Differing Worlds

A little Vivisection

He took a deep breath at first and then he exhaled with a force of vision. Fidellus had his eyes closed as he took another deep breath. He needed to calm himself down. He needed to relax. He was supposed to meditate every day, but that was hardly what he had been doing. Instead, he had begun a tryst with one of the adventurers who had hired him and was fast learning that she had other tricks up her sleeves as well.

Beth was a fantastic warrior. It really set his blood to boil. Watching the woman in her mail suit and halberd readied to kill, maim and even destroy was fascinating. However, what was even more fascinating was the fact that she was also very pretty. She had a figure that had obviously been honed in battle, supple as it was, and she also had a definite grace which had more than obviously come from her ancestry. She was the descendent of a long clan of Dragon Riders - Those who were taught from a young age to speak and live with Dragons, to use them as mounts and companions. The Thousands Brigade was just one such group. One thousand Riders who had gone against Convclavus in an all-out attack to protect the Sorceress Rynn'eth near the border of Clyvall. They rescued her from what would later be called Rynn's Cross and then kept her with them as they fought themselves a way towards Port Lyss. It was all for naught however a Bishops came in the thousands and overwhelmed the small band.

Fidellus frowned at himself. he was thinking of history, he should have been meditating. He tried to make a thoughtful interposing chant in his head that he could follow and all he wound up thinking of was Beth again. He pounded his fist against the stone floor in frustration. How could a person with such a legacy also be so cruel? He remembered when he followed her that one night in the Underdark, when he discovered her hideous secret. He had known for quite some time that she had been getting a second place to stay the night as she never seemed to stay at the inn where the rest of her traveling companions stayed, but he had never been sure why. Taking matters into his own hands to follow her had been quite simple. He had thought he would have to wrest with his own personal dogma of Neutrality. However, in the greater scheme of things, if she had been doing something dangerous, it was his job not necessarily to protect his employers, but to more actually protect the monies that would be given to the church as his payment and stipend.

It was quite the surprise when he discovered that what Beth suffered from was not necessarily a vice of the flesh, but more of the soul. In fact, it tainted her soul in such a dark way that he was not sure how he had never seen it before. He followed her that first night, when she had discovered that young woman in the tavern of the Poisoned Letter, and led her back to her own inn where she firmly latched the door and neither she nor woman came out again until much, much later. In point of fact, Fidellus only saw Beth come out, but when he went to investigate, he found no sign of the woman. Whoring was not such a great secret of a pastime for adventurers, but Fidellus had to wonder to himself why Beth was always hiding her wenching. It might have been a little awkward that Beth was more preferring of the fairer sex, but then, in the same moment, she was sleeping and having relations with him. It confused him.

The next day, she had come onto him and he had a lusty time with her in which he forgot, almost, what he had seen. It was not until two nights later, when she tried to ease out of her bed that he woke and decided to stalk her once more into the night. He followed her to a dive bar known as the Drowned Horse. He pulled the hood of his cloak over his face and then wandered in after her. He took a seat at a corner table. In the center of the room, a girl was dancing on a table with her dress hiked up well past her thighs and a minstrel was playing a bawdy tune that the girl was stopping on the table to.

He looked around the room and saw her with a strange looking man who had a scar running down his eye. His hair had been braided into several long greasy strings that held the strangest of charms on them, but that didn't interest him much. He waited hours while Beth proceeded to ply the man with drink after drink after drink. Soon, the man was so drunk, he could barely stand. She slyly paid the serving wench and told her that she as going to take him home. She slipped the wench two more gold and then picked the man up and helped him out of the tavern.