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.

7. Ch 6: Revelations

"There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men."

—Epicurus

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APHRA

Mulahey's face contorted from unbridled rage to raw fear. Aphra approached his cowering form with a dagger in hand, and then looked at the dagger, wondering where it had come from, why she was there, and didn't they capture him? The dagger was less of a blade and more of a protrusion of sharp bone, and startled, she dropped it onto the ground with a clatter and stared at it. It wriggled on the ground.

It was a dream, she realized - a true dream, not like what had happened in Athkatla, but something her exhausted imagination had concocted. Almost as if it knew she had realized what it was, the dagger floated up from the ground and pointed itself at Mulahey.

YOU WILL LEARN TO TAKE WHAT IS OFFERED, the dagger intoned her in a voice that wasn't a voice at all but a thought that shattered everything in her mind with its intensity, shaking the dream all around her. The dagger, as if thrown, embedded itself in Mulahey's chest and twisted, killing him while Aphra was helpless to watch. Mulahey fell when struck, and Aphra woke.

She awakened with a startle in a foreign bed, and suddenly panicked when she couldn't recognize her immediate surroundings. She stood off of a strange bed in a strange room with four other figures, until she recognized Minsc and Jaheira's forms and panicked in a completely unique way. Imoen was nowhere to be found, neither was Neera, nor was Dynaheir. Only Yoshimo, who had awoken with her commotion and brought a lamp to his face as he approached with a concerned expression.

"Are you well, my friend? You were turning in your sleep fiercely," he asked and commented, holding the lamp out to her.

She gripped its handle and stared at him, confused, overwhelmed, and wanted to cry. "Why—but—how am—oh gods," Aphra blurted out and rubbed at her brow with her free hand.

"Aphra?" Jaheira called out. Her braided hair and less-stern expression that was colored by lines of grief alerted Aphra to the incontrovertible fact that she had just traveled through time again, this time back to Athkatla despite last being consciously aware of herself in Nashkel. The Jaheira she'd met for the first time officially in Nashkel hadn't recognized her unlike this Khalid-less Jaheira, nor did she have her hair in braids and instead wore it long and wild. The other Jaheira was curt and rude, and though the Jaheira in front of her was perhaps only a little less so, they were still the same person. It was just that one of them was missing her husband and seemed to know Aphra far better than she knew either version.

"Jaheira," Aphra uttered as her bottom lip trembled and tears emerged at the corners of her eyes, stinging them. She wiped them angrily away. Aphra realized something in that moment - that this Jaheira, who was on her side indefinitely - had been right about everything. "Oh Jaheira, you were right, I'm so sorry—"

"Hush, child," Jaheira chided and got up from her bed to address Aphra. Aphra responded by engulfing the smaller half-elven woman in a hug - something she had wanted to do to the Jaheira in the past but knew it might have been ill-received. Jaheira let the hug happen and even wrapped her arms around the younger woman, patting her gently with one hand on the back in a comforting gesture.

"I don't understand what's happening," Aphra sobbed into Jaheira's neck. She smelled like thyme and moss, reminding Aphra suddenly of Candlekeep when she'd slept as a child in the belfry one rainy night. She was still a child, and the fact of it made her want to cry more.

"I will go and fetch breakfast," Yoshimo decided awkwardly, and left the room to give the two of them privacy, perhaps uncomfortable at the display of naked emotion.

Jaheira eventually managed to get Aphra to sit down on the ground, where she wrapped her arms around Aphra's shoulders and let her cry it all out. "It's barely my eighteenth year," Aphra managed to spit out after she felt like she had cried herself out and was in the hiccup stage. "I don't know what I'm doing. I've already killed so many people, and escaped a mad wizard's death dungeon, and I'm so sorry I thought you were a dream or some sort of vision of the future. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't understand what's happening to me. Why am I like this? This is real. I'm real. You're here. Aren't we?"

"That is something I do not know," Jaheira admitted, "but I do know that it must have something to do with your father."

Aphra sniffled. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Is it—did Gorion do this?"

"Not him," Jaheira shook her head, and seemed pensively withdrawn for a moment as if she were mulling her words over. "Your father is Bhaal," she eventually decided to say outright. Aphra stared at her as she continued: "By which I mean, the Lord of Murder, god of violent death, patron of assassins, Bhaal. Gorion adopted you. I know not where he acquired you. You are one of many of Bhaal's mortal children, in fact, and there are some that hunt you even now. But, unfortunately Gorion spoke very little of his wards to Khalid and I, and we did not ask many questions. I learned of your parentage only much later - far too much later. He asked us to keep this secret about your parentage, not from you, but from others who might seek your divine heritage for insidious motives. I suspect Irenicus is, if not another Bhaalspawn himself, interested in you because of your father's blood."

Aphra stared at Jaheira for a little while before she erupted into startled laughter. It became a little strident and Jaheira chided her with her expression alone, which was an interesting enough look that it made Aphra stop laughing and stare at the ground blankly for a moment. She thought of the drawing she'd done back in Nashkel of Jaheira, convinced they would meet, knowing they would, all because the Jaheira that was in front of her had told her of it. It made the kind of sense that didn't - it was an impossible paradox. "I don't know how this is possible," Aphra stated, choosing her words carefully, "but you've managed to completely dumbfound me."

"We spoke of a name last," Jaheira said, withdrawing one of her arms but keeping the other wrapped around Aphra's shoulders as she knelt by Aphra's side. "Sarevok," the druid repeated. "You defeated him, at great personal cost. He was the man who slew Gorion. You must, when you inevitably return to Nashkel, find him at all costs. Defeat him. Be careful how you go about it, and listen to your sister," Jaheira instructed with a frown. "You need to listen to her more often."

"Imoen," Aphra breathed. "Where is she? How do we save her from that — creepy wizard?"

"That I also do not know," Jaheira said.

"You're serious, aren't you?" Aphra realized. "You think I'm the daughter of Bhaal. The god of murder that Cyric back-stabbed to death," she scoffed.

"You have been having dreams, yes?" Jaheira assumed with an arched eyebrow. Her voice became soft as she said, "Dreams of rivers of blood, and of the red gnashing of bones."

Aphra stilled, unwilling to admit this but her silence was in itself an admission. How did Jaheira know this? "Let me guess, you know because I told you in the past?" the gray-eyed girl guessed, her tone becoming higher in pitch as the incredulity of her own reality crashed down upon her.

"You never spoke of it much," Jaheira revealed. "But I overheard you speaking to Imoen about it. You and I . . . We did not get along back then. It is better said that we were on tense terms - but I am well pleased to put that behind us and focus on saving Imoen with a fresh slate. Know, however, that I would never lie to you about such matters."

"You're serious," Aphra murmured, as horror dawned upon her. "You really think I'm a child of . . ." And then, so many terrible things began to add up about Gorion's shiftiness about her family looking for her. "Well, can you give me any hints?" Aphra queried, a little frustrated. "Who's this Sarevok anyway?"

"He was the shadow power behind the organization that called itself the Iron Throne," Jaheira informed her. "I knew not what he looked like, for he never revealed himself to my eyes and only appeared before you when you were alone and without allies. He knew your weaknesses and possessed a powerful sword capable of severing an astral cord and wore a large and ostentatious helmet. His body did not survive his death and dissolved into golden dust beyond the point of resurrection. He left mortal wounds upon you in battle that I and another of our fellows managed to heal. She left not long after that point . . . Though I do wonder what has become of her now. I suppose it does not matter. It is her you must thank for your life, truly, though part of Sarevok's sword when it broke during your fight became embedded in your breast-bone - a small shard, but it left quite a scar."

Aphra processed this and nodded. She did not know why she was being given this strangeness by the gods, but she would do her best to utilize her knowledge to try and change things for the better for her sake, and Imoen's. She poked at her breastbone and looked down her shirt to find a thick scar between her breasts that felt cold and burned slightly under her touch at the same time, most peculiarly. it was one of dozens, perhaps hundreds upon her own body which she did not recognize any longer. She had thought her tough, umber-hued skin was impenetrable to all but extremely rare and hard metals - adamantine, or some enchanted blade, perhaps. Something that could permanently kill someone past the point of resurrection was dangerous enough - but what of this golden dust that had become of her enemy? And what of Bhaal's heritage, did it explain all of her abilities? Her skin's innate hardness? Her speed, her strength? Were all the demigod children of Bhaal so gifted? Aphra did not know, and suspected Jaheira did not know either.

Minsc at that moment awoke, announcing it to the world with, "Ah, another beautiful day in the stinky city! Come Boo, let us greet the day and find nuts!"

Aphra stood and immediately ran over to him as he rolled out of bed and took in the sight of him. Minsc had a scar under his eye that the past version of himself did not have, but otherwise he was unchanged, and Aphra could not help herself from engulfing him in a hug. "It was so good to meet you for the first time," she said into his shoulder. "And to finally meet Dynaheir. I like her a lot."

Minsc seemed like he was about to say something but choked on the word and fell into silence. He wrapped his arms around Aphra and hugged her back wordlessly instead.

"Have I returned at a bad time?" Yoshimo said as he poked his head through the door. The smell of eggs and meat wafted over to Aphra's nose, making her realize how very hungry she actually was. She broke the hug with Minsc and walked over to the door, opening it fully for the bounty hunter.

"Just been an emotional morning full of weird revelations," Aphra summarized as she shut the door behind Yoshimo. "I don't really know what's going on with my life anymore to be honest, but is that bacon? Oh gods, it is!" She snatched a piece off of one of the plates he carried, and he handed her the plate which she brought over to Minsc. Jaheira wrinkled her nose up at it slightly when offered, which Aphra took to mean that she could have Jaheira's portion.

Aphra had fallen asleep in her clothes and had not had time to change them, so they were still the same bloodstained items from her raid through the slaver base. She wondered vaguely what had happened to Tiri as she descended the steps of Hendak's Copper Coronet, when the little girl ran right into her legs and hugged them, apparently uncaring about the bloodstains.

Without really thinking about it, Aphra swept Tiri up into her arms and smiled at the girl, who seemed to be one of the only people she'd met in Athkatla so far that wasn't visibly afraid of her appearance. Tiri played with the fuzz on her nearly bald and scarred head, running her small fingers through the short and thick black hair and giggling in delight.

It occurred to Aphra that she had no idea what would happen to the children, most of whom were orphans or as good as. Hendak seemed not to know what to do with them either but was unsurprisingly good with the children, who had already decided to listen to him when he barked orders at them to stop making a racket and sit quietly while they awaited breakfast. Most were too excited to sit still, and it warmed Aphra's heart to see most of them bouncing back from their tragedies so quickly. Though there had been roughly ten of them the previous night, others had been coaxed from their cages by Hendak and made quite little flurries of motion as they chattered amongst each other in her presence.

"Good morning little ones," she called out, and most of them called out back to her and waved at 'Miss Aphra' enthusiastically. "Tiri," she said to the girl in her arms, "I hope you slept better than I did."

"I got scared when I woke up and forgot where I was," Tiri answered quite easily, shocking Aphra a bit at their similarities, "but then I remembered you were here."

"I think you have a worshiper," Jaheira jested in a sardonic voice as she descended the steps behind Aphra. "Come, child, you must eat," she instructed in a motherly voice, and Tiri automatically let go of Aphra's arms and slid down the length of her body to the ground with a little bounce.

"Okay, Miss Jaheira," Tiri agreed and took Jaheira's hand to go walk over to Bernard. Aphra watched them go, feeling oddly wistful.

Yoshimo, Minsc, Jaheira and Aphra sat down for a more hearty breakfast than the one they'd had in their room. There were still no customers in the Copper Coronet, save Korgan, a passed-out Salvanas, and Drini who had seated themselves at the bar. Tiri had managed to find her way into Aphra's lap at that point and was eating most of Aphra's food without any objections. Aphra was in a pensive mood, and Yoshimo seemed to sense this as he asked, "What is the plan today, fearless leader? We have a great deal of funds to raise and little to our names."

For a moment, Aphra wondered at Yoshimo's presence. Though they had met in a dungeon and helped each other mutually escape, he seemed to fit in effortlessly with their lot, and from what Aphra could tell his concern for their plight was genuine. If it were not for his connection to the Shadow Thieves, who knows how they might have gone about matters? So, Aphra answered him, "I think we should contact the Cowled Wizards, and then the Shadow Thieves, wherever they're at. Gaelan works for them more or less, doesn't he?"

"He is self-employed, but they are benefactors, just as I occasionally work for them as well," Yoshimo admitted carefully. "That is how things are done in Athkatla. As legal as bounty hunting may be, and will keep my name in good circles, someone with my talents is not overlooked by the Shadow Thieves. And how can they resist the fallen Hero of Baldur's Gate?"

Aphra frowned. "Fallen? Did I fall down somewhere? When?" She looked to Jaheira.

Jaheira interjected, "Suffice it to say, not all in Baldur's Gate hold you in equal opinion. To some you are their savior. To others, their damnation."

"Well that's terribly dramatic," Aphra muttered. "I don't suppose this mysterious reputation of mine will do me any good in these circles you speak of?"

"Unlikely, but we can try," Yoshimo supplied.

"We should storm the Cowled Wizards' nefarious tower and take back Imoen!" Minsc suggested enthusiastically.

"As much as I like that idea, I have a feeling Jaheira would lecture me fiercely," said Aphra. She tapped Tiri on the shoulder and indicated the girl should get off of her lap and stand up, and Tiri slid off after taking the last bit of bacon from Aphra's plate. "You're just a fiend, aren't you?" Aphra teased.

"You were playing with your food, and you're not supposed to do that!" Tiri instructed as if from rote.

"Are you teaching her manners?" Aphra looked over to Jaheira.

Jaheira frowned. "It is not my place to do so. She looks up to you most of all, you know." Aphra didn't know what to do with that information and let Tiri finish her plate.

