Forsaken by Shadows 47: Dead Quiet

~12. Dead Quiet~

Torafein

Whenever Torafein left for his tours in Menzoberranzan, he comforted himself with the knowledge that in the midst of everything he would be living without for the next ten years—the love of his wife, the joy of his children, the sheer common decency of being respected—he would at least regain silence. Even when Ardyn was grown and before Sabraena had come to be, there was somehow never silence in his house. 

But Menzoberannzan, for all its horrendous flaws, was at least silent, because Melee-Magthere students knew better than to break curfew or defy quiet hours. The drow of the city were subdued and kept to themselves, and if ever someone dared to threaten his peace, he simply shut his door and didn’t open it again until the next day’s work. No one cared what he did, so long as he showed up when he was supposed to and did his job well. 

Silence was his only delight in Menzoberranzan. 

Out here, in the Wilds, it was agony. 

The caverns were too quiet. Not the tranquility of peace, but the stillness of death. They hadn’t come across so much as a flumpf or a darkmantle, let alone the drow they hunted. It made his skin crawl and set his soldiers on an edge they’d had no relief from for eight cycles. 

Little monsters only fled when bigger monsters were out and about. So where were they hiding? 

He sat stiff and rigid with his back against a cavern wall, legs crossed, trying to take advantage of the nothingness to rest. Yet every time his consciousness slipped into a trance, his repose was assaulted by memories. That was the problem with trancing over sleeping. Sleep brought dreams, which could sometimes be pleasant. 

Trances brought nightmares, recollections of his own past he’d much rather forget. All the ways he had failed, as a husband, a father, and a Guide. There was no shortage of supply to work with. 

He closed his eyes again, willing oblivion to take him, praying it would treat him kindly. But as his senses grew thick and heavy, the darkness shifted and flickered.

He stood in a crowd of Melee-Magthere students, but saw none of them. All he could focus on was the red, red blood of an innocent girl whose death he had allowed to happen. 

He didn’t even know her name. Toloruel hadn’t bothered to tell them. 

But Rismyn knew it. Rismyn, whom he’d been keeping an eye on these last five years. Rismyn, who reminded him so much of Ardyn at times it hurt to instruct him the way Melee-Magthere required. Sewing with violence, reaping brutality.

But Rismyn had held onto some level of tenderness. He had known the girl, and loved her, judging by the way he clutched her broken body to his chest. His unbridled, unmasked passion left Torafein with precious few seconds to make some critical decisions on how to keep the boy from following after her in death. 

He wouldn’t fail Rismyn the way he’d failed Ardyn. 

Torafein’s eyes snapped open, and were he a less disciplined elf, he would have groaned in despair. In all his considerable life, there were few memories that bit harder than that one. 

But, that was why he was here, wasn’t it? In the Wilds, hunting Toloruel. Atoning for his sin of inaction which nearly cost Mazira her life. Wreaking vengeance on the one who’d brought her to the Underdark in the first place, so that maybe, one day, he could look into her sweet face without the pain of regret. 

Regret. The fuel that drove him ever onward. Laments that sent him out of his house less than a cycle after his family had finally been made whole again. What did it say about him, that he was willing to drop everything for anyone who wasn’t blood related to him? Would he ever cease to be a disappointment to his only son? 

No. That wasn’t entirely true. Not the disappointment part. He’d seen the look on Ardyn’s face when the boy had caught him preparing to leave. Another battle lost in the reconciliation of their relationship. But this mission wasn’t only about Mazira. He’d meant what he said to the Council when he so openly defied them. 

Ardyn had no idea how close he’d come to brushing past one of Menzoberranzan’s most vicious killers, but Torafein knew. Nine years had passed since he’d last seen his son, since he’d sworn to disown him for daring to want to go his own way in life. 

Nine years, and the reunion had almost been snuffed, should Ardyn have tread the path back to Launa just a few hours later. The fear of what-if smothered Torafein like a cave-in. Yet as though that weren’t enough, Ardyn had taken Militia oaths, which meant he’d be venturing out into the Wilds again, where that killer was still on the loose. 

