Author's Note: Ooookey-dokey, I figured this one out, finally – to the degree of being bold enough to start publishing it. The story is supposed to be a series of one-shots from the POVs of different NPCs (companions and not) that follow crucial points and in-betweens of the OC. If you are not comfortable with the Chaotic Evil future-Knight-Captain, explicit violence and questionable morale, please, beware. If you are fine with that – then let's set a beast loose and see how far we can go.

Warning for devastatingly irregular update, since it's not my main story (and drastically different both in style and substance) – but, heck, almost every chapter here can stand on its own, so you won't lose the flow. There's nothing to lose:)

I do not own Neverwinter Nights 2 and its characters. Cadence and Hawk are both my fault, utterly.

P.S.: English is still not my native language (as if that's a surprise:) – so any remarks and pointed out glaring mistakes would be welcomed.

Of Black Blood

Now, hear the forest talking, insects and birds.
Does the scent of soil and beast
Breathe the life into the animal you hide?
It's a great illusion one never knows -
When you think you're really alone,
Feel the eyes of someone looking in on you.

- Joe Romersa "Cradle of Forest"

#1. Father

I looked at their faces,
And I could not forgive,
That they don't have you -
Yet still manage to live

- Nautilus Pompilius "I Want to Be with You"

ooooooooooooooo

…Please…

He ran.

The world was white before him, as if the explosion blinded him, scorched his eyes out, burned them away, just like it consumed the valley below, rolled across the village, sweeping away everything and everyone in its path, demons and people alike. Sizzling air filled his lungs with every breath he took, so hot it seemed to burn through his chest from the inside. Dust flied up from under his feet, acrid, but dry and tasteless like ashes.

Or was it ashes?

It didn't matter as he burst into smoke, flames and ash, as if into the Hells themselves. Cinders stuffed his eyes, making him force every blink, lids falling and coming up with scratch against aching running eyes, and he brushed the back of his palm mercilessly against them, coughing and spitting out any dust that got into his nose and throat.

It didn't help.

…Please…

All sounds were distant, like they were not even here, screams and shrieks of the Abyssal creatures left without a force that summoned them, writhing into disfigured cadavers, fading and melting into the air as their Plane dragged back their remains. He ignored them, his swift frantic steps crunching over the scalded ground, gaze flicking from one agonized form to another, discharging them all, for he was searching for her, the small lean frame he had seen only briefly – before it was wiped away by the power of the gust.

…Please…

The only word that pulsed within his mind seemed to fall in rhythm with the pumping of blood in his veins. The word that he kept repeating from the moment he hadn't found her beside him, among other villagers.

…Please…

Blindly, he stumbled over the body, almost falling, and took an abrupt turn, blots of darkness dancing before his eyes, ashy butterflies of unconsciousness. He blinked them away angrily, looking down with both relief and terror, realizing it was her he nearly stepped on – but dismissed every feeling in the face of need, dropping to his knees. Letting go of his bow, he began to tear the gloves off, invoking any scraps of healing magic he could muster, while his eyes roamed over her painfully arching body, looking for the wounds he intended to heal.

"Don't move," he said – no – ordered, and the sound of his voice snatched her hazy floating gaze to him, locking it on his face, as if only now she became aware of his presence.

A cry tried to escape her lips – but all that did was a weak quiet wheeze. Her fingers trembled on the sword's hilt, golden hair smoldered just like the grass she was lying on, smoke rising from her clothes. He was relieved to see that her burns seemed more of singes, not as horrible as they could be. But the relief disappeared quickly, for she shuddered, like she was lying on a bed of needles, and it took him a few – damned – moments to realize what it was.

The mail.

The accursed chainmail she had put on right over the night-gown, red-hot and nearly molten, stung her body, got burned into her flesh, like in hearth of forge under the smith's hammer. He grasped her collar, barely acknowledging pain in his hands, trying to tear the mail open, to free her. Uselessly. But she finally managed to scream, and that high-pitched shriek cut into his ears, his very soul, to haunt his dreams, to awaken him in dead of night for years to come. With fury of despair he was tearing up welded steel links and buckles that cleaved to his palms, peeling off his skin, but – again - it didn't matter. What mattered were her pale eyes, wide, filled with agony that turned his own pain into nothing.

