Chapter 1

- the Archivist, your narrator

"... she swore by grass, she swore by corn

her true love had never been born... "

"Marséna, you are covering me, aren't you?" Virginia shouted as she gave the wooden door a third, hard kick. Splinters flew as the rusted joints gave way.

"Right behind you, oh ye of little faith," Marséna called out as she parried an incoming thrust with her longsword. Fighting in the cramped stairwell of a slum tenement in the Hive was never pleasant. Especially when the stairwell was under assault by half a dozen Anarchist thugs. In principle, they rejected all political and intellectual authority. In reality, the pecuniary demands of running a revolutionary faction imposed unsavoury activities: prostitution, racketeering, trafficking of persons and restricted substances.

The Civic Security Department, too underfunded to deal with so-called petty crime turned a blind eye to paramilitary organisations which volunteered to share the workload. Thus, the Order of the Radiant Path of the Vigilant Maiden, called, as stipulated in its Founding Axioms, to defend the honour and integrity of victimised, now found themselves in a decidedly tight spot.

"They're in here." Virginia called out, briefly catching in her field of vision the ragged vestiges of soulless women held in blackened manacles, before turning back towards the stairwell. Marséna, as reliable as ever, had already struck one dark-leather clad assailant down and stepped over him as the man lay clutching the welling lifeblood that fell from his body.

"Looks like you don't need the help," Virginia said grimly as she set herself at her companion's side, her sword wailing as it cut into an Anarchist's shoulder. The tightness of the stairwell gave both paladins of the Radiant Path the tactical advantage. Pressed shoulder to shoulder against each other, assuming a defensive posture that reduced the target for their enemies, they relied on the disorganised indignation of the Anarchists. Their indignation was great enough to throw caution to the wind, striking out at the armoured women with practised but ineffectual lunges that were soon blunted by patient, calm swordplay, and opening themselves for that final, cutting riposte that sent them reeling and then tumbling down the stairs. By the time Marséna had felled her second, the remainder of the Anarchist cell had decided that prolonged resistance would result in - at best - a Pyrrhic victory and withdrew, boots sliding frantically, into the lower reaches of the building before disappearing, in all haste, into the Hive Ward. Untraceable, to be sure, but they would certainly lie low for a while.

"No," Marséna said, recovering her breath, as she leant back on the wooden wall of the stairwell to take stock of the situation, "I probably didn't." She smiled wryly at Virginia, "But it's always a pleasure to have you by my side, superfluous or not."

"I'm flattered," Virginia replied, with irony but no malice. Marséna had matured into one of the most impressively effective - and elegant - fencers she had known. Her days as an insecure novice were quite evidently behind her. She now carried herself with enviable poise: her body was lean, athletic, with olive skin, lustrous, long corvine-black hair, and immersive, expressive brown eyes which some poets would have said betrayed the secrets of the depths of her soul. Her features were delicate; lips full and wine red, breasts and hips in the parsimonious generosity of a Classical sculpture - a visage which, in other worlds, would have been called a paean to the Mediterranean. Virginia knew they made a strikingly complementary team.

While Marséna had been born in the province of Overnha on the sun-kissed world of Mareterra, Virginia's ancestors hailed from the cool, misty lands of Ortho. Her complexion, pale as pearl, was testament to this. Her body was leaner still than Marséna's, more masculine, perhaps, but no less elegant. Fervid, green eyes were framed by perfectly blonde hair which had been succinctly arranged, in the manner of a page boy. Though Virginia's features were sharper, there was a richness to them in the symmetrical beauty of her face, still blessed with the freshness of very late adolescence which bridges into womanhood, and the inviting firmness of her body.

Both paladins wore the engraved breastplate of their order. This was forged out of silvery steel and adorned with a stylised star placed at the centre of a two concentric circles. Herein lay the symbolic summary of the doctrine of the Vigilant Maiden: the purity of the inner soul that reunites holds body and intellect into a single, inseparable whole. Honour, dignity and compassion had to be adequately represented in all three spheres to truly walk the Radiant Path of Salvation. Such was the principle; in that moment, however, all Virginia wanted was a warm bath and some silence, or at least some pleasingly inane banter with Marséna, just to remind herself that the world did not rest at the end of a blade.

"All done?" A melodious voice called from lowed down the stairwell.

"Goddess, Friyya, you took your time." Virginia snapped back. Combat situations were not something to be pursued if it could at all be avoided, even the notoriously sanguine Isobel, their unit vice-commander, had said, albeit grudgingly, something to that effect, "Get up here, let the prisoners out and bring them to the hospice. We'll have a look at the mezzanine."