They talked to Hendak before they left about the children, behind the door of Lehtinan's old office so that they would not be overheard, while Minsc kept the children entertained with the story of how he had met Boo. Anomen had disappeared that night to return to his Order and according to Hendak would be back with some aid on that front; there were several orphanages in the city, but with so many of the children having been sold from different orphanages to the slavers, Aphra objected to this - as did Hendak. Though they trusted Anomen's intention as pure, they did not trust the Order of the Radiant Heart itself for having overlooked the slaver problem in the city. Aphra promised Hendak she would go to the church of Lathander in the city and talk to them personally about the matter, after she had spoken to the Cowled Wizards. In exchange she made Hendak promise that he would not see the children off anywhere until they returned, for she worried about them finding new homes and getting taken back up by the slaver network in the city. Hendak had informed him of its large complexity and Yoshimo implied that it was surely a vast conglomerate, or it would never have been able to operate openly as it did in the Copper Coronet and at the dry-docked ship. What Aphra could do at least was uproot them at every opportunity and provide what she could for the children.

As for the Inn, Bernard and Hendak would work together to run it and re-open it in the meantime, but Aphra concluded that it would take some time before people felt comfortable coming back to the Inn. She worried what would happen to the place without the funds rolling in, however, she had no thoughts on this front. Internally, she was still reeling from the revelation that Alaundo's prophecy had come true in her, and that Gorion had lied to her.

Yoshimo led the way through the city with Aphra at his side as Jaheira and Minsc followed. The ranger and druid seemed particularly uncomfortable with their urban environment, although Minsc was preoccupied with listening to Boo and murmuring back to his hamster. Aphra had grown largely used to the riotous combination of smells in the city, and it changed depending on which district they happened to find themselves in. She found she particularly liked the quieter streets full of colorful people hanging their laundry or fetching water, going about their work. It was the populated areas that gave her slight nausea and drove her to distraction with all the noise and stench.

The government district was largely quiet as they approached, and the buildings were increasingly neater, cleaner. Aphra wondered why it was she could smell rot somewhere underneath all the cleanliness and trimmed shrubbery. As Yoshimo pointed out buildings - this was the Council of Six building where the mysterious Six met in the upper chambers, and the Cowled Wizards maintained an office here, and there was the magistrate's office where one turned in bounties - Aphra found her eyes drawn to a particular crowd situated in front of what Yoshimo described as the city's jail.

As Yoshimo trailed on, Aphra found her feet glued to a path in front of her that led toward the loud and angry crowd of people, as a feeling of horror began to dawn on her as she slowly took in what was happening in front of her eyes. They were holding torches, gathering fagots of wood, and tying a woman to a large wooden pole. They were building a fire around her. For a moment, Aphra saw Dynaheir as she had seen her first - surrounded by hungry gnolls and still fighting back despite having nothing left - and when she blinked, she realized it was only a woman that looked very much like Dynaheir. But while Dynaheir had skin and hair the hue of mahogany, this woman was the color of obsidian, and her hair was as bright as the harvest moon and shined white-gold in the sun. Her face was bruised and distorted, and her eyes red and bright and desperate when they met Aphra's.

There was a recognition that passed between them, followed by fear. Aphra didn't know what to make of it, but she pressed through the crowd angrily shoving people aside. Eventually they made way for her when they took in the sword at her side, her bloodstained clothes, and her frightfully scarred and nearly serpentine appearance. "Aphra," the dark elven woman tied to the stake greeted her by name and with profound relief in her tone. Aphra wasn't sure how this woman knew her, but she wasn't about to let someone be burnt alive in front of her no matter their crime. Death was not meant to be a spectacle for a blood-hungry crowd.

Aphra pulled out her sword and cut the woman down, helping her off of the pile and to stand on her own feet. She swayed slightly and rubbed at her wrists where there were small lacerations and raw skin from her imprisonment.

"How dare you interfere with Beshaba's will!" A man from the crowd screamed suddenly, throwing the torch to their feet.

Aphra stamped it out with her foot in one mighty blow and turned to face him. She kicked a pile of wood aside and glared with all her might at the man, significantly shorter than her, and stepped forward toward him to see the measure of his courage. He backed away at her approach and stumbled back into the crowd, who parted for him and let him fall to the ground.

She picked him up. He weighed next to nothing in her hands; after she had recovered from Irenicus' dungeon she had regained most of her strength and knew she could probably throw him over the government building if she exerted herself fully. By his shirt she dangled him up to her eyes and told him quite confidently, "There's no Beshaba here. Only the avatar of Bhaal, and you've just made me very angry." Then, she hurled him over the crowd with a small grunt and watched him scream and fly to a terrible crunching landing.

The mob parted before her as she approached the fallen fanatic, who began to point at her shakingly from the ground and spell-cast despite having clearly broken his leg. He never got to finish his spell because an arrow thudded into his head from nearby, and Yoshimo and the others came into view just as Yoshimo was nocking another arrow into his shortbow.

The people screamed and a few charged Aphra from the sides angrily. She drew her sword and repelled them, trying her best to aim for non-lethal areas but doing so handicapped her in the fight and thus prolonged it. She heard the drow woman shout something, and looked back - worried about her - and then realized she need not have worried as the dark elf sent a glowing hammer in her hands right through the skulls of one of her attackers, spilling blood and bone onto the ground.

It was an ignoble battle and did not last long, as only a few of the mob had the will to fight while most dispersed and ran away in terror. Jaheira had transformed into a sleek black panther and mauled several of them to the point where they had to be carried away by the others, and in the end there were only a few deaths - the lead fanatic that Yoshimo had initially killed, and the one that the drow had bludgeoned to death. The guards, in the distance, watched and did nothing about the bodies littering the streets. Aphra's infuriation over their inaction paled in light of her own actions, and she stared down at the bodies of the deceased fanatics dispassionately.

Aphra looked over to Yoshimo. "Excellent timing," she said blithely, and he nodded in response.

"Jabbress," the drow woman addressed with some respect.

Aphra did not realize this was directed at her initially, and understood nothing of the drow language, so she said, "Eh? It's Aphra, I thought you knew that. Wait, who are you? Have we met? Apologies, I'm having, uh . . ." Aphra struggled with the exact right words to explain her predicament without really explaining it, but she need not have bothered.

"My past is your present, and your future is mine," the drow woman said. "Your powers, I have come to understand, are nearly limitless jabbress. I am nonetheless pleased to see you again, even if for you it is the first time we have met. I am Viconia DeVir," she introduced with a slight incline of her white-gold head.

Jaheira's form became fluid and hazy for a moment before reforming back into her braided, armored form. The only evidence left behind was the gore coating her hands and forearms. She pulled a cloth out of one of her belt's pockets and wiped at herself, looking between Aphra and Viconia and then rolling her eyes. "Of course we would happen to cross paths here. What brings you to Athkatla, Viconia?" She addressed.

"Not that it is your business, mongrel," Viconia snapped, "but I came here alone and for my own reasons. I was trading with the rivvin when that fanatic saw me underneath my hood and accosted me. I had been in jail until this morning, when they all stormed the jail, and the guards did nothing as they dragged me away!"

Aphra looked for reassurance in Jaheira, and noted that despite Viconia's tone, Jaheira maintained a relaxed posture. "She would not be in league with our enemy," Jaheira told Aphra. "Viconia is largely motivated by self-interest, but her loyalty is genuine. Truthfully, I am not opposed to traveling with her again. Her clerical spells will no doubt be useful in our journey."

"Again?" Aphra asked for clarification.

"I parted ways with you for a time after Baldur's Gate," Viconia answered with a frown. "Something I regret now. I would not be parted again. Twice you have saved me. Shar has set me in your path for her own reason, I trust."

Aphra perked up. "Shar? You're the—you're a Sharran? How funny, I was just looking for one of those. Come along then, we'll get you fixed up. You can tell me all about how we met."

"Viconia rejoins us at last! Boo is pleased!" Minsc announced. "The gang is almost back together again."

"What?" Aphra was confused, which was a normal state of being when talking to Minsc as far as she was concerned.

"Much has happened in your absence," Jaheira told Viconia as she came up to them. Viconia eyed Yoshimo suspiciously but stayed close to Aphra and Jaheira. She was wearing a torn shift of some kind of off-white color and had bare feet, but seemed unbothered by her state even if it bothered Aphra and reminded her of her own state in Irenicus' dungeon. Aphra considered giving Viconia her boots, but then realized how tiny the dark elf's feet were, and there was no chance of them fitting the same clothes. She made a mental note to stop by the Promenade, so that Viconia would not have to be so uncomfortable. The drow seemed relieved, if harried.

The group walked to the government building, leaving the fanatics' bodies behind. Aphra marched up to one of the armored guards with halberds, peered into his helmet, and felt like spitting on him but refrained from doing so. The fact that they would stand and do nothing while a crowd gathered around a woman trying to burn her to death was despicable to her. The guard said nothing and did not stop the party from entering the Council of Six building. Yoshimo held open the door for Aphra and the others. The guards may as well have been statues.

Inside, no one could be bothered to give them the time of day let alone talk to her about Imoen's plight. Most people side-eyed them, particularly Aphra and Viconia but even Minsc and Jaheira's states received dirty looks and avoided them entirely. Such a wide berth were they given that no one even so much as bumped into them. There were Cowled Wizards in attendance, but one of them teleported away when she tried to ask him something and the other told Aphra quite bluntly to leave him alone unless she wanted to purchase a license - he did not have the authorization to speak about prisoners. She had to be convinced not to throttle him by Jaheira when the Cowled one demanded five thousand for a license. This silly law, thankfully, did not prohibit clerical spells, so Aphra walked away from the encounter without bloodshed.

Aphra managed not to bring the entire building down around everyone's ears, mostly thanks to Minsc and Jaheira redirecting her while Viconia tried to egg her on. Yoshimo interjected, once she had calmed down, "The chief inspector might know more about your situation, although he has no authority over the Cowled ones. He's who I spoke to earlier."

Aphra perked up. "Who's that? Where?"

The Chief Inspector, located in an office adjacent to the Cowled Wizards' apparent chamber, was a man named Brega with gray at his temples and a permanently frustrated expression on his otherwise handsome face. His accent was even north of Baldur's Gate when Aphra spoke to him and introduced herself and her party.

"I know who you are," Chief Inspector Brega stated with narrowed eyes. "You better not be bringing destruction to my city like you did Baldur's Gate. For the sake of what happened in Nashkel, and Yoshimo vouching for you, I'll not make any attempt to turn you over to the Fist."

Aphra wasn't sure what she'd done that was so wrong the Fist would want her, but she had no time for it. "You know you had a woman nearly burnt to death outside of your building?!" She shouted instead, gesturing to Viconia who looked uncomfortable with the attention.

The Chief Inspector's face went from frustrated to shocked, and then disappointed. "I didn't know," he admitted.

"You don't look particularly surprised," Aphra criticized.

Brega's brown eyes went to Viconia's, and he adjusted his blue uniform and shoulder-plates as he stepped around his desk and knelt before the drow woman. Viconia looked a little startled, but also pleased, when Brega deeply apologized, "I beg your eternal pardon, madam, for the actions of our citizens. Had I known of your plight, it would have been within my power to stop it."

Viconia enjoyed this and examined her nails to disguise the fact. "Yes, well," she eventually said dismissively. "Males do belong at the feet of the superior sex. I am pleased with this apology. You may cease your groveling, jaluk."

"Viconia is under my protection," Aphra asserted as Brega stood. "Anyone who tries to go after her is asking for my sword. Is that clear?"

"That is fair," Brega conceded. "I doubt you came into my office just to yell at me and demand apologies, however. How can I help you?"

Aphra considered explaining her situation, but she wasn't sure where to begin. "I don't suppose you have any sway over the Cowled Wizards? Or know where they keep their prisoners?"

Brega winced. "The 'magically deviant' are beyond my power to retrieve. If you know someone who was taken by them . . . Pray for them."

If that was her only recourse, she could understand why Brega's expression was permanently frustrated. The Chief Inspector went on rambling, perhaps unintentionally: "Since Waukeen disappeared, her city's fortune has drained," Brega responded. "Now, there is suffering at every tier. In a way, it has united us . . . Even as the guilds have mobilized into the streets. It's almost touching to see crime fighting against crime. If it weren't so bloody dangerous, and getting so many innocent people killed, and weren't so terribly illegal, I'd be paying them. Hells, half the old guard was on the Shadow Thieves payroll."

Aphra cocked her head slightly to the side curiously and asked, "Should I be hearing this?"

"Probably not," the Chief Inspector admitted and rubbed a hand through his salt-and-peppered short hair. "Someone ought to," he went on, "and who better than an outsider? Apologies, some of that has just been simmering beneath the surface. Truth be told I could use the help of someone exactly like you and your friends."

Aphra left that building with five thousand danter in her pocket and a job and felt thoroughly confused by the turn of events. The Bridge District was where she was bound. The Chief Inspector had been confounded by a series of murders in the Bridge area of Athkatla; Aphra was overall not impressed with the guard, even if she had to admit that she rather liked the Chief Inspector. She hadn't fully processed the fact that they'd been hired for a bounty until they were outside the building, and then realized that she had work to do for the Shadow Thieves as well.

"Fuck," Aphra realized out loud.

"Did you just realize you are on the Shadow Thieves' payroll as well?" Yoshimo wondered with a chuckle. "Now you understand my predicament."

"This is why I hate cities," Viconia grumbled. "And rivvin. I hate rivvin."

"Well, that was weird and slightly pointless, but at least we got an advance," Aphra stated. "Let's go to the Promenade and get some more gear and Viconia some boots, because she needs them."

"I . . . Thank you, jabbress. I cannot repay you, but I will someday," Viconia said.

Jaheira, in quiet tones, spoke to Viconia of their present predicament and recent experiences. She glossed over a great deal of detail regarding Irenicus; she mentioned nothing of Khalid except to say that he had been slain in the dungeon. Viconia made a rude comment about how she would miss his stuttering subservience, and Jaheira commanded the woman to silence on the matter. Viconia obeyed, looking unabashed but unbothered while Jaheira seemed to forget about it quickly and moved on with her summary of events. Aphra worried that Viconia and Jaheira seemed not to like each other, but the rancor did not seem to last long, so she put it out of her mind.

