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There’s seven of them, see. Astarion and Karlach. Shadowheart and Lae’zel. Gale and Tav. And then Wyll, by himself.
It’s why he thought the offer could work.
Isayrn was standing ankle-deep in gore, which was a big upgrade from hip-deep in gore. Which wasn’t a metaphorical situation; before being summoned here, he had been trying to stop some kind of multi-headed hydra demon from ripping his wings off. His coworker, a fellow guard for Mizora’s estate, kept not realizing that chopping off demon hydra heads was the last thing you wanted to do, because the hydra would sprout more heads. Not from the stump, like a normal hydra, just out of the body somewhere, so there were dozens of necks just gushing blood all over, and the battlefield had been getting slippery.
Some Bhaalist cultists were a large step up in Isayrn’s opinion. He didn’t even have to worry about true death, unlike his stranded coworker.
Surface problems seemed milder in comparison. There was a potential invasion of the city, but not right now. There were Bhaalist cultists, again, easily killed with a glaive and a few lobs of hellfire. And, interestingly, there was a fancy dinner party the summoner’s group was planning on attending.
“We can get close to Gortash during the coronation,” Tav was saying. “Fucking Gortash even sent us invitations. But there’s a fancy ball beforehand, and we’re going to need outfits, and there’s going to be a dance.”
Tav held up eight envelopes. “Eight invites. Someone gets a plus one.”
The group, for the most part, ignored Isayrn, or gave him sharp looks without saying anything. They tolerated his presence at best, and they most certainly don’t trust him. Which was good, because he was here on loan from Mizora, his own contract outsourced for the time being. But honestly if/when Mizora wanted to spy on them, she could already do it through Wyll.
Isayrn was purely here as additional back-up, because even Zariel was wary of the Absolute at this point.
Mizora had favorites among her retinue, and Isayrn was near bottom of the list, barely scraping out of getting demoted back to lemurehood. That said, Isayrn wasn’t sure if it was much better to be a favorite, because Wyll was clearly a favorite, and that hadn’t seemed to do him many favors.
Though it did give him one: a rapier, made in an echo of Wyll’s own soul. The rapier Mizora had bound Isayrn to, in what was clearly some kind of elaborate mindgame against Wyll.
Strangely, he didn’t mind being summoned. He thought he would, when he was informed what had happened. When Mizora yanked him somewhere for something, it was never pleasant.
Granted, that didn’t say much. It was the Hells. Nothing good ever happened in the Hells. Superiors, like Mizora, tended to vent their frustrations about their own superiors, Zariel, onto their subordinates.
And yet when Wyll pulled him from the Hells, he had the decency to be polite. He had manners, and he mostly commanded Isayrn to kill things that weren’t massive demons trying to hork him down like a dog with a sausage.
That said, Isayrn would like to do more than kill things because, right now, he was not in the Hells. He could smell opportunity, if only he could find a way to get Wyll to keep him around and not shoot him back to where the multi-headed hydra demons were.
Bargaining would be difficult because, you know, Mizora, but bargaining was in Isayrn’s blood, and not just literally.
He wasn’t clear on how he became a devil other than the absolute basics of ‘was a lemure’, but he was pretty sure he bargained his way into the mess, and by the absent gods, he was going to fucking bargain his way back on out.
So Isayrn cleared his throat, and half the group jumped like they forgot he was here. He ignored that. “You are planning for this to end in bloodshed, correct?”
Wyll didn’t jump. Wyll didn’t give much of a reaction, other than his mismatched eyes narrowing slightly. “We are trying to avoid collateral damage.”
“But you still think combat might break out. It takes time to summon me. If I was already there, it would allow you to react faster. And you never need worry on if I die.”
You didn’t even get demoted if you died while you were summoned, and if you weren’t in the Hells, the death didn’t stick. It was a form of immortality Isayrn rarely got to experience as, normally, it was big ole demons, and rivers of gore, and dealing with Mizora.
Combat was strangely fun this way. No consequences to his own actions. All pain was temporary, made smooth by the return to the Hells. He could just let loose for a bit and pretend yonder human was Mizora when he flung fire at her face.
