Holy Opposites 48

Chapter Twenty-Eight:


	I sat on the ledge outside the blacksmithy, swinging my legs in the air.  The amount of healing magic I’d had poured into my body in the last few days had left me feeling carefree and healthy, as much as I could with missing body parts.  The wind picked up and carried the late spring scents across my face.  The orchards were all shedding their leaf pods and sprouting bright green curls, the river had dropped to its normal level, and the seagulls were out and soaring.  Were it not for the specter of imminent apocalypse, I might have been enjoying myself.

	Axio emerged with two pieces of paper in his hands.  “His reservations about the speed with which we needed the work done evaporated when he saw the huge bags of gold and jewels,” the Aasimar said sarcastically.  “Bringing him the old armor scraps helped, too.”

	“Kinda surprised you wanted new armor, Axio,” I remarked.  “Your old armor was much better than mine.”

	“And obsolete.  Besides, it never fit quite right,” Axio said.  He stood next to me and looked up at where I was sitting.  “Time for the next errand.”

	“Sure.”  I rose and walked down the few short steps to where he was.  “What’s the next step?”

	“Off to the apothecary’s, to buy some potions and alchemics,” he said.  He spotted where I had affixed my new badge and smiled.  “That looks good on you.”

	I rolled my arms back to display where the badge sat over my heart on my new jacket.  “The badge, or the jacket?” I purred.

	“Sure.”  He grinned and shook his head.  As I followed him to the apothecary’s, I wondered about the change in his demeanor.  He seemed to have gotten over my accidental teasing the previous day.  Was it something he had discussed with Ryaire, or had something else happened?  Either way, I supposed it was for the better.

	Actually, it was bothering me a bit, now.  I hadn’t meant to be mean, and I suspect I had convinced him that it wasn’t my intent, but being a thing of evil sex and all that, had I given him cause to think my control of my impulses was slipping?  “Too far?” I asked.

	“What?”

	“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable there,” I said.

	Axio sighed and stepped into an alleyway.  I followed.  “Cavria, let it go,” he said quietly.  “My… insecurity… over my sexual inadequacies is not something with which I am comfortable joking, and you didn’t know that,” he added.  “I thought it over after I talked with Ryaire in my dreams last night on another topic.  I’m twenty two years of age, I can handle a bit of teasing.”

	I felt a bit relieved that he was being so mature about it, but I couldn’t resist saying one more thing.  “Luanea clearly has eyes for you, if it really bothers you,” I said.

	Axio recoiled.  “What?  No!  She doesn’t act like that towards me in a flirtatious way.”

	“She sure acts like she does,” I remembered.

	My partner shook his head.  “No, she acts like she misses her husband.”

	I blinked.  “Husband?”

	“That ring on her finger isn’t magical.  He’s a Supplicant, one of the Eilistraeean servants who hides refugees in the secure caves in the Underdark until it’s safe to move them all up to the surface.  She goes months at a time without seeing him, the poor thing,” Axio said sadly.  “He’s a very good man.  They’re head over heels for each other.”  He focused on me again.  “She acts relaxed and unguarded around me because we’re so alike in nature and height that we may as well be brothers.  Have you ever met him?  It’s uncanny.”  He stepped back.  “I assure you, she has no sexual feelings for me.  None.”

	I thought that over.  “So… I shouldn’t flirt with you either, I take it?” I asked, phrasing it as a joke.

	He chuckled.  “No, no, I’ll find a way to resign myself to it,” he said sheepishly.  “I suppose I should take it on the chin.  It’s a silly thing to be embarrassed about.”  He fixed me with his gemstone eyes.  “But your own nature does make it a bit risky, you tell me.  You were the one who imposed the asexuality clause on yourself.”

	“Sadly.  Oh well.”  I shrugged, playing off my sudden regret.  My nature is such a pain in the ass sometimes.  “Onward.”


