attempt a search for, for her."

"Casavir-"

"Lady Saintrowe disappeared, Nevalle, right after you were brought here," Casavir admitted, standing from his seat to pledge at the foot board of the bed, "She hasn't been seen anywhere in Neverwinter's lands."

"And you permitted her to leave?!" The knight snapped. Casavir's response was interposed by a distinctively otherworldly cackle.

Axarthys manifested by the opened window, the fresh air tumbling through the drapes moistened with the pleasant chill of a fresh rain. Beyond the casement it was tranquil, soundless save for birdsong. Swathed in a gown greener than Eden, the demon's slender hands perched upon the window sill, as she craned her neck to gaze out upon the pastoral landscape. She chastised gently, "A demon is never in need of human permission to carry out anything, knight of Neverwinter. I had matters to attend to in Waterdeep, and did not want you to think ill of me departing in time of your most desperate need of me."

Nevalle exhaled her name, sighing, "Please don't depart from me like that again."

"Do you fear that once more I'll abandon you for higher aspirations? Silence your concerns. Whilst your soul remains in my keeping you are at my disposal, and I am not rid of you yet." Axarthys callously hissed. The knight sank back defeated into his bed sheets, and Casavir hurriedly fled for the door. He uttered an anxious well-wish to his captain before closing the passage in is hinges with a resounding creak. Nevalle waited the span of a few minutes before he spoke, to assure that Casavir had left and that the sting of the demon's words would not poison his reply. Before he spoke, the demon did, saying, "Forgive my cruelty. I am… only angry with myself, and lash out at you unnecessarily. Out of greed I sought to keep you for myself, and now I am miserable for it."

"What you've done saved my life," he countered.

She sagged in a seat beside the window. Her back arched so that the ridges of her skeletal spine burst up through the open back of her gown. Axarthys elucidated, "I've concealed my true purposes in Neverwinter far too long, my knight. You see, I returned to Neverwinter on Graz'zt's orders to vie for your kingdom's throne, not for you. But when I arrived to find you here, my willpower… faltered. You were to be nothing but a diversion. Yet that excuse weakened with time as I realized that I loved you. Concurrently, I recognized what my love stole from you- dignity, a family, a future, a soul. I would reap from you everything that a man aspires to if I loved you, and still I continued to love you. I craved you, despite all that you would lose if you loved me."

Axarthys restlessly ascended from her seat, pacing the chamber. She paused at his bedside before once more strolling to the window, leaning out. The breeze lifted two loose tresses from the elegant knot of her bun, breathing life into the tendrils as they floated and danced in the wind. The demon tensed, bending her hands from their wrists to grasp the sill and lean further out into the air. She was clearly entrenched in her thoughts, yet in an instant she recoiled, alighting on the bed next to Nevalle. She seethed, "Demons know greed as well as any mortal, and are rendered no less excused whenever they succumb to it. Yet though we know it, and though we know it is wrong, we are powerless to refuse it. Moments after declaring to my former lord that I cannot take the chance for human happiness from you, I condemn you. Why? Because my greed is insatiable. I must have you, I- I… do have you."

She withdrew into shadow, her limbs cracking as they uncoiled. Her knees caved in backwards, bending in the opposite direction as she slithered behind the drapery, observing as the sky outside darkened, swirling grey. The verdance of the landscape dazzled like a peridot against black velvet. Axarthys extended a green-sleeved arm to the sill, her stormy skin providing a staunch, colorless palette for the color of her gown to glitter in its rich brightness. Distant thunder pounded, increasingly descending on the estate. The demon derisively remarked, "A storm is coming."