"Coming, coming..." Friyya grumbled.

"Once you've caught your breath we can take a look downstairs," Virginia said, turning to Marséna.

"Anytime, then you can make me dinner." Marséna answered, irreverent as always.

Virginia nodded almost gratefully before descending the stair, Marséna close behind her. Friyya met them halfway down to the mezzanine: "I absolutely hate running in armour." she said, causing Marséna to sigh in irritation and Virginia to ask herself how she'd put up with Friyya for over five years of training in the same novice detachment. Friyya loved to poke, provoke, gossip and complain. She was also, as far as Virginia and quite a few others were concerned, impossibly beautiful with light, auburn hair, an elfin face graced by melt-water blue eyes, and an elegantly feminine body which not even her breastplate, greaves and gauntlets could much diminish. If she stared long enough, Virginia was certain that she could get lost in the pale silkiness of but a section of Friyya's thighs, bare and enframed between her boots and the breastplate's kirtle.

Then again, Virginia had begun to think the same of the maddening sensuality of Marséna's iodine skin against the silvery whiteness of her armour. It had been too long, Virginia resolved, since she had been given the opportunity for a truly unhurried amorous encounter. The new responsibilities of being a Consecrated Paladin, however, took precedence. This much, even in the rambling chaos of the Hive Ward with its shattered, misshapen, mismatched buildings from a thousand ages and drawn from a thousand schools of architecture, was certain.

"We're down to the mezzanine, there cold be some residual hostile activity there," Marséna specified, letting Friyya through to reach the upstairs prison chambers, "where's Syf?"

"Downstairs, holding the entrance, just in case the Rebs change their minds and come back for more." Friyya said curtly as she passed by.

"Typical, Goddess knows where you'd be without her," Marséna muttered: there was definitely an uneven distribution of duties between those two, and, she suspected, not only in field operations, "we'll meet at the building entrance when we're done."

The mezzanine was an abandoned storage facility, built as a communal warehouse for the inhabitants of the tenement who, in centuries past when that part of Sigil was still civil and functioning, had been the scions of a highly egalitarian culture from some distant part of the Multiverse. They were gone, but their narrow, space-efficient buildings, all clustered onto one another, were testament to a culture which placed society above privacy or individualism. There, in the musty pitch-darkness, Marséna and Virginia found nothing but disused, dusty fabric and silence.

"Virg, Light." Marséna said softly, her sword at the ready.

Virginia obeyed, intoning a soft prayer and allowing the light of her soul to expand outwards and fill the mezzanine chamber with a dull, lambet glow. Something stirred, deep in the fabric which, upon illumination, was nothing of the sort, but appeared to be a form of spiderweb, extending to every floor and wall of the chamber.

"Who goes there?" Marséna inquired, as the light allowed nothing but the most perfunctory identification of form or motion, "We mean no harm lest you mean harm to us." There were times in which Marséna's one-liners irritated Virginia to no end, especially when they incongruously popped up in tense situations which required less talking and more thinking.

"Far right, behind the web curtain," Virginia said, her keen sense of intuition suggesting that the rustling had come from that direction, "brush it aside, I'm behind you."

Marséna complied, stepping forward gingerly, the tip of blade reflecting the flickering Light spell as it shifted the silky material aside, revealing a niche in the corner. There lay a form, crouched low as if ready to pounce, clad only in a light shift woven of fabric that could have been a starless midnight.

"Pericla en set zel!" Marséna growled, "Dark elf!"

"Calm down, don't provoke her," Virginia said, surprised, but not thrown as she contemplated the figure before her, its visage obscured by a wild mane of thick hair, white as snow, "and, for future reference, cut down on the oaths - in any language." Marséna smirked in response, relieved, more than anything, that it was unlikely that the drow, in such a tattered state, posed any threat. Virginia, Marséna thought, no doubt sometimes envied Syf's doctrinaire, clean-living, clean-fighting, self-sacrifice approach. All fine and well for a paladin, but, then again, there were always Lathander and Tyr to worship should the Radiant Path strike anyone as too lax.

Turning to the drow, Virginia asked, "Do you understand me?" The dark elf girl was clearly startled, yet there was a self-possessed confidence about her demeanour, as if she were defiant, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

"Do you understand our language?" Virginia repeated, approaching slightly.

"Virg, it doesn't, let's get out of here before things have a chance to go wrong..." Marséna interjected, somewhat nervous at the development of standoff that should never have been.

