Erynne

[Deleted]

*Erynne sits by a stream, under a massive oak tree, fishing. Sharazim, her trusted panther companion, lies stretched out by her side. She absently strokes his fur while she muses.*

I have no idea what Holance thinks I do, or why he thinks it. All I have to do is change the color of the clothes I wear, and he thinks I am a Banite. A Banite, of all things. Five years of scars on my back from a Banite, Zhentish slaver, and he thinks I have loyalty to the Black Hand. I changed my colors to black, and he thought I was a Banite. I changed it to black and green, and he thought I was a Banite. Now, I changed them to brown and green, and he thought I was a Banite. Imagine, a ranger running around in the woods with brown and green on. There can only be one explanation: She's a Banite who doesn't want to be seen in the woods.

Aris. The man who has shown me the most consistent kindness over the longest period of time of anyone in Cormyr, slain by the one who has shown me the most base cruelty. There is nothing to be done. He chose his path. There was nothing to turn him from it. He did not want to change. In an odd way, I bless his choice. Not that I support the doing of evil things as he did. But it must be a choice. One cannot do right without the freedom to choose, or the one who forces the decision is the one doing the doing. And the reward is not earned.

Everyone knew Aris would end this way. It was only a matter of time. I'm honestly surprised Velisario took so long to get around to it. Even Aris knew it would end like this. Something in me thinks he wanted it to. I have no idea why.

I respect Aris's choice. Something in me says he wanted to assert to the world that his choice was his choice. That no one and nothing would make up his mind for him. It's a horrible price to pay for that choice, to die like this, and who knows what awaits him hereafter. But I respect his choice. If this is what he must do to prove to himself he was his own man, then so be it. As much suffering as he brought to others, existence does owe it to him what it takes to settle in his own mind that yes, Aris Norman belongs to no one, and his mind is his own. His rewards are deserved, his punishments are earned, and neither are determined. Without that, all else is just meaningless crap that happens to you.

I'll mourn for him. He was a true friend. He stood up for me to Cormyr's legal authorities. He stood up for me to people who wanted to hunt me for the bounty the slaver offered. He stood up for me to that wicked priest in the orc cave. He stood up for me at every opportunity he got to stand up for me. No one else in all of Cormyr has ever stood up for me like Aris did. Not so many times. Not without fail. Not regardless of who or what it was he was standing up to. Not without fear for himself. He never failed me. His crime in the Greatgaunt Fire was not a failure of justice. He overstepped. He went too far. And Cormyr never forgave him for it.

Aris said to me that he had gone too far in the Greatgaunt Fire. He never backed off in the face of persecution over it. Nor threats. Nor condemnation or judgment. Nothing anyone ever said against him, no drawn swords, no spells, not execution by the crown, absolutely nothing swayed Aris in his opinion that what he did that day was perfectly okay. Except for one thing. The heartfelt tears of the one he had stood up for. When I went to him with tears over what he had done, he admitted that what he did was too much. And he agreed not to do it again.

Cormyr hates Aris. He has touched my soul. I've kept him at arm's length, because I know the rules with a man like him. Yet even so, so far as a man of his nature is able, he has been faithful to me in all things. Only Sharazim rivals him in that.

From this day forward, I will remember Aris Norman well. When someone pushes me around, I will remember the sacrifices he made for me. When something insurmountable rises in my path, I will remember his courage to face it. When someone speaks ill of me, I will remember the kindness that came from Cormyr's most unexpected place. And for as long as I shall live, may I never judge another soul again.

[Deleted]

Under an overcast sky high over the misty canopy of trees, Erynne lay on the ground, her turn at watch over. There was still a few hours of darkness ahead before twilight would rouse her from her slumber. A few members of the Royal Corps of Monster Hunters lay sleeping as well, one of them keeping silent watch in the night. As always, the faithful panther, Sharazim, watched over her while she slept, and over all her companions. Not as much part of the group as the others, he had perched himself in a tree, his wild mind accepting this as the natural order of things, his keenly perceptive feline ears and eyes bearing witness to all that transpired around them all. Even the faintest scents of the forest left their impressions on his conscious psyche.

As the cat stood silent vigil over his constant companion, she stirred on the forest floor. He'd seen it before, and while others of her kind may have been disturbed, he knew it to be natural. The writhing of limbs. The low groans and occasional cries of pain. All things with minds dreamt as they slept, and his friend would be no exception.

From the bird's eye view of an eagle flying overhead, a town rimmed by a wooden wall spread into her view. As she watched, men and women moved into place with an eerily slow, smooth gait. All was silent. Not a sound could be heard. Her view reeled, and an army could be seen a mile or two away, drawing into formations and readying for battle. Women of the street and children piled into a larger building in the center of the town, the door closed behind them.

Her view now swooped down to the town, centering on a woman in a blue uniform holding a bow, her thick, unruly, reddish brown tresses flowing slightly in a gentle breeze. She recognized this one as herself. Her view swooped straight into the woman such that she could see through her own eyes.

