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chaoticbardlady99 · 7 months

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Lethal Woman (GN! Reader x Astarion)- Chapter One

Hello! This is my first fanfiction in a very long time so please be kind (I'm fragile)! I have played DND before, but I will be taking a few creative liberties. With the Deathbringer class, the ceremony for creating a Deathbringer is vague so I have based the ceremony on the Grey Warden ceremony (with creative liberties) in DA:O. Also with the mine (in background) think Markarth from Skyrim (Cidhna Mine). This is an Astarion x Reader based on my ongoing mental story that I am obsessed with and finally had to do something about it. I hope you enjoy!

Title is inspired by the song Dove Cameron sings. The picture of Astarion is is by @aristenfromwarsaw on Tumblr. Nightmask and Astarion’s tattoo are off the internet, the picture of Rowan is from my PlayStation lol!

Chapter Two

General INFOOOOOO:

Astarion x Gender Neutral! Reader.

The sex of the character is female so if I ever become brave enough to write smut, the smut will be male/female sex. Otherwise, the character will be going by They/Them pronouns. I will do my best to be consistent with this as I have not written a gender neutral character before!

Trigger Warnings: mentions of Death, mentions of blood, mentions of torture, mentions of physical abuse, mentions of emotional abuse (not a lot)

Name: Rowan (I don’t care for Tav so I chose another Gender Neutral name)

Race: Half Drow Elf, red eyes, black hair, draconic sorcerer parents

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

Class: Rogue

Subclass:Night Mask Deathbringer

Background: You are a Night Mask Deathbringer hailing from the Underbelly of Westgate. You spent the first 5 years of your life living happily in a grove with your sorcerer mother and your mercenary father- until a group of Ravenger’s killed your father, lit your town on fire, and sold all the women and children to a mine outside of Westgate. You remained working in that mine in poor conditions with your mother until you were 9. Your mother hatched an escape plan, but she became ill and you had to escape on your own. You live on the streets scavenging for food and fighting off attackers until you are 13 years old. Dahlia, the leader of the Assassin’s in the Night Mask Guild was scavenging for someone to drink from when she came across you. Dahlia watches you- a scrappy, skinny, feeble little thing fight off three older boys as they attempt to steal your food and your tent. Dahlia intervenes when the boys manage to overthrow you- draining them completely and leaving them to die.. She offers you a warm bed and a promise that you will never be hungry. That you will become the scariest thing in the darkness. After devoting 5 years to the Night Masks, you were deemed appropriate to become an A class assassin by going through a painful rite to become a Deathbringer- not quite undead, but not entirely alive either. As a pseudo vampire, you have become a powerful assassin despite your general disdain for tasteless killing. The money is good, you have a roof over your head, and your belly is always full- who wouldn’t become a little morally flexible? While taking care of a contract in Baldur’s Gate, a strange ship comes flying towards you…...

Chapter 1: Rowan (you!)

Your head is throbbing when the smell of fresh grass hits your nose. Jolting upright with a start, you wince and press your hands against your eyes- desperately trying to get the black spots to fade away.

What in the hells happened?

You rub your eyes and slowly blink your way back into focus. You smell the stench of burning and look around to try to identify the source.

You survey the landscape and find that you are in the woods next to a stream with a precarious light shining brightly behind a large rock. Turning your head again, you see dark smoke coming up from somewhere beyond the trees.

Suddenly, the events of the last 24 hours begin to replay in your head.

The Nautiloid. La’Zeal. Shadowheart. Oh gods they are going to kill each other if I don’t find them quickly.

You had met the two women on the Nautiloid when that thing put a disgusting, worm in your head. In response to your contempt, the worm wiggles behind your eye to make it’s presence known.

Despite how well you had fought together, the other two women had made it very clear that they had no intention of “bonding in the name of womanhood” as Dahlia would say as she whipped you for insubordination. It was hardly bonding- unless you count thick leather and your bareskin.

Slowly you get to your feet and test out your balance. Solid. All is well and there isn’t a single scratch on you. A sigh of relief leaves your mouth. Patting yourself down, you find that your daggers are still intact and your two hidden blades are not broken. Testing them, you watch as they slide smoothly out of your wrist guards and follow the curve of your index fingers. You smirk.

Excellent, now time to make sure the glowing rock won’t kill me.

You creep along the forest floor, barely making a peep as you approach the rock. You hear the sound of a woman groaning. You reach for your daggers as you go around the rock, brandishing your weapons- only to see a Tiefling woman on GODS DAMN FIRE!

She offers you a tense smile.

“That looks incredibly uncomfortable,” you say awkwardly. You wince at how scratchy your voice sounds. You were never really one for “friends” and preferred to rely on yourself. You were less likely to suffer from heartache and Dahlia had been less likely to beat you that way. She once found you and your crush, Tessa, making out in an alleyway. Tessa was a warlock in training at a local guild and you had quickly been consumed by your love for her at the age of 13.

“Becoming attached is a weakness. Falling in love is a weakness. You will do no such things girl. You are a divine monster in the making. You are not made for love, only death and servitude.”

Once you had been deemed a Deathbringer, she never tortured you again and you never attempted to get close to anyone out of fear that the beatings would start up again. You would obey and you would serve- that kept you safe. And Tessa? Well, Dahlia killed her.

“Oh this?” the Tiefling says with a heavy breath, “I have never felt better.”

The fire begins to settle around the Tiefling. She stares back at you with investigative eyes- your weapon already sheathed, your eyes giving away your weariness.

The Tieflings eyes glow with recognition, “Well fuck me! It’s you! From the Nautiloid. Pleaseeeee tell me I found you before those so called ‘Paladins’ of Tyr did.”

She looks at you with desperation and nerves. You pretend to think about it, trying to assess the Tiefling’s posture and disposition. She appears to be friendly and open like a puppy- not what you would expect from someone who was just literally on fire and is now looking at you like they are on the verge of a panic attack.

You shrug, “Fortunately for you, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

The Tieflings beams at you with a happiness you never thought was possible in your presence.

“We really shouldn’t spend too much time here. These so called paladins-”

The Tiefling is interrupted by the worm screaming visions into your heads. You see her on the front lines of the Blood War- scorching rage erupting from her being, but a sense of melancholy underneath. The mantra I will be free chanting in your head.

You feel your own vision come screeching into your head as she dives into your brain. You try to resist and control what she sees to the best of your ability, but she sees it. The ceremony that turned you into what you are. The way your body felt when Orbhak drank your blood. The radiating pain in your muscles as you try to keep yourself alive- resisting the urge to scream while your muscles cramp. The way he allowed your blood to drip slowly into your mouth from his wrist- your body aching to survive.

She feels the way your new found power bursts through you- painful and like ice, your body numb. Then nothing.

“What in the hells was that!?”

She matches your weary eyes with curiosity. You shrug, “I think it’s the tadpole,” you pause to fling your arms around to paint the worm (?) when she looks at you with confusion, “The- Mindflayer? put it in our heads.”

You say it with a finality that even shocks you. You have a tadpole. In your head!

She stares at you with wide, unblinking eyes before she curses out loud.

After further conversation, she tells you that her name is Karlach and she asks you to assist her in killing the people after her. You decide to help her kill the supposed “Paladins of Tyr” in exchange for assistance in finding Shadowheart and La’Zeal. The sooner the unwanted visitor is dealt with, the sooner you can go back to solitude and safety. There is safety in numbers after all.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You are setting up camp with Karlach as she vibrantly retells the day’s earlier events.

“And your eyes!” She exclaims, looking at you in wonder, “A single change of color and you had that man PISSING himself in fear!”

Karlach cackles as you give her a wide, appreciative smile. You never felt like your ability was something that others would find acceptable or in this case, admirable. The praise itself was uncomfortable, but your soul aches to bask in it- to feel something other than loathing. After the battle, Karlach had basically begged you to explain what you are and how you became so “magestic” as she put it. Despite your better instincts, you trust her and find that you actually enjoy her company. She takes your whole “not quite alive” thing very well.

