3. The mirror of heaven

The mirror of heaven


  • Be not the representative of fame. Make not your mind a clearing-house of plans and strategy. Let things take their natural course, and do not presume to preside over the wise. Understand and trace things to their infInite source and roam about in the sphere beyond the evidences of reality. Fulfil what you have received from heaven and do not hold yourself the possessor thereof. Be empty, that is all. The enlightened uses his mind like a mirror. It neither sends off nor welcomes; it responds but does not retain. It remains in its place passively, and it gives back what it receives without concealment

    Footfalls ring through an alley. Just one more alley in one more city. Just one more boy running and dodging just one more handful of toughs. The ludicrously stuffed bag of gold slowed him down, but he was not about to abandon a prize he fought so hard for.
    And he'd won it fair and square. Sure, he promised to throw the fight, but it wasn't his fault their prize fighter couldn't take a proper hook to the jaw. The fact that he'd also used the bribe to bet on himself in no way proved that he had intended to screw them over.
    He just needed to get to one dock or one caravan that didn't have a bunch of them on lookout.

    He turned a corner and thought he saw salvation. One caravan, surrounded by armored guards. The caravan seemed about ready to leave. The guards seemed unconcerned with the commotion of the night.
    Too late did he see the trouble he was in. The caravan consisted of prison wagons, full of the desperate or the unwilling. The guards' armor marked them Zhentarim. He walked right into a press gang.

    As he turned to run the other way again, he saw that the road was cut off by their keen eyed and keen eared scouts. They knew one more desperate soul when they saw it. He knew his desperate soul when one of them spoke.

    "You that boy that won the fight down in the warehouse tonight? Heard about what you did. Quite a rough spot you're in. Tell you what. You pay that bag of gold in tribute to the Black Hand, and we'll see you right. We get you out from under their noses and keep you safe. You've got a good pair of fists, we'll find a use for you.

    Or... you turn down our gracious offer, and you'll be on your own. It sounds like they're getting mighty close, though. Heard what they do to thieves and conmen around here, and it ain't pretty. So what'll it be? A life in servitude? Or a life in a gibbet? 's Not gonna be a long one, at least. Oh, and you'll be making that donation either way."

    The ground beneath his body was cold and hard. The impact harder. And the men who threw him there colder. He scrambled to his feet and saw the stone floor, while consisting of large, featureless stones, had been curiously patterned. Their surface worn down as smoothly as if it had been polished marble.

    The walls were paneled with a dark wood, and intricately carved, though not all of the panels were finished. It felt downright luxurious after days being moved from tent camp to tent camp. The scent of incense hung in the air, along with something else overpowering the medicinal plants and oils from the carving... Stale sweat. The decoration and pleasant atmosphere did not hide the room's purpose. A training ground. He then noticed the weapons in the corner, and their curious shapes. Training dummies. The blood on them.

    He barely heard the scuffle of feet behind him. He turned to see a robed human enter the room. Not a wizard. The man watching him did so with disdain, but not the kind a wizard would show. Not a cleric. He wore no trappings of his faith, and the Banites did so proudly. The man moved a bit like a curious stork as he watched the half elf with curious, small eyes.

    "Appreciating my gilded cage? It may be yours, too, if you can stomach the path. Let us see what Geroldine has sent me this time."

    The blink of an eye. That was all it took for the man to close the distance and send him flying backwards, hitting the ground yet again. Cold and hard.

    He stormed out of the building. No more. He could take no more. The rank and file weren't paying attention to him. They knew what his uniform meant. Office of the provost. "Enforcer" was the nicer colloquialism. A man that would rarely have to join them on the front lines, but a constant companion nonetheless. He was hated. And with reason, for what the provost did to the rank and file. Feared, too. Not him, the greenhorn, but the clothes he wore. They knew not to ask questions.

    He ran behind a corner where he fell to his knees. The sight. The screams. Their faces. Not just the ones born from pain. He could stomach those. It were the ones born of helplessness. A child screaming for its mother. A father screaming for his child.
    It was one thing to break some fingers in a back room or crack some heads on a couple of malcontent conscripts. This punishment for... for what? Failing an impossible task? And this was "desertion"? What they did to that family... What they made him do... No. What he did.

    Heaving for breath, knees in the mud, he bent double and threw up. When it was done, he sat up straight and blinked the tears away. At the other end of the house, he saw a scout, equally disturbed by what they'd seen, looking at 206 with a mix of horror and sympathy. Then his eyes widened and he stepped into a shadow and out of sight.
    206 felt their presence more than heard it. Even as he whipped his hand around in a backfist and heard the satisfying crack of a knee, he felt the bag slide over his head, and the club strikes coming down before losing consciousness.