"We will have you the heart of the one who has done this," Viconia agreed quietly after she heard the end of Jaheira's tale. They were almost at the Promenade, according to Aphra's ears and Yoshimo's estimation. "And I will sacrifice it to Shar."

"Irenicus is a dead wizard walking," Aphra agreed. "But we're no match for him, as we are. We need better gear, or something to help strip his magic away. He's the most powerful wizard I think I've ever seen."

"I know you do not speak lightly, despite your naïveté," Viconia said. "I will help you scour this land, if we must, until we find him and retrieve Imoen."

"And Xzar," Aphra added, though Viconia did not acknowledge it.

"And the wretched Zhent, if we must," Jaheira grumbled. Seeing how little had changed regarding Jaheira's attitude toward Xzar over the course of events, Aphra couldn't help but chuckle. It was nice when some things were reliably the same in her chaotic life.

Aphra did end up carrying Viconia on her back for a while through the Promenade, despite the stares they drew; this due to the presence of a great deal of horse manure that Aphra was more easily able to navigate around. Aphra let Yoshimo and Jaheira lead the way to the Adventurer's Mart while she hung back with Minsc and Boo and talked to Viconia over her shoulder. It gave Aphra something to focus on besides the clamor and loudness of the crowd, which was a thousand times worse than Beregost.

"What do you know about Sarevok?" Aphra asked Viconia.

"Little, for the rivvil Imoen knew you best of all and had your confidence," The drow woman leaned toward Aphra's ear and said quietly, to Aphra's gratitude. "I traveled for a time at your side but remained distant, suspicious of you and your struggles. Your actions confounded me, more often than they did not, and my confusion would manifest as disrespect and criticism."

"At least you're honest," Aphra conceded.

"It shames me that you have now saved my life twice and I only once for you, when you were nearly dying of wounds from this Sarevok. I left your company after you slew him, which I have come to regret. I am pleased to be in your company once more, and I swear I will not abandon you again," Viconia concluded confidently.

"Why'd you leave?" Aphra wondered, curious about her 'past' self's actions.

Viconia hesitated before answering gently, "I . . . Felt your fight had grown beyond you. Into a crusade. It was not Shar's way. And at times, your anger had frightened me. I convinced myself that you had become distracted from your purpose by the demands of the rivvin, and that it was for the best that I left. However, I am pleased to see you are still the same person I knew, and I owe you my life once more. I wish to amend my mistake in not helping you. Shar, after all, has led me to you twice now and is doubtless in her wisdom."

"I don't know anything about gods, but I'd rather not be having them in my life if they're just the meddling sorts," Aphra criticized, but Viconia did not respond. Perhaps she smiled, but she nonetheless looked away and held on tightly to Aphra's shoulders and neck. Aphra didn't have a better explanation for the events of her life however - perhaps they had been the will of Shar - so she tucked the thought away with a frown. Certainly Bhaal's will had dictated her birth. Had he, before his death, dictated her life? How could he still do so, if he was dead? The thought of Bhaal's culpability in her life's events made Aphra feel cold and very alone. How much did Gorion know? Why had he concealed this information from her for so many years of her life? And what did it mean if her 'family' were hunting her - did he mean other children of Bhaal, or the fallen god himself?

It hit her quite suddenly - again - that Viconia presented a unique opportunity in light of her being a Sharran, whose goddess' domain was that of memory and forgetting. Two other clerics had referred Aphra to a Sharran, a Helmite and Ilmateri. When they had a moment of privacy, Aphra would ask her to do an augury on her mind and figure out what had happened to her and Imoen, that they didn't remember.

Aphra let Viconia off her back as soon as they got to the Adventurer's Mart. She took the gold purse from her hip and handed it to Jaheira and said, "Viconia could probably use some armor, yeah? What's your favored weapon?"

"Flail, or mace," Viconia answered. "Though I can make do with the spiritual hammer."

"I will help her," Jaheira stated and gestured inside toward the Mart, for Viconia to follow her. "Come, harlot," she said with some slight amusement in her tone. "Let us gear you for battle and travel once more."

"Oh, how you must be enjoying this," Viconia grumbled as they walked into the shop together. Aphra thought about following them but did not enjoy the competing smells of the shop and thought that Ribald Barterman did not like her very much. Jaheira was better at haggling than she, Aphra reasoned, and so she turned to Yoshimo and Minsc, wondering what they wanted to do.

"I suppose we have to wait for them somewhere," Aphra murmured. "Anyone else hungry? Tiri ate most of my breakfast."

"I know just the place," Yoshimo offered, and he led the way to a stand serving delicious fried food. With some of his portion of the gold they'd divided, he bought the warm buttery snacks for Minsc and Aphra and they were all content to share by the fences while they watched the circus tents get set up from afar. They even managed to find an area with free peanuts, snacking for the elephants. The great and noble beasts did not seem to mind sharing their food as Aphra pilfered two handfuls and passed them to the others. She watched the lumbering animals move about their pen contemplatively, wondering what sort of lives they led and what sort of thoughts they thought. She tried to memorize them, so she could draw them later.

A scream from nearby pierced the area and caused a commotion outside of one of the tents, which began to pour out people who ran past shouting for cover. At least, it did so until no more people poured out at all, and a crowd had gathered outside while a few weeping people sought comfort in the arms of their loved ones.

Minsc, Yoshimo, and Aphra approached still stuffing themselves full of peanuts, and Aphra was drawn to a tiny cry from a small child who was looking for his mother. He cried out for his mother but she did not appear, and he tried to enter the tent that had just ejected so many crying people - only to get turned away by others, who stopped him. "My mummy is in there! She said she'd be out in a moment!" He cried out, frustrated nearly to the point of tears and sniffling.

Aphra stepped in and knelt down to his level, taking his hand. At first he was a little frightened of her appearance but then he calmed down, strangely, when he saw the weapons at her companions' sides. "You said your mum is in that tent? What happened, do you know? Why hasn't she come out?" Aphra asked.

"She was supposed to! I don't know why, but everyone is really scared! Can you help me?" He asked, and sounded like he was in awe. "Are you adventurers?!"

Aphra looked to the others. Minsc declared immediately, "Ah yes, we are great heroes, Boo! We must do the rescuing of this poor woman!"

"Don't go in there!" A man nearby cried out. "There's monsters! It's — it's magic! Everybody run!"

"He means we were watching an illusionist perform, when the illusions became real," a nearby woman supplied, who looked a great deal calmer than he or the child did about it all. "Someone should notify the Cowled Wizards!" The woman suggested.

Aphra hoped they didn't. "Let's go inside," she suggested to Minsc and Yoshimo.

"Perhaps we should wait for the others," Yoshimo tried to argue, but Aphra waved him off and approached the entrance of the tent.

"That boy's mother might not have that long," she reasoned and approached two guards that had arrived on the scene and were standing in front of the tent entrance.

"Halt!" One of the guards commanded. "This area is off limits to all—"

"Get out of my bloody way," Aphra demanded and forcibly moved one guard aside so she could step inside the tent with nary a further word.

The guards stuttered and parted for Minsc and Yoshimo, who followed - Minsc with a satisfied grin and Yoshimo with caution on his features. She could understand his hesitation - he was a great deal more fragile than she, and additionally Aphra had the tendency to run head-first into a lot of trouble.

As soon as they stepped in, it was abruptly quieter than the outside to such a degree that Aphra could no longer hear the commotion at all from the outside. She was at once relieved, and suspicious, and watched as the tent flap closed behind them and suddenly sealed. A chord of alarm rang in her mind, and she suddenly wished they had waited for Jaheira and Viconia. "Well, we're stuck in here now," Aphra murmured.

Yoshimo sighed while Minsc laughed. "Evil's butt awaits kicking!" Minsc announced.

The tent was no longer a tent. Instead it was a massive, beautifully domed building made out of an ivory-like rock that Aphra was certain had been constructed with magic, such was its seamlessly sleek design. The ceiling went up into a void that contained air but visibly nothing else. Aphra trusted her nose when she couldn't trust her eyes and ears and took a big whiff of the air around her, trying to sort out the smells. It stank of something similar to hobgoblin, and spell components with an earthy odor, as well as some general human scents such as urine and sweat, and one smell that reminded her of Firebead.

"I don't think anything in here is what it seems," Aphra inferred to the others, and drew her sword to keep it ready in her hands. It flamed out a little at her side, and then settled back into the blade. "Let's be cautious unless we see someone else getting burnt at the stake or something," she added.

Yoshimo kept his bow shouldered and nodded while Minsc kept his hand on his own blade as well. They looked around their unfamiliar environment, drinking in everything with their eyes. "Boo says this is a mighty illusion - too big for just one person!" Minsc interpreted for his hamster.

Beneath them was a set path of mosaic stone that lengthened into a bridge across a mighty empty divide that also lead to a void. At the entrance to the dome, across the bridge, was what appeared to be a nymph but what Aphra knew from her nose was actually nothing at all but a spell.

"The mighty Kalah bids you welcome into his domain," the illusory nymph greeted with a bow. She was naked, from the tips of her hair to her dainty little toes, and Aphra's nose wrinkled in distaste for this Kalah who - judging from the tone of the nymph - had created this illusion.

"We're coming for the mighty Kalah," she told the illusory nymph, hoping that Kalah could hear it, wherever he was.

The blond nymph illusion disappeared suddenly and they entered into an alcove that led to the inside of the dome, which itself appeared bigger on the inside than it was on the outside and actually seemed to breathe out when they stepped inside, disorienting them for a moment. Once the three of them had their footing again, they approached what appeared to be a very docile ogre in mage's robes in the center of the room, sitting all by itself on the ground. Aphra knew immediately this was not an ogre at all from the smell, which reminded her of Ol' Firebead - spell components, herbal salves, and ink dried on spell scrolls. It was a peculiar mixture of eggy sulfur, minty ointment and metallic ink that put Aphra at ease.

"Oh! Oh, p-people! Hey! Pl-please don't attack me, I'm not actually an ogre!" the ogre cried out, fairly predictably. What wasn't part of Aphra's prediction was the delicate, feminine, high-pitched voice that came out of the ogre's mouth which was completely at odds with its appearance. "Oh, I hope you weren't trapped here like us! You, you're real, aren't you? You don't seem to be illusion . . ."

Aphra considered playing a joke on the fake-ogre but decided against it, given the seriousness of the situation. "We're actually looking for a boy's mother who was trapped in here when whatever happened, happened," she explained and put away her sword. If the not-ogre-but-actually-a-girl wanted to talk, she would talk.

"Oh! I-I'm sure she is around here, somewhere. She might look very different, like me, so be careful when looking that you don't mistake her for something else. Unless you have a True Seeing spell, it can be hard to tell."

"Are you a mage?" Aphra wondered.

"I-I'm still in training but I know a few spells," the ogre-girl revealed. "I'm licensed! We have to be, to practice in the city, but I can't cast anything while I'm in these chains though." She seemed more comfortable, judging from their tone, after deciding they weren't illusions. Licensure at least explained why no Cowled Wizards appeared to make sense of the magical disturbance.

"Minsc sees no chains," Minsc demurred.

"They're a part of the illusion," the ogre defended. "Th-there's a key! The p-people, or, well, they look like people but they're actually monsters. They're over there!" she pointed with her head, gesturing vaguely to an area of the large room where some figures were lurking in the shadows. "They have a sword that's really a key. If you free me, I'll help you however I can! I have to find my uncle Quayle, though. He's here somewhere in this illusion too, just like me."

Aphra nodded. They could use help with a spell-caster figuring out the illusion nonsense, so she marched over to where the ogre had indicated and drew her sword. A few human peasants that momentarily wavered in shape regarded her in menacing silence as she pointed her weapon at them. "Hand over your weapons and you won't be harmed," she vowed.

They did not take this lightly, and charged at her faster than she expected - almost as fast as she was. She didn't see the blade - it must have been sheltered by illusion - so she relied on the hardness of her skin and her hearing to determine where it was coming from. A few blows she managed to deflect while others struck, but she occupied both of their attentions' fast enough for Minsc to get in a few blows. Yoshimo's arrows pierced right through them as if they weren't there at all. Yoshimo, who noticed his arrows hitting nothing, drew his katana from his side and joined the fray.

After a few moments, Aphra's clothes were cut and Yoshimo had a cut on his cheek, but they were able to defeat the illusory monsters. They disappeared into the ground like they were nothing after they had been 'killed,' and returned to wherever they came from. Perhaps imagination, or the shadowfell. A sword clattered to the ground as they departed the world and Aphra picked it up and ran back to the ogre mage imprisoned in the center of the room.

"You got it!" The ogre mage was so happy she sounded like she was nearly crying. "By Baervan, please, give it to me!" Aphra handed it over and watched as the ogre mage struck it into the ground. With the sound of clattering metal, chains from the mage's wrists suddenly materialized on the ground where they had fallen, and the ogre mage was bathed in sudden light. After the light abated and her form stopped glowing like the sun, what was left behind was a tiny blond elf in braids who looked like a stiff breeze might blow her over. Aphra felt disheartened but knew elves to be tougher than they looked and decided not to underestimate this girl.

"I'm Aphra," she introduced as she watched the elven girl get her bearings and used to the fact that her hands and body were no longer illusions. Aerie brushed some of her fallen braids out of her eyes and clasped her hands together, eying Aphra evenly with bright blue attentive eyes. "That's Yoshimo with the bow, and Minsc with the big sword."

"I-I'm Aerie," the elf introduced and bowed. "I owe you everything! Thank you. If there's anything I can do to repay you—"

"Help us figure out this illusion nonsense, I think someone named Kalah is responsible," Aphra cut in shortly.

"Yes!" Aerie agreed. "He was the other illusionist in my uncle Quayle's show. Once he took the stage, everything looked different, and I was trapped in that awful ogre body! Now that I'm free, I-I have a few spells that might be able to help. I'll do my best, anyway."

