Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

“Not gonna ask how y’got cogs, Jellal,” Hansen said.


“That’s probably best,” Jellal said and dropped a bag of platinum into Hansen’s waiting hands.

Jellal had searched for months for a portal to Toril, and a key, but it seemed like that prime liked to spit people into Sigil and not let anyone back in. He was lamenting his luck at the Tin Cup. Not that he noticed anyone was listening. They were too busy clutching their purses to be sure he didn’t snatch them and disappear into the hive or the undercity. That was how hiver’s were treated; Guilty until proven innocent.

But Hansen had been listening. He’d watched the young hive rat all night, and as Jellal began his walk home he found a shadow in his footsteps. The fiendish rogue could have remained unseen as long as he desired, but he he had a proposition for Jellal. Hansen was a gatecrasher. He had an innate ability to find and open portals without keys. It was an ability he kept to himself and his clients. For a small fortune he promised Jellal that he could be on Toril and bid farewell to Sigil for good.

Twenty platinum cogs changed hands and then Hansen grabbed Jellal and shoved him backward into a back, gaping hole in reality. They tumbled out onto the infinite staircase, and Jellal’s mind boggled at the sheer number of doorways there. Jellal looked to the fiend and ground out, “A little dramatic, pushing me through like that.”

“I like it when they scream,” Hansen offered with a smirk, “You dinne even flinch. Guess that’s the hive’s influence on ya.”

“Which one?” Jellal ignored the fiend’s baiting and got to the business of things. He looks at all the portals, the doorways to other worlds, and then realized he didn’t even know what he was looking for. This was a gamble to be sure. The fiend could dump him anywhere in the verse, and he wouldn’t even know he was in the wrong place. Hansen seemed to sense his apprehension and his smile grew cruel.

“Oh, just thought of that did ya?” Hansen cooed, “I love this part. It’s almost better than the money. This is the part where I make you a new offer.”

Jellal didn’t speak. Instead he weighed his options. If he killed Hansen, how long would it be before another gatecrasher found him here? Did “here” even exist without a gatecrasher or would it all implode into non-existence without Hansen to manufacture it? He should have read up more on gatecrashing. He simply didn’t know, so he listened.

“Ooooh,” Hansen grinned, “Strong silent type. Well here is the deal, hero. . . I can deliver you through a portal as promised. Maybe to Toril, maybe somewhere else, or you can go back to Sigil with me for double the price.”

“Rust you, bleck-spewing son of a maggot-borne wrech,” Jellal said it evenly. It was odd how deadly calm he always felt when he was about to smite someone for breathing the wrong way.

“Language!” Hansen laughed, “My poor, delicate ears. So… There or back again, Jelly-boy?”

“Pick a portal,” Jellal spat.

Hansen smiled broadly, “Hivers. Always so convinced that no fresh hell could be worse that the hell they come from.”

The wiry rogue began to shift his form until he was twice Jellal’s size. He balor wings stretched outward from him and he picked Jellal up by the throat. Jellal coughed and clawed that the burning grasp of the fiend. Hansen grinned and taunted, “I could toss you into the abyss from here. Right into the middle of the blood war."


He looked into Jellal’s eyes as the aasimar struggled for breath, but what he never saw was fear. The hive had long beaten out the fear of death and torture. As Jellal’s vision began to blur, Hansen’s smile faded and he grumbled, “Eh… I must like you or something.”

Jellal woke up on something cold and wet. It smelled clean but it made him sneeze. He sat back on his haunches and looked up at the clear blue sky.

Sometimes you need to play. You need to forget all the responsibility and havoc around you and remember to enjoy life. Sari’s human feet dug into the sand and as she ran forward scales formed on her legs and wings erupted from her back. With a single great thrust of her wings she took to the air and finished her transformation into a dragon only to then let herself fall. If you’ve never seen a dragon do a cannon ball, chances are you need some druids for friends. She hit the water as a several thousand pound beast.

Teris, who was shifted into a dire wolf and was retrieving a ball that Arturi had thrown didn’t have time to react or warn. He dropped the ball, lowered to his haunches and closed his eyes. Arturi threw both of his arms up to shield himself with his as the water came crashing in. The ranger was close to ground zero however and bowled over by the waves that made way for the druidess to enter the water. Teris yelped and even Emmanuel, further down the beach, had to brace himself. Arturi washed up on the beach and laid there, looking up at the sky. He was content to chide Sari laying in the sand with a flat expression, “Very funny.”

And a dragon did grin at his rebuke, scooping a wing full of water and throwing it up upon him. He threw his arms up, sputtering futily, “Ay!”

Sari was not done however and swung her tail in the water, sending a wave crashing toward Emmanuel and Ashling. Emmanuel shielded himself from the splash again, moving further away with a deep chuckle. Sari, proceeding to prance about the waves kicking up the water in all directions. No one was safe, but then she noticed Emmanuel and Ashling had gone deadly still. Her instincts fired instantly and she moved in to guard them. Teris seemed to pick up on it at the same time, his ears twitched at something and he looked stiff with alarm. Arturi’s eyes narrowed and he moved alongside his dragon druidess. Teris panicked, turning back into a gensai and yelled, “GET OUT QUICK! Something's wrong...! I hear things!!!”

Appearing from the waters at thier side, a familiar form beautifully and elegantly emerges. Her hair was wet and cloyed to her skin with dewy glaze. She eyed Emmanuel slowly, and they immediately felt the effects of her charm except for Arturi who seemed wholly umoved. They felt the lull and haze of the beautiful enigmatic manifestation of the sea's beauty. They felt its pull and even Sarisay seemed interested. Better senses won out narrowly, and caution kicked in. This was a Siren, afterall, and they knew it. Sarisay leaned in slightly, taking a step and then shook her head to clear it. Emmanuel got control of himself and then placed a hand on Ashling's arm to hold her firm. Sarisay took a mental inventory of her friends and seeing that no one was disappearing in the waves she spoke, “You visit us again... To what do we owe the honor?”

Arturi tilted his head, moving closer as well, but his eyes were narrowed. Once Sarisay stopped moving he stood firm. Teris covered his eyes with his hands unable to keep from looking otherwise. Ashling studied the Siren, copying her stance. The siren’s eyes settled on Emmanuel, giving him an unseemly, unbashful gaze. She surveyed him, thoroughly before purring, “You all look so... Fun.”

“Ah... well. ... Thank you,” Emmanuel offered, clearly feeling a bit exposed under her gaze.

Ashling followed the Siren's gaze, looking to Emmanuel, and studying him. The fey then turned to Sarisay and answered, “I just wanted to play.... You don't mind. Do you?”

As the fey walked through the water she looked toward Ashling and let out one hand, wiggling her fingers and sashaying her way through the clear blue waters. Sarisay looked to Emmanuel and the Feykind, “What is your fascination with my high druid?”

Ashling, looking a bit intoxicated, ran her free hand through the water at her side and followed the Siren with her eyes. Sari moved up to flank and potentially protect the couple as the Siren whined, “You know.. There aren't too many sailors anymore… I get so, so lonely...”

Ashling reflected the fey’s mood and sympathized, “I've been lonely before.”

“You understand, don't you?” the Siren’s eyes settles on Ashling, “Yessss, you know, you like the water too don't you? Wouldn't you like to be free, but not lonely?”

Sari struck the water with her tail between them to break the Siren’s attention. In a growling draconic voice she gave a firm reply, “She too, has duties still to this world.”

“Oh come on darling,” The Siren crooned at Sari, “What's all this duty business anyway? Look at you all, you're having fun. You need to play in these waters, don't you?”

Emmanuel’s hand tightened on Ashlings as he defended, “She's not lonely now.”

“I don't like this!” Teris whimpered, still holding his hands over his eyes.

“We are members of the circle which guards your wilds,” Sarisay explained to the fey patiently, “Arturi, while not in the circle, is a ranger of the feild and forest. We must relax when we can.”

“So,” The fey smiled with levity, laying back and floating perfectly on the waters surface, backstroking around them, “Let's play.”

Arturi looked to the beach to Sorcha a moment, his head gesturing to Teris. Ashling canted her head again, studying the siren, running a hand down the scar on her left thigh. Saris eyes settled on Ashling and she could think of only one response to pull the fey away from Ashling before it was too late. Sarisay shifted into a water elemental and began to play with the Siren, lifting her up and gently tossing her about the waves. Arturi moved out of the wave but did not take a single eye off the Siren. Emmanuel saw his moment to pull Ashling back.

