Archive of Our Own ^beta

I’ve seen the serpent hidden in your brow.
Your lips have sucked the blood from wounds at night,
And something in me sickens and repents
When your cold kisses sting me with their bite.

I hate you, but your beauty’s suppleness
Takes me, enthralls me, and draws me in its wake,
And my heart, in terror at your cruelty,
Scorns and adores you, my Goddess and my Snake!

– Renée Vivien, tr. by Jeanette H. Foster, from Poems; “Troubling Resemblance,” 

Fire lines the ground like the spine of a serpent. It weaves through grease and blood, licking Catarina’s ankles while her legs grow heavy. 

All red, furious red, encircles her as the last opponents crowd her companions. The Spectator is dead at last, though a few stragglers of aberrant nature make the obstinate choice to stand their ground. 

Perhaps she targeted the right beast too slowly, realizing who their cleric was too late. Catarina’s throat is dry, her lungs and chest constricting with each breath–she exhales smoke into the air, where there is already plenty. Her ribs ache with each swallowed breath; her calves give way to a ferocious burn, angry that she dares to keep fighting rather than to run. 

Wyll, Karlach, and Shadowheart are just up the hill, a few yards behind. They’d agreed to hold off the worst of these enemies to prevent any further disturbance for the Myconids who have already been dangled before the slaughter.

Karlach throws one of the smaller beasts into the air with an underhanded cleave of her axe, and Wyll sends it hurdling ten feet back with a repelling blast, directly into an explosive puff of undergrowth. Catarina can hear them cheering as the spores catch flame in the distance. 

The rest feels stifled by the throb of his pulse in both temples, resounding and swollen with sound. It’s hard to hear, even harder to focus. 

“Hurry, will you?” Calls Shadowheart, her palm aglow with light. She restores the four of them with just a little more strength, a few wounds becoming less all-consuming aches, abruptly more bearable. 

Catarina feels the threads of her barely held together braiding into a rope. But even clutching that with all her might, the last reserves of her sorcery stuck to the tips of her fingers, it feels as though nothing is enough. 

“All we have to do is form a wall. Just up this way, and they’ll be hard pressed to make it between us.” Wyll shoots another enemy tumbling down the cliffside, his eldritch invocation casting light across the shimmery floors. The fire climbs higher then, thinning the air and making it harder to breathe. 

“Fall back a bit!” Karlach says, less careful of the flames as she helps to bolster their retreat with another devastating swing. “We’ve got you!” 

Catarina looks down, gathering the last of her strength, and finally notices her knees starting to buckle. The pain in his chest smarts, wicked and hot. He’s certain something is dislocated, though adrenaline makes it hard to tell precisely what. One of the smaller aberrations oozes something fluorescent in color, then flings a blast of blinding energy into her face. 

She staggers, taking two steps in what she thinks is the right direction, though it seems not to be, as she’s immediately chided. 

“That won’t do.” The Guardian’s words cut through her dizzy sickness. 

She blinks, refusing to succumb to the chills that curl up and down her spine, running a temperature surely befitting her part-infernal, part-draconic blood. The sheer volume of aberrations surrounding them at this cliff of the Underdark is… vexing, to say the least. 

The many billowy, disorienting creatures have done nothing but multiply. Shadows creep closer around them and the fumes that threaten madness and paralysis only worsen the longer this lasts. A wet line of blood trickles down the scar on Catarina’s lip, and she winces. The psychic damage must be taking its toll, because her nose very rarely bleeds. 

“Hold on.” He eases, and the disarming warmth that always follows the Dream Visitor’s company lingers in Catarina’s mind. “Follow my voice. Just a little more will do the trick.” 

Something about him reminds her to concentrate. Too much at stake. Too much she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t want to let the Dream Visitor sift through her mind with any more vulnerability than she already has. 

The Guardian’s composure is so perfect, it’s trite. Where is his impatience? His fear? His anger? It’s his anger she wants to see, most of all. 

One of her knees gives. She catches herself on a nearby branch with a sideways lunge, opening her hand to send a final three scorching rays. 

“There you are. That’s my girl.” 

The last of their two remaining enemies dissipate before the third spiral of heat reaches them, but Catarina can barely see through the haze. Her muscles lock where she pulls her free arm back toward her side. 

“Rest now.” Says the Guardian, and her teeth click as she clenches her jaw. He is warm, but warmth is not enough. Her veins are already wracked with torrents of heat and shuddering cold.

My girl, she complains, fading. Must you make everything sound so…? 

“Ah. My apologies. After our kiss, I presumed… Was that over-familiar?” 

Dreamlike – romantic – impossible. Catarina enjoys it all, despite himself.  

The Dream Visitor pauses. Her inability to sense most anything else makes the faint sensation of his sifting through her mind more blatant. 

Don’t ask stupid questions. 

She crumples, the sound of the others scrambling back down a curtain of comfort draped over her body.

Catarina’s heartbeat lulls, quiet, a drum stricken idly as consciousness abandons the rest of her. 

The epiphanies forced on Catarina following her encounters neck-deep in Crèche Y'llek make ensuing combat a harrowing challenge.

The lich queen has long-betrayed her people; with each day, that treachery only blooms. 

