Causality

[Nyssis]

"The Zhentarim were the most desultory force we ever opposed, rivaled in power only by shift of the elements."
"And how did someone like you prosper?"
"Survival isn't always defined by prosperity. I struggled."

-1348 DR, Lasvi & Amar in the High Forest

"Cuom yta, sun ou velai..."

Someone stifles a belittling laugh. There's a sea of bodies standing far less than a league away, their steel and leathery feet finding comfortable purchase atop the sand. It is packed remarkably firm here compared to the rest of the basin to cement the Black Road in place.

"Suue shi, vulo ee k'lai..." rings out in melody to the first line, the voice carrying the foreign words far in the mist of a frigid night. Fog huffs out from every breath the child takes, but her peers keep theirs contained. Indeed, all of the tel'quessir present --- while only a fraction of the whole --- are withholding the Breath of Life in fear it might fuel the wickedness standing across from them.

"Cuom d fei, ōm dou fet'ii brom ulai. Sh'tutete jeki vela kou."

The Zhentarim weren't often to seek the bare minimum in their encounters, typically demanding everything from exhaustive magickal boons to the last drop of potable water, but their commander this time sought 'entertainment.' And rather than commit to a fight as he was wont to do, Thamior decided it'd be better they slake their thirsts on the lorekeeper's apprentice.

The warchief stayed intimately close to the seated girl beside him, hand anxiously wavering towards the sword holstered in leather and enamel over his shoulder. As she continued to sing and the slow throb of an accompanying drum echoed across the flats, he too felt his heart throb in rhythm. Followers of N'asr made up over half the ranks of this cadre in particular, and they'd attack if she so much as missed a beat.

"Jun atie, ii vela fu ne. Llej ou na, suue vela eein."

She felt her heart expand the veins in her throat astride every beat of the camelskin instrument, constricting the chords she lost in rolling song; constricting too the eyes lost behind lids glued shut to deny them seeing her fear. Although unskilled at wielding any kind of percussion, Lasvi was desperate enough to try when prodded by her elder cousin. But did she ever really have a choice in the first place?

"Sje kou, velae ni'fa dai ni'yo. Mnif ii sa, ou volo sje laie ee."

It was a simple song that, from a distance, disturbed the Zhent legion only a small amount. Some grew impatient and shifted around absently, others --- Banite cohorts --- adjusted their arms and armor to elicit more distress in the neutral elves trespassing on their sands. But their commanding officer kept them in line by not doing anything at all. He had disciplined them enough that they knew better than to challenge his authority.

He was interested in watching the elf from under the raised visor of his helm, the momentary shift of his dark eyes matched by the shift of his tasset whenever weight favored a different leg. Garbed in voile befitting her long-since-matured form, she was no dissimilar from the rest of the nameless desert feyfolk, but her music proved thought evoking.

"Ōm klej sa mnen fol oje cuom o'sja. Tolo ee gat a'sje--- ee gat a'sje suue fral ae..."

"The natives aren't ones to oft chat with foreigners," this commander suddenly called out despite the song's ambience, his tutored ears discerning the subtle Midani meaning behind the lyrics. The girl was singing about fear overpowering a heart and staying the hand, or something along those lines. "How did you learn their language?"

"Ou tra jaie a fol oje cuom o'sja. Tolo ee gat a'sje--- ee gat a'sje suue fral ae."

Thamior had been staring at him like a wide-eyed owl the entire time, his own brown eyes reflecting the blindingly bright moon that glared off the luminescent sand underfoot, so a shift of attention wasn't necessary. But rather than answer the enemy's query, the warchief decided to repay it with a little bite. "You want entertain," the leaner male replied in his broken Common, "so listen."

"Ii sja..."

The officer didn't react to the verbal snap, though his inferiors guffawed in an undulation of raspy snickers and chortles. This windless evening might be denying Aerdrie Her occasional breeze, but the chorus that instantly beswept the two hordes was enough to disrupt even the apprentice's drumwork. Lasvi missed two--- three beats and fear almost made her aching, delicate fingers succumb to the pain of new calluses.

"Ōm llej la cuom sje, sje sja koot e'sja. N'yam ee fet suom ou gri--- fet suom ou gri llen gama."

Laughter gave way to nothingness a lilting stanza later, the whole Zhentarim unit chilled to silence by the crisp atmosphere. Thamior instantly felt the regret of his outburst hanging over his head, and he too succumbed to silence in reply. The other elves there under his command whispered amongst themselves to share their frets and astonishment, and it proved they were no mirror of the enemy's.

