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snowfolly · 10 days ago

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This story is heart wrenching, poor Ember 😭 he family seemed so good… ahhhhhh

Thanks so much, again, for trusting me with this piece!

A Happy Child

Word Count: 8k

Summary: A One-shot of Ember Thistleberry's, (The Dark Urge), childhood, leading up to her first Urge from Papa Bhaal.

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat: Violence, Gore, Murder, Body Dysmorphia, Intrusive Thoughts, Identity Crisis, Child Death/Slaughter, Familicide

Art for this One-shot Commission from the absolutely AMAZING @snowfolly!! TY SO MUCH FOR THIS GORGEOUS ART, I'M SO EXCITED TO FINALLY BE ABLE TO SHARE IT!! sorry it took me a million years to finish writing the fic 😭

Ember Thistleberry was a very happy child, since the moment her parents found her on their doorstep.

In fact, she was such a happy and lovely little babe that they simply couldn’t take her to the orphanage when they looked upon her sleeping soundly in the cradle she’d been left in. Despite already having two other mouths to feed, they knew that they would make it work.

Her father, Nik, was a well-known and successful Luthier, with a small talent for weaving magical enchantments into the instruments he built. He taught Ember to play a great many instruments, and she shared his preference for the mandolin in particular.

And work it did, as Ember grew up to be just as much a Thistleberry as her two older siblings, or her two youngest - the most recent addition to the family a rambunctious toddler who loved her sister so.

“The real secret to playing well is practice, Emmie. That’s why you almost never hear about most of the musicians who come into my shop, looking for the most expensive thing they can find. They want the easy way out. An enchantment to permanently keep your strings in tune, or to make the strings feel soft as butter will only go so far beneath unpracticed, uncalloused hands.”

Ember’s mother, Maureen, is the one who taught her to sing.

“Little Emmie-bird, won’t you chirp with your mama?” she would ask her every evening, and they’d sing lullabies together until she fell asleep. Now they sang together for her youngest brother at his bedtime every night.

The entire family loved music, and would play together very often. Her older siblings, Jemma and Jess, played percussion and the banjo respectively. Benji, Ember’s younger brother, was still learning the fiddle with Jess. Ember thought he was getting pretty good, but it was a lot more fun when he started playing spoons, instead.

Baby Elijah was too young to hold any instruments without stuffing the end of it into his gummy mouth, but folks said that even he seemed to coo and clap closer to the beat of their playing than any babe ought to be able to.

All of the Thistleberry kids were talented beyond their years, as could only be expected of the children of two former bards.

Nik and Maureen had travelled all across the Realms as a bardic duo in their youth before they’d decided that they’d had enough adventure and wanted to settle down to open Nik’s shop and start a family. They stayed well-practiced in their musicianship, though. Between the time spent teaching their kids and rehearsing for local performances, the two had honed their craft to a degree that everyone in town looked forward to hearing them play.

Maureen had a delicate grace that made it look like second-nature whenever she played her flute or tickled her fingers over her harp strings. And Nik was said to have the steadiest sense of rhythm that anyone who’d heard him play had ever heard.

More than once, Ember had overheard an older man leaning over to a friend to say, “Thistleberry’s got the tightest right hand in the game. Set yer watch to it!”

At the end of every tenday since Ember could remember, her family would pack up all sorts of instruments and head to the city square for an evening of music and dancing, food and games.

She looked forward to it every tenday, practicing her favorite songs until her Mama or Papa told her to pick up another hobby for the evening and let her progress settle.

But the only hobby Ember ever truly loved was music, as it brought her closer to her family and friends alike. For no one was a stranger to Ember for very long while she had music, and all who heard her sing adored the girl.

As she grew, the little boys who’d often played with her began to come and watch her perform in the town square; no longer preoccupied with food and wrestling tournaments, but instead raptly observing her. Some would be brave and ask her to dance, and she would accept, because Ember loved dancing dearly. It was one of the few things that could make her forget the phantom shiver of a missing limb behind her, or the weight of something heavy that she sometimes felt upon her forehead.

She’d felt it strongest on one night in the square, when a tiefling stranger had come to the gathering, apparently new to the town. He had skin a more vibrant crimson than even blood, she thought, and then wondered why she’d made the comparison.

“Red as the Hells he came from,” someone had muttered, and Ember had suddenly felt a simmering heat over her own skin, as though she’d stepped too near a fireplace to be comfortable.

The tiefling had heard him, of course, but attempted to enjoy the night’s festivities nonetheless. He’d taken a seat near the stage as Ember and her siblings performed, looking delighted by the show until two men deep in their cups approached him.

“Why don’t you go back to where you came from, Hellspawn? ”

Ember looked to her father nervously, but he motioned for her to continue her playing, so she pressed her fingers to the strings, digging deeper into the frets than necessary. For a moment, she had an awkward feeling, like her fingers didn’t quite fit. She trimmed her nails meticulously to keep them out of the way while she played, but they suddenly felt like they hadn’t grown out of her skin correctly.

