#that note you can pull from Ketheric killed me

[a2zillustration]

We made it to the end of Act 2! Is it really a d&d campaign if someone isn't having an emotional breakdown in the middle of a group hug?

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[its-luna-noel]

your obstinate charge | astarion ancunin

Astarion has never been allowed to say 'no' before. When he does, he realizes who he wants to say 'yes' to. You realize that he could kill you here, right now, in any number of ways. He could slit your throat, drive a dagger beneath your ribs & pierce your heart, bleed you dry until you're nothing but a memory upon this land. You realize this, and yet your body relaxes in his hands. You trust him completely.

warnings: 18+, MDNI, afab reader but any pronouns, durge reader, act 2 spoilers, previous abuse, smut, oral (f! & m! receiving), blood drinking

word count: 5.3k

masterlist | link to ao3

notes: hello! i wrote this last year and posted on ao3, and i wasn't going to cross post since my blog is mostly jjk, but i reread it and was really proud of it, so here it is on tumblr! ty for reading & hope you enjoy!

Everyone at camp can see that Astarion is in a foul mood.

You arrived back at Last Light after your first journey to Moonrise Towers, finally having arrived at your end goal to destroy these tadpoles, and before you could all share your discoveries with the rest of the party, Astarion strode off towards the waterline, ducking into darkness before you could grab him.

You stare after him for a moment and shake your head. Then you turn towards the fire, folding your legs under you as you ready yourself for dinner.

Gale passes you a wooden bowl of the same stew you'd been eating since arriving in the Shadow-Cursed Lands. "How did it go?" he asks.

You shake your head again, shoving food in your mouth, and lift your shoulder in a shrug. "We found Ketheric," you explain, offering the memory of your meeting to Gale through your tadpoles. He grimaces as you share the images of Ketheric pulling the axe from his chest. You withdraw your mind from his and continue to eat. "We've convinced them that we're True Souls, for now. We'll see where it takes us."

Gale begins to speak over his own meal, airing his many ideas to the party as the others gathered around the fire. But your thoughts drift, and you aren’t even lucid enough to feel guilty for ignoring him; all you can think of was how you know Ketheric was somehow involved in your previous life, that life you can't remember. Determination begins to burn deep in your chest; you must find out what this all means.

Before you can try to sort out your disordered thoughts, Karlach plops down beside you, the heat of her warming you on all sides as she digs into her stew.

"Hey," she says through a mouth full of food, "what's wrong with Fangs?"

You shrug, pulling apart your warm roll of bread. "How am I supposed to know?"

"'Cause you're all cozy with him, or whatever." She looks at you, her bright eyes keen and knowing. "Whatever happened today, you know what must be bothering him. Maybe you should go check on him."

You almost laugh. "He doesn't want to see me," you tell her.

She gives you a stern look before returning to her meal. "Just think about it, soldier," is all she says.

You all finish your meal and talk about your plan for the next day before retiring to your own tents for the night. You change out of your armor and clean it, rubbing off stubborn stains of goblin blood. You try to lose yourself to sleep, but it does not take you, with your many worries for the next day. And, even though you don't want to, you can't help but think about what Karlach said.

"Maybe you should go check on him."

So, unable to sleep, and unable to think of anything else to do, you leave your tent and make your way towards Astarion's.

You walk over, the chill of the night making you shiver. You almost hope to find the tent closed up for the night, to find him already trancing for the night, but the entrance is still tied open. You peek inside, expecting to find your companion reclined and reading a book by candle light; you try to prepare yourself for whatever sly flirtation he has for you.

Instead, you find the tent empty.

You frown; you know that Astarion hasn't been able to find suitable prey since you'd arrived in the cursed lands, so you can't imagine that he's out prowling. You stand there for a moment, at a loss and trying to decide whether or not to just go to bed. But you sigh, as whatever blackened heart inside you pushes you forward.

You, thanking your lucky stars that he wasn't trying to hide when he skulked away, follow Astarion's tracks down towards the river.

—

You find him propped up on his elbows across the river, staring out across the water. You don't bother to try and hide your footsteps; you simply cross the river, taking care not to lose your footing on the loose stones along the way.

"Come to collect your obstinate charge?" Astarion sneers without looking at you as you approach.

You sit beside him, tucking your knees against your chest. You try to keep your dirty shoes off his cloak that he spread out on the ground beneath him.

Those words are familiar enough; that dreadful Drow called him that to your face when she asked for him to bite her. "She really got to you, huh?" you ask, resting your cheek on one knee as you turn to look at him.

He's still in his armor from the day, and he'd found a bottle of wine somewhere in the crates surrounding Last Light on his journey over. It's something cheap, something you're sure he finds repulsive, even as he drinks. He stares across the river towards the inn, and he's silent for so long you resign yourself to the fact that he's ignoring you. Then, as you're deciding if you should just leave him to his thoughts, he shakes his head and says, "I can't get it out of my head. The way she leered at me."

You watch him, waiting for him to speak. He swirls the bottle of wine and takes a drink, then grimaces at the taste and lets the bottle hang loosely from his fingers. He doesn't look at you as he thinks.

Eventually, he sighs, the sound light and airy. "I was being too precious, wasn't I?" You can tell he's trying to convince himself, to talk himself back into some dark line of thinking he'd grown accustomed since being turned. "We could have used her potion. A moment of unpleasantry doesn't matter if there's a fine reward. I should have just gritted my teeth as always and let her have me for a bit."

You feel your heart sink at his words. "Astarion," you whisper, unsure of what to say next.

He barks out a laugh, a short, derisive sound. "Oh, darling, I don't need your pity." He throws the bottle of wine towards the water, and the glass shatters against the river bank. Wine starts to spill into the river, spreading like blood.

You shake your head, confused by how quickly his mood shifts. You struggle to keep up. "Astarion, I don't pity you," you tell him. You turn to face him properly, to take this conversation seriously. He still doesn't look at you. "But you have the right to say 'no.' You don't belong to anyone anymore."

At those words, he shifts his gaze from the waterline to finally examine you. His eyes are narrow, the expression behind them inscrutable. "You really believe that, don't you?" He laughs again, but he's not amused. His voice is bitter as he continues, "Yes, well, I must admit, a part of me feels sick when I think about getting on my back for breadcrumbs again." He tilts his head, suddenly curious. "But you, you could have convinced me to take the deal. To just push through and get the potion, and we would've all just moved along with our lives. Why didn't you?"

"Didn't you hear me?" Your voice is slightly incredulous. "You said 'no,' and that's your right. I'm not here to force you to do anything." You, now, laugh without mirth. You know enough about not having a say in what you do, with your strange visitors haunting your every move.

Astarion is still watching you. He has to admit to himself, he doesn't understand you one bit. No one in this life or his last ever showed him any ounce of kindness; even the gods couldn't be bothered to look his way. But here you are, some insignificant wanderer with gore for brains and a strong propensity towards gruesome violence, sitting beside him and telling him he had a choice. "But you could've," he pushes, and he suddenly reaches forward, dragging aside your neckline to reveal bruised teeth marks from where he'd last fed. You stiffen slightly, caught off guard by his quick movements. "What have I done to deserve any of your grace? I deceived you, tried to hunt you in the night, have taken everything I could from you with no promises to give any of it back."

"Astarion," you whisper, and for the first time, you think you are finally seeing him. "What makes you think you have to earn it?"

And that, finally, is what breaks him.

He rises up on his knees and takes your face in his hands, and there's a frenzy there, a desperation that makes you tense. You think he might shake you so hard your ruined brain will rattle around in your skull, and you watch the thought form behind his eyes. You realize that he could kill you here, right now, in any number of ways. He could slit your throat, drive a dagger beneath your ribs & pierce your heart, bleed you dry until you're nothing but a memory upon this land.

You realize this, and yet your body relaxes in his hands.

You trust him completely.

The look in his eyes is suddenly wild, confused, exasperated. Of all the prey he's ever hunted before, why did you have to be the one he showed the monster to? Anyone else would've run; you should've, too. Yet here you sit, on this riverbank beside him, looking into his blood-red eyes because he's led you right where he wanted you. Surely you aren't too stupid to see that.

Yet here you are, staring at him with those big, trusting eyes as he holds your life in his hands.

There must be something wrong with you, he decides then. Beyond the parasite in your head, and beyond the spells of very bloody memory loss; there is something fundamentally, elementally, seriously wrong with you. It's the only way he can explain to himself why you're still sitting here, prey in its predator's sight, unwavering & unafraid.

At that look in your eyes, that brave, corruptible expression, he leans closer. He says your name, and it's like the last prayer he'll ever speak. "Tell me what you want," he whispers, and he's almost begging.

You lean in, too, until the tip of your nose brushes the slope of his, and you breathe, "You."

And then he's kissing you, and you let out a small gasp, because you can't believe this beautiful elf has chosen you. He breathes you in, his hands still cupping your cheeks, and you thread your fingers into his silvery curls, beckoning him closer. One of his hands traces down your side, wrapping around your waist and holding you closer so you can feel the lines of him through your camp clothes. You gasp again, surprised by his unyielding grip, and his tongue slips between your parted lips, searching, exploring, tasting. You groan quietly, low in your throat, and his other hand traces from your cheek to your neck, fingers searching for the source of the sound. They find it, and they squeeze…

With his hand on your throat, feeling your pulse through the delicate skin, Astarion is nearly hypnotized.

He wishes that hunger deep in his belly would fade, would disappear and leave him to enjoy this, to lose himself in the moment like he hasn't in two hundred years. But it burns hot, and he can hear your heart beating strong in your chest, quickening as he moves against you, presses into you. It gnaws at him, spurned and getting harder to ignore, and you feel him bracing, beginning to pull away because he shouldn't do this to you— he can't—

You pull back from him, and he wonders how you could have possibly known his thoughts and braces for the impact of a stake in his heart—

Instead you tilt your chin and arch your back, and your hands in his hair lead him right to where he needs to be. His mouth brushes the pulse at your throat.

His vision flashes red; he can feel your blood thrumming against his lips, feel the seductive brush of each pulse against his mouth. He groans, and he wants to fight it, because gods he wishes things were different, but his lips part and his jaw opens, and he's biting into your throat.

A breath hisses from between your teeth at the sensation, at the ice traveling down your spine and chilling you to the bone. His mouth on you is unyielding as he cradles you in his hands, drinking you in in every way possible. Your eyes fall closed, and you begin to float, your thoughts becoming lighter than the clouds. You smile, because you can still feel him grasping at you, wanting you, needing you.

You trust him completely.

