Blowing Away - Sorrel Darkfire

Daring Heights. Evening.

Sometimes the best things in life are not free, Sorrel thought as she tidied away the scraps of leather and swept the floor in Lucan’s workshop. Money might not buy everything, that was true. But what it didn’t get she was too scared to use. The half elf was charging her such a tiny fraction of the going price for training that she was almost embarrassed to hand over the money. She offered more every day, but he turned her down kindly again and again.

She was both grateful and pained when he refused. Transactional relationships are easy to handle, she thought. You either buy or you sell. Everything else is negotiation. But when relationships became emotional, Sorrel felt the ground shift beneath her feet. It was safer, so much safer, to deal in prices rather than values. Lucan’s kindness, his laughter, his understanding, his quiet conversation, and warm praise worked its way slowly into the tiny cracks in the chitin that Sorrel had carefully layered around her heart.

These goddam Dawnlands… how was that in barely a half year she had met more people who forced her to care for them than in two long decades in Faerun?

Anyway, she sighed with a certain pained relief as she closed up the shop, for the next few days she was safe. These lessons required money. She had to earn the money. And there was a job with deadly violence and extreme peril beckoning that carried the promise of substantial fiscal reward. Finally. Something life threatening that could be resolved with a bow and a sword. This she could understand - her body was honed for trouble. Some people say a woman is made out of mud but a poor woman is made out of muscle and blood. Muscle and blood and skin and bone – a mind that’s sharp and a back that’s strong.

The letter was promising –


My friends,

I hope you are all well and have recovered from the ordeals of last summer. K'ul Goran has years of work ahead of it to really feel whole again I fear, and some of that work is why I am writing to you now.

The city of Jarvenol has been a major reconstruction project since the Giant War tore it apart. As a result of the chaos, a few monsters have made their nests in the rubble, I am told.

The Errant Guard are stretched thin, I trust I can call upon your services (paid of course) to aid us in this? Both as your friends and your allies under the Aegis Accords, I look forward to seeing some of your number soon at my offices in Zot Goran.

May the wind be ever at your back,

Senator Rhodes

The ordeals of last summer, K’ul Goran, the Giant War – the history meant nothing, but war was always the same. It was good for nothing. Mothers sheltering their children from unspeakable horror, wiping away the tears that proved every dream they had told them was a lie. Young boys in ill-fitting uniforms frozen with fear, understanding when it was too late that they were not the warriors of their playground games. The fire, the screams, the end of love songs, delicate food and comforting arms. And then, perhaps the worst of all, were the handful of people in the heart of the horror who felt more alive there than they had dreamed possible.

You had to have a particular kind of heart to welcome destruction with a surge of grim satisfaction. You could see these people moving through the burning streets – the ones who took time to aim their bows rather than twanging the strings desperately, too scared to stare at the enemy the arrow might kill. They were the few who used their swords more frequently than their shields. Who paused, dodged, waited and struck home. Some of them, no doubt, were well trained soldiers defending those they loved. Most of them were the professionals, the mercenaries, who moved from storm front to storm front, doing business, collecting their pay, no skin in this game, just selling death. These were Sorrel’s people. 

She’d lost count of the city walls she’d breached, the palace gates she’d stormed, and the rivers she’d forded under flights of arrows. The one thing you could say for her profession, she reflected, was that they stuck to the job in hand. Civilians, if they only knew it, should welcome mercenaries. No sell sword had time to burn a farm or slaughter a herd of cattle – they might need to eat when the battle was over, and a dead farmer or sullied wife was bad for business.

It was the indoctrinated fools who fought for something they believed in that were dangerous. Those who thought they were justified, killing in name of… whatever. People who fought for money didn’t waste arrows or time on the massacre of children.

There were moments of doubt, she admitted. She remembered helping an old woman to her feet in the wreckage of a small house built against the walls of a nameless city during a brief lull in battle. This time she was defending. Next time she might be attacking. But as the old woman looked around the destruction and saw the bodies of her son and his children, her knees gave way and she fell again. She looked up at Sorrel, just as a thousand eyes had done, but something in her pain at the years she had given to raise and feed these shattered bodies hit home.

Sorrel knelt beside her and drew her sword. “Mother, take this sword away from me. I can’t use it anymore. I feel a long black cloud coming down and it’s getting too dark to see.”

“No reason to get excited,” the woman said, surprisingly kindly. “There are many here who feel that life is a joke but you and I, we have been through that, and this is not our fate. So let us stop talking falsely. The hour is getting late. Return to the watchtower and keep my city safe.”

