Archive of Our Own

“Still studying, then?”

He’d had to repeat the question before Melkior’s eyes finally lifted from the page in front of him. Fiery yellow set deep in black. Not the most uncommon color for tieflings, but the effect of them piercing through shaggy dark hair was always a touch startling. He always held them a little too wide, blinked too little.

“......You’re back already?”

Gortash can’t help but smile, whisking the door to his office shut behind him. Melkior had been holed up for hours, carpeting his office in books and papers. Everything that had ever been written on Mephistopheles' vaults, accounts from the exceedingly factual to the patently deranged. Most of those hours had been silent, by necessity: the Chosen of Bhaal, prodigiously talented in all arts bloodthirsty, was an almost charmingly slow reader.

Silence was unbearable to Enver. He’d had more than enough of it for twenty lifetimes. It had been better, almost, when they were beating him because when they weren’t he was left below for hours, days, weeks. Not a voice to be heard or a person to see. He made his excuses to busy himself below, lose himself in the tangled noise of his machines and his lackeys.

“Already? The sun’s nearly set, you’ve been in here all day.”

Another slow blink. A scowl crosses the Bhaalspawn’s face, probably a startling visage for most. The grey-white death mask tattooed into his purple skin would twist, rippling over a nasty burn scar on his right cheek. The effect was entirely demonic.

Not for him. He knew better. Knew better of demons, and knew better of Melkior. This wasn’t a threat, but a sulk.

“I was busy.”

“Clearly.” He tilts his head, meaningfully regarding the rest of his office. “Not a drop of viscera to be seen, either. I commend the focus you’ve shown for this task.”

It’s hard to read blushes behind the tattoos, but the way his tail flicks nervously behind him is as good as any coloring. “Why am I the only one focusing? It’s your plan, Baneite.”

“Enver.” He says cheerfully. In two strides he’s crossed the room, taking a seat on the worn chaise he slept in more than his own bed. It was the only surface not entirely littered in paper. “I am focusing. But there are wheels in motion, my friend. Someone needs to make sure they don’t fly off before we’ve had the chance to make our play.”

“I have better-”

“The compliment was sincere, Melkior.” 

He didn’t need words to know that was worse, leagues worse. Melkior snaps the book shut, rolling cat-like to his feet. Enver watches him tilt his chin, drawing himself up to his full height to look down at him on the couch. Blazing eyes, stony expressions, claws ever so slightly parted. Like in a twitch they might rend a throat. Divine wrath made manifest. 

“I’m returning to the Temple. The flock needs tending. The cattle need culling.” He stalks past him, feet padding silently. “Call me when you have a more productive use for my time.”

Enver says nothing, yet. Waits for him to get nearer the door. 

“Then I suppose you don’t want your present.”

Stillness, silence. So thick over his left shoulder it was nearly tangible. A lesser man, a man less practiced in his art, might’ve thought the tiefling had left.

Enver was not a lesser man. And Bhaal’s favorite bludgeon was more a child at heart than they realized.

“....Present.” Melkior’s tone is flat and heavy, trying to smother the curiosity out of his voice.

Without turning, he lifts his hand, holding the palm flat to reveal two delicate gold chains, bookended by clips set with rubies. “You have a penchant for jewelry, don’t you?” The carelessness rolls effortlessly off his tongue, the benevolent disinterest weaving the lie into the truthful statement. “I’ve noticed many of the tieflings in the city have taken to horn decorations of late.” Finally, a turn, a graceful smile sliding on. “A life in service to the Murder Lord doesn’t offer much exposure to the latest trends, I imagine.”

Melkior seems to have frozen mid-stride. He’s frozen in general. Among the more monkish of his habits: the ability to appear carved right from the rock. Even still, the argument clearly taking place in the theater of his mind is all but broadcasted. “...Why do you care?”

He shrugs, closing his hand over the trinkets and lowering it ever so slowly. “You don’t need to take it if you don’t wish. I’m sure I have a few other colleagues who would be interested. “

“I don’t-” His hand jerks. Enver feels the point slide towards him. He watches Melkior feel it slip away. A paroxysm of irritation passes over him, making his lip curl to bare fangs. An animal kind of frustration.

His palm opens beckoning. 

“....You waste a lot of time on gestures, Baneite.” Melkior’s heels sink to the ground, pivoting towards him. Seconds before his claws can close on the proffered chains, though, Gortash’s hand snaps shut again.

“Enver.”

An annoyed twitch of the tail. Golden eyes are locked on his hand with a greedy gleam.

