Harper 007: License to Smite

18. Jurassic Palace

14 FLAMERULE 0000
THE UNDERSEA PALACE

Jaheira, tailed by two rangers, two crusaders, and two thieves, ran down a crystal-and-marble corridor of the undersea palace, looking for any signs of her their lost leader, inspecting every hallway.

?Hurry up, everyone! Can?t you rangers run faster?? she shouted over her shoulder to the others as she ran. ?Look through the windows and the ocean into the other passageways, we might see something! Keep your eyes peeled for hidden traps or doors, especially you, Arra! Don?t you know anything more about this place, Bucki? We?ve got to find a way down to where they took him!?

A knot of acrid pain formed in the half-elf?s stomach, but she forced herself to run onwards, as the bitterness spread to her mind. Will none that I love be safe? First, they took my family. Then, they took my grove. Then, they took Gorion. Then, they took Khalid. Now, they?re trying to take Onyx. Well, this time, I won?t let them. I WON?T LET THEM!

**********

Onyx came to, and found himself shackled to a metallic table. He was not in chains, only neat little half-circle cuffs that wrapped around his wrists, ankles, waist, and neck, all attached to the table, pinning him there.

?Ah, I see the child of Bhaal has awoken.?

Onyx rolled his eyes. ?Very funny. Irenicus did that line much better. Your accent isn?t creepy at all.?

?Ah?as you like,? the voice chuckled with perceptible chagrin. ?As I?m sure you can guess, I am the Jeweler.?

?Your fashion sense is terrible as well,? the cavalier said, looking down at the tight, shiny silver suit he had been dressed in by his captor. He managed to twist his head slightly, and out of the corner of his eye he could see a man of average height with freckles and sandy hair stroking a cat. ?A game of cat and mouse, eh?? the paladin asked.

?Precisely,? the Jeweler chuckled. ?You?re sounding like your friend, Jarek Bond. But pray that you?ll fare better than he did!?

The Jeweler snapped his fingers, and a small beholder floated into Onyx?s field of vision. It began staring at the bottom of the table, and then its main eye lit up and a concentrated beam of light shot out of the pupil and fired onto the metal table, between Onyx?s feet, starting to disintegrate the metal surface. As the beam burned a hole in the end of the table, the beholder began angling its eye up and the beam began cutting the table upwards, between and parallel to Onyx?s legs and headed straight for his groin.

?Do you expect me to talk?? the paladin asked calmly.

The Jeweler chuckled. ?No, Sir Onyx, I expect you to die!? With that he ran laughing from the room.

Onyx began to chant a priest spell at the beholder, but without interrupting its main eye's beam gaze, one of the stalk eyes looked straight at the human and zapped forth a spell which instantly ceased the stream of syllables from his mouth. The cavalier moved his lips in a curse, but of course no sound came out at that either.

The frost-giant-strong warrior then gritted his teeth and tried to bust himself out of the metal restraints with brute force, but they would not give, and did not even betray the awful sounds of straining metal, even though the man could have easily torn himself out of the shackles almost any of Faerun's dungeons had to offer.

If I don?t get out of this trap soon , Onyx thought as the beam drew closer to his crotch, I?ll have one very disappointed lover!

Just moments before this fear came true, the captured cavalier heard a twang sound behind him and an arrow whizzed over his head and stuck the tiny beholder right in its main eye. The floating beast shut the eye, immediately ceasing the beam, and opened its fang-lined mouth to let out a piercing shriek, into which another projectile then flew, the arrowhead then popping out the back of the beholder and causing black blood to spurt from the creature's mouth. Onyx craned his head back to find his savior, and saw two booted feet land on his table, then they leapt up again and the cavalier watched, impressed, as a man clad like him in shiny silver leather leapt into the air holding a longsword, and cleaved the little beholder cleanly in half in midair before landing on the floor at the foot of the table.

Black blood and beholder-brains flew everywhere as the beholder's halves flew apart like a busted piñata, streaking across Onyx's face. When he opened his eyes, he could see Jarek Bond standing at the foot of the table, wiping off the longsword on the foot of the table and then sticking it over his back alongside other blades and a shortbow, and smiling smugly.

"Good day, Sir Onyx," the swashbuckler nodded calmly, as if this were an ordinary day (which it somewhat was, for both of them), "If you're not too tied up at the moment," he quipped while the cavalier silently groaned at the pun, "Perhaps you'd care to join me?"

Onyx mouthed the sentence, "If you can quit wisecracking and actually unshackle me," but no sound came out.

"Damsels in distress are usually speechless when I rescue them," Jarek arched an eyebrow, "But you, Sir Onyx? Very interesting." The cavalier did an exaggerated eye-roll at the swashbuckler to convey his (low) opinion of the joke. "Allow me," Jarek continued and reached under the table, and pulled some sort of lever which made a loud click. The metal bands restraining Onyx immediately swiveled back into the table and the freed paladin wasted no time in rolling sideway and off that accursed table, landing in a kneel on the floor and standing up again while brushing some beholder gore off himself.

"Thanks, Jarek," Onyx pleasantly surprised himself by saying out loud. "So what's the score?"

"Two-nothing, Jeweler's favor, I'm afraid," Jarek played off the idiom. "I've been his...guest...for a few days now, as you must have suspected, but as you can see managed to free myself ? though I should thank Bucki Ryder ? that?s the lady assassin your friend Valygar would?ve reported last seeing me with in Nashkel. I acquired this bow, the arrows, and some longswords from a patrol of skeletons I managed to take out, but for the most part I've been keeping to the dark corners of this confounded undersea palace and avoiding fights. Golems and more powerful undead are numerous, and though I think I found where the Jeweler stashed my gear - and yours, I'd wager - I've not yet dared to fight or try to sneak past the vigilant, vampiric guards of that chamber."

"Perhaps I can help you there," Onyx nodded approvingly, and Jarek pulled two longswords off his back and handed them to him. The cavalier copied Jarek's innovation of plunging them through-and-back-through the back of his silver leather suit to create makeshift but suitably secure and safe sheaths.

?Odd taste in clothing, the Jeweler has for his guests,? Jarek smiled, admiring the outrageously shiny silver suits they both had been dressed in during their capture.

?Tell me about it,? Onyx nodded, ?What is it about evil and poor taste that go together??

?Now you?re getting the swing of it,? Jarek laughed at the quip. "The rest of your friends here?"

"Yes, although the Helmite split off and we've been joined by a Lathanderian cleric and paladin," Onyx informed.

"That wouldn't be darling Dawn and her kid sis, busty Buffy, would it?" Jarek arched an eyebrow and grinned.

"Yep, that's them," Onyx nodded back, "You seem to know a lot of the Harpers' agents, 007."

"Just the ladies," the swashbuckler grinned absentmindedly as he turned toward the door of the chamber. "It'll be good to see Arra again, it's a pity I always end up leaving her company so abruptly." Onyx rolled his eyes as the two walked toward the door. "Now, once we leave this chamber, try to be as quiet you can - which, being a paladin, I'm guessing isn't very - enemies will be about and listening, and I doubt even you, my lionlike friend, want to take them all head-on with our tasteless leather outfits and mundane weaponry. Do you have a means of hiding?"

"I'll cast a sanctuary spell," Onyx nodded.

"Good. I'll keep to the shadows. Just follow me, and once we get to the doorway to the room with our gear, I'll give you a signal and we'll have to fight the last few guards, two vampires who'll see me and perhaps you, I'm afraid."

Onyx nodded. "Once we get there, let me cast a few spells on us before we engage them."

"Very good, I didn't particularly feel like making a blood donation today. Cast them quietly, as this marble palace echoes like a plagiarizing bard. Shall we?"

Onyx cast sanctuary over himself and Jarek opened the door. The two proceeded down a hallway. It was made of greenish marble, and the walls were almost entirely of perfectly clear crystal, through which he could see the ocean. Other hallways and chambers were visible through the water; the palace looked almost like a giant coral structure; with hallways snaking through the water between otherwise free-floating chambers; rather than being one solid building with the rooms flush against each other and sharing walls. The marble-and-crystal halls and chambers were all extremely clean, extremely quiet, and extremely cold.

The pair continued around several turns and up and down a few stairways, past a number of lesser types of ambling undead; spectral, skeletal, and cadaverous alike, as well as some marching golem sentries, careful to stay out of their paths.

At last, after going down a stairway that nearly plunged into the ocean floor, the pair came to a single, long hallway that ran along just above the coral growing out of the sand floor below. It shot out away from the other snaking passages of the palace, and was even quieter and colder.

Onyx could just make out what seemed like an end to the hallway ahead; a doorless archway leading into some sort of larger room which he could vaguely make out the exterior shape of by looking through the water surrounding the wall; and he thought he saw the glint of gold within it. Jarek gave the signal, even though the cavalier could see no vampires yet. Onyx inferred Jarek must have carefully appraised the correct distance for inaudible spellcasting. He concentrated, and immediately very faint blue globes appeared and disappeared around him and Jarek as he protected them from the impending evil. The cavalier then blessed them both, imbued himself with holy might and armor of faith, and last but not least, a negative energy ward.

Onyx gave Jarek a nod and then the swashbuckler immediately broke into a run, and the cavalier followed closely, both knowing they'd have to dispatch their vampiric foes before their defenses wore off. Jarek pulled the shortbow off his back and notched an arrow midstride, and Onyx drew his longswords and began mentally preparing another spell.

Just as the two came within a dozen yards of the gateway, horrific shrieks could be heard from just on the other side and two vampire women popped through. Both men immediately planted their feet, and Jarek let his arrow loose at one, while Onyx cast a holy smite over the area between them and their foes. The nimble Jarek had already loosed a second arrow at the other when the evil-banishing energy of the spell flowed down over the hallway, and the vampires both screamed as it ate at their undead bodies and arrows flew through their hearts. Still the monsters clambered on, reaching out with their dirty claws toward the heroes, and Jarek tossed down his short bow just in time to unsheath another pair of longswords and join Onyx in a four-sword whirlwind blizzard against the vampires. Segments of claw and arm went flying against the glass walls as the swordsmen cut into the monsters, and with nearly synchronized slashes each cut off the head of a vampire with one of his sword and then impaled it through the heart with his other.

?Well, that was a pleasant warm-up,? Jarek chuckled as the vampiric bodies disintegrated and their mists floated back down the hallway. Onyx scowled at the gaseous forms, hoping to later find and stake their hosts.

?Was that the vampire couple that rules the undead here?? the cavalier asked.

Jarek laughed haughtily. ?Not a chance! They are far more powerful, and one is a male. Yes, I have seen them from afar, but not dared to go close. No, these were merely two of their lackeys, and not better ones at that. But luckily for us, they were the only ones guarding our stuff.? With that, Jarek strode into the small room at the end of the hall. He and Onyx began to rifle through the treasure chests, and soon found two bags of holding.

?Platemail. This one?s yours,? the swashbuckler remarked as he peeked into one, then tossed it to the cavalier.

?Leather. This one?s yours,? the cavalier remarked as he peeked into the other, then tossed it to the swashbuckler.

?Everything?s still here, I?m impressed,? Jarek smiled as he peered into his bag. ?The Jeweler is quite a kind host, isn?t he??

?Don?t get me started,? Onyx scoffed as he opened his bag. ?Yep, everything in mine is still ? oh no.?

?What?s missing?? Jarek looked concerned.

Onyx gulped. ?The Burning Earth.?

***********

?Blue dragonscales, eh?? Jarek smirked as he watched Onyx draw out and don his shiny blue suit of armor. ?Makes your foes a bit less shocking, I hear??

Onyx rolled his eyes, ?Not shocking at all. Between this and my natural abilities, I?m immune. Ah, armor of shadows, I should have guessed,? he watched the thief draw out a nearly-black suit of leather and slip it on.

?Yes, and if I do say so myself, it?s quite stylish ? when I wish to be seen at all.? Jarek also drew a few potions of invisibility from his bag and strapped them in various places to his suit. ?Ah, a dragon helm!?

?Immunity to fire,? Onyx nodded as he clamped the helm down and then slipped on a bright red ring.

?Wouldn?t want the Jeweler running the burn on us, would we?? Jarek punned and Onyx sighed. The swashbuckler drew out a headband with a black ioun stone set in it and tied it just under his hair. ?Not the favorite look, but occasionally I have to be practical,? he smirked. ?Ah, I see you?ve had boots of speed and the north forged together for you??

?Nearly immune to cold, with my helm and myself,? Onyx nodded as he put on the boots.

?Very good. I had the same done with boots of grounding,? Jarek smiled as he pulled out another specially forged pair and put them on. ?An internal barrier girdle? Very nice. Cuts those magic missiles down to size.?

?With myself and this amulet,? Onyx added as he slipped a necklace under his armor, ?and a spell; or even just my sword, I can cut out the rest. Of course, my fiancé has a single cloak that provides immunity; all the best defensive equipment for her,? the paladin smiled absentmindedly.

?Ah, such singular commitment,? the swashbuckler smirked. ?How sweet.?

The cavalier glared at him with mixed disapproval and amusement. ?Something tells me you wouldn?t know, Jarek Bond.?

?Hey, it?s not my fault that I?ve not yet found Miss Perfect?only Miss Tethyrian, Miss Amnish, Miss Cormyrian, Miss Baldurian, Miss Kozakuran, Miss Shou-Lungese, Miss Calimshani, Miss Chultish, Miss Maztican, Miss Avariel, Miss Drow, Miss Nymph, Miss Tiefling, Miss??

?Alright, alright! I get the idea!? Onyx groaned. ?Can?t a man put on his belt in peace??

?I guess unlike myself, you don?t need one for strength?? Jarek smiled as he clamped a strength girdle around his waist.

?Nope,? Onyx smiled. ?I?m a giant; and Torm can make me a titan.? The cavalier threw on a non-detection cloak.

?Very subtle choice for a paladin,? Jarek laughed as he slipped on and fastened tight to his back an identical cape. ?Last time I saw you, it was more aesthetically oriented nymph?s cloak.?

?I think we?re beyond negotiation at this point, don?t you?? Onyx winked as Jarek tucked an amulet under his leather.

?Quite,? Jarek nodded as he slipped on a ring of regeneration and watched Onyx slip on an improved invisibility ring to match the one he?d just donned. Over his rings the cavalier slipped on a set of handwear that caused Jarek to arch an eyebrow. ?Bracers or gauntlets??

?Both,? the cavalier smiled, ?Had a quick-talking imp fuse blessed bracers onto gauntlets of extraordinary weapon specialization.? He waved his hands around in an unarmed combat technique unbecoming of a paladin.

?Offense and defense, I like. But stylistically, they look a little garish,? Jarek smiled.

?Say that when they resurrect you later on,? Onyx winked while Jarek slipped on some blinding strike bracers.

?Perhaps instead you?d better hope that a rogue can figure out how to work such an item,? Jarek winked back and attached his bag of holding to his waist. He pulled out a tuigan short bow, strapped in onto his back, then filled the quiver next to it with arrows, drew out a number of daggers and placed them along his forearms and thighs, and lastly pulled out a pair of beautifully crafted Kozakuran katanas and sheathed them in an ?X? over his back.

?You look like my sister, thief,? Onyx winked as he strapped his own bag to his belt, and began to draw out and sheath weapons on his armor. The Azuredge throwing axe he sheathed in a quickly grabble manner over his right shoulder, the silvery Axe of the Unyielding and the five-headed Flail of Ages he strapped at either hip, the pair of longswords Daystar and Angurvadal he sheathed along his thighs, the longsword Dragonslayer and bastard sword Foebane he sheathed in a diagonal cross on his back, and between them along his spine he sheathed the two-handed Carsomyr.

?You look like a true tin can, paladin,? Jarek winked back. ?Shall we??

Onyx nodded. ?Let?s go.?

After very quickly loading the other contents of the treasure room back into their bags of holding, the two fully armed heroes ran at boot-hastened pace out of the ransacked room and back down the hallway.

?Where the hell are we going? Onyx asked Jarek.

?Straight to the Jeweler,? Jarek explained, ?Unless you feel like dropping by on some more vampires.?

?Not any more than I have to,? Onyx chuckled.

?Best be quiet and activate our invisibility rings then. Stay close to me,? Jarek explained. He and Onyx twisted the rings on their left hands in unison and disappeared from sight. They ran along the crystal-and-marble halls of the undersea palace, past unwitting patrols of golems and vampires who could not detect them. They gradually would their way to the other end of the palace, though still on the bottom floor, and the sandy ocean floor stretched ever out before them through the crystal.

At last they came to the large window-walled chamber where Jarek had formerly dined with the Jeweler. ?Protect us from evil, Torm,? Onyx whispered simply as he and the swashbuckler ran into the large room.

?So good of you to join us, heroes!? came a thinly pleasant villain?s laugh, and the large chair behind the long table swiveled around to reveal the sandy-haired, freckled Jeweler sitting in it. With a flick of his wrist he dispelled the invisibility of the two heroes. The chair next to it spun around, revealing itself to be occupied by a blonde man in a black fighting suit, the Saint. Across the table, Jarek and Onyx stopped in their tracks.

?I?m so glad we could all come together,? the Jeweler chuckled, gesturing to the three around him. ?We have Jarek Bond, the legendary Harper agent who has foiled so many of my little schemes over the years, but how long can this aging thief?s luck last? We have Sir Onyx, a divinely-tainted knight who has made quite a name for himself over the past year, but will daddy?s shadow always be the sole source of his fame and fortune? We have Cyran, better know as the Saint, an unparalleled saint of the sword and a true leader of the Cyricist flock, who is my now my illustrious business partner. For I am the Jeweler, I deal in the rarest artifacts, mostly a collector of sorts, and it is I who engineered the slave trade from the beginning.?

