The Journey of Endless Lifetimes

“Don’t look, don’t look,”  the shadows breathe.
Whispering me away from you.
Don’t wake at night to watch her sleep.
You know that you will always see.
This trembling, adored, toussled bird-mad girl.
Every night I burn.
Every night I call your name.
Every night I burn.
Every night I fall again.

I can’t go on like this. I can’t carry this pain anymore, but I’m afraid, so afraid. I can stare into the face of an angered dragon, can grab a Malaugrym by its writhing, shifting tentacles and not even wretch at the stink, and all of it I can do unafraid. But this…this wound I carry is so deep. It cuts through my heart and directly to the soul, and I can no longer hide the smears of proverbial blood it has forced me to create. I cannot hide the pain any longer, especially from Anwar, who sees more than he’s willing to divulge.

The knowledge in his eyes was a torment, and I worked tirelessly until I was too tired by the day’s end to do much else but sleep. But still, we slept in the same room, and while I slept, I dreamed.

He haunts my dreams every night. It’s so hard at night, when all you have is yourself, your guilt, your shame…your love. In all my trials, there was no greater hamstring, no greater weakness, no greater mistake than when I thought to cow to Telamont’s unshakeable will and leave Thultanthar. That day had opened a fissure in my heart with the clawed hands of bitterness; my only solace had been the life growing in my womb. Hadrhune was slain, but not by my hand. Likely it was orchestrated by Rivalen…and I knew it, the moment the orb he gave me no longer beat with the fierce steadiness of his heart. I had not wept that day, or any day after that. Now all the tears I had dammed up were finding the hairline cracks in my defenses; defenses I had erected to protect myself both from outer threats and…and myself.

Anwar finally got fed up and confronted me about it, and by the gods the fight that followed was furious. He shouted at me to stop carrying the hurt around, shouted at me to weep the bitter tears I had saw fit not to give to my lost Love. Anwar fought with a ferocity that was unmatched, and the cold had made my joints ache something fierce that morning. I had no advantage save experience…and my pain. I was not fighting him; I was fighting the ghosts of a past I had failed to bury deep enough to not reach hands from the hungry earth to drag me to my own personal hell.

Anwar pressed Nadja in an attack that could have sent any man sprawling, but he knew better than to believe that if the Nubian yielded, it would not be to so simple a maneuver. He wielded his sword in a two-handed grip, his eyes watching the moves she fell into like a familiar dance. They’d gathered an audience, but it was not the cheering rousing of a betting crowd this time around; this was more hushed, and subdued. The men in this stronghold knew the difference between a friendly match and one of desperation. It was skill matched to skill, and while Nadja may have been a god-trained treasure, Anwar had trained to dispatch all threats around him. “Stop holding back, Nadereh!” He shouted as they locked blades. “Why do you carry this pain around? Hurting yourself for penance? It won’t bring him back!” Anwar knew he was angering her. Good, he wanted her angry. He needed her to unlock the doors that kept her and her emotions so desperately divided. Anwar wanted Nadja to feel again, that he may have a chance to give her the happiness she thought eluded her. Selfish, perhaps, but the poison of her own heart-wound was damning her to an early grave.

I fought him because he was upsetting me, but soon his words began to wear on me, and my attacks became defensive parries and blocks as he pressed. Finally, I relented and allowed him to pin me, his expression fierce. I never noticed it before, but he looked so handsome…

I wept.

Anwar’s weight lifted from me and he pulled me into his arms and I wept. The men around us did not know what to make of it. This was not the superficial weeping of a spoiled child who had not gotten her way. This was something soul-deep, dragged from the deepest parts of me and given voice. I wept because I had failed to protect Hadrhune from his fate—wrought by his own hand or no. I had failed to properly prepare him, had failed to love him as fiercely as I wanted to. I had made him. I dreamed of him every night; some memories, some merely imaginings of my own starved heart. I wept because Anwar would never understand that kind of pain. I wept because Farir would only ever know the evil legacy his father left behind, never the nobility that had been his birthright. He was not entirely evil…simply misunderstood. I wept until the tears ran dry and then I wept within, shuddering in Anwar’s arms more from my own bleeding heart than from the biting chill. Gathering me up, he carried me inside, and lay me on my pallet. I lay there, sick with a grief I’d held at bay for so long that I was sure I would eventually forget it. But, like some restless poltergeist waiting just beyond the portal, it was there, wanting to be the first piece of myself freed from the cellar I’d locked it in. I lay there, feeling the poison of my wound getting lanced from me with each confession. I wept again because I had not been strong enough, and by the time I had emptied my heart on Anwar, and he watched me, somewhat stunned at all I’d told him. He did not know who or what the Shadovar were, but he knew enough to know they were everything Ahura Mazda had abhorred…and I had bore one of their princes a son. He understood, then, what my purpose in that place had been. Consort, lover, trainer…usurper.

