I am much obliged to Trisa_Slyne for helping me out with this as my beta reader and editor.
GORION
Gorion of Halruaa felt lucky that his young ward Aphra was not a loud girl, nor was she too prone to mischief, unlike her best friend and Gorion's only daughter Imoen - a slightly older and sprightly child who was as loud as she was mischievous. Sometimes when Gorion looked at Imoen, an invisible knife would pierce his heart as he most vividly recalled his late wife's irreversible death. It did him ill to dwell on dark thoughts. Imoen was safe enough and untouched by the shadows of her past. He kept her at an arm's reach, a stone's throw away at the Inn simply because Winthrop was better equipped to keep the rambunctious young girl busy. Aphra was studious, but Imoen now perhaps spent too much time with Winthrop, who had seemed to instill in Imoen a childish sense of humor and irrepressible propensity for pranks. Aphra, a name Imoen had chosen at the age of five for her slightly younger sibling meaning 'three' in a dead language, was indeed a reasonably treated - and reasonable child. Perhaps even his favorite, though he would never tell Imoen such. Most people got along with Aphra despite her sister's knack for roping her into trouble, and this was considered a blessing in light of her peculiarities.
The monks had begun to notice odd things about the child immediately - long before she was named and precisely two years after the famed sage had returned to Candlekeep from long travel abroad with a small and bright boy at his side who carried his infant half-sister in his little arms. There had been some contention at his sudden adoptions (one child they could accept as Imoen was his 'true-born,' but a total of three was somewhat of a stretch), but Gorion was an esteemed sage who had been known by his friends to talk his way out of prisons. Calling him 'persuasive' would have been an insult to bardic traditions; and along with many other feathers in his cap he'd developed a lifelong devotion and mastery of enchantment, so any concerns about his strange wards landed on deaf ears. The monks were unlikely to turn away the old Harper collegiate scholar and his orphans, and shortly after Gorion's arrival he had engaged the First Monk in private conversation and donated a large chunk of his own personal library to Candlekeep. Amongst his possession were coveted engineering manuals on Halruaan airships which was something he suspected that if his homeland at all knew about, they would surely send an assassin or two armed with a poisoned bolt his way. The details of the discussion he had with gnarly old Ulraunt were never disclosed and the books were kept under careful guard and enchantment, and Gorion was thereafter allowed to stay with his three children in the safety of the Keep. Imoen knew nothing of the struggles that led to her birth and assumed the other two were her siblings by other women, and Gorion was glad for their ignorance. The boy knew better, but thankfully - and gracefully - kept his silence.
A large part of Gorion's conscience had died the day his wife announced her pregnancy. He'd consigned the circumstances that led to it to his journals and abjured it from both of their memories, that they might soldier forward undeterred by thoughts of suicide. Imoen's was a violent birth, what little he could recall of it. There were realities in the world too terrible to bear, lies that allowed him to live with their truths ascribed to a hidden physical record. His wife had died after Imoen was born and she drifted past the reach of the clerics, whom could beseech no god on Abeir-Toril capable of breathing life back into her broken body. Her soul simply did not want to return, and his only daughter was born a squawking bald goblin out of a dying mother's womb. Two days later he buried his wife in their garden. He accepted he was Imoen's father, even if it was fundamentally untrue, and the sight of the babe initially revolted him. All he had seen in the moment was a monster.
Embittered by his loss and overwhelmed by his newfound responsibility, he'd given the child to a wet nurse paid with heaps of coin. He trusted the child to the nurse and left on a mission for the Harpers for Saradush and returned unexpectedly within four months mentally scarred by what he had seen there with two young wards in tow, one an infant carried by the other, one small boy. When he'd finally embraced his daughter for the first time, he openly wept and named her Imoen, based off of an ancient Halruaan word meaning 'gift.' As Imoen grew up, her pale eyes gradually changed to the jade-green hue of her mother's, but he saw little of his or his wife's nature in the girl. She grew up to be irreverent to authority and only selectively studious, despite having two dedicated and passionate scholars for parents. It baffled him a little that Imoen appeared at such a young age to be strikingly individual, whereas his other two wards had attempted to emulate him in demeanor. Sarevok had been quite eager to take after and learn from his new foster parent, and Aphra proved to be similar in manner as she had grown as well, devoting most of her time to studies quite fiercely.
Life had been painful, yet peaceful for the next few years while the girls learned to walk and speak. The boy, Sarevok, was most helpful in this regard, having watched after many of the younger Children in his old home. He seemed content to be their steward for a time, which allowed Gorion to focus on other matters than parenting. Sarevok trailed after Gorion like a shadow at first, but eventually found himself preoccupied with the education of the other two, and took well to his responsibilities.
Gorion also paid no mind to the concerns of the nanny he hired until he saw the first signs of strangeness with his own eyes. It's not often you see a toddler lift an adult cow by the legs. Sarevok had been proud and impressed that his sister took so much after their "true" father with her great strength. The girl was innocently oblivious to this remark, and thought Gorion was her father. Imoen laughed innocuously and clapped merrily and asked her to do it again.
Gorion's blood had run cold, for he had never spoken to the boy of their father. The Sembian boy had been entirely silent when they had met, and he had followed Gorion mutely outside the Temple of Bhaal. Once they were outside, as Gorion had taken the time to wash the blood off of the boy's feet, Sarevok had asked, "Are you going to kill us?"
Gorion had told him no. That there had been enough death, and he did not care to add to it. That no one would ever hurt him again. Sarevok's expression had suggested he did not entirely believe Gorion, but he desperately wanted to. He was only a child, after all.
