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Chapter Text

She wakes up lying on craggy cliffs, looking down at the crashed ship. It bleeds like a fleshy thing, a mollusc dashed on rock, purple guts spilled out, still fresh with their sick-sweet scent.

The pod she had been held within lies open, feet away, no longer trapping her in place. It is alone, the only one so freed, neither shattered pods nor corpses landed within sight. He isn't here, isn't close, but she can feel the way the tether pulls at her, down off the cliffside into the wilderness below. The direction shifts, slightly, he's moving, which is something. Corpses can be dragged and the Chionthar can sweep a body down, but moving is better than still, it gives her something.

He is down towards the crash and the beach, and that way is cliffs and rocks. She knows how to fall, could make it down that way, but to be so near to the crashed ship was to beg to be trapped and wedged between. She did not like being so exposed, standing in the bright sun with no place to duck and hide and wait, but at least it was high and gave her sight of the lands around.

Bag is gone, no gear, no food, but these lands are forested and far enough from the curse-lands that hunting will be good, once she can move. Her swords are still sheathed on her back, at least, and there are no tears in the cloth of her shirt, the leather of her boots and armor in good condition, only slightly singed. Injuries are...

Nothing bleeds, nothing breaks, her body is intact and whole, but she is weak all the same. Frail as she had been when they had first left the city, that her curse would kill her outright if given cause. This had been the doing of the tentacle-faced creatures, the thing they'd placed inside her eye - she'd tear it out, if she could, but that needed more eyes, more hands.

"Found yourself trapped, little mouse?"

She can smell the hellfire before she even turns to see the man. He wears a human face, a noble's clothes, and a devil's grin - not one she knows, but he knows her. Knows her well enough to be standing north and out of reach.

"My swords are just as deadly thrown as slicing in my hand," she says. "You think I could not spear your throat, send you back to the fires below?"

He laughs. "Such threats, when all I want is to help you! Really, my dear, you should choose your battles more wisely."

"I hunt devils, I don't make deals with them."

"Now, we both know that isn't true." How she wishes she could slice the smile off his face, would it reveal the devil-skin underneath? "I'm not after your soul; I've grander things in mind, and breaking off your collar would suit my plans very well."

"Ever a devil knows the most tempting offer to speak; but I am forged in the wilds and the hells, I know how to hunt even as a jessed hawk. The only offer I will take is one with no contract held, freely given. Does your silk-sick tongue still speak, when I have set the terms?"

"I won't give gifts where I'm not wanted," the devil says. "Enjoy yourself, trying to climb down these rocks - and know that I'm only ever a deal away." Sulphur-smoke, he vanishes. Good riddance.

Violent painful bloody death and not even a rat to strike. But the tether is moving from south to east, still the steep side down but where the bottom is open ground, not pinning her in place. As if she needed devil-dealings, when the Blade was on the hunt.

Approaching the edge, she finds her footing, sees the path, and waits for the movement to still before climbing down. Far more terrifying cliffs have beset her, but that was when she knew she would survive the fall - this sick-weak frailty pains her to no end. 

A sudden movement has her stumbling, but only at the end, it scratches-bleeds but does not break. She licks her wounds and feels the tether tug - all that is left is to hunt.

The ship-meat rots now, the sun growing lower, late summer heat, the scent spreading longer than the sights, as winding rocks and crack-growing trees keep her from her quarry.

South, she tracks the tether, carefully winding her way through rocks, climbing over when needed. It is dark when she sees it, ruined columns and overgrown stone, a temple to an abandoned god. Blood on the stone, corpses in the vines - fresh-dead, hours not days, and strangers all. The tether tugs her in and down, to the crypt-dark depths.

No devil-deals needed for luck - there is a cracked and broken hole, between her and where she can feel Wyll, no double-back trapped-above waiting for camp break and hoping against monsters in the dark of night. The jump is one she can land without harm...the shifts are small, pacing back and forth, but it is still a risk not knowing how the rooms lay out inside, temples built like mazes to keep sneak-thieves from relics, as if this was not plundered all the same.

She hears it before she sees it, a door below opening, a figure creeping out. Not him, but person-shaped, the movement of a predator, that tugs her senses with something wrong. She is a predator too, one that makes monsters her prey - and as it heads out into the dark to hunt, it does not see her hiding.

If it is a monster, its blood is hers, but if it is a person - every move is risky. But it slips closer, between her and the hole - she pounces, swords like claws, to pin it to the ground.

Elf-shape, pointy ears, pale but not as pale as her, eyes like blood that glow in the night, predator fangs. It loses the body of the hunt, the moment that she jumps, sits afraid beneath her, scent and form of prey. But just as quick, it has a knife in hand, tries to cut her, bleed her. Good, too, aims for a vein, smart thing - but she is smarter.

Quick, she pulls the hand aside, pins it to the ground, not forcing blade from grip but keeping it from slicing her. She does not make a cut just yet - needs to know what she is hunting - but it recoils back anyways. A lance, psychic, a pain within the mind - and then, she feels connection, a sharing of thoughts.

She sees a hunter in dark city streets, the prey not beasts but men. She knows this place, from long ago, the taverns of the Lower City, luring drunks into the night. Thief, but not a cutpurse, no necks slit left to rot with sewage - targeted, bringing somewhere. She freezes then, with the thought that haunts her: is he one of her Father's, come to hunt her down?

The memories slide, more recent, new. The living-dead ship, from a pod like hers but different, crashed, split open, scrambling out, recoiling then rejoicing in the fresh air and the sun. Then, predator spots prey, two, combing through the wreck, carving flesh apart. Lays a trap. Knife to throat. Ready to kill a captor. To kill him.

The connection breaks. He looks at her with the fear she is used to, when people peer into her mind. He is people then, which is unfortunate, because there is no power in this world that will stop her from pressing her blade to his throat, a mimic of the move he made, where even a flinch would bleed.

"Is this what you did to him, little hunter?" she asks. "Slice across the throat, or did you gut him down the chest, leave organs hanging and blood seeping into sand? Whatever you did, I will return it tenfold. I can make a death last days, or if you talk, it can be quick."

"What in the hells are you talking about?" the elf asks. She hears the echoes in his mind - whatever psychic-link exists, he's calling out across it, asking for help from the endless dark. No response; hunting alone, she very hopes.

"I saw you, with a knife on him. Did you bleed him, break him, kill him? Are the motions I feel those of a corpse being carried, one made to walk? Tell me."

"I'm not a necromancer, and I haven't killed-" he stops himself before he lies. "I don't think you're after one of the idiots who were looting this place, but if you are, their deaths were solely on their own idiocy, really-"

"You are the fool, to face the Blade and not expect its Shadow to strike you down." She readies her sword to strike-

"Orin, stop!"

Only one living voice can hold back her swords - her arm freezes in place, held firm by the cold metal on her wrists. She doesn't even mind, lets the swords drop to the ground with no taste of blood, rushing towards the door where Wyll is standing.

The githyanki next to him draws her sword to block, but he steps in front of it, pulling her into a hug. She lets him embrace her, but doesn't stop her own motions, tilting his head up to get a look at his neck. No scar, not even one freshly healed by magic.

"I saw it," she says, excuse or apology or explanation. "Your throat, begging for a blade."

"The tadpole connection doesn't show everything. I talked my way out of it, - I'm good at that, remember?" Wyll assures her. "But you - I saw you dead, cut down in Avernus by a devil-"

"Not so easily killed," she reminds him. "There was blue-healing mist, aboard the ship, although I am weakened that blows that should scratch would kill outright."

"A shared symptom of our infection, it would seem," a human she does not know says. "Brought in both skills and health to the levels of a novice student."

"So, Wyll, are you going to introduce us to your girlfriend?" dark haired half-elf asks.

"She's not my girlfriend, she's my partner - not like that - I mean - we hunt monsters together. The Blade and its Shadow."

"Orin the Red,” she says, and nods her head. "Are they joining the hunt?"

"We seek my people’s crèche, where the Illithid infection may be cured,” the githyanki says. “You are also infected, and should join with before you are transformed and we must hunt you down in turn.”

"I go where Wyll goes; what hurts him, I kill."

"Yes, you made that point very clear," the elf says. "For the record, I thought he was working for the illithids, so pulling a knife was a perfectly reasonable response."

"Liar, trick-thief. I don't like you."

"She's certainly got your number, Astarion," the half-elf chuckles.

"He's telling the truth, or near enough - it was an honest mistake," Wyll says. "They may be a little eccentric-"

“I don’t know if someone who calls himself the Blade of Frontiers gets a say on what is eccentric -"

“-but they’re good traveling companions, and once we’ve finished hunting down our advocatus diaboli, I want to see this through, at the crèche or wherever we might find healing.”

“I go where you go,” she repeats. “Gladly, until the hells swallow us both, and even after. But never will I trust someone who holds a blade to you.”

“You’ve pulled a blade on me many a time,” Wyll points out. “I’m not asking you to like him, but give it a chance? He’s a fun fellow once you get to know him.”

“A fun fellow,” the elf deadpans. 

“It’s a compliment,” Wyll says earnestly. “I enjoy your wit, it makes traveling quite entertaining.”

"I assume you haven't eaten since before the ship crashed?" the human cuts in. "We just finished making dinner - you should join us to eat, and we can determine what happens next from there. Assuming we don't all wake up with tentacles for faces, that is."

"Do not joke of such matters," the gith growls. "The threat is both real and serious."

"That is, in fact, why I'm joking. Gale of Waterdeep, at your service. So...dinner?"

"If it was within my bindings, I would eat your very flesh, such is my hunger," she says. "But I will settle, for what meat you have hunted and what rations have come to your way." She pushes past towards the door - not getting too far ahead, but moving towards their camp sight.

Gale of Waterdeep looks to Wyll, as if he should be bothered by her words - Wyll smiles, ever-pleasant, and it does little to calm them. Good. She does not like it when people see her as anything but threat - dangerous, to forget a predator for a pet, especially for the ones who do not hold her leash.

Chapter Text

He helps Orin get set up with some of the supplies they've taken from the tomb robbers; it isn't much, they still need proper tents for camping in the woods, but a bedroll is better than hard stone. She's slept on worse. He has too. It's a good thing he's gotten so used to traveling light, not keeping any personal effects - everything but the clothes on his back and his sword are lost to the fires of Avernus. He'd been halfway through a book he'd found in what was left of a slaughtered wagon before all this; hopefully he could find another copy the next time they were in a town.

"These monsters, with their living-ship, we will hunt them, once the devil is slain, yes?" Orin asks.

"I'm not sure if there are any more mindflayers; it doesn't look like any survived the crash, and I think we dealt with all of the intellect devourers," he explains. She has the look in her eye - the one that waits for him to tell a story; she's far better at the tracking and hunting, but her sense of monsters is all instinctive, none of the lore, and he's more than happy to share. "Illithids - usually found in the depths of the Underdark, or on great ships traveling through the astral. They eat brains, infect their victims with tadpoles to transform them into more of their kind. If Lae'zel is right, and her people hold the cure - we need it, soon."

Orin nods. "She is the one with the keen sword arm. I like her."

"Somehow, I knew you would." From the moment she'd pulled her sword on him, then killed an imp in a single blow, he'd had the feeling Orin would like the githyanki, or at least, want to spar with her. Whether Lae'zel would feel the same...he had the sense she had little love to give, but Orin's peculiarities would probably be less grating to her than Wyll's heroics seemed to be. "Shadowheart's a cleric. I'm not sure what god she swears herself to; she's rather secretive. Not that I can blame her, given that we're all strangers. Gale's a wizard, and seemingly a powerful one at that - although we found him trapped in a teleportation sigil, had to pull him out. I think he's placed that my magic isn't exactly book-learned, but he hasn't said anything, at least. Astarion..."

"Him. He is a predator in the night, quick with knife as with tongue."

"Explains why he reminds me of you; he claims to have been a magistrate in Baldur's Gate. His clothes look the part, as do his complaints, but his skills..."

"Magistrates are cut-purses, often." Orin nods.

"Usually not quite so literally, but it’s an odd choice of a lie. Still, it's nice to have him around, even if he is lying. He's proven himself very useful, and-"

"I have already made the choice not to kill-cut-bleed him. You do not need to bargain with me otherwise. I understand what it means to work with people I do not like; how many years have I been at your side?"

"Ouch. So mean to me, Orin," he bemoans, grin still across his face. "And here I was, preparing to scavenge the whole flaming wreckage just to give you a proper burial."

"That you think I am the kind of thing that would so easily die is why I am so mean to you," she says. "It will take greater than a devil-sword to keep me from your side - fate has bound us, by more than cursed chains. Our deaths will be of legends, for I am the monster at your side - the dragon to your knight."

"The Ansur to my Balduran; together until the end," Wyll says. "Sleep well; here's hoping we don't wake up with tentacles on our faces."

He's learned to fall asleep quickly - best, always, to not spend much time weak and ambushable. Even here, down in some forgotten, undead-cursed crypt, surrounded by strangers, a tadpole in his head, he finds himself slipping not long after he closes his eyes. 

It’s a familiar dream that greets him. He makes his way out of Wyrm’s Rock by the secret passage, Orin following when she refuses to let him go alone. Slipping through quiet city streets at night, through Twin Songs up Dusthawk Hill. He can remember it all so clearly: the Cult of the Dragon, masks on and almost glowing with their bright colors in the dark of night; the way Orin rushed forward first, let them cut her so that she could strike without the geas breaking; the blood, the whisper in his ear, the choice he makes to bind his fate.

After, when the Flaming Fist arrived, they had found the cultists vanished but the blood remaining, staining the grass and Orin’s arms, Mizora at his side. The broken and betrayed expression on his father’s face, as he ordered their immediate arrest, her execution - the way Mizora wrapped her arms around him and teleported them both away.

The ritual circle cracks, and she pulls herself from hellfire, standing in his dreams, smug smile and too-solid presence that mark his patron’s usual visions to communicate and not more of the memory. "My poor little pupster," she croons. "A free trip on a mind flayer machine, and all you've got is a brain-bug to show for it."

"Mizora.” He doesn’t welcomes these, but they never surprise him. “I was expecting you to contact me on the beach. Did you-"

”Catch you out of the air? No, that was something else, and I’m very curious as to what. I was waiting for you to get settled - I may be a half-devil, but I'm no monster. Sweet little crypt you've found yourself in, but I wouldn't get too cosy. After all, we've got a deal."

Karlach. The advocatus diaboli who was his latest hunt. He hadn’t forgotten, but that never stopped Mizora from visiting. "I don’t suppose you’ll be opening up a portal, sending us back to Avernus to catch the trail?"

"No need - Karlach isn’t in the Hells anymore. She fled Avernus on the same ship you hitched a ride on. Wild little thing. If you don't find her and cut her down, she'll burn the whole Coast to ash. And I know the famed Blade of Frontiers would never stand for that."

She’s right - she’s always right. As pressing as the infection is, if he only has a few days left living, it will be in service of helping to save people, otherwise what was the point?

"I know the terms of our bargain," he says. "I'll find Karlach and kill her."

"Obedient thing," Mizora grins. "I love to see it. Now, be a good boy. Bring me her head for dessert - I've a sweet tooth, and devil's on the menu."

She vanishes into darkness. He wakes up, sweating, lingering sensation in his eye. There’s no good way to tell the time, the temple lacking in windows, but Astarion is still trancing, so it must still be a while to morning. The fire is quiet embers now, and it’s only the pact that lets him see anything, no light filtering in through the cracks in the stone.

He sits there, for a while, thinking about Mizora, about the devil he’s hunting, about pact and tadpole and how far from home he is. When no one else has made any move to wake, he closes his eyes, and slips back into dreamless sleep. 

The sounds of shouting cut through the air, as they make their way north past the wreckage, where rocky beach starts to give way to the true forest. Wyll motions for everyone to stay low, out of sight, though Lae’zel and Astarion have already done so, blades drawn. He moves closer, to see what’s happening, more clearly hear the words.

A gate stands in the stone - familiar marks, a druidic grove he and Orin had visited several years ago. Banging on the wood are a group of adventurers, crying out to be let in by the tieflings manning the upper ramparts - goblins on their tail. The war band crashes after, worgs gnarling teeth, ready to corner their quarry against the gateway.

No hesitation, he jumps out onto the rocks, sword drawn. "If it’s a fight you seek, the Blade of Frontiers will be your end!"

He makes himself a spotlight, draws them closer, away from anyone more vulnerable, like the already bleeding adventurers. Orin leaps from hilltop, landing with sleek panther’s grace in beast form, moving in front of the worg to block it, and taunting all the goblins to strike at her so she might return their blows with a vicious growl. 

He’s used to fighting, just the two of them, striking at a distance while she kept them close away, flanking with her, as she’d make them strike at a feinted retreat letting him slip away to dance through the battle.here, spread out as the goblins are, he’s armored in ice, so that the ones who strike him will hurt for it.

They had fought the robbers and the temple undead together, but he’s still not used to this group, the way they move. Astarion is in the shadows, hard to track, and it’s almost lucky that he’s so weak on magic he can’t summon a fireball, because he’s concerned who he’d catch within. He seems to be sneaking up on the snipers on the cliffs, at least, that’s what Wyll hopes he’s doing.

Lae’zel, though, he can tell is a trained soldier. She moves with a calm precision to strike at the goblin booyahg, slicing in to stop it from casting any spells. When her sword isn’t enough, she calls out that they strike with magic - both Shadowheart and Gale shoot out firebolts, overkill, Lae’zel curses but let’s the body drop and flanks across the worg, ready to strike.

Archers rain down a volley of arrows from atop the gate; he bites back as goblin steel carves into his flesh, and strikes back sword in hand. Light and fire spill across the battlefield, swords and blood, chaotic as ever. Orin's claws spark with lightning, as she tears through the worg's throat, giving Lae'zel the opportunity to cut it down in full. When the bugbear makes the mistake to strike at her in retaliation, she ponces, tearing out its throat.

Astarion strikes the last of the scouts down, and the tiefling commander from the top of the gate cries out, "Inside, all of you! Open the gate!"

The adventurers all rush in as soon as it's risen high enough. No further raiding party on the horizon, Lae'zel is already stripping corpses of weapons, Astarion of valuables. Orin, still in panther form, moves to his side; he scratches the fur behind her ears.

"I don't see any more goblins on the horizon," Shadowheart notes, "but I'm not certain if we want to tempt fate by waiting out here for very long."

"And not savor in the rewards? Ooh, these look very nice." Astarion peels a set of gloves off one of the leading raiders, putting them on himself.

"Those at the gate are weaklings and cowards, to run from such a fight," Lae'zel notes. "It is clear that even you are a trained warrior; while your techniques are poor, you have the groundings that a few days under my command could forge this group into a shape matched by a Githyanki training squad."

"High praise, from you," Wyll says. "You're quite a skilled tactician."

"Even among my creche, I was known for my skills. You have enough sense in battle to be comparable with Githyanki youth. Unlike most upon Fay-run, it seems."

"I think, given our recent infection and relative inexperience with each others' skillsets, we did an excellent job," Gale says, clapping his hands. "But I am hopeful that we might be growing more comfortable with each others skillsets as this is will undoubtedly not be the most difficult fight we face together.

"Is she planning to stay like that?" Astarion asks, looking over to where Orin stands proud at his side.

"We are entering into a haven of the druidic arts," Gale notes. "I assume many will be wearing the shape of beasts; I've heard much tale about their magic and rituals, although I'll admit to not having much experience with druids at all, much less their sanctuaries. Even when I did travel in the pursuit of my studies it was not into the open wilds such as these."

"This is the Emerald Grove; I've been here, a handful of times, crossing the Frontiers," Wyll notes. "The leader is a druid named Halsin - a healer of some great renown. We helped him slay a behir that had come from the foothills of the mountains to the northwest."

"Renowned enough that he might have a solution to our tadpole problem?" Shadowheart asks.

"Tchk. We shall find no one able to cure us of our affliction outside of a creche. Still, it seems the leads to where my people were sighted can be found inside. We shall find the information, take what supplies we must, and then be on our way."

Just in the entrance, the leader of the adventurers is arguing with one of the tieflings who'd been on top of the gate, well-armored even if he does look travel-worn. "There are children here, you fool!" the tiefling yells, anger ripe in his face.

"We was running for our lives!" the human shouts back.

"You led them straight to us. And you let them take the druid too. Unbelievable!"

Wyll pushes in. "It's a lucky thing we arrived when we did, and there weren't any further losses," he says.

"And who the hell are you again?"

"The Blade of Frontiers, at your service." He offers a half-bow, and the adventurer scoffs, but there's recognition in both their faces at the name, and respect from the tiefling, glad to see it.

Orin slinks closer, and he can hear her speak in his brain, through the tadpole. If I made him trip and stumble, do you think he would kick hard enough to let me rip-snarl-tear out his throat? It comes with matching images of the man falling over her. He holds back a chuckle, pushing back the sensation of don't try it even as she responds with an eye-rolled huff.

"Show some respect!" the tiefling says. "The Blade just saved your pathetic life."

He sees all the tell-tale signs, of the human about to throw a punch. "More violence won't solve anyone, won't bring back those who have been lost. Stop and think."

"Worried about your precious hides, the both of you," the human bites out.

"Enough. The goblins have found us. We need to act." The human pushes past, heading back out with his party into the wilds, and the tiefling holds his head and sighs. "Forgive that display. Aradin's a blowhard, but that's no cause for me to join him. Thank you for your help out there. I'm Zevlor - and you're quite famous, in these parts, Blade of Frontiers."

"Please - it's just Wyll," he says. "You aren't exactly who I was expecting, guarding the grove. There seems to be quite a camp set up here."

"We're refugees, from Elturel - we took shelter here after gnolls attacked us on the road. The druid Halsin bade us stay, until the road to Baldur's Gate became safer, but the goblins seem to only be growing stronger, day by day."

"What happened to Elturel, to leave so many refugees?" It wasn't unusual, to see tieflings seeking refuge, but in his time east, Elturgard had always seemed accepting.

"You haven't heard? The Descent - the High Overseer signed a devil-pact, dragged the city straight to Avernus. We were brought back, but no one's keen on 'devilkin' - no different from the druids here. I thought tale of it had spread all through the Sword Coast."

"I've been hunting in the wilds, been some time since I was somewhere civilized enough to hear such things." And of course Mizora wouldn't tell him - for a whole city to be brought down, it had to be Zariel's doing. He didn't like to dwell, on the greater plans Mizora served - too much time spent wondering how each slain fiend and monster might serve Zariel would drive inaction, while there were innocents to save. "I'm surprised the druids aren't as open. Halsin seemed a good man, when we met."

"He is - but he left with Aradin, and didn't make it back. In his absence, they've started up a ritual to cut the grove off from the world outside. I've tried to convince their new First Druid, Kagha, but she won't see me. It seems we're to be forced out onto the road, goblins waiting for us."

"Not willing to see you - but I may be able to persuade her. I'll see what I can do."

"We'd owe you a great debt," Zevlor says. "You'll find her and the druids at the heart of the grove. Please, make them see sense, before more lives are lost." He pushes back, organizing the tieflings to bury their dead and prepare for the journey.

"Bah. Must you offer aid to every whimpering pup we come across?" Lae'zel asks. "We do not have the time to deal with squabbles while the ghaik parasites are in our heads. We need to find information on the location of the creche."

"Well, we hardly need your company to go speak to some druids," Shadowheart snipes back.

"It's going to be so exciting when one of them finally slits the other's throat in the night, don't you think?" Astarion whispers as an aside.

"Waste your time as you see fit; I will hunt down this Zorru," Lae'zel retorts, storming off deeper towards the refugees.

"I'll join her, try and trade for supplies, and prevent any misunderstandings leading to bloodshed, as it were," Gale suggests.

"Good man," Wyll pats him on his back. "Elturel sent to the hells themself..."

"And nearly Baldur's Gate, if tavern gossip is to be believed," Astarion says. "There's been a whole waive of arrests, and I think one of the Dukes was implicated in it all."

"One of the Dukes?" There's no way it would be - Stelmane had always been so proud and stalwart, even if he had seen flashes of - Portyr may not have been the most noble of men, but even he, to sell the city to Zariel -

"Vanthampur, the crone. The whole family's all in disarray," Astarion continues. The least surprising option; his few meetings with her had always been somewhat terrifying. "I'm not one to keep up with all the goings on of the council, but I do love hearing about people being brought to ruin."

"I'm glad the city's safe," he says, and tries not to think about what it would mean, that Zariel had been planning to drag Baldur's Gate to Avernus as well. Orin brushes up against his leg, and he follows her deeper into the Grove, past stabled oxen and training children, towards the center sanctuary at the heart.

"Hey, mister!" a tiefling kid says, blocking the way. "You look like someone who 's in the market for something magic. Hold out your hand, let me show you something." He produces a plain looking ring out of nowhere with a flourish, offering it up. "Go on, take the ring, it's lucky!"

"Please tell me you know this is a scam," Shadowheart mutters under her breath, but Wyll shushes her, holding out his hand and taking the offered ring - doing a matching flourish as he does - if willing it to be easier with magic.

"Nice one, mister! Now - call it. Heads or tails."

"Heads," he says, and watches him flip it. A trick of the wrist, clearly, to make certain the coin would land on whatever the mark would offer. Precocious kid.

"Heads it is!" the boy declares. "See? That's the kind of luck you get from just one of my lucky rings! I've got more where that came from. Real cheap, too. Interested?"

"What sort of rings are you offering?" he asks, giving the lucky one back, and the boy rattles off the list - hard not to chuckle, at the ring of resistance to ants, and a few gold is worth a donation to these kids stuck out on as rough a journey as they are. 

"You can't be serious," Astarion grumbles. "I should have taken you for an easy mark, honestly."

