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Moonmother's Embrace

Fandom: Baldur’s Gate 3 Characters: Dame Aylin, Selûne, a bit of Aylin/Isobel Length: ~5800 words Rating: T, canon-typical violence

Summary:

It is said that the Moon is twice-blessed: with a dear daughter and with a worthy champion. A treasure so great She could not keep her to Herself, and bestowed the blessing of her, in turn, upon the world and all Her faithful.

Aylin, and the many ways her mother loves her.

A belated full moon offering and mother's day fic, and a bit of self-indulgence. Expands on this drabble from my collection.

Also on AO3.

—

Moonmother's Embrace

It is said that the Moon Herself wove the raiments with which She clothed Her daughter, wrapping the very night sky around her shoulders. Then, from the celestial matter of Her Tears, She forged for her a panoply unmatched, quenched and tempered in the endless waters of Her divine realm.

The roadside ambush is typical Sharran fare, carefully timed to coincide with the long shadows of the new moon and the waning of Aylin's own powers - always, ironically, when she most needed them. It is well-targeted, too: they knew she would be travelling unaccompanied from the east towards Waterdeep, and they patiently waited for her to stop and let her guard down for but a moment mid-rest.

Aylin curses herself for ever granting them this moment, as she parries a long, wicked-looking spear and dodges a dagger aimed for her briefly exposed side. She knows agents of her aunt are always on her trail, and she knows they are craven assassins all, substituting eerily accurate knowledge of Aylin's movements for true skill and valour in battle. Never facing her head on in a fair fight, in a true contest of mettle. With them it is always some scheme, some ambush, some poison-dipped blade lurking in the shadows.

And now they, and their loathsome mistress, would try to take away even this.

For Aylin has grown into her limbs and her stature; has honed her abilities; has mastered both the sword and her wings; has become ready, she believes, to take up duty and title and the full weight of her grand legacy - and she let her mother know as much.

Selûne spoke back to her in words brimming with pride, promising her a knighting ceremony, a formal naming, and accoutrements befitting her station. But her aunt, as always, tries to deny them everything.

Hence this. A well-prepared trap sprung upon her when she is by nature at her lowest, in an attempt to prevent Aylin from reaching the House of the Moon for her own celebration.

It is just as well, perhaps. The indignant rage is potent fuel for sword-work, and two of the six would-be assassins lie dead at her feet already. Two more engage her in close-range combat, while two skulk around further away and pepper her with bolts both magical and mundane.

A dark spell-streak only just misses her, singeing a few feathers off her right wing instead of taking her head clean off. Aylin knows she cannot die; has been told as much many times. But she has yet to test the true extent of that gift - and she is not particularly eager for the occasion.

The spear-wielder is the next to fall, but, in her attempts to push their impaled bulk off her sword, Aylin leaves her flank exposed. From right behind her, the nimble Sharran armed with a dagger gleefully takes this opportunity. The simple tunic and travel cloak Aylin is wearing do little to protect her from the blow, and the shallow slice across her ribs burns more than it should.

One of the mages moves closer the moment she staggers, both hands aglow with an ill-boding miasma. The other she has completely lost sight of, which, when dealing with Sharrans, is cause for particular concern.

The dagger flashes before her in a feint, making once more for her flank and then slinking back. Tendrils of shadow emerge around her feet and try to entangle and trip her. A purple-fletched crossbow bolt sinks into the dirt right where she was standing a split second ago.

Suddenly, in the midst of the chaos of fierce combat, Aylin feels her mother's embrace around her, and the poison-coated dagger cutting towards her neck instead bounces off a gorget. The assassin stumbles, shielding their eyes as their weapon clatters to the ground. Moonlight burns away all lingering traces of shadow-magic.

The remaining Sharrans do not last particularly long after that.

Aylin sheathes her sword to press both her hands against her side - against cool, burnished, freshly-formed steel - and heal herself. The weakness of the spreading venom is gone at once, as is the sting of the cut. The pause she takes to marvel at the intricate filigree and run her newly gauntleted fingers over it in wonder is far longer than a simple regaining of breath.

Some few dazed minutes later, as she approaches a woodland pool to wash off her assailants' blood, Aylin catches sight of herself, and, for a long, long moment, simply stares.

For all that her mother's teachings speak of free will and choice, with the insistence that, even in the face of divine guidance, a path still had to be walked by the one choosing it, Aylin feels like she has known her purpose all her life. Enveloped in the Moonmaiden's silver, accented with gold and cobalt blue, she looks the part beyond any doubt. The sheer strength of the feeling of rightness that floods her almost startles her, and makes her sit back on her haunches.

Even the joints of her wings are armoured - Aylin notices as she stretches them out then folds them behind herself. A marvellous detail, speaking volumes about the care taken in the devising and crafting of the suit, and all for her.

The lakeshore mud doesn't even attempt to stick to her greaves when she stands up, as if knowing nothing can possibly dull the shine. The dark storm-clouds gathering on the horizon do little to dim Aylin's mood or weaken her resolve, as she leaves her foes where they lie in the ruins of their failure and takes to the skies.

But the rain, when it comes, is fierce and icy, falling in great, cutting sheets. The winds grow so strong and buffet Aylin so ferociously that even she, in all her proud stubbornness, must at the last oblige them and land, setting up in the protective mouth of a shallow cave. A small pause in her journey, but still frustrating - she'd been making such good time, too!

The fight - and then the flight - must have taken more out of her than she'd been ready to admit, for when she is all but plucked out of her humble campsite it jars her out of a shallow and utterly unplanned doze.

Aylin blinks back into full awareness in a grand hall of pale marble, empty save for the imposing figure of a tall silver-haired and silver-clad woman - a figure she recognises immediately. She stumbles only a little as she drops to her knees, head bowed in utmost reverence, eyes cast down and focused on the way her armour and wings are dripping rain onto the nacreous floor tiles beneath her. Then she starts, realises her oversight, and pulls her helm off her head - surprised and fascinated, for a moment, to see it disappear into motes of moonlight as soon as she sets it aside.

"Aylin," a calm, deep, familiar voice sounds right next to her, though she heard no approach. Gentle but insistent hands pull her up to her feet. "None of that now."

Her mother looks at her, cups her face and tilts her chin this way and that, then waves a hand. The slow drip-drip-drip stops, and Aylin feels suddenly perfectly dry and warm and comfortable. Another quiet hum, with a press of fingers against Aylin's cheek, and a bruise she was not even aware of fades into nothing, as does the twinge of an ache she'd stubbornly ignored.

"There," Selûne says, finally satisfied, and lets her hand fall back to her side.

A silence stretches between them, weighty but not uncomfortable. They are occupied enough with simply looking at each other, content to take in the other's presence. Not in a dream, or a vision, or an echo, or a guiding whisper in Aylin's ear. Nor through the connection of prayer and ritual - as solid or as tenuous as the fullness of the moon's current phase.

Aylin is the first one to speak up. "Why—" but she lapses back into the silence she isn't sure why she broke as questions crowd her mind.

Why did you summon me to Waterdeep? Why did you bring me here? Why now? And a particularly small and guilty Why not before?

But Selûne seems to grasp at least some of these, or perhaps Aylin has inadvertently spoken them to her. A rueful smile stretches her dusky skin, highlighting the subtle luminescence of her visage.

"I wanted to celebrate you in a way I felt you deserved and hoped you would enjoy. I wanted to see you acknowledged as you should be, by those you are to live amongst, and who you tell me you wish to protect. But I suppose we shall settle for marking the occasion here, instead. And I shall have you for myself, even if for a little while, before I return you to the world. Nobody can deny us that."

Aylin nods, opting for dutiful when all else seems in danger of turning overwhelming. "When?" Is her simple question.

"Whenever you wish, or feel ready. There are quarters prepared for you, to stay for as long as you need. I also I wanted you to rest - for you to allow yourself rest, and thought, and deliberation." There is a quiet intensity in her words Aylin finds she cannot even begin to argue with. "I have heard your words, and I agree with your assessment of yourself. I have watched you grow into a fine woman and shape yourself into a fine warrior. Still, this should be a decision made with a clear head and a calm heart. So I would ask you once more, is this what you want? Is this who you want to be?"

"More than anything," Aylin feels the words burst out as if of their own accord, then swallows, breathes in, pulling herself back. "I have never wanted anything else. It is— it is like—" she clenches a fist against her chest, "a fire, a drive. A need to act. I cannot stand idly by. I cannot allow injustice to go unrighted. I will not."

Selûne inclines her head and seems to acquiesce, with an expression Aylin cannot quite read. There is admiration in there, and deep affection, to be sure, but there is also an age-old, incomprehensible sorrow that has always seemed to haunt her mother, even in statues and frescoes.

"Shall I take an oath?" Aylin asks, but it is too insistent to be a question.

"In time. I would still prepare a proper ceremony for you."

All at once, Aylin is seized by something - not fear, no, but a grip is tightening around her heart. "No," she blurts out, cheeks and eyes burning silver under her mother's questioning look. "No, I…" There is no need, she wants to say, but that is not quite it, either. "I would make it now, and to you alone." Then, meeting her mother's ancient gaze, she, rarest of wonders, falters. "Of course, if you think a ceremony is required, I will—"

"Aylin," Selûne smiles at her, still tinged with sadness, but shining down upon her with an intense, bright love and unmistakable pride. "I wanted to celebrate you, as I said, for I feel it is well-deserved. That is all. But know that it will be however you wish."

Then, sterner, somehow taller, the goddess proclaims: "Speak then, daughter, and I will listen, and all the heavens shall be our witness."

The vaulted ceiling above them disappears into a dome of stars. Aylin feels like she could drift away into the endless ocean of them, with clusters dancing around the full moon that now crowns her mother. The fine scale mail she wears - so like Aylin's own, now - catches and reflects and multiplies the light. It is difficult to tell where the woman ends and the firmament begins.

