The Last Threshold

Chapter 13

"Well then find her,” Captain Cannavara said to Entreri.

“Aye, or we’ll be leavin’ ye here, and won’t that be better for us?” added Mister Sikkal. He stood at Cannavara’s side, bobbing up and down on his bowed legs so that his head bounced stupidly. How Artemis Entreri wanted to put his recovered dagger to good use at that moment!

“I only came to tell you that we cannot find her,” Entreri remarked, addressing the captain directly, but throwing one warning glance at Sikkal as he did to keep the fool’s mouth shut. “Not to be lectured by either of you.”

“Then you four will be aboard when we sail?” the captain asked.

“No,” Entreri replied without the slightest hesitation-and he was surprised at his own certainty, though as he considered it, he couldn’t deny the truth. He would not leave Dahlia behind, would not leave Baldur’s Gate until he learned what had happened to her.

“Minnow Skipper sails on the morning tide,” Cannavara declared.

“Then you will explain to Beniago and High Captain Kurth why my friends and I returned to Luskan before you. You are on to Memnon, are you not?”

The expression on Cannavara’s face, and on Sikkal’s as well, spoke volumes to Entreri before either had uttered a word-if either had been able to speak at that moment. As far as Cannavara knew, clearly, they had told no one of their course change, and from Sikkal’s point of view, likely he had done some whispering that might get him thrown to the sharks.

“You think you know all the strands of the web,” the assassin quietly said. “That is a dangerous belief when dealing with … my associates.”

His tone left little doubt in the two men as to whom he might be referring. Bregan D’aerthe or Ship Kurth, the two men facing him obviously assumed, given the blood then draining from their respective faces.

Entreri used that moment to pull back his cloak and put a hand to the hilt of his fabulous dagger. Cannavara let out a little gasp at that, obviously recognizing it and remembering for the first time where he had seen that particular blade before.

With a dismissive snort, Artemis Entreri turned and walked back down the gangplank.

By the time he stepped onto the wharf, he had put the two men out of his thoughts, focusing again on the missing Dahlia. Half the night and half the day now, and not a sign of her.

This was more than petulance, he knew.

He was afraid.

Ambergris and Afafrenfere walked the wharf slowly, taking their time on their way to Minnow Skipper. Drizzt and Entreri moved separately through the various neighborhoods of the city, checking every inn and tavern, and every alley, but the dwarf had resisted Afafrenfere’s calls to separate and cover more ground.

“I got me an idea,” she announced to her partner, with one of her exaggerated winks, and she led him directly to these docks, where more than a score of ships were moored, some out on the water, others pulled up tight against the wharves.

“You think she’s on one of these boats?” Afafrenfere asked when Ambergris’s destination became apparent.

“She ain’t been out through any o’ Baldur’s Gate’s gates, from what them sentries’re saying.”

“Dahlia could have easily gotten past them unnoticed.”

“Aye, but to what end?” Ambergris asked. “Long roads to walk alone, and why would she, when there’s better ways to be long gone from Baldur’s Gate, eh?”

“So you think she left of her own accord?”

Ambergris stopped and turned to face him, hands on hips. “Well, say it out loud, then,” she remarked when Afafrenfere made no move as if to answer her look.

“I think she was kidnapped, or murdered,” the monk said.

“Things ain’t been so good between herself and Drizzt,” Ambergris said, an observation she and Afafrenfere had noted for the last few days, and even before that, out on the seas.

“She wouldn’t leave like that,” Afafrenfere argued, shaking his head. “Not that one. Lady Dahlia does not run from a fight.”

“Even from a lover’s quarrel?”

That gave Afafrenfere pause, but only for a moment before he shook his head. He didn’t know Dahlia all that well, but in the months he’d spent with her, he believed that he had a fairly solid understanding of the elf’s motivations.

“I’m only arguin’ with ye because I’m fearing that ye’re right,” Ambergris admitted.

“Then why have you led me to the docks?”

“If ye was to kidnap someone, to sell to slavers or to force to serve yerself, would ye be wanting to keep her in Baldur’s Gate with us friends o’ hers walking about?”

“And if you murdered her, what better place to dump the body?” Afafrenfere came right back.

“Aye, and let’s hope it’s not that.”

Afafrenfere wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment. He hadn’t known much camaraderie in his life, other than his long relationship with Parbid. He hadn’t thought it possible when first they had left Gauntlgrym, when he had walked out of that complex under great duress and in the company of those who had killed his dear companion, but Afafrenfere had come to think of these four, even the drow who had slain Parbid, as more than mere companions. He enjoyed fighting beside them-to deny it would be a terrible lie.