“Please, I don’t want any trouble,” the tiefling man tried to calm the two drunkards.

“I thought trouble was all you devils wanted,” one said as the other laughed.

The man stopped, holding his breath for a moment before saying, “I’m not a devil. I’m a tiefling . And your neighbor! I’ve just bought the shop down the street. I’m Tobias.”

“And where’d you get the money to do that, eh? Ye’ steal it?”

Tobias sighed, “Of course not. Come on, I’m new here and I just wanted to get to know the town. Like I said, I don’t want trouble.”

“Well you’ve got it. Whether you want it or not.”

Again, Ember looked to her father. He looked concerned by the scene, if hesitant to do anything. It was the first time Ember could ever remember feeling disappointed in him.

He must have seen a bit of the awe his daughter held for him slip away then, because Nik suddenly jumped up from where he’d been playing the guitar at a steady rhythm. Taking over for Nik as he’d signaled her, Maureen led her children in a new song, louder and more lively than the last, encouraging them to keep playing.

Ember watched Nik as he approached the men and clapped a kind hand on the tiefling’s back, and just that gesture seemed to change everything. Maureen started a call and response routine with the audience, who seemed eager to participate after the uncomfortable moment, and Ember couldn’t hear what was being said between the men. Whatever her father was saying, she could tell that he was soothing the worries of the two drunks and standing up for the stranger.

Chiding herself for ever doubting him, Ember looked away and put her mind back to her performance with her mother and her siblings, kicking her feet out and tapping the heels of her sandals to the wooden boards of the stage in a percussive rhythm as she played her mandolin. The discomfort she’d felt in her own skin had disappeared as quickly as it had come. She’d forgotten the heat of her skin, the feeling of phantom limbs and nails that hadn’t grown out quite right. She’d forgotten and she was happy again.

She was only eight years old that night, and had accepted that everything was alright again once the tiefling and the two drunks had left. She moved on to the exciting events of the evening, jumping down from the stage to dance after a few songs, encouraged by her father to play with the other kids.

She noticed a boy, sitting at one of the wooden benches outlining the platform set up for dancing, blushing when he met her eye and looking hurriedly away. It was Zeth Daydew. She’d recognized him because his father was a carpenter and friend of Nik’s, and he often came along when Mr. Daydew brought wood scraps to her father’s shop. Zeth was a year older than her, and although she initially took his reserved nature for rudeness, she quickly realized that he was just shy.

“How- do , Zeth Daydew?” she asked him cheerily, giggling when he blushed nearly as red as the tiefling had been.

“‘m fine, Ember,” he nodded his head politely. “You played real nice tonight.”

“Oh good!” she clapped, pleased with herself and the compliment, “I’d been practicing the whole tenday to get the songs just right!”

“Too bad that devil fellow had to interrupt,” he’d muttered, looking down.

Ember frowned, unhappy with the unpleasant turn in conversation. She put her hands on her hips.

“Well, are you gonna dance or not? Papa always says it’s a shame to play for a crowd that doesn’t dance.”

“Well,” Zeth grinned sheepishly, “I’d hate to disappoint your Pa.”

She took his hand and led him to the dance floor, taking turns dancing between him, her siblings, and anyone else who came up for a dance. Her parents each took a turn with their kids, and when they all packed up and headed home, Ember thought it had been such a lovely night.

---

The next morning, Ember was sitting in her father’s shop, practicing her carving with floral patterns on one of the cheaper wooden flutes, when Mr. Daydew came in with his son and told her father there’d been a murder the night before.

“They’re asking everyone who was there last night about it, thought I’d tell ya before anyone came to the shop,” Mr. Daydew said.

Nik glanced at Ember, then nodded at Mr. Daydew to follow him into the back, the way he always did when he was talking about adult things he didn’t want her to hear.

“Mind the shop, Emmie,” he said.

She nodded, waiting for her father to close the door before she rounded on Zeth.

“A murder!?”

Zeth nodded, eyes wide. “Yup. S’posedly happened sometime during the party. After your Pa sent those men away.”

Ember gasped, bringing her hand to her chest. “Mr. Tobias?”

“Wh— that tiefling ?” Zeth looked perplexed. “No! He’s the one who did it!”

“How do you know?” Ember asked.

“Mrs. Estelle found them two, Mr. Patrick and Mr. Ross, by the back door of her shop this morning when she went to open for the day. She woke up that entire side of town with her screaming. Apparently, they were so mangled up, people had a hard time telling who they were until someone recognized Mr. Ross’s pocket watch, and everyone who was in the square last night knew he’d left with Mr. Patrick.”

“Mangled? ” Ember felt sick.

“Yeah, there were pieces missing off both of them, scattered in the alley. My brother was there this morning, said Mr. Patrick’s face looked like ground beef. Don’t know what you gotta do to a man to make him look like ground beef, but that devil did it.”