The monks objected considerably less to Imoen's bright presence than the frighteningly strong new toddler and her too-smart-for-his-own-good brother. When Gorion had been too busy, the boy had picked up after his sisters. Sarevok subsequently had taught them how to read, write, draw, and speak. It seemed convenient enough an arrangement at the time, but had unintentionally created life-bonds between all three that no existing force could sever. They had each other's mannerisms, and around each other they talked of inside jokes that confused him.
After catching Sarevok giving them impromptu anatomy lessons on a fallen and dead bird, he sent the boy away to a willing family of Calimshanite nobles near Baldur's Gate where he couldn't influence the girls with strange ideas. It pained them all deeply. He lamented the decision when he saw the sheer amount of grief it caused his wards and the boy to be separated, but it was nothing an enchantment wouldn't ameliorate. They would feel his absence but not know his name, and vice versa; a lie that would let them live easier. The guards and monks could be convinced to hold their silence and Sarevok, Gorion rationalized, would have the best of all worlds in the care of his foster family. He would live unremarkably and contentedly, if only for a time. Gorion had felt the need to separate Aphra from the boy from the moment they'd met in that awful Temple, though the decision had never ceased to plague him.
Sarevok was better off, as were Aphra and Imoen, and he had repeated this to himself daily ever since. The doubts came daily. The boy would be fine. Aphra was his priority. She needed special care, for she had more of her father's blood than the others.
The boy had been a tragic mistake, one easily rectified by a few well-placed memory spells. The girls would recall a distant dream, and so would Sarevok - taken in by the Anchev family of the Gate, where he would no doubt be under too many eyes to indulge in the behavior that precipitated Gorion's banishment. There was nothing special about the boy outside of his intelligence and exceptionally good health, but letting one such as Aphra out of Gorion's sight was unthinkable. At least of Imoen, she was convinced that Aphra was her half-sister and thought nothing at all was odd about her. The old wizard had no desire to correct his children of any delusions they had developed on their own, especially if they made his life significantly easier.
Aphra grew like a weed; before Imoen named her, she learned to walk and talk at an age most children would still be crawling. Shortly after she learned to read, and then learned to speak elven by age six despite having an accent that he could not seem to correct her of (it appeared to be a condition of playing with Imoen, the only other child about her age who was nowhere near her level of literacy - though Imoen spent most of her time with the Innkeeper and playing pranks on guests at this age, to Gorion's consternation). At the tender age of seven, Aphra was already learning two more languages and devouring books and scrolls like a true Oghmite. She studied the stars of the Sphere obsessively, and devoured knowledge about the world around her. The religion and discipline required of one of Oghma's own was beyond her, though. She was restless, and never still for long. Even as she read or wrote, her foot would always tap, her fingers always twitch, her hands would wind through her hair, or play with the ends of her braid. She also took up running - running because she had more energy than anyone had ever seen or known all pent up inside a tiny body.
Sometimes, Aphra would run so fast that you couldn't see anything but a trail of black locks in the air behind her and hear the wind thunder and snap at her passing feet. Dirt would kick up in clouds in her wake. She would run in circles around the keep in the rain until she could run no more, to 'cool off and get the wind out without it stirring,' as she would say to Gorion when he asked her what in blazes she thought she was doing. It was a terrible sort of logic from a seven year old. The habit seemed harmless even if it mentally disturbed others to watch, so he allowed her this indulgence.
Gorion often thanked Oghma out loud, and at great length (with sometimes a few curses thrown in there) that she was a (mostly) well-behaved child, despite many pranks played on Ulraunt that warranted the old monk a serious and deep grudge against the 'unnatural' girl. Gorion did not mind it in truth, although it did complicate his life a bit when Ulraunt came to him with lengthy complaints about the girl's behavior. He didn't know how to tell the old monk that his antagonism toward the girl would only result in escalations of behavior; such was Aphra's way, unless one was direct. If Gorion didn't like what she was doing, he would tell her so and she would always obey without too many questions. She listened to him attentively and held boundless curiosity about reality and its hidden mechanics. He could never stay mad at her for long. "Old man," she'd chide him if he was stern with her, "there's no need to be so grumpy."
He answered all of her queries as best as a guardian and tutor could, and felt himself privileged to have such an intelligent and inquisitive ward especially when his other child detested most of her studies, save magic. The rest of the residents of sleepy Candlekeep were not so forgiving as Gorion. Imoen was thankfully exempt from any strangeness, but his daughter took it all in her chipper stride without question. She loved her sister, there was no doubt Aphra loved her too.
He only nearly caved and told his children about the boy once. Imoen had been delivered to him in his study by their language tutor Tethtoril and a bewildered Aphra, inconsolably and incoherently sobbing for reasons Imoen had trouble explaining, on account of the crying. After a time, Imoen managed to hiccup her way through an explanation of what amounted to a mysterious hole she felt at the center of her - not quite in body, but in her chest, where she knew something had to be. She felt quite eloquently about it after calming down and described a profound sensation of a loss without a name, as if someone very dear to her had died but she couldn't really fathom why. It didn't seem fair that the enchantment could suppress the memory, but not the emotion behind it. Aphra even admitted then that she felt it too sometimes - as a sort of pull in her, telling her to climb over the walls and run away to the north. He talked himself out of admitting the truth, and offered a half-truth instead: that sometimes, people just felt this way without really understanding why. Imoen came crying of the feeling a time or two after that, but his reassurances seemed to quell her.
