Scourge of the Sword Coast

by Anja Kidd

Aphra and Imoen of Candlekeep embark from their childhood home, barely children themselves, into a life of bloody misadventure and time-bending lunacy. This story is cross-posted on AO3 and WP.

3. Ch 2: Irenicus

Muchas gracias to Trisa_Slyne for being an amazing editor.

---

"Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be."

—Terry Pratchett, Nation

---

Aphra finally awoke to Imoen calling her name over a vast distance, sounding as though it were muffled from being underwater at first and then too close, as if Imoen's voice were right in her ear. Aphra shot up in her cage and hit her head on the bars trying to stand up and groaned, falling back as an unexpected and unfamiliar weakness flooded every part of her body. She had never before felt weak, sick, or seriously damaged in any capacity in her entire life. As far as she knew only extremely rare metals could harm her skin - she felt her forearms, hugging her body, and became alarmed as her fingers traced ridges and scars she did not remember having. Old wounds she did not remember receiving. Her eyes opened in horror as she swam in complete darkness for a moment, as her eyes were slow to adjust to the dim lighting.

"Aphra! Come on, come on, wake up, wake up sleepy-head!" Imoen hissed through the bars to reach Aphra's damaged ears. Some awareness crept into the girl's skull, the first - pain. She was in pain. Her body ached in places and ways it had never ached before and she had no way of coping.

So Aphra moaned, first in just grunts and groans and then in attempted words. Her mouth didn't want to form the correct syllables, so it came out as, "Surpa turpa faah," nonsensically. Her ears were working, more or less, and she heard the words coming out of her mouth, but they simply weren't coherent. Aphra understood on some level that her mind itself, along with her body, must have been severely damaged if she was unable to recall how she arrived to where she was, and could not even process language properly. How she was even thinking, or was aware of what was going on escaped her, but she began to feel panic creeping in.

There were bars all around her, until suddenly there were not as one of the walls of bars fell away and clanged against something at the bottom, and two arms were attempting to hoist her up by her armpits unsuccessfully. "Bloody Hells Aph!" Imoen grunted. "I know I'm malnourished, but so are you - how do you still weigh a damn ton?!"

Aphra tried to talk again. This time it came out as, "Waba som aan," much to her frustration. "Waaba suuuupa aan!" She tried again, somehow feeling accomplished and handicapped at the same time.

"Time for that later, Aph. Shit! I need help with you, and I don't want to leave . . . Wait here, alright?" Imoen insisted to Aphra's horror. She had no idea where she was or how she got here, couldn't speak, couldn't walk, and was covered in scars and wounds she didn't remember getting - now Imoen was threatening to leave her all alone in her cage. "Just wait!" Imoen said matter-of-factly, and patted Aphra's hair. To Aphra's growing despair, there was less hair on her head than she last remembered there being. It was as if one side of it was completely gone. It was a highly uncomfortable, ugly, barren feeling. Her hands wandered up to her scalp in panic.

Imoen tried to reassure her, "Don't worry Aphra, you're going to be just fine. I'll barely be ten minutes. I hear others in the room, I think I can get us some help," Imoen said certainly, and slipped away.

Aphra couldn't reckon the passage of time in the dark, but she knew the general length of seconds, and counted. She lost count about three times, so Imoen could have returned in two-hundred and seven seconds, or six-hundred and fifty-something seconds, but she felt better when Imoen came back and her sister had company with her, and she chirped at Aphra, "See? Told you I'd be back with help! Ten minutes, maybe even if that!"

"Den minu," Aphra managed to say, and felt proud of herself despite the tears that had started to leak from her eyes. They stopped in Imoen's presence as she repeated, "Den minu!"

"I see now what you mean," said an unfamiliar, sharply accented, and highly temperamental voice.

"It's like he cast an intelligence drain on her or did something to her head," Imoen said with a tremble in her voice. "She's got all these . . . Strange marks on her head, and . . ."

Aphra didn't hear the rest, it being spoken in mumbles and her being much too disoriented to make sense of matters. Aphra's hands fluttered experimentally up her face and head, trying to find it with probing fingers, and she did indeed discover wounds on her head she didn't recall receiving, on the left side of her skull which was completely bare of hair as if half of it had simply been shorn off without care with a rusty razor. She wanted to cry. Everyone had always loved her sable tresses. It was her favorite feature. Someone had taken away her favorite defining feature, messed with her mind and presumably tortured her beyond the point of recollection, and then locked her in a cage to rot. She wondered, not for the first and definitely not the last time, where she was and how she got there. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep in Beregost, followed by a terribly vivid nightmare, and then Imoen had woken her up, and then was now. She wasn't sure she wanted to remember what happened to her if it was indeed something so awful.

A green, calming light settled over her vision, and then cleared it. Everything came into sharp and uncomfortable focus, and Aphra could suddenly move properly again. Her legs operated, more or less, and she was able to crawl out of her cage, grunting, with Imoen's help. With the stranger's additional help, she was able to stand on two feet that felt like they were becoming steadier by the second.

"This was only a minor healing spell," the temperamental, female voice lectured at her from her left in a strained voice, "so we had best make the most of it while we are in dire straits. We must move, and quickly. I wish to find Khalid. I will save my other healing spell for him, should he need it."

"'Hoo the blahdy 'ells is dis?" Aphra stumbled out of half-numb lips. She felt like she was getting better and shook her head. Suddenly, Imoen's concerned, pale, dark-eye-circled face came into her blurred twin-vision. Slowly, the two competing images settled into one and Aphra felt right again. Except that Imoen looked older, and worse, than she'd ever been before. Her hair was still pink though, which made Aphra smile and her eyes water. It was the only familiar thing that she welcomed so far. "Immy, where are we? How'd we get here?" She asked, fearing the answer.

Imoen's lips trembled, eyes similarly watering. She suddenly leaned forward and hugged Aphra tightly. "Oh, Aph, I don't know. Somewhere dark and terrible. We have to get out. Come on. There's one more person nearby who needs our help, I saw him as I was freeing you, Jaheira," Imoen called over their shoulder.

The name rang a vague bell in Aphra's memory, but her mind was too fogged to precisely recall it. It belonged to the temperamental woman, whom after Aphra got a good look at, she found she could not blame the woman at all for feeling such. Jaheira was wiry but just as malnourished as they were, with once-burnished light brown hair bound back in tattered braids that accentuated, rather than concealed, her half-elven ears. Her even hazel gaze implied she was a proud woman, unashamed of her present circumstances and fiercely desperate to get out. It was almost inspiring to Aphra, who wordlessly followed Imoen dutifully and hoped desperately that this was all some terrible, too-vivid, extended dream-sequence.

It wouldn't be the first time such a thing had happened to her, after all. Fairly frequently throughout her childhood, she had found herself falling asleep and 'waking' in a strange room with a hole in the ceiling, surrounded by walls and standing stones, and had dreamt she was trapped there with no way out. No matter how she climbed, jumped, or tried to break the stones, nothing worked. She'd become convinced after telling others about her experiences that it was simply an awfully boring re-occurring dream. Gorion had dismissed it as such when she told him.

Yes, it had to all be a dream. That was the only possibility that made sense to Aphra. Strange dreams, after all, were not so strange when they were just dreams.

So Aphra blindly followed Imoen to the other cells, where a tall mostly-bald man with a circular blue tattoo on the side of his head was imprisoned, and he was being vocal about it, talking to the air around him which he named 'Boo.' Aphra didn't judge herself too harshly, what with having just been recently tortured and captured, and it was all a dream besides so why did she need to worry? She listened briefly while Imoen tried to talk to the man and the other woman stepped in as they tried to figure out a way to open the cage, unsuccessfully. It apparently had no lock. Then the man addressed the half-clothed Aphra.

"Aphra!" He cried out, recognizing her even though she did not know him, and had never met him before. "I see that you have taken to Minsc's hair style," he announced, "perhaps in envy of my heroic visage! Boo and I approve, although it looks unfinished!" Aphra blinked and scratched the bald side of her head, fingering the vivid scars and doubting for a split second that this was really a dream. She felt a strange numbness on the scar tissue. But it had to be a dream, didn't it? Oddly enough, the strange comment made her feel better about her unwanted hairstyle.

"Yeah, you," she shot back, pointing vaguely and trying to laugh it off. She tossed her remaining lanky, limp hair over the side of her shoulder. "Er, how are you?"

The man rambled: "Minsc knew - yes, Boo told him - that you and Imoen would come rescue us! And Jaheira is here too! Huzzah! Now we heroes are united once more and will break this dungeon of evil over our knees like a stick. Of evil!"

Aphra was barely following but wanted to encourage him since he seemed to need it, and the thought occurred to her that dungeon-people ought to stick together, so Aphra happily nodded along. "Sticks beware, buddy," she agreed. "We'll get you out of there, chop-chop. Imoen? How do we go about doing that?"

"There's no lock hole, or key, or anything," Imoen bemoaned. "I think this was sealed with magic! Minsc, we might need to come back, we—"

"Minsc knows no magical prison could hold the mighty Aphra and Minsc if they applied their strength together! Yes, Boo agrees!" Minsc announced, mainly to the ceiling, but also to anyone in earshot.

Aphra caught his drift. He was built, for certain, but she was probably stronger (though she wondered how her sudden feeling of weakness would affect her strength). "I'll pull one way, and you pull the other on the bars," she suggested to Minsc. She gripped one of them and positioned herself, and for once didn't know if her feat of strength would work in her favor. She had tried bursting out of her own cell but had been imprisoned by her own weakness. As it turned out, it did not matter, for Minsc's strength alone was enough to break his own cage, and he freed himself. Aphra politely did not comment on this and let Imoen and Jaheira unite with Minsc.

She found herself suddenly engulfed by a hug from the addled warrior, whose accent and appearance she vaguely placed as Rashemenic. "Where'd you find this fucking lunatic?" she whispered to Imoen.

"Back in Nash—oh, it doesn't matter," Imoen sighed. "You'll get there eventually. Just follow me, Aph, alright? We'll have time to talk about everything when we're out of here. We have to find Khalid next."

Aphra's brow furrowed in concern and confusion, but since it was a dream after all, she nodded. The best way to reach a dream's conclusion was to play along, she reasoned. "Yeah, fine plan, but who's Khalid?" she couldn't help but wonder.

"Be silent!" The angry braided woman practically hissed at her. "She just said that there is no time for your foolish questions!" And then she marched off, with Imoen following after her, and Aphra and the bald man who was talking to - was that a pet hamster in his hands? Where had it been living all this time? And what had it been eating? - had no choice but to follow them. Aphra had to run a little to catch up to Imoen but decided upon glancing at Jaheira's angry form to stick to silence, which was the better part of valor at least according to Sister Sapientia.

The door to the room they'd been kept inside was surprisingly open. Aphra wasn't sure what was going on exactly in this dream, but if she strained her ears, she could pick up the sounds of distant battle. Even in the dream with the hole in the ceiling, she could see and hear the occasional bird through it, so an immersive sensory experience wasn't unusual for her in a dream. What was unusual was the malaise and chill that pervaded her every step, as if someone had taken all the light out of the world and left her in some cold and dark nightmare. It puzzled Aphra, and she couldn't help but keep wondering what her dead father would do in her circumstances.

The thought of Gorion, of Sister Sapientia, of Candlekeep, of all those she'd left behind subdued Aphra and kept her quiet despite her questions. Gorion too had lectured her for asking too many questions when he had no time to answer them. There was that, and the barely-wavering certainty that she was in a dream. She became less and less certain with each step she took after Imoen, and desperately wanted the dream to end.

