R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“Better?” Catti-brie asked.

“Ah, aye, hands o’ magic,” Bruenor breathed, and his eyes went wide and Drizzt gasped as Catti-brie brought her hand back over his shoulder, holding the large spear tip that had been sunk into his back.

“You’ll need more spells on that wound,” she said.

“Do ’em on our way back to me grave, then,” Bruenor said.

“And Wulfgar, too,” Drizzt added. “You three return to the cairn. Regis, Guen, and I will remain here so we don’t lose any of the ground we have gained.”

Bruenor and his adopted children set off immediately, skull and femurs in hand.

“We should scout out the area,” Drizzt remarked.

Regis had other ideas, however. He reached into his magical pouch of holding and brought forth a large multi-layered and pocketed bag. He put it gently on the floor and began unwrapping it, revealing the pieces of his portable alchemy lab. He opened a large book, then, flipped to a marked page.

“That lichen,” he said, looking up from the picture in the book to a patch of mossy green fungus at the base of the room’s wall. “You go and scout and keep Guenhwyvar as relay. If you find any more of the lichen, gather it.”

“For?”

“Many things, and probably many more I haven’t yet discovered,” Regis answered. He reached into one pocket and pulled forth a vial filled with a bluish liquid. “And here,” he said, offering it to Drizzt.

The drow took it, looking at his halfling friend curiously.

“A potion of healing,” Regis explained. “Good to have until Catti-brie is back, at least.”

Drizzt nodded and started away.

“Fire protection,” Regis said suddenly, turning him back. “The lichen, I mean. I think I can use it to finish a potion of fire protection, and if I’m to be marching beside Catti-brie, that is something I desire! She seems to favor the flame!”

Drizzt smiled and nodded, his hand going to Icingdeath, which similarly protected him, and his thoughts going to the ring he had given to Catti-brie that afforded her the same. He was thinking about the longer term implications, fitting pieces of the greater puzzle together to find even more harmony and power within the group.

He glanced one last time at Regis, who had buried his nose in his alchemy book and who was, obviously, musing along the same lines.

“Allow me,” Wulfgar said.

Bruenor, still holding the skull, looked at him and hesitated.

“Please,” Wulfgar added.

“Are ye sad that ye weren’t there to bury yer Da the first time?” Bruenor asked with a wry smile as he handed the skull over.

“Just respect,” Wulfgar explained. “Respect owed to you.” He knelt beside the cairn and gently moved aside the stones.

“It is … sobering,” Catti-brie said, standing back with Bruenor. She draped her arm across the dwarf’s sturdy shoulders. “I wonder how I will feel when I return to Mithral Hall and look upon my own grave.”

“Sobering?” Bruenor replied with a snort. “Feeling more like I could use me a bit o’ the gutbuster!” He put his arm around his daughter’s waist and pulled her closer.

Wulfgar put the femurs back in place first, then tenderly placed the skull. Before he replaced the stones, he stood at the foot of the grave, where Catti-brie and Bruenor joined him. As the woman consecrated the grave, Wulfgar and Bruenor lowered their eyes.

It proved a cathartic moment for this unusual family. They did not bury their past there, just their past differences, Wulfgar most of all.

When Catti-brie finished her chant, he pulled the woman close in a tight hug. “Ever have I loved you,” he said, but there was no tension there in his voice or between them. “And now I am glad to be back beside you, both of you.”

“I didn’t think you’d leave Iruladoon to return to Toril,” Catti-brie said.

“Nor did I,” Wulfgar replied. “Curiously, I have not regretted my choice for a moment of the last twenty-one years. This is my adventure, my journey, my place.”

“Will you tell me about your wife and children in time?” Catti-brie asked, and Wulfgar smiled wide and nodded eagerly.

“Two lives,” he said as if he could not believe his good fortune. “Or three, as I consider the two sides of my previous existence.”

“Nah, just the one,” Bruenor decided. He stepped away from his children to the grave and kicked at one of the stones. He looked back at the pair, nodding as if in epiphany.

“What’s in here’s what’s countin’,” he said, poking a stubby finger against his chest, over his heart. “Not what’s in there,” he finished, pointing to the cairn.

The other two, who had passed through death, who also wore their second mortal bodies, could not argue that fine point.

The diminutive tiefling warlock strode angrily along the devastated section of Port Llast, his dead arm swinging behind him, his bone staff tucked up under his other arm. Often he used that staff for support, but not now, not with his blood on fire with anger.

They had taken his mother, if she was even still alive.

They had destroyed his band of companions, his band of friends. Some of the citizens had seen Afafrenfere down and dead. Some had seen Artemis Entreri dragged away. And Amber, too, poor Amber, hoisted upside down by her feet and jostled around like a plaything at the end of an enormous drider’s ugly arm.

And Dahlia had been beaten-Effron had seen that with his own eyes. When the lightning net had descended, so had Effron descended, reverting to wraith form and slipping into a crack between the cobblestones, rushing down and along the ground, then up between the planks of a nearby building. Fortunately, he had gone to the opposite side of the avenue from where Dahlia’s magical weapon had redirected the lightning web energy, and how proud the young warlock had been to witness his mother enacting such a mighty blast as that!

But he had witnessed the savage retribution of the male drider as well, and even in his two-dimensional form, the tiefling warlock felt his breath leaving him as that monster battered Dahlia about the head, laying her low.

And now she was gone. They were all gone, and Effron found himself alone.

He thought of the Shadowfell and Draygo Quick, once his mentor in what was once his home, but dismissed the thought with an angry shake of his head and a mutter of curses that had the many citizens moving about the disaster area looking at him curiously, as if he had surely lost his mind.

They were not far off in their estimation of his emotional stability, he realized as he took note of them.

Effron was indeed nearly insane with anger and frustration, and sheer hopelessness. He was alone now, two decades removed from his time-was Draygo Quick even still alive? And how far had the Shadowfell receded from the shores of Toril? Effron doubted he could even shadowstep back to that dark place, but he doubted even more that he wanted to.

Likely, he was an outlaw there, and would not survive for long.

He came up before the smoldering rubble of Stonecutter’s Solace, the inn a complete ruin from the magical fires and thunderous lightning of the dark elves’ assault. Many had died in there; almost a dozen bodies had been pulled out at last count.

All around him, the folk of Port Llast vowed that they would rebuild.

These were hardy folk, resilient and stubborn, and their words gave Effron some comfort.

He could go his way now, he realized, free to roam as he saw fit, free to build a new life. He was a warlock of no small power, after all, and powerfully outfitted. With the bone staff he had taken from the skull lord in the Shadowfell, he could raise an army of undead to do his bidding, if it came to that.