As she looked around herself, she saw. She saw what was going to happen. And she saw how to fight back. She saw how to stop it. She ran. She ran into the central building and ran to the outpost's commander, trying to warn him. No one inside the building moved. They were all frozen in place, as if turned to stone by magic without the colors fading. As she spoke, she became aware of a glass bubble completely surrounding her, blocking her words from getting out. Frantically, she shouted to the commander. Their positions were wrong. Vulnerable troops would be reached ahead of those meant to protect them. Walls were meant to shield troops behind them, and not the other way around. They were spread too thin. The building where the commander and the townsfolk sheltered would be burned down around them. They were set up not for defense, but for slaughter. None of her words escaped the bubble. She couldn't even hear herself. She shouted and shouted until she thought her head would explode, but yet no response.

She ran outside and went to the troops. Her own unit commander stood there, frozen in place, a command to another frozen on her lips. She spoke her words to her commander, but nothing came out. No sound. No response. She went to the archers, who would be first to fall, and pleaded with them to move from where they stood and take shelter behind the line. Nothing. Not a sound. Not a movement. She resorted to tugging on their arms and legs, but they were as rooted in place as a hundreds of years old oak tree.

She ran around to the rear guard and begged them to move to support the front with more concentrated arrow fire. Again, no words escaped the bubble that followed everywhere she went. She pushed on the back of the red haired mercenary captain. Not a movement. Not a stirring. Frozen in place.

Tears flowed down her face as the army marched forward. With impossible slowness, taking what seemed a decade to cross the field, they marched ahead. The first person she had tried to move was the first they approached, and with merciless strokes, they cut this one to pieces. Her heart broke at what she saw. One by one, each one had their turn, each falling in the exact order and in the exact way she'd foreseen. None moved. None cried out. They simply stood still, frozen in place, and were hacked apart.

The defenders slain, the army moved into the town. She ran into the building to warn those in it to leave. No words escaped. She picked up a child to jump out a window, but he was too heavy to lift. She began beating on the breast of the commander, trying to evoke some sort of a response, even if it should be anger at her. Nothing. No response. Not the slightest motion.

Smoke began to fill the room, and she knew they were finished. The crackling sound of flames began to rise, the only sound she'd heard since she was flying high above. The smell of the smoke filled the air and scratched the back of her throat. Her eyes watered at the irritation, and her heart sank under the weight of doom at the calamity befalling them all. The calamity she'd foreseen, step by step, inch by inch, in every detail from beginning to end. The calamity she'd been powerless to alter in the slightest detail of its transpiring. With the heat of the flames rising around her and the gentle crackling turning to a roar, she covered her face in her hands and wept.

[Deleted]

*Erynne sits a short distance from the campfire around which sit her few companions who escaped the battle seen in her last dream. She faces back towards the scene of the battle, and her thoughts place her amid the thousands of corpses that litter the town.*

Death lies ahead. Death lies behind. Death lies all around me.

Obedience has wrought this. The calamity that has befallen this town has come at the orders of those who hold positions "above." They came because their commanders told them to, and they followed orders. They killed because their commanders told them to, and they followed orders. Nameless, faceless, wave after wave, they came. Many of them fell. And we fell, too, almost to the last man, woman and child. The few children who remained all fell. And we for our part stood to die because those "above" us commanded us to, and we obeyed. We paid for our blind obedience with our lives vainly lost, and with the sight of others being mercilessly slaughtered around us, a memory that will never fully leave the mind. And they paid for theirs in part today, a down payment in blood on a debt to be fully collected later in this war and at Kelemvor's throne. A debt to be paid for blind obedience. I wonder if they're all still fighting on the Fugue Plain. May the eyes of the children who burned in that building stare into the souls of those who set the fire for all eternity.

And who or what is above me? Above us? I look up towards the heavens, and I see only sky. The highest of the gods lives there, and to that one I bow my knee, and to that one alone. But mortal men and women do not deserve obedience unto the death, nor unto the deaths of others. This disaster is what comes when it is given unchecked and unexamined. It is not a freedom to question what one is told to do. It is not a liberty. It is not an indulgence, or a childish rebellion. It is a moral responsibility and a sacred duty to acknowledge that each person is responsible for their own choices, that a command to stand in an open field will not be a wall to save you from the arrows when they come, and that when one appears before Kelemvor's throne, "My officer told me to" or "the law said" will excuse exactly nothing. And one must act accordingly. I am not free to question and at times disobey. I am morally bound to do so, regardless of the earthly consequences, and the binding is forged this day in blood.