But the potency of her resolve pulls Aylin back into herself. She kneels, bows her head again, takes out her sword, and lays it across her bent knee. When she speaks, her voice is clear and strong. "I would enter your service, Moonmaiden, Lady of Silver, She who brightens the deepest night."

"And I gladly accept," the Moon Herself replies, glowing and glorious. "Now, tell me, and speak true. What would you be?"

Aylin's grip on the hilt tightens with a creak of leather - she has thought of this so many times, spent so many nights wondering, pondering, making sense of her own purpose and place in this and all worlds.

"I would be your sword. To cut through darkness, and to destroy those who would spread it." She does not avert her gaze this time, but lifts her chin proudly and faces her mother's luminous countenance head on, allowing that familiar blaze never quite under her conscious control to slip into her eyes. "With your blessing, I swear it. No evil shall go unchallenged under my eye and within my reach, and no wrong unavenged. I shall be an extension of your arm and your wrath made manifest, and the instrument of your justice, as inevitable as the rising of the tide, in all the Realms and beyond."

The smile Selûne gives in response is steely. "Rise, then, Dame Aylin Silverblood, and take up your mantle."

The weight and warmth of a literal mantle come to rest on Aylin's shoulders as she stands up tall, summoned out of thin air on the goddess' word. A starry thing, midnight blue, with golden trim - it is a perfect match for her armour, draping precisely and elegantly over spaces for her wings. It is also heavy, glorious, and silky to the touch, woven of something pure and fine that Aylin does not recognise.

"Perfect," Selûne's hand comes to rest upon her shoulder, fingers lightly tracing a bit of intricate embroidery, eyes alight with familiarity. "You will forgive your mother this small indulgence as well, I trust. I was planning to present you with the armour I'd had made for you, for this special occasion. But keeping you from hurt is more important than symbolism and ceremony." She sounds almost rueful, with an edge of anger. Hated, hateful Shar must spoil even this goes unsaid but not unheard.

Then she once more shifts closer to being contained within the form of a simple woman, and takes one of Aylin's hands between her own. "Come, my dear, let us retire to somewhere more comfortable, and let us speak in peace, at length, as mother and daughter should."

When she pulls on her hand, Aylin follows. It is oddly disorienting to walk down the long corridors of a place she knows from dreams and visions but has never been to before. The emptiness feels conspicuous - a brief glimpse of a Shard's bright blue mane as they turn a corner the only sign of company - but then Aylin remembers she herself wished for privacy, and she supposes her mother's palace and realm are fulfilling her request.

She pauses at a particularly polished silver-mirror wall, when she catches sight of how very regal her marble countenance seems, accentuated by the rich shades of her grand outfit. Selûne comes to a stop beside her and regards the reflection of both of them appreciatively. Amidst the curves and dips of their brows and cheeks and the outlines of their jaws and chins, an unmistakable resemblance arises.

"Look at you," her mother says, as tall as her, far less broad, but far more imposing in her sheer presence. The silvered lines that crease her face as she smiles almost appear to be shining with joy, as her hands come to rest on Aylin's shoulders. "My dearest light. My greatest pride. How gloriously resplendent you are."

Selûne presses a kiss to Aylin's temple, her eyes awash with melancholy once more.

It is said that when grief and loss struck their most grievous blow, the very Moon stepped down from the heavens and held Her daughter as she wept. The tears She cried Herself were so abundant, Her pull on the tide so strong, the sea rose to climb upriver and reached deep inland along the path of the Chionthar.

Aylin, ever gallant, drapes the cloak across Isobel's shoulders the first time she sees her shivering with the cold of slowly creeping winter, and from then on insistently fails to remember to take it back, no matter Isobel's many attempts to remind her.

The last time she sees it is the darkest day of her life. The ragged slash splitting it down the middle and the bloodstains marring the embroidered stars dance before her eyes even when she forces them closed. Even when it is gone, pulled out of her arms and taken away, together with Isobel.

She is not welcome at the funeral - this has been made loudly and abundantly clear by a man seemingly determined to claim all the grief in the world as his and his alone. There was almost an altercation between them in the sorrow-soaked entry hall of Moonrise.

Aylin has half a mind to simply burst into the ceremony anyway, to demand her rightful place in the proceedings and fight for it as hard as necessary, but a small part of her whispers Isobel doesn't deserve this. Let her own funeral, at least, be about her.

Unless, of course - another part pipes up, bitter with resentment and almost wry - Ketheric continues to make it about himself. But when Aylin thinks of the blame so blatant in his pointed glares at her, it feels so very hard not to share it, and the weight of failure and defeat pulls her down into moroseness once more.

And so, as all of Reithwin seems to be pouring down to the grounds before the Thorm family mausoleum in a great meandering and miserable river, Aylin perches on the very edge of the open crown of Moonrise's tallest tower, and watches quietly from a distance. Hunched over, arms around her knees, wings folded tightly against her back as if to make herself smaller. She does not have it in her to pray, nor can she think of words beautiful enough to be worthy of being spoken in tribute to Isobel.

But she is not alone. The soft rain that starts to drizzle out of no clouds at all is just as silver as the tears on her face in the light of the moon.

Eventually, when the mourners have dispersed and long hours have trudged on by, Aylin, still unmoving, falls into an exhausted sleep, and dreams. The crescent moon cradles her and rocks her to soothe her, a pair of silvery arms wound tight around her, a pair of hands brushing through her ruffled feathers and braiding her messy hair. A hum sounds in the back of her mind, subtle but ever-present - a lullaby.

When Aylin wakes, the sun has long since risen. She takes brief stock of herself and the very real ties woven into her hair, and finally picks herself up to prepare to march on against the heavy weight of grief, to find the culprits behind this most hideous crime and end them without mercy. The silver thread that she knows she can always tug on stays wound tight around her heart, providing the comforting certainty of a response that always, always comes.

Until the jaws of darkness snap shut around her.

What follows is a century of pain and loneliness and a silence she never thought possible from a mother she should never have been able to lose, with the mockery of her most hated foes as her only company.

Moon-child, how does your mother love you?

Does she weave you laurels before you've earned them?

Does she cover your eyes and whisper sweet lies in your ear?

Will she shed a tear when we slay you?

Or will she, from her perch on high, not notice at all?

On and on and on, their words and their knives cut the same.

It is said that when Her daughter was at long last freed, the Moon Herself wept once more - but this time for joy. The night sky She painted with showers of light to announce her return to the world. Witnessed by every temple along the Coast and beyond, a portent of great victory and great jubilation.

As the light rained down, all it touched was sanctified in Her name. Swords and ploughshares and compasses and prayer books all. From devoted peasant to inquisitive acolyte to honoured silverstar, all of Her people flocked outside in droves, not yet knowing what they were celebrating, but sharing in the triumph.

The first time Aylin clearly hears her mother's voice after a century or more, she is not struck by relief or joy.

Instead, she startles and feels her heart stutter in her rib cage and her hair stand on end - because of how similar it sounds to the voice of her principal tormentor. The content of the words, the loving and gentle cadence - those are nothing at all like the horrors whispered into her ear throughout her captivity, the salt rubbed so very carefully into her wounds. But it still causes her to shiver involuntarily, and it makes her so very angry, that Shar would dare leave stains on even this.

Her mother, it seems, takes note and offers sombre understanding - but it has always been hers to see and know. For that evening, at least, she keeps her presence felt, but her words quiet.

"I missed you," Aylin says, softly, knowing with such beautiful certainty that this time she is not murmuring to herself. Sitting cross-legged at the edge of a brook in a forest, somewhere off the road to Baldur's Gate; it is no formal prayer, no knight knelt upon one knee, answering to her goddess. No official consultation between deity and emissary.

Aylin is stripped of her armour, and though this time it is voluntary, she feels its stark absence. Some small, discontent movement, some mostly-contained shudder does not go unnoticed, for a warmth drapes over her as if in response.

The moonlight lies thick on her like a blanket, comfortingly heavy and soft against her shoulders, brushing against her cheeks and jaw. There are no clouds to mar her longed-for view of the heavens. A tear from the sky kisses her forehead in a droplet of silver, and vanishes into mist just as quickly as it appeared.

An owl hoots somewhere in the thick forest behind her. A wolf's howl echoes in the distance. Isobel is safe asleep but a few paces back towards camp - safe and whole and gloriously, wondrously alive. Aylin breathes deeply, and, for a moment, alone-but-not, feels content.

In Waterdeep, near the docks, there is a tavern. An unassuming place, unusually quiet and pleasantly subdued in the midst of the vivid rowdiness of the district.

During the century and a half since its founding, before her own century of imprisonment, Aylin was called here many times, for a wide variety of reasons. She has saved it from Sharran plots and mundane threats both, and helped in rebuilding it when protection failed. She has celebrated here, taken respite and refuge here, and been welcomed every time.

It is, after all, her mother's.

But she has never before had a chance to bring Isobel with her.

So it makes sense to Aylin to suggest they visit, as part of their travels, now that all immediate crises have been averted and both their freedoms regained. They are in the immediate area, after all - and sneaking out of the House of the Moon and away from honour and ceremony, even if for an evening, seems an attractive prospect. She does not question the thought or its provenance at all.

What Aylin is certainly not expecting is for it to be empty of patrons on such a pleasant evening as this. She pauses and looks over behind her upon entering, just to make sure that the door was indeed unlocked and the sign indeed proclaimed the tavern open.

Nor is she expecting the figure behind the bar, nothing at all like the last proprietor of Selûne's Smile Aylin had worked with. For the last quarter-hour winding their way through narrow harbourside streets, she'd half-prepared to meet someone new and explain, once again, who she truly was, and why the backroom was not, in fact, off limits to her.

Short, plump, grey-haired, with a kindly lined face, the woman looks up from her busywork just before Aylin enters and steps forward, as if knowing she was coming.