"Indeed, and you are a fool to brave it alone," The knight chastised. The demon emerged from concealment, her eyes brimming with dry distress. Nevalle lifted an arm, his fingers reaching for her across the room. She approached, crumpling into the blankets beside him, her forehead hidden in the crook of his neck and her arms locked around his waist. The velvet of her gown immersed the white sheets in a coating of plentiful verdure. Bruised and damaged as his arms were, he enveloped her in them. She nestled against his shattered leg, sending immobilizing pain through his body, but he did not rebuke her. Instead, he grasped her tighter, clenching his jaw from the pain and allowing the sedatives to overcome him. Before he succumbed, he pledged into her ear, "Condemning yourself to the fault alone-"

"-Negates your love, and diminishes its fault, for having mutually brightened the lantern that illuminated the path to this damnation," she finished, rasping, "Yes, I am wrong to forego your fault in this, yet I rebuke myself only because I am a diplomat and see clearly the precarious state my love puts your fortune in."

"My lady, you forget that in my world, lords and not their wives control the fate of their houses. Stay with me, and it is I that shall shoulder the stupidity of our union."

"Nevalle?"

"Axarthys?"

"My… my, my grasp on humanity is abating, and the Abyss's hand clamps tighter around its prisoner, asphyxiating me," she confessed, "Even my voice, once as sweet as any maiden's, reverts to the guttural rattle of a demon's speech. I've lost all ability to emulate human conduct, unable to control my joints from bending as they should not for mortals. If I cannot control myself, I fear that I will put your soul in peril."

"Knowing your concern alone is assurance that you retain your compassion." He yawned, tucking the demon beneath the coverlets.

"That is ill assurance to me." She muttered.

After he'd fallen asleep, Axarthys spoke his name aloud to hear the coarseness of her once-lovely voice. She tried to laugh, but where music once sprang from her wine-painted lips now only a preternatural screech emerged. Her lower lip trembled, as she tolerated a lone tear to slip from her pink eyes. The Abyss called to her, stripping her of her decency of character to bait her back into its hellish depths, to once more take up arms against devil-kind. Burying herself under her knight's arm, she heard the tanar'ri shrieking in her ears, demanding her to relinquish her humanity. Axarthys knew that the Blood War drew to a precarious close, and in the collapse of demon-kind to follow, she would inevitably fall victim to baatezu conquest.

The demon begged Tyr in the silence of her prayers to spare her knight.

-

Deep within the coils of Azzagrat, sheltered in the silvery towers of his stronghold, Graz'zt never anticipated Asmodeus's aspect to stroll into his armory. The crimson-swathed devil glided into the chamber with a disparaging expression of dissatisfaction etched onto his face. Graz'zt dropped the cuirass in his hands, and both fiends remained silent until the metallic clatter of the armor's fall ceased.

"Preparing for war so soon?" Asmodeus inquired. Though they were not a taunt, Graz'zt responded to the words with a prolonged, combative snarl.

"Indeed," the demon spat, "For the daughter is dead, and I hold no sway over the mortal kingdom. If that weren't unfortunate enough, my emissary grows increasingly soft of heart. I've released her from my service. Better to surrender the Neverwintan throne and face your armies then employ such a pathetic whelp in my court."

Asmodeus frowned calculatedly, lifting the armor from the floor. He extended it to Graz'zt, who snatched it from his hands. The devil suggested, "Without an heir, the kingdom is weak. By all accounts, now would be the most opportune moment to strike and seize the throne. If you are concerned about the competence of your emissary, perhaps you should send your second-hand, Verin. I think no demon in the Abyss more capable at politics than he."

Graz'zt growled, sequestering a thin rapier from the weapons shelf. He twirled the blade in his hand lightly, examining its hoary surface as he replied scathingly, "Why do you lend your aid? If I succeed in my conquest, you will not declare war on Azzagrat and infiltrate my realm. There is so much to gain at hand."

"Is there?" Asmodeus inquired, "My military's resources are widespread as is. I have far grander schemes in mind than the mere satiation of my devil's desire to slay demons. If that were my goal, I would have never approached you with an offer of aid at all."

"Then I see no reason why you would threaten me with war at all." Graz'zt countered.

