Breath, in and out. The sound is a hollow echo, a rhythmic tide of air contained within the metal and bone of my mask. It is the only sound that is truly mine, a constant in this alien world. Outside, Menzoberranzan breathes a discordant chorus—the distant, frantic chittering of unseen spiders, the murmur of a language like grinding stones, the thin, sharp scream of some far-off misery that is simply part of the city's texture. It is a city of elegant rot, of beautiful decay, and we move through its heart. We hunt a piece of the Rod of Seven Parts, hidden in the depths of this spider-kissed hell.
The others cloak themselves in magic. Gnarls and Fell shimmer, their forms seamlessly twisted into the guise of the treacherous drow. Skygge needs no magic, only her own guile; she shrivels into the role of a pathetic slave, her subservience a coiled spring of danger, fingers already twitching toward unguarded purses. They are focused, their courage a palpable force against the city's oppressive gloom. I need no such illusions. My armor is my truth. My mask is my face. I am the monster they should fear.
We move. The city is a tactical problem to be solved, a web of threats and pathways. An intersection, watched by a mounted drow on a reptilian beast. The others pause, their minds racing through plans and contingencies. Fell's eyes dart, seeking patterns in the chaos. Gnarls conjures a phantom purse, a trick for a city of deceivers. I see only the path. One breath, and I am across. The drow guard's head turns too late, the moment is gone and so are we.
More obstacles. Bugbears, brutish and loud, their cruelty as plain and artless as the stench of their booze-laden wagon. They are a distraction, a festering sore on the street, unworthy of the Blade of Destruction. I let a sound escape the grille of my mask - not a scream, not yet, but the low, keening promise of one. A sliver of the terror that unmakes minds, a psychic barb. They feel it. They give us a wide berth. Pathetic.
The real test comes at the ascent. Tier Breche. At the top is the drow's fortress of dark sorcery, and other schools to indoctrinate their young in their vile ways. The guardians are giant jade spiders, their many eyes burning with a magic that peels back illusion to see the truth beneath. Our disguises are useless. Brelen, our temporary guide, offers no solution. He only points the way and vanishes into the gloom he calls home.
The others decide on flight and invisibility. A sound plan, I must be made small to be carried. I speak the words of power myself, feeling my own magic take hold as the world swells. I am a doll, and Gnarls lifts me. I bear it. We rise into the cavern's upper dark, a three-hundred-foot climb through dangling stone and the dwellings of the low-born. Filth rains down from above. It spatters against Gnarls, and against me. Anger continues to rise, a familiar, cleansing heat.
We land. The drow contact, Veserin, cleans us with a flick of his wrist and a condescending remark. His arrogance is typical of his kind—all posture and veiled threats, a brittle shell over a hollow core. He speaks of guards and wards, which he will disable for us. Our success helps his own schemes in some unfathomable way. We demand an hour to refocus. He acquiesces and leaves, his impatience a flickering flame in his dark eyes.
But we are not alone.
A presence in the nave of the empty chapel. A flicker of movement in the deep shadows. A drow wizard steps out, his hand already crackling with malevolent purple energy. His eyes burn with hatred as he takes in our foreign forms. "Ibilith!" he spits, the word an insult. "Surface filth. What are you doing in this holy place?"
He should have remained a shadow.
I am moving. The Blade of Destruction is in my hand, a blur of motion that ends in a spray of hot, black blood across a stone altar. He is fast. He survives the first strike and conjures darkness. The world outside the mask vanishes, but he cannot hide his dark soul's spark. It is a point of cold light in the void, a frantic star pulsing with fear. He tries to leap away, a desperate flight.
I swat him from the air. The impact of his body against the far wall is a dull thud. He chokes out another spell. A cloud of poison fills the dark, acrid and cloying. The others engage. Arrows fly. Gnarls's magic thunders, but the darkness holds.
I close the distance, my steps silent in the chaos. There is a wet crack, and the cold spark is extinguished.
Silence.
Veserin returns. He sees the body he names Tobin Blainthir and does not flinch. This is the way of the drow. He leads us into the fortress.
The halls of Sorcere are a maze of cold stone and shimmering magic. We are ghosts, wrapped in invisibility and silence. Further within, a voice, thin and reedy, whispers from Fell's shoulder. Grovel. A Quasit. Another stray, a lesser demon whose betrayal of his master speaks to the rot at Sorcere's heart. But he knows the way and takes a perch on Fell's shoulder. We follow.
Gromph's antechamber. A fire elemental erupts from the floor and a stone golem bursts to life. The elemental is rage and heat, a threat made formless. I am a torrent, a whirlwind of black steel that shreds its form faster than a breath. It dissolves into fading embers.
The golem is different. It is stone. It is strength. It strikes, and the impact is a tectonic shock through my armor. Pain, sharp and deep. My body screams. The pain is a lens, a whetstone for the building fury within, focusing me to a razor's edge.
Gnarls blasts the golem with sound, then vanishes with a pop, stolen by a ward on the floor. For an instant, my mind is pulled with him. A flash of impossible geometry - gray corridors twisting in on themselves under a sky of black carbon. The stench of wet fur and ozone. Horned, bestial shapes hunting in the gloom. I see him, crouched and alone, as a hulking, demonic minotaur turns its horned head and fixes him with its gaze. The vision is gone as quickly as it came, severed by the searing pain of the golem's fist as it strikes my side. I stand. Fell's shots crack into the stone face of the construct. The golem strikes again. I endure. Now Skygge's arrows find their mark, a swarm of angry wasps against a cliff face, and the stone construct finally crumbles into dust and silence.
Gnarls has not returned. The room is still. Fell finds the true door—a ripple in space, a tear in reality. We step through.
The inner sanctum. And at its center, a lie. A beautiful drow woman, trapped within a glowing circle. A prize on a table beside her - the Rod segment. The air hums with deceit, thick with the cloying sweetness of chaos.
Fell sends his mage hand, a ghostly appendage, to retrieve the prize.
The prisoner moves, but too quickly. The faint scent of Chaos flares into an overwhelming, soul-sickening stench. This is no drow. This is an abomination wearing a mask of flesh. Instinct takes over. I move to intercept, we must have the Rod segment. My foot crosses the glowing line.
The circle breaks.
Her laughter fills the room, but not as a sound. It is a wave of psychic filth that washes over my mind, a cacophony of evil. The beautiful flesh melts away like wax, and the true form beneath is revealed - a body of living embers and cracked obsidian, wreathed in shadow and flame.
A Balor. An ancient evil of Chaos. A servant of the Arch-Enemy.
The embers of rage have built a pyre within me; the pain from the golem's fists, the grating evil of this entire city, the crushing weight of destiny to destroy Vecna. Now, in the face of this ultimate corruption, they ignite into an inferno.
The Great Enemy shows its face.
And I draw a breath to answer it with mine.
