The worst might have been the unending, drip, drip, drip, from the mouldy pipe in the upper right-hand corner of the ceiling that none of us could have reached in our chains.

And that we were alone in the dark and the cold and the endless damp and the disgusting mess, and it might well have already been an eternity of imprisonment down here...

It might as well have taken that time to lose our minds.

Imoen was in the corner far from me. Iron chained her hands behind her back and her breathing above the leather gag forced in her mouth was dreadful in its tortured struggles. At first I screamed for someone to come to save her from suffocation, but the metal above us was thick or none cared. She still seemed to breathe. She was hurt and I couldn't help her at all...

Viconia was beside her, gagged as well; but she had bitten through the thick leather enough to curse us all many times. She seemed to sleep, or to try to. She could not make the right gestures to call on any spell of Shar, and her holy symbol had been ripped from her neck, cutting her skin. She had complained that the wounds grew infected, and probably spoke the truth. She was in pain.

Shar-Teel was weighted down by as many chains as the three of us combined, as if she was feared like a wild tiger. Her hands behind her back and bolted to the floor; ankles to knees pulled down by heavy metal and iron balls; and a thick collar as if for an angry bull. She'd tried to break free by strength alone, and failed. I could reach her by the tip of my fingers, the chain cutting to my wrists; she shook me off when I dared to lay a hand on her, her muscles tense and twisted like iron themselves. But at least to reach out to her reminded that something besides us still existed.

I sat manacled to the wall of the lowest-tilting part of the cell. The chains were bolted to the wall, and turned tight enough to burn and chafe at the least movement. My wrists are smaller than most men's; in what state of starvation were the prisoners here meant to be kept? I had seen pale flashes that had perhaps been bone below green slime in the faint light when we had been lowered in; bone could be sharpened for rough dagger or crude and unlikely lockpick, but none were close enough for even that. Perhaps they were rat rather than human. There were sounds of rats. Then there were rats trying to bite us.

Please, get us out of this hell-hole. I wasn't listening when the slaves of Cloakwood called that.

Mould grew in the damp across boots and clothes. It had to have been days, and we couldn't move. For as long as we lived we'd never be clean again. Twice in all the time the small cover of the cell had opened, and a cracked pitcher and rotting bread were lowered, by no human who seemed to be able to hear our cries. This was a cellar, a sewer, part of the drains. Water filled with who knew what flowed around our feet every so often, and though my throat was burning I still had stopped myself drinking from its stench... Soaked wet, our flesh swelled pale in the dark, and there was no way to be dry. Or clean. I'd go mad again.

Some...hours, perhaps—at the least hours ago, for sometimes unconsciousness less black than the cell took me and then more time that I did not know of passed, Imoen had used her fire spell even through the gag. She shone a single spark of light in the darkness, to show faces and the glinting of fire upon iron; and then the gases had exploded in her corner. Her hands must have been damaged, her chains heated and hurting, and not long after that an additional coldness had come down over the cell... The pain I felt must be nothing compared to her cries through the gag, and what had been done stopped me from that...sorcery. The chains rubbed against the wrist; and they had been forged rather than locked together, so we would stay here and we might as well be dead already than slowly rot and have toes and fingers fall off first followed by feet and legs and arms, a weeping head on a helpless body forever...

This was no cell; the Flaming Fist had prison reforms, years ago, and cells like this are not supposed to exist. It would be called an oubliette. If Faldorn and Ajantis and the group of those who sought to save the city had not come below the thick metal and the dark trapdoor by now, then they would never come. Shar-Teel and Viconia knew that well. It didn't matter how many hours it had been, because the number of hours to go would always be an eternity to go. In the storming of the prison in the Tethyrian capital during the civil war, some prisoners had been there for eight decades. I couldn't bear it for that long. I couldn't hear Imoen trying to breathe for that long.

Outside there was a war with Amn.

There was an uneasy dream amidst the sewer-stench, and in it Imoen's face. A crowd of Imoens who ran through the city streets, summoning beautiful butterflies and bearing gloriously transmuted swords of light and casually reaching into pockets and street-stalls. A sunny day under blue sky and no smogs. No signs of the war.

