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Chapter Text

Tav opened her eyes and peered into a cloudless summer sky, blighted only by the writhing purple tentacles of a nautiloid and the pillars of billowing smoke as the wreckage burned.
Everything hurt. She tried to sit up, but immediately winced as red-hot pain streaked down her back. Two quick breaths through the nose gave her enough composure to force her aching muscles to relax, despite the pain compelling her to tense and shudder. Nothing broken. But her entire side and back might be one large bruise.

The soft, fine sand yielded as she scrambled to her feet, grunting like an old crone and just as slow.
A beach… But where? Certainly not home; Baldur's Gate could never boast air this fresh. Fresh air… not the Sea of Swords and its briny gales. But fresh water was a good sign? There were towns, villages, people near fresh water. With a little luck, she wouldn’t have to wander far.
But this was Faerûn at least, and not one of the hells. Avernus, she'd heard the cambions shout, and Zariel?
She shuddered again. Bleeding hells... What an insane trip.

Somehow Tav had fallen out of the literal sky and not died. If her memory of it were clearer, it would make for a splendid song.
If she'd landed just a bit to her left, she'd have cracked on a great, big rock… like an egg. If she'd landed a bit to her right, she'd have drowned. She hadn't washed ashore; all her kit was dry, save for the damp spots that made contact with the ground. So she'd… landed softly on the sand? How had that—whoa!

Something tickled sickeningly, moving on its own, making her eye bulge. She could feel it wriggling behind her eye, tickling, caressing, slithering, making it feel like it might pop out of its socket. Even her eyelid stretched taut as it writhed. Once it came to rest, it lay snug, pressing against her skull. The feeling was distantly related to having a hair stuck in your eye… except a hundred times the girth and decidedly, disgustingly alive, burrowing inwards.
Tav recoiled with a muffled sling of profanity and pressed her palm to her eye, as if to keep it from falling out. The hateful little intruder settled down, comfortable at last, and Tav sighed, almost numb with dread… Then anger blazed like a red-hot ripple across ashen embers.

Bullshit.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Bullshit magic, bullshit mind flayers and their bullshit brain worms! And now I've been thrown like a ragdoll into this gargantuan burning plate of calamari in the arse-end of nowhere, cooking between the blazing sun and these fanning flames of destruction. My magic was, as ever, just as useless as nipples on a crab. I think I turned onto an aardvark for a moment there? When that winged devil tried to rip my jugular out?
… And the best lute I've ever owned has been smashed to kindling to top it all off. Fucking. Great.
Well. Staying put will help fuck-all. Best get moving.

With her flattened instrument strapped to her back—Must've landed on it—she set off. More than anything, she wanted to sit down and weep, but she could still be in danger. There’d be time to mourn later.
She had to leave this place. To find help or just getting clear. If she got lucky, maybe she'd find a wounded arsehole mindflayer around here and strangle it with her lute strings as punishment for killing her beloved instrument. The walnut and burnt cedar extension of not just her hands, but her heart. Her father had made that lute for her. The pyrogravure around its rose was reminiscent of the family crest. Seeing it reduced to splinters made her eyes burn with grief. She had to repair it somehow.

Maybe she ought to consider herself lucky; she had survived a breakneck dragon chase across probably three planes, on a vessel that was burning and disintegrating under her feet, and not even broken her tail, which she made sure was tucked into her legwear.
If only the brainworm wasn’t the death sentence that githyanki woman had said. Slow death or immediate, death was certain.
Ambling under arches of undulating octopus-like arms and darting between flaming bits of wreckage, Tav surveyed the chaos of the crash. Corpses littered the beach and now lay strewn like bloodied confetti, their skulls empty and their faces contorted in death as their brains had absconded on scurrying little legs. Just how many had been abducted?

Much to Tav's great disappointment, she came across the body of that Shadowheart lass, looking almost childish in death with her toes turned inwards and touching. Still holding that polyhedric bauble too, cradling it as if protecting it with her body. How odd.
She crouched down next to her erstwhile sister-in-arms. Still warm… still alive!
“Hey,” she coaxed urgently, shaking her gently by the shoulders. Her ringmail felt warmed by the sun. “Sh-shadowheart? Open your eyes.”
The elven pale green eyes flew open and Shadowheart coughed, then flinched with dread until she found her treasure still in her hands. She tucked it away almost possessively, as if simply by looking at it, Tav was intruding.
Alright, you keep your secrets. I have my own.
Once reassured, she looked back to Tav, stumbling to find perch against the ground but failing.
“Easy, easy,” Tave hushed her, catching her by the arm to soften the landing. Shadowheart groaned and rubbed her eye, the same side as Tav’s open brainworm was nested in.
“You. You're alive… I'm alive. How is this possible?”
Tav offered her hands and pulled Shadowheart to her feet, steadying her as she swayed.

She shrugged in response.
“Who’s to say?” she sighed and released Shadowheart’s hands, “Perhaps it was some… dramatically timed divine intervention.”
Shadowheart scoffed but smiled bitterly in retort.
“The divine tend to keep their intentions close to the chest. Though… I suppose it’s not impossible.”
She said that with a certain knowing tone… Was Shadowheart a cleric perchance? A paladin? Skinniest paladin Tav had ever seen, if so.
“Did you see what happened to our gith friend? She should’ve landed nearby… Maybe she hit the water?”
Shadowheart scoffed again, but this time without mirth. “Better her than me, in that case. Bet that toad-face is a stronger swimmer than I. Looks like she ran off without us. Might want to reconsider calling her a ‘friend.’”

There was sense in that. Tav had a vague notion of Lae’zel’s pod being only feet from her own when they were both infected. But she hadn’t been there when Tav left her pod, and she’d been awfully keen on leaving Shadowheart to her fate too. There were always those people in every crisis. Selfish cowards, that was.
Outwardly, Tav grunted assent.
“Best of luck to her, then. Do you recognise where we are?”
Shadowheart squinted in the bright sunlight and peered around.
“... No. I don’t recognise this place. Can’t be worse than where we just were, though. We need food, shelter—”
“—a healer,” Tav interjected, referring to their parasites, and Shadowheart nodded gravely.
“We might have escaped but we still have these little monsters in our heads. I’m a cleric but… this is an ail I can’t remedy,” she sighed, and then put her face in her hands, rubbing her eyes and forehead.

“We’d best get moving then,” Tav said and turned to see the way forward, Shadowheart by her side, steadier now.
“By the way, Tav—it was Tav, right?—I uh… wanted to thank you again for freeing me back on the ship. Lae’zel was practically dragging you to run right past my pod. But you didn’t. That was… Uhm… Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Tav grinned and patted her new friend’s shoulder, “I needed an audience for my playing anyway.”
Shadowheart threw a glance at the smashed instrument slung on Tav’s shoulder.
“Oh gods, your lute!” she sympathised, “What happened to it?”
“Think it softened my fall,” Tav grimaced back, swerving around the dead bodies around them. The loss of her instrument still ached, but she was trying to set the sorrow aside until they were in the clear. The burn in her eyes would have to wait its turn. “These poor souls weren’t so lucky.”

Dead fisherfolk, by the looks of things. There were scattered fishing implements, smashed buckets, fly-infested fish lying limp where they’d spilled in the sand. A hot morning like this, it wouldn’t take long for them to rot.
Tav remarked to herself that Shadowheart didn’t say any prayers for the dead in passing, the way clerics usually did. No Morninglord blessings, no light of Selûne, not even any Seldarine prayers like you might expect from a half-elf.
Though, she supposed, with a name like ‘Shadowheart,’ secrecy wasn’t out of scope. It sounded more like a code name or an alias than a birth name. And who was Tav to argue with chosen names? Her own was a nickname, after all, and she wasn’t exactly itching to burden her new companion with so many syllables.

Passing two dead fisherfolk, Tav and Shadowheart spotted two backpacks and decided to adopt the orphaned satchels. Neither of them had left home equipped for a wilderness hike, after all. All they had to their names presently was their weapons—Shadowheart a mace and shield, Tav a rapier she’d scrounged off a corpse on the nautiloid—and six pieces of gold. At least the satchels held some small supplies.

Tav had been wandering home after her usual nightly performance at her local tavern back in Baldur’s Gate when she’d been snatched up, drunk as a skunk and half-thinking the seashell-shaped ship a drunken mirage in the hazy dawn light.
Alas. It had plucked her right out of an alley, like a grape from the vine. And now here she was, ill equipped, infected with a deadly parasite, following the coastline in the hopes of finding help out here in the sticks.

“Look. Is that a temple up ahead?” Shadowheart asked suddenly, and Tav’s attention snapped back to the now. Hopeful, they hurried their steps.
The stone walls rose high upon the cliff, wreathed in sprawling vines, and she could fathom a large wooden door below, only paces away. They came to a run, pulling on the handle at once. Locked. The door might as well have rattled more if it had been part of the wall. Pounding and calling for help was for naught too. The hinges were so corroded with rust, she’d need to hack the door loose with a pickaxe anyway.

“Damn,” Tav muttered and kicked the door. She didn’t even have anything to pick the lock with. Her mouth was already dry with thirst and she longed for shade.
“We can’t climb these vines either,” Shadowheart muttered, shading her eyes as she followed the trail upward, “They look drier than aged Arabellan. They could snap if we tried, and I don’t think we’ll have any more ‘divine intervention’ left for another fall.”
Tav chuckled and squinted as she peered around.
“Looks abandoned anyway. Or very poorly maintained at least. Maybe we can… make our way around to the top somehow?”
A shared sigh, and then they set off again, following the shaded cliffside that snaked back around, returning them to the smoky ruins of the crashed nautiloid.

“So,” Shadowheart began as they walked, “You’re a bard, I take it? Back in Baldur’s Gate?”
“Yes, or trying to be, at least.”
“Maybe ‘used to be’ until you can get that lute replaced.”
“There’s no replacing it. Only repairing it. It’s an heirloom.”
“Anything else then? You handled yourself pretty well on the ship.”
"I’ve done the odd bit of this and that,” Tav sighed in reply. “As for the fighting… Well, you can’t be a bard unless you’re also a little bit of a brawler.”
“Uncommon with elven bards,” Shadowheart remarked, “At least outside of Nindrol?”

‘Elven’ she’d assumed. Good. Shadowheart hadn’t spotted the filed-flat discs under Tav’s fringe, which was all that was left of her horns. Her tail was tucked flat against her leg, trained to be immobile after so many years. Her skin looked almost human-like in colouration, and her ears were pointed in a way so that most took her for an elf.
Unless Tav showed her forehead or was caught naked, you’d never know she was a tiefling, or part one at least, and she preferred it that way. It made life easier, to not be ostracised everywhere she went. Elves were welcomed most places; tieflings were scorned.

“My family originally hail from far away, but I am Baldurian, born and bred,” Tav assured her, taking care to neither confirm nor deny anything. To lie by omission was an art, and Tav as a master. “What about you?”
Shadowheart’s brow furrowed, and Tav stopped to look at her, making sure her eyes were earnest and bright, and not at all suspicious. It was just friendly small talk, right? But her dark-haired companion seemed to catch her meaning well enough; ‘don’t press lest you be pressed in turn.’ They left it at that, somewhat less chatty now, and pushed on.

Smoke burned their noses as they approached the wreckage again. It smelled less like burnt flesh than rancid, burnt shellfish, mingled with caustic brine and the remnants of infernal sulphur. From the dragon’s breath? Or scraping up against the jagged mountain tops of Avernus?
Tav didn’t want to dwell on that, or the tadpoles. Looking back made her knees buckle, and she needed to keep it together until they were out of dodge.

Shadows and silhouettes scurried behind the curtains of smoke, low to the ground, darting in and out of view.
“More of those wretched things,” Shadowheart mumbled with dread, “Intellect devourers. Best keep our distance or we’ll have a fight on our hands.”
“We can use the smoke to our advantage,” Tav tried to cheer her up.
“Hardly, if we can’t see where we’re going.”
“I can see daylight on the other side. See? The hull has been smashed through. The dark shadow is just the roof of the conch. We just need to make it across. If we follow the walls to our right and keep an eye open, we might be able to slip past without detection. Just don’t let go of the wall.”
“Lead the way,” Shadowheart said with a slight shake of the head and ducked behind Tav. They quietly brought kerchiefs in front of their noses and mouths to keep from coughing.

Tav’s heart was beating so hard, she could hear her pulse throb in her ears. Every little noise made her crouch lower as she slowly made her way along the wall. Cracked hull pieces falling, scurrying steps of clawed feet, even the wind whistling hollow and long under the arched wreckage. As long as she heard the steps of the tentacled little freaks, she knew where they were. Like when you found a spider in the bath; it was never pleasant to come across it, but nothing was so terrifying as looking back and finding it suddenly gone. Right? At that point, you might as well burn the whole house down.
The direction of the wind changed, and it rippled through the smoke. It hinted to its point of origin, a little further up to the right, like an upward spiral.
Peering that way, Tav could see the sunlight, even brighter. No shadows of the hull to obscure it. She grabbed Shadowheart’s wrist gently and pointed silently. Green eyes under a severe fringe nodded gravely, and they proceeded.

Suddenly, Tav let out a yelp despite herself; she’d put her hand right through a viscous membrane and her entire left hand was coated with a sticky slime that stung like jellyfish venom. Her little outcry reverberated through the wreckage, sending her blood ice cold in contrast to the chemical burn.
And that scalding burn against her skin was mounting, amplifying tenfold, wanting to eat through her flesh. Sweat broke on her back and the pain made every hair stand on end, and Tav tried to bite down on screaming, but her hisses of pain and panic hitched higher and higher.
Shadowheart darted forward, cupping her hands over Tav’s, letting a turquoise light shine from her palms. The pain evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared.
She looked down on her hand; red, like she’d dipped it in scalding hot water. But no blisters, no splitting skin, no raw flesh beneath like she’d feared.

Gasping with relief, Tav relaxed into the wall behind her, a hand of thanks on Shadowheart’s own; she dared not speak until they were in the clear.
But Shadowheart’s green eyes were wide with worry; her eyes were darting to and fro, looking out for attackers coming out of the smog. Where the slight clatter of idle claws against the shell-hard floor had once rattled, hollow and low, there was now only the sound of wind. Not even gull-song reached in here. The silence was so thick, it choked. Like the intellect devourers had stopped in their tracks, listening out for them too.

They’d been detected, and that certainty spread like cold sweat down Tav’s spine. Horrified and frozen in place, they waited for any sign of approaching danger.
One held breath.
Two.
Then the slight rustle of disturbed stones. Close. Way too close.
“Run!” Shadowheart hissed and pushed Tav in front of her as she set off towards the sunlight.
Shrieks rang through the wreck and then the sound of several sets of feet in pursuit, and Tav ran. She ran harder than she ever had in her life, but the shrieking little monsters came ever closer. There was no use in denying it; there was going to be a fight.

“Stand and fight!” Tav called out to Shadowheart, who paused and turned. The smoke was thin enough here that they wouldn’t be entirely caught off-guard.
“Ignis!” came her companion’s voice, and a fire bolt parted the shadows, hitting its mark with a wet sizzle and a cry of pain. In the fading flames of the dying intellect devourer, two more silhouettes moved besides it, and it was all Tav needed to aim true. She was loath to cast magic, but with no crossbow...
Three magic missiles, inexorable red darts of pain, snaked their way to a second and it sprawled, dying and spilling its purple fluids on the ground. Another fire bolt quieted it forever.
The third, last one proved more elusive. Shadowheart held her fire bolt aloft above her head, ready to sling it at the first sign of movement. But an unexpected voice rang out from the shadows below.
“Help!”
“... Shit,” Shadowheart muttered as Tav darted forward. “Tav, leave them!”
“Nope!”
“Tav!”
“Should I have left you, then?” Tav countered without pausing to look back, and she heard Shadowheart curse her name as she picked up a run after her.

Back in these shadowy environs, the smoke became thick again, and she still couldn’t hear the last little monster following somewhere in the dark. Tav suppressed a cough and held her breath, listening for another shout, or the clatter of dashing talons.
“Help me!” came the caller again. It sounded like a man’s voice, but it seemed farther away than before. Intellect devourers couldn’t talk, right? Us had used telepathy on the ship, not words? Surely this wasn’t a trap?
“Where are you?!” Tav shouted back, and Shadowheart approached from behind.
“Watch out!” she shouted and tackled Tav to the ground, mace swinging wide, slamming the attacking intellect devourer sideways into the wall. It hit the wall with a sticky noise, landed lopsided on its feet like a very fat cat, and darted right at them, attacking anew.

Tav pulled her rapier from her belt and pointed the wicked point of the blade right at it as it leapt at her, impaling itself on the long blade all the way down to the forte.
It let out a shriek, its claws swiping uselessly into thin air, before going limp with one final twitch. With a disgusted grimace, Tav put her foot to the dead creature and unsheathed her blade from its corpse.
“Tav, don’t you ever run off like that again!”
“What? That man still needs help!”
Shadowheart grabbed her wrist, looking at her very seriously. “We can’t save everyone, we barely know where we are!”
“Maybe he does!” Tav shot back and wriggled free. For such delicate hands, Shadowheart had hands like a vise. “He could be one of the fisherfolk!”
Shadowheart sighed, clearly still wound up from the sudden fight, and threw her hands up in defeat. “Fine. Let’s… find this ‘fisherman’ then.”
“I hear him call from that way,” Tav pointed and sprinted. Daylight parted the shadows like a glorious hand and they were out near the water again. “If he has a boat, we’ll be safer out on the water anyway.”
“If he has a boat, why would he need help?”
Tav ignored the last bit, hurrying her steps.

There was rustling in the thicket and they hurried there, and were met by a vision of a man. He was tall, lithe, his skin almost white as porcelain in the resplendent sunlight, and his hair fell in pearlescent silver curls around a delicate face with impossibly piercing eyes.
Tav had to correct herself just seeing them; his eyes were almost red like cherry drops, making his skin look like white ash and his eyes the red ripple of fire in the embers.

An elf, judging by the refined clothes and pointed ears. The very image of refinement, even if his clothes seemed fraying at the seams at a glance. He must have been snatched from the city. There was no other alternative to why this vision of a man would be out here otherwise.
“Fisherman, huh?” Tav heard Shadowheart mutter sarcastically as they approached.
“Hurry!” the pale elf said, waving a dagger at a bush, “I’ve got one of those brain… things cornered! There! In the bushes! You can kill it, can’t you? Like you did the others?”
“Well, I killed the others, actually,” Shadowheart muttered, but she still kept a wary distance.
“Stand back,” Tav muttered and dashed in front of him, rapier poised to strike.

The branches rustled and out came… a boar? For a moment she was almost relieved.
Then Shadowheart called out a warning as the wicked blade of the dagger curled around Tav’s throat, and the cool breath of her erstwhile rescué fell upon her neck.
She stiffened, reflexively frozen, dread and bitter embarrassment like swallowing a steel marble. She’d been had. As a bard, she ought to know better than to trust beauty.
Bastard.

The deceitful elf hushed her with a wicked grin playing on his lips and plucked the rapier out of her hand.
“I’ll be having that. Thank you so much, darling,” he mumbled almost intimately into the curve of her ear. There was a rustle in the tall grass as her blade was tossed aside. His voice would almost be seductive if it hadn’t been so… venomous. It was a velvety, purring deep hum, with little inflections and lilts like an aristocrat… and a lusty one at that. Almost pouty and effeminate.
“We’re going to do this the old-fashioned way. Not a word now, my dear. Let’s try to keep that darling neck of yours in one piece, shall we?”

He angled the blade and Tav gasped slightly and moved with it, lest her throat be slit by accident. The elf turned them both towards Shadowheart, who gave Tav the most scathing ‘I told you’ look that Tav had ever received, and she returned it with an apologetic arch of her brow.
“And you,” Tav’s hostage-taker continued pointedly, and decidedly less pleasantly to Shadowheart, “Keep your distance. No need for things to get messy.”
Shadowheart, for her part, looked positively ice-cold; her hand held her mace steady, ready to bash his head in. “I need her alive. So stow your blade… or I’ll show you just how messy things can get.”
“Ha! Promises, promises… But I have other business, I’m afraid.”
“We came here to help you, and this is how you greet us?” Tav hissed and she could hear the elf’s lips part in a wicked grin.
“Your gullibility is your own vice, pet.”
“I won’t warn you again,” Shadowheart wanted, but the stranger didn’t get to answer. “Stow… Your… Bl—”

Tav, for her part, had grown disinterested in this play; she was not one to play damsel, and if she must do so, she’d be rescuing herself.
While he was distracted talking to Shadowheart, Tav stomped on the elf’s foot and he cried out, flinching the dagger away from Tav’s neck, and she made enough space to slam the back of her head right in his nose. He cried out in pain and Tav pushed him backwards, off her, and broke free.
“Ahh! You little—”

His leverage lost, the pale elf scowled at them, dagger poised to defend himself against retribution.
“I saw you on that ship!” he growled, “strutting about whilst I was trapped in that pod!”
His voice was indignant, as if they’d left him to his fate. But Tav had no recollection of even seeing him as they ran.
“You too?” Shadowheart said.
“I’m sorry, we didn’t see you or we would have freed you too,” Tav tried to assuage him, but he scoffed.
“Lies! That toad-like woman, she looked right at me! What did you and those… tentacled freaks do to me?!”
Of course. Lae’zel.
“We haven’t done anything to you… yet,” Shadowheart purred menacingly.
“You arrogant little shi—AHH!”

All three of them spasmed as one, their minds crashing, mingling as the worms in their heads squirmed in greeting.
The pale elf’s mind played before Tav’s thoughts, crashing through her unbidden—one moment, a prowling night stalker, hunting in the dark, and the next, a searing flash of panic as his eyes opened to the sunlight—and his thoughts slammed shut like bars on a cell.
“Wh-what was that?” he winced, voice thick with panic and pain, “What is going on?”
“It’s the mind flayers' worm. It… connects us somehow.”
“So you’re not one of them? They stole you, like they did me?”
“Yes. We’ve been trying to tell you.”
“... Do you know anything about these worms?”
Well, there’s no gentle way of breaking these news to anyone, is there?
“Unfortunately yes. They’ll… turn us into mind flayers.”

The elf’s eyes went large with disbelief, and then he let out a cold, disheartened laugh. It was a sight, someone so beautiful being so bitter.
“Of course. Of course it’ll turn me into a monster. Of course that would happen to me. And to think, I was ready to decorate the ground with your innards. Apologies,” he conceded as though he hadn’t just threatened her life, sheathing is dagger at last.
Tav shrugged back with feigned levity. “Honestly, I can’t blame you. I might have done the same to you.”
At that, Shadowheart let out a small giggle, that would have been girlishly pleasant if it wasn’t so… murderously misplaced. Tav gave her the most inquisitive stare.
Just what the hells kind of murderous people had she fallen in with here? One as black as the other was white, but equal in their malice. Normally brutes weren’t even remotely as refined as these two.

“My name is Astarion,” the elf announced with a slight bow, like the gentleman he most certainly wasn’t. “I was in Baldur’s Gate when those beasts snatched me. And you are…?”
“I’m Tav. I’m from Baldur’s Gate too. This is Shadowheart.”
“Pleasure. Old friends, are we?”
“Partners in misery, rather,” Tav shrugged. “I’m a bard by trade.”
“Well, we clearly move in vastly different circles,” Astarion smirked and threw her smashed lute a glance. “Oh dear. Penchant for saving the needy aside, pet, that lute is only fit for sawdust, I’d say.”
Tav’s eyes rolled, suppressing a woeful sigh, and she gave a knowing shrug. “I know, it’s bad, but I can’t just leave it. Look, you can tag along if you want. It’s not safe around here. But no more pointy antics. Deal?”
Astarion considered momentarily, lips pursed slightly. Such a beautiful specimen of manhood, and yet so catty. “Deal. Lead on.”

They had to double back through the wreck again, but encountered no more rabid little brain-monsters. They even found something akin to a deer path on the other side, with foot steps new and old. The corpses grew sparser by the minute, but stranger to make up for it.
“Goblins? Were there goblins on the ship too?”
“I daresay they’re the only faction not represented until now,” Astarion mused, “not that mind flayers would get much… sustenance out of them.
Shadowheart crouched next to one smelly little carcass, prodding it with the head of her mace. “I think they came from the road. They’re covered in road dust. And they’ve got supplies, which doesn’t indicate that they were snatched like us.”

She scrounged up a few flasks of water and some hardtack biscuits. Hardly a feast, but beat going hungry. Astarion accepted his share with careless disinterest, as if Shadowheart had just handed him a party flyer he would toss as soon as she looked away. Another oddity.
Was the elf one of those aristocrats that barely ate for fear of corpulence, mayhaps? Or simply too refined to even entertain such modest fare?
If so, Tav might relieve him of his provisions later, lest his delicate palate be tainted by anything touched by poverty. She’d happily eat for two, even if the hardtack broke her teeth in the process.

Something tugged at her. Like the echo of sparks in the distance. It wasn’t something she heard or saw. More felt. Something like… magic?
Magic always seemed to beckon her a little, like having a small, very stubborn dog on a leash that was ever looking for a post to mark. It refused to be ignored, gnawed at her attention, beckoning her to investigate.
“I think there’s something up ahead,” she pointed out, and her companions looked in the direction she was.
“Why? Do you hear something?” Astarion asked, as if perplexed that Tav could hear something he couldn’t. Tav didn’t answer; she merely followed the inkling. The sparking noise turned swirling, whooshing, and as she rounded a boulder, she found its source.

An arcane rune sigil swirled and sparked in purple, frothing and roiling at the edges like a furious maelstrom, coiling inwards to a black centre. What had upset the portal so?
Could be dangerous… But what else was new these days?
She prodded it curiously, her hand drawn of its own accord, and then she flinched back with a hiss, like she’d singed her fingers.
A hand threw itself through the purple swirls, feeling the empty air for purchase. Tav flinched backwards. She didn’t feel like being snatched through any portals after the night she’d just had. It was a man’s hands, by the looks of things, held aloft as if offering something now instead of searching for a straw.

“Someone there? A hand? Anyone?” A pleasant voice. A man, by the sound of it. But Tav wasn’t about to tug any old jack out of a box immediately. On a mischievous impulse, she giggled and slapped the hand tentatively.
“Ow!” the stranger said, and his finger made a professorial little flourish in the air. “Perhaps I should have clarified; a helping hand? Hmm?”
“Who are you?” she asked bemusedly, and she fathomed more than saw a weary sigh.
“Just your average traveller, stuck between realms,” was the answer, and the hand stretched out amenably, as if asking her to dance, “Pull me out, and we’ll get properly introduced.”

“Don’t suppose either of you are gonna help?” Tav called over her shoulder.
“No,” Shadowheart scowled.
“Oh, you knock yourself out, darling.”
“Not literally, mind.”
Astarion pouted pensively at that. “Well…”
“What, scared he’ll be just like you?”
“He wishes.”
“As in ambushing us, you twit.”
“Great. Thanks, pals,” Tav muttered and looked at the hand before her, and the conundrum it was attached to.
“You can do it, Tav! Ouch! What was that for?”

Ignoring the squabble, Tav took in the stranger’s digits. The fingers were long and slender. The nails clean and neat. He had no calluses or scars, nor any other signs of doing any hard labour or fighting. He wore no bracers or any other armour that she could see; he wore some kind of thick, expensive-looking clothes judging by his sleeve.
If this man did have nefarious intentions, Tav was pretty sure she could take him as easily as Astarion. With or without her companions, who kept a respectful and not at all cowardly distance. She could feel Shadowheart tutting annoyedly from here.

“Are we to collect every stray we come across?”
“Rude,” Astarion purred in retort, hands on his hips, chiding gently without taking any real offence, before turning back to Tav, “Help him out. Could be fun.”
“Alright. Hold on in there, I’ll need a moment,” Tav instructed the owner of the hand.
“Not going anywhere.”
Tav suppressed a chuckle. Closing her eyes, she focused and tried to attune herself to the swirling arcana around the portal’s edge. She never had much control of her magic to begin with, but she also had the upper body strength of a prawn, so pulling was out of the question. This was going to prove somewhat delicate or she’d get sucked in there with him or turn them both into mephits.

Listening to the note that emanated from the sigil, she attuned herself to it, trying to hum and harmonise with it, soothing it enough to free the wayward wanderer trapped inside. Almost like she’d done with the consoles on the ship, except the console wanted to be willed, and this irate rune felt more akin to soothing a stressed animal.
The furious swirling slowed, no longer a current but a leisurely stream tugging inwards on itself. She hummed louder, encouraging the reversal.
“Whatever you’re doing, it’s working wonders! Now, just a quick tug…”
Tav heard Astarion let out a lewd chuckle behind her, but ignored it. She couldn’t partake in any crass jokes until she’d seen this through.
Her hand closed around the stranger’s wrist, and his around hers. His grip was firm, but not painful, and his hand was warm. When she tried to tug, the current of magic pulled back a little, so she shifted on her feet.

“Don’t let me go!” the voice begged as his he felt the tension between them intensify.
“Not on your life! Literally,” Tav grunted. She braced against the boulder with a foot and began to pull. But the current grew stronger again, and she place the other foot against the boulder too, using her legs to thrust.
Hope my tail doesn’t fall out of my trousers, was all she had time to think before the swirling hole birthed a fully grown man, who came tumbling out. When the magical current lost its hold on him, Tav fell straight backwards, with the stranger landing right on top of her with a shared ‘oof!’

Those eyes are the brownest I’v ever seen. Like… agates.
He’d managed to stop himself from falling flatly over her, bracing with one hand against the ground next to her head, and the other by her ribs. But he’d landed right between her legs, and she could feel his gasps of relief on her cheek.
His eyes widened, mortified, and for a moment Tav worried her fringe might have swept to the side and he’d glimpsed what was left of her horns.

But she could feel her fringe in place… The rest of her felt strangely numb, looking at this man. Embarrassed and not scared or disdainful, he swallowed at their evocative placement before scurrying backwards and onto his knees. He scrambled to his feet, pulling Tav up.
He dusted off his deep purple robes, wiped his hands on the legs of his trousers and then clasped Tav’s hand with both of his, pulling her too to her feet.
Once she was steady, that clasp became a firm and fervent handshake. There was an almost frantic tempo to his movements.
“Must say… It’s nice to feel the ground below my feet again! Oof!” he said with a groan as he straightened up.

He was… tall. Thick, silken brown hair slicked back in a tousled mane, tickling the back of his shoulders, and his skin as warm and sun-kissed as Astarion was moon pallid.
He sported a close-cropped but thick stubble and a glinting silver earring in only one ear, in the shape of an encircled star. A tattoo coiled down his neck like a trail of incense smoke, from his ear down to his collarbone, where Tav could fathom the top of some circle that must be the greater motif under a smattering of silken chest hair that peeked out of his undershirt. She had the most annoying impulse to look closer at what it was.
He smiled brilliantly and pulled his hands away, leaving Tav feeling weirdly off-balance. This man was… gorgeous. That quick smile, that charming twinkle in his eyes… If his skin was caressed by the sun, then that glitter as he looked at you was the sunlight that kissed the sea.
He wore some sort of wrap-around bathrobe, the sort that learned men liked to lounge in when they ‘just threw something on’ that was in fact highly curated and deliberate.
He pulled his fingers through his hair, adjusting it.

A wizard. Of course he’s a wizard. Only a wizard would think to pair a dress and a mullet unironically. Or hop out of boulders, for that matter.
He was handsome. Not in that ethereal and lithe way that her two elven companions… but he was without a doubt the most sculpted wizard Tav had ever met. By her experience, studious efforts taking priority over bodily labour left wizards either pale and lanky, or somewhat pudgy. This man was neither pudgy, lanky, nor pale. He was so beautiful, Tav could almost fathom the thumbprint of divinity in his lines. Especially as he lit up, smiling at her.

“My rescuer, I presume? Much obliged!” he grinned and his eyes took them all three in. “Hello, everyone. I am Gale of Waterdeep. Apologies for… this whole affair. I am usually better at this.”
“A-at introductions?” Tav stuttered, and Gale’s eyes rested on her again, and she felt warm just to see it.
“At magic,” he clarified, “But say, I know you, don’t I?”
“I-I’ve been known to play a tune or two, but I can’t say I’ve ever been to Waterdeep,” she mumbled quickly, almost apologetically.
“I mean, you were on the nautiloid as well.” Behind her, Tav heard Shadowheart sigh audibly, but Astarion was curious.
“Never mind that, we all were. If you were on that ship, how come you were inside that stone?”

Gale peered around and shrugged slightly. “I don’t know what transpired exactly… but the ship broke into pieces and I suddenly found myself in freefall. As I was plummeting to certain death, I spied a glimmer quite near where I estimated my body to impact with less-than-savoury propulsion.”
This man knows many words. Brevity isn’t one of them, Tav ascertained, but Gale went on unperturbed at her slightly sardonic smile at his verbosity.
“—Recognising this glimmer to be magical in nature, I reached out to it with a Weaving of words,” he continued with a descriptive gesture, “and found myself on the other side… as it were. How about you lot? How did you survive the fall?”
He nodded to Tav in particular. Why was he looking at her so intently?
Tav placed her hands on her hips, looked back at the burning wreckage and shrugged slightly, like she’d merely done some rose pruning. “Well, obviously I took control of the ship, landed it safely and saved the day.”
She couldn't... actually recall how she'd survived? The images in her head were patchy. She remembered the ship falling, seeing the dying mindflayer across from her... Getting hit in the head with falling a stone or some loose debris as the ship broke apart... Falling... Falling... Had something caught her and laid her down? Had she just gotten unbelievably lucky landing in soft sand? Even at that height—a miracle—
She snapped out of her remembrance as Gale peered over her shoulder and scoffed softly.
“‘Obviously,’” he echoed with a smile tugging at his mouth, “That er… That vast, burning inferno behind you somewhat contradicts your story? But here you stand, so… Who am I to argue?”
At this, Shadowheart interjected. “It’s a tad bit embellished, as ever with bards, but she did bring the ship out of Avernus before the crash.”
“A bard?” Gale wondered, “Weaving me out of that sigil like that? I’d have thought you a wizard or a sorcer—oh, dearie me.”
His eyes had looked her over and fallen on her smashed lute.
“Yes,” Tav sighed somewhat annoyed with the repeated reminder of what she’d lost. “Another casualty, but I can’t leave it behind.”

Gale looked at her for a moment, and then stretched his hand out again. “May I?”
Tav looked him in the eye for a long moment, pondering whether to trust this stranger with her most prized possession and friend. Then she slung the carcass of her lute and gingerly placed it in Gale’s hands.
He turned it over slowly in his hands, taking great care not to part the splintered wood more, nor twist and sever the delicate strings. Then he mumbled some arcane words softly, as if gently waking the lute up from slumber. A flash of heliotrope, and the lute began to pull itself back into shape before her eyes. The broken neck unkinked and straightened. The collapsed body grew convex and round again, the disjointed bridge slotted back into its place.
The spell had even erased the little scratches on the soundboard and the chipped edges.
Tav’s heart began to swell, seeing her beloved instrument regain its former splendour, and she watched in hushed amazement as the wizard worked.

Once finished, Gale handed the lute back like a midwife handing over a fresh babe to its mother. Breathless, Tav accepted her lost friend and strummed a tentative chord. Its sound was as rich and full as ever, and her lashes burned with tears as she laughed.
“I can’t believe it,” she gasped as a grateful tear escaped her, and she embraced the lute delicately, like a long-lost friend.
“My humble thanks,” Gale mumbled with a soft smile, “as a gesture for saving me from that stone. It was an act of foresighted kindness, I assure you, and I have the feeling ample opportunities will present themselves for me to return the favour in measure.”
“This was… I… You have saved a life here. Trust me on that,” Tav choked out.

Chapter Text

“So, you all have my name, but I don’t have yours?”
Gale had fallen in step quickly with the others, walking side by side with Astarion behind Tav and Shadowheart on the narrow deer path. It had taken him an entire ten minutes of chattering to ascertain that they were all carrying parasites. Then he proceeded to blather on about himself and his wizardly prowess before it occurred to him to ask his audience a question. Until now, it had been ‘Blackstaff Academy’ this, and ‘the goddess Mystra’ that. It was unbearable in how clichéd it was.
Tav had figured him some wizard hotshot given his ‘of Waterdeep’ instead of a family name. Like he expected them to know who he was or something. Typical wizard. How aggravating that looks like that were wasted on a scholarly miser. And a dorky one at that.

“I am Astarion, I’m a magistrate back in Baldur’s Gate, rather tedious really. The lovely ladies are Shadowheart the beautiful and… Tav.”
At this, Tav laughed aloud, too mirthful at the return of her beloved instrument to take offence at Astarion’s needle pricks. Besides, she'd been slandered worse by better men.

“Tav,” Gale repeated, befuddled but smiling. Her name sounded pleasant on his tongue. “Is that short for something?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell me. Tavelyn.”
“Nope,” she chortled back, and judging by Astarion’s little snicker, she took it Gale’s arched brow knitted quizzically.
“Tavitha?” he suggested.
“Nuh-uh.”
“Tavielle?”
“Not even close.”
“... Tavisèd?”
“Give it up, Gale,” Shadowheart sighed, but she smiled back at the men all the same. “Let a girl keep some secrets.”

“Can’t think of very many elven names starting with ‘Tav?’ Surely there can’t be many?”
Another one fooled by her apparel. Good. It almost started to sound like a funny story at this point, wasn’t it? ‘Three elves and a boastful mage walk into a bar…’
“Who’s to say it starts with ‘Tav?’ Maybe it’s in the middle,” Astarion suggested with almost sadistic tease.
“Maybe it’s an ugly name,” Tav cut short the speculations, “And one I won’t answer to, even if you got it right by happenstance.”
“Spoilsport,” Astarion tutted softly.
“Surely it can’t be that bad. Come now,” Gale pressed, eyes twinkling as he tried to convince her.
“Unlike you, Gale, some of us require a puny single syllable where you'd insist on twelve. Let a bard have a stage name, will you?”

“In that case, my dear, Shadowheart has you beat by a mile,” Astarion remarked, “Tell me, Shadowheart, what’s your story?”
The target sighed for the umteenth time of the day in response, stopping to deal a fatigued look of mock derision. “Is it that time already? For prying? You do seem the type.”
“And are you the type to answer?” Tav grinned back and the half-elf cocked her head when she passed.
“What, because you’re straight as an arrow at every turn?”

There was the slightest hint of a tone there, reminding Tav of their implicit little agreement below the temple. ‘Press not, lest…’
Taking her meaning, Tav raised a warning finger in jest to the others, walking backwards as she faced them, gesturing to draw their eyes from Shadowheart’s little indication. “Let me remind you all, before you annoy me, that I saved each and everyone of you, so don’t give me trouble now.”
“Fair,” Gale conceded, hands laced behind his back in a way that made him look like some dry, ancient scribe of yore instead of a dashing young man.

“Let me remind you that I was never in any actual danger,” Astarion pushed back with almost childish defiance.
“You were. Of a tan,” Shadowheart giggled and started again by Astarion’s side. “This isn’t the tadpole I’m speaking to, is it, Astarion? Picking our brains for information? The personality seems a little lacking.”
“Ah, you got me! I am in fact the mighty tadpole. This body is my vessel! Kneel before me!”
It was almost endearing, that little dramatic flair of his.
Shadowheart on the other hand, gave a positively lethal little smirk. “... and that’s the vessel you chose? My.”
“Oof. Steady there, Shadowheart,” Gale bristled, “You could cut these tadpoles out with that scathing wit. Where are we headed anyway?”
He wasn’t wrong there, Tav must admit. Between the pale elf and the half-elf, there was enough sass to literally cut silk.
“Anywhere,” Astarion replied, “Away. From the smell, if little else.”

Then Tav glanced sideways at Gale, walking so close his shoulders almost brushed hers. Somehow he’d ended up next to Tav, and she wasn’t exactly sure how he’d managed it.
Tav pointed ahead to the east, up the hill, ignoring the slight tightness around her ribs at having him standing so close.
“Shadowheart and I came across the foot of an old temple by the water, before we made it off the beach. The door there wasn’t budging, so we’re taking the long way topside. Either there’ll be someone there who can help… Or we make camp there for the night, marginally safer than out here in the sticks.”

“My vote is for not the sticks, thank you very much,” Astarion mumbled and swatted at some flying bug. “Gale, I don’t suppose your magic tricks include conjuring an inn with fresh sheets and a bathtub? Surely being the Chosen of Mystra comes with certain perks.”
It was Tav’s turn to bristle, and Gale had the good grace to blush when he saw her reaction. Alright, ‘Gale the Chosen of Mystra.’ If true, the man is practically a demigod. He could simply open us up an interdimensional portal back to Baldur’s Gate and save us the shoe chafe.

“Alas,” Gale lamented with an almost demure sigh, “I… I find my magic somewhat diminished, I must say. Might have something to do with our little stowaways. Say, Shadowheart… You’re a cleric. Don’t suppose you’re uncannily adroit with a surgeon’s blade and can evict the little rascals?”
“Were that the case, I’d have cut you all already.”
Astarion and Tav exchanged looks at that. Sensing their sudden discomfort, Shadowheart quickly added: “I could turn my wit on you instead, since you seem to prefer it?”
“Ah, I fear you’d wield it against my ailing heart,” Gale smiled gallantly and tilted his head with his hand pressed to his chest. “And that, I could not survive.”

“Judging by our sassy little friend’s tone, there’s still time,” the pale elf mused.
“If we don’t find an astute healer, these little parasites will make quick work of us ere too long,” Gale pondered, ignoring Astarion’s quip, “A rather gruesome process called ‘ceremorphosis,’ and let me assure you… It is to be avoided!”
That last bit, he bit out with emphasis and another little wag of his finger.

“You seem to know enough about these parasites, Gale. Surely it can’t have escaped you that this infection is just a tad out of what most healers can remedy.”
“True, Shadowheart,” Gale admitted, “But I find myself in the company of the exceptional. Forgive a man for hoping.”
Very smooth.
He shot Tav another one of those warm smiles, and Tav’s breath caught in her throat so she had to turn and cough, lest he saw… Saw nothing. Tav was fine. She was just breathing hard from the inclement incline.

They crested the hill and Gale breathed hard from strain, bending over slightly, sheened in sweat. Tav remarked to herself that the man might have been sculpted to look the pinnacle of masculine beauty, but that wizardly stamina won out in the end. Once she was done committing Gale, sweaty and panting, to memory.
Get it together, Lunet.
Made no sense for a man with that physique like that, to be so out of shape. He could use words like ‘adroit’ and ‘ere’ as casually as they were dish rags, but a little nature hike knocked the wind out of him?

Then it occurred to her. It was evident, really, and almost embarrassing that it took her so long to figure it out: Gale, the vain fop, had glamoured himself into looking like that. Whether he fooled the eye or had actually altered his form, it had been magically sculpted all the same.
Of course. You silly, vain mage. Better not tell Astarion you did that, or you’ll be stuck fixing his blemishes until the end of time.
The thought had her laughing to herself, and Shadowheart shot her a quizzical look.
“What?”
“These foppish men,” Tav sighed in explanation and Shadowheart rolled her eyes.
“That they are, but what makes you say that in response to ceremorphosis?”
“That Gale could probably glamour himself to look the same as ever anyway,” Tav continued with a pointed look and nodded to Gale’s form.

It took a moment but then Shadowheart finally caught her meaning, and burst out laughing. Not a menacing little giggle like before, but a laugh that pearled out of her, made her eyes glitter. The men turned their heads in confusion.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Tav stifled her laughter. “The temple is just up ahead.”
“I must say, while ceremorphosis certainly is no laughing matter, but I am glad you ladies are taking the news in your stride.”
“Save your ire and ‘stride’ your arse up here,” Tav teased, waving them onwards.

She wasn’t lying; the temple, or more temple ruins, towered up the road. Derelict and crumbling.
“Deserted,” Gale mumbled, suddenly appearing beside her, and Tav spooked slightly. “To be expected, I suppose. Were this temple in operation, the inhabitants would have heard the crash and come to look.”
As he passed, Tav felt the urge to pat Gale’s back down to rid him of the dust from the road, but she was also almost afraid to touch him. That if she did, he’d suss out that she wanted to touch him. Not that she wanted to touch him. She just… didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. If she did touch him.

“Don’t suppose those goblins came from here?” Astarion asked, and Gale’s head swivelled around.
“What goblins?”
Astarion made a dismissive wave. “Oh, just some dead little specimens we found just before Tav pulled you from that boulder. Not to worry, they had enough supplies for y—us all.”
“Goblins come in hordes, not trios. If they were here, we’d have smelled them long before we saw their campfire smoke.”
“Quite,” Gale concurred.

“So, Gale… You hail from Waterdeep, you say?” Tav asked innocently.
“Quite so. My home is a tower right near the promenade.”
Tav nodded, her eyes widened as if impressed by his less-than-subtle boast of implied wealth. “Fancy. So… How come you were snatched up in Baldur’s Gate? What were you doing there?”
At that, Gale looked rather caught out. “Why, I—”
Before he had time to answer, Shadowheart caught them both by the wrists and pulled them to a crouch and dragged them sideways off the path. There were voices up ahead.
Two tieflings, a man and a woman, dressed as forest rangers. Their infernal skin beautifully red, their eyes black pools lit with fires within.
“Zorru was right. Yellow as a toad… and twice as ugly,” the man said, eyes skyward.
Looking up, Tav saw who they were referring to:
Lae’zel.

Suspended mid-air in a tiny cage made with splinterwood, looking more like a poorly woven chicken cage. The cage was so small, Lae’zel sat crouched just like a toad about to hop, and her hands gripped the bars of her confinement. Her yellow eyes glimmered with seething hate from under the shadow of the tree, looking at the tieflings below.

Upon seeing the githyanki woman again, Tav felt neither elation nor joy.
Instead, she felt an icy scorn. And this supposed elite githyanki warrior woman had somehow managed to get caught in such a crude boobytrap? Goblins weren’t exactly known for their masterful trapping.
This did explain the footprints they had seen near those dead goblins earlier; Lae’zel must have killed them before running off. She hadn’t even thought to take their supplies for herself. And that also meant she’d run right past Gale.
Tav supposed she ought to be grateful for her shortsightedness in doing so, leaving the supplies at least.

“That thing is dangerous, Damays!” the tiefling woman warned her companion. “Leave it for the goblins to kill.”
Behind her, Shadowheart let out a contented little huff. But Tav was never one to sit idly by, so she stood straight up and strode right into the sunlight. Behind her, she heard Shadowheart curse her once again today for running headfirst into every potential altercation. She heard Gale ask for an explanation, and Shadowheart gave one, sparing no ink in describing how infuriating Tav was with her heroic antics.

“And if it escapes?” this Damays countered, “How will you—oh. A guest.”
Their bows only raised momentarily before lowering again.
“You’re not one of us, are you?” Tav panicked for a brief instant; she didn’t want to be outed here. But the man continued, “From Elturel?”
Tav swallowed her relieved sigh. “No, just a passerby.”

Lae’zel’s thoughts invaded her head, seething to Tav too.
“You again. Get rid of them.”
Tav blinked the intrusion away, trying to keep her face steady lest the two rangers thought her a threat or a madwoman. “This creature is dangerous! You two, get out of here and leave it to me.”
The woman left a small touch on her partner’s arm. “She’s right, let’s go. We need to check out that blast.”
“What blast?” Tav inquired innocently.
“Didn’t you hear it, culwsapil? Great, big blast just before dawn. Shook our camp pretty good, so we came to see what the racket was.”

Culwsapil—’Kinswoman.’ Of course infernals all knew each other on sight, no matter what. There was no fooling them.
“Where is this camp of yours? I’m in need of healing.”
“Head northwest, there’s a grove up the path. About a day’s hike. Ask for Nettie. Ain’t no wound she can’t mend.”
Damn. A camp full of tiefs? This was going to be a carefully weighed decision; a camp full of tieflings who could out me as one of their own… or that Nettie lady, holding all our salvation in her healing hands.
“Just be careful! The goblins have left traps all over the place!” the woman warned, pointing to the cage. “And thank you.”
“Nymessa. Come.”

And as soon as they had appeared, the two tiefling strangers faded into the greenery. As ever when she encountered tieflings, full tieflings unlike her halfbreed self, Tav watched them go with a surge of melancholy.
The way tieflings banded together against the ostracising eye of others was a source of bitter envy. Tav didn’t look tiefling enough to fully belong with them, and she looked too othered to fully fit with her human kin. Her cropped horns were to many tieflings the sign of a her being a criminal, and not the sign of a desperate mother wanting her little girl to not be smothered in her crib.
So she belonged nowhere, really. The edges around that hollow in her heart were throbbed, like a missing limb.

Lae’zel, as ever, had no patience. She barely contained herself long enough for her captors to get out of earshot. “Enough gawking! Get. Me. Down!”
Tav regarded her coldly; she knew precisely the parameters of her ‘heroic antics:’ she had a hard time passing by anyone who asked for help. Shadowheart had begged for help. As had Astarion, even if he was an ambushing little shit. Gale had begged for help too. Lae’zel would never stoop to so much as asking someone to pass the salt.

Behind her, she heard the others emerge from their hiding.
“Tav, I really have to put my foot down on this one. You can’t stop to save every soul we trip over!”
She ignored Shadowheart, meeting Lae’zel’s commanding eyes, feeling something defiantly impertinent, almost childishly obstinate, stir in her.
I am not your fucking subordinate.
“Say please.”

Shadowheart flinched in surprise; she hadn’t expected this cold reunion, to be sure. A stubborn malice gleamed in Lae’zel’s eyes. “Never.”
Fine. Made your bed.
“You know, Lae’zel… You left me to die on the ship. My pod was right next to yours. You were infected just before I was. I heard you whimper. But you left me and ran when the dragons attacked the nautiloid. Then you nearly hacked me to death, thinking I was a thrall. Then you used me to survive the crash. And finally, you left me for dead again on the beach. And I found out you’ve left, or tried to leave, all of us to save your own skin. I think I’ll leave you right here for the goblins to find.”

And with that, Tav turned on her heel and kept walking on. Shadowheart and Astarion looked impressed with her callousness, but Gale’s eyes were harder to read. His dark eyes squinted under a concerned brow.
“Tskva! You can’t just leave me here!” Lae’zel hissed at her, rattling the bars of her chicken cage, and Tav gave her one last glance.
“... Sorry. No time for stragglers.”
Hearing her own words repeated back at her, Lae’zel hissed some githyanki curse over her, slamming her cage one final time. Then they left her to her fate and continued up the road, up towards the temple.

The others were quiet for a few minutes, but Tav could practically sense a hushed conversation of brows and gestures behind her back. She wasn’t entirely sure just how she’d been roped into being the leader of this little crew of survivors, but no one seemed to push her on it.

“Nice to see even you finally drawing a line somewhere,” Shadowheart broke the pressed silence at last, “We’re better off without her ugly mug.”
“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?” Gale wondered, subdued but serious.
“She could be a radiant beauty and still be dead weight,” Tav muttered, ”She’d leave us all for dead at first sight of danger. Or slit our throats calling us mind flayer thralls.”
“I’m not questioning your decision, Tav,” the wizard hastened to clarify, “I’ll admit, normally I’d oppose abandoning anyone to the mercy of goblins… My protest is merely that we may have condemned her to death already, so deriding her further is a waste of breath.”

Astarion broke his own silence now. “She looked me dead in the eye on the nautiloid and kept running. Disrespectfully… Fuck her.”
At that, Gale nodded, knuckles pensively resting on his chin. “I recognised her voice… No mistaking it, is there? I heard her fight the goblins outside the rune sigil while I was stuck. When it went quiet, I reached out for help, goblins or no. I couldn’t make it out of that stone on my own. She… ran past me too. Anyway, I shan’t fault you your ire, Tav. I once wished a most impure demise on a colleague of mine who bought the last remaining copy of Etheril Enchaeridion’s Enchantments Of Easements. It was a first edition, too!”
Hearing that dry little tone at the tail end of his anecdote, Tav stopped doubting her decision. For a moment, she’d been worried that her temper may have gotten the better of her. But Gale’s lighthearted confession even had her smiling a little.

“I figured as much,” she mumbled. Gale caught up with her and walked by her side again.
“Are you alright?” he asked softly, hand hovering over her arm but not quite touching her, and Tav sighed deeply and twisted away from the prospective touch.
She didn’t want him to know that she wanted to be touched by him, any more than she wanted him to know she wanted to touch him in turn. In fact, touching him in any way was a peril she couldn’t afford.

“It’s been… a hell of a day.”
“No understating it, is there,” he chuckled dryly. “Should we not head to that tiefling camp instead of the temple? That healer…?”
Tav shook her head, feeling loose strands of hair in her neck tickling. “I don’t think I can walk much further today as is. My whole body is sore. A day’s march, those tieflings said. We’ll need to make camp for the night soon, and we’ll set off early in the morning. If we sleep rough, we could fall into goblin traps in the dark or be set upon by predators. ‘More predators,’ might be a better way to put it, on closer thought. After intellect devourers, mind flayers, hellboars, imps, cambions… I must confess my tether is fraying.”
Just admitting it was enough to bring the strain of her ailing muscles to the forefront of her mind.

“Well put,” Gale smiled softly. “I think our companions might be feeling worse for wear also, though they’d deny it if asked. Astarion looks like he’s not slept in a tenday, he’s been yawning non-stop.”
“Can’t say I blame him. He strikes me as a… bird of the night,” Tav said with a sly smile and added, “Even more so than I. I’d been playing a late gig when I was snatched.”

Gale smiled softly, as if imagining it.
“Some glamorous gala in the upper city?”
“Hah! Look at my clothes, Gale! You think they’d even let me into the Elfsong? Try the graveyard hours at The Pink Scabbard.”
Gale croaked with shock and distaste at the name.
“‘The Pink—’”
“It’s a brothel.”
“You don’t say,” he squeaked, his voice uncomfortably high. She squinted at him, but laughter was bubbling out of her throat.
“You judging?”
“N-not at all!” he said emphatically, “Why, some of the finest artists and musicians began their careers amidst stale ale tankards a-and… sticky floors—”

At that, all three laughed.
“Someone’s afraid of getting their hands mucky,” Astarion teased, and Gale grinned at their banter in spite of his awkwardness.
“Well, they can’t all be Sharess’ Caress, can they?” Tav pressed with a wicked grin at his squirming.
“I shall… have to take your word for it,” Gale chuckled, eyes wide and startled. But he had the grace to smile through his blush.
Oh no, not the blushing.
“So is ‘Tav’ a stage name for a more… carnal profession? A labour of love, as it were? Is the lute merely a prop?”
Sensing a catty remark from their fellows, Tav preceded it by throwing back, “Astarion, don’t say it.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“To be fair, you were about to,” Shadowheart giggled and Astarion gave her an outraged little gasp at being tattled on.

“Well, no, I am indeed a musician and not a sex worker. Didn’t think a man as worldly and well-read as you would be a prude, Gale?” Tav teased, “With shoulders that broad, I’m sure you have had your fill of the ladies.”
At that, he blushed even deeper, and it was delightful.
“Yeah Gale, do you have a sweetheart waiting for you back in the city?” Astarion butted in. Tav swallowed and tried to feign indifference.
“You know what? That is not the easiest question for me to answer. Besides, Tav, the most well-red person in this party must by rights be you!”
Tav laughed and made a little gesture over her knotted hairstyle, trying to ignore her discomfort over Gale’s vague answer to his being taken.
“A whole afternoon before anyone made a ginger joke! I’m impressed.”
“How did the er… lengths happen though? Another concession for the stage?” Gale nodded at the fading green tips.

“Oh this?” Tav asked, pointing to the streaks of blueish green interspersed in her pinned-up braids and fringe. I had a little magical mishap during a brawl. My er… my hair and eyes swapped colours, and I had red eyes and green hair for half a year.”
“Bet your eyes didn’t look half as good as mine,” Astarion purred at that.
“It’s a striking look that only the truly special could pull off,” Tav conceded.
At this Gale laughed warmly.

“You're not versed in magic then, are you? With ‘mishaps’ of that calibre,” he ascertained. “Prestidigitation gone awry?”
“Of course I am! I have as much magic in me as you!” Tav rebuffed. “Just… not a terribly good grip on the little bastard.”
“Oh, I do apologise. What I meant to say is, ‘are you studied in magic?’ namely, ‘are you a wizard?’ Which you are not.”
He was angling for a jokingly condescending tone, but it stung all the same. Her magic was a sore spot.
“Sorry to disappoint,” she mumbled, trying to smile through the needle-prick feeling.
“You didn't. But that confirms my hypothesis. I just knew you were a sorcerer or some sort, and not merely a bard! I can all but feel the Weave… crackling in the air around you.”

He made a little flourish over her hair and then he leaned a little closer, looking Tav deep in the eyes, and she swallowed hard from those dark eyes being trained so intently on her. Her heart even quickened, and she told herself she was just worried he might see her horns. But his eyes didn’t flicker over her features at all.
Instead, eyes rock steady, he was looking for any red traces in her irises. Hells, he might as well be staring into her soul.
Tav, for her part, could have kicked herself when her own eyes faltered from the intensity of that look, and flickered over his lips. It had been an age and an aeon since she’d had anyone this close to her.
Please don’t look too hard.

“No traces of copper anymore,” he remarked softly and released her gaze, as if sensing her trepidation. “Merely emerald, with flecks of gold.”
Tav swallowed again. “Yeah, they changed back pretty quick… But the hair is still growing out.”
“It matches your outfit. That makes more sense than that a red-head would wear pink.”
“Colour theory can lick my arse,” Tav retorted in good humour, and she heard Astarion chuckle behind them. “I like pink. That being said… I must admit I did buy this outfit after my hair turned green. Enough about me though. What about you, Gale?”
“Not the wizard stuff, mind,” Shadowheart intercepted him before the wizard could regale them again with his formative years in higher education. “Save it for bedtime so I can doze off.”

“That subject has already been quite exhausted. I already told you I hail from The City Of Splendours... I am a wizard of considerable acclaim, and a scholar of exceptional accomplishment… I have a cat, a library, and a weakness for a glass of good wine. And if the mood strikes me… I’ve even been known to try my hand at poetry.”

There was that professorial little inflection again. How rare to call a grown man precocious, but he sounded like he was emulating someone much older. Someone wrinkled and dusty and decrepit.

But it worked all the same, made her insides sparkle with laughter like plum fizz. It… It worked on Tav. The entire arcane academia persona fucking worked. She was attracted to him. And that’s why his touch both appealed and terrified.
Fuck. No. Why does it work on me?
“Modest too, I see,” she hummed, biting back a grin she didn’t feel like baring.
“Oh, quite without match, I assure you,” he grinned back.
Another one of those cheeky smirks, this time with a jauntily cocked eyebrow in mock flirtation. So boastful and yet entirely self-aware at the same time.
Insufferable. Hells, I hate wizards. I’ll never forgive myself for being into this.

It was disgustingly endearing, and she was ashamed to be enthralled by such turgid prose despite her better judgement, practical sense and moral convictions.
Wizards were all trouble and ego, ever proving themselves better than their supposed peers in trite rivalry or their own sordid amusement… which of course was the polar opposite of what bards did.
And she resented him even more than herself. Hells, he even folded his hands behind his back, heels together, and did that little gentlemanly nod with a smirk that aristocrats did when they tried to be facetiously bashful. She’d make a disgusted face, would it not be monstrously rude.
Am I really so starved for company that I’ll stoop to gentiles now? Like some naive school girl, swooning over dainty manners and posh talk?

“Well… what else? Surely as an arch mage of Mystra you must have embarked on adventures that make our outing seem like a leisurely stroll.”
“Former arch mage, I haste to point out.”
“What I wouldn’t do for a bottle of good wine right now,” Shadowheart said wistfully, snapping Tav and Gale both out of her less-than-subtle prying. “A crisp, dry white. Served cold on a summer’s day with some fresh fish.”
“I’ll never be able to enjoy seafood again,” Tav chuckled, with the burning nautiloid’s pungence fresh in mind.
“I prefer red myself,” Astarion hummed. Again, with that suggestive little inflection? What little japes were he amusing himself with, dangling over their heads?

“It's a bit heavy in the summer, no?”
“Oh, I like them full-bodied.”
Tav frowned at him in mock derision.
“Very… suggestive, Astarion, thank you,” she said dubiously. “Finally made it. This temple has a most disagreeably inaccessible verticality.”
Shadowheart made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Ugh. If you’re gonna talk like that, you’re not allowed to walk with Gale anymore.”

“OI YOU!” They all flinched out of their companionable banter as a halfling in full armour appeared before them, hand on his sword hilt. “My lot were here first! Our site, our ship, our salvage. Piss off!”
“We were just looking for shel—”
“Don’t care! Bugger off or else!”
From around some pillars came the angry little man’s crew. Tav did a quick headcount, tallying the economy of a brawl here. Only the scowling halfling wore any armour worth a damn.
“I quite like our odds, four on four. Or well… Three and a half,” she smirked at the halfling, who immediately drew his blade and attacked with an angry bleat.

