The Tower of Dissent - Sorrel Darkfire

“Sorrel… is something wrong?” Shaleena stood over her as Sorrel stuffed some cold meat and rye bread down in a hastily improvised breakfast. “You disappear for days and I… you don’t say anything.”

Sorrel looked up, her mouth half full, and gave as game a smile as she could muster then pushed back the chair in front of her in invitation. Shaleena looked carefully around the room then sat.

“I am not a good person,” Sorrel began, then raised her hands when Shaleena tried to interrupt. “I’m not married, I don't have any kids, and I'd shoot your best friend if someone paid me enough. If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there, but I know what I do isn’t… moral, per se. Look at these people, look at your colleagues, look at your life. If I fall into conversation with them, what am I going to say? ‘I killed the Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard with a fork. How've you been?’”

Shaleena rolled her eyes. “You think you’re the first?”

Sorrel raised an eyebrow.

Shaleena leaned across the table and took her hands for a second. The brush of her skin was like fire searing Sorrel’s heart. “I am looking out for you every day,” she was quiet, intense. “You make messy decisions, and you never clean up after yourself. You owe me nothing and I owe you even less. I have…” she looked away, shook her head, sat upright again. “I don’t know what I feel for you. But I deserve enough respect that if you stay under my roof, you flirt with me behind my bar, and you have me put everything at risk to cover your tracks you have the good manners to tell me what is going on.”

She stood, looking down scornfully. “Look at you Sorrel Darkfire,” she sighed. “You’ve got the boots you stand up in, a past you never mention and a sack full of weapons. You think your life is going well? I’m not sure you can afford to treat people this way.”

And she was gone. Sorrel stared furiously after her, aching to tell her the truth and yet so terrified of that feeling that she felt sick. Things were so much easier when she was dead inside.

She looked up and saw Breeze wander into the bar, clearly lining up a job. She sighed with relief. This bard was proving to be a lucky charm. From her first day on this continent, she’d fought alongside him and whilst his choices were unconventional his… she paused, then finally admitted it… his music always seemed to give her an edge. Whatever lunatic quest he was signing up for it had to be easier than handling actual meaningful emotions. She hauled her day pack onto her shoulders and moved through the bar, barely noticing the regulars falling back nervously.

“Comrade Breeze, what business brings you here?” she hailed the bard.

“Manhunting business,” he gave a cheerful grin. “And maybe, just maybe… a song!”

As he started the first few notes of a jaunty tune, she snatched the paper from his hands and speed read it

Lazy, loutish and stubborn, I will not stand for it! Our smithy spends his days drinking himself to death at The Three Headed Dragon and will not see reason. Find out what the matter is, and get him back to work IMMEDIATELY... by any means necessary

As she finished, she saw the genasi scholar Glint drift through the door, his head buried in a book. She briefly felt a tug of nerves. Breeze and Glint had been on the weird assed minotaur gig which ended in something that barely passed for combat on a quest which defied logical comprehension. Although, she took comfort in the thought that if the goddess was out to punish, she’d have sent…

At which point the mischievous halfling cleric Kelne tapped her on the back and the blood drained from Sorrel’s face. The three of them. But no druid…? Of course. The eladrin wafting past. A druid. He introduced himself as Alces, and the four newcomers were soon searching the bar for anyone looking vaguely like a drunken blacksmith. Which was pretty much everyone in the place, Sorrel shrugged as she settled her companions bar tab just as an elf ranger slid up to the bar next to her. This man positively reeked of the feywild, and she felt its power like a dark shock of energy. Dazed, she wandered over to the table the party were gathering around.

Neil, a funny name for a smith, had lost his son to goblins, he slurred. He was three bottles of wine in and as maudlin as a troll watching the final billy goat pass. The smithy bordered the Feythorne forest, one morning his son Arthur had vanished, the window was open and goblin tracks lead off towards the trees. He’d been drinking ever since and was in no state to let them into his house to search for clues.

