#well that took 431235123 hours to write lol

[blackjackkent]

Ahhhh, I'm excited - time to meet Minthara properly! (And to figure out a reason not to let Rakha just finish the job of killing her. :P )

-----

"I WILL NOT BE SLANDERED!"

The words echo to the high rafters of Moonrise Towers' central chamber just as Rakha and her companions push in through the main doors.

The room itself is an extraordinary display of decayed opulence. A ragged carpet of faded velvet lines the pathway to the dais at the front, upon which is a sturdy stone throne. This central path is flanked by ornate columns and long, low benches that suggest this was once a gathering place - a meeting hall or church perhaps. All of it is draped in dust and cobwebs like a recently opened tomb.

No one is making use of the benches, though. The small crowd in the room is all clustered around the dais, where some sort of impromptu tribunal appears to be taking place.

A bearded half-elf in full plate armor is sitting on the throne. He looks almost bored; his head is leaned on one hand and he is lounged back with an attitude of utter disinterest. At his side stands a half-orc about Rakha's own height, whose eyes are narrowed in visible rage. Both of them are staring down at the prisoner under examination - a lithe, muscular elf in dark armor in a strange design of layered metal.

Rakha realizes with a sudden start that she knows all three of these people. She doesn't know how she knows the half-elf or the half-orc, but both faces ring like bells in her empty memory. And the drow...

Rakha blinks several times rapidly. I *killed* you. What are you doing here?

It is definitely Minthara, the drow commander from the goblin camp, a woman Rakha thought she killed weeks ago now. Yet here she stands, on trial before other Absolutists, fully intact. At first Rakha thinks she must be mistaken, that this must be some other drow with similar hair, similar armor...

...except that the commander is barefoot. Shadowheart is currently wearing the boots they took from Minthara's supposed corpse.

"General - you saw my reports!" Minthara cries urgently, spreading her hands towards the half-elf man in a gesture of supplication. "You know it's not my fault!"

General, Rakha thinks. Her skin prickles with sudden agitation, the arrested urge to dart forward and strike. Minthara called the man General; he is Ketheric Thorm, the leader of the Absolutists. The half-orc, then, must be the Disciple the guards spoke of - Z'Rell.

Her head aches with some half-realized vision. She knows both faces, both names, but why?

"The facts suggest otherwise," snaps Z'Rell, staring Minthara down like a predator eyeing prey. "You were ordered to retrieve the artifact. You failed to do so."

"If I had been given drow warriors instead of goblin trash--" Minthara begins. Whatever argument she was about to make is immediately drowned out by an explosion of noise - objections from the cluster of goblin prisoners standing nearby. Leftover dregs, survivors of the devastation Rakha and her companions wrought at the shattered temple, perhaps.

"ENOUGH!" Z'Rell thunders, her voice crashing through the room like a battering ram.

Narrator: A blast of mental energy washes over you, filling the room. Your tadpole squirms, urging you to obey.

Rakha doubles over with a groan of sudden pain. The impact of Z'Rell's mental force strikes her like a wave, grips her by the brain and twists. Obey, it commands, even though there is no order for her to follow. Kneel. She feels her legs buckle, and instinctively struggles against the power until it begins to ease.

"Let me make sure I understand this," Z'Rell sneers at Minthara icily. "You're claiming that General Thorm gave you the wrong soldiers?" She takes a step forward. On the throne, Thorm stirs, his eyes narrowing to slits.

"Yes--" Minthara starts to say, then realizes her mistake just as the word leaves her lips. "No!" she corrects herself hastily.

"You blame the Absolute's Chosen for your failure?" Z'Rell demands, taking another step forward.

"Of course it is not the General's fault!" Minthara is trying to maintain her composure, but her voice cracks with sudden fear.

Z'Rell is almost nose to nose with her now, staring her down with a strange sort of vicious hunger in her eyes. "WHOSE, then?" she snarls.

At Rakha's side, she hears Wyll give a low whistle under his breath. "Someone's in trouble..." he murmurs.

Rakha ignores him. Her eyes are fixed on Z'Rell, on that hungry smile touching the other half-orc's expression. It is unsettling, only adding to the inexplicable feeling of familiarity the Disciple's face engenders in her. It is an expression she could imagine on her own face, the moment before a kill.

As for Thorm... Rakha's interest in Minthara's fate pales beside her interest in Ketheric's - she wants him dead. By all accounts his is the hand that has driven every terrible thing that has happened to her. She wants his blood far more deeply than she wants Minthara's.

But not here. As when she faced down Jaheira at Last Light, she is deeply aware that pushing the fight here would result only in her own death. She needs to learn Thorm's weaknesses, and find him alone.

