Warning: Contains Viconia and Xzar sleeping together.
—
The casters stumbled like drunkards in the dark; they weren't faking it.
"Enough spells for today, Mummy. I need to go to sleep. Please let me go to sleep." The mad mage bit on his thumb.
"I need a bath," Viconia complained, wringing her cloak of brain's fluid. "So do you. So do you, mage. I tire. I start to stumble." She clutched at the mad wizard's arm, which didn't help her.
"Svirfneblin village, fools," Montaron grunted. "Anything in the dark—ye said as much—ain't safe—"
The pair of fools fell against each other, collapsing in a dark corner between narrow stone. Viconia waved a hand vaguely in the air.
"Shar give us...Shar give us shield for the night..." She closed her fingers and let her hand flop down like a dead fish.
It half looked like seamless rock covered where they lay. Montaron stared down at the two of them. In the time he'd glanced away to check the illusion they'd already closed eyes and lay on top of each other, cloaks tangled together and breathing lightly as if they slept like children. He drew the swords and sat cross-legged to keep watch for a long night.
—
"You're fortunate I pointed the way to water, males." Viconia wrung out her long hair. "Are you finished washing my garments, sakphul? I realise it was cold, but I could not tolerate your stench a moment longer without strangling myself."
Felt slightly better without the brain fluid drying and pulling down his clothes. He passed back her cloak and dress, taking the drow clothes on the black shape he still hadn't lost. The mad mage stared at his own reflection in the pale underground river, tracing where his markings ought to be and sneezing every so often from the cold.
"We've got to get rid of this, Monty," he whined. "We're not really drow."
Yeah, ye wanted your own body and the skills with it and the way ye'd shaped it on your own—and the way to the bloody silver lizard. He wondered if Benrulon'd done what he wanted in the drow city by now. He wouldn't be surprised if they'd been gone months under the squidmouths. Times had buzzed in their head; and they were almost free. The mad mage washed over the demon mirror carefully and belted his robe.
"Ye've one chance, mad mage," Montaron said. "Screw it up and I'll stab ye first."
"We should," Viconia purred, her dress still only halfway on. He could almost taste what they could do.
—
Adalon's lair was, he'd guess, thirty feet high and closed, for her duty was to guard the Underdark; and at least a hundred and fifty deep. Holypated knightlings might wear out their left hands patting their own backs for facing dragons in their lairs, but the truth was that if ye wanted to fight a dragon it was better to do it in a place with a roof. 'Course, the lair was also the home, and with mage-casting dragons ye never knew what surprises lay ahead.
He'd fought a formerly-sleeping wyvern or few with the idiot mage. Not half the size of the silver thing; and their hoards of dead carcasses weren't anything like dragons either.
Step up the game; and take from the bastards all we can.
"I am aware you defeated the yochlol," Adalon said, lowering that vast silvery head and staring with her big white eyes. "The Bhaalchild achieved the rest, and told me that he did not travel with you."
Suspicion, most likely, crept into her eyes. He wouldn't know if she used some subtler form of mind-magic than the squids.
"But he told ye he'd met us. Nothing much personal 'twixt us." Mayhap if he'd known of the asylum; but that was only if skinmask-mage and bloodsucker had told him, and they weren't the type to say much.
"My eggs were returned. The handmaids of the Spider Queen were denied." The white teeth smiled. "You have a demonic artefact you took from them. Return it to me. I will see it does no harm."
"I would rather not do that, lady Adalon. And after I broke it and ate it and mended it and gave to it too," Xzar said. "And after I know a recipe for..."
"Do not think I do not see what lurks in you!" Adalon said. "I gave you tolerance for your deed and it lasts no further. Go," she finished, and cold breath spilt from her mouth.
Silver dragons fight with ice born from their gullets. They've breath that can stop you moving. They've extra talons on the tips of their wings. Thick scales. Resistant to castings, their own and others'. Four sets of claws and one set of teeth and one long tail. Soft eyes and tongue, and softer scales in carefully hidden places over the lower belly. This one knew spells herself.