?And that?s just where it begins,? the spiky-blonde Saint spoke darkly as he stood up, two katana handles sticking up over his shoulderblades, ?But for you, this is where it ends.?

?I want my sword back, Jeweler,? Onyx scowled at the sandy-haired Jeweler. ?It?s mine.?

?Ah,? the Jeweler smiled, and stood up out of his chair, revealing a pair of longswords sheathed on either side of his waist. The handle of one Onyx recognized as the Burning Earth, the other looked quite similar but was electric white-yellow in color, instead of fiery orange-red. The man set his cat down and placed his hands on the hilts lovingly. ?I?m afraid it was mine first.?

?You stole it at some point, big deal,? Onyx shrugged.

?No, no, dear paladin,? the Jeweler grinned, stretching his round freckly face into an angled mask, and his voice grew deeper as he spoke, ?I made it.? The man gripped two swords, and drew them out. The Burning Earth now had a red pommel gem where Onyx had earlier noticed one might go, and his mind?s eye flashed back to the terrible vision of the great reptilian beast of the ancient world that the Burning Earth itself had once showed him, the sword its claw, glowing bright with leaping flame, as it did now again. In the Jeweler?s other hand, which also seemed much too weak and small to an unwieldy, ancient weapon, the other sword crackled with leaping electricity, and it had a bright yellow pommel gem in its hilt. ?Yes,? the Jeweler smiled as he watched Onyx?s eyes widen, ?You know.?

The cavalier saw the huge, terrible, scaly creature in his mind again, standing twice as tall as the two barbarians that it slashed down, laughing terribly.

The Jeweler spoke.

?In the beginning, the world was without form.?

Onyx saw again his vision of the utter void, cold and complete darkness.

?When it took shape, it was a burning place. It was the burning earth.?

Onyx saw again his vision of the barren, burning rocks, magma everywhere and life nowhere.

?And the air overhead sizzled and crackled with lightning; it was the searing sky.?

Onyx saw again in his vision the air of the burning landscape filled with thunder.

?Then there was life. And the world was hot and wet and bright, and it grew.?

Onyx saw again his vision of the landscape now covered in the foliage of dense jungles.

?And life began to stir, and grew larger and greater and more complex.?

Onyx now saw animals among the plants, scaly things scurrying about, growing larger and fiercer.

?And then, emerged the king of the species.?

Onyx now saw one great animal among them, a large, winged, scaly creature that looked like a huge, winged reptile; like both a dragon and a demon, and somehow different still.

?And so it should have stayed. But then a fluke, an accident happened.?

Onyx saw again his vision of the great orb from space crashing into Toril, sending clouds of dust and ice across the surface, flooding the world and blanketing it in cold and winter.

?Now you understand, human,? the Jeweler smiled, ?You were a fluke, an accident, a mistake. Your race was never meant to be. Our kind had a destiny. We ruled the world, and were meant to forever more. We were great, magnificent, and immortal. We were the dragemosaurs. But then the blazer came down from the sky, and destroyed us! And allowed you pathetic monkey-men an ill-earned chance. The cold and the mammals drove us away. Some of us, the larger ones, began to hibernate, hoping to wake again one day, millennia in the future. And these evolved into the race of Dragons, huge beasts that slumber for eons in their lairs. And among others of us sprang mutants with the abilities to find or make doors to travel the planes. And these evolved into the race of Demons, and fleed the terrible cold of the Prime. Our descendants live, but we are gone. All save one. Me. My family was the last. My mate and our eggs were killed, stolen and eaten by you furry fiends. I swore revenge upon your simian interlopers, and so I crafted The Burning Earth,? the Jeweler held up the gem-augmented fiery sword, ?And the Searing Sky,? the Jeweler held up the electric sword. ?The world began in fire and lightning, and so shall it end. I am the Jeweler, but my true form is Tyranodon, and I am the last dragemosaur.?

?Whatever the hell you are,? Onyx bellowed as he reached his hands up to his shoulders and drew out Peridan, the dragon-slayer, in his right hand, and Foebane, the demon-smiter, in his left. ?You?re going extinct.?

?NEVER, WEAK HUMAN,? the Jeweler growled in a reverberating and inhumanly deep voice, and he began to shapeshift, and grow larger and scalier, and became the beast from Onyx?s vision. The beast stood, on two legs but stooping forward, about twice the height of a man. Its flesh was covered in an armor of large, green, chitinous scales, the claws of its front and back limbs long, red, and swordlike, the front ones clutching the two massive and ancient longswords, whose auras of flame and electricity made their blades even larger. The beast?s body was not unlike that of a thin-bodied dragon standing mostly erect on its hind legs, and it did have two green leathery wings sprouting from its back. It had the twisted, horrifically grinned face of a demon though, with a crown of cruel horns upon its forehead, and other horns sprouting from its back, knees, shoulders, and tail. Its snout was quite long, like a dragon?s, but wider; easily large and powerful enough to swallow a man whole with one snap, or bite him in half with one chomp. Its great toothy jaw smiled daggers down at the knight and the rogue.

?Humans are not weak,? the cavalier stared up defiantly at the beast.

Tyranodon began to laugh a deep, murderous laugh, echoing all about the chamber. Onyx stood his ground, but Jarek was at once overcome with a sudden panic, and began to spin around and bolt for the door.

?Courage, friend!? Onyx bellowed, his voice echoing like a god?s, ?You shall have no fear!? At these words, Jarek?s fear was gone at quickly as it had come, and he spun round again and faced the enormous creature and the kensai standing beside it.

?Enough theatrics,? Cyran, still standing next to the monster, hissed from under the spiky blonde hair spilling over his headband. ?Let?s waste these fools. KAAAIIIIIII!!!!!!!!?

Before Onyx even had a chance to blink, the kensai had drawn the katanas on his back and leapt high into the air, straight over the table, making an arc for Jarek, shouting his strange battle-cry. The swashbuckler?s reflexes were just as fast, and he?d already yanked his shortbow and an arrow off his back with each hand. He drew and fired the arrow as Cyran flew over the table, then let the shortbow fall onto a belt-hook and reached back for the katanas over his own shoulders. With lightning reflexes, Cyran swung his katanas forward, slicing the arrow in three pieces in midair just before it plunged into his chest, and continuing with the forward sweeps clanged against Jarek?s blades just as he hit the ground.

The kensai and the swashbuckler glanced up from their crossed swords as Tyranodon drew a deep intake of breath. Onyx looked up and saw the dragemosaur holding his swords aloft, and they began to grow even more brightly that ever before. Suddenly a great billow of fire came from the Burning Earth and a great cloud of lightning from the Searing Sky, and struck the center of the table. While Tyranodon continued laughing, Jarek and Cyran immediately parted and both leapt for the edge of the room, narrowly dodging the elemental blasts. As if a red dragon and a blue one had breathed upon the very same spot in unison, great clouds of fire and electricity exploded from the middle of the table, enveloping Onyx while Cyran and Jarek nimbly dashed away. The great beast bellowed in laughter as he watched the terrible storm consume the cavalier across the table from him.

?DIEEEE, KNIIIIIIGHT,? he bellowed, chuckling to himself and holding his two great swords aloft while flames and lightning leapt about. His laughter was cut short when the untouched form of a blue-and-silver armored warrior brandishing two swords of his own leapt out of the cloud of energy straight for him, seeming to have passed straight through the storm without a care. Onyx jumped up onto the table and now leapt off the other side at his foe, the fire and electricity flashing harmlessly about him as he sailed through the air headlong at the beast, Dragonslayer and Foebane pointed forward. Tyranodon growled with fury at his adversary?s passage through the elemental maelstrom, but was not caught off guard, and met the incoming blades with slashing parries from his ancient longswords. So great were his blows that the cavalier was knocked backwards out of the air, and crashed back into the table, shattering the marble and then hopping to his feet again as the beast strode forward.

Tyranodon spun and his great spiked tail came swinging at the cavalier, who leapt over it as it smashed more of the table to rubble, and then ducked under a buffet from its wings, which scraped across what remained of the tabletop and sent the placesettings and the Jeweler?s cat flying across the chamber.

?OHHH?.MR. BIGGLESWORTH GO BYE-BYE,? Tyronodon growled with a hint of regret as he watched the feline sail through the air. It landed on its feet (of course), and wisely scurried away (chasing an undead mouse).

?Eight left, Mr. Bigglesworth,? Jarek Bond could be heard quipping above the fray.

?Torm, grant me might!? Onyx shouted and raised his swords aloft, and was for one instant consumed in a pillar of white light. As Tyranodon swung his swords down at the spectacle, the cavalier appeared again, swinging back fearlessly. The knight?s swords smashed against the dragemosaur?s, and the beast stumbled back at the unprecedented strength behind his opponent?s blows.

Beyond the end of the table, outside the fading cloud of fire and lightning, Jarek and Cyran had reengaged as soon as they had escaped the common danger, and danced around each other. Four katanas flashed bright as showy, deadly blows were exchanged at high speeds.

Cyran brought each katana in from the side in fast horizontal sweeps which undoubtedly had the power to cut his opponent in half. The quick-minded swashbuckler saw this, and could have feigned back out of reach or used both his blades to parry them, but his aching wounds told him that he had to end this, for he was at his end. He dropped only his off weapon to his waist to counter, turning it sideways, and with his main weapon continued to slash high and forward. He turned his left wrist, aligning the katana horizontally in front of his waist, the pommel of its hilt pointing towards Cyran?s incoming main hand katana, the tip of its blade pointing towards Cyran?s incoming off hand katana.

The swashbuckler?s finesse was perfect, and both of the kensai?s weapons clanged off the top and bottom of the swashbuckler?s left-hand curved sword with two metallic rings in unison. Less than half a second later, Jarek?s right-hand katana, uninhibited, sailed straight into Cyran?s head. The enchanted steel sliced cleanly into the left side of his face, running all the way from the left corner of his mouth, up through his cheek and eye and forehead, slicing quickly through the front of his skull and teeth into his jaw and forebrain like a surgeon?s scalpel. The hilt of the katana smashed into his jawbone, and he went stumbling back, screaming in horrible pain with a bloody gash now running down the left side of his face. He dropped his katanas to grab his mutilated face in agony, and shortly dropped to the floor himself, clutching his face as he spasmed and bled; and then he lay quite still.

The air filled with horrible clanging every time the swords of Onyx and Tyranodon met, flames or sparks leaping from the beast?s weapons but hurting neither of them. With a quick spin of its entire massive body, Tyranodon brought his wings swinging forward at the cavalier, who stabbed for them with his swords but nonetheless was buffeted forcefully into the air, landing on the marble floor across the chamber. The beast took to the air with its wings, flying over the cavalier and then dropping back to the floor to crush the human beneath its great hind limbs. Onyx rolled aside just in time, and sprang up as the beast came down, using their combined motion to stab with force and speed into the side of the beast as it crashed to the floor, causing great cracks to radiate across the marble. Blackish beast-blood sprayed from the wounds with such force that as Onyx withdrew Dragonslayer and Foebane, he was nearly knocked back.

The beast gave a horrible roar and stabbed at him with the Burning Earth while swinging for his head with the Searing Sky. Onyx sidestepped the stab, ducked the swing, but before he could move elsewhere, the dragemosaur had reared back with both swords to its shoulders and come forward again, each swinging in great diagonal arcs toward the cavalier, from both outside and above, prepared to meet in an ?X? of slashes right where he stood. They were coming from the sides, so Onyx could not evade left or right, but they were coming down from above to the floor; he could not duck them. The creature lunged forward as it swung, and the paladin knew he could not jog backwards any faster; nor could he come forward straight at the creature?s kicking, spearing hind claws and horned knees.

The only way out was up. He sprang out of his crouch with blinding speed, using the superhuman strength that filled his legs and back to shoot up like a compressed spring, leaping high into the air, high for the most acrobatic of monks, much an armored knight. As he soared up, he pulled his swords back behind his shoulders, and as he came up face to face with the house-high beast, its head sprang forward like a snake and its mouth opened wide to bite, but the knight swung his two swords forward in great horizontal sweeps from both sides. Dragonslayer and Foebane cleaved into the dragemosaur?s neck, shearing it front to back, meeting at its spine and completely beheading it.

Tyranodon?s final roar dissolved into a vomiting of dark blood, which ceased to come from its mouth as the head fell away, and instead spurted from its great, cleanly cleaved neck. The head fell to the floor, looking as hideous as ever and still staring up at its slayer, and the decapitated body let go of its swords, which fell with ominous, heavy clangs; and then the great body stumbled backwards and fell, crushing its own wings under itself and further cracking the marble floor, shaking the entire chamber as it landed.

Onyx himself landed on his feet, breathing heavily, clutching his bloody swords, and looked down at the severed head of the beast. He started as its eyes opened again and peered up at him. A chortling laugh came from within its great, toothy mouth.

?CONGRATULATIONS, HUMAN?.? it bellowed, even without lungs, ?PERHAPS?YOU ARE NOT SO WEAK AFTER ALL. THE TEST OF TIME HAS PROVED ME WRONG. MY KIND WAS?UNFIT?AND SO WE GO. AND YOU FLOURISH, AND REIGN?THE KING OF SPECIES.?

?So be it,? Onyx proclaimed, staring down at the head of his slain foe, ?Man shall triumph over the greatest monster.?

?NO?..? the beast?s head growled, ?MAN IS THE GREATEST MONSTER?.HO HO HO HO HO HO?.? With that, the head sputtered, the tongue rolled limply out of the toothy mouth, the eyes closed, and then it ceased to move. Tyranodon, the last dragemosaur, was dead.

?Mission accomplished, my good man,? Jarek chuckled, looking at the still body of the kensai that lay across in a puddle of its life-blood across the room.

?Let us hope,? Onyx nodded tiredly, and stepped over the body of Tyranodon. Using Dragonslayer and Foebane, he began to shear away the hard, chitinous scales of the beast, carving away a single large swath of its scaly hide.

?He?ll make quite a suit of armor, eh?? Jarek smiled. ?Pity it?d prove heavy for my tastes, or I?d take some myself?.perhaps the teeth and claws though; they?ll make excellent daggers and shortswords.?

?Help youself. Speaking of which,? Onyx spoke thoughtfully as he cut off his enormous chunk of hide, rolled it up, and stuck it in his bag of holding, ?It?s time I reclaimed my sword?and one more for my troubles.?

Sheathing Dragonslayer and Foebane over his shoulders again, Onyx picked up the Burning Earth, and then walked around the skinned body to pick up the Searing Sky. The swords felt even heavier and more ill-balanced than before, augmented by their reset pommel gems with some strange power that seemed to have weight and magnetism, though whether it was physical, magical, or psychological was difficult to tell. The cavalier felt both compelled to drop the heavy burdens, but also quite reluctant to do so.

He squeezed the oversized handle of the Burning Earth, while Jarek looked on in confusion. ?Everything chipper, knighty?? he asked with detached concern.

?The Burning Earth? Onyx muttered, ?It allowed me to see the archaic past?.?

?And the Searing Sky?? Jarek asked, with an expectant air.

??will I see the future?? Onyx wondered. ?Tyranodon said the world began and would end in fire and electricity?if the Burning Earth and the Searing Sky were forged of the flame and lightning that the began the world??

??shall they be unforged into the elements that will be at its end?? Jarek finished. ?Find out, dear cavalier.?

Onyx closed his eyes and squeezed the hilt of the Searing Sky. Jarek watched as the sword began to glow blue, yellow, and white, like electricity caged within crystal.

Onyx opened his eyes and saw an ordinary cityscape: commoners, nobles, and adventurers going about; mostly humans. With a start, he recognized where he was: the slums of Athkatla, and it was as he usually saw it. Both wealth and poverty, loving and fighting, smiling and frowning.

He blinked, and the city changed. The slums were no longer slums; there were fewer adventurers; and it was hard to distinguish nobles and commoners, indeed, he saw very little poverty and squalor, and in fact almost everyone looked like a noble. There were pedestrians walking without fear or pickpockets, merchants vending without fear of lifters, street-conjurers entertaining without fear of magic-police. He noticed also that almost every face was smiling, and if engaging a fellow citizen, whether in business or pleasure, had a look of comraderie, and that these looks came from creatures of many races. Elves and dwarves greeted one another as they went by, or even went hand in hand, as did halflings and gnomes, humans and orcs, avariel and drow, aasimar and tieflings. He saw in front of himself, in the center of the square, a boy with features both orcish and halfling, waving about a newspaper. As everyone else, he took no notice of Onyx, and brandished a newspaper right in his face. The cavalier saw the headline as it went by, ?V-K DAY: MEZOBERRANZAN AND NEW MYTH DRANNOR SIGN PACT; KOZAKURA SURRENDERS TO UNITED STATES Of MAZTICA; TORIL WAR TWO ENDS!?

He blinked, and the city changed. The buildings were sleeker and stronger than before, looking not like the wood-walled and thatched-roofs he was accustomed too; rather there was much more use of metal and glass, and some sort of very gray, smooth, featureless stone. He noticed that a street magician was trying unsuccessfully to conjure a trick, and a passerby trudged up to him and spoke with a grave face. More pedestrians than before walked about, but their looks were also crossed with worry, and they looked up at the sky with trepidation. He noticed also fewer manners of character than before: there were more humans, but less of all else. The paperboy turned around, but now he was a shortish human, and the wind blew a paper from his grasp. As it drifted through the air into the face of a fast-walking man wearing a silk blue suit, an extremely thin red kerchief, and holding a thin rectangular case, Onyx read the headline, ?DEAD MAGIC ZONE EPIDEMIC SPREADS ? NEW TODAY: SOUTH HALF OF ATHKATLA; DELRYN, DISTRICT OF CORDELL, U.S.M.; TEN-CITIES OF REPUBLIC OF ICEWIND DALE.?