Astarion had drawn Tav’s rapier out of her belt and parried the blow to her thighs before she had time to even flinch backwards, and Gale muttered some arcane spell than flung the bastard and one of his thugs over a stone bannister to a nasty fall on the level below.
“Hey! Give me back my sword!”
“It’s mine now!” Astarion smirked and leapt after them, landing lithely like a cat and skewering the halfling through the weak point at the neck.
“The hells it is! Get your own!” she called out, already in pursuit to retrieve her weapon.
A bolt of golden light flew past Tav as Shadowheart provided cover fire. “Focus, Tav! You started this fight!”

She ducked under a crossbow bolt that buried itself several into the mural behind her.
“You shite shot! You couldn’t hit the side of a barn, you cross-eyed cad!” she taunted the archer before picking up a loose rock and socking it right in his head. Astarion stole that kill too; Tav’s blade already devilishly red in his hands.
“Give. That. Back!” she hollered and set off after him for her prize.
One of the hired thugs launched himself at her from behind a stone pillar, but slight as she was, physics won out in the end through the cunning use of tackling him at the knees, sending him sprawling. But he used their combined momentum to fling Tav over himself, somersaulting so he landed on top of her. His fist came down once, twice, but Tav was too fast and ducked both times. The big bastard swore as his knuckles kissed cobblestone, probably cracking in the process.

Then a staff swung in view, toppling Tav’s assailant off her to the side, and Gale appeared in view. He grabbed the thug by the throat and mumbled a spell that sent a sickening green light through her would-be killer, and he fell down dead with a blackened handprint as his killing blow. She smelled singed, rotting flesh.
Necrotic magic. I’m flattered.
“Are you alright, Tav?” he asked, bending over her. The sun shone behind him, lighting his hair in a gilded crown.
“Wounded pride is all. Tadpole aside.” She cleared her throat and sat up with a grunt.
“And just what were you thinking, taking on a man twice your size with just quick reflexes and an irreverent tongue?”
“... That I wanted my sword back?” she shrugged, and the wizard sighed.
“I don’t suppose thinking before starting a brawl is to be expected henceforth?”

Fuck off with your ‘irreverents’ and ‘henceforths,’ smart-arse.
“Alas,” Tav smirked in an exaggerated, sarcastic mimicry of his own mannerisms and cadence, both legs out like a straw doll where she sat, “I am disinclined to acquiesce to that particular request. You shall simply have to learn to duck as fast as me, or perish, master wizard.”
Gale barked a laugh and shook his head.
“This is no time to flirt,” she smiled and tutted, and Gale got a very promising look in his eye.
“Oh, what are you like, you lewd wench,” he tutted reproachfully.
At that, Tav raised a warning finger. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s get this straight; I may pluck a tune or two in whorehouses and taverns of ill repute. That I grant you, sir. I am crass, bawdy, smutty and even uncouth when it takes my fancy… but I defy you to ever call me ’lewd’. ‘Lewd’ is for mouth-breathing old geezers and creepy third cousins!”
Gale stared at her blank. “I stand corrected. My lady, you have caught me out in my slander. Apologies.”
“Granted,” she conceded graciously.

“All clear!” Astarion called out, and Shadowheart and Gale sounded back. The moment between them passed. Gale offered Tav a hand up. She took it and he pulled her up with such force, she bounced slightly on her heels and she missed the warmth of his hands when he let her go, still chuckling at their little exchange.
Astarion sauntered over and handed back Tav’s rapier, dripping with blood, like a kid handing his mother a used hanky.
“Here you go! Thanks a bunch!” he cooed and sauntered away again to rifle through their packs.
“... Clean it off before giving it back at least! Bloody hells.”

Chapter Text

By the time they’d scavenged what they could off their attackers and dragged their bodies into the woods, the sun had set.
A cosy campfire was crackling, but the knowledge of their tadpole infections weighed heavily and very literally on their minds. The little critters were still in there. Like having a chronic itch in the eye that was never quite bad enough to rub constantly, but still too intrusive to let itself be forgotten about.

The pillars of the crumbling ruins rose above them, in broken arches, covered in vines with waxy leaves, reflecting the firelight softly.
Shadowheart was fidgeting, having set up a stolen tent further away from the fire than the others, all the way off in the shadows. Maybe she couldn’t sleep unless it was completely dark, Tav pondered as she hung the small pewter camp cauldron on their makeshift cooking tripod. The new supplies were far superior to hardtack. Some potatoes, some carrots, some wild rosemary… This meal might not turn out so bad.
No one spoke. The hardships of the day had won out and they were all looking as tired as they felt, despite the fading sun and the softening touch of flamelight. Four strangers sharing only their squirming parasites and a certain ease of conversation.

Astarion watched her hands as Tav worked, sitting between Gale and Shadowheart. Shadowheart had scrounged up a bottle of Tyche Pink that she was nursing, trading swigs with the pale elf. Gale, on the other hand, sat deep in thought, staring at the flames, lips pressed to his braided knuckles. His eyes looked so dark they were almost black, reflecting the fire like mirrors.
“Go to hell,” he said at last, and the two by his side threw him a surprised look.
Astarion sighed petulantly. “But I just sat down.”
Gale snapped out of his thoughts and hummed amusedly. “You’re a good sport. ‘Go to hell.’ An everyday expression. So trivial it’s almost meaningless. But we’ve seen hell. It’s real. And it isn’t trivial.”

The blood-red skies of Avernus weighed on his mind then.
If Tav hadn’t connected the transponders and snapped the crashing nautiloid out of that plane, they’d have crashed in that hell and probably been churned to chum in the Styx by now. Tav watched them. She could see the direness of their straits playing across their eyes, even in this obscure light.

“What’s brought this melancholy on?” she pressed softly, stirring the pot gently, and Gale shrugged with a deep sigh.
“Devils. Dragons. Mind flayers. They used to be abstracts. Pictures on a piece of paper. What a difference a day makes. Now we have these tadpoles slithering through our heads like carnivorous foeti… That’s not abstract,” he said, looking at her head on. “Our time is running short and we’re miles away from anyone with the skillset to extract them.”

Shadowheart took a long swig from the bottle, worthy of the most hardened liver. Must be that elven constitution at work, because three quarters of a bottle deep, she was as clear as ever. Tav expected her to say a little prayer or something, but she didn’t.

“Time to decompress all that’s happened, is it?” she mused coldly.
“As if sleeping in the dirt didn’t take getting used to already. It’s so quiet out here,” Astarion remarked. “Normally at this hour, the city would be bustling, the taverns and alehouses brimming with people spilling out onto the streets. It’s almost uneasy, this… peace. I must admit, it’s a little novel.”
“A deceitful peace,” Gale said, “For our parasites—”
“Yes, we know, Gale. Shut up about the damn parasites,” Shadowheart interrupted before rising on her heels and striding off in the dark towards her tent.
“Shadowheart, wait,” Astarion called out and went after her.
“Leave her,” Tav tried to stop him, “Doesn’t look like she wants comforting right now.”
“Comfort her? She took the wine, darling,” he corrected her with a furrowed brow and followed the chain-clad braid.

Left were only Tav and Gale, across the fire from each other.
“I didn’t mean to upset her.”
“To be fair, she’s been upset all day,” Tav reassured him, “But she seems more the type to get annoyed during stress instead of weepy. She’s sighed more today than I have my whole life and most of it is on me, I’m afraid.”
“Getting infected was hardly your fault.”
“Oh, I mean with my ‘heroic antics.’”
He turned his dark eyes on her again. When they were alone like this, Gale didn’t seem such a dork anymore. He wasn’t flexing his charms trying to seem happier than he felt. Maybe this is what he looked like, sitting in his fancy tower with his fancy library, reading by candlelight with a very fancy, hypoallergenic cat on his lap. Lost in thought.

“There are worse vices to have,” he smiled with a slight shrug. His voice was low, almost like they were speaking in confidence. It had this velvety depth that was anything but miserly. It was… poetic. Like the hushed cadence of a stage actor, his audience captivated in his palm, performing a profoundly philosophical soliloquy.
Tav blinked repeatedly, trying to break the spell. But she felt a little more vindicated in her reluctant attraction to him, knowing there was something of a thespian in him. That seemed far more her usual type.

“What are your vices then?” she asked, breaking that piercing eye contact to stir their meal again. “That good glass of wine? Buying books by the bushel and leaving them unread? … Smutty pulp fiction?”
Gale’s eyes glossed over with something mournful. “Ambition.”
“Ah yes. The wizard’s plight.”
“I assure you, the scope of my folly stretches far past the clichéd. But I shan’t bore you with the tedium of it. Astarion has already made me quite self-conscious about my own verbiage today. I’m… going to freshen up. There’s a brook meandering yonder. When I’m done, I’ll swap places with you.”

She watched him go, thoughts swirling. The fears of the tadpole that she was trying to stave off. The inherent stress of bathing anywhere near where people could see the features she was hiding. The tinge of want at the thought of Gale taking his shirt off. If she had thoughts of offering to join him, she choked them dead; she wasn’t quite so pathetic.
There was a crackle as an ember moved, sending sparks into the dark on the breeze.
Then Astarion came back into view, pale as a moonbeam and just as resplendent, and plonked himself and his prize down where Gale had sat, reclining until he was horizontal.
He did not offer to help with dinner.

“Where did our resident mage amble off to?”
“You care now?” Tav scoffed.
“You’re right, I don’t,” Astarion said and kissed his teeth before taking a swig.
“Soup-stew won’t be done for a good while yet, mind.”
“Oh, I’m not hungry. I just wanted the pleasure of your company.”
“Perhaps I’ll play you a tune?”
“Would you mind terribly? All this quiet is making me uneasy.”

Tav rose and plucked her lute from its perch, testing the strings to see if it needed a tune first; even that, Gale’s spell had taken care of. “A city boy, through and through I take it?”
“And proudly so. How about you, Tav? You seem to fit right in with the rubes.”
Tav laughed. Astarion’s rudeness couldn’t cut her.
“As any good performer must, I adapt to my surroundings. But something tells me you’re not above a little roleplay, Astarion. You have the bearing of a stage primadonna.”
“Thank you,” he purred and flicked his hair slightly. “Now play something good. No country jigs. The stars tonight deserve better than a hay bale romp.”

“Since you asked so nicely,” Tav purred right back, and strummed a tentative chord before choosing her tune.
Her lute felt as comfortable in her hands as it ever had, despite its mint condition. Some instruments were like shoes; they needed to be broken in a little before they sounded as intended. Other instruments broke their players in, pushing the limits of their hands.
Her lute had been the former; sounding a little stiff like a novice without a warmup, singing high and high-strung until you’d strummed the strings to just the right tension for that desired deep reverb. Like making an ethereal choral soprano find their belting voice.

Tav was tossed between plucking notes with her nails, and strong strums across her fingertips, wanting to test just how well Gale had repaired her friend. She could almost hear her father’s laugh between tentative chords.
“Beautiful,” came Gale’s voice, snapping her out of her reverie. Tav must’ve lost herself in the music for some minutes.

His hair was curling slightly from the wetness and his cropped beard glistened slightly in the firelight. He had changed into more leisurely clothes, out of his purple vestment and into a velvety-looking sleeping tunic and supple trousers. The neckline was modest, but she could still see the smoky wisps of that tattoo he bore.
“I do hope you’re not letting our supper burn?”
“Not at all.”

“How did I do?” he asked, nodding to her instrument, and Tav gave a breathy smile, like a child holding a present.
“She’s perfect. Thank you.”
“Hearing you play is thanks enough.”
“I’ll take requests… after I wash up,” she smiled and got up with a slight groan. Pain and sitting on bare ground made her stiff. Her tail had gone numb from sitting on it, wrapped around her leg.
Gale pointed in the direction of the brook and she headed there with trepidation, looking around her over and over to make sure no one was watching her. It wasn’t nudity that concerned her, it was someone seeing the parts of her body she’d been conditioned to hide.

It wasn’t just a brook, it was the Chionthar.
A small bay in the vast river, as still as a lake, but she could hear the waterfall down to where the crash site must lie, off in the distance. Reeds wafted gently in the meandering breeze, weeping willows skirted the waterline and scented briar rose thickets thrived in the sandy ground.
Only the moon and stars lit the water, serene and quiet. Should someone show up behind her, though, they would not be able to make out the tipped edges of her shoulder blades or the ridged skin of her collarbones, but the outline of her tail against her leg…
She couldn’t keep stressing over this. Astarion and Gale were still by the fire, and Shadowheart seemed engrossed in prayer by her tent. No one was coming, or staring.

Still, she stripped quickly and made her way into waist-deep water. It was warmer than she’d first expected, and she untied the ribbons that kept her hair up, letting the auburn and green lengths fall down her back. Then her tail uncoiled from around her leg, stretching and flicking tentatively under water. She drew breath and put her head under.
Maybe she was just imagining it, but she could swear she felt the dust and soot of the crash and the road trailing off her skin, dissolving into the water like paint from a brush. She rubbed her face until it felt clean, then dragged her fingers from scalp to hair ends before her lungs cried out for air.
She washed in peace, feeling lighter by the second, letting the fretting of being seen subside. Even without soap, this bath felt divine. Her skin went from coated in a rough sheen of dust and sweat, to supple and soft under her palms.
Having the moon for an audience was only pleasant. She found herself beginning to hum contentedly, feeling lighter tonight than she had all day.

She gently wrung her clean hair out and reflexively moved her wet fringe into place so it could dry the right shape, but when she turned, she was met with a pale figure standing behind her, waist-deep like her.
“It’s quite a sight.”
“Astarion!” Tav cried and dipped down to her neck, but Astarion only grinned wider. His sculpted chest, pale as marble, reflected the moonlight and his eyes seemed red like wine in this light. He was beautiful, it was undeniable. And entirely unwelcome.
“The moon, that is. I could take or leave your chin.”
“Well, you certainly seem more relaxed!”
“You’re not the only one in want of relaxation, darling. I’d have thought, given how crass and bawdy you professed yourself, you wouldn’t be opposed to sharing the water. Don’t be greedy.”
“It would have been nice to have been asked first.”
“I shan’t touch you,” he promised, as if certain she’d ask eventually. “I’m starting to appreciate the silence out here. No voices pressing, no eyes looking in. It’s… freeing. I’m usually so busy at night. I can see the moon from Baldur’s Gate of course, but not with such… clarity.”

He moved slightly closer and Tav turned sideways, to afford him a privacy he was certainly not repaying; she could all but feel his appreciative eyes caressing her neck.
“It got me thinking about what tomorrow might bring, when we meet this ‘Nettie.’ Will she be able to cure us? Bring these tadpoles under control?”
He wasn’t touching her, but he was standing so close, Tav’s cheeks burned. This was even more intimate than Gale’s appraising eyes. He towered over her, tall and elegant. Every line in his body was long and elegant. Jawline, neck, collarbones, his forearms and hands with long, dextrous fingers.

“What, you don’t want to be cured all of a sudden?” she bit out and turned even more, trying not to look at him.
“I didn’t say that. Just… It got me thinking. Reflecting. What will happen after? Will we go our separate ways? Will this little adventure of ours be over?”
“What, will you miss me?”
“Hah! Why not?” he said. Sensing that his height was imposing, he sank down to her level in the water, dragging wet fingers through his hair and tousling it like a preening peacock, all too aware of his own beauty.
Tav snapped out of her own initial shock and embarrassment and found her nerve again; Astarion was the same as any philanderer; all it took was a little pushback…

“Why would a magistrate be busy at night anyway? Overtime? Moonlighting?” she asked, and Astarion’s delicate brows arched.
“Er… Overtime. I am rather studious,” he answered overly nonchalantly. It wasn’t even a good lie.
’Studious’ is the longest word you’ve said today, you rotten liar. Hells, you’re no Gale; it might be the longest word you even know.
“You’re not really a magistrate, are you?”
His eyes snapped out of their seductive squint, taken aback. Then he unclenched his shoulders. “You’re rather astute, aren’t you?”
“So what then? A whore, what with being so busy all, every night night?”
“Alas, I’m more of a… cutpurse.”

That explained a lot. His quickness with a blade wasn’t decidedly more a trait of a law breaker than a law practitioner. He wasn’t using his body to make money, not in the traditional sense anyway. A beauty like him, he didn’t have to bare his skin to feel gold in his palm. All he had to do was to get so close he took people’s breath away, too entranced by his eyes to notice their purse strings being severed; too bewitched by his touch to feel anything but ecstasy… as he cleaned their pockets out.

“And you want to pair up, do you? A bard and a rogue? One plays a tune while the other picks pockets? How gauche.”
“Forgive a man for hoping. We could make out like bandits, you and I. A pretty little slip of a thing like you, keeping all eyes trained on you while I work the crowd. But who knows? Maybe I just… don’t want to say goodbye to you just yet. With lips like yours, I could combine business and pleasure. You’ve been to the hells and back,” he pushed, pouting slightly.
“So have you.”
“Oh please. You were the one who got us out of Avernus… survived the crash, banded this little motley crew together. I’m not easily impressed by people but you… You strike me as the plucky sort, always overlooked. But I see you. You’re stronger than I think most people give you credit for.”

She watched the curl of his smile, the warmth in his eyes. Rehearsed. An actor with his face as his instrument. He was very good. Credible, even. He could run circles around most trained stage divas. But he might not mean a word he says, Tav noted dispassionately.
“I am pretty impressive,” she agreed with an almost apologetic shrug, and Astarion’s lips split in a suggestive, positively voracious grin. He inched nearer again, thinking her hooked on his flattery.
“Aren’t you just. We’re more similar than I thought. You… have your charms. More than you think,” he whispered as he towered over her again, inching closer as if about to kiss her.

She grew tired of his tawdry, fumbling attempts at feigned attraction. Time to cut this short. Tav put her hand on his chiselled chest, cooled from the water, and Astarion’s brow cocked self-assuredly at the touch.
She allowed him the fraction of a moment, thinking he’d won her over. Then she pushed him off, sending him disappointed aback with a cold splash.
“Hey!”
“You’re too close.”
And with that, she sank below the surface of the water and disappeared out of his view, swimming to a nearby willow tree. Once safely tucked behind the tree’s protective curtain of branches, dancing lightly on the water surface, she emerged and listened out for Astarion’s movements in the water. But she could neither see nor hear him anywhere.

The bath had lost its magic, and she wrung her hair out again, fixed her fringe and found her clothes folded neatly not far away. They stuck to her skin, but if parts of her attire were translucent from the wet, it couldn’t be helped. The dim light would obscure her. Hopefully.
Damp but refreshed and with a laugh bubbling in her throat at the memory of Astarion’s outraged face, she made her way back to the fire. Astarion was nowhere to be seen—probably off pouting somewhere—but Shadowheart had made it back to the fire, with a bowl in her hands, and her wine bottle placed on the log next to her like a comrade.

“Back so soon? I thought you and Astarion would… need a little longer in the water.”
Shadowheart sometimes sounded like a mean schoolgirl with her little needle-prick remarks.
“Alas, my insatiable sexual appetites proved too much for our resident peacock. I shall need to devour both men before I sleep tonight,” Tav drawled back. Can’t embarrass the shameless, in her humble experience. Shadowheart let out her melodious laugh again. “Good sport,” she mimicked Gale, “He made himself a tent over there. I’m sure he could be convinced to make room for two.”
“Did he eat?”
Shadowheart shrugged at that. “Good food though. Maybe he sprinkled a little magic over it.”

Tav took two portions and made it over to Gale’s new tent; of course, a simple tripod with a tarp wouldn't do for such an illustrious conjurer; his was a thick, deep velvet, blue like night sky and embroidered stars in gold thread.
“Gale? May I come in?” she asked, and the door flap opened by itself. And there sat two Gales, staring intently into his own eyes, humming as he inspected every pore of himself. Of course, a mere mirror could not do, any more than a rough tent could.
“Am I interrupting something private?” Tav asked with a barely repressed laughter. “Typical. A wizard using magic to admire his own beard.”
Gale watched his own smile at her jape.
“A gentleman is only as dashing as his least-groomed locus.”
Tav cringed. Why say ‘spot’ or ‘place’ when ‘locus’ is so much more poncy. And gods, why does that work on me too?
A flash of purple sparks, and his mirror image disappeared, leaving him looking at her head-on again. Except this time, his face was lit with lantern light under a low-hanging velvet canopy. Tav blinked a few times to clear her head.

“Did you and Astarion enjoy your… swim?” Gale asked. He glanced down the front of her shirt, before seeking her eyes again.
Bloody hells, is there no privacy with this lot?!
“I certainly did,” Tav answered, suddenly self-conscious of her damp, clingy shirt. “All Astarion got was a cold shower. I brought you dinner.”
Gale made a face of slight surprise—at her quip, or that she brought him a bowl?
“Thank you,” he said, accepting it with grace. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t fault you for seeking solace any way you can, considering the predicament we find ourselves in… and time running out. Please, have a seat.”
He directed her to a plush pillow, and Tav accepted too, digging out spoons from her pocket to tuck in.
“There’s nothing to fault. You don’t mind company, do you? Between Astarion’s pouting and Shadowheart’s wine-stained remarks, I think I prefer it in here.”
“You might rethink that in a moment,” Gale warned her drolly with another twirling finger, accepting his own spoon.
“Oh please, I’m in show business,” Tav waved off his vanity, “If I were put off by people admiring their own reflections, I’d have starved to death years ago.”

“Admiring my own face while I still can,” Gale nodded gravely, “‘Ceremorphosis.’ What does that word make you think of?”
“These damn tadpoles,” Tav replied and spooned a mouthful of stew. Gale nodded contentedly, like a teacher getting a right answer from a pupil he’d called upon.
“Spot on! Day one: fever and memory loss. Day two, hallucinations and greying skin. Day three: hair loss and blood leaking from all orifices. Need I go on?”
“I am eating, but go ahead.” He sighed, pressing a little harder:
“Day four: excruciating pain as the skeleton and organs reform and reposition. Day five: the host’s personality has disappeared. Fingers, toes and limp elongate. I take it, you get the picture?”
“Still not grossed out, keep painting,” Tav answered dryly, ignoring the knot forming around her dinner. He was trying to scare her, but she’d learned the hard way to react to those attempts with outward nonchalance. “Where did you get these onions from?”
He ignored her sarcasm, and sighed annoyedly again. “Day six: the flesh around the mouth splits open to make way for tentacles. Day seven… a mind flayer is born. The annotated version, of course.”

The little hairs on Tav’s neck stood up in horror as the image of that woman turned aboard the nautiloid played before her eyes. Her skin cracking, her eyes rolling back, her hands contorting and breaking on their own, her teeth falling out in a gush of blood.
That had been no six days. It had barely been six seconds.
She swallowed hard to press down the rising dread in her throat and keep her composure. Gale seemed to press her to panic, or to respond with anything but calm; she was loath to give him what he wanted. All three of them looked to her to lead them for whatever reason, and she had decided to rise to the occasion. They trusted her. Panic wouldn’t do.

“Except it’s not accurate,” Tav pointed out with her spoon in the air. “Were it, we would be experiencing fever and greying skin by now.”
“Spot on again,” Gale nodded, reassured. “Our orifices remain blissfully intact. Blood temperature normal, minds clear.”
“Maybe not Astarion’s.”
He only chortled for an instant. “Be that as it may, any expert would agree this is… abnormal.”
“Are you an expert then? Any idea as to what could explain our abnormal normalcy?”
“That, alas, is where my knowledge fails me. A rogue might call it luck. A priest might call it fate.”
“And what do you call it?”
“I’m a pragmatic,”—he says in the most ostentatious tent I’ve ever seen—”I see the silence before the storm.”

They were both quiet for a moment. Even Tav had stopped eating. She sensed the bone-deep dread that Gale too was struggling to keep a lid on, and even pretending to eat would make mockery of their thinly veiled despair.
“Long live the abnormal,” she tried to jest, but her voice came out smaller than she’d intended. Gale laughed briefly, but then put his face in his hands.
Unaccountable timeline or no, the tadpoles were a death sentence.
“I’ll drink to that, actually,” he mumbled to himself, as if remembering something, before pulling out a small flask and uncorking it.

“Wyvern whisky. Our halfling benefactor had expensive taste,” he explained and offered her the first sip.
“How did you hide this away from our companions?!” Tav asked as she accepted the flask. It was wrapped in ornate leather, the flask itself glinting in silver underneath.
“Oh, you’re not the only one here capable of guile… Tavissa?”
“Nope. To the abnormal,” Tav smiled and raised the flask his way before taking a big gulp. It burned like furious heartbreak and sundered cities on the way down, like swallowing dragonfire. Then came the afternotes in a symphony. Oak cask. It left her breathless and gasping, and Gale watched her mouth as she did.
“Long may they reign,” he said quietly, taking the flask and matching her swig. His eyes looked slightly wet after, but it only made his eyes glisten more in the low light.

“Good wine hasn’t turned your palate soft, I see,” Tav remarked and reached for another sip.
“Variety is the spice of life. Speaking of the abnormal… dubious morals of our companions aside, I am glad to be a part of this menagerie you’ve gathered about you.”
“Me too. Let’s not share the whisky with them, though.”
“Absolutely not,” he concurred with another of those smiles that made Tav’s knees feel distinctly vaporous. Thank the gods she was already sitting down. Sharing whisky and a meal with a man this fine, in this intimate a setting, was positively perilous. Especially when his smile turned bashful and he averted his eyes. Moonlight couldn’t hold a candle to… well, candlelight.
The whisky is already making my head cloudy.

“So… what I just caught you doing, admiring yourself, was merely a scientific endeavour, was it?” she asked in a low voice, hoping the redness in her cheeks was attributed to the drink.
“Quite so,” he assured.
“What about me? Do I show any signs of ceremorphosis?”
He paused momentarily and then squinted appraisingly, tilting his head to look closer.
I’m a fucking idiot for inviting those eyes on me again. And I don’t care. His eyes feel like a warm bath on a winter’s night. A comfort that scalds my skin.
Still. She couldn’t bring herself to look away or to joke off the hushed tension that she’d inadvertently conjured.

Then, slowly, he put his hand to her neck and cheek, feeling her temperature. His hands were warm, dry. He palmed her skin softly, leaning closer.
Oh shit. Shit shit shit.
“You run a little warm for someone who just took a moonlight swim. The Wyvern, no doubt.”
He smiled briefly, before swallowing hard and focusing again.
“Right.” Tav swallowed and met his eyes as they wandered over her. She couldn’t tell if she was clammy with sweat or simply damp from her dip. She was warm though, that much was true. His hand began wandering from her cheek to her temple.
Oh shit, my horns!

She flinched away and the spell broke. He almost looked disappointed. She reached for the flask and their fingers brushed momentarily as he handed it over. She took a deep swig, hoping to drink just enough to blame her blush on the drink.
“You are… quite brimming with magic,” he noted and gave a little smile as he took the bottle back. “I could almost taste it on the air just now. No wonder you have these little ‘mishaps’ as you call them. Your cup is overflowing. Were you versed and trained… you’d have made a fine wizard.”
He absentmindedly rubbed the lip of the bottle. It was a compliment, she knew it was. He certainly thought highly of himself as such, and saying she could be equal to it was probably as high a praise as he could bestow. So she had to ruin it.
“I’d rather pull teeth.”
He flinched, amused and surprised. But he was still sitting too close. It made the Wyvern run fast through her.

“Your own, or someone else’s?”
“Yes. And besides, I am versed. In my own way. Music is… structured in rhythm, beats, layers of melody. I read some as a child, but as an adult I cannot bear to have my hands be idle. But music… Music lets me express what words fail to. It gives me an outlet that isn’t just… bursts. If I feel sad, I can strum a sad song instead of manifesting a raincloud. Or a mephit.”
“A mephit?” he laughed.
“Always. Fucking. Mephits. I don’t know what it is, but the little fuckers seem to fall out of my arse whenever I try to wield my magic.”
At that, he laughed heartily, finally averting his eyes. Then he took another sip of whisky.
“I conjured a mephit too, as a boy. Nice bloke, we kept in touch.”
Tav rolled her eyes. “Of course you of all people could talk your way out of being burned to a crisp by a mephit.”
“Clearly, you need to learn to speak Ignan,” Gale shrugged, but he teased.
“Piss off,” Tav laughed, her lips splitting into a full grin.

“I think I take your meaning well enough though. Of course, there are endless words for the scope of emotion. Every time I think there’s no word that can express what I mean, or feel, I look about me and find that someone, somewhere, felt it too and conjured a word for it and etched it down in stone, or parchment. Even in other tongues,” he pondered, and then pinched his fingers together, pulling a hair fine silver line in the air, “Like a single thread of spider silk across eternity, one mind to another, connecting us all in the soulful experience.”

Tav’s heart was pounding. This garrulous mage was insufferable, and the whisky was no balm for the blush that burned her cheeks, but fuel for it.
When the silver thread turned into a wisp of smoke, she swallowed hard.
“Your magic is of course one that anyone can partake in,” he continued, almost nervously babbling, having no mercy on her, “With one mere strike of your fingers, you can hearten the despairing and embolden the fearful. Your evocation is a gift from Mystra.”

At last, Gale said something that cooled her. The currents of warmth that rippled through her turned to resentful ice.
“Mystra put magic in me and let it run me like a river,” she bit out coldly. “No control. I chose my vocation over evocation, because it is the one gods-damned thing I can control. My fealty to the gods is forfeit. I would curse Mystra to the Hells, and the high horse she rode in on.”

She regretted it as soon as she’d said it. Not her feelings, those were justified. But saying them aloud, and saying them to Gale.
It was blasphemy, and by any right, Gale as her Chosen—ex Chosen, whatever—ought to abjure her for it. But instead he looked thoughtful as he listened, looking at her heretic mouth.
“I… understand you completely. That being said, I think it’s time we turn in for the night. I conjured you a tent near the willow tree so you and Astarion could have privacy, but… Thank you. For dinner. And conversation. The green tent is yours. We must rise with the lark on the morrow and find this ‘Nettie.’”

Chapter Text

Maybe Tav should’ve just fucked Astarion after all. Sure, Astarion was a tart, but he had a certain swagger. It wouldn’t mean anything to him.
Clearly it had been too long, and touch starvation was clearly doing a number on her head. Her dreams had been feverish collages of tangled bodies and whisky-coloured eyes glinting in firelight, swirling in the scent of magic and oak barrels.
Hells, she’d even seen herself from the outside, through someone else's eyes, tinged with desire. The lines of her neck, long and graceful, down the curvature where her jaw and her earlobe met, her pulsepoint… Flakes of magic swirling around her like starlings in murmuration, wafting on the air towards an outstretched hand. Then the fingers of that hand elongated, forming a fourth joint on each finger, the nail stretching out into a talon, then a white mask smiling out of the shadows, the neck of a woman with drow-dark skin dressed in black silk.

All the while, Tav had heard her own heart beating hard and slow, like an animal-skin drum being struck. She’d felt hungry for hearing it, hungry to absorb the swirling Weave around her, pulsing through her own veins, and she heard the mumbles of arcane spells from the lacings of her imagination.
Tav had woken from the dream in a feverish haze, lust and fear emulsified and thick, brushed onto her skin like oil paint. Now she sat with its remnants sticking to her.

When was the last time she’d been drunk enough to not care who got too close and saw what she really was? Too long. Pathetically long.
All the same, the inside of her green tent was stuffy when her eyes fluttered open just after dawn.
Somewhere in the back of her head throbbed remnants of Gale’s sermon on ceremorphosis. But flipping the tent door open, inviting the crisp morning air, felt like being revived. Surely if it were ceremorphosis that had made her tongue run rougher than shag carpet, the feeling wouldn’t subside by simply breathing fresh air?

Stiffness from the crash aside, Tav still felt… surprisingly normal?
Or, well... Her limbs felt heavy and her blood ran thick and hot for a solid few minutes after waking. Flitting dreamscapes in napes of necks and hair trailing between fingers played inside her eyelids in staccato as she blinked at the morning sun. Maybe it was the tadpole making her feel this discombobulated?
Drowsy, she ambled down to the river, splashing cold water on her face to wake herself up and rinse the dreams off.
Why was she feeling this way? The tadpole?
Either it was connecting her to Astarion’s debauched flutter of mental images involuntarily, or eating her brain into holed cheese. Like a pungent, aged Waterdhavian. Speaking of Waterdhavian…

Her eyes wandered over to Gale’s tent. But the tenant had already vacated his quarters and sat with his face in his hands by the fire, stirring something resembling porridge.
Gale looked worse for wear that morning, his face ashen and his brow drawn tight as he squinted at the light. Remembering his lecture on ceremorphosis the night before, a knot formed in her belly.
“Please tell me you’re just hungover from the whisky,” Tav mumbled as she sat next to him.
“Your wish is my regret,” he mumbled back without looking back at her, refusing to elaborate.
Don’t be articulate when you’re deflecting.

“What is it then? Don’t tell me you’re—”
“You look worse for wear?” Astarion chirped and plopped down between them. His chipper mood was a nail in Tav’s eye, especially as he didn’t even seem to acknowledge either coming on to her last night or remember the dousing she’d given him. Maybe he was still drunk; there was a small spill on his collar.

“You need cold water, Astarion,” she mumbled.
“What, even more?” he smiled with a sarcastic little squint. Tav nodded down his shirt.
“Your shirt. You wouldn’t want that wine there to stain your shirt permanently.”
Astarion turned stock still for an instant, seeming caught out, before peering down his shirt collar. “Ah yes! A little too much of the plonk last night, haha! But Gale, darling, you look like seven years of woe. Do you need the hair of the dog?”
“No. Can you two quarrel somewhere else?” Gale mumbled and rubbed his collarbones.
His chest? The chest was decidedly not the place you felt hungover.

“Gods, Gale, you look like death,” Shadowheart entered the conversation.
“I’m so glad that we’re all such good chums already, that we can address each other with such a lack of tact.”
“Come here, let’s have a look.”
Judging by Shadowheart’s pressed calm, it was obvious what her worry was: transformation. Just like Tav was worried about it.

She and Astarion stood behind their cleric-in-resident as she inspected Gale’s sclera and irises, the dilation of his pupils. The tadpole’s tail flicked in and out of view as fast as a viper could strike under his eyelid, and all three of them recoiled in horror.
“I’m gonna be sick,” Astarion complained and turned away with a small dry-heave.
“Gale… What happened to your chest?” Shadowheart mumbled, her concern so thick you could cut it like pudding.

Tav started chewing her thumb nail and looked over Shadowheart’s shoulder. Shadowheart was looking at Gale’s tattoo, the top edge sticking out from under his shirt. As the cleric ran her fingers over the black lines, Tav saw that the ink did not run even against the skin, but was slightly indented, pressed inwards, like the pyrogravure on her lute. What kind of tattoo was sunken in?

“It’s like you’ve been branded with an iron,” Shadowheart mumbled and ran her fingers along it. She began opening the front of Gale’s vestment to look closer. He tried to shy away, but Shadowheart wasn’t taking a no for an answer. She bared his chest and Tav looked transfixed. A circle, wreathed in smoke. But she was not staring at his chest due to his exposure, but at the bruise that tinted his skin black and blue under the brand. Like he’d been punched in the chest repeatedly, except… From within? Like something was furiously trying to beat its way out of his chest.

“Is that from your… bones repositioning?” Shadowheart mumbled and looked for more signs, but Gale pulled away from her prying hands and closed his vestments.
“I want to tell you it’s no cause for alarm, but I cannot.”
“This makes no sense,” Tav said, “None of us others have symptoms. Were you… infected before us, Gale?”
He looked up, letting Shadowheart feel his forehead at least. She immediately started mumbling healing spells over him, but they fell flat, and it made her mumble even faster. She sighed frustratedly and sat straight.

“I’m trying to ease the pain, but—”
“I thank you—and no, Tav, it’s not the tadpoles…”
“... Was it the whisky, then?”
“What whisky?” Shadowheart bit out. “Were you drinking something without checking it first?! What if it was poisoned?”
She let go of Gale and reached a hand towards Astarion, asking silently for her satchel. He handed her it and she started rifling through it with care. Small glass vials clinked daintily against each other. She’d picked some funny-looking plants earlier that night, so maybe she had some antidote in there? She found a small vial of a cloudy liquid, uncorked it with her teeth and put it to Gale’s lips, and he swallowed with clear disgust.

“I doubt the halfling counted on getting killed and poisoned his Wyvern on the off-chance his killer drank it,” Tav shook her head.
“You two had expensive whisky all to yourselves last night, and weren’t sharing it? Then you deserve being poisoned,” Astarion pouted.
“He’s not poisoned,” Shadowheart protested, “Because he’s not reacting to the potion I just gave him.”
“Ladies—” Gale tried to interject.
“How can you be sure it’s not the tadpole then?”
Gale took Shadowheart’s wrists in hands to stop her fussing, and looked at them with a pensive sigh.
“... I’ve had this since before we were abducted,” he finally admitted.
Shadowheart went very still. “Is it contagious?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he assured her with an attempt at levity, but he let her retract her hands. He squinted at the bright morning sun like it hurt him, “I would not subject any of you to any ails of the flesh knowingly. This problem is distinctly arcane, even though it presents itself like a bone-splitting ache.”
“... Are you sure you’re not just hungover?” Tav insisted, and he nodded with a calm smile.
“Quite sure. I may be a puny wizard or however you’d prefer to defame me, but it takes more than a few sips of spirits to topple me thus,” Gale smiled faintly with a dry sigh. He looked at them all in turn, as if weighing them all. “Alright. If I tell you, know that I do so as an act of trust. What I am about to confide in you all about, I have told no other living soul. Except my cat. This is… a vulnerable thing for me to speak on.”

He looked at them all in turn, seeing if any one of them would start to poke fun, but Shadowheart and Astarion looked to Tav. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight uncomfortably.
“Alright. Go on.”
“You see, I have this… condition. Very different from the parasite we share, but I assure you, just as deadly.”
“... Can it be cured?”
“No. It cannot be cured.” His voice was curt, bitter, and final. He did not want to invite suggestions of false hopes. “And believe you me, I have exhausted all options. I’ve left neither page nor stone unturned, reaching that conclusion. I can keep it under control, as indeed I have done for a significant amount of time…. But that was under different circumstances altogether. At home, in Waterdeep. It’s all rather complicated… What it comes down to is this: every so often I need to get my hands on a powerful magical item… so I can absorb the Weave inside.”

Tav blinked a few times at that.
“You eat magic? Just straight up raw magic?”
Is that why you were smelling my hair last night? Is that why I dreamed of hands reaching for the magic I exuded in my dream, like inhaling intoxicating fumes? Were our tadpoles connected and I felt you sniffing me a fresh-baked berry tart? Fuck, I am a stupid tart. For a second there I thought you might actually be interested in me.
“It’s… rather more complicated than that, but that is the jist of it,” Gale nodded with a squint. Clearly he was obfuscating a great deal here, and it was infuriating… and compelling her curiosity.
“... Care to elaborate? What happens if you ‘go hungry?’”
Gale swallowed down the horror at the mere thought. “In short… It begins with a simple biological degradation. Muscle spasms, disorientation, a slight ear-ringing… If left for too long…? Catastrophe.”

The last word rang in the air, spoken with a calamitous whisper. He couldn’t even utter it with his eyes open. Not his own death, that wasn’t what frightened him. He may be a self-important wizardly git, but the gravitas with which he called it a catastrophe implied his own demise would not stop with just him. In one word, Gale had gleaned a door he’d clearly kept closed for a long time. His eyes snapped open, two dark pools of despair. Not just for his own life, but clearly… that in confiding in them, that they would shun him.
He was even wringing his hands in anxiety. It made Tav’s heart ache with sympathy, and she crouched down to clasp his hands, to reassure him that he could keep going. He squeezed that hand gratefully, afraid to meet her eyes.

Then, she saw it. That tattoo, or firebrand more like, of his. That wisp of smoke trailing up his neck… it was incredibly faint, but she could see it trace all the way up his face. Grey veins under sun-kissed skin, leading towards his eye, like sepsis. It took bright morning light and sitting very close to him to see it, but this ‘condition’ was spreading in his blood. Her gaze flicked from his cheek to his eyes, and they transfixed her with their earnest plea. He needed to consume magic… but this magic was also consuming him in turn.

“It’s been some days since I last consumed an artefact,” he continued hurriedly, almost ashamed to admit the need, “since before we were abducted. And now, my craving returns to visit me. I have nothing on hand. I hate to ask you for help, especially since you three have already saved me once before, but it is vital, I daresay critical, that you help me find some arcane object to feed my condition with.”
“What sort of artefact?”
“At this juncture, even the smallest thing will do, to buy a little time. It’ll take days before my hunger reaches a critical point but… I hate to alarm you, but I don’t want to skirt the limits of this crisis to see just how far it can go. I’ve never gone longer than four days, and never by choice. Trust me on that.”
Astarion let out an impatient huff.
“What with the tadpoles, do we really have time to go treasure hunting?!”
“What ails me would not be negated by the infection,” Gale countered softly, “my form would merely alter around it. But losing my soul, my conscience…”
His voice trailed off as words failed him, but his point was quite obvious: a mind flayer would not have the wherewithal of a conscience to care if others got hurt.

“Shadowheart?” Tav turned to her. “We have yet to display a single symptom of ceremorphosis. Correct?”
The green-eyed elf sighed, her hands on her hips as she considered the situation too.
“Yes. I’m keeping my eye on you all. It makes no sense, but it’s as if we weren’t even infected at all, as long as I ignore the little bastard moving around under my eyelid intermittently. The way we seem to be able to enter each other's minds… I’ve never heard of anyone infected with a mind flayer parasite being able to do that. Have you, Gale?”
“No.”
“Whatever is going on… I think our tadpoles aren’t your bog standard death sentence.”
Tav nodded gravely.
“So… A week before ceremorphosis is complete… and seems like Gale’s fuse burns faster than that, judging by your state. Then I think we can ascertain which of the two is more pressing just now.”

“Is that really a risk we are willing to take?” Astarion interjected, arms around himself. Tav looked at him and shrugged.
“Well, if you want to go and seek out this healer Nettie, go right ahead. I’m not your mistress and I won’t stop you. You are free to go as you please. Through the goblin-infested woods. By yourself.”
Astarion’s face drained of all expression at the implication; lost its fanciful façade entirely. Cold and beautiful, like moonstone. Tav looked at him head on.
There you are. That’s you, under that effeminate, flirtatious persona. A frightened performer, ever weighing your options. Hello, Astarion. Pleasure to finally meet you.

Gale interrupted.
“Please, there is no need to fall out over this. I know I am asking a lot… but I promise you, the consequences far outweigh the inconvenience. I would not ask, were it not imperative.”
“If it helps, Astarion… there could be something shiny down there too,” Shadowheart chimed in. Tav was surprised; she hadn’t expected the dark-haired cleric to be onboard with a little treasure-hunting.
Astarion made an annoyed little huff, snapping back into character effortlessly, but he didn’t move to leave.
“Alright, fine! But if I sprout tentacles, yours are the first heads I’m cracking.”
“You are… most fortunate,” Tav said very deliberately, turning to Gale, “that I can’t ever tell people no when they ask me for help. And even luckier still… that we’re sitting on top of a shrine.”

Chapter Text

It took them a little while to get strapped in and ready to delve into the old temple.
There was scant signage and only one vague statue outside hinting at just who the temple was built in honour of. The plaque below was infuriatingly unhelpful; barely legible and in some long-lost tongue that none of them spoke, not even their resident ‘scholar of exceptional acclaim.’
Gale seemed lighter of mind, and moved with more gusto than at breakfast.
He must be heartened to know that someone, even strangers, would help him. I’d be perkier for it too.

They did find a door to get inside. Another locked door. Tav had managed to sift out a small lockpicking kit from their dead assailants’ packs and jammed a small chisel into the keyhole. She began to twist, feeling the little tool yielding in the struggle between Tav’s unstoppable will and the door’s implacable contumacy.
Astarion watched in disgusted horror for a few moments before interfering.
“You ham-fisted butcher,” he tutted and shoved Tav aside, “Let me.”

Ah yes. I forgot we had a cat burglar in our midst.
“Say, Astarion,” Shadowheart mused, arms crossed, “You have a very practical knowledge of crime for a magistrate.”
“Oh, you didn’t tell them, dearie?” Astarion chirped in surprise to Tav as he delicately coaxed and manipulated the lock, “Tav and I had a little heart-to-heart last night in the bath. She managed to suss out that I am, in fact, an ex-magistrate. And believe you me, my current profession is much more suitable to our current predicament.”
“Don’t talk about you and I ‘in the bath’ like that, or I’ll curb-stomp you.”
“Don’t flirt while I'm working.”

“Oh, I absolutely knew you weren’t a magistrate, Astarion, but I thought you were—”
“I know, I’ve been told I exude a certain energy to those of exquisite taste. That’s just all natural talent. This is an acquired skill, and one Tav was fumbling most deplorably.”
Tav merely chortled at that.
“And where did you learn to master this dextrous craft?” Gale wondered, leaning against the wall by the door.
“Oh, I cut my teeth on your mother’s corset lacing, darling,” Astarion purred venomously as he smirked back at his target, “I had ample practice, given her generous anatomy.”
Gale looked positively gobsmacked at that, but Tav cackled in a most unladylike manner, and she nudged Gale’s arm hard with a wicked grin.
“Get it, Gale? Because you need to be a burglar to break into her—”
“Yes, Tav, I got it, thank you.”

“Come now, darling, don’t be irksome,” their master thief mumbled to his undertaking. The lock parted under Astarion’s fingers with a click and he made a delighted little noise, smiling up at them from his crouched position.
“And that’s how you don’t break our only kit,” he smiled with a little cock of the head Tav’s way. She stuck her tongue at him and he blew her a sarcastic kiss.

The door opened with a creak so loud it could wake the dead, and a gust of wind blew at them from within. They recoiled, preparing for something to lunge at them from out of the darkness. The harsh light of day lit their way some small distance in, before the darkness conquered and swallowed it.
Shadowheart conjured a small light, dancing above their heads, illuminating the stone floor and walls in a cold blue-white hue that seemed to drain away all colour.

“I can feel magic in here,” Tav noted, and both Gale and Shadowheart hummed in assent.
“It smells like… antimony and burnt sugar.”
Gale blinked for a moment. “Didn’t take you for being so sensorial… Octavia?”
“Not my name.”
He let out a noise, somewhere between a chuckle and an annoyed huff. She appreciated that he tried to cut the tension though; this darkness was so compact it felt like a film on her skin. Not that it helped much. Their voices didn’t even echo in here.

She could see well enough in the dark, but she couldn’t linger on the banter. Something in Tav’s stomach told her she needed to keep feelers out too. That something might be waiting in the dark, or stick out unexpectedly. So she put her palm tentatively to the dusty, rough-hewn stone to feel her way.
“Look out for bugs,” Astarion mumbled, “I hate bugs.”
Gale shuddered.
“It’s in the very walls… How can the Weave feel so potent here, despite this place looking like it hasn’t heard a prayer in centuries?”
“Well, it certainly bodes well for finding you a meal,” Astarion mumbled with a little smirk. “I can’t feel anything, except stale air.”

Shadowheart hissed a slight shudder. “... Maybe this place is cursed?”
A tremble went through them all, chilling their blood like ice. The dancing lights even flickered.
“No,” Shadowheart corrected herself with a fake smile, “A curse wouldn’t allow for greenery to grow atop it… surely.”

They slowly began to make their way deeper in. It had hardly been some grand entrance they had found, but even so, this space was cramped. Like a servant's passage.
They were in some form of corridor it seemed, winding and narrow. No windows lit their way. The stone walls were so thick, you couldn’t even hear the world outside, even with the door swinging open.
Just as Tav thought that, she heard the way behind them slam shut, and they were surrounded by the pressing blackness, staved off only by Shadowheart’s dancing lights.
Tav’s hand on the wall paid off: she found a sconce with a cobwebbed torch in its hold. She lit it and held it aloft as the began making their way further in.

The walls were covered in old hieroglyphs and inscrutable murals, faded with time, covered with dust or, more ominously, scratched out in places in long, anguished single-stroke gashes. Like someone had tried to claw onto the walls for purchase.
It took them less than a minute of ambling inside for them to come across a pile of bones. Its clothes had rotted away and the bones were so brittle they seemed to turn to dust as you looked at them.
“They just died right here? Unarmed, no sign of injury, and no one to bury them?” Tav remarked. “Like they just slouched against the wall and… tried to not inconvenience anyone.”
“Gale can’t relate,” Astarion quipped and nudged the tutting wizard with his elbow.

“‘No sign of injury,’ my arse—look at the walls,” Shadowheart mumbled and leaned closer to the gashes, putting her fingers delicately to them. Four parallel lines, like the fingers of a hand.
“They fought, alright.”
“Is it just me or do you hear… echoes? Where are they coming from?” Tav muttered and strained her eyes to pierce the darkness ahead. No one answered; they were too tense, listening out for movements.
“... Let’s not linger. I prefer feeling like I’m the threat in the shadows,” Astarion mumbled and urged them on. “But let’s be quiet. We do not want to anger the dead.”
“... Why would you say that, you ponce?!”
“You were the one who wanted to go in here, Tav!”
“Shhh!” Gale hissed. “Sound travels in places like these. Speak only when necessary.”

Shadowheart reached her hand out, and one of the glowing marbles of light wandered off ahead of them, quietly lighting the way. The shadows began to murmur and hum, like a swarm of agitated wasps, but nothing moved. Still… something was stirring out there. There was something watching. Something… evil.
Tav felt it like a bass note, and she felt it in her lungs.

The corridor meandered onward, but there were doors off to the side. The light hovered for a moment, as though it had heard something to give it pause, and then a shadow reached for it and snuffed it out.
A low, ominous baritone resounded, bounding down the corridor towards them like a warning, and hit them like a gust of wind, extinguishing the remaining lights.
Gale chimed up, his voice amplified tenfold, as he conjured a fire bolt to dispel the darkness stronger than the dainty dancing lights, and then a shape lunged out of the dark, roaring like a storm wind, filling the passage from floor to ceiling, its eye sockets hollow and maw agape.
All but Gale crouched down instinctively, too frozen in fear to stumble backwards.

Gale moved to the front in one stride; his arm swung reflexively in an arch, turning the flame into a fiery disc and pushed back. He roared arcane spells in defiance of the dark, a pyromancer wielding flame like the blade and the shield.
The gaping shadow-mouth broke upon it like a squall upon a cliff, pushing like a minotaur straining against a wall, howling with bottomless hate.

Then it subsided like a flood, dissipating in smoke and burnt flakes of parchment, the silence so deep it hummed again. Like the shadows were regrouping, having tested their defences once. But there were the gasps of the group too.
“What the bleeding hells was that?” Shadowheart mumbled.
“A boobytrap, I think,” Gale said and brushed the soot off his sleeve. “This place is more dangerous than I thought. Eyes sharp, there’s bound to be more.”
“A good sign,” Astarion shrugged, “Why boobytrap a place if there’s nothing to guard?”
“It attacked the light,” Tav pointed out. She could no longer feel seething eyes upon them now that no offending flames disturbed the dark.
“Then we must move without it. Sheathe your blades, or we’ll stab each other.”

Another deep, low echo reverberated towards them, but this time it sounded more… distinct? Tav could almost fathom the shape of words in it.
“I don’t think we’re alone down here.”
“Wait, who was that? Shadowheart?” Gale whispered.
“Tav.”
“I can’t see a blasted thing! Curse your elven eyes!”

Of course the human was blind as a bat in here. Elves saw well in the dark, and tieflings passably. Poor Gale was at their mercy in this pitch.
Tav looked at him, a faint outline in the blackout. His eyes were wide and black with worry, flickering in the dark with nothing to focus on. Astarion spotted her lingering eyes. He was so pale he almost shone like a pearl, but his wine-coloured eyes glinted dark, with a strange reflective quality Tav hadn’t noticed before, and Shadowheart’s eyes were so pale in the darkness that they appeared as colourless as vapour.

Tav reached out to Gale, found his hand in hers. He flinched ever so slightly, startled at the sudden touch, but found himself quickly. Slowly, she placed Gale’s hand on her shoulder, showing him to hold on to her and follow her, and he understood implicitly. His thumb grazed her neck, and Tav felt every peachy little hair there stand straight up. She wanted to lean into the touch and sink right into his palm.
Don’t do this to me in the dark. Fuck’s sakes.

It felt like aeons of time passed as they navigated the dark. Tav in the lead, Gale in the middle with Astarion and Shadowheart at the rear. Maybe it was only minutes, really. Tav’s heart pounded so hard against her ribs that she could hear scant else. And Gale’s hand on her left shoulder was distracting. His hand was warm, and his hand rested against her like they were dancing together; comfortably, consciously, not quite caressing but not obstructive or intrusive either. He’d held her neck with that hand last night and it had made Tav’s thoughts turn sluggish and dull with want. She’d flinched away then so as to not lose her head from the touch.
Now, she was holding on to the feeling of that hand lest she lost her composure here in the dark, like a lifeline.

They rounded a corner and she spied a weird shape of light on the stone floor. She stopped and crouched, reaching back to halt the others also. Gale stopped too, so close that she could feel his breath on her neck, and she swallowed hard.
Keep it together, Lunet.
Her foot nudged something. Soft, dense… heavy.
She looked down and recoiled in horror, nearly stumbling backwards, toppling Gale and Astarion in her wake. The hand not bracing against the wall clasped at her mouth to subdue a startled scream.
Empty, dead eyes stared up at her from the floor, his face contorted into a mask of horror. This corpse was fresh.
Hands steadied her, and then came their gasps when they saw what startled her. Tav breathed deep to steady herself before stepping carefully over the dead man and pushing on. She heard Gale stumble slightly, but the last two made no sound.

The light emanated from under a crooked door to her right, flickering. Must be a torch? Or a lantern of some sort?
She heard steps moving across the floor, dragging slightly, from within.
Astarion came up on her side, moving past her and slightly in front, pressing his ear to the door, right by the handle. Then he tilted his head with a slight strain, squinting hard. For a moment it was hard to tell just what he was doing, but then his thoughts bounded to them all, as he used the tadpole to consciously open their connection of the mind.

”I hear four sets of steps. Two are heavy… One wounded, limping… they have a steel-tipped staff or cane.”
”How can you hear that?!” Tav shot back, but Astarion’s mind closed off. Either he lost the connection, or cut it. She tried to pry, but he recoiled from her, squirming his thoughts away from the attempt.
”Attack or sneak past?” Shadowheart thought.

Their conversation got interrupted as one of the people in there spoke up. Their voices mingled, harrowed and hurried as they argued.
“Those bastids are still out there! They killed Gimblebock!” came a man’s throaty voice.
“They ain’t gettin’ past the door!” another chuckled. “Locked her proper, ain’t no budging’er.”
Astarion let out a small huff through his nose at that.
“We can’t wait for’em to leave, Quenella’s bleedin’ out. She’ll die if we don’t git out. Feckin’ traps—”
“Screw them! This place is out to kill us all!”
“Look, Andorn, either we starve in ‘ere—or the boobytraps git us—or we go out there and catch the feckers off-guard! They don’t know we’s down ‘ere!”

“We can’t bleedin’ find our way out without lights and the bones are out for us! This is the one feckin’ room that ain’t spouted fire or had bonies waitin’ in it.”
“Yet.”
“This place… is cursed.”
“Wot is it wiv’ you an’ curses?!”
“Shut up, Corrin! Look, Gimblebock is gone, aight? And we ain’t found what we came for. We can stay, get the thing and take a bigger cut, or—”
“Won’t be nothin’ to cut if we’s dead!” a woman’s voice interrupted, strained from pain.
“Keep yer voice down, idjit, or you’ll wake the dead! Tommin might still find a way out—”
Then came stomps towards the door, and Astarion shimmied backwards.
“He’s either gone wiv’out us or dead already! Feck this shite, I’m goin’ after the bastids!” the throaty voice said, just inside the door. Tav’s heart beat so hard she was certain the man inside would hear it.
“Don’t! The bonies’ll git ya!”
“Feck’em! Let’em come, but I ain’t dyin’ ‘ere!”
The door slammed open and a large, rugged man stumbled out, heading the other way in an agitated jog with his torch held high.
“Andorn! Andorn, git back ‘ere!”

But the large man didn’t look back, or even around, as he headed to his right, straight ahead of the crouched eavesdroppers. He rounded a corner up ahead and disappeared entirely; his torchlight, even the sounds of his boots. As soon as he’d gone out of sight, the darkness swallowed him whole. Like he’d been a phantom all along, a trick of the dark, dissipating the moment he was out of view. Going the wrong way too, Tav remarked, but in this dark you’d be hard-pressed to not get disoriented.
More steps hurried to the door, and Astarion began to lean backwards; the odds of them getting lucky and avoiding detection a second time were slim to none.
“Leave’im. If he wants to die down ‘ere, let’im. There’s still treasure to be found,” came the woman’s voice. The steps stopped, then turned and faded away.

Whatever the treasure hunters inside were here for, they’d not found it yet. Judging by the sound of their voices, they had huddled around something.
Astarion dared a glance around the door frame.
”They’re not looking. Not a sound. One by one.”
They held as Astarion danced across the open door like a playful shadow. He moved with such ease and grace, it made Tav feel cumbersome in comparison, but she made ready to move. Astarion leaned up against the open door on the other side, pressing it to the wall so it couldn’t rattle by accident.
Just as she began to leap, Astarion’s hand darted up to halt her, and she nearly fell over.

“I tell yous, when I get my hands on them bastids who killed Gimblebock, I’ll throttle’em like chickins,” came a voice, drawing nearer to the open door.
If the man came into the corridor, no matter which direction he took, he’d be falling over them. Astarion unsheathed his dagger and moved past the reach of the door, becoming one with the dark.
“Leave the door,” came the voice that must be this ‘Quenella.’ Her voice sounded strained and groggy.
“Makes me queasy, all ajar like that. Anyfin’ could barge in,” he mumbled, leaning out and fumbling for the handle. He seemed too scared to risk reaching more than his arm out.
“We need to suss out where this book is at,” they heard a third voice faintly.
Astarion put a finger around the edge of the door and helped it along a little, and the man pulled it to with a slam.
“Feckin’ bonies,” was the last thing they heard before his steps faded again.

The others scurried past the door before anything else could occur and drew a sigh of relief. When they reached the corner where this ‘Andorn’ had turned left and disappeared, they turned right. Shadowheart began taking tally as soon as they were out of earshot.
“So we’ve got one treasure hunter on the loose, three back in that room—”
“—boobytraps and ‘bonies,’ whatever that pertains to,” Gale finished.
“This place guards something, clearly,” Shadowheart concluded, “And so we should stay on-guard also.”
“What’s that?” Astarion mumbled, his hand idly stroking a spot on the wall. It cracked and slid open. Gale, blind as ever, flinched at the sound.
“What in the hells kind of temple comes with secret passages and boobytraps?”
“A good one,” Shadowheart smiled wryly and peered in.

They made their way in, one by one, making sure to keep ears perked up for lack of light.
“The treasure hunters said something about a book,” Gale mumbled as they walked. “Perhaps a tome of enchantment of some sort.”
“Would that sate the hunger?” Tav asked.
“Oh yes, it would be most apt.”
“... Your condition is proving very expensive.”
“I obtained it in Waterdeep. Nothing there comes cheap,” Gale answered with a dry smile. “Although it has decluttered my tower most effectively.”
Tav chortled and placed his hand back on her shoulder so he could follow her in.

Astarion led the way now, dagger drawn in case of surprises. But soon, he stopped, poised in some sort of archway.
“A chamber of some sort,” he mumbled. “There’s a sarcophagus up ahead.”
He took a step forward, but froze again instantly as the stone floor clicked ominously. Then they all flinched as all the sconces lit as one.
“Pressure plates,” Astarion explained, moving his foot cautiously.
“At least now we can see.”
Tav looked to Gale. Now, in the firelight, she could see streaks of soot where his fire shield had been pressed back towards him. He swallowed and retracted his hand from her shoulder.

They looked around, taking in the chamber. There wasn’t just one sarcophagus, but multiple. Although the one he had pertained to sat in the middle of the room, whereas the others were placed along the walls. The middle one was larger and more ornate, and raised onto some sort of pedestal. The ceiling was arched but all the arches drew inwards towards the centre of the room, pointing right at the figure hewn into the stone lid. It looked almost like the roof over a canopy bed. It was an odd architectural choice, but it did frame the final resting place of whoever lay within the stone coffin.