Karlach is intelligent and quick. Her smile is infectious as she preached her love for being free from Avernus as they set up camp.

You smile to yourself sadly, “I guess I haven’t ever actually used my vampiric stare on myself so I have no idea what you are talking about.”

She stares at you and leans forward across the log, “Your eyes, they go from being bright like the earth to red like blood.”

Ah. you thought, begrudgingly, my inner murderer is showing.

Embarrassingly enough, you never looked so you didn’t know. You didn’t really care to look either- the hype wearing off after the first 6 months before you learned to use your stare. 5 and a half years later and you feel apathetic towards your condition. You often wonder if you could have been powerful without the whole “immortal, spooky semi-vampire thing”.

You push that thought aside as Karlach continues to highlight both of your best moments in combat. You chime in occasionally, finding your voice and your charisma deep within you- unaware of the individuals watching your camp.

#astarion x reader #astarion #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion #astarion x you #astarion x tav #astarion romance #karlach #gale #wyll #shadowheart #la'zael #halsin #astarion acunin #gn reader #gn reader x Astarion #gn! reader x astarion #bg3

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optiwashere · 4 months

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I became completely unhinged because of the full version of this art by @forestborg so I had to write about it. It cooked my brain.

This is smutty, smutty smut, but it's also a light exploration of drow trans women as well. Drow culture has always been one of my favorite things about the Forgotten Realms ever since I was a lil DM running my fucked up version of 3E. Combine that with my constant need to trans all the ladies? Yeah.

Really though... this fic is super explicit. I'm adding this to my Kinktober series because I selfishly want that series to say 31/31 some day and this fic definitely belongs.

Rating: E for Exquisite frottage

Category: F/F

Ship: Minthara/Karlach

Tags and AO3 Summary under the break.

Tags: Explicit Sexual Content, Shameless Smut, Smut, Trans Female Character, Trans Karlach, Trans Minthara, Light Dom/sub, Frottage, Come as Lube, Tail Sex, Size Difference, Choking, Breathplay, Drow-typical Gender Hierarchy, Gender Identity, mentions of Minthara/Lae'zel, Inspired by Fanart

Summary:

A vision on the battlefield. A heart warm enough to beat a thousand times too strong for its own good. An axe with a sharp edge, though its haft is unkempt and left to rust. These are the ways Minthara knows Karlach. There is one other way she desires to know her. Or: Minthara and Karlach spend an evening in a tent together.

#bg3 #bg3 fanfiction #karlach #minthara baenre #minthara x karlach #karlach x minthara #mintharlach #I don't know the common ship tag rip me #my fic #anotheropti's kinktober 2023 #I wrote this in a frenzy and I've spent basically all day editing it while I work lmao #I'm still a Minthara/Lae'zel truther... but the art... I am a victim of propaganda...

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xalygatorx · 3 months

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Unbound | Chapter 20, "Oathbreaker"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: Áine explains her past connections to Moonrise Towers and Ketheric Thorm to their companions as her anxiety mounts at the prospect of returning. She’s met with pushback from Wyll, which triggers her into anger before she can stop it. Áine meets with Jaheira again privately, explaining her hesitation to face Ketheric again and how she fears that she might sabotage the mission if he somehow recognizes her. Considering making the journey alone to spare her loved ones, Áine finds herself in a conversation with Halsin as he tends to the comatose Flaming Fist. The former Archdruid offers her comfort and perspective.

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: Angst; descriptions of feeling triggered and trauma-based anxiety; forced shared flashbacks via the tadpole connection by the illithid tadpoles (it’s an assault on the group but primarily on Áine); fragmented traumatic flashbacks that imply past violence, abuse (physical and verbal), and include grief (Áine); descriptions of pain and blood; suicidal ideation if you squint; lightly proofread

Word Count: 8.3k

Listening to: Funeral Bell - PHILDEL

A/N: The section that includes the forced flashbacks is written in a way that may be, but hopefully isn’t confusing (and if it is, I’m sorry). It’s meant to convey when Áine is fighting the connection and managing to break through while we’re experiencing the vision along with the others. She regains control toward the end of the flashback sequence, which is why the text interruptions go away. (I like to mess with the format in stuff I write, so I'm just back on my bullshit really.)

I was going to wait to post this because it's only been a couple of days since the last post, but I have a horrible headache and I could use the dopamine. That said, the next chapter will take more time since I haven't even started it yet.

Every moment between her confession to Astarion and the next time their companions roused was spent restless and uneasy. At times, even panicked. It was both too familiar and entirely new, this crushing, leaden weight in her chest.

She only noticed her heartbeat had started to pick up again when her beloved vampire stirred beside her from a light reverie he’d only just slipped into. Guilt ate into her stomach when he woke and studied her in the muted light that worked its way through the canvas draped around them. Áine met his eyes, her lashes fluttering as he brought a hand up to smooth her hair from her face and his fingertips left cool, soothing trails against her cheek.

“Sleep, darling,” Astarion murmured encouragement as he leaned in, a breath away from her lips. He brushed his nose against hers and she instinctively leaned in closer, secured in the cradle of his arms.

“I’m sorry I keep waking you,” Áine whispered back, bridging the gap to kiss him gently. “You can rest, love, I’m okay.”

“Not without you,” he grumbled, dropping his head forward and nuzzling into her neck. Áine smirked, carding her fingers through his curls and letting her hands brush the tips of his ears. A soft groan eased from Astarion’s throat, lost amidst her pearly strands. “I know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know what you mean, little star,” Áine murmured back unconvincingly, kissing his crown as she continued her gentle ministrations through his locks.

Instead of arguing with her, he chuckled. “I do rather like that, you know,” he mumbled and she could swear she heard a bloodless blush in his tone.

Áine smiled. “The endearment or me playing with your hair?”

“Both,” Astarion admitted, a content sigh fanning across her neck. “Would you like to know what else I like, darling girl?”

“What else?” she asked.

“When you endeavor to rest those lovely eyes,” he said as he leaned his head away from the curve of her neck to peer down at her again, bending his elbow up to prop his head on his hand. “Instead of trying to lull me back into meditation so I stop fretting over you.”

The bard gave him a small frown. “I can’t sleep. There’s no reason we should both suffer for that.”

“I’m not suffering to stay up with you, Áine,” Astarion sighed. Despite his frustration, he couldn’t help but admire the little doe-eyed look she got just from hearing him say her name. “What can I do?”

“You can let me lull you back to reverie so you stop fretting over me,” Áine teased him.

“Darling, I truly don’t know how I’m supposed to do that,” he pointed out, getting a little annoyed. “You hardly touched your dinner and you aren’t—”

“Can you blame me?” Áine asked point blank. “After what I’ve told you, wouldn’t it be stranger if I slept peacefully and made merry without a care?”

Astarion’s lips thinned. “You seemed to be doing fine earlier, all things considered,” he mused, wondering if he was just not as talented at reading her as he’d thought. Then again, he hadn’t known quite what to look for earlier before he’d known what these lands meant to her. He’d had little more than her upset heartrate to read during their talk with Jaheira.

“Fighting out there came back like second nature. I didn’t have time to overthink it,” Áine said. “And this inn, these people… They’re new to me. It hadn’t sunk in yet, I guess.”

“And now?” Astarion asked.

“Now…,” she murmured, her gaze flickering down from his to consider his question before she met his eyes again. “...I’m scared.”

“You?” Astarion mused, a doubtful crease forming between his brows. “You’re the bravest person I know.”

“I don’t know that fear and bravery are mutually exclusive,” Áine said. “At least they never have been for me. Astarion, I’m… I’m terrified.”

“Of?” he urged.

