Chosen of Eilistraee

by Anja Kidd

Far beneath the doomed city of Waterdeep, Eilistraee's unlucky Chosen (and his minions) find themselves set on a collision course with destiny. Rated M for language, sexual content, drow humor, and violence. This story is cross-posted on AO3 and WP. COMPLETE.

10. Chosen

I bow down and worship at the altar that is Trisa_Slyne, for being my beta.

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BINNE

I struggled and shivered through a wintry landscape reminiscent of home. I don't know how long I wandered through those snowy fields, for time didn't seem to have any meaning there, and my awareness didn't permit me to gauge its passage. All I knew was that I had to keep walking forward. My feet were compelled.

Eventually an object made itself clear in the distance - as I approached, it seemed at first to be a man, but then it stretched and stretched until it touched the gray and clouded sky as a massive obsidian obelisk. The surface of it was so clear and clean I could see my face in it - even the wrinkles and golden piercings at the corners of my eyes. When I touched its surface, it was unexpectedly warm, and a voice in my mind spoke to me. DO IT, it commanded. DIE!

Startled by a sudden sharp feeling in my chest that caused my breath to hitch, I looked down and saw my own hand clutching Enserric's hilt as the length of the sword was stuck through me, stabbing all the way through my back. I couldn't breathe. There was no pain, but weakness, and I fell to my knees before the obelisk as my blood leaked out of me staining the pristine white ground red. The voice in my mind seemed to laugh in a deep, rumbling cackle. The surface of the obelisk before me rippled and shifted until it was no longer a mirror but displayed a city ripped apart by chaos and fire as demons and monsters overran its populace, slaying everything and destroying anything in their warpath. The smell of burning flesh came to me on the breeze, tingling in my nostrils and bringing me back to the days of the Wailing Death. I felt a large, heavy hand on my shoulder and turned to look, seeing black claws and red out of the corner of my eye - only for the hand to withdraw and grasp the back of my hair, and twist it painfully in its fingers. With strength that I had no ability to resist, it slammed my head into the obelisk hard enough to crack its surface and dispersed the image it displayed.

I awoke on impact gasping for air in a near panic to find Solaufein entwined with me, still deep within his reverie. He was mumbling in his own language under his breath but stopped when I stretched myself out next to him and he seemed to hum contentedly. His living, warm presence helped drive the dreadful dream from my mind. I don't know why I trusted him as much as I did - there was still a faint, lingering trepidation around groups of drow in the back of my mind ever since our stint as Akordia's captives - but there was simply something about Solaufein himself that exuded trustworthiness and inspired my devotion. He was probably the best friend that I'd ever had, despite the fairly short length of time I'd known him in. There was this unspoken solidarity between us, I think perhaps even before our capture. It was hardly the first time I'd been held captive against my will - hells, it wasn't even the first time I'd been violated as punishment for an imagined slight while in captivity (thank you, Zhentil Keep, for that ugly and unwanted lesson) - but any doubts I held about drow certainly didn't include Solaufein (or most of the Eilistraeens, honestly). Though the vulnerable moments of that misadventure would creep into my thoughts at times, I did my best to suppress them, and Solaufein's presence at my side comforted me. I knew without a doubt that he would never hurt me.

I left him to it after running my fingers through his short hair fondly for a few moments. I didn't want to disturb him. I silently dressed in my armor, remembering Valen's tired warnings about us running about in our clothes and assassins lurking about. The last thing I wanted was to be gutted again, especially after the dream in which I'd gutted myself. I was still quite a bit disoriented from it as I donned the adamantine helm last and fit it neatly over my horns. I loved my new helm, but most of all I loved my new scythe. It was the nicest gift anyone had ever gotten for me - it was truly a work of bloody art - beautiful curved cold-steel that would be the bane of undead, unerringly sharp, and wickedly hafted with some dark material that I hesitated to know the nature of (I wanted to say some sort of mushroom or bone, because it certainly wasn't wood). It was heavy, bleak, shiny, and altogether suited me. I gave it a few experimental swings in the training yard and nearly cut one of the dummies in half by accident with its curved blade.

I tilted my head toward the cavern's ceiling as a flapping sound caught my attention and noted Aghaaz flying overhead toward the battlements. I'd seen Ferron a day or so earlier perusing the grounds with a few of his and Aghaaz' followers - it seemed the golems were settling in nicely and regarded the two brothers as co-leaders - both of whom had largely gotten over their differences after being kicked off their island by their creator and were well respected by the Eilistraeens even if the rest of the city seemed to regard them as little more than a curiosity. Aghaaz paused in his flight to eye me - perhaps he thought I was an enemy at first glance - but I gave him a friendly wave and he snorted at this and flapped away into the distance. It seemed he didn't like me very much - I wanted to blame my demonic heritage for that, rather than my loudmouth (the latter of which had torn down his entire religion and gotten him kicked out of his previous home in the span of a single day, so perhaps Aghaaz could be forgiven for harboring a little resentment toward yours truly).

The sound of metallic footsteps alerted me to Valen's presence before he was actually visible in the light, and I turned to regard him with a smile. "I'm surprised to see you awake," the General noted. He approached me with his hands clasped behind his back - for once, his left hand wasn't resting on his flail, and the sight of him slightly at ease made me smile wider. He seemed comfortable in the training yard if he could ever be such a thing.

I took a moment to unashamedly admire him in the faefire-light (he was quite ridiculously pretty, and somewhat imposing in his glinting green armor) before asking him, "Care for a sparring match?"

He smiled. He really was lovely when he smiled - practically angelic, really - but I'd never be the one to tell him that. He kept smiling even as he attacked, which was a little disarming. It threw me off and allowed him to get under my initial sweep and knock my scythe aside, which put me at his mercy quite suddenly. At least he seemed to be enjoying himself if he ever did such a thing. He won the first few rounds like that, dodging more quickly than he had any right to in his mithral plate armor and knocking my blows aside and wide with his heavy double-headed flail. The nasty thing still terrified me, honestly, and I did my best to avoid it and managed to - for the most part. Eventually I was able to keep him at a distance for more than a few minutes, though he still won by knocking my scythe right out of my hands and dodging under my subsequent whip that I lashed out with instinctively. It seemed having a weapon in my hands made no difference when I was fighting him.

We danced back and forth in the sparring yard, eventually drawing an audience. By the time I was exhausted, I was ready to call it quits and he had barely broken a sweat. "You're a formidable man," I complimented, "but I think I'm about done getting my arse beaten by you."

"And we were just getting started," he commented in a surprisingly friendly tone, and offered me a hand to stand up. He'd knocked me flat on my arse in the last match, and I took his gloved hand in my own gratefully and brushed dirt off of my armor, sending the shining dark scales tinkling. "You're getting better," he complimented, "though you still need work," he added as a way to make the compliment back-handed.

I rolled my eyes. "Melee isn't my strength," I conceded, "but I could've lit your hair on fire at any point in battle, and then where would you be?"

"Hairless and still beating you into the ground," he replied quickly. "You're usually not up this early," he commented as we made our way out of the training grounds. Behind us, Commander Imloth - who had been a clapping spectator - started shouting commands in Ilythiiri to his fellow Eilistraeens, who formed lines and began swinging at imaginary enemies at his command with various weapons. A few of the mind flayer's former slaves followed suit, Celia chief among them. I gave her a friendly wave as we passed her by, which she returned, looking startled.

"Don't remind me," I requested, and took off my helmet so I could stuff it under one arm. My hair was a mess underneath, I was sure of it. I ran my fingers through its tangled mess, grateful that it was at least clean and not matted with blood again. "I had a bad dream."

"Ah." Valen nodded in understanding. I suspected he often dreamed of the Blood Wars, but he never talked about it. It was a common enough problem for Greycloaks after the war, according to my mother. Valen always volunteered for first watch when we had to camp outside of the city, and I had never observed him in slumber, always passed out hard myself. I was curious, but it was a difficult subject to broach - and perhaps a bit uncomfortable for both of us. Him for what he'd suffered, and me for the simple fact that he'd spent a great deal of his life killing people who looked just like me in an inter-planar war. At least it seemed like he had gotten over his dislike of me or learned to tolerate my presence. Deekin's plan had assuredly worked. "What about?" He suddenly asked.

Valen's curiosity surprised me, and it was so rare and precious that I felt the unbidden urge to indulge him. "I dreamed I died," I told him casually as we stopped to talk for a moment in the halls of the temple. He fixed his gaze on me intently but said nothing, so I went on, staring up at the ceiling because I found it too distracting to look at him while I spoke lest I flirt with him and make him uncomfortable: "I often dream of it - dying in various ways. Sometimes I'm killed in battle. This time, I killed myself. I was in a snowy place, sort of wandering about until I came across this great big, mirrored pillar - then I stabbed myself right through the stomach with Enserric after a voice commanded me to. Something slammed my head into the pillar and then I woke up. Disturbed me enough that I couldn't fall back asleep, and I didn't want to dream anymore, so I made my way to the training grounds and figured I may as well be productive if I'm going to be awake."

Valen nodded. "Have you talked to the Seer about these dreams?" He wondered.

I snorted. "Why would I?"

"She may have insight that would surprise you," he offered. "I, too, suffer from . . . nightmares," he added in the biggest understatement I'd ever heard. "Usually of the Blood Wars. I dreamt of it often when I arrived here on Prime. The Seer helped me learn to focus on other things."

"I'll consider it," I conceded dubiously. I didn't want to share my innermost anxieties with the drow woman, no matter how nice or far-seeing she was - I'd been dreaming of my own death in many ways for nearly my whole life, and I doubted it was going to stop any time soon. It wasn't as if I had any great gift of prophecy - yes, I'd surely died a time or three, but none of the instances of it seemed to have any direct correlation to the nagging dreams. This one had been . . . Unexpectedly vivid, but not realm-shattering.

Valen parted ways with me when we encountered Sharwyn in the halls, professing a need to go check on the troops and the ongoing training. The bard and I were left baffled by his swift and sudden exit, but she and I chatted amicably through the halls as we made our way to the kitchen. I hadn't intended to go there, not even really being hungry, but Sharwyn was and I was happy enough to accompany her. I couldn't have been arsed to tell you what we talked about, however - I was passing fair at small talk (provided the talk was in Common), but selective in my attention.

I took the initiative, while we were eating, to prepare a small dish of rothe meat and cooked mushrooms for Deekin, knowing the little bard was the earliest riser amongst us, and made my way alone to his room.

"Coming!" Deekin announced after I'd knocked politely. He opened the door and blinked in surprise. "Goat-lady?"

"That's Boss-lady to you," I corrected primly and shoved the plate of food at him. "And here, got you a little something. What are you working on?" I wondered in bafflement as I took in the sight of the messy room behind him. It was more disorganized than the drow library where the Seer and Nathyrra spent so much time - sheafs of paper covered in fine renderings in charcoal and incomprehensible inky scrawls littered every available surface.

"Boss and Boss-lady get up to lots of trouble," Deekin explained, "especially now that we have so many new friends. Deekin trying to figure out how to introduce thieving halfling and Ladybard into story without it seeming contrived. Deekin thinking maybe not mentioning Blackstaff and the rune and explaining their arrival in some other way be more realistic to a moderns reader, or just cuttings them out entirely. Readers not really interested in actual truth anyway, they just wantings good story about drow."

"They did arrive at a very opportune time," I agreed with him. "And truth is often incredible unless you're there to witness it. That's why I've come to realize so many people prefer well-tailored lies to the actual story." For my part, I was thinking about the cover-up of the cult, which was never mentioned in Neverwinter's walls by the press, perhaps because the truth had been silenced by the Nine, or Gend. On the one hand, I understood how a people might begin to act erratically and panic if they realized the clergy of their local Helmites had been infiltrated by a cult of death-dealing magic-plague-spreading lizard-worshipers. On the other hand, the truth of the matter was so far-fetched I doubt anyone would actually believe it had it been announced in any sort of official capacity. History would only reflect the opinions of the wealthiest, and so far most people I'd overheard seemed to regard it all as an attempt at subversion by Luskan. They'd lynched the only person who could've told them what was really going on, anyway. People pointed to the Hero's origins as proof of this so-called Luskan plot, and really it was hard to disagree with them when Bishop was such an unmitigated arsehole in every capacity.

"That be what Deekin be thinking," Deekin nodded. "Anyways, thanks for breakfasts. Boss be up yet?"

"Not yet, was just going to go check on him," I said.

"Deekin be writings until we ready to leave, then," the little bard said, and closed the door with nary a goodbye.

I went back to mine and Solaufein's room (well technically it was his but I refused to move out of it, his bed was too damn comfortable and sharing is caring) and noted with surprise that he was already awake and donning his armor. I moved to assist instinctively and put my helmet down on the bed.

"I am surprised you are up before me," he noted as I reached around to adjust his mithral-enhanced brigandine cuirass. His hands fell back to his sides as he let me work.

"You're not the first to say that this morning," I noted, pulling a shoulder strap tight. "Trained with Valen, had some breakfast. Figured I'd let you rest. Deekin's up, as are the others, I think."

"Excellent. I wish us all to gather in the library, to discuss our next step with the Seer," he told me.

"What's next for us?" I asked, tightening the last strap on his leg into place and tugging on the greaves.

He stretched, and satisfied with his range of motion, answered, "it depends on when our enemy attacks. Thank you," he added, pausing a moment to smooth an errant lock of hair behind my ear with a smile.

I smiled back. "Of course."

I ended up running about with Deekin rounding up our allies and companions into the library so we could discuss our options. As a result, Deekin and I were last to join the conversation, which had ensued and evolved into an argument in our absence. Everyone was talking over each other except for the Seer who remained pensive and silent with her slender hand on her chin; Deekin and I tried to piece together what was going on.

The little bard cleared his throat loudly and drew everyone's attention. Six pairs of eyes not including mine fixed on him and the room became awash in silence. "Deekin not totally sure what be goings on," the little bard spoke timidly, "but maybes we all should be speaking one at a time? Interruptions makes it hard for Deekin to record what be goings on for posterity." He pulled out his journal from his pack and sat down at a nearby table and started to scrawl in charcoal on the page.

Tomi Undergallows spoke up first. "Well, the bottom line here as it is that as we were making our way to your city, Shar and I happened to overhear some of the Varshalessy's plans from an encampment of drow."

