Fan Fiction ❯ Demons and Paladins ❯ Public Displays ( Chapter 3 )

Demons and Paladins

By: bsmart

Disclaimer: Why the hell am I writing this? Nobody reads them and they have no legal weight. It's a complete waste of time and bandwidth and yet I'm still typing. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and rate this fic NC17, for sex, violence and language, the good stuff, often all at once. This is a rewrite of the ending of Neverwinter Nights, an RPG for the computer. It combines Neverwinter Nights with the expansion Hordes of the Underdark, there's no Shadows of Undrentide, and no Deekin.

"…" Normal Speech

`…' Thought

Chapter Three: Public Displays

After seven days of running Aribeth was becoming monumentally bored. Since they had stopped for a bath she had tried to fill the hours by talking to Mala but her mistress wasn't very forth coming, aside from talking about what had happened in Neverwinter Mala didn't say much. Each of Aribeth's attempts to ask why they were going to Waterdeep were either ignored or rebuffed, and it got frustrating. After a full day of banging her metaphorical head against the brick wall of Mala's communicative reticence Aribeth had given up and settled for talking to Mala about Neverwinter.

Aribeth had found Mala to be surprisingly candid, disturbingly at some points. The demoness held nothing back, informing her of her fighting off hordes of undead in the Beggar's Nest then making a father pay for his dead son's journal, of helping a courtesan escape with her illegitimate son and then killing a pirate just for his uniform, all with equal candor, like she was listing off supplies to buy the next time they were in a town. After two days of talking to her mistress Aribeth came away as confused about her as she had ever been. But that had been yesterday and the day before and as numerous as Mala's stories were they had still run out.

'By Tyr, how far have we gone? Waterdeep can't be too much furth...'

Aribeth had been so engrossed in trying to determine how close they were to their destination that she ran headlong into Mala when the half-dragon stopped.

"Watch it!" Mala hissed as she staggered back. When she regained her footing she shoved Aribeth off of her.

"Sorry," Aribeth said but Mala shushed her rather then accept it.

"Can't you smell them?" Mala asked quietly.

Aribeth paused for a moment then inhaled deeply through her nose. The woodland scents of the pine forest around them flooded her senses but down deep she could just barely detect something musty, some thing rotting, something foul. "What is it?"

"Gnolls," Mala whispered.

"Gnolls?"

Mala nodded and started to mess with one of her bags.

"What are gnolls doing this far south?"

Mala shrugged, "Dunno, never heard of them this far south, hell I've never heard of them coming south of Luskan. Did you have any gnolls in your army?"

A chill ran through Aribeth but she shook her head, "No, they weren't worth the time to try and convince to join up, we had plenty of troops."

Mala pulled a quiver of arrows out of the bag and reached in again. "Benali," Mala whispered, nothing happened. "Benali!" A small pillar of light appeared in front of Mala, shimmering for an instant before splitting apart to reveal her familiar. At a good forty centimeters from head to toe the half naked girl was a little large to be a pixie though she had all the traits, wings, leaf skirt, glittering, etc. Hovering in the air in front of Mala the little girl's gossamer wings beat furiously though her tiny face communicated intense disinterest in the goings on, until she saw Aribeth.

The tiny brunette's eyes got as big as a gold piece as she darted right up to Aribeth's face and poked her nose. Aribeth blinked and pulled her head back but the little pixie had darted out of sight in the split second her eyes were closed. Aribeth didn't have to wonder where the familiar had disappeared too for long though as she felt a minute hand playing with the pendant on her collar. Aribeth took a step back to try and get away from the pixie but Benali wasn't following, instead she had curled up in a ball in midair and looked to laughing her little head off though her laugh sounded like a bunch of tiny little bells. When Benali stopped laughing for a moment to breathe Aribeth thought it might be over but Benali just stabbed a finger towards her collar and laughed even harder.

Her familiar's merriment was cut short when Mala snatched her out of the air and held her only a few centimeters from her face. "Focus runt!" she snarled. Benali just rolled her eyes. "There are a group of gnolls upwind from here, find them."

Benali squirmed out of Mala's hand and took flight but not before shooting her Mistress a rather rude gesture.

"I thought familiars we're supposed to be...ummm..."

"Respectful?" Mala finished. "I still don't know what possessed me to pick her." Mala's hand disappeared into her bag again.

"Will she be alright by herself?"

"She'll be fine. She's obnoxious, not stupid." Mala tossed a pair of leather rolls onto the ground.

"What are you planning?"

