I
What Comes Out of the Dark
Dynamene sat at one of the tables in the inn. She lightly traced a finger across the tabletop, drawing little circles around the knots and creases of the weathered and aged pine with a disinterested expression upon her soft half-elven features. The barroom was almost empty, save for one of her present travelling companions sitting opposite her at the table.
Apart from him, the bar boasted two darkly clad occupants who sitting in a corner and talking with hushed voices. She felt as if whatever they were talking about wouldn’t end particularly well for either her or her companion.
Taurrandir, as her companion was called, seemed to be more absorbed with the small task of cleaning his sword than the odd behaviour of the two people. She had a hard time of figuring out exactly what Taurrandir was at times; he was an elf, but had mixed features which hinted at both moon elf and wood elf ancestry, but she even had her doubts about that.
Humming to himself quietly as he worked, he seemed completely oblivious to everything that was going on around them. Or at least it seemed that way until he gazed at her with an odd expression on his face, something that resembled grimness but had a deep-woven predatory glee. It was the twisted and warped expression of someone who had spent far too long of a time staring into the abyss; most veteran adventurers held that very same expression prior to a fight or skirmish.
It was times like this that Taurrandir almost scared her, but a feeling of exhilaration slowly built itself up on the inside; a feeling of adrenaline which was slowly-but-surely gathering, ready to explode outwards at a moment’s notice. Even she would have to admit that the thought of something that would break up the endless boredom was a more than a little tempting.
‘Those two idiots in the corner think I can’t hear them,’ he muttered as quietly as he could manage. ‘They’re thieves, and they’re planning to rob us when we get outside.’ With a grin, he sheathed his sword. ‘Not that they’ll really manage to get much further than pissing me off by getting this blade dirty after I just spent half an hour cleaning it, mind.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for Aenara and Morfindel to get back?’ she asked. ‘We’re not necessarily going to win every fight that we decide to enter; so we should wait until they get back and then improve our chances.’
‘Ah, but there lies my problem; too many of us would scare them off, and I want to catch one of them and get some answers,’ he replied after a moment’s silence. ‘And there’s little that’ll get in my way when I desire answers, my dear friend.’
‘What do you care about it anyway? Thieves are thieves,’ Dynamene replied. ‘There’s no need to explain their actions beyond a despicably large amount of greed, laziness and malice.’
‘There’s just something odd about the way they’re talking, there’s a slight edge to their tones that makes it sound as if they’re both actors reading from a script,’ he said. ‘Besides, thieves usually don’t plan to kill people, but instead just take hostages or make threats if any sort of need arises…’
‘You seem to know quite a bit about thieves,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me? Is there some dark secret about you that no one should know or find out?’
‘I’m experienced in dealing with thieves and bandits,’ he said quietly. ‘You get to know how something operates if you fight it enough times.’
‘It’s quite obvious that Morfindel has never fought a Shield Guardian before, then,’ she said, chuckling. ‘How did he figure that his sword would damage the bloody thing anyway; I’ll bet that he felt like a bloody idiot when the blade broke in half.’
‘To be fair, it was a magical sword,’ Taurrandir shrugged. ‘And none of us really foresaw that bloody enchantment that had been infused into it, so we should all just feel lucky that it was only Morfindel’s sword that got broken and not our necks.’
Dynamene quickly changed the subject and muttered, ‘You know, I think we should go now, but could we try and make it look more casual than they’re making out their intent to rob and murder us, please.’
‘Certainly,’ Taurrandir whispered with a grin. ‘Just follow my lead, and we should be okay…’
Standing up to his full height of six feet and two inches, the elf straightened his chain shirt and then stretched out a little. ‘Come on, and don’t forget your staff,’ he said, extending a hand as a gesture to help her up out of her seat. ‘You wouldn’t want to forget that particular trinket, would you?’