In the meantime, the Dream Visitor ‘proves’ his fealty in a plane where his form is a silhouette more than what he shows to her, a beautiful farce he leads by saying he can hear her thoughts. 

Catarina’s trust is skewered every which-way, desperate only to keep his companions’ lives intact, and his own ambitions at an arm’s length. 

“This way,” Hushes Karlach, with Shadowheart peeking around the corner, ducked just below her bicep. 

Catarina’s traveling party is careful to take the far left path, aiming to teleport as far away as possible before needlessly taking the lives of anyone misled by Vlaakith’s rampage. But as always, they cannot prevent all carnage before it finds them, faster than hounds on their scent. A few spare gith soldiers heed the call of their vindictive queen, poised to attack at full strength, whereas Catarina and the others have little more than a third of their own. 

“Fuck me.” Karlach says, her infernal engine sputtering and irate. 

“I’m nearly through.” Shadowheart warns, cracking the knuckles of one hand, arcane energy running over the bruised skin in rivulets. 

“We used the last potion earlier.” Catarina huffs, shoulders giving way to a weary heave.

On their last legs, they play defense. As best they can, they exercise mercy. Catarina’s rage is quelled only by her capacity to redirect it: those intent on taking her life now are merely pawns in Vlaakith’s demented lanceboard match of lies–they, too, would suffer because of the Absolute. 

Some of Catarina’s illithid capabilities function like Wyll’s counterspell–they chip away at and negate a few of the worst psionic attacks against their ranks, but not all. 

Wyll has one arm near to his ribs, likely nursing a sprain. Karlach’s grip around the hilt of her weapon pales her knuckles, but it’s starting to slip. Catarina’s head has spun so thoroughly that he’s half-certain it’s on backwards, bleeding from his forehead and his mouth. Meanwhile, Shadowheart has already spent countless reserves of magic to piece them back together without rest. 

They won’t last.

With the glowing exit route in sight, its sigils lilac on the nearby wall, his body reminds him that he is pushing far beyond his limits. 

Catarina’s insides twist until she can taste the tangled nerves in her throat. 

Everything is on fire. 

You’re on the right path, Eurydice had said. 

Her Dream Visitor is a seamless actor. So far, she’s done no small amount of indulging his game of revel and pretend. Save for coming here against his wishes, their goals have aligned exquisitely. So exquisitely, it’s eerie. 

As of late, Catarina’s mistrust is a madness in and of itself. 

His ancestral dragon, Karma, has need of him at his family’s side. When all is said and done, he will need to return home to The Beryl Tombgardens, where the great wyrm’s vestige and any other remnants of her hoard require his protection. 

Today is not the day she dies, for Karma still needs her. Karma still needs her, she thinks, a nauseous litany that lights like a blown fuse in her hand. Despite the will to go on, she lacks the resources to quicken a spell, and her reflexes struggle to cooperate. 

One of the guards more imminently keen on the intruders not leaving the créche alive turns her focus from a fallen ally to Catarina’s weaker stance. She charges then, leaping off the wall with a hoisted kick. As it lands, she makes contact with Catarina’s casting arm and ribs. The frame of her body gives with a chilling crack. 

Catarina sucks in a breath, and scorching pain caves in on him. The guard drops with enough force to shove them both to the ground, knees on both sides of his chest. Her arms tense, lance raised just over Catarina’s heart. 

“You will not!” Alongside Shadowheart’s outcry, the faint glow of her spiritual weapon draws close. The delicate rapier, aglow with divine darkness, pierces forth–it runs all the way through. 

Blood sprays Catarina’s throat and chest, though it hardly shocks her out of the episode of pain that seizes the entire right side of her body. The searing sensations ripple across her forearm and up toward her shoulder, splintering. 

With a soft thud, the guard’s corpse drops. Half on top of Catarina, half slumped to the side. 

“Something’s definitely broken. Get her up.” Karlach says, urgency at a fever pitch.  

She wants to pull herself together and finish off the last of their opposition. But she can barely pull her gaze back towards the action; her eyelids flutter and her pupils loll. The slippery light filtering in from the window swells with motes, like dragonflies or dandelions. 

“How wretched, this fight, that you should endure the weight of all.” 

Not now, she thinks, haggard. She doesn’t want the solace this will bring. Not now. There’s so little she trusts him with in the first place, and everything unveiled at the créche has made it so much better… so much worse. 

It’s impossible to get the image of Eurydice kneeling before her with that ornate weapon out of her mind. How beautiful he looked, eyes severe, surrendering his defenses. Pledging the world of her trust, demanding it with his life, as if that were all he had to offer. 

Be quiet. She thinks. Be quiet. 

“Believe me.” The voice assures, too sincerely miserable for Catarina’s liking. She tilts her head, cheek against the ground, still unable to focus on anything around her. “You are not alone.” 

Her chest swells, tenfold sorrow and envy and dread. She should be helping the others. She should be killing, instead. She shouldn’t be waiting to fall on Eurydice’s words, like a sword. 

Even as hands slip underneath her back, the pain swells before she can see clearly. But as her body feels weightless, she can only guess it’s Karlach who’s able to lift her into the air. Catarina’s mouth tastes of copper and his vision goes dark. 

But she knows that the numbness creeping up her body like a cool sheet is no natural physical alarm. As the biting grief of her every muscle subsides, Catarina hisses, shuddering as her body struggles to remember itself. 