They were undisciplined, uncoordinated. Easy prey for these regimented humans. The majority of the Norreitryn's power lie in both their scouting band and their elder council, but only one piece of the latter was present in form of the warchief. He couldn't possibly defend against all of them by himself, let alone for long enough that Halima might arrive. Was he wrong to suggest any course of action here? Would it be on his head if he tried to bargain with the Zhentarim without Safriol's approval?

The fear of Bane was directing his thoughts now and just as easily changing the flow of his iced blood. Shaken from his typically composed roost, Thamior felt his guard tense once the enemy commander pitched his vision up from Lasvi's seated position and towards his standing own. The young she-elf slowed her drumming as she heard the Zhent loudly snap his metal visor down over his eyes, exerting as little effort as possible.

His cold maw opened and---

"Fuo ii n'yam sja ou te'araqu. A laie ee at sje--- laie ee at sje sh'tuto."

"Subvert the leader and capture the rest!" he bellowed through the contralto of his steel helmet.

[Nyssis]

"In the Chondathan trade language, 'chaos' is simply defined as being without pattern or predictability in sequential instances. In Elvish, 'chaos' is synonymous to freedom from restrictions and stereotypes, though it hypocritically falls into the same vein by being without either."

-1367 DR, Viola Halfwastrel teaching the literary arts

"Back!" the warchief immediately shot towards his own inferiors in their native tongue, dissuading most of their attempts to don arms in favor of sending the swiftest scattering back towards the encampment. "Go get Halima!" And emboldened by his fear, Thamior's pulsing heart began a new throbbing stanza of adrenaline, his curved longblade singing out of its teak scabbard.

Another song quaked into the frosted midnight air as the lorekeeper's apprentice outcried her terror, scrambling from her spot on the dune to seek refuge at her elder's rear guard. As she dived past the row of onrushing feyfolk, her strides unknowingly pounded a percussionist's handiwork. Even her ears, though swollen with hasty blood and drowning out all heard, could recognize the aria.

Lasvi followed the prints left behind by her much quicker cousins up and over the dune, trying to set as much distance between she and the roar of combat on the Black Road. Bobbing her advance over the cusp of the hillock was met with a swift halt, however, for the Zhentarim forces had long since split to stand guard over the retreating path and incapacitate their quarry.

The cloud that chased her steps ebbed forward instead of backward this time, sounding her precarious retreat from the cadre caught somewhere between attacking the runners and acknowledging the apprentice's presence. A duo stayed behind to apprehend an older etriel than she, but the rest were quick to close in on the unassuming prey what just walked right back into their grasp.

"Calloway needed a new vassal at his hip for meets," hissed one of the various unknown men, the unity behind their mirrored steel appearance more unsettling than individuality. It was the very same that sent Thamior's doubts racing in the first place: a group of enemies moving as one, thinking as one, and fighting as one. With so much more militaristic experience steering their steps about a sole victim, they converged in on her location in fluctuating but constricting degrees.

"He needs to stop glinting his eyes at every thing he comes across," a N'asrite in the small throng replied, so convinced by Lasvi's submissive behavior that he needn't waste time trying to grab hold of her personage. His attempt was lackluster and thankfully left a large enough window for her to dodge off to the side to circle the berth of the group. The man's failure drew forth belittling laughter that whipped him far worse than his masters ever could.

It was from this direction, pitching the glinting swordplay nearest the Black Road into her peripheral, that she could catch all of Selūne's overhead light and peer in the dark more keenly. Behind those men approached a veiled spy hidden in all but the indentations his hide soles melted into the drift. The elf-girl was magnetized to the trail despite her unconsciously slowing withdrawal as a result.

"Close them," the younger quessir commanded once he stopped within breathing distance with the humans, caring little for the woman still clawing for her freedom a stone's throw away. "And keep them closed." Two pivoted to glance over their shoulders once it dawned that Lasvi wasn't shutting her eyes taut because of them.

But they would never complete that gesture.

A foot anchored itself deep in the sand to keep his center of gravity stable, and then the whole of his powerful core twisted with the slung blade drawn across each of them. Through each of them. Through metal and flesh and bone, severing torsos from hips and arms from elbows. The gore splayed forth in a curtain that enveloped the sand and doused the girl, matting her hair and clodding the dirt in one sweep, and then huffed off the weapon once his gyre came to a halt.

