3:36 Close to the Edge.

Keep-go-ing-keep-go-ing-keep-go-ing-keep-go-ing

With one syllable per foot fall, the dark-leather clad rogue ran, and ran, and ran.  The pain that had begun at the leading edge of her right shoulder blade hammered miserably across her back, but it still took Mi'ishaen until sundown to decide to pay attention to it.

It was less of a decision, and more of a sudden descent.
It wasn't graceful, either. Instead, it was an embarrassing, agonizing, slam-and-slide act onto a green-and-white patched tree.  She bitterly counted herself lucky that no one was around to witness it.  Looking up at the sky, with its tawny, crimson and radiant yellow streaks, the Tiefling panted her weariness out into the still air.

Those....guards.....are.......pitiful.

She had torn far past the city limits, she knew, since she'd literally leaped over the walls behind some guards' backs without much thinking about what the ground might feel like when she connected with it from that height.  As beautiful as she made it look, turning like an experienced dancer in the air, the descent from the proud edifice had been worse than the drop from the rooftop, sending a jolt of agony through her right shoulder and nearly into her lungs themselves.  Only at that point had she realized that there was an arrow sticking out of her upper body somehow, firmly stuck all the way into her armor.  She pulled it out instinctively, both stunned and terrified by the thing- so much so that she didn't waste time thinking about what damage that could have done.  Instead, she kept running, past the outer guard, past the tell-tale shifting from open space to more densely wooded area, into some strange mix of woodland and swampland  for which she couldn't find words.  The ground underneath her was damp, as though it had freshly rained, and the mud felt good through the hole in the armor.

Cool, she thought.  It feels cool.

Her mind danced from her escape- successful, mostly- to the operation itself- botched, mostly- and, funny enough, to the rest of the group.  Her thoughts stuck there momentarily, like a skiff on a sandbar, dwelling first on Bahlzair, then Aleksei, and finally, Silveredge.

Edge, she smiled.  She knew she was smiling, somehow, even though it seemed... different.  Strange.  Distant.  She chalked it up to being tired.  Who leaps across ten rooftops, dives off a city wall, and then runs, breakneck, for at least five miles without winding up tired?

Or was it ten miles?

Distance and time suddenly seemed much more relative than they had just a few minutes ago... at least she thought it might be mere minutes ago...

But it seemed fitting to have time gyrate around her like a satin dress might hiss and play between a dancer's ankles, immediately after running for her life due to impersonating a murderer.

Impersonating Bahlzair, she smiled again, somehow proud of the fact that she personally knew the creature whose murders had been so spectacularly upsetting that his style was selected to strike fear into the hearts of crown-sanctioned, seasoned mercenaries.

I wonder if he will think I'm talking to him, Mi'ishaen thought distractedly, remembering Aleksei's words.  I wonder what he thinks I'm saying... what he'll do... if he'll take offense... or... something.

Mi'ishaen breathed more evenly, more deeply, more calmly....and...

...suddenly found herself running again.  While the sky still shone with the red and orange streaks of sunset, the ground had changed, was more clay than soil, and had turned slightly reddish, betraying its high iron content.  The air no longer hung heavy with the smell of saltwater, but instead burned with spices, smoky scented oils and roasting meats.  Just as Mi'ishaen noticed the change of the ground upon which she was running, it changed again, sporting actual cobblestones.  Actual buildings began to fly by her as she ran- recognizable, as though she had passed them before.

This is- it's Kragal- I... I'm home.

Strange as it was, the knowledge of where she was put an incredible energy in every footfall.  Instead of becoming more and more weary, her excitement and power grew and grew, until she felt as light and rambunctious as she had years before.  Everything was just as it had been- every street, every street seller, and every gate.  One humble side gate was manned with heavily armored guards standing at as rigid an attention as though it had been a main one, and Mi'ishaen recognized one of the younger ones.

"Good morning, Enerys!"

"Good morning, Isha!" the guard called back.  It was against protocol to do so, and he received a hideous look from the nearby commander, but Mi'ishaen felt herself glowing.