Wyll pressed steepled fingers to his face, and when he pulled them away, his face held hostility. “I don’t think bringing a devil to the coronation would aid my reputation here.”
Isayrn stared at him. “Yes. And?”
Isayrn had heard about the various kinds of festivities places that weren’t the Hells had. They had free food. Delicious food. Food that tasted what some called ‘pleasurable’.
There wasn’t pleasure in the Hells. There were things that hurt, and things that hurt less, and things that didn’t hurt but were vaguely distasteful. The absolute best you got was ‘kinda unpleasant’. All smells, sounds, tastes, colors, they were all either glaring, or painful, or distasteful, or tolerable.
There were so many colors up here that were so beautiful. Even colors Isayrn thought he knew, like that crimson red of Wyll’s eye, here it was a glittering, pretty thing, instead of malice incarnate.
Isayrn smelled flowers, and the floral scent was pleasant instead of grating, and the blue of the sky was calming instead of depressing, and the heat from a fire was relaxing instead of misery.
“I’m trying to repair my reputation,” Wyll said.
“ Why? ” Isayrn asked.
“I hate to say it, but he’s got a point,” Astarion said.
“I don’t fancy getting exiled a second time,” Wyll said.
“Your reputation was in tatters even before Mizora,” Isayrn pointed out. “The patriars always tittered over you. Exile was just an excuse. You could be absolutely perfect, a paragon of heroism, and they would find a way to turn that into your fault. They have already decided to hate you, have hated you for years, whether you were an inconvenient heir keeping them from their own plots, or a scandal they never heard of. They have decided, already, to side with Gortash over your father. In that case, why not have a little fun with it? And with me there, a full devil, fewer people will think devil when they see you.”
Isayrn knew a lot about Wyll. He was, after all, one of Mizora’s favorites.
Karlach Demonsbane, godsdamned champion of Zariel, folded her arms and moved into a protective stance. Isayrn’s wings reflexively plastered to his back. “And what do you get out of this?”
“More time outside of the Hells,” Isayrn said quickly. “Free food? I haven’t eaten since, ever I think? I’m kinda curious what it’s like.”
“Again,” Astarion said. “I hate to say it, but he’s got a point.”
“Gortash will be in the seat of his power,” Isayrn said. Wheedled really. “You can trust he will have guards and the full force of the Steel Watch. You can also trust that when summoned, I cannot act outside of your commands. If you want me to only focus on securing your father’s safety, that I will do.”
“Devils are master wordsmiths,” Wyll countered. “I know well how easily devils can turn your words into a sword.”
“And if I was a master wordsmith, I wouldn’t still be working for Mizora,” Isayrn said. Again, he had the feeling he had, indeed, bargained his way into his sticky situation, which implied he failed at it. “Besides, if I perform well, you may be inclined to let me stay here longer on other occasions. This means more time out of the Hells for me. That’s very exciting.”
Karlach sucked in air through her teeth. “Look I know devils are supposed to be tricky bastards, but the desire to escape the Hells is very real.”
“It’s your decision Wyll,” Tav said.
—
Isayrn’s clothing did not survive the Blood War. Clothing never survived war. He had had armor, and some kind of weird acidic blob splashed up against him and melted half of his skin off as well as the armor.
The skin regrew. Armor, unfortunately, did not.
Decadent clothing was a sign of power, that you were so far above the common soldiers that you afford opulence. Mizora had hundreds of extravagant outfits for any occasion she needed. She had imported furs from the Material plane. Pearls from the Elemental Plane of Water. Gems from the Elemental Plane of Earth.
Isayrn had half a shirt remaining and some pants.
The clothier stared at him.
He stared back.
“We did save you from that serial killer,” Tav said, folding their arms.
“Well, I’ve got something backless,” the clothier sighed. “Let me take some measurements, and I’ll get to work.”
As the others picked out their own ostentatious outfits, Wyll remained by Isayrn’s side. He was having that look on his face of second-guessing himself, so, clearly, Isayrn needed to work some charming in here.