Aylin has never met this particular person in her life. Aylin knows exactly who she is.

Isobel, it seems, knows - or realises - as well. She gasps and all but throws herself to her knees.

"My Lady," she whispers, awed, not daring to look up. Aylin stands, blinking, unmoored, as the woman tuts kindly and steps hastily forward.

"None of that, now," she takes Isobel by the hand and pulls her up, and Aylin is struck once again by the familiarity-but-not of it all. "I most certainly did not come here for my very own daughter-in-law to bow and scrape to me, goodness."

Her eyes are like living silver coals set deep in her weathered face, sparkling with clear mirth and deep, deep, unfathomable feeling. She holds Isobel's astounded gaze, then pats her hand and lets it go. "Save it for the temples and the rituals, darling girl. And please, call me Luna. Now, you," she turns to Aylin, tilting her head up almost comically in order to face her, arms wide. "Come here."

Aylin manages the few steps forward, then crumples into her waiting arms. "Oh, how I've missed you," she hears, spoken into her hair.

"And I you," Aylin whispers into a shoulder of rough-spun wool, and notices it already stained with her tears. A small, work-roughened hand cradles the back of her head, and combs gently through her hair with perfect rhythm, like the rising and falling of the tides.

"You'll make me weep with joy, you will," Luna chuckles wetly, still holding her close. "I may be diminished like this, but the tears might still cause a miracle. There are easier ways, you know, for us to get dear Isobel a fine enchanted trinket."

Isobel still looks shocked, ramrod straight, gloved hands clasped nervously around each other in a death-grip. "I-I couldn't possibly—"

Luna takes pity on her, and lets Aylin go with only a bit of reluctance. Then she steps forward and opens her arms, and ushers Isobel into an embrace in turn - much more easily and comfortably, with someone who doesn't tower over her.

There is the briefest, most fleeting moment of someone else being in her place - not alongside Luna, but impossibly occupying the very same space. A woman Aylin has never met, but has seen loving depictions of gracing many walls in Moonrise.

Luna whispers something into Isobel's ear, then lets her go. Isobel, Aylin thinks, who has not felt a mother's embrace since childhood.

Isobel, who seems intent on regaining something resembling composure, and who attempts to excuse herself, dabbing frustratedly at the tears that are ruining her finely lined eyes. In the presence of her goddess, no less, whose holy symbol she had marked in permanent ink upon her very face - Aylin wants to laugh at the wonder and absurdity of it all.

"Mother," she manages, shoulders shaking with mirth and tears and gods knew what besides, "I am delighted to introduce you to Isobel, my beloved, most treasured mate."

Luna smiles, bright and wide. "I would say we've met, but, well, it is an honour and a pleasure to have a proper introduction."

"The honour is all mine, I assure you, my lady— madam Luna," Isobel still seems shaken and awed and only mildly terrified, but slips so proficiently into elegant manners and a small, refined bow that Aylin beams with pride.

Mother or no, it is surreal to have a goddess bid you take off your heavy travelling cloak, to set out a table for the three of you, to have her putter around the kitchen and place before you a plate of small tea cakes, lovingly crescent-shaped.

But in the midst of all of this, a horrible thought occurs to Aylin, and a chill runs down her spine. It is entirely unsuited to the pleasant surroundings and warm, welcoming atmosphere suffusing the place, but she must speak it.

"Mother. What if Shar—"

"Let us not speak of her now, and spoil our joy on her account, when for once she isn't even trying herself," Luna cuts her off and waves an almost casual hand, but she knows - of course she does, goddess that she is - what Aylin meant. The unspoken truth behind it, the endless pursuit they endure at her cruel hands. "She is busy licking her wounds, brooding. We are safe, can indulge in a bit less worry, at least for a night. We all deserve as much, do we not?"

Aylin knows this well: Selûne does not frequently take shape like this, work with as direct an approach. Her avatars and embodiments, when she creates them, roam elsewhere, out of her scheming sister's ever-reaching grasp.

"Still— why? Why come here, like this?" Aylin dares ask, as if she, so used to being fearless, fears the possible answers.

"For you, Aylin," Luna replies simply. "You are not just divine, and you are not merely celestial. You are a woman of flesh and blood, as silvered as they might be. And so you deserve, I think, the comfort of flesh and blood, and a mother's love so expressed and unmistakable, even if for a little while."

She reaches up and traces a gold line that cuts through Aylin's cheek with a knobby thumb, anger rising - not aimed at her, no, never her. But the wrath as old as the universe itself is still a frightening sight to see, couched in that kindly, unassuming face. A moment later she wanes into sadness, dimming before their eyes.

"I will never forgive my sister for what she put you through. But I will never forgive myself for allowing it to happen, either. It is the greatest grief of any mother, that she cannot shield her children from all harm."

Aylin recalls the night-black points of a cruel, obsidian-headed spear, and swallows around a lump in her throat. Isobel's hand winds itself around hers, small but insistently present in wordless reassurance, and Aylin, for a moment, indulges in feeling so very thoroughly loved.

But there is still a gnawing, maddeningly insistent question in the back of her mind, and she allows herself to finally speak it, though it tastes bitter. "Why, then? Why did you allow it?"

"So much had transpired," Luna continues, acknowledging the interjection with a pained furrowing of her brows. Standing, she is about eye-level with Aylin, who is seated. "The very world split apart, and more besides. I was weak, and I could not interfere - I tell you this not as an excuse, but as the plain truth. The few agents I sent, tried to guide to you, were misled and fell, and you were lost in shadows so dark they hid you even from me. Both of you, stolen from me."

The anger, rising once more, turns the diminutive woman into something else, almost like the superposition of a reflection in a clear pond. Hair not grey, but bright silver; blue scale and drapery instead of a brown woollen dress and apron. A fierce scowl full of ancient rage and sorrow both on her face. But Aylin blinks, and it is all gone, and something within her unfurls as well.

"Still, it is as we all know: the light may be dimmed, but it cannot ever be extinguished. And it shall always wax in power once more," Luna states this certainty, this cornerstone of their faith, so simply that she makes it enchanting. "At least for the moment we have peace, and safety, and time enough to talk and reflect and understand. Sorely needed, I should think."

"We were planning to stay the evening, I believe, though not exactly the night. Of course, you are right, and it would be an unimaginable honour as well as a necessity, but…" Isobel begins rather pragmatically and diplomatically, brow furrowed in concern. Aylin is well aware what she means, that they promised their presence at several rituals and in some fairly distant enclaves, later. She is also utterly enamoured with how perfectly respectful but uncowed Isobel is acting.

Luna seems to notice this as well, judging by the merry twinkle in her eyes. "Oh, I know you, shining, dutiful flames that you both are - you would rush onward immediately, until all wrongs in the world were righted by your hands. My sword and my shield."

A loud flapping of wings sounds right outside one of the inn's windows, accompanied by a series of long hoots as a pair of snow-white owls disappear into the darkening night sky.

"Don't mind them," Luna says when she sees the both of them startle. "They are merely going off to let the Head Priestess know where you are."

"Better to avoid dealing with an overeager search party, I suppose," Isobel approves with that half-smile Aylin is prepared to name the most charming thing on Toril, and that she still cannot quite believe she is getting to witness again. So she pulls her chair closer to Isobel's and winds an arm around her shoulders.

Luna inclines her head in a little nod, then stands very still for a moment, simply facing the two of them and taking in the sight of them. "You have made me so proud," she says, more quietly, more solemnly. "The both of you. So strong, and so wise. I could not have wished for greater champions, for brighter stars in my sky, nor for a dearer daughter. Know that you have my blessing, always. But now I bid you rest, and spare some time for indulging an old woman, as well as yourselves."

Aylin shakes her head and smiles, preparing to stomp down on some of her restlessness and let herself be coddled, to luxuriate in the odd mundanity of it all - and looks sidelong at Isobel who shrugs with a bemused smile of her own.

"Here," Luna waves a hand and conjures some decidedly un-mundane silverware, completely filling the table before them. "Why don't we start with tea?"

#baldur's gate 3 #dame aylin #selune #aylin x isobel #isobel thorm #fanfiction #bg3 #oathkeeper writes things #my fic #fullmoonofferings2025 #it's a wonder i've managed to keep away from the whole waterdeep inn thing for so long!

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months ago

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Perigee

Fandom: Baldur’s Gate 3 Characters: Dame Aylin/Isobel Thorm Length: ~2400 words Rating: T

Summary:

The tattoos were decades old when Isobel died, and the renewal had already been somewhat overdue. Thin skin, the woman had warned her all those years ago, laying out her tools in preparation for the ritual.

Isobel, and simple and not so simple acts of reclamation.

Bit of a followup to this drabble from my collection. This is mostly me writing out a bunch of Isobel-related headcanons in the form of a fic, one of my favourite pastimes. Centres some body image and modification themes, some post-resurrection recovery (shoutout to @demytrixi for this one in particular), and some trans Isobel. Cheers to @ontoilogical for suffering through many of my rambles.

Also on AO3.

—

Perigee

The edges of the mirror are foggy; the air filling the small but private room heavy with damp warmth. Isobel leans in closer and gazes at herself, flushed and fresh from her bath. She pulls gently on the skin of her cheek with but a fingertip, tugging just underneath her right eye, and frowns.

The circles there have faded to a level she was used to, once: ever-present, but a far cry from the bruised-dark shadows marking the many sleepless days and nights flowing into each other during her vigil at Last Light.

But something else has faded, as well - as ink is wont to do. The carefully applied marks around her eyes have lightened and lost their sharpness, as if spilling out of their confines within her skin. The subtle magic woven into them was meant to preserve them from being inadvertently affected by restorative spells, not to combat the march of time. It's a miracle, Isobel supposes, that they are there at all. That they didn't fade into smudges of near-nothingness in the long century she spent entombed.