“Don’t be afraid.” A pulse of lavender moves through the black, like faerie wind and woozy lightning. “Please. Allow me to dull your pain. It will only last as long as your companions need to heal you.” 

Her joints lock. Her claws pierce her palms. Her tail curls close. 

But as she feels the tension ball into a knot at her brow, Catarina lets go. She won’t be any good to the others fighting something as simple as anesthetic. But still, she thinks, trying to direct all her thoughts toward the one responsible, why are you still here? 

The airy, glowing lilac thread, psionic in nature, holds her in this place between dreams and unconsciousness, where her pain disappears. 

“As you are now, it helps to ease your senses.” He assures, having heard the question in her mind of why they can speak right now, at all. “You’re concussed. The light… the noise, it will only make it worse.”

Why don’t you fight your own battle? 

She’s become too familiar with not being the only one in her own mind. 

“I’ve never stopped. What is required of me, and what is required of you, is much the same. But know this: the road ahead, without allies, is endless.”

You always say that. The dark behind Catarina’s eyes ebbs and flows, incongruous. Perhaps it’s better to talk like this, where she cannot see his face. The bewitching pretense, with his careful eyes a lurid pink. That we’re the same. We’re not the same. You keep more secrets than I ever will. Sometimes I enjoy that, but… 

“Think less of secrecy. These realms would break us a thousand times over if they taught us all there was to know. I will prove my use to you – prove my loyalty to you – in any way you would have me.”

And if I will not have you? 

That gives him pause. She doesn’t know why she says that. It might be a reflex, hoping to get a reaction out of him that he seems nigh incapable of.

The purple pulses of light dim where they move, currents like synapses across the waking dark. 

“I do not know. I will be severed from you, eventually. Regardless, it seems…”

Don’t tell me you haven’t thought that far ahead. 

“Quite the contrary. I have thought, in excruciating detail, over each and every way that this might end.” 

This? What is ‘this’? The Absolute? 

“Yes. The Absolute. The unending battle. And amidst it all, the care and carnage, you and I.” 

 Hm. 

“Yes… Hm.” 

I do not know if I will have you. She lies, just well enough to fool him. But I do know one thing. 

“And what’s that, my dark hero?” He taunts. If he is piqued, she cannot hear it. But he doesn’t sound quite as agreeable, not even as his honeyed words carve out room for her wrath. “What sayeth the dragon's teeth?” 

You will prove it to me. Your use. Your loyalty. Whatever it is that you intend to do with your hand along the bowstring of my fate. Prove it, for having thrilled me. And for the rest. 

He exhales. Could he truly believe that she wants anything other than to keep him? If she could press him into the pages of a book, for his wittiness. If she could root him alongside emeralds and death lilies in her garden-trove, simply to watch him bloom. 

Perhaps… 

“Trust in me. ” The Dream Visitor clears his throat. Could he hear that musing, too? He makes no note of it. “You’ll see; my word is my bond.”

Catarina is struck by a threadbare sensation: healing warmth. Night’s absent calm, a quiet reprieve. Shadowheart is hard at work.

“Though…” The Guardian continues. “You don’t believe in fate.” 

I don’t. And I wager, neither do you. So let’s stop pretending that we’re not both weaving here, with all our strength, in hopes we’ll end up somewhere that feels better than this.  

For now, he is numb, but the exhaustion from all of his pain before wears at him.

“There are battles greater than the one you fabricate between us.” 

Not to me. 

“Then,” He says, smoothly. “you would do well to reconsider your priorities.”

You would do well to consider me. No matter how many times you save me, protect me, if you fool me, truly… 

“What? 'You will bleed me dry, and make a tapestry of my insides?’ Yes. I assure you, your… imagination is plenty. I gave you the opportunity to do so, and you returned my blade to me.”

From the lilt of his voice, the Guardian’s words sound almost charmed. Catarina’s soul stills, disgusted. But not at all displeased. 

It’s not too late to change my mind.

“I enjoy your hunger too much to let it go to waste.” He admits, calm, as though burying something. “Better you turn it on our enemy.” 

The ensuing silence sinks, a stone in the deep sea.

“I will make you no promise I cannot keep. I have not once lied. Still… set that aside, for now. You must rest. Let us bicker no longer.”

No, I’ve… She fights his whelming will. We’re not bickering. 

“Sleep, Catarina.”  

But… 

Despite himself, Catarina stirs much later. 

He huffs, loud, and Shadowheart wastes no time in scolding him for moving far too soon. 

She does not expect to wake from the brush with death that follows Myrkul. But wake she does. Somehow, his pulse is both faint and heavy in his throat. 

What she expects even less is to see the Guardian, up and about in the realm before her. The noxious green fumes wafting above the pit of decay cast Eurydice in stark relief. Just moments ago, she had been damning all the strength in her sorcery to blast the dead god into the abyss. Just before one of his spells blew up in her face, and… came to this. 

Unceremoniously, she remembers Karlach lunging to bridge the gap before Catarina hit the ground. 

For now, it seems the fight is through. There is no champion, and no god. Only the annihilation that follows them both. 

Hurriedly pushing her weight up to the heels of her elbows, she chokes on the blood in her throat. In the same second, the Dream Visitor kneels before her. One hand at her back, the other over her heart, which races against his palm. 