“How do you know he did it?” Ember demanded. “He said he wasn’t a devil, and he wasn’t the one picking a fight last night.”

“Oh, come on. ‘Course he did it! You should know you can’t trust a devil to tell you he’s a devil. Maybe that’s what he wanted all along, why he came to the square last night in the first place.”

Ember didn’t say anything, upset about the whole thing. Worse, she was upset with herself, and her morbid curiosity, as she wondered what Mr. Patrick’s face really looked like. She’d seen ground beef at the butcher’s shop when she went to town with her mother running errands. She couldn’t imagine a person’s face looking anything like it. There must have been a lot of blood. Who would clean it? She imagined a pool of blood spreading and filling the alley, enough to drown in, until Zeth waved in front of her face.

“Ember? You alright?” He asked. Then, giving her a guilty look, “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have told you so much about it. I didn’t mean to upset you, Em.”

She blinked at the nickname. Zeth had never called her anything but Ember, or Miss Ember, which was very polite but always made her feel awkward.

“You didn’t,” she said. It wasn’t entirely true, she realized. The gory details of the mangled corpses didn’t bother her, but the talk of the tiefling man committing the murders did. What did that say about her?

Zeth didn’t seem to believe her, and had kept quiet until their fathers came out of the back room again.

“Emmie, Mr. Daydew needs to go take care of some things in town, but I’d like for you to head home for the day. Zeth? Would you be kind enough to take her home? I’m sure Maureen will give you a sweet treat as thanks.”

“I’d be happy to, Mr. Thistleberry.”

“Good man.”

Ember wasn’t happy to be shoo’d out of the shop by her father, and reluctantly put her tools and the flute she’d been practicing on away in a drawer behind the counter.

“There won’t be much business today, Emmie. Go along, now.”

She nodded at her father’s instruction, and left the shop with Zeth behind her.

Once they were a few feet away from the shop, Ember took a turn down the street.

“Where are you going?” Zeth asked, quickening his pace to follow her. “Your house is the other way.”

She turned around to face him.

“I don’t quite feel like going home yet. I wanted to stop at Hattie’s and pick up a few treats for Benji, Jess, & Jema today anyway.

“Your Pa asked me to make sure you got home.”

“And you can do that after we go to the bakery. C’mon!”

Zeth was a timid enough young man that he didn’t argue further, and just resigned himself to following her wherever she went.

Ember found herself slightly annoyed to have a chaperone, since what she would have really liked to do was run off to the scene of the crime and see what had happened with her own eyes. She felt a connection, a sympathy, for the tiefling man from the night before that she couldn’t fully understand.

There had to have been another explanation to what happened, something that would make it all make sense when she saw it for herself. Maybe Zeth was exaggerating the gore and Tobias had only acted in self-defense after the two drunks had cornered him.

She told herself the shiver in her spine was simply anxiety and distress at imagining the bloody scene and nothing more.

None of this mattered, though, with Zeth trailing closely behind her. So Ember would have to settle for idle gossip, which seemed to be the reason most adults went to Hattie’s anyway. Actually buying her pastries was just a courtesy and a ‘thank you’ for managing to get a tenday’s worth of news about town in a short visit with the woman.

Ember just hoped there were already customers in the shop so she could listen to their conversations without having to actually ask Hattie questions herself. The woman was sweet as could be to Ember and always gave her a small sack of free goodies whenever she came in, but she’d talk for hours and keep a person hostage if there was no one else around to take her attention.

Luckily, the bakery was near-full when they got there. Ember should have expected it, really, when the biggest and probably most awful thing that had ever happened in the town had just occurred. Of course, anyone inclined to gossip had come straight to Hattie’s. Odd that something so horrible had brought the bakery the best business it had seen in a few tendays.

The bell on the top of the door tinkled as they walked into the shop, and Hattie looked up from the heavy tray full of hot drinks and pastries she carried.

“Oh my dears!” She exclaimed, when she saw the two of them. “What’re you both doing out today? Don’t you know it’s not safe?”

“I was hoping to get some cookies before going home, Miss Hattie,” Ember said, trying her best to sound as innocent as possible.

Hattie set her tray down on a table where several older ladies were sitting. She eyed the women as they hesitated, looking at the tray. “You all know what you got,” she said flatly, and they quickly took their drinks and food from the tray so Hattie could take it back.

She turned back to Ember and Zeth and gave them a warm smile. “Well gods help me, but I just can’t say no to such a sweet pair o’ faces as yours. Mind, we’re a bit busy, as you can see, so you’ll have to wait at a table while I fix you something.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Zeth nodded.

“Oh, you take that ‘ma’am’ right out of your mouth, young man! Miss Hattie will do just fine.”

“Yes ma- Miss Hattie.”

Ember giggled at the slip.