"Valsharess," Nathyrra reflexively corrected. She was ignored.

"My Ilythiiri is very rusty, so it was lucky that I had a few translation scrolls on me," Sharwyn spoke up. "The forces we overheard indicated a large, en-masse attack plan in a time frame of about a week, hence our haste in getting here. That was approximately five days ago."

"So they could attack any day now," Valen surmised grimly.

"We are prepared for that possibility," said Nathyrra confidently. "Our troops have been bolstered by our golem and former slave allies, and the blow we struck against the Valsharess' beholder and illithid allies cannot be sidelined. Neither can our acquisition of the anti-magic tablet and the Mirror of All-Seeing."

"Unless we all want to play the opposite game again, maybe we should ignore the mirror," I said a little nervously. After all, I had been the one to break it and turn Valen into a baker, made Solaufein evil, and switched places with a giant pulsating brain. I still hadn't fully processed the experience and was largely trying to pretend it had never happened.

"Breaking that mirror again has to be a last resort," agreed Sharwyn immediately as she seemed to distantly recall something fondly, and smirked. "As much as I enjoyed being the leader of a mob, I'd rather not do it again. Only if all of our defenses have fallen . . . And maybe not even then. There's no way to predict what it would do to us a second time."

The Seer gently cleared her throat, drawing everyone's attention. "I have made use of the mirror sparingly, to see the movements of the Valsharess' forces. I can assure you that we are not in any immediate danger, though the threat is looming, and my dreams have been oddly silent."

I half-expected Valen to leap to criticize her trust in her dreams, but he was quiet on that front as his respect for the Seer seemed to be overriding his derision of visions. Instead he said, "Then we should calculate our next move with care. We still have not investigated the source of the undead in the outer caverns outside the city."

"I scouted the area before I left for Undermountain," said Nathyrra, "and isolated the source to one particular cavern. I can lead us to it if that is where we intend to go. However, we risk leaving the city vulnerable without our presence to guard it and opening ourselves to an unknown number of enemies in the cavern."

"So our options are to stay here and wait to be attacked, or go back into the Underdark and wade through a potential horde of undead?" Tomi did not seem impressed with these options.

"I'll protect you, little shadowdancer," I offered with a cheeky smile as my tail swayed in enthusiasm. "My new scythe has an edge of cold iron which should make quick work of them, and if that fails, I'll just set the whole horde on fire!"

"I'll be sure to hide behind your tail then," Tomi grinned.

"I do not wish to wait for an attack while there is work to be done," Solaufein decided. "The Valsharess made overtures to the illithid and the b'ahlach, and I have no doubt she is involved in the presence of the naut-elghinyrr. Malla Seer, with your blessing, I will investigate the source of these creatures."

The Seer nodded and upturned her lips in that gentle, calming smile of hers that somehow set everyone around her at ease. "You have it. I will send Cazna and her scouts into the caverns in your absence. Should the worst occur, I will contact you with the mirror, and you may teleport back here to the temple."

We were all summarily dismissed after that, though I noted Solaufein remained behind with Nathyrra to discuss something with the Seer in their language. Figuring it wasn't any of my business, I followed the others out of the library and headed back to our quarters. I nearly ran horns-first into Vaendrith however, nearly knocking him down, and startled the poor boy so much that he up and ran in the opposite direction before I could even apologize. I stared after his skinny, fleeing form as my heart sank into my boots.

Back in the shared room, I propped up my scythe near the door, took off my helmet, sat back on the bed, and started to brood. I couldn't really help myself - it happened at times when I was left alone with my thoughts. I never had much success at being stoic and suppressing my feelings, so I kept busy to avoid feeling them and pretended bad things didn't bother me. In the quiet, by myself, I'd start ruminating about things I couldn't control or big what-if-scenarios and that would eventually, inevitably escalate into a full-on brood.

I couldn't stop thinking about Vaendrith and how we'd found him - and I wondered about the other spiders down there in the caverns. What would have become of him if we'd never investigated that hole? And how many of those spiders had been people before they'd succumbed to their transformations? How many of them suffered - were they all slaves, or outcasts from fallen houses, like Vaendrith and Nathyrra? And how many countless others had been caught up in the Valsharess' army and her schemes? How many more had to suffer under the whips of her people? I'd never given drow society much thought until following Solaufein into the Underdark, aside from that time with the mistaken summons, but after hearing his and Nathyrra's stories about their families the other day, it all seemed to pile up in my head. There was so much that was wrong with the Underdark - well, with the whole world really. It wasn't confined to any one particular place. Valen had been quick to point that out with his stories of other planes. Slavery was rife in Luskan from what I'd heard, and they simply had different words for it in other places, like thrall, or prisoner, or criminal - but it definitely seemed like most of the suffering was concentrated and compounded down in the Underdark. Something about the perpetual, confined darkness seemed to bring out the worst in people. Drow society, illithid society, beholder society - they were all steeped in it, so much so that their individual societies seemed centered around suffering and the infliction of needless cruelty. I knew that life fed on life - that was the nature of things - but down here, that fact was taken to extremes. It had turned perfectly good people like Nathyrra and Solaufein into living weapons, and the more I thought about it, the less it seemed like someone like me was in any position to do something concrete to stop that from happening to others. The only things I was good at were killing, foaling, and baling hay, and violence always begets violence. Sure, we could save the Eilistraeens and the drow city of Lith My'athar, but what about the countless others that the Valsharess had already ground under her stilettoed boot? What about the thousands still lost in the doctrine of Lolth, awaiting her word from the ether? It all seemed hopeless.

That's how I found myself crying alone when Solaufein found me. "What is this?" He demanded and knelt down to my level drawing my gaze. I hiccupped and shied away from his searching burgundy eyes instinctively. "Who hurt you? I will kill them immediately," he offered generously.

I sniffled. It was sweet of him to offer. "No, no I'm not hurt. I-I started thinking about Vae, about what would've become of him if we hadn't happened across him, is all. He would've been down there, losing his mind in the dark all alone as beholder fodder, and for what? Not to mention all the others . . ."

Solaufein's hand reached up to cup my cheek and brushed away a fallen tear with his thumb. He leaned in to touch his forehead to mine. "Does crying help him?" He asked me gently.

"No," I conceded, already feeling calm, "but it helps me feel better. I always feel better after a good cry."

He sat down next to me and placed a hand on my back, drawing me to his side. I leaned and placed my head in his lap, not minding the cold mithral studs from his greaves on my face. "Tears are a sign of pain and weakness to dhaerow," he informed me.

I wiped at my eyes. "Are friends a pain, or a weakness to drow?" I asked him.

"Friends are the worst of both," he said. "They are those who take pleasure in sharing your pain. They are people you should not be afraid to be vulnerable with." His hand wound its way up my back and into my messy hair, and I nearly purred.

"It's been . . . A rough few months," I summarized. "I'm glad I'm here with you," I added.

"And I with you," he said warmly. I silently thanked Tymora, again, for sending him my way - and Eilistraee too for good measure, since he seemed certain that the goddess was guiding his steps. Despite my brooding tendency, I didn't want to think about what would have become of me if Solaufein hadn't happened along, especially since it seemed once we'd gotten back to the surface that Durnan and his folk had forgotten all about me and written me off for dead.

So I basked in Solaufein's attention for a while, and gathered up the courage to ask, "Do you think we'll survive?"

"We will barely survive, or die gloriously," he told me honestly.

"I hope at least Deekin survives," I said. "If we don't, someone should know what happened down here."

He chuckled at that. "Let me braid your hair," he insisted. I assented and let him play with my hair for a while, feeling the rare and fragile contentment I always seemed to feel in his presence. It was almost insidious, how at-ease he made me feel just by being next to me. I implicitly trusted him. We'd fought side-by-side and slaughtered enemies together, hells I'd died for him, yet nothing in the world made me feel quite as safe as just sitting there, with Solaufein's callused hands running over my scalp and threading through my hair. I was afraid something might shatter the moment, but nothing did - it simply ended when he was done, and I let it bittersweetly pass.

"Thank you," I said sincerely, and stood to put my helmet back on. "Shall we?"

Solaufein nodded and adjusted Enserric at his hip, who was sporting a shiny new rothe-leather sheath. The sword seemed to communicate something to Solaufein internally as Solaufein's grip on the silvered hilt tightened for a moment and his expression became sardonic, and he rolled his eyes ceiling-ward.

"What'd he say now?" I wondered.

"Nothing worth repeating. And I mean that sincerely. Continue this line of reasoning, Enserric, and I will leave you in the undead cavern at the mercy of the first lich I see."

"Harsh, but probably deserved," I chuckled.

Solaufein, Deekin, and I spent some time in the market once more haggling with Gulhrys - or rather Deekin did all the haggling since I couldn't be trusted not to punch the smug Mae'vir wizard in the face for hiking his prices so high in a time of dire need - and we re-stocked on potions and scrolls. Nathyrra caught up to us first, followed by Valen, then Tomi and Sharwyn. We decided to purchase a few spare cold iron enchanted blades from Rizolvir 'just in case' and then headed out toward the gates. We had a full war-party on our side this time, and I estimated our chances of survival without being severely maimed (again) as quite high, which made me very happy as I was the one who had the bad habit of being consistently injured and deceased.

We rivvin got a few askance glances from the locals, but there wasn't any noticeable heat behind the gazes anymore as most of them seemed to have adjusted to our presence. As we headed out, we spotted Ferron and one of his fellows at the gates, and Deekin and I gave the tall gold golem a hearty wave goodbye as we set out into the outer caverns and into darkness. Ferron waved back after a few seconds and it might have been my imagination, but he seemed pleased. He was definitely my favorite out of all the golems that had come with us. Probably because he was the nicest and most verbose.

"So why do they call you General?" Tomi asked of Valen as we started marching after Nathyrra, who had taken point since she knew the way better than anyone. "I don't see you commanding anything."

When Valen didn't seem keen on answering, I supplied, "Drow humor. It's a long story. The abridged version is that they respect his command, and Commander Imloth's the one who's in charge when he's gone. Have you met him?"

Tomi shook his head. "Haven't gotten out much since I've been here honestly. I'm either scouting or holing up in that creepy temple."

I perked up. "Have you tried morimatra? It's amazing."

The halfling's brow wrinkled. "Is that the wine they make from mushrooms that tastes like a fart of itself? Because yes, I have, and let me tell you, it does not taste half as swell coming back out."

"It's not so bad," I defended that magnificent brew. "You probably just drank too much."

Tomi shrugged. "Anything that makes me cavort with my ancestors for a few too many hours is worth avoiding."

"He's a bit of a lush, to put it mildly," Sharwyn supplied with a smirk.

"He's got nothing on Bishop," I remarked.

Sharwyn laughed. "True enough."

"Bastard drank me under the table multiple times," Tomi grumbled. "He still owes me coin from the one time I out-drank him, though."

"Well of course he out-drank you, he was twice your size," I noted. "His pet wolf would've out-drank you. Tell you what, we'll have a drinking contest when this is over, just you and me, and I'll go easy on you."

"As long as I'm not drinking those fermented mushrooms, it sounds like a plan," Tomi nodded.

I shut up when I noted that Nathyrra had given the signal for silence ahead and our column had been stopped. We'd taught a few of the necessary, need-to-know signals to Tomi and Sharwyn on our way out, namely 'stop,' 'silence,' 'move,' and 'enemy sighted.' While Nathyrra and Solaufein led the way, I was sandwiched in the middle behind Valen as the most dangerous evocative caster, while Deekin, Tomi, and Sharwyn were behind me. Though Tomi apparently had a darkvision belt, he seemed happy enough to hide behind my legs waiting to jump out at any second while we waited for another signal from Nathyrra. Eventually she gave us the signal for 'move' and we went on our merry way, albeit more quietly. I picked up on something that smelled . . . Spidery, for lack of a better word . . . But it passed, thankfully. I was momentarily revisiting my memories of the skittering, bloated driders in the avariel palace, none too pleasantly.

The village of Drearing's Deep was completely horrible, and I mean that in every sincere sense of the word. It took us nearly an entire day to reach the cavern it was housed in from Lith My'athar, and we didn't opt to rest in the time it took, so most of us (sans Valen and the two drow leading us, whom together had the stamina of a pack of powerful draft horses) were all fairly exhausted when we happened upon the sorriest excuse for a village in the entirety of the Underdark.

The entire stinking shanty-town was populated by nondescript rivvin (but nothing like yours truly), whom I'd normally be pressed to describe and trade with if they weren't the most sad-looking misbegotten sods I'd ever had the displeasure of interacting with outside of the cursed flying elf isle. These fellows didn't have an obvious curse to blame their behavior upon. The place reeked of rot, unwashed bodies, and bone-dust, much like a lich's tomb. I was having flashbacks to the avariel island again, even as we addressed the gray svirfneblin seemingly in charge of the town, who stood in front of a strange metallic gong of indeterminate nature that he seemed determined to have us outsiders avoiding. All of them, on the whole, appeared to be malnourished former slaves of all different sorts, who spent their time shambling about and foraging for food while avoiding our gazes and questions with vagueness and downcast eyes. I didn't spy any rothe on the way in, so I hesitated when thinking about what they all ate to survive down there.

There was an imposing structure at the apex of the cavern that stretched out toward the ceiling in black stone spires carved out from the surrounding rock, probably by the very people surrounding us, the nature of which I had to guess was some sort of temple (since no one on this blasted plane seemed to build anything large and magnificent that wasn't in some sort of misguided worship to the bleeding gods or in honor of the bloody government, looking at you Waterdeep, city of a thousand bloody temples and at least one city hall).

The blighted rock gnome greeted us fairly enough despite warning us off the gong that he seemed to be guarding, so naturally we all took an interest in the object. Other than spouting off vague portents about how 'terrible' things would happen should anyone ring it, the svirfneblin didn't name anything specific when describing our certain doom.

"I vote we ignore the uncertain doom, certain to descend upon us should we mess with this thing, and go back home," Tomi cheerily suggested, when we all gathered to quietly conference in the center of the town.

I was thumbing the edge of my scythe, admiring its sharpness, fantasizing about cutting swathes through shambling zombies, felling three or four of them in a single sweep . . . "I say we ring it, and kill anything that tries to kill us," I voted happily. "And then look for more answers in that yonder temple-looking thing. And raid it while we're at it, it looks like it has valuables."