He blinked, and now almost every pedestrian he saw was human, and walked quickly about his or her business with neither frown nor smile. There were no street magicians, no one seemed to carry any item with an enchanted glow, and the architecture grew even sleeker and more sterile, as did clothing. He noticed one scraggly man standing in the square, with a placard hung about him that read: ?YOUR DIETY IS DEAD!? The paper changed direction in the wind, and sailed by his face, and he read it again, ?OFFICIAL: WEAVE UNWOVEN, MYSTRA DEAD; ALSO HELM, CHAUNTEA, TALOS. ?

He blinked again, and now everything was smooth and clean and artificial, and all that he saw were humans, and no signs of any mage or priest. The newspaper landed upon the ground at his feet, and it now read: ?DWARVES AND DRAGONS DECLARED EXTINCT, JOIN ELVES, ORCS, OTHERS.?

He blinked again, and the paper burned to ashes before his eyes. He looked up, and now there was no one to be seen, but bones littered the street, which like the buildings was all blackened and burnt out; shattered glass, crushed quasi-stone, and twisted metal lay about. He looked up at the darkened sky, and he saw two gigantic and faroff birdlike creatures above, but they were made of metal. They flew quickly about one another, in some sort of dogfight, shooting colored beams of light at one another. One found its mark, and the other exploded.

He blinked again, and he could see no more ruins, nor anything manmade at all, but only scattered, scrubby desert plants. The sun was up, but the sky had some permanent, scorched shadow about it.

He blinked again, and the plants were gone, and now from faroff he saw mountains, nay, volcanoes, for lava spewed from them, and flowed down their sides, and ash was spat forth, and covered the sky, which was thundering.

He blinked again, and the lava was everywhere and ignited, and the sky utterly dark and filled with terrible thunder. Flame leapt all about his feet, and lightning crashed all about his head.

He blinked again, and there was darkness.

20. Lawful Awful Stupid Skirmish Showdown

Torm, I strive for
The charisma to change evil when I can,
The strength to destroy evil when I must,
And the wisdom to recognize each,
Amen.

- Sir Maximus Prime of Longsaddle

Topsy-turvy, who?s to say,
What?s right, what?s wrong; but be that your way,
And I see no up, I see no down,
Then how could I say that you were the clown?

- Jakk?Dalis, Riddles of the Jester

15 FLAMERULE 0500
CANDLEKEEP

?Captain, three horsemen approach!? yelled a guard from atop the gate of Candlekeep, upon which rain fell from an overcast predawn sky.

It was so. Onyx of Candlekeep, Minsc of Rasheman, and Valygar Corthala were riding hard, even as they came to their destination, Candlekeep, and halted just before the gate. After the departure of Jaheira and a farewell parting from the rest of their Athkatla-bound company in Nashkel at dinner the night before, they had ridden through the night, dispatching a few attacking highway-robber men and hobgoblins along the way, all from horseback with deftly shot arrow and mightily thrown axe, without breaking stride. They had stopped only once, very briefly in Beregost, to see mayor Keldath Ormlyr once again and to tell him of the ultimate success of the mission, and the defeat of the mastermind of the slave-trade, that had sold to the Chaos Circus the now-freed victims that the good mayor had been instrumental in returning to their homes.

And now, after riding from Nashkel through the night, riding from the gnoll stronghold the previous day, and fighting through it and the undersea palace the previous night and the day before, the two rangers and the paladin, beginning their third day without sleep, came to Candlekeep with great longing in their hearts that had brought them as quickly as if in the balance still hung the fates of the thousands who now would never know bondage, who would not become what Aerie had been made so long ago; one of so many pawns in the last game of Tyranodon, the ancient creature who manipulated the demihuman races, not by fighting them himself, but through the instrument of slavery, which by nature pits them against one another, finding like beasts and not men. But now the true monster was slain, yet the three still rode to Candlekeep, towards a free and avenged Aerie, and Imoen, and Nalia, as swiftly as if this were the final and most important leg of the quest. Because for them, in a way, it was.

But Tyranodon?s game was not quite over, for though he was gone, and struggled not against men, what he had wrought would now bring them to arms against one another one more time.

The three men dismounted, and Onyx, helmless and in his shining blue dragonscales, raised an empty right gauntlet and greeted the guard who met them at the foot of the wall.

?Hark, Sir Onyx!? cried Jondalar, captain of the guards, having come out himself to see for the first time in fourteen-and-a-half months the youth that under his guidance and first learned the ways of a swordsman, and now returned with the bearing of a man, and the repute of a (slightly controversial) hero.

?Hail, Captain Jondalar,? the cavalier smiled. The two men exchanged a mighty handshake and roared with laughter, falling into a backslapping hug.

?You know the rules,? the guard captain sighed. ?Please tell me you brought a book! Of course,? he looked back at the gate furtively, ?I?ve got the one that the last guy brought me still handy??

The cavalier chuckled and drew forth a tome. ?This one should do. Found it night before last in an undersea palace, would you believe??

?Well, well!? Jondalar laughed heartily. ?You?ll have to tell me more of your stories tonight around some mugs of ale! Why, I can?t even read it title of this tome though, not even recognize the language?but no matter!? he laughed as Onyx returned a shrug. ?I?m sure Phlydia can identify it. She?s a lorekeeper of Oghma now! Why,? he winked, ?I?ll bet you?ll be wanting to see her again, young man! She sends word she?s in her quarters in the library.?

?Phlydia?? a faraway look came over the cavalier?s eyes, and he looked up into the clouds and the rain. ?Yes?I should see her??

His attention was snapped back when the gate opened and his ranger friends led the horses through, and he dashed after them, while Jondalar chuckled heartily.

?How you friends holding up?? Onyx patted the backs of the sturdy rangers.

?Oh ? YAWN ? fine,? Valygar?s mouth stretched as he looked at the paladin, who didn?t seem to be even a mite tired. ?You and that endless stamina,? he chuckled.

?Boo says Bebe wants breakfast now!? Minsc spoke up. ?Bebe has been eating a lot lately, Boo says! And throwing it up in the mornings??

?Alright,? Onyx laughed, ?The best ? well, only - place is Winthrop?s, a.k.a. the Candlekeep Inn, it?s at the northwestern corner of town, against the outer wall. I tell you what, you guys stash the horses ? there?s a stable right next to the inn ? and order up breakfast, I?ll duck into the library; but I?ll be with you in just a minute.?

??Wouldn?t brave Onyx rather see Aerie first?? Minsc gave the paladin a slap on the back, a bit hard even by the standards of bonhomie between the mighty warriors. ?We all miss our witch, don?t we, Boo!?

?Yes, and Nalia. And Imoen, of course,? Valygar added with a smile.

?They won?t be awake yet, I bet,? Onyx shook his head, ?Let?s let ?em finish their beauty sleep ? not that a one of ?em needs it, and surprise ?em when they come down in the morning. I?ll only be a minute.?

With that the cavalier split off from the rangers, who led the horses to the right, around the north side of the inner wall, and Onyx began to make a beeline straight for the gate through it.

?Hark, you there! Sir Onyx!? called a figure from across the grassy courtyard to his left, before he had gotten through the gate in the inner wall. Onyx looked left, peered through the rain at the tall armored figure who spoke, and at the shorter armored figure next to him, who appeared to be none other than Sir Anomen Delryn.

?Greetings, Anomen!? Onyx called cheerily and waved, as if ignoring or forgetting the bad terms on which they?d last parted, less than a tenday ago, though it seemed to both like an age. ?And who is your friend? He?s nearly the size of Minsc! A Tyrran, by the look of him.? Onyx walked toward the men, who approached him, and the met in the outer courtyard to the south of the library, between the inner and outer walls of Candlekeep.

?Sir Judas Iscarias, justknight of Tyr indeed!? the taller man spoke. ?And Sir Anomen Delryn, watcher of Helm!?

?So I have heard,? Onyx smirked with lighthearted sarcasm at the second, obviously needless introduction. ?Tell me, Anomen,? he questioned the Helmite, with a suspicious air, ?What brings you to Candlekeep, with company??

?I will make no pleasantries or smalltalk about it,? Anomen puffed, ?Sir Onyx ? blast it, what?s your last name, or do you even have one, anyway??

?A question and an answer for another day,? the cavalier said simply.

?Well then, Sir Onyx, you are under arrest conduct unbecoming a knight: for illegal use of evil weaponry, for illegal association with known evil witches, for illegal execution of an illegal mission, and for illegal methods of interrogation. You are to come with us immediately to the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart where you will stand court martial??

??and face?? Onyx put on a penchant face, as if he were carefully considering a voluntary opportunity.

??well, it will be decided there,? Anomen copped out, ?but I?d expect, if not further penalties?explusion!!? he hung on the last word like it were a death sentence.

Onyx began to laugh out loud, causing Judas?s face to tighten and Anomen?s to go slackjawed. ?Truly, truly ridiculous. If you were other than Sir Anomen Delryn, that is to say someone possessed of a sense of humor, I?d think this a joke, but as it stands I will merely infer you are acting on actual orders from some incompetent, if not corrupt, official of the Order.? Onyx smirked while Anomen and Judas exchanged unconfident glanced. ?I have an offer for you??

?It was no offer, it was an order.? Judas stated firmly.

?Well, then mine is an offer,? Onyx retorted, ?I will not accompany you back to Athkatla just now; but I expect I shall be there again in good time. You may return to the Order, and conduct a trial without me, and expel me or whatever you feel like.? He smiled and shrugged with both authentic and projected nonchalance, and an utterly shocked look passed over Anomen?s face at his flippant attitude. ?Or the Order?s judging bureaucrats may wait until I return, and then face trial with me there. Expel me, ban me from entering the Order, whatever,? he smiled again at Anomen, ?But know that I will not stand for so-called penalties such as fines or imprisonment, which infringe upon my own rights rather than strip me of Order-bequeathed privileges, for I have done nothing that another good adventurer could or would not do??

?Good is not the issue, lawfulness is,? Judas growled, looking down at Onyx and touching the scales-of-justice emblem on his breastplate.

?Then you admit they need not align,? the cavalier gazed up with his steel blue eyes into the Tyrran?s sea green, smiling calmly.

?They?.that?s not an issue here!? Judas balked, losing the confidence his great height usually instilled.

?No, that?s the issue here, my friends,? Onyx continued, with a voice that was quite confident, but not quite smug. ?Behind what you are doing here today, and what you are doing with your lives.?

Judas and Anomen exchanged nervous glances, and the Helmite spoke first. ?What we are doing with our lives is being knights, mister Onyx. And our job is to align the two ideals, which you seem to have forgotten.?

?Forgotten?? Onyx arched an eyebrow. ?How about tried. Is it always possible??

?Of course!? Anomen said reflexively.

?Good is objective and universal, yes?? Onyx inquired.

?Of course,? Anomen said more thoughtfully.

?And law can change, if you move over land, or in time?? Onyx inquired.

?Well, yes,? Anomen shrugged.

?So?..? Onyx nodded his head suggestively.

Anomen thought carefully for a second and smiled. ?It?s because, within limits, what can be good can actually be a function of the law, that law is mutable is no contradiction, for all other circumstances of situation are mutable too. There is a value in obeying conventions, for example law may provide for certain allowed assumptions in contracts.?

?I agree,? Onyx nodded, ?But surely, in say, drow society?.?

?When we say lawful we speak of just laws,? Judas added quickly.

?Fair enough, if after-the-fact,? Onyx shrugged, ?So we speak now of justice instead of laws.?

?It?s not semantic,? Anomen answered the sarcastic tinge on Onyx?s voice. ?Justice, too, is universal.?

?And how do we mortals determine it?? Onyx asked.

?Well, for our purposes today, studying the chivalric code will do,? Anomen replied after a hesitant moment of though.

Onyx answered, ?Even if you are correct in that a most knights wouldn?t behave this way, which I can believe, rhat doesn?t mean they shouldn?t. Heck, I could go on about the things most of us do wrong??

Anomen looked increasingly hesitant and merely said, ?Such things are not for me to judge??

??a knight never surrenders his own judgment?? Onyx countered. Anomen balked and felt a sense of déjà vu.

?Onyx!? Anomen pleaded. ?You?ll be expelled from the Order!?

?Do you know what the different between you and me, is, Sir Delryn?? Onyx asked with a calm stare. ?For you, your official knighthood was the most important day of your life. For me, it was the least important of the last four things I had done; the other three being the deeds for which the fourth wad conferred ? routing a corrupt baron and parlaying with peaceful ?monsters? in Imnesvale ? a discussion of its own we should have, as I?ve been thinking on this lately - and bodyguarding a spoiled but innocent girl.. It?s the deeds that make us noble, not the titles.?

?Enough!? Judas growled, and looked down at Anomen, who seemed troubled.

Anomen stammered. ??I?uh..Onyx?I have my orders. YOU ARE UN- UNDER ARREST!?

As Anomen?s cracking voice ceased, Judas put his hands behind his head and began to draw out his enormous two-handed holy sword.

Onyx had appraised the two before him carefully. Judas stood a little to his left, Anomen to his right. He had been resting his hands on his belt with pretended casualness, just happening to put his left palm against the hilt of the Axe of the Unyielding, and the right palm against the hilt of the Flail of Ages.

As Judas's sword came cleaving through the air in a huge overhead swing, Onyx heard the unexpected but unmistakable clicks of crossbows firing from both his right and left. Thinking quickly, he began stepping forward into a low kneel, while pulling the axe and the flail out from his belt. As he moved forward and down, he caught Judas?s gaze, and looked deep into the other paladin?s deep green eyes and smirked. Judas looked into the other paladin?s steel blue eyes, and something about the man?s face worried him. It wasn?t quite a scolding look, but the look of a man who is quite sure of himself, and is watching you making a fatal mistake.

As Onyx?s left knee touched the grass and two bolts flew through the air over his head, he swung his left arm forward with the Axe of the Unyielding, slicing into Judas's leg, whose sword, still arcing down, fell down behind the cavalier, who was practically at the Tyrran's feet and safely inside the sword radius. Onyx simultaneously swung the Flail of Ages around for an underhand whiplash toward Anomen's ankles. While the axe made a clean vorpal slice straight through Judas's lower leg and severed it just below the knee, the five heads of the flail snaked around Anomen's lower legs, crackling with elemental energy and interrupting the priest's chant.

Onyx heard the two snipers, whom he had yet to spot, fire their crossbows again and pulled back and up out of his crouch. Judas, with his huge sword held forward, was caught off balance on his one remaining foot, and began to topple forward, and Anomen's legs were swept out from under him by the flail's grasp as Onyx pulled back. The result was that Judas and Anomen soon occupied the air Onyx just had, and a bolt went flying into each of them, piercing even their enchanted full plate. The cavalier found himself rightfully apprehensive of the apparent power of the invisible crossbows, but wasted no time in pulling his flail far enough back to sweep Anomen flat on his back, while strapping his axe to his belt again. Judas was lying face-first in the mud, struggling to pull out his greatsword, which had plunged several feet into the earth. Anomen was beginning another chant on his back, and while Onyx reached for his longsword Namarra, sheathed on his back, he twirled the flail to unwrap it from Anomen's ankles and then brought it back and around for an overheard swing.

As Onyx unsheathed the Neversleep sword, all sound around him was immediately dimmed, and he did not hear the next twin clicks of the crossbows as his flail arced over his head. While he brought the flail down onto Anomen's chest, disrupting the priest's chant and sending ripples of the weapon?s alteration magic through him, he pointed the sword forward and squeezed the handle. Namarra glowed briefly and a spell shot from its tip. Anomen had already begun yet another chant, but he felt his mouth moving sluggishly as the flail's full impact washed over him, and when the sword's spell burst in front of him, his string of strange syllables was cut off even as his tongue continued to flap. Onyx also noticed Judas's grumbles suddenly silenced, but then he felt bolts piercing the armor on both his arms and sink into his biceps.

Onyx grimaced, but turned and began to run while resheating Namarra and snatching an invisibility potion at his belt. Trying to hold the potion, with a bolt in the arm?s bicep, he was barely able to get it to his lips before dropping it, and as he consumed it, he looked down and could see the grass through his own now-invisible legs. He stopped in his tracks and hit the dirt. He smiled when he saw two bolts fly several feet in front of him - he'd predicted that the snipers would guess their suddenly-invisible mark to maintain trajectory. He heard the crossbows clicking again, and realized unhappily that, though invisible, his prostrate form was making a very large and very visible imprint in the mud. He quickly rolled aside just as two bolts struck the ground where he had just been. He realized that he was both making a muddy trail of footprints, and making a seemingly hollow space devoid of falling rain. He was invisible, but not undetectable in this foul weather. The next bolt missed by a mile, but the one after came straight for him, but mercifully ricocheted off his helmet. Despite the ring in his ears the projectile from the obviously-high-powered launcher was causing, he kept running, pulling the bolts out of his arms so that the wounds would start regenerating, and soon was against the outer wall of the keep. He went along it until he found a ladder leading up to the ramparts, and began to scale it.

Adonis Narcissus laid low on the ramparts of the outer wall, his crossbow pointing into the courtyard below. He had been expertly tracing the muddy footprints and deflected raindrops caused by the invisible man, and had seen his last bolt bounce off him. But then his quarry had effectively disappeared against the rough background of a section of the outer wall further along the rampart. Adonis fired randomly at the junction of the ground and the wall, expecting his prey would be running along the edge. He leaned a bit further over, and fired below himself, lest Onyx now be below him at the foot of the wall.