“I can’t leave this place, Anwar,” I whispered, my voice nearly lost, “I can’t bear to leave the memory of him behind. His ghost holds me here, and somewhere in that desert, his bones lay. No one would bury him.” No one loved him enough to bury him save me. I had gone to look, once. I wager magic had been his end, as it was meant to be. I wager he had thought of me before the end. Perhaps not a full thought, but a flash of what we once had. That happiness we’d created against all odds. In his dying moments, did he see me as the woman who had betrayed him and run off with his son? Or did he see the woman who lay bare to him in the darkness, our fingers and limbs entwined, my laughter mingling with his even while he beckoned me closer to drink down all I had to offer with my mouth? Did the memories of us follow him to the afterlife? Did they keep him warm there? Was there even a hereafter for him? Anwar watched me intently, and I saw the glimmer of knowledge flash behind his eyes like a shooting star.

“Why did you come, Anwar?” I asked him, knowing now was not the time for evasion or anymore secrets. He knew the source of my deepest pain and weakness, now, I wanted to know why he had come…and gods help me, but I dreaded the answer.

“You loved him terribly deep, Nadereh,” He said in Farsi, the only tongue they shared comfortably that was understood only by them, “How could you carry such a festering wound inside of you this long? Ahura’s Grace it’s a wonder how you lived.” Anwar hesitated, knowing this was the most vulnerable he had ever seen his friend. Even then, he knew what he felt for her remained unchanged. He knew why he had come, and he knew she knew it too. He just had to say it out loud and all would be revealed in the open, like bets placed on the gambling table. He swallowed. “Nadja,” he said, using her real name as oppose to the Persian variation, “I came because of you. You freed me from being the slave of the gods, and whether you realize it, you have shown me that I know less than I should in a world that will kill me for not knowing. Your methods, while some are not as honorable as I would like, are fought for worthy causes. We fought alongside one another and protected one another.” He lost his words, tried to find them again, and swallowed. He recited exactly what he told Lady Alustriel. “My faith was my strength, Nadja,” he began, “and everything I ever felt—”

It was as far as he’d get with me before I went to him, taking his face in both my hands and kissing him. The kiss…ah gods. It was new and it was not. It was like nothing I ever imagined. Anwar had never been kissed before, I could tell, but his body responded all the same. He was surprised, but then his hand came up, his arms came around me, and his mouth yielded to the feel of mine. The kiss must have lasted no more than a span of heartbeats, but time mattered not. He pulled away first, a look of unfettered wonder on his face. His lips were parted and he touched them in wonder, as if the kiss had left a signature on them; my signature.

All bets were off.

Dig within me, turn over secret stones.
Forest and fields, breathing with blood and bones.
No words we can speak, our paths have been chosen.
All travels we trek will lead us back here because love comes again.

Anwar.

I have not spoken his name since I abandoned him on Earth, when the Twilight War ended, and I took my crusade elsewhere. I do not think for a moment that Anwar intended to find me, otherwise his entrance into the stronghold would not have been so…aggressive. That was one thing that I never knew or expected him to become: aggressive. He was trained to defend, not attack unprovoked. But I knew what had changed in him. The war had ravaged his soul, and the wounds were still fresh where they’d been dealt the day he reached for aid from his god—his god he had devoted his entire adolescence and adulthood to; condemned to celibacy—and he found nothing. Ahura Mazda had turned his back on his most loyal and faithful of servants.

Even then, Anwar had believed it to be a mistake, a punishment of some kind; an unknown transgression on his account. I had told him the truth of it; that the gods simply did not care enough, no matter how faithful we were. They were selfish creatures in the end, and that was that. Things had been so black and white to him then, but when he saw the truth on the weathered faces of the innocents the gods had condemned to a life of suffering, the shades of gray began to bleed onto the pages.