That hunger inside him pushes him to drink you dry, to tear your life from your hands until it burns in his chest instead. But he pries himself away from your throat, mouth dripping with scarlet and breath stuttering from between his lips. You can feel his chest heaving against you, can feel air fanning against your neck. You're still smiling.

"You," he gasps, easing you back down against the ground beneath you as he licks his teeth clean, "you ruin me." And then he kisses that smile on your mouth, and he's hovering over you, holding himself above you. It feels like a question.

When he pulls away, you open your eyes to see the stars painted over his shoulders. He looks predatory, like he's standing over the tattered remains of his latest hunt, but you see the softness in his expression, the vulnerability. He doesn't want to hurt you; he doesn't want this to be like all the other times, and he surely doesn't want this to be the first of its own terrible kind. He wants you, you realize. Not your blood, not your power, not your protection or your loyalty or your allegiance; he wants you.

You're ready to let him have you, if he'll take you.

"Astarion." You whisper his name, and he leans closer, his curls brushing your cheek. It tickles, and you giggle under your breath.

He tries not to stiffen at the sound. He forgets how soft you are sometimes, how gentle. It creates an air of innocence, though he watched you tear through goblins and cursed undead only hours before, and he knows without a doubt you can handle yourself. For a moment, he feels like the monster under the bed again.

But you touch his face, so very gently, and kiss him. Softly, sweetly, you call him back to you.

"I'm yours," you breathe, "if you'll have me."

And oh, it’s not even a question.

He’ll have you, he decides, pressing you back against the ground until rocks dig into your shoulders. He’ll take whatever you will give him, and when you’ve had enough, he will probably still be on his knees before you, begging for more.

Before that thought can scare him away, he trails his touch over your thin, casual clothes, grasping at the hem of your shirt. He pulls it over your head, leaving you naked from the waist up. He pulls back to look at you, to admire you, but you — suddenly cold and bashful — wrap your arms over your chest.

You hide from him, and he’s suddenly confused.

He examines the nervous look in your eyes, the way you're flushed in embarrassment and trying to hide beneath him, and all the little puzzle pieces suddenly click into place. This is new to you, he realizes. Maybe not truly and entirely; maybe you were taken to bed in whatever life you had before, but you don't remember that now. For you, with your absent memories and shattered persona, this was your first time.

It's suddenly all too much for him, and he shrinks away from you, leaning back into his heels. He holds his face in his hands, and he shakes his head ever so slightly, because it's too familiar a sight, to pin down bright innocence beneath his hips and drag it into the darkness. He wants to run away, to curse you for ever asking him to come to your camp and join your little band of misfits.

For a moment, he wishes he never met you; at least he wouldn't have to question every action he takes.

You prop yourself up on your elbows as he recedes from you, and very slowly and gently take one of his hands in yours. He's shaking, just barely, but your throat seems to close with a flood of emotion.

"Astarion," you whisper, and you gently pry his hand away from his face. His eyes are shut tightly, his lips twisted in a grimace. You bring his hand towards your lips, and you leave a kiss on his palm, feather light. "Astarion," you say again, "you don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Of course, you have to be the first person to say those words. The first person to encourage him to say no, when all he wants — for the first time in two hundred years — is to say yes.

For a moment, he’s bitter, and you can see the flash of frustration in his eyes when he finally opens them. But it’s gone in a moment, and he grins, flashing his teeth as he leans back in. “My dear,” he says, his silver tongue and honeyed words his only protection against the overwhelming confusion that’s threatening to settle over him, “I want this, trust me.”

He moves to catch your mouth with his, but you put your hand on his chest and stop him before he can. Your brows are creased, pulled together in concern.

The message is clear; you won’t let him use you to destroy himself.

His eyes flutter closed once more, and he breathes deeply, reminding himself where he is, who he is with. When he opens his eyes, they are gentle, softer than you’ve ever seen. You think, for a moment, maybe he has grown to trust you, too.

Slowly, without that same underlying malice, he leans in, close enough that his lips brush yours when he speaks. “I want this,” he repeats, his voice so quiet you can almost convince yourself you’ve imagined it. But then his mouth is on yours again, and he returns to his work removing your clothes.

His movements are slow, now, methodical. Like he’s trying to shake off decades of ghosts as he slides your pants down your thighs; maybe he is, you think. The fabric reaches your ankles, and you help him wriggle you free, and he tosses the clothing aside. Your underwear soon follow. Then, for one long, languorous moment, he looks at you, naked under the moonlight. Your mouth is red and sinful from kissing him, and the chilly breeze of the ever-present darkness raises goosebumps along your skin. Your nipples grow hard and pink, and you shiver. His gaze continues lower, to where you nervously squeeze your legs together in one last attempt at preserving your decency.

He wants to ruin you.

He brushes your thighs apart with one commanding swipe of his hand, and you shiver at the look in his eyes. Pupils blown wide with desire, he stares up at you through his lashes as he dips down, pressing open-mouthed kisses to the valley between your breasts. He settles his body between your legs, and he veers to one side and licks a line towards one nipple, catching it between his lips. The wind cools his saliva until you’re shivering, and you’re not sure if it’s the cold or the pleasure as your head tilts back, your body arching against the ground.

Astarion suddenly sucks, his cheeks hollowing slightly as he pulls at your nipple. You gasp, and he relishes in the sound, watching you bare your throat to him. He gazes up at you, admiring the sight, as his hand slips between your thighs.

Suddenly, you gasp when fingertips stroke against your core, revealing your glistening slick. Astarion groans, the mound of your breast still in his mouth. “All this talk,” he teases, reaching up and grabbing your jaw in one hand. With the other, he rocks his touch back just slightly, barely brushing against your clit. “You should be the one telling me how much you want it, desperate little thing.”

Your face burns at his words and his casual tone, but you can’t even argue with him before he sweeps his tongue into your mouth. He licks your teeth, and at the same time he presses two fingers inside you, and you let out a broken moan against his lips. You can feel his wolfish smile as he pulls back before pumping back inside you.

You can feel how wet you are, can feel it dripping down the inside of your thighs. He moves slowly, though, allowing the gentle stretch of his fingers as he kisses you. His thumb draws lazy little circles over your clit, and he catches each of your moans with his mouth, learning exactly what you like with a few strokes of his expert hands.

Then, just as your breathing starts to hitch and break, he pulls away, taking his hand from the wet heat between your legs.

The sound you make almost comes out as a whine, and Astarion laughs, watching you flush deep crimson. “Someone needs to mind their manners,” he chastises playfully, and then he lifts his fingers to his mouth and licks them clean, maintaining eye contact the entire time.

Your flush impossibly deepens, and you almost look away in embarrassment. But you can’t tear your eyes from the shameful scene, and you can tell that he knows how much it turns you on to see him like this. He grins again, and then he dips his head, disappearing between your thighs.

Before you can process his quick movements, you feel him lick molten heat up your core, and you throw your arms out to the sides, scrambling for purchase. You gasp his name, and you feel him chuckle more than you hear it.

”Yes, my dear?” he asks before running the flat of his tongue against your clit.

Your body stiffens, and your face lifts to the heavens. “Don’t stop,” is all you can muster.

And he doesn’t.

He eats you out until you’re shaking, falling apart under him. He presses his fingers back into you, three this time, and sucks on your clit while he strokes you from the inside. He stares up at you while he does it, watching you writhe in breathless, beautiful agony. One of your hands finds his hair, brushing through his curls with a touch that’s much too gentle for what you’re suffering at his hand.

You can feel your pleasure mounting, tightening like a coil deep in your belly while heat flames between your legs. Your moans are coming out in pants, now, barely intelligible noises that break against the riverbed. Your hand in his hair tightens, gripping for dear life and holding him there and pushing him away all in the same movement, and your back bows off the ground, your eyes nearly rolling back into your head as he pushes you higher and higher—

Then, like a band snapping, your orgasm rocks through you, and your vision goes black while your hips stutter and your core clenches and quivers.

Bliss washes over you, and you slowly come back to earth, and you find Astarion unbuckling his armor, nearly frantic in his movements.

”Astarion,” you croak, reaching for him.

He leans over you, kissing you, letting you taste yourself on his lips, his tongue. His hands tug feverishly at the buckles.

”Astarion,” you sound like you’re begging. “Astarion, please—“

He huffs playfully, still pushing off his leather armor one layer at a time. “What is it?” he asks, sparing one hand to stroke gently at your throat. “Do you need some attention? Aren’t you just obsessed—?”

”No,” you whine, finally rising up on your knees and reaching for his hands. “Let me— I want you to feel good.”

By now, his chest is bare, and he’s kicked off his boots. “Sweet thing, the thought of being inside you is driving me insane.” His leather pants slide down his thighs. “Do you want—?”

”Astarion,” you say again, your voice emphatic. You take his hand and bring it to your mouth, parting your lips against his fingers. “Please.”

Astarion freezes suddenly, staring at you with an expression of recognition. His eyes trail from yours down to your mouth, where his fingers sit. He can feel the heat of your breath, and he grows impossibly harder at the thought of what you’re asking.

It’s something he’s so rarely done since being turned. A pleasure he’s so rarely accepted.

Your lips brush his fingertips when you speak. “I want to make you feel good,” you whisper, and then you take two of his fingers in your mouth.

His stomach drops as he watches you, and his cock twitches at the sinful sight of your lips wrapped around his long pale fingers. You watch his pupils dilate, and his lips part slightly as you slide your tongue down, swirling gently. Your own desire pools in your belly, watching him watch you.

Please.

He nods, his breath starting to hitch slightly at the idea of filling that mouth. You smile, and you draw back until his fingers leave your mouth with a pop. Then you ease him back gently onto his elbows, picking up where he left off by dipping your fingers into the band of his underwear. You look up through your eyelashes, watching his chest heave up and down.

”Tell me to stop,” you say sternly, and he nods, understanding your meaning. So, having his confirmation, you continue.

You slide his last layer of clothing slowly down his strong thighs, watching every reaction your movements elicit. Watching for any sign of trepidation, of apprehension. But you only see desire, and one of his hands goes to your hair, knotting in your tresses. Encouraging you further.

You move your hands lower and lower, and your mouth begins to water as you follow the shaft of his cock. He’s gorgeous in every way, and when you finally reveal the pink head, glistening with precum, you have to hold yourself back from devouring him.

You tug his underwear the rest of the way off, and then you kneel in front of him, sure that whatever gods may be listening have placed him here in front of you.

You dip your head forward, wanting only to touch him with your mouth. With his hold on your hair, hopefully that would give him enough power to say no if it became too much. Tentatively, and watching for his reaction, your tongue slips out from between your lips and licks a gentle line along his shaft, giving you your first taste of him.