[Deleted]

*Erynne sits by the stream again with her faithful companion, Sharazim, absently stroking his fur. The great cat's eyelids gently drift downwards in a lazy expression, enjoying the material comfort of a trusted human hand gently and rythmically massaging his fur, skin, and flesh. Completely absorbed in the moment, his natural feline detachment ruling as always his mind and emotions, the cat simply enjoys the attention and service he receives from his human friend, while Erynne's thoughts drift back over the last few days.*

They existed to die. At least, so far as their part in my life. Rayanna the Rose, and the militia captain at Monksblade. Two kindred souls, fiery of spirit, and woman warriors with the courage to stand against many. Life brought them onto the stage only to snuff them out. For no other purpose. I don't understand this. I could easily be angry at life itself for this, to hate the course of events with a bitterness that would take over my soul and never let it go.

I should have seen it coming. Who in all the time since I've left Zhentil Keep, indeed for as long as I've been alive, has ever touched on that part of my soul? Who has ever "gotten it," without having to be told? So rare. Perhaps it's a message from above. That those who are as I am are but a breath of air in the wind. That no one persists in life thinking and feeling as I do. That forces of destruction roll right over anyone they wish, beginning with those who have the courage to stand up and say, "No, I don't think so."

Am I a survivor? Or am I a casualty? My life will never be the same after Monksblade as it was before. It cannot. It simply is not possible. After seeing what I saw, witnessing what I witnessed, feeling what I felt. The powerlessness. The horror. The foreknowing. That really was the worst part, the foreknowing. As if the gods above taunted me, waving the death and destruction I so wished to avert before my face like a fish before a hunting cat, saying, "You want this. You want to stop this. But you can't. Na na ... you can't stop it. You can't do a thing. This is going to happen no matter what you do or say. I know how this hurts you. And I'm doing it anyways."

It really wasn't Darren I was standing up to before we set out for Azoun's Hold. That pitched stand to go looking for those five fallen officers at Monksblade. I was standing up to who ever or what ever above us all arrayed them all to die like toy soldiers in a child's game, just before the child sweeps them all away. I've rebelled to the Purple Dragons. I've rebelled to nobles and kings. But there are greater powers above even them, and my rebellion will continue until my spittle finds their eye, too. And why not? If this is what they do with us, then why accept? Why lie down? Why obey? Why submit? How could anything come to be any worse? If this is what they put upon us, then what is there to lose in rebelling against the very gods themselves? What is left?

[Deleted]

Every territory, every concept, every idea, everything in all of creation has an edge. A border. A meeting place with that which lies next to it, lies beyond, just out of reach to the grasping fingers longing to intrude that little bit further. A twilight where light gives way to shadow, and to utter blackness, shadow is as light. A blending where one is lost discerning the place or time one left from that which lies ahead.

It was under the purple and pink streaked sky of twilight that a subtle shadow swept across a fern and tree stump outside Monksblade, the edge of Sembian held territory. Red foxes hunted the forest floor, taking their turn between the creatures of night and day to fill their bellies on what they could find before they would leave the forest to the creatures of true night. They rooted in the ground and pounced on field mice and licked up their meal with relish, oblivious to the passing of the shadow's source, even their wild eyes and ears failing to pick up on it. But the twilight hunter was not interested in foxes. More dangerous game was on the menu tonight. Less wary, less suspecting, but more dangerous if roused.

At a soft whisper, a voice chanted out a chorus of syllables. The ground and foliage shimmered and swirled almost imperceptibly, like a mirage taking up around a single bush for just a moment, and two eyes, blending nearly perfectly with the darkening forest, took on a green glow for a moment. Through those eyes, the forest came into sharper focus. The gathering gloom of night receded as if a pale, purple tinged white light fell upon everything around. Shadow simply ceased to exist, and all that depended upon the cover of darkness to obscure it was laid completely, starkly bare before those nearly unseen eyes.

The forest slid silently past and around that illuminated vantage, pausing occasionally to turn slowly and sweep the landscape under the forest canopy in all directions. Bats and owls fluttered noiselessly overheard, and three Hullack red wolves prowled past. The wolves paused to sniff the air, and the silent hunter stopped. The wolves glances around, heads lowering for a different angle on the forest, then padded on their way.

A stream came up into view, and on the other side stood six Silver Ravens, Sembian soldiers, pausing to refill their waterskins. At three foot intervals, downed leaves, still fresh and undried, deformed silently under a hundred and eighty pounds of weight, the barely perceptible indentations closing in slowly on the soldiers at the rate of a slow walk. Above those deformations, a slight distortion of the forest beyond hung in the air like a four foot tall, one foot wide mirage suspended in the air. Eyes keen enough to discern the disturbance would have most likely dismissed it as a trick of shadows in the approach of night. Every five steps, the disturbance paused for five seconds, and then resumed.

The soldiers filled their skins and resumed marching through the forest. The barely perceptible entity trailed behind, gliding noiselessly over fallen logs and through patches of ferns, always keeping a tree or other notable object behind it to the viewpoint of the soldiers. Their movements became predictable, and the silent stalker came to anticipate their glances in its direction, ceasing to move to accomodate the semblance of safety from its direction, and closing the few feet lost immediately upon resuming movement.

