Dark Flower Ch. 15 (previously The Flower Ch. 9)

[Mikayla]

The Flower, Chapter 9.

Sheyreiza crouched in the snow beneath a cloudy sky almost the color of blood. Across the roiling clouds streaks of red, purple and orange danced like flame. She was not sure what, precisely, caused the discoloration. Sunset had long since passed, and the dawn was still hours away. The nights of the north were normally dark, but not nearly so sanguine. Ahead of Sheyreiza, across a nearly frozen stream, was a hill on top of which glowed a great bonfire. She supposed the flames of that bonfire might be lending their color to the ruddy glow of the clouds above, but it was hard to imagine one bonfire, no matter how big, causing such a sky. More likely, she thought, the evil, starless sky had something to do with the nearby tower where in Amythzul was bound. Or had been bound. Sheyreiza was not sure. Jain’n had told her only a little about the evil that had been bound in the tower as they ran through the snow to get here. Sheyreiza, laboring to keep up with Jain’n and Nylo, had been unable to devote all her attention to his story. She had other things on her mind, such as the numerous gnolls that prowled the snows beneath the red sky, and their plague druid masters.

A few hours ago, as the last daylight faded, the elves had spied the gnolls constructing a great pyre atop a hill far across the lake. It seemed the plague druids were going to conduct some great ceremony. The elves and drow of Lonelywood decided to attend.

Sheyreiza, Jain’n and Nylo had set out from Lonelywood, moving as fast as they could while still maintaining some semblance of stealth. They did not know what the druids intended with this pyre or this ceremony, but if at all possible, the elves intended to stop it. As they had approached the site of the bonfire, the sky grew redder. Now, they sat just a hundred yards from the base of the hill. Tall, feral looking gnolls patrolled the snows, huge halberds in their hands. The snows around the hill were littered with the debris of old battles. Many had fought here. Many had died here.

Sheyreiza crouched now, behind the wreck of some human siege machine. In the distance, she kept an eye on a wild-eyed gnoll that walked along the banks of the stream running at the hills base. Nylo was off scouting the hill. Jain’n was only a few yards from Sheyreiza, but since they were so close to the gnoll, they dared not speak or move if they did not have to. Until Nylo returned, Sheyreiza was alone with her thoughts. The three elves were badly outnumbered. As the sweat she had perspired while running slowly froze on her skin, she turned her thoughts to her fight with the stormhold orcs, when she had also been badly outnumbered. She thought of all the fights since then as well.

The year that followed Sheyreiza’s attack on the stormhold orcs had brought more opportunities for her to test her sword craft. A war between the elves and the Talonites had grown from the skirmish that had claimed Vraja’s life. A Talonite stronghold was built across the lake from Lonelywood and Termaline. Sheyreiza and the other elves could see the stronghold from the top of Ellewyn’s tower using the gnomish viewing glasses Jain’n had obtained. Far across the icy waters, they watched as the Talonites, primarily gnolls, dug in and fortified. There were simply too many of them to attack directly. So, the elves watched the Talonites’ movements. When the Talonites left the safety of their stronghold, the elves attacked.

Human druids led the Talonites for the most part. The druids of Talona were foul creatures, barely more civilized than the animalistic gnolls they commanded. Why they had come to the far north was a mystery, but their unadulterated aggression was easy to see. Attacks on caravans and travelers became common. Gnolls stalked the walls of Termaline and the paths leading to Lonelywood village. Always the druids led them.

The elves of Lonelywood and Sheyreiza’s drow showed the Talonites no mercy. The elves watched from the tower and patrolled the snows. Wherever the Talonites were found, they were killed. Still, the elves saw no end to their enemy.

Even as the ‘war’ progressed, new threats appeared. A half-breed thug from the human city of Waterdeep came looking for Jain’n. Nylo, Inthara, Jain’n and Sheyreiza had to drive him off with sword, spell and arrow. A caravan of evil humans appeared traveling the roads. Sheyreiza knew they were either Zhentarim or Thayan or perhaps both. To Sheyreiza, there was little difference between the two; they were both groups of ruthless human merchants, warriors and wizards from the east. The elves set to ambush the humans, but the Talonites attacked the caravan first. Happy to let enemy fight enemy, the elves sat back and watched until the Talonites had killed all the humans. Then the elves attacked, slaughtering the fatigued, disorganized Talonites.

