The heroine of this story is Suriel, an elf invoker and one of the PCs in my ongoing 4e Forgotten Realms game. She belongs to a party of adventurers called the Spellsword Spectrum Six, which has recently saved the town of Loudwater from marauding giants under the command of Nosnra (see Against the Giants: Stedding of the Hill Giant Chief).
I wrote this story as a teaser/hook for my players to whip them up for the next arc, but I’ll share it here! Enjoy!
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Suriel was happy.
She hadn’t often known true happiness in her young life, but lying there, entwined with Varzynthiir, gazing into his open but trance-heavy eyes, she felt it. Contentment. Peace.
She gazed down at where his hand grasped hers, black and pale fingers interwoven. Even in rest, he would not be parted from her.
It really was remarkable how pale she looked next to him. Her skin had always been dusky, especially since Corellon’s blood had cleansed her scars and she’d been able to expose herself to the beloved sun. But Varzynthiir took darkness to an entirely different dimension–his skin was truly black, like ink. If not for his stark white hair and gleaming red eyes, she might have thought him part of the night and not a living creature at all. When he invoked his skills as a shadowdancer, even his eyes turned jet black. Sometimes, she thought she saw shadow flit across him, even in trance–as now. She found it a little unnerving to stare into his wide-open eyes and know he was somewhere else.
Was he gazing at a dream, or reality? She could not tell.
Then Varzynthiir’s hand closed on hers, holding tight. His other hand moved toward his belt and Suriel smiled. “Again?” she asked. “Well all right, but not all of us are as durable as . . .”
She trailed off when he pressed a knife to her throat. She could not move. She could not breathe.
“I played this role well, didn’t I?” Varzynthiir’s lips split to reveal blood-smeared teeth. “Xara sends her regards.”
Suriel felt sharp steel kiss her skin.
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Suriel jerked away, catching her breath for a scream.
Varzynthiir lay as he had before, in the bed they shared in the Fisher’s Friend tavern, with its hot and stuffy interior. His red eyes were wide open and staring at her. There was no knife in his hand, which lay like a dead spider on the pillow. A spider.
Terrified revulsion rose in her, and she tore herself away from the bed.
It had been a dream. Or else a vision.
“Corellon protect me,” she prayed. “Father . . .”
Had she been less flustered, she might have wondered why the word felt so natural, but just at the moment, she did not care. She needed air. She needed to get out.
Their room had a balcony, and she shoved through the doors. The rush of night air felt freezing in her shift, after the stuffy room and her sweaty nightmare, but she welcomed it. The cold was of the natural world–the gift of the gods–and it was good.
The trance was also the gift of the fey gods, but Suriel found that less just at the moment. Varzynthiir could take her into his trance, which they’d just started doing over the last days. It was far more intimate–though perhaps less pleasing–than most other activities they could do. Over time, she’d grown adept at trancing with him, though it invariably left her a bit weary. She felt exhausted now, as though her body had not forgotten the exertions of the giant attack.
The shadows moved behind Suriel, and Varzynthiir joined her on the balcony. Wiry arms wrapped around her and pressed her into an embrace that was blessedly warm against the night. Warm—and frightening.
Suriel pulled away, but Varzynthiir did not follow her. “I have displeased you,” he said.
“No, I—” Suriel bit her lip. Now was not the time to correct him about his obsession with pleasing her, rather than himself. “I just need a moment. Alone.”
He took her hand. “You are wroth with me. Let me fix this.”
He didn’t understand, or else he was up to something more sinister. Why had she even thought that?
Arcane power surged in Suriel, and she fell backward through darkness, teleporting out of Varzynthiir’s grasp to the street below. Their eyes met, Suriel shook her head to stop him following her, and she headed off down the cobbled road. He stood on the balcony for a long while—she could feel him watching her—then disappeared. Perhaps he was following her in the shadows as was he wont, or perhaps not. At least he left her to her thoughts.
She wandered Loudwater without a particular goal. The city had taken a beating, there was no denying it. Buildings lay in rubble, fires still smoldered here and there, and the streets were littered with corpses both man-sized and giant-sized. Lady Moonfire had summoned a massive fire elemental during the battle, and while it had proved decisive in defeating Nosnra’s attack, it had proved difficult to drive off. The creature had a tendency to break apart in multiple pieces and scatter in all directions. Ulik and Kadath were even now tracking them down.