There's a sound from behind, feet in the grass, but none of the tension that comes with a blade about to meet his back. When he turns, there's nothing there, but Orin is chasing off down a cliff, and when he feels his pockets lighter, he's after her in a moment, Astarion and Shadowheart a step behind.

There's a flash of a tail, ducking through a hole in the rocky cliff edge, and Orin shifts again, to the child-form she'd worn when not wanting to be quite so obvious, darker hair and more flushed skin, even if the eyes were still her empty white. "Sneak-thief," she says. "Nothing can hide from me, not in any mousehole, sneakaway, hidden-hiding-den."

"They're just children, Orin. I've not much of value on me anyways. Let them be."

"How cruel, you think I go to threaten, cut and bleed?" Orin retorts, taking her scimitars in their now far-too-large sheaths and resting them on the grass. "Who cares for gold and coin? I only dislike thieves when they put blade to you." She throws a glare Astarion's direction, as if her meaning wasn't clear enough. "They should know their marks better; I only go to help."

With that, she's slipping past the rock and out of sight. Wyll sighs. "That doesn't look like it's crawlable, not for me at least. I wonder if there's another way in."

"Not here, certainly," Astarion points out. "And I'm certainly not going to try and go through there."

"Orin - that's more of a shift than an illusion spell could manage - or any druid's shapechanging," Shadowheart reasons. "What is she?"

"A damnable menace," Wyll says with a sigh. "I'm not sure if she's trying to terrifying these children into the path of the law or recruit them to help."

"Yes, because what our camp needs is a gang of thieving children to lighten the mood," Astarion complains. "If you're going to be so inattentive with your coin purse, maybe someone else should take your gold."

"You're welcome to it," Wyll says. "I'm sure you'll find much use for it, out here in the Frontiers."

"Ha. Ha." Astarion rolls his eyes - and then looks surprised when Wyll actually offers him the coin. "If only to lighten your pack so you can carry more of the armors we keep scavenging." And then he turns back, waiting at the cliffs edge, trying to reach out across this new psychic bond to see what Orin was actually up to.

Chapter Text

Orin slips through rocky crevice, enters the cavernous hideout after the child-thief. The passage is small but she is smaller, wearing the form that had hidden in crooks and crevices and crates when the deep dark of the city had still been her home. It winds through stone to a larger cave, carved out by water and still damp and green-growing. Crates are stacked within, and she watches her not-quite-prey hurry towards the center, to give the stolen coin-pouch to the chest, report takings to the one in charge. 

It is her nature to take to shadows, climb up above on rocks. As they talk she moves to sit on top of the takings chest and waits for the one with the eyepatch to turn her way, and grins. 

“We don’t take kindly to people intruding in our space,” the girl says. “This is our turf - and our loot. If you’re not looking to join up and pay tribute, then get the hells out.”

"Follow one thief, find a guild, hiding-crawling-scurry-hoarding." She perches herself, resting hands on the tops of her knees, watching the one she had followed, who tries to cower out of sight. "You should choose your targets better - you took from the Blade of Frontiers. A hero."

"Wait, really?" one of the other kids asks. "The Blade, he's here?"

"I mean, I saw a human? He didn't seem special."

"Hey, we're not looking for trouble," eyepatch says, raising her hands. "You found us, fair and square; you can take your gold back."

"Who cares for gold?" she asks. "Heroes only care for gold in what it buys them. I want the rest - the arrows and the potions. Take gold, it comes in many forms. Take supplies - that is what keeps the living from the dead. Take magic - that is what earns being hunted, and you do not want to be hunted, little thieves."

"We're pretty good at not being hunted," the leader retorts. "Not many, who can make their way down here."

"How often have you stole from heroes and not just farmers running frightened for their lives?" Orin asks. "I have known thieves guilds, would slink through sewers to hide and watch as they would steal and maim and torture and slit throats to leave rotting in the muck. Listened and learned. You have more to fear than goblin steel and prison bars. You should be careful, with your targets. Lucky, the Blade is hero and not one of the killers who wear the shape of one."

"That's good advice. You from the Gate? Because it sounds like you work with the Guild-guild. That's where we're headed, if the goblins don't get everyone first. When we get to the city, we're going to make a name for ourselves. Could use some friendly contacts. Might even have a job for you."

That gets her attention. "Here?"

"You're new, so I don't know if you've seen it yet, but the druids have a big shiny idol they're all chanting at. It's part of the ritual that's going to get us all killed. If they don't have the idol..." she trails off.

“One of mine, Arabella, she tried, but they caught her. But the way you came in here - you’re sneaky. I bet you could pull it off.”

She slides off the crate, to circle around her. “I can. You have yourself a deal, little guildmaster.”

“Who you calling little? I’m taller than you.” She shifts herself to be an inch taller, and she balks for a second, before laughing. “It’s going to be a pleasure doing business with you, innit? The name's Mol. Remember it."

“Orin the Red.” She gives a fancy bow, before slinking back out the way she had entered.

The others are not far - she slips in the shape of beast and fur to join them near the entrance.

“So, are we to expect a gaggle of thieves to come join us at our camp?” the pale not-elf asks. She ignores him, pushes to Wyll’s side, tilts her head for more ear-scritches, which earns only his crossing of arms. 

Not hurt-blood-bleeding-prey-flesh, she assures, as if her not being a corpse in the cave isn’t proof enough. Warned to choose better marks. And offered me a job.

“Well, you’re welcome to go join them in their life of crime - hey!” he stumbles over her, and the dark-shadow cleric laughs. “There was a bit of a commotion near the entrance to the grove’s heart - it seems one of the children was taken by this Kagha for trying to disrupt the ritual.”

The tieflings by the entrance have the bearings of frustration and desperation on them, anger that is fruitless and already resigned to death, except for when the look upon the Blade and for that moment believe there is something better that might await. The druids standing guard are scared and tired, hiding behind their weapons and their beast forms - the bear growls as they approach to drive them back, and she matches it with a growl of her own. 

“Calm, Maggran. Give them a chance,” the druid at the front says. “You - get back. This place is forbidden to outsiders - Kagha's orders.”

“It’s Kagha I’m here to see, in fact,” Wyll says. “We’re not looking for trouble, but we do need to speak with her. Urgently.”

“No entry means no entry. And you'll find trouble all the same, unless you get out of my sight.” Astarion shifts to ready a blade, and she raises her haunches to better match the bear, taunting it to come and bite-slash-tear at her, but the looming conflict is interrupted. 

“A moment, Jeorna,” a hooded gnome says, and they whisper, words shes only catches back and forth. 

Solemnly, she nods. “It seems that Kagha wants to see you, Blade. Go ahead.” They part to the side and let them past, although keep a wary eye on the tieflings gathered further up the stairs. 

“It seems you’ve quite a reputation around here, Wyll,” Shadowheart says. “It’s rather useful - should we expect a lot of warm welcomes, between here and Baldur’s Gate?”

“This isn’t a warm welcome,” Wyll says. “This Kagha might be willing to meet with us, but these druids aren’t exactly greeting us with open arms - stay on guard.”

“Oh, darling, you think we’re ever not on guard?” Astarion asks, as they make their way into the sacred heart at the grove’s center. 

She sees it there, surrounded by green and glowing magic, the statue, idol, target. Wide and clear it is easy to see where the girl they had sent had failed - but casters concentration falls on spells and not on sneaking, and she knows how to slip into even light shadows as deep darkness.

Sparking across the bond, she sends the image of the idol, her hand taking it and leaving bound sticks in its place, delivering it to the children hiding in the depths. The tieflings free and safe, unable to be cast out. Good plan yes agree sneak-steal away yes?

The No. that comes back is strong and tired and insistent. First, we need to ensure the girl’s safety, if she’s being tried for the crime, we don’t have the time to risk on distractions. Second, given the tensions already at play, stealing the idol is more likely to cause the druid’s to strike out and cause a bloodbath. Third, it’s in broad daylight, you’re going to get caught. 

I don’t know, comes another line of thought. I think it would be very fun to watch. Wyll turns back to glare at Astarion, he shrugs with a smirk. What? It would! The world could use more chaos.

You do know we all can hear these, right? Shadowheart adds. And I don’t want to get caught up in a giant battle. 

The sensation of annoyed resignation is sent to all of them with plenty of push. You don’t control my hand when it has no blades in it, she adds, but lets the matter drop. He is right - he usually is, and she…does not want to sit back and watch a slaughter that she cannot take part in, not when it is starving weaklings instead of a great and mighty battle. 

That, she does not share, but she can see the pride in Wyll’s form at her restraint, as he leads them on to the thick stone door and down into the druid-caves.

There is a child screaming. Child screams are different, from any other; they scream often, easily, and this she can hear is sad and frightened, desperate. “Please!” she cries “I’m sorry!”

A tiefling girl stands backed up against the stone table in the center, a snake looped around and holding her back as one druid looms over her and the others watch. 

“This is madness, Kagha,” says a tall man who smells of wolf fur. “She's just a…”

“A what, Rath?” the druid who must be Kagha says. “A thief? A poison? A threat? I will imprison the devil. And I will cast out the rest.”

The Blade of Frontiers takes only a second to come down the stairs and see the scene before he is pressing into the space, defensive. “Explain this cruelty. Now .”

“Not cruelty. Justice,” Kagha retorts. “Tell me, Blade. Is the healer cruel for ridding the sick of disease?”

“She's not a disease - she's a child. If that’s what you see then you're no healer - and no judge either. Let her go.”

“The blight must be cut away for healing to begin,” Kagha says. “First, the spawn. The rest will follow.” Astarion tenses at that, and Wyll’s hand flexes in the way that leads to rapiers drawn. “Rath - lock her up. She remains here until the rite is complete. And keep still, devil. Teela is restless.”

Rath frowns. “Come, Kagha. We took back the idol. Surely…”

“Do it,” the druid hisses. Wyll steps forward. Orin coils around his side and watches. 

The girl is frightened, of snake and druid, and she is quick-fast-thief, ready to dart out and up the stairs the moment she has the chance. The viper is waiting for it, to strike out - it cares not, of the trial at play, of anything but what it has been told is threat, and at the thrill of striking out. If she runs - the child dies, a painful but quick death, choking on her own bile as her brain falls apart in moments. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Wyll pleads. “Hand her over to me, let her return to her parents, and I promise you, she won’t be any trouble.”

The druid frowns, the viper coils, the child tenses - Orin readies herself to push the girl aside and take the bite herself, for was she not weaned on poisons, does she not let them pass her through? Instead, there is the waive of a hand, “Ssifisv - Teela, to me,” Kagha commands, and the snake pulls back to climb up her arm. “She may go - but I hold you to your word, Blade of Frontiers. Now out, thief. My grace has its limits.”

Arabella grabs at Wyll’s sleeve, a quick and desperate, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” they’ve both heard so many times before, and runs up the steps. To the side, Shadowheart winces in pain, and the child saved and the tension cut, Wyll turns to her side, holding it gently and speaking quietly. 

Orin slips from form of beast to pull herself in the druid’s space as she retreats.

“And here the Shadow, to follow the Blade,” Kagha says. “Go on. Say it. You think I’m a monster.”

“Monster?” Wyll cuts in. “Too kind. A demon, more like.”

“Are you?” Orin asks, stepping forward to stand at his shoulder. “Monsters, I kill freely. You send strangers out to bloody death rather than stain your hands. You hide behind a vipers fangs rather than hold the blade yourself. I see no monster, I see coward.”

Kagha laughs. “I do not hide. I have no interest, in spilling their infernal blood - what I want is them gone. If they will die on the road, that is all the reason for you to guide them. I know you and the Blade both, and saw your companions at the gate. You’d keep them safe, and I’m sure they would reward you well.”

“Oh, great, now we’re agreeing to babysit the tieflings?” Astarion sighs. 

“You see that this is worse, yes?” she tilts her head. “To kill without intent, to harm without purpose. You bleed and do not eat. You kill and do not hunger. You set a sword and do not even know that it was drawn. Or did you give your orders knowing it would lead to death? Are you cunning sharp-tooth monster, or are you coward hiding behind thorns that will not save you?”

The words flow freely, fall like knives, she circles like she stalks her prey, and when the druid is off-kilter, she dives into that mind. Always she has had this skill, to know a mind and copy it and bear the truth in the acting, but worm-in-head makes it move like water, rushing thoughts subsume her.

Bristles-fear at cowardice; she is first druid, now that Halsin is gone, needs power-strength-authority. Hunted, cornered, prey. And there, the thread, resenting. Slick words in the back of mind. Outsiders will only hurt-maim-killl-burn, safety needs strength and blood. 

“I have done my part,” Kagha says. “The girl is freed. I’ve sent you to guard the outsiders, if you care for them so much. But I will not sit back and listen to your words.”

“I have no need for you to listen. Worship where you wish -  but know when it is at my father’s knee and not the great old oak.” She circles back, to stand by Wyll. “I have said my piece. Now, we leave?”

“Actually, I wanted to check in with this Nettie,” Shadowheart suggests. “Lae’zel might think our only solution is the crèche, but that seems like a good way to get murdered by githyanki. If this Halsin is as great a healer as everyone says, it’s worth checking.”

“It seems rather like a good way to get murdered by a druid instead,” Astarion snipes. “Although, this deep in, I doubt we’d draw too much attention.”

“We aren’t killing Nettie,” Wyll says - and ignores the doubtful response both elf-bloods give him back.

She does not remember any of the people of this place from their first visit - only the animals and even then not by any name. The apprentice heals a broken-bleeding bird, then turns to them, and Wyll. 

“Well, you seem healthy enough,” she says, grabbing towards her face. “Scars look healed, but if they’re aching, I’ve some salves that may help. A bit tired ‘round the eyes, maybe.”

Astarion voices his indignation through the telepathic connection, but Wyll brushes him off. “More than just exhaustion and old wounds I’m afraid. I’ve been infected - there’s a parasite in my head. A tadpole.”

“A mind flayer tadpole?” Nettie clarifies. “That’s…a serious condition. Come, follow me. I might be able to help.”

Magic flows into her hand, and a stone door opens to another chamber. Books, and tables, and a corpse, drow and sick-dead-rot-blood. On the table, sits a jar, the worm held within. Floating. It calls to her like blood flesh, to be taken, to be devoured - symptom, but of what. 

“This one had the same problem as you,” the apprentice tells them. “Attacked us in the woods with some goblins. Tadpole crawled out of his head soon after. Gave Master Halsin a right start - it’s why he joined those adventurers on their expedition. To find out what was happening. A pity you got me instead - he understands these things, studied them. Still, we have options.”

She pulls out a briarthorn, and holds it at her side. Sharp and barbed and of the kind that surely holds a poison. She knows both poisons and wild things very well - Kelemvor’s Kiss. Deadly. The druid means to kill over this. 

“You don’t have to be here for this,” the apprentice tells them. As if she would leave Wyll alone with someone weapon drawn, in secret. The other two, for all their flaws, are not fools. No mental words are needed to share the sense of threat. 

“Oh, don’t mind us,” says the voice of a predator who wants to be seen as without claws. The shadow-cleric speaks with clear words of cautioned-warning, “No, I’ll stay. I’d rather know exactly what you’re up to.” Orin herself moves to slip around, better to dart forward and keep the thorn from cutting-bleeding-poison-killing.  

“All right, let’s see what we can do - first things first. What’s been happening? Any symptoms? Strange events?”

“Plenty,” Wyll says. “Although, I’m not certain what is the infection and what has a different source. But it seems to give some of the mind flayer’s psionic powers - I’m able to speak through minds, and an intellect devourer recognized me as one of its own.”

“Victims are recognized before the transformation begins…that is something,” Nettie nods. “How’d you pick up the parasite? Halsin was desperate to find where all this was happening.”

“A mindflayer’s nautiloid over the skies of Avernus,” Wyll explains. “It’s crashed not far south of here.” 

“A ship? But Master Halsin was so sure…” Nettie trails off. “I…if you were anyone else, I don’t know if I’d say this, but you deserve honesty. There is no cure - all I have for you is a way out. A quick death, rather than let you transform.”

“I thought druids were supposed to be peaceful and harmonious,” Astarion quips. “First the snake, now poison - it seems like all you want is to kill!”

“There’s no good way to remove a tadpole without destroying the host brain,” she continues. “And at the state the drow was - by all rights, you should be dead and transformed already - there should be an army of mind flayers marching on the Sword Coast. But weird powers aside, you’re perfectly normal.”

“But you and Halsin have been studying these. Have you learned anything - a cure, where they’re coming from?”

“He knows more, but this isn’t like anything we’ve seen before. I can’t tell you when, but there’s only one way that tadpole infections ever end. We both know how important it is, to keep the coast safe. It’s why I need you to take this and swear to me you’ll swallow it if you feel any symptoms.”

Wyll grabs the vial. “Poison,” he says. “You’re asking me to kill myself, rather than be turned.”

“I am,” Nettie says. “I’m sorry. I wish I had a proper cure for you. Perhaps Master Halsin has some lead. But your infection is too dangerous. Swear it.”

Wyll kneels down, to lock eyes with her. “By my name, as the Blade of Frontiers, I swear it.” She nods, even as behind them, Astarion rolls his eyes heavily. “Do you know where Halsin is? If he’s alive?”

“I’ve sent birds scouting. They can’t get close without goblins trying to shoot them down, but his body hasn’t joined the decorations round the camp. I have to hope he’s still  alive. And you - technically speaking, you’re one of them. You might have a real chance, slipping in and freeing him. And if he’s…there are spells, to learn what he knew.”

“It won’t come to that,” Wyll assures her. “Thank you, Nettie. This has been very helpful.”

“Has it?” Astarion stage whispers as she returns to tending her wounded bird. “I know you heroes are a self-sacrificing type, but you can’t really be planning to follow through. Can you?”

“I don’t want to be a monster - to harm innocents. But I’m not convinced this is the only cure - or that the poison would be all that effective, honesty.” He turns to look over the drow’s corpse. “Still, it’s useful information - there are more victims than just those aboard the nautiloid. That has to mean something.”

The body lies there, still and cold. Astarion palms the squirming worm jar from behind his back as if no one is watching. Shadowheart mentions with great dismay that they ought to reconnect with their wayward party members. Orin slides next to Wyll as they start to make their way out of the chamber. 

“Three, two, one,” she recites in half a whisper. “The perfect death.”

“Blow to blow with a tarrasque.”

“Dragon-back fight with great titans in cloudy mountaintops.”

“Taking an explosive curse through a portal away from the city’s heart.”

“Framing a demon for the knife in the back of the Lord of Hells.”

“After the tadpole takes me,” Wyll says. “Not before. Your blade, carving the tentacles asunder.”

“The curse taking me for raising blade against you,” she finishes. “Taken by oblivion, together.”

“This isn’t the only way,” he says. “This isn’t how we die. I know it.” She squeezes his hand. “Come on - let’s see if we can find any leads on where our advocatus diaboli ended up.

Chapter Text

Their time at Grove is an all around a success. They'd saved two children, Arabella from Kagha's bloodthirsty false court, and Mirkon from harpy-song, which had put the refugees in good spirit despite the somber occasion. Beyond the initial assault, they'd stopped a bugbear assassin creeping up the hill, and Astarion's snooping had led them to a goblin strikeforce slipping in through the tunnels and saved one of the druids from being victim. Lae'zel had found a lead on her people and their crèche; the stargazer with a soul coin burning a hole in her pocket had mentioned seeing one of the pods crash in the hills west of the Grove; Halsin's apprentice, Nettie, had given more information on the mindflayer infection that seemed to be spreading through the region; Aradin had given insight on the goblin camp, alongside the quest for some holy relic; and a sweet old woman had invited them to her teahouse with the potential to brew some potion to delay or eliminate the tadpole. 

Lae'zel had scoffed at that  - at most of what they'd accomplished beyond her own fact-finding mission, but it had been a good day. For all the fighting, there had only been one death, one of the guards upon the gate, and that meant it had to be a good day. 

They chose to camp out in the Grove, instead of heading out into the woods, towards the goblins. It was very different from the night he’d spent the first time here, years ago - all of the druids were deep at work continuing the ritual, so it was spent out in the caverns with the tieflings. Gale had joined with one to help prepare food, and Wyll had managed to rope Lae’zel into helping train some of the children. She certainly made for a harsh instructor, but no worse than some of the fist that had taught him, and for as dangerous a road as faced them…some harshness wouldn’t go unmissed. 

Their bedrolls were all set out nestled among the rocks near the gate - Lae’zel wanted them close at hand to one of the entrance in case of an attack in the night, and Wyll couldn’t blame her of it. As true night fell, and the Grove grew quiet, it was here he found Astarion, leaning back and staring upwards at the sky. 

“It’s quite a sight,” the elf says, as Wyll approaches. “The stars, I mean. I could take or leave your chin.”

“I always thought my chin looked dashing, although it’s been some time since I saw my face in a mirror,” he says. “They do look beautiful - a good, clear night for it.”

“I’ve seen a clear sky, before, but nothing like this,” Astarion says. “Even when there isn’t any fog, in Baldur’s Gate there’s half the light at best. A few twinkling dots, nothing to write home about. This makes me almost understand why people choose to live in the ass end of nowhere.”

He pauses, looks up at the sky, and realizes he’d forgotten, what the sky had looked like in the Gate. Seven years was all it had taken him to forget. 

“It has me thinking,” Astarion continues. “Reflecting, on what tomorrow might bring. When we track down this druid, or the gith drags us to her damn creche. Will we find out how to bring the worm under control? Will this little adventure of ours be over?”

“The Blade’s work is never done,” he says. “Even once I’ve slain this devil, there are plenty of quarries to come. But I wouldn’t mind more company on the road. No reason for us to part ways just yet, if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not so certain your traveling companion would agree,” Astarion notes. “But I don’t think I want you to run off just yet.” He rises to stand, pressing closer into Wyll’s space. “You’re quite the ally after all. Not many, who can survive a trek through Avernus and the crash of a mindflayer’s ship. I’m not easily impressed…but you certainly do your legends proud.”

“I promise you, any song you’ve heard is nothing but bardwork,” he says, but doesn’t hold back the smile. 

“Now that’s a real shame.” He’s stepped closer now, their faces barely a handswidth apart, his eyes half-lidded. 

“Are you alright?” Wyll asks him, tilting his head. 

“Hmm? Oh, I was leagues away, I just need to…” he breathes in, and then takes a step back, as if only just realizing how close they’d gotten. “...get some air. Clear my head.” 

“Be careful,” he warns. “Don’t wander too far off - there may be goblins lurking in these woods - or worse.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me; I can take care of myself,” he says. “I'll see you later, I'm sure. Sleep tight.” He slips off into the darkness. 

“You and Astarion, huh?” Shadowheart says, slinking up beside him. 

“We were just talking about what might happen after we get these tadpole removed,” he says. 

“Mmmhmm. And he looked like he wanted to devour you for a perfectly normal reason, I’m sure,” she says. “Be careful with him. He’s hiding something.”

“And you aren’t?” Wyll asks. 

“Who isn’t?” she smiles. “Do what you want; I just don’t want to see you end up with a knife in your back, or worse. Not until we’re free of these tadpoles, at least.”

“Always such the charmer,” he says. “But I’m fairly experienced, dealing with pale, knife-wielding maniacs. Don’t worry about me.”

“Well, I’ll sleep soundly at that thought,” Shadowheart quips. “Good night; here’s hoping we don’t have tentacles come morning.”

Heading west, there’s not much sign of a devil burning through the landscape, but there are some broken trees in the distance that might be where a pod landed, so they make that their target, and push through the rocky terrain. 

Not far from the Grove, they find another tadpoled victim - not from the ship, but like the drow that had been laid out in the table. He had bore an amulet with the same mark the goblins had branded on them - the Absolute - and called himself True Soul. 

They skirt around the edges of the abandoned, ruined village - prime ambush territory, likely another nest of goblins. Slipping out of sight and under the river leads almost to a fight with a very large and very angry owlbear - the boon of his pact that let him speak with animals all that avoids a fight. Further into the forest, a messenger’s corpse, a worried dog, the same boon lets him invite it back to camp. 

Lae’zel rolls her eyes; Astarion makes a comment about collecting strays. Orin trails behind him, and says, “You should have spoken true, not let it go on thinking its master lived.”

“Not everyone takes poor news well,” Wyll notes.

“Loyal dogs will sit and die at their master’s graves; trained out of their instincts, the sense of self. A harsh truth is better than starving for the sake of a long lie.”

“To grieve is natural, but I promise you - we’ll see that dog by our camp soon enough.”

She shrugs, but steps ahead of him, towards the stony creek, and sniffs the air. “See? Hellfire. Close. Our devil-quarry.” She points downstream, along stony rocks. 

“You can smell that?” Gale asks. “Fascinating.” 

“Orin’s the best tracker I know,” Wyll says. “But I can too - it’s strong, she must be close.”

Shadowheart looks down the river. “What’s the plan? We’re not exactly in the state for killing devils, after all. Keep low to the brush, try and ambush?”

“You can keep whatever distance you need - I meet my targets face to face before I finish the deed - even the devils. It’s honorable.”

“That sounds like a horrible plan,” Astarion points out. “What, do you leave your sword behind and offer up your neck as well?”

“I may be the Blade - but I’m not so easily unarmed.” He summons his current pacted rapier into his hand, then slides it back into its place upon his belt. “Advocatus diaboli vary in strength, but the fact that we aren’t seeing a trail of fire and destruction means she was most likely weakened by the mindflayers or injured by the crash, the same as us. With numbers on our side, I’m confident in our abilities.”

“Assuming we help, that is,” Shadowheart points out. “I’m not interested in being killed by a devil just because you’ve got some silly ideas of heroics into your head.”

