Junei Luelin

[grokan]

It was a dark and stormy night. At least, it would have been if this were a fantasy novel. In reality, it was a rather bright and sunny summer day.

Junei was outside, playing with a few of her human friends who were about the same apparent age. Her mother was watching out the window, concern in her eyes as she knew that even though Junei was apparently the same age as her friends, around 7 years old, she would still be physically and mentally equivalent to a 10 year old after her other friends had grown to maturity. But for now, she would let Junei play.

Her father was in his study, studying a mirror that he had enchanted to allow him to scry. He was intently watching out for the danger that had hounded him for decades. A powerful and evil necromancer, who he had fought many times before but never really had the upper hand. For decades he had been fleeing the necromancer, and now he was especially afraid. For by all reports, the necromancer had made a deal with an evil deity for more power.

He knew that the necromancer would be coming after him and his family. For he knew he was the only one of the necromancer's enemies that was powerful enough to be a threat to the necromancer, but not enough to be a danger by himself. He would be eliminated soon.

He peered intently into the scrying mirror, only hoping that he could pierce the wards the necromancer kept up against such. He was rewarded with a view of the necromancer looking straight at him. He staggered back.

"Good day. I know you've been trying to scry me for weeks now. I decided your efforts should be rewarded. I'm going to let you know when I'm going to attack you next."

Junei's father looked in horror at the background of the scene. He could clearly see the village he was residing in. Even worse, he could see Junei playing with her friends in the distance.

"That's right. You've been careless. I've been able to trace your scrying back to where you live. Oh, is that your child there? Such a pretty little thing. I think I'll make her my next pet."

With that, the mirror exploded.

"Junei!" Her father screamed as he rushed from his study. He had only made it halfway through the house when he heard the kids outside screaming in horror. Oh gods, he hoped he was not too late. "Junei!" He screamed as he rushed out the door. And stopped. To his horror, Junei wasn't screaming and running, like the rest of her friends. She was clearly and calmly staring up at the necromancer, right before her, oblivious to the zombies and skeletons all around her.

The necromancer was looking down at her quizzically, but then his face broke into a broad smile. "She has no fear of the undead? Excellent. She will make a wonderful necromancer." He then reached down, and touched her forehead. Her forehead glowed for a moment where he touched her, but quickly faded. She looked uncomfortable for a moment, but it seemed to pass quickly, and she went back to staring up at the necromancer. She gave him a shy smile.

Junei's father screamed out words of power, and balls of fire struck the necromancer, and the nearest 16 zombies and skeletons. The zombies and skeletons were incinerated, but the necromancer only staggered back momentarily. He scowled back at her father. "You have been in my way for near a century now, but now that's all going to change. I was going to forgive you for that for giving me such a gem of a child to take as my own, but I've changed my mind. You're going to die."

Suddenly Junei's mother rushed out of the house, and ran to take Junei. The necromancer simply pointed, and a powerful ball of fire flew from his hand. Junei's mother was thrown against the house by the blast, and Junei's father had to hold his hand up against the heat.

"Don't worry, you'll have your turn too," the necromancer said to Junei's mom, who was still dazed from being knocked against the house. The necromancer made a lifting motion with his hand, and a great number of undead rose up from the ground. "Kill them," he said, and the undead army moved to attack.

Suddenly, there was an earsplitting roar from the heavens. The necromancer looked up, and his face, which had been sneering and confident this entire time, twisted up in fear. A tremendous crash and a roar shook everyone in the vicinity as the colossal gold dragon landed and made its presence known.

The necromancer backed away, his quarry and the child forgotten for the moment. "Dragon! You will not stop me this time!" His arms waved in arcane movements, and everything stopped. The very earth stopped turning as time stood still. The sneer returned to the necromancers face, to be replaced with an expression of fright as he realized... the spell did not affect the dragon!

"Your spell, though mighty, will have no effect on me," said the dragon. "Did you really think that kind of spell would stop one as timeless and enduring as a dragon?" he roared. The dragon held up one paw, and spoke a word of power. Time resumed. The dragon made another gesture, and the field was blasted with holy power. All the undead turned to dust, the bonds holding them to their unlife severed. The dragon then looked at the necromancer, a baleful look in his eye.

The necromancer had not been idle all this time. He had prepared a teleportation to his lair, and had cast it while the dragon turned the undead. The necromancer flew between planes as the dragon could only look on. "Pity. I'll have to chase him down now," said the dragon.

Junei didn't really understand what was going on. Her mom was knocked out, her dad was staggered against the house, her friends had all run off, and the man she had been looking at had disappeared. So she did what any 7 year old child would do if it felt it had been abandoned.

She sat down right there and started to cry.

The dragon looked down and spoke to Junei in a gentle voice. "Do not cry, child. I will take you and your parents somewhere safe. That bad man won't hurt you again." The dragon did not realize that Junei hadn't been scared or hurt by the necromancer. But Junei looked up at the giant dragon in wonder, and just nodded as she walked over to it to be picked up.

