Much had happened as Ivan had described it as he'd worked whatever spell it took to pull my spirit back from Shar's itching fingers. I'd allowed the Dragonborn women to paint over my scars and tattoos, I'd known precisely what to say to Mikhail's questions of faith, and I'd known not to show concern when the dragon came.
But when Mikhail and I entered the cave, I was on my own.
The path through the place was lined with bones and horns, as though the camp had cleaned and saved the remains of every Tiefling they'd ever killed. The stale air reeked of rotting and burned flesh. Planted torches only went a few feet; utter darkness greeted us within minutes. My eyes adjusted quickly to the absolute absence of light, the darkness becoming to me like a dreary day, but it also became obvious that Mikhail's eyes could do no such thing.
"Perhaps my master wishes to come close to me," I whispered gently, pausing my easy advance so that he too would stop. "The way is dark, but I can see it all, all the way up to the altar."
Mikhail stood absolutely still and first glared into the darkness, then squinted into it. At last he turned back, pulled up one of the torches that had been planted into the ground, and came back with it. I watched the entire time, so that my eyes could readjust to the presence of light, and inclined my head in respect when he returned to my side.
"Shall we continue?" he smiled grimly reaching out for my hand. I tried not to betray concern as I placed my hand in his again. Touching him always came with the worried thrill that I might find myself conveniently occupied by his own spirit.
We'd only gotten a few steps farther on before shouts from the camp began echoing in the cave. They sounded strong and militant, as though they were declaring battle. I turned, assuming that Mikhail would want to go and check on his people, but he squeezed my hand.
"No need. They are all well trained, and this is our day."
"Of course, my master; as you wish," I recanted, turning back around and trying to ignore the hollers that sprung around the cave like the flickers of light from the torch. A few minutes after that, the first shrill scream of some young child pierced the enclosing darkness. It was distant, but still sharp enough to be quite disturbing. Mikhail himself paused, then pursed his lips and pressed onward toward the jagged altar before us. Wickedly barbed bear traps and rope traps littered the area- some with the remains of unwary adventurers still clinging to them. Mikhail paused at one point to reset a bear trap that a rat had tripped, and the tough, rusted jaws of it tore the poor creature, still living, in half as he pulled it back.
The altar, and the dais that had been carved around it, was enough to stop me in my tracks. Heaps of gold and jewels had been surrounded by the speared and crushed remains of those who'd been mauled by traps. No one had seen fit to clear the carnage away for some reason, and the sight and stench of it was unbearable. I pulled away from Mikhail, trying to prevent myself from retching, but he gripped my hand like an iron clamp, and I was left to shield myself only with a wavering right hand.
"This strikes terror into the hearts of those who do not follow Her Dark Majesty," Mikhail beamed, completely ignoring my obvious impending illness. "Even as they stretch out their hands to take for themselves this horde dedicated to her honor, they tremble. They sweat. They pay her homage with their fear."
My breath came in small, but audible gags, and I shut my eyes, willing myself to maintain some semblance of decorum as Mikhail reveled in the filth.
"Oh, but of course," Mikhail realized as he watched my form crumple slightly, "Lord Bahamut does not approve?"
I waved my hand weakly, still trying with little success to settle my stomach. Mikhail, perhaps willfully misunderstanding my signal of difficulty, planted the torch again and pulled me to himself. The rapid movement was too much, as I was forced to quickly breathe the putrid air in, and I was sick- all over. The food that had been simple and bland going down reeked like the worst of Orcish cuisine when it returned, and Mikhail found himself plastered from the stomach downward. He let go of me at once, and I collapsed to the ground, still heaving for a few moments before I could control myself.
And chillingly, he laughed.
It was not some simple sound, the product of amusement, but a maniacal cacophony, echoing from the cavern's walls and pressing down on me like a solid hand. Utterly afraid, tears began to come to my eyes as I gasped, gagged and vomited again, by this time giving up little but water and the juices of the stomach.
"Yes, my dearest, indeed. Such would be the Platinum Dragon's reaction, I'm sure." I couldn't look up, but I didn't have to, as Mikhail's soaked robe splatted to the ground. He reached down and slid his hands under my arms, lifting me gently to my feet and wiping the remains of my illness from me with my own scant clothing- a bit of the ceremonial paint came with it, but he did not seem to mind. This done, he disrobed me entirely and picked me up completely, stepping over my pool of sick and carrying me toward a slightly moldy and blood-spattered bed roll.
"Rest here," he counseled calmly, as though we were in the most serene of places. Perhaps he was. "Your fear and revulsion has, I'm sure, pleased Her Dark Majesty greatly. I shall do my best to clean the area before we kneel before the Dark Queen and request her grim blessings."