Suriel knew she and her companions had won the day for Loudwater, but she couldn’t help but wonder what would have come to pass if they had not come at all. Would Nosnra have launched his massive attack without their provocation?
Should they have come at all? Obviously they could not leave innocents to be massacred, but they had their own important business to attend to. They knew hardly anything about the Eight who, by all accounts, threatened their very world. Waterdeep, the Feywild, Airspur, and now Loudwater—all of them seemed like distractions on their greater path. Did they simply keep wandering down dead-end roads, or was there some great connection Suriel did not see?
But this was all a distraction in her thoughts anyway. She couldn’t keep out the memory of the nightmare with Varzynthiir. And gods-damned Xara. Suriel thought she’d escaped Xara Baenre—her half-sister, if Xara herself was to be believed. Indeed, she’d seen Xara seemingly at peace in Arvandor. Why then was she still having nightmares of her? And why Varzynthiir? Didn’t she trust him by now?
Suriel found herself heading toward Lady Moonfire’s manor house, where the final confrontation had taken place. The building was a mess and completely uninhabitable until major repairs were done, so no one would be here. Suriel climbed through a massive hole in the wall where Nosnra’s dragon had tried to blast her way free, and picked her way carefully through the burned out interior. She could see perfectly fine by the moonlight: discarded clubs and broken blades, rubble from thrown rocks, and the hulking carcass of Nosnra’s trained dire bear. The people of Loudwater hadn’t managed to remove the huge thing, so they’d left it where it had fallen.
A faint reddish glow caught Suriel’s attention, and she half expected to look up and see Varzynthiir standing there. Instead, the constant glow came from deeper in the manor, illumining a massive statue—that of Nosnra himself. The Hill Giant Chief had made the mistake (not entirely his fault) of turning the stone giant emissary Laerthar into an enemy, and it had won him petrification. But where was the light coming from?
Suriel drew closer and her breath caught. One of Nosnra’s stone eyes was glowing alternately blue and red as if from an inner light.
It couldn’t be.
The giant was so tall that its face was out of her reach. Suriel had not bothered to bring any of her equipments other than the pouch she always wore, but she hardly needed her rod to work her magic. With an arcane word, Suriel tapped the statue, which groaned—cracks shot out around her fingers. She spoke arcane words, gathering the moonlight around her hand, and blasted the statue in the middle, making it shatter into a thousand pieces, which crumbled to dust around her. It was almost like the giant was falling apart anyway, and she’d only expedited the process.
She sifted through the crumbling stone and found what she was seeking: a spherical gemstone that looked red in one light and blue in another. Its light had dimmed, but when Suriel touched it, it sparked back to life. It rose up from her hand and began a casual, elliptical orbit of her head. Her mind opened to new possibilities—new connections she had not previously considered. Particularly if Nosnra bore one of the gemstones of the Eight.
All these events were connected. She could not quite see it, but she knew it. Given thought . . .
The shadows parted behind her, but she sensed it was not Varzynthiir. Instead, four humans—two men, two women—clad in black robes fanned out around her. They wore medallions shaped like discs of black outlined in bands of purple. The symbol of Shar, goddess of darkness.
“Is she one of them, do you think?” asked one of the women. “One of the traitors?”
“She must be, to be holding one of the Warlock Stones.” One of the men pointed to the gemstone in Suriel’s hand. “Do you think she killed the giant by herself?”
“Careful.” The second woman drew a bladed disk set with purple gemstones from within her robe. “I can smell the stench of the Moon Bitch on her. This one is blessed of the gods.”
“Then the Lady will be pleased when we slay her.” The final man stepped threateningly toward Suriel. He drew a wickedly curved kukri from beneath his robes. “We’ll kill her quickly and be at the City That Waits by dawn.”
The elf had not been idle while they spoke. Rather, her enhanced thoughts analyzed every possible tactical solution. With each option, she defeated one or perhaps two of the Sharrans, but not all four—not before they killed her. Her fault, she supposed, for thinking Loudwater a safe place to explore at night without her weapons. And she’d told her sworn defender to leave her in peace. All she had to her credit were the trinkets in her small bag of holding: some treasure and components for rituals, a broken ioun stone, two inactive stones, a purple gem from an ancient temple to Mystra, and . . .
