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On the darkest and longest night of the year in Baldur’s Gate, Enver Gortash was definitely not sulking. Men of his stature did not sulk. At most, he would admit to the indulgence of introspection, which he felt to be a beneficial pastime for a man with the amount of responsibilities he held. If this had happened to occupy significant portions of his waking hours for the past several days, that was neither here nor there.
Gods, but he hated the cold. His laboratory in the dockside foundry stayed damp and chilly in the winter months, no matter how many furnaces might be running at full speed above or beneath him. When he spent too long hunched over his notes and dissecting table, he was reminded of the not insignificant number of old hurts that had a tendency to flare in the cold or if a storm was coming on.
Before, there had been a reason to step away before the pain set in - someone waiting for him by a crackling fire with a bottle of wine and a sharp gleam in their eyes that dared him to match that hard edged brilliance. Their schemes had unfurled with a sort of fluidity that had taken Gortash’s breath away, his intellect and ruthlessness finally matched by someone he could truly consider to be an equal. The possibilities of their partnership had seemed boundless only months earlier as firelight shimmered across delicate white scales with an almost hypnotic glow. It had been a little too warm to really warrant a fire in the late summer heat, but Gortash had never been able to resist the opportunity to admire the Bhaalspawn’s murderous, otherworldly beauty.
Back then, he had almost let himself begin to anticipate the colder months to come. The white dragonborn might be resistant to the cold, but he'd loved nothing more than to stretch full length before a blaze that Gortash had prepared for him. More than once, he had appeared covered in gore and other unmentionable subjects, and Gortash had ordered a warm bath prepared before the hearth. The contented hiss the dragonborn always emitted as he sank into the heat had been only a prelude to other delightful noises that Gortash had won from him before the fire had burned itself down to embers.
There had been something inevitable in the way they had orbited each other, each step coming in time as they circled through the paces of a dance as instinctive as breathing. Now, the rhythm was gone, and the cold air of winter burned his lungs the same way the coals had once smoldered in the bottom of a fireplace he would never sit in front of again.
The sound of glass breaking tore Gortash from the warmth of that memory and back to the intolerable state of his current reality. Looking down, he saw that his elbow had knocked into one of the waiting specimen jars and sent it tumbling to the ground. He stared at the shattered pieces for a long moment, then picked up another and hurled it with unexpected strength at the brick wall. The third jar made an even larger impact, tiny shards of glass flying in all directions as it collided with the sharp corner of the brick. Through the sudden rage that had gripped him, Gortash noted the tiny pricks of pain in his hand and cheek where the glass had struck him. Instead of tending to the minor injuries, he picked up the final jar and hurled it even harder just to hear the crash fill the deafening silence he lived in now. In its wake, though, the silence hung heavier than ever, broken only by the heaving gasps of air that he forced himself to suck into burning lungs.
Bracing his hands on the table, Gortash forced himself to steady his breathing as he tried to master his racing thoughts. When he and the other Chosen agreed to take a few weeks to lie low and adjust to the new weight of the Netherstones’ power, Gortash had planned to bury himself in the demands of his work. So far, though, the usual rhythm of invention had eluded him entirely.
Orin had been the first of the three to depart Moonrise, her smug triumph raking against Gortash’s nerves like a hot poker - heightened, presumably unintentionally, by Ketheric’s inescapable pessimism and refusal to be surprised by the unpredictable whims of gods and their Chosen. The time apart had been the General’s suggestion when it became clear that Gortash and Orin could not be prevailed upon to collaborate without devolving into veiled barbs, oblique taunting, and outright threats. When the undead paladin made yet another attempt to counsel acceptance after Orin's departure, Gortash had asked archly after the ongoing attempts to resurrect the man’s dead daughter. He had been on the road back to Baldur’s Gate less than an hour later.
After decades spent honing his self-control and adaptability, the snarling fury and deep despondency that gripped Gortash following Orin’s revelation felt like an inexcusable weakness at the very time he could least afford it. This couldn’t continue, and he knew it. No matter his own personal affairs, the success of their plan depended on Gortash’s ability to find a way to move forward. He simply did not have the luxury of wallowing in a loss that he struggled to define even to himself. After all, the alliance between himself and the Bhaalspawn had always had an expiration date. Still, for all his planning and plotting, somehow Gortash had not expected this. This dreadful silence and creeping cold that seeped into him like the very air itself had been altered by the dragonborn’s absence.
Silence broken unexpectedly by the click of a bolt disengaging in the door at the top of the stairs - a door he had specifically instructed should remain undisturbed until he reappeared.
Looking up at the landing above, Gortash saw the armor of one of the foundry guards as she turned to reengage the lock before turning to descend. As she navigated the metal stairs, something in the inhumanly sinuous movement of the otherwise thoroughly unremarkable guard triggered a flash of recognition in Gortash’s mind before the woman ever spoke.
“What in the hells do you think you’re doing in my foundry, Bhaalspawn?”
