Amber Zoned Comix

Elturel, c. 1491 DR, 10 years before The Descent

“What the hells is that, Maelmir?” Aniza asked as her husband gently laid the small, limp bundle on the stone hearth. He threw another log on the fire and peeled back a corner of the blanket. “Gods below, Melmir,” she half-whispered, “who is that? Where did you find - ”

Melmir raised the girl’s head and folded the blanket for a cushion. Gently he smoothed the tangled, dirty hair , revealing a gaunt face with ashen skin. Beneath the matted hair a pair of short horns curved away from her forehead.

“Maelmir. Where did you find her?” Aniza repeated insistently.

Her husband adjusted the blanket around the unconscious child. “In an alleyway just off ____ street in the Lower City,” he said after a pause. “She was just lying there, sleeping in the street. Oh, please, Aniza, I couldn’t just leave her!” He said, seeing his wife’s gaze harden. “The child is starving! Look at her!” He pulled the blanket back, revealing the girl’s emaciated frame. Aniza gaped in horror at the sight the ashen, fragile skin stretched over sharp bones and thin muscles. “I couldn’t, Aniza,” he said softly. “She needs someone.”

Aniza knelt, examining the girl’s features, noting the myriad cuts and sores on her face and shoulders. It was a strong face even with the gaunt, sunken cheeks and dark circles around the eyes. Delicate, pointed ears indicated elven ancestry, but the horns were the question mark.

“Is she one of us?” She asked. “A tiefling?” If she was, perhaps the child’s family could be found.

Maelmir shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “No tail. I know,” he added hastily, before his wife could respond; tailless tieflings were not unheard of, “but I didn’t see the usual markings, either. And there’s this.” The child hadn’t responded to any of their discussion yet, and the fire was burning well. He pulled more of the blanket aside to reveal the girl’s shoulders and spine. “She has - or rather, had - wings.”

Aniza gasped in shock as she saw, in the flickering firelight, the scabrous stumps and blackened scars where a pair of wings would have been. Rising, she took up a coin purse and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Maelmir asked.

Aniza turned to face her husband. “The child will need a healer,” she said, “and food. Boil some bone broth and slice some cheese. I’m going for poultices.” She paused again on her way out the door. “You know, I always wanted a daughter.”

*****

The imps proved easy targets.

Lesser devils, even the smarter of them was little more than a winged bundle of aggression and hate. The gith warrior’s blade and Ceres’ daemonic magic made short work of the creatures.

Ceres had kept her feet firmly on the deck of the alien ship and her wings tightly folded out of concern the howling winds would sweep her out in to the burning plains below.

“Your skill in battle is … adequate,” the gith informed her. “Perhaps our survival is not in question. You may call me Lae’Zel.”

Adequate? Ceres had dispatched half the imps with only her magic. This gith, Lae’Zel, had an interesting definition of “adequate.”

“Ceres,” she said without looking up from the imp corpse she was searching. A sword and a crossbow, neither of which she was trained to use, and a few coins. She pocketed the coins and tossed the weapons to Lae’Zel. “I’m sure you’ll find a use for these.” She stood and stretched, working away the exertion of battle. “Let’s find the helm.”

*****

How long she’d been climbing, she did not know. Time had little meaning in the Underdark. It had no meaning for her, she who’d been kept in the deepest recesses of its pits for decades. She simply had no concept of it, no use for it.

When she’d first escaped her mother’s lair she had no idea where she had to go, only that if anyone caught her, it would mean death or worse. She crawled through the slave pits of the city, hiding in dark corners where vile things lived alongside degenerate, mindless creatures in human form. They mostly ignored her, taking her for one of their own.

From there she wove her sneaking, slinking way through the twisting alleyways of the Drow city until she reached the rocky crags bordering the city. She’d become quite adept at climbing and hiding and made her way up, up, up the sharp cliff faces until at last the dim cave-lights of the city lay far below and behind.

From there she picked her slow, agonizing path through the cave-warrens and winding passageways of the Underdark, eating the flesh of fungi and blind fish, hiding from anything on two legs, sleeping in dank hollows in knotted roots, until at last she crawled, starving and covered in filth, through a storm drain in a darkened alley.

*****

The half-elf, Ceres had decided, would be a good ally to have, if she could be trusted. The woman was hiding something - Ceres had seen her retrieve, then hide, some object after she’d rescued her from the pod. She’d decided to ignore it at the time but made a mental note to ask later, if they survived. Besides, the gith had apparently not noticed, and they had more pressing issues.

“I’m Shadowheart,” the woman said. “And you are?”

“Ceres.” She gestured toward the gith. “And this is - “
“We are wasting time,” Lae’Zel hissed. “There will be time for idle chatter after we escape.”