Sorrel hauled him outside and watched, bemused, as Alces sprouted horns, fell forward and was suddenly an elk. The druid scooped Neil up and they ambled to his house through crowds doing their level best to play it cool as if this sort of thing happened every day in Daring Heights. Which, Sorrel reflected, it probably did.

A cursory search of the premises revealed the messiest collection of filth in the known world, a portrait of Arthur doing his best paladin pose and some goblin tracks that seemed strangely unburdened by a struggling human youth. If anything, the human tracks alongside seemed to have been moving a little faster than the purported kidnapping party. Sorrel nodded to herself, adding it all up.

“So, on the date in question, had you exchanged any cross words with your son sir?” she asked. “Is it, for instance, the case that you intend him to take on your forge – an admirable business in so many ways? And could it be that he has alternative ambitions?”

“Ambishuns phap,” the smith explained. “Fuggin kids bastards the lot of you, I’ll take you all on.”

“As I thought sir,” Sorrel patted his slowly moving fist reassuringly. “We’ll have your son back in no time.”

With Angier scouting ahead, the party moved towards the forest and Sorrel fell into step next to Glint. “So, comrade Glint,” she began carefully. “Are you of the opinion that every single life is sacred including actual goblins? Just, you know, for information.”

“Yes,” the genasi said simply.

Breeze and Alces overheard them and agreed fervently. “I will not kill,” Alces said firmly. Breeze nodded. “There is always a better way,” he said. “And I have a song that expresses this perfectly… Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout bagism and dragism and bagism and shagism-ism, that-ism, prisonism, ism, ism. All we are saying is give peace a chance. All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

Sorrel walked alongside them in silence for a while until Breeze’s melody died away.

“We are talking about goblins, aren’t we?” she said eventually. “Black-hearted, selfish, dwell in caves, despoil dungeons, gather in overwhelming numbers, crave power, torment other creatures and embrace all manner of wickedness?”

“I think there was a nice goblin on the Daring Heights city council once,” Alces replied mildly. "You seem to be quoting from ancient, long out of date tales in the writings of Mons Termanuelle and Dee N'deebyon."

Sorrel was about to reply when they heard the blacksmith, clearly still drunk, delighting in the fact that “they didn’t even ask for a reward.”

“I think working folk deserve protection for free,” Sorrel shrugged, speaking mainly to herself. The House, during her years in service, would only operate for a fee, something that didn’t sit comfortably with her.

“It’s the small villages and peasant farmers who face the orcs and the goblins when the raiding seasons start,” she would complain to her unit chief. “Why can’t we do something pro bono now and then?”

“You are trained in the arts of evasion and death,” he always replied. “Your training is not cheap. Nor is your food or lodging. We would not attract elite clientele if we spent our winters camping in muddy fields in exchange for a few loaves of bread.”

But Sorrel still shuddered when she passed through smouldering hamlets, her horse picking its way over the bodies of parents who died sheltering their children. The client was always in a hurry. There was never any time to help. She hated the client, the House, the goblins, but most of all herself. Saving one boy would not pay her debt, but it would be a start. Although…. She thought about the picture again. What if the boy didn’t want saving?

They passed through thick woods following a clumsy trail until the trees cleared and they could see a tall stone tower at the foot of tooth-sharp hills. It seemed as old as the rock itself, but unharmed by the years. It was the perfect goblin hideout. Between the thinning trees and the castle, however, stretched a wide grassy clearing that offered as much cover as a handkerchief in a bar fight. Glint’s familiar reported two goblin sentries at the castle gates with a gong nearby.

Sorrel made some quick calculations. The clearing was roughly half a kilometre of open ground in front and some distance more around the sides. Two goblins were easy, but the gong was dangerous. Ideally, the party would operate a distraction with pincer assault, but the flanking movement would take time and the shadows were already long. It would have to be deception then.