“There you are. Let the poison out.” 

“I’m,” She spews, tasting copper and stifled bile. “all poison.” 

He smiles, patient, in good humor. The back of his knuckle gently brushes her jaw. 

Catarina’s exhaustion overturns her body’s reflex to go entirely rigid. She sighs and turns her head, watching the lines of his face. The way the corners of his eyes crease when his dimples show. The pale length of his impossibly thick lashes, the same ashen blonde of his hair. 

“Did I…” She grumbles. “When did we… Where are the others?” 

The Guardian juts his chin toward the opposite end of the platform, where her companions lean against the railings and catch their breath on the floor. 

Karlach and Shadowheart’s legs cross, perpendicular at the ankles. Their eyes look mostly closed, beyond spent. 

Wyll eyes Catarina cautiously, surely with his own reservations of the Dream Visitor’s appearance before them in the waking world. She nods, giving him an apologetic sort of shrug–perhaps they both know a dangerous oath too well when they see one. 

Before she can say much more, she grimaces, flinching at the throb of a wound. 

“Not dreaming?” She asks, one eye shut as a bruise over her temple stings. 

“You’re very awake, as safe as you can be.” He says, brushing stray hair on the opposite side of her head away from her eyes. His hand feels different here. Heavier. 

“You were only down for a moment. Chosen though he may have been, neither god nor champion claimed your life.” 

Eurydice’s expression tilts, a lopsided turn of the mouth. Briefly, he rests the back of his knuckles–gauntlet’s cold adamantine–against Catarina’s forehead. 

Cared for like this… it’s impossible not to feel tricked. The damnable, favored warrior of a patron’s wretched goal. She cannot die because Karma still has need of her. She cannot die because The Guardian requires her life. 

It is nauseating. It is thrilling. It instills him with this foreign sense of significance outside of his family’s name. The Raverre bloodline is something she will fight for until the end of time–would never regret the place to which she will always return… but… 

Perhaps she nurses a wish to make something right simply because she chose to. No tethers to Karma, and nothing to keep her from more.

“Then, what happened?” She covers her mouth, swallowing the taste of rust. The claw on Catarina’s ring finger scrapes encrusted blood along her chin. 

“The bottom line? You weren’t alone.” Eurydice says, his stare silken, if a little desperate. 

“There was nearly nothing left of me.” 

“What did you think? That you would breathe your last here of all places? While you had me behind you?” 

Catarina wets her lips, head heavy and neck sore. “Your tactical encouragement is far from enough to supplement the wounds a god can inflict upon me.” It’s agitating. 

Even if she does trust that he has burdens and battles of his own, rearing his head to sing their praises after not helping one bit, directly after a horrible fight…? How could he expect him to believe such convoluted ‘sincerity’?

“I’m a long way from being the only one here.” 

“Then don’t make it sound like you expect all the credit.” She counters, head a mosaic of fresh agonies. 

“I expect nothing like that.” He says, his lip just barely curling in the shadow of a sneer. 

Perhaps the strain of what lies ahead cracks Eurydice’s veneer, always this sprightly, unbothered thing, showing most of his concern only when Catarina threatens to disobey. “Do you truly have so little faith in me?” 

The urge to see him pushed a little further–just a little sharper–makes her headache worse. 

“Why is faith what you fall back on?” She shifts, feeling odd in her body. It feels wrong–like watching someone else’s suffering prepared for a bard’s unflattering script–she doesn’t like that her friends can hear this entire conversation. It feels like she’s being cut open and put on display. “You’ve demanded my faith from the start, telling me so little. And what do I have to say for it?” 

“Catarina, this is a grand victory.” He sighs, attention going narrow. “Is chasing an argument how you normally celebrate?”  

The shame that follows the pressure to perform leaves Catarina crueler than usual. She wants to taunt that cold turn of his lips–wants to see what he would look like with some of her poison in his mouth. 

“Could you just fix me up, and disappear, like you always do?” Her chest burns. “Say something else that doesn’t matter. That’s all you know.”

Eurydice turns his eyes on hers. His pupils dilate, then compress. The dark center goes thin, stretching horizontally until they look like tiny waves across his multi-colored sclera. It’s odd, almost goatlike, but stranger. It reminds Catarina of some creatures her eldest brother would fish up from the depths of the coast. 

“It doesn’t always have to be this way. ” He says, and her focus snaps back into place. 

Catarina’s delirious mind’s eye supplies her with the blissful picture of her teeth sunken into his shoulder. Her mouth aches. 

“You know every path around my thoughts, and this is the best you can do?”

“Your weariness makes you wicked.” He tuts, though quiet. Neither of them want the others listening in, much less prying. “Let me show you a kindness.” 

“Show me the truth.” 

There is a split second of pure, immature reaction. A muscle leaps in The Guardian’s face–a quick twist as he paces himself through thoughts of his response. A rarity, needless to say–but it soon passes. 

And then… Eurydice lets out a quiet laugh, ducking his head into Catarina’s collarbone. Breathy and worn, he leans his forehead against the crook of her throat. Her jaw flexes, she groans, though her pulse hums contentedly quicker. 

“You would like it if I bit you back? You want to provoke me?” 

