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What Gortash endured that night might have been worse than the whole gods-damned affair itself. The idealistic whining of young Ravengard was easy enough to drown with his own thoughts — or, failing that, to busy the brat’s mouth otherwise. But no such escape could be hoped for with his true ally and closest companion.
He found them lounging in his chair, behind his desk, as if the room belonged to them, flipping through his correspondence like it were their private property. When he had told them to “feel at home”, he had not meant this. Yet the Dark Urge, all sly smiles and deliberate insolence, took the words at face value — or rather pretended to, reveling in the pretense of ignorance.
Then they paused, an unassuming letter caught between their fingers. Gortash felt the first throb of an oncoming headache.
“You’ve got another note from one of your admirers?” Their smile, bright with far too sharp teeth, was anything but innocent. “What’s this? Another paean to your ‘strong, burly arms’? Or perhaps the ‘ample, round buttocks’?”
Their gaze followed the scarce lines of text that Gortash knew covered the sheet of paper.
“Aww. And this one’s a poem,” the Dark Urge exclaimed, clearly delighted at the prospect of Gortash’s discomfort. Then, only one way remained — to not give them what they wanted.
“Go on, read it,” Gortash encouraged, gesturing for his companion to proceed. “You’re sure to find it amusing.”
“If you insist…” They cleared their throat, adopting a pompous tone:
“You opened my eyes to all there is,
and I, in turn, had but little to give.”
“Amazing, what those little lovers of yours can come up with. I didn’t know that side of you. How tender. How… sweet.”
“Are you done? We have work to do,” Gortash said, trying — futilely — to get them back on track.
“We have plenty of time. And I, for one, am having fun. Are you, the grand Enver Gortash, soon to be lord, feeling embarrassed by…” They glanced down to check the signature. “Your Wyll’s undying devotion to you? See how sweetly he addresses you.”
‘Yet always here I’ll be for you,
for as long as you’ll let me be.’
“Really? You’re going to waste time on bad poetry and pry into my private affairs, instead of advancing your god’s plan?” Gortash retorted, voice flat, brows arched in scorn. “You’re supposed to be the leader of a death cult, not some meddling schoolchild.”
“Someone’s in a sour mood,” the Dark Urge tutted, not rising their eyes from the letter. “Is this one truly so terrible? I can fix that for you. Just say the word.”
It was not the resolution Gortash had in mind. Not in the slightest. Of course, at the thought of older Ravengard’s face twisted in anguish and grief a pleasant warmth surged through him. Yet, his plan was to humiliate the man and not for the city to look to the duke with sympathy.
“Absolutely not, you’d do no such thing,” he said firmly, pinning the Dark Urge with his gaze. “He may be a squealing puppy, but only I am to kick him. Understood?”
The Dark Urge made a disgruntled sound, deep in their chest, finally letting go of the offending piece of correspondence.
“But do you? Truly kick him? At all?” They fixed Gortash with a suddenly serious look. He paused, taking a step back in his annoyance, and carefully regarded his ally. They seemed… unhappy? But why? Gortash could not come up with a reason, at least not with a sensible one.
“As far as I know, you are awfully cozy with the precious young thing. Whispering in his ear. Holding his hand. Making sweet, sweet love…”
„Enough!” Gortash interrupted the increasingly venomous pronouncement. “What is the matter with you?”
Then, after a moment of silence, where the Dark Urge stubbornly refused to speak, a new thought dawned on him.
“How do you know what Ravengard and I are up to?”
They lifted their head, a well-practiced display of pride and superiority, their gaze unwavering.
“What do you think?”
“You’re spying on me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t do it personally. But yes, I do keep an eye on you. Much like you have your Banites follow me every time I show my face on the surface.”
They stretched, their spine giving a soft crack — then splayed themselves in the chair like a monarch upon a throne.
“Though I have no idea how they manage it, always finding me so swiftly. Credit where it’s due, my dear friend.”
Gortash chose to ignore the barb. They both knew the trust between them had its limits, and those limits extended only as far as their gods allowed.
“That much I do know,” he began, his voice firm. “Yet I fail to see why would you choose to track such intimate affairs of mine, my dearest ally.”
At that, the Dark Urge merely shrugged. “I want to know all that may be of interest to our cause.”
“How, on Toril,” Gortash stared, exasperation and outrage barely contained, “would how I fuck be important to our cause?”