As he walked with his dwarf friend along those docks, he thought of a starry night far out at sea on Minnow Skipper. Unable to sleep, Afafrenfere had gone up to the deck. Drizzt was up there, distracted, standing at the prow and staring off at the sea and sky.

Afafrenfere had moved up, quietly as was his nature, but before he addressed Drizzt, he realized that the drow was already engaged in a quiet conversation-with himself.

Drizzt, this most curious drow rogue, was talking to himself, was using the serenity of the nighttime sea to sort through his thoughts and fears. And judging from his tone, the drow had already gone far around with his current subject and had found his answer, his words clearly reinforcing that which was in his heart.

“So now I say again, I am free, and say it with conviction,” Drizzt had declared to no one but himself. “Because I accept that which is in my heart, and understand those tenets to be the truest guidepost along this road. The world may be shadowed in various shades of gray, but the concept of right and wrong is not so subtle for me, and has never been. And when that concept collides against the stated law, then the stated law be damned.”

Drizzt had continued, but Afafrenfere had moved away, shocked, and not by the words, but by the exercise itself. Afafrenfere had learned similar techniques at the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. He had learned to fall deeply into meditation, an empty state, and then to subtly shift that bottomless trance, to use that ultimate peace, into a quiet personal conversation to sort out his innermost turmoil. Not with spoken words, but certainly in a similar soliloquy to that which Drizzt was doing at the front of that boat on that dark night.

That dark night had proven enlightening, for the monk had realized that this experience with these companions was very different than that which he had known in Cavus Dun. He had nothing as intense here as his relationship with Parbid, certainly, but there was another matter that he could not deny: unlike Ratsis, Bol, and the others of Cavus Dun-indeed, unlike Parbid, though Afafrenfere was afraid to admit that to himself-these companions would not leave him behind. Even Entreri, the surliest and most violent of the bunch, would not abandon him should they find themselves in a difficult place.

Ambergris’s elbow drew the monk from his contemplations.

“Remember them two?” the dwarf asked, barely moving her lips and so quietly that no one else could hear.

Without being obvious about studying the pair, Afafrenfere tried to place them.

“When we was first off the boat,” Ambergris prodded, and then he did indeed remember.

And Afafrenfere also noted that the pair, an old gaffer and a middle-aged man, watched him and the dwarf with more than a passing curiosity yet again. He made a mental note of them, and looked at Minnow Skipper tied up not so far aside.

“Yerself thinking what I’m thinkin’?” the dwarf asked.

“I believe I am,” Afafrenfere whispered back, then in a louder voice, added, “And now I am without coin. I hope that Captain Cannavara will give me work until we put to sea once more.”

The monk and the dwarf then boarded Minnow Skipper, and Afafrenfere didn’t even bother to ask the captain for any pay, but just remained on the boat, grabbing a mop and trying to look busy, when Ambergris headed back to rendezvous with Drizzt and Entreri.

Simple patience stood as among the greatest lessons Afafrenfere had learned in his years at the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, and he put that training to use now.

He would get to know the movements of these two dockhands, given all the interest they seemed to be showing in him and his friends.

After many frustrating hours of scouring the taverns of Baldur’s Gate, Drizzt headed across town to meet up with Artemis Entreri at the inn where the assassin was staying.

His mixed feelings chased him along every step.

Drizzt had an inkling of where Dahlia had been before she disappeared, and indeed, of where Dahlia spent most of her time apart from him.

He didn’t know how far her relationship with Entreri had progressed. He had known for a long time that there was something between them, of course, an idea that the sentient sword Charon’s Claw had seized upon to turn Drizzt’s suspicions to a murderous rage against the assassin back in Gauntlgrym. Even when Drizzt had realized the sword’s intrusions, and had thus brushed them aside, he couldn’t deny that Claw had found a hold on him because of some very real jealousy that had been stirring in his thoughts.

Dahlia had spent a lot of time with Entreri along the journey from Luskan; oftentimes, Drizzt had seen her working the lines of a sail right beside the man, and always the two were engaged in conversation.

There might well be a spark there between them, one that went beyond their shared understanding of each other’s deep emotional scars.

Drizzt would be a liar indeed if he claimed that the thought of Dahlia in a tryst with Entreri didn’t bother him.