"Ooh! I change my answer to hers," Tomi corrected. "I'm always down for a burglary."

"What sort of undead did you see near this cavern when you were scouting?" Sharwyn asked Nathyrra.

"What you call zombies, a number of animated skeletons, and at a distance what I guessed was either a vampire or a very well-preserved ghoul," Nathyrra supplied. "They were traveling outside of the cavern with the Valsharess' forces. Why she would leave this particular village un-pillaged is beyond me, but likely it serves her greater purpose to leave it intact . . . If there are vampires nearby, perhaps they use these people as a food source."

"How charming," Sharwyn chimed. "Too bad we didn't think to bring any wooden stakes."

"Deekin has some firewoods in his bag of holding," the kobold said. "Should be enough, if we carves them up, to kill any vampires we find!"

I was scanning my memory for any knowledge or advice I might've held about the undead and recalled a few tips from my mother about them. Not so surprisingly, her advice was a little more practical than my father's, being a cleric. "Vampires don't usually live alone," I spoke up. "If you did see one, there's probably more. A lot more. Maybe even a whole pack of them, or clan, whatever you wanna call 'em. Coven, maybe?" Valen had been quiet the entire time we'd been speaking, which drew my attention as I noted he seemed to be visibly disturbed by something. "Something the matter, General?" I queried.

He looked at me with those bright eyes that sometimes took my breath away, and then glanced over my horns at the imposing temple behind our group. His hand clenched around the hilt of his flail in unease. "This place reeks of death . . . And despair," he said quite dramatically, which caused me to roll my eyes.

"Do we ever go anywhere that doesn't reek of death and despair?" I asked him. I felt it was a fair point, even though I agreed with him. The stench of death, both old rot and new blood, permeated the surrounding air in that cavern. I'd grown so used to it that it didn't even really bother me anymore, even though I probably had the most sensitive nose out of anyone in the group. It was just because we'd spent so much time already in other places that smelled similar - both islands in the Dark River and the beholder caverns had smelled largely the same, with the beholder cavern taking the cake for being particularly revolting since it was full of corpses and beholder shit. At least we didn't smell bad anymore.

"Just once in my life I'd like to be somewhere that don't smell like death and despair," Tomi lamented.

I laughed at him. "You picked the wrong profession, my friend. You wanted to spend your life smelling nice things, you should've become a baker."

"Aye, I was more safe as a cut-purse, but I didn't have half as much fun," Tomi grinned.

"Whatever we decide to do, I think we should prepare for battle," Valen announced, looking perturbed - probably remembering his time as a baker, if I had to guess. I grinned at him.

"Are you ever not prepared for battle?" Tomi had to wonder, eying Devil's Bane. I couldn't blame him, the vicious weapon gave me the shivers too. "Seems like you're always just a hair away from fighting anyone over anything. Er, no offense intended."

"We're at war, little man," I reminded him, while Valen fixed Tomi with one of his patented glacial glares. "You'll be glad for Valen's paranoia in the thick of it, believe me. There's no one better to hide behind while he pulverizes our enemies. All you have to do is stand back and watch him shine." Valen switched his glare over to me, and I took it with aplomb since it didn't really seem heart-felt, only put-out.

Nathyrra had been the only one to examine the gong up close and had some prescient thoughts to share about it while the rest of us were wandering off-point: "There was an inscription on the metal cymbal. I believe it was in draconic—I translated two words. One, I believe means 'blood.' The other, 'feeding' or 'fed,' I'm not sure about the tense but—"

"What sort of vampires advertise their bleeding existences on a musical instrument?" Tomi interjected with a scoff. "That's a sign if I've ever heard one. A sign that says, 'we are most definitely evil vampires and we are here to eat you.'"

"Why it be in draconic?" Deekin wondered.

"An excellent question," Nathyrra complimented, "and I am unsure. But I believe it is a reference to ceremonial sacrifice. The cymbal is struck, and the villagers offer one of their own to the undead, either for consumption or conversion. It would make sense for a group of vampires to have a lair near a small community, where they might easily prey on the defenseless. It would also explain why this largely defenseless village has been avoided by larger predators, if the vampires and other undead have been protecting it from discovery. I suspect that they have been entrenched here for some time and may have perhaps fostered this town of former slaves by gathering them from around the Underdark and indoctrinating them into this ritual practice."

My eyebrows crawled up to my hairline of their own accord. "You figured all of that from scribbles on a gong?"

Her short white hair swished to one side as her head cocked. "I am unfamiliar with that term."

That threw me for a second, before I considered the fact that she'd never even been to the surface before and even most people on the surface of Faerûn knew next to nothing about Shou Lung except that they sure liked their dragons, which was enough to make me never want to personally visit. Dragons terrified me, for damn good reason. Anything that magically impenetrable and that much colossally larger than me deserved my unrepentant terror. "Oh, it's an eastern instrument," Sharwyn immediately supplied while I was off in my own mental world, "like a large cymbal. I think they're from Shou Lung or Kara-Tur, on the surface. What one is doing here is beyond me."

"Did anyone get a look at the defenses on the temple? Are there any?" I asked of the group.

"Two guards in thick armor," Solaufein reported.

"Alive or undead?"

"Undead," Nathyrra confirmed with a nod. "They are faint to my eyes, far too so for the warmth of blood to be present."

I gripped my scythe a little more tightly. "Let's storm the place," I suggested eagerly. "We can take 'em."

"If we summon their leadership by posing as sacrifices, however, we could lure them close to us and kill them here," Nathyrra pointed out.

I grinned. "Even better! Let's hit the gong and bring 'em out. Master Scalesinger, care to do the honors?"

"Deekin rather not be the one to summon the doom this time," the kobold admitted sheepishly. "Deekin thinking he be standing waaaay far backs from Boss while he hits gong, and then Deekin gets Deekin's crossbow ready for the incoming routine violence. Deekin also not wantings to be caught underfoots in suspicious temple again. Last ones was really nasty."

Solaufein appeared to think about it for a few seconds while we all awaited his response, or for someone to break the quiet with a joke. I looked to Tomi, but he was looking a might antsy. "Did we reach a decision?" Sharwyn wondered aloud, a little confused.

"I will ring it," Solaufein finally decided, "while everyone else will be spelled into invisibility, or hiding out of sight. We must strike swiftly, and brutally to catch them by surprise. On my signal, Sharwyn and Deekin will cast haste on all of us, and we will attack as one." Deekin nodded and Sharwyn pulled out the lute that was strapped to her side.

"It'd be helpful if I knew what I was facing," Tomi pointed out.

"Most likely a vampire," Nathyrra supplied, "or other intelligent undead. A lich if we are unlucky."

"We can handle liches," I assessed confidently. I'd handled one with another small adventuring troupe and had done the heavy lifting as far as evocative spell-power. The trick was in getting rid of their magical defenses - luckily, back then, we had a competent wizard among us who didn't die too fast and managed to wither away quite a few of its protections (before he got hit with an Imprisonment, anyway), while our rogue and rascal found its phylactery and destroyed it. In the end, I'd turned it into a pile of slag. I was so certain of our current capabilities as a troupe that Nathyrra, Valen and I could probably take on a lich, just the three of us, her stripping its defenses down, him smacking it around, and me belting it with hellfire while everyone else took a snack break.

"Liches ain't so bad," Tomi agreed. "I'd take a lich over a mimic any fucking day." I suspected Enserric, if he could be heard, would have disagreed with him most vehemently. As it was, all I heard was a vague sort of frustrated grunting from his sheath.

"Don't mind the sword," I pardoned on Enserric's behalf. "He used to be owned by a lich who lived in a room of full of other liches and has some very strong feelings about them."

More outraged, muffled mumbling.

Of our number, only Solaufein and Tomi remained unspelled; Solaufein because he was the honorary sacrifice in this farce and Tomi because he, thanks to a shadowdancer trick, literally disappeared into a shadow right in front of my eyes. He was a sneaky fucker. I was glad he was on our side. Deekin, Sharwyn, and Nathyrra cast invisibility on the rest of us and we crept behind a few buildings in separate groups, Deekin and I hiding behind one and Sharwyn and Nathyrra behind the other, with the exception of Valen who was hiding alone behind the gong and didn't want to give any potential enemy spell-casters the time to react before he closed the distance. He wanted to be up close and personal in case something happened to the Seer's savior. As much as I would've felt comforted hiding behind the tiefling's mithral plate-armored back, I conceded that Solaufein's life was a little more valuable to us both than mine, no matter how Solaufein might have felt about that himself. Having died often and recently and being down in the Underdark for so long, I had started anticipating death looming around every corner.

Our drow leader rung the gong with a big mallet that was attached to it, and a resounding clang echoed throughout the dank cavern. It was a loud bastard. I heard a distant scraping noise, and a few minutes later spotted figures moving down from the temple toward the gong. Slowly, the gray, shuffling townspeople gathered in a circle - keeping their fair distance of course - around Solaufein, even as they parted to make way for the black-clad procession emerging from the temple.

Though it was somewhat difficult to see at the distance, it looked like the two temple guards from the entrance had escorted someone in a fancy red-and-gold wizard-dress over to Solaufein. I couldn't believe Solaufein's luck - it was always damn wizards with him! I heard the wizardy one speak up in a surprisingly posh accent and ramble on about something called "Vix'thra," and how great its hunger was and how this Vix'thra fellow had to be fed with probably the fresh red blood of innocents, and so on and so forth for several long seconds until I could tell even at the distance from his posture that Solaufein was getting bored. He drew the reticent and whining Enserric in a red blur from his sheath, snarled something in Ilythiiri on the lines of "go fuck yourselves" punctuated by an emphatic "phindari," and that's when Valen crashed into the vampire from out of nowhere and tackled the undead wizard to the ground and started smashing into him with his flail's twin heads.

I supposed that was the signal. I felt more energy than I'd ever felt in my life and rushed forward with my scythe, closing the distance in half the time it'd normally take me thanks to Sharwyn's haste-spell. I could hear her singing and Deekin's screeching behind us even as I swept forward over Valen's hunched form toward one of the black knights, nearly skewering the enemy were it not for the plate of black metal that protected him. As it were, the blow knocked the armored fiend back and down momentarily but didn't do much else. I knew that none of my mentally distracting spells could do much on the undead, so I sent a lance of hellfire at his downed form that speared him through the visor of his helmet and caused him to cry out and spasm in panic. I wasn't sure if he could feel pain, being undead and all, but he sure seemed like he was in pain. I clenched my fist, intensifying the fire and turning it white-hot.

The other knight had Deekin, Nathyrra and Tomi to contend with, and wasn't as lucky as mine. Two icy crossbow bolts, one after the other, thudded into the weak spots between its neck and arms while Nathyrra went high for the armpit and throat with her shining short sword and a dagger; Tomi went low, and I mean low and got in under the knight's fauld right toward his genitals and under his sabatons in the back of the knees. The warrior went face-down with a choked scream and kept on screaming until Nathyrra put him out of his misery a few seconds later with a sword through the neck. Guess they could feel pain after all - or was it existential panic? I was so confused by the sounds all I could do was stare at them as they both quickly died.

The vampire wizard, whatever his name was, didn't last long under Valen's aggression. The fiend was more or less a pulp when his body started dissolving into dust right underneath the suddenly grossed-out Valen, who leapt up in surprise as a cloud of mist emerged from the dust and started speeding away toward the temple. We all watched it leave with disdain. Everything had happened so quickly that it seemed like a waste of a haste spell - I still felt like I was watching everything in slow motion for a few minutes while the spell wore off.

"Tch, vampires," Tomi said derisively, summing up my feelings completely. "Now we gotta go raid that temple, find his body, and stake his corpse for good! Why can't they just die like these other sods?" He kicked the corpse of the fallen warrior at his feet.

I looked down at my fallen re-dead warrior, who had gone suddenly still and was still smoldering from the hellfire. Corpses on fire, everywhere I went. It was strange, I didn't smell blood, but I didn't smell rot either. It was a sharp and pungent chemical smell that the corpse emitted, like burning embalming fluid. "You sure they were undead? They don't smell like undead to me," I noted. "More like . . . Fresh flesh golems."

"Well-preserved, but most certainly a form of undead," Nathyrra confirmed with a nod. She looked down at the one that had fallen at her feet dispassionately. "At least we will not have to worry about facing them after they have regenerated. We should hurry. They may send reinforcements soon."

"I am only glad I was briefly spared the distaste and indignity of having to taste more rotted flesh," Enserric said, finding the upside in this situation as he had gone completely unused while Solaufein just sort of stood there and watched us work for a change.

"Don't get picky now," I cautioned the sword, "chances are you've got plenty more undead ahead of you."

"Oh joy," the sword said bitterly in a perfect imitation of Hembercane. I was starting to miss that dour imp. "Will the horror never cease?"

After looting all the corpses and finding an important-looking key in the vampire's robes, we marched on up to the temple with the silent citizens of Drearing's Deep watching us with dull, sometimes hopeful eyes. I didn't want to promise them anything in case we all died by vampire-to-the-neck in the next few hours, but I personally felt there was a good chance we'd have another small army of liberated ex-slaves following us back to Lith My'athar. Not that they'd be of any use in the battle against the Valsharess - by the look of them, a stiff breeze could've blown half of them over.

The moment we entered the massive temple's front doors, I was greeted by the sight of a skeletal . . . Dog-thing, launching itself through the air and right towards my face. I let out a startled 'meep' and didn't really have time to react as Deekin abruptly shouted, "SKELETAL DEVOURERS!" as if he was reciting its name from Volo's Monster Manual by rote; luckily Solaufein's reaction time was far better than mine and he intercepted it mid-air with Enserric and sent the skeletal devourer careening to the ground with a shining red-and-black blur.

I set fire to it, since that's honestly what I was best at, and watched in satisfaction as it ran around in panic for a little while before processing what else was happening in the room. Tomi was running away in circles from another skeletal devourer and shrieking curses, while Sharwyn was chasing after it with her double-bladed sword, and Deekin was screeching a song behind me at the top of his lungs drowning out anything that anyone was saying. Two other knights had been guarding the entrance - I was thinking of calling them death-knights, since that seemed more appropriate for undead warriors - and Nathyrra, Solaufein, and Valen had already engaged the two of them, with the two drow tackling one and Valen the other.