Torafein could not, would not, stop until the threat was eradicated. It didn’t matter that Ardyn was an adult now, a seasoned warrior in his own right. It didn’t matter that Torafein was proud of the person his son had become, despite his own misguided attempts to sabotage Ardyn’s dreams. It didn’t matter that Ardyn could probably take care of himself. 

For as long as Torafein had breath in his lungs, he would shoulder the burden of keeping his loved ones safe, no matter the cost. 

If only he’d held to that position when it counted most. Would killing one murderer atone for all his sins? 

He shifted, growing restless, and frankly tired of his own self-pity. Three of his eight soldiers tranced easily, apparently not disturbed by their deepest flaws and most horrific failures the way he was. Two more stood guard, while his scouts did what they did best—scouted. All of them wore black masks to cover the lower portions of their faces, and none of them knew exactly who it was they were hunting. He thought again about whether or not he should tell them, but Emmalara had insisted he not start any rumors until facts were confirmed. As if they needed more proof than four crescent-shaped face marrings. 

At least his soldiers knew it was drow they were looking for, unlike the rest of the city. The Reverend Mother hadn’t lied when she announced the death of the Songblades, she’d just heavily implied a wild animal or mindless monster had been behind the attacks. 

A stone skittered somewhere in the dark, and Torafein’s sword was in his hand before he’d even spun to face the sound. His trancing warriors leapt to their feet, his two guards snapping to attention with weapons drawn. 

“It’s us,” came a sharp, urgent voice. “We found something.” 

“We found someone,” came the second voice. “He’s wounded.”

Two men materialized through the gloom, hoisting a third between them. A trail of red-hot blood dribbled in their wake, oozing from the chest of the limp elf as his head lolled back and forth. 

Crysla, their appointed Songblade, moved to intercept them, but Torafein growled a harsh, “Hold.” 

The priestess froze, and so did the men, who appeared to be his scouts, but Torafein knew better than to trust his eyes. Magic could play any number of clever tricks. 

Torafein studied the scout on the left, a stocky male drow. “How did you meet your wife, Jahelli?”

The scouts exchanged surprised glances, as though they were under the impression that returning from the shadows with an obviously wounded individual overrode protocol. Though surely none of his hand-picked veteran soldiers would fall prey to that assumption. Torafein’s iron stare must have communicated that thought, because Jahelli’s expression turned grim. 

“She bought me at an auction,” he said, with no apology in his voice. “Wanted a man to do her laundry but didn’t want to bother with a husband. We still laugh at the irony. But you told me to lie and say we met in Launa after I was well and properly reformed, and that we have three daughters and a son, knowing full well those ‘children’ have four paws and are covered in fur.” 

Torafein nodded, though he was still tense. Jahelli had given more than was required for his safe answer, which was actually more in line with his character. The lie had been all Torafein asked for from each of them, as a mind reader would probably dig for truth if they wanted to impersonate someone. 

The other scout, Chameth, glanced distastefully at the swords still pointed at him. “And I’m six-hundred and three and looking forward to retiring,” he said, offering the lie he was given before prompted. “So I can live out my days on the shores of the Sword Coast. This man is dying, Torafein. He needs our help.”

Crysla glanced at Torafein, her eyes full of concern, but Torafein wasn’t quite convinced yet.

“Who is he?” he asked instead, as though the pool collecting at the stranger’s feet didn’t concern him. Where did you find him?”

“He looks like an escaped slave,” Chameth said. “Give us light and you’ll understand. We found him up by the limestone ledge.” 

 “Go ahead, Crysla,” Torafein said. “Give us light.”

Crysla sang a wordless tune and a small orb of white light flickered above their heads. The wounded elf moaned, now revealed to be so fair of skin and hair both looked to be the color of snow. Just as white as his tattered garments were, before his torso was slashed open. How he was still alive enough to make noise, Torafein could only guess. But then, he’d seen miracles before. 