The Siren chuckled taking to the play, “That's it darling, loose and free and untamed, the oceans sister, her child her wild little off spring, aren't you?”


As they played it was evident that the Siren truly was lonely, and although she couldn't help her somewhat malevolent nature, this was natural. Like a bully who was lonely inside, or at times acted out she was reaching out now and they only had to catch her to help her. Sari swirled around the fey, picking her up and harmlessly plopping her back down into the water. Welcoming her in play to the group. The feykind’s musical laughter filled the air with delight and glee. The played, some were skeptical, but they played until at last the Siren disappeared again beneath the waves. Her grateful song lingered on the air into the distance.

It took some time for Ashling’s head to fully clear, but Sari couldn’t help feeling they’d done something good today. No one was hurt, and that Siren make yet prove an ally to the circle that treated it so kindly.

He wore his collars high to hide the burn marks on his throat, though the number of women that told him scars were sexy made him rethink it from time to time. He’d arrived penniless but quickly made use of his sword skill and power shield-bashing techniques to make a name for himself as a mercenary. It wasn’t long at all before he had something he’d never had before; respect. . . And coin. . . And women. Lots of women.

There was one in his lap already when his eyes landed on the beautiful daughter of an up-coming merchant. He was captivated instantly, and his pursuit was not subtle. Her family objected, but he knew of a small town where he’d first ventured into Toril. A small town where they could be make-believe nobles. With a beautiful woman like that on his arm and his growing reputation he might be mayor in a cycle. He took her away from everything she knew and bought her the biggest house in the town. Her greed was plain, but he didn’t mind. He promised her a bigger house and made the same promise to himself. He’d told himself once that he would have it all; a home, power, and beautiful wife. Now he did. He even have land. Maybe he’d pay someone to farm it and buy himself a horse.

A few years passed, and the field was full of wheat. He was up for mayor, but truthfully was growing weary of his wife’s shrewish nature. He was considering being rid of her when he found her doubled over the chamber pot and retching her guts up. He’d lost love for that woman, but when she told him she carried his child time stood still for his heart. As her stomach began to swell his hands were drawn there, and the large warrior made the most ridiculous sounds at the babe growing within. The wife was no full, and her jealousy grew. The man she once loved, who claimed to love her, was lost to her. The baby was all he cared for now.

When he was called to the battlefield it was a relief to both adults from the growing tension. He rode his dappled mare and considered what could be done for the situation. She would want to be compensated if he left her, as she’d given up her family and inheritance to follow him. Would she want the baby? That would be unacceptable. He had never loved anything or anyone until the thought of his own child. Now that he felt it he would hold it with both hands. He wondered what her price might be to leave the babe with him.

The battle hit. It was chaotic and spilled into the High forest. Soon they had wild elves firing at both sides to drive them from the woods. The orcs set fire to the woods and he got separated in the smoke.

“Look etcha,” Hansen’s voice mocked from somewhere in the choking fumes, “All growed up and respectable looking. Is that mithril armor, *mayor*?”

“Hansen?” Jellal’s eyes stung, “You son of a jinkskirt! Where are you? What are you doing here?”

“I had a feeling,” His voice seemed to surround Jellal, “I had a feeling a hive rat might not have gotten all that jink *in the most honorable manner*. I thought someone might come looking, and that I might then profit double for collecting.”

“Nothing was taken inside the city!” Jellal swung at the smoke and coughed miserably, “It was legal!”

“MMnnn, the Mercykillers disagree,” Hansen chuckled darkly, “But tell them your story. Maybe you’ll be spared the wyrm. . .”

“Listen!” Jellal cried, “I can pay you more. I have money and power now.”

“1000 cogs?” Hasen cooed.

Jellal’s heart stopped. How was he worth 1000 platinum cogs? He began to get dizzy. His armor was heavy as he ground out, “There’s no way the bounty is that mu--.”

And then the world went dark. When he awoke he was in chains. He was drug before the Mercykillers to plead for his life.

In her time within the circle she had seen many requests levied to them. Almost none had anything to do with the wilds. One would struggle for even a passing connection to nature. She was even petitioned to move the circle to war against the Zhents and the other party could not honestly say that the they were any better for the wilds than the black network.

The circle was large, and strong. A single druid on the battlefield made all the difference, and everyone knew it. Trouble is that the battlefield was not a place the druids cared to be. Tied up, fighting a bleeding for the civilization that pushed the forests back a little more every year? Spoiling the fields with rotten, fetid corpses over what exactly? What was the circles reason to care about that fight? Yet, no one thought twice about asking. If they were a civilized country, being so often beseeched without any offer of tithe or benefit would have been considered an insult. The heads of emissaries had been sent back to their native lands for less than assuming that the larger country's might existed to be used by them. The unmitigated gall…

The fact of the matter is that this circle had become public and lazy. It was well known the circle would either show up or not, but no other consequences existed for wasting its time on the trivial politics of man. It was time to remind the coast why the elder circle existed. She was simply at a lost for how to do it short of declaring war on the cities. She was a proud druid, dedicated to nature, but she was not that radical. Tact, however, was not her strong suit either, and she struggled with how to express it. She labored over the right ears to feed even when she could half imagine what to say.

She sat bare beneath an oak upon a bed of moss, anointed in mistletoe that had not touched the earth. She closed her eyes and prayed for guidance in her vigil.

Banished. . . Not fallen, but banished. Even so he had felt his connection to the plane of nature stretched as he moved about the planes. In the generations past Milani’s death he’d taken to watching the course of his line. For hundreds of years it had seemed a self-imposed punishment. He’d loved a mortal. He’d acted against the six on her behalf and for the sake of their young. For it he’d been held for something equivalent to 50 years, and finding him still unrepentant of his love he was then cast out.

He watched his twins grow, have children, and die young. He watched their descendants fester in the Hive of Sigil, the city of doors. He felt his soul withering with them, sinking in the fetid sewage lake the marked the center of this cruel prison-like ward. You didn’t need keen ears to hear the howling in the Gatehouse, and his were especially keen. Even in his imposing half-bear form, the jinkskirts pawed at his oily, neglected fur. He slowly lost the will to fight his descent. Surely he would fall soon, and the abyss would call to him.

“I do not know where you went in your after-life, my sweet Milani,” He grumbled, “But I do not think I will ever meet you there.”

He closed his eyes, laying in a dirty ditch, and hoping some thugs would come take him apart. Instead he awoke to a small boy, poking at his face. The boy’s jinkskirt mother was tugged on him, “Jellal, y’know bettah. Oh! Oh, yer awake! Ah, sorry, he dinne mean no harm.”

It was his youngest descendant. The boy looked accusingly into Ramsus’ eyes and declared, “You stink. Ya look like yer givin’ up? Well I won’t never. Never-ever.”

“Jellal!” he mother shrieked.

“It is alright,” Ramsus rumbled and pushed up on his knees, “He’s a sharp boy, with a stubborn spirit. He needs it here. It would not hurt for him to speak better though. What if. . . I tutored him?”

He did so for free as obviously the single mother and a hive jinkshirt couldn’t pay. He taught him strategy, how to fight, and how to use his words before a fight. The boy was eventually a man and hatching some scheme to get to Toril. Ramsus couldn’t help but root for him, and his return to the world then made Milani. In time, Ramsus decided that he would go with him. When Jellal went to meet Hansen Ramsus polymorphed in to a mouse, and then shrunk himself. A near flea-sized rodent, he was easy missed as he stowed away in Jellal’s belongings.

Jellal wasn’t the upright descendant he’d have preferred, but he was not a bad man. He was simply a product of where he had grown up. Ramsus took to watching his life and exploits from afar, often disguised as some small creature. He never followed Jellal into battle however. He knew he’d be too tempted to help, and explaining himself to the people on this world looked vexing. Their tolerance for differences was slim to non-existent. It was a choice he regretted when Jellal did not return to his wife and unborn child. Ramsus withdrew into himself after that. Passively watching the cruelty inflicted on Sarisay.

