Chapter Text
BALDUR’S GATE, 1472 DR. It took approximately 64 hours and 49 minutes of sailing through the rough waters of the Sea of Swords to reach Baldur’s Gate from Waterdeep. And it would have taken a lot longer if Selferavin hadn’t cast a spell to guide the ship into gliding through the waters faster.
It did not go without risk, of course—an accomplished mage Selferavin may be but she did not have the instincts of a seasoned sailor nor did she know anything about seafaring, like how and when sails are furled so as not to be at the complete mercy of the unpredictable tailwinds and choppy waves or where the waters run shallow along the rocky coast. With a single look at the sea captain Selferavin had surmised that she was an ill-tempered woman who would not allow any interference with the commanding of her own vessel. For all she knew she could be thrown overboard over the slight possibility of running the ship aground yet she still took upon the chance, preemptively forgiving herself for the rare moment of utter recklessness.
With a great stroke of luck, the skies were blue and barren of clouds and the seas were an unusual calm throughout the voyage, though the serene weather did not do much to quell her anxieties. These were good days for sailing for there were no tempests brewing ahead, by a deckhand she was told this much, yet she could not help but feel as though she were in an eye of the storm, waiting for her to put her guard down only to be swept away by the cruel indifference of the winds of fate. The calm, to her, was almost foreboding.
Selferavin was usually meticulous and fussy about matters concerning her safety and comfort, and with most things for that matter. She would have booked the finest watercraft with proper solo cabins and a pleasant captain, and not this stinking, leaking hunk of wood they call a ship if she wasn't already hassled and in a hurry.
As a professor regarded in high esteem within the Blackstaff Academy, she's with the privilege of using the teleportation doors of the hallowed wizard tower. She could have skipped the journey altogether if she hadn't had a heated argument with the portalmaster in the middle of the academy's dining hall just a few days prior. An embarrassing spectacle it was for the two senior mages and a greatly amusing one for all the students who watched in curiosity, and she had no desire to embarrass herself further by asking that same person for a favor—her pride would never allow her to. With thinning patience, she passed her leave of absence letter and boarded the first ship heading for Baldur's Gate.
Selferavin leaned her hip on the bulwark as she watched the ship dock on the Gray Harbor. The biting wind of the dawn slowly coming to pass carried the distant yet familiar smell of the Lower City with it, of fish and salt and smoke distinct from that of Waterdeep, one which greeted her like an unwelcoming old friend. For but a heartbeat Selferavin had half a mind to demand the captain to turn the ship around and sail away—to anywhere but this place—but it would have been foolish. She did not believe herself to be craven, someone who cannot look into the eyes of the past if it stood right before her.
Before disembarking, she said a quick prayer of gratitude to the ever temperamental sea goddess Umberlee for not throwing a hissy fit and pushing the ship off course. She almost threw one herself at evenfeast two evenings ago when a couple of rowdy passengers accidentally knocked her dinner plate off the table and spilled ale on her dress. Her indignation manifested itself as a flicker of lightning that surged through her fingertips but she clenched her fists and reined the magic in, deciding not to bother with the task of putting those drunkards in their place. She was in no hurry to put herself into the forefront of another spectacle. Besides, there were more important matters that lay ahead of her: the gruesome death of her uncle for one.
Stepping on the wooden, nearly rotten docks of the harbor, she raised the hood of her cloak over her head and started her ascent toward the steep slopes of the city proper, although with difficulty. She had nearly forgotten how slick the cobbled paths could be, that and the general wetness and fog that hung in the streets before the warmth of the day stole it away. With the dizzying rush that came after reading her father's letter about the news of her uncle's death and how it came about, she had neglected to bring appropriate footwear. Only the gods knew whatever else she came unprepared for.
A young porter rushed towards her, a boy no older than fourteen, she noted, the same age she was when she first left home. After they exchanged lukewarm greetings, the boy took her lone suitcase with one hand while he held a candled lantern with the other. The boy walked with his head fixed to the front and his footsteps were firm and steady against the damp and dimly lit city streets, seemingly knowing which puddle or uneven crack in the path to step over and avoid without averting his gaze from what's ahead of him.
Selferavin wondered if she ever strode along these streets with the same quiet confidence in her early youth as this porter boy did, or did she fumble and trip over her own feet, awkward with her own growing limbs, uncertain of what lurked on the next turn of the alley. She shook her head and pushed these questions away from her mind, loath to know what her musings might bring once she falls into reverie tonight.