Even so, Anwar maintained a sense of nobility and honor that many men would have shirked out of spite. He may have been betrayed by his god, but he had taken his vows in earnest; he would not foreswear himself, although I told him his god had already done so.

Over the course of the hours when he breached the stronghold, and was subsequently overtaken by Jagra’s men, I understood what had happened: he had been looking for me.

I cannot say why I was so deeply moved by this act. He had beseeched Sidgartha himself for passage out of Terrarum, and it had been granted! But even more so, Anwar had traveled across the Worlds to find me. How long had he been searching? And what would he make of me when he finally confronted me face to face? I too had been changed, both physically and spiritually.

When I knelt beside him, tending to his injuries, he came to, and looked upon me with a mixture of shock, anger, and sympathy. I saw his gaze linger too long on the eye patch, saw him take in the ragged scar on my throat, and saw the anger in his eyes. He had been to Waterdeep, then, and he too had been seduced by the whispers along the coast, crawling across Faerûn to put an end to and subsequently spoil the legend I had forged of myself.

Nadja is dead.

“No,” I told him, answering the unspoken question, “that is not a tale fit for telling in this place. When you are mended, we will ride and I will tell you.” I breached my own hard-earned calm in a moment of impatience. “Gods bedamned, Anwar! Why did you follow me? Why have you come?” I demanded. Anwar smiled, and I saw that one of his teeth had been knocked out; a molar.

“You are a single-minded woman, Nadja, if you need to ask me that, then I shouldn’t have to answer you.” He said and turned his head to sleep. Frustrated and burning with questions, I yearned to slap him awake and demand he answer, but he owed me nothing…at least, not now. Hissing a curse, I retreated from the infirmary to let him rest.

Then I took my horse and went for a ride beneath the winter stars, because contemplating the vast emptiness beyond the diamond studded sky was far easier than contemplating the reasons Anwar had risked life, limb, and sanity to find me.

“The most important thing you will ever learn in this life, Nadja, is to disappear when you no longer wish to be needed.” –Ifrit

Let me disappear. It is all I have ever wished since coming to Faerun. Yet, where my vagabond feet tread, disaster is wont to follow. It is something I have come to accept as an inescapable truth regarding my existence. How not, when I was a child of violence, raised therein as a prodigy of war? I was trained to bring trouble wherever I went, I was trained to combat evil in its purest form.

How and when did I go from such a clear and noble purpose to so many shades of gray? I suppose it happened when I stumbled upon the secret my parents had died to keep. It’s so trite, that I laugh now to pen it; immortalizing it at last where my parents would not dare. It was some decades ago–as Terra would reckon it–only a handful of years had passed here in Faerun, yet in my own world, time had flown forward since I departed. In any case, I had been dispatched on an assignment to investigate the suspicious shift of trade routes that branched off of the Silk Road. The Immortalis had learned by then that we would meet them in battle in the open only if our hand was forced, so they bound us. They found pawns to do their bidding, forcing us to work in secret. I did not mind it, nor did Sadique, but for Ibrahim, it was a problem. He favored open battle and the honesty of shed blood in broad daylight as oppose to what he called ‘slithering around in the dark behind the curtains’.

No poet, that one.

Sadique was dispatched to Europe, where by this time, a majority of the trade routes ended. My job was to head off our suspects in Persia–I dreaded Persia, though I could not readily say why. I found out that the needling feeling in my subconscious was a vendetta twenty-five years in the making.

Somewhere in my journey, my presence had been observed and reported, and I was ambushed in Damascus, en route to Babylon. However, I had not been expecting anyone other than the Immortalis. What I got was my uncle, Malik, Emperor of Persia and outnumbering me with over fifty men.

I was taken into custody and ridden to Babylon. At first, I was under the impression that I was a guest, until Malik had me struck in chains. By the time we were in Babylon, I knew what he planned for me.

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Nadja is dead.

Or so it is spoken in Waterdeep, and has been spoke all along the Sword Coast since my tavern and inn burned down and it was last said I was seen amongst the flames, lying in a pool of my own blood, my throat slit.  No one speaks about how the Watch pulled my near-lifeless body from the flames, or how a mage healed and mended me as best she could. No one speaks of my bid for them  to remain silent on the matter as I fled the City of Splendors–my home–for safety.

