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Chapter Text

—

Bhaal who walks in bloodied tread,

Whose name is carved in dying breath—

Guide my hand where shadows spread,

And sanctify this holy death.

— A Bhaalist Prayer

Chapter One: The Chosen

- Cal   -

This story truly began hidden in the dimly lit corners of the Elfsong Tavern. The glass of Chultan Firebrew in my hand had long since gone warm. My body was tired, my mind a haze. The Urge was awake and loud, pulling at my hair and screaming in my ears, but—despite my love of it—this was not a time for killing. 

It was a time for patience. 

For observation.

I watched as the little girl chose her mark. He was an older man, human, with wiry grey hair swept across the top of his head. Heavy set. Lonely. Just what she was looking for. “Uncle! There you are!” She cried loudly as she approached him. 

The man, who was not her uncle, was already drunk and worse for wear. He regarded her with glassy eyes, a smile spreading across his features. He replied to her, but his voice was lost amid the boisterous crowd and the bardic music that lulled over it. 

I had been watching her at this little game for days now. Without her knowing, I had been following her movements through taverns, hostels, and alleyways. 

She fascinated me; so much malice bound up into one little corpse-to-be. 

She sat across from the man, hefting herself up onto the tall barstool. She was a half-elf, maybe ten years old, with her long red hair braided down behind her back into a single length. They chatted, and he laughed and called her sweetheart. Her demeanor was almost flirtatious with him. 

Then, he made the mistake that would be his undoing, turning his head and ordering another two pints of ale with a motion to the bartender. 

This is when she did it. 

She leaned over and oh so casually slipped a quarter ounce of Crawler Mucus into his tankard. When he turned back, her arm was still extended, and she pretended to be pulling a stray hair off of his coat with a grin.

It was so smooth that, had I not known her nature, I would not have seen it. The man laughed again, taking a deep slug of the drink. Smiling and talking, thinking he had found a little prize for his night. 

After a few moments, he gasped loudly, and his head fell to the table with a thunk .

Paralyzed.

Covering the noise, the girl laughed, smacking the table with a flat hand like he had told a funny joke. “You’re drunk, uncle!” She exclaimed, reaching over to punch him in the shoulder playfully. 

She was testing the effects of the poison. 

His body twitched just slightly as the paralysis turned to pain… then death. From my angle, I could see the way his jaw slacked, the final spark of light before the flame was extinguished in his placid eyes. 

The little girl never let her smile fall as she pretended to giggle and press on his shoulder. Her other hand snaked its way into his garb, fishing for gold and trinkets. 

She was enjoying herself. 

She was perfect. 

As she looted the corpse, I began to imagine all my uses for her: sending her into orphanages for a holy slaughter, gifting her to nobles under untoward pretenses only for her to rid them of their lives, sending her to the other temples under the guise of refuge so she could maim amid their prayers. 

I would corrupt her into the perfect weapon. 

She would be all the things Orin once was. 

Unassuming. Fresh.

A divine terror.

One day, she would die at my hand, that same smile burned—

“Recruiting children , are we?” A man’s voice said, calling me from my thoughts, “Or are we simply picking our next innocent victim, oh Chosen of Bhaal?” 

I looked up and saw him for the first time. How long he was watching me, I was unsure. He was human, with dark, messy hair and a round face. Simple-looking, except for his clothes, which were dark and gaudy in a way that demanded attention. 

I didn’t want attention.

Without invitation, he slid into the seat across from mine, lacing his fingers beneath his chin and leaning forward confidentially. “You know, if you’re so desperate for recruits, I’d recommend murdering fewer people who arrive on your doorstep.”

As he sat, the girl claimed the last of her spoils, casually leaving the tavern without another word. The room continued with its merriment, the dead man unnoticed slumped in his chair. They would think him sleeping it off. It could be hours before anyone knew what truly happened. 

I’d see the girl again.
I’d speak to her eventually. 

She would become my blade.

For now, I settled back in my seat, examining the man before me. 

For someone who seemed to know my nature, he was remarkably unafraid. I scoured my mind trying to place his face to a name. 

“You must be Enver Gortash,” I said after a moment. 

He grinned. “I am.”

Gortash . The latest leader of the Banites. 

It was the only name that made sense. 

Of late, some of my most faithful parishioners had gone missing. The people of my church knew better than to defect, and those who were caught amid their beautiful acts were sworn to self-sacrifice upon capture. But… I had heard no such reports of my flock going astray or their bodies being found in the prisons. What I had heard was of the rise of the temple of Bane, a quiet revival humming its haunting song through the streets of Baldur’s Gate. 

How he knew my face was still a mystery to me, but I had my assumptions about what had happened to my kin. I figured if anyone was taking my worshipers in the dead of night, it must be the Black Hand. 

“Bold of you to sit at my table,” I said, “Given the poisoned history between your god and mine.” 

“Ah, but what is a bit of boldness between the Chosen of gods.” 

Slit his throat. Crush his corpse into dust. Make him eat his own innards. Bathe in his blood! The Urge hissed. I shook my head in a stilted motion, knocking the thought loose. 

He grinned at the gesture. “And our boldness doesn’t seem to be in short supply. I’m surprised to see someone of your standing out and about among the people.” 

I leaned back from the table, crossing my arms over my chest. “The people of Baldur’s Gate do not know my face or talent. So long as I remain a shadow, I am hidden among them.”

“Oh certainly, though, I will say Drow are rare, even in these parts. I imagine you garner more glances than you realize.”

He was right, of course, but I had never much cared about wandering eyes. For any that watched too closely, I’d simply pluck them from their skulls.

In fact, I was considering it now, with Gortash across from me. He had a glass of mead in his hand, his dark eyes glimmering in the candlelight. There was a smugness to him that reminded me of a devil watching its prey. I wanted to rip out his eyes and eat them, pop them like grapes.  “Given that you know who I am, I assume there is a reason you’re here, disrupting my evening.”

“Well, yes, of course. Straight to the point.” Gortash responded, he clapped his hands together, “I have a proposition for you, one I think you’ll be pleased to hear.”

I didn’t respond. He studied me, no doubt wondering what I thought of him. Mostly, I was imagining how handsome he’d look as a corpse—his innards strung up around the bar like party streamers. Of course, if I did need to kill him so publicly, it would be quick, quiet, like the man at the table in the corner. The rest was just fantasy.

“I’ve been watching you, you know,” he said, voice casual but careful. “I had heard whispers of the cult of Bhaal my whole life, but it wasn’t until recently that I started paying attention enough to see it… the beautiful, manicured chaos that you have created. You have the Flaming Fist believing that they have a serial killer or two amid the common folk, blind to the network of slaughterists who kill for fun in Bhaal’s name. You hide right under their noses, enacting the will of your god. I’m curious how far your reach goes beyond the city, what your numbers are within.”

I took a sip of the spirit I had been holding in my hand. “I thought Bane despised chaos.”

“Of course. I don’t trust chaos, but I can respect what you’ve done with it. You’ve made it into an art form, really.” He continued, “You are a blade in the darkness, a dagger held by fraying string waiting to break free and slice through the fragile peace of this city. However, I have a vision for the future that does not have room for such unpredictability. So, I come to you. As a… friend. A partner.”

“And what is your vision exactly?”
“Control. Power. Tyranny.” He grinned that smarmy grin, “I have a great respect for your work, you see. You sew fear, you act on hate–things my lord would be so proud to see. But, the random killings, the cultic bloodletting, the ‘unpredictable motives’, I find it all… deeply inconvenient.” He paused, pursing his lips. He swirled around the glass of mead, his eyes watching the amber liquid slosh. “At the same time, I think to eliminate you would be such a waste. I dare not bring the wrath of Bhaal. Killing you could destabilize the city or rally your remaining cultists into a frenzy.” He shakes his head. “No, to make an enemy of your kind would be witless. So, I figure… if I cannot stop the blade, then perhaps I can aim it. Compliment its edge.” 

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“You mean to kill the world. I mean to rule it. At their face, they seem to be ambitions destined to clash, but I think they could go hand in hand.” He said, “I intend to seize control of Baldur’s Gate, maybe of all of Faerun, and I think you’re just the person to help me do it. It would be the very rise of Bhaal. Imagine it, being able to kill in broad daylight, unrestricted, bold and open like your lord intended!’

‘My simple plan is this: I could feed you information, all the names and places. A list of those whose deaths would shake this city—and none would question why they fell. Let your cultists rise. Let people whisper of Bhaal in their prayers, their fear growing like wildfire as the Murder Lord’s name echoes through the city, and amid that chaos… I will thrive as the very hand of justice and order. We will sweep the ranks, you and I, and come out of the flames as kings.” 

I studied him. 

He was a mere human. Short-lived. Borrowed time in a brittle frame. Born of nothing, hungry for power. It would be pathetic if it were not so bold. Someone so puny and squishable, daring to look upon a table of murderous gods and decide he deserved a seat—perhaps at its head. It was remarkable in a way, if not narcissistic.

I didn’t trust him, but at that moment, I respected him. 

“Bhaal demands death. Bane demands order.” he continued, “You were made to slaughter. I was made to lead. As glorious as your little network of murder is, it could be better. Blood on a massive scale. I could protect you and lead you to a new era of carnage. Together, we could build a city so feared even the gods would tremble to enter.”

It was not often that outsiders dared to approach me. Especially not ones who knew what I was capable of. I didn’t trust him or his ambitions. His path was meaningless to me, but there was a spark in me at the idea of being able to slaughter the whole city. I’d kill all who did not believe and then kill those who did in my father’s name. 

Amid that glorious death, Gortash would die with them. 

When the silence stretched on a bit too long, he smirked, knowing he had planted the seed. Now, all that was left to do was water it and wait for the idea to grow. 

“Think on it, sometime when you’re not… sulking and observing children from the dark. You know where to find me.” He stood from the table, downing the rest of the mead. “And in the meantime, I promise to stop pruning your weeds.” He said, meaning killing off and kidnapping the members of my church. 

He walked away, leaving me once again to my thoughts. I looked at the dead man and thought about the girl. Like I intended to sharpen her skills, perhaps he could sharpen mine. A city in disorder. Death on a massive scale. It was more than appealing. 

After all, he was right.

He’d planted the seed. I would water it in blood.

We were Chosen. Bold.

And it was time the city knew it.

Chapter Text

The Five Sacred Tenets of Bhaal:

Kill swiftly. Delay is hesitation. Hesitation is heresy.

Kill cleanly. The beauty of murder lies in its precision.

Kill often. Let your blade rust not for want of courage.

Kill without shame. Let the world see and tremble.

Kill in his name. Always. Always. Always.

Chapter Two: The Banite

- Cal   -

Two Months Later

—

I laid across Gortash’s desk while I waited, using a stack of scrolls as a pillow, one of my feet propped up between his trinkets with my other ankle crossed over my knee. I tossed the severed hand up in the air, catching it each time it came back down to me, wondering exactly what its previous owner had done to slight the Chosen of Bane. 

I didn’t much care. 

I was reluctant at first to trust Gortash. The Cult of Bhaal had waxed and waned like a moon in the last few centuries, coming into relevance and out again as my father saw fit. For now, I wanted my church to remain the little secret it had been for the last decade. I didn’t want the Flaming Fist marching to my doorstep when I was unprepared for them. Of course, if they did, we’d slaughter them in kind, but I’d rather get to them on my terms. The thought that a single man had not only noticed our existence but then marked me as our leader was… alarming.

Of course, Gortash did spend a lot of time kidnapping people he thought to be Bhaalists, torturing them until he got the information he wanted: an approximate location of the temple and a good description of me. He didn’t even know my name until the third time we met, and ever since he learned it, he hadn’t stopped saying it. 

Calrissian, 

Oh, Cal,

Calrissssian. 

I regretted telling him. 

That being said, the partnership he had proposed had been working in my favor. Though Bane was a god barely tolerated by most folk, he was still much more tolerated than the Lord of Murder. The church of Bhaal had numbers, but the church of Bane had public access, which meant more resources and more legitimacy. Although Gortash himself tended to keep his endeavors separate from Bane’s name in the public eye, he opened the temple doors to me and welcomed me inside. 

Gortash had judges, nobles, and members of the city watch in his pocket, which meant my people were getting away with… well… murder . The Banites even collected taxes and protection fees, money which Gortash had started to share with me. 

