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Description
Academy Days

Sunlight drifted through the window, casting light into the cramped space that made up one of the bedrooms of a prospective graduate of the Neverwinter academy. The door was bolted shut, as the room’s occupant did not expect nor appreciate visitors to her living space.

Several scratches had been carved into the wood paneling of that bolted door, marks that resembled the angry slashes of some savage beast, or perhaps the pleading indentions made by someone’s pet, begging its master for an escape into the outside world. The maids that had managed to catch a glimpse of that bolted door often debated what had made those artless symbols in the otherwise undamaged wood. Some thought it was a cat, but the claw marks were far too large for such a creature. A bear perhaps? But how could a student of the academy fit an animal of that proportion into her tiny room?

In any case, the room’s occupant was an odd one. She rarely spoke to anyone within the academy, other than the instructors, and a few choice students—the blonde ranger and the blue-haired rogue mainly, and she sometimes traded words with the half-elven cleric, or if she was in a generous mood, the giant of a paladin that often found himself on the receiving end of a tounge lashing from Herban the instructor.

She was seldom found in her room, and it was whispered that she often slipped out the academy walls at night. Some students claimed that she was a spy for some drow house in the Underdark, and spent her nights reporting back to her superiors. Others claimed that she was actually a succubus in disguise, and had been sent by her diabolical master to gather the souls of unsuspecting citizens, each one of them a man spellbound by the exotic allure of her amethyst eyes and the hint of dark amusement that occasionally curled her full lips into a smile or a smirk. More still claimed that she met a lover during her nights, going so far as to swear that they saw her leap out of her window one night and into the arms of a cloaked man. She had pushed back his hood to reveal a handsome man with a goatee Asmodeus himself would envy, and she had kissed him on the cheek. (Of course, this part of the story often changed to “He swept her into an embrace” or “She planted a passionate kiss on his waiting lips”—This version usually being told by a slightly jealous male student.)

Regardless, it was known by the maids that hers was an easy room to maintain. There were few signs that she even slept in the room. The bed was always made, the floor clean of any errant dirt or stray scraps of clothing, and the only real signs that anyone lived there being the occasional crumpled scroll or half full glass of water—and of course, the scratches on the wall.

At the moment, the room was anything but the way the maids usually saw it. A crossbow lay on the floor next to the bed, ready to grabbed and fired at any moment. Three quarrels of poisoned bolts rested next to the firearm. There were usually one hundred bolts per quarrel, but today there were only two hundred and ninety-nine. The last one was buried deep in the heart of some corrupted guardsman outside the blacklake district.

Getting towards the Blacklake district gates had been a nightmare. Guards, thieves, madmen driven to insanity, and hells know what else she had dealt with that night. Just a week ago the quarantine had been issued in the district, banning all from entering and leaving. A nobleman had been found dead—the cause of which, was decided as the wailing death. Of course, the room’s occupant knew that was not the case. The nobleman had dealt in an array of crimes—smuggling, slavery, prostitution, rape. He met his end at the hands of an assassin who slipped a poison made to simulate the effects of the wailing death into his evening glass of wine. She was paid to put an end to his life by a group of men that had not been paid what they owed by the nobleman in a long time, and had grown weary of his excuses.

It had meant nothing to her to see that man slump over his chair. It had meant nothing to her to aim a crossbow at that guardsman and watch as that bolt whistled through the air and struck him in the eye, piercing through his brain. They were a corrupted sort, scumbags that were better off dead, and the men that employed her no better than the men they sent her to dispose of. Once it would have disgusted her to see herself assassinating others for nothing more than gold and the experience of the kill. Once it would have pained her heart to see the starving and mad that littered the streets of No-Man’s-Land—but as far as she was concerned, that soft-hearted woman was as dead as the babe that once grew within her womb, and would not return until she was reunited with that young girl and the man that had fathered her.

At the moment though, the woman wanted nothing more than sleep. Fifteen minutes had passed since she crawled through the small window to her bedroom, placed the crossbow next to her bed with hands trembling with weariness, and stripped down to nothing more than her undergarments and the bandage on her right arm. The other students had murmered to each other about the wrappings, wondering how she had managed to injure herself and whether or not it hurt her to participate in the combat drills Herban demanded of each and every student. Of course, if it did, then she did not show it.

The woman had instantly sunk into the soft mattress of her bed and buried her face in the feather pillow. Sleep would not come easily, and when it did, she would see either the haunted faces of the people that had met the wrong end of her blade—or it would be the two faces she missed more than anything in the cold world she inhabited. The two faces she had burned in hell and crossed the layers of the abyss for. She had been cheated out of her salvation, but she would not give up so easily.

She began to slip into a deep slumber, but not five minutes passed before the marks on the wall began to glow with a searing red light. Those crimson marked seeped down to the floor, spreading out like spilled water until a pentagram of red light formed on the floor. There was a flash, and a huge creature appeared in the place of the symbol.

To the uneducated eye, he was a dog. Larger than a great dane in size, but holding some of the characteristics of a Doberman. His eyes were glowing with the same scarlet intensity as the symbol that had disappeared only moments ago, and a spiked collar rested upon his neck. Anyone with some knowledge of the lower planes would have instantly recognized him as a hellhound.

The dog let out a yawn, displaying his sharp teeth and long tongue to the ceiling above, before perfoming the customary kanine scratching of the ears. Allowing himself one more stretch, the dog walked toward the bed, his sharp claws clicking against the wooden floorboards.