“That one is bound to hold any treasure,” Shadowheart pointed out and started walking towards it. Astarion stopped her.
“And more likely to be rigged for the likes of us. Allow me.” He looked very closely where he placed his feet as he snuck up to the sarcophagus. His right foot hovered over a stone tile for a moment, considering it. Then he stepped to the left of it instead.
He glanced upwards at the stone overhang over his head.
Then Astarion hunkered down, stuck the dagger in his boot shaft, and very delicately moved his hands across the stone surface, searching for hairpin triggers or keyholes. Anything that could get him killed, or into the stone chest.
“Can you guys not watch me while I do this? I need to concentrate, and it’s hard when people are looking over my shoulder,” Astarion hissed.

Tav turned about, looking at the faded murals in the firelight, the less ornate sarcophagi along the walls.
Gale came to stand between her and Shadowheart.
“Can you read the plaques below?” Tav asked him.
“No. Same lost tongue as the others. This place was not meant for the living.”
“Then you lot’ll fit right in,” came a strange man’s voice. They turned to see the man who had stormed past them as he left his comrades. He must’ve hidden behind the sarcophagus when they came in, because he was standing across it to Astarion, crossbow directed right between his eyes.

Astarion stood now, frozen, hands raised.
“You’s the lot that killed Gimblebock, ain’t yous?”
“Yes,” Tav interjected, making sure the stranger knew who the leader was, “Put the crossbow down or you’ll get to meet him.”
“You’ve muddled up who’s got the trump cards ‘ere, sweetheart,” the man grinned. His smile was gapped and brown from snuff. “Pretty boy ‘ere’s gonna unlock the box, or he can share one wiv the other bonies.”
“I must warn you,” Astarion said, “I’m afraid I don’t fare well under pressure."
Tav caught the slight inflection in his voice at once, but didn’t so much as twitch. Astarion’s foot moved slightly to the right but didn’t touch down.
The pressure plate Astarion nearly had stepped on. He’s going to trigger it.

“Too feckin’ bad, pointy-ears. You’s gonna do as you’s told, or you won’t be so pretty no more.”
“Alright,” Astarion said softly with a nod. “I am going to crouch down… So that I can see better.”
The man flinched and raised the crossbow higher. “No funny business, or I’ll spit roast ya when the bolt’s run you through.”
“I need both eyes for the job, darling.”
Tav squinted and strained, trying to repeat Astarion’s feat with the tadpoles earlier.
”Get ready to duck on Astarion’s say,” she thought as hard as she could.

Shadowheart and Gale both threw her glances, looking more like they deferred to her as their leader, than as if they were making a plan telepathically. The man must not suspect a thing.
Astarion sank to his knees and began working the locking mechanisms again, and the man with the crossbow started moving around to his side, crossbow trained on Astarion the entire time.
“Yous thought you lot were so clever, huh? Stickin’ it to Gimblebock an’ taking the book for yerselves? Saves me from killin’ ‘im. Bet none of yous was expecting ol’ Andorn to stick it right back, eh? When I get the book, me an’ pretty little green-eyed princess there are gonna make our way out and—”
“Finish that sentence, you filth,” Shadowheart hissed, “and I’ll show you just how much rejection hurts.”

The lid of the sarcophagus sprung ajar as Astarion finished his task.
“Open wide,” Andorn instructed him, and the elf obeyed. As Andorn bent over the edge to peer inside, Astarion crouched back down, hands raised.
“All yours,” he bowed his head slightly. Andorn took a hand off the crossbow and started rifling between what sounded like desiccated boneshards, faster and faster.
“It’s not ‘ere! It’s s’posed to be ‘ere!”

Quick as a snake, Astarion drew the dagger from his boot shaft and struck Andorn just under the ribs. The man cried out and fired the crossbow, sending the shot so far to the side it clanged limply against the stone wall.
Using the hilt of his dagger almost like leverage, Astarion began to hoist Andorn into the sarcophagus and the man, trying to keep from being slashed open, went along with the movement until he fell in with a scream. Astarion retracted, stepped onto the pressure plate, triggering the boobytrap he’d spotted there. He threw himself aside as flames spewed out from the stone overhang, engulfing Andorn in flames where he lay in the sarcophagus.

Astarion scurried backwards and dragged the others back with him. The smell of burnt flesh mixed with the roaring flames and the screaming thug. The trap ceased, but Andorn still burned, hoisting himself clumsily out over the edge. Tav reached for her tiny crossbow and aimed for his head to give a killing blow and save him the agony.
The screams flickered out like a candle, leaving only his burning body hanging over the edge.
“Let’s be done with this before his smelly little friends come wondering what the racket was. That sarcophagus in the middle was just a diversion,” Astarion mumbled. “An ostentatious chest to draw graverobbers in, only to spring the trap and kill them. If there’s treasure here, it’s bound to be more discrete.”
“You’re awfully level-headed considering how you just killed a man.”
The elf shrugged and looked at her as though Tav were daft. “Him or me, darling. Besides… You killed him.”

Gale stumbled and sat straight down. They all cried out and went to him.
“Sorry, I felt a sudden light-headedness.”
“Right,” Tav said and started looking around, slightly more frantically.
She stretched her hand out and started to scan the room. She’d felt the magic in Gale’s swirling rune sigil, and she’d sensed the traces of magic in the temple upon entry after all; maybe she could feel any other magical objects nearby. If her magic felt like being cooperative today, that was.
“There could be more traps,” Astarion warned her.

Tav tried to concentrate, to open her head. Then she felt a hand between her shoulder blades; small, cool. Shadowheart. She was mumbling prayers and Tav felt the strangest surge of lightness, of focus. Shadowheart was guiding her, amplifying her.
She put her hands on the lid of the nearest sarcophagus, trying to smell that smell again, the one like burnt sugar and lit matches. Nothing.
Another.
Another. Still nothing.
Then… the faintest tickle in her fingertips… in the space between two stone coffins. She ran her hand over the stone, looking for something, anything, that might spark harder, like that magical stink.
Great, now I’m sniffing for magical baubles for the stupid, hot wizard man. It’s like I polymorphed into an aardvark again—a bard-vark if you will.

Her fingers began to prickle, like the faintest sense of lightning. A loose stone in the wall.
She beckoned Astarion over, while Shadowheart helped Gale to his feet again.
“What are the odds that this is boobytrapped too?”
“Not zero, it never is with these things. But it’s easy to hide trigger points in intricate patterns. The eye is so busy with taking in beauty, but the plain has a harder time obscuring the danger within.”
“Sage wisdom, Astarion,” Gale mumbled as he stumbled over.
“The metaphors sure are coming up thick this year,” Tav mumbled as she watched Astarion pry the stones around her target aside.
“Like you’d know anything about being plain,” he chirped gallantly.
“Shut up,” Tav shot back, but she hid a grin.
“He meant me, darling.”

He coaxed the stone out, revealing a small cavity within. There was something magical in there, she could sense it. Tav went to stick her hand in for a feel, but Astarion slapped her hand away.
“You only just got your lute back. I doubt Gale can regrow your hand.”
He took his dagger out and ran it along the edges, feeling for any triggers. Reassured, he stuck his own hand in and began to tug at something.
“Gods, it’s heavy. It’s like it’s made of solid metal,” he grunted, trying to get both hands into the cache and inching it out with his fingertips.

He wrangled a parcel out, wrapped in a crumbling shroud. He swept the covering aside and revealed a book made in solid gold, glimmering softly in the torchlight.
They all let out a small gasp as they took the splendour in. The gold reflected the torchlight back up at their faces, like the ripples of light bouncing off water.
It had an almost comically large lock around it, way too large considering the book itself only seemed to have… seven or so pages when looked at from the side? Each page a solid slab of red gold.
Tav inspected the coverings closer. It had that same strange, lost language carved upon it as the plaques they’d found scattered around the place, interspersed with intricate little golden skulls and runes using bones as staves. Wealth and death combined. How dark.

She ran her finger along the spine and almost shuddered with the power of the magic within.
“You can’t eat that,” Astarion stated dryly. “There’s no way. You can’t eat solid gold, and even if you could, I won’t let you.”
“We should open it,” Tav mumbled, “See what in the world could be so important it’s not etched in stone, but solid gold.”
Gale bristled slightly.
“I question the wisdom of that.”
“What? It’s just a book. No harm ever came from… reading a book.”
She grunted slightly as she turned the book in her hands. Gale rubbed his chest, a pained look in his eyes.
“... Ere too long ago I would’ve said the same. But you’d be just as mistaken as I.”

Tav ignored him. She didn’t mean to, but… The beauty of the book was simply transfixing.
Her hand went to the disproportionately large lock, pressing her palm to it. She heard a faint buzzing in her ears, something between a chorus of whispers and the humming of a beehive. The hum bled into her skin, her bones.
“Tav, careful,” Shadowheart warned her. “There’s something about that book… It’s not just magic. It’s something divine.”
Tav knew she ought to pull back. The current pulling her in wasn’t just her own reactions, it was a force outside herself. The book wanted to be opened, it beckoned her to open it, pleaded, coaxed. It whispered of wealth, enough wealth to be yourself without anyone being able to say anything snide, or daring to cut you out. It whispered of every door opening, if only she opened the book first.

Attuning herself to the arcane lock came as easy as turning over in bed, as breathing, as slipping under water. She felt basked in sunlight reflected on gold, her whole being reverberated with a note that she could sing. She drew breath and let it out of her own mouth, and the book surged with contentment.
And then the talons of gold that kept it closed snapped open and the book opened in her lap.
Gale’s face came into view.
“Tav… Tav, look away,” he warned her, “Don’t read from it.”
She couldn’t stop herself. As soon as her vocal cords resounded, the words formed in her mouth and spilled of their own accord. Gale’s hand came to her mouth, trying to cover it, to stop her.
“Tav, don’t lose control, reclaim yourself from it. Close the book, Tav.”

She couldn’t. She felt as though the spine of the book had fused to her skin. She couldn’t part with it anymore than she could sever her own hand.
Then Gale was there, in her mind, splitting her head with his presence, using his will to amplify her own. But there was something else… something in there with him. Not a person… A chasm that swallowed every thought that skirted it, that would not let so much as light escape. Between the tug of the book and the surge of that blackness, Tav felt like she was being ripped in half. That chasm within Gale felt nothing but bottomless hunger, something so vast that it could swallow—

Gale’s hands covered her own and he slammed to book shut with a clang so loud it made them all hunch down and cover their ears.
Then he ripped the book from Tav’s grasp, pressing it to his chest, and in a flash of octarine and purple above Gale’s heart, it was gone. Consumed.
He shuddered for some moments, then they both slouched over each other, fighting for breath.
“I told you, you must not read from the book. Trust me. Somebooks consume you more than you do them.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself,” she gasped. “My magic—I couldn’t—”
Gale gave her a faint smile. “I understand. That blaze of wild magic is magnetic.”
“How are you feeling?” she asked, looking at him. He was already looking less ashen, and the dullness had left his eyes. “You look better.”
“Oh, it hit the spot. It was a potent source,” he mumbled, and swallowed hard. “I am quite sated… for a few days at least.”
“Thank you. You saved me.”
He stroked her arm, and the softness of the gesture made her breath catch again. “We’re even, then.”

“You read aloud from it,” Shadowheart said, her voice thick with dread, and Tav flinched back from how closely she’d leaned into Gale.
“What was I saying?”
“Nothing any of us could understand.”
“That’s… ominous.”
Tav went to wipe sweat from her brow, when she realised she was holding something in her hand. Small, metallic. A key?
A gold key, its bow another gilded skull with its eternal grin. Where did it come from?

She held it out, showing it to the others.
“It… just appeared in my hand.”
“You better hand it over, then,” came a woman’s voice from the archway, dripping with malice.

Chapter Text

The three remaining treasure hunters stood poised in the archway, but only two crossbows were trained on them. The woman who’d spoken stood slightly behind two men. She was pale as death, leaning on her quarterstaff, and her hair was both sticking out in loose strands and smeared to the blood-mingled sweat at her temples. These three had been in a fight not too long ago, and while the other two looked fit as fiddles, this woman was probably not going to make it before she got within range of the healer Damays and Nymessa had talked about.

“Where’s the book?” she said, sweat glistening on her lip. Tav glanced down and spotted the wound on her abdomen. A shattered bone pipe stuck out of it, but not her own; she’d been stabbed with a desiccated bone shard, and her thick gambeson was stained with blood so dark it was almost black.
“Gone,” Tav answered at once. “Destroyed. And… probably for the best, honestly.”
The woman who must be Quenella squinted angrily. Her breath became laboured with agitation, trying to breathe around her impalement.

“You feck-shites. First you kill Gimblebock, and then you destroy the one feckin’ thing in this grave-hoard worth anyfin’?”
“Gimblebock attacked us,” Tav tried to correct her, but the men raised their crossbows in warning against any contradictions.
“Sure, sweetheart. You stumble on the one temple in the area, are innocently beset upon by a halfling, an’ merely murder our lads in self-defence… An’ now you wot? Just fell down a hole an’ right into the spot where the book was? Get fecked.”
“... Technically we dropped from the sky? The rest is pretty spot on, actually,” Tav said and shrugged, and Shadowheart glared at her making light of the situation.

“I’m not havin’ any of yer bullshit. Give us the key.”
“I can heal that wound for you,” Shadowheart piped up, “Just let us go after. There’s no need for violence.”
The man on Quenella’s left stepped forward and aimed straight at her.
“I’ll bolt ya to the wall before you lay one hand on’er, murderer,” he hissed.
“‘More violence,’ you mean? I see you lot made a hog-roast out of Andorn.”
Tav shot Andorn’s body a glance; he was still smoking and he had one of her small bolts right through the eye—the only spot on the face weak enough for one killing shot. It looked gruesome, but it had been a mercy. But try telling these people that. Any and all self-defence against them, they’d call an attack. It didn’t look like they’d be able to make it out of this without a fight.

“Listen,” Tav tried in a soothing voice, “We are four fit fighters… and only two with you. You’re in no position to fight, madam. If we come to an altercation, it’ll only end one way. All we want now… is to leave.”
“Not wiv’ our treasure, you’re not.”
“There is no treasure.”
“Feck off.”
Voices raised, Tav tried to shout over them to bring the tensions down, but before she managed to dispel it, a bone-piercing shriek pierced the dark behind the treasure hunters.
Something tackled Quenella from the behind, and she toppled one of the crossbowmen on her way down. He fired the bolt and Tav ducked in behind the sarcophagus in the centre of the floor, reaching for her own little crossbow at the hip.

She glanced over the edge to the commotion in the archway. Quenella had fallen face-first to the floor and pressed the bone-pipe lodged in her belly even deeper. She’d been turned on her back and was being pummelled into a pulp by a rusted blade… in the hands of what must be the ‘bonies’ Tav had overheard them talking about.
Some form of expired scribe, judging by the disintegrating long robes that hung loose from its form.
There were four of them, unnaturally lanky and twitchy as they moved.
“Fucking, bleeding hells,” she heard Shadowheart exclaim next to her. “Kill anything that moves!”
Astarion fell in on Tav’s other side, leaning over the burnt body of Andorn as he shot.
By the time Tav got enough wherewithal to join the onslaught, the three treasure hunters were gone, killed by the uneasy dead, and their murderers were wandering towards them in janky steps, screaming hollowly through cracked, dry teeth.

Shadowheart slung firebolt after firebolt, raining fire down the line, blowing off arms and shattering ribs, but more kept coming.
“Shadows save us,” she mumbled and reached for her mace, and then she threw herself into the fray, swinging her mace like she was felling a tree. Astarion joined in, but he grabbed Quenella’s fallen quarterstaff—no flesh to pierce with a blade, I guess—and went swinging too.
Panicked, Tav leapt over the sarcophagus, staying close to Shadowheart as she provided cover fire.

When no more undead scribes came at them, all three looked at eachother. Sweaty, out of breath, harrowed by the carnage of their would-be assailants, reduced to what Tav could only liken to jellied veal on the floor.
“Let’s the get hells out of this place,” Astarion gasped.
“Tav, if you have magic too, I could’ve really used another spellslinger,” Shadowheart bit out, wiping her forehead free of soot and sweat. She picked some bone crumbs out of the head of her mace, wiping her fingers against her hips.
“I… I can’t. My magic is too unpredictable. I can’t control it. You say what happened on the nautiloid—I grew a snout and nearly turned you and the githyanki into marsupials. I can’t use magic in battle. Why do you think I’m such a crack shot?”

Shadowheart’s shoulders slouched.
“Bleeding hells. Gale will have to teach you to use it somehow.”
“Agreed. Come on, Gale.”
He didn’t reply. In fact, he hadn’t even interjected any quips about his acumen for teaching magic. And Tav couldn’t recall seeing him in the fight either.
The silence made Tav’s blood run cold. She looked back but couldn’t see him.
Now is a really bad time for you to shut up, Gale.

“Gale?”
“Gale?!”
Tav started around the sarcophagus again and nearly tripped over him, feeling at once gripped by a stiff coldness in her limbs, deathly cold coils like a swarm of hands, reaching out to snuff her life out.
What in the hells?!

And there he lay, in a pool of his own blood, with a stray crossbow bolt right through his solar plexus. His eyes stared emptily at the ceiling, pupils blown so wide she could swear she saw into the back of his head. Empty of life.
Tav had fallen to her knees instantly, shaking him, slapping his cheeks.
And that bonechill wandered up her hands, her forearms upon touching him, and dark coils of necrotic smoke began to rise from his body.
“No! Gale, come on! Wake up! GALE?!” She looked around. “SHADOWHEART, HELP!”

Hands were on her shoulders, pulling her away by the scruff of her clothes.
“He’s dead, Tav!” Astarion grunted as he pulled on her. “What the hells is that stuff?!”
“It’s… I think it’s his condition. He was in my head. Before, I mean. And I felt…”
“Eschaton,” Shadowheart whispered, her mouth close to Tav’s ear as she’d nearly fallen backwards pulling Tav away. “A darkness that eats all. Even the divine.”
“... Fuck me,” Astarion gasped. “If that’s what’s inside him—”
“What do we do? We can’t… We can’t leave him like this.”
“You should’ve left him in his bleeding hole. Curses!”

Tav felt tears well into her eyes. She should have noticed he’d been shot sooner, then she might have been able to… to do… to tell Shadowheart to—fucking anything, really. Anything except letting Gale die, forgotten on the floor.
Gale had been sweet. A sweet, annoying, droll dork, with his flat jokes and his turgid prose and the fingers that danced magic into the air. Vain and fop, but he hadn’t seemed like he had a vicious thought in his head.
Her heart ached, having lost something she’d never even had. She’d like him. Looks aside, she’d liked him a lot.

“Shit,” she mumbled and put her face in her hands, trying not to show her tears starting to burn.
“What do we do with his body? I hate to come off as insensitive here, ladies, but if that stuff is what hides within him… we can’t just leave him here.”
“We can’t desecrate his body, Astarion. He was our friend.”
“What the hells do we do then, Tav? If we leave him here, that stuff will ‘hunger’ again before too long, and we don’t even know what ‘it’ is! For all we know, he’ll turn into a ghoul or a demon or something and come hunting us! We can’t bury him. If we throw him in the river, he’ll just be a ‘catastrophe’ downstream. Judging by what he said earlier, I doubt burning him will be any more effective than transforming into a mind flayer would—”

Tav didn’t want to look at him as he spoke. She didn’t want to have Gale’s body within her sight, it hurt too much. Shadowheart was stroking her back, trying to console her.
She'd let Gale down. He'd gotten killed because of her recklessness, mere moments after saving her.
“Astarion,” she began, but the pale elf was getting agitated. Shadowheart’s hand suddenly became a grip in the back of Tav’s tunic.
“Astarion,” she exclaimed. Tav looked up and saw what Shadowheart was pointing at.
From above Gale’s heart, a trail of purple sparks trailed upwards and turned into…

“GALE?!”
He seemed lit from within, but just as hale and whole as he had been minutes ago… apart from his eyes, glowing with lilac light. Tav flew to her feet, reaching for him… but her hands went through empty air.
“Gale?”
“Well met,” the apparition said overly stiffly, like a passive-aggressive butler, “I am a magical projection of GALE OF WATERDEEP, and if you’re seeing this manifestation, it means that I have prematurely perished.”

“You have got to be joking,” Shadowheart mumbled.
“Of course the mad bastard has a magical will and testament,” Astarion mumbled and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“However,” the projection went on, “for reasons that cannot be disclosed, it is of vital importance that MY DEATH BE REMEDIED at your earliest convenience.”
“... and of course he’d make it sound like an overdue invoice,” Astarion carried on, smacking his lips in distaste. “He sounds like my modiste.”
“He sounds like my old school teacher.”
Tav hushed them, eyes trained on the apparition.
“You may rest assured that I do not speak out of self-preservation alone: many lives depend on my return to the living within the span of TWO DAYS,” it carried on, two fingers in the air, “I trust I have made myself clear?

What’s a bit of casual necromancy between friends? Shall I put the kettle on too?! I don’t know how to resurrect people!
“Just for that tone alone, I’m starting to think he’s better off dead.”
“Shut up, Astarion,” Tav hissed, waving him away, still fixed on not-Gale. “How… are we supposed to bring you back to life?”
“She shushed me and now it’s ‘we’ again.”
The apparition perked up, professorial finger in the air just like the man in the flesh.
“I have upon my deceased person a magical item that can accomplish my return, but such is the value and rarity that it is protected by a MULTI-LAYERED SECURITY PROTOCOL. I will now explain the protocol—”

All three groaned.
“Leave him dead. Screw him for making us dance to this tune,” Shadowheart mumbled, rubbing her temples.
“Bring him back so I can throttle him,” Astarion snarked.
“There’ll be no bringing him back at all unless you two shut your gobs!” Tav shouted and stomped her foot. The apparition before her stopped dead in its tracks. “Go on, Gale.”
“I am not a real person. I am a magical projection of GALE OF WA—”
“I got it, just read me the damn protocol.”
“Step one is to retrieve from my person a POUCH I wear over my heart.”
“Right,” Tav nodded.

It was very unsettling how this lifelike figure flicked between being entirely blank and void of personality, and yet Gale’s mannerisms and voice peeked through every few sentences. His syntax, the melody of his voice. Like the way he said ‘my heart.’ She had to bring him back. She just had to.
“Next, you must unthread the PURPLE SEAM that seals it in in a COUNTER-CLOCKWISE fashion. DO NOT TOUCH ANY OTHER-COLOURED STRAND. Inside the pouch, you will find a FOLDED LETTER and a TINY FLUTE. Unfold the letter, and note the MARKINGS in the top and bottom corners. Those are the notes you will need to play.”

“Did he make this little obstacle course just for you, Tav?” Shadowheart mused.
Easy enough. I can play a four-note ditty. No sweat.
“Starting from the bottom right,” the manifestation went on unperturbed, “PLAY THE NOTES in correct order—CLOCKWISE this time. Upon completion—”
Both Shadowheart and Astarion groaned aloud at the addition on yet more steps.
“I must ask you to refrain from commentary and FOCUS.”
“Refrain from being a pain in the arse, Gale.”
“I am not a real person—”
“Astarion, stop interrupting it or you’ll break it! Please, not-Gale, do go on.”

“Upon completion of the tune, a MAGMA MEPHIT will appear, which will pose the following QUESTION…”
Here, the apparition made a series of throaty noises that had Tav bristling.
No way. No fucking way. I’m gonna blow it.
“... This is Ignan for ‘What is my name?’ The ANSWER is…”
Another series of guttural noises. She heard Shadowheart and Astarion snicker behind her, and felt like she was 9 again, being called upon in school to answer a frankly nonsensical question in front of the whole class, and it made her want to break Gale’s lecturing little finger. After she brought him back. To make sure he’d feel it.
“Pronounce the name correctly, and the mephit will breathe on the letter. Stay clear! Because the little scamp can melt metal.”
‘Nice bloke, we kept in touch’—eat my shit and hair, Gale, and your stupid little hints can go sit on a splintered—

“Look at her, you can see her forehead vein popping out,” Astarion whispered to Shadowheart behind her.
“... fuck off,” Tav mumbled, keeping her conversation with Gale last night fresh in her mind. ’Practise your Ignan,’ he’d said, and it felt both prescient and mocking now. If she pulled any of this off, she was going to wring Gale’s neck herself. “I don’t see either of you helping!”
“Hey, he seemed to have devised this test just for you, Tav.”
“With his life in the betting pool.”
“... You’re not gonna let him down, are you?” Astarion chuckled, daring her to do it. And she wished she hadn’t done that. Dared her to pull this off. Because the only thing more compelling than a plea was a dare.

“All three of you can lick my arse. Especially this sack of potatoes,” Tav hissed with an irate gesture over Gale’s body at the feet of his apparition.
She placed her hands on her hips, looking at the apparition of Gale like he was a stone wall and she was going to headbutt him into oblivion.
“Tell me the Ignan again,” she commanded the spectre, and it repeated its throaty utterances. “Slower.”
It took her several minutes before the infernal gobbledygook stuck in her head, and the vision of Gale had the temerity to correct her pronunciation repeatedly. Eventually, Astarion and Shafowheart started amusing themselves by imitating her when she got it wrong, and Astarion took to throwing little pebbles through not-Gale’s ghostly head.
“I’ss k’cha t’chiss n’aga?” the projection asked, and Tav was grateful at this point that despite it being annoyingly impersonal, and condescendingly parental, it couldn’t lose its patience with her.
“K’ha’ssji’trach’ash,” she repeated back, and at last the spectral vision didn’t correct her.
“Correct.”

Her audience gave a most adequate round of slow claps, and she gave them both the middle finger without looking at either of them.
“Go on,” she waved Gale’s vision on, determined to see it through.
“Words will now appear on the letter’s surface, effectively turning the letter into a Scroll Of True Resurrection. Use it to bring me back to life.”

Tav’s knees felt like jelly and she almost sat straight down in shock. One of those scrolls went for tens of thousands of gold, and that’s if you could even find one for sale!
That was no mere little lifeline or tawdry ghoul-maker he had on him. One of those scrolls were… well, fuck kings; they were god-tier commodities. If she could compel his little mephit friend to give her it, it would be the most valuable thing she’d ever held in her hands. Hells, it’d be more money than she’d ever make in her life.
“... Looks like our mage-in-residence was a made man,” Shadowheart mumbled.
“We should just take the scroll and run,” Astarion pointed out, “We can go on a prolonged holiday and live off Wyvern whisky and whoring until the end of time.”
“No,” Tav set her jaw. “Gale wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble if that stuff in his chest wasn’t serious. If it’s this ‘eschaton’ Shadowheart called it, it doesn’t have a radius at all. If he did make this test for us, it’s because he trusted us. Alright, not-Gale. Ridiculously convoluted protocol aside… I will do it.”

“Excellent. Now repeat my instructions back to me, please.”
All three groaned.
“But I got it all! Pouch, seams, the lot!”
“In that case, it will be an easy exercise. Step one?”
“Get the pouch,” Tav pouted and kicked a loose stone with a sigh.
“And next?”
“Unthread the purple seam in a counter-clockwise fashion.”
“No, darling, the scarlet one.”
“Shut. The fuck. Up.”
“Right. You will then have access to the letter and the flute. Go on.”
“Play the notes, starting at the bottom… right corner?”
“Which direction this time?”
“Clockwise.”
“Correct. And then?”
“Then a mephit appears and I speak its name. ‘K’ha’ssji’trach’ash.’”
“Not quite so rhotic.”
She rolled her eyes and repeated it again, so far back down her trachea it made her cough.
“We have now gone through the MULTI-LAYERED SECURITY PROTOCOL. Let’s hope this repetition has served you well. Best of luck, FRIEND. May my cold, dead hands soon be refilled with the warmth of life so they can shake yours in gratitude.”
And just like that, the apparition dissolved in a trail of purple sparks.

“Well… no pressure,” Shadowheart mumbled, and it sounded like she was sipping something. Tav turned to look.
“... Is that Gale’s flask?”
“Technically it’s Gimblebock’s flask.”
“Where did you even—nevermind.”
“Give it here,” Astarion said and snatched it out of Shadowheart’s hands and taking a deep swig. Tav looked at them for a moment, not quite sure whether to yell or laugh at the absurdity of it all. When Astarion threw her the flask, she caught it with a slight fumble, and took three gulps so big it made her throat hurt. Her cheeks flushed and her stomach burned like embers as soon as the liquor hit it. It felt like righteous fury and spite.
“Alright, you earringed freak. Wakey-wakey.”

Whisky still sizzling in her gullet, she stepped quickly into the reach of that necrotic chill that emanated from his body, patting his cooling chest for a pouch. She pulled it out with a triumphant little flourish and hopped to a safe distance.
“Step one!” she called out, raising the pouch up for the others to see. Then she quickly unspooled the purple seam and fished the little flute out, sticking it behind her ear while she inspected the notes she was supposed to play. The page was empty save for the notes in the corners, written in an ornate hand in a deep purple ink. Upon seeing the notes in order, she let out a laugh.
D-E-A-D.
“You droll idiot,” she mumbled to Gale, wherever his spirit lingered, and put the flute to her lips, playing the ditty effortlessly.

A slight whoosh and a hot gust of air like opening a roaring oven door, and a mephit appeared before her, looking her up and down.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever summoned one of your kind on purpose, you know,” she said, “Lay it on me.”
“I’ss k’cha t’chiss n’aga?” the red-hot little winged creature asked, tilting its ugly head.
Tav took one more swig from the flask in preparation and then gathered spit in the back of her throat like she was going to impress a sailor.
“K’ha’ssji’trach’ash,” she said with a smug little bow, and the mephit clapped its oversized hands.
“D’a jah’jah s’um!” it grunted, showing needle-thin teeth and reaching a clawed hand towards the parchment. “M’ul t’ha m’esc.”
Tav held out Gale’s letter to it, stretching as far away from her body as she could, pinching the parchment daintily between her fingers. She shielded her face and only flinched a little when the mephit’s breath scalded her fingertips like boiling water.

Purple flames traced over the parchment’s surface and transformed it before her eyes into an ornate drawing, pulsating with potent magic.
So close now…
She cradled the treasure to her chest and swallowed, nervous over holding such a rarity with her bare hands.
“T’i n’uthrantha m’ahthra Gale,” the mephit said with a slight bow, did a little somersault in the air, and disappeared in a hail of sparks.

“Brava!” Astarion called out from a safe distance. “Now bring the bastard back to life so we can clear out of this blasted tomb.”
“Gotta give it to Gale, very convenient to die in one though.”
Tav laughed, feeling almost giddy with relief that she’d passed the test.
“That’s just about the only convenient thing that man has ever done, I bet.”

As she read off the page, she felt her entire being almost fill with light, like she could bend reality as she spoke. But then there was a flash of turquoise and Gale’s dead eyes blinked and he bolted upright like he’d been sprung out of a very small catapult.
He gasped for breath, coughing, rubbing his chest.
Tav fell to her knees at his side, pushing the flask of Wyvern to his lips, and he drank. He coughed up the first sip, but then drank the flask dry in one go. She patted his back and she could feel the whisky warm him from within.
The empty flask dropped with a clang, and he was shaking his hands like they were numb from cold.

Gale turned his eyes to her, filled with wonder and disbelief. Then he clasped her cheeks, hands still unnaturally cold, grinning wide.
“Tav… My word, you did it! Ha! Thank you! Gods, it’s good to see your beautiful face!”
She slapped him right in the mouth.
“For making that ordeal so bloody hard.”
How dare he still smile like that? His cheeks must still be numb. I ought to slap him harder.
Instead, she hugged him. After a moment, his own hesitant arm wrapped around her in turn.

“That certainly dispels the oppressive dreariness from the Fugue Plane,” he laughed into her hair. “I er… assume you have… questions about this whole palaver.”
“You got that gods-damned right,” she said and pulled away.
“Only fair to warn you, I have precious few answers to spare.”
Tav looked at him dead on, the joyous triumph of bringing him back souring in her mouth.

“Not good enough.”
“Tav, I know that sounds thankless and for that, I apologise, it’s just that… some secrets simply cannot be revealed.”
“Make an exception. You owe us that much.”
He swallowed, his eyes sad. Gratifyingly alive, but sad.
“I—”
“Unbelievable. I brought you back to life. That’s two times I’ve saved you now. And I’m pretty sure you made that little obstacle course just for me. Sparing me some answers is the absolute minimum you could afford me.”
He remained silent, grimacing with discomfort. At how he must be feeling in his requickened body, sure, but also in the secrets he was biting down on.
“What is so unforgivable that you cannot even say it to me after all that?”

“I have a question,” Astarion chimed up, “First of all, you inimitable bastard!"
“... That’s not a question.”
“‘How bloody dare you,’ then? Dying like a fool and then making us jump trhough your magical little hoops?”
“You were hardly leaping, Astarion,” Shadowheart interjected and patted him calmingly on the back.
“We’re your friends, Gale!” the elf went on, crossing his arms. At being called friends, Gale went awfully silent.

“Leave it,” Tav said bitterly, standing up and turning away, so that the tears of betrayal wouldn’t be so obvious. “He will tell us when he’s ready to trust us. Or ‘if,’ I should say. Should we ever earn the confidence of the illustrious ‘Gale of Waterdeep’ and his divine company. Fuck it. Let’s get out of here.”
“Tav—”
“It’s fine, Gale. Can you walk? Good. Shadowheart, will you give him a hand? I… I need a minute.”

She walked over to the far side of the burnt-out sarcophagus and crouched down behind it, pressing her head between her knees and breathing deep. She heard the others mumble amongst themselves but their voices were drowned out by the ringing, buzzing sound in her ears. She’d been thrown between scares, despair and then such joy that she could cartwheel out of the temple, only to be hurt. It was too many flips for one day.
I wish he hadn’t drunk the last of the whisky.

She leaned back against the singed, cool marble and slid down to a sitting position, wiping away the tears that came unbidden. She searched her pockets for something to wipe her nose with, but only came up with the gilded skeleton key that had appeared in her hand after reading the golden book of skulls. As she leaned her head back, she felt something get pushed in by the weight of her head… like a pressure plate. Then all the lit sconces turned green.

She flinched away and looked back, trying to see what hells she’d awakened now, only to find a tiny hole presenting itself in the nook between carvings. On impulse, she put the key in and then retracted her hand.
Why did I do that?! Why the fuck did I just do that?
There was a hollow hiss of escaping air, and then the grinding of stone wheels beginning to churn and move. Something inside the sarcophagus was… unfolding.
She let out a small scream when Andorn’s scorched body fell over the coffin’s edge and fell to the floor with a dull thud, but his corpse wasn’t reanimating. Tav stumbled to her knees and looked into the chest, trying to see what was moving in there.

A false bottom. It rose and rose until it was level with the edges, and then lifted magically even higher, hovering on air, slotting into the overhanging canopy.
Then two skeletal hands clutched the edges and hoisted up a corpse, all bones and dried out skin, its skull sheathed in ornate gold threads.
Its limbs growing impossibly long, stretching forever, like a rising giant, reaching almost as tall as the ceiling.
It turned to Tav where she sat, frozen in horror, as this unbelievable skeletal beast, twice as tall as her yet only half as wide, bent over her to peer into her eyes.
Skeletons aren’t supposed to have eyes. Bloodshot sclera like wound scabs, with curious blue irises, seeking eye contact. Skeletons shouldn’t seek eye contact. Skeletons shouldn’t fucking move either.

A hand as long as her forearm reached out and its elongated, bony finger uncoiled from its deathly contortion, to reach under her chin and point her face upwards so the figure could loom over her and inspect her intimately.
It was like… standing before a giant, mummified judge.

Behind the risen dead stood her companions, all equally frozen in horror, pressed against the wall in recoil. The creature tilted its head, its dried out skin creaking like strained leather, and Tav looked in horror and disgust at it, taking it in just as it did to her. Her heart pounded against her ribs and she felt a fear that made her blood sizzle, her skin crawl, every fibre of her being frozen like ice.
“So He has spoken,” came its voice in a dry drawl, “and so thou standest before me. Right as always.”

The giant skeleton moved around, coiling itself like a gnarled tree as it contorted its entire length to look at her friends behind it. Then back to Tav.
“What a curious way to awaken,” it remarked bemusedly. “Now I have a question for thee: What is the worth of a single mortal’s life?”
“W-what?” Tav mumbled out, her tongue thick in her mouth from terror. Its talon still forced her face to meet the mummy’s eyes, and she couldn’t even bring herself to flinch. “W-why do you want to know?”
“Curiosity. Nothing more. Wilt thou answer my question?”
“I…”

Tav swallowed, glancing to her friends through the spaces between the mummified giant’s arm and ribcage. Had they offended this creature somehow, by bringing Gale back to life in spite of its own demise? Was it some great cosmic faux-pas to resurrect fresh corpses before old ones? Was there a queue system in place that she’d bypassed somehow?
Gale’s eyes met hers across the coffin, glinting with life in the green flamelight.
What was I supposed to do? Not when this man can look at me like that?
She swallowed again, feeling the Wyvern behind her tonsils, threatening to come back up. Then she nodded, shaking down to her boot soles.
“I ask again: What is the worth of a single mortal life?”

She tore her face from Gale’s and found the courage to speak directly to the mummy, even if it might not like her answer. It squinted, waiting.
And she had a feeling he wouldn’t like any answer that wasn’t a plea for mercy. But she set her jaw defiantly anyway.
“Each life… is of infinite value… and merits sacrificing everything for.”
Shadowheart gasped at her reply, seeming convinced that Tav may have just signed her own death order. Tav pressed her eyes shut and waited for the killing blow. But it never came.
“Very well. I am satisfied.” Tav opened one eye. The mummified judge had shrunken into a less threatening size, still with his unnaturally long, bony finger holding her chin up. “We have met. And I know thy face.”
“Y-you’re not going to kill us?”
The mummy tilted its head again, as if her question was childishly ignorant and he was about to reproach her.
“No. We will see each other again at the proper time and place. Farewell.”

And just like that, the figure disappeared into the green flamelight, and then normal golden flames resumed.
Tav nearly fell face-first into the now truly empty sarcophagus as the deathly grip on her being fell away, and she braced against the cold marble. “What… in the fucking hells… is going on?!”

Chapter Text

They made camp further down the road, tired and quiet after what transpired in the crypt.
Tav had walked some paces ahead of the group, scouting for threats, while Astarion and Shadowheart had flanked Gale, who’d insisted on walking without aid.
She’d tried not to look back at him. She was hurt, she was angry, she was agitated, and looking at him burned.
By her reckon, they were probably just over halfway to the tiefling settlement, and Nettie the healer.

The road meandered slow and narrow but blessedly level, as opposed to the climb they’d done up to the temple grounds yesterday. Singing birds flitted to and fro in the rich, green canopy, and there were flowers everywhere.
It was hard to believe they’d had a brush with death only this morning. Hell, nature itself seemed extra vivacious as if to spite the absence of life they’d just seen.
She’d heard the snapping of stems behind her as Shadowheart had snagged the odd herb or bloom in her stride. Tav, for her part, merely picked up pebbles and flung them into the bushes periodically. Either she’d scare up something creeping on them, or she’d hear the satisfying thud of the rock hitting tree trunks.

They made camp at Shadowheart’s insistence, but it was clearly on Gale’s behalf. Even were the ground a perfectly level marble floor, he’d be hard-pressed to make great strides so fresh from death.
Tents raised and a thin soup simmering away, Tav took company with her lute on the edge of camp. She picked at the strings, hoping to find some sequence of notes that could quieten her anger.

She’d clawed Gale back from the Fugue Plane and looked the very face of Death right in the eye for Gale and defied it. Hells, it was the stuff of great love myths, wasn’t it? Like that hero who’d pulled his love out of the Underworld on the condition that he not look back to his love until he felt the sun on his face.
… What had his name been? She couldn’t recall.
Bet Gale would remember, the manky git.
Gale was nothing to her—apparently—and she’d done it anyway. She’d jumped through his idiotic hoops and played along. And he still didn’t trust her enough to tell her what was going on. It was maddening.

A little voice in the back of her mind pointed out that they’d only known each other for two days, but she waved it off annoyedly. She was very happily irate and wasn’t going to let something as trifling as a tiny voice of reason ruin it for her.
That tiny voice also told her that walking off in a strop because it didn’t work trying to guilt trip Gale into sharing… wasn’t a very good look either. Didn’t inspire confidence.
She sighed and cursed the tiny voice to the hells with very specific instructions of self-immolation and then leaned over her instrument with another sigh.
“Tav?” came a soft voice, and she looked up to see Gale sitting next to her.

His hair was dishevelled and tousled, he looked like he’d run some water through it.
In his outstretched hand, he held a tiny, white flower, and she took it carefully.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, heart in her throat, counting petals.
“Like death,” he tried to quip, giving her a small smile. “I’m… I’m sorry, Tav. For hurting you. And for making you go through the rigamarole of resurrecting me with so little to reward you with.”
“I’m sorry too. For pushing you. And for being upset,” she nodded. “Hardly inspiring trust, am I?”
“Tav, you pulled me out of perdition and saved me, knowing absolutely nothing about me. I altered my security protocol because I trust you.”
He reached a hand out to her.
“So… Can we still be friends?”
She took it, and it was blessedly warm again. In spite of herself, she felt her eyes sting.

“You scared me to death,” she said, trying not to sound so reproachful.
“How do you think I felt?” he chuckled, and she gave him a light tackle with her elbow. Then his eyes turned serious. “Tav, I don’t keep… secrets just to protect myself, but also to protect you. You’ve… glimpsed the darkness I carry, and I think you’ve comprehended the magnitude of the problem. Telling you all… would be to force you to shoulder my yoke. And I am loath to subject you to it.”
“So you can tell your cat, but not me?”
“You’d be surprised at what burdens a little cat can alleviate,” he pointed out, finger raised. “Besides… How can I tell you my deepest, darkest secrets when I don’t even know your name?”

She squinted at him, that humorous glimmer in his eyes so endearing she could pinch him.
“Tavissa?” he guessed, and she shook her head again.
“Why do you trifle with such a stupid question?”
“If it’s so stupid, why do you make such a fuss? Besides? What’s in a name? A lily, by any other name, would be as lovely.”
She sighed. “Fine. Lunet.”
He stared at her blankly. “That doesn’t even have a ‘Tav’ in it.”
“It’s my family name.”
“Coward,” he squinted good-humouredly. “Tav Lunet. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
He lifted her hand as if to kiss it, but he was laughing too hard to keep the pretence of chivalry.

“You’d make an abysmal stage actor,” Tav tutted, letting him take her hand.
“Oh, one can’t always be a gentleman. I am Gale… Dekarios.”
She tried his last name out, each syllable dancing on her tongue. It tasted like high summer sun and ripe figs.
“I like it. Way less poncy than ‘of Waterdeep,’” she said, letting the last two words go deep as she mimicked him.

“Allow a man a stage name,” he countered and gave her a little nudge right back.
“‘Of Anywhere’ is not a stage name, it’s an inherited title! It sounds like it comes with an estate and a family crest.”
“Alas, nothing quite so prestigious. My last name is courtesy of my mother. The inimitable, and dare I say it, sometimes unavoidable Morena Dekarios. It’s been so long since I’ve used it… ‘Gale Dekarios’ cuts a poor figure next to the wizarding prowess of ‘Gale of Waterdeep.’”
“I like Gale Dekarios better, I think.”
At that, he looked at her in disbelief.
“Really? Then you prefer a part of me that I’d have sooner discarded. He likes you too, by the by. Though… let’s keep his existence between ourselves, shall we?” he leaned in in confidence.
“My lips are sealed,” she leaned in as well and whispered conspiratorially.

Gods, his eyes are beautiful. And his lips… Don’t kiss him. Don’t even think about it. Thank the gods he didn’t kiss my hand, so I don’t have to know how kissing him would be like. Don’t wonder if he’d be gentle or passionate. Don’t imagine his fingers in your hair. Beware of swoons.
That’s when she realised he’d never let go of her hand. She swallowed hard, trying her damndest not to look at his mouth again or to lick her lips.

She cleared her throat and broke the spell, carefully retracting her hand to adjust her fringe, and then wrapping them around her knees.
“Alright, fine. Fair is only fair, Gale Dekarios. You mustn’t laugh, though.”
“What?”
She sighed deep. “Gustaviana.”
His eyes widened with mirth. “That’s what Tav is short for? Gustaviana?”
“Gustaviana Ottilia Lunet. I know, it’s a mouthful.”
“Is there a ‘The Third’ or ‘Esquire’ in there somewhere?”
“Shut up. It’s a take on my father’s name. And if you ever call me anything but Tav, I’ll set your trousers on fire in your sleep.”

“You’re unbelievable!” he chided her, chuckling all the while. “You poke fun at me for calling myself ‘of Waterdeep’ like an aristocrat, when your own name sounds less like you come from a family tree, than a family wreath! Fie thee.”
Tav barked out a most unladylike laughter, and Gale immediately understood that he’d said something uncommonly dorky, even for him.
“‘Fie thee?’ What does that even mean? Why do you always talk like an old man?!” she groaned and covered her eyes.
He tutted and nudged her again.

How embarrassing that even the lightest of touches made Tav feel like she’d been dunked with warm water.
“Fie-ness aside, surely you can see why all those syllables don’t make for a short and snappy stage name? Mind, I perform for drunkards and whores most times.”
“... That I will concede. Not to fret! Gustaviana’s secret is safe with me.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you two have made up,” came a pouty drawl from behind them and Tav looked back to see Astarion watching them. “Hope I’m not interrupting. Shadowheart says she burnt the soup. Don’t ask me how.”

Chapter Text

After scraping out the burnt broth and much consternation on the subject of how one even burns soup, a new batch was set to cook, and Tav scrounged up some stinging nettles to stick in as well—’To pre-empt any burning this time.’
Sun was setting and they were all feeling more mirthful than they had upon waking. As the shadows grew long and the unrelenting sun subsided, cool evening air wafted through their camp.

“Not that I’m complaining, but it’s as though we weren’t carrying tadpoles at all!” Astarion mused, “And believe it or not, I’m even learning to enjoy the outdoors!”
“No complaints and you like it out with the mud and sticks… Are you a mimic?” Shadowheart mused over her bowl.
“I am merely enjoying the freedom that comes with an open sky! And the… dubious quality of your company.”
“There he is,” Gale chuckled.

Having already finished her meal, Tav watched him from across the fire, lute in her hands and plucking little melodies absentmindedly. Flames dancing around Gale’s silhouette in the blushing dusk light distracted her.
She still had that small white flower he’d given her, tucked behind her ear.
He was beautiful when he smiled, and it felt like her heart was sitting right behind her tonsils like cheap brandy. She hadn’t drunk a drop tonight, though.
He was just an attractive man. That was all it was. He was objectively beautiful. It was his dorky way of talking that ruined it. Except it didn’t ruin it either, though it really ought to. His propensity for pretentious words was most aggravating and not even remotely necessary. He wasn’t even her usual type.

When she did indulge in the fancies of pleasurable company, her usual haul consisted of swashbucklers and ruffians. Not scholars or wizards.
Men of rough touch and quickness of blade and wit. She liked it that way, too! And to date, not one of them had sported a mullet hairstyle.
Just as the thought passed her, Gale laughed at a joke Astarion made, and put a small ribbon between his teeth, reaching his hands up to stroke his hair back. He’d pulled his sleeves up, and Tav could see every line of his forearms ripple under his skin and he made his hair into a bun and tied it off. The line from his arm, down his shoulder and waist were bewitching.

Wizards weren’t supposed to possess that magnetic quickness of humour and such depth in their eyes that you could drown therein. They were supposed to be desiccated old geezers in moth-eaten bathrobes and with receding hairlines.
When they recited scripture, they were supposed to be sedating, not seductive.
But Gale… defied the script. Tav was not supposed to be jealous of a ribbon between his teeth as he smiled.

Curse him. Maybe he was using his tadpole on her, reading her thoughts. Maybe he knew exactly the state she was in, and he was making the most of it.
Tav came to the mortifying conclusion that she… may or may not… hypothetically, theoretically, abstractly… was absolutely drawn to this tawdry buffoon. Not just drawn but even potentially… infatuated.

Infatuation in itself was a horrifying admission; to be so possessed by this arrogant, droll, insufferable, unabashedly self-aware and yet boastful idiot and his puppy eyes? Inconceivable. She’d never live it down. She hated feeling like this. This bitterly sweet ripple of apprehension, like every little hair on her skin stood on end when their eyes met at a glance. Or him leaning in to joke conspiratorially earlier in the day, like they were old accomplices, gossiping and trading flattery. The effortless tug and pull of their conversation. The ease of it.

Secrets or no secrets, I don’t even know him.
And yet.
Oh no. Shit. Fuck. Maybe I can just bed him and get over it.
Even thinking of ‘bedding Gale’ without further imaginings made her cheeks flush and she thanked the gods for the fading light, obscuring it. She could just blame the blush on sitting so near the campfire if anyone saw.
“Are you alright, Tav?” Shadowheart asked.
“Yeah, fine,” Tav shrugged and strummed to divert her.
“What’s that in your ear?”
“... A flower. What of it?”
“It’s… not a flower anymore.”
Tav’s hand shot up to her ear and found a tangle of something there.
Fuck. What fresh hell now?

Gale sauntered over to help, and Tav cursed inwardly. She shot up and put the lute down, already hurrying away. Of course the mere phantom of imagining Gale in bed was enough to set her magic off to a manifestation of her own idiocy.
“Don’t panic,” he said, “Or you might make it worse. It’s a miniature thicket of the flower I gave you.”
“Shit,” she mumbled and stumbled off to the side.
“It’s actually rather becoming, but knowing your propensity for ‘mishaps’ I think any further fluster will make it turn on you. Do you want he—”
“No!” she called back and he stopped dead.
And that was no lie; she wanted Gale’s hands on her in this state even less than she wanted him to see her horns. Only person she’d let mess anywhere near her hair was herself.

She made it within the treeline, clawing at her ear to get the flowers out.
Bloody hells, it’s a fucking crown!
She ripped the flowers out and let them fall to the ground, but the delicate stems were still tangled in there. She ripped out the ribbons that held her hair up in her usual buns, bent forward and started shaking it out.
She combed through her hair, fishing little stems out that tangled into knots, swearing like a sailor. Swearing at her predicament, swearing at her magic being hells-bent on making an arse out of her at any given chance, and at the state she was in over the idiot wizard.
Once finished, she sat crouched down, breathing deep and trying to calm down.
“Fucking hells,” she hissed to herself.

“My, my,” came an unknown man’s voice from behind her, and Tav almost fell over with surprise, “What manner of place is this?”
Tav jumped to her feet and took in the stranger that had appeared out of nowhere. He was tall, dressed in pristine gilded finery, his hair black and slick as oil. He was looking down at her down his proud, aquiline nose, smirking fiendishly.
“The path to redemption?” he continued without an introduction or so much as an apology for startling her, “or the road to damnation? Hard to say, for your journey is just beginning.”
Had this guy just been at the outskirts of camp this whole time, waiting for someone to come take a piss or something?
Tav fumbled at her hip and came up empty.

Shit. I left my weapons at camp.
The stranger began to circle her, watching her in a way that she distinctly abhorred. It mad every drop of blood in her veins seethe. She circled right back. Armed or not, she wasn’t about to be intimidated by anyone.
There was… something familiar about him. Not his face… His smell. Pungent perfume aside, he smelled… not like another tiefling? But infernal nonetheless.
“What would suit the occasion?” the stranger asked when she didn’t make a move. “The words to a lullaby, perhaps?
“Tav?” she heard the others call out, and then their steps as they ran to help her with their intruder. But the stranger appeared none too plussed about the four of them against his lone self. Instead, he merely smiled again, and it made Tav’s blood run cold with apprehension.

“The mouse smiled brightly, it outfoxed the cat! Then down came the claw, and that, love… was that,” he purred. Hearing that old nursery rhyme being recited so ominously left Tav’s mouth taste sour with apprehension. And how he’d lingered his eyes on Tav on ‘love?’ And she hadn’t missed the talons of the man’s fingers as he’d made a clawing motion of his own.
She wanted desperately to shudder, but she refused to give this arsehole the satisfaction; any attempt to intimidate her only roused her fighting spirit.

“They do know how to write them in Cormyr, don’t they? Well met, adventurers. I am Raphael. Very much at your service.”
“Pretty words,” Shadowheart said, squinting appraisingly at the stranger, mace raised, “But if you’re going to threaten us, don’t disguise it. Walk away, stranger.”
“While you still have legs to carry you,” Astarion smiled venomously. Tav gestured to them to go easy.
“So whom might I have the pleasure of addressing? The mouse… or the cat?”
The stranger flashed a smile, all incisors. He shrugged.
“Neither. The fox, rather, hiding in a word. A silent observer, breaking the silence,” he gestured elegantly. His entire demeanour positively dripped with condescension.

This man has every aspiration for Gale’s sense of drama, but each line sounds so rehearsed. This wasn’t eloquence, but the attempt at it.
“So you’ve been following us.”
“And you will be glad I have, I assure you. What I have to say, merits some privacy—”
“We’re literally in the middle of nowhere,” Tav scoffed, gesturing at the trees all about them.
The stranger scoffed with disgust.
“Ah, yes. A patch of dirt. A rest for the wicked. Humour me as we indulge in some much-needed refinement. This… quaint little scene is far too pastoral for my tastes. Come,” Raphael beckoned and snapped his fingers.

There was the briefest roaring of flames and it felt as though the ground faltered under Tav’s feet, and then she stood in a resplendent dining room. It felt as if she’d been dropped into an oven. The red marble floors were warmed from below, with black veins like blood running through it. It somehow reminded her of both burning embers, and stripped flesh at once.
Gothic arches stretching as tall as trees loomed above, gilded with demonic horns and glinting with malice in the low light. The room felt uncomfortably warm, almost like a steam bath, and smelled just like one that needed a scrubbing.
She looked around, and found to her relief that her friends were right there with her, looking just as discombobulated as she felt.

Astarion’s eyes were wide as saucers, and Shadowheart fumbled in thin air for her mace, which mysteriously had not travelled here with her. Gale’s eyes however were drawn tight, obscuring anything he thought. Like a lanceboard player, hiding any worries or fears behind a curated mask.
Tav decided to take a page out of that book too. She smoothed her brow and unclenched her shoulders, trying to exude an ease she didn’t feel. She glanced around herself almost nonchalantly, as if appraising the room instead of seeking an escape.
Why does he have a fireplace fit to roast an ogre for, in this climate?

There was a dining table too, ornate to the point of ridicule, towering with overflowing platters of succulent beeves and plump fruits, flowers interspersed to hide the rot.
But the table was… just a little too high to sit comfortably at. And the chairs too large, too tall and wide, for a mere mortal form.
“There,” Raphael’s voice said contentedly as he came around Tav’s side. “Middle-of-somewhere.”
He pulled out an oversized chair for Tav, but she refused, standing still and trying to will herself not to sweat in this pressing heat. Even drawing breath felt like inhaling fire.
“A bit ostentatious, all this red and gold, no? Looks like a brothel trying to leap an income bracket.”

Astarion’s eyes shot her a horrified glance, as if telling her to watch her mouth, but she didn’t so much as wink back. The stranger merely chuckled. When she refused the seat, he walked behind her, which forced her to turn and look at him. She felt distinctly that she ought not take her eyes off this bastard for so much as a heartbeat.
“You would know,” the man purred back, looking her dead in the eye, and then nodded discretely Gale’s way.
Sussed that out, did you? Horrifying obviousness aside, I already know he’s a tidbit above my station, you fucker, so no need for the sultry hints.

“Take us back, now,” she commanded, lips pressed together.
“I can see you’re easily rattled, little mouse. I would be too, so exposed in the wilds. But this… is the House of Hope. Where the tired come to rest, and the famished come to feed—lavishly. Go on, partake!”
“Sadly, we just ate,” Tav tutted apologetically, sending their abductor a pouty frown.
“You should enjoy this supper, my dearest Tav. Something more decadent than your measly lobscouse. After all… it could be your last.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, as though this stranger was an obtuse used-wagon salesman.
“Are these paltry theatrics leading anywhere?” she said.
Gale leaned over the table, picking up a plate and starting to fill it.
“This one’s not so easily rattled,” Raphael laughed.
“What makes you so sure it’s our last supper?” Shadowheart wondered, suspiciously.
“Call it… a ninth sense,” he smirked in reply. “What’s better than a devil you don’t know?”

Before anyone could answer, his form grew, expanded, widened. His skin turned red as embers, his eyes turned black, and two giant wings unfolded from behind his back. Four horns sprouted like a deathly black crown on his head, and when he smiled, his teeth were fangs.
A devil.
No wonder the tiefling part of Tav had recognised him. He’d dragged them all back to hell.

She swallowed her rising panic, looking at him without revealing so much as a tremble.
“A devil you do,” he finished his own question, purring at her.
He stretched his wings out, as if boasting to the tiefling before him that he had something she lacked. The flames of the fireplace behind him shone through the fine membrane of them, making them almost shimmer. “That’s more comfortable. I cannot bear the discomfort of a disguise. To hide what you are is… such a pitiful thing. Don't you agree?”
At this, he looked at them all in turn.
What is he hinting at here? That we all hide what they were? Every one of us? I know I am, and Gale, but the others…?

Gale chimed in, sharing the brunt of the devil’s gaze.
“And just why would we care to know you, Raphael?” he said, level as ever.
“I could be anything you require. A friend? Potentially,” he replied, circling Tav closer again, as if about to sniff her infernal blood, leaning in as if trying to be seductive. His tail stroked her arm and it took every ounce of her mettle to not recoil at his touch. “An adversary? Conceivably. Your saviour? That… is for certain.”
He was looking at Tav so intently, it was as if he was trying to will her into submission. She merely looked ahead, dead-eyed. The mummy this morning had been bigger… but less malicious too.

“We don’t need saving,” Shadowheart hissed, standing by Astarion’s side.
The devil sighed and tilted his head.
“Come now,” he tutted, “Why play hard to get, when I know you’re all in over your tadpoled little heads?
With Raphael’s attention turned on the other two, Tav shot Gale a glance. He met it, but didn’t betray what he was thinking.
Then Raphael’s massive hand closed around her shoulders, like a neck-grip on a disobedient dog, marching her into a chair where he sat her down before caressing her scalp, taking a grip on her loose hair, guiding her face up at the chandelier’s glinting lights.

Her scalp burned, but not as hot as her ire. She struggled, but his hands held her in a vise.
“Let me go,” she choked out, but he merely leaned over her like he might bite her mouth. His eyes were lit with epicaricacy and he looked positively deranged up close like this.

The grip was so rough and so sudden, she inadvertently made a tiny little whimper of pain.
“One skull,” he purred, turning her head in his hands like a cabbage he might buy, “two tenants… And no solution in sight.” He bent down, lips to Tav’s ear. “I could fix it all… like that.”
He snapped his fingers, and for an instant, Tav worried he was instead showing her how easily he could snap her neck. Her hands gripped the edge of the table and she kept her eyes cast down, unable to meet the flames that were his pupils, but unwilling to concede so much as a drop of fear.
Raphael leaned his nose into the crook of her neck and breathed deep. She couldn’t tell if he was savouring the scent of her horror, or merely the fact that he had the ability to take these liberties with her, with impunity.

“Let her go, devil,” Shadowheart warned him, and Rapahel, seeming to realise he was running away with his impulses, released his grip on Tav’s hair immediately.
Tav’s eyes went to Gale’s unbidden, and despite his withdrawn face, his skin was white as a sheet and his knuckles gripped his plate so hard, she feared he might throw it at Raphael.
“After that little turn, you’d be more likely to find a snowball in this house… than for us to make a deal with you, devil,” Tav hissed out. She made sure the chair screeched against the marble as she got up to walk away from the table.

Raphael laughed, a cold, joyless, superior laugh.
“Go ahead, little mouse. I have a feeling you’ll change your mind. Or one of your companions may take me up on my offer.”
“You haven’t offered anything but a charcuterie board and your halitosis,” Tav snapped back. “Dangling solution above our noses, but no actual plan on how you’ll cure the tadpoles. Your promises are as hollow as your scorched heart. You may lack a soul, but you cannot have ours.”

Infuriatingly, Raphael gave an almost delighted little shudder.
“There’s that fire in you, fit for the hells. I do love when my meal fights back. The prouder they stand, the harder they fall.”
”Fuck. You.”
“Let’s cool off, shall we?” Gale interrupted, his hand on Tav’s shoulder. Somehow the gesture was reassuring, protective and commanding her to stand down, all at once. “Raphael, we decline your offer. Now return us to our camp.”

The devil turned with a certain spring in his step, and Tav regretted having let her fury slip to his gratification.
“Well… Should you change your mind—before it is changed for you, that is—the offer still stands,” he drawled, throwing Astarion a meaningful look. “I invite you, all of you, to shop around, of course. Beg, borrow and steal. Exhaust every possibility until none are left. And when hope has been whittled down to the very marrow of despair… That’s when you’ll come knocking on my door.”
“I’ll rip out your mocking tongue,” Shadowheart hissed and strode up to Tav’s other side.