Astarion’s entire body stiffens at the sensation, and you do not move again, waiting for some sign that this was okay. After a moment, he tugs at your hair and very gently touches your cheek, and the look in his eyes is clear direction for you to continue.

You brush your lips against him, leaving gentle kisses, and then your tongue follows to the head of his dick, tasting his precum before swirling and bobbing deeper.

Astarion throws his head back, and he keens as you take him into your mouth. It’s a broken sound, but his hand in your hair pushes you deeper, and you obey. You drool when his hips cant forward, and you match his movements by swirling your tongue and pulling back before sliding all the way back down. He almost can’t believe the skill of your mouth, with how innocent you looked not five minutes ago, but then his thoughts scatter again when he hits the back of your throat.

He wants to press you down until you’re choking on him, wants to cum in your mouth and make a mess of you—

But he stops himself, pulls you back by your hair and kisses you, because he needs to fuck you.

He’s panting when he grabs you by the throat and lowers you onto your back. “Say it again,” he tells you, half delirious with the need to be inside you. “Say you’re mine.”

”I’m yours,” you respond immediately, eyes shining in the moonlight.

He groans your name, cupping his hands under your thighs. He wraps your legs around his waist, lining himself up at your entrance. Your cunt is still dripping for him, and he presses his fingers against your clit, watching you jump as he touches the swollen bundle of nerves. He laughs, a breathless sound, and then he places one hand beside your head, staring into your eyes as he slides inside you.

Thank you, he wants to say. Thank you for saving me.

But that’s much too vulnerable a thought to share, so he simply rocks his hips into yours, watching your mouth fall open in pleasure.

He’s perfect, you think as he slides back out of you before slamming back in, setting a brutal, unrelenting pace. He’s perfect and he’s here and he’s yours, and you want to tell him so, but you can’t even speak, so you squeak out moans and scrabble at his chest as he fucks you.

He watches you quickly come undone beneath him, and when he decides he needs more, he lifts one of your legs and props it over his shoulder. The new angle lets him hit a target inside you that has you seeing stars, and you’re a drooling mess beneath him, eyes glazed over with pleasure. His fingers once again find your clit, and he rubs those practiced circles, just like before. He watches your chest heave, and your lips try to form his name, but he’s knocking the wind out of you with every thrust. You feel him inside you, on top of you, all around you, and you know that this is dangerous, that this is the sort of magic that will keep you coming to his tent every night.

And oh, how you both want to tear each other apart each night.

You feel your second orgasm building, so much faster than the first, and you gaze up into his eyes, watching him fuck you, and it quickly becomes too much.

“Astarion,” you finally gasp, your voice pitched so high it almost breaks, “pleasepleasepleaseplease—“

The sound of your voice threatens to send him over the edge, and his thrusts begin to turn wild, frantic. He shoves himself into you until you come apart, unraveling at the seams. Your cunt clenches over and over again, pulling him closer from the inside, and before he can pull out to empty himself on your stomach, you grab his shoulder and tilt your hips forward, begging him to stay there.

Begging him to cum inside you.

The thought shatters him, and he moans into the crook of your shoulder, thrusting erratically as he rides out his own orgasm. You feel his cock twitching inside you, and you hold him close as his thrusts slow, then stop.

As you hold him, you press gentle kisses to his face. His forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks, his nose, his chin. His lips. He kisses you back, slowly, deeply. Then he pulls himself out of you, and you almost regret the sudden emptiness. But you can’t think about it for too long before he lowers himself to the ground beside you, and you follow him, still kissing every inch of him that you can reach.

”I’m yours,” you remind him. And even as you both start to clean up and head back to camp, he remembers those words.

He belonged to no one, but maybe one day, he wouldn’t mind belonging to you.

thanks for reading! -luna xx link to ao3

[synchodai]

I recently got these tags for @sera-wasnever on my Ketheric Thorm post and it got me thinking about the ability to appeal to him vs the ability to appeal to Orin and Gortash.

Because my main qualm in that post about Ketheric was that you don't get to curse out him the way you can literally say "Fuck you, Gortash" or "You're a psycho, Orin" (actual in-game dialogue lines). Obviously, I think Ketheric was treated with more narrative sympathy among the Dead Three.

BUT I disagree that you CAN'T appeal to the other two -- or rather, trigger a crisis of faith by tugging at something personal. Ketheric's is more straightforward and obviously has more content and dialogue surrounding it. You have entire areas and inventory items meant to humanize him. Isobel's old room, his bust, the note he keeps in his corpse, his wife's diary, etc. There are a lot of things programmed into this game to make you feel sorry for this old man.

Compare that to Orin and Gortash. The area that's meant to humanize Orin and equip you with the thing that triggers her crisis of faith is her room with her mother's preserved corpse. You can argue that for Gortash, it's the Flymm house, but I don't think the Flymms are actually the trigger for his crisis of faith because you don't use his parents during his boss fight to make him waver like you do with Orin and Ketheric.

You can't be like "you're a sicko whose parents abused you" (he'd be like "well, yes") or "you can still be good for the sake of your loved ones" (he'd be like "lmao, funny joke"). If you kill his parents, he mentions it with the gravity of experiencing a minor shipping delay and goes on business as usual.

However, there IS something that canonically does spark hesitation. It is extremely brief but it is very much spelled out in the game, and it is very much infamous.

DARK URGE: For what it's worth, I think I always liked you, too. NARRATOR: There is hesitation in his eye for one moment. A passing thought of all the times spent together you’ll never remember.

That hesitation that shows that there's recognition of something human beneath the monster is seen in all of the Dead Three Chosens' confrontations. You pull it out of Ketheric by talking about how he loves his dead wife. You pull it out of Orin by telling her she was a victim of abuse and incest. Obviously, these truths fundamentally challenge how they perceive the world and themselves. How could Ketheric be a warmongerer who destroys families and tortures his daughter when his wife would hate him for it? How could Orin be the ultimate predator she's posturing herself as if you reveal she's been a helpless victim of Bhaal's cult too?

And for Gortash, the thing that challenges him enough to make him hesitate is... the Dark Urge telling him they liked him? Huh? Well... ain't that laden with implications.

There are no cries of despair like Orin or Ketheric, but there is something. Instead of manipulating and feeding you his agenda and his ideology, this is the only time in all your interactions with Gortash that he asks you what YOU think ("Is that what you...") -- but that line is quickly cut off when the current situation you're both in reasserts itself through the Elder Brain making earthquakes.

With Orin and Ketheric, it's Bhaal and Myrkul who interfere and hastily cut off their Chosen's potential redemptive change of heart. With Gortash, however, it's not god but these reminders that he's stuck having to see through his crumbling grand plans that smacks him back into villain mode. It's not Bane that's stopping the player character from bringing out less monstrous, more sympathetic Gortash who even so very briefly questions this path of evil he's found himself in -- it's reality, and that's just tragic.

[lets-go-hurt-someone]

My Durge is a bard and I just—

“If I tell you, you’ll laugh.” “Oh, I most certainly will. Please, do tell me anyway.” Killian sighed, already hating himself for indulging him. “I made them play didgeridoos at the temple—” Enver did let out a merry snort at that, and Kill nearly grinned at the sound despite himself. “—and it seems ridiculous, but I promise you, every sacrifice we brought back that week nearly shit themselves. One actually did. Poor sod.” “An absolutely diverting anecdote, my dear bhaalspawn.” Gortash was grinning back at him, and Kill felt a twist in the pit of his stomach. The call to violence in his blood was becoming difficult to parse from other types of impulses, of late. “I’ll think about it fondly. Can we get back to the point, now? We have a cult to start.” Killian grunted and pulled away. “The point is,” Killian rolled his eyes, a performance of annoyance that Enver knew he was not at all committed to, “a bit of theatricality and impracticality — leaning into the ridiculous — it doesn’t undermine us at all. Quite the opposite. A touch of the absurd can make the frightening much, much more so.” “The tension from the surreal makes sure the terror of reality is felt that much more sharply.” “Exactly.” Enver nodded, thoughtful, his quill poised above his parchment. “Delightful insight, my dear. A goblin priestess it is, then.” He scribbled a few notes, then looked back up at Kill with a wicked smile. “Ketheric will be furious.”

Yeah. Didgeridoos.

[freyasilverbough]

The Cave Bear and the White Wolf - Part 3

Notes: in my headcanon and in my games, Minthara is an oathbreaker. I know canonically she’s oath of vengeance, but oathbreaker is more fun and she has a whole dialogue tree about it.

Summary: Freya does stupid shit, like freeing the Moonrise prisoners by herself, and Halsin no likey. Some angst, some fluff, nothing too explicit but heavy making out happens towards the end.

Cw: blood (always atp since my paladins are always covered in blood), canon typical violence, light mentions of suicidal tendencies in that my oc does not give a single fuck about her own life while she’s saving others.

“Hey, Dammon,” Halsin called as he approached the blacksmith.

“Hey, how is she?” Dammon asked as he turned to the larger man, clasping Halsin’s forearm in greeting.

“She’s awake. Wants her armor back.” Dammon chuckled and nodded to where her suit lay on his workbench, polished and free of all the dents that adorned it after the battle yesterday. “You do work fast, impressive.”

“I added some extra reinforcements to the plate. It’s a good set, but there’s too many gaps in it for someone who takes as many hits as Freya does.”

“Actually, I wondered if you might be able to make something,” Halsin said as he pulled the sketchbook he kept from his pocket and handed it to the smith.

Dammon looked the sketches over for a long moment, his brows creasing as he mapped his new project in his head. “Yeah, I think I can manage it. Give me a moment to measure the other set, I have plenty of steel and scraps of scalemail thanks to Talli. Should take me about a week or so.”

Halsin thanked the tiefling as he gathered Freya’s armor and turned back to the inn. “Oh, Dammon?” He called over his shoulder. “Keep it quiet, would you?”

Dammon smirked and nodded his agreement. Halsin smiled to himself, taking long strides back inside to the woman he was trying so hard not to fall for.

————

They were heading for Moonrise that day. Freya was a ball of nerves, wound so tight that he was sure any minor inconvenience would cause her to snap. She was worried that Ketheric might recognize her, and therefore put her newfound friends at risk, so she insisted that everyone wait outside while she went in and “tested the waters.”

Halsin didn’t like it one bit. There were too many things that could go wrong in there, and while he didn’t doubt Freya’s abilities, he also wouldn’t underestimate Ketheric Thorm.

“Take Astarion inside with you at the very least,” he tried to reason with her. She just glared in response. “He knows how to stay hidden and he can back you up if something goes wrong.”

