Title: Not Yet by Lightning
Chapter: Nine
Author: Jade Sabre
Notes: Sorry this one is so late—school ended and I had to go home, and my internet at home is spotty at best. I hope to stay with the one-update-a-week schedule, but I can't make any promises.
This was one of the last chapters I wrote, and I decided to take it from a slightly different perspective. Here's the second of the Hoar chapters; let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.
9
Neeshka sat in the Phoenix Tail with a tankard of ale in front of her. It was early afternoon, the sun still high and bright in the sky, but she wasn't much for daytime, and with her schedule so reversed it made a kind of sense for her to be drinking this early. Besides, there wasn't really anything else to do. No one seemed to have any sort of plan or pressing agenda. Elanee was off communing with nature, as usual, while Grobnar spent all his time with his crazy machine, and Sand watched Qara as closely as possible; the sorceress seemed content to laze about the Keep, complaining about boredom but not taking any particular measures to counteract it. She didn't know or particularly care where Casavir was (oh, he was nice enough, but she didn't really like being in the same room with him for more than two minutes), and Khelgar was in the Tail with her, as was Bishop.
Shandra had been with them, until a few minutes previous, when she had shoved back her barstool and said, "I can't take this anymore."
Her voice, always loud, seemed unusually so in the stark silence of the near-empty inn. Neeshka had glanced at her, tail twitching, but hadn't really cared to say anything.
"I'm going to go find her. See what I can do."
"Good luck," Khelgar said, and Neeshka echoed him, but she wasn't really feeling up to any more enthusiasm. She felt horribly out of sorts, the way she had a few times before in her life, though never to this degree.
And so she sat with her ale, waiting for someone to come along and say that they needed her, that they wanted her, that there was a lock to be picked or a trap foreseen or something that she could actually work on, a problem she could actually solve. She wanted to feel useful, damn it, but no one seemed to have any clue what to do next. They just…sat.
The door to the Tail opened, and Neeshka knew instantly that the newcomer was just that, someone new, someone who had never been to the Keep before—from the careworn state of his cloak to the way he gawked at her as if he had never seen the horned, tailed girl walking around with the Captain of the whole place as an honored companion. She returned his rude stare with a lash of her tail—she didn't really care all that much anymore, but it was something to do—and then went back to her ale, offering him a cold shoulder.
He approached the bar. He was a youngish man, probably around her own age, his brown hair afflicted with a bowl-cut and his chin lacking the rugged perpetual shadow that Bishop maintained, instead sprinkled with sparse growth that begged desperately for a shave. Still, she thought his expression was open, honest, and figured that he'd be an easy mark if he looked like he had more than two coins to rub together. Which, as it came out in his ensuing conversation with Sal, he didn't.
He sat a fair distance away from her down the bar, on the other side from Khelgar, closer to where Bishop leaned against the wall and glowered uselessly at everyone. He looked inclined to make conversation, but Neeshka and the others did their best to indicate it wasn't particularly welcome. Well, she would've welcomed it—she was dying for something, anything new, anything to distract her from the fact that they were doing nothing—but it seemed disrespectful, somehow, like she hadn't gotten permission to speak. Not that she needed permission to speak, just that there was a moratorium on conversation that had been issued and which she didn't feel inclined to fight it.
Finally, though, the young man had enough. "This is Crossroad Keep, isn't it?" he said, glancing at the bar's other occupants.
"Aye," said Sal, washing a mug that he'd probably already washed three times that day.
"And Laura Farthing's the captain of it, yes?"
"Aye, and a good lass she is, too," Sal said, adding the latter as an afterthought.
The young man nodded, and the others, having said just about all there was to say on the subject of Crossroad Keep and its mistress (or at least all there was to say to an outsider, to someone who wasn't there and hadn't seen), went back to their ale.
"Do you know where I could find her? I'd like to talk to her."
