#we've kinda stymied him at every turn and rakha regularly tries to kill him but he's still so glad to see us

[blackjackkent]

Well, hey there. Look who's hanging out on the steps of the Temple of Bhaal.

Goodie. I suppose it would have been too much for Rakha to hope that this little twerp wasn't going to show up to the party.

Charming.

"Who is that?" Wyll asks with an expression of puzzled distaste. He glances at Rakha - and is surprised to see that she doesn't seem surprised, or curious, or anything other than deeply exhausted.

"My butler," she mutters.

Wyll's eyebrows lift. Rakha explained this butler to him in frantic, haphazard terms the night she nearly snapped and killed him, but he would be lying if he said he took in more than half of it. He got enough of the gist, though, particularly with the context they've learned since - this is some servant of Bhaal that has been dogging Rakha's footsteps, trying to goad her to evil deeds.

"Smaller than I expected," he says after a short pause.

Rakha barks a low, humorless laugh and steps forward without answering.

-----

"Oh, Master, Master, MASTER!" Sceleritas squeals eagerly as Rakha draws within arm's reach of him. "You have come home to your royal dwelling!" He peers up at her with obsequious adoration from beneath the brim of his hat.

(A/N: I'm only just now realizing that Sceleritas's color scheme matches Rakha's. This actually was not intentional.)

He scurries a few steps closer, wringing his clawed hands together, and peers at the amulet of Bhaal still hanging loosely in Rakha's fingers. "But why did you exert yourself so getting here? I was waiting to open the door!" His dessicated lips curl up at the corners. "Lady Orin told me not to let you in," he adds, sing-song, "but I'd never listen to the pretender to your fetid throne."

(A/N: Sceleritas claims that he could have opened the door for us without the amulet, but I looked in the dialogue files and didn't see a path through the convo with the door outside that allowed that. So possibly he is lying? Uncertain.)

Rakha sets her jaw, glaring at her little minion with undisguised dislike. Their last encounter is only too clear in her mind - the night he tried to taunt her into giving in to the beast and killing Wyll in cold blood in the middle of camp. The memory regularly gives her nightmares, an image of how everything could have fallen apart, her greatest support ripped away by her own hand.

She would gladly throttle Sceleritas here and now - but he has proved too quick for her in the past. And she has no time to chase him down.

"Open it," she snaps curtly.

"A thousand succubae could give me no greater delight!" Sceleritas crows.

("Ew," Wyll mumbles.)

The butler backpedals a few steps, pushing the door open and then bowing eagerly over and over again. "There's a puddle of blood on the floor as you walk in! Careful! Don't slip!"

-----

There is, indeed, a puddle of blood on the floor as they walk in.

"This is a foul place," Minsc mutters darkly. "Better buried. Already Boo is bristling - and not from the cold."

"I confess that the last time I came here," Jaheira adds, "I though it would be my tomb. You can see why."

Rakha doesn't answer. The banter seems to slide past her; she feels a little dizzy as the air of the temple touches her.

Only the thought of her friend trapped somewhere within this place gives her the strength to keep walking forward.