Wish You Were Here 01/03/22 Sorrel Darkfire & the Blood Pact



Following the events in Run Like Hell

The letter in the back room, Daring Heights, 12am, Saturday night

Sorrel slumped in a high-backed chair in front of a large wooden table. She reached for the neatly tied letter – black ribbon wound around the thick parchment twice then beautifully tied off in a perfect double bow.

There was a rustle from her companions that almost drowned out the crackling of the small fire in the overwrought iron grate.

“Do you want us to leave Sorrel?” Derthaad’s voice was cautious, and he was watching her hands carefully.

She sat in silence for a heartbeat.

“No,” she said. “I have just lost two families and found a third. You are the family I choose. I want to share this with you, whatever it holds… please?”

They murmured assent, she untied the bow and unfolded the letter.

“Sorrel,

In my life, there have been many things I wish I had done differently. Some of them mistakes, some of them reckless and thoughtless - some of them I couldn't have done differently but I still wish, all these years later, that there had been another way.

You deserve to know the truth. The truth about my past, about the shackles placed on you before your very conception, my failure as a mother, and about the legacy I leave for you. I hope at the end of it all you can make peace with it.

I do not ask your forgiveness for what I have done; I accepted a long time ago that I won't deserve any. But I love you, truly, and I wish - Selûne willing - that there be solace at the end of your road.”

Sorrel stopped reading. She looked up at her companions – Kavel, nodding slowly; Velania, concern knitting her brows; Zola, frowning deep in thought and Derthaad, awkward and worried.

She took a deep breath. “Well… I suppose this is what I wanted…”

“When we were young, your father and I wanted to be free of the ways of your grandfather - my father, the pirate captain. We had the opportunity to steal cargo he was guarding fiercely. Believing it to be of great value, we relieved his crew of it and ran, intending to start a new life together. The cargo was more precious than we could have imagined, but not in terms of gold or jewels. It was...”

Sorrel swore loudly. The others glanced at each other. “For fuck’s sake,” Sorrel sighed. “It’s all beginning to fall into place. Those fucking assholes…”

36 years ago

Elsa Darkfire hurries through the pouring rain to the temple of Selûne in Baldur’s Gate. The narrow streets keep her safely hidden until she walks into the small square in front of the small temple. She hesitates, then dashes to the doorway. An elderly dragonborn priest is waiting to meet her on the portico. She speaks quietly and hurriedly despite his slow, sad shaking of his head. He is trying to be gentle and firm. He is asking her to leave. She pulls out a coin pouch and a small box and offers them in supplication. He pushes them away, but she will not be denied. Eventually his hands close reluctantly on both and she turns and disappears into the storm.

Selûne’s temple in Daring Heights - a continent and three decades away. 6.30pm Tuesday night

“I have told you a little about the House,” Sorrel sat with Velania on the edge of the pool in the heart of the temple. The high ceiling, patterned like the night sky, soared above them as priests pulled back the sable cloth to reveal the setting sun through the vast open roof. Devotees began to filter in, murmuring softly. For a few minutes Sorrel breathed in the cool dusk air.

Velania cleared her throat gently and Sorrel gathered her thoughts.

“But really, I’ve barely told you anything. It is so much bigger and more powerful than I implied. And it contacted me a month ago – not entirely out of the blue – to inform me my mother was dead, that they were involved and that she had offered me as collateral on a task. They had two jobs for me then I can read her letter explaining everything. The first was hunting down a mage who experimented on live children. The second…”

Sorrel held up a beautifully engraved card with an address and today’s date. The Silver Serpent. Graveside.

Velania sighed in irritation. “Why did you not tell me sooner?”

“When we first met I didn’t say anything, then time passed and it didn’t come up and… I never got round to it. Does that mean you won’t come?”

“Of course I will,” Velania placed her hands on Sorrel’s arm. “I will always stand beside you. But Sorrel, your mother…”

“I’m over it,” Sorrel stood up. “Time heals all wounds and I had a whole month. That was plenty.”