During her years of training at the House, the drow assassin team selected a handful of students, how she had no idea, and they spent months learning the darker arts of the silent hit. Sorrel had been chosen and excelled at the fine blade and poison work, but her true genius was in disguise. Towards the end of her time the elderly drow who ran the college called her to his office - a long, high stone room wreathed in shadow. He sat by a strange magical fire that flickered with a black energy and seemed to suck in light then radiate heat. Sorrel stood next to him, and they gazed at the dancing obsidian void in silence for a while.

“You have an aptitude,” the drow said finally.

“Thank you master,” she gave a formal bow. “It is an honour that my unworthy skills…”

He waved her to silence. “Sit.”

She moved to the floor and crossed her legs, but he pointed at the chair next to him. Her heart beating fast, she sat awkwardly, feeling like a child at a grown-up’s party.

“You have the skill at disguise that all unhappy children show – but in you it is more than a skill, it is part of who you are,” he observed coldly. “You are one of the few who actually wish you were someone else and this means your talent is extraordinary. They tell me you have applied for the protection detail. Will you not think again? We can use you.”

Sorrel paused, wary of her next words.

“I have chosen to keep people safe,” she said eventually.

Before she could explain or apologise the drow nodded and finally turned his eyes on her. For a second, she thought she might fall into the swirling darkness of his gaze and keep falling forever. Then he spoke.

“I see your sadness is deeper than I had understood,” he said gravely. “I will teach you words of concealment and protection, and they will be useful to you,” his voice was matter of fact, but the energy in the room changed just a little. “This is a dark magic, and it must be handled carefully but I think you are strong enough to use it. If you ever change your mind, this college will always receive you.”

And so, at the edge of the forest glade, Sorrel began rehearsing the spell he had taught her, plucking shards of the black energy that matched every light and living thing to weave a cloak of deception around her. “I can disguise myself as a goblin,” she explained, as she felt the concealing power seep from the ground. “I can take one of you as a prisoner and we can… subdue the guards.”

“Or…” said Alces, “We could create a cloud of fog and advance with the aid of soft puffs of magical wind.”

Sorrel’s mouth gaped but the others nodded enthusiastically. Before she could recover her surprise, they were shambling across the grass in the ball of mist, bumping into each other as they huddled to stay within its borders.

Glint’s familiar flew up again and the genasi reporting that suspicion was growing in the goblin sentries. Sorrel unstrapped her bow and was measuring the windspeed when Alces conjured a second cloud alongside the first.

“That should confuse them,” Breeze said approvingly.

Sorrel nodded carefully and settled her bow back over her shoulders as the alarm gong rang out and she heard the portcullis rattle shut.

They arrived at the gate and peered through the gaps in the portcullis. “I know an ancient magic from the blood of my people,” Sorrel began. “I can merge with the air and reform just a few feet away. I could pass through the gate and hold a bridgehead, maybe finding the winch for this gate.”

As she began to summon the magic, Alces broke her concentration. “Or….” he said cheerfully. “I could make flowers grow out of the walls and bricks and that may weaken the gate.”

Sorrel looked at the rest of the team, who were beaming in delight. She stepped back as colourful blossoms bloomed against the brickwork and, to her surprise, the gate did indeed fall with a crash. She peered through the gateway. The portcullis lever was five feet inside. She looked back at the team again.

“It’s a good job we’re not getting paid for this,” Kelne muttered. Sorrel bit her tongue.

Inside the gate, the one path lead down into a darkness so black it would blanket the fires of Hell. Sorrel’s trained umbral sight cut in, and she relished her training that concealed her from those creatures that relied on dark vision. Angier moved up beside her and they moved silently down the slope.

“Can’t see a bloody thing,” she heard Breeze say behind her.

“Let me set my head on fire,” Glint offered, and the genasi blazed light. Breeze muttered an incantation and a coin in his hand glowed like the sun. Sorrel’s umbral sight fled.

“If you don’t mind,” she said politely, “I might go up ahead?” Angier nodded and they slid forward, avoiding the flicking lights from behind. As the descended, a voice rang out from below.

“Save your tears, spare your grief, soon your life too shall cease as you pass into the glow…” and it dissolved into sinister laughter.

