Chapter Text
A ship crashes. It hasn't crashed yet: still it falls, trailing smoke and dragons and sunbright silver, punching through realms with all the subtlety of a warhammer; still it falls, leaving a bleeding gutwound in the world behind it. Hunters crawl after, gathering at the torn edges of reality, a redred infection, flame and fury and vicious silver vengeance. It falls, twisting-twisted breaking apart, Nautiloid -to-naught, and the eyes that track its progress are keen and bright.
Deep in the guts of the ruin-to-be, eyes open. Yellowgreenblack, a stained-glass tapestry of pure bloodbright panic.
A githyanki warrior wakes angry , smashes her way free, ancestral hatred heavy behind her ribs.
A cleric of Shar wakes afraid , breathes fast, says her name aloud in the stifling dark.
A prophet wakes abandoned , cries out to a God not listening, remembers a name left behind.
(I am—)
They — body a burden offering no answers — breathe in blood, taste it bitterheavy on their tongue. Flatten their hands (long fingers taperedblack claws with blood beneath them and scars on the knuckles) on the muscle wall of the pod, and they push .
(My name is—)
The pod flexes outwards. Muscles strain, membranes pulling taut, tearing free, fleshy strata meat beneath their hands—
—and the ship jolts (a dragon roars), and the shockwave of it breaks through the inertia, the pod splitting snapping with a sound like breaking bone, and
(My God is—)
they tumble free, hit the ground hard and roll.
Agony flares in a body newly awake, the skull an axeblade split. Amniotic fluid sloughs from them, dripping plasma-clear to the fleshy ground: they draw in a first, painful breath in this new world, and
they pray.
Fumble through rotted roots of memories, the spaces where memories should be, searching for—
(you)
finding—
(me)
—absence.
The shape of devotion still lingers in their body. The cage of their ribs a confession, their spine a rosary stained crimson, and in the place where the God should live—
—nothing.
(My name is)
Nothing.
They rise unsteady to their feet, rooted to the fleshy pulpy ground as the not-not-Nautiloid rocks. Their hands ache, fingers curled inwards until their claws bite bloody crescents into their palms.
(I am)
—alive—
(I am)
—alone—
(I am)
—empty.
(My name is)
(and I am)
(and I will)
and they close their eyes nauseous-hungry-hollow as the one-day wreckage (the soon-to-be husk) lurches around them and they reach for a God not-there not-listening:
(Tyr blind god of justice is this)
(Helm watcherfatherguardian am I)
(Ilmater weeping god of martyrs is this)
The non-answer they receive throbs in their skull, pulsing emptiness reaching dead fingers through the gaps in their mind.
Silence, then.
They bare teeth too large for their mouth (feel their lips split, blood hot and sharp and familiar on their tongue) and they move. Unsteady on the tilting floor, headempty scarsthrobbing, they move. Violence singing in their blood, lonelyhollow animalscared, they move.
Find a sword on a (person's) body, grip it with both bleeding hands. Swing it heavy through the blood, the fire, the screams, through the meat and the terror, and their heart beats steady throughout, reptile-slow, not a twitch as they carve open enthralled bodies, not a twinge as they bury their blade in the skull of a hellboar, blood hot on their skin, beneath their skin, and in the black pit of their stomach hunger stirs.
A ship crashes. It hasn't crashed yet: still it falls, opening Avernus to the light of Toril, trailing hellfire and leathery wings. Still it falls, spiralling towards the ground with reaching grasping tentacles outstretched, embracing the dust-dry fate below.
On the surface, the Blood War rages, silverred and roaring. The ship casts a many-limbed shadow over the redred earth, over the redred blood and the bodies that wallow beneath it.
Deep in its guts, the Blade of Frontiers opens his eyes. Deep in its guts, Wyll Ravengard breathes in sharp, tastes viscera and amniotic fluid, and he retches. Bile in his mouth, stinging in his nose, his eyes, he writhes for a razorred moment, breathless and bloody.
And then, he moves.
Spreads his hands across the pulsing warmth of the pod, and pushes—
—and pushes—
—until black spots swim in his vision, until his chest burns with exertion, until:
until the ship, Nautiloid-to-nothing, hits the ground, and he is birthed, wet and reeling, into the cold salt air of home.
His pod cracks: he's weightless within it, cushioned by blood and flesh and sicksweet fluid as it’s flung across the cavity of the ship, gravity racing back in on impact, his teeth clashing together as the shell of the pod splits against the wall. Wyll spills out with the fluid, reeking, sticky, shivering as the air rushes in, and it takes his limbs a moment to remember how to move, muscles resting on their laurels as he tries to stumble to his feet. Succeeds, finally, with a hand on the shattered shell of the pod. He wipes greasy ooze from his face and inhales — tastes sea air, salt and fish and low tide. After the sulfurreek of Avernus, he thinks, he could drop to his knees and kiss the seaweed-laden rocks. Know the touch of Toril, the material , solid stone and cold water against his skin.
Instead, he pushes himself upright, gingerly stretches his arms. Takes a short inventory — no broken bones, some bruises that make themselves known, a loose tooth that fills his mouth with blood.
So. He's alive, and he's home. It's almost nice . Would be, should be, except for the itch in his (one good) eye, except for the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, except for the headache that threatens to split him open, has nothing to do with the bruises on his ribs and the ache in his hands. He flexes them, slowcarefulthoughtful, inhales until his ribs protest, and breathes out.