The sound alone was enough to turn her insides, but the shower that pattered across her curves was plenty to make her visibly panic. Her eyes refused to emerge from behind now red and wet cloves, fearful of what this newfound weight was upon her lashes and face. There was a foreign color dyeing her clothes, its metallic scent slaying the myrrh perfuming her skin and assailing every sense that still held sense, and her silhouette trembled as fingers plied the wet fabric.

He donned the same red cloak once his shroud of invisibility wore thin, though it was a pauper's compared to her lavish own. The elf boy, unphased by the destruction, took a moment to compose himself and wrest his sandal from the quicksand. As for the falchion? It was such an extension of his body that he refused to sheath it as he hastily yanked her fragile wrist into his grasp, even if only the sickening gurgles of his passing victims confirmed opposition.

"We go to Safriol now, nys," came his second order jumbled betwixt varying speeches, though the stern delivery hardly painted him the savior he intended to be. A tug from his naked hand fought against the slew of blood to cement his hold along her slender forearm.

She proved the mule when the boy tried wresting her up from her roost, panicked to the point that her knees seized up when they skid through bloodied sand and the line of corpses strewn between them. And he proved stoic, showing no pity or compassion as he drug her the distance he needed to take her to safety.

He was straining the length of her arm nearly out of its joints, and the pain proved enough to help her forget the carnage draining down her form in favor of fearing for her goodwill. "Tan...!" the maiden whimpered the Elven pronoun. "It's hurting! Stop!"

"No!" the boy, her presumed brother, snapped in return to silence her cries. Although he desired only her security, the waxing chorus of Thamior still fending for his life had sewn urgency into his gestures. Lasvi's fighting back couldn't hold a candle to the overbearing strength in her companion's fist, and she gagged with nausea when the stench of her new adornments commandeered her again.

Despite her apprehension, she bent to his will by doing nothing at all. Two ravines followed his footprints as he drug her back towards the temporary home they shared, ignoring the deafening orders from the other Norreitryn that shared their blood.

Afterall, Halima was on her way and would likely dispose of the enemy sooner than he could return.

[Nyssis]

"To have naturally progressive strength is to know few boundaries, but this growth is a beacon not to be ignored. You hate that. You hate inevitability?"
"It's not really that deep. I just hate being prodded to fill Merahil's boots after Thamior proved so incompetent, like I'm the next nameless quessir in a line."

-1249 DR, Lasvi & Avistolis on his sorcery

The clamor of battle had long since splashed into the modest encampment by the time the elf boy dragged his sister there, and more experienced kin offered little resistance to their progress with Thamior still at dire risk. A duality of skidding footprints made it painfully obvious where they headed, arcing corners with the occasional misstep and plait between unmarked skin yurts like the blind led by a clumsy guide hound.

Indeed she clung to her much larger hound like he were her last torch in a darkened world, confident he's leading her to safety, but her opposite hand was intent on weakening his vicelike grip around her wrist. The fastening, while flesh, was perhaps stronger than adamantine and chafed as jaggedly as manacles made of the same worth.

The black-haired boy had absolutely none of it, no matter how pleading her touch was. With a grunt to suppress her attempts, his opposite gloved hand parted the heavy sheaf of animal hides sealing off one particular yurt's interior. The frosted blood splattering both their bodies instantly began melting in the comfort of far warmer, stuffier air.

Despite the chaos echoing into the yurt, the living space was too comfortable. Another female elf poised slovenly upon a throe of rugs and cushions, each with a different embezzlement glinting an aurora in the dim light, and kept close the iron that stoked the dying embers of a firepit in its center.

This etriel, clean and content and without a single stray hair in her thick ginger braid, was reading a book.

"You're pathetic," the boy spat in a more adept tongue to usher an apology out of her. Unconsciously did his grip on Lasvi tighten to the point that her metal bracelets groaned under the strain, and she whined when it pinched her skin. "You sat here in safety the entire time while Lasvi was dragged out by Thamior to appease Zhents?"

"I said it was bad to begin with. Not my fault you listened to his dumb ideas," was the redhead's blasé response, caring about as much for the delivery as she appeared to care in general. The nonchalance of which she leafed through pages was enraging him, but the weakening cries still in his dangerous grip pulled him back enough to not let spells fly.