The boy escorted her up unto the gate of the Upper City that opened towards the Temples District and The Wide, the actual Baldur's Gate in which the city was named after. She tipped him generously for staying wordless throughout the entire walk. Much was already in her mind and she was grateful for a moment of quietude even though it did not do much to soothe her frayed nerves.
By the time she reached The Wide, the sun was already peeking above the horizon, painting the old walls of the city with a slight tinge of yellow with the brush of its light. Artisans and shopkeepers, Baldurian locals and outsiders alike, quickly flooded the city's dedicated marketplace, busily setting up their shops for the day.
As she walked by the famed Beloved Ranger statue of the plaza, a disgruntled perfumer nearby was arguing with the bailiff about how their stall assignment put them too close to a vendor selling spiced roast meat while a servant of a supposedly wealthy patriar, either unaware or indifferent to the squabble happening next to him, haggled for goods from a merchant still yet to open up shop.
Although there were no usual faces she could make out amongst the crowd, the noise, the bustle, and the aroma that wafted throughout The Wide managed to paint a scene straight out of her childhood. There was an irony there, how her hometown, unbelonging and no longer familiar to her, had not changed.
Oh, how wondrous yet heartrending it was for things to have continued on without her in it.
Suddenly blanketed by the weight of her journey, Selferavin stood there, her worn feet rooted firmly on the stone of the ground, taking in the sights of old and new all the while people drifted by her like ghosts in the wind. As if she were the ghost.
In here she's no one. She's almost home now.
Home. It sounded weird coming out of her mouth. Strictly speaking, Waterdeep had been her home for the past eighty-nine years. After getting accepted as a student in the Blackstaff Academy at the tender age of fourteen, she hardly had the time to go back, or rather, made enough time to go back to Baldur's Gate. As someone of elven descent, she had an abundance of it. Her serious dedication for the art of divination magic was nothing short of commendable, the master of the Blackstaff told her this himself, but at some point it had became an excuse to keep away from the truths of her own life.
Nigh on nine decades: to most humans it's a whole lifetime and more. To the elven mage, it's but another nine decades of the next couple of centuries to come, if the Call of Arvandor remains a whisper in her later years or if she does not perish in the same manner her uncle did, that is.
With bated breath, Selferavin beheld her family's old townhouse before pushing towards the wrought iron gate of her past. She went straight to the door but her keen eyes had not failed to notice how the once diligently cared for elderberries and widow's blossoms by the porch were wilting and needed more than a little tending—they had to be repotted and pruned—but there were matters of relevance to be attended to, she reminded herself, and mere trifles such as dying plants were not among them.
Her father Veremar was a diligent man, that fact cannot be discounted, but a grieving man he also was. The funeral ceremony was set tonight and the preparations must continue. Elven funerals were within her mother's expertise as a priestess of Sehanine Moonbow but with her out of the picture, they were left to hold a regular funeral for her uncle Caelthar. With that Selferavin must help but once it was over she'd hasten herself towards another ship sailing back to Waterdeep—that or seek the fabled master of Ramazith's Tower, another unfortunate peer of hers, to assist her with teleportation.
She slotted a rusty old key into the keyhole, one which she had locked away in a dusty chest of personal mementos having last used it a decade or two ago. She had learned not to count the years, not that knowing it would ever assuage her guilt for never visiting home. As she pushed the heavy wooden door open and walked inside, there was nothing but the stuffy air and a faint lingering smell of iron that welcomed her. It was dead quiet, and only the muffled sounds of the hustle and bustle outside betrayed that silence. She half expected to be greeted by the soft tune that wafted about the house in her memories, a tune his father used to play for her mother in the pianoforte, but that would have been odd, not after what happened, not with what was still happening in the foreground of their life.
The house looked nothing like in her memories. What used to be cream wallpaper that colored the walls were now a deep green and the old furnishings had been replaced although they did not look all that new either. Even the painting that hung on the wall by the stairway was different. She would have thought she entered the wrong house if it were not for the antique floor mirror that always welcomed every guest who entered the foyer.
Selferavin detested this mirror. Whenever she left or entered the house as a child, she'd catch a glimpse of herself and she detested it, not just the mirror itself but her own distorted reflection upon it, how it seemed to exaggerate how long her limbs were and how broader her shoulders were getting—how boyish her body had been becoming. The looking glass whispered things she did not believe to be true; what it had shown her was incongruent to how she felt within.