Suriel drew out the shard of blade she had found in Starra’s Knives. She couldn’t really explain why the item seemed appropriate to hold, but so it did. She raised it front of her: a hiltless knife that caught the rays of moonlight and gleamed.
The Sharrans did not look at all impressed. The four priests fanned out around her, the men with daggers, the women with those bladed discs. Chakram, she realized they were called, though she could not credit the knowledge. Perhaps it had come from the ioun stone?
“Corellon aid me,” she prayed. “Hear your daughter in her time of—”
Inky blackness surrounded her, summoned by one of the priests. A shadowy shield spun around her, making the air chill and empty. Her moonlight faded, and Corellon felt entirely absent. What? A moment of panic struck–Suriel had never been without the Seldarine in her life–but she realized the gods were there, she just could not reach for their power.
“The Lady of Loss shows her favor,” said one of the women. “Her intercession has cut this one from the source of her power. If the Lady finds her of use, perhaps we should take her alive? No doubt one of us will enjoy her better that way.”
“Perhaps not better,” said one of the men. “But her screams will be sweet.”
Damn. There went Suriel’s chances. She could muster some useful arcane magic, but without Corellon, she could not even take one of her foes with her.
“Varzynthiir,” she murmured as she backed toward the destroyed statue. “If there was ever a time not to listen to your mistress, this was it.”
Even as the knife-wielding priests stalked toward her, hissing, something moved in the shadows. Suriel’s heart leaped.
Something glittered as it flew, end over end, out of the darkness toward her. She caught it by the hilt, holding it awkwardly. It was a longsword, slightly curved, but clearly not magical. It had no adornments of any kind. What was she to do with this?
“What?” said the nearest priest. “Where did that—?”
Suriel realized—of a sudden—that it fit her hand impossibly well. It was part of her movements, that without a sword, she would be naked. She felt like she’d been carrying a sword all her life.
The shard of moonlight in her hand glowed with a violent need, and she would assuage that desire. She pressed the bit of steel to the sword in her hand, and it fused to the steel, tracing along its edge like running silver. It grew around the blade, which became a sinuous whole that burned with inner moonlight.
And oddly, Suriel felt like dancing.
Then one of the priestesses who’d hung back gave a shriek that became a wet gurgle as her throat exploded in blood, and a shadowy form shot past her. The second priestess cried out to Shar and defended herself.
That was all Suriel could see before her attacks charged her. She parried one, moving with a speed and grace she wouldn’t have thought possible, and flowed into the next parry like a dancer. The blade moved to defend her of its own accord. She spun, dragged the sword across one man’s arm, and eluded the seeking blade of the other. This priest, increasingly frustrated, jabbed at her relentlessly, but she had no fear. She danced, parrying two cuts of a dagger before slamming the pommel into the man’s face. He crumpled.
The priestess screamed as her shadowy attacker drove blades into her, leaving her bleeding on the ground. Suriel’s heart went out to the woman, as evil as she was, but she didn’t have the time to think about that. Her own final attacker cast a spell, ensnaring her with a loop of darkness, but she cut it aside with her sword. The steel left a swath of moonlight in its wake, forming a shield around her that staved off the man’s darkness. He staggered back, dumbfounded, and a knife blade burst through his throat. He slumped to the ground.
Suriel was lost in the deadly dance—the grace and beauty of it, something she’d hardly even imagined for years upon years. She’d had her scars since she was very young, and hadn’t dreamed of dancing for others or even herself since then. Now . . .
She whirled to a stop, panting and thrilled in the moonlight spilling through the gap in the roof. All four of the priests were dead–cut expertly with only the least wounds necessary. It was brutal, but it was efficient. Familiar.
“Thank you Varzynthiir,” she said, reaching for him. “I—”
But the shadowy figure pulled away from her touch, nestled deeper in the darkness. Her savior drew back and was about to leave.
“Wait,” she said. “Who—?”
The shadowy man stopped and turned back. He stood in the darkness, but in the dim moonlight, his face was barely visible: a dark drow face covered by a black velvet mask, with one gleaming gold eye and one red eye. He smiled at her, revealing sharp white teeth beneath his mask.
Then the drow was gone.
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