He slackened his grip in unspoken apology to Lasvi himself, but he'd offer no similar kindness to the one pampering herself like a pompous queen. His voice came hard and cutting: "It isn't about his ideas or that he tried to make due with them, Terani."

Terani, in turn, backhanded him with her silence.

"Move!" he reiterated, shoving his sister towards the unwanted visitor trespassing in his territory now. Although the force he exerted would've otherwise guaranteed Lasvi could not be ragdolled far, her toe caught on the lowest rug in the stack. She careened down onto the ground and Terani careened out of the way right before they would've collided.

Her eyes forced themselves open once the vertigo consumed her senses, and she braced the impact with arms prepared to accept the floor's hardness. Every earring and bracelet resounded after she hit the floor. They were joined afterwards by the breaths rocketing out of her gullet.

"What's wrong with you? Just because I disagree, you feel the need to take it out on everyone around you?" was the last thing her ears understood before her brain switched off in a panic, and the rest of the two cousins' conversation muted underneath her pulsing heartbeat.

"...should drop you where ... for betraying ... stupidity..."

The elf-girl's hands were varnished by blood. It was clumped into her cuticles and highlighted the rings that branched up her wrists and into her palms.

"...covered in ... you don't even treat ... wounded..." Terani's chords hummed incoherently as she discarded her tome in a stray direction, presumably her own arcanabulum. There was so much--- so much blood. Every blink sent another coagulated flake beating down towards the swirling canvas patterns underneath like flying ashes from a bonfire.

It was swirling so much that it made her nauseous.

Her ears blocked out her cousin's assurances, her nerves ignoring the cloth set to blot all the blood off her skin, and it was replaced with the icy cold shock of neurosis. That steady crunching of metal warped to accommodate a blade, parting the guests like arms, and the wet sound that wed it down the aisle. The red gown that the bride donned, thick with layers of varying texture to stave off the chilly Highharvestide air, glowed in the shine of her eyes as she peered about for her husband-to-be.

A friend came closer and affectionately hooked her arm, though his red tunic paled in comparison to her radiance on this day. He tugged her along with such insistence that it wrested the pinned amaranth laurels from her hair, leading her through the gaily audience that chirps at their passing. Leading her over the corpses he reared in his approach that chirped with their passing. He laughed despite the grimness.

Lasvi immediately buckled over after only a second of this lapse, and emptied her retching insides all over the carpet until only aching heaves could pursue with a fraction of the fervor.

[Nyssis]

"I need more ... power. Power so that I may have freedom. Freedom so I can be who I want to be. You cannot possibly understand."

-1340 DR, Avistolis in the Sword

The maiden coughed as the final contents of her breadbasket dribbled out of her mouth, strangled so by queasiness that she couldn't manage more than a tremble when she tried to move. Her body had the strength sucked right out of it, and the knowledge of the Zhentarim's deaths rippled deeply through her subconscious. Although her unfocused eyes swiveled about the mess of colors, her hearing finally hummed back into coherency just in time to catch someone poised to soothe her.

"...affected you more than I think," the tailwind of Terani's comfort echoed into the blonde's closest ear, her dainty body immediately unified with the larger redhead's in a rocking embrace. This shook her empty stomach like the flimsiest dingy upon the ocean, but likewise matched the chaos of her mind until it could be quelled into submission.

The boy watched passively as the girls bonded. Though his angular countenance didn't show it, the regret of admittedly poor decision-making weighed heavy on his shoulders.

"See? This is why I didn't help," the ginger of the two quipped up at his higher elevation. The blood had long since been smeared between them at this point, even though Terani had wiped away the thickest of it. "We probably would've committed more to a fight than you did and Lasvi can't handle that yet." He frowned upon both acknowledging this fact and that they were coddling the apprentice lorekeeper too much for her own good.

"She's older than I am," he couldn't help but announce to refute that claim. The boy knew barely a hundred summers at this point in time, but he was far more comfortable around a battlefield than his sister of nearly two-hundred. Granted, he was expected to be while her caste would corral her into a sedentary role. But before either could offer more, the flap of skins barricading the yurt parted with a foreign hand.

"Avistolis," echoed in through the breach of privacy. The boy turned to reciprocate it, but stood beside himself when formalities were dispelled in favor of an order. "We go to meet Thamior. Halima is tied up with the rest." His lips wrinkled as he swallowed this command unwillingly, knowing the speaker only wanted him to prove his mettle to the rest of the family.

