The Glass Prison

Mela

But what if Vheod was right? What if Mela

"What's it like to believe in something so wholeheartedly?" Vheod asked her, staring straight ahead is he walked, "How can you trust in what you believe? And if the god you serve is truly worthy of service, how can you know that you are worthy to serve?" Vheod looked up at her. "I'm sorry. I have no business asking such-"

"No, that's quite all right." Mela

"Proof that Our Mother is worthy of worship is all around you. Didn't you say yesterday that you found our world beautiful? That's the work of Chauntea." She forced herself to smile, hoping it would cover for the fact that she left his last question unanswered. Vheod just nodded, and didn't press any further. Whitlock remained closed mouthed. He obviously didn't trust Vheod. His every ma

When darkness overcame the vale through which they traveled, the three of them stopped to sleep for the night. Vheod helped Whitlock gather wood for a fire. Neither of them spoke, but both kept a sharp eye out for more gnolls.

Mela

He happily accepted the berries, as well as leftover meat from some game birds Whitlock had killed the previous morning. While they ate, Whitlock muttered quietly about needing to hunt again the next day. Vheod pla

Removing his breastplate, Vheod stretched out near the fire. The heat didn't bother him. Night birds, insects, and the crackling fire made the only noise for quite some time. To Vheod it seemed there were a great many birds in the area, but he realized it was probably normal and thought nothing more of it. Like the previous night, the three of them didn't really know what to say to each other. Unlike the last night, however, they weren't so exhausted that they collapsed into almost immediate sleep. Mela

"Do you know anything about these green stones?" She held up a small glassy stone she'd pulled from her pouch, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger. It was lustrous and sparkled in the firelight, Vheod reached toward her with his hand open. She cropped the stone into his palm, and he felt the stone's smooth surface between his fingers.

He shook his head and said, "No, I've no idea. Does t have meaning?"

“I’m begi

Vheod nodded and looked again at the stone. "Do you think," he asked her slowly, "it has anything to do with us, or with Chare'en?"

“I’m not sure, but I have a feeling it does." Vheod just nodded again. He kept the stone. Mela

Vheod should have been prepared for this, he realized, but he wasn't. Surely these two, particularly Mela

Perhaps she didn't truly understand what he was. All the more reason not to tell them.

Vheod swallowed his food and lied, "There's really very little to tell."

"Oh, I find that remarkably hard to believe," she replied. Her eyes widened. "I mean, you don't even come from this world. That alone is the most incredible thing I've ever heard."

"Well, as I said yesterday, my family-my mothers side-came from this world. I understand they were great sorcerers."

"That figures," Whitlock added with his mouth full.

Mela

"I grew up on the streets of a city called Broken Reach. I met many… unique individuals there." Vheod chortled humorlessly. "It's more cosmopolitan than you might think. Creatures from hundreds of worlds and planes walked those streets. That's where I first heard of Toril. In Broken Reach I learned to be a thief first, a warrior second, and a wizard last. Each type of skill was helpful in my survival. You see, they don't care for my kind in the Abyss. I was looked down on because I was a half-breed."

"I imagine they didn't like the other differences you displayed as well," Mela

Vheod thought for a moment. Tanar'ri live in dark, tortuous places and think only of death and rage. Life in this world was more than that.

"I hated them," he answered finally – "I hated what they did to me, and I hated to think of myself as one of them. I never really gave it much more thought than that. I rarely had time to think about whether what I was doing was evil or not."

Before he could stop to think, he found himself continuing on. "Don't get me wrong. In the Abyss I learned to steal, to kill, and to do as I wanted. I worked as a professional assassin." Vheod sighed deeply and looked at the ground. "Just before I left I was hired by a tanar'ri named Nethess to kill a man, and I found I couldn't do it. I'd killed tanar'ri before-and other monstrous things-but I couldn't kill this mortal man. Something stayed my hand. I'm really not sure what it was. For my troubles, I was hounded until I fled. I wound up here."