"I... understand." Said the drow, very softly, her voice accented surprisingly lightly by her native tongue, "I like to think that I've managed to pick a few things up." Though not the most poetic of languages, Sigil's lingua franca had the advantage of drawing on a number of disparate linguistic stems, facilitating its learning by virtually anyone familiar with the major linguistic traditions of the Multiverse.

Now, for the first time, the dark elf looked up, her long mane of silvery hair parting, revealing a youthful, noble elven face, full lips like lavender, onyx-black skin drawn perfectly onto delicate, high cheekbones, her eyes glowing violet like embers in some alien fire. The drow stirred slightly, her strength had been much sapped by her sojourn on the surface of plane far removed from her own. Maybe her time had come to descend into the Demonweb Pits.

"Are you here for my life?" The dark elf inquired, almost wearily. Had she possessed the strength, she would have struck out with a blade or incantations, but only animals fought in her condition.

"Not if you do not wish it." Marséna said. "Stand up and keep your hands within our sight."

The dark elf complied, rising slowly, unsteadily to her feet, raising and extending her arms out to her sides. Virginia looked on, her heart still beating from the adrenaline of battle, her training told her never to drop her guard, to always prepare for the worst possible situation - particularly when dealing with untrustworthy races. Very few could be classified as more untrustworthy than dark elves. But there was something about the quiet dignity of the girl's demeanour that struck Virginia, that and the enticingly full breasts, larger than any she had seen on a surface elf, which were only marginally obscured by the gauziness of the charcoal black shift. Despite herself Virginia took a pause to swallow. It really had been too long.

"What, may we ask, are you doing here?" Virginia said, placing her hand on Marséna's sword arm, indicating that it would be best to assume a less threatening approach, "You must be far from your kin." Not that this was always a bad thing, Virginia thought.

"Close or far, my situation is one of constant fear for my life," the drow said with almost palpable rancour, "if you were to kill me now, I who am already dead, at least I would fear no more." If drow humour existed, it was gallows humour.

"We mean no ill will, look, my companion has set aside her sword," Virginia said, her tone immediately more conciliatory.

The dark elf took a glance at Marséna's reluctantly lowered arm and allowed herself a wan, sardonic smile, before stumbling suddenly to her knees as her strength failed her. Virginia caught her in her arms on her way down. There the drow lay for several long moments, breathing in the metallic scent of Virginia's armour, the softer smell of the skin beneath it mingled with the saline residue of sweat. It was almost surreal, like being encased protectively in metal. At once, she hated herself for showing herself in such a weakened state.

"Virg, she could have knife..."Marséna said, utterly surprised at the turn the situation had taken.

"She's tired." That was the only answer Virginia could muster. She had experienced her full share of surreal events for the day, but that instant was to the paladin like contact with an alien world: hesitant, fearful, but strangely full of promise. Virginia gently helped the drow to her feet.

"I could have a knife," the dark elf whispered as she clutched Virginia's leather gauntleted hand in her own, "but if I kill you, she kills me. What kind of deranged arithmetic is that?" She smiled again, enigmatically.

"I sense no violence in your intentions," Virginia gambled, she certainly had no inclination to be drawn into a dark elf mind game, she had to regain the initiative, "would you trust me for something to eat?"

"Not for food, but for the boldness of your opening." This paladin, the drow thought, has mettle, even if she is foolish - it would have been, admittedly, very easy to simply run her through.

"Then come with us." Virginia said, finally exhaling with relief.

"Are you insane?" Marséna protested, completely indifferent to the drow's presence, "Isobel will have our heads on a skewer! There's now way we can bring her back to Quarters."

"It's on my head, you can always tell Isobel it was my idea." Virginia retorted, as she moved to exit the room.

"If I'm complicit, I get tossed out too, you know..."

"Nobody asked for your complicity, just say you knew nothing about it and I won't object."

Marséna was taken aback. Not for the first time, of course - Virginia was an expert at making her feel guilty, especially since she knew that that Virginia knew that they would follow one another up through the gates of the Ninth Pit of Hell.

"Goddess, Virg, you know I'd never leave you." Marséna said with quiet regret. Of all the stupid things they had done together, and there had been many, this misguided act of compassion was almost certainly on top of the list.

"Then lead her out," Virginia called back, "and don't tell Friyya or we'll all be in for a long day."

Complying almost in exasperation with her friend's request, Marséna prompted the drow forward with nudge on the shoulder, her sword still drawn and ready by her side, "Come on then," she told the dark elf, as they exited the mezzanine chamber, "no funny games, alright?" It was more a request than an order.