It is strange to be a ghost in one’s own skin. I never thought I would see the day where I would be completely and utterly anonymous. It is hard to place my face in a crowd, with one eye missing and my voice changed from the damaged vocal cords. In those first few weeks, I scarcely recognized myself, barely cognizant that the woman I saw reflected in a stream as I washed my face was the same woman who had made a home and name for herself in Faerun; the woman that had been ‘spit out by a storm’…or so the small village that took me from the shore claims.

Nadja is dead.

Even here, so far from Waterdeep, the rumor has spread. Doubtless my enemies rejoice; secure in the knowledge that my assets and myself were finally buried too deep in death to come back. It makes me wonder how I will live my life, now, with a somewhat clean slate. My name will die along with me, and no one will sing of my deeds. In some cultures I have crossed paths with, that is the ultimate dishonor, but I have not lived my life honorably, so it does not matter. Such an outcast I am, that I am forbidden to wear the tribal markings of my people, or my warrior’s marks that I earned a thousand times over long ago. I have always been anonymous, and my alleged death is evident of that fact. Perhaps I will wander, cursed to never find a place to call home.

Then I think of my children and remember I don’t need a place to call home at all.

All who wander are not lost.

I realize that not since Hadrhune have I ever…taken a man into my heart. Even Idris never came as close as he did, and we were to be married. I think, sitting beneath the stars one cold night, amidst hardened soldiers, some twice my age, I realized that part of me well and truly died. My heart was so cold, and the thought of taking a man to my bed nauseated me. I have enough love in my heart for my children and those of my tiny, extended family in Faerûn, no more.

But love for a lover resides here no more.

I do not know why it is, perhaps it is possible that one can love so deeply and truly that when the object of their love is taken from them, there is no recovery. I believe that somewhere in me there is a wasteland where my heart used to be. Men I have crossed paths with will flirt without shame, regardless of my scars, call me beautiful, offer up sweet nothings for my heart’s consumption…and yet I feel nothing. I am numb to it all, and I wander through this world staying alive for my children’s sake, for the sake of one day going home.

Home. Where is that, now? No longer in Waterdeep, where the home I had built from money stained with blood was nothing but a blackened stain amidst the wealthy district. I had lived there, content and absolutely ascertained in my safety. Walls no enemy of mine could breach; my children and I were safe there.

We were home.

But that seemed a lifetime ago, and now I was here, preparing for war, and hiding my children in Calimport—a place no one would dare think I would think to flee. Perhaps, if I survive this, I will go to them, and we will find a new home. The Heartlands are no longer safe, where the Shadovar have established a strong foothold there in Sembia, and Cormyr’s constant strained relations with the surrounding nations. Even now, I can count on one hand the cities that would not be safe to settle in, and villages were even worse off.

Icewind Dale, famed for the drow ranger, Drizzt Do’Urden and his band, was far too cold for a desert-born creature like myself to live, although I know for a fact we would be welcome there. I would not survive the harsh winters so far north beyond the Spine of the World.

There are other lands, beyond Faerûn, lands that I believe the people of this continent have forgotten, much farther East, like Rokugan, which reminds me of Terra’s Ch’in and Japan. I do not think I have enemies so desperate as to follow me so far East.

There are times when I wonder if my curse is to wander until my body crumbles, and my spirit fades, leaving only a ghost of longing in its wake.

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We who fight to survive live a life the sheltered shall never know.

So much has changed since last I dared pen my thoughts in these worn pages. When I read back, I can hardly recognize myself in the words, I’ve changed so much. I’ve been through so much since I last wrote, and I’ve only just regained my bearings. I suppose I should start from the beginning of what triggered this somewhat bloody transformation.

It began several months after my return from Terra—my homeworld. We know it as Earth, but in some spellbooks and rare tomes of Faerûn, it is labeled as Terra or Gaia. In any case, I had returned, worn to the bone from war, and barely alive to tell of it. It fell to my children to run things in my stead, with Maribasse having lost touch when we both touched down in Terra.

I fear she may not have even made it to that world during the shift.