Looming in the distance beyond the scene stood the huge, intricately carved iron main gates.  Shaped to look like majestic trees, they reached artful arms outward as though the cold metal limbs might swing in the breeze.  The actual main posts of the gates, which were held in place only by their own weight, stretched up and met at prayerful hand-like points at their apex.  As Mi'ishaen continued to stare at this impressive vista, Enerys returned his attentions to her and smiled.  Mi'ishaen realized that she was shorter than he- far shorter- although at her current age, she should have been looking him straight in the face.

What am I, seven again?

She wanted to laugh at the idea, and the piercing, shrieking sound that echoed in her ears was starkly prepubescent.  Encouraged by what wasn't at all the laughter he might have intended, Enerys jogged the few steps that separated them, got to one knee, and began tickling her.  Mi'ishaen writhed and hooted, completely broken free of the rogue who would have punished an offender of her personal space with either a blade or a well placed knee.  The commander walked over to actually talk to Enerys about leaving his post, and as the grim-faced Tiefling approached, the small frame that was pretending to be Mi'ishaen's body pitched forward and began to run again.

"Bye, Nery!"

With that, the city walls flew by, the market was torn through, stalls were dodged around and people were either blown by or ducked under.  Soon she was in the residential district, navigating between people's children, pets, wells, and drying lines.

Oooh!  The baker.  The baker's purse!

And with an impish smile, she turned on her heel and headed back for the market.

She remembered with relish the stall that she'd once hopped over- thereby thoroughly annoying the weaver who worked it- the kids whose card game she'd disturbed, and finally the trundling baker, who never had the good sense to get anything better than a common, single strap purse.  It was so well worn that it should have been retired as an heirloom long ago, and the over-wise, child-sized Mi'ishaen knew precisely which weary string to pull.  In no time, her hands were heavy with a purse that she had never before managed to snatch.  Suddenly, the girl that she was smashed into the woman that she'd grown to be, both forms of her laughing genuinely at the seized quarry.  She whirled around a corner, excited to count out her gain, and was spotted by a portly, fair skinned creature who would have passed for a Human woman, if it weren't for the stubby satyr-like horns at the sides of her head.  Mi'ishaen realized her mistake at once, and wrapped her fingers more tightly around the old purse, preparing to take off running again.

I guess I practically ran everywhere I went... or... is it run every where I go...?

It didn't take long for the chubby apothecary to put her voice loudly into the streets.  "Isha?  Isha!  Mi'ishaen Lucien-Azaroth, you get in this apothecary this instant!  Ide- hey, Ide!  Would you go get your sister?!"

"Shall do, Madam Iti'idre," the dutiful elder brother replied.  To Mi'ishaen's ears, he was twelve- just one year away from being cut down by the War of Ruin.

"Isha, Madam Iti'idre is looking for you!"

But he didn't sound like a dearly departed war veteran, at the moment.  At the moment, he sounded like a playful elder brother, about to bodily tackle his rough-and-tumble, persistently mischievous, and truant little sister.

Mi'ishaen pulled herself mercilessly along the cobblestone streets, pushing her way through market-bound citizens, darting around the sides of shops, and sliding her way down alleys like the professional that she had become.  Surprisingly enough, it seemed that the pursuing elder brother had learned a few things of his own, thundering toward her with an untiring tread that could only have been learned from years of hard quick-marching.  It wasn't even consistent with his actual army experience, which couldn't possibly have lasted long enough to put such discipline into his body.  Mi'ishaen was just distracted enough to turn down an alley that she knew dead ended because of three houses that sat back-to-back-to-back.

"Ha, gotcha!" called Iaden from the top of the alley.

No, you don't, Mi'ishaen thought. With all the knowledge of twenty seven years crammed into a body that had yet to endure the two extra decades, the pint-sized rogue ran four steps up the wall, clutched the purse and the extra fabric in her skirts tightly, and somersaulted over her pursuer.  Iaden, who had charged forward until he was just three steps behind her, wore her surprise at her success on his young face.

"Where did you learn to do that?" he cried after her, turning around to face her.

Mi'ishaen stared at him, the reality of the fact that she could have told him where she had actually learned to "walk the wall" belying the equally real fact that her seven year old self could not have possibly learned it yet.  Time seemed as though it had stopped completely, just as confused as she.

But then Iaden smiled.  "It was great!  I gotta try- soon as I catch you!"

And Mi'ishaen turned to run again.