“Remember how you insisted that you were the only one who could enter the Shadowfell? This is like that,” she snapped. “If Ketheric recognizes me, it’s all over. The rest of you have an advantage, he’s got no clue who you are and if I fall, you can still infiltrate the tower. If you’re with me, and things go sideways, he’ll behead you for association before you even know what’s happening. I won’t put anyone here at risk because I failed to kill him a hundred years ago.”

She’d removed her headband and earrings that marked her as a follower of Selûne. Instead of her plated armor, she sported black leather and wore a hood to cover her silver hair. She had left her wolf crest shield in her tent, and striped her face with black kohl to hide the scar over the bridge of her nose. She looked more like an assassin than a paladin.

Halsin ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. The archdruid in him wanted to command her to stay behind, to let the others scout the tower if she was so worried about being recognized. He knew that such a command would just piss her off, that she would never ask another to do something she herself wasn’t willing to do.

The plan was that he would wait just outside the moonshield with Astarion, Gale, and Shadowheart. With the pixie’s blessing, they’d be protected from the curse while the cultists were forced to stay in the light. If Ketheric recognized Freya and she somehow made it out of the tower, Astarion would pick off the cultists with his bow and Gale would open a portal to Last Light, while Shadowheart and Halsin would make sure they all survived.

If Freya made it out. He’d never admit to her that the thought she may not make it made his bones run cold and heart sink to his gut. He wanted to go with her, to protect her, to stand between the oathbreaker and the faithful and give her a chance to flee.

Freya stepped closer to him and looked up into his eyes, a cold determination hardening the blue. “If I fall, be assured that I plan on taking every damned cultist I can down with me.”

“You once told me your brother always said that anything before the word ‘but’ is bullshit,” Halsin echoed her words from the week before.

“But,” a smirk lifted her perfect lips. “I have no intention of dying today. By my oath, I will do everything in my power to see justice come to Ketheric Thorm.”

When she invoked her oath, Halsin knew that there was no more arguing to be done. She stood firm in her choice. All he could do was pray to Silvanus and every other god that would listen that she would return to him.

“Let’s get this over with, then,” he said, clapping her shoulder as he strode to meet the others before departure.

————

Halsin paced just outside the moonshield, watching the huge oak doors of the tower as if he could see through them and glimpse what was happening.

“Would you settle down? You’re making all of us dizzy,” Astarion whined from the stump he perched on, carving new arrows with his knife.

Halsin ignored him and carried on as he was.

“Don’t be an ass, Astarion. It’s giving you wrinkles,” Shadowheart quipped.

Halsin stopped his pacing when bells sounded from the tower and he heard the faint shouts of the guards. His breath caught in his throat as he stopped just in front of the moonshield.

He strained his ears, hearing the faint clashing of swords from inside the tower.

Freya.

If there was fighting, she was alive. Halsin breathed a sigh of relief before that relief quickly turned to panic. Who was she fighting? What was she doing? Freya was formidable, to be sure, but one soldier against an entire stronghold? She’d either had no choice, or she was completely mad.

The oak doors at the tower’s entrance blew open with an explosion of silver moonfire, and out poured a host of gnomes, tieflings, and…

Was that Minthara?

Freya followed close behind, covered once again in blood and glowing with the rush of battle. Her hood had fallen and her braids swung wildly behind her. She pulled something from her pocket and launched it toward Astarion as the gnomes and tieflings ran across the bridge.

“Tell the pixie to protect the prisoners from the curse! HURRY!” She screamed as he caught it. Halsin vaguely registered Astarion following her order, but his focus was on her. Minthara stood with her as the prisoners fled from the battle. The drow had no weapon, but she had a paladin’s magic and was using it to compel foes to halt, flee, drop their weapons as Freya struck them down.

Gale muttered incantations under his breath as purple magic began to swirl around him. A portal appeared, and Shadowheart ushered the prisoners through to safety. Astarion drew his bow and fired as Freya and Minthara sprinted across the bridge. One of the guards dodged Astarion’s arrow at the last second and reached out to grab Freya by the braids, and Halsin decided he’d had enough.

He let the earth guide him as he shifted, fur and claws erupting where there were once skin and hands. He leapt over the two women and tore out the guard’s throat, letting loose a roar of fury. When the drow crossed the portal, Freya slid to a stop and approached to stand at Halsin’s side.

“Well. I may have started a bit of a fight,” she said as more guards poured through the doors. “We should probably go.” Halsin shifted back to his elven form and grabbed Freya’s hand, the two of them sprinting through Gale’s portal.

Halsin stumbled as his feet touched the ground outside Last Light, and Freya landed on her hands and knees. Reunions and celebrations were happening all around them, but he couldn’t bring himself to gaze at anything but Freya. She sat back on her heels, tilted her face to the sky, and laughed. Cackled like a godsdamned madwoman, covered in her enemies’ blood and viscera. Perhaps she’d taken a pommel to the head.

“Fucking hells, that felt good,” she said between her laughs, trying and failing to catch her breath. Halsin leveled a glare in her direction. “Oh come on now, they were taking Minthara to the cells to erase her mind. I was on a time crunch,” she said to him.

“Yeah, that’s another thing we’re going to talk about. Minthara, Freya? I thought she was dead!” Halsin tried to keep his voice level, but his anger raised the volume.

“I thought she was too, turns out she’s tougher than I thought.” Freya got to her feet and crossed her arms in defiance, as if she didn’t just save the drow who’d threatened his grove not two months before.

“She’s an oathbreaker, Freya. She’ll slit your throat in your sleep now that you’ve set her free. What in all the Nine Hells were you thinking?!”

“They’re arguing about me, aren’t they?” He heard the drow ask someone behind him. It took every ounce of will he possessed to keep from turning his wrath on her.

“Don’t worry, Freya always wins him over. She has a thing for taking in strays,” Astarion responded.

“She’s an oathbreaker, yes, but you’ll make one of me if you ask me to send her back to the shadows. She was controlled by the tadpole when she planned to take the grove, a fate I would’ve faced myself were it not for blind, stupid luck. Minthara is a valuable asset whose goals align with our own, for now. If she turns on us, I’ll cut her down myself.” Freya’s tone quickly turned from exuberant to commanding as she spoke, returning Halsin’s glare and spreading her stance.

“You would die in the attempt, but it’s a noble thought,” Minthara retorted. Halsin whipped around to face the drow and Freya circled him so she stood between them, gripping her sword as she did.

“I don’t like her either, Halsin, but I must hold to the tenets of my oath and I must accept every sword I am offered in this fight.” Freya’s gaze softened just a fraction and Halsin knew she was right. Fuck, but she could talk him into biting off his own hand if she wanted.

He looked over Freya’s shoulder to the drow. “The first sign of trouble, and you’re gone,” he said to her.

“Oh, I intend to cause plenty, but only for our enemies.”

————

Back at camp, Halsin’s whittling turned into a pile of slivers in his frustration. He was still so angry with Freya, she was only meant to “test the waters,” as she had said. Instead, the woman took it upon herself to tackle an entire stronghold by herself.

He knew she would do it all over again to save those prisoners, and he couldn’t exactly fault her for it. He didn’t know the exact words of her oath, but he knew that most paladins were bound to defend the innocent. The tenets of her oath would always come above her own safety, and something about that fact aggravated him to no end. Did she just not value her own life the way she valued others?

She materialized before him as if she could read his thoughts. She leaned on a tree and bit down on an apple, without a care in the world. She wore a sleeveless cotton top that accentuated every curve and muscle of her lithe torso and dipped low into her cleavage. Her moonlight hair was unbound and she’d washed the black from her face.

She looked like a godsdamned angel, and that just made Halsin angrier.

“You’re upset,” she stated, taking another bite of her apple.

Halsin took a deep breath, willing his centuries of training in patience to kick in and chase the rage from his bones. “Yes,” he responded.

“Look, I made a call in the moment. I’ve spoken with Minthara, and I believe she’ll stand with us against the Absolute. They scarred her mind, and she wants vengeance. If you talked with her yourself, you’d believe her, too.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about Minthara.”

“Then why the fuck are you sulking in the farthest corner of camp?” Halsin stood, stalking toward Freya like she was his prey. She pushed off of her tree and straightened, crossing her arms and widening her stance. The movement made her biceps ripple and her breasts pushed together slightly. Halsin pretended that his cock didn’t twitch at the sight.

He didn’t stop until he was inches away from her. “I’m sulking because you asked - no, demanded - that everyone else stay behind while you went on a fucking suicide mission, Freya. You put yourself at risk again and I cannot figure out how someone with such high regard for others can regard her own life so little. It was stupid, and you know it. I thought we were past this recklessness, that you would finally ask me for help, and then you go and pull this shit without a thought for how your friends would feel having to burn your body.”

“Don’t you dare act as if you were there. You didn’t see what they were doing in that prison, Halsin.”

“I didn’t see because you forced me to stay behind!” He yelled. “I wasn’t there because you always insist on standing alone!”

“What would you have me fucking do?! I am somehow responsible for each of the lives in this camp, for each of the souls in Last Light. I’ve been fighting for well over two hundred years, I trust in my own strength even if-“

Halsin couldn’t help it. He took her face in both hands and crashed his lips to hers. She stiffened in his grip for a moment, then melted into his kiss, molding herself to his body. She was a perfect fit. She put both of her small, calloused hands on his chest as one of his own traveled to her waist. He gripped her side as he groaned slightly into her full lips, feeling the ridges of her scars under her shirt. She opened her mouth for him, and their tongues danced in a battle for dominance.

It was not a sweet kiss, nor a gentle one. He wound the hand that had been cupping her cheek into her long hair, wrapping it around his fist. He moved her back against the tree and the hand on her side inched up to her breast as she moaned into his mouth. It was the sweetest godsdamned sound Halsin had ever heard.

All reason and restraint had left his body in that moment. His reasons for declining her offer at the party with the tieflings simply melted away. As he kissed Freya against that tree, there was no Shadow Curse, no invulnerable general, no tadpole swimming in her skull. There was only her.

That fierce, kind, compassionate, reckless woman whose loyalty had no match, whose strength could challenge gods and rattle the stars. He’d taken many lovers, always held that his heart roamed as nature willed it, but he knew without a doubt as he held her that she was it for him. Whether she would have him or not, there would never be another.

Reluctantly, he broke their kiss and pressed his forehead to hers, staring into her bright blue eyes. Both of them were breathless, and he could smell her arousal as his cock stretched the leather of his pants.

“I wish you could see yourself as I do,” he whispered, before gripping her thighs and hoisting her up to his height. She wrapped her legs around his hips and bared her neck for him in a rare show of vulnerability as his lips wrapped around her soft flesh. His teeth moved their way up to her delicate pointed ear and she ground herself into him with a loud sigh of pleasure.

