R. Salvatore - The Companions

He tried to keep the lingering doubts regarding his previous choices far away, and tried not to even think about the responsibility and oath he had accepted in coming back to this place anew. There would be time for that, years hence. For now, he had to try to simply learn to control this strange body.

Still, he was thrown back into those old doubts and the political morass of who he had once been one afternoon only a tenday later, when King Emerus Warcrown and Parson Glaive arrived at the Roundshield house, their expressions grave.

Bruenor couldn’t hear the conversation, for they spoke low to Uween over by the door, but her sudden cry of denial said it all.

King Emerus and Parson Glaive each grabbed her under an arm and helped her in to the table and to a seat.

“He fought as aout those year

The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR) Delthuntle

Regis walked out of Iruladoon and into the blinding light with sure and determined strides. His resolve was no less than that of Catti-brie, who took this journey as a matter of faith and devotion to her goddess, Mielikki.

For Regis, it was the second chance that he dearly, desperately wanted. For so long had he been the tag-along, the one to be rescued instead of the heroic rescuer. He couldn’t help but believe that he had ever been the weak link in the chain that formed the Companions of the Hall.

No more, he decided.

Not this time around.

He was holding Catti-brie’s hand, and then he was not. He was in the springtime forest, and then he was not.

He was walking, and then he was floating.

He was up among the stars, it seemed, with the world, all white and brown and so much blue turning below him, and he felt free, freer than he had ever been in his corporeal days, freer than anything he had ever known. At that moment, swallowed by the celestial spheres, Regis felt as if he could float and swim forevermore and be perfectly content.

The world grew larger-that was how he perceived it until he realized that he was falling, diving back into the sphere of Toril, and he was not afraid. He saw the outlines of the great land of Faerun, of the Sword Coast that he had sailed many times and knew well, of the lands of the Silver Marches and then an inland sea, a vast great lake, with jagged coastlines of jutting peninsulas and long harbors.

Into the water he went, and it did not feel to him as if he was swimming, or submerged, but rather as if he had joined with the substance, had become as liquid himself, flowing breezily through the wash with barely an effort.

He reveled in the journey, excited by the elemental domain. He guessed this to be another gift of Mielikki, because he was unaware of his genetic heritage, unaware that he was venturing the long roots of his rebirth. He expected that his two companions were similarly soaring, but he was wrong, for this was his journey alone, a particular added touch to the halfling he would become.

Darkness enveloped him, dark and soft walls pressing against him tightly, holding his arms close to his chest. Still he felt as if he was deep within the liquid of the Inner Sea, and his own heartbeat reverberated in his ears.

Ka-thump .

No, not his own heartbeat, he realized to his horror and his comfort, all at once.

He was in the womb.

The heart was his mother’s heart-or would this female be considered his surrogate mother? He could not be sure, could not sort it out. Not then, not there, for there was only the impulse, the urge to struggle and twist until he was free. The walls worked around him, nudging him, twisting him, pushing him, bidding him to find his escape.

The heartbeat grew more intense, louder and faster, louder and faster.

He heard the calls of the outside world, a cry of pain, a plea from a deeper voice.

“Don’t you go!”

The flesh walls pressed in on him, squeezing him, urging him. He flailed and worked furiously, recognizing this as the moment of his birth, and knowing, instinctively and reflexively, that he had to get out.

The heartbeat intensified. Another scream sounded from afar, followed by more frantic pleas and cries.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump .

The muscles pressed, squeezing him more tightly.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump .

He could sense that it was too tight, too intense, the cries too desperate.

Ka-thump. Ka-thump .

Another cry. Something was amiss, he sensed.

Silence.

Darkness.

The flesh walls did not contort around him.

He reached and clawed, unable to draw breath. He tried to squirm and fight, but he could not. He got one arm up high, over his head.

He felt the bite of a blade, but he could not cry out, and his arm slid back before him, a coppery taste filling the watery tomb around him.

But then it was opened, peeling apart before him at the edge of a sliding knife, and he was pulled free, hoisted from his womb, his tomb, and roughly spun around and thumped hard upon his back. He sputtered and gagged, then coughed and cried. He could not help but cry, terrified, confused.

In that jumbled moment, he didn’t know, didn’t understand, that his new mother was dead.

He felt the bugs crawling over him, but could not coordinate his little arms enough to swat at them.

An annoyance, he told himself repeatedly though the days and dark nights, for these were merely bedbugs and cockroaches and the like, the same insects he had suffered in Calimport. In truth, the insects were the least troubling of the surroundings the baby Regis found. He couldn’t move much-even his head was too heavy for him to swivel it around while laying on his back-but he had noted enough of the ramshackle abode to realize that his new family, which seemed to be comprised of only himself and his father, was perfectly destitute.

This wasn’t even a house, not even a shack, but merely a piling of sticks, a lean- to in a decrepit part of some dirty city. A wet nurse tended to his needs, but only arrived sparingly, twice a day by his count, leaving him to lie in his own waste, leaving his belly to growl with hunger, leaving the bugs to crawl around him.

He could see the sky above through the openings in the hastily piled boards, and noted that it was almost always gray. Or perhaps that was a trick of his young eyes, still trying to find some focus and clarity.

But it did rain quite often, he knew, the water dripping in upon him.

If he had been wearing clothes, they would always have been wet.

He lay there one morning, drizzle coating him so that his skin glistened in the diffused daylight, trying hard to get his hand to slap a particularly annoying gnat aside, when a loud crash alerted him that he was not alone.

His father came up beside him, towering over him as he lay in his makeshift crib, which was no more than a piece of old wood with beams piled along its sides to prevent him from rolling off.

Regis studied the man carefully, his dirty face, his missing teeth, his glassy eyes and scraggly hair. The years had broken this one, though he was not very old, the baby who was not a baby realized. He had seen this before, so many times, on the streets of Calimport in his first youth, some century-and-a-half removed. The constant struggle for basic needs, the helplessness, with no way to escape and no place to escape to; it was all there, etched indelibly and not to Icewind Dale.. Fo on on the face of this halfling standing over him, in lines of sadness and helpless frustration.

Surprisingly strong hands reached down to grab Regis and he was easily hoisted from his bed.

“Here’s to hoping you’re your mother’s son,” the halfling said, bringing Regis against his shoulder and moving swiftly out of the house.