“Dear Shadowheart,” Raphael tutted, leaning over the elf, “Do enjoy your own tongue while you still have one. Symptoms are yet to manifest, are they not? Sundering skin, dissolving guts? One would call your little rag-tag team paragons of luck at a glance. It’s easy to deny me now, your delicate bodies hale and whole—but what of tomorrow, or the day after? When your blood turns silver and your teeth fall out of your gums? When your souls get eaten away, one nasty little bite at a time? When your luck runs out and your beauty is consumed… I’ll be waiting.”

Raphael snapped his fingers again, jolting all four of them back to Faerûn in freefall, landing straight into a blueberry thicket.
The fresh air seemed almost frosty in comparison to the hells, and their damp, sweaty clothes felt so cold they all but shivered.
“I’ve never been so happy to see a muddy road,” Tav mumbled, scrambling to her feet. “I need a hot bath and a stiff drink. I can still feel his hands on me.”
“Are you alright?” Gale asked, but she shied away from his hands.
“Please. I’ve been treated worse by better men.”
“Bloody hells,” Shadowheart groaned, “Literally! Just when I think we might have some grasp on this situation, a devil shows up.”

“This just gets better and better!” Astarion complained.
“I take it neither of you feel as flattered as I do?” Gale mused, fingers pensively to his lips. “Invited to dine with a devil…”
“You weren’t on the receiving end of a chokehold like a bitch in heat. Flattery isn’t exactly how I’d put it,” Tav said and rubbed her scalp.

“Don’t let his bluster fool you,” Gale warned, “All that talk of desperation merely illustrates his own. I think he wants something from us. Badly. And in that knowledge lies our opportunity.“
She looked at him, wide-eyed with disbelief.
"... You’d have us humour the prospect of selling our souls? You’re unbelievable,” Tav said and kicked the ground.
“Tav is right, Gale. I’ll remind you that when dealing with a devil, one always draws the short straw,” Shadowheart said. She’d found her dropped mace in the thicket and was swinging it tentatively.

“There’s no such thing as absolute certainty!” Gale pointed out. “Let me play the devil’s advocate here…”
Tav groaned at that.
“Now you sound like the wizard you are. No one likes a devil’s advocate, Gale, and they seldom or never make any astute observations.”
“We might not have to sell our souls, Tav! Not if we figure out his true intentions!”
“His intentions are to purchase our souls, you fool! He’s a devil! So either we lose them to the tadpoles, or we become chew toys for that mouthy shit.”

“Hang on, Tav,” Astarion interjected, putting a hand up, “These are no ordinary mind flayer parasites we carry. You said so yourself. Question is… Who tampered with it and why? What do they have planned for us?”
“Precisely, Astarion! Fact one: there’s something very strange and very powerful about our tadpoles,” Gale said, counting on his fingers. “Fact two: a devil offers to take it away. What if it’s the tadpoles he wants instead of the customary price of our souls? If I’m right, there’s a mighty bargain to be made.”
“You would bargain with the devil? When you said your vice was ambition I didn’t take you for a literal idiot, Gale of Waterdeep.”

Gale flinched, hurt at the use of his moniker rather than his name, but he gathered himself quickly.
“Point is: the man is too eager by half. Do not dismiss his offer out of hand.”
Shadowheart frowned, contemplating.
“And how do you suggest we beat a devil at his own game?”
Gale smiled gallantly.
“Remember his Cormyrian rhyme? ‘Down came the claw.’ Perhaps we should be sharpening our own nails. Once we know what he’s truly after, between the four of us, we have enough guile to turn the tables.”
Shadowheart looked pensive for a moment, then turned to Tav.
“... Look. We’ve dealt with every other oddity thrown at us these past few days. We can handle this one too.”
Tav started pacing, arms crossed, and she flinched at how quickly Shadowheart turned sides.
“What, you agree with the devil’s advocate now?!”

Shadowheart shrugged and a small smile even played across her lips.
“A little pragmatism won't hurt. Raphael knows our secret, he claims he can help…”
That coaxing little voice made Tav so angry she could scream, but instead she breathed hard like an irate boar. She was already rattled from the manhandling she’d been given, and already her friends were turning to the devil.
“He’s a literal devil. Did none of you grow up with the stories? There is no trusting him. Simple as that.”
“‘Shop around,’ he said,” Astarion went on. ”He seems sure we won’t find anything. And he might be right. We’ve had no luck thus far.”
“We haven’t even made it out of the woods, of course we’ve had no luck! He’s not our only option. There’s Nettie.”
“Be smart, Tav. He seems powerful and very knowledgeable about our problem.”

“He does at that,” Gale interjected and Tav silenced him with a gesture, so Shadowheart could go on.
“I’m just saying, he’s not the worst prospect we’ve stumbled across. As long as we can look past what he is. Who is this Nettie anyway? Some backcountry midwife no one’s ever heard of, who knows how to sew a suture? Why would she be more equipped to extract the tadpoles than Raphael?”
“Are all three of you out of your minds?! I’m not going to just change my stance because of peer pressure, Shadowheart. He’s a devil. We can’t trust him. That’s that.”
“And can we trust you, Tav?”
Tav flinched, outraged.

“I saved all of your lives, and I haven’t asked for shit in return. I am no devil, and you are not bound to me. If you want to sell your soul or your tadpole or whatever, Gale, you go right ahead, but you can leave camp then. Go to hell. It’s gagging to have you. But a devil’s puppet cannot be trusted to stay.”

Shadowheart sighed with relief and bent over.
“Good,” she smiled, but genuinely this time, “That’s what I wanted to hear. Raphael’s clever, I’ll give him that. Using the same techniques I would. You don’t need a scourge or a rack to break people; fear and self-doubt are sufficient. Either to make us doubt ourselves... or making us turn on each other. When actual pain comes, the victim has already done the heavy lifting for the torturer.”

All three of them looked at the petite woman, stunned at the casual certainty with which she’d said it. For such a soft-spoken person who made such a demure impression, Shadowheart sometimes said things that were… very disturbing.
“Well, I’m glad I passed your little test. And I don’t even want to know where you acquired that sage knowledge,” Tav said and threw her hands in the hair, turning her back to them to sigh.
“There were no right answers with that devil. And you’d do well to remember that, lads,” Shadowheart said, directing her last words to Gale and Astarion.

“Still. Why would he come to us in the first place? Normally people seek out the devils to make bargains. Not every day that the devil comes courting,” Gale said.
Astarion nodded vehemently. “The question is, why are we important enough that a devil comes knocking at our door? If we find those answers, we might stand a chance. Not to bargain… but to escape.”
“He didn’t knock. He abducted us. He dragged us to hell with the snap of his fingers,” Tav mumbled, hugging herself tighter. She didn’t like being tested, either by Raphael or by Shadowheart testing her mettle.

Astarion walked over to Tav, putting an arm around her shoulder. He could see that the scalp grip Raphael had taken on her had really rattled her.
“That devil reminds me of… Well, someone I used to know. Someone who liked to play with people. Creatures like them don’t play games unless they are certain they will win.”
“That is my worry also,” Tav said, sniffling a bit at the gesture. For someone who used the word ‘darling’ so liberally, this was the first time Astarion showed something akin to genuine tenderness. Maybe he could be a real friend eventually, once he dropped that flirtatious devil-may-care persona. “I know people like that too.”

“I apologise for having upset you, Tav,” Gale nodded solemnly, his eye lingering on the arm around Tav, “To even consider a bargain after how he treated you—”
“It’s alright,” Tav shrugged, both to get away from Astarion’s arm and Gale’s apology.
“All that ‘take your time, I’ll be waiting’ nonsense. He’s playing with us,” Astarion mumbled.
“Playing with his food. Us,” Shadowheart said firmly.
“We’re not his playthings,” Tav said, wiping the tip of her nose. “We’ll show him that.”

Chapter Text

That night, Tav laid in her tent with worries swirling around her head. Nothing but worries. Tadpole worries. Mummy worries. Devil worries. Wilderness worries. Gale worries.
But she put the last to the forefront of her thoughts. The devil left a sour aftertaste and that mummy had been straight up confusing.

Worrying about Gale… No, wanting Gale, while absolutely mortifying and nothing short of reprehensible, had its pleasant charms too.
Was that ashen look on his face in the House of Hope because he worried about her? Did he reach out to help her with her little flower crown problem out of friendly concern or as an excuse to touch her? Did that lingering touch on her shoulder in the darkness of the crypt mean something more, or was she reading way too much into it?

And that touch… His hands were deft and moved deliberately, even as he spoke with animation. Now she knew what those hands felt like on her.
Even that stupid wagging finger he liked to dance around in tiny swirls as he said something dorky was charming. When she started picturing herself putting that dorky finger between her lips, she had to swallow hard and bite down on her imagination. Imagine ice cold waters and crisp, biting winter winds on her cheeks.

She had to keep a lid on this. Her feelings and her magic were too entwined. Flower crowns as she let her fancies run away with her was pretty tame, all things considered; in the past, she’d woken from vivid dreams with her sheets smouldering or vines sprouting from her skin.

Though she must admit, it had felt pretty gratifying to feel like she’d performed magic with some semblance of control today? Maybe Shadowheart was right; she could ask Gale for pointers. One could do worse than an ex-Chosen of Mystra for a tutor.
His tent was set up just a few paces from her own and she could hear him moving about in there, pottering about and sighing wistfully once in a while. It was… kinda cosy.
She figured she’d ask him in the morning. Sauntering between tent at night time was a sure-fire way to invite gossip or split within the group.
… Or, worse yet, sending the wrong message. Not that she wasn’t interested in him, curse his eyes, but that other people might catch on to that.

She rolled over and went to sleep. But dreams plagued her yet again. That bottomless hunger was upon her again, coursing through her, yet still watching her from the outside, and she felt this chill racing down her spine. Like there were eyes out between the trees. Black eyes like bottomless pits… Glowing red eyes… Eyes that looked to the pulsepoint in her neck, feeling her steady thump of magic heartsblood.

When her eyes flickered open, she stared right into an open maw. Plump sculpted lips agape, and two glinting fangs in the fading light through the tent fabric. Was it still a dream? Was she awake? She moved to scream but a hand quieted her.
“Shit,” she heard Astarion mumble. She said his name into his palm, and it only came out a muffled whimper. When she pulled her knee between them and pushed him off, he didn’t even try to fight.
She scooted backwards on her bedroll, hunched under the low canopy of her tent, fumbling for something to hit Astarion with, but she came up empty. He must have moved her sword out of reach before he’d bent over her.

Terrified, Tav fumbled at the side of her neck and found it gratifyingly unbitten.
“Tav, wait, this isn’t what it looks like, I swear” he whispered, hands up to assuage her, “I wasn’t trying to hurt you! I just needed, well… blood.”
His voice sounded desperate and pained, his throat hoarse and dry. Even in this dark, she could see the hollows under his eyes. His shirt collar was untied, and she saw the two deep puncture scars that he’d hidden under his padded gambeson in the daytime.
Then there it was again, that glint in his eyes that Tav had seen down in the crypt; that slightly reflective quality that reminded her of a predator under the canopy. He watched her, hungry but not murderous.
He was frightened, desperate and starving.

“You’re a vampire?!”
“Surprise, darling,” he tried to joke. “I wasn’t going to kill you, I swear. I’ve never killed anyone—well, not for food. I usually feed on animals. Boars, deer, kobolds—”
“—and me, apparently—”
“I eat whatever I can get!” he insisted vehemently. “But it’s not enough. Not with all the fighting we’ve been doing. I am… so weak. So slow.” He turned his palms upwards, leaning on his knees. “If I just had a little blood, I could think clearer, fight better. Tav… please.”
Curse him for begging. He knew damn well by now what it did to her fortitude.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she said and punched him in the chest, but he took it like she’d swatted a fly.
“What do you think?!” his eyes widened with reproach, clasping her hand against his unbeaten heart. “You’re so bloody heroic, I figured you’d ram a stake through my ribs.”
Disgusted at his clumsy attempt at tenderness, she recoiled her hand.
“I still might,” she warned him.
“I needed you to trust me, Tav. And you can trust me.”
“How can I trust you? You tried to bite me! I should ram you with a stake just for that! I don’t believe a word out of your mouth,” she hissed, “And I don’t need to.”

She plunged herself into Astarion’s head, parting the shadows without warning. She’d either taken him off-guard, or he really was as weak as he claimed, because she rifled through his head as easily as shirking off a cape.
There were those glowing red eyes she’d seen in her dream, and a high, shrill, sadistic laughter. It was almost diabolic, but it was grave-cold instead of hell-blazed.
There was the squeaking of tiny, wriggling bodies between her teeth as she crushed them to drink, as they burst into hot gushes down her throat, tiny claws scratching helplessly against her cheeks. His repulsion echoed in her, but he also felt a crumb of quenching the thirst that ravaged him every night.

He made an attempt to repel her, but she easily mowed his defences down: he’d eaten animals alright, but she also felt the way he looked at the bodies that moved around him; a feast ever out of his reach. He yearned to grasp at those people and to tear their jugulars out and eat with the same abandon as a small child eating pudding. The sanguine urge was animalistic and something outside of himself, something he both loathed and craved to indulge.

“You only fed on animals because you were forced to,” she spat out, “not out of a sense of honour. I can’t trust you, Astarion.”
“You don’t have a choice! I need you alive. You need me strong!” he beseeched, scooting closer to her on his knees. “Please… Just a taste? I’ll be well, you’ll be fine and everything can go back to normal.”

Thoughts were racing through her head. She’d felt the hunger when she’d plunged into his mind. She knew how weak he was. And then she thought of Gale and Shadowheart. Of him sneaking into their cots instead.
And… despite herself, she pitied him for his predicament. That high, shrill voice she’d heard… He feared it. He feared and hated it to the brink of madness. It hadn’t been possible to conjure his face from Astarion’s mind, but she was fairly certain that that voice was who subjected him to the squalid existence he’d had to date, eating rats.

“... Alright,” she mumbled.
“... Really?”
“Really. But go too far, and I will kill you.”
Astarion looked at her, head on. Then he drew the dagger from his boot and put it in her hand.
“It’s not a stake,” he said, swallowing loudly, “But it will kill me just as fine, if you stick it between my ribs. If I go too far, I give you permission to kill me. As a sign of trust.”
Slowly, he began to unlace the front of his shirt all the way down to where it was tucked into his supple trousers, baring his chest to her as a sign of trust.

It was intimate in a way that Tav wasn’t comfortable with. It wasn’t Astarion she’d wanted to unlace his shirt like that in her tent. But just the thought of Gale made her pulse quicken, and judging by Astarion’s eyes flickering to her neck, he seemed to notice, because he immediately turned on his flirtatious persona again. The notion that he could hear her pulse made her very uneasy.
“Let’s… make ourselves more comfortable, shall we?” he said, gesturing for her to lay back down on her bedroll. He sounded just like any of the seasoned whores Tav was used to working next to. It was the tone they took with nervous customers, and it made her feel sullied, and also profoundly concerned about just what sort of life Astarion led back in Baldur’s Gate… About what that shrill voice he feared so had subjected him to.
“
This is by far the weirdest thing I ever agreed to.
Astarion helped tuck her pillow so that she could recline on it whilst exposing her neck to him, and he leaned over her as though to kiss her.
“Not the mouth,” she mumbled, and his brows arched.
“No?”
“No.”
“I could make this truly unforgettable for you, you know,” he whispered seductively, moving one knee between hers and one hand starting to trail down her form, but Tav reminded him of the boundaries with the tip of his own dagger.
“Just do what you need to,” she said, and turned her eyes away.

His hand cradled her face as if he was about to give her a demure peck on the cheek, and then she felt his lips meet her skin. There was a sharp pain as he punctured the vein. His mouth was cold and razor sharp, and Tav couldn’t help but whimper at the pain. She felt Astarion’s body shudder, both at the taste of her blood, and the little sound she’d made. The knee between her thighs climbed upwards and his hand tangled in her hair, as if tangled in a passionate kiss with her.

Then came a cold numbness and the bite dulled. He must have some sort of venom that anaesthetised his victims when he bit them.
Her heart thudded against her chest. This was needlessly intimate, and her body reacted to being close to another person in spite of herself. She considered imagining Gale in Astarion’s stead, but she didn’t ever want to associate him with something this… invasive. Something she wanted to consider medically necessary and never do again.

Astarion hummed contentedly as he drank her in, a frankly evocative sound that made her feel like he was using her body for something entirely different. Even his body language, the way his body swayed against hers, felt like they were dry humping. He was also a lot louder than she was comfortable with, and she absolutely didn’t want anyone to think she was bedding Astarion right now. Not with Gale mere paces away. Hopefully he was soundly asleep and unsuspecting.

Her head became cloudy and she started to push back.
“That’s enough,” she said. Astarion clinged to her neck, and Tav nicked his ribs with the dagger. With a hiss of pain, he pulled away, snapped out of the daze that had come over him. Her blood stained his lips, looking almost purple in the dark. His breathing was laboured and his cheeks looked positively flushed—with my blood—and he shuddered with a cheeky little groan.
“That… that was amazing. “You’re so fiery, it makes my tongue tingle,” he chuckled. “My mind is finally clear. I feel strong. I feel… happy.”

She couldn’t deny, his eyes looked sharp and steady as he looked at her, as if he took her in anew. Her hand to the bite came away sticky, but she didn’t seem to be bleeding. Numbing, blood-stopping… Made sense for a vampire, she supposed. She wiped her hand on her blanket and pulled her knees under her chin.
“I don’t. That felt wrong.”
“Come now, don’t be so dramatic,” he tutted, “This is just a little transaction between friends.”
“You better fight like a fiend after this,” was all she mumbled.
“For you? For this? This was a gift, Tav. I won’t forget it. I could… stay? Comfort you? ”
“Please just get out.”

After she’d watched him go, she took a rag from her pack, doused it in some of the cheaper alcohol they’d found, more fit for wound cleaning than consumption, and wiped at the bite. Astarion had fed on animals after all, rats. She didn’t want anything from his mouth to inflame the wound. But the air within the tent felt oppressive. She was dizzy and needed cool air on her skin.
Stumbling out of the tent, bedroll in hand, she was set on sleeping by the fire, under the stars. Astarion’s tent was dark, as was Shadowheart’s. But gazing left, to Gale’s… the lights were on.

“Tav?” came Gale’s voice, gently coaxing her out of sleep, and she blinked at the tent ceiling. Oh yes. She’d come back in here, after seeing that Gale was still awake.
Her head throbbed in waves of dull ache, and she felt groggy.
“Astarion? Are you awake? Everything alright in there?”
She flinched. Of course he’d heard Astarion in her tent. Of course he’d assumed the obvious. Of course he assumed Astarion would still be in here, tangled in her body.
Fuck.
“I’m awake. Astarion’s not here.”
She wouldn’t bother with any attempts at lies, like ‘why would Astarion be here?’ It would be an insult to Gale’s intellect, and frankly immature to pretend like nothing. His steps grew faint as he walked away.

She rubbed her aching head before starting to tug at her kit.
Normally she’d get out of the tent to strap her armour on but she worried it might look… smug? Or triumphant, doing so in the open? Maybe if she got dressed in here, it would look more like she’d slept in her armour and thus could not have been fornicating with Astarion?
Fuck it. They’ll think the wrong thing anyway and she’d have to set the record straight regardless.

Besides, she figured the others deserved to know about Astarion’s plight. He’d not asked her to keep his secret, and he’d not demanded a promise out of her to keep it between them. She had no obligation to protect his secret—not from Gale and Shadowheart at least; anyone outside their little circle needn’t know.
Astarion would probably prefer the others to think they were sleeping together but not because he was madly in love with her or anything. Tav had the distinct impression he’d sleep with whoever he thought was best suited to protect him.
Which was sad, because she’d protect him regardless. He was her friend. Dubious friend, but still. And she needed him, at least until they made it to that tiefling camp—which they ought to reach by today.

Deciding to strap her armour on after breakfast, she stumbled out of the tent and came to sit by the fire. Gale was stirring something that looked like porridge. Shadowheart was there too, already strapped in and ready to get going.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she smiled faintly.
“Morning. Morning, Gale.”
“Morning,” he said, sounding a little stiff, “Want a bowl?”
“Please.”

Astarion came sauntering over, sitting close to Tav on her log.
“Where have you been?” Shadowheart mused.
“Morning ablutions? What else?” he shrugged back before turning to Tav, leaning in to show the others their supposed closeness. “Morning, darling. How are you feeling?”
That slightly insinuant lilt referred to the bite, but of course the others wouldn’t infer that from his tone.
Gale’s hand came into view, handing her a bowl of porridge. She took it, blushing, feeling ashamed for something she hadn’t even done. She mumbled thanks to Gale, but he’d already strode away. It didn’t escape her that he didn’t offer Astarion breakfast.
Not that Astarion would eat any, but how would Gale know that? Unless he’d heard their entire conversation last night… But then why not confront Astarion about his being a vampire? Was he… upset at the idea that Tav might be with Astarion?

“My neck hurts. How do you think I feel?” she mumbled back, stirring the thick slurry she’d been served. She ought to eat, but she couldn’t bring herself to it.
“It’ll pass. Just be glad I’m not a ‘true’ vampire,” he mumbled back, watching Gale’s back intently, making sure no one was listening in. “A bite from them and you might wake up as a vampire spawn like my good self. All of a vampire’s hunger, but few of their powers.”

Tav was still listening, but she was watching Gale as he sat down next to Shadowheart, as if to mark clearly that he was giving them privacy. His face was drawn and he was watching his own bowl intently.
This whole affair didn’t sit well with Tav at all. And she wasn’t going to humour it.
“Is that how you can stand in the sun?” she said, no effort to keep quiet. “Because you’re not a true vampire?”
Astarion’s eyes widened in shock and he immediately looked to the others. They looked just as taken aback as he was. A spoon clanged to the side of Gale’s bowl.

“I beg your pardon?” he said. “A vampire? You’re a vampire?!”
“Well, that explains the pallor,” Shadowheart tried to jest.
“Shadowheart, this is no laughing matter,” Gale berated her.
Tav swept her loose hair to the side, revealing the bite to prove it, and Gale shot to his feet in alarm.
“You bit her?!”
“I let him!” Tav hastened to point out, “He didn’t ask for my permission off the bat, admittedly, but we came to an agreement.”
At that, she pulled Astarion’s dagger out of her boot, handing it back to its rightful owner. Gale stared, mouth agape like a fish from her exposed neck to the dagger.
“I can’t believe you did something so reckless,” he mumbled, rubbing his face. “He could have turned you!”

“Wait now,” Astarion began, hands up, “It’s not as it seems! I am not a true vampire, I am a mere spawn! I swear, I couldn’t turn anyone even if I tried! I am no danger to you!”
“The wounds in Tav’s neck implies otherwise.”
“I told you, I let him bite me.”
“... How is this even possible?” Shadowheart interjected, squinting at Astarion.
“No idea. I should be cinders in this light. I hadn’t seen the sun for two hundred years before we crashed here. Standing in the sun, wading through a river, wandering into people’s homes without an invitation—they’re all perfectly mundane activities now. Someone, or something, wants me alive. They’ve changed the rules.” He stretched his wrists out before the sun, marvelling at the miracle of his standing there. “Not that I’m complaining. As for my other quirks, well… We can figure those out in time.”

“What’s causing this? The mind flayer parasite?” Gale asked.
“That’s my theory. But who knows? I’m just glad you’re all being sensible about these… revelations. I was worried that you might turn up with torches and pitchforks.”
“Given our group’s nature, I don’t see much harm,” Shadowheart shrugged. “We’re each monsters in the making, after all. I’d just better not wake up in the night to find fangs at my throat.”

“For what it’s worth, I trust him. He won’t hurt us. Last night, I think he was more frightened than I was,” Tav smiled.
“... She’s not wrong. With these parasites we carry, we’re bound together, no matter what,” Astarion said, bowing his head. “That being said, I understand if you’d prefer my departure.”
“Maybe we can get you to wear a bell? Dissuade any nighttime prowling.”
“Very droll,” Astarion squinted sarcastically.
Gale, however, was not as onboard as the ladies.
“You say all the right words, Astarion,” he said slowly, “but I’m not so sure you mean the right things. Still, it’s two ayes to one nay. I will respect the decision that was made. Just—a quick word of warning: I taste absolutely awful. Keep your distance.”

At that, Gale seemed resigned and he turned to walk away. Tav set her bowl aside, virtually untouched, and hurried after him. She called his name but it took him some steps before he heeded her.
“Gale. For what it’s worth… I realise you may have heard… stuff. But the bite was all that happened. Nothing else. Astarion and I are just friends.”
“Vampires can charm you into submission,” he pointed out, and Tav scoffed.
“Well, he’s not that charming. I’m just a sucker for a ‘pretty please.’”
He tutted impatiently.
“Tav, your moonlit swims and your nighttime activities in your tents are your own business.”
Is that disapproval in your voice, or disappointment?
“I prefer sharing whisky with friends, actually. When I seek company,” Tav said softly, but she felt like Gale’s words were… somehow final?
But why would it be? She’d sought Gale’s company in his own tent after all. She’d all but offered him her face in his hands—until she’d chickened out, but still!
He stopped and turned, looking down. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d taken his hand to stop him from leaving.

“So you’re telling me Astarion hasn’t tried it on with you?”
“Oh no, he absolutely has,” she scoffed, “Need I remind you I threatened to curb-stomp him for being suggestive?”
Gale gave a small chuckle. “Forgive me. I figured someone of your scathing wit would… use it to make overtures.”
He wasn’t letting go of her hand. Instead, his thumb stroked hers.
“I do, Gale. Haven’t… you noticed?”
Gale frowned slightly in consternation. Then, finally, his brown eyes met hers, with an almost hopeful shine to them. He was seeking something. But there was something cautious there too. Tav held her breath.
Come on, you dorky git, I can’t say it any plainer without crayons. I thought you were supposed to be intelligent.
“What are you saying?”
“Gale… Will you catch my drift if I spell it out for you?”
“I—”
But whatever he’d meant to say, it was lost in the cry for help that came from camp.

Chapter Text

The great horror that had befallen the others at camp turned out to be a very sweet dog named Scratch. He’d stumbled upon the food Astarion had been pouring out, trying to obscure his unusual diet. Apparently, Astarion had been startled and didn’t take kindly to being the second cutest platinum blonde in camp, especially as both Tav and Shadowheart were immediately besotted with their new friend.
At least this time, Shadowheart had no objections to collecting strays.

The poor animal looked like he’d been put through the wringer; he was starving, dehydrated, tired and his white coat was dull with dust, tangled with twigs. He’d whimpered in the most heart-wrenching way when Tav and Gale had made it back to camp and had almost crawled on his stomach as a sign of submission and contrition over stealing food, whining like he was afraid of being whipped.

After some coaxing consisting of cooing and scritches, Tav had managed to get Scratch to tell how he’d ended up in the woods all by himself; the death of his master, the gnolls that skulked about… But he did know the way to the Emerald Grove where the tieflings made camp.
Apparently it was no tiefling settlement, but a druid grove that happened to house tieflings too. There being druids was immediately reassuring; this Nettie person would likely be an adept healer.
According to Scratch, the journey would take no more than a few hours, but their new four-legged companion hadn’t calculated for bipedal shortcomings.

It was afternoon by the time the dog’s tail started wagging, and he signalled to Tav that he could smell the grove. But then he stiffened suddenly, hunkering down and going very quiet.
Tav came to a crouch by his side, watching the dog intently.
“What do you smell? Is it the gnolls?”
“Goblins. From the west,” he replied with a small whine. Tav relayed the information to the others and she could have sworn Shadowheart looked positively giddy at the prospect of a fight. Not to mention Astarion.

“Astarion, why do you look like I just rang a dinner bell?”
“Because now that you all know what I am, I can fight with all my weapons,” he smiled, glinting a fang.
Just as he said that, the bushes began to rattle. But not just the bushes… the trees too.
Something was running right at them, and a tall, slender man with thick brown curls stumbled out of the foliage.
“Run, ye sorry bastids!” he shouted upon spotting them, not pausing for one breath, “They’re coming!”

His men stumbled after him, looking haggard and bruised as they flew past. A quick head count told Tav that they must be hunted by a fair few goblins, if they took off running instead of stopping to make a stand, even with sudden backup.
“Let’s go!” she called to her companions and set off, following the strangers. They rounded a boulder and came upon a clearing in front of a rockfall, as tall as the trees and no handholds in sight.
Where were these people leading them? Was it a dead end?

“Open the bloody gate!” the curly-haired man called out.
What bloody gate?
Much to Tav’s surprise, a tall tiefling man appeared over the rockfall’s edge.
“Nobody gets in or out! Zevlor’s orders!” he shouted back.
The man before Tav snarled a muffled curse.
“That pack of goblins will be on us any second!” he insisted and fumbled at his belt.
Another tiefling, taller, older, with ridged red skin appeared. By his bearing and his armour he must be the one in charge.
“What’s going on down there?” Tav heard him ask.
“Goblins are on our tail! Open the gate, Zevlor—NOW!”
“You lead goblins here?! Where is the druid?!”
The curly-haired man found what he fumbled for at his belt and held up a grenade like a promise to the tiefling commander.
“Please, Zevlor! There’s no time!”

And he was right. There was a roar behind them as the enemy cleared the treeline. More goblins than Tav could count at a glance, worgs, even an ogre swinging a great club ahead of her with a nasty grin.
Tav heard the commander swear above her and order the guards to open the gate and man positions. There was a rumbling noise behind them and one of the largest boulder began to move, painstakingly slowly hoisted into the air. Tav’s eyes widened—a disguised portcullis!
Genius, she had time to think, Discreet, sturdy and heavy.

She immediately signalled for her companions to move between herself and the rising boulder so that she could cover them as they went inside, drawing her crossbow as she turned. The entire forest behind them was rattling and shaking, and she could faintly feel the tremors of heavy footsteps approaching.
Scratch took a wide stance beside her, growling menacingly at the approaching horde.
Brave, silly pup. I’m gonna have to worry about you, aren’t I?
She stared down the encroaching swarm, not even bothering to take count. They were outnumbered, that much was certain, and cornered… But surely they ought to have arrow fire from above to cover them too?

Sure enough, one goblin was nailed to the ground as a thick arrow shaft pierced it to the fletchling, dead in an instant.
The worgs took crossbow bolts but barely winced as they came barreling down them. Tav was trying to will the boulder up faster with her mind to no avail, feeling the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rising with apprehension of a fight like this.

But it wasn’t just the tieflings that had range weapons: an archer line formed right behind the chargers and fired.
“Kanon! NO!” she heard the commander shout and then the cry of disappointment and the heavy thud of inexorable rock making contact with the ground—the impact nearly threw Tav off her feet for a moment.
Too late now; there was no time to raise the portcullis again before the goblins fell upon them.
“Shit,” she heard the northern lilt of the curly haired man beside her, and she looked at him. He had a club raised and he met her gaze steadily, checking her nerve.
She gave him a curt nod and he actually grinned before he ordered his men to form a line.

Her own friends were already forming up behind her.
Astarion clicked his neck slightly and smiled.
“I’ve missed this,” he grinned at her, rapier drawn.
“Ready,” came Shadowheart on his other side.
A crack of thunder parted the goblin cries as one of the little bastards flew sky-high.
“Damnable roach!” came a stranger's voice as he plopped down ahead of them all, having leapt to their aid from the parapet. He was a dark-skinned man dressed in supple leathers and a red gambeson, hair braided tight against his scalp. Beautiful and scarred, with one white stone eye.
“Provoke the blade, and suffer its sting!” he cried out, and then fell into the fray with a war cry.

Tav had been distracted for a moment by the appearance of the stranger, and she very nearly paid dearly for it; Gale pulled her backwards as he flung his arm out to catch the arrow. The air glinted as his magical shield flashed, sending the arrow to the side limply.
Gale didn’t hesitate to counter; his hands glowed and he sent a flurry of red missiles like a rain of pain, all hitting their marks.
Tab quickly gathered herself too, firing at the nearest goblin chargers; her little hand crossbow wasn’t powerful enough to kill anything the size of an ogre, or even a worg, but she could hit some goblins just fine.

Astarion danced as he carved a bloody trail through the horde, covered by the supporting fire from atop the parapet.
A warhorn sounded, so deep that Tav felt it in her chest, and roused anew, she cried out as she set to kill.
Scratch barked at her side, snarling as he went tumbling over a goblin fighter, gurgling as the dog tore his throat out.

Shadowheart leapt into the air next to her, gripping her mace with both hands, bringing it down with full force as she nailed another foe into the ground with a wet crunch. A worg dashed at her to avenge its master, but she caught the beast by the throat. A flash of bright green light, and gashes opened its pelt and stained the ground red. An arrow from one of the stranger’s archers pierced its neck, ending its suffering.
Shadowheart didn’t even stop for breath but charged on, swinging wide and crying out like a war fiend.

Astarion and the dark-skinned stranger were back to back, covering each other as they danced their deathly dance, until Astarion caught a goblin by the mane and sank his teeth into his neck.
Where’s Gale?
A thunderous voice sounded just as Tav thought it, and a shockwave rippled through the ground, sending the ogre on its back, crushing a few of its allies under itself in an instant.
Then Gale cried out in pain, and Tav whipped her head around, spotting him with a shallow crossbow bolt to the shoulder.

She turned to see who had fired, and saw a smug, gap-toothed grin. One shot of her crossbow later, she had returned the gesture and the archer went limp to the ground, eye bleeding out of its socket.
“You have got to stop getting shot, Gale!” she berated him, and pulled her rapier to start slashing. He flashed her a sardonic grin, but if Gale replied, she didn’t hear it.

“Hold the line!” came the northern lilt again and Tav felt the stranger to her right, swinging wide as he aimed for a worg snout. It ducked out of range, but barely got to flash its teeth before an arrow sent its head into the ground, piercing its skull.
Tav’s lungs burned and she could feel her chest tighten, coil up, her magic beginning to rise.
Shit shit shit shit—
She didn’t have time to calm down, and she didn’t know what it would do, but whatever was about to detonate from her… she ought to do it among foes, not allies.
“Cover me!”
She took off bolting, breaking the line and piercing the goblins. Her skin burned and her vision blurred, and she heard the others cry out after her as she broke the line.
“Hold the fooking line, lass!”

Then a pained grunt as someone behind her took a hit. She couldn’t afford to look back. Her skin was taut and set to burst, to erupt in flames. She screamed, bellowed, and then let loose and a sphere of fire engulfed her, sending all the little goblin bastards flying in a trail of flames and smoke, screaming in horror and pain.
Tav almost got a chance to feel smug, and relieved as the pressure subsided, but not for long.
She heard the faint whisper of air and ducked just as the ogre’s bat came swinging at her.
The great, big monster of a creature was singed, burned raw in places, and furious. And no wonder; her breast bared, she had so many arrow shafts sticking out of her that she looked like a very ugly hedgehog, like a meat pin-cushion, striped in streaks of sticky blood.

She swung once more, twice, and Tav barely had time to duck out of the way.
There was a snarl and a flash of white, and Tav spotted Scratch, hanging on to the ogre’s loin cloth, shaking his head viciously as he tried to protect his new friend.
The ogre barely even registered the tug, but she grinned viciously at the dog , raising her club above her head to crush Scratch like a bug.
“You! You squash!” she grinned, voice thick and dumb.
Not my dog, you ugly cunt.

Tav didn’t even think; she felt her fury rise faster than bile, and she clapped her hands to the ogre’s skin, feeling the impact of her touch.
She had no idea what she’d done, but the ogre cried, wailed in pain, gasping for breath, and when Tav looked at what she’d done, there was a crater in the ogre’s flesh, big enough for her to crawl into.
Did I do that?!

With a wet rattle of a breath, the ogre sank to her knees, flinching as arrow upon arrow rained down on her from the parapet, shaking her. But it didn’t matter; the only thing that mattered to the beast before it died was that she dragged Tav into death with her.
“Take her down, take her down, kill her!” she heard Zevlor commanding his archers from on high, and with the sun glinting in his armour, Tav could’ve sworn she saw a divine glimmer at the sight.
Scratch lunged at the ogre’s throat, burying his teeth into her soft flesh, shaking his head like he was crazed, that frightening, sickening noise that only enraged dogs could produce.

With a grunt, the ogre rolled onto her back, fumbling limply for her assailant, and Tav summoned every flame she’d ever seen to her mind. The word came unbidden, she’d only ever heard others using it, but she figured she’d try it on for size. Her hands burned, turned red, wreathed in flames.
It felt good. Balanced.
”Ignis,” she hissed and slammed her fiery fist right into the ogre’s face, killing it at last.
Scratch leapt out of the way of the flames, tail giving one single wag, before setting off into the chaos again.
Good dog.

She allowed herself one shuddering breath and took in the scene: the ground was muddy and red, the stones slick with blood.
One of the stranger’s men lay dead, sandwiched between the goblins he had killed, and the felled worg that had killed him in turn.

The curly-haired stranger was still fighting, glazed in blood, as he staved off two goblin assailants. But he got unlucky and his grip slipped, leaving him open to a blow that surely broke his arm. It hung limp and the man looked frightened, backing up.
The one-eyed stranger fell in to cover him, piercing one with his rapier and kicking the other in the chest so hard, Tav was certain its rib cage caved in.
But the line was broken, and the goblin were storming between them.

“Close ranks!” he called out, and then came the ominous creaking of the portcullis being raised behind them. What the—
“ZEVLOR, WHAT THE FOOK ARE YE DOING?!”
Tav watched as the goblins, almost dizzy with triumph, rallied and cried out, immediately beginning to swarm closer to the opening in the rockfall.
“PULL BACK!” came the northerner’s voice, but a smoke grenade dropped and they all flinched backwards, away from the rockfall. It had fallen from the parapet, between the fighters and the goblins, and Tav started to sense a ruse.
“FOR THE ABSOLUTE!” came a nasal war cry, and the goblins began to flood in.
“LOOSE!” came Zevlor’s deep voice and suddenly the great boulder fell right on the swarming goblins, crushing half a dozen or more in one fell swoop.

Clever bastard, Tav though to herself.
Zevlor had drawn the goblins into a trap, fooled them into thinking they were about to win, staved the frontline fighters off from pursuing them under the giant rock… and crushed the majority of the remaining goblins. Now the stragglers were caught between a rock and sharp blades, with arrows raining down from the parapet.

It was bloody work, but in less than a minute, the stragglers lay dead too. Only one was left alive, a female with a plum-coloured mohawk, held dangling off her feet in a chokehold by the curly-haired stranger.
The portcullis began to pull up for a third time, this time its underside painted red, and dripping into the chum below.
Tav and her friends ran a quick inventory of one another; they were splattered red with blood—most of which was not their own.
“Bleeding hells, Tav, look at what you did to the ogre!? Where was this in the shrine?!” Astarion called out.
Gale wandered up to Shadowheart who ripped the bolt out of his shoulder and healed him with some mumbled spell.
“Judging by the state of it, it seems Tav used her powers on the nautiloid,” Gale grunted through the pain, “It looks just like the crash site.”
“To be honest, I didn’t intend to do that,” Tav shrugged, “But she threatened Scratch.”
“Serves her right then,” Shadowheart mumbled.

Once healed, Gale sighed with relief, testing his shoulder out.
“Many thanks, Shadowheart,” he said.
“Gale,” Tav called out to him. When he turned to her, she threw him a gambeson she’d scavenged off one of the dead. Gale caught it and wobbled slightly, taken by surprise. “Put this on. No more bolts for you. Two in two days is plenty.”
He shrugged and shimmied into it, mending the little scuffs and tears in the material.
“At least it’s not plated steel, or I’d never walk again,” he remarked. Then he gestured over himself, mumbled some prestidigitation spell, and the gambeson turned indigo.
“That’s better.”
Tav looked at him, dumbfounded. “Seriously?”
“... What?”
“Purple is such a mage colour. You’re practically begging to get shot again. Can’t you just wear a sign that says ‘I’m a delicate prawn, shoot me’ instead?”
“Allow a man his vanity,” smiled and patted her arm.
“How can you care about vanity covered in blood and guts?”

Astarion made a delighted little sigh and adjusted his locks.
“With ease and panache.”
“... Shut up,” Tav chuckled, reaching down to pet Scratch as he sat by her knee, tongue lolling happily out of his mouth. “All I’m saying, Gale, is if you die again, I refuse to do your little song-and-dance bringing you back to life.”
“Heartless woman,” he tutted, but he was smiling too. Tav swallowed hard and turned to their newest recruit instead.
“You did so good, boy! Who’s a vicious killer? You are! Remind me to pick up some dog-friendly little treatos once we’re inside.”
Then she caught that the others had stopped smiling, their attentions turned elsewhere, and she looked over her shoulder to see that tiefling commander, Zevlor, marching from out under the opened portcullis.

“All of you, inside, more may follow,” he ordered with a gesture, but his eyes were locked on the curly-haired man. “And you…”
The curly-haired man handed off his quarry and ordered her to be taken inside for questioning. The commander shoved him hard in the chest as soon as he reached him.
“There are children here, you fool!
“We wos runnin’ for our lives!” the man scowled back, still breathing hard, not backing an inch.
Oh dear. Time for round two it seems, Tav thought and made her way over.
“Loot the dead, then wait inside,” she instructed the others.

“You led them straight to us! And you let them take the druid! Unbelievable!” Zevlor spat out.
“Hang on now,” Tav began, dialling her womanly wiles all the way up, “The only unbelievable stuff here is how you both fought off those goblins! You’re heroes.”
To her surprise, the curly-haired man turned on her. “And who are you, again?”
Zevlor raised a warning finger in the man’s face.
“Show this woman respect, she just saved your sorry hide. Where’s Halsin?!”
“Gentlemen, please, the fight is over, simmer down,” Tav tried again, worrying that these two might be running a little bit too hot to be receptive.
“Stay out of this, lass.”
“No, thanks.”
“Where’s. Halsin?” Zevlor repeated. Tav could practically feel his blood boil from where she was standing. The northerner shrugged.
“We lost him back at the ruins—whole place is crawlin’ with gobbos.”

More ruins? Because there weren’t any goblins where we just came from.
“He trusted you, Aradin!”
“Nobody forced him to go with us—he insisted. And when things got tough, he couldn’t keep up. Simple as.”
“My gods, you’re a coward,” Zevlor snarled, “The druids will be out for blood over this!”
“... That doesn’t sound like druids,” Tav remarked, and stepped between them very literally, hands on both their hearts. “The only two out for blood right now are the pair of you. Your crews are watching. Don’t lose your cool.”
“Tell that to the dead at the gate,” Zevlor mumbled, but he’d been subdued.
“Listen, horns, my men and I would be lying dead outside the gates if you’d stalled any longer. And I don’t remember asking for any bloody help either, especially from a lass,” the human sneered and flicked her hand away. The ‘horns’ hadn’t been lost on Tav—this man clearly wasn’t the open-minded sort in regards to tieflings.
Men like you are the reason my mother cut my horns off.

“Please, you were begging me to open the gate! Anything to save yourself, you coward,” the tiefling commander said again, towering over Aradin.
Alright, you blowhards, if you won’t listen to sense, you’ll listen to orders.
“HEY!” Tav shouted, shoving them both off, rising to her full height, which barely reached Aradin’s nose. “More violence won’t bring back the ones you lost. Stop and think.”
Zevlor deflated immediately.
“You’re right. There’s too much at stake.”
“Worried about yer precious hides, the both of ye,” Aradin said and spat at the ground.
“Enough, Aradin,” Tav commanded, nailing him with her eyes. “Squabbling is useless. Take some air.”
Aradin made an annoyed noise and walked off, into the settlement. His men gathered to him like hens around a cock. A beautiful man, with a beautiful name… and an absolutely rancid personality.

Zevlor took Tav in for a moment, pondering her, before bowing his head in respect.
“Forgive that display. You showed better sense than I. Aradin is a ruffian, but that’s no excuse for me to stoop to his level. He won’t say this, but I will; thank you for your help out there. I am Zevlor.”
He reached out a massive red hand, with long, black talons and speckled with scars. This man was a lifelong warrior, no mistake. She took it, marvelling at its strength and warmth.
“Tav Lunet. My companions over there are Shadowheart, Gale of Waterdeep, and Astarion. And this good boy here is Scratch.”
“Well met,” he nodded to them. “I should warn you, culwsapil… Visitors are no longer welcome in this grove.”
Shit, spotted.

She began to subtly move around Zevlor so his booming voice wouldn’t quite reach the others, in case he’d say something else that so clearly let on what she wasn’t ready to share with the others just yet.
“This place is dedicated to Silvanus, the Oak Father. I’m afraid his followers are just as thorny, I fear. Whatever your business, I’d see to it quickly. The druids are forcing everyone out. This attack will only strengthen their resolve.”
“Why? We have no quarrel with druids,” she remarked with a frown.
“There have been several attacks by different monsters. The druids blame us tieflings for drawing them here. We’re not welcome anymore.”

“Alright, well, we don’t intend to stay here long. We need to resupply on our way home, and we’re looking for a healer—Nettie?”
“Nettie is good if your injuries aren’t too serious, but she is merely Halsin’s apprentice—now that’s a master healer. But he didn’t make it back from Aradin’s little expedition. But the infirmary is in the inner grove, you can find help there, for now.”
Shit. What were the odds that an apprentice could heal a mind flayer parasite?
Zevlor went on, not noticing the disappointment on Tav’s face.

“The druids have started a ritual to cut the grove off from the world outside. We can’t stay… but my people will be slaughtered if we leave: We’re refugees, from Elturel. Civilians, children, elders… Not fighters. We took shelter here after gnolls attacked us on the road. We’ve tried to leave for Baldur’s Gate, but each time we attempt it we are forced to retreat here. There’s no place in Elturel for tieflings anymore after the Descent.”

The flames of his eyes filled to a flickering, sorrowful ember.
“The Descent?”
Zevlor flinched with surprise.
“I’m… surprised you’ve not heard of it?”
Tav glanced around, making sure her companions were none too close, but they were patching each other up, waiting for her.
“I’m from Baldur’s Gate. My tiefling heritage is from my grandparents. I’ve never been to Elturel.”

“Alright, well… The High Overseer—our ‘grand protector’—signed a pact with devils. It dragged Elturel straight to the hells. Lucky for us, a band of adventurers found a way to bring the city back… But afterwards, the people looked at our kind and called us ‘devilkin.’ No different from the druids here, actually,” he remarked with a small tone of sadness.
“... Is there a safe place for tieflings anywhere?” Tav remarked sadly and gave Zevlor’s arm a small squeeze, and the commander hummed bitterly.
“Fair point. We can only hope the city of Baldur’s Gate are as welcoming of our kind as they have been to you, culwsapil.”

Tav bit her lip.
“That… may be a bit of a problem,” she mumbled and, making sure her back was fully turned to her friends, briefly swept her fringe to the side, baring the pale discs of what was left of her horns to Zevlor, and his eyes widened. “Don’t be alarmed. My mother did this to me, for my protection. I don’t style myself the way that I do for fun. I can pass for an elf, so long as I hide the more obvious signs. It’s safer that way. There are tieflings in the city, but… well, we’re on par with ogres and drow to some. Expect more like Aradin when you get there.”

Zevlor nodded, frowning deeply.
“I am sorry if I have caused you trouble with your companions. And I thank you for your confidence, and your advice on the city. But we can’t get there, with those beasts blocking our path.”
“Give them some credit,” she tried to smile encouragingly, “if your people survived the Hells, they’re hardier than you give them credit for.”
Zevlor shook his head, but more out of dull despair than rebuffing her claim.
“We’ve lost so many already. And more will die if we’re forced out again.”
“... Is there no way to convince the druids to stop the ritual?” Tav said, crossing her arms, and Zevlor sighed.

“I’ve tried. Kagha—their new First Druid—won’t even see me,” he lamented, but then something lit in his eyes, “You though… You don’t look tiefling, she might listen to you. I know it’s not your business, Miss Lunet, but Kagha owes you for saving this place. Perhaps you could persuade her? Or buy us a little more time at least. Please?”
Tav shifted her weight from one foot to another. He’d asked for help. But then again, she had other people depending on her too. But she could tell that Zevlor was a proud man, who did not ask for help lightly. And they were tieflings. She felt… like she had an obligation to help.

“... I’ll see what I can do, but I cannot make any promises.”
“We’d owe you a great debt. If we’re forced to leave now, I assure you we won’t make it to the city. Please, just try. To make them see sense, before more lives are lost.”
“I—”
“Tav?” came Shadowheart’s voice, and Scratch let out an inquisitive bark too.
“I shan’t keep you any longer,” Zevlor said, and pulled back, and Tav gave him a serious nod, fixing her fringe.

“Yeah, I’m coming!”
“We got the haul off the dead, already pawned it off,” Shadowheart said, handing her a pouch full of clink. “You know, that’s the first time I ever met a trader who made me feel guilty for buying anything. ‘Please, remember, you’re not the only one in need.’ These people have seen some hard times. There’s tieflings everywhere.”
Tav passed on Zevlor’s information about the tieflings, the druids’ paranoia, and Nettie.
“She’s an apprentice?” Astarion exclaimed, “And not this supposed master healer? Gods!”
“What, would you have rather taken the deal with the dev—Raphael?”

There was a squeak at Tav’s feet and she looked down to see a very fat rat scurrying past her. Right out in the open, fearless and not even trying to hide in the shadows. How peculiar.
“Tav, we don’t know how long we have before we turn,” Astarion pushed back between gritted teeth.
“Well… We still haven’t actually seen Nettie, and we need to get our bearings. Find out how far we are from home, resupply. See about that goblin they took prisoner, she might know a way around the goblin camp, save us the trouble. Talk to this druid, Kagha—”
“What, we’re messengers now?” he groaned back. “The tieflings aren’t our conce—oh, hells, he said ‘please,’ didn’t he? Gods above.”

“Zevlor just asked that we speak to the First Druid,” Gale soothed, “Not that we indulge in some brazen heroics. And I for one am for it.”
He shot Tav another smile, and Tav felt warmer just to see it.
“Well, at least we have fresh coin,” Astarion muttered.
“What about that stranger?” Shadowheart asked.
“Which one?” Gale asked.
“The stone eye?” Tav said, gesturing to her own eye.
“Oh, he took off down the road. He didn’t stay around,” Astarion shrugged, “Why do you ask?”
“I think… I think he was on the nautiloid. I connected with him earlier. Nearly split my head in half,” Shadowheart said, rubbing her head.
“Let’s walk and talk,” Tav said and nodded her head. “Standing around makes me jittery.”

Gale made a surprised noise and began heading backwards a bit.
“Wrong way?” Astarion said, pointing into the settlement.
“That up there,” Gale pointed, “Is that a telescope? It is! Hang on, we could use it to—”
Once again, Gale was interrupted by a piercing scream, and a tiefling woman scrambled into view with a bugbear on her heel.

Chapter Text

They shot off to help the poor tiefling, scrambling up the ladder to reach her in time. The woman was scurrying on her hands and knees trying to get away, and the bugbear intent to kill her swung a menacing, spiked club with a murderous, grunting laugh, certain he’d get his quarry.
But Tav was faster; she’d gotten her small crossbow from her hip and shot him in the hand. He dropped his crude implement with a yowl of pain. Gale and Shadowheart sent two firebolts in perfect sync, sending him backwards, where he landed on something.
The bugbear’s face contorted in shock and pain, and then he spat out blood.
Behind him rose a huge tiefling woman with one horn crudely severed, wreathed in flames.

She threw the bugbear off her greataxe blade, raised it above her head and severed its head from the body in one fell swing, and then grunted to retract her weapon; she’d swung it with so much force, she’d embedded the blade into the rock.
“Whoa,” Tav recoiled, but then moved the others to hurry to aid the erstwhile murder victim.
By the time they made it up to the parapet, she and the large tiefling were engrossed in a heated debate that distinctly looked like anything but thanks.
“That bloody erinyes! Fine, take it, mragreshem, and get lost!”
She threw something small into the chest of the newcomer, who was panting hard and scowling viciously, and stormed off.

“Should we really—”
“Yes, Astarion. I want to know what just happened.”
“Stay back!” the red tiefling warned them, hunched over in pain. Even from several paces away, Tav could feel the heat that emanated from her. This newcomer was wildly beautiful and powerful in equal measure, with a thick mane of hair hanging over one side of her face. Her attire seemed to have mostly burned off of her and hanging on by very literal threads, and the spot above her heart glowed white-hot under her ribs, outlining them in stark contrast as her heart pounded. Her skin was equally tattooed and horribly marred; flesh-deep burns and battle scars lacing into black ink lines, taut over rippling muscle.
Are those… vents? In her skin?!

She smelled more like the hells than any tiefling Tav had ever laid eyes on—not just infernal blood but the stench of spilled, burnt blood and sulphur seeming to have seeped into her skin and clothes.
“Are you alright?” she called out from a safe distance.
“Me?” the woman chuckled, trying hard to breathe deep and bring her flames under control. “Never better.”
She looked into Tav’s eyes, and she dumbstruck her with their colour, yellow like saffron and liquid fire. She stood up, towering almost two heads over Tav’s meagre height. Now that she was standing straight, Tav could see that she had red streaks through her hair, and that the lengths were choppy and uneven—she couldn’t tell whether from a sloppy cut or simply singing them off.
“I smelled other tieflings,” she said, “and this was the only way in. Fuck me, steep climb. Please tell me there aren’t any Paladins of Tyr here.”
“It’s not a shrine, it’s a druid’s grove,” Tav explained. “We just got here ourselves, so we couldn’t tell you.”
“I think Zevlor is a paladin,” Shadowheart offered, “Did he mention Tyr, Tav?”
“Only Elturel.”
“Oof,” the giant beauty winced, “Poor bastard. Hang on—I saw blondie on the nautiloid!”
She nodded eagerly to Astarion. “Glad to see you made it, pal!”
“You were on the nautiloid too?”
“Hang on, Tav,” Gale interrupted, “How did you control those flames?!”
The tiefling shot him a grin. “Nice of you to ask. Lately, I’ve gotten used to being called ‘devil’ without followup questions. S’why I made my way here when I smelled more of our kind. As for the flames, I’ll tell you the whole story, but it’s a long’un—”

All their heads split to one another as the stranger’s mind poured into theirs. This woman had not been snatched by a giant tentacle off the streets; she’d been in the middle of a bloody battle on the sands of the Styx, when the nautiloid had appeared out of nowhere. She’d seen a window of opportunity and hitched a ride, but fallen into a vat of tadpoles when she’d breached the hull. She was infected, just like them.
“What was that?!” she grunted with pain, rubbing her head.
“Whoa,” Tav recoiled, “It’s the worm in your eye. It connects us. You left from the frying pan into the fire, just jumping onto a nautiloid on impulse like that. Your nerves are wrought iron.”
“I was in literal Hell for ten years, soldier,” the stranger shrugged, “If you’d been there longer than a minute, you wouldn’t judge. Anything else these… worms can do?”

“They might turn us into mind flayers,” Shadowheart piped up, and the stranger’s eyes widened into fiery saucers.
“‘Might?!’”
“We should’ve seen symptoms of turning by now, but we haven’t. We might not turn at all as far as we know. But there’s no way to be sure.”
The tiefling’s eyes closed with despair, and she heaved a shuddering sigh.
“Fuck’s sakes. Nothing but mountains as far as the eye can see,” the tiefling muttered, rubbing her eye socket. “I’m Karlach. What about you lot?”
Tav introduced them all in turn. Shadowheart smiled.

“I like her. She looks like she could throw me over her shoulder and carry me to safety, should the need arise,” she hummed softly.
“She looks like she could break your back,” Astarion muttered and Shadowheart seemed to ponder the prospect for a moment.
“Sounds fun.”
Tav sighed deep. “Don’t mind them. They’re all reprobates.”
“What, even I?” Gale protested.
“Wizard, ain’t you?” Tav and Karlach asked as one, and grinned immediately at each other.

“Fuck me, soldier, you lot actually seem cool. Mind if I tag along? I’m not much use for shoulder slinging, seeing as I run hotter than sin… But I can kill evil bastards with the best of’em.”
Gale shrugged a little but then shot the most shit-eating grin Tav had ever seen, and it filled her with dread.
“I suppose she’s a little rough around the edges, but then again, I can be smooth enough for two.”
Tav cringed and rubbed her eyes.
“See, that’s why you count as a reprobate,” she smirked sarcastically at him, then back to Karlach, then she looked to Scratch, sitting obediently at her feet, dark eyes untroubled and his tongue hanging out as ever. A good sign in itself.
When their eyes made contact, she nodded questioningly over to Karlach, and the dog shot up to carefully sniff the red lady.

Karlach crouched down, seeming to want to reach out to pet, but being afraid she might burn the dog.
“Careful, bud,” she said, holding out her hand, ready to retract if the sensitive nose got too close, “I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you.”
Tav watched the dog intently. One thing she’d learned was that animals were an uncanny litmus test for people. The whores in The Pink Scabbard trusted their local cats even more than they trusted the clink of coin. ‘If the cat sounds a hiss, not so much as a kiss.’ Or the more crude ending of ‘man is worth less than piss.’

When Scratch’s tail began to wag, she considered the matter closed.
“Welcome to the gang,” she said and waved her on.
“What? Just like that?” Karlach said, eyes wide and excited. Tav shrugged.
“Scratch says you pass, so you pass.”
“Aww,” Karlach cooed, “Thanks, buddy, I owe you one.”

“I’ll take payment in chicken,” Scratch said, and Tav passed the message on. Karlach boomed with laughter and promised him a whole spatchcock.
As they climbed back down again, Karlach told about the paladins of Tyr that were hunting her, led by The Blade of Frontiers.
Provoke the blade, and suffer its sting.
“Scarred fellow, one stone eye?”
“Shit, the fact that you’ve seen him bodes ill.”
“He left. He fought at the gates with us, but he left afterwards.”
“Looking for me, no doubt.”
“Well, he had no paladins in tow, at least.”

They made their way into the great cavern that shaded the settlement. There were stalls about, manned by all manner of folk. There were more tieflings here than Tav had ever seen in one spot, in every imaginable colour. Tails free in the air, horns on full display with ornate braids that curled around them to emphasise their shape and beauty. Some even had gold inlays in their horns, glinting in the light.
All of them were so beautiful. They’d never hidden what they were, even if the world condemned them for it. Instead they’d sought each other.
Tav’s heart twinged with a certain jealousy. Of their community, their camaraderie. The only tiefling Tav was close to was her father, now that her grandparents had passed.

Children were zig-zagging the crowd, and Tav moved her coin purse to her chest pocket immediately. Like any Baldurian worth a damn, she knew just how fast little hands could snatch.
“Fancy a bowl?” came an old woman’s voice, catching Tav’s attention. “It’s not much, but it’s all we’ve got, sweetheart.”
The older tiefling woman looked haggard, tired. Her white hair cropped short, but her eyes shone with kindness as she was handing her a bowl across a great cauldron.
To have a stranger, a refugee, call you ‘sweetheart’ and freely offer you a meal, both of you so far from home... That was a rare kindness indeed. Tav’s heart caught on her ribs. She took the bowl with soft thanks, and soon they were all served and sitting on some crates, watching the people pottering about them.

Gale sat next to her, his side warm against her arm.
“I saw that, by the way,” he said with a small smile.
Tav’s head stalled.
“... Saw what?”
He leaned in as if to whisper a secret.
“You used magic on purpose. No ‘mishaps.’”
“I mean, that surge of flames wasn’t intentional, but once that had happened… I dunno. It was like the pressure dropped. I didn’t feel so pent up. Did it look cool?”
“It was glorious,” he nodded with great emphasis, “You show promise to become a great pyromancer with a little training.”
“You gonna smooth out my rough edges too, huh?”
“... Maybe. If you say ‘please.’”

You cheeky git! … Why does it work on me?
“Please,” she said without hesitation, exaggeratedly sumptuous, and Gale choked on his spoonful. She laughed heartily at her little revenge. “I was actually considering asking you to teach me anyway.”
He nodded and looked curiously at her hands, as though he could glean some insight in her knuckles.
“Shadowheart mentioned you don’t resort to magic if you can help it?”
“I have no control over it. Sometimes it feels as if I spend all my waking time trying to make sure I don’t blow up.”

“... I can empathise with that,” he mumbled, putting his spoon down, before shooting her another smirk. “Very well. I accept you as my apprentice.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Tav protested, putting her spoon up to her defence, “I’m not your wizarding apprentice! I am still a bard, just hopefully a less volatile one, ere too long.”
“With my astute tutelage.”
“I am already regretting asking,” she said in mock reproach, shoving him gently with her shoulder.
“Oh no, Tav, it’s a very shrewd quid pro quo you’ve devised,” he mused, “I teach you a spell and maybe… you could ‘spell things out’ for me.”