Though it is unlikely it would have been the full century, of course - who knows how long anything that could ever have been called Isobel had actually been in that sarcophagus?

But it does her no good at all to contemplate that; to picture all too vividly her own remains wasting away.

Maybe they never did. Maybe she never did. This is a course Aylin has taken several times when comforting her during troubled nights. Insistent, in that ardent way of hers, that there'd been a beam of blessed light upon the marble relief of her grave, always, even in the still-hallowed but sealed depths of the mausoleum. The Moonmaiden doing what little She could at that tragically late point, out of some meagre hope or other, to protect and preserve one of Her own; a gentle repose instead of worms and rot.

Isobel is not quite sure how comforting she finds the thought, even now. Nor is she quite sure if Aylin was trying to comfort Isobel, or herself. It is pointless to contemplate, anyway - those who knew the truth of her state when they pulled her back into this world are all mercifully dead, now, and she is forever safe from their grasp.

The simple coal-fuelled fire this remote enclave of the Moonmaiden's faithful uses in place of water-warming enchantments has sputtered out completely. The rough-spun towel dips low around Isobel's waist, sodden, and she has to hold it up with one hand as she stands up straight and steps away from the mirror, suppressing a shiver.

It helps that the reflection that greets her then is a welcome sight. In their shared and savoured months of serenity, her skin has lost any sallow undertone, returned to the duskier shades that so amicably caught the rays of Reithwin's sun a long time ago. Her cheeks and nose and the tips of her ears flush a much healthier tone, a markedly more alive hue. Her ribs no longer show, and the sharp angles of her hip bones do not jut out so prominently. Even the most blatant reminder, the surgically precise lines cutting down from below each of Isobel's shoulders and meeting in a Y in the middle of her chest, have lost some of their darkness and so stand out just that blessed little bit less.

Gone is that haunting feeling of being unpleasantly hollowed out. And all it has taken for these precious incremental changes is time, and rest, and peace and all that came with it - all things that Isobel would never have considered luxuries, before. But most of all there has been love - oh, such bountiful, incredible, nourishing love. Not the grasping, suffocating thing her father tried to subject her to, twisting it and besmirching the very idea.

So Isobel pokes and prods once more at the remaining frustration she means to address, at the once-vivid black of the detailed design inked around her eyes. They would have needed to be redone, or at least filled in again, anyway. The tattoos were decades old when Isobel died, and the renewal had already been somewhat overdue. Thin skin, the woman had warned her all those years ago, laying out her tools in preparation for the ritual.

The one below the corner of her right eye had already grown just a bit ragged and fuzzy around the edges by the time Aylin burst so gloriously into her life. That part of it now looks almost like a frayed ribbon, a far cry from the finely pointed tip of Her Lady's sigil. Isobel has taken to filling it in with dark pencil and kohl, but she can always tell. It smudges, sweats off, and is altogether an annoyance.

No, an actual fix is desperately needed. And now, finally, Isobel has both opportunity and time enough to consider a plan and put it into motion. The sheer indulgence of it strikes her, and takes her breath away for a moment - not at all in that awful, creeping, deathly way she's almost gotten used to.

The artist who'd done it so marvellously the first time is long dead; lost with the rest of Reithwin and Isobel's former life to the ravages of cursed shadows, or violence, or simply time. She would have to find another, in one of the enclaves they were planning on visiting, perhaps. Somewhere not in dire straits, where they could stay for a little while without being a burden, in order for Isobel to recover properly instead of squinting through long days of travel, fighting a futile battle against the dust and dirt of the road and camp. There are such concrete steps to consider and put into motion, Isobel almost feels giddy.

A ritual, a renewal, a purification, and a reclamation.

Though she knows with a certainty born of decades of faith that the moon will wax to fullness and rise in its eternal course, there is an element of excitement in the anticipation of it each time. Now more so than ever, perhaps; the night of renewal she has organised for herself draws close, mere hours away.

This time is different from the last in one crucial way, however. Isobel will not be alone with the artist, staying very deliberately still and murmuring quiet prayers to herself, outside of a requisite call-and-response with them to mark the four quarters of their work's progress.

Aylin is to sit at her side throughout the proceedings. She is there at her post already; her shoulders stiff, formal and proud, in full regalia, she is every inch the Moonmaiden's Sword. The one obvious concession to the dual role she is to play tonight is the endlessly gentle, loving way she takes and holds Isobel's hand between both of hers: warm, safe, engulfed as soon as she is within reach.

She does not let go for a moment, not even when Isobel thinks she might rather like the use of her hand in her attempt to lie down just a bit more gracefully. Dramatically and suddenly prostrating herself before her Goddess is not exactly on her schedule tonight.

Still, she manages to get herself into position, reclined on a somewhat makeshift altar-bed, amidst a veritable sea of incense and candles and a small side-table filled with containers of vivid ink and freshly blessed, cleaned, and honed implements. The artist is an elder cleric, settled in this enclave after a lifetime of travel, and they look very much like they know what they are doing. Isobel relaxes with deep, measured breaths, closes her eyes, and they begin.

Aylin's hands tighten around hers each time Isobel winces inadvertently. Isobel can't see her, but can picture the slight downturn of that noble mouth, that expression of displeasure saved for the idea of her darling suffering any kind of discomfort - even if it is willingly chosen and administered for a higher purpose, as it is now.

None of it is audible in Aylin's voice, however, not when she speaks her part of the proclamations in Selûne's name, nor when she murmurs gentle encouragement in Isobel's ear.

The smell of the incense is strong, even as the night breeze tries to carry it off. Isobel feels gooseflesh prickle along her bare arms and legs. The simple robes she is wearing ensure she is bathed in the light of the full moon, but the warmth this induces is purely within, Selûne's face ever-radiant yet cool.

As the night stretches on, Isobel lets herself fall into the rhythm of it all, cradled in silver hands, an ancient, familiar whisper in her mind, tethered to the world only by Aylin's stalwart hold on her.

And then, almost startlingly suddenly, it is done.

She'd called it an act of devotion that first time, but in truth it had been a reclamation even then. A distinction from a loved but long-lost woman her father insisted on seeing in her, and a claim upon her own self.

When Isobel looks at herself in the mirror, afterwards, even through the freshly bleeding, red, swollen mess, she can tell the work was done with utmost skill and mastery. She feels more like herself at once, a loosening of something in her chest she feels just as keenly as she feels the ointment coating her skin settle and dry.

Her first smile is wide, crinkling her eyes and making her wince in pain, and the tears, though she tries to hold them back, sting awfully.

Aylin looks concerned, of course, the darling miracle that she is. Offers her healing, even though Isobel is perfectly capable of healing herself.

Isobel refuses, just as she refused to heal herself back then - the burn has become bracing in a familiar way. It is, after all, hers and hers alone.

She remembers it, holds onto it, the next time she lies awake and troubled even though she is comfortably ensconced in Aylin's arms. When Aylin, sound asleep, murmurs nonsense into her hair and squeezes her closer and jolts Isobel's hand up against her own collarbone. Her fingers graze the ugly lines of scars that meet there to run down to just above her navel, very precisely marking halves of her torso.

Isobel doesn't focus on the feeling of dark muck rising in her throat, or of the itch in her lungs she wishes to expel; she thinks, instead, of how the lines would look as part of a crescent moon and stars design, of how it could curl down all the way to below her ribs. An addition of something else, perhaps. Feathers, with each sleek vane finely inked and detailed? she muses, almost idly, as if the mere thought is enough to stave off that shadow of clinging death. No, perhaps a design even more elaborate. Perhaps she would like to bear actual silver on her skin.

She'd prayed to a caring and giving goddess to alter her body before, when she'd found it did not suit who she was, and she received everything she asked for, each glorious step of the way. Perhaps if she were to ask now, Selûne would deign to once again look upon Her faithful and—

—but no, this is different, and Isobel dismisses the thought almost as soon as it appears. In fact, she feels surer than ever she wishes to once again participate in some small way in this echo of the divine act of creation, inching closer to a body she will rejoice in inhabiting through more mundane means. It is only a matter of deciding on the specifics.

Her thoughts drift, inevitably, to her mother, who died not quite knowing her name, but who never once, not even in the privacy of her correspondence with her father, nor in all the journals and letters unearthed after a century, resorted to using her forsworn one, no matter how young Isobel had been when they'd said their goodbyes. Our little one, our darling daughter, written in a stumbling, weakened, trembling hand, in the few precious moments of wakefulness afforded her in her final days. An outpouring of love and faith onto regular parchment that held even after a hundred years and more. What would immortalising her look like? The tribute of a favourite flower, or perhaps a handful of notes from a favoured song, for a woman named Melodia, somewhere near Isobel's heart?

She thinks of her father, loving and proud and oh-so-encouraging of his precious daughter, his, his, his, his world, his life, his treasure, his Isobel… calling her his as he plucked her from her grave and allowed, no, demanded death and its servants to leave their fingerprints and marks all over her, outside and in. How dare he, how dare he, how dare—

She turns in the warm circle of Aylin's arms and thinks of something, anything else.

Such as the endearing way Aylin's brow furrowed in confusion on that one inconspicuous summer afternoon, when she and Isobel first discussed the very concept of desiring to change and shape oneself - for was not their Lady reliably ever-shifting in Her nature?

"I am eternal," Aylin stated, then, "and I am perfect as my holy Mother made me."

It was not said as a haughty boast or brag, but as a simple undeniable fact. Isobel couldn't help but giggle at that, and indulge quite happily in that perfection for the rest of the evening.

She wonders, now, as thoughts crowd her head and deny her sleep even as dawn slowly creeps closer, if Aylin still thinks this. If she merely tolerates, or mislikes, or takes pride in the gold lining every part of her now, beautiful but heavy with meaning and reminders - like the patch over her heart that is the size of Isobel's palm, and the conspicuous, almost mirrored, insets at her shoulder blades. If Aylin, too, has grown estranged from her own body, in ways both quite logically understandable and deeply, primally incomprehensible, after that long, long century. If she would ever admit such a thing to herself, and if she would like to be asked and prompted to consider it at all.