They took the long way back to the Quarters which were situated in the slightly more congenial surroundings of the Temple District. Foremost amongst Virginia's concerns was to avoid Friyya and Syf - not that they were less trustworthy than Marséna, but the situation would, under present circumstances, have taken too long to explain. The drow did not seem to take too poorly to the dim light of day afforded by the overcast sky of Sigil. In other worlds, Virginia had read that dark elves would be incapacitated by the rays of one or more suns and that their clothing and weaponry, though infused with might incantations, would dissolve into dust and nothingness when it came into contact with the first rays of dawn. Sigil, however, had no Sun. Night and day were determined by varying shades of grey, the hours called by the great Bell Tower at the Hall of Records.

The Quarters of the paladins of the Order of the Radiant Path had been carved out of fair roseate marble imported from Elysium and, although the inner living chambers were spartan, the edifice had an air of dignified taste to it, so much so that it stood in relief when compared to its surroundings of highly ornate towers and impossible architectural follies dreamt up by the priests of more ostentatious gods. It proved relatively simple for the party to sneak into the Quarters through the stables and into the rear service stairway which led to the upper floors. Novices were confined to the bottom floors and limited to communal accommodation, Consecrated Paladins were entitled to more spacious lodgings, with shared bathing and cooking facilities and separate bedchambers. Silence filled the living area in that late afternoon, most novices were in the courtyard for drills or in the Temple for lessons. Virginia desperately hoped she did not run into any senior knight on her way up.

"It's strange," the dark elf said quite suddenly as Virginia unlocked the door to her apartment, "you bring me to a temple for what you believe is compassion. It's a little like a sacrifice, if you think about it."

"Quiet," Marséna growled, "this wasn't my idea."

"Easy," Virginia said, eager to ensure that Marséna did not cause the drow to feel cornered, "is Shesayne going to be home soon?"

"Possibly, but I'll speak to her." Shesayne had been Marséna's lover for the last six months. An impish, slightly eccentric half-elf who worked for a private organisation specialised in the retrieval of potentially hazardous enchanted objects, she had first caught Marséna's eye during a joint operation between her company and the Radiant Path. Despite Virginia's expectations, a touching understanding of both minds and sentiment had developed between the two, to the extent that Marséna had obtained appropriate dispensation to house Shesayne in Quarters. Considering the property prices in overcrowded Sigil, Shesayne had leapt at the opportunity, even if it meant sharing her living with a militant order of a religious nature.

"Here we are, then," Virginia said as she allowed Marséna to usher the dark elf into the communal kitchen, "I'll draw some hot water for you to freshen up and then prepare something warm. Please, wait here." The paladin carefully removed and hung up her breastplate, gauntlets, boots and greaves on her armour stand before proceeding, wordlessly, into the bath chamber.

Marséna followed her in, "You're losing it, Virg. She's not an honoured guest: there's a dark elf in our living quarters whom you met her less than an hour ago and now it's as if the High Priestess was visiting."

Virginia ignored Marséna for a moment as she heated some charcoal in a stove with a large cast-iron pail of water on top. "I thought charity was one of the Founding Axioms." She finally said, testing the water with a finger and, finding it suitably warm, poured it into the circular cedarwood bathing tub.

"It is. But I'm not stupid, Virg. This isn't charity. I know your eyes because you are a sister to me. Oelhos trayous, you can't fool me."

"That's the problem with both of us. We're so transparent. That's why we are paladins and not saleswomen. Bear with me on this, because I know I felt something when I held her. Something which could be a germinating seed. Give me time and, if need be, I'll tell Friyya and I'm sure Syf will understand. I know you know me, so you understand that I see things differently. Even when we first met, I took the unconventional view." Marséna knew this was Virginia's trump card: most of the novices had been of Ortho stock and a Mareterran amongst them certainly stood out. The two weeks before Virginia had befriended her, had unequivocally been the most unpleasant of Marséna's life.

"So, will you help me out?" Virginia inquired, breaking Marséna's brief recollection.

"Sure. We'll see how this turns out, me trigo." Marséna sighed.

"Good girl. Take off your armour, I'll run you a bath later."

"Will you join me?"

"Shesayne will be jealous." Virginia chided gently.

"I don't think she cares."

"Maybe, then." Virginia smiled as she leaned forward to kiss Marséna softly on the lips, "Now let me attend to this."