I then set fire to the devourer that was chasing Tomi and stomped on the other one that I'd set on fire as it tried to approach me and crushed its spine with my foot. It went immobile. "Oh, just stab it already!" I crowed, criticizing the halfling. Tomi looked behind him for a moment in utter terror at the on-hellfire-skeletal-devourer chittering after him and just kept on running away in circles. Sharwyn eventually pinned it down between the ribs with her double-bladed weapon and I jumped on that one too with my big adamantine boots, causing Tomi to finally stop running and take a breather. By that point in time, the other two death-knights had fallen in pools of embalming fluid thanks to the expertise of our other three party members, all of whom had finished their battles and were watching the three of us with varying levels of amusement (or in Valen's case, borderline pique).

"That was absurd," I commented, eying Tomi. "Well, at least we didn't trip our way into battle again," I realized, determined in finding the upside.

"Real bloody funny, you," Tomi scoffed, catching his breath. "They caught me by surprise, is all!"

I smiled. "You should've hid behind my tail. Then I could've just stepped on them for you."

"Skeletal devourers can warp the minds of their prey," Nathyrra spoke up. "It is good you disoriented them with hellfire and destroyed them so quickly, or the fight may have gotten . . . Difficult."

I shrugged. "I'll keep that in mind when and if we see more of them."

I spoke too quickly. Of course there would be more of them. I always did that shit, and it made me furious at myself - it was as if Beshaba hung on every word I said and graced my life only appropriately.

First we found a sinister looking altar that mentioned blood sacrifice in draconic, so we thought it best if we destroy it, not being wholly certain as to its function but pretty sure it smelled off. Unfortunately as we did so, several shadows burst into animation at our sides and started attacking us. Being rather intangible, that was a challenge - getting to them before they could drain the life out of us - and them being immune to all of our physical weapons. They weren't immune to eldritch energy however, so I managed to keep them at bay while Nathyrra figured out a way to destroy them. It seemed natural to her that an ethereal shadow would be weak to light, and Deekin had purchased a few scrolls from Gulhrys for use against potential undead back in Lith My'athar, at least one of which was a sun fire scroll. He screeched out its incantation in his best clerical imitation and for some reason, perhaps due to Tymora or Eilistraee looking out for us, it worked and dispersed them.

Then we started descending into the lower levels, and before we could climb down yet another ominous-looking pit into what appeared to be total darkness, we were beset upon by three bone golems of massive proportions. Luckily, they weren't immune to physical damage, and although I did get smacked around a bit by one, my helmet kept my brains intact and we managed to collectively rip them apart by force.

We stood over the pit for a while, gazing into the pitch darkness. "What's down there?" I asked Solaufein and Nathyrra.

"More bones," Nathyrra answered after her glowing eyes peered into the dark, and Solaufein nodded grimly beside her.

I smiled in spite of myself and raised my hand. "Who wants to climb down into the bone-filled pit that reeks of death and despair?"

Valen scoffed, Tomi laughed, and Sharwyn pulled out a long rope from Deekin's pack with the little bard's help. We secured it and lowered ourselves one-by-one into the pit, with the drow leading the way and Valen following right after them. His agility in that armor never ceased to surprise me. It made me wonder about . . . Things.

At the bottom was a bone-filled corridor ending in an unknown light source from around a corner that we carefully trudged our way through, trying to make as little noise as possible, though this was perhaps an exercise in futility as I tended to make a clatter wherever I went. As we made our way through the dark corridor and rounded the corner, it opened up into a large yet somehow cramped room that reminded me uncomfortably of Undermountain with the dungeon-y vibe the place was giving off, and all the eternal-flame-lit sconces giving us a constantly flickering ambiance. I could almost smell the ogres from my suddenly vivid memory; not that smelling the undead was any better. I swore to myself right then and there that one day, I'd be done with bloody dungeon-delving.

Oh, and there to greet us in the middle of the room was another vampire in a wizardly looking robe, who despite seeing us all trussed up as armed and armored war machines didn't seemed deterred from immediately mistaking us for sacrifices. Tomi corrected him of this stupid assumption by throwing a cold iron kukri right between his eyes with impeccable aim while he was still talking to us, giving the vampire no time to do anything but quickly die as he was simultaneously pierced by crossbow bolts of ice cutting their way through the air from Deekin's crossbow. We followed the mist from the body as it fell to the ground, and it led us to a nearby alcove where we took one of Deekin's firewood pieces, quickly broke it and used part of it to stake the body of the vampire-priesty fellow while he was regenerating in his coffin.

We ended up running around and culling vampires and skeletal devourers for positively hours. Tomi still seemed irrationally terrified of the latter, apparently having spent a brief amount of time as an intellect devourer's thrall at some point during the Plague and so he hid behind my tail while I alternately tried to stomp and take scythe-swipes at them to simultaneously keep them away from me and crush their spines while he shouted encouraging curses. I was already feeling sleep-deprived, so this added nothing good to my temperament. I was taking out my frustrations on the vampires and not Tomi, at least, so my time was productively spent.

One of the vamps nearly ate Deekin and almost got to me, were it not for my new helmet at least - it was one of the older vampires by the look of it, this one certainly previously human like most of the rest of the vampire coven that we'd slaughtered, so her being more powerful made me feel a little better about being knocked down. Solaufein lopped the vampire's head off while it was attacking me, thanks in large part to his speedy boots making him just as fast if not faster than most of the vampires.

That one was particularly strange due to a heavily trapped door that her sarcophagus was locked behind, but luckily we had a proper rapscallion in the form of Tomi Undergallows in our employ who was able to disarm it, which made it easier for us when we pointed Valen at it to knock it down. That was when we were rather startled to discover that the vampires had fitted a door made of wood to that frame. Seemed a bit odd in the Underdark, given how expensive wood was, how poor Drearing's Deep seemed to be, and the fact that they were fucking vampires famously known to be weak to spikes of wood through the chest. But who am I to critique our enemies when it made it easier to kill them?

We were sweaty, and exhausted, but thankfully largely uninjured and still had a decent supply of potions to go around, not to mention a few charges left on Solaufein's resurrection rod should the worst occur. I think that was due to the larger-than-normal war party we had going on - that, or these vamps were more incompetent than I'd assumed.

As annoying and tiring as it was, wading through the lair of an undead horde, it made me anxious as to what was leading these bastards. I knew eventually we'd find a way down a level, and my intimate experience in both the exploration of and captivity in dungeons had taught me that everything got worse the further down you went. We were already in the Underdark; how much further into the dark could we go? What was at the bottom of this temple? What was this "Vix'thra" the wizard in chief had been yodeling about? It said something about our circumstances, I'm not sure what exactly, that it would be a good thing if it turned out to only be a lich.

While we wandered through the complex, looting everything we saw of value (quite a few enchanted weapons now populated Deekin's bag of holding) and killing every vampire we saw, we happened upon a strange and very unwelcome sight, for several reasons. Firstly was the lava flow that encircled the room, which was reminding me stiffly and uncomfortably of my time in the ogres' captivity and had me sweating in my armor. Also, initially, I wasn't sure what I was looking at, so it appeared to be a pile of feathers and pale skin in the shape of a humanoid before my senses alerted me in the form of an irrepressible itching on my skin that what I was looking at was a winged celestial, and my instincts told me to keep my distance. I noticed Valen right at my side going rigid and his tail lashing in the same pattern as mine, back and forth angrily, causing his to accidentally whip into mine and briefly entangle. I didn't mind it but he immediately flushed bright red and took a step away, which made me want to laugh despite my discomfort in the moment from the celestial's presence.

The others hadn't noticed that we fiendlings had decided to hang back and sit out this encounter from a good safe distance for valid, if knee-jerk reasons. On the floor before us was an obviously injured deva, with blonde hair that hung in limp noodles around her skull and eyes that glowed a bright and ethereal blue, chained to a strange and sinister contraption with all sorts of spikes and tubes that I shuddered to know the nature of, but would bet my tailed arse had been created by a crafty mad wizard for a nefarious purpose. "No . . . ! No, please don't hurt me! PLEASE!" The deva cried out weakly from the floor in a broken voice. I wondered how long she had been down there, what sorts of trials and tortures the vampires had visited upon her, and my fists clenched in anger. I looked down and noticed Valen's had too, and we met each other's eyes in a rare moment of solidarity that I treasured.

"A celestial? Down here? I thought winged elves were odd," Enserric noted aloud, as Solaufein had kept him drawn and out.

Solaufein, for his part, put the sword down on the ground and knelt before the fallen deva in an oddly reverent gesture. "I shall not hurt you," he vowed.

"Don't worry, angel-lady," Deekin advised suddenly, "Boss be good drow and like to help peoples."

"Except for the ones he kills," I felt the need to qualify from the back, and then winced when I realized I wasn't exactly helping matters and then the deva started crying.

"N-no, please," she sobbed, trying to scuttle away from Solaufein. "I don't have anything left to give!" She started heaving and oh hells I felt so awful for making her cry that tears welled up in my own eyes in sympathy. I wiped at them, feeling frustrated with myself a bit like an arsehole.

Solaufein had closed his eyes in concentration and held his hands away from the deva, poised open and out, while the others kept an ample distance, not sure of what to do in this exact situation. "She is probably frightened because we are dhaerow," Nathyrra qualified. "Why would vampires seek a celestial?" She then wondered rhetorically and moved closer to examine the machinery. The blonde deva kept a wary eye on her, but Nathyrra was careful not to step closer to her in her examination.

Tomi barked out, "Oi, kobold, give 'er a potion so she'll calm down already."

Deekin momentarily rifled through his bag but stopped when a flash of light emitted from Solaufein's hands as he finally opened his eyes. "She is healed, there is no need," he announced, and Deekin nodded. "Are you well enough to stand?" He stood from his kneeling position and offered a hand to the downed deva.

She looked up at him in pleased surprise but managed to get up to her feet by herself. The chains rattled all around her as she slowly stood to her full height, easily going eye-to-eye with Valen. "I . . . Feel better! Thank you!" She brightened when she examined Solaufein more closely, and seemed to like what she saw, as she smiled. "Oh! I never expected one of you to be a drow. But I suppose you can't be evil and call on that type of power. Although you do have some fiendlings with you . . ." She squinted over at Valen and I, causing us both to reflexively glare as her aura washed over us with her attention, and if I had bristles they would've been sticking on end. I saw Valen's jaw grit from the corner of my eye.

"One of whom?" Solaufein was confused. "—and call on what?"

Nathyrra clearly wasn't on the same social level as everyone else around her, and I meant that in the best way. "It seems like they are extracting her blood for . . . Something," she inferred, and kicked over a few bones that happened to be strewn on the floor. "They are creating bone golems somehow here."

"Yes!" The deva confirmed with a bright expression, completely the opposite of her earlier sobbing self. "Yes, they have been. It's truly horrific. I thought you for sure were evil until just now, but I suppose you're not if you really are here to help me. You are . . . right? My instincts say yes but my recent fortune tells me no," she babbled nervously.

"Why would I heal you if only I turned around to— never mind," Solaufein decided, shaking his head. "What is your name? And how do we free you from this contraption?"

"Well, I'm Lavoera," she introduced half-heartedly, "and I was on a mission I can't exactly remember before I came here, and I'm not sure how this contraption works . . ." She seemed puzzled and disturbed by her own predicament which made one of my eyebrows raise.

Sharwyn had been staring at Solaufein since he healed the deva, and stopped him to ask, "Solaufein. How did you do that? You pulled out no scroll, said no incantation."

Solaufein turned to regard her and thought about this for several moments. "I . . . Asked her wounds to heal themselves. I realize that does not make sense, but it is an ability I have had for some time. It has only been useful in emergencies," he rationalized.

"He did it once before that I have seen," Valen pointed out, probably remembering the time he'd seen Solaufein do it to me on the elf isle. "I assumed it was a hidden item."

I stared at Solaufein, feeling perturbed by the sudden notion that he had holy powers and how much sense it was starting to make. "What're you, a cleric now?" I accused him. "Some kind of, of, of sword-slinging-death-dealing-cleric-wizard?"

Solaufein laughed at this, like the notion was ridiculous. "Nau, I—"

Lavoera felt the need to inject her opinion in here for some reason, "Being God-touched is not the same thing as being a cleric. And there's more than one kind of divine caster! Everybody on Celestia knows that."

I growled out, "We can't all be from Celestia!"

"Well of course you couldn't be, you're—oh, uh, never mind," she scoffed, "I don't think this line of talk is going to help me get out of here."

Sharwyn politely raised her hand. "Hello, yes, still here, I'd like to know what just happened."

Deekin chirped up, "Deekin knows the answer to that. Boss be a paladin!"

I laughed instinctively because why wouldn't I? Whoever heard of a drow paladin? Valen, beside me, had a different reaction and tensed with either understanding or surprise. "I suppose that explains why he makes my skin itch sometimes," he reasoned. "To be touched by the gods is a rare and dangerous thing," he further intoned, and this time he had earned my derision with his dramatics.

"What?" I blurted. "Everything is dangerous to you!" And then I rounded on Deekin. "And what? A paladin?"

Deekin blinked. "Deekin be surprised Ladyhorns not know that. It be obvious to Deekin, but that probably be because he has known since the big desert when Boss heal mean orc-man and says he ask his goddess to heal wounds."

Solaufein seemed suddenly embarrassed by the turn in conversation. "Eilistraee does not have paladins, like the Tyrrans. It is—"

Lavoera interrupted him again, which was starting to irritate me. "Oh, I know her! Or of her. One of my cousins works part time as one of her messengers. She's one of the good ones! So that means you have to help free me, right? It's part of your sacred oath?"

My favorite drow looked disturbed. "I took no oath that I know of, but I will help you if I can," he promised a little uneasily.

"Helping her is more important than our questions right now, of course," Sharwyn nodded. "I apologize."

Nathyrra, bringing everyone back to the point, pointed right at the circle that surrounded the black iron contraption. "She can't move out of the circle until it's dispelled, and it's more than mere magic. It's somehow tied into this machine. And we're missing a component, I think." She pointed at a notch that looked like an empty socket. "Something is supposed to fit here," she ascertained.