“He might know something,” Crysla said, twitching a little as though she was physically restraining herself to obey his hold command. 

“He won’t know anything much longer,” Chameth said. “Unless we do something about his condition.”

Torafein narrowed his eyes, unable to shake the nagging sense that something was deeply amiss. After so many cycles of utter silence, a nearly-dead slave just happened to turn up in their path? They were within the Outer Rim. People didn’t just wander in here, and certainly not slaves. The one and only time a stranger walked to the Sanctuary without a Guide to show them the way was when Solaurin had turned up with his infant daughter and wild tales of a goddess directing his steps. That meant this scenario wasn’t completely unprecedented… but still. It seemed awfully convenient.

Yet his scouts had passed their security questions, and the man was very clearly dying. His soldiers were right, whether the stranger was friend or foe, the only way to find out would be to heal him and ask questions. 

“Do it,” he finally said, and the priestess released an audible sigh. The scouts laid the slave down and the Crysla knelt at his side. 

“It’ll be alright,” she told the wounded man. “We’re going to heal you.” And then she began to sing.

Compassion over caution. Maybe that was what Torafein lacked. He thought too much about everything, and too much thinking got people killed. Yet instinct alone was never good enough. It was certainly a good place to start, but everyone’s gut could be wrong, the way his had been wrong when he believed Mazira to be a lost cause, choosing to focus his efforts on saving Rismyn instead. 

Wait. Mazira. That was it. That was what was so wrong with this situation. 

“Crysla, wait!” he said, but it was too late. The final notes of the priestess’s song faded into the cavern, and light spread throughout the stranger’s body. The wounds on the elf’s chest melded together—she must have used a powerful spell—and he gasped, his eyes fluttering open to reveal sapphire-blue irises. 

He started to sit up, but Torafein’s blade at his throat hindered his progress. 

“Who are you?” he snarled. “And how did you get here?” 

Crysla looked startled, perhaps surprised at Torafein’s aggression, but he didn’t care. She knew enough not to question his tone, and moved to stand beside him, a hand on her own saber. Around them, the soldiers tensed, responding appropriately to the threat in Torafein’s voice. Four of them turned aside, scanning the darkness for other dangers, while Torafein did his work. 

The pale elf blinked rapidly, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the orb above him. “Mercy, please,” he said, a note of fear in his voice. “I-I come seeking sanctuary… I was told I could find it here…” 

“By who?” Torafein asked, jabbing the point a little closer to the stranger’s throat. 

“Divdaer. Divdaer Ory’liel. He… he told me how to get here and said I’d be safe, please, mercy…” 

Torafein didn’t take his eyes off of the elf, but he felt his soldiers exchange glances. 

Divdaer was the Guide who had replaced Torafein in Menzoberranzan. But Guides didn’t send new Voices on their own. So either this slave wasn’t being fully honest, or something awful had happened to Divdaer. 

Or both. 

“Who injured you?” Torafein asked, though he suspected he knew the answer. 

“My master. He caught up with me. He…” The elf broke off his statement with a shudder, a perfect imitation of a traumatized victim. 

But that’s all it was. An imitation. Torafein was sure of it, even as he sensed the uncertainty in his soldiers. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became.

“How tragic,” Torafein said, placing the killing edge of his blade against the pale elf’s throat. Crysla raised a hand as if she was going to try to stop him, but then seemed to think better of it. 

“Wait, wait, wait!” The elf cried, trying to scoot away from Torafein’s blade, but he found his way blocked by one of the soldiers. “Please, I beg of you, mercy!” 

“I have no mercy for liars,” Torafein said. “But I will offer you one more chance. Think carefully about how you answer my questions.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” the elf whimpered. 

Torafein was disgusted. “I know who it is we stalk in these Wilds,” he said, and his soldiers exchanged more glances. “I know if he wanted you dead, he’d have made sure he did it right. I know if he’d meant us to find you like the others, he’d have left his mark.” 

With a quick flick, Torafein snapped his blade up and nicked the elf’s cheek, so that a thin line of blood appeared on otherwise colorless skin. His soldiers shifted uncomfortably, their tension heightened at the sight of fresh blood. 