The mad mage's contingency hit. A flock of cheap skeletons turned up from old bones. They all got faster. A blast ripped through the dragon to make finger-wiggling show on her and a second blast was timed to take down the spell protections. And the mad wizard's eyes whitened with magesight. Viconia's casting felt hot and spike-edged and added cheap shieldings. They scattered.
Adalon's huge feet beat down in the cavern. Her wings flew like giant razors through the air and her teeth met close to Montaron's head. Get a clear shot to the eye with poison-marked crossbow, he'd thought, but the feet came close to him and he tried to slash into the scales. It barely took. Xzar got another spell off while skeletons were crushed below the dragon's bulk. Something on the silver scales blurred out. Montaron stabbed between the scales on the talons and made nothing more than a pinprick to it. Adalon's long head snapped after him, but the speed held. He ran past the white tiles of her lair, trying to get her to tangle herself. The tail—watch for the tail—
The tail-spike sheared above his head. He flung himself aside. Out of Viconia's hands came a long black bolt of power he'd never seen her use before, and it left a scorch-mark the size of a barrel-opening on Adalon's left flank. She'd gotten far back from the dragon, but it breathed out a pyramid of cold air at her. The scream meant she was still alive when the blast ended, and he nicked at the muscle behind the dragon's foot. Hobgoblin battlecries echoed from the mad wizard's summoning. Arrows bounced off scales. He opened up some and started to make the dragon bleed; if he got far enough he'd cripple her foot. She whirled on him, white eyes terrible.
The green light of the spell he'd told the mad wizard not to use—'cept in times like this—hit the dragon's face, and gave her pain. The scar went barely deeper than Viconia's strike.
"Impossible," Adalon spoke, turning eyes to the mad mage, "brave, evil ones, foolish ones. Be still, now; for me..."
Breath that stopped limbs spilled from her mouth, near colourless but for faint white in it, covering Xzar. And the demon mirror was in his hands, filmed with the fluid of the Elder Brain. Viconia, a distance away, watched the mad mage in satisfaction; for he still moved, and the handy preparatory casting she'd done held on.
"Have a look," Xzar said, standing his ground. The tail smacked a hobgoblin, and pulped the creature's chest against a wall of the lair.
"The demonic artefact. It shows the real shape of one. There is no truth I have to fear," Adalon said. Ice rimed her mouth and built in her throat, and the wide moon eyes took a glance at the silver mirror in the mad wizard's arms.
"But are there possibilities you fear?" Xzar said; and the dragon fell into the mirror, and the wrap of the tail and the beat of the wings pulled them all spiralling into the silver void by her. It was all light, and mad-magery, and going wrong.
...And Adalon reared with all the wrath of a trueborn dragon, and rose to the ceiling of her lair; in the earthquake stone rained, and the mad mage and Viconia took their last breath the moment before large stone covered them, and the claw cut Montaron open in an instant—
...And the mad mage's spell never took the dragon Adalon, and the ice breath of the dragon cracked the mirror from side by side, and the mad wizard froze the moment before he died; and then Adalon's spell took them all down to the Nine Hells—
...And Adalon spat out a second rain of the paralzying gas, for Viconia's spells were long since stripped, and for she was a noble silver dragon in place of a tormenting red or green, she secured the deaths of the interlopers quickly and once more took her children under her wing to sing them songs—
...And the fibres of the Elder Brain were lengthy and wound over and over each other, like a plaited rope stores more than a string; and in them unfolded the possibilities of the next moment, all at once in the shards of the yochlol and the shield of the tyrant and the sparks of old mind...
"In the pages of a book, Adalon," Xzar said, "there is some possibility that leads inexorably to your death today and my dragon's blood spell components."
"Power," Viconia hissed, and Montaron thought of the sort of silver that came with gold.
—The dragon roared. The dragon struck. The dragon was ice. The dragon stilled others in a breath. The dragon enspelled and earthquaked and clawed. Ten cases, fifty, dragon's victories winning through.