	The apothecary, a half-gnome with old blue eyes, read the list of ingredients Axio had brought with him.  “Goodness, somebody’s taking up adventuring,” she said.  “By Garl, this reads like a checklist for spell and potion components.”

	Axio nodded.  “Not adventuring, per se, but close enough.  Can you provide us with all this?”

	“Well, the reagents and some ingredients, for sure, but the spell components… no, not all.  You’ll have better luck elsewhere, I’m afraid.”

	I stuck my hand out.  “I can take the ingredients while you deal with the rest, Axio,” I said.

	“Sure, thank you.”  He passed me some of the money and took off.

	The apothecary started finding the items behind her counter while I waited.  “So, you were with those adventurers who found the children in a bookstore or something, right?” she asked as she grabbed some dried bats.

	“I was,” I said.  “It’s a portal to Undermountain.”

	“Amazing.”  She started piling things on a little scale as I doled out coins.  “So do you have any idea who’s taking all these children?” she asked worriedly.

	“Baneites, unfortunately.  We’re working on it, I promise.”  I thought of my new badge, my new armor, and the enchanted bangle I had bought for my glaive.  “Yes, we’re solving this problem.”


Chapter Twenty-Nine:


	Suivi sat on the floor of the Baneite satellite temple, slowly running an enchanted piece of wood over the rune carved in the wall.  There had been many such runes on the stone tiles surrounding the portal.  He was no wizard, but he knew a spell anchor when he saw it.  His trip back to the place with the Paladin had confirmed it.

	Suivi’s hand tightened on the wand as he forced away his memories of the brutal confession that had followed.  He still felt a bit helpless, but…

	His hand suddenly twitched.  It hadn’t been voluntary.  He stopped the wand as it dragged over the stone, and he felt it start pulsing in rhythm.  The sensation was so faint he could barely feel it, but it was there.  “This one,” he said.  A Watch officer painted a daub of white paint on the same brick.  Suivi put down that stick and lifted another.  He pressed the new wand against the same spot and focused.  Moments later, he felt the faintest pull on the wand’s end.  “That way,” he said, pointing in the direction he had felt.

	The Watch officer daubed a yellow arrow on the floor in the trap hall, which mercifully had been cleared of bodies.  “Where did you get those wands?” one officer asked.

	“Bought them, actually, from an arcanist’s store in Athkatla,” Suivi said truthfully.  Hang on…” he trailed off as he paused his wand again on the next tile.  “No… nothing.  This portal is really old.  I think Halaster himself must have made this.”

	“Probably,” the Watch officer admitted.  Suivi sighed in hidden relief.  He had been afraid of the Watch pressing him hard.  As far as he knew, only a few Watch members were aware of his new and old affiliations.

	The wands attuned to conjuration and teleportation magic, which Suivi was using to detect the portal keys.  Since the destination was on the same plane, the runes could align with specific, pre-set targets.  A wizard could have derived the destination through a careful reverse engineering of the magic in the portal, but his lockpick’s senses were more useful for simply deriving the direction on the spot.

	A crisscross of yellow paint covered the floor behind them now.  Each arrow pointed to a potential destination.  Suivi was willing to bet at least one was somewhere else in Undermountain, and one would be the main Baneite temple somewhere.  The rest he pegged as being somewhere in Waterdeep or Daggerford, perhaps as back doors into the dungeon for Halaster to lure adventurers to their doom.  He had done that a lot.

	Suivi’s hope was that by finding the destination used the most that they could track the direction the cultists used when they were traveling back and forth from their main hub.  Knowing the password would require a wizard’s help, if the captured cultists didn’t divulge it first.


	Axio and Cavria sat in the perfumed room in the temple of Eilistraee and listened to their hosts.  “And from what you can see,” Luanea asked, “there are five portal destinations?”

	“We have our recent convert in the temple in Undermountain, tracking the direction of the portal’s guidance runes,” Axio explained.  “They align with five total directions.  That teaches us count and bearing.  We can use the same technique on the portal in the bookstore’s apartment.  That will give us ranges.”