As the soldiers walked, they hacked haphazardly at branches and brambles that lay in their path, the sound easily alerting anything within a hundred yards to their presence, that if the torches in their hands hadn't removed all hope at escaping detection to begin with. They also bantered back and forth. The subject of their idle and rambling conversation marked them as bored with patrol duty, expecting no Cormyrean response to their taking of Battlerise, Azoun's Hold, and Monksblade. Each had a name they called each other by as they passed through their route. Montfoy had a brother whose butcher business was struggling back in Sembia. Vladimind's sister was sick with a fever when he left home for the campaign. Colomar had a letter in his bunk he planned to send to his lover the following morning telling her it was over. Alvic was an older man whose wife had yet to produce a child. Chelar enjoyed horseback riding and hoped to take it up again after the war. And Rufric enjoyed fishing, and was looking forward to returning to his father's farm where they'd spent countless nights together under the starlit sky hauling trout out of the pond that lay on his property.

Hours went by, twilight giving way to outright night. Each of the men took on a personality as each and every word of their chatter fell upon the ears of their unseen follower. Montfoy was a serious man, often teased for his boorish demeanor. Rufric, on the other hand, was a cut up, constantly making the jokes that Montfoy missed. Chelar was conscientious and dutiful, another point of ribbing from Rufric. Colomar was a keen minded, task oriented fellow, the most focused of the six on the duty at hand, though even his mind was half caught up in the idle chatting of the group. Though Montfoy was the officer leading the patrol, it seemed Colomar was the moral rallying point of the group with his focused conviction to remain alert and on task. Vladimind was quiet and pensive, his thoughts more than likely with his sick sister. Alvic, for his part, was tense-jawed and bitter.

As midnight drew near, the group stopped to rest by a thick stand of trees. They were to rotate cat naps and keep moving in an hour. They would watch in pairs for twenty minutes each and resume patrolling in an hour. As they settled in, the magically camoflauged shape that followed them eased ever closer, settling behind a wild raspberry bush. A keen observer very close up would have been able to discern the form of a young woman, perhaps a year over twenty, dressed in studded leather armor, every detail of her appearance matching the coloration of what ever was nearest to her at the moment, the hues of her clothes, weapons, skin, eyes, and hair shifting to maintain the match.

As she crouched behind the bush, thirty feet from the group, she considered which of the patrol to take. She wouldn't be able to kill all six on her own, not in one ambush. One she might manage, but not all six. She considered all she knew about each of them, having grown rather familiar with each one in his peculiarities, given the wealth of information they'd unwittingly supplied her with over the last five hours. Rufric was almost a clown. Of the six, he was the least threatening if he survived the night. Vladimind had a sick sister back home, so if any should survive, it should be him. His family knew enough tragedy as it was. Montfoy, the officer, was a good choice, given the blow to morale and organization that would be struck by the loss of an officer. Chelar, in his adherence to duty, was another candidate to begin with. Alvic, with his darkly sour attitude, might do her cause more good alive among his fellows, she mused. But Colomar seemed to fill the role of mental glue that held the group together. His sudden death would fill the others with pause and a moment of doubt which could prove the most valuable. She settled on Colomar. If all went according to plan, then Colomar had slain his last Cormyrean soldier and burned his last prostitute and child.

She would have to wait twenty minutes, because Colomar was set to watch in the second pair. She passed the time in silent stillness, barely thirty feet from the nose of her intended prey. With a long stick, they could have poked her boot. She knew better, though, from three years of experience stalking killers than to think of them as anything other than wary, savy, and instantly responsive. She knew her own speed with a bow and sense for battle, so she knew that any opening and opportunity they afforded her, she would take advantage of. It was the sudden, miraculously unhesitating and appropriate response she had to consciously be ready for. Outnumbered one against six, more than likely weaker than the weakest among them in a straight up fight, it would not take much for this attack to mean her own pointless, futile, fruitless death.

Twenty minutes became thirty as Chelar and Alvic overextended their watch. Her fingers began to sweat as the moment drew nearer. Her heartbeat rose in nervous anticipation of what was to come. With the discipline of a panther lurking in a tree over a deer path in those last, critical moments before striking, she kept perfectly still, breathing in tiny puffs through her nostrils, her eyes narrowed to obscure their whites. The forest's sounds seemed to amplify in her ears as she surrendered her consciousness and all its boundaries to allow even the slightest disturbance anywhere easy access to her conscious mind.

After what seemed like a week, Chelar and Alvic woke Colomar and Rufric. Colomar and Rufric set themselves up leaning against opposite sides of a tree, blades in hand. As luck would have it, Colomar was on the far side of the tree. She slowly, inch by inch, extended her legs without rising from her crouching position, and slid sideways across the ground. Five full minutes later, she was a mere fifty feet away. Colomar was vigilant enough, and his search pattern, the sequence of turnings of his head and eyes, was unpredictable. He had done this before.