—A perfect shot, high on a ledge, Adalon going after Viconia, not paying attention to the halfling who didn't look like it. The dragon's voice turned high for a cry as if it'd hurt her; the vast eye blinked and cried large tears, and the dragon roared for vengeance while the barbed tip of the bolt worked its way to the brain—
—The spell weakened the dragon's chest. Viconia's casting sharpened the blades. He was running under her, and it so happened that the blades bit at the right spot for silver's blood to spill. Even dragons had their share of thick blood-vessels that burst open and could not easily be staunched; and he'd opened the place for that. Spells lanced through the air to hold it open, and he hacked at the dragon's open heart—
—And instead of a mirror of possibility the demon mirror was a shield, and the cold from the dragon's throat was turned to spears of Lloth's black web that returned to bind her mouth and bring her down, and for the guardian's death the Queen of the Demonweb Pits set forth her drow to ravage the surface and take back their rightful place—
"Do it," the proud silver said, raising her neck and baring it in doing so, "do it and do not delay it; and know your own—"
Silver lightning stormed over the mirror's surface.
—
The mad mage's face—or not so mad, any more—was clean, young-looking without the markings, and blank, carefully blank. Around the next corner of the cave they'd find their enemies ready. She'd changed Xzar, made him go quiet and biddable by her; he didn't babble or make a nuisance of himself any more. Xzar followed on the drow's orders, not quite the way Montaron did himself—much quieter, nothing but shuffling and spellcasting when Viconia said. She'd managed to take the mad wizard to bed and get her power over him. He'd helped her prison him, figuring that'd make the mad mage easier to keep.
She paused and brushed the tips of her fingers across the mad mage's cheek, and though there was terror in his eyes at her touch he was too much the slave by now to dare to back away. If'n they fought well there wouldn't be punishments after.
"Fire," the drow whispered, "and then drain their divine casters of power; then speed us to finish them; and summon gnolls to our side..."
Xzar nodded quickly as if there was no other choice. Then the battlecry came and the black-clad figures fell on them and tried to kill. Montaron could see himself surrounded, see the drow trying to beat her way out. The mad mage's face was pale and the spells came slowly one by one, and when the battle went ill there was too much fear on his face to do anything other than ordered. He got stabbed in the back, spears running all of them through, not fast enough and no sudden imagination to change things—
—
Anti-magic fields made up for nob mages and the like only prickled his skin as much as going out before a thunderstorm. Tattooed Xzar stood limp between two hefty soldier types and Montaron thrust up his chin to take it like a man.
The gallows was well-built for its kind. Solid wood. Thick tarred hanging-ropes. Two ready spaces on them. Grim-faced soldiers with muscles bulging like hog shanks. The sentencing'd been read out in court, all of it; and the stoneface judge'd put on a black cap after. Only a day between verdict and execution.
First the blasted wouldbe do-gooders read out the pretty parchment scroll of crimes, when the truth was folk gathered just to watch the death. He'd spit on the nearest gawking eye if he could. It wasn't a short list and the guard captain took his time on it, wearing a plumed helmet with a long red-dyed feather curling out of it like an old cock's wattle. Spittle flew out of his pox-scarred face. Nothing they'd not heard before.
"—and sentenced to death in accordance with our law. Take the prisoners."
The stairs swayed below him and Montaron stalked up with put-on bravado. The black-masked hangman with a breath that stink of onions lowered the rope to his neck and stood him dead-centre on the trapdoor. A grey-robed Ilmatari gave the nod to it; they'd turned down damned last rites. The knot lay firm at the base of his neck. The mad mage bothered to struggle at the last, biting and kicking with lunatic's strength. Gave the crowd something to jeer at. A rotten egg flew through the air for them. They beat the mad mage into place and pulled on the lever.
And watching, the same guard-captain, Viconia draped around him in the crowd, the drow cloaked and her hands running over the captain's body to save herself. She looked up at the prisoners, showing no expression in her eyes and refusing to turn away from the sight. Her new man stroked her cheek.
Montaron saw it as if from a distance, the noose and the final crack. The mad mage dangling with robes in the air, head bent an impossible angle to the left, dead eyes almost bursting from his skull. Then himself, the same bad end he'd expected all along, long drop ending with a sudden stop, body swaying to and fro in the wind like so much refuse...