“You waste a lot of time on gestures....Enver.”

“Not so difficult, is it?” He smiles, gesturing in front of him. “Come here, I’ll put them on.”

“I can do it myself.” He follows the gesture where it leads, though, tugged a few steps around the edge of the chaise.

“You haven’t seen how they’re attached. I’d like my gifts worn properly.” He tilts his head up to look him in the eye. The bland smile never wavers. “Though, I can’t exactly reach from here.”

“Then...stand?”

“Ah, my friend, this seat is comfortable, and I’ve had such a long morning.”

This, actually, is where it becomes most dangerous. Not lightly do the Children of Bhaal open their space. Even less lightly should they be invited into yours. Gortash doesn’t break eye contact. Almost doesn’t dare to. The long ebony claws now mere inches from his face occupy the whole of his awareness regardless. 

Melkior glances again at the hand holding his prize.

He takes a seat on the couch, settling awkwardly at the very edge of the worn green velvet. His gaze flickers towards him again.

“Better?”

The faintest knot of tension that had begun tying itself in his chest is swept cleanly aside. His smile deepens, sharpens as he sits up properly. “Better...but you are blessed with some very imposing horns, Melkior.” He glances at them, near vertical and spiraling like a goat’s. They add nearly half a foot to his height. It’s when the tiefling’s eyes dart up towards the same appendage, however, that he moves. In one blink, he plants a hand on his shoulder, sweeping him off the couch entirely.

In the span of a heartbeat, Melkior is kneeling before him.

Another heartbeat. Gortash half expects to feel a draft over his innards the next second. So, he doesn’t let himself pause. With deft hands, he plucks one of the chains from his palm and begins carefully clipping the first end near the base of his horn.

Melkior’s body goes tight. From this level, he has to look up at him. From the edges of his vision, he can feel those eyes held wide, burning into him. No doubt imagining a thousand ways to split him down the middle for the insult.

“Will this satisfy you, then.”

......

Enver’s been too well trained to let his surprise show. He doesn’t break his gaze from his work, even, carefully lining the clips along the ridges spirals of the horn, assessing placement to see if the chains will drape properly.

“For now.” He says softly.

Melkior rolls his eyes, arranging his legs to fold more comfortably underneath him. His hands clasp politely in his lap, for all the world looking like a penitent at his prayers. The visual has its appeals. Much more so the fact that he’s clearly trying to avoid eye contact at the moment.

Up close, it’s surprising how clean he smells. The undercurrent is there, of course, old blood and fluids of more unmentionable varieties. The reeking incense of Bhaal. Something antiseptic, a rubbing alcohol perhaps. But there’s linen too, notes of a soapy kind of a lavender smell.  He wonders if it’s intentional, a way of hiding his nature. Or perhaps this was simply a clean outfit, yet unspoiled by the usual grisly tasks on Melkior’s to-do list.

The tiefling continues to sit quietly. An outside perspective might presume him to be meditating. Certainly his gaze seems far enough away for that to be the case. Gortash looks closer, though, and sees the barely restrained shiver every time he traces the edges of his horns.

Hears the slightly staccato rhythm of his breath.

“If I had known all it took were a few baubles to get you to behave, I would’ve sent earrings ahead of my first few envoys.” The spirals of the horns pose an inviting challenge, drawing the chains taut where they should instead drape. He recalculates the placement some. “Are all Bhaalists so materialist?”

“I don’t care about finery. I take trophies.”

“My favorite assassin, this is a trophy.” Slowly, ever so slowly, his free hand slides into his hair, threading through dark tangled strands to sweep them from his face. This is almost a bridge too far. Melkior’s shoulders snap to attention and his lip curls. Enver only presses firmly on the top of his skull, tilting his head back gently until his eyes meet his own. “We’ve secured our means into the hells.” Not quite a murmur, not quite a whisper, but something velvet and soft and prayerful in his voice all the same. With his hair pushed off his forehead, he can see glints of amber and red swimming in the molten gold of Melkior’s eyes. “Our victory is within our grasp, and I’d say that merits a reward.”

Melkior’s chest rises and falls in sharp movements. The dark purple of his lips peeks through, the usual white paint scraped away by his teeth. “We haven’t won yet.”

“True. But it’s as simple as closing our fist.” He presses his thumb pointedly to the center of the tiefling’s forehead, biting back a laugh when his eyes briefly cross in their attempt to track the movement. “Not comfortable being touched?”

“I’m not frightened of you.”

“I didn’t ask if you were frightened.”