Mala pulled a bow out of her bag before closing it up and reattaching it to her belt. Unlike the normal longbow she had used to hunt with a few nights before this bow was clearly meant for war. A meter and a half or better from top to bottom the bow was a composite of material's Aribeth could only guess at wrapped in what looked like some black metal wire. The recessed hand grip was protected by a pair of wide blades in front of it that ran along the front of the bow and the bowstring was nearly invisible it was so fine. Mala slung the bow over her back and attached the quiver to her left hip. The leather rolls turned out to be full of darts and each sheet was strapped to the front of one of Mala's thighs. After checking the buckles on all her equipment Mala looked back at Aribeth. "I hate gnolls."

*****************

Just like Benali had told Mala the gnolls were camped at the base of a ridge, a ridge they now laid on top of. The thick covering of pine needles on the ground provided plenty of cushion to hide their movements but the pine trees they had come from offered little cover, thankfully there was a small rise just before the ground sloped down sharply to the gnoll camp that they were able to hide behind. Looking like hyenas taken human form the three creatures moved listlessly around a small campfire, the remains of their latest meal scattered around them.

Having seen enough Mala, Aribeth, and Benali slide back down the rise though the pixie was not happy to be grounded.

"Only three?" Mala asked.

"I didn't see any others," Aribeth said. Benali jingled in agreement. "Raiding party maybe?"

"Or scouts, I didn't see any axes or chain mail on them, just bucklers and scimitars."

"I've never heard of gnolls operating in anything less then a full pack."

"Me either."

"So what are we going to do?"

Mala smiled, "Same thing, follow my lead."

"You're just going to kill them?"

Mala looked at her slave in confusion, "They're gnolls," and with that Mala slowly stood up keeping most of her body behind a pine tree as she unlimbered her bow and grasped an arrow. With nothing put the long sword and shield that Mala had given her Aribeth quieted down and waited. She didn't like killing without a reason, even if what was being killed was a group of gnolls.

Mala's bow creaked and groaned as it was drawn but the three standing gnolls below them didn't hear a thing, until the first shot was loosed. With incredible speed the first arrow left the longbow and smashed into the side of the first gnolls head knocking the large humanoid a meter to the side. Dim witted they might be but slow to react they weren't and the other two gnolls spun quickly to try and find the source of the shooter that had killed their packmate but the second arrow had already been loosed before the first one had hit, turning to find their attacker only meant that rather the rip through its neck, the second whistling arrow crashed into the sternum of the second gnoll and drove it to the ground. With both his companions dead the third gnoll turned to run and made it a half step before the arrow that had been intended for his heart instead shattered his knee from behind.

In all her life Aribeth had never seen an arrow cause the damage that Mala's three had done and her shock at the sight of the gnolls being knocked around by the projectiles was the reason she had to try and play catch up to Mala as she took off down the slope.

Covered in pine needles the steep slope of the ridge would have offered little traction or footing to someone without elf blood in their veins, but Aribeth had it and did Mala but Aribeth struggled to keep up. Mala was a blur as she shot down the hill, her feet barely disturbing the needles covering the floor, and with hardly a sound being made. As she ran Mala deftly slung her bow and reached back for the long falchion she kept strapped low across her back, the burning blade sliding cleanly from its scabbard even as Mala seemed to melt through a final shrub before charging into the gnoll clearing.

The single survivor of Mala's arrows hard turned towards the charging half-elf even as he was crouched down on the ground on his destroyed knee and with a defiant roar the creature tried to draw its scimitar to defend itself.

Mala was too quick. In a flaming blur her falchion swept out in a wide horizontal arc, dropping the gnolls body in a pile and sending its head rolling off. Kneeling had put the large humanoid at the perfect height to be decapitated.

Aribeth finally made it to the foot of the slope only to find all three gnolls lying motionless on the ground. "Mal..." The gleefully maniacal look on her mistress' face stopped Aribeth cold.

With a smile big enough to swallow an apple whole Mala made a show of breathing in deeply and letting it out with a pleased sigh. "It's been almost two weeks."

Aribeth was afraid to ask but she did anyway, "Since?"

"I killed something," Mala said with a smile. "Now be a dear and go get that arrow."

Aribeth was more then happy to not have to look at Mala's happy face while she retrieved the arrow from the first gnoll. From the way Mala had been smiling Aribeth doubted that her joy was faked. The first of the hyena-men had been hit in the side of the head and his slack body had landed with that side up, the arrow still embedded in his head. Aribeth's wonder at Mala's bow increased when she saw that the arrow had actually crushed the side of the gnoll's skull in and gnoll's heads were even denser then orcs. For something that had done so much damage the arrow came out surprising easily, but once it was clear Aribeth almost lost her grip on it. 'This thing must weigh half a kilo! What kind of draw must that bow have to launch them?' The head of the arrow was long and thin, obviously designed to pierce and it had a wide tang, 'That's what crushed its head.' The arrow's fletching spiraled around just like an elvish arrow, and when she looked hard she thought she could see small sparks dancing along the arrow's head just like on Mala's claymore. Aribeth was so engrossed in the arrow that it almost killed her.