Tav blushed and bit her lip, but he was blushing too.
How dare you make passes that hard, and be flustered with yourself?!
Still. He was adorable with his cheeks reddening like that. And Tav ran scant on words, seeing it. She dared to lean the most incremental of inches closer.
Both of them too flustered to talk, Tav looked around, trying to find something, anything, to look at that wasn’t her own knees.
There were guards walking about. Some were human and wore the same shade of green as Aradin, which told her he must be there somewhere. She heard some bickering and saw three red tieflings, with the same colour eyes, so alike they must be siblings, arguing about something. An old woman selling potions.
There was also a rhythmic thudding of impact, a hammer striking hot steel. A blacksmith?
Karlach was staring that way, and she was already starting to smoke a little bit around the edges.

“Something the matter, Karlach?” she asked.
Karlach nodded to the broad back of the smith, turned their direction. His skin golden yellow, his blonde hair tied up in a deliciously sloppy knot, revealing a shaved neck. He was glazed in sweat and shimmering like a jewel.
“Soldier… He is well fit.”
Tav grinned. “Looks like he’s not scared of fire either.”

The smith walked around the fire hearth, great hammer in one hand, holding a red hot sword in the embers with the other. As he turned his face their way, Tav could see ice-blue eyes glinting through the flames.
“Fuck me,” she heard Karlach mumble to herself, and Tav couldn’t fault her. The man was positively gorgeous.
Shadowheart passed her new friend a waterskin.
“Thirsty?” she asked, smirking.
Karlach took the flask, held it open to her mouth without pressing it to her lips, and poured water onto her tongue. It sizzled and steamed, and Shadowheart’s eyes widened as she grinned.
“I haven’t had a cold pint in ten solid years. Wine mulls on my tongue. Forget touching,” Karlach sniffled, slouching a little. “Besides, specimen like that? He won’t look at me twice.”

Just as she said that, the blacksmith did look up, as if sensing that he was being ogled. He spotted the three women openly staring, but Tav could have sworn his eyes lingered on Karlach a heartbeat too long, and then the corner of his mouth tugged slightly.
Yeah, hold that thought…
The smith looked down at his project, then glanced back, as if to see if Karlach was still looking… Then he turned his back again.
Karlach let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.

“See?” she sighed.
But then the smith unhooked the top of his leather apron from his neck, reached above his shoulders and pulled his shirt off, revealing a back rippling with muscle and sheened in sweat, looking positively good enough to eat. Then he hooked the top of his apron back over his neck, turned back whilst very deliberately not looking their way, before raising his hammer high and bringing it down in slow, forceful blows that rang against the cavern walls like church bells.
Astarion hummed.
“That man needs a tip jar.”
“It’s not the tip he wants to give Karlach.”
“SHADOWHEART!”

Karlach made an indecipherable noise and the Astarion scooted to the side before her flames rose hot enough to singe his clothes.
“Easy, Karlach!” Tav warned, but there was laughter bubbling up her throat too.
The smith brought another blow down, but then sighed and wiped his brow, looking at Karlach with a grin that was in no way subtle or vague, combing the stray hairs back with his fingers.
Karlach looked away, blushing like sin, biting on her knuckle.
Evil man. Nicely done. You broke her.

“That makes three times he’s looked right at you now,” Shadowheart chirped, and Karlach almost curled into herself.
“Doesn’t matter. If I touch him, I’ll cook him,” she muttered.
“Why is that?”
Karlach formed a fist and knocked her own chest; instead of the thud of flesh, there was a tinny sound from behind her ribs.
“Infernal engine for a heart. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

She peered up at the smith again and he shot her a smile, but then he went back to his duties, satisfied that he’d wrecked Karlach entirely.
“Well, Karlach, you are wearing nothing but belt buckles and leather scraps. We’re gonna have to kit you out regardless,” Tav pointed out.
“And I don’t want to go back to the halfling trader, my conscience can’t take it,” Shadowheart chimed in. “Might as well get his name. You can’t cook a name.”

“Woe betide anyone in your crosshairs, ladies,” Gale grinned, looking almost scared. He put his bowl down and rose to his feet, offering Tav his hand to help her down the entire four inch chasm between the soil and her soles. When she landed, he let her go and she stretched her fingers out tentatively. “A man can only dream to be so lucky.”
“What does ‘betide’ mean?” Karlach asked, and Tav laughed.
She gave the cook a few coins for a cut of ham, and was doling it out to Scratch in small pieces as she took in the scene.

“Alright. Let’s split up. Astarion, you see about that goblin prisoner, see if you can figure out where their camp is. Last thing we want is to run into more trouble on the road home. Take Scratch with you for backup—he can play bad dog. Shadowheart, you and Karlach go get kitted out. Do you need more coin? Good. Gale and I will go talk to the First Druid, and find Nettie and see if she can evict our little stowaways. That way, we cover more ground. Let’s meet up here in an hour.”

Going their separate ways, Gale walked close to Tav. Once again, she heard the squeaking of rats, spotting them walking unbothered around the wooden crates.
She knew every settlement had rats, of course. She remembered vaguely being told that you were never more than ten paces away from a rat within a settlement, whether you saw it or not.
But seeing them out like this? So fat, so clean, their coats so shiny, and not one injury between them? Not scraggly, scrungly city rats, these. It was as if they were being hand-fed sweets. Were druids really so precious about life that even rats were worthy of reverence?

Her thoughts were interrupted as she was almost ploughed out of the way by a tall tiefling in wizard's robes hurrying the opposite direction, and Gale only just managed to lead her out of the way. It was one of the bickering siblings, she thought.
But not only that. Both her and Gale’s eyes followed the young man as he strode. There was something in the air about him…
“You felt that, didn’t you?” Gale whispered. “How he brims? That’s how you feel, when I stand close to you. Like the threads of reality knot around your form and crackle. He’s powerful, make no mistake. What’s he doing in apprentice robes?”

Sure enough, the sister came hurrying behind her quarry, stopping in front of him and putting her index finger right under his nose.
“Hells, Rolan! Listen to me!” she shouted, putting both hands on his chest to stay him. “We can’t just leave! They’re kin!”
Tav and Gale were already turning to pretend they weren’t listening in.

The wizard put both hands up and almost lazily drawled out:
“I will not gamble our lives—our futures—on people who are as good as dead.”
That stopped Tav dead. Before her eyes, she saw Zevlor dead, and the blacksmith making eyes at Karlach, and the kind woman by the hearth. That image stung. It stung something fierce.
That is a bold thing to say out loud, in public, on purpose.

She exchanged a look with Gale, who clearly seemed of a mind with her.
“We cannot linger, Lia. We must leave for Baldur’s Gate at once,” the wizard continued, but their brother, clearly the born mediator, came hurrying up too, shushing his siblings.
“Can we just take a moment, I beg of you,” he hissed, trying to make them quieten down.

“NO!” the sister insisted, stomping her feet, seeming almost to aim for the toes of her obstinate brother. “What’s the point in blades and spells if we don’t bloody use them?! We should stay! These people aren’t fighters! We can help!”
The mediator looked around and sighed deeply.
“... Or yell louder. That’s fine too,” he mumbled and covered his eyes in shame.
Tav couldn’t hold her tongue. Not with Zevlor’s request in her ears. Not with that kind woman’s food in her belly.

“You should all stay,” she said forcefully to the reluctant brother—a beautiful man of an elegant aquiline nose and a snobbish sneer befitting any high wizard. “And don’t you ever dare be so nonchalant with the lives of others! Even a single blade could make a difference. Take pity for the children, even if your heart is lacking.”
“He just cares about his stupid apprenticeship! To the hells with innocent children,” Lia derided him, eyes brimming with reproach.
“Rolan, please listen,” the other brother beseeched him. “Three of us, all alone for a tenday journey? Or the entire group? Who do you think would fare better?”
”... Zurgan. Fine,” Rolan, acquiesced. “Fine! If we survive, it’ll make for a good story, I suppose!”

And just like that, he stormed on, siblings on his heels. The younger brother turned to Tav and Gale, looking rather verklempt, before mumbling a thanks and following them.

“The confidence of youth,” Gale muttered, shaking his head.
“The confidence of wizards,” Tav corrected him. “Long noses so far into their book spines and squabbles that they forget other people are real.”
“Ouch,” Gale muttered, placing a hand on her back and guiding her back to what they were doing. “I regret that you may have a point, though. That being said, should you see any elder wizards, point them out at once. I have a matter I need to discuss with a true savant.”

“Five minutes together and you’re already bored?” Tav quipped.
“Far from it, I find you rather invigorating.”
“I did invigorate you, at great expense to my sanity.”
“... That was not quite what I meant in the strictest sense,” Gale smiled, blushing again.
Stop that.
“Then… spell it out for me,” Tav quipped, and Gale’s blush deepened even further. It was intoxicating to do that to him.
“... Mystra’s mantle, grant me strength.”

Chapter Text

Tav spotted a little tiefling girl standing by herself, looking very nervous. She couldn’t be older than nine or ten and she was wringing her hands, nervously watching any bypassers like they might raise a hand to her at any given moment.
“So many children running around,” Tav pointed out, “but I haven’t heard the single bellow of a parent telling them to simmer down or stay close.”
“Where you find refugees, you find orphans,” her companion pondered with melancholy.
Tav’s heart twinged sharply. Gale was right. Zevlor had said ‘children,’ not ‘families.’

“She looks like she’s looking out for someone,” she pointed out, and started to walk up to the girl, crouching down to talk to her. Immediately, the girl shimmied backwards.
“S-sorry, m-my brother is the one doing all the b-business stuff,” she mumbled and pointed to a boy, standing a few paces off in front of an upturned crate with knick knacks on it.
“And what is your part of the business, sweetheart?” Tav asked, and the little girl bristled.
“Me? Oh, I’m… The guard?” she said, seeming to find a little bit of cheek within her. “So no funny business! I’m watching you…”
She made a little gesture between her eyes and Tav’s, and Tav leaned in conspiratorially.
“I’m watching you too,” she said, playfully squinting.
The girl squeaked and Tav decided to give the girl a break.

Gale had already made his way over to the brother, a scruffy-looking older kid with a quick smile and a mop of hair that desperately needed a brush.
“This your missus, saer?” the kid asked, and Gale’s mouth just moved like a fish on land. Clearly too soon for gifting jewellery.
“Give me your hand, lady, let me show you something!”
Tav thought of the girl right on her tail.
Soft girl behind the chump. Loud kid running distraction up front. I see how it is.
The kid made some little flourishes in the air, and then produced a cheap tin ring out of nowhere, holding it up for Tav with a small bow. Kid was a born showman.

“Take this ring. It’s lucky.”
“Nice little trick you’ve got there. Hammer’s Flourish, right?”
“Uh… I never learned the names of anything, just the tricks,” the kid shrugged. But he didn’t realise whatever little ruse he was playing at, the jig was already up. “Anyway, forget that, take the ring! I want to show you how lucky it is!”
Tav sighed and performed the sleight of hand right back, the exact same one the kid had used to conjure the ring, but to make it disappear.
“Weeping, bleeding hells!” the boy grinned.
“But that’s not all!” Tav said, raising a Gale-esque finger, certain that she had the kid in a vise already. “Because I can read thoughts!”

She felt Gale’s wary eyes on her neck already, but she crouched down to level with her mark. The kid, cocky, crossed his arms, but he swallowed too.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Tav said, pressing two fingers to her temple and squinting, as if she were concentrating hard. “I can see… That you’re running a Tinker’s Trash scam. A bad one too.”

The kid’s eyes widened.
“Nuh-uh!”
“Yuh-uh. But I’ve got a better scam. I’ll teach it to you. I call it the Tavvy Trap. I use it to trap little mice. Now what you do… is you get the chump to listen closely…”
She waved the kid closer, and he followed, suspiciously. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt, putting him off balance, and he whooped in surprise.
“... Because everyone knows that to catch mice, you need a nice little nibble of cheese,” she continued, and sure enough, the kid’s eyes wandered off her own for just a moment, but it was enough. But he looked back to her, trying to wiggle free.
“Hey, I ain’t no mouse, lady!” the kid said, squirming harder.
“Oh, sweetheart, I know,” Tav said, tasting triumph, “You’re the cheese.”

With that, Tav let go of the boy, turning to look at Gale, and sure enough, he had a tiny little shadow right behind him, just turning to sneak away. Tav caught the little sister by the back of her shirt, and she squeaked.
“You leave Mattis be!” she cried out, fighting feebly against the most miniscule restraint.
“‘Guard,’ huh? Give it back, little mouse,” Tav commanded.
“... Give what back?” she tried, but her eyes were already welling up.
“The man’s purse.”
Gale’s eyes followed Tav’s arm, and then fumbled at his belt, finding his purse gone.
“You cheeky little nipper!” he said, seeming more surprised—even impressed—than outraged.
That he’s so good-humoured about it is nice. Many men in his shoes would raise a hand.

The little girl hiccuped and swallowed repeatedly, looking from the adults to her brother, tears welling up in her eyes. It was no ruse; Tav could feel the poor child shaking like an aspen leaf.
Too soft-hearted to be a street rat, this one.
“Hand the purse back, little mouse, and there’ll be no trouble,” Tav said softly, holding her hand out expectantly. “I promise.”
The girl looked from Tav, to her brother, and back to Tav.
“... I’m sorry, Mattis!” she cried and moved to run, and Tav let her. She disappeared like a swift, leaving her prize on the ground.

Her brother moved to follow, but one hooked finger in his collar arrested him.
“Not so fast, kid.”
“What? You got your money back!” he said, swatting at her hand.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
She flicked his cheap ring back at him with her thumb, like flipping a coin. It caught him in the chest.
“Running schemes like that, you’re gonna play a player eventually,” Tav said. “You need to scout your marks better. Go for flashy folks.”
“Fine, whatever,” the kid said, adjusting his ill-fitting shirt. “Your lad there’s plenty flashy.”
He nodded to Gale, and Tav raised a very smug brow at him.
Told you.
Still good-humoured, Gale just sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Oh, for the love of…”

Tav leaned in and whispered:
“Yeah, he’s a bit of a toff, isn’t he?”
“I beg your pardon?” he scoffed, and Tav let the kid go, disappearing after his sister.
“I am not a toff,” Gale pointed out as soon as Mattis was out of earshot, “Nor am I a ponce, nor a tosser. I am, however, it must be said, a bit of a dandy.”
“You’re telling me, dressed in lilac like that.”
At that, he looked a little indignant. “I’ll have you know it’s indigo.”
Tav laughed heartily. “Gods, you really are an easy mark.”
“If only to make you laugh,” Gale said, gallantly offering her his arm.
“Come off it,” she scoffed and shoved him playfully with one hand. “Do I look like some mamsell that needs a chaperone?”

Then she spotted more trouble, right under a stone arch.
“Looks like someone does,” Gale bristled and gestured them onwards.
Finally a bellowing mother, I was starting to think tieflings popped out of the ground.

Chapter Text

Two tieflings, one of which an enraged mother, were squaring up with some druids and one very irate bear.
“Tav, I think your diplomatic acumen would be in order here?” Gale suggested, and Tav was off like a fiend, with Zevlor’s words of concern ringing in her ears.
“She’s a thief, hellspawn,” she heard one of the druids say, “And you will wait for Kagha’s judgement. Now back off!”
“I’d sooner trek through every road in every hell before I trust that snake! Now let me through, mragreshem, or I’ll rip your fucking throat out!” the mother bellowed back, taking heed of neither bear nor spears.
“Who, whoa, whoa, everyone,” Tav began as she approached, “There’s no need for violence here!”
“Who are you?” the guard squinted suspiciously, spear directed Tav’s way in the blink of an eye.
“I’m the one who killed the goblins at your gate a hot minute ago, remember?” Tav cooed and gently coaxed the spear to lower. “I’d hate to have saved everyone inside the grove, only for the people within to kill each other. Now what’s going on here?”

“The hellspawn stole our Holy Idol of Silvanus! She must be punished!” the druid pushed on.
“They need it for their sacred ritual,” the father filled in.
“It was my fault!” the mother sobbed, “Because I said I wished the damned thing would explode, or disappear! If you want to punish someone, punish me!”
Oh dear. Stop the ritual, and the druids can’t kick the tieflings out of the grove. Of course a stupid kid would try it on to steal it.
Tav glanced over the druid’s shoulder. There were a dozen druids in there, most of which were praying to an idol on a pedestal, with magic swirling around it in a vortex of ivy green.

“Your idol doesn’t look very stolen to me,” she shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter, she’s an agitator!”
“An agitator?! She’s ten for pity’s sake!” the mother insisted, with her husband at her back.
“Look, saer… Between your spears and the guard bears, I bet the poor child is scared out of her wits,” Tav reasoned, “You did your job! The idol is safe, the ritual resumed. The child was caught red-handed, taken before the big, scary boss lady, she’s been yelled at… Hells, I’d be scared within an inch of my life. How about you let the poor child return to her parents?”
She made sure to use the word ‘child’ as often as she could, trying to hammer home that it wasn’t a hardened adult criminal they’d caught, but a desperate and admittedly idiotic little kid with little wits and a propensity for taking her mother too literally.

“GET BACK!” the guard rebuffed her, shoving them all backward with the shaft of their spear placed in both hands like a staff.
“Jeorna!” called a man from across the druids’ circle. The guard looked back and the stranger nodded inwards.
“Kagha wants to see the saviour of the Grove,” the guard bit out and made way for Tav and Gale. When they moved, the mother clasped Tav’s hands.
“I beg of you, miss, please, my little girl is in there! Her name is Arabella, please help her, she didn’t mean any harm!”
Tav didn’t reply but tried to give an encouraging look as she stepped past the barrier.
Jeorna halted her briefly and leaned closer.
“One wrong movement, stranger, and every animal in here will tear you apart,” she warned before waving them on.

The druids seemed wary after the attempt on their lucky figurine; they weren’t allowed to wander freely here in the inner sanctum. They were surrounded on all sides by an escort, taking them straight from the entrance to the cave below. There were bears, boars, wolves…
No mere pets. And still, more rats?
And they seemed to follow Tav with their beady little eyes, watchful of the stranger in their midst.

They could hear the sobs of a little girl further in, bouncing off the stone walls like a wailing ghost. It was chilling to hear. It was damp and dank down here. Not like how it was outside with the idol, with lush greenery bathing in resplendent sunlight. Even the druids seemed more pressed and withdrawn. They averted their eyes as Tav and Gale passed.
“You’d find more mirth in a mortuary,” Gale mumbled, walking closely beside her.
“I’ve never met druids this afraid. Something is terribly amiss.”

They rounded a corner and led into a cavernous room, droplets singing hollow against stone and water reflecting scant light in ripples across the vaulted ceiling. The shadows were thick and seemed to whisper. A tall, gaunt elf woman with her hair in painfully tight braids had a tiefling child in a chokehold. That must be Arabella. A spindly kid, clearly in the middle of a growth spurt because her trousers were too short and frayed at the hem. Every piece of clothing she owned was visibly mended and showed sign of wearing thin on the road.

Of course she’d get caught. She’s probably not used to being so tall and her arms so long yet. Silly girl.
Tav’s heart bled for Arabella. The poor child was sobbing, tears streaking her round cheeks and she was standing on her tippy toes to keep from being hoisted in the air and strangled. The elf on the other hand was smiling coldly, with a viper poised on her shoulder, teeth bared and ready to strike the girl.

Tav’s insides turned cold with horror. To look at a terrified child with a murderous smile like that… It was nothing short of evil. She’d been given that smile herself.
“Stop, Kagha!” another druid was pleading behind the First Druid, “Stop this madness now! She’s just a—”
“A what, Rath?” the woman shrugged with dispassion, “A thief? A poison? A threat? I will imprison this devil… and I will cast out every stranger.”
As if to underline its mistress’ words, the snake hissed with emphasis, and the child shuddered and squealed in bottomless terror.

“You’d kill a girl over a failed snatch and grab?” Tav said coldly, and the druids’ eyes snapped to her. “Or imprison her for eternity, whilst her parents beat themselves bloody outside?”
“‘Girl?’” the Kagha drawled mockingly and then grabbed the child's hair instead. “You mean parasite. She eats our food, drinks our water, and steals our most holy idol as tribute for our mercy.”
She threw the girl to the floor, and Tav suppressed a wince when she thought how the girl's palms and knees must scrape against bare bedrock.
It was quiet for a long moment, save for Arabella’s raspy, tearful breaths and the squeaking of rats.
“Lock the parasite up,” Kagha ordered eventually. “She will remain here until the rite is complete.”
If you think I’ll let you torment this child with impunity forever, you are sorely mistaken, you heinous, rancid sow—
The guards picked the girl up with scant kindness and began to lead her off, but Kagha paused them.
“You better keep still, devil,” she hissed at her victim, “Teela here is restless.”
The snake hissed again and the child flinched. Then she was more dragged away than led.

Tav swallowed hard, and was grateful that she had already blown off steam killing those goblins today. Because had she not, she would have burned Kagha’s heart out. Instead, Tav breathed deep and collected her composure. If she started a fight or pissed Kagha off, the tieflings would be turned out and Arabella lost forever. If she was to delay the ritual, buy Zevlor time, and save this poor child from this madwoman, she needed to keep her wits about her. So she straightened her back, raised her chin and tensed her neck to elongate it like a dancer, trying to make herself appear taller, more elf-like. She also folded her hands in front of her, trying to appear more noble and elevated.

“Wait,” Tav interjected, before they could lead Arabella further away from the sun—if they did, she might never get the kid out.
Kagha was a new First Druid, and clearly out to solidify her new position, mark her strength and resolve, and prove her power to her enclave. Leaning into stroking her ego would probably suit best… But Zevlor or no, after what she just saw… Tav would die before she let a despot like this hateful quim rule a latrine.

“You’ve proven your might, First Druid. Now show your mercy. Your idol is safer now than it ever was under Halsin. What could you possibly fear?”
Kagha’s thin lips formed a smile. Bullies were so predictable.
“Fair words, Nys aul alusfaen. Alright. Release the child back to her parents. And you, parasite, take word to your people of my limited grace. Get out of my sight.”
Tav heaved a sigh of relief as Arabella was led back the way they’d just entered. She couldn’t believe that she passed well enough for elf that even Kagha was fooled.

“Thank you, Kagha,” Rath said, “Master Halsin would—”
“Halsin. Isn’t. Here,” Kagha said coldly. “Keep his name off your tongue, lest Teela pierce it.”
“Kagha, we are guardians, not killers—”
“It’s Mistress Kagha to you now. Spare me your tears, Rath. The devil knew damn well what it was doing. Now, begone. You, strangers. Approach.”

She waved them forward. Tav didn’t even have to look at Gale to know what he was thinking, and she was glad that he’d deferred to her here.
The snake lay snug against its mistress’ neck, comfortably vicious.
Tav bowed deeply to the First Druid and she felt Gale pay the same respect. A rat was sitting right at Kagha’s feet, glaring at them.

”Whime tye’re sìmen, mellon nin?”
Tav panicked. Her Elvish was patchy at best. She did know the word for ‘welcome,’ though, and she didn’t hear it from Kagha’s mouth.
“For the benefit of our human friend, I think it best we keep to the common tongue,” she lied effortlessly with a nod to Gale.
If you speak Elvish, wizard, pipe the hells down right now, or so help me…

“Fair enough. Why are you come here, strangers?”
“We are in search of healing,” Gale chimed in.
“We heard of Nettie’s skills,” Tav agreed, taking care not to mention Kagha’s predecessor, “And the goblins were in the way.”
Kagha pursed her lips, seeming pleased with the answer.
“I thank you for clearing the weeds on our doorstep. Perhaps… I could interest you in clearing some vermin for me as well?”
You better be talking about the rodents.

“Beg pardon?” Gale said.
“The tieflings. They are a thorn in our side. Mas—Halsin, my predecessor, took them in out of the kindness of his heart, and the devils have run amok with our patience. He was always a soft-hearted one. I mean to seal this grove off from the outside world, and I want the tieflings gone. Perhaps you could assist me in rooting them out?”
Tav swallowed.
“I only seek healing, and then we too shall steer clear of this place.”
Kagha folded her hands in front of her.
“I see. You think me a monster, don’t you? For threatening the devilspawn?”
“Her people will die if you force them back on the road,” Gale argued.
Tav shot him a look, telling him to stand down; putting Kagha on the defensive would be detrimental to what Tav was aiming for here. She wanted Kagha to feel at ease and not suspect a thing.

“And my people will die if they stay, master wizard,” Kagha shot back. “I don’t expect a human would understand. Loyalty to kin is not in your nature, but we elves look after our own first. Elturel fell into the hells for a reason, just as it rose back up for a reason: to spread its infernal rot and bring the Blood War to the Sword Coast. With your help, we could lance the boil and cut the cancer out before it kills us all.”
Gale looked from Kagha to Tav, but then backed off with a small bow.
“I will defer to the mistress of the grove,” he said with a small smile.

“The tieflings do not wish to impose on your hospitality,” Tav reasoned, “They are merely pressed between a rock and a blade.”
“So they would tell you,” Kagha scoffed, “but they show no great hurry to leave. This grove was peaceful until the hellspawn darkened our doorstep, and we basked in the Oakfather’s light. Those skies are now dark… blighted.”

“Mistress Kagha,” Tav smiled, swallowing her bile, “I assure you, once we have seen your expert healer, I will personally ensure that the tieflings leave this place forever. My word is my bond.”
She felt Gale glance her way. Kagha might not suspect Tav’s precise phrasing, but Gale knew her well enough.
“Thank you,” Kagha seemed to sigh a little, and stroked her pet snake, draped across her shoulders. “The tieflings are to be gone before last rites. If they are not… The viper will strike. You may see Nettie, she’s in the chamber beyond. N-ehtelë.”
Kagha gestured them onwards in the infirmary’s direction.
”Ar tye ve ehtelë,” Tav bowed, thankful for knowing at least a basic goodbye, and left with a small bow, following the direction she’d pointed. This time, they were not escorted by guards.

Gale followed Tav’s steps closely, and as soon as he was out of earshot of Kagha, he leaned in.
“That woman has more venom in her heart than that snake has in its fangs,” he mumbled, voice thick with disdain, “But at least the child is safe. What a truly odious woman. What is youth, if not a time to be forgiven for one’s transgressions?”
“Sounds like you have something to confess,” Tav cocked an eyebrow and smiled.
“What, and you don’t?” he teased right back. “No. You don’t strike me as quite that boring.”
“How dare you! I would never! Well, Kagha’s not fit for a dunghill dominion, that’s for sure,” Tav agreed, “but we have to do something.”
“Quite right. I take it you don’t mean to murder all the tieflings, like she asked?” he asked. “Are you sure we ought to get involved, Tav? Why are you so set on helping the tieflings?”
“Because there’s something worse afoot here than just the refugees,” Tav said, trying to lead him off her affinity for her own kin. “Haven’t you noticed?”
He squinted. “Noticed what?”
Tav pointed to a very fat rat scurrying around a corner.
“For a woman with a pet snake and a problem with ‘vermin’... she doesn’t seem to mind all these bloody rats.”

Chapter Text

Nettie was healing a small flock of birds in the infirmary. Broken or dislocated wings, arrow bolts, all manner of injuries. Why so many all at once?
Tav listened as the birds were all chittering of failure, of looking and looking, of Master Halsin in hushed and mournful despondency. Worries of imbalance, the stench of goblins, of crushed and raided nests, of blue feather fletching as arrows whispered past, the plumage of their fallen kin adorning the killing bolts that were turned on them.

Nettie, for her part, walked to and fro among them all, tears in her eyes, as if her hopes were shattered like egg shells. She was a dwarf woman, short, stout, with a sweet voice that sounded like braided brook waters and the whispers of wild water foam. She looked tired and haggard, but not naturally like Kagha; this woman used to be vibrant with life and joy, but the light within her was dimmed and flickering. Even the leaves in her hair looked wilted. She must have spent tireless nights tending to her delicate charges.

She wasn’t alone; an elf with short-cropped hair fussed over the birds also, listening to their reports. They hadn’t seen her before. The dark-skinned human who had tried to talk Kagha down was there too… Tav thought his name was Rath? He stood leaned over a stone exam table adorned with a cloth.
Not a cloth… a shroud. Someone’s lying under there. And there’s another dead body next to it.
Arabella’s face flashed before Tav’s eyes. She could have been carried in here too, half the size of these adult corpses. Tav had averted the tragedy, but she still couldn’t shake that danger had not yet passed. If she couldn’t help Zevlor and the tieflings in his charge, would they be put under shrouds in here too, on cold stone slabs? Or would the druids just… leave them to rot, not even bothering to bury them?
It pressed damply to her skin, as if the very spirit of the grove itself clung to her for help.

Nettie mumbled, holding a small, bright blue little bird to her heart, and her hands lighting up to heal it.
“I’m so sorry, little one,” she whispered to the bird, “You did so good. We will find him, I swear.”
Rath sighed and leaned harder over the table. “Nettie…”
“The First Druid is too hardy to be cut so easily,” Nettie cut him off. “If he were dead, we would feel it. The stones would feel it.”

“The goblins must be storing him under ground,” the short-haired elven woman said. Her voice was soft, but her conviction wasn’t. “The birds have spied everywhere else that the sky touches. There’s no trace of him above ground, not even discarded clothing.”
“If he is under lock and key within the temple, he’s practically dead,” Rath said, “He might as well be in another plane for all the good it will do us.”
The whole grove is upended without this Halsin, Tav thought, heart aching for the sorrow he left in his wake and the horrid successor who had appointed herself.

“Whether he is dead or not, Kagha cannot be allowed to take his place,” Rath said, “These damnable rats everywhere, and killing children—”
”Almost killing children,” the elf woman corrected him, “To think that we even have to make that distinction. Oak Father save us.”
“The Oak Father won’t save us, Apikusis,” Nettie said tensely, “He would have us save ourselves. Master Halsin would say the same. This Grove has endured half a millennium and stood through Sharran onslaught—”
“The Grove had Harpers to aid them then! And Selûnites!
“Well, we will have to make do!” Nettie said with restraint around her barely concealed despair. She picked up the bird before her and held it above her heart.

She didn’t even take notice of Tav and Gale, until Gale announced them both, and all three druids flinched until they saw that it wasn’t Kagha who had discovered them.
“You… Kagha’s champion,” Rath said stiffly and Tav scoffed coldly.
“No.”
“She called you Blood Sister,” the elf woman said.
Tav blinked, gobsmacked. “Well, that was her error. The latest pearl on her erroneous strand, I’m sure. I came at the behest of the girl’s parents. What were you saying to the birds?”
“That was for the birds. They need to know. You do not.”
“Easy, Apikusis, she saved the tiefling child. You did well to speak up for her,” Rath bowed lightly. “That snake is fickle. You prevented a tragedy.”
“What would have happened if Tav had not spoken up?” Gale said rhetorically.
“... Nothing befitting a child,” the dark-skinned druid sighed. “Nothing befitting any of our world’s creatures. We’ve let a snake replace our leader. She’d see the tieflings driven out—or worse.”
“Forgive me, stranger,” Apikusis said, “I spoke out tersely out of fear. But I do not fear you. I fear… our brethren. More follow Kagha every day. They are afraid, and Kagha offers a simple solution: ‘eject the refugees and we will be safe.’”
“And you think she’s wrong?” Tav asked, and Apikusis pressed her lips together.
“Perhaps she is, perhaps she is not. But that doesn’t make it right. It is cruel to knowingly eject people to perish, and cruelty has never been the Oak Father’s tenet. But Master Halsin took them in, and he would know what to do. We have sent birds to search for him, but they come up empty, or do not return at all. If Master Halsin does not come home, I fear for everyone here.”

“... How did Kagha replace your leader? A whole grove?” Tav asked, shaking her head.
“She was—is Master Halsin’s first pupil, and First Druid in his absence.”
“How can that be? Your First Druid has been gone for how long? And she’s already started a rite to oust Halsin’s guests, nearly killed a child and—”
“And started the process of undoing everything the First Druid stands for,” Apikusis finished for her. “We know. That is what worries us so. We fear that Kagha may be… corrupted. By her own fear, or maybe even an outside influence.”
“With Master Halsin caught, or dead,” Rath continued, “none may gainsay her. Even though more will die if her Rite Of Thorns is finished. I doubt the refugees will survive long outside for long. I would give anything to see Master Halsin return home.”
“I’m… sorry. For you all.”

Tav sighed, trying to puzzle it all together.
“And the bird there?” Gale asked softly.
“Crushed wing,” Nettie mumbled of the bird, “someone stomped on her. She had to be carried here by her fellows. Wanton cruelty. It’s unnatural.”
She seemed to admonish them, almost as if it were their fault, and her companions stared at them quietly. She looked at them head on.

“I’ve done all I can. It’s up to her now, life or death. Now, what was it that you two needed? Why are you in my infirmary?”
“We’re looking for Nettie.”
The halfling gestured over herself. “You found her. But I’m not sure what she can do for you.”
The other two began to move away.
“We’ll be outside,” the elf woman mumbled.
Tav waited until she was sure the other two were out of earshot.
“We need healing.”
“Well… I’m no Master Halsin,” Nettie smiled habitually, but her eyes were sorrowful, “but I can manage. Come here, let’s have a look at you.”

Tav took a knee before Nettie, and her warm, calloused hands felt her face with a gentle touch.
“You… seem healthy enough? A bit tired around the eyes maybe?”
Tav steeled herself and swallowed; she was going to have to talk about the tadpole to someone outside the group eventually. Nettie couldn’t heal them if she didn’t know what ailed them.
“There’s… no easy way of putting this but… I have a tadpole in my head. We both do.”

As expected, Nettie shied backwards and put the examination table between herself and them.
“A tadpole?! A mind flayer tadpole?!”
Should I take it as a good sign that she immediately knew the exact distinction?
“What other kinds are there?” Tav tried to joke. “It’s not like a frog hopped in.”
Nettie tried to calm herself, picking tools up and down. She seemed to look for something, but also didn’t seem to have a clue what.
“That’s… a serious condition,” she said, looking down at the implements before her. Bottles, vial, pliers, scalpels.
This doesn’t bode well. Is she looking for a defensive weapon?

“You’ve seen mind flayer tadpoles before,” Gale stated, “and recently too.”
Then Nettie stilled herself and looked between them both.
“I have.” She looked to the door behind them, glancing for anyone to listen in, and then nodded to the far end of the room with the shrouds. “This way. We have to be quick, Kagha or one of her followers could drop by any second. If they find out about your condition…”
She walked over to the dead body on the right and pulled the shroud off, revealing a dead drow man.
Tav’s eyes widened. What would drow do here, so far from the Underdark?

“This one had the same problem as you both,” Nettie said, “He and some goblins attacked us in the woods.”
“Who’s ‘we?’” Gale asked.
“Master Halsin and I. Tadpole crawled out of his head as soon as he died. Gave Master Halsin a right start.” Nettie pointed to a glass jar, where a dead tadpole was suspended in some sort of embalming liquid. Just seeing it, something inside her head squirmed with curiosity and she had half a mind to pocket the jar when nobody looked. But she couldn’t account for that impulse; she wanted to get rid of the tadpole, not get it a friend.

“So the drow shared our affliction?” Gale wondered and bent over to inspect the dead. “Is everyone getting infected by mind flayers these days? I didn’t realise it was such a common occurrence.”
“There have been more, but we do not have their bodies to inspect,” Nettie said gravely.
“Is killing them the only way of stopping the transformation?” Tav pressed, sounding pressed and terse. She was less interested in the ‘how many’ than she was with a cure.

“We had no choice but to kill him, he lunged at us,” Nettie said, pointing to a dagger beside the corpse with a thorned twig in her hand, “You are unlucky to get me instead of Master Halsin. He understands these things. He studied the tadpole that crawled out of this one. But the drow also carried a letter. It pertains to the old Selûnite temple to the West. It’s derelict now, but it seems the goblins have set up camp inside. Master Halsin was tracking the infected there.”

Things started to connect in Tav’s head: Halsin had gone to that temple with Aradin’s crew, and been lost in the process. In Halsin’s absence, Kagha had taken power and she was doing something insidious with her new power.
“And that’s why Halsin joined Aradin on his expedition. To find out what was happening. But what was Aradin doing there?” she asked.
“Treasure hunting. Old temples hide all manner of shiny baubles to tempt the materialistic.”
“And a druid went treasure hunting with them?”
“No. I think he went with the adventurers to see if that is where the drow picked up the parasite.”
“What about that plant?” Gale said, snapping her out of thought. “Will that help?”
“... It might. But first things first,” Nettie said slowly, “How long ago were you infected? Have you noticed any symptoms?”
“Three, four days ago?” Gale said, looking to Tav for confirmation.
“And… we can merge minds with others who are infected.”

Nettie’s lips drained of colour.
“There are more? Many more?”
Tav shrugged, taking a quick tally in her head; her group… and this Blade Of Frontiers, wherever he’d run off to. “We know of six, thus far.”
“... So many. Where did you all get infected? Clearly not the temple...Master Halsin was desperate to find out where it came from. It’s why he went with Aradin.”
“Well, we were aboard a nautiloid ship,” Tav began, telling the whole story of being snatched from the streets of the lower city, the dragons attacking, the chase through the hells. Nettie listened raptly, her eyes widening like saucers. When Tav’s story concluded, she was breathing deep. She quietly put the thorn aside and folded her hands in front of her.

Tav and Gale exchanged a look and then Tav decided to press when Nettie had been quiet for too long.
“Yes,” Nettie began slowly, “A ship though? Master Halsin was so sure the temple… Look. You’ve been straight with me… so I’ll be straight with you: You’re dangerous. You both are. If you transform here, we’re all dead. But you saved that child from Kagha. And you defended the Grove. I think you are both capable of redemption from this curse, unlike the drow… You deserve a chance to save yourselves.”

She walked over to the door and waved her companions in.
“This is Rath, he is one of Master Halsin’s most trusted pupils, and Apikusis, our aviculturist. She oversees our rookeries,” Nettie explained. “We’ve been trying to find Master Halsin since he disappeared, we’ve sent the birds looking for him. If anyone can cure your tadpoles, it’s the First Druid.”
“Let me guess,” Tav extrapolated, “You want us to find Halsin.”
“Not just that,” Rath said solemnly, “Even if he returned now, there’d be a power struggle between him and Kagha. She has gained followers at a precipitous rate. Do not judge them too harshly; they are afraid. And Kagha has… unexpected help.”

Apikusis walked over to the other shroud and tore it off with a flick of the wrist. A dead halfling lay there, neck in an unnatural angle. She was sooty and covered in druidic tattoos.
“A Shadow Druid. We found her… in one of my rat traps,” Nettie said. “The little creatures were snooping around my infirmary. I thought it unsanitary. Little did I know what would turn up. She must have been transformed into a rat and gotten her neck snapped, and returned to her own form in death.”
“We are certain Kagha has led them into the Grove,” Rath said, his voice thick with anxiety, “But we have no hard proof.”
“Can’t you just… put more rat traps down?” Tav shrugged.
“Have you seen how many of the little creatures are scurrying about the place?” Nettie said. “Besides, they’ve stayed clear of the infirmary since. Kagha won’t come in here; medicine isn’t her domain.”

“If we accuse her now, she could feign ignorance and say that she and her snake left the rats alone for the sanctity of life,” Apikusis said.
Gale scoffed. “The sanctity of life was far from her mind when she had a child by the throat.”
“It matters not,” the elf pressed in a soft voice, “There are enough druids here who are frightened of all the hardship that came with the tieflings. We’ve lived with barely any visitors in decades, and even fewer attacks, and now we suffer an abundance of both. To many, the two are not a coincidence. And one would be hard pressed to debate that fact.”
“If you want a cure,” Nettie said, “You must not only bring Master Halsin back… but bring us irrefutable proof that Kagha is compromised and a follower of Faldorn, so we may oust her. Then this Grove will do all in its might to cure you.”

“And the tieflings?” Gale pressed, and Tav shot him a grateful look.
“Master Halsin harboured the refugees. He invited them with open arms. We will honour that.”
“... Even if Halsin is dead?” Tav asked cautiously.
Nettie’s eyes set with determination.
“He isn’t. Master Halsin has been First Druid of the Emerald Grove for a century or more. He has lived and fought and bled on these stones. The spirit of the Grove would know if Halsin had perished. Even so… Should he perish, we will honour our agreement as soon as Kagha is ousted.”

Tav pondered the prospect. The tieflings would be safe. Halsin could cure them. She half-derided the old First Druid for absconding and leaving his Grove in such a vulnerable state. It had been a questionable and rash move on his part. But then again, if the old geezer was over a century old…
“Allow me a moment with my companion,” she mumbled and led Gale to the side.
“We help them,” Gale said before she’d even said anything, and Tav smiled slightly.
“... Just like that? They haven’t even said ‘please.’”
“Kagha threatened to kill a child, or to imprison her for the rest of her life whilst her parents perished outside trying to get in. There are no qualms about it.”
Tav watched him, her chest flooding with warmth.
You silly, heroic mage.
“Alright. But you tell Astarion what we agreed to,” Tav chuckled, “I’m not taking the heat for this one.”
“As if you couldn’t take it,” Gale smiled with a slight incline of the head, and they turned back to Nettie, who called her companions back in.

“Alright. We will bring Halsin back and help you with your rat infestation.” Tav said.
“Master Halsin is an elf with the presence of a bear,” Rath said, “There is no mistaking the First Druid for anyone else.” ‘An elf with the presence of a bear' seems somewhat contradictory, Tav pondered, like saying a cat with the presence of a pig. “One more thing,” Nettie said, "Here's a vial of Wyvern poison. You still may transform at any point. I want you to swear to me that you’ll drink it as soon as you feel yourself start to slip.”
She held out the small bottle with a waxed stopper. The liquid within was opaque and a menacing shade of green.
“Alright, give it here,” Tav said and held out her hand, but Nettie’s fist closed.
”Swear it.” Nettie’s brown eyes were resolute and desperate.
“... I swear it,” Tav conceded, and received the bottle.

Rath stepped forward. “I would advise you to look first to the First Druid’s quarters. Kagha moved herself in there all but instantly when Master Halsin disappeared. There may be some clues there.”
“Alright, lead the way,” Tav said.
“We cannot aid you beyond advice,” Apikusis cautioned. “Kagha has us under watch, she suspects us. The rats will not follow us into the infirmary, it is the only place we may speak freely. If we make so much as one wrong move, we’re all done for.”
“Right,” Tav said. “Point the way then.”

Luckily for Tav and Gale, there weren’t many sentries posted. It seemed Kagha had delegated almost all the druids to the Rite Of Thorns that was supposed to seal off the Grove. But there were rats scurrying around too. Here in the inner sanctum, the walls weren't so much built and bricked as they were carved out of the bedrock; giant boulders leaning against each other almost precariously, leaving plenty of shadowy nooks and crannies. Most were too small to hide a cat. Others made small alcoves, bathed in darkness.
They made their way towards Kagha’s quarters in perfect silence and daggers drawn. They killed three rats on their way, and watched the shadow druids change into their true forms upon death. Then, those little alcoves proved most useful to hide the bodies.

They could hear the sound of running water, and followed it to the large stone door, carved in ornate swirls and circles by hands of yore. Motifs of willow trees and clouds and beads of water. Beautiful in their simple lines, like you could trace the fingertips of the artist.
Gale waved his hand and the door opened with a small rumble, closing it as they stepped in.
The room was circular and lined with shelves. Stone tablets, heavy tomes, scrolls so ancient they might crumble if you looked at them wrong.
One side of the room was not walled in, but had a stone bannister. When Tav peeked over the edge, she saw water reflecting sunlight; there was a small opening out into the light somewhere down there.

“Let’s get to work,” Tav sighed.
“One moment,” Gale said, placing his hands on the door behind them. There were snapping sounds, like giant steel pistons moving into place.
“Arcane lock. Not impenetrable,” Gale shrugged, “But will give us a minute or two if someone comes. Too bad there’s only one way in or out.”
“There is one more,” Tav nodded to the waterway.
“The current could just as well lead deeper into the mountain as out into the river,” Gale frowned. “I’d rather fight my way out, honestly.”

The room hummed slightly with magic, and Tav reached her hand out for more feelers, and Gale took to rummaging through the stone table in the middle of the floor. He picked up a scroll, read the title, and then tossed it over the bannister where it made a slight splash.
“... What did you just throw away?”
“‘The Rite Of Thorns,’” he said coyly.
Tav chortled and peered down to see if it had sunk. Instead, the scroll floated decidedly away from the light.

“Current leads into the mountain. Damn.”
“Are you trying to sense something?” he said, moving closer.
“Yes, but there’s so much magic here it’s hard to sift anything pertinent out.” She shook her hands slightly, as if shaking off water.
“Let me help you,” he said and moved behind her. “Your first lesson in wizardry.”
“Not a wizard,” she corrected him with a tut.
“Hush now,” he said softly into her ear, turning her protests into water. “Or, you may hum if it helps. I noticed that music seems to help you attune to the Weave. Picture in your mind an arrow that cannot err. It will find anything it aims to, whether around bends or through steel. It will always strike true.”

Tav breathed deep and attuned herself. Her hand reached out as though she might fire the arrow from her fingertips. Then she felt warmth all the way down her arm as Gale’s hand trailed from her shoulder and moulded to her skin. His chest pressed into her back and she could feel his breath on her neck.
“Focus,” he mumbled, and every little hair on Tav’s skin stood straight up. She almost wanted to pull away, hoping he wouldn’t feel the base of her tail twitching of the pointed tips of her shoulder blades through her gambeson, or hear her heart pound out of her ribs.
Easy for you to say.

Then there he was, inside her head. Not through the tadpole that split her skull, but like wind coursing through the fine hair on her arms and sweeping stray hairs from her scalp. Gentle. He wasn’t prying for secrets and seemed to make an effort to look away from anything inside her not pertinent to the spell. He was merely trying to guide. He was inside her head, as if he’d swept in on the note she hummed.
She closed her eyes and couldn’t help but lean into the feeling, and images flashed before her mind’s eye, from Gale. Points of light in blackness. Loose arrows. A homogenous wall of books, like a panel, breaking up and shuffling of their own accord, until the spines began to rattle out, one by one with the soft murmur of feathers and falling paper.
There it was. Like turning a telescope lens in her hands, from blurry to knife sharp.

The spell passed from his mind to her lips. ”Quaere… Pars occultas, revelare…”
Gale huffed slightly as he smiled contentedly and then there was a chime in the air. Tav opened her eyes and it seemed like one of the storage chests was framed by the shadows, highlighted by the contrast of lights on water rippling across the lid.
Gale stepped away from her and it felt like a pillar crumbled inside her.
“Excellent! Well done!” he said, smiling.
“You did most of it,” Tav said and tried not to blush or sound disappointed that he’d stepped away.

“Oh no, Tav, don’t sell yourself short. You have almost a… an intuitive, natural ear for magic, the way you seem for music. You just need the slightest nudge, and off you go, all on your own. Like I could hum a note or two, and you’d immediately extrapolate the song I’m humming, or you’d compose a new melody all on your own, on the spot. I’ve not seen such an affinity for magic since… Well, me.”
Tav scoffed. “Of course you pair compliments with comparisons to yourself. You’re such a wizard.”
Gale’s brow arched slightly. “I do not think you grasp the magnitude of that compliment.”
“Ugh, stop, you’re making it worse,” Tav tutted and shook her head, then rattled the chest lid. Locked. “Don’t give me trouble now. Shit, Astarion has the lockpick.”

Maybe Kagha had some hairpins or something in here… But why resort to tools?
She still felt that current of clarity in her hands. She placed her hands over the lock, right where the bolt ought to be, and hummed a little nonny to herself, as if parting paper at the crease, and the chest opened itself.
Gale’s jaw dropped. “You used Knock without ever learning it?”
“What, like it’s hard?” Tav purred with a coy smile and cocked her head slightly.

He crouched next to her, eyes watching her curiously.
“What?” she said. “You want to pass some more deflated compliments, or do you think you can hold off until we’re out of here?”
“You seem oddly at ease with a bit of burglary, I daresay,” Gale mumbled.
“I’m a self-employed artist, Gale Dekarios,” Tav said, “And that means sometimes people try to scalp you on all matters pecuniary. I’ve had to… ‘liberate’ my payment once or twice.”
Gale chuckled and Tav began to rifle through the scrolls and loose pages within.
“Come now,” Gale tutted, “Are you going to stop with the magic there?”
Tav sighed. “I’m not entirely sure I agree with learning magic on the fly when we can get caught.”
“You haven’t missed a beat yet.” Gale raised his hand, palm open towards the contents of the chest. His fingertips glowed purple and then a stray piece of what looked like birchbark freed itself from the pile, floating up into his hand like a feather falling to the ground.
Tav read it instantly, brief as it was. It was scrawled by a hand that seemed unused to writing, and she was fairly certain it had been written with a burnt out piece of wood.

Kagha. Swamp docks. Tree. Meet me alone. Olodan

“Who’s Olodan?” Tav asked, but Gale had no time to answer. There was a noise as someone tried to order the stone door to slide aside for someone to enter.
Someone was cursing outside, slightly muffled.
“Shit,” Tav muttered and pocketed the birchbark letter, gently closing the chest. “We need to hide.”
“We only have a minute or so until the spell wears off,” Gale mumbled.
“You couldn’t have made the lock stronger?”
“Not if we ever wanted to see sunlight again. This way,” he mumbled, catching Tav by the wrist and building her to where two boulders met. He pulled her in behind himself and she nestled between the cold stone and his warm body.

The crack between boulders was so narrow that her body pressed into Gale’s. As the guard passed, she turned her face away and Gale with her. She could feel his breath against her temple. He breathed with restraint, seeming to hold his breath before exhaling.
When he did breathe in, his ribcage pressed against Tav's chest, and as he held it, she could feel every outline of him. Her forehead was just under the tip of his nose.

”Velum obumbratio,” he mumbled and the shadows seemed to thicken around them, just as the stone door slid to the side and a sentry stepped in.
The guard swore to herself about Kagha’s paranoia as she scrambled for something on the stone table where Gale had taken the Rite Of Thorns. Tav hoped to the hells it wasn’t the scroll the sentry was looking for, or it would arouse suspicion.
Speaking of arousal… Gale’s smell of old books and ink tickled her nose. That old book smell had something akin to vanilla over it, something sweet and… not quite floral, it was too deep, not quite citrusy enough to count as floral. More like a vanilla extract, as if steeped in aged rum. There was also sweat and the smell of ozone and petrichor, like a rainstorm.

Tav wished he hadn't wreathed them in shadows, because it underlined the intimacy of how they were standing, chest to chest and almost cheek to cheek. Gale seemed to have caught on too, because he braced his elbow against the wall behind her, as if trying to give her more room. But that backfired also, because now it was as if he was leaning over her.
She knew it was a bad idea to look at him, but she did it anyway. Gale’s eyes were fixed on hers and he swallowed again and again, almost trying to apologise for his closeness with his eyes, pupils so dilated in the dark his eyes appeared almost black.

Gale closed his eyes slowly and kept his eyes averted. Tav lowered her eyes and could see his heartbeat thumping heavily where his clavicles met above his heart.

Knowing that Gale wasn’t indifferent to being so close to her set her own heart racing. There it was again, though. Sometimes he seemed intent on keeping her at arm’s length, and other times it seemed if she got close enough, his orderly and reserved patina began to crack.
Gale swallowed again and the arm closest to the outside shifted slightly, as if he needed to free his hand.
“Please be still,” he whispered almost like a plea, and then he made a small gesture with his free hand, mumbling something Tav couldn’t quite catch. “I need to concentrate.”

Gale’s head fell forward, and Tav almost gasped thinking for an instant that he was about to kiss her, but his head moved aside, almost touching her shoulder. His breaths came sharp and steady and scalding hot against the side of her neck, and Tav was desperate to squirm away from the feeling. Being this close to him whilst trying to hide was making her nerves fray.

Then she heard the sentry stop rummaging, swearing and slapping at something. Then there was a shriek and she fled out the door. Tav dared turn her head out into the room, away from Gale’s face, and saw Kagha’s snake coiled and hissing on the table.
She was about to shake Gale to alert him, but then the snake disappeared in a haze of purple sparks, and Gale’s head shot up. He was gasping for breath and bracing with both hands on either side of Tav, and when he looked up to see Tav all but cradled in his arms, he started to move awkwardly out of their little hideaway.

“... You did that?” Tav mumbled as she broke free from the shadows.
“Minor illusion. But I made it bite her, and sensory illusions are harder than mere mirages,” Gale shrugged. “She’s halfway to the infirmary now. We’d best get going.”
And without addressing the moment passed between them, Gale set off out the door that had been left open.
“Gale, are you alright?”
“Quite alright,” he said abruptly. “I do beg your pardon if I made—”
“You didn’t.”
“—I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t be sorry,” Tav interrupted him again. “I er… I don’t find your closeness wholly objectionable.”

Gale stopped momentarily and looked at her head-on, eyes bright and clear. But he didn't smile.
Oh no. He’s offended. He didn’t catch the understatement.
But he didn’t seem hurt or angry. Instead, his sun-kissed skin seemed to blush, and he seemed to struggle for words.
“It has been a long time,” he finally choked out, “Since I was that close to another person. I’d forgotten… But it’s safe to say, your closeness isn’t entirely loathsome to me either. Anyway, don’t mind my fluster. We must return to the others, and find this Olodan person.”

Chapter Text

They made their way out of the inner sanctum in pressed silence. In some measure, the silence was part of their furtive escape from the off-limit quarters. In part, maybe even the most part for Tav at least, she was short on words for the moment that had passed between her and Gale within. The press of his body had left her in an uproar and she just felt in her bones that the dreams that had ravaged her since being infected were going to wreck her tonight.

And that was assuming she didn’t break herself on waking thoughts first.
She had tried to repress thoughts of Gale as best as she could, and even been grateful that she didn’t know what his lips felt like. But now the feel of him was branded into her skin like the mark above his heart.
As the stone doors to the outside opened, she threw Gale a glance. His silence was an uncomfortable one, probably because it was out of his character.

She thought of what he’d said when he’d pulled back, and added it to the condition he was so secretive about. She thought of what he had said about other people shouldering his yoke and his tower decluttering as he consumed the magical items inside. How flustered he was with being close to her, and how he kept pulling back. Had… had Gale been locked away in that tower since acquiring his condition? Had he been alone with no one but a cat? For how long? Just how long had he sat in his tower, smack in the middle of Waterdeep, watching the world moving around him like a brook around a rock?

And that condition of his… He seemed convinced it was incurable, even that it would inevitably kill him. Was it wise then of Tav to even entertain feeling the way that she did?
But she didn’t entertain the feeling. She was anything but entertained by the force that pulled her into him. It was almost a compulsion, and even admitting it was a revulsion.

Maybe… maybe whatever he felt being near her wasn’t for her own sake. Maybe he was like one of those people who spent years in prison and came out almost feral for a gentle touch? Maybe… Gale was simply touch starved, so much so that he’d have sex with a meat grinder.
She wanted to think he liked her for her own sake. But she’d also played one brothel too many to be ignorant that some people couldn’t care less so long as the body was warm.
No. Surely that wasn’t it. Was it?
Sunlight wiped her brow clear and the damp sweat on her skin felt cold in the fresh air. They passed the sentries and saw Arabella and her parents just outside. The mother was alternating between hugging her child desperately and scolding her within an inch of her life.

“—And if you ever worry me like that I will feed you to a gnoll!” she said, grasping her child by the arms. Arabella’s father stood with his arms crossed behind his wife.
“Muuuuum,” Arabella groaned, “I’m fine, stop fussing. It’s embarrassing.”
“Young lady, your mother was ready to fist-fight a bear to pull you out of that fine mess you made,” he said tersely.
“... So same as always, then?” Arabella shrugged nonchalantly, hugging herself. Attitude or not, the girl’s eyes were swollen from crying, as were her mother’s.

Arabella’s father spotted Tav and Gale as they approached, and hurried forward to clasp Tav by the hand.
“Arbella told us what you did! I cannot thank you enough! Our little hellion or no, we… we didn’t know what to do without her.”
“I’ve been in scrapes like hers. No more light-fingered antics, huh, Arabella.”
The girl sulked and looked down, clearly embarrassed.
“Arabella,” her mother warned.
“Yeah,” the kid shrugged. “I mean… Thank you for helping me. Truly.”
Tav pretended to consider her thanks for a moment, before reaching her hand out for a business-like shake, and Arabella took it cautiously.
“Perhaps you could help me in turn?” Tav asked.

The child peered at her suspiciously. “With what?”
Tav nodded for Gale to talk to her parents for a moment, and he fell in step immediately, regaling the parents of how horrible Kagha had been.
“See all these rats about the place?” she whispered to Arabella in a low voice.
“... Yeah?”
“See about catching them. Don’t kill them, mind, or you’ll get in even bigger trouble. Just… Stuff them in jars with a really tight lid, and hide them somewhere. Are any of the other kids your friends?”
“I’m not a kid!” Arabella protested with a pout.
“Of course you’re not!” Tav hurried to point out. “But the little kids look up to you, being so brave and all. If you told them to do this, I bet they’d help you.”

Arabella seemed to consider, and a mischievous glean lighted in her eyes.
Incorrigible scoundrel, this one. If this one had tried to rob Gale, she might have actually gotten away with it.
“I… could talk to Mol?” Tav cocked her head inquisitively, and Arabella whispered excitedly. “Mol is in charge of all the orphans here! She doesn’t want the Rite Of Thorns to take place either.”
“Would it help if I told you my friend here threw that scroll in the river?”
Arabella’s eyes widened excitedly. “No!”
“Shhh! He absolutely did, like it was an old rag!” Tav winked. “But don’t tell anyone! Our secret. Do you think Mol might be… more inclined to catch rats if you told her that?”
Arabella cocked her head and tried looking blasé, like only a precocious little kid could.
“I’m sure she’d be amenable to that.”

The kid put a fist out, and Tav bumped it, but then Arabella seemed to remember something. “Wait! You’ll need the signal!”
“What signal?”
“Mol’s kids all have a signal. To show you’re with them.”
“... Is this Mol an adult?”
“No, she’s nine months younger than me. But she’s really cool, and she has an eye patch, just like a pirate!”
Bloody hells, a miniature mob boss. They grow up so fast.

“Alright, let’s see the signal then. Maybe it’ll keep my friend here from being robbed.”
Arabella giggled and showed Tav the little flourish with her hands, and Tav imitated it perfectly.
“Got it,” Tav winked, “Happy hunting. And make sure you hide the rats you catch, somewhere the druids will never find them!”
“I know just the place! It’s called the Dragon’s Lair.”
Of course it is.

Tav signalled to Gale it was time to go, and they set off to the meeting place they’d decided with the others.
“You there!” came a voice from next to them and a man in the most gaudy cerulean garb came running. He had a hat that looked like a deflated balloon, adorned with an ostrich feather. Around his neck sat a very old, very worn ruff, stained in all manner of questionable splotches. “Stranger! Hello! You’re the one who slew the goblins outside the gates, are you not?”
“The very same,” Tav replied. She didn’t stop to entertain the old, lanky stranger but kept walking. The stranger took no notice of her disinterest, walking alongside her and ducking out of the way for anyone they passed.

“So you saw these goblins, up close?” he pressed.
“While I’d prefer to kill goblins from afar, one does need proximity in a pinch.”
“Oh please, do entertain me for a few moments, just to ask you some questions! There’s no overstating my interest!”
“And I think there’s no overstating the lady’s disinterest,” Gale quipped, trying to sweep the irksome man away like a fly.
“I’ll make it very quick! Hand to heart!” the gaudy stranger pressed.

Tav stopped and took him in for a moment. He was dressed like a bard, but a bard from the previous century at least. His moustache was grey as was the thin hair sticking out from under his blaggardly hat. And if he were a bard… where was his instrument?
She sniffled slightly, and thought she smelled magic off the queer little man. Bards were inherently magical, she supposed, but this man… There was something ever so slightly off about him, and not just his fashion sense.

“Fine,” she sighed.
“Glory!” the man thanked her and proceeded to produce a most cumbersome tome of a notebook, pulling the feather from his hat to use as a quill. “Now… How would you describe that particular batch of goblins? Any distinguishing qualities?”
“Certainly no variation of their smell,” Gale mumbled and Tav chuckled.
“Tell me about it. The portcullis will stink until the next skyfall,” she said, before turning back to the supposed bard and describing the horde.

The man’s quill moved of its own accord as she spoke, and reading upside down on the page, she saw an unmistakable amount of purple prose and embellishments being made to her account.
“And the dragon with them, was it the Brass or Silver variety?” he asked nosily.
“A dragon?” Tav scoffed. “How gauche.”
The man looked positively deflated, even more so than his ugly headwear. When Tav peered on the page, she read the quill spell out Witness failed to specify the variety of the obvious dragon.