Without actually using charming magic. The group would notice that. And it always wore off eventually, and sure, cambion charming was a little more hefty than normal charming magic, but people could sometimes figure out they were under the influence, and boy they got mad if that happened.
So Isayrn sidled over to Wyll, who looked like he would rather be anywhere else.
It was a familiar expression to Isayrn. Most of his coworkers looked like that, and half of them would stab him for invading personal bubbles. Wyll hadn’t stabbed him yet, so Isayrn was immune to his disapproval.
“A handful of us were watching when you freed Mizora,” Isayrn said. “We had a betting pool on if you’d kill her instead. I myself was hoping for you hitting that big blender button. It would have been cathartic.”
“I wasn’t about to become a lemure,” Wyll said. The unspoken ‘again’ didn’t really need to be said. Even if Wyll had been yanked out before his personality melted around him, there was one way to make a devil.
Isayrn tried not to think too hard about his lemure days himself.
“Smart for you, but, yaknow, work with Mizora long enough, and you start visualizing bad things happening to Mizora as if you could manifest them through daydreaming alone.”
There was the tiniest snort from Wyll. That was encouraging. Isayrn sidled closer. The clothier was currently busy taking Gale’s measurements while Gale talked in length about drow silks.
“We don’t need to hear this,” the clothier was saying.
“No no, let him talk,” Tav said.
They seemed a friendly group, at least with each other and not necessarily the awkward new summon in the party. Maybe he could ask Tara for pointers.
“Apparently,” Isayrn continued, “Zariel’s been upset at her lately. First she got captured by cultists, and then she agreed to let you off the hook in six months? Zariel’s been spamming angry messages, and we can all hear those. Shakes the building.”
“I doubt breaking my contract will be that easy,” Wyll said. “It’s Mizora.”
There was this strange instinct Isayrn would get sometimes, a pulsing heartbeat of someone who died a while ago. A word without a translation into Infernal.
‘Unionization’.
It seemed important, but Isayrn couldn’t remember what it fucking meant.
“True, but we’re rooting for you. Some of us, anyway.”
Wyll gave him a skeptical look.
“Look, we are closer to each other than to Mizora at least, right?”
“And that lasts until someone backstabs their way into a better bargaining position,” Wyll said flatly.
“Would you?” Isayrn asked, genuinely curious.
He could see the protest form at first, almost see Wyll argue that he wasn’t a devil.
But he was. The protest died on Wyll’s lips, and he glanced away, shoulders hunching defensively.
“I wouldn’t,” Wyll finally said. “I cannot trust others to be the same.”
“Can you at least trust that I want to shit-talk her on the job?”
Wyll laughed, a sudden bright thing, and then looked affronted that Isayrn had gotten him to do so.
Well. Lemure steps and all.
—
Isayrn was able to talk his way into not being banished after getting measured by pointing out there was a big time vampire lord after Astarion right now, and Isayrn didn’t need to sleep, so he could be on night watch.
“He keeps making good points,” Astarion said. “Look I’ll rest easier with a devil nightwatch that I won’t spill tears over if he gets gutted.”
Wyll made a frustrated sigh but conceded the point.
And then! Excitingly! Vampire spawn did try to attack and abduct Astarion, and Isayrn was able to rouse everyone the good ole fashioned way, by belting Infernal insults at the top of his lungs to wake your cohorts before the demons ate you.
Vampires were kinda like demons, right?
Astarion didn’t get kidnapped, more people got to die, and Isayrn got to look very good while doing so, even if the rest of his shirt got torn off in the combat. Win/win all around.
He was, he decided, going to win Wyll over. He was going to do this ‘unionize’ thing so hard, even if he couldn’t fully remember what the fuck unionizing was. Isayrn hadn’t had a lot of success in the Hells. As Wyll pointed out, devils were the sort of people prone to backstabbing, and this hadn’t gone well for Isayrn historically, but this was not the Hells.
And Wyll was a brand new devil, not yet seeped in Infernal treachery.