Sorrel suddenly snapped back into the present and realised she was standing outside the Dragons Head. The sun was setting and the smell of roasting meat, warm beer and pipe smoke wafted from the windows. Shaleena would be inside, there again, the girl with the child in her eyes. She would be moving between tables, laughing professionally, and tossing back her hair as she faced down those who misbehaved. Sorrel could almost feel the shape of her, the slow curve of her hips and the strong set of her shoulders.

Sorrel had been many things, adopted many disguises – she had changed her hairstyle so many times she scarcely knew what she looked like. Shaleena made her shiver, made her feel so tender. She knew they would make a good team. But Sorrel’s life would exhaust her. She would drive, fight, keep watch while Shaleena slept but that wouldn’t help her survive. Sorrel’s chest was aching, burning like a furnace. The burning kept her alive.

She stood there for a long time, staring at the door, her mind tumbling over and over. No matter where the story went, she could only see pain at its end. The one thing she’d been trained to do – keep her safe - had failed once. Only once. But it was the one time it truly mattered and she had sworn she would never be there again.

She forced herself to think of the armour she was planning to forge – sable leather, studs that shone like Selune’s stars and, with the blessing of the goddess, charms of protection. She would weave Sana’s name into every strand, the armour she had promised her lover but never delivered – the armour that might have kept her alive that night. This was all she had left.

Abruptly she turned and started walking. She would not sleep tonight, she knew that. She was tense and nervous and couldn’t relax. She wouldn’t sleep because her mind was on fire. She would run - run away to Fort Ettin. The miles under foot would clear her head. She smiled briefly. After Sana’s death she had sought out soothsayers and asked them all the same question – why should I not kill myself? Some were shocked, others uncertain, but three had said the same thing. You have many miles to travel Sorrel Darkfire. It is not your choice to refuse to travel them. There is blood and fire in every step. But in time you will understand why.

Very well then, she thought as she slipped through the alleys in Daring Heights, checking all the while for footsteps behind her just as a reflex. If she had many rivers to cross, if it was only her will that keeps her alive, she would survive because of her pride.

She would live her life never thinking of the future, always proving herself. She would take her chances, win or lose, because she was nothing more than the moves she made. That was the fate of those who owned a lonely heart.

She stopped at the gates, singing one of Faust Greyheart’s songs softly under her breath, then looked at the road ahead and laughed. Her life was a whole song cycle in itself, she thought. But how many would she ever get to sing?*

Fort Ettin. Day. The Teleportation Circle.

Sorrel hadn’t spoken for an hour. Ragtag, a warlock by the looks of things, that mischievous halfing cleric Kelne, Glint, the professor whose head was always on fire, the bard Breeze from her first day in Kantas and a druid, Florian, who seemed unsure of the basics of his craft, were chatting to the dragonborn emissary and patting her red dragon – Keltezan? She couldn’t catch dragon names properly. Difficult memories.

Three words of advice, the dragonborn said. You’re going to Minotaur country. Minotaurs like mazes. It’s also very windy.

Sorrel counted two words of advice in that list. Just as she was about to ask, the sigils around them lit up with the blinding light of a million atoms breaking apart and reassembling.

Not Sorrel’s first teleport but she found it unpleasantly like being drunk. Drunk in the way a glass of water was drunk.

And so not for the first time she thought – it’s a good job you can’t harness this atom splitting energy for weaponry. No civilisation is that barbaric.

The thought vanished as her body was ripped to pieces and reassembled, left floating somewhere in time and space. Lost to other worlds, she guessed. Still, that idea could do no harm.

Minotaur guards waved glaives, ambassadors came and went and they waited. Soldiers learned how to wait. You powered down, drifted, let your thoughts stay superficial and safe. She checked her weapons and sat cross legged on the ground, her muscles loose but ready, as her fight training had taught her. Save your energy when you can. Eat. Be ready. You could tell old campaigners by the food they had stuffed in the strangest places and how they could doze for hours but be ready to fight in seconds.

A half elf in a green velvet jacket arrived and briefed them. She picked up a few things. A war, giants, the first city wrecked. The Dawnlands fought alongside the Minotaurs and rid the city of a demon summoning mayor. Standard stuff.

An Aarakocra archivist of the falcon kind – cute with short brown feathers – gave them the lowdown on the, well, on the low down. They need to retrieve and deactivate a borecollar that summoned bore worms – an image played in her mind of a slim young woman in tiny straps of red cloth screaming no, not the bore worms… good times.

As the party clambered aboard a landship, sails flapping in the powerful wind, she found herself drifting. The long walk and lack of sleep was catching up with her. She pulled her cloak around her shoulders, pulled the hood down and dozed, toying with the image of a demon raising mayor.

You had to hand it to the Satanists – first day in the faith you find out that summoning a demon involves runes in a magic circle that you need to stop the demon ripping you limb from limb.