His rough tongue flicked out against the woman’s nose, but rather than rousing her, only caused her to let out a sleepy chuckle and say, “Corran, stop that.”

The kanine couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes at that phrase, and gently nipped her nose. One eyelid cracked open, purple meeting red for a brief moment before her eye returned to its hiding place.

“Wake up.” The dog’s voice was a deep baritone, and spoke with an authority that one would expect from an experienced general.

“Go. Away.” The woman’s voice came out as a hiss that would not have been lost on the deadliest cobra in the Anauroch desert.

The dog remained unfazed, quite used to his friend’s disapproval for waking rituals. Without warning, he thrust his wet nose directly into the woman’s pointed and multiply pierced ear, and let out a sharp exhalation of air. Goosebumps ran up her arms, and she suffered from a slight spasm at the unpleasant feeling.

“I’ll do it again.” He threatened.

“Fine. Fine.” She sat up, stretching the kinks out of her spine and combing her fingers through tousled hair. “How long has it been?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Not nearly long enough.”

“Untrue,” The dog began, his words muffled by the covers he had clenched in his teeth with the intent of pulling them away from the woman. “It’s nearly nine o’clock.”

The assassin’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “What?”

“Oh good, you’ve remembered that you have a test today. Perhaps I was wrong about your suffering from early onset altzheimers. I owe Irraun ten gold.”

She scrambled to get ready, running frenzied fingers through her hair and hastily donning bits and pieces of armor. It was hardly inconspicuous armor, the red and black design drawing far too much attention from curious onlookers. Normally, she would have discarded the garment for something more subtle—as she usually did when on one of her assignments—but she figured that once she left the academy, she would be dead again within the month, so it hardly mattered. Normally, the thought of her returning to the planes would have caused hope to blossom in her chest, but at the moment she could do little more than try to assemble herself into something presentable.

“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up earlier?” She snapped, trying to maintain her balance on one foot while tugging a boot onto the other.

“I would have, but I thought about how ‘bright and cheery’ you would be once you woke up and decided that it would be better to leave the sleeping beast to slumber.” He replied drily.

She glared at him. “I swear once of these days I’m going to sell you to the baatezu.”

“If you did that then no one would be here to wake you up in the morning, and there where would you be?” He retorted.

“Happily asleep without the irritating interruptions of an obnoxious animal.” She shot back.

“You’d also be failing out of the academy.”

“My academic performance is phenomenal.”

“So is your tardy record.”

“I don’t have time for this.” She growled, sliding twin daggers into the sheathes at her waist.

“You would if you deemed to take a night off every now and then for some actual sleep.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You could do the same yourself. I swear if I hear, ‘Corran, stop that’ one more time I’m going to hurl.” The dog stretched out on the floor, watching the frown deepen on the drow’s face. “I swear every time you say that all I can think about for the next two hours is you on your back.”

Deciding that her next tactic would be to shock him into silence, the drow turned and presented him with an innocent smile. “Oh but Tan, you have it all wrong. That’s not how it happened at all. I wasn’t lying on my back…He was.”

At first, the hound’s eyes narrowed slightly, clearly trying to process what she had just said. But then, as she expected, those eyes went as wide as two red apples. “Thank you for sharing that, Ili.”

She began unbolting the doors, and cast one final glare over her shoulder. “Make yourself scarce.”

“Play nice with the other kids, stop harassing Herban, don’t tease Kelsar, eat your vegetables, and don’t kill yourself if your performance standard drops by one point.” With a flash of light, the dog was gone.

The woman hurried outside. It was only five minutes until nine…and the rogue training room was on the other side of the academy. She could make it…if she was quick.

The assassin rushed past the boy—Pavel, that was his name—and into the hall. She raced past pictures of Lord Nasher, Lady Aribeth, and other famous citizens of Neverwinter into a sidelong room that contained a simple iron staircase. She jumped feet first onto the banister, sliding down the rail as easily as a skilled skier, and dived off the narrow railing. She did a sumersault the moment she felt the hard ground make contact with her skin, and nearly crashed into a student.

She was about to curse at the boy—when she realized that he was standing in a crowd of dozens, each person a late member of the academy rushing to get to class on time. All the staircases leading to the first floor of the building were jammed with people, and the room leading to the staircase was packed wall to wall with students clamoring to climb down the stairs. People were being shoved, kicked, punched—it seemed as though an all out brawl was about to break out.

The assassin scowled at the scene before her. There was no way she would be able to push through all those burly dwarves and overly tall human fighters. There was a potential escape, a balcony on the other side of the room…but how to get there?

The drow’s hands crackled with purple light. Ever since her resurrection, she had been reluctant to utilize her magic. It was unstable, and much of her craft had been lost to her. But worst of all, there something simply…wrong….when she attempted to cast spells. It was as though a pair of smirking lips started chuckling low in her ear whenever she started the moves of a spell, but whenever she stopped to focus, the sound was gone.

It’s only a cantrip, she reassured herself, and began whispering the words to the spell. A gust of wind shot throughout the room, knocking over a score of students. The drow used the extra room to dash toward the nearest wall, run up the stone barrier, and leap off as she neared the ceiling, grabbing hold of the room’s chandelier.