"Stay out of combat if you can, or run away if you have something chasing you," Aphra advised. "If that doesn't work, you can hide behind me and spell cast from there," she added with a smirk when Aerie looked hesitant.

"I'll do my best," Aerie repeated with determination. She picked up the fallen sword that had served as a key but couldn't quite keep its balance right in her hands. "Uhm, I'm not very good with big weapons, but maybe if we find a staff or a sling! I-I have good aim with those," she said, as if in defense of Aphra's undelivered judgment.

Aphra shrugged. She had known Neera and Jaheira to be deadly with staffs, and did not doubt their usefulness, but had no such weapon with her at the time. "Just hide behind me," she repeated to Aerie, who followed her like a lost puppy after that point as they explored the illusory room. Eventually they found the way out and into another chamber up some steps, which breathed out again and bloomed into a bigger illusory den with a tall domed ceiling that was chocked full of lycanthropes. Though she had never met one, she recognized them immediately by their humanoid-wolven hybrid shapes. They were unmistakable.

The werewolves in the room perked up at the sight of them, and Aerie squeaked in distress. Aphra drew her sword, smirked, and heard Minsc behind her draw his and give out a war cry as he charged in. She followed behind him and a werewolf that had been lounging intercepted her, swiping a great claw toward her face. She dodged it and easily slid her flaming blade through its ribs, sending its illusory form to the ground. She felt an impact at her side from another werewolf that managed to tackle her, but she got back on her feet quickly. She knew from their experience downstairs that they could cause real damage - perhaps not to her but her companions for certain - but they were nonetheless still illusory.

Aerie let loose a spell from Yoshimo's side that blinded the beast and caused him to mistake Aerie and Yoshimo for an illusory potted plant nearby. She immediately followed it up with a spell that hastened Minsc and caused him to become as fast, if not faster than Aphra herself naturally was, causing them to draw attention from the rest of the beasts and engage them all simultaneously. Three were cut down in quick succession while one got in a blow at Minsc's armor that made a massive gouge in it. Minsc was unharmed and Aphra killed this particular werewolf, causing its body - like the bodies of all the other creatures they had fought - to disappear into nothingness.

"Well, Aphra of Candlekeep, we meet again," said a strangely familiar voice. Behind Aphra materialized a familiar blue genie in the air, whose lower half disappeared into fog as he floated mid-air. The planar being had a tight smile on his face, and Aphra had to rack her brain for where she had known him from.

"Boo says it is the genie from Irenicus' dungeon!" Minsc announced suddenly after Boo had whispered into his ear.

Aphra did vaguely recall meeting a genie in the dungeon, but they had been in such a rush that the name of the being didn't register with her. "Er, you do seem to pop up in the strangest of places, if you don't mind me saying so," she said to the genie as she carefully sheathed her flaming sword.

The genie's smile faded slightly. If he had anything to say on the matter, he was forbidden from saying so, for he changed the subject immediately. "I am Aatagah. To you, god-child, I will pose a simple riddle."

"I'm rubbish at those!" Aphra whined. "Fine," she assented, "just make it quick."

"The poorest have it, the richest need it, but if either were to eat it, they would certainly perish. Tell me what it is!" Aatagah asked.

She thought about this for a moment but couldn't land on anything. Quickly she looked to the others, shrugging. Only Aerie seemed to have an idea and cleared her throat. "Um, mister genie," she addressed formally. "Might the answer be, 'nothing?'" She queried.

"What she said," Aphra agreed with a nod.

"Well done," the genie said. "I will take you to Kalah, for he has found you worthy of his attention. Are you ready?"

"Oh," Aphra made a noise of surprise. "I don't suppose you're how he created this illusion?" Aatagah said nothing, which was telling in and of itself. "How did he get you from Irenicus? Did he steal you?" Again, the genie said nothing. Finally Aphra looked back to the others and looked for signs of agreement.

"I'm ready," Aerie said determinedly, and Yoshimo and Minsc nodded.

"Take us to Kalah," Aphra told Aatagah, who teleported them away with a whirl of lights.

When Aphra's eyes could see properly again, she stood in what appeared to be a throne room in the center of the great dome, surrounded by pillars and twisting mosaic tile designs that centralized around a figure. In the throne he sat, a great squat ogre mage who sneered at them from afar. At his feet lay a strange ooze-creature, who seemed to have swallowed a pair of familiar purple-tinted glasses.

"Kalah!" Aerie shouted from the back of their group and pushed her way to Aphra's side. She shook with anger. "Where's my uncle Quayle?! What have you done with all the people in here?"

Kalah, the ogre mage, stood from his throne. Suddenly he was flanked by beasts - lions, tigers, even a bear, and was addressing Aerie with the same sneering voice, "Ah, good, my beast, you have brought them right to me!"

"I-I'm not a beast!" Aerie defended in a shaking voice, full of equal parts fear and anger.

"You can end this right now," Aphra told Kalah as she drew her flaming sword. Somewhere in her bones, she knew it would end in blood. She wondered if it was Bhaal that pulled at her when the violence was incipient, or if it was just instinct honed from everything in her life going so wrong so quickly. She eyed the beasts at Kalah's side in trepidation and could not deny an abhorrent part of her found the violence thrilling when it felt justified.

"Some are illusions but others are real! Be careful," Aerie cautioned as she drew behind Aphra.

"At them, my beasts!" Kalah cackled and the beasts began to charge. One tried to tackle Aphra but she caught it mid-air on her sword and threw it to the side, the wolf skittering to a dead halt as it disappeared into illusion. More of Kalah's too-real illusions attacked them, despite Yoshimo's sword slicing through the air and Minsc and Boo charging headfirst into the battle.

Aphra cut her way to the casting Kalah with Aerie keeping close behind her and firing off a magic missile or flaming arrow here and there. She proved to have good instincts in conflict despite her gentle seeming nature and even warned Aphra a few times about beasts that were trying to circle them.

Kalah was mid-casting when Aphra's flaming sword slammed into him, though it hit a magic barrier right above his skin, making him flinch. Aerie pointed a finger at his magical defenses and sent some of them crashing down, but Kalah teleported through a portal in the ground to nearby Minsc, who charged at Kalah the ogre mage with his two-hander. Kalah, facing an assault now from both sides, flinched under the blows from Aphra and Minsc until his defenses fell with his concentration.

There was no defense against Minsc's sword sailing into the junction between his shoulder and neck, and the illusions all around them shuddered and fell away, including the remaining beasts. The only real ones had died, it seemed, and lay in sad pools of cooling blood all around what suddenly became a completely ordinary circus tent. She was reminded of the beasts that Lehtinan had kept trapped, the remainder of which Jaheira was keeping appeased until she could free them at the Coronet. That would not be the fate of the circus beasts or workers.

"UNCLE QUAYLE!" Aerie cried out at the ooze which began to shift and morph forms until it became a gnome in purple - an odious one, if Jaheira's assessment of Quayle had been correct after Aphra encountered him before the circus had been set up. Aerie didn't seem to find him too odious and bent down to Quayle's level to engulf the little gnome in a hug that Quayle happily returned. It made for an odd but endearing sight.

Of Kalah, the dying gnome gurgled on his own blood for a time before Minsc pulled his blade out of the un-transformed gnome. He was small and unimposing, in contrast to his illusory form. He died quickly from blood loss due to his grievous wound, and after his death Quayle spat upon his corpse with gusto. Aphra looked at him, surprised. "He slew many of us who worked for the circus, my friends and co-workers of the last year," Quayle reported grimly. "He deserves no less."

Yoshimo had begun to rifle through the gnome's pockets, as no one stopped him, and emerged with a small, peculiar lamp that Aphra vaguely recognized. "That must be the genie's lamp," she inferred, and Yoshimo passed it over to her.

She did not wish to summon Aatagah without consulting with the others, however, so she tied it onto her belt securely and turned to Quayle and Aerie. "Well, we meet again," she began.

"Most likely by accident, knowing you," Quayle guessed, not inaccurately.

Aphra shrugged. "I still don't know anything about our terrible time in Baldur's Gate, but hey, you're welcome," she offered.

"I have a favor to ask," Quayle began, "but first, let me reward you for your trouble. A few thousand gold, for saving my show and my co-workers. Really, it's the least I can do, but please accept it."

Aphra wasn't about to turn down money when they needed enormous funds to rescue Imoen. She pocketed Quayle's gold, or rather gave it to Yoshimo to pocket and raised an eyebrow, waiting for Quayle to get to his favor. "Aerie, as you know, is a talented spell-caster and cleric of Baervan Wildwanderer," Quayle summarized, gesturing to his young ward. "She's been a part of the circus too long . . . And needs to stretch her wings."

"Uncle Quayle, do you really mean it? You . . . You want me to leave?" Aerie seemed hesitant, even teary-eyed.

Aphra didn't know where Neera was and knew they didn't have a spell-caster, even if Viconia was a cleric of Shar. She knew they could use all the help they could muster and wasn't in a position to refuse aid. She wondered what Jaheira would think of their latest recruit and could already hear Jaheira's impending lecture in her mind. "Alright, but she'll have to carry her own gear and if she can't hack it, I'll send her back," Aphra conceded a little grumpily.

"Are we to be joined by the little witch?" Minsc perked up.

"Seems like it, Minsc," Aphra nodded. She looked to Aerie. "That is, if that's what you want, Aerie. We have a wild journey ahead of us and I won't blame you once you find out where we're headed if you want to hang back. There's no strings attached here. But you'll get a fair share of any loot we come across, and I'll defend you if you'll defend me."

"I've always wanted to be an adventurer," Aerie confessed with a blush. "I-I don't have much gear, but whatever spells I have memorized are yours! I can heal most wounds, and Quayle's been teaching me a lot of illusion! I won't let you down, Miss Aphra, I promise!"

"Just Aphra, don't call me Miss, it feels strange when it's not a small child addressing me as such," Aphra gently corrected. "We'll gear you up after we meet up with our other friends at the Adventurer's Mart. Now, have you seen a woman looking for her child around here?" She turned to Quayle with this question.

Quayle shrugged, unhelpfully. "Many people will be missing loved ones, with Kalah's demise. He felled many innocents."

"Fantastic," Aphra summed up, and left Aerie to her goodbyes with Quayle while she looked around the tent for anyone still alive. There was a woman cowering in a corner with her eyes closed, who didn't seem to understand what had happened around them just yet.

She walked over to the woman and called out, "Hey, the illusion's over."

The woman in peasant garb opened her eyes slowly and squinted up at Aphra, looking frightened. "A-are-are you real? Wait . . . The tent!" She shouted and stood with Aphra's help. "M-my son! Giran! I told him I'd find him, oh he must be so scared! I need to go to him!" She cried out and ran out of the tent with all the speed she could muster with her skirts. Aphra let her go, hoping that Giran was the boy she'd met and that she had found his mother. It would have been nice for something to turn out well for a change.

Aerie trounced up behind Aphra with a few new things strapped to her body - a brown cloak embroidered with a golden symbol Aphra did not recognize that complimented Aerie's colorful yellow robes, clearly designed with travel in mind, a belt with a spell-scroll case, and a silvered runic staff that she was leaning on that was an apparent gift from Quayle. "I'm ready to go, Aphra! Thank you again for giving me this chance," she said with a bright smile.

Aphra squinted at Aerie and estimated that the elf had to be of a similar age to her, or at least some equivalence even if elves aged differently. Her seeming immaturity had belied her nerves in combat, however, and spoke to some hidden experience under Aerie's belt. Aphra was certain that she would be useful, in any case. "Don't worry about it," Aphra suggested with a shrug. "Just help me convince Jaheira this is a good idea when we find her, and then you can stay as long as you like."

"Who's Jaheira?" Aerie wondered.

As it turned out, Jaheira was not what Aphra needed to worry about. Aphra hadn't predicted that Viconia, being a drow, would be an issue for Aerie - who was a surface elf - but in hindsight Aphra felt she should have easily predicted and avoided this.

Aerie was hiding behind Aphra as soon as she saw Viconia and gasped, "A drow!" Very loudly and made quite a scene in the Mart when they caught up to Jaheira and Viconia, who were haggling prices with Ribald Barterman. Aphra turned around to look at Aerie and made a disgruntled face and looked apologetically to the completely unimpressed Viconia who had simply been minding herself examining some splint-mail.

"I didn't think about this," Aphra tried to explain. "Uh, Aerie? Could you not hide behind my back please and be polite to my friends? Yes, Viconia is a dark elf. But you're making me look bad. Guys I swear, she's normally pretty brave . . . You should've seen her with all those werewolves we were fighting earlier!"

"Werewolves?" Jaheira frowned, putting her fists on her hips. "Where have you been?!"

"At the circus!" Aphra defended, throwing her arms into the air.

"The circus? Is that where you picked up this wild thing?" She pointed at Aerie, who looked a little affronted as well as afraid of Jaheira now as well.

Aphra answered, "It got taken over by an illusionist whom - look it's a long story, Jaheira, can it all wait 'til we get back to the Copper Coronet? Aerie here will be joining us," she gestured, jabbing a thumb at Aerie who was still eying Viconia suspiciously.

"Can you go anywhere without making trouble? Next time, you're shopping with me!" Jaheira lectured. Aphra groaned.

Viconia made a patronizing face at Aerie that certainly didn't help. "You find the oddest strays," Viconia criticized. She was dressed in a simple white tunic and black trousers and pulled up the pieces of splint mail towards her chest that she'd been haggling for off the table. "Jaheira, pay the rivvil and let us be off," she said demandingly, tossing her white-gold hair over her shoulder and clutching the armor.

Jaheira sighed but nonetheless did so. "We might need an extra bedroll," she told Ribald, who passed one over with a smirk from under his desk and Jaheira handed him some extra coins. "If you are quite finished getting into trouble and picking up strays, let us go," Jaheira said to a bashful Aphra, who nodded as Jaheira and Yoshimo led the way to the slums where the Copper Coronet was waiting.

"Wh-where are we going?" Aerie asked, looking about her in wonder. "I've never left the circus except to barter with Quayle."