Her ruse discovered, Orin’s disguise dissolved along with it. As the armor and bland face melted away, Gortash was left to observe the white hair and skin that reminded him eerily of the iridescent scales that had covered her brother’s skin. Her strangely swirling eyes took in the shards of glass that littered the workspace, many of them falling in pools of congealed blood that Gortash had not allowed any of his underling’s entrance to clean after locking himself in the laboratory on his return.
“Has the would-be lordling been caught in a fit of temper?” she taunted. “And after all your twisting, empty words about control.”
Despite the flippancy of her tone, Gortash could see evidence that Orin had not been unaffected herself by the events of recent days. The long white braid that swayed along her spine hung loose in sections and matted in others, disheveled and neglected in a way that he had never seen before. At her sides, the ritual daggers that she and her brother had always kept scrupulously clean and razor sharp showed evidence of an appalling lack of care compared to their usual pristine horror.
Abandoning the conflict that had driven them for days at Moonrise, Gortash sighed with all the weariness that he had been unable to shake.
“Why are you here, Orin?”
Silence hung over the pair for several long moments. As Gortash watched Orin’s lithe form stalk to and fro across his laboratory, he realized that her movements seemed less the prowl of a hunting predator and more the pacing of a captive beast.
“My blood-kin’s useless memory echoes through the halls of my temple,” Orin admitted finally. She spat the words from her mouth as though they contained poison, fury clear on every line of her pallid face. “Even now, I cannot be rid of him. Every inch of the city crawls with his presence, no matter how much blood I paint it with.”
“Because it was his birthright you stole!” Gortash snapped. “What did you expect, that you could just take his place seamlessly with no ill effects?”
An inhuman growl tore from the changeling’s throat at his words.
“You will not pluck at my mind the way you did my brother’s, tyrant! I took what was mine by right, just as our Father demands. My grandfather built this city on bones and blood - it should always have been mine. I only relieved the worthless bloodsack of a burden he no longer deserved to carry.”
“And yet, here you are,” Gortash drawled cruelly. “Looking for any reprieve you can find from the very memory of him. Following his footsteps until you end up at my door.”
“Yes,” she hissed, fury drawing the truth from the Bhaalspawn with the same precision her daggers would trace along unwilling flesh. “They always led here - to ruin. Our blades could have carved the world into beautiful mincemeat, if you had not turned his mind-matter to automated butchery instead.”
Realization dawned on Gortash as clear and cold as the new film of ice on the water barrels that lined the foundry perimeter in case of fire.
“You were jealous,” he sneered incredulously. “Not just that he had been made Chosen instead of you. You were jealous of me.”
Gortash could feel the divine pact pull taut between them as Orin began to reach for her blades, an ever present reminder that neither of them could be free of the other until their gods’ orders were complete. Both Chosen snarled in response, impotently furious and unable to do more than glare accusingly at the other.
“The place at his side was meant to be mine,” Orin spat. “Until the day we slit each other’s throats on our Father’s altar as a final offering at the end of the world. Your pathetic human mind could never comprehend what we were to each other. You understood nothing, and still you stole it from me!”
The pitch and volume of her voice rose gradually as she spoke, until it reached a shrieking note that could have been a distant cousin to grief - if Gortash thought the changeling capable of feeling such a thing. Her unearthly face contorted into a grimace of hatred that looked more than a little like pain underneath.
Gortash closed his eyes and let the waves of tangled emotion wash over him at her revelation. Senseless, futile, useless grief. What was done was done. Regret would not fix anything now.
“Congratulations,” he said, voice hollow. “Now we’ve both lost.”
They stared at each other across the shattered glass and possibilities littered between them.
“One day, I will repay you with every stroke of my knife that you caused me to give him,” Orin vowed, her words dropping to a whisper that echoed in the quiet.
“You’re like a child,” Gortash sneered. “Breaking your toys so no one else can play with them. And one day, I will be rid of your petulant ravings.”
Black and white eyes caught and held in the low light of the foundry lab, both relishing the moment of their ultimate triumph over the other.
“But for now,” Gortash went on, “we must make use of each other. Until the work is finally done. Otherwise, all of this will have been for nothing.”
Long moments passed before Orin’s chin jerked downward in a resentful nod. Gortash couldn’t pretend to be any happier about the situation, but they had no meaningful choice in the matter. Orin had made this bed for all of them, and now they would simply have to learn how to lie in it.
“If there’s nothing else,” he said with obviously feigned civility, “you can get the hells out of my foundry.”
Without a word, the changeling made to disappear, before his voice made her pause.
“Oh, and Orin? Don’t ever come here again. You can rot in the silence of your haunted temple for all I care. In fact, I rather hope you choke on it.”
Orin’s answering snarl hung in the air as she faded abruptly from sight. In the wake of her disappearance, Gortash’s own haunted silence draped over him in the frigid loneliness of the night.
Tomorrow, the work would have to be resumed. Gortash would have to tuck away all of the jagged edges of himself and resume the ironclad control that had laid the foundation for every triumph he had ever achieved in his life. But the morning was still hours away, and there would be time enough then to settle back seamlessly into his role.
Tonight, he would give himself to the cold and the quiet. After all, he had an old friend’s memory to sit vigil for.