#dubhàn

[sidestepping]

Gonna put Dubhàn here as BG3 Baby n°2... Behold, a really really nice lad who will fuck it up so bad by helping the wrong sexy guy become a god. Never trust idealism etc etc

[sidestepping]

Short. Moonrise, Dubhàn — "Distract her with your yearning for Gale."

Disclaimer: Obviously, everything belongs to Larian Studios; Baldur's Gate riffing! What to expect: snippet just to unwind the writing fingers, nothing fancy, a little tweak on Z'rell's scene at the start of Moonrise Towers explorating; I am trying to do justice to my little wizard, and Dubhàn is NOT amused to be here. About Dubhàn: they're a Tav, an open-hand monk (a good one, physically; a less good one, mindly, because balance is harder to achieve than you'd think when you're a natural hot-head), and they look like this:

(DUBHÀN - ACT II)

What are you doing here? You should never have come here. You’re not an actor. You’re not a charmer. You’re barely anyone, though you continue painfully to be something. In the cold dark devoted air of Moonrise, you are—choked, choking.

Maybe the shadows were better after all.

The shadows you can see, and fight. This labyrinth, it is made of walls you run into, of lines you can’t navigate.

What was Jaheira thinking?

“Z’rell is waiting for you,” someone says—who—a guard, a helmet, eyes ruby’d with Lolth, though Lolth doesn’t reach this landed tower, this towered land. And you are already gone—up the stairs, a buzzing in your ears, a silence in your gut. No space; between the too-closed walls, there is no room to move-shift-hit-and                                                               breathe.

“Dubhàn,” he says very close to your ear, Gale, he says—so close it is barely a sigh. When you meet his dark eyes there is a smile there, a smile for you.

A smile for you.

Him, he—he does navigate. More comfortable here in the snakepit than where the world is free, where the world is wild. To your constant shift, to your constant becoming, becoming-other, becoming-further, he is atemporal and fixed; he weaves symmetry. In Moonrise, symmetry wins. You smile back.

“Ready to shine, magic man?”

“Words, huh? Harder than they look,” he cracks a smirk, a smirk that tries very hard not to be smug.

No matter; you like him a little smug.

“Don’t call me dumb too fast,” you snort. “What are you gonna do when words don’t manage to carry your pack?”

He laughs; incongruous, the sound, and immediately swallowed by the rot-sponges that these walls are; how heartbreaking, that this god-filled, god-forsaken place would silence what should be crystallized.

“T-t-t,” he’s still chatting away, still chatting you up, “you forget telekinesis. Did you think I kept you around for the shoulder power?”

“No,” you push open the door to the upper hall. “For the shoulder gawking, more like,” and above the shoulder gawked at you also throw him a wink, which gets you the win. He has more words, he does, but more flustering too, as chatterboxes are wont to, and ah—on the tripping of his lovely tongue you make the mistake of advancing first.

“Excellent timing, True Soul.”

Shit. You stop. You look ahead, you look up.

She’s there, Z’rell, eyes full on you, eyes tunnelled pummelled on you; True Soul, that’s you—that’s not you, and really that’s the crux of the problem here, the crux the crack the flaw.

“No,” he says, very close to your ear, Gale, he says—so close, this time his voice clear and high, advancing before disaster can unfold, a shield of waterlight. “No, Commander Z’rell, I’m the one you—”

“Shut it, human. I’m talking to the drow.”

Eyes full on you, eyes tunnelled pummelled on you; not even a flicker towards him, and scorn so cold you bristle under its breeze. Gale doesn’t bristle, no; he huffs, good-humored, though his tadpole twitches; he bows his head; you bristle twice as strong. One last attempt:

“Well,” he says, all pirouette, “if you’d rather have a discussion with my bodyguard, of course…”

That you can be. That you are.

“Is he always so troublesome, True Soul? You should discipline him.”

You don’t rise to the bait, because it’s not a bait: she’s serious. She’s serious, so you clench your teeth, and dodge the scorching of your own anger; instead, you say, low enough to scrape:

“You wanted me. What is it?”

“I did,” Z’rell purrs. “The goblins, tell me how they suffered. No, better yet: show me.”

You want to say: don’t—but it’s too late, and she’s already parting the curtains of your mind, sliding inside like a robber’s hand, feeling, groping for something she won’t find; leaving behind the shame-slime of insertion, invasion, subjection. You are not—not a subject of this. You are not. You are the master of your face: pulled taut over your features, you feel its tight rigidity, its disciplined unmoving. Mouth, eyes, skin: still and stone.

“They didn’t,” she comes to, spat back, spat out. “Suffer?” A hiss, a threat.

“No,” you hold her gaze, though your mind is still burning with disgust. “I am no one’s dog, Commander. I don’t kill for others.”

“Except for the Absolute herself,” Gale adds, smarter than you, as you smart still.

His hand, not in your mind—here, on your naked shoulder, dry and cool, a weight on your body, a lightness in your soul. You like his hands—always open and dancing, like yours, but not like yours at all—their learnèd choreography, following a pattern you can’t know, graceful, rigid and algebraic—a neat-waltzing to your free-flowing.

Gently, you flow under his palm, and let it slide away; Z’rell is still watching you.

“Right,” she tongue-tips, an inch away from a threat. “And you came here to answer the Absolute’s call. Let’s see what you’re made of, then.”

This time you are ready, standing open so that she won’t leave a trace on the walls of yourself; but not ready enough—not ready to show her proof of your faith; as your minds collide, you grapple, you scramble for purchase—you know what to do, you knew what to do—you can drown anything, you can, that you can, in the power of Ki, in its gravel humming, you can, erase it all, deafen it all—this is what you should have done, this is what you should have invoked: smog and smoke to Z’rell’s mirrors, a force, a fog, but—but, oh, but Gale’s hand was on your shoulder a second ago, Gale’s hand, dry and cool, its dance its grace, skin-to-skin and close enough, not quite, cloth-enough, enough enough, closer you wish, you do—you wish for—Gale’s hand, and its—patterns, patience, power—Gale’s hand, meet-sweet-heat.

What Ki cannot drown, Gale did flood.

“Huh.” Z’rell laughs low. “You have used the wizard well. But the desperate one who would love such a pathetic man must hunger for—”

That’s it.

When your hand grips her throat (FAST)— When her head hits the wall (HARD)—           FINALLY She shuts her damn mouth                                                   and gasps.

Under your grasp the strength of her wide-strong body heaves; under your gaze the wrath of her eyes ignites. That, you don’t fear, though. Strength you can tackle. Wrath you can extinguish. When she strains, you give her another shove, and delight in the ugly sound of her skull against stone.

“Have some fucking respect,” you hiss, very close. “Don’t make me strike you down before your Goddess inevitably does. Yes?”

Her hand has found your wrist, scrabbling for release. She sees you now: not the secret parts she shouldn’t touch, not the restraint of Ki, either—but the you of this ugly world, the you you’re willing to give to her, this, this you. You look at her, in that second, and you think: you could kill her there. You could, you think, you think, you think on it. You could, and it would feel good.

Instead you push her back, and step away.

“Well!” In the beat of silence, Gale chuckles, beautifully unfazed as Z’rell pulls herself together, mouth twisted with hatred. “Now that we’ve all been wildly inappropriate with one another…” When you snort, he smiles wider, sparkling. “You had a mission for us?”