The dragon looked over to where Junei's parents were struggling to stand. It raised a claw and spoke a blessing, and both parents' wounds were magically healed. "Come, we have not much time. I must seek out and kill that necromancer before more innocents are hurt. He has made a pact with Baneth for power."

The parents nodded, and walked over to where Junei was, so the dragon could pick them all up. The dragon gathered up all three, and took off. In minutes, they were flying over the land, and then over the sea. The dragon angled in the direction of an isolated island, and began to descend. Moments later, Evermeet was in sight.

The dragon landed outside Leuthilspar. "Give Queen Moonflower my regards. I must be back to the hunt." The dragon then flew off.

//Any comments, nitpicks, or whatever, drop them in my PMbox. -Shade_81

[grokan]

Junei lay there, bound and gagged, and unable to move even if she weren't. The darned high priestess' spell still held her immobile. Now she was on a boat out of Evermeet, and was trying to figure out exactly what had happened. The nearest she could figure out, it had something to do with... the voices.

She couldn't remember exactly when they had started whispering to her. She just knew that they hadn't seemed unfriendly, or insistant. Just a companion of sorts. Reassuring her when she was alone, or scared, keeping her company when she was lonely.

Then she had been apprenticed to her master, and the voices had changed from a companion, to a tutor. The voices knew all about magic, and they were constantly pointing out things that she hadn't noticed before, or different ways of doing things that were more powerful, or easier. Her master had been so pleased with her seemingly innate understanding of magic, and after teaching her the basics, had left her to study her own path of magic.

Her master had always said that magic could not be evil. That it was how magic was used that determined if it was good or not. So she did not understand when, under the tutelage of the voices she had studied the death arts, he had found out about her studies and thrown her out of the tower! The death arts were just more magic, and magic could not be good or evil, right?

She wondered this to herself as the spell that held her immobile slowly wore off. Had her master lied to her? Were the death arts truly evil? And what did that make her? She squirmed in her bonds as the spell wore off completely. Now that she was no longer paralyzed, the position she was in was extremely uncomfortable.

He had been so pleased with her when she had summoned Yonia for the first time. A pixie familiar, she was intelligent and could help her with her studies. The pixie was trouble with a capitol T sometimes, and Junei and Yonia had come to an easy love-hate relationship. They both loved each other unconditionally, but Junei had hated the way Yonia would always get herself into mischief, and Yonia hated how Junei would sometimes stop listening to her, as if her mind were somewhere else, or she were listening to something Yonia couldn't hear. She always snapped out of it after a few minutes, but those few moments had made Yonia... uneasy.

Yonia didn't understand what was going on with her mistress, and so had questioned the master about it when Junei's attention was elsewhere. It always seemed to happen when Junei was reading certain books, and the master had demanded that Yonia show him one.

When the master caught Junei in one of her trances, reading one of his books on necromantic creatures, he had become so furious. Yonia had been so shocked she had unsummoned herself. And now Junei was contemplating summoning Yonia back just so she would have some company.

She had been thrown out of the tower. The master had said "I will not be responsible for the creation of another damned necromancer!" and closed and warded his tower against her.

She had run to another of her parents' friends she remembered from before her parents had gone away, determined to end the threat to their family posed by the necromancer that had hunted them. She came to them, and when they saw the look on her face they didn't even ask any questions. They gave her a place to stay, and said it didn't matter what had happened, and that they would give her all the time she needed to tell them what was wrong.

But the voices... they were laughing. She could hear them in her mind, she couldn't shut them out. They were laughing at her, and she knew it was because of the situation she had got herself into, the situation they had put her in. She couldn't eat, she couldn't find reverie, and the friends she was staying with became worried. She was so tortured by the voices, she didn't even notice when the priests of Corellon had shown up. The master had scried her while she was so tortured that she couldn't notice, and had informed the high priests where they could find a practicing necromancer.

They found her so tormented, that they immediately suspected that she had conjured up some spirit and lost control of it. They raised their holy symbols in a turning ritual, and the voices, with one last round of torturous laughter, left.

There was silence in her mind for the first time in decades as she looked up at the circle of priestesses surrounding her. She felt that it wasn't anything the priestesses had done that had made the voices leave. They had simply finished their torture and left. She passed out right there, but remembered what one of the priestesses had said before she had succumbed to blessed reverie...

"Necromancer scum."

She had come to in a cell, with a high priestess waiting for her. She had been bound by a spell and was unable to speak, but the priestess did all the talking.

"Junei Luelin, you have been judged guilty of practicing the forbidden art of necromancy. Proof of this has been provided by your master wizard, and by the display you provided with the spirit you had lost control of. Be thankful it was you the spirit had tortured and not another innocent soul, or you would not have awoke. You will be exiled from Evermeet, and on your life you will never return. So be it."

The priestess had left, and then two more had come. They had bound and gagged her, and carried her to a waiting craft. They had given he captain of the boat orders to drop her off at the first port off of Evermeet he came to, and to make sure the people of whatever city that was knew what kind of scum they were dealing with.