"About what?" Khelgar said, gruffly, already suspicious. Neeshka laughed into her drink, pitying the poor fool who wanted to ask Laura for help getting his cat out of his tree, the poor fool who had to go through Khelgar's Dwarven Defense Mechanism first.
"Things," he said, looking surprised. "Stuff."
Bishop laughed, then, a sound that unhinged Neeshka's spine. She was no stranger to men of Bishop's breed—they excited her, in a way, as much as any man had managed to excite her (and Leldon had tried, but oh man, she had so many better things to be doing)—but Bishop had played his role so well it crept/creeped her out. "Good luck with that," he said.
"Why d'you say that?" the newcomer asked, clearly unnerved and just as clearly unwilling to be intimidated. Neeshka saw the telltale curl of Bishop's lip and sighed into her drink. Oh well. Might as well enjoy the show as not. At least it was something different. And male posturing would never cease to be amusing.
"Well, she's a very busy, important lady," Bishop said casually, still leaning against the wall. "She has a lot more to worry about than your things. And…stuff."
"I think she'll see me," he said, still putting a little too much effort into appearing not intimidated. Neeshka laughed to herself.
"Why?"
"I'm her friend. We grew up together." He had clearly played his trump card; his entire voice was smug as he finished, "My name's Bevil. Bevil Starling. And I'd like to know where Laura is."
"Starling…" Bishop laughed again, softly this time, and said, "You hear about your brother Lorne?"
Neeshka shifted in her seat, immediately reevaluating the stranger. He wasn't scrawny by any means, but it was a little difficult to imagine that this guy was related to that huge berserker. Still, it meant he could be dangerous. She wondered how Bishop knew that in the first place.
"Yeah, I did," he said. "I'm not my brother. I—"
"You hear about your mother?"
The kid finally took the hint, and backed down a notch; his voice was much more uncertain as he said, "What about my mother?"
Bishop shrugged. "Just that there's a reason that it's so hard to get a hold of the Captain these days."
"What does that have to do with my mother?"
"It has to do with the fact that she's dead." He didn't linger on the word, but Neeshka could see a bit of satisfaction in his eyes as he watched the younger man recoil instantly. "Very dead, in fact. Just like everyone else who lived in your little West Harbor."
Bevil stared at him, and then twisted in his seat to look at Sal, who merely nodded, and then at Neeshka, who shrugged and offered him an apologetic grimace. Khelgar offered his tankard in a brief salute and proceeded to gulp down half of it. Realizing that he wasn't going to get anything out of them, he returned to his dubious information source and said, "The whole village…?"
"Destroyed. Razed, even. It's not very pretty." Bishop had a knack for sounding like he thought exactly the opposite of what he was saying.
He absorbed this news for a minute, sitting heavily (he struck her as being very heavy, the kind of person who couldn't step lightly if their life depended on it) on his stool, before finally saying, "How?"
"Well, everyone's got enemies. Farthing's enemies just happen to be a little more powerful than most. And destructive."
"And Laura?"
For just a moment, Bishop's cocky, self-assured aloofness vanished. He covered it by saying nastily, "Well, no one's seen her in a week," then recovered himself and said simply, "She…didn't take it well."
No, Neeshka thought to herself. No, she really didn't.
o-o-o
o-o-o
As soon as they went through the portal, Neeshka knew something was wrong. Something about the entire place felt wrong, felt…evil, and she knew it was evil because it was tugging on her blood like no call she'd ever felt before—and she'd met her fair share of demons trying to reclaim her as one of their own. It made her horns throb and her tail twitch, pulling her by invisible strings. She blinked and looked around, trying to push it out of her mind, but their surroundings only increased her agitation.
The place—wherever they were—was a scene from one of the Hells—a village destroyed, burned to the ground, the charred houses still smoking. They stood on the outskirts, at the top of a hill, overlooking the little undulations in the earth that folded into miniature valleys once fruitful, now little more than heaps of ruined wood and stone. The sky was the same grey as the smoke, the air thick with whatever magic had wrought this destruction. Neeshka pulled her tail close, unable to control its lashings.