I had little physical strength left to do anything but what he'd asked, and I tried not to turn my head to notice precisely why there was an arc of old blood across the roll. I didn't dare close my eyes for fear of what creatures would crawl on me, so I found myself staring terrified holes into the ceiling, wondering what god was capable of putting up with, let alone enjoying, such a gruesome display. It seemed a hideously long wait, each second passing as though it had been an age. When Mikhail returned with the torch, he reeked of bile, but I could not even summon the strength to be unwell again.
"Come, let us pray," Mikhail invited, stretching his hand out to me. I accepted it silently, taking my time to get up, trying to prepare myself to see again that gut-wrenching heap of death-splattered treasure.
The altar itself, a twisted metal work that branched up from the ground with five protruding hooks, would have been lovely, if it were not painted in blood with entrails hanging from the various metal spikes. Great care had been taken to adorn it with swirls and loose knot-work engravings, not unlike the ceremonial painting that I'd had to lay still for hours to receive. In addition to the gore before the altar, the thick tree-trunk like work was flanked on either side by large torture apparatuses- a spiked coffin on one side and a spiked metal rack on the other. The rack was fitted with huge gears, hooks, and two different cranks, and sat near what appeared to be a cold fire pot, and my imagination went wild with the images of victims being pulled apart on a heated rack.
I knelt with Mikhail, but could hardly listen to the words coming out of his mouth. I was too busy being disgusted and horrified by the fact that moment by moment, I was becoming accustomed to the smell, acclimatized to the obvious signs of torture. I wondered at the internal health of a society that festered with this type of worship- the type that dragged victims into pitch black caves to be sliced at, bored through with spikes, pulled apart on blistering hot racks and finally tossed in pieces onto a spiked altar.
Worse, I wondered at myself for being able to imagine these things.
Fortunately, whatever worship had been required was able to be suffered through without saying anything at all. After some hour or so on my knees, my legs were angry, stinging and weak when Mikhail drew me to stand and hold on to him.
"We are as one," he said joyfully, dispelling all other thoughts from my mind. "The Dark Queen is most pleased with your rapidly darkening thoughts- your fear has given way to her reverence. Perhaps you were not meant to symbolize the Unified at all, but instead to reclaim this camp for her great and most vicious ways."
"Not so, my lord," I protested quietly, shaking my head. "I am sure I was born with the eyes of the great Platinum Dragon, who had called me out before I had even known of him."
Mikhail kissed the crown of my head, which I accepted with a thin smirk and a curtsey. We walked cautiously in the light of the one torch back over to the bedroll, which really was only large enough for one person to fit comfortably. I made a pretense of wanting to pray, and he went to bed alone.
Never before had I been so grateful for the Bleak Blessing.
While my father, Ceubel, had been a great warrior cursed, as he saw it, with no children save daughters, my mother, Naja, had been a grasping, intelligent woman who had befriended a particularly worthy Drow opponent. Together, Naja and her Drow woman made myself and most of my sisters more kin to shadow than to each other. I would have done them proud that night, silently phasing out of the light into the utter darkness of the rest of the cave. As I walked close to the entrance of the cave, able to clearly see the crude traps that Mikhail had studiously avoided or reset before, I could see great leaping fires and hear cries of battle. It seemed as though the Dragonborn were evenly matched by archers that I could not see and melee fighters that zoomed around them like gnats. Most of their Human cohabitants seemed either turned against them or slain, blood and fire rushing this way and that.
I turned my head over my shoulder.
Why had Mikhail not turned back to help his people when we had first heard the cries arise?
I looked down at the pathway that stretched out before me, lined with the remains of others.
I knelt down and put both hands to a horn that thrust up out of the ground as though it had been one of the carved spikes on the altar to Tiamat.
There had never been a Unified. Not for Mikhail. Not even for a moment.
I picked up a fairly heavy stone and turned back, jaw set and lips pursed.
The screaming behind me strengthened my resolve.
Like the selfish, grasping, prideful anti-goddess he worshiped, Mikhail had only ever cared for his own happiness, his own comfort, his own success.
Tiamat seemed to me, in that moment, very like Shar. And Mikhail seemed very like the selfish man who complained aloud to that goddess every time his name was used to call one of his daughters.
It was nothing for me to walk back through the pitch blackness of the cave, and when I reached the torch, I pulled it up, walked it a few paces away so that the area near the bedroll was untouched by its halo of light, and then picked up my chosen implements again. Quietly, I set down the rock behind me as I knelt next to this creature who'd been called master for years. With both hands gripping the horn tightly, I raised my arms.