Shortly after this incident, Aphra received her first reprimand from the senior most monks for leaping from building to building and running along Candlekeep's walls and putting cracks in them when she jumped off of them. Gorion of Halruaa asked his young ward (careful to keep the fearful quaver out of his voice) what exactly she thought she was doing, making such a nuisance of herself and jumping up on the walls. Aphra dutifully apologized and promised not to make the monks upset again. She helped the guards repair the walls and kept her word, and was allowed to spend time at the forge learning from the Keep's blacksmith at her leisure.
She broke Candlekeep's walls again by falling into them once at age eleven from first leaping from a great height to try and get a good gander at one of Gorion's mysterious visitors, and then falling into a pile of rocks at the feet of Khelben Arunsun. The Blackstaff had a good laugh at his colleague's expense, and Aphra was told to scrub pots at the Inn for punishment. Imoen had to join her for laughing uproariously at her sibling's punishment. The pots were shining not but an hour later. Aphra surprised most by helping to repair the walls again, though the residents of Candlekeep were not at all reassured by this.
As she grew, her oddities only seemed to increase, and there was not a thing in any text in the entire Library Fortress that seemed to indicate how or why such things could happen around or to her. A few began to theorize in hushed tones; Gorion had the misfortune to overhear a few as he perused the stacks. Enhanced by magic tomes, born under certain stars, a demigod, giant-blooded, planar, or something worse. Gorion dismissed every theory and made sure that she was treated no differently than any other youth. It helped that he had ensured her appearance was human since she was an infant. He'd made certain that he had well-transformed her less-human characteristics with a powerful Netherese polymorph, before they'd even left the Temple. She'd emerged from her mother's dying womb unaltered; he knew she'd never survive in the world with her heritage, without at least seeming human. He rationalized her abilities whenever he was questioned about them, and swore others to silence when the rationalizations didn't help. When that didn't work, a bit of intervening enchantment always fixed things.
If Gorion had ever questioned himself for altering the memories (or appearances, in Aphra's case) of his wards without their knowledge, he had long since ceased to. He did not expect to be forgiven for the necessities of circumstance, and prayed only that one day they would come to understand his actions. He did what he had to do, to give them their best chance in the world that was surely set against them from birth.
The problem with Aphra was not that she was unusual. Many things in Abeir-Toril were quite unusual. Aphra was forthright but humble, blunt but not insensitive, intellectual but not arrogant, studious but not serious; certainly his children had their flaws, but from the look of them they'd not seem too different from other girls their age. From every perspective, the real problem was inevitable: no one really knew how to technically stop Aphra from doing anything. Imoen's mischief was contained with discipline and Aphra could be convinced to obey someone if they reasoned with her, but many wondered what would happen if Aphra simply decided to be unreasonable. It was the same fear one would have of a massive hunting dog; what will they do should a famine strike? She was too fast to physically catch while running, faster than a haste spell. Her strength seemed to be that of a pile of ogres combined. It wasn't natural, even if she was agreeable at times - if a little more interested in her studies than in people. Even Gorion himself was stumped with this conundrum. If Aphra decided she was to do a thing, there was no force that existed that seemed to be able to physically prevent her from doing it. If she wished to run in circles so fast that the air itself would howl in her wake like a brewing storm, she would do so. If she wished to crawl down the Keep's walls from her room to watch the Watchers' practice, she would do so. If she wished to stay up for four days straight reading about far eastern dragon cults and studying the Sphere, she would do so. If she wished to spend seventeen hours observing plants and insects in the garden, she would do so. If she wished to leap over the temple of Oghma, she would do so. If she wished to climb to the top of Candlekeep's tallest spire and nap in the sunniest spot in the whole of the fortress, she would do so.
Of course it would be that magic was the only thing that confounded Aphra. Her primary weakness was Gorion's primary strength. It affected her the same as most other sentient beings, but for the evocative spells that affected physical and natural forces that rolled off of Aphra like water off a duck's back. They'd discovered at age five that she was completely resistant to fire after she stuck her hand in a torch out of curiosity; a few experiments after revealed that this was true for most of the natural forces, though she had a particularly advanced sense of smell and was only susceptible to something if it was stinky enough. In short, Gorion was certain a dragon could breathe on her and she'd feel fine, perhaps a bit sweaty, but she ran in terror from skunks and wolverines. No elements seemed to affect her in any significant way (she felt cold and heat, but seemed to be immune to extremes), but illusions worked on her eyes much the same as anyone else, and no matter how much Gorion and the monks tried to tutor her not a single spell ever seemed to be retained in her brain. It stumped him how it affected her, and yet how all of it simply slipped in one ear and out the other. It galled Gorion, who only wished his best to prepare Aphra for the dangers of the Realms that he knew would assuredly avail her in adulthood; any weak spot in her, he knew the world would exploit. Himself an archmage of significant talent, it confounded him that her intellect was unable to purchase the most basic of cantrips. Her pronunciation, movement, and intonation were precise and scientific, but the magic died in the air before it could be released.
It seemed to be of no use, as she was convinced that she could run faster than wizards could speak. Magic simply did not hold her interest beyond its theoretical principles. She could at least read scrolls in most any language and retained a more than fair grasp of alchemy and physics. She was quite literally minded which stunted her socially as much as it advanced her intellectually; she cared much more about the insects and fungi she studied and drew than she did the people around her. The theory of magic she grasped, but something in her nature had stunted her to its methodical practice. It was a glaring weakness in her nature that Gorion counted himself lucky for, but worried for her ever, as he had yet to find a way to immunize her to enchantment and illusion.
