"A woman alone and in distress."
A tall, statuesque beauty clothed in a simple white gown walked into the dim light. With glistening olive skin, high cheeks, and proud emerald eyes, her face was as regal as it was stunning – and it was one the Amnesian Hero knew as well as he knew his own.
"Perhaps you would be kind enough to escort me to a safer part of the city?" The woman glanced around the dark room as though surprised to find herself in such a place. "I seem to have lost my way."
The Amnesian Hero slipped from his hiding place and crept forward, barely able to hold his tongue. Jayk grabbed his arm and pulled him back, then gently closed the storeroom door.
"Zoombee, what has happened to you?" she hissed. "We're almost safe!"
The Thrasson pressed his eye to the peephole. "It's her! The woman who appears-" He almost whispered 'when I drink wine,' but caught himself and said instead, "The one I know from before!"
"Pah! That cannot be."
In the main room, Tessali was rubbing his chin and studying the woman with a thoughtful air. "This is a bad district for a woman of your… appearances. How did you come to be here?"
The woman shook her head, her expression dazed. "I cannot – I honestly don't know. I was at home, then this."
"Yes, perhaps you should come with me." Tessali wrapped an arm around her shoulder, then glanced at Brill. "Is her account settled?"
Even the slaad could not think quickly enough to make a profit from her unexpected appearance. He only shook his head, croaking, "Didn't know she was here."
"Good." Tessali motioned for his remaining guard to open the door. "We'll be going."
"No," gasped the Amnesian Hero.
He tried to pull the door open, but found it blocked by Jayk.
"Zoombee, don't be a fool!"
"I can't let him take her!" the Thrasson whispered. "She knows who I am!"
"What is she doing here? How did she find you?" Jayk demanded. "This woman, she must be a sleepcaster's trick."
"Out of my way!"
The Thrasson pushed Jayk away, then remembered the portal and fumbled around in the darkness until he found the wine. He returned to the door and jerked it open, but by then Tessali had already taken the woman and left. The Amnesian Hero raised the jug to his lips, then rushed across the threshold, leaving both the amphora and his tiefling guide behind. Dabus
Dim has fallen over the city. It would be wrong to call it dusk; there are no rays of sunlight fanning up from the skyline, no silverlit clouds hanging low over the horizon, no deepening hues of blue spreading across the heavenly vault. There is only the waxing gray gloom, spilling from the alcoves and niches of the city's hundred-thousand hovels, spreading over the scum-coated cobblestones, rising like a ground fog to fill the avenues with a thickening ashen murk. In Sigil, we have no twilights before the dawns, no endings presaging fresh beginnings, no deaths begetting new births; we have only that eternal ashen instant that follows what was and precedes what will be, that wavering gray span that separates the dying and the death.
Once the Amnesian Hero has dodged past the rutterkin tables and dashed by Brill's gloomy counter and burst from Rivergate's doors, it is into this gray eventide that he stumbles. Already has the street filled with the scuttling denizens of the night: bustling, dark-cloaked figures who melt into the shadows as suddenly as they emerge. Already has the throng swallowed Tessali and the white-gowned beauty, carried them into the ashen gloom and swept clean their trail. Already has the Thrasson lost his quarry and his good sense as well; he will go after the woman, search her out in winding lanes he has never walked.
Still clutching the jug of Rivergate wine and watching for a flash of white dress in the dimness ahead, the Amnesian Hero raced down the street. When he found only skulking figures camouflaged in night-gray cloaks or armored in spiked plate, he turned and rushed in the opposite direction. The cobblestones rattled with the sound of claws on stone, and the air stank of acrid, lower-planar sweat. Sporadic screams of anguish rose and fell in the distant darkness; the clamor of clashing steel grew common, and the din of growling voices became a constant rumble. Twilight had fallen in the district of blood.
Realizing that he was in danger of losing his way back to Rivergate, the Thrasson ceased his running. "Tessali!"
Had the elf actually answered, the Amnesian Hero might have come to his senses and given some thought to his actions. What would he do? Try to explain that he was not "barmy," then demand the return of a woman whose name he could not recall? As it was, the Thrasson's voice merely vanished into the general roar. He found himself standing alone and ignored in a street bustling with brutish beings, his mind still clouded by Rivergate's powerful libation, not quite able to comprehend how he had again lost the one woman who could possibly tell him his name.
The Amnesian Hero fixed a wary gaze on the dark figures streaming past. Had he seen one of the ghastly brutes skulking the streets of Thrassos, he would have drawn his sword on the spot and driven it from the city. Now, he found himself in need of their aid and ready to ask it. Wondering how he had fallen so low, he took another swig from his jug and stepped into the path of an ember-eyed shadow.
"If you would be kind enough to offer your indulgence…"
"Out the way, bubber!" As the creature spoke, its lips were illuminated by a faint, fiery glow deep in its gullet. "I'll scorch ya!"
It sidestepped the Thrasson, buffeting him with a murky wing that suddenly unfolded from its back. The Amnesian Hero accepted the indignity with atypical restraint, more interested in finding his white-gowned woman than teaching proper manners. He grabbed the next figure in line, a lanky slope-shouldered brute in scale armor, and dragged him to a stop.
"A moment of your-"
Something long and snaky lashed over the fellow's shoulder and pinged off the Amnesian Hero's bronze armor. The Thrasson glimpsed the form of a thick scaly tail arcing away, then felt the tip of a dagger pressed up beneath his jaw.
"Le'go-n-step'way, berk." The voice was raspy, the breath foul. "Maybe I don' killya."
The Amnesian Hero calmly released the brute's arm and grabbed his knife hand instead. With a quick twist against the joint, the Thrasson turned the dagger away and, in the same motion, forced his adversary to his knees. He found himself looking down at a gaunt, scaled face with sunken eyes, an arrow-shaped nose, and a row of tiny tusks rising from behind a pouting lower lip. The fellow was one of the barbazu, a race of minor fiends the Thrasson had encountered when Apollo sent him to deliver a message to the Lord of the Stinking Mire.
"You have no cause for alarm." The Amnesian Hero twisted the barbazu's wrist until the dagger came free and clattered onto the cobblestones. "Nor do you have need of weapons."
The crowd parted and continued to scurry past, giving wide berth to the confrontation. Any human that could drop a barbazu to his knees was not to be bothered – especially in this part of Sigil, where strength was the only law.
The Amnesian Hero said, "I only want to ask about Tessali."
"Who?" The fiend's tail appeared above his shoulder, but hovered there and did not strike; there would have been no purpose, as the bony end-barb had broken off the first time it hit the Thrasson's armor. "D'ya think I know every…"
"An elf. He has a human with him, a beautiful woman."
The barbazu's gaze flickered to the wine jug, which the Amnesian Hero still held in his free hand, then over the rest of the Thrasson's body.
"The elf's armor red?" The fiend's speech was still raspy, but less urgent now.