Realms of Enlightenment: The Grey Companions (final update posted 02.14.10)

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #491] The Cavern of the Self

The group stood looking at the mirrored gate. The single piercing note that the threnodies had invoked still vibrated about in the high-ceilinged chamber, but the moment after Morier stepped through seemed to draw out before them.

"So are we gonna follow him, or what?" Cerrakean barked and Maleko looked at Ayremac who looked in turn at the threnodies.

"Do we need to wait or can we just step through after him?" the holy warrior asked and the Buomman angled her head slightly.

"We do not know," she admitted, and something within her posture and tone made it seem that she thought him foolish for asking such a question.

"As we told you, the Cavern of the Self is a journey that a Buomman takes alone with his twin," said a second threnody.

"But no Buomman takes this journey with any save his twin," added a third.

"And none save a Buomman has made the journey in our memory," said a fourth.

"We cannot tell you what is the right thing to do," the fifth Buomman told them.

"Truly, we do not know what you will find on the other side of the Gate," confided the sixth.

"Great..." Cerrakean muttered.

"Well," Maleko said, getting that look on his face that he wore when working out a problem in his head. "It seems that we've come this far with no guarantee of certainty. And it is plain that the only way forward is through." And saying thus, he stepped forward and through the Gate, leaving his stunned companions to gape at their reflections.

"Well, I'll be damned!" Cerrakean laughed. "Fancy Pants is full of surprises!" And then she followed him, leaping easily through the portal and disappearing.

"I thought she'd be the last one through," Ixin observed to Ayremac.

"That's what she'd like you to think," Del told her, and smiling sadly back at them, stepped through and was gone. Ixin and Ayremac exchanged a look.

"I don't want to be the last one," she told him and he grinned a glowing grin.

"I'll do it," he told her, gesturing with his sword hand for the Gate. Ixin reached out her left hand and clasped his firmly.

"Together?" she suggested and, still smiling, the holy warrior nodded once and they stepped through.



"Amazing," Maleko hissed as he passed through the gate and into the mirrored tunnel beyond. He;d seen a great many wonders and read about scores more, but nothing quite like this. The place was lit dimly from some unseen source, but that dim light was reflected off every surface until it filled the space with brilliance. And in every polished mirror he saw himself smiling back, but not with his face as it was now, but as if the reflections were moments in time plucked from the long years of his own life and displayed here for himself to see.

"The Cavern of the Self," he said nodding his understanding. What else could it be? And what better way to reflect on one's self than to study it in this way... each moment frozen for minute study. Thrilled to begin, he glanced quickly around, noting with some measure of surprise that he'd had a generally happy life.

He didn't normally think of his life in that way, but judging by the smiling and laughing faces that predominated, his many years had been just that. There were others, of course, moments of frozen grief.. or anger... or boredom. In one dark image, he wore the face of a man in terror, his eyes wide, his mouth a gaping rictus.

When had he looked like that, he wondered and drifted closer. He touched it and...



A chorus of night insects filled his ears. He smelled pine needles and damp soil and wood smoke. Branches clawed at his face and snatched at his cloak. His feet were wet, his shoes soaked through with mud. Where was he?

"Las' chance, points!" a voice in the distance called from behind him. "Show ye'self now, or this 'ne's the first ta get a new, red grin!"

Maleko froze. He knew where he was! And turning around he saw a sight that had haunted him nearly every day for the last three years: his steward, Glaltariand on his knees, his hair in the fist of the brigand whose name he had never learned. The human had a knife of what looked like orcish steel pressed against Glaltariand's exposed throat.

Maleko knew from past experience that the brigand's threat was not an idle one. If Maleko did not show himself, then Glaltariand would die.

"I'm here!" Maleko shouted without hesitation, moving as quickly as he could back through the trees to the camp. "Don't hurt him! I'm right here!" The brigand shouted for his crones and Maleko saw several burly shapes moving toward the treeline where he was likely to emerge.

"Dont give yourself up, sir," Glaltariand shouted bravely in elvish. "The bastards will just kill us all anyway!" The brigand who had the steward's hair snarled and carved him open from ear to ear, a sheet of blood sprayed outward, glistening wet and red in the firelight.

"No!" Maleko screamed as he burst from the trees. "No!" Hands were on him then and the elf struggled impotently. He felt tears on his face, and he let them come. He'd done things differently this time. Glaltariand was supposed to live.

"I surrendered," he shouted. "Why did you kill him? Why?" The brigand smiled a gap-toothed yellow smile as he stepped nonchalantly over the dead elf's body and up to Maleko. He held the knife in front of Maleko's face, it still dripped with his steward's blood.

"I kilt 'im 'cause I reco'nized the crest on yer wagons, points. Ye're a Maltalia! Yer family's got more gold'n Waukeen hisself," the bandit sneered. "Can't kill you, pretty boy. Ye're the only one worth the ransom we'll demand. But I reckon it'll set the proper tone if I send along yer friend's head with our demands."

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #492] Back in the Air Walk

"Come back into the shelter," Ledare gestured. "You'll freeze to death out there." She fixed Morier with a concerned look, but snowflakes stuck to her eyelashes, obscuring her vision. She rubbed them away and looked again at Morier, who was staring at her in disbelief. He hadn't moved.

"Feln, get him in here!" she nudged the half-ogre next to her. It was a soft command, but delivered with all the firmness and expectation of one accustomed to compliance. And for a moment, Morier was overcome with a warm rush of relief, not realizing until now the extent to which responsibility for issuing commands and making decisions had weighed on him.

Feln rose and covered the distance between them in a single stride. His long arms stretched out and picked Morier up by the armpits, hoisting him into the makeshift shelter like a parent might do with a stubborn child. Once the albino was out of the direct wind, Feln let him go, but Morier did not release his own hold. Instead, gripping the ogre's meaty arms in his own he embraced his friend vigorously.

"You are losing it," Feln snorted, awkwardly patting Morier on the back as the embrace lingered. At last Morier stepped back, looking at Ledare and Feln for a long moment.

He recognized the surroundings of the test of air in the Grove of Renewal and could sense exaclty why he had been taken back to this moment. He had relived it in his mind nearly every day since it happened. This was the moment, intentional or not, that he had accepted the weight of this entire quest being placed onto his shoulders. He wondered what would have become of Feln or Ledare if they had stayed with him, and he wondered what would have happened if they had stood next to him while the water guardian who lay just beyond the doorway on the other side of this test had explained about Dridana's heart and body. Would the three have shared 'the pull', or would they each have been given their own information that may have made the trip easier, possibly even leading to their ultimate survival? He had played out a dozen scenarios in his mind, always wondering how each would have changed the path...

And now it seemed, he had a chance to find out.

The cold bit hungrily into his flesh, snapping him back to the present moment and Morier made his decision. The fates had gotten him here, that much he knew for sure, and changing any part of the timeline that had gotten him here could be disastrous. He knew that it had been hard enough to get Ledare and Feln to leave him here the first time around, and trying to explain his current state of mind to them would surely lead them to believe that he had lost control of his mental faculties. And it would be harder still to get them to leave him under those conditions.

"I have a plan, and the plan is only big enough for one person," he shouted over the driving winds. Remorse made the words taste like ash in his mouth. "I have enough draughts of healing to sustain myself, but it's only enough for one person. If the two of you go back, I am sure that I can succeed here. Please... go!" Then, heartbroken, Morier pulled his collar stiff around his neck and turned his back to his two companions.

He remembered of course, that the argument would not end there - Ledare rarely made any decision without first debating its merits from every side - but for the moment he could no longer face them. He wanted to tell them everything, he wanted them to know that he had seen their futures, and he wanted to be able to save them from those fates more than he could stand to think. It was even more difficult knowing that with Dridana's heart and the powers that accompanied it he may well have the power to save them all and bring them through the test alive, but he feared the results of doing so. The Threnody who spoke of the Cavern of the Self spoke of it as another test, which meant that there was likely a 'right answer', and Morier braced himself to give what he thought would be that answer.

He wasn't sure what he would do if changing the past was actually the right answer and he convinced Feln and Ledare to leave as they had before. Doubt swirled around him like the snow as he waited for the argument he knew would continue, hoping he had the wherewithal to hold his stalwart position. And hoping even harder that doing so was the right thing to do.

"There's no way I'm leaving you alone on this mountain," Ledare told at last and the eldritch warrior almost sighed with relief. He half-turned to look at her.

"Someone needs to succeed," Morier said, remembering this argument from the first time they'd had it. "Not all of us."

"You're right. Someone needs to survive this. But how does leave you alone here on this mountainside help anyone survive?" the Janissary asked.

"I can use spells to boost my constitution and my healing draughts will ward off frostbite, and maybe Garn-Zanuth will have a hand in my survival. But I cannot keep two of us alive... or three. Staying here is certain death for you and Feln," Morier countered. "I don't have-"

"I won't be a burden and I don't expect you to waste your spells on me," Ledare interrupted, her eyes pleading. "Morier, you especially know how many friends I have already lost. I just can't do it." The statement ripped through to his heart for he felt that pain more acutely than she would ever know.

Feln joined the argument, "Do you honestly think you would be more likely to survive if you were alone?" He regarded Morier with ice chip blue eyes, the expression on his face suggesting that he expected the elf to say no.

"Yes," the eldritch warrior said instead. "I do." Ledare shook her head stubbornly at that.

"And what makes you so certain?" she challenged. "Why does our staying with you make you more likely to fail?" Morier shook his head, feeling his certainty wavering.

"I don't believe that I will survive only if you leave, I believe that I can survive if I have only myself to look out for," he sighed and held out his hands in a pleading gesture. "I cannot make you leave, but I cannot aid in your survival if you choose to stay. The Guardian said that ONE of us needs to complete the Renewal, not all of us. I can make it, and would rather have you waiting for me at the end than try to decide how best to honor your frozen corpses on this side."

Morier hoped his companioms would engage him in the discussion just one more time. His mind had changed, and he wanted them to make him act before it changed yet again. He certainly thought he now had the means to help Feln and Ledare survive with him, and had these been the circumstances when he first encountered this test, he would have done exactly what he was suddenly intent on doing: changing the past. The results of that action, like so many other things it seemed would be left for another to decide. 'The Cavern of the Self' it was called, and he was going to do what his "self" was screaming at him to do, not what he thought was expected of him.

Morier opened his mouth then and changed the course of history. He was beside them, crouching in the snow, the story of the past spilling forth. And accompanying it - a strong sense of release, an unburdoning that he had not anticipated when he'd suddenly made this choice. He began with their decision to turn back and allow him to go on alone, ignoring the denial plainly visible on their faces. He talked about the desperation he had felt, fearing failure, and the frantic plea for help which had ultimately saved his life. He paused to catch his breath and observed the uncertain glance which passed between them. Not to be deterred, he pushed on, describing his audience with the Water Guardian and the charge he had been given: to reunite the goddess Dridana's heart and body in the place beyond the Green. And here he slowed, choosing carefully his words to describe the first gift bestowed upon him to aid in that quest: the Pull. At that revelation, Feln shifted closer for a better vantage point and regarded Morier's head critically. After a moment, he settled back once more in silence. Ledare was equally perplexed. She had listened intently to Morier's story, struggling to process it all, but decided she could no longer sit back as the elements took hold of her friend's reason.