Then Adonis looked the other way, on the other side of where the man had disappeared, and noticed a ladder. He became quite scared as its possibilities occurred to him. He fired a few shots at the ladder, but hit nothing, then began firing along the level of the rampart itself. He nearly pissed in his armor when one of his bolts bounced off the air. Suddenly, at just that point, Onyx materialized out of the air, now holding the gigantic Fortress Shield in his left hand and spinning the Flail of Ages overhead in his right. Onyx whipped forward, and crashed the flail's heads into Adonis's heavy crossbow. The Sune-worshipping knight screamed like a girl as electricity and acid burned his fingers and the crossbow slipped from them and clattered to the ground.

Meanwhile, back in the courtyard, Judas stoically grimaced against the pain of his severed leg. Vorpal wounds are the epitome of clean wounds, and like them, they heal quickly and get infected less, but are extremely painful. Vorpal severed limbs are actually quite easy to reattach with magical healing, as the perfectly flat faces of the cut will fit easily, and this is what Judas was now trying to do. He tried to call to the priest lying beside him for healing, but only silence came out of his mouth, and this made him realize Anomen wouldn?t have been able to cast a spell anyway. The paladin smiled as he remembered his own subvocal healing ability, and as he pressed his severed limb against the stump beneath his knee, he willed the healing power of his hands upon the wound.

And nothing happened.

Judas tried again, and still nothing happened. He searched within himself, and tried to find his holy powers, but he could not. Worried, he reached over to his sword, which lay stuck into the ground, to grab the hilt and feel the reassuring power of a holy avenger when it was in your grasp. But as he moved his hand around the hilt, an invisible force, liked repelling magnetism, pushed him away. Then he remembered the look Onyx had given him as he fell into a crouch, the calm, knowing stare of the famed cavalier as he was attacked by a fellow paladin. Judas had thought Onyx was smirking at the tactical blunder that had allowed him to dodge his blow and sever his leg, but now he realized it had been a moral blunder over which the cavalier had given him that look. Judas broke into a cold sweat as the answer finally dawned on him. He was fallen.

The sharp pain of his yet-unhealed leg snapped his attention away the abysmal sinking of his heart, and he rolled onto his back, and pulled a large healing potion off his belt with his right hand. While using his left hand to hold the severed leg flush against the stump, he uncapped and chortled the potion with his right, and to his relief he could feel the flesh of his stump reach out and grow against the flesh of the severed limb. He realized, though, that the severed part was not returning the favor, as its bloodstream was of course disconnected, and so the potion wasn't getting to it, causing the wound to close asymmetrically and leave him with a useless limb.

Regretfully, he winced and forcibly popped his reattached lower leg back off the stump, and took out another healing potion. This time, rather than ingesting it he poured it over the both faces of the slice, and pressed them together. Healing potions can work topically as well as by ingesting, though not as well, and the lower and upper leg slowly began fusing together. Once he felt the circulation return to the severed leg, he drank the rest of the potion. Now he could feel it getting into his reconnected bloodstream and the tissues reconnecting much faster. He drew out another and drank, and the feeling returned to his foot and he found he was becoming able to move it again. The sheared tibia and fibula bones each fused, the muscles began complete again, and the skin grew back together; but he was left with only a neat ring of a scar around his leg just below the knee.

Back up on the outer rampart, Adonis screeched as the crossbow left his hands. Onyx had approached Adonis on the south rampart from the west, which would put his shield arm toward the inside of the Keep, and sure enough, a bolt came flying from the sniper on the inner wall?s rampart, and glanced off the Fortress Shield. Adonis held his two ornate shortswords out - Onyx caught himself appraising his foe's handsomeness, and realized that the shortswords looked like small versions of his own Blade of Roses. He noticed the emblems of Sune on the man's armor.

"A paladin of...Sune?" Onyx asked incredulously.

Adonis sighed. "Oh boy, I get that sooo much. Yes, silly, a paladin of Sune!" He grew cross and charged Onyx with his shortswords waving wildly. The cavalier stuck his large shield forward to meet both of them, and another bolt came sailing for his now-exposed side but mercifully the fortress shield magically deflected that one too. The cavalier found himself wishing he had his fiance?s reflective shield ? then he could take out the other sniper without even having to find his position!

The small, wiry paladin of Sune bounced off the larger paladin's tower shield, but soon charged again, this time slashing one sword low and the other high. Onyx moved his shield up to block the high one, and swung his flail down and wrapped its heads around the low ones and the man's left forearm behind it. He pushed the man's upper body and right arm back with his shield, and pulled his left arm toward him with his ensnarled flail, and with the quick jerky movement managed to half-disarm of the weak paladin.

"Yeow!" Adonis yelled as his off blade was pulled from his left hand by the flail. He quickly brought his remaining weapon down under the shield and stabbed forward, using the momentum from the pull. The rosy shortsword plunged into Onyx's stomach, through his blue dragonscales, through his thick abs and just under his ribcage, but the impaled cavalier managed to knee Adonis in the face, sending him back, and the shortsword sliding back out of his belly before it cut into his intestines.

As the Sune-paladin?s right arm fell back, Onyx brought his shield down on it hard, smashing the man's wrist against the ground and breaking it audibly, and nearly severing the entire hand. Onyx stepped on the flat of the sword with his left foot and easily slid it away under his boot. He lifted the shield and brought his flail around for an underhand swing at Adonis's head, but the roseknight had pulled a dagger out of his own boot with his left hand and successfully stabbed Onyx in the stomach again just as the flail smashed into the face of his helmet. He was knocked back onto the stones, and Onyx ignored the dagger lodged in his belly while he charged forward and brought his flail down in a massive overhead swing upon Adonis's head. Even through the helmet, he managed to give Adonis a concussion, and the paladin of Sune went limp on the stones.

Yet another bolt whizzed harmlessly near Onyx, and the cavalier strapped his flail to his belt, crouched down, and held his shield toward the courtyard, completely blocking himself from the sniper. He pulled the dagger out of his stomach, and while his two stomach gashes were regenerating, he gripped one hand onto his axe hilt to speed the healing, and pressed the other over the wounds to stifle the profuse bleeding. Once they had ceased, he reached into the bag of holding at his belt and pulled a length of rope from it. With both hands, he tied Adonis's feet together. He then tied the other end of the rope around one of the outer guardstones of the wall, and then grabbed and easily lifted the Sunite?s small, rather feminine body. The knotted knight regained consciousness just in time to feel himself getting tossed over the edge of the rampart, and shrieked wildly as he began to fall. He screamed again when he suddenly stopped falling and realized that he was suspended in midair, almost flush with the outside of the keep wall, dangling upside-down with a rope around his feet, and staring at an inverted scene of the coastline stretching south of Candlekeep. Upside-down cows peered down from the grass-and-mud ?ceiling? of his field of vision and mooed curiously.

"I'll be back; just hang around," Onyx quipped and downed another invisibility potion.

Back in the courtyard, Judas now stood on two solid legs, and then loaded and aimed his crossbow up at Onyx just in time to see Adonis get thrown over the rampart and disappear. He fired potshots but didn't hit anything, and he noticed Puritus doing the same from atop the inner rampart behind him. Anomen, too, had gotten to his feet and had silently armed his sling, but then the cavalier vanished from sight again.

"To the ladders, you fools!" Puritus called from atop the inner wall. "He'll have to come back down the ladders!"

Judas and Anomen each began running to the bases of the two ladders that ran up outer wall, one on either side of where Onyx had disappeared. Puritus continued making potshots at the outer rampart with his crossbow; unlike Adonis, he wasn't clever enough to notice the slight rain-silhouette the cavalier was making. In fact, he didn't even notice the strange indentation that suddenly appeared in a stack of hay at the base of the outer wall. Nor did he notice the line of muddy footprints that began forming next to this haystack and grew in a straight line towards the base of the wall that he stood upon. Nor did it occur to him that his shout to Judas and Anomen could have given away to his prey his position behind the guardstones of the inner rampart.

While Anomen and Judas stood near the bases of their respective ladders, and Anomen wiggled his mouth hoping his powers of speech would return so he could cast a detect invisibility or true sight spell, a deva suddenly materialized from nowhere at the base of the inner wall, just below where Puritus had shouted from.

Puritus was still making potshots when a deva suddenly flew up into his field of vision just in front of him. He nearly dropped his crossbow in terror, and when he did shoot it at her, it bounced off an invisible thing or force just in front of her, and then Puritus realized in even greater terror that the deva had her arms clasped as if she had them around the waist of an invisible man. Then she flew over the guardstones and let go, and Puritus could hear a crunch of two heavy boots just in front of him. Onyx materialized out of the air, holding his large shield in front of Puritus's crossbow and beginning a swing with his flail. Puritus immediately countered with the turn-and-run-like-a-coward technique, and the heads of the Flail of Ages raked lightly across the back of his armor. He jumped off the inner edge of the wall and landed in a thick flowerbed, and while the deva swooped down after him, he made a bolt for the front door of the library itself. He heard the flowerbed crunch again as Onyx landed after him, and opened and ran through the doors just as a throwing axe lodged itself in the oakwood where his head and just been.

Judas and Anomen had seen the action on the inner rampart from their positions and began running towards it. When both Puritus and Onyx leaped over the inside of the wall, they headed for the gate leading through the inner wall and to the library. But just as they passed through the gate, the deva swooped down at them. Anomen hit the dirt in terror, but she grabbed Judas by the back. He struggled and waved his crossbow around, but could not aim it at her, and the deva was strong, and he could not break her grasp. She flew him high up and outside the Keep, over the water, and dropped him in.

"HEEELP!!" he shouted as he splashed into the rain-pelted ocean, "I can't swim!!!" he let his crossbow go and tried to dogpaddle, but his full plate wasn't helping at all. "Heeelp!!! I'm gonna drown!!!"

"Try standing up, wayward warrior," the deva sang. Judas stopped struggling and pushed his legs straight down and?planted them in sand, and then stood up with the water barely reaching his armpit. He breathed a huge sigh of relief, his head easily above the water, and took a deep breath while pulling off his waterlogged helmet and brushing his long black hair out of his face.

Anomen helplessly watched the deva fly off with the Tyrran, and then popped up again as they disappeared. He ran after Onyx, who had followed Judas inside the library. Once inside, he heard boots going up the stairs in the center of the library, and continued following while brandishing his mace and shield.

He could hear Onyx yelling "Come back here, coward!" a flight of stairs above him. For the cavalier too was going up and up only to chase the fleeing Puritus.

Onyx couldn't believe how cowardly and stupid this guy he was following him was. His boots echoed crisply off the marble stairs above, and made him quite easy to follow; much easier than say, detouring over a carpeted floor would have been. Furthermore, what was he going to do once he reached the top floor, a dead end? Fly away on a magic carpet?

At last Onyx came to the fifth floor just as he heard Puritus reaching the sixth, whose footsteps then grew quieter as he raced across the carpet of the floor above. Onyx stopped, having heard someone chasing him a floor below; either Judas or Anomen he assumed, but kept stepping in place so that it would sound like his footsteps were continuing up the last flight of stairs.

Anomen balked in surprise when he rounded the stairs onto the landing of the fifth floor, and suddenly Onyx stepped out from behind a bookcase and smashed his huge shield straight into the Helmite with incredibly ramming force, sending him tripping backwards and crashing head-over-heels back down the stairs again.

"Have a nice trip!" Onyx shouted cheerily after him and resumed ascending the stairs.

"MMMPH OOF OWW MMMPF BY HELM OWW MMMPF!" Anomen declared eloquently as he rolled down flight after flight, at last managing to quit rolling as he sprawled out on the first floor landing, his legs still sticking up the last few stairs. He looked up at the ceiling of the first floor, hurting all over, and feeling embarrassed at his flailing and screaming manner on the way down. Then it occurred to him - he'd made sounds! The silence had worn off! Though he ached all over, he began chanting a powerful healing spell on himself, and the bruises under his armor healed, and as he laid sprawled at the foot of the stairs with his legs above his head, invigorated blood poured into his mind.

Onyx had now made it to the sixth, top story and looked around for Puritus. He cast a detect evil, but sensed nothing. Well, I should, he thought to himself. Then he noticed something that made him smile, for at last the rain and mud were working to his advantage. A trail of wet carpet and occasional streaks of mud led away from the stairwell past columns of books. Onyx followed them, strapping his shield to his back and drawing out his fiery longsword Angurvadal with his shield arm.

The tracks reached a corner of the library, and then disappeared. Onyx cursed under his breath. The sniper's boots must have dried off. He rounded the corner and continued on, trying to peer into every possible hiding place and listen carefully for the sounds of running boots. He suspected the cowardly man would try to make it back to the staircase, and he was keeping it in his line of sight. He could?ve stayed at the stairway, and essentially laid siege to his foe, but the morning was getting on and he still wanted to be back at the Inn when Aerie awoke. And he prayed that if Phlydia really was in the library at this hour, this skirmish would bring no harm to her in any crossfire. His plan was to lure the cowardly Helmite to the stairway by leaving it, but be able to beat him there once his foe made the dash.

Then he heard a breath behind him, even though he'd heard no footsteps coming up, and he thought of something. Perhaps the man's trail hadn't disappeared because his boots had dried off, but because that's where the trail ended. Perhaps he hadn't been the only one carrying an invisibility potion today.

His thoughts were confirmed by a sharp pain between his shoulderblades as a bolt sailed into his back. His heart spasmed as the bolt lodged in it and sent a terrible crying pain throughout his chest. He turned to see Puritus standing exactly where the bootprints had disappeared, strapping a crossbow to his waist and drawing a two-handed sword out of a sheath on his back. Onyx tried to lift his armaments, but his pierced heart gave out a terrible shriek and his arms faltered. As Puritus charged with his sword held menacingly, Onyx managed to raise his right arm, spin the flail around over his head, and lash out. The heads snaked around the blade and hilt of the sword and Onyx yanked sideways. As the electricity head crashed into Puritus's wrists and gave him a nasty shock that caused his fingers to spasm, Onyx's yank pulled from his hands the sword, caught in the coils of the other four heads. The greatsword crashed into the bookshelf next to it. Unable to extricate his weapon from the sword and the bookshelf, Onyx let the flail handle go. Wincing with the pain of raising his other arm nearer his heart, he brought Angurvadal up and charged Puritus. The Helmite shrieked and began to jog back while Onyx pursued him. His back smacked into a bookshelf, and as Onyx bore down on him, he began chant in an archaic tongue.

A terrified look came over his face when nothing happened, except that Onyx brought the flaming tip of Angurvadal to his neck and pressed it against the thin chainmail running from his chin to collar between his breastplate and helm. The sword began to heat the metal and sear his throat, and the cavalier applied just enough pressure to make it obvious that he could plunge it straight through the chain and his neck if he wished. Onyx held himself outwardly firm, but really he was losing control fast. The bolt had struck true, stuck right through his heart, which had ceased beating. His muscles were starting to tingle, and soon he would lose his motor skills. With the bolt in his heart, even his natural regeneration, augmented by that of the sheathed axe?s hilt he clasped again with his right hand, would not heal such a mortal would with the bolt still lodged in the way.

Moving only his mouth, Puritus tried to cast his spell again but nothing happened.

"Don't bother," Onyx wheezed emotionlessly, even as blood dribbled from his mouth and his pierced lung made his voice hollow and airy. ?You have lost your powers. Speaking of which?? He reached around between his shoulder blades with his right hand. He placed his palm upon the back of his platemail where blood was gushing forth, and his hand glowed blue for a moment. Onyx smiled as he felt the bolt within him dissolve and the muscle tissue of his heart reconnect and his lung reseal, and the flow of blood dribbling out of his mouth cease. His heart resumed beating, his muscles ceased tingling as proper bloodflow returned to them, and his breathing lost its punctured wheeze.

?Such a simple spell!? Puritus cried in manic at his own failed attempt, seemingly oblivious to the near-miracle Onyx had just performed on himself. ?How could I miscast it twice??

?You know the answer,? Onyx told him, ?You are fallen.?

Puritus went deathly pale. ?That?can?t be! I?m carrying out the will of the Order!?

?The Order knightsmen and women - and, sadly, only certain lineages, to date. It does not make them paladins.?

?Ah?but I am also carrying out the wills of Helm and Torm!?

?The will of Helm? Perhaps. The will of Torm? No, as we can see.?

?It?s not fair! I was merely following orders!?

?A paladin does not surrender his own judgment.?

?But?.? Puritus then made several gurgling noises in his feeble attempts to make a retort. ?How was I to know??

?Firstly, you didn?t even try to know. Did you ask my side before attacking me? No. Did you find out whether I had fallen, as you were probably led to believe or wrongly inferred I must have? No. You know what happens when a paladin attacks a paladin. Either you failed to find out the truth of my deeds, or you inferred incorrectly that they were unjust.?

?I was deceived!?

?Aye, but you also let yourself be deceived.?

?But?your deeds are unjust!?

?Unconventional? Yes ? for a paladin, at least. Unpopular? Apparently, at least within certain circles. Unjust? Please, tell me how.?

?You have disobeyed the Order.?

?The Order does not decide justice. Human decisions are subjective, justice is not; the rules and laws of men cannot change it.?

?You use vampiric weapons.?

?And how is that unjust? I use them only upon evildoers. Torm explicitly allows his priests to control undead ? yes, I know, Helm does not ? holding a vampiric sword is no worse than controlling a vampire. How could it be unjust to drain the life of an evildoer, whom it is just to kill outright??

