#how would Lucretia make the second artifact and still keep Taako and Merle and the whole Bureau in the dark?

[liltaz-asatreat]

What if in the scenario that Magnus took the Chalice, the only way to get him back was to time jump to his timeline, and the only way to do that was to create another powerful artifact using the Light because that's the only power source strong enough to make something like that, but then of course Magnus doesn't want to leave the timeline he's in, but in the ensuing conflict, something happens that makes him want to fix it, so he uses the Chalice again, making Taako, Merle, possibly Lucretia since she would have to be the one who made the second "Chalice", and whoever else time jump again, and then like, Magnus dies or something, and of course they can't have that! So they make a new timeline, and it just turns into an unofficial contest of who can fuck up time the most trying to get what the other wants until time is so broken and both artifacts have a chokehold on their wielders, and no one knows how to unfuck this situation

Wouldn't that be fucked up? Lol

[angstytieflingbard]

Platonic THB x Villain’s Child!Reader Finale

Request: “Hey, Taz anon here. Its been a bit! Could I request a finally part to the villian child reader series? On one of the Tres Horny Boys adventures, they meet a person and their son. It turns out its the reader who later in their life became something like a deity of time manipulation(current yn is only studying it now)? And introduces them to their son(who they named Magnus) Just some pure interactions of that? Thank you for your time!”

“please give us more thb x child content!!!!!! ♥️”

Summary: (Y/N)’s only just started studying time magic, but they’ve already hit a roadblock. There’s not exactly a wealth of information on the subject. Their three guardians aren’t exactly sure how to help, nor are they even sure they should be encouraging them, if there’s so little evidence of anyone ever pulling it off. However, their proof comes one day in the form of an oddly familiar stranger...

Warnings: None!

Author’s Note: Y’all really like the child reader content, huh? That’s fine by me, sometimes self care is reading/writing soft platonic stuff, and I’m absolutely willing to provide. On a completely different note, I got into Devil May Cry, and Wow™ am I enjoying that. I could go on forever about how I feel about that game, but I doubt y’all wanna read that when you could be reading more of this good good fluff I’m putting down for you guys. Enjoy, and remember you can always hit up my ask box to talk/request, and the relevant links for that are in my bio!

The past few months had been… frustrating, to say the least. You’d recently decided to study time magic, a feat easier said than done, as you’d found there was almost no material on the subject. All you could find were theoretical essays, some religious texts (mostly from Istus’ worshippers, warning against the practice), and and a few half-finished sets of notes from people who’d attempted the research before eventually giving up just as you had. You’d compiled everything you thought would help you, and still you seemed to be getting nowhere.

Taako had even attempted to help, usually by bringing you new reading materials, though you got the feeling he was more humoring you than anything.

“Hey, Taako!” You called from your desk.

“Yes, darling?” He responded to your call, blinking curiously at you from the kitchen doorway.

“Could you help me real quick? I’m having trouble understanding what this means…” You gestured to your book, and he nodded, moving the pot he was cooking in off the burner for the moment and making his way to your side. Just as he began to read the offending passage, however, his stone of farspeech suddenly glowed a bright green, letting out a single, sustained note for a few seconds before going silent and dark again. He sighed, giving you an apologetic look as he headed for the door.

“I’ll try to help when I get back, okay? Dinner’s already cooking, so you need to keep an eye on it. And don’t burn the apartment down!” He added as the elevator door closed after him. You waved goodbye, sighing as you turned to go into the kitchen once he’d left. You’d get back to your studies with fresh eyes, once the mission was over.

~

Magnus and Merle met Taako at the elevator, each having been going about their own business at the time, and the group were sent down to the surface. Apparently, there were whispers of some powerful magical artifact in Baldur’s Gate, though the regulators hadn’t been able to find out if it was a Grand Relic or not. Either way, they were going to intercept a meeting where the artifact was supposedly being sold, hoping to take the item into custody. Even if it wasn’t an actual Grand Relic, they couldn’t afford to have these types of things end up in the wrong hands.

The main streets of Baldur’s Gate was bustling, homes, businesses, and market stalls alike crammed haphazardly together to create a bright, lively atmosphere nearly overflowing with color and sound. However, as the three got into the side streets, where the deal for this artifact was supposedly taking place, the people and color and overall life seemed to just disappear. The alleys were quiet and nearly empty, seeming almost like a different town entirely.

When they reached the location of the deal, they found it empty, and found a place to wait and watch, without risking blowing their own cover. They sat in silence for a few moments, idly watching the empty alleys and sidestreets around their hiding place.