Almost by instinct, she pushes outward with her own mental force, reaching out to his mind. Can she learn something of him? Can he be manipulated, pushed into a corner to die by her hand?

[WISDOM] Try to force your will on Ketheric - push him to declare Minthara innocent.

Narrator: Your mind extends outward and grasps at... nothing. In Ketheric's place, you feel an absence. No psionic power. No tadpole at all.

Rakha's breath jolts in her throat, as if she has tried to take a downward step that wasn't there. Her eyes open wide and she stares at Ketheric with an entirely new feeling of puzzlement - and unexpected fear. Here in the heart of the Absolute cult, a person without a tadpole feels far more unsettling than someone with one.

Minthara is still trying to plead her case. "The goblins!" she insists. "They failed me. They failed us all!"

"You lyin' little--" one of the goblins yelps, but she's cut off by Z'Rell, still cold as ice.

"And what would you do to those that have failed you?" she asks coolly.

Rakha can see the trap being laid, the blood that will follow it, but Minthara, desperate for salvation, grasps at the question eagerly.

"They are to be put to death - obviously," she says firmly.

"True," Thorm says abruptly. He stirs again and leans forward - stiffly, as if with some inexpressible weariness. "Ultimate failure must earn ultimate punishment." He lifts one hand and waves it in a dismissing gesture. "Nightwarden Minthara - your crime is incompetence and your sentence is death."

"NO!" Minthara screams - the sound a little choked off as two guards grab her by the arms and drag her backwards.

Ketheric lounges backwards in his chair again. "Make her passing slow, Disciple Z'rell," he says, a slow, disinterested drawl. "Be creative."

Again, that hungry, gleeful eagerness flashes onto Z'rell's face. Her hand rests on a dagger at her side.

And Rakha - completely without her own volition, as if voicing a script established for her long ago, speaks up. "I could make it *much* more creative," she hears herself say, and her voice is low and cold and matches that gleeful smile on Z'rell's face. "As a torturer, I am unmatched."

Wyll shoots her a sharp look, his eyes narrowing; one of his hands closes on her arm. But she doesn't even need it. She's already clamped her mouth shut, baffled by the words, by how natural they felt.

She can see Z'rell's mouth draw into a tight line, infuriated by the interruption, but Thorm merely raises an eyebrow as if he has been presented with some curiosity by an eager child.

Narrator: As the General's attention shifts to you, a memory stirs. A memory of this room, and his voice raised in anger.

"I'm surprised to see you again, True Soul," the General says. His tone is clipped, exquisitely controlled, with a sliver of barely concealed threat beneath. "You are here to assist and not to meddle, I trust. I would remind you that while in my halls, you obey me - just as you would any other Chosen." His lip curls in a disdainful smile and he leans forward again, his eyes fixed on Rakha intently. "What say you about our Minthara? It is fitting that one mad dog should judge another."

Rakha's blood feels as if it has been flooded with ice. Her body goes still; her very breath stills in her chest.

She does know him. And he knows her, just as the guard at the gate did. She doesn't know why. She has been here before, in this room - before the Nautiloid took her, before she met Lae'zel or Wyll or any of her companions.

You are here to assist and not to meddle.

While in my halls, you obey me.

Somewhere in the past, she argued with this man. She disagreed with his decisions, disrespected his authority. He shouted in her face - that memory is clear, but utterly without context.

It is fitting that one mad dog should judge another.

It's an insult. It infuriates her. She wants, more than ever, more than anything, to rip out his throat and eat it in front of his body as it bleeds out. But as always, her need for answers trumps the hunger for blood.

"You know me?" she whispers. "You know of my madness?"

Thorm smiles unpleasantly. "Better than you know yourself, it seems," he says. "But we are here to speak of Minthara, not you."

Her tongue feels frozen in her mouth. This is too much to take in - she doesn't care about Minthara's fate. She wants Thorm dead for that mocking smirk and for the tadpole in her head.

"What do you intend to do with her?" she manages to ask.

Thorm shrugs. "She will die. Eventually." He jerks his head. "Take her below."

Rakha watches, her thoughts racing, as Minthara - screaming for mercy - is dragged out of a nearby door by two of the guards.

Thorm stands slowly from the throne, stretches a kink out of his shoulder, and squints at the pint-size collection of other prisoners waiting for his attention. "Kill the goblins too," he adds dismissively.

Noises of dismay erupt from the crowd of goblins, and one of them cracks into sheer panic.

"You creaking old bag of shit!" she bellows. Hurling her full weight at a nearby guard, she manages to get ahold of his axe and - with surprising dexterity for her size - hurls it with all her might at Ketheric's chest.