A tree stood a little to Colomar's left at a distance of eighteen feet. It would be the best ambush point. Behind its cover, she rose to her full five and a half feet of height, unslinging a composite longbow from her shoulder. Out of Colomar's sight, she slid an arrow three inches towards the edge of her quiver and stopped, making the faint scraping sound of tip against quiver as brief as possible. After a silent, mental count of thirty, she moved it again. And again. And again. Five counts later, the arrow was free. She placed the bow against the side of the tree, and with a smooth, practiced motion, she drew it in near silence.

At a certain level, war is impersonal. A soldier fights those who wear the other colors, regardless of who they are. There are no names, no faces, nothing to set one enemy soldier apart from another. But this time, the bow that levelled towards the heart of its target was held by one who knew the name of the one she was about to shoot. She knew enough about him as a man to choose him specifically, personally, as the one that she would kill. She knew his name. She knew something about his personal history. His family. His goals and ambitions. All of that was about to come to an end with the simple release of two fingertips.

As she pulled back on the bowstring, she thought of the screams of women and children burning at Monksblade. In her mind, she saw Colomar standing outside the burning building, torch in hand. Her eyes watered, and bile rose up in her throat to the point she nearly coughed.

Colomar stood relaxed but vigilant against his tree, his eyes sweeping now and then the dark forest before him. At first, his mind didn't register a nearly silent, whispered, "Colomar." He blinked it away and refocused his attention. A second time, it came at a whisper, "Colomar." This second repetition of his name caught his attention. His eyes swept the forest, right to left. No sign of danger. No sign of anyone present besides his patrol.

Colomar's heart lept into his throat. There, less than twenty feet away from him, cloaked in the shadows of the night forest, blending to the next tree like a moth whose wings naturally match its favorite bark to sit on, was a woman in a hooded cloak, aiming a longbow at full draw directly at his heart. Their eyes met. Colomar froze, not quite comprehending what this moment meant. As he looked into her eyes filled with the heated glare of anger and hatred, she hissed to him, barely above a whisper, "For Monksblade."

A bowstring snapped once, cries of alarm went up, and soft soled boots sprinted into the darkness of the forest.

[Deleted]

Erynne muses to herself while she rides on a caravan wagon, headed east.

Enough is enough. Cormyr. The land of the throttled. The coddled. The herded. The sheep. Those who lay responsibility for their own well being on the shoulders of others and then tremble in fear in front of the power that they themselves have given. Enough.

I am sick and tired of the pedanticism. I am sick and tired of the judgment handed down from purple pedestals. I once believed in what Cormyr tried to be, though it fell short. Now I doubt that it's even trying. With war brewing with Sembia, the atrocities I have witnessed, the perils I have myself faced, only to be thrown out as unworthy because I don't tie my boot laces tightly enough and have the audacity to speak up when things aren't right, over much, much more minor things. Where is your head Cormyr? Try not to break wind, or you'll fill your own nostrils with the odor.

This war is not my fight. I don't even believe in the country I would be fighting for, if I stayed. Cormyr is a sham. A willfull blindness of the sheep who live in the shadow of the powers over them, covering their mouths for fear of bleating too loudly. I can take no more. I can stomach no more. Cormyr can burn, for all I care, and for those who remain within it, they can either take to their own two fight like I am, or they can burn with it.

Shadowdale lies ahead. Beyond, I know not what comes. But I do know this much. Where ever I may roam, my destiny will lie in my own two hands, exactly where it ought. Farewell, oh land polluted with purple. It's been a long three years.

The wagon rumbles over Cormyr's border and makes its way for Shadowdale ...

[Deleted]

*Erynne sits as she often does in the shade of the trees of the Bramblewood, by a cool, clear stream. The faithful panther, Sharazim, lounges by her side.*

Well it's official. I am now officially at odds with every "lawful" organization I have ever come across. I've studied the planes and their philosophies enough to know just what that word means.

In Zhentil Keep, I learned to fear the lash. Invented stories, imagined shortcomings, and the blood would fly. Three and a half years later, the marks are beginning to fade, and I can imagine the muscles of my back working properly again. And then came the Greatgaunt Militia. They tried to arrest me for defending myself from a drunk dwarf that had spent a full tenday trying to get me to go to bed with him, hands and eyes all over me, and dangling his naughty bits literally in my face at the table. The Greatgaunt Fire ensued. Next, it was Zodika, and the war wizards and purple dragons who let her go after she imploded me twice in one day, for reasons I have yet to come to know. Then the purple dragons who robbed Salina of her personhood with their manhandling of her at her second execution.

"Put your head over the bucket," they said. And when, unthinkable as it was, she did not eagerly cooperate with their attempts to destroy her, they became indignant, as if she had some moral obligation to offer up her very neck to be cut, at their convenience, because they said so.   Despicable.  She had killed men and women.  They killed a lifeless thing, for that is what they turned her into in their minds.  The war wizards were no better.