“So, (Y/N) has been having trouble with their studies lately.” Taako started casually, voice quiet. Magnus and Merle looked at him curiously.

“Yeah? They’re working on time magic, right? Not exactly a lot on it, I’m guessing…” Magnus replied with a slight frown.

“Might be because of Istus. I doubt she wants people running around and changing fate on her.” Merle added. He had a better insight into the minds of the gods, as mercurial as they could be, and he knew gods like Istus didn’t appreciate interference in their divine machinations.

“Maybe. I’m… I’m a little worried they’re gonna hurt themselves, honestly. Either by messing up a spell when they finally do figure it out, or pissing off some god or another.” Magnus confessed. Merle nodded his agreement, and Taako sighed.

“Well, I’m not exactly gonna stop them from studying it. I don’t think I could if I tried, anyways. They’ve set their mind on it. I think it was something about Refuge that set them off, with the resetting and all.” Taako frowned, an odd look on his normally relaxed, almost apathetic expression.

“That almost worries me more. If they’re trying to recreate the kind of effects the chalice had…” Merle trailed off thoughtfully, and they all exchanged a look. Lucretia would be… less than pleased, to say the least, if that’s what you were trying for.

Suddenly, someone appeared out of nowhere in front of them, interrupting their conversation. The person was a human, and a familiar one at that, though they couldn’t place why. In their arms, they held a child, a young boy no older than four or five.

“Hello, boys!” The person greeted them cheerfully, and they all scrambled to their feet, startled. The stranger simply smiled as they sorted themselves out, reaching for weapons, but hesitating at the sight of the child in their arms.

“Who are you?” Magnus started cautiously, already putting himself in front of the other two slightly. The person didn’t seem dangerous, certainly not with the happy looking kid with them, but you never knew these days.

“I- Well, it’s a long story. Um…” They paused, smile slipping into a frown. They didn’t seem to have planned this far ahead in their interactions.

“Start with a name, maybe?” Taako suggested, eyes narrowed somewhat dubiously at them. They winced, but nodded.

“Probably the worst part to start with, but sure. My name’s (Y/N). And before you say ‘Wow, I know someone with that name, wild,” I should say yeah, I know you do.” They spoke quickly, seeing the mix of expressions which flitted rapidly across the boys’ faces.

The three stared at them for a moment longer, surprise and confusion slipping into denial, then recognition, then acceptance as they noticed how similar the strangers’ features were to the child they knew.

“(Y/N)? How are you.... What?” Merle asked incredulously. You smiled sheepishly.

“Well, to make a long story short, I figured out time magic! I’m not gonna get into how that happened for a couple reasons, partially because Istus would actually try to kill me if I meddled in your fates more than I already am just by making this visit, so…” You shrugged somewhat apologetically, carefully resituating the boy in your arms to a more comfortable position. There was a moment of silence as the three processed the information.

“So… What are you doing here, exactly? Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t exactly an unpleasant surprise, but… It’s sure a surprise, at least.” Taako was the one to break the silence again, curiosity overtaking any lingering confusion regarding the circumstances.

“Well,” You said thoughtfully, as though considering what you could tell them, “I wanted my boy here to meet you guys. Where I am, or when I am, I guess, you’re not… around anymore. It’s been a long time. And I thought, hey, what better time than when you guys were in your prime! Before the day of- Oh. Spoilers.” You stopped yourself. The boy in your arms shifted restlessly when you talked about him, and you set him down, chuckling as he hid behind your legs.

You were different, much different than the kid they knew. But somehow they still knew, like a parent always knows their child, that you were still the same dorky, bookish kid they’d taken in so many months ago, even if it was masked by your somewhat strange, almost absentminded demeanor now. For some reason it almost felt like they were only one of several things you were paying attention to, like you were twisting the strings of time around your fingers even as you spoke to them, always watching how every word and choice could affect the timeline.

“You have a kid?” Magnus finally decided to settle on that revelation, clinging to something he could understand between the talk of time magic and fate and spoilers.

“Yeah.” You replied softly, something almost like sadness taking over your features. You twisted slightly in place, reaching back to gently guide the little boy out from behind you. He was shy, though that was clear just from how quiet he’d been for the interaction, but there was a glint of fierce intelligence in his eyes that showed them clear as day how much he took after you.

“Do you wanna say hi? These are my parents. The people I told you about?” You reminded the boy gently, and he nodded, finally stepping closer to the three. Magnus crouched down to the boys height, and Taako leaned down a bit over his shoulder, Merle just shuffling a bit closer without making an attempt to make himself shorter.