“If the dragon was so obvious, how come you don’t recall its hue?”
“Last question,” the man squeaked, ignoring her question, “And then I shall be quite done with you: did the attackers rally to ‘The Absolute’ when they fell upon the gates?”
“... Technically the gate fell on them, but yes,” Tav confirmed, and she heard Gale laugh by her side, “They sang it like a war hymn. Now, if you’ll excuse us—”
“I’ve interrogated one of them, you know?” the man said, unperturbed by their disinterest in small talk, “A captive in this very camp! She reports that the goblins have all abandoned their god, Maglubiyet, in favour of someone they call The Absolute! The scandal!”

He made a little outraged hop.
“And why would we care about goblin superstition?”
“Ah!” the man said triumphantly, his oversized quill almost hitting Tav in the face, “But is superstition all? These goblins are informed by a kind of strategy anathema to their kind! And I for one intend to get to the bottom of it! I was just preparing to head to their camp now, actually. I mustn’t dawdle! Cheerio!”
And just like that, he sauntered off, quill in tow.

Tav shook her head. “What an odd fellow.”
“Not just any odd fellow. That was Volothamp Geddarm,” Gale ascertained.
She burst out laughing. “No way. Volo Geddarm would be well over a century old. The man succumbed to advanced age or whoring long ago.”
“I assure you, he is very much alive and kicking,” Gale insisted, “He had an old paramour in Waterdeep. Even sired a son by her. A girl of a very elusive family. If Volo The Loose-Tongued ever set foot in Waterdeep again, there’s no armour in any plane that can save his skin.”
“The scandal!” Tav mimicked and giggled. “Well, well. One can only hope to be as spry as him at a geriatric age.”
“Hard to believe he’s a wizard of some acclaim, isn’t it?”
“Oh, well, it’s not ‘exceptional acclaim,’ is it?” Tav said gallantly. “A wizard? Not a bard?”
“Don’t let the garb fool you. Or do you not recognise wizards unless we wear purple?” Gale teased.
“Excuse me,” Tav said and pinched the edge of his sleeve, “I’ll have you know this is indigo.”

Gale huffed, suppressing a grin. “Impossible woman. So… When we meet the others…?”
Tav glanced around before answering, making sure there were no rats in sight.
“We see what the others had to say. We talk to Zevlor about our agreement in the sanctum, and… I’m afraid we’ll need to speak to Aradin again. He’s the last one to see Halsin. He knows where the goblin camp is. We need that location off him.”

They spied Karlach, a head taller than most folks, first. She was kitted out in some armour clearly made for a man, because she was swinging her arms around, trying to make room for her chest under the plate. But she grinned once she spotted them and seemed to point them out to Astarion and Shadowheart.
“Gods!” Astarion exclaimed when they arrived, “What in the hells took you two so bloody long? I’ve been listening to these two gossiping about that damned blacksmith for half an hour!”
“His name is Dammon,” Karlach beamed, “And guess what? He might be able to help me with the ol’ tin can!” She knocked over her heart twice for emphasis. “An’ he got us a discount!”
“I would’ve gotten you a five-finger-discount,” Astarion pouted.
“Dammon would’ve chopped those fingers off,” Shadowheart grinned. “But he seemed pretty stoked to talk to Karlach here.”
“Judging by the flames, the only stoking happened to Karlach,” Tav grinned, “Bloody hells, woman, it’s like working in a rotisserie grill standing next to you.”

Karlach bristled and blushed. “Sorry, soldier. The engine ain’t churning like it’s s’posed to outside Avernus. I feel like I’m cooking like a trout.”
“You look marvellously dapper, if it’s any consolation,” Gale bowed slightly.
“Dammon said so too. He had to help strap me in. Singed his fingers some, but when he licked his fingertips I was set to faint.”
Karlach’s eyes were so large with excitement, she looked positively deranged. Tav glanced Gale’s way, entirely too quick to relate to the feeling.
“We need to find some infernal iron because fuck me, he is good enough to eat, an’ I can’t even touch him!”

Astarion relayed the information off the goblin prisoner, sparing no ink detailing how odorous the captive was or how keen she was to escape her captivity.
“I had to all but stand in front of a crossbow! The tieflings were lining up to shoot her like a bass in a barrel!”
He also recounted tales of this “Absolute” goddess the goblins had converted to, and some mystic goblin witch priestess who could cure anything. Astarion didn’t say so explicitly, but he clearly had no faith in Nettie’s ability.

Gale relayed what had transpired in the sanctum below with Kagha, Arabella, Nettie… He did leave out their near-miss hiding in the alcove.
“For fuck’s sakes, Tav,” Astarion, “So help me, you need to stop agreeing to help people all over the place! At least until we’re cured!”
“Actually, it was at my insistence,” Gale tried, but the vexed elf put a long, elegant finger to his lips to quieten him.
“Don’t try it, wizard, this has bard-smell all over it.”
“We need to find this Halsin fellow anyway!” Tav argued, “And if it happens to kill two goblins with one arrow—”
“Goblins don’t come in pairs, Tav,” Astarion bit out, “They come in scores. You’ve bit off a wee bit more than any of us can chew!”

“You’re. One. To. Talk. Fangs,” Tav smiled venomously. “Besides… There’s people we can get to come with us to save the druid.”
“And who’s that?”
As if signalled, a brawl broke out behind them, and a man in green leapt over a table chasing after a tiefling kid that was bolting away. Aradin was right on the man’s heel, hauling him backwards with whispered orders in his ear to stand down and not cause a fuss.
“Aradin.”

Chapter Text

Aradin sneered as they all filed up to see him. His men were watching intently under lowered brows, licking their wounds and bruises from the skirmish outside.
“If it ain’t the fearless goblin slayer,” Aradin said with a sarcastic grin. “You sure you want to be seen with me? I ain’t exactly popular with this lot.”
He nodded to the tieflings moving around them, shooting Aradin and his crew dirty looks.
“You could try being a little friendlier,” Tav suggested and helped herself to Aradin’s mug of ale, just to show him she wasn’t afraid of him or ruffling his feathers.

“Thanks, mum,” he scoffed, “Now please do feck off.”
“Feck off yourself!” Tav chuckled, putting her hands on her hips. “I saved your arse back at the gates.”
A woman tending to a wounded arm snickered.
“Glad to see someone around here has a spine!”
Shadowheart scrunched her nose at her tone. “I already regret saving you people.”
“Was that supposed to be a thanks?” Tav agreed, and the woman’s brow furrowed insolently, but she kept quiet. Tav continued, “Charming. I can see why the locals like you so much.”

Aradin cocked his head and squinted. “Yeah, yeah, wotever. You really saved the day, swoopin’ in and playin’ the hero, didn’t ya? Except now I’m gonna take the blame for leading the goblins here, and losing track of the bloody druid!”
“... Except you did lead the goblins here,” Gale said pointedly.
“... And you did lose track of the druid,” Shadowheart concurred.
“Halsin?” Tav asked, and Aradin’s eyes actually seemed remorseful. Even ashamed.
“Halsin,” he confirmed, sniffling. Then his eyes set hard again. “He’s the leader around these parts. Or wos. We had a contract to track down some relic, an’ he wanted in on the job. Eyes lit op when he heard about it. Didn’t work out for him though. Gobbos got’im when we were turning tail.”

“He’s either digging latrines or boilin’ in a cook pot by now. Same as Liam,” the woman muttered solemnly.
“Who’s Liam?”
“He was our new lad,” the woman said, wincing with pain, “We expected a soft job and brought him along to cut his teeth on. The gobbos got him too. Most would’ve turned on the spot, but not Liam—he charged them, the stupid bastid.”
“I’m assuming that did not end well,” Gale said with a sympathetic wince.
“No… He must’ve… thought we wos followin’ him. Always the foolhardy optimist, was Liam.”
“Hope they cut him down quick before he saw we wos gone,” said a third man, the one Aradin had held back a moment ago.

“Did you really turn tail over a few goblins?” Astarion chuckled, and Aradin’s temper flashed.
“It wosn’t no few bloody goblins, mate! It was an entire hive of’em! Contract failed to mention that part.”
“Well… did you think getting rich would be easy?” Tav shrugged, running low on sympathy, and Aradin sighed.
“Dunno wot I expected. 5000 pieces of gold for some old trinket. And from a wizard too. Gold probably turns to lead the moment you leave Baldur’s Gate."
“Do you have any idea what this relic actually is?” Tav asked, and Aradin was clearly getting annoyed with just how much he’d put on the line over very scant information.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be back here with half my crew gone! But hey. If you’re itchin’ to meet Kelemvor, I won’t stop ya,” he said, taking out a folded print sheet and throwing it Tav’s way. She looked at the ad. ‘Adventurers Wanted’ and the name Lorroakan. That sounded oddly familiar?
Aradin, you’ve been so had, you dumb bastard.
“It’s called the Nightsong. S’posed to be hidden under the temple where the gobbos jumped us. I’d give you the map, and wish ye a happy funeral, but my mate Brian kept hold of it like his own todger. Goblins made short work of the fat old chunk,” Aradin hissed out, but his eyes were dark with sadness.

He’d lost a friend, someone he cared about. And this Liam kid too. Half their gang gone… Of course they were strung high. Trying not to show his state, Aradin sniffled and tapped the print sheet with a long, calloused finger.
“All we’ve got left is the contract. It’ll show ya where we turned back, if ya feel like dying’.”
“Thanks,” Tav muttered dryly and was already turning around.
“Don’t thank me, lass. We’ll be well on our way back to Baldur’s Gate when you die.”
And like that, he turned his back, thinking their affairs concluded.

“Except you won’t,” Tav said coolly, pretending to read the contract, and Aradin stopped dead.
“Excuse me?”
She shrugged. She had them in her palm.
“You won’t. The ‘gobbos’ are still out on the road. If you head out now, without an adult holding your hand,” Tav added with a small smile, “you’ll lose the last half of your crew too. You lot are just as stuck here as the tieflings are.”

Aradin’s entire crew looked at her, cold but crestfallen that she was right.
“So I have a proposal for you,” Tav continued, now that she had their full attention, “We combine forces. I’m gonna scrounge up a few tieflings too. We’re gonna go raid that nest.”
“Why would we help the foulbloods?” Aradin squinted, arms crossed.
“Watch it, mate,” Karlach warned and stared him down.
“You’re gonna help yourselves,” Tav corrected him, “because you can’t get back home to the Guild unless the road is cleared. Everyone’s interests align here, see? The goblins need to be cleared out no matter who you ask: the druids, the tieflings, our sake, and yours. You don’t have much of a choice here, mate.”

“How do you know we’re with the Guild?” the woman asked.
Tav pointed at the lute swung on her back.
“Hello, bard? I have friends in all the lowest places. You’re not smart enough for Zhentarim, too loud to be Harpers, too tall to be Bloodaxes, the Doom Raiders aren’t active in Baldur’s Gate and you’re too far from the sea to be White Sails.” Then she pinched Aradin’s sleeve. “Nice shirt. Lovely shade of emerald, just like Nine-Fingers Keene,” she shrugged. “Does mummy know you’re wearing her blouse?”
Aradin flinched back.
“How the hell do you know Nine-Fingers?!”
Tav pointed at her lute again with more emphasis. ”Bard!”

“What about the Nightsong?” the taciturn man asked, suspicious.
“Pfft. I don’t care about your relic,” Tav shrugged. “Go for it, keep it, eat it for all I care, that’s your business. But none of us are getting out of here until the goblins are disposed of. And it’ll be easier if we do it together.”
She could see the cogs in Aradin's head churning, weighing his options here. He didn't want to concede that she was right, any more than he wanted to work with Zevlor or herself. But between the closing window of the druid ritual and the goblin problem, he was scant on other ways home.
“... Shit,” Aradin winced, and spat on the ground. “Fine. But once the goblins are disposed of, you’re on you’re own.”
“No, Aradin, you are,” Tav said. “And one more thing: you all have to do as I say. No fecking around, and we all get back to mummy Nine-Fingers. Deal?”
Aradin exchanged a look between his crew, made an annoyed face, and then stretched his hand out to shake Tav’s.
“Good. You lot, get patched up. I’ll scrounge up some of the tiefs. Zevlor and anyone he thinks might be a good fit. But I want no bad blood, understand me? No slurs, no picking fights, not so much as a stink-eye. Be ready to depart as soon as I give the word. Understood? Good.”
She turned on her heel and headed back to the tieflings. She was beginning to feel like a commander and… relishing it?

Astarion was slow to join though.
“You there,” he nodded to the taciturn man, who turned and squinted suspiciously.
“Wot d’ya want?”
“Here,” the pale elf said and held out his hand. A small brass locket dangled from his long, elegant fingers. It must have been the thing that had made this man chase that tiefling kid: another one of Mol’s little gangsters perhaps? And Astarion had snatched the item back?
“A gesture of good faith. That little pickpocket needs to learn a thing or two.”
“You… You took it back?” the man said, accepting the necklace with incredulous eyes. “I—I dunno wot to say. Look, I know it’s stupid, gettin’ all emotional over a cheap trinket but I wos my mother’s. It’s all I have of’er, s’all. Kind o’ya, saer.”
“Heirloom, is it?” Astarion tried to small talk, clearly uncomfortable with having been nice to someone. “Been in your family long?”

The man rubbed his neck nervously. “Not long as a matter of fact.”
“Not much of an heirloom then… unless it has a story behind it?” Tav smiled coaxingly.
“She stole it from a house she cleaned, alright?” the man spat out defensively. Not so grateful anymore, and clearly ashamed. “They didn’t pay her much! They owed her a perk or two!”
The heartwarming moment gone, Tav turned icy: “I see. So when your mother steals, it’s anything but reprehensible, but when an orphan does, you’re willing to chase them with a raised fist?”
“Ain’t the same, an’ you know it! Feck it. Thanks anyway. We’ll await your say.”

As he turned and stormed back to Aradin like a struck dog, Tav whistled at Astarion.
“How did that feel? Being all nice?”
“Disgusting,” Astarion complained, “I shan’t do it again. I can’t fathom how you bear these niceties.”
“With grace,” Tav teased.
“Please. Let Gale be the nice one, and I’ll be the beautiful one.”
“Afraid he’s got you beat there too.”
“You’re a rotten liar, Tav Lunet,” Astarion dismissed her and inspected his nails. “Mine is an undying beauty.”
“Maybe immortality just isn’t my cup of blood,” she shrugged with a smile.

Shadowheart joined at her side. “That was savvy, thinking to recruit more people for the road.”
“But Aradin though?” Astarion muttered, “He already failed to beat the goblins once.”
“He didn’t have us last time. We’re gonna talk get some of the tieflings with us too.”
“Who did you have in mind?” Gale asked. “Zevlor is obvious, but who else?”
“Me,” came a strange woman’s voice and when they turned, a tiefling woman with skin like brass and eyes like stormy skies. She had a crossbow strapped to her back and her arms were crossed. Astarion took a step forward.
“Arka, was it? Good to see you again, under better circumstances.”
“You robbed me of a kill, elf,” the woman said pointedly. “But if you’re killing goblins, I’m coming too. I’m a crack shot.”
“What, shooting goblins in a cage? A child could do it,” Astarion shrugged dismissively. “At that range, you’d be hard-pressed to miss, darling.”

“Are you going to tell us who your friend is?” Gale pressed and Astarion made a surprised noise.
“Oh, beg pardon. Everyone, this is Arka. She tried to kill the goblin prisoner I questioned. The dead tiefling on the parapet was her brother.”
“Kanon. His name was Kanon,” the woman said bitterly. “I heard you talking to the adventurers. I want in on raiding the goblin camp.”
“... Are you going to be okay with vengeance like that?” Tav asked cautiously, and the woman scowled.
“Look, you can have me tag along, or I’ll go on my own and get myself killed in the process.”
“... You’re really selling me on your mental clarity, Arka,” Tav chuckled, “Will you obey orders if I let you tag along?”
The woman breathed like a forge bellow, nostrils flaring angrily. “I swear it. Just let me kill a few and I’ll follow you to the hells.”
“Trust me,” Karlach muttered, “We’re not going that way.”
Tav sighed, contemplating the sudden volunteer. “Alright. Stock your quivers and stick closeby.”
Arka nodded tersely and strode off with a gate as if she was crushing glass with every step.

“Alright, Gale, we’ll have an Arka,” Tav shrugged. “If Zevlor agrees, he might bring some mates, but I had another option in mind too, and I might need some… wizardly airs to recruit him.”
Gale’s eyes flashed instantly and his eyes wandered the crowd, spotting the three siblings over by the soup kitchen. The wizard apprentice and his family.
“On it.”

Chapter Text

Tav moved to follow Gale to his quarry, but he gestured for her to hang back.
“Please, miss Lunet, you must have exhausted that silvered tongue today, surely. Allow me to relieve you,” he said gallantly, “Let me work my magic.”
He winked—dorkishly, stupidly, embarrassingly adorable—and took the lead, and Tav stayed back, watching how that chestnut hair curled slightly above his collar. Astarion nudged her gently with his arm.
“You’ve got it bad.”
“Quiet, you.”
“I can’t believe you think that inimitable wool-wad prettier than me,” he tutted sourly, “or that you’d have the nerve to say so aloud, on purpose, in front of people.”
“Trust me,” Tav sighed as Gale’s silver earring glinted in the light. Perhaps she could just focus on the jewellery and pretend he was a pirate? “No one’s more embarrassed than I.”
“As you should be.”

Her smile softened slightly. “I don’t know what it is about him. Any other day my type would be more—”
“—Me?”
“—I was going to say Aradin, actually,” Tav chuckled, watching Gale and Rolan shake hands. “I mean… I’d have to stick a sock in his mouth to keep him from talking, but he’s easy enough on the eyes and we haunt the same spots. Gale is… I don’t know.”
“... I can’t believe I’m not even a contender for the top spot.”
Tav gave him an innocent smile, trying to keep from laughing. “Actually, you don’t even rank.”
“You lie! I’m not even in the top three?!”
Too easy.
“I dunno… Zevlor has a certain tragic draw to him? Crestfallen-paladin, sort of fatherly appeal—” she teased and Astarion shoved her at this point.
“Now you’re just pulling my leg!”
“I don’t want to pull anything with you, Astarion. I’m sorry, you’re just… too pretty for me. I could never aspire to such lofty heights.”
Appeased, Astarion shuffled on his feet.
“... That’s better.”

“Tav has a working theory that perhaps Gale’s chiselled physique is the result of glamouring himself,” Shadowheart interjected with a small giggle, and Astarion laughed so hard passersby flinched.
“You would defer to the magically amplified over these natural endowments, Tav?” he teased, gesturing over himself, and Tav shrugged with a small smile.
“Hey, maybe he’s Enlarged something?”
Both her friends barked a laugh.
“Kiss-arse,” Shadowheart purred behind them. “And Astarion, you’re so desperate it’s pathetic.”
“Only pathetic thing here is that god-awful fringe of yours,” Astarion grinned back good-humouredly. Tav smiled at them both and shook her head in mock annoyance. She was really beginning to like these people, the ease and comfort with which they lovingly insulted each other.
“... Where’s Karlach?” it occurred to her to ask, and Shadowheart shrugged.
“What am I, her babysitter? She’s chatting up Dammon. Forgive me for extracting myself from third-wheeling.”
Throwing a glance that way, Tav could indeed see Dammon paying a frankly imprudent amount of attention to Karlach’s chest, and Karlach basking in it with glee.

Gale waved her over and she left the others to their devices.
“I believe you’ve met my friend, Tav,” Gale said, reaching an arm out as if to wrap it around her back, “but I don’t believe you were properly introduced.”
Not quite ready to touch Gale again after their tête-à-tête in the druids’ sanctum, Tav kept her distance. She didn’t want to be jittery whilst trying to convince Rolan to join her little raiding party. Instead, she took Rolan’s hand in greeting. It was warm, and the touch sparked her palm with magic. And he seemed to pick up on hers too.

“You again,” Rolan said with a miniscule squint, “We would have left by now, if not for you. Damnation.” He added the last bit under his breath. “Instead we’re just sitting here, practically begging to be attacked again. Staying is a mistake.”
“How come you’re so eager to reach the city? Have you ever even been there? Do you even know how they welcome tieflings?”
The young man shrugged, unphased. “A few strangers may stare, but where do they not? They’ll keep their daggers sheathed,” he said, and then rose a little taller, clearly proud, ”I for one will be warmly welcomed, besides. You are looking at Master Lorroakan’s newest apprentice.”
Tav flinched. That name again, Lorroakan, and in the span of five minutes. Small world. Rolan mistook her puzzlement with her being impressed, and he puckered his lips smugly. “Yes, that Lorroakan. The greatest wizard in Baldur’s Gate.”
Only because Gale’s never been there, most likely. A quick glance his way told her he’d had the exact same notion, except smugly.
“I’ve heard that name before,” Gale interjected, smiling, “A young man, yes? Lives in Ramazith’s Tower in the Upper City?”
“The very same,” Rolan said and folded his hands behind his back. Was that a posture all wizards had? Did they take classes to do it or something, the way young ladies learned to dance and curtsy?

“... Word in Waterdeep has it he’s a bit of a cad,” Gale winced politely, “but you say he’s an accomplished wizard?”
“Of course he is,” Rolan tutted defensively, “The greatest spellcaster on the Sword Coast! As if I’d settle for a lesser mentor!”
How did I end up stuck between two wizards in a measuring contest? At least Gale’s keeping his usual boastfulness to a minimum… Strategy to not intimidate Rolan, or sudden bashfulness?
“In that case, I’d very much appreciate it if you could arrange an introduction, should we reach the city,” the wizard in question said gallantly.
“Good idea,” Tav smiled and placed a gentle hand on Rolan’s forearm, employing her most soft, wily smile. “Powerful acquaintances never hurt.”

Rolan’s posture softened and he smiled at her, yellow irises glinting with charm.
“If it’s powerful allies you’re after, you have to look no further than yours truly.”
Gotcha.
She felt Gale subtly touching her shoulder with his arm too, clearly catching her drift.
“Is that a fact?” she said, feigning awe.
“Oh yes. Few can match me, in magic or talent. In years to come, you will boast of meeting me, I can assure you.”
Never thought I’d admit it, but having now met this self-assured lad… Gale seems positively demure in comparison.

“In that case, we must expedite your arrival for your apprenticeship!” Tav said.
“I thought you were all for us staying?” came Lia’s voice from behind her brother.
“To stay and help defend your kin,” Tav corrected with a glittering smile, “But those goblins aren’t going anywhere, are they? Before too long, this grove will be sequestered, and we will all be forced back out on the road. Children, elderly, the infirm… But we have an idea, to eradicate the goblin threat before the civilians hit the road. Without them hanging at our belt hoops, panicking and needing protection, it will be far easier to deal with the problem. Clear the road, so to speak.”
“Take the fight to them!” Lia said, with a fierce gleam in her eye. Her brother, however, seemed less certain.
“I don’t know about this…”
“What, will you be discouraged by a few goblins, brother?” Rolan said. “Fear not, I can dispatch them back to their grubby afterlife forthwith. Though some assistance in this endeavour would not hurt.”
Yeah, sure, my idea and my suggestion but I will be assisting you. Bloody wizards, I swear.

“So we can count on your help when it is time to leave?”
“Assuredly so,” Rolan nodded graciously, “Who else have you in mind for this excursion?”
“The humans yon,” Gale said and nodded to Aradin’s crew, “Not the most agreeable company but they know where the nest is and have a decidedly vested interest in eradicating the goblins. We already have their word they’ll follow miss Lunet.”
“Lunet?” Rolan said, “Is that your family name?”
“Indeed,” Tav said and tried not to swallow.
“That name is familiar to me, but I cannot summon the connection just now?”
“Oh? That surprises me. My family have never been to Elturel,” Tav was quick to point out, smothering any suspicion in its infancy. “Anyway, I shall make my overtures to Commander Zevlor as well, and then we will make leaps to our quarry. Wait for my signal.”

She gave the three tiefling siblings a quick bow and then brought Gale with her onwards to Zevlor’s keep.
“Colour me impressed,” Gale chortled, “The only woman I’ve ever met who could talk anyone to do their will the way you do is my mother, and I think you’d give even her a run for her money. ”
Tav groaned. “You did not just compare me to your mother!”
Gale put his hands up. “No, understand me; my mother has the grace and guile of a battering ram. You are more… Beguiling. Transfixing, even.”
She shot him a beaming smile. “Do I transfix you, Master Dekarios?”
“Quite,” he replied immediately, and then swallowed hard, as if not intending to be quite so candid. “I beg your pardon, I er…”
“It’s alright,” Tav said, swallowing hard and brushing his hand, “Point in case, I guess.”
“Well, you certainly charmed Rolan easily enough,” he pointed out, relieved to be let off the hook. “Perhaps you just have a way with wizards.”
“... I think I’d rather be compared to your mother again.”
“What exactly do you have against wizards?”
She shrugged. “Do they not teach socioeconomic theory at Blackstaff Academy?”
“... So it’s a question of income brackets over nomenclature?”

Tav sighed and pondered his question for a moment. “Let’s just say my family, regardless of our poncy-sounding names, hardly owns any seaside towers by any promenades.”
“Interesting notion,” Gale pondered, “That you consider yourself to be too poor to appeal to wizards, but act snobby about it. And trust you me, wizards are connoisseurs of snobbery.”
“Well, I contain multitudes within me. Volumes even.”
Gale’s eyes flashed momentarily. “I’ve always been a notorious devourer of books, until I began taking it very literally… I shall read you to filth forthwith.”
Tav stopped dead in her tracks, cheeks flushing violently and Gale nudged her with his elbow, shooting her a smug grin over quieting her. His brown eyes sparkled like a rippling brook.

“Miss Lunet, comport yourself,” he warned her, “You have a tiefling commander to subdue next.”
“If I could afford pearls, I would surely clutch them at your temerity, Gale Dekarios,” she tutted, trying not to laugh.
“What, over a spot of flirting? Please, as if you didn’t like it.”
Tav exhaled through her nose and stifled her laugh-tinted gasp.
“I suppose you’ll threaten to fold me over and dog-ear me next.”
At that, he barked a laugh and blushed. “By Elminster’s ears, no! I would never defile anything by dog-earing it!”
At least he admitted openly to flirting with her. For now anyway. She was sure he’d pull back again before too long. It was as if he couldn’t quite help but flirt with her one moment, only to think better of it the next. One moment he’d seem so embarrassed to flirt, and the next he’d say the most uncouth double-entendres with tongue firmly in cheek. It was maddening.

Zevlor’s quarters were sparse and orderly to a fault. A battered but lovingly mended travel coffer stood by a most well-organised stone table, serving as a desk for the tiefling commander. The man himself stood pensive, seeming to contemplate a roadmap. When he heard Gale and Tav approaching, he looked up, seemingly snapped out of thought.
“Miss Lunet, Master Gale,” he nodded in greeting, “I heard what happened. I thank you for protecting Arabella.”
“Word travels fast,” Gale whispered.
“If the druids are so far gone as to nearly kill a child, then it’s not just goblins we have to fear,” Zevlor lamented and gestured over the map in front of him. “So we can risk violence here… or face it for certain on the road. Quite the choice, isn’t it?”
“We could delay the ritual…” Gale suggested, but Zevlor’s eyes widened with worry.
“No! The druids are too powerful! We can’t stand against them all. It’s Kagha’s influence. Without her twisting things, I believe the druids might see sense.”
“You are not the only one who thinks so,” Tav said, and then threw a glance around the room to look for rats. Gale saw her look, and with a gesture, he drew a dome of light on the air that muddled even the sounds of their breaths with a quiet ’silencio.’

“... What is this?” Zevlor said, gesturing to the spell around them.
“Assurance that we won’t be overheard,” Gale said. “Small rats have ears too.”
“What?” Zevlor asked, befuddled.
“We have ascertained you’re not the only person who thinks Kagha ill-fitted to rule the roost,” Tav said solemnly, “Her power here is not unanimous. We spoke to the healer you recommended, and she has tasked us with finding Halsin, whether alive or dead, and to find any materials which might put Kagha’s authority into question.” Zevlor’s eyes lit with hope, and Tav went on. “Whether we return Halsin home or not, as long as we find evidence of Kagha’s corruption, the druids will stop The Rite Of Thorns and allow the tieflings asylum here until the road to Baldur’s Gate is clear.”
“One druid against Kagha?” Zevlor said in disbelief.
“Not one, more,” Tav assured him, without specifying the number, “but we’ve already found some dubious materials in Kagha’s quarters. As has Nettie.”
“You broke into Kagha’s—”
“If it’s any consolation, Kagha did ask us to kick the tieflings out or kill you,” Gale interjected.
“But I for one have always found anyone willing to murder children less than compelling,” Tav finished.

“So what then?” Zevlor asked.
“We have a plan: The note we found in Kagha’s possession refers to a meeting place outside the Grove. The swamp docks.”
“That’s between here and the goblin camp,” Zevlor nodded, pointing it out on the map before him. It seemed to be located below a village of some sort. “You think you will find more evidence of Kagha doing malpractice there?”
“We do, but not just that,” Tav shrugged, “We intend to kill two rats with one trap: No matter what becomes of Kagha, the goblins on the road remain a thorn in the thicket here. Even with Kagha ousted, until the goblins are gone, there will be no journey to Baldur’s Gate. So while we’re out, we’re going to raid the hive.”
“Just the four of you?!” Zevlor said, and it occurred to Tav that Karlach hadn’t been with the gang when Zevlor had first spoken to her that morning, “That’s suicide!”
“Actually, the group has grown somewhat,” Tav smiled, “We have already recruited Rolan and his siblings, as well as Aradin’s troupe.”
“Aradin?” Zevlor scoffed, “That coward will turn tail at first turn.”
“All the more reason to pad our ranks with more seasoned fighters,” Tav said and nodded to himself, “The more, the merrier, right?”
“You would have me join your outing?” he said, dubious.
“Yes. We need a firm hand to keep Aradin in line, and a skilled warrior to help in the fighting.”

Zevlor contemplated for a moment. “What’s your plan for the actual nest? Just storming it, head on?”
“... I’ll admit, not knowing the layout, that bit is yet to be decided,” Tav conceded with an innocent smile.
“There will be no improvising it,” Zevlor said, and then moved to his coffer. He found a scroll and laid it out on the table. “We found an old sketch of the Selûne temple. I too have had half a mind to take the fight to the goblins, but I have not the numbers to pull off an assault.”
Tav and Gale bent over the sketch, looking at it. It was an old drawing in coal, depicting the temple as seen from one of the towers, it seemed.
The place seemed a hybrid between a fort and a monastery. All the walls were fortified with archer nests, a portcullis to close it off in the event of an assault.
“The place seems designed to withstand sieges,” Zevlor explained, “I couldn’t make horns or tails of it until I saw the murals in this place. The Selûnites made war with a Sharran enclave here centuries past, and the temple was modified to serve as a fort.”

A cloister, a sort of grand courtyard with a fountain, made the heart of the temple’s outside, it seemed, which formed a sort of cross. The northern apse held a grand set of doors that led inside the temple itself, and there were transepts to the east and west. But the temple itself was tall, two levels at least. There was a parapet above those doors, that stretched the entire front of the temple, and even a narrow footbridge that led to a belfry.
“I dispatched scouts to size them up. Not seen in the sketch is the area outside this portcullis,” Zevlor went on, pointing to notes he himself had made. “The defences outside are fairly adequate. There’s a wild stream with a steep waterfall flanking the entire southern side of the temple. There are sentries up high on a cliff by the main gate, which is guarded by worgs and their handlers. There are war drums evenly spaced to call for reinforcements at any sign of attackers, calling the goblins from within the temple out to fight. If we assault head-on, the goblins have a narrow corridor and the advantage of the towers from which they can shoot anyone approaching. But… There is also a back way. It takes a steady foot and a daft hand at disarming traps, however. It is conspicuously unguarded, too ignored to not be rigged with boobytraps.”

Tav looked at the sketch intently, her mind turning, and Zevlor watched her with the same intent contemplation.
“I may be no commander or grand strategist,” Tav conceded, “But I’m not without my own brand of low cunning.”
“... What do you have in mind?” Gale asked warily.
“That I talk us in. A few of us, anyway.”
Gale winced. “Of course the bard wants to talk their way into a goblin hive.”
“Well, could you summon a dragon or something to eradicate them for us, master wizard? No? Then let me make my case without interruption. I can get a small group of us into the nest.”
“How?” Gale pressed.
“By lifting my shirt and batting my eyelashes,” she shot back with a sly smile, and Gale groaned. “Look, goblins aren’t exactly hard to convince of anything. They’re dumber than a bag of hammers. We’ll go in, being loud and drawing eyes. I’ll play a song, improvise a little! I charm myself into parties all the time, trust me, there’s no way this will go wrong! Astarion will go with the second group, he can disarm the traps and clear the way. There are no guards there, you said, Zevlor? Then no one will hear Astarion’s group coming. And when we’re all within the walls, the goblins will no longer have the advantage of safe walls. We can adapt to the situation once we’re past the main gate.”

Zevlor nodded. “I do not like leaving so much to chance…”
“Not chance, adaptability,” Tav corrected. “The information is too scant as yet. We haven’t seen the place with our own eyes, and we have no idea how many goblins are even in there or if they have anything nastier than worgs or ogres on their side. Being too rigid now would only be detrimental. When we get there, we can tailor our approach. Zevlor, I can see your apprehension, but you know I’m right: the goblins must be removed, one way or another.”
“Not just that,” Zevlor said slowly, “I am also worried for Master Halsin. It would be a lowly thing indeed to accept his help and not return the favour when he needs it.”
I love when my marks come up with their own arguments in my favour. I didn’t even have to guilt trip him.

“Either we’ll return here with evidence against Kagha or, luck willing, with Halsin in tow to reclaim his seat here. Either way, the druids won’t oust you,” Gale assured the undecided commander.
“So you’ll come?” Tav pressed gently, holding her breath.
Zevlor looked between them both, before settling on Tav’s face.
“I will. But only I. My lieutenant here will ensure the druids don’t force our people out in my absence.”
“I’m sure Nettie will not allow that either.”
“Even so. It is heartening to know we’re not universally despised in this place,” Zevlor conceded softly. “Had I known of Nettie’s sympathies… No matter. The druids will not even allow me into their sanctum.”

Tav took a count of her little troupe. Twelve now. Not excellent numbers, admittedly, but to paraphrase Gale, she ‘found herself in company of the exceptional.’

Chapter Text

Deciding against leaving at first light, the newly formed band set off with haste to make progress down the road before sundown.
The three siblings hadn’t paused their bickering for longer than a breath, and Arka in stark contrast hadn’t uttered a sound. She’d merely placed some flowers on her brother’s fresh grave as they had made their way out of the Grove. Since then, Arka had seemed to seethe with a lust for vengeance so tangible that Tav could almost smell her hair burning. And she watched the bickering siblings with squinted eyes and palpable annoyance.

Zevlor knew the road somewhat, but Aradin better and unlike any of the tieflings, he’d actually been inside the walls of the old Selûnite temple. The two talked as little as possible, and the tension between them was grating. Zevlor stood a full head taller than Aradin even without counting the regal set of horns adorning his head. Watching the three rogues glaring at the tall, red-skinned commander in his resplendent armour was akin to watching three naughty children being mad at their nanny.

Zevlor cut an imposing figure, tall as he was and moving effortlessly in his heavy armour. Every angle on him looked sharp, from the acute angle of his ears, which blended into high, ridged cheekbones, to his arched eyebrows, to his pointed chin. With skin so infernally red and the sclera of his eyes so black, lit from within by irises like wreaths of flame, the commander looked out of place in this bright sunlight. He didn't belong on this bucolic forest road. He might look even more misplaced in cold silver moonlight. But Tav hypothesised that perhaps next to a roaring fire, the flames would frame him duly. Every angle was sharp enough to cut, but his eyes were mournful and his voice sombre. A fallen paladin, indeed. There was something grandfatherly over him too, but maybe that was just something inherent to the burden of command.

Aradin scoffed at Zevlor’s severely outdated sketch.
“That might as well be bog-roll for all the good it’ll do us,” he sneered, “The gobbos have done a right number on the place. The statues are defaced, the walls have caved in in places. There’s rubbish everywhere.”
“To be expected, I guess,” Tav shrugged, “Goblins aren’t exactly known for being hygienic.”
“Trust me,” Barth muttered, “It smells worse than death in there. Think they smeared the walls wiv shit.”

Shadowheart was looking strangely smug about hearing of the state of the temple—positively chipper—which wasn’t… odd for Shadowheart specifically, with her murderous softness, but it was objectively weird. What kind of cleric looked happy hearing that a temple was defiled? Was Selûne an enemy of Shadowheart’s deity? Shar was an obvious choice, as was Cyric, but there were plenty more: Umberlee of the ocean waves, Mask, rotting Moander, Jessar as the dark side of the moon… It had been too long since Tav’s teenage theology phase to remember fully.
It occurred to her that all these days they’d spent together now, Shadowheart was a mystery to Tav. They hadn’t talked much since picking up Astarion and Gale, and she spent her evenings deep in silent, solitary prayer.
Pensive, she watched Shadowheart as she walked next to Astarion ahead of them on the narrow deer path.

Dark hair, braided in a high ponytail and wreathed in silver chains, dark clothes… She’d used necrotic magic fighting the goblins outside the Grove, but she was a healer too. Necrotic magic didn’t seem in line with Umberlee. Shar or Cyric then? Healing wasn't usually part of either of their parcels. Maybe Cyric, being a trickster and all, was most apt? They didn’t call him the Prince Of Lies for nothing. But then again, Shadowheart had a word for Gale’s condition, of some force that could swallow everything, even the divine. That did undoubtedly sound like Shar, seeing as she was the Lady Of Loss… and Selûne’s twin and nemesis.
Tav didn’t know enough about Shar’s or Cyric’s followers to identify them, both were so secretive. She’d have to pry a little here… Unless not poking this sleeping owlbear was for the best; after all, so long as Shadowheart was their ally, did it really matter who she prayed to?

Zevlor, however, was in his strategic mood, snapping her out of her ponderings. He was still going on about their approach to the goblin problem.
“Could we use the cave-ins to our advantage?”
“The lookout is placed too high, it’ll see anything unless we take it out. Even the birds can’t get in. They’ve been using them for target practice.”
“We could draw their eyes,” Tav suggested, taking a few minutes to fill Aradin in on the prospective plan.
“It ain’t a bad one,” Aradin conceded tersely, “but Horns here is too heavy and too noisy wiv his ringmail. If he comes with me and the pale elf, he’ll wake the dead. He’d best follow you lot through the main gate.”
“If I may,” Astarion suggested, “We could always bring Zevlor under the guise of taking him prisoner.”
“True,” Gale nodded, rubbing his chin as he pondered, “But why would they not just take us prisoners too? We’re strangers to them.”
“Let’s not make any hard decisions until we actually reach the place and see for ourselves,” Tav deflected, “We might be able to shoot the lookout from across the river.”

Aradin scoffed again.
“Ha! I’d like to see the archer with arms strong enough to make that shot!”
Karlach gave him a grin and placed her hand on Aradin’s shoulder in a friendly gesture, squeezing it so he winced. Every muscle in her arm swelled and she looked comfortably smug.
“Good idea, mate, I could do with a warm up before we head in,” she purred,
“Fookin’ hell! Get off me!” Aradin hissed and pulled away, and Karlach let him, “The fook?! You burnt me!”
Karlach merely licked her fingertip and set it sizzling to her skin.
“One-horned freak!” Aradin muttered, rubbing the singed shirt where Karlach had touched him. His mates were there in a flash to protect him.’
“Piss off, will ya!” the woman, Remira, said and led Aradin ahead with hurried steps.

“Karlach, I beg of you, we need everyone to play nice here,” Tav groaned, and Karlach fell in step next to her. But since Karlach was almost two heads taller than herself, Tav had to make long strides in order to keep pace with her latest friend.
“I am playing nice. Didn’t even blister him. Not my fault he’s all hot air and no fire,” Karlach grinned. “Like a fart.”
“Speaking of,” Tav said cautiously, “How did you end up so… fiery?”
“I told you, infernal engine for a heart.”
“Yeah, but how? Tall as you are, it’s not like those things grow on trees.”
Karlach’s bright cat-eyes dimmed and her bubbly mood evaporated.
“Got it ten years ago. Compliments of a dynamic duo of truly terrible bosses. I was a kid looking for a way to fill my days and make some cash when I fell into the wrong crowd. Worked for a guy I respected. A lot. Turns out the feeling wasn’t mutual.”
Tav’s blood turned ice cold.
“He didn’t—”

Karlach flinched.
“Fuck, no! Not that! Through the jigs and the reels, he made a deal with Zariel behind my back. You know of Zariel, right? The Archdevil of Avernus?”
“Not personally, but… her reputation precedes her,” Tav sighed.
“Well, I do know her personally. She put this thing in my chest and set me to work. Or well… to war. Had to learn quickly to stay alive. And this engine served me when it came to killing demons. Ten years of that shit.”
“Shit. The stories you could tell, from the front lines.”
“I don’t want to dwell on it, honestly.”

“So Zariel is one half of that shit-duet… Who’s the other?” Tav asked, and Karlach made a face.
“Guy named Gortash. Politician. Inventor. One of those wheeler-dealer types who seems to have a finger in every pie. I guess I was naive to think everything he got up to was above board. But what did I know, y’know? All I saw was a job—a good job!—with people I liked, doing work I was good at.”
Tav bristled at that.
“Hey, girlie, we’ve all been there,” she said, “Being a naive slip of a thing is something that you don’t get to enjoy for long in the city.”
“Ugh, I know, right? Sometimes I’m jealous of the girl I was. Ugh, to feel so invincible again. Y’know what I mean?”
“Do I ever. I play the graveyard shift at a brothel—not where my younger self imagined I’d end up. You ever been to The Pink Scabbard?”
“Only in my nightmares!” Karlach chortled, “Fuck me, how’d you end up doing that?”

“Yeah, how did you?” came a man’s voice from behind, and Aradin appeared. How had he walked ahead of them and managed to sneak up from behind all of a sudden?
Tav strangled a string of profanity out of startlement, but didn’t answer the question.
“Did Nine-Fingers set you op to play that gig? Listen in on the pillow talk?” Aradin kept pressing.
“Why do you care how I know Nine-Fingers? She’s a mob mum, she meets a lot of people.”
“Maybe your place at that whorehouse is putting that mardy gob of yours to use.”

Karlach stopped dead and Aradin walked headfirst into the mountain wall of her back.
Very slowly, she bent down to meet Aradin’s eyes.
“... Come. Again?” she almost growled.
“Karlach,” Tav calmed her, “It’s fine. It’s natural to be curious. If Aradin wants my story so bad, he can hear me tell it at work when we make it back. Only costs a copper. That’s not too dear for you, is it, Aradin? Unless you’re on the brothel blacklist?”
The man made a disgusted face and walked away.

“Do brothels share a blacklist?” Karlach asked when he was out of earshot, and Tav shrugged.
“Hells if I know. But that man has an air about him of someone who, for want of coin to pay for company, resorts to fucking himself. If there is a blacklist, you bet your arse he’s on it. The pretty ones never want to pay. Anyway, what does an infernal engine even do? Why would you stick one into a person’s chest?”
“It gives me energy. Power. Not gonna lie, though, it’s a bit hard to control. Like, if I get excited at all—angry, nervous, delighted, enticed—I burn hot. Hot enough to burn anyone who gets too close.”

“Oh shit,” Tav lamented, eyes wide, “You must be… pent up.”
“I try not to think about it,” Karlach said quickly and swallowed nervously. “Still think about it constantly, but, y’know, I try.”
“... Poor Dammon.”
“Oh my gods, Dammon is an absolute morsel, isn’t he? I could ride him from here to the Feywilds,” Karlach sighed wistfully and rubbed her neck and collarbones wantonly. “When he took his shirt off I thought I might combust and blow the entire Grove into cinders.”
Tav chortled to herself at Karlach’s choice of words.
“Wot?” Karlach asked and Tav shrugged, trying to suppress a shit-eating grin.
“Oh, you know. ‘Come.’ ‘Bust.’”

Karlach’s face split into a mirror of her own bawdy smile, and she playfully slapped Tav’s shoulder so hard she nearly toppled over, and together they laughed so hard that the people walking ahead of them turned to stare.
“Good gods, there’s two of them now,” Astarion muttered with a snark. “Will you two stop cackling like hags and behave yourselves?”
“No!” Tav shot back with a beaming smile, and then her eyes wandered to Gale’s eyes, glittering curiously at her.
Don’t look at me like that, or I’ll blush to death.
“What are you even laughing at?” Astarion pressed on.
“Who says we’re laughing at something? Maybe we’re just enjoying the natural splendour?”

“Fuck yeah!” Karlach agreed. “Fresh air! Grass! Sunshine! Maybe we can get rid of the people hunting me while we’re out?”
“If they darken our proverbial doorstep, absolutely,” Tav nodded, “But let’s not seek them out and give them the advantage of familiar turf. Who knows, they might lose your trail entirely and give up.”
“You don’t know these types,” Karlach muttered, “Especially if they’re led by the Blade of Frontiers. Man, I can’t believe he chased me all the way from Avernus.”
“What was he even doing in Avernus to begin with? I thought that guy was a folk hero, clearing out bandits and such? There’s stories about him poking up all over the Sword Coast.”
“Maye he was sicced on me. Would be just my luck.”

“Who would sicc a guy like that on your tail?”
“Zariel,” she reminded Tav. “But never mind that! We’re home, or nearly home anyway, and there’s birdsong and fit blacksmiths in the world! Maybe even a frosty pint somewhere. One of these days, I’ll sort this whole infernal affair out, get myself cooled off, and start making up for lost time.”
“Preferably with Dammon?” Shadowheart smiled.
“Aw, mate, I wish!” Karlach groaned.
“Bet he wishes too!” the green-eyed elf chirped. “He looked at you like you were a slice of cake.”
“He might be able to tune me up a lil bit?” Karlach blushed and tapped her sternum, ignoring Shadowheart’s insinuating tone, “He said we need to find some Infernal Iron, and he might be able to tinker something up with it.”

“And what does he want for payment?” Astarion asked, pursing his lips knowingly.
The corners of Karlach’s mouth drooped a little and she suddenly looked very unsure of herself.
“He… didn’t say.”
“If it’s on the house, he’s definitely hankering for a slice of red velvet cake,” the elf purred lewdly and they all laughed.
“Shit, I should have made that joke,” Tav lamented. “Damn. Oh well, credit where it’s due.”

“So, you’re from the Sword Coast then, Karlach?” Gale asked.
“Baldur’s Gate, mate!” Karlach said, slapping her chest with pride, and that tinny sound clanked again.
“So if you’re a victim of the Blood War and not an agent of it, why is a hero like the Blade of Frontiers hunting you? Surely he ought to help you?”
“Not everyone’s as cool as you lot,” Karlach shrugged, “Maybe he doesn’t like our kind, culwsa—”

Tav’s heart nearly seized, but Zevlor stepped in like a father to quell his disorderly brood.
“You are most right, Karlach, that the weather is most clement today. Though we should look to make camp soon, before the marsh. I felt some… strange energies about the marsh.”
Tav shot Zevlor a grateful look as he passed, bringing everyone but Karlach and herself with him. That was the second time he’d had Tav’s back today, if not the third. Cover fire seemed to be the old commander’s strong suit.
“So, er…” Tav began, biting her lip. “Um, speaking of kin… The others don’t… know what I am. They think I’m an elf.”
Karlach’s laughter boomed and she nearly folded over. “And you haven’t set’em straight?!”

“Come on now,” Tav muttered, anxiously looking to see if the others were listening in. Karlach’s booming voice was a bassoon that defied discretion. “You know what people do to us. We’re not welcome everywhere. We’re barely tolerated in some places. I mean, you saw the druids. And Aradin.”
“Is that why you cut your horns off? I thought you were a hardened criminal or something, figured ‘finally someone with a worse rep sheet than me.’ Because you look well dodgy with your stumps hidden like that.”
“I didn’t cut them, my mum did. What about your missing horn?”
Karlach scratched the rough-raw stump by her right temple.
“Not a punishment either. I had a tussle with an orthon who broke it off. Hurt like a motherfucker. Like breaking all your finger and toenails at once, amplified by ten. Having two handlebars stuck on your head is very handy for your opponents, turns out.”

Tav winced in sympathy.
“Bleeding hells. I’m glad I was too little to remember when mum cut mine. She’s human and her parents… Let’s just say they’d prefer an elf grandchild over an infernal.”
“Aw, mate, that’s so shit,” Karlach said, and laid a scalding pat on Tav’s shoulder, “So… your hair looks like that on purpose?”
Tav instinctively checked her fringe, suddenly self-conscious.
“What’s that—actually, never mind, I’ll let that one slide. The green streaks were a magical accident but the fringe has always been there, yes. And I happen to like it!”
“Different folks, different strokes,” Karlach shrugged, “But you should really come clean to the others. The longer you wait, the worse it’ll get. They seem like a cool bunch. They need to know who you really are.”
Having said her piece, Karlach’s strides turned long and she left Tav with her thoughts.

Was that really fair? Astarion’s secret was out now. Shadowheart was still an inaccessible enigma, and Gale was, in a strange self-contradiction, not secretive about having a terrible secret. Or a series of them, but all seemed tied together. His affliction, his dismissal from his powerful position…
Compared to that, what did it matter if Tav simply didn’t correct the others when they called her an elf? It wasn’t a secret, more a… lie by omission? Though asking Karlach not to out her just now may have transgressed that separation.

Aradin didn’t much care for tieflings, after all. And Tav was sure Kagha never would have asked her to get rid of the tieflings from the Grove, had she known her would-be errand girl was one herself.
But as Tav looked at her companions in turn, not one of them had made so much as a single derogatory remark about tieflings. Gale for one had turned ice cold at the prospect of so much as a hair out of place on Arabella’s head.

For the umteenth time that day, her eyes were drawn to the form of Gale’s back and the whisky-coloured amber of his hair when lit by the sun, and the flecks of brass in his eyes when the sun hit them just so.
Maybe the way to learn what was so terrible and secret about him lay in sharing her own truths first. Besides… Lying about herself was becoming frightfully impractical.
But it wasn’t just as easy as moving her fringe out of her face and digging her tail out of her trousers. Or, it was, technically, but the resistance she felt at even the idea of doing it… It felt akin to the first time Tav had gone on stage. That stage fright, that terror, that pounding of her blood in her ears and feeling like she could both piss herself and burrow into the ground and catch fire with embarrassment and shame… It was easier to move a mountain than to strip the disguise away. A disguise that had been worn for so long that Tav scarce could imagine herself without it. Like… having her tail out felt akin to walking bare-chested in the town square? A strangely prude sensation, all things considered.

As Gale was cooking dinner for twelve in his magically enlarged cauldron, tensions between Zevlor and Aradin mellowed out, but not for becoming fast friends. The waning sun and bodily tiredness softened the sharper glances. Enmity was laid aside, for the night at least.
Arka, for her part, sat as far away from the bickering wizard and his siblings as she could get. Lia and Rolan struggled to agree on the colour of shit, and Cal between them had something haggard over his skin, as well as a short fuse glinting in his eye. Like he might make his irksome siblings wear one shirt together until they got along.

“If I have to listen to their arguing for one more moment, I will shoot them both and then myself,” Arka sighed to Karlach, who moved to pat her back, before remembering her touch scalded people.
“Oi, you lot!” she shouted over, and Rolan hushed Lia, to her great outrage. “OI! You’re gonna lead the goblins right to us with your tongue-wagging! Give it a rest or so help me, I’ll chuck you into the river!”
“Now look what you did,” Lia muttered, “You made her cross.”
“Shut. Up,” Cal hissed.
Their cook chimed in.
“My mother always said to let dinner quiet the idle mouth,” Gale hummed as he doled out ladlefuls of whatever fragrant concoction he was serving for the night. Tav watched him as he handed bowls out, picturing him in his own kitchen, casual and comfortably domestic humming to himself… naked apart from a frilly apron.

She shook the image out of her head as she took her own serving with mumbled thanks. It was some sort of stew, as ever with their limited cooking setup, but this one seemed a medley of potatoes, sweet carrots, tender pork, with pockets of melted cheese in between. He must have scrounged that up from the Grove somehow? She didn’t think the illustrious Gale of Waterdeep would struggle for years and years of academia simply to manifest cheese from the aether.

Once everybody was served, Gale took a seat next to her like it was the most natural gesture in the world, sitting next to her like they were long acquainted.
They weren’t all so formal as to sit all together. Aradin’s crew were off in their own corner, Karlach, Zevlor and Arka as the resident tieflings outside of a family unit congregated to themselves, the siblings sat in the closest to a companionable silence Tav had heard from them all day… Astarion and Shadowheart ate together, by the looks of it gossiping about the others.

Rolan, not letting his ‘idle mouth’ enjoy dinner quietly, was sour about the state of his robes after hiking all afternoon.
“I’ll die if I reach Lorroakan reeking of filth. I’ll never get the smell out of my clothes. I’ll have to burn them.”
His sister scoffed.
“You vain fop,” she tutted, and Arka surprised them all by stomping her foot, so suddenly and so sharply, that Astarion and Shadowheart chuckled nervously.
“ENOUGH, YOU LOT!” she shouted. “WILL YOU SHUT UP?!”
“What’s pissed in your beer, Arka?” Cal said sourly.
There was the faintest of tense giggles in the air, but Arka either didn’t notice, or didn’t care.

“You three! With your bickering and your stupid little japes and calling each other names! You’re all horrible! My brother is dead! Dead! Just this morning, he told me he was homesick, and now he’s cold in the ground, and he’s gone forever. I will never get to hug him again, or tell him how much he meant. Not just to me, but to us all! He died protecting you! And his bones will lie in some plot in the woods, where no one knew him, and no one to mourn him. The flowers I put on his grave might be the only ones his grave will ever see. We could all be killed like that!” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “And never get a chance to say sorry or goodbye. So stop. Fucking. Arguing. All the time! Hells, I hope the goblins get me too, so I can keep his bones company! And not listen to your constant, idiotic squabbling!”

Her voice grew thick and her eyes watered. She set her bowl down with almost exaggerated restraint and then stomped off to be alone.
A pressed silence fell in her wake. No one moved to follow her, and the nervous giggles were blown away like dandelion seeds. Arka had left to be alone, after all.
Lia and Rolan exchanged shameful glances, but neither stretched their hand out to the other to make peace.
For a moment Tav considered forcing it, but thought better of it; two people who couldn’t see eye to eye could never be forced to reconcile in any way that lasted, or mattered.
As for Arka’s death wish… It was impossible to tell if she was serious, or merely the fleeting fancy of being acutely grief-stricken.

Zevlor got up and followed Arka in the end, to help calm her. He was after all some form of commander to her, even if Tav wasn’t entirely sure of the ranks among the Elturel refugees. From the darkening shadows of the treeline came Zevlor’s soothing voice, mixed with Arka’s teary replies.

In the hope of cutting the silence and granting Arka some privacy, Tav gently set her bowl to the side and took out her lute. She began plucking a folk tune her father had taught her, ‘The Sinking Sun.’ It was neither too chipper nor excessively dour, but it broke the silence enough for people to feel comfortable talking again.
If her food got a little cold, she could live with that. When she gently sang, she saw the others resume their hushed conversations, and when the song rang out its last, only Gale sat quietly, listening intently.

“What a rapt audience of one,” Tav mused with a small smile, setting her lute aside. Gale handed her a bottle of wine and she took a swig. A sweet, floral red, but Tav couldn’t place it.
“Spellbound even,” Gale smiled back, handing her her forlorn bowl as well.
For a moment, they sat side by side, enjoying listening to the gentle conversations about them. Gale took a swig of his own from the bottle.
“May I ask you a question?” she asked eventually.
“I do enjoy our conversations,” he replied softly, “Ask away.”
“If… you were the Chosen of Mystra… how come Rolan doesn’t recognise you?”
Gale paused momentarily, his eyes clouded with insecurity.
“I did not find my usual moniker necessary upon introducing myself to him,” he answered very deliberately, “He’s an apprentice, and one with a rather lofty self-esteem. His knowing who I am could have… displaced him somewhat. Humbling him would not entice him to rally to our cause.”
Tav considered that answer for a moment, taking the bottle for a sip.

“... But he would have known your name?”
“Undoubtedly, if not my visage. Tav, wizards worship Mystra, not Mystra’s Chosen. Rolan’s studies are his own, his worship is his own. He… may have read my works, but it’s not like any books I’ve written come with my portrait printed on the sleeve.”
“Why not lead with that though? Surely as Mystra’s Chosen, he’d feel compelled to aid you regardless?”
“Former Chosen,” he corrected her almost annoyedly, “If anything, knowing who I am might have dissuaded him.”
“... How come?” At her insistent question, Gale sighed deeply, but Tav wouldn’t budge. “What did you do to lose your position?”
“That is rather personal.”
“Has it anything to do with your affliction?” she said, nodding to his blackened scars.
“Why do you press?” he asked defensively, turning partly away.
“To understand you better.”

Gale breathed deep, but Tav couldn’t tell whether he was embarrassed, angry or anxious.
“Is it not enough that I am here?” he said finally, “That I am indebted to you for saving my life, and charmed by your company? Does my past carry any weight to our current predicament?”
“Is that the only reason you’re coming along? Because you feel indebted to me?”
“Do I really need to reiterate the dire nature of our cerebral predicament?”
“I’m sorry if I offended you. I can empathise with wanting a clean slate but… you talk of yourself as though you committed some ignominious crime, and yet… I’d never even heard of you until your hand flew out of a stone and nearly hit me in the face. Gale, I am not looking to blackmail you. I want to know you.”

Gale swallowed hard, closed his empty hand as if considering reaching for her, and looked at her head on. Then he took the bottle and drank deeply.
“What I did… is not easy to speak on,” he started slowly, “To utter it aloud makes me relive it. The shame I felt, the disgrace of being shunned. I felt like everything I thought I was, the greatness I had been connected to, thought myself destined for, was severed from me, akin to losing a limb. It’s more than grief. It is a wound. Before I was snapped up by the nautiloid, I was alone in my tower with only a cat for company.”

Tav stared at him blankly.
“You didn’t… have any friends come visit you, or—”
Gale shook his head and drank again.
“I imposed that on myself,” he said bitterly, “With my condition being so volatile, I set up enough wards to keep an army at bay, never mind the few colleagues who sought to inquire about my welfare. Tara—my tressym—did her best to keep my spirits up, of course, but there’s only so much one person can make up for one’s entire social circle. And even so, she was often gone, seeking items to feed my condition. Truth is… you’re the first person I’ve spent any significant time with in a year or more. And to be honest, spending time in your company, I realise that I… may have left behind the greater part of my wit, and my sensitivity, in my tower.”

Tav took a long moment to absorb what he’d just shared, which was both vague and telling all at once.
“Not one person came to visit you during your confinement?”
Gale lowered his eyes and smiled ruefully.
“Sadly not.” He swallowed and sighed. “If I’m being entirely honest, my social circle is rather small. More of a dot… or a pinhead. I’ve got acquaintances, surely. Plenty of colleagues. But friends? Those are precious few indeed.”
But you’re not entirely honest, even now. You still won’t tell me what on earth you carry over your heart. What makes you so dangerous. What cost you everything.

But Tav also saw what it cost Gale to admit even this much. And having seen his, and now also Rolan’s bluster regarding their massive talents and intellect, in a way that surely wasn’t at all a placeholder for something more phallic to throw measuring contests over… If Gale had been surrounded by wizards who only saw their peers not as actual equals or brothers, but rivals? If he’d been the Chosen of the goddess those wizards shared, then any fellow wizard he’d met might have been gunning for his position. Hardly an environment conducive to form friendships.

Gale was swallowing again, as if holding something back or struggling to share himself further. Gently, Tav guided his hand to her lap, wreathing it with both of hers, stroking his skin with her thumb. Gale almost gasped for breath, and then his fingers laced with hers. It was hesitant and a little cloddish, but his palm pressed to hers and Tav forgot to breathe. He was soft, and warm, and he was trying his best.

“I hope,” Gale began quietly, “though we’ve only known each other for a short time… that you would permit me to count you among that number?”
Tav didn’t want to be just friends with Gale. But it was a good start. She gave his hand a gentle squeeze and nudged him with her shoulder.
She pretended to ponder his request, biting her lip and squinting.
“Friends with the mighty Gale of Waterdeep? I’d be honoured.”
He flashed her a smile.
“It is Gale Dekarios who is asking.”
Tav pretended to sigh with relief.
“Oh good! I like him better anyway.”
“I’m glad,” he smiled again, but this time with genuine joy, like a light had lit somewhere within him. “To know you enjoy my company is… Well, it’s rather wonderful, actually. I’d be loath to waste the time of someone who’s quickly becoming rather important to me.”
Tav blinked and hoped her eyes didn’t look as wet as they suddenly felt. Gale’s eyes were fixed on hers, lit like sunlight on a brook by the dancing flames.
Fuck. I’m a goner. I can never be just his friend.