—
They moved along with wealth and power and the black tower took shape in unclaimed lands. Rising glassy high like Zhentil Keep's own architecture, above settlement and town of people and merchants and farmers under the thumb of the tyrant. They settled down. Terror conquered the nearby land. The Mage-Lord Xzar ruled in his black magic and evil genius.
"Humble advisors, when the Mage-Lord cares to listen," a white-robed Viconia said. "And—unwilling concubine; at times..." Her tears were thoroughly false.
Heroes came and challenged the dark Mage-Lord in his black tower, and failed; ignoring his cowardly council behind him in the shadows...
"Wheat production has increased by half this year," Viconia said in a small velvet-walled room, studying plain scrolls on a low table between them. "The mining operation wants to open negotiations with the Shieldspar dwarves. I think we should allow the dwen'del to deal with us as if we were a legitimate kingdom; they are ready to treat."
"Get Almorgan to go to them. He's half their blood," Montaron said to her. "The Shieldspars have a little secret contact going on with Jameson's trade ring, and that's a bit of knowledge to keep in the hole."
"Later, arrange for one of their shipments to Jameson to go astray; and make sure Jameson acts accordingly to punish them," Viconia said. "We can offer near as favourable a dealing. For now, at any rate."
"The Darkhold caravans got a good deal from Sememmon," Montaron said, going through a scroll of his own. "Market for nightshade's high. Should get one more field for it, trade in the dreaming 'shrooms."
"And look at these plans for my temple's new wing," Viconia said, and threw over an architectural drawing with lots of black and purple to it. "What do you think? Majestic and glorious, is it not?"
"Oh, sure," he said, and she mock-frowned and leaned over the table above him.
—
The woman came up to him, but he wouldn't have known her in a crowd. Mostly because she was wearing Viconia's bootboy's skin.
"I take people's skin," Raissa announced, "I am Raissa Skindancer whether I wanted to deny it. I still want to deny it. But because I knew the love of Tiris I knew I could not stand by when cruel murderers acted; and I do good by using my powers to punish the wicked. I dance in people's skin to save the world.
"And you," she said, "though you helped me, have done enough evil that I cannot let it lie. By skin shredding in motion, I have come to see you gone!"
He'd taken the time in her little speech to set up a poisoned throwing dagger. It ate into her flesh though she fetched up a handy antidote from her belt. They fought and it lasted long; but in the end he'd not prepared for an enemy who knew how to take his skin. Raissa had fought a lot of evildoers over the years, weak peasant girl no longer. She saw him dead and she took over his skin; and then the mad mage's last words were a surprised cry to Monty, and Viconia taken and her skin flayed from her the same—
And Raissa Skindancer left as quiet as a thief in the night, searching out the next murderer to use their skin.
—
It was plain rock made in the vast face of an old man with little things about him that weren't human, but blasted if you could list and narrow them out. Chin a touch too long if ye turned your head to the right. Nose a bit too narrow to stare up at it. Eyes open and staring and dead like it'd been made off a death mask instead of a living thing. They stood on the right cheek of it, and beyond the face of the statue lay only the black void of space. Someone'd taken Toril itself away, was the first mad thought; and only the pain of the long silver spears pricking into them made it seem real.
"You killed magic here," Xzar said sadly. Book and components had been stripped from his robes.
"You killed gods here!" Viconia snapped. "There is nothing here, nothing! Shar—"
The yellow-skinned warriors of the Gith stood around them.
"You betrayed us by abandoning us to the old masters," said one of the gith they'd left behind in the illithid gladiator pits. "You have been judged guilty by law. Remain here on the stone corpse of Destaranzai in retribution for your crime." She touched a thick necklace, and without appeal the githyanki vanished.
The gith lived on the stone remains of dead gods here in the planes. This was a small one as dead god went, falling headlong into the distant void. The air was thin. Nothing grew or lived on him. They waited, and in the void the same prisoning came to them as they'd tried to doom the gith, forever and ever...
—
It was the Mage-Lord's dark spiky tower once more, and pulling faces in her black glass reflection was a little girl.
A gaunt, patchy-skinned little girl, with bony shoulders, a nose too small for her face, and a tangle of white hair that wouldn't lie down. But the kid giggled and poked her tongue out at herself as if she were happy enough, and scrunched her face together to wriggle her pointy ears by themselves. Part-drow from her looks and on the short side.