Where I was keen to bleed the rich, he was keen to profit from them. 

And that wasn’t the only way he made a profit or asserted his power. Gortash had his hands in all sorts of things—weapons trading, black market deals, and political influence. He had even branded himself as a ‘military advisor’ though the man had never seen a day of war. Recently, he had been talking a lot about automotons.
He was as cunning and quick-witted as an archdevil, and he had many people fooled into thinking he was a good man. 

Even if I often thought I didn’t need his help, I found him… interesting. 

I’d kill him whenever I was ready to and think nothing more of him, but for the time… I enjoyed the little missions he’d send me on, the little deals we’d work with one another, and at times, even his company. 

He was not put off by much, and he was the only person I consistently spoke with who wasn’t of my faith.

The hand was beginning to go stiff as I caught it again, rigor mortis setting in after a few hours of being detached. I massaged it, cracking the little bones back and forth within. I was beginning to wonder if Gortash was even coming today or if I was wasting time better spent killing, but as I was on the cusp of deciding to leave, I heard the door open. 

“Step back, soldier.” A woman’s voice said gruffly, “Who’re you?” I looked up from my spot and saw a tall, muscular teifling walking through the doorway with Gortash in tow. The surprise was evident on her face, she was not expecting to see a drow draped in black cloaks lounging on her master’s desk. 

She held out an axe before her, aimed at me like she meant to fight, but Gortash put his hand on it. 

“Easy, Karlach. This is a friend, though… an unexpected one.” He said, and he motioned to the door, “You may leave us. I assure you, your services will not be needed.” 

She gave me a wary eye before nodding in deference to him. “Righto.” She stowed her axe, watching as Gortash wandered past her into the room at total ease. “I’ll be back at first light, then. Goodnight, boss.”

He nodded, waving her off as she disappeared through the door, closing it behind her with a soft click. “I’ll have you know my desk is not your bedroll.” 

 “I’ve been waiting,” I replied, 

“Yes, well, you can wait while standing, can you not?” 

Cut his throat . 

I swung my feet off the edge, sitting upright. I tossed him the hand. “Dmitri Hhune.” 

“Ah, wonderful.” He said, holding it by the finger like it was something distasteful. He put it down on the desk and sat in the chair, looking up at me. “Was that all?”

I said nothing, simply watching him. 

He leaned back in the chair. “You usually send one of your little lackeys for things like this, dearest Calrissian. Tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure of Bhaal’s Chosen, for it must be more than delivering a simple package.” 

“Do I need a reason?” 

“No,” he responded quickly, “but you always seem to. Though, I do love when you come in person. It’s so much nicer to speak to you directly then through your agents. And I do so detest when you send Orin in your stead.” 

I slid off the desk and circled it slowly, dragging my fingers across the smooth surface. “You promised a kingdom, Gortash. A world reshaped in blood and death. And yet… you still sit in your little office playing politics. I’m growing restless.”

“You’re bored,” he said.

“I’m ready.”

He pursed his lips. “These things take time. Have I not held up my end of the bargain? Giving you lists upon lists of those you can kill?”
“You have hampered me from killing those I please in the moments I please to. Always thinking back to your lists and gauging how much attention is too much. You promised me blood in the streets, and I want it. Now.” 

“In time. The rise of Bhaal will come, I assure you. You will sew your chaos, and I will emerge as the hero, come to save Baldur’s Gate from it all. Then when I have my power, you will have yours as well. You can slaughter to your heart's content within these city walls and not a single person will stand in your path. You have my word, but I need time.” 

Kill him. He wants blood? Give it to him.  

“I’ve nothing more to say on the matter. If you want to sit and drink, I’m happy to entertain you, little spawn, but if you’ve come here looking for me to permiss you to unleash unholy wrath upon the land, the answer is no. Not today.” 

“I could do it any time I want.”

“You certainly could.” He agreed, “But you know, without me, it will land you nowhere, except in a showdown with whatever adventurers show up to stop you. You want to kill the world, we must dominate it first. You cannot do it without me, and you know it.” 

The tyrant did have a point, even if it was a flimsy one. 

Though I had come here fresh from the kill, I could feel my Urge winding up again, jostling around inside my head. Clawing. Chewing. 

Patience was not its strong suit. 

“Do you still not trust me?” He scoffed, “It should be I who is so wary, Chosen of Bhaal. You’ve seen all my intimate spaces: this office, my home, even the tunnels where I conduct my businesses. Yet, you’ve given me near nothing of the sort. I don’t even know where the Temple of Bhaal is.”

“You need not know where it is.”

“I am getting tired of communicating with you via drop spots, Orin and birds, Calrissian.” He snapped, “When I want to call upon you, I’d rather have direct access.” 

“I’m not your dog.”

“Aren’t you? For you seem to be a real hand at fetch .” He tossed the limp-fingered hand off of his desk and toward me.

It pissed me off, him thinking that I was his pet, like I owed him anything. I was not some dog playing fetch, I was the Chosen Son of Bhaal. The bringer of death. Harbinger of the end. The slayer. The master. The final king. 

Kill him. Kill him. Kill him!

I don’t remember leaping over the desk at him. 

The next thing I recall, he is pinned down beneath me, my blade pressed to his throat, my hand holding his hair with a painful grip. The chair from behind the desk was broken, scraps of wood beneath us. There was a drop of blood beneath Gortash’s eye.

Rip out his innards and bathe in his blood! Slaughter the nonbeliever in our father’s holy name!

He tried to punch me, but a burst of cold magic zapped his fist. He recoiled. I settled on his hips. 

“ Enough , Calrissian.” He said firmly, but I wasn’t all there. I was coming out of a fog I didn’t know I had been in. I didn’t know how long I had blinked away, though it only felt like a moment. My breathing came ragged and sharp. My knife hand twitched like it had its own pulse. “ Cal .”

Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill—

He leaned up suddenly, bringing his face to mine and kissed me, forcefully, bitingly. His hand planted first on the back of my neck, pulling me into him, then rested against my cheek.
The knife clattered out of my fist and I was awake again. 

I didn’t kiss him back, my jaw slack against his palm. When he pulled away, his eyes flicked between mine. 

“Well, welcome back.”

“...what was that?”

“An act of self-preservation.”

I swallowed.

“Are you keen to get off me now, or did you intend to sit on the floor all night?” He quipped. 

He was unshakable, I had to give him that. 

I sat up slowly. We’d had quite the tussle, it seemed, though in my memory, it goes directly from him insulting me to us being on the floor. 

The room was in a state of disarray it hadn’t been seemingly moments before; books on the floor, furniture broken. I more than flew over the desk at him. I must have hit him with an eldritch blast and knocked him prone, scattering papers and breaking the chair in the process. There was a long scrape across his desk where my knife had carved new lines in the wood. 

The blood on his face was mine, dripping from my nose, but I couldn’t remember what had happened to me. He sat up on his elbows, looking up at me, his breath still trying to settle. 

I picked up the knife and put it to his throat again, this time with a great deal more control. “Put my mind at ease, Gortash. What is the next step in this plan of yours?” 

He glared at me, defensive and angry, considering his options. I must have bested him in the scuffle, for he did not even attempt to push me away. He was a man of the mind, I was one of body and magic. 

“That girl, the tiefling, Karlach. I’ve sold her soul to Zariel. In exchange, I will be granted power and knowledge that will move this endeavor forward. I will bring down Archduke Ravengard, piece by piece, until the people of this city demand I stand where he once stood.”

“ Knowledge .”

“Yes,” he said, “But I can say no more due to the nature of the deal. I am bound to silence by it.” 

He was lying, at least about being bound to silence. I pressed the blade a little sharper, looking into his eyes. “And what does Zariel want with the girl?” I asked. “Or is that part of your ‘silence clause’ too?”

He sneered. “Do you want me to kiss you again?” He hissed, “Get off of me.”

I put my hand on the back of his head, “I am not your puppet, nor your toy, Gortash,” I breathed, “From now on, you don’t make plans, I am the plan . You will run everything you seek to do by me before you do it. I will no longer sit in the darkness awaiting your calls. I am the blade on the fraying string, and you make it fray ever faster. You will treat me like an equal or die at my hand, am I understood?” 

His jaw set. His anger boiling. 

“Fine.” He said.

“Good.” I stood, holding out a hand to him to help him off the floor. He took it, standing up in front of me, closer than he needed to be. 

“But hear me, you will keep your… urges in check. If you want to be my equal, it will mean standing at my side. I cannot bring you into the fold if you mean to slaughter everyone in the room.” 

“I manage just fine on my own.” 

“ Clearly. ” He said, voice dripping in sarcasm as he looked about the room. 

Kill him. Now. Before— I jerked my head to the side, silencing the Urge and trying to keep calm. He watched me, then straightened out his clothes. 

“I’ve had enough of you. Go. We will speak in the morning.” 

—

That night in my meditations I let my mind wander to Gortash. To our meeting. To his scheming. To his anger. To the way his lips felt upon mine. 

It wasn’t love or respect that had burned the moment into my memory. It was the warmth of it. I hadn’t kissed a living thing in years, nor had any want to. 

It didn’t matter, regardless. Things were getting volatile with him, and I knew I would break sooner than later. I had all but made up my mind to kill him when I felt a familiar pull. A calling. 

I opened my eyes and saw I was no longer in my room at the temple but rather lying on the stone floor in front of my father, somewhere in the Outer Plane. He sat upon his throne of bodies and bones, drinking from a horn of blood. His blood-slick throne groaned beneath his shifting weight. The stench of rot was comforting. Homey, even.

I sat up, hugging my knee to my chest. 

When he spoke, it was not a voice like that which you’d hear, but rather a command reverberating in my skull. 

You will go to the Chosen of Bane and bring him to the House of Wonder. You are to open the path for the child of tyranny and eradicate the children of Gond. For this is my will, and you are my Chosen, you will obey.

Chapter Text

“The Banite is not friend, but function. A leash-maker. A wielder of the blade, never the blade itself. Trust not his smile, for he would see your chaos caged and your knife dulled. But use him. Let him build the throne from which you will carve His name. For though Bane commands order, even order bleeds.”

-The Crimson Doctrine, Book of Oaths, Verse XVII

Chapter Three: The House of Wonders

-Cal-

“If you keep showing up like this unannounced, I may start to believe you’ve taken a liking to me,” Gortash said. He didn’t rise when I entered—he just smirked, sipping something dark from a silver chalice. He was sitting at the end of his long dining room table in nothing but a robe, more of his chest exposed than hidden. 

Karlach had ushered me in, right through the front door, recognising me from the night before. Though she had only seen me at a distance then, and this morning half of my face was covered, she said I knew who I was based on… ‘vibes’ . 

Gortash’s staff had laid out a grand breakfast for the man. His home in the upper city was opulent, though smaller than some of the more castle-like structures in the far reaches. It spoke more of his aspirations than his accomplishments, with high ceilings and so many useless extra rooms. 

I approached, sitting down in one chair and putting my feet up on another. 

He looked annoyed at the simple gesture, but I didn’t really care. 

“I don’t suppose you came here to apologise for last night then,” Gortash said. 

“I came to see what it is you intend to steal from the High House of Wonders.” 

He paused for a moment, cocking his head to the side and squinting at me. He took up his napkin and dabbed at the corners of his mouth, considering his response before barking out, “Leave us.” 

His little ‘staff’ all scurried away like rats into the walls, disappearing out of the room this way and that. He leaned back in his chair, still eyeing me. 

“I’ve been curious, do you eat?” he asked,

I nodded.

“Ah, so the great Bhaalspawn is mortal after all. How adorably pedestrian.” 

He motioned to the table. I took up a biscuit from a tray, pulling it apart in my hands, letting the crumbling bits pile up on the finished wood. He folded his hands in front of him, watching as I popped a warm piece into my mouth. 

“How do you know about that? My little idea.” His tone was curious. 

“I know a lot of things you think I don’t,” I replied, intent on putting him on edge. It worked; I could see the glare in his eye fix on me, sizing me up, deciding how to answer. “I told you, Gortash, I no longer intend to hide amid your shadows. What do you want at the House of Wonders?” 