Despite the brief drop in her stomach, Selferavin now looked at the mirror with indifferent eyes. She smoothed out her long, crimson red hair which was dishelved by the winds of journey, dabbed the grime that had clung to the sweat on her forehead with a handkerchief, and took the cerulean wool cloak off her shoulders. She'd need to prepare herself a bath to feel truly presentable but it would do for now. It was her family she's meeting for the first time in years, what were they to say about it?
Upstairs she went. Keeping her steps as light as possible, she carefully skipped over the lifted areas of the floorboard that she knew creaked. Somehow it felt like a small relief for her to at least remember one insignificant but intimate thing about the house and for it to have stayed that way, even if it were only the noise the floor made when met with her footsteps.
As she walked the hallway towards her chambers she sensed something shift behind her. With the attempt to find the sinister shadow that that sent a sudden chill across her spine, her eyes met the room cordoned off by rope at the other end of the hall. It was her cousin Seilvrae's room. One need not be a genius to surmise that it was where the incident happened. A tickle of curiosity enticed her to look around but she immediately brushed off the thought. She was a wizard, not a detective, and her specialty most definitely did not involve scenes of murder.
Not indulging her curiosity, she spun back around and slipped into her bedchamber. It used to be her aunt Ayaeqlarune's. Selferavin did not have the bedchamber for herself for long either because she left for Waterdeep soon after her aunt did, and although she rarely visited, her family always had the room prepared for her on the off chance she missed home. On the foot of her bed she dropped her singular suitcase—despite her proclivity to bring too many things with her during her travels it was all she deemed necessary for this short trip home. She did not bother with hanging her garments inside the empty wardrobe, wrinkles on clothing were nothing a simple practical spell could not fix anyway, but she set her writing utensils on the hardwood desk by the window.
She paced the room while looking out onto the busy street beneath the window every now and then. It took her a while to contemplate on what to do next; she was certain that if she tried to lay down she would still not be able to rest even though her three day journey on the high seas took a toll on her physically, not when the thoughts dredged up by the waves of old memories roiled around her head without any outlet.
Selferavin could have went to her father's study and be done with what needed to be done—it was like him to already be awake while most of the city were still blanketed warmly in their beds, perhaps he had not even had the chance to rest, the poor man, but she ultimately decided to check on her twin brother. It was beyond doubt that he'd still be all up in the throes of shock and terror, after all, he was an unfortunate witness to the murder of their uncle by the hands of his own daughter. The details were vague and hazy since the letter her father sent her were clearly written in haste but it was enough to paint the picture.
Many a time her family wrote her letters: ramblings of what the days had brought them and nagging questions of how she had been, at the end always beckoning her to come home and visit but most of it were ignored by her—the letters were either stuck unread on a pile in random corners of her study or thrown into the hearth, words of affection and mundane minutiae reduced to heartless embers by the fire. But something about that particular letter stood out, not that there was anything special about how it looked nor did it have a touch of magic in it yet there was a certain pull to it that made her set her research and unfinished lesson plans aside to read what it contained.
She did not know what to make of it. She was never close to her uncle Caelthar nor to his drow elf daughter Seilvrae and thus had no idea of what could have transpired between them for things to end as violently as it did. It was her twin brother who knew them better; one could even say that Seilvrae acted more like a sister to him than she ever did. And that was where it hit the most: Selferavin did not know much of her cousin but she understood what the drow meant to him. With Seilvrae's sudden murdering and vanishing act, she could not even begin to imagine how much betrayal now grew aching within Solhelon's heart.
No, not Solhelon, Veil—the name her brother had chosen for himself on his hundredth nameday. It had been a long tradition for elves to shed the names given to them at birth and choose for themselves a name that they feel suit their character better in adulthood. Even as elves born and raised away from the native lands of their brethren, it was a tradition they chose to uphold nonetheless.
Selferavin did wish to celebrate their hundredth nameday together, her and her twin brother's, but the one time she had actually planned to go back home she was withheld by her duties as a diviner of Mystra. If the Lady of Mysteries herself demanded her to stay, who was she to defy that which was ordained by fate? It was the will of the gods, she had convinced herself as she swirled the feywine in her crystal goblet, staring at her twisted reflection upon it, and then bit into a piece of honeycake, alone in her corner of the Blackstaff Tower.