"If I am associated with such failure, then my aptitude falls under question, and the consequences of that happening again could be another upheaval of the political structure of the hells. I will not risk a second Reckoning over such trivial matters as these," Asmodeus answered, crossing the room casually. He folded his arms over his chest, conceding, "So if you fail, lord demon, I may clear all suspicion of my involvement by reacting in the most severe manner at my disposal- open war- and pass it off as a Blood War offensive."

Unable to refute him, Graz'zt surrendered the weapon to its place on the rack. He concluded, "You will not regret lost forces, devil, because I will travel to Neverwinter myself. If I am unable to seize a single kingdom, then my ineptitude should rightly be tested by your armies."

-

Seated under the lofty arches of her palatial dining hall alone, Alucié Davane could not bring herself to eat the exquisite platter of food before her. It was terribly rude of a lady to do so, she knew, but etiquette was the least of her concerns. Her son and only child had returned to her, after months of absence from her home, beaten and clinging to his life's existence. She was convinced that he'd died when first he was carried through the passageway. The Countess's noble composure stood no power against the overwhelming sorrow that caved her knees in, and saw her begging for Tyr's mercy for her son at the paladin Casavir's feet. What cruelty of fate could allow her son to return as she'd prayed, yet dead? Crumpled on the ground, all that spared her poise was the bones of her corset, which held her blueblood torso up with whatever false composure she had left. Dyed red with the blood of her child, the beaded ivory of her velvet gown was no more valuable than the coarse canvas skirts of a peasant woman. No amount of finery had value to her if her son was dead.

The paladin cooed her, assuring that her son lived. But there was little life in a man sustained by a pact with a demon. To Alucié, her son was lost to her; present in her home, as she'd hoped for so long, in the worst of circumstances. Nevalle's blood still stained the white marble floors of the foyer, and his miserable cries echoed the halls like the moans of a ghost that had not yet been granted death's mercy. No, the son who so easily cast his soul to a demon was no son of hers, but an empty shell of a man foreign to her. Her child was a stranger to her, a fate worse than if he'd died. The Countess mindlessly halved slices of fruit with her knife, distracting herself until the servants eventually yielded their efforts to feed her ladyship and removed the plate. As she sliced through the last sliver of pear, the knife rapped against the fine china of her plate with an empty pang that resounded through the tall ceilings like a smothered, insignificant church bell.

When the door creaked, Alucié expected her servants, and set her knife on her plate for them to remove it. But in their place, a woman floated through the chamber, and seated herself a few chairs' length away from the Countess. She rested two emerald-clothed arms on the tabletop, gazing purposefully at the human.

"I apologize for my absence," she submitted quietly, "It is not proper of a woman so deeply involved with the fate of your son to have abandoned her duties here. I am her Ladyship Emissary."

"Axarthys," The Countess clarified aloud, sweeping a loose lock of graying blonde hair over her ear anxiously. The demon, unblinking and frightening motionless, did not respond. Alucié swallowed her anxiety, stifling the fury she bore the demon. If she were to endure this crisis, it would be with whatever dignity she had left. She stood, and the demon followed suit, grasping her hand fleetingly. The chill of the demon's skin was so acute that the woman recoiled gracefully but quickly, shivering when their handshake ended. The woman said, "I am Countess Swychcreste, Lady Alucié Davane. I hope I have the pleasure of being the first to introduce you to the Swychcreste estate, and the opportunity to extend our hospitality to you."

The demon attempted to smile, but sadness prevented her from doing so. Instead, she drifted back into her seat and murmured, "My kind rarely receives such a warm welcome. My appreciation of your gratitude is sincere, though your mercy renders me more shameful of my recent… faults. I fear I have more to apologize for than my absence, my lady."

"You are free to speak it." The Countess prompted. The demon cast her eyes aside, wincing faintly.