Lavoera nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes! That's where they stick this rod and when they turn it on, they drain most of my blood until I'm half dead. Then they wait for me to heal up and do it again! And again. And again. And again! I think you can turn it off with that rod if you get it. I'm . . . Not sure who has it, but it's bound to be around somewhere!" She smiled, looking a little manic and it set my teeth slightly on edge.

I whispered to Valen, "Do you get the impression she isn't entirely there in the noggin?"

He leaned in and whispered back, "And what self-respecting deva gets captured by vampires in the Underdark? What is she doing here?"

I hissed, "Ah see, I wanted to say that too, but it sounded mean in my head."

"I don't think it's mean, I'm genuinely concerned. It's either a trap or she's stupid," he reasoned.

"Let's hope the latter. We can handle stupid."

Meanwhile, Solaufein had nodded and said, "We will retrieve it and free you if we can."

We left her there, all chained up in rags with darting eyes that twitched at every shadow, and despite my brief annoyance with her and discomfort in her presence I couldn't help feeling awful about her predicament. Celestials didn't belong in the Underdark. It felt like I'd seen something fundamentally wrong, her all trapped in that machine. Something unholy. Well, unholier than a cambion warlock. I had room to talk, really.

Finding the vampire with the right component for the machine was actually pretty simple since there was only one area of the lair that we'd yet to investigate. We carved our way through vampire monks, priests, and wizards until we got to one that was wearing fancier velvet robes in the same shade of off-black as the rest of them, with pretty filigree. Sometimes the enemy made it easy for you. Nathyrra and Solaufein were frighteningly quick and seemed to have developed a seamless synchronicity while they were leading us - the lead vampire made them work for it for a little while, but the gaps in one of their defenses was filled by the other and in the span of a few seconds, the battle was over and we were back to tracing the mist cloud to its coffin again.

As I was busily looting the corpse of the unconscious and regenerating vampire-leader, I found myself whispering to Solaufein who was at my side with a stake poised and ready to stab down, "A drow paladin! Whoever heard of such a thing? You'd think that would've been something you'd tell a girl before you ask her to fu—"

I caught Solaufein's gaze as I was about to finish my sentence and such was his power over me that he managed to stop me mid-sentence with only a look and a raised white eyebrow.

"—follow you into the Underdark," I finished instead.

"Nau, do go on," Solaufein indicated, "it is not as if we have nothing better to do right now, other than to discuss this."

I found the rod in the vampire's robes and pulled it out. "No thanks," I chirped and left him to do the deed.

In the next room, we discovered what seemed to be a cursed mace that was prejudiced against demons, that Sharwyn had to hold onto since we figured it had to belong to the deva. She seemed like a heavy-hitting sort. I found myself walking beside Solaufein, my hand still stinging while we caught up to the others and said, "I'm just surprised by it. Not unpleasantly," I was sure to quickly add. "Explains a lot. I guess it never occurred to me to question why you could heal things like that. How paladins lay their hands on the sick and such. I thought it was maybe a drow thing. Or that you were a bit of a cleric. You did that dispel thing once, I can recall, and I suppose you've healed me twice. That's probably why it hurts so much when you do - because of my demonic bits."

"I am not a paladin," Solaufein firmly insisted, "or god-touched. That I know of," he added somewhat sheepishly. "I admit, I do not know what that means, but I am sure - because you are the one saying it - that it is wrong."

Tomi laughed from the end of the corridor, having overheard us. "Well, you're certainly not like any law-abiding paladin I've ever met. Most know better than to invite demons into their beds," he said.

Solaufein looked annoyed. "I am not a paladin!" he insisted, irrationally.

"And anyone would be lucky to have me in their bed!" I defended passionately, earning a nod from Solaufein and another fierce blush from the General which nearly made me shout on the spot in victory. Every emotional reaction from him felt like an achievement.

Nathyrra stated, "He is detholusin, and the closest equivalent to term this would be some kind of chosen knight or paladin. The Seer says that Eilistraee has Chosen him and granted him certain gifts beyond others to accomplish the task she gave him. That healing is one of the abilities she has granted you is not something I knew, but useful."

Solaufein seemed embarrassed. "For the last time, I am not a paladin!"

Valen cleared his throat and the blush had disappeared. "The demonic side of me seems to think you are, because my skin still itches sometimes when you're near. I think being god-touched is different because it's gotten better since we first met. I met a god-touched in the Abyss once and the itch was similar."

Seeming concerned, Solaufein turned to me. "Have you experienced something similar to this?" He wondered.

I tapped my lip in thought. "You'd think I would've back at the Portal, but, eh, no. I felt nothing," I honestly admitted. There had been a twinge, perhaps an itch, but it had been thoroughly scratched.

Then, he smiled. "Truly? You felt nothing at all?" He drawled.

I smiled. "Nothing like an itch."

"Not even a little one?"

"Well, maybe a little one."

"You have a large aura, Solaufein, so it is natural for demons to be able sense it," Nathyrra pointed out, totally reasonably. "Binne has been around you longer than Valen and would simply have adjusted to it over time."

I shook my head. "Oh, no, that one got well-scratched . . ." I trailed off lost in thought and fond, sexy memory for a little bit. "Er, I never thought of overcoming a paladin aura in that way, but if it works, it works," I found myself grinning. "Maybe Valen should get scratched too!"

Solaufein caught my meaning and quietly stared at Valen in careful consideration.

The General's brow wrinkled, perhaps in misunderstanding. "I have no desire to be scratched by anyone in any way," he said firmly.

I flashed my grin at him. "You say that now but wait until my claws grow out again."

There was a rare and treasured smile that graced his lips, which upended my brain onto the floor as well as if a devourer had clamped onto my skull. "You can't have anything on the claws of a marilith, milady," he said, somewhat shyly.

I wanted to shout in victory again and also mark the day on my calendar for the rest of my life - the day I'd gotten him to flirt back with me. I was so stunned and briefly happy that I didn't even notice Solaufein shuddering out, "But . . . Her toe-claws," and taking the rod from my numb hands to go and free Lavoera.

Nathyrra momentarily seemed like she wanted to follow Solaufein, but curiosity stayed her feet. "I feel as though I've missed some subtext," she said, obviously confused. "I like to think my Common is good, but idioms are often lost on me." She looked to me, finally arresting my attention from Valen's red face. "Someone was itched? Or scratched? With your . . . toe-claws?"

Meanwhile, Sharwyn and Tomi were just sitting there watching our back and forth with this shit-eating grin on their faces, and I was stuck trying to explain what the hell had just happened to Nathyrra while my brain slowly derailed itself into dangerous territory. "Well, I did once kick an ogre in the, uh, while . . . It's . . ." I cut myself off and stared down at my boots, defeated, and shook my head. "No. I wouldn't even know where to start."

Deekin rode in to save the day. "It be okay, Deekin can explains the itches and scratches to nice drow-lady - he used to be havings to explains things a lot to other kobolds, because most be dumb and not even knows that scales needs to be washed every now and then," he said cheerily.

I stared at him in disbelief for all of a second before deciding to just roll with my good fortune. "Good luck with that Nathyrra; I suddenly feel the pressing urge to check on the deva," I started inching my way away.

". . . Yes, me too," Valen admitted, moving to follow me.

"Oh, I'm not missing this!" Tomi vowed. Sharwyn laughed. Valen and I fled the scene a little too eagerly.

Lavoera was still dirty, scarred, and clad in rags, but she looked positively regal and stood a little straighter now that she had that nasty mace back in her hands where it belonged. The cursed thing had my fingers still tingling even then; of course it had to be a deva's property with a grudge against demon-kind. Solaufein's little pick-me-up had done her some good and seemed to have the side-effect of restoring her confidence, if not her brains. "Now all I need to do is find whoever I was sent here to find and warn them about the great evil trying to stop them, and then I can go back to Celestia!" Lavoera was cheering.

Solaufein stared at her in consternation. "You don't know who this person is, only that you were trying to find them?" He queried.

"Not in the slightest," Lavoera confirmed a little too happily. I slapped myself in the forehead on her behalf, and from the corner of my eye I saw Valen's eyes roll up to the ceiling. "Just that they are being manipulated by something evil. Does that sound like someone you might know?"

Solaufein shared a long look with Nathyrra that probably had something to do with their shared religion if I had to guess, because the next thing out of Nathyrra's mouth was, "the Seer might know."

Solaufein nodded. "Yes, you should find Malla Ourana, the one called the Seer of Eilistraee, in Lith My'athar. It is a day's journey south and west from the upper cave."

"Oh? You don't need my help with the rest of the vampires?" Lavoera seemed confused, and a little tetchy. She wrangled her hands around her mace. "I would like to smash some of them myself for what they did to me."

Solaufein shrugged noncommittally. "That is for you to decide. If you feel well enough to help us, then follow. If you would rather meet in Lith My'athar, we will return when we have destroyed this aphyon yath."

The grip on Lavoera's mace tightened. "I don't know exactly what this Vix'thra is, but I think it's the god these vampires all worship. They talked about him, only in whispers. You'll need my help to stop him, I can feel it - and then maybe after, the Seer can help me."

It really mussed our marching order, since both Valen and I agreed it was for the best that we steer as clear from Lavoera as possible, which meant we were confined to the front of the group and she to the back. I didn't know how bad it was for a tiefling, but it wasn't fun judging from Valen's stiffened expression. At least his eyes hadn't gone red yet. However, as a cambion, the closer she was, the more itchy the under of my skin felt. It was an impossible to describe sensation. It was somewhere between irritating and maddening. I could ignore it if I had to, but it was damn near impossible to spell-cast when she was nearby and I worried for Valen and I during the next battle where we really had to cut loose. Celestials and fiendlings were natural enemies, right? That had to be why I was feeling what I was. I wondered if I'd simply grow accustomed to it, the more time I spent around her.

The more time I spent around her, however, the less I time I wanted to spend around her. She was so damned air-headed and we didn't have time to teach her the drow hand-signals so the first vampire we encountered, which happened to be the same fellow that Valen had smashed above ground earlier, she charged from right up behind us and tried put her mace to work. She got a chained lightning bolt to the face for her efforts, sending her soaring through the air into the wall behind us with a 'poof' of feathers and a pained and heavy thud.

Valen and I exchanged a quick look that spoke volumes of our opinion of the deva as the same tingling sensation rolled over our bodies while she stirred. Then, he darted forward with his flail and I was close behind him, drawing out my scythe for a sweep. I saw Tomi move as a black-clad blur with two kukris in his hands.

Solaufein was suddenly next to Valen, and then he wasn't, and I shouted in alarm as a massive immaterial hand formed out of the air and solidified around the drow, crushing him, and drawing his body up to the ceiling. Enserric fell with an outraged objection from the drow's limp hands. I waited for some kind of spell to be cast or dispel from our other party members, but I turned and watched Nathyrra, Sharwyn, and Deekin mouth syllables with no sound and realized what had happened.

We'd finally happened across a competent wizard. I could still hear myself, which meant I'd been out of range of the silencing spell, so I slapped a spider-walk onto myself and ran for the walls to get around Valen's fight with the vampire wizard and to the other side of it. Solaufein's predicament was out of my hands, as awful as that made me feel. So far, the wizard had a magical shield in effect that caused all of Valen's blows to glance wide. I had to do what I could for the bulk of the group now to wear down his magical protections and keep him on the defensive.

I knew my weapon wouldn't do much damage to him until his protections fell, but the size of it startled him and caused the vampire to take a few steps back to instinctively avoid being skewered. Arcane phrases fell from his tongue, and a few planar beings started to materialize in the air. I banished them with an abyssal command - really, a wizard should know better than to summon demons to a warlock fight. This had the unfortunate side-effect of the wizard's attention becoming arrested on me, however, and since I couldn't dispel his protections, all I could do was try to interrupt his spell-casting with as many evocative spells as I had at my command. I furiously flashed eldritch and hellfire lances and whips at him while Tomi and Valen continued to try to stab and smash him to no avail.

Bigby's crushing hand finally dropped Solaufein as the spell naturally dispersed on its own, sending the drow careening to the ground with a clatter and gasping for air. He had the others to help him and I couldn't stop the fight just to check on him no matter how much I wanted to, so I continued my assault on the wizard. I was sure the vampire hadn't had the foresight to mentally protect himself as thoroughly as he had physically, so I decided to fuck with his head a little bit. I didn't have quite the same knack for psychic spells as I did for evocative and summoning, but I had plenty of tricks under my belt that were begging to be used.

With a quick abyssal utterance, I pulled an image out of my mind from the surface and superimposed it onto my enemy's. I knew it wouldn't cause any physical damage, but it definitely disrupted the bastard's concentration to suddenly see a mountainous sunrise surrounded by gushing waterfalls and even caused him to momentarily panic as the illusory sun dawned on him. The momentary lapse was enough time for Solaufein to pick up Enserric and rush at him at fully enhanced speed and execute a powerful sword-point dispel. I felt the magic of the wizard's protections shatter and immediately sent a blast of hellfire toward his face.

He dodged it, but he wasn't able to dodge Tomi who got him in the kidneys with both of his kukris, causing the vampire to let out a startled, breathless cry and stiffen in place. Then, suddenly, he was gone.

Tomi looked up, startled, and I glanced around to see where our enemy might have teleported. I saw no flash of light, however, which confused me. It didn't seem like a spell had been cast - it seemed like all of us had just . . . Blanked out for a second, and then he had disappeared.

Lavoera, of all people, figured it out first. "He cast a time-stop!" She shouted as she struggled to stand. She hadn't been at her full capacity before the battle, and the chained bolt seemed to have taken a lot out of her. Solaufein would probably have to slap another healing spell on her to get her up and running, or she'd start to drain our potion supply. Who knew what else we'd run into, in that temple?

Nathyrra had apparently already put the same information together and was darting out of the room we were in down a neighboring corridor, where I could hear the sounds of faint chanting. The silence spell having worn off, we all pursued and were treated to the sight of a beam of light emitting from Nathyrra's hands as she pointed a conjured sunbeam at the vampire who screamed. He was thoroughly cooked despite the short duration of the light, and his skin was falling off in black flakes as he struggled to stand after. Solaufein got to him before anyone else and buried Enserric in the juncture between his neck and arm, almost bisecting the vampire's entire torso. The vampire stared down at the sword in his chest for but a moment before bursting into a cloud of mist, sending his clothes falling limply to the floor. "That tasted about as bad as I anticipated," Enserric commented, "but I'm ever so pleased to be a part of your ongoing vendetta against irritating wizards, Solaufein."

