Baldur's gate II_ throne of Bhaal - Drew Karpyshyn [14]
Instinctively, his hand reached over his shoulder to feel the reassuring touch of his broadsword's hilt, strapped to his back as it had been in his dream. This time, however, the Abyssal plane was somehow different. For one thing, this was no dream. Abdel had been conscious and fully awake when he felt the mortal world slipping away-or was it he who had slipped away? And his left arm still dripped blood from the ragged wounds inflicted by the arrows of the huntress in the clearing. But it was more than the awareness that this was no dream that differentiated the void from the last time he had been here.
He felt ground beneath his feet. At least, he felt as if he was standing on something solid, though when he looked down there was nothing there. The endless gray surrounding him was altered as well. Instead of a bleak plane of nonexistent nothingness, Abdel felt himself to be lost within obscuring mist. There was something in this plane, something concealed by the fog. Unlike his dream world, this place was not an empty void, it was a place of secrets.
As if responding to his inner realization, the mists parted slightly to reveal the outlines of several doors standing upright within the clouds. Abdel hesitated, then approached. The words of the cloaked being from his dream came back to Abdel-this place was Bhaal's realm, a plane in the Abyss once ruled by the Lord of Murder, shaped by the will of Abdel's evil, immortal father.
Despite this, Abdel still felt he had little to fear from simply examining a door. Actually opening the portal, Abdel noted to himself, was another matter entirely.
How could he open a door that wasn't attached to anything? Each of the portals just hung in the air with no frame, no walls, no hinges. Just the doors, five in all. Built from solid, stout oak they were remarkable in neither size nor shape. They bore no ornamentation save for a simple, functional handle. In fact, there was nothing unusual about the doors at all-except for their surroundings, or lack of surroundings, to be more precise.
Abdel drew his great sword and cautiously circled the free-standing portals, looking for something. He didn't find it.
"Hello?" he called out at last, not sure whether he expected the being from his dream to appear and answer him. His voice echoed back at him from the gray mists.
"Is anybody here?" Abdel called again.
The voice that came back to him from the mist was not the chorus of the creature that he expected, but it was a voice Abdel recognized all too well.
"I am here, brother. As are you."
A figure emerged from the mist, a man from Abdel's past. He was clad from head to toe in black, metal armor. Many of the heavy iron plates were adorned with razor-sharp blades, making the suit both a defensive and offensive instrument of war. The fierce warrior stood well over seven feet tall, one of the few humans who had ever been able to look Abdel directly in the eye. Their similarity of stature was not surprising, given that the man was Abdel's half brother whom Abdel had killed in the town of Baldur's Gate-Sarevok.
Sarevok had not stepped out from the cover of the obscuring mist into view as Abdel might have expected. He had coalesced into view, solidifying into existence not ten feet in front of Abdel's disbelieving eyes.
Abdel shook his head and tightened his grip on his sword, ignoring the flare of pain that shot up through his injured left arm and into his shoulder. "I killed you," he said, half to himself. "You're dead."
His half brother laughed in a deep, joyless rumble. "And was not your lover, Jaheira, once dead as well, my brother? Yet the priests of Gond brought her back. Death is not always the end."
At least he wasn't armed, Abdel noticed. The dark blade Sarevok had wielded during their duel beneath Baldur's Gate was nowhere to be seen. Still, the big sellsword didn't drop his guard. If Abdel was careless enough to let his half brother