Áine’s throat worked as her features pinched in a feeling he knew immediately and intimately—shame. He frowned when her eyes left his again, favoring his collarbones so she didn’t have to see whatever she was afraid to see in his stare. The vampire sighed and adjusted their blanket more snugly around her, scooping her closer until he had her nestled against his chest. Only when he felt her relax a little did he urge her again. “Talk to me, dearest.”

“You have enough on your heart without me adding to it,” she mumbled against his chest.

“What heart?” he teased her, earning a disapproving grumble from the woman he held. “How many times have you suggested I do the same—that I talk to you—while assuring me that my baggage imposes nothing on you?”

He still didn’t quite believe her when she said that. His trauma followed him like one of the wraiths they’d fought. More nefarious than an ordinary shadow, wailing and clawing at any spark it could snuff out. Someday she would realize he wasn’t worth it, but she seemed to not have discovered that just yet. He’d enjoy it while it lasted.

“A few,” Áine relinquished in a muffled tone.

“Then afford me the same,” Astarion instructed, resting his chin atop her head.

Her warm sigh sank into his skin as she let her arm that wasn’t angled beneath her rest across his waist. “It’s not the same thing, not really,” Áine said, “but this, to me, feels like being back at Cazador’s front steps would to you.”

Astarion couldn’t help the way his body stiffened at her words, but he gently shushed her when she started to apologize for bringing it up. “No, it’s… That certainly puts it into perspective,” he said. Something in him flared just at hearing his sire’s name on her voice, at knowing how frightened she must be if that were the case. He was mulling over the logistics of just keeping her bundled up in here with him for an eternity when she spoke again.

“Do you think they’ll hate me?”

His brow bunched and his eyes flickered down toward the top of her head, but he didn’t pull back to look at her. “Who?”

“Our friends,” she replied. Her voice was small but steadier than before and completely serious. He couldn’t fathom it.

“Why would they hate you?” Astarion asked.

Áine exhaled a breath she’d been holding and it felt like her words started spilling out with it. “Because I’m not the bard they thought they met,” she said, her quiet voice cracking. “I’m not who they signed up to follow into this mess. I’m not ‘good,’ I’m not a hero, and I’ve done…terrible things.”

“You’re also a liar.” Áine tensed at his words, but the patterns he was tracing along her back didn’t cease. “You’re lying to yourself right now, for example.”

“Astarion, I’m—”

“Serious?” he finished for her, rolling to his back and pulling her with him. She lay atop him and he cupped her face in his hands. “I know you are. It baffles me.”

“What baffles you?” Áine asked.

“How you could possibly think anyone would hate you, my love,” he murmured, smoothing the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “Have you met our friends? Everyone has something categorically wrong with them. If anything, it makes me feel a little better about tricking you into being with me to know you have a few skeletons of your own.”

She scoffed. “You didn’t trick me.”

“Keep thinking that, darling,” he purred, pulling her down to kiss her forehead, then her nose and her cheeks. He spoke in jest, but wasn’t that what he did? Wasn’t that why this little slice of peace he’d been afforded wouldn’t last?

“I don’t know how you don’t hate me,” Áine admitted.

Astarion snorted. He couldn’t help it. It was all he could do to not throw his head back and laugh in her beautiful face. “I’m sorry, my sweet,” he snickered when he met her eyes. She was embarrassed and exasperated that he didn’t seem to be taking her seriously again. How could he take her seriously though? It was the most absurd statement he’d ever been obligated to respond to. It was the very statement he should be presenting to her, but was too selfish to point out the obvious lest she see the light and go.

When she tried to shift off him and escape his teasing, he hemmed her in with the frame of his legs, tightening them on either side of her hips. Astarion gave her a scolding look and nodded. “Well, go on. Why should I hate you?” he prodded.

He could see that he’d disarmed her. Áine hesitated, worrying her lower lip. “Well, I… I gave you the wrong impression, too.”

“What impression is that?” he asked.

“That the version of me you met is all there was,” Áine supposed, her brow pinched with the effort to put her anxieties into words, to make them sound remotely rational. Her wide amber eyes bore into his as she said, “I meant it when I said I’d done awful things, Astarion. I… What if I’m no better than…”

“Than?”

“Than the people who hurt you?”

As soon as the words were out, he felt the shudder run through her frame like her body was an extension of his. Astarion sighed and tucked her against him, rubbing her back as he felt her tears dampen his shirt. “On your worst day,” he murmured, “you couldn’t come close.”

“You don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be that person again. And she feels so close here.”

“Shh, shh,” he hushed her soothingly again, content to hold her while she cried. Gods, she’d managed to soften his heart in their time together. It overwhelmed him to realize it at times. It was ever less terrifying, but unnerving all the same. When she quieted some, Astarion murmured against her hair, “Neither of us had a true choice in the end. But especially not you. You must know that.”

“Sometimes I do,” she murmured, sniffling. “But sometimes it feels like I could’ve done so much more than I did to get away.”

“You can’t punish yourself forever, darling, even if that’s true,” Astarion sighed. “I would be curled against the floor of my tent every night if I clung to every awful thing I’ve done, every mistake I’ve made, every time weakness won over.”

“It’s different for you,” Áine said, her voice kind as one of her hands came up to trace along his jaw. “You had no choice at all. You were compelled.”

“And you were a child, Áine,” Astarion said in a hard voice not meant for her, but for the world that hurt her. That hurt them both. “Children aren’t meant to know what’s ‘best’ or ‘good,’ that’s what parents are meant to teach. You’re casting judgment knowing what you know now and not considering all you didn’t know at the time.”

Áine pondered his words. “Is that how you think of yourself, too? Even if it’s different?”

“Yes,” Astarion said. “Granted, I don’t have the moral compass you do to misguide me, but anything I actually feel sorry for in that time falls into the same line. I did what I had to do to survive and so did you. They’re not our sins.”

Cautiously, Áine snaked her arms around him again, almost as if afraid he’d disappear. He could relate to that feeling, that need, that fear. He tightened his arms to try to help extinguish it. Astarion felt her breath on his neck when her lips parted, but she thought better of whatever she’d been about to say, burying her face against his shoulder instead.

Finally, when she did speak, she said only, “Thank you.”

Astarion didn’t hate her. He forgave too much when it came to her, in her opinion, but she supposed she was the same with him. She adored him. How could she fault him for anything he’d done before just to endure the hell he’d suffered? She supposed she should just be grateful that he looked upon her with that same forgiveness.

Áine guessed that the others wouldn’t be so understanding. She was soon to find out.

She and Astarion had stayed up when she still hadn’t found sleep, quietly talking until they heard their companions stir. That leaden feeling had returned to her gut the moment she heard them rouse and her lover had distracted her momentarily with kisses when he felt her heart start to hammer.

“And you’re wrong, by the way. You are the bard we met. This is who you’ve chosen to be, not what you were made to be. Weren’t you the one who told me something like that, darling? Afford yourself your own advice.”

The corner of her mouth quirked a little as she ran his words through her tired mind a few more times. She stared into the dancing campfire flames for a few moments more, listening to the hum of conversation around her, before she forced herself to speak. “I have something I need to clear up,” Áine said.

The crosstalk quieted and she felt eyes on her. That had been the goal, but now that they were there, she felt every burning stare. Any gusto she’d drummed up wilted like the flora outside the moon shield. It was already starting. The end of what she’d built. All because of what she’d been born into, what she’d existed within and endured for her first 45 years of life. Because of all she’d done before she’d known things could be different.

No going back now.

Áine cleared her suddenly dry throat. “Ketheric Thorm,” she said, the words poison in her mouth. “I know him.”

The silence stretched for what felt like an age. Finally, Karlach broke it. “What do you mean you ‘know’ him?” she asked.