Suddenly as they tried to make their way out, the addled warrior stopped in front of a strangely empty cage and began to weep hysterically. The sound of the great, booming warrior of enviable strength suddenly breaking down and crying rapidly ripped Aphra out of her thoughts and put her in an awkward position, as she was the one physically closest to Minsc. She took a look at the cage that Minsc had stopped by and noted that it wasn't entirely empty - it was full of gray, fragrant ashes. Her nose was abruptly assaulted with a scent that triggered a very vivid memory - of one of the Old Order monks that had attacked her once, called her a monster and attempted to end her life by breaking a knife on Aphra's face, only for Gorion to intercept with a spell that had practically cooked the woman while she was in Aphra's hands. The smell of a burning person isn't something you forget, especially when that burning person runs past you and flings themselves out of a tower window. The body was still burning after it struck the bottom. Aphra would not forget, could not forget the smell of burning, ashen flesh stinging her nostrils.

Because she was closest to Minsc, and Boo, and Boo was chittering at her from the warrior's shoulder very strangely, she tentatively approached and knelt down to Minsc's level. She placed one arm over the big man's shoulders, said, "Don't cry now," and suddenly found herself engulfed in the largest, most bone-crushing-est hug that she'd ever endured in her life.

"They killed Dynaheir!" Minsc wailed into her ear painfully. "As I watched they—I know not who they were but . . ."

Aphra could guess - and had a few vengeful thoughts about their captor to share. Dream or not, she still felt like she was herself, and she knew that the person she was didn't stand for people being tortured and burnt to death. "We'll make 'em suffer for what they did," she vowed. "I promise, uh, Minsc." She wasn't sure who Dynaheir was but could guess that name had once belonged to the pile of ashes in the cage.

"I will redeem myself," the warrior nodded along, and swallowed his tears. "I will staunch the flow of tears with righteous fury! Lullaby and goodnight, evil! Minsc and Aphra shall join together once more," he rambled on in third person, losing Aphra a bit but she was at least grateful he'd stopped crying on her, "and the bards will run their quills dry wherever we go!" Boo made a noise that sounded like agreement, if one didn't know better. Aphra absently wondered where Garrick and Neera were, and wasn't sure if it mattered, or if they had been captured as well.

The man named Minsc seemed to need it, and she wasn't sure about him, so Aphra just agreed since she had taken it upon herself to engage. "Absolutely," she nodded along. "We'll make those bards' hands cramp up from use."

"Oh Minsc," Imoen suddenly gushed and joined the hug. Boo ran to the opposite shoulder of Minsc and chittered at Imoen, moving his arms up and down in seeming agitation. "I miss Dynaheir," she sobbed. "I'm so sorry about—"

"There there, Imoen," Minsc consoled, and in a rapid change of pace he became the one to comfort Imoen.

Jaheira appeared at the other side of Imoen and reached out a firm hand to the young woman. "Imoen. We must carry on. Compose yourself," she demanded.

Aphra felt a little angry with the strange and strident woman for telling Imoen what to do, but Imoen took her words and did indeed swallow her grief. She nodded, wiped her eyes with frustration, and stood. "Come on, Minsc," said Imoen. "Let's avenge ourselves, and Dynaheir."

"For Dynaheir," Minsc agreed, and stood. He offered his hand to Aphra. She took it and was grateful, because her knees had begun to feel cramped and weak for the first time in her life and Aphra in general just wasn't having a fun time dealing with it. She kept hoping she'd wake up in Beregost any moment.

Imoen and Jaheira led the way to a hallway that split in two directions. One was toward a locked door, and the other ended in a natural cave that the dungeon they'd been trapped in had apparently been built around. Having never seen anything of its like, Aphra found the cave to be shockingly beautiful. There was a high vaulted ceiling surrounded on the edges by different terraces of crystalline-clear mineral pools, stalactites stretching down from the ceiling to touch stalagmites as they dripped over centuries into connected formations, like the stone strings of a great lyre. She caught her reflection in the sight of one of the cave pools and approached it, taking the time to admire a sea-urchin-like anthodite that had formed near it. She thought that for a moment she caught a glimpse of movement in the pool - perhaps some strange, stygofaunic creature - when the breath was taken from her lungs in a breathless gasp as she caught a glimpse of an image that spread across the surface of the pool, in the place of her reflection.

She could barely make sense of it - massive artificial towers that stretched into the sky and up toward the Sphere, people flying like birds in strange pods through the skies and stars, an explosion of light so massive it formed all light in the sky - before she was taken away from the image by an impatient Imoen.

"Come on!" her sister urged. "Don't get distracted, w-we gotta get out of here!"

Aphra nodded and let her sister pull her hand along. She brought Aphra back to Jaheira and Minsc who were staring at her strangely.

"What?" Aphra challenged their stares aggressively, hoping they weren't going to comment on her hairstyle again.

Jaheira and Minsc looked away from her, and off to the side. Aphra followed their gazes and met face-to-face with a genie of all things - and he was unmistakable, floating in a vortex of wind, muscular and deep blue-colored, with thick pensive brows and a wicked grin on his too-perfect features. She had never seen one, only read about them in books at Candlekeep and was a little stunned to finally come face-to-face with one so suddenly.

Still, Aphra had never known herself to be at a loss for words, so she waved her hand and said, "Hello," to the genie, because it seemed polite. "You're not here to kill us, are you?" she quickly clarified and tensed. She wished Imoen well in the event she was about to die.

"I am Aatagah," the genie introduced. "And no, I do not desire your death. Hello to you, Aphra," he greeted back even though Aphra hadn't introduced herself. "You had escaped quite a bit later than I had hoped."

"I try not to disappoint people, but since I'm not really sure where I am, how I got here, or even when I got here, I don't really have a response to that," Aphra rambled. "Last thing I remember was being in Beregost after Imoen and I buried our father in the woods." There was an intake of breath from Minsc and Jaheira's corner that Aphra ignored. "So tell me Aatagah, what part did you have to play in our capture, I wonder?" She queried, raising an eyebrow at the genie.

He laughed. It was a rumble of thunder. "I so enjoyed your blundering through Baldur's Gate," the genie commented, oddly. Aphra was certain she had never been to Baldur's Gate in her entire life. "Worry not, godling. I will offer you a bargain, as I know you seek the exit to this wretched place."

Aphra's nose wrinkled at the term 'godling' and couldn't be sure what that meant, or what this genie's intentions are. "Are you a prisoner as well?" Aphra asked, not sure or really caring if the question was impolite.

"In a manner of speaking," Aatagah replied cryptically. "Answer me a question, and I will give you directions to the exit. You will find this madhouse quite a bit larger than you anticipate."

Aphra looked to Imoen, who seemed eager to move on but couldn't take her eyes off the genie. Imoen's gaze flickered to Aphra's for a moment before the pink-haired girl executed a quick shrug and turned her attention back to Aatagah. Aphra similarly shrugged. "I'll answer as best I can, I suppose. What's on your mind?"

"I present to you: a hypothetical situation," the genie began. His voice grew quieter and less booming as he explained his question: "You and your sister are captured, locked in separate cells, and cannot communicate. Your captor explains to you a sadistic game - in each cell is a magical button. If you press the button and she does not you will die, but she will be free. If she presses the button and you do not, she will die and you will be free. If neither or both of you press the buttons, you will both die. You have a turn of the hourglass in total to make your decision. What is your answer?" He finished.

Aphra wasted no time thinking about the stupid (in her opinion) hypothetical and said, "I'd probably press it immediately. I'd rather die than play some sick tormented game for my captor. I'm not about that."

"Aphra!" Imoen chided suddenly. "What if I pressed it too?"

"Then you'd be stupid. Hypothetically," Aphra summarized. Upon witnessing Imoen's wholly consternated expression, Aphra elaborated, "Look, Gorion said he wanted you safe, so that's what I'd bloody well do. My life simply doesn't matter as much to me as yours does."

"Well, who's gonna keep you safe, then?" Imoen demanded angrily.

Aphra shrugged. She had never thought too much about dying, but on the surface - having seen it so often in the last few days - it didn't bother her as much as it probably should. She wanted to avoid it, but it seemed inevitable - her life was a violent one. Why not accept that? "Death is death. There's no fighting it when your time is up," Aphra concluded eloquently.

"Minsc and Boo will!" Minsc announced suddenly, interjecting himself into the conversation. "Aphra need not worry, for Minsc is here to save the day! He would break into this prison to rescue Imoen and Aphra, the way they helped him rescue Dynaheir!" Tellingly, he wavered on Dynaheir's name, and his expression fell. Aphra found herself awkwardly comforting him with a pat on the arm again.

"You have satisfied my curiosity," Aatagah announced, and twirled on the spot, and disappeared. Suddenly, in his place, was a massive ogre mage.

It was also unmistakable, even though Aphra had only read about them. Massive, green, loin-clothed and wielding a sword as big as her entire body, it was quite intimidating - to someone who cared. Aphra found herself closest to the creature and it snarled at her - and began to chant in Ogrish. Wasting no time and knowing that they possibly only had seconds before a magical protection swung into place, Aphra felt her mind empty of fear and leapt and kicked at the ogre mage with all her strength. This was a considerable amount, but winded her significantly - although the ogre mage went flying back and became impaled on the anthodite formation. Irrationally angry, Aphra ran toward it with the last of her energy reserves and started wailing on the green ogre - punching and kicking and gouging until she finally became aware of Imoen, Minsc, and Jaheira shouting at her to stop.

Once she stopped, she found herself sliding off the body of the ogre mage onto the floor, covered in sticky purple blood. It was thoroughly dead, and Aatagah was once more in front of her. "Well done, godling," he complimented mysteriously. Aphra wasn't sure why he kept calling her 'godling' but knew it couldn't be for any good reason. "Seek out Rielev," he instructed, "and give him the release he seeks. He will make your journey apparent. Farewell, Aphra of Candlekeep. May we never meet again." And with that last cryptic remark the genie swirled away in the air, fading into nothingness as he plane-shifted.

"Aphra!" Imoen cried out and tried her best to help Aphra stand up. She was feeling weak again, and had trouble standing on her own, but Minsc was of immense help in this regard and simply slung Aphra over his shoulder and carried her. She could see his rear end from the angle she was carried at, and although it was not necessarily a bad view she felt strange about it. Minsc seemed more like an addled brother to her than anything else, and she wasn't able to admire the arse properly.

"This isn't so bad I guess," Aphra decided, became content, and felt herself dizzily drifting as the blood rushed to her brain. This was by far the most vivid dream she'd ever had, and she was beginning to seriously doubt that it was still a dream. In fact, she was nearly certain now that it was not.

"I told you to be careful, and what do you do? Charge an ogre mage. Excellent job, sister," Imoen chided from behind her, hovering in and out of Aphra's field of vision in a pink blur.

"This isn't a dream, right?" Aphra wondered in Imoen's vague direction.

Imoen's lack of response was telling. In Aphra's mind, this left only one logical conclusion: it was all real, and they had to get out of there as fast as possible. She coped with this information the same way she coped with most challenging concepts: accepted them, agreed to obsessively puzzle about it later, and moved on.

The natural cave had been built into several pathways with several different halls, but only two passageways were open - one in the direction they'd come from, and another where they had yet to go. Minsc and Jaheira now took the lead as Imoen followed behind, with Aphra slung over Minsc's shoulder. The halls were dimly lit in mage-light, enough for her to see clearly and count the scars along her arms that she didn't remember receiving. She touched the raised ridges, strange to her eyes and fingers, and wondered what sort of instrument and of what make had made the welts. No common metal could penetrate her skin - perhaps adamantine? Mithral wasn't enough, but an adamant letter opener on Gorion's desk had once cut her flesh. She wondered if the drow were somehow involved; they held onto their metal fiercely, she had read.

"I'm sorry, Aph," Imoen was nearly crying. She sniffled but did not let herself sob. "This is all my fault. I should've–I could've–"

Aphra didn't know what she was talking about. "It'll be okay, Immy," was all she could say. She tried to comfort Imoen, "You know me. Give me a shepherd's pie and plant me in the sun and I'll be right as rain in a few hours. How are you?"