Curiously, though, even though he considered the possibility of his own cuckolding, such matters seemed trivial to him. Something had happened to Dahlia, and he doubted that she had run off of her own accord. Surely she would have confronted him and told him, or at least, he realized, she would have told Entreri.

And wasn’t it curious, Drizzt thought, that he wasn’t suspicious of Entreri at all in this mystery? Entreri had been the last of the group to see her, and the man was, after all-or had been, at least-a ruthless killer. And yet, Drizzt was certain that he hadn’t done anything to harm Dahlia, or even that he wasn’t hiding anything about Dahlia’s disappearance at all.

That notion slowed Drizzt’s steps, as he had to pause to truly consider his feelings here, his gut instinct.

There were so many dark alleyways he might allow his imagination to float along, notions of Entreri getting rid of Dahlia because the assassin feared Drizzt’s reaction to him taking Dahlia as a lover, perhaps. Or Dahlia, in her visit, discovering something nefarious about the assassin, and threatening to reveal him. It was all too easy to understand how a relationship with Artemis Entreri could go very bad, very fast, and yet, Drizzt knew that he was right in his feelings of Entreri’s innocence.

As he moved toward Entreri’s inn, Drizzt could hardly believe how little he cared about Dahlia’s relationship with Entreri, whatever it might be. Not now, at least. Now, all that mattered to him was finding out what had happened to her.

When this was settled, however it turned out, he would have a long time in sorting through this morass of confusing emotions.

Entreri looked up briefly when Drizzt entered the crowded tavern, but quickly went back to his drink.

He was having a hard time looking the drow in the eye.

“Nothing,” Drizzt said, moving up to the table and sitting opposite the man-in the exact seat Dahlia had taken on that first night in port when she had come to him, Entreri realized.

“I have been in every tavern in Baldur’s Gate,” Drizzt went on. “None have seen her.”

“Or none admit to seeing her,” Entreri remarked.

“Would she have left us without notice, on her own?”

Entreri wanted to say, “Left you, perhaps,” but he bit it back. And when he thought about it, he realized, to his surprise, that he didn’t really want to say something like that to Drizzt. He had cuckolded the drow, and though this ranger had long been his bitterest enemy, Artemis Entreri was not proud of that fact.

He had not made love to Dahlia out of any ill-regard to Drizzt, or out of any regard to Drizzt at all.

And that was why he was so bothered, because that reality was the basis of his pain. He had been with Dahlia because of how Dahlia had touched him, how she made him feel, how she understood so much about him due to her own experiences, their parallel history.

He had been with Dahlia because of his feelings for Dahlia, and now, with her gone, perhaps lost to him, the assassin was being forced into emotions so foreign to him.

Artemis Entreri had been down this road once before, with a woman named Calihye, and to a horrible end. Artemis Entreri had vowed to never again walk such a road of vulnerability. He would depend upon himself and no one else, a rock and island against these unwanted emotions.

And yet, here he was, miserable and worried and fearing that Dahlia had been taken from him.

“Where do we turn?” Drizzt asked.

And here Entreri was, discussing her with Drizzt Do’Urden, her other lover. He looked up at the drow, and answered, “How would I know?”

“You know her as well as I do,” Drizzt admitted. “Better, likely.”

Entreri winced at the words, expecting a barrage of curses to immediately follow, and looked down to his drink once more, lifting it and draining it without making eye contact with his counterpart.

“Well?” Drizzt prompted.

There was no judgment in the drow’s tone. None at all that Entreri could detect. He placed his glass down and slowly looked up to return Drizzt’s gaze.

“Dahlia is a profoundly troubled woman,” he said.

Drizzt nodded.

“Complicated,” Entreri went on. “The violations inflicted upon her wounded her in ways you cannot-” He stopped there, not wanting to twist a dagger into Drizzt.

But Drizzt answered, “I know,” and he let it go at that.

He knew other things as well, Entreri realized, or at least, Drizzt suspected, and yet Drizzt was putting that all behind him at this dangerous time. Drizzt tiptoed around the obvious issue, unwilling to confront Entreri openly.

Because he cared about Dahlia, Entreri understood, and that realization stung him all the more in his guilt.

“Effron,” Entreri said, and Drizzt perked up.

“He is the only one I can imagine,” Entreri explained. “His hatred for Dahlia, if it can even be called hatred, permeates his every thought.”

“We are a long way from Port Llast,” Drizzt said, “and took a roundabout path to get here.”