He scoffed, “The House of Wonders, with its mirrored walls and echoing halls of failed inventions. A museum of hubris. Perfect place for a heist.” He took up the chalice before him, bringing it to his lips. He took a deep swig of drink, sucking his teeth. “Zariel’s forces will come to collect the tiefling today. The knowledge she has promised me… is of an engine. An infernal engine, one that I intend to use in my automatons. She will put the prototype into Karlach and turn her into the perfect soldier. I intend to create something more powerful, something unlike the world has ever seen, a sort of… living automaton. In the vaults of the House of Wonder is a schematic, not dissimilar from my vision, but something that was never built out of fear for what it could become. I intend to take those schematics and the pieces required to finish my final product.”

“What makes your invention so different from other constructs? Are they not simply machines with magic?”

“Yes, and no.” He explained, “I’ll give them eyes that never close, ears that hear through walls. They’ll walk the streets ever-vigilant, and no one will dare whisper rebellion under their breath. My machines won’t bleed, won’t sleep, and won’t forget. And I will build them all so they answer only to my command, and thus… inject myself into the upper echelon.” He grinned, “They will call me ‘Lord Enver Gortash’, then soon, ‘Archduke’.” 

I popped another piece of biscuit into my mouth, “Mm.”

His smile faltered. “You seem unimpressed. I assure you—”
“It is of personal interest to me to slay the Gondians who run the House of Wonders.” 

His smirk returned. “Oh, is it now? And may I ask why?”
“My father came to me and told me to slay them, so I will. Need I have more of a reason?” 

“I just think it’s convenient timing is all.” Gortash replied, “I need a distraction to get to the vault, and you want to have a slaughterfest of the people who stand in my way.”

“The gods work in mysterious ways,” I said. 

“Yes, I suppose they do…” he mused. “Well, I already have a man on the inside—an archivist. Nervous sort. Devout. Easy to crack. He will hold the door, let the dragon into the king’s castle, so to speak.” He stood, finally, and walked to a side table, pulling out a scroll case. “He’s given me near everything. Schematics of the building. Roster of who’ll be present. Ceremonial security is lighter today—some holy observance, or whatever superstition they follow.”

He handed it to me, his fingers lingering just longer than they needed to, brushing softly against the back of my hand. 

He scoffed, “You’ve dried blood in your nail beds. Charming . Do you bathe, or do you simply hope that the filth will come off somewhere between the rain and the grave digging?” 

“Your plan is to simply walk in and take what you need, then?”

He blinked. “Yes, though I hadn’t fine-tuned the details. I was going to call upon my church to cause some sort of distraction, a fire outside or something of the sort… but your cultists are a much better diversion, I’d say. I assume you don’t need help with the killing.”

“No, just the timing. There will be no one left when I’ve finished, but I’m not keen on fighting off the Fist if someone raises the alarm.” 

“Ah, yes, I often forget, your kin are murderers, not soldiers .” He giggles to himself, wandering back over toward his seat. “What did you have in mind?”

“Tell your archivist to have the door open as soon as the sun drops below the horizon.”

“And then?”

“I’d recommend entering after the screaming begins.”

—

Some Hours Later

– Gortash –

Well, the screaming didn’t take long. 

We waited in the darkness outside the House of Wonders until the stillness of dusk had shattered, replaced by a cacophony of terror. As soon as the first voice sounded the alarm, we made our way down the cobblestone path and in through the side door of the marvelously decaying building—its clockwork trim gleaming beside crumbling columns. 

The High House of Wonder was a temple to the god Gond, the Lord of All Smiths. Inhabited by witless gnomes, I didn’t think it would be much of a battle to get in. After all, the Black Hand had been catching the little Gondians here and there and stowing them away on my behalf these last few months. 

I had a rough idea of how I wanted my automatons built, but I would need their expert hands to actually build them. If Bhaal’s chosen was under the impression he was killing all the Gondians left in the city this night… I wouldn’t be the one to tell him he was wrong. I wasn’t about to question why he wanted them dead, nor was I about to volunteer that I had another twelve of them squirreled away for future use. 

There were some things he simply didn’t need to know. Not yet, anyway.

We crept into the building, met by Brimorn Pebbledust, my little archivist. He was already trembling when we entered. “You said you’d come alone!” he screeched.

I could hear the chaos in the building, echoing through the halls and rolling over the rounded ceilings. A whole chorus of carnage: incantations being shouted, steel meeting steel, the occasional sound of a blast. 

Black Gauntlet Numia stepped past me, putting her blade under the little wretch’s chin. “Vault. Move it.” She barked. 

I brought only two of my most trusted followers, Black Gauntlets Greyward and Numia. Though I had brought Calrissian to the temple a while ago, I had not told many of my flock about my new association with the Chosen of Bhaal, but after tonight, there would be no hiding it from them anymore. 

We were climbing into a new era, and I intended for the Bhaalists to be our ladder. That being said, Cal didn’t exactly fit in among the strictly regulated ranks of my people. He was pragmatic, I’d give him that, but there were many things about him I found off-putting. 

Bhaal’s Chosen was often flecked with blood, across his dark clothes, staining the gray-blue of his skin, though you had to be close enough to see it. There was also the way that he twitched and jerked, his head snapping to one side or tilting back sharply, like a puppet with strings too taut. Most of all was the smell, sharp and coppery with a hint of rot. I had this image of him in my mind like he was a happy pig rolling around in viscera all night.

Today, however, his scent was mild, his mind settled, his body calm. 

He was in rare form.

The little gnome cried as he led us further into his home. To the left was the temple’s main area where they’d gather for rites and rituals, to the right, their workshops where they came up with new inventions and ideas. Most of the fighting was happening in the church or above it, in the dormitories. 

The Bhaalists had descended on the House of Gond like flesh-wrought gnolls on hapless adventurers. Horrifying, yet somehow glorious. Amid all the chaos, I could somehow hear Orin’s voice screeching above the rest. 

Gods, I hated her. 

Bhaal’s children were wild by nature, but any control Cal seemed to exercise, she was incapable of. Worse, she treated it all like sport. Blood for amusement. Screams as applause. As the other Bhaalists stalked through the dormitory like silent shadows, trying to kill the unsuspecting Gondians before they were noticed, she shrieked and cackled through her kills, waking the hells themselves. 

Perhaps Bhaal preferred it this way, blood and laughter in equal parts, but given Calrissian’s devotion to his lord, I doubted it. Cal killed swiftly, mercilessly, in droves. For him, it was about numbers rather than gratification. 

Cal’s followers regarded him like a god, all save for Orin, who regarded him like a worm. I did not know, then, the relationship between them, but he did not seem to return her malice. He treated her like a rival maybe, but more often like a sister, and his second hand—a hand she seemed eager to stab him with. 

The amount of times he had sent her to me in his stead these last few months, I can’t be sure of. Only a few of the times that she presented herself to me was I able to figure out the changeling’s ruse. She often pretended to be Cal himself, trying to leverage answers out of me to play into some made-up conspiracy in her head that her brother meant to defy their father or something akin.

The little gnome reached a door at the end of the long hall, fishing around in his pocket for a key. He was shaking so much that he couldn’t get the damn thing out. Numia, impatient, pushed him up against the door and got the key herself, unlocking one of the final barriers between me and my prize. 

Greyward pushed the doors open, and inside, we could see the shrine of Gond in all its wonder. In the very center of the room was a large statue of the god, flanked by workbenches and materials. All around the room, shown in nearly museum-like displays, were Gondian inventions, each with a little plaque beneath that explained what the item was, who it had been built by, and so on. 

Past all of this was a large steel door. Its surface was a network of ornate embossments, depicting some story of Gond. The metal vibrated gently, glowing ever so slightly with enchantment. “Through there,” Brimorn said. “But like I told you, I don’t know how to open it.” 

“No matter. You’ve served your purpose.” I said, 

“You’ll let them go then? My family? Please, sire you promised you’d—” 

Greyward reached over, a boon of necrotic damage leaving his hand. The gnome dropped, the spell ‘Inflict Wounds’ inflicting a swift death. It was almost merciful, killing him like this rather than leaving him to the Bhaalists. 

“Shall we?” Numia asked, wandering past the statue to the door. She ran her fingers across the metal gently, feeling into the grooves and sensing what kind of magic held it closed. After a moment, she put her palm flat, uttering a single word, “ Yield.” 

A number of runes appeared from within the artistic depiction on the door, glowing bright in purple and red, then dispersing as she dispelled the lesser magic. She then took a step back, casting silence on the ground near the door. Greyward wordlessly stepped away from the spell, casting knock on the surface. The arcane lock that held it closed dispersed for the moment, and just like that, we were free to enter. 

Numia pulled on the massive door, swinging it open into the room. Inside, dust hung heavy in the air, the space undisturbed for years, save for a few temple priests stowing away works here and there. There were little sections, each stacked high with scrolls and books. Beyond those fenced-off areas were piles of inventions, hidden away because of their power or destructive capabilities.

While I scoured the room for the tome, my compatriots took to the back area, scavenging for the parts I needed.  I found what I was looking for quickly enough: The Principle of Augmented Remains tucked between a book about stealing the magic of Djinns and a series of scrolls on the ethics of using faerie corpses as an alchemical ingredient. As soon as Greyward found the chassis for the original work hung up by some metal hooks behind a magical carpet and a box of random bits, we were golden. 

It was a shame, really, that the tome’s original author passed before his vision could be completed. The idea of combining necromancy into this kind of work was novel. With his ideas and the infernal engines promised to me by Zariel, I’d have my perfect automatons in a matter of months. Of course, there would be testing, and I’d have to convince the city officials that they were needed, but I was a patient man. A decade, a lifetime—it didn’t matter. I would see this plan through to its end.

We put everything in the vault back just as we had found it, save for our prizes. No doubt the Flaming Fist would investigate all that happened here, so the less we changed the better. 

We were walking back out when a loud boom rocked the whole building. The firelit chandelier above the statue of Gond swung wildly back and forth just as one of his gnomish children came stumbling in. He was dressed like a Gondian priest, white robes with golden stitching.

This gnome, like Brimorn, had an air of fear about him. His eyes were wide as he regarded us. He stepped toward us with a hand raised, mumbling something incoherent. We readied for an easy fight, thinking the words to be an incantation, but when the light swung back, I could see blood dribbling from the man’s mouth. 

He turned slightly, showing the back of his head where an ornate-looking blade was sticking out just at the nape of his neck. The blade twitched back and forth with every little movement the man made, pinched between nerves, muscles, and sinews.

He thought us his kin. He was begging for help, asking for healing, or at least for one of us to remove the knife. 

“Brutal—” Greyward started to say,

In the next moment, another blade whizzed through the air, hitting the gnome directly in the temple. I could see the way it clipped into his face, breaking through the bone into the soft tissue of his eye, bursting it. His body fell slack, landing on the ground with a clatter. 

One of Cal’s followers rounded the corner. 

It was like he couldn’t see us, so focused on the kill that we were but ghosts to him. He was properly covered in blood, chest heaving, eyes distant. He fell onto the man, stabbing him again for good measure, though we were all certain he was dead. Up and down the Bhaalist’s arms were runes crudely carved into his skin. This was more than a bloodbath for the cultists, it was a sacred offering, a ritual of unholy slaughter. 

As Cal had promised, the murderer did not threaten nor harm us. We strode past him, regarding him perhaps as one might regard a loose tiger, yet he did not swipe at us. He merely kept stabbing the corpse long after it was dead, muttering prayers beneath his breath. 

As we made our way back down the hall, I could see how wild things had gotten. 

There was blood everywhere. Bodies strewn about left and right, cluttering the paths. I anticipated dozens, but there were at least fifty of them, maybe more. We passed the other Bhaalists amid their work, cutting and slicing, chasing those who had broken free. 

Cal was true to his word; not one of the Gondians would survive this night. 

His followers treated us all the same as the one in the vault had, letting us pass through unharmed. We slipped back out the same entrance and into the darkening night unseen. 

—

We made our way through the underground tunnels, down to my workshop where I conducted much of my business. We stowed the chassis there before going back topside. I decided to keep the tome with me, and if anyone bothered to ask me about it, I would just say it was on loan. 

From there, Greyward split off to head back to the Obsidian Chapel and report our good fortune while Numia stayed by my side to make sure I made it home in one piece. As we traversed the Upper City, we could hear distant chaos on the wind. 