The fourth gnoll of the group came charging into the clearing with a roar, large even for a gnoll the hulking humanoid would tower over either of the two petite women in the clearing. Unlike his fellows this gnoll carried the traditional weapon of his kind, a battle axe that only someone of his size could wield with one hand. Whatever the crude weapon lacked in refinement it made up for it in shear mass as the Gnoll tried to crush the nearest woman with it.

Aribeth barely had time to get her shield up before the gnoll's axe fell much less draw her sword or stand up. The force of the blow landed directly on the boss of the shield and drove it down onto Aribeth's head before the blade swept off the side of the metal protuberance and smashed part way through the shield.

Aribeth could smell the putrid breath of the creature all around her as it howled in anger and tried to withdraw its axe only to rip the whole shield from Aribeth's arm, the old leather straps snapping under the strain. The extra weight of the shield on the end of his weapon threw the Gnoll off balance for a moment and running on instinct Aribeth rose and drew her long sword, plunging it to the hilt into the gnolls neck in one smooth stroke. The gnoll's howl turned into a gurgle as Aribeth's sword stabbed through its windpipe spraying her in thick purple blood, the three meter high creature looked down at Aribeth and tried to swat her away with its paw but there was no strength in the blow. When four darts hissed past Aribeth's head and embedded in the creatures matted brown fur the gnoll collapsed to the ground ripping Aribeth's sword from her hand in the process.

Mala skidded to a stop beside Aribeth. "Holy shit, I thought you said there were only three!" she snapped at her familiar.

Benali's tinkle sounded quite a bit like, "There were!"

*************

The appearance of the forth gnoll had made Mala and Aribeth uneasy and after only a quick inspection of the bodies and their belongings they had started off again.

"Fucking gnolls," Mala had snarled as they jogged through the woods, Benali keeping pace with them. "Not a damn thing on them worth taking."

"Why do you hate gnolls so much?" Aribeth had asked.

"It's a long story, a long boring, pointless, mind numbing story."

"I'm willing to listen."

"Well I'm not willing to tell it. Suffice it to say that I got around before I came to your fair city and after being cheated out of what was rightfully mine by a tribe of gnolls in the north I have a distaste for their flea ridden kind."

And that had been the end of it. The only thing that set apart from all the other days they spent running was that it was over many increasingly large hills. Aribeth had started to see mountains in the distance the day before and she knew Waterdeep was close but without a map she didn't know how much further they had to go. She knew that the hills they were in were the foothills of the mountains but the thick pine forest they were in kept her from seeing anything beyond the next hill or ridge.

As she ran Aribeth did her best to get the thick purple blood of the gnoll off of her, it covered her sword arm almost to the shoulder and it had sprayed across her chest and face. Wiping had gotten the sticky mess off of her skin but she could still feel little bits of it in her hair and it wasn't coming out of the nooks and crannies of her armor without a thorough washing. It was her hair that was really driving her insane though, her mithril and adamantium armor wasn't going to be hurt by a little blood but she didn't want to think about what that creature's gore was doing to her hair for even though she had been the very epitome of a paladin once Aribeth was still more then a little vain about her hair.

'I shouldn't have let her wipe it off,' Mala grumbled to herself as she hopped over a fallen log. 'She looked better covered in blood.' Even though she tried to shrug it off every time the memory of that huge gnoll towering over Aribeth came to mind Mala felt queasy, worrying about other people wasn't something she'd done in a long time.

The sun was sinking low and the light about them was fading fast much to Aribeth's displeasure. Her search for an herb or flower that she could clean out her hair with hadn't turned up anything so far and soon they would stop. "Damn it, I do not want to have to cut my hair," she hissed.

"What was that? Whoa!"

Aribeth slid to a stop beside her mistress but made no comments on the sight herself. The darkening sky had hidden the top of the hill from them so reaching the top had been a bit of a surprise, but not as much as the sight before them. The Clouded Mountains thrust up out of the verdant earth dominating the landscape with a mass of brown and gray rock that stretched from horizon to horizon and from the ground up to the clouds where their white capped peaks disappeared. Directly in front of them across the valley was a deep cut between the mountains and while the plateau that was formed was several hundred meters above the valley floor it was still a few thousand below the tops of the mountains. In that cut sat the glittering jewel that was Waterdeep. From their vantage point the city's great walls were just a thing gray line but the city itself spread out behind it, filling the space between the stony ravine and even intruding up the sides for a bit. Even though night was falling the city wasn't sleeping, the whole of it was lit up brightly by thousands of torches and the light from hundreds of windows. Like a great silver snake the Aolic poured down from Waterdeep and cut off across the valley, its waters nourishing the farms that filled to plains.