Shandra broke the silence. "What is this place? It looks like a ruined village, but…it looks…" It was as if she couldn't bring herself to say what she was thinking.
"It is." Bishop's voice was clipped, a marked difference from his usual drawl. "We've been here before. Haven't we?"
Neeshka followed his glance to their leader, who stood motionless, staring down at the wreckage. Laura's face betrayed absolutely nothing, so it was left to Casavir to say, "This is…West Harbor?"
"What's left of it," Shandra said. "Why did we come here?"
"Know that this is not where we were meant to come," Zhjaeve said; even the gith sounded unnerved. "I do not know what has caused this—"
"Demons. Devils," Neeshka said, knowing it to be true as soon as she said it. "Not shadows. Hit by the Lower Planes."
"What on earth would the Lower Planes—Laura?"
The Captain had finally moved: one step, and then another, jerky, mechanical motions, heading down the hill and into the village proper. Neeshka glanced around the others' expressions; Shandra looked bewildered, and Casavir pained, while Zhjaeve—well, who cared what she felt, if anything—and Bishop was so withdrawn he almost rivaled the human cleric's impassivity. She shrugged, not particularly wanting to immerse herself in the demon-soaked debris, but not entirely willing to let Laura continue on alone.
Casavir made the choice to follow, and they fell into line behind him, silently stepping in their leader's footprints as she wound her way around the back of the village, skirting houses and following fences until she went up another hill to stop and stare at the remains of the house perched at the hill's summit. It had once been two stories, but the upper one had collapsed, and the lower one shattered under its weight, the wooden supports snapped in half and further weakened from the flames. Neeshka shivered again: the sky was turning darker by the minute, the air rapidly cooling as whatever fires had been there dwindled, leaving only the tang of sulfur in the air.
"Why are we here?" Shandra repeated.
"I do not know," Zhjaeve answered again, turning to her leader. "This is your birth village?"
Laura stared at the house and didn't answer.
"I'd take that as a yes," Bishop said, his expression still completely neutral, his eyes watching Laura with more concentration than Neeshka had ever seen him exhibit towards anything. She didn't blame him; if she hadn't been so—so—wiggly with the demon taint, she would have tried to do something. As it was, she tried to keep from giving into her urge to add insult to injury and set fire to the smoking structure.
"You were born here?" Shandra said. "You're a Mere kid?"
Laura responded in Elvish; or maybe she wasn't responding to Shandra at all, because there was something plaintive and young in her voice as she called out to the…house, from all appearances. There was, unsurprisingly, no response, and she bowed her head, at it was then that Neeshka noticed, with some curiosity, that the cleric was trembling. She gripped her elbows and stood there, shaking, and probably wouldn't have moved again if Zhjaeve had not spoken.
"Are there any Illefarn ruins near this village? We must be moving. Know that lingering here—"
Laura turned, sharply but with great deliberateness, and looked as if she was about to speak. But instead she strode past them, apparently intent on cutting through the village in order to reach the swamp on the other side. Neeshka couldn't help glancing at the wreckage as they passed; here, two bodies, young men bearing clubs; there, across the river, slaughtered animals, their eyes open and glassy even as their entrails spilled out in some sort of bizarre fortune-telling ritual. There was nothing deliberate about this destruction, aside from its wantonness, if it could be deliberate in its wholesale chaos.
Zhjaeve repeated her question, just as Shandra demanded again to know why they were here, and Zhjaeve started to answer something about interference and great evil when Laura stopped, so suddenly Shandra nearly crashed into her. The cleric reacted instantly, shoving the other woman away from her, so that all her companions instinctively stayed a few feet back, lost and not a little afraid. But she didn't move; she just stared down at the ground, at whatever had caught her eye, her hands clenched into shaking fists as her side.