Junei lay there, still contemplating summoning Yonia. She was scared, and truly alone for the first time in her life. The voices, which had comforted her and been her companion for so long, were no longer there. They had betrayed her, led her down stray paths to forbidden magic, and then left her. They had never been her friend, she realized. They had used her, and now no longer had a use for her.

She cried. She sobbed around the gag in her mouth and sniffled into the hard floor. Nobody was there to comfort her. She reached around in her mind. There had to be at least one of the voices still there. She couldn't be completely alone! But she was.

She gave a mental scream out to anything. Any of the voices that remained behind, anything that wanted to answer. She just wanted any kind of company! And that's when... the darkness came.

"Dear Junei," the darkness said. "You have had quite the rough few days, haven't you?" Junei just nodded, unable to speak around the gag, tears streaming from her eyes and shining with gratitude to this being that had answered her mental cry.

"I have been watching you for quite some time, you have become quite the skilled little death mage." Junei realized that it wasn't the darkness speaking... it was a being in the darkness. Her eyes began to adjust, and she could just barely see the outline of a woman. "It is unfortunate that those on Evermeet could never understand you, but this presents a wonderful opportunity."

Junei just slumped back into the floor. What could be so wonderful about this? Did this being come just to torture her more, like the voices had? The being stepped closer, and she could start to make out the being's features. She was beautiful! She had the ageless features of elves, but was missing the pointed ears. But she took ageless to another level completely. She looked as if she could be... immortal.

The being smiled. "You are quick for one so young. And I am not here to torture you." Junei gave a start. This being could read her thoughts. "I am a goddess. You may call me the Mistress of the Night. I am here to help you, young necromancer. But my help comes with a price." 'Anything!' thought Junei. "You must become my agent. Renounce Corellon! He has forsaken you anyway! Become my agent. Go to Cormyr, and await my further orders."

'I will!' thought Junei. 'I will do as you ask, Mistress! Just don't let them execute me!' Junei had heard the captain as he had looked in on her one time. "She'll live a short few hours where she's going. I heard the people at that town hate necromancers more than the elves do."

Shar smiled, and she and the unnatural darkness in the room began to fade. "Remember, my little agent. This should be kept a secret. I wouldn't want my little agent in Cormyr to be killed before I have a chance to use her." As Shar faded completely, she whispered one last warning. "Tell no one you follow me."

The darkness faded, leaving a small, green glowing being behind. Yonia blinked as she found herself summoned, before her mistress who was clearly too bound to make the movements to summon her correctly. But she was here now, and her mistress was obviously in trouble.

"Mistress, what happened?" She eyed the ropes. "I can take care of that." She took her dagger and cut through the ropes. As Junei was freed from her bonds, she held a finger to her lips. "Sshh..." she whispered quietly to her familiar. "We've got to get out of hewe."

Yonia nodded, and went to inspect the door's lock. "I can get this. Can you take care of the guard?" she whispered to Junei. Junei nodded, and began the movements to cast a spell. As Yonia popped the lock and the door swung open, Junei cast a ray at the guard. The guard dropped to the floor, unable to continue standing in his full plate armor. Junei had stolen most of his strength, and he could no longer move while so encumbered by his armor. Before he could cry out, Junei gagged him with the hated gag she had worn for so long. He could not even lift his hands to remove it, he simply continued to slump to the floor, burdened by his armor.

Junei raced down the corridors of the ship, trying to find an escape route. She opened a room, and found herself surrounded. It was the ship galley she had burst into. The captain was in there, and spotted her immediately. "The necromancer!" he exclaimed, and moved to draw his sword, but Junei was quicker. She cast a spell on him, and suddenly, he saw her in a whole new light. "T-the Necromancer! S-she's free! Run for your lives!" The galley burst into chaos as everyone rushed to one of the exits she was not currently standing in. She had no trouble following a group to the deck, where the group she had been following promptly jumped ship. Most of the passengers on the deck that saw figured her for the probable reason, and jumped ship as well. The first mate was on deck, and seeing this, scowled at her. Junei cast a spell, and suddenly his scowl turned into a smile. "Why, lady Necromancer! What a pleasant surprise! I apologize for your accomodations on this trip, but I'm sure you understand it was necessary."

Junei nodded to the charmed first mate. "The captain and I had a misundewstanding. How fast can you get me off this boat?"

The first mate rubbed his chin. "It'll be about 10 minutes to port, we're almost there. Or we can give you a little boat... the tide is right, you should just drift right to shore."

Junei nodded, and was loaded in a little boat with a few days' supplies. She did drift for a few hours, which gave her a chance to catch up on some much needed rest, but the first mate had been right. She drifted up onto a shore near the town with a little bump that woke her from her reverie. She gathered her supplies, and started her journey to where her goddess Shar had told her to go: Cormyr.

//I know, this has been almost too long in coming. Sorry. Again, any comments, nitpicks, etc., drop them in Grokan's PMbox.

Shade_81