He was ready to burst in his pants like an adolescent when a call from Astarion interrupted them. “Freya! Quit fucking the bear, there’s a devil in our camp again, and it’s not Minthara.”

She broke away from him, panting and thoroughly flushed. “I’m going to fucking kill him,” she murmured. Halsin chuckled and nipped at her throat before releasing his hold on her. He smoothed her hair with his hand and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She smelled like rosemary and thunderstorms, he realized as he took a deep inhale.

“Next time I risk my own hide in an epic act of heroism, I expect to be thoroughly fucked, druid,” she said in a sing song voice as she turned to hurry back to where an alleged devil waited to meet with her.

He chuckled to himself as he adjusted his breeches, and jogged to catch up with her. He was in such deep shit.

————

The devil in question was Wyll’s patron, Mizora. She’d appeared to inform Wyll that he needed to rescue one of Zariel’s assets from Moonrise. Freya agreed on Wyll’s behalf, stating that they’d do it only if Mizora freed her warlock from his pact.

The damn woman would argue with a devil. Currently, she sat with Minthara on a log, handing her the weapons they’d gathered from their travels for inspection. The flaming sword she’d picked up on the nautiloid was too big, the mace from under the creche too small, the shortsword from the goblin camp downright insulting.

Freya smirked as she passed the drow a Menzoberranzan blade she’d looted from a drider. Minthara stood, gripping the hilt with finesse and testing its balance. “Finally, good drow steel. This will do,” she said. Freya retrieved her own sword and started sharpening it with her whetstone. Halsin watched as the two women fell into an easy camaraderie, honing their weapons and talking of battles won, foes vanquished.

May all the gods above have mercy on Ketheric Thorm, for the elf and the drow would not.

[blackjackkent]

So, as noted in the last post, Rakha is having a Really Bad Time all of a sudden. The Urge really wants her to kill Isobel, she really DOESN'T want to kill Isobel (and thus destroy the protection she offers against the magical corruption around them), and she really wants to get the hell out of Isobel's bedroom before she does something Wyll wouldn't approve of.

Consequently, she is NOT pleased that her attempt at a quick leavetaking is interrupted by This Asshole:

"Hello, Isobel."

"Marcus - is that you? What's happened to you?"

"I've been blessed," the man hisses, a fervent and fanatical light in his eyes. "You can be too. Come with me and you can hear it all from Ketheric himself!"

(A/N: I never really questioned it before, but does anyone know exactly what is supposed to have happened to Marcus here, or why Ketheric/the brain have the power to give him the dollar-store Aasimar treatment? His wings make me uncomfortable.)

Rakha feels as if she is being pulled apart, every muscle strained as if ready to snap. Inside her head, the beast still howls for Isobel's death, and she is so preoccupied with battling it back that she can barely focus on this new arrival. His appearance makes no sense to her - his armor is Flaming Fist, his face is unfamiliar, his wings are monstrous.

"What *are* you?" she growls.

True Soul. The man's thoughts push into her head, in among the chaos of the beast and her own mind. Like her, he has a parasite; the connection is uncomfortably familiar. My instructions are clear - take the girl to Ketheric. Alive.

Were she more coherent, she might recognize a certain irony here. In this case, she and the beast are suddenly precisely aligned. Rakha herself does not want Isobel in the cult's hands. The beast does not want Isobel alive. And therefore... with this statement, Marcus is enemy to both of them.

But she cannot think clearly enough, just now, to articulate this. Only a much more basic thought breaks through the turmoil. Marcus is a threat. There is purpose in stopping him.

Touch her and I'll kill you. Her thoughts snap back at him like a whip.

Marcus laughs - aloud this time. "Pathetic. The Absolute sees all, you fool."

Isobel pales, her eyes narrowing in anger - and fear. "The Absolute. Of course. You can't believe them, Marcus! Ketheric will never give you whatever it is you've been promised."

"He already has." Marcus smiles coldly, flexing his wings. "Time to go, Isobel."

He leans back and roars, a deafening, resonant call. Chaos erupts throughout the inn as they are suddenly swarmed with winged creatures Rakha does not recognize.

Rakha can hear the sound of Mol screaming, and shouts from the Harpers and Flaming Fist as battle breaks out below. But her eyes remain fixed on Marcus, her heart thudding in her ears.

Narrator: With Isobel dead, the whole sanctuary will be flooded with blood... A far finer future than her taken alive...

No. No, damn you. I won't kill her. She lets out a soft, strangled groan; her head aches with the effort of trying to keep control of herself.

There is only one death she wants here, only one killing she can do with purpose. She hurls herself at Marcus, driving a ball of fire into his face.

[triviallytrue]

Honour Mode Act 2 Complete

Overall thoughts: Definitely more challenging than Act 1, but kind of inversely so - the bossfights are much easier than the few actual tough fights in the act. Had my first real close call. One thing I like about Honour Mode is how it forces you to live with your mistakes - I took a very different path here than I normally would've.

Thorms + Yurgir: You can talk these guys to death and there's no downside to doing so, so I did. Free xp!

Oliver (Level 8): His new action makes parts of the battlefield inaccessible, which is kind of cool. Still not a very challenging fight.

Balthazar (Level 9): Would probably be pretty hard if he had Flesh with him, but I got the bell and arranged for Flesh to get killed softening up the undead Dark Justiciars. The actual fight is pretty simple - he has a bunch of new stuff he can do if someone dies, but you just focus him and it never becomes relevant. His legendary action makes him slightly tankier, but it's not that meaningful against a TB monk.

Ketheric, Part 1 (Level 9): As always, getting to Ketheric is much harder than facing him. He got targeted down before his first turn, and after his cutscene triggers the rest of the fight is just mop-up as long as you already killed Karniss (which I had).

Ketheric, Part 2: Did you know you can talk your way out of this phase? If you read his wife's note in his private quarters, you can talk him into surrendering. It doesn't offer that much of an advantage (you can use his first phase to kill off his ads) but it's definitely at least a bit easier.

Avatar of Myrkul (Level 9): This is a decent fight - the avatar has a boatload of health, physical and elemental resistances, legendary resistances, a reasonably annoying reaction, and some nice attacks. A pity, then, that I had 12 allied characters on my side for this fight (my party, 4 elementals, Scratch, Shovel, Us, and Aylin). I sent my monk in invisibly to free Aylin and target down the mind flayer (this is essential, the mind flayer will do nasty things to your party if you let it live) and then ignored everyone to pure focus down the avatar. It got to go once, where it took a swipe at an elemental. I think this fight would be pretty reasonable with 4 mind flayers, but as is it's a little underwhelming.

Other interesting fights:

Isobel Last Light (Level 7): I botched this completely. Got shit initiative rolls, used my monk and bard to kill off Marcus, but the winged horrors all went before my cleric and killed her off before I could heal or cast sanctuary. Annoying, but I should've thrown a potion on her instead of killing Marcus ASAP, I guess.

The following Last Light fight got me a lot of gold and xp, and it ended up not being that bad - at this point I had 4th level spell slots and was able to use Confusion to mass-disable enemies. Kind of a bummer, though - losing Dammon here really stings.

It turns out if you fail the fight but kill Marcus, Zrell/Ketheric just... assume you sided with them, so I got into Moonrise and a free parasite off that. Go figure.

Thaniel Portal Defense (Level 8): Fucking love this fight. Great opportunity to cut lose and go hog wild. AOE, single target, you name it.

House of Healing Morgue bullshit (Level 8): This was the close call. I stupidly sent my monk down the pit, assuming he could handle it solo, and forgot they get a surprise round. He got downed, then my cleric got pulled from above and was downed from fall damage, and then both of them got killed. This was pretty dire, but I pulled things back from the brink with the power of Haste and revivify scrolls. Way closer than it should've been for such a random encounter - it was the combination of forgetting about the surprise round, splitting the party, the coordination issues caused by the height, not casting feather fall early and taking a dickton of fall damage, and then having the two dead characters be the two more important ones. Just grateful I made it out, tbh.

Moonrise Towers Assault (Level 9): Kinda infamous as the one actually hard bg3 fight - in both of my previous tactician runs I had to reset here, which of course would be a game over in honour mode. I decided to pull out all the stops and used the Sharran ability score buffs, 4 elixirs, and 4 summon elemental scrolls. I also killed off the entire prison floor of the tower beforehand, which takes a pretty big chunk out of the neverending waves of mid-tier enemies.

The actual fight was smooth except for Jaheira managing to find a way to die instantly, practically a tradition for her in this fight. Hit Zrell with a Confusion spell before she got a chance to act and picked her off at my leisure, and I used a potion of Cloud Giant Strength for my monk, so he shredded through enemies without much difficulty.

Final thoughts: Things feel a bit less broken in act 2. My party is still steamrolling enemies, but it feels less one-sided and the party itself feels more balanced, mostly due to my bard finally catching up a bit in damage thanks to the Risky Ring. At this point my playthrough is going to slow down a bit because my two tactician playthroughs are not that deep into act 3, and I'd like to have a good idea of what I'm up against before I take my honour mode playthrough in.

Honour Mode Act 1 Complete

Overall thoughts: I enjoy playing without savescumming being an option. It speeds up the game and forces me to be more thoughtful. Aside from that, the changes feel pretty minimal - there are only 7 bossfights in act 1, of which I only did 6, so the net impact of the changes on my run thus far has been small.

Analysis of the bossfights + balance thoughts below the cut.

Owlbear (Fought at level 3): First bossfight I took. Didn't realize it was going to be a bossfight, went into it expecting an easy ride like on tactician. Definitely the most-changed of any of the fights, over twice as hard. Had to rely on the NPC assists and Command to get me through. Probably the closest call I've had thus far, though it wasn't that close. One of two fights where a character was downed.

After the Owlbear, I started looking up which fights were bossfights/what their changes were and planning in advance.

Phase Spider Matriach (Level 4): I suspect this fight is legitimately very dangerous at level 3, but at level 4 it's not bad. The main change is that it's uncheeseable now. There's also a new reaction, but it only got fired at me once, and it missed. Killed the ads, had my cleric spam command and my bard Tasha's to lock it down, and then beat it to death with my monk. Barely took damage.

Auntie Ethel (Level 5): Again, would've been hard at 4 but not bad at 5. Still took a fair amount of damage, but didn't come all that close to dropping. Her special reaction is designed to counter the best way of taking out her clones (mass magic missile) but it's hard-countered by monks - with 3 ki points you can force her to make 3 saves (2 against stunning, 1 against stagger) and if she fails any of them she can't use her reaction. With her reaction gone and her clones dealt with, 145 HP is not very much for a boss to have against a level 5 party.