"Wait- you got it!  The purse- you finally got it!" he exulted, nearly as happy about it as she.  "By the Hells!  I've only told you how a million times."

Mi'ishaen blinked as she stopped dead in her tracks, then turned back to look up at him.

I have to look up at him.  Look at him!  He taught me how to snatch purses?

And the thought returned to her as though it had been her own-

Yes, I did.  Didn't think you'd be using it to keep clothes on your body and food in your belly.  I ought to have taught you how to really throw a good punch, but those acrobatics- Papa would be outright ecstatic.  That somersault- it's better than his, actually.  I'll tell him.

Mi'ishaen allowed the purse to fall out of her hands, and it disappeared into the cobblestones of the street, somehow.  In the distance, a strange jewelry seller walked slowly, with what seemed to be one very long, thin, and delicate silvery chain slung across her arms, wrapped around her waist, and even dragging behind her on the cobblestoned ground.  The artful way in which she moved struck the rogue as familiar, but the periwinkle skin and silvery hair of the creature seemed not quite right, somehow.

What is happening? she asked, turning her face upward to Iaden's.  She found that he'd aged much in an instant, growing taller, more muscular.  His hair, like hers, fell thick and unchecked down to his shoulders, which, along with the rest of his body, were now encased in a dark set of heavy armor adorned with thorn-like spikes.

Don't tell me you don't recognize, Iaden replied with a bitter scoff.  Go, Isha.  Go back.  You don't belong here.

Mi'ishaen turned to look up at him again, and found that she did not have as far to look.  His rich, red-streaked brown eyes looked her up and down as he sighed deeply.


Don't.  Don't stay here with us; I can feel you thinking about it.

Why can't I stay? Mi'ishaen spat angrily.  I'm already here, so- 

You're smart enough to know why I'm here, Iaden said very quietly, as though the admission were embarrassing to him.  Why Mami, and Papa, and all of us are here.  But you can still leave, so- so do it.  Get out.

Well, what if I don't want to go, what then? Mi'ishaen shot back, grieved as she had not been in years.

And as if she would answer, the jewelry seller appeared again, seeming to have somehow teleported from the distance that she'd been to a mere twenty yards from Iaden.  This time, she looked up and seemed to notice the Tiefling rogue.  The jewelry that ran from her neck, down her arms, encircled her waist and dragged behind her glimmered as brilliantly as her hair, but her eyes were strangely and terrifyingly black.

Hey!  Mi'ishaen cried at once, somehow struck by the change in the woman's appearance.  Scat!  You don't-

If she doesn't belong here either, Iaden urged, maybe she can show you the way out.  Follow her.  Let her take you from this place.  

I thought I- but I don't, Mi'ishaen frowned.  She doesn't look- I don't know that woman.  I'm not going anywhere with her.

Vor Kragal fell into the Hells not long after you left her, Iaden replied in a flat tone worthy of an exasperated elder brother.  All of these peddlers, all the guards, all these people- none of us should look right.  Not to someone who still draws natural breath.  Go.  Home.

But I AM home! Mi'ishaen hollered, frustrated.  There is no place closer to home than-

Than this? Iaden charged viciously.  Than this graveyard, this open and obvious sepulcher?  Seyashen walks with the dead because he has to, not because he wants to spend quality family time with his father and sister.  How dare you now, you who despised his abilities and his message, not knowing whether to believe in them or not, willingly put yourself in a position that he had to be nearly sent mad to accept?  

Little sister stared at big brother, unable to make any kind of answer.  A pained compassion came over Iaden's face slowly, and he opened his armor-clad arms.

It... will be cold.  For obvious reasons.

Mi'ishaen suddenly rushed forward and hugged Iaden with all her might, and he folded himself around her for a few moments before pushing her away by the shoulders. 

This hurts me too, you know.  I thought I'd never get to say goodbye, and now that I can, I...

When Mi'ishaen looked up, tears standing in her eyes, Iaden stepped back, then let his sister go entirely.  A small throbbing began under the back of Mi'ishaen's right shoulder, going unnoticed for the moment.

Yasha sent me- and he didn't have to ask twice.  I'm going to go tell him that you're okay.  Don't make a liar out of me.

Still unable to speak, the dutiful little sister nodded.

