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Ame was born of rare defiance: the love between a tiefling scholar and a drow noblewoman who fled the Underdark. Her mother had worshiped Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden, in secret for years before she finally escaped the web of Lolth’s cruelty. Her father, a wizard devoted to knowledge rather than power, found her wandering the outskirts of Baldur’s Gate and offered her sanctuary.
What began as compassion became devotion, and then family.
Their daughter bore the mark of both worlds. Her skin was the color of moonlit amethyst, her eyes glowed like molten gold, and her horns curved in perfect symmetry, adorned in the elven style her mother never forgot. Ame was beautiful, but unmistakably other: a living contradiction of infernal and drow blood.
For a time, their little household was filled with love and quiet laughter. But peace never lasts for those who run from the Underdark. Assassins came more than once, blades glinting with poison marked by the spider’s sigil. The family fled to Elturel, changed their names, and hid beneath the Companion’s light until the pursuit finally stopped.
Ame grew into her power under that false safety. She learned her mother’s dances and hymns, not as worship but as a language of light and movement. Eilistraee’s teachings suited her: freedom through grace, redemption through song. When she danced, her horns shimmered like obsidian, and her presence drew eyes even when she tried to remain unseen.
But beauty did not protect her from cruelty. In Elturel, children whispered that her eyes were cursed, that her horns belonged to a devil, not a girl. She learned to ignore them, though the barbs sometimes pierced deep. When the jeers grew loudest, she would hear a voice cut through them, fierce and unyielding.
“Even if she’s different, who cares?”
A tiefling boy. Small, fiery, protective in a way that embarrassed them both.
Years later, when Ame had grown into a young woman and taken work as a bard in a dockside tavern, she heard that same voice again. It was deeper now, controlled, touched with intellect. Rolan sat in a corner, lost in spell work, his quill dancing between ink and parchment.
She recognized him instantly. Despite the polished arrogance he now wore like armor, his golden eyes betrayed the same boyish conviction she remembered.
Their reunion was quiet, polite words exchanged between two who both remembered but refused to say so. He spoke to her as though she were a riddle to solve. She sang as though daring him to feel. Rolan tried to reason his fascination away, calling it “academic curiosity.” But every time she danced, every time moonlight traced the line of her horns, reason failed him.
One night, as the tavern lights dimmed and her song turned soft, she drifted toward him, each movement an invitation he pretended not to understand. He looked up, color rising to his cheeks, and murmured with a scholar’s desperation, “A subject should be observed, never interfered with.”
Then he left, leaving behind his notes, his composure, and a silence Ame could not fill. That night, beneath the cold light of the Companion, she danced alone, her music mournful, her heart breaking for the first time.
The first time Ame saw Rolan again, the air stank of fear and smoke.
Emerald Grove, once meant to be a refuge, was fracturing under the weight of its own desperation. Tiefling refugees argued with druids over rights and shelter. Blades were half-drawn, tempers fully bared.
Ame had been traveling with a caravan of pilgrims when the attack came. She had not expected to find him there: older now, sharper in speech, wrapped in the same defensive pride he once used to hide discomfort. His robes were singed, his hands still marked with ink. But his eyes were the same molten gold, observant, unwilling to yield.
He almost didn’t recognize her at first. The years had changed her. Her horns were now adorned with silver crescents in homage to Eilistraee, her skin traced with ritual luminescence that glowed faintly when she prayed. But when she spoke his name softly, “Rolan?”, something in him faltered.
“You,” he said at last, more accusation than greeting. “I thought you would have found some temple to vanish into by now.”
“And I thought you would have stopped running from things that move you,” she answered.
That silenced him.
He turned away, muttering about goblin raids, responsibility, and “pointless sentiment.” Ame saw the lie for what it was: the same fragile shield he always raised when faced with feeling.