The Cannon Fodder Café. Later that evening.

The sky was thick with clouds and the air was so damp there was no room for rain. Kavel, Velania, Derthaad and Sorrel arrived at carefully chosen times, moving through the narrow streets in a random, unpredictable pattern.

Velania was first and when Sorrel sat down the words seemed to burst out of the elegant cleric. “Help me clear my conscience Sorrel,” her eyes bored into the troubled warrior. “You used to kill people for money. This job you did – was it wicked?”

“No more wicked than any party of adventurers in Kantas,” Sorrel shrugged. “Here I have slain goblins for little more than their race and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the House the contract always stated the reason.”

“But now you have left.”

“I have left in the same way you might leave the church of Selûne… by which I mean, never quite.”

Kavel pulled back a chair, waved at the waiter and started wolfing down the bread in the tatty basket on the table.

“If I were ever to part with the Moonmaiden she would let me go in peace,” Velania said coldly. “Perhaps she would look in on me to see I was doing OK, but I would never be punished for leaving.”

“And yet if, after many years away from the church, the Moonmaiden came to you and said, ‘Velania, I need you and only you. Will you help me in my hour of need?’ would you turn her away?”

Derthaad slumped in a chair and looked at Kavel, bemused.

“Cleric stuff,” Kavel shrugged, took the bowl of stew from the waiter and was polishing the plate by the time Zola arrived late.

She had taken to the middle of the road, wearing a white hooded cloak to protect her from the rain, the glint of the silver mask still visible under the cowl.

“Are we ready?” she folded her arms impatiently.

The party stood, securing weapons.

“What if they ask you to do something immoral?” Velania asked quietly.

“Callimar has chosen me for reason,” Sorrel sounded more puzzled than certain. “I don’t think he’ll make me do anything I morally oppose. He is tempting not forcing me. He is dangling the letter, the answer to the greatest mystery of my damaged soul… why did my parents sell me to the House?”

The Silver Serpent Inn, Graveside. 10pm

“It’s the most crooked inn in Daring Heights – the neutral ground for all crime,” Derthaad whispered to Velania as they stepped through the door. “Hopefully they don’t spot that I’m in the watch.”

“Why did you bring a cop?” the 10ft tall goliath with pitch black eyes behind the bar was staring at Derthaad but speaking to Sorrel.

“He is under my protection,” Sorrel was firm.

“You’d better be fucking good at protecting then,” the barman turned away. “Back room. As before.”

As the others drifted past Kavel stopped. “I thought I was the largest goliath in Daring Heights comrade,” Kavel looked the barman up and down. “How are you so much bigger than me.”

The goliath turned and met Kavel’s gaze with his dead, black eyes.

There was a long silence. “The normal way. I started small and then I grew taller.” 

“Well, if you ever have any training tips let me know,” Kavel followed the others into the back room.

Specialist Yhsa Al'astor

The room was quiet, as before. Five tankards of ale were waiting for them, as before. The beautiful Tiefling Specialist Yhsa Al'astor was holding the sixth, as before. They sat slowly, eyes darting around the room looking for possible threats.

“Tell me, Darkfire,” the Tiefling drawled. “Do I call you specialist? It’s quite the hot button topic at the House.”

“My rank?” Sorrel’s brow furrowed. “I’m surprised they talk about me at all.”

Only Velania noted the look that crawled briefly across Yhsa’s face – anger, envy and hatred… a look that demanded of the gods just one reason why Sorrel Darkfire should still be alive.

“Anyway,” Sorrel breezed on. “The second job?”

Yhsa pulled out a dark wood case, stained black, polished and gleaming in the candlelight and only through experience could Sorrel see - from a very specific angle – the slight change in the grain of the wood that marked the outline of the raised black hand, the symbol of the House.

She opened it carefully and saw two ornate vambraces made of thick, carved leather, each showing dark cloud over a black moon. Her eyes widened.

“These are his…?”

Yhsa let her guard fall and her face knotted with fury at the sight of gift. She slammed a dagger into the wood of the table, spitting in fury.