"Didn't you used to be an irritating wizard?" I asked of the sword.

"'Used' is the operative word there," the sword replied. "Now, I'm a shining beacon of justice and eloquence!"

Gracefully, no one corrected him of this assumption.

We traced the cloud to its thankfully neighboring coffin and put the blasted creature to permanent rest with a wooden stake to the heart. The vampire wizard had quite a few scrolls and wands on his person that Deekin, Nathyrra and Sharwyn carefully collected and divvied up the use of once they identified them. Tomi pocketed the few valuable gems that were lying around his lair with no objection from anyone, since most of us were more concerned with survival than loot at that point (or were content with what we had in my case). A strong potion perked Lavoera up and she offered her apologies for charging in and agreed to wait until Solaufein or Nathyrra said something in future battles before diving head-first in, as they were ostensibly our leaders in this adventure and we usually deferred to them.

Past the room we'd found the vampire's coffin in was a massive metal door that fit the key we'd acquired off that same vampire's corpse earlier, the first time when Valen had killed him. The door creakily opened to a dark, creepy, and narrow raw cavern that I'd bet my tail again led to the evil lair of this Vix'thra character. With no way of knowing what for certain was awaiting us, I happened upon the worst-case-scenarios of my imagination as Nathyrra and Solaufein led the way down into the deep.

I was treated, part-way-down, to a visceral reminder of the Battle for Old Owl Well, when I'd been shot in the arse and a dragon had swooped in and nearly sat on top of me. It was that memory specifically that came to mind, as the great red beast had swooped in and the unmistakable mixture of scents - of smoke, charred flesh, magic, and giant fire-breathing-lizard had washed over the whole battlefield. Something down in those corridors smelled like dragon, and death, and spooky, and I was having none of it.

I stopped walking. Stopped everything, in fact. A soul-crushing terror filled me to my bones and threatened to erupt out of my mouth in a scream. I covered my mouth with my hands, clamping them over my face as I started to shake. I wasn't sure entirely what was happening, but I could still picture it in my mind's eye - that great and terrible beast bearing down on us, and I could feel the gut-wrenching fear as near to me as if it were happening now.

People were calling my name, trying to get my attention, but it sounded like they were speaking through water and all I could think about was that there was a dragon ahead somewhere and it was going to be digesting us in a few short minutes. "D-d-d-d-d-dr—" I tried to articulate but couldn't get the words out. I wasn't sure what was holding me back, but it was getting harder and harder to breathe and I wasn't sure if it was me or a fear spell at that point, I just wanted it to stop.

Valen was looming in front of me, his crimson haired visage giving me something else to concentrate on. I stared into his eyes, the blue of the Sea of Fallen Stars, the blue of the sky on the surface in the full bloom of summer, the blue in the hearts of lapis lazuli, and something in me stilled. He was telling me to do something, but I couldn't understand quite what he was saying. His hands came up to rest on my shoulders, and I could feel the warmth of his palms through my armor. It grounded me into the moment. "Breathe," I finally understood his command. "Breathe, Binne. You're not breathing."

I gasped for air and almost collapsed on the spot, but he kept me standing. "Dragons," I finally managed to get out halfway between a shout and a whisper. "It's dragons, there's a dragon ahead, I can smell him, and we're all fucked and gonna die because there's a godsdamned dragon—!"

Nathyrra, ever curious Nathyrra, always to the point like a good assassin, pointed out, "that would certainly explain why the etchings on the gong were written in draconic. A dragon cult of undead, however, is unlikely . . . unless the dragon is also undead."

I froze again. The only thing worse than a dragon was a fucking dracolich. They were the great, heaping shit of legends. I licked my lips. "What are you saying, Nathyrra?" I bit out harshly.

"That we could be facing a dracolich ahead," she informed us, like she was commenting on the weather outside being unseasonably balmy and not at all on the likelihood of us suffering death-by-undead-lizard in the nearby future.

"Bloody brilliant," Tomi decreed grimly. "At least we have a deva on our side, that should give us an edge, right?" He squinted up at the faintly glowing wings of Lavoera.

She looked especially concerned about this announcement. "Well, I've certainly never faced a dracolich before," she babbled, "but I'm always willing to try new things. What should we do? How do we destroy it? Can it be destroyed? Come to think of it, I've never actually faced a regular lich before either." I supposed I had one up on her, then.

"It can be," Nathyrra nodded calmly. I wished I shared her calm. Valen was the only thing keeping me upright in that moment. "We must find its phylactery, which it should keep close by for security reasons, and destroy it. Then, the lich can be permanently destroyed."

"Then it'll be on us to find it and smash it, yeah?" Tomi looked up to Nathyrra, who nodded. "Us being the sneaky types."

"It will be incumbent upon the rest of us to keep the phindari occupied while they do so," Solaufein realized. He turned to Lavoera. "Have you any clerical spells left?"

". . . A few," she hesitated to say while thumbing her mace, "though they are mostly supportive. I have no healing spells left."

"You are not to engage unless the rest of us are incapacitated," Solaufein instructed, falling into the 'fearless leader' role effortlessly. "Everyone is to avoid its breath at all costs - Deekin, Sharwyn, keep your distance with the deva, and keep the potions nearby, we will have need of them. Summon what you can and stick to supportive spells - its magical resistances will be immense. Our primary focus should be physically engaging it and keeping it on the ground. The same goes to you," he looked directly at me as he said this, and I nodded nervously. "We will need every ally we can muster in this fight."

"The real question here is how are you supposed to 'keep it occupied?'" Tomi wondered nervously. "I can tell you my knives are sharp but they're not going to do much damage against dragon bone."

"We will keep its attention divided as much as we can, and do what damage we can," was Solaufein's advice. "Every effort counts and will wear down its defenses. We will approach it invisibly, at first. If it sees through our spell, attack immediately. If it succeeds, wait for my hand signal." We all nodded our affirmations, some of us perhaps a little less willingly than others (in mine and Tomi's case).

My hands rose up to grip Valen's wrists gently, causing him to instinctively pull his hands away, but I caught them for a moment in mine and admired the feeling of his calluses against my fingertips with a smile. I wondered how many scars he had, how many he even remembered getting, and if they would contrast with mine. I wondered if those hands had ever done anything delicate, like braided someone's hair, or caressed a hound's ear, and now at least I knew what they felt like in my own. There had been something fragile between him and myself that I'd sensed in the odd moment such as this, usually not lasting longer than a second, but the instances had been becoming more frequent. We hadn't immediately gelled like Solaufein and I had, but something small had grown between Valen and I, and I wanted to hold onto it for just a moment.

The General seemed surprised by the gesture, judging from the quirk of his tail and facial expression. Curiously, he did not break my hold, though I let his hands go after a few seconds, satisfied but not wishing to over-reach. I didn't want to nuisance him at the moment with any unwanted affection, so I held back from telling him what I really wanted to say and said instead, "Thank you, General. I'm ready when you are." And mentally prepared to die. Again.

He seemed conflicted for a second before becoming resolved and nodding his scarlet head. He held my gaze for a longer than expected moment, and then turned away. Nathyrra and the others then spelled us as a group into invisibility, and I held back with the bards and mentally prepared a list of summons I was going to make as they all prepared another haste spell, each of us ready to cast at a moment's notice.

My memory of my singular dragon encounter had surely shocked me, but it was indistinct. Most people spend their entire lives never seeing a dragon, and only hearing about them in stories. Great, intelligent, massive, fire-breathing, shape-shifting lizards of certain magical aptitude and immunity? Fuck that. If I were being really honest with myself, I'd admit that all I actually saw was a giant red blur that blotted out the sun and nearly crushed me. Its belly scales grazed my horns. If I hadn't been shot in the arse, I never would've looked up and seen the thing nor heard it over the roar of the battle - if I hadn't have rolled over into a ditch filled with orc and Greycloak bodies, I'd have been crushed to death like a tomato. Instead I survived in a dead-man-sandwich with a puckered scar on my arse. If I escaped this next dragon encounter unscathed, I knew I'd owe Tymora more than just a few half-hearted prayers. I was going to owe Lady Luck my lifelong devotion.

The bones alone were just . . . Massive! I mistook them for stalagmite formations at first, then boulders, and then put two-and-two-together as the bones started moving of their own accord toward each other. What I had been staring at was the ancient, animated spinal column of a very large and very angry elder dragon, who reared its skeletal head above all of us and clearly saw right through our little invisibility trick judging the ungodly, otherworldly screech that emitted from its open jaws. As soon as it opened its mouth I cried, "SCATTER!" Instinctively diving for the side as I knew it prepared to use its breath.

Thankfully, the haste spell was triggered a second later and we all managed to get away from the blue fire blast that came out of the dracolich's mouth. We were separated and running in different directions, but we were all alive. I blurted out the summoning incantation for Mata - I didn't want to try and see what would happen if I summoned Barbara and set it against the dracolich, I wasn't ready for that level of pants-shitting-chaos - and kept on blurting out incantations as I kept running around the room. I could hear the Vix'thra rumbling behind me as its bones shifted and moved, but I didn't dare to look.

I could soon see and hear the tall, voluptuous Mata flapping overhead, sounding frustrated with me judging by the quality of her guffaws. Her angelic, dark-feathered wings reminded me of Lavoera as she swooped in low over my head. "You summon me to fight a fucking dracolich?!" She snarled out, infuriated and incredulous. Short locks of dark hair fluttered behind her head, the mass of it bound back by a braid. "What is WRONG with you? First Halaster now this? Do you have a fucking death wish, Binne?!" I wouldn't have blamed her for planar-shifting right on out of there, but she didn't. She was a better friend than I deserved.

"No not yet, but every little bit helps! Try to avoid its breath!" I told her and barked out the summons for the next thing I could think of off the top of my head. A giant black vrock I'd named Birdbrain suddenly popped into existence with a poof of feathers and took one look at the deva behind it, the dracolich in front of it, and squawked in alarm. I'd learned to summon him in school and hadn't done it often since vrocks were largely useless. I figured it could be a good distraction for a few seconds, at the very least. Other incantations spilled past my lips summoning other creatures I'd made pacts with - of course there was Hembercane who was about as useful as a tail on a pig's arse but at least would be good fodder, a rogue baatezu I'd befriended during my stint as a Zhent prisoner that I'd nicknamed Hugo who was largely immune to fire, a big ancient earth elemental I'd encountered that I'd dubbed Aivee, anything and everything that spilled from my mouth - slaadi, a few fey, elementals, I had a small army under my belt that I hadn't been able to use yet and I summoned them all and threw them against the mighty Vix'thra.

I didn't see Tomi or Nathyrra on the battlefield, which probably meant they were doing their jobs properly and I was the one who had to shape up. So, I stopped running and whipped around to assess, and was treated to the sight of my vrock taking a full blue blast of dragon's breath to the face and cooking on the spot as Solaufein and Valen managed to get away in time. The vrock vanished in a puff of charred feathers and the smell of burnt chicken filled the cavern and made me wince. A blue slaadi I'd named Alan had latched itself onto the dracolich's clawed foot and was gnawing on its bone, not making much headway but at least providing a pretty good distraction. Hembercane did his best to keep his distance from the thing, which made me roll my eyes at his uselessness.

The dracolich picked up its clawed foot and tried to shake the slaadi off somewhat comically, so I took the opportunity to launch a few eldritch lances at its face while Aivee tried to pummel it. Aivee was rewarded for its efforts with a claw to the face and got knocked down and out into rubble while my eldritch blasts dissolved on impact with the Vix'thra's bone and did nothing other than get its attention, doing no visible damage. I paled and prepared a blast of hellfire as its attention became arrested on me, and it started to flap its desiccated wings back and forth.

"Try to keep it grounded!" I heard Solaufein shout. The clashing music from our bards reached my eyes as I ransacked my mind for the best thing I could think of, that would potentially keep it on the ground. Instinctively I formed a spear with hellfire and let my energy trail off after it in the shape of a rope in some kind of hybrid of my usual whip and launched it at the wings of the dracolich as it started to take off the ground. The ceiling of the cavern was enormous, with plenty of room for the blasted beast to fly around and inflict death from above on us lot.

My spear became lodged in the top of Vix'thra's tattered wing, but unfortunately all this seemed to do was irritate it. I realized my error pretty quickly and couldn't just sever the cord of energy since it was coming from my gut, so I was dragged up into the air with the dracolich, trailing behind it for a few moments before Valen and Solaufein caught up with me and managed to grab me by my boots and pull me down. I felt like I was being ripped in two and screamed.

The dracolich also roared in protest. Vix'thra's massive wing suddenly gave on the impact of having three people pulling a spear through it, and the energy-spear traveled down as it tore a massive, hellfiery hole in the rotted flesh of the wing. The dracolich tilted to the side as its wing was nearly torn completely in half, and I clattered to the ground on top of the tiefling and the drow, and the whip of energy finally coiled back into my gut and dispersed as it became dislodged from its target. "Let's never do that again," I vowed, grumbling as I rolled off of Valen and Solaufein as quickly as I could.

Valen flipped to his feet again in a second just as quickly as Solaufein and the three of us turned to face the dracolich. "One more time?" Valen suggested. Vix'thra was avoiding me now, on the opposite end of the cavern, but its eyes were fixed on us as it prepared its breath again. We dodged it - it was far enough away that doing so was fairly easy - and in the midst of this attack, Mata flew in and started firing lightning blasts at the undead lizard. She proved herself little more than a nuisance to the dracolich, but at least provided a useful distraction while the rest of us got in close and I prepared another hellfire lance to fire at its other wing.

This time, Solaufein and Valen were prepared and kept me firmly grounded while I launched another hellfire-whip-spear at the undead dragon's other wing, and we managed to tear an even bigger hole in it while it was distracted by the flying Mata. She flew away just in time to avoid the dracolich careening to the ground with a massive, deafening screech that I felt reverberated across several planes of existences, such was its ethereal volume. The Eryines cheered from overhead at our small victory - there really was nothing Mata loved more than a good battle.