The dark-eyed jewelry peddler, a midnight black, bodiced peasant dress swirling from her upper body down to the ground, appeared again immediately behind Iaden.   She reached out her arms, Iaden stood back and knelt down as though he were in the presence of royalty.  The silver color that had been in her hair seemed to run down from it like a river, creating a strange pool at her feet and leaving her hair as raven black as her eyes.  Mi'ishaen looked up into the abyss of those dark eyes, and found that the woman-like being was smiling.

"What do you think of this one, heart of my beloved's heart?" she asked, plucking the single chain up from one arm to hold it out.  Mi'ishaen noticed that the chain held multiple loops where small charms should be.

It's...uh... pretty, Mi'ishaen managed, finding her throat dry.  The pain under her shoulder grew noticeably, and she shifted uncomfortably.

"It could do with some embellishment, I think," the seller replied.  "Something worthy of my beloved, who wants nothing in her world more than it.  Your eye is skilled at appraisal, so give me your opinion; shall I set gold into the charms, or rubies?"

Rubies, Mi'ishaen answered at once.  Gold would raise the market value, but it would only really be useful to her if she should choose to sell it... which it sounds like she wouldn't do... if it's all she wants in the whole world....yeah.  Rubies.

"You speak of utility instead of beauty; yet you speak truly," the jewelry seller smiled, revealing a pair of wing charms with rubies set deeply where the wings might have attached to an avian creature's back.  "Come with me, First Beloved, and set the stones."

I don't know how to make jewelry, Mi'ishaen balked, concerned instantly by the creature's use of Silveredge's words.  Who are you, anyway?

The seller smiled and moved forward to gather her into chilly, delicate-seeming arms.  As soon as the arms neared the Tiefling, the light blue of their skin faded into alabaster whiteness.

"Do not fear me," came the gentle reply.

I don't, Mi'ishaen shot back, looking from the seller to her still-kneeling brother.  I just want to know who you are.

"A guide."

And as if to demonstrate her point, the seller turned around and pointed toward the horizon, where a very familiar Shadar-kai knelt.  Her head bowed, allowing all her glimmering silver hair to fall like a sheet of ice around her, and her hands were folded in her lap.  The seller drew close to Mi'ishaen, and as her pale hands touched the back of Mi'ishaen's right shoulder, the Tiefling squeezed her eyes shut and groaned in pain.  Her back arched involuntarily, and was greeted with the sensation of slick earth that squished through her armor.


In what felt like a mere second later, Mi'ishaen opened her eyes to a dawn-stained sky that peeked gingerly through the treetops as though it wasn't sure that it should be looking down at her.  The Tiefling sat up with a start, looking around herself at the tell-tale signs of her arrival to the place.  Splotches of old blood, especially the wide one in the place from which she'd just sat up, preached loudly to her of how close she had come to meeting her end.

"I met Iaden," she said to herself aloud, trying to convince herself of the reality of the situation.  "I met him, and talked to him, and..."

She rolled her right shoulder, and although it was stiff, the agony that had brought her to the ground before had faded into a dull throbbing.  She found that her right hand was closed into a fist, and opened it.

There lay a very small, smooth ruby, like a pool of blood in the flesh of her hand.  It reminded her at once of the blackness of the seller's eyes.

A guide.

"Okay, Seyashen," she sighed, biting the backs of her lips.  "Okay, you win.  You're getting your damned letter now, because this is worth writing about."

3:35 The family business.

"He said he sensed something 'not right' about him," Terezio finished, looking down at the juice in his cup as he swirled it.

Dresan looked uncomfortably from his new-found grandparents to his unmoved mother, who seemed to be closely inspecting her beautifully carved wooden fork before putting it back into the half-cold food left on her dinner plate.

"Not right how?" the middle-aged mage finally asked as he tore his eyes away.  "Did the man sense any enchantment, any compulsion?"

"No," Terezio said in a disapproving tone, looking up from his juice.  "The battlemage said it was as though a spell was absent.  That something magical should have been there, and it wasn't.  You really must listen more carefully."

Dresan rolled his eyes immediately, nearly out of force of habit.

"Did your mother teach you to do that?" Druce chirped sharply.  "It's very rude-  Trizelle, why did you allow him to learn that?"