“People who touch me don’t find it ends happily for them.” He still hasn’t moved. The pressure he’s placing on his head is tight, not easily breakable, but Melkior hasn’t so much as tested it.

“I didn’t ask how I’d end up either. Even if I did.” He tilts his head, lifting free hand to show the mark matching the one blazoned on the Bhaalspawn’s shoulder. “We have certain oaths to prevent exactly this. Your Urge isn’t complicating that?”

Melkior huffs, darting his eyes to the side. “No. Father made...allowances.”

“Then you’ll forgive me if I continue to place my trust at your feet. So far as I can see it, then, the only reason for me to not touch you is if you prefer not to be touched.” He’s still looking away. It won’t do, it needles him where he needs to remain placid. He taps his chin, drawing his gaze back where it should stay. “Do you prefer that?”

The office isn’t silent. A draft beckoned in by the open window carries the din of the city below, the echoes of small lives and ways. The floor buzzes with his machines, the clanks and crashes so familiar they felt like music.

Just as familiar is the sensation he feels. A leash, tied around Melkior’s neck. The end lays in front, his for the grabbing. He could layer his voice with such powers as Bane made available to him, let the sensation of his touch seep into that too addled mind neatly cupped in his hands. A final completion of his art, dominating that which was by its nature untameable. Violence incarnate in his palm. Perhaps impossible, but the temptation was there all the same. Nearly overwhelming, even.

He doesn’t reach for it. It means nothing if taken now.

Melkior blinks. Blinks. Blinks. Blinks.

“.....You’ll touch me unless I say no?”

“Correct.”

“........For how-....” His brow knits together. For once not in anger, but confusion. “Continuously? Or just now? Or-”

He can’t hold it back anymore. He laughs, for once not the boisterous, controlled thing he saved for meetings. He might even go so far as to call it genuine. It seems to worsen the confusion, but Enver only ruffles his hair before getting to his feet.

“We can work that out later, then. For now, I think it may be time to speak with our diabolist.”

Melkior scrambles to his feet, the new chains jingling slightly in the motion. He seems wholly taken aback. “I didn’t give my answer.”

“Later.” You did . He claps his shoulder, smiling brightly. “Duty calls” 

Enver strides out the door before he can say another word. He glances back only once, when the expected footfalls don’t hit his ears.

A gift of his own. Who else in the last century can claim to see a Bhaalspawn smiling without a hint of bloodlust?

Some Months. Years. Decades. Eons. Time Later

The patriars are all speaking at once, their chattering so loud as to nearly drown out the whirr and clank of the Steel Watch. The metal monstrosities tower around his party, flatly beckoning him into the fray. All of it fails to overpower the sound of Melkior’s own heartbeat.

The tiefling’s feet strain against the boots Shadowheart had wrestled him into. Without his calloused heels touching the earth he feels untethered. So many people, their reek hit him like a fist to the face. Unbidden a frenzy of gore-spattered images swim past his eyes, made sharper and angrier by all his unrestful heart. The duchess, her legs discarded as bloodied stumps on either side of her. One of the country lords to his immediate left, gagging on Melkior’s staff as it punched through the back of his skull. A sizzling smell of cooking meat as he imagined the Steel Watch chassis stuffed full of lordlings to get acquainted with the infernal iron buried within.

He didn’t even bother to breathe right now, to try grounding himself. There were simply too many things to distract himself from. Easier to let it swim by. His hand twitches instinctively towards Gale’s, but can he trust himself then to leave the limb intact? 

The wizard notices the motion. Gale knows enough not to touch him, but he does favor him with a kind smile nonetheless, reassurance dripping from that soft voice of his. “Not far now, my love. We won’t let you lose control.”

“Right. Or if you’ve got to, I’ve got just the dickhead in this room for you to aim it at...” Karlach grumbles just behind him. Gale looks at her disapprovingly, though the regret seems to hit her even faster. “Sorry, that’s not funny.”

“He’ll be with my father.” Wyll says. Urgent, so urgent, his eyes scanning the throng. Those eyes aren’t meant for anything but Ulder Ravengard at the moment, they can’t be spared for the fearless leader. “Likely near the front-...BLAST these crowds, can you see him?”

“We’ll find him, Wyll.” Melkior says faintly, voice so small it immediately becomes lost in the pandemonium. “And the others...” Though what he’s meant to do about it in here he couldn’t say. This hall. He’s never been in it before, he can’t have been, not with the way everyone’s eyes seem to slide right off him. But something lingers in the hall, a miasma that claws into the aching gapes in his brain.

The machine had known him. He eyes the mechanical soldier like it might echo with that voice again.