Imoen sniffled again. She did not answer. She did not have to, either, as the sounds of battle erupted ahead of them. Minsc was suddenly charging back down the hall with Aphra over his shoulder, causing her face to smack against his back. "Put me down you massive oaf!" She demanded.

Minsc did once they were back in the natural cave and were hidden in view from the hall behind one of the mineral pools. Jaheira spoke for them both and said sharply and curtly, "Mephits," like this explained everything.

Aphra immediately recalled everything she knew about mephits. She'd seen Gorion summon one and had been thoroughly unimpressed with the quasi-vaporous imp. Mephits were a strange bunch, not entirely demonic, and not entirely heavenly - and operated somewhere in-between in the more nebulous and chaotic elemental realms. They had a physical form, but some could shift out of it willingly. Aphra could hear high-pitched cackling down the hall and estimated at least four or five different voices. She knew charging at them would just shock her or set her on fire, but she was generally immune to elemental damage - at least, she used to be. She was still having trouble catching her breath after the sudden ogre-slaying and felt frustratingly helpless.

She wanted to vent her frustrations on the mephits, most of all. They needed a good thrashing, judging from their unpleasant attitude. "What weapons do we have?" Aphra wondered, looking amongst them all. Minsc had picked up the ogre mage's sword and he tested its weight with a few swings and seemed satisfied. Aphra eyed her dagger and felt less so.

They all looked at each other, paused, and realized that they didn't exactly have anything else in the way of weapons, armor, or anything. "I have two more minor spells of rejuvenation," Jaheira reported quietly, looking at Aphra. "But you must not waste all of your energy before it can be replenished."

The way she said 'replenished' made Aphra wonder just how much about herself Jaheira knew - what was their relation to each other? And what did it mean, that Imoen recognized her and knew her well, but Aphra did not? How had her mind been tampered with by their captor? Was she missing memory, or more? "I'll make it count, and Minsc and I will kill them all," Aphra promised. "Hit me."

"Wait, Aph!" Imoen cut in and pulled from the small of her back a small dagger. "It's enchanted, I found it when I was looking for Jaheira's key," she explained quickly. "That and some gold, but that's not really as helpful right this second."

Aphra felt better with the weight of the small dagger in her hands. She was just as deadly with a small blade as a large blade, but more experienced with a lengthier blade. "I'll give it back when I find something better," Aphra promised, and looked to Minsc.

The mighty Rashemenite nodded, and charged down the hallway with her, ducking low and weaving to avoid any potential spell fire. Aphra wasted no time dodging the crackling lightning bolts that shot her way - they didn't hurt her, like she suspected they wouldn't, striking her limbs and body with small tingles, and she reached the mephits before the little flying nuisances could know what hit them.

She grabbed one out of the air and stabbed it quickly in the neck and threw it at another one mid-air where it collided with a thud. Minsc charged next to her and destroyed one with one mighty cleave right out of its flight and turned his sword to bisect another that attempted to flee. Aphra stomped on the one she'd downed, forgetting that she had bare feet and felt sickened at the slick feeling of gore squished beneath her bare toes.

Minsc - between the two of them - had the wherewithal to at least take stock of the room and chortled in joy at the quick work they'd made of their enemies. Boo, apparently, directed him to a lever on the ground that stopped the lightning mephits from being summoned, and there was much rejoicing (from Minsc). "All dead!" the mostly-bald man declared. "All in a moment's work! We are still fearsome, Aphra!"

"This is quite fearsome, yes," Aphra agreed, staring at her feet and unable to look away. "I need a bath yesterday."

They wandered back down the hall at a sedate pace to Jaheira and Imoen, who took in the sight of them with pursed lips and muffled laughter, respectively. "Wha-what happened to you?" Imoen managed to get out.

"Well I stomped one to death and then I forgot I was basically wearing prison rags with no boots," Aphra summarized and gestured to her raggedy attire, comprised of a torn shift, no pants, or shoes, and quietly began to fear the implications of this not being a dream and just what exactly she had been put through without being aware. The others were not in much better shape, though Jaheira and Minsc at least were fully clothed in ragged linens that had been augmented by scavenged leather armor they had acquired along the way. She wondered if they remembered what had happened to them.

"We will tend to it when we are free of this place," Jaheira decided for all of them, "and after I have found Khalid," she added.

Aphra shrugged. She still had no idea who this Khalid person was, and questioning Jaheira didn't seem to win her any points with the woman, so she kept her mouth shut and let Jaheira and Minsc lead the way onward.

"How do you forget you don't have—" Imoen was about to ask, but Aphra interrupted her.

"Look, last I remember was falling asleep at the Jovial Juggler next to you and Neera and Garrick in Beregost!" Aphra snapped in a whispered tone, to keep their conversation between them.

Imoen's answering look was strangely bemused. "It's just . . . I sometimes forget you used to be like this. I know now. It makes sense. This is the reason for it all. Why we are the way we are. Trust me, Aphra. We'll escape this place. I promise. And this is real. Never forget that."

Aphra gave her an equally strange look. "Just what did he do to you that you do remember, anyway? Why can't I remember?"

Imoen shook her head and marched on after Jaheira and Minsc, forcing Aphra to keep pace with her. "It's nothing he did," Imoen insisted. "And it's nothing you've forgotten. You're just - we're just - different, is all. We'll figure it out later, but for now, let's just get out of here, alright?"

Aphra paused to think about this, but then nodded. It made the most sense to at least continue their discussion when they weren't being attacked by things left and right. Almost as that thought occurred to her, while they were making their way down the hall, the shrieks of goblins ahead alerted them to their enemies' presences just as arrows haphazardly flew through the air. Only one arrow hit its mark, along Aphra's left shoulder, and bounced off of her while only tearing her shift. She saw Jaheira and Imoen moving to make smaller targets of themselves by pressing themselves into the wall, and charged ahead with Minsc who was already shouting a battle cry for Boo to go for the eyes of his enemies and bite them. Aphra hoped the hamster was tucked away somewhere safe, for his sake.

There were six goblins, appearing extremely emaciated and malnourished, and half of them ran in terror when the other half of them quickly died under Aphra and Minsc's assault. She threw her enchanted dagger unerringly at the back of one, nailing it in the back of the head, and Minsc charged after the others, quickly overtaking them, and slaying them on the spot with two mighty sword swipes.

Aphra was tempted to say something positive, about how well they worked together as a team, when she remembered the pile of ashes in the cage. Minsc seemed to remember this too and rather than shout something about Boo or their heroic prowess, he was tellingly silent.

Imoen caught up to her as Aphra was pulling the dagger out of the back of one of the goblin's heads. "Ew," Imoen commented. "Keep it," she insisted, pushing the dagger toward Aphra when Aphra offered it back.

"You sure? I'll be happy when I find something bigger," Aphra said.

"Keep it 'til then and throw it away after for all I care. It's got goblin gore all over it," Imoen complained. Aphra wanted to criticize her, but it seemed to be a hallmark of a return to her usual humor, so Aphra let it slide and accepted Imoen's complaint and offer.

The stone-tiled, torch-lit hallway was dirty and their circumstances were hardly ideal, but Aphra couldn't help but want to complain about the lack of a good sword in her hands. She didn't feel right without one after leaving Candlekeep, and Gorion had cautioned her when they left that she should keep her weapon close at all times. Aphra felt impotent with the little dagger in her hands but couldn't deny how many mephits and goblins in the past few minutes it had helped her kill. It also left her other hand free for grabbing and punching, which helped her anger issues at her present circumstances considerably. It was, at least, making her re-think her opinion of daggers.

"I think I'm starting to feel better," Aphra couldn't help but comment aloud.

Jaheira and Imoen, who had been leading the way, stopped in front of a partially open door leading off from the hallway to a curiously illuminated room. Inside were floating blue mage-lights under a vast ceiling, sprawled out over a macabre wizard's lab. Jars of every shape and size - mostly humanoid or larger - were connected by tubes to strange contraptions and filled with somewhat hazy fluid. Listless, lifeless forms floated within all of them - save one where a man was attempting to escape by hitting the sides of his cage frantically.

Aphra couldn't see his form clearly, but recognized a person in need and shouted, "Stand back!" and jabbed at the glass with her enchanted dagger, knowing if it had a decent enough enchantment that it wouldn't suffer any damage. The force of her blow was enough to puncture it, and when she pulled out the blade, a small bead of the strange bluish fluid began to stream out of a steadily growing crack in the glass. She punched the glass again with her other hand right on the crack, and the inferior substance broke against her knuckles, not even scratching the surface of her skin. The glass shattered in one great wall of watery substance that spread all across the floor. Aphra let it flow over her feet, unbothered, knowing she would either die before she got a bath - or while trying to get one. At least the fluid washed away some of the mess her feet were caked in.

The man in the glass jar collapsed inside it and was very naked. He was covered in strange tattoos that Aphra had trouble identifying at a glance of mysterious, swirling, almost runic patterns. He coughed up what sounded like an entire lung, expelling and vomiting fluid as he yanked strange black tubes off of his body, which left behind puncture marks in their wake. Aphra looked down at her scarred skin, tucked what remained of her hair behind her eye, and felt she could empathize.

"What the fu—Xzar?" Imoen blurted out, the foreign name coasting over her tongue so easily. Aphra stared down at the man and felt this name was strange, and fitting, for when Xzar first looked up at Aphra and met her gaze for (at least in her case) the first time, there was a grin spread across his features like a corpse's rictus. For a moment Aphra tensed, ready for an attack, but Xzar made no such threatening moves and still seemed to be catching his breath despite his creepy smile.

"Curse that we have run into this wretched, mad, Zhentil clown before my husband!" Jaheira declared angrily and marched right off toward the door they'd entered without even offering Xzar so much as a hand up. Aphra could empathize to a degree, because if she had a husband she'd be upset about not finding him in a death-dungeon but didn't see any reason to deny someone who clearly needed it some assistance.

Aphra felt the need to step up to the task and bent down to Xzar's level, and carefully snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. "Can you see me? Hear me? How many fingers am I holding up?" She held up three in front of his face, and internally despaired that the scars covered her fingers too.

Xzar stared at her. She was struck that his eyes were a vivid, mad viridian. ". . . Seven?" He guessed, inaccurately.

Aphra stared up at Imoen, who shrugged at her in response. "A little help here, Im?" She requested politely.

"Well, help him up at least," was Imoen's only suggestion, delivered with a nonchalant shrug.

Aphra simply picked up Xzar when helping him up became too time-consuming, because he couldn't be trusted to walk barefoot on the broken glass, and Xzar didn't seem to mind this terribly as he was still quite out of it. He was short and so thin he was almost bird-like, and weighed nothing to Aphra, who easily picked up the strange wet man in her arms and toted him with her. "So what's his story?" Aphra looked at Imoen, who had taken to walking beside her behind Minsc and Jaheira.

"We met in the woods, with the wolves!" Xzar declared nonsensically.

"Actually, that's pretty much the summary," Imoen nodded, even more nonsensically.

Aphra decided it wasn't a suitable time to ask those questions, since she wasn't ready for those answers anyway, and adjusted Xzar in her grip more comfortably. He was still wet, but it wasn't the worst thing about the scenario. The worst thing was having to suffer being barefoot on the cold and grimy stone ground.

"Must you be so insufferably charitable, Aphra, rescuing damsels in distress?" Xzar started criticizing for some reason. Aphra looked down at him, annoyed and confused. He seemed to recognize her, certainly, but she had no certain memory of him - though this was something she was getting used to now. Absently, Aphra wondered just how much time she had lost and how many strange people she and Imoen picked up along the way.

". . . Did you just call yourself a damsel in distress?" Imoen chuckled. It warmed Aphra's heart to hear her laugh, even if it only lasted a few seconds.

"I actually think I rather like being a damsel," Xzar rambled. "Getting carted around by goddesses is quite satisfactory, even if it is just a dream."