Isobel places a hand over the steadily beating beloved heart, and toys with the thought of how the gold outside only mirrors the gold within, now. Their legs already entangled, she slots herself closer in a way endlessly practised, and lets the morning sun find them like that in its own time.

#baldur's gate 3 #isobel thorm #aylin x isobel #dame aylin #fanfiction #bg3 #oathkeeper writes things #my fic #i am drowning in anxiety today....... so why not rotate isobel in my mind. anyway here's a post.

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months ago

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I think I've pinpointed what my main problem with how widespread and pervasive and accepted at face value the whole "Aylin broke her oath" nonsense is (beyond the itchy nerd rage annoyance of No But That's Factually Incorrect About My Fave), why it grates on me so damn much: I hate that people apparently cannot conceive of a storyline for a paladin/knight-type character other than a fall from grace.

As if there is no interesting struggle to any kind of genuine goodness or nobility or honour or virtue other than a loss of it, be it sudden or gradual; just piling on a whole lot of cynicism and a need for everyone to be dragged down and through the same dirt and endlessly punished and never, ever, ever emerging changed and challenged but victorious, but instead being tarnished and diminished and having something fundamental taken away from them. Coupled with this whole miasma around it of how even daring to strive or try for something else, to be better, to hold yourself to principles and standards is futile, and a bit of a nasty hint of how even if you've succeeded in some way, it will be taken from you, or it will be soured for you and ruined. The cause you believed in and dedicated your life to was not actually worth it or worthy, the person you believed in and were loyal to and respected betrays you or uses you or lets you down, and never actually cared about you in the first place, as if the story cannot be allowed to go any other way. Or, also, often the implication that this is all somehow good and liberating? These aren't interesting shades of gray or clever subversions. This is disillusionment and misery and bleak shit - but anything else is a childish fairy tale and boring, apparently. Am I making sense?

#i don't know... everything about this just feels so bad every time i see it in the wild #yes i do have to admit there's a certain level of comedy to the situation #tumblr user oathkeeper: i get personally offended when people call my favourite character an oathbreaker how very dare you #ostensibly this post is about #dame aylin #but you know... in general as well #knightposting #i'm just tired man

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months ago

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#snork mimimi #yeah this is just me..... blessedly it's a holiday tomorrow #knightposting

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months ago

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Brain is super fried, so I decided to just stare at Isobel's face a bit and do some comparisons with and without the tattoos. I adore them in both concept and execution, but they do make a lot of her facial structure/details hard to properly grasp.

Some expressions, courtesy of photo mode.

And a little kiss to top it all off, because I can't not, the adoring gazes are just too much. Even if it's default NPC Aylin blocking half the screen with her wings and pauldrons.

Anyway, I am enamoured with her. Look at her.

#isobel thorm #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #aylin x isobel #me: I NEED THIS! THESE ARE IMPORTANT REFERENCES! [takes another 200 screenshots of the same 2 characters]

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months ago

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...and that's Isobel done! Quick turnaround on the messy table among all the paints and brushes and spare parts and whatnot.

And then a couple more in the room she'll actually be hanging out in, just to check out different lighting. Hi there, very appropriately named moonshine snake plant.

Some closeups - the detail level of the sculpt is just out of this world. Also, I don't want to paint a crescent moon or a star ever again.

So, the big question, can you pose her and Aylin together? It's a bit tough, honestly! They weren't really made to match, pose-wise, and the poses are supposed to represent their individual iconic moments (Aylin breaking out of her Shadowfell imprisonment and Isobel protecting Last Light). But you can make it work.

After messing around with them a bunch and trying things out, I decided perching Aylin on something gave the best results. Having her sort of loom threateningly in the background, just about to take flight, while Isobel casts one last pre-combat buff spell. Big battle couple vibes, which I'm always down for.

That's how I'll keep them for now, over in the corner of my work desk I've allocated for this purpose. So they can just judge me, eternally.

Of course, you can also do silly things, such as "let me get that loose feather for you real quick, babe":

And, finally, the funniest thing I realised is that when you take a photo of Isobel from a certain angle, the way her arm is posed makes it look like she's trying to take a selfie (sadly, the wife isn't cooperating).

#isobel thorm #model painting #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #dame aylin #anyway. yeah. i love them #also love finishing things. feeling accomplished.#long post #once again photographing any of this is actual hell

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months ago

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No more inadvertent ghosting from our favourite moon lesbians; no more depriving everyone of the blessing that is Dame Aylin sending her regards. Here's a little something I've been holding on to just in case Patch 8 addressed it (which it doesn't seem to have done).

This mod doesn't add any new content - it's a tiny scripting tweak that changes one unset flag check in order to get Isobel's (or Aylin's) existing letter to appear in the Chest of Grateful Words in the epilogue reunion camp.

Available here on Nexus and here on mod.io, as well as the in-game mod catalogue (console/Mac approval pending).

If they are both alive and well (and, importantly, un-betrayed!) you will get a letter from Isobel. If only Aylin has made it, you will get a letter from her.

Note that this mod will NOT work on a mid-epilogue save. In order for any new letter to appear in an existing playthrough, you need to load a save that's at any point before starting the actual epilogue party.

Enjoy, and let me know if you notice any issues!

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #mods #dame aylin #isobel thorm #aylin x isobel #mod release #this has been bothering me for long enough hah

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months ago

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head not empty, head full of that freaking manor from blue prince

#me this last week i'm sorry it is impossible to stop #regular oath service will resume.............. at some point #i say clutching the scraps of my ever-growing conspiracy board #i'm not dead i promise i'm just deep in the puzzle mansion that's layered like a goddamn onion #blue prince #gaming

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 3 months ago

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Tbh I would pay you to write a novel that’s just Isobel, Aylin, Karlach, and Wyll kicking ass and being bros down in Avernus. (Bonus points for Karlach/Aylin arm wrestling competitions and Wyll and Isobel just watching with heart eyes.)

That's very sweet of you to say! See, I'd just do that for free: it sounds super fun and I think it has tons of potential, and, among the many possible character combos and relationships, these two particular buddy pairs are a big personal fave of mine.

My problem is that this specific storyline should be focusing and centred on Karlach and Wyll, with the other two as major supporting characters. But my brain makes Aylin and Isobel the protagonists of the universe and sidelines most everyone else, so it doesn't feel like a good fit, you know?

(My other totally minor and slight problem is I am immensely inexperienced at long-form and have no idea how to actually write a novel, of course.)

Now, the whole Selûnite enclave murder mystery thing implied in the epilogue letters and newspapers? That's something I am always rolling around in my mind.

#one day...... who knows #oathkeeper replies to things #oathkeeper writes things #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #man i'd kill for some tie-in novels again #/another finger on the monkey's paw curls #specifically about my faves and with the exact characterisation choices i like for them. of course. shhhh.

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 3 months ago

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Let It Burn Slowly

Fandom: Baldur’s Gate 3 Characters: Dame Aylin/Isobel Thorm, with a bit of Wyll/Karlach on the side Length: ~6100 words Rating: E, for canon-typical violence and smut

Summary:

"Tonight, you rest," Aylin states with all the certainty in the Realms, and smiles, gloriously accomplished and genuinely loving. Aylin is devastatingly handsome and distracting throughout, laughing, happy, almost carefree - in the hells, of all places. Isobel sips at the sweet dregs of her goblet and supposes she can't blame her - their immediate future promises time spent fighting a simple fight, for a simple cause, at the side of good, stalwart people.

The start of an adventure in literal hell, or a series of somewhat unusual double dates - who can say?

I was challenged to write something out of my regular hurt/comfort flavoured character study wheelhouse; namely, playing with a) plot and b) an actual explicit sex scene. This is the result, concocted over the past few days. The first half of this sets up a friendly reunion with two of my personal favourite camp buddy combos and the start of an adventure with a couple of hopefully interesting threads to pursue. The second half is entirely smut, which I have never really written before, so here goes nothing, I guess. Specifically, this contains cunnilingus, fingering, face-sitting, and the mildest suggestion of armour kink.

To be continued? Possibly! In the meantime, enjoy, and do let me know how I did.

Also on AO3.

—

Let It Burn Slowly

Aylin lands in a jagged gouge in the scorched-barren ground of Avernus, between the rocky ruins of what must once have been a hilltop fortification and a field of pointed bone-brambles, and sets Isobel down with customary care.

As soon as she is certain her beloved has found her footing, with a squeeze of a hand and a quick kiss, Aylin rushes forward into the noisy, echoing fray a few dozen feet away, wings furiously beating, sword ready and gleaming.

Their two allies stand back to back, completely surrounded by enemies - but giving a good accounting of themselves, even so. The infernal line breaks beneath the first wave of Dame Aylin's radiant assault, and both Wyll and Karlach pull back to safely regroup at Isobel's side.

"Hello," she says simply, hands already aglow with restorative magic.

"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes! And sore everything," Karlach exclaims, a big breath of relief whooshing out of her as Isobel patches up a nasty set of claw-marks marring her arm.

Meanwhile, Aylin throws herself into her vanguard role with gusto, the very picture of an avenging angel raining down just rewards upon an entire battlefield. It buys them more than a moment of respite; Wyll and Karlach both look worse for wear, but nothing Isobel wouldn't consider an achievable enough fix, so she gets right to it.

"What brings you here?" Wyll asks, rolling a newly healed shoulder and shaking out his sword-hand - then lunging forward to skewer an imp that decided, to its severe detriment, their little trio presented an easy target.

"Oh, a bit of business on Our Lady's part," Isobel replies, just as pleasantly conversational, as if they were having tea and biscuits in a parlour and not braving the first of the Hells. "And the two of you, of course."