They made their way to one of the only open tables left in the shop, and Ember sat on the cushioned bench against the wall, eyes roaming over the the various groups of people huddled at their own tables and booths. Zeth looked back and forth from the cushion beside her, to the chair across from her, uncertain. After a moment of nervous contemplation, he took the seat beside her.

Thankfully, Zeth was a quiet boy, so Ember was free to listen to the many conversations happening around her.

“Didn’t like those teeth o’ his,” said a small older woman, whose brow drooped heavily over her eyes, giving her what looked to be a permanent scowl.

Ember’s gums felt suddenly sore, and she ran her tongue over her sore canines.

“Them claws alone could gut a grown man quick enough. Probably why there wasn’t any weapon found,” grumbled another patron, a stout man with rough features and a bit of stubble that made it look like he’d skipped his morning shave.

She tried to ignore the itchiness at her fingertips.

“You could see the fires of Asmodeous burning in that one’s eyes,” said a blonde, slender half-elf that Ember had recognized from town. She was very beautiful, Ember thought, as she looked at the woman’s shimmering blue eyes.

Blinking hard very suddenly, Ember listened for anyone who didn’t seem already convinced that the tiefling was some sort of evil monster.

“Looked like a demon,” someone said at another table.

“His skin was certainly red as the hells,” another said, just like one someone had the night before, when Tobias had come to the square.

They were all so certain that Tobias was the murderer, and Ember felt an ache of sadness for him. She couldn’t understand why, but she felt a bit of that ache for herself, too.

“Here you are, sweeties,” Hattie said, bringing them each a bag of pastries and snapping Ember out of her thoughts. “Now, I want you to take these straight home. There’s dangerous people about town and it’s not safe for you to be by yourselves.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Hattie. Zeth is walking me, and I’m sure Mama won’t mind him staying with us until his Pa can come for him.”

Zeth seemed to blush at that last bit.

“Good, good,” Hattie said, looking up as her door tinkled and another customer walked in. “Well, off with you both, then,” she ruffled Ember’s hair affectionately as she sent them off.

They thanked Hattie again and left the shop.

They were quiet for a while, until Ember couldn’t keep herself from asking anymore.

“Do you really think that tiefling did it, Zeth?”

He nodded like it was obvious. “Well, yeah. I mean you heard what people were saying in there. The teeth, the claws. Seems like a monster, to me, at least. My Uncle says they’re all like that. They’re all demonic or something because they come from the Hells.”

Ember wanted to argue, but she didn’t know what she could say when he seemed so self-assured, like what he was saying was common knowledge. It made her feel stupid, like she didn’t know enough about the world yet.

As they continued to walk, Zeth reached into the bag Hattie gave him and pulled out a cookie. “Sure was nice of her to give these to us. Didn’t think I’d get one,” he said as he took a bite, changing the subject to more mild conversation.

“You haven’t gone to Hattie’s before?” Ember asked. “I thought she gave all the kids in town free treats.”

“Well, you’re special.”

Ember’s eyes widened and Zeth turned a deep shade of pink as he seemed to realized what he’d just said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Your family, I mean!” Zeth rushed to say, talking over the cookie he was still chewing, a few crumbs flying out of his mouth.

“What about us?”

“Everyone loves you all. Each one of you makes music no one else in town can. Everybody knows you can’t call a gathering a party around here unless the Thistleberry’s are there. Of course Hattie dotes on you. She probably wants you to marry her nephew someday.”

Ember nearly dropped her bag of treats.

“Well, I better get as many of her free pastries as I can before she figures out that I’m not getting married to anyone, ever!” she said, indignant.

Zeth looked at her, surprised.

“What do you mean, ‘never getting married ’? I thought a girl like you would want to marry an adventurer someday so you could be their bard and sing their songs,” he said, like it was a matter of fact.

“I’ll have you know that I’ll be singing of my own adventures when I’m grown up, thank you very much!” Ember stamped her foot for emphasis, not the least bit embarrassed to do so.

Zeth’s brows shot up, disappearing behind the thick, dark hair hanging over his forehead. “You want to be an adventurer? By yourself? You can’t even walk home by yourself!”

“Well, I’m just little now! I’ll grow and get big, and when I do, Zeth Daydew,” she pointed at him severely, “I’ll be perfectly capable of doing things by myself! My Ma adventured by herself and with friends, before she met my Pa. I can, too!”

Perfectly chastised, Zeth grew quiet once again. Satisfied, Ember continued their walk.

After a few moments, Zeth asked quietly, “So you’ll be a fighting bard? Where will you learn to fight?”

Ember smirked at him. “Did you think my parents weren’t fighting bards?”

He gasped, as though he’d never imagined her parents to be capable of violence, despite them being well-known for their adventuring days before settling down.

“Don’t you worry about me, Zeth Daydew,” Ember winked at the taller, slightly older boy walking her home. “I’ll be just fine!”