Her foster father counted himself blessed that she was only as odd as she was good. It seemed that raising her with basic principles had worked. She was generally kind to the people around her, and often helped around Candlekeep when it was asked of her. She had no trouble making time for others. If she could only get a firm grasp of magic, he was certain there was no force on Abeir-Toril - or any Realm - that could stop her. Not even the gods. When he looked at his young ward, he was filled with equal parts hope and fear for the future. Though Gorion suspected that, in many ways, Aphra tried to emulate him as much as he tried to encourage her to pursue independent studies. It frustrated her greatly that he could not take her as an apprentice as he had attempted to do with Imoen when she was of age.
There was also no denying that Aphra was drawn to combat for some reason. Something in her drew her to the song of the blade. He denied it for as long as he could, wanting to distance her as much as possible from her heritage, but there was truly something in her that took joy in the art of martial action; it was not the death that pleased her, but the dance with it. The meditation through motion. It made him uneasy to watch her grow more proficient with the blades she so loved, but he had not the heart to deny her the practice when it could very well save her life (and others) someday.
Whatever she was, it was unlike anything ever heard of or seen from a child before. If she continued growing as she already had, soon she would have the power of a god, not a mere demigod. It shouldn't be possible; but many impossible things seemed to pile up around his second child. He'd consulted every colleague he had without revealing too much about his ward's identity, to no avail. All he had were prophecies of Alaundo and more questions than answers. He refused to allow anyone but his closest allies to know of the girl and told only Khelben - whom he trusted above all - of her father's nature. The girl had power, and it was his duty as her guardian to ensure others did not exploit it for their own purposes. Gorion could trust no one but himself with the full truth; his journals contained the only narrative that lived beyond him of it.
Yet nowhere in all the world could he find a record of anyone bearing witness to the wonders he had seen in her short life. No, Aphra was definitely an oddity, even if she herself remained largely oblivious of it. At her present age of nineteen summers, she stood a head taller and a hand wider than he with a full head of long sable hair, features chiseled of smoky bronze, and eyes the hue of morning rain. She unwittingly had been placed out and above every person and was graced with the ignorance of it. Gorion was filled with equal parts hope and fear - hope, because she was an intelligent and kind girl. She had wept for a day about a fallen bird she hadn't heard, and didn't save. Aside from her studies of entomology and botany, she had found small bats and creatures at the tops of unreachable towers in Candlekeep and continued to bring them down to help them and study them. Her life was spent in the study, not reaping of life. She had once found a nest of doves in the belfry at the age of eleven, having scaled the Keep in a storm to fetch them when she heard their tiny little cries. How she heard such a small thing from so low on the ground over the thundering sky was a question that was as important as how she had managed at the age of eleven to scale the walls bare-handed. Gorion took the birds in and showed her how to care for them, while others shook their heads and muttered at her unnatural capability. He saw her true nature - that she cared for the world around her and did her best to cherish it in her own way.
He felt fear for her for the first time when he saw that she had finally noticed how truly different she was from others. It was around the age of thirteen when she began to bloom as a woman that Gorion made the executive decision to train the girl in combat and battle strategy. Not to learn to defend herself, no. They discovered, at age eight, that her skin was impenetrable to natural forces (he'd caught the girl testing this with a letter opener with Imoen's help, while the younger girl pelted her with various rocks, sticks, knives, and others such things from across the hall. He'd been in shock while the girls had laughed uproariously at their marvelous discovery). No, he wanted to train her to know her own strength - it was not her that needed protecting. It was everything else around her that needed protection from her, and it was her duty to discover her limits. She'd broken Candlekeep one time too many, and the monks had been hammering on his eardrums to teach the girl to mind herself for far too long.
This was, perhaps, a mistake in hindsight. She had been taken in by one of the Watchers of Candlekeep, a male lieutenant named Jocelin who'd caught the girl watching their training exercises a few mornings. In her spare time, she trained with the monks of Candlekeep in the art of meditation and hand-to-hand to learn how to control her strength and master her limitations. It became quickly apparent during the first few lessons that Aphra had a natural knack for the balance required in martial fighting, but no mind for meditation or esoteric practices. She was intellectually gifted, but stubborn and unresponsive to commands (Gorion had results in coaxing her behavior by asking leading questions and making it seem like it was her idea, while monks and the lieutenant took some time to grasp this concept and were frustrated at her seeming disobedience). The ascetics found themselves as annoyed as the other monks of the Library Fortress in tutoring her; Jocelin was simply annoyed that Aphra kept refusing to practice in armor.
For a time, he was hopeful that her father's shadows hadn't reached her. Since the boy had left and the monks had arrived, she'd shown no signs. Months passed into years and gradually her tutors found a balance with her. The Watcher lieutenant had found a compromise in light armor, since Aphra kept returning to swords despite learning other weapons and found armor an encumbrance rather than advantage, in light of her body's innate resistances. The Watchers had chalked this up to Gorion's influence, suspecting perhaps that he hit her with anti-missile and weapon-immunity spells, and he did not dissuade them of any assumptions. The monks tried bringing Aphra with them into their practices and beliefs, and while she had been skeptical at first she eventually seemed to find the routine and the exercise invigorating. If the philosophy didn't sink in, it was because she constantly challenged it, which kept the monks on their toes and held their interest. It was rare to find such a difficult but promising pupil. In time, she even learned to meditate through katas - the rudimentary martial forms used in practice; she had yet to master meditation whilst sitting still.
Gorion had known that opening his young ward to the world might evoke her curiosity toward it . . . But he did not anticipate that the eyes of his enemies would find him so quickly in the careful sanctuary he'd constructed. It had been only two years into her tutoring when, during a practice duel, one of the monks had screamed 'Abomination' into her face and thrown herself into actual combat with the young, tall girl. Aphra had been all too careful to never reveal the entirety of her strength before to people outside of her 'family' until that moment, when she took the assassin's dagger to the cheekbone with only a startled flinch and faint scratch. The small blade built of inferior metal broke into shards that pierced the assailant's hand. It all happened so suddenly that Gorion hadn't quite had time to finish his spell and would later admit it had been so sudden that it startled him into inaction.
