The Sterile Queen is the sharpest tool of all possessed by the Mother of the Son of the Black Moon. A gentle breeze is louder than her footsteps, dry stone more relenting than her performance of duty, and none possess her skills.
Above everything, even the love for her Step-Mother, is her love for her brother, the Herald of Carnage himself.
-Honored Disciple Atonaclese,
Chroniclers of the Son of the Black Moon
Gasping, the little Peeper drug itself up another step, crying out in pain as its weight landed on its bad leg. Tears rolling out of its eyes, it hopped down the hallway, limping so badly it almost fell over, would have fell over if not for its tail giving it extra balance.
It rounded the corner of the long hallway its eyes could see Fraker laying face down in a room, and it began hurrying down the hallway, crying out softly every time its weight was put on its scarred leg. Tears ran down the side of its little head, slipping down its neck, to drip off of its sides. It was rushing now, hurrying toward the prone body of the massive human, its own pain forgotten as it rushed toward the fallen hero. It was making distressed peeping noises, sounds of hurt from pain that had nothing to do with its lamed leg.
The Peeper rushed into the room, ignoring everything but Fraker, climbing up the hero's calf and limping along his leg, then his back, until it could bury its little head in Fraker's hair and collapse against the hero's thick neck. It shuddered as it crooned softly, crying out in pain when its leg twisted.
"What is that disgusting little beast?" A cold voice asked, and the Peeper froze.
"A baby kobold, great one." Another voice answered, and the Peeper shivered in fear, lifting its head up. Its eyes opened in shock when it saw that Fraker's head was surrounded by a vast pool of blood and the giant's eyes were open, staring at nothing. It grabbed Fraker's hair and began pulling on it, peeping desperately, trying to wake Fraker up, pleading with the giant to wake up, to get up.
A shadow fell over the Peeper, and the little lizard looked up, staring at the pale, cadaverous figure above him. The baby kobold looked into the blue eyes, then darted a glance at the fish-belly white hands to see them covered in blood, the left hand holding onto a dagger. Its eyes narrowed as it recognized the dagger as one of Fraker's own boot daggers.
"Kill the disgusting little thing." The cold voice ordered, and the Peeper reared back, hissing defiantly.
Without a word, the black clad figure stepped forward and the Peeper threw itself forward, using the powerful muscles of its tail to launch itself in the air, its mouth open and fangs gleaming in the dim light.
Its crippled leg had betrayed it, however, and instead of landing on the black clad man's chest and latching onto his throat, the Peeper instead flew to one side, landing on the floor with a pitiful plop, another cry of pain torn from its little body.
The man just kicked the Peeper, the silver-chased toe of his boot catching it in its soft belly, burying deep, and blood burst from the Peeper's mouth as it arced through the air to slam into the wall. The pitiful little body fell to the floor, forgotten as the man turned back to the shadowy presence in the far corner of the room.
"And now, great one?" The cadaverous man asked.
"Now, we leave. My revenge has finally begun."
The two figures left the room together, shutting the door behind them.
Against the wall the little figure stirred, a low croon of pain sounding out, followed by tiny coughs. Crooning to itself, to the fallen hero, the baby kobold pushed itself forward with one foot, slowly and painfully, inch by inch, until it was nestled up against Fraker's neck, against the back of the dead hero's head. It began to purr, a sad, broken noise instead of the steady rumble it usually made. The Peeper nuzzled's head against Fraker's hair, crooned softly, then went limp, still purring brokenly.
It shivered a little, coughed a spray of bright blood into the pool of Fraker's blood, and went still. The purring stopped.
Back in the bedroom a windup monkey rolled out of the pouch the Peeper had vacated, landing on the floor. It began clapping its cymbals together, playing a lively tune, until it slowly wound down and stopped.
* * * * *
"Don't run, you'll only die tired and be all sweaty in the Queue of the Dead!" Aveliene crowed out, her feet skipping across the rooftop of the Novak-Eck insula. She jumped over the skylights, skipped across the throat, and leapt from the top of the ten-story apartment building to the eight story storefront building across the alley. Ahead of her the man she was hunting was jumping to the next building, leaping up to the wall of the massive public insula and using the same magic that let him jump yards across and up to scale the wall.