Again, nothing in their expression changed. Not a twitch. Not a hint of movement.
“You never know.”
Gortash had had enough. At the end of his wits, he was, for once, conciliatory. He did not wish to further antagonize his ally, and if he was honest with himself — the sole person who came anywhere near the definition of a friend.
“Let’s get back to today’s agenda,” he tried, an olive branch amidst the chaos the Dark Urge occasionally carried — when their moods, and perhaps their urges, made them prickly.
Nothing.
Not a look. Not even a shrug. No sign they’d heard him.
They seemed to return to their task of violating the privacy of his correspondence.
If it was like that, so be it.
“Get out,” Gortash’s voice was calm, yet carried the air of authority that made people listen, made them obey.
But not the Dark Urge.
They merely yawned.
Then shifted, reaching for a cup of tea left on the desk, long cold. His tea. And this was another insolence. Perhaps even disrespect.
“Would you like to have anything else? Perhaps my dinner? A fresh shirt out of my closet? My journal even? Be my guest.” He could not help and did not try to stop the acid in his voice.
“If you are offering.” The Dark Urge’s smile was malicious and oh-so-familiar, in a way that perhaps would have stifled his temper on any other occasion. Not today.
“I’m not, stop being difficult!” Gortash stepped forward, his hands landing flat on the desk as he leaned in towards his ally. “Tell me what’s wrong with you today or shut up — I don’t care. Otherwise, take your leave.”
They rose slowly, and for one fleeting moment Gortash allowed himself to believe, naively, that they would finally make their departure. Perhaps nothing of use would be accomplished tonight but at least he’d be spared indulging the Dark Urge’s vicious, petulant moods.
That is, until cold fear curled up his spine and crept over his skin, raising the hairs and tracing its path in goosebumps. The little shit was using his divine, Bhaal-given powers in their petty argument. A low blow, and one even Gortash himself, a man not known for playing fair, would consider beneath him.
Thus, he offered a quick prayer to Bane, asking leniency for the misuse of the unholy blessing, and did the only reasonable thing left to him in this situation: he summoned his own aura of tyranny. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as the Dark Urge winced, a telltale sign of their struggle against the invisible collar of terror.
That is how the two of them stood for a moment, then two, then three. Their breaths grew heavy with the strain of wrestling against the other’s divine aspect. Eyes locked, neither of them willing to be the first to back down.
“Do you have to ruin every perfectly pleasant evening?” the Dark Urge accused, jaw tight with exertion.
Gortash would have opened his mouth to voice his indignation, if not for the careful balance he was forced to maintain to avoid succumbing to that murderous aura.
“I’ve ruined the evening? That’s rich,” he muttered at last, his hands gripping the edge of the desk until his knuckles whitened.
Their expression said, Who else?, as they tried to shrug and failed, the effort trembling through their shoulders. Under different circumstances, he might have laughed.
Instead, Gortash have felt every treacherous shake of his own body, muscles tense, threatening to give up. Sweat dripped slowly down his spine, gathered at the hollow of his throat, threatened to slip down his brow.
Their eyes were locked all along and he did not know whether the heat came from the clash of their divine auras or from the way they stood so close, intertwined in something that felt far too intent to be called an argument.
In that moment, Gortash felt — no, he thought — that the Dark Urge might lean forward only a little more… and then what? He was hallucinating, indulging thoughts beneath him, beneath whatever lay between them. It would not do to jeopardise their alliance, that extraordinary meeting of minds and potential, by imagining something so base.
The Dark Urge would not step closer and plant their lips on his — as if that were even within the realm of possibility. Wyll Ravengard and his childish notions were clearly rubbing off on Gortash, and that would not do at all.
“Truce?” he said at last, desperate to stop his overtaxed mind from conjuring scenarios better left unimagined, never revisited.
The Dark Urge stilled at his word, as though caught mid-fall. The flicker of their gaze toward his mouth must have been a trick of the light. Or his mind deceiving him yet again.
“Truce,” they agreed, extending a hand. “On three?”
Gortash only nodded, clasping the extended hand.
They counted together. And when they reached the fateful “three,” their auras fell away in unison, dissolving into the quiet peace, and the lingering warmth of the late evening.
No work would be done that evening, too much has passed between them leaving them drained, and yet neither of them seemed willing to part.
