A Land Far Away

Kail pushed open the door to his house and entered cautiously, his eyes flitted from left to right in the darkness.

There was no noise, no movement, but only the presences that had lurked there since he had acquired this place.

He closed the door behind him and continued into the dining room.
An empty glass and plate covered in crumbs lay on the great oak table. The scent of fine exotic tobacco filled the air. His giant glass bong had been used in the last few hours. The coals still glowed slightly atop the fascinating structure. He smiled slightly and carried the empty glass and plate to his kitchen.

He shook the crumbs into a dirty barrel and filled a new glass with brandy.

His guest seemed to be out of the house for now, probably in the bar across the street.

After removing his shield and scales he sat comfortably in his purple coloured loincloth on a cushion next to the bong and sipped his brandy whilst concocting himself a curious goodnight mixture of kif, fine nelaxian tobacco and a drop of watered down centipede venom.

Misty blue smoke bubbled through the water as he sucked in, hard on the end of a woven read pipe. Kail's wolf like eyes gazed out from the haze of the smoke for a long while, a look of sadness upon his face.

He looked down upon his grey arms and legs and watched as his tattoos broke out into movement, coursing around his body like terrible black centipedes, eyes glowing, horrible and red, unreal in the smoky haze. He blinked twice and gulped down on his brandy, finishing the glass.

Again he looked about the room. Everything seemed normal for a moment, books in shelves and chairs around the table. Smoke rose up around the chandelier and twisted across the ceiling like spirits trying to escape his presence.

He started and nearly knocked over the great bong as he heard the sound of his own laugh echo from the walls of the room.

He looked down at his tattoos, they were still again, nothing more than the classical designs and family crests worn by all those on his mother’s side of the family. Worn by red wizards of Thay.

He nodded his head in amusement. The irony!

Lying there for more then an hour, Kail rose up finally, sweat beading on his chest and face, something clenched inside his chest, in his lungs. He could breath but it felt like there was no air.

Across the room he stumbled, the cupboards swayed and blurred before him and the chandelier swung down like the mouth of a dragon making him duck and fall sideways.

He grabbed out at the hilt of his sword on the table and swung it through the air foolishly landing in a heap on the floor.

Five small shadows, the size of infants, crept in from the far corners of the room and lifted him up from the floor in unison, carrying his body up through the floors of the house eventually laying him on the great four posted bed in his attic bedroom.

He lay motionless for many hours, tears running from his eyes as he slept, torments of an eternity left behind, pain for a reality he was part of once again.

In the darkness of his room, Kail lay sleeping, remembering the sadness which changed him long ago. Kail remembered a woman and a child, far away, in Sembia.

He remembered the spiders coming for him and the way he was left poisoned and broken in the woods. He remembered the way her mother had looked down on him and the way her red eyes smiled with arrogance as she saw him weak before her. The way the darkness had given her power over him. The way he had been betrayed by the one he thought had loved him.

Kail lay in his bed asleep, his arm clawing out into the air of his bedroom. In his mind, touching out at the dust of the forest floor, touching the wet soil where his son's tears had fallen.

He remembered his hands upon dark skin, his cheek on her perfect white hair. He remembered affection and what he had once had. He remembered being loved once.

How he wished to seek it once more but he was afraid. Love, a lie, never to be trusted again.

He wondered if his little boy searched for him now as he had searched for his father. He smiled in his sleep. He imagined a grey skinned youth, with dark blue hair and pale white eyes. His mind flickered through possibilities. Could he be out there...? Sadness filled his soul as he accepted the inevitable truth. He imagined him wrapped in chains in a drow noble house, whipped and beaten and treated like filth for his impure blood. For possessing the blood of man. Yet unknown to the boy, the blood of Onifhet.

........................................................................................................

Kail woke to the sound of birds singing. His room dark still, without windows. A sadness filled his heart, yet he could not remember what. Perhaps he had been dreaming again. He rubbed his eyes, knowing he had not slept well. He hated that he could never remember his dreams. His mind was weak, why could he not remember. It was as if some magic blocked his memory.