"I have suffered greatly for the foolishness of contracting your son's soul to me," she uttered, "Knowing my pain, I cannot begin to imagine the misery a mother must feel in the same circumstances. If it offers you any solace, I've endured such regret over my actions as I've never known before. My lady, I cannot heal, or ease a human's death. The only manner of saving a life as I knew how was to-"

"-I know what occurred," Alucié interceded, sighing, "It is a lady's duty to forgive those who implore her to, but you may understand the… complications in so doing for this particular case. I cannot know if I judge your character incorrectly, yet despite the inherently evil nature of your kind, I feel that your regret is sincere. However, understand that in light of my son's recent lack of foresight the viability of our noble house hinges on my treatment of the issue. If I forgive your actions, then I too bend to your will, and my reputation will be questioned. My ladyship, perhaps it is I who should beg your forgiveness for being incapable of pardoning you."

"You've considered this quite deeply." Axarthys flatly stated. Alucié nodded weakly.

"Amongst other things, yes," she admitted, "Politics distract me from my son's suffering. Indeed, he shall live, but the cost agonizes me."

The woman lifted her napkin to her cheek, daubing the tears that pooled in her muted blue eyes. Axarthys crept closer to the woman, explicating as she knelt before her, "I traveled to Waterdeep with hopes that my former employer, an accomplished wizard, could provide me with a solution to Sir Nevalle's deplorable condition, and undo what I have done. Once enacted, fiendish pacts cannot be voided unless terms are broken; the simplicity of my pact does not allow for this route to be taken, and so my employer suggested a more- more, dire solution. My lady, the only available resolution is to be sought north, in Icewind Dale."

"Icewind Dale!" Alucié exclaimed, leaping from her seat. Axarthys stood once more, nodding succinctly in response. The noblewoman kneaded her brow, fretting, "My son would not survive the journey there, nor the stay. This time of year the weather-"

"Your son isn't traveling with me," Axarthys rejoined, irritated. She frowned, melancholy carved into the elegant arc of her lips, "Countess Davane, I sojourn to Icewind Dale to end the pact in the only possible manner, to die, far enough away that your son won't attempt to rescue me. With my death his soul will be returned to him."

Alucié wavered in disbelief, shaking her head, standing beside her chair. She voiced, "But my son…"

"Would suffer a broken heart, yes, but as you concede yourself, Nevalle has no future with a demon, and I have no future as a domestic housewife wasting away in the mortal vale or any hope to regain power in my home realm. My lord Graz'zt ejected me from my station, and now two demon lords of the highest repute in the lower planes have forsaken me. I am scorned in the Abyss and hated amongst mortals. I have exhausted all doors of opportunity."

"And so you would end your life to save my son?" Alucié breathed. Axarthys scoffed.

"Simply because my surname contains 'saint' hardly renders me one," the demon coldly replied, reeling away from the woman to stand at the far end of the other table. Her back facing Alucié, the human could see the demon's shoulders trembling visibly beneath the green finery, and watched as she unlocked her arms from their joints to clutch them tighter to her chest. Tiptoeing to Axarthys, Alucié tenuously placed a hand on the demon's back. Axarthys lifted her chin over her shoulder, to reveal silent tears spilling from the otherwise haughty, emotionless features of her face. She seethed through tears, "If there is a happy ending for your son and I, then I have no faith in this world."

"I do not know if he will be able to handle this news in his current state," the noblewoman gently implied.

"No," Axarthys agreed, "Nor did I ever intend to inform him. I request from you only one more night in his presence, my lady."

"Granted," Alucié responded, proposing, "Return to him as soon as you can. I shan't steal you from him for a moment longer."

The demon wandered off to the castle halls without thanks.

-

Author's Note

I completely rewrote this chapter at least three times, abandoned it for a few weeks, and then finally nailed it (without editing it for grammar, so please pardon any mechanical dupes :) ). As I'll be studying abroad for the rest of January, I wanted to post at least the first part of Diptych II so that I could finish rewriting and polishing the second half when I returned.

Thanks so much for your patience, and I hope you enjoyed. Happy New Year!

JCB Valah