Once at my home, she saw me up to my room, ignoring the gazes of the other staff who watched her. Ever since this afternoon when Karlach mysteriously departed, they had been on edge. 

Perhaps I could use Numia to replace her as my personal bodyguard, I considered as she followed me up to my chambers. I opened my bedroom door to near darkness and sensed immediately that we were not alone. 

The window, slightly ajar, allowed Selune’s light to filter in across the stone floors and my bed. The few candles that had been left lit on my nightstand flickered, offering what little they could against the cold shadows. It was in the crosshairs of this dim light that I could barely make out who was standing beside my bed. 

Hunched over and shivering slightly, Calrissian looked up at me with wild eyes, muttering incoherently under his breath. 

“What are you doing here? You were to return to your temple, not follow me home like a hungry dog.” I snapped. I realized quickly that he was not in his own body, much like the other night; his eyes had this vacant, crazed quality to them. I could feel Numia tensing behind me, ready to strike if he moved. “ Calrissian .” 

I took a single step closer and saw where his hand was sitting, atop a dagger that jutted out between his ribs. It was sleek and thin, with a black handle adorned with the mark of the Flaming Fist. 

I’d just survived a divine bloodbath, stolen a forbidden schematic, and successfully manipulated a high priest of murder. So of course—tonight of all nights—he was in my bedroom, bleeding into my carpet.

“You idiot, you’d’ve brought them right to my door!”

“Sir,” Numia said, putting her hand on my shoulder and keeping me from advancing toward him. The look in his eyes was feral. 

He started speaking louder, faster.

It took me a moment to understand what he was saying, “We cannot kill Gortash, we cannot kill Gortash, we cannot kill Gortash…” 

I swallowed, my jaw set. No, it wasn’t his decision to come here. He had been brought here. Somewhere in his addled brain, he had stolen away to my home to slaughter me while I slept, spurred on by pain and blood, only to stop himself at my doorstep. 

“You can go,” I said over my shoulder. Numia gaped at me.

“Sir, this isn’t—”

“Go,” I said, suddenly protective of him. I didn’t want her to see him in this state—my little project breaking apart at the seams. She hesitated, rightfully, but obeyed. She backed out the door, but I could hear her still in the hall, giving us privacy but readying herself to spring if necessary.
She had seen what the Bhaalists could do. 

She was right to be scared, even if I wasn’t. 

“I need you to focus, Bhaalspawn,” I said firmly, taking a step closer to him. His head twitched and jerked around, his fingers snapping back and forth. With every labored breath, the knife fluctuated. 

He needed healing, or this whole thing would be for naught. I closed the distance between us, gingerly putting my hand on the hilt of the blade. “We cannot kill Gortash, we cannot kill Gortash, we cannot kill Gortash…” he panted. 

His eyes were frantically scanning my face, looking for something. If I knew what it was, I would have given it to him. It was at that moment that I heard the voice of Bane in my head, coaxing me toward Cal as my lord had been in my dreams. 

This is the Child of Bhaal. The destroyer. The key. 

I inched ever closer to him. Pulling out the blade in one swift motion. He gasped in pain, dropping his head into my shoulder as he cried out, hissing through his teeth. 

I took a half step back, cupping my hands around the back of his blood-stained neck, forcing him to look me in the eyes. He was there, if just barely, still in control. 

Yes, this was the son of Bhaal. 

It was not words that passed through us, but understanding. 

From there, our pact was forged. 

Chapter Text

“She says I speak softly when I sleep. That there is still a man beneath the blood. But Bhaal does not permit love—only loyalty. Each day, I hold the knife and wonder: will it be for Him, or for me? If I must choose between her and the world’s end… I pray I have the strength to end the world.”

-Excerpt from the Journal of Elgar Velmorr, Bhaalspawn, 1372 DR

Chapter Four: Haze

— Cal—

The woman cradling my arm was sobbing.

She was dressed in a simple frock with her hair pulled back away from her face. Human. One of her hands sat beneath my elbow, holding my arm straight, while the other gently scrubbed at my skin with a warm, wet cloth.  

I cleared my throat as I woke, trying to get my bearings. 

“Where am I?” I rasped, but she only sobbed harder, her eyes transfixed on my skin, unwilling or unable to answer. She was trying with great desperation to remove crusted blood from between the scars across my forearm. 

I turned my head slowly, hissing as sore muscles pulled taut and protested. 

There was another woman beside me, dressed in armor with a dagger extended in her hand. A dwarf. She was much less frightened of me. She pressed the cool metal of the blade against my throat as she watched the other woman work. 

At first, I couldn’t make sense of it: who they were, where I was, what had happened to me. I looked down and realized that not only was I naked, but sat a bathtub full of warm, reddish tinged water. The only thing hiding my body was the smattering of bubbles on the surface. 

My eyes skimmed around the dimly lit room, taking in the yellow stone walls and floors. A deep groove ran along the length of the floor, sending liquid to a drain. There was blood in the grout between the tiles. Gold accents glimmered on towel bars and rings screwed into the walls, and two steaming buckets of what I assumed to be hot water sat by a wooden door. 

A bathing room of some sort.  

I leaned up carefully to look past the lip of the tub, where four dead bodies lay in a heap on the floor. They had been clawed apart, viciously, mercilessly, by hand. Eyes scratched out of the sockets, bitemarks on their skin, clothes torn, and limbs broken. They were dressed the same as the woman who was bathing me now. Simple garments with their hair pulled back away from their face–though, for some of them, their hair had been pulled from their bodies and left in clumps on the floor.

My dominant arm was sore, soaking beneath the water. 

The thought of moving it again felt daunting. 

“Please… don’t…” the woman was whimpering softly. I knew those whimpers. That self-important begging. “Please…”

I rolled my head toward her. “I’m going to kill you,” I whispered. 

The blade pressed ever tighter against my throat, the sharp steel threatening to slice the thrumming veins beneath the surface. 

I will kill you both.   

“You will not.” A new voice said, echoing in the room. A door had opened, and Gortash stepped in, wearing the same robe he had been the other morning. Flanking him on either side were more armed guards, not the Black Gauntlet soldiers he had with him the other night, but rough-looking women in leather armor, one with a short sword and the other with a flail.

Gortash . 

I couldn’t remember how I got here or how long I had been here, but of course, no matter what state I had been in or what had happened to me, it was Gortash making me take a bath . 

“You have already slaughtered enough of my employees, and you are quickly outpacing your worth,” he said.

Oh good. The bodies on the floor are my kill. Beautiful . 

I could feel the Urge slumbering in the back of my mind, I did not know how long he had been driving my body. The last thing I recalled was standing in the House of Gond, reveling in the bloodshed.

I remember Orin’s voice, shrill, furious, accusing me of something absurd, choosing always the most inconvenient of times to voice her arguments with my leadership. I recall the Flaming Fist bursting in mid-curse, blades drawn, and then…

I pulled my arm away from the woman in a motion that was perhaps too swift, given her state. She sprung back away from me, falling by Gortash’s feet, trembling as I put my hand into the water, feeling at my side. 

The wound was gone . 

Entirely gone, not just healed up by a cleric—there was no scarring, no pain, no memory of it left in my skin. 

The woman made some sort of a squeal, a loud, terrified noise between a scream and a whimper as she looked up at Gortash for permission to flee. He sighed, pinching his nose between his fingers. 

If he were smart, he’d kill her. She had seen too much, clearly.
“Where are we?” I asked, 

“At my house, you buffoon,” he hissed. I was clearly testing his patience today, though I couldn’t remember but a few moments of it. Being poked and prodded by some man. A flash of someone dragging me down a hallway. Laughing quite maniacally as I tore out a maid’s jugular with my fingers. Kicking and fighting as I was plunged into the water. 

My head throbbed, not the distinct pain I often felt when resisting my darker urges, but something more physical. I remember vaguely someone trying to give me a sleeping potion, only to rediscover in violent horror that sleeping potions don’t work on my kind. 

My eyes skimmed the room again. It was definitely Gortash’s house. It had the same high ceilings and stupidly opulent gold all about. “Do you honestly not remember crawling through my window in the dead of night? You left a trail of blood dripping from my rooftop all the way down to my azaleas. You could have died and gotten me arrested in one foul swoop!”

If he had been worried about his staff knowing his personal business before, he certainly didn’t care now. He was practically flaunting it: I am the Chosen of Bane, this is my murderkin, we robbed the House of Wonders last night.

“I should have turned you in myself; it certainly would have been cheaper,” he continued to rant. “You keep him in that water until you get that stench out of his hair,” he snapped, speaking to the snivelling woman on the floor. 

“Y-y-yes, S-s—”

“Good.” He looked at the dwarf, “You make sure he doesn’t kill anyone else, or I’ll assign you a new job in the sewers, and you —” he looked to me. “I’ll see you once you’ve put on some clothes and stopped sulking. We have much to discuss. Clearly .” He turned, his robe flaring behind him as he left, one of the guards stepping aside to let him pass with a lazy, well-practiced bow.

Then we were alone, the five of us. There was this tense stalemate, for a long moment, where none of them wanted to move. 

Terrified, though of me or Gortash, I was unsure.
Naked, weaponless, and held hostage by a tasty little dwarf… it all made me laugh.

— An Hour Later—

-Cal-

Once the human woman had scrubbed the filth and viscera off of every inch of my body, the dwarf finally let me get out of the tub. She, with the other guardswomen, then walked me down the hall to a guest room of some sort. There were clean clothes laid out there for me, with options to choose from. Though I demanded I wanted my own clothes back, my arguments went unheard. 

They were there to keep me and the other members of Gortash’s staff alive, not bend to my whims. 

I dressed quickly enough, and then there was this whole process of waiting. One of them would leave the room, trying to figure out what to do with me, the other two would be on edge, sitting in silence while I stared at them, then the first would come back, they’d switch out and so on.

It wasn’t until finally a little gnomish woman poked in and called for me that they finally allowed me into Gortash’s presence again. 

If I had been annoying him earlier, he was annoying me now. “Whose clothes are these, and where the fuck did you put my things?” I practically shouted at him as they walked me into the dining room. 

He looked up from the tome resting on his lap. 

“Ah, yes, you’re welcome for allowing you into my home, making sure you didn’t bleed out on my bedsheets, cleaning you, clothing you, feeding you. Yes , you are so welcome .” He retorted. Much like the other morning, he was sitting at the head of his dining room table, chalice in hand, except now he was wearing more clothes… This black and gold coat over black leather, and a golden gauntlet on his right hand.  “I hardly thought your chamber garb was appropriate for dinner. Now sit.” 

He motioned to the only chair at the table, far across from him. I glared for a long moment before deciding to obediently disobey him. I grabbed the back of the chair and scraped it loudly against the floor, dragging it all the way down to where he was sitting. 

It was a long table. 

I placed the chair adjacent to him and plopped myself down in it. No sooner did two of his little pets come scurrying around, moving the plates and silverware he had had them set out for me, shuffling the place settings like this was normal. Like I was normal.

He rolled his eyes, snapping the book shut.

“Wine?” I didn’t say anything, and he took this as a yes, reaching over and filling my chalice near to the brim. “Your robes and whatnot were taken away to be cleaned, much like you were. I’ll return them to you when they’re finished. I promise.”

“They didn’t need cleaning.”
“They were soaked in blood,” he snapped, “And full of holes from where you got stabbed by the Fist a couple dozen times. Believe it or not, Calrissian, I am not trying to rob you, I’m trying to help you. To keep you from rotting alive in your own filth.”

I had always been warned that ‘help’ from Banites often came at a hefty cost. I was growing less and less fond of how Gortash viewed our relationship. Every day, it became clearer: to Gortash, this was not a partnership but a mentorship. I was his cause. His weapon. His project. I wasn’t sure which insult bothered me most. 

I did not need helping. I did not need his polish. I did not need him .

At the same time… having someone on my side was occasionally refreshing. I wasn’t his captive , after all. I could leave at any time. Nothing was stopping me, except maybe the shit eating grin on the Banite’s face.

“I would have come to you with a dagger on my person that is now gone. Where is it?” I demanded.  

His eyes scanned my face, thinking. “You had no such dagger.” 