“No. You wish to die from the tadpole in your head, taking all efforts to avoid the direct route to the nearest creche,” Lae’zel snipes back. “If we are to face this devil, than face it. It is not the first we have killed.”

Orin stands perched on one of the larger stones mid-river. “You speak with loud words, for being told our prey is close enough to scent. Come.” She jumps across the rocks to the other side, the others follow - Wyll helps Gale when he stumbles, then forages along the bank until he catches sight of her. 

Karlach. She wears the telltale worn, burnt leathers of the hells. Fire burns around her, scorching the shrubs and melting some of the sand into glittering shards of glass. Bent over, kneeling, she screams out with a rage that near shakes the rocks around. Injured indeed. 

He feels a twicth in the stone eye, the sensation of being watched. He steps onto the fallen log that crosses the river, and meets her head on. 

With a grunt, she forces herself up, the fires lessened but still burning bright. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” she says. “The Blade of Frontiers. I thought I’d shaken you for good. That’ll teach me to underestimate you.”

“This is your quarry?” Gale asks. “Not quite as infernal as I had anticipated.” 

“That would be because I’m no devil - not by a longshot. Look, it’s an honor to be chased by a famed hero, but you’ve got the wrong gal.”

The infernal, the demonic, the heartless, and the soulless. For all her flaws, Mizora would never break the pact. Her horns, one broken, her face, her voice, it all screams tiefling, but that has to be a lie. It wasn’t beyond a devil to wear false faces, after all. 

“You think I don’t know hellfire when I see it?” he asks, gesturing towards the metal ports that still flare up from her skin. “Only a devil could survive that. We’ve tracked you through the Hells themselves - I won’t let you bring the Blood War to the Coast.”

“Yeah, cause I stowed away on a mind flayer ship just to bring the war home. Makes perfect sense. I can explain, if you’d just hear me out-”

There’s the now-familiar sensation - a far different itch behind his eye, followed by the spark of two tadpoles connecting. He’s gotten used enough to the parasites it’s no longer a sharp pulse of pain, only the disorientation of seeing through another’s eyes, feeling another’s thoughts. 

A nasty looking axe slices through the flesh of demons on the familiar, horrid plains of Avernus - and then devils, Zariel’s servants. There’s adrenaline, and rage, and desperation - eyes darting back and forth for an opening to run. To escape. To be free. 

Devils don’t have any interest in leaving the war, leaving Zariel - only in manipulating events to put themselves in a better position, earn more power and more favor. This isn’t. It can’t be. She-

She’s no agent of the Blood War - she’s a victim of it. A tiefling - living, not a damned soul - cast into the Hells, forged into a soldier, set against the demons, escaped, only to stand here, before his blade. 

“Fuck,” Karlach says, holding her head as the connection ends. 

“This changes nothing,” Orin says, and he knows in that moment she saw the same thing he did. 

“What the tadpole link showed - is it - explain it.” He knows what it means, how can he not, but he needs to hear her say it.

“The tadpole? Gods, there’s more to this thing than I realised,” Karlach mutters. “What is there to explain? I never wanted to serve Zariel - the first chance I got, I escaped. Ten years, and I’m finally home - or near it, anyway.”

“This has to be a trick.” Infernal, demonic, heartless, soulless - he’d thought the deal through, not given Mizora loopholes to send him after innocents.

“You know monsters, right?” Karlach asks. “Look into my eyes. Can’t you see I’m not what you think? On my heart - I’m telling you the truth.”

She’s so earnest - so desperate - so burning with rage at all she’s had to face, and this keeping her from the end. If she’s right - if she’s a tiefling - to kill her would be unthinkable. But to break the pact…there was only one fate in store for him. 

“I know a way to tell monsters,” Orin says, hand resting on her blades. “This changes nothing. Words, words, words - we both know this ends in death.”

“It changes everything.” His shoulders drop. “Damn it.”

“I knew it,” Karlach exclaims, moving forward as if to hug before pulling back. “I knew you’d see sense!” Her grin is wide, infectious, and it’s hard to wonder how anyone could ever take her for a devil, bearing that joy. 

“Cut-blade-bleeding-death!” Orin growls out. “Do you understand what this brings down upon us?”

“On me. My price, my responsibility.” Orin levies a long glare at him. “You know me, Orin. You think I can’t tell people from monsters? That I would-”

She pushes past the rest of the party, across the log to the other side of the bank, leaving him standing there besides Karlach, watching her push into the treeline as far as she can. 

Karlach looks him over. “I think I’ve got an idea, what you’re facing. You want to take your mind of it with a little fun? I know you love bashing evil - we have that in common. How would you feel about helping me kill some evil bastards?”

There’s a scoff from Lae’zel, who walks back towards Orin. “I’m listening.”

“Just up the hill in that tollhouse there, I was cornered by a group calling themselves the Paladins of Tyr - they’re anything but, some of Zariel’s goons, here to drag me back to the hells. Believe me when I say I’d rather die than go back. Just up the Blade of Frontiers alley, yeah? And once they’re dealt with, we can work on evicting this parasite and take Faerun by the short hairs. Sound good?

“I like her,” Shadowheart says, smirking. “She looks like she could throw me over her shoulder and carry me to safety, should the need arise.”

“Oh, bet?” Karlach says with a laugh. “Unfortunately, getting much closer than this is gonna burn.”

“I think we could work something out.”

“It sounds like a great plan,” Wyll cuts in. “If they’re minions of Zariel, we’ll send them straight back to Avernus.”

“Yes! I’d hug you if it wouldn’t scorch your skin off!” She does a little shimmy in celebration. “The day’s ours! Let’s fucking roll out!” 

“Definitely not what I was expecting from an advocatus diaboli,” Gale notes, as Karlach bounds across the river, Shadowheart trailing after her. 

“No. Not what I expected either.” He shakes his head - focus.

The Paladins break from their deception, attacking first, most swords and spells aimed towards Karlach, who shrugs them off as she burns with hellfire. Their blades may be sharp, but they’re nothing like a devil or a demon, he knows from experience as much as she surely does. 

Orin lets the spellcaster catch her in a blast of thunder before slitting her throat. It lacks the usual glee of her kills; he tries not to think of that as he casts from out of the range of Karlach’s sweeping axe tearing into the leaders, Anders. It’s over quickly, and she stands, breathing heavily over the body left on the ground. 

“Fuck them. Fuck Zariel. I won’t go back. I’m never going back,” she says, not to anyone in particular, more words of affirmation, it seems. “If any of mummy's little friends want to pick up where the others left off... they'll find nothing but a pile of ash.”

“Perhaps first we check to see if there are any valuables-” Astarion starts, but he hasn’t even finished speaking before Karlach lets out a roar, the flames growing higher from her, catching the floor on fire. 

“We should probably get out before we’re caught in the blaze ourselves,” Gale notes, heading out the door, as they watch the tiefling rampage through the tollhouse. 

“Impressive,” Lae’zel comments. “You were right to spare her - she has the brawn of a warrior and the wiles of a survivor.”

“She certainly has that. And plenty of endurance.” They watch as she jumps up onto the roof, breaking apart the shingles to catch the beams on fire, and not even flinching as she jumps back down. 

The sun’s getting low, as the tollhouse cracks with embers, and she emerges to stand exhausted, breathing heavily on the stairs at the front. With how hot hellfire burns, there won’t be anything left but molten metal and ash, by the time its out.

“Had to let off a little steam after facing off with those ignots,” she says, and there’s literal steam coming off of her skin. “Granted, the fire’s lasting a little longer than it should. How do I look?”

“Hot,” Shadowheart says immediately.

“You are quite literally smoking,” Gale echoes. 

“Careful, soldier,” Karlach shoots back with a grin. “If I burn any hotter, I might explode.”

“How can you withstand the heat? Hellfire should burn anything but devils.”

She knocks on  her chest, the spot above her heart that glows orange through the skin, and there’s a metallic clang that follows. “Hear that?” she asks. “Infernal engine for a heart. Lets me burn hot as the Hells - seems to be running in overdrive since I left Avernus. Won’t be seeing my mechanic any time soon, so I’ll just make the most of the extra heat. But don’t get too close ‘til I’ve found a way to calm it down.”

He’s seen the machines of the hells before, blazing trails across the burnt plains - never inside a person, but the Hells always found new ways to torture. 

“If you’re looking for a mechanic,” Gale says, “we met a blacksmith, back at the druid’s grove, who spent some time working with infernal techniques during Elturel’s sojourn to Avernus. He might have some knowledge of engines like the one you carry.”

“Shit, really? A tune-up would do this rustbox of mine a world of good. But I assume you all have things you want to get done, too.”

“Finding my people’s creche and curing the tadpole infection is our top priority,” Lae’zel tells her. 

“Goblins are holed up in the old town nearby, took the local druid leader captive,” Wyll says.  

“A full camp of goblins sounds like a fun fight.” Karlach grins. “I want this bug out of my head for sure, so I’ll be sticking around. You seem like you get into a lot of trouble.”

“And you seem like a woman who enjoys a little trouble,” Astarion notes. Standing amid the burnt remnants of the building, Karlach shrugs, still smiling. 

“It’s getting dark enough we should probably set up camp,” Gale says. “Best to put some distance from the Tollhouse in case this display attracts any undue attention.”

“She’ll come tonight,” Orin says, as she helps him set up the tent. 

“I know. Waiting to make the most dramatic entrance possible, I’m certain. Whatever the punishment is, I can handle it.” It wouldn’t be the first time, she’s punished him. He’s never had this flagrant a break in the agreement of the pact, but it was Mizora who had broken it first, choosing Karlach as a target. 

“You should have killed her,” Orin says. “A kinder death, here than in the Hells.”

“And cruel, to take it the moment she tastes freedom,” Wyll retorts. “I couldn’t kill her, not standing there and begging. I can’t let that be me. No matter what Mizora wants-”

“Knights in shining armor,” Orin cuts him off. “You can’t save everyone.”

“I can try," Wyll tells her, before joining the others in discussing where they're best to spend the night.

Towards the center of camp, he can see the burning circle, as Mizora makes her way from wherever in the Hells she’s been to the Material Plane. Right in the center, where everyone can see, of course, and the others all gather. Orin and Karlach flank him. 

“Wyll,” his patron greets. “You’ve been naughty. And you know what happens when you’re naughty.”

“Mizora, Zariel’s lapdog,” Karlach says, crossing her arms. “Should’ve guessed you were behind this hunt.”

“I prefer advocate,” Mizora says. “Has a nice ring to it. But you?” She turns to him. “You’ve been a bad boy, Wyll. I’d say your leash needs a yank.”

She pulls him forward, and he’s dragged by an invisible chain at the throat closer. Orin steps in front, protective, but Mizora pays her no mind, eyes locked on him alone.

“We had a deal,” she hisses. “But Karlach is still breathing.”

“I’ve taken more pleasant shits than you, Mizora,” Karlach bites out. “And at least those can be buried after.”

“That’s no kind of way to talk for a lady,” Mizora chides her. “By the way, Karlcah- Zariel sends her regards.” That earns a reaction, some mix of fear and anger. Mizora wasn’t one to let her pets go - Zariel was surely even worse. 

“You said she was a devil. The pact says-”

“I said she was advocatus diaboli - which she is. That you assumed devil is a sign you should really brush up on the politics of Avernus, pup. And for our pact…Clause G. Section Nine. ‘Targets shall be limited to the infernal, the demonic, the heartless, and the soulless.' Karlach meets the criteria, trust me on this.”

Heartless. The infernal engine in her chest. Mizora had to be pleased at that little loophole. He should have seen it coming, should have - there was no talking his way out, the pact was broken. 

“You’ve been defiant,” Mizora continues. “And defiance requires discipline. To wit-”

“Don’t touch him,” Orin growls. 

“Oh, do you want to make a deal with me? Another one, that is?” Mizora asks. “It’s been decided that Karlach gets her little reprieve, so I don’t think you have anything worth offering me on the table. Not unless things have changed.”

“Don’t,” Wyll hisses, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back towards him. “I told you, whatever she wants to do, I can handle it, this isn’t worth a deal. I’m not afraid of her.” 

“You should be,” Mizora says, and then, he’s falling.

The familiar red skies of Avernus; he chokes on the smoke. Fire streaks around him, the sounds of battle echoing in the distance below. His skin burns, as if being flayed away, 

Before he hits the rocky ground, he finds himself falling further, as below, Dis stands as a massive spine against the black and blighted lands. Lightning crackles around, the stormy winds buffeting him as he falls through the dull green clouds that burn in his lungs with the acrid smoke coming off of the great city. 

His journeys to the Hells had mostly been in Avernus, but even having gone no deeper than Dis, he knew what came next. Smoke gave way to poisonous rot, as Minauros claimed him next, the endless swamps stretching out with their sulfur-smell. He hit the sickened, oozing waters of the marsh, felt the acid eat away at him, drowning in the thin swamp water, before slipping forth again.

Avernus had skies of fire, but they were nothing to the heat of Phlegethos, volcanoes and rivers of lava across black-glass lands. He’d stopped breathing, with all the smoke, the lack of air making it hard to focus on anything but the endless pain, coursing through his body. 

The heat of the lava gave way to fresh air - a momentary embrace, before the cold seeped in. Stygia stood crusted in ice, and the thin shirt did nothing to hold back ice deeper than the harshest winter, enough to claim his fingers with the bite of frost. At least, for those few moments, sharp clear air was a relief - he breathed heavily, getting as much as he could - and gasped in salty water as he hit the colder sea, soaking him to the brim before letting him pass through. 

No strength to move, he hit the ground of Malboge, tumbling down sharp and jagged cliff faces, pounded by boulders as he rolled. Bones breaking, head ringing, already flayed and acid-scoured skin torn apart. By all rights, he should be passed out - should be dead, six times over - but Mizora’s vengeance had no limits so petty. 

What flesh is left is bit by flies, as he descends into the maze-like ruins of Maladomi. Nothing so kind as a swamp or icy water greats him - he sinks into the rotten filth, black ichor and toxic sludge that moved and shifted as it lived and died. It sat so thick it blocked off the rivers of lava beneath, only sliding through feet of sludge before it grew warm enough to melt into the almost welcoming embrace of fire. 

His body felt as if it had been taken apart, molten down into a liquid, and it is in the cold air of Cania that it reforms, tempered by the ice. The light refracted by the icy mountains, as he crashes through them, ever falling into the dark.

Volcanic fire, sharp cliffs, forests of fire and lakes of ice, he sees them all flash by, but it is the caves of Nessus that claim him, the rocky city enveloping him, and at last, it is dark. No longer falling, he sits, shaken in the void, the endless dark and quiet, and finally finds it in himself to move. 

Whatever has been torn apart, he’s been reformed. The pain is present in his mind, the burning ache, too much to even comprehend. 

He’d do it all again, rather than kill an innocent, rather than condemn someone else to the Hells. But gods, did it hurt. 

When she brings him back, he knows only seconds have past, not the endless hours he feels as if he sent falling through the Hells, sat sitting alone in the dark. She smiles. He stares down at his body - not flayed and burnt and bitten, but leathery skin, claws at the points of his fingers. On instinct, his hands reach up to touch his forehead, to the base of the horns now growing out of him. "What…what have you done?”

“A promise broken, a price paid. You knew the terms.” He did. He knew she still wanted him useful, wouldn’t damn him as a lemure just yet, but this? “Get used to the new form, pet - there’s no going back. Some magic even I can’t undo.” She looks over to the rest of them, gathered around. “Now, let’s see how the Frontiers fare without their precious Blade.”

“You miserable bitch,” Karlach bites out. 

“Keep an eye on him for me, Orin, won’t you? And that old offer is still open, if you want to be free of your little tether.”

Orin ignores her, to kneel down beside him, looking over his face. “You have nothing left to offer me that I would take,” she says, not even deigning to look the cambion in the eye. 

“We’ll see. And Wyll? Don’t forget. Our pact still stands. Ta-ta!”

She vanishes back into the hells, as easily as she had arrived, and he is left sitting in the wake, in body that isn’t his.

“Your patron is quite unpleasant,” Gale remarks. “The problem with warlock powers - great power, but coming at a great price.”

“It took guts to defy her,” Lae’zel says. ”The Blade’s sting is real.”

“For what it's worth, I rather like your new look,” Astarion says. “It adds a sense of drama - a little more flair.”

“Rather rugged, a little dashing…” Shadowheart adds. 

He takes the hand Orin offers, and stands. “Can we do this later?” he asks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep this from you.” He pushes away from them, back towards his tent. 

The sound of heavy footsteps follows, as Karlach runs to catch up with him. 

“Ignore them,” she says. “They don’t understand what just happened, but I think I do. And I don’t know what to say. I don’t think anyone’s ever stuck their neck out that far for me. You’d known me minutes, before sparing me. Hours, before- I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Don’t. I’m just glad you’re alright. I save my sword for monsters.”

“You saw me for who I am - and I think I can see who you really are too. You may look like a devil - but you’re maybe the most noble man I’ve ever met. Even after everything - don’t forget that.”

He collapses on the ground inside his tent, staring up with new darkvision to the cloth ceiling. Not long after, Orin slips in, black fur of her panther form, to lie next to him. She doesn’t say anything, no telepathic bond, just quiet and soft fur against new and rougher skin.

He doesn’t know if he could handle her saying something, if she said that she had been right, or worse, that he should have let her take the brunt of it instead. Because it has to be better this way. 

His dreams are full of smoke and burning skies and endless screams. 

Chapter Text

Orin wakes first, sits by the embers in the center of their camp and stares at the not-devil who lays sprawled out and sleeping as if unaware of how easy it would be to slit the soft flesh of her throat. Sulfur-stink of hells still lingers where Mizora had visited. The metal of the collar around her neck feels warm enough to burn. 

The others rise, and there are furtive glances towards Wyll’s tent, but they do not speak of it where she can hear. The wizard is welcoming to their new companion as he makes up breakfast, and the cleric fawns over her with fascination, and Orin does not stop staring until Wyll emerges from the tent. She sees, in those side glances, the guilt, and worse, the understanding. None of them understand the Hells, not like her, who has spent seven years, becoming the perfect hunter, learning the scent of their flesh and their blood. 

Devils dying doesn’t bind her, that sick-sweet voice in the back of her mind tells her. No collar-weight, no orders on her hands, no huntmaster holding glove out, but freedom, far roaming, blood seaking.

She ignores the voice. She ignores them all. She takes a cut of meat, and when Wyll rises, goes as far as the tether binds her to scout the path ahead, climbs and dances up into a tree to get better sight of the stone road that stretches on before them. 

It is Lae’zel who joins her, where she sits perched up in the branches. The githyanki moves as if there is no weight to pull her down, near running up the side before jumping to grab upon a lower limb and pull herself up to perch, and stares out at the same sight, sharp and piercing eyes scanning all in sight. 

“We waste light, as they wait in camp,” she mutters. “With a forced march, we could have made it to the crèche already.”

“Soldiers move fast, through roads and fields and forests. But they walk right into their deaths, the more they walk. In the fields of the dead, demons will feast on platoons who thought better of quick movement than of rest.”

“Chk. They were not githyanki,” she scowls. “But a group of this size will always march slow. You have skill, as a tracker, and with a blade. You have the strength to be a warrior, that you might have survived training within a crèche. Why do you stay and follow these pointless journeys? Why do you not take your leave? We could together make to the mountains, be free of the tadpoles.”

The question itches under her skin, and she grips at the branch she sits on. “I did not take you for someone dancing around truths with shining words. Ask what you mean to ask of me: why do I stay in the shadow of the Blade?”

“He is what my people would name she’lak. Roughly translated - idealist, better, benevolent burden. He has his skills, and his place, but his pursuit of valor is a weakness, easily exploited and near certain to lead to ruin. You have no such weakness, you see this, surely.”

She jumps down, and Lae’zel follows suit. “We stay clear of the road, until we approach the bridge to the town. The sightlines are too open, easy to sneak and hide and pounce on prey.”

“And now you dance around the truth.” The githyanki crosses her arms, levies a hardened stare at her. 

“It is a weakness, the choice to be the Blade of Frontiers, to be the knight, the hero,” she says. “In his place, I would have eaten the snake’s heart before her dying eyes, and there would be no devil-horns, only blood seeping into sand. But if not for that weakness, you would be guts strung up on temple walls. I follow him because there are worse things than weakness.”

“You think that you could kill me?” Lae’zel asks. 

“Clear of the road, staying within the treeline,” she repeats. “The brush is not so dense to slow our path. They grow close. Or can’t you hear them?”

She grunts, but says no more, and Orin smiles.

There are fewer goblin traps here than in the rocky path near where they had pulled themself from the crash, but she is still careful in the lead, looking for pitfalls and snare wires to stab and shoot and hoist up from the ground. The forest is quiet, not completely free of sound, but birdsong sparse, squirrels and rats and crawling creatures few in number, most of what is left the hum of insects singing. 

No larger game is to be found - but not too far from where they had set camp, they find the boar. 

“That’s odd,” Gale says, kneeling down to inspect the carcass. 

“It’s a dead pig,” Astarion groans. “Staring at it won’t bring it back.”

“Not that - the way it died. I won’t pretend that I’m anything like an expert, but it doesn’t look like it was killed by a hunter, or an owlbear…”

That earns her pause enough to give it proper look. A larger predator could have scared away the game, and it was more monstrosity than simple owlbear that would leave remains so full. Save some maggots, there is little decay - no flesh exposed, no cuts and tears and bleeds. No blood at all. 

“I don’t work with animals, but if I had to guess, it looks like it was completely drained of blood,” Shadowheart notes. It has that sunken pallor too it - and there, two puncture marks, a mouth apart. Fang bites. Vampire. 

She glances over to Astarion, who’s groaning. “This is a waste of time, aren’t we supposed to be hurrying, to get these tadpoles out or find this druid or whatever it is we’re after?”

Wyll catches her eye. They don’t need the tadpole connection to communicate; he shakes his head. He knows, of course he knows, he probably knew before she did, from the first night, when all she’d caught was predator, not monster. 

“Astarion is right. We know the woods are dangerous, this changes nothing,” Lae’zel growls. “If it is not an immediate threat, then we move on.”

“It doesn’t seem as if there are any tracks nearby, but I will admit to woodlands not being my exact area of expertise,” Gale says.  “How old do you think it is?”

“Last night,” Orin declares. “Most things that hunt and bite and claw choose cover of night to safeguard them. We keep watch when we camp.”

“I don’t think we need be too concerned,” Wyll says.

They have not hunted vampires, nor much undead save skeletons, the unthinking animated minions of greater monsters and dark-dealing wizards. Skeletons, she knows she can shatter apart without any problem. A vampire?  It was hard to say what counted for her curse. Before, when she was stronger, when the geas was a stab wound to the chest instead of a knife across her throat, she may have tested. Now…

Let him think that he has done good job of hiding the fangs that peek from his smug smiles. She does not look to him, but keeps leading through the woods, and when the cliff moves close around, back up to the stones of the roadway, a better sight of the bridge before they cross.

The scent of blood comes before the sight of it - broken wagons, spilled crates, older corpses starting to rot. Not a fresh kill, but days in the making. Travelers, ambushed. 

“Oh, good, more monsters,” Shadowheart sighs. “Have we found anywhere here that doesn’t have something infesting it?”

“If this is what the wilds are like, why does anyone ever leave cities?” Astarion asks. “It certainly makes me question ever going out past the walls again.”

“The Hellriders used to patrol the Risen Road, keep it clear. Given that the tieflings in the Grove have one of the captains, I imagine there haven’t been many riding out from Elturel,” Wyll notes. “It could be the work of that owlbear - the cave wasn’t too far off.”

"Or it could be the work of whatever attacked that boar," Gale points out, and Orin slips closer. The bodies have been scavenged down to sun bleached bone cracked open to get at the marrow. A hyena gnaws at one - others lay on the ground, bloated, barely breathing. Familiar signs - now this, unlike a vampire, is prey that she is used to. 

“That’s disturbing.” Shadowheart wrenches her nose in disgust, peering around some of the fallen and broken apart crates. “Are they sick?”

“Shh - soft steps, soft words. There may be others close.” Orin slinks up to the closest, knife in hand to slit the throat. 

“Not that I don’t think mercy is the better option,” Gale whispers loudly, “but perhaps we might be better off sneaking around?”

“What, let them do this to more people just trying to make their way home?” Karlach asks, letting her axe cut another’s head off. If she was trying to be quiet, she failed completely, as on the other side of the spattering of corpses, a hyena that had been chewing at the gore perks up its ears and then darts up into the hills. 

Wyll lets off a blast of energy, that hits only the tail and cracks the rocks behind. “Shit,” he curses, and presses out of the sightlines of what will be coming down that same path. 

“I know we’re not exactly the most elite of fighting forces, but I think we can handle some sick dogs,” Astarion quips.

“Just for that, if they bite you, I’ll let you handle the rabies yourself,” Shadowheart shoots back, smiling.

“You should listen to more stories,” Orin tells them. “Not dogs, not sick, not safe.” The belly of one at the far end bursts open, fur matted sticky with the blood and guts that birthed it. “Demonspawn, hungering for taste of flesh.”

“Been a while since I got to cave gnoll-skull in,” Karlach whoops. “Fuck yeah, here we go!”

She hates the tiefling for not being dead. For being the sort of person Wyll was too noble a hero to harm, for being good and kind and not broken into cruelty and bloodshed by the hells. For taking him and damning him and hurting him, for making him have to hide the hurt, to pretend that this was worth the cost. But axe in hand, she is an artist, making beautiful bloody work of the gnolls that come through the rocks to tear at them. She likes her, and it makes her think the choice might not have been wrong, and that is worse, so she hates her more and more. 