"You think this is a dream too?" Aphra wondered, keeping pace with Jaheira and Minsc down a turn of the hall. She let the 'goddess' remark slide but made note of its oddness and similarity to 'godling' as Aatagah had addressed her.

"All we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream," Xzar said dreamily, and this struck Aphra with its profundity such that it almost stopped her in place. She stumbled for a moment and had to right Xzar again in her arms, but she carried on and did her best to pretend she hadn't been disturbed by what he'd said.

"You look so different without your makeup," Imoen commented, looking to Xzar. "And I had no idea how far those tattoos went down!"

Xzar blinked. "What tattoos? Why—by Cyric, woman, are you aware your hair is the most ghastly shade of pink?!" Xzar was completely, inappropriately aghast.

Imoen touched her pink locks self-consciously. "Oh, I guess he must've messed with your head too, huh?" She realized forlornly, and then forced herself to smile. "Well, hey, maybe you, Minsc, and Aphra can start a guild for brain-addled adventurers when we get out of here!" She tried to joke, but it didn't work because it wasn't funny.

"Hey, I'm not addled!" Aphra defended heatedly, although she was actually uncertain of this and secretly suspected Imoen might be right. "I mean he for sure is, but from my perspective I just got here!" Imoen shook her head and her expression was sad. She said nothing further.

Jaheira and Minsc stopped their line up to ransack a dead human body on the ground, dressed in strange black-wrapped and shrouded gear that they stripped for its usefulness. None of the armor fit them, but the clothes fit Xzar, and Aphra was glad even though she hadn't even really noticed the nudity. She was still wearing what looked like a torn nightgown that she ordinarily would not want to be caught dead in, let alone captured in. The boots on the dead man fit her and she was deemed the most worthy inheritor of them given her tendency to stomp small things to death, like mephits, and goblins. Aphra just wished there was a bath somewhere where she could finally be clean.

Imoen was ransacking the body for valuables and counting the coins within and examining them. "These don't look like Nashkel coins," she murmured.

Jaheira, vaguely interested, looked over Imoen's work and placed her open palm in front of Imoen to deposit a coin. Imoen did so, and Jaheira held up one of the coins to a nearby torch to look at it more closely. "These danter were minted in Amn," Jaheira announced, and dropped the coin back into Imoen's small pile.

"How did we get all the way to Amn?" Imoen's tone suggested complete bewilderment.

"The identity of our captor, his methods and intent are unknown to me," Jaheira answered curtly. "We may piece together what we know once we escape this wretched place and seek vengeance."

"Who's he, you think?" Aphra wondered, pointing at the stripped body on the ground. He had a death-wound, but no marks of torture or capture, no emaciation, unlike them. "He doesn't look like a captive," Aphra noted. "He's not dressed like one, anyways."

"He doesn't," Imoen agreed, and frowned. "He isn't. You're right, I wonder what he's doing here?"

"It matters little," Jaheira sniffed and started to move on without them. They had to scramble to catch up and Aphra simply picked up Xzar again when he moved too slowly for her liking.

"I'll carry you until you can walk right, but I'm dropping you on your arse if there's battle," Aphra promised him honestly.

"Oh, I feel like a blushing bride!" Xzar gushed happily and threw his arms around her neck. Aphra shook her head, annoyed.

Aphra spoke too soon - screeching, malnourished, and mad goblins were around nearly every corner. Jaheira and Imoen slowed their pace down after the first round of eight or seven goblins ran into them and resulted in a battle that shouldn't have been harrowing but was due to their condition and lack of armaments. This meant Aphra could finally put down Xzar and let the strange man wander behind them, rambling to himself or to Aphra about whatever came to his mind.

"So why were you in that jar?" Aphra wondered as Imoen picked up a goblin's short bow and arrows, arming herself and continuing to root around for valuables. Unfortunately, there were no blades that adequately suited Aphra's tall size (she preferred bastard swords or long swords), so she was stuck with the dagger.

"He said I deserved to drown in there because I talked entirely too much!" Xzar explained, though this didn't offer much.

"Who said?" Aphra pressed.

Xzar tapped his pale chin thoughtfully. "Well, he never rightly introduced himself, but I got the impression that he was the one responsible for putting us here," he pieced together. Aphra rolled her eyes and decided to never again ask Xzar anything, ever, unless she needed an immediate record of the obvious.

"You never heard his name? What else did he say to you?" Imoen demanded to know, rounding on Xzar somewhat desperately. It was out of character for Imoen, but Aphra couldn't judge, since Imoen carried the memories of their time in captivity with her and Aphra did not.

"He wanted to know where we'd been, about Baldur's Gate in particular," Xzar answered quite lucidly which surprised both of them. "He asked me many questions about the Bridge and the Temple and hurt me when I didn't answer! It was nice for a while, until it stopped. I was starting to think that it could have been the beginning of a beautiful relationship, but then he put me in a jar."

Imoen and Aphra shared an equally amused and disturbed look. Aphra didn't know anything about what Xzar was talking about, but as long as Imoen had a clue, Aphra figured that she could learn about her hidden past later and catch up on the present for now. "Let's keep moving," Aphra decided for them, and caught up with the stern Jaheira who was waiting on them quite impatiently.

They discovered a thankfully inactive golem in a neighboring room, and for obvious reasons he wasn't a scintillating conversationalist. Aphra did find a sword in that room however, for whatever reason, and was pleased with the shiny weapon. It left behind a searing cold upon anything that kissed its blade, a fact Aphra discovered after she tested its edge on her skin. It did not cut her, but it did chill her slightly. She decided to keep the dagger in her off-hand, having grown to like its presence for uncomfortably close encounters and did not find it at all troubling to wield the sword one-handed. She would need practice but she liked the way it felt.

In a room adjacent to the inactive golem's chamber was another series of glass jars with floating figures inside. Much like the other jar-room they had found Xzar in, only one was left alive. This one moved at the sight of them, distinguishably alive in its floating tank of milky fluid. "Ma-a-aster?" A voice croaked out, watery and indistinct. Even Aphra had to strain to make it out - something about the place they were in, or what they had endured had dulled her senses in a way nothing else ever had before.

"This one is still alive," Jaheira declared, and put a hand on the tank. "This place is an affront to nature. Who would do this to living beings?" the half-elf snarled out.

Aphra could agree with her there - whatever or whoever their captor was, he didn't much care for natural law. Aphra addressed the voice coming from the tank and took a wild guess. "Don't tell me you're Rielev?" She wondered, remembering the genie's strange words.

"Ma-a-aster! Please, I did as you asked I—"

"We're not your master!" Imoen said sharply and knocked on the glass. "Come on now, do we sound anything like him? We're trying to escape here, same as you. I'm Imoen, I'm not your 'master.' We were all prisoners here!"

" . . . You do not sound like him," the voice in the tank agreed, and the nebulous form inside the milky blue fluid shifted, revealing a sliver of pale flesh. "If . . . If you come here, seeking freedom, can you—can you free me?"

Aphra cocked her head to the side. "How? Shall I break the glass?" She held up the fist with her enchanted dagger.

"The crystals!" The voice named Rielev called out. "At the top of this—this jar, take the crystals. Use them if you wish, but take them, and I . . . I will finally be allowed to die."

"What, no! We meant free you as in get you out of there!" Imoen objected.

"I am neither living nor dead," said Rielev sadly. "And the master will not be happy I spoke with you. Much pain I will endure. Please. End me now! Quickly, before the master returns!"

"So we may now count assisted suicide amongst our heroic deeds!" Xzar declared in a weirdly cheerful voice.

"Minsc would not wish such a fate on his worst enemy!" Minsc oddly agreed.

Aphra and Imoen shared a long look. Aphra ultimately decided for them - she would not wish to be kept half-alive in a jar, after all - but Imoen stayed her hand. "Wait," objected Imoen, holding up a hand. "Rielev," she addressed, "do you know the way out of this awful place?"

"The golems do," Rielev answered. "The activation stone, master left on the table behind you."

"Why do you call him 'master?'" Imoen asked, the question sounding bitter as it left her tongue. "Surely he hasn't done anything to deserve the address, if he's treated you thusly."

"Once, we knew him as friend so long ago," Rielev answered, his voice sounding as though it came across a vast and tiring distance. "So long, long ago. No more do I remember than this. He became friend no longer when I did not please him, and trapped me, here. Living, but not. His name I have forgotten. He demands to be called 'master.' He commands it. I obey."

"Can you see us?" Aphra wondered, morbidly curious.

"Partially. I see things differently now, from above, and beyond. I am ready. Take the crystals," he insisted.

Aphra looked at Imoen, who nodded as Imoen looked behind their group to a table housing a runed stone. She picked it up, and Aphra stepped forward. She stood on the tips of her toes and fiddled with the top of the jar, looking for crystals, and ultimately found them behind a panel that came loose when her fingers pressed it. Three shining purple quartz crystals were revealed. Aphra took them out one by one and handed them over to Imoen because Aphra had no pockets and one of her hands was already occupied holding her weapons. The pale light in the jar went out and Rielev went silent after some twitching in the fluid. Imoen didn't seem to know what to do with them, so she put them in the gold-pouch she'd recovered off of the dead man and they kept walking. No one spoke, everyone was subdued after the experience. Aphra, no stranger to death by now, found herself bothered by the death itself. She had delivered many unwillingly to Kelemvor's hands by this point, but watching someone walk into the Lord of Death's hands felt different. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, but knew it wasn't the same as killing someone that was attacking you.

Imoen led them back to the inactive golem and put the activation stone inside its chest, in a small slot. No one really objected even though all of them suspected that as soon as the golem was active, it would try to attack them. Instead, it addressed Imoen as, "Master," which made Imoen shudder.

"Who likes being called 'master' anyway? Only a lunatic or a Thayan," Imoen muttered, "not that they're mutually exclusive . . ." She then addressed the activated golem more loudly, "Uh, golem servant! Show us the way out of here, and open all the doors we can't open for us, will you?"

The golem shuddered in place. "I cannot do as you ask," it intoned.

Imoen pouted. "Why not?"

"I was built as a security measure, to open or close all doors. That is my only function," it answered in its gravelly, rumbling voice.

"Oh, well, go and do that then and open all the doors," Imoen told it, and it nodded, marching off on great clay legs to do exactly that. Aphra looked at Imoen questioningly. "We can just follow it," Imoen reasoned, and started to take off after the golem.

Aphra dragged Xzar behind her, and Jaheira and Minsc picked up the rear as they all followed Imoen and met a few goblins along the way - about seven of them. They were easier pickings than the last group and Xzar - apparently a not-entirely-incompetent spell-caster - sent a successful spell that dispersed the goblins with fear. They were easy to chase down and quickly slaughter at that point. Imoen retrieved more arrows, and Aphra felt more familiar and like herself with the sword in her hands.

"That sword," Jaheira indicated, almost stopping their march. She came to stand alongside Aphra, and Aphra raised an eyebrow questioningly at the stern half-elven woman. Jaheira pointed at the blade that Aphra held up and said, "It is Varscona, a Sharran sword you wielded once before. Tell me, do you remember the feeling of this blade in your hands?"

Aphra was surprised by the question. The blade did feel strikingly familiar, but most blades were easily swung in Aphra's hands due to her training. Uncertainly, she said, "A little. I like the way it feels, anyway. Those Sharrans know their weapons."

Jaheira nodded, as if expecting this. "Good. Then your mind is not completely lost." After this cryptic remark, she caught up with Imoen and kept pace with the young thief who trailed after the marching golem.

They quickly lost sight of the clay creation in the labyrinthine lair, after it led them to a dark room with many doors and crates that stank of sewage and right into the path of an otyugh. Aphra had never seen one outside of Volo's Monster Manual - the colorful, sewage-dwelling carrions were bottom-feeders in the world, and not likely to be seen around Candlekeep except perhaps in the darkest of catacombs where she had always been expressly forbidden from entering. Its tentacled, rubbery form parted like butter beneath Aphra's new sword, Varscona, and she felt significantly more like her former self after the victorious moment when the otyugh's stinking body finally stopped shuddering under her blows.