In the following days, their paths crossed often. Ame worked among the refugees, singing in the evenings to calm the frightened children, her voice carrying soft blessings of moonlight and hope. Rolan stood apart, tutoring his siblings Cal and Lia in defensive cantrips, pretending not to listen to her songs, though his hands always stilled when she began.
He still called her “bard” instead of by name. She still teased him for his arrogance. Yet between the banter, something older stirred: the faint echo of that long-ago tavern and all the words they never spoke.
When the goblin war band threatened the Grove, Ame joined the defense without hesitation. Her dance became battle, fluid, bright. She saw Rolan on the field, his spells tearing through the shadows, rage and brilliance intertwined. For a moment, their eyes met through the chaos, and he looked at her not as an anomaly or distraction, but as an equal.
After the battle, he approached her beneath the shattered gates.
“You fight like you sing,” he said quietly. “Recklessly. But beautifully.”
Ame smiled, tired but radiant. “And you still think beauty is something to study instead of cherish.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t look away either.
That night, when the Grove finally fell silent, Rolan lingered by her campfire. Neither spoke. The distance between them was smaller than it had ever been, and yet still impossibly wide.
The road beyond the Mountain Pass bled into darkness, a half-light world where the sun refused to rise. The Shadow-Cursed Lands had already devoured villages, faiths, and names. For Ame, it felt like walking through a memory the moon had abandoned.
At Last Light Inn, she found the survivors she once sang for: refugees, wounded, hollow-eyed. And among them, Rolan.
He had changed. His robes were dusted with ash, his hands trembled when he thought no one watched, and the sharp precision in his voice had been replaced by fatigue. His siblings, Cal and Lia, were missing, taken by cultists bound for Moonrise Towers. The arrogance that once defined him had collapsed into guilt.
“I should have protected them,” he muttered when she approached. “But I was too busy proving I could survive without anyone’s help.”
Ame didn’t speak. She only placed a hand on his shoulder, light as moon-dust, the same way her mother once steadied her before a dance. He flinched but did not pull away.
Days later, he vanished.
The others at the inn whispered that he’d gone to face the darkness alone. Ame knew immediately what that meant: a death wish wrapped in logic, the kind of decision Rolan would call necessary research. She left that night, armed only with her blade, her faith, and a faint trail of footprints leading into the curse.
She found him at the edge of a ruined bridge, surrounded by shadow spawn, half-dead, fighting with grim precision, refusing to yield even as the shadows clawed at his soul. His spells flickered, his voice cracked from exhaustion.
“Rolan!”
He turned, disbelief flashing through the corruption around him.
“You shouldn’t be here-”
“And you shouldn’t die alone.”
She stepped into the curse without hesitation. Her song rose a hymn to Eilistraee, the melody bright enough to cut through the gloom. Light poured from her movements as if the moon itself answered. The shadows recoiled. Together, they fought, her dance and his magic forming a rhythm older than fear.
When the last creature fell, Rolan collapsed to his knees, staring at the ground.
“I thought I’d lost them. I thought I’d lost myself.”
“You’re not lost,” she said quietly. “You’re just afraid to be found.”
He looked up then, truly looked, and for once, his gaze was free of pride.
Back at Last Light Inn, Rolan spoke little. But when Ame sang that night, he stayed close to the fire, his hands folded, eyes lowered in thought. The arrogance was gone; in its place was something far rarer: humility.
Before she turned in, he stopped her.
“You once told me beauty was something to cherish, not study,” he said softly. “Perhaps you were right. Perhaps I just never knew how.”
Ame smiled, tired but resolute. “Then learn. Start with the light that still reaches you.”
He nodded, not in submission, but in promise.
Baldur’s Gate glittered in the distance like a promise wrapped in smoke. For most, it was salvation. For Ame, it was answers. For Rolan, it was the one place that still owed him recognition.
They arrived with the refugee tide, worn, alive, and uncertain. Rolan walked a step ahead, eyes fixed on the spires of Sorcerous Sundries. The ink stains on his hands had faded; the weight of failure had not. Inside those walls waited Lorroakan, arch mage and opportunist, promising power, stability, and escape from the chaos of the road.