    He awoke to a whisper. Everything was sore. He was certain some things were broken. He remembered what that felt like from training. One eye was swollen shut. The other one was taking in entirely too much light, even if it was only a single torch. Another whisper. Where was the source?
    He barely saw the movement in the shadows beyond his cage. A scout. The scout. He wanted out. Of course he did. Most wanted out. Few had the spine to try. Desperation was often a substitute for courage, however.
    He knew 206 wanted out, too. Knew 206 was taught how the enforcers hunt. Knew 206 would probably not survive the next day of punishments. Together they might make it. Together they would make it.


  • The stone bastion of a keep that has seen better days. A winter chill in the air. An oddly large moon looms above among a multitude of stars, while a mist clings thick to the ground of the surrounding landscape, only letting up over the nearby lake.

    A quiet, somewhat secluded part of the ramparts. Not impossible to get to, but unlikely to be accidentally wandered into. Solitude.
    A wooden stool, about waist high, stands on the stone. Worn and forgotten like the keep he found it in, nobody would miss this particular piece of furniture. Nor the burlap sack fashioned into a pillow that lies on top of it. And the dried beans inside the pillow were fairly bought.

    A right hand comes straight down onto the pillow, an open handed slap. The Celestial palm. The wood creaks. The beans rattle softly. The stool holds, as does the burlap.
    The hand lifts off the pillow and twists. A second slap, open handed with the back of the hand. The Goddess' palm. The hand lifts and goes again, a cut with the outside of the palm. The crane. The hand goes again. And again. And again. Tiger, ox, monkey. Leopard, mantis, eagle. Palm, fingers, fingertips. Major knuckles, minor knuckles. Wrist, forearm, elbow. Straight forward, from the outside, from the inside. Nothing is spared.
    The wood survives the onslaught. When the routine is done, the makeshift pillow is fluffed and the left hand begins.

    Conditioning. Hardening. Zero Eight One had called them relaxing. Meditative. His fellow inmate had looked on with great amusement and a healthy helping of disdain when an officer ordered him to teach the fledgling brawler. Yet, he did as was demanded of him, as all in the Zhent warmachine must.

    A scant few weeks, and it already seemed a different world. The half elf repeated the exercise in the moonlight. His mind should have been focused on the task at hand, experiencing only the steady repetition, but he could not let it help but wander.
    So much had gone wrong after fleeing their captors. A bold move, some would say. A selfish one, according to others. There was no risk but for his own death. He had no family the Zhent could hold over his head. Nerrez never mentioned if he did.

    They'd barely survived getting to Moonreach. Deserters were not treated kindly, and hunted by their agents all across Faerûn. Making it out of Geroldine's direct holdings made no difference, as his sphere of influence extended well beyond that.
    They'd learned to avoid civilization after three brush ins. Learned to distrust wanderers after being informed against twice. Cutting a path through the wilds had been their only salvation. Still, that brought its own hardships. Traveling light, and being the hunted as often as the hunter, they had gone hungry more often than not. Oft times they had forced themselves to march simply to help them forget their hunger pangs. Those would have kept them from their sleep, anyway.

    To where? They had not known. They had not cared. Farther north than the Great Glacier, if they had to. Farther east than the Endless Wastes.
    Their path had seemed a random one. Maybe it had been. Zero Eight One had been a curious teacher, however. Stressing the lessons of the sun and the moon as taught by his people. Mocking the notions of Faerûnian humans even as he sat in a cage they'd fashioned for him. Two Oh Six had not cared much for the man's opinions, but sun and moon were ingrained into him, ever drawn to the moon in their nightly travels.
    Still, they might have missed this worn old keep entirely had the storm not driven them there for shelter. Maybe random. Maybe not.

    And now, all the world had changed. He had changed. Down to his very face. A complete stranger had not only sheltered them from the storm, she had hidden him from a Zhent agent that had sniffed out their trail. On top of which, she pulled some strings to have his body magically altered, to not look so like the half elf the Zhent were looking for. She would do the same for Nerrez.
    Others had been driven towards the keep in that storm, while still others were huddled around the fire that night. Maybe random. Maybe not. Given shelter, given a home, given more freedom than many places had given them before. A handful of them had stood up to help the Keep with a goblin problem, and now they had bonded together through their solitude in the keep, their need to belong to something greater and their desire to give back.

    Bonds so strong, little could deter them. From the goblins, normal or fiendish, to fishmen and their fey ruler, to legions of undead, to living crystal golems. From the glares their drow companion attracted, to the inability to communicate in a common tongue, to the known lycanthropy of one of their own. And possible lycanthropy of another.
    That had been a harrowing sight. The pain Aenhever had gone through. The transformation into that beast. He would not have wished that on any enemy. Now he had not just seen it happen to one friend. He had learned it might happen to the one soul who had seen what he had seen. The one man who had lived it and escaped alongside him.

    And there was the crux of the matter. The thought that truly occupied him and kept him from his meditation. The one part of his old life worth saving, and he might lose it as a new one begins.

    By the time his hand stopped moving, the dried beans had been ground to dust. He would not waste them, not in a place where everything was scarce. He gathered the dust in a bowl and added water. The paste would make a decent enough bread.