Another throaty battle-cry - this time directly from above - echoes as Aylin reaches a zenith, then dives down with a spectacular burst of moonlight, scattering a group of infernal soldiers trying to form a shield-wall.

Isobel feels her mouth go dry, agape in the hot, dusty, entirely hellish air. Karlach, even through the wreath of residual rage and flames enveloping her, gives her expression a chuckle, then gives Isobel herself a friendly nudge to refocus on the spell she is casting.

"Showoff," Karlach mutters, grinning all the while. Whatever else she was about to say is interrupted by a collection of cries and screeches, as what little remains of their assailants turn to flee.

"Go!" Aylin cries after them, watching them stumble and shove at each other in their haste to escape the range of her radiance. "Let your allies know the overlook is held fast. Let them know they would be fools to try their luck against Dame Aylin."

With the most pressing of the healing done and their foes routed, Isobel feels rightfully entitled to take a moment and fully take in the magnificent sight. Aylin in her element, all ablaze, hovering mere feet off the ground, with her mighty wingbeats kicking up a cloud of red dust and bathing it in moonlight at the same time.

Not a moment of admiration later—

"My most fiery friend!"

"Get in here, you!"

Aylin sweeps Karlach off her feet when they embrace, laughing uproariously and triumphantly. Karlach, in return, lifts Aylin up and spins her around until they both almost topple over.

"I do think they missed each other," Isobel says through her laughter at the sweet sight, as Wyll rejoins her side, and they embrace in a quick but warm hug. "And I've missed you. How have you been?"

"Well enough, all things considered," he replies with a somewhat strained smile. Isobel sees the frown pull at Wyll's brow, and knows what he will say before, she thinks, he himself quite does. "My father—"

"—is well, and has the rebuilding efforts well in hand," Isobel rushes to offer this quiet bit of reassurance, giving Wyll's hand a squeeze. "He sends his regards - and a reminder of his pride, just in case it has slipped your mind."

"For you, dear friends," Aylin proclaims - and Isobel is delighted to see the last of the clouds depart from Wyll's face at the reminder of not merely being allies anymore. "We bring the Moonmaiden's blessings and at least a few days and nights of respite. Sorely needed, by the looks of it."

"You can say that again," Karlach says, letting the haft of her axe thud against the ground. Grinding of infernal gears and gaskets accompanies her every tired, heavy movement. "We haven't had a break since we got here after Withers' reunion party. It's been months. Even I have my limits, right?"

"Tonight, you rest," Aylin states with all the certainty in the Realms, and smiles, gloriously accomplished and genuinely loving. Isobel's heart flutters even harder, making a jaunty little leap when Aylin's eyes turn to her. "Isobel?"

Isobel clears her throat and shakes her head to clear it, and makes sure to quietly curse the unpleasantly stubborn heat of the place. "Right. Yes. The sanctuary spell—"

"Aw, the old Isobel special again?"

"Nothing quite so dramatic, I promise," Isobel corrects modestly, feeling oddly flattered by Karlach's enthusiasm - and Aylin's beaming expression of pride - over something so tied into dreary, desperate effort and grim razor-edge survival in her mind. "And, thankfully, not nearly as taxing. Just a bit of shelter in any storm - infernal or otherwise. As soon as you let me know where we should set up, I'll cast it."

"The fort is as good a place as we're going to find," Wyll confirms, casting a gaze around them, cataloguing, even if briefly, the slain assailants already turning to ash and hellish residue. "We were making for the high ground, hoping it would be defensible - but an ambush was waiting for us."

As they crest the hill, it only takes a moment and a murmured prayer to Selûne on Isobel's part. Bright, moon-pale silver flows from her hands almost effortlessly now, without the need to tear through malice-soaked shadows. Without that chilling straining against something in Isobel herself. It infuses the ground and the air both, forming a bright dome of light interlocking with the ancient stone circle of the fort's outer wall.

The buzzing flies, the miasma suffusing the air, and even the pervasive reek of sulphur are all but gone. The sweltering heat becomes a warmth that could almost be termed pleasant. Isobel feels both gratitude and a tinge of self-satisfaction. Everywhere the moonlight touches is a place for Selûne, indeed - and few are more practised than Isobel in bringing the moonlight with them to the most unlikely places.

"I also," she taps the silvery satchel securely strapped to her side, "happen to have a bag of holding simply bursting with supplies and equipment for the two of you."

Karlach whoops in delight. "Oh, can't wait! I've missed real food. I could eat an entire rothé—"

The evening, if the word even has a meaning in Avernus, is comfortable; friends sharing stories of travel and adventure over dinner and drinks. The moonlit dome holds fast, blessedly does not demand Isobel's constant focus and concern, and carves a miraculously calm little segment out of the usual throat-cutting pandemonium of the place. The occasional fireball streaking across the sky overhead, distant and quiet, could pass for nothing more than misaimed fireworks.

Aylin is devastatingly handsome and distracting throughout, laughing, happy, almost carefree - in the hells, of all places. Isobel sips at the sweet dregs of her goblet and supposes she can't blame her - their immediate future promises time spent fighting a simple fight, for a simple cause, at the side of good, stalwart people. No politics here, no age-old grudges or strained loyalties or weighty history or unfortunate family ties. Besides, neither of them have been here before, so the little detour is an oddly refreshing - if appropriately horrific - novelty.

It makes Isobel's heart sing, how feather-light Aylin seems to be feeling. But it also, somehow, accentuates the line of Aylin's jaw and neck, the irresistible way she tilts her head proudly, and Isobel wants to trace the trajectory with kisses and teeth and tongue. She is enthralling, her angel, glowing in the red-hued everdusk.

Sitting still is a challenge, and Isobel thanks all the gods for her proper upbringing and the restraint it has left her with. She contents herself with fidgeting with her dinner bowl when her fingers itch to touch every part of Aylin, takes measured breaths, and wrenches her focus back to the story of a misadventure Karlach is hilariously retelling.

But Isobel isn't quite so distracted as to lose her natural and honed discernment. The little looks and touches are hardly that subtle, after all, and the familiar blanket of comfort in each other's presence has seemingly long settled upon the pair before her.

"So," she smiles only slightly pointedly when the tale is done, and raises an elegant eyebrow, "I gather the two of you…" She trails off, and lets a little wave of her hand finish her meaning.

"Cat's out of the bag?" Karlach chuckles. "It's not that we were hiding from you guys, it's just that…"

"We are still figuring out what exactly "it" is ourselves," Wyll concludes.

Karlach shrugs, slightly ruefully. "I guess whatever it is, it was bound to happen, you know? Feels like it now, at least. But I guess fate, or whatever you want to call it, gets funny like that. Just when I thought I was done and dusted, that good old Karlach was going to have her couple of months of adventure and homecoming, and then go out in a blaze of glory saving her city."

"Whatever it is," Aylin repeats, the words sounding just a bit comical in her inflection, in the mounting ardour of her speech-proclamation, "do not run from it. No matter how much time you think you may or may not have, every moment of it will be that much richer, that much sweeter, if you dive in and embrace it. And I promise you, there is time. Seize the immensity of this feeling. It is more than worth it."

Aylin grasps the air with one gauntleted fist, as if time itself is something she can clutch within it. Wyll's eyes are unusually bright. Isobel herself feels a knot in her chest, bittersweet feeling spilling all over. Karlach looks a bit choked up at that - sounds like it, as well. "So, erm, the fabled Blade of Avernus himself. Good catch, right?"

"The honour is all mine," says Wyll, smile impossibly tender. "Look at her. How could I resist? Like a moth to a flame, I was."

Karlach scooches closer on the upturned stone slab they are using as a bench, pulls him into her side, and kisses his temple, just behind the curl of a horn. She grins at Isobel from there. "The two of you, however. Nothing new there, eh?"

Isobel clears her throat, but there's a slight rasp to her voice when she replies, politely and diplomatically. "We have a new tent. A magical thing that pitches itself and puts itself away on command. A rather comfortable cot set up inside - roomy enough for Aylin, even, though she can't quite spread her wings. Awfully convenient. I simply adore it," Isobel continues. "Woven with an alarm spell." A pause. "And a private sanctum spell."

"Hah! No more noise complaints, I gather."

Isobel tilts her head demurely at the guffaw, but denies nothing.

Karlach, on a more serious note, puts a red-glowing hand carefully on Isobel's metal shoulder pad, and draws closer almost in confidence, while Aylin is briefly distracted by skewering more sausages to roast over the fire. "Not that I'm about to look a gift aasimar in the mouth, but are you sure you two should be here? You know… considering?"

Isobel recalls the way Karlach and Aylin sat huddled after both their ill-tasting quests for vengeance concluded unhappily, and feels a warmth as different from the heat of the hells as possible at the concern and understanding offered to her poor darling.

"It is very sweet of you to care, but I promise it's fine," Isobel replies just as quietly, then straightens and raises her voice as Aylin returns to her seat.

"Aylin and I, we've both felt called, guided here. There have been… portents," Isobel explains.

A message meant for them both and heard by them both on several different occasions - with the same weighty ending, repeating and growing in intensity with the moon. There is time, the words echoed, just like Aylin spoke them, mere moments ago. Time for what, exactly, Isobel doesn't know just yet. But on each occasion, the message left her with a warmth and a feeling of lightness and safety. An incongruous conclusion to what was presumably about a heist-mission to the hells, to be sure.

Aylin nods and places a hand over Isobel's. "My Mother wants us here for good reason. Though I have had much to ask Her and much to question in the time since my liberation, I unequivocally trust Her in this."

Isobel lets her fingers entwine with Aylin's, and chooses not to comment on the many complexities captured in those words just yet. "In your last letter to us, Wyll, you mentioned you were planning to assault a certain forge - that this might be the key to allowing you both to return home. It is our understanding that something of Selûne's was stolen, and can be found there as well. Something She would very much like returned."