“Hey, kiddo. What’s your name?” Taako asked softly, Magnus too busy being absolutely enamoured with the kid, partially for the realization that he had a grandson, of all things. The boy hesitated a moment, looking back at you. You smiled and nodded, reassuringly, and he took a deep breath, facing the three again.

“My… my name’s Magnus.” The boys froze, glancing between you and the boy a few times in shock, a somewhat uncomfortable silence settling over the empty alley for a moment.

Magnus felt like he’d just been shot. After Julia, and the attack on Raven’s Roost, he’d always assumed that would be it for him in terms of family. Just being your guardian at all, getting to experience having a family, even if it wasn’t in the way he’d always imagined, was a gift to him. But now, knowing his ward, his kid, had named their own child after him, it was almost too much. He swallowed, feeling bittersweet tears come to his eyes.

Your son looked mildly unsettled by the silence that settled for a moment, and you stepped forward, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. It seemed to knock the three out of their shock, and chaos erupted, each of them starting to talk over each other in excited tones. You waited for them to calm down with a smile on your face, your son more at ease now that they were acting how you’d always described them in your stories, like chaotic, dorky forces of nature.

“Well…” You started once they finally stopped rambling. “We can’t really stay much longer, unfortunately. Even this short visit has already changed things, I can’t risk changing anything else.” You explained sadly. The boys frowned, but nodded understandingly.

“Even just this has been… amazing.” Magnus said, quietly. “I’m so proud of you, kiddo.” You felt tears build in your eyes, and took a deep breath, leaving your sons’ side for a moment to step forward and pull all three of your childhood guardians into a hug. They hugged you back just as tightly, and you blindly reached out an arm, pulling Magnus Jr. into the hug as well. You all stayed like that for a long moment, until you finally willed yourself to pull away. You smiled sadly at them.

“It’s time to go. I’m sorry we couldn’t stay longer.” You said softly, voice hoarse with unshed tears. You looked like a young adult still, but from the way you talked it seemed like you were much older, all of them having been gone for some time.

“It’s cool, kid. We’ve got a mission to do, anyway.” Taako told you airily, attempting to hide his own teary eyes.

“Ha. About that, uh… I may have made up the artifact. Just a couple well placed rumors and a little hop forward in time to today.” You winced, giving them a sheepish grin as you picked up Magnus Jr. again and held him on your hip. The three paused in surprise, and then started laughing.

“Well, I’d say this was better, anyway.” Magnus chuckled.

“Yeah, now get out of here before I actually start crying. I did not put on makeup this morning just to ruin it like this.” Taako huffed playfully, and Merle simply smiled kindly and patted you on the arm, not saying anything.

You nodded, taking a short step back from them. With one last smile, you brought up the hand not occupied with holding your son, and snapped your fingers. White, gold, and green swirled around you like wind, catching your hair and clothes, and the three watched as the two of you seemed to dissolve into the air, the bright colors of your magic dissipating shortly after. There was a moment spent simply staring at the place where you once stood, before Taako sighed and took the first steps in the direction of the main street again, the other two following shortly after him.

~~

When the Taako, Magnus, and Merle got home, it was late, nearly time for you to go to bed. As they found, you’d spent most of the time still attempting to study that tome you’d gotten your hands on, and Magnus had to herd you off to bed (it had only taken a few short months after they moved into their little apartment for you to end up taking up permanent residence with them, though your dorm was still officially with Angus up in the main part of the base) with bleary eyes and shambling steps, even as you protested.

“C’mon kid, you gotta sleep if you wanna study good.” He told you, and you groaned, though you still let him gently push you by the shoulders into your little room and over to the bed. He tucked you in, and you managed a tired laugh at how he treated you like a little kid.

“Hey Magnus?” You asked him just as he started to head to the door. He stopped in the doorway, looking over his shoulder at you.

“Yeah, (Y/N)?” He asked.

“Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Studying time magic… No one else has ever managed it. I don’t know if I’ll ever figure it out, much less get good at it.” You admitted. Magnus paused, thinking over how he’d met your older self, the child you’d named after him, and wracked his brain for the right words to tell you. Eventually, he settled on something he remembered someone saying to him, not all too long ago.

“Kid… You’re going to be amazing.” And with that, he shut off your light, and left you to sleep.

[believingbrook]

She doesn’t start out with a portrait on the wall behind her. That enchantment is not the first one she lays.