“The feeling is mutual,” she mumbled, her throat feeling unaccountably thick all of a sudden. “You’re a wonderful friend. Though usually more… erudite.”
Gale cleared his throat and straightened into his usual stature, as if to read a line.
“Wine is to wit, what meat is to… Bah, I can’t bloody remember it. There I go, proving your point. Perhaps we’d better leave it at that. My ineloquent tongue isn’t worthy of your ear at present… Gustaviana.”
Fuck, thanks. Now that’s an image that’ll scald me all night. He’ll even make me like hearing my name.

“Oh look, they’re holding hands,” came Astarion’s insouciant drawl, and Tav and Gale both snapped out of the moment that had just transpired between them. Gale withdrew his hand, and Tav could’ve thrown the wine bottle at Astarion for breaking the spell.
“They’re adorable,” Shadowheart mused and raised her bottle to them, “So wrapped in one another they both forgot to eat.”
“Even though no one knows her real name.”
At that, Tav saw Aradin straighten up from the corner of her eye. What was this guy’s problem over prying with her past?!
“Wot?” Karlach asked, “Is ‘Tav’ short for something?”
“We have sussed that much out, but our indelible leader is yet to confirm or deny whether it’s the beginning of her name, or somewhere in the middle.”

Lia from her log seemed almost roused by the prospect of a guessing game.
“Taviara!”
Tav sighed and shook her head.
“TAVERN WENCH!”
The camp rang with laughter.
“No, Karlach. But it really should be.”
“Tavette?”
“Ha! Not heard that guess before.”
“Tavière?”
“... What? Are you just making sounds now?”
“Altava?” Cal chimed in, and Rolan gave him a disgusted look.
“That’s our aunt’s name!”
“So what? It’s a time-honoured tiefling name!”
“Too bad then that Tav the Triumphant is an elf,” Gale mused, taking a sip of wine.

“What?” Rolan scoffed. “No, she isn’t. Tav is a tiefling.”

Chapter Text

Silence fell with the weight and cutting edge of an axe, severing all idle chatter. Blood drained from Tav’s cheeks and the ground beneath her fell away. Her eyes darted to them, one by one, all but Arka and Zevlor with his usual, blessed aptitude for cover fire. It felt like the moment after being heckled on stage, before the scathing and humorous retort, except there was no heckling. Instead, the moment stretched unbearably long as people’s eyes darted amongst themselves.
The script fell away and the mummers looked panicked to one another for a cue, for the thing to say, for someone else to speak first. There were no cries of operatic outrage like you’d expect from a stage play, as Tav’s mask fell away.

Without moving a muscle or uttering one word herself, she felt laid bare to scrutiny and derision. But nobody moved or spoke. If her companions had cried out, she’d have something to work with, a proverbial yarn to spill. Instead, all she saw was herself reflected in eyes emptied in surprise. What was she to do? Her immediate impulse was to lie and deny Rolan’s words, but she knew it was futile the second the notion sparked. She could try and joke it off, but she was literate enough at room-reading to sense when levity would be detrimental.

Were she to speak first, she would be the one put in a defensive position, arguing her case. But defences were made to be battered, and she had none presently. Waiting for someone else to speak and meeting it could help her catch the rope with which she’d pull out of this, even as it frayed between her fingers and leapt between her palms, slipping away like her usual composure. But no one did.
Rolan looked befuddled from one silent onlooker to another, sensing something amiss but not understanding what. Karlach looked at her, giving her a cocked eyebrow telling Tav just how much she’d told her so.

”A foulblood?” came at last Aradin’s voice. “I thought you wos an elf?!”
”You tricked us!” Remira reproached, and finally Tav had something to work with.
“Hey, surely you know what they say about assuming, Aradin, and I refuse to share assery with you,” she shrugged, sending her most glittering smile.
Aradin, for his part, stood up so abruptly his bowl almost went topsy-turvy on the ground.
“Enough with yer bullshit, tief! If we’d known you wos a tiefling, ain’t none of os would’ve come along for this little picnic!”
“And you never would’ve sampled Gale’s marvellous cooking! Listen, Aradin, I never lied. You never asked, and regardless of my ignominious workplace, I don’t actually introduce myself with the contents of my pants upon every introduction, it tends to leave fellows falling short,” Tav batted her eyelashes, before turning more serious. “The plan remains the same: We scout the old temple, we whack the goblin menaces, and then you can curse me and all my ilk the entire road home to Baldur’s Gate. Because let’s face it… They already had you on the back foot before.”

Aradin’s nostrils flared and he looked like he was biting down on several expletives. But then a flurry of white placed itself between them. Scratch, snarling at Aradin.
He looked to the dog, then back to Tav, and then to her companions behind her. Tav couldn’t see their expressions, but clearly Aradin tallied the economy of a brawl.
“... You’d best not be hidin’ any more secrets, tief,” he threatened, finger under Tav’s nose, “Or I’ll tan yer hide so well, yer manky wizard there can write yer eulogy on it. Kelemvor won’t know you from chum by the time I’m through with ye.”

And with that, he walked off to sulk with his crew, and Tav breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis averted.
Until she turned to see her own crew staring at her. Karlach with arms crossed and a bemused smile. Astarion trying, and failing, to look non-plussed, Shadowheart with open curiosity. Gale had his finger pensively on his chin though. Nobody looked angry, merely perplexed.
Might as well get it over with.
She raised her hands and beckoned their questions.
“Astarion,” Gale surprised them all by turning to their resident vampire, “How come you didn’t tell us our indelible leader was a tiefling?”
Astarion’s sculpted brow knitted quizzically. “Me?! I… Well, if you must know, Tav is the first person I’ve ever bitten. I… I don’t have much to compare with. I can tell you she doesn't taste like rat!”
“Karlach?”
“Not my tale to tell.”
Gale nodded, stroking his bottom lip in a way that made Tav sweat slightly.
“I suppose…” Gale began, “that solves the mystery of why you snore, Tav.”
The others chortled.
“I do not snore!”
The others laughed, except for Gale, who merely gave Tav a teasing smirk.
“Well, while we’re clearly all blessed with wit and beauty, we cannot boast being encumbered by intellect. For true, with two elves in our midst, you even had them fooled, Tav. Even with one within biting range. They certainly don’t snore, and Karlach only joined us this morning.”

Tav scanned his face for disappointment or bitterness, but all she saw was a teasing glimmer in his eyes.
“So… Nobody minds?”
Karlach chortled. “Bit hypocritical to take me in but not you, innit?”
Tav’s arms closed around herself, suddenly feeling timid. “Yeah but… I don’t often… let people know. Or, well… Usually not? There’s been times when I… may or may not have had my enchanting visage on a wanted poster, and it helps being able to whip my tail out when the sheet calls for an elf to get off scot-free. But beyond that…”
“Hah!” Karlach boomed, “That’s clever! Better than being mistaken for a cambion, at any rate.”
“There’s no need to explain,” Shadowheart soothed, “We all have our little secrets."

Clearing her throat and staring at her own boots, Tav shifted on her feet as she looked for words. Scratch sat obediently there, tongue hanging out like a red snake from his gob, looking at her like she was a particularly bright star. With a soft smile, she bent down to thank her stalwart defender with a good scruff around the neck, and he gave her a slobbering dog-kiss on the chin.
She turned to the others, still feeling bared and shaken.
“I’m… I’m sorry I didn’t say sooner. I know no one asked, but a lie by omission is still a lie. And you look to me to solve this whole debacle. I want you to feel like you can trust me.”
“Well, as you said,” Shadowheart shrugged, “You don’t tend to introduce yourself with the contents of your smallclothes. If anything, I feel more heartened in your ability to lead us. If you can fool even two elves into thinking you are one… you’re canny enough to see us through anything.”
Tav hadn’t considered that anyone might take her ability to charm and deceive as a good thing. Leave it to Shadowheart to spin secrecy into a positive.
“Three elves, technically,” Gale corrected with a smile, “She even had Kagha fooled, even as she spoke Elvish to her.”
Tav burst out into a chuckle. “I still have no idea how the fuck I swung that. I thought for sure she’d suss me out.”
“Not with her head so firmly lodged up her own backside,” Gale tutted.
“Do you have any other secrets you’ve been keeping?” Shadowheart purred and sipped a flask.
“... No?”
“Well played. I like you,” she smiled and raised her drink in salute. Tav chuckled again, baffled and grateful for the unwavering support.

“Tav,” Rolan interrupted, looking rueful. He nodded to the side, asking for a moment with her. Scratch bounded from her feet and rejoined the others, and Tav turned sideways with Rolan, not leaving the ring of light from their campfire.
“I must apologise profusely if I made this excursion harder by speaking out of turn,” he began, but Tav waved it off.
“How were you to know I don’t shout my kinship from the rooftops?” she shrugged, “No hard feelings, I swear. It was… inevitable for the truth to come out one way or another. But apology accepted.”
Rolan nodded, stiffly polite, and sighed, squinting the way of their human companions.
“That Aradin fellow… he mentioned Master Lorroakan.”
“... He’s not a mage, if that’s your concern.”
“‘Tis not. But once we clear the goblin menaces out of that temple, perchance my family and I will join them on the road to Baldur’s Gate. Seeing as we share an employer, it makes sense for us to converge.”
“... Rolan. Did you miss something pivotal? He does not take kindly to our kind. I’d recommend staying with Zevlor,” she said. Rolan moved to protest, but Tav went on, “I know the refugees move too slowly for your liking. But slower is better than dead altogether. Zevlor will protect you, no matter what. Aradin would only keep you until he could use you as a decoy to save himself. He won’t bring you to your master. Unless by some miracle you pay exceedingly well.”

Rolan considered and had to concede she was right. Whether a wizard apprentice or not, the three siblings were just as much refugees as the rest. They carried nothing which could prevail upon Aradin to escort them to Baldur’s Gate in one piece.
“What about your lot?”
“I’ll happily take you, but I must give you fair warning. Given our propensity for getting side-tracked, you’d be slowed even further.”
“Curses,” Rolan tutted, the flames of his irises dimming to a disappointed glow.
Tav cocked her head. “Surely if this Master Lorroakan chose you as an apprentice out of what I’m sure must be a hefty pile of applicants, he will wait for you.”
He seemed to consider that for a moment, then a reassured tug to the corner of his mouth lightened his air.
“Just so. Quite rightly, Miss Lunet,” he said, before sighing and offering more of what weighed on his mind. “I… I have waited for so long to step into my destiny, you know? I actually got into Blackstaff but… could not muster the tuition, not after Elturel fell. And there are no scholarships for the likes of us, no matter our natural talents.”
“You sound more like a sorcerer than a wizard, with all this natural talent of yours.”
“You would know, would you not?” he quipped back, eyebrow cocked.
“I know that when men boast wantonly of naturally generous talents, to expect a degree of embellishment inflating that measure,” she sassed, but he merely chuckled back.
“I am not one of your bordello punters, Miss Lunet. I meant what I said at the Grove. You may find me boastful, but one day you will boast of meeting me.”

She chuckled, and then looked at Cal and Lia, sitting in confidence, eating contentedly. “What of your siblings?”
Rolan’s eyes followed hers.
“They don’t share my magic. I’m positive Lia finds it positively baffling. But Cal and Lia are under my wing. We are used to living on meagre means, we can make do with my apprentice’s earnings, they can get work in the city too. But once my apprenticeship is up, I will make enough for all three of us to live comfortably. Enough to give them everything they’re owed. Everything they deserve.”
Tav looked at him quizzically. For all the swagger, all the boasting and all the squabbling, the tall wizard’s apprentice glowed with an affection towards his siblings that seemed tinted with… gratitude? Or a debt owed? How peculiar. She wagered there was something else going on with these three, but she didn’t get a chance to prod further. Zevlor and Arka rejoined the circle and Tav and Rolan did too, with Rolan’s renewed apologies for the debacle he’d inadvertently caused.

“Well, Commander,” Tav sighed, “The cat’s out of the bag regarding my kinship.”
“Just Zevlor, please,” he corrected her, and then his eyes swivelled for Aradin. “If anything, I ought to salute you. I take it the Beno Boys have left our merry band then?”
She looked around. “Their packs are still here. They… may not be in the morning?”
“They will remain if they know what’s good for them,” Zevlor mused, “If they run into more trouble on the road, I doubt there will be more saviours to rescue their sorry hides.”
Tav shrugged.
“Time will tell. Arka?” she prodded, nodding to their grief-stricken addition.
“Her sorrow is fresh, and deep. Kanon was all she had left in the world,” the tall tiefling said, shaking his head in sympathy.
“Do you think she might… Do something reckless? If given a chance?”
“I cannot say. If it is advice you seek… She will insist on the front line of whatever approach you’re making, but as a crossbow-woman her place is to the rear, giving cover fire. I would not let her cover Aradin, though. She blames him for Kanon’s death almost as much as the goblins. She figures that had Aradin never led the goblins to the Grove, Kanon would still be with us. She will not shoot him in the back but… She would turn her eye from any peril he’ll attract.”
“Duly noted. Thank you, Zevlor. Come tomorrow, we will reach the temple, correct? Good. Then we can make a solid plan and carry it out. But for now, I think it’s time we got some rest.”

Shortly after tucking into bed, a trickle of rain began to fall, dousing their fire. The human members of the expedition were thus excused from guard duty, given their inability to see in the dark. Tav took the first watch, agreeing to swap with Karlach later. She did not trust Arka to be left alone with her grief, in case she wandered off in the night to exact revenge on her own. The siblings were willing but less experienced fighters, and Zevlor looked exhausted after the day’s exertions.
The humid, warm summer air made Tav uncomfortable and sticky, unable to tell perspiration from precipitation. She dug a wool blanket out of her kit, resolved that dry but overly warm was preferable to being wet to the bone.

As their little camp fell into slumber, she watched Gale’s tent from the corner of her eye. Watched the shadows dance against the rain-heavy canvas. The lantern within was dimmed, but not fully put out. Was he having trouble sleeping?
His face, wreathed in soft lantern light the other night when they’d shared the bottle of Wyvern, swam into her mind. The way his hands had cradled her face, looking for traces of ceremorphosis. Then another memory of his chest pressed against hers, nestled into a crack in the cave wall in Kagha’s quarters. If only the trickling rain had been cold. It’d sober her from her fancies.

Soon, the wizard within came out, with a thick wool cloak as a canopy above him, and he crossed the camp to sit down beside her, offering her a reprieve from the rain.
The wool felt lighter than it really ought to, and Tav figured he’d conjured it somehow. It was soft and supple in her hands as she curled up next to him. His company was both thrilling and distracting.
“You should be asleep, Mr Dekarios,” Tav pretended to chide him as she leaned into the warmth of his side.
“I could not sleep, knowing you were out here, catching your death,” he smiled, speaking hushedly. “I waited until the others were asleep.”
“Scandalous,” she mused, and poked the sizzling remnants of the fire with her toe. Most of the smoke had dissipated, but there were still some stalwart embers somewhere in there, trying to stave the rain off. “Listen, Gale, I er… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about—”
“Tav, I would be an unmatched hypocrite to resent you for privacy considering my—”
When had she clasped his hand? Either way, it shut him up. Then she looked up, wondering which hand was holding their rain cover up, only to find it levitating on its own, and smiling at it.
“Tav, I still know a secret no one else does. It would not matter to me whether you were an elf or a troll.”
“A troll by any name would still smell bad.”
“At least I know your name. Which no one else here seems to. That is enough for me.”
Wizardly git.

“Yes, but I felt like we were growing closer and I…” She paused, swallowing hard. “I mean I already feel pretty shit about getting cross with you before, and… I’d resolved to lead with earnesty rather than simply demand it from you. And now I feel like I failed.”
Gale swallowed and looked at her hand above his own. He was warm, but the cold made him tremble slightly. Quickly, she retracted it, hiding it under her blanket again.
He just… sat there. Quiet. Clearly she’d overestimated how close they were growing, and it sent her nervous.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, sending a tremor through the ground like a bass note.
“No lightning,” she said, just to break the tense silence.

Gale snapped out of whatever pause his head had been in, and he gave her a smile.
Then he put his hand up, palm towards her, and twirled his fingers. A blue thread of lightning danced between his knuckles, tinged in blue.
“I’ve got it right here.”
Daring to return his smile, she put her finger out and lightly touched his. A crackling snap and a small whoop, and her finger tingled, slightly numbed from the shock.
“Careful, Miss Lunet,” he warned her, beckoning her to try again.
She reached for another touch, but stopped before they made contact, unsure whether she was allowed.
“Can I… Can I do that too?”
He squinted, considering.
“I don’t see why not. But given your aptitude for pyrotechnics, I would advise you not to attempt the spark yourself. You might summon another one of your… blasted mephits.”
“”Blasted mephits?’ Is that a new species? I only know of… fucking mephits.”
He bit his lip to stifle a laugh. “Insolent brat.”
“Insipid prude.”
“Potty-mouthed liar.”
“Incorrigible flirt.”
He sighed. “You will not get a rise out of me, Miss Lunet. Instead… try taking the spark over from me.”
“Spoilsport. Is this you teaching me wizardry?” she smiled, fingertip circling his teasingly.
“Let’s call it a diagnostic test. Before I can teach you anything, I need to know what level you’re at. Do try to focus.”
Then don’t look at me so intently.

A deep breath, and then Tav squinted, bracing to get zapped again.
Another crackle, and she shook her hand in discomfort. Gale, to his credit, didn’t laugh at her. She tried again and again, growing increasingly frustrated.
“Breathe, don’t lose your patience. You’re doing well,” Gale reminded her gently, but it merely made Tav flustered and eager to… impress was probably too late, but succeed at least.
Another thunderous bass note ran like a current through the ground, accompanied by the tapping sounds of dripping water against their wool covering.
Tav’s singed finger formed an aggressive lance with which to assault Gale’s impetuous digit, but he withdrew his hand in warning.
“Miss Lunet, you’re so single-minded you are scaring me. Comport yourself.”
She reached for his hand, but he drew back even further, and an evasive dance began, where Tav chased his finger as he tried to keep his hand away.
“I am comported,” she insisted tensely, through gritted teeth and a false smile.
“... I’m not entirely sure that’s a word.”
Tav took a deep breath to stifle a biting retort, irritation sitting behind her tonsils like vinegar. “Fine. I am comely and portly and—”

Gale chuckled, a melodic string of notes, offering his finger back. When their fingertips touched once more, they both flinched in pain and the air smelled of ozone and burnt hair.
“Are you alright?” they said as one, and then burst out into suppressed laughter, trying their damndest not to wake the others through the concert of rain and rumbling thunder.
“I think it’s best if we leave it at that.”
“Did I hurt you?” Tav asked, hand on his knee. Gale looked at her hand for a moment, then clasped it.
“Twas my spark, not yours. Your power merely amplified what was offered. Your magic is so wild, but it’s… Wait.”
He mumbled some spell and produced a glass sphere in his palm, clasping it with both hands and sending rippling currents of lightning through it. Not the frantic bolts of a thunderstorm but almost leisurely strings, like rainwater down stone tile. Meandering to and fro in coiling ropes of light.

Tav looked closer, having never seen lightning move so slowly, sustained so long.
“Imagine that your magic flows like currents, like these inside the glass,” Gale explained, letting his free hand amble about the outside of the glass. A string of light broke off from the bolt, branching out, following Gale’s fingertip wherever it danced. “See how the current seems to look for something to anchor to? Seems to seek a point of contact?”
“Yes.”
“Your magic is like that. Your whole being pulses with magic and it… doesn’t have a tether. It seeks an outlet, a destination, or in the event of a fight, a target.”
Tav reached out and put a fingertip to the cool glass, and watched in wonderment as the current of lightning leapt between Gale’s finger and her own.
“Then you’d best stay out of my crosshairs. I can either aim to please or shoot to kill.”
“I have the utmost respect for your aim, Miss Lunet. While violent and unpredictable, it has proven remarkably true.”

His eyes locked on hers. His face was illuminated by that rippling blue light, like sunlight reflected on water and up on marble. Why was it that whenever she saw light reflected on him, she thought of sunlight upon the sea?
When he felt her eyes so intently trained on him, he seemed to fluster and vanished the glass orb with a gesture, veiling himself in shadow and rain. Clearing his throat, he continued:
“I believe that in order for you to manage your magic better, you need to dispose of the excess.”
“Like a tavern wench using a beer-comb to skim the top off a pint.”
“I was going to say ‘like lancing a boil’ but your metaphor is more tasteful by fathoms. Does that analysis reflect your history with magical mishaps?”
“It’s as good an analysis as I’ve ever done,” Tav shrugged, but then a daft notion struck her. “Gale, do you… Could… Might it be possible for us to kill two birds with one stone?”

Gale, of course, saw immediately where her mind wandered.
“ ... No. It is too dangerous.”
“It would save us from having to hunt down magical artefacts,” she pressed, “And save me discomfort and all of us the risk of some kind of magical outburst.”
“Miss Lunet, please trust that I value your life higher than any trinket with a speckle of Weave over it. The odd diversion from our intended path is worth the trouble,” he countered.
“Gale… The last magical artefact we scored, you died. Crossbow bolt right through the ribs.”
Gale’s eyes closed and he shook his head slowly. Another round of thunder grew nearer.
“Tav—”
When he changed from formal address to her name, something in Tav shifted and she pressed even harder, clasping his hand with both of hers.
“Do you have any more Scrolls of True Resurrection on your person? Have you already engineered me another little puzzle for the next time you perish? Risky as it is… it is but one risk outweighed by three greater risks. Hells, five even!”
“Tav, if I lost control, it would kill you. That is not hyperbole. It would consume your entire being.”
“I am not a book, limp to put up a fight. Besides, we will have one hell of a fight on our hands tomorrow. We will need me to be… level-headed, for me to be in control.”
“I—I could not risk you. Not for anything.”
“You would not risk me, I would bear the brunt.”

Gale breathed labouredly, struggling to counter. “It would hurt you.”
“I am accustomed to discomfort. And if it is, as you say, akin to lancing a boil, then the pain would be the pain of relief to me, surely?”
“Woman, you are a battering ram.”
He was hanging on by a thread, but he was smiling too.
“And you are a silk screen,” she smiled back, feeling herself gaining ground. “Will you not at least indulge me… an attempt?”
“If I afford you ‘an attempt,’ failure could mean your death.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know better than you, I dare to venture. The most infinitesimal of risks to your life dissuades me entirely.”
“Shall we leave the road then? Succumb to the tadpoles? We live in constant danger out here out here. Even now, I am neglecting guard duty, risking us all.”
“Oh dear, I—”
“Oh please, spare me,” she chuckled, “Even the midges aren’t out in this downpour.”

As if hearing her, another round of thunder rolled between them and the rain increased in its intensity. Gale didn’t speak. He merely rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“To think I flattered myself the devil’s advocate with you in the room,” he shook his head in disbelief.
“Gale, your affliction is this… insatiable pit for magic? Right? Well I am a bottomless fount. I am brimming over. All my life, I’ve been waking from nightmares only to find my bed in flames. I get angry, and stuff starts exploding. When I cry, the walls run like waterfalls. When I am lonely, I form dark clouds all about me. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve turned myself and people around me into sheep. I’ve… I’ve hurt people! Gale, if you will not help yourself when I offer, at least help me.”

Gale stared at her, at her pleading mouth.
“You don’t even know what my affliction is,” he whispered. “You fed one monster in Astarion and now you think you can master any fanged creature.”
“You could always tell me what ails you.”
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed his lips again, looking anguished. Then he looked back to her, assessing her as well as his own hold on his curse. She met his gaze head on, sure she would get him to yield as long as she didn’t disrupt the process of his surrender.
“Mystra’s mantle,” he whispered, “One attempt. It will be at my pace, and if I sense so much as a hairline crack to your safety, I am aborting the experiment.”
Tav couldn’t help but split into a grin, and Gale sighed deeply.
“When you swap with Karlach… come to my tent.”

Chapter Text

Two hours later, Tav woke Karlach for a guard swap. As soon as the rain touched the hellion’s sleep-warmed skin, it sizzled like a hot griddle and rose in wisps of steam.
Tav knew exactly how it felt. Ever since Gale had gone back to his tent for some shut-eye, she’d been sitting by herself, roiled warm and expectant. She had no idea of what exactly the experiment would entail, but the imagined prospect of not constantly feeling like an over-fermented bottle of ale about to explode was a beckoning prospect. But being alone with Gale held its appeal.

Alas, alone in the rain for a prolonged stretch of time had given her ample time trying to imagine the mechanics of their experiment. It kept her warm. Would he hold her to his heart like he’d done with the magical tome? Decanting her magic into the swirling abyss like pouring wine into an open maw?
As she traipsed through the rain towards Gale’s tent instead of her own, she threw a glance behind her and saw Karlach grinning like a madwoman and saluting her silently.

Gale’s tent was warm and lit very dimly with the faintest of flames in his lantern. The main source of light, however, was the projection of light in the cup of his hand.
A bust of lilac light in the image of a woman, beautiful, with long, silken black hair wreathed in some arcana tiara. She was everything Tav wasn’t; where her own lines were soft, rounded, full… this woman was more sharp and angular. Her eyes were large and expressive, glowing lilac themselves. Proud cheekbones and a full, expressive mouth prone to smirking with superiority, like a queen.

But her face wasn’t what made Tav turn a little cold inside. It was Gale’s. He watched the woman in the palm of his hand with a sombre, sorrowful solemnity. But not just sorrow. Longing too. Pain. Wistful remorse. The way he held her face in his hands, you’d think he was an instant away from stroking her cheek.
Whoever this woman was, she was more than just a friend.
It occurred to Tav that Gale had never mentioned being married, or being single. He did flirt pretty heartily with her at any given chance, but always pulled away… was this woman the reason? Did he have a wife waiting for him back in Waterdeep?
The shift from nervous anticipation to a douse of cold water was immediate and thorough. She felt stupid for expecting something intimate with him now. She supposed she ought to be angry with Gale, but she’d seen too many straying husbands through her profession to be anything but cross with herself for being naive.

“Pretty,” she said in a low voice, and prayed her dashed hopes didn’t shine through her voice too much.
Gale flinched, and the woman’s face dissipated into thin air. “Oh! My! You startled me. I was er… I was miles away.”
His voice trailed off in a nervous laugh.
“... Is everything alright?” Tav asked, almost reticent to hear the answer.
“Just pondering what I lost.”
“Oh. The figure you conjured… someone you miss?”
“No, no,” he said a little too quickly, “She’s no one, really… I was just… practising an incantation.”
Tav cocked her head in sympathy. “You don’t have that look on your face when you’re looking at ‘no one.’”
Gale sighed and rubbed his brow, shooting her a sad little smile. “What can I say? She’s… She’s Mystra.” As her name passed his lips, breathy and reverent, Tav felt a pang of jealousy. Like she’d break her lute herself to hear her name spoken with such devotion. “I can’t quite describe it, the need I sometimes feel to see her—to draw the filaments of fantasy into existence. No sculpture or painting could ever do her justice… Only the fabric that she herself is and embodies.”

The movement in his voice left Tav speechless. For all his secrecy, this was the deepest he’d let her glean into his soul to date. So not his wife… but the same commitment, if not deeper yet. The goddess that had cast him out for some unspeakable sin, and still Gale yearned to return to her all the same. When Tav didn’t speak, Gale kept spilling his heart.
“The Weave,” he explained, “Mystra is all magic. And as far as I’m concerned… She is all creation.”
“I… didn’t realise the depth of your devotion.”
Gale became animated as he spoke, his words tumbling out of him like spring water, his eyes glowing with a fervent ardour Tav only felt when she sang. His whole being came alight and alive.
“Salvation… if such a thing exists… is Mystra’s to bestow and behold. And yet, even now, more than I fear losing my own self and soul, I fear losing losing my command of her art. Magic is… my life. I’ve been in touch with the Weave for as long as I can remember. There’s nothing like it. It’s like music, poetry… physical beauty all rolled into one and given expression through the senses. “

And to think I fancied myself someone he could be attracted to. What he feels… I can’t hold a candle to it. There is no way the devotion he feels for Mystra could ever be bestowed on another. In comparison to a goddess, I’d be a pastime at best. She would not even leave a crumb for me.

Gale breathed deep after his long confession, and then his eyes rested on herself, lit from within. “Is it… the same for you?”
Tav thought for a moment about her reply. Of the magic she was born with that wrung havoc on her life and her body. Of the ecstatic highs of music and lyrical genius that was within her grasp.
“You put it very beautifully. You already know how I feel about music and magic. But what you need written down, I can… play by ear?”
Putting his fingers together and leaning on his knees, he pondered her answer.
“Fair enough… Though in the end, we’re still playing the same composition. Perhaps… I can show you what I mean by reaching into the Weave together?”
“I thought we were going to attempt—”
He smirked. “I didn’t say we’d try tonight.”
“You certainly implied it!” she smirked, and he tutted at her.
“I admire your industriousness. I do not yet need another magical item, though. We did agree to do this at my pace,” he countered, “Humour me, Gustaviana. We’ll work our way up to it.”
Hearing her name on his lips, it was hard to protest. He didn’t say it wistfully yearning, but with a light-hearted smile. She sighed, unable to rebuff.
“By all means,” she surrendered, and Gale’s lips split into a grin.
“Then follow my lead.” He offered her a spot across from him on his pallet, and she accepted.
He was wearing his purple velvet sleepwear again, and it beckoned for her to touch. She settled for letting the soft material brush her arm in passing and not letting disappointment of not being closer to him sully her mood.

Gale made sweeping gestures with his hands, almost like a small choreography, and between his hands formed a sphere of purple light, waning and waxing in time with his palms. Then he swept his arms outward and a hail of arcane sparks danced in the air like snowflakes, dissipating before reaching the ground, only to start again mid-air.
“Now you,” he smiled and gestured for her to mimic his movements. Said and done, but where Gale’s sparks had been purple and heliotrope, Tav’s were octarine and green, mingling with his in a cascade of colour.

As sparks shot from her hands, Tav felt an unfamiliar feeling. She felt more balanced than she normally did when magic coursed through her, washing through her veins like stepping into a warm rain.
“You feel that?” Excellent!” he said, splitting into yet another almost boyish grin. “Now, repeat after me: Ah-Thran Mystra-Ryl Kanthrach-Ao!”
He enunciated very clearly, and Tav was briefly grateful the spell wasn’t in Ignan again. If she had to listen to Gale making noises like a cat coughing up a hair ball, she’d lose her concentration from laughing too hard.

But where Gale’s arcana was rigid and square, Tav heard its escalation of inflection, and she sang it back at her teacher with a little flourish. Her chest felt full, like the deep breath before belting out a song: like power, coiled to spring out of her mouth, where she tasted rosewater and this tingling, akin to sparkling strawberry wine on the tip of her tongue.
Their magical sparks didn’t just dance around one another but started to merge and split, shifting in hues like fireworks, and then began to change direction, like snow in the wind, from falling idly to swirling sideways, horizontally, a vortex coiling the sparks closer and closer until a thread began to form.

Gale’s eyes widened at the sight and he beamed with delight.
”Very good!” he chuckled, “Now… I want you to picture in your mind, the concept of harmony, as true as you can!”
Tav’s ears filled with the choral music of her earliest memories, singing in the temple with her mother. But something else chimed into her memory; that look in Gale’s eye when his face lit up, their laughter earlier by the dying fire, their pressing bodies in Kagha’s cave.
She saw her own eyes reflected in Gale’s, glowing with light, before his own began to glow his own lilac shade. The sparks coiled into an arcane thread in the air, connecting her to him.

“Gale?”
“Are you alright? Or do you feel a mishap coming on?”
“Far from it… I’ve never felt… more balanced?”
Even his teeth seemed to glow slightly when he smiled, reflecting the coils of light around them, between them.
“You’re doing superbly well,” he hummed, “Wait…”
He reached his hand up and Tav felt his mind connect with hers. Not the way the tadpoles did, crashing together like in knots of pain, but like the tendrils of curious roots reaching out to her. Like fingers intertwining, Gale invited her in.

Tav could see herself through his eyes, but not just what he saw, but how he saw her. Lit from within by magical light, holding palmfuls of magic like flower petals, the copper and green of her hair curling slightly around her pointed ears, and how Gale imagined tracing his fingers around those locks. She saw the softness of her jawline, inviting his hand. She saw the curvature of her eyelashes, the fullness of her mouth and the tug of her own smile as she read his mind.
You… want to touch me?
”It drives me to no small degree of distraction, actually,” came the surprising reply. He’d heard her! She’d heard him too!

When Gale smiled, she felt his fluttering joy and the pounding of his chest, the iron-heavy, ice cold darkness he carried above his heart. There was something like the anticipation of a kiss, the pleasure of being connected fully, of being cloaked in peace. Tav felt light as dandelion fluff, ready to dance away at the smallest gust of air.
Gale burst out into delighted laughter. “You did it! You’re channelling the Weave! How does it feel?”
Like I could weep. I never knew magic could feel like this.
“Effortless. Sensual even,” Tav whispered, letting magic slip through her fingers like water, “You’re a wonderful teacher.”
“I know,” he teased her.
Incredible. Though of course, I could’ve managed it by myself…
“You’re hard to please, aren’t you?” he replied aloud to her sass. “Do you want to let go?”
Tav let out an incredulous chuckle. “Not yet.”

Musical harmony could never measure up to this. The instant transmission of thoughts, memories, feelings. So intuitive and instant. Not a handshake but a dance in perfect unison.
Tav looked at Gale again, the power that pulsed through his very being, to every moreish, exquisite line of his face, those teasing lips that spoke poetry with ease, feeling herself fill up with that tentative, luminous feeling that rose within her at the sight of him.
Gale, seeing himself through her eyes, looked astonished at her, wonderment sparking along their magical tether.
”Gustaviana?” His voice in her head was an incredulous whisper, as if not believing what she felt when she turned her eyes to him. What words would convince him?
But then, she remembered… No words were necessary.

Tav’s mind filled with the moments she had let her eyes linger on him, the way she’d marvelled at the lines of his face, the pearlescence of his smile, the way his hair shifted in brass and gold in the sunlight when his back was turned, the little white flower he’d given her and the way it had sat in her hair and turned into a flowering crown, the thoughts that had brought on the spill of her imaginations into reality. How she had pictured him in the most fleeting of moments; her fantasies of embracing him, kissing him, at first with tenderness… then with passion, fervour.
She let the images flow generously from her to him and Gale’s expression went slack with surprise, but he didn’t recoil.
“I… I didn’t think—” he gasped.

Quick-fire gusts of embarrassment and trepidation sparked from him to her, and then… elation. Desire.
Gale shared his own mind. Before Tav’s eyes played visions of her own face, but not like she’d ever seen herself reflected. Her eyes downcast as she played her lute and the way Gale stared transfixed at her lashes, the movement of her mouth as she sang sweetly, the way his chest tightened with tenderness. The way he stole glances at her just after she’d stolen her own of him, how her face was the first thing he’d seen being pulled out of the magical portal, of being pulled from death. Even her own insolent, shit-eating grin became a beacon in his mind, a laughter when his days had been dark and dull for so long. The warmth of her hands, the tremble of her bottom lip when he’d pressed against her under the mountain, and she felt how badly he wanted to kiss that lip. She saw herself, bristling with magic, even her freckles emitting light like a canopy of stars across her skin, and how he ached to taste every single one.
I want that too.

And like that, their tether severed and Tav reeled, feeling dizzy with the sudden shock of only being one again.
“Sorry!” Gale said hurriedly, taking Tav’s hand. “I-I wasn’t expecting—but it is a pleasant image, to be sure!” His face split into incandescent joy as he looked into her eyes. “Most pleasant, in fact. Most welcome.”
The magic they’d conjured began to fade, and Gale let out a small disappointed hum. It made the night feel cold, and despite sitting in the dark, holding hands, Tav felt strangely lonely. She wanted to hold on to the feeling of being connected with him.
“There it goes,” Gale whispered into the dark, “How easily things slip away from us. No matter how hard they were in the obtaining. You should… return to your tent.”

Tav flinched with surprise. “After that? Why—”

“Believe me, Gustaviana, we should leave this here,” Gale interrupted solemnly, pressing her hands, stroking his thumb over her skin. His words and his touch were at conflict. Tav would not break this spell for anything.
She leaned in to kiss him, inexorably drawn, but he turned away with great chagrin, just enough to press his cheek to hers. His hand came to her face and he caressed away her fringe. She let him. He broke free, his eyes dark with desire and sorrow.
“I would like nothing more than to ask you to stay,” he whispered. “But it isn’t safe. My grip on my ailment grows… tenuous when you are near. You drive me to distraction, and I fear that any, er… excitement or a slip in my self-restraint could prevail over me. What I feel, what I desire is not just the pleasure of your body. I… I’ve never met anyone quite like you. I… I would like to court you, if you’d allow it, in whatever small measure is still available to me.”

Tav lit up. “I’ll court! I love courting! I’ll court you until we’re both—wait. ‘Still available to you?’ What does that mean?”
Gale blushed deeply and held his breath for a long moment, then tapped his chest. “Since acquiring my horrid condition, I must always keep myself level, to some degree. If I lose control of this… this curse… then I could doom us all.”
“So in a way, you’re just like me?”
He hummed, surprised at the similarity.
“Not entirely,” he disagreed slowly, “Your magic, your struggle with it, is like dancing around a beast you must not waken, for it will run amok once roused. My… predicament is ever awake, ever trying to slip its binds. Should I slack off in my efforts to contain it, catastrophe would ensue. That being said, I suppose we do share this… this necessity to never… maybe ‘surrender' is the closest word? To abandon composure to pleasure and let go?”
“... What do you mean by that in this context?”
“It means that I must not surrender to the pleasures of the flesh that may cloud my judgement. Not even my own touch.”

Tav’s eyes widened in the dark and she stared at him. “Does that mean what I think you mean? You haven’t pleasured yourself since you were cursed?”
“I have not,” he answered shortly, clearly embarrassed.
“Not once?”
“Not once.”
“You spent a whole year in isolation and you couldn’t even pass the time… playing the skin flute?!”
Gale flinched with repulsion.
“You’re being crass again,” he winced, but he smiled between the ripples of embarrassment across his face. “No, I have not… ‘played the skin flute.’ And I must not.”
Great. Now we’re a trio of people in this group who must always keep their feelings from running away with them. Better not tell Karlach about this, or the goblins will hear her laughter miles off.

“What did you even do for a year?” she pressed.
“Read a lot. Decluttered my tower. Wallowed in self-pity. Talked to my cat... Tried not to die,” he said with a bitter smile.
That shut her up, and the incredulous laughter wilted in her mouth.
“That,” she began slowly, “Is the nicest rejection I’ve ever gotten.”
“It wasn’t one,” he whispered, insisting.
“It sure feels like one.”
He let out a bitter chuckle. “It wounds me to ask you to go. No one is sorrier than I.”

At that, Tav sniffled sadly.
“Nope. Got you beat there too. Someone did once tell me that a bit of lusting does wonders for the skin?” she tried to joke, but her voice was thick and clumsy in her throat, and he squinted dubiously.
“Who’d say such a thing?”
“... An abominable liar,” she chuckled, letting her fingers braid with his, leaning her forehead to his. “And if I may, Gale… showing me how you see me, asking to court me, then telling me you haven’t felt sexual release in a year, and then that you must refrain from it… is supremely cruel.”
“Even were I allowed to surrender to the draw of your body… I am not the sort of man who beds a companion quickly,” he clarified. “It may be an antiquated notion, but I enjoy conversing with you. I shan't go so far as to wait until matrimony, but there is a certain art to deepened acquaintance before consummation. I would surrender myself to you in the flesh, once I know your heart.”
“You just gleaned my mind,” Tav teased. “And I know you like what you see.”
“You contain volumes, and I swore to read you to filth. One page at a time.”
“Oh, now you listen to me. Fucking wizards, I swear.”
He laughed slowly, swallowed, and then pressed a small kiss to her forehead, breathing in the smell of her hair. But he sighed too.
“Goodnight, Gustaviana. I enjoyed sharing a moment of magic with you. And I look forward to more to come.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, Tav rolled out of her bedroll feeling like she’d not slept a wink. Her sleep had been shallow and anxious, and had arrived late besides. Dawn came swift and chilly, and getting out of bed was a drag. She couldn’t even be bothered to put her hair up before breakfast. But for once… She decided to let her tail hang out of her trousers. The hidden button seam in the back of her trousers opened under her fingers, a little stiff with disuse. Where the other button holes in her attire were supple from regularly being done and undone, this particular set’s holes were still a little too narrow to open with the ease of habit, the way things often were with new clothes.

After such long confinement, her tail felt unnaturally stiff and prone to cling to her leg. The feeling was akin to walking in public scantily clad, or in nothing but a very thin, sheer shift or some unsanctionably revealing skirt. Her tail felt exposed and cold, but… it was a little freeing too? She let it waft through the air, back and forth, trying to feel more lax and alter her tail posture to be more relaxed. There were more tieflings in camp than any other race, after all. She ought to feel more comfortable. Annoyed with her own nerves, she flicked the tail tip slightly and stepped outside.

As she left her tent, the rest of the camp were in fairly good spirits along with the fresh air and damp ground. Tav had worried about mud slowing them down today after the nightly downpour, but the grass kept the soil blessedly level.
Blue birds sang in the trees, and busy bumblebees were already running their daily bucolic commute to the flowerbeds.
Wait… bluebirds?
“Hello,” she cooed at a dainty little specimen perched in the nearest linden tree, wreathed in heart-shaped leaves, “I saw you and your kin in the Grove. Keeping tabs on us for Nettie?”
“For Apikusis,” replied the bird in a chittering sing-song, tilting its head and peering at her with curious, black eyes, “Be warned! The wilds are in disarray with Master Halsin gone! The roads run thick with blood and sharp fangs!”
“We will watch ourselves, you needn’t fear. Thank you for keeping an eye in the sky for us.”
“Beware the swamp! Something dark there lurks!”
“We… will be careful,” Tav said, knowing full well the swamp was undeniably part of their route.
Then the bird took flight and joined her sisters in the tree crowns.

Karlach was positively beaming and sauntered over to Tav as soon as her tent flap closed behind her.
“Soldier,” she grinned for a morning greeting. “Tail out and ready to serve, I see. It’s a good look on you. But why are you coming out of your own tent? And why aren’t you bow-legged?”
“Will you keep your voice down? Because nothing happened,” Tav replied in a lower tone, desperately hoping Karlach’s voice didn’t carry too far. She even clasped the tip of her tail nervously, unused to it being observed.
Karlach took scant note of Tav’s want for discretion. “Wot? Did your breath stink or summat?”
“No,” she glared back.
“... Did he get bored waitin’ for you, and fell asleep?”
“No.”
Her friend’s nose wrinkled in confusion. “Did he ask to swive you and you told him ‘no’ because it’s the only word you know?”
Tav gave her a withering look. “No.”
“Alright, sour-Sally,” Karlach shrugged, confused, and squinted at Gale’s tent, offended on her behalf. “... Does he not fancy you then? Because you wouldn’t think from looking at’im that he’s visually impaired.”
“Karlach.”
“Wot? You two are sparks in a powder keg! How am I supposed to live vicariously through you if you two won’t—”
”Karlach!” Tav interrupted and then immediately lowered her voice when Arka sent her a scathing look for being loud so early in the morning. She continued in a more mumbled tone, “If you must know… We’re taking it slow.”
At that, Karlach snorted with disbelief. “Why the fuck for? Tadpole ain’t gonna wait until marriage. Is he stupid?”
“He’s being a gentleman,” Tav muttered before adding a bitterly whispered, “Curse his eyes.”

“You don’t strike me as someone who prefers a genteel fella?”
Bothered by the prying but also desperate for outside input, Tav crossed her arms and shrugged. “And normally you’d be entirely correct, but Gale is… different. I can’t make horns or tails out of it.”
“Is he a good kisser at least?” When Tav sighed and Karlach realised just how pathetically little had transpired, she bristled with laughter. “Oh you got it bad!”
“... Shut up,” Tav muttered and wandered off to sulk over breakfast in peace, trying to ignore Karlach’s hearty laugh.

“Commander,” Aradin greeted her sarcastically, and Tav had to stifle her surprise. Immediately, she felt her tail twitch to cling to her leg, but she stood fast and made a conscious effort to leave it lax and not reveal her irritation and startlement.
If she’d been the betting type, she’d have pegged Aradin to slip away in the night, crew in tow. It was a relief he hadn’t; not that she’d miss him, but it was ever simpler knowing where he was lest he brought more havoc down her way.
“Aradin,” she replied back, sparing honorifics, “Good to see you’re still here.”
“Spare me the lies, tief,” he squinted back, “You just get them gobbos cleared out and you’ll see the back of me soon enough.”
Am I not right now? It is so hard to tell your arse from your gob.

“Well, we should be there before dusk, bar some calamity on the road,” she stated with a shrug and helped herself to the porridge Lia had cooked up.
“Not much road left,” Aradin countered, “We’re coming up on Moonhaven.”
“Moonhaven? What’s that?”
He nodded to the north-west. “Village further aways. Don’t gimme that look. It’s abandoned years past, half-rotted and reabsorbed by the forest. Ain’t no way we could’ve spent the night there. Barth insists the place is haunted, but really the houses are just a brisk wind away from collapsing like a house of cards. Besides, goblins are patrolling the roads; where’s the first place they’d lie in ambush? Arse-pit of nowhere like here… or a nice, cosy-lookin’ village for people lookin’ to escape the rain?”
“Huh,” Tav said, “Gotta give you credit, you’re not as dumb as you look.”
“Feck off.”
“So we skirt this Moonhaven then. Long way around.”
Aradin considered for a spell. “Let’s see when we get there. The long way ‘round would cost os another day. Two goin’ through the swamp.”

Tav remembered: Kagha’s secret letter. It mentioned a tree in the swamp docks. If she was going to fulfil the deal with Nettie and her co-conspirators, she needed to get that evidence, find out who this ‘Olodan’ was and why they were so secretive in their dealings with the Archdruid-in-waiting.
“Are there docks in the swamp?”
“No real docks, not like Grey Harbour if that’s what ya mean. Just waterways and dinghies tied to tree stumps.”
Great. Finding that tree will be like finding a needle in a haystack.
“Why ya askin’?”
“Mistress Kagha asked me to retrieve something for her from the docks,” she lied effortlessly, and Aradin didn’t seem to catch on, but who could tell his sour mug from a suspicious one?

“Hard to believe Kagha asked one tief for help when she’s tossin’ the rest of—Wait. You tricked her too, didn't ya?”
“What? Like it’s hard?” Tav smirked and batted her eyelashes sarcastically. Aradin almost smirked back. She thought he’d look disgusted with her, but he actually got something that resembled respect in his eyes.
“Impressive. If you weren’t such a stuck up bitch, I’d hire ye.”
Tav gave him a grin, showing every white tooth, not letting on the ice in her veins at the slur.
“Well,” she said sumptuously and leaned closer, looking up at him under her eyelashes, “You know what they say about men with great, big cocks, don’t you?”
Something twinkled in Aradin’s eye, and Tav felt triumphant, knowing she had his balls in a vise. He leaned right in too.
“No, what do they—”
“Of course you wouldn’t know,” she dropped the act like a blade, and then whispered again, “They say it doesn’t count if it’s your personality.”
And with that said, she flicked her hair slightly and sauntered off with a spring in her step, her tail raised proud and high, feeling Aradin’s eyes burn a hole in the back of her shirt. Suddenly the dreary morning improved markedly.

Shadowheart was sitting next to Astarion and she went their way with a chirpy morning greeting. Scratch sat at Astarion’s feet, being fed little bits of ham from his hand.
“Aradin looks like he’s going to throw something at you,” Astarion stated with a nod. “Were you being mean again?”
“Yes. My, isn’t it a glorious morning?”
“So… your good mood has nothing to do with an excursion into a certain tent?”
Tav froze.
“Is there no privacy in this bloody camp?!” she hissed and covered her eyes.
“We’re nocturnal creatures, darling. If you want privacy, you should avoid making light shows like that,” Astarion purred, and Tav pinched him.
“Nothing happened,” she insisted.
Astarion looked at her deadpan, squinting with incredulity. “Did it fuck.”
She gestured markedly at the way she’d just walked. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no! Look! I came out of my own bloody tent!”

As if to underline her argument, Gale’s tent opened and the man himself strode out, hair tied back away from his face, stretching for a moment in the morning light. Tav stood spellbound by the sleepy blush in his cheeks, the slight tousle of the hair that curled slightly against his neck, long and chiselled in perfect lines to be kissed.
Then she cleared her throat, snapped out of it and crossed her arms. “See?!”
“Ha! Pay up,” Shadowheart chuckled and held her palm open to Astarion, who dropped a few clinking coins down, scowling at Tav.
“Now look what you did.”
Tav merely stretched her tongue out at him.

Gale yawned and let his eyes wander, lighting up when they spotted her, and Tav felt that idiotic little flutter in the pit of her stomach again.
“Good morning,” he greeted them all in turn as he sauntered over. They greeted him in turn.
“H-have you had breakfast yet?” Tav asked idiotically, and she tried to ignore the other two exchanging glances.
“I have not,” Gale smiled, “You? Then we shall partake together.”
His hand caught her by her waist and he guided her towards the bubbling breakfast. That hand on her was so warm she could swear it could burn straight through her linen. In combination with her exposed tail just below his palm, she felt his touch must look positively indecent, but no one batted an eye, or even looked.

Tav felt tongue-tied, but Gale seemed comfortable and in no hurry to break the quiet.
“I wanted to thank you for the lesson last night,” Tav began as she took a bowl and let Cal spoon the thick, creamy porridge in, “I never realised it could be so… painless to cast magic. It was even easy.”
“I assure you, casting magic is not easy,” Gale insisted as he was served and they started to walk towards a log to sit on. “As a sorcerer, you have a born affinity for it, but that does not diminish its complexity. Don’t get me wrong, you did well! The somatic component, the verbal component, even the focus on the inner self that invites Mystra in… But I was still your conduit. I balanced you out. To perform such a feat alone requires much and arduous study. Were we in Waterdeep, I'd supply you with a curriculum—”
“You will not get me to do homework.”
“It’ll be to your own detriment, but fine. I doubt I could force you if I tried, and doing so with books I don't even have at hand would be exceedingly irrational. Yet, studying magic is life’s most worthy pursuit—in my impartial, if not humble opinion.”
With his hand, he bade her sit, as were they about to indulge in some gourmet fare at a set table in some luxurious establishment, and not atop a hollow log in the middle of the woods.
There’s the loquacious wizard again.

“So what did you think about the er… somatic component?” she asked as she sat, and Gale blinked rapidly. “About what I pictured… when we were connected by the Weave?”
“Oh, I was surprised!” he smiled, before quickly adding, “but pleasantly so, just like I said! Amid the madness that has befallen us, it seems almost out of place to think of a… kiss.” His cheeks reddened and he awkwardly stirred his breakfast with his spoon. “And yet… Now more than ever, it’s important to recall what makes us human—or well, you know what I mean. A moment of connection. A stolen glance, that sudden heartbeat? Sometimes… the little things are worth more than kingdoms.” He leaned in slightly and whispered, “They promise things to come.”

About an hour after breaking camp, the landscape started to transition into more marsh-like terrain. The ground was no longer merely damp from rain, but spongy and sodden. The flowers became increasingly interspersed not with weeds, but with reeds and cattails. Even the sky started to cloud over, dreary and heavy. Then came the rotten grass, the barren willow trees, the sullage and tar-like mud.
“Wait,” said one of Aradin’s crew. “Stop.”
“We can’t keep stopping,” Tav sighed, “We only just got back on the road—”
“Shut up,” Aradin interrupted. “This place is different.”
At that, she shrugged. “It’s a bog. What’s there to dally over?”
“It wasn’t like this last time. Last time it was a marsh all the same, but… It was sunny. There were sheep and flowers. We even found a well to drink from.”

Astarion raised his sculpted brow and looked around with an incredulous giggle.
“Were you drunk already? This place hasn’t been idyllic in decades.”
“I know wot I saw!” the foul-mannered bandit insisted. “This wosn’t here!”
“I smell magic,” Tav pointed out, and Gale was by her side in an instant, nose in the air.
“Me too.”
“Oi, soldier,” Karlach said, leaning between them, “look up ahead.”

From a great, rotting oak, towering over them like temple arches, hung corpses. Human corpses, goblin corpses, suspended by nooses made from their own guts, shrouded with clouds of fat flies flying lazily and well-fed.
“... Fey,” Gale whispered, “And in environs such as these, it can only mean—”
“—A hag,” Shadowheart finished, “If not a coven. This swamp is so steeped in blood and guts, the lair must’ve been here for centuries.”
“... That’s not possible,” Aradin mumbled, brow furrowed and curls hanging above his eyes as he peered around.
“An illusion spell,” Gale deduced, “You would not be the first to be taken in by a hag’s glamours, Aradin.”
“Were they here when you passed?” Zevlor wondered.
“No.”
“Must be recent then. Their bodies aren't too rotten either.”

“These corpses are a warning,” Gale speculated, “A ‘keep out’ sign. Or the fate of these poor sods will befall us too.”
Wary, Tav considered their options. They needed to find that spot in Kagha’s letter, and she was loath to break her promise to Nettie if it could be helped.
“Aradin… Are the docks near here?”
“Closer to the village.” He pointed beyond the fork in the road, ignoring the path leading deeper into the swamp under the hanging dead, and she heaved a tiny sigh of relief.
“Good. Then I am ready to heed that warning,” she decided. “We pass by. Discreetly.”

That plan did not pan out.
They’d barely skirted most of the marshlands when they came upon two human strangers, a man and a woman, kneeling by a limp body, caked with blood and mud.
“You’re a True Soul,” the woman sobbed, “You can’t die! Please stay with us!”
“I-I don’t think he’s conscious,” the man mumbled, clearly panicking and slapping the lying man’s cheeks in an attempt to rouse him, “Can you hear us, Ed?”
Karlach’s heavy feet snapped a twig, and the woman had drawn a crossbow in the blink of an eye as she spotted the interlopers, training it right at Tav in the lead. She raised both hands dutifully.
“YOU! Not one step closer!” the red-headed woman hissed, cheeks still streaked with tears over her fallen comrade.

As Tav met the woman’s eyes, she fathomed a strange red symbol glowing faint with magic across one of her eyes… A red handprint crowning a triangle, with a skull centred in its palm. And as Tav made eye contact with the symbol, she could swear it felt like making eye contact with some stirring, monstrous eye. The tadpole squirmed behind her eyelid. She didn’t know how she knew, but something told her that the others couldn’t see it. Or maybe her own gang could, if the tadpole reacted to it?
What in the world was going on?

“Brynna, wait!” her companion pleaded, “They might have a healer!”
“They might be bandits for all we know,” she growled in reply, crossbow still trained on Tav. The two looked alike. Siblings maybe?
Before anyone could explain their presence, the body on the ground stirred. Tav flinched, having assumed them dead.

“Wait,” it grunted; a man’s voice, thick with pain and approaching death. He wore a silver amulet over his heart, the same symbol as the one Tav could see over his sister’s eye. His clothes were dark and torn, so caked with mud that it was hard to tell their real colour, and with his hands he was clutching at his belly to hold his guts in.
The dying man reached for Tav, one red hand pleading, and she kneeled beside him, clasping his bloody hand. How could she deny a dying man a hand to hold?

His teeth were stained with blood, a trickle spilling through the corner of his mouth.
His eyes locked with hers and a surge, a current opened between them, sucking Tav in.
The dying man’s mind ploughed into her own thoughts.
Edowin. The two beside him were his siblings—Andrick and Brynna. New recruits. Hers to shepherd. Praise be.
“P-protect… them,” he begged, then turned to his brother and sister, “She is… a True Soul… Mind her. She will… She—”
And like that, death quieted him and those fingers clasping Tav’s went slack.
“Edowin!” Andrick cried, clasping the dead man by the shoulders, “Ed! Please!”
The sister sank back onto her heels and let her crossbow fall aside, hiding her face in her hands momentarily before wiping her tears.
“He’s with the Absolute now,” she said solemnly, closing the dead man’s deathly stare, and stifled a sob before she turned to Tav, “You… You’re a True Soul. Edowin, our brother… He was chosen. Like you. D-do you have orders for us? We were reporting to him.”

Tav was so shocked by what had just transpired, she didn’t fully clasp words at first, but luckily Shadowheart stepped in.
“What happened to you all? What are you even doing out here? The wilds are dangerous.”
“It was a shit show,” Andrick explained, voice thick with sorrow and barely coherent, “We were patrolling the village, looking, waiting for the raiding party to return… Then an owlbear attacked? We all scattered and we stumbled into the swamp… We were set upon by wood woads, and then th-there was a cackling shriek and—”
“A green hag,” Brynna cut in, more level than her brother, “Edowin tried to protect us but she… Her talons. She g-gutted him. She let us go, cackling the whole time. I think we interrupted her doing something. There was a pregnant girl too I think? I dunno… It all happened so fast. We don’t know what became of the others. We just grabbed Edowin by the ankles and ran. We c-couldn’t leave him with her.”

“Patrolling the village? Looking? For what?” Astarion chimed in.
“The Absolute sent us here,” Brynna explained, and her brother cut in.
“And not ‘what,’ but ‘who,’” Andrick said. “We’re looking for fugitives.”
“From the temple?” Aradin cut in, jaws clenched tight. Andrick shook his head and wiped snot from his nose.
“No. Survivors, from that ship that crashed farther west of here. We don’t know what they look like, but anyone who survived the crash is bound to be injured. That’s enough to get us started. The Absolute wants them found, no matter the cost.”
At that, Tave breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. “You’re in luck! You found us!”
But much to her surprise, the two strangers didn’t seem elated or happy. Instead, their faces lit with surprise and horror.
“You?! Brynna, kill her!”
Brynna threw herself towards her dropped crossbow, but finally Tav’s brain kicked in and she slapped the weapon out of her hands before Brynna got a chance to fully clasp it, and it flew into the murky bog water with a splash. Astarion kicked Brynna in the face so hard she went sprawling backwards, and Arka put a bolt in her chest.

Andrick drew his sword, but he was no match for Zevlor who cut him down faster than Tav had a chance to see.
“Stupid bastids,” Aradin mumbled. “Thirteen of us and two of them. They should’ve run.”
“You’re the expert,” Arka muttered, and Aradin sent her a foul, withering stare.
“May I suggest,” Zevlor muttered, wiping his blade clean, “That we not be so forthcoming with our identities from now on, Miss Lunet?”
“... Duly noted,” Tav sighed and rose to her feet. “Aradin, did you see these people in the temple?”
The man in question was already patting through Edowin’s clothes. “No.” Then he snatched the silver amulet off the dead man’s neck. “This symbol is painted all over, though. Some gobbo god, I reckon.”
“No,” Shadowheart mumbled and reached for the silver. “Goblins worship Maglubiyet. I’ve never heard of this ‘Absolute.’”
“Nor I,” Gale chimed in, reaching for Tav. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” she smiled dryly, “Just a little caught off-guard.”
“At least you didn’t get shot in the heart. I’ve tried it, and it was decidedly not something I’d recommend.” Gale leaned in, making sure Aradin wasn’t listening in. “I heard Edowin. His dying thoughts in your head, and I reckon the others did too.”
The ‘others’ being their own crew, she reckoned.
She nodded. “Must be something to do with… our little joyride on the nautiloid.”
“Quite so.”

“Oi, love birds,” Aradin interrupted. “Moonhaven ain’t too far off. We’ll scout ahead. If you find an arrow in the gate post, it’s a sign we spotted an ambush there. Skirt north until you find us if so.”
“Will you be alright without adult supervision?” Astarion sassed, and Aradin slammed his shoulder into him as he passed without a retort.
“We’ll go,” Zevlor chimed in and led Arka and Rolan’s family on. “They may have the clever idea to lay an ambush of their own, like as not.”
“By all means,” Tav said and ran her fingers through her hair, “Last thing we need is Aradin getting chased again. This day is starting out mighty fine.”
“Who do you think this Absolute is?” Gale wondered, and Tav bent over the dead siblings.
“Maybe one of them will carry answers.”
She began to pat Edowin over, not trusting Aradin to have looted thoroughly, when she felt her muscles start to tense and move against her will.

“Soldier?” Karlach asked, suddenly worried.
“I’m not doing it,” Tav protested, and then her hands began to move, clasping the air like a mage. Something in the corpse made Edowin’s body connect with her own, and his body began to defy gravity and levitate as Tav’s hands raised. There was… something of value here. Something her mind craved. No… Not her mind; the tadpole.
Is this how it begins then? My transformation? Am I already going to start cracking skulls open and sucking brains out like eating an oyster? Before I even lose my teeth or grow tentacles?

