Baine - Oasis of Usar (5 & 12/02)

The sun setting over Daring Heights outlines the silhouette of a hulking figure braced against the back wall of a seedy tavern. One arm is propping him up, the other clutching at his stomach as he expels the meager contents of his stomach onto the cobblestones. Baine takes a deep breath and straightens up with a groan. He spits on the ground and wipes his brow with the back of a dirty hand before continuing on towards the Order compound with heavy steps.

He realizes he must look quite the mess as he marches into the training yard. The coat of paint that Ben painstakingly applied to his new armor is already worn down, patchy and faded as though sanded down. His usually well-kept hair is tangled and knotted, skin pallid and clammy, eyes bloodshot and lips dry and cracked.

He grabs a recruit roughly by the arm, a dark-skinned tiefling - Floris?

“The Boss, I need to see him. Where is he?”

Floris gives him what the rest of the Order is quickly understanding to be his trademark look of confusion.

“Uh- I’m not-”

Baine shakes the man, cutting him off.

“Now! Where is he?”

From across the yard, Red’s gravelly voice rings out.

“Nine Hells Rosey, let the boy go.”

She walks over as Baine releases Floris, who looks between the two and decides to make himself scarce. Red eyes the half-orc with obvious distaste, wrinkling her nose a bit.

“You look like absolute shit, lad, and you smell worse. The mountains didn’t agree with you, I take it?”

“No sir, they really fuckin’ didn’t. Sir, I need to speak to-”

Red’s eyes flicker to Baine’s neck, and she reaches up and yanks him down by his breastplate.

“What the fuck is that?”

Baine goes a little cross eyed trying to focus on her this close.

“What’s what, sir?”

“Don’t get cute with me, sunshine. That’s a Hell-Mark on your neck. What the fuck have you been up to?”

Baine’s only reply is to turn away and heave bile onto the hard packed earth of the training yard.
Red waits till he’s finished before dragging him bodily to the Grandmaster’s door, pounding on it with the stump of her left arm, and almost throwing Baine over the threshold at an amused “Come” from within.

Varis looks up from the Dragon Chess board, a from still creasing his brow. He appears to be losing another game, though his opponent is not in evidence.

“Gretcha. Soldier. What do you need.”

Red makes as though to spit on the ground, remembering where she is at the last moment.

“Just delivering three hundred pounds of prime fuckwit, sir. I’ll let you deal with him. Make sure he shows you his new love bite.”

With that she turns on her heel and walks from the room, slamming the door behind her. Varis turns to regard Baine.

“So. You visited our friends in the desert again. What did you make of them this time?”

Baine opens his mouth to reply, then his eyes roll up into his head and he collapses in a tangle of limbs and armour.

Between them, Varis and Grits eventually get him out of his armor and a solid meal in him. The Grandmaster seats him in a chair before the fire with a mug of hot spiced wine, and as his trembling hands slowly still, he manages to give a slightly more detailed report.

“It was me an’ Taff, Pieni and Ghesh. I dunno why BB ended up with us specifically but that was the crew. She needed us to go up the mountains with her because she was looking for the source of her magic, and information about some other things probably. You know she kept the brazier that we found, last we were up there? She’s been using it, speaking to the Yuan-Ti.” His lips curl into a sardonic smile. “Making deals. They gave her the instructions, the directions to the Oasis. Take this path, avoid that one, look for these stars, be wary of fiends and so on.

We walked for about five days, give or take. Some of it was during night so I’m honestly not sure. We crossed over the mountains and into the desert, but not in the same direction as last time, more south west. It was all sandstorms and star gazin’ for a bit there, nothing too exciting. Turns out I’m allergic to wasps.

Eventually we find these pillars of quartz, clearly meant to like, correspond with the stars we were looking for, the Double Daggers or the Eyes of the Cat or whatever. There was uh, a sphinx? Big fella with like a lion body and a human face, is that a sphinx? He was guarding the entrance to the Oasis basically. BB answered some questions and he let us through.”

His voice deepens as he imitates the Sphinx.