No; when the Bureau is constructed, the first piece of furniture she moves in, one she tacks down by hand, is a map.

Over the past forty years, Davenport entrusted her more and more with command. By this point, a year into their stay on this plane, it’s almost second nature for Lucretia to create an organization on an interplanar scope. She needs a headquarters, and she needs technology, and she needs people to get the job done, and it’s almost rote to establish communication with the Millers and the bugbears and the families Fangbattle and Bonecrusher and Octavius until her dome-encrusted base brims with talent.

In her spare time as Director, even in these budding years of the Bureau of Balance, Lucretia searches. Endlessly.

Every evening she returns to her office and looks at the map and thinks, Lup, where could you have gone?

Barry was a meticulous note-taker. Lucretia thanks any of the gods on this plane for that. He notes carefully which cities he visited, which ones he and Taako visited together (and it hurts, for years, to even hear that name—in her darker moments she thinks, will he ever know how much I took? and she thinks, what a relief it will be to have his anger if it means I have someone to return to him.)

There are a handful of villages that Barry left unturned, so in all of her spare time, Lucretia goes. Upon the ruins of a once-thriving Greenhold she can see a perfect plane of black glass glinting along the horizon. It takes her several minutes, when she lands in the center of that abandoned town, to tear her gaze away.

Their Relics are incredibly powerful objects, Davenport’s perhaps the most so, but in that moment she hates the Gauntlet the most. When Taako compared the worlds to dust he was not wrong, and Lucretia cannot help but hate the Gauntlet for taking one of the only seven people that truly mattered.

Then, she brings them home.

But it’s not home, not really. It’s a home fragmented into seven pieces and torn apart. Bonds, shredded between her own fingers. Lucretia welcomes them to the Bureau with a warm smile and a heavy heart—there’s a space at Taako’s side, a blank absence that tears through her heart like flame.

She has to keep Barry from them, but Barry is still her brother. In her limited spare time, when she takes a break from working, she visits him. It’s one of the few moments she can be Lucretia, nothing more, nothing less; not the Director, nor the stern-faced woman who lost ten years of her life in Wonderland, just...Lucretia. Someone’s sister. The little girl who tried to save her world.

Most of their conversations are filled with silence, now. Even in the dark caves in which Barry has taken up primary residence, he conjures tea for himself, coffee for her. It’s perfectly blended: two sugars, a dash of cream, another of milk, two percent. Barry remembers what she likes, perfectly, because that’s what Barry does: commits to memory what is most important.

They talk about trivialities and the weight of the world and nothing in between. Their conversations are either about the slimming effect the robe has on his silhouette or the last place he saw Lup, places he’s checked, places they have left to scour. The rest of their interactions are filled with silence.

Though the silence should be awkward, perhaps—she has stolen from his family, after all—they aren’t. They’re thick and heavy and warm, somehow, and settle over her shoulders like a well-worn robe.

They say goodbye the same way, every time: “Best of luck.”

Eventually, Lucretia switches out the map for her portrait. Eventually, her days jam up with research about the Relics, about where they could have gone. Eventually, her nightmares—of the Hunger, of Wonderland, of her family shattered by the Relics they created—keep her up at night, wandering the halls of her own organization like a ghost. She takes no comfort in the reflections of these unfamiliar stars, refracted and jagged through the glass planes of the dome.

And on and on, she looks for Lup.

She tucks the map away, unwilling to field questions about it. She stows it next to the baby Voidfish, because deep inside herself she thinks that this child, who has provided her with so many solutions, would have one more answer. Just one more. She’d take this one answer over all the solutions it’s given her so far.

It’s no use. After the Hunger devoured their world Lucretia gave up on praying, and she’s hardly about to start now. Over the last century, the gods have never seen fit to help. Why should they start now?

Those ten years without her family, she looked. Every month, every week; she’d go every day, if she could. She scours the continent top-to-bottom, asking, please, an elven woman with hair spun like gold. Perhaps wearing a red robe, perhaps not. Looking lost and confused. Sometimes Barry comes with her, shielded from prying eyes by one of her spells, and together they devour the continent.

It never shows them Lup.

Lucretia never gives up.

She keeps looking. Even after they recover the Gauntlet, she keeps looking. Even after she spies the Umbrastaff hooked over Taako’s shoulder, scrapes off the remnants of the name L-U-P burned into the wall through blurred eyes. Even after they recover the Oculus and the Sash and the Stone and the Chalice, even as she prepares to send her family into a hell from which she barely escaped—she never stops looking.