The monk had looked down at her hand, confused, and then roared in pain. Aphra seemed just as confused for a moment (as everyone else was), and then angry when the assassin pulled her hair to try and hurt her with her good hand. Then, his fosterling had simply picked up the attacker by the throat, not even blinking as the woman in her grip dangled and twitched a few feet above the ground, causing the assassin's eyes to roll back in panic. Gorion reacted before Aphra could and electrocuted the assassin to death with a lightning bolt from his fingertips. The false Watcher had cooked right in Aphra's hold, horrifying his teenage ward as she watched life gruesomely sizzle out of the assassin's wide, glowing eyes.
He hadn't been able to forgive himself for that one. Aphra hadn't locked herself in a room for days after, but it took her days to be able to form words in his presence again. She avoided him for a time like he had the plague, and he did not begrudge his ward her need for distance, although he missed the light of her presence. Imoen tried to cheer him up to no avail, but even she - who had not been told of the incident and had not born witness so lacked the context to understand why - could not lift either of their spirits out of their self-imposed gloom.
When Aphra finally approached him in his study to speak of it, she had crawled up the rain-drenched keep to get to his window and knock on it. Used to the oddity, he let her in and wrapped her in a blanket. Perched by the window, "She wouldn't have hurt me," was the first thing she said. "She couldn't. Why did she try? Who would want to hurt me? Did I do something wrong?"
They were innocent questions with sinister answers. "She didn't know, Aphra. No one does. And they must never know, lest it be exploited. Don't mistake me, you did nothing wrong - it was simply ill luck, is all." Ill luck, not the first lie he had told her. Knowing his luck, he knew then it would not be his last.
For the first time, she stared into his eyes and asked, "But father, what am I? She called me an abomination. What does that mean? Why am I here, if everyone and everything is so, so breakable? Why am I different from Imoen if she's my sister?"
It was these very questions that he had dreaded since the day she was brought to Candlekeep. "I'm afraid I don't know," he continued to lie, and her face betrayed no suspicion. It was perhaps not a complete lie, but she - at least - was not aware of the polymorph placed upon her birth and rescue. Her trust in him was implicit and unshakable, and it hurt something in him to reward it with misinformation. "The secret of your abilities died with your mother. One day, you'll find the answers you seek . . . But you must be patient with yourself, my dear. As for that assassin, I do not know, but rest assured it will never happen under my watch again."
This hadn't satisfied her. She had tried her best to ransack Candlekeep's mighty library for clues into her origins, but only found more questions. Imoen, bless the girl, did her best to distract Aphra from her studies and managed to pull her back into life - if only to get the monks to stop complaining about the mess that Aphra had been making, leaving candles everywhere and getting wax all over book covers. The Watchers discussed it amongst themselves, and decided it was best to return to training separately - it wasn't totally fair for Aphra to practice with them when she was much stronger and faster. Aphra resented the decision but relented, and she practiced on her own in the gardens from then on, occasionally in mock-battles with Imoen or with a particularly brave monk. Jocelin continued independently sparring with her but found himself taxed by her strength. As most were bound by enchantment into silence on the matter of his daughter's talents, he was unconcerned with what they would tell of what had transpired and how their fellow had truly died. They'd likely lay the blame on Gorion's feet; it was just as well. He would that his own hands would be stained, and not Aphra's.
Life returned to a peaceful lull for a time after the assassination attempt, although Aphra had been disquieted since. Gorion felt a distance between himself and his ward that had not existed before. On a day in what was near her eighteenth year (although they did not reckon days of birth and the girls typically celebrated their 'life days' whenever they felt like it), he received word from his Harper colleagues in the south and realized that the emotional distance would worsen, for their time at Candlekeep had drawn to an abrupt end.
The Bhaalspawn were gathering, and Abeir-Toril would tremble beneath their feet. Twice in one day after receiving a seemingly innocuous letter from Khelben, Aphra been attacked by infiltrators, hiding in the barracks and in the barn - twice her hands had been stained with blood, and twice she had run to Tethtoril crying into the elderly monk's crimson robes. Gorion's mind was made at the sight, and he knew what had to be done. When the elderly monk had successfully returned the sniffling Aphra to him, the sage had leveled her with instructions delivered in his most teacherly tone.
"Gather some clothes, and any small items you wish to bring with you, child. We are going on a trip, and we may not return for some time. This is very unnerving I know, but you must trust me. It is very important that you pack your possessions as quickly as possible so that we may leave Candlekeep immediately."
She wiped her eyes eagerly. "Where shall we go?" Aphra had expressed much curiosity at visitors to Candlekeep, always full of questions about the outside world, but had always obeyed Gorion's strict boundaries. Never before had she been allowed to leave Candlekeep. Even when she had the power to jump outside of the city walls whenever she wanted, she had - to his knowledge - never done so.
"To the Friendly Arm's Inn, not far from here in the north," he told her. "I would like to introduce you to two very old friends of mine who are eager to meet you. I think you'll like them."
She frowned distastefully. "They're not more wizards, are they?"
He chuckled. "No, they are not."
"Swell, then," she grinned, "We'll get along splendidly. Who are they?"
"Khalid and Jaheira, a husband and wife. He is a warrior and she a druidess. They are very old friends of mine, from my days as a wanderer."
"And . . . Is Imoen to come with us?" Aphra asked tentatively.