"Stop," she insisted, and her eyes flashed dangerously. "Just stop. This is quite a story you have concocted to get us to leave you here, Morier, and you may very well believe it.."

In response, Morier held up a staying hand and very slowly and purposefully removed his chain shirt. All at once the three companions were bathed in the brilliant radiance of a glowing gemstone embedded in his chest. The gold-green light of the forest floor in summer pushed back the harsh darkness, and limned the trio's half-frozen faces.

Ledare thought for sure that she was freezing to death. They had spent too long talking and now she was dying, awash in a swirling sensation of brilliance which made her dizzy. She began to fall but Morier reached out to steady her. At his touch the healing powers vested in the gemstone coursed into her body. Suddenly she felt gloriously warm and alive once more as the power filled her by degree. She gaped, incredulously, at Morier.

"We're staying with you," she said and her words seemed to shatter the stillness of that revelatory moment.

"Holy trollsh*t!" Feln bellowed. "What is that?!" Morier's hand went protectively to his chest.

"It's... I... I don't exactly know. A souvenir from the Astral plane," he attempted with a weak smile. "There is so much more I have to tell you."

But it was clear that the story would take longer than the surrounding elements would allow them. Ledare was already looking cold again, and Feln's sallow skin was taking on an alarming blueish tint. It was time to take the next step. He could fill them in on all of the particulars once they had returned to the Termlane Forest. That's where he would be reunited with... and here his mind faltered. No, that wasn't right. Ledare and Feln would be with him. Well, the gods would decide where this new path would lead. He hoped they would be merciful. Abruptly, Morier stood up. But Feln's protest halted him.

"Wait. If what you say is true, then all these things that you have done, these favors that you have received were because of the choices you made along the way." The half-ogre's lips were frozen and rubbery. Morier reached out and instantly relieved his friend's unspoken pain. A large smile washed across Feln's face, only to disappear as his mind returned again to their present prediciment. "How do we know that things won't change if you alter your course now?"

Ledare nodded slowly. "He's right. If this is all true," she gestured unnecessarily toward his chest, which Morier had modestly covered once more, "how do we know that changing your actions won't destroy the chances of success?"

Inch by inch, the coldness began to surround Morier's heart again. This was not what he had expected. But Ledare was smiling at him.

"Morier! You've made the right choices. You've gone so far! And, whatever you have done, you have been granted favor by the gods! I knew you would be invaluable to us. You are on the only path we know for certain can succeed."

He shook his head sadly. "I have thought of all this before," he told them. "But there are things you should know..."

Feln stopped him once more. "Don't tell us." And suddenly Morier felt the familiar weight of responsibility settle on his shoulders. Except that it was immeasurably heavier this time. Crushingly so.

Ledare stood, and her voice assumed that familiar commanding tone. "We must go back through the portal. You must go on. We will meet again, Morier. Have faith." Her arms encircled him in a warm embrace, in spite of the chill in his soul. Feln followed with a bone-crushing grip. And then they turned to leave, making their way through the knee-deep snow toward the dolmen that led back the way they'd come.

Morier watched their progress, giving stern consideration once again to the situation in front of him. He couldn't predict an outcome. Nothing had prepared him for the decision he was about to make, but he knew for sure that the circumstances had changed since the first time this scene unfolded, and now he had options.

In a moment, he had set the plan in motion. Using the power of the Heart, he activated a quick spell that would open the door closed to most except the most powerful Druids, hoping that the power he now held could alter the course of events... wondering if he should.

A mere moment later, the once blinding snowsqualls had diminsihed to flurries and the winds stalled. Ledare and Feln, as though in lockstep, stopped abruptly just short of the portal and looked skyward... and then back at Morier. "Morier," Ledare fumbled, "you... did you... you can't.... are you.... you shouldn't..."

"It's too late. It's done. It would be pointless for you to turn back now. You may as well come and sit down with me and watch the snow melt." He smiled, knowing that Ledare would have more to say, but it seemed to him a fairly straightforward argument. They hesitantly turned and began back toward the makeshift shelter they had helped construct before they left.

"I fear you've made a grave mistake," Ledare scolded as they settled back down "You've come so far toward our goal, living with the sequence of events as the Gods intended, why alter them now?"

"For several reasons, not the least of which is that I'm not entirely convinced that the events playing out before us are real. A cadre of Buommans asked me to step through a door in the Astral plane into the Cavern of the Self, and I haven't the slightest notion what impact any of this has on events there in the Astral, or for that matter back on the Material plane." Morier told them with a wry smile on his face and a rare lightness in his heart. "But what I do know is that every night before I fall asleep, I lie in wonder at what might have happened if I hadn't convinced the two of you to leave me alone on this snowy mountaintop when it happened the first time. This time I know that Dridana has imbued me with the power to take the first step toward finding out. If just one of us made it through here the first time and that gave us the power and ability to get where we are now, what if three of us had made it?"

"Then events would play out all wrong," a voice snarled from behind the snow wall. The three companions turned toward the source of the sound, just in time to see Morier stride into view. Only it wasn't really Morier - not the Morier they knew, anyway. His features were hard and a finger length scar ran along his right cheek from nose to jaw. He wore his hair held back in a long pony tail that writhed and whipped behind him as if in a strong gale. But his eyes were the strangest thing; they were featureless orbs the color of a springtime sky before a thunderstorm. His clothing and gear were largely the same as Morier's although he wore gauntlets that Karak had claimed from some hoard or other and he carried Ravager sheathed across his back.

The impostor stepped up and faced Morier. His fists were balled up at his sides and tiny sparks crackled and jumped over them as he studied his doppelganger.

"What you've done already may well have ruined things in ways you can't imagine," the Not-Morier said. "And I can't let you upset things any more than you already have."

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #493] Forging the Future

Maleko's gaze darted around the clearing. The bandits had secured his small caravan, he saw, leaving him as the last and most valuable loose end to tie up. These rogue's were efficient at their black-hearted business.

He had been escorting the caravan containing fine cloth back from Awad when the brigands waylaid them. The seven guards and merchants accompanying him had been looking forward to a few days away in the Freeport and had enjoyed themselves there. Not only were they employees, but friends. Maltalia Lanneralanna was one of the best places to work in all of Barnacus if not all the Realms. The Malatalias were, of course, known for paying well but also for treating every employee from the expert seamstress to the hunched up old man who swept up at night with the respect every living being deserved. He was glad that their time in the notorious port city had been filled with as much pleasure as work.

For his part, Maleko had merely been looking for some peace with his time away from the capital, or so he remembered now standing once more in the one place to which he never wanted to return. Memories washed over him in a flood. He had been teaching at the University in Barnacus but it was late summer - the students all returned to the country to aid their families' harvest. Generally speaking, that left him with little to do so he welcomed the chance to get out of town when his older brother, Kepano, had suggested he help escort a Lanneralanna caravan to Farmin.

"Malie," his half-brother had told him on that long ago day over a bottle of Redwood Fireamber. "You'll enjoy the ladies of Farmin! You'll not find their equal in all of the Realms. Go and have some fun!"

Maleko, of course, had not partaken of such activity. But Kepano, he knew, had only been trying to help him get out of the rut he had been in for the decade since his human wife had passed. She'd suffered a protracted illness that had drained Maleko nearly as much as it had her. On more than one occasion Kepano had suggested that Maleko had become a professor at the university only to pass time after her death. Looking back on it, Maleko wasn't sure that his brother had been all that far from the truth.

He had joined the clergy of Nethlar only after meeting his wife who also worhiped the god of knowledge. Maleko loved serving Nethlar as he believed wholly all the tenants of that faith, but not with the same passion his wife had always exhibited. She gained very high status among the elders and was highly respected, but during the twenty years they were there together he had progressed only moderately within the church heirarchy. Of course, Maleko was also distracted by his first love, sorcery, as well as the family business and his personal research into the history of The Realms. As his father had always said, it was in the nature of elves to be distracted by more than one career in order to occupy their time among the short-lived races.

Upon his wife's death Maleko lost his love of service to Nethlar and gave it up in favor of work at the university and periodic stints as representative for the family business. It was-

"I 'ad me enough o' the look on tha' pointy-eared fairy's face already," the bandit said, shocking Maleko out of his reverie. "Wish we could slit 'is throat too!" He laughed gruffly and the band of brigands joined the laughter. Maleko felt the sharp crack of a dagger hilt striking the back of his head and everything went black.



Del was momentarily awestruck by the mirrored hall beyond the Gate of Duality. It was so... alien that his mind could barely wrap around it. He stopped there, his eyes nervously searching the faces that stared at him from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The many reflections of himself seemed to hold him in place with some unguessed power. But after a moment he forced himself forward, keeping his eyes ahead as he looked for an end to the corridor. He drifted along - for there was once again no sense of up or down - images of himself laughing here, grimacing in pain there. At the corner of his vision he saw himself screaming orders on the battlefield while above him and on the left he was weeping over a fallen friend, his features spattered with fresh blood.

He paused then and forced himself to look closer, for there was a certain commonality in all the images he realized. More than just the fact that all the faces were his own, there was a unifying theme present throughout the images: restlessness. Truly, he seemed happy in many of the images, but in none of the reflections did he seem at peace.

That realization troubled him and he drifted closer to a nearby image that showed himself as he had been half a lifetime ago. He couldn't have been much older than fifteen in the reflection, still living in Awad, no doubt. He was young enough then that the cares of the world shouldn't have yet found purchase in his heart, but even there he saw a restless dissatisfaction in his young eyes. A nervous wanderlust that kept him from finding the happiness he craved.

He reached out a gloved hand...



...and nearly fell off the wharf into the ocean below. He pin-wheeled his arms and lurched back from the edge, colliding as he did so with a heavy barrel. He steadied himself on it and looked around. There were rocks below and in front of him, a steep set of stone stairs, glittering with black wetness in the moonslight climbed up a sea wall to his left. Behind him...

Behind him the Lunamer was at anchor, riding low in the water, her holds filled with goods for trade in the northern reaches. She was a gorgeous ship, every bit the beauty he had remembered her to be, and fast! She'd outrun a trio of pirate schooners when they'd skirted the Thyatis Archipelago, ending their threat without ever entering ballista range.

He was in Awad again. Haladar Shipyard was just around the curve in the seawall, he knew. But this was not the Awad he'd passed through when he'd returned recently to his post on The Borderlands. This was the Awad of his youth. It was just like...

Just like the night he'd run away.

Emotion blossomed in Del's chest then, and without really realizing he was doing it, he slammed his fist against the barrel by his side.

"Ouch!" said a muffled voice from within the barrel and Del's battle axe was in his hand at once. He stepped into a strategically advantageous position keeping the axe between himself and the barrel and the barrel between himself and the water.