“I know I—”

“Cal, I was there when they stripped you bare. You had two rapiers, a bag with some alchemical ingredients, and your pack, which was empty save for a skull and a dead rat.” He leaned back in his chair. “No dagger. Well, except for the one in your chest, but I doubt that’s the one you’re looking for.” As though to prove his words, he pulled out a small black blade with the logo of the Flaming Fist emblazoned onto the hilt. He placed it down next to my butter knife and motioned to it. “A little souvenir.” 

He was right, it wasn’t the one I was missing. 

It wasn’t just any dagger. It was Father’s. Ceremonial. Etched with his sigil, stained with his blood beneath the leather grip. I never left it behind. Not unless something was deeply wrong. It was the very dagger I intended to slay Orin with, the one I’d plunge into my own heart at the end of the days.

Perhaps he was right, and I lost it at the House of Gond, or worse, the Fist had taken it from me. 

If it were lost, I’d find it. 

If it were taken, I’d claim it back. 

With interest.

“So now what?” I said after a moment. He raised an eyebrow at me, 

“We eat dinner like normal people.”

“No,” I said, closing my eyes and shaking my head, just so. “I meant, you have your schematics, and the devil promised you your engine. What’s next? Are we building an army of automatons to take over the city or…?”

He laughed this genuine, hearty laugh I hadn’t heard before. “No, no , my creations will be built to protect the city, not bring it to ruin. No, unfortunately for you, the rest is sort of a waiting game. Of course, you and your kin will make a slow rise, people growing more fearful overtime of the mysterious cult killing the good people of Baldur’s Gate left and right, and in the meantime I will create and test my machines before convincing the Lords and Ladies that they’re essential to keep the city safe. Somewhere along the way, I will convince them that the only way to protect Baldur’s Gate is to name me its champion, the Arch Duke. From there, we’ll have everything.” 

He made it all sound so stupidly simple. Then again, with the support and money from his church, maybe it was. 

“And when, in your little fantasy, do you use my corpse as a stepping stone?” I asked. He hesitated. We’d both thought about it, no doubt, this little agreement is barely hanging on by a thread. I wanted to kill him just to watch the life leave his eyes, and he found me more cumbersome than a petulant fly. What bothered me most was how drawn to him I seemed to be.

I’d come crawling to his doorstep in a fugue state and let him baby me like a dying dog all day. It was disgusting for someone of my standing. 

“Me, betray you? That would imply we ever trusted one another in the first place.” He joked, “No, I have no such intention. Honestly. I assume our little pact will fizzle out over time, but I’ll stay true to my word as long as you are. You’re useful.” 

Unfortunately, the sentiment was mutual. He was useful, I just didn’t know how to use him yet, not well anyway. Taking his coin and murdering alongside him was one thing, but actually being able to weaponize his success was another I hadn’t quite figured out. 

I was about to say as much when more of his staff came out, bringing dishes of decadent food. I picked up my chalice and held it in my lap as they placed platters down between us.

They brought enough food for ten people, meant for just two.

Rothe ribs. Treacle tarts. Fruit, cheese, spiced breads.

There was something so deeply strange about it to me, sitting here with him like this, dining at his table, while his terrified servants tried desperately not to look me in the eye. No doubt my haze-induced antics from this morning had swept their ranks. They thought me more of a wraith than a man. 

A wraith who supped with their master.

We sat in manicured silence for a long time, each refusing to say anything to the other. Eventually, it grated on me, that silence, and when it did, I reached out to the book he had been reading, The Principle of Augmented Remains, the cover read in gnomish. 

I had barely touched it when he snatched it away from me. 

“Do you read?” 

“Yes.”

“Huh,” he stood, walking over to the same little desk he had pulled the scroll out from the other morning. He put the book down atop it, running his hand over the cover. “Don’t think me cruel, but I didn’t think the Cult of Bhaal to be… educated . After all, what’s the point, right? Murder doesn’t take much finesse.” 

I switched our wine glasses while he had his back turned. 

“You know very little of me,” I replied. He chuckled, motioning for me to speak, leaning against the desk and watching me with a sly grin.

“What, are you going to tell me you like red wine and getting caught in the rain?”
“No,” I said firmly. In fact, I hate red wine, and rain makes my skin crawl. I thought about the other day when he asked if I ate, as though I was some immortal killing machine. He wasn’t far off, I suppose, but it was still strange to me how he imagined my life.

He tilted his head, studying me. “You’re awfully civil tonight. Did you get all the bloodlust out, or are you saving some for dessert?”

It was an act. The civility. He’d forgotten what I was with just a change of clothes and a bath.

Every passing moment, I kept having to remind my little Urge: 

We cannot kill Gortash. 

We can kill anyone else but Gortash. 

Not him. Not yet. 

Not until father says. 

We cannot kill Gortash . 

He crossed back to the table, picking up his chalice and drinking from it, “I like you like this, you know, it gives more—”

“There is a service tonight at the temple, Black Mass,” I said, and though he may have thought this was the answer to his question, it was rather that I needed to talk to him quickly and plainly as not to get him off on a tangent. “I’d like you to come.”

He looked at me, then scoffed, “At the Temple of Bhaal?”

I nodded. 

“You’ve forbidden me from visiting your little murder chapel more than once. Why now?”

“I didn’t want you to know the way. I don’t give a damn if you come into the temple or not.”

“Why now , Calrissian?” He asked the question more sternly the second time, like a teacher disappointed in his pupil. I rolled my eyes, 

“I am trying to show you our understanding. You protected me last night, and I’m… reciprocating in my own way. Do you not want to see the temple?”

“I don’t want to end up a sacrifice in a Bhaalist ritual ,” he retorted, mocking my tone. “Besides, if you don’t want me to know the way, why would you bring me there?”

“You won’t know the way.”

“Oh?”
“You’ll be asleep.” I motioned to the chair again. “You won’t remember anything. That’s the point. Now sit.”

“What in the hells do you mean—” Then it hit him. That sweet taste in his wine wasn’t because I stuck my finger in it; it was because I’d laced my own goblet with two potions of sleep, then switched them while he wasn’t looking. As the realisation dawned, he sat quickly, keen not to end up smacking his head on the floor. “Motherfucker… and if… I… say…” he shook his head, closing his eyes, trying to fight the effects. After just a few sips, it had already worked its way into his system. 

I wanted him to drink more. I pushed the goblet closer. 

“If you had said no? Then I would have just left you here for your staff to find.” I told him. “Do you want to go or not?” He hesitated, trying to keep his focus on me, but he was slipping away. “Gortash.”

“Yes.” 

“Then drink,” I ordered. I picked up his glass and held it to his lips. He looked at me with angry, glossy eyes but nonetheless obeyed. “Good boy,” I whispered.

Then the lights went out, and finally I could go home. 

Chapter Text

“Where mercy walks, let it be slain. Where innocence dwells, let it be burned. My chosen are not gardeners of peace but reapers of flesh. Pave my path with corpses and build my castle with bone. Let the blood of the many anoint the feet of the faithful. In slaughter, there is truth. In devotion, ruin.”

-The Book of Endings, Verse XIII

Chapter Five: The Temple of Bhaal

— Gortash —

Waking was like surfacing from the ocean, hazy and strange. The world twisted and warped around me, dancing back and forth as though it was stitching itself together before my eyes. High, cathedral-like ceilings dotted with lit chandeliers slowly came into view out of the void. But the chandeliers were made of bone, candles nestled in the eye sockets of old skulls, bound with care and raised toward the heavens. 

Between them, bodies dangled down, hands bulbous and red with old blood, faces contorted with long silent screams. 

It took me a moment to remember what had happened. 

I could piece together last night: Cal showing up in my bedroom after the heist, fighting off anyone who tried to lay hands on him—except me, of course. A sentiment that was as flattering as it was troubling. 

Then this morning, trying to wake him out of his meditation when he killed the first of my maids, followed by a doctor, a priest, and the cleric I had sent for. 

Then, deciding that if he was going to behave like a child, I’d treat him like one. Forcing him into the bath. 

A few hours to attend to real work: schematics, contracts, and anything that didn’t bleed. 

Dinner and… evidently, a little field trip to the hells.

I rolled my head forward, looking at the scene before me. I was sitting in a chapel pew made of granite stone, tucked in the back of some sort of service. The seating all faced a large pool, and behind it, an altar and a throne. Above the throne loomed a large skull carved into the stone, surrounded by massive rubies inlaid in a neat, perfect circle. 

The unmistakable symbol of Bhaal. 

The Lord of Murder never had a taste for subtlety.

My immediate concern was the same thought I’d had before sleep dragged me under in my dining room: Cal had dragged me here to kill me, surely. I had never felt so close to death before in my life. The very room seemed to radiate it. 

Every instinct screamed at me to run, but instead, I stayed. Whether out of curiosity or cowardice, I wasn’t sure.

Amid the pews were around thirty Bhaalist worshippers, all standing with their arms extended out toward the massive skull, chanting along in some language I didn’t quite recognize. 

Standing before the throne was a large man wearing a heavy set of armor. The tome he was reading from looked small in his palm, his fiery eyes more focused on the crowd than the words as he spoke them.

Sarevok Anchev. The Deathbringer. 

I had thought all other Bhaalspawn dead, save for Orin, yet here Sarevok was, not only alive but leading the Bhaalists in ritual slaughter. Last I heard of the great adventurer, he had taken a streak of heroism… I suppose it had waned. 

Behind him, kneeling, were Cal and Orin, heads bowed, palms open, chanting the same rhythmic phrases. Cal in eerie stillness, Orin rocking back and forth with performative fervor.

There was a shift in the chanting, a tone change I couldn’t parse, but they seemed to feel it. Cal stood first, calm and composed, while Orin practically sprang to her feet. Whatever came next, they were ready. 

I could see now, as Cal stood, that he was dressed only in a pair of cloth breeches, the same kind he had been wearing under his robes this morning. He had always dressed the same, layered up in fabric, hiding his body and his face. If it weren’t his clothes distorting his appearance it was soot, dirt, and blood. 

Now, he was exposed. 

At a distance, he looked more like a worshiper of Loviatar than Bhaal. His skin was a network of scars and marks over toned muscles, earned from a lifetime of slaying for the Lord of Murder. 

Orin tucked herself behind the altar while Cal stepped forward, following some unspoken instruction that moved him toward the murky pool in the center of it all. 

I sat forward, my stomach sinking as I realized it wasn’t water but blood.

I watched as Cal descended the steps into the viscous fluid. So much for all the effort I spent cleaning him up this morning. Following behind, Sarevok waded into the crimson bath, going up to his knees, arms spread like some grotesque priest-king. 

“As he stands before you, Father, your Chosen walks willingly into the womb of death.” Sarevok bellowed, “Let the blood of the unworthy cling to his skin, let the screams of the slain echo in his lungs, for he is not heir to mercy. He is heir to murder.” 

I’ve seen plays less theatrical.

Cal stood still in the pool, shoulder at Sarevok’s chest, arms crossed like a corpse laid out for burial. His eyes were closed. Still and trusting.

In the next moment, the elder Bhaalspawn put one hand on Calrissian’s throat and the other in the small of his back, lifting him slightly before throwing him down into the blood, totally submerged. 

“Bathe him in your crimson covenant! Drown him in devotion! May his breath leave him—so that he returns filled only with You. In your name, O Lord of Murder, we give you your son, perfect and pure.”

The zealots erupted into ecstasy, shrieking and sobbing, raking their nails down their arms, some biting their tongues. It was crazed. Deranged. Those who drew blood leaned themselves over the pool to add their own essence to the unholy baptism. 

Bubbles ruptured the surface as Sarevok held Cal beneath it. My eyes flicked away for all of a moment, going from the spectacle to Orin.

She was locked on me, her pale eyes boring into mine with a sinister grin plastered on her face. 

She mouthed the words slowly: You’re next.  

The unease that settled in the pit of my stomach hit like an anvil. 

The moment was stretching on too long. As the seconds ticked on, I could see little waves on the surface of the liquid, as though Cal was struggling, muscles tensing and moving under the blood. 

Sarevok held him down. 

This wasn’t symbolic anymore. This was either murder or ascension, and I wasn’t sure which would be worse. If Calrissian died in that pit, then the Chosen of Bhaal was no longer the man I’d made a pact with.

And if he lived…

Well.

I just had to hope that our fragile trust was not a lie on both ends. 