The bard shifted through her discomfort at Karlach’s wary tone. She scraped through the nausea in her gut to find her voice again. “I was born into the covenant he keeps, that he uses,” she explained, already finding it more difficult to explain the truth of her past to all of them than it had been to explain it to Astarion down by the lake. She wasn’t surprised, but she was finding it quite tough to even get the words past her lips. “I was oathbound. Just like the rest of my family. And now I’m not. But I’m telling you this because I’m still concerned. There’s a very real chance that he may recognize me if we come face-to-face with him at Moonrise. Or at least put two and two together. Half-drow aren’t exactly common as far as I know.”

“So you were a paladin then?” Gale asked, seeming more like he was just trying to get his facts straight than that he was doubting her. She still occasionally caught him tiptoeing around her, careful not to fall into her poor favor a second time, but she didn’t think that was why he was being careful now. This just felt like Gale being Gale. When she nodded, Gale asked further, “And now you’re oathbroken? Is that where your power came from in the Underdark? That you used to defeat the spectator?”

Áine nodded again. “That’s right,” she said, appreciating the understanding look in his eyes, holding to it like a lifeline. “That’s also why we’ve had a knight hanging around camp. He’s…well, he’s sort of the authority over broken oaths. Mine reinvigorated when I used its power and brought him back to me.”

“You know that makes a lot of sense,” Gale mused, chuckling. “I’m embarrassed to not have put that together.”

“How long ago were you oathbound?” Halsin asked, his features twisted with concern.

“I left ten years ago,” she said, “and before that…well, I served for about 20 years in all.” Gale’s straightforward curiosity had reminded her that not all questions equated doubt. Of course they would have questions. That rationale helped her more quickly recognize the source of Halsin’s concern and she added, “Long after you would have fought him if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Praise Sylvanus for that,” he sighed emphatically, looking aggrieved. Relief lanced through Áine that she was correct. “Even if you’d been on the opposing side, I feel nothing but relief to know you weren’t somewhere on that battlefield.”

Áine smiled, her gaze shifting when a small, kind-looking Flaming Fist approached Halsin, asking if he’d come with her. Áine supposed it had something to do with the unconscious fellow in the inn when he excused himself to follow her. He couldn’t be too concerned or suspicious of her if he was content to leave their circle now, Áine figured.

“So the fear of being recognized is paramount?” Shadowheart asked, looking only somewhat concerned as Áine met her eyes.

Áine nodded. “I’m going to speak to Jaheira as well, I think, about that,” she said. “I’m afraid of sabotaging our infiltration if he knows my face. I want to say that it’s unlikely as I would have only been in front of him for my initiation in a group of other new blood, but there exists the possibility. It’s also possible that someone I’m related to or that I trained with could be there, too.”

“And how likely is that do you think?” Shadowheart asked.

“Given what we were used for, unlikely,” Áine speculated. “If operations are the same, he has his own separate guard for Moonrise. Or maybe he’s using cultists for that now, too.”

“There’s always a disguise spell,” Gale suggested. “Although I would be shocked if there weren’t wards around Moonrise to unravel such enchantments. Maybe if we—”

“And you are truly oathbroken?” Wyll asked, interrupting Gale’s ramble. Áine missed the edge to his voice but Astarion, lingering nearby and listening, caught onto it and bristled.

“I am,” Áine said simply and without a sliver of doubt.

“You did well to separate yourself from such an evil,” Lae’zel commended her, unbothered by Áine’s past and far more concerned with their next move. Áine cast her an appreciative look.

Wyll’s tone was not missed by the bard a second time. “I find it…hard to believe if I’m honest.”

The remaining party stilled, curious glances cast sideways at Wyll. Shaken by the sudden statement and confused by his meaning, Áine dumbly asked, “...What?”

“Hear me out,” he requested. With a gesture toward the horns protruding from his skull, Wyll said, “As we’ve all gathered by this point, I am also pacted. It’s a different situation, it’s true, but the base of it is the same. And I know how constrictive these agreements are. How hard it is to escape it, let alone find oneself again.” He rose from his seat, his hands resting against his hips as he looked down at Áine. Even if he didn’t mean to cow her, he was succeeding in her current headspace. “And I’m just not so sure that it could be possible to do that under this supposedly invincible undead entity that is General Thorm.”

“On what grounds?” Áine asked, a dangerous waver in her tone as she also stood, hurt by Wyll’s claims and unwilling to sit while he loomed over her.

“It would have a horrific cost,” Wyll said with absolute certainty, not noticing how much he’d triggered her with his words. He gestured first at himself again and then at her. “A cost that, frankly, unlike me, you don’t appear to bear.”

Áine barked a cold, humorless laugh. “Not all of us get off as easy as a set of horns, Wyll,” she snapped, something unhinging within her. She tried to keep it hemmed in, horrified when the reciprocating spark of hurt and anger she saw flare in his good eye felt almost gratifying. “You… You would really doubt me? After everything we’ve been through?”

“Now, we’ve no need to fight amongst ourselves,” Gale imposed cautiously. His eyes darted between Wyll and Áine but also fleetingly to Astarion, who looked more prepared to intercept by the second.

Ignoring him and the tension in their circle, Wyll pushed further. “It’s not you, I doubt, Áine. Not really. But you’re not exactly doing much in the way of convincing me otherwise, are you,” he said, his question not a question at all. “Though I hate to say it, it’s more suspicious that you—”

He was plucked from his tirade and his train of thought as a sensation akin to a hard tap thudded within his head. The disturbance sent a ripple through all their tadpoles. The only one who didn’t look confused was Áine, who instead looked shaken to her core. Wyll took in her expression and began to ask, “What’s wr—”

He couldn’t get the words out before it happened again. The next intrusion was shattering. Wyll rocked back on his heels, his hand going to his head as he steadied himself. The shockwave of the vision that bled open in his mind’s eye reached the rest of the group with lesser force. For an instant, they feared the takeover of the Absolute or an onset of ceremorphosis. However, the sights that filled their minds were somehow even less familiar.

At least, they were at first.

The feelings came first. Unfathomable grief. Barely contained rage. Survivor’s guilt in its most basic form, sometimes an echo and sometimes a squall. Abject terror. Shame. A horrible, ever-present emptiness. All of it washed along the branches of their intertwined minds, traceable from what could’ve only been Áine’s memories, her heart, spilling over.

The bard clutched her head, her nails digging painfully into her scalp as if she could claw inside and dissuade the parasite behind her eye from its onslaught. The feelings, the memories, the panic had hit her like that gnoll back on the Risen Road, knocking the air clean out of her lungs until all she could do was scrape her breath back inside and try to keep her footing. She’d not anticipated this, hadn’t given a single thought to the damn worm, and her tadpole wriggled as if it knew, thrumming with the energy of her mind’s attack, and it had latched onto the others before she could conceive of how to stop it.

All she could do was drag back anything within her reach and augment the pieces that would hurt her most, the ones she would rarely let herself see clearly, much less the ones surrounding her, their parasites feasting on her memories as they bubbled to the surface unbidden.

Suddenly, no one present was themselves. No one save for Áine, who in that moment would have been anyone else. Behind her, as she struggled to stay standing and not sink to her knees, Astarion’s sight, too, was blanketed by memories not his and swept into this shared vision he shouldn’t have been privy to and yet couldn’t resist. Dully, he could feel Áine’s will flex against the tadpoles’, but her attempts to stop the illithid violation of her mind held all the power of a fish flopping against dry land, drowning in air.

It wasn’t Astarion alone who wanted to help her, who wanted this to stop, but none of them could move, could resist. Instead, they bore witness while their unwilling performer swallowed her screams.

Stonework underfoot studied by a bowed head. The tip of your worn boot is where your eyes focus because to raise the head is to look upon the oathsworn and it’s simply not done. You’re a worm beneath his feet and you will acknowledge the ground from which you’ve come while you swear your oath on your knees.