?Blackrazor may shatter their soul forever.?

?A damned soul is forfeit in the same manner as an evil life; in that it may be ended if necessary to curtail the evil it does. All else equal, I?d not wish the loss of the soul, and with it loss of any chance for redemption in the afterlife, but can that be put ahead of an innocent life or soul??

?You have tortured for information.?

?My response is the same. An evildoer, by their actions, forfeits their otherwise inalienable rights of life and liberty. Though such practices may be grisly, undesirable, and abhorrent; the course of action that is unjust is putting the interests of the evildoer above the rights of the innocent.?

?You have associated with an evil drow Sharite.?

?You speak of miss deVir? She did no evil while in my company. She was redeemable, and though I know not her recent whereabouts, if she has not yet been burned at the stake by yahoos like yourself, I imagine she is redeemable still. We can detect evil, but are not always charged to destroy it on sight. There are other ways of overcoming it. Paladins fight with words as well as swords. To convert an evil foe to good, like to wield an evil weapon for good, is to do twice the good of destroying it, for its power is then reversed. Not to mention the benefit to the former evildoer herself.?

?Your justice is not righteous. Your logic is wrong.?

?There is only one justice. There is only logic. I am not infallible, but here I am right. If you cannot see it, it is your loss. I need not justify myself to you theologically, for as we can see, Torm knows I am in the right, nor need I justify myself to you in your flawed perception, for it is I who have you at swordpoint.?

?You mean to kill me then? I knew it! I KNEW IT!? Puritus shrieked without regard for dignity, and Onyx noticed a small, warm puddle had appeared on the inside of one of his boots.

?No,? Onyx stated calmly, ?I merely restrain you for my own safety. It is you who brought the Law of the Sword to bear this day, and I think we both know the alignment of that ethos.?

Puritus continued to babble in panic. ?I knew you were a killer! A Bhaalspawn!?

?Not for a tenday now, actually. But that, too, is not a crime, it is not unjust. Despite the Order?s racist entry requirements, lineage and creed are separable. Even the essence of Bhaal, while I still had it, was always under my control. Though parentage does seem to play a part in personality, it merely influences, not controls; like a stream with a current that is never too fast to swim against if one tries. Ultimately, it is an individual?s responsibility and power to make choices. All is at the discretion of the individual.?

?But you mean to kill me, don?t you, killer??

?No, I do not, though it would be justified. I am merely going to confiscate your weapons, as you have behaved as an assassin and I cannot trust you.? Onyx lifted his free right hand from the hilt of the Axe of the Unyielding, and grabbed the hilt of the bastard sword at Puritus?s belt. ?This one?s a holy avenger ? you won?t need it now anyway,? the cavalier chuckled.

The Helmite paladin?s hands reflexively flinched forward for his weapon, but ceased again when the cavalier pressed the tip of his flaming longsword closer against his neck. Onyx drew the bastard sword out of its sheath and then slid it into his bag of holding after deftly opening it with two fingers. Onyx then unhooked the crossbow from the man?s belt and placed it away too.

?As I am no thief ? although the customs of spoils would make these mine if I wished,? Onyx continued, ?I will return your armaments to the Order when next I am there. If they do not expel you, or if the weapons are your own property and they actually honor that,? he said with acidity directed not at Puritus, ?I am sure they will return them. Otherwise, I?m sure they will put them in the hands of someone more capable, both morally and tactically.? Puritus let out a bratty whimper but said nothing coherent. ?Keep your shield, armor, and quiver. I have left your friends alive and still armed; they can protect you on your journey back.?

Onyx withdrew Angurvadal from the paladin?s throat and turned to walk back along the aisle of bookshelves. He untangled the Flail of Ages and Puritus?s two-handed sword from where they were lodged in a bookshelf, and put them in his bag. Then, seeming more bored than relieved (in fact it was his recent loss of circulation which, in his sleep deprived state, had left him quite lightheaded), he continued pacing down the aisle to the other wall of the floor, where he gazed out an east-facing window and looked inland, through the dim light of the overcast, rainy morning, the sun just beginning to peak out. He took off his helmet, laid it on a table next to the window, and leaned over the windowsill.

?You know,? he told Puritus as he barely heard the man walking up the aisle behind him, ?Out this window, over those hills, stretches Faerun, and further on Kara-Tur. I knew a man from there. A conflicted man, but I believe he could have been a good man. He was not given the chance to be redeemed in life, only in death. Fare the well, Yoshimo, and I pray Ilmater has had mercy upon thy soul.?

He paused in thought and then continued. ?Imoen and I used to play in this library. The old monks forbade that, of course, so we tried to stay quiet. We would play at adventurers, beginning on the ground floor, and working our way up. The ?monsters? of course, came either entirely out of our imagination, or were represented by the monks whom we had to sneak past. Imoen always did love sneaking??

While Onyx continued rambling, he leaned his head leaning out the window and listened to the crashes of the waves. He was hunched forward over the windowsill, and his shoulders blocked his ears from the inside of the floor of the library, and thus the sounds of Puritus drawing a dagger from within his own gauntlet and tiptoeing up behind him were quite muffled. Then a loud running noise came from the marble stairwell, and Puritus winced in terror, but as if by some great mercy the cavalier did not turn around. ?Ah, Anomen is here to join us,? Onyx said, without turning from the window, ?How nice.?

The Helmite heard him, and came walking towards their corner of the library, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Puritus standing just behind Onyx with a dagger drawn, holding it high in a reverse grip, clearly meaning to plunge it into the back of the cavalier?s bare neck.

?Dear Sir Delryn,? Onyx began calmly without looking into the room, ?I was just explaining to my fallen paladin friend here the error of your mission. You see??

?ONYX WATCH OUT!!!!!? Anomen screamed as Puritus lunged.

Onyx reacted to the warning almost too quickly. He sunk into a kneel, his arms and chin pulling back fluidly and moving just over and down past the windowsill as Puritus fell high and forward upon him. The neck-stabbing fallen paladin reacted too slowly, and his legs smashed into Onyx?s crouched form while he was still bringing his upper body forward and down for the stab, turning his linear momentum into an angular head-over-heels trajectory.

Carried forward by the weight of his armored torso and arms, particularly his right arm outstretched forward, Puritus flipped over Onyx, who bowed his head forward to let the man?s waist roll smoothly over his broad shoulders, and his stomach landed on the windowsill and slid along it, carried by his momentum. As Puritus?s upper body flew out the window, he dropped his dagger at the sight of the ground six long stories below and began to shriek and flail wildly. He made the grave error of bending his knees and waving his hands forward, causing his center of gravity to move ever-so-slightly over the edge of the windowsill. Like a perfect lever, set on the windowsill against his rigid lower chestplate, he tipped forward and began to slide further out the window. The metal of his armor grated across the stone, then that of his leggings, and finally he went hurtling out of the sixth floor into the empty air.

Onyx mused, ?Death comes??

Puritus fell past the fifth floor, flailing like a dancing puppet.

??to us all??

Puritus dropped past the fourth floor, crying like a terrified child.

??But to you??

Puritus sailed past the third floor, babbling like a lunatic.

?..it comes??

Puritus hurtled past the second floor, quivering like a dying bird.

??without??

Puritus plummeted past the first floor, silent and still as stone.

??honor.?

He landed headfirst with a sickening and deafening crash of bones and metal upon the patio stones just outside the library doors, his rigid helmet and torso parting at his neck, the weakest point of stress relief. So too with his other joints, and his body was dashed to large chunks as it sank into the stones, metal plates cutting through flesh, and his head and limbs went flying into nearby patches of colorfully and carefully arranged flowers.

Onyx and Anomen now stood by adjacent windows and looked down at the wreckage below. A monk was carefully walking up to inspect it, hiking up the skirt of his robe above the bloodied grass. The rain was still falling, washing the trickling blood along the cracks between the cobblestones into the grass rather than allowing it to pool.

?Why did you warn me?? Onyx asked Anomen, turning to him, while putting his helmet into his bag of holding.

The Helmite bit his lip. ?Because he attacked unchivalrously. Because he was fallen. Because you spared my life. Because you deserved a trial. Because your actions did not merit death. Because they may not be unjust at all. I don?t know, Onyx, I?m confused, and I don?t know. I don?t know what Helm wanted me to do. I don?t know what the Order wanted me to do. I don?t know what was right to do.?

?But it sounds like you are beginning to understand that those three are not always the same.?

?The Order may not always be right, I suppose. Please don?t ? ?

?Don?t worry, you know I of all people won?t say anything to them. Speak freely.?

?Okay. As for Helm, well,??

?You don?t want to blaspheme him, I understand.?

Anomen bit his lip again and nodded silently. Onyx placed his left gauntlet upon the priest?s right shoulder forgivingly and spoke. ?I am sure he looks approvingly upon you today. I believe that if the gods wished for their servants to be unthinking, they would use golems, not men. We have free will. No matter our laws, rules, order, and edicts, there is always a place for judgment calls and individual thinking. Good and truth may be absolute, but that does not necessarily make any particular being infallible. Not even a deity. After all, are they really so different from us? As Elminster says, gods may become mortals, and mortals may become gods??

??Such is life in the Realms.? Anomen finished and Onyx smiled.

Just then the pitter-patter of three light pairs of feet and two heavier pairs could be heard ascending the stairs. Onyx grinned broadly. ?And I should know. Such has been my life. But it is now a mortal life. But life?? he touched his right hand to Aerie?s handkerchief, tied around his left arm, ??goes on.?

Three young women in mage robes and elven chain appeared from around a bookshelf, followed by a dreadlocked man and a bald one. Aerie and Imoen rushed to Onyx?s sides and hugged him, and he wrapped his arms around them; and Minsc laughed and strode over to Anomen and nearly crushed him in a bear hug, and Nalia and Valygar held back and wrapped their arms around each other?s waists, and looked at Onyx, who stood tall above his sister and lover in front of the window, the rays of the sunrise coming through the window, as the rain ceased and the clouds parted outside, filling in around him and creating a glowing golden-white halo around the beaming knight.

21. The Beginning is the End

16 FLAMERULE 1600
ATHKATLA ? JANSEN RESIDENCE

?Come in, 007, come in.?

Jan Jansen was sitting hunched over a little stool, staring at a desk, on which sat a crystal ball, mounted on a metal pedestal with many buttons that the gnome was pushing rapidly as he spoke. Behind him stood a white-haired knight, arms crossed impatiently.

?Why isn?t he responding, Q?? the elderly armored man grumbled. ?He?s right there, isn?t he??

?Well yeah, I?ve got my wizard eye right on him. But, eh, well, you know Keldie,? Jan chuckled, waving his stubby arms around, ?He?s eh?busy.?

?By the tonsils of Torm!? Keldorn exclaimed. ?He should have been back days ago! Let me see that.?

Keldorn stooped down over the desk and looked at the crystal ball; and couldn?t help noticing that the pedestal had ?J.S.M.: Jansen Scrying Machines? engraved along the side. The inquisitor peered into the ball itself, and his goateed jaw nearly hit the desk.

The image was of some sort of luxurious inn room, and focused on a bed, out of which a gaggle of limbs were sticking haphazardly in every direction; some thicker, tanned ones, and some thinner, paler ones with purple nails.

Keldorn hastily looked away from the crystal ball as his scarred cheeks reddened, but Jan laughed, ?Dontcha worry, big guy. Ain?t checkin? in on 007 your duty or somethin???

The aged inquisitor sighed uneasily. ?Q, why do I get the feeling that your little ?J.S.M.? device has seen this sort of thing before??

The gnome chuckled, ?Well, you see, it all started back when my great-uncles Billygoats Jansen and Hugo Hefsen got together. ?Bill? had this scrying invention called Wizard Windows for the World Wide Weave, and ?Hugh? had this illustrated circular called Playgnome, and so they formed a joint entrepreneurial venture to??

?Eh, I think I get the gist,? Keldorn hooked a long index finger in his armor collar nervously.

?Hey look, Keldo!? Jan pointed a hairy finger at the ball.

A smugly grinning female face with long purple hair popped up from underneath the white sheets. The woman exhaled contentedly, giggled, and then looked around. She spotted and grabbed a martini glass, but before she?d gotten it to her purple lips, her eyes flicked around, and then stopped, looking straight back out of the crystal ball.

?Jarek?.what is that?? she seemed to point right out of the crystal ball at Keldorn, who blushed further, and Jan, who bit his fingernails anxiously.

?Huh?? Jarek poked his head up from beneath the sheets. ?Why, Bucki dear, that?s just a wizard eye??.wizard eye!? Jarek followed her gaze right out of the ball. ?Bloody hell! Can?t you chaps see I?m still busy wrapping up the mission??

Jan chuckled and elbowed Keldorn lightly in the ribs, ?Looks more like he?s unwrapped it to me!?

The inquisitor slapped his own forehead and groaned. ?You?re even worse that 007, Q.?

In the image, Jarek continued, ?Don?t worry Bucki, I can fix this?let me just get my rod here??

?By all means, Mr. Bond! By all means,? Bucki arched an eyebrow seductively and grinned.

Jarek reached under the sheets and pulled out some sort of wand, then pointed it straight at Jan, who screeched, ?Aiee! It?s a rod of dispelling!?

The staff flashed in Jarek?s hand, and then the crystal ball went dark.

A second later the ball flashed the text message, ?WARNING: DISPEL MAGIC DETECTED, SPELL_IMMUNITY_ABJURATION NOT FOUND. THIS CANTRIP HAS BEEN DISPELLED AND MUST BE RECAST.?

?Aieee!! It crashed again!? Jan yelped. ?Curse you, Billygoats, may your turnips ever rot!? He started frantically mashing buttons on the pedestal, to no avail.

Keldorn merely chuckled, ?Over and out, 007. See you next mission.?

**********

17 FLAMERULE 1800
ATHKATLA ? THE RADIANT HEART

"You WHAT!?!?!?!?!" echoed throughout the main floor of the Radiant Heart.

"You heard what Sir Delryn said, Puritus," Keldorn Firecam spoke up, and Anomen breathed a sigh of relief. "It would seem that Torm's will was made perfectly clear in this matter, if your son and his mates are fallen."

"My son isn't fallen, he's DEAD!" screamed Sir Puritus Pontius Pilatus IV, High Watcher and Priest of Helm and Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart, his fat face turning beet red and veins becoming visible on his balding scalp.

"By his own doing, it would seem, not even by Onyx's blade," the aged inquisitor replied calmly. "We mourn his loss, but the blame lies squarely on his own head. "

Anomen spoke up, "I regret it too, as did Onyx. Judas and Adonis, whom he spared, do still live."

A new wave of anger washed over Puritus's face. "Then why haven't Sir Iscarias and Sir Narcissus reported back too, Delryn?" he demanded.

The younger Helmite politely answered, "We spoke with them after the skirmish. Onyx was quite kind and amicable, and he forgave and befriended them. They took his advice to go on a long journey and quest of atonement; east towards Rasheman I think. Onyx mentioned something about a 'reverse-dejemma' I didn't quite get. It will be a long time before we see them again, I think, but if and when they return I'm sure it will be in their gods? favor."

Keldorn nodded approvingly. "And maybe sporting purple tattoos on their foreheads," he chuckled, scratching his neatly trimmed snowy goatee.

Puritus grew livid and turned towards the inquisitor. "How can you laugh at a time like this? Just because you have the rank and station of a knight half your age doesn't give you leave to go flaunting my authority! Watch it, or I'll demote you to a rank befitting a knight a third your age!"

Keldorn bit his lip and looked down, but Anomen spoke up. "Speaking of rules and ranks, Sir Pilatus, Onyx asked me to read you a message." The priest took an envelope out of a belt-pouch, opened it, and pulled out and unfolded a letter. "ahem..."

"Sir Puritus Pontius Pilatus:

Greetings, it is Sir Onyx (or perhaps just 'Onyx' now?). If you're hearing this, then thank Anomen for me for delivering it, and I assume he's already told you how your little 'arrest' (or perhaps 'ambush and assassination attempt' would be more apt?) turned out.

First, you have my condolences on the loss of your son. He did quite literally earn his own death, but he didn't deserve it, and you do not deserve the loss of your only child. He fell six stories after missing his mark (my spine) in a backstabbing lunge, and I'd have resurrected him myself, but as the saying goes, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put him back together again.

Second, Judas Iscarias and Adonis Narcissus, on the other hand, are fallen but alive and well, and currently embarking on a journey, spiritually towards enlightenment and geographically towards Rasheman. My close friend and ally Minsc, a ranger and Rashemani native, has prepared them well for their dejemma with maps and lore. I'm sure they will emerge reborn as truer paladins than ever they were, though whether we see them again, and whether they end up as heroes of Amn or of Rasheman, only time will tell.

Third, despite the 'failure' of his mission, Anomen Delryn should be if anything commended, for strength and skill both martial and moral. I realize that you won't value my opinion, and that it's not from a senior Order member (or perhaps you've bothered with the committees and paperwork to declare me not one at all), but the fact remains true.

Fourth, speaking of ranks and membership and such, while we couldn't reassemble your son, I did find some interesting documents upon his person (well, upon his left forearm anyway; up the same sleeve as his dagger) that seemed to pertain to your personal finances, and the Order's. Funny thing is, I had a lot of trouble figuring out which were which, as there was alot of crossover. Now, I'm no accountant, but I'm pretty sure that Order funds don't cover 500 GP armor polishing and therapeutic chiropractory at the Copper Coronet. Nor would I expect such pricing at the Coronet, although I seem to recall hearing that said establishment offers certain other services for about those fees. There?s also the ?equipment? purchased from vendors I had thought only sold jewelry (I suspect these expenses are related to the last ones?), and a few other curious items in the same vein in these. I figured the Order brass would have more use for these than myself, so I sent them back south with Anomen, who should have delivered the papers to Keldorn Firecam before reading you this (and just in case they don?t survive the journey, my fiancé has made magical copies that I?ll bring next time I?m in town).