Ceres sighed. “Lead on.”

“You keep dangerous company,” Shadowheart said softly as Lae’Zel stalked off toward another pink, mucous-slick, sphincter-like door. “I’d keep an eye on that one.”

“She’s a bitch, yeah, but she’s good in a fight,” Ceres replied. “I’d rather have her on my side. At least for now.”

Shadowheart scowled. “Your call,” she said, “but I’d watch my back.”

Ceres leaned in close and gripped her shoulder. “Do you know where we are? Do you smell that? That’s brimstone. This is Avernus,” she ignored the woman’s startled look, “so if that green bitch thinks she can get us out of here, I’ll go where she says. Unless you’ve got a better idea.” Ceres stalked after the gith without looking back.

The fighting was worst in the helm deck. The entire front of the ship had been ripped away by the dragon attack and the heat and stink of Avernus filled the space. Imps and hellbeasts brawled with mind flayers and intellect devourers, and in the center of the immense deck a massive devil dueled with the ilithid commander. As they crossed the threshold, the devil staggered under a telepathic assault and in the brief moment that followed Ceres felt the ilithid’s overwhelming, commanding presence flood her mind with instructions, the abhorrent worm behind her eye writhing in response. It did not speak but the message was clear - she and her companions were nothing to it, mere thralls to be used. They were to reach the helm at the broken prow of the ship and connect the nerves, the squirming tentacle masses that controlled the thing.

“Do as it says,” Lae’zel shouted, “we will deal with the ghaik after we escape!”

The helm lay at least 30 yards away, across the battleground that the deck had become. It was risky, but Ceres realized the best - and possibly only - chance to escape lay with her. Leaning into the hellish headwinds, she spread her wings with a few powerful strokes took off over the fighting.

Wind. Fiery blasts from the imps below raked her heels. She swooped down on the helm and griped the writhing tentacles, partly to carry out the instructions, partly to steady herself. A dragon gripped the shattered hull and loosed a savage blast of flame; she ducked behind the alien machinery and felt the searing heat pass over and around her. And then with a massive effort she linked the critical nerve endings and the ship lurched as it left Avernus, and then she was falling, falling into the void…

“Abomination! This is your end.” The woman’s words hung in the air between them like blood dripping from the sword point leveled at Ceres’ throat. She’d been caught off guard, seeing for the first time the burning plains of Avernus through the shattered hull of the alien ship, the imps feasting on the corpses of prisoners. She hadn’t seen the lithe warrior leap and twist gracefully through the air above her to land, sword drawn, within arm’s reach. Ceres readied herself for the sword blow, muscles tense and daemonic magic rising within her. Why was the woman hesitating? It would be all too easy, a blast of Seductive power to distract, then she could move in for the kill. She never had the chance. A powerful surge of psychic force hit them both, a telepathic assault that tore through their minds and laid bare the threads of thought. Ceres fought, unsuccessfully, to hide the unwanted intrusion as she felt her memories being unraveled by the unseen intruder.

The cold hands of slaves gripped her wrists and feet. Clamped the chains around her ankles and wrists. Held her down on the bloodstained altar. The altar upon which she’d been mutilated year after year, the cold slab of stone stained black with her blood. The hideous place marked by a century of torture at the hands of the person who’d created her. The chains tightened to painful tension; the slaves released their hold on her. Ceres lay there, carefully maintaining the illusion of submission, until she heard the tap-tap-tap of her mother’s boot heels on the cold stone. Then the green woman’s memory clashed with hers and she saw, with shocking clarity, a rush of red dragon wings, flames belching forth from the beast’s mouth, and a slender green rider wielding a silver blade.

