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The Aurora shimmered across the sky, the coruscating colors forming ever-shifting patterns and chaos, all at once. The tiefling observed it with rapt attention. Tonight's display was continuing to be the most complex one he had ever seen in his over four decades of observing the northern skies.
Not daring to look away, lest he miss a permutation, Stienn scrawled a notation on the parchment tacked to a board on the ground beside him. There was something important happening, very soon, the signs were there. Pulura, Mistress of the Aurora Iobara, definitely had a message for him. He had to be sure he received the message correctly, and cross-referenced it with the portents he had read in the stars the night before.
Sometimes his angelic patron’s messages sent him to help a homesick traveler find their way in the dark. Sometimes it was intelligence he was to deliver to a passing Mendevian Crusader scout. He had once helped direct a Crusader patrol to intercept a demon raid before it ransacked a village. Other times, it was simply comfort for his lonely demon-tainted heart. An assurance that someone out there in the planes cared about him.
The lights faded, the oracle scratched a final notation. With a reluctant sigh, he lowered his gaze.
Stienn muttered to himself in Abyssal as he calculated. Speaking the language didn't annoy him as much as it used to. It always happened when he was under pressure, no matter how much he tried to stop it. It had caused a lot of trouble and abuse growing up, though. His very existence reminded his mother of her years of captivity in the Abyss. But this speech as well? No one had taught him the language, and no one had understood it except that it was demon-speech. When he had randomly spoken it in times of stress there had been attempts by his mother or other villagers to “beat it out of him”. Which, of course, had only made the stress worse. He had eventually just stopped speaking altogether, unless it was absolutely necessary.
He didn't completely blame his mother, though, his demon-blooded nature scared himself sometimes. It was also difficult to think ill of the poor anguished woman who had gone to her rest over 30 years ago.
He did, though, whisper a quick prayer of thanks, once again, for the mysterious stranger. He had freed Stienn's mother and a handful of other women from the Abyss. All Stienn's mother had ever said about her demonic rescuer was that he was uncommonly kind for an incubus, and had been fleeing the Abyss himself.
There, the calculations were finished. Now to ponder their results against the translation charts he had crafted over years of careful observation.
“A great time of danger, and opportunity, powerful forces are at work.” Stienn traced a grey-skinned finger across his notes, making connections. “Long-lost family, rediscovered. Great heroes descending into darkness to rescue… a herald? Herald of ‘the one who inherited’… Iomedae.”
The tiefling glanced up at the heavens, muttering half to himself, half to his patron. “Is Iomedae’s Herald in trouble?”
He returned to his notes: “...a visitor, or visitors, unlooked-for, but with a personal connection…”
Voices came drifting across the tundra that surrounded Stienn’s stargazing hill.
“Are you sure someone’s out here, Arushelae?” Asked a man’s voice. “You're not just dragging me out here alone in the dark for a bit of fun?”
“Hey! Hands off, Calden,” scolded a woman's voice, teasingly. “I told you, saw him here in my dream, Desna does not lie to me.”
“Hello?” Stienn called out, peering over the edge of the flat-topped hill. “Who's there?”
“Hey, look at that, there is someone up there,” the man said. “Can we come up? My friend says Desna sent her out here to find you, and that I was supposed to come along.”
“Oh, uh, come on up? I guess?” Stienn answered, scratching at the base of one of his glossy ebon horns. He was speaking Abyssal again, but the shapes in the shadows at the edge of his vision seemed to understand it. They began the walk up the winding gravel path.
Stienn considered lighting a lamp, or building a fire, but the visitors weren't carrying any lights, despite the deep darkness of the night. They must be able to see in the darkness as he could. Stienn stood to meet them.
The man and woman were both armored, but their gear was supple, built for fast movements. These two fought with finesse, not power. The man was dark-skinned and dark haired. As he looked up to the hilltop, ambient starlight glinted off of a pair of demonic horns, one of which was broken off halfway. The stranger looked like he was close to Stienn's age, maybe younger. He carried a pair of scimitars sheathed and bound across his back: ease of travel, he wasn't expecting a fight.
The woman followed behind, but not in subservience. She seemed to be more focused on appreciating her companion’s backside and sinuous tail as he climbed the rocks at the edge of the hilltop. As she climbed up, Stienn noticed she too had horns, albeit smaller ones, and what he had taken for a cloak draped across the top of her shoulders was actually folded bat-like wings.
“Greetings!” said the man, speaking common. He pulled off his leather gauntlet and extended a bare hand. “My name is Calden. I’m a scout for the Crusade, and sometimes-bodyguard for redeemed succubi who go dashing off into the night following dreams.” He tilted his head towards the woman as she came up to stand beside him.
Stienn clasped the proffered hand, noting the detailed tattoo on the tiefling man’s forearm, it was of a woman, arms outstretched, her head haloed by a fiery sun. The man was a follower of Sarenrae, goddess of the sun, healing, and redemption.