Gnolls, at least, are monsters twice-over, animal-bodies and demon-spirits. She rips and cuts and tears and bites and needs no blood of her own to be taken for it to matter. If she fights with the vampire like a second shadow, and with Lae’zel like an oiled machine, then with Karlach she is a storm, and it is the most fun she has had since they left from the Hells. 

When it is over, Gale pops his head up from behind the wagon he had used as cover for the fire and lightning that came from his hands. “I’d read that gnolls came from hyenas, but I wasn’t aware that was quite so literal a process.”

“Note, kill all the sick hyenas first,” Shadowheart agrees, kicking the spattered remains of the newborn. “Here’s hoping that’s the most disturbing thing we see today.”

“Oh, but Lae’zel was hoping we’d find the patrol-” Astarion starts, earning a shove to the side.

“Compare my people to these beasts, istik, and we will see what the inner lining of your stomach looks like.”

“Enough.” Wyll’s voice rings clear, and it is sharper than usual. The edge of exhaustion. “The town’s just south of here. It’s where we should start looking for Halsin.”

“A moment to catch my breath, please,” Gale says, as Astarion quickly picks through the crates, and Orin sticks her fingers into the flesh. It sings beneath her fingers as she strips them of anything worth taking and cuts the ears for potioncraft. 

“You’re pretty fun to fight alongside, you know that?” Karlach says, stepping close beside her. “I think I remember you being at Wyll’s side while he was chasing me through Avernus, so, what’s your deal? You another of that bitch's warlocks?”

“He’s a knight and I’m a dragon.” Her hands dig deep into guts that spread across the ground, elbow high, enough to stain. “Ansur and Balduran.”

“I grew up in Cliffgate, saw all the statues, and they never make old Baldy look half as pretty as him,” Karlach murmurs. “But you serious about being a dragon? 

She pauses, and then lets her mouth stretch wide, rows of sharp and pointed teeth, more than should fit inside her head. She licks a now clawed finger clean, eyes slit and sharp and staring.

“Fuck! Dragon or not, that’s some killer shit!” Karlach claps, before bundling over to see what it was that Astarion had found. 

If she dies, then all of this will be for nothing, and Wyll will be full of sorrow and regret. So she slots Karlach after him in the list she keeps, of people who she must keep safe from blood and harm. But she still doesn’t like her. Never, ever will. 

The bridges may still stand, but the way into the ruined town have long since eroded. It was not destroyed recently - often, in their travels, they would stay in these places, these ghost towns built up and left abandoned as monsters and armies fell upon them, dead and fled and gone gone gone. 

If the woods were quiet, then this is dead, the sound of the river and the wind all that makes it through the cracked buildings and rotting buildings. She drifts to the back, as wood becomes stone, the better to slink into the shadows. She does not like these empty places, haunted by the ghosts of crushed out lives. She thinks of a city, hiding under the shadows of another, crumpled buildings and old skeletons and stale air that will never be free of the scent of death. 

They make their way towards the entrance, and it is as they make it towards there that Gale raises a hand to halt the party. “We know you’re hiding up on the rooftops!” he calls out. “I don’t see any need for that, so why don’t you show yourselves?”

A goblin scurries into view - staff and decorations, a spellcaster. “You spotted us,” they say, staring down. “Good. ‘s like they say…no fun in skewerin’ a pig what doesn’t know he’s cooked.”

“We aren’t looking for any trouble, just to pass through. No need to make things more complicated for anyone involved.”

A silver tongue is likely wasted on these goblins, Wyll passes through the tadpole connection towards Gale. 

And you have no idea what I’ve managed to talk my way out of, Gale retorts. 

There’s a flash. A strange symbol glows with burning light, marked on the goblin’s flesh. Same as what had been on the shields and arms of those at the gate, same as what the pilgrims at the owlbear cave had worn, the ones infected by the tadpole. 

“I don’t think any of this is necessary,” Gale continues, raising his hands, and moving into position for a clearer angle to knock them off the roof. Hard to get an angle, good cover, with that height…not ones to be swayed by words, too open for much cover to further hide, not at that angle. 

Orin slips behind Karlach to block the sight of shifting flesh, and then steps forward, skin to greyed purple and ears pointed as she bears the presence of a drow, standing at the front and crossing her arms to look up. The druid had a drow, laid out on the table, affected but not turned. Goblins tended to flock to the shadows of those more powerful. 

“A drow? In the sun?” The booyagh furrows a brow, staring down. “Apologies, your greatness. Hard makin’ you out from a distance. Stand down!” goes the call to the rest. “This one’s got a touch of the Absolute about her.”

“That name, again,” Gale mutters beneath his breath. 

“Good thinking - the drow back in the grove is one of theirs,” Shadowheart says. “We should be able to pass all the way into their main camp without a fight.”

“Or…we climb up onto the rooftops, and gut them while they least expect it,” Astarion suggests.

“They’ve already put down their arms,” Wyll points out. 

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to get your morals twisted over a bunch of goblins," he sighs. “Especially not ones who had been just ready to kill us. Have you heard the phrase pick your battles?”

“Do you think you could knock them down here? Because I’m good for a brawl, but my aim’s a bit shit," Karlach says. "Plus, if I get up onto one of those rooftops, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna singe it through enough to cave in under me. Not fun.”

“It can’t be that hard to throw a goblin of a building, it isn’t as if they weigh very much. Although I don’t know if they’d survive the fall enough to be worth you stomping them into the ground, darling.”

“A full fight is a waste of energy,” Lae’zel remarks. “They consider you to be commander - order them down from the roofs, and we shall strike as one, quick and clean.”

How long has it been, since her voice alone lead people to walk blindly to their deaths? “I’ve new orders for you,” she calls out, moving to stand near the center of the town. “Unless you would prefer to stay guarding this miserable ruin?”

They are cautious, at the size of the group, but there is a hunger in the eyes of the one who had spoken to them, of someone who wants more than they are offered. She comes up close, looking Orin in the eye. “So, what, positions opened up back at camp? Or are you organizing a new hunting party to try and find the druid’s hideout.”

Swiftly, surely, swords and axes cleave through flesh, electricity courses amplified by armor. Her hands thirst for the blades, but there is no such luck as cuts biting into her blood. Instead, she shoves the caster to the ground, gives Wyll the opportunity to strike true with sword in hand. Clean, efficient. Hardly any sounds to bring attention.

Lae’zel wipes clean her sword, then moves to start checking the buildings that surround - knocking into Orin by the shoulder as she passes. 

“You think I fear you killing me, when you cannot kill a goblin, kneeling at your feet?” she asks. “You may have skill, but I see you are the same as him. She’lak, weak.”

Orin tastes blood, in her mouth, sees skin flayed to reveal alien musculature hiding beneath, death and blood and bone. It tastes sweet. 

She does not reach for sword or knife. She grabs a goblin by the ankle, and drops it down the well, where there will be no pretty picture made of corpses to draw attention on to them. 

Chapter Text

The signposts declare that once, this village was named Moonhaven. Like most of the small settlements that dotted through the Heartlands, especially so close to the Fields of the Dead, it had fallen, left only the shells of buildings slowly being overgrown. There hadn't been a village the last time they'd traveled this section of the Risen Road, and with the lack of even skeletal remains, it was old, maybe from as far back as the Sundering. Plenty of places had fallen during that upheaval.

And, like most of the similar ruins he'd traveled through and camped out within during these past years, it made a solid home for monsters. There were more goblins than the ambush on the roof, and notably, a trio of ogres, eating the corpse of what seemed to be an adventurer, presumably one of Aradin's party who had not been so fast in their escape.

Even with the advantages of stealth, they weren't as simple to deal with than the goblin ambush had been, but they fell all the same, as did the group gathered by the surprisingly still-functional windmill harassing the deep gnome tied to one end.

"I still think we should have gotten more out of him," Astarion bemoans, as they move through the ruined shells of the houses. Half of them take the apothecary, the others

"Gotten more of what exactly?" Shadowheart raises an eyebrow. "He already led us to his supplies, and some smokepowder. I can't imagine he had much gold on him beyond that."

"It's the principle of the thing," he bemoans. "At least that little side quest actually got us some reward, unlike some of these distractions."

"Good deeds are their own reward," Wyll declares, more on instinct than anything else. He continues looking through the shelves of the apothecary. "Find anything useful?"

"While there are a handful of still viable ingredients, what potions seem to still exist have been long since ruined," Gale says. "If we want to increase our stock of healing elixirs, we will have to look elsewhere."

"Downstairs, maybe," Shadowheart suggests, leaning on the counter and flipping through the logbook, gentle to keep the pages from completely falling apart. "It seems the valuable supplies were being stored in the cellar."

"What sort of valuable are we talking about?" Astarion asks.

"Doesn't say. Potions, presumably." She shrugs, as they open the door into the cellar. It's more intact than most of the town, clearly not somewhere the goblins had gotten into. He helps gather more of the ingredients, and the handful of potions.

"Useful, but not exactly what I'd consider prime materials worth any special care or storage," Gale notes. "Perhaps whatever was stored here was taken when they evacuated the town when it first fell?"

"Oh, come on," Astarion groans. "It's amazing you get anything done without me." He leans over against the wall, and there's a click, as a bookcase on one of the far walls spins open to reveal a hidden door. "The cellar lock was nothing, who'd hide something worth anything behind just that?"

"You'd be surprised," Shadowheart notes. "Although it's more often they forget to use their very fancy locks."

Behind the door is a rough-hewn cave, overgrown with greenery and herbs. Several wooden caskets line the space, and where it loops back to stone walls, there is no door but instead an ornate mirror, that Gale approaches, looking it over curiously.

"Spea-k your name," it says, an echoing voice coming from an

"Gale of Waterdeep," he says, confidently. "A magic mirror - the reactive lock is programmed with the personality of the wizard who cast the spell. I've seen it a fair few times before, although it's not the most effective of security."

"I do no-t know this name. If you are known to my mas-ter, step forward and de-clare yourself an ally."

"An ally! Yes!" Gale declares. "I am an ally of your master's, so you should feel free to let me in."

The face on the mirror shows exactly how little it thinks of that idea. "Only a t-rue ally of Ilyn Toth may pass. What th-ink you of the zulkir known as Szass Tam."

"Szass Tam? You're mistaken, he isn't a zulkir. He's a lich, ruling as High Regent of Thay, now." Gale declares. "It's actually rather-"

"A poor ch-oice. You will be purged."

From the caskets on the ground behind, the rotting bodies of ghouls begin to rise. "For reference, Gale, don't correct the mirror-door."

The shadow gathering around her hand, most of the ghouls are turned away, moving towards edges of the cave with the cleric power. Astarion's hidden himself...somewhere, but with them fleeing, it gives plenty of opportunity for he and Gale to levy both eldritch blast and a firebolt in the same movement, picking them off from a distance before they can react to the intrusion.

"Let's hope that whatever else is down here doesn't need more than cantrips, because with all we've faced today, I'm rather spent," Gale admits.

"I've some minor healing left, but I was expecting traps, not ghouls," Shadowheart agrees. "Let's try not to anger the mirror a second time."

"Where's Astarion?" Wyll looks around the room, only to feel someone come up from behind him.

"Hiding stealthily. Always better to attack from cover, don't you agree? Now, I think I've an idea how to deal with the mirror-"

"I mean, I think it's fairly obvious where Gale misstepped," Wyll says. "Not to put any blame on you, of course, but given the response, it's clear that this Ilyn Toth is trying to keep any Thayan sympathizers out of this space." He steps forward. "Mirror - my name is Wyll, an ally of your master - and forgive my friend for his correction, but Szass Tam is a foul lich, may his reign end."

"You are no zulkir, but are you wise?" the mirror asks. "T-tell me, why might one use balsam ointment."

"Are you wise," Gale repeats in a mocking tone. "That's simple, surely everyone knows-

"Basalm is for cleaning wounds," Wyll says. "We've used it fairly often, out in the wilds."

"Acceptable." The mirror says. "F-inally...if you could see an-ything in me, what w-ould it be?"

What would he see? Himself, free of the pact. Them all, safe and free of tadpoles. But he knows what he wants. He wants to be back in Baldur's Gate, the same streets where he and Orin had gone dancing, the halls of Wyrm's Rock, the cliffs where he'd dangled his fishing pole, swimming in the bay. He'd see his father, open arms, apologetic, offering him back.

He opens his mouth to speak, which is when Astarion cuts him off. "No need to bother with any of this!" he says. "I am your master, Ilyn Toth, and you'll let us all in now."

"Master?" the mirror questions. "I cannot see you. M-aster? Speak."

Astarion, Wyll sends across the tadpole's telepathic bond, I had it handled.

Whatever it was you were about to say was probably something cloyingly sweet, and I can't imagine it would have gone over well with the former Thayan necromancer who built this place, Astarion sends back, before turning to the mirror, a charming grin across his face. "Yes, it is me, your master. I'm invisible. My enemies are close, so let us in now."

"Be wel-come." The mirror gives way to an entrance to a space far more expansive than the cellar.

"Why didn't it see you?" Shadowheart questions, narrowing her eyes.

"Magic. I may not have been an archmage from Waterdeep but I know some things. It's not exactly a hard enchantment to trick."

"Fascinating," Gale says dryly. "I'd be quite curious to learn what sort of spell you've learned that makes one invisible but only to specific targets."

"Oh, perhaps I'll try and teach it to you at camp. But it is rather complicated," Astarion says.

Given the way Gale stares at him, clearly he's also pieced together Astarion's...affliction, and was not particularly impressed by his efforts to lie about it. He'd respected the reasons Astarion had wanted to keep it quiet - few people reacted well to vampires in their midst, but he clearly wasn't a usual vampire, and he'd had plenty of chances to try and feed that had gone and passed. Still, it seems they would have to talk about it - maybe once Halsin had been freed and they'd gotten the tadpoles out of their heads.

Past the mirror is a large chamber, clearly the true alchemical lab, a massive skeleton displayed in the center and many shelves and tables lined with tomes and potions. It's quite the impressive array.There's a door leading back to the cellar, a secret entrance locked behind a lever, and across from it, a small cell.

"It does seem as if the apothecary and apprentice are former Red Wizards on the run," Gale notes, as he flips through one of the books. "They seem to have been keeping constant watch for whether any Thayans had followed them, not surprising, as rogue red wizards are exceedingly rare. Based on the dates within, that places the destruction of the village, Moonhaven, around a century ago, following a winter of regular raids from soldiers in black armor." 

Shadowheart hums in acknowledgement, as she slips the various potions into her pack, while Astarion clicks open the lock on the gated door, slipping inside.

"Ah, found something interesting have you?" Gale asks, raising his head.

"Oh, maybe," the elf deflects. "You never know what will end up being useful."

"That looks like it's incredibly cursed," Shadowheart notes. "You can take a closer look...I'll observe from back here."

"Cursed?" Wyll moves over to the side. "That looks too dangerous to be left lying around, even in as hidden a place as this."

"My thoughts exactly! So I'll just be taking this-"

"As a magical tome, perhaps I should be the one to take it?" Gale suggests, peering over through the iron barred walls as well. "I have some experience, with curses."

"And I've plenty of experience with traps," Astarion shoots back. "You're not the only person who's studied magic, you know."

Do you think Astarion will stab him for it? Shadowheart muses in his mind, and both of the two fighting over the book turn and glare at her. "What? It would make things more interesting around here."

"It's nothing so intense, just a difference of opinion," Gale says. "I simply think as the one most skilled with Arcana, it is perhaps in te group's best interests that I be the one-"

"The group's best interests, or your best interests?"

"Maybe we should just take this as a sign not to get involved with Thayan magic and destroy it."

"Destroy it?" Gale asks. "Destroy it?! No matter the content, that is no way to treat a book!"

"See! We're agreed. You don't want the book destroyed, and it will be very safe in my pack." Astarion slips the tome into  his bag, to Gale's exasperated face. "We're all done here, clearly."

"So, some healing potions, some antidotes, and a cursed book," Shadowheart says. "Here's hoping the others had some better luck."

They meet back in the center of town as Orin, Lae'zel, and Karlach are climbing out from the well, covered in spider guts.

"What happened?" Wyll asks, running over to them.

"We killed a spider." Lae'zel's face is deadpan as she reports this.

"We killed a lot of spiders, but the big one, it was climbing on the webs, and Orin shot it down with a fire arrow, and it went splat!" Karlach gives a sufficiently gory sound effect to her narration, arms spread wide as she grins. "I've heard enough about the Blade, but your sister's awesome!"

"Not my sister," he says, in the same moment Orin says, "Not my brother." Karlach looks between them both for a moment, and then shrugs.

"Here are the items, enchanted and otherwise, we found within the forge and the depths below," Lae'zel reports, laying out some weapons, a robe, a ring, and a large gem. "I have claimed an enchanted pair of boots for myself. The robe seems only valuable to the wizard; the ring to anyone. Split them amongst themselves as most appropriate."

"I don't particularly utilize poison-based spells as a-" Gale pauses, mid setting up the pots and gathered food around the fire, as if coming to a sudden realization. "Actually, yes, I  will take this, thank you, Lae'zel."

"It is only reasonable that equipment goes to those who would make best use of it." The githyanki frowns and crosses her arms. "What did you recover."

"Nothing so interesting as a giant spider exploding on top of us; just some potions, a quick brawl with some undead, and an incredibly cursed tome of Thayan magic," Shadowheart quips. "You're welcome to try and fight Astarion over it, but he seems attached."

"Chk. If I wished to train as a gish, I would need no magic from your Fay-run."

"Well, hey, more health potions are always good," Karlach assures her. "This town seems pretty cleared out, so what's the plan, boss."

It takes a moment for him to realize she's talking to him. "Enter into the goblin camp," he says. "They all seem connected to this Absolute, as did the other infected, the True Soul. That, and with Orin in the form of a Drow, we should have no problems getting in and locating Halsin - and getting a better sense of how to get out."

"Right. Sneaky. I've told you I don't really do sneaky, yeah?"

"Well, I do believe the point of this is that we won't have to be sneaky, at least, not in the vein of trying to completely avoid being spotted. If the mindflayer infection marks us as true souls, they should welcome us with open arms as allies," Gale notes. "I'm not exactly the best at skulking through shadows either."

"It shows," Shadowheart tells him.

"You're not so sneaky yourself," Astarion says. "Clanking about in that armor-"

"I can be sneaky when I want to be," she retorts. "Some of just are too naturally charismatic to go unnoticed - not a problem you have."

"You're right, some people are easy to forget. You certainly are."

"Dinner and a show!" Karlach exclaims. "You two should play the circuits. You're better than some of the people I saw back in Baldur's Gate, and I doubt the entertainment's gotten that much better in a decade."

"Chk. Mindless squabble. They act as children. If this is what passes for entertainment, your world is lacking in all pleasures."

"And what do githyanki do for fun?" Gale asks. "While your craftsmanship and prowess in battle is legendary, not much else of your people's culture makes it to the Realms."

"We sing tales of our heroes and their great feats; of Gith who freed us from the tyranny of the ghaik, and in the praise of Vlaakith eternal," Lae'zel says. "But most of our entertainment takes the form of feasting and finding carnal pleasure within our fellow warriors."

"Ah," Gale says. "That's. What I should have expected."

"Wyll tells stories," Orin says abruptly. "Great tales. Heroes and villains and knights and dragons."

"Oh? I didn't take you for much of a bard," Shadowheart says.

"She's just fishing for her favorite," Wyll relents. "I can't craft them myself very well - but I have a strong memory, and I'd like to think my singing voice isn't half bad."

"Your favorite, not mine," Orin retorts.

"It can't be worse than those two bickering, can it?" Karlach asks. "Come on, give us a story - we're marching right into a camp full of mindflayer-cultist-goblins, might as well make a celebration of it!"

He takes a bowl of soup from Gale, and sits down besides the fire. "Then let me tell the tale," he recites, "of how Balduran met the Great Wyrm Ansur and came to found the city of Baldur's Gate..."

There is no message from Mizora that night. She was letting him linger with the transformation rather than any more taunting or quests. It didn't make the night any more restful, or stop any of the dreams.

He can't remember the last time he had a truly restful night. Seven years, probably.

It's not the only time he wakes that night, to stare at the cracked ceiling of the Forge, but it is the more eventful, as he sees Astarion kneeling over him, ready for a bite.

"...Shit."

"Astarion? What are you-"

"It's not what it looks like, I swear!" He moves back. "I wasn't going to hurt you! I just needed- well-"

"Blood." He'd really been hoping that feeding on animals, like that drained boar, would be enough to stave off the hunger for it, but clearly not. He had liked Astarion, but he'd sworn himself to protect the coast.

"I'm not a monster, I swear - I've never fed from a human before, only animals, boards, deer, kobolds, whatever I can get! But it's not enough - I'm too slow, too weak, and we're about to face an entire host of goblins. So I thought if I just had a little blood, I could think clearer. Fight better."

"You could have asked."

"Yes, because I'm sure everyone would be so accommodating to getting their blood drained by a vampire. That couldn't have backfired at all." The snark fades as he seems to realize exactly what a precarious position he's in. "I wanted you to trust me. And you can trust me."

There's a tinge of fear in his voice, but it's otherwise open, calming. Wyll shouldn't trust any of this, but this isn't just any vampire spawn - it's Astarion. "I do," he says. "I believe you."

"Thank you." He closes the gap again, reaching out a hesitant hand. "Do you think you could trust me just a little further? I only need a taste, I swear."

A vampire's bite. He's had several monsters bite him before, never a pleasant experience, but they said vampires - the stories he'd read - this was a bad idea. But Astarion wasn't wrong, about needing all they could for what was to come tomorrow. And he'd always wondered -

"Just a taste," he says. "No more than what you need, promise?"

"The easiest promise I've ever made," Astarion assures him. "Now, let's make ourselves comfortable, shall we?" He leans forward, as if to kiss, but instead presses a hand to Wyll's chest, gently pushing him back down onto the bedroll. Leaning over, his mouth hovers a breath away from neck before biting down.

It feels like - like nothing else. At first cold, strangely numb, not the expected rush of pain, and then there's an almost dreamlike feel, of being drawn closer in. Not a charm - but it's almost comforting. As if he could stay in this moment forever.

There is a lunging blur, and suddenly, the fangs are gone, pulled out, as he sees Orin tackling Astarion down, knife drawn.

"Predator pouncing from the shadows, I knew you when I saw you, and what did I say would happen if any harm had come to him? Back to you by tenfold, your throat a bloody gash-"

He needs to - his head is spinning, he hadn't meant to lose that much, and the wound is still open.

"He asked me to!" Astarion struggles. "He's fine! I didn't drain him-"

"You think I trust a word you say, trick-thief? You think I care, when it is his blood spilled?"

"Orin, it's alright," he coughs out. "I agreed to it, and I'm fine."

It isn't a command; she pulls back anyways. "Monsters, I slay freely. If I see his blood on you again, I will not be stopped. Whatever is your greatest fear, know that I am worse by far."

The emotions that cross Astarion's face are difficult to read - more complex than simple fear, at the least. "She won't hurt you over this, I swear," Wyll assures. "And I wouldn't be against doing this again. Before any particularly dangerous encounters. Although not quite that much."

"Ah, yes. I was just swept up in the moment. You taste delicious - I wasn't expecting it to be quite that overwhelming. But I should be very useful tomorrow, don't worry. And now that my condition is a fairly open secret, I don't see why I can't drain the occasional bandit while we're in the process of killing them."

This feels like a dangerous path to walk - agreeing to any amount of vampiric feeding - but dead is dead. "I doubt goblin blood will be appetizing, but I see no problem with it."

"I'm sure I've had worse," Astarion tells him, "But I think you'll stay the best - you know what they say, about first times." He smirks. "But as invigorating as you are, not the most filling meal - I need something more." he rises, heading over to the entry. "But thank you. This is a gift, and I won't forget it."

Wyll watches as he leaves, stalking out into the night - stronger, more confident. He presses a hand to the bite mark on his neck, still tingling. He'd really done that, really let a vampire bite him. And it had felt better than he'd imagined.

He almost expects to feel that familiar pain in his eye, Mizora's presence in a dream, but instead he finds himself in the deepest sleep he's had in months.

Chapter Text

She does not sleep the rest of the night, but sits perched and watching over all as they lay in their bedrolls. She watches the hunter return with bloody mouth, and he looks up at her, hands raised in mock-surrender before settling down to read. He is an elf, and undead besides - she cannot match the hours he keeps, cannot spend every night like this, but here, and now, he will know that she is watching.

This used to be how she spent every night. Years, alone in the wilds, alone in the hells, when they would hide themselves in rocks and up in trees, take their turns to sit in silence and watch through the night as the other slept. More eyes, more bodies, she knows that it is safer now. She misses those nights, those days. She misses many things, that linger in her mind as she sits in quiet dark and watches.

If there is any sign of tire in her eyes, it is lost as she sits there by the mirror, molds herself a proper face as a drow, crafts look and name and voice and past as the structure molds to fit. Food is eaten, preparations are made. The vampire confesses his condition to the others with no prompting, and they let it pass with their own warnings. Gale's blood is as bitter as it smells, he claims. The others are all ready to draw blades if fang touches neck - Wyll the only one of their number without the sense to distrust monsters.

The sound of drums is deep and resonant and greets them by the edge of town before they ever cross that bridge that leads to goblin gates and doors. A raucous celebration that goes clanging through the hills. She takes the lead, moves with purpose and authority, for she is priestess and commander, leading a warband thralled to her, with no thought to the small and petty things dancing at her feet only the words that will be had with those that hold real power, and with that in every piece of flesh and step and sound she comes upon gate and guard.

"Lookit, Klaw! Supper's here!" The guard calls to his warg companion. She sees the shift in posture, as Lae'zel reaches for her sword, prepared to strike, the vampire with knife to hand as well. If it is noticed, it is not minded - the guard barks out a laugh. "Only funnin' - got word from Moonrise?"