She’s been asking herself that question for some time now. The answer is more complicated than she’d like. Her fingers curl against the back arc of his armor. He leans back a little, though he keeps her still in the firm cradle of his arms. 

“I know you’re more than a smiling sculpture.” Says Catarina, looping both hands behind his neck. “That silhouette of yours I can see in my dreams, where the weave is so alive…” The outline of psionic entanglements, bright lavender and tinged the same dawnshade of orange as the feathery tips of Eurydice’s hair. “I can’t see it here.” 

The sculpture of her dreams smiles then, though his eyes look through her. How bittersweetly he manages to confirm her suspicions. 

“What? I told you I could see it.” She boasts, chin up. “You’ve had my faith. Yet you ask for more. I’m tired. Yes, I would rather you bite me, than ask for more favors where I remain in the dark.” 

“Well glad am I that you are a creature of few regrets.” 

As he is now, legs curled underneath him, back to the rest of Catarina’s companions, the Guardian sighs. The vivid, sickly pink that spans across his eyes begins to overtake his disparate sclera. Where one was white, and the other black, only pink remains. And just above it, that inhuman length of curling pupil, tracking her every move. 

From his eyes and throat, a tracery of veins illuminate just behind the Dream Visitor’s skin. Catarina’s head pain makes her squint, watching focus crowd his face as dark, weblike lines sprawl down his cheeks and jaw. His palms emanate a pink light the same color as his eyes, enclosed by flickers of aberrant energy. 

Soft, cool air wraps around Catarina, and the way her head swims slows in increments. The pulses of helpless pains that envelope his entire body begin dwindling.

Taking each next breath, she watches Eurydice’s face, his eyes alight. Dark and sharp, like attention that hones after having starved. 

She only looks away from him long enough to catch one of the wounds along her forearm stitching itself back together, just below one of the new cracks in her charred vambrace. 

She shivers. It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right. 

Although those words sound nice, it’s hard not to when they land in Eurydice’s voice. Was that her own thought? Who spoke first? Had he only repeated her? 

Trying to distinguish the Guardian’s voice in her mind from the one aloud does Catarina very little good. 

“The pain, I can tolerate.” Even saying that, she feels so much less of it already. Perhaps he healed him to shut him up. “But couldn’t you let me in? You’ll have to, eventually.”

“I know.” He relents, and the light dies. The veins in his face withdraw, his sclera and pupils both returning to their prior state. “Enough, now. It won’t be long before there are no secrets left between us. If it were up to me, we would have been free of them from the start.” 

Catarina blinks, sluggish. He brushes his own knuckles against the scales perched at the apple of his cheek. 

“But that’s right.” The Guardian rests his temple against hers. Telepathically, he murmurs, “Without secrets, you wouldn’t enjoy it in quite the same way, now would you?” 

Her face screws tightly, frowning. Where their foreheads touch, she tangles a hand in his hair at the opposite side. After pressing a rough kiss against his cheekbone, Catarina shifts so that she’s able to kneel, then gets to her feet. 

“You know what I am.” The gruff reply follows soon after, dusting himself off now that the worst of his pain is dissipating. 

“You need not explain yourself to me.” Eurydice pulls himself together, a process that needs no more than the perfect reflex Catarina sees time and time again. 

His armor glints against the putrid air, standing stark: the moon’s reflection in a catacomb – the rock that breaks the wave.

The other three seem to tap into a telepathy of their own. As soon as the conversation comes to an apparent close, Wyll, Karlach and Shadowheart all exchange glances before deciding to approach. The Guardian gives a brief debriefing on The Chosen of The Dead Three and their ensuing ambitions before the others drill him. 

When all is said and done, the Guardian returns from whence he came. Catarina’s traveling party seems content to take a beat before they dive forth, and she figures one night’s rest will be enough. 

✧

By the fire they build before sleep, Wyll and Catarina take the first watch of the night. 

“What say, I take a guess… you’d rather not speak of everything from earlier?” 

Wyll rests his hand atop the place where Catarina’s vambrace splintered–where her wound is barely a line suggesting a shallow scar. 

“I don’t mind talking with you, Ravengard.” He starts to pluck a few pins out from where his hair was held up in two tight curls at the crown of his head. “Even if this topic makes so little sense.” 

“Whatever you do,” As Wyll speaks, Catarina knocks her knee gently against his. “Just promise me you’re not the one getting lost in all this.” 

She can hear the regrets of The Blade of Frontiers in his voice–but the warning comes from a friend. Softer, kinder, and by damnable experience, more true. 

“This matter of… tunnel vision that happens when a goal is in sight makes getting lost all the easier. Whoever that truly is–yes, they’ve helped us–be that as it may, they could still very well take everything.” 

Catarina’s pride smarts, and his tail curls behind him as he tucks any leftover hairpins into a pocket by his waist. 

Not at all looking forward to the next time she falters on the battlefield, he shakes his head. 

“You’re right. And I get it.” She says, tugging a piece of jerky away from the flame and nudging it in Wyll’s direction. “At the very least, I have sharper eyes on him than he’d like. Because of the weave–he knows that I know–that he is more than what he’s shown us.” 

Wyll’s brows arch; he takes a minute to absorb what Catarina says. 

"Honestly, Rini? I've never had a reason to doubt that you didn’t have a handle on all… this. Just… don’t mind if the rest of us watch your back, all right?”