"Watch it, she's going to—" Bishop spoke, but no one comprehended; muttering curses at them all, he shoved through the group and managed to catch Laura just as her knees buckled and her mace fell from her limp grip. Something which was remarkably like pity, but on Bishop was more likely hatred, crossed his face, and then he slapped her with his free gloved hand.
"Stop that!" Casavir said, finally springing into action, stepping forward too late to save the swooning lady but perhaps in time to spare her further indignities. "She has merely fainted. It is not to be—"
"Then you hold her," Bishop snapped, but Casavir, rather than taking her, blocked Bishop's second slap. "She's got to wake up somehow—"
Neeshka saw Laura crumple in on herself, shaking violently, and Bishop freed his hand from Casavir's grip in order to support her, wrapping both arms around her waist. "You fucking useless—"
And then she screamed.
Neeshka had never heard a sound like that before in her life—it sounded as though someone had reached inside the girl with a barbed hook, latching onto her anguish and pulling it out as slowly as possible, jostling it against her innards, piercing and bruising, drawing out every primal feeling within. Casavir reached out to lay his hands on her—to do anything to stop the pain—but Bishop took a step back, jerking her away. On the ground behind him lay a woman's body—a grey-haired woman, though beyond that she was too much a part of the mud and the smoke to be discernable. Thunder rumbled in a sky as black as the look on Bishop's face. The noise stopped for the space of a breath, and then resumed; the ranger planted himself as she screamed, his arms acting as a fulcrum as she doubled over, her feet kicking against his shins.
"Hit her!" Bishop snarled, and Casavir, dumbstruck, did exactly as he said; his slap lacked the force of Bishop's malice, but the harsher steel of his gauntlets seemed to penetrate the fog of—pain, and gods only knew what else. She gasped and looked up, her face blurred by grief and twisted with confusion. She stood under her own power and spun around to discover who was holding her; it looked as though Bishop said something, because she snarled and jerked as far away as she could, considering he wasn't loosening his grip.
And then she cried, as though she thought he might know, "Why?"
"Doesn't have to be a reason," he answered, his expression almost as angry as hers.
"Why?" He didn't answer; she twisted and he let her go, but she didn't even seem to notice what she was doing, simply repeating, "Why?"
"No one's got the answer to that," Shandra muttered, looking as disturbed as Neeshka felt.
"Fuck that!" Laura snapped, whirling on them; they shrank away, and Bishop tapped her shoulder, as if to redirect her rage. It worked; she turned back to him, still more angry than grieved, and screamed, "Why? Why did I bother? Why the fuck did I leave? Why bother when I'm just going to—why—" She threw back her head and howled, "My god, tell me why the fuck I should keep trying!"
The lightning bolt hit so close that Neeshka could feel her hair standing on end, her every cell jolted to a new level of awareness. The tangy ozone washed away the sulfur; the white light blinded her to everything, leaving only blank brightness in its place. She was cold, so cold, and so she hugged herself while she blinked herself back from blindness.
She saw it in the space of two blinks—Laura, standing rigid, and a man behind her who she resolutely ignored; then, for the briefest moment, Laura sobbing, and the man wrapping his arms around her while she cried. When she looked again, there was only Laura and Bishop, and Casavir; but Bishop looked distinctly unsettled, shifting from foot to foot, and Neeshka knew it hadn't been him who had tried to comfort the Captain in her grief.
As for Laura, she stood as implacably as she had on their arrival, but shock had given way to determination. Neeshka stared at her, still unnerved, concentrating so hard that the first raindrop made her jump. Bishop laughed at her, a rude, out-of-place sound, and thunder rumbled, almost in response.
Laura turned to Zhjaeve; when she spoke, her voice was as quiet and calm as always. "My father hid the shard in ruins out in the swamp. It's not far. Follow me."
