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.The floor was pristine marble, white as snow, with swirls of pink and blue dancing across it in no discernable pattern.A single figure wrapped in a white cloak, hood pulled over his head, knelt before the altar.This scene seemed so familiar, yet so foreign.I’d last looked upon this room two years ago this very night.Then, it had been Jaide kneeling at the altar and Perrault walking through the door.I’d only seen the room through Alviss’s magical crystal ball, and how grand it had appeared.This time, though, from this angle, it seemed far larger and far less grand.Joen and I stood frozen in the doorway, but Jaide walked confidently, her footsteps echoing in the cavernous room.“Come,” she whispered to us, and we each took a step forward.“Yes,” said the figure at the altar, his voice low and imposing.“Do come.It has been so long since I’ve seen you.”He rose to his feet, shrugged off the white cloak, and turned to face us.He was a mere silhouette against the candlelight behind him, but I knew the shape well enough: bald head, sharp features, pointed ears.Asbeel.“Not long enough,” I practically shouted.“You should be dead.”“Yes, I should,” he answered.“But so should you, many times over.We each have Tymora to thank for our lives.” He walked out from the altar, and the light seemed to follow him—no, to grow with him.The walls, the floor, the ceiling all glowed with a dim white light that only grew as he approached.The light revealed the whole expanse of the room, the white columns lining the walls, and the alcoves with smaller altars and carvings and etchings of words, poems or prayers, I could not tell.It also revealed the speaker—not Asbeel’s red-tinted skin, sharp-toothed mouth, and twisted face.It revealed the pale skin of a moon elf, one of Jaide’s kin.I had long wondered what type of creature Asbeel really was.His demonic appearance had certainly suggested he was a being of the lower planes, but he didn’t fit exactly with any of the types I knew about.Could it have been that his demon form was but an illusion? That he was truly an elf?“Dear sister,” the elf who was Asbeel continued.“At long last you’ve brought them both to me.”“She didn’t bring us,” I said.“Oi, we’ve both faced you before,” Joen added.“Not you, fools,” he said, his voice smooth and calm.“You are not relevant.I was speaking of the blessed stones.”“The bearers brought the stones of their own free will,” Jaide said.“Whatever helps you sleep, sister,” Asbeel answered.“We did,” I said.“We brought them, and we’re going to make you destroy them.”“Nothing would please me more.”“What’s that supposed to mean?”Asbeel laughed, a hearty laugh filled with mirth, something completely foreign to my experience of him.Always before, his laugh had been a horrid, grating thing.“Have you truly learned so much and yet so little?” he said.“Next you’ll tell me she hasn’t even revealed how the ritual occurs!”Jaide spoke before I could answer.“One of the bearers must kill one of the Sentinels, the Sentinel who watches his specific stone.”“Not a problem, then,” Joen said, drawing her daggers and moving toward Asbeel.Jaide reached out an arm and held her back.“Not here,” she said softly.“And why would you care that it not be here, sister?” Asbeel asked.“This is not the home of your Lady, after all.”“What’s that supposed to mean, eh?” Joen asked.Again Asbeel laughed that mirthful laugh, which I found somehow more unsettling than the wretched chortle I was used to.“It’s worse than even I suspected!” he said.“My dear sister never even told you which goddess she serves? Oh, how cruel!”My gut clenched tight.I did my best to keep a straight face, to not let Asbeel know his words had surprised me.But they surprised me all right, and the fact that one corner of Jaide’s lips curled up in a touch of a smile, and that she didn’t refute Asbeel’s claim, made the blood run cold in my veins.I was so wrong, for so long, in so many ways.I was wrong about Perrault, then too, wasn’t I? Wasn’t it he who had put me in contact with Jaide, a servant of an evil goddess? Could he have known? Why would he have done that?“You’ve all been manipulating me,” I said, my voice tight in my throat.“You’ve lied to me over and over again, cursed me, pushed me around, put me in harm’s way, led me here against my will.So she serves Beshaba, and you serve Tymora.That changes nothing.”“It changes everything!” he said, his manner maddeningly jovial.“All it changes is who gets the pleasure of killing you,” I said, drawing my magical stiletto—the stiletto I’d inherited from Perrault.“Not here,” Jaide said again, more forcefully.“She’s masked the truth from you, my dear sister has, and overstepped her bounds as much as I have.”“Why do you keep calling her sister?” Joen asked.“Because,” Jaide answered, “he is my brother by birth.”“Twins, you see,” Asbeel continued.“The goddesses chose twins to bear their blessing.”“It is a curse,” Jaide said.“You no more believe that than I do.”“Oi, why not just stop, then?” Joen asked.“Just ignore your goddesses, you know?”“Oh, he did,” Jaide said.“That’s why his appearance is so twisted beyond these walls.That’s the punishment he suffers.”“You should suffer as I do,” Asbeel said, his voice low and menacing, all traces of mirth gone from it.“You betrayed the charge as thoroughly as I did.More so, even.”“You seek the bearers of your sacred stone so that you may kill them,” Jaide said, revulsion obvious in her tone.“To facilitate the passage of the stones to their rightful bearers, this is our divine task.You, though, you tried to stop it entirely.”“Stop it?” I asked.Jaide sighed.“I suppose it’s time you knew everything.You see, your parents were my dear friends—as was Perrault, Alviss, and Elbeth.We adventured together—many years ago.And then one day your mother found the Stone of Tymora.And everything changed.Asbeel killed your mother, and your father when he tried to defend her, to facilitate the passage of the stone to someone of his choosing.But the stone bound to you before Asbeel could stop it.Asbeel was furious.And I was horrified.You were so young.Too young.When I heard what had happened, I had Perrault deliver the stone to me and hide you away.When you turned twelve, he felt you were ready to bear the stone and let the goddess’s will reign.I feared the stone’s power would be too much for you, but I felt it could not be lost.I had a responsibility to bear, and I had hoped Asbeel would relent.But then Perrault died.” Jaide glared at Asbeel.“And I no longer wanted to take part in the havoc the stones wreck on their bearers’ lives
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