---

Ember had been having nightmares. It had been about a tenday since finding out about the murders and Zeth walking her home. She soon found that she hadn’t needed to seek out rumor at Hattie’s that day, as the murder, more specifically, the alleged murderer, was all anyone in town seemed to talk about anymore. Stories of the gore and the supposed motivations behind it only grew more grizzly and exaggerated, some even swearing in hushed tones that it had to have been some sort of strange Bhaalist ritual.

The night Zeth had walked her home was the night of Ember’s first nightmare, and she’d woken up in tears. The night after that, she’d woken with a gasp that felt like a first breath after minutes without any air in her lungs, and crawled into her parents bed when she couldn’t go back to sleep. The third day, she woke the whole house as she screamed in her sleep.

Everyone did their best to console her, and Zeth had been suspiciously present in their home a lot more often after her father had decided it would be best if Ember stayed home instead of helping him in the shop until talk of the murder had quieted. She was starting to think her father had asked Mr. Daydew to have Zeth keep her company at the house, depite her Ma and siblings already being there with her.

Sometimes, he’d ask her if she wanted to talk about the dreams she’d been having, but she only ever shrugged in response.

“I’m just saying, you can, if you want,” Zeth said one afternoon, as he watched her pluck a few notes on her mandolin, then hunch over her notebook and scratch away at it with her pen.

She always carefully wiped her fingers to make sure they were clean of any ink before plucking at her strings again, making the process all the longer. The process of writing music was always much less musical than the end-product, itself. Ember found it soothing, and had been writing much more often than not, in recent days.

Ember sighed, pausing her notation for a moment before saying, “They’re just… scary. I don’t want to think about them.”

And that was the truth. She didn’t wan’t to think about her dreams at all. She’d been having the same dream, over and over, in which she saw the murder the entire town had been talking about, as it happened. Which certainly would have been scary enough on its own. Or should have been. But what she couldn’t explain to anyone, was that it wasn’t the violence and gore of her dreams that disturbed her. It was the person committing the murders in her dream. It wasn’t the tiefling, Tobias, from that night. Every night, Ember saw the murder happening from her own eyes, as she was the one committing it.

She felt the thrill at the first sight of blood, could smell the coppery tint of it in the air, and always, always, always, licked her blade clean after that first slice. Every night, she found herself in shadows, trailing the two men from the party before goading them into a darkened alley. Every night, she watched the shock in the first man’s face as she slipped her blade so smoothly through his ribs that they could have been butter, and relished the salty, savory tang of his blood as she let the second man attempt to run because she enjoyed the scent of his fear in the air. Before she rent the flesh off his bones with her own fangs and claws.

And she had fangs and claws in these dreams, because in them, she was always a tiefling. Each night, the dream shifted from her first-person perspective to pan out, as though she were a ghost leaving her body to watch the scene before her.

She was always an unfamiliar tiefling woman, with flaming crimson skin, blackened scleras behind flaming purple irises, and bone white markings patterning her face. Her fangs bared, smiling as they dripped blood. And that was always when Ember woke up.

And while the gore of it all was awful, Ember couldn’t rightly say that any of it truly bothered her, and that’s part of what scared her. What really scared her, was that, in her dreams, she enjoyed it.

---

Eventually, the town had moved on. Once the funerals had been had, it occurred to everyone that discussing the grizzly details of the murder would be in poor taste, and so, as adults often do with unpleasant things, they stopped talking about it. Life continued and more fun and diverting events took place in town, until barely anyone thought of the horrible business anymore. Ember’s nightmares had finally stopped, and even she, eventually moved on.

As time went by, and she became closer with Zeth, Ember had all but forgotten about what had happened by the end of the year. And as their town was just out of the way and small enough that it didn’t attract a lot of travelers, excepting Mr. Thistleberry’s shop, Ember had eventually forgotten a tiefling had ever come to town in the first place. She was very much back to being a very happy child.

---

Ember was the happiest any child could be, and had everything anyone could want. Family, friends, and joy. So she chose to ignore her headaches, sore teeth, aching nails, and the general feeling that she was missing something important. As she got older, she tried to push down the new, unwelcome thoughts that sometimes arose when she was irritated.

Sometimes, her mother would take her mandolin away for the evening until her chores were done and Ember would imagine smashing the thing upon her head repeatedly, until it was little more than bloody splinters and her mother lie still on the ground.

Others, she’d be helping her father in the shop and a customer would refuse to speak to her, demanding her father help them instead, and she’d imagine taking one of the lighter gauges of strings they carried in stock and wrapping it tightly around their neck, pulling until it sliced into their skin, sweet crimson running down their throats.

Worst of all, when her baby brother cried inconsolably throughout the night, she’d imagine taking his tongue between her fingernails and pinching until she pierced through the flesh and he screamed even harder, or pressing her palm against his mouth and nose until he didn’t make any sound at all anymore.