Thorm slams back into the throne. The axe lodges itself through his armor and into his chest with an eruption of blood; Rakha's head snaps back, her eyes dilating, the beast rising in her head with a wave of excitement.

And then... nothing. Silence. Her hunger fades. The blood is false - it is no red tide of fading life, but something much darker, almost black, a strange ichorous mess pooling around his boots.

His eyes open. He stands, and without pain or even much evident interest, he rips the axe from his own chest.

"I'm so sorry, my lord," Z'Rell is babbling. "She's an unbeliever, outside my control--"

Thorm ignores her. In three quick strides he moves to stand directly in front of the goblin and drops the axe onto the floor in front of her with a clang.

"Try again," he says coldly.

(A/N: Fuck Ketheric, obviously, but this is such a fucking boss power move.)

The goblin swallows, bright-eyed with blank fear, and leans over and picks up the axe. Rakha can almost see the thoughts churning in her head - in for a coin, in for a coffer - and then she swings the axe again, this time a clean blow directly into Ketheric's neck.

Again Rakha watches intently, eager for that burst of satisfaction that would come with seeing Ketheric bleed properly and die... but it doesn't come. Instead, he pulls the axe from his neck, and twists his head with an uncomfortable cracking sound until it settles back into its correct position.

And without a single word, he slams both gauntleted fists down onto the goblin's head, shattering her skull.

It's a poor meal compared to the feast that Thorm's own death would have been, but at least there is proper blood. The beast purrs eagerly in Rakha's head.

"Dispose of the rest as you see fit," Thorm says absently. He seems utterly unconcerned with the mix of blood and ichor that now stains his hands, his armor, his beard. "Or better yet..." His eyes flick back to Rakha, reading the expression on her face - the involuntary eager smirk that touched her lips seeing the goblin die. "Let us take advantage of our surprising guest, and their particular creative genius. I'm sure the results will send a clear message to the troops on the importance of discipline."

Z'Rell has gone very quiet and still as well. She is looking at Rakha with unmitigated dislike - but her respect for (or perhaps fear of) the General is greater. "Of course, my lord," she mutters. "Thank you."

She takes a step down off the dais, closing with Rakha. "You heard the General. The goblins are yours - deal with them however you wish."

The beast leaps eagerly at this offer. So many ways to kill, so many ways to make them bleed and bleed and bleed...

She squeezes her eyes shut, fighting it back, trying to think clearly. Too much has happened here. She needs to take time to understand...

Contain your excitement.

Z'Rell rolls her eyes at Rakha's silence. "Here, in the seat of the Absolute's power, your authority over them is complete. They will obey any command. Report to me upstairs when you're done."

She doesn't wait for a reply, but disappears out a door in the back of the room, leaving Rakha and her companions alone with the goblins.

"Here..." one of the goblins quavers nervously. "You ain't gonna do anything drastic, are yeh? We've been nothing but loyal!"

-----

"Rakha?" Wyll says softly. "Hey. Hey-- Rakha. Come back down."

He's seen her gaze starting to go wide and wild with the promise of violence and the chaos of the last few minutes, and he's relieved to see that his voice seems to ground her a little, to draw her back.

She turns sharply away from the prisoners, squeezes the heels of her hands against her eyes.

"Did you see it?" she mutters hoarsely. "He didn't bleed. He didn't die."

"Chk. We knew he would not, already," Lae'zel points out. "The greater question - how does he know you?"

Rakha shakes her head once sharply. "I don't know. I don't--" She draws a breath, lets it out slowly between her teeth. "I have seen him before. Him and the woman both. Clashed with them, I think. But I don't remember..."

A muscle works in her jaw as she slowly calms her own agitation. Wyll can see the effort it's taking her, and he smiles just a little in pride to see it. She would not have calmed herself like this, when they first met.

"And the drow," Rakha goes on after a short pause. "We killed her."

"It seems we didn't do a good enough job," Shadowheart says dryly. "Although Thorm seems likely to finish it for us." She raises one eyebrow. "She might be a useful ally. People tend to be rather more pliant, when the alternative is death."

Rakha grunts. "Perhaps..." she says. Her thoughts are clearly elsewhere. "And the goblins..."

She expects Wyll to tell her to release them; it isn't practical but it would be kind. To her surprise, though, his jaw sets and he shrugs. "Finish them, I suppose. That will get us in good here."

Lae'zel nods curt agreement. "Yes."

Rakha draws a slow, shuddering breath and turns back to the prisoners.

The beast is full of ideas, ways to use the tadpole's command to make them tear themselves apart. But Rakha ignores it. Flame bursts up in both palms, rising into an arc before her.

"I will do this with my own hands. It always feels better."