The chainmail finally burst, and he threw it aside, ripping her fuming gown, allowing her to breathe. She didn't scream anymore, didn't even move, giving only slight jerks when his fingers brushed against her burns covered by shreds of clothes and skin. Tears oozed down her cheeks, slowly, just like the blood that stood out on his nearly kilned palms.

"…Cold," the words seemed pushed with force, coming out of her in faint shocks, she was gasping for air. "…So cold, my love…"

…Please…

"It will be alright," his own voice seemed alien to him – even and calm, so unlike the boiling of torment inside of him. He allowed that boiling to course through his body, his veins, forming its heat into the coolness of divine magic.

She tried saying something else, but all sounds merged into one lingering moan, that was cut short by another bout of convulsive breathing. He placed his palms on her chest, sending magics into her – and clenched his teeth, suppressing a desperate howl caused by the feeling of his spell dissolving, sinking helplessly in the severity of her injures. Her eyes roamed over the sky above them, from side to side, until got fixed on him once more, narrowed from pain and exertion, parted lips trembling. Almost involuntarily, he leaned closer to her, catching her whisper, those heart-ripping attempts at words.

"Esme," her parched lips forced out. "Child."

"They are well," he lied. He didn't know what happened to them, and he couldn't tear himself in two in order to search for them. Just like he couldn't tell these fading tortured eyes the truth.

But he didn't even need to. Her head moved to the side, then to another one in slow shake of denial, with her eyes still fixed on him, and he felt close to begging her to look away – just for a moment, for a heartbeat, to allow him concentrate, heal her, save her.

…Please…

Her eyes suddenly widened, and she pushed herself upwards, to him, closer, burnt lips moving, trying to form other words – and he reached forwards to grab her, steady her - but before he could, her body quivered with last cramp, and she collapsed back on the ground, limp and soft, and her head rolled to the side, turning her blank unseeing gaze off him.

...

He didn't move, looking at her face,

…breathe…

searching carefully for any signs that it wasn't true,

…breathe…

watching from aside as his own fingers

…breathe!

travelled to her eyes…

…breathe!

to lower her lids, still warm and horribly pliable under his touch.

BREATHE!

And he breathed, drew in a whole chest of air, crisp and bitter, so much of it that his lungs felt close to exploding. And brushed the back of his palm against his eyes, stinging and moist. And smoke had nothing to do with it.

"…Daeghun?" came a strained male voice from behind him, followed by rustle of footsteps, that stopped, leaving only deep haggard breathing. "Gods… Shayla, she is…?"

"Dead," Dead – and, spoken, it became true. As true as a slap to the face. Taking another breath, he got up to his feet, leaving some part of him lying there, on the ground, screaming, crying, clawing at her slowly cooling body, clutching her to him, scratching her out from whatever place she had gone to, back… "Yes, she is dead."

"Oh gods…"

He turned his head, his glance meeting other eyes, so much akin to his own, eyes of someone he knew, but couldn't recall, couldn't find the memory in the white thick haze that his mind had become.

Who are you? – he almost wondered, but then remember. Duncan. Duncan, his half-brother, eyes searching his face, as if asking, pleading for something…

"And Esmerelle?" Duncan's voice sounded more of a croak, like he already knew. Perhaps, he did.

Daeghun tore his gaze away from his brother's face, dragging it wearily across the remnants of the village – and felt his chest fill with nagging icy heaviness at how still those remnants were.

As if the whole world had died with her.

The first step was the hardest – the first step away from her, step that meant leaving her – and his feet slowly took the speed, carrying him deeper into the battlefield. Another healing spell, unused and useless, tickled the tips of his fingers. Reeking wind blew on him, through him, whining in the twists of a gaping hole in his self. A moment crawled, and Duncan fell in his steps, his eyes darting around – just like his own some time before.

…before…

He reminded himself to breathe again.

The grass, even burnt as it was, came to an end, revealing soil, bald dead patch in a form of a macabre huge star, parched and black, branded into the ground. For a moment his eyes caught some glimpse, grey against the blackness, and he stopped in his tracks, suddenly hit by the unsuitableness of that merry silver flicker among cold empty death. But before he could see to it, Duncan brushed past him with a gasp that was supposed to be words – and he turned again, seeing his brother slumped to knees, grabbing one of the bodies, turning it, shaking.