Kavel looked at the bracers curiously. "Does this mean that you are now head of the College of Persuasion?" 

Yhsa let another dagger fly from her wrist, slicing across Kavel’s throat and drawing a brief gout of blood before the goliaths strength and Velania’s healing sealed the wound.

“Sorrel should do this alone,” Yhsa fumed. “I don’t know why she’s gathered this party. Those bracers should be mine. If you fail I will tear them off your cold, dead corpse.”

“It would help to know the job,” Sorrel met Yhsa’s stare coldly. If this arrogant half-trained fool didn’t have the secret of her life in her hand, she would be dead already for drawing a weapon on her brother.

Yhsa pulled out a letter tied in black ribbon with Sorrel’s name neatly written on one edge, then placed it in her own lap. Sorrel reached forward unconsciously, but the Tiefling took a card and laid it on the table in front of her instead.

There were just two words – a name; Obuzur Kragmaul.

“An unholy cross between an ogre and an oni,” Yhsa growled. “Wanted for a number of things by a number of people. Fled here. Set up camp four days north in the Angelbark. You’ll smell him before you see him. Bring back evidence this time. His head.”

“I apologise for Specialist Al'astor’s crude behaviour, brother,” Sorrel’s voice was so polite you could have sliced open your cheeks on it. “She clearly hasn’t completed her training. The House of Delight has a lot of work ahead.”

As the party headed for the door Yhsa drawled, “he likes them young, Darkfire. Perfect for you, you sentimental fuck.”

--

The letter in the back room, Daring Heights, 12.03am, Saturday night

“The cargo was more precious than we could have imagined, but not in terms of gold or jewels. It was three children, no older than five, taken and kept, for reasons we didn't know..”

Sorrel paused. In the distance they could hear the hum of the busy inn. She took a breath.

“Those reasons are unknown to me to this day, but the importance of those children was readily apparent to me the first time I laid eyes on them. The Moonmaiden guided my heart and my hands, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that I needed to give everything to protect them. And I did.

The House had been tasked with tracking down the children, but the compensation was poor, especially when compared to the promise of a future child to train - one of my body and your father's mind. You did not yet exist as anything more than a vague concept for the future and before me were three children I had already resolved to mother. I made the deal. I stipulated that they were never to tell you what I had done - that I had chosen other children over you. I knew even then that the shame would be too much to bear.”

--

The Bracers of the Black Moon, date and time unknown

Sorrel slipped her forearms into the stiff leather guards and felt the soft, worn animal skin brush against her as the bracers closed around her wrists like a kiss.

She felt something thrill through her, some hint of laughter in her blood, or perhaps the folding of the mind produced by Callimar’s interrogative potions. For a second she span out, the world cartwheeling around her, and she was drifting down the stairs to the Dark Basement again.

The door opened and there was Callimar, resting in his hight backed chair, leafing through the pages of a heavy, iron bound book.

She looked down at the floor to see where the final step ended and saw nothing. Her legs were not there. She was invisible or dreaming or drifting into her own past like a ghost.

And then Callimar closed the book, turned his head and looked into her eyes.

“Darkfire,” he said eventually. “They suit you. Don’t forget.”

And she was walking with her comrades through the Angelbark.

The foul smelling and badly organised camp of Obuzur Kragmaul and the Five Billy Goats Rough, Saturday, 9am

For the first time in a year, Sorrel found the party running through precombat preparation. It surprised and delighted her, but she found it a little unnerving. Casting spells of protection and stealth, reinforcing skin and bone against violence. She drank deeply of a blessed potion and felt the glow steal through her.

Velania reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“My care for you is real,” she said, and Sorrel felt stronger still.

They crept through the trees until they came across a long dried up river bed and a broken bridge crossing the resulting valley below.

The Tiefling hadn’t lied. The stench of the camp made Sorrel gag, but she bit her revulsion down as she looked along the shabbily assembled wooden huts to a set of cages holding four starving children.