"By Tyr," Aribeth whispered, "I've never seen the city like that."

"Something ain't right..."

"What?"

Mala pointed at the city. "Some of those lights aren't torches, they're fires, and the whole city should be lit up not just parts of it."

Aribeth strained to see what Mala could but even her half-elven eyes failed to make out enough detail to see what Mala did, but she could see that there were areas of the city where there were no lights, islands of darkness in a sea of light. "Is this why we're here?"

Mala looked over at her slave and grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Actually yes I would."

"Tough."

Aribeth glared at her owner, it might not have been so bad if Mala didn't enjoy it so much.

**************

Mala relaxed against the pine tree, her belly pleasantly full and the low fire providing just enough warmth to keep her toes from getting cold. Her armor fit well enough that it wasn't too uncomfortable to be spending the night in it and her swords were close enough that she could easily reach them. With her physical needs taken care of she again found her gaze and her thoughts drawn back to Waterdeep. For all the teasing she did to Aribeth Mala was just as in the dark as to why they had come as the paladin was. It wasn't a new situation, Ultimat, the Northern Reaches, the Netherese Desert, and on and on, Tokimi had never been forth coming as to why she sent Mala on the errands she did. Mala sometimes wondered if there even was a reason connecting them all, if maybe she was just being sent on these tasks to groom her for something later, but she never asked, it wasn't her place to ask.

Mala sighed and turned back to the fire to see Aribeth kneeling beside it fussing with her hair. Aribeth was mumbling to herself as her long fingers fidgeted with something before she exclaimed, "Ow! Blast!"

"What's the matter with you?"

"I can't get this blood out of my hair; it's clotted and stuck in."

"Come here."

"What?"

Mala's finger stabbed the dirt between her legs. "I said come here. You can't see what in the hells you're doing."

With no good reason to disobey Aribeth did as she was told and tentatively sat down between Mala's outstretched legs.

Mala frowned when Aribeth sat down so far away that she could barely touch her shoulders. "Scoot back."

Aribeth felt queasy when she heard Mala's order. She wasn't blind to the way she sometimes caught Mala looking at her and she well remembered her Mistress' conversation with her Mistress about the normal use of female slaves. Her unease wasn't helped when Mala decided that she wasn't moving quickly enough and dragged her back to her by her cuirass until she was pressed right up against her, her bottom planted in Mala's crotch and her back leaning against the Dragon Disciple's breastplate. "The light is better by the fire." Even separated by two centimeters and six layers of metal, leather, and cloth Mala was too close for comfort. Aribeth could feel the aura emanating from Mala like a cold mass of writhing snakes against her back and the longer she stayed the more the aura started to envelope her.

"No, I can see fine." Unseen by Aribeth Mala was smiling. Aribeth's discomfort and reluctance was palpable which suited Mala just fine, the less comfortable Aribeth was the more likely it would be that she would break the subservient routine. Much like Aribeth Mala found the aura given off by her companion unsettling; in Mala's case Aribeth's sweet, light aura was positively nauseating yet at the same time it called to her drawing her in against her will. Mala ran her hands quickly through Aribeth's hair, finding the clots and eliciting a few discontent yelps from her slave when her fingers found one. Just like Aribeth had said it didn't look like any amount of tugging or scraping was going to dislodge the dried ichor. "Lean back," Mala commanded.

Aribeth didn't move quickly enough to comply so Mala gave a quick jerk to the handful of hair she had and Aribeth complied with a muted yelp. Mala relished the feeling of Aribeth settling back into her, even muted by the armor that they wore the sensation of Aribeth's weight settling back against her was exquisite, made all the better by the fact that it wasn't willing. Mala ran her hands through Aribeth's hair enjoying the feeling of the brown and gold strands sliding through her fingers, Aribeth protested occasionally when Mala's fingers found a tangle or some blood but she quieted down after Mala yanked her hair hard when she tried to pull away. Mala's mouth watered as her eyes traced a line from Aribeth's generous exposed cleavage up and across the delicate collar bone then along the pale creamy skin of her long graceful neck and then to Aribeth's full pointed ear. Mala felt her jaw muscles tensing as she fought an almost overwhelming urge to bite down and mark Aribeth but she resisted, it wasn't time.