The woman snorted. “I let you tag along because you're cute when you're trying to protect women who are perfectly capable on their own.” She leaned forward towards Stienn and whispered in a conspiratorial tone: “You should see him around his daughter. She’s a paladin that commands an entire fortress, when she's not leading strike teams into the Abyss. But he hovers around her like a mother hen. My name’s Arushelae, but my friends call me Shae.”
“My name is Stienn,” the stargazer replied, still confused and a little nervous. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Do you always speak Abyssal?” Calden asked. “You obviously understand common…”
“It's a... nervous habit, never been able to control it…” he replied.
Arushelae stepped away from the two men as they continued yammering, talking about where Stienn lived, what he was doing out in the dark in the middle of the night. She wandered a bit around the hilltop, quickly surveying the star charts, notes, reference books, and an elaborate spyglass trained at the skies. This guy would get along well with Lyra, she thought, maybe that's why she was sent out here, to find another diviner?
Shae turned back to look at the pair of tiefling men and froze, struck with a fascinating realization.
“Hey, both of you!” They turned in surprise at her sudden shout.
“Stand next to each other, facing me, yeah, shoulder to shoulder, like that.” It was a bit difficult to see for sure, her vision in the dark did not have much color detail, but the shapes, the features…
“Gods, you two are brothers!” She announced.
“What?” they replied in unison (though Calden said it in the common tongue, and Stienn in Abyssal).
“Yep, brothers, well, half-brothers probably." Shae nodded. "I would bet my soul on it.”
“Shae, you don't have a soul, you're a demon.” Calden joked.
“No, I am a soul, fused with Abyssal matter. At any rate, semantics, to be debated later. My observation still stands. He's a child of Jazeel's, I can feel it.”
“Jazeel?” Stienn asked.
“My father.” Calden responded. “He's a redeemed incubus, he left the Abyss fifty years ago. But he hasn't had any offspring besides me since his escape. I know that for certain.” Calden looked at Shae. "He would have had to have been born in the Abyss to be Jazeel's son. He looks too human for that to be the case..."
“My mother was rescued from the Abyss by an incubus," Stienn replied. "While she was newly pregnant with me. She said the incubus was fleeing the Abyss himself."
"See? It's got to be Jazeel." Shae grinned.
"Well, I’ve never really known, or cared, which demon or demons in particular raped my mother and destroyed her life…” Stienn spoke slowly, but with a growing bitter edge. “But if the demon who rescued her was the same one who sired me, why didn't he ever seek me out? He obviously stuck around enough for you to get to know him after he sired you.” Stienn gestured to Calden angrily.
“He may have never known you exsisted.” Calden said consolingly, laying a hand on Stienn’s shoulder.
“He could have at least come check on us, on the women he rescued and then just abandoned.” The tiefling shot back, shrugging Calden’s hand off his shoulder. Stienn crossed his arms across his chest defensively, his shoulders hunching as he turned and took a few steps away. He stood, fuming in silence for a time.
Calden glanced at Shae awkwardly, unsure what to do. She replied with a shushing gesture, as if to say wait, let him be.
“You want to know my full name?" Stienn murmured finally. "What my mother and the village called me?"
"What was it?" Asked Arushelae softly.
"Blyddstienn.”
Calden shot his female companion a confused look.
“In Hallit, language of the Kellid tribes--” Shae answered, sorrow coloring her voice. “--It means ‘heavy stone’, ‘a burden’.”
“Exactly," Stienn growled. "A burden that dragged my mother to the depths." The tiefling's demon-red eyes glowed as his anger built. "She took her own life to escape me, the horror I represented. I was TEN YEARS OLD!"
“I’m so sorry.” Calden whispered. “I-- I don't know what to say. I lost my mother at a young age too. I can... understand your pain.”
There was an awkward silence as Stienn stared up at the stars. Breathing slowly and deliberately, he let the heavenly lights’ clear bright radiance steady him. He looked in them for guidance, for confirmation or rebuttal of the succubus’ assertion about his father. The stars were unclear. He would have to wait for the Auroras again, they spoke to him more clearly than the stars did.
“So... Shae,” Calden whispered into the silence. “What exactly did Desna say we were supposed to do when we found him?”
The risen succubus shrugged, whispering back: “Don't know, really. My dream just said to come here, and there would be a potential ally and friend waiting.”
Calden cleared his throat, the sudden noise startling the other man. Stienn looked down from the skies, his gaze unfocused and confused for a moment as he remembered there were others on the hill with him.
“I’ve, ah, been told the view of the heavens from atop the new Magus tower in Drezen is particularly beautiful,” Calden stated, "Though it was a blind seer who said so, to our half-orc knight-commander and her wife.”
“You have a... diverse... group of associates.” Stienn observed, looking from the tiefling to the succubus and back.
“You have no idea.” Arushelae laughed. “Want to come meet them?”
Stienn shrugged. “Why not?”