Moonrise...the name of a leader out at field? No. A base they had, messengers, shifting worm-tunnels of the cult spread fast and further afield, festering and hiding in the dark. To expect a drow, hidden in the caves deep dark below? Or hiding in other shadows, perhaps. They weren't far at all from the curse-lands blight.

He looks up waiting a response. Let's try to be diplomatic, shall we? Gale suggests in back of her mind. This camp is surely not lacking in goblins, and number is often the deciding factor in these struggles.

Trained githyanki warriors could take all that were held within and more-

Maybe telepathic conversations can hold for when the guard inspecting us isn't waiting for a response? Shadowheart suggests, and there is silence in her skull once more.

The symbol glows, marked on flesh, the firebrand of the Absolute. It beckons across the tadpole link, resonant with power and control.

"I bring word to your leaders. Not you. Stand aside." The words echo with the power.

"Of course! Didn't realize we had a True Soul coming. Stand down, lads!" Weapons fall back into relaxed grips, attention turns outwards rather than down. "Enjoy the party."

"That went far smoother than expected; I've always admired illusionists and that school of magic, even if I've never found the time to specialize in it - a well placed disguise or minor image can be more impactful than a fireball in turning the tides of an encounter, after all. I'm curious how you came to specialize in disguise self - your use of the spell is-

The wizard's words are interrupted, as halfway across the bridge, the very ground begins to shake, a deafening ring that drown out all drums and revelry with the way it pierces mind, body and soul.

Hear my voice. Obey my command.

It is soft and sweet and calm, but in the way a devil's voice is, with power overwhelming, crashing through the tadpole that infects.

It takes over all sense of vision, as bridge and camp and shaking ground all fade away for void and psychic impressions. In wavering silhouette, three figures emerge, bearing with them more the force of intent and will than the face and forms they wear.

These are my Chosen. They speak for me. Aid their search for the Prism, and you will be worthy to stand beside them. In my presence.

Center stands an armored elf, hand reached out and beckoning. Behind, standing together, two figures. Even with faces clouded and details lost, she knows them, would know them blind, by the presence of their minds alone. The man, she only ever saw the once, standing out and open in the Wide, but even that is seared into her, for they stood together, and she felt the shape of his psyche even as she slipped through booths to keep out of sight.

My power grows. My forces gather. The reckoning draws near.

There is energy, pushing the voice away, and control returns, for her to find herself on the ground, clutching her head, as the others turn to look up at an artifact that floats in the air and falls back down into her hands. Emanating with power, it had blocked the vision.

This is how she knows, whatever the Absolute might be, it isn't what she feared, for no bauble would be enough to protect her, protect anyone. And yet they stand there as its chosen, her sibling.

"Don't give me that look!" Shadowheart declares, finding herself the center of attention. "I don't know what just happened any more than you do. We should keep going."

"You carry a gith relic," Lae'zel notes. "Explain."

"I mean, good thing you had it - not a lot of good things that go around giving orders in your mind," Karlach adds. 

"I don't know," she asserts. "Not exactly. All I'm certain of is that my mission was to retrieve it and bring it back to Baldur's Gate. At any cost." Already paid for in blood, her voice says clearly.

"Your secrets are your own - but we've reached the point where this involves all of us," Wyll tells her. "What is was your mission, anything you know might help."

"You're not wrong  - things are more connected than I thought. I was sworn to secrecy, but there's little point in hiding, now. I am a servant of Shar. My home is a secret cloister in Baldur's Gate, where I was to return wit the artifact. I can't tell you more, because I don't know it all - to maintain our Lady' secrets on the mission, we had our memories suppressed. All I know is my contact in the city, and that I have to guard the artefact with my life. There. The truth, for all it's worth. "

"I knew it!" Karlach exclaims.

"Thank you, for trusting us with that," Wyll assures her. His voice is genuine and gentle. Yet another knife-sharp threat to be brought in close as friend.

"How exactly did you come into posession of this artefact, Shadowheart? It's not your typical fare for Sharran magics or her artifacts, there's no trace of the Shadow-weave or its ilk upon it, although I can't say I recognize the enchantment it does have."

"The symbols upon it are githyanki runes," Lae'zel growls. "Ancient as Vlaakith herself. This was stolen from my people."

"And a lot of my people died in the process," Shadowheart bites back. "I won't fail them - not after what I saw your kind do to them."

"Chk. It is not only githyanki you need fear hunt you down. It seems the cult and its chosen are focused on it just the same."

"The villains of the piece have presented themselves," Wyll says. "As soon as we've dealt with the tadpoles, we can turn our full attention onto finding who they are and ending the threat they pose the Coast."

She should say something, anything, but the words catch in her throat and refuse to crawl back out - for Wyll does not know any of this. The last time she saw her sibling, she made him run, so that he would not be caught and gutted and devoured for standing by her. If she bade him flee, he wouldn’t listen now. None of them would. 

There is confidence in his voice, and she wishes it could be shared. Perhaps she is wrong, and it is another dragonborn standing cloaked in shadow. She wishes it was true, because it means that she can hold on to the hope this will end in anything but blood and death. 

It is only the mask that grounds her. No daughter of the Underdark would be caught so out of sorts, not in front of surface-dwellers and goblinkin who should be kneeling. It is another’s steps that lead her f forward, another’s face that falls cold and stoic, another’s heart that steels itself to focus on the mission.

The goblin camp is lively, celebrating a raid as just in turn they prepare themselves for more, weapons being sharpened to the beating of the drums. Centerfold is a human man - he had been at the grove. A bard, reciting poetry, with the nerves that show he knows the cost for if he can’t perform, a heckling and hungry crowd beneath. 

The scent of meat cooking on the fire is familiar to her, in equal parts nostalgic as it is bitter, the child she can not return to, for better but not without its cost. It smells delicious, well-prepared. “Do not eat any food offered.”

“I was hardly planning on it, goblins not being known for culinary masterwork, but it doesn’t look poisoned?” Gale asks, and then takes a moment, looking over the fire, before he realizes what the warning means. “How do you- I don’t know if I want the answer to that question.”

“With all the commotion, it wouldn’t be hard to slip something into that cauldron,” the vampire notes, glancing over to where the drinks are served. 

“We should track down Halsin and figure out what the plan is before we do anything that might reveal we’re not loyal to the Absolute,” Wyll cautions. “I’d hate to poison Volo on accident.”

“I can’t imagine it would make him a worse poet,” Shadowheart derides. The vampire barks out a laugh. 

Then Karlach is bounding over to one side, where an owlbear cub is cornered against a maze, and Wyll is following after, the concern for the creature clear on his face. He is the one with the blessing that lets him speak with beasts. If she had the gift, she would tell it to turn on those that cage it and rip and tear all asunder, until the stones were more stained with blood than they already were. It would die, but it would die free.

Wyll will tell it to slip away in the chaos that is sure to follow and join them in the camp. When it puts claw and fang against the soft flesh of his neck, he will not wake in time, for the weakness of thinking it warm and safe and pet only because it speaks back to him in words he understands. 

“Not much of monster hunter, is he?” the vampire commiserates, holding back near the fire hearth away from the scene that plays out by the cub and game alike. “I mean, I’m grateful for it, of course, but first a devil spared, then a vampire, now an owlbear? And whatever it is you are.”

That draws her attention, sharp and focused. Wyll’s attention turned, he would not notice in time for spell to act and him to call her blades. A risk, still weak enough the geas spells certain death, but she doubts he meets the mark that was set out. But she would not do that to Wyll - and the vampire knows it, and laughs. 

“Don’t act so surprised. We’re not all dense as Gale - you’re no illusionist, and you’re no druid. I know there are powerful magics to change forms, but the tadpole’s stripped everyone of that. And it’s not love of Wyll that keeps you from killing me - those bracelets have you bound. He doesn’t seem the type to just go keeping a slave, so, what, you’re some sort of demon?”

“Yes.” Isn’t she? Does not her Father make his home in the highest level of Gehenna, is not she more touched by fiendish power than any tiefling, no matter what horns they bear? Is she not tempted to eat the meat that roasts near where they stand?

“What, really? I meant that as a joke. You know, I’m really not planning on biting Wyll again. Even if he asks. Honest.” Fear. Of course it would be only the other monster to know when to show caution and not ignore danger. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you and Karlach killing each other over shared history?”

“I’m bound, not to kill mortals,” she explains. “Tiefling blood is only touched by fiends.”

“So you can kill vampires,” he finishes. The fear is twinged with the spark of something, a plan. “Good to know.”

They do not return with a cub in tow, but they do return less worried. The vampire slides back next to Wyll, full of comfort and charm.

The druid is not the only prisoner being kept in the shattered ruins of the temple. A priest sworn to Loviatar was brought to tease secrets out of an adventurer held captive. The last raid failed, no survivors to report back, they seek the Grove’s location.

As a child, there had been visits from those who worshiped the maiden of pain, for she had been a servant to Bhaal, and the art of suffering was one of many things that Orin was tutored in. They had been beautiful, true artists, the ways her siblings and fellow servants did not appreciate. And they told her secrets, as they taught. That pain would not beget anything but pain, to only act in love of the art and not in service of knowledge. 

If this priest knows the secrets, he has not shared them with the goblins who stand with clubs in hand ready to bleed truth from stone. 

We need to get him out, Wyll tells her. 

Say we’ll take over, Shadowheart suggests. The work is sloppy and they’ll kill him too quickly.

The man strung up is crying. The goblin leading the torture looks up and pales. “Oh, uh, ma’am. I - I didn’t see you there.”

“I was ordered to assist you. Your methods are…unrefined,” she declares. “Move aside.”

“Of course!” As all the other have before, this one moves aside with as much fear as deference.  “We've got some tongue-looseners in the fire if you want 'em. We'll leave ya to it!” In a softer voice, he whispers, “Come Grush, let's go. I don't think I got the stomach for this.”

Wyll holds back a smile as they leave the room at the deception - he knows she couldn’t strike. She knows the fear is justified; even among the other followers, her art had turned stomachs. She wonders what happened to her mother’s corpse, when the Fist closed around the temple, when all of her fellows had shattered and scattered to the winds.

The man strung up on the rack is just as frightened. “Please,” he says with no lack of desperation. “Don’t hurt me!”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Wyll assures. “We’re going to get you out. Astarion-”

“Those cuffs look just the right size that breaking your thumbs will let you slip free.”

“Astarion. The locks?”

“Those also work.” 

“The druid, Halsin. What happened to him?” Orin asks.

“Halsin? I don’t know - he turned into a bear, and I lost him - there were too many. Remira, the others-”

“Alive, they made it to the grove,” Wyll assures. “It looks like there’s a passage out through these rooms - keep your head low and move swift, and you should make it all the same. We dealt with the guard in the town, and the ones at camp seem more interested in drink than tracking.”

He stumbles out his praise, the desperation and confusion that comes so often from the people Wyll saves. She dips her hands in the blood left on the ground, and takes a rag to wipe it off, as they exit the room, a cold look on her face and not bothering to look at the goblins. Weak stomachs, they won’t come to check for some time. 

If he’s alive, they took him as a bear, yeah? Karlach notes. Where’d you keep a bear in here?

Animal pens, Lae’zel notes. There were no structures for it in the camp outdoors. 

The dirty floors are rich in tracks, small goblins to large ogres, and worg-feet mixed among them. This way, she says, and follows them around and down, passing through the doors to old cells repurposed for the worgs.

One pen holds a worg - the other a large cave bear, which squeals as goblin children pelt it with stones, laughing at the sounds of pain it makes. Halsin, wildshaped, no doubt.

Karlach wastes no time to step in front of the bars to the pen, blocking the rocks. "Leave him alone!" she cries out, juts of fire bursting from the engine vents.

"If you can't stand a bit of rough-housin, get lost!"

There won't be any talking, as Karlach reaches for her axe - Orin shifts, dark fur and claws, and around her, violence falls. As soon as Karlach swings down at the brawler who had chastized her, moving out of the way, the bear bursts through the grates and strikes with wild ferocity. The beastmaster undoes the lock, and Orin tangles herself with the worg before it can even leave the cell, no need to hold back her strikes against the beast.

After this day? She relishes in the blood and the death, lets it consume her, fire at her claws as she tears through fur and flesh. There are other strikes that she ignores - let those who can kill deal with them, and let her have this.

When it is dead, she falls back to human-shape, hands wrist deep in blood. The last goblin falls; she licks one of her own scratch-marks clean to better bind it. The bear shifts as well, a grin across his face, as he looks Wyll over.

"I admit, I hadn't expected anyone to come to my aid. Who in their right mind would infiltrate a goblin infested temple? A sign not to underestimate the Blade of Frontiers, it would seem."

"Master Halsin," Wyll greets. "After what Aradin's party and the druids said, I wasn't sure we'd find you so well. You should get out of here - back to the Grove."

"They will have been left vulnerable in my absence - but there's still work to be done here. The cult..." he trails off, looking Wyll over, and then glancing around each member of the group, before raising a hand up, the light casting a spell, the soft glow of healing. "Oak Father preserve you - you're infected. And yet, you don't bow to the Absolute like the True Souls do..."

"The cult is actively infecting your people with ghaik parasites, you are certain?" Lae'zel asks.

"More importantly, do you know how to remove them?" Shadowheart cuts in.

"A normal mindflayer infection - if caught in time - I may have been able to cure. But the tadpoles the cult is using are modified by very powerful magic, allowing them to exert control over the infected, and preventing both the infected from transforming and from the tadpoles removal."

"If there's magic involved, it sounds like your zay-thisk won't work either," Shadowheart says.

"My people have been studying the mindflayers and their nature since before your world was fully formed," Lae'zel bites back. "Purification remains the only path available for us."

"What exactly were you able to find out about the enchantment on the tadpoles?" Gale questions. "It's quite powerful at blocking other abilities and effects."

"Much of the impacts you will have gathered for yourself. It's nature is strange - either so ancient as to be lost even to nature, or not of this world, in which case the githyanki may no more. It grants many powers, telepathic connection chief among them, and has a way of bending the infected to the will of the cult. These goblins are only held in allegiance by the True Souls of their number. And most important, I was able to listen here. Captives and pilgrims both are sent to Moonrise Towers."

"An old abandoned fortress in the heart of the cursed lands west of here," Wyll finishes. "A dangerous choice - but cultist zealotry can outweigh many risks. Cure or not - it seems we'll be heading there. Would you join us?"

"Gladly - but there's work still to finish, blood yet to be spilled. The safety of the Grove and those within is paramount - three deaths could win us peace. The drow captain, Minthara, the priestess, Gut, and the clan leader, Dror Ragzlin. Remove them, and the rest will scatter, and nature can heal itself."

"Three assassinations, in the middle of a camp of zealous cultists already on edge. Shouldn't be that difficult," the vampire quips.

"We'll handle it. But you should get back to the grove. There's a ritual being prepared - to cast out the refugees and seal the grove from the outside world."

"The rite of thorns? But-" Halsin's brow furrows. "I don't want to leave, while the threat still hangs here, but the rite must be halted. I'm not much use at stealth, if that is your approach - but promise me, you'll deal with those three leaders, end the threat?"

"By my word, as the Blade of Frontiers, it will be done." He presses a hand to his chest, puffs it out, brave and kind and noble.

The druid gathers himself, heals his wounds, prepares his escape. She kneels down on the dirty floor and draws out the rough shape of all she'd seen above, to plot out how exactly they will enact these deaths.

Chapter Text

The Blade of Frontiers was never been one for ambush or stealth when it came to battles fought and targets hunted. There wasn’t much point in trying to hide from the senses of a fiend, after all, and most of his targets were better faced upfront. It was far more heroic to stand proud and tall - and it gave a better distraction for the Blade’s Shadow to slink around the edges. 

Now, he’s the one in the shadows, as Orin goes to meet with the Nightwarden wearing her drow disguise. They want to take out the leaders quietly, rather than face a whole camp of goblins at once, and Orin’s best suited to drawing their targets away quietly. She took Gale and Karlach with her - with Gale’s promise not to interrupt the dealings. 

He can see her, across the cave, but his job is to stick back and watch the exit. A scrying eye has been circling the area, and it needs to be dealt with quickly once Orin strikes, alongside any guards that might try sounding the alarm. 

Darkness sits heavy around them, the magic Shadowheart had cast to let the shadows cling to them and hide them from sight. He’s still unsure how to feel about traveling with a Shar worshipper, but he’d prefer the guidance over none at all. Astarion’s near invisible with how well he blends perched up on the top of the shelves; Wyll can only spot him using the tadpole connection’s help. The rest of them aren’t quite as well hidden, but none of the goblins notice, as Lae’zel keeps her sword ready to strike, darkness dancing on the edge of Shadowheart’s fingers. 

He trusts them to deal with the goblins keeping watch quickly, and keeps his attention peeled on the scrying eye. Shouts and fighting have the chance to be covered with a quick excuse, but whoever’s watching on the other side of the spell won’t be handled so easily. He’s not sure if they’re in camp, or further afield - the cult was larger than just these goblins, it seemed. If the watcher was in camp, easy enough to kill and be done, but if they were in Moonrise Towers…

Better to be cautious with anyone who scried, destroy the eye before it could notice anything amiss. 

There’s an itch behind his eye, but it’s the good one, as Orin peers through the tadpole connection to get a view of the full battlefield. He can follow it back, listen to the Nightwarden as she talks, her adoration of the Absolute, her plans for the grove…and then, the telepathic command, now, a swift hand pushing Minthara into the path of Karlach’s swinging axe. 

Still hiding in the shadows, he lets loose an eldritch blast, the force shattering the scrying eye before it can see the blow, or anything of what is to happen next. On cue, Astarion bursts from the darkness to slice the neck of one of the goblins, while Lae’zel carved into another. On the other side, Gale casts Silence, and Karlach cracks against the Nightwarden’s armor without any sound to match the heavy weight of the blow. 

Surprised as they are, the goblins are quickly dealt with, unable to run to get aid, do much more than stumble back against the attack. Shadowheart focuses her blessings onto the group dealing with the Nightwarden, not one to be taken down as easily as her soldiers, barely hurt by the axe-blow that would have split a goblin in two. She strikes out against Orin, mace glowing with divine light - a solid enough hit that the geas will allow her to strike back. 

As they clear out the guards, he has Astarion and Shadowheart stay close to the entrance, ready to deal with anyone who wanders in, as Lae’zel adds her arrows into the fray, ready to dash forward and close the distance across the chasm and bridge. He holds back, using the long abandoned stone shelves as cover, but lets more magic coalesce in his hands, aiming as carefully as he can between Karlach and Orin to strike the drow between them.

Minthara glows with the force of anger and magic, radiant strikes against the two who flank her, but strong as she is, it is numbers that win out. He can see the drow falter - and he can see Orin, sword in hand, move to take the finishing blow. 

Wyll’s breath catches, unable to call out to stop her and not draw alarm. The duke’s wording let her retaliate against attackers, but even then, she couldn’t kill. They were stronger than when they’d first escaped the nautiloid, but none of them were as strong as before the tadpole infection - with the injuries she’d had, the geas would surely kill her. 

Her blade drives down - with the blunt end. Of course it does - this was Orin. She wasn’t driven by battle-lust or mindless rage. She had lived with the curse for half her life, wouldn’t overstep if it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t need to worry. She was fine. 

He can hear the creak as Gale lets the silence drop, a quick spell to clean the blood from their weapons and armor - no sign that anything strange happened here, nothing to interrupt the celebrations.

“One down,” Karlach says, a grin across her face. “Two more to go, yeah?”

“Both the priestess and the hobgoblin warleader are in open areas, fairly well surrounded,” Gale notes. “If we start a fight in either of those two main chambers, it will be difficult not to draw the attention of the full camp.”

“We lure them away,” Shadowheart says. “We’re true souls; we won’t discuss matters in front of the low ranks and the unfaithful.” 

“A githyanki strikeforce would be able to handle a full room of anyone as weak as these goblins.” Lae’zel grabs the bodies of the most visible slain goblins, tossing them into the chasm. 

“Yes, and they wouldn’t all survive it,” Shadowheart snipes back. “Although I’m more than fine with certain casualties, if you want to risk it.”

“None of us are dying here today,” Wyll interrupts. “If you think you can get the priestess out of the chambers, then it’s probably our best option.” Shadowheart smirks, Lae’zel growls but relents. 

She’s conducting a ritual - a branding. The scent of burned flesh fills the room, adding to the rest of the horrid goblin scents. There’s the momentary tinge of the tadpole, not just the flash of the branded symbol. She’s infected too, a true soul. 

“Now, you lot are something special.” The priestess grins. “The Absolute has touched you, hasn’t She?”

“We’re blessed by her, as are you,” Shadowheart says, stepping forward. 

“Priestess Gut still needs to touch you too - hold out your arm so I can mark your flesh.” 

Shadowheart pulls her hand back on instinct, the one with the dark mark that flares up sometimes, but it doesn’t seem to be in pain, just the memory of it. “I don’t think that’s necessary; you can tell we’re part of the cult without it, can’t you?”

“Suppose that’s right enough.” There’s a pause, as her eyes close, and he can feel the edge as the priestess reaches out to Shadowheart’s mind and the cleric shuts everything off. “Don’t wanna get intimate in front of the novices? Fair enough. Got some weird shadows in your head.”

“Darkness is normal in my line of work,” Shadowheart covers. “We should talk privately.”

“Course, don’t want this lot interfering with True Soul business. Let’s deal with this in my chapel, it’s private.”

None of the goblins gathered around make any attempt to interfere; blind loyalty and idiocy not having them question a leader going off with a full group of armed strangers. 

He has a blade in hand as soon as the door is shut. “This is for everyone you and your clan have killed,” he declares, striking out at her, the same time Astarion and Lae’zel strike as well, trapping the goblin between the three of them. Magic sparks up around her as she tries and shield herself, but the surprise keeps her from halting all of their assaults. 

He pulls back, ducking under the fire that flies from Gale’s hands, giving the space for Karlach to slam down with her axe, but it’s Astarion who’s offhand strike slips through the shield to slice her neck. 

There’s the sound of clapping emerging from the shadows - and with it, the scent of brimstone. He pivots immediately, ready to see Mizora, but instead it’s a man, human in appearance but the smug grin makes it hard to shake the sense of a devil watching over. 

“Bravo! Always wonderful to see people use their skills to their advantage. Reminds me of a lullaby - the mouse smiled brightly, it outfoxed the cat. Then down came the claw, and that, love, was that. They do know how to write them in Cormyr, don’t they?”

“Leave,” Orin growls, ready to shift into something wild and bestial to pounce, the way she has on many a lesser devil they’ve hunted in the upper reaches of the hells. 

“I was so rude last time, wasn’t I, not even introducing myself! The name’s Raphael, very much at your service.”

“And how exactly did someone at our service end up in the heart of a goblin camp?” Shadowheart asks, raising an eyebrow. 

“I have my ways. But I do think you’re right, this discussion deserves a more fitting locale.” There’s a flash of light, and they stand not in the ruined chapel but an ornately decorated room, a lavish feast spread out on the dining table before them. There’s the familiar heat of Avernus, barely held back by the walls - Karlach’s heart flares up in response, stable back in the environment it was designed for. 

“We’re in the hells,” she realizes. “Take me back. Now.” Her hand is gripped on her axe, flames licking off her shoulders. 

“And deny you the honor of my hospitality? You’re in the House of Hope! Refuge of lost souls, where the tired come to rest and the famished come to feed. Dig in!”

None of them bother to do more than glance at the table heaped in food. “What do you want?” Wyll asks. This is a costly show of power - more than Mizora ever made - and he had to be either very powerful or very ambitious, to go messing with another devil’s warlock. 

“Straight to business, I can respect that. What is better than a devil you don’t know?” Wings sprout from his back as he grows in stature, red skin and cresting horns, the very picture of a fiend, a cambion. “A devil you do.”

“Two cambions in two days,” Karlach groans. “Zariel couldn’t be bothered to send someone fun, a few erinyes, maybe?”

“As if I would stoop to working for Zariel; no need to insult me by comparing me to your friend’s patron, not when I’m here offering my aid. Although I must admit, she does excellent work.” His eyes linger on the horns, and Wyll can’t help but bristle. 

“If you know Mizora, then you know we’re not the sort to go walking into devil-pacts,” he bites back instead. “If you want souls, go hunt somewhere else.”

“I think you’ll find the value is rapidly decreasing; a soul’s worth very little with a tadpole in the head. Quite the conundrum, isn’t it? One skull, two tenants, no solution in sight?”

“The purification of a zaith’isk will rid us of the infection,” Lae’zel tells him, resolute. “We have no need of your magic.”

“I would never think to deny you the chance to shop around. Explore all your options, beg, borrow and steal - exhaust every possibility until hope has been whittled down to the very essence of despair. That’s when you’ll come knocking at my door. Ah, hope - such a tease.”

“Devils will never get it,” Karlach says. “They see our greatest strength is a weakness; can’t imagine anything else.”

“Trust me, I’m not the one lacking in imagination, not if you haven’t thought about exactly what becoming a mindflayer will entail.”

“Even if my soul was mine to bargain, I wouldn’t strike a deal with you,” Wyll declares. “If you’re done posturing, then take us back.”

“Of course. Goblins to slay, refugees to save, another day’s work for the Blade of Frontiers. But I’ll be around - don’t write yourselves off quite yet.”

The House of Hope dissolves around them, back into the stone floors of the chapel and the body of the goblin priestess on the floor. 

“Things are getting interesting,” Gale notes. “Mysterious artifacts, rising cults, and now a devil. It seems like quite a few eyes are on us.”

“Could do with a few less. Devils getting interested never ends well.”