The grey haired female pursed her lips and continued to look down at her utensil without uttering a single word in reply.

"Trizelle, your mother spoke to you," Terezio warned, the eyes behind his spectacles narrowing.

Although Trizelle still didn't bother to look up, she did finally speak.  "Did she exhibit unusual behavior?"

"What?" chorused three of the four other diners at the table.

"Silveredge," Urmlaspyr's court mage said flatly.  "Unusual behavior?"

The retired battlemage recovered himself first, but still spoke with a note of surprise.  "The Oversword noted that it seemed as though the Sunfire mage had enslaved her again.  Her answers weren't always to the point, even when she'd been asked direct questions of identification."

"Unusual?" Trizelle repeated for a third time, finally looking up at her father with a weary gaze.

You really must listen more carefully, Dresan thought bitterly.

"I believe I can say the same to you," a powerful something said inside the Tiefling's mind.  The message was so strong that Dresan's head throbbed momentarily in response.  Self-conscious and concerned that he may slip into a fit of possession at the dinner table, he began to study his own fork.

Terezio raised an eyebrow at his daughter's disenchanted look, then answered.  "A soldier close to her said that she spoke directly to the dog after he scratched her up.  As though he would understand her."

Trizelle broke gaze with her father, looking back down at her plate.  "Aleksei?"

And the Dragonborn, who had remained painfully silent for most of the meal, looked up from the table to Dresan, then to Trizelle before answering.  "This is strange for Niku, but not for Rasha."

" 'Niku' is mangled Elven," Dresan noted quietly enough to be speaking to himself.  "Funny that none of my compatriots ever spoke of her."

"They wouldn't," Trizelle replied simply in a similarly quiet voice.  Without any emotive note or shade of feeling on her face, her son was unable to tell whether her words had been a comment on the competence of his companions or on the nature of the Shadar-kai herself.

"That's not nice, to trade secrets at the table," Druce pronounced firmly, setting her utensil down completely.  "Now, really, Triz, I know I didn't raise you to do such things; I don't know why you permitted your son to learn them."

"I raised my son with no help from you, or anyone," Trizelle finally replied, looking her mother straight into the eyes.  "Perhaps some delicate or polite qualities were overlooked in the process."

"There were a few useful details omitted as well," the powerful something soothed inside Dresan's head.  The recipient of the message bit his lips, trying to ignore whatever-it-was until he could get a chance to speak to his mother about it.

A few moments of intensely uncomfortable silence passed between the diners.

"How old is Niku, Aleksei?" Dresan asked when he had released his hold on his lips, fidgeting slightly in his seat.

Aleksei shook his head.  "I am not sure.  He is big, but he comes and goes only when Rasha is asking, or when he himself is wanting to do so."

"So he doesn't recognize commands, then?" Dresan wondered.  "Would the Sunfire sell him untrained?"

"You think he's a familiar," Terezio suggested, locking eyes with the middle-aged mage even though he was speaking to his daughter.

"Yes," Trizelle noted.  "Silveredge has raw talent."

"If he's too young to recognize standard commands, he's too young to be a familiar," Terezio volleyed sharply, still staring at Dresan as though it had been his idea.

"And if she hasn't been trained in how to command a familiar- if she asks him to do what she needs instead of commanding him- she can't possibly have full control over him," Dresan noted.

"Loyalty," Trizelle replied without losing a moment.  "Strengthens focus."

"Enough to bind a puppy bred for fighting to a weak, inexperienced mage?" Terezio wondered aloud.

"Positively," Trizelle answered, finally looking straight at her son.  Dresan, somehow strangely encouraged, focused on following her train of thought.

"If the dog had been a familiar, the bonding magic would have been sensed," the retired battlemage grunted.

"If he is a familiar, he would try to protect her-" Dresan began, interested in his mother's look.  Her eyes seemed to be opened, somehow- "vulnerable" was the only adjective that seemed to fit, and he wondered if that was his own idea.

"-but she protected him, instead," Trizelle finished.

"So the 'missing' spell-"

"-was instead a magic aura."

Mother and son, in that strange moment, realized each other as if for the first time.  Trizelle broke the spell first, looking back down at her fork as though it were the most interesting thing in the room.  The open, vulnerable quality in her gaze disappeared, and Dresan felt somehow different for having experienced it.