He shook his head and thought of it no more. Beneath him he could hear his guest performing morning prayers in the room below.

Nicely written, and quite intriguing for one who hasn't met your PC. Keep up the good work.

Kail knelt in the dark musky store room of the darkest house of Waterdeep.

He packed his bags quickly, renewing food and water, checking over the items on his belt and the supplies laid out on the floor.

The shelves were full of nick nacks and general supplies. Some he could use, some he knew he could and should not.

As he scraped the last of the supplies, a small pouch of trail rations, that he would need for his journey south, off the shelf above him he noticed a small bundle of fur on the floor poking out from where it was caught, under the lowest of the wooden shelves.

He picked it up between two fingers of his black, clawed, chitin and obsidian gauntlets. His pale eyes looking it over in the dim light.

"Cat fur..."

A slight smirk crossed his face as he remembered fighting the werecats in the hallway outside the store room. They had been tough, very tough. They would have probably killed him if it had not been for the blessings channelled onto him by the priestess.

His smile faded.

"Yes... yes we need her." His pause made the room seem more noticably quiet. He felt as if someone was listening for his next words.

He stood looking down still at the fur as he dropped it to the floor. He tucked the necklace hanging around his neck back under the scales on his chest. His mind feeling reassured and certain for the first time in many years.

"We need her as she was maybe..."

He turned and looked towards the light of the corridor, outside the store room, behind him.

The dark menacing figure he expected to see listening to him was not there. His eyes lowered and looked upon the visage of a small child.

Perfect, uncut, neck length locks of soft, fair hair framed a beautiful grey face. A pair of large crimson eyes stared back at him looking him over, with a slight expression of nervousness.

Outside a gianourmous helmed construction floated past humming as it moved along. The child jumped forwards and stepped fast and awkwardly towards him with a slight cry of surprise and fear.

Moments later Kail found himself holding in his arms a smiling half drow infant, fixated with trying to put his tiny fingers in Kail's mouth.

Something ate away at him inside, he couldn't figure out what, but he knew what he wanted to do, he also knew what he had to do.

"I'll be back in a day or so, you'll see her again" he winked at the little boy and placed him back down on the floor rubbing the top of his head and letting him waddle off again.

He watched as Istvan stomped about in the corridor, watching his own feet, amused by the sound his sandals made on the stone floor.

The road would be long, perhaps more in spirit than in actuality.

"It was never her who was tested, it was us."

The wind blew and the rain lashed down. Kail stood motionless at the forest's edge, amongst the criss cross of shadows and twisted boughs.

Rain poured down over his broad armoured shoulders and ran down his fiendish scales. Underneath he was wet through and sore.

His hood stuck to his wet face, leaves blew down from the trees and stuck to him. Still bearing a calm expression though, for one in such a terrible and tormenting situation.

She had not come yet, she was supposed to be here near a day ago. Still he waited. It was what he was good at. Ten thousand years in the hellish plane of negative had made him patient.

Others thought him a fool but he had faith. Not in his god, but in her. His god he served because of his blood, it was loyalty unlike that the others posessed. It was loyalty by design. Ancestry could not be escaped.

Perhaps he was misguided to believe she was the same person she used to be. Perhaps he was a fool to himself. He saw what the others did not. None of them had suffered this much and so she was more deserving of a chance. One he knew he should not be giving.

Was it for her though or the child? Was it for himself, for his guilt. Guilt was not a trait associated with those of his order but he felt it for some reason. He had never felt it before and he didn't like it. So many secrets he held from so many people and so many did he owe his allegiance to. So many secrets he knew were kept from him. Hierachy mean't nothing, he would face failure willingly. Any punishment dealt could not be as bad as how he would feel if he could not save her.

Perhaps he could have stopped this long ago but where was he then, where was he when she fell. He was afraid, too scared to help. He watched her broken and remade.

...Remade, what a joke.

Broken is broken.

Torment filled the shadowed statue standing in the rain. A grey face and white wolven eyes remained expressionless stairing out at the crossroads. His stomach churned with hunger, his bones ached from the cold and his eyes were sore from not sleeping.

It was all he could do.

I hate to be too busy to play.