“I doubt he’s here just for our souls. With what Halsin said - I’m not sure if he could remove the tadpole.” Mizora hadn’t tried to use that as a bargaining chip, and he knew she wouldn’t want his soul lost turned into a mindflayer, not if she could help it. “He’s got some larger plan, the question is, what.”

“Hopefully something we can turn to our advantage,” Astarion says. 

“Yes, because trying to get one over on a devil always ends well.” Shadowheart rolls her eyes. “I mean, look at Wyll - no offense.”

“It’s a good point. We should all be on guard, especially if he tries to single anyone out - Orin, you’ve met him, before?”

“Waiting for me as I crawled from the wreckage of the ship. Same empty words. I don’t deal with devils.”

He remembers, the night she made her pact with Mizora, who taunted him about how they met behind his back. It hadn’t been for a soul, instead a smaller boon to include her in the geas’ bounds, but it still hurt to see the way his actions had led Orin to be entangled in the same net as him. He wonders, sometimes, if there were more deals he doesn’t know - something dear enough that Mizora would rather keep it secret than taunt him with it. 

“We should be quick,” Orin continues. “They will notice their leaders are missing.”

Their trip to Avernus doesn’t seem to have had a time difference; no one pays mind as they leave the chambers, Astarion locking the flimsy door behind them. One leader left, holding court over a body of a mindflayer, chanting.

“One of the ghaik of the Nautiloid,” Lae’zel notes, derision heavy in her voice.

“I believe he’s trying to speak with it,” Gale adds. “If it was aboard the vessel, it might be able to identify us - depending on the questions he asks, of course.”

The hobgoblin falters, the spell not taking hold - and turns his attention up towards where they’re standing at the door. “More true souls,” he growls out. “ You ever speak to a dead squid?”

Talking over the tadpoles would be risky - another true soul might be able to hear. He glances over at Lae’zel and Karlach, and they follow beside him, moving to stand where they’d be able to hit the hobgoblin with only a short dash to strike. The others circle around, moving to block at both exits, ready for the fighting to break out. Wyll lets the magic gather in his hand, standing above the illithid corpse, before striking out at the hobgoblin. 

“Heretic!” he calls out, but not before sword and axe are cutting into his sides. Chaos erupts from the goblins and cultists to the sides, rallied by their leader’s cries. The ground shakes with thunder as Gale shatters the ground, trying to get as many of the goblins in one blow, careful to avoid catching Lae’zel in the crosshairs. 

Slinking from the darkness, Astarion emerges from behind, stabbing the leader in the back, before rolling out of the way as he swings out with the warhammer, wreathed in power, hitting Karlach instead, crushing into her side. 

“Loyal followers of the Absolute! Slay these false true souls, in her name!”

The goblins swarm on every side; sickening grease thrown down as blades cut, most missing but some finding home. They fall easily, but not without dealing damage, and the leader stands as an impassive, hulking menace to the center. 

Wyll focuses on avoiding getting hit by anyone else and wearing him down; it’s Lae’zel and Karlach who take the brunt of the damage from his swings, pushing them back with sickening cracks, but not enough for either to fall. 

Karlach gets that final blow, slicing off his arm and a good chunk of torso with one heavy swing. Blood splatters across the ground, and it’s not long after that the others follow suit. 

There’s only a few moments to catch a breath before the rest of the goblins spread through the sanctum are on alert - even keeping the war drums from ringing, the commotion has garnered attention. Karlach grabs the hammer off the hobgoblin, and Astarion vanishes in the back towards a treasure trove, but he’s still the first one to get a shot off on a goblin looking in through the gates. 

“I think,” Gale suggests, “it’s time we made our hasty retreat.”

“In the room strung up in Loviatar’s art,” Orin says. “The path he used to slip unnoticed.”

“You know, this retreat wouldn’t be quite so difficult if we’d just poisoned the drink outside,” Astarion points out. He bites down on a goblin, drains it’s blood completely, face twisted in disgust even as it heals the wounds he’s gathered.

“We’ll move quickly,” Wyll declares. “Hopefully only those inside will be so on edge.”

The path leads out to a thin ledge along the cliff, traps buried in the dirt as it moves from grass to stone. They’ve not been activated, so it seems that the captured member of Aradin’s party was able to escape unharmed - with the slight scuffle in the dirt, it looks like Halsin may have caught up with him and the two escaped up the towering cliffs on the river’s other edge.

There’s only one goblin who blocks the way, distracted and drunk, not standing guard. They’re able to slip quietly behind the walls, avoiding the ruckus clearly happening in the camp’s heart. He hopes that Halsin is right, with the leaders dead they’ll just disband, but at least they won’t be organized enough to threaten the Grove. 

They pass across the river under the main bridge, sneaking around underneath the now alert sentries at the gate’s entrance. Shadowheart points them down another path - winding back to the south of the ruined village. With their injuries, and the wargs gnarling at the teeth, it looks a surer bet than fighting against the horde, especially with a path that cuts through the rocky terrain instead of balancing on a cliff’s edge. 

A few more traps are buried in the dirt here, rough explosives that Astarion carefully disarms, there to block anyone from coming in. There’s a craterous hole that looks like it might have been the result of one going off while being placed - not too large they can’t jump across. 

Karlach makes a mighty leap, landing solidly in the clearing, then Lae’zel a graceful jump as if there’s no gravity to weigh her down. Gale mutters words of magic, a feather fall to safeguard against anyone who misleads and falls, and then Wyll takes his own leap, landing solidly on the stone on the other side. 

He hits rock, and then feels a different texture, metal beneath his boot, and it’s the only warning he has as the explosive rocks through him, sending him tumbling back towards that empty maw of a pit. 

Karlach moves first to grab him, and even with the devil skin, her touch is so hot it burns, his body can’t help but jerk back in the pain. It feels like everything is moving in slow motion, and he can’t tell how much of it is the magic trying to slow a fall and how much is his mind, the fear and the doubt. He feels something barrel into his chest knocking him forward again - as a great black-furred beast pushes him to the ground. 

He stares up at Orin’s eyes, wide and panicked and so clear even in this form, before succumbing to the bruised feeling in the chest, slipping into unconsciousness as he lies in the dirt and broken stone. 

Chapter Text

Wyll is hurt.

They have to move quickly, sound attracts goblins, attracts guards, attracts predators and hunters and danger, always danger. They need to run, need to hide - Wyll is hurt, bleeding, dying. Dead weight, as she carries him on her shoulders, moves round the corner for cover, needs to be safe, he has to be safe.

It's the vampire who stops her from blindly rushing forward - more traps, that he disarms as quickly as he can, although she still keeps a close eye on him, watching for bloodlust-hunger-anything that moves to strike. Coiled as she is, she almost lashes out at the cleric, before realizing it's healing light that glows within her hands, the last dregs of magic to try and staunch the wounds.

He doesn't wake just yet, but his breathing strengthens, heart settles, and she pushes the panic back to pragmatism, lets go of beast and fear and blood-hunger, back into human form.

"We need to go," she says, the traps cleared, the way forward as safe as it can manage. The path ends looking out on swamplands, stinking not with rot but magic. There is a fallen tree to act as a bridge across to the cliffs beneath the village where they'd rested the night before. Easy choice. "Up the cliffs, into the town, we need shelter."

"The climb will be difficult enough without him to weigh us down," Lae'zel argues, and then they all join in, a clamoring din of voices, around her from all sides. The goblins will look for them in town, the climb is hard, the swamp is pretty, the tree will break beneath them, everywhere they camp is bad, noise and noise and noise, they will not listen, as if she is not the one who has spent years out in the wilds, knows them as well as she knows anything.

"I met a very nice old woman while at the Grove," Gale says. "She mentioned running a teahouse in the area, and suggested I stop by for some healing. She should have some potions to help tend to Wyll's injuries, or at least a safe place to rest."

They all think this is good. They want good tea and nice food. As if you can trust someone who lives here, as if you can trust anyone to give a potion and not poison. Everything in her screams that this path is bad-curse-danger, but she can't fight all of them, can't keep Wyll safe alone. He can't die on her. She doesn't know what she would do without him.

There are traps in the water, spikes jutting out of the mud, and she is almost tempted to let them walk right in and realize how poor a path they've chosen, to see if pushing them into the water and letting them get pinned on spikes and have rot seep into the cuts and wounds until it pulls them inside out. It isn't worth it, yet, and at least they listen when she tells them to stick to solid ground, even if they won't turn aside.

It is still difficult, muddy even in the peaceful bright illusion, all of them weary and tired, but if the goblins are chasing after them, they know better than to venture down here. The sun is dipping low, glinting through the trees. She did not want to be here at all, but she especially did not want to be here in the darkness.

The water levels out, a larger stretch of what counts as dry land exposed, and amid the flowers with no scent and the worn stone steps that lead up to the building that must be where there are sheep spread out, all turning their heads to watch as they approach.

"Aw, look at all them!" Karlach exclaims, holding back from running over to touch them, not because of any warning but her own burning touch. "I forgot how cute sheep were, they're so fluffy, I want to hug one."

Orin trusts the definitely-not-sheep about as much as she trusts the water - no mud in their fur, and there isn't much for them to graze on, even with the reeds. They stink like iron, blood. Whatever they are, she doesn't think they'll be soft. She thinks they'll bite.

The teahouse is mossy, but it isn't rotting, old stone and boards in good condition. It looks like safe enough shelter for the night from anything outside - but it's whatever is inside Orin worries about. None of them are on guard, none of them are aware - it's so easy, to die in the dark and the night, a drop of poison or the slip of a blade. None of the artistry of a display, just death and death and death. She has seen so much of death.

It's an old woman who opens the door, simple clothes and wrinkled face and tied up hair. No weapons, no claws, no fangs, but there is more magic than just potions on her, inside reeks with something wrong. "Oh, dearies, come in, come in!" she says, ushering them to come sit by the fire. "You look dreadful, come sit by the fire and warm yourself up."

"Thank you, Ethel," Gale says, smiling. Wizard that he is and he can't smell magic when it surrounds him. "I'm more concerned with Wyll; I don't know if you met him at the Grove, but he got injured while we were dealing with the goblins, and I was hoping you could help. That potion you offered me did wonders, after all."

"Of course! But don't think I can't see those bags under your eyes, we're going to have a talk about whatever it is that still ails you." She moves over to Orin, and there's a momentary glint in her eyes, before settling back into warmth and openness. "Here, let me see him."

"Be careful, she nearly stabbed me when I went to heal him," Shadowheart says. "Orin's protective. And bloodthirsty."

"You're a feral one, aren't you, dearie? Don't worry, I've got exactly what he needs to be right as rain." Orin sets him down, but she doesn't back away, even as the others move towards the fire, stripping off armor to clean their own injuries. Gale offers to help, to cook food or find a potion, and Ethel brushes him off. "Nonsense, you're all my guests, just get yourself comfortable."

The first potion offered looks like a standard health-draught. Out in the frontiers, it was rare to find them, rarer still she dealt with traders rather than Wyll be the one to talk, but she had learned enough how to gather the mushrooms and mix them herself, when they had the supplies to brew. She drinks it first anyways, just a sip, and when nothing ill falls upon her, pours the rest into Wyll's mouth.

He isn't dying, anymore, but there is only so much magic can do to repair wounds. They knit back together until he is sleeping, breathing even, and it is only then that she relaxes somewhat, even if she doesn't let the old witch get any closer.

She offers them to stay the night, pulls and offers pastries. They agree to her hospitality. They eat her food. If they notice that Orin only eats the dried meat from her pack, they don't say anything, but Ethel notices. If they're going to stay the night, then Orin resolves herself to stay awake, to keep watch.

"You are safe here," Gale tells her, as Ethel retreats to the upper level of the teahouse, the rest of them gathered with bedrolls down near the fire. "I know you don't trust easily, but we're all looking out for Wyll, wouldn't let anything happen to him. I promise."

She doesn't trust them, it has only been a tenday, but more than that, she doesn't trust herself. Wyll is the one who she is bound to, Wyll is the one who's orders halt her hands, Wyll is the one who knows to make sure that she doesn't hurt people, she doesn't fall back on the bloodlust that is her inheritance, Wyll is the one who is the hero, she the monster bound at his side.

She doesn't say that. What she says is: "You talked to her, in the druid camp. About a sickness."

"Not about our little ocular visitors," he says. "I don't know whether Lae'zel or Halsin is right about where we'll find the cure, but I doubt we'd be so lucky as to find our solution here. No, I've a different condition. And, I suppose, if we're speaking of trust, it's one worth sharing with my traveling companions, as it does concern you, in some way."

He looks as healthy as the rest of them - not very, now, but enough. He doesn't smell sick, doesn't seem weaker than expected for a city-born mage, but there is the markings on his neck, thin dark purple lines that trail up into the shadows beneath his eyes. Not tattoo, but illness, infection.

"I have an illness, an infection, rather, or perhaps a curse. The result of my own hubris, so I suppose curse is the most fitting. It hungers, for magic, and so I must feed it fragments of the weave to stabilize. We've found more than a few magical baubles in our travels, things small enough no one noticed they were missing, and they were enough to keep me on my feet. I can tell their impact is diminishing, though, and if it grows out of control, the result would be disastrous, enough to level a full city. That's what I'm concerned with, more than my own health. I've scoured through many libraries looking for answers and found nothing, so I had hoped perhaps Ethel, with her less traditional and documented hedge magic and experience in curses, might have a solution."

She thinks about how much death follows him, living weapon, walking bomb. One strike, and she'd kill more than maybe all of her brethren in Baldur's Gate ever had, timed right.

Wyll had asked her, though, and she didn't know if he meant it, the way it slid into their games, but he wanted to die illithid, soul consumed instead of down in the hells in Mizora's grasp. She wouldn't do that to him, no matter how tempting it was to carve a blade into the circle-shaped target marked out on his flesh.

"She won't help you," she says instead.

"She helped Wyll," he points out. "This is the frontiers, not the hells. Not everyone is out to get you." Like he knows the wilds better than her. Like she hasn't seen more danger in this world than in their stints to Avernus. She says nothing, and he hums as if he thinks he's won the argument.

He joins the others in their sleep. Orin sits in the dark, as the fireplace dims to embers, and sharpens her blades.

Astarion goes out in the night, comes home with blood on his mouth, but the only thing surprising there was good hunting in the swamp. Not that good hunting, he skulks back looking more cautious and afraid than blood drunk. Maybe he has seen the swamp for what it is, broken past the illusion, and she will have someone on her side when she says they should run and leave this place and not look back.

Shadowheart has a nightmare. She doesn't scream, doesn't wake the others, but she shifts in her sleep enough it's clear to watch. Karlach snores. The battlefields of Avernus must have been loud, that she never drew attention to where she'd been holed up. Orin wishes that Wyll would snore, that she could hear his breath without pressing her head to his chest, but that was a wish she would regret when he was hale and walking.

Lae'zel wakes when she always does, at the crack of dawn, moves out onto the smaller side porch to do her stretches. Orin almost goes to join her, but then Ethel is about, starting a pot of tea and making pastries, so she stays where she is.

"You really should rest, dearie," Ethel tells her. "It sounds like you've a long way to travel, it wouldn't do to be exhausted."

"I don't sleep," she says, and tugs the long strands of her hair aside to show off her ears, shifted to an elf's point.

"Now, we both know that isn't true. You're the wrong kind of fey-blood for that. Still, whatever makes you most comfortable, I won't presume on any guest in my humble house."

There's a knock on the teahouse door, and a woman walks in, human, her fine dress only somewhat soiled at the edges in the muck, dark lines where tears have smudged the paint around her eyes and not been cleaned. "Oh, Auntie, I didn't realize you had company-"

"Nonsense, Mayrina, sit yourself down, the more the merrier."

"We will be leaving after breaking fast," Lae'zel says, stepping inside and resting on her sword. The woman gasps, but doesn't react like most of the tieflings and druids did. Expecting Ethel to keep strange company.

The others start to wake, with the sound. Wyll wakes, bleary and confused, and she lets Karlach hover at his side, explain what happened, and keeps her eye on the woman who arrived, and Ethel, and the sick-sweet rotting food being set before them.

People do not live here. Druids live here, goblins live here, but the town above is ruins, the temple long abandoned, and she is not a treasure-seeker, monster hunter, even a mage. She came here, then, for Ethel, which means Ethel is someone people come to when they need help, more than tea or potions. She was pregnant. She was crying. Neither thing surprised Ethel. The whole swamp stunk of illusion and lies.

In their time in the frontiers, they had hunted many things, mostly fiends, rogue devils and and demons and anything else that made its way to attention. They fought plenty of other monsters too, whatever stumbled into their path, whatever was terrorizing local people. They'd never hunted a hag.

You didn't hunt hags. You didn't need to hunt them at all, they kept in one place, a sanctum. Hidden, usually, but by illusion more than anything. Hags preyed on people who needed them, who came to them for help. And they'd help enough, that no one would think badly, until too many children were dead, eaten and devoured and baked into pies.

It makes her want to try the pastries, but they are all sweet-rotten fruit, not meat. Better, thus way; none of them would want to know. Maybe the vampire.

She could ask what deal was made, that brought this woman here. It wouldn't matter. They wouldn't believe her, all her warnings and still the wizard went to consult her, like she'd have any answer to the explosion simmering inside him. Maybe she could tell Wyll, but he never liked when their hunts wore people-faces, she was the one who struck them down, he was trusting, wanted to believe people. He wanted to believe even monsters could be good. He wouldn't have led them down into this swamp, would have listened to that warning, but in this, she was on her own.

They eat. Karlach, ever-sunny, tries to brighten the woman's somber look. Orin warms broth over the fire, gives it to Wyll over any of the hag's food, as if she is still worried of his injuries, even as the color is in his cheeks, he surely looks better than she does, a whole night spent worried over him.

Two men come barging in, armed with farm tools, already injured from the traps out in the water, barely able to stand. "Mayrina!'' One calls out. "We won't let you keep her from us, witch!"

"Demir? Johl?" Mayrina looks up. "I told you not to come after me-"

"Calm down," Wyll says, stepping in front of their weapons. "I'm sure that things can be talked peacefully, there's no need for violence."

"She stole our sister!"

"She came here of her own free will," Ethel cuts in. "Please, you have to help me, a poor old woman just trying to keep a frightened woman safe-"

"Liar," Orin growls. "Monster. Hag."

Ethel looks to her, and then to the brothers, bleeding, and then to Mayrina, crying, and then to Wyll, who's hand has moved to his rapier and turned to look her over cautiously, and the rest of them following in his lead, not ready to strike, not yet. She sighs, then snaps her fingers, as Mayrina vanishes into the air, and Ethel transforms, shifting into her true form.

"No need for name-calling, you're just as fey as I am, girlie, just as much a monster. I can help you, with your curse, your pact, that inferno of a heart, that orb eating its way through your chest, with all your little tadpoles - all you need is to let me."

"Already turned down the deal from a demon, don't need one from a hag, either," Karlach says. "I've met my share of night hags down in Avernus, I know better than to trust one. Especially when I hear there's a smith out there with some experience in infernal machinery."

"Perhaps, on another day, I'd be open for a discussion, but deals with hags quite famously come with a cost, and we're not going to be paying it."

"Especially if it's that girl's life. We're going to save her," Wyll says.

"And after all I did for you? Ungrateful little whelps. If you won't help me, well, then it's time to put you in your places."

She whistles, and from the door outside, the sheep-not-sheep start crawling from the swamp, illusion dropping as the stench and rot reveals itself all around them, gnome-height men with blood-soaked hats. Redcaps, which were fey, and not just touched but fully of another plane. Fey, with blades ready to finish off the trembling farmers with bloody wounds, fey, she could kill without a flicker of the curse to stop her.

Rushing forward, she blocks the door. Revealed, better for all of them to focus on the hag rather than split their attention, magic against magic, while she reveled in the bloodlust, in tearing them limb from limb. They cut into her, and the wounds run deep, blood magic spreading to take and take, but she is daughter of blood, of death, and all it does is drive her forward, forgoing knives to be a whirlwind of claws and teeth and blood and flesh and death and death and death. It is a revelry, a revelation, even with the scuffle with gnolls she hasn't been this free.

And then there is a pull at her tether, her hands slow, and they are dead, it is just Gale who stands before her, frightened but unhurt. Wyll is on the steps, but when he meets her gaze, the tether drops.

"The hag?" she asks. He mutters a spell that cleans her of the blood, and it strips itself from her skin and leaves her feeling barren, empty.

"Escaped," the wizard tells her. "There was a secret passage behind the fireplace. I suppose this is the part where we all say you were right." She prods at the corpses scattered around her, bloody and torn apart. Not much of worth to loot, just mushrooms, plants harvested from the wilderness around them. "Are you...alright?"

"No," she says, and follows them down into the dark.

The hag-tunnels are a maze, filled with traps, with poison and with death. Tired as she is, she doesn't have it in her to see them stretched out, sticks to the back and follows steps and watches as they go.

They aren't as spent as they had been, escaping from the goblin camp, but it's a near thing, as Lae'zel strikes the final blow not bothering to listen to her final, desperate offer for even a moment. Mayrina is freed from the burning cage. They're left to sort through the hag's workshop for anything of worth.

"How long did you suspect, she was a hag?" Wyll asks her, in the quiet mossy dark. "You spent a full night's rest, up there."

"Not long," she says. "The girl. But I knew something was wrong before we came here. It smelled like magic."

"I'd say your nose never steered us wrong, but you did think that blacksmith was a devil in disguise because he stank of sulfur." He laughs. He's hardly injured, got out better than the rest of them. He's alive.

"Don't do it again," she says.

"Do what?"

"Die. I'm supposed to be the one to kill you, not a trap."

"Not dead yet," he says. "Just promise me that if I do, you wouldn't make a deal with a hag to bring back my corpse."

The others are arguing over the wand and what to do with it, the woman in the center, looking grateful her brothers were left upstairs so they wouldn't kill themselves in the descent. She thinks about the hag, dead, who called her kin, as if family was something she would trust. She thinks about children being swallowed whole.

"No hags," she says. "No devils, no demons, no curses, no dark powers, no gods."

"You don't think we'd be lucky enough for Lathander to shine some light our way?" he asks. "They're not all the Dead Three."

No god that would make the deal with her, then. "Make the deal yourself, then."

"Somehow I don't think they'd have much interest, making a deal with a devil. Just the two of us, then. We made it this far, after all."

Karlach runs back to get Wyll's attention, rambling excitedly about a fairy circle, before running off, and he follows after her, as Orin stays back, watching.

Chapter Text

Wyll has never liked swamps.

It had taken some getting used to traveling in the Frontiers, after having grown up in Baldur's Gate with only a few trips along the Trade Way to Waterdeep with his father. Orin had experience with hunting, but not much better, her first time even seeing forests after a life spent in the sewers and tunnels under the city. Not quite the glamorous life of traveling adventures that they told stories of, but he'd come to love it, the small villages and the farm lands, hunting the monsters that plagued the lands, hiking up mountains and getting a view unlike even that from the peak of Dusthawk Hill, deep forests and wide plains.

He'd take a march through Avernus over swamps, stagnant water and mud in boots, biting insects and humid air. It had been a more pleasant, idyllic marshland when they'd arrived, Gale had explained, the Hag's illusion hiding her true nature, now just rotting trees and murky waters and bloody spike traps sticking out of the water. It's for the best they came here - helped save Mayrina and her child, surely spared her brothers' lives, slain a monster in the process, but he has to admit he's with Orin, he's not sure why they chose this path instead of sticking to the cleared out ruins.

Mayrina seems sweet, although her risen corpse of a husband seems more like the tragic end to a ballad warning others not to make deals than anything else. He hopes it goes well for her, though, hopes she's able to move forward despite all she'd lost. Hags preyed on the desperate; its why they were dangerous, even when they weren't snatching children and slinging curses. 

Their path back is looping, navigating through traps and sickly waters, their injuries from the tunnels under the hut not bad but not something the swamp water would help with. Up back on the craggy rocks, it's easier to orient their position, the massive crash of the Nautiloid still spread out down to the Chionthar's banks visible through the trees. He's not sure how long it's been, only a handful of days, surely, but even as far downriver they are, the smell of it rotting adds to the muck of the swamp below, still stuck to their boots.

"Gods, I can't believe I miss the goblin camp - at least there had some cobblestones to walk on," Astarion bemoans.

"I'd carry you if I could, fangs," Karlach offers. "But I think burns are probably worse than sore feet."

"It should be an easier journey the rest of the way," Wyll notes. "It's mostly flat, from here to the Grove, and we should reach there before nightfall."

"At a proper pace, we could reach it before the sun began to touch the treeline," Lae'zel comments. "You're lucky you do not have a Sarth commanding you, or it would be more than your feet sore for such slow traversal."

"Really?" Shadowheart raises an eyebrow. "I thought we already had one."

Even through the cover of plants, it's clear no one stands atop the gate. Wyll can't help the pang of fear at that - but there's no sign of goblins, even from the battle when they'd first arrived at the enclave, no blood, and most importantly no wall of thorns rising up to seal the Grove off from any outsiders.

"Is this the part where we start shouting for attention?" Shadowheart asks dryly. "Good news, your glorious heroes have returned."

"Open up!" Karlach bellows, a wide grin across her face, and a small horned head pops up the side - the child who'd been running a stall and pickpocketing, Wyll recognizes.

"New policy, there's a toll to enter," he says, grinning. "But I suppose I can wave that for a friend of the family-"

"Mattis!" Comes a muffled shout from deeper in the grove, and he vanishes back under cover, although the gate wheels up. The reason why its empty is clear once they do - gathered at the entrance to the grove is all the refugees, wagons packed to ready the journey. Zevlor stands at the front, a weary but open smile across his face. "Apologies - its hard enough keeping the children all in hand without the chaos of preparing for the road." He takes them all in - their injuries, their new addition in Karlach, but most of all Wyll himself. Its hard to read what exactly crosses his face, fear, sadness, disappointment, disgust, but he's not the only one staring, the heavy weight of eyes on him covered as they continue with their work.