Closer to her?  More understanding of her?

"No.  More power over her."

Dresan drained the wine in his cup completely, drawing Trizelle's faint attention and a stare from Druce.

"Not possible," Terezio muttered grumpily, shaking his head.  "The battlemage should have been able to perceive the glamer-work immediately."

"There is the blood abjuration theory," Dresan suddenly said, as though the theory had just explained itself to him.

"No," Trizelle said, shaking her head.  "Shadow Child."

"Blood abjuration," the old man cut in sharply, as though his daughter hadn't spoken at all.  "The battlemage did say-"

Dresan, who had set his fork down, began figuring the factors aloud.  "I remember- 'If self-inflicted physical damage can be made inversely proportional to incoming damage, be it physical or magical in nature, there should be a point at which the incoming damage can be reduced lower than the lowest species standard damage threshold,' right?"

"But if the target of the physical damage is capable of transmutating their own blood into a magical focus, she needs only to select the spell best able to counteract the incoming damage," Trizelle replied.

"But only one being has been known to successfully transmutate self-inflicted damage into usable magica of any kind-"

"The Raven Queen," Trizelle injected with an impenetrable mask of dispassion on her face.

"-by the misguided 'benevolence' of Nerull himself, and at the cost of hundreds of trapped souls.  I... don't know if there are... mortal... blood abjurers-"

"That is because the only mortal practitioners of blood abjuration," Trizelle counseled in a tone that Dresan immediately recognized as her teaching voice, "are all 'Shadow Children,' or Shadar-kai who, by means still not fully researched, are naturally capable of transmuting their own physical or mental damage into potential arcane or divine energy."

"The Shadow Child 'theory' is a political and religious pacifier," Terezio interjected.  "It's meant to keep the rabble from clamoring for a genocidal-"

"No, the ability to transmute damage into potential magical energy is a testable trait," Dresan mused slowly.    "Although it... is... notably... a.... bloodline trait."

"You're welcome," the deep ethereal voice soothed.  "You have a few... bloodline traits, let us say... yourself.  Your ability to commune with me this easily is one of them."

Aleksei closed his eyes, feeling the maddening pain burning through his self-control.  Whispers, unintelligible to the spirit that was trying to deafen itself to them by strength of will alone, skittered like mice through his mind.  On the other side of both his lids, Trizelle had stolen a glance at him, then looked over to her son.

"You're saying that the Shado- the Shadar-kai, rather- incited her own familiar to attack her with the intention of temporarily covering up the familiar bond," Terezio remarked, looking from his grandson to his daughter with irritation printed plainly on his face.

"Yes," Trizelle stated flatly, having gone on to other matters in her mind.

Her mother, sitting immediately across the table from her, had the irritating desire to kick her daughter in the shins.  The distant, empty stare was even worse than the unreasonable staring at the fork, yet it was just as normal now for Trizelle as it had been decades ago.

"First of all, the dog is too young," Terezio snapped bitterly.  "Second, not only is the Shadar-kai too inexperienced to hide a familiar bond from a trained Cormite battlemage, she is too inexperienced to have any sort of familiar at all.  Now, I tell you again, Trizelle, there are no such things as-"

"And how do you explain the 'missing' spell?" Urmlaspyr's court mage said calmly.

"There wasn't a 'missing' spell," the retired battlemage snorted, annoyed at the idea that he could be talked down to at all, let alone by a child of his.  "The creature had a gal-ralan, as most of her kind do.  When the dog attacked her, the gal-ralan absorbed the damage, creating a slight energy vacuum.  I explained that to the boy, and-"

"Neither an implement's absorption nor a practitioner's transmutation of physical damage would result in an energy vacuum of any kind," Trizelle replied.

"And what happened to Thultanthar, then?" Terezio demanded.  "Did it just float into the Plane of Shadow on its own?"

"It was magically shifted into the Plane of Shadow via the strongest teleportation spell documented to date," Trizelle responded without missing a beat.  "For the past decade, there have been yearly HCC conferences held in Myth Drannor on whether or not that spell should be recast for testing; would you like to attend one?"