Selferavin stood in front of the door across her bedchamber, her fist raised with the intention to knock. "Veil?" She spoke instead, softly but loud enough to wake him if he was in reverie. He had always been a light trancer.
A deep, muffled voice spoke to her in return, "Come in." Her hands trembled ever so slightly as she twisted the doorknob open and leapt from the precipice that separated her and her brother.
His room was bathed in a solemn, cool light, away from the sun that was rising on other side of his corner of the house. It was their shared childhood bedroom back when they lived in a full house. Selferavin nearly expected it to be messy and filled with boyish trinkets just as it had before but, of course, it was nothing like it was back then anymore. It was cluttered, yes, mostly with numerous artisan's tools and supplies she hardly knew the proper names of, but it was within its own designated spots. The true mess she noted of were most likely that of the evidence of the sorrows from the past few days. Everything seemed to be in place aside from the growing pile of worn clothes on the edge of the bed and the scarcely-touched dinner plate and cups on the nightstand.
"You're finally here," Veil said in a low voice, "and you're late." He sounded exhausted and his voice cracked from unuse yet there was that familiar and unmistakable cheekiness to it. Despite it all he still had the nerve to nag at her and it almost felt like a relief. She wanted to spit out a sharp retort, a complaint about how rough her voyage had been for the past three days and the inconveniences that lead up to it, to continue upon the thread of banter he so considerately offered but after seeing the pitiful state he was in, up this close, the words were stolen right out of her and tossed out the window.
She moved closer, slowly as if afraid to disturb the fragile gravity that held them down the room, and saw not just the pain that contorted his face but marked upon his body as well. On the bed he laid on his back, the sleeves of his white nightshirt barely hiding the bloodstained bandages wrapped around his hand and wrists.
"Father seems to have forgotten to tell me you were hurt as well," she said, her voice laced with concern and confusion. Veremar would have included in his letter that Veil was caught in the altercation as well but she soon realized that there was little logic to be found in the storm her family had found themselves in. Perhaps he did not forget and only wanted for her to not worry too much. Perhaps he preferred to tell her in person. For now she could only guess.
"Well, no, I-" he stumbled over his words and adjusted his sleeves. He wanted to tell her that most of his wounds were not inflicted the way she thought they were but found the explanation caught in his throat. He looked into his sister's concerned eyes, finding within them a reason to be truthful. It was not that he had no trust in her but she had the tendency to not be dissuaded once she set her mind to things, and betraying Seilvrae was the last thing he wanted. Between the two of them there was an implicit promise and he was nothing if not a man who honored his word.
"Have you talked to him and Anifirith yet?" he digressed. He shifted his body, now lying on his side.
Selferavin saw him more clearly now: his swollen, bloodshot eyes and the evidence of tears on his flushed and hollowed cheeks. She leaned on the bedpost and wrapped an arm around it. "No, I wanted to check in on you first," she replied, conveniently ignoring the mention of their father's new wife.
"A picture of concern, aren't you now?" He teasingly raised an eyebrow.
She sighed and rolled her eyes, more surprised at his continuous attempts at humor than annoyed. "Don't make me regret coming here."
A virtually imperceptible easiness appeared on his face for a moment which did not escape Selferavin. She sat on the far end of his bed. "Do you regularly change your bandages? It looks like it needs to be changed," she asked.
"Father did come last night to change them but he thought I was in reverie and chose not to wake me. I kept telling him I could do it on my own but he's always checking even though it's difficult for him to go up and down the stairs," he replied.
"And did you?"
He couldn't. He did not have the will to. Veil spent the entirety of last night staring at the carved ceiling of his bedroom, vividly reliving the sheer horror of his uncle bleeding to death right before his very eyes. He saw himself looking at Seilvrae's tight-knuckled grip with the dagger that slashed Caelthar's throat and the amount of blood that gushed out of it. When he heard his father's footsteps coming up the stairs, he pretended to be trancing. And when he closed his eyes, begging to be spared of the vision, he heard his uncle's final words resounding in his head: "The dark urge," he said before he gurgled and choked on his own blood.
Selferavin took his silent, vacant stare as a no and hurriedly paced across the room, looking into his cabinet drawers to find ointment and clean bandages. The close distance slightly overwhelmed her.
"It's here." Veil broke himself from the horrific daze and sat on the edge of the bed to open the drawers of his nightstand. Of course, she thought and shrugged her shoulders.