As she grew he could not help but notice how much she resembled Milani. As the cruelty of her village pushed her into the woods, he began to watch more closely. He was there, at the moment her eyes began to glow. She was curled up at the foot of great elm tree, sobbing into one of its massive roots. A green glow closed in around her and an oak leaf gently floated down in the warm green glow, landing on her dark locks. She was chosen like all kin of the forest. She would be a druid, following unknowingly in the footsteps of her ancestor and his one true love.

She opened her eyes and they flashed with the synergy of her new calling and divine birth right. In that moment, her eyes became keener and she looked into the bushes where he hid. She couldn’t quite make him out, but she knew someone was there and she scrambled back, afraid. She was a druid. . . and she would need a companion. It was easy enough to take on one of his true forms; that of a great brown bear. Then to shrink himself down to a less intimidating size. In mere moments he crashed out of the underbrush, looking every inch a baby brown bear.


She looked at him. He looked at her. He curled up next to her, and she held him and cried.

She opened her eyes slowly. She could have sworn she heard it again. That wailing, sorrowful, and beautifully defiant cry. It had resonated in her soul, bringing up memories of her own defiance. She defied being drained or dying at the hands of her stepfather. She defied the wishes of a mother that couldn’t bring herself to love her only child. She defied the opinions of her hometown when she struck out at the tender age of 16. She defied expectations of survival floating from wild to wild on one caravan after another. That song… The dirge of the dying sirine, had engraved itself on her soul in deepest empathy.

That sirine that had been captured, tortured, corrupted, and buried in the unnatural, sullied ground of the Fields of the Dead had stirred something deeply wounded inside her and made her feel strangely… Vindicated in all her defiant resistance to every attempt to tame her. Her eyes no longer needed to adjust to the salinity of the ocean water around her. If that was a product of her third day here, or the ritual itself she could not have said. She could not have told you where here was. She’d stepped into the temple with Arturi and passed through an area of deep magic. They no longer needed to maintain water breathing spells, and both of them could talk here. Her black dragon shape was no longer necessary.

Then the ritual began, the gem was freed and delivered to the circle she’d been told. She and Arturi had taken on a sacrifice of giving up a piece of their essence to make it so. They were suffering through days of pain and misery. In so doing, they and the circle had been named the new guardians. She was sure the only safe place for the corrupted gem was in the healing energy of the grove. A place of purification, well-cloaked by the gods of the triad and their allies. There they could study it and see if it could be fully purified or destroyed never again to fall into the hands of this Kreselfax, Z, or any of the other forces currently stirring the dead from rest.

There was the chance this was all a trap. It was possible they were only playing a role in bringing the gem out of its sanctuary. Umberlee and Talos were no friends to life. The ocean fey and storm giant guarding the gem were not naturally evil enemies, so she had little reason to doubt them. She fell back on the idea that sirines did not typically align to Umberlee herself and also would have little reason to play a part in the desires of the undead that had captured, corrupted and killed so many of their number. The undead were certainly attracted to and had been trying to find these gems of power for some time. The circle had put an army of fettid corpses to rest that day getting to and protecting its resting place.

There was one final element that made the gem unsafe with the circle. She could only pray that it did not choose her absence to make itself known. She kicked herself for not having acquired the proof of the danger until the very day she went missing. It was a matter she meant to see laid to final rest as soon as she returned. Rage swelled up inside her momentarily, only to be quelled by the deep, rumbling voice of her mate. He wanted her attention for something… Important. She would pass out moments later, in so much pain, so tired, and so very happy.

She was only faintly aware of the crawling feeling of her changing skin, hair, and eyes as the final stages of the ritual completed.

Before I could have objected I found myself in love with a ranger. He was a full head taller than me, broad at the shoulders, and possessing the quiet calm of a proven creature of the forest. I remember even the posture of him, the way he would fold his arms and stand at the outside of things with patient observance. His gestures impressed upon me his quiet strength, but when he did speak... He was not just physically daunting, he had the presence of someone that knew well that (regardless of any perceived fault) he could and would rise to any situation and overcome it on pure tenacity. If he pursued me with that level of determination, I knew I was done.


For once in my life I had felt like prey, and my lion’s golden eyes fixed on me. My breath was often caught in my throat in panic, for I was prey that no ground to which I could run. It was evident that I could not hide myself in the usual ways from him. No amount of pretended coldness or attempted distance would impress him. He found the heart of me and cut into it with every moment we shared. My heart knew before my terrified mind, and my mouth ran off without me in his presence. I found myself giving up all my secrets to him, and sharing all my pains and desires with him. He might have thought it was because he asked, but it was because his eyes seemed to see through me. Like a child knowing that I was caught, I found myself confessing well beyond anything he asked.

The connection between us was palpable from distance, unspoken, and driving from the very beginning. I watched him with stunned fascination at how we just seemed to understand each other. There was a deep resonance in our souls. I have never been a romantic, but I find myself now thinking it could only be by design. As my heart won over my mind, I felt less like prey and more… Precious. Pursued because I was of irreplaceable value to him and not merely to consume and be done with me.


He announced he had a surprise for me. Odd for him to voice it rather than just do it. My mind raced at the possibilities. Days my mind worked on it and then he brought me to our tree; A birch with a divide trunk. It looked like two trees from a distance, but up close one could move the grass and see it bound into a share length of solid trunk and roots. I was almost certain he meant to propose, but what he actually did moved me to the brink of tears. He laid the plants of the three shrines of the triad at my feet and told me he would be honored if I would consider him for membership in the Elder circle.

For him, this was almost a deeper commitment than asking me to be his wife. He had refused to join the circle so far in understanding of the deeper promise it meant. He had to be devoted to it, and he could not promise that until this moment… Now. I was sincerely moved. I had never thought of myself as the marrying type anyway. Civilization’s version of mates seemed less like partnership and more like servitude. The thing is… I knew that wasn’t what it was for him and I knew that wasn’t a thing that our relationship could ever be. A deep disappointment settled in the more I thought on it.

I realized I had deterred him early on, sharing my opinion on marriage early in our talks. I summed my courage as we sat by the fire in Ulgoth’s and attempted to fix that. I asked him if he wanted something more traditional than my somewhat feral confidence that we were mates and that was all there was to it. His posture stiffened and then relaxed. He took up my hands and looked into my eyes. His eyes looked over me, memorizing me yet again as she said, “. . . I have known some time I would ask the love of my life to be my wife.”

He had things he was waiting on, and smiled as he said, “Do you think she’ll still be able to act surprised when I ask?”

I remember the feeling of my small hands fully encircled by his rough, well-worked blacksmith’s hands. His eyes stared into my own and my breath unconsciously synchronized to his. In that moment of connection, that feeling of falling ever deeper in love with him, I could only move myself to place my lips against his. These moments where I feel… Like I am part of one soul, separated into two separate containers. I wonder if he thinks at times that I only crave physical intimacy like the animal I am. It’s more than that. I feel almost painfully separated from my other half, and need to be as close as our separate bodies will allow.


He’d been the one out on a limb lately and I felt the need as our lips met to meet him there; To pay him in kind for his gestures of faith and commitment. It was that second that I formulated a plan to bare my heart to him, naked and unprotected. I would share pages of my journal with him, giving him a view into my mind no one before him had, and arrange a series of surprises for him that would seem to climax in the welcoming of him to a group of people I now consider my family, but the real climax… That would come just as he thought it was over.

I found this song and I rehearsed it over and over again;


I planned to sing to him… To dance with him… I was the one that taught him to dance. I had this trumped up mental picture of doing the wolf’s mating dance with him and blending into a waltz. I had so many grand plans and I was almost there when fate intervened. We walked together into the unknown. We were the only ones present with divine blood to pass the barrier. Without fear we pledged our life force to restore the fey we met within. It was days of slow, unrelenting torture. We passed in and out of consciousness tightly wound up in each other’s arms. I held to any thought that fed the fight in my soul. I thought of the circle, of the threats to it, of Ashling’s part of my surprise and my driving desire to make this man my husband.

He jostled me from my wandering thoughts and spoke. In that wet, dark place of suffering I found myself again warmed by what he said. I asked him how I got so lucky and he placed his forehead to mine and said it was he that needed luck now. He began to ramble about it having been some time since we danced, and in my delirious state and held him and swayed as best I could through the pain. I found the words of that song escaping me early… And I messed them up. He didn’t seem to mind, pulling me tighter to him with an adoring chuckle as he gave me his reason for needing luck in this particular moment.