Gasps sounded from several of the students, accompanied by several murmurs of awe and envy as the drow swung from the chandelier and onto the balcony. She soon gripped the steel railing and dropped to the next balcony, then the next, until finally she was on solid ground.

She smiled, and turned around to find herself faced with—even more human traffic than before.

Every student was fighting to get through the gates standing between the academy and the dorm rooms. Scores of students were late for classes, unprepared for tests, and all were attempting either to get to class—or out of the academy. The ground was already wet from the rain last night, and if she were still in the Underdark, it would soon be red with blood.

The drow’s violet eyes scanned the area near her. The gate obviously was not an option. Perhaps the sewers? No, too much time. Perhaps she could scale the walls and circle around the academy? No, again too many issues with the time.

Suddenly, her eyes caught sight of the buildings surrounding the campus. The mess hall, the servant’s quarter, the stable…yes, that could work.

The assassin nimbly made her way through the crowd, darting between people, ducking through student’s legs, and even using the shoulders of some crowd members as stepping stones towards the mess hall. One particularily disgruntled half-orc groped at her ankle, attempting to make her answer for using his head as a platform for her next leap, but she had already escaped onto the window sill of the hall.

The assassin braced herself on the sill, and jumped upwards, clutching at the the flagpole that jutted out from the building. She swung once, twice, then let go, somersaulting through the air and onto an outstretched balcony. She stood on another windowsill and jumped, gripping the rain gutter and finally reaching the roof.

The drow crouched low, and broke into a speed that could have been seen on a cheetah stalking prey. She pounced at the edge of the roof, and landed directly on the ledge of the servant’s quarter.

It should have been difficult, leaping from building to building in such a way, but the woman had spent her youth on top of roofs and ledges. Her only playground had been the seedy part of a city in the Underdark, and her time there had proved useful as she grew into womanhood. She dodged air vents, squatting birds, and even the gates to the academy, leaping effortlessly from ledge to ledge in her persuit of the training quarters of the academy. She thought she had encountered a problem when she saw that the servant's quarters and the laundry facility were spaced to far for a running jump, but she quickly solved the matter by untying the violet sash at her waist and using it to slide down the clothstring between the two places. It wasn’t until she reached the stables that she had a real issue.

The stable was lower than the other buildings, and proved to be more of an obstacle than the other roofs. Instead of landing on sturdy stone, she slipped through the straw top of the stable. Frantic thoughts circled through her head as she fell, each one of them a spell she could use to prevent an unconventional broken neck. But instead of meeting hard ground, she found herself landing in the brawny arms of a stablegoer.

The assassin pushed aside several thick strands of her white hair and looked up at her savior. It was a brown haired, freckled, over-muscled soldier in training, with eyes so innocently brown one would expect that at least one of his parents had been a Labrador puppy.

She recognized him as Perry—Perrin?—Pegasus—Whatever his name was—from one of her martial arts classes. He was little more than a simpering puppy in his skill and his manner. Always desperate to prove himself, but usually failing to do so, whether it was the time he dropped his sword in the middle of his midterm spar, or the time he had tried to light his sword on fire for effect—and ended up burning off half of Herban’s mustache. His bumblings annoyed her more than they amused her, and in addition to that, he looked far too much like someone she had once known—and made still made her heart ache with the thoughts of the life she could have had.

As she lay there looking at his shocked face, it occurred to her that it was more likely that he had thrown his hands up in a “Why me” gesture and caught her by accident, than it was likely he had heard her crash and thrown up his hands just in time to save her. Of course, he would probably tell his two friends—Kiki and Kyla? Oh well, she simply remembered them as “the spellsword with more hair than a yeti” and “the socially retarded rogue who never took off that hood”—that he had saved her like a true hero.

Over to the right stood one more resident of the stable, a half-elven cleric with laughing green eyes and snow white hair. He was nice enough she supposed. Friendly towards her, and possessing a horrible, horrible crush on her classmate, Earalia.

“Having trouble, Ili?” He asked, grinning.

Ili glared over at the cleric. “You know, Kelsar, I could ask the same about you and Earalia. The day you manage to talk to her without stammering is the day I get up on the roof of this academy, strip down nothing, and sing ‘Like a Virgin’ to any passing onlooker who should happen to look up at that moment.”

The cleric blushed, and Ili gave him a satisfied smile before turning a fierce glare upon the boy that held her. “Put me down, pissant.”

He dropped her unceremoniously in the dirt, scared by the agitation in her voice. Glaring still, the drow knocked aside his hand and stood up on her own. She brushed the dirt off her backside and started for the door, when the boy’s quiet voice made her stop.

“Ilivarra, wait.”

She spun around and fixed him with another deadly purple stare. “What is it?”

“I-I was just wondering--”

The assassin made a dismissive gesture with her hand, impatient with the boy’s utterances. She was already late, and no time for him. “The burning sensation should go away with two to three weeks. And that’s if you keep using the shampoo. If the problem persists, you should see a healer.”

“That is not what I was going to ask!”

But she didn’t hear him, for she was already out the stable door.

The last obstacle to the academy doors was a training field that could have made her eldest sister, Solafae, have a screaming orgasm on the spot. Combat dummies everywhere. Dozens of weights, weapon racks, and armor stands for participating students. There were archery targets and jars of ketchup to simulate fake bed for the military training at the edge of the court, and an entire track course circled around the area, concentric to a steel cage in the center used for combat.