Selferavin seated herself beside him quietly and rolled up his sleeves to treat his wounds. Her show of care was strange in the way she went about it, usually her concern was mired in barbs, but he did not have it in him to point it out. It was a rare comfort to have his sister back and he'd rather not make the mistake of pushing her away. At this moment, he needed her most of all.
"Have you slept at all? Tranced?" she asked. If she squinted, Veil would almost seem like a child again, all disheveled and bruised.
Despite being the younger twin, Selferavin had always taken it upon herself to be the responsible one, contrasting Veil's more carefree attitude. When they were children, it was Selferavin who woke him up early for their tutoring lessons at their mother's ancestral house in Manorborn. It annoyed her to no end whenever he struggled and protested "Five more minutes!" while she wrestled him out of bed. Every so often, it turned into actual physical fights with him tightly gripping the blanket closer to him while she yanked it away and then he'd kick her and she'd hit him back. “This is why you’re stupid! If you forgo any more lessons, you will be nothing! You hear that? Nothing!” She had never been one to mince her words—outspoken and tactless, that was the Selferavin everyone knew. In the end, Veil gave up and did her bidding, and the victory made her feel good. As a child, she felt as if she achieved something impossible, like she had just moved mountains.
But today, he put up no fight. He sat beside her with shoulders laden with sorrow, tight-lipped, and did not do so much as flinch when she dabbed astringent on his wounds.
Veil briefly glanced her way and replied, "No, no I haven't. Not at all." His voice came out of his throat cracked and defeated as he stared out the half-open window. The sun has fully risen and its indifference burned. It cared not if the situation called for heavy rain.
'You look horrible, pale and beaten. It is as if you were the one who died,' she thought to herself. She almost laughed. For some twisted reason, she felt vindicated for leaving this house that killed the people who lived in it long before they truly died. If she had stayed, what would have been made of her?
She dared not continue this line of thought—the woman she had become was everything she wanted and more. And yet, there was a persistent ache that never went away.
Selferavin bit her tongue. Caring for another's sensibilities had never been a priority of hers but just this once, as she beheld what seemed like the shell of her twin brother, she kept it in.
She finished wrapping the bandages on his arms and now had nothing to do with her hands. She smoothed out the skirt of her dress while he stretched his stiffened-up fingers. The dead silence that enveloped the bedchamber was unsettling, it was as if they had forgotten how to be around each other. They—who were two halves of a whole. They—who were never meant to be separated.
With the complications of the elven cycle of life and death, twins were a rarity among the elven people. It was an immense blessing from the Seldarine to be trusted with the care and guidance of two children at once and the separation of elven twins spoke of great misfortune for not even the forces of life and death kept their entwined souls apart. A risk their parents had accounted for and took anyway.
Although they never had similar interests or hobbies as children, the two of them used to be inseparable. While Veil sloppily painted the hawthorn tree that stood in their back garden, Selferavin laid under its shade reciting spells in her head. Whenever Veil was tasked to do errands in behalf of the artisans' guild their family had long been a part of, Selferavin trotted along behind him but not without complaints about how she could have used the time to practice scribing instead. He'd then remind her it was she who insisted on coming along. They had all their meals together and when they did not, they scarcely had the interest to touch their food. After whole days of loud, tearful arguments and tussling, they crawled onto bed whispering hushed apologies and hugged each other to sleep.
Now they sat on the same bed as strangers bearing the same face.
"Thank you," he said and paused awkwardly, grasping at words so as not to show his gratitude in such a dry manner. "You do it better than father. He wraps it so tightly sometimes that it numbs my fingers. It is a great blessing that you did not inherit his indelicate hands."
"Stop it with your flattery. You and I both know he's the gentlest man on this side of the Coast." She snorted and looked him up and down.
"Not with this." He twirled a wrist around. The jest earned him a laugh from his sister and with it a smile from him. A small gesture as it was, it meant a lot in this world that only seemed to hurl at them one obstacle after another.
Silence dared to take over them once more but Veil did not give it so much as a chance. He shook his shoulders in an attempt to shake off his weariness and gave her another thin smile though it did not quite reach his eyes this time. "I should get prepared. Long day ahead, isn't it?"
He walked towards the wardrobe where his funeral garb hung but before he opened it he faced her and spoke again. "It's lovely seeing you again after so long, Sel. I only wish the circumstances were different."
"Me too," was all she could muster as a reply. Once he turned his back again, she blinked away the tears that gathered on her eyelids and swallowed the lump in her throat that had been holding her together the entire time.