“That young tiefling is not without resources,” Entreri replied. “Even Herzgo Alegni showed him great deference, and Herzgo Alegni hated him profoundly.”

“Herzgo Alegni was his father,” Drizzt reminded him.

“It mattered not,” Entreri explained. “Or perhaps that was the focus of the hatred. Effron came to us in Neverwinter at the request of a Netherese lord. I had many dealings with these lords in my time as Alegni’s slave. Do not ever underestimate them.”

“You believe this Netherese lord helped Effron get to Dahlia?” Drizzt asked.

“I fear it,” Entreri admitted, and he was being quite honest at that moment, “for if that is the case, then Dahlia is lost to us forever.”

Drizzt slumped back at that, and he and Entreri stared at each other for many heartbeats. But again, and again to Entreri’s surprise, the drow did not broach that most delicate subject.

“I need another drink,” Entreri said, standing, for what he really needed was to take a break from this unrelenting pressure. The idea that Dahlia was forever lost to him gnawed at his sensibilities in a way that he simply could not process.

“Get a drink for me,” Drizzt surprised him by saying when Entreri turned for the bar. “A large one.”

Entreri turned back to him and snickered, seeing the hyperbole for what it was. Still, he returned with a pair of drinks and the bottle of rum, even though he realized that he’d be drinking most of that bottle himself.

From before dawn until after sunset, Brother Afafrenfere scrubbed the deck of Minnow Skipper, or worked the lines, or patched with tar, or performed whatever other chore he could fashion, or Mister Sikkal assigned him, so long as that work did not move him belowdecks. He wasn’t there to actually work, after all.

“Get yerself down under and help Cribbins with the patching,” Sikkal ordered him late one afternoon.

“Down under?”

“Bottom hold,” Sikkal explained. “We be taking a bit o’ water, and I’m not for that. So get yerself down there and get yerself to work!”

Afafrenfere looked around, noting several other crewmen sitting here or there on the open deck, done with their work, if any of them had even been assigned any this day. Minnow Skipper was stocked and seaworthy and only sitting here because of the missing Dahlia, though no one aboard seemed to know that Dahlia was missing, or cared to admit to it, anyway.

“I do not think I will go and do that,” Afafrenfere replied.

“ ’Ere, what did ye say?” Sikkal demanded.

“Send another,” the monk replied.

“If we was at sea, I could have yerself thrown to the sharks for that answer, boy!”

“If we were at sea, you could try,” the monk replied calmly. He wasn’t looking at Sikkal as he spoke, though. The two dock hands had appeared on the wharf, the old gaffer with a sack over his shoulder. Afafrenfere had seen this play before, the previous twilight.

Sikkal rambled on and on about something, but Afafrenfere was no longer listening. The two old dockhands revealed their nervousness as they moved along the wharf, glancing this way and that with every step. Just like the night before.

Afafrenfere let his gaze shift far to the side, to an old scow, appearing far less than seaworthy, that was strapped up tight to the farthest dock. These two would make their way to that one, the monk believed, for the night before they had gone aboard, carrying a similar sack. Afafrenfere had watched the boat for a long while, but had never seen the pair depart, nor had they gone out the previous morning. The monk hadn’t thought much of it at the time, since many of the dockhands in Baldur’s Gate, as in every port, used the moored boats as personal inns. But earlier this day, Afafrenfere had noted the pair gazing that way more than once, and had expected they would arrive on the docks around dinnertime, bound for the scow.

And why, after all, had they obviously slipped off the boat in the middle of the night?

“Hey!” Mister Sikkal shouted and he grabbed Afafrenfere’s arm.

The monk slowly swiveled his head, first glancing at the other members of the crew, all looking on with more than a passing interest now, then turning down to eye Sikkal’s dirty hand, and then, finally, settling his gaze on Sikkal himself, looking the man straight in the eye with a glare that was more promise than threat.

Sikkal couldn’t hold that stare, or the arm, and he backed off, but only momentarily, for he seemed to gain a bit of courage when he broke free of Afafrenfere’s glare and considered the crew around him.

“Get below,” he ordered Afafrenfere.

In a low voice, so that only Sikkal could hear, Afafrenfere spelled it out more clearly. “Only if that is where I am asked to move your corpse.”

“Captain’s to hear of this!” Sikkal cried, but Afafrenfere wasn’t looking at him anymore, turning again to the wharves, and to the dockhands, and just in time to see them toss their sack onto the distant scow and slither aboard.