He took a knee and my hand, looking up to me as he said, “I’m going to ask the love of my live to be my wife.”

My mind came into startling focus. I couldn’t hide my surprise as I looked around our foreboding surroundings. The incredulous look upon my face must have been nearly comical. Here? Now? Of all times and places? It sank in and I realized just how utterly perfect that was. In all this pain, even now and under these circumstances it was to each other we clung. Of course here… Of course now… It could be no other time and place. He had beaten me to the proposal and chosen a far better moment.

I collapsed and wrapped myself around him as I gave him my answer. So much for all my well-laid plans. . .

“The six have spoken,” Arielnon the avoral guardinal spoke, “You have been welcomed back among us and will return.”

He manners and tone were appropriate. He was a celestial; the picture of duty and one-mindedness. For a moment Ramsus envied him. Life had been so much simpler before Ramsus met Melani and fell in love. Now he had spent generations among what most celestials considered children. They were lesser beings in need of guidance. If one was particularly pure-hearted, it was a great joy to them, but in the sense of seeing a child take baby steps into adulthood. It struck him now that, though he never intended to be so arrogant, he had been. Seeing them in all their complexity had educated him and he was no longer certain that it was not the celestials that needed to take steps into a more complex realm of thought.

“She needs me,” He said.

“She has a baby dragon,” Arielnon scoffed, “She is the archdruid, and has power allies in nearly every faction. She is… Impressive, maybe even a worthy petitioner someday, but she does not need you or anyone else for that matter. Be proud of her. Proud enough to let her stand alone.”

“. . . I need her,” He said softer, “It’s like watching my own cubs again, after Milani died. I see so much of Milani in her. Mortal life spans are short. Surely the six can grant me this clemancy.”

The Hawk looked at him for a long alien moment like he was seeing something curious and vile, “If you ask me, you should not be allowed to return. You speak like one that has fallen. They should strip you of what thin divinity you have left and be done with you.”

“That’s fair,” He said, staring right back at Arielnon without a hint of fear, “I am not sure I disagree.”

Arielnon’s feathers puffed up around him. His eyes dilated and his beak hung open, “Blasphemy. I will report this to the six. I would not expect Talisid to show you more mercy than has already been granted.”

“I have no doubt you will do exactly that,” Ramsus nodded, “You don’t have the experience or free thought to do anything else.”

Ramsus smiled, baring teeth. Arielnon opened his wings and puffed his feathers, particularly those on his neck. Ramsus circled him and Arielnon’s head followed without his body an almost full circle before his body followed it and he pushed out his chest. Ramsus, crouched down and roared. Arielnon’s feathers fell flat against him and he beat his wings once to bounce backward. It was a conversation as much as any spoken one.

“Go,” Ramsus said cooly, “Before I decided to have chicken for dinner.”

“You will regret this,” Arielnon shrieked and took off into the sky.

Only a few days later the avoral returned with an ultimatum. Ramsus would return in two day’s time, or his divinity would be stripped. He didn’t know what that would mean for Sarisay, or if his true form as a bear would be compromised. The more he thought on it, the more he worried for her. What would he say? How would he explain? A part of him ached to tell her how much like her ancestor she was, and how proud Melani would be. Sarisay had precious little of that sort of pride and love lavished upon her, but would she be able to reconcile that a gaurdinal had been at her side all this time deceiving her?

----------------------------------------------------------

Sari saw Karn looking into the distance. Exaltrix’s head was in her lap.

“I hope that appetite slows down, little one,” She cooed as she stroked its shimmering scales. Karn flopped down, exhausted from keeping up on the full day of hunting. He looked longingly to the forest again. He’d been doing that a lot lately. The urge to find a mate, and to be a proper bear was upon him. Sari knew it, but she’d been holding on this past year. That wasn’t fair, it wasn’t kind, but she’d found him as a cub, letting go as a parent wasn’t easy.

He looked up to her, and she to him. His warm brown eyes then fell to the infant in her lap, already larger than a wolf, and slowly rose to her again like he was asking. If he went now, would she be alright? It might help to have two to hunt for the bottomless youngster. She smiled gently to him. It was time. It was past time. She ruffled his fur and placed her forehead to his.

“You are my cub,” She murmured, “Always. Come back to me if you have need or if your wilds are threatened. I love you, little bear.”

-----------------------------------------------------------

Karn’s heart nearly stopped. She had understood somehow that he needed to leave but not why. He watched her from the forest’s edge for a long while. She had a mate now, and a dragon. Arielnon had been right about that. She didn’t need him. He watched her until she left with the wyrmling and uttered a final time, “But I need you.”

It was the truest, final statement of a parent. One that comes after letting go. It was in that moment past letting them go that you realize part of you was not holding them back for their sake but for your own.

It had been a rocky return. Ramsus seemed to be under constant trial. He was not allowed to resume free patrols, working instead beneath another ursinal and being largely delegated to research there. Ursinals were the scholars of the guardinals so it wasn’t out of his depth, but he’d grown used to freedom even in his time before Melani. He pulled a book off the shelf and found his mind wandering to Sarisay. A found smile curved the lips of his more human form. She had an ursinal’s fondness for knowledge and books. It set her apart from many of the other forest kin.

He felt a sudden tingling. The bond that hand broken when Exaltrix was hatched was making itself known again. He paused and looked into the distance. He could feel her, and she was in pain. He could not go to her, and his heart sunk into his stomach. The next days intensified his worry as he felt her life force draining. On the third day he put down his books and was going to leave but was met at the door.

Arielnon glared at him and said simply, “You are to return.”

Arielnon turned on the tips of his claws and started to walk. Ramsus followed, his mind racing, “Wait… I am returning to Toril on order?”

“Yes,” Arielnon said flatly, “From one above the six.”

Above the six? Mystra? Some other god? Was Talisid overriding the other Five Companions? He had so many questions and Arielnon did not look amused or in the mood to entertain him. The hawk stopped at an old, unused portal, “You will use this one. It’s a little unstable but time is of the essence.”

He knew why Arielnon wanted him to use this one. The stable route meant moving through many portals and planes. It would take days to get back to Toril. This one would deliver him directly but was mildly unstable. The toll it would take on him might be severe, but he nodded and shifted his bear form.

“Open it,” He said with grim determination. I’m coming, Sarisay.

When he landed on the other side, he felt like he’d been flipped inside out a few times. For a moment he wondered if he had arrived that way. With a rumbling moan he found his feet and ran in the direction of her energy. Unfortunately, the instability of the portal was worse than was documented, having dropped him several hundred miles away from the intended entry. It took a few days to reach her.

Despite, his portal sickness he ran the whole way. He was a celestial after all; eating and sleeping were largely unnecessary. He had grown to enjoy those activities but had no biological imperative. Finally he found himself at the entrance of the den at last and froze on sight of Sarisay and Arturi. As a denizen of the Beastlands he knew well the look of the followers of Stronmaus, who made his home there. Arturi bore those traits rather obviously to Ramsus’ celestial vision. Sarisay, on the other hand bore the smell and look of fey known to inhabit the sea. What in the realms had happened?

The lordling looked to Milani and asked, “Can you help it? The fields take neither forest nor crop. The battle fought here seems to have corrupted the ground. We’ve had it consecrated, which stopped the dead from shambling up out of it, but still nothing grows.”

She stepped up to the edge of the baren plot. There was a stark edge where the wild grasses came up to the edge and just stopped. The lordling looked at her impatiently. His kind only needed a druid when the wilds were angry or baren and there was no one left to ask. She paid him no mind and crouched by the edge, touching her hand to the soil. She closed her eyes and communed with nature. At first the area actively resisted her, but her will was strong. She felt like she was wading through mud in her mind. A pinpoint of light up ahead grew, and expanded into a vision.

She sneered and stood erect. She growled at the lordling, “You clear cut this place just for your battle.”

Rather unapologetically the lordling said, “The forest here presented a blind spot and we knew the enemy was coming from this side.”

“There was a dryad here,” She snarled, “You felled her tree!”

The lordling shifted uncomfortably. His men closed in around him protectively. They had not expected her to learn that particular truth it seemed. He rose his hands, “She wasn’t willing to help stand in the way of the coming forces. She was actively fighting the clearly of the forest around her, to include charming and turning some of our troops against us. The choice was her or my people. What would you have done?”