Fifth, and speaking of me being in town, I will be soon, and am prepared to face a hearing if the brass requests it. But I?m not coming now, and when I do am prepared to sue that your previous order was illegal and unjust; as (1) the charges against me merit no more than expulsion by precedent, for which an arrest need not (and cannot) be made, (2) multiple senior officials must approve such an order; and Keldorn?s, being under your duress as Anomen will testify, is void, (3) Above point voids your authority as well.

Sixth, I have other duties, to my true love, that are long overdue. With all due respect, Sir Puritus IV, I know enough about your field experience, or lack thereof, to know that you have no idea what I?ve been through, or put her through, and right now betraying my promises and duty to her would be far more of a dishonor than disobeying you, which in light of above is no dishonor at all.

Seventh, Sir Puritus IV, fuck you and the warhorse you never rode in on.

That about sums it up. Have a nice day. J

-Onyx?

A stony silence fell over the room after Anomen finished reading.

?Sir Delryn did indeed deliver said papers,? Keldorn told Puritus, nodding towards the young knight, ?And I have already handed them over to the Order brass.?

Puritus was the color of blood. ?You?.lies! Lies and outrage!? he shrieked in terror. ?The cavalier outlaw is doing this to distract from his own wrongdoings and undermine the credibility of those seeking to bring him to justice.?

?A convenient confluence of motives on the lad?s part, perhaps,? the old knight admitted, ?But given such documents, I suspect he?d be interesting in bringing you to justice regardless.?

?They are forgeries and lies!? Puritus stood and screamed, his spittle raining upon the other two?s faces and getting caught in their black and white goatees, ?He had his foul witch conjure them from thin air! Why, he practically admitted it in the letter!?

The old inquisitor sighed, wiping the spit off his face. ?I?ve seen and investigated enough deceitful magery in my time to know that copying a document is a pale shadow of the skill required to outright conjure an original one, especially bearing the signature and handwriting of someone ? you ? which he wouldn?t know.?

?He?altered them, obviously!? the elder Helmite cried, his eyes flashing about desperately. ?His little sorceress doctored them!?

?My eyes saw no such traces, magical or practical,? Keldorn replied calmly, ?As we speak, the other senior inquisitors are confirming my forensics.?

?And I?m sure they will find that the invoices are legitimate nonetheless!? Puritus babbled eagerly.

?Odd that you would claim both that they false, and that they are legitimate,? Keldorn scratched his bearded chin with mock thoughtfulness. ?For if they are false, then you have never seen them and could not possibly know such a thing.?

Puritus began to sputter and stammer, but before he got out a coherent word, heavy footsteps sounded outside the closed door of the office, and then heavy knocks sounded upon it. Anomen took the liberty of opening the door, to find two burly and heavily armored paladins in the hallway.

?Sir Puritus Pontius Pilatus IV,? one stated gruffly, staring across the office at the fat priest, ?come with us, please.?

?Well now, Anomen,? Keldorn chuckled to the younger Helmite as the elder one was led away, ?I?ll bet you never expected your first mission as a full Order knight would turn out quite like that.?

?Not in my wildest dreams, sir,? the priest sighed with the relief of someone who has just finished a long race, as he and the inquisitor left the office.

?In your career,? Keldorn began as they strode across the main hall of the Order, ?I think you will find what I have: that things often are not what they first seem; you?ll find friends where you expect enemies and enemies where you expect friends, and dangers are to be found on both sides of the line, and the ability to see clearly is oft more important than that to strike true.?

?I understand its importance, but still it proves difficult at times,? Anomen sighed as he followed Keldorn into his office.

?I thought I had it pretty much all figured out,? Keldorn admitted as he sat down behind his desk and gestured for the Helmite to take a seat, ?But things are weighing upon my mind now, and this issue is far from resolved. Even if the arrest were to be found wrongful, Onyx couldn?t have known that when he resisted; and I think technically remains insubordinate.?

Anomen glanced at the ceiling and scratched his goatee before answering, ?Well, his first point on that issue he could have deduced on the fly, and he did flatly say before the skirmish that he suspected the other two, based on the first.?

?Suspicion does not merit disobedience,? Keldorn replied calmly, ?And reasoning from just precedent is not his place; the exact guidelines on arrests will have to be looked at. Whichever side of the fine line the coin falls on though, I can?t say I like his attitude. And that letter? He has demonstrated to me once again that he is brash and arrogant, and this time I can?t put the blame on his sire?s taint. I image some form of censure will be in order, but hopefully he will learn something from it, and I mean to tell him a few things myself. There are a few things the lad is overlooking, I think.?

?Firstly, there is great value in obeying conventions, even if they may seem slightly hamhanded for the situation. It is a way of acknowledging limitations of one?s own judgment and trusting in that of others, which is the entire reason we?re here. If he ? or you - ran solely on his mere 21 years of experience and heeded not the Order, whose live members have hundreds of combined years of experience, and whose rules are based on thousands, his decision making will be the less for it.?

?Secondly, it makes him unpredictable, and how can the Order possible wage battles effectively if its operatives behave like that? It?s as if each of your arms decided for itself what best to do; you?d never get anything done!?

?Third, there is the epidemic and escalation issue. Cavalier behavior on his part might encourage it in other recruits; and worse still, his underhanded field tactics might, if more public, encourage our enemies to fight dirtier themselves. And is anyone better off then? It?s true, Anomen, that we seem to fight with one hand tied behind our back sometimes, but that is part of what we?re fighting for; lest we descend to the level of what we claim to oppose.?

?But he did win the fight, and I?d hate to think of what might have happened if the Chaos Circus and the Jeweler?s slaving cartel had remained intact. Nay, on second thought, I know ? the slaving would have continued, as it did while we and the Harpers tried for years to nail the Jeweler. Soon the expansion-hungry Zhentarim will grow to fill the slave-market void, and the battle will rage on, but the circus?s captives are free and some untold number will have been spared the horrors of enslavement thanks to your actions, Anomen, and that of Onyx and the rest. There?s a certain irony ? his attitude and decision-making seem selfish, in a way, and yet his actions have been quite altruistic ? doing what he did to find and fight the Jeweler nearly cost him his life at the Order?s very hands, not to mention the Jeweler?s, and may yet cost him, all for the freedom of people he?s never met. But as good as his intentions may have been, we all know what the road to the hells is paved with, as there will yet be a reckoning ? but hopefully a peaceful one this time, which he will learn from.?

?But I?ve talked your ear off enough for one afternoon, my lad. Let?s call it a day. And what a day it was! Good work, Anomen, and thanks for listening to an old proselytizer.? With that he get up from the desk and began to walk with Anomen out of his office.

?Thank you, sir,? Anomen smiled as they strode out the great front doors of the Order, ?Words any mentor or father would be wise to give.?

?Yes,? Keldorn agreed, with a distant look in your eye, as they stood upon the bridges of the temple district. ?The sort of words I suspect your father never gave you,? he young priest?s sad gaze answered his question, ?And the sort of words I have neglected to give my own wife and son. If you?ll excuse me, Sir Delryn, the day wanes, and tonight Onyx shan?t be the only one spending time with loved ones.?

Anomen smiled as Keldorn turned towards his home, and looked out, wondering where he should go, to what family. To the unkempt house of his drunkard father? No. To the lonely grave of his slain sister? No. He began to trudge along, through the darkness and the rain. He soon came by the Temple of Helm, and thinking to go in and pray, turned towards the doors. Before he could take a step off the main path, the bright glint of the Temple of Lathander, even in the darkness and out of the corner of his eye, caught his attention and he turned idly. His attention was then turned to the voices of four figures up ahead. Mere silhouettes they were in the darkness, but each tall and feminine.

?Like, omigod, that was totally the thing to do! I feel like, soooo refreshed!? laughed one of the shadows.

?Right on, Buffy, I haven?t felt so good in ages. I?m glad they could get rid of my purple hair dye!? a second laughed sheepishly.

?Oh, of course, little sister!? sang a third woman, ?As well as the Temple of Lathander can cleanse the soul, the Morninglord?s Spa can the body!? The others giggled, but Anomen thought he recognized this voice, warm and musical. Dawn-whats-her-name from the chapel in Nashkel, Anomen realized, that friend of Father Optus?s. ?Even you must feel at ease now, my quiet elf-friend.?

?I suppose so, Dawn,? sighed the fourth voice, and Anomen?s heart nearly leapt into his throat as the voice of Arra Flyte filled his ears. ?Thanks gals. I haven?t had this much fun in a long time.?

?Anytime,? laughed the voice of Dawn. ?Now, girls, back to my place for drinks and dinner??

?Thanks again,? sighed the elven voice, ?But I?really should be getting back to the Harpers.?

?Let us accompany you to the docks then, Arra,? Dawn insisted, ??Tis a dangerous place, even for one as streetwise as you.?

?Aw, thanks, but I?ll be fine,? Arra sighed. One of the four figures separated from the rest, coming towards Anomen even as the other three turned away.

The Helmite felt within himself mixed urges to run toward her and flee away, and before he knew it the figure was near him.

?Lady Arra! Lady Arra!? he called out, unable to think of anything better to say.

?Who wants to kn- Anomen?? the elf asked in disbelief, peaking out from under her green hood.

?Yes! It is I!? he answered. ?It?s?good to see you again.?

?And y-?no! You deserter! What are you doing here? Guarding the temples from the raindrops?? she asked acidly.

?I was just coming from the Order after ? well, it?s a long story, as I?m sure yours is ? but ? well, shouldn?t we get out of the rain first? I haven?t supped yet; you?? Anomen rambled, unable to compose himself better.

?No so fast, Helmite,? the elven Harper hissed, drawing back into her hood, ?You?? she leaned toward him, and his heart leapt briefly, ??.JERK!!!!? his heart fell again as she slapped him hard across the face, with the might of the great warrior that she was, and the knight barely kept his feet. ?You just left me! And the mission! And you called me a?a witch! No one calls me a witch!?

?Arra, I?? already shaken from his slap, Anomen dropped to one knee and wrung his hands up at her. ?I want to apologize. I told you in Beregost I?d have nothing more to do with you until you saw the light, but?.it is I who needed the enlightenment. I?m truly sorry, and I hope but do not expect that you can forgive me. I crossed paths again with some of the others in Candlekeep and ? ah, there is so much to tell.?

Arra sighed and peeked out from under her hood again. ?Well,? she began with a softer voice, ?I suppose, as a tactical matter at least, we should exchange accounts; after all this entire mission was a joint operation between the Harpers and the Order.? And I have already seen one agent and knight, nearly brought together by this mission, push themselves apart again?.well now, miss Arra Flyte 006, is that what you want to do with yourself now here? Or is there good reason the druid and her cavalier weren?t meant to be together? Is that where the story ends? No, this is my story now, and that?s the beginning.

?And, knight,? she spoke aloud again, ?You could truly apologize by proving to me that your company can be bearable again,? she laughed teasingly and reached out a hand.

The kneeling knight lightly took and kissed it as he rose to his feet. ?Well, pleasant even,? she giggled in spite of herself, taking the man?s arm as he offered it.

?Come then, my lady,? Anomen smiled broadly, making a moderately successful attempt to suppress the true extent of his grin, ?Let us to elsewhere; you are cold and wet.?

Wet, yes; cold, no, she thought as she looked up into the rain, and leaned snugly against him as they walked away arm in arm.

**********

17 FLAMERULE 1900
CANDLEKEEP

"Might I join you in watching a sunset so beautiful, milady?"

Nalia de'Arnise spun around in a moment of shock, the voice right behind her even though she'd heard no one approach. Her back now to the westward windows of Candlekeep library's sixth floor, her look of shock melted to one of glee as she saw it was Valygar Corthala who had approached so silently behind her.

"Forgive me, Nalia," he cracked a smile, "I did not mean to surprise you. Walking quietly becomes a habit, as I suppose you know."

"Yes, but a pleasant surprise is a welcome one," she giggled, looking up into his dark eyes. "Please do join me."

The stalker nodded, and walked up beside her, and she turned again to join him in looking out to sea, into which the sun now dipped. "It is good to have the mission over and done," he said, "And to once again see you, and Imoen and Aerie," he added hastily and averted his eyes.

"Likewise," the mage smiled, "To see you; and Onyx and Minsc. What of Jaheira?"

"She...went her on way," Valygar sighed, "To where, we do not know."

"That?s...well enough, but I'm glad the rest of you are back," Nalia smiled up at him, "I was worried. I should have gone with you. We all should have?"

"All's well that ends well, but your company would have been desirable," he nodded while looking out to sea. ?With your power and all.?

"Oh, so Valygar Corthala is warming up to having mages about, is he?" Nalia teased him.

The stalker smiled sheepishly, and were his skin any lighter, his blush would have been apparent. "I...think that you - and your friends - have softened my regard for magic," he flashed a pearly grin down at her, and as he took a deep breath a look that showed both calm and vigor crossed his face. "Well, not softened....heh, warmed?" Nalia bit her tongue to suppress a smile as she realized he must have just inhaled the perfume she and Aerie had concocted - which just happened to be laced with an enchantment or two.

"I regret the separation for your sake too, Nalia," Valygar continued at length, "In light of the attempt on your life. I'm so glad you're okay, and I apologize that the rest of us weren't there."

"If I'd come with you, it would have been averted," Nalia frowned pensively. "Well, all's well that end's well, right?"

"The assassins would have been awaiting your return, I'm sure," Valygar looked crossly out to sea, his thumb and forefinger pressed as if around a drawn arrow. "And there may yet be more."

"I have worried about this," Nalia stared downwards unhappily, then up to the stalker with a look of hope. "It's nice the way Aerie has her own bodyguard and all."

Valygar looked down at her with a serious but compassionate gaze, and nodded with understanding. "I imagine we both suspect the source of this lies in Athkatla, and the peril will be greater when we return. If you would have it, I shall be your sworn protector, and the Sphere your stronghold as well as mine."

Nalia's face lit up before being creased again with concern. "Thank you so much, Val! But...you are still yourself a hunted man in the City of Coin, and I will understand if you do not wish to linger there. But if you will be my bodyguard, I too shall be yours, and help you clear your name, as a priority before my estate, or politics."

"The Cowled Wizards and the Council of Six both are in need of much reform," Valygar looked down at her caringly, "And I suspect before the end of things, we shall find our pursuits entwined."

He lay a hand upon the windowsill, millimeters from hers, and she agreed, "Entwined...yes, we shall."

**********

The other end of the sixth floor of the library was dead quiet, except for some furtive sighing and kissing sounds coming from a dark corner.

"Hee hee!" giggled a soft soprano voice. "Looks like our perfume is doing the trick!"

"Oh yeah!" chuckled a baritone counterpart in between miscellaneous noises. "Not that it's necess- wait, 'our'? Uh, I'm not wearing any!"

"Well, you practically are now! But I meant Nalia and I invented it."

"Ahhhh...so that's why it's so nice. I would almost swear it were magical!"

"Oh, it is, my love, we engineered it to work despite your charm-immunity; as well as Val?s??

??That?s just his armor??

??Which I'd suspect, unfortunately, he for one is still wearing. Now you, my dear, on the other hand....mmmm, you should have been a kensai!"

"Heh! I don't suppose I could convince you to start wearing tighter robes?"

"I would, but what robes? You already took care of those!"

?Ah, yes?.well now I?ll TAKE CARE OF YOU!! HA HA.?

?Ooooooo! I?m?I?m so happy, my love! I feel like I?m going to burst.?

?Me too?.heh heh?.?

?Oh!?..My true love, I don?t want to ever worry about you again, or you about me, promise me we?ll always be together.?

?Of course, my love. ?Til death do?.?

?No! Don?t say that. I know what you?re thinking, my love, but Im and Nal and I aren?t going to let that happen. Just promise me. Please.?

?I love you, Aerie. Forever.?

**********

Meanwhile, through the ceiling and on the roof above, Minsc sat on the stones of the top spire, with Imoen cradled cozily in his arms and lap, and two large hamsters and a half-dozen baby ones in her lap.

?Ya know, Minscy, I used to love to come up here,? Imoen looked longingly out the sea, into which the sun had set out of a clear sky. ?I guess cuz no one else did ? or could! This was my secret place to sneak up to.?

?Who would have guessed that mighty Minsc would be able to get up here!?Unless of course, evil were up here, and Minsc needed very badly to kick its butt back down six stories??

?Well, Minscy, I kinda helped you with a little telekinesis.?

?Ooh! Imoen is very clever, isn?t she Boo??

?Heya, thanks. Ya know, I?m really glad I have ya to talk to. Somehow, it?s so nice that Onyx and I are finally back, but?it?s just not the same.?

?Have no fear, Imoen! Onyx will spend more time with his sister very soon, Minsc will see to that! He will kick your brother over to you with his great boot, and Boo will hop into his armor and nibble until he sits down with Immy and hugs her many times and?.?

?Hee hee! Thanks, Minsc, but it?s okay. It?s more just that?well, I?m just not the same girl I once was?the one you yourself once knew?I got back my life, and my soul, but my innocence is gone forever.?

?Poor Imoen, yes, Minsc has seen this and it makes him very sad that there are such evil men that they would hurt such a sweet girl?but if Minsc had never lost his innocence, we would never have become such great stompers and biters of evil, would be Boo?? A valiant squeak answered from the ranger?s pocket.