Sikkal rushed off for Cannavara’s cabin, but he hadn’t gone three steps before the monk leaped over Minnow Skipper’s rail to land lightly on the dock.

Sikkal called after him, and Afafrenfere resolved to rush back to the ship and crush the idiot’s windpipe if he persisted in raising a ruckus.

But Sikkal didn’t, and the monk moved in fits and starts, slipping along the wharves from barrel to crate, carefully picking his stealthy way to the old scow. Near to the boat, he nestled behind a stack of kegs and listened intently.

He heard some murmuring, but nothing definitive. He couldn’t make out any actual words, for the waves lapped loudly against the wharf’s supporting posts and broke with a watery crash just a few steps from his position.

Patience, Afafrenfere told himself, and he waited for twilight to deepen.

With practiced stealth, Brother Afafrenfere slipped onto the deck of the scow and into the shadows beside the main cabin. He heard the pair of dock hands within, laughing and wheezing, and he thought then, to his great disappointment, that this boat was nothing more than their nightly retreat. He remained anyway, for he had to be certain. He didn’t know if these two had been involved in Dahlia’s disappearance, but Ambergris’s hunch had resonated with him, and watching them for the last couple of days had done nothing to dissuade Afafrenfere from believing these two to be a nefarious pair, and with something to hide, though whatever it might be, he could not be sure.

The monk moved quietly around the deck, looking for clues. Everything seemed unremarkable … until he noted a meager light between the deck boards, lamplight coming from the hold and not the cabin.

Growing up in the Bloodstone Lands, Afafrenfere wasn’t versed in ship design, but he had been on a couple of boats similar to this one, and he didn’t think there was any way for the dockhands to get belowdecks from the cabin. He slipped back to the cabin, and heard the pair still inside, with the younger seadog grumbling about the smell of the older one’s pipe weed.

Across from the door to that cabin, right in the open on the deck, sat the bulkhead. It wouldn’t be easy to get there unseen, the monk realized, but he started that way, belly-crawling.

“Get out on the deck, then, ye stinky fool!” he heard from inside the cabin.

Alarmed, the monk stood and leaped as the cabin door swung open and the old gaffer came forth.

Puffing his pipe, and indeed the stench was terrible, the wheezing old seadog moved right under Afafrenfere, who had wrapped himself like a snake around the crossbeam of the mainmast. The cabin door was still open, creaking as it swung gently with the rocking boat. Afafrenfere caught glimpses of the other swabby inside, moving around, preparing a meal, it seemed.

The old gaffer moved to the rail, looking out to sea.

Afafrenfere slithered along the crossbeam, again right above him. With a quick glance to the other, to ensure that he was distracted, the monk dropped down behind his prey, his right forearm tucking tightly against the gaffer’s throat, his left hand coming across behind the man’s head, grabbing a handful of hair and an ear, and pressing the man forward, tightening the choke. In a matter of a few heartbeats, the gaffer went limp in Afafrenfere’s strong grasp, and the monk eased the unconscious fool down to the deck.

Afafrenfere didn’t even pause at the cabin door, bursting in quickly, violently, and similarly locking the other man into the incapacitating hold. Soon after, the two were seated in the cabin, tied and gagged back to back, as the monk moved quietly to the entry to the lower hold.

Flat on his belly, Afafrenfere peered through the cracks in the old bulkhead. He did well to stifle his gasp when he did, for there Dahlia was, bound and gagged in a chair across the way. And there sat Effron, off to the side in a chair and staring at her.

Dahlia couldn’t look the tiefling in the eye, Afafrenfere realized. He tried to remember all that he knew of this dangerous young warlock. So he took his time here-besides, he wanted to know what this was all about. What was really going on between Effron and Dahlia? Why had he taken her, and given that, why was he still here on Toril? He could shadowstep with her back to the Shadowfell, Afafrenfere knew.

There was much more to this story, and Afafrenfere wanted to know it.

So he waited as the night deepened around him. Judging from the location of the moon, it was past midnight before Effron finally stirred.

The young tiefling moved over to Dahlia and pulled down her gag.

“They are all sleeping now, of course,” Effron said. “No one will hear you if you scream out-”

“I won’t scream out,” Dahlia replied, and still she did not look at him.

“I could make you.”

Dahlia didn’t even lift her eyes. Where was the firebrand Afafrenfere had come to know? If Drizzt or Entreri, or anyone else, had spoken to her like that in Port Llast, bound or not, she would have spat in his face.

“Do you know how much I hate you?” Effron asked.