“Wouldn’t be involved in a war,” She said flatly, “I do not treat my mother as property and fight over her bits.”

He sputtered through a string of weak excuses for why the battle was necessary that basically came down to a simple border dispute. Nobles… Squabling over land and resources to feed their power and sense of self-importance. Bad seed, the lot of them, punching the womb of the world as they greedily suckled on her breast until she was dry. She looked hard into him and said, “You will sell this land to me. I’d ask you to preserve the new forest that sprouts here, but clearly you are the type that will burn it the moment it grows and the need suits you. It is always the easiest, most destructive way with you lot. All you respect is your contracts, and so I will have one of your mighty papers.”

His eyes went wide, “There are hectares of land here, owning that much land would entitle you to minor ennobling. Be reasonable.”

“I doubt you truly gave the dryad a chance to ‘be reasonable’,” Milani spat, “Her unwillingness to do anything as militant forces passed through her woods was evidence of her mistreatment far before you told her to help or get out of the way. If you find my terms unreasonable, enjoy the baren view.”

The dryad laid to rest here did not rest easy. Her soul burned with hate for the thoughtless treatment of her land and the mortal blood that soaked the soil. This place would grow nothing until her voice was heard, and the ground was cleansed. Milani needed to be able to offer some comfort and assurance that the land would be allowed to heal and not be further abused. She knowingly asked for more than the lordling would agree to.

It was a gamble. She knew the scar they left on the land bordered a main road coming into the area. It was an embarrassment; a thing that required constant explanation to visitors who then left speaking of the ill blight in their lands. Nobles and their fragile egos. He wanted to stop explaining. He didn’t care about the land at all. The real question was if he felt a need to keep this land for some use. She knew he wouldn’t give her the land, but if she could get him to commit to a contract outlining the land’s potential use…

“I can’t make you a lady in my own lands!” He grumbled becoming red in the face, “Our lands are small and sparse as it is. You want a contract? I will agree to a contract labeling half of it a reserve. Hunting will only be allowed by the nobility or special permit. No more than 20 permits in a year.”

“All of it,” She said flatly.

“Two thirds!”

“All… Of… It…”

He turned and spoke in hushed words to his council. They eventually left to discuss the prospect. Some three days later they stood there again, and he presented her the contract with his seal upon it. She tucked it safely away and stepped onto the baren soil. She reached out with her senses and called in prayer. Soon she found herself moved to a lingering song that seemed etched into the abused ground beneath her feet and it burst forth from her lips as she was enveloped in an otherworld green glow. Oak leafs floated in on the wind, circling her in the warm green light.


((Adapted from "Noble Blood" Tommee Profit))

They fight,
They fall,
Because duty called, it called!
So they chose, like there’s no choice at all,
duty called, it called!

Vines rose up out of the ground all around her, spreading like a wave as far as could be seen. It stirring the packed earth, bringing much needed air to its depths. She was vaguely aware of the startled gasps at the spectacle playing out before them. See… Know the power of the deep wilds.

Mercy, Peace, and Justice,
Will cherish and protect us,
Battle borne the sent us,
Protected by our noble blood.

They rise,
Standing tall,

Lightning erupted from her eyes and licked all around her. The angry, forgotten winds stir around her as she became the avatar of storms.

Steady hands,
For the draw,
Swing the sword,
Watch them fall..

She reached to the sky and pulled downward bringing a flood of water that spawned three greater water elementals.

Because duty called, it called…

She danced and sang the dead fey’s lament as the elementals spread out.

Mercy, Peace and Justice,
You have all forsook us,
Now the fields lie baren,
Covered in their noble blood.

They soaked the stirred ground and driving the blood up and running it off. She reached into her satchel, grabbing fists of acorns and native seeds. She spread them as she danced, hearing the song again and again in her mind. The vines aided her, snatching the seeds and pulling them in the ground.

Those gathered watched in stunned wonder as a few trees rose in full maturity. The green glow sunk into the ground and resurrected the old wood while the seeds she spread were woken by her song and the promise of protection.

To one watching her life they might have called her important and powerful; chosen by the gods of nature to right so many wrongs. However, the reach of the gods of Toril was not as absolute as they hoped their followers would believe. There were many more gods and many more prime worlds. If their power was not absolute, what was? Ao? Fate? Was there a direction or sense to any of it?

The bleakers would say no because they only saw meaning in what happened within a limited, magnified scope. As Milani died in Sigil, coughing up acid and pollution, they would say that was the payment for her service. She was evidence that there was no point or protection to be had. There was no truth to fate and no grand design. Death and suffering came to all and claimed all. Champions or beggars, they were fleas on the back of existence. Who rose and fell was completely accidental. Trying to live according to any creed in the hopes that morality and service would shield you was ridiculous. Living a life of service should be so that you can make peace when the verse claimed you and rest easy. Be assured that it could and would claim you and your loved ones without mercy or consideration.

They had it partially right. Sometimes lights existed to be snuffed out. A mortal could only contemplate the fairness of their existence. Seeing the true effect their life and the lives they touched was beyond the scope of their vision. They might think their life had no point because everyone they knew and loved was dead and they suffered no matter how they tried. They failed to see that their true purpose was to drop a coin on the street. A coin that would roll into the hands of a beggar child. They might even have seen it happened, but the coin and the face of the child whose hands it reached were long forgotten as one of those insignificant moments. What could one coin do?

It might be the coin that bought medicine for the ailing mother in the alley behind him. Her continued life might convince him that there was some small kindness to the world. Or maybe the coin was taken and the child beaten to death and left in a ditch. Maybe that child had a sister who then dedicated herself to necromancy in a misguided attempt to right that injustice. No one can say, but as small as it was, the coin was important; a catalyst. Catalysts were often small to the point of being inpreceptible.

Mortals would cry that a whole life’s point should not be to drop a single coin but the truth of fate was that it cared very little for individual fairness. It was likely that it was at least not that wasteful; Spending a whole life for one coin. However, it didn’t care about a person’s ego and feeling that the things important to them were somehow important to the verse. Every action created a ripple, or an opportunity for the butterfly affect. There was a point to every life and every death. It was simply beyond our sight, lost to what was insignificant to us in our self-centeredness.

The forest she rose out of that desolation was leveled and sown for more corn a mere year after she went missing.

So what was her true purpose?

She moved through the ruined dusty bookcases of Ulcasters. She felt closed off to nature here; It was claustrophobic to her and made her skin itch a little. It was the puzzles, books, and minor freedom from people that kept her returning. There was some relief to be hand as well from the call of the sea which had so completely invaded her senses since her encounter with the ancient sea fey.

Karn was feeling better and shadowed her footsteps. He was always so quiet here and so alert. His honey eyes settled on hers every time she looked at him. Animal language does not truly convey sentences, but a thought or emotion. Things like “I am a strong female”, “Predator about to pounce”, and “Nervous and unsure”. Simple directions were possible. Not “go right at the baker’s house” but “In that direction” like a person pointing without words. Right now his was saying, “cautious, reverent.”

She stopped as a small black book caught her eye.

“An Account of Deep Woods Magic; The Life and Disappearance of Druidess Milani.”

It had been written by a mage who was researching divine magic and had lucked into knowing a very powerful druid name Milani. No last name was given, but that was oft the way with druids. The mage had abandoned his more general studies to watch this woman, and his account was a fascinated and tender biography. Within the first pages she could feel him falling in love with Milani, and she was drawn in. She found an unbroken desk and began to read in a more focused sense.

Legends never die
When the world is callin' you
Can you hear them screaming out your name?

“. . .She prayed and a blast of healing, with a strength I had not encountered, pulsed through us. I get chills recalling it. It was the most complete feeling of wellness I ever had. In healing one of her own his eyes closed blissfully and he murmured about hearing a song in the trees. As I came to know her great faith, I realized she was drawing from it to make her healing more potent. Her touch cured alignments that were untouchable to some of the finest clerics I knew. . . ”

Legends never die
They become a part of you
Every time you bleed for reaching greatness
Relentless, you survive

“. . . As benevolent and loving as her prayers could be they could also be awe inspiring in their destructive power. I watch her cripple an army without using the druid’s greatest power; shape shifting. In truth, I rarely saw her shift and never to the druid’s greatest form. Somehow she manages to stand outside of all the legendary powers of the deep woods and be something equally impressive and unique. . . ”

“. . . Gods, there was blood everywhere and most of it was hers. I cradled her in my arms and asked again why she would be so reckless. She always placed so little value in her own life. Was this a part of the heroic condition? How could she not see how the world would be dimmer without her. Far more than it would be missing a few acres of woods. . .”

