James Wyatt - Oath of Vigilance

“What an interesting feeling!” he announced, trying to sit up. “I felt like I was swimming.”

Shara looked at her friend’s chest. Water soaked his clothes and had washed the blood away from the wound, which was still a bit pink but otherwise completely healed.

“Looks like you were,” Shara said, smiling at the halfling.

“Oh! I’m all wet.” He looked up at the lizardfolk. “How did you do that?”

Quarhaun hissed a few words, and the shaman responded in kind.

“He says the water spirits healed you. He just brought them where they needed to be.”

Uldane sprang to his feet, all the pain of his injury forgotten. “Ooh! Do you think I could learn to do that, Shara?”

Shara just smiled and wished that she could learn to recover so quickly and so completely from her wounded heart.

“We should leave this place,” Quarhaun announced. “The demons might come back in greater numbers.”

“You’re right,” Shara said. “We should hit them before they can regroup.”

“Hit them?”

“Of course.”

“Shara,” Uldane said, “just a few minutes ago you were saying you didn’t want to die here. You want to have your revenge on Vestapalk before you die, right?”

“I have no intention of dying,” Shara said. “We’re stronger than ever, and the demons are on the run. We need to root them out of here.”

Quarhaun caught her gaze with his blank white eyes. “Why?”

Shara’s face flushed and her words were heated and fast. “You’ve seen them. Whatever has changed Vestapalk, whatever he tried to do to you-that same substance is here. It made these demons. They’re all part of the same … the same disease. For all we know, Vestapalk could be here, somewhere in these ruins, spreading his plague from here.”

Quarhaun held her gaze for a long moment until she looked away, uneasy.

“You are quite a warrior,” he said at last.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s not our way, you see? Among the drow, women hold sacred positions, ordained by the Spider Queen. They’re the matron mothers and priests, generals at times, but not warriors. I’ve never known a woman like you.”

“Does that mean we’re going to explore these ruins some more?” Uldane asked.

“I suppose it does,” Quarhaun said.

“Well, that’s a bright side to it. I wonder how far down the tunnels go? It can’t be too far, or they’d be full of water, wouldn’t they?”

“It depends. Sometimes stone tunnels jut up all the way from the Underdark, solid and dry even when they touch the surface in swampy areas like this.”

“Really?”

“It’s rare, but it does happen.”

“I’d like to see that.”

Shara let Uldane pester Quarhaun with questions as she tried to sort through the feelings the drow’s words had stirred up in her. It’s natural that he’d respect a skilled warrior like me, she told herself. And the fact that I’m a woman makes me … a curiosity. That’s all.

And the way he touched my chin … the memory of it brought echoes of the shivers it had sent through her. Who knows what that means to a drow like him? Maybe it’s a warrior’s sign of respect.

She felt a grin creep into the corners of her mouth. I wonder what else drow warriors do as a sign of respect …

She shook her head to dispel the thought. “Are we ready to move on?” she asked.

Uldane stepped closer to her and looked up at her seriously. “Are you sure about this, Shara?”

“Of course I am. Vestapalk might be here. How could I live with myself if revenge was within my grasp and I let it slip away?”

“Do you think he’s here?”

“We’ve seen more demons here than anywhere else in the Vale. Remember what Quarhaun said earlier? It’s like a lava flow.”

Uldane nodded. “We’ll find the source where the lava is thickest.”

Quarhaun turned from the lizardfolk shaman and put a hand on Shara’s shoulder. “Kssansk says his people will continue to help us until we’ve rooted the demons out of here.”

“And they won’t eat us?” Shara asked, smiling.

“No promises, but I think we’re safe at least until the demons are gone.”

“No promises?” Uldane said, his eyes wide.

“If Kssansk had wanted to eat you, he had the perfect opportunity while you were passed out on the floor.”

The shaman cocked his head, presumably recognizing the sound of his name, and Quarhaun said a few words to him.

Kssansk responded with a short exclamation and two chomps of his enormous jaws.

“Two bites, he says,” Quarhaun translated.

Shara laughed as Uldane’s eyes widened further.

“Where did you learn their language?” she asked the drow.

“They speak a dialect of Draconic, same as troglodytes.”

“And dragons, I take it.”

“Yes. But my house had troglodyte slaves, not dragons. Some of my people think it’s beneath them to speak in the languages of their slaves, but it’s hard to argue that it’s very useful to be able to understand it.”

Something in his grin suggested that the most useful thing about understanding the language of slaves was the ability to quell any uprising before it took root and spread. Such a vivid reminder of the very different world he came from made her uncomfortable. She turned away from him to shoulder her pack.

“Which way?” she asked.

“We follow the ones that fled,” Quarhaun said. “They’ll lead us to the heart of their lair.”

“Maybe,” Uldane said, “by the most roundabout path imaginable. More likely, they’ll just lead us outside.”

Quarhaun arched an eyebrow. “You know so much about the behavior of these demons?”

“It’s common sense, and the way most animals would behave. They don’t want us to find their lair.”

“They do if that’s where they’re strongest. That’s what I’d do-pull all the survivors back to a defensible location.”

“They’re a pack, not an army,” Uldane insisted. “I don’t think that’s the way they think.”

“Shara, help me here,” Quarhaun said.

“I think Uldane is right,” Shara said. “I think they’d try to lure us away. They know they can outrun us and make their way back to their lair by a back route.”

Quarhaun scowled, and for a moment Shara thought he might lose his temper. The air thrummed with his gathering power, and dark energy coalesced around his hands before he took a deep breath and made a visible effort to calm himself.

“Fine,” he said at last. “We go the way they didn’t go. Lead on, sir halfling.” He gave an exaggerated bow.

Uldane frowned at him and started down the hall, in the direction he and Shara had been going before they ducked into the room. Shara took up a position just behind him and to the left, which allowed him a chance to notice any traps or other dangers before she blundered into them, while keeping her close enough to step in and protect him if anything leaped out to attack. It was their established procedure, and at that point Shara was happy to ignore Quarhaun and the lizardfolk.

Let them protect each other, she thought.

Uldane wasn’t trained as a tracker, but he noticed details that most other people would miss-a bloody print on the floor here, there a scratch in the wall gouged by one of the crystalline growths that sprouted from the demons’ backs. In each case, he chose the path the demons had not taken, and soon they were heading down a damp, moss-covered stairway.

“Looks like we’re reaching the water level,” Shara said.

“That’s really interesting,” Uldane said. “But this isn’t an Underdark tunnel like Quarhaun described.”

“I think this whole structure used to be above ground,” Quarhaun said. “The swamp has slowly swallowed it up.”