Aphra didn't know what to do with that information. So much was happening in her life that it felt dangerous for Aerie to merely accompany her, but she'd proven useful in the genie's illusion and Aphra wanted to reward that usefulness with a chance. She saw herself and Imoen a bit in Aerie, perhaps by only a few days ago (by Aphra's reckoning, since she had still only lost Gorion a few days ago in her memory), and perhaps it was that like attracted like. She felt, however, that she might be younger than Aerie by some time. So she answered amiably, "The slums. We liberated a slaver operation inside an Inn and now we live there. It's called the Copper Coronet."

"Oh, I-I've heard of that one! There are sometimes good shows that h-have passed through there, but we stick to the Promenade," Aerie replied as she gripped her staff tightly. Aphra winced as the noise in the Promenade reached its highest pitch before they passed away from it and wandered toward the exit, following Yoshimo and Jaheira.

"You take me to the nicest of places," Viconia drawled.

"Only the best of slums for you, my dear," Aphra couldn't help but shoot back with a chuckle, surprised that joking with Viconia came so easily to her.

"How lovely," the drow answered, chuckling.

"We have a job in the Bridge that we've been hired for by the guard," Aphra told Aerie, turning to the little elf as they walked. "Something about murder. I'm sure the guard there can tell us more."

"Murder? How charming. And we are hunting a mad wizard, have you told your new pet thus?" Viconia wondered, her tone snide but her curiosity honest.

"I was getting to that," Aphra complained. She turned back to Aerie. "It's a long story, alright? We'll tell you later. You can always go back to Quayle if it seems like too much for you."

"I'm not afraid! I'm a pretty good wizard, even if I have a lot to learn," Aerie defended, surprisingly not stuttering the entire time she spoke. Aphra was impressed with her nerve and hoped it served Aerie well. "Better than Kalah anyway," she added grumpily, eying the lamp at Aphra's belt.

Aphra had considered touching it to summon the sky-blue planar being for questioning but decided against it. Rubbing a genie's lamp was the recipe for trouble, so Tethtoril had once said. Perhaps after they had all talked about it, she would give it to Aerie who had more than earned it - but the question of figuring out what he knew about Irenicus had to be addressed.

Aerie stuttered out the odd inane question as they made their way through the tight streets of Athkatla's most dense urban area. Aphra had learned to take care and breathe through her mouth as they passed through dirty alleyways, until they finally came before the Copper Coronet.

Hendak and Bernard had done some cleaning by the time they got back, and Anomen had returned thankfully without a full force of knights at his side. There was an unexpected figure in imposing, gleaming armor whose noble bearing and chiseled profile screamed 'paladin of the Order of the Radiant Heart' if ever Aphra had seen such a thing. Together they stood before a small crowd of at least half of the freed children, with Anomen concluding a rather boastful and likely untrue story of how he had defeated a group of trolls by himself and the other Knight looking on, bored and unimpressed, just as Aphra's group entered. As if to undercut the story, Korgan was passed out a few tables away, face-first into the hard surface and drooling while still clutching an ale.

"We're back with company!" Aphra called out into the Inn's dark, dank interior, and Bernard waved from the bar while Hendak looked on as he was seated at it next to the now-awake Salvanas and now-passed-out-Drini. Hendak was half-listening to Anomen's story as he talked to the perpetually drunken Salvanas, and nodded to acknowledge Aphra when they made eye-contact. He was guarded about something, or perhaps the other knight put him on edge, judging by his posture. Aphra approached behind Anomen and smirked. "What did you seal the trolls' wounds with?" She asked him.

Anomen practically leapt out of his armor at her closeness and drew back a bit, frightened. Aphra was still not used to getting this reaction from people, so it did not amuse her, but she concealed her distaste. Anomen spluttered, "With fire of course! After we cut them down, we took a torch to their wounds."

"Must have been a big, hot torch," said Aphra, making it plain in her tone that she did not believe him. It was not that she had battled so many trolls herself, but she knew that they were quite vicious in packs and for someone such as Anomen to face them alone spoke of dishonesty. Likely he had either been the sole survivor of such an ambush or was taking credit for the deeds of others to entertain the children. It was harmless self-aggrandizement, so she did not press him further, and instead directed her attention to the bored-looking paladin. "Greetings, I'm Aphra, and you are?" She queried politely, crossing her arms.

The Knight turned to her. His eyebrows raised slightly as he looked upon her, but he did not display any fear or distaste at her appearance which Aphra appreciated. Most people she had encountered, even on the streets, stared openly or did the exact opposite and shunned her in fear once they got a good look at her. "I am Keldorn Firecam, my lady, a paladin of Torm and Knight of the Order of the Radiant Heart. Anomen returned to the Order this morning with an incredible story, and I came with him to verify it. I can see he was not exaggerating, truly there is a crisis of slavery afoot in the underground."

"I find it hard to believe you knew nothing of it," Aphra replied, and then added when she saw a look of fury cross Keldorn's face, "Not implying you had any part of it, but that you knew nothing? That is a stretch. I've talked to the Chief Inspector and I doubt he even has enough power to uproot this entire operation. It seems well-established."

"Indeed," Keldorn agreed a little hesitantly, "this organization is a plague upon Athkatla, and I have been charged with the sacred duty of uprooting it. I will require your help."

"I was going to say I'd need your help, not the other way around," Aphra chuckled. "As you can see we're pretty effective at this business of killing slavers. If you have any more information about them, I'll happily pursue them vigorously."

"Our investigation of the stronghold you destroyed has yet to be concluded," Keldorn informed her, "but rest assured I will return with any information as soon as it is found."

Aphra side-eyed Viconia who was slinking her way upstairs as her hood was up to cover her face, dodging all the children and being led by Jaheira. It was a feat for a woman in splint mail. She redirected the Knight's attention when she saw his gaze wandering and his brows furrowing, and asked, "What housing options does the city have for them?"

"There are several orphanages, but many are at full capacity," Keldorn said, turning back to Aphra and was all business once again. "We are working to find volunteers to take them in, and they are being vetted as we speak."

"That's great, I can't run a boarding house in this inn, I've got too much going on as it is," Aphra mused. "Plus I'm hardly qualified, having half grown up in an inn myself in Candlekeep. Well, it was nice chatting with you, but I'm afraid my friends and I have some business to discuss. We'll have to talk more later about options. Hendak," she shot a glance over Hendak's way and nodded, and when he nodded back in solidarity she walked over to Korgan's table, patted the stinking, sleeping dwarf on the back somewhat fondly, and then walked upstairs to their shared room. Aerie followed her after a moment's confusion and waved at Anomen and Keldorn hurriedly in greeting and parting, and Minsc and Yoshimo trailed behind them.

Aphra had grown up a scholar before becoming a blacksmith's apprentice in the workshop at Candlekeep and knew how to order her mind in such a way that it appeared less chaotic on the outside than it actually was. She was a Child of Bhaal. Her father had lied to her. Imoen was missing. She was stuck between two places in time, living out two separate times simultaneously. And she had no idea what she was doing because she was still a child inside, despite having cut a bloody swath already through the world around her.

Viconia had just taken down her hood and Aerie was at Aphra's side far away from the drow, the newest of the bunch and still too terrified of Viconia to even look at her straight. Viconia was wholly unimpressed and looked exasperated at Aphra. They all looked to her,all except for Minsc who looked only to Boo. This made Aphra smile as some things did not change no matter the timeline, and it gave her the courage to speak. "We have some, uh, problems," she began lamely. "Some of you know because it happened to you, but some of you don't, that the four of us," as she gestured to Jaheira, Yoshimo, Minsc, and herself, "escaped a mad wizard's dungeon. One of us was taken by the Cowled Wizards, along with my sister. It's probably a trap, but we have to find them and spring it somehow and save them. Also, I feel like being honest here is the best thing so we can avoid awkward questions later - I'm apparently the daughter of Bhaal."

Yoshimo coughed. "What?" He said, disbelievingly.

"She is a demigod," Viconia clarified, looking to the human and carefully not at Aerie, who was staring at Aphra in something between confusion and horror. "There are others out there, but few as powerful as our jabbress. "'The Children of Bhaal will walk the earth, and chaos shall be sown in their passage,'" she quoted in conclusion.

Aphra winced at the Alaundo reference. And to think she had grown in his fortress, sheltered by the Order that had chosen to memorialize his prophetic poetry. She could hear the Chanters in her head, their song as it had wafted up to her in the mornings in her tower room with Imoen. Imoen, bored of the song and throwing rocks at them to break their concentration from the bushes - getting caught by Winthrop after running away, laughing, even as they had to scrub pots together later. She tried not to cry as she said, "I really try not to, uh, sow chaos - but it just seems to be piling up everywhere," she said, feeling silly. "And now I need forty thousand gold to fund a mission to rescue my sister, so we're trying to mass as much work as we can in the shortest amount of time possible. I'll try to split funds evenly when we earn them for the work we do. All of my shares are going toward rescuing Imoen, and buying supplies for our journey. You're all free to keep as much as you can carry, with that in mind."

"We are with you, jabbress," Viconia stated with a nod, and surprisingly Jaheira nodded with her.

"She speaks our truth," Jaheira agreed. "I will have my vengeance on Irenicus for what he has done."

"Irenicus?" Aerie repeated, as if she were tasting the name.

Aphra turned to her, concerned. "Do you know that name at all?"

"It sounds familiar," she recalled and tapped her chin. To her credit, she looked less frightened and had not moved away from Aphra, but she had refused to meet Aphra's gaze thus far. "I think . . . It—it's an elven name. I-I-I'm not sure what it means though, maybe it's a shortened version of one. I swear I-I've heard it before! Maybe it'll come to me, i-if I think on it." Aerie shut down quickly after her outburst and fidgeted in place.

"You do that," said Aphra, and she turned back to the circle that had assembled in their room. "In the meantime, we're leaving the city after a job we have in the Bridge District, to head for the Windspear Hills. There's some ogres out there that a Lord asked me to look into, when we met in the Coronet," she added, and wondered absently where the paper had gone with Firkraag's initials on it, "and there's some acorns we promised to deliver."

"Acorns?" Yoshimo was confused.

"Dryads," Aphra shrugged. "They seemed insistent about it and we owe them for helping us escape Irenicus. I don't really like to think about why he had some dryads imprisoned there."

"Neither do I," Jaheira intoned darkly with a grim expression.

"Anyway, that's the gist of matters, does anyone have any questions?" Aphra wondered, looking around, mostly at Yoshimo and Aerie since the others seemed to know about her heritage before her and were not fazed by her revelation.

"What does it mean, to be a child of Bhaal?" Yoshimo asked curiously.

She thought about this for all of a second before answering, "I've no bloody idea, I only found out earlier this morning. I suppose it means something horrible must have happened to my mother. I'm . . . I promised my father before he died, Gorion, not my — not Bhaal, obviously, I've never met the bastard as far as I know, and he's dead and stabbed anyway—" she added inelegantly, and then continued, "I promised Gorion that I'd survive. I'd live. However I could. I owe him that. I'm just trying to get by and fix what I can. I really don't understand why these things are happening to me, of all people."

Yoshimo reflected on this for a moment, his expression troubled. Eventually he said, "Fair enough," and his face became a neutral mask. Aphra did not trust that this was the end of his questions, but he withheld the rest of them for now.

"You really didn't know?" Aerie wondered, sounding hesitant.

"Sure I'm stronger and faster than most, but no one ever told me 'why' and I couldn't figure it out my whole life," Aphra informed Aerie honestly with a frustrated shrug. "Sometimes I'd wake up in the library stacks covered in notes I didn't remember writing about gods, demigods, and planar beings. I was obsessed with the why, until I gave up figuring it out. It's bad enough I attract attention, let alone most of it seems to be negative. It means a lot to me, really, that you don't seem to look at me like I'm a freak because of my weird scars or how I look," she added, hoping that would put Aerie more at ease.

Aerie's eyes widened. "I-I would never do that! Th-there's all sorts of people in the circus, a-and they're celebrated for how they are or what they can do! Quayle saved me from that, fr-from . . . From being trapped in a cage and stared at. I-i-if something happened to you, with this Irenicus, that was anything like that . . . Well, then I know the kind of pain you felt," Aerie concluded.

"Thank you," Aphra said sincerely. Nothing had been as keenly awful as being stuck powerless in that cage, and with the knowledge that she'd lost so much time in there being kept like an abused pet. She didn't like the implication that something similar had once happened to Aerie, but she would let Aerie reveal that information to her on her own time, and not press the inexperienced elf in front of their companions. "I think we should head to the Bridge District, and investigate the murders that Brega mentioned," she put out to the group and looked around for opinions.

"I grow weary of this city," Jaheira demurred, "but murder is unconscionable and I do not trust this city government to intervene on behalf of its citizens in this manner. It is not just, to leave them to their fate when we have been asked to help."

"Brega pays well," Yoshimo offered, "and you'll get future jobs as well as a word in with the magistracy. Plus the people of the city will be grateful when they learn who you are, and you can use some good will."

"I share the mongrel's distaste of rivvin cities," Viconia spat, "and would welcome leaving this wretched place."

"We will be detectives? With hats, and canes, and right the wrongs? Boo says yes!" Minsc practically shouted.

"I-I don't know much about investigating, but if the guard aren't doing a good job, sh-shouldn't we help out?" Aerie wondered. She smiled at Aphra tentatively, finally meeting her eyes after the last few uncomfortable minutes. It put Aphra more at ease. "I'm with you," Aerie told her. "Quayle trusts you and that's enough for me!"

"Quayle? Bah," Jaheira grumped, "I would trust him as far as Aphra could throw him. But it is good to see he did not fail at being your guardian, child."

As they ventured downstairs, they were met with a strange intake of breath that sounded like a threatening hiss. Viconia stopped dead in her tracks and locked wide eyes with the paladin Keldorn and the young knight in training Anomen, and Keldorn immediately drew his sword, so Aphra drew hers in response. It erupted into flames at her side, causing all the children to go silent with rapt attention. Korgan undercut this by snoring loudly.