“We’re in this stupidly humbling intersection of several dark corners, practically always. I’ll do what protects my own, as you know I will. So, you don’t mind if I watch your back.” Her voice takes on less of a sharp edge. “But listen; I hear you. I’ll be certain that he makes good on his promise to tell the full truth.” 

His shoulders falling with a short breath of relief, Wyll finally takes a bite of the cured meat from earlier. “Fine by me.” 

“Still.” She grunts. “I keep getting turned over at the worst time. I hate that he makes an appearance every time I’m put on the back foot.” 

Wyll brightens up then. 

“Tomorrow, come sunrise, I’ll show you a few quick maneuvers. A swordsman's evasion. Something to take forward, that might just come in handy.”

Catarina snorts, though her smile indulges him. 

“Suppose I could ask for nothing more.” 

When she lays her head down to sleep, her dreams are empty. Dark. 

Dark as true death. 

With The Iron Throne’s hostages safe and The Steel Watch undone, the next step comes into perfect clarity. They move to butcher Enver Gortash and wrest his control from this city–from his netherstone too–the choice is second nature. 

For the strength they’ve amassed, it is a fair enough fight. Gortash’s defenses are offensive to a fault: once the reflective barriers dissipate, the opposition leaves their sides wide open, even detonating different corners of the room to take everyone down with them. 

But by the time Bane bolsters his champion, the shadows in the room grow to suffocating. 

Shoulder to shoulder with Karlach, Wyll charges a quick invocation. He’s fast as steel, but his targeted focus distracts his footwork. He cannot look to protect Karlach’s flank, veer to plunge another encroaching enemy across the room, and take caution of every fire-trap here.  

An explosive blasts open and flames erupt, surging across the floors in a column of monstrous heat. Though Karlach is quick to shove him out of harm’s way, the reaction is seconds too late. Though the blast only seizes Wyll by the shoulder and left arm, he has half Karlach’s infernal tolerance and half her health. 

Shadowheart lunges to heal him the second he drops, and Catarina’s heart falls on its side, grateful for her swiftness. 

Catarina, too, is on her last legs. But it will be a moment before Shadowheart can help Wyll back to his feet, and Gortash’s antagonizing shadow-hand swipes eagerly at Karlach, where she remains a wall between him and those of their friends still recovering the strength to stand. As the pillar of fire diminishes, it ignites a few other flames in the room, smaller bursts of all-swallowing force shoving the darkness this way and that. 

Karlach may have been able to withstand The Closed Fist of Bane at the start of this battle, but she isn’t now. Catarina eyes her with a twisting wariness in his stomach, chest wound tightly, temples throbbing and weak, more abruptly afraid than she’s been in a very long time. 

But Karlach doesn’t turn–just grips her axe more tightly, the infernal element wreaking havoc across the planes of her skin turbulent and wild. 

Even knowing they could tip the scales here. Even having faith, no matter what. 

Yes, they’ll turn it around. Yes, like they always have. 

But she won’t allow Karlach to be crushed by Gortash before she has a chance to cleave him into nothing. Nothing matters more than the people at her side now. 

If something terrible happens, they will get her home. Perhaps a carcass. Perhaps not.

“Karlach!” Catarina watches the shadowed fist cascade down, but not before she summons a psionic pulse of force-tunneled energy that allows her to propel herself forward in far less time. Surefooting at full strength, combined with one of the maneuvers Wyll showed her. “Let’s have his blood! You finish this!” 

She tries to glance back at Karlach’s face, but crushing darkness obscures her every avenue of vision. Perhaps there is something else she says, but Catarina cannot remember it. Remembers worrying about her teeth shattering in her mouth… and the entirety of her body erased by helpless pain. 

Then, again, dark.

✧

Waking in the astral prism, all Catarina can think is how she should have expected this is what would come next. 

Though, when he comes to, it’s a little different, this time. 

As he looks down to his hands, turning each palm over individually, they look partly transparent. The scales that shimmer against the backs of her forearms and the spines along her elbows… the color of the dark leggings at her thighs, and the sharp points of her laced boots are all visible, but she can see through them. 

His tail lashes behind him. As he reaches to touch the tips of his fingers to the knuckles on his opposite hand, they pass right through. It’s only with a little arcane focus–a somatic component–that he can feel the callouses there. Faintly… but finally still palpable. 

And when Catarina’s attention darts upward, there stands The Emperor. Armored and sharp, with a majesty she finds not without horror. 

Pacing back and forth below the prism’s arches, all astral dust and stone, hovering just a few inches above the ground. His claws lace behind his back, puzzling over something and about-turned.

Catarina swallows the dry spot in the back of his throat. He can’t taste anything. Not even poison, not even blood. 

The Emperor continues his back-and-forth, albeit more slowly. His tentacles freeze in precipitous thought.

“Hey, you.” She says, burying her terror at the bottom of the astral sea. But her voice doesn’t come out. 

Catarina can barely feel her own body. But she feels him probing then–his presence, combing gently through– everywhere, really. 

“You’re here.” The Emperor muses, like he’s speaking to her in a hypothetical. He extends one hand before him, levitating towards the place she’s standing. “Your arcane signature… I recognized it instantly. And now, I can hear your thoughts.” 