Each thought was only the briefest flicker in her imagination, but they horrified her every time. She kept it all to herself, apologizing to the gods every night and asking them to fix whatever was wrong inside her that gave her such terrible, evil thoughts.

Zeth helped her get her mind off her troubles most days. He was about a year older than Ember, but he’d insisted on accompanying her nearly everywhere she went since that first time he walked her home. He said it was only proper, since he was older than she was. Ember always rolled her eyes, insisting that as she got better at sparring with her father, he was the on who needed her to walk with.

The truth was that Zeth also sparred with her father. He’d asked if he could learn in exchange for small chores around their house and shop, and Mr. Thistleberry gladly accepted. Her parents were fond of Zeth, and seemed happy to have him spending so much time with Ember, which was good, because she found herself very happy to be in his company as well.

Eventually, they would start sparring together, and Ember always loved the look on Zeth’s face when she managed to knock him on his back in front of her father. Which was often, as it turned out.

“How do you do that?” He asked one afternoon, still winded on the floor as she laughed.

“She does it because you’re distracted, Zeth,” her father chuckled.

Ember pouted. “I do it because I’m a better fighter than he is!”

“Might be,” Nik smiled. “But Zeth is much bigger than you Emmie. If he looked at your hands and feet as much as he looked at your face, he might actually beat you.”

Ember crossed her arms, annoyed and unaware of what her father was implying.

Zeth blushed a deep pink, and Nik laughed again.

“I know my daughter’s pretty, son, but you can’t let it distract you.”

This time, Ember blushed as well.

As they walked home together, she tried to dismiss it.

“Don’t listen to Pa, he’s just getting old,” she said.

She expected Zeth to laugh and agree, so they could go back to business as usual, but he didn’t.

“He’s not that old. I think he’s younger than mine, actually.”

“Well, then he’s just crazy,” she said flippantly.

Zeth was quiet again, and she thought that was that, but then he stopped. They were standing in a field, just beyond where her house was visible, and Zeth reached out to tug her arm.

Once Ember turned to look at him again, a little confused, he asked, “Do you think… Would it be alright if I tried to kiss you?”

Ember’s eyes widened as she froze in place, red flooding her face.

She’d never kissed anyone before. Well, she kissed her family. But she’d never Kiss Kissed someone before. She hadn’t really thought to.

But Zeth was a good friend and very sweet, and she liked him very much. She realized that she might actually want to try kissing him. So she nodded.

Zeth leaned forward, hands awkwardly hanging at his sides, and he pressed his closed lips against hers for all of a second before leaning back and smiling.

“Huh,” Ember said. Suddenly, she wasn’t very sure what the big deal with kissing was. It didn’t feel bad, but it didn’t really feel like anything. Just a little awkward. “That was weird.”

Zeth laughed. “Yeah,” he said.

“Maybe we’ll like it more when we’re older?” she suggested helpfully.

“Well at least I know it’s not so scary, now.” He agreed, before they walked the rest of the way to her house.

Ember didn’t feel very moved by the kiss itself, but later that night, her heart fluttered a little at the thought that Zeth had wanted to kiss her.

---

It was Ember’s 13th birthday.

This year, it had happened to fall on a day her family would normally be performing in the town square, which is what Ember had expected to be doing that night. Performing was what she loved to do best, so it only made sense to her that she’d be doing it on her birthday, and she’d been surprised when she realized her family planned to celebrate at home, first.

“Don’t worry, Emmie-bird,” her mother reassured her, “we’ll joint the town later for the grandest of parties. We just wanted a moment for family first, my love.”

Ember relaxed, relieved they’d still be going, albeit a little nervous that it was now a party for her, and not just a general gathering like usual.

Her parents mostly wanted to have dinner together and have her open their gifts at home before going out, so they wouldn’t have to bring so many presents home on their way back. They had Embers favorite soup, and Jema and Jess had made and decorated a cake so tall, she wasn’t quite sure how it stood, for her.

Before eating the cake, though, it was time for gifts.

Jema and Jess had both saved up a bit of money from their jobs in town to get Ember a new leather bound notebook, and a few bottles of ink for her to write her songs in.

Benji had written her a lovely poem that he recited to her for the whole family, then handed her when he was done.

Elijah had given her a piece of paper with his handprint, in purple paint surrounded with multicolor swirls he’d made with his fingers. On the back, was an unintelligible note the toddler had written and translated aloud to her, very pleased with himself for his excellent reading and writing.

Ember’s mother gave her a small and simple necklace, with a small carved wooden bluebird hanging from it.

“A bluebird for my Emmie-bird,” she said.

And then her father pulled out a large box, wrapped in simple brown paper, that he said was from everyone. Ember took it from him and set it in her lap before pulling the twine tied around the paper off, and sliding the box open.

And she was speechless.

Inside the box, lay a beautiful mandolin, intricately decorated with abalone inlays of foxgloves and bluebirds. There were small filigree carvings, etched with gold accents, and pearled fret boards, and the wood had been stained a gorgeous deep amber. It had taken months to make. Ember knew, because she was the one who made it.