Aveliene jumped up and hit the wall, scaling the wall quickly with the talons on her fingers and the cleats on her boots. Her talons penetrated the alchemically treated concrete wall and allowed her to use it t o quickly head up. Her mouth was flooded with a sweet taste, her muscles were thrumming, her reflexes amped up, and her senses were widened out to the point she could tell the insects floating around her and the taste of the concrete dust with the bitter taste of the alchemical treatment. Even though her target was yards ahead of her she could hear his hard breathing; smell his sweat, the soap he had used the day before, the hair coloring he had used, the faint salt from the ocean; taste his unique scent on her tongue and the concrete dust; and feel the way the breeze curled through the alley and streets to updraft off the buildings.
He had no chance of escaping even if he got out of sight or dropped into a crowd. She knew everything about him, knew him intimately in ways not even his lovers knew him, and had known since the second she had sniffed her little brother's body.
"There's no where in the cosmos you can hide from me, Lurven duParkering." She shouted. "I will never stop hunting you and even IV herself cannot protect you from me. Even in the Hells you cannot hide yourself from me or find those willing to protect you." She swung up over edge, tilting her head to avoid the hand crossbow bolt that shot just under her earlobe. "A crossbow, seriously? I'm going to take that bolt and used it to geld you!" Aveliene shouted. Her kick at the arc of the swing twirled her around and she landed on her feet on the middle of the skylight, taking two steps before leaping at the wall of the opposing insula. She quickly clambered up the wall and flipped over the far edge, spreading her legs open to allow the crossbow bolt to pass through without grazing the leather on her legs. She put her heels together, capturing the crossbow bolt.
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"My brother Pliazli shot at me with a better crossbow than that every day for fifty years, you half-trained guttersnipe spawn!" Aveliene yelled.
She knew she was angry, and eons of training urged her to stabilize her two heartbeats, regulate her breathing, control her limbic system, and clear her mind to avoid anything that would weaken her skills.
Instead she allowed her anger to sharpen her senses, increase her strength, increase her reflexes, and completely cast aside the masks she had worn for the lifetimes of mortals. Her eyes were jade green, no other color, too wide and tilted too far for human, her nose was broader than normal, her lower jar extended out too far and was too heavy, her mouth was full of triple rows of serrated shark-like teeth, her cheekbones too high and her face angular. Her fingers had lengthened, four joints per finger, four-inch long razor sharp talons extending out from the end of her fingers, and the humanity she wore as a mask was discarded completely.
Another crossbow bolt went by and Aveliene plucked it out of the air with the flick of her wrist, tucking it into her hair and still running across the rooftop. She was gaining on her prey, which was jumping from the side of the insula and down into the alleyway below.
Aveliene didn't bother looking or preparing her jump, just dover headfirst into the alley, kicking off a brick to flip over feet down and landing on the ground right behind the man, who was caught holding still, waiting for his magic boots to finish bleeding off the kinetic energy from his jump.
"Hah! Gotcha!" Aveliene cried out, snatching him by his ponytail. It came off in her hand, suddenly transforming into a live viper that twisted and tried to bite her. "Oh please, I invented that trick." She slapped the viper upside the guy's head twice, the head popping off the viper the second hit, at the same time as she grabbed the guy by the neck, sinking her talons into the side of his neck.
"Cheap boots, old tricks, stupid stupid human." She said, tightening her grip. The man's arms and legs quit twitching as her talons pierced the nerve clusters. "You know who I am?"
"The Sterile Queen." The man choked out.
"Then you know why I am here, you donkey ejaculate drinking idiot." Aveliene snarled, pulling the man back and slamming him against the brick wall. The man's magical protection flared and crumbled as the wall's reinforcement magic, combined with Aveliene's anger fueled strength, overwhelmed it and the magic crackled around the two. The arcane energy tore into the man, savaging flesh and nerve, making the man scream in agony. Aveliene's innate protection just shunted the arcane energy into the reservoir inside of her, making her eyes glow slightly.
"It won't matter." The man grunted.
"It will to you." Aveliene smiled, her smile widening out to show the tearing teeth that were in place of normal human's molars.
"What?" The man choked as Aveliene squeezed tighter.
Aveliene pushed her face into the man's, her long tongue coming out and stroking along his neck to taste the blood tricking from where her talons had punctured his flesh. She sniffed him, once, twice, then a third time.