Of course, by this time at least forty of the fighting students were hard at work—fencing, boxing, practicing their archery, etc. They moved across the court in rapid motions, armed to the teeth with their swords, bows, and fists. She would have to maneuever herself across the court quickly and deftly.

The drow took a deep breath and sprung forward, performing a serious of acrobatics to get across the court. She did cartwheels between pairs of boxing students, used handsprings to dodge any stray arrows, and flipped over the swords of any fencers.

One blond paladin raised his sword just as she flipped over his sword, taking off the tip of a stray lock of white hair. The assassin paused in midstride, narrowed her eyes at the cut end, then turned her glare upon the paladin. “You’re lucky I have too much damned hair as it is, or I’d take off some of yours in compensation, Atty.”

His partner—a middle-aged grey haired man—chuckled at that.

She did not see how hear the paladin’s response, for she was already halfway to the academy’s doors before he could open his mouth. Once inside, she sped down the hallway and into the secondary training room, where Fullard was teaching advanced archery to some of the students.

The drow ran across the court, dodging the arrows of any students and ignoring the shouts that she was in the way. Only one archer shot well enough that she had to stop and catch the arrow in her hands before moving on. The assassin looked from the arrow to its owner—a blond, petite ranger—and chuckled despite herself. “For what its worth, I’m glad I don’t count you amongst my enemies, Arwen.”

The blonde ranger nodded quickly to the drow, and briefly clutched at the amulet clasped around her neck. The ranger was a follower of Eilistraee, and unfortunately, one of those types who believed that any drow could be saved. She had shown great surprise that the drow was not a follower of Eilistraee come to the surface, nor a follower of Lolth cast out from her home. She had been all the more stunned to learn that the drow was a member of the faithless—those who placed no devotion in the hands of a god. This fact had made the girl uneasy, and she had already made some failed—and highly unsubtle—attempts to convert the drow to one of Eilistraee’s followers.

She was nosy as well. Twice now the ranger had followed the drow after she had slipped out for the night. The drow had been forced to evade her—a task not easy in the least. The ranger was a skilled tracker, and every time she thought she had lost her, that blonde girl appeared once more on her trail, curious to learn the secret that the drow held. But the ranger would not see her spill the blood of Neverwinter’s scum, and the assassin had evaded her through the scant remnants of the knowledge of escapism she had held during her time as luitenant mistress of her first academy, her familiarity with the city’s dock district, and her own dumb luck—such as her ability to hold her breath underwater for an extended period of time while hiding within one of the water barrels littering the Docks District streets, or the cunning of her partner in pretending to be one of the Bloodsailor thugs and ambushing the girl until the assassin could escape to a safe location. Nevertheless, the girl was no stranger to combat, and the assassin found herself tending to the wounds of her partner in the hours after the encounter. He had let out a groan of pain, and rubbed one of the pounding bruises on his forehead, all the while muttering, “You’re lucky I care about you enough to have my arse kicked by some blonde slip of a girl, Render.” (She in turn had commanded him to be silent as she pressed a healing bandage to his split lip)

Despite all of this, the assassin still liked the girl. Normally, the ranger’s innocence and compassion would have grated on her nerves, but she found the girl to be endearing instead. Hells only knew why. But these thoughts could be pondered later, for she still had a class to get to.

Quickly darting past a stray fireball fired by one of the mages in training, and finally found herself in front of the rogue’s room. She breathed a sigh of relief, and pushed open the door.

“Ilivarra!” Ketta called with faux sweetness. “So nice of you to join us. Take your place with the other students, and see me after class. We need to have a discussion about your continued tardiness.”

It took every ounce of willpower to keep from rolling her eyes. Ketta was treating her like a child. She knew she was late, she knew it was an inconvience, she would accept the consequences. Ketta’s attitude reminded her of her own time as an instructor, when she had often lashed out at students who arrived late in her class. Truth be told, Ketta was truly far more tolerant than she would have been had she been teaching a class with a tardy student—but such thoughts meant little, as she was no longer a student.

Ili went to take her place next to a green-eyed, blue-haired rogue.

“Why were you late this time?” Rally whispered.

“I slept in again.”

The rogue shook her head, the strands of her hair looking very much like slithering snakes during that brief motion. “You’ve really do something about that, Ili.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Peering around the room, she noticed the eyes of some of the other students upon her. Silk was indifferent to her as usual, Shade’s leering gaze had fallen upon her—again, as usual. And of course, Rally’s obnoxious little brother, Aiden, was casting an appreciative eye on her bed-raggled appearance. In all likelihood he was thinking about the things he would like to do that involved her having a tousled appearance afterwards. And judging by the direction of his gaze, these were things that would involve her lips, her breasts, her hips, her legs, what lay in between—and then back to her lips.

Were she two hundred years younger, she probably would have accepted Aiden’s unspoken offer—but she would have killed Shade for his impudence. Aiden was irritating, but tolerable. Shade on the other hand, had taken an unhealthy interest in her. One that often lead to the tracking of her movements and the feel of his watchful gaze on the back of her neck. In her business, Shade was a threat to her secrecy, and one that would have to be eliminated. Aiden would be ignored, but Shade would be dealt with. Preferably in a subtle way—but if necessary, she could handle a mess.

Rally nudged her in the ribs. “You think you’re ready for Ketta’s newest obstacle course?”

Ili couldn’t resist allowing a smirk to cross her lips.

“Of course.”