Sorrel eased the hilt of her rapier loose and checked her arrows were close to hand as Angier lead the way through an arch into a large open room that looked like it had been ransacked, abandoned, ransacked again, abandoned again, ransacked again, rinse and repeat 10 times over.

At some point some sort of creature had used the place to house an uncertain amount of either soldiers, schoolchildren, patients or youth hostel holidaymakers. Now all the furniture was broken, the bedding ripped to pieces, the stonework vandalised, the kitchen trashed and all that remained was a giant goblet glowing purple in centre of room and a very unpleasant smell coming from the far corner.

There were words in draconic etched into the base of the goblet, which was usually a sign that the thing didn’t contain hot chocolate in Sorrel’s experience, but Kelne’s curious soul would not be sated until she’d climbed up and seen a pile of bric a brac, weapons, gold and silver stacked like offerings in the goblets cup.

Angier was already moving forward towards the only other doorway on the other side of the chamber. Sorrel hurried to catch up and was shocked when he suddenly shoved her in the chest, forcing her backwards until she nearly fell over. For a second, she was about to protest until she felt the whisper of a blade as a sprung trap whisked past her face.

She looked at Angier with respect and gave him the warriors bow. “I owe you a debt and it will be repaid,” she assured him, but the wood elf just moved on into the corridor. She caught up with him just as he reached another doorway, which opened onto a grand hall supported by stout pillars. At one end, a hobgoblin sat on a makeshift throne, four goblin soldiers gather around and Arthur at his feet like an overdressed Princess Leia.

Something triggered in the darkest corner of Sorrel’s brain – every dead child, every burned village, every whooping band of raiders she had been forced to ignore flashed in front of her eyes and she barely noticed the two arrows she unleashed at the hobgoblin’s throne. Both struck home, burying themselves deep in the creatures flesh and the professional in her battled to control her fury. Moving, ducking, taking position and firing she started picking off the party as best she could. If Chuckles the Blacksmiths Son had turned G, she sighted up a weak spot in his poorly assembled armour where she could take out his right knee and bring him crashing to the ground. Piece of cake. Angier’s arrows flew as fast, with strange fey magic infesting his targets with crawling insects that finished them off.

And then the hobgoblin fell asleep.

Sorrel rested her head against the wall for a second. Of course. It was going to be this way. Breeze, Glint and Kelne moved through the small horde with other goblins looming from behind pillars screaming in fury as their magic sent the soldier crashing into slumber.

An arrow flew out of the darkness and hit her shoulder and without even aiming seriously she sent one flying into her attacker’s throat. By which time most of the battlefield was dozing and Kelne had charmed Arthur into being his new best friend. She supposed the job was done. The goblins would wake up in time and carry on doing their thing. Villages would burn. But for now, it was over.

She followed them through the goblet room, avoided the light larceny, and headed back through the woods as Arthur unloaded his woes – “and being smith really sucks, because it’s all hot, and you have to carry metal around and the goblins were just cool, with all these outfits and swords and stuff.”

They reached the smiths house and she stood outside for a while gazing up at the moon, wondering if the goddess was playing a game with her. Inside she could hear Glint pouring her heart out to the smith, telling him to talk to his son. Sorrel gave a wry smile. She knew what it was to have your parents decide your career for you. It’s just that not many blacksmiths sold their children to settle debts of honour.

She walked into the humble house, surprised to find the smith handing out the reward the merchants had offered to restore him to work. He shook Glints hand warmly, tears in his eyes, and Sorrel took her money and left.

As she walked back to the inn, she looked at her takings. 12 gold. She had 6 due to Lucan and with living expenses she’d be lucky to be ahead four gold this week. Back in Faerun, she’d taken a group of tourists on a hiking trip to the Lost Mine of Phandelver and picked up more than this in tips. Shaleena was… a pain she couldn’t cure. And she felt a doom hanging over her. She thought about the armour she was planning to create – easily a thousand gold before she even began trying to imbue it with magic. She was earning buttons, bringing an unwilling son back to a barely competent father and something really needed to change.