Your voice—her voice, younger and strained—aligns with the other initiates’ intonations in the memory. You are numb. In this war, there has never been golden propaganda or the promise of glory for a bit of your blood. This is expectation incarnate. You were born to do this, only this, to serve and die for your general. There was never a moment of ‘giving up’ because you were never provided an alternative to flee to. You’ve no notion of freedom to relinquish.

“I swear fealty to the undying general and those who faithfully follow, my life for the Thorm bloodline, my bloodline for his.

“I will uphold the laws beset by my oathsworn master. I will be a bastion to he who would see unjust gods fall to ruin. I will suffer no charlatans, none who may interfere or prevent our cause. None who would rise against his final word.

“No one will stand in the way of my fulfillment of my oathsworn’s will, be they beast, monster, or noble. I take responsibility for ensuring the return of Ketheric Thorm and his bloodline to its previous glory.

“My life for the Thorm bloodline, my bloodline for his. I will bear the brunt of any chaos that this task creates. He speaks, I obey.”

The scene changes. The years blur as they wind back and fly forward in this vision. It’s the vision’s manifestation of Áine fighting her tadpole and theirs as well for control and losing. Áine’s nose started to bleed and they could all feel the warm runny trail, could smell the sickly sweet copper when it hit the cupid’s bow of her lips. Despite no sound passing her lips in the physical plane, they can all hear her scream in their minds when her tadpole burrows deeper, sinks its teeth, and twists.

Battles rage wherever you go. Big and small. Ceaseless. Between your allies scraping for respect or with your ordained enemies fighting for their lives. Selûnites. Sharrans. Any who have wronged the general are at your disposal. You are at his disposal. Your life is forfeit if you refuse. You have grown up under the unnegotiable teachings that to break your oath is to die, slow and horribly and in dishonor. No gods will claim you. You will be a far-flung soul to be plucked from painful purgatory by hungry, greedy devils bound for Avernus. You will suffer. Better to live and suffer and have some semblance of control over your agony.

The doubt begins to sink in much sooner than the resolve to flee. Oathbound, the underbelly of your family’s dealings is no longer hidden from you if it ever was at all. It’s not as if you ever had a choice in your “decision” to swear fealty. It becomes clearer as you age why you were born, half-elf cannon fodder for a selfish cause that traces back to one man who refuses to stay buried. Who refuses to let his family rest. Who rallies against every deity that refuses his twisted, blasphemous demands and purges their acolytes in retaliation.

Something shifts when you turn 45. The specifics are clawed back, leaving notable gaps, but you’ve been in service for 20 years and something finally snaps. You must leave. There’s no other option. You know that you will die trying—your oath will kill you when it breaks if your family or even Thorm himself doesn’t kill you first. But you must.

You can hear your breaths loudly in your ears in the quiet of the field you run through. The scenery is blurred but you can see the skyline of Baldur’s Gate in your periphery. The sky is milky with dawn. It’s a far cry from the cursed lands you just left behind. You might just make it past the outskirts before your oath’s bonds begin to be tested. You’re doubtful you’ll make it much further, but it ultimately doesn’t matter.

You hear the arrow before you see it, but it takes that long to realize what it is. There’s someone with you for just a second, but the bearer of the memories uses her depleting strength to rip them away. The arrow sinks into the ground where they would have been running. You keep running, hoping it’s a staggering shot and no more, but you know the truth. It was meant for you and it missed—it wasn’t meant for you, it never missed—and you keep running. The pounding of your heels is a lone staccato now. It always was.

You feel your oath begin to shudder. It feels as though your ribcage is being hinged apart. You slow, hearing a shout, hearing threats. You’re not worried about yourself. There’s not much point now anyway. It’s over. You feel yourself give up like you’re a visitor in your own body.

You turn to look back. It’s a mistake. The figure of a hulking drow male stands at a distance, another smaller male that could be one of his brothers near him. The larger of the pair holds the bow, another arrow already knocked into place. It’s aimed at you. He calls you back like a wayward animal.

Your eyes fall to the ground near him. A human woman sits in the grass, something nothing slung in her arms no no no no no no no

You steel yourself to return if it means he won’t hurt her. She looks so unbearably small. Heavy streams of tears fall down her face and splash onto what she’s holding. You refuse to study it because, if you don’t acknowledge it, it won’t be true there’s nothing there, STOP STARING AT IT!

She looks up at you. You anticipate blame. It’s your fault that he’s dead gods he’s dead she’s going to die too why can’t you save her you tried to run, knowing what would happen. And you still went.

Her lips part on a scream. It’s a scream that haunts every nightmare you have. That haunted you when your broken oath reached out to you through the Weave when you were practicing magic with Gale. Sometimes it comes to you while awake, sudden and sharp and senseless and spurred by nothing.

“ÁINE, RUN!”

You don’t turn away before the archer commands the other drow to slam his sword through her back. But the instant you see it, the instant you hear it, you run. Faster than you ever have. It’s a miracle you can even move, that you have the clarity to follow her instruction. Your pace is breakneck and would result in injury if you misstep even once. You don’t care. You’d rather die than be placed back in formation now. There’s no going back. You have nothing to return to. Death is preferable. You’d realize it always has been if you were ever honest with yourself, but you’ve been too scared, always too scared. You had something to lose back then. The fear dissipates with your worldly attachments, the only ones that have ever mattered.

The first arrow finds its home in your shoulder. The second hits closer to your heart and almost sends you to your knees. You do double over, but your legs don’t lose the pace you’ve set. Your built momentum keeps them loping forward until you regain enough of your focus to start surging them forward on your own again.

Your shoulder is broken, there’s no doubt. The muscles are shredded around the carved flint heads. They’ve skewered through your flesh and are protruding out your front. You clutch your useless, injured arm and keep it drawn against your side so it doesn’t slow you down. Adrenaline postpones some of the pain, but not all of it. You feel like you’re burning alive.

You have the frame of mind to duck down and change position and it’s only because of that that the third arrow misses. You fell into old battle maneuvers without thinking, perhaps triggered by your injury, and you’re surprised it works against the drow hunting you. The arrow impales the ground where you would have been otherwise. That one may have been the one to kill you.

Instead, you think your oath might do that.

You buckle your knees and skid down a slope that descends into a curve that goes past the treeline. You curl into the dirt as you fall, briars scraping the back of your neck and your scalp as you disappear beneath them. You’ll hide there until you’re sure they no longer pursue you. Or you’ll be found and dragged back. Your shoulder screams when you fall on it and you almost bite through your tongue to remain silent. You’ve stomached worse pain before but not many times, not like this.

Your oathbreaking is a different pain. It’s a wretched, angry thing that held heavy in your chest for the past two decades and now comes undone like a lightburned wraith. It rages in your bones, ravaging your insides and making your mind feel as if it’s melting from your ears. Distantly, you hear the male drows’ voices bark more threats and then a quieter exchange. They’re fading. They’ve lost you in the thicket or they assume you’ll die there, wherever you’ve ended up. If you survive your injuries and your oath, perhaps you’ll survive it all. But for what purpose now?

You shimmy out from under the bracken an indeterminable amount of time later, your teeth grinding as you can’t help but snag the arrows on the roots, against the soil. You ache to get them out of where they’ve torn you asunder, but logic and years of training remind you that you need to wait until you can staunch the blood flow. Right now, the arrows are all that keep you from bleeding out and you need to appreciate that they’re of use to you for the time being, no matter how much they hurt.

The twisting agony still rages in your chest and you stagger to your knees when it finally reaches its peak. Just as swiftly as it riled and ruptured in your chest, it dissolves like splintering ice. Not just broken, not quite, but almost melting. Collecting. Reforming into something new.

“You have broken your oath, paladin.”