It had been her first commission project. Her father had given her the assignment earlier in the year, saying she had finally become skilled enough in crafting that he trusted her with this special order for an anonymous client. Ember was overjoyed to finally work on one of the bigger projects herself, as carving and inlay had become her favorite hobby, second only to music, which she loved too much to really consider a hobby.

She’d spent countless hours drafting designs and then painstakingly measuring and slicing the pieces she’d need for her inlay. She’d worked on practice instruments first, always, never committing a mark to the commissioned instrument until she knew it was perfect. It had taken her months. By the time she had finished, she had been deeply sad to give it away, though she knew it had been paid for and belonged to someone else.

Her father smiled broadly at her speechless reaction.

“I nearly gave it right back to you when you looked so sad to give it to me for the customer, Emmie. It took all my strength to keep the surprise for you.”

Tears spilled down her cheeks as she brushed her fingers over the instrument she’d put her whole heart into making.

“Thank you, Pa. Everyone. I love it,” she whispered, reverent.

“And that brings me to my gift,” Nik said, pulling out a long, slim box. “For your future carvings.”

Ember strapped her new mandolin to her back and took the box from him. She opened it to find a simple, but beautiful knife. The blade wasn’t very long, about the length of her longest finger, otherwise it’d be a bit too big for carving. It had her name etched down the middle, though, and the handle was a warm, supple wood. She pulled it out to examine, and it felt comfortable in her hands.

And Ember blacked out.

---

Ember came to herself, screaming.

Everything was dark, and she didn’t know where she was. The air was thick and smelled like copper, and she felt damp and sticky in it. She looked around her frantically, trying to get a grasp on where she was, and as her eyes adjusted to the sight around her, she wailed in despair.

She was home. And her entire family was dead.

She screamed for help that would never come, rushing to her mother and father, begging them to wake as though they were only sleeping. Her mother’s fingers had been ripped off her hands one by one, and were strewn about beside where she lay. Ember looked away from them, holding her close. She couldn’t even look toward her father, who had blood oozing from his eyes, nose and mouth, his jaw unhinged as though broken off and barely hanging to the rest of his skull underneath the skin. Their skin was mottled in deep, purple bruises.

She looked to her older brother and sister, Jema and Jess, and tried to shake them awake, too. They had matching injuries, twins matching even in death, with deep slashes through their necks and stab wounds covering their bloody bodies.

Her throat was becoming raw from her screaming, and she was choking on tears and sobs as she huddled herself over her youngest brothers, Benji and Eli.

Benji’s neck was broken, bending at a wrong angle and his lifeless eyes stares straight at their youngest brother. Eli, only a few years old, had his mouth open in a soundless scream, covered in blood with his tongue ripped out and lying beside him.

Something broke something deep inside of Ember, seeing her baby brother so brutalized, and she’d wished that whatever had come and done this had killed her, too.

She looked to her hands, covered in blood.

She was still holding the knife her father had given her for her birthday. It too, was covered in blood.

And then, a flash of memory.

The knife in her hand cutting into the base of her mother’s fingers. Slicing through Jema and Jess’s necks. Carving Eli’s tongue out of his screaming mouth.

“No!” she screamed, throwing the knife as though it had burned her.

“NO!” she screamed again.

Her throat was so raw, she swallowed, licking her lips and tasting blood.

Another flash of memory.

Her hands, holding the knife and stabbing her siblings as she sat atop them. Blood bursting and gushing from their wounds as she opened her mouth to let it sprinkle on her tongue, the way she did when she tasted the first drops of heavy rain outside, relishing in it.

A cry so raw and broken it didn’t even sound like her ripped from her chest and into the night. Ember wanted to rip her own tongue out, to banish the taste of blood in her mouth. She fell to her knees, and the movement jostled the instrument still at her back enough that the strings twanged lightly and reminded her of its presence.

She unstrapped the mandolin from her back and tugged it to her chest.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to it, as though it had seen what she’d done. As though it held a piece of each of her siblings and parents inside it, and she was speaking to them. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” an unfamiliar, deep voice rasped. There was almost a gurgling sound to it, as though the voice were underwater.

Ember looked up to see who was speaking, to find a sickly green aura surrounding her father. And for just the briefest moment, she felt a flicker of joy, not fear, as the corpse of her father started to move.

But the movement was stiff, broken, and wrong. Unnatural. None of his limbs faced in quite the right direction, as though every bone in his body had been broken, and something was operating within his skin like it were an elaborate suit malfunctioning.

Absolute dread filled Ember down to the marrow of her bones as her Not-Father ambled over to sit before her.

“You should be sorry,” her Not-Father garbled, in that deep tone that grew more and more menacing as it continued. “For disobeying.”

“Dis-“ Ember started to ask, but her Not-Father continued, seeming not to even register the sound.