So, the next morning, Isayrn helpfully pointed out that he, as a devil, was immune to vampiric charm effects. Astarion didn’t say anything this time, and just gestured with both hands to Isayrn’s chest. Isayrn continued to not be in the Hells, and they went to go kill a vampire lord, though the amount of personal trauma made things a touch awkward.
But not as awkward as combat with Wyll. He’d use the rapier, see, the rapier Isayrn was now bound to, the rapier that was the summation of Wyll’s soul.
When Mizora used the contract against Isayrn, it felt like barbed hooks. It felt like leashes and chains, yanking Isayrn this way or that. It was a boiling, burning thing, and it grated along all the lemure-shaped scars in the remnants of Isayrn’s soul.
When Wyll held the rapier, it felt like he was holding Isayrn in his warm, steady hands.
Gentle wasn’t the right word. Wyll wielded them both with precision and with an eye for protection. Safe, perhaps. There wasn’t a fear Wyll would misuse him. When Wyll held the sword, Isayrn knew in the deepest intimacy the shape of Wyll’s soul, and it was enthralling.
Isayrn wondered what it felt like on Wyll’s end, Isayrn bound to his soul. If he was constantly aware of Isayrn’s presence.
Maybe he could work a ‘unionization’ angle from that. They were both in this together now.
Isayrn did unfortunately die during a massive Bhaalist murder tribunal ambush thing, and he woke up to skies choked in black ash, lit only by faint flashes of fire lightning. He groaned, and let his head hit against the charred earth for a moment.
“Fuck,” he said succinctly.
He stretched out his wings, shook off the strips of flesh cocoon he’d ripped out of, and he surveyed the base.
It had, unfortunately, survived the demon hydra attack, and was not currently under siege. Damn.
He flew up to an entryway, and clung to the side of the wall, listening. In the distance, he could hear the tones of one archdevil Zariel, and Isayrn’s wings reflexively plastered to his back.
He crawled inside and sought out a paperwork imp. Imps were easier to unionize with, because they were already so low on the social ladder, they were willing to take more risks, because they had so much less to lose.
“How bad is it?” Isayrn asked, gesturing with his head towards the raised voices.
The imp hissed and shook his head. “Mizora demoted three people back into lemures, and that was before this next conference call. Just pretend you aren’t here.”
“Zariel’s upset again?” Isayrn asked.
“Oh no, Mizora is,” the imp said. “See, Mizora’s favorite warlock? Wyll? Apparently Zariel’s decided she wants him for keeps. And like, of course Mizora was gonna find a way around breaking the contract, but Mizora wanted to keep Wyll for herself. ”
It was never good to be a superior’s ‘favorite’.
“Mizora is furious, but she can’t say anything to Zariel, soooo…”
“She’s taking it out on everyone else,” Isayrn said.
“If he just hit the blender button, Zariel probably would have demoted her,” the imp said. “He had the chance. I would have done it.”
“Nothing would change, not really,” Isayrn said. “We would just be assigned a different shitty superior officer. What if… there were no superior officers?”
The imp squinted at him. “You haven’t been talking to the demons again, have you?”
—
Several hours later, Isayrn was pulled back into the Prime Material plane. He slicked the Hells off of him and looked around. Tavern this time. Not in an active combat zone, so the glaive could be sheathed. This was extremely promising for his unionization efforts.
Wyll sat cross-legged on his bed, and he was giving Isayrn an appraising look. For once, it didn’t seem quite as hostile. Considering, like Wyll was actively doing math on the shape of Isayrn’s soul.
He hoped Wyll liked the feel of it. He hoped Isayrn felt appropriately protective.
“What’s the plan for today?” Isayrn asked. His body warred between standing at attention and then getting away with slouching for once without Mizora’s constant gaze.
“Preparations for tomorrow evening,” Wyll said. “The outfits will be ready tomorrow in early afternoon. But I was curious if you knew how to dance?”
Isayrn consulted the hot mess of his brain. “No idea.”
“Well that won’t do,” Wyll said. “It’s been seven years, but I do know the current dances in fashion. I’ll show you.”