Virginia returned to the living area, and found the dark elf alone and bemused, contemplating her surroundings with an air of quiet perplexity which can only be found in those who have just been plunged into a fundamentally different existence. Her drow instincts told her to deceive, inveigle, fight covertly, to run and betray.

But there was an essential break in that logic. She was clever enough to know that what had been pertinent in the Underdark of a distant world would not be the most effective means of preservation on another. Existence, after all, was the imperative of all beings. She had fought to live so far, there was no reason to succumb to her more natural inclinations now. Not when salvation appeared in reach.

"If you wish, there's a bath ready for you," Virginia said, and the dark elf turned and nodded slightly, as if even that gesture of acknowledgement had to be forced from the inherently arrogant mindset of her race, "I understand you're tired, take your time."

"I'll be in my room if you need me," Marséna called as she tugged her boots off, before finally retreating behind the door of her bedchamber, "If Shesayne comes send her straight to me and I'll talk her through it." Marséna made herself sound weary to communicate her anxiety to Virginia, although it occurred to her that Shesayne would be just what she required at this juncture.

Virginia set to work on the kitchen counter, her hands setting to the task of slicing root vegetables with grim determination. There was something she found therapeutic in cooking, a process of creation which compensated for the destruction which inevitably accompanied the more brutal aspects of her work. Over time, she had developed quite a reputation and her fellow residents had grown to appreciate the great skill with which she turned the fairly mundane selection of ingredient presented as rations by the Order into ever-changing repasts. Above all, cooking gave Virginia time to think and in that moment, her thoughts were fevered, concerned only with the objective irrationality of her choice and with the burning compulsion that had overwhelmed her in that derelict tenement in the Hive. Perhaps Marséna had been right, Virginia thought, perhaps it was a form of madness.

In the bath chamber, the dark elf had gratefully discarded her thin shift, the last remnant of her patrimony from a noble house in the great and decadent drow city of Ille-Athalath. Since antiquity, her house had been known for the maddening brilliance of its spidersilk patterns which, in their disordered chaos, challenged the aesthetic mind more than any rational design. Now, that single black negligee was the last testament to a world which had disappeared, it was the last hated remnant of grandeur. There was, after all, no greater misfortune than that of once having been happy.

She now stood, naked, before the bath of steaming water, the charcoal stove filling the room with hypnotically stifling heat. She eased herself in the bath one foot at the time, absorbing the revitalising warmth of the water, the forgetful steam that now began to drift across the chamber. Revenge for having been found in such a weakened, pitiful state could wait. Anything could wait for this. Now all the drow needed was silence to realise that her body could once again be at peace with her mind and not the dull, throbbing, humiliating pain at the back of her head. Finally the restored mastery of her intellect would restore harmony to her being. Or so it appeared until the door opened.

"You don't mind, do you?" Virginia asked tentatively as she stepped in. The drow turned back to face her in bemused irritation.

"Depends on what you had in mind." The dark elf replied sharply.

Virginia entered all the same and knelt by the side of the tub, placing her hands on the drow's shoulders, holding her down gently near the level of the steaming water, "Nothing you would object to." The paladin replied, taking a washcloth from a small chest with numerous drawers, originally conceived to hold herbal medicines, at the side of the bathtub. She poured a small quantity of sweet scented, amber liquid from a small vial onto the coarse cloth, before gently beginning to wash the drow's shoulders in a slow, circular pattern. Virginia's hands were firm and knowing, seeking out every nexus of tension and slowly relieving it with precise and expert movements.

"Do you find my weakness appealing? Does it assuage your insecurity to treat me as a doll?" The dark elf asked softly, now conscious that Virginia's was scrubbing lower, her hands moving in a soporific, wave like motion down he breasts, over her belly, between her thighs and lower still to her calves. Each motion was partially obscured by the copious steam generated by the stove, but there was no demanding quality to the paladin's actions and certainly no invasiveness. It was if it were all a matter of fact exercise, like something she would do for a comrade in arms or a friend.

"No, not a doll," Virginia corrected as she set the washcloth aside and poured some of the same amber liquid onto the dark elf's hair, "I would treat you as a fellow sister." She began to massage the drow's scalp gently, revealing the elegantly pointed tips of the dark elf's ears. Virginia, however, could not help but notice that she stood before a most perfect example of female plenitude. Nipples pert and bright on her onyx skin like lavender crowned stunningly firm, full breasts, hips flaring naturally like the curvature of the softest hills of Elysium, this was an elf, yes, but one that was breathtakingly feminine - physically, at least.