Description
Academy Days

Sunlight drifted through the window, casting light into the cramped space that made up one of the bedrooms of a prospective graduate of the Neverwinter academy. The door was bolted shut, as the room’s occupant did not expect nor appreciate visitors to her living space.

Several scratches had been carved into the wood paneling of that bolted door, marks that resembled the angry slashes of some savage beast, or perhaps the pleading indentions made by someone’s pet, begging its master for an escape into the outside world. The maids that had managed to catch a glimpse of that bolted door often debated what had made those artless symbols in the otherwise undamaged wood. Some thought it was a cat, but the claw marks were far too large for such a creature. A bear perhaps? But how could a student of the academy fit an animal of that proportion into her tiny room?

In any case, the room’s occupant was an odd one. She rarely spoke to anyone within the academy, other than the instructors, and a few choice students—the blonde ranger and the blue-haired rogue mainly, and she sometimes traded words with the half-elven cleric, or if she was in a generous mood, the giant of a paladin that often found himself on the receiving end of a tounge lashing from Herban the instructor.

She was seldom found in her room, and it was whispered that she often slipped out the academy walls at night. Some students claimed that she was a spy for some drow house in the Underdark, and spent her nights reporting back to her superiors. Others claimed that she was actually a succubus in disguise, and had been sent by her diabolical master to gather the souls of unsuspecting citizens, each one of them a man spellbound by the exotic allure of her amethyst eyes and the hint of dark amusement that occasionally curled her full lips into a smile or a smirk. More still claimed that she met a lover during her nights, going so far as to swear that they saw her leap out of her window one night and into the arms of a cloaked man. She had pushed back his hood to reveal a handsome man with a goatee Asmodeus himself would envy, and she had kissed him on the cheek. (Of course, this part of the story often changed to “He swept her into an embrace” or “She planted a passionate kiss on his waiting lips”—This version usually being told by a slightly jealous male student.)

Regardless, it was known by the maids that hers was an easy room to maintain. There were few signs that she even slept in the room. The bed was always made, the floor clean of any errant dirt or stray scraps of clothing, and the only real signs that anyone lived there being the occasional crumpled scroll or half full glass of water—and of course, the scratches on the wall.

At the moment, the room was anything but the way the maids usually saw it. A crossbow lay on the floor next to the bed, ready to grabbed and fired at any moment. Three quarrels of poisoned bolts rested next to the firearm. There were usually one hundred bolts per quarrel, but today there were only two hundred and ninety-nine. The last one was buried deep in the heart of some corrupted guardsman outside the blacklake district.

Getting towards the Blacklake district gates had been a nightmare. Guards, thieves, madmen driven to insanity, and hells know what else she had dealt with that night. Just a week ago the quarantine had been issued in the district, banning all from entering and leaving. A nobleman had been found dead—the cause of which, was decided as the wailing death. Of course, the room’s occupant knew that was not the case. The nobleman had dealt in an array of crimes—smuggling, slavery, prostitution, rape. He met his end at the hands of an assassin who slipped a poison made to simulate the effects of the wailing death into his evening glass of wine. She was paid to put an end to his life by a group of men that had not been paid what they owed by the nobleman in a long time, and had grown weary of his excuses.

It had meant nothing to her to see that man slump over his chair. It had meant nothing to her to aim a crossbow at that guardsman and watch as that bolt whistled through the air and struck him in the eye, piercing through his brain. They were a corrupted sort, scumbags that were better off dead, and the men that employed her no better than the men they sent her to dispose of. Once it would have disgusted her to see herself assassinating others for nothing more than gold and the experience of the kill. Once it would have pained her heart to see the starving and mad that littered the streets of No-Man’s-Land—but as far as she was concerned, that soft-hearted woman was as dead as the babe that once grew within her womb, and would not return until she was reunited with that young girl and the man that had fathered her.

At the moment though, the woman wanted nothing more than sleep. Fifteen minutes had passed since she crawled through the small window to her bedroom, placed the crossbow next to her bed with hands trembling with weariness, and stripped down to nothing more than her undergarments and the bandage on her right arm. The other students had murmered to each other about the wrappings, wondering how she had managed to injure herself and whether or not it hurt her to participate in the combat drills Herban demanded of each and every student. Of course, if it did, then she did not show it.

The woman had instantly sunk into the soft mattress of her bed and buried her face in the feather pillow. Sleep would not come easily, and when it did, she would see either the haunted faces of the people that had met the wrong end of her blade—or it would be the two faces she missed more than anything in the cold world she inhabited. The two faces she had burned in hell and crossed the layers of the abyss for. She had been cheated out of her salvation, but she would not give up so easily.

She began to slip into a deep slumber, but not five minutes passed before the marks on the wall began to glow with a searing red light. Those crimson marked seeped down to the floor, spreading out like spilled water until a pentagram of red light formed on the floor. There was a flash, and a huge creature appeared in the place of the symbol.

To the uneducated eye, he was a dog. Larger than a great dane in size, but holding some of the characteristics of a Doberman. His eyes were glowing with the same scarlet intensity as the symbol that had disappeared only moments ago, and a spiked collar rested upon his neck. Anyone with some knowledge of the lower planes would have instantly recognized him as a hellhound.

The dog let out a yawn, displaying his sharp teeth and long tongue to the ceiling above, before perfoming the customary kanine scratching of the ears. Allowing himself one more stretch, the dog walked toward the bed, his sharp claws clicking against the wooden floorboards.