Bernard (DNF): As far as I can tell, the risk-reward on this fight is very bad. It's easily bypassable with Sussur blooms if you want the XP, but I just used the books to get the items with dialogue.

Inquisitor W'wargaz (Level 6): You know how 145 HP is not a lot of health against a level 5 party? It's really not a lot of health against a level 6 party. Never even saw this guy's honour mode changes because he was dead before he ever got a turn. Give him a crazy high initiative or some kind of better AC/resistances for him to be a threat.

True Soul Nere (Level 6): My pick for the most improved fight of Act 1. Nere's changes make him basically impossible to burst down, and if you had to fight him alongside all the Duergar it would be a legitimately nasty fight. Unfortunately for Nere and fans of game difficulty, it's easy to get more than half the Duergar to turn against him. The resulting fight is not trivial, but I never felt like I was in serious risk of things spiraling out of control.

Grym (Level 7): There's an argument to be made here that this is the hardest fight in act 1, but I took it a little too seriously and ended up beating it without taking any damage. So it goes. His new honour mode ability is cool but Silence makes you immune to thunder damage which takes away its sting, my sorcerer's Twinned Haste on my monk and cleric meant I had very good damage output and was also able to cast Command on him twice per turn if necessary, so I kept him stunlocked and beat him to death pretty quickly. My bard contributed nothing to this fight.

Overall balance thoughts: You may have noticed a few themes here - in 3 of the 6 fights I took, Command was used to stunlock the boss. Command would be extremely good as a level 2 spell and still often worth using as a level 3 spell. As a level 1 spell, it makes clerics a must-have for any party and easily slots them in as the second best class in the game.

But still not quite the best class in the game, which is monk. Tavern Brawler Open Hand Monk, to be specific. At level 3, Open Hand monks get the ability to suppress reactions if enemies fail a save. At level 4, they get Tavern Brawer, which with strength elixirs means you have a +12 to hit with 1d6+10 damage on 3 attacks per turn. At level 5 they get extra attack and also the ability to stun if enemies fail a save. At level 6 they get another huge boost to damage. They have a great set of gear with no real overlaps with other classes that drives these numbers up even farther.

This combination of traits - high accuracy, high damage, lots of attacks per turn, ability to stun and suppress reactions at will, all bundled together in a nice, smooth earlygame progression package, is ridiculously good. Definitely the standout character of the run thus far.

Command should be nerfed or removed, Tavern Brawler should be nerfed or removed, early game strength elixirs should be nerfed or removed. Til then, I'm playing the cards I'm dealt.

[darkobsidianquill]

Harry Potter and the descent into Darkness.

Chapter Twenty

On Monday, during his visit to Voldemort's manor, Harry succeeded in apparating across the ballroom, once. He was a bit off on his destination – missing his intended spot by about five feet, but for his first successful attempt, it wasn't bad.

As he was preparing to leave, Voldemort informed him that once he had apparition down, the two of them were going to begin dueling lessons and discussing the magical theory behind the dark arts. Harry just stared back at the dark lord with a dropped jaw and stunned silence. The Dark Lordwanted to teach him dueling and dark arts?

After a scathing scolding about looking like an idiot and being instructed to pick his jaw up off the ground, Harry was dismissed and used the time-turner before using the portkey back to Hogwarts.

Harry used his cloak to slip back into the school, the same as he did every day after his lunch-time visits to Voldemort's manor, and met back up with Ron, only a minute after his earlier self disappeared into a bathroom. The pair made their way up to Divination, and with each step Harry felt his anticipation growing.

He was going to try Voldemort's suggestion today, and he couldn't help the feeling in his gut that he was actually going to get somewhere that day. He scolded himself for being stupid enough to get his hopes up, but couldn't quite manage to squash the feeling away.

As the class gathered in the room, it became obvious that the smoke scrying section was done because Trelawney had rearranged the seats again back to their usual places and the big fire pit in the center of the room was gone.

When she called the class to attention, Trelawney began a long-winded talk about using the inner eye to see into a person's soul that Harry was quickly tuning out.

"The Human Aura is made up of seven main Human aura's which extend up to four feet from the Human body. These aura's all occupy the same space at the same time, each Human aura extending out further than the previous aura. All Human aura's are interconnected and reliant on the others for normal function," Trelawney was saying in that annoying low 'mysterious' sounding voice she used.

"The astral human aura extends about eight to twelve inches from the physical body and appears as brightly coloured rainbow clouds. The astral human aura is the bridge between the physical world and the spiritual world.

"The mental human aura extends about four to eight inches from the physical body and is usually a bright shade of yellow in colour. Within this Human aura are our thoughts and mental processes. The more active our thinking processes the brighter our mental Human aura becomes. Within this Human aura can be found thought forms. "

Harry tuned out her lecture, choosing instead to try catching the professor's eye and see if he could maintain eye contact long enough to slip inside her head for a quick look-around. Unfortunately, Trelawney didn't seem terribly interested in looking at him at that moment, and just kept right on talking and talking about different auras and how many inches they existed from the body, as if that meant something to any of them.

About twenty minutes later, she told them to partner up, and cut off all lighting in the room except for the 'natural light' that came in through the windows, which still had thing hangings draping over them, giving the room a rather dim look.

Harry sighed heavily and turned to face Ron. She gave them instructions and told them what page to turn to in their textbooks before telling them to start.

Ron said he was too confused and insisted that Harry give it a go first. Harry read the page in the book, since he hadn't paid any attention to Trelawney's annoying ramblings. Finally he focused on Ron and gave it a go.

"Let's see... well... I think for the Etheric Aura I'm seeing er.." Harry looked down at the book before looking back up at Ron. "Delft blue? That means you've got strong ethics. A strong deep blue also suggests that you're in good physical health. I think. For your Mental Aura I'm seeing... sort of a sienna color I'd say." Harry looked down at the book and then had to hold back a bark of laughter.

"Whut?" Ron asked, seeing Harry's expression.

"Oh um... well, the book says that Raw Sienna indicates poor thinking process," Harry mumbled through the tight grin he was trying to force off his face.

Ron snorted and rolled his eyes. "Whatever. What's next?"

"Um, well, your Etheric Template Aura looks purple... like grape, I guess."

"What's that one mean?"

Harry looked down at the book and then flipped the page.

"Er... Laziness."

"Pfft," Ron said, rolling his eyes again. "Next?"

"Well, your Ketheric Template Aura looks like Amber," Harry continued and then referenced the book again. "Ah. That one means strong personal courage."

Ron grinned at this one. Another minute and Harry had gone through all the different auras for Ron.

"Alright, alright. Let me do you," said Ron. He sat forward and skimmed over the book page one more time before turning his focus on Harry.

"Alright your er... Etheric Aura issss...kind of maroon-ish." Ron looked down at the book. "That means self empowerment. Your Emotional Aura is sort of like carmine. And the book says... carmine is for people seeking change. You seeking change, Harry?"

Harry shrugged and Ron moved on. "You're mental aura is... sort of like mustard, I'd say." Ron looked back down at the book and flipped to the next page where the list continued. He frowned and screwed up his face. "Well that's not right."

"What?" Harry asked, hesitantly.

"Says Mustard is usually seen on people who are really manipulative. Pfft. This stuff is such rubbish. Moving on," he said dramatically and flipped back a page. "You're uh... Etheric Template Aura is... sort of a light yellow-green. Like lemon-green." Again he consulted the book, and again he frowned at it before rolling his eyes.

"What?" Harry asked.

"Well, it says that lemon-green is for people who are cheats and liars. Maybe it's more like pale green? That's spiritual advancement. It's definitely not iridescent green, and that's for friendly people. Ah, here we go. Lemon yellow, that's strength of direction. That sounds more like it."

"Heh... yeah," Harry said, feeling a bit more wary by the minute.

"Aaandd... your Celestial Aura is..." Ron trailed off before screwing up his face a lot. "I've got to be reading this one wrong. Oh... oh, well maybe not."

"What?" Harry asked, feeling rather unsettled.

"Well it looks... black."

"What's black mean?"

"It says that there are two types of people who end up with black in their celestial aura. Um... well, murderers, and people who've really hurt other people, or who have it in them to kill people –"

Harry's eyes went wide and for a moment he thought his heart had stopped beating.

"– and people who've been either abused a lot or tortured," Ron finished, looking back up at Harry, hesitantly.

Harry blinked at Ron, holding a neutral expression on his face. "Oh."

"Er... yeah," Ron mumbled before clearing his throat. "Anyway, this aura stuff is rubbish. Think that's sufficient to get Trelawney off our backs?"

"Yeah, just don't tell her that you saw black on mine. I'm sure she'll find some way to interpret that to mean I'm going to die a horrible death under the cruciatus or something."

Ron snorted.

Harry and Ron both started to write down the notes from what they'd 'seen' during the class exercise, and Harry sat there, waiting for Trelawney to come over to speak with them.

Harry made sure to write down as much detail as he could from what he'd 'seen' of Ron's various auras so that he'd have a lot of stuff to say to her once she got over. Finally she left Lavender and Padma's group and came over to where Ron and Harry were sitting opposite each other.

She asked them how their reading went and Ron said a little bit, but was vague and mumbly. Trelawney was less than impressed and turned on Harry rather quickly. The second she made eye contact, Harry slipped into her mind and began a furious search for anything pertaining to the prophecy that he had personally witnessed the previous spring.

His search turned up instant results, much to his surprise and elation. He found the memory of her speaking the prophecy about the servant returning to his master and could tell right away that it had a very different feel to it than the rest of her memories that he'd breezed through. It was like it was on a different wavelength, and it was buried under a layer that her conscious mind didn't quite see. Harry slipped away from the prophecy memory, but stayed in the same general location of her mind and began to look for other memories that had the same strange feeling to it.

He was glad to discover that there weren't a lot of them. Trelawney obviously didn't make legitimate prophecies very often, and it was obvious that most of those that she did make were done when alone and there was no one around to even hear them.

Finally he came across one of the prophetic memories that took place in a very familiar setting. Dumbledore's office.

It was in Dumbledore's office. Not the pub. In fact, none of her memories of actual prophecies took place inside the Hog's Head. He pulled the one in Dumbledore's office to the forefront and quickly began to watch it. It began with Trelawney going rigid and her voice becoming suddenly very gravely. Dumbledore sat up to attention, suddenly watching her with far more interest than his demeanor a moment earlier had.

She began to speak –

The only one with the power to match the Dark Lord approaches...

Born to those who have thrice defied him,

Born as the seventh month dies...

The Dark Lord will come for him and mark him as his equal.

He will –

"Harry?"

Harry blinked and gave a start at suddenly being jerked from Trelawney's mind.

