The Legacy

Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.

Farewell, my friend," Drizzt whispered, trying futilely to keep his voice from breaking. :This journey you make alone.

I am sorry," was all Drizzt could quietly mouth. Vierna shook her head, refusing any apology. To Drizzt, it seemed as if that buried part of her that was Zaknafein Do'Urden's daughter approved of this ending.

You wish this to end," the mercenary remarked to Dinin when they were alone. "You have not met my brother," Dinin replied evenly, and his hand instinctively twitched near the hilt of his magnificent drow-made sword, as though the mere mention of Drizzt put him on the defensive. "Not in combat, at least.

When I die … may there be friends who will grieve for me, who will carry our shared joys and pains, who will carry my memory.

What loss is death if life is not to be lived?

He hates me because my way of life shows his to be an empty lie,

Because of the friends I have known, the honorable people I have met, I know I am no solitary hero of unique causes. I know that when I die, that which is important will live on.

Do I grieve for Zaknafein, for Montolio, for Wulfgar? Or do I grieve for myself, for the loss I must forever endure? It is perhaps the most basic question of mortal existence, and yet it is one for which there can be no answer…. Unless the answer is one of faith.

In the dim light of Twinkle’s glow, their skin colors lost in a common gray, they seemed alike, brethren come from the same mold. Entreri approved of that perception, but Drizzt surely did not.

Fortunate circumstances do not equate to high principles.

Are we then creatures of action? Do we say that we desire those accepted cliches of comfort when, in fact, it is the challenge and the adventure that truly give us life?

I cannot deny that my life is better, a thousand times better, than anything I ever knew in the Underdark. And yet, I cannot remember the last time I felt the anxiety, the inspiring fear, of impending battle, the tingling that can come only when an enemy is near or a challenge must be met.

Dare I?” Drizzt shot back. “You speak of Catti-brie as if she were your possession. I heard you tell her, command her, to remain behind when we go to the goblins.” “You overstep your bounds,” Wulfgar warned. “You puff like a drunken orc,” Drizzt returned, and he thought the analogy strangely fitting.

Ye found some goblins in their own hole, not to bothering anybody, and ye’re planning for their slaughter,” Cattie-brie went on in the face of her father’s sarcasm.

He was wearing his shimmering cape now, its magical colours cascading up and down his graceful form, and his wide-brimmed hat, hugely plumed with the feathers of a diatryma, a great flightless Underdark bird, adorned his clean-shaven head. A slender sword dancing beside one hip and long dirk on the other were his only visible weapons, but those who knew the sly mercenary realized that he possessed many more than that, concealed on his person, but easily retrieved if the need arose.

Information was Jarlaxle’s forte. The scouting network of Bregan D’aethe, the band Jarlaxle had founded and taken to greatness, was more intricate than that of any drow house. Jarlaxle knew everything that happened, or would soon happen, in and around the city, and armed with that information, he had survived for centuries as a houseless rogue.

I feel that I am dying, that those stories I so desired to share with friends will soon grow stale, with nothing to replace them. But, I remind myself again, the choice is mine to make. –Drizzt Do’Urden

To place the measure of a living being’s worth above that of another simply because that being wears the same color skin as I belittles my principles.

As we uncover the mysteries of the body, so too must we unravel the harmonies of the soul.

Drizzt, trying to play it calm, trying to hold fast to his principles, could not hide his grimace at the mention of his dead father, reputably the finest weapons master ever to draw swords in Menzoberranzan.