James Davis: Circle of Skulls

The small chamber became a swift blur followed by a sudden stop. Stars streaked across his field of vision, and slow throbs of pain arced through his back. He blinked and fell forward on his hands and knees, barely aware that the devil had turned on Mara. Hellish shrieks filled the chamber as the pair tore at one another like animals. The scent of blood brought Jinn to his senses, and he found his sword.

A glimpse of crimson streaking across Mara's forearms in little rivers brought him to his feet, and he charged back into the fray. In a breath Mara fell back, dissolving into smoky mist and leaving Belsharoth to pound only at the wall, clouds of dust and splinters of rotted wood surrounding him as he turned. Jinn jumped over the barbed tail as it swung toward him, turning as he landed to slice an arm's length from its end. Belsharoth seemed unbothered by the wound as they circled one another, the face-off drawing Jinn back to another confrontation with the devil from another time, another life.

"You die again, half-blood," Belsharoth growled and pounced, claws outstretched, his hulking form enough to easily crush anything in its way, but Jinn saw his opportunity and rushed into the fiend.

He accepted the deep wounds in his shoulder as he rolled beneath the fiend's right claw, gaining position to use Belsharoth's momentum against him. The point of his blade slipped beneath the mass of bone that served as the devil's rib cage, sliding through thick skin and dense muscle, scraping along the spined backbone to emerge from Belsharoth's back.

"This isn't Myth Drannor," Jinn said as he twisted the blade and pulled, bracing his boot against the devil's right leg. The wound opened like a toothless grin, and Belsharoth roared, steaming blood pouring from his side. Before he could take breath to roar again or twist to dislodge the blade, blue fire arced through his chest, a bolt of lightning silencing his pain and throwing Jinn away from the thrashing fiend.

Jinnaoth's hands tingled and shook, numb as the devil rolled onto his back, reaching blindly and kicking before falling still, a smoking hole in his chest filling the chamber with the scent of charred flesh.

Mara knelt over the defeated fiend, tracing the edges of the wound with a deft hand, drawing little symbols in the air and smiling cruelly when the ritual was done. As Jinn sat forward, he watched her palm a small, red gem that she quickly placed in her purse.

"We should be quick," she said, flinging droplets of blood from her claws. "That last roar may have drawn the Watch."

"Right," Jinn replied and stood, pulling his sword from the devil's corpse before scanning the chamber, his eyes quickly falling on the stained tablecloth of the makeshift altar. He turned his head to the side, studying the shape of the dried blood in the cloth. "Flensing?" he asked.

Mara shrugged, tending to the wounds on her arms, her face once again as human and soft as it had been outside.

"Just one of their rituals, as far as I know," she answered, gesturing to Belsharoth. "Torture for those souls destined to serve as devils."

Jinn lifted the tablecloth, narrowing his eyes as a familiar shape appeared in its stains like a map. A long and winding wall, dark drips serving as watchtowers, the spread of blood through the thick weave almost like streets. The undeniable shape of Waterdeep had been splashed into the cloth.

"And as it might apply to a city?" he asked, raising the gruesome image for Mara's inspection.

"That would be… ambitious, to say the least," she said, pointing to the darkest splash on the cloth where all the others seemed to have flowed away from. "Something to do with Sea Ward perhaps?"

Jinn sighed and rolled the cloth up, stuffing it into his belt as they exited the chamber and sought an alternate route back to the streets. His mind raced with possibilities, wondering what he could have missed in all his years of battling the Vigilant Order. But for one talkative devil, he might have thought his task complete.

The memories brought back by Belsharoth were already fading, too vague and indistinct to hold on to, just another ripple in four thousand years of time's river. He disliked the term half-blood, though many with an idea of his true nature had used it to describe him. He had dreams occasionally of his second birth, ripped from the higher realms of the gods, forged into a body of blood and bone that he could never escape, to serve his lords in battle.

They had called him a deva, an angel made flesh.

Bright sunlight struck his face as Mara led him out the east side of the ramshackle home and down yet another street crowded with mortals ignorant of the wars that went on beneath their boots. Mara flashed him a smile as a patrol of Watchmen disappeared down the garbage-strewn alley. He eyed her warily, following her down twisting avenues back to her shop and the room he'd rented from her several years ago. She maintained her illusions of beauty among the citizens of Waterdeep, but he could see the face of the night hag she hid beneath her false green eyes, and he wondered if one day, despite their strange alliance, she would come to place his soul in one of her little red gems.

He wondered, with a soul that had survived a countless number of deaths, if such a thing were possible.

NIGHTAL 19, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

Jirin stared down upon the hustle and bustle of Suldown Street, absently studying the faces of passersby and listening to the broadcriers hawking the latest scandals. Shadows lengthened as he stood, still as a statue in the window above Pages Curious, the bookstore owned by Maranyuss since she had been exiled to live among mortals. His room was small and uncluttered with the things many people took for granted, the various trappings and mementos of a long life lived. Only the window stood as a connection to the world outside. The furnishings consisted of a chair and small table for his meals and a simple bed for when he grew tired.

Though his rented room was nigh bare, his mind was a labyrinth of information and memories, cluttered and filled with the details of more than a hundred lifetimes. He was never privy to all his lifetimes of memories at once-just a recalled name here, a familiar place there-but even so, each life had made its mark on the next. Only the details of his current existence were fully open to him. He cursed his limited memory, wishing for some insight into the devil Belsharoth's warning.

Even in its apparent fall, the Vigilant Order vexed him.

Sighing, he stepped away from the window and leaned over the small table next to the view of the city, his eyes scanning the rough map on the bloody tablecloth for clues. He did not look up when Mara arrived at the top of the stairs, though he could feel her watching him. She could be as silent as the grave, but her presence exuded a dark aura that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

"This business is not done yet," she said. "We'll find him."

The angel Sathariel, an agent of Asmodeus somehow bound to Waterdeep, was Jinn's only focus, his one reason for having hunted the Vigilant Order, for living in the city when he might have adventured across the length and breadth of Faerun. Mara and he shared that focus, and it had bound them in purpose, though their reasons were vastly different.

He shook his head and rolled up the cloth, tired of staring at blood for answers that never came.

"I had hoped that he might find us," Jinn replied. "We've weakened his following, set spies in every ward of the city, and still he will not view us as a threat."

"Perhaps we aren't," Mara said. "Not yet anyway, not until we figure out why he's here."

Jinn's hand rested on the bloody tablecloth, the crimson map of the city burned in his memory, the dark splash of Sea Ward teasing him with mysteries. It was in that moment he considered the poor soul who had likely been sacrificed to scrawl the crude map, and he instinctively whispered a short prayer, though the gods of Mulhorand he had once served were long gone from the world.