"Wh'o' there?" he demanded "Show yourself!" There came a whimper from the barrel and two small hands thrust slowly skyward from within. They were small and pale and dirty, like an infant's hands, but somehow too weathered to be an infant's and they were followed a moment later by a round face dominated by two fearful eyes that brimmed with tears.

"Please don't kill me!" the halfling whimpered. "I was just resting here in this barrel, honest. I wasn't hiding from any Garn-Zanuth meanies. What would they want with me anyways? I love those guys! Honest!" Del shook his head and lowered his axe.

"I'm not going to kill you," the half-elf said and the hobbit's demeanor changed at once. He sprang up onto the lip of the barrel and perched there, his legs dangling. He was small, even by halfling standards, perhaps only a child himself.

"Oh! That's good!" he chirped, all threats of tears forgotten. "Who are you? My name's Vadenhuffer T. Briarhopper IV - don't ask me what the T stands for - but my brothers call me Vade. What are you doing out here at night anyway? Not thinking of sneaking onto one of those ships I hope 'cause I was thinking about it, but then I remembered that I don't really like fish all that much. I'm more of a fruit person myself. Do you like fruit?"

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #494] The Butterfly Effect

"The fruit man told me to stay away from his apples," the halfling said with only a moment's pause. He shrugged his small shoulders. "I assumed they were spoiled. Very good of him to tell me. Then I see him yelling after me: 'Put down my oranges you rascal!' Papa used to call me a rascal. I like that fruit man. So all I have to eat now are these grapes." Vade smiled as he pulled a whole bunch from his bag.

"They are very good; have some," he said handing Del the bunch.

"Call me Del," he responded, waving off the proffered grapes. He stowed his battle axe and looked around himself once more. It seemed odd, this change from the way he remembered things. Almost of their own accord his eyes were drawn in the direction of the Lunamer once more, and the pressure in his chest began to expand. It had been a brash decision to stow away in the cargo hold so many years ago, yet the yearning which had directed his head then powerful still.

He looked down at himself, wondering. In returning to this particular life-altering moment, was he meant to enact a different outcome? Was that the intent of the Cavern of the Self? What if he had never climbed aboard the ship in the pitch dark? Never happened across Omar Lagasse and his madcap adventuring? What secrets might be revealed by merely slipping back into his room and waking at dawn's first light to work with his brothers in the shipyard?

Then, with gale-wind force a realization hit him. Would choosing a different path exonerate him from his failure to embrace the Haladar legacy? Would it negate the strained relationship with his parents which had followed? The feelings in his chest whirled uncontrollably. Was he truly being given the chance to select a different outcome for himself? One that might prove his father had been right all along and finally still the restlessness in his heart?
While the rash headstrong feelings from his youth still existed, he had to admit that the older, wiser Del was attracted to that possibility.

Vade's exaggerated sigh signaled to Del that he was waiting for a response.
"I happen to know where there is a whole shipload of fruit," he told the halfling with a smile.

"OOOH... I would stow away on a ship full of fruit... if that is what kind of ship you were interested in stowing away in?" Vade said with a mouth full of grapes. He then expertly spit several at a duck floating nearby and giggled. "Let's go take a look. What kind of fruit do you like best?"

"There are some peach orchards just west of town that I used to visit quite often as a child," Del told the halfling. "Those were happy times, So I guess that peaches are quite dear to my heart." Vade hopped down off the barrel and wiped his hands on his breeches.

"Peaches are dear to my stomach," the halfling grinned. "Are there peaches on your ship? Because if there are then I might just have to race you there. And I'm pretty fast! Just ask Deuce. He'll tell you." Del laughed.

"I don't think you need to worry, Vade," the half-elf told him. "I don't think I'll be stowing away on any ships tonight." Despite that decision, his eyes once again drifted toward the Lunamer and he thought wistfully of the expression on the cook's face when he had discovered Del's hiding place.

"So what are you doing down here on the wharf?" Vade asked. "I happen to know that there's lots nicer spots in Awad to hang out. Warmer spots. Drier spots. Spots that don't smell so much like fish." Vade scrunched up his face and rubbed his backside. "Of course lots of those kinds of places have mean old humans with brooms too." Del chuckled in spite of himself and pointed at the Lumaner.

That's the ship I was talking about," he told the halfling. "And I know for a fact that Captain Lorbain only acts mean and old. He's a fair man if you treat him the same." Vade looked over at the ship.

"I've never been on the ocean before," he admitted with a tone of consideration. He looked up at Del and asked, "And you're sure that there's lots of fruit on board? 'Cause I already told you I don't like fish and if all they have is-"

"You mustn't take that ship, Vade," said a voice from the shadows along the sea wall. "You're meant to head north by land." Vade darted behind Del's leg as the half-elf was once more readying his battle axe. There was a chuckle from the darkness followed by the scrape of metal on stone and a figure detached itself from the shadows and started slowly toward them.

"You won't need that if you heed my warning," the voice said and it had a very familiar ring to it. "You must not try to change things here any more than you already have." The figure stepped into the light and Del saw that it was him. Almost. He was wearing heavy plate armor rather than elven chain, and he carried a longsword scabbarded at his waist, but otherwise he was an exact duplicate. He shook his head sadly at Del.

"I can't believe you were really thinking about staying in Awad," the simulacrum scoffed. "Huzair said that you would, but I told him he was wrong. And then you went and did it." He sighed and rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.

"I offer you the choice of boarding the Lumaner as you were meant to or an honorable death in battle," the Not Del said without irony. "The choice is yours."

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #495] The Way things are Meant to Be

The passage of time seemed strange to Maleko as he relived his past, but the elf recalled spending three days as a prisoner of the bandits. During that time, he himself was not treated poorly, though he had not remembered the whack on the head before so perhaps some small things were subject to change. That thought brought renewed visions of Glaltariand and Maleko's inability again to prevent his steward's death. And though none of his other comrades were killed outright, they were beaten just for the brigands' amusement. None suffered much beyond a few bumps and bruises, but it was horrible to have to watch and listen as his trusted employees were abused to satisfy their captors' unwholesome bloodlust. Maleko knew that they wanted to keep him looking good until they could exchange him for their ransom; they needed him alive and uninjured if they were to collect his father's gold.

He knew from experience that these brigands would never see one single noble of the ransom they demanded,but he did not betray his knowledge of events, and instead played most things the same as he had before. He mostly kept his mouth closed and his eyes and ears opened, listening and looking for any weakness. He counted 16 different men, all human and from their accents he could tell they were all from Hillsburg. Banditry had been on the rise of late thanks to the recent disputes over (of all things) trade. The local economy suffered as the cost of moving goods along the caravan routes climbed, but Maleko knew that things would get far worse in years to come. He also knew when the Janissary patrol would come to rescue him and recalled that was when and where he first met Del as well as Ledare.

He knew these things because they had already come to pass.

The difference this time was that he wanted revenge. He knew that the man who had slit Glaltariand's throat would hang from the gallows and rot, but that wasn't enough. It never had been. Maleko wanted to make him suffer. Killing the man himself would make him feel better, he supposed, easing the crushing guilt for a friend twice-slain because of Maleko. Things had not happened differently even though he acted differently and he wondered if he could change what happened or whether it was set and only minor details would change. Regardless, he went through his repertoire of spells to be ready if the chance for action presented itself. He thought of what had happened at the time of the rescue, considering the events as they had happened carefully and poring over the memories in minute detail. He had been talking, he remembered, with the head bandit regarding the food or lack there of his men were getting. When Maleko called him over, the man, named Declan, had gone to the fire to get a piece of meat. With the bit of pork slapping at the end of his fork, Declan had come over to taunt Maleko.

"The sooner yer rich old man coughs up the gold, the sooner your pretty little ass goes free," Declan had sneered, waving the meat in Maleko's face. "Then you can free your worthless guards. Easiest caravan we have ever taken, Points." He then raised his hand, probably to swat his captive, but Maleko recalled that as soon as Declan made a gesture towards him with his hand, an arrow had struck him through his forearm and the camp was then stormed by Janissaries.

Several rangers hired by the Maltalias had easily tracked the brigands to their campsite and led the Janissaries straight to them. The Hound was one of the finest trackers in all the Realms and he was a friend of the Maltalia company. The rangers had approached with stealth, silencing the guards and allowing the Janissaries to get close enough without being discoverd for the raid. It was an excellent plan his father had contrived with the Janissaries.

Maleko knew that Glaltariand's head being sent to his father had enraged the man rather than filling his heart with fear as the bandits had hoped. Given the thirst for blood these bandits displayed, the patriarch questioned whether his son would be returned alive even if he paid. Most bandits in the past century that his father had worked the business had asked only for a moderate ransom and sent a note with adequate proof, usually a ring or seal taken from the leader of the caravan. Amaril Maltalia had always felt is was only the poor trying to feed their families, and the brigands only took the valuables and later released the prisoners. This time however was cold blooded murder. Killing a family friend was not something Maleko's father had taken lightly.

And the Maltalias enjoyed some measure of influence within Barnacus. Certainly the name, Maltalia Lanneralanna, was enough to draw a squad of Janissaries from the King.



Ledare stood up at once, and Morier saw her hand go to her hip, where her sword would have hung had she brought one with her into the Grove. Behind her, Feln rose up, his bulk dwarfing the half-elf. Thick cables of muscle rippled beneath his hide as he judged this new Morier, warily. The Not-Morier's gaze flicked to them and a smirk touched his lips.

"Don't try it, Feln," he growled. "You're no match for me and I'm not above killing you if I must. I've had to make a lot of tough choices since the last time you and I saw one another and too much depends on my success for me to be squeamish about old friends."

Morier's stomach knotted at his doppleganger's words. Whether it was the words themselves or the unnatural sound of hearing his own voice speak them, he couldn't tell. He had been so sure that he could act here without repercussion, and it instantly set in that he may have made a critical error... but then again, he may not have. This might be another part of yet another test. The lines between reality and fantasy had been blurred to indistinction recently. Either way, it appeared now as though he may have no choice but to meet this corollary of his decision head-on.

He turned to face himself and stared hard into not-quite-his-own turbulent grey eyes set in a smouldering stare. There seemed to be nothing of substance behind them, he held no particular skill at sensing that, it was just a feeling. Eyes that lacked a soul, or maybe just eyes that lacked his soul. The two stared at one another for a long while, each trying to read the other, trying to see past the eyes into what dwelled beyond.

Stunned, Ledare and Feln could do little more than watch in disbelief.

A strong gust of wind blew across both of their faces and the Not-Morier didn't waver while the real Morier squinted hard to avoid losing his duplicate's gaze. It was then that he first sensed the question worming its way into his mind. He pushed hard against it and busied himself searching again for something behind the stormy orbs that stared back at him. Again the question flashed, more urgently this time. He wondered if the lifeless eyes staring back at him had noticed and steeled himself to avoid giving his thoughts away.

The dream had come on more than one occasion. Although he may not have been fully aware of it at the time, the pattern was making itself evident now, and he felt foolish for not having seen it. It had come the night after Feln first died, growing in intensity when Ledare was killed. and then Lela, and Karak and Ixin, and finally, the most vivid and troubling of them all had come on the astral plane, after both Huzair and Shamalin had been taken. And now a vaguely-familiar version of it was playing itself out in front of him.

