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blackjackkent · 3 months

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OK, we're in the home stretch before heading into the mausoleum and, from there, into the end of Act 2, which (as I understand it) is when some of the big Durge Lore is gonna drop and Rakha's world is gonna get blown wide open.

Cleaning up loose ends, and the only remaining ones that I can think of are 1) finishing up with He Who Was and 2) helping Halsin with Thaniel. The latter is obviously more overall important to Rakha, but she is obliquely invested in the situation with HWW because HWW has promised to show her intense necromantic magic.

So let's start with that.

-----

The man is still standing in the spot where Rakha left him. She could easily believe that he has not moved since she was last here. As she approaches, though, he twists his head to the side, his nostrils flaring as he sniffs the air. His gleaming black-on-black eyes look at her intently.

"The air stirs in trepidation," he murmurs, sounding satisfied. "You have the ledger."

Rakha comes to a halt in the circle of light that surrounds the ritual circle next to the man's boots. She lets out a slow breath between her teeth. As before, the effect of the curse is weaker here; the man's magic, though dark in its way, is clean - uncorrupted. Powerful. She watches the way the Weaves shimmers with it, pale fire sizzling through the fabric.

All the same, she stops a short distance from him and watches him warily.

(Wyll expressed concern on the way up here. We don't know what he wants, he said, quite reasonably. He says he means to drag a soul back for judgment, when by all rights the gods have already judged her. Just... be careful, all right? And he's right; she knows he is. But this man knows things Rakha doesn't know...)

"How do you know I have the ledger?" she asks cautiously.

"The raven always knows," the man says placidly.

Rakha shoots a sideways look at the white raven hovering at the man's shoulder. It is flapping its wings in a steady, comfortable rhythm and squinting at Rakha with what seems like baleful dislike.

Evasion? Or does the raven truly know such things? It's not an animal, but a conjuration out of the Weave; Rakha can tell by the way the light sits on its feathers. But that tells her nothing, really.

"Tell me why you want the ledger, first," she says.

"To punish a murderer," the man hisses. There's a subtle note of agitation and urgency in his voice now. "If that is not enough, leave. I have no time for those lacking commitment."

Rakha reaches into her pack, withdraws the small, battered volume, and extends it in the man's direction. "Here," she says flatly. "Take it."

He snatches it from her grip and thumbs through it eagerly, devouring the words on each page. "We have it..." he whispers feverishly. "Her lies. Her *guilt.* Madeline reported her friends to a Dark Justiciar and fled when they were butchered."

He looks up at Rakha and there's a sudden wildness in his eyes, a manic smile touching his lips.

"Well, she flees no more," he rasps. "I will be the conduit for Madeline's spirit. I will force her to face trial! And you will be the judge. Make her beg. Make her *suffer.*"

A rolling throb of pain reverberates through Rakha's head. The beast stirs, the bloodthirst - abrupt and hungry, resonating with that desperate intensity in the pale man's voice.

Make her suffer. Yes. An invitation to indulge the worst part of herself, the part that she does not control. An invitation, in exchange for magical knowledge, to destroy someone at a level even deeper than blood.

The beast keens eagerly. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Rakha swallows. She feels acutely aware of Wyll standing at her side, the back of his hand just brushing hers. She knows the distinction well by now, everything that he and Lae'zel and the others have taught her. Attack with purpose.

This is some kind of perverse temptation. She feels like a woman starving a week, presented with a dish she knows is poison.

"I'm here to... make sure she sees justice," she mutters hoarsely. It's not an answer to the man so much as a reminder to herself.

The man's lip curls in an almost-snarl, as if he is half a beast himself. "There is no justice for traitors," he hisses. "Only pain."

Pain. Yes. The pulse starts to thump at the back of Rakha's skull.

She watches silently as he turns away and sets the book down at the edge of the ritual circle.

Then he stands slowly, spreads his hands at his sides. Rakha watches as the Weave closes in and wraps around him in a swirling, sweeping wave.

"WITNESS HER!" he cries out.

White-green light flares at the center of the circle and blasts outward, coating the dead woman's corpse, painting the man's skin a sickly hue.

He screams, his fists clenched and head thrown back, as the light pours out of his mouth and between the eyelids of his tight-clenched eyes. His breath rasps in his throat with a painful, grating sound.

Rakha stares, wide-eyed. For a brief moment, all the thoughts of blood and pain are driven from her mind, because this--

She has never seen magic like this before.

It is somehow connected to the magic of the curse around her; she can tell that. But it is also clean and pure and uncorrupted. It is bright and dark at once. And it reaches out through the Weave - like the magic of Wyll's eye or Shadowheart's brand, except this time it is not a communication conduit but a claw, a grasping seizing thing that reaches beyond the world and pulls, violently and brutally and unceasingly, dragging a dead soul back into a living body.

His living body.

He spasms; his scream grows higher-pitched, his shoulders hunching, his head cocking to one side. The sound fades and he breathes again, still rasping and gutteral. The light ebbs away and he stands there, trembling, and turns to look at her with bright terror.

"You!" he yelps. She yelps - for the voice is completely different now, another person's sound in his throat.

It is, Rakha realizes, the voice of the dead woman in the ritual circle. Madeline. Rakha can see the lines of the Weave shuddering and pulsing, binding the man to the corpse, and the corpse to somewhere beyond, and she has never, never seen magic like this before. She can feel her whole body thrumming with its energy.

"He said I was gonna be punished! That you'd be the judge! But I didn't mean to hurt anyone!" Madeline stares out of the man's eyes pleadingly, her entire attitude one of intense supplication and fear.