"HCC?" Druce piped up.  "What's that?  I've never heard-"

"The Human Conjuration Council, dear, and it's because no one from here is affiliated- for good reason, may I add," Terezio answered without taking his eyes away from his daughter.  "Human only in name, it's got Elans, Gnomes- Shadovar themselves-"

"Shadar-kai, Battlemage Ranclyffe," Trizelle reminded immediately.  "Not every-"

"Well, I fail to see the difference, then, Master Ranclyffe!" Terezio rumbled, allowing his fork to thunk down to his half-finished dinner plate.

"Now, Rezi-" Druce began comfortingly.

"Bloodlines," Trizelle shot back.  "This has been tested as well, although some findings are rumored to be lost to the collapse of the Turathi Empire.  Only the Human bloodline Shadar-kai of Thultanthar are true Shadovar.  Not the Human bloodlines through the unwilling, hapless people that were dragged along for the ride from nearby countries, not the Elven bloodlines, and certainly not the actual natives to the Plane of Shadow.  A mere ten percent of the estimated Shadar-kai population, probably even less than that, can truly be called Shadovar."

"Why you are studying anything that could have been found in the Turathi Empire is beyond me, Trizelle," Terezio sighed wearily.  "When did you become an expert on the origin of extraplanar races?"

"I'm not an expert," Trizelle replied quietly.  "I had the opportunity to do extensive testing on a subject that could not reject any of my methodologies- or any of those of my more... sanguine... colleague."

"A mage with a focus more singularly vicious than yours?" Terezio hissed.  "Color me amazed."

"Rezi!" Druce fussed, crossing her arms.  "The first time our daughter comes back since Shade, and this is how you talk to her?  Why can't we simply be a family?  Why can't we forget the spells and the studies and the experimentation or the methodologies involved for just one hour- just one!- and enjoy each other's company?"

And everyone looked at Druce, dumbfounded.

"Sometimes I wish you all were as idiot about magic as I," she added, shifting her chair back to get up from the table.

"Dru- Maman, s'il vous plait ne vas pas," Terezio said suddenly, laying his hand upon her own.  "I apologize.  I brought the subject up and... I don't know what I... well, yes I do.  Trizelle, it... it's hard to admit you're wrong, at my age, but... I'm wrong.  I've been wrong for... well, for longer than this boy has been alive, obviously... it... is my fault that you've been alone all these years.  And... I don't know if it's appropriate to say, but... you don't look like a Tiefling, Dresan.  You look like... like your grandmother, actually, around the eyes, although that hawkish nose is... definitely mine."


Dresan turned to his mother, whose face had not melted in the least.  He was about to be astounded at the impenetrability of her heart when he heard-

"He's named after you... Maman."

Druce put her hands to her face, too moved to speak.  Terezio sat back in his chair and began to cross his arms, then thought better of the motion.  He rested them on the table instead, softly drumming his fingers as though he were waiting for something.  Dresan, for his part, was just as struck as his grandmother, since this information was new to him, as well.  Yet the similarity between Dresan and Drussandra jumped out at him immediately, looming so large that he felt stupid for not noticing it before.

Even before he'd been a knowing part of the family, he had been part of the family, ancestral name and all.  He wondered if Trizelle had ever before planned to tell him anything about it, or whether she intended to take the knowledge to the grave with her.

And then he shivered at the thought of putting his mother in a grave.

Knowing her, she'd sit right back up, he thought, macabre humor his only way to rally back from such a thought.

"She might," the voice echoed in his mind.  "Better learn a few tricks to keep her where she belongs, when the time comes."

"That is enough," Dresan thought at last, squeezing his eyes shut.  "Away from me, whoever you are."

The voice laughed.

"Ah, you were much better off ignoring me," it soothed.  "You've invited me in by speaking to me, so now, I think I'll stay.  You may call me Graz'zt, by the way.  You can thank my benefactors, Aleksei and Bahlzair, for my ability to hang around.  If you'd like to thank them in a tangible manner, I can tell you the perfect ways to bring them to their knees before you- and you'd like that.  I know you would."

"You know nothing about me," Dresan stubbornly insisted.

"Oh, you are just as much a part of my family as you are of this one," Graz'zt said gleefully.  "You see, I'm your father.  You'll find that I, in fact, know a great deal about you.  But even still, I do very much look forward to knowing you."