Sorrel Darkfire - nothing to see here. Seriously. Look away.

Sorrel was born in Baldur’s Gate. Her half elf father Leonas had spent a decade or two on the road before settling down to run a pawn shop near the port. Her human mother Elsa was a captain’s daughter, superb at rigging and rope work – before quite literally seeing the light. The moonlight in this case, and she started working as warden at the temple of Selune. They settled into dockside respectability.

And yet, when you’ve travelled as far, seen as much and taken as many risks as Sorrel’s parents, there are always debts to pay. Before her first week in the world had passed, a small detachment of mercenaries visited the family home.

The tallest - Askar - had a dark scar that seemed to give off a glow as if glow worms burrowed beneath his skin. He came and sat at the kitchen table while the others waited outside, casually taking up positions to secure the street. Askar praised Sorrel’s beautiful brown eyes and gave the family a small bag of gold to help them through the early years.

And then the conversation turned to the old days, a journey to a vast island a long way from Faerun, a new land where they found and faced a horror so profound that a debt of honour had arisen that came due when a child was born.

“None of us could have been sure today would come, and so I understand if you want to go back on your word,” Askar said mildly. “The Master will take my word. You are not obliged. The gold is a gift from me and is not a condition of our agreement.”

Leonas and Elsa held hands so tightly it seemed as if they had just one clenched fist between them. Elsa swallowed and said softly, “we will not live without honour. We remember what we owe. The debt will be paid. Sorrel will serve her apprenticeship as agreed.” They gazed into each other’s eyes, both on the verge of tears.

Askar coughed awkwardly and pulled out some folded scrolls which he laid out on the crooked wooden table. Both parents signed. Sorrel would be picked up on her 16th birthday and until then her family would be paid a stipend to keep her healthy. Askar left a House dagger as a gift for the child, bowed and saw himself out.

It’s just that no-one checked in with Sorrel on this. She spent her time learning mischief from the local light-fingered lads and her dad’s own tales. By the time she arrived at the House, she was already half-way to being a skillful pickpocket. She knew how to pick a lock, fake an accent and run a con. The idea of life as, essentially, a courier… that really hadn’t been her plan no matter what contract her parents signed.

The second to last time Sorrel saw her parents was when the House came for her.

She had been expecting them. For months she had been working her usual haunts, building up favours from the scum of the docks – dark and dangerous people who appreciated her speed and discretion.

The rules of such transactions were always straightforward. A favour had to be repaid. It was perhaps the only rule. If you could not hold up your side of that bargain you would struggle to do business, no matter how much gold you threw around.

The day before her birthday she let it be known that she had been sold, that the deal would be concluded the following day and that accounts would have to be settled before she was taken.

And then she vanished.

Her parents barely slept that night – worried about her and terrified for themselves. The House expected Sorrel in payment for a debt of such magnitude that the consequences of her failing to appear were beyond comprehension.

The shades and blades of the countless basement dockside bars also felt uneasy. These were villains of a very particular honour system. They had often relied on Sorrel’s cunning, and they knew her to be ferocious in her demands for payment. They could feel they’d been conned into something – they just couldn’t work out what.

So, at dawn the following day when the House mercenaries rode through the dock streets, the clatter of their spurs, weapons and chain mail echoing off the high stone walls, they found their natural swagger slowly dissipating as the shadows boiled with danger all around them.

These were fighting men who knew trouble when it lurked malevolently in the darkness, and they were woefully underprepared. This had seemed a simple courier job. They were below strength and poorly armed, seeing it as little more than a jolly. They’d stopped more than once along the way to enjoy local hospitality. They were sleepy, overfed and sluggish.

The bald man who rode in the dark coach that bore the House’s sable crest on black paint, visible only to those who knew how to look, was furious. Darkfire and her husband had the nerve to resist the House? His mind almost boiled with ideas for the horror he would bring upon them and their neighbours.

When the coach rolled to a stop outside the Darkfire storefront, his anger turned to disbelief. The parents were outside, their faces grey. He had spent enough time with people at the limits of terror to know real fear when he saw it. There was something else afoot here and he was alarmed to find he couldn’t guess what it was.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, Sorrel stepped out of the front door with a small rucksack and a travelling case. Surprise, relief, and anger flickered across her parent’s faces before her mother started weeping. Sorrel paid them no attention, walked towards the coach and stopped a few feet from the door.