"Come here!" Duncan snarled, his voice almost commanding, something the half-elven youth never allowed himself when addressing him – but right then and there Daeghun couldn't care less. He heard the desperation behind the snarl, behind denial – and in his own cold half-dead mind guessed that his presence wasn't really that needed. That his healing spell would stay useless. There was no one to heal. No one to save. Not anymore.

Yet he advanced, out of respect and kinship if of nothing else, looking down at the woman's body held in Duncan's arms, her lifeless face floating above Duncan's trembling shoulder, dark hair clinging to blood and dirt streaking her cheeks. There was another face, small, shrunken in pain, also smeared in blood that could not hide the purple colour of suffocation, as her mother's embrace was cramped into a mortal grip by the last convulsion of pain, strangling the very child she meant to save at the cost of her life.

Lives of them both.

Oh, the irony.

…Breathe…

…Yes…

"…They…?" Duncan gulped in the air greedily, steadying himself. He was a strong lad, he had to admit, had always been – and will always be.

"Yes."

"…Why? It's…" he didn't finish, gritting his teeth, and Daeghun watched, detached, not here, as his brother took a hold of Esmerelle's pale hands, carefully (as if it mattered) peeling them off, to free the child, strangled child, killed twice child, and, gods, he wanted to scream. Just toss his head back and shriek at the sky until his throat went sore, until his lungs explode, his vocal cords split. But none of it came out. It never did. "Daeghun…? I…" Duncan's voice changed, became more frantic, just like his movements – he was no longer peeling off Esme's grip, he was wrenching it. "I think she's…"

And then came the scream. The sound he never thought such small chest could produce, scream that was hungry for air, for life, scream not of pain, no – scream of pure rage at the pain, at the cold, wordless, meaningless, but so clear, so strong that for a second it iced him to the spot.

"She's alive!"

As if that inhuman yell of fury needed confirmation.

And his hands were already on her, covering a gash in the tiny chest, the power of bloodstream hitting his fingers, hitting through them, flowing free in-between – but he didn't allow, not this time, channeling all he had and could into the spell, its coldness clawing through his flesh into hers, filling the small vessel of her body, just enough for her.

Just enough.

The flow ebbed away – both of blood and of magic – and Daeghun moved back, sitting, falling, leaving Duncan to cradle the screaming child, to sob in relief, and finally threw his head back, staring at the night sky.

Drained.

Empty.

ooooooooooooooo

They were coming back. One by one, or in pairs, or in small family-herds, friend-packs… Each one of them – towards what was left of their homes. Just like he did, sitting on the parched wooden stairs she would never stand on, his elbows placed on his knees, his hands hanging limply between his legs, watching them coming back from the swamp. There was so many of them, he realized, so many – that the only two deaths seemed even more unacceptable. The child was silent, wrapped in some dirty blanked, placed in a torn woven basket Duncan had found. Her bloodloss was severe, dropping her into half-slumber, half-unconsciousness – but silencing her. He would have thanked the gods. But he no longer wanted to.

Some of the humans looked at him, unmoving, blood-covered, but averted their gazes quickly. Some lingered, some even stopped. He recognized Retta, her grey misty eyes sad on him, her first-born, Lorne, staring blankly, old enough to comprehend what happened, but not old enough to handle. Daeghun didn't rise to meet any of them as they came back, leaving that, too, to Duncan, who still had the strength to help, to do something – or plainly too pained and terrified to stop.

But they were coming back. From the same swamp he had led them to, from the hiding places he had shown them…

For a moment, for a heartbeat, but he wished he had not.

And so he looked away, unable to see them without hating them, and focused his gaze on a small pale dirty face. Sleepy weary eyes looked back at him from under lowered lids. His own eyes closed, then opened, slowly, heavily, and he sucked in another breath, covering them with his palm, grazing his fingers along his lids, squeezing out rare drops of moisture from under them, rushing it towards the bridge of his nose - where he wiped it away, without a trace, pretending it was never there.

"We'll be fine, child," he said quietly to the human girl. "We'll be fine."

She didn't answer, closing her eyes fully and succumbing to sleep.

Blessed.