And in the midst of them was a monster who didn't speak in my voice no matter how I tried. An ogre smashing with its club. A kobold who deserved to be hunted down. A threatening gnoll with breath of rotten meat. An ettercap mother who gave birth to a thousand mutated children with twisted faces in eggshell-fluid. A spider clicking black mandibles together, its carapace green in venom-patterns that poisoned to death. A long-dead ghoul with shattered memories of the time before its soul was lost. A wolfwere howling to tear the flesh of a girl who owned a dolly. And a monster who killed children in the dark bottom of mines; and a doppelganger whose bones and flesh shifted to take the place of others.

This...is not supposed to happen to me...

The monster was hunted down in the city streets, fleeing from the innocent civilians. It was attacked with icy arrows and flares, and each time it sought brief succour in some dark corner it was chased away. Without shelter, without even one face turned in friendship toward it. Hated and searched for to kill, as every monster we'd hunted down in the course of this...

Imoen, please don't go away, please don't turn on me.

But the hunt continued. The doppelganger beat against its chains and sought to shift out from them. The monster recoiled from its own face in the mirror and the children who screamed in horror at the frightening visage. There was no escape.

The sewers gurgled, and fouled water across my face and in my mouth woke me. I spat and gagged, shaking. Imoen—

In the corner Imoen still struggled for each heavy breath, and Shar-Teel could be heard moving. We were still trapped down here. We would be so for a very long time. The bones in my wrists were weak and limp, but to pull on the chains again was hopeless.

But then that sense of coldness lifted from the air of the oubliette, and I could feel my hands once more. I was bending my hands further back than before, wrists slipping past the metal tearing at my skin. The blood had the surface of the fetters slippery, and then it twisted out with flexibility like Viconia's—

There was the painfully loud metallic creak of the trapdoor opening, and a light that looked blinding in the dark. Then boots came down upon the abbreviated ladder, and then stepped down to the ground of the far end of the cell. My hand slipped to appear back in the fetter. The man who had come wore a red cloak more dashing than uniform, light armour on his chest and runed bracers at the edge of his wrists, and heavy necklaces and rings on chest and hands. From his greying red-copper hair I could recognise the Fist captain who had arrested us. His complexion was slightly sallow, olive-gold.

Shar-Teel flung herself forward in her chains as if she'd suddenly gone mad; she couldn't reach him. It didn't stop her from launching forward each time, then pulled back and restrained. I still couldn't have reached him; so I kept asking for Imoen, while Shar-Teel struggled; "—Please help her, please..."

The captain was completely silent. Shar-Teel, badly bruised, subsided; her eyes burned and her hands were curled into fists that cut her own skin with her nails. If she'd them anywhere near the Fist's neck then he would have died quickly.

He was looking at her. "I was curious for the motivation, Shar," he said with unnecessary familiarity. His boots made hardly a sound in the green slime as he shifted position; his form glowed, like a wizard's light emanating from him. Viconia cursed him in drow, though her voice had gone softly hoarse and cracking. "You were seen in the docks. I found the foster-daughter of Jhessen..."

She was fit to fling herself from her chains again; it seemed more miraculous that they held than that their width and weight kept her there.

"You have a daughter," the Fist continued, unmoved. Shar-Teel said nothing, only struggled against the bonds. "Tevanie." The name rung coldly from his thin lips. "She is in a place I control. You won't go against Anchev, and you'll keep your motley group from it."

Then Shar-Teel spoke: "—So you're Anchev's dog, now? I'm not surprised. Sniffing around him licking his turds—"

"You never did understand the principle of staying bought once you are," the Fist said. On his uniform, I saw, was not only a captain's badge but the symbol of command. So he must be Angelo Dosan: the one who'd handed all the Fist over to Sarevok. I'd heard of him in the past. "At last it seems you've found companions suited to you."

Then he pointed his hands at where Imoen hung from the walls; he chanted a spell, and I feared for her and tried to lunge. But the beam of light was pale, and instead it set open her shackles and set her free, collapsed to her knees and her hands in the light burned and blackened, claw-like—

Angelo spoke again. "Consequences if you fail to obey," he said, and pointed his hands next at Viconia. Freed, she stepped roughly forward, her hands trying to trace a black circle in the air itself. "Perhaps consequences to myself as well." Next, I was free; and Shar-Teel would have wanted a surprise attack of him, but perhaps he'd take her chains as well—

(But why free us even so?)