His rough tongue flicked out against the woman’s nose, but rather than rousing her, only caused her to let out a sleepy chuckle and say, “Corran, stop that.”

The kanine couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes at that phrase, and gently nipped her nose. One eyelid cracked open, purple meeting red for a brief moment before her eye returned to its hiding place.

“Wake up.” The dog’s voice was a deep baritone, and spoke with an authority that one would expect from an experienced general.

“Go. Away.” The woman’s voice came out as a hiss that would not have been lost on the deadliest cobra in the Anauroch desert.

The dog remained unfazed, quite used to his friend’s disapproval for waking rituals. Without warning, he thrust his wet nose directly into the woman’s pointed and multiply pierced ear, and let out a sharp exhalation of air. Goosebumps ran up her arms, and she suffered from a slight spasm at the unpleasant feeling.

“I’ll do it again.” He threatened.

“Fine. Fine.” She sat up, stretching the kinks out of her spine and combing her fingers through tousled hair. “How long has it been?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Not nearly long enough.”

“Untrue,” The dog began, his words muffled by the covers he had clenched in his teeth with the intent of pulling them away from the woman. “It’s nearly nine o’clock.”

The assassin’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “What?”

“Oh good, you’ve remembered that you have a test today. Perhaps I was wrong about your suffering from early onset altzheimers. I owe Irraun ten gold.”

She scrambled to get ready, running frenzied fingers through her hair and hastily donning bits and pieces of armor. It was hardly inconspicuous armor, the red and black design drawing far too much attention from curious onlookers. Normally, she would have discarded the garment for something more subtle—as she usually did when on one of her assignments—but she figured that once she left the academy, she would be dead again within the month, so it hardly mattered. Normally, the thought of her returning to the planes would have caused hope to blossom in her chest, but at the moment she could do little more than try to assemble herself into something presentable.

“Why the hell didn’t you wake me up earlier?” She snapped, trying to maintain her balance on one foot while tugging a boot onto the other.

“I would have, but I thought about how ‘bright and cheery’ you would be once you woke up and decided that it would be better to leave the sleeping beast to slumber.” He replied drily.

She glared at him. “I swear once of these days I’m going to sell you to the baatezu.”

“If you did that then no one would be here to wake you up in the morning, and there where would you be?” He retorted.

“Happily asleep without the irritating interruptions of an obnoxious animal.” She shot back.

“You’d also be failing out of the academy.”

“My academic performance is phenomenal.”

“So is your tardy record.”

“I don’t have time for this.” She growled, sliding twin daggers into the sheathes at her waist.

“You would if you deemed to take a night off every now and then for some actual sleep.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You could do the same yourself. I swear if I hear, ‘Corran, stop that’ one more time I’m going to hurl.” The dog stretched out on the floor, watching the frown deepen on the drow’s face. “I swear every time you say that all I can think about for the next two hours is you on your back.”

Deciding that her next tactic would be to shock him into silence, the drow turned and presented him with an innocent smile. “Oh but Tan, you have it all wrong. That’s not how it happened at all. I wasn’t lying on my back…He was.”

At first, the hound’s eyes narrowed slightly, clearly trying to process what she had just said. But then, as she expected, those eyes went as wide as two red apples. “Thank you for sharing that, Ili.”

She began unbolting the doors, and cast one final glare over her shoulder. “Make yourself scarce.”

“Play nice with the other kids, stop harassing Herban, don’t tease Kelsar, eat your vegetables, and don’t kill yourself if your performance standard drops by one point.” With a flash of light, the dog was gone.

The woman hurried outside. It was only five minutes until nine…and the rogue training room was on the other side of the academy. She could make it…if she was quick.

The assassin rushed past the boy—Pavel, that was his name—and into the hall. She raced past pictures of Lord Nasher, Lady Aribeth, and other famous citizens of Neverwinter into a sidelong room that contained a simple iron staircase. She jumped feet first onto the banister, sliding down the rail as easily as a skilled skier, and dived off the narrow railing. She did a sumersault the moment she felt the hard ground make contact with her skin, and nearly crashed into a student.

She was about to curse at the boy—when she realized that he was standing in a crowd of dozens, each person a late member of the academy rushing to get to class on time. All the staircases leading to the first floor of the building were jammed with people, and the room leading to the staircase was packed wall to wall with students clamoring to climb down the stairs. People were being shoved, kicked, punched—it seemed as though an all out brawl was about to break out.

The assassin scowled at the scene before her. There was no way she would be able to push through all those burly dwarves and overly tall human fighters. There was a potential escape, a balcony on the other side of the room…but how to get there?

The drow’s hands crackled with purple light. Ever since her resurrection, she had been reluctant to utilize her magic. It was unstable, and much of her craft had been lost to her. But worst of all, there something simply…wrong….when she attempted to cast spells. It was as though a pair of smirking lips started chuckling low in her ear whenever she started the moves of a spell, but whenever she stopped to focus, the sound was gone.

It’s only a cantrip, she reassured herself, and began whispering the words to the spell. A gust of wind shot throughout the room, knocking over a score of students. The drow used the extra room to dash toward the nearest wall, run up the stone barrier, and leap off as she neared the ceiling, grabbing hold of the room’s chandelier.