A choke shook Lasvi's body as she craned her weak head up to peer towards her brother, and he met her weary gaze instinctively. His yellow irises may have voiced their apology for having to leave, but Av coldly offered no assurances before he vacated their presence.

The hand holding open the barrier drew his stare once he weaved out of the living space, and Nerrar, his father, pulled his arm away with the same apprehension of a person realizing they were trespassing in someone's personal space. "He's down the southern incline," the elder told his son after an uncomfortable moment, and the ignorance behind this information assured Av that no one knew he'd spied on the meet.

Giving him little leeway to make a different assessment, the black-haired boy sped towards the conflict as he was unceremoniously commanded. He retraced the same path that Lasvi cut into the encampment upon their approach, his strides the long and thinly ones accustomed to opposing the shifting loam underfoot, and his father followed more slowly by comparison due to the armor weighing him down.

They were joined by a flighty few that had yet to enter the conflict but none could match Av's uninhibited speed as he zoomed past. The contingent of Zhents were still twice in number compared to the tel'quessir from an elevated glance, but despite the inherent wickedness of the former they were being fairly cautious about combat. The Norreitryn struck to kill and the Zhentarim were striking to subdue; to capture.

All save for Thamior, who proved far more fortunate than his kin in this regard. The commander was fully intending to kill him judging by the voices squawking his orders, somewhere on the opposite side of a writhing horde of combat. If he died, Avistolis would immediately be elevated in status to replace him. But should the boy let him die despite what he decided in his folly?

"As I would think, so shall ye!" he incanted instead to dispel these negative thoughts while wedging his path into the skirmish. The excerpt of Myth Drannor's royal code empowered those elves he wormed beside with his peremptory bellows despite his age, and they echoed the chant like choristers. "As I would feel! As I would do! The People are as one and never shall I stray for this, for to digress is to diminish you and your kin!"

As he lifted his arkerym overhead, his fingers drew symbols of power along the metal's formidable length, infusing the weapon with an overabundance of the Weave until it burned brilliantly upon its surface. The sword became a lighthouse beacon amidst the sea of bodies undulating around him in melee and it proved difficult to ignore. While the light lured his enemies quickly, with several abandoning their invested combat to converge them on his locus, he maintained his concentration.

Avistolis dropped his readied blade into the ground before him with overwhelming force, the initial impact missing his victims but the runes ignited as anticipated in a cadence that spread like wildfire. Sparks ricocheted off the roiling sand and the Zhents' steel armor before both were consumed by the conflagration, the spell ignoring the difference between friend and foe as it kindled across whatever tinder was in its path. The glow perhaps trounced even Selūne's overhead.

"Av, control yourself!" Nerrar screamed at his son as the blaze screamed its retort to his face, searing off more than just a few stray hairs from his brow. The vassal locked with him took advantage of this distraction with a well-placed pierce that nearly tore out the elf's eye and claimed one half of an ear.

The younger nael'kerym exhumed his falchion from the charred burrow it mined into the drift, and proceeded to find a more pressing opponent now that he put the horde on edge. His focused hearing drowned out the demands of his father and the surprised wails of his House when they suffered friendly fire, and homed in on the fretful commands of a near-death Thamior further down the slope.

He had to be quick. He ... didn't want a warchief's responsibilities yet.

[Nyssis]

"How do you know so much about us? We were inconsequential in Myth Drannor. Were you truly one of our ancestors or were you just one of our more informed enemies?"
"I was your patron and your confidant. We worked together as easily as you and I do now, dragonblood, but the difference is that I haven't forgotten that with the passage of time unlike the rest of your ilk."

-1371 DR, Avistolis & his necklace in Mhiilamniir

His approach was stonewalled just as quickly as he intended to progress, freezing his progress when he came close to hurling himself onto a sword poised to retrieve him. Several uniformed watchmen took it upon themselves to keep the apprentice warchief separated from his predecessor once alerted by his reckless displays of power.

To be denied like this was a wound he's already suffered a million times before.

He suffered with the sickly appreciation given to his spontaneous magic, the more numerous scholars in their family staring down their noses at his green dragon pedigree like he was uncultured and diseased. And despite wishing and praying and pleading for a cure, he had to accept its presence.

The friendship his two etriel cousins tried to feed him was unpleasantly choked down. Their sympathy and words of encouragement made a mockery of his desire for some relief, but at the same time he longed for their attention. They seemed to be fearless in accepting him, despite all the horror stories their ascendants embellished throughout the generations, and this facade of normality provided him his temporary remedy.