For a time, things were relatively peaceful. Against my usual wanderlust desires, I had opted to stay put, to stay home, and my children were overjoyed, if a bit wary as to what my decision entailed. To be honest, I was too tired to do much adventuring at this point. I was so tired of fighting, so tired of bloodshed, and I feared if I left home again, I would not be able to return to my family alive. So I stayed, and for a while—a long while, I was content to do so. The seasons came and went; I kept up my training, as I must, and occasionally indulged Sundari in a spar, but I refused contracts during those months. I took the time to get to know myself as a woman rather than a vagabond warrior, and I took time to get to know my children. In addition to being a decent cook, my son is a phenomenal shadow artist. The artwork he has created in my absence and while I lingered in our home was simply breathtaking. Darkly beautiful, and yet…there was a gentleness to the pieces that no one would expect of one of his kind. Sundari still thirsts for war, and I blame Akuto. She has battle in her blood, something she inherited from him despite not being his actual daughter. Perhaps one day the fire that passes for blood in her veins will cool, but it is a long way yet.

During the end of the summer, everything changed.

I suppose I should not have been surprised, but even so, it was to be expected after so much peace that I had forgotten about the dangers that lingered beyond my doorstep. They came in force, and left me little choice in way of defense. I had gotten lucky, my children were in Neverwinter for the summer, and I was alone. I had only myself to worry about.

It was enough.

They were strange looking, but not so strange for Faerûn, I suppose. They carried swords that sheared through oak like wet parchment, and that was what gave me alarm. I had seen their weapons only once before, wielded by one man and one man alone. I fought, but they were like drones, tireless and relentless. I could not wear them down, so I sought escape instead.

They overpowered me.

Their leader was a clever man; they had studied my ways, and knew me well enough to know I would try for information, even if my death was imminent. They gave me nothing, but as I watched him draw a dagger and felt hands forcing me to stillness, holding my face upward in the oppressive heat as my home burned around us, I knew.

I tried to scream, but found a hand clamped firmly over my mouth.

As the man carved my right eye from its socket, surgical and methodical, I wept, and found I could not—not truly. He took my eye, gazing at it, pleased.

“One eye, taken from a mother and warrior during a struggle.” He looked up at his drones, then. “Finish it.”

He turned and left and the sword, so clear it was like glass, was on my throat. I heard the bells tolling outside, alerting the Watch. I felt a sharp biting pain as my throat was opened by the blade; felt my blood pouring down my chest, pooling on the floor in a dark, macabre mockery of a spill. They released me and I collapsed. As my life ebbed from my open throat, I heard shouts amidst the roar of the flames, and my final sight was armored fists and drawn swords as the door was splintered, and then I saw no more.

It was some days before I woke again, and when I did, it all came flooding back to me. I sat bolt upright, reaching for a weapon, finding nothing.

“You are finally awake.” A voice intoned wryly, and I rubbed my face, my sight searching for the speaker. A woman stood by the door, clad in elegant robes, her golden hair streaming like sunlight in charming profusion. She was a mage, I think, and had overseen my recovery.

“Yes…” I murmured, and found my voice barely a whisper, hoarse and tired, as if I had used it all up. The woman smiled and came forward. Without much forethought she illuminated the room, candles and lamps coming to life at her command.

“Do not speak just yet. You are very lucky, you know,” she said, sitting in the chair beside my bed, “had the Watch been a moment later, you would have been lost.” Her hands folded in her lap, daintily and I nodded, my neck sore. It occurred to me that my sight was off. Gasping, my hand flew to my face, and I felt the bandaged patch over my right eye…where my eye used to be. The woman’s face was saddened somewhat, and I bit my lip.

“I am Neera,” she said, “I did what I could in the little time we had to save you.” Afterward, she explained what had happened, how the Watch had found my body amidst the burning building that had been my home for a decade and more. My home was lost to me, but they had pulled me from the flames and recovered my life. Neera had closed my throat with magic, but there was nothing she could do about the scarring. It would be a clean scar, at least, the blade had been very fine and precise. My eye too was irreplaceable, but I was alive; and that was more than enough. After some weeks convalescing, I left Waterdeep, leaving a message for my children to be sent to them in Neverwinter. I stole a mount and a blade, and headed south.

When I found Destin, he was no less disdainful than any other time I knew him. It did not matter, I had endured far worse than his disparaging demeanor. As selfish and cruel as he was, I needed his help, and I pressed him until he acceded. Part of me still believes he took liberties at times with his training methods, but if I had learned anything at all from my time since the Aljenu first chose me for a weapon, it was endurance. I learned, and even if Destin would not admit it, I showed improvement and readiness to begin the actual training. I needed to learn his way of fighting to combat this enemy. It was a matter of my pride that I pursued this endeavor at all…at first.