More skirmishes followed. Plague spread among the humans in Brynn Shander and the folk of the north dubbed the Talonite leaders ‘plague druids.’ Though the elves continued their ambushes, there seemed no end to the gnolls and their leaders.

Something else had grown from Vraja’s death: a tree. It rose up overnight from the spot where Vraja had been laid to rest in the ancient burial grounds. At night, it seemed wrapped in a mystic glow, as if the soul of Vraja haunted its boughs. Jain’n, the Lord of Lonelywood, often sat leaning against the tree in silence.

Sheyreiza remembered the morning she Jain’n sitting there in the hours just before dawn. She had been patrolling the paths of the wood, as she often did, and was returning to the circle to make one last prayer.

“Shadows, love.” She had said as she approached Jain’n.

“Blessings, flower.” Jain’n he had replied. His words had been loving, but his face was distant. His eyes did not look at Sheyreiza; they looked into the distance across the snowy landscape.

He had pulled her down into his lap and she had settled in. She remembered his body was warm, his grip strong, and his smell comforting. They had talked and were soon joined by Inthara, now called Butterfly, and her lover, Nylo. Inthara was pregnant with Nylo’s child and very excited. She was no longer allowed to leave the woods, however, as Jain’n forbid pregnant females from patrolling. Though happy to be pregnant, Butterfly was not happy to be left at home while her lover Nylo and the others fought the war against the Talonites.

The foursome had spoken of love, of babies, of Vraja’s tree and of the weather. Nylo and Jain’n seemed affected by the war but Sheyreiza hardly noticed. She had been at war her whole life. The only things that changed were the names and faces of the enemy. Ironically, perhaps the only time in her life that she had not been fighting someone was the time she had spent in the Battlehammer dungeons. There, her only real enemy had been herself. That war took place in her mind. It was fought between the traditions and culture she had been raised with on one side, and her awakening sense of good and evil and Ilythiiri destiny and history on the other. The past versus the future. Lolth versus Eilistraee. The prize was Sheyreiza’s soul.

That ideological war was not over, but the more tangible war with the Talonites had distracted Sheyreiza. The importance of wrestling with dogma lessened dramatically when one was wrestling with a seven-foot tall gnoll. Sheyreiza was well aware her soul was in jeopardy, however; should she die fighting one of those gnolls, she was not entirely sure where her soul would go. To Lolth? To Eilistraee? To neither? Sheyreiza wanted to go to Arvandor, but she held out little hope that she would ever be allowed to walk in those green fields. Still, a little hope was better than none at all. Some Ilythiiri had made it to Arvandor, or so Vraja’s spirit had told her. Would Sheyreiza? Could Sheyreiza? Or was her past simply too dark, too evil, too wrapped up in Lolth’s insidious web? Sheyreiza did not know.

Sheyreiza remembered the sickness that came upon her as they talked beneath Vraja’s tree. Sheyreiza had run from the burial field to the nearby woods and retched uncontrollably. Rilralia, who had joined the group, followed Sheyreiza. Both women knew the cause of Sheyreiza’s illness. Indeed, even Butterfly knew, though Sheyreiza denied it at first. Sheyreiza pleaded with Rilralia not to tell Jain’n the source of her distress, but Rilralia’s loyalty lay with the Lord of Lonelywood, not Sheyreiza. Sheyreiza knew she would not be able to keep the secret without Rilralia’s help, so she has simply walked over to Jain’n and the others and made her announcement.

“I am pregnant.” Sheyreiza had said. Simple and to the point, stated almost as a challenge to those around her. Indeed, perhaps she had stated it as a challenge.

The timing was terrible. Sheyreiza’s son in Ched Nasad was just past twenty years old when she had fled that city. He would be close to twenty-five now. Soon, he would be sent to an academy, either to learn the art of war or the art of the arcane. Either way, the priestesses and instructors would indoctrinate him. If Sheyreiza had any hope of saving her son, that hope lay in getting to him before the academies did. If she had to wait for her pregnancy to run its course, she would likely not get to Ched Nasad in time. Her son would be at the academy, and beyond her reach physically, and later, spiritually.

Jain’n had understood. Though usually quite rigid with his rules, he seemed amenable to allowing Sheyreiza to go on patrolling and training while pregnant until the point at which the pregnancy interfered with her ability to move and fight. Then they had seen the bonfire being built.