As delicious as Aribeth's acquiescence was it was soured by the motivation. The paladin was still giving in because she wanted to please Tyr, to accept her just punishment, Mala wanted her to resist it, to loathe it but to submit anyways because she knew she had no choice, that if Mala wanted to she could just take what she wanted. 'Now if I can just get it.' She needed Aribeth pissed off at her, she needed the paladin to absolutely loathe her presence, and she also wanted her attracted to her. 'If I can just get that then she'll be ready.'

Aribeth tried to relax as Mala played with her hair but the random tugs at the knots kept her too on edge, she didn't want to admit it but Mala's fingers felt wonderful and if it weren't for the occasional shooting pain Aribeth might have been able to enjoy it. The tugs and snags subsided soon enough and Aribeth started to relax, until Mala's right hand left her scalp and the unmistakable sound of a blade being drawn from a scabbard demanded her attention. Quicker then she could react she saw a hunting knife pass by her face in her peripheral vision and then her hair was pulled for a moment before the pressure was gone. A single blood soaked lock of honey brown hair drifted down in front of her face. "What are you doing?!" Aribeth squealed.

"This isn't coming out, so I'm taking it out."

"Wha...AH!" Aribeth yelped as she felt another piece of her hair coming out.

"Sit still unless you want it yanked out by the roots."

"Then I'll wait...NO!"

Mala tossed the bit of hair to the side with a grin. "If we don't take care of it now you'll smell like a rotting corpse by morning. Now sit STILL!" Mala hooked her legs over the top of Aribeth's thighs and then down under her knees, pulling the stunned paladin's legs apart and denying her any leverage as the surprisingly strong dragon-half held her down.

Aribeth struggled instinctively against the restraint, her mithril armor scraping against Mala's dragon scale protection but Mala didn't give her a chance as one of her arms snaked around Aribeth's chest just below her breasts holding her arms and torso tightly. The tip of Mala's dagger slid across the sensitive skin behind Aribeth's right ear while she whispered in the other, "Be. Still."

Mala's leering grin threatened to split her face apart when she heard Aribeth growl low in her throat in aggravation at her helplessness but she stopped fighting, her breathing ragged long after they had stopped competing.

And Benali chose this moment to wake up from her nap and crawl out of one of Mala's bags.

'Whoa! Do you two want some privacy or are you just gonna fuck right here?'

'Piss off you little bug,' Mala snapped back mentally at her familiar.

'Whatever lizard breath, I thought you liked an audience.'

'I didn't know giant mosquitoes could think.'

Benali fluttered right up beside Mala and Aribeth's heads cluing Aribeth in on what Mala and been snarling about. 'I remember you and Whis...' Benali was cut off as the tip of Mala's dagger stopped a few millimeters from her nose. 'Ok, I got it,' the pixie said as she backed up. 'I was outta line.' She waited while Mala glared at her for a moment before turning back to Aribeth's hair. 'Bitch.'

Aribeth didn't know what prompted Mala to knock her familiar clean out of the air with the flat of the dagger but she did and the furious little fey girl skittered off amidst a string of the most hateful tinkling Aribeth had ever heard.

"Will she be all right?" Aribeth asked cautiously.

"She can't die unless I do," Mala said off hand, "She'll be fine."

"What did she say?"

"None of your concern."

Aribeth sat still and quiet for the rest of the night and her breathing went back to normal prompting Mala to try to think of a way to get her obnoxious familiar back for breaking the mood.

**************

The next morning was a dark gloomy affair. During the night a low layer of thick gray clouds had rolled in settling over the hills they were and low enough for the tops of some of the towers in Waterdeep to disappear into them. A thick fog blanketed the valley floor and only a few ghostly shapes hinted at the houses hidden beneath it. The light drizzle didn't improve Aribeth's mood as the water seemed to hang in the air rather then fall, getting everything miserably damp. Mala however seemed to be enjoying herself, waking up with a smile and breathing in deeply as she gazed out over the fog shrouded plain.

"Wonderful morning don't you think?"

"Only you would think that," Aribeth said with a shake of her head.

"Vampires might appreciate the lack of sun too."

"The company you keep must be wonderful."

"You're the only company I keep," Mala leered. "Now come here."

Aribeth did as she was told while Mala started to fiddle with one of her bags. Setting it down on the ground Mala pulled the mouth open wide before reaching inside and starting to pull something out. What finally emerged was a huge tower shield. "I was going to give this to you later but since you wrecked your last one I suppose this is as good a time as any. Take 'em."