The eyes looked different here though; it was not like peering into his own eyes as he had in the dream so many times before, but instead these were darker eyes, sinister and stormlike that seemed to be holding nothing but rage. In all of the other encounters he had simply stood, voiceless and imposing, but this time he spoke. Slung across his back though, as it had been every time, was Ravager.

In each successive dream, the menacing non-Morier seemed to be looking at his very real counterpart with greater impatience, and although nothing had ever been said, he knew that there would eventually come the confrontation between them. And he feared it more than any beast or transformed, grotesque, demon that Aphyx could throw at him.

As bizarre as the circumstances felt, there was suddenly something about the situation here in the Cavern of the Self that seemed a lot less like vagary than reality.

"Are you ready?" rang the voice in his head. It was his own to be sure, but he couldn't tell where the thought had come from. "Why are you afraid? What does he have that you don't?" More questions, and Morier was growing increasingly aware that an answer would have to come. Maybe this was the goal of the cavern, maybe this was what the Buommans knew when he stepped through the doorway.

"It should be an even fight, shouldn't it?" came the voice again, this time with a menacing edge, as though it was intended more as a challenge than a request for an answer.

And then it came, not as a trickling stream of water from a rainspout, but as a tidal wave crashing over him at once. What if the Morier in front of him, the one who had set the wheels of this showdown in motion long ago, had wrung every bit of potential from within himself? What if he posessed the spark that had ignited his Eldritch abilitites and had fanned those flames to a roaring fire? Morier didn't fear losing an epic, hard fought battle between two powerful warriors, he feared total annihilation by one that should have been an equal. Morier knew that he had spent so much time adrift, rudderless and wandering, that he had let his own fire die down out of malaise. Confronting his own untapped potential was as horrifying a fear as he could imagine, and now it stood before him.

"Ah, so it seems you have answers," he managed to say through lips gone dry and papery with anxiety. "What have I ruined?"

"I'm not here to answer your questions," the Not-Morier sneered. "I'm here to stop you from dooming thousands."



"Run!" the halfling yelled as he took off along the docks. Following the curve of the seawall toward the Haladar Shipyards Vade disappeared almost as suddenly as he had appeared out of the barrel leaving Del to confer with his alter ego in private.

Del did not watch him go, keeping his eyes fixed on his doppelganger He studied the man carefully; looking for any other noticeable differences between them, fairly certain that this was some trick of the mind.

If it was, however, it was a damned thorough one. The double was correct in every detail. His beard was grown in a bit more than Del usually let his go, but otherwise, it was himself as he might look dressed in heavy black armor.

"If I die in battle with you," Del mused, his head reeling a little at the absurdity of that, "then I won't end up boarding that ship."

"But I will," the Not-Del said simply. "According to Huzair that's the important part. It must be one of us, not Vade. Events must play out as they were intended."

"But Vade and I never really connected or discussed the possibility of stowing on board the Lunamer the first time," Del countered. "So history has already been altered to some degree."

"But not to a sufficient degree to change the future," his double shot back. "I don't understand half of what Huzair tells me since he got the Headband of Othmus, but he was very clear that events must play out as they were intended."

"I'm sure you must know that I've never been one to do a thing simply because someone tells me to do it," Del replied. "Even if the one telling me is me." His double scowled, growling in his throat in a most un-Del-like fashion.

"Don't be so damned stubborn! This is a flashpoint, Del. If events change here too radically, then everything will come unravelled!" his simulacrum said to him. He struggled for a moment and then began to explain. "Look, time is like a river. Vade was always hiding in that barrel, the first time we just crept silently passed and never met him. Interacting with him as you have is like throwing a pebble into the river of time; it doesn't change much. Having him stow away on the Lumaner in our place is like dropping a boulder; it will have catastrophic consequences on the future."

"We were meant to board that ship. Not Vade. We were meant to meet Omar Lagasse. Not Vade," he said. "He's meant for a Byric prison in less than a half a year. If things turn out differently..." His voice trailed off and he looked down at his hand which still rested on his sword's pommel.

"As much as I'd like things to turn out differently, I have sworn an oath," the Not-Del explained gravely. "If you will not board the Lumaner then I am to slay you and take your place. The choice is yours."

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #496] Perspectives on Problem-Solving

Del allowed himself a glance over at the ship laden with trade goods and, as he well knew, the first adventure of a young boy's lifetime. That thought - his own desire to seek out that adventure despite what he knew - made anger flare within him.

"Why am I back here, then?" he demanded of his other, heat in his voice. "Can't you see I'm not the original me who made the decision you are so adamantly protecting? What's the sense in sending me back if I'm only to do exactly as I did before?" He threw up his hands, but his mind seized upon something his doppelganger has said moments before.

"As much as you would like things to turn out differently... What's that supposed to mean?" Del moved away from the barrel Vade had so quickly abandoned, putting himself in a better psotion should they come to blows. He watched his double register the move and allow it. For all his anger and frustration, Del could not help but be intrigued. And again, his eyes took in this different Del. His armor. His demeanor. Which path to the future was he from? He could see no evidence of his own shortcomings, and was suddenly consumed by the desire to ask how his mirror twin felt about snakes. Instead he demanded, "Tell me what you know. To whom have you sworn an oath?" His twin made a harrumphing sound and shook his head.


"Does it really matter? An oath has been sworn. That should be enough," the Not-Del shot back, shifting slightly to keep his eyes on his twin. Del sniffed and opened his mouth to retort when his twin added, "To the king, Del. I've sworn an oath to the king and Realms Council. Or what's left of it."

"Okay. Killing me and assuming my place on the Lunamer would be terribly difficult, wouldn't it?" Del probed, sounding more confident than he felt. "For how long could you keep up that charade, knowing what you know? How could you possibly remember enough to make the EXACT same decisions all over again?"

"I don't have to. And neither do you," his double answered. "Here and now are all that matter. These events have already happened before. If we don't change what happened here - at this flashpoint - then the rest will play out as it was meant to." He sighed and shook his head then. "Look. I don't understand it any better than you do really. I told them that I was the wrong one to send here, but Huzair said it had to be me. So here I am. Here we are."

A rush of adrenalin assailed his senses as Del's mind raced with possibilities. Somewhere, Huzair had instructed this Del to come back and make certain that some earlier version of himself boarded the Lunamer on this night. But that future hadn't been the one that he himself was from, since Huzair had been killed before he had even joined Morier's quest.

"If Huzair knows for certain that getting on board that ship will set things straight, then he must know it will cost him his life. And the lives of countless others." He allowed the words to settle and saw the realization of their meaning in his own eyes.

"I can save her," he whispered. "I can save her with just a pebble."

"You can't," came the reply. Emotionless. Certain.


"I know how she died. If I could..."

"You can't."

"I don't care what Huzair told you!" Del screamed at himself. "Huzair can't know for certain. No one can!"

And, with that, he attacked - the anger and frustration of the past surging through him, both exhilarated and terrified by the prospect of fighting himself. His other met the advance blow-for blow as the cacophony of metal split the still night air.

They pressed each other up and down the wharf, neither one being able to claim advantage. While he had expected to know his counterpart's fighting design, it became clear that different experiences had shaped the style and art for each . Del struggled to press an advantage, and his doppelganger did the same. They were both suffering when a familiar voice rang out, halting each man dead in his tracks.

"For the love of Flor, stop this nonsense!"

Del wanted to shake his head and clear his senses of what he thought he had just heard, but found that he could not move. The voice had come from behind him. He feared that by turning to look, the whole thing would melt away - nothing more than another dream, so like the others.

Instead he remained absolutely still and studied his twin, whose eyes were riveted to the space just beyond him. He witnessed emotion play across the Non-Del’s face, and the look was so raw he could feel it echo inside himself. His counterpart’s eyes flashed, as if in anger, and then softened. He made no move either, but his eyes tracked the newcomer.

“I was unsuccessful,” Del’s other spoke softly - half question, half statement of fact. It was answered by a soft chuckle.

“You are a very stubborn man,” was the response. His twin acknowledged this by lowering his sword. Del knew they would fight no more.

He felt a presence just behind him and held his breath. A hand rested on his shoulder for the space of a heartbeat, and then gently turned him around. Ledare smiled up at him in the darkness.

“Don’t be troubled, Del,” She said and though he could not be sure for whom she spoke, it didn’t really matter. He drank in every detail of her: her robe, the holy symbol around her neck, the lack of a sword at her waist, her hair longer than he remembered. Her sober eyes caught the moonlight. This was at once not the Ledare he knew and exactly her.

“Please, Del,” she whispered, and this time her words were for him alone. “You are meant to board that ship. It is the only way.”

“Do you know what that will mean?” he struggled, barely managing to get the words out.

“I know what that will mean in this lifetime,” she answered firmly, giving him nothing.

“I…” He faltered, looking for the right words. “I should never have left…” But she held up a hand to stop him.

“Time will set things right. You must be true to what was in your heart on this day.” She gestured around them in the night.

“What about what is in my heart today?” he demanded, still arguing.

“It will resolve… in time.” Her eyes flickered to the Del standing behind him now, and for a moment he felt a pang of jealousy. They exchanged a look that he could not decipher, but he felt resentment for this other Del. After a moment, Ledare once more directed her attention toward him and stepped closer. She reached up to touch him lightly on the face.

“This cause is bigger than one life. Or two. We cannot fail. Please..."
Del reached out to grab her and he heard a grunt from his double behind him followed by a startlingly sharp stab of pain as his twin's longsword stabbed through his torso. The slick, red point erupted from his gut just below his ribs and he stared dumbly at it for a moment before looking up questioningly at Ledare. He saw that her face was screwed up in horror as his blood sprayed her white robe and spattered her face.

"No!" she said. "Del. This didn't have to be!" Del saw that she was looking not at him, but at his double. He felt a hand on his back and the blade slid free with another excruciating stab. He heard his battle axe thunk down on the dock and then a rushing sound began to fill his ears.

His twin was speaking, but the voice - his voice - seemed to be coming from a long way off and he could barely hear it over the building hiss that was filling the world. He felt cold. The night was darkening and tilting drunkenly. It was only with a titanic effort that he was able to stagger around, his hands pressed uselessly at the red torrent on his belly.

There he was with his sword still clutched bloody in his fist. He was talking with Ledare - seemed to be pleading with her - seemed to be...

He stumbled forward into himself, his sudden limp weight overbalancing his murdering double and sending them both tumbling backward over the side and into the cold water of the bay. The shock of the water momentarily revived him and he saw the Not-Del drawn like an anchor to the bottom by the weight of his heavy plate armor. The darkness drew in again and before it overtook him Del had a moment's satisfaction at knowing that if he couldn't have her then at least his murderer wouldn't either.

Ledare looked down at the dark water as the delicate forces that held that tiny bubble of reality apart from the rest failed, ruptured by the deaths of the two Dels. A moment later, the entire thing collapsed, catching her spirit like a fish in a net before spitting her, gasping and sputtering onto the Astral Plane.