Then he saw himself behind her, older than he'd been in the room with the scrolls, and looking to have started to put on a stomach.
Curse ye, wide-bellied fool, have some sense and pick a fight or two! Montaron thought. Ye can't expect to sneakthief or keep breath that way...
But the other-him looked content. Satisfied and smug and happy for all his slackness. Viconia wore hair marked by a few yellowing streaks up in a bun. She called out something he couldn't quite hear and the girl rushed to her side.
It was with a sense of growing horror that he figured out the poor kid had his eyes, and not in the sense the mad mage would use the term. She was still shorter than him and the other-him took her hand like a father—
—
"This has ended, wael,fool," Viconia said, and the dagger she threw at him showed she meant it; and the him in the vision scowled the same back at her.
"Fine, wench. Make your living on your knees or not as ye prefer. And pray I don't throw back."
Another dagger went an inch above her shoulder.
"Come on, Monty. Zhent business awaits. We can take care of it with just us again, like old times, can't we?" the mad mage begged, and Montaron turned on him.
"What makes ye think I'll stick with you? Zhent business—there's else I can do than drag a lunatic fool like you, mad wizard—"
Separate ways it was, and that didn't go so bad; Xzar stuck himself in a lab and did a few things that the high-ups figured had their uses, and Montaron killed Harpers and fought Zhent wars; and then a Sharran temple got in ill with a Baneite high in the Keep, maybe something because the high priestess didn't feel like shagging him.
On a battlefield all black mud, Zhentilar getting up, the mad wizard bringing up skeletons to put down the cult, and the high priestess screaming as she tried to swing her flail at their heads; the poison head of it cut in him as his own blade made her bleed, and by Viconia's hand the mad wizard had fallen for once and all first...
—
And again he was back in the Mage-Lord's tower, Viconia and the daughter and sitting around trying to teach her to play stone-tower jumps. The kid laughed when she knocked down a triple-soldier by mistake, pieces scattering the board, but then she moved her roguestone in a sideways double that beat up six of his low pieces and made him proud. She clapped her hands. Her mother patted her head.
There came a knock on the door while they set up the pieces for another game, and a human woman in Shar's colours stepped up to whisper in Viconia's ear. The child lifted up a red weaponpiece to place down.
"Kessilvyabah," whispered the name in Viconia's ear. An old demon—demons who never forgot—and then there was an obsidian dagger in Viconia's side and a yochlol-drow standing by her, the shape shifting to Lloth's colouring—
He stood up and tried to stab the handmaid dead with his beltknife, but the next moment the thing left to the inner planes. The child tried to stop her mother's wounds while Viconia tried her chanting, all her most powerful spells to slow the spider's poison in her blood. None of it worked.
He shouted at the mad wizard in his lab to hurry up his research for a cure, but though Xzar gave himself no sleep none of it did any good. Angry drow goddesses left their claws, or perhaps ungrateful Shar had let her go in spite of all she'd done for her—Sharran creed said not to hope or ever be happy— Curse their names from dawn 'till dusk and that did nothing, only spilled blood mattered.
Viconia hung on for four days with chants from her priestesses and alchemy to delay it. Talked; spent time with her family; and the end came slowly and painfully while she whispered her last words.
Then other-him was standing, armoured, at the head of a group of adventurers, and the child left behind with the mad mage. And deep in the Underdark he travelled despite the girl left behind, and Montaron saw himself burying steel in a drow's stomach at the last in vengeance...
—
It was hot and dry in desert lands to the south, yellow sands below their feet and silence falling across the valley. He felt certain this wasn't the same as the last. A dark shape ran through the sunlight, and magery fell on them and confused them. A summoned demon screamed. Blood fell and drenched the sands, and then armoured feet marched by.
"Hello, betrayers," said a youth's harshened voice, and blackness fell across the sands.
—
The mirror broke to shards. Its times had run their course. They killed the silver dragon by the second way shown. Adalon did not die easily or cravenly, but she fell as any other of the ones they'd murdered.
—