She waited.

The streets rustled with anticipation and whispered questions. Finally, the bald man blinked. He opened the door and stepped onto the cobbles.

“I am ready,” Sorrel said. “You are a little late.”

He grinned and gave a mocking bow. Breaking this one would be a pleasure.

“My apologies, m’lady, is there anything I can offer you to compensate for our unseemly delay?”

“Your dagger.”

He stood quickly and searched her face.

“I wasn’t…”

“Your dagger,” she held out her hand. “Quickly or we will be later still.”

Bemused, he pulled a knife from his boot and handed it to her hilt first. She turned away from him and surveyed the roof tops and alleyways, held the dagger high in her left hand then gripped the blade in her right and pulled the dagger down, slicing through her skin.

Blood dripped from her fingers as she clenched her fist, making tiny patterns on the road.

“There are debts outstanding,” she called out. “I will expect them to be repaid at the time and place of my choosing. My blood is token of my contract with every one of you. Do not forget me. I will not forget you.”

She turned and walked to the coach.

“Your parents?” The bald man was puzzled.

She threw her luggage onto the roof and walked the few paces back to where they huddled, looking older and smaller than she had ever seen. She spat on her bloodied palm and held her right hand out.

“My thanks for the food and lodgings,” she gave a tight smile. “The training was useful.”

Her mother moved to hug her, but Sorrel moved faster, and shook her hand politely before turning to her father and grasping his hand firmly.

“Good luck with your next venture.”

She was in the coach before they had recovered from their shock. The bald man stepped in, the coach rattled into life and he sat watching her gaze out of the window as the driver whipped the horses and the mercenaries closed ranks around them, their mail and spurs jingling in the echoing streets like the horsemen of the apocalypse.

Eventually he broke the silence.

“Most recruits are more reluctant to leave their parents,” he began.

“You do this often then?” She half turned, then something caught her eye, and she returned her gaze to the window. “So, you are on the child collecting detail? That is an enviable posting, I’m sure.”

He was not in control of the situation and felt stupid, so stood and stepped forward until he towered over her.

“You would do well to treat me with more respect, Darkfire,” he hissed. “I am your tutor, and you live and die by my word.”

Sorrel flickered and suddenly she was on the seat behind him, holding a blade to his throat.

“I am very much looking forward to learning all I can from you Sashak,” Sorrel whispered. He panicked. How did she know his name? No-one was supposed to know… “But perhaps we could begin with me teaching you something. You should always know where all your weapons are before you start threatening people. Having your throat slit by a child is even more embarrassing when it’s with your own dagger.”

She let the knife drop between his feet, the handle quivering as the blade sank into the wooden floor. He kept his eyes on her and by the time he had pulled it free she was back in her seat watching the streets roll by. He stuffed the weapon back in his boot hurriedly then cried out in pain as something bit his skin.

Sorrel turned sadly. “Do you not know your own blade?” she sighed, offering him the hilt of his dagger. “This will fit your sheath. The other is longer and heavier. Your… colleague gave it to me years ago. It has come in handy. You didn’t notice?”

He grabbed the knife and retreated to the furthest corner of the coach, staring furiously at this tiny demon that had taken barely an hour to destroy his morning and his pride.

Eventually he shook his head and laughed. “Sorrel Darkfire, I think you will do very well for yourself at the House,” he said. “Or you will be dead within a week.”

In the end it was the bald tutor who had died first - alone, many miles from any help when the Shadow Gate had opened. By then Sorrel had learned to admire and even like him. She was glad he died bravely.

—-

Towards the end of her training, Sorrel had been summoned by Callimar Daevion'lyrn in the Endless Basement beneath the Final Door. The stairs down were fashioned of creaking, ancient wood – presumably as an alarm system, Sorrel thought as she failed to creep soundlessly down.

Callimar’s chambers were exquisitely decorated although the carefully chosen luxuries were difficult to entirely appreciate as the occasional scream rose and died slowly from behind an obsidian door while the ageless drow considered her.

“I need to speak to you about loyalty,” he began eventually, pouring a generous measure of blood red wine into a single goblet in front of him.

“I remain loyal to death and beyond,” Sorrel said, puzzled. “My oath is to my Team, the House and my Client.”