Karlach hisses. It’s joined by a flare of heat just at his back. Lucky they were on the edge of the carpet, or it might’ve started smoking. “Got him. Just at the end there.”

“With my father.” Wyll says, relief palpable in his voice. He starts forward reflexively, but hesitates, glancing back at Melkior. “.....How do you want to do this?”

Melkior sees a flicker of strain behind his eyes. The compulsion to move towards his father. Or not, that strain had been flickering ever since Last Light. Since the cler- “It’s your father, Wyll.” He says, strangling the thought in its synapse. A shaky smile forces its way on his face, like it might make them all friends again.

Wyll smiles back, like he might be able to accept it. “And the Steel Watch let you in, my friend. I’ll follow your lead.”

“ Fuck strategy, we should just rush the bastard. Letting him even speak is a bad move.” Karlach says, glaring daggers at the room at large. “Fuck, hang on, he’s on the move. Can’t see him from here.”

“He can’t have gone far” He rocks up onto the balls of his feet, craning his neck above the cross to try to find where Wyll and Karlach’s gazes point. “Is it-"

“ There you are.”

A headache splits his skull, so sharp and profound that the word ceremorphosis floats to the front of his consciousness. It's not me , rumbles the Emperor, but he’s momentarily insensate to it. His heels crash to the ground and he staggers. The cobblestone and the rich carpets swim in front of his eyes. The voice, the voice from just behind him, the whole universe in a voice. 

Vaguely, he’s aware of the voice of Gale, concerned, and a sudden snarl from Karlach. All he can do is lurch forwards, dragging a head that seems ten pounds heavier up to meet the origin of the voice.

Black and emerald leathers, set deep with gold. Are all Bhaalists such materialists ? Above them swims a face, the features refusing to resolve themselves. It's like it's being blocked. His face won’t render them into anything human, just swirls them into a sickly whorl of flesh. All that pierces through are two dark eyes, deep and shadowed and taunting.

He nearly doubles over to vomit. The eyes narrow, tilting to the side. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

The voice again, deep and smooth as spider’s web, I’d tear the voicebox out to keep it on my pillow, but I can’t, but I can’t, it won’t sound if it's not where it should be

“Melkior, can you hear me?” Gale’s touch on his shoulder, pulling him upright, and Karlach’s big arms hauling him to his feet at the waist. All feel wrong, itching, pulling .

“What the hell did you do to him?” Karlach growls. Time was he’d love to wrap himself in that protection, in the ferocity of love it signified. Now he shoved hard at her arm, scratching like a caught stray.

“While I appreciate the faith in my abilities, Karlach, I think you overestimate them a hair. When would I have had time to do a thing to him?” There’s a laugh in his voice, and it makes a mouth sprout in the skin spiral. Smiling, always smiling, dark stubble dotting the jaw. The nose follows, and dark brows. “I think he can stand for himself, now, can’t you, Melkior?”

The face is just a face. He shoves hard until Karlach drops him, lurching forward the last few steps. The last thing he feels is Gale’s hand sliding off his shoulder, the kind touch evaporating like a dream.

He stops a hair short of the dark-haired man. The Chosen, the Absolute, Gortash, Baneite, but he’s missing a name, isn’t he? Treasure locked behind that name, prizes, secrets.

Trophies.

On the last step he pulls himself up. Melkior sinks his claws deep into the fabric of his trousers, planting his feet squarely apart. There’s barely a meter between him and the stranger now, a meter that seems to draw his breath out from him entirely. This is not the Urge, not his father, and yet he fights for control all the same.

“Who....who are you?” His voice rings out impossibly loud. The crowd of nobles immediately near him look around in stunned surprise, creating a ripple of silence.

Gortash scarcely seems to notice. He tilts his head, regarding him with a detached sort of warmth. The look Gale gives to his books that used to claw at him so, the look Astarion gives a willing neck before his teeth sinks in.

The headache is worse. He won’t let himself react, even as his vision whites out-

There is a gentle warmth on his forehead, edged in something sharp and metallic. It brushes the hair on his head back, sweeping the overgrown tangles back between his horns. He blinks hard. He’s touching my head like a sick child , comes the realization like thunder.

“My favorite assassin, what have they done to your eyes?”

His entire face feels hot, the stone set in his left socket itching self consciously. “What are you-”

“Don’t fucking touch him!” Karlach barks.

“No need to be like that, Karlach. He may not remember it, but...”

Enver tilts his head. He smiles. For just a second, Melkior’s head feels just fine.

“I do have permission.”