When the dreams began, I knew that there was a much larger force at work. The dreams were nonsense; soundless images of pale men with glass-like swords, rituals being performed, and then I would wake. I have shared these dreams with no one—not even Destin. I know that if I do not move to stop these men, if we do nothing, then the entire world would go to Tartarus. If I did not tell my dreams of foreboding to Destin, he at least sensed the gravity of the situation, and summoned Akuto and his son, Aric. He sent word far and wide for them to gather an army. I knew that even though this had become much larger than myself that I would take comfort in knowing I was not alone in my desire to get to the bottom of this.

I could only pray the dreams would stop, soon.

Sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, he could feel the weight of her gaze on his back. Whether she adored him or no, it did not matter. He did not keep her to be adored, but he would not lie that her presence was something he cherished above all else. He could not tell you when he had begun to place his heart above his duties, but he could tell you how she would react when you asked her to serve you. He could tell you where the laugh lines on her face would appear when she found something to be humorous, could tell you the shape of her body when she threw her head back in ecstasy, could map the scars along her body with his eyes closed. He could tell you how many times her heart would beat in the night, all the things she said when he was hilt-deep within her, with one fist in her hair and the other hand clutching her thigh in a grip that would not relent.

Don’t stop…gods don’t stop…

He could tell you how she used her tongue when she sank between his knees, the way her lips wrapped around his turgid phallus, sliding down to meet where her fingers gripped him. He could tell you how it felt when she took him into her throat, when she shut her eyes in private euphoria, even as he tugged her hair just to see himself emerge from her swollen lips, slick with her own saliva. He could tell you how her chest rose and fell as she gasped for breath, her legs draped over his shoulders, her beautiful throat arched for his ravishing. He could tell you how she looked when completely bare and supplicated, her face shoved into the goose down pillows, her rear arched in the air while he drove himself into her, relishing in her muffled cries of pain and pleasure. Or how her hair wove through his fingers when he used them as reins to ride her, with the other hand wrapped around her delicate neck, choking off her cries and turning her into the most base-driven animal he had ever seen.

Or how she looked too much like a queen when he allowed her to ride him, his hands clutching her waist, smoothing up to cup her breasts, then back down to sculpt the lush, flexing curves of her gyrating hips, and finally up her sweat-slick back, and dragging his nails down just to put a raw purr in her throat.

He could tell you how she moved beneath the whip, with each crack her body contorted beautifully in pain, then quivered in ecstasy as it craved the next strike. Or how nimble she was when he would bind her in positions her body could not have possibly been meant for. Her legs spread for his pleasure, with her arms bound implicitly behind her, her sight robbed with a silk blindfold. And then the torment he would cause as he stimulated her with strikes of lightning, reveling in the smell of scorched flesh, and the taste of her tears, and then healing her to lick her wounds in silent contrition. Or perhaps he would tell you how she begged and pleaded, her lovely mouth shaping the word ‘master’ and ‘my lord’ and ‘please’ as if they were all she knew. Or how she crawled to him and debased herself at his whim, her lips seeking his phallus to perform an act of contrition when she thought she had displeased him. The truth was, she rarely displeased him, but he would not stop her from making amends in a way that had solved many of his problems.

He loved her, and he hated her. Her effect on him was a double-edged blade. She could damn him in one breath, and have him drilling between her thighs as if all was forgiven and forgotten the next. Telamont had been correct. Love had made him do the strangest things. And then she had gotten with child.

The beautiful assassin, his lover, his slave, his pet, his equal—was to bear his son.

But she had vanished. She had run from him and dropped completely to a place where he could not find her. He would not fault her for running, but he was an exceedingly proud man—and he did not take kindly to being slighted. And so he sought her out.

Her trail led him to the Cloudwalker Temple where the traces of her scent were still fresh. He could smell her all over, and it infuriated him. He wanted nothing more than to scour the temple from the face of Toril. She had been worshipping the goddess in this place. He knew the scent of her in pleasure and in pain, and the scent of her pleasure cloyed his senses.

He recalled a moment, a rare moment of raw, unhindered intimacy in which he took his time with her. She had called him a name that he did not know the meaning of: ishta.