“So we’re worshipping this thing and it wants to destroy us?”

“Yeah, it’s complicated.”

“Is it more fun in Hell?”

“Not so much. Most everyone there thinks it sucks.”

“Even the demons?”

“Oh, especially the demons. They hate it.”

“And we’re worshipping them for what? To get time off for good worshipping behaviour?”

“No, we want to serve them for all eternity and bring their dark wrath to rule over everything.”

“Do we get to have fun?”

“I think mainly we get turned into slime that has a remote chance of becoming a demon one day.”

“But demons hate being demons?”

“Look, it’s complicated, just shut up and kill that virgin.”

Sorrel was shaken awake by the vessel grinding to a halt in the wreckage of a city. She could see giants had been here. This didn’t require her carefully trained urban bounty hunter/gloomstalker ranger skills. Someone had dropped enormous rocks on all the roofs. To do that, you had to be taller than the average house.

The archivist lead them to the wrecked museum, which meant leading them through some wreckage to some more wreckage then pointing at the new wreckage and saying “that used to be a museum.” Detective work isn’t what it used to be Sorrel thought.

The party unstrapped, unwrapped and unpacked such weaponry and magical flummery as had been assembled then spent a short while bickering over the spells. Ragtag and Breeze debated the merits of their respective magical armour whilst Florian discussed lighting levels and recited an incantation that ensured they could move stealthily through the dust and stone. Sorrel took a couple of paces and was stunned to find she couldn’t even hear herself move. She tried to remember the words Florian had used but couldn’t quite hold them in her mind.

Glint tried to secure promises from everyone not to kill the worms unless absolutely necessary. Florian flinched so violently Sorrel actually felt it.

“Dude, are you saying that we gotta respect the space of giant killer worms that want to kill us?” the druid’s eyes were simultaneously narrowing and popping out of his head.

“I’m just saying they’re creatures that are probably as scared of us as we are of them,” Glint protested.

“They’re not scared of you at all,” the archivist cut in. “Imagine an enormous stomach about quarter of a mile long with a thousand teeth at one end that can only think the word ‘eat’.”

Sorrel thought fondly of Varga.

“I’m sorry dude, but if they come at us…” Florian began.

“I’m just saying…” Glint cut in.

And so they made their way forwards, Sorrel moving as far ahead as possible so the light wouldn’t pollute her carefully trained eyes. Breeze’s voice echoed in her head. “If you want to warn us, just think to me,” the bard’s words echoed in the caverns of her mind.

“Can you see things as well?” Sorrel thought nervously. “In my mind, I mean?”

Breeze reassured her. “That’s a whole different spell,” he said, which offered Sorrel no reassurance whatsoever.

Still they moved forward, entering a vast library stacked with tomes. Glint, Kelne, Florian, Ragtag and even Breeze’s eyes lit up. Sorrel could see a hunger that she usually found in sailor’s eyes as they stepped off a six month voyage and saw the bar in the brothel was serving food.

She moved forward to a large metal door and listened for the sound of worming. Whatever that sounded like. What she heard was the soft washing of water and… something… a hiss… did worms his? She wished she’d paid more attention in wilderness class. All the same, it didn’t sound good.

She gathered the party at the far end of the library and explained what she’d heard, watching with some relief as they fanned out deploying spells and skills in equal measure. For a moment there, she’d been worried she was the only professional on the team.

Ragtag’s magic opened the door from a distance while Kelne moved forward, armour shining in the light of Gint blazing head. The cleric gave a puzzled cry and they moved forward.

The room ahead had been flooded and at the far end an amulet of arcane power was dangling in the water, firing off lightning bolts that ricocheted around the room and fizzed through the water.

“I’m guessing the door is on the other side,” Florian sighed.

“Chill out,” Ragtag stepped forward and muttered a few words, parting the waters and freezing them into place. “Chill out… geddit?” he turned to Breeze who nodded politely.

“Yeah, totally,” Breeze smiled. “It’s like, chill out, calm down and also you’ve made it into ice.”

Ragtag was still snickering as he stepped down onto the path he’d carved through the lake, walked towards the source of danger and slipped on the icy surface.

The party looked hard at their feet, all squashing jokes as hard as they could. But after Ragtag made it to the medallion, hauled it out and the lightning stopped, they nodded with respect. You save the party, you get to make any jokes you like. They filed past him, each one bowing their head, hand on heart. Ragtag beamed and they moved forward, Sorrel ahead with an arrow notched in her bow as she glided silently down the stairs.