“You resisted your Urges. You should have killed them all much sooner than this. I do not like to be made to wait, child. And I certainly do not like being made to incapacitate my children so that they will carry out my will.” He said with a sneer.

Ember didn’t think she’d ever seen her father sneer in her life. But this wasn’t her father. This was her Not-Father. Whoever that was.

Her Not-Father reached his hand out toward her and she flinched. A sickly cackle bubbled out of his mouth as he pressed his palm to her forehead, and she remembered every horrible thought she’d prayed to the gods to take away from her.

“No gods listen to Bhaalspawn but me , my child.”

If Ember could feel anything in that moment, it might have been confusion. She stared at her Not-Father blankly.

“Oh, but you aren’t just any Bhaalspawn. You are mine. Made of my blood. My Chosen, and most favored child.” He smiled wickedly down at her.

“Why?” Was all she whipered, not quite sure what she was asking.

“You needed to be raised until you came of age, before you could take your rightful place in my temple. To be around people enough to know how to act like one of them. Bhaalspawn raised as such from infancy are too feral to carry out my plans. They are too easily identified, and killed.”

“But why…” did they have to die, she thought.

“Think of this,” her Not-Father said. “As a Rite of Passage. Something to undertake before you claimed your inheritance as a child of Bhaal,” he said.

And then, Ember felt the world shift again as her body shifted and changed. It was similar to the way her teeth and forehead would ache, or she’d feel phantom limbs. Only this time, the ache grew something, and she felt fangs splitting her lips where there was nothing before, and reached for her pounding head only to feel horns suddenly protruding through her skull. The dress she was wearing suddenly felt uncomfortable and tight, and she twisted to see she had a red, spaded tail hanging from her skirts. She looked at her hands to find red skin and talons, and realized she could suddenly see in the room much more clearly than before, as though it were no longer dark at all. She ran to the mirror on the far side of the living room wall.

“Yes,” Not-Father cackled. “Look upon your true face,” he said.

And Ember saw the tiefling she was in her dreams, from those long-forgotten nightmares years ago. She remembered the whispered rumors that the tiefling accused of the murder had been a Bhaalspawn.

And as though he had heard her thoughts, her Not-Father answered them. “Yes, that rumor. It was almost right. But the tiefling was given undue credit. Poor Sceleritas was quite offended that his work had been attributed to such a waif. Until I killed him, to settle the nerves.”

Ember looked at her flaming purple eyes in the mirror. Nothing her Not-Father was saying made any sense. Her face, her body, didn’t make sense. The world didn’t make sense.

Again, as though he knew her every thought, Not-Father spoke. “Your human form was courtesy of Sceleritas, as well. A True Polymorph, to help you blend into your adoptive environment. He, of course, kept close watch of you.”

She heard the cruel humor in his voice, and understood, somehow, that she was meant to feel this pain. For his enjoyment. It had been no mistake a tiefling came to town those years ago. No mistake that she’d always felt those phantom limbs, and felt wrong in her body.

“I am pleased with you, child. You have done well tonight, despite your reluctance. Sceleritas will be on his way to collect you and take you to the temple. I will leave you to bask in your glorious murder. Savor it. Your new life awaits after this.”

And with that, her Not-Father was gone, and her father’s corpse slumped, collapsing over itself onto the floor.

Ember felt empty. She was only a hollowed husk, a body she didn’t know. And she was alone.

Or, she thought sh e was alone.

There was a small rustle in the closet by the front door of the house.

Ember’s body moved on its own, as she hardly felt present in it, and approached the closet. She heard the smallest sniffle behind the door, and saw that it had been left ajar. She pushed it open, staring blankly inside.

Zeth Daydew was there.

He scrambled back, holding his arms in front of himself defensively.

“Don’t come any closer!” he cried.

A flicker of Ember’s mind came back to her as she saw her friend before her, alive.

“What are you doing here?” she gasped.

He looked panicked, and started explaining like he couldn’t stop himself.

“You weren’t there at the town square, so I came to surprise you for your birthday.” He said through tears. “I was waiting for the cake to jump out and surprise you, and then- then…”

He stared blankly into nothing, as though seeing everything she did to her family all over again.

She suddenly remembered what her Not-Father had said, that someone was coming to collect her. She felt a cold panic wash over her as she realized that if Zeth was still here when they arrived, he might not live through the night.

“You need to leave,” she said.

He glared at her. Her sweet Zeth, her first kiss and best friend, glared at her like he held all the hate in the world behind his eyes.

“You’re a monster ,” he spat.

She’d cried so much already, she’d have thought there was nothing left inside her. Yet, a single tear slipped down her cheek as she responded, broken.

“Yes. I am.”

#oh god poor ember 😭#bg3 #bg3 bhaalspawn #Bhaalspawn #dark urge #tiefling #blood #cw blood #tw blood #murder #tw murder #cw murder

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