He instructed, "Not this time. To do so would only put Imoen in danger. Do you want that?"
"N-No, of course not. I love Imoen. Who is trying to threaten us? Why—do you know why those m—"
"You have already been attacked today, so please, ask few questions and do not tarry. You may be invulnerable to most danger, but this keep is not. I know you care for Imoen, but where we go now she cannot follow. It would be too dangerous for her. She is safest here."
"But father—" She objected.
"Fewer questions, child!" He lectured. "Go to Winthrop, take these coins, and purchase what supplies you can for a long journey. Ask him for assistance if you do not know what to purchase."
"Yes, father."
He didn't have the heart to tell Aphra that it was forever. It was the only home she had ever known for nearly two decades. She surprised him with an eagerness to leave but seemed depressed at the thought of departing without Imoen. There was a stone in Gorion's chest on the matter that could not be moved. If he left his enemies would follow them, and while he was willing to risk Aphra's safety no matter his love for the girl - he was never, could never, would never be willing to risk Imoen. Though Imoen would likely never know it, she was the last legacy of his wife, her mother. It pained him most to look into Imoen's eyes, the same bright viridian hue her mother's had been, so he kept the girl at an arm's length to avoid the daily reminder of what could have been. It was getting harder every day with how she had grown, so like her mother in appearance if not manner - no, he would keep Imoen safe from the legacy of her true father. Aphra could not escape it, but there was still hope for Imoen.
He knew that Aphra would hate him probably forever for taking her away from her sister and only friend. He knew it would scar her as surely as the parting with her forgotten brother, but he also knew that the only place he could protect her from his enemy's magic was at his side. He did not know what horrors the cult of Bhaal had planned for the girl, but it was certainly something terrible.
He knew Imoen alone would draw no notice, not like her sister who radiated power like a lighthouse under a scrying. The only place Aphra could learn the truth about her origins was in the past. The only hope for the future had to rest within her, if Alaundo knew what he was about, and his only prayer was that Imoen would be spared the bloody fate of her half-siblings. He dreaded telling her the truth after a largely peaceful childhood, but the truth would surely catch up to her in time on its own whether he was ready for it or not.
Swiftly, on anxious feet they left Candlekeep for good. Her teary and short goodbye with Imoen left him breathless, especially when neither girl seemed to understand why it needed to happen at all. They were both the only legacy he truly had, and though it broke him to part them, a part of him stilled at Imoen's suspiciously quick acquiescence. She seemed too quickly defeated by the prospect of their imminent departure, and on an intuitive level Gorion knew he'd have to keep an eye out for her on the road. Aphra didn't have a dishonest bone in her entire body, and had he asked her to would have remained put ad infinitum with minimal whining. Imoen, on the other hand, knew how to selectively listen and worm her way out of situations with all the ease her sister awkwardly lacked. Her quick-wit had gotten her out of trouble many times, and was perhaps one of the only things she had in common with Gorion. The last thing Gorion wanted to subject the world to was the aftermath of whatever his wards would get up to outside of supervision.
His troubled younger ward was pensively quiet the entire journey into the evening darkness. Once the stars began to appear as faint dots in the purple sky, her eyes seemed fixed upward on their growing brightness even as she walked at his side.
"Are you alright, girl?" He asked, gruffly.
She shrugged and glanced in his direction in acknowledgment. Her unbound hair fell across her brow, and she swiped the midnight curtain aside behind an ear. "I don't mind doing the heavy lifting, old man," she softly chided, adjusting the packs on her back as they walked.
"You do make a rather useful pack-mule," Gorion acknowledged in a teasing voice. "But that is not what I meant."
She looked down from the stars and to her feet in dejection. "I miss home. Are we going back there soon? I-I thought I'd be glad to leave when I did, but I always pictured Imoen with me . . ." Her voice trailed off roughly as she seemed to fight back several strong emotions.
"You will see her again one day," he promised after carefully considering his answer. He did not wish to lie to her anymore. She deserved better. "But right now, there are more important matters to attend to that she would be better off not involved in. You are correct in that some of it is because of those men who attacked you this morning. There are also many bandits on these roads and monsters in these woods, and she could get hurt or become a target if we were to cross any."
"Not if she hid behind me!" Aphra perked up but perked back down when she saw the old man's dark expression.
Imoen was technically not the younger of the two, but neither knew that. Aphra had merely grown faster. With his little daughter's slight stature, immaturity, and sincerity, he had no doubt that the world would make short work of her. The thought of her growing up before her transition into adulthood filled him with dread; it was only his imagination, but he could swear he could hear his wife rolling in her grave. Imoen and Aphra shared a sense of humor and mannerisms from growing up around one another, but to look at them was night and day. Aphra's eyes were so gray they were nearly white and was dusk-skinned with black hair; Imoen green eyed, and pale as a camellia but for her numerous freckles, with a shock of short pink hair she'd nagged him into transmuting for her. She was surprisingly fast with a bow as she'd practiced with the militia, but Imoen was no warrior. She had never killed, never indulged her baser nature. Aphra on the other hand, had killed in self-defense twice that morning and really made a mess of the bodies. She'd been upset, but seemed to take it in stride after bawling about it to her old language tutor, Tethtoril.
"Your sister is very . . . fragile," Gorion worded carefully, "compared to you. Please keep that in mind."
"Just feels strange being on an adventure without her," she commented lightly, and dropped the subject.
They continued walking northerly through the dark Cloakwood as the sun faded over the horizon. His ward asked if they would set up camp, but they'd lost too much time as it was merely saying goodbyes. There was simply no more time to rest. Not while the enemies who would threaten her were still out there.