Poems about the nael'kerym betraying their orders and slaughtering indiscriminately, or the sonnets of his conception haunted his footsteps. These were weak points ferreted into his validation as the apprentice warchief, for regardless of all his power he gravitated towards selfish and questionable decisions. Nerrar thought it best to just hone the skills Av was born with, but all it did was ostracize him.

His bitterness fermented over time and with it was borne his desire to prove them wrong. Av may not be able to fight against the inclinations in his blood, but he could poke a few holes in their tribunal by saving Thamior from his inevitable death. If he could only get to him.

Eyes given heat by the fuel of his frustration met with the faceless, nameless masks that were keen on denying his admittance. His attempts to maneuver around or bull rush through their line met a sturdy barrier, with shields and parrying daggers poised to both limit his progress and attempt to disarm him.

A tether of lightning then pierced through the Zhentarim like a spear aimed for a chink in their armor, homing in on a random man. His armor screeched once the electricity latched on and his precious walls collapsed in on him, and the thud that accompanied his subsequent fall sent similar vibrations rippling throughout his peers.

Perched atop a haven was an elderly teu'tel'quessir, wisely staying somewhere between the thick of battle and being well out of it, and her hand wrested the spark of magic back to her side after its purpose was made clear. Her wrinkled and moth-eaten gown betrayed the protection of her leather breastplate by showing how flimsy she truly was, and the allies of her unlikely victim immediately tried to capitalize on this fact.

"You squander your time by swatting at flies!" the crone chided before vanishing behind a veil of sand, the loose debris casting aside her frame to appear somewhere else. The aggravated unit was prepared to strike dead her silhouette with a volley of their own flickering evocations as soon as her presence was made known, but she was already long gone when it connected with the mist.

Their diverted attention was enough to give the ar'tel'quessir time to cloak his visage and bolt for a more advantageous position, but his retreat to higher ground would not go by unnoticed. A ranking Banite who had an uncomfortably close call with Halima's spell barked a warning in repetitions towards his master, his eyes catching hint of the fresh footprints the elf's withdrawal exposed, and he chased after them.

While the rest of his N'asrite collective preferred the moon elf, this indistinguishable Banite continued haunting the trail that slipped down the dunes towards his commanding officer. His descent curbed the tide of the skirmish, both parting to permit his journey and eliciting the same screamed order within the ranks. The caravan lord was well aware of Av's approach after he cut down a weakened Thamior because of this, and he immediately braced for the approaching attack.

Calloway hunkered down underneath the tortoiseshell shield, intoning a command word to bring its dormant enchantments to life, before a conflagration burst towards him in rapid succession. Mage's fire parted like a red-orange river from this defensive position, and he did not waver despite the trepidations that would uproot most men. He knew he was not at risk. He trusted the stash of equipment he'd collected over decades and for good reason, as was made very apparent by the charred streaks that steamed off the earth instead of off him.

Avistolis seethed at his own impotency as the Zhent stood afterwards, unharmed.

It was bittersweet to learn he would require a more direct application of magic than the rest of his cadre did. It was more bitter to see no fear shaking this man, as the simplest cantrips could typically mystify the more impressionable folk. But perhaps it was foolish to think a Banite would fear anyone other than his lord: a notion that routed Av into contemplating his own death as he stood alone to protect Thamior while several Zhents came to Calloway's defense.

"Fair be our meeting," very simply echoed into his subconscious, the voice forcing its way beyond his thoughts. Every inflection he was prepared to recite dissipated when this disarming greeting invaded the privacy of his psyche.

The elven boy's eyes funneled towards the unadorned clear crystal pendant that rocked against the chest of the caravan lord, his sound deafened into a melodious hum as it jingled with his every approaching step. Although given no prompt to confirm it, he recognized it as the source of the intrusion ... or more than likely he was doing a very good job of convincing himself of that.

"I am going to help you, dragonblood," it told the boy and each flicker against the wave of Selūne's light overhead pierced his heart like a needle. These words wormed their way into his head and past his moral conscience, offering open hands to every fiber of his person that wanted to conquer his enemy, but now there was also a strange desire to wrest that necklace as a prize.

"Who you?" Avistolis disjointedly asked, the question loud enough to penetrate the height of the battle that writhed around the arena carved out of the fight. He maintained a very close vigil over Thamior's bloodied and battered form as his elder heaved raspy, choking breaths from his gaping throat.