They did, of course. They always did. Frankly, where else was there to go?
o-o-o
o-o-o
"The whole place. Completely destroyed." Bevil seemed to be having trouble taking it in.
"Yeah," Bishop said. "Lots of burned buildings. Smell of sulfur in the air. A case study in destroyed villages."
Neeshka wondered at the lack of bite in his voice—she had no doubt that Bishop was mocking this kid, but he was doing a much better job of hiding it than he normally did. She felt sorry for the guy, but didn't have anything to say that would make the picture any better.
"I…" He shook his head; Sal refilled his tankard without being asked. "I just went away for a few weeks. I—did—they're all dead?"
"As far as I could tell. Didn't really get a chance to investigate." There was the sardonic grin. Neeshka breathed an internal sigh of relief.
"Didn' look like they put up much of a fight, from what Casavir says," Khelgar offered. "Probably didn' have th' time. So it was quick."
Bevil's eyes had taken on the haunted look Neeshka had seen in Laura's eyes, right before the cleric detached herself from the group and disappeared within the confines of her keep. Her tail twitched in sympathy. He was probably making a list of all the people he had known, and how they were all dead now. Well, Laura wasn't dead, but nobody had dared to disturb her—
"You are going to sit down, and you are going to get a drink, and you are going to be social." Shandra's voice had all the force of a kid playing at military commander, and all the whine as well. Impossibly, she was propelling someone in front of her as she entered the bar, steering the other woman past Bishop's now-amused stare as she continued to lecture. "Brooding doesn't do anybody any good, you know. Drink first, then—"
Bevil stood up so fast he overturned his bar stool. The sound distracted the two women; Shandra frowned in confusion, while Laura's face stayed as blank as it had been, staring at him. "Can I…help you?" Shandra said, peering over her captain's shoulder.
"Laura?" He was so pathetic Neeshka almost wanted to aw; his eyes threatening to fill with tears, his lower lip trembling.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and finally said, "How?"
Shandra looked over at Neeshka, who shrugged, while Bevil said, "Your father took me along on a scouting mission—"
"Father?"
"We only split up yesterday; he sent me here to see you, while he went home, but this man just told me—" He didn't seem to see Laura glance at Bishop, who shrugged, that same mocking pity on his face, an expression that made Neeshka shudder "—and now I don't—"
She reached out and took his hand between hers; it occurred to Neeshka that it was the first time she'd ever seen the captain voluntarily offer physical comfort to anyone. "Come with me. We can talk." She looked over her shoulder at Shandra and asked, a faint smile on her face, "Is that social enough to satisfy you?"
"I—yeah," Shandra said, still looking utterly confused, and then Laura practically dragged her childhood friend—her only childhood friend—out the door, as if hoping to escape before everyone realized she had tears in her eyes. Neeshka had seen them, if only because she had never seen them there before.
"Who's he?" Shandra asked, sitting back down next to Neeshka and picking up Bevil's abandoned refill.
"Friend," Neeshka said with a shrug.
"Survivors," Bishop said, scowling into his mug. "That's just sloppy, leaving survivors."
"Lucky, you mean," Khelgar said. "The lass's finally talkin' again. Maybe we can do somethin' about th' place now."
"Well thank the gods, by all means," the ranger said, slamming his mug down on the bar. "I've spent too long in this damn place anyway. Going for some fresh air."
"Don't care!" Neeshka called after him, then finally took a swig from her ale and turned to Shandra. "Where'd you find her?"
"The chapel. Don't think she's left there since we got back. She's got to be starving."
"More likely thirsty." Neeshka smiled to herself; at Shandra's blank look, she said, "For revenge?"
"Oh." Shandra looked at her ale. "I don't know if I want to be around to see that."
"Cheer up," Neeshka said. "Maybe you won't be." At Shandra's raised eyebrow, she shrugged and said, "Maybe we'll have found you a new farmhouse by then."
"I'll drink to that," Shandra said, and they crashed their tankards together, and drank.