Edowin’s face began to twitch and Tav stared in horror as she fought the movements of her body, but then realised it was only Edowin’s eyelid that was moving… and then a tadpole of his own appeared.
She could feel the tadpole in her own head squirm, wrestling her for control, and she felt its… its repulsive hunger for the wisdom of its fellow parasite. It wanted Tav to consume the other tadpole.
No. Nonononono. I won’t. I refuse. Fuck you, you illithid little—
With a tremendous effort, she formed a fist, feeling like she held some invisible fruit in her hand, squishing between her fingers, and then Edowin’s neck snapped with a wet squelch.
With its host body inexorably, irrevocably dead, the thing inside Edowin crawled out and into Tav’s grip in the air. Another illithid tadpole.
“What in the hells,” Astarion gasped, “Do any of you recognise him? Was he on the ship too?”
“No,” Tav mumbled in reply, manipulating the tadpole in the air like she were holding a snake trying to slither out of her hands, ever moving to keep a hold on it.
“He shows no signs of turning illithid either. Nor did his siblings.”
“They weren’t infected,” Shadowheart mumbled.

Uncomfortable with these new queries about just what the hells had befallen them, Tav dropped the tadpole on the ground and crushed it with her heel. “There. Now it can’t infect anyone else.”
Gale squatted next to the dead man and squinted pensively. Tav could practically hear the cogs in his head turning.
“So he’s infected like us, not turning just like us… But he wasn’t on the ship. That can only mean one thing; this man was infected somewhere else. Somewhere closeby.”
“And his being infected made him a ‘True Soul,’ whatever the hells that means,” Shadowheart nodded. “The plot thickens.”
“Thank the gods Aradin didn’t see this tadpole debacle, or he’d have lost his marbles,” Karlach mumbled, and Tav bristled with apprehension for that scenario. Shadowheart wasn’t satisfied with the dead though, taking over where Tav had rummaged.
“Careful,” Astarion warned.
“What? It’s not like he could be doubly infected,” Shadowheart squinted.
“What are you looking for?”
Her hands still moving, their dark-haired companion explained her line of thinking. “It might be nothing, but…”
“But?” Gale asked.
“The other two mentioned wood woads.”
“So?” Astarion said dubiously, and Shadowheart sighed.
“So wood woads are guardians. That is their sole purpose. They are created to protect people, places, things. A living soul that is either willingly sacrificed, or murdered to become one.”
“Dark,” Karlach muttered and made a grimace.
“Exactly,” Shadowheart said, digging into Edowin’s breast pocket, “Dark magic.”
“Not like any I’ve heard of,” Gale said.
“The hag?” Tav guessed, but Shadowheart shook her head.
“You’d think so, but no; it’s not Fey magic… Druidic magic.”
Tav’s jaw dropped. ”Kagha.”
“Yes! Dark druidic magic to protect—aha!” Triumphant, Shadowheart ripped a seam and pulled out a letter from inside Edowin’s clothes, handing it to Tav.
Not wasting an instant, Tav ripped the dried birch bark note open and read it.

Kagha, Olodan has sent word of your progress; I am pleased that the Rite of Thorns has begun. I depart soon from Cloakwood to Baldur's Gate. Should you need further aid from my circle, now is the time to ask. Once cloistered, the Emerald Grove will be the Shadow Druids' domain, and you its First Druid. In Faldorn's memory, Archdruid Aelis

“Shadow druids,” Tav mumbled. “Kagha is trying to turn the Grove into a Shadow Cloister.”
“And with Master Halsin gone, and an outside threat to unify her brethren,” Gale continued, “she was given the perfect opportunity.”
“The bitch,” Tav whispered, “Where did the bluebirds go? I should give them the note, send it back to Nettie.”
“Haven’t seen them since we entered the swamp,” Astarion said, “Wary of the hag, no doubt. We’ll have to look out for them when we—”
“Hold that thought,” Tav smiled and called Scratch over. She gently placed the note in between his teeth and gave him instructions to find bluebirds to take the note back to Apikusis, to deliver the note to Nettie himself if he found none, and then smell his way back to Tav and her crew.

The dog bounded off and disappeared in the shrubs. Sad as it was to see him go, Tav knew there was no one she trusted more to get the job done. People had the uncanny ability to get sidetracked. Dogs too for that matter, admittedly, but Scratch was different. He was single-minded and dutiful almost to a fault. Add to that, Scratch was faster than any bipedal friend, more discreet, hardier. No one would pay a stray dog any heed as he darted by.
“Well spotted, Shadowheart,” Gale commended their cleric friend. “I am not well versed on the subject of druidic magic, so your knowledge was most useful!”
“It was a shot in the dark, to be honest,” Shadowheart smiled, “They mentioned woads, but they didn’t say that the woads got this Edowin fellow… Ergo, they must’ve found the cache, defeated the woads, and taken the letter, thinking it important.”
“It is important,” Tav said, “It pertains to the Emerald Grove. And the goblin raiding party were looking for the Grove. If the siblings had gotten the note back to the goblins, our druid friends wouldn’t have a prayer.”
“That worry is out of the way, at least,” Shadowheart sighed.
“Only if Scratch delivers it,” Tav mumbled. “Let’s go. Moonhaven awaits.”

Chapter Text

Moonhaven’s gates swung lopsided on mismatched, rusty hinges.
When they had first approached the dilapidated village its first impression, its silhouette, had seemed picturesque and charming like a pastoral painting. But the closer Tav and her companions got, the eerier it grew; the holes in the tiled roofs grew more apparent. What had first seemed like rustic wooden facades turned out to simply be sun-faded paint, chipped and rotted until the original colours were all but gone. Every window was broken. Shutters littered the ground below their old placements. The cobblestones were so overgrown with moss and grass, you could scarcely tell what used to be streets and what used to be yards and flowerbeds.
And the silence… There were birds singing, but not from the rooftops nor the trees. The birdsong came from the forest beyond the old village palisades. Like the birds didn’t venture in here.

Tav pondered the state of the place. She’d seen abandoned settlements before, and there were different signatures to each one. Places where people lived were almost alive in their own way.
You could trace the way places were forgotten and expired. When settlements died slowly over the span of years or decades, you could see where broken things had tried to be mended. The traces of repairs and dilapidation ran like scars across skin. Patches of paint that were ever so slightly mismatched to the original, like wine stains and pox marks. Wood of different hues as one was younger, fresher than the fence picket next to it. Then expensive, loving mending turned to thrifty, cheap… desperate plugs in the roof to stop the rain, as its ridge began to sag like an old man’s back. Planks to cover holes. Curtains That used to be patched with loving scraps started instead to be mended with old potato sacks. Old vines in the lattice trellises, paired with thrift-wood grow boxes full of weeds that choked the crops. And as people moved away, one by one, their belongings would go with them, leaving emptiness behind.

But places like here, this ‘Moonhaven,’ that had been abandoned suddenly, unexpectedly, all at once? They were snapshots in a way, frozen in time. No petering out of life, but an abrupt end like the swing of a sword. Things had just been dropped and then left there. Pallets and buckets and carts.
“Even with dandelions growing all over… This place gives me the heebies,” Karlach muttered as she kicked some rocks. Shadowheart next to her didn’t even react. Her eyes darted to and fro, squinting quizzically.
She must be trying to figure the place out too.

There were signs that people had travelled through here since its abandonment without staying: A freshly painted overturned carriage. Barrels of apples, having tumbled over and spilling the fruits all the way down the sloped way, now stinking of sweet rot in the sweltering summer heat. And that wasn’t all that was rotting: there laid dead people outside the village gates, flies hanging thick over them. But they had been moved since dying. They had been placed on their backs, lying side by side off the side of the path. Pallid faces turned to the sun. Their swords and shields laid across their chests.

“No tieflings,” Tav determined, “So likely Aradin’s lost crew.”
Astarion sniffed the air. “They were here not long ago. Found their fallen comrades, pulled them aside, laid them neatly but not having time to bury them properly… tossed aside the arrows in their backs. The grass there has been disturbed.”
“Goblin arrows,” Shadowheart said, “Probably pulled from their backs.”
“The dead’s quivers are empty?” Gale noted.
“Aradin is not wasting time burying his friends, but he’s not leaving anything useful with them either,” Tav remarked dryly.
“Sounds like’im,” Karlach remarked. “Poor sods. Aradin didn’t even stop to check if they wos keeping up with him. He just ran, and robbed their bodies now he was in the neighbourhood again.”

“No arrow in the gate post,” Gale said as he strode next to Tav. His hand kept grazing hers as they had walked here, as if on the cusp of taking it. Tav kept expecting him to, wanting him to come to her rather than chasing his hand, but she got the distinct impression he felt her anticipation and was playing with it.
“Aradin? Zevlor?”
Astarion immediately hushed her. “They may not have had a chance to stick an arrow in.”
“Shadowheart?” Karlach said with concern, and Tav followed her gaze. “Are you alright?”
Shadowheart had the most bizarre expression across her face. Recognition, confusion, mingled with determination. What was going on behind those green eyes?
“It’s nothing. I’m listening for sounds,” came the vague answer.
“Do you recognise this place?” Tav asked.
“No.”
Sloppy lie. She shrugged it off for now.

“There’s signs of struggle here, to be sure,” Astarion continued, voice low, “But no fresh blood. Only disturbed earth. But with these scattered barrels and carts, who could tell one scuffle from another? Could be our little friends… could be days older.”
“Probably the tiefling refugees,” Tav speculated pointing the cardinal directions, “They came from the east, from Elturel, heading west, to Baldur’s Gate at the coast, following the Chionthar. They were attacked, dropped all their equipment… Ran for their lives. They probably didn’t even know the Grove was nearby. They just scattered like frightened hens.”
“I can smell the hells, alright,” Karlach said, turning her nose to the wind, and Tav followed suit. There was a hint of sulphur, but the red hellion seemed to sense more than Tav could. “I think… I think there might be something else here. Infernal Iron. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
“Kar—fucking hells, Karlach! Come back!”

But too late. Karlach had already turned a corner and entered a house. Tav toed after her, not wanting to be left without their brawniest member if it came to a fight after all. She had a vague memory of being an adolescent, walking her grandmother’s Mastiff… or more accurately being dragged behind it, because the big lout of a dog smelled sausages and ran like a hog, dragging her behind him. Before she could catch up though, she heard a whoop.
“Karlach!” she called out and ran. She climbed through a busted window and nearly fell straight through the collapsed floor under it, just like Karlach had. Right below the window frame, the floor boards had collapsed in a circle, now lined with cobwebs swaying gently in the wind.
She called Karlach’s name again, straight into the black pit, and heard a pained groan in reply.

“Watch the floor. There ain’t one,” she croaked out, “Fuck, my I landed right on my tail…”
“Did you break anything?”
“Just my pride. I’ll be alright.”
Tav looked around. How the hells were they going to haul her big arse out? She couldn’t even see Karlach below, but given she could still hear her fine, the drop couldn’t have been too far?
“Can you see anything?”
“I’m in the basement? Ooh, actually… I think there’s a forge down here!”
Tav leaned her face in her hands. “Karlach, I am begging you to be careful.”
“Calm your tits, will you?” came an annoyed sigh from below, “I survived the fucking Blood War, I’m not gonna die falling on my arse. If there’s a basement, there must be stairs up or summat. I’ll make my way back up, as soon as I find this stinking Iron.”
“Do you need he—”
”Whatever, mum.”
Tav drew a deep, irritated sigh through her nostrils and failed to swallow her sarcastic retort.
“Fine! Enjoy your hole!” she stomped.
A lewd cackle resounded from below, and it made Tav’s worry run off her like water, and she let out her own ‘snrrk’ at her own choice of words; if Karlach was well enough to be dirty-minded, she could probably crawl out in her own time as soon as she’d finished scurrying around down there looking for her stupid scrap metal.

“Where’d she go?” Shadowheart as Tav crawled back out the window.
“She went spelunking. She’s got a kink in her tail but she’ll be fine. Any luck with our missing friends?”
“None yet,” Gale said, pointing upwards, “Astarion went the opposite direction, to scout the surroundings.”
Shadowheart’s eyes, trailing off to the side, suddenly widened and she tackled Tav so they both went sprawling. A crude, knobbly goblin arrow trembled where it had just embedded into the wall right where Tav’s head had been an instant ago.
Air knocked out of her, Tav coughed and looked up, only to immediately throw herself to the side, rolling both her and Shadowheart out of the way of the screaming goblin about to use them both as a soft landing.

Missing its reluctant cushions, it died with a wet crunch against the cobblestones and its dying scream cut short.
“Ambush! Goblins on the roofs!” Astarion shouted in a superfluous warning, having thrown the little monster from the rakes.
“Now he tells us,” Tav heard Shadowheart mumble angrily next to her as she sat up, pulling her mace from her back and rising to her feet in one fluid movement.
Gale was already midway through his retort to the arrow; between his hands formed a fireball and his arm arched to sling it up the roof across the street, where a nasty little goblin archer was trying to knock another arrow.
Shadowheart was already beside him, fanning flames of her own.
She missed hers, though Gale’s shot hit true and the goblin cried out, letting go of its burning weapon.
Astarion quietened its pained screams with an arrow through the throat and it fell limply, rolling over and tumbled off its perch.

“Incoming!” Tav screamed, taking a few seconds too long to spring into action, bolting upright. Goblin reinforcements crested the ridge of the roof behind where the burning archer had stood. In one movement, she’d drawn her little crossbow and raised it to fire, but her shot went wide and she cried out. Pain ran hot all the way down her arm. She’d been shot in the back of the shoulder. Turning on the spot, a smirking goblin gob met her, maybe six feet above her. The little bitch must’ve been hiding right in the room where Karlach had gone through the floor—and of-fucking-course our brawniest member was busy elsewhere!
“Tav!” Gale cried out.
“I’m fine, get the little—”
“On it!” Shadowheart cried out, fireball in hand and already slinging. She missed Tav’s assailant by inches, sending sparks scattering as it crashed into the side of the wall. A little sneer came from behind the wall.
”Will you stop bloody missing?!” Tav grunted where she squatted behind Gale and his magical shield, reaching over her shoulder to tug the arrow out of her flesh. It hurt like a bastard, but not as much coming out as going in. She gritted her teeth against the pain. Thank goodness she could shoot her little crossbow one-handed.
“Didn’t miss saving you, did I?!” Shadowheart snapped back and slapped a turquoise healing spell hard into the wound, sealing it instantly. “You’re welcome!”

With Gale covering her back for the archers across the false valley-scape of the village square, Tav took aim for the spot above her where the goblin had shot her from. The little bastard was bound to try for another hit. Arrows whizzed around her head but she held fast that the others had her covered. Even now, she heard some shots fall limp, clattering as they hit Gale’s shield.
Luckily she only had to wait a breath or two before the goblin poked her head out for another round. Tav got her through the eye and she sank out of view, instantly dead.

A war horn sounded from the roof, and Tav’s blood ran cold. Not even more reinforcements! Maybe if the rest of the party were anywhere to be seen, this wouldn’t be so hard, but for some idiotic reason, thirteen fighters had split off and now they were only four in the bottom of a proverbial barrel, taking shots and staring at even more assailants showing up before too long.
She swore and scrambled to her feet.
“We need to get out of the pit, get higher ground,” she said, intending for them to press ahead, closer up towards a mill in the distance with an overlook of the land around.
“Too right,” Gale gritted out, deflecting an arrow and then slamming his hands onto Tav’s and Shadowheart’s shoulders. ”Inveniam viam!”

The world turned upside down as the town square blurred out of view, and when Tav landed she swayed so much that Gale had to steady her to prevent her falling to her death on the cobblestones far below. He’d teleported them up on the roof, right next to Astarion.
Tav’s knees buckled and she dry heaved. She’d never shifted like that before, and she absolutely did not care for it. Gale looked winded too. Transporting three people, even at such a short distance, must’ve taken a toll on him.
“Get down!” Astarion shouted and yanked Gale out of the trajectory of an arrow. “Looks like you got up here just in time!”
Tav peered over the edge to see the feared reinforcements; not one ogre… but three.
Ten feet tall, a filthy shade of brownish green, lumpy and pear shaped. All brawn, no brains, ample aggression and meaty appetites for anything that would fit in their palms, which regrettably was them to a tee.

One of the massive beasts, looking like a leader type, was wearing a frankly comically tiny and very effeminate tiara, bent out of shape to accommodate the tight squeeze. It really was more apt as a pinky ring than headwear on the massive, potato-shaped head, and Tav would laugh if the great, tree-trunk shaped bat in his hand didn't practically have their names on it.
“Fuck,” Shadowheart hissed, “Those three will knock this shack out from under us!”
Astarion fired his crossbow, hitting the largest of the three in its fleshy shoulder. The ogre swayed a little from the impact but barely made a face. It didn't even look at the shaft sticking out of him.
Shadowheart sent a sacred flame in a searing white-hot arc, hitting the other shoulder, and that impact made the bastard slow down with a grumble, showing stumpy, stained gap teeth. If anything, the big lout seemed more keen to show off how gleefully he'd gnash their bones with his rotten gums once he laid hands on them.

Quickly, Tav tallied her own inventory; a small crossbow, more fit for close combat with smaller targets… A rapier, and she did not want to get that close to an ogre, and honestly their skin might be too tough for such a finesse weapon… She needed something that packed a punch! Some hardtack in her pocket? Well, they could shatter teeth if you tried to eat them… She could throw them at the ogres’ heads and pray?
“Uh, Gale… Gale, we’re gonna need some brazen heroics here,” she said, hoping she sounded encouraging and not at all terrified as she crouched next to the ailing wizard.
“I c-can’t… I’m spent,” he gasped in return, “Hauling both of you—”
“Gale, all I have is a rapier and a fun-sized pea shooter. I’ll be able to tickle these guys and scant else. We need your magic.”
Shadowheart hissed. “For pity’s sake, Tav, you have magic too! You killed that ogre outside the Grove!”
“That was lucky! I might kill us instead of them!”
Shadowheart caught her by the pink of her collar, staring her murderously in the eye. “Tav, by sorrow and night, you will use magic to kill these ogres or I will punt you off this roof and watch them eat you for supper!”
“... You drive a hard bargain, madam,” Tav muttered indignantly.
Her green eyes hardened but then she bit out a command, “Oh, do forgive my manners, Tav, please!”
Then came Gale's voice, saying her name softly, sounding a lot closer than before. Tav barely had time to spin on the spot and lock eyes with him before his lips were on hers.

Her knees buckled again as the kiss overwhelmed her, his hands gentle but inexorable around her face.
“Er, love birds,” Astarion grunted and ducked as a wooden barrel came sailing at him from below, “I know we’re about to die, but now is not the time?”
Gale didn’t heed him, and Tav was too frozen in surprise to move. The kiss was needy yet tender, as if trying to claw something from her but trying his best to not hurt her in the process, like a man drowning, but very politely… and then came the surge. The surge of power, of raw magic, emanating from her chest and pouring out of her mouth and into him. It was not a dying man’s last desperate kiss. He was taking her up on her offer, with woefully short notice.
He drank her magic in, cradling her face to his mouth, and Tav saw stars as her whole body rose to meet his.

Necessity or no, exchange or no… Her body responded to his touch immediately, sparking fully. He was feverish against her lips and his hair felt like strands of silk to her raw palms.
She gave of her magic freely, generously, abundantly. The onslaught of lust amplified the rise, running like river rapids… and then the tide changed. The centre of gravity shifted and she went from pouring into him to being dragged in, absorbed, drunk from like a cup of wine. Her hands, at first tangling in his hair with desire, now braced against his shoulders with budding despair, countering the tug.

It was nauseating, this loss of control, of feeling feeble in the palm of something hungry, feeling like her whole being might get sucked into Gale’s arcane hunger, like her insides were being hollowed out… She'd thought herself the whitewater rapids. If that were so, Gale’s body drew her downwards to perdition like the pull of a steep and jagged waterfall, and there she was, feebly backpedalling against the current, perched just on the cusp of going over the edge and freefalling helplessly. All sound fell away, except for his breath against her cheek.

The kiss stretched a small eternity between them and was cut short as Gale at last broke free, having drunk his fill in mere instants.
Air flooded back into her lungs, sound poured back into her ears, light returned to her vision and Tav sank to her knees, bracing on her hands, deflated and cold sweating. She watched dazedly as Gale let go of her as soon as he’d seen her safely to the floor. When he turned to the fight, his entire being brimming and crackling with thunder like a storm god set to vanquish his foes.
Weak knees, stolen breath, lips tingling, head empty. As far as first kisses go… Pretty fucking spectacular.

She'd thought that Gale consuming her magic might weaken her like Astarion's bite had, but she didn't feel feeble for long. Her head swam but soon she could feel herself level out. The fog over her eyes cleared and she took a deep breath, feeling like her chest was less constricted before, like she’d been stuck in a restrictive corset suddenly cut loose, in a stuffy room where a window had just swung wide. A first full, deep breath in what felt like an eternity.
Gale's kiss had taken, but it had given something too. She felt balanced, clear-headed, just like she had done after the fire eruption outside the Grove’s portcullis.

The roof shingles under her shook and clinked gently as the house trembled to the foundations. Whether from the ogres striking the walls, or from Gale’s thunderbolts she couldn’t say, but adrenaline saturated her veins and suddenly she felt like she could fight an army single-handedly.
Looking down at her palms, she saw the ember-red glow under her scraped skin. The hellish fires within her, begging for release. It felt good, the pounding of her heart and the lightness in her muscles. Liquid fire ran through her being and for once, it didn't feel terrifying.
A pyromancer Gale had called her. Alright. She could be that. She was gonna write one hell of a song about it later too.

Astarion was glazed in sweat as he shot arrow after arrow in quick-fire rounds at something right below the gables at his feet. Then a massive hand rose from below as one of the ogres had climbed the side of the building. With a giant thud that made the rafters creak ominously, the palm slapped down, missing Shadowheart by inches as she danced away.
The hand fumbled, as if looking for something on an elusive top shelf, and Tav saw her chance.
A fireball in each hand, she braided fingers and flames above her head and brought them down, erupting in a searing cloud as she made contact with the ogre’s calloused, thick skin.
With a scream the burned hand flinched away, and Tav delighted at the blackened crater she’d made in the back of it. If she were lucky, the bastard was left-handed, because that hand wouldn’t be swinging anything for a while.

His friend, one still on solid ground, took offence on his buddy's behalf. He bellowed just as Tav rolled out of the way for a bushel of apples being hurled her way. Effortlessly, she got to one knee and repaid the shot in kind with a fire projectile that sent a wine barrel next to him erupting in a firestorm, killing the smallest of their ogre opponents instantly in a deafening boom.
Then came a thundercrack so loud Tav duck reflexively, and the crowned ogre screamed, clutching his sundered arm to his chest, roaring his outrage and harm. He kicked a hole straight through a wall in retaliation, rattling the entire building like a bell as he made himself a step to haul himself up, using the blown out windows as handholds.

“Behind!” Astarion shouted and Tav turned to see more goblin reinforcements climbing up the back of the building. He shot one and it tumbled off the eaves, but two more took his place.
“Astarion, Shadowheart! The goblins!” Tav commanded, “Leave the big guys to us!”
Forming a pitiful back-to-back line, the group covered one another as the fight took on a new rhythm. Shadowheart and Astarion took on the smaller entities while Gale, so filled with lightning he all but lifted off the ground, summoned bolt after bolt and Tav rained fire down on the ogres climbing up over the edge. They had to kill the ogres before they managed to pull themselves over the rakes, there was no way this roof could bear their weight. And while ogres might be hardy enough to survive a building collapsing around them, the same could not be said of anyone short of cresting seven feet.

The crowned head of the ogre leader rose up above the gables, his small eyes squinting menacingly when he clapped eyes on Tav and Gale.
As one, the two mages sent fire and lightning straight into his eyes, and he screamed in pain, letting go of his handhold to bring one monstrous fist slamming straight down in retaliation.
Gale tackled Tav out of the way, rolling until she landed on top.
She didn't get a chance to enjoy the view though.

The fist had left a huge hole in the middle of the roof, straight through the rafters, and Tav watched as the shingles began to slide, one by one, into the abyss, and felt the roof begin to cave inwards, towards the gaping maw.
Gale shouted, pushed Tav off, and reached his hands out, summoning magical hands out of the aether to catch Astarion and Shadowheart as they were sliding, stumbling, beginning to fall backwards into the hole behind them. Tav moved aside, screaming at the ogre to call his attention, resorting to throwing loose shingles at his ear. She had to distract it. If it occurred to the stupid potato-head to go for the other two as they were on the back foot…

His last remaining eye opened amidst the debris hovering in the air and fixed on Tav, roaring his murderous intent. His intact hand reached for her, but she danced out of the way, drawing her rapier and slicing at his knuckles to keep him trained on her, making him angry so he might try and keep swatting at her.
Angrier and angrier, the monster formed another fist, raising it high and slamming it down again.
“You! Pink bitch! Squash you!” he bellowed as Tav danced out of the way. He slammed again, and again, and now Tav started to notice to her horror that she was running out of roof to retreat on. Not only that; with every slam of the ogre’s mass, the walls holding the roof up began to sway, threatening to tumble asunder. Surely at this point, only the corner of the building remained.
“Come get me then, you stupid sack of shit!” she bellowed right back at the monster, forming a fireball in her hand, but the foundations shook and she missed, sending her fireball instead straight into a goblin behind him. “I meant to do that!”

The ogre heaved himself up, surely standing on the eaves under the roof or something, spreading his arms wide so she couldn’t flee around him..
“Running out of places to dash, little morsel,” he grumbled, “I will enjoy crushing the marrow out of your bones like blood jam.”
Then his face suddenly contracted in a grimace of pain, and then another. A wet, fleshy sound erupted from behind him.
And there she was, glorious and red, clawing herself onto the ogre’s shoulder, bloodied axe in hand, as if she’d used it as a pickaxe to scale his back like a warrior monkey.
“You thought you could have all the fun without me?!”
“Fuck him up, Karlach!” Tav bellowed, and then she fisted a fireball to hurl right into the ogre’s gut.
The ogre screamed, but was cut short when Karlach’s axe all but divorced his head from his short, stubby neck.
“What took you so bloody long?” Tav berated Karlach, but the hellion shrugged her off.
“Fight first, lecture later! Cheerio!” Her weapon raised above her head, Karlach flung herself off the roof and right into the head of the last ogre waiting below, cleaving his head down to the clavicle.

Tav turned to the others to help fight the goblins on the other line, only to find that her friends had managed to push the oncoming group off the roof gables. But then movement in the distance, nearing the crest of the hill by the mill, sent her scrambling. Worg-riding goblins, in full tilt right towards Karlach.
Alright. Time for those brazen heroics!
She leapt up onto the blood-streaked back of the dead ogre leader, practically sock-sliding down the lumpy length of his corpse, landing with a somersault next to Karlach.
“Oi, soldier,” she grinned, “Nice fireworks. Wanna do some target practice?”
Tav’s brow knitted momentarily, but then she spotted the unharmed wine barrels next to her friend, and her lips split into a glorious smile.
“Pull!” she called, and Karlach hurled the first barrel into the vanguard of the oncoming riders. A heartbeat later, the barrel exploded in a blaze of glory.

Two more barrels sailed through the air, forming a wall of fire to keep the worgs and their riders at bay, but then their luck ran out. The last barrel was reinforced somehow. It didn’t crack, and the fireball didn’t blow it up. Instead, in the slanted terrain, it began to roll downhill again, right back at Tav and Karlach.
“Oh shit,” Karlach muttered, and then they were both running, tails literally between their legs, away from the oncoming keg barreling at them.
They threw themselves between the gateposts, not one heartbeat before the keg slammed into those gateposts and lodged itself stuck.
Tav barely had a moment to sigh with relief. Karlach had already bounced to her feet, grabbing her by the wrist.
“Can’t stay here, we’ll miss all the fun! Remember to ball up and roll,” she instructed. “Softer landing that way!”
“What?” Tav asked, “Softer wha—”

Before she could finish, Karlach slung her right back over the barrel and Tav flailed disgracefully as she flew back into the village square.
This is even worse than misty-stepping, was all she had time to think before she landed with a thud on the wine-stained cobblestones, trying her best to roll with the inertia of Karlach’s throw. Her whole body throbbed with pain, but everything still seemed attached and moving correctly.

Somehow, she’d not broken any bones in the landing, but now she was alone in the fiery mess she and Karlach had wrought on Moonhaven’s abandoned streets. The smoke was thick, but luckily billowed almost straight up in great pillars.
“Karlach?!” she called out, hoping her stronger friend might hop over to join her.
“I’ll take the long way around!” came the reply, “Don’t die!”
Just like Granny’s Mastiff. Fucking, bleeding hells!

There was no sign of her friends up to the remnants of the roof to her right. Only the dead ogres, smashed brickwork, and burning wine barrels.
Then she heard coughing not far up ahead among the smoke pillars, and she crouched behind a pile of debris.
“Where’d the wenches go?!” came a goblin’s voice.
“Probably walking in their chum, innit,” another replied before cooing at his worg mount, “Hush, pet, s’alright, s’only wine!”
Two goblins, at least one worg. Shit. The goblins she might be able to take, but the worg? All by herself? What if there were more?

Then came a hand around her mouth and Tav screamed into the palm.
“Shut yer gob,” came Aradin’s drawl in her ear.
Outraged, Tav elbowed him right in the rib and he let her go with a grunt.
“Where the fuck have you been?!” she hissed, hitting him in the chest. “So much for your warning!”
“We wos taken before I could put the arrow up,” he mumbled, rubbing the spot where Tav had hit him, “Fookin’ hell, do you have hammers for elbows?”
“Sure you were! Where’s Zevlor and Rolan?” Tav demanded, hissing low.
Another voice, smooth and smiling, came from behind her. “They’re helping your crew on the other side.”
She turned on the spot and looked right into one brown eye, and one made from bloodstone, and her blood ran cold—not for herself, but for Karlach… The same Karlach who was headed right this way, right into her stalker.

“The Blade of Frontiers,” she said in a low and reverent tone, swallowing nervously, “We meet again.”
“Miss Lunet,” the handsome but scarred young man nodded gallantly, “Our reputations precede us both.”
“S-since when does the hero of the Sword Coast cavort with the likes of the Beno Boys?”
“Told ye, we wos tied up. Strapped to the windmill wings up yon,” Aradin explained to her, but he was smiling too. Smugly. Why was he smiling? Tav didn’t like when Aradin smiled.
“I merely offered a hand,” the man smiled softly, “And I was especially intrigued when Aradin here told me he travelled with a violent, hornless tiefling criminal, showing up out of nowhere and lying about her identity…” His hand came up and Tav froze as he reached a marred hand up and stroked the hair out of her face, revealing her hornless forehead. “Advocatus Diaboli.”

Chapter Text

Tav's blood ran cold, but Aradin positively grinned as the Blade clapped manacles around her wrists behind her back and dragged her into a dilapidated house, throwing her into a corner as easily as dropping a shopping basket.
I am going to write you a diss tune so lethal your forefathers will shrivel in their fucking roadside graves, Aradin Beno.
“What did you call me?” she stuttered out, all fighting fire doused.
“The stink of Avernus. Karlach, the War Devil. The archdevil Zariel's protegée. Evil incarnate.”
Tav scoffed indignantly. “I. Don't. Stink. And I'm not this ‘Karlach.’”

The Blade merely sneered. “Well… you would say that wouldn't you? Please. I followed you from the Hells. I followed your rank scent to the Grove. Your disguise had me fooled. I lost you briefly in the swamp, but the old crone set me straight. Then I saw pillars of smoke over the village and I knew it was you… wreaking havoc, trying to bring your Infernal Blood War to the Sword Coast on your mistress’ behalf.”
Undeterred, she looked him dead in his remaining eye. He was a beautiful and surprisingly young man, scars notwithstanding. His gaze was deep and intelligent, looking at her with a righteous wrath. Full lips prone to small smiles so as to not split the gashes to his face. Was he a paladin of some sort? He talked with the cadence and ardour of one… but not the prose of piety. Was he a noble of some sort maybe? He carried himself like one. Posture of someone who’d been corrected by governesses and private tutors thousands of times, same as Gale. His rapier had a gold inlay in the handle, which was way out of the budget of a mere hedge knight.
But why would a man of such beauty, refinement and privilege subject himself to being slashed at like a spatchcock chicken? She’d heard the stories of what The Blade Of Frontiers had done. Rescued children and damsels. Slain monsters and ne’er-do-wells from Luskan to Amn. He’d be the perfect subject for a hero’s hymn, honestly.

“I'm telling you, you've got the wrong girl,” she insisted.
How the hells do I get out of this one without selling out Karlach as she’s making her way here as we speak?
He scoffed and gave her an almost pitying smile, his brow knitting with what almost looked like concern. “Karlach, cease this ruse. Do you take me for a fool? Do you propose there are more than one foul-mouthed tiefling woman with a criminal record in this area, missing her horns, obfuscating her identity, running away from a crashed nautiloid?”
Aradin flinched. “What nautiloid? Are there illithids here?!”
The Blade quietened him with a calloused and scarred finger. “And I just happen to find one such tiefling in the midst of a razed village, littered with dead bodies, basked in fire?”
“... I see your point, Saer, however I insist. You are pissing up the wrong tree. Your first mistake was listening to this here gobshite. He'd lose his arse if it didn't sit under his nose. My name is Tav Lunet. I am a bard in the Lower City. I am not a devil, and I am not your quarry.”
Why is Aradin selling me out to the Blade and not the actual Karlach? He’s met Karlach! I can see the singe marks from her fingers on his bloody tunic!

The Blade studied her intently. Then he placed both hands on her tunic and ripped it open. Only enough to bare her heart; he clearly was not interested in assaulting her, but she could hear Aradin gasp with surprise at this feat.
The Blade leaned his ear to heart and listened. Then he sat back on his heels and closed
“A steady beat. But your heart is true and living. Not infernal cogs,” he smiled graciously, “And you didn’t burn me. It seems I was mistaken.”
Finally, Tav’s indignation finally kicked into gear. She headbutted him and heard his nose crunch satisfyingly. She’d gotten him right with a horn stump.
“Next time, buy me a drink first. That was my favourite top.”

She was certain she was going to pay for that, but to her surprise, the Blade laughed as if she’d told an earnest joke, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose, wiping the trickly of blood on his upper lip. She’d never known a man to be so mirthful, or so beautiful
“You are right. My manners subside when the hunt for evil has me in its throes.”
Then came a head-splitting ache, and at first Tav thought it was merely the delayed pain from the impact, but then the Blade’s thoughts poured into her own.
Oh shit. He’s infected! Just like Shadowheart said.
Then his memories drowned out her own thoughts.

A woman’s menacing laughter. Black veils over faces. The smell of sulphur and the feeling of a leather strap around his throat, yanking him when he questioned or disobeyed. Wyll. That was his name, but no one used it anymore, not even himself. Only the Blade mattered. They had that in common. Lonely nights on the road danced before Tav’s eyes, moments of sewing his own wounds shut, of holding heads dangling off the ground as trophies. Holding them by the horns, by the hair, watching blood drip black against his polished boots. Watching Baldur’s Gate from a distance with melancholy, missing home, and then that echo of a woman’s voice again. Seductive, pernicious, commanding. She saw a young, beautiful boy in gilded finery, filled with heroic and noble dreams in a mirror… fading into a marred, scarred bounty hunter in exile, with a winged shadow whispering into his ear.

“What the fook are you two doing?” she heard Aradin say, but she ignored him.
The Blade nearly fell down with surprise at her surprise invasion, but he was quick to find himself again and riposte, piercing Tav’s mind right back.

Wyll’s thoughts parted her own with a novice’s fumbling, clumsy touch, but what he lacked in delicacy he made up for in brute force. In mere instants, he’d perused Tav’s names, from every alias she’d ever used, all the way to her real one. Her father’s and mother’s. Father comforting her when her little hands struggled to hold chords on her lute. Her mother smoothing out her fringe in company. The crocheted tablecloth burning. The curtains. The stable thatch. He saw her dealings with the Guild and the Zhentarim, the hidden compartment in her lute—
His mind hit hard, like an anvil.
“Lunet?” the Blade gasped, “I know that name… Like the warlock?”

Then more recent days as he prised apart her memories further. Her waking up in the sand, Shadowheart’s smirk, Astarion’s teeth to her neck, Gale’s hair lit from behind by the sun like spun gold, his kiss that made gravity fall away, and finally—

Tav pushed back, obscuring Karlach as best as she could, pulling memories of bad gigs and rough hands touching her and eating stale scraps from the tavern kitchens; like a thief pulling down doors, boxes... any and all items behind them as they raced to escape the Watch. But like a wolf with a scent, Wyll sensed what she was hiding and pushed harder, to see what she was trying to keep from him.

Tav’s hands may be tied. Her feet were not. With a gargantuan effort, she kicked him out of her head, then planted her foot in his still bleeding nose so he sprawled backwards with a pained gasp. Not wasting an instant, she scrambled to her feet, determined to escape before they could slit her throat or pry Karlach’s location out of her head.
But Aradin dashed in front of the door, blocking Tav off. A standoff ensued as Tav feinted to and fro. She didn’t have time to wait for the Blade to get to his feet.
So she screamed. A shrill shriek that made her own ears hurt. If the goblins heard her or her friends didn’t matter, hells, if she deafened them both didn’t matter, she just had to get out of here.
Aradin winced with pain and slapped her clear across the mouth to shut her up. Her cheek stung like a firebrand from his strike.

“Of course you’d only dare try it on when my hands are tied,” she hissed, giving him a red smile, “You pathetic piss-stained prick.”
Aradin’s eyes were wide in fear. The Blade was on his feet and between them, protecting his little helper. The front of his gambeson had a blood stain on it the size of a saucer and his nose was satisfyingly crooked.
“Let me go,” Tav demanded, trying to wiggle the manacles off.
“Not until you tell me where she is. Karlach. I know you’re obscuring her. Tell me where she is.”
“Kiss my arse,” Tav bit back, “Or my boot again, if you prefer.”
The Blade sighed impatient, hands raised as if soothing a wild beast. “Miss Lunet. Your hands are tied and you’re unarmed. You will not walk out of here without telling me where my quarry is to be found.”
Tav looked from him to the door, but the Blade stepped into view again. “Tell you what? Tell me where Karlach is… and I won’t report your whereabouts to the authorities.”

At that moment, the cavalry arrived. Or well, not horses, but goblins on worgs.
The door splintered with the impact and Tav threw herself to the side, scurrying behind a barrel out of view. As the other two fought, she shimmied her tied hands under her buttocks and threaded her legs through so that she’d at least have her hands in front of her and not be entirely open to blows. The manacles were so rusted that just maybe…
As swords met on the other side of her hiding place, she tried to smash the lock to her shackles open. She didn’t care to hide the racket—in fact, she hoped it might draw her friends

She was not disappointed; soon she heard the crack of thunder and worgs screaming.
Her name was shouted between the blows, and Tav called out.
And there he was, sweaty, sooty, his indigo gambeson stained and frayed, but Gale was there and unharmed. They all were there and in some state of dishevelment from prolonged battle. Three goblins dead or dying along with their dead worg mounts at her fellows’ feet. Shadowheart, mace raised high. Astarion, bow drawn, Rolan with fireballs in his hands. All of them. Aradin had scurried behind them as though he’d been the Blade’s captive along with her, and Remira was already dragging him away.
But no Karlach. Where was Karlach?

Tav saw her chance and bolted towards him. But then came a dark hand grabbing her hair, and a gold inlay blade to her throat.
“No one moves,” the Blade grunted nasally between laboured breaths, “or she dies. No need for this to get messy.”
Gale looked at Tav, looked her over instantly, saw her ripped blouse, her tied hands, and… smiled lethally at her captor.
“Couldn’t agree more,” he smiled politely, “But if you harm her, I will incinerate you.”
He said it matter-of-factly, almost sweetly, as if he were presenting not vengeance but merely natural consequences to his error. Lightning danced between his fingers to underline his words. He continued:
“Look about you. No other way out. You have several crossbows aimed at you, but I assure you… you will be dead before an arrow reaches you. Release her now.”

A knobbly hand grasped Tav by the ankle and she gasped with shock. A goblin, clasping at her as it died.
“You’re too late, shitstains. Waukeen’s Rest is in flames. Ravengard… is ours. Praise th’Absolute.”
Tav’s brow knitted, but the Blade flinched and he threw Tav aside as if she were a used handkerchief. She scurried to her friends and Shadowheart helped her up.
The Blade had clasped the dying goblin by the throat, hoisting him into the air. “Ravengard? Ulder Ravengard is here?!”
The goblin grinned with bloodied teeth and then his life slipped out of the Blade’s hands.
He turned to them, without a hostage and his helper gone. His eyes were black with horror. Was he really that pressed over a dying goblin’s taunts?
“Let me go,” he pleaded, “I beg of you. I must go.”
“Absolutely not,” Shadowheart hissed, but Tav soothed her.
“We’ll let you go… If you swear to let Karlach go.”

She had not thought it possible, but the Blade’s desperation deepened even more. “I… cannot. I have sworn to take her head.”
Tav’s blood ran cold at the thought of Karlach’s head among his trophies. She’d peered into his head. Bottomless solitude or not, the Blade was a hardened killer for hire. She knew it as sure as she knew her own scars.
This hunter took no quarter, except for quartering his quarries’ carcasses. But she breathed deep and kept her composure.

“If we kill you now, your Duke will die and Karlach goes free anyway. Either way, Karlach lives.” She shrugged. “You’re no good to your Duke dead.”
The Blade breathed hard through his mouth, blood still strickling from his nostrils. His remaining eye turned just as hard as the stone one.
“I swear… I will not harm Karlach as long as you draw breath.”
Next to her, Shadowheart flinched. “I know a threat when I hear it.”
She flung her mace with all her might at the Blade, but he disappeared in a haze of ink-black smoke in front of them, and her projectile clattered limply to the floor.
“Where did he go?!”
“No matter,” Tav insisted, shoving her manacles to Gale for unlocking, “We need to find Karlach and haul her the hells away from him, he might still be nearby.”
“Karlach can defend herself, he’s coming for you next!”
“I probably broke his nose twice without even using my hands or any magic. I’m good.”
Shadowheart sighed, muttering a string of curses over her stoic idiot head.

The manacles clanged to the ground and Shadowheart led Tav out into the street, still smoking from the fight.
“Karlach is in the school house,” she gestured. "She spotted that man dragging you away.”
“Tav, you would not believe the ordeal we’ve been through trying to dig you out,” Astarion chided her as he stepped out too, getting ready to air his grievances, “Bugbears and goblins and gnomes…”
She didn’t hear any of it. Gale stepped out of the shadow of the broken house where she’d been held captive, looking like a sooty jewel in the light.
“I’m just glad you’re alright,” he interrupted their pouting companion, clasping Tav’s hands, “Are you? Alright?”
“I’m pissed and I’ve been slapped around a little, but I’m fine,” she said, not bothering to pull her ripped blouse to cover her chest. Gale’s eyes only strayed for one moment, but seemed more outraged than enticed by what he saw. With a gesture, he’d repaired the ripped seams and preserved her modesty again.
You silly, chivalrous ponce. I’d hoped the rip would at least do me a little good.

He gently clasped her chin and raised it so he could examine her closer, turning her head softly side to side. At his touch, the memory of their kiss replayed on Tav’s eyelids.
“I swear, I’m fine.” She clasped him by the cheeks and kissed him. Gentler than he had kissed her earlier, but no less ardently. Gale gasped when her lips touched his and he froze up. He seemed so clumsy and timid now, unlike during the fight, and while he did return the kiss, he withdrew quickly as if afraid to hurt her.
“You’re out of practice,” she breathed, smiling, and he gave her a withering look before softening again.
“I’m sorry I was so abrupt earlier—It’s not how I imagined that to go.”
“Oh really? How have you been imagining kissing me?”
Flustered, he went beet red, and Tav smiled.
“You can be abrupt all you want, just kiss me again,” she whispered, and this time he didn’t withdraw. He froze again, but this time with caution, even repression rather than surprise or trepidation. As his tongue gently met hers, she felt him tense up, as if waiting for a blow or some divine punishment. But when none came, he kissed her fervently and then withdrew again, more decisively this time, turning away slightly, away from their onlookers.
“We have an audience,” he cautioned her, before clasping her hand firmly, whispering in a reminding tone, “One page at a time.”

Licking her lips like a smug cat, Tav withdrew, feeling like she’d been promised enough.
“Right. Karlach. School house. Which one is that again?”
Shadowheart came up to them and pointed it out. “There.”
“Is that a school? Doesn’t look like one.”
“I mean… I suppose it could be something else,” Shadowheart shrugged and hurried along. “Are you coming or not?”
And just like that, she was off without them. What was with her? She’d been making weird faces ever since they got here.

“Commander,” came Zevlor’s voice, “Colour me impressed and appalled in equal measure. I fought next to the Blade of Frontiers. I never would imagine he’d be such a blaggard!”
“A spot of mistaken identity, I’m afraid,” Tav said and gave a brief summary of the Blade’s mistake.
“He’s after Karlach?” Zevlor asked. “He told me he was hunting a devil, not a tiefling! I never would have allowed him near the Grove, had I known. His hunt for her could have had him hurting my people. I even rejoiced that he’d aid us.”
“None of your people are missing horns, Zevlor,” Tav assured him, “And besides… It was Aradin’s fault.”
“... Why am I not surprised,” Gale interjected.

As if she’d ordered him off a menu, there he was. Lia was patching him up where he leaned against a door post.
In an instant, Tav had flown to his side, smacking his cheek so hard she could feel his skin split from the impact, right across the pretty cheekbone. She’d struck him so hard, pain in her own palm had her shuddering and her little hairs stand on end. Lia and Remira gasped at the violence of the hit.
“I save your life and that’s the thanks I get?” Tav gritted out, “Handing me to a bounty hunter, lying about my name?”
Barth stepped in. “You split-tongue freaks all look the same to me.”
“Watch it, or I’ll serve you one as well. Might improve your ugly mug,” Tav threatened, palm at the ready, and Barth backed off, hands raised in retreat.
“When you’ve served your purpose… and led us to the temple,” she hissed Aradin’s way, “How did you put it again? ‘Kelemvor won’t know you from… chum,’ was it?” Aradin rose to protest, but Tav was having none of it. “I won’t kill you… but maybe Nine-Fingers will.”

“Oi!” came Karlach’s voice, and suddenly Tav was hoisted off the ground into a rib-budging hug that nearly burned her to a crisp.
“Ow-ow-ow-ow!” she gasped, and Karlach released her to the ground at once.
“Whoo, soldier! Am I glad to see you! You flew like a pigeon, you did!” she said, and then looked around her to see naught but tense, angry and slapped faces all about her. “Someone died or summat?”
Tav turned to where Aradin had laid, only to find the spot empty, and him storming off to sulk elsewhere.

Chapter Text

Once assured that this ‘Waukeen’s Rest’ that the goblin had mentioned was all the way across the river, Tav felt reassured enough to carry on their journey without the Blade Of Frontiers nipping at their heels. But first a pause, to lick wounds, take a breather and refill quivers.
Shadowheart had scrounged a trophy from the dead ogre with the tiara, and was trying it on for size where she sat on an abandoned school bench.
“It suits you,” Astarion purred, “Can’t even see your fringe.”
“How did you know this was a school?” Gale asked. “It just looks like any old house from outside.”
“Why does that matter? I think this tiara might be enchanted,” she deflected, “When I wear it, I feel… I dunno. That chicken scratch on the blackboard makes sense.”

She nodded to an old, cracked blackboard, scrawled with arithmetic. Astarion tried it on.
“Oh yes. Looks like they were working on averages. Sloppily.”
He walked up to the board, cocked his head, then wiped out some symbols and replaced it with a solution of his own.
Gale threw the board a glance. “Indeed they were. And your solution is correct. Congratulations, you’re better at arithmetic than a child.”
Then he frowned at Astarion’s head, reaching a hand out to try the trinket on for himself. It slipped effortlessly on his head, and he hummed. A crown suited him, and it was sickening to see; he didn’t need more finery to bolster his already ample opinion of his intellect.

“Well?” Shadowheart pressed when Gale remained quiet, studying the board.
“I can’t tell any difference,” he shrugged, handing it back over.
“Then you won’t mind me keeping it,” she said, putting it back on and adjusting wisps of her black hair around it.
Rolan was there too, examining the precious stone in the jewel. “Beautiful.”
He did not ask to try it on, but his finger absentmindedly stroked the gold for a moment, before he caught Shadowheart glaring at him. He was practically stroking her face, after all. Quickly and with a great sense of self-preservation, he retracted his hand. Was he… blushing?
“I do believe this trinket is enchanted. An intellect augmentation spell perchance.”
“Small wonder I didn’t feel dumber wearing it then,” Gale joked, and Shadowheart turned her scowl on him. He hastened to add, “It suits you, Shadowheart. The stone brings out the green of your eyes.”
“Kissing my arse is worse than insulting my wit,” she scoffed and hopped down.

Tav, for her part, was looking around the room. She’d found wanted posters, so old they were almost illegible.
“Missing… children?” she mumbled, and Shadowheart traipsed to her side, peering closer.
“Maggie Terrens, Marcus Terrens… Mathen Deetch… Rochelle Kirk. I can’t read the last one? It’s so smudged. J-Jenevieve? No, Jenevelle—”
A purple light flashed in Shadowheart’s hand and she fell to her knees with a scream, clutching her hand like she'd burned it.
“Shadowheart!?” Tav fell to her side.
“I-I’m alright,” her friend gasped, “I have an injury to my hand. It smarts occasionally.”
“What? Is it to do with the tadpoles?” Tav asked hushedly, so that Rolan might not hear as he hurried towards them.
“No. That I promise you. It’s an old wound. The pain is sharp, but passes quickly.”

Rolan kneeled beside Shadowheart, saying her name stiffly, as if minding his manners, but not without a certain soft concern, and Shadowheart… didn’t rebuff him, hissing at him to mind his own tail.
Interesting. I see how it is.
Tav backed off to leave Rolan to his fussing, and she saw Cal and Lia exchange a knowing look also. There was going to be some ripe bickering and teasing ere too long, of that she was certain.

She didn’t get more time to wonder about Shadowheart’s injury or watch the budding romance from Rolan’s side; Zevlor came through the lopsided schoolhouse door, holding a satchel she didn’t recognise, made from woven reeds. It had a moon emblem braided onto the front, wreathed in oak leaves.
“Miss Lunet,” he beckoned her.

He showed her the contents of the satchel. Bottled blooms… Flint and steel. A small roll filled with what looked like surgical tools. Cured moss for staunching wounds. Labels upon labels upon labels: Dried rosehips. Cherry and willow tree bark. Essence of dittany. Milk of poppy. Small rolls of bandages. A vial of lavender oil. One label read ‘yarrow powder: for poultices.’
The man came prepared, bringing a field hospital with him.
A bobbin of silk thread with a fine needle attached. A tin flask that upon inspection smelled of alcohol so potent it burned her sinuses. Halsin clearly intended to make himself useful as naught but a healer. Because that stuff was only good to clean wounds, unless you wanted to go blind for fun and profit.

And bar one single knife, there were no weapons. Druids weren’t fighters as far as Tav knew, most were even pacifists to a fault. They’d merely shift into bird form and flee at first sight of trouble. But he must’ve known the temple was dangerous, and he clearly knew how to plan ahead. Why choose to go virtually unarmed? Did the old man put that much stock in young Aradin’s martial prowess?
She rummaged through the satchel’s contents some more. Some small vials of herb tinctures she couldn’t identify, bar one with mugwort in it; working in brothels, you learned to identify abortifacients right quick.

A knife with a bear claw handle, which was surprisingly large. The man must have hands the size of dinner plates. There was a smaller knife too, with a curved blade. Too crude to be a scalpel. Cooking perhaps? Maybe he used it to carve something, like turning potatoes?
There were also provisions. Hardtack, a small jar of honey with the honeycomb floating inside along with some thyme sprigs; a sheep’s cheese wrapped in nettle leaves… An old and well-used pipe, whittled from oakwood. It even had oak leaf motifs carved daintily into the grain. Zevlor caught her curiosity in the pipe and placed it in her hands.

“Oakwood… for the Oak Father,” he clarified. “This is Master Halsin’s satchel. He was here!”
“Where did you get this?”
“Aradin found it. Master Halsin must have stashed it at some point, it was hidden under some debris where they made camp on the way to the temple.”
Tav’s interest lit in earnest and she rummaged further.
“Let’s see what the old man may have. Might give us something useful about the temple grounds. Nettie did say he’d been the master of the Grove for centuries or some such… Surely he must know something about the local area.”
She pulled out an old, tattered notebook.
“I’ll leave you to it, Miss Lunet. I must make sure Aradin doesn’t outweigh his usefulness,” Zevlor said, and left with a courteous bow.

Tav flicked through the old pages, yellowed with age and use. It smelled vaguely of thornapple smoke and something slightly sour, like old wine. The old man must’ve spilled honeymead on it at some point, she reckoned.
The druid’s writing was small but neat, writing in cursive like how old folks were prone to. There were anatomical sketches of animals and people alike. Ducks were prevalent, drawn asleep with their beaks tucked under their wings, suspended in snapshots of flight… Along one margin, Halsin had drawn a mother duck being followed by downy chicks in a row.
The man likes ducks. That’s actually kind of sweet.
There was even a duck feather being used as a bookmark and a quill; one half of the feather a downy, dusty brown, and the other side a sharp black that shimmered in blueish green where the light hit it.
She turned to reading the book but ignored the earlier writings out of respect for his privacy, only perusing the later entries and reading them fully.
The last page was especially interesting:

Extraordinary happenings. While meditating in the forest, Nettie and I were ambushed by a pack of goblins, led by a drow. We had no choice but to defend ourselves.

But that is not the extraordinary—or rather disturbing—part. On the drow's death, a parasitic creature emerged from the corpse and attempted to escape. I managed to capture it, and have the host's cadaver here in my study. I've told no one of my fears. Nettie suspects, but knows better than to ask.

I will investigate further before informing the others. Kagha will demand answers I don't yet have. I had better record any further findings in a separate volume and keep them upon my person, lest prying eyes jump to the wrong conclusions.

Alright. At this point, the old druid had merely seemed perplexed by what had occurred… But he’d shown more—and entirely valid—concerns for Kagha than the drow or the tadpole.
But Halsin had not been as diligent as he’d prescribed. A note fell out of the folds of the book. Crumpled around the edges, as though the old man had shoved it between the pages in a hurry. His research. Upon opening it, Tav winced a bit at the detail with which the old druid had dissected that drow in Nettie’s study, and the illithid tadpole he’d extracted from the dead.
Here, his otherwise neat writings became hastily scribbled and disorganised as his worries had grown; far from all was even legible:

The parasite was nestled deep in the brain matter... illithid, undoubtedly. Yet the host seemed unaware while alive?

... no visible signs of ceremorphosis on the cadaver. Most strange.

Altered???

The way that last word was underlined so hard that he’d all but pierced the paper… Halsin clearly suspected it strongly. No wonder he’d been so keen to investigate further.
The hypothesis was… compelling. Altered tadpoles would fall in line with Gale’s own ponderings. Between him and the old druid, Tav was certain they could crack the mystery of why none of the infected from the nautiloid had turned into mind flayers yet—which really ought to have transpired long ago, by Gale’s timeline. Besides, Gale struck her as the type who’d enjoy smoking a pipe with an old geezer as they pondered the mysteries of the universe.

Curious, Tav opened the small birch bark container with the old druid’s smoking tinder inside. Sweet. Earthy. A sharp twang of tobacco, something aromatic like incense and… the unmistakable musky scent of cured wyssin leaves.
Tav chuckled and closed the container with care, like she’d just found her father’s hidden booze stash. Seemed the old man liked to party in some leisurely fashion. No wonder the old man kept his spiced honeycomb with his pipe.
She sure hoped he didn’t smoke this stuff during his more clinical pastimes, lest his analyses veer way off the mark. So this Master Halsin… the old elf was knowledgeable and educated, organised, liked to prepare ahead of time, averse to violence, had a sweet tooth and a penchant for waterfowl. Oh, and smoking himself into a stupor, obviously.

She took her findings to her own group of misfits. Upon sharing what the druid knew, they all agreed Halsin was their best bet for salvation, and Tav left the healing herbs and salves to Shadowheart. Either for safekeeping or practical use if they ran into more trouble.
They hurried down the trail after Aradin as he led the way to the old temple. He didn’t turn back to look at them once, merely kept his eyes on the path ahead. When he needed to communicate something, he did so via Remira or Barth, who scowled at them all.
Sucks to suck, Tav figured. She had half a mind to ignore Zevlor’s recommendation and let Arka be Aradin’s bodyguard after all.

Aradin was leading them to a small peak between cliffs and boulders and pointed across the river running between them and the temple. Gale walked by Tav's side, his knuckles brushing against hers.
“Are you feeling nervous, Commander Lunet?” he asked in a low voice. “The big fight is coming up.”
“Can’t lie, I’m kind of bricking it,” she answered as she ducked under a low branch, “All these people looking to me to fix this? There’s a dozen or so of us, and who knows how many of the goblins. Are there worgs? Ogres?”
“We will divide and conquer,” Gale assured her.
“The last time we divided, I was nearly eaten by an ogre and skewered by the Blade Of Frontiers!”
“This time, we will be the ones attacking them,” Gale smiled, “We have the element of surprise.”
“And we’re prettier,” Tav pointed out, and Gale’s smile lit up the shadows under the canopy, watching her with that glitter in his eyes, like sparkling seas.

“What are sharp arrows to sharp looks?” he agreed good-humouredly. “I have no fear. You’ve led us true thus far.”
His faith in her was certainly reassuring. But all those smiles dancing across Gale’s lips had Tav’s heart nearly stalling in her chest. So tall, so sunkissed… And the way he knitted his fingers behind his back that merely emphasised how narrow his hips were in contrast to those broad shoulders and the smattering of chest hair she could fathom at the enckline of his gambeson.

“... Do you need another kiss? To like… charge up for the battle ahead?” Tav asked cautiously, hoping she didn’t sound too desperate.
Gale blushed. “Oh, I… I wouldn’t call that a kiss, not by the exact definition. There is actually a precedent for it, known as a Heimlish Arcana Transference Event—”
Tav chortled. “A… H.A.T.E-kiss?”
“Gustaviana,” Gale said like an annoyed father, but Tav was already spinning the thread from her own joke, cackling like a hag.
“Sheesh, if that was a hate-kiss, I tremble to see how you kiss someone you actually like.”
“Come here then,” Gale mumbled, taking Tav’s hand and leading her behind a tree. He pressed her back to the wide trunk, nailing her between it and his body, kissing her so deeply her knees buckled.
Her hands bundled up in the front of his tunic so hard, she’d be leaving star-shaped wrinkles in it, but she didn’t care. The kiss made her whole body feel like liquid toffee. When Gale’s hips pressed against hers, she nearly whimpered.
“How’s that for ‘out-of-practice?’” he whispered when he let go, his breath hot and fast against her cheek.

“... I might require further convincing,” she whispered back, braiding her fingers into his hair while her other hand draped across the back of his shoulders.
As he tasted her mouth, he reached his mind out to hers. He wanted to show her his thoughts of her.
How good she felt under his hands, how beautiful she was when pleasure played across her face, how good her lips tasted, how soft her tongue was, how Gale marvelled at her touch and how it soothed and riled him after a whole year of not touching anyone. There were memories scattered in there too. That first night, when Tav had bathed in the Chionthar, returning to the fire with her damp tunic glued to her skin, revealing every curve under it. Her blouse ripped and the soft lines between her breasts. How he’d instantly imagined cupping her breasts with his hands, his mouth tracing down that line. There was a tint of frantic desperation to his longing, and Tav drank it up.
Even with his tongue in her mouth, he showed her how he imagined putting that tongue to use between her legs, wondering how she might taste, how she might sing for him as he strummed her sex with his mouth, and Tav nearly slid to the ground at the vision.

Gale’s hands travelled down her sides until he reached her hips, but when Tav moved to wrap her legs around his, her tail around his thigh, he pulled away.
“Wait,” he gasped, clutching his chest. “Damn…” He backed up, hunched over and breathing hard, grunting in pain.
Tav swore to herself as her blood cooled again, but when she reached to help him, she felt that icy, necrotic chill in the air around him again. Gale kept her at bay. “I’ll be alright. I’ve just… been pushing the boundaries of my composure too much.”
He dragged his fingers through his hair, breathing deep through his nose to comport himself. But when he turned to look at Tav, his pupils were blown so wide his irises appeared almost black.
“You are… a breathtaking woman,” he mumbled, “And your touch could be my undoing.”
Tav, breathing hard herself, laughed low and she heard how sultry it sounded. Gale’s eyes then flooded with sorrow, and he hastened away.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”