Time seemed to stretch on forever, Sarevok’s arm twitching just so… until it didn’t. He retracted both of his hands out of the blood, taking a step back and away from where Cal was sunk beneath it. 

I could feel my heart drumming silently in my chest. Sarevok’s fiery eyes skimmed over the blood patiently, then, after a few moments longer, Cal surfaced, gasping and sputtering. 

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding on his behalf. 

He floated there for a moment, swiping blood away from his eyes with the back of his hands while the zealots increased their jubilation tenfold, crying and dancing and praising the Lord of Murder. The liquid clung to his skin, making him look like something not quite human, something… darker. Red.

I finally caught a bit of what they were saying. This was an offering of some sort, an option for Bhaal to take the life of his chosen if it pleased him. 

Apparently, today, it hadn’t. 

I jumped, startled, as a bony little hand gripped my elbow, its fingers cold and unsettling. Looking down, there was... this creature . The thing looked like a nightmare drawn by a drunk aristocrat: part imp, part plague doctor, with something fiendish in between. He was crouched down, thin, with a black top hat and a beak-like nose. “Pardon, sire, but the master said to pull you from the mass before final… erm, devotions. As you’re not a worshiper of Bhaal, the sacrifices are not meant for your eyes.” He said, with a wheezy little chuckle at the end. I blinked, staring at him for a few moments, trying to piece together who and what he was. “Come. Come,” he beckoned. 

Over where Cal was, two women were dragging a man, screaming and bound to the altar. Though I didn’t mind death, given the nature of my work, I could sense the little imp was right. 

I wasn’t meant to see this. This was between the Bhaalists and their God. 

He led me quietly out of the room, down a small corridor and toward a winding set of stone stairs. “My name is Sceleritas Fel, I serve Master Calrissian as his butler.”

I raised an eyebrow. “His butler?” I repeated, incredulity thick in my voice. The idea of Cal being pampered like some noble seemed so foreign, especially after the way he glared at my staff, so visceral and dangerous. 

“Yes, yes. Of course, I also serve here at the temple cleaning and preparing and whatnot. The master would be so lost without dear Sceleritas.” He said it like it was a badge of honor. I couldn’t help but wonder if Cal even knew what a butler was.

The little creature kept prattling on as we walked, leading me up those stairs and down a long hall. He went on about all of the little duties he did on Cal’s behalf, chattering about how rare it was for ‘the master’ to take visitors. I was barely hearing the thing, trapped in my own thoughts about everything I had just seen. 

As we walked, we passed through dilapidated hallways, lit by candles and torches. Every few feet were random bedrolls, stacks of books, and barrels with half eaten food atop their lids. Skulls here. Weapons there. Blood slicking every surface.

They lived like animals in this place. Festering and wild, lives focused entirely on the pursuit of death. 

Eventually, he stopped at a large set of doors. 

“Few have the key, this is a place of privacy, after all, the master’s room…” he said with that same clownish chuckle. He pulled out a ring of keys, slipped one into the lock and then forced the door open.

I was shocked, though I shouldn’t have been, at the state of his chambers. I don’t know what I expected from the Chosen of Bhaal’s bedroom—but it wasn’t this.

First were all the normal things: 

The room had a high ceiling and a big window that looked out into a cavern. It was the first time I realized we were underground, with thin rays of moonlight coming in between the stalactites. His bed was before the window, a stone slab with a thin mattress atop it, made neatly with black blankets and sheets. He had a desk in one corner, covered in paper, and two full walls of bookshelves, stocked full with a rainbow of titles. There was a comfy-looking chair, upholstered in red satin with a real skull on the rest of each arm. Two training dummies sat in the far corner of the room, one knocked over with burn marks on its chest, the other standing with a knife jutting out from its face. 

Then… there were the things I noticed first. 

The pile of corpses in the center of the room was most paramount. The further stray corpse half flopped off of his bed. Thick jars of coagulated blood were wedged between volumes in the bookshelves, tucked away next to specimen jars cradling brains like they were common paperweights. The drain in the center of the floor, clogged with bits I could only assume came from a hacked-up dragon-born. In one corner of the room was a bathtub, stained a rusty red with brownish goop lingering in the bottom. A rack of bloodstained weapons pushed up against a mirror that had been covered over with a sheet. 

The smell… heavy, like old iron and rot. 

“I do apologize, my liege. I would have cleaned up some if I knew the master meant to have company this evening, fluffed the corpses and all that,” Sceleritas said, laughing uncomfortably. He scurried past into the room, picking up a stray limb, tossing it onto the pile. “I honestly worried the master was dead when he did not return with the raiding party last night. Mistress Orin said he had been quite wounded and wandered off into the dark.” 

“Yes, he came to me.” I mused, a good instinct after all. How the man hadn’t gotten a deadly infection living like this was beyond me. 

“And I do so thank you for caring for him in my absence.” The little creature said, going over to the bed and trying to remove the body there. It was of a man, four times the fiend’s size. I was about to offer to help when I realized the absurdity of such a thing. “I had half the mind to go looking for him myself, but I knew if my intervention was required that the Lord of Murder would have called upon me himself.”

He worked while I waited, doing what he could to bring things up to a somewhat liveable standard. The minutes stretched on to a half hour, then more. In that time, I wandered the space, piecing together the man I thought I knew. 

—

– Cal –

“You brought the Banite to our sanctum, into Father’s sanctum.” Orin hissed, pacing in a tight circle. I continued to try to get the blood out of my ear with the already bloody rag I had found on Sarevok’s desk. “It is blasphemy.”

“Father decrees that I keep Gortash by my side. I needed to bring him here.”

“Why? So you could impress him with your little ritual?” She laughed, “How unspeakably precious.” She shifted her form, making herself look like him. She leaned down toward me, “You’re so impressive, Calrissian, so perfect in every way. I wish my god had crafted me the way he built you. I bow to you, slaughterkin, take me now!” She flopped dramatically over my lap, then leaned up, snapping her teeth at me with genuine malice.

Sarevok walked in through the open door, closing it behind him. He snapped his fingers, motioning for me to get off his desk where I had been sitting. I started to move before thinking. He was the one person in the entire plane who could survive snapping at the Son of Bhaal . 

Even Father never made me feel so small.

I shoved Orin off my lap and sank into the chair across from the desk, still picking dried blood from my nails. Though I hated to admit when Gortash was right, the blood was drying sticky along my spine, leaving me itchy and annoyed. I missed being clean.

I should have Sceleritas run me a proper bath… I mused as Sarevok settled in, putting away the instruments of slaughter we had used for our sacrifice. 

“Did you see him, grandfather? The Banite? Little Cal is practically leading them to our door–”

“ Out .” Sarevok barked, “The men have things to discuss.” 

I hated it when he spoke to her like that. Like she had any less reason to be here than we did, she may have been an irrational child in his eyes, but she was still a child of Bhaal—his grandchild , moreover. 

The worst of it was she didn’t seem to understand how he loathed her.

She shifted back into her normal form, teeth barred. “Your champion means to destroy everything you’ve built, I won’t have it!” She shouted, slamming a dagger into the desk between him and me. She retracted her hand, and I felt a wave of recognition pass over me. Leather bound hilt. Sigil carved with care. 

It was my blade. The one I had accused Gortash of taking from me earlier. 

“Why the fuck do you have this?” I hissed, grabbing it.

“Do not try to change the subject; that little lordling in the making is a disease. We ought to cut him down and drown him in our holy blood.” I moved before she could react, grabbing the knife and pinning her up against the wall in one swift motion, “Oh, hoh…. There it is, a little fire in your belly?” She shifted to look like Gortash once again, her voice breathy and low, “Come on baby, thrust it into me , you know you want to…” 

“ Enough .” Sarevok barked. “You dishonor our Father with this petty squabbling. Leave. I will deal with you later.” 

I kept her gaze as I let her off the wall. She straightened out the front of the visage’s clothes, eyeing me. She dared not speak again, knowing full well that if it came down to picking sides, Sarevok would always choose mine. 

It was pitiful, but… helpful, more often than not. 

She strode out the door, slamming it with the petulance of a child. I closed my eyes, settling. 

“You wanted to speak to me?” 

“I did, and despite Orin’s nature, she and I are of the same mind today.”

“You’re worried about Gortash.” 

“I’m worried about you .” He said after a moment. He sat in his chair, this big magnificent thing built of bones from his favorite kills. As he settled back, it creaked beneath his weight. The ivory danced beneath the candlelight with the same ominous haze as the fire in Sarevok’s eyes. “That man eats with forks and speaks in pleasantries. How long until you’re kneeling beside him, polishing his boots instead of gutting traitors in Father’s name?”

“He has been more than helpful to me of late, to us , Sarevok. He’s been pestering me to see the temple. I thought it a way to repay him.”

“You're Bhaal's weapon, not a man with a conscience.”

“I understand that, but Father has told me to keep Gortash at my side, I know not the reason, only that I have been burdened with the duty—and mind you, it is a burden,” I said, I didn’t have the mind to go into the details, complaining about how Gortash treated me would only add to the problem. 

“I don’t trust him.”

I didn’t trust him either. 

But what did that change?

I bounced my leg while Sarevok spoke, uncomfortably, scratching blood from my eyebrows. I don’t know why I was at such ill ease, be it that Orin took my knife and now I wanted to stab her with it, or the fact they both were so appalled by Gortash’s presence here. I knew it was a mistake, but I didn’t think I’d receive such chastising over it. 

“You are the Chosen of Bhaal. You are to lead us into the next era of death. To the end of days. To a glorious destruction of all that is.” He continued, “Reign him in. I don’t want him so much as breathing without considering the consequences that may come from your hand. I do not care how you do it, but you will keep your toy in check so long as our Lord bids you to use him. Am I clear?”

I looked at the ground. “Yes.” The word churned bile in my stomach. I didn’t need loyalty commanded of me. I was more loyal than any slaughterkin in this whole temple. He knew that. I knew that. This whole exercise did nothing but make my blood boil. 

“Good.” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes shifting over me. “Orin told us all you were dead last night. That a Fist had stabbed you and you had wandered off.” 

I didn’t exactly want to tell him I wandered off to Gortash’s house, especially not after the pleasant conversation we’d just had. 

“I don’t recall,” I said, which was the truth. 

He pursed his lips. 

“I would bid you to be wary around her as well. The child hungers for power, but knows not her place.” 

I shook my head. “I’m not afraid of Orin. She is a lot of talk but nothing of concern.” 

He nodded, slowly. 

“You disagree?”

“I think her ambition outweighs her loyalty. In the end, there can only be one Chosen of Bhaal. Though I know it to be you, she believes that one day it shall be her. Like her family before her, she may even attempt to overthrow our Lord of Murder. She is hubris incarnate. An excellent replacement should you fall, a dangerous weapon to have onside, but a blade I would not wish to see driven through your chest.” 

I looked down at the dagger in my hand. I didn’t know why I trusted Orin so much, given her constant attempts to thwart and maim me. 

I suspected she was the one who stabbed me last night, not the Fist. 

I didn’t care to say it out loud. 

I suppose in my head she was still the little girl who would crawl on my lap amid feasts demanding to be tickled. The same little girl who once dragged a battle-axe four times her size down into the ritual room, demanding I let her make her first kill. 

Though she was not my blood, I had always regarded her as my sister. Slaughterkin. Bhaalspawn. 

Perhaps that’s how Sarevok viewed me.

“You require rest,” He said after a long moment. “You may go, but heed my words, child. I will see Gortash leashed and Orin tamed. Understood?”

“Yes,” I said once again, standing this time. I tossed the bloody rag onto his desk where I had found it. 

“And Cal?”

“Yes?” I asked, standing by the door, 

“Do not bring him here again, or I will kill him myself.”

—

—Gortash—

I had been listening to Sceleritas prattle on for what felt like a century. Though I knew Cal’s followers were devoted to him, it seemed his butler was the most fanatical. He spent the entire time going through a roster of all of his favorite crimes Cal had committed.
I genuinely couldn’t tell if it was something the Bhaalspawn had put him up to or not, some strange attempt to intimidate me, as I imagine this whole field trip had been intended to. I tuned him out most of the time, busying myself with looking through books and opening drawers I wasn’t supposed to. 

After some time, I heard movement in the hall, and finally, Cal returned to his chambers. 