A wave of nausea accompanied the hideous writhing sensation in her skull and Ceres felt the daemonic magic she’d summoned fade away. She stumbled, extended her wings to steady herself. When she opened her eyes the green woman had lowered her sword and was bent over, glaring at Ceres and clutching her temple. “Tcha! You are no thrall!” The woman hissed. “Vlaakith blesses me this day!” Ceres’ vision cleared as the throbbing passed, and she was finally able to study the woman’s features. Green skin, sharply pointed ears, brown hair swept back in a cascade of tight, beaded braids. Black stripes under the eyes that she’d taken at first for bruises or paint. A small, flat nose above a cruel mouth slashed with a vertical scar. A Gith. Ceres had never met Githyanki. She’d heard tales, though. Brutal, savage creatures with a superiority complex that rivaled even the Drow. They were not known for being merciful. Ceres braced herself for a fight. “Who are you?” The gith lowered her sword but did not sheathe it. She glared at Ceres as though talking to a dimwitted child. “Who am I? Your only chance for survival,” she spat. “We have been infected with ghaik parasites! You may know them as ilithid, or perhaps mind flayers.” Ceres thought she heard a note of disdain as the gith spoke the words. “My people can cure us,” she continued, “but first we must escape this place.” So the gith wasn’t going to kill her. Not today. Fine, she thought. I’ll play along. “What do you suggest?” She said warily. “First,” the gith said with the air of a military commander directing her troops, “we exterminate the imps.” She glanced in the direction of the creatures gnawing at the corpses. “Then we make for the helm.” She threw a baleful glare at the intellect devourer beside Ceres. “That,” she said, “will remain tame as long as it believes we are thralls.” She raised her sword. “You have no weapons.” “No.” “Pfft. Let us hope you do not need them.” One of the imps looked up from its feast, saw them, and howled with fury. “Time to kill,” she announced.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The creature who called itself her mother circled the stone dais slowly, deliberately, as though savoring each step. The heavy executioner’s blade glittered in the cold mage-light. Tap. Tap. Tap. And then the icy tones of her voice speaking the last words she would ever hear from that foul mouth. “Abomination. This is your end.”

In the dream, she was flying.

That’s what the humans called it, when memory leaked into meditation and reality became blurred, but elves don’t sleep and daemons don’t dream, and Ceres was both.

Half Drowning, half daemon. A creature of two worlds, outcast from both.

In the dream memory, she soared above a city, possibly Elturel this time. Sometimes it was Neverwinter, other times Baldur’s Gate, more often a nebulous amalgam of them, all at once and none.

It made no difference. What she did in the dream was what mattered.

Naked but for a few leather straps supporting her breasts and covering her bottom, she stretched her wings and soared above the darkened streets, stretching her wings in the night air, instinctively catching updrafts and adjusting angles to swoop and dive, the wind flowing over the leathery patagia of her daemonic limbs.

Ceres had only recently learned the art of flying. A century earlier, In the city of the Dark Elves Menzobarranzan, her mother, a rising priestess of the spider god Lolth, developed an interest in daemonology. Desiring a child but lacking the will to carry the burden herself, the sorceress had summoned a fiend of the Lower Realms and, through a profane binding ritual, impregnated the creature with her own blood. The child emerged from the infernal flesh of the succubus six days later and, the pact complete, the fiend returned to its home Realm.

At first, apart from her red-within-black eyes, the child appeared a normal, healthy Drow. But by her twentieth year, signs of the daemonic parentage began to show.

Twin pairs of horns began to sprout from her forehead. These could be concealed under hair or a hat, at least for a time, but when leathery wings sprouted from her back, the truth could no longer be hidden.

When the daemonic limbs grew too large to conceal under heavy cloaks, the child (she had as yet no name, as was the custom) was locked away in a cage in her mother’s laboratory, never to see the city again.

Any attempt to gain freedom was ruthlessly and brutally punished. First the lash, then the chains, and always the cage.

One day after a particularly spectacular escape attempt, her mother sent five slaves to her prison. They bound and chained the child to a slab normally reserved for sacrifices, and then, with a look of revulsion twisting her dark face, her mother raised an executioner’s axe and hewed off the offending limbs. Bleeding and twisted with pain, the child was thrown back into her prison. What became of the wings she did not know. Her blood was collected for magical research.

But mere physical savagery could not end this expression of her daemonic heritage. Within a year the wings had grown back, and her enraged mother once again strapped the child to the ritual slab and dismembered her.

So it went for many decades.

Chop. Chop. Chop.

But now she was free. Free to fly, to soar among the clouds, to own the skies like the birds of the surface. In the dream she swooped, dove, and caught a strong updraft of warm air, rose to the clouds…

Darkness.

Silence.

A faint smell of sweat, piss, and something else Ceres couldn’t place.

Pain beyond imagining. The right half of her head felt as though someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to pull her brains out through her eye socket using a fishhook. A hard cushion pressed against her back, forcing her wings into a cramped and unnatural position splayed out to the sides and folded flat between her and the cushion.

With an effort of will, Ceres managed to open one eye.

A greenish haze swam before her. After a moment she realized it was the translucent lid of a coffin or pod. The curved shell obscured the world outside. She raised a hand to touch the crystalline surface. As she did, the lid of the coffin opened with a crack and a rush of air.

A combination of odors assaulted her senses - the salt of brine and an acrid haze of smoke, and overlaying it something else, something oddly alien and strangely familiar.

Brimstone.

Ceres knew, without knowing, where she was. It was the stench of Avernus.

With an effort, she pushed herself from the cramped coffin and stretched her wings.