“You should,” Dahlia replied in barely a whisper, and with true humility, it seemed.

“Then why?” the young warlock demanded, his voice rising and trembling. “If the memory hurts you as much as you claim, then why?”

“You couldn’t understand.”

“Try!”

“Because you looked like him!” Dahlia shouted back, now, at last, raising her teary eyes to look at Effron. “You looked like him, and when I looked upon you, all I saw was him!”

“Herzgo Alegni?”

“Don’t speak his name!”

“He was my father!” Effron retorted. “Herzgo Alegni was my father. And at least he cared enough to bother to raise me! At least he didn’t throw me off a cliff!”

Again Afafrenfere had to work hard to suppress a gasp, for it seemed clear to him that Effron wasn’t talking figuratively here.

“You wanted me dead!” he yelled in Dahlia’s face, and she was weeping openly now.

“I wanted him dead,” she corrected, her voice breaking with every syllable. “And I couldn’t kill him! I was a child, don’t you understand? Just a little orphaned elf hiding in the forest with the few of my clan who had survived the murderous raid. And he was coming back for you.”

Effron sputtered several indecipherable syllables. “Then why didn’t you just let him take me?” he demanded.

“He would have killed me.”

“Most mothers would die for their children. A real mother would have died-”

“He would have violated me again, more likely,” Dahlia said, and she wasn’t looking at Effron any longer, and her tone made it seem to Afafrenfere as if she were speaking more to herself than to him at that point, trying to sort through her own painful recollections. “He would have filled me with another child, that I could serve him like a brood mare, like chattel.

“And you,” she said, now looking up at him, and seeming to find some measure of strength once more. “You would have been taught to hate me in any case.”

“No.”

“Yes!” Dahlia snapped back. “He would have trained you from your youngest days. He would have made you just like him, ready to go forth and murder and rape-”

“No!” Effron said and he slapped Dahlia across the face, but then fell back a step, seeming as wounded as she, and she melted into sobs once more.

Afafrenfere had seen enough. He slithered back from the hold and climbed a guide rope, setting himself into position.

He played this through in his thoughts repeatedly, recalling all that he knew of Effron, recognizing the tiefling’s deadly arsenal.

He heard another slap from below.

Afafrenfere leaped down, double-kicking below as he descended on the bulkhead, his weight, momentum and powerful kicks exploding the old wood beneath him. He landed in the hold in perfect balance and sprang immediately for the surprised Effron, diving into a forward roll.

Dahlia screamed, Effron threw his good arm up defensively, and Afafrenfere came up to his feet with a barrage of blows. The warlock had magical defenses in place, of course, but still the monk’s relentless barrage got through, slamming Effron about the face once and again.

Effron fell back and Afafrenfere pursued, kicking, punching, launching a full-out offensive volley to keep the warlock off balance, to keep him from casting a spell. His best chance, he knew, was to simply overwhelm the young tiefling, to bury him before the dangerous Effron ever found his balance.

A sharp left jab sped past the warlock’s uplifted arm, snapping his head back. A right cross followed, but much of its weight was blocked, inadvertently, by the rising arm of the staggering Effron. It hardly mattered, though, for Afafrenfere threw the right simply to half-turn Effron and open a hole in his defenses, and to get Afafrenfere’s own right foot forward. Now came the real attack, a sweeping left hook that flew around the warlock’s uplifted arm and cracked him across the side of the jaw, snapping his head to the side.

Afafrenfere spun a tight circuit, lifting his trailing right leg up high, nearly clipping the beams of the low hold’s ceiling, and he brought that leg down and across, chopping the warlock across the collarbone, dropping him to his knees.

The monk didn’t dare relent, understanding that a single spell from Effron could quickly reverse his fortunes. For some reason, though, Effron didn’t seem to be fighting back. Perhaps it had been the speed and brutality of the attack, but there seemed something more to Afafrenfere, some deeper resignation.

If he had paused to consider that, Afafrenfere would have sorted it out, of course: the tiefling had been as overwhelmed by the confrontation with his mother as was Dahlia.

Afafrenfere wasn’t about to take the chance that such apparent surrender would hold. He waded in, slapping away the meager attempt to block, then backhanded Effron in the forehead, driving the tiefling’s head back, opening a clear strike at the exposed neck. In the same movement, Afafrenfere set himself powerfully and lifted his right hand up behind him, fingers locked claw-like for the killing blow.

Effron couldn’t stop it.

Effron didn’t appear as if he wanted to stop it.