Is there no way out of this place? I know nothing about these gates, it felt like I moved through one, because the landscape changed. Instead of going to someplace else, I was still on an ugly gray plane. Derra kept my sanity, by talking to me. She was helpful, told me a little about the Lower Planes. There are five Lower Planes, unless you count Acheron and Pandemonium which are also quite evil. The planes surround the Outlands in a ring, and if you look at the planes, the Lower Planes are at the bottom. The five planes are Baator, where I was trained and mentally tortured, Gehenna, The Gray Waste, which I am getting sick of, Carceri, a prison for evil creatures, and The Abyss, where the Tanar'ri run around on the infinite planes. All of them were different in it's malevolence.

Derra was owned by a valiant warrior named Ergon, he was slain by the warrior Grazlet, and took her, and as she said, she didn't mind since Grazlet was a fiend slayer, she had been with this fiend for a number of years and never spoke, but when she thought she was going to kill someone who was good, not evil, was why she wanted to heal me. She has the ability to heal me completely, once a day. She can also detect good and evil at will, and detect invisible creatures, and speak a number of languages. She was created to kill fiends, and it tore her apart that she was forced to fight for a fiend. The fiends strength and intelligence was too overwhelming. In fact, if it wasn't for it's arrogance in thinking I was finished, I would have been dead. Now she was happy, she knew I was made for her. Derra apparently was alive ages ago. A beautiful cutter, a warrior woman. She could show me an image of what she looked like. She had long flowing blonde hair, green eyes, with an incredibly beautiful face and figure. She was strong, and wielded a bastard sword as well. She would slay fiends in the Blood War, but after all this time, she's realized even more that the fiends will be killing each other forever, and it would be better to keep the fiends from trying to move to the Upper Planes, and let the fiends kill each other. She does want to return to Sigil, so I can regain my bearings. To me, anything would be better than here.

I had no way of getting clean, no way to clean off the blood. Derra had completely healed all my wounds, no scabs, no scars, completely healed. The healing didn't get me clean though. After a day, I was in sad spirits, I found some water. The water was poisoned, and I knew it was, but I would have died of thirst, so I took my fill of the foul liquid, and she nullified the poison in me. After a while, there was no food, but I was fine. Then I encountered the creature Derra called a Maralith. It was a snake woman with six arms, her lower half was snake like, her upper half was like a naked female upper body, however that didn't distract me. She had a number of weapons, and attacked with each. I didn't even try to parry, I dodged them completely, and then thrust the sword into her chest, and she still kept coming, slashing me. Swords bounced off my armor, her trident, one of her six weapons. She was not so adept at using weapons, she was still hard to hit. no matter how furiously I attacked, one or two of her weapons was blocking Derra. My sword started growling, and she came up and struck the fiend in the shoulder. A number of blades hit me, but none hit any vital spots, but it hurt none the less, biting cold steel into my warm skin.

The fiend seemed to be healing, regenerating the wounds I inflicted on her. My wounds were getting worse, but I knew Derra was waiting for the right time for her to heal me. I slashed low and sliced into the Maralith's underbelly. More blades struck me, and I could suddenly feel Derra's magic fill me. All my wounds closed. if it wasn't for Derra, I would have been in bad shape. The Maralith was shaken by my instant healing, and I plunged Derra into her chest. The fiend fell on my blade. She dropped all her weapons. Using all my might I twisted the blade over, to spin the Maralith's body off the blade and to the ground. Derra purred suggestively "You were masterful killing that fiend." She must have been a very fiery woman when she was alive. "I couldn't have done it without you." I looked out on the plane and I saw a few ostrich like creatures. "Food." I said. Mmm chicken meat. My stomach made an audible roar of noise. Derra replied "Those are Arbrian, mean suckers, if you like fowl, you'll like it." I hadn't remember having foul or not, but I was starving, so I pulled out my light crossbow, and loaded it with bolts. The squabs had long legs, so I better get a good shot. It's been a while since I've shot a bolt, so I steady my shot, and prepared a second bolt. The Bolt whizzed away, and struck the bird, it let out a foul squeal. The other four Arbrian looked, and saw me. Apparently they figured they could take me, so they charged. I sent another bolt and it felled the first bird. The four Arbiau started biting at me. I wished that I had my shield. I hacked the first bird's head off. The three that were left struck again, surrounding me and crashing and biting into me. These were wounds Derra couldn't heal, not today. I stabbed the bird, and it fell. The two remaining birds ran off at high speed. I let them alone. I had enough food for several days.