"Monsters do not stand a chance before us!" Minsc crowed and raised his arms in the air. Aphra thought he wanted a hug, and her weapons were stuck in the body of the otyugh momentarily, so she raised her arms too only to be unexpectedly treated to a double high-five. "A mighty butt-kicking, for the forces of Evil arrayed against us. Well done, Aphra."

"Thanks. It's really in the sword, though," she bragged.

"Remember that ogre mage you basically kicked and punched to death?" Imoen reminded her with a raised eyebrow. She grinned, but it didn't reach her eyes. Aphra wondered if Imoen's smiles would ever reach her eyes again. "Don't sell yourself short," her sister tried to cheer her up, but it only succeeded in reminded Aphra of everything they'd already lost.

She stared down at her boots and nodded, just wanting the conversation to be over. She let Imoen and Jaheira lead the way and kept pace behind Minsc with Xzar, the slowest of their group, still unsure on his legs. They entered a random doorway that the golem had assuredly opened - Aphra could hear his massive footsteps in the distance, but they had lost sight of them. "I could carry you, you know. On my back maybe this time," she offered.

Xzar tentatively nodded, and Aphra bent down on her knees to let Xzar climb up onto her back. She was considerably taller than he was, being a little over nineteen hands herself, and suspected Xzar was close to sixteen or seventeen. She grabbed his legs with her arms and let him hang from her shoulders and neck, unbothered by his bird-like weight. Xzar giggled insanely; he seemed more like the harmless kind of mad though, at least as far as Aphra knew. Jaheira and Imoen hadn't exactly given him a seal of approval, but neither had objected further to his presence.

With a few swift strides, it was easy to catch up to Minsc, who kept his two-hander drawn and seemed ready for the next goblin to round the corner. Round they did indeed - it seemed there were goblins at every corner waiting to fire arrows at them. Imoen fired arrows back at a few and managed to get one in the neck while Jaheira clobbered everything in her sight with a staff they had found in the otyugh room. Minsc rushed ahead to finish off the ones Jaheira and Imoen hadn't gotten first, and Aphra caught up with them just in time for the battle to be over. She had forgotten to drop Xzar from her back, so she and Xzar simply stood in surprise at the efficiency of the killing and moved on.

"You've gotten quite deadly with that bow," Aphra commented to Imoen as she marched behind her pink-haired sister.

"Well, I've had a lot of practice. You're as deadly with your sword as ever. It's not fair," Imoen huffed in mock-offense.

"So how long has it been since we were first in Beregost?" She wondered, finally deciding that she was tired of not knowing.

"About a year," Imoen answered easily. "Give or take a few weeks, but yes, it's been that long. Try not to faint."

"I'm missing a year?!" Aphra exclaimed. "Don't give me that 'this is not the time or place' look Jaheira, I'm entitled to be angry about missing a year's worth of memories!" Jaheira scowled at Aphra askance.

"You're not missing memories!" Imoen nonsensically insisted. "Trust me, it'll all make sense when we get out of here, but now's really not the time or pl—"

"Oh, spare me," Aphra grumbled and marched ahead with a few quick steps and took the lead.

"I like you better when you're grumpy," Xzar confided in a whisper.

"I will drop you," she growled.

He giggled in her ear but said nothing further.

Aphra led the way into a strange room, made strange only by its seeming normalcy in contrast to the dungeon that the rest of the place resembled. There was a merry fireplace and centrally placed rug, with a comfortable bed, a bookshelf with titles in many different languages, and a general vibe to it that suggested this was a place of rest. Aphra would have stumbled right into a claw-trap that would have broken against her legs but undoubtedly damaged her boots, were it not thanks to Imoen who rushed ahead to point it out and pull her and Xzar away from it.

"Off you go," Aphra insisted and dropped the little mage. He righted himself with a scramble as he suddenly slid off of her back, and Aphra tore out Varscona from its sheath, ready for action.

"I think it's just trapped . . . It's . . . What is this place?" Imoen murmured. She seemed confused, unsure of herself. It wasn't like her to be so; she was always quick-witted and silver-tongued, getting them out of the trouble she got them into. Aphra vowed at once to kill the person that had done this to Imoen, well and good, nice and dead. Her hand clenched around her sword as she thought about her revenge.

"We should search the room," Jaheira suddenly suggested. "There may be better weapons, or perhaps we may find our gear, such as Aphra did with her sword."

It confused Aphra for a moment until she looked down at the sword and remembered that it had supposedly been hers. She had found it somewhere in her missing year, and it had come with her to the dungeon. She stood still and contemplated, looking about and feeling lost while the others ransacked the room and Imoen disarmed the traps. They found a horned helm that apparently once belonged to Balduran, and a few items and weapons of interest that they decided to tote with them or strap to their bodies as best as they were able as back-up weapons. The helm went to Minsc without question; Jaheira claimed that it used to be Aphra's, but she couldn't picture herself in it and knew that her head was more durable than Minsc's. "Let him have it, he certainly needs it more than I do," was Aphra's final word on the subject.

They wound their way through the complex, through the open doors that the golem had left for them in its path. They eventually did discover an exit outside of the comfortable room, but it was 'locked' by a mechanism Imoen couldn't figure out - a portal that was enchanted to a specific key, which they did not have. Frustrated, they moved on and killed every goblin in their path. Aphra made quick work of their enemies now that she had the sword (and dagger) in her hands, and even found the mindless task of killing their every enemy to be calming in a way.

However, the next corner they tore around didn't contain goblins ready to run or fight. Thick crossbow bolts started sailing to their heads as they made their retreat - Aphra had to be dragged away as the urge to kill and crush rose up inside of her. "Oh, just let me at 'em," she pleaded with Imoen as the girl tugged on her hand to pull her away. Aphra let herself be led, but she was frustrated by it.

"I counted what appear to be a group of enemy dwarves, perhaps six or seven of them," Jaheira reported.

"I bet I could kill them if you just—" Aphra began but was cut off.

"Xzar, have any fear spells left?"

Xzar, who had been trailing behind them and only just caught up to them, nodded and then made an observation, "I do, but Aphra can do it too. I have one spell of fear left. Who are we killing now?" He sounded just as eager as Aphra, but his comment caught her off guard.

"What? I don't—" she began, but Imoen cut her off with a stern look toward Xzar.

"She doesn't remember much, least of all how to do that," Imoen explained without really explaining anything. "So, Xzar, you point that spell at the crossbow guys. Minsc will guard you, right?"

"Minsc doesn't even have armor," Aphra pointed out, to Imoen's consternation. "Look, I'm mostly arrow-proof, unless they're tipped with adamantine, which they probably aren't. I'll stand in front of Xzar and smash everything his spell doesn't hit with my sword."

"I will fight those affected by the spell, and the boltmen," Jaheira volunteered with a fierce nod. She seemed to want the battle over as quickly as possible and gave Aphra a look of approval that Aphra felt she didn't earn. "At your signal, Aphra."

"I'll just shove arrows into anyone I see," Imoen grumbled a little but assented, and took her goblin's shortbow from her shoulder to nock an arrow.

"Xzar, behind me," said Aphra, and the skinny Zhent giggled a little nervously and somewhat crouched behind her form, using her as a living shield. She marched around the corner and closed her eyes briefly as a crossbow bolt hit above her brow, and one in her breast, tearing her shift but bouncing off of her skin effortlessly. There was a stirring from their enemies as more bolts tried to pierce her body but to no avail - that was when Xzar let loose a greenish yellow spell of fear that scattered their enemies, allowing Aphra to take stock of the room and their battle.

Only a few were unaffected - one, a spell-caster of some kind, and another, a large angry dwarven figure armored to the teeth with a club in his hands, that was charging Aphra. Aphra pushed Xzar back around the corner and dodged a swing from the angry dwarf's mace just in time. She wouldn't have been injured had it hit, but it would have been annoying and disorienting.

Unexpectedly from around the corner where her allies lay waiting, a giant tiger prowled out and sailed over their heads with a mighty leap. Aphra stared in awe as the tiger charged at the spell-caster who panicked, not fast enough to get away however as the tiger soon had the spell-caster's head stuffed into her mouth. With one great growl and a mighty twist of her head, the tiger beheaded her enemy and started chasing after the others.

Aphra decided to end her battle quickly - she led the dwarf into a few basic parries and got a few nicks, before he left a massive opening for her to let her sword slide into his guard and pierce his neck. She withdrew the blade quickly as the angry armored dwarf tried to cover his wound, only for Aphra to go for the side and pierce his heart in-between the gap in his armor. Minsc tore around the corner then with his two-hander hefted over his head, only to discover that the battle was largely over without him. Imoen had appeared crouched, firing arrows into the fleeing dwarves and hitting many successfully, and with the spell-caster gone, there was no defense left for them. Aphra watched the battle deconstruct all around them and started to ransack the body of what she now thought was the leader dwarf, the most armored and aggressive one that she had just killed. The tiger shifted, its body moving like liquid around itself for a moment before it reformed into Jaheira, wiping away the blood that had gathered around her mouth with one of her hands. Aphra hadn't realized she was a druid and vowed never to get on Jaheira's bad side.

They were able to strip the armor, weapons, and valuables from their enemies' corpses, and discovered they were duergar - 'dark' dwarves normally native to the Underdark. Their presence in the dungeon was as much a mystery as was their own. They had a small kitchen of food items, no more than snacks really, but the starving group devoured everything in sight and distributed most of it evenly. Aphra refrained from eating, not feeling hungry at the time and gave her portion to Minsc - some acorns she had found in the dead duergar's pocket she passed over to the bald warrior as well, as potential food for Boo. The armor from the dead duergar leader was enchanted of a variety that Imoen was able to identify with a quick spell - the Mail of the Dead - and it was unanimously decided that it would go to Minsc who needed the most protection when he charged in recklessly. Minsc agreed around a mouthful of bread, and with Aphra and Imoen's help (and Boo), they were able to strap the magic armor onto him, which lengthened when it touched Minsc's form to fit him appropriately. "Now if only I could find an enchanted set of clothes," Aphra bemoaned as Minsc strutted around in his new armor, testing it with some swings of his sword. They had to adjust a few straps for him to be totally comfortable, but once they were all suited up and packed they headed out of the area into the next unexplored part of the dungeon through another open door the golem had left.

They had all begun to feel hunger and fatigue, alleviated a bit by the bounty the dead duergar had left, but could not stop in their escape no matter what. They went on through another corridor connected to the carpeted room and entered a veritable indoor forest. It was a garden of surpassing complexity, replete with trees and enchanted sunlight, undergrowth, and shrubbery. Aphra didn't know what to make of her captor then, when three scared-looking dryads emerged from behind the trees and stared at her with wide, frightened eyes. Out of the corner of her eye, Xzar suddenly hid behind Jaheira, who seemed affronted by this.

"Hello," Aphra greeted and let her sword tip drop toward the ground as an afterthought, and then sheathed it when they made no threatening moves. Amongst the duergar had been a sword-belt, to which she was immensely grateful. Aphra paid no mind to her own disheveled appearance, or that of the dryads - for their brightly colored forms of sublime beauty were unmistakable - and Aphra also knew you only had one chance to make a first impression. "I swear we don't want to fight you," she promised, but internally prepared herself for conflict which had been lurking around every corner since she had woken up in the dungeon. Aphra held up her hands innocently palm-out. "I don't suppose you lovely ladies know the way out this grimy shithole?"

One of them whose skin was the color of sapling bark and hair the color of summer grass stepped forward, her lips trembling and eyes watering. "H-Help us!" She cried and let out a small and desperate wail as tears formed in her eyes. "Free us!"