Taking the hand, Dynamene shot a quick glance in the direction of the darkly clad ones and noticed that their interest seemed to be piqued by the sudden change in scenario. One of the apparent thieves began reaching into an inside pocket, but her attention was abruptly pulled away before she could see what was being retrieved. Taurrandir had put one of his hands on her shoulder and began glowering at her.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘You don’t usually glare at me like that.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he muttered quietly. ‘Don’t look at them or you’ll draw far too much attention to yourself, and they’ll catch onto the fact that we know their plan is to attack us…’
Reverting to his normal tone of voice, he added, ‘I’m sorry, dear, but we just can’t afford to buy you all new clothes from every single village we stop at. I understand that your clothes can get torn, ripped and dirtied in your field, but you shouldn’t have gone into adventuring if that was a problem for you.’
‘Are you insinuating that I spend too much?’ she asked as they made their way to the door, playing along. ‘I mean, you don’t have much room to talk with the constant pocketbook drain that all somehow manages to get spent on your arrows.’
‘My arrows are at least useful,’ he replied with a mock-indignant tone as they got to the door of the inn. Pulling the door open and letting in a blast of cold night-time air, he stepped out and walked into the silvery moonlight with a sigh.
As Dynamene stepped out and closed the door behind her, she chuckled, ‘Well, that was a fun little spat we were having there.’
She glanced around, looking at the small village and admiring the view; it wasn’t often that she got to gaze upon such a picturesque sight as this, as she was often too busy running for her life or using her magic to destroy something to just stop and look around. A stream ran through the middle of the town, with a small stone bridge arching over it. It glistened with the silvery reflections of the moon and stars, giving the whole area an ethereal quality.
‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ she said as they began walking. ‘It’s rare that we even get to stand back for but a moment and admire the scenery; even brief moments like this are hard to come by.’
‘Yes, my half-blooded friend,’ Taurrandir said with a half-smile, listening to the sounds of the evening. ‘But I’m afraid we’re going to postpone that for now; I can hear them opening the tavern door.’
She stalked through the almost pitch-black halls of the mansion, glancing about, remaining wary for any unwelcome surprises. She examined every entrance and every feature of the hallway, her silvery-blue eyes remained completely unhindered by the almost absolute darkness which she found herself in.
The walls were adorned with paintings and portraits of aristocratic looking people dressed in their best finery. She paused for a moment to admire a statue of a regally-armoured man, clutching a broken claymore’s handle in both hands.
She made her way down the corridor silently, making sure not to make much more sound than a small mouse. After making her way through the expansive corridors for a time, she arrived at a locked bedroom door. It was adorned with a gold-coloured royal seal of some kind, that of a dragon.
Her hand crept to the handle tentatively, expecting it to be locked. She was surprised that it turned, and the door opened without resistance or noise.
She cast a glance throughout the room. It was large, and almost cavernous, with a single large four-poster bed towards the centre of the room, adorned with sheets and decorative curtains, purplish-red in colour. Banners hung from the walls, decorated in a similar style to the door with the same golden dragon.
Moonlight from the open balcony in the distance was shining into the room, providing a light silvery tint to the room. Upon the bed lay a naked young blonde, clearly asleep and lying on top of a similarly unconscious and undressed man. The man was her target; but witnesses of all types must be silenced in a rather permanent fashion.
Reaching for the dagger at her waist, she grinned maniacally. This part was always the one that gave her that quivering feeling that filled her very soul. The thrill of the final part of an assassination was what she lived for; the sheer ecstasy of the killing was almost orgasmic in intensity.
She made a single thrust with the short crooked blade, and she embedded the blade within the man’s chest. It killed him almost instantly; for his heart was pierced. She spent a moment looking down upon her victim; he hadn’t even moved a muscle, let out a spasm or twitched in defiance of death.
Giving it only a moment’s thought, she moved on and sliced the woman’s throat with a sort of swiftness that was only enjoyed by the skilful or the magically enhanced. Those two were enough to sate her bloodthirstiness for one more night, she supposed.
Dynamene glanced back in the direction of the tavern, catching a glimpse of the two darkly cloaked people. They were moving silently, slowly, with almost enough stealth and precision that they were almost invisible when compared with the night-time darkness that surrounded them. There was a silvery glint of polished blades.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked with a grimace. ‘I don’t have many spells left, and they might end up cutting you to ribbons if you try attacking them from close up.’