Then he aimed the spell a last time at her. He gave a brief nod as she rushed at him, as if he had expected nothing else. Shar-Teel hit something, but the captain still stood in place:

"I have business elsewhere."

Dosan's shape blinked out to disappear; not quite a teleportation, nor a door like Imoen's, some sort of magical duplicate. That the form could cast spells meant a good deal.

"Who—" Imoen began. "What..."

"Can you not tell it from her face, fool rivvil? That male is her sire. As a drow would mother," Viconia said.

The trapdoor was still open above us. I went to Imoen and cast, though I couldn't quite soothe the burns of her spell. Wizards need their hands; I looked to Viconia, but she was chanting over herself and then she spoke that she had used all she had without her symbol.

Shar-Teel was first to the ladder above; we followed her, unsteady on newly-unchained feet. The cell was hidden below a cellar that must have been long disused. A heavy door was locked at the end of it; instead of waiting to see it picked Shar-Teel flung herself at it, and managed to shoulder her way through. Splintered fragments cut us to cross behind her.

The Fist barracks seemed practically deserted. —What could have happened? Has Anchev killed— Then further up from the cellars was the movement of a sentry; Imoen begged Shar-Teel not to kill him. She hit him over the head from behind with a slat torn from the door; then took up his sword and shield for herself. We followed, awkwardly, because where she led didn't quite seem the way out of the complex...

Another sentry; he stared in shock at Viconia, and that gave Shar-Teel a chance to take him down as well. Then we were at another door buried in a narrow, twisting passage, its lock heavy and possibly even magicked; she kicked it open, and there inside were racks for weapons, most emptied. One that was not contained our own equipment, partly labelled for themselves.

She took up the sword that some called the World's End once more, and I felt the flame of the Burning Earth when its hilt found my hand. Viconia reached for the jet black of her holy symbol, and then prayed over Imoen's hands. She was skilful; Imoen flexed her fingers once more, picking up her tattered spellbook that had been kept below Viconia's cloak.

Then we were running out of the emptied Fist building, and outside in the night it was clear why so few had been left behind.

The city was on fire in the direction of the docks, ships flared in the harbour, and shouts could be heard everywhere.

"Let's go," I said. "If anything it's helping Sarevok, but we have to, let's go do what we can for the city—"

"I won't stop you for that alone," Shar-Teel said harshly; I looked up at her stony face. "I'll kill you for going against Angelo, you hear? I'll do nothing. It ends here."

She was going to desert us. I went into it without thinking:

"—You were horrible to her on the docks the day I saw you, why pretend to care about your daughter now? Mothers don't say those things to their children. Real mothers don't abandon them, ever— The entire city's in danger. At least be a decent Baldurian, Shar-Teel, because you're pathetic as a mother—"

Then there were bright yellow stars flashing in my head and I lay flat on the cobblestones. I blinked through tears to look up at her, framed against the night's dark and the flares and stars behind her.

Viconia stood at her side.

"I killed my own eldest daughter for becoming competent enough to believe she could plot against me," she said, "and I ought to have had the other two killed for sheer lack of it before they would have died for my exile. Two of my sons, also, for the blood of my third husband proved pathetic. These are the ways of drow society and those of our children who prove threat to us.

"The males who govern this city would burn me for the colour of my skin alone. The ilharess was the one who stepped forward to spare me from the fool who pursued me. And the two of you dare to ask us to defend this place of iblith?" Her voice was ice, formed into daggers sharp enough to pierce skin. We had helped Viconia too, we really had...

"Farewell," she said simply; she laid a light touch on Shar-Teel's arm. "Shar, bring us a sanctuary this night."

And then there was nothing Imoen or I could do to find them.

"—That was stupid, Skie," Imoen said, brushing some of the layers of dirt and mud from her robes and clothing. "Shouldn't have said that—so I guess she wants her kid alive, it's gonna be tough without her—"

"There isn't time for this," I said. The docks; the Amnians; we stumbled there...

—