When Rolan was summoned to stand before the arch mage, Ame accompanied him. She said nothing, only watched the tension return to his shoulders, the same rigid precision he wore before every choice that frightened him.
“Serve me,” Lorroakan intoned, “and you will have knowledge beyond imagination. All I require is loyalty… and silence.”
The silence hung like a blade. Rolan’s jaw tightened. Lorroakan offered everything he’d once chased: validation, structure, purpose without pain. And yet, Ame’s presence at his side altered the equation.
“You’ve always wanted to be seen,” she said quietly. “But not like this.”
The arch mage scoffed, his voice slick with contempt. “Faith and sentiment are the tools of lesser minds. Choose wisely, apprentice.”
Rolan looked between them: the master who embodied everything he thought he wanted, and the woman who reflected everything he feared to feel.
He chose.
Lightning burst through the chamber, raw and unrestrained. Lorroakan’s wards shattered; the man staggered back beneath the weight of his own arrogance. Ame moved beside Rolan without a word, her blades singing through the chaos. When it was over, the arch mage's tower smoldered with the scent of burnt parchment and pride.
Outside, as dawn broke over the harbor, Rolan stood by the parapet, his breath unsteady.
“I spent half my life proving I needed no one,” he said. “And the other half regretting it.”
Ame’s golden eyes softened. “Then stop proving. Just be.”
He turned to her. Tired, humbled, finally human in his imperfections.
“And you?” he asked. “What will you be, now that the world has stopped chasing you?”
“Free,” she said. “At last.”
For the first time since their childhood, their silences aligned. Not the silence of avoidance, but of understanding.
That night, the people of Baldur’s Gate whispered of strange music rising from the upper quarter, soft notes carried on moonlight, interwoven with the echo of distant thunder. Those who looked up swore they saw two figures upon the tower’s edge: one dancing, one watching, the light between them balanced and unbroken.
Night draped itself over Baldur’s Gate like silk, the city’s fires dimming beneath the pale shimmer of Selûne’s light. Ame stood upon the tower balcony, the wind tugging at the silver strands of her hair. Behind her, the soft rustle of parchment gave way to footsteps she already knew by heart.
Rolan leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, his usual poise tempered by something quieter, uncertainty. “You never sleep,” he said, voice low.
“Neither do you,” she replied with a faint smile. “Afraid the world will forget you if you close your eyes?”
He scoffed softly. “Afraid you’ll vanish again if I do.”
Their eyes met, the space between them charged with everything they’d left unsaid. The city lights flickered below, a constellation of lives that suddenly felt very far away.
Ame turned fully toward him. The moonlight traced her skin and caught the faint glow of her markings. She took a step closer, and he didn’t move. “You always tried to understand me,” she murmured.
“To reason with what can’t be reasoned.”
“And you,” Rolan replied, his tone wavering between defiance and confession, “always made chaos look like grace.”
Her hand found his, tentative at first, then firm. His fingers curled around hers, as though some invisible current demanded it. The warmth of his skin startled them both.
“Still think beauty is meant to be studied?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper.
He hesitated, his breath shallow. “No,” he said finally.
“I think it’s meant to be endured.”
Ame’s smile softened into something unguarded. The distance between them disappeared. A touch, a breath, a moment suspended in the quiet pulse of magic that shimmered faintly around them.
The air itself seemed to hum with power, as if Eilistraee and Mystra both paused to listen.
Neither spoke. Words would have broken the spell.
The night wind coiled around them, carrying the faint scent of rain and parchment. Somewhere below, the city stirred, but up here, only the moon bore witness. When Rolan finally leaned in, it wasn’t with the confidence of a scholar or the hesitation of a penitent, but with the simple truth of a man who had stopped running.
Ame met him halfway.