The time of Maleko's rescue was approaching. Things had happened almost identically as things had before, despite his attempt to change things. Maleko had made a mistake again and was forced to relive the most intense pains he could imagine feeling. His wife's death had been almost a relief by the end for her suffering had ended at last. But the suffering for Glaltariand's family had just began. And it was as a result of Maleko's action.

"Declan, my men are hungry. Let them eat," Maleko said, as he recalled saying the first time he'd lived through this horrible situation. "You are going to get your money; starving them will do you no good." As he had done before, the bandit leader bent over to grab a piece of meat and headed for the fire to begin his taunt. And as if on cue the whipping noise of an arrow punctuated by a scream came at once followed by the sounds of armored men crashing through the bushes. Declan was holding his imapaled forearm as he was tackled unceremoniously to the ground.

Maleko was surprised to see the familiar face of Delaroux Haladar emerge from the fray. With efficiency the janissary passed off his groaning prisoner to one of a number of legionnaires who had their small camp surrounded. Maleko couldn't help but notice Del's demeanor: confident, responsible, a perfect model of the king's guard. How he had changed in three short years.

"Maleko Maltalia?" Del asked in an urgent tone and Maleko nodded. "Sir, we have been instructed by your father to take you immediately to safety." Maleko tried to remember what he had said before, but drew a blank.

Instinctively he replied. "Not until I see all my men are accounted for. I am sure I am very safe being surrounded by many of the finest soldiers in the Realms. I appreciate you and your men's bravery." Nodding Del took out his knife and freed Maleko's hands quickly then gave him the knife to cut the rope that tied his legs.

Once he was free Maleko had the chance to do what he had hoped: to kill the man who murdered his steward. It would be easy, two guards were holding him tying his hands. He walked over casually with the knife in his hand in an unthreatening manner, hoping to suprise the guards and stab the fiend. Then Maleko froze in his tracks. He saw a female Janissary report to the commanding officer.

"Sixteen brigands and 5 prisoners accounted for, sir," she said and Maleko recall then that two more of his men had died from their wounds in captivity. This enraged him further as he thought that perhaps they had been beaten to death for the bandit's entertainment. His hand tightened on the knife hidden in his hand and he might have carried out his plan then and there had he not been distracted by Ledare. She had been barely an acquaintance before, but the artwork he had seen at K'ree's shop back on Discord had burned the image of the half-elven soldier into his head.

Of course, she was wearing a good deal more now that she had been in that drawing.

Morier had mentioned Ledare's passion for duty and honor on more than one occasion and Maleko believed that he could see it in her manner even now. It made him think. Would killing this bandit honor anyone? Would it ease Maleko's pain? Or Glaltariand's family's? His steward would still be dead. As Maleko recalled, the captured brigand's had provided a great deal of information about the criminal operation near Hillsburg before being hanged on the gallows in Barnacus. Killing Glaltariand's killer would only hurt the greater cause. And moreover, Maleko did not even want to see the man again nor give him the pleasure of seeing Maleko's grief, which he was quite certain he wasn't hiding very well. Avoiding the temptation to kill, he decided, was the best route. To keep focused on thoughts other than revenge, he decided to approach the commanding officer, it was what a leader of men would do, after all.

"Maleko Maltalia, sir," he said extending his hand. "Our company owes you a huge debt for your bravery and service. You have demonstrated once again why the Janissary Guild of Barnacus is the pride of the Realms." The captain said something in reply, but off to the side Maleko noticed Del speaking with Ledare.

"Your aim was perfect! Are you alright?" Del asked referring to a trickle of blood on her cheek.

"Damn thorns. Why did I pick to hide behind the thorny bush?" she laughed. They smiled at each other and Maleko felt suddenly intrusive. He glanced around to see if their affection for each other was as obvious as he felt it to be. But the other soldiers were either unaware or conveniently engaged with the business of securing the camp.

The Captain of the Janissary was still replying to Maleko's comments even though the elf was barely listening. "It is good merchants like you that allow Barnacus to thrive," the man was saying. "It is our duty to protect you and your goods."

What did he say next?

"The way Officer Haladar rushed in to save me from this brigand was commendable. If more men like him were serving on the Borderlands, those issued would be solved in no time, I'm sure," Maleko said in an off-hand way. But he saw a light go on in the Captain's head. Maleko had intended only to compliment Del, but nearly choked on his own words as soon as they had been uttered. Had this comment been responsible for Del's assignment to the Borderlands? That had been the mission, he knew, which had separated Del and Ledare for good; Del had told him as much once, late at night after too much Firewine. Was it possible that he was the one responsible for keeping them apart? Maleko would never know.

He had not intended to change what had happened for he feared the affects such changes would have. Ledare for example, might have never joined Grey House and started this entire journey. How would that change things? The possibilities seemed very unclear. The effects on the world that even minor changes to the past could have, truly boggled his mind. He felt... he felt... faint...

"Guildsman Maltalia!" the Captain shouted, shooting out a hand to grab the elf's arm and steady him. Maleko staggered a bit on his feet and blinked up into the Janissary's eyes.

"I'm okay," he said forcing a smile. "Just a little light-headed." The Janissary nodded, obviously unconvinced.

"Janissary Ledare," the captain said, motioning sharply. "Take Guildsman Maltalia into that tent and have him rest while we finish securing the camp."

"Yes, sir!" she replied and hurried to help Maleko into the tent. She poked her head inside to make sure it was clear and then held the flap open for Maleko to enter. "There's a cot to the left," she told him. "You can lie down. I'll stand guard just outside." He felt a little silly. Had this part happened last time? He didn't remember it, but he didn't get the opportunity to wonder as, passing through the tent door, he stepped out into the Astral plane.



Ledare took a step forward and she saw Morier's double track her movements from the corner of his eye. "Look. Feln and I were prepared to leave here in an effort to have the future play out as it has so far. You might find it easier to convince us than to kill us. Tell us what you know." The doppelganger smiled a genuine smile filled more with sadness than mirth.

"Ever the diplomat, Ledare. I've missed that," he mused. "I tried to fill that role after the Heart... but ultimately, I'm better at destroying my problems than I am at talking them away."

"You're talking now," she observed and the Not-Morier's smile broadened.

"What can I say? You're good," he grinned. "And if you and Feln want to leave the Grove, then be my guest. Take him with you if you can manage it. That would solve everything nicely." He angled his head at Morier.

"I've got to stay and complete the tests," the real Morier said and his double laughed.

"I knew you were going to say that," the double told him. "It's funny really, Ledare had half-convinced me that this might end without me having to kill more of my friends. I should have known better."

He turned and looked sadly at Ledare. "See what I mean?" he asked. "I'm not much of a negotiator." And then, in one fluid motion, he drew Ravager from its sheath and charged straight at Morier, the weapon held over his shoulder in a two-handed grip.

The attack was swift and savage, but Morier anticipated it with uncanny prescience. He stepped back and to the left and the jagged blade slashed down on empty air, clanging violently off the bare rock where he'd been standing. As his double struggled to recover, Morier was already pivoting on his left foot, his mercurial greatsword a silver blur in his hands. The blade came around in a vicious arc that crackled with lightning.

It was aimed to take off the double's head, but Not-Morier simply ducked beneath the swing and reached up with his left hand, touching the real Morier on the chest and releasing a Shocking Grasp spell into his body. The spell bypassed Morier's Spell Resistance like it wasn't even there and sent lightning coursing through his body.

The double tried to capitalize on the momentary distraction by delivering a follow-up blow with Ravager, but the bastard sword glanced harmlessly off Morier's mailed shoulder.

Morier Battlecast a Bull's Strength spell and his muscles swelled with temporary might. The greatsword came around again in a deadly arc, but this time Morier aimed low, trying to take out his opponent's legs. His twin leapt up and over the blade, easily avoiding the blow, before landing hard and driving upward with Ravager in an attack of his own. Morier caught the saw-toothed blade on the fuller of his greatsword and the electrical attack channeled into the stroke dissipated uselessly, filling the air with the smell of ozone.

The twin combatants pressed each other mercilessly, their style and skill so evenly matched that neither seemed capable of besting the other. For Ledare, the fight was made even more surreal by the fact that the duplicate Morier wielded Ravager - her Ravager! Left to her by Draelond's untimely death and, she thought, waiting with Karak and the rest of her gear at the portal to the first test.

Morier took two steps back and drew on the power of the Heart to Call Lightning from the dark sky. He raised his hand and clouds coalesced from the ether drawing into a knot that glowed and sparked before spewing forth a bolt of electricity. Morier's double saw it coming and tried to dodge, but the strike was too fast and it struck him solidly, bypassing his spell resistance and shocking him to the core.

Rather than dropping, however, he let his momentum draw him forward, reached out a hand and hit his twin with another Shocking Grasp spell. This time, however, the magic slid harmlessly off Morier's Spell Resistance and the disappointment and surprise filled the Not-Morier's face. He swung Ravager half-heartdly as he stepped back, sneering at his opponent.

"You've got the Heart, don't you?" he asked and after weighing the value of lying to himself, Morier nodded once. Conflicting emotions swam momentarily across Not-Morier's face then he clamped shut like a steel trap and cold calm showed in his strange stormy eyes.. "Huzair had it where I come from. I had to kill him too."

"What?!" Morier cried, incredulous. Was this truly himself as he might have been? Was it within him to kill his friend? He thought for a moment of Colonel Sealus and Called another Lightning Bolt. His doppelganger managed to avoid the worst of this attack, however, and seemed little injured by the electricity, certainly not as much as he ought to have been. He grinned up at Morier sardonically.

"He was corrupted by the Heart," his dark reflection told him, swinging Ravager around in an overhand chop that Morier barely had time to parry. "Surely you've felt the call of its power, Morier? Felt the need to protect it even over the lives of your friends?"

"No!" Morier shouted back. He Battlecast a True Strike spell and brought his mercurial greatsword around in a tremendous blow that would have taken off a lesser opponent's head and fried the corpse into a cinder. Morier's simulacrum deflected the killing blow with his vambrace and shrugged off the dreadful effects of the Second Circle spell he'd used to fuel his Elemental Blade attack.

And it was his last Second Circle spell.

"You will," Morier's double replied cooly. He was staggering slightly now and Morier saw that, despite his pretense to the contrary, he was near to collapse. "I saw what you did here, already... changing the weather so your friends could pass the Test. Despite the fact that you know that goes against the entire point of the Tests!" He lurched forward with Ravager in a two-handed grip and tried to bring the blade up under Morier's defenses, but the eldritch warrior blocked the attack and Called another Lightning Bolt.

His double had more than enough life in him to avoid a direct hit and this time his own Spell Resistance dissipated the glancing strike without injury.

"You're on the path, Morier," Not-Morier said. "No mortal can wield that kind of power without succumbing. Especially not you! I know what's in your heart!" Morier's double gestured with his hand and a Fog Cloud began to rise in the area. But before it could obscure him from view, Morier Battlecast his last True Strike spell and lunged forward, cleaving his double's left leg from his torso. Not-Morier screamed and teetered backward while his leg fell to the side. It wasn't blood that spewed from the gruesome wound, it was darkness, and that darkness soon filled Morier's vision entirely, blotting out not just sight, but sound as well, filling him with emptiness.