"Save us!" A golden eyed, golden-haired dryad behind her echoed.

Aphra leaned back a little bit as the green-haired dryad grabbed her hands and brought them up to her eyes, crying into them. She was completely taken aback and didn't know what to do at all, trying to rack her brain for any previous instance that might help her. When she was a child, Imoen often cried and ran to Gorion or Tethtoril for help. Always, they had comforted her with embraces and words, and let her pour out her despair onto them. Why it had happened at all had always been a mystery to Aphra, who had cried very little in her memory.

"Oh, uh, yes," Aphra blurted out, trying to pull her hands gently away from the weeping dryad, but not succeeding. "That. We can, certainly, uh. Hells. Someone help me out here?"

Jaheira was the one who stepped forward, to which Aphra was immensely grateful. The druid placed a gentle hand on the green-haired, green-eyed dryad's shoulder. The dryad drew her painfully lovely gaze back up to Jaheira's, seemingly startled by the contact. "We are captives here as well," Jaheira stated, "just as you are. Tell us how we might free you, and both escape this wretched place. Nature does not belong in this hellish dungeon."

The dryad seemed surprised. "You are a druid," she realized, her expression morphing into cautious excitement. "You have to help us!"

"Our acorns were taken!" The golden one piped up.

The third one, a lovely, slender, sky-blue dryad stepped forward and grabbed Aphra's hands, seeming to not mind the gore and dirt they were caked in. "They were taken by the dwarves," this one said. "The dark dwarves!"

It took Aphra several seconds to put this information together and reach a conclusion. Embarrassingly, by then, Minsc had already reached the same conclusion and pulled the acorns she had given to him for Boo out of his pocket. "Be this the acorns the ladies speak of?" Minsc asked, holding them forward for them to examine.

The blue one nodded enthusiastically, and the gold one cried, "Yes!"

"You must take them," the green dryad concluded. "Take them from this place to the Windspear Hills in the east! Give them to our Queen there."

Aphra wasn't exactly following this information, but Jaheira seemed to, and she took the acorns from Minsc's hands and carefully emptied a pouch on her belt to keep the acorns in. She drew the strings tightly on the pouch and secured it with a double knot. "We will do as you say," Jaheira promised. "As soon as we are free from this place. Tell me, how do we escape this dungeon?"

"A key there is, to the portal. We are forbidden to touch the key, or enter the Mistress' room," the green dryad informed them. She gestured behind her, to a forested corridor that led to a wooden doorway. Aphra almost immediately marched off to it were it not for Imoen grabbing her shift and nearly tearing it to keep her from moving.

"Hang on, Aph!" Imoen chuckled. "It's probably trapped. Let me go first. First off, 'Mistress?'" She directed this question to the dryads with a note of disgust in her voice. "Who's the Mistress?"

The dryads looked amongst each other with frightened expressions. "She does not come here anymore," the golden one explained. "The master grows angry when we speak of her. Please, you must hurry! The key to the portal is in her room. We will show you the way when you have it."

"But we cannot leave our trees," the green one added. "We cannot enter the portal. You must find the way from there!"

"Alright, fair enough," Aphra agreed. She tried not to think of the ways their captor must have abused these poor dryads and followed Imoen to the Mistress' room. Imoen took her time as she spotted several traps and didn't exactly have all the tools on hand to disarm them, so she had to make do with the enchanted dagger and her arrow tips. One seemed to set off a large bell which sounded ominous but had no immediate side-effect, so perhaps it was merely an ineffectual alarm.

Imoen's reaction to the room was more interesting than its contents - she stumbled inside once the traps were disarmed and blinked, as if she were waking up from sleep. "No," she said. "No, this isn't . . . I thought this was a dream! This bed, that table, this . . . This is for her. His lost love kept perfect. She despises him and this is his monument, all to her." She blinked and rubbed her own arms, up and down. "He spoke while he cut—he—cut—" she couldn't finish her thought and buried her face in her hands. In growing horror of comprehension, Aphra placed an arm around Imoen's shoulders and drew her sister into her embrace. "Oh, get me out of here, Aphra," Imoen sighed into her arms as she whimpered. Aphra vowed to kill their captor if it was the very last thing she did while living.

The room itself was meticulously clean and decorated in an elven design, with lovingly crafted patterned floor rugs, hand-carved furniture, and a sturdy wooden bed with a leaf-green satin coverlet. There was a mage-fire merrily burning in the fireplace permanently, but no signs that anyone had been in the room in some time. There was a fine layer of dust covering everything. Imoen found a few items of magical value and gemstones that she tied to Aphra's belt because she got tired of carrying them, or at least this is what she said after she managed to compose herself, but they still found no clothes for Aphra or suitable weapons for Jaheira who stuck to a pole she'd been using as a quarterstaff.

Imoen did find what appeared to be golden key and pocketed it just as two golems burst into the room, nearly breaking the doorframe. They were of the massive clay variety and barreled in over the furniture, declaring in their monotone voices, "The sanctity of the Mistress' room has been violated. Destroy the intruders."

Xzar, who had been closest to the doorway, ran and hid for cover underneath a table and screamed. Aphra drew her sword and charged them, drawing strikes with Varscona that took gouges out of the brittle clay beneath her blows. Minsc hammered at one with his sword, and Aphra had to dodge one of his blows because they were in such close quarters. Imoen seemed not to know what to do since her arrows were entirely useless and was rifling through her things to try and find anything that would be of use. Jaheira kept one at bay with her staff, but her blows did little to no damage, and the bulk of the fight was left up to Aphra.

Feeling impatient but knowing she needed to conserve her strength should they meet their captor in the dungeon, she circled around at her full speed and leapt onto the back of one golem. Before it could reach behind and throw her off she pierced her sword through the back of where its neck would be, and severed the head completely, blinding the golem. It was still operational, but its other limbs were easily hacked off by this point and it was quickly no longer a threat. She went for the legs of the one that Minsc was attacking after, and with his help quickly dismantled the second one. They were heaps of clay in moments.

"I dearly love this sword," she declared, standing in the iced-clay remains of the golems.

After ransacking the room and quickly, therapeutically upturning everything that was in place with Imoen - the bed sheets, the bed itself, the tables, the chairs, the drawers of the armoire, - they ambled back through the dryads to have them identify the key. The dryads confirmed it was what they had spoken of and gave them a few directions down a hallway that they hadn't turned down yet to the 'portal room' which, as it was explained to Aphra, should lead them to the next level and then exit.

It wasn't long before they were standing in the gore of more rabid goblinoids that had been driven to insanity's brink by starvation and isolation by this mad wizard, right in front of the glowing, swirling blue portal. A slot in one of the pedestals that the portal seemed bound to was of the right size and shape for the key they'd found, and Imoen shoved it right in and twisted it, causing a small click to happen. The portal briefly changed color to a clear white, before it became translucent sky blue again and continued as if it hadn't been disturbed.

"Shall we jump in?" Imoen suggested, gesturing to the portal.

"Who knows what awaits us on the other side," Jaheira cautioned.

Minsc held up his hamster to his ear as Boo chittered at him. "More enemies? More swords? Yes, Boo agrees! The possibilities are endlessly tempting! Off we go!" Minsc agreed and stepped in without preamble, drawing his sword and raising it over his head, keeping the fearless hamster in his other hand.

Aphra had to scramble to follow him and drew her sword in the process. "Wait for me you big oafing plonker—!" she called out just as her cry was silenced by the portal travel.

Aphra got hit in the head by Minsc's bicep after she made her way through the portal and emerged on the other side, just as she was simultaneously hit from behind by Imoen's bow and Imoen herself, as Jaheira and Xzar collided with Imoen. Minsc politely stepped out of the way at this point and seemed not to notice the pile of them by the portal that had bumped into one another and had to scramble to right themselves.

When they did, Aphra became aware of the chamber they were in, and the company that they had. Part of her expected goblins to suddenly appear. She did not expect a mere man, in leathers and shorter than her by half a head, with long jet black hair that cascaded out of a top-knot at the crown of his head. His weapon - a katana whose make Aphra instantly wanted to study - was drawn in one hand as he eyed them with suspicion, but he did not seem to be attacking them, so Aphra put away her weapon in response even if Minsc did not.

"So, there is sanity in all of this madness!" Their greeter said, putting away his sword at his belt. "If you are not in league with the evil that dwells in this unholy place, Yoshimo begs your assistance," he declared, with a slight bow at the waist.

Aphra had read of customs from the eastern continent and determined that this man had to be from Kara-Tur, and not Shou Lung. Though both tended to bow as a sign of respect when they met new people, he was not dressed nor did this man speak as someone from Shou Lung.

Because Minsc was in front of them all, he held up Boo as if Boo were going to examine the Kara-Turan man and stared down at him with suspicion. "We serve no evil mages!" Minsc declared for them all honestly. "But Boo looks upon you with suspicion, little man. How is it you come to be here? Never have I seen his whiskers quiver so!" Minsc finished, pointing out the slight quivering in Boo's cheeks.

Aphra had to admit, he was one cute hamster. Yoshimo seemed to agree and stared at Minsc with a mixture of confusion and respect. "I am not sure how I came to be here," he answered, "but it was much like you, I expect. I have been attempting to find a way out and have failed thus far. I became wounded in my attempts and sought shelter in this room. I thought the portal might lead out, but I suppose now that is not the case."

"Not out, but down," Aphra corrected, and offered her hand for Yoshimo to shake. It wasn't a Kara-Turan greeting, but it was Faerûnian. She didn't smell any blood around him and wasn't sure what he was describing as a 'wound' since he made no limping movements, and seemed agile enough, if a bit harried. "I'm Aphra. Nice to meet you, Yoshimo. Thanks for not attacking us, we've had enough of that."

Yoshimo shook her hand with familiarity. It did diminish her suspicion somewhat, but not entirely.

"How did you come to be trapped here?" Jaheira questioned, coming around to them and eying the man - Aphra suspected if she had whiskers like Boo, they would have been fiercely quivering.

"It is quite embarrassing," Yoshimo explained tentatively. "I was drugged and taken. My memory does not recall anything past falling asleep. My profession does not leave itself open to those who are not wary, yet somehow I was caught unawares."

"Adventurer?" Aphra guessed, judging by his gear.

"Bounty hunter," Yoshimo corrected.

"Fair enough," Aphra decided. She informed him, "If you want to come with us to get out of here that's fine, but we're on a hell-path of destruction out of here no matter the cost. So long as that's agreeable with you, you're welcome with us."

"We will free ourselves and destroy this evil wizard!" Minsc agreed, and tucked Boo back onto his shoulder.

"I will share with you what I know then, and we will join forces," Yoshimo decided with a nod. "I awoke in this place about a day ago and escaped my cell in the recent upheaval. I assume you have noticed the others in this place, attacking the golems and goblins?"

Aphra nodded, thinking of Xzar who had been disturbingly quiet the entire time behind them, and the clothes they'd found for him taken from the strange dead man. "Not sure why they're here, but we've been taking advantage of the distraction to escape," Aphra said.

"They are targeting Irenicus, for whatever reason," Yoshimo said, finally revealing to them the name of their captor.

"Irenicus?" Aphra repeated, tasting the name on her tongue. It was ashen knowledge that did her no good at present, but it was good to have a name to an identity. Still no face, but it was something to snarl about as she challenged him whenever she met him next. "Is that his name?"

"That is what he introduced himself to me as, when he told me I would die and rot in here," Yoshimo informed them. "I first awoke without a great deal of hunger, however, and suspect that I was not taken far from where I originally was."

"Irenicus," Jaheira repeated as well. "This name seems familiar to me, but there will be time to ponder on this later. We should move on, Khalid is still somewhere in this dread place," she reminded them.

Aphra nodded and addressed Yoshimo. "If you're not made of sturdy stuff, stick to the back with Xzar and Imoen," she gestured to her sister, who waved, and Xzar, who wiggled his fingers in greeting and grimaced. "We can figure out where we are when we find the way out of here."