Torafein was aware of what he must look like to them. Callous and cruel, tormenting a helpless slave, and it filled him all the more with rage. How dare this pale elf come into his patrol and try to fool them? He took the insult personally. 

“And lastly,” Torafein said, as the elf stared up at him with eyes that… 

Eyes that…

Eyes that were steady. Devoid of the fear his body language spoke of. And no longer blue. 

Red eyes looked back at Torefein. Red eyes that gleamed with lethal intent. Red eyes that didn’t belong to surface folk, but were the blood-soaked color of elves born to love darkness. 

This was a damn trap, and Torafein knew it. But he didn’t react as if he did. He just finished what he was going to say, hoping it stung the killer he suspected lurked close by. “If your supposed master had taken another faerie slave, he wouldn’t have taken one such as yourself. He would have taken a little girl, to replace the one I stole from him.” 

“Commander, his eyes,” Crysla hissed, apparently having just noticed the shift in color. She drew her own saber and pointed it directly at the stranger’s heart. Attracted by her words, the soldiers who had turned away whipped back around, ready to pounce at Torafein’s command. 

The pale elf still had his hands raised, as though in surrender, but his feigned trembling ceased. Slowly, he wiped away the stream of blood Torafein had left on his cheek, his lips curling into a smile. “You must be the famed Torafein Xarrin, as ruthless as your reputation. Mindra said we’d find you here, but I admit, I was skeptical.” 

Mindra. The name sounded familiar. Did Rismyn have a sister named Mindra? That seemed right, but Torafein didn’t know much about the daughters of House Tear. 

He also didn’t particularly care at the moment, nor did he bother to deny the claim of his identity. He pressed his blade deeper into the elf’s throat until it bit, drawing yet another stream of crimson. “And you are…?” 

“I?” The elf paused, as though considering his words carefully. Then his condescending smile became a sneer. “I am your new master.” 

Too late, Torafein noticed the darkness creeping into the eyes of the stranger. The elf blinked once, and his irises were gone, replaced by deep, fathomless pits of black.

The shadows at Torafein’s feet writhed and gathered, then snapped around his ankles and wrists, burning his flesh and seeping into his skin. Magic crawled through his veins, wriggling like worms up, up, up, and into his skull. 

Torafein tried to shout, tried to order an attack, but his body no longer obeyed his commands. Pinpricks of pain blossomed around his brow, blood dribbling from tiny wounds he couldn’t see as the magic pierced through his flesh like a circlet of misery. 

It all happened so fast. The words had barely emanated from the stranger’s lips before Torafein found his muscles bunching and tensing. Completely against his will, he hefted his blade and plunged it into Crysla’s stomach, shattering her orb of light. He watched her fall in utter silence as the priestess cried out, but it was no use. Shadows clawed for his mind, sending his vision into blackness while infernal chanting ricocheted in his ears, consuming his will to fight the darkness. 

The stranger moved then, darting forward to catch the stunned Crysla before she fell, cradling her in his arms as she choked on her own blood, unable to voice a healing spell. 

“There, there, shhhh,” the elf consoled, tracing his thumb over her lower lip, painting it red, while she gaped up at him. “Don’t fret. You’ve been chosen to live.”

Someone was shouting. Several someones. The noise clashed with the magic chanting in his mind, the cacophony was enough to drive Torafein mad. A hand reached out for his shoulder and he spun, cutting the assailant down. 

Assailant? No, he knew that face. Chameth? No, not Chameth. Because Chameth was dead at his feet. When did Chameth die? Did he do that? 

Why did his head hurt so badly? And who was chanting? Another shadowy figure charged at him, over Chameth’s dead body, and Torafein swung again. His blow was parried once, twice, but not thrice. Another body crumpled at his feet. 

His consciousness swam with the swelling cadence of the chant, his vision swirling. One moment, he stared at the corpses of strangers, evil drow he’d come to slay. The next, they were his friends, his comrades he’d hand selected for this mission. 