The shield was tear drop shaped and large enough to cover Aribeth from shin to shoulder when she held it. A third of the way down the shield on both sides there was a diagonal cut back towards the large boss of the shield. Above the boss in the large semi-circular area at the top of the shield was a willow tree wrought out of a dark copper colored metal that filled the whole area and below the boss made from the same metal were the tree's roots. The boss itself and the entire perimeter of the shield were made from some kind of golden metal that only shined dully in the light and the willow's branches where given color with a dark green patina, the whole shield made her immediately think that it was of elvish origin. When Aribeth took the shield and turned it over she found that instead of the usual cross holding that would have her arm horizontally across her body to hold the shield that it was instead meant to be gripped vertically with her arm running down the long axis of the shield. The strange design choice was immediately clear when Aribeth took a close look at the bottom of the shield and discovered that the edge of the shield from the bottom of the cutouts to the point at the bottom had been sharpened to a razor edge.

Tucked back in the straps of the shield was the second gift Mala was giving to her, a new sword, a bastard sword by the looks of it whose reach would come in handy with the large shield. Where as the long sword she'd been given had been serviceable the bastard sword was a work of art, perfectly balanced, simply but richly adorned grip, and a simple scabbard. Aribeth could feel the sword before she even laid a hand on it and she knew that it had been intended to be an instrument of divine justice.

Smiling broadly at the gifts Aribeth told Mala, "Thank you."

"Yeah well...let's go, we're killing daylight."

Aribeth tried to fight off the sense of deja vu as they ran across the valley floor but she couldn't. The land was almost identical to what they had traveled across on their first day, field after field of grains and fruit trees, pastures and potato fields, but unlike their first day there was nothing refreshing about their journey. Every house they passed was empty, some scorched from fire and one even burned to the ground. None of the fields were being kept up; weeds were everywhere as were rodents. The closer they got to Waterdeep the more Aribeth knew that something evil was happening though she still didn't know why it mattered to Mala's mistress.

The crunch of gravel beneath their boots and the gentle rise of the land were the first indications that they had started the climb to Waterdeep. The long line of carts and peasants coming down the pass was the second. While dense the layer of fog that covered the valley wasn't particularly thick, only a few minutes up the slope and they were out of it revealing the road up to Waterdeep. Down at the bottom where they were the slope wasn't bad, a cart could easily negotiate it but as you went higher the slope got steeper and the road started to snake back and forth on itself until you got to the top of the plateau and things shallowed out again. While the city was only a kilometer or two away from the base of the mountains as the crow flied there was a good eight or nine kilometers of road to traverse to get to the city and every meter of it was packed with people. Peasants in rag, nobles in finery, some riding horses, some in carts, most walking, they all came.

"Where are they all going?" Aribeth asked.

"Dunno, let's ask." Mala strode up the slope towards the road singling out an elderly man. "Hey you, yeah you old man. Come here." The man Mala had chosen didn't want any of her attention. "I said come here, I've got five pieces of gold if you just get your ass over here." The mention of gold overcame whatever reluctance the man may have had at approaching a woman with horns sprouting from her head and red wings on her back.

"Yes m'lady?" he asked with an outstretched hand.

"What's going on, where is everyone going?"

"You haven't heard?"

Mala's voice dripped with annoyance as her eyes narrowed. "Would I be asking if I had?"

"My apologies," he said as he fingered the gold pieces Mala dropped into his hand. "We're leaving before they lock the gates tomorrow."

"Lock the gates?" Aribeth asked.

The old man was preoccupied with one of the gold pieces, turning it over in front of his face. "Mmhmmm, they don't want none of the creatures getting out, course they already have."

"Creatures?" Mala asked.

"Aye, bunch ah nasties commin' outta Undermountain. Drow, duergar, ogres, I even talked to one of mah mates who said he'd heard of some eye tyrants and mind flayers showing up."

"Why?"

"Nobody knows they just started showing up. Durnan swears none of them are coming up the Well but they're there none the same."

Aribeth spoke up as the man petered off, "Anything else kind sir?"

"That's it aside from the city officials having their heads up their asses. They don't know what to do `bout anything. I hear they're `bout to offer a reward to anyone willing to go into Undermountain and try to figure out what's going on."

Mala dismissed the old man with a wave of her hand but Aribeth told him, "Thank you," before he slipped back into the line of refugees. "Is this why we're coming?"

"Probably."

**********************

The city was as bad as the flood of refuges would have suggested. Whole blocks of buildings had been reduced to burning rubble and fires were everywhere. Unlike Neverwinter where there was plenty of space between the buildings and open areas all around Waterdeep was much more built up, some alleys were only a meter wide and after half an hour of exploring the only open spaces they had found were where buildings had crumbled. Most houses stood empty, their doors barred and their windows dark, some still had occupants but even they seemed to be preparing to leave, and a few had barricaded themselves inside. Spying an armored man with an officer's cape overseeing a group of soldiers going door to door Mala and Aribeth hustled over to him.