"Are you alright Mr. Potter?" Professor Trelawney asked as she peered down at him with her enormous, magnified eyes.

He quickly tried to slip back into her mind; desperate too see what came next, but she looked away and he cursed her in his own mind, as he wished he could do it in reality.

"You just zoned out there for a minute," Ron was saying, "You were talking and then you just sort of... stopped. Are you sure you're alright?"

Harry fought the urge to snap at the red head and forced a calm smile on his face. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just sort of out of it today. Not getting enough sleep, I guess."

"You're not having nightmares again, are you?" Ron asked in a whisper as he leaned in closer.

"No, no. Nothing like that. I'm fine, really."

Harry turned his head and watched as Trelawney walked over to Dean and Seamus and began to speak with them. He realized he was clenching his jaw in frustrated anger, and he could feel his magic beginning to boil deep within him, furiously. The urge to curse something, violently, was roaring in his head, and he knew he needed to calm himself down quickly, or he might loose control of himself. He was so frustrated! He had been so close! So fucking close!

He needed to calm down. He needed to relax. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing and push his angry magic back down inside.

It wasn't working.

He took another deep breath, trying to remember what it felt like to have Voldemort's fingers combing through his hair, and as soon as he successfully brought the memory to the surface, he felt some of the tension leaving him.

He continued to focus on the imagined feeling of long slender fingers trailing across his scalp, and the steady sound of the Dark Lord breathing during his meditation exercises and Harry finally felt like his head was clear enough to think again.

One thing was for sure, that prophecy was not the exact same as the one that Voldemort had heard. He'd also gotten one more line from it than Voldemort already knew. And the Dark Lord will come for him and mark him as his equal.

Mark him as his equal? Well, Harry was marked. That was probably referring to his scar. And while Harry held no delusions about being a magical equal to the Dark Lord, there was the fact that Harry possessed a portion of Voldemort's soul. Did that make them equal on some level? Since the soul and the scar were connected, perhaps that's what that line was referring to?

He needed to get the rest of it! He was going to have to find an opportunity alone with Trelawney and force some sort of situation where she couldn't get away from him until he'd gotten everything he needed from her mind.

Harry decided to visit Voldemort again later that evening and ask him for any advice. He could sense that he was on the brink of something huge, and now that he knew he could actually get it from her head, he wasn't going to give up until he had what he wanted.

The frustrating part was that he was going to have to wait a few hours because his earlier self was still at the manor, at that very moment, not having even apparated for the first time yet. Harry couldn't return to the manor until after his earlier incarnation had left, because there couldn't be two Harry's there at the same time.

Harry refocused, or at least tried to refocus on the class work. He spent the remainder of the class trying, repeatedly, to make eye contact with Trelawney, and not once succeeding in getting into her head. It was exceedingly frustrating.

After class let out, Harry and Ron made their way towards the Great Hall; meeting up with Hermione in the hall on the way. Harry stabbed at his food angrily while checking his mechanical wristwatch every few minutes, practically counting down to the time he had left the manor earlier.

"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione's voice came through, drawing his attention away from the mutilated potato on his plate.

"Huh? Oh yeah... just... tired."

"You seem really... distracted," she said, hesitantly.

"I just..." he foundered, his mind was too jumbled and preoccupied to come up with convincing lie to tell her. "I don't know what's up. I just feel antsy," he said, ducking his head and scowling at his watch again. Fifteen minutes...

"You know... I think I really just need to go for a walk. I need to clear my head and sort out what's eating at me. Do you guys mind?" Harry said, giving them a pleading, apologetic look, hoping it would keep them from getting too suspicious.

Hermione and Ron shared a Look, but then turned back to Harry and nodded. Hermione looked worried, but didn't say anything else. Harry packed up his bag and stood to his feet. He would start walking around the grounds towards the edge of the wards and portkey to the manor as his watch showed it was the same time that it had been when he'd entered the time-turner room, several hours earlier.

– –

Voldemort watched as Harry Potter disappeared into the time-turner closet and felt the exact moment the boy's magic disappeared from the manor. He had been impressed with how fast Potter picked up on the various lessons he had taught him. Once things had been explained to him properly, he could catch on quite quickly. He still had trouble wrapping his mind around some concepts, but he had an instinctive control over his magic, and once he started to understand the ideas, the magic obeyed his will without any resistance.

His development and control was on par with Voldemort's own education during his teen years. Faster even, but of course, Voldemort had had to teach himself most of these things when he was younger. Potter had the advantage of a proper instructor, so it was understandable that he would be catching on quicker.

Three lessons and Potter had already managed to appratate.

Voldemort grinned to himself before pausing and frowning. Was he... proud, of the boy? He was. How odd.

He turned and began to make his way up the stairs towards his study. Mixey would have dinner ready soon, and he wanted to get a few things done before –

The thought was suddenly cut off by the sudden reappearance of Potter's magical energy and the sound of a portkey popping in from behind him. He turned around and found Potter standing there with that wrinkled pucker in his forehead that he got when he was frustrated. The look was instantly replaced with a huge relieved smile as he noticed the Dark Lord standing there at the foot of the stairs. The intensity of the boy's smile, and the foreign feeling it inspired in Voldemort's chest, shocked him for a moment.

He quickly squashed it and gave Potter a questioning look.

"You're back awfully soon," he observed suspiciously.

"It drove me crazy having to wait until I knew my other self had already left. I got into Trelawney's head today in class! I found the prophecy but the bloody bint blinked and turned away from me before I could hear the whole thing!"

"You found it?" Voldemort exclaimed.

"Yes! It was there! But there is definitely something seriously fishy going on. I found it in the section of her subconscious where her mind stores all of her legitimate prophecies, and it had the exact same feel to it that the memory of the prophecy I heard last year about Wormtail, so I know it's real. The thing is that it was not in the Hog's Head! It was in Dumbledore's office! And the portion of it that I did manage to hear wasn't exactly the same as the one your Death Eater overheard. It was really close, but some of the wording was different."

Voldemort had to take pause at this. What did it mean?

"In what way was it different? Tell me the exact wording."

"Okay, it went, 'The only one with the power to match the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. The Dark Lord will come for him and mark him as his equal. He will... and then I got ejected from her head by bloody Ron Weasley yelling at me. Trelawney blinked and then moved on to the next group. I wanted to curse the hell out of both of them."

Voldemort had stopped paying attention to Potter's grumblings as he went deep in thought over the changes to the lines. "The power to match the Dark Lord, not vanquish... interesting..."

"Yeah, I know! What the hell do you think is going on? You said you were positive that the one your spy had overheard was legitimate, but this one wasn't in a pub, and the wording is different."

"That last line is interesting too... mark you as my equal... well, I suppose its fairly obvious what that's referring to."

"My scar, and your soul."

"Precisely."

"I need to figure out a way to go digging through her head without interruption and without garnering suspicion. There's no way I can wait till next class. I'll go mental if I have to wait a whole week."

Voldemort looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. "Have you ever used any memory charms?"

Potter blinked. "Like obliviate? No. I've never really had the opportunity try it out."

"Perhaps you can pay her a visit in her office, and use a compulsion spell to get her to sit still long enough for you to have a nice thorough dig through her addled mind. When you've gotten what you need, simply obliviate her and tell her that you came and asked her for help with some assignment, she helped you and you're done. Simple as that."

Potter stood there looking thoughtful as he considered the Dark Lord's suggestion. "I could try it. I was hesitant to do anything that extreme against a member of the staff... I was afraid it'd get noticed."

"Were it any other teacher, I'm sure it would, but that woman is an incompetent idiot. The only reason that Dumbledore has kept her in his employment is to protect her from me."

"Okay, but I've never cast that sort of compulsion charm on someone before. I've cast Pareo on someone, but that's a fairly powerful dark obedience spell, and I didn't think I could get away with that one inside the castle wards. I've put some simple compulsion charms on letters that I've sent my muggle aunt to force her to actually answer my questions, but that spell only works when cast onto an object, not something I could cast directly onto Trelawney... although, I suppose I could just put that charm on a piece of parchment and hand it to her... then I don't have to have my wand out and put her on her guard."

"Either way. I could easily teach you how to do the other types as well. You really should know how to perform a few different compulsion and control spells."

"I get the theory and I know the spell for a standard compulsion charm, I just haven't had any way of practicing it. I was hesitant to try out any spells like that in a risky situation without knowing if I could properly cast it or not."

Voldemort looked thoughtful for a moment before a wicked grin spread across his thin lips.

"WORMTAIL!" He bellowed loudly. Potter jumped slightly at the sudden yell, but Voldemort noticed that the boy's expression quickly shifted to one of amusement and gleeful anticipation.

A few second later a sputtering, chubby, balding, man came jogging down a corridor looking anxious and worried.

"Yes, my Lord?" He said, as his eyes darted back and forth from the Dark Lord to Potter with suspicion and fear.

"You will aid us tonight. I need to instruct Potter on some spells so he can retrieve something for me."

"Yes, my Lord. Anything you need," Wormtail cowered as he dipped his head.

"Good. Potter, Wormtail, come," Voldemort said as he began to briskly stride towards one of the empty rooms that he and Potter had used a number of times for spell practice.

Potter followed with a rather menacing grin spread across his face, and Wormtail's look of worry only seemed to grow every time he glanced over and saw it.

"What are you smirking about, brat?" Wormtail hissed under his breath as they continued to walk forward. Voldemort was a good five feet ahead of them, but he heard the remark anyway. His eyes narrowed as he glanced over his shoulder as he considered reprimanding his servant for his snark.

Potter's grin only grew wider. "You're going to being playing 'lab-rat' tonight. I just think it's rather appropriate," Harry said, airily. Wormtail bristled and looked as if he were about to try and retort something, but Voldemort reached the door, opened it and turned to glare at the short fat man. Wormtail was instantly cowed by the look and remained silent.

"This shouldn't take long. I suspect Potter will catch on quickly enough," he said as he turned from them and entered the room. The two followed; Potter with a confident gait and Wormtail with a hesitant cowering step.

The lesson progressed smoothly enough. Wormtail was understandably hesitant to allow the two of them to throw compulsion charms and obliviates at him, but he wasn't about to go against his Lord's direct orders, so he submitted, just as Voldemort knew he would.

Mixey interrupted them twenty minutes in, informing them that dinner was ready. Voldemort allowed Wormtail a 'break' to told him to go eat his dinner in his room, while he and Harry took their meals in the dining room.