Following this, the more recent events of the mind probe, and the human sacrifice the purple dragons performed at Monksblade. The stand I took, on behalf of those who could not stand for themselves, the risks and sacrifices I made for the purple dragons, only to be fired in disgrace.

And now, even Tyr himself, or at least his representative in this world, has ignored my pleas for help. Ignored my cries against the war wizards, and ignored my cries against a paladin ...

Have I had a hand in all this? Of course. But what else could I do? From a thirteen year old girl to a seasoned adventurer, even soldier, it has always been the same. Painted a criminal, deficient, lacking, wanting, wrong. Whether I am or not. No way out. No hope. No vindication, outside the sympathies of those likewise condemned.

So be it. If this is to be my path, then I shall walk it. And I shall walk it with pride. Let murderers and thieves be my company. Beasts and fiends. The outcast. The "criminal." The undesired. I will seek them. I will find them. I will join hands with them. And they will be my people.

A false Tyrran, they say. "Cherrypicking," they say. Do I believe in revealing the truth?   Do I believe in punishing the truly guilty?  Righting the wrongs? Most certainly. But their laws are not my laws. Conscience. Empathy. Forebearance. Loyalty. And truth grounded in reality, not words.  These are the laws, and others like them, which my soul will be measured by. Laws laid down from the beginning of time by the original source of life, and written in the stars in the heavens above.  And their abominable books can burn in The Nine.  They have no weight to me.

Fenix.  I must find him.  He has no idea just how powerful he can become.

[Deleted]

My despising of Cormyr grows with every passing day. Cormyr has a reputation abroad as a place of law and good, yet it is a place that is ruled by lawlessness and evil as much as any other. The war wizards are the war wizards, treating the minds of others as if they are public property. Only through the direst protestations did they actually respect the boundaries of my mind. //OOC: Erynne's mind probe has been retconed.// I suppose they thought that corroborating what ever the others might have had in their heads wasn't worth losing a member or two to me. Pragmatism, but not respect. They are despicable bastards.

And now, on the roof of the outpost in Thunderstone, "Lord" Dauneth drags a prisoner before him, wanting to know from his lips what the Sembians are up to. The Purple Dragons in attendance promise the man he'll be spared his life if he gives up the information they want. Promises made in Dauneth's presence. In his sight. In his hearing. And in his name. Dauneth makes no protest or contradiction to this promise. The man gives it up without a fuss. And in the next breath, as soon as the prisoner is taken out of Dauneth's sight, Dauneth pronounces a sentence of death over the man. Without even the courage to speak his treachery to the man's face.

He is a lawless promise breaker. An evil man with no honor at all. Aris, for all his evil, would have spared a person who did what he wanted if it's what he had promised. For all his evil, Aris did have honor, and respect. I'm quite certain that Butcher and even Zodika would do likewise. Dauneth has none. Only sanctimonious contempt for people "below" him. He is the worst kind of slime, the kind that poses as "good" and "honorable" and "respectable" while hiding behind that conception and using his position to send others to their deaths. He's a Ronso, a Than, and a Kross, Banites all. I bet he's even fooled his own conscience. He deserves the same ignoble death he gave to the man he promised life.

[Deleted]

Erynne stepped out of the cave into the fresh air of the Hullack Forest. The adults behind the brood had proven too much for her and Wyeth, so they had decided to retreat. And now, she emerged from the darkness into the light of day beneath the branches of the towering trees. But as she did, she saw Wyeth moving forward to engage two young green dragons that had been lounging at the mouth of the cave. All was well until Wyeth, apparently having had his mind ward elapse, succumbed to the dragon fear and began to stumble about in confusion.

Erynne stepped forward to defend him, taking on the two dragons at once. Wyeth, for his part stumbled away a little bit further. Claws and sword slashed in a deadly battle, and Erynne did the best she could to hold up both dragons until Wyeth could recover. Her sword nipped into their scaly hides now and then, but their claws and fangs drew her blood in greater measure. Soon, it was clear that Erynne was not going to stand for long in front of both dragons, alone.

She made a tactical decision. She would lead the dragons away a bit, drop a distraction in their path, and then return to Wyeth, hopefully having shaken the dragons off of her and her companion. She dropped her guard and ran off to her right, away from Wyeth. As she did, one dragon turned to follow her, and the other resumed attacking Wyeth, who ducked and dodged as best he could in his fear induced state. The worst case scenario. Erynne had the urgency of being under attack, so she couldn't stop to heal herself or lay other plans, but Wyeth was also under attack in his vulnerable condition.

Erynne sprinted for a corner around the rocks, hoping to lay out her plan, minus one dragon, then return and kill the one attacking Wyeth. She knew from previous experience she could take a dragon of that size, one to one. It was the two in tandem she couldn't handle. So off she went, and she summoned a bear to help. The dragon stopped to fight the bear, and Erynne ran to help Wyeth. Looking over a shoulder, she saw the bear run off into the woods, and the dragon resume its focus on Erynne. She swore under her breath as the dragon returned so quickly, and turned to try to distract it again. As she did, Wyeth fell to the second dragon.