“Dancing together then?” Isayrn asked. Wyll took one of his hands in his own, and Isayrn mimicked his body language. Wyll pulled back, and Isayrn mimicked. Wyll swayed to the left, and gestured for Isayrn to move to the right. “I approve. Hopefully I’ll last longer than your normal dance partners.”
“You know a disturbing amount about me,” Wyll said dryly.
“Mizora won’t shut up about you,” Isayrn said. Wyll indicated for him to twirl, and Isayrn did so. “She’s going to try to renegotiate your contract, you know that, right?”
Wyll slid gracefully around the room, free arm extended just so, and Isayrn moved to match. He could probably get away with mimickry alone and just focus on memorizing the deviances. The hot mess that was his brain was uncertain, but surely if there were other dancing couples on the stage, he could also mimic them as well.
“Of course she is,” Wyll said tiredly.
“You’ve got the winning hand,” Isayrn said. “You out-bargained her, which is a thing I’m sure I never did. Just hold down on that, wait it out, and you should be good.”
“How much do you remember?” Wyll asked.
Isayrn blinked, feeling as disarmed as if Wyll had taken his glaive away. “About… fifteen years? Everything before lemurehood is a staticky haze. I get glimpses sometimes, but just that.”
Wyll swept back, one arm low, and Isayrn mimicked, and then added a flourish of his wings following the arms. There was the faintest flush on Wyll’s face at that.
“No memories at all?” Wyll asked.
“Just the Hells. You’ve been. Not a pleasant place.”
“You haven’t been a devil for very long, not in the grand scheme of things,” Wyll said.
“Neither have you,” Isayrn said.
“But you remember bargaining,” Wyll said. “Do you remember what it was for?”
Isayrn paused in the dance, wings swaying slightly.
“No,” he finally said. “I don’t. Why all the questions?”
“I’m wondering where Mizora gets her other devils,” Wyll said, voice low and somber. “She made me one. If there are other devils in her employ… How many were failed warlocks?”
Had he bargained for power?
If he had needed it for something, to fix something, to overthrow and outlast…
But his mind gave him no answers, and the barbs of the contract only spoke of what he owed Mizora.
“I think that sounds correct,” he said after a moment. “But even if we weren’t, we all had to come from somewhere.”
Wyll was silent now.
Something flickered in Isayrn’s chest, an instinct that not even lemurehood could fully burn out. “Look, if you are worried if you’ll end up like Mizora, I mean, maybe. But she spent, what, a thousand years in the Hells? Just don’t do that, and you probably won’t be as terrible.”
“That bar is so low it’s reached the Underdark,” Wyll said.
“Okay, yeah, but the Hells get to you. It worms its way into your mind. It’s slow and insidious and endless. So as long as you stay up here, and not in the massive corruption zone, I think you don’t have anything to be worried about.”
“That’s kind of you to say so,” Wyll said.
Wyll clearly didn’t believe him. Well that wouldn’t do. Isayrn knew Wyll wasn’t evil. He could feel Wyll’s soul, after all. Jury was out on Isayrn, but he liked Wyll like this. Be a shame if it was yet another thing the Hells devoured.
“Cambions that are actually born the old fashioned way up here aren’t always evil,” Isayrn continued. “Granted, the ones that are born the old-fashioned way that do end up in the Hells, that’s how you get your Raphaels and your Mizoras, just desperately compensating. So. Point is, nothing about being a fiend makes you fiendish by default. Logically then, it’s the Hells that do that, to where not even the celestial Zariel was immune. The background magical corruption of the planes, and the systemic corruption of the hierarchy.”
Unionization was hard to do when Mizora would say ‘if you don’t stop that this instance you are all going to be lemures’. People broke ranks fast.
Wyll stared at him, eyes more soft than they had been.
“Are you sure you aren’t a demon?” Wyll asked, but his tone was playful. His guard lowered to a degree, and any victory with him felt better than any ambrosia from the heavens.
“Relatively.”
“Your theory holds merit,” Wyll said slowly. “Sounds as if it would be best if you avoided the Hells then. For your own health.”
The safety promised by the way Wyll wielded the blade was coming into fruition.