Gortash fell heavily into one of the armchairs by the window gesturing for the Dark Urge to take the one opposite. He rang for a fresh pot of tea to be brought for them to share.
Later, over the steam curling from his cup, he studied the Dark Urge’s tired figure with careful attention. Himself he could not have looked much better —likely worse, given that he was not sculpted from divine flesh.
His companion took a sip of the still-too-hot tea, then suddenly lifted their gaze to study him in return.
“Are we good now?” Gortash asked. He had no desire to revisit the subject that had caused such upheaval; he merely sought confirmation of the current state of their working relationship.
The Dark Urge hummed in agreement.
“Why do you even bother with the Grand Duke’s sorry puppy?” they asked suddenly. They feigned indifference, their gaze drifting toward the garden, gilded by the setting sun.
“And why did you decide to read my private letters out loud?” Gortash shrugged, unbothered. “We all have our petty little amusements.”
“Oh, I see. And staging a breathless romance operetta with the boy is yours? Or is he some prodigy between the sheets?” Their gaze flicked over him. “Forgive me. I’m simply fascinated. One rarely sees a man of your supposed gravity squander his time on something so exquisitely absurd.”
“That is what bothers you? How I choose to spend my free time?”
“It’s distracting,” the Dark Urge replied. “If it affects our work, then yes. It most certainly does.”
Is it only work, though? Gortash wondered, then promptly scolded himself. He could, of course, see the appeal of attributing his ally’s actions to jealousy, but the thought struck too close to certain ideas — and perhaps hopes — that he would much prefer to keep buried.
“It does not,” came the matter-of-fact reply.
“Fine.” The Dark Urge reached to refill their cup, keeping their face carefully blank.
“Fine,” he agreed. The silence that followed was newly uncomfortable, charged with a tension that hadn’t been there before.
“I wonder, though…” Gortash began, gesturing vaguely toward his desk. “What was it that brought you here early in the first place?”
At that, the Dark Urge finally stirred, a tremble in their hands that would have been imperceptible to anyone else — not as attuned as Gortash, nor as familiar with them as he was.
“Found myself in the area.”
At that, Gortash finally felt the tables turning. He leaned back, crossing one leg over the other, a picture of ease.
“In the area,” he repeated. “Truly?”
“What? A respectable Bhaalspawn isn’t allowed to enjoy the more affluent areas? I have business all over the city, and not all of it has anything to do with you.”
“No, of course. You’re a very busy individual. Which is precisely why it seemed odd for you to waste time waiting on me, reading my mail…”
“I made sure to set aside time to dedicate towards fostering the strength of our alliance.” The Dark Urge looked up, as if in challenge. “Which you, so unwisely, decided to disregard and made it all about yourself. But I am anything but generous, hence you are forgiven. For the sake of our future fruitful cooperation, of course.”
Gortash merely smiled, sure of his own victory in the encounter.
“Likewise, my friend. You too are forgiven for prying into my most personal and intimate affairs — matters that should be of no interest to you. Perhaps, if you are so curious, I can share a few tales and sate your concerns.” He paused, letting the weight of his words hang in the air. “For the sake of our future… mutually advantageous cooperation.”
“I know everything I wish to know.”
“And yet, you pry into my business.”
“Out of caution, not personal interest.”
“Is that so?” Gortash raised his eyebrows, his face a picture of innocence.
A moment of silence, uncomfortable in the most bizarre way.
“Yes,” said the Dark Urge firmly, finally breaking the silence. “Unless you’re dying to share how you impress that poor virgin with your… unique skills -- to bolster your already oversized ego. Or are you compensating for something else entirely?”
Your mother, Gortash nearly said, but held his tongue. Even he had limits. Not to mention class.
“Oh, for the tragic lack of godhood, if anything,” he replied instead. “Which is why we should get to work, as soon as possible, to correct that oversight.”
At that, the smile tugged at the Dark Urge’s mouth — barely, reluctantly, just the smallest twitch of the corners of their mouth. “You are impossible.”
“That’s why you like me,” Gortash smiled, widely and honestly.
“Perhaps I do,” the Dark Urge muttered, just loud enough.
Gortash heard it. Of course he did.
Grinning, he reached over to pat their knee. The gesture earned him a sharp but good-natured swat.
“Behave,” they warned.
They were fine, once more. Of course they were. They always were, in the end.