"I am Caravan Lord Firilen Calloway II of the Zhentarim, adherent of the Lyceum of the Black Lord and commanding unit of the seventeenth through twenty-first routes that take the Black Road by the regulation of Lord Manshoon," the Zhent replied through the distortion of his sealed helm, social grace in no way staunched in the face of danger.

As he tightened straps what kept the fixings on his arm in place, the pendant moved to oppose the shift in balance. "He will destroy you otherwise," that indiscernible voice made its painfully sure reply.

[Nyssis]

"Why do you look at me like that, sister? This is the first time we've seen each other in years."
"It is because I hate you. I hate you for every foul thing you have ever done and I hate myself for letting you do it."

-1382 DR, Lasvi's reunion with Avistolis near Ascore

It has been a long time since she thought about what happened. Several decades.

Tending to her new ailment proved as difficult as bearing it, for as often as they were changed her bandages were just as often bled through or dirtied with the port's grime and her own sweat. The squalor surrounding the bed was cluttered with all manner of nonsense that hoped to entertain her for an evening or two of recovery, but by then she had already exhausted her enjoyment. A few waterlogged, moldy novels penned by playwright snobs had their worn pages flipped completely through in an hours' time.

The breastplate her cousin forged had not been completely repaired, the distorted metal still punctured where she had suffered her elder wounds, but it rested primped and polished upon the wooden stand in mocked perfection. An expensive grey cloak was reluctantly half-sewn to its new, moth-eaten inner lining before she grew tired of unwittingly pricking her fingertips on the needle.

She noticed a hand mirror when she paused to sift through everything, poorly made by a glassblower who hated his job and riddled with air pockets and old water stains. While a mere one thing amidst a myriad of forgotten memorabilia, she did pay it a curious mind, both unskilled at handling it and uncertain when the last time she saw herself was. In an effort to convince herself that she could be made presentable, she idly brushed her fingers through the disheveled hair tucked around her ear before taking a gander.

Her downcast eyes met the glass but there was no reflection. No fawn-haired, world weary elf who is too young to be called old and too jaded to be called young. No nose pointed towards the ground in feigned modesty to make her seem inconsequential or posture stiff as a board when she's uncomfortable. No lungs swollen with a quiet confidence she leeched off someone else. No skin-crawling aversion that was vulnerable to a discerning gaze, or cold sweat drenching her collar when she found herself in a well-lit area among prying eyes.

There was someone else looking back at her. Someone she recognized but was unaccustomed to seeing in a mirror; someone whose skin she'd grown fearlessly comfortable wearing.

An icon. A murderer. A proactive man that wasn't afraid of the consequences his actions wrought because he was so self-assured. Someone she had every reason to hate, yet his was a man she desperately wanted to emulate in her earlier years. Indeed, starstruck by her eagerness to please she wanted to emulate every great man she'd ever known, from their mannerisms to the fantastic things they were capable of.

She yearned to ride on the coattails of success and proclaim someone else's achievements so she might briefly partake of the bounty; to make believers out of the nonbelievers or enemies out of the disbelievers. She was a crony with no desire for the spotlight despite the leader her father attempted to coerce out, and she was uncharacteristically enthusiastic about her fate. Perhaps she was humbled by her meager role and hoped something grand would eventually come out of it.

Perhaps she was simple and only wanted simple things. She didn't know what else to make of herself.

Each stage of her life brought about another experiment in flattering mimicry instead of honing what qualities could be called her own, and she hounded about for a substance that smacked of proving her self-worth. A scholar, a poet, a thief or a priest. A human or a dwarf, a man or a woman. A sociopath or a philanthropist. Over time, a line of failed attempts was drawn in the sand, and she never quite knew the kind of success she craved until she stopped drawing completely.

The mirror in her hand tilted precariously in one direction to shift a beam of light across its pocked surface, but despite the additional illumination his visage skillfully avoided eye contact. He seemed to know she wanted to exchange her hopeful glance --- her desperate plea for recognition and praise from someone she held in high esteem --- for his proud and gratified reply, so he strained to conceal his disappointment for as long as possible.

She squinted her eyes and blinked awkwardly at the image. She never remembered him looking as hideous as he did then, through her. No matter how she pivoted his face, she could not recognize that man's beauty or strength anymore.

It was eventually set aside in frustration, satisfaction or disgust.