Potter was entertaining in his enthusiasm. He was fascinated with how the different types of compulsion spells worked and the way the magic felt to cast. The more the boy spoke of how his magic 'felt' to him, the more intrigued the Dark Lord was. Very very few wizards were as in tune with their magic as Potter was. The way that he, himself, was. It seemed that their magics worked very much the same way, which made the line about being equals from the prophecy that much more curious and intriguing.

After their meal, he called Wormtail back into the room with them and had Potter try his hand at the Imperius curse. He couldn't use it on the Seer, because the school's wards would detect the use of any of the Unforgivables, but it was important that the boy know how to perform it anyway.

The second Potter had cast the spell correctly – which also happened to be his first try at it – the Dark Lord was once again impressed with how adept the boy was the darker spells. He almost always got them on his first attempt. He watched as Potter's eyes glazed over a bit and rolled up into his head as a look of elated euphoria spread across his features for a fraction of a second. Potter recovered quickly enough and his face was covered with a wicked grin.

"Merlin, I love that feeling," he said while a small giggle erupted from his chest.

"Feeling?" Voldemort asked curiously as he watched the boy's behavior. He was beginning to form some suspicions about the boy's magic and it was slightly concerning.

"The Darker spells... they... effect me, I guess," Potter said, pulling himself together and doing a few deep breaths to compose himself. "It's kind of crazy. I mean, in the beginning, when I first started playing around with the Dark Arts, I would totally lose myself to this sort of... crazed madness.This... euphoric haze of insanity, I guess. But it feels bloody amazing. It's indescribable. Anyway, your bit of soul inside me? He told me I needed to keep practicing so that I could gain control over it, so it wouldn't control me so much. That's one of the reason I made myself do exactly one hour of practice every evening. But no more than that. Only one hour. I wanted to do more, but he – your er... soul – he told me that restraining the amount of time I did it was part of gaining control."

Voldemort nodded thoughtfully. It was still strange to him at times to think that the portion of his soul locked within Potter actively communicated with the boy, but he was glad now that it had. There was no telling what the boy's mental state would be at the moment if he hadn't reigned the madness like that. The boy was clearly addicted to his own dark magic, but he seemed to have it relatively under control. Voldemort himself had had to deal with a dark addiction in his youth, and it took him considerably longer to get a handle on it. He was going to have to take this into account once he really began the boy's dark art's training.

Potter refocused his attentions on the Imperiused Wormtail and began forcing him to do various acts of self-humiliation, while giggling maniacally. The boy was extremely amusing to watch.

Potter lowered his wand and his giggles subsided with a content-sounding sigh. "Well, I've now officially earned myself three life sentences in Azkaban," Potter said with a chuckle.

Voldemort looked over at him and rose a single curious questioning eyebrow. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, it's a life sentence for every one of the Unforgivables, right?"

"You've cast an Unforgivable before?" Voldemort asked, his interest peaked.

"I didn't tell you about Skeeter?"

"Skeeter?"

"Ah, I guess I didn't. Do you know who Rita Skeeter is?"

"Isn't she a reporter for the Daily Prophet? There's been several articles in it lately reporting that she's... missing?" Voldemort ended with a slowly appearing smirk.

Potter's grin began to grow again. "Yeah. She's the nasty bint who wrote all those articles on me. She's also the one who outed me to the whole bloody world. Thing was that I just couldn't figure out how the hell she found out. She practically quoted a conversation I had with Fleur Delacour, but she and I had been totally alone at the time, and I read Fleur's mind later on to confirm that she hadn't been the one to run her mouth off.

"Right after the second task, I saw this big ugly water beetle in Hermione's hair and snatched it up, intending to flick it away or just squish it. But as soon as I touched it, I sensed a wizard's magical aura, so I stuck the beetle into a small magical container and kept it in my pocket till I could investigate it.

"Long story short, it turned out that Rita Skeeter was an unregistered animagus, and her form was that of a small beetle. No one knew she was at the school, or that she could turn into a tiny bug, so I figured there was almost no risk at all of anyone ever connecting her disappearing to me. So I took the little bug down into the chamber, forced her back into her human form, and used her as my own personal test subject. There were so many dark spells I'd been dying to try out on a real, living, person, but I hadn't been able to. Throwing spells at a giant dead snake is only so fulfilling. After a while it's just not very satisfying anymore." Potter ended with a bit of a pout and Voldemort barked a small laugh.

"So you used an Unforgivable on her?"

"Two. I used crucio a couple times, and holy shite what a rush! I can't even describe how... wow that was. I can see why it's so damned popular."

Voldemort smirked. "Yes, I've always been extremely partial to that one.

"Yeah, well, I basically just kept throwing stuff at her until she was no longer recognizable, and when I was finally satisfied that I was done with her, I used the killing curse. Worked on my first try."

"You're lying."

"Nope. I swear to Merlin, I got it on my first go."

"Smug little prick."

"How many times did it take you to cast the killing curse properly?" Potter asked, with legitimate curiosity in his eyes.

"My second casting."

"That's still bloody amazing. I mean, everything I read made it sound like I'd have to cast it dozens of times before I even got close to casting it properly."

"Most are unable to cast the killing curse. They simply do not have it in them."

"Well, you and I clearly do," Potter snickered.

They resumed the lesson and by the end of the hour Voldemort was sufficiently pleased with Potter's progress. He was sure that Potter would have no problems in getting the prophecy from the Seer now. He dismissed a disoriented Wormtail back to his quarters and walked Potter back to the time-turner room, still speaking the entire way there.

Potter acted as if he were on some sort of sugar-rush and was talking far more than he usually did. It was curious and yet also mildly amusing. His youthful enthusiasm was almost contagious, and Voldemort found himself snickering at the boy's jokes more than he would normally allow himself.

"Hey, if you ever decide that Wormtail has worn out his usefulness, do you think there'd ever be a chance I could obliviate the last year from his mind and hand him over to the Ministry?" Potter said as they walked down the hall.

Voldemort paused and gave the boy an incredulous look. "Why the hell would you do that? I thought that if you ever wanted to do anything with him, you would want to just kill him."

"Well, I'd love to do that too. Hell, I'd really enjoy that. But if I hand him over to the Ministry and can get my godfather cleared."

Again, Voldemort looked at the boy with a sense of confusion.

"And why, exactly, would I want Sirius Black cleared? You do realize that he was one of my more annoying opponents, don't you?"

"Was he really? Well, I guess he was an auror, wasn't he?" Potter said. "I guess, it's just that if he was cleared he could get custody of me and I wouldn't ever have to worry about someone trying to force me back to the Dursley's."

Voldemort scoffed quietly. "I sometimes forget that you're still so young. What does it matter if those fool muggles retain custody? They have custody of you now and yet you have no intention of going back to them. What difference does it make?"

Potter shrugged. "I don't know... I guess it's just sort of residual hope from last spring when Sirius first asked me if I wanted to go live with him. I really don't need, or even really want it much now, but it's still there. Besides, you should see how he's living now. It's horrible. He's literally hiding in a cave, living in rags and filth and practically starving to death."

Potter paused and observed Voldemort for a moment before smirking and rolling his eyes. "Okay, okay! I get that you didn't like the man but you don't have to look so smug about that."

Voldemort rose a single daring eyebrow, which made Potter snort and begin to chuckle.

"I may take your request into consideration, but I pose you a question –" Voldemort began.

"Alright," Potter responded with a nod and giving the Dark Lord his full attention.

"If Black's name is cleared and he gains custody of you, he would expect you to stay with him during the summers, yes?"

Potter looked thoughtful for a minute and frowned. "Yes, he would."

"You can persuade your muggle relatives to permit you to go where ever you please, so you will be able to come stay at the manor this summer, however you would not be able to do such a thing with Black. You wouldn't be able to come here."

"Shit," Potter grumbled and then heaved a heavy sigh. "You're right. Well screw it. Anyway, I guess I should get going. I've already eaten up almost your whole day."

"Yes you have," Voldemort drawled, causing Potter to grin.

"I'll see you tomorrow after lunch," Potter said as he leaned over and hissed the password to open the time-turner closet. "My free period is second block tomorrow; before lunch, so I'm going to try and visit Trelawney then. I don't think she has any morning classes, so I should be able to get in to see her."

"Good. I will expect a thorough report tomorrow."

Potter grinned and nodded his head. "You bet." He turned and slipped inside the closet while waving.

"Goodbye Harry," Voldemort said quietly as he saw the door begin to close. He caught the flicker of surprise from the boy's eyes from the open crack as the door slid closed.

A moment later Harry's magical signature disappeared and Voldemort once again felt that strange empty sensation that something was missing.

He huffed out an annoyed breath and turned away from the room. He needed to catch up on his tasks, so he quickly strode towards the staircase and up to his study.

– –

Harry climbed up into the Divination classroom and looked around. It was deserted, but he had expected as much. He'd overheard Lavender Brown speaking with her friends on several occasions about how Professor Trelawney refused to have classes before noon because of some ridiculous excuse about the inner eye or auras or something, that was really just an excuse for her refusal to get up before ten am.

He had also heard Lavender mentioning the divination groupies gathering in Trelawney's office before lunch for tea and biscuits on frequent occasion.

Harry strode across the divination classroom to the door in the back that he knew led to Trelawney's office. He turned and pointed his cypress wand at the hatch in the floor that was the entrance to the classroom and cast a quick locking spell on it. Next he turned to the office door and gave a gentle knock.

"Come in," came Trelawney's dreamy voice from the other side. Harry pushed the door open and quickly strode inside.

"Morning Professor," Harry said in a smooth, confident tone.

"Mr. Potter?" She blinked at him through her magnifying specs in obvious surprise and confusion before trying to rework her expression. "Ah, I was wondering when you would be coming to see me. I've Seen your desire to visit me for some time now."

Harry grinned. "I'm sure you have." He turned his back on her and pushed the office door closed, As he turned back to face her, he pulled his wand up and pointed it right at her.

"Compellere," he said in an authoritative voice as he aimed his wand at her head and focused his will upon her.

It was a relatively mild compulsion spell, that depended a great deal upon the wizard's personal strength and skill to be truly effective. Because of this, most wizards couldn't use it to force a person to do anything outside of their own reasonable will. This also meant that the spell was only just barely on the dark side of gray. Not a neutral spell, but still low enough on the list to not register with the wards as a dark art.

Harry pressed his will upon her with all his strength and watched as her eyes glazed over and a dumb little smile appeared on her face.

"Good, Professor. Very good," Harry said in a calm soothing voice as he walked over and sat in the chair opposite her desk. "Now you're going to sit there and look me in the eye and you're not going to blink until I'm done. Do we have an understanding?"

"Oh, yes, of course dear. Anything for my favorite student."

Harry made a slightly disturbed face, but pushed past it as he looked into her eyes and quickly slipped inside her mind..