Holy Opposites 41

	The High Succubus spat out blood and rose to her feet.  Of course he was jumping from tile to tile, she thought.  He knew where the trigger tiles were.  She started jumping through the pattern until she had reached the far side.

	She took a moment to run her hand over the seam of the door.  She didn’t feel any magic, and her divine senses weren’t returning a thing from the far side.  She opened the door cautiously.

	Nothing.  It was a small, empty privy, with no other exit.  She cursed and closed the door.  This was the portal, she was sure of it.  There had to be some password or something that redirected it from the privy to another location outside Undermountain.


	Axio was up in the hallway full of children now.  Tears of bitter loss streamed down his face.  He stumbled on one leg, using his sheathed sword as a crutch, from door to door, opening each and letting the children out, one at a time.  Some cried, most didn’t.  Most simply stood there, lost and traumatized.

	The young Aasimar had never felt such existential despair.  He acknowledged the few pitiful thanks he received with mechanical nods as he hobbled around the room, opening the little doors and letting the lost souls through.  Perhaps a human would have perceived things differently, or any other race without an intrinsic and biological sense of right and wrong, but perhaps not.

	Doshellas slowly walked down the stairs to the dungeon chamber and joined him in releasing the children.  A few shied from his drow features, but most just stared ahead.

	The women upstairs worked to open the wriggling bags they had found.  Luanea had a look of haunted bitterness on her face as she freed the children and asked them to sit in the corners until she could be sure how many of them there were.

	Cavria just stewed in her hate.  She was a product of the Hells, and even she had never seen such unambiguous evil.  She felt her hands shaking as she untied one savagely beaten little girl, who barely mustered the strength to roll over and avert her eyes.

	“Who?” she hissed.  The Paladin rubbed her eyes as hot tears spilled down her face.  “Who would do this?”  She gripped her holy symbol under her finger bones creaked.  “Who?”

	“Toller,” a voice said.  Both women looked over.  A half-orc boy, slightly older than the others, was sitting cross-legged against the wall, staring at them.  “His name was Toller.  A cleric, I think.”

	“Was he a mortal?” Cavria asked urgently.

	The half-orc nodded.  “Human, man.  Old.  Bald.  Fat.  Black robes.  Don’t remember anything else.”  The boy buried his face in his arms.  “He just locked us away and hit us when we cried.”

	Luanea was at his side in an instant.  She rested the boy’s head on her shoulder and kissed his shorn head.  “Hush, son, I have you,” she whispered.  “We’ll get you all out of here as soon as we can.”


	Below, Axio finished releasing the children.  He slowly rose to his full height in the dark hallway.  “Little ones, please look away.  I don’t want to hurt your eyes,” he said as gently as he could while his heart was shattering into a thousand pieces.  He covered his left hand with his right and cast the light cantrip onto the fingertips of his glove.  The children shied away from the glare, and he toned the emanation down.  “All right, we’re going to get you all home, now,” he said.  Keeping his voice under control was a colossal effort.  He heard footsteps in the stairs, and turned to see Cavria emerge.

	Cavria looked at the scene before her, feeling her heart swell.  It couldn’t have been more poignant.  Hundreds of tiny, filthy, barely-clothed waifs, all half-starved, clustered around a huge, bloodied angel, covered in dust and wounds, but still glowing with light.  His sapphire eyes were running with tears that shone in the light from his hand.  Several children were clinging to the hanging cloth of his tabard and pack, looking all around with dead eyes.

	If Cavria had had the means to capture a single image in the hearts and memories of every man and woman who would ever have children that would have been it.  A single divine guardian, safeguarding the lost children of Toril, guiding them with his light and shielding them with his wounded body.

	Her heart ached.  She felt like her tongue was covered in cotton.  “There’s a portal, sir,” she said.  Her voice was trembling.  “There’s a portal.  The privy door.  It’s conditional.  You can go through if you trigger it to activate.”

	Axio nodded slowly.  Some of the children whimpered and shied away from Cavria, and she felt a surge of self-loathing as she realized they were afraid of her bat-like wings.  “Uh…”

	Axio slowly walked forward, leaving the children in his wake.  He kissed her cheek.  “Thank you,” he said.  His voice was trembling too.  He turned to the children and knelt, holding his illuminated hand over their heads.  “All right, my friends.  Can any of you tell me what word the evil men spoke when they wanted to leave?”

	Silence filled the room.  Then, a little hand stuck over the crowd.  “Vor… Vortese,” a girl said uncertainly.  “When they were leaving.”

	Axio met her eyes.  “Vortese?  They said that before they disappeared?”

	The little girl nodded, and a few others did too.

	Axio leaned forward and gave her a gentle hug.  “Then off we go,” he whispered.  “Thank you.”


	What a sight it must have been, to those who were watching.  Axio led the group at a limp through the bookstore’s back stairs, appearing in the middle of the markets of Waterdeep.  Hundreds of matted, starving children followed, clinging to each other in a long line, with three wounded adventurers in the tail.  Axio emerged into the street and extinguished his light.  He breathed the fragrant air of the sea.  This part of the story, at least, was over.