 He had lavished her throat with kisses, slow and saturated, dwelling on the points that made her moan the most. His thrusts were slow and excruciating, and she groaned in pleasure beneath him, writhing like the serpent she was, begging and pleading, her nails raking down his swarthy, shadow-swathed flesh. Her ankles locked at the base of his spine, and he drove ever deeper until he felt the violent arch in her back. His hands slid down to cup her rear and hold her to him while she shuddered in release, lust-saturated walls constricting around him as she shuddered violently in his arms. He thought she would melt from it and he captured her lips. It was then he tasted the salt of her tears.

It was the first time he’d made her weep from pleasure instead of pain.

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You’re always hiding behind your so-called god(ddess).

So what, you don’t think that we can see your face?

Resurrected back before the final Fallen;

I’ll never rest until I can make my own way.

I’m not afraid of fading.

I stand alone, feeling your sting down inside me.

I’m not dying for it.

Everything I believe is fading…I stand alone.

Poets scribe the tales of warriors and inspire the young and inexperienced to be like the characters in the verses. They scribe tales of war with such lush beauty that one is moved to hope for their own battles to fight. There are no words that can sway the masses like those scribed by a skilled poet or sung by a skilled bard.

And I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there will never be words to describe this war.

We are at war, as you well know, and already we are taking heavy losses in Khaptur. The Aljenu, Machia, has sent his Necromancer, Vanhi against us. Our forces are few, and those that are slain become her minions. Sadique has suggested we infiltrate enemy lines to kill the Necromancer, but Vanhi knows us. We have fought against the Immortalis for longer than I can remember. They would expect such a move from us. Even Anwar agreed that if we slew the Necromancer, we would be better off. I led my army against the legions of undead, and for all that prowess I have gained over hard decades of experience and tutelage, it did little to serve us on a battlefield chosen by the gods themselves. Yet, for all that, it is not Machia’s forces I fear.

Xiaolong has yet to move against us…and I know from experience the terrible power he is capable of wielding. With Sadique and Ibrahim on my side, along with the paladin, Anwar, I had thought we stood a fair chance. We took refuge in a fortress on the plains of Dartha. It is fortified, of course, and we’ve men enough to post on all sides, and the enemy can be seen for miles before they reach us. I had thought we stood a fair chance.

Every day, the war begins to show on our faces. Our provisions will not last forever and those of us seasoned in many a gruesome siege know that an army travels on its belly and unfortunately for us, our enemy has no need of food. I see the shadow in Anwar’s eyes grow daily and I fear for him. He has never had to do the loathsome things we’ve done to survive, and I pity him, but it is a hard lesson to learn and he is lucky to have learned it in the company of those who would not abandon him.

I would not abandon him, for he had not abandoned me when I visited the darkest corner of my soul, and managed to painstakingly make my way back to some semblance of humanity. But day by day, I see Anwar taking in the refugees fleeing the sacking of their villages and towns, I see the weariness bow his shoulders, I see the bruised and weary lines beneath his eyes, and I feel self-loathing well in me. He was so good before he met me. Before we crossed paths his duty had been to the very god who sanctioned this war on humanity. Ahura Mazda had abandoned him, after he had devoted his life as a faithful servant of the Light, turning away the darkness of Angra Mainyu to protect the royal family of Persia. It is hard news, the shock of betrayal; and the betrayal sticks even worse when it’s from one’s own patron deity. He is losing hope.

I do not blame him. I can’t blame him. Our magics are nearly exhausted and there are no gods to beseech for aid. It seemed all of divinity has turned against us.

I am losing hope…but I refuse to let the gods not feel the sting of human resilience before I let despair consume me entirely.

Don’t judge a thing ‘till you know what’s inside it.

Don’t push me, I’ll fight it.

Never gonna give it, never gonna give it up, no.

If you can’t catch a wave then you’re never gonna ride it.

You can’t come uninvited.

Never gonna give it, never gonna give it up, no.

You can’t take me, I’m free.

The war has begun, and I cannot help but think that I will not live to see its end. Anwar believes that I am something of a leader, that I have a plan to do what those who rebelled before us could not, and for some reason…it breaks my heart because I know I am going to let him down. I am going to fail all of them, who have taken up the fight against the gods who have forgotten that humanity makes them what they are.

Without us, these gods are but figments.

“How can you be so sure, Nadja?” Anwar asked me one night, “How can you be so sure this is what we were meant to do?” We had fought against the Necromancer that day, and the stench of the undead was everywhere. We—Anwar, Rita, and myself—made camp by the Jubra River. It flowed swift enough that the dead would not follow us, and would afford us enough time to rest, but none of us were resting despite how bone-tired and weary we were. Gods…I looked down at my hands, caked with blood and dirt. I no longer recognized myself.