The gravelly voice startles you. Your first thought is the drow, but you’ve never heard a voice like this before. Your eyes lift by an increment to find blackened pewter boots decadently laced with gold patina and travel upward into the incandescent stare of something far beyond your understanding. It’s a knight, you think. But it’s unlike any knight you’ve ever seen.

He inclines his head to you, fire blazing within metal. “We have much to discuss.”

The vision shattered as Áine finally wrenched herself from the connection, breaking its center with her hard-fought departure. Freed as well, her companions each in turn shook their heads as if the vision could be cleared more quickly that way. Eyes instinctively wandered back to the half-drow near the fire who was staring into nothing as silent trickling streams of tears and blood grew stale on her face.

The first to push through their daze and act was Wyll. “Gods, Áine, are you—”

“Leave me alone,” the bard whimpered hollowly, blood under her nails as she finally withdrew them from her hair and quickly stumbled to separate herself from them.

When she hurried past where Astarion stood, rooted to the spot, he instinctively reached out to catch her in his arm. She dodged around him without a second’s hesitation, her gait quickening as she disappeared past the inn.

“Leave her be, she’lak,” Lae’zel hissed to Wyll when he tried again to call Áine back. The pain she’d felt through Áine’s memories still lingered like a specter in her chest and repeatedly triggered a vicious “fight” instinct that she was trying to stamp back into submission. “She will return when she is ready.”

“Lae’zel is right,” Shadowheart decreed despite looking desperate to follow the bard, herself. Her eyes shone with grief-born pain, an interesting expression for a true Sharran to wear. “Did you… Did any of us cause that?”

“No,” Wyll said with complete certainty, heads shaking to echo the same sentiment around him. “I don’t even think she did it. It almost felt like she was fighting it the entire time.”

“Then the tadpoles just…did it on their own?” Karlach asked, her brows creasing at their middle.

“So much for having a ‘guardian’,” Gale remarked. It held the air of a quip, but genuine suspicion sharpened his tone into something that bordered an accusation.

Their aforementioned guardian remained uncharacteristically silent.

The icy water off the shore of Last Light was all that pulled Áine back inside herself. She’d undergone a lot in her life, most of it physical, but that had been a new level of the Hells she’d experienced. She felt turned inside out and violated, like she’d had hands all over her and inside her, too, pulling out whatever they could the moment they’d smelt blood.

Áine let herself sink just enough below the lapping tides’ surface to unleash the scream she’d felt building in her for the better part of an hour now. It ricocheted in her ears, muffled, and expelled where no one else could hear or be perturbed. For the briefest moment, she considered not resurfacing. Even so, she’d hardly finished that dark thought before she was swimming back up.

Her head broke the surface and she cupped the water to clean her face, idly wedging the dried blood and skin from her scalp from under her nails as she walked back up the shore. She’d just reached up to wring the water from her hair when she spotted just the person she’d earlier intended to speak to.

“Jaheira?” Áine called, getting the High Harper’s attention. “Do you have a moment?”

Jaheira regarded her with curiosity as she approached, taking in her soaked appearance but also the look in the younger woman’s eyes and the defensive hunch of her shoulders. “You should ask instead if I have a towel,” she quipped before raising her hand. With a small flourish, the moisture left Áine’s clothes, leaving them perfectly dry and her hair just a little damp. Áine murmured her thanks and Jaheira inclined her head. “I assume though that wasn’t what you needed?”

“Not exactly,” Áine said, winding her wet locks into a haphazard bun at her nape.

“Then I have more than a moment. Some even say I have a few moments,” Jaheira said with an edge of humor, nodding for Áine to walk with her. They made their way inside the inn, found stools at the nearly vacant bar, and sat down. The building was filled with the hum of several conversations punctuated by the strum of Alfira’s lute. “What’s on your mind?”

Áine did her best to summarize everything she’d just told the others, from the covenant sworn under Ketheric to her former station in it and then to her concerns about how it would affect their infiltration of Moonrise Towers. Jaheira remained silent throughout, nodding occasionally to indicate that she understood what Áine was saying and she was listening as intently as she seemed to be. Jaheira had known about the covenant, but she had not known that it was part of—but not all of—what fed into his life force.

“Surely it must be more than the covenant,” Jaheira suggested as Áine paused to take a drink of the water she’d been served by one of the tiefling children playing bartender for kicks and the occasional coin. “Your bloodline is many but their binding would not create the power that I saw at the gate.”

“It wouldn’t,” Áine agreed. “There were whispers of some sort of relic that he kept. That it was the primary source of his immortality, maybe the healing you saw too. But we were never privy to what it was or where it was. That was always handled far away from any of our dealings.”

“I see,” Jaheira said, her mind already flying through possibilities. Coming up short, she turned her attention back to Áine and her predicament. “Well, you are right to be concerned,” Jaheira reasoned. Áine felt palpable relief that she was hearing her and hadn’t jumped to any conclusions. If anything, it made their newly established alliance feel less tenuous after their talk the day before. “However, it may not be such a bad thing.”

“No?” Áine inquired, encouraging her to continue.

“You have that parasite in your head, after all,” Jaheira said. “By all accounts, you should be under the Absolute’s control. Perhaps his ego would be his undoing. Picture—in the instance he does recognize you, he rests on his laurels thinking that someone who disobeyed him, who broke the oath they took to his cause, has been dragged back by a worm. It may disarm him even further than we anticipated.”

Áine had to admit that she hadn’t thought of it like that, but she was right. It was certainly a possibility. Jaheira smirked. “Tread carefully, of course, but I will be most interested to hear how he reacts,” the druid said. “Or better yet, what he accidentally gives away.”

“I understand,” Áine said, absently nodding as she pondered Jaheira’s points. She gave a more certain nod when she went to stand back up. “Thank you, Jaheira.”

“Thank you,” Jaheira said, inclining her head to Áine before taking their half-pint bartender up on his second-time-offered tankard of mead.

Áine retreated from the bar, not quite ready to return to camp but needing to come to terms with what her next steps would be. Jaheira was right—it almost behooved them if Ketheric recognized her, if he was smug over his regained control over one of his oathbroken. Perhaps his only oathbroken. She wasn’t sure if anyone else had done the same before or after her. But it did make their arrival to Moonrise that much more dangerous as well.

In truth, she remained terrified. Of being back where her darkest memories originated, in Ketheric’s shadow, and also for the safety of her newly chosen family. Then again, maybe the unexpected way her parasite had regurgitated her trauma into their brains would have dissuaded them from carrying on with her. The thought was irrational, but it did pick firmly at her brain from the moment of its inception. Áine’s eyes wandered into the side room as she passed it en route to the entrance of the inn, wondering if Halsin was there. The lure of a friendly face who hadn’t just seen some lightly edited replays of her worst memories unfold was more than enough to alter her path.

He was indeed still there, seated by the unconscious man from the Shadowfell and leaning in close as if to hear something the man was speaking in his sleep. Áine wandered into the room and to Halsin’s side.

“How is he?” she asked as she drew near, not wanting to startle the druid.

“He simply won’t wake,” Halsin sighed. “It’s a miracle from the Oak Father Himself that he’s even alive. That he’s coherent.” He looked up at Áine, but only slightly—seated, he was nearly eye-level with her. “There must be a way to wake him. He dreams of Thaniel, the very spirit and heart of this land. He may know what’s happened to him if we can find a way to rouse him.”

“Do you have any leads?” Áine asked, glancing between Halsin and the lingering Fist who’d come to fetch him from their circle earlier.

“Only what was on his person when we found him wandering the wilds,” the Fist said, “which wasn’t very much, I’m afraid.” The man began mumbling again and his barely discernable words almost sounded like a poem. Áine’s brows creased at the middle with pity.

“Would you mind if I looked through it?” Áine asked. The Fist presented her with a tattered rucksack and a couple of bits and pieces she had to assume were in his pockets. As she parsed through it all, she found a faded missive that she had to study hard to make out. She saw a name—Art McCullough—and something else. “...Where is the ‘House of Healing’ relative to here?”