They never lose hope when everything's cold and the fighting's near
It's deep in their bones, they'll ride into smoke when the fire is fierce

“. . .I remember her curse as the young druid she was mentoring succumbed to his wounds. She bathed her hands in his blood and then wept into them as the battle raged. It looked like all was lost. The orcs were too many and too powerful. As she lifted her eyes, fire blazed within them and she thrust her hands into the ground. As she prayed the fallen Silvanite was swallowed by the ground and made one with the earth once more. All around us vicious brambles sprang up, separating the survivors from the orc army. The strangled screams will haunt my dreams of the orcs choked by vines and bled out by a thousand thorn pricks. Their remaining forces had to navigate the labyrinth her prayer created, and from there it was easy to pick them off. Gods, is there no end to her power? It was a great victory, and still she wept for a full night and day past it. . .”

No, pick yourself up, 'cause
Legends never die

“. . . I nearly converted and followed her into the woods on the day I watched her raise and entire forest from baren ground. Not just a grove, mind you, an entire forest. The song she sang etched itself onto my soul. I am forever changed in watching this woman. Her faith, selflessness, and determination should be considered forces of nature in their own right. It is my great honor to continue in her company. Recording her great works may be my life’s true purpose. . .”

When the world is calling you
Can you hear them screamin' out your name?
Legends never die

Sari never slept indoors, but an incredible weariness took her and reading was so relaxing to her. Her head hit the desk with a dull thump and she was out cold. Karn took his moment, shifting from his bear form to a form he’d only recently become accustomed to holding since his return to the Beastlands. Half bear, half man, Ramsus looked over Sari’s peaceful features. She was so much the image of his Milani that it still stole his breath to look at her in certain lights. His eyes fell to the book which he gently slid out from under Sari’s hand.


They become a part of you
Every time you bleed for reaching greatness
Legends never die

“…It was a young dragon, but a dragon all the same. I questioned her decision to climb the peak alone…”

They're written down in eternity
But you'll never see the price it costs

A book on his Milani. He’d have never thought to hope anything of her still existed on Toril or anywhere in the verse. His eyes flew over the pages at a pace that was only natural for what he truly was.

“. . .I watched her climb that rocky path. My eyes knew her form well enough to imagine it well beyond the strength of my sight. . .”

The scars collected all their lives

“. . . Every scar upon her, the curve of her cheek, and the slopes and valleys of a body made for physical rigors to which I was poorly suited. I suppose that is why I never told her. I was never her equal. . .”

When everything's lost, they pick up their hearts and avenge defeat
Before it all starts, they suffer through harm just to touch a dream
Oh, pick yourself up, 'cause
Legends never die
When the world is calling you
Can you hear them screamin' out your name?

Karn’s eyes became moist, reading about her brought her back to him in a level of detail he was ashamed to admit. Centuries had passed and the mind is a fickle thing, cherry picking what to remember. There was a way to everything she did, even the tilt of her head. This book captured it. She was alive again on its pages.

Legends never die
They become a part of you
Every time you bleed for reaching greatness
Legends never die

“. . .The roar shook the ground as the sun was setting. We all clamored to find something to cling to as the land slid around us. I found an oak and latch on as a child to a mother’s bosom. The dwarf but a meter away was not so lucky. He was there one moment, and gone the next as a rolling rock swept him away faster than the eye could track. . .”

When the world is callin' out your name
Beggin' you to fight
Pick yourself up once more
Pick yourself up, 'cause

“. . . I looked up to the summit, framed by the golds and oranges of Lathander’s dying light and saw it. A small speck. A black spot thrust away from the peak and falling fast. My heart met my throat. . . “

Legends never die
When the world is calling you
Can you hear them screamin' out your name?

Milani. . .

“. . .Milani. . .”

Legends never die
They become a part of you
Every time you bleed for reaching greatness
Legends never die

“We ran up the slopes and dispatched the young dragon. She would not have wanted it, but she had clearly failed in reasoning with it and we could not safely search for her elsewise. It is now Day 120 that I have lingered in this town to search. The others have long given up and news of her disappearance has spread quickly. They say her body must have been swallowed by the perturbed ground, but I will search. She did not answer to true resurrection and try as I may, I cannot accept that she is dead and unwilling to return. I will turn over every stone until I find her. There is too much left undone. . . “

The author and Ramsus echoed in unison with their hearts, “. . . Too much left unsaid. . .”

It lacked the part of her story that Ramsus knew well. He’d had no feelings of inadequacy to stand in the way of his desire to hold her. Looking back he saw it for the arrogance it was. He was no more worthy of her than this mage that followed her for years without speaking his affection. Yet, he was strangely comforted that the book did not fully contain her end. It was an account of a hero with a mysterious end and served its purpose in capturing her heart and wisdom. This book belonged somewhere to be learned from, not wasting away in a ruined library.

Or. . . Was that exactly where it belonged? His eyes fell to Sarisay. She would never have found it if it were hidden away in Candlekeep’s vaults. He wasn’t aware of a single druid that belonged to their ranks and so he wondered if any of their supposed scholars would have bothered to read it. Here was the only place it could have been discovered by her ancestor centuries later; A girl just starting on a path so similar. He brushed a bit of hair away from her face and wondered at it all.

There has to be a plan to it all. He was so close to falling, so close to abandoning his convictions and all the wisdom he’d gained watching mortals more closely and living among them. In this moment, one of his line centuries removed, brought everything back to him. Was this Sari’s purpose? To save an angel without even knowing it? He didn’t pretend at the kind of arrogance so prevalent in his kind anymore, and so he could not guess. His heart beat with only one sentiment. . .

“Thank you, Sarisay.”

He allowed himself the risk of embracing her, putting sturdy arms around her and cradling her like a child. She was after all a child with many greats before it and he was so proud of her. He felt her heartbeat quicken before she even began to stir. Sarisay, sat up like a bolt to look into the honey eyes of karn, who moaned at her in protest from beside her. She looked around, bewildered. She was sure someone had been holding her. . .

*Thunk*
Arturi walked up to the archery target. The combination of the draw strength needed of his bow and the quality of the target's material proved it easier for him to pull the arrows through the other side to free them. The grey sky above released a light drizzle of rain this morning, akin to a misting. The sun was just now peering over the horizon where in due time it would be blanketed once again from the clouds above. Sorcha lied nearby curled into herself sleeping, indifferent to the sound of arrows finding their mark.

Sarisay sat beneath the brush at enough of a distance to observe him in the clearing without distracting him. She didn’t hide. She had no desire to spy on her beloved and his eyes would likely find her anyway. Her presence going unnoticed was merely a side-effect of his intense focus. She did want to watch him as he still fascinated her. Not in the way that one finds something curious, but in an awed sense. Someone like him existed, and he chose to love her of all people.

Arturi walked back behind an arrow that rested on the grass, serving as his point in which to shoot from. He knocked, lifting the bow and finding his aim sight down the arrow. He loosed and it had found its mark. He let out a sigh of frustration. It wasn't good enough. It wasn't the same. He flexed his free hand, a repeated fist as he looked down to it in futile appraisal.

She could see his marksmanship had still not fully recovered from their ordeal and a pang of guilt hit her heart. He had walked right into it and agreed to it of his own will. Yet she could not shake the feeling that it was ultimately for her, and thus her fault. That was one of her mental pathologies and she knew it. Her mother had done well instilling the idea that all the bad that happened in this world rested squarely on Sarisay’s shoulders. She shook the cruelty of her mother’s words from her head and stood.

She considered announcing herself for a brief moment, but seeing his grim, determined face she thought it best to leave him to his process. She traveled deep into the woods and sat beneath an oak tree on a bed of moss. She had used this tree before in vigil, but today she only sat and thought. There was no ritual to it. Just a woman alone with what raced in her mind.

There was so much clutter there. She’d lost the dragon form, the forms of the mythical beasts, and while her brethren consoled her and said they would return, she had her doubts. There was something else within her now taking up that space. A swelling of her faith and her desire to know the magic she had on a deeper level. She knew the rights, the prayers to invoke the oakfather’s blessings, and she felt the divinity of it, but she had always just felt her way through. She leaned into an innate wisdom without question.