?That?s the weird thing, and that?s the nature of why you can never get it back I think,? Imoen sighed, and snuggled into Minsc?s shoulder, ?Because even if I could, would I want to??

*********

Back down on the fifth floor of the library, in a cozy office stuffed with books, sat at a desk a young woman, adorned in the priestly vestments of Oghma, looking beautiful but sad. She had cleared her usually-cluttered desk of all save a few old pieces of paper; each a letter, addressed to her, and written in large, boyish, and nearly illegible handwriting, each beginning with some variation of "dear Phlydia," "dearest Phyldia," "beloved Phyldia," and ending with some variation of "Love, Onyx," "Yours, Onyx," "Always, Onyx."

Always indeed, she thought, and her mind wandered.

"Here Phlyd! 'The History of Halruaa,' wasn't this one of yours?"

"Oh thank you! I'll try not to lose it yet again, hee hee! *peck*."

"No trouble at all, lovely Phyldia."

"Quit it! You're making me blush. Won't you stay awhile? I was just reading 'The Dead Three' - it's about how Bane, Myrkul, and Bhaal came to power, and how they eventually died and - well, I was just reading it here behind the haystacks and you could join me, I loving reading to you and..."

"Aw, c'mon Phlyd, what relevance could old history and dead gods possibly have to us here and now!"

"Well, we don't have to read, you know..."

"I'd - *smooch* - love to join you, but Gorion has summoned me. Sorry."

"What? But you already did all your chores! And even my very own knight in shining armor has to take a break from training at least one day a week!"

"It's...not that. I didn't just come by just to return your book. Imoen seemed to know what old Gorion was up to and...well, I think he wants me to leave."

"Leave! It's your day off! Are the summer kobold-sightings beginning already?"

"No, no, I think he wants me to leave Candlekeep. And I don't know for how long."

"WHAT!?"

"I don't understand it myself...there were two men in town trying to kill me, Phyldia; they are slain, but now Gorion says I'm not safe here, I have to go."

"Oh no, no, no! But...why would anyone...that makes no sense, you're so good...why...why..."

"I wish I knew. Maybe Gorion and I will figure it out. But I have to go now."

"NO! You can't just...abandon me...what if you get killed! How can you not be safe in Candlekeep of all places!"

"I'm sorry, Phyldia...but I?m not safe here, and I?d put you in jeopardy too if I stayed, so I must leave you for now?I won't abandon you...I love you, and I'm going to return as soon as I can.?

?Promise me this isn?t the end!?

?I know this looks like how a story might end, but it really isn?t. This is how one begins.?

Epilogue: Happily N/ever After

18 FLAMERULE 0000
ATHKATLA ? THE SLUMS

As rain and cloud left the Sword Coast, they moved down to Amn, blanketing Athkatla in wet, overcast night. It was hot and muggy, and unusually dark, and thus two figures trudged nearly invisible through the slums district of the city in a late hour, although their gruff curses pierced the still, oppressive air.

"Ar," cried one, a grimacing dwarf with a matted beard and horned helm, "It be too hot for such work t'night, aye? I dinna know why the dark-elfy be wantin? these bodies tonight, they be spoil'n too fast in such weather!" He hoisted the heavy, lumpy burlap sack he carried onto his other shoulder.

"Oh, be quiet," groaned the other, an unusually tall and muscular man; his ethereal glowing eyes illuminating much of his face, such as his bald scalp and tattooed forehead, "The sooner we get these last bodies to her, the sooner we may retire to meat and drink." The huge man carried a burlap sack similar to the dwarf's, although whatever was in it seemed about six feet long rather than three.

"Ar, meat and drink, now that be more like it!" chuckled the surly dwarf, licking his lips and then patting the axe at his belt with his free hand. "And after that's we can be findin? ourselves some pretty lasses for a bit o' fun, aye?"

"Perhaps, Korg," replied the goateed man half-heartedly.

"Ar, ye be soundin? not so enthusiastic for girlies of late, mister Sarry, is it all be still workin' downstairs? Har har!"

"Watch your tongue, dwarf, or you shall fill a third burlap sack," the man scowled down at his accomplice menacingly.

The dwarf growled back, traces of froth appearing at the corners of his mouth. "Har har, I be figurin' it out!" he laughed at length, "The dark-elfy be havin' another task for ye, so to speak! Har har!"

"Yes, perhaps," the man answered again, with a smirk, while rubbing the tentacle-rod-welt on his neck with his free hand. "Or perhaps I'll have a task for her," he added with bellowed laughter and clenched the hand into a hard fist.

"Ar, we be back in the bones-yard now, this place be givin? me the creeps! Let us be findin? yer little darkie, and then I be back off to the Coronet with my money, whether ye come or no!" the dwarf looked around at the gravestones and made some superstitious gesture with his hand.

The man squinted ahead into the gloom. The graveyard district was even danker than the slums this night, and a thick fog hung about it.

"Finally!" a shrill, witchlike voice echoed from ahead. Though neither Sarevok Anchev nor Korgan Bloodaxe could see its owner, they knew it to be Viconia deVir. "Hurry along, you oafs!" she continued, "This is no night for leaving the dead inanimate and rotting!"

The man and the dwarf plodded forward, and came to a large rectangular tomb. They strode within the open doors, and before them was then Viconia, decked out in ostentatious but revealing Sharran regalia.

"Well don't just stand their, you steel-swinging simpletons, lay them out!" she cried.

Korgan laid his burden on one of the two raised marble slabs in the room, and pulled the sack off, revealing the body of a messy-black-haired halfling man with earrings and greasy leather. Sarevok did the same, revealing a messy-blonde-haired human with facial tattoos and acid-green robes.

"Nei iblith!" Viconia cried as she peered over the bodies, brushing the hair out of the faces and studying them.

"We found 'em by the docks," Korgan began defensively, "In a dumper behind tha Harpy-Hold! They be as good condition is ye can be 'spectin!"

"You recognize them?" Sarevok asked the drow more perceptively, arching an eyebrow.

"Yes," Viconia answered, looking up at the living man, her look of disbelief melting into a wicked grin, "The halfling one is the rogue known as Montaron, the other the necromancer Xzar."

"Ah yes," Sarevok grinned, "I have heard of them."

"Now you shall meet them," the drow witch grinned, and rubbed her nimble hands together, causing Korgan to wince as the long, sharp nails scraped one another.

"But they died nigh a month ago, yes?" Sarevok looked down at them quizzically. "They should be naught but bones."

Viconia grinned knowingly. "It would seem that they were imbued with a certain...preservation ward," she laughed, "I would wager this foul, death-cheating necromancer put it upon them himself for just such an opportunity as this."

"If Korgan Bloodaxe coulds be disgusteded out," the dwarf frowned, "That would be doin? it!"

Sarevok nodded and chuckled while Viconia began uttering foul words in a foul tongue. A blue haze appeared around her hands, and then upon the body of Xzar, which began to stir. Montaron's then began to glow and to move as well.

"KILL THE HARPERS!" Xzar screamed as his eyes popped open, gripping the sides of his head.

"AYE, KILL THE HARPERS!!" Montaron yelled, wriggling around on his oversized slab.

The necromancer sat up and bit his knuckles, babbling into his fist. "I have in mine sleep seen demons a-dancing and dragons in drag! ?Tis all true, I swear, and now I wake to a hag!"

"Nay, X, it be tha beautiful buxom blue elf we saw abouts before!" the halfling laughed and licked his lips.

"Yep, that?s ol? Monty and Xzar," Viconia laughed.

************

18 FLAMERULE 2200
ATHKATLA - THE SHADOW THIEVES? GUILD

The only place shadier than the streets of Athkatla?s docks district are what lies beneath, and there, in the bowels of the Shadow Thief complex, in one of its more luxurious chambers, a red-robed and black-bearded man stood, looking at a painting on the wall. In drab colors, it was of a distinctively Thayvian man with a bald head and a black goatee. At the bottom, on the frame, an inscription read ?Uncle Vlad.?

?Don?t worry, comrade Vlad,? the red-robed man sighed and held a glass of vodka up, ?The Motherland will be proud yet.?

The man downed his drink and then left the room in a huff, and walked into another, even more opulent, chamber. Two men paced and argued. One had roguish but handsome features, clad in a leather suit rife with hidden pockets and daggers. The other wore chainmail and had a large, flat nose.

?Your men are incompetent!? The red-robed man hissed at the man in leather.

?Incompetent? Nae. Untrustworthy, yae,? he responded.

?Yeah, it was pretty f-in far out!? the one in chainmail laughed.

?Silence, you ? what was your name?? the red-robed one demanded.

?I told you,? hissed the leathered one, ?He?s Quintus Tarantinus, official bard and loremaster of the Shadow Thieves.?

?I always change the names in my work, of course,? Quintus Tarantinus grinned.

?See that he does, Aran Linvail,? the red-robed man glared at the leather-clad one.

?Don?t worry, Edwin Odesseiron,? Aran glared back.

?Hey yo man, are we professionals or what?? Quintus waved his hands, ?I know the mission was bust, what with Orange, Pink, and Brown going freelance and turning like that, but it?ll make an f-in story. I?m thinking of calling it ?Keep Fiction? or ?Reservoir Thieves.? Whaddya f-in think, huh??

?SHUT UP!? Aran and Edwin screamed at him in unison.

?Right,? Quintus shrugged and began walking out of the chambers, giving a very communicative hand signal as he did.

Aran stared down Edwin defensively. ?Yeah yeah, so hitting the de?Arnise girl didn?t go as planned. So what are you trying to say, anyway??

?Simple,? the Thayvian grinned, ?If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.?

***********

19 FLAMERULE 1800
THE WINDSPEAR HILLS

The storms plaguing the western coast of Amn did not end there, but moved inland over the country, bringing much-necessary rain to farm crops in many places, but nearly flooding others.

Rain beat down upon the Windspear Hills, filling streams and rivers and creating new ones, eroding the hillsides and bringing tons of mud downhill, much of it reaching the low-lying marshlands to the south, where the rain also came down in tropical downpours.

Through these choked, flooded swamps walked - nay, waded - a lonely wandering woman, wearing both dragonscale mail and ordinary, rugged clothing, scimitars on her back, stores in her magical bag, but no helm upon her head, only matted, muddied blonde hair. Its usually kempt braids had come tangled and undone, and the hair now spilled over a face that would have been beautiful save for the sadness and anger and mud that marred it now. She walked quickly but heavily, looking down at her own swamp-immersed feet or around at the flooded, festering landscape about her, ever looking both sorrowful and scornful, grime on her face and her clothing.

She came at last to a hillock that had been made almost an island by the risen waters of the swamp. Upon it was a stonehenge circle, and it backed against a rocky face, into which led a cave. As she approached the stonehenge, she could see that in its center stood a man. He had long, grey hair, and his face had the care and wisdom of great age, though he did not look actually very old, but like a man worn early by much brooding. His hair had also white feathers in it, and upon his body was plant-woven clothing, including a green cape that seemed a solid mat of leaves. In one hand he held a great staff that looked almost as if it were still growing.

He saw her, nodded knowingly as if he'd been expecting the lone woman, and called out to her. "The hour is late, the skies dark and stormy, the lands flooded and wild, and Jaheira of Tethyr comes before me, bearing a light burden on her back, but a great one on her heart. Come, daughter of the druids, back once more to your family. Join us again, my child."

Jaheira ascended out of the muck onto the hill, and stood just outside the circle of stones, looking skeptically at the man in its center. "I am no child, Cernd, indeed I am older than your mother, and might one Tethyrian druid ask another why you too linger still in Amn?"

The shapeshifter smiled. "A just question, Jaheira, who joined as an orphan and left as a woman our home grove long ere I was born to it. I would have returned, my investigation long now finished, but for obligations to nature - I am now grand druid of this grove, and our family needs me here."

"And what of your own family?" Jaheira asked him. "Did you not have a son, whom you longed to see again, and must still be neglecting."

"Sadly, yes," a mournful look crossed the long-haired man's face, "But even the grandest tree cannot keep its fruit upon its boughs forever; otherwise neither tree nor fruit would grow. I'm afraid that what you speak of, for now at least, it is a necessary sacrifice for the balance. And I am glad, dear Jaheira, to see that you once again desire to serve it."

"I have served it ever, Cernd," the half-elf rejoined defensively, "As a druid, though not with others of our kind."

"I meant nothing contrary, my dear," the man gestured apologetically, even as his face stayed haughty, "But I am so glad you are here once more."

The woman sighed. "I...I want to do what I can, but I know you can sense the real, simple reason I'm here; I can't deny it even to myself. I've..." she bit her lip and a tear welled in the corner of one eye, "I've just got no other place to go."

Cernd stared deeply at her, with compassion but also curiosity, as if looking straight through her eyes, directly into her mind. "Nowhere else should you be, though," he said, "With the young paladin? Certainly not. We both know, as much as he seemed to want to reach out to you, that his growth was stunted, his mind was closed off to any view save his own, indeed to our view, the True View; his mind was as closed off as his heart. He would have tried to lead you down a false path, indeed he did try if not deliberately or deviously, and I sense you have explored it with him, but that also you saw that it was false. And this, even were his pet pigeon to have never walked our beautiful planet, would have ever kept you two apart, even if you had tried to be together. That could have happened physically, perhaps, but spiritually, never. And you have journeyed, in both these realms, but now you return home. And that, I sense is the real reason you have returned, to leave both him and his warmongering philosophy behind, and make yourself pure again."

Yes, you hate him, Jaheira told herself.

No, I love him, she thought back.

Hate him.

Love him.

You hate him. He is your enemy.

I love him. He is my best friend.

No! He scorned you. Your friendship, your love, your body, and your ways. He lusted for you once, but he hates you, and you hate him.

No! He loved me. He had to follow his heart, but he wanted us to be all he could be, and he would have wanted all else and to change his own heart if he could have.

Never, he was a delusional fool who could trick himself and thus you as a charlatan might trick you.

No! He had clarity. He wanted us to understand each other's views, and I think he was right about some things.

He is like an arrogant child. A naive little boy with his naive little girl and their naive little beliefs.

He is enchanted by his love for her, but no more deluded than are any of us who love, and more consistent and clear in his beliefs than any.

You are right that you are deluded that you love or believe him. You do not. You hate him and his dogma!

I cannot, we were soulmates.

You were his nanny, no more. Be glad you are rid of him!

I...yes, I am glad that I am rid of him, in a way..I wanted to be his friend, but I could not stand to be with him and less than his beloved. It hurts so much even now.

It hurts less with hate...this you know?

But that's wrong! But yes, it does?

Jaheira shut her eyes and clenched her teeth, grabbing both sides of her skull like she were trying to prevent it from splitting in half.

"You struggle with questions of the balance, my dear," Cernd's mesmerizing voice filled her ears and her mind, "Both external and internal; balance of our world, and within your own head. You are tired, cold, hungry, wet, muddy, and confused. Come join us inside, where all will be made comfortable and clear."

Jaheira opened her eyes, moving her hand and mouth to object, but she could not lift her arm above her breasts, and only a feeble groan escaped her lips. Cernd gestured to her, warm and welcoming, and she found that, though she was tired, she could not close her eyes, for she could not tear them away from his, and his gaze and continuing words of welcome seemed to both weaken her and nourish her.

At last the shapeshifter bent towards the ground, as if taking a step towards her but crouching low. Then, hands become like paws and his arms furry, his staff melding with them, and then his ears and jowl grew large, and he looked like a wolf, and then she realized his entire body now was as one.

The great werewolf trotted towards her, and she felt weaker still and fell forward, but upon its waiting back rather than the ground. It turned around, easily bearing her, and plodded back past the circle of stones and towards the entrance of the cave.

Jaheira's last thoughts flowed like water through her mind. I had a family....my parents were taken from me by revolutionaries. Then the druids were my family, but my foster parents were taken from me by poachers. Then the Harpers were my family, but Gorion was taken from me, by Sarevok, and then Khalid was taken from me, by Irenicus. Then my party was my family, but Onyx was taken from me, by his ignorance, by Aerie, by their shared beliefs and love. Now the druids are my family again. Cernd and the druids are my family...

*********

20 FLAMRULE 1300
ATHKATLA ? WAUKEEN?S PROMENADE

?Yegads, mister Quayle, lookie at all these elves pourin? into town! Why, I haven?t seen this many elves in Athkatla since my great-great-uncle, ?Saint? Nicolas Jansen, tried setting up a Jansen Seasonal Toys & Gifts Co. elf-labor sweatshop in the slums district, only to find that his business rival, miss Snowy Whyte (a.k.a. Kaithae Laie) of Poison Apple Sweatshops Inc., had undercut him with cheaper dwarven labor! I hear tell she had a thing for the rock-eatin? buggers too, there were this seven she always kept around?.Anyway, I hear these elves are all fresh from that evil ?Chaos Circus? my good good friends trashed!?

?And might I add, mister Jansen, that if you had a fraction of my intellect, you?d also know that one of those ?good good friends?, that Sir Onyx fellow, just happens to be my niece?s fiancé!?

?What in the nine turnipless hells? Why, I haven?t heard of a human & a gnome getting? hitched since uncle Hugo Hefsen and one of his Playgnome centerfolds, Arra Nycara Smythe??

?No, Jan, you writhing imbecil! Why, if you were even nearly as smart as I am, you?d surely know that Aerie the elf is my ?niece?, by adoption, and that?s a-course who I meant, you rotund little slowbrain!?