The Fist pulled out her map and carefully spread it out on the end of the bed. Áine passed the missive to Halsin for him to read while the Fist showed her where they were and then where the House of Healing was. Áine committed the route she showed her to memory. She’d add it to her own map once she retrieved it with her rucksack before she set out.

Halsin’s hope looked rejuvenated by her findings and Áine felt apprehensive of this turning out to be a dead end. It was the only lead she could find, but she hated the idea of disappointing him.

“It’s on the path to Moonrise, so there’s no reason not to take a look one of the times we’re en route,” she said, scratching the back of her neck as she retrieved the missive from his outstretched hand and pocketed it.

“Thank you, my friend,” Halsin emphasized. “You have the whole of my gratitude and my aid if you should need it. You and our companions, both, but that goes without saying.”

Áine’s lips pursed and her eyes found the floorboards when they began to burn at the corners. How could she possibly have more tears left? “I… Well, I might be going to Moonrise alone,” she said. “Regardless, I will try to find something to bring back if I can nail down where these orders took him.”

A deep fissure formed between Halsin’s scarred brows and Áine nearly lost her composure when his first instinct was to take her hand and pat it. His huge palms engulfed hers and she, not for the first time, was awed at what a feeling of safety he emitted without even trying. “Why would you need to do that?” he asked. The Fist stepped away to give them some privacy as Áine’s eyes threatened to spill over. She couldn’t look him in the eyes.

Áine finally sighed, some of the moisture falling from her eyes and, to her embarrassment, hitting the back of Halsin’s hand. “I… I got into a bit of a row with Wyll over what I told you all earlier and something happened with the tadpoles. I don’t think I did it and, if I did, I didn’t mean to, but…,” she mumbled, sniffling against her free hand, which had come up to shield her shame. “It was never to be a safe venture to find the source of these things, I know that, but this… These circumstances make it even less so and I can’t have that on my head.”

Halsin listened patiently, absently patting her hand and measuring her grief. “It was likely a lot to handle, and more is soon to be handled. But handle it, we will,” he reassured her. “That is what friends do.”

“I made them see my memories, Halsin,” Áine insisted, his sympathy painful to her guilty heart. “It wasn’t me at first, it was the parasites, but they were still my memories, and toward the end, when I regained control… I didn’t stop it.”

“You must have needed to show someone then,” Halsin reasoned, offering her a kind smile when she finally found it in herself to meet his eyes. He was right in a way. She’d wanted them to feel her oath break since they were already there in her timeline. She’d wanted them to understand. “Which is nothing short of understandable, given that you’re being made to face it all again. By the worms and by being here. We both have tremendous agony attached to these lands, you and I. This time, neither of us need face it alone.”

Áine was at war with herself. She knew in her heart that she wouldn’t want Halsin to face any of this alone. She’d just agreed to help him try to heal the nature here, after all, by helping Art. Yet she couldn’t find it in herself to afford herself the same generosity. And she certainly couldn’t put her friends and her partner at the heart of something she already knew with horrible intimacy to be a sanctuary for pure evil. Just the prospect of it made her eyes well again and she parted her lips to argue only to have her voice crack on a stifled sob before she could get a word out.

Halsin squeezed her hand, holding her trembling fingers in a much surer grip. “Do not make an outcast of yourself, Áine. You’re in pain and you’re clutching your wounds. The instinct is to run away, but you mustn’t. Trust me,” he told her gently. His words brought back her recently revisited memory of actually running and clutching her broken shoulder. The phantom pain between her scars flared almost in answer. Her gut twisted. It twisted further when she finally accepted that he was right. “You needn’t hide from those who would help you heal.”

Áine sniffled softly and swallowed hard. “Would you come with us?” she asked in a quiet voice, his offered comfort a needed tether in her vulnerability. If they even stay, a dark voice reminded her, that inner voice harsh against the ache in her chest. And why should they?

Halsin smiled and shook his head. “I’m needed here. Just for now,” he told her. His eyes shifted briefly over her head before they returned to her flushed, tear-streaked face. “But you have me. That didn’t end with the Grove. It won’t end here either. You will be alright.”

“Don’t worry, Halsin,” came Shadowheart’s voice from behind Áine, startling her. “We’ll take care of her.”

“You’re godsdamn right,” Karlach agreed, appearing in Áine’s line of sight as she stopped near Halsin’s chair. She was almost embarrassed to be caught in such a teary state in front of the rough-and-tumble tiefling warrior, but the embarrassment was short-lived as Karlach gave her the most affectionate “Mama K” smile she’d yet seen.

Áine swallowed against the lingering lump in her throat as a familiar pair of cool, strong arms slipped around her shoulders. Astarion kissed her blotchy cheek as he drew her back against his chest.

“I’d like to see you try to leave me behind,” he whispered like a challenge near her ear.

Next chapter: Chapter 21, "Her Nightmare Revisited"

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odetoviscera · 9 months

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Baldur's Gate 3: The Evil Experience

on the recommendation of @leupagus: My Very Special Evil Boy, Vexation. don't worry about the blood, it's a fashion choice.

if you've been wondering how evil you can be in baldur's gate 3, wonder no more-- So Evil.

so beginning at the beginning, i of course chose the Dark Urge (obvious serial killer) origin, who is conveniently customizable, so i also made him Drow and a Lolth Worshipper and a Warlock (all of which has made him only marginally more evil, tbh, mostly the related dialogue options make him a smug bastard, although OCCASIONALLY this will give him a "hmm what if i enslaved you" option which people do indeed react to as if he's an evil maniac and they should flee and/or try to kill him. this goes great for them considering i'm the protagonist.)

i wake up on an illithid ship with no memories, as one does. i befriend a walking talking brain, by which i mean i lobotomize it so that i can more easily control and manipulate it, as one does. i may not know who i am, but i definitely know that i am powerful, mean, and more important than everyone here. also i have a great old one in my brain giving me eldritch blast, so the tadpole wriggling around in there seems normal. i crash the ship sort of accidentally and am set loose on my merry way to wrack the Sword Coast with terrible mayhem. probably. as soon as i figure out if i'm about to turn into a mindflayer.

the first sign of my uncontrollable evil mania was when i tried to talk to a squirrel in act one (actually, i tell a lie, the FIRST sign was when i was tempted to hack Gale's hand off instead of dragging him out of the portal he got stuck in, but i decided i needed a wizard more than a dismembered hand) and the narrator informed me i had been Gripped By A Compulsion and promptly dropkicked the squirrel into a tree. it died, obviously. i was given the option to decide if i cared about this and decided that my opinion was a frankly inappropriate level of malicious glee considering the heights from which i, clearly child of murder, have obviously fallen to get amnesia and get tadpoled and fall out of the sky on a dying illithid spaceship. anyway this set me up for Being Maximally Deranged, however there is No Karma Meter or any equivalent system to MEASURE your evil or limit your dialogue options-- i have free reign at all times, i COULD decide that suddenly i'm going to be a Repentant Murderer, i can do Nice Things if i want the reward or the exp or i am exercising my single scintilla of compassion accidentally inculcated by my eventual three simultaneous romances (one of which is with the mindflayer who lives in my brain/an artifact stopping ME from becoming a mindflayer. this game is so horny, very classic dnd "i roll to romance the villain". except i am also the villain.) at this point i have no romances, though-- at this point my companions watch me kick a squirrel to death and their collective response is "well… that seemed… excessive."

i also have the option to tell every single one of them individually that i am driven by a blood mania to murder and destruction. opinions of this range from "well admitting you have a problem is the first step!" to "that's nice, just point it at the enemy instead of ME". no one seems appropriately concerned about this. they'll learn.