Now, here she was, pregnant, sweaty, and cold, crouched in the snows beneath a blood-red sky amidst a field of carnage, waiting silently for Nylo to return. Her bow was in her left hand, an arrow in her right. She watched the gnolls patrol the stream and the hill and she counted them and made note of their weapons.

Nylo returned silently. When he did not want to be seen or heard, Nylo was a veritable ghost. He signed using the drow sign language, relaying how many gnolls he had seen, how many humans, and how many had bows. There was something else though, something more shocking. They have a unicorn. Nylo signed. On top of the hill. I think they are going to sacrifice it.

Jain’n replied in sign language, issuing orders. The trio would attack and attempt to save the unicorn.

Sheyreiza was not sure which bothered her the most: the terrible odds they faced, the thought of a unicorn being sacrificed or seeing a surface elf use the drow sign language. After a moment of reflection, she decided it was seeing Jain’n use the drow sign language.

Though she had patrolled and fought with the elves of Lonelywood for more than a year, she never got used to seeing those elves use her people’s silent language. There was just something wrong about it. She hated it most when Jain’n used the silent tongue. The hand signs and facial expressions contorted Jain’n’s beautiful features and made him look like a drow male and that caused nothing but revulsion to Sheyreiza. Jain’n was, for Sheyreiza, the anti-thesis of the drow culture she had grown up in. Where the drow of Ched Nasad were cold, Jain’n was warm. Where the drow of Ched Nasad were selfish, Jain’n was giving. None of the drow Sheyreiza had known would have given their life to save another no matter who, yet Jain’n had been willing to give his life for a mere chance at saving Sheyreiza’s soul. He was unlike the drow of her homeland as any creature she could imagine. To see him use the drow sign language was like seeing a crude curse scrawled across a beautiful painting. It was simply offensive. Of course, there were other offensive things to worry about at the moment, and most them were seven feet tall and carrying halberds.

The three elves stood from their crouch. Nylo padded off through the snow flanking the hill while Jain’n and Sheyreiza advanced on stream and bridge. Sheyreiza let an arrow fly and Jain’n rushed into melee taking the gnolls off guard. The beasts fell quickly. The trio circled the hill taking out more sentries as they went. The sound of the fiendish ceremony atop the hill drowned out the sporadic noise of the skirmishes below. The flickering lights, littered battlefield and red sky proved a strong distraction for the gnolls on guard. The humanoids fought without coordination, singly or in small groups and they died similarly. The trio gained the bridge and a handful of gnolls counterattacked. By now, the elves were blooded and buffed and they made quick work of the beasts. Jain’n, with his shield and sword, went toe to toe with the great beasts while Sheyreiza worked her bow and Nylo flanked. One after another the gnolls fell.

Nylo scouted the hill. Despite all the bloodshed, the druids carried on with their ceremony, seemingly unconcerned. Nylo signaled back that the sacrifice of the unicorn appeared imminent. Jain’n and Sheyreiza shared a look. If they died here, it was not only their lives, but also the life their unborn child. On the other hand, how could they not try? After all the good the unicorns of Lonelywood had done for them, how could they simply turn back now and leave one of the sacred beasts to the druids?

The answer was simple: they could not turn back. Live or die, they had to try. Jain’n gave the signal to attack to Nylo and the three started up the hill. Arrows flew. Gnolls rushed. Jain’n cut left and right and Sheyreiza fired until her first quiver was empty. A skeletal figure appeared and Sheyreiza drew her sword, barely parrying the skeleton’s axe in time. She danced now, the dance she had been learning that night in the snow with the orcs. Step, feint, step, slip, step, set-up, step, kill. The skeleton fell. More gnolls. A druid. Fire appeared and flared around a pit in the center of the hill. Sheyreiza danced between gnolls and a druid, slashing and parrying, slipping between sweeps of her enemies’ halberds. Somewhere nearby, Jain’n was also fighting, trying to reach Sheyreiza’s back. A gnoll fell. Another appeared. Sheyreiza slipped him and reached the druid, plunging her rapier through the Talonite as he backpedaled away from her. She danced through the gnolls again, no longer sure of where Jain’n or Nylo were. All was chaos.