Gasps sounded from several of the students, accompanied by several murmurs of awe and envy as the drow swung from the chandelier and onto the balcony. She soon gripped the steel railing and dropped to the next balcony, then the next, until finally she was on solid ground.

She smiled, and turned around to find herself faced with—even more human traffic than before.

Every student was fighting to get through the gates standing between the academy and the dorm rooms. Scores of students were late for classes, unprepared for tests, and all were attempting either to get to class—or out of the academy. The ground was already wet from the rain last night, and if she were still in the Underdark, it would soon be red with blood.

The drow’s violet eyes scanned the area near her. The gate obviously was not an option. Perhaps the sewers? No, too much time. Perhaps she could scale the walls and circle around the academy? No, again too many issues with the time.

Suddenly, her eyes caught sight of the buildings surrounding the campus. The mess hall, the servant’s quarter, the stable…yes, that could work.

The assassin nimbly made her way through the crowd, darting between people, ducking through student’s legs, and even using the shoulders of some crowd members as stepping stones towards the mess hall. One particularily disgruntled half-orc groped at her ankle, attempting to make her answer for using his head as a platform for her next leap, but she had already escaped onto the window sill of the hall.

The assassin braced herself on the sill, and jumped upwards, clutching at the the flagpole that jutted out from the building. She swung once, twice, then let go, somersaulting through the air and onto an outstretched balcony. She stood on another windowsill and jumped, gripping the rain gutter and finally reaching the roof.

The drow crouched low, and broke into a speed that could have been seen on a cheetah stalking prey. She pounced at the edge of the roof, and landed directly on the ledge of the servant’s quarter.

It should have been difficult, leaping from building to building in such a way, but the woman had spent her youth on top of roofs and ledges. Her only playground had been the seedy part of a city in the Underdark, and her time there had proved useful as she grew into womanhood. She dodged air vents, squatting birds, and even the gates to the academy, leaping effortlessly from ledge to ledge in her persuit of the training quarters of the academy. She thought she had encountered a problem when she saw that the servant's quarters and the laundry facility were spaced to far for a running jump, but she quickly solved the matter by untying the violet sash at her waist and using it to slide down the clothstring between the two places. It wasn’t until she reached the stables that she had a real issue.

The stable was lower than the other buildings, and proved to be more of an obstacle than the other roofs. Instead of landing on sturdy stone, she slipped through the straw top of the stable. Frantic thoughts circled through her head as she fell, each one of them a spell she could use to prevent an unconventional broken neck. But instead of meeting hard ground, she found herself landing in the brawny arms of a stablegoer.

The assassin pushed aside several thick strands of her white hair and looked up at her savior. It was a brown haired, freckled, over-muscled soldier in training, with eyes so innocently brown one would expect that at least one of his parents had been a Labrador puppy.

She recognized him as Perry—Perrin?—Pegasus—Whatever his name was—from one of her martial arts classes. He was little more than a simpering puppy in his skill and his manner. Always desperate to prove himself, but usually failing to do so, whether it was the time he dropped his sword in the middle of his midterm spar, or the time he had tried to light his sword on fire for effect—and ended up burning off half of Herban’s mustache. His bumblings annoyed her more than they amused her, and in addition to that, he looked far too much like someone she had once known—and made still made her heart ache with the thoughts of the life she could have had.

As she lay there looking at his shocked face, it occurred to her that it was more likely that he had thrown his hands up in a “Why me” gesture and caught her by accident, than it was likely he had heard her crash and thrown up his hands just in time to save her. Of course, he would probably tell his two friends—Kiki and Kyla? Oh well, she simply remembered them as “the spellsword with more hair than a yeti” and “the socially retarded rogue who never took off that hood”—that he had saved her like a true hero.

Over to the right stood one more resident of the stable, a half-elven cleric with laughing green eyes and snow white hair. He was nice enough she supposed. Friendly towards her, and possessing a horrible, horrible crush on her classmate, Earalia.

“Having trouble, Ili?” He asked, grinning.

Ili glared over at the cleric. “You know, Kelsar, I could ask the same about you and Earalia. The day you manage to talk to her without stammering is the day I get up on the roof of this academy, strip down nothing, and sing ‘Like a Virgin’ to any passing onlooker who should happen to look up at that moment.”

The cleric blushed, and Ili gave him a satisfied smile before turning a fierce glare upon the boy that held her. “Put me down, pissant.”

He dropped her unceremoniously in the dirt, scared by the agitation in her voice. Glaring still, the drow knocked aside his hand and stood up on her own. She brushed the dirt off her backside and started for the door, when the boy’s quiet voice made her stop.

“Ilivarra, wait.”

She spun around and fixed him with another deadly purple stare. “What is it?”

“I-I was just wondering--”

The assassin made a dismissive gesture with her hand, impatient with the boy’s utterances. She was already late, and no time for him. “The burning sensation should go away with two to three weeks. And that’s if you keep using the shampoo. If the problem persists, you should see a healer.”

“That is not what I was going to ask!”

But she didn’t hear him, for she was already out the stable door.

The last obstacle to the academy doors was a training field that could have made her eldest sister, Solafae, have a screaming orgasm on the spot. Combat dummies everywhere. Dozens of weights, weapon racks, and armor stands for participating students. There were archery targets and jars of ketchup to simulate fake bed for the military training at the edge of the court, and an entire track course circled around the area, concentric to a steel cage in the center used for combat.