He opened his eyes onto the silvery void of the Astral Plane. He saw that others were there as well: Maleko was to his left and beyond that was another - Ixin perhaps. But his vision was dominated by the enormous figure that hung before him in the void. It was easily the size of a hill giant, but with flesh of total blackness, like polished obsidian. It was bedecked in finery of gold and platinum and regarded him with inscrutable serenity. An aura of power and unfathomable age surrounded it, making Morier want to hide from its presence.

Then it raised an arm very slowly and deliberately, pointing off into the distance at an oblique angle, and while he couldn't see anything in that direction, he somehow knew that it was pointing to the God Isles.

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #497] Jumping the Shark

Her heart fluttered wildly within her chest as Ledare looked around, trying to make sense of where she was. She was standing on a large flat rock that seemed suspended in an unearthly expanse of silver mists. An enormous ebony figure floated nearby, dominating the sky.

This had not been a conscious jump - no portal or spell this time. She registered the presence of other figures in the near distance, but was distracted by the crimson color of blood on her robes and hands. She tasted that blood on her lips. Del's blood and suddenly her knees buckled and she sank to the ground. What had gone wrong? She needed time to think.



Maleko sighed contentedly, awash with a sense of relief from the his experiences in the Cavern of the Self. He took a deep, cleansing breath and smiled. Guilt had been lifted off of him for his actions of the past and his heart threatened to soar right out of his chest. No matter what he had done it seemed - surrender or hide - his steward would have died. And if he'd tried to combat the bandits... Well, an attack on the caravan would likely have resulted in even more deaths. So he was relieved and felt happy about what he'd learned in the test.

A soft cry to his left drew his attention and he saw a figure on the ground nearby. She was dressed in robes that should have been brilliant white but were instead splattered with the bright red of fresh arterial blood. She was propped up on hands and knees, her disheveled auburn hair hanging loose about her face which was, he saw twisted into a look of anguish that-

He stopped, not quite believing what he was seeing. It was Ledare Eelsof'faw



The polite sound of a throat being cleared drew Ledare back to the present - whichever present that now was. Instinctively, her hand groped the air at her side where her sword should have been. But of course it wasn't there. She struggled to rise, but felt dizzy and thought better of it. So, with an utter loss of presence, Ledare stared at the well-dressed elf as he approached. A flicker of recognition ignited in her brain and then went dead. The effort of remembering was a heavy, burdensome task - like moving through the sludge of the swamps near Byr.

"Are you hurt?" the elf addressed her, stopping a few paces away. He had lustrous dark brown hair and eyes that (like her own) were the bright color of polished copper. His face was kind, and though he wore an ornate longsword at his hip, his arms and hands did not seem the arms and hands of a swordsman.

"Are you injured?" he asked again, trying to coax a reply from her through his body language. Ledare could not form the answer and so shook her head slightly. With a colossal effort, she pushed recent events into a corner of her mind and tried to focus on this place. She looked beyond the elf and registered the large black shape of the giant, its luminous skin reflecting the strange twinkling lights of the astral plane. Another figure stood on the ground nearby and as he turned toward her Ledare's breath caught in her chest and disbelief filled her.



"Maleko? We need to get moving," Morier commanded. He cast a look up at the giant, shuddering at the coldness that seemed to emanate from its dark body. The bleak finality of cemeteries, tombs, and funeral shrouds surrounded the huge figure. "I don't think this guardian thing is one to let us hang around and chat for -"

He saw Ledare and stopped, agog. Morier had been certain that he didn't really have the ability to change things in his own past - that he was acting in a vacuum. But here was proof to the contrary. Ledare. Alive. The reaction on her face mirrored his own emotions and they stared at one another across the Astral plane.

"I think we three are the only ones to pass the test," Maleko announced, breaking the stunned silence.

"Test?" Ledare managed to croak and the elf nodded.

"Yes, we all went into-" he started to explain and Morier cut him off.

"Ledare! What- How- " he struggled, but the questions died on his lips. Died. He looked up at the giant again, meeting its inscrutable gaze. The black gulfs of its eyes seemed to take in everything, but offered nothing in return. They were the cold, dark eyes of death itself. Morier tore himself away from the twin abysses and looked at his remaining companions.

"We need to go. Now," he said, forcing all his questions aside. "If the others were coming out, they would have. We can talk about what happened in the Cavern once we're underway."



Ledare followed the pair numbly. She had no armor, no weapons, and could find no clear path of reason with which to explain how the fates had landed her here. She whispered a prayer to Flor for guidance and plodded along toward what Morier described as the God Isles. What might have been the glimmer of a response presented itself as the slow realization that this party still epitomized the struggle against Aphyx, however uniquely. And so, in that sense, she belonged here now.

She stole glances at her companions from time to time as they flew almost certain now that the elf was familiar. Yet she couldn't quite place him. It was Morier who seemed truly foreign despite the fact that he looked exactly as she last remembered seeing him. He did not, however, appear to have any of the characteristics of the strange doppelganger she remembered encountering with Feln during the Air Walk so long ago. It had been following that bitter fight between the two Moriers that the true Morier had vanished. And it had only been because of his mysterious ability to alter the weather that she and Feln had been able to finish the quest successfully. She had never seen him again until now and had always assumed him dead. Was this the same man? Had he somehow been dragged through time and space as she had been?

For his part, Morier was quiet and introspective too, making her reluctant to seek answers to questions her brain could not quite fully comprehend.

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #498[ Divergent Paths

As they continued to travel, the barren emptiness of the Astral Plane seemed in direct contrast with the congregation of thoughts and emotions swirling inside each traveler's mind. Ledare was completely out of sorts, but not even she exceeded Morier in the feeling of shock and confusion.

Ledare was alive!

He'd dreamed of saving her on countless occasions, but as many times as he had played out the scenario in his own mind, Morier never expected to have need to consider how he would react if it actually happened. A string of questions flooded his mind; Had he pulled Ledare from an alternate plane? Was there another Morier there? Had someone found the Heart in Ledare's reality? Who? Where was it now? Morier closed his eyes and tried to force the questions away. He reopened them slowly, hoping to find he had been hallucinating. For as much joy as the sight of Ledare gave him, her appearance carried with it a tremendous sense of dread.

"What have I done?" he asked himself, quietly but aloud.

"What do you mean, Morier?" Maleko asked. "Done what?" The albino looked at him, his mouth opening and closing slowly like a fish's. He was beyond words. Ledare, keenly aware of Morier's confusion drifted forward to speak.

"Morier, do you remember, long ago, on a mountain top when you changed the seasons?" she asked him. "There was... another Morier, and a fight. When you disappeared, Feln and I were forced to go on without you. We held out hope that you would be waiting back with Karak when we returned, but you weren't." She stopped and stared straight into his eyes for a long moment before finding her own words again: "Morier, we thought you were dead. Where have you been?"

"I..." Morier groped for explanation. "Ledare, in my world the fight on the mountain top wasn't long ago; it was moments ago. It was an instant before that figure pointed us in this direction. I thought it was a test. I didn't think I could actually..." He trailed off, realizing that he would need to compose himself before he could make any sense to anyone. He pulled a deep breath.

"In my world - in my reality - you and Feln turned back at the Test of Air," he told her and her expression creased with the effort of making sense of his words. "Do you remember the conversation we had on the mountain top just before I changed the weather? I told you about the outcome, that I had succeeded in getting the Heart? Do you remember that?"

Ledare considered.

"I don't know; it was so long ago... We talked about this, Feln and I, after you left. We thought the changes you made were intended to avoid some kind of undesirable outcome." Her voice quavered, but she controlled it and continued. "But it seems all our own outcomes went wrong. Maybe the other Morier was right after all. Trollspit! We managed to muck it all up! Thank the gods you were able to get out alive."

"I don't know how much the gods had to do with this," the eldritch warrior grumbled, feeling that the weight of responsibility rested squarely on his own shoulders and not elsewhere. Ledare nodded her acceptance, but from the way that she clutched her holy symbol in her fist, it was plain that she didn't share his feelings on the matter.

"When you didn't return, we kept going. The Water Guardian bestowed some kind of mental pull in our heads that directed us toward the Keys..." her voice trailed off. "But you know about that, don't you?"

"Yes," the albino said nodding. "Except that in my reality I completed the Tests alone."

"That must have been a temendous burden to bear alone. Feln and I often imagined what would have happened to our quest if we had died before we found the Cradle. But at least there were two of us." She shook her head and sighed. "We went to find the Keys intent on rescuing the Heart. But..." Her voice trailed off as she recalled something that the other Morier had said on that mountain top long ago. Her eyes fixed momentarily on this Morier's chest and then widened. "Morier, that Heart destroyed Huzair."

It was all becoming more than Morier was able to process. His mind raced and swirled at the complexities of everything he had taken in over the last few hours. Alternate pathways of reality with alternate outcomes... it was the stuff of myth and ether really. None of it seemed real enough, yet nothing about it was any different from the gossamer-draped existence he had been surrounded by from the moment he opened his eyes on the Astral plane.

A part of him wanted to know everything about the voyage that Ledare had taken from the moment he left the mountain top until now, but every new detail seemed to cloud his own thinking even more, so he hesitated to ask for much. But somehow the idea of the Heart destroying Huzair was one he couldn't let go of. Morier considered two possibilities; Either Huzair had gotten to the Heart after Morier did, and reaching it on Huzair's reality constituted some sort of terminus that resulted in his death since Morier already possessed it. Or in that universe, Huzair was given Dridana's powers in much the same way he had been, and the power turned Huzair. The mage had always lived his life perched on that precipice, and seemingly limitless power might be enough to push anyone over. Morier wanted to believe neither, but the first possibility at least gave him a sense of comfort about his lost friend.

"Destroyed him? How so?" he asked and Ledare looked away.

"You killed him, didn't you?" she asked after a moment, fixing her gaze once more on Morier. The shocked expression on his face was a relief to her; she didn't much like the idea of her friends killing one another.

"No I did not!" he said with finality. "Huzair may have been an ass much of the time-"

"But he did many good things as well," she added and the eldritch warrior nodded his agreement. "You had a connection with Huzair, didn't you, Morier? He spoke of your past, the time you spent together under the guardianship of - someone whose name I can't remember..."

"Garan-Zak" Morier supplied it for her and Ledare nodded. It was yet another detail - a joining point from their multiple pasts - more delicate and complex than a web, and she shuddered at that thought.

"And if Huzair told you of our friendship, then what would make you think I killed him?" the eldritch warrior pressed.

"You said it yourself," she told him. "Or rather that other version of you did. Back on the mountain top, I mean."

"That wasn't me!" Morier nearly shouted. "I would never... Huzair died saving the rest of the party."

"Your Huzair sounds different from mine," she said. "There was unrest within our party. And Huzair was often at the center of things." She searched for a suitable explanation and Morier recalled how heavily discord had often weighed within his own party - doubly so for the leader. "A quest such as our draws its strength from the fortitude of its followers," Ledare went on. "And we were a group of strong personalities, one in particular with whom Huzair did not see eye to eye."