Things could be worse, he supposes. He could have died in the crash; he could have died in the Hells. He could have died a thousand times, in a thousand ways, left an obligation unfulfilled, an oath broken. Then again, he still could.
Fine. Step one: find a healer. Step two: kill a devil. Step three: undergo ceremorphosis.
Things could be worse.
They rob a tomb. Heart in their mouth (unholy, unholy), they crush the guardian’s skull with the pommel of their sword, and they think—
—this is wrong—
—and the scribes don’t scream when they die, no death rattle shuddering down their spine. Just the tired sigh of old magic, and the cloth-wrapped bones hitting the tiles.
They breathe out, watch the bonedust stir, swirling through the light to settle on the black of their armour, a pale shroud over their hands, already so bloody. They can taste it when they inhale, stale and chalky. Should make them sick; doesn’t. Should make them sad; doesn’t.
They spit a mouthful of blood and dust onto the ground, and rub their hand on their thigh.
“Well,” says the cleric (Shadowheart Shadowheart Shadowheart, clinging to the name like it’s
all
she’s
got), “Should we see what they were defending?”
They (touch their scars) (touch their chest) (can’t find the source of the what what what the thing in their throat that won’t let them breathe this air) nod, wipe their brow with their wrist and feel the bonedust cling to their sweaty skin.
She’s looking at them.
“Yes,” they say, their voice a rasp, a shell broken open, and they don’t look back at her as they stalk past, ignore the
no no no
that’s heavy in their chest as they
no no no
step into the tomb, sword too tight hands too tight skin too tight and they touch a hand to the tomb, feel the marks of something under their fingers.
“Can you read it?”
Shadowheart looks at them. At the runes carved on the tomb, the statue of Jergal
(scribe of the dead, lord of the end, shouldn’t frighten you the way it does)
still looming behind them. Shakes her head. Lae’zel shifts, impatient, blood oozing between her fingers and they—
(think to offer, to hold out a hand alight with divine benediction and soothe her ills)
—turn back to the tomb. Draw their thumb through the dusty runes; try to picture the body beneath. Motionless in the dark, waiting for the light.
Waiting for them.
And something in them says
don’t
and something in them says
leave
and the cleric at their side (eyes dark heart dark shadow-shadow-shadowheart) says
“Well?”
They swallow, and taste bone.
Breathe deep, and move.
Clench, flex, muscles straining against the stone as the lid of the tomb grinds against its walls, as the black gap grows wider, swallows the light until it can’t swallow any more, until—
— green.
Spectre-green, necrosis-green, energy alight in their eyes and in their chest, they stagger back with their sword raised to face down the rising dead (rising dread), bonehands gripping the edges of the tomb (their lungs), and Shadowheart steps back too, radiant light gathering at her fingertips—
—and the dead thing stands before them, and their sword drops with a clang. The thing (and something deep inside names it Him , names it Ancient , names it Hated ) tips his head and looks at them, and those eyes—
—neither mortal nor fiend, nor the empty gaze of undead—
—pierce them.
“So he has spoken,” he says, and they can see the root of his tongue, the desiccated muscle greywhite and filmy. “And so thou standest before me.”
Heart in their mouth (blood in their lips in the scars just glimpsed in a reflection notme notme) they pull back their lips, show teeth stained crimson and he
says
“right, as always”,
like conversation in the abandoned church of an abandoned god and they, abandoned too, close their mouth on the words.
He spits up blood as he walks. Wipes it careless from his lips with the back of his hand, thin and crimson — vibrant enough not to worry about internal bleeding, at least. There's a bruise on his jaw that makes itself known every time he opens his mouth, bruises mottled along his ribs that ache with each step, bruises up his arms and his legs and his back, but he's walking , and he's only bleeding a little.
Which means he's not done . He keeps an eye out for survivors as he scrambles from the wreckage, shedding sticky fluid and membranous webbing as he goes. North, North, North, the guiding star brightening overhead as the sky darkens, as the land slopes upwards, the cliffs and the sea fading into the night at his back. He walks until the sun sets, until the sky is black, until he can't see the path before him and the wind has turned bitter-cold.
He finds no survivors. Whether because there aren't any (how can I be the only one?) or because he missed them (I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm), he can't say.
All he knows is that he's alone.
He reaches the grove. At this time, he doesn't know that's its name; all he sees is fires, all he hears is voices. He starts to run, makes his limping, aching way to the vineladen gate: figures greet him, shadows in the dark.
“Stop!”
A threat: a torch swings towards him, and Wyll raises his hands, feels blood flake from his skin. The figure, silhouetted against the moon, has horns.
“I don't mean any harm,” he calls up, calls out, hands still raised, still frozen in the shadow of the gate. “I could use a healer.”
A moment; the figure withdraws, a new voice softer in the dark.
Who is it?
They aren't a goblin.
One of Aradin's lot?
Horns pierce the moon once again.
“Are you with Aradin?”
“Not as far as I know.”
Another moment passes. The horns retreat. Wyll hunches his shoulders against the chill, and waits. Time crawls on. Voices hiss, leaves whispering against the face of the gate. A new voice: deeper, authoritarian, pitched low and worried.
The gate grinds open.