I did not know where Mi'ishaen was. For all I knew, she could have been dead, killed while bound as the attackers raged through the Dragonborn camp. The thought of a pair of dull red eyes staring forever into the darkness of death poured force into my upper body, and the horn dove into Mikhail's temple as though it had been a sharpened pact blade prepared for the purpose.
His body jerked- his eyes and mouth opened, but sound failed to come. I watched for just a few moments before turning to the stone behind me. Again I raised my arms, and with a grunt of effort brought the solid thing down against the horn, pinning Mikhail through the temple to the ground. His eyes glazed, but did not close, and I did not check to see if he still lived. I let go, and the stone rolled from my hands over his head and onto the ground behind him with a heavy thud. My body either realized that I'd just murdered someone or that it was very chilly, for I began to tremble, but I would not let myself cry.
"Curse you," I whispered viciously through tight lips. "Curse your goddess, and your gold, and your blind selfish pride."
I got up and retrieved the torch, walking back for the last time to the bedroll and simply dropping it there. I walked off a few paces, then turned to watch, still shivering, as the bedroll slowly began to burn. I did not mind the scent of Mikhail's burning scale and flesh at all, and I don't know how long I stood there, watching as the fire delighted itself with melting the paint and then eating into the scale underneath.
When I finally did tear myself away from the sight to walk back again toward the mouth of the cave, I noted that the torches were all out, and that the witch of the morning was clawing impatiently at the horizon. The battle in the camp was still raging, and a few killed soldiers, some Dragonborn, some Human, some Elven and some kobolds, were scattered all over the place.
As though I were in a dream, I walked forward and pulled a green cloth from one of the Elven soldiers to wrap around my nakedness and tie in the front. As I turned my head slowly and mechanically over my shoulders, I saw two daggers that had clearly been the end of at least one kobold. The blood had dried onto the talon-tipped pommels, leading me to believe that the damage had been done quite near the beginning of the battle the night before. Perhaps the invaders had seen Mikhail and I enter the cave and had thought to take our lives.
I was somehow strangely glad that they had left me the grim honor of claiming Mikhail's life myself.
I walked out with the daggers hanging at my sides, not looking for battle, but instead for the remains of battle. I'm not sure what I must have looked like, but Dragonborn soldiers and invaders alike completely avoided me as I walked down toward the river, which had just about jumped its banks. Mikhail's tent had been burned, and was now a smoking ruin. The Hall of Horns looked as though it had been smashed through with a crude battering ram, and all the furniture in it, altars and all, had been smashed or burned. Many tents were pulled up, smoking, but Ivan's tent, right at the banks of the river, stood whole. I made my way down toward it, but was stopped by a heavy hand on my shoulder. I slowly turned and looked up into a glittering hazel right eye and a scarred left side that had suffered yet another slice. It bled freely, and I put my hand to it, eliciting a slight wince from the other eye.
"It is not hurting until you are touching it," the sonorous voice grumbled. "Maybe I am not seeing the dagger of my opponent soon enough- but, this slice is better here than in my neck."
"What's happening, Aleksei?" I asked disjointedly, aware of a Dragonborn fighting a pair of much smaller soldiers just beyond me.
"It is ending, this battle. Many times this people further south, toward the water, are complaining of bandits, but the ruler is doing nothing. So when I am coming with kobolds to find Bahlzair, who I am not bringing back at all, this people are angry, and are defending themselves. They are not knowing that I am not wishing to take their gold. They are furious. I am saying, 'Let me go, let also my kobolds go, and I will destroy this bandits for you. So they are sending good soldiers; they are saying, 'Do this, and you will be safe leaving from us. You and everyone you are saying is safe. But do not come back.' I am promising them death of Mikhail- but I am not seeing Mikhail...?"
And I smiled. I felt myself doing it. A horrible, bloody grimace that explained more to Aleksei than any description could have done.
"He is much deserving that. My family is being avenged by Shadow Child- this is good story for tavern. But you smell awful, even for battle. Come, we are winning already; let us celebrate."
And with that, Aleksei simply picked me right up off the ground, sat down on the banks of the river, and rolled me in. I tumbled from his lap with a splash, still clutching both weapons. Digging them into the river bed, I gained the ability to control my place in the water and could stand up against the current, which was much stronger than I thought. I whipped my hair up and back out of the water, spraying Aleksei and laughing as some of the black and green ceremonial paint dripped off his left side. It seemed to aggravate the slice just on the outside of the socket of his scarred left eye, but he shrugged the pain off with an easy going laugh.
But even with this joyous reunion, I still worried.
I had seen not one trace of neither Mi'ishaen nor her new-found cousin.
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