Of course, by this time at least forty of the fighting students were hard at work—fencing, boxing, practicing their archery, etc. They moved across the court in rapid motions, armed to the teeth with their swords, bows, and fists. She would have to maneuever herself across the court quickly and deftly.

The drow took a deep breath and sprung forward, performing a serious of acrobatics to get across the court. She did cartwheels between pairs of boxing students, used handsprings to dodge any stray arrows, and flipped over the swords of any fencers.

One blond paladin raised his sword just as she flipped over his sword, taking off the tip of a stray lock of white hair. The assassin paused in midstride, narrowed her eyes at the cut end, then turned her glare upon the paladin. “You’re lucky I have too much damned hair as it is, or I’d take off some of yours in compensation, Atty.”

His partner—a middle-aged grey haired man—chuckled at that.

She did not see how hear the paladin’s response, for she was already halfway to the academy’s doors before he could open his mouth. Once inside, she sped down the hallway and into the secondary training room, where Fullard was teaching advanced archery to some of the students.

The drow ran across the court, dodging the arrows of any students and ignoring the shouts that she was in the way. Only one archer shot well enough that she had to stop and catch the arrow in her hands before moving on. The assassin looked from the arrow to its owner—a blond, petite ranger—and chuckled despite herself. “For what its worth, I’m glad I don’t count you amongst my enemies, Arwen.”

The blonde ranger nodded quickly to the drow, and briefly clutched at the amulet clasped around her neck. The ranger was a follower of Eilistraee, and unfortunately, one of those types who believed that any drow could be saved. She had shown great surprise that the drow was not a follower of Eilistraee come to the surface, nor a follower of Lolth cast out from her home. She had been all the more stunned to learn that the drow was a member of the faithless—those who placed no devotion in the hands of a god. This fact had made the girl uneasy, and she had already made some failed—and highly unsubtle—attempts to convert the drow to one of Eilistraee’s followers.

She was nosy as well. Twice now the ranger had followed the drow after she had slipped out for the night. The drow had been forced to evade her—a task not easy in the least. The ranger was a skilled tracker, and every time she thought she had lost her, that blonde girl appeared once more on her trail, curious to learn the secret that the drow held. But the ranger would not see her spill the blood of Neverwinter’s scum, and the assassin had evaded her through the scant remnants of the knowledge of escapism she had held during her time as luitenant mistress of her first academy, her familiarity with the city’s dock district, and her own dumb luck—such as her ability to hold her breath underwater for an extended period of time while hiding within one of the water barrels littering the Docks District streets, or the cunning of her partner in pretending to be one of the Bloodsailor thugs and ambushing the girl until the assassin could escape to a safe location. Nevertheless, the girl was no stranger to combat, and the assassin found herself tending to the wounds of her partner in the hours after the encounter. He had let out a groan of pain, and rubbed one of the pounding bruises on his forehead, all the while muttering, “You’re lucky I care about you enough to have my arse kicked by some blonde slip of a girl, Render.” (She in turn had commanded him to be silent as she pressed a healing bandage to his split lip)

Despite all of this, the assassin still liked the girl. Normally, the ranger’s innocence and compassion would have grated on her nerves, but she found the girl to be endearing instead. Hells only knew why. But these thoughts could be pondered later, for she still had a class to get to.

Quickly darting past a stray fireball fired by one of the mages in training, and finally found herself in front of the rogue’s room. She breathed a sigh of relief, and pushed open the door.

“Ilivarra!” Ketta called with faux sweetness. “So nice of you to join us. Take your place with the other students, and see me after class. We need to have a discussion about your continued tardiness.”

It took every ounce of willpower to keep from rolling her eyes. Ketta was treating her like a child. She knew she was late, she knew it was an inconvience, she would accept the consequences. Ketta’s attitude reminded her of her own time as an instructor, when she had often lashed out at students who arrived late in her class. Truth be told, Ketta was truly far more tolerant than she would have been had she been teaching a class with a tardy student—but such thoughts meant little, as she was no longer a student.

Ili went to take her place next to a green-eyed, blue-haired rogue.

“Why were you late this time?” Rally whispered.

“I slept in again.”

The rogue shook her head, the strands of her hair looking very much like slithering snakes during that brief motion. “You’ve really do something about that, Ili.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Peering around the room, she noticed the eyes of some of the other students upon her. Silk was indifferent to her as usual, Shade’s leering gaze had fallen upon her—again, as usual. And of course, Rally’s obnoxious little brother, Aiden, was casting an appreciative eye on her bed-raggled appearance. In all likelihood he was thinking about the things he would like to do that involved her having a tousled appearance afterwards. And judging by the direction of his gaze, these were things that would involve her lips, her breasts, her hips, her legs, what lay in between—and then back to her lips.

Were she two hundred years younger, she probably would have accepted Aiden’s unspoken offer—but she would have killed Shade for his impudence. Aiden was irritating, but tolerable. Shade on the other hand, had taken an unhealthy interest in her. One that often lead to the tracking of her movements and the feel of his watchful gaze on the back of her neck. In her business, Shade was a threat to her secrecy, and one that would have to be eliminated. Aiden would be ignored, but Shade would be dealt with. Preferably in a subtle way—but if necessary, she could handle a mess.

Rally nudged her in the ribs. “You think you’re ready for Ketta’s newest obstacle course?”

Ili couldn’t resist allowing a smirk to cross her lips.

“Of course.”