Hugo suddenly jumped on Vix'thra's head and started clawing, tearing massive scores in its bone, and actually doing some damage. The rogue devil howled in what appeared to be sexual pleasure, I wasn't sure - baatezu anatomy was a nightmare and Hugo was really weird, did I mention I met him in a Zhent prison? - and he was treated to a full blast of dragon breath that he managed to shrug off with only some singed fur, being largely fireproof as most of those with the blood of Baator were (yours truly included, but I still didn't want to get my hair and eyebrows burned off, Hugo was just nuts). The devil roared again victoriously and continued his work, until Vix'thra managed to shake him off and send him flying into the walls. Hugo, glutton for punishment that he was, just flew right back and kept cackling and attacking.

As I felt a protective, strength-enhancing spell wash over us with the deva's distinctive tingle left behind, I wondered briefly how Valen, being tanar'ri blooded, felt with all this devil-deva action going on. I saw him at my side for a moment, his tail lashing in anger, as he abruptly roared and flew into the fight at Hugo's side, red-eyes, and all. I supposed that answered that question. Solaufein was close behind, crawling up Vix'thra's bony head and toward his spinal column, and started hacking away at the massive vertebrae with Enserric's edge. With Enserric's general indestructibility and Solaufein's enhanced strength, he was actually doing more than just carving off splinters and chips of bone and seemed to be working at a crack in the central neck column.

Vix'thra was definitely annoyed with us at that point. As I tried to approach, Vix'thra saw me and screeched and sent its tail whapping toward me. I didn't have time to dodge and I flew through the air with the wind knocked right out of me, straight into Lavoera and Sharwyn. I was dumb enough to get pissed off by that and charged again after getting back to my feet, only this time to get tail-whipped into the other end of the cavern.

This time, I was very surprised to suddenly fly through the wall of the cavern and straight into a pile of gold that set my helmet clanging around my ears. I opened my eyes and spotted the dragon's horde, and heard it roar as it realized what must have happened. I wasn't entire surely where I was or what was going on, but I spied Tomi and Nathyrra none the worse for wear next to two piles of bones at the end of the gold-and-jewel-and-weapon-filled room, the drow holding what appeared to be a large red potion bottle. They stared at my sudden appearance, wide-eyed, and I grinned at them. "Hey, how's the phylactery search coming along?" I asked politely over the dracolich's roars of outrage.

Nathyrra stared at the phylactery in her hands and with one great heave, threw it onto the ground and smashed it into a thousand pieces. A sizzle of red lightning emerged from the fluid on the ground and dispersed into the air as the liquid dissolved, rendering the dracolich mortal. I grinned even wider. "Now, let's put down this fucker for good," I said, and stood up on my two feet. I pocketed a bit of gold on the ground just for keepsies, gripped my scythe with two hands, and bolted out back into the fray eagerly. I felt a little more hopeful now that we had confirmation that Vix'thra was killable, even if it was still largely invincible.

Once I was back in the main cavern and in the fight, I realized with a start that it wasn't just Vix'thra we were fighting anymore. A contingency spell seemed to have been activated and three bone golems, the mirrors of the massive ones that we'd faced higher up in the temple, had become animated from leftover bones strewn on the ground and were attacking in concert with the dracolich, probably at its command.

They weren't made out of dragon bone, so I was less worried about them and directed my minions with an abyssal command to attack them and keep them off our spell casters. Hugo even intercepted one that was bound for the deva, much to Lavoera's visible surprise, and she assisted the devil in his attack with her mace. Deekin and Sharwyn managed another one by themselves, the tone of Deekin's song changing as he started chanting the Doom song, and Sharwyn fending it off successfully with her double-bladed sword in a melee. The other bone golem had Valen and Solaufein to contend with, so it was toast in a matter of seconds - I felt like Sharwyn could use the most help, so I threw a lance of hellfire at the thing and lit it up from within with white hot flames straight from the Abyss. That distracted it from its attacking for a moment that I used to intercept it with my scythe, and quickly dismembered it with my weapon.

Our focus on the bone golems for a few minutes allowed Vix'thra the time to recover and plan, and it had decided that Tomi and Nathyrra were the most dangerous or vulnerable of us all. Tomi dodged a swipe from its claw, but Nathyrra - despite her haste from her short sword - was still not fast enough to avoid its jaws. Vix'thra picked the drow woman up in its mouth and to my horror, bit down, making her scream in agony as its massive teeth practically bit her in half. Deep and dark drow blood poured out of the dracolich's mouth in a fountain. I could see Deekin from the corner of my eye scrambling to find a potion, but I wasn't sure a potion was going to be enough to fix this shit.

I didn't know what else to do to help Nathyrra, so I started chucking hellfire at the beast which really only distracted it and made it more mad at me. I made a target out of myself as it finally dropped the fatally silent Nathyrra from its jaws. She tumbled to the ground in a bleeding heap as Vix'thra turned toward me. "That's right, I'm the one you bloody want!" I cried even as I backed away. "Remember me? I tore your wings in two, motherfucker!"

"You really do have a fucking death wish!" Mata cried from overhead in alarm.

Valen roared in rage and launched himself through the air at Vix'thra, scrambling up its ribs and body as quickly as he'd scuttled down that rope into the pit toward its spine until he was perched on its backside, and started to take out his anger on its vertebrae, worrying at the cracks that Solaufein had made earlier and blowing off chunks of dragon bone with his heavy flail. Vix'thra let out an involuntary gout of flame at the ceiling and turned to try to shake the tiefling off, only to earn Mordekainen's enchanted sword to the bony face courtesy of Sharwyn or Deekin. It was little more than a momentary distraction, but it gave Hugo time to fly up next to Valen and assist the tiefling in his work of tearing the dracolich apart from the top-down.

Lavoera had either run out of spells or was choosing that moment to ignore Solaufein's command and flew over to start hitting Vix'thra in the leg with her massive mace. Either way, I don't think Solaufein noticed - the drow took a moment to brush his short hair that had fallen into his face away, making my fingers twitch, before joining her. Lavoera did something to their weapons with a chant in a language I didn't recognize that seemed to make them glow with white-yellow light, which seemed to cause them to do more damage and alarmed Vix'thra enough to attempt to stomp on them with his free foot. Overhead, I saw Valen's weapon glow with the same light, and as Tomi rushed in to contribute his knives carried the same light.

Tomi stabbed at the dracolich and to his credit, tried to do damage, but all this earned him was a good stomping. He would've been crushed to death were it not for a sudden invulnerable globe, courtesy of the chanting Sharwyn, and the halfling managed to roll away in time albeit with an injured leg.

Hugo got snatched out of the air by Vix'thra's jaws and chose to plane-shift at the last second before he was chomped on like Nathyrra, who was still being treated by Deekin on the ground. Valen at that moment leapt up off of the dracolich's spine and clung to the horns on its head with one hand, nailing it with his flail with the other hand in the jaw. Vix'thra shook its head back and forth like a dog to try to dislodge the tiefling, to no avail. I worried about him though, he was being reckless in his berserker way and I lashed out with an eldritch whip again around its jaw, this time using Akordia's whip as well and lashed it around the opposite horn on Vix'thra's head and pulled with all my might.

I didn't stand a chance in pinning it down by myself, so Solaufein rushed over to help me again, as did Lavoera when she saw what I was doing - she was at least as strong as Valen so between the three of us, once more we managed to keep it grounded, this time with its head dragged down to make it easier for Valen to climb up top and smash it in the eye sockets and jaw.

At the last second, Lavoera let go, which I was immensely grateful for since her nearness had the abrupt effect of making me itch all over, and she joined the tiefling on Vix'thra's head in beating it into submission.

I was worried that Vix'thra would just rear its head up suddenly and send us all flying off, but Lavoera surprised me. She flew forward with all the strength behind her body and wings and with a loud cry, slammed her glowing mace into Vix'thra's jawbone and completely shattered it. Shards of bone flew through the air and to the ground, and she didn't stop there - she continued laying into the dracolich with all her might until suddenly it just . . . Stopped moving.

The skeleton now inanimate, the undead dragon collapsed into the heap of bones it had originally been, and the bluish necromantic glow from its eye sockets abated. It took a few seconds for it to really seep in that the thing was dead and the battle was finally over, because my adrenaline was telling me it would get back up any second and we'd have to kill it all over again. But, Nathyrra had destroyed its phylactery, and Vix'thra was well and truly dead. Again.

Valen's eyes flashed back to blue as he leapt off of the skeleton's head and stood, bent over, and panting with his hands on his knees. He waved me off when I expressed concern. It was the first time I'd ever seen him actually exhausted from a fight. There were dents in his armor, but he was otherwise unruffled, as were most of the rest of us. Except Nathyrra.

Luckily, Solaufein had a few charges left in his resurrection stick. It seemed I owed Tymora my lifelong devotion after all. Nathyrra was back up and running in no time at all and seemed unaffected despite her violent death. She had earned a few interesting looking scars and her armor was completely toast, but she was glad the battle had turned out the way it had. I wished I possessed her nonchalance. I hung onto her, hugging her for a good couple of seconds too long, sniffling back tears. I hadn't realized how much I missed Nathyrra or even really liked her, until she was immobile in a pool of her own blood on the cold stone ground. At the same time, I was selfishly glad that it hadn't been me dying this time, or worse, Solaufein.

In addition, Tomi's leg had been broken, but it was nothing that couldn't be set and fixed with a few potions. We were all bruised and battered and cut up, but we survived and lived to raid the dragon's horde. Overall, I'd say it was a profitable and worthwhile adventure. We even found some shadow dragon scales in Vix'thra's horde that some good armor could be made from, which I didn't want to think about the origin of (but hoped they had belonged to the original dragon at least), and a number of enchanted weapons. Tomi pocketed most of the gems and we couldn't begrudge him that, while Nathyrra had first pick of the enchanted weapons. Amongst them she found a dagger of unknown make that would return to her hands once thrown, which was pretty useful for an assassin and I spotted Tomi eying it jealously.

Lavoera, despite inflicting what I would call the killing blow, was disinterested in the loot, and just seemed happy enough to be alive. "That was a rush!" She was gushing as her wings fluttered in excitement, stirring the air. "I've never been in a battle so bracing!"

Mata flapped down from the ceiling where she'd been hovering to keep her distance from the deva. "You're a crazy bitch, you're lucky I like you," Mata commented. "Call me next time you're fighting a dragon, that was hilarious." Mata casually waved and disappeared as a planar shift took hold of her form. I waved back happily. Hembercane followed her suit with a grunt, looking displeased with me, but I couldn't give a rat's arse what that imp thought.

"You certainly know a lot of demons!" Lavoera commented to me, perhaps a little unwisely, but she seemed pretty naive and she had helped us out so I wasn't going to be mean to her. I also didn't want to make her cry again.

"Well, it comes with the territory," I drawled instead. "I've made a lot of friends over the years and sometimes they like to help me out in a pinch. I hope Hugo's okay," I added, realizing he had been nearly bit in half by Vix'thra. "Eh, he's probably fine," I rationalized aloud, "probably jerking himself off in the Abyss at all the excitement he just got. Great big horndog . . ."

"Well, he certainly did have a great big . . . Er . . ." Lavoera didn't feel comfortable finishing that sentence.

"Penis?" I finished it for her with a sly smile. "Yes, some of them have those. Bet you'd be surprised by how many of them don't."

She blushed and turned away, playing with her hair as I smirked at her shyness. She was surprisingly endearing, despite her vapid moments. Then again, I supposed I had my vapid moments too.

"You are reckless in the heat of battle, abbil," Solaufein was softly saying to Valen. His tone caught my ear. He had placed a hand on Valen's pauldron, and the tiefling stood up to look the drow man in the eyes. I wondered that the General had brushed me off but allowed Solaufein close.

"It's definitely the biggest thing I've helped kill so far," said General Shadowbreath. "Thank the deva for me . . . I still need to keep my distance from her," Valen admitted grimly. Something in his eyes flickered. The battle-rage was too near the surface - I could smell his tanar'ri blood stirring even at the small distance. I couldn't focus on it during the battle, but something in Valen had cut loose like it never had before. Tomi had put it well earlier when he'd said Valen was just a moment away from fighting anyone over just about anything. Right then in that second it seemed like Solaufein was the only thing standing in between Valen and whatever Valen was about to start punching.

"Oh, you're welcome!" Lavoera called over. "I'm not offended, I understand," she rambled on, "I've never been around so many fiendlings before - fought alongside, I mean, not against because I definitely have done that a lot - but you both seem like nice people even if you make my skin itch too, and I'm happy to kill undead with you!"

"Thanks, I think?" I said, itching my skin because she was still a little too near. I sidled over to Valen and Solaufein.

The drow nodded at me and went over to check on Nathyrra, speaking with her in Ilythiiri in hushed tones. Valen stared at the de-animated bones grumpily. I didn't know what to say to him - I didn't have anything prepared, so I just told him, "I'm glad you're alright."

The General gave me a weirdly suspicious look, before sighing. "I forget that you are a warlock," he said. "I needed this reminder." And then he walked off like he didn't want to be standing next to me, which hurt my feelings a little bit. I wasn't sure what I'd done to earn that comment, but I was sure whatever it was involved the permanent stick up his arse called the Blood Wars and figured I probably didn't actually earn it and that he was just being his usual huffy self. I'm sure whatever it was, he'd get over it eventually with or without some encouragement.

We left that cavern carrying the entire dragon's horde in our overflowing bag of holding, and whatever we could in our arms, leaving only a few piles of gold coins behind that we had no room for that Tomi lamented the loss of all the way back up. We parked ourselves in the temple in a large room that we hadn't killed anyone in yet and seemed clean and set up a few bedrolls so we could get some hours of shut-eye before going back through Drearing's Deep and to Lith My'athar. We set up watches in three hour rotations, with Lavoera happily volunteering to take the first watch with Deekin, who had a lot of notes to catch up on and questions for the "heaven-lady." I passed out next to Sharwyn and Solaufein, who had thrown his arm around me in his v'dri and woke for the third watch with Nathyrra and carefully extricated myself from the warm sandwich.