Jaheira intervened, putting arms outstretched between them. "Cease this madness at once, Viconia has done no wrong and there is no reason to leap to violence," she leveled at Keldorn and Aphra in such a stern voice that both of them could not help but obey. Keldorn did not put his blade away, which gleamed in the firelight, but it was not half so bright as Aphra's angry flaming sword.

"She is a dark elf! Stand aside so I may administer justice, for all those whom she has wronged!" Keldorn demanded in a righteous rage.

"Get out of this fucking inn right now or I'll throw you out!" Aphra roared in response. Still, due to Jaheira's intervention she decided not to point her sword at the paladin, thinking that might make things difficult for the children.

Some of the children, meanwhile, started whispering and a few cheered and started clapping for some reason. It was highly distracting.

"Viconia is our ally and we will defend her with our lives," Jaheira warned. "Cease your threats, sir Knight. You will find no audience for them here."

"Get out, right now," Aphra threatened. "I won't say it thrice."

"Sir Keldorn, perhaps we should—" Anomen started to intervene, looking confused, a little hurt, and slightly frightened.

Keldorn squared his shoulders, then his jaw, and put away his sword. "Let us go, Anomen. They are not what we thought they were," he announced, and trounced off toward the entrance. Aphra stuck her tongue out at his retreating form as Anomen followed, and only Anomen turned his eyes back toward them. Since he wasn't a complete ass unlike Keldorn, Aphra bothered to wave at Anomen whom waved confusedly back at Aphra before leaving in a hurry to catch up to Keldorn's purposeful stride.

They nearly bumped into a young woman who was entering the inn, and Anomen held the door open for her as she stepped in. She was dressed in expensive clothes covered by inexpensive and common brigandine armor, and had several belts with which to hold coin, potions, a small collection of darts - an odd combination. She seemed friendly enough as she approached Aphra's group, and even bowed a little before them in greeting. She had burnished hair of dark bronze and eyes that were a gleaming ochre in the firelight and wore a small copper crown that kept her hair bound back and down. She looked at the children milling about askance but did not seem to mind them even as they gathered around her and Aphra, interested in the business of adults.

"Yes, hello," Aphra offered and put away her sword politely. She tucked nonexistent hair behind her ear reflexively and ended up rubbing the scars on her head self-consciously as the young woman before her stood from her bow. She missed her hair.

"Are you the adventurers who uprooted the slavers here? You must be," the young woman assumed immediately before Aphra could confirm this. She grabbed Aphra's hands and held them in her own. "I'm Nalia De'Arnise, and I have a job for you!"

Aphra locked eyes with Jaheira incredulously, thinking about the strange amount of work that simply fell into their laps.

Nalia sat down with them over food and explained her situation. She was a young noble on the run trying to find people to defend her father's keep which was under assault, but by what she was not willing to divulge details. Bandits and brigands, she said. This made Aphra queasy about promising to help, especially when they had other obligations, but after discussion with the others, they decided to accept Nalia and made her pay half in advance. They were five thousand gold richer and had promised, before they left for Windspear Hills, they would stop at the De'Arnise Keep, which was along the way, and see how they could help.

Nalia asked them about their circumstances, but Aphra was hesitant to bring in a totally unproven stranger into their circle even though Aerie had been such a stranger. Still, Aphra mentioned nothing of her heritage, only their mission to rescue her sister from the Cowled Wizards. Nalia was sympathetic, even as she admitted she had never heard of anyone escaping from the Cowled Wizards.

After Nalia left, and promised to return on the morrow, Aphra brought up the issue of the genie lamp but none of them could reach a consensus on what to do with it. She decided to keep it in her pocket for now until they could figure out how to question or free the genie in exchange for something; Jaheira urged her not to use it for wishes, as genies, like Kalah had discovered, were not all-powerful and did not fulfill one's wishes entirely the way one would desire them to. She considered wishing Imoen free, or wishing for teleportation to Spellhold, but without knowing precisely where they were going, such a thing would undoubtedly be dangerous. Aphra agreed that they needed more information before they could make proper use of the lamp. And surely, Yoshimo pointed out, it was good to have such items in your corner when backed into one by your enemy.

They left the Copper Coronet behind and headed toward the Bridge District, with the Alandor ponderously winding its wide way underneath. The Bridge connected Athkatla's north and south districts together, and Aphra had to pause and look over the edge into the ocean as they approached the great structure. It was so large that people lived on it, inns and taverns sprawled across it, and fisheries on stilts sat on the edge of a great and mighty dock that wound down the Bridge vertically to the river below. Aphra saw a brownscale leap out of the water and shine in the sun for a flickering moment and felt the urge to draw for the pleasure of it. It made her smile, that small things could still evoke this urge in her.

"We should talk to the guards on shift here," Yoshimo suggested, bringing Aphra back to their grim reality. They were there to investigate murder, and she had somehow in her daze forgotten.

Aphra frowned. Since the day she had left Candlekeep, her life had been a killing story, of slay or be slain. That someone in Athkatla would do so purposefully to the undeserving sat ill with her and made her wonder how many people in other cities suffered similar fates at the hands of someone bloody-minded. How many more languished, forgotten by the living, brought before Kelemvor's doors? How many murderers had killed in the name of her dread father? "You do it?" She pleaded. "I'm really only useful when we're trying to threaten people, and I don't think the guards of this city like me very much."

"The Inspector liked you," Viconia pointed out, then added in afterthought, "most males would do well to grovel at our feet as such."

"Groveling really isn't necessary," Aphra disagreed. "Alright, I'll talk to them," she conceded after a moment's deliberation. "But if they stare rudely at me, I'll go right back to being threatening. Let me put on my civil-hat." Aphra cleared her throat and with Yoshimo and Viconia's encouragement, shouted at the nearest guardsman and approached him. "Oi! You! With the helmet! I want to talk to you!"

"You're off to a wonderful start," Viconia snarked beneath her hood, which she brought up around her ears and face for protection from the sun.

The guard barely paid her any mind until he got a good look at her, and then took a step backward in startle. It was not the best reaction Aphra could have hoped for, but it was better than him pointing his weapon at her. "I'm here because Inspector Brega hired me to look into the murders," she summarized quickly with her hands outstretched innocently.

"Aegisfield! You want Lieutenant Aegisfield!" The guard blurted out, as if he were in a hurry to get Aphra away from him. He pointed down the street toward where a similarly armored fellow, but this one without a helmet, was talking to another guard on-duty around the corner of the alley.

"There! That wasn't so hard!" Aphra complimented herself and patted the cooperative guard on the shoulder. He winced away from her, but she did not let it get her down and marched toward where he had indicated his Lieutenant was.

"Who the hell was that?" One of the other guards nearby asked the man she'd question.

"Fuck if I know, some freak," he murmured. "Did you see those eyes?"

She ignored them to the best of her ability and focused on walking toward Lieutenant Aegisfield, who was addressing two guardsmen that stood at attention before them. They gleamed brightly copper in the sun, with the insignia of Amn's Council of Six on their fronts. It was a series of six silver stars in a triangular arrangement on a red and white field.

"Lieutenant!" Aphra called, getting his attention. The man was as tall as she with long brown hair bound back in a low ponytail that Aphra was a little envious of. He pointed his hawk-nose in her direction, squinted, and then turned back to his men and nodded at them, barking a command that sent them on their way.

Lieutenant Aegisfield turned back to Aphra to give her his full attention. Like Brega, he was able to at least conceal his surprise at her appearance or was genuinely not frightened. Still, Viconia remained near the back of their group and Aphra could do nothing at the moment to disguise who she was or what she looked like and would make no attempt to do so. "So, he's hiring adventurers?" Aegisfield presumed.

"Got a problem with that?" Aphra guessed.

"We could use all the help we can get here in the Bridge," Aegisfield did the opposite of complaining, and offered Aphra his forearm to clasp in greeting. She did so, and they both seemed more at ease around each other after. She let her hand stray away from her weapon and folded her arms over her chest, forgetting for the nth time that she had forgotten to change her bloodstained clothes. This, perhaps, could have something to do with the overly cautious looks she was getting from city folk.

"Show me the points of interest, and tell me everything we know so far," said Aphra, preparing to take mental note of Aegisfield's next words.

Lieutenant Aegisfield gave her the name of three witnesses, a small orphan boy named Faraji, a night-walker named Rose Bouquet, and a beggar named Rampah. He described the grim state of the bodies that had been found, of which about three had been discovered but others had gone missing and had yet to be found. The bodies had all been skinned to some degree or other, that is - their skin had been removed and not found at the scene of discovery, and presumably was taken by the killer or killers. They had no leads, no discoveries, and had barely begun to question witnesses. Aegisfield's lack of funding meant he had to increase patrols without paying them, an impossible task, and a large part of his job now was the simple discovery and removal of bodies. He had no time to investigate a crime, even when a criminal was running rampant, as this one was.

Aphra sighed and vowed to do what she could, even though she preferred not to think about what sort of killer would do such a thing. Jaheira was insistent that it was an affront to nature and Minsc was anticipating butt-kicking, but everyone else was silent on the matter, particularly Aerie who was very disturbed by what she had heard. Aphra hoped their investigation didn't scare her away - if Aerie was to prove herself, she would need to handle grim tasks such as these.

The young elf was silent even as Aphra questioned the witnesses, watching everything with wide sky-blue eyes even as Viconia glared at everything and everyone beneath her hood. Jaheira was similarly unimpressed with their surroundings, turning her nose up at the dock as the smell of fish wafted to them. Aphra found Rose Bouquet first, who took after her name with bright red hair and a satin-like green dress and seemed disappointed that Aphra wasn't there to avail herself of Rose's services. She answered Aphra's questions for a pittance. She identified a peculiar smell around the last body discovered and redirected her to a nearby merchant's cart, owned by a man named Bel who had several items in his possession that could potentially be linked to the strange odor that Rose had such a tough time describing. After returning with some would-be clues, Rose properly identified the smell of oak bark.

Aphra found the little boy Faraji next, who was clearly disturbed by what he'd seen but had no useful information, as he believed a nearby witch was responsible. Aphra found this unlikely, especially after talking to the old woman, and suspected her of simply being a magic user without a license. She found the beggar Rampah next with the old woman's direction, who was a little bit mad but had an item that was a clue that she'd had to pay the beggar for. She wondered if Aegisfield had even bothered questioning the beggar and the orphan; or if they'd simply dismissed Rose's claims entirely due to her being a streetwalker. It infuriated her a little bit to think about, and she fingered the small bit of hide she had acquired from Rampah and walked back to the merchant.

He had no idea what it was, but suspected one of the tanners nearby might. A few things clicked into place when Aphra knocked on the door of Rejiek Hidesman next. She could not deny the smell of blood that wafted to her from the tanner's, but this was not an unusual smell for one that skinned animals and acquired their hides to make armor and tools for a living. She could also not deny the smell of oak bark and bitter tannins that Rose had identified, and as she held the elephant hide in her fingers, she pushed it forward toward Rejiek Hidesman as he opened the door and glared at her with beady eyes.

"This belong to you?" Aphra presumed.

A few notions must have passed invisibly through the air in that moment, and the tanner must have put a few things together on his own as well. And rather than answer Aphra's most obvious question, turned around and ran into the house.

Aphra caught his shirt but it tore in her fingers loose and scattered to the ground as Rejiek fell and tripped away, getting back up in a flash. Aphra nearly gave chase but not for Jaheira's arm on her shoulder and Yoshimo putting a finger to his lips as Rejiek disappeared into the house. "He will have undoubtedly put numerous traps in place," Yoshimo cautioned her.

"Let us walk together, and pursue him as such," Jaheira requested.

Aphra knew her speed could ensure that the tanner didn't make a getaway but she had no guarantee that there were no magical traps that could stop her in place, wards and such that could send her into a Maze or worse. Surely such a prolific killer would have had time to prepare such a getaway.

"Hurry," Aphra urged and followed Yoshimo's careful steps as he moved his way around pressure plates and snipped wires that nearly missed her eyes. The others trailed behind her as they made their way into the smelly house and found numerous scraps of what Aphra had to assume was skin, not just hides, and bloody bits of meat randomly strewn about his workspaces. The entire house was bloodstained, as if he'd cut and never cleaned, and Rejiek's smell retreated down some stairs and into a lower area of the house that was heavily trapped and warded. Yoshimo and Aphra were able to identify the steps to avoid stepping on and helped their companions get down the stairs without triggering anything. She simply carried Viconia and Aerie over the steps when they were too slow for her liking, much to the consternation and fluster of both.

Aphra urged silence and caution as she heard the sounds of stirring and multiple voices. Likely they did not know that Aphra and her party were there yet and were attempting to make a getaway. She heard and smelled the signs of water from the river lapping up against a small dock that had been installed.

She nearly drew her sword and approached the form of Rejiek at work trying to unmoor a boat, were it not for a blade suddenly at her neck. A figure shimmered out of invisibility and appeared cloaked and shadowed before her eyes, with glaring black eyes that stared at her from the corner of her vision. She banked on this individual not knowing her innate weakness toward adamantine or other such hard metals and doubted that the knife pressed to her throat could wound her in any way. Not wishing to showcase her abilities however, she hissed for her companions to stop.

Rejiek looked over into the shadows of his basement-dock toward the stairs where Aphra and her party were held up, and he started laughing cruelly. Aphra quickly and without much thought grabbed the knife with her hand and twisted it toward her attacker. With her superior strength she was able to force it through her would-be assassin's neck, sending blood spraying onto the ground and over her legs.

"Attack!" Aphra called out and ran with all of her speed for the dock.

She had barely a moment to take in the scene before her - a mage in dark robes with a staff already in the midst of gesturing and chanting, and the tanner was poised in the boat with an oar in his hands - when she was addressed suddenly by name and stopped in her tracks. "Aphra of Candlekeep! You have been marked!" The mage called out just as he finished his spell, and a portal opened up behind him that shimmered blue in the air and reminded her of the Cowled Wizards' magic. There wasn't any time to ask him what he meant as another person materialized in front of her out of invisibility as they sent their blade crashing toward Aphra's head.