“Ah, the Son of Bhaal finally graces me with his presence,” I said. I had been standing by his desk while Sceleritas finished chopping up an old corpse. After being unable to move it from the bed to the pile of bodies in the center of the room, he had decided it would be best to remove it in smaller pieces. 

“Master, Sceleritas has—” 

“Out,” Cal said, motioning behind him. The little creature paused for only a moment before rushing out the door, yes sire, of course, sir. He was muttering. He closed the doors behind him with great effort as they were much larger and heavier than he. 

Cal was in a state, not wild, not lost to bloodlust, but eerily calm. Like he’d made peace with something monstrous. He still had dried blood clinging to his skin, still wearing nothing but the bloodsoaked breeches he had been baptised in. 

“That was quite the spectacle down there.” I mused, “Tell me, how often do you knock on death’s door for amusement?”

“It’s not amusement, it’s appeasement.” He said, running a hand over his tired face. He stepped further into the room, then seemed to stop. Deciding. Thinking. 

It was late, and I had no way to leave that wouldn’t expose the path here. He wanted to rest and have silence, no doubt, but he was stuck with me until he either killed me or brought me home. 

That understanding finally made me feel like I had a leg to stand on. I leaned back against the desk, crossing my arms. 

“You draw,” I said. He looked up, drawn from his thoughts. I tapped my fingers down on the parchment littering his desk.

“Yes.” 

I ran my finger across the page, looking at it. A depiction of a wyrmling tearing an adventurer in twain with its clawed hands. “Forgive me, I meant to say you draw quite well.”

“I brought you into my home, and you want to talk about my artistic prowess?”

“No, it was just unexpected amid…” I motioned to the rest of the room. He seemed impervious to it all. The corpses. The smell. “I see you found your dagger,” I observed. He looked down as though just remembering it was in his hand. 

“Yes, Orin had it.”

“Did she now?” 

“Can you cease, with all of the…” he trailed off,

“All of the what?”

“... Gortash -ing.”

I smirked. “What ever do you mean?” 

He closed his eyes, then cracked his neck. He wandered closer to me, fixing his eyes on me in the dim light. Here, there were only but a few candles lit, and a torch near his bed that illuminated the room. 

There was something stilling about the darkness, the somber silence of this place. 

I knew what he wanted from me. Meekness. Submission. He had taken me directly into the wolf’s den and expected me to recoil from its bite. In earnest, I was afraid of him then. It was not the wild gaze he wore when the Urge was steering his mind, nor the gaze that he held when he was calculating and controlling. 

It was darker than that. 

Something had changed that I wasn’t privy to, something he was about to make abundantly clear. 

I cleared my throat, turning away from him, settling my hands on the table, examining more of his art. Corpses. Fires. But between them were elegant portraits done in coal and ink. One of Sarevok stood out to me. 

“I didn’t realise the great Sarevok Anchev lived.” I said, “Moreover, I thought you were the one pulling the strings around here. I was surprised to see him leading you about like a little pup.”

“I am the Chosen of Bhaal, the next era of the Murder Lord’s reign, but this temple was built by Sarevok’s hands. His penance to our father.”

I squinted over my shoulder at him. “Is Sarevok your… mortal father, then?” The question seemed silly. Calrissian was drow as far as I could tell, though he was pale. Sarevok was human, but perhaps he was half-elven on his mother’s side or something akin.

“No,” he replied flatly. He walked up behind me, placing the dagger down on the desk. 

“One of the other Bhaalspawn, then.”

“My parents were not Bhaalist at all.” He must have seen the confusion writ on my features. He stepped closer, putting himself right behind me. It made all the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. 

He plucked a stray hair off of my coat, examining it. My instinct was to turn and draw steel, but I forced myself not to move, not to show my hand. I still wasn’t sure what he was doing or what he wanted from me, but I knew a reaction was part of it.

“I am not like the other Bhaalspawn. They are murderous descendants of my Father’s human form… I am the Bhaalspawn. Brought to life by my father’s hand, sculpted by his very flesh, born on this plane to no one, of no one.” He explained. Terrifying. Glorious. “My mortal parents found me in the woods outside the city as a babe and raised me as their own.” 

“And where are they now?” I asked. His face was very close to mine. He released the hair, putting his hand on my shoulder in an overly familiar way. He pushed it down the length of my arm, settling it on top of my hand. 

“I killed them.” He said, his tone dead, “They were the first to die at my hand.”
I forced a laugh. “Of course they were.”

He paused, contemplatively, “I aspire to be like Sarevok, as smart and as ruthless as he. He has both sides of the coin… I barely hold onto my mind, each day, more of it slips through my fingers like sand.…” he breathed against my ear, “This is why I tolerate you, Gortash. Your mind, your focus. Sarevok will not live forever.”

He ran his other hand down my other arm in the same motion. My breathing slowed, deepening. He pressed his bloodstained forehead against the back of my head, pressing his body against mine. 

“What are you doing, Cal?” I asked softly. 

“You drive me insane. I know not how to put you in your place.” I could feel his body moving against mine, a heat rising in my chest as he nuzzled into the nape of my neck. “I cannot kill you. I cannot frighten you. You think me a simple tool and nothing more.” 

“I need you.” 

“I know.” 

“Then why—”

“You haven’t stopped me yet,” he breathed. 

I found myself unable to speak at all. 

I hadn’t stopped him, no.  

He pressed his lips gently to my throat, once, then a second time, then put them right against my ear. When he spoke, the words were in elvish. Dreamy and sultry, “ Do you want me to touch you ?”

And Bane, save me, I didn’t move.

Chapter Text

Hey folks!
This is a continuation of the last chapter. This mini chapter features some toxic/abusive behaviour and commentary on Durge’s part, as well as a very explicit sex scene, so I decided to separate it from the base content. Those reading for the plot can skip if they don’t want the smut/porn/overt Durge-like acts. 

Hope you enjoy!

-Eli

—

Chapter 6: Alone in the Dark

- Cal- 

I stood behind him, my hands atop each of his, my face close to his cheek. He smelled of gilded leather, cloves and charcoal. 

It was not love that had put us in this position, it was barely even lust. This was about domination. Sarevok’s words hung heavy in my mind. I had to bring Gortash to heel if I meant to keep our pact. 

I felt this was the way to do it.

For so long, he had thought himself the lion, stalking his prey, but he had suddenly found himself in the den of an Owlbear. There was no Black Gauntlet here to protect him from me, no members of his little black market guild, no maids in simple dresses. 

It was just the tyrant and the murder, alone in the dark. 

“Take this off,” I whispered. Dragging my fingers across the golden gauntlet on his right hand. The muscles in his jaw clenched as he obeyed, pulling his hands from beneath mine to remove it. 

I reached around him, undoing the facets of his fancy coat, the delicate hinges clicking as they came apart between my fingers. 

“Do you want me to touch you, Gortash?” I whispered a second time. 

“I know what you’re doing—” he started to say, but I pressed my fingers softly to his lips. There was hesitation, then release. His shoulders fell slightly, relaxing against my body. “Fine.”

I shook my head. I wanted to hear him say it—no, I wanted him to beg me for it.  

To touch him, to stop, mercy or pleasure, I didn’t care.

“Yes or no.” 

He pursed his lips, annoyed with my insistence. I ran my fingers down the line of his jaw, ghosting across his skin. 

I hadn’t been with someone alive in nearly thirty years by then. Probably the whole length of the human’s life. I had satisfied myself between kills, letting corpses serve as bedmates with great frequency.

Gortash was warm. 

“Say it.”

He wouldn’t look at me. There was a red flush blooming across his cheeks, but he stared straight ahead, refusing to meet my eyes. To look at me would be to admit defeat, and to Gortash… that was worse than death.

“Yes,” he hissed. I grinned at his consent, planning to use it to the fullest. 

“Then take this off too,” I whispered, slipping my fingers beneath the collar of his gaudy jacket. He hesitated, then pushed it off his shoulders in silence. He placed the garment down on my desk, trying to keep it off of the floor, likely thinking the dirt would sully it. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he thought of this place. Compared to his cushy little bedroom, my domain was a nightmare. 

“Good boy,” I whispered. I took his hands and planted them on the desk once again in the same position they had been in before. I ran my fingers carefully across the back of his neck, dragging them slowly down his spine. There was this way that his muscles moved beneath the skin, responding to my touch like one might to the lightest lick of a candle’s flame, twitching and jumping in anticipation.

His obstinate silence was amusing. If I had known all this time that all I needed to do to get the great Enver Gortash to be quiet was to seduce him, I would have started with this months ago.

He was broken. 

I intended to break him further. 

I kicked his feet apart, planted my hand on the back of his neck and bent him over my desk in one swift motion. He gasped at the suddenness of it, arms tensing before giving in. Much like the other night, I think he realised there was no point in trying to fight me. Where he was much smarter than I, I was much stronger than he, and I had a lot more magic in my back pocket than he knew how to wield. 

“Easy,” he snapped,

I pressed harder. “No.” 

He finally met my eye, glaring over his shoulder at me. Though his eyes argued, his mouth stayed shut in a thin line. “You’re smiling,” he remarked after a moment.

“I’m enjoying myself,” I admitted. 

I wasn’t the only one. In the back of my mind, a threatening darkness stirred, the Urge awake, watching through my eyes.

Slit his fucking throat, tear him to pieces— 

“Shut up,” I whispered. 

“I didn’t say anything.” Gortash hissed. 

“Not you,” I breathed, closing my eyes. “Just… hush, I’m trying to focus.” 

Gortash shifted just slightly, “Don’t tell me you’ve lost your nerve already, Chosen. Do you need a minute? I’ll wait.” His tone was snarky and sharp as always, but something else lingered between the words. Anger. Genuine and sweet. 

I chuckled. 

He lost a lot of his bravado when I picked up the knife again. 

Face blanching. Eyes shocked.

“Wait—” he started, drawing a sharp breath. I slipped it under the collar of his tailored shirt and cut a straight line down to the hem, carving the garment in two. The fabric hissed as it tore, loud in my quiet chambers. 

Though I did not intend to do him harm, I did let the blade sink just lower than it needed to, dragging an angry red line across his pale skin. 

“You asshole,” he spat, his breathing tight. 

“Why the fuck would I kill you now , Gortash?” I whispered, dragging the knife back up slowly, lightly. “When I’ve just found a new use for you…” 

He breathed out huffily through his nose, shaking his head in annoyance. 

Though he didn’t voice it, I think he would have rather that I had killed him than ruin his fancy shirt. I put the knife back down, right beside his face and began to kiss a slow line down his back, following the path I had drawn. 

He shuddered ever so slightly. Pushed himself up partially, then more fully, before turning toward me. His eyes were flicking over my face, seeking insight into my intentions, but finding none. 

“If you think I’ll debase myself for you, I won’t,” he said. 

“Oh,” I laughed, quietly, “did I hurt your feelings?” I moved closer, cupping my hands up under his chin and pulled him into a kiss. Sweet at first. Tentative. Exploratory. Then hungry. 

His mouth was wet, warm and eager. 

I pulled away, barely a hairsbreadth from his mouth, “If you want me to stop, you can say so.”

His hands found my hips and pulled me against his body with gruff, urgent demand, ignoring me entirely, all too eager to plunder my mouth with his tongue. I moaned in spite of myself, stumbling slightly as he leaned back against the desk, pulling me with him. I ripped the remnants of his shirt off, tossing them away. 

He wouldn’t be needing them anymore. 

He moved his hands to the back of my neck, his lips pushing against mine, first fast, then intoxicatingly slow.

I could have taken him right there. Laid him down on my desk like a body on an altar and just did as I pleased, but then again… why rush? I had no intention of taking him home, not tonight. 

“Come here,” I whispered, leaning away. I walked backwards toward my bed, motioning with my finger for him to follow. There was a moment of hesitation on his behalf.  I knew it wasn’t quite up to his standard; stone slab, thin bedding, blankets and sheets Sceleritas hadn’t changed in weeks… but when I sat on the edge, he joined me without complaint. 

He put one knee up beside my hip, then planted a firm hand on my shoulder and pushed me down onto the mattress. He nipped along my neck and up to my ear, his hands exploring freely every inch of my torso. 

After some time, he stilled above me, looming, looking down at me with a gaze I didn’t recognise. 