She quietly tended to the fire I'd started while I stared into it, trying to remember what it was I'd dreamt about again. The vivid and truly terrible ones I tended to remember quite well, but the rest slipped away in the seconds it took to wake. "Hey Nathyrra," I got her attention, her red eyes snapping up to mine. "What's your reverie like? You know, the v'dri. Do drow dream?"

She paused to consider this, brushing a short lock of hair out of her eyes. I rather liked her new haircut, I thought it suited her well. "It is somewhere between dream and memory. Like . . . Solipsism. We can easily slip into the past, and even so rarely the future - such as what the Seer is able to do. It is a gift that I am told is innate to all elven kind and becomes more powerful with age and experience. I, for one, do not remember my v'dri, but that is perhaps because I am so young."

"How old are you?" I wondered honestly.

"Almost a century," she admitted somewhat sheepishly. "To some I am still considered a child, but I have never been allowed to be one, so I disagree with this." I supposed this was considered quite young by drow standards, even though it was positively ancient by mine.

"I'm only thirty if that makes you feel better," I told her. "I mean, that's considered fairly adult by human standards, but it's still a lot younger than you. You're really as old as you feel."

"Thank you," she said carefully. "I admit, I am unused to being in the presence of younger races. My only experience before meeting you, Solaufein, and Deekin, was interacting with Valen, and he is . . . Unique."

"He is," I agreed, glancing over to the tiefling's red head as he slumbered. He turned fitfully in his sleep, suddenly facing toward us and the fire, and mumbled something I couldn't hear but reflexively made me smile.

"To return to your earlier question, v'dri is a little more like a form of meditation, than sleep," Nathyrra answered. "It is a time for us to reflect on our waking hours, and re-order our minds."

"Thanks. I saw Solaufein tossing and turning one night, and wondered what it was like, if it was different."

"Do you dream?" She wondered.

Funny how the subject kept coming up. "I do have nightmares," I told her a little uneasily. "Usually involving me or people I know dying. Doesn't happen every time I sleep, but most of the time."

Nathyrra blinked and took this in stride. "I see," she commented lightly. "Have you spoken to the Seer about this?" She wondered.

I shrugged. "Valen told me I should talk to her too when I told him the same thing," I noted. "I've just never spoken to anyone about them really, before. I'm sort of used to them. It's been happening for most of my life, and I've led a fairly violent life, so perhaps it's to be expected."

"It is up to you, who you choose to open up to about yourself," Nathyrra said. "I would not fault you if you found it difficult to share your inner thoughts with the Seer. It took me many months to first open up to her about my innermost thoughts, and I still have not shared all of them. Know that she would not judge you by anything you say, however."

"I'll consider it," I promised. "Now, be honest, Nathyrra. What do you gauge our chances of making it out of this upcoming battle alive and on top?"

Nathyrra's gaze slid from mine toward the fire. "I do not know," she admitted honestly. "I think we stand a chance at overpowering the Valsharess, but there is still the matter of her arch-devil to contend with. I do not know if the bebilith poison will even be effective in its current state . . . There are too many unknowns," she assessed. "I know we are formidable. But it may not be enough."

I sighed, my thoughts growing dark and morbid again. I struggled to find the silver lining but couldn't really see it. I didn't want any of us to die. "Well, at least I probably won't die of old age," I said. "How's Vaendrith been?" I asked, changing the subject. "I ran into him in the halls but didn't get a chance to speak to him."

"Adjusting well," Nathyrra replied. "He had long ago left the Spider Queen in his heart, so it has not been as difficult for him as I had anticipated. He does not find the idea of Eilistraee appealing, but he seems to get along well with the Seer, and he and I have been able to make amends for past harm. I reared him," she revealed at my questioning gaze. "He is a great deal younger than I, and I was tasked with our Matron to raise him when he was a small babe. I taught him how to read, write, clean, and use his innate gifts."

"So you're close then," I realized. "True siblings?"

"We share a different father, but that is not uncommon. Matrons may take who they please to their beds, and fathers are not permitted to be openly affectionate or show favor to any of their children. Children do not belong to the males. They belong to the females."

"Your society is strange, no offense," I laughed a little. "Surfacers just do things differently I suppose. Though I do believe women are superior to men in just about every way, so I can agree with that much about drow. Did I tell you I was mistakenly summoned by a Matron lady once?" I nodded at Nathyrra's disbelieving eyebrow-raise. "Oh yes, mistaken summons happen more often than you'd think, particularly when your summoning name - like mine - sounds similar to a few others.' I was summoned by this drow priestess woman who was offering up her youngest son, just a babe, and so it was explained to me, in exchange for power or some service. Is that a common practice? Offering your own children for sacrifice? I'd always wondered."

"Unfortunately, yes, it is expected amongst noble Houses to do so," Nathyrra explained. "Males are less desirable than females and sometimes offered in sacrifice when they are unwanted by their mothers. You were summoned for a rite? For what purpose?"

"To bless or oversee the sacrifice? I'm not sure what she wanted. Nothing good, that much was pretty clear from the bloodstained altar, screaming baby, and the wickedly sharp knife she was holding. I objected quite vehemently before I was banished and was thoroughly appalled after."

For some reason, Nathyrra looked a little ashamed. "I am sorry you had to see this side of my people, before knowing them as anything else," she said quietly. "They . . . We have long been lost in Lloth's doctrine, and it has shaped us accordingly. Her teachings have sharpened our edges, given us scars, and informed our lives."

I thought about Solaufein for a moment, and how much there was about his life that I didn't yet know. Hundreds of years of whips and chains and darkness had somehow birthed him, just as all those years traveling through the planes battling devils had shaped Valen. I reflected on Nathyrra, her clear gaze and perfectly exotic profile over the campfire and wondered what she'd suffered under the thumb of the Valsharess, and who she had made to suffer. She was a beautiful assassin, after all, and good at her work. Without really paying attention to it as it was happening, my own life had shaped me too - my capture and subsequent torture, the dungeon-diving, the lich-slaying, the Wailing, the war, and now this geas-induced suicide mission into the Underdark to stop an arch-devil and drow queen from teaming up and taking over Prime.

It seemed like each of us, in our ways, had come together after being perfectly molded by the years for this very task in front of us. And for a moment, just a second really, I started to wonder if fate really was a thing after all and not something I'd simply joked about sniffing. It was more than just an odor. For a second, I started to believe Eilistraee had a plan for us.

I thought about it later and realized I was being completely barmy, but it was a nice feeling for the short while it lasted. Felt like something big was looking out for me for a change. Felt powerful. It was almost like love, in that it made me feel less alone in the universe.

We trudged back through Drearing's Deep the following day. None of the residents of the village had any interest in following us, despite us insisting that they'd be killed if they stayed there. They didn't seem to have anywhere else to go and I felt bad for them, but they were sorry-looking and wouldn't be useful in a fight and a darkly selfish part of me was grateful they chose to remain behind. Not that I was glad that they would probably die out there without aid, but there was only so much we could do, and I wasn't in a convincing mood. They all could probably hole up in the now-abandoned-temple and wait out the Valsharess' war entirely, which is what I told the svirfneblin in charge that they should do, and then once the dust cleared get the hells out of the Underdark one way or another. I'll admit though it felt a bit funny talking to all of the villagers with all that gold dripping off us from the dragon's horde.

Rather than walk the entire day back to Lith My'athar, Solaufein offered to teleport us despite his visible misgivings over the process of teleportation, which I knew upset his stomach like nothing else. It was a simple matter of all of us touching him, or each other, while he operated the weird little portal-device that he had in his boot, and soon we were back in the white Reaper's realm with him looking a little pale.

Tomi and Sharwyn spent a little bit of time gawking about, and Nathyrra fired a number of questions in Ilythiiri at Solaufein that he didn't seem prepared to answer. The nauseous drow largely ignored Nathyrra's questions and led us to a doorway that he had apparently 'keyed' to the temple in Lith My'athar's main room one night, which was convenient because I really didn't want to have to walk the entire way back to the city. I went through the door first, eager to be back and get real food and a nap in on an actual bed, with Deekin so close behind me that he bumped into my tail.

I blinked at the sudden change in light. The arachnoid temple was a great deal more dim than the nexus where the Reaper lived. The others were soon behind me, Valen and Solaufein pulling up the rear, and a few seconds later Commander Imloth was walking down the corridor and looking very surprised to see all of us. "General! You have returned," he greeted, pretty much ignoring the rest of us, except for Lavoera who drew Imloth's concerned stare as she waved happily at him. "I see you have brought us more strays," he noted. I waved too, not at all miffed, there were quite a few of us after all. "The Seer is waiting for you all in the library."

"How'd she know we were coming?" I wondered, and then remembered I was talking about someone called 'the Seer.' "Oh, I answered my own question."

"That would be why she be called the Seer," Deekin answered me anyway. I whapped him gently with my tail in retaliation, drawing an annoyed grunting out of him.

Solaufein led the way once he had gotten his bearings and a pat on the back from me, his dark cloak swishing dramatically around his boots as he stalked through the halls. He knocked on the library door three times before opening, and I heard the Seer trill a greeting in Ilythiiri from inside. She beckoned us forward as we filed in, and something about her looked different. I wasn't sure what it was at first until I heard the sounds of chainmail tinkling as she stood up from a desk and walked forward and noted that she was wearing fitted armor belted over her white robe, covering her vulnerable bits. With a glowing blue staff she picked up from the table in her hands, she looked like she was ready for war.

"Armor looks good on you," I complimented. She smiled at me, a little slyly. "Does this mean the battle is at hand?"

"I have seen enemy illithid gathering on the astral plane with my own eyes," the Seer informed us, all business. "It is fortunate you arrived when you have."

"Our dramatic timing has always been excellent," I said.

"We have seen movement from the Valsharess' forces in the outer caverns and believe she will attack in a matter of a few days. Lith My'athar has begun preparations for war," the Seer went on.

I gripped my scythe a little tighter as Solaufein bowed respectfully and said, "Use us as you will, Malla Ourana. Where would you have us?"

"I would have your input on a few matters of troop placement, but first, will you tell me what has happened? I see we have a guest."

Lavoera stepped forward from the back, and Valen and I stepped aside as she brushed past us, sending my skin itchy-tingly again. It was really starting to get old. "Oh yes, you must be the Seer they told me about," she realized with wide eyes. "Your aura is so pure and bright! I-I guess I'm just surprised. You must be as close to Eilistraee as Solaufein, then. They, uh, found me in Vix'thra's temple, but don't worry, he's dead!" She summarized.

"Who is dead?" The Seer wondered with some amusement.

"Vix'thra. I will check in with the scouts after seeing to new armor," Nathyrra spoke up. "Valen, you should see to the city's defenses. Solaufein, you should inform Malla Seer what has happened." Valen nodded and headed out of library after a moment's hesitation where he stared between Solaufein and the Seer, as if he didn't want to chance that something would happen to either of them while they were out from under his watch, but his logic eventually directed him to leave. He must've been in a fine mood still because he didn't even look at me as he left. Nathyrra followed him, worrying at the bloodstained holes in her black armor's breastplate that Vix'thra had left behind with her fingers.

"And I need to get to the market," Tomi realized, his pockets still stuffed with gems. "Kobold? You up for a quick market trip?"

"Yeah, Deekin really needs to lighten his pack," the little bard said mournfully. "Though maybes we should donates enchanted weapons to drows defending the city, first. Then, we can sells everything else."

Tomi shrugged. "Whatever floats you, I just want to be rich once before I die."

"You really think Gulhrys is going to be still selling shit when there's a war about to happen?" I wondered dubiously. Just how far did that bloody drow wizard's greed go?

"I think you underestimate the concept of the free market," Tomi said with a grin.

"I'll supervise them," Sharwyn volunteered. "You can tell them about the undead dragon."

". . . What exactly happened in that cavern?" The Seer wondered with wide, concerned eyes.

Lavoera seemed to think this was directed at her. "Oh! Well, I was minding my own business going about my mission, which I'm still on and could definitely use some help with if you have the time, but no rush or whatever, and I was captured by drow and taken to this undead vampire temple place where they drained my blood to use in the animation of bone golems! Then these people rescued me and I felt like I owed them, so I helped them destroy the dracolich that the vampires worshiped, and then we went through a portal, and then I was here because they said you might be able to help me, and you also needed some help! Did I miss anything? I don't think I did. Would anyone happen to have any spare clothes or armor? It might be hard to fit something with my wings, but I, er, feel dirty." She glanced down at the brown rags clinging to her shining form, and I could empathize quite a bit having once also been kept naked in a dungeon.

The Seer took this news pretty well and processed it with a straight face. "We will run you a bath, find something comfortable for you to wear, and then take you to our city's armorer," she promised the perky deva. "Thank you for agreeing to help us against the Valsharess. I will do my best to aid you in your own mission."

"Really? That'd be great!"

I yawned. "Yeah, that about sums it up," I assessed. "I'm er, going to pass out standing up if I stay here, so I think I'll be heading to bed. Wake me up when the battle starts."

"I will join you momentarily," Solaufein promised. I waved him off, knowing I'd probably be passed out as soon as I hit the sack.

Instead, I was surprised to find my mind racing as soon as I took my armor off and laid down. I tossed and turned quite a bit, trying to get comfortable but couldn't. All I could think about was the approaching army of mind flayers, drow, and who knew what else, looming just a day or so away. Solaufein was true to his word and wordlessly joined me a few minutes later, curling up against my back and spooning me. He placed a few gentle kisses on the back of my neck that raised my hairs there before falling quickly into his reverie, while for a change of pace I stared into the dark, unable to find rest.

I must've fallen asleep at some point, however, because the next thing I knew I was waking up feeling disoriented about the loss of time and the whole of Lith My'athar was already awake. I slipped out of bed without disturbing Solaufein, and donned my clothes, not bothering with the armor since the army wasn't at the gates yet, or there would have been an angry tiefling knocking at our door. I went into the temple's nave and waited until I saw someone I recognize pass by - it was Imloth on his way to the training grounds, who had a moment to spare a word for me. Intelligence had arrived from the Cazna's scouts that the enemy's army was on their way. In a matter of days, the Valsharess herself would be here to wipe us off the face of the earth or die trying.

---

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

Naut-elghinyrr . . . Undead, in general
Detholusin . . . Chosen, in this context not in the past sense of choice but as in one who is chosen
Aphyon yath . . . Vix'thra's Temple of Doom