Wyll's eyebrows seem well on their way to climbing into his hair. Karlach releases a low whistle.

"It is also," Isobel smiles pointedly, "a fine and convenient excuse for us to drop by and help out an old friend, without anyone making any divine fuss. Don't you think?"

"So you cut short the honeymoon for little old me, on the prompting of a goddess? Colour me flattered."

"As odd as it might sound, it's a welcome change. We did spend some time in Waterdeep. It was… pleasant enough, if a tad overwhelming. Then we made it all the way to Sembia, and got embroiled in local politics." Isobel allows her face to scrunch up in disgust as she recalls those utterly frustrating few months. "I do not recommend that."

"We uprooted a gaggle of Cyricists on our return past Baldur's Gate," Aylin says, matching the distaste with a scoff. "Of all the gods to yoke oneself to."

"The Dark Sun?" Wyll squirms in his seat, suddenly restless. "The city—"

"It is in good hands, on a long but steady road to recovery," Aylin reassures firmly. "They did not get very far with their plots."

Then, with an elegance that Isobel finds enchanting, she turns the conversation to Wyll honing his skills as a ranger to replace his broken pact; his reliance on his own sword-hand, on knowing the land and the creatures he hunts and combining it all to deadly advantage.

Aylin is visibly impressed - but also somewhat dissatisfied. "With the strength of your convictions and the brightness of your resolve, your drive to protect all who cannot fight for themselves - what a fine paladin you would make, Wyll Ravengard!"

Though clearly flattered, Wyll demurs. Isobel senses this particular discussion is far from over.

"Mizora?" Aylin questions darkly, but he shakes his head with a frown.

"Still lives, and has been lying low. Staying unusually quiet. But we have a plan for some long-overdue payback - one you can perhaps help us enact, now that you're here."

"Pray tell," Aylin leans closer to him, conspiratorially, a vicious grin making the golden lines on her face glint in the red light and sending Isobel's insides aflutter.

But then Aylin stiffens, drawing a deep breath, and just beyond the ruined wall Wyll is leaning against comes the telltale sound of buzzing against the silvery dome, of sizzling matter, and a screech of pain.

The rest of them hardly have time to react - Aylin is upon the intruder in an instant, grasping their neck as if the barrier were not even there for her, and pulling them through. The scorching stench intensifies as the unusually solitary merregon twists in agony, dropping the scimitar once foolishly bound for Wyll's back.

"An ill-advised attempt at treachery, doomed to failure from the start," she grinds out through clenched teeth, wings flaring, eyes aglow. The fiendish mercenary in her grip thrashes violently, strains and gurgles, tries to claw at her gauntlet - all to no avail. Aylin is as malleable as carved marble, set on dispensing justice. Isobel stares, enthralled.

Suddenly, Aylin swerves around to face another creature more cleverly cowering just outside the silver dome - a mere imp. "You there, scout or straggler," she calls out, "I hope for your sake that your master spares messengers. This is the message I would have you bring them."

She tightens her grip around the merregon's neck, gaze still intent on their other uninvited guest, and steps forward to press the struggling creature against the moonlit dome. A pillar of radiance scorches the screeching thing to ash, leaving behind only a brass-looking mask that clatters to the ground.

The little devil, beady eyes awash with terror, scampers away hurriedly, and disappears in a puff of smoke.

Aylin picks up the mask, looking it over briefly, then handing it to Wyll. "It seems any markings of whose legions this one belonged to have been scoured. We shall have to identify our newest assailants some other way."

She calmly shakes stray ashes off the leather of her glove, then tuts when some get caught in the groves of her gauntlet.

"Time to call it a night, I think," Isobel speaks up, breaking the silence with some effort.

"Indeed. Something tells me they will not be back so soon," Wyll agrees, eyes still wide.

Aylin inclines her head and gives them a warm smile, as if there isn't a bit of infernal ash smeared on her chin where her hand carelessly brushed against it. "We promised you safety and respite, did we not? What manner of paladin would I be if I did not keep my word?"

Isobel takes her by the arm, then pulls her along to where their much lauded self-pitching tent has popped up, contrasting with the surroundings in its fine indigo and silver.

"Rest well, friends!" Aylin calls to them in parting.

"Like a moth to a flame, huh?" Karlach says, as the last flutter of Isobel's white capelet disappears behind the closing flap of their tent.

"Can't blame her," a grinning Wyll responds.

"Gods no. And I still say, just like I said back in the damn shadows - they deserve it, after all that shit. Some nice times, even in the midst of… all this."

"Karlach," a soft-eyed Wyll lays a hand on her shoulder, and doesn't even flinch at the flames that still lick, at the engine oil residue collected on her skin. "So do you. Don't forget."

"As do you." She throws an arm around his shoulders, enveloping him.

The dark flush only accentuates the handsome curve of Wyll's cheeks, as well as throwing the silvery scars cutting through them into higher contrast. Karlach presses a kiss there, just because she can.

"Come on, let's give the two lovebirds their privacy. While they conveniently give us some in return."

The moment they are safely ensconced in their tent, in as magically secluded a little corner of the world as can be, Isobel's kisses do not stop. She is not deterred by needing to stand on tiptoe, straining up and tangling her hand in Aylin's hair to tug her down.

"I see my darling is in a mood," Aylin manages slightly breathlessly between the marvellously insistent kisses. She smirks almost devilishly as she says it, and for an angel getting embroiled in a battle for one of the hells, it feels like a blasphemous comparison. But the smirk only grows as her hand inches underneath Isobel's robes. "Shall I assist? Shall I alleviate—"

Isobel swats the hand away and kisses her again, harder, then nips at her lower lip, tasting gold. "I couldn't bear to sit there merely looking at you anymore," she answers against Aylin's mouth.

She winds embroidered blue fabric around her hand, feeling the heaviness of the crescent moon at its end pulling downwards, then tugs Aylin lower, closer. Having absolutely no interest in playing fair, the moment Aylin has graciously leaned in, Isobel reaches over and runs her fingers through the downy feathers covering her first wing joint, then presses into it in the particular way she knows very well Aylin cannot resist. The utterly disarmed way her name graces her angel's lips is proof enough of her success.

Soon enough, Aylin is being divested of her armour piece by piece - gauntlets first, then hip plates, joining a helmet long-lost - until Isobel fully loses her patience.

"Off," she commands, fingers catching on every scale and seam as they run down the masterwork mail covering Aylin's thighs, though her attempt at an authoritative voice ends up almost pleading. She stops Aylin mid-movement, hand only half-able to close around her unarmoured wrist. "But," her face is flushed aglow, the residual heat of the hells combining with the sweltering feeling boiling her insides, "only that."

Aylin lifts an eyebrow and grins, blinding-bright, delighted. "As my lady desires."

The scale is dismissed with a mere wishful thought and a playfully overwrought wave of her hands. She is left in her lovingly moon-and-stars embroidered braies, peeking from under the edge of her tunic and gambeson, all of it beneath luminous blue-silver plate.

And perhaps it should have been a silly sight, gold-filigreed armour giving way to soft cotton and marble-pale skin just as gilded, but Isobel's mouth waters at it. She pulls at the ties and laces and the fabric like a woman starved, crouching down, keeping Aylin still with a single loaded look upwards.

Once they are finally bared, Isobel runs a hand down each of the thick thighs, enthralled, and kisses up a golden line that twines so temptingly around one, outlining solid muscle. Her other hand is busy grasping at a behind almost as firm as if it truly belongs to a statue, but with just enough warm give to be enrapturing.

She is delighted to note Aylin's legs are trembling already. Her endurance and constitution are prodigious and divine, but even she has her limits - ones Isobel is well-acquainted with. She is less delighted by the uncomfortable cramp in her own muscles.

"Lie down," Isobel says, rising to her feet and stepping away with a measure of reluctance. Aylin obeys within moments, draping herself comfortably and most enticingly atop the several sheets and covers on their well-appointed cot.

The accommodations might leave something to be desired in comparison to the luxurious suite the House of the Moon insisted on foisting upon them, but they are also reminiscent of the camps of their allies during the Absolute crisis, and in particular of the site of their salvation and (fondly-remembered) reunion just out of the shadow of Moonrise. All in all, it is almost nostalgic.

Isobel settles on the cot herself and leans over Aylin. She indulges in drinking in the sight of her wide-eyed and utterly disarmed for but a heartbeat, then lets herself rest fully against a pleasantly cool steel breastplate. She nibbles on an ear, trails down cheek and jaw and neck, tasting, finally, the gold and pale skin and the edge of a gorget.

The way Aylin's wings shudder and flutter beneath her, feathers ruffled, is a tell all its own. Aylin turns her head to press her face against Isobel's hand, wandered up to tangling in her hair and cupping her cheek, then bites down gently at the leather of her glove.

Her armour gleams in the ruddy light, reflecting it this way and that with every movement of her heaving chest. Isobel sits back, catches her breath, wary of her own limits, and enjoys the view on her slow way down.

She can almost taste the metal and leather on the back of her tongue as she breathes in deeply before the plunge, head pillowed against that magnificent thigh. Then she takes off her gloves, tossing them aside, and delights at the half-stifled little gasps escaping Aylin as chill fingers trail over and press into her flushed, heated flesh.

The next time Aylin says her name, almost pleading, Isobel decides they have no more need for restraint. Her reward, the sound Aylin makes when she finally takes a long, slow taste of her, cannot be called anything but divine. Isobel groans in response, mouth full and tongue occupied in the most deliciously blessed of ways.

Aylin knows better than to buck her hips - but the strain visible in her, the flex of the trembling muscle, drives a surge of pride up Isobel's spine. Such control and trust, so willingly given time and again. All for her.

Often, when they had hours to spare, Isobel would take her time and test that glorious restraint, bring Aylin to the very brink over and over again before finally allowing her release. The spectacle of it, the sheer magnificence of Aylin in this state, taking her apart so thoroughly and lovingly, was more than worth every effort.