"What did I do?" The man asked. "Why does the Immortal Elba want me dead?"
"Oh, not just her, sweetling." Aveliene murmured. She reached up with one hand and began climbing the wall of the twelve story building next to her, ascending it quickly and effortlessly. "You did a very very bad thing, and there is a lot of people who will want you dead."
"What, what did I do?" The man choked as Aveliene moved over the roof and pressed him hard against the top of the abandoned insula's roof.
"You know what you did. I smelled you all over him and that poor peeper." Aveliene snarled. She raised up her talon and scraped down his cheek, laying it open to the bone.
"Who? I've been out of town for a week." The man gasped once he was done screaming.
"Don't lie to me. You think I can't tell your smell?" Aveliene said, holding one talon in front of the man's eye. The light of the red and white moons glinted off the talon as she lowered it to his eyebow. "Did you know that I can track a single smell across the Six Worlds? Your smell was all over my little brother when I found him."
The man suddenly blushed and Aveliene leaned down and sniffed closer. "Oh." She said softly. She sniffed again. "Umm. Yeah. So... how long?" She licked the man's cheek and the wound sealed up beneath her tongue. She removed her talons, licked the wounds, and sat up, looking down at the man she was straddling. "How long have you... umm... known Fraker?"
"Twelve years." He admitted, blushing.
Aveliene leaned back, staring up at the stars and the three moons in the sky. "So when were you with him last?"
"Last night."
"He spent the night at your house?"
"Yes."
"Did he leave that night?"
"Yes."
"And the peeper?"
"Sleeping in my daughter's toys until he left. My wife fed him each time we took a break."
"Wife? My my my." Aveliene smiled. She shook her head. "Ah, Novak. All right, which organization do you normally take employment with?"
"The Knights of Bhaal." He shrugged. "I'm a Church Expediter."
"Really? Huh. All right, listen close." Aveliene leaned in. "Someone killed my brother last night." The man's eyes opened wide and he made a low moan of pain and shook his head. "Whoever did it knew what they were doing. They killed Fraker and his peeper, but did not rob him. Your smell was all over them."
"May I see the body?" The man asked.
Aveliene nodded, reaching into her pocket and dropping a small runestone with her personal sigil on it. "Your wife, did she care for him?"
"Very much, Oh Queen." The man said, his voice breaking for a moment. "As did I."
"I wish him interred. I will be busy." Aveliene stood up and turned around. She took four steps and went to dive off the roof. "Withdraw the money from the Novak bank in my name. The runestone will tell all who see that your words are spoken in my voice"
"Sterile Queen?" The man called out. "Kill him, in the name of my wife, myself, the three of our's children, and everyone who loves him."
Aveliene dove off the roof.
* * * * *
Aveliene carefully crawled across the wall, sniffing closely at the paint and the moldings on the walls. She climbed up to the ceiling and sniffed closely, tasting things off and on as slowly moved forward.
Fraker had left his room, taken six steps down the hallway, and been killed by his own bootknife being driven into the base of his skull. The peeper had left the belt pouch, hobbled down the hallway, and was then killed by a hard kick with a pointed boot with engraved tips. The only scents were Fraker, the peeper, and the man and his wife who Fraker had a relationship with. There were no tastes that she could detect beyond her brother or the peeper or the people he had been spending time with.
Her brother tasted, as always, of old blood, sweat, adrenaline, steel, magic, and everything else that made up both him and his lifestyle. The peeper smelled like normal, and Aveliene could smell the fact that it had eaten beef stew, it's ingredients and spices same as the man she had tracked had eaten earlier that day. What little that was left after Fraker had left the room all smelled and tasted correctly, and Aveliene could detect no other scents.
Which told her a lot.
The maids had found Fraker's body. People had come up to look, the guard had come up and examined the body as well as removed it. Maids had cleaned the hallway and the Novak-Eck Hammers had removed all of Fraker's possessions.
Yet Aveliene could smell nothing but Fraker, the peeper, and the small family that Fraker had been visiting with.
She couldn't even smell her own distinctive scent.
That alone told her she would have to move beyond her original scope. It meant that whoever had killed her brother had obtained arcane or divine magic use to assist them, that they had planned carefully to avoid any type of reflex or