Jan Jansen and Quayle, gnomish illusionists and annoyances extraordinaire (who were proving no less irritating to one another than they did to everyone else), were standing (on a very tall podium) just in front of the entrance to Quayle?s circus, watching in amazement as caravans of tieflings and elves ? wood, moon, avariel, drow, sea - poured through Waukeen?s Promenade. As the gnomes had realized, these were the ?refugees? of former Chaos Circus slavery, who had been freed by Onyx, Jaheira, Arra, Anomen, Valygar, and Minsc, given the provisions of the disbanded circus, such as food and drink (mostly already consumed) and caravans for the journeys to their respective homelands: the forests, the caves, the mountains, the sea, or the planes.

Despite the fact that few of them lived in Athkatla, many were apparently going through, presumably on their way to lands to the south, or to use the Five Flagons? now well-known interplanar portal. Quayle saw this as a business opportunity, of course, and was trying to convince these itinerant elves to stay and join his circus. (This, of course, was not the first time he had acquired labor from the Chaos Circus, as his ?niece? well knew). He was standing on a tall podium with an enormous magi-megaphone, broadcasting his message across the Promenade. Unfortunately, Quayle was greeted by more thrown rotten tomatoes than offers, due to his rather insulting and ineffective way of ?coaxing? them, and also their understandable aversion to circuses after their previous big-top interment.

?JOIN QUAYLE CIRCUS,? the gnome bellowed into his magi-megaphone, ?IT IS FUN AND EXCITING AND PAYS WELL. YOU ARE ALREADY SKILLED TO WORK HERE. YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE A MORON NOT TO WANT TO WORK HERE.?

In response, a rotten watermelon sailed out of the window of a caravan, smacking Quayle and sending the megaphone (as well as chunks of moldy melon) flying about. Luckily, Jan caught the megaphone in midflight.

?Lemme try, mister Quayle!? he chirped while the other gnome cleaned off his spectacles and muttered something about the intellectual inferiority of everyone around him.

?LADIES ANG GENTLE-ELVES,? Jan Jansen called into the megaphone, ?WELCOME TO QUAAAAAAYLE?S CIRCUS! I KNOW, I KNOW, YOU?VE HAD SOME ROUGH TIMES, AND THAT?S AN UNDERSTATEMENT, AND RIGHT NOW A JOB IN THE LIVE ENTERTAINMENT BIZ IS ABOUT THE LAST THINGS ON YOUR TROUBLED MINDS. BUT HAVE NO FEAR, QUAYLE?S CIRCUS IS HERE! IT?S A CLEAN, FUN-AND-FREEDOM-LOVING PLACE, WITH 100% VOLUNTARY LABOR, NO COMMITMENT REQUIRED, COME AND GO AS YOU PLEASE, NO STRINGS ATTACHED! WE?RE ALWAYS ROTATING ACTS AND SHOWS, AND ALL SORTS OF TALENTS, ACROBATIC, COMIC, OR MAGICAL, ARE WELCOME AND NEEDED! AND WHAT BETTER PLACE TO LIVE AND WORK THAN ATHKATLA, A DIVERSE CENTER OF FAERUNIAN CULTURE AND COMMERCE THAT NEVER FAILS TO EXCITE AND AMAZE! THERE?S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS! THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO MAKE IT BIG, BIG, BIG! DON?T DELAY! SPOTS ARE GOING FAST!?

Pointy-eared heads were now sticking out of the windows of the caravans, and immediately entire elves began hopping out and a throng amassed in the already-crowded promenade just in front of the circus, at the foot of the podium where the gnomes were standing. ?Better get the interviews going!? Jan whispered to Quayle.

?Er, right,? the bespectacled gnome chuckled, wringing his hands happily as he looked down at the clamor of elves. ?You just ah, keep sayin? what you?re sayin?, and I?ll use my superior skills of inference and deduction to weed out the most talented of ?em!?

?SAY,? Jan babbled to himself (so he thought) as Quayle hopped down, and didn?t notice that he happened to skill have his mouth really close to the megaphone, ?I HAVEN?T SEEN A THRONG OF YOUNG DEMIHUMANS THIS THICK SINCE I LAST WENT TO A BRITTANY OF SPEARS CONCERT?OF COURSE, THAT WAS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE INTENSITY OF WHEN I WENT BACKSTAGE TO GET HER AUTOGRAPH AFTER THE SHOW, AND I CAME ACROSS HER IN THE MIDST OF A ?HUMBLING OF THE UNBELIEVERS? ORGY-CEREMONY IN HER CHANGING ROOM, WHICH SHE DRAGGED HAPLESS LITTLE ME INTO THE MIDDLE OF, AND SHE SPENT THE NEXT SEVEN HOURS ?TICKLING? ME WITH HER TENTACLE ROD! WHO?D EVER HAVE THOUGHT THAT BRITTANY OF SPEARS WAS ACTUALLY A PSYCHOTIC EVIL ARCHPRIESTESS OF LOVIATAR BENT ON USING THE HYPNOTIC POWERS OF HER MUSIC OVER THE WEAK-MINDED, AND THE PAINMAIDEN-WORTHY AGONY IT CAUSES IN EVERYONE ELSE, TO ENSLAVE THE WORLD.
WELL, IT WAS KINDA FUN, AND YOU?D NEVER GUESS WHERE SHE SIGNED HER AUTOGRAPH?AS A PERMANENT TATTOO??

The gnome abruptly shut up (an amazing event in and of itself) when he realized that the entire promenade was now deathly silent, and every pair of eyes for hundreds of yards around was staring at him. ?Eep!? the little illusionist cried and hastily cast an invisibility spell.

Meanwhile, just inside the big tent, Quayle had set up a little sub-tent, inside which was a chair and a desk. ?Next!? he called from behind the desk, as the drow jester standing before him finished a juggling act involving five scimitars and an infant.

As the drow departed, a beautiful moon elf woman stepped into the mini-tint. ?What?? Quayle exclaimed as he noticed she, too, held a newborn. ?Another brat-act??

?No, no, mister Quayle sir, he?s just my son,? she sighed demurely, and set the half-elven baby in the chair. ?My name is Iri. I am a dancer,? she said simply, and began her act. The gnome watched enrapt as the elf, clad in a strange but alluring outfit of many multicolored and nigh-translucent pieces, almost like she were merely wearing a large number of thin scarves, began a slow, graceful dance while singing an enchanting but haunting and mournful tune in some exotic language.

?Marvelous! Marvelous!? Quayle clapped his stubby hands excitedly. ?Why, even the insipidly stupid denizens of this city will be able to appreciate such a beautiful act. Iri, was it? What is your son?s name??

?Cyrex,? Iri said simply. They looked at the boy, who was but an infant and yet had managed to find three stones and was juggling them expertly.

?My my! Quite a talented lad! He?ll be perfect here. But now, who?s the father?? Quayle asked, holding a quill up as he wrote things down.

?The father?s?gone, dead?.? The moon elf mother sighed.

?Yes, but whom?? the gnome asked tactlessly.

?Please?it?doesn?t matter,? Iri pleaded.

?Very well, very well, I suppose it really doesn?t,? Quayle adjusted his glasses and handed her a paper. ?Here?s your contract; standard weekly wages, bonuses for each performance, conditions, waivers, fine print, and all that. Just sign along the dotted line?.ah, good?NEXT!!!?

As Iri tenderly lifted her son into her arms, walking away from the gnome?s desk and out of the mini-tent just as a fire-breathing tiefling walked in, she kissed her half-elven son?s forehead and whispered to him. ?My poor, darling little Cyrex. Those brave heroes gave us a chance for a better life. Won?t it be fun growing up in the circus, little Cyrex? Far away from your father?? Cyran, she thought to herself silently. I pray, my son, that you never know who your father was, especially not what he was. May you be spared what one of very heroes who rescued us endured. I pray, my dear son, that you never know.

**********

20 FLAMERULE 2100
THE SEA OF SWORDS

As well as moving south to Amn, the rains which had pounded and left the Sword Coast had moved out west upon the Sea of Swords itself. The maritime night sky was made even darker by the blanket of dark stormclouds smothering all light of stars or moon, and the only light came from the many lightning flashes that danced across the ocean. The water was rough, and upon it was a tossing ship. It was a sleek three-masted vessel, and swashbucklers ran to and fro across the decks and climbed through the rigging, trying desperately to keep the ship sailing in the great storm. The sails were let very slack in the high wind, but each bore the symbol of a purple sun with a superimposed skull.

Across the side of the ship was written the words ?Our Lady Entropy.? Above these words upon the ship?s fore deck stood two figures, a man and a tiefling whose faces were made frightful by their tattoos, piercings, and manic grins. The man wore acid-green robes and the tiefling wore multicolored chainmail.

?Strange things have we seen in death oh yes!? the robed man laughed hysterically and bit his fist. ?Some demons too have rabbit?s feet, and cloven-hooved clowns prance ?cross the hells! ?Tis true, ?tis true!?

?Few denizens of the multiverse, much less clueless Primes, speak as poetically as you, dear Xzar,? the tiefling smiled. ?So glad you decided to join my suddenly-understaffed troupe. We new characters like you on board?.literally!? he laughed and stomped on the deck.

?Ahoy cap?n Dalis!? cried a halfling pirate from the crow?s nest. ?Man overboard!!?

??and fewer dagger-biting drunkards who can?t even keep to one side of the railing,? Haer?Dalis added with an exasperated sigh. He then shouted up to the halfling, ?Kill the sails, Monty!?

?Kill the sails! Near the aft ?pon starboard side!? Montaron up in the nest shouted. Immediately the sails went totally slack and the ship slowed in the water while several men ran towards the starboard side of the aft deck and threw a net overboard. Within a minute they had hauled it back up, now with a body entangled in it.

?How curious,? Haer?Dalis scratched his tattooed chin as he and Xzar ran to the back of the ship to inspect this piece of humanoid flotsam. ?He?s not one of ours.?

The blade and the necromancer peered down at the body as the swashbucklers untangled it and laid it upon the deck. It was a young human male, his blonde hair spiky despite his waterlogged state, with a very athletic physique. He wore a simple black-and-purple fighting suit and a matching headband which more the dark sun of Cyric. Most striking, though, was the enormous slash that ran down the left side of his young face, a deep katana slash from his forehead to the corner of his mouth, as if he had sneered so horribly it had sliced all the way up his face. It was so bloody and deep that it was difficult to tell whether the man?s left eye was still in its socket, and if so, whether in one piece.

Haer?Dalis leaned over the man and smiled. ?Why, I believe this is a former business partner of my dear departed brothers and myself ? none other than the Saint!?

The surrounding crowd gasped and Xzar shrieked as the body suddenly came to life. It spasmed once and the arms flew up and clutched Haer?Dalis round the neck, and the mouth, opening freakishly wide thanks to the gash which severed part of the left cheek, spat bloody saltwater into the blade?s surprised face.

The swashbucklers immediately drew scimitars and prepared to converge on the waterlogged semi-alive man strangling their master Blade, but the tiefling immediately lifted up his own arms out to the sides and signaled them back with open hands.

The Saint made more gurgling sounds as he continued to expunge saltwater from his throat. ?Yes?the Saint indeed?Cyran lives!? he croaked at last, then threw Haer?Dalis violently aside. The blade rolled nicely and sprang up laughing merrily as the waterlogged kensai got to his feet.

?I take it your little undersea palace has had a plumbing mishap, dear Cyran?? Haer?Dalis smiled. ?I don?t suppose the Jeweler is swimming about??

?He is?extinct,? Cyran chuckled darkly. As if just now becoming aware of his scar, he held his left hand up over the side of his face. ?My head?.hurts?..feels like katana in brain?..hurts Cyran?..Cyran mad!!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA?.? the kensai began to cackle insanely. Haer?Dalis raised an eyebrow and looked between him and Xzar, mentally comparing the kensai?s sudden eccentric behavior with the necromancer?s habits.

?Yes Xzar understands he too had head hurt once,? the green-robed wizard giggled and rubbed his temple and crown with his hands, shaking up his already disheleved hair. ?Xzar knows what it is like to feel the pounding in the brain forevermore, yes truly I do!? Before Xzar?s eyes flashed childhood memories, the fist of a paladin-to-be slamming into his temple, a hard wall of Candlekeep smashing into his crown, a rock in the courtyard?s grass hitting his forehead as he fell, then all the noises and voices and colors?. Xzar began to titter and almost cried, then his face twisted up in rage and he screamed, ?I shall help thee, Cyran!?

He began to reach for the Cyran?s face, but the kensai screamed and flailed back with incredible strength at the necromancer, who barely managed to dodge the kensai?s fist. ?No touch stupid wizard,? Cyran began ranting, his slashed face twisting horribly as he spoke, the torn left cheek flapping about, ?I shall kill kill kill have revenge very soon?I will regenerate wound Cyran super tough heal natural no worries yes indeed oh yes??

While Xzar began to babble in arcane tongues, Cyran kept holding his head and muttering incessantly. After pronouncing his final syllable, the evil wizard clapped his hands and then pushed them forward together, sending an ethereal yellow orb into the Cyran?s chest. The kensai was immediately stunned and fell backwards onto the deck, lying absolutely silent and motionless.

?Poor Cyran!? Xzar screeched and bent over the fallen, frozen kensai while drawing a spherical white gem from his robes. ?It the wound regenerates, no left eye will thou have for seeing our common enemies, indeed! Let Xzar help, please, oh yes!?

Haer?Dalis and the crew, standing in an awestruck circle around the two figures, watched in horror as the kneeling necromancer began a disgusting procedure. He used his clawlike bare fingernails to tear apart the mending flesh around the stunned kensai?s empty left eye socket, then pushed the gem into it. He then used his bloody fingers to pull the flesh back around it, molding and kneading it like clay as it resumed regenerating. Finally it bled no longer and the skin seemed unbroken again, but there was still a horrible scar running from the left corner of his mouth up to his now-solid-white left ?eye? and trough his now-split left eyebrow and up his forehead, which now had an indentation that seemed to go in to where a human?s forebrain should be. Several crew members ran over to the railing and vomited over the edge of the ship at the sight of the necromancer?s unnatural surgery.

Xzar backed away just in time as Cyran unfroze. The kensai?s right eye blinked and he sat up with a start. He moved a hand up to the left side of his face, gingerly tracing the scar and poking at the gem in his eyesocket. He sprang to his feet and looked around. Haer?Dalis, Xzar, and the rest of the crew peered it him with disgusted curiosity, and stared into his new jeweled eye. Each thought at first he could see his own reflection in it, but when he looked deeper, the spherical gem seemed like a crystal ball in which could be scene unspeakably horrible images of torture, carnage, murder, and other things sicker still. The corners of the kensai?s now ever-sneering mouth twitched as the images moved and changed; as if he were watching them himself, or perhaps they were indeed projections of his very thoughts.

Chills went down the spine of every man present as Cyran began to laugh maniacally. ?Now can I see clearly yes! To Mouth Ith must we go there is my flock of faithful to lord Cyric the Saint has converted must we go organize army new task lays before us!?

?Task, my dear Saint?? Haer arched an eyebrow. ?Cyric has some new designs of merry chaos-making you perceive??

?Oh yes yes indeed,? Cyran laughed, ?He will show you yes indeed here he comes??

The vision of Haer?Dalis and Xzar went dark for one moment, and then came back.

The blade, the kensai, and the necromancer stood upon an endless plain of sand. Somehow the place was both chillingly cold and scorchingly hot; and the sky both dark and bright; for at its zenith was a dark-lit purple sun, and a skull grinned within it.

?WELCOME TO PANDEMONIUM,? the omnipresent ?voice? of the skull above pierced their minds, ?IT IS I, CYRIC.?

?What do you command, lord,? Cyran looked up, staring straight at the dark sun, the skull reflecting in his eye-gem. Standing on either side of him, Xzar and Haer?Dalis felt as though they were nearly blinded as they tried to look upon it.

?THE TRADING OF SLAVES HAS SERVED THEE WELL. MUCH HAVE THEE NOW IN WEALTH AND MIGHT. THE TIME FOR THY DESTINY IS NOW AT HAND.

?RETURN TO THY FAITHFUL FLOCK, SAINT CYRAN, RETURN TO MOUTH ITH, AND LET MY PRIESTS IN THE CITIES RECRUIT EVER MORE TO JOIN THEE AT ITH AND SWELL THY RANKS. BUILD AN ARMY, RAID THE LAID, BEGIN FULL WAR WHEN THEE ARE STRONG, ACCUMULATE MURDERS, THAT IS THY GOAL.?

?CYRAN, THOU ART A SWORD SAINT, BUT THOU MUST BE MORE.?

?NECROMANCER, THOU SHALT NOW TEACH CYRAN THE WAYS OF THE ARCANE. THY REWARD SHALL BE ARCANE KNOWLEDGE AND TERRIBLE POWER BEYOND THY RECKONING AT THY FINGERTIPS.?

?BLADE, THOU SHALT NOW BIND THYSELF AND THY CREW TO THIS ARMY, AND THY HARP SHALL SING OF OUR GLORY. THY REWARD SHALL THE POWER OF ENSLAVING ENCHANTMENT OVER ANY THY DESIRE.?

?CYRAN, BUILD THY ARMY AND GO FORTH. THOU MUST SLAY. FOR SLAYING IS THE PATH TO THE THRONE.?

The kensai, the blade, and the necromancer found themselves standing upon the deck of Our Lady Entropy again, their vision gone, the rain beating down as before.

?I don?t understand,? Haer?Dalis looked at Cyran, ?Throne? The Throne of Bhaal? Is it not now rejected and gone? Was not its war, the Bhaalspawn War, already fought??

?No, no, dear bard, it is rejected and unclaimed,? Cyran smiled, ?The real throne war has just begun.?