“I can keep the children safe,” Derthaad murmured softly, and Sorrel’s eyes snapped to the creature – this bestial half ogre taller than Kavel by… wait… out of the corner of her eye she saw her brother swell and grow.

“Who’s the biggest goliath in Daring Heights now?” he winked as a powerful magic gave him power, height and strength like she had never seen before. Then he laughed, ran to the lip of the old river bank and leaped onto Obuzur, grappling him in a bear hug.

Sorrel took careful aim, summoned the spirits of the storm and sent two arrows flying into the beast, lightning crackling around its form as it shook at the force of the fey magic. And then she thought of Callimar’s eyes gleaming… don’t forget… don’t forget… and she pulled the threads of darkness creeping beneath the Forbidden Door, letting them coil around the bracers as she loosed a third arrow into the ogre’s foetid cheek where the shadows uncoiled and wormed like parasites into his eyes until he bellowed in fury as his eyes went dark and the night fell on him.

Then the thunder of hooves and Zola leaped over a roughly built palisade on Korvander, charging Obuzur and crashing down radiant smites with Castor and Pollux smashing into the creatures mighty chest.

As it roared in blind rage, the goliaths started to move, turning towards the party and towards the cages where the starving children were screaming in terror.

Just as Sorrel started to worry, Derthaad summoned up a sheer wall of arcane force around the cages to protect the children and the goliaths stumbled away from its power.

“May the Goddess deal justice through your righteous anger,” Velania whispered in Sorrel’s ear, touching her bow which started to echo with divine chords as if the strings themselves were vibrating with the song of creation. Light gleamed from the yew and danced along Sorrel’s wrists, lighting up the dark moons on her bracers.

Suddenly the ogre hurled himself into the night sky, high above their heads, his dead eyes turning this way and that as he searched blindly for a safe landing.

As he leaped, Kavel threw three punches at the goliath that stood on the ogre’s ground. A left, a right and then, before the stunned goliath could decide whether to stand or fall, a brutal uppercut that tore the powerful warriors head clean off.

“Head’s up!” Kavel gave a sly grin as he met Sorrel’s impressed gaze. She smiled back. The competition was on.

Two more arrows at Obuzur as he crashed to the ground on the other side of the river valley, one that shook his frame with the fizzing light of the storm and the second aglow with Selûne’s power piercing his eye just as his sight crept back.

Derthaad sent bolts of lightning and shards of radiant power raking through the camp. Velania was revealed in her wrath and splendour, the light pouring from her as she spread her wings and flew above the camp crying out the eternal torment visited on the unholy.

Driven mad with terror, the ogre leaped again, crashing down on Zola, Velania, Derthaad and Sorrel in turn. The others crashed to the ground, but a glow of protection surrounded Sorrel and she remained unmoved, noticing from the corner of her eyes how Velania staggered at each blow Sorrel received.

And then Sorrel’s fury was beyond the mortal. She plucked divine light from the eternal plane and hurled it at the ogre, sending him spinning to his knees. With a casual flick of her wrist, she followed with the halo knife, the gift from the Lady of Pain, which pierced the creatures other eye and threw him to the ground, stone dead.

As the others freed and fed the children, mopping up the remaining, terrified goliaths, Sorrel studied the ogres corpse and saw for certain what she hoped she had only imagined.

The black hand of the House tattooed on his chest.

The halo knife severed his head at a stroke and peeled back the tattooed skin.

The party seemed non-plussed by the encounter.

“We have done good, have we not?” Zola sounded uncertain.

“Yes, we have,” Velania’s voice was proud and sure. “These children will live. We can be proud of this night’s work.”

Sorrel turned. “We must report back,” she rasped, and the teleportation ring was prepared.

The Silver Serpent Inn, Graveside, 10pm Saturday

The regulars rumbled their discontent at the watch walking in again. Sorrel was firmly of the opinion that anyone who had her back when she fought an ogre to save some children deserved some fucking respect. Her face still had smears of her enemy’s blood and her eyes glowed with the faint echoes of a killer’s soul that has just torn the life from a sentient creature.