anyway the next sign of my uncontrollable evil mania is that when i decided to be nice to a bard for no reason and she showed up at our next long rest to Join The Party (oh we do get a bard companion, that's nice, i said, like a fool.) i promptly murdered her in the night. as in i woke up covered in blood with her corpse ritually slaughtered at my feet and said "hm. probably shouldn't let anyone else find out i did this" and then sulked when no one gave me proper respect and rewards for murdering her. fortunately the next day my Evil Butler materialized to do just that, and proved he wasn't a figment of my imagination by giving me an Evil Cloak that lets me turn invisible everytime i murder someone. i spend the next half an act or so convinced i'm going to slowly kill off my party, but fortunately i develop the ability to control myself. now i only murder when I WANT to murder.

the rest of act one i am SORT OF a good boy-- i do deliberately get a child killed but i don't PERSONALLY kill her, i get a druid's snake to do it, so does it really count against MY soul? yes but only me and daddy bhaal know it so i am able to continue playing Goody Two Shoes for the rest of the act. (i don't know he's my daddy yet, but like… i know it. i, the player, know it. in my soul. i've played these games before.) delightful fallout, my child murder gets the druid killed after i Helpfully Save The Tieflings by telling the opposing force i'll totally help them break in and kill them all, then betraying them at the last minute. i kill so so so many goblins. i get an inspiration point for how many goblins i kill. goblins are still sentient. It's Still Murder.

act two, however, empowered by all my Blood And Chaos, i turn over a new leaf. sure sure being lauded by the tieflings was fun and all, but i do somewhat regret not killing EVERYONE. i'll do better this time. this shadow-cursed hellscape is really vibing with me. it's also trying to eat me every time i'm not carrying a magic lamp but you can't win 'em all. i pretend that i'm with the antagonists (can you call them villains when I'M the villain?) so i can get their lamp. it's carried by a drider who does not appreciate my sincere compliments about how beautifully fucked up he is. his loss, i'm down to fuck anyone. i'm already fucking a githyanki and a vampire spawn.

when i get to the Big Bad Tower where supposedly they'll know about my tadpole, i discover they know something WAY MORE IMPORTANT: who the fuck i am. everyone here recognizes me. no one will tell me anything. several of them are appropriately terrified. this is infuriating but also promising. the Big Bad is a smug dick and i want to eat his heart raw. i daydream about this.

my butler arrives to tell me if i murder a Special Girl i'll get a treat. i like treats and i LOVE murder so i go looking for her. she's maintaining a Magic Selenite Moon Shield over the single not-shadow-cursed place here, which i hate on principle-- also it's a harper outpost and i hate them too, they'd probably disapprove of murder. some rando minion with wings drops in to tell me the Big Bad of the region wants to kidnap her (ALIVE, he specifies) so obviously i now double want to kill her. i kill her in one round. the magic shield collapses. EVERYONE dies (including the tieflings i saved in act one! full circle.) and then i kill their shadow-cursed undead corpses again, for good measure.

my treat is getting to turn into the slayer. i KNEW i was a bhaalspawn.

behold my true glorious visage. (with blep.) my only complaint is that i can only become this hulking death machine once per long rest. it is, however, not a turn-limited form, i can stay in it Forever if no one kills me as long as i'm willing to Just Murder No Talking. also it has a spectacular ladder-climbing animation, this bitch goes down ladders face-down like a lizard, i love him.)

anyway i don't go back to the Big Bad Tower bc presumably they'll be mad about the dead girl (i'm guessing she's Big Bad's dead daughter miraculously resurrected. i'm totally right by the way.) but the last time i was there i got a quest to find the Big Bad's Relic, which is obviously his phylactery or something since he's got a whole death aesthetic-- after a whole Temple of Shar sequence it turns out his phylactery is a captive aasimar actually. my companion wants to murder her for shar-related reasons, so i give her the go-ahead since i don't have any SPECIAL reason to kill her myself. my companions should get to be evil occasionally too.

with his phylactery dead, it's pretty easy to mow through the Big Bad Tower, especially since i can now turn into the Death Machine. i don't have to talk to anyone here. i can Just Murder.

nearly kill the Big Bad but he flees to his basement, where it turns out there's an mindflayer colony, big deal, we've all got tadpoles in our brains (i've been eating other tadpoles for extra power along the way, because of course i have) okay fine it's a slightly big deal bc there's an elder brain here that my Special Mindflayer Friend is shielding us from whatever. it's under the control of the Big Bad who's death aesthetic turns out to be that he's the Chosen of Myrkul, and also here are reps of the other Dead Three, Bane and My Daddy. i hate bhaal's chosen on sight, as is traditional for a bhaalspawn. i will murder her someday. i will murder her SO GOOD.

unfortunately she and the baneite fuck off with their elder brain to lay siege to baldur's gate while i'm daydreaming about it, so for now all i get to murder is Big Bad Myrkul Edition. moderately satisfying. he turns in an Avatar of Myrkul in the second half but i destroy him so quickly he doesn't even get to regenerate with the hojillion corpses in the area. nobody murders like vexation.

off to baldur's gate to save the city/get bigger hunting grounds!

i do cure the shadow curse on my way out though, because i'm never coming back and i've left the place a blighted wasteland, why not, it gets me a pet druid.

there's also some drama with githyanki and vlaakith, as usual, turns out the Rebel Prince Orpheus is actually how my particular mindflayer (who is finally revealing that he's a mindflayer, a thing i have suspected all along because of all the psychic shit he does) is doing the shielding, etc. etc. also i let my mindflayer boyfriend turn me in a half-illithid, which means i get no tentacles but a BUNCH of new mindflayer powers to make me an even better murderer. can't wait to see who wins in the tug-of-war for my mind, body, and soul--the illithids, my great old one beyond the stars, a devil who keeps trying to get my attention, my vampire boyfriend who wants to ascend to vampire god, or Murder Daddy. my bet is murder daddy.

anyway we get to baldur's gate, where i break in bc i don't want any guards to know i'm here-- just jumped and flew my way up the side of the bridge past the checkpoint. easy peasy now that i have illithid flight powers on command no cooldowns just Psychically Levitate wherever i want to go. also i can turn into a displacer beast. that's right, i now have to option to become TWO DIFFERENT terrifying horror beasts and rip through mobs like papier-mache. my patron really needs to keep up, warlock powers are falling behind. (no they aren't, i've hit level 10 and can now eldritch blast three times in one round and every hit knocks enemies back and terrifies them. i'm gonna chew this city up and swallow it one bite.)

however, first thing when i get into the citadel: the baneite is being coronated Archduke, bc of course he is. so i head up to see if there's a chance to murder him and a room full of peers, BUT. for the first time EVER-- this little shit is willing to tell me Who I Am. Assassin of Bhaal, former high priest of His Temple, and ONE OF THE INVENTORS OF THIS CONQUEST PLAN. that little bhaalite chosen is my bhaalspawn sister (obviously) who fucking tadpoled me, gave me amnesia, and discarded me before making sure my corpse was cold. this will be a mistake! FOR HER.

in the meantime the baneite wants me to know that he is a big fan of mine, would i like to murder my sister since i already murdered the myrkulite, and then he and i can rule this city together with an iron grip and a blood knife, since he's sure he'll have a lot of use for an assassin as a tyrant. mind-reading and my brain-illithid agree that he is actually on the level about this, at least for the moment, so of course i agree. i will rule this city. and then i will murder him. and then i will murder EVERYONE. in THE WORLD.

so now i'm hunting the current chosen of bhaal so i can kill her and steal her place-- my butler is sending me divine visions of it, SHE can't turn into the slayer, i am evil daddy's favourite. she's also kidnapped one of my companions and is threatening to kill her if i show up but i care about that less.

and that's where i am so far! will report on Future Evils.

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #bg3 oc #baldur's gate evil edition #truly sorry i don't have more screenshots #i'll try to remember to take more for the rest of act three lol

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