The elegant drow nodded thoughtfully, then steepled his fingers. “I believe you,” he said eventually. “But we are all orphans - in our own way - at this… establishment. Loyalty between us is idealised - it creates our identity and ensures our effectiveness. Loyalty is our emotional connection and our moral compass. But I sense it is not enough for you,” he raised his hand to silence her protest.

“It is not a crime,” he gave a crooked smile. “You joined with 15 other Pledged. Seven died during training, four have been dismissed, one is best suited for the kitchen and of the three survivors Unthril and that short one are meat shields at best. I give them a year. But you are here. And, for better or for worse, I sense you will make your own bonds – love, friendship, all of those things we have tried to drive out of you.”

He smiled and produced a vial of fine grey powder. “I am afraid you are about to discover some of your limits,” he looked wistfully at the small bottle. “It will not be pleasant, and it will seem endless. Few get to experience it, but I warn you… you will, no matter how unlikely it may seem, yearn to feel it again.”

He scattered a little dust on the surface of the wine, stirred it once with a slim silver spoon and handed it to Sorrel. She held his gaze, drank deeply and fell backwards into madness for a thousand years.

Eternity split into an infinite number of possibilities, each one spawning an infinite array of its own. She felt them all – all the lives she could lead, all the universes where she had never been born, all those she destroyed in an unspeakable cataclysm and everything in between. She lived a million lives and died a million times, always painfully, never at home. She felt each wound, each betrayal, each catastrophe with her nerves stripped raw so that even the wind was too much to bear.

All the while, the drow’s long, curved fingernails of glass and steel slid deeper into her soul, raking patterns through her dreams and forcing needle points into every one of her fears – she heard the scissors opening and shutting, the ominous gong, the scuttling things and the clang of the steel room bolted around her so she could never stand or walk again and… and then she passed into a light so bright she knew nothing else.

When she opened her eyes, she found she was crouched in the passata sotto, the fencers all-or-nothing defence, and Callimar Daevion'lyr was regarding her thoughtfully. She sprang to her feet and staggered a few steps as a wave of nausea swept over her.

“It is a little worse than I feared,” the drow said, almost to himself. “It is rare to find so much suffering and so much discipline in a child. You must have built the walls when you were barely eight, maybe younger. They have deep foundations, and you are safe behind them. If you can find them when you need them, of course, which is another matter entirely.”

He picked up the goblet, more than half empty but with a small pool of the drugged wine at the bottom. He refilled it from his flask, sniffing it before taking a sip and wrinkling his nose. “Perhaps a little strong…” then he emptied it at a draught.

“And so, you will struggle to act on loyalty alone and that means…” he started to giggle. “It means you will die soon, or become the next Daiyoshi Master or…” his eyes began to cloud over. “Revolutionary, adventurer, assassin, who can say? But remember the value of loyalty whichever route you choose, Sorrel. In combat, loyalty will be useful. It will prioritise your decisions. If you are prepared to lose your life for a comrade, that is an enviable place to find in the world. I will be fascinated to see how your life unfolds. Now leave me. I have something important to do…”

His last words trailed off into a gasp of pleasure, the goblet fell from his hand and he slumped back in his chair.

—-

She took the oath on the final four day long ritual at the House academy, where those recruits that had survived the brutal training stood motionless for hours in the last bitter test, chanting the creed from dawn to dawn:

Everything has its purpose.
For those who serve without fear or favour there is a time for war, and a time for peace.
Both these masters serve we the same.
We serve because we have our place.
To understand this is our duty.
Without duty, we have no purpose.
And so, we serve until death.

Most of those who stood with her were gone now, their names etched in stone in the vast hall of heroes, the words ‘they have served their purpose until death’ carved into the floor with an ancient magic that resists the passing of time and the wear and tear of a thousand passing students.

She worked for the House on a small team, guarding convoys on land and sea, rescuing hostages, protecting VIP clients and executing targeted wet work if the House Master personally requested. Her crew included Morgan, a warlock, Sana, an eldritch knight, and Al-Amer, a hardened mercenary who could kill from the shadows with savage speed. The story of how she fell for Sana is for another day, but the House encouraged tight bonds within units and seemed to know how to pick teams who would happily die for each other.

For a few years she was happy – so busy being happy she barely realised it at the time. The four of them travelled and fought and loved and drank and danced and trained and played and sang together – and, looking back, it seemed to her that every day had soft spring sunshine and every night the stars twinkled like angel’s eyes.