"I was a quite rambunctious youth myself, no need to worry on that front," Wyll says, covering the empty pause. "I'm more concerned with you all - I had thought Halsin was to stop the Rite of Thorns, let you stay in the Grove?"

Zevlor takes the opening, and they slide back into normal conversation, leaving his own question unasked and unanswered. "He has, and I'm very grateful for your help, but this was never intended to be more than a stop along the way. With the goblins scattered, this is our best chance to start heading towards Baldur's Gate, and the druids have even offered up supplies for the road, under Halsin's suggestion. I must thank you - all of you - for what you did. It would have been easy to ignore our plight, move on. I took up a collection; it isn't much, but you've earned it."

"You don't need to-" Wyll starts but Astarion pushes him to the side.

"All of that work in a pit of goblin filth, you nearly dying - we're going to take their gold." He grabs the pouch from out of Zevlor's grip without much note, but at least the tiefling chuckles amiably.

"It isn't nearly enough, but at least it's something. We'll be celebrating the start of the journey, and you'd be the guests of honor, if you're willing."

"Who's going to say no to a party!" Karlach says. "But first - I hear you've got an infernal mechanic with you."

"Dammon? He's still packing up his tools down in the Grove. And I'm sure Halsin will want to see you all and thank you for the rescue."

"We'll be sure to see him, then," Gale says, and as Zevlor heads back to continue the preparations for travel, "Rambunctious youth, eh? I'd love to hear a story of what the Blade of Frontiers got up to, as a child."

"Drinking and telling stories about the shit we got up to as kids sounds like a hell of a way to party, although I'm really hoping I can get my engine fixed first," Karlach says, as they head deeper down into the grove.

The rough stone caves look empty, without the host of refugees to fill them, still absent of druids and animals that had filled them when he was here last. Dammon is half-through packing up the Forge, but becomes immediately distracted upon seeing Karlach - not just for her presence, but recognizing the engine. With a chunk of iron that had been picked up...somewhere, in their travels...he had enough to do some quick repair, to keep her from burning up like she had facing the false-paladins of Tyr, but not enough to touch, with a promise for more further down the line.

Although clearly broken up by the news, Karlach shouldered it well, and as she waited as he forged the designs, the pair were happily chatting about Avernus and Elturel and infernal mechanisms. He makes sure to gather as much detail as he can, about infernal iron, to keep an eye out for any more - if there's anything that can be done to give her even a semblance of a normal life, it's more than worth the work.

Kagha and her followers have been chastised - cast down to apprentice, but not cut off from the circle in full. That type of insubordination would have his father firing any Fist - far less, for exile from the city - but Halsin was not his father, and from his time spent in the various druidic enclaves across the frontiers, they had their own customs far removed from the laws of the land and cities. Astarion drags Gale to help identify the reward Rath offered in the crypts below;

"I'm glad to see you all were successful," Halsin notes. "With the leaders dead, the goblins will scatter, those loyal back towards Moonrise Towers, and the rest to the hills. You've done a great service, but I'm sure you know this isn't over."

"Our next step is purification; my people possess the means to cure us. But this cult cannot be allowed to continue their use of ghaik infestations, and must be rooted out from these Moonrise Towers."

"A strong plan, although with how abnormal these tadpoles are, I'm not certain standard methods will be effective." A graceful way to dance around what they all have been thinking - that whatever lies with the Githyanki won't be such a simple answer to their problems. "I wish to accompany you, to Moonrise Towers and the lands that surround it, although it will not be a simple journey. The details can wait to the morning - I hear Zevlor and his people are planning quite the celebration."

The glow of the firelight illuminates a scene of joy and revelry. It seems that Mol and her gang are dealing out stores of wine, flowing freely amid the dancing refugees, the one wizard, Rolan, casting illusions, lutesong filling the night air. He sees the others sitting around the fire talking and drinking, Gale involved in some argument with Volo, Karlach, surrounded by a mob of children, acting out some story to their unending glee.

So bright and pure a soul, to still be so good and happy after a decade in the hells - one he'd almost put an end to. The weight of the horns bear down on his head, and in the smell of the smoke from the fire, he can taste bile in his mouth, the sensation of his human skin being burned and stripped away, replaced by the sturdier hide that marked him devil. Because he had made his choice, forsaken his humanity for hers - there was no place for him, at this party, among innocents, children.

For a long moment, he stands on the edge, watching the party unfold, and then picks up a bottle and absconds down to the river's edge to drink. He's not sure what it is - his mind has no sense to linger on the taste, only the burn of alcohol to try and set his mind afloat.

He remembers the first time, out in the Frontiers, there had been a celebration. He and Orin had killed a manticore who'd been causing mayhem in a village, been invited to celebrate, everyone banded together to bring out a feast like he hadn't seen since they'd left the Gate. That was the moment Mizora had decided to make an appearance, send him on his next mission. They'd always chosen to leave town before rewards could be offered, after that. Warlocks and devils and monsters were fine enough as temporary allies, to set loose against a greater threat, but they made poor dinner guests.

"I was wondering where you'd run off to," Astarion says. "I should have known I'd find you brooding. You realize you're missing the whole party, out here."

"That was rather my intention." He raises the glass to his lips, stares out at the water. "I'm afraid I'm poor company; if you're looking for someone's blood to taste, I think you'd have better luck back there."

"Who said anything about biting you? Although, I'm glad I'm on your mind. I can't imagine unwashed refugees will have a shine on your taste. But no, I was looking for the hero of the hour; its unbearably dull without you, darling."

"I'm sure there's plenty to find enjoyable - good drink, perhaps, and the chance to sit front stage to our friends' bickering."

"The gith isn't even threatening to stab someone, so they're no fun at all, and this wine is shit. Besides, everyone was wondering where you'd gone off too; this is all to celebrate you, after all."

"It's for all of us; you killed your share of goblins too. And it feels good, doesn't it, being acknowledged for heroic deeds?"

"As far as rewards go, a few gold, vinegar wine, and cheap song don't sell me on heroism," Astarion says. "And the rest of us would have left them all to their sorry little doom, if you weren't around to push the matter."

"Not true," he counters. "For all you play the cold-hearted rake, you've your soft spots. The same holds true for the others.

"You can pretend that if it makes you feel better. That still doesn't explain why you're down here brooding instead of basking in the praise of your heroic exploits."

"I don't do this for the praise - I do it because it's righteous." Astarion laughs at that, disbelieving. "Its the Blade of Frontiers they want to celebrate - not me, not like this."

"Somehow I don't think a bunch of tieflings will be scared off by some horns and ridges - they make you look rather dashing, after all."

"You didn't see the way they looked at me, when we returned, when they realized all this time they'd been looking up to a warlock, one who'd fallen so far in with devils to start bearing their mark. Never mind they'd just clawed their way back from the hells themself. I don't think they'd show it, but I'm just a reminder of everything they've lost."

"Well, you're hardly missing much. It's already far more enjoyable out here with you, darling, and it would be even more so once you've gotten out of your head and started to have a bit of fun."

"I'm afraid I'm not in a state for dancing. Some other time, perhaps."

Astarion leans in closer. "I wasn't talking about dancing."

His breath is cool, sends a shiver across his neck - and maybe its the wine,
but a sudden rush of bravery falls over him, and he leans around to press a kiss against his cheek. The vampire stands there, shocked, before his face molds back into his usual, confident grin. "I expect more than just a peck on the cheek, darling."

"I wish I had more to offer; you certainly deserve it."

"Of course I do. And why not from you?" He leans forward, and presses their lips together, a deeper kiss, and Wyll leans into it, for along moment, before pulling away.

"It was sweet of you to check up on me," Wyll says, "but I don't think I'll be good company, tonight. I'm not really in the mood, for celebration."

"Another time," Astarion says, but his voice is distant. Hiding whatever mix of emotions come from the rejection, undoubtedly.

"We can dance," he says. "I'm sure you'd make a wonderful partner."

He doesn't watch, as Astarion slips off into the darkness, focusing instead on the Chionthar, the light of Selûne dancing over the ripples of the water. He finishes the rest of the bottle, lets it dull the ever-pressing thoughts in the back of his mind to a gentle hum, as the music slowly fades as celebration gives way to sleep. 

A head comes to rest on his shoulder. He doesn't know when Orin came to sit next to him, she'd always been so good at walking silently, sneaking up on him even without the help of alcohol-induced peace of mind, but he's glad she's there. She looks the way she had when they'd first met - or, rather, in their early adventures out through the city, thin but not as scrawny, skin ash-pale but not shifting like smoke, the red dress he'd helped tailor until it had become too worn on the road, replaced by something that could be worn beneath her armor.

"Did you enjoy the party?" he asks.

"Without you?" she tilts her head further, resting against the crook of his neck, joining him in staring out at the river. "Never."

Chapter Text

When she returns to camp, just before the break of dawn, the ground is littered with bodies. Drunk and sleeping, still moving and making the quiet sounds of rest, but she can pretend. 

There are a few already awake, packing everything that had been left out in the celebration back aboard the wagons. The leader speaks with a guide who still has the fresh scent of the open trail, discussing their path forward. Above it all, on a rocky outcropping, Lae’zel moves through sword forms, regular exercises done before any of the others wake. 

Last night, she had said I yearn to taste you and all Orin could think about was tasting her back - ripping out the soft flesh of her throat and staining her mouth in the blood, savoring the imagined taste. Lae’zel may have even been fine with that answer - but Orin had instead fled without another word to curl up in the sands at Wyll’s side, Wyll whose throat she couldn’t tear out, not with the bracelets binding her to his command. 

Lae’zel does not pause in her movements, but her eyes watch Orin as she returns to camp, narrowed with judgment and resentment, before passing back into the usual mask of superiority. The iron taste of blood is back in her mouth; she turns to move away from all the bodies and the people and the camp, off into the woods.

In panther form, she hunts what small game hasn’t been frightened off by the masses and the vampire, lets the taste of blood sit in her mouth and stay her. The rest she brings back to camp as the sun starts to proper rise. Supplies for them, or for the refugees and their journey to the city - for whatever reason they seem to think Baldur’s Gate will be shelter. 

Gale has started on breakfast, and he thanks her for the contribution. She sits by him and an old woman, skinning the pelts. 

Wyll is in better spirits as he returns, and not just better at hiding it. With the tiefling and the druid beside him, he announces to the whole group: “I think we should travel with Zevlor and his people, for at least part of the way along the Risen Road.”

“There are two paths to Moonrise Towers,” Halsin explains. “Overland, an offshoot of the road makes way into the mountains, a pass to the lands around the Towers, cursed by shadow. Passing through the shadow curse overland is dangerous, enough I would even recommend facing the journey through the Underdark in its stead, but keeping watch over fellow travelers has its own benefits in trade.”

“Traveling with you is a slow enough pace, we don’t need more to drag us down,” Lae’zel complains, “but that is the direction my people were sighted, and it is best to make way to the crèche, even burdened.”

It is Wyll who suggested it, so Lae’zel was the only one who would disagree - with both united, it is decided. Astarion plays up his annoyed disinterest, and Shadowheart attempts the same without the heart, but Gale and Karlach are both cheered by the group that follows after them, the trail of wagons and noise, of lute-song and idle chatter and children pestering Karlach for tales of Avernus. 

Crowds were a comfort on city streets, easy to slip away and hide in, unnoticed and unseen. Here, in the Frontiers, they are a siren calling for predators to attack. At least the size of the group would frighten off simple beasts - but that was not the threat that concerned her. 

Early into the exile from the city, she and Wyll had spent most of their time as caravan-guards. Many times had they made the trip from Elturgard to Waterdeep, or just outside of Baldur’s Gate south to Amn, but never the full journey, never the same wagon train for long, the call of devil-hunting always dragging them off course. She hadn’t liked that either; if not for the geas there were many hands she would have taken, throats slashed - at least the tieflings have the respect to keep their distance and no doubt that each of them have the skill to act as guards. It had stopped, as the Blade had grown in renown, as they had spent lest time among people and more in the wilderness. 

It is much harder to guide wagons, slower going to keep only to the paths that they can ford, not the direct routes a group on foot could take and climb especially with the rockier terrain, but with the abandoned town cleared of goblins, it wasn’t difficult to make it to the road proper, and with it the open lack of cover and the tendays old blood that still stained the stone. 

At least she is not the one to guide and lead - the tiefling scout does more than fair a job, and that gives Orin lead to dance upon the rocky outcrops the road cuts through as hills give way to mountains. Perchedup high away from crowd and noise, it is there she sees the first sign of them, the monsters she’s been waiting for. 

A gnoll pack prowls at the edge of a cave, fortified with traps, scorch marks of thrown vials, waiting for their prey to tire. She tries to motion for quiet, but no one is paying her any mind - and there, an ear pricks up, a nose turns. They’ve been caught scent of. 

She moves quickly, jumps down before Wyll. “Gnolls, to the north.” 

“They’ve caught our scent?” Zevlor asks. “Shit. Circle the wagons! Arms at the ready!” 

Lae’zel takes a look at Astarion, and starts to move stealthily to circle back around to outflank where the gnolls are likely to approach. She is quiet, the vampire near-vanishes in the crevices of rock. Orin takes a look at Wyll, who armors himself with biting ice, Gale scrambling up to a position in high ground and out of the way, Karlach and the druid moving to form a barrier out of their own bodies further up the path from the wagons, before she slips to join them as well.

Gnolls are safe prey - fiend touched monstrosities, bloodlust to match her own. These are a stronger, more experienced pack than the ones they had fought near the tollhouse, not freshborn from cursed corpses but organized. The matron pack-leader is sharp in her commands as they stalk towards - and there is a thrumming in Orin’s skull. The worm. 

She cuts it off - no need for it to see through shared eyes, know that they are sneaking up behind. It means something, that the gnolls are under the cults charge, same as the goblins, same as a war band of drow, but that isn’t what matters now. What matters is the scent of blood and death and battle. 

They strike from behind just as the gnolls come into view of the rest of the party, gathered in a defensive line. Quick and bloody, but even surprise is not enough to halt any of the monsters, only turn some attention on them rather than immediate target of the 

In the frenzy she is quick to be drenched in blood, thrilled by the dance of murder and death, bites back at the gnolls who go for her throat, focuses only on the blood and pain and knives, as spells sing around them and flesh is torn asunder. 

She is weak from blood loss and blood lust delirium when the last gnoll falls, but not so gone not to remember her curse and stay her hand, as healing falls over all of them, start to pick the corpses. Not even cut of blood on the refugees they were guarding. Of all the problems guarding caravans, lack of skill protecting them was not one.

Whoever had been cornered in the cave has taken the opportunity to flee. They start to take down enough of the traps to enter, to check for any injured, or if there are any supplies worth taking. A handful of the tiefling children slip past ahead via the gaps between the traps for first looks; they already have some

“We’ll split it with you,” Mol says. “Fair shake, since you’re the ones who dealt with the gnolls.” There isn’t much left beyond that 

“Thank you for being there for us,” Zevlor says, pressing a hand on Wyll’s shoulder. “We’re lucky to have the Blade of Frontiers at our side, even for this short leg of the journey.”

“And I aprpeciate having some Hellriders guarding my back,” Wyll tells him in return. “Your people are resilient; I hope they won’t have need to be, when they get to Baldur’s Gate.”

The scent of fire catches on the wind, acrid smoke and heat, with it a mix of shouting, exertion and orders and panic muted into just noise by the distance. 

“Based on the signpost we saw a ways back - that should be a local inn, Waukeen’s Rest,” Gale notes. “Something must have happened. 

The tiefling in the lead, Zevlor, frowns. “We can look after our own, go.” With little more encouragement, Wyll is off running towards the fire, so Orin goes sprinting after him. 

It is an inn, and it is burning, a  slow blaze in the central building that has not hit the stone walls, the rooftop embers visible from over them even at a distance. The gate lies open with signs of battle, and in the courtyard, Flaming Fist. Some are dead, mixed with armored drow, but most are pushing at the doors, trying to break through what has collapsed in the fire. 

She grabs at Wyll’s arm, standing before the gate, whispers sharply, “We need to go.” Nothing is good when the Fist closes around them, nothing, but he forgets, sometimes, thinks of what it aws like when he was a child. She remembers being a child too, and even many years and many faces later, she knows the order still stands. It should be fine, but if there is one poor slip of the tongue from their companions who do not know what needs to be kept hidden, one veteran with wits about to connect, to know who they are-

“People are in danger. There isn’t time.” He makes the same choice he always does and always will, and so she follows, face-shifted and several steps back, as he runs up towards the doors. “What happened here? How many people are inside?”

“Drow happened!” the Gauntlet shouts. “Duke Ravengard could still be inside, others surely - so make yourself useful or get out of the way! Push!”

“Ravengard? He’s here?” There is no hesitation now, as he joins the efforts to break down the doors. 

“We doing some rescue? Fuck yeah!” Karlach says, running up to join them, and with one solid kick breaking through the wood, a burst of flames and smoke and heat that sends the Fist stumbling back. “Woah - that’s hot enough I can feel it.”

“We have to move quickly,” Wyll says. “Mactē Virtueē!” Ice coalesces around him as armor, some attempt to hold back the heat, as both of them go rushing in headfirst, the Fist quickly following.

Orin hesitates at the threshold. She can’t leave Wyll in this alone, where his foolishness will get him killed, again and again and again. But she knows as well as Wyll -there was never to be a good outcome of this, not once the Duke was mentioned. Either he is dead-dying-burning, a corpse to be cradled that even in death will have no remorse, or he will be alive, see her, see Wyll - danger and sabotage and the whole squadron of Fist at the doors to turn against them, no devil to whisk them away at the nick of time and pretend it could have gone differently. 

But Wyll doesn’t care what his father will do, that his father will see the horns and the tail and two monsters, side by side - and whatever happens, whatever Wyll is about to face, she won’t let him be alone. 

The fire hasn’t spread to break the supports, the stairs still hold, and it is here among the spread out Fist that she makes her way to the upper floors. Karlach breaks through the various locked doors, as Wyll searches, desperate. 

She is in the center of the hallway as she sees Wyll enter one of the upstairs rooms, finds a figure on the floor and coughing in the smoke. “Florrick!” he cries out, reaching down to help. “Is my - is the Duke…?”

“Wyll? You’re…” she almost pulls away, but then she takes his hand. “No, he was taken by the raiders who attacked. I don’t know if he’s alive.”

“Orin! I need hands that won’t burn someone up!” Karlach calls, and she sees Wyll, helping his father’s right hand to her feet, locks eyes for a moment before going to help the poor man who’s trapped beneath a fallen beam. The tiefling pulls it up, not even flinching at the flames around her hands, while she grabs him out. “Try and see if you can find his wife, too, she’s somewhere around here.”

The fires burning higher the way they entered, it is in the next room they find the woman - another corpse. She pulls the man up across his shoulders, to bear his weight. “Take her.”

“What? No - I’ll burn her-”

“Already burnt, burning more,” she points out. There isn’t time, she sees the stairs on this side start to go up as well - not going to take the weight, and if they fail, trapped in burning wood in a back corner. Instead, she pushes open the door out to the balcony, breathes in clear air, and jumps. 

It is difficult, to block the fall from the man who’s weight she carries, means taking more of the pain onto herself, but if she hadn’t, the curse would have taken more. Shhe’s strong enough now I t wouldn’t kill her straight out, only leave her unconscious and bleeding from the ears, maybe awake and struggling to stand if lucky. Neither is a good state to be in, surrounded by the Fist. This, she’d take. 

Karlach is moments after, and rests the woman on the ground. Dead from the smoke, not the burns, and even where Karlach carried her, still more elegant a sight than the battle-dead spread around the rest of the courtyard. She sees Shadowheart approach, and turns her focus back on Wyll, who’s made it out the front door safely.

Counsellor Prim-and-Proper has collected herself. “Wyll. You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

“I wasn’t sure you would be,” Wyll says, and he shrinks, some, at the way she stares at the horns and not his face. 

“There have been no shortage of stories, of the Blade of Frontiers and his heroism,” she explains. “It’s why despite your father’s orders, I must ask - Wyll, I know you must have little love for your father, but please, find him and return him to the city. Baldur’s Gate needs him now more than ever.”

“I wouldn’t leave him to this cult, even if the city weren’t at stake, I swear,” he says. There is a sound at the gate, a few Hellriders, cautious but approaching now that the chaos has died down. “Refugees, from Elturel,” he explained. “We were helping safeguard them back to the city. If-”

“Of course,” Florrick says. “With injured, they won’t slow us down, and it’s a small payment for your help in rescuing the Duke. Besides, we were there, when that city was claimed by the hells. I know-” the words die on her lips, know a tiefling from a devil, which makes it all the clearer who is standing before her now. Lucky, then, that Wyll’s father is missing. Lucky, his skill is barter to keep the Fist’s swords from their throats. “Is she…?”

“Does it matter?” Wyll asks, and he does not glance to look at her, disguised and keeping distance from the Fist. 

“No,” the Counsellor says. “I suppose not. You’re a good man, Wyll. There’s no one I would trust more, to bring your father back to us.”

Chapter Text

This isn’t the first time they’ve seen the dragon fly overhead - he’d noticed it the first night at the Emerald Grove, gotten a decent look through the spyglass of one of the tieflings, a red dragon, large enough to be at least an adult. It was rare to see a dragon here in the Frontiers, rarer still ine this full-grown, most of them deeper into the mountains or the wilds away from humans that would bother them. More, back when they’d first left the city, when the Cult of Tiamat had been more active, but even then it would only be glimpses overhead. 

It is much different, to see the dragon that had destroyed the bridge, landing perched on the edge of the craggy cliff. A silver armored githyanki jumped from its back, serious and admonishing the patrol below that had nearly come to blows with the Flaming Fist that had been guarding this outpost.

None of this is good. The dragon alone would be an incredible threat to face, with a githyanki warband it would take luck to survive the encounter, as still weakened they all were by the tadpoles’ infection.

The bridge being destroyed is a bad sign in turn - it would block the easier road to Baldur’s Gate, but at least the refugees had Florrick to help guide them there. If they didn’t encounter more of thegithyanki.

From their position, up on the hill near to the small guardhouse and covered by trees, he can’t hear what is being said, as the dragonrider admonishes his fellows. He isn’t sure if Lae’zel can, or if she chooses to break cover anyways to jump down and meet the warband.

“Of all the…does she really think they’re going to do anything but kill her?” Shadowheart asks.

“Should we follow after her?” Gale questions. “I wouldn’t want to leave her without support, but I don’t know if a group of istik will help matters.”

“I can’t believe you trust her to actually negotiate instead of sharing everything and then getting us all executed,” Shadowheart groans. “We need to go down there and make sure she doesn’t say anything about the artifact or the parasites.”

Their tension hasn’t lessoned since when the artifact had somehow flown from Shadowheart’s grasp to block out the voice of the Absolute, just as there were no answers as to why she’d been carrying a githyanki relic. So far, it had been simmering, too busy with dealing with goblins, but it was going to come to a head soon enough.

“You should stay back,” he says, because there is no way this will be made easier by that argument happening in front of a group of heavily armed Githyanki. “But you’re both right - she needs back up, and we need to keep this from coming to blows.”

“Or the dragon will eat us,” Orin supplies, which is good a way to explain the odds that faced them as any.

“I don’t know, I think we could take it,” Karlach says. “It’s not like it can burn me up, anyways.” She follows after without even a second thought, while the others take a quick glance between them. Halsin stays with Shadowheart, Gale follows down after Wyll, and Astarion slips further out into the guardpost for some sort of snipers’ roost.

“Imbeciles,” Lae’zel growls. “Stay back.”

“And who are these, child?” the dragonrider asks. “Pets?”

“Mercenaries,” Orin cuts in. She’s shifted on the way down into her usual more human guise, her voice cool and confident. As usual, she’s good at reading people, knowing the right approach to take. The githyanki seem to react well,

“Are you already searching for the weapon, then? Report, child!”

Lae’zel is more hesitant, but she turns her gaze back from the rest of them and back to the knight. “No, Kith’rak, I have not been given orders about a weapon. I have searched the crash, and killed the last surviving ghaik.”

They’re on shaky ground, nothing quite a lie and yet avoiding the truth. Lae’zel, it seems, is just as aware that mentioning the artifact will end poorly.

“A full warrior, then.” This Kith’rak seems to be humoring her slightly, but Lae’zel still straightens her back in pride. “In your search, did you find any  sign of survivors from the wreck, where they may have taken the weapon?”

Orin cuts in, Any were covered up by goblin raiders, who were also searching for survivors. We followed to their encampment, but what had been scavenged was already moved further down the river.”

The dragonrider looks her over, eyes narrowed, and there is a gesture with his hands of casting something. Whatever it is, it isn’t an attack, and he seems satisfied by Orin’s reaction. “Return then, to your crèche, and tell them to join in the search.”

Lae’zel looks as if she might speak up - ask about the crèche nearby they’re allegedly searching for - and Wyll can’t help but spark up the tadpole connection and slip into her mind. We know their crèche is close in the mountains, we can track it down later. There isn’t a reaction, but she bows her head. “You honor me with this duty, Kith’rak. I shall alert my caretaker with haste.”

The dragon flies off, and the warriors depart soon after, leaving them standing next to the smoked ruins of the bridge.

“Voss, Knight Supreme. The queen’s silver, the queen’s sword. And you would have me lie to him.” She bristles. “It was the right call. He would have struck us down where we stood, as is his right.”

“And you wonder why no one likes githyanki,” Shadowheart grumbles, as the rest of their party joins them on the bridge. “Smart thinking, Orin - there’s no way she’d have been able to pull off that lie alone.”

