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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 893255" data-attributes="member: 143">We're back!  It's not the Friday cliffhanger that I originally envisioned before the crash, but I think you'll enjoy this installment...* * * * * Book VIII, Part 33Benzan looked around at his surroundings.  He had no memory of how he had come to be here; when he tried to think on it, he felt a pounding deep within his skull, so he turned his attention outward.  He was standing in a narrow city street.  The place had the look of any of a million streets in a thousand unnamed cities, yet it was instantly familiar to the tiefling warrior.  The sights, the smells—they instantly hit him with a barrage of memories, despite the fact that when he’d last been here, the place had not been empty as it was now.  There was a void of sound, not even the whisper of a breeze off the bay or the scuttle of rats in the shadowy alleys that darted off of the winding thoroughfare.  In those days when his dreams had taken him back to Unthalass, they had always been filled with the constant rush of sound that was a part of the city, a medley of voices and noises that grew and redoubled in the tight spaces that were these slums where he’d grown up.  Only now, the city was vacant, without even the buzzing of an insect to shatter the emptiness.   He didn’t immediately recognize this street; a veritable maze twisted and wove through the slums that sat like a fat boil upon the wealthier central districts where the quarters of the merchants, priests, and the palace of the God-King occupied the choice spaces along the bay.  As a youth, he’d known that maze intricately, as many of the fatherless and hopeless urchins who crowded the slums did, but it had been many, many years.He looked up.  The sky was bright, and the heat was familiar, that oppressive, wrenching heat that literally sucked the sweat from the body until it ran down your skin in currents.  But there was something wrong in that, as well... he realized that he could not see the sun, the golden orb that brightened Toril was just... gone.  He realized belatedly that he had changed as well.  Instead of his mithril chainmail he was clad in a flowing cotton tunic, of the sort common in Unthalass.  His other gear was missing as well, save for his accustomed bronze longsword, which rested in its usual position upon his hip.  It was a reassuring presence, something tangible in this familiar and yet alien place.  “Once again you return to the place of your origin,” a voice said, from behind.Benzan spun swiftly, for all that he hadn’t heard the stranger approach.  As he pivoted his blade hissed out from its scabbard, leaping readily into his hand.  The stranger stood calmly ten paces distant, regarding him with a cold but intent expression.  He was humanoid, muscular, his skin a perfect ebon, with a polish that caught the light like smooth obsidian.  He looked human at first glance, handsome in a regal sort of way, but on closer examination his pointed ears and slanted brows betrayed his otherworldly heritage.  He was clad in a richly cut garment of soft black silk that highlighted the muscular outlines of his frame, and carried a massive bastard sword whose hilt jutted up above his right shoulder.  “This isn’t Unthalass,” Benzan said, gesturing with his blade at the empty streets and alleys that surrounded them. The black man strode forward.  “No, but my statement is true nonetheless,” he said with the faintest hint of a smirk twisting his perfect features.   Benzan lifted the sword so that it stood as a barrier between them.  But if the ebon man seemed threatened by the long blade that stood three paces from his heart, he gave no sign of it.  “Who are you?”“Benzan, Benzan.  You carry my likeness around with you every day for three years, and you have no knowledge of me?  Perhaps I should be insulted...”“Prince Graz’zt,” he breathed.  The Prince fixed him with a hard stare, held him with those black eyes, until there could be no doubt.  “Where are the others?  Have you harmed... any of them?”  He’d hesitated, almost said, “Dana,” but he’d been able to catch himself.  There was no way that he was going to give this... creature any advantage, if he could help it...But then he looked into those eyes again, and felt despair.  Graz’zt already knew.  He knew it all.  He knew everything.  “It was all one big trap, wasn’t it?”Graz’zt strode out into the empty street, his boots crunching on the shattered flagstones.  Even before the war with Mulhorand that had driven Benzan and his mother, along with thousands of other refugees, from Unther, the back avenues and side alleys of the city had never been kept in good repair, the revenues of the city going instead to enrich the priest caste and those elite warriors close to the retinue of the god-king.  Benzan thought he could even smell the familiar odors of the open-air markets, stimulating a rush of memories he’d thought forgotten. It’s just an illusion, he told himself firmly, forcing himself to draw his full attention upon the foe—for this was a foe, and a deadly one, for all his apparent ease now—as he turned once more to face him. “I will not try to turn you against your friends, Benzan—I can see the bond that exists between you, and while it might be an entertaining project to snap that bond, or perhaps to warp it, you and your fellow Faerûnites are not my primary concern at the moment.  