"No time for rest, girl," he instructed, picking up his pace.
"How do you know where we're going?" The questions persisted, to his chagrin.
"The stars of the Sphere will always inform you where you are," he told her in his familiar, teacherly tone. "You should remember as much from your astronomy lessons. Look to the sky, and you'll always know where you are."
"O-oh. I guess we're going north then? Right . . . Where's the star that tells me how long it's going to take to get to wherever we are going?"
Gorion sighed. "No more questions, child. Please. I am unused to this walking."
"You've sure gotten cranky in your age."
"And you have only grown more impertinent in yours! Now please, silence."
" . . . Sorry father. I'm just anxious. I'll—I'll be quiet now."
They continued in silence for a time further into the darkening Cloakwood until that most honed of his senses over the last ten years alerted him to danger ahead. There was a stillness in the brush and air. It was the same sense that had alerted him to Aphra falling off the wall, or getting attacked by the assassin in that duel, or in the barn when they'd found her crying and staring at the body of an assassin in peasant garb - the girl who could not have hurt a butterfly, weeping over a thug who'd eloquently introduced himself as Shank.
"Listen to me, Aphra," he instructed as they walked over brush, stepped on moss and climbed through the massive root systems of the central forest. "There is not much time, and too much to tell," he told her, knowing he had his daughter's rapt attention - she was ever there at his side to help him over obstacles, practically hovering around him in a dim blur at the corners of his vision.
"We have all of time," she scoffed, jumping over another root and holding out a hand obligingly.
He took it with an annoyed glower, knowing it was faster if she helped him than waited. He was not in his youth, that much was true, but it irked him now to be the cause of their delay. "Stop," he told her, and they paused to speak in the quiet of the forest. There was only the stirring undergrowth of Cloakwood to hear them now, and Oghma; for Selûne was new and only her trailing Tears shined in the sky. He wondered if it was the last peaceful moment they would have together. "The enemy draws near," he spoke, and closed his eyes. "No more," he instructed as he saw his ward open her mouth to pester him for more information. "You must listen. I am sorry, for everything. For more than you will ever know, for never telling you about your mother or your true father. I am not he, but I am the one who took you in - I who kept you safe, who raised you with the principles he most believed would benefit the world. It's important you understand how I have now failed in that regard. I have failed to prepare you for this. I failed to tell you about the truth of your family, and now they have begun to hunt for you before I was ready."
Her eyebrows crossed angrily and mouth opened, but she remembered that he had told her not to ask questions and Aphra gritted her teeth in frustration. "What must I do?" She asked instead, uneasily.
"There is only one thing you must do from now on - you must survive. You must live. Forget everything else if you must, but you must live! The coming days will be the most difficult of your life so far, and this enemy will hunt you until the end. If we should become separated, remember what I have taught to you as best you can, and survive however you can. Live as you can, where you can. That is all you can do in this world, in the brief time you are given." He knew that the greatest threat to Alaundo's prophecy was Aphra (and her siblings') continuing survival. There was nothing he could do if he died before the prophecy came to pass - but Aphra could change the world, in her wake.
Aphra bit back a fair amount of frustration out of respect, but he could sense the roiling unease beneath the surface of his ward's words: "But father, I'm strong, I can—what do you mean, my family? You and Imoen are all the family I have! I don't need more family—and who would want me dead?!" She flapped her arms angrily. "Why have you never spoken of this 'til now?"
Gorion placed a hand on her shoulder and drew her into a helpless hug. Her arms folded up around him automatically, always surprising him with their tenderness. When he pulled her back to regard her, tears were in both of their eyes. "Everyone has two families," he told her. "The one we're born to, and the one we choose. You get to decide which is more important to you, and which you allow to influence you. This enemy must never find out the extent of your strength, or they will find a way to overcome it. You are not invincible - no one is. For all we know, they already know what you are. You must conceal what you are or it will draw unwanted attention."
"I don't even know what I am," she grumbled. "I didn't even know I had enemies!"
He patted her hair and gave her a fond kiss on her warm forehead. "You will discover the truth when you are ready for it. I promise. Oghma willing, I will tell you all when we reach the Friendly Arm's together and end all these secrets between us." He hoped to fulfill that promise by night's end.
Farther into the woods they went until they finally drew upon the Coast Way from the west, and the sense he'd felt before erupted into a flaring warning as the woods began to part before a clearing. He hesitated for but a moment, drawing a worried glance from Aphra. "Stay behind me," he instructed. She stubbornly held her place, but relented under his glare and hid behind him as they approached.
A large set of tall, horizontally placed standing stones seemed ritualistically placed around a series of rocks. The grass and moss that had since grown over them hinted at the disrepair and ancient age of the place; a part of him itched to study these formations, even as he knew he was probably walking to his death. As they approached the center of a spiral pebble formation, he saw Aphra hesitate from the corner of his eye. "Remember what I have said," he cautioned her. She gave him a stiff nod, and he contented himself with the reassurance of it. "I'm so very proud of you," he informed her with a heartfelt smile and let a contingency spell slip from his fingertips. A protection from missiles spell slammed into place over them both just as a few enchanted bolts sizzled against it in the air and fell to the ground inert, a simultaneous action that had been timed mostly due to luck, if Gorion was to begin being honest with himself.
"Gorion of Halruaa," a booming metallic voice called from the trees. Gorion heard Aphra next to him gasp in alarm and come up to his shoulder just as his eyes began to make out the shape of a massive horned figure. He cursed his luck at it being a minotaur, but when the figure suddenly loomed into the moonlight, he was revealed to be merely a tall man in peculiar spiked armor. He didn't know if that was better or worse.