In the end, Taako finds her. It’s fitting, Lucretia thinks.

She stows away her map, for a few weeks, tucking it into her apartment. Then she burns it. She doesn’t want anything to do with it, never again.

They come find her later that day, Lup and Barry. Barry talked his way into restoring Lup’s body, and she beams to see Lucretia in a way that makes her gut twist nauseatingly.

Lup sweeps her up in an embrace. She’s so warm.

Lucretia buries her head in Lup’s shoulder, trembling arms clasped around her back, and sobs.

Over Lup’s shoulder, Barry nods. Then he goes to make tea and coffee, and soon, her apartment is filled with the fragrances shrouded with a hundred years.

They talk for hours. They talk about trivialities and the weight of the world and everything in between. “I know what you did,” Lup tells her, when the dregs of her coffee have long gone cold and Lup has twined her fingers with Lucretia’s own. Her smile is radiant and soft, a bed of embers gleaming against twilight falling. “I know how long you looked. Thank you, Lucretia.”

Lucretia swallows, hard. She cried so hard and for so long on Lup’s shoulder that she doesn’t think she could manage any more. “You’re welcome,” she rasps, then: “I missed you.”

Lup’s grin burns brighter. She squeezes Lucretia’s hand. “I missed you too, babe.”

They talk about the festivals of this world, the towns they’ve seen. In their searching she and Barry were not entirely blind to the beauty of the world around them, and one joy—they learned this from Merle, to find joys even in the darkest of places—is that Barry can show Lup the most breathtaking sights on this plane.

He invites Lucretia to join them, for this next one. Talks about a place they discovered together, during their travels. Says he thinks she’d like to come along, and they’d like her to come too.

She says yes, of course. Those last few tears she didn’t think she would manage prove her wrong, but—she’s smiling.

Evening trickles into night into dawn, and in the span of a blink one day has turned to the next, midafternoon streaming bright and burnished into her small kitchen. Old and worn as this body is, she can’t help a cracking yawn that crackles up her jaw. Lup laughs.

It’s a gorgeous sound, and oh, she’d missed it so.

“Let’s get you to bed, babe,” Lup laughs, and curls her arm around Lucretia’s, escorting her to bed. When Lucretia wakes that evening, she finds a note scrawled in Barry’s handwriting—not Lup’s, for good reason—containing an address not far from their place. For rent, Barry’s ink proclaims. We think you’d like it.

The three of them take their vacation. The scenery is gorgeous but there’s nothing so striking as the quiet awe on Lup’s face as she watches the full, bleeding sun drip yellow-orange-red over the horizon. All the light and heat of this arid place and nothing burns quite so bright as her.

Lucretia tours the place once, twice. Then she walks to Lup and Barry’s place, just to test out the stroll. She’s under no illusions about her own condition; soon, she’ll hardly be able to walk, and it’s hardly worth the purchase if she can’t pay her family a visit. They receive her with joy, and coffee, and tea, and the spices that only Lup and Taako know how to transmute, and together they lost track of another day. The next week, another; the next month, Lucretia spends more time at Lup and Barry’s than she does in her new home. She keeps a toothbrush over there, yes, along with several changes of clothes and some of her favorite books and a rocking-chair, a custom Burnsides artifact, tucked in the corner for when she needs to nap.

They travel. Not only around their plane, as they did in the beginning, but across the planes; just the three of them, sometimes. To the ones with good memories but to new ones, too. Barry starts a few cults and Lup holds it over his head, blackmailing him with the knowledge that she would absolutely tell Kravitz if she thought it necessary. The petulance on Barry’s face is so childish and bright that Lucretia can’t help but laugh.

It surprises her. Going by the shock on their faces it surprises them, too. Then they both beam, warm and reassuring, and tell stupid jokes and old, old stories she’d forgotten, until she’s laughing so hard she can hardly breathe.

When she can’t move as much she spends hours in their living room, drawing. It’s a talent that has never left her; both of her hands are steady, and after so long observing so many people and cultures of so many colors, blending and shading comes easy to her. She burned the map but she makes new ones, landscapes of the places they’ve been, both in Faerun and not. She draws their whole family. She takes the pictures that Davenport sends of himself, that Merle sends of himself and his children, of Magnus and Merle and Taako.

She draws Lup and Barry, too. Sometimes, the three of them together. They’re her proudest works.

Her room in their home is painted blue, like her office in the Bureau, but this one—this one she decorates with portraits, layered so thick and so fast that the burnished borders paint the walls scarlet.