Not today, however. Time enough or no, today Isobel's own patience is spent, short, possibly nonexistent.

Aylin's, it seems, is in a state not much better; her mounting murmurs of Isobel Isobel Isobel coupled with calling her everything from darling to beloved to radiant and divine herself become increasingly desperate. In no time at all they turn into a drawn-out groan, as Aylin tenses, reaching to cling to whatever she happens to reach - Isobel's left hand - like a lifeline. Isobel laps greedily at the bounty of her release, until she calms, melting back down onto the sheets with a keening little sound that is as undignified as it is utterly endearing.

By the time Isobel is done catching her breath and wiping almost daintily at her mouth, her own underclothes feel uncomfortably sticky. She huffs with relief when Aylin, ever helpful and understanding, sits up, reaches over, and rather unceremoniously peels them down her legs along with her trousers.

Then, a simple tug at her hips accompanied by a pleading stare, and Isobel knows exactly what her angel desires most.

Those eyes, wide and luminous, still look at her like she is a miracle, like it is difficult to believe she is real. Isobel understands - she feels the same so very often, when the light catches on the lines of the beloved face just so, when Aylin smiles a particularly familiar smile. As if it could all be a trick of mind and yearning memory. But the large, sword-calloused fingers running along the inside of her thigh, the taste of Aylin on her tongue and lips and trace remnants on her face, all serve to anchor her to a much more pleasant, solid, beautifully palpable reality.

She gets up briefly to kick off her boots and her trousers and the rest into a pile, then sets herself above an expectant, eager Aylin, one knee on each side of her face, robes pushed open but still covering them both, as if they needed more privacy. Her white capelet brushes against the bare backs of her legs, tickling. The armour beneath her is pleasantly cool against her skin. The trick to positioning herself without getting caught on the elaborate silhouettes of Aylin's pauldrons she mastered long ago - and, thankfully, never forgot, even after their lost century.

Aylin's delight is as unmistakable as the silvery blush that dusts her cheeks. Her endless, frank enthusiasm and dedication are both sweetly endearing, filling Isobel's heart to tender bursting, and deliciously passionate, driving the pooling heat in her insides to a boiling point.

Isobel brings herself lower, but not quite all the way, not just yet. Aylin strains up towards her, hands grasping gently but pleadingly at the backs of Isobel's thighs. She manages, just barely, to nose through wet folds. The beautiful line of her jaw, chiseled by divine hands, tilts upwards, straining for what is just out of reach.

Taking mercy on her, Isobel lowers herself fully. The resulting delighted hum against her seemingly makes its way to her very marrow, dislodging and replacing whatever might have settled there during the long day with a pleasantly pure and simple warmth. She looks down to appreciate the sight beneath her - both of them angled perfectly for her to catch a tantalising glimpse.

The way Aylin meets her gaze and holds it, her eyes wide and rounded and softened in that way that is saved only for Isobel, shimmering with the echo of moonlight that never dims; the immense intensity of adoration contained within the simple look - it all makes Isobel's breath catch, more disarming even than her darling's rather insistent ministrations.

One hand entangling in the soft golden hair that teases lightly against the insides of her thighs, Isobel leans forward and braces herself with the other. Two fingertips press at her entrance, gently tracing and circling. Aylin looks up at her with a question writ plainly on her face, but her mouth far too enraptured to pause and speak.

"Just one," Isobel answers breathily, and immediately gasps at the familiar, welcome sensation of fullness pressing in. Aylin is being firm but cautious and measured with her strokes, she can tell. That prodigious immortal memory has, in the time since their reunion, been applied to carefully making note of every change in feeling, in preference and sensation; mapping every new place that Isobel wanted touched, as well as everything once familiar and dependable that was now better avoided.

The devotion and care on display are intoxicating. Overwhelming, almost, in a beautiful, enveloping way. But Aylin loves with the same intensity she does all else in life, and Isobel knows she can meet her as an equal and in kind, just as she deserves - as they both deserve. No notion of either diminishing or dimming could ever survive long between them, nor of bearing any part or particularity of the other as a burden.

It does not take much more than that; it never really does, when Aylin settles the full weight of her attention and ardour upon her. But a few more laps of that diligent tongue, a few thrusts carefully angled, and Isobel is crying out, clenching around the slowly retreating finger, bracing against the one strong arm keeping her upright, and grinding down upon Aylin's handsome, beloved face.

Both hands have come around her hips by the time she recovers somewhat, holding her in place effortlessly as Aylin licks her clean in languid strokes, humming her delight all the while.

Disentangling takes a bit more effort, but Aylin manages to sit up, and Isobel falls rather bonelessly against her chest. The enchanted steel of the plate now feels considerably warmer, and Isobel takes a moment to appreciate the contrast between it and Aylin herself, running so very hot where their bare legs touch.

"Since I am rewarded so handsomely," Aylin muses while she demonstratively collects wetness off her chin and her fingers, "perhaps tomorrow I shall cleave a particularly odious villain in two and make a spectacle of it - if only to watch my beloved simply drip down her thighs."

"Aylin," Isobel whines rather ingloriously as Aylin's fingers return to her and start tracing little circles around all her most sensitive, lovingly well-catalogued spots, maddeningly refusing to linger in any one place for very long.

"Shall I make a solemn oath? Never doubt how much you honour me with your regard." She kisses a teasing trail up Isobel's neck, and nibbles at the delicate tip of her ear before whispering there hotly. "But for now… I am not quite done, my love - nor, I believe, are you. What would you have of me? Mouth, fingers? Something else? Whatever my darling desires, she shall receive."

"Mmm, fingers first, then," Isobel answers after the briefest moment of introspection, allowing herself some less than refined squirming in Aylin's lap, thighs rubbing together.

Aylin nods, cups her cheek and turns her head to kiss her deeply, then takes to her favourite duties with her habitual gusto and a triumphant gleam in her eye - and an ear for command better than any soldier whenever Isobel deigns to change her instructions.

Again and again and again, because Aylin does not keep score, but always seems to yearn to outdo herself. Until Isobel, drained and overwhelmed, bids her to stop; sated, languid, exhausted and liquid-limbed.

In that almost dazed and sensation-drunk moment, Isobel thinks she would like nothing more than to fall asleep in a boneless heap, and blame the hells themselves when she felt awfully uncomfortable and sweaty upon awakening. They've managed to divest themselves of the last of their armour and clothing, at least, somewhere along the way.

But suddenly there is a pleasantly lukewarm damp cloth wiping down the insides of her thighs and her groin, then a cooler one on her flushed chest when she stifles a little cough. A cup of fresh water is pressed to her lips, along with a kiss to her temple, as Aylin returns to her side.

"Thank you," Isobel murmurs and wraps herself around Aylin as much as she can. "I love you," she manages to speak into a broad chest, safely enveloped in two strong arms, feeling the rumble of the reply more than hearing it.

When whatever passes for morning in Avernus creeps upon them, Isobel blinks awake, slowly and muddily. She groans softly into the solid shoulder beneath her cheek, inches out from under the soft cover of a wing, then sits up. Her stiff neck cracks when she rolls her head, and she tries to stretch out and will sensation back into all the worn-feeling parts of her and all the joints that haven't quite been cooperating since her return from the grave. All the while she strives not to jostle or disturb Aylin too badly, as entwined as they always end up during the night.

Despite her best efforts, Aylin blinks blearily awake soon enough, humming something resembling good morning.

"We should get up, rejoin our friends," Isobel says, without much conviction, when Aylin gently but insistently pulls her back into an embrace.

"That we should, in time. From the looks they were giving each other during supper, I'd wager they have no complaints about making good use of your sanctuary and sleeping in."

"As they deserve," Isobel concludes. She busies herself tracing a golden line down Aylin's forearm and marveling at how it moves and glistens whenever Aylin tightens her hold around her waist.

"Truly. But, rather more pressingly - shall I make good on my offer, in the meantime?" Aylin muses mock-innocently, her hand wandering lower, stopping just atop the soft give of a thigh. "Or is smiting a foe a necessary prerequisite? I fear if, after every encounter in a place as lousy with wretchedness as Avernus, we must stop so that I may attend to the sweet needs of my mate, it will take us an age to get anything done." Her hand has snuck down, long fingers now tangled in dampening curls. "Of course, it is no great burden upon Dame Aylin; my darling comes first, after all. Well - unless she herself demands otherwise."

Her grin is so wide, her joy and self-satisfaction so contagious and honest and plain as to be ridiculous. Isobel takes the wandering hand in hers, pulls it up for a kiss, then presses her cheek against it, chuckling. She relishes the moment of feeling enveloped by the large, soft palm. All the sweet ardour and horrible innuendo and true weight of the full meaning of Aylin's proclamation bears down upon her all at once.

"Oh, Aylin. I adore you. But for now, breakfast comes first, I'd say—" The hand is gone from her face, the sheets and covers rustle loudly, and Aylin is on her eager way down, still grinning, before the words even finish leaving Isobel's lips. "I did not mean it like—"

The rest of the sentence is lost in a delighted gasp, and Isobel finds she doesn't mind she misspoke at all.

But Aylin pauses, tilts her head inquisitively. "Shall I stop?" Isobel can feel her every word, her every little puff of air torturously close.

"Mmh, no, don't you dare stop now," she mutters breathily, tapping fingers against a golden head, cupping the back of it and pulling it, somehow, even closer, grinding against a wonderfully hot mouth, "there is— we have time."

Aylin hums her happy agreement from between her thighs, and feasts.

#dame aylin #isobel thorm #aylin x isobel #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #fanfiction #oathkeeper writes things #my fic #isobel is understandably thirsty #aylin is delighted to be of service #i cheated and wrote a character study anyway #you know how it is #genuinely though would love to know what you think

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