"He rarely saw eye to eye with anyone," Morier mused.

"It was settled, though," she said flatly. He paused, but she did not elaborate, and Morier knew it was yet another story to someday be told. "I thought perhaps that would be the end of our troubles. Turned out, it was only the beginning."

"So what did Huzair do with the Heart when he had it?" Morier asked and Ledare looked at him strangely.

"We never found the Heart, Morier," she told him.

"But the Pull..." Morier began and the Janissary shrugged uneasily.

"The more I ignored it, the more it began to fade," she explained. "I haven't felt it for some time." The eldritch warrior looked at her as if she were speaking Abyssal.

"You IGNORED the Pull?" he asked and Ledare sighed.

"When it became obvious that we were never going to get passed that damned Grandfather Plaque I did!" she said with a trifle more venom than she intended. "The thing guarded a door warded with a magical riddle that we could not solve. Huzair convinced us that the answer was: the leper. But it wasn't." Morier smiled and then laughed, but it was a thin, manic laugh, filled with anxiety but little mirth.

"The answer to Grandfather Plaque's riddle is: the healer," Morier said, still chuckling nervously. Ledare short him a scornful look.

"There's little reason to laugh, Morier," she told him. "Feln died at that door - slain byGrandfather Plaque's magic." That fact snuffed the albino's chuckles at once.

"I didn't mean-" Morier started and then he sighed. "My Huzair tried the same answer; I convinced him otherwise." Ledare looked pained and she cast a sidelong glance at the elf.

"Well you weren't there to help us," she said. "We failed that test and could go no further. So, yes, I learned to ignore the Pull and eventually it went away entirely. It was a bitter blow, being blocked as we were."

"I can imagine-" he began but she cut him off at once.

"I'm not sure you can, Morier," she snapped. "We were aimless for a time after that. We scoured the entirity of the Cradle, looking for another way into the Tests, but could find none. After we accidentally opened a dimensional tear to the Negative Material Plane we were all too physically drained to consider further assault on Grandfather Plaque. So we left, at loose ends for the first time in a long time. Huzair did not do well with that."

"Is that what caused the friction within your party?" Maleko asked and Ledare looked at him as if she'd forgotten he was even there. He started to offer apology but she shook her head.

"It was the start of things, I think," she admitted. "But the real rift didn't occur until we stopped the Aphyx cultists from freeing Zagaroth from his prison."

"Zagaroth?" Maleko asked , his face creased with thought. "You mean the Witch-King of Erlacor?" Ledare nodded.

"The very same. His prison was in the City of Gold under the ice on the coast of the Frozen Sea," she said and then offered Morier a strained smile, adding, "Beyond the fork's three tines."

"The poem!" the eldritch wwarrior exclaimed. "You finally discovered its meaning!" Ledare nodded, but any thrill she felt about that discovery had long ago faded away.

"We did," she said. "But at great cost." Morier looked at her quizzically. "Is there anyone... special... for you, Morier?" she asked and Morier started. They had never talked like this, even before the Air Walk, when they had traveled together. He shifted uncomfortably.

Ledare explained, "Huzair had... a... a ladyfriend."

Morier smiled sardonically, "Of course. Only one?"

She laughed, "Well, one he was particularly fond of - an elf named Anania. She was beautiful. She died, an accident really. Huzair was... very angry." Morier sighed and looked off into the misty void.

"I've really mucked things up, haven't I?" he groaned, shoulders slumping. Ledare drifted over and lay a comforting hand on one of those shoulders.

"I understand your concern about how things stand now, Morier, but I think you must trust yourself. There is a reason why you have made it so far in this quest - farther than anyone else. More and more I am not surprised that it is you," Ledare spoke earnestly. "Yet, maybe, after a time your steadfast tendency to always do what seems right becomes calculable. Like right now, you assume the weight of responsibility not only for your own but for everyone else's actions too. For all that has passed since last we saw one another, you haven't changed much." He looked at her then and she smiled at him, encouragingly.

"What is not like you... what differs so dramatically from the past, is what you did on that mountain top," she went on. "The unpredictability of your choice to alter a history that was, for all intents and purposes going along remarkably well, might just be an incredibly strategic move. Have you considered that?" He smiled back at her, though it was a wan smile that required real effort to stir.

"I hope what has just transpired has not changed the fabric of reality," Maleko said aloud though it was unclear whether he was speaking to anyone in particular or just to himself. "Perhaps, it is just an anomaly of the Astral Plane. and we shouldn't worry. We are so close to success, and on a clear track, though;I would hate to lose what we have gained."

The elf looked directly at Ledare then and suggested,"Tell more us of your world. Who was with you. Obviously I never found you in Ledare's reality," Maleko added, looking pointedly at Morier. Ledare shifted uncomfortably.

"I honestly don't know what will happen. I understand your concern - you have done all the right things so far," she admitted. "I may be a distraction." Maleko clucked his tongue.

"I wouldn't saay that, Ledare," he told her. "In fact, without you, I dare say there wouldn't be a quest to undertake." She regarded him with surprise.
"How is it you know me?" the Janissary asked the mage and Maleko smiled at her warmly.

"You and Del saved my life in Hillsburg, along the Coast Highway when you rescued my caravan from brigands. You shot a man through the forearm with your crossbow," he told her excitedly. She smiled slightly as the memory came back to her and she suddenly recalled why his face looked so familiar to her.

"That I did," she agreed.

"I am forever indebted to you and to Del," he said. "I am so sorry for his loss." Just as suddenly, her face darkened and Maleko hastened to add, "He became a great friend. He spoke very fondly of you." Ledare raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"He missed you greatly and mourned your loss," he concluded. "It was obvious the burden it put on him and served as one source of motivation for this cause." Ledare nodded hesitantly, her expression intent as she put things together for herself.

"So in your reality, I died." She spoke slowly, as if tasting each possibility. She was tempted to ask how, but there would be time for that later. "Earlier you mentioned tests... Del was in a test, or at least at a crossroad, I think. I don't know what he was trying to do... maybe alter his own future?" She looked quizzically at Morier, but the albino had sunk deeply into his own thoughts. "There was another version of himself there too. They fought." She stared down at her still soiled robe. "It ended badly for both." She was silent for a moment, lost in thought.

"Oftimes, we are our own worst enemies," Maleko said, somewhat lamely he thought once the words had passed his lips. But the words prompted Ledare to nod and look at him.

"But how would that have contributed to me being here?" she asked and Maleko tapped thoughtfully at his lips with one slender finger for a moment before ultimately shrugging.

"We have no idea how your... I mean our actions affected reality. Any assumptions may be premature, although caution should be wielded," he explained. "For all we know we could have been in a separate dimension completing the test and everything around us remained the same as when we went in. Only you came out instead, Ledare. All theories are plausible at this point. For instance, in Zarnack the Magnificent's first volume on time travel, 'Chronomancy and the Fixed Prime Fallacy', he discusses at length the spontaneous creation of alternate timelines when changes occur at what he called chronologic hot spots or flashpoints-"

"Okay. Okay," Ledare interupted. "I get the idea." She had heard all about flashpoints before and didn't think she could take hearing all Maleko knew of the subject.

"Of course." Maleko replied graciously but she caught a note of disappointment in his voice.

"I might like to read that book if you still have it," Ledare offered and Maleko smiled.

"Alas, the copy that I read belonged to the Mageholme library in Barnacus," the elf apologized. Ledare sighed.

"By the way," the Janissary observed. "I need a sword. And some armor."

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #499] Auld Lang Syne

They pressed on for a time through the void until they reached a point where they could just make out a series of monumental stones adrift at the limits of their vision. Those islands of rock lay directly in their path and none of them had any doubt that they were the the God Isles. In truth, their only doubt came from the fact that they knew not what they would find once they reached the Isles. After so long in pursuit of this goal, it took tremendous effort for Morier to call a halt to their advance, but he did.

"We should rest," he told the other two. "We don't know what we'll be facing once we reach our goal and I need to regain my spells."

"Do you think we'll be fighting?" Maleko asked, a note of nervousness in his voice. Morier shrugged noncommittally and Ledare stared off at the floating rocks, hazy and indistinct in the misty twilight of the Astral Plane.

"Every other leg of this journey has required steel as well as wit," she muttered bitterly. "I see little reason to think that this will be any different." Maleko looked at her with concern, wondering again by what alternate path she had arrived in their midst.

"Ledare's right," Morier said and pointed at a smallish chunk of astral debris that drifted nearby. "We'll camp there."

"You can take first watch," she said to Morier. "I'll take second and Maleko third. As spellcasters you'll need uninterrupted time to rest." The albino raised his eyebrows.

"I was about to suggest the same thing," he told her and she cast her eyes downward.

"Of course," she said, reddening. "My apologies. Old habits." Morier smiled at her and began moving out.

"It's nice to know we're on the same page," he said wryly.



The longsword Maleko had graciously offered her was much more ornate than anything Ledare had wielded before. She suspected the jewels alone were of great value; the entire thing was polished to perfection. It was a magnificent work of art, and she wondered briefly how he had come by it. Another question to add to the tally. The weight of it felt good in her palm, as if such a solid reminder could anchor her to the here and now by its presence alone. She swung the weapon a few times, experimentally, and found she had to make several adjustments with her robe to avoid its becoming entangled on the gleaming steel.

She looked up to find Maleko watching her with interest. "My thanks," she said, raising the longword in a half-salute. "Are you sure you have no need of it?" He held up a tidy gloved hand and shook his head.

"It was a gift from my father," he told her as if he'd been privy to her earlier thoughts. "He wanted me to be able to defend myself if it came to crossed blades. But I don't think I've weilded it out of necessity more than thrice in all the years that I've had it." Ledare looked at the sword and saw her indestinct reflection in the polished fuller.

"You're a lucky fellow in that case, Maleko," she said, wondering how many times out of necessity she'd weilded a weapon like this one to save her own life or the life of someone she cared about.

"Not really," he told her with an ironic chuckle. "I just have other means of defending myself. And I think, given the current circumstances that I'm better defended with that sword in your hands than hanging at my hip." She nodded her acceptance and slid the weapon back into its scabbard.

Of course, she had noticed right away that this Morier did not carry Ravager as his double had so long ago. She wondered what had become of that sword. That consideration had been followed by a twinge of regret, wondering if she would have been able to make a difference in Del's test had she been armed. The Gods played bitter games allowing men to be destroyed at their own hand - whole histories and realities snuffed out in an instant. She wondered if weapons endured without consequence and added the fate of her former weapon to her list of questions for Morier.



For the moment, though, Morier was through with questions. She'd asked him about Huzair's death and the albino had pressed his hand to his face, sighing.

"I can't do this right now, Ledare. Events all turned bizarre and started to unravel once we stepped through the door to the Cavern of the Self, and it might all be illusory," he told her. "Of course that might just be a self-satisfying explaination for all of it, since it would seem to be growing more difficult for one not to question his own sanity at some point in sorting through all of this." She looked at him morosely.