“Who knows, maybe the githyanki can soften up the cultists for us,” Astarion suggests.

“Maybe we should leave a note,” Gale muses, and everyone turns to stare at him, confused. “For Zevlor and the other tieflings - they’ll be sure to pass this way, and they deserve the warning that they may be accosted by another band like this.”

“They know my people are here and searching, it was one of their group who sent us in this direction,” Lae’zel says.

“Besides, I don’t think the reaction to ‘oh, another group is hunting us down and wants us dead’ is to leave notes saying exactly where we’ve been and where we’re going,” Astarion adds. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

“Aww, I thought it was a good idea,” Karlach says. “What do you think, Wyll, we leave them a note?”

“Astarion makes a good point. We shouldn’t draw too much attention to ourselves. They have the Fist with them, they should be alright.” Orin, her skin back to shifting-grey, has moved as far ahead as she can towards the path that leads up into the mountains. “We shouldn’t wait here; the sooner we get to Moonrise…”

“The sooner we get purification, the better we will be able to face the cult,” Lae’zel corrects, and they head up. 

It has been some time since the pair of them had last been this up into the mountains; traveling by foot was always tiring, but hiking up the steeper cliffs was an additional challenge, and one that made it very clear who in their party wasn’t used to outdoors. Gale, Shadowheart, and Astarion slowed the pace of the group, and while Gale seemed intent to push through perhaps more than he should, and Shadowheart was doing the best to hide her problems, Astarion made it very clear how little

There had been a brief attempt to find a way for Karlach to carry him without burning him, involving bedrolls as a barrier between, that had ended with Astarion on the ground and a bit of his sleeve burning, which Gale was quick to use a cantrip to mend.

Thankfully, they seemed out of the range of gnolls, and no other githyanki patrols came across them before they found an appropriately nestled outcropping of rocks to make their camp among, shielded from anything that might be flying overhead hunting for easy prey in the night.

“So, you seemed very familiar with that Counsellor,” Astarion says, as they all sit around the fire, closer here than they had been down camping in the forests and ruins. “More than just, the Blade of Frontiers has worked for the Fist, close.”

“I’ve known her since I was very young. She was my father’s right hand, for as long as I can remember.” No use dancing around the subject, if they were going to Moonrise, it would come up. “My father is the Grand Duke.”

“You’re Dillard Portyr’s kid?” Karlach’s face crinkles in disbelief. “I don’t see it.”

“I think he means a different Duke,” Gale interjects. “I’m not entirely versed on the politics of Baldur’s Gate, but I know there have been more than a few shakeups in the past ten years.”

“Yeah, I only ever paid attention to any of that because the Hero of Baldur’s Gate was one of them.” Orin gets up and walks away from them, but that was to be expected. “He died,” he says, keeping his voice quiet and a bit somber. “My father, Ulder Ravengard, was elected soon after, and Portyr stepped down so he could be the Grand Duke. The fact that he’s been taken bodes poorly for the city, and for the cult’s plans.”

“I’m surprised I didn’t hear about that. You’d imagine all the patriar’s would be gossiping about a Duke’s son running off with a devil and…whatever Orin is.”

“Maybe they were, just not around you,” Shadowheart cuts in. Astarion frowns, but covers it up quickly enough.

“Were you close with your dad?” Karlach asks.

“I haven’t talked to him since we left the city, seven years ago,” he says. “But we were. He was so busy with work, we didn’t spend much time together, but he was there when I needed him.”

“I’m sorry. We’ll get him back,” Karlach says, and goes to hug him before she remembers the burning of her engine and pulls back. “I can’t believe the old Duke’s dead, though. Man, I don’t want to think about who else might be dead while I was stuck in Avernus.”

He almost reaches out across the tadpole to touch at Orin’s mind, to comfort her on a subject still sore after all these years, but holds back. There’s nothing he can say that hasn’t already been said, and he knows she’s hiding exactly how little she wants to go to Moonrise for his sake, and there’s no need to press that in any harder.

Sleep comes easily - he’s used to rough camping, after all, easier to sleep out in the wilds than in a camp full of innocents celebrating another day alive. When the dream comes, heavy and lucid, he expects to see Mizora, there to ruin a good night’s sleep again.

The man who stands over him reaching down a gentle hand is no devil at all, wearing the gleaming golden armor of a paladin or a knight of an order, warm brown skin with slight sun-kissed wrinkles despite the elven point to the ears. He reminds Wyll of looking up at the statue of Balduran that sat out in the Tumbledown, but more like how he had imagined the man to look like than the way he had in the various portraits he’d read in books.

The hand that reaches down to touch his face is surprisingly gentle, but he pulls away as he sits up. This isn’t some fantasy, it’s contact, and he knows better than to trust anyone who would make first contact in a dream.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Not a devil, merely a friend. One who saved you before,” The landscape around changes from starry skies to first the nautiloid, then the crash, leaving himhanging in midair, “and I’m here to save you again. Just in time - you are transforming.”

He doesn’t feel like someone becoming a mindflayer, but then, this wasn’t truly his body, all in his mind, some sort of pscyhic connection. “You’re the voice who turned back the Absolute. How are you…?”

“We don’t have much time, the enemy is closing in. But don’t worry, you will not become a mind flayer. Not while I’m around to protect you.”

He offers a hand, and despite, perhaps, his better judgment, Wyll takes it. Standing up, he gets a better sense of this alien landscape, floating rocks amid an endless sea of stars.

“Listen closely: there is great potential within you. It comes from the parasite. Your instinct is to resist the power it gives, but you must accept it, nurture it. I will keep it from consuming you, but for the sake of both of us, you must learn to wield it.”

He knows exactly what Lae’zel is going to say to this - that this is the tadpole trying to get them to succumb to its powers. He isn’t so sure.

“Why are you helping us?” he asks. “What do you-”

Instead the man looks out across the floating rocks and ruins. “I have to go. The enemy is closing in, but I will be back.” He presses strong hands on Wyll’s shoulders, and despite all the questions, he can’t help but find the gesture comforting. “Wake now. You’ll feel better - I promise.”

He’s right - Wyll wakes feeling better rested than he has for some time. Not the usual response to dream visitors. 

They break camp earlier than normal, trying to make as much of the steep hike before the midday heat. One thing is clear - everyone had the same dream last night.

“A hallucination of the tadpoles, nothing more,” Lae’zel declares it. No one else has any more certain idea what it might be, other than not that, please, at least if we all get murdered at this crèche she’ll shut up, courtesy of Shadowheart.

They didn’t all see the same face - he thought they might, when Karlach describes a golden paladin, until ‘she’ is used - maybe they had a longer conversation, but he doubts it. He doesn’t know what that means, if its points to Lae’zel’s theory, if there’s some knightly order protecting them in dreamspace, if this is all a shared psychosis from turned rations passed along through the telepathic connection. Although probably not that. 

Orin is quiet, and he worries that its still the conversation from that night, but she’s always been more quiet traveling in groups. He gives her space.

The sun is still rising when they see the temple, down in the valley. Its built into the side of the mountains, and its one of the most impressive temples he’s seen, clearly to Lathander the way its designed to catch the sunrise.

“I knew there was a Monastery here,” Halsin notes, “but I’d never made the journey to see it myself. Abandoned, the way most things in the region have been this past century following the Shadow Curse.”

“That will be where the crèche is located,” Lae’zel declares. “When choosing locations on inhabited worlds, isolated ruins in defensible locations are prioritized.”

“Is this similar to your own crèche location?” Gale asks, as they start to look over the way down.

“No, I am not from your Faerûn at all. II was born on Crèche K’llir, based on one of the many asteroids that cluster around your moon.”

“You’re from the moon?” Karlach asks. “You’re joking, right ‘zel? How cool is that?”

“I should have guessed - you’re a gift from Selûne sent to bother us,” Shadowheart says.

“Do not waste your time with idle gossip. Purification is finally within our sight, and after the visions shared last night, there is no more time to waste. We will see if the lift is functional, or else make our way their on foot.”

Lae’zel doesn’t wait for anyone else to agree before she heads out towards the somewhat overgrown machinery just visible a short hike down from where they stand overlooking the monastery, and he follows after her. He has to admit, he agrees with Shadowheart, its unlikely this will end well, but he can’t help but be curious, to see a gith stronghold in person.  

Chapter Text

Orin has never pushed anyone off a cliff before, and she wonders how satisfying it would be. Most deaths-by-falling were inelegant, monotonously dull, but in the city you only had so far to fall as from a building top, and while it would kill, the corpse would only be slightly bent out of shape. From here on the mountainsides, it was a very long fall down, with many rocks to bump off of and roll jaggedly down upon. The only problem was it was too far up to see the final form properly, but perhaps the experience of watching would be worth more than that in turn. And she had never learned if such a push would cause the curse to trigger - it was the mountain and the fall that did the harm, after all.

If they were not within eyesight of the crèche, Lae’zel would probably have already stabbed the woman who is somehow still talking. Or maybe not, maybe she too was drawn away from violence in the attempt to stay in Wyll’s good graces.

The Society of Brilliance (who had a building that sat like a bridge over the docks and would be one of the more satisfying buildings to push someone off of in Baldur’s Gate because of it) had sponsored this mission. They did…some sort of research, or magic, or the like, based on what she remembered of the speeches she’d ignored as they’d walked down to the docks or past the lodge, focused on more interesting things. Somehow, this made them want to study the nature of evil, by sending someone to steal a githyanki egg.

The woman is smart enough to know better than to head into the crèche herself, so instead she is asking it of them, that with Lae’zel in their number it would be easy enough to enter freely. Wyll is polite, but makes it clear that they will do no such thing.

Astarion winks, suggesting silently he may steal and sell the egg to her himself, if it isn’t too difficult. Wyll either doesn’t see the look, or chooses to ignore it. No one stabs the Lady Esther, or throws her off a cliff.

Orin is thinking a lot about cliffs.

Lae’zel and Gale between their strength and knowledge manage to get the lift to work, old gears greased again to turn. Gale promises that if the chains are too brittle with age that they break under the weight of their full party, he’ll be able to cast a feather-fall and keep them all from being dashed upon the rocks. Orin imagines the fall regardless: would the geas claim her if she cut them loose to fall, or would knowing the spell was there to save mean only upon impact it would take hold, killing what the fall had not?

“You alright?” Karlach whispers, as they sit on the edge of the lift, moving steadily closer to the massive abandoned temple that looms in the distance, lit by the rising sun. She scoots close beside, both their legs dangling off the edge. Easy to push, easy to fall.

She means to brush it off, but instead she says, “I don’t know.” She doesn’t know why the way that this impotent egg-thief talks makes her want to kill her as much as it does. Since last night they have been up because they had been up in the mountains since the last night and she hadn’t thought of throwing any of the others off a cliff. “I want to steal the egg.”

“For lady posh back there? Didn’t seem like your kind of job.” Her voice is dubious, but not quite challenging. “Not sure how Lae’zel would feel, you handing over a kid to that lot. Dunno how I feel.”

The words form faster than her own thoughts as to what they mean. “Not to hand over. Just to get out.”

The best thing to ever happen to her was being stolen from her hatchery, but while she had been a child, she had still been old enough to swear herself to her Father and be broken in this way. Her brother, he had been stolen as just a babe, raised by monks and wizards in far off mythic Candlekeep, and it was why he had been Truly Good while she could only pass for the same cursed and bound and at Wyll’s side. As far as the theory was concerned, she was poor proof, but it meant that the experiment would work.

“Not that I don’t like Lae’zel, but…no kid should turn out like any of us lot, should they?” Karlach hums, and stares off the cliff. “Except Wyll, of course. He’s the best of us. Anyone would be lucky, to be half as good as him.”

Orin is struck, in that moment, not knowing who Karlach was before she was heart-stolen, hellbound, war-scarred and devil-forged. So bright and cheerful, she had always seemed a thing like Wyll - but maybe she was more like Orin, already drenched in blood before she had set foot upon Avernus’ fields. She had met plenty happy monsters; once upon a time, she was one.

The chain does not break, the lift does not fall, and no one is pushed across the sides. Instead, they descend in safety to the Temple’s ancient, looming doors.

There is blood on the stone, fresh, not yet a day old, a halfling bearing the silver mark of the Absolute. A group of them had been brought, but one had tried to run, break free. Dead, now, a swift arrow in the back, the others marched inside.

Your curiosity is getting the better of you, comes a voice, unbidden in her mind. Do not let it. Stay away from the githyanki. It is a voice she knows, knows well - the one that had come to sit in dreams, the faceless wearing the guise of her mother, but whole and clean and living not the blood-drained display that was what always came first to memory.

“I trust we all just heard that?” Shadowheart asks. “It came from the artifact.”

“Same voice as the dream visitor,” Gale agrees. “It seems that our protector doesn’t want us near this place.”

“It is the tadpoles!” Lae’zel declares. “It knows purification is close at hand, and would do anything to keep us from our salvation. Ignore it, I know I shall.” And with the grand doors barred, she spies the broken window, climbing inside.

The other side is a winery, drunken kobolds as the inconsequential looters. They are able to get out of the quick-spreading fires with only Karlach’s clothes singed (already quick-to-often burning with the engine-heat) and the vampire has found himself a giggling drunk from blood heavy with the firewine, not the sour slinking grouch he’d been at the party the tieflings had held.

The way forward, deeper in, is blocked by ruin and rubble. Perhaps another way forward they could find, but Lae’zel is not in the mood for exploration, and she climbs over the shattered temple wall and broken casks into the temple’s empty heart.

The entry hall is empty, only crushed bones and ancient corpses, no signs of the gith who make it there home. They all start to span out for signs, but it is Lae’zel who narrows in. “The crypts below,” she says. “A more defensible position than out in the ruin.”

Was her crèche also in caves and dungeons? It makes sense. Lae’zel is not like Wyll - she wasn’t raised in the sun.

They are met with silver crossbows, leveled mostly at Gale. Sword at his side, no one sees Wyll as one to cast, which has many times cost them their lives.

“Stand down, gish,” Lae’zel says, standing between those at the door and the wizard. “Is it not Vlaakith’s command to welcome her faithful?”

“I expected no visitors, faithful or otherwise,” the leader declares. “Why have you come?”

“We seek the zaith’isk. Show me the way.

“You are infected? A ghaik thrall is something to eradicate, not reason with.”

Lae’zel bristles. “The faithful may be purified. This is Vlaakith’s protocol.” The guards glance between each other, but relent and stand aside, allowing all of them passage, not just Lae’zel.

In her head, she had imagined the temple, but the crèche is not at all like this, clean and tidy, and most of all as they pass the guards on it, young, children at work cleaning the stone, gathered through archways in a class training in combat. A pair of lanky initiates stare at the group as they enter, looking as young as Orin and Wyll had when they had left from Baldur’s Gate. When Lae’zel presses them which way to the infirmary, they answer quickly and then step aside, their eyes not leaving.

“I can’t believe they’re letting istik roam the halls,” one says to the other as they’re halfway down the hall.

Empty bunks fill the area before the infirmary, a handful more gith gathered around, a pair of children practicing their mage hand to toss a chest back and forth, inside the sound of something mewling, crying out in pain, so sweet to her ears.

“Do you have a cat in that chest?” Gale asks, his brows furrowing.

“What’s it to you, istik?” the youth asks, puffing up his chest.

“There are better ways to practice your mage hand than torturing an innocent creature - let it out, now.” He towers over them, and a hint of magic sparks around his eyes, a sign that however frail and fragile there is danger in raising a mage’s blood. The pair are quick-witted to know they are out matched, although not foolish enough to show fear before their peers.

“Fine. If you’re going to be a big baby about it.” They step to the side, and Gale leans down to open the chest. He fumbles with the lock, glances over to Astarion - who rolls his eyes but goes over, unlocking the chest with a single swift motion.

The chest explodes open as a small, hairless cat like creature popped out, hissing. Astarion stumbled back,

“A gremishka!” Gale exclaims. “Be careful not to cast - they react violently to any magic-” and he’s cut off as it pounces on him.

Already beside it, Astarion is swift to slash at it before it claws at him, before Karlach beheads it with a clean strike of the axe, only a small strike of blood upon the floor. No one reacts, used to far greater violence. Orin kneels by the body and rips off the tail, a rare and useful component.

“Are you done with this foolishness?” Lae’zel asks, unimpressed, not waiting for a response before she pushes here way through the doors leading where they were pointed.

The device in the center of the room looks nothing more than like the pods aboard the flesh-ship, sinuous pink-purple parts contained with the silver workings of the gith. It stands illuminated in sunlight like a holy thing, amid the mess and gore of a brutal workshop around them, and Lae’zel stares up at it in an awestruck revelry, her goal at last at hand.

Only one person is in here, dissecting one of the crawling worms and carefully pulling out the thin lines of its guts. “If you require treatment, take a seat, kin. Or do you have a question?”

“I am Lae’zel of K’liir. I have come to be purified.”

That gets the gith’s attention, as she sets the scalpel down to circle around Lae’zel. “Cursed is the day that even we become ghaik incubators,” she says. “First the nautiloid’s arrival, then the ghaik swarming around Moonrise…though you are like nothing I’ve seen before. You remain lucid, when you should have succumbed.”

“You’ve seen mindflayers, around Moonrise Towers?” Wyll asks.

“You speak freely, istik. And what do you know, of ghaik? Are they also infected?” she asks Lae’zel.

“Oh, us?” Astarion cuts in. “We’re just good samaritans who Lae’zel here rescued off that nautiloid before they could infect us, trying to get home.” When Lae’zel narrows her eyes at him, he presses across the psychic bond the push to go with it and the undercurrent of idiot.

“With the necrotic curse, I have not been personally, but we have reports. It is the site where the enthralled cultists are gathering, although none of the fully transformed have been seen since I was stationed here.”

“The cultists at Moonrise will be dealt with and eliminated,” Lae’zel declares, “but first I must be purified. Lucid or not, I will wait no longer.”

“Sit in the zaith’isk, child. I will ensure you are cured - you and your parasite must me studied.”

So, this shit is going to fail and just fuck her up, yeah? Karlach asks quietly, as they watch Lae’zel step up to sit in the device.

The githyanki are experts when it comes to the biology of mindflayers, so if anyone has the technology it would be them, but the fact remains that our parasites are unique in uncertain ways, Gale replies. I would keep careful watch.

The machine settles around her, and she begins to chant, biting back pain. “Vlaakith tavki na’zin. Vlaakith tavki na’zin.”

“Yes, child, speak the Tla’ket. Meditate on its verses,” the doctor says, face alight with glee as Lae’zel cries out in pain, and with it, there is a spark, as the tadpole’s bond connects them, and standing back all of them recoil at the sensation.

It’s going to kill her! Karlach cries out. Lae’zel, you need to get out!

“No! Out of my head! Vlaakith, purge me of this blight, purify me!

Idiot gith - you’re too stubborn for your own good! Get out of there! Shadowheart says.

There’s something more there, and Orin can feel the presence of Gale’s mind slip deeper into Lae’zel’s, interwoven with the device, and she follows after, trying to move around the flares of pain as best she could, as the others cry in vain, voices falling on resolute ears.

It is the shallar’s gift, to read the minds of those you will become, but that only prepares her so much for the dancing path the tadpole offers. She tries to keep Gale’s mind steady and centered as best she can, but the machine feels like tendrils, feels like knives.

And then, they see it, recorded in the thinking pinkflesh that thrums beneath the silver. A hundred thousand bodies, all going through this same pain, thoughts like silver thread recorded here then raised up. It is another bloody altar to an absent god. She was right to think this place was like her home.

Lae’zel, the zaith’isk isn’t saving you. It’s extracting your memories and killing you in the process, Gale says. His mind opens, and the vision is shared.

Please, Lae’zel. We can’t lose you, Wyll adds. Her face contorts with pain, and it seems almost as if she will rebut them yet again - but instead, she rips herself out of the chair, leaping forth - and moments later, it crumples under the pressure, bursting apart in force and flames.

“Shka’keth! My life’s work - gone!” the doctor cries out. “And yet she lives, and so does her parasite.”

There is a hunger in her eyes, fierce and manic. Danger, she thinks to Wyll, quick and violent sensations. Bloodthirst, hunter’s eyes locked on prey.

“No! Can’t you see it in her eyes?” Wyll cuts in, silver tongue ready. “She’s no thrall - the parasite is dead.”

Astarion seems ready to cut Lae’zel off from retorting, but she is silent. The doctor stares at him. “Then all of this destruction was a symptom of its power…incredible.” She shakes her head. “I am disappointed that we could not extract it alive. It would have been an exceptional specimen. Perhaps others can be studied…”

She turns back, engrossed in her work.

“Tsk’va,” Lae’zel curses. “It must have been sabotaged - unsurprising, as this crèche is weak, undisciplined. The ghustil is surely in on it; who knows how many others. We must find any other weakness and bring this to the Inquisitor’s attention.”

She feels the doubt-worry that crosses all their faces. Orin knows what it is like, to cling on to a lie to keep the world from shattering. The voice was right: there is nothing but death waiting for them in this place. But Lae’zel will not depart, not without her due.

A curled iron cements itself from passing thought to certainty. Still standing in the halls outside, Orin presses a hand to Wyll’s shoulder, holding him back as the others make their way to the center room, to watch the training youths, and Astarion and Shadowheart have stepped aside to paint over the lich queen’s portrait.

“I don’t see any way this ends other than blood,” he says. “I’m glad that we got Lae’zel out, but it doesn’t seem as if she understands.” He shakes his head. “Was there something you noticed?”

“There’s something I need to do.” Something that can’t be interrupted by a leash being pulled taught. She takes his hand, and leads him down the hall, to stand outside the set of doors that lead to the sound of dripping water, cave pools buried beneath the earth.

Orin, you can’t be serious, he says, silent as they stand outside the doors. If they catch you stealing one of their children-

They won’t catch me. She is quick-quiet like a mouse, has danced leagues around attentive Fist and sharp toothed monsters alike.

I know you were just as upset at Lady Esther as I was, he says. Why steal a child? From its home?

Her thoughts are a jumbled mess, and she’s not sure how much transfers across, of sewer caves and bloody pools. What she says is dragons are better, raised by knights. He squeezes her hand, and then lets go, standing guardwatch on the other side of the door, out of sight.

Light of step, she slinks in shadows. Lets her shape and form be molded to match the walls and floor around, avoiding the flick-flames of the torches, gith poor in dark-seeing from what she knew of how Lae’zel kept watch as they rested in places of danger.

The cavern is large, larger than she’d hoped - before the deal she’d struck with that thrice-damned devil, halfway it would have caught her as well as any of the hidden etched glyphs upon the stone. Now, it is enough that if Wyll were to go any deeper back into the crèche’s heart it would pull taught, but as long as he stands watch, she will be safe to make her way.

How long has it been since last she’d done a dance like this? A few times had the Blade and its Shadow gone delving into dungeons, but those traps were old, there was no need for them to be so danced around, easier still to set them off at a distance, a few well placed arrows, shots of magic, and the way would be clear for both to cross.

This, this is like when she was young, in temples full of spike traps and in the sewers where Guild and Cult and many more would set bloodbaths up to keep things out and keep things in and just to watch the chaos they would inflict. There, young, she had found fun luring people to step on traps she had avoided, well-wishers chasing after a girl lost in dangerous places, and those who saw that innocence and wanted harm instead. Perhaps, soft sounds, she could lure the guards onto the circles, even though they knew the placements, see what happened when they were set off. Too many variables, too many risk, and she is not here for games and fun. She is here for the egg.

Only one is left, where surely the room was meant to be filled, its clutchmates running through the halls. This one, she listens as the watch-guard tenders speak, is runt of the litter, last to hatch and first to die. Soft-hearted, the egg-warden will not do the dead and smash it, is giving all chances to the wretched thing.

It is her sibling’s voice in her ear, as it looms over her, crooning. Wretched thing. Weak, pathetic, it is a wonder you have any of our Father’s blessed blood within you. Should have let your mother kill you, for what did Father care of art? You were meant to be a bloodbath, meant to slay the Duke. If that was being saved, better dead.

She holds the egg gently in her hands. How fragile a thing, an egg, so easy to smash and break and spill the youngblood guts into the acid. More careful than she’s ever been holding any treasure, any knife, she tucks it into her bag, wrapped and cushioned by the bedroll, and follows her path back out to where Wyll waits for her.

The painting has been defaced, and the training room is full of whispers, the death of one of the trainees averted by it seems Karlach’s intimidating presence, and when there is no one trading with the quartermaster, Wyll slowly opens the door to the office and the bloodbath within.

“Cowards, weaklings, Hshar’lak all,” Lae’zel bites out as she stands, sword in hand. “To interfere with purification, allow children of Gith to succumb to ghaik infection. A cleaner death than was deserved.”

“Apparently the gith know we’re the ones with Shadowheart’s little artifact,” Astarion stage whispers to the pair of them, looking at Wyll. “She refused to hand it over, so of course we had to make a mess.”

“They know?” Wyll questions. “Then why haven’t they been tracking us down? We’ve not exactly been inconspicuous.”

“The wilds are difficult to navigate; locate object has a limited range and scrying is not particularly useful at distinguishing one patch of woods from another,” Gale notes. “But I can’t help but shake the feeling they wanted us to end up here.”

“Who knows why they do anything,” Shadowheart rolls her eyes. “You know the Inquisitor is going to also try and kill us, right?”

“If the Kith’rak was weak enough to die at the hands of a group of istik, then he will agree she deserved the fate,” Lae’zel declares. “And if he does not take these warnings seriously, he too is hshar’lak and will face my blade.”

“Hey, as long as you’re fine helping us do some killing, it’s alright with me,” Karlach says with a grin.