“My mother and father were slain by these gods for the very same reason we are fighting, Anwar.” I said wearily. “My mother was condemned to an eternity of aging, watching all of her children die, until I…” I could not finish the sentence. Anwar placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder, rubbed raw from my haste in attempting to adjust my baldric. I sighed.

“My mother asked me to kill her that night, Anwar. You know that. My father, slain the very night of my birth for attempting this binding we are working toward…Anwar, if you do not believe this to be my destiny then what is? Shall I be content to serve gods who have no care for the humans that blindly worship them?”

“And have you considered how many more like you have perished for such hubris, Nadja? These gods are old—older than the earth, older than man’s memory. These gods are not waging war with us as we are with them,” Anwar countered hotly. “They send other minions to do their bidding, because to fight us themselves would be no fight at all. They could bat an eye and our existence would not even be a memory. It would be as if we never were.” I frowned.

“And that,” I said, “is precisely why we must banish them.”

The seal was broken.

No one had to come and inform me, I had known. I had known the moment it happened, as if it was as expected as one’s heartbeat. Indeed it was, as I could not fathom that the seal would hold for long. I was more surprised that it took longer than I expected. Can you imagine? Living in fear that the very gods would find a way to free themselves and come seeking the one who orchestrated their imprisonment?

No, I imagine you cannot.

For two years, I knew a sense of peace I did not think possible. I was no longer selling my skills as a warrior to wary merchants and frightened travelers, for I no longer needed to. That is not to say that I shirked a lifetime of training simply because I no longer had need to implement it; it is just that I finally had time to devote my attentions to more peaceable pursuits. I raised my children, I even married. I did not love the man I married; I do not think it is something I will ever be capable of again, that all-consuming irrational passion that is supposed to accompany love. I have experienced it with one man only, and he is dead. And so I annulled the marriage. I tended to my business, a well-to-do tavern and inn that I had built from the ground up. I was the Lady of Delights, and I was prosperous and I was happy.

I should have known the moment I freely admitted to myself that I was all of those things that disaster would strike.

It was raining the day I felt the change, and Sundari and I had just finished shuttering the windows and putting up spells in the doorway to dry off rain-sodden patrons. I was curled on one of the couches, reading, and Sundari had gone upstairs to take a nap…or whatever it was she did in place of sleep.

Then it happened. It was like someone had doused one candle in a room full of candles. Subtle, but the change was noticeable. I paused briefly, and thinking—no, hoping—it was merely weary from the day’s work, I returned to reading.

Another proverbial candle hissed out, and then the feeling went from a sense of the world dimming to a sense that the light was rapidly being stolen from the world. I was scarcely aware of the book slipping from my fingers and hitting the carpet, because a profound sense of dread was beginning to prickle along my spine. You see, when I had put up the seal, the feeling had been in reverse. Light had returned to the world when I and the others had sealed up the gods that had made a game of our very existence, and now it was leaving…fast. I bolted to my feet and bounded up the steps.

“Sundari!” I cried. Sundari came out of her room, rubbing her eyes and hiding a yawn as I nearly ran her down.

“Yeah? What is it?” She murmured, and seeing my alarm, she grew alert.

“The seal…I think it’s….” I couldn’t say the words but Sundari understood right away. She rushed into the room and began to prepare. We had to get to Earth as soon as possible, but to do that we had to pass through the Illiyan Realms.

And I knew the young ruler there would not welcome the self-same person who had nearly tore her realm apart in war. We would have to beseech Sukufan for magical aid. My resources in Faerûn as far as warfare was concerned had all but vanished; the riverbed for my nefarious lifestyle had all but dried up on this end. A majority of my contacts were wealthy merchants looking to trade goods from Earth here on Toril. I needed firepower, and I needed it fast. Sundari swept her booted foot across our doorway, sealing it against intruders before she began the spell that would transport us out of Waterdeep. We would have to travel far to raise a portal to Earth, but without Hadrhune, I could not perfect the technique of gaining direct access to my world. I would have to pass through the Illiyan Realms before going, and while I was no longer a fugitive in that part of the universe, nor was I readily welcome.

Gods damn it all, I was tired of this.