She dodged more out of habit than necessity and kicked low, tripping them up and causing them to backpedal toward the boat just as Rejiek and the mage disappeared through the portal and it closed. From behind her, she smelled the awful scent of rotting flesh and didn't know what to think as she moved away from some manner of undead creature that took a surprisingly fast swipe at her. It was followed by another identical creature she similarly had to dodge, and without knowing the abilities of the undead in front of her, she felt it best to simply avoid it and went for her sword to attack the assassin that had tried to kill her.

He dodged her first few blows but he wasn't as fast as she was, and she overwhelmed him quickly and ended his life as swiftly as she could, getting him first in the gut, and then aimed for the neck and decapitated him. Vines appeared out of the ground breaking apart the stones and wood and grasping the legs of the undead creatures just as they were about to move again, and Jaheira appeared to the rescue along with Viconia close behind her. She shouted a command in Ilythiiri and a column of fire appeared to engulf them, causing the undead creature to howl in distress or panic - Aphra had never been clear if undead creatures could feel pain.

Minsc brained one of the undead with his sword and it collapsed into remains on the ground, while Aerie had run up with her staff and batted the other one in the head. It did minor damage because she was quite small, but it was a brave gesture and Jaheira beheaded it shortly thereafter, ending the battle. The vines withered away. The battle was over, and Aphra pointed her face toward the ceiling and shouted, "FUCK!" because the tanner and his accomplice had gotten away despite their best efforts. "Let's . . . Let's search the place," she suggested tentatively, even as the smell of the murderer's house was getting to her. "There's bound to be something important he left behind, in such a hurry."

Aphra and Yoshimo searched the bodies of the would-be assassins for clues but found nothing, no identifying demarcations or clues of any kind, and very little gold on either of them as well. She had to excuse herself from the basement to get fresh air outside and felt queasy the longer she stayed near the house. She was soon joined by Aerie who had found something and reported it right to Aphra - a note, signed by the tanner from his accomplice who was named in the note as Vellin Dahn. It didn't detail anything except for a request for him to speed up their 'special' project, which Aphra did not discover the nature of until Viconia came outside to get her attention.

She went back into the tanner's house once, to see what Viconia had found. Aerie followed her and vomited at the sight of it. It was armor, or clothing of some kind, made from the sewn-together skin of multiple people. Aphra gently escorted Aerie out of the building and requested to Viconia and Jaheira that they burn it, even if it was evidence - it was a terrible thing to let continue existing.

One burning piece of evidence later and the rest of them took their evidence to Lieutenant Aegisfield, who was genuinely surprised to see them and none too happy about it. He was pleased to see the conclusion of the murder case and to have a suspect, but the suspect had escaped, and the note was not exactly damning. Aphra was confident that they would find all the evidence they needed lurking around Rejiek's house and was pleased to put the entire matter behind her.

Aegisfield paid them a lump sum of only about a thousand gold, which was not insignificant but Aphra felt annoyed that it wasn't more and made a mental note to complain to Brega about the minuscule pay. She had a sister to rescue, and that money was barely enough to supply them with low-priced gear.

Aerie still was quiet and looked disturbingly green, so Aphra suggested they pause by an inn before leaving the city and get something to drink and eat before venturing out. There was one such inn nearby according to Yoshimo, the Five Flagons. The tavern sat along the edge of the Alandor overlooking the ships that came in by the river to the city from all over the world. It was only midday, but it was fairly loud inside being more crowded than the Jovial Juggler had been, and larger by at least half.

On a platform so he could service everyone equally, a small and smiling halfling was behind the bar serving in a whirl of motion while a few others waited tables and took orders. There was a sea of people inside, but there were a few free tables, and Aphra took the largest of the bunch and sat Aerie down next to her. The elf sort of limply followed her by the hand and let Aphra do as she willed, as she was still internally reeling from what they had just seen in such a short amount of time.

Everyone sat around the table, but no one said anything, so Aphra felt the urge to speak first and said, "I'm sorry. I really thought that wouldn't . . . That was terribly unpleasant, wasn't it?"

"Adventuring is sometimes such," Jaheira cautioned her, leveling both her and Aerie with a stern but compassionate gaze. "Violence such as this, though, is rare. Truly, the tanner was a monster."

"But industrious, and clever," Viconia felt the need to add. "He did not get away by his own folly, but ours. Perhaps this is the last we will see of him, but my instincts tell me this is not so."

"What else do your instincts tell you?" Aphra wondered, hoping the drow might have some wisdom that might make the terrible feeling in her gut vanish.

"It is . . . Not unusual, amongst my people, to flay as punishment those who violate the unspoken rules of our society," Viconia added after a moment's thought, her tone quiet but not such that Aphra had to struggle to hear. "To keep the skin, to make use of it, that is strange to me. I wonder what he sought to accomplish with such a—"

"Ghoulish wonderings will not serve us," Jaheira interrupted. "We will likely not see him again."

"I'd like to find him," Aphra told her, "and bring him to justice."

"Then you must gain clout with the Cowled Wizards," Yoshimo interjected, drawing all of their attentions to him. He folded his arms on the table in front of him and looked at Aphra as he said, "No one practices in this city without their approval."

"Th-that's true!" Aerie suddenly perked up, clapping her hands as something occurred to her. She then babbled as she stared at her hands, "The mage! The—the mage who teleported had to be licensed! If the Cowled Wizards know he's a criminal, m-maybe they can be persuaded to give us his name or help us."

"They are not known for their generosity," Yoshimo cautioned.

"Then we will kick them most profusely in the behinds until they tell us what we want to know!" Minsc threw in.

"I-I'm sorry I got so sick, but I feel better now," Aerie added, looking at Aphra shyly. "I think we should bring that man to justice too. That—that house was evil."

"On that we are agreed," Jaheira nodded, looking approving.

A halfling server suddenly appeared at Aphra's elbow, and the little blond woman piped up in a high-pitched voice, "Greetings, big-legs! What can I getcha?"

"Mead," Aphra requested immediately, and then added, "make that two," and ordered one for Aerie who seemed like she needed it. Aerie herself just asked for water. The server went around the table and took orders, and even had Viconia's request for a drow drink that seemed rare on the surface, which seemed to impress the dark elf. Even Jaheira, who normally did not partake, ordered a small glass of red wine. Everyone seemed too exhausted to do much, and thankfully their group did not garner too many stares thanks to being rather quiet. Even Minsc only attended to Boo, giving the little hamster pats on the head and lifting him up to Minsc's ear every now and then as if to whisper to him.

"I'd much rather have fought a dragon than deal with the tanner," Aphra admitted, breaking the silence.

"You would rather be a dragon toothpick, you mean?" Yoshimo jested.

Aphra nonetheless agreed, "Has to be better than a man who skins people into suits."

"At least they were dead when he did so," Viconia pointed out, unexpectedly finding the positive aspect.

Though this made everyone else scowl to think of it, Aphra had to chuckle in spite of herself. It seemed to be her instinctive reaction, to think of terrible things, but part of her genuinely found it funny without really knowing why. "What a terrible city this is," she remarked. "I don't think I like Athkatla very much, nor do I think it likes me."

"It is not much different from one of my people's cities, to be truthful," Viconia observed. "Though I have never seen a mob of my kin burning an elf alive, but that is only because that is not in their idiom."

"Because a dark elf would simply enslave and abuse the elf instead," Jaheira snarked as Aerie flinched.

Viconia did not disagree, nor did she seem to think this was a particular insult leveled at her, so she tolerated the remark with a shrug. "Death by fire is not as festive, I suppose," she shot back.

"Charming. I hope I never get to visit one of your cities then," Aphra sighed. "I much preferred Candlekeep. No one ever got burnt al—" and then Aphra had to cut herself off from the remark because indeed she had witnessed a woman on fire, being actively burnt alive, throw herself out of a window after trying to attack Aphra, and the images flashed by in her minds eye so suddenly that it took the words right out of her mouth.

As the various orders of food and drink were delivered to their table by their server, Aerie looked at Aphra with a surprised expression. "You're from the library fortress? I thought no one but monks were allowed in!"

"True, but I think my foster father either bribed or blackmailed the First Reader into letting us live there," Aphra explained. She adjusted the mead glasses so that one was in front of Aerie and said, "Mead surprised me when I tried it. If you haven't, you should - but if you don't like it, I'll drink it for you." Aerie sipped at her glass delicately as Aphra went on, "Candlekeep is home to many types of people - farmers, guards, scholars, traders. It's not just monks and wizards who live there, though I can see why they have that reputation. I studied all manner of subjects under the Readers and had all manner of interesting tutors from all around the world. People travel from all over Abeir-Toril to study there. Then I ended up getting into blacksmithing, and the only thing I kept studying beyond that was history and insects. Not terribly useful skills as an adventurer now, I suppose. My sister is much more clever than I - she learned about hunting, trapping, and people and is the sneakiest little troublemaker you'll ever meet."

"I hope we'll rescue her soon," Aerie said.

"Me too," Aphra honestly admitted. "I miss her a lot. She always knew what to do. I feel sort of lost without her."

"I-I think you're doing a good job," Aerie replied. "Making the big decisions is hard, but you're trying your best. That's all anyone can do, right?"

"Do not short-sell yourself," Jaheira said. "You are wiser than you know."

One of Aphra's brows crawled up her forehead as she told Jaheira, "You from a year ago wouldn't be caught dead saying that, I think."

"I have changed," Jaheira snapped, and then softened, as if to prove her point. "You will change too," she added.

As if to undercut the tension that had nearly snapped amongst them all, their server returned and asked them if anyone wanted anything else. Aphra had barely touched her mead and declined politely, and the server looked at her and then added, "If you're looking for a distraction, there's a fine play being presented downstairs! Only five danters a head." She smiled bright and tottered off away from their table to attend to others.

Aphra thought about it, drank about half of her mead, and then stood with her mug and stated, "I could use a distraction. I've never seen a play before."

"R-really? Never?" Aerie didn't believe her. "We should go! Although, I don't know if I'm in the mood for a comedy."

Jaheira and Viconia refrained, but Minsc and Yoshimo stood to accompany them. Out of their pay from Aegisfield, Aphra passed the coins over to the doorman who stood at the bottom of the stairs, another halfling on a podium with a big smile. "No refunds!" He declared and opened the door for them, which was not the most auspicious of entries.

Aphra decided, about five minutes into the performance, that theater probably wasn't her thing. Though a few of the actors were into the performance, the male lead whom the story seemed to revolve around was uninspiring. Only Minsc had clapped, though for the wrong reasons - he was under the impression that he was seeing a comedy, when it was actually supposed to be a tragedy, at least according to Aerie who was an authority on these matters as far as Aphra was concerned.

"This is terrible," Aerie agreed quietly, and Yoshimo had to snort back a laugh when Minsc laughed and clapped uproariously again. By the time the second act rolled around, most of the theater had started to walk out. One drunken man in front was threatening to start chucking his dinner at the male lead, who ran and hid for cover and couldn't be persuaded to come back out.

The director at that point, a rather strange looking woman with silvery skin and starkly red hair stood up and addressed the audience. By far more interesting than the performers, she said, "We apologize for this performance today. I beg of you, return when we have restored matters, and we shall prove that the Sigil Actors Troupe is worthy of your attention and coin, and we shall do so for free . . . To those of the adventuring profession present, speak to me about a possible errand backstage, please. It is a private matter of importance."

Aphra exchanged a look with Yoshimo next to her that spoke volumes. Neither one of them could really believe it, even though it happened all the time - how things fell into their path directly as if the gods were playing a joke on them or taking bets on the outcome. With her heritage, Aphra could believe that. "Do these things happen a lot?" Aerie had to wonder as they all waited for the rest of the theater to clear out, and then collectively made the decision to stay behind and speak to the troupe's director.

"It's how we met," Aphra reminded her.

"We wandered into that circus tent just looking for a boy's mother," Yoshimo agreed.

"And found a gnome with a genie. Trouble finds us, more often than not," Aphra concluded. She stepped away from the group then and approached the stage, which had emptied of actors. She called out, "Hello?" To hopefully get someone's attention.

From behind the curtains, Aphra heard clicking footsteps of feet in heels as the silvery woman stepped out from behind the stage. Her expression seemed surprised. She opened her red mouth and spoke softly, "Are you here to help us?"

Aphra looked to the others, who seemed unsure. "Maybe?" She turned back to the woman. "I'm Aphra. 'Of the adventuring profession.' You are?"

"Raelis Shai," she introduced, and her red hair fell as a curtain over her shoulder as she bowed in greeting, brushing against bare shoulders. Her dress was a red and black sheath that guarded her body closely, and there was an intriguing depth to her black irises as she stood upright and locked eyes with Aphra. Raelis tossed her hair back when she stood upright and it hit Aphra then that something was very different about this woman - and perhaps otherworldly. "I am the leader of the Sigil Actors Troupe."

"Sigil, the planar city?" Aphra perked up. It was a place she'd only ever read of, an interplanar metropolis poised on the edge of the realms. She knew little of it and was excited at the idea of learning more in a way she hadn't been for a while.

"I am a tiefling, as are most of our troupe members, and Sigil is our home," Raelis confirmed. "If you are adventurers, I have need of your services and will of course compensate you. It is a sensitive matter. May we speak frankly?"

Aphra motioned the others to approach behind her, and Aerie, Minsc, and Yoshimo joined them. "These are my friends. What do you need help with?"

She explained her situation quickly - their lead actor had gone missing after trying to retrieve a stolen gem of power from a thief, something Raelis explained relatively little about despite stressing its importance. She was more concerned with the status of her actor, however, and worried for his safety. She had not seen him in some time. The thief lived in the sewers out of the eyes of the Cowled Wizards and populace, and maintained a laboratory there - a mage as a thief seemed unlikely to Aphra since it wasn't usually their style, but if Raelis was worried and was paying, Aphra could look into it. Aphra had no idea that the sewers were large enough to walk around in - but Yoshimo added that they were dangerous territory where otyughs and slimes lived. She knew it might delay their trip to Windspear for a day, but it would have to appease Jaheira and Viconia that they were at least amassing funds, even if it involved the smelliest place in the world.