"Sarevok," he guessed, having read the name and description of the man before him in a missive from Khelben about the Iron Throne's activities in the area. A radical new leader of a local mercenary group was definitely something worth mentioning, particularly if this one had an apparent personal stake in his wards - even going so far as, three months back, entering the keep under the guise of a monk beneath even his notice to spy on them. Gorion suspected the enchantment might eventually break; were it not for the enchantment it would have surely ended differently, but Aphra had been none the wiser of the identity of her new 'friend.' Gorion had thankfully been spared that headache and dismissed the scholar 'Koveras' summarily. Just how much Sarevok remembered and what his plans were had been something he'd planned on investigating, and hadn't had the time to accomplish in the scramble to settle his affairs and leave Candlekeep.
It was hard to believe the armored, imposing figure in front of him had anything in common with the fresh-faced 'monk,' or the young blood-stained boy he'd met so long ago at Bhaal's gruesome altar. He'd often wondered about him, if the child survived, if the boy had remembered anything, and Gorion internally marveled at how terrible it was now to have the answer to that haunting question.
"Hand over your ward," the black knight commanded. From the depths of the helm, only a pair of golden glowing orbs could be seen; enchantment, or power - it wasn't clear.
Gorion felt, more than heard, Aphra shift restlessly at his side. Thankfully, she kept silent, despite her obvious anxiety, and did not draw the sword she'd 'borrowed' from the Watcher Hull belted to her hip. "No?" Gorion offered instead in an off-putting, questioning tone.
Sarevok's answer was to unsheathe a broadsword strapped to his thigh, and at his gesture three more very imposing figures entered the clearing. One, a Kara-Turan woman of small build with a fierce-looking katana at her side, one man who may have possibly been a half-ogre or half-something terrible, and the other too armored and shadowed for Gorion to make up. The sword in Sarevok's grasp was what had Gorion's attention, however, as it was limned with a substance that shone eerily in the night air, subtly shifting like water under the faint moonlight. At the sight of the blade, the sage's blood ran cold, and old memories stirred.
Gorion's mind reached back for a moment to a thirty-five year old man witnessing one of the more horrifying moments of his life: watching a bloodied baby held in a young boy's arms, as the child's mother slowly died on the altar behind them, pierced through the chest with that same shimmering silvered spike. Gorion remembered the cries of that child as vividly as the voice of the young boy hushing her and humming atonally to get her to calm down in his arms. There was no resemblance between the golden-eyed man in the horned armor and the boy who had looked up at him too calmly with deep brown eyes, too even a gaze for all the senseless blood pooled all around his sandaled feet. The sight would have broken Gorion were he not already a broken man when he arrived there, but the cries of the child and the humming of the boy stayed his hand. Her mother's death fueled the young Aphra's life, and nearly all the Children of Bhaal. Except for that boy.
'No more death,' Gorion had then vowed. He'd taken the two in because he was tired of the death and destruction and could bear no more in that place. He'd washed the blood off of the young boy's bare feet when they were outside the temple, and had to spend several embarrassing fervent minutes convincing the boy that he wasn't about to try and kill him or the girl. He'd followed Gorion around like a lost puppy ever since, and Gorion had no doubt that his own enchantment would forever lock that delicate memory away from Sarevok. He saw nothing of the boy in those terrible, glowing golden orbs behind the horned helm.
Long ago, Sarevok had returned to Candlekeep. He had sought out Gorion's guidance, and the guidance of the monks of Candlekeep, in the perusal of Alaundo's prophecies. Gorion had convinced Ulraunt to refuse him despite his offering to Candlekeep's library, and Gorion knew that Sarevok had walked away embittered by the encounter. He did not know now how much of that bitterness was from that moment, or from the terrible possibility that the enchantment on Sarevok's mind had been broken and his memories returned. How much did he recall? And for how long had he known?
"Forgive me," Gorion whispered to all of the Children that he'd failed in that moment, and cast the first spell at his fingertips right at his daughter, a Power Word of Fear that hit Aphra so hard it nearly sent her eyes rolling up into her skull in panic. Her flight of abject terror was such that she was naught but a blur that spliced through the air as the spell that struck her to the bone hit something much more powerful than will - it was the instinct to survive. Behind her was a cloud of dust and kicked up grass, and the forest thundered in her passing as she flew into the distance as tree tops swayed. Cloakwood closed behind her, enveloping her into its spidery embrace as she ran, ran, ran faster than she'd ever run before. He heard the crackling of trees as she leapt between and off of them, occasionally knocking into them in her haste. The least Gorion could do was buy her time.
Sarevok approached with his silvered, gleaming, thrumming broadsword drawn. "You know that I will find her eventually," the Bhaalspawn promised in a deeply hollow ring as his voice emerged from his helmet distorted. "And I will kill her. It is her fate."
"You will try," the old sage said reasonably, "and you will probably fail." After all, it was not Aphra's life that he feared for. That had never been the point of her lessons. "In trying, you'll only succeed in destroying yourself and worse," he cautioned. "For your own sake, leave her be. Your only quarrel is with me."
The black knight chuckled and pointed his sword at Gorion. Though the sneer was not visible beneath Sarevok's imposing new helmet, it was audible in his voice. "It is you who have failed us all, by denying her the divine legacy she was born to! Now, how would you like to die, old man? We both know how this fight ends."
Gorion of Halruaa's answer was a lightning bolt aimed right at Sarevok's groin that the towering man barely dodged by leaping back in a clatter of armor. "Then make it count, son," he instructed the young man that had hunted him across the continent, who had once sought to learn at his feet, and who had been denied his destiny all of his life. "This is your only chance."