She met the eyes of the malcontents.

The malcontents looked away.

“Zola, will you open the door?" Sorrel asked quietly.

“What do you plan to do?” Zola sounded wary.

“Please…?” Sorrel whispered.

She cocked the hand crossbow and slipped her venom blade up her sleeve as the door swung back to reveal an empty room.

Sorrel smiled, stepped forward and felt Yhsa’s crossbow graze her cheek.

“Shall we deal fairly?” Yhsa hissed.

Sorrel bowed her head in assent and laid the small crossbow on the table. Yhsa followed suit.

“You have proof?”

Sorrel opened her cloak and the ogre’s mutilated head crashed to the floor. Yhsa smiled, bent to check and handed Sorrel the letter wrapped in ribbons.

As the specialist looked up and nodded Sorrel flicked her hand from her pocket and in one swift move smeared the tattooed, gore stained stinking ogre skin tattoo across Yhsa’s face.

“One more thing, trainee,” she spat. “Next time, send your fucking master or we have no deal. This trickery is insulting. You are an insult. If you return without him you will never go home. Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

The letter in the back room, Daring Heights, 12.05am, Saturday night

“The House killed Swinford Darkfire (now hot on our heels) and hid the children,” Sorrel’s voice was clear and cold. “They were raised in a temple of Selûne far away enough that it would be hard to find them but near enough that I could visit if I needed to. They have been safe all this time, but urgency has remained in my heart all these years. The Moonmaiden has watched over them through me, for their tasks are yet to be fulfilled.

Do not hate me, but I believe this is what she intended. Moonlight has shone on our bloodline for longer than we know. The children - now grown but still innocent - have been discovered and I'm going there to protect them as best I can.

I'm not the fighter I used to be. Should I fall, I pass this task on to you. She wishes them to be safe, and you have grown to be one of the most formidable champions She could ever ask for.

If you receive only this letter from me and nothing else, I am surely dead. Do not mourn me, for you have a Mother still. A better one than I was. She is with you always, and is the solace at the end of all things. May She bless and keep you, and be with you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

Love,

Elsa"

Silence fell. Sorrel looked up to find her companions watching her.

A log cracked and fell in the grate.

The pause became uncomfortable.

“I am going to the Temple,” Sorrel said eventually. “But I would like to buy you all a drink when I am done. I need to walk there alone. I have… things on my mind.”

Sometime later

Kavel and Velania walked ahead.

Sorrel’s mind raced. When she woke this morning she had looked so rocky-eyed, her strange gaze ringed in black. She was always on her own at night, even when Silvia lay next to her. Inside she was screaming until the ringing in her ears meant she could no longer hear the silence, like watching the wind from the window, seeing it, but not being touched by it.

There was a vision summoned by the letter - three white haired elven sisters ushered onto a ship by members of the House. The ship set sail for Kantas.

She reached for Jasathriel in her mind and felt a large calloused hand on her shoulder. His grief and frustration flooded her soul as he gripped her to the point of pain.

Briefly the clouds parted, and the moon shone through the rain.

Something hard around Sorrel’s heart cracked open and she staggered as if hit by a bolt from a heavy crossbow.

“I do not have my mother anymore, but I have a mother still,” she thought, her mind clinging to anything that passed for certainty.

And Sorrel wept.

Three elven children on a boat.

She never asked for war, nor in the innocence of her birth was aware of it.

She never asked to fight, nor in the joyful colour of her childhood was she conscious of the darkness.

In her arrogance she had gutted bodies filled with life, her filthy pride cleansing her of the doubt she should have known.

She had smiled in the face of death - the pain she inflicted, determined, created, ordered – taking instruction to slaughter.

Throughout her life she had stolen the young bodies of the living, twisted and torn in filthy war.

What right did she have to defile those births?

What right did she have to spit on hope?

What right did she have to slaughter?

Sorrel’s tears were for her life lost and her sisters to come.

Because all she could taste was blood.