No more. Now when she communed it wasn’t just seeking for quick answers but because she truly wished a oneness with the deepest of the wilds. The arid savannahs, the thick old wood forests, the impassable swamps, the streams which became rivers which fed the ocean. She could feel them all calling and coursing through her viens and they felt…

She could not have seen her own eyes blazing like bluegreen fire.

He walked away from the pair and their “animals”. His tail flicked behind him in malicious mischief and he took up a vantage to watch them a moment as he mused. That woman… That druid all those hundreds of years ago…

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Milani and the dragon were talking. How dreadfully boring. He’d lead her to this place in the hopes this young red dragon would chomp first and ask questions later. He smiled at the irony of her being a pain in his arse even now. She’d been a real thorn in the side of the abyss for too long. The orders were clear; get rid of her. He detested getting directly involved but, was just going to have to get his hands dirty this time.

He stepped up behind her out of the shadows to the surprise of the dragon. Milani never saw him as even her druidic will folded before his sleep spell and she fell back into his arms. The dragon, to its credit, didn’t just start attacking him. Red chromatics where some of his favorite dragons. They could be a fair bit less lawful and more reasonable. The beast sat back on its haunches and asked, “I was rather enjoying her. Is there a reason I should let you have her?”

“Maybe I’ll give her back to you,” Hansen said, “You planning to eat her after you are done playing with her?”

“Be serious,” The red scoffed, “Look at her, she’s tough as shoe leather.”

“Then I am afraid I must insist on taking her away,” Hansen offered politely, “Send you another druid later? Maybe after you are done torching the town below like you were supposed to?”

The dragon’s head tilted, and a deep rolling sound told Hansen the beast didn’t like thinking he’d been manipulated to come here. The truth hurts, especially when you are prideful, and dragons had some of the biggest egos in the verse. Hansen clicked his tongue, “Mmn, you have the look of a creature that is about to be unreasonable. Ah well…”

He tossed Milani over the edge and entangled the young dragon so he could not do something foolish like dive over after her. The beast let out a fierce roar that shook even Hansen’s unnatural dexterity. He fell and caught himself looking over the edge as Milani was swallow by the gaping maw of a portal just before she would have hit the ground. She would not have seen him with her limited human eyes, but he saw the look of shock and fear on her face as she was falling. It was a shame she never hit bottom to give it the glorious finish it deserved. He frowned and stood, brushing off his coat.

“She’s one of those,” Hansen grumbled.

“One of what?” The dragon growled as he worked to free himself.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Hansen sighed, “The verse is a vast and complex place. Seems that one is not done away with so easy.”

“The verse?” The dragon cackled, “You don’t make any sense.”

“I don’t need to,” Hansen said, “Not to the likes of you.”

He stepped through his own portal just as the dragon was almost free and he cooed back at the wyrm, “They’re coming. You should probably fly away. You killed their beloved druid after all.”

-------------------------------------

Pure curiosity drove him to find her. He was there in another form when she turned up in Sigil. He despised that the verse chose certain people. If she was going to live, she didn’t have to live well. She was pregnant with twins and he saw to it that she we placed in the worse part of the Hive. Eventually the verse seemed to lose interest and she died alone, pitiful, and coughing up her own blood.

What a wonderful sight that had been. He had never felt so fulfilled in his work. She thanked him in the end for taking care of her the poor, wretched thing. He watched the twins for a time and once he was sure they’d amount to little he left it. Generations later he met Jellal.

There was something good and stubborn and annoying about him. It didn’t take long for Hansen to trace his ancestry. He thought he’d toy with the boy a while but then he realized that Jellal had the most curious shadow; A gaurdinal. An ursinal to be precise. He’d heard Milani weeping at night before the end. He’d listened to her cry out to her “Ramsus” in her sleep. It didn’t take much to piece together who the shadow was. Now he was fully intrigued. Her celestial lover had not just abandoned her, and so he tested the waters.

Jellal hung by his throat in Hansen’s hand. He could sense the mouse-sized celestial stowed away in Jellal’s gear. Hansen had wanted a confrontation. He’d wanted Ramsus to show himself, but the celestial never did come out. When Jellal passed out, Hansen discarded him through the portal to Toril. He needed more information. He observed for some time as Ramsus just sort of watched Jellal. Ramsus looked old, lost, and broken.

Hansen’s face split in a toothy grin. Was he witnessing the fall of a celestial? Maybe Ramsus would be the beginning of an all new kind of devil as the first fallen devas had become the first Erineyes. Content with what he had seen Hansen collected the hive rat years later and delivered him to the Mercykillers in Sigil. Again Ramsus could not be bothered to show up, and Hansen lost interest. It was not the touch of destiny he’d expected from the line that came out of that woman.

But then there was this stirring… An aasimar druid had bested a necromancer that had been gifted ancient and powerful texts on long forgotten magics in the hopes that he would use them and spread chaos into the heart of the High forest. When Hansen showed up to investigate, there she was.

Sarisay…

She was so much the spitting image of her ancestor that he experienced something he’d not before; Fear. He took to watching her, particularly because Ramsus had chosen this ancestor to actively involve himself. He wasn’t looking so broken any more either. Hansen was chaotic but cautious, so he chose to wait it out and observe again. She doubled over and her lover caught her outside the cloud peaks of Amn. Ramsus was not with her. He was nowhere to be found!

She'd been a typcal overzealous hero and spread herself too thin. This was a golden opportunity. He followed the couple to where they got off the caravan alone. He had seen to it that along the way that Sarisay had fallen into a deep, unnatural sleep, and he was ready to strike.

He should have only had the Ranger, weary from battle, and his little spotted dog to deal with, but Ramsus was there when they got off the caravan too. He was waiting int he bushes with his rounded ears peeking out of it. The loss of dignity in the Celestial's crouching posture almost made Hansen bark a crazed laugh.

He couldn’t help a bit of manic glee at it all. It was like Milani was back from the grave and being a pain in his arse all over again. He followed them and on a whim approached their campfire. Ramsus could tell what Hansen was right away, but the celestial had a cover to maintain so Hansen took a bit of perverse pleasure in taunting him. The Ranger was… More impressive than he had expected but Arturi believed his eyes that a mere tiefling stood before him.

All at once this was all a terribly exciting game.

So the line of Milani had its own guardian angel… Guess that meant they need a demon too. Sarisay always spoke of the balance after all.

I’m going to make you thank me as you die pitiful and used up. Just like she did.

He unlocked the collar around Jellal’s neck, “That’s that. 23 years served. Though if you ask me you’d have gotten the wyrm. Here’s the key t’yer stuff in lockup. Whatever ain’t rotted or been chewed up by moths.”

The key fell in Jellal’s lap as his hand worked over his throat. Between the burns of that balor so long ago and over twenty years of a slave’s collar he was beginning to wonder if fate just had it out for his neck. He rose picking up the key and walked for the first time in a lifetime as a free man. His mistress waited outside of the factol’s office, staring at her feet. As the door opened she lifted her eyes to his and smiled weakly, “Are you sure you won’t stay? Didn’t I treat you well?”

“You treated me as well as any of your possessions, lady,” He offered in a firm tone and walked past her.

“You ungrateful hive rat!” She barked behind him, “Go wallow in the filth that bore you!”

He kept walking as she seethed behind him. Then he turned the corner, walked down the stairs and out onto the street. It was raining. When he’d found his way to Toril he’d blissfully forgotten the smell of Sigil rain; The filth, acid, and decay, lifted up and poured back down onto the pitted streets of forever. He’d survived the past years, passed from master to master, on the thought of getting back to Toril and it’s sweet-smelling rain. He found he’d even grown to miss the shrewish woman he married there. He had a child there. They would be grown by now, but that child had been the only living being he’d loved more than himself.

His eyes lifted to the sign over the Tin Cup. He stepped up to the bar and addressed the owner operator of the place, “Lo, Dion… About that job?”

He needed to get back to Toril, and for that he needed jink.