Slowly Rakha's eyes refocus on her; it takes a moment to extract herself from watching that endless shimmering pattern. Right. She is supposed to stand trial. To judge this woman's crimes. To punish her.

I didn't mean to hurt anyone, she said...

Rakha is all too familiar with that phrase. She snorts softly, a bitter and humorless sound. "Blood taints all our hands in ways we never predict," she mutters.

Madeline flinches. "But-- but this wasn't supposed to happen! I swear!" she wails. "I said it didn't mean nothin'! That Ben n' Marc were just drunk n' whining! The Dark Justiciar promised she was gonna *chat* with 'em. She promised!"

Rakha remembers the writing in the book. The two men - Ben and Marc - had spoken out against Thorm's rule, before the curse. Madeline reported them. They were punished.

"What did the Dark Justiciar actually do to your friends?" she asks.

"She gave 'em a dagger each," Madeline says softly. "And told 'em to press it against their stomachs. On the count of three, to 'start stabbin' and not to stop til she said so." She swallows; the man's Adam's-apple bobs sharply with it. "She never said stop. I'd do anything to take it back. Anything!" she wails.

(A/N: A bit disappointed there's no Dark Urge persuasion option here. As it is, there's one standard persuade, plus a class-specific set of two - one to forgive her, one to punish her. The class-specific ones Rakha gets are [BARD] options which are very unlike her; most of the [BARD] options are quite flamboyant and wordy and don't match her personality. So we'll go with the standard persuade option, although it takes a little mental gymnastics.

Side note - this scene has the camera on He Who Was pretty much the entire time; I have almost no shots of Rakha to work with at all, which is annoying.)

Rakha listens to this in silence. Her eyes dilate subtly at the mental image of this brutal punishment. The daggers. Self-inflicted. A gut wound... purrs the beast. Genius. They would die slowly. The blood would pour and pour and pour...

Rakha shudders, squeezing her eyes shut. Justice. Purpose, she reminds herself fiercely.

But her thoughts feel jumbled. She cannot focus - neither on the beast nor on any sense of justice. Her thoughts are suddenly blotted out by a sudden frustrated rage without any direction... because she hears herself in the woman's words.

Monsters - the both of us.

Yes. It was brutal, what this woman caused to happen. She killed those men by proxy, men who were her friends. Just like Rakha has killed so many by letting the beast take control. By being too weak to stop it.

Monsters, the both of us. And both should be punished, she thinks wildly.

[PERSUASION] "Anything?" she mutters. "Then hurt yourself. As Ben and Marc did. Stab yourself." The words are tight and strained in her throat. She's dimly aware that with one hand she has grasped the hilt of her own dagger, pulled it slightly free of its sheathe so the edge of the blade touches her hip. She can feel its bite through the fabric of her robes.(*)

The man's body shudders all over. His hands rip the dagger from his belt and hold the point poised at his stomach. Madeline is hyperventilating with fear, eyes wide and staring at Rakha's. "Like... this...?" she whispers.

-----

"Rakha!" Wyll snaps next to her.

Rakha's head clears slightly and she sucks in a sudden sharp breath. Wyll is gripping her forearm gently, holding her still, drawing her back. "Why are you doing this?" he mutters, tipping his head towards her. "Is this justice?" His eyes flick to Lae'zel, then back to Rakha. "Is there purpose?"

Rakha draws a slow, shaky breath. She wants to explain, to have the words to make him understand that this woman's crimes and her own are the same, and both deserve punishment...

...and that he has made a mistake with his kisses and his soft touches, that he should see her that way too...

But she doesn't. She can't. She doesn't have the words, and she knows he wouldn't believe her anyway. Because he saw light in her even when there was none, and perhaps he sees it in this woman's soul too, despite everything she did.

Her hand relaxes at her side, her own dagger sliding back fully into its sheath, and she looks down at the ground and swallows. "No," she mutters.

He nods, releases her arm, and says nothing more.

------

After a while Rakha raises her head and looks at Madeline, who is still standing stock-still with the knife gripped in both hands.

"Stop," she says quietly. Her voice, to her own shame, is shaking slightly. "You were willing to hurt yourself. That is enough for me."

Madeline's eyebrows lift and her breath catches in the man's throat. "I did it?" she whispers weakly. "I'm forgiven?"

The knife drops from her grip to clatter on the stones. The man's mouth opens and the green light pours from it again, the soul being set free to the sound of a last whisper. "...Thank you..."

Then the man's body spasms again, and he cries out in sudden pain, staggering back a few steps and clutching at his head.

"Aaaaargh!" he howls. "You were supposed to make her suffer! Not forgive her!"

Rakha stares at him icily. She feels as if she has run a marathon, and this man cannot possibly understand the internal struggle that his little trial has put her through. It was not justice.

"Do not speak to me like that," she says flatly.

His eyes flare with sudden rage. And it is not the self-hating, vindictive rage that Rakha just struggled against, but something more petulant - a child denied a favorite toy. Perhaps there was never any intention for justice here anyway. "You're right," he snarls, and pulls the enormous spear from his back. "Now is not the time for talk. You have crossed me - and for that I end your pathetic life!"

(*) Critical levels of artistic license here, obviously.

#bjk plays bg3 durge #rakha the dark urge #whoof #went a smidge dark here i guess #this ended up tying in a little bit to that post i made on sunday #about rakha's 'wretched thing - pull yourself together' dialogue line #and how by starting to figure out the person that she wants to be #she is starting to develop some self-hatred about the person that she has been and still is #i know what i was trying to go for here and not quite sure if i achieved it XD #but some interesting beats at least i hope

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