"What's going on?"

Up close the officer looked harried and worn, like a man with a dozen things that absolutely had to be done perfectly but only time to do one poorly. His blonde hair was a matted mess and he was covered in soot and bruises, it didn't look like he'd slept in a week. "You shouldn't be out, it's not safe."

"We can take care of ourselves, what's going on?"

The man sighed, "Do as you please, I don't have time to bother."

"I asked you what's going on?" Mala demanded.

"Are you blind? We're under attack!"

"From who, from where?" Aribeth asked.

"Have you been in a hole for the last month?"

"We're not from around here," Mala explained.

The man sighed again and checked his men. "It's Undermountain, Halaster's pets have gone mad and they're starting to come out into the city."

"Where are they?" Aribeth asked as soothingly as she could.

"Who knows, they come out of no where, attack and then disappear. Duergar, drow, all manner of creatures, we can't fight them because they don't stay in one place long enough to get any men to them to try and stop them, it's like they're coming up through the ground."

"Do you know why?"

Aribeth's soft voice seemed to coax more information out of the man. "No, we've lived over Undermountain for thousands of years and never had any problems, course no one who's come back out of Undermountain ever said anything about drow and duergar before."

"Do you know a man named Durnan?" Mala asked.

"Course I do, everyone knows Durnan, he owns the Yawning Portal, only way into Undermountain that anyone knows about."

Aribeth took over, "Where is the Yawning Portal?"

"Eastern side of town, just before you start back up the mountains, it's at the end of the Greenway canal."

Aribeth laid a hand on the man's shoulder and Mala had to hold her tongue as Aribeth said, "Thank you," and they turned to leave.

"Why have you come?" the man asked as they started to head off.

"We've come to help," Aribeth yelled back before turning a corner after Mala.

*********************

"Why did we come?" Aribeth asked Mala as she followed her mistress down another dark street. It was only an hour or two after midday but the low clouds and the smoke rising from all over the city had darkened the city to twilight. Aribeth and Mala's keen vision made it easy to see in the dim light but what they saw wasn't happy. The northern side of the city was worse then the northern where they had entered. Not a single building had escaped damage and not a single one still had anyone living in it. The Greenway canal was easily found and once they were able to run along side it on the stone path that ringed it they made good time.

"You don't need to know, just be a good little slave and do as you're told."

Aribeth could see the end of the canal coming up and the large inn that say at it. "It looks like were almost there."

Even though she tried to hide it Mala could still hear the annoyance in Aribeth's voice. "Yep, almost..."

The battle ax came spinning out of the alley they were passing in front of and hit Mala in the shoulder. With no time to prepare even marginally for the blow Mala was at the mercy of the laws of nature as the weapon knocked her off balance and she tumbled to the ground, skidding a meter before hitting one of the boat hitches that lined the canal and coming to a stop. Mala snarled in rage and was about to climb to her feet but Aribeth was already in front of her, covering them both with her shield while she drew her sword, the blade gleaming.

Aribeth had moved to cover Mala without a conscious thought and she now found herself facing their attackers by herself. While they were short and stout like their surface dwelling cousins only a fool would have mistaken the ashen skinned duergar for regular dwarves. With grace belying their heft the four gray and red armored forms moved to surround them, axes and shields in hand while a fifth stayed back in the alley muttering prayers or incantations, Aribeth didn't know which until a dire spider emerged from the ether and started to stalk towards them. Aribeth thought she might have been able to make out a taller shadow but the approaching dark dwarves commanded her immediate attention. Unwilling to leave Mala exposed on the ground Aribeth prepared to stand her ground until she heard Mala whisper, "Go right."

Mala roared as Aribeth lunged towards the farthest right duergar, in a flash she was back on her feet and lunging towards the left most dwarf. The three meters between Mala and her prey were bridged in a flash as her left arm stabbed out, claymore in hand, and the weapon sank into the startled man's chest emerging from his back half a heart beat later.

Aribeth didn't have as much of the element of surprise on her side as Mala had and her target had enough time to raise his shield to ward off her blow allowing the duergar beside him a clean shot at Aribeth. Unlike her last shield this one easily warded off the ax blow of the second duergar to her left leaving him open to Aribeth's spinning counter-strike that laid his throat open almost to the bone.