She heard the Doron Amor was having trouble with demons. Demons were bad news for anyone but her mind could not help but rewind…

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She pushed to her feet a bit shakily. Most of the people fighting the fire did not know she was recently returned from 4 days missing. During those days a she had suffered her every waking moment as a piece of her life force was drained to restore the two guardian fey who watched over a precious relic. She was nothing near her full strength and might not ever be again. Still she fought the fire with everything she had, expending every bit of her divinity in defense of the wilds.

“Is that orcs exiting the cavern?” Terri chirped and Sari looked up to see not just warriors but women and children trying to crawl away from the flames, crying and begging mercy.

Beware always an orc or others that bring axes into the woods. It was a tenant of her faith and yet…

It would take a special kind of evil, an unforgivable apathy, to watch children crying and clinging to their mothers as they were burned alive.

Terri plunged into the fire first and it was perhaps the proudest she’d been to have her in the Elder Circle. Oona retreated back from the flames as they tried to take her, and Sari joined Terri in the roaring abyssal heat of the flames. A cruel laugh lifted into the air while behind her a special kind of evil made itself known.

Alarielle, the chancellor of Doron Amor seemed entirely unphased by the dying orcs, even the children. Michael Dunn stood right beside her and said, “I'm not about to save any of them."

Terri pried one child form the charred, dead grip of his mother. Sari dove into the center of the inferno and began casting all that she had left, a few meager mass healing spells, in the hopes it would give a few more the strength to stand and flea. She was too late and none rose.

“For once, I agree with Dunn,” Alarielle said with Atria silently smirking at her side.

"Let them burn Archdruidess - they're orcs!” Michael cried at Sari as her elemental protection failed and she began to burn. Sari withdrew, beaten, from the flames. It was the second time she would collapse from the bitter smoke and burns in her airways.

"They'd eat you if they could," He further added as she crawled to Terri and Sane who were tending the child’s burns. Alarielle seemed less than impressed by their mercy, “Either it dies to the fire, or to me. Or one of my Rangers. It matters not, I'd just rather save the Arrows.”

Sari put herself between the elf and the child with a deep, unforgiving growl. As the flames roared more and more with each life taken of the orcs they begin to laugh and grow. Her celestial blood hummed with an ancient hatred. Sari gave a pitiful whine, gripping the earth beneath her fingers, she had so little power left. With what had she hurled the fists of dirt at the fire and cast holy storm of vengeance over the flames. No help came for the crippled archdruidess, spent to her last drop as Michael held his people back and glibly quipped, “I think the wood magi are back on it - now that they're done saving the orcs."

“Thems just watch fire like thems no care!” Ma’luke whimpered and wiped his eyes.

Sari’s aqua-colored eyes settled on Michael and then back to the fire. What can I do? I’m spent. There must be something I can do!

As the fires took the lives of the countless orcs that tried to leave, there was great thunderclap when it reached thresh-hold. The fires disappeared, leaving a reformed Balor, it smiled with glee at the fallen corpses and back at the adventurers. Sari used her last wild shape to take the form of a bear and with no wards, no healing, and no spells left to offer, she charged the balor with silver fangs shining. He gave her a mocking look before stepping into a portal and exiting the realms. She howled in misery as the balor escaped.

Alarielle sighed in boredom, “Guess I'll have to organise a clean-up expedition. . . .kill any remaining orcs, this is our best chance to finish the tribe off once and for all.”

Sari’s fur stood on end at the sound of that arrogant woman’s voice. The forest was saved today, but other decisions were made that may affect the woods of sharp tooth and the greater balance in the long term. She feared this would not be the last they saw of that demon. She shifted back to her normal form and ground out the words between a snarling growl, “For the record... That is why you save innocents. Even Orc innocents.”

"No such thing as an orc innocent," Michael scoffed.

Alarielle echoed, “There are no Orc Innocents in this forest.”

Ma’luke turned to the elves, his face ashen with rejection, “Hims know yous no like hims. Hims not want yous loose home. No want forrest burn. No want animal hurt. No care what happen hims.”

The forrest spoke to her. It told her that balor was formed from the torture and blood of the innocent. She looked over her shoulder at her people and her eyes settled on Terri’s disapproving frown that echoed her own feeling on it. Alarielle had not grown tired of her own voice yet however, “All of them, even the children, hunt my people. I'll not stand idly by when I can end this conflict once and for all.”

Sari knew it in her bones. Demons revel in destruction and death. The adventurers lack of action to save the orcs helped a Balor reform. Sari tried to at least get to to recognize she had traded what she perceived as one evil for a far greater one, “Would you trade Orcs for balors then? It was lack of action when I said to fight that flame allowed that BALOR to form!”

"I’m not gifted in such knowledge, Sarisay - but I'm pretty sure thats not how they're born," Michael dismissed.

Alarielle had more to say, “Trade this entire tribe for a single balor? Yes please.”

Something deep that cried for justice and goodness bristled and wanted to lash out within her. There was always something inside her that drove her to higher ideals and confounded her attempts to properly achieve neutrality as her faith would ask her. There was acid in her voice as she said, “A child is a child!”

Eroan seemed as much aghast at the apathy from his kin and tried to reason with them, “Balors are powerful demons. One balor can summon another balor.”

“Eroan,” The arrogance dripping of Alarielle’s voice made Sari want to take her head off her shoulders, “I've killed Balors before.”

She and Eroan argued over what balors could and could not do, but Sari was done with it. In her time on the coast she had watched this elf and her cohort Atria act like rash, petulant children. Without mercy, without remorse, in barbaric “might makes right” fashion. They were supposed to be wise, aged elves. They instead only reminded her of teenage mean girls who by all rights should have peaked towards the end of their grade school and faded into their self-centered and entitled way of thinking never to be missed. Somehow this one was a chancellor and she could only guess at what the elves of Doron Amor had been thinking. She’d found herself aligned to their deeds exactly once and cleaning up after them all other times. She had waited through many mis-deeds but today was the day she wrote them off.

And gods… The woman was still going, “And, if you also didnt know, any planar being called to the prime material plane. Die when they're slain here. They would not return to their home plane, they would die. So yes, I would very much welcome a single Balor in exchange for this wretched tribe that has been a neusance since the Village first came to be.”

Even some of the other on-lookers seemed to lose patience with Alarielle’s pompous and ignorant attitude. Vox frowned as his cigar went out on his return, stuffing hands into his pockets he asked, "Who's the custodian of Doron these days?"

Alarielle called over the fence smugly, “That'd be me!”

As if the fact that someone clearly wanted to lodge a complaint against her and she was the one it would be lodged to was something to be proud of. Sari gave that a word to define it… Corruption.

Meanwhile Sane, the former archdruid, echoed Sari’s caution, “I wonder, the demonic flames seems to have reformed that balor. All the chaos, all the death. It was for it to be created. Maybe this was the plan all along.”

Eroan gave up trying to talk sense into Alarielle and moved to Sari’s side. He could tell she was spent, burnt, and the glow of her eyes was weakened, “How are you feeling, Archdruidess?”

She frowned in her shame and moved to her people, leaving him unanswered. Terri looked to Sari and their unspoken grief at what had happened, their disgust at the action and inaction of the “heroes” of the coast passed silently on the air between them. Alarielle just could not stop and pronounced that she would catch the balor and hand it over to her people, “Let it try, Isendir will laugh at it then probably toy with it for a while. Wouldn’t be the first time he's dealt with powerful planar beings.”

Sane expressed his lament at the troubling situation and left. Terri cradled the child and offered one small comfort to Sari, “I saved one innocent at least.”

“The deeper wisdoms of the forest tell me that Balor now exists because of our inaction,” Sari, who had tried so hard, took it still upon her own shoulders as if she alone should have done more, “Thank you for that at least, Terri”

Finding no one listening to her any more Alarielle lamented, “Guess I'll be heading back to the village. . ..I was looking forward to a quiet day. You coming Elrien?”

“No much dead,” Ma’luke offered to Sari attempting to sooth her, “Kumua go to earth make new life.”

“Yes, Maluke, but this fire was not just claiming life,” She explained, “It was claiming innocence. What poetic justice it would be if we are someday called to save the elves from the balor this birthed. We will help... Of course.”

========================================================================================================================

Even if that woman deserved the despair of her wounded pride… Her people did not, so if they were plagued by a demon now, Sari was only a sending away. Because that is goodness. That is kindness. That is seeing the whole picture and acting to the greater good. She would not be a special kind of evil.

Even if she smiled a little on hearing it.