Wyll once again took Isayrn’s hand in his own. “Let’s take the dance from the top.”
—
Baldur’s Gate benefited from being such a large city with various arcane centers in that a devil could walk into a ballroom, and the most the party got was a stern lecture for safety.
This wasn’t good when one was trying to hide from the evil cambion harlot who held your contract and thought ruining your life constituted as a personal hobby, but it was good when you yourself were also a devil, and, in Isayrn’s case, also a cambion.
As Isayrn thought, with him standing around, people looked at him and not at Wyll.
The magical outsider detection field the party had for some reason, however, did ping Wyll as a devil.
The receptionist sighed. “Alright. Which one of you summoned that one?” she asked, gesturing at Wyll.
“Me,” Karlach said without missing a beat. “That’s my emotional support devil.”
The receptionist wrote that down. “And the cambion?”
“I also require an emotional support devil,” Wyll answered.
The receptionist sighed again, and looked up over her paper at the party. “I highly doubt that to be the case.”
“You can check with Lord Gortash,” Tav said. “He specifically invited us all here.”
“There was only mention of one devil,” the receptionist said.
“Exactly,” Tav said. “So you know he’s fine with devils being here.”
The receptionist paused, thought about it, and then decided not to press the issue.
They were all let in.
The patriars, true to form, began gossiping loudly about all of them. When the conversation turned to Wyll, Isayrn simply flared his wings and looked intimidating, and the conversation turned to be about him.
Job done, he made a beeline for the buffet table, Wyll following suit.
“Okay, the moment my Father shows for the coronation, you keep him safe,” Wyll said. “If he goes anywhere, you follow.”
“Do you want me visibly following him or not?” Isayrn asked.
“Invisible,” Wyll said.
“Great. Now which one of these should I try first?”
Food was delicious.
Food was so fucking delicious, and Isayrn felt heavily cheated he didn’t get to have it more often. The sheer delights of bread were worth a little bloodshed. When no one was looking except for Wyll, Isayrn opened his bag of holding, and he started shoveling bread in there for later, and then cheeses.
Wyll was content to let most of the party do the talking and mingling, so Isayrn stayed by his side, flaring out his wings a few more times to scare off patriars.
There were large automatons that screamed of the Hells that were ‘patrolling’ the area, and Isayrn didn’t trust them one bit.
And then Gortash entered the party, flanked by Steel Watch automatons, and accompanied by Ulder Ravengard.
Isayrn whispered a word of magic and vanished. He was hoping this would happen after the dancing, but maybe he could find an excuse to dance again later.
He flew up onto the ceiling above Ulder Ravengard and clung there like an overgrown bat. Gortash had split off to talk to the others, but Isayrn had his mission. He stayed invisible up there, having to refresh the spell twice.
He watched Karlach have to be restrained from attacking Gortash, and he watched the mortals below feast on food they all took for granted, and then he watched Gortash get annointed Grand Duke of the city.
Shortly after, the inevitable move was made, and the Steel Watch began to ‘escort’ the previous duke from the premises.
He followed at a reasonable pace away, as Ravengard and the Steel Watch went through several hallways and staircases, then out of the building entirely. Upon which Ravengard vanished, but Isayrn could see faint footprints left behind in the dust of the streets.
They didn’t want anyone noticing him then.
He followed down streets and alleyways, down blocks and past fountains and statues, until they reached the docks. He was able to slip into the building they went into, a private harbor for some large metal boat thing, but there was no way to fit inside the boat thing without being noticed.
So, he watched, and he confirmed when Ravengard entered by the sounds of someone climbing down rungs without anyone visibly doing so, and he watched the contraption vanish under the waves.
He felt like he should know what it was, but unfortunately his brain was just hot wax.
Isayrn left the building quietly, took careful note of which warehouse it exactly was, and then he followed the invisible pull back to his summoner.
—
The group was not in the fancy building, nor in the Elfsong Tavern, but in a dark alleyway they had half-set up in for some reason. The group was semi-clustered together. None of them seemed injured which was reassuring.
He hadn’t realized he’d been worried, and frankly, he shouldn’t have been, not with Zariel’s old champion in the party.