“‘What does the Tribe want most of all?’ To ascend, apparently. In we went, through this gorge. There was a purple worm making some trouble but we dealt with that, wasn’t a problem. Thought we was gonna have a real problem when our old mate Te’Zeer showed up, but at the time he just asked about Serpentine - she hasn’t honored her deal with them apparently - before calling us boring and fucking off. Left his mate behind, another fiend with some sort of whip. Dealt with her too. Meanwhile, time is running out ‘cos the Sphinx summoned an hourglass before we went in and said that was all we had.”

He screws his face up in concentration, trying to have things come out in the right order.

“We found the Oasis. It was night time, right, but the stars reflected in the water wasn’t the ones in the sky, they was all wrong. The gorge was fillin’ with sand behind us and BB was talkin’ to the Yuan-Ti in her head. They told her to get in the pool, to honor the deal. She told us we didn’t have to come but obviously-” he shrugs, “- I wasn’t going to let her go off and release the Big Old One without at least tryin’ to convince her not to.

So, In the water we went. There was a spell, something that tugged us out of our bodies, somehow. We looked the same, but like, we was made of, of light? And there was a long string, connecting us to our bodies, leading far away. Around us was just.. Endless space and stars. A field of grass and a temple. And then the wind came, and drove me completely mad.

It wasn’t like when you do it, Varis, or when someone else does it, when someone casts a spell and you can feel it and you have a moment to maybe shrug it off, y’know? It just took my mind from me, easy as that, and I didn’t stand a chance. I was seeing shit and yellin’ and bein’ a mess. Ghesh must’ve got me out of there somehow.

When I snap out of it, we’re back out of the Oasis, back in the desert by those big quartz pillars where we met the sphinx. BB’s holding some stuff, some “tools that will give her answers” or some such shit, and she’s - she’s released the One Serpent. Somehow. Whatever the fuck that means.”

Varis is silent, but something burns in his eyes, something Baine has never seen before. It isn’t the hot rage of battle. It’s colder, slower, and utterly implacable. Baine shivers, in spite of the fire. When the Grandmaster speaks, his voice is barely audible.

“I begin to have sympathy for Magister Manyvoices. So, once you realised what she had done, you returned here?”

“First thing we did was go to sleep - we were all done for. And that’s when our buddy Ta’Zeer came back. Plopped right into my dream, didn’t he? God, I’m so fuckin’ done with havin’ people in my head.”

Baine hesitates, just for a moment, before continuing.

“He offered me a deal to keep you and Sun out of hell.”

The half elf’s jaw tenses.

“And?”

“The offer was I do 15 years down there, you and Sun do one. But I didn’t take it. Couldn’t. I don’t see an easy way out of this. There’s no magic fix. No fucking deal is going to make this better.”

He takes a drink of wine. “Bit selfish maybe,” he adds quietly. “Sorry.”

The older man gives a grim smile.

“Soldier, if you think I’d want you to do a thing like that you really haven’t been paying much attention.”

Baine raises an eyebrow.

“I have. And somehow, that rule applies to everyone but you. But never mind. The real problem is that Glasya - or maybe just Te’Zeer, I don’t know - seems bent on buying our contract from the Rose. And that’s a much, much bigger fish to fry, innit? On top of that, Ta’Zeer told Taff that Khingo is almost back to full health. We’re running out of time.”

Varis smile turns sour.

“Damn that woman. I told her not to wait. As for Glasya - we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Does Sunday know? She and the Lady of the Sixth have... history.”

Baine nods. “She knows. Varis, her deal is for 20 fucking years. She can’t go back to Phlegethos for that long. What are we gonna do?”

“Anything that can be made, can be unmade. Hell is a place of subtlety, of intrigue. We will have to be certain of our path before we set foot upon it, but it may be that a little blunt force is required.”

Baine grins.

“Regardless, we have some time yet. More pressing is this Serpent your friend has released, and Mistress Thistletop’s nemesis. I’ll ask Sunday to speak with Taffeta, find out what her plan is. If she refuses to act, we may have to force her hand. In the meanwhile, I want you to look at something.”

He passes an artfully bound dossier to Baine.

“It seems friend Heret has been digging too deep, and too greedily. He has awoken something in the darkness beneath the Spine. Something old and terrible.”

He smiles at the younger man.

“We’re going to kill it.”

---

In collaboration with Varis/G'Lorth/Sundilar .