Firelight from the bonfire mixed with the arcane flashes from the sacrificial pit casting long, strobing shadows across the snows wherever the elves and Talonites stood. As the blood flowed, the snows took on the semblance of the sanguine clouds above. Everywhere, above and below, the northern night was gray-white and streaked with blood.

Sheyreiza drew her rapier from a gnoll as it died on her blade and looked around. She saw half way around the pit and Nylo on the far side. Even from here, she could tell Nylo was wounded. She dashed through the snow, leaping over bodies and running past burning pyres to reach her comrades. A druid fired a spell of entanglement at her but Sheyreiza was too fast. She was on him in a heartbeat and he was dead almost as fast. Another skeletal figure appeared, but unlike last time, Sheyreiza was not fast enough to parry. The skeletons axe struck her side and only the dwarf-made armor she wore stopped it from cleaving her in two. She fell back, blood pouring down her side from under the mail shirt. She bit back a scream as she felt something crunching beneath her skin on that side. Broken ribs. She could hardly breathe. She staggered away from the skeletal warrior and pulled a potion vial from her belt. The skeletal warrior raised his axe for the kill, but Jain’n’s shield deflected it as the sun elf came running into the melee. More blows were traded and Sheyreiza returned to the fight, her wound staunched by her healing potions. The skeletal warrior fell, only to be replaced by another and another. Though the hill was engulfed in arcane flame and chaotic battle like some plane of the abyss, Sheyreiza took heart in having Jain’n near her now. Together, they searched for Nylo amidst the chaos, running around the pit between the bonfires, slaying the Talonites and their undead as they found them.

Jain’n stopped suddenly near the edge of the central pit and pointed. Sheyreiza ran to his side and looked in. There, at the bottom of the pit, was a bloodied unicorn fighting for its life. The unicorn’s opponent was over nine feet tall, winged and possessed of claws as long as sharp as daggers. Sheyreiza, no stranger to fiends, recognized it immediately. It was a Vrock, a true tanari, a demon of the abyss and no small fiend at that. Vrocks were to the armies of the Balors and demon princes what knights were to the armies of mortal lords; powerful, elite and nearly fearless fighters. Vrocks were borne into battle by their great wings, not by horse. Clearly since this Vrock was in the pit, it was there because it wanted to be. Sheyreiza studied the fiend for a moment, her drow eye and abyssal eye working well in the ragged dark of the flame lit night. The fiend’s beak was long, cruel and serrated from untold centuries of abuse. Its feathers were sharp, and unlike the feathers of a bird, Sheyreiza knew they were tough, as if made of thin plates of metal. Beneath those horrid, feathered scales were sickly pustules, ready to explode with deadly spores. Long ago, Sheyreiza had been taught to run if a Vrock ever raised its feathers around her. The fiend’s eyes were black, soulless, seeming unintelligent and utterly without mercy, feeling or compassion. Each of the fiend’s four, long, stringy limbs ended in terrible, ivory talons that Sheyreiza had been told could rip open adamantine plate. The unicorn, majestic beast though it be, was no match for this opponent.

Neither was Sheyreiza.

The drow female looked down upon the great demon and knew this was an opponent none of them could face in single combat and likely not even together. Nor could they escape it. It could fly faster than they could run. Though she felt like fleeing, Sheyreiza was drow and she understood the danger of appearing weak. Weakness in the face of a creature such as this invited attack. She would bluff.

In the horrid language of the fiends themselves, Sheyreiza called out to the demon. “Be gone foulwing, be gone before you are banished!” The words rolled off her tongue as harshly as river stones passing under a mill wheel. The abyssal tongue was a horrid one, constructed of the purest evil thought. The word for love was also the word for excrement. The word for hope was also the word for nothingness and the void. The word for mercy was a cruel joke, for mercy was unknown to the foul demons of the abyss except as something to torment the doomed with.

The demon looked up from the bloody unicorn to stare Sheyreiza in the eye. “I have been waiting for you.” It said. “I knew you would come.”

Sheyreiza narrowed her eyes and snarled back at the beast, anger and hate mixing with fear to fuel her bluff. “Know you not my kind fool? Can you not see that I am a priestess of the Ilythiiri? Do you not know that your kind are but servants to us, to do with as we please? Be gone, or I shall destroy you and ne’er shall you return to torment this plane!” If Sheyreiza had looked, she would have seen the blood drain from Jain’n’s face as she growled out her words to the demon. Whatever distaste she had for Jain’n’s use of the drow silent tongue was nothing compared to his horror at hearing her speaking in the tongue of the fiends with a demon right before his eyes.