As they reached the next floor down Sorrel’s fingers tensed on her bow string, hauling it slowly back as they gathered at the foot of the stairs. A vast haul stretched in front of them, twelve pedestals arranged in a neat semi circle, with all but one of them fallen, shattered or broken. The last, furthest away inevitably, was intact – a glass case containing a tiny golden bell that swung back and forth, emitting no sound except the dull tok as it hit the sides of the case.

If they had any doubts this was the borecaller, they were dispelled by the three glistening worms writhing across the floor of the room, hides covered in bruised purple chitinous plates, a mouth filled with teeth at one end and a poisonous stinger on the other. The gaping mouths were grinding and pulsing, sucking in and crushing the air but searching, always searching for something more substantial. Their hunger was palpable, and it caught Sorrel unawares. She almost froze, until her training cut in and, instinctively, she let loose two arrows deep into the flesh of the nearest beast.

It reared up, its body writhing and pulsing in pain, a silent scream bursting from its slimy mouth. The others moved fast, sending a barrage of spells into the room. Glint, Sorrel noticed, was still trying to preserve the creatures. He conjured up a facsimile of Kelne that danced between the furthest worms, its feet clattering on the ground. Sorrel saw the worms turn and descend on the sound, their mouths agape as they sucked and gulped at the air.

Florian’s fingers flickered with feywild flame, and the furthest worm was outlined against the dark – an easy target, waiting to be felled. But as Sorrel shot arrow after arrow, Ragtag’s eldritch blasts seared their flesh and his fire rained down on the creatures, but they took so much punishment Sorrel felt they might never die.

Just as the first touch of fear reached her heart, she heard Breeze’s voice lift above the chaos of battle, it’s crystal notes lifting her soul. At that second, she saw Florian fall to the ground, fur bursting from his skin. In seconds, he was a lithe, deadly black panther, gliding across the museum floor, fangs bared, heading for the silent bell like a molten shadow, except with massive teeth.

One worm finally sensed the intruders and Sorrel cursed their tactical error, bunched up at the foot of the stairs. As it glided towards them, she danced forward, leaping gracefully on to a pedestal and letting her bow sing again.

Kelne stepped forward, taking the force of the worm’s attack, its mouth almost closing around her, until she dodged free at the last second, her wounds dripping poison. Glint, meanwhile, uttered a sonorous drone that lulled one of the worms into a trance. It fell forwards and Sorrel realised what the flame headed academic was doing – using the world’s least powerful spell to disable unstoppable walls of slimy death. And it seemed to be working.

Florian crashed through the glass case, catching the bell in his mouth and hurtling back towards the injured cleric. To cover him, Sorrel sent an arrow into the maw of the worm that was rearing to attack him, only to hear Glint’s voice crash down around them all like thousand fluffy pillows. The goddam genasi was pulling this madness off.

Sorrel surveyed the room – three giant worms, one dead, two sleeping. A transformed panther dropping a still ringing bell into a wounded clerics hands. A warlock… well, readying an eldritch blast. I mean… that’s warlocks. And Breeze with songs of healing and care.

Sorrel tried to think of stranger battles. She’d been greater danger, fought mightier creatures, faced more desperate odds and still survived. But this… she wasn’t even sure it counted as a battle.

She stepped down from the pillar and joined Ragtag rooting through the rubble. Between them they found a statue carved from something that seemed like solidified air. “Toss you for it,” Ragtag said cheerfully. Sorrel’s coin came up and she stuffed the object into her rucksack, still slightly unsure if any of this was real.

The sight of Glint forcing out one of the dead worm’s teeth with a crowbar almost pushed her over the edge. At least with an actual war you understood the rules of engagement, she reflected. The rules may have sucked, but you knew what they were. As she watched the party pocket books from the library and clamber back into the Minotaur land cruiser, she found her eyes resting on Florian, the druid who’d seemed so ill at ease as the party set out but whose insane bravery and bond with nature had saved them all.

Florian caught her gaze and smiled. “Penny for them…?”

Sorrel reflected. “An odd day…” she began.

“Dude, the energy of that fight was the strangest I have ever experienced. I mean, what was that shit?”

Sorrel laughed. “That spell,” she said tentatively. “The one that let us walk in silence…”

“It’s not too tricky,” the druid assured her. “As a ranger I think you could pick it up fairly easily. Listen, I’m sorting a meal when we finally get back. You want to come over?”

Sorrel hesitated. She’d eaten with druids before.

“It won’t be vegetarian,” Florian grinned. “Dude, I was a panther. Hunting cats don’t eat lentils.”

Sorrel laughed. “In which case, I would be delighted.” And she looked out over the side of the ship as it hurtled across the battered land and sun set slowly behind a low bank of cloud.



* technically eleven - the number of songs whose lyrics appear in that first section