They returned upstairs to find Viconia and Jaheira in the midst of another half-hearted spat, and Aphra was beginning to think they were friends after all. She paid their bill and explained what had happened downstairs, that the director had approached her for a job, although it involved the sewers. Jaheira looked resigned to staying in Athkatla another day, while Viconia outright scoffed but said nothing.

They left the Five Flagons as the evening sun began to set and made their way back to the Copper Coronet. Tiri was ecstatic to see Aphra, as were the other children, but they were less enthusiastic about their affection as Tiri was. She leapt and climbed up Aphra, forcing Aphra to hold onto her as she clung to Aphra's neck, and started to babble about her entire day to the overwhelmed young woman.

She ended up having to help Hendak and Jaheira put all the orphans to sleep, since they followed her around like lost little puppies and peppered her with many questions she had difficulty answering, like was she born having lizard-eyes, or where did she get those cool scars, and why was she covered in bloodstains again?

"Because I kill everyone who asks me silly questions, now good night," she told one boy with a mischievous wink, and he giggled and curled up in his cot.

Viconia and Yoshimo were downstairs talking to Bernard about the goods they'd acquired from the slaves and were attempting to identify some enchanted items. Aerie twitched behind them, looking desperate to help but also desperate to be anywhere that wasn't near Viconia. Aphra knew she'd have to get over her fear one day, so she asked Aerie, "Aerie, do you know the spell 'identify?'"

"Quayle gave me a few scrolls and I have it memorized," she confirmed hastily.

"Help Viconia and Yoshimo sort through the goods then," Aphra ordered, and Aerie looked grateful to have some direction. She still hesitated to approach Viconia and didn't meet the drow woman in the eyes, but Viconia didn't seem to care much one way or another about how skittish the little elf was and simply tolerated her. Perhaps it was Aerie's usefulness that allowed Viconia's pride to tolerate her, or something else.

The inn began to filter in a few familiar faces and some unfamiliar once the children were down and no longer milling about - though Aphra could see Daran, the little boy who'd shown them the slaver den, watching from the stairwell behind the half-closed door, and decided not to report him since he wasn't hurting anyone with his curiosity.

Korgan was there, along with the drunks, and Nalia appeared again though this time it seemed she wanted to socialize. She started to make a beeline for Aphra, but Aphra ducked away and went upstairs to the roof, not feeling particularly sociable after the long day they'd had. She was glad the Copper Coronet was receiving business again, and hopefully this time it was more on the up-and-up, but there was still a long series of back rooms and beast pens that needed to be dealt with. Reform would take a long time.

She found a spot large enough and laid down on the mossy roof, staring up at the stars of the Sphere. How long would it be until she returned to the past? She didn't want to go to sleep in case she missed out on some detail, and it seemed like so many people always needed helping. Yet all she did was kill, and kill, and kill again. Was this what it meant, to be a child of Bhaal?

"H-hello?" Aerie's voice tentatively called out into the night. "We finished sorting through the gear," she reported, and stepped into Aphra's sight as she craned her head up to look at the girl.

"Well done, come sit," Aphra gestured and sat up. She rubbed her head of any moss that was clinging to the fuzz on the back of her head, and sighed at the lack of length. "I miss having hair," she admitted as she looked at Aerie's long blond locks, a little jealous. "I just don't feel myself without it."

"Why did you cut it?" Aerie wondered.

"Jaheira did. I asked her to. Half of it was already gone. That's why these scars are there," Aphra pointed to the side of her head, where a curved length of small, fingernail-sized cuts made a unique pattern down the length of her head and neck. She had found others, on her legs, and forearms, and wondered if they were purposeful somehow, or ritualistic. Or perhaps they were just sadistic. "When we were captured, I woke up like this. I don't remember how we got there or why. But I have to find out, and that means finding Imoen too."

"Th-there's a spell, I've heard of it, that can re-grow hair," Aerie mentioned, a little shyly as she pulled her legs up to her chest with her arms. "I don't know if I can do it, but I-I can look into it."

This gave Aphra some hope. Perhaps, eventually, she'd feel like herself again. "Thanks, Aerie. That'd be nice."

"It's hard, f-finding magic in this city," Aerie babbled, "when all of it's hoarded by the Cowled Wizards, b-but Quayle managed to train me well. It's hard to believe it's only been a year since we met . . ."

"I thought he adopted you." Aphra was confused.

"Sort of," Aerie smiled and fidgeted. "I was with the circus, before he took me in. Wh-when I was a little girl, I was t-taken by slavers, and sold to them. I-I am an avariel, but w-without the freedom to fly, my wings, they . . . Became damaged and h-had to be removed. So they cut them off." Aerie hugged herself then, as if she were trying to stretch out her shoulders.

"That must have been painful," Aphra sympathized. She'd gone her whole life without ever really experiencing much of anything, to suddenly being thrust in a dungeon and weaker than she'd ever been. Her life of violence, she suspected, might be a short one. She suddenly hoped that once Aerie got what she wanted out of adventuring, that she'd leave with her life intact and go somewhere far away from Aphra. It would be better for all of her friends if they did that and left. "So Quayle took care of you? Freed you?" She guessed.

Aerie nodded and stared up at the sky. "All I'd known was life in a cage until he came. I r-remember just enough of my childhood to miss the mountains. I thought earlier when we found that tanner . . . That it would all be like this. Gory, and terrible. But we stop slavers, and we help people like me, just like you h-helped those kids. You're doing good work, Aphra," Aerie told her confidently, this time looking her in the eyes. "Don't doubt that."

She wondered if Aerie was psychic or had perhaps sensed her mood. Either way, the elven girl was more intuitive than she appeared. "You're a lot tougher than you look," Aphra assessed askance.

Aerie chuckled and said, "I know."

They sat up there for a while as Aerie peppered Aphra with questions about her past; she seemed to wish to speak no more of her own, so Aphra respected that and answered questions as best as she could. She was curious about Candlekeep, a place of scholars she would one day like to visit - though Aerie seemed to express an interest in visiting everywhere she could that wasn't the circus, after living there for so long. Aphra did ask her about her age out of curiosity, but Aerie went quiet for a moment as she hesitated before answering that she didn't know. She had no way of knowing how long she was with the circus, or how much time passed with her illness when her wings became infected.

The time passed amiably, until a strange woman appeared out of the shadows and called Aphra by name to get her attention. Aphra's attention immediately went to her sword, while the woman's hands went up. She was gray from head to toe, dressed in gray silks and with a dark hood to conceal her features. Aphra could not make her out in the light but noted a strange scent of rot around her. "Peace. I mean you no harm," she cautioned. Aphra's hand strayed away from her weapon, but Aerie at her side tensed up.

"W-who are you?" Aerie asked, and stood up slowly, as did Aphra. Almost subconsciously, she put Aerie behind her.

"My name is Valen," the woman in gray replied. "And I have come to offer you an alternative. The Shadow Thieves want your loyalty but force you to pay an atrocious amount. I wish to offer an alternative option on behalf of my mistress."

"Who's your mistress?" Aphra queried. "And how do you know me?"

Valen did not answer the second question, as if it were too obvious to bear answering - such was Aphra's unknown reputation that the whole underworld seemed to have caught wind of. She also did not answer the first question, and said instead, "I am not at liberty to discuss her identity, but to offer you a chance to meet her. You will find her in the Graveyard District of Athkatla, at midnight."

Aphra considered this for all of a moment before replying, "No, I don't think so. I'm not about to go slinking around graveyards at midnight meeting strange people who don't answer my questions. I have better things to do. If she wants to meet me so badly, she can find me herself."

"Nonetheless, the offer remains open, but for tonight only," Valen answered, and cast a spell in a circular gesture. The smell was gone from the air as soon as a shadowy door appeared and Valen stepped through it, disappearing.

Aerie looked at Aphra, surprised. "You're working with the Shadow Thieves?" She guessed, and to be fair did not seem entirely appalled as more curious.

"I have to, they're the only ones with enough power in this city to stand up to the Cowled Wizards and help me," Aphra bit out. "If this 'mistress' of Valen's has a better idea, she can come find me. Although . . ."

" . . . Are you thinking of meeting her anyway?" Aerie surmised.

"Not exactly," Aphra smirked. "Care for a little adventure to the graveyard? We won't be more than an hour. Jaheira will never know we were gone."

Aerie seemed hesitant for a moment but nodded. It took her a few moments to do as instructed - mainly, just hop on Aphra's back so she could carry the little elf, and Aerie was much lighter than anyone she'd ever carried which was a relief (perhaps avariel were hollow-boned? Aphra wanted to ask but didn't want to be rude). Once Aerie felt secure, Aphra crawled down the outside of the Copper Coronet by clinging to windows and eaves as Aerie let out a little gasp when they fell and hit the ground on Aphra's feet harmlessly.

Aphra turned her face toward the air and tried to find Valen's scent but didn't know if she'd be able to recognize it with so many other competing smells. "Where's the Graveyard District, do you think?"

Aerie looked around for a moment before pointing left and away from the Copper Coronet, "That way! I-I think. Or at least, there's signs on the road there."

Aphra nodded. "Good call." Luckily the graveyard district was on their side of the river, and just a ways south from the slums - Aerie had explored the city somewhat and though she had not been, she knew this much from looking at a map of the city once. It was a mage's ability to recall, Aphra suspected - which is why Imoen would one day be a great mage. Anyone who could recall inane details from glancing at a paper once was surely mage material, and that was practically Imoen's specialty, aside from her penchant for stealing things.

The Graveyard District lived up to its name of elaborate tombs and more modest gravestones for several leagues, on distinct levels built into the southern hill of the city. It was easy to tell which graves were that of nobility; statues and monuments stood out front of these tombs, with ever-burning mage-fire torches lit to make their inscriptions visible. Aphra kept Aerie on her back as they snooped about, looking for any sign of Valen. Aerie hissed in her ear suddenly and pointed - her wide eyes had caught the sight of Valen in the distance up the hill, slinking into an open tomb that slid shut behind her. That had, perhaps, arrived too late.

"Well, no sneaky business for us tonight," Aphra lamented, and let Aerie down off her back. Aerie brushed and rearranged her skirt and cloak and seemed sympathetically disappointed. "What do—" she was about to say something but lost her train of thought as a peculiar noise assaulted her ears.

It seemed to be coming from somewhere muffled, and she wandered off in the direction of it, situated between a few gravestones. It took a few moments for her to realize what she was hearing was coming from the ground, from the grave in front of her. There was a banging sound, as if someone's fists were hitting a door. And the sound of crying, praying, and pleading.

Someone had been buried alive. The ground was recently disturbed, and she picked up a shovel without thinking and started digging as fast as she could. "Find a shovel, Aerie, help me! Someone's in there! Alive!" She ordered as Aerie fidgeted, not knowing what to do.

"Oh, wait! I-I know a telekinesis spell. Loosen up the dirt as much as you can! Like that, yes," Aerie instructed. "I'll aim for the coffin! Ready?" Aphra nodded after stabbing at the dirt as much as she could, until her shovel had struck the coffin. The banging and screaming sounds that were muffled became louder. Aerie chanted something that Aphra didn't catch and held her hands above the ground as the dirt began to shift and move.

The coffin below rustled and shifted, and eventually lifted out of the dirt below and sent it scattering across the ground, covering gravestones and sites alike. It hovered for a moment in the air as the banging finally stopped, and Aerie sent it with her hands to the ground next to the grave. Aphra ripped the lid right off with her hands and reached in to help a middle-aged man out who was hyperventilating, and instructed him to breathe, just focus on breathing, telling him he was alright.

Aerie cast a spell of minor healing which seemed to help him breathe better and get his bearings, and also erased a few bruises around his throat and face. He looked at the girls and started crying, and it took some time for him to compose himself. "I apologize," was the first thing he said.

"You have nothing to apologize for," Aphra insisted. "Tell us what happened to you, so we can fix this."

"I-I—" he couldn't speak for a moment and then pressed a piece of cloth into Aphra's hands. She looked down at it - it was dyed red linen, of fine make and brightly colored. "I owed them money, but I didn't think they would . . . Gods! I would have died! I thought I was dead! I tore this off of him, as he attacked me."

"You'll have a sore throat for a few days, b-but then you should be okay!" Aerie assured the man as he gently touched his reddened throat.

"Any idea of who they are, where they haunt?" Aphra wondered. "I don't want them finding you again or doing this to someone else."

"I don't know," he said. "They jumped me at me home, but I won't be going back there! I'm staying with my brother in Trademeet."

"What's your name?" Aphra asked as she helped him stand up.

"Tirdir," he said. His eyes welled up in tears again as he said, "Thank you."

She and Aerie returned to the Copper Coronet that night feeling subdued. Inwardly, Aphra was a little infuriated that the woman Valen had slinked back into a tomb like a vampire and never even batted an eye at the man literally buried alive a few tombs away. It reminded her of encountering Elminster the morning after Gorion's death, who had pestered her and Imoen with vague statements. Aerie seemed confident that Aphra was doing 'good work' whatever that meant, but she didn't feel better for having saved Tirdir's life. She only felt furious at all the lives that had been ruined in Athkatla, by thieves, slavers, Cowled Wizards, and worse. Had it not been for her excellent timing, Aerie might be dead, Viconia would have been burnt alive, and Tirdir would have suffocated to death. She had to wonder if her entire life was one of Beshaba's jokes, or a bet perhaps she'd made with Tymora.

Aerie bade her goodnight and went off to bed as soon as they returned to the Copper Coronet, which had a bit of a different crowd but was still just as rowdy as it had been. Aphra didn't see Daran at the door anymore, and checked on the children, unsurprised to find half of them faking being asleep. She decided it wasn't her problem, bade them all goodnight, and went to find the others.

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Holy snickerdoodles Batman! Trisa_Slyne read over forty pages of my drivel and polished it to make it shine, so let's all give a round of applause, shall we?!