It didn’t make sense. His brain was fracturing. 

Rays of sickly green light crackled throughout the cave, and for a brief, shining moment, Torafein’s senses came back to him.

They were under attack! 

Jahelli was locked in combat with a swordsman obscured by stalagmites, while Quevyr dropped to her knees, shrieking, as her body was swarmed by thousands of black spiders. Torafein rushed to her aid, but just as he reached her, his head throbbed and fresh blood oozed from the circlet of pain woven around his skull, and Quevyr was no longer Quevyr. 

In her place rose a large, leering drider—half drow, half spider—and Torafein’s blood ran cold. He didn’t slow his charge, but instead rammed the monster through with his sword, planting a boot on its chest and  ripping his blade back out again. 

The shrieking stopped, and so did his head-throbbing, and Quevry lay dead before him, her mouth open in shock, her flesh swelling from myriad venomous bites. 

Horrified, Torafein staggered back, glancing up just in time to see a woman he was certain was an enemy lash at one of warriors with a brutal snake-headed whip. The soldier wobbled and dropped his blade, and the woman grabbed his face, cackling as black magic oozed from her hands.

His soldier screamed, and the cavern was filled with the scent of melting flesh. 

Against all his training, all his discipline, Torafein roared in primal fury. He raised his blade and hurled it at the woman, but she looked up, alerted by his scream. She threw his warrior aside and jumped out of the way, and his blade clanged uselessly into stone. 

“I thought you had him on a leash, Ivory!” she shouted, a sentence that made no sense to Torafein whatsoever.

It didn’t matter. He made to run for her, to strangle her with his bare hands if he had to, but he hardly made it two steps before something sharp thudded into his back, dangerously close to his spine. He tried to ignore it, to carry on, but two more thuds brought him to his knees as an all too familiar tingle crawled beneath his skin. 

Throwing knives, he presumed. Laced with sleeping poison, a drow specialty.

Torafein fought to remain conscious as he slumped over, distantly aware that the cavern was quiet. The shouting had ceased, the chanting in his head was gone, and he was suddenly very aware of the horror he had inflicted. 

He’d killed Chameth, Ioria, and Quevry. Some type of madness had overtaken him and he’d just… killed them. And Crysla. Mercy, Crysla! 

He craned his head to look for her, and found her not far away. She was still cradled in the arms of the pale elf, who watched him with his head tilted aside, as though Torafein was a curious mold growing on the side of a house. Crysla moaned, and the elf looked away, stroking her face and shushing her, like a child he was trying to comfort from a nightmare. 

Where were his other warriors? Surely they weren’t dead. Not all of them. They were elites, the best Launa had to offer. Any minute now, they would come to his aid. 

But there was only silence, and Crysla’s sobs, and footsteps echoing behind him. Torafein tried to move, but his limbs were heavy with poison. Someone knelt beside him, and he grunted as the throwing knives were wrenched out of his back. The tip of a black-bladed sword flashed briefly through his vision.

“Wait,” the woman said. “Don’t kill him.” She sauntered forward. “Take off his mask. I want to see his face.” 

The knife-thrower did as he was bid, ripping the fabric away from Torafein’s face. 

The woman gave a scornful laugh. “Torafein Xarrin. It really is you.” 

She grabbed a fistfull of his hair and yanked his face up, and even in his haze, Torafein recognized the shape and color of those wine-dark eyes. The same as Rismyn’s. 

“I’ve been looking for you,” said Mindra Tear. She dangled something shiny in front of his face, but his vision was blurring. Was it a house medallion? Hadn’t he lost one of those? His head was too full of poison to remember, and everything felt like a terrible dream. 

She let him go and his forehead thudded against the stone floor. Torafein didn’t even have the strength to turn his head so he could keep her in his vision. Everything was going numb, even his distress over what he’d done to his own soldiers. 

“Change of plans, boys,” said Mindra. “We’re taking two prisoners.”

Disclaimer: Forsaken by Shadows is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.