Rather then withdraw her blade from the fresh corpse Mala followed through with her lunge bringing her within a hairs breadth of the duergar on the right of the one she had just killed. As the first duergar collapsed to the ground with Mala's claymore still embedded in his chest Mala used the now upright weapon to pivot around drawing her falchion as she spun. The duergar hadn't been expecting Mala to follow through on her strike and his attempt to hack at her as she passed was clumsy at best, his ax missing her by a good half meter and hitting the paving stones next to his dead comrade, Mala didn't give him a second chance. Finally withdrawing her claymore from the first duergar Mala now finished her spin facing right at the off balance Underdark denizen and she brought both blades down on his exposed back shattering armor, piecing plate, and rending flesh.

Aribeth knew her opportunistic attack on the second duergar left her open to the first but her trainers had always emphasized to her to never pass up a chance to land a killing blow so she had trusted to her armor and gone ahead and dispatched the second. When she heard the first dark dwarf yelp Aribeth had though she'd find out just how good the armor Mala had given her a second later but the blow never fell, instead she turned to find Benali flittering away from the duergar who now had a shallow but nasty gash across his throat. There was none of the spray that would have meant the little pixie had hit an artery but the cut was gruesome to look at none the less, and it distracted him long enough for Aribeth to remove their attacker's arm at the shoulder. The duergar turned back to her, hardly believing what his nerves were telling him but Aribeth didn't give him time to contemplate his new disability as her return slash destroyed the duergar's face.

Mala's elation at the scent of fresh blood was short lived as a blast of mage fire engulfed her. The dark shadow that Aribeth had seen had revealed himself to be a drow mage and he had entered the fight. The dire spider in front of Mala was caught up in the blast of flame as well and one swipe of Mala's falchion left is smoldering in her wake as she charged the dark elf. Caught off guard by the lack of effect his spell had on Mala the mage loosed another spell sending a bolt of lightning from his hands to her chest. The surge of electricity drew a pained grunt from Mala but she didn't slow down.

The duergar cleric was still reeling from the loss of his summoned creature when Aribeth attacked. He tried to defend himself with his morningstar but the weapon had never been meant for defense and Aribeth was giving him no time to get the spike studded ball swinging. After Benali did her best to gouge out one of the dark dwarves eyes Aribeth took the opportunity to lay open his belly spilling his entrails out on the ground as he collapsed. Aribeth was just stepping over the body when the cleric's hand latched onto her left ankle and to her dismay he started to chant something. With the dark dwarf's head on the wrong side of her body to get at with her sword Aribeth cocked her arm back and drove the point of her shield down into the skull of the cleric. His grip loosened immediately.

A strangled cry grabbed Aribeth's attention and revealed where Mala was. The drow's staff lay on the stone at his feet while his feet thrashed feebly in the air half a meter off the ground. Mala's hand over his face kept the elf crushed against the wall where she had hoisted him, muffled curses and invectives trying to slip past his lips and Mala's hand. For a split second Aribeth wondered why both of Mala's swords were in their scabbards until Mala smiled bigger then any normal person could, her lips pulling clear of her teeth revealing a mouth full of razor sharp fangs. "Mala no!"

The dragon-half lunged forward, her mouth popping open and then slamming shut around the drow's throat, thick blue blood erupted into Mala's mouth as her fangs ripped through flesh and arteries. The terror that she had seen in his eyes when he had realized he was helpless was only an appetizer to the rich bouquet oh his blood flowing across her tongue. Mala's teeth kept bearing down until she hit bone and then she held there until the drow stopped thrashing and then she let the limp body fall to the ground. Mala smiled to herself as she watched the last of the drow's life blood leech out onto the flagstones of the alley until Aribeth put her hand on her shoulder and spun her around.

"You didn't have to do that!"

With the adrenaline still rushing through her veins Mala saw red, she grabbed Aribeth's cuirass and slammed her into the wall where the dead mage's back had been a moment before. "Learn your place!"

As the air was driven from her lungs Aribeth realized that she had grossly misjudged her actions, Mala's enraged face was barely a centimeter from hers with her whole mouth covered in blood and her fangs still prominent. "You didn't have to kill him," Aribeth wheezed.

Some of the fire went out of Mala's eyes when she heard Aribeth trying to suck in a lungful of air. "That is not your decision, slave." Mala let go of Aribeth and cut off a section of the mage's robe to wipe her mouth off with.

Aribeth barely had time to re-inflate her lungs before two city guards came running over. "Are you alright, we saw a commotion."

Mala waded up the cloth scrap and threw it on the ground at her feet. "We're fine, they're not." Then she pushed past the two men and started walking towards the inn only a hundred meters away, Aribeth did her best to follow after her with Benali flying along with her.

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