"That is a sound plan," Yoshimo agreed, and he gestured to the singular door that led out of the portal room.

"You too know the hardship of being set into a maze like a helpless hamster," Minsc declared, and clapped Yoshimo on the back of the shoulder as if all of his and Boo's suspicion were forgotten. "We are comrades in peril. Boo asks what you propose we do next, little man."

"Continue to search for a way out?" Yoshimo (a little confusedly) suggested.

"Don't mind the hamster," Aphra suggested to the bounty hunter, and Yoshimo hesitantly nodded, continuing to occasionally glace Boo's way in concern or confusion, it wasn't clear.

The halls continued outside of the room Yoshimo had been hiding in - they'd cobbled together a torch from the duergars' remnants in the lower level, and Aphra led the way with Yoshimo as he described what he had encountered. "I know not what lies in this room," he pointed to a closed door on their left, "I ran past and tried the portal, but it was locked. I thought it would lead out, and not further in."

Aphra opened the door with no objections from anyone and heard the whisper of weapons' hafts on skin as everyone adjusted their equipment and prepared for combat. "Be ready," she cautioned as she drew Varscona up in her hand. It opened into a room not altogether different from the one they'd found Xzar and Rielev in - it was a room of massive bluish glass containers filled with floating forms and milky fluid. The sounds of combat alerted her to the presence of a fight between a strange naked woman who had apparently escaped a jar, and one of the black-clad humanoids from earlier who was trying to get close to her and stab at her with a knife. She was unexpectedly agile, and apparently a proficient spell-caster as some lightning slipped from her fingertips toward her foe and sent him flying back toward Aphra.

Aphra wasted no time and stabbed the black-clad man through the throat before he could get up and attack her - she knew that they might not be her enemy, but she wanted to help anyone attempting to escape the dungeon the same as she was. She lowered her weapon as the black-clad man's body slipped to the ground, choking on his own blood for a moment before dying, and approached the hyperventilating woman.

She was tall and elven in appearance, with hair of shining spun gold that stuck to her scalp in wet clumps. She was dripping with the same fluid that Xzar had nearly drowned in and was eying Aphra balefully. "Hello," Aphra offered, with a wave of her hand, and felt awkward. She brushed her hair that had fallen over her shoulder, and once more lamented the loss of half of it. When the elven woman said nothing, Aphra added, "Can't imagine he was a terribly nice fellow if he was stopping you from getting out of here."

"Aphra?" Imoen said, with a high note of fear in her voice.

Aphra slowly put her weapon on the ground in front of the woman and backed down and away from it. She was certain she was faster than the woman could possibly be and could easily kill her if she attacked them too, but she hoped the gesture would mean something to the woman if her words did not.

"We mean you no harm," Jaheira backed her up, stepping forward and lowering her weapon as well.

"You are his captives, just as I am his slave," the woman finally bit out bitterly in a voice that, had she used another tone, might belong to a bard. There was something disturbingly perfect about her elven features, and strangely familiar to Aphra for reasons she couldn't identify. "You will not stop me from leaving this place!" She added stridently, backing away from them.

Jaheira took a step back, and Aphra followed her suit. "Everyone, lower your weapons and let her leave," Jaheira instructed. Everybody moved further into the room and backed away from the door, giving the elven woman a clear path to the exit. Boldly, the green-eyed elven woman picked up Aphra's discarded sword and started running for the exit. No one stopped her, and Aphra mourned its loss for a moment before reasoning that the naked woman from the jar probably needed it more than she did. "I guess I can always find another sword," she grumbled, and decided to let it go.

"Oh no," Imoen murmured as she approached one of the jars. "Sune's unmerciful tits! They're all . . . They're all dead!"

Aphra examined one, and then another, and a thread of alarm grew in her heart that sped up its pace as she realized they all looked like the same person. The same elven woman that had been glaring back at them was replicated by the dozens in each one of the jars, as if they'd been created all for some insane vain purpose.

"Who was she?" Aphra wondered.

"The Mistress?" Imoen guessed. "I think . . . I was in that room before," she admitted. "I can't . . . I can't remember . . ." Imoen trailed off and covered her face with one of her hands, shaking.

Aphra didn't know what to do, other than throw an arm over her sister's shoulder. "Sorry I stink," she offered, and hugged Imoen. Imoen didn't seem to mind and returned the hug gratefully, her breath becoming increasingly even. "I don't know what he did to us, but I promise, we'll figure this out and make him pay," she vowed.

"I know you will," Imoen said certainly, and pulled away from the hug. There was a deep pain in her eyes that Aphra was afraid nothing would ever erase.

They left that chamber feeling impossibly more subdued than they had before. What they found in the next room they discovered shocked all of them, but none more so than Jaheira. Before Aphra really had time to process what she was looking at - which was a half-flayed corpse on display - Jaheira was running forward, dropping her gear, and screaming in recognition. "Khalid . . . ? Khalid!" Jaheira cried out. And the strong woman, who was so fierce in manner and bearing, broke at the sight of her dead husband. Jaheira fell, first onto her knees and then onto her hands as she stared up at the corpse that had been violently dissected.

Aphra's hand clenched around the air, regretting the loss of her sword, and Imoen fell to her hands and knees and began to retch. Everyone except Xzar looked away; Xzar seemingly couldn't look anywhere else and could only stare blankly at the sight in front of him.

"Where are the levers, the ropes to pull, to show where he really is . . . My Khalid!" Jaheira wailed. "This—I will have the heart of the one who has done this! I will tear their blackened heart from their—" Jaheira broke from her vows as she looked up at the corpse of what was once a man named Khalid.

He was once a red-haired man and perhaps handsome, with half-elven ears, but it was hard for Aphra to tell anything else about him from the state of his corpse, having not known him in life to her recollection. She touched Jaheira's shoulder, but the woman swatted her hand away with vehemence and glared into Aphra's startled eyes. "No!" Jaheira snapped. "No words!"

"Jaheira," Aphra tried, but to no avail.

"No more words!" Jaheira snapped. "The only one whose words I wish to hear is . . ."

"Khalid was a brave man," Minsc supplied suddenly, sounding more subdued than his usual cheer. He held Boo in one hand and offered him to Jaheira who eyed the hamster disdainfully. "Boo and Minsc mourn your loss—"

"What do you know? Affront to nature!" Jaheira roared, misdirecting her anger and frustration at Minsc.

Minsc was not angry as he replied empathetically, "A great man has fallen here, but this is no cause to hurl insults at the living."

"Stranger! No one! Leave me!" Jaheira wailed angrily, burying her face in her dirty hands as she sobbed angrily. Aphra had no idea how to comfort her, or even if comfort was possible for such a thing. She stared at the corpse, at Jaheira, and didn't know what to think or do.

"Here, Boo will comfort you," Minsc tried to offer, but Jaheira nearly slapped him and the hamster away and very well would have if Minsc hadn't pulled Boo away just in time.

"What do you and your rodent know? What can you know?!" Jaheira practically snarled out. "No more words. Save your speeches. The only voice I wish to hear is gone."

Imoen stepped forward and knelt to Jaheira's level. "He didn't suffer," Imoen promised, eerily.

Jaheira's eyes snapped up and sought out Imoen's, still angry, still suffering. "How would you know? Speak plain!" She demanded of Imoen and grabbed the girl by the tunic.

Imoen didn't seem to mind and closed her hands over Jaheira's grip gently and spoke so softly that Aphra wouldn't be surprised if only she and Jaheira could hear it, "He . . . Made me watch as he cut, but Khalid was already . . . Already gone, when he did all this," Imoen answered tentatively. "He—"

"Speak no more of this," Jaheira intoned quietly, angrily as she released Imoen's shirt with shaking hands. "I—I do not wish to know."

Imoen nodded, swallowed, and stood to offer Jaheira a hand. Jaheira eyed it like it was a snake for a moment before taking it and standing. She composed herself quietly, by inches, until finally she was standing tall again. Then, she spoke, "Khalid cannot be raised, now that his body has been desecrated," she declared, and approached the corpse. Imoen reached out to her for a moment before withdrawing, re-thinking her action. Jaheira looked upon Khalid's displayed corpse, defiled, half-flayed, and rotting, and caressed the remains of his cheek. "I will see you again," she promised, and looked to Aphra. "I would borrow your blade," she requested in a tone that Aphra could never think to disagree with.

Aphra stepped up and passed the dagger over to Jaheira, who used it to cut a small tuft of Khalid's ginger hair and tucked it in her pocket. Aphra understood, instantly, what her intention was. "We'll find a sunny spot somewhere for him to rest," Aphra promised Jaheira out of a lack of better things to say, and accepted the dagger as it was handed back to her. Aphra thought of Gorion and his lonely cairn that she and Imoen had built out in the wilderness, now littered with dried flowers.

Jaheira only nodded and glared at the door that led on into the complex, away from where they'd come from. "Let us leave this place for good, and kill the wretch who has done this," she growled out.

Xzar sidled up to Aphra, and she glanced down at the little madman and raised an eyebrow. "Be silent, in your solitude - which is not loneliness," he recited from something in his memory, "for then the spirits of the dead who stood in life before thee are again in death around thee - and their will shall overshadow thee: be still." It was an instruction, or perhaps a warning, Aphra wasn't sure. She was just glad Jaheira didn't comment on his ramblings, and that they weren't wholly inappropriate for the moment. It stuck in her memory, however.

Aphra nodded and headed for the door. Yoshimo lingered behind them all for a moment as he stared at Khalid's remains in sadness and horror, before catching up to them. They soldiered on through the complex, meeting goblins and mephits and slaying everything in their path. They eventually encountered more of the black-clad men, who also attacked them on sight and wouldn't listen when Aphra tried to reason with them. Everyone else in their group had lapsed into contemplative silence, even Xzar. The associated the party with their captor, Irenicus, and were out for blood. Aphra briefly mourned their loss of life as a result of an unfortunate misunderstanding but had no pity for them. They fell easily enough under Minsc's and Aphra's blows and punches, and they managed to incapacitate more than they killed. Altogether the black-clad people posed little obstacle to them even as they all began to lag and tire from their flight. Only Aphra was still brimming with the energy of Jaheira's regenerative spell; Yoshimo also was not tired, though this was because he had seemingly endured less during his stint as Irenicus' captive. Aphra was unsure of Irenicus' end-goal but was certain it had something to do with experimentation on people judging from the state of Khalid's corpse and the rooms full of all the jars of people. Maybe she didn't want to know at all.

The halls were lined with torches, and Aphra picked one up as she led them on. She didn't know at what point it was decided that she had to be the one to go first, but she figured it only made sense as she was by far the most damage-proof of them. They found more goblins, dead moments later thanks to their increased strength, prowess, and gear, and she told Yoshimo to stick to a bow and use the goblin arrows they found. He nodded only once and agreed without complaint; it was somehow silently understood that Aphra was not to be questioned. She wasn't aware of what she'd done to earn such a privilege, as she was certain she was the youngest of the group.

As they marched on through Irenicus' tunnels of his laboratory and fortress, they eventually encountered another black-clad man, this time in a fight with a woman in a gauzy azure gown of Calimshan design. It was clear that the blond woman hadn't come this way, or had bypassed them altogether, because they were both startled to encounter the others. "Oh, don't let us keep you," Aphra tried to offer. "Really, we'll be on our way—"

"More minions?" The black-clad man rasped out in a foreign accent. "You will all fall before the Shadow Thieves!" He declared and suddenly charged the blue-dressed woman.

"Join me in darkness!" She cried strangely gleefully as he charged her.

"Maybe we just sit this one out," Aphra suggested, and everybody nearly agreed, except Imoen who started firing arrows at both of the people. "Imoen!" She chided.

"Whoever wins is just gonna try to kill us too!" She pointed out, which Aphra had to agree with.