Still, it is rare to encounter one of the Blood who has gone out from us, lived his life on another plane, and has returned to the Homeland as you have.  Have you ever considered what you are, Benzan?  What am I saying—of course you are.  It consumes you, doesn’t it?  You’ve been trained by the weaklings of that world, this world,” he indicated the deserted streets with a casual toss of his hands, “This world that hates you and all that you are.”“I have accepted what I am,” Benzan said.  Graz’zt’s lips twisted into that familiar half-amused, half-mocking smile.  “Indeed?”  He waved his hand, and a gust of wind swirled in the street, and in that wind they could hear a voice, faint, an echo of words spoken before.“Anything born of this place is an abomination...” came Benzan’s voice on that breeze.  “Your words, I believe?” Graz’zt said to him.  “You’re not the first to try to torment me with my own identity,” Benzan shot back.  “Torment you?  No, Benzan.  I want to free you.  Have you never considered the possibility that who you are—what you are—sets you above those that surround you?  Look at you.  You are faster, smarter; though you seek to hide that behind that layer of sarcasm and ‘wit’ that you cultivate.  You have chosen not to develop greatly the innate magical talents that flow within your blood, but those skills you have refined make you powerful, nonetheless.  Your heritage makes you adaptable, resistant to the hot touch of the flame and the numbing chill of ice alike.”“I know what I can do,” Benzan said.  “Why don’t you just tell me what you want and be done with it?  I’m getting bored with all this chatter.”Graz’zt’s eyes narrowed the slightest fraction, but then he laughed.  “Ah, Benzan.  Would that I had the time to turn you; you would make a great addition to the ranks of my minions, I suspect.  But since you insist, I will get to the point.  I have come to make you an offer, Benzan.  For all your self-loathing and petty denials, your ancestry is core to what you are, central to the construct of your identity.  I can give you insight, Benzan.”“Have you never wondered, Benzan?  Of course, your mother never told you, but I can.”“Your father...”Benzan tried to hide his reaction, but he knew that the demon Prince could see through him as though he were shaped from Cormyrian crystal.  “My father?”“Yes.  Have you never wondered, from what source you sprang?  Did you think it all happenstance, boy?  Your wanderings, drawn to the Western Heartlands, finding the statuette, the device that led you, ultimately, to me...”“You?” Benzan breathed.  His heart seemed to have frozen in his chest.  “You... my father...”Graz’zt laughed again, this time a deep, throaty sound that echoed off of the close press of buildings around them.  “Me!  Ah, you certainly have a high opinion of yourself after all, it seems!  Nay, Benzan, while it’s true that I’ve shared around my seed on more than a few occasions, if you possessed my blood, believe me, you would know it...”Benzan heard the scraping sound behind him this time, even as he sensed the presence approach.  He looked up at Graz’zt, but the Demon Prince only watched him, a faint hint of a smirk on his features.  Reluctantly, Benzan turned around.  The creature—and that was the most he could define of it, at first—was large, half-again his height, its bulbous form clearly several times his mass.  It had the look of a fat, ugly, massive toad, except that it stood on two legs, and a demonic intelligence shone in its dull yellow eyes.  Fat gobs of slobber dripped from jaws that stretched at least three feet across, smoking where they landed on the uneven paving stones of the street.  Its mottled hide was coated with an oily sheen, and as it drew nearer, the stench of it hit Benzan like a hammer blow.  It was only with some difficulty that he held his ground, although his stomach continued to roil in protest as the creature closed to within ten paces, sinking into a crouch on its thick legs, ready to spring.   Graz’zt’s voice came over his shoulder.  “This is the hezrou, Mul’guk’lak,” he said.  “A fairly recent addition to the ranks of my minions.  He’s made a few visits to your Faerûn... no doubt you have heard about the rituals conducted by the priests of Unther?  Quite... stimulating... wouldn’t you agree, Mul’guk?” The hezrou’s huge jaws twisted into a ferocious grin, and it emitted a sour, fetid croak.  Benzan could not take his eyes off of the hezrou, though he turned his body back toward Graz’zt.  “What... what are you saying...”“Benzan, allow me to introduce your father.”  “No.  No, you’re lying...”The Demon Prince laughed.  “Why would I lie?  Ah, I take that back—I’m sure there’s a thousand reasons why I might lie... But in this case, my words are truth... and did you not yourself just say that you have accepted what you are?  Surely the family resemblance is obvious?”“No...”  Benzan found himself kneeling in the dusty street, although he hadn’t remembered falling.  Looking up, all he saw was the hulking demon, looming over him.  Its stench filled his nostrils, seeping into his pores.  “No, this is just an illusion, a lie...”Graz’zt’s laughter came to him once again, echoed by the creature before him.  Its jaws opened, and from deep within its throat came a hissing mockery of human speech.  “My son.”Benzan clutched his head, pressing his arms against his ears.  His stomach finally gave over, and he felt hot bile in his throat as he purged upon the dusty stones.  Blackness.</blockquote>

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