Isayrn dropped the invisibility, and Karlach nearly impaled him.
“Just me!” he said, holding up his hands. Again, she couldn’t really kill him up here, but he didn’t like going back to the Hells. Also getting stabbed hurt his feelings.
“And what the fuck do you want?” Karlach asked. Hostile again? Why?
Did he mess up somewhere?
“Reporting back in?” Isayrn asked, confused. “Everything okay over here?”
Wyll stood up straighter and looked at him.
His stone eye was missing.
That detail seemed important for some reason. Hot wax brain couldn’t figure it out though, but something was definitely going on.
“Right. I told you to follow my father,” Wyll said, voice in an odd tone.
“Yeah they took him to a warehouse,” Isayrn said, feeling a little proud on what a good job he did following that duke. “I think they had him drink an invisibility potion, but the Watch didn’t change, and I tracked him to the docks. There was a metal boat that went underwater. I couldn’t follow further than that. Sorry. But I can take you to the boat.”
Tav blinked. Tav looked pointedly at Wyll.
“She said he was to be executed at dawn,” Wyll said after a moment. “We have several hours.”
Isayrn blinked. “Whomst?”
“If we leave now, we might be able to save him,” Shadowheart said. She turned to Isayrn. “How far away is the warehouse?”
“Maybe forty minutes?” Isayrn said. “So what’s going on?”
“I broke the pact,” Wyll said. “Mizora offered me his location and safe passage in return for a pact unbreaking, versus him dying at his enemy’s hands, and- and I broke it.”
“Good for you!” Isayrn said. “Man Zariel’s going to be so mad at her. Hah. We should definitely be able to get to him before dawn then.”
“Don’t you work for Mizora?” Astarion asked.
Isayrn blinked.
Thought about it.
“Oh shit,” he said. “Oh. Oh hm. Oh she’s not going to be happy about this.”
Isayrn was starting to make a little rattling wheezing noise. He’d never made that noise before. Curious.
“I think you broke him,” Shadowheart said to Astarion.
“Hey, uh, you gonna be okay?” Karlach asked.
Isayrn covered his face with his wings. He was dead. He was beyond dead. He was going to be a lemure again for who knows how long.
A hand touched his shoulder, and Isayrn lowered his wings.
“The magic is bound to the rapier, not to me,” Wyll said. “You should be able to stay, provided you don’t die. And if you do, I can resummon you here.”
“Which is how it works for everyone else,” Gale said. “Ah, minus the summoning part.”
“Withers basically resummons us,” Shadowheart said.
Some small part of him realized though, that he could just not tell them which warehouse. He could possibly stay in Mizora’s bad graces, instead of her lowest ones. He considered it for a hot minute.
But when Wyll summoned him, that was the magic Mizora had, outsourced to Wyll. Right now, in Wyll’s hand, that was where the contract lay, not with Mizora, not in this moment.
Isayrn thought long and hard about this.
“So… if we do this, are we unionizing against Mizora?”
“I don’t think that’s how unions work,” Tav said. “If Wyll’s not-”
“Absolutely,” Wyll said.
“Alright. Okay. Alright I’m on strike because of poor working conditions.” That seemed a correct thing to say. “Yeah I can show you the warehouse.”
And he did. He led the group the entire way there, and watched as Tav negotiated with the captain of the weird boat vessel for passage.
“I know how hard it is to move against Mizora,” Wyll said after a moment, voice quiet so only he could hear. “You have my gratitude. And if we are in a union against Mizora, that implies equality between us, power imbalance aside. I cannot help the magic that summoned you here, but I will not abuse it.”
“I know,” Isayrn said. “I know the shape of your soul already.”
And then because Wyll never would, not with the disparity due to the summoning magic, Isayrn gently kissed Wyll’s temple.
Wyll flushed, but he didn’t pull away.
“You know, for the unionization efforts,” Isayrn said.
Wyll gave Isayrn a long, hard look. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to my father,” he said, and then he kissed Isayrn on the cheek. “But we’ll slay that ogre when it arrives. Let’s go.”