The creature only laughed. “I waited for you because I wanted you to see this.” The creature chuckled again. The beast looked at the unicorn, which circled warily in the pit. With a single loping stride of its long legs, the Vrock closed the distance between in and the unicorn. The doomed unicorn bowed its head and reared back to launch a charge. The vrock reached out and slashed at the unicorn, tearing out its throat.

Sheyreiza screamed. She screamed the name of a goddess, though she was not sure which one. She thought she screamed the Dark Maiden’s name, but had she? As she screamed Sheyreiza summoned a spell, one she had memorized long ago on board the ship from Waterdeep to Luskan. One she owed to Lolth. It was one of the last spells she had left in her memory, and it was the same kind of spell she had slain the frost giant with. Once, she had called on the power of Lolth to save Jain’n from the giant. Now she called upon the same spell, though she which goddess she called to she was not sure. The spell fired and a beam of pure negative energy fired from Sheyreiza’s hand at the fiend in the pit below her. Sheyreiza screamed as the divine energy coursed through her. More than a year had passed since Sheyreiza had tried to channel the power of any goddess and her body had long forgotten the sensation of power that accompanied such a channeling. Sheyreiza’s body, infused with the divine power, hovered on the edge of orgasm and collapse. Even as the pleasure of the channeling, the pure power of it, coursed through Sheyreiza’s body, the fear of what she was doing coursed through her heart. If the power of this magic came from Lolth, Sheyreiza’s very soul was in danger. Was it worth it to save the unicorn? Was this beast’s life worth risking her soul?

Sheyreiza already knew the answer. She had cast the spell. There was no turning back now. Second guessing her decision would only hurt everyone. If channeling Lolth’s power was what it took to save the unicorn, so be it. Sheyreiza would bear the burden of that decision. She hoped the divine power she now channeled was Eilistraee’s, but she could not be sure. It did not matter now. What mattered was killing the demon and saving the unicorn. Sheyreiza’s soul would have to wait.

She poured on the magic of the spell and threw everything she had into it. All the divine energy she could summon she put into the beam firing from her hands.

The demon was unaffected. The vrock tore the head off the unicorn and tossed to the bottom of the pit. The fiend looked over its shoulder straight at Sheyreiza. Though beaked, it seemed to smile. Then it was gone. Simply gone.

Sheyreiza looked into the pit, empty save for the beheaded corpse of the unicorn she had tried to save. Was this then a foreshadowing of things to come? Was this a message to Sheyreiza from the abyss? It seemed so. It seemed that the vrock had come just to torment her, to let her know she was all but powerless against the forces of the abyss she had once served.

She looked at the red sky and the blood stained snows. It was as if the whole world was bleeding. She looked at Jain’n and felt her own belly. Was this all just a foreshadowing of what would happen when she tried to save her son? Was this a foreshadowing of what would happen to Jain’n? To her baby? Would everyone she cared about die? Would she be helpless to save any of them? Was this what her life was to be? Nothing but blood and death, torment and defeat? Was there no hope?

As she looked back into the pit at the corpse of the unicorn, Sheyreiza screamed out a frustrated, angry curse in the abyssal tongue. The vrock would have been quite proud.

[Sandermann]

This just gets better and better

Excellent work Mikayla

[kiyoti]

very nice. i remember that was one hell of a fight. hope you don't mind if i qoute you

[Zakharra]

I love this. Now I know what you did across the lake. I have yet to get the entire story IC yet. Only pieces and parts.

[Trebor]

Great story Mik...

What was really shocking to me...I can't believe Nylo got himself a lady. Good stuff lad

And I'd watch out for that Vraja tree...it's probably warped in some way.

[kiyoti]

even a trembling coward gets lucky sometimes.

[Mikayla]

Sheesh. Nylo is not really a 'trembling coward'...that would be Fenifef (see chapter 10).

Nylo is much better than that - he is a running coward. Running is much smarter than trembling....






J/K That was the first and only time I've ever seen Nylo run from something, and as described, almost everyone ran. It was damn scary.