A Fyre Within

Fyre Starter

Somewhere inside the magnificent fortress of Candlekeep, the sage, Fedrel Ran, sits in a plush chair next to a cozy fire, the flames warming the lofty room that looks out onto the night-shrouded coast. In his lap, resting against his crossed legs, an open notebook accepts the ink from a quill that glides across the pages, seemingly on its own, recording the current interview. The sage swirls the contents of a wine glass before taking a dainty sip. "Your book is most intriguing, but I feel it lacks something." He pauses and studies the mage across from him.

She sits in an equally eloquent chair, but she sits on the edge, her legs crossed while she cradles her knee with interlaced fingers. She's leaning forward, her dark lips curving in a childish grin and her yellow slitted eyes bright with excitement. Her green skin glows softly from the flickering light in the room. The wild locks of her dusty blue hair spill over her purple tunic, which drapes over her shoulders, hiding her tall but lanky torso.

He clears his throat and says. "You begin your story in Thay, but we . . ." he pauses, gesturing lazily at himself and then toward the door of the room. His interviewee follows his gesture with her slitted pupils, but snaps back to him as his hand rests back onto the arm of his chair. "We would like to know how a hobgoblin . . . erm, excuse me, a half-hobgoblin . . . ended up in Thay in the first place. But from the very beginning. Please, tell me your whole story."

Her smile widens and she looks out the window behind him, her nose ring and the one in her eyebrow flashing briefly during the movement. Her bright eyes travel to distant places, and she begins her tale, her thick Thayan accent permeating the room:

I remember that night remarkably well. The moon illuminated the ground with a soft white glow, highlighting the dry grass that grew sparsely across the red earth, and the leaves left spidery shadows over the hard ground. I slipped into the slave barracks, and found my mother, a human, sitting on the floor next to her bunk, knitting a sweater for me. I had slinked out of the nursery where the shamans kept all the children to be with her that evening. I tiptoed over, then crawled into her arms, interrupting her work.

Hobgoblins rarely spent time with their children after their birth. The shaman's responsibility, aside from earning favor from Maglubiyet, was also to raise the children of the tribe. However, my mother was a human and loved me greatly despite my green skin tone and hobgoblin eyes. That night, she held me and rocked me to sleep.

I don't remember how long I slept, but the sounds of shouting and fighting awakened me with a start. My mother scanned the room, panic dominating her features. Finally, she shoved me under the bed and told me to stay quiet and not to come out, no matter what happened.

From my vantage, all I could see were ankles moving this way and that. I tracked my mother's knit socks darting around the bed toward the rear exit with all the other slaves. Moments later, I watched as bodies fell to the floor, each decorated with one or two black darts in their neck or back.

Turning my head to find my mother's socks again, I observed her lying on her stomach, unmoving. I stared at her with growing horror. From my position, I couldn't tell if she was dead or alive, so when the jet black hands hauled her from off the floor and dragged her out, I gasped.

Lithe, dark-skinned creatures with pointy ears extracted the slaves from the building and I inched backward so they wouldn't spot me peeking out. Suddenly, I felt hands grasp my ankle and yank me out from under the bed, scraping my knees across the rough clay packed floor.