She struggles to watch his face. Struggles not to think herself into a corner of what kind of a nightmare this could be. It is a tremendous strain not to throw herself against the stone structures of this place simply to feel them scrape against her skin. 

Why am I so…? Asks Catarina–thinking to him–though the voice in her mind is small, unrecognizably so. 

The Emperor doesn’t look her in the face. After a long enough pause, his eyes move from the place she’d summoned magic at her fingers up to what must be his estimate of her height–which is accurate enough. 

“I must have called a piece of you here.” He deduces, a pearl-shaped pulse of light simultaneously coming alive in his upright palm. “Hold onto this.” 

For once, she takes it without thinking. Rests her hand over his. 

The light spreads over the transparency of her body like a constellation, infinitesimal, star by star. Even though he’s still mostly see-through, the outline of his body is lined by a gossamer astral light. 

And it becomes swiftly clear that The Emperor can see her, for the way his gaze darts perfectly to her face. 

Please say this isn’t necromancy. My blood is already cursed. I don’t want–

“It will only make you visible to me.” He explains, closing his thumb over Catarina’s knuckles. His usual coldness is much warmer, while she’s like this. “Those were the material components to a more evolved psychic bond. Don’t worry. I couldn’t ground you to this plane, no matter how much I would like to.” 

Why not? Pushing her thoughts directly into his mind gets a little easier when she’s not ‘thinking’ too hard about it. What’s happening? 

“Your allies had to resurrect you. I believe they’re nearly finished.” 

Wait. 

Even having felt like it would happen, the feelings that strike her now are a bit more shocking. A few of her other companions have taken the same risks and faced the same consequences before–both Shadowheart and Withers have the capacity to undo the worst wounds done. It makes all of this less daunting. Less grave, even. But.

I really did die?

Growing up, she spent years building coffins for Karma’s resting Tombgardens. But she’s nowhere near ready to lay down in one. 

“Catarina.” The slightest narrowing of his eyes suggests that he is as incredulous as a mindflayer is capable of looking. “You threw your body before a killing blow. How else did you imagine it would end?” 

I did what was necessary. 

As she retracts her hand, The Emperor turns away. Though mere seconds after, his stare shifts ground. He glances back at her from the corner of his eye, nearly fastening their minds. He’s so much more still–more unreadably alien than usual. 

And right now, she’s too tired to play their game. To go after his throat, no matter how much she would like to. 

“You saw to your companion’s justice. That, I can understand. But heed me.” His voice makes her ears ring, twitching as they press back against her head.  

“Gortash meant to crush you against a land mine. Where Bane’s fist touched the floor, it burst.” He adds, somehow emphatic and cold. “Draconic armor or no, you were nearly in too many pieces to revive.” 

She’d been so caught up in Karlach being able to deliver the perfect retribution, she hadn’t considered that. The possibility that the terrain could potentially stop even Withers from making right of her corpse. 

Catarina folds both arms over her chest, trying to think back to anything other than the pain that subsumed her. She closes her eyes, but it’s largely unsuccessful. 

When she opens them, a barely-visible fluorescent barrier surrounds her. A bubble-like shield. 

And the same flicker of lilac colored-light comes to mind, in blurry memory just before the fire and dark. 

… You deflected it. 

“Only just. I stabilized a compact space for your body to sustain the impact, rather than the elements.” 

As the temporary shield fades away, Catarina finds herself wishing she had enough strength to set everything on fire. His stubbornness is a swell of faraway ache. So what? Karlach deserves to make that wretch feel every form of dread.

Death or worse, she would do it all over again. But she is curious.

Did you know it would be enough?

“How opposed you are to questions we know the answers to. And yet you ask them.” He snaps, hovering to loom a little closer. “I considered every possibility, and acted on the one most likely to save as much of you as I could. Despite being able to predict much of it, I yet lack the ability to know the future.” 

Catarina’s glad for the difficulty he has feeling in tune with his body right now. It would be awful if her legs grew frail enough to give out now of all times.

You’re… cross. Are you angry?

“What do you think?” The slight undulations of the tentacles over rows of tiny, jagged teeth go idle. “You know as well as I do, that your mind is a knife. But when your body needs your cleverness most, what do you choose?”

She squints, maddened that she’s being chewed out for something like dying. 

Clearly, I should have known better than to think you might have a logical response to this. 

“Logical–” His voice deepens, more hollow. “You chose to risk everything we’ve built due to sentimentality. And it cost your life. You expect me to treat those stakes with nonchalance? ” 

You’re blaming sentimentality? This is sentimentality. This. You, yelling at me. 

“I’m hardly yelling.” He adds, clipped. 

Oh. She says. You’re not. 

“I’m not.”

Okay. 

They leer at each other for a minute that lasts at least an hour. 

Catarina’s lips curl back, resisting a smile. She must still be lightheaded, but his expression is… well, a little funny. 

“Now, I’ve amused you.” He complains, tone not not one of scolding. “On the verge of your soul leaving this realm, and you grant me the rare pleasure of your laugh.” 

It’s just strange. Speaking into your head. Seeing you well and truly stressed, at last. You understand, don’t you? 

Catarina laughs, though the sound is little more than hollow air put under pressure. 

It’s like I’m you. She points to The Emperor’s chest, fingertip plucking at the armor over his sternum. Then, to her own. 