Yoshimo and Imoen started pelting them with arrows, but only Imoen managed to hit the black-clad man. The woman in the blue Calimshanite gown dodged everything that was thrown at her effortlessly, and suddenly grabbed the black-clad man after he stiffened in place from being hit by Imoen's arrow. She bore his cowl and shroud aside and brought her mouth to the crook of the man's neck, and bit down viciously, sending blood gushing down her face and dress.

"Oh," Aphra said objectionably. It was the sort of sound one makes when one sees something not only unsanitary, but unholy. She decided to charge the vampire while she was feeding and took the blue-clad woman by surprise. Aphra dropped her dagger and torch and went for hand-to-hand; she was suspecting that the woman was not only gifted at evading weapons but clearly some manner of spell-caster if she were fighting in such clothes, and Aphra bodily picked up the vampire away from her victim and tossed her into the nearest wall.

The woman blurred as she was thrown with such force that her body gave an audible 'pop' of air as it burst into gaseous form and disappeared through an open pipe in the wall.

"Your strength is impressive," Yoshimo commented.

"She weighed next to nothing," Aphra said dismissively and picked her dagger and torch back up from where she'd dropped them. She glanced around the now-illuminated room and saw two more corpses of black-clad fellows, now identified as Shadow Thieves. She had heard the term before in Baldur's Gate, spoken of with fear as if they were Amn's nearly invisible army of thieves and spies. What they were doing in this wizard's lab trying to kill him and Aphra was anyone's guess, and Aphra didn't have the time for guessing. "Let's strip these fools of valuables and be on our way," she suggested, and approached the first and most fresh corpse.

He was still moderately alive or was until Aphra brought her dagger to bear across his throat. No one objected to this or even seemed to see her do it, so she thought nothing of it. A part of her did quail for a moment at how callous she was becoming about life and death, but then she thought of Rielev and corrected herself. Callous was not the right word. Efficient in some ways (and she stared down at the face of the black-clad man), perhaps. Merciful (as she thought of Rielev and the dead bodies in all the jars), in others.

It was not long after this that they found a tunnel that had more than just a torchlight at the end, but something brighter. Jaheira stepped forward to Aphra's side and inhaled deeply. Something rumbled underneath their feet and crackled in the distance. "There is fresh air ahead, and spell-fire," she cautioned. "I can smell it."

"Are your druid-senses tingling?" Aphra joked, but Jaheira was completely unamused. Aphra cleared her throat and led on, feeling embarrassed. "We don't know what we'll face out there, so be cautious in your step," Aphra suggested, figuring it sounded like good advice.

"Freedom," Imoen breathed out. Her eyes caught the light ahead and seemed greener than they'd ever been. "Aphra, we're almost out! We made it!" She cried and took off for the exit.

Aphra cursed under her breath and ran after her sister, dropping her torch and easily catching up with her longer legs. She didn't stop Imoen or pull her down, but she did run ahead and out into the sun, feeling it seeping into every pore of her skin as she did so.

However long she'd been in the dark, whatever tortures had been inflicted upon her, whatever shadows remained inside her did nothing to stop the relief that seeped into her very bones as Aphra finally left Irenicus' laboratory. It seemed as though a whole entrance had been blown apart, as something had collided with part of the upper walls of the lair and had given in, exposing and turning it into an entrance. Aphra ran ahead as the others trailed after her, Imoen catching up first as Aphra toed her way around the rubble with her nearly-too-big-for-her-feet boots, still in her torn and filthy shift. Part of it caught and tore again on some exposed rubble, and she turned to try and free herself, Aphra saw him.

He was Irenicus. There was no doubt about it. He was clad in a strange mixture of leathers and wizardly robes, with a cowl that revealed his face but covered everything else. He stared at her with such rage, such need, such contempt, and such familiarity that Aphra wondered for a moment what she had done to this man to warrant such a gaze. She realized that she did remember him from when she had initially woken in the cage, and he had addressed her not by name, but by something else. For the life of her, she couldn't recall his words.

"Ah, the god-child has freed herself," Irenicus opened his mouth and commented. The terminology he used was familiar, as was his voice, which was no different from that of a bored scholar and would not have been out of place amongst the stacks of Candlekeep. He could have been discussing transmutative magical theory - it would not have sounded terribly odd from such a man as him, were it not for the profoundly vicious look in his cold, cruel eyes.

As she internally compared her captor to Ulraunt, Aphra suddenly lost the ability to move. She could not turn her head to see anything, only her eyes, as her body had been frozen in place. Her eyes snapped back to Irenicus who had raised a hand in a spell-casting gesture. She could not speak to warn her companions and heard a great crash and clatter to her right just as Imoen cried out, "It's collapsing! Everyone out!"

A column of rock tumbled to the ground in front of her. Aphra only had eyes for Irenicus, who was looking at everything but her now - as if he had completely dismissed her as a threat. It infuriated her to her bones that her susceptibility to magic had caused this - her own foolishness. Imoen tumbled into her view, as did Xzar, Minsc and Jaheira who were not far behind. Imoen looked up at her sister in alarm for a moment, before drawing her bow and nocking an arrow in one fluid motion and aiming it right at Irenicus. She huffed in her struggle to regain her breath but her aim was true, and she fired.

Irenicus was there one second and gone the next. The arrow clattered to the ground, just as someone in the distance screamed. "Where'd he go?!" Imoen demanded to know and looked up at her sister. "Aphra? Can you speak? Guys she can't—can anyone move?" There was an answering silence, and Aphra's heart began to pound in her ears. They were about to become captives again at any moment, she was sure of it. "Get away from her!" Imoen suddenly cried out and fired an arrow over Aphra's shoulder that, judging from the sound, didn't hit. It flew back at Imoen a moment later, and it was only by luck that she managed to dodge it. It struck Aphra ineffectually, tearing at her already-torn shift but doing nothing else.

Over Aphra's shoulder, she heard Irenicus say, "I won't let you leave, not when I'm so close to unlocking your power." The sound of his voice so close to her ear, and being so helpless to stop it, sent a shiver up her spine in a wholly unpleasant way.

Imoen rolled to Aphra's other side and nocked another arrow, narrowing her eyes as she aimed. "You're not unlocking anything, you evil bastard!" She cried and loosed. Aphra wanted to chide her, that it was useless, but this arrow seemed different. It was as if the daylight had coalesced into the arrowhead for a moment before it fired, and Aphra watched in amazement as it flew true somewhere behind her and hit something that sounded like flesh. "Hah! You do bleed!" Imoen cried out victoriously, and then stopped moving as her skin abruptly flashed with light before becoming gray and motionless. She was mid-victory cry as she had been turned to stone by their enemy.

Aphra wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage. She could not speak or move. She felt utterly powerless.

"Foolish girl, pitting her magic against mine," Irenicus chided as he walked back over into Aphra's view. She was treated to the sight of Imoen's arrow sticking out of the front of his leg, but the wizard seemed entirely unbothered and not at all in pain. He simply pulled the arrow out as it gushed blood for all of a moment before it healed itself. She despaired at the sight, and Aphra resolved once she was free to carve Irenicus into as many indivisible pieces as possible and see if he still regenerated.

Shimmers in the surrounding air alerted Aphra to the presence of mages before they stepped out of the sudden portals that coalesced. Gray-robed and hooded to disguise their faces, there were about five of them that Aphra could see and hear that surrounded Irenicus quite suddenly within her line of sight, although she had to view it out of nearly the corner of her left eye as her head was unable to move. "Stop!" One of them announced, holding up a hand. "This is an unlawful use of magical energies!"

Aphra had no idea what he was talking about, but Irenicus apparently did and snarled something out and the man just . . . Exploded. There was no other word for the sudden outpouring of viscera and guts that the cowled fellow burst into as Irenicus dispassionately dismantled him with a thoughtful arcane gesture. There was nothing about the man in the cowl that was recognizably alive at the end, and the other cowled fellows around him stared on in horror before they, too, burst into bloody pieces on the spot, coating rubble in gore and splattering onto Aphra and her friends. Some hit her face, but thankfully not her eyes. She twitched her eyebrow, pleased to be able to move it suddenly, and felt like she could sense the paralysis was gradually wearing off or expiring. She tried to twitch her toes and fingers. Somewhere, people began to scream en masse and panic.

Three more shimmers in the air announced the presence of a few more cowled fellows, who took in the destruction all around them strangely officiously. "We are the law here, mage! You would do well not to resist!" One of them declared, almost shaking in place. He cast a spell at Irenicus that dissolved against the man's strange leather robes. A magical battle ensued that shook the ground, where lights flashed above Aphra's head and cowled wizards went down, one after one, some in splatters of gore, others as ashes. It was destruction incarnate, and Irenicus was the only one still standing by the end. Five more cowled fellows stepped out of the shimmering air once more and the battle, which was more of a senseless magical slaughter, reached a sudden standstill.

"You may be powerful, but we are many!" One of the cowled ones threatened. "Our numbers are legion and you will be overwhelmed!"

Irenicus glared vehemently at the one who spoke, before something in his demeanor seemed to change. As he was about to open his mouth to speak, Xzar had somehow freed himself from the magical prison and was trying to help Aphra in front of her. She wanted to seethe at him to go run and hide or run away and save himself at the very least. She couldn't voice anything to him and was helpless to stop Xzar from firing off a bolt of magic at Irenicus that fluttered uselessly off of his robes. "I'll show you a helpless damsel!" Xzar insanely said and fired off a number of other spells.

Irenicus waved a hand at Xzar and he turned to stone, just like Imoen. Aphra despaired silently. Quiet suddenly engulfed the area. "You mages bore me," Irenicus announced and looked to the cowled one that had addressed him. "Very well, I will resist no further," he suddenly announced, "but you will take the petrified ones with me. They are mages as well."

Aphra railed and raged with everything in her, but all she could do was twitch her littlest toes and left eyebrow. The cowled ones nodded, and the light around them shimmered for all of a moment before suddenly they, Irenicus, Imoen, and Xzar were gone.

She heard the sounds of people murmuring and movement before she was able to move again. The first thing Aphra did was collapse under the tension her body had been suspended in. She plopped down on her bare knees atop the rubble, which exposed the tunnel leading to Irenicus' domain, and Aphra turned to look out onto a sea of curious and terrified faces amidst a foreign marketplace. Colorful tents and sandstone buildings encircled an arena of sorts, where Aphra, Jaheira, Minsc and Yoshimo were left abandoned by the wizard fight in the air that was slowly settling. Dust had gathered and began to disperse as the crowd became more visible.

There was a murmuring as armored men started to push through it toward Aphra and the others. Aphra felt a sob well up in her chest, but it mixed with a laugh as she thought of the incredulity of their circumstances. A second later, the guards found them all and pointed their halberds at the group as Aphra cried out a wretched kind laughter mixed with tears of sorrow. Minsc had knelt beside her and placed a hand on her back to ground her, but Aphra was helpless to stop the deranged laughter that erupted out of her mouth even as she tried to cover it.

She doubled over and felt like screaming, but all she could do was laugh so hard that helpless tears poured out of her eyes and down her face. She thought of her and Imoen laughing and crying together before burying Gorion. Now the last family she had left in the world was gone and she was all alone, in a ruin surrounded by strangers in a strange land. There was nothing funny about her circumstances, and yet she laughed out of an inability to do anything else. Gorion's words to her rang in her ears: 'Your sister is very fragile compared to you,' he had said several times. Yet, who had found her in the woods when Gorion was dead? Imoen. Who had picked Aphra up and marched them onward? Imoen. Who was she, without Imoen?

As Aphra finally calmed down and stopped laughing, she looked up into the eye-slots of the helm of the guard closest to her, who pointed his halberd down at her with trepidation, and she glared. She would get Imoen back, no matter the cost to herself or others, if it was the last thing she did. She knew it was what Gorion would want, and that was enough to make her stand back up.