As Wyeth settled in a bloody mass to the ground, Erynne saw her own doom approaching. She had to help him. She couldn't leave him. But a dead Erynne wasn't going to be of much use to anyone. So pulling away from the nearer dragon at a sprint, once she had enough of a gap to take the time, she stopped to drink a speed potion, and continued to run. The thought occurred to her, however, that the dragons were not the only dangers in the woods. A few steps later, she stopped for an invisibility potion, to protect her from other creatures. Once so prepared, Erynne shot down the path the way she and Wyeth had come and across a bridge at about forty miles per hour, unseen by any but the dragon.

As Erynne transitioned from the bridge to forest soil, the dragon took to the air and virtually landed on top of her. Erynne tried to roll out of the way and parry a claw at her chest, but her stroke must have been a bit too aggressive, because the invisibility magic of her potion broke. She resumed running at full speed, the speed potion now elapsing. Much to Erynne's horror, the commotion of the fight had drawn the attention of a group of Malarite huntsmen. One of them began casting a spell, and the half dozen or so other warriors, grinning in delight, decided to join in the chase of the desperate human woman already running for her life from a green dragon.

Erynne strained her legs, opened a gap again between herself and the dragon that had landed to attack, and drank another speed potion, then an invisibility potion again. She tore through a clearing, hooked a sharp left down a trail, and ran smack into a rocky corner between two paths. This wasn't the way she wanted to go. She wanted to run out of the forest, not further in. She looked to the south. No sign of pursuit. She looked to the west. No sign of pursuit. She paused to gather her thoughts and let her pulse settle.

After a few moments went by, one of the Malarite huntsmen rounded a corner to the west and came sprinting right at Erynne. How he saw her while she was as yet invisible, she had no idea, but here he came nonetheless. Perhaps his shaman had enhanced his eyes. Erynne glanced around again for the dragon or more Malarites, and seeing none, she called upon Sharazim to help put him down. He roared with maniacal fury, great axe raised high, and charged. Erynne raised her shield and stepped into his attack, stuffing her shield up at the haft of his axe, and blocked the blow. Sharazim leapt at him and tore a gash in the man's leg. Enraged, the Malarite turned on Sharazim and cut into his side, forcing the cat to retire from the fight.

Erynne's eyes grew wide as she contemplated how to turn this fight against the Malarite. Coming up behind his loomed the same green dragon she'd fled from before, running grounded, claws outstretched and growling. Erynne cursed under her breath, turned, and ran again for her life. Once more, she opened a small distance between herself and her pursuers, drank a speed potion, and returned to an all out sprint down the path.

Erynne turned a corner, and before her milled around a half dozen or so ettercaps. As she came into sight, all their myriad eyes turned to focus upon her. Erynne's eyes squinched shut for a moment as realization set in. So quickly did she come upon them after leaving the site of the last encounter with the dragon and the Malarite that she had yet to take an invisibility potion. She knew what would come next. Thoughts flashed through her mind. She considered casting freedom of movement, but remembered she didn't have it memorized. She could rest and memorize it was the next desperate thought. As if it would take eight hours for a pursuing dragon to descend upon a pack of ettercaps and compete with them for her flesh. There was only one thing Erynne could do.

In ever growing desperation, Erynne leaned into the effort of running, hoping to make it around a rocky corner before any of the ettercaps could get their webs away. But luck was not on her side. All six ettercaps launched webs at her, and all six landed squarely around their mark. The copper haired, green clad, sprinting woman was engulfed so thickly that she disappeared from sight under a massive pile of white, sticky strands. The pile came to an abrupt halt, and as the green dragon and Malarite huntsmen drew nearer to their prey which had just acquired a new set of enemies, from deep inside the pile of webs came a muffled, "Frrrk!"

From the outside, the cocoon jostled and vibrated as a muffled, "Dmmm dmmm dmmm dmmm DMMM!" emanated from within. In the darkness of the cocoon, Erynne cut furiously at the webbing. In a moment, she had her sword arm poking out and her face cleared enough to make an attempt at fighting back. The dragon roared, reaching towards her again, and it slashed down at her. Erynne managed to deflect the blow away from her chest and vital organs, but the claws raked her arm and shoulder. Desperately trying to present enough of a threat with her weapon to make the dragon pause and think, she tugged with her legs and other arm, trying to get free. The dragon struck again, and the Malarite struck with his axe. The dragon slashed into a leg, and the huntsman cut a superficial slice into her back. The ettercaps gathered around and clawed at her as well.

Erynne ducked and covered as best she could, but she was taking bleeding wounds all over her body. She didn't have long. She tried summoning another animal to aid her, but a slap from the dragon to the side of her head almost broke her neck and disrupted her concentration. Erynne reached down to her belt, pulled a scroll out, and read it aloud. A giant spider appeared to aid her cause, but was quickly torn apart.