‘I’m not sure,’ the elf shrugged, concentrating for a moment. ‘Do you have spell ready that can generate some light for us, at all? I mean, you must have something, you’re a magician, you do magic.’
‘Unfortunately not,’ she lamented, looking forwards along the path again. ‘I spent that one up when we took your little detour through the caves earlier. Could you possibly remind me to hit you later for that little idea?’
‘You already did that, as I recall,’ the elf remarked, rubbing his shoulder. ‘And it hurt, too.’
‘I do hope you’ve got something else planned, you’re starting to look pretty stupid at the moment, I’m afraid,’ Dynamene said.
‘What about that trick you can do with your eyes? That trick where you can make them glow must have something useful about it,’ he sighed. ‘I mean, a glow produces light, does it not?’
‘Practically useless, it’s just rather intimidating to the ignorant, and presents a clearer target in the middle of the night,’ she grumbled. ‘I mean, glowing eyes in the middle of the dark would present a tempting and easy target to anyone with a bow or a good throwing arm.’
Taurrandir grumbled under his breath and closed his eyes, concentrating on something as he walked onwards. He was, as Dynamene understood it, something of a basic magic user, but in an odd unique fashion that was tied in directly with the wielder’s mind, usually seen being wielded by the Mind Flayers of the Underdark. Very occasionally, an otherwise average being would manifest such powers, and become powerful beings in their own rights.
And that was why, with a flash of light and a sudden thumping sound of rapidly displaced air, Taurrandir vanished into nothingness as if he’d never actually been standing there.
Dynamene turned just in time to see the elf instantly reappear between their two attackers with a sword in each hand. One, somewhat longer than the other, was the blade that he’d been cleaning earlier, one of human make. The other weapon was a slightly curved blade of elven make.
Taurrandir swung around towards the one that was to the left with a kick strong enough to break bones, but he aimed to disarm or disable, not to harm or maim. He missed, however, as the attacker dodged the strike effortlessly, dropping to one knee and rolling backwards out of his range.
The other attacker let out a masculine-sounding growl and leapt forwards at the psychic elf, swinging the blade of a short sword, only to meet a sudden parry from one of the elf’s own twin swords. Soon enough, the other sword was brought to bear and Taurrandir began his furious series of various swings and parries which were met with surprisingly equal ferocity.
With the power of Taurrandir’s mind, however, the battle was done and over with as he saw a seemingly impossible opening in the attacker’s defences and swung one of his blades with an unnatural speed like only a psychic could muster. An ear-splitting scream pierced the air as a black clad arm clutching a short sword fell to the ground.
Dynamene diverted her attention, scanning the area for the other attacker, but she couldn’t see anything. ‘Where did the other one go?’
‘Don’t bother looking,’ Taurrandir replied. ‘She vanished by using a magical trinket of some sort, probably a teleportation amulet,’ he gestured to the remaining attacker, ‘but we still have this one to deal with.’
‘You won’t get anything from me!’ the man exclaimed. ‘The mistress had us all prepared for every eventuality…’
‘What Mistress?’ Dynamene asked, stepping towards the thug with a glimmer of anger on her features. ‘And we will have our answers, even if Taurrandir has to seize them from your brain in a more direct fashion.’
‘You won’t manage it, bitch!’ the man said. ‘You see, I give my life for the Lady. Red of colour and old of wisdom, she serves us all as we serve her power.’ With those words, he seized up for a brief second, apparently unable to breathe, and tumbled limply to the ground as if all life had been sucked out of him, and it probably had.
The half-elf knelt next to his limp form, examining him for just a moment. ‘He’s dead; he just died like that…’
‘Well, this is odd indeed,’ Taurrandir muttered. ‘We’d better find Morfindel, it’s quite clear that something dark and mysterious is going on here, and I’m afraid that I don’t want to be the poor bastard who gets the short end of the stick this time.’