And you’re me. 

The illithid’s eyes flick. His focus tilts away, pink eyes pale, as though stricken with lightning.  

I worried you’d only ever care if I jeopardized our plan to destroy the Elder Brain. 

“You’re far too pragmatic for that.” He responds quickly, dismissing the idea. “Not that your pragmatism is without its limits.” 

Stones are so unkind to glass houses. 

“...I may not regret in the way you do.” The Emperor pauses, his brow wrinkling as he closes his eyes. “But I fear losing you may cause me to remember how.” 

They puncture each other’s guards. She longs to touch him, as reward. 

You’ve been alone for a long time. Even memories you cherished must have felt far away. 

The Emperor opens his eyes; Catarina can see herself reflected–a vision in clouded pink. 

“This was much easier before I came to trust you.”

Why? She asks. Because now, I can break it?  

Catarina huffs, reaching up to grip his face and clasp him by the temples. Pressed between her ring finger and his brow is the quiet pearl of light that connects them. 

When she touches him, it hums. 

Now you really know how I feel. 

“You’ve spoiled my ability to envision a future that is not haunted by your spite. Your ruthlessness. Your crude lack of apology.” The Emperor says, and his head tilts, slow, against her hands. 

He narrows his gaze, and Catarina melts, her smile too-knowing, unashamed to be appraised of these traits, certain already of exactly where this leads. 

“Your tenacity. Your rigor. Even your eagerness to outpace me, I covet. That you should struggle to believe any of this, while I have shown you, time and time again–”

You were the one who told me this all started out as an experiment. 

“I also told you–” The pearl’s shimmer extends past Catarina’s palm, bright and blurry just long enough for her to blink. In the moments she tries to catch her focus, The Emperor’s silhouette is obfuscated. 

In its place is, of course, Eurydice. His eyes glitter and lips curl, composed with fey allure. 

Catarina grimaces, looking away from him. This is the creature The Emperor designed precisely for her desires–his sway makes her naively fond. 

“–That I’m on your side. I have been, from the beginning.” 

When she glances back, though… he is not entirely disguised. His pupils lay horizontal in both eyes, his fingers form four claws, and pendent at both sides of his jaw, the barest, astral outline of tentacles ripple gently. Underneath the loose purple fabric strewn across his shoulder are countless illithid veins, chiefly the ones that form a heart over his chest.

He looks like some amalgamation of the lush pretense engineered to indulge them both, and the truth that’s become so dear to her. 

You’re infuriating. 

“And that is the feeling you wanted to share with me.” He leans in, the tip of a tentacle resting over her hand, where it touches him. “This sentimentality is precisely what you longed to provoke, always arguing while you’re on the verge of passing out?” 

Yes. Again, with the stupid questions.

Catarina takes a long breath, feeling the air pass through her body. She’s woozy, though even a lousy sensation is more than she had to begin with. 

“Of course.” The Guardian smiles, deftly changing the subject. “The ritual is nearly through. Your body calls to every piece of your soul. This piece of you, I reached for without realizing… must return.”

She’s eager to feel the rest of her physicality again, and foolish or not, there’s no doubt in her mind that this will go as intended. 

Fine. Go and chew on this valuable lesson. 

“Very well.” He acquiesces, hand moving to cover her eyes. “Since you’ve so much to teach me, shall I call you tutor? Mistress?” 

What happened to ‘my girl?’ As she closes them, she smirks. Quiet, or you’ll excite me. Let me go. 

“Yes.” Eurydice agrees, and Catarina chuckles soundlessly at the smile in his voice. “For now. I will see you soon.” 

Her chest shudders, and when she concentrates, she can hear her heart’s quiet attempts to beat. 

Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. 

The warmth that surrounds Catarina then… It’s so sweet, her tail curls. 

The dark behind his eyes breaks. A golden haze filters through. 

Her friend’s voices, frantic, though certain… and The Emperor, with Eurydice’s echo–all reaching out to her. 

I knew it. 

“Knew what? Tell me.” 

It’s not the end until I say. 

✧

She bolts upright, choking on a mouthful of ash. 

Shadowheart is just above, her smoky eyeshadow smeared around her eyes while she pours healing magic over Catarina’s chest. Wyll and Karlach kneel on the opposite side, but they move like a twisted bolt of fire and lightning, embracing her entirely in unison. 

“Soldier, how could you!” Karlach wails. “You’re all right! Thank the gods, you’re all right…” 

“Would you just– anything could set him back, you know–” Shadowheart’s protest only lasts a moment; with all the strength in her left arm, Catarina pulls her in, too.

They knock heads together, covered in grime and blood and smoke. And Catarina laughs, her chest finally heavy again. 

Along with… all of her muscles, actually. Everything hurts. 

“Ow. Fuck.” 

“Sorry.” Wyll says, giving her shoulder a very gentle squeeze as he backs off. “Balduran’s bones. We did it… damn it. We did it.” 

“You’re all impossible.” She rasps. “Don’t you know by now? There will be no tomb for me unless I've built one."

Catarina’s pulse hammers in her throat, desperate. Alive. 

“Fortunate, no? That I choose to fight battles beyond my own?"

She snickers, falling onto her back, her companions sprawled about her in a pile of relief.

Yes. Fortunate, indeed, that you love to ask stupid questions.