Time seemed to stand still. Realization set in. Erynne was doomed. In that moment, she considered giving up. Resigning to her fate. Letting herself be torn limb from limb by this collection of adversaries. No. She shook her head free of the thought. She would not give up. She took out healing kits and applied them. Her enemies made more wounds faster than she could heal them. But then she remembered the heal potions on her belt. She only had so many, and she couldn't imagine herself lasting more than a few minutes, even if she drank them all, so furious was the assault she was under. But she had to try. She had to do something. And who knew. If she stayed alive for a few moments more, perhaps something would happen, and she would be spared death this day. Her mind settled on one singular thought: "Never give up. No Matter. What."

Erynne ducked and writhed, trying to avoid more hurt, popped a cork, and drank. Healing magic flowed, and a portion of her wounds closed. But not enough. She took another potion from her pouch and drank it. Again, wounds closed, but she was being pummeled and slashed relentlessly. She reached for another potion, and then it happened. A foot popped out of the webs. All the claws and cuts had destroyed the cocoon just as much as they'd shredded her flesh. Erynne stopped, put the heal potion back, and took a speed potion instead. She ducked under a dragon claw, pulled out an invisibility potion to disappear from sight to all but the dragon, stepped out of the cocoon, and ran again as fast as her legs could carry her.

Erynne didn't even look back at the roaring and screaming she heard behind her. She knew what had happened. This last battle had been happening in a narrow spot where the rocks on both sides of the path nearly pinched together. With the ettercaps standing around dumbfounded at where Erynne went, the dragon's path was blocked, at least to pursue on the ground. When they didn't move out of its way, it had turned on them instead. Suddenly, obstacle and enemy had become salvation from the most brutal of her foes. All because she'd decided to never give up and managed to stay alive for those few moments more.

Contemplating the amazing luck of her escape, Erynne ran unseen at naturally impossible speed for the Last Flagon Inn.

[Deleted]

In a smoky, dimly lit tavern in the city of Llorkh, a lone figure sits at a table, quietly nursing an ale. The form under the dark cloak looks more slight than most men, and something about the slight swell at the hips subtly suggests femininity. The warm, orange firelight glints off of a pair of eyes nearly hidden under the hood of the cloak as the visitor takes another small sip from the tankard now half filled with ale.

"Hear ye, hear ye!" calls out a half-elven man as he clambers up on a rickety stage set in the middle of the tavern. "Listen now, and hear a tale of love gone awry!" After a brief introduction, he launches into a comedic song about two strangers who meet, fall in love, and stumble through mishap after calamity. Accompanied by a few other musicians, he makes his way through the jovial tune and comes to a satisfying finish.

Once the first song is done, he begins another, and another. The ale sipper listens in with wry amusement, until the bard begins singing of news from far and wide. Of particular note, the listener focuses in as she hears names she recognizes, spoken of all the way out in Llorkh. "And the Ace of Blades, so sure and true, brought low the murderers foul. And her intent did misconstrue, the law, this darkest hour." And a little later, "So Tal of Torm took up the blade of witness to proclaim, to all the land reminders told of the Ace's well earned fame."

The listener's eyes narrowed darkly, and she sank down into her seat as the inner battle began.

"You know these people. You know the fight they face. They could use you."

"It's too late. I've gone. And I'm not going back."

"They need you. Cormyr needs you."

"They need no such thing. There's nothing I can do that hundreds of other people can't do."

"You believe in the fight. It's your heart's desire to see it through."

"Cormyr doesn't want change. It's spoken to that loud and clear for years on end. Killed for it. Buried the bodies of noble men and women who would have stood up for its own well being without a whisper of protest or tear of regret. Deaf ears is all there are to be found in Cormyr."

"You're not a quitter. You've never given up in all your life."

"There is a first time for everything. And a wise warrior picks her battles."

"You know the lay of the land. You know what they are up against."

"As do many others, and more still will learn."

"You've defeated the Zhents. Defied armies with a potion and a prayer. Marched into the hells themselves for the sake of men and women who didn't even deserve it. You can't turn aside now."

"You can't free a land that refuses to free itself. Leave them to their fate."

"A tiny voice has risen up among the masses. Nurture it. It will grow."

"He'll be crushed. Him and everyone who stands with him."

"Exactly."

A tankard exploded against the wall in a shower of golden liquid and frothy white foam.


For the next several nights, travelers along the roads outside of Llorkh reported hearing the beats of galloping hooves by night. Those who didn't take cover at the disturbance also said they saw a lone, black horse in full stride, a trail of dust in its wake, rising to form a plume to mark its passage. Its mouth frothed, its sides foamed, and the moonlight glinted and glistened on the definition of its powerful muscles as it bore its rider eastward, its eerily gleaming eyes guiding it along the road and past obstacles with the same ease and assurance another horse might gallop the same path in full daylight.