"I don't feel like an illusion, Morier," she told him and he nodded.

"I know, Ledare," he said. "And I can only imagine how confusing this all is for you, because I know how confusing it all is for me. But I can't focus on it right now. Not so close to our goal..." Ledare looked off into the distance, grim-faced.

"I realize that, practically there is a job to do and it needs attention," she assured him. "So perhaps we can all try to lock things away in a chest for now and move along. But be careful, Morier. Things we think we've locked away and buried have a way of coming back on us at inopportune times."

She turned back to Maleko and saw the elf holding her holy symbol by its chain with a far-off puzzled look in his eyes. There was something unsettling about his expression and she prodded him gently to get his attention. He blinked rapidly and looked at her.

"I was trying out my new Gloves of Object Reading," he told her. "I thought it might shed some light on your past, maybe explain in part why you're here."

"I told you I'm willing to answer your questions," she explained and Maleko grinned bashfully.

"I know. But as I said, the Gloves are new and I wanted to try them out," he admitted and Ledare chuckled.

"So why did you look so puzzled just now?" she asked and Maleko held up the necklace.

"The holy symbol gave me exactly the reading I expected," he told her. "You were the most recent owner, and before that it belonged to Matriarch Lenoire, cleric of Flor."

"She gave it to me when I first converted to the faith of the White Lady," Ledare confirmed and Maleko nodded.

"Again: it's exactly the reading I was expecting," he told her. "But then I tried to do a reading on the chain and... well the Gloves are giving me conflicting information. Like the readings overlap." Ledare frowned, trying to remember where she'd picked up the large chain and found that she couldn't. Maleko looked at her.

"Do the names Tarawyn Alusiil and Melengar the Black mean anything to you?" he asked. "Because before you, both of them appear to have owned this chain."

 

[Jon Potter]

[Realms #500] Dead Gods

Ledare straightened at the mention of the names. "I have heard about Melenger the Black. He was the custodian of a magical artifact called the Rod of Ruin. Long ago, before your time even Morier, I traveled with... with a company of great friends. We happened upon something like that - a rod of great power, although we didn't know its nature and there were mixed feeling about what should be done with it."

Morier shook his head and snorted to himself, thinking in turn of the Rod of Withering and the Samsara Sword and of how both had divided his own group.

Taking the chain from Maleko's hands, Ledare continued, "Kirnoth carried it for a time. I always thought he threw it into the sea." She paused a moment, fingering the chain thoughtfully. It was solidly-made, each link scribed with a fillifgreed design and disks of silver polished to mirrored smoothness were worked into its length at regular intervals. It seemed momentarily odd that she didn't remember getting the chain, but she was adrift in a sea of oddity and a forgotten necklace represented but a single cup-full of confusion.

"Those were distant lifetimes," she said at last. "I don't know how I came to possess this chain. But it is of no small significance that it should now bear the symbol of Mercy." She placed the chain once more around her neck and stood abruptly. "Flor's ways are mysterious and powerful indeed, but I will be quite ineffective at doing her good work without some kind of armor!" Maleko held up a finger and began sifting through his gear.

"I have some scrolls of Mage Armor that I could use to benefit you in combat. It's not plate mail, but it will help turn aside a blade," he told her and she nodded. "There are some Nethlar-granted miracles that I could also impart on you after my prayers. Shield of Faith comes immediately to mind..."

"Anything will help," she admitted. "My thanks, Maleko." She looked at Morier and saw that he had his back to them, his attention pointedly not focused on his companions but rather on the insubstantial world of glittering vapor that surrounded them. She stared hard at the back of the albino's head, wondering what was going on inside. She was so fixated that she very nearly missed hearing Maleko's last comment.

"I really wish you could remember where you got the chain," the mage-priest told her. "It may tell us where this Black Bishop is."

But, alas, she had no answers for him.



Morier settled in to take his turn on watch while the others rested.

He was struck by the comfort he once again felt in a moment of solitude. It was a familiar feeling, but one that he hadn't felt for quite some time. There was a time when he seemed the "solitary warrior", moving from place to place, leaving before bonds could be tied to others. But his recent travels, particularly those with Ledare and Huzair, had opened him to the idea of companionship. He looked thoughtfully at these sleeping comrades but didn't feel the same ties he had before.

The familiar face, and the new one for that matter, were at once comforting and distressing to Morier. He remembered the coins he once had forged and given to Ledare to mark her membership as a member of the "Order Bringers" and laughed aloud a sarcastic chuckle. If this was "order" it left something to be questioned of what "disorder" felt like. Where had the line between reality and ether begun to blur?

He wanted badly to talk to both of his new companions, but he needed more time to sort out his own questions. Simply seeing them seemed strange enough. Talking to them seemed like madness. Developing bonds with them was crossing the line into complete lunacy.

He turned from them and looked ahead, focusing his energies on keeping watch. When Ledare spoke, he started violently and very nearly drew his sword. She was- obviously - no longer sleeping, and she crept quietly from her spot near Maleko to not disturb the elf's rest. Morier sighed and turned away from her again.

"Choosing solitude doesn't make you more likely to succeed, Morier. It just makes you more alone," the janissary said and settled on her haunches near, but not actually beside the eldritch warrior. She gazed off at the distant islands of rock, half-glimpsed in the mist. "You've come this far thanks to the blood and the grit of those who chose to make the journey with you... Don't discredit them because you are afraid to lose anyone else. One man alone is not going to defeat Aphyx, no matter how strong. It has been a team effort, regardless of what reality you are from." She paused, and silence blossomed between them. Morier kept his attention focused beyond their tiny oasis of substance in the vast emptiness.

"If this is all nothing more than an illusion - a trick of your mind - then make the most of it," Ledare encouraged. "Learn something from it. Don't retreat inside yourself until it makes sense; it may never make sense! Use the opportunity it presents to you!" Her voice rose and she glanced back at Maleko, but she hadn't disturbed the elf's reverie. When she looked back Morier was facing her with a grave expression on his face.

"You misunderstand, Ledare," the albino explained. "It's not that I don't want to. Actually I want to quite a lot... I just... I feel like he's losing my damned mind." Ledare looked at him and there was nothing of jest n his face. He meant everything he said.

"Oh, you mean that!" she said, grinning and running a hand through her auburn locks. "Sorry, can't help you with that." Morier blinked and then a grin played across his own face and he chuckled under his breath. He reached out a hand and gave Ledare's fingers a squeeze.

"Give me time, Ledare," he said. "I just need time to wrap my brain around all that's happened... or may have happened.. or-" She patted him on the shoulder and nodded.

"Get some rest," she said. "It's my turn to take watch." He agreed and moved to take her recently vacated spot near Maleko.

"Oh, and, Morier?" she asked quietly. "What exactly are we supposed to be doing in the Gods Isles?" He regarded her earnestly and then shrugged.

"I have no idea," he said. "Unite Dridana's Heart and Body. I'm sort of hoping it'll be obvious once we get there." Ledare smiled at him and shook her head.

"Maybe we should have asked that yucky death guardian a question or two before we ran away," she suggested and Morier shrugged again.

"Maybe," he admitted. "We're operating a bit off the map here."



For her part, Ledare spent the slow hours of the watch reviewing any details from her experiences that she thought might help them in the next leg of the journey. The bits and pieces of the journal entries and cryptic poems that she had collected over time swirled in her mind like the far-off twinkling lights and the strange, moving conduits of the Astral plane. When the threads of memory inevitably led her to the scene on the wharf of Awad, she felt a mingled sense of sadness and disbelief. Was it by design that two lives had been extinguished and her own soul hurled into the present situation? Or was it randomness. Might there be still other realities harboring names and faces from her past, all alive and well somewhere? It seemed preposterous to even consider. And yet, here she was in the company of one whom she had thought dead. One who had, instead, taken up the cause and fought on in some parallel world without her. Her heart swelled with pride at that.

The soft sounds of Maleko stirring from his trance broke into her reflection. Maleko - a well dressed and well spoken stranger who seemed to already have connectinos to her life - a different life, full of facets and ramifications she knew nothing about. Ledare sighed deeply and begrudgingly admitted the feeling that, like Morier, this tangle was truly beyond her ability to grasp. And, contrary to her own advice, it seemed that shutting out the confusion brought - if not peace - then the closest semblance to it she would find in this place.



They set off in the morning - or what passed for such on the Astral - after Maleko had prayed to Nethlar for both guidance and those miracles he thought might be necessary. The latter included the spell Shield of Faith which he hoped to cast on Ledare should the need arise. None of them were naive enough to believe that it wouldn't.

At first, it seemed as though they were racing simply toward an immense island of stone suspended in the silver void. But as they drew nearer and the island grew larger , they realized the truth. One by one their eyes followed the lines and contours of the rock and each in turn made out feminine arms curled tight against the body with hands that covered stone breasts of enormous size. Between the two hands - in the center of the figure's chest - was a hole that seemed filled with solid darkness, an absolute void. An expression of shocked pain and grief was frozen on the face of the gigantic humanoid whose cold stone eyes stared unseeing at the misty expanse of the astral sea. The whole contorted "island" was at least four miles long and made entirely of dry, gray stone.

"My god..." Maleko breathed as he beheld, and grasped what he was seeing.

"Not your god, Maleko," Morier corrected, his own voice a whisper. "But a god nonetheless."

"Or what's left of one," Ledare added.



They pressed on, wary of opposition, but finding none, until they reached a point some thousand feet or so above the great stone corpse. There, with their vision dominated by the massive corpus dei, they seemed to breach some invisible barrier and felt the tug of gravity reassert itself on them. It pulled them inexorably downward in a slow Featherfall toward the figure's feet as if that were the only proper place for mortals on the body of a god. An uneven, landscape of broken and blasted rock stretched out ahead of them as they touched down.

"We're here," Morier said unsteadily as if he couldn't quite believe it. Maleko cast Detect Magic and found that, unlike the rest of the Astral Plane, on this God Isle the normal laws governing magic were in effect. His spell was not Quickened or otherwise metamagically enhanced. It still worked properly, however, and the vista around him began to light up as he concentrated on the spell.

"Amazing," he said as he looked around. The whole place was awash with magic of every type, but at much lower levels than he feared it might. Some of the gear that his companions wore glowed with more power than the God Isle itself. In fact...

He noticed that Ledare's necklace was glowing particularly brightly, and it was quickly glowing brighter still. He analyzed the dweomer with a thought, his knowledge of spellcraft making the process nearly effortless: Conjuration magic of the Teleportation subschool. Odd, he thought. Either the necklace was about to gate somewhere or...

With a shouted warning he reached out and jerked the necklace off Ledare's head at the very moment that the device flared with light and the area within the circle of the chain became a portal to somewhere else. Had he been a moment slower, the effect would have neatly decapitated the janissary. As it was, the necklace clattered down to the rock nearby and for a brief second, they saw a window looking in on a stone chamber.

Then that image was eclipsed as a seething mass of rats bubbled up and out of the tiny gate, their brown-black bodies scrabbling madly over one another with singular purpose.