He reached out, pushing his fingers through my hair in a way that was almost tender. “Hm.” 

“What?”

“For someone so rough, you’re… soft.” He whispered, bringing his mouth back down to mine, “Your skin,” he kissed, “you hair…” 

I wondered if that was all he really meant.

Those were the only ‘soft’ parts about me. 

My instinct was to throw him over and have my way with him, but I resisted.

His fingers felt nice. Gentle. 

Softness was something I hadn’t felt in a very long time. 

Instead, I just closed my eyes and let him. I let him push his fingers through my hair and plant gentle kisses on my throat. Then my chest. Then my belly. As he kept moving lower, I felt a new, much more genuine longing move through my system. 

He grabbed my waistband and started shuffling my breeches down off my legs, coming back up to my face once I was bare. 

“Last chance, Calrissian,” he whispered.
I didn’t need the warning, but I laid still for a moment, letting him choose. If he wanted to walk away, it was his last chance. Not mine. 

His hand slid down across my chest, lower and lower until—

“Ah, fuck .” I moaned, hissing through my teeth. His hand was warm, tight. 

He grinned at my reaction, “When’s the last time someone touched you like this, oh Chosen One?”

Questions, questions, always questions, shut the fuck up, the urge roared. I put my hand over Gortash’s mouth, shaking my head.
“Stop…”

He chuckled against my palm. “Stop what? This?” He moved his hand slightly faster. “Do you like this, Cal?” He breathed, mumbling against my hand, then kissing my wrist. 

I moved my hand to his throat, squeezing, not enough to hurt him but enough to remind him that I could. 

“Stop fucking talking,” I groaned. He chuckled again, biting his lip, continuing his ministrations. 

“Or what?” He whispered, “You’ve already told me you’re not going to kill me, Cal, so what then?” 

We cannot kill Gortash. 

“All bark and no bite, are we?” He breathed. I rolled us over, suddenly switching our positions and tightening my grip on his throat. 

“I would suggest not testing my patience while you’re here.” I breathed, he pulled his hand away, a challenging glint in his eye. 

“Do you really think you’re in charge of me?”

“No.” I breathed, putting my mouth down close to his ear, “But even if someone hears you scream down here, no one is coming for you . You cannot run from me. I could decide at any moment… that I want to rip you apart, bite by bite… and there is little you can do about it. I’ve told you before, my control is measured; it does have limits. If I slip away…” I chuckled, “I’ll fucking eviscerate you.” 

I didn’t know it before this moment, how much Gortash got off on peril. Fear. Loss of the control he tried so hard so often to create. I only care to mention it because as I spoke, I felt his body react beneath me. His manhood went from awake to alert to painfully aroused with each word I spoke. I could feel his throat move as he swallowed beneath my grip. 

“Noted,” he whispered.

“Now take your breeches off, or I’ll cut them from you.” 

He obeyed, kicking off his shoes and then his trousers. The motion was awkward, with me atop of him, unwilling to move. I sat back on his thighs, examining the whole of him. I admired the hair on his chest and how it thickened past his navel. His body was toned but not lean. A man of muscle and edge who also enjoyed the finer things. 

Then I shoved my fist into his hair and pulled his head back. 

“Fuck,” he moaned. 

This was power, not pleasure. 

Or… maybe it was both—it didn’t matter.

I had no intention to be ‘soft’ with him.

When I bit his neck, it was not the same teasing nibbling he had given me. I bit to bruise. For blood. I moved down his body, gnawing and scraping my teeth across his skin like a starved chimaera, leaving a wake of marks and scratches. 

His body would remember every moment of this night. I demanded as much from it. 

When I reached his cock I slid off the bed onto my knees, pulling him with me just a touch so I could watch him. I did wait or ask. I took him in without hesitation, just to see how quickly his composure would crack.

“ Fuck! Slower… fucking slower, Cal…” 

I disregarded him entirely. I wrapped my arms under his thighs and dragged his whole body closer, spreading his legs and continuing to move my head up and down. He put his hand on my hair, and I batted it away, then stopped. 

I put my hand on his cock and stroked slowly, “Every time you touch me… I’m going to stop.” I whispered. The genuine shock and horror on his face was priceless. 

Corpses? Fine. 

Blood? Manageable.

Stopping this ? Absolutely out of the question, the most dreadful thing I could have suggested. 

I rolled my eyes, then licked down the length of his shaft. 

“Fucking…” he muttered something I didn’t quite catch, laying back on the bed and putting his arm over his mouth. If he was trying to stifle his moaning, it didn’t work. As I sucked on the tender tip I could feel his legs shaking, his breathing labored. 

I alternated between moving so slow it was driving him crazy, and so fast he thought he was going to cum. Each time he seemed like he was about to teeter over the edge, I’d stop again, which made him angrier than I’d ever seen him. 

“Stop fucking playing with me.”

“Stop fucking whining.” 

I rubbed my thumb over the tip, milking a drop of precum from the head and lapping it up with my tongue. He looked down at me, lips parted, cheeks flushed, eyes bleary. 

When I released him and stood, he sat up on his elbows. His gaze followed me intensely. I walked to the far bookshelf and opened the little box there, pulling out a small glass container. 

“What’s that?” 

“The blood of my enemies,” I said, a little too quickly. Then I showed him the vial, to dispel some of the disgust in his eyes. “Oil.” 

I coated my fingers in it first, then my cock, moving back toward him. 

“Have you ever been with a man before?” I asked, cupping my clean hand under his chin. 

“Admittedly not like this,” he replied back, looking away from me. I don’t know why that made me smile. 

I was going to ruin him. 

Be the first to ruin him. 

I leaned down and kissed him again. 

“Then I will show you.” I whispered, “Get on your hands and knees.” 

“You’re enjoying this far too much.” He said, trying to pretend he still had some modicum of control. He sat up obediently, moving as directed. I wandered behind him, kneeling on the mattress. 

When I leaned down and licked his entrance, his body shuddered. “Why the fuck—”

“Stop complaining, or I won’t do it again.” I reminded him. I did it a second time, then a third, before sitting up and positioning my fingers at his entrance. He was as tightly locked as a banker’s vault. “You’re going to have to relax.”

“I’m relaxed. Just do it.” 

As you wish, I thought as I pressed my middle finger inside. 

His body tensed, his hips bucking, “Ow!–stop. Stop .” 

“Give it a second,” I said, putting my other hand up on his back, soothing him. I moved my finger in and out, slowly. With each subtle movement, he would hiss and moan, unsure if the sensation was pleasurable or painful. His spine arched downward, his legs relaxing in the slightest. 

I pushed my forefinger in with the first and, “Ah—ah, fuck… fuck…” he started to moan as I prodded his prostate.
“Good boy…” I breathed, moving slightly faster. I moved my other hand back down to his arousal, throbbing and hot. He wasn’t going to last long. That was okay. 

When I was satisfied that he was prepared, I withdrew my fingers, settling myself behind him. I pushed down on his back, sending his chest onto my mattress, his face into my pillows, before taking a fistful of that glorious hair again. 

I pushed into him in one swift motion, the action making his whole body seize and tense beyond his control. He made some noise between a gasp and a moan as he buried his face in the pillows, be it out of embarrassment, shame, pain or arousal; I really couldn’t tell. 

It felt so fucking good whatever it was. 

I started to move inside of him, slowly, only for the first few thrusts into his body, giving him my grace of letting him adjust to my size. Then I picked up the pace, snapping hips forward, the sound of skin on skin echoing through the room. 

While I worked, I watched as he reached down, pleasuring himself. 

I pushed his hand off. He turned his head, looking up at me, this time not with malice but desperation. “Please, I need— Ah, I—I— Ah, ” 

I knew exactly what he needed. 

I wrapped my arm around his waist, pulling him with me as I shifted our positions, laying so that he was sitting up on my cock while I moved. 

“Show me,” I said, kissing just below his shoulder blade. I ran my nails down his back, following the line my knife had left earlier, “Show me how much you want to cum.” 

He was panting, his body slow. He planted his hands down on the mattress and started to rock his hips back and forth, moaning half-worded sentiments as he tried to keep moving. Every thrust backwards I’d hit his prostate, and he’d put his head back in ecstasy. 

I let him suffer for a few miserable moments before complying, putting my hand on his cock. But I didn’t move it, I simply gave him something to work for. He moved forward, his cock would slip through my fingers, slick with precum, and he’d moan. He’d move back, and my cock, slick with oil, would hit his prostate again, and he’d gasp. 

Moaning. 

Gasping. 

Moaning.

Gasping. 

“I’m going to cum…” he warned me. I decided to bring him there swiftly, pushing my hips up and taking control of the pace again. I retracted my hand, giving him nothing to stimulate that glorious cock, “No, no, please—” he whimpered.
I gripped his hips painfully, ploughing into him with near reckless abandon in chase of my own pleasure. 

I didn’t give a fuck what he wanted. 

“Cal— ah, ah, ah, Cal, please…”

This is what you wanted, you have to give him something. I thought, 

A treat for good behaviour. 

I moved my one hand off of his hip and onto his shoulder, generously putting my other hand back on his cock. 

It throbbed and twitched at my touch, bouncing as I defiled him. 

“ Fuck!” He came all over my hand, the white fluid dripping down onto the black blankets. 

“I’m close,” I breathed against his back, my hand still moving long after he was done.

“Fucking finish.”

Gut him, fucking slice him open fucking—

I came hard, my hips snapping forward, “ Fuck , thank you, fuck… ” I muttered in elvish. My vision blacked out for a moment with the force of it, and I had to stop. I pressed my forehead into his back, my hand leaving his softening member.

I sat back on my elbows, breathing heavy.

I lifted him up slightly, pulling out while he twitched and moaned. “Fucking hells…” he said.

I stood up, walking over toward the tub where there was a partially soiled towel I could clean myself off with. I had cum on my hands, and more of it dripping down my legs. 

He laid flat on his back, closing his eyes as he ran his hands over his sweat-dampened skin. “Hells, we should have been doing that sooner…”

“What are you doing?” I asked, 

He opened his eyes, peering over at me through the darkness. 

“I have to sleep; humans sleep,” he panted. I walked over to the side of the bed where he was lying and looked down at him. He looked up at me. “What?” 

I reached out carefully, gripping his jaw. 

This was about domination.

I was feral for it. Starved.  

“I’m not fucking done with you yet.” 

Chapter Text

“For He shall come again in the form of his Chosen, born not from womb but from wound. And on that day, the rivers shall run dry with blood, for the sky will drink first.”
- Notes from the Seer, Divine Archivist of Bhaal

Chapter Seven: The Magic Mirror

— Cal—

I sat amid the pews in the ritual room in the earliest hours of the morning. I had stretched out, sketching between the pages of a book with ink, destroying the author’s legacy word by word… some tome of Selûne, the last copy in existence—its wise words now hidden beneath a detailed depiction of a mindflayer corpse. Its face was squashed in, its tentacles pulled apart.

I ripped the page out and crumpled it. Started anew. 

Sleeping with Gortash was a mistake. 

Though it served its purpose—he was much more compliant, or at least more tired, afterward. I was able to get more information out of him about some of his black market deals, and the automatons he intends to make once he was sated and sleepy. 

The problem was I couldn’t stop thinking about it. His moans echoed in my skull like bellowing screams, stirring heat in places I’d thought long dead. I could remember the warmth of his skin. The feeling of his nails against my chest. Being inside of him. 

Sleeping with Gortash was a mistake, and I was definitely going to do it again. 

As I parsed through this in my mind, I heard the soft steps of someone approaching in the room. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be wandering about at all hours here, but the ritual room was typically quiet unless there were sacrifices or services being held. 

I looked up just slightly and saw a woman in a long red dress stepping over the threshold.

She came closer, then chose the pew directly in front of the one I was lying in to sit. She folded her hands, bowed her head, glancing up at the massive idol of my Father on the wall. 

I wasn’t in the mood. 

“What do you want, Orin?” I asked, sullenly. 

She popped her head toward me, that eerie, knowing grin already tugging at her mouth. I kept drawing, not even bothering to look up at her. 

The skin on her face rippled and peeled, my sister shifting back into her natural form. 

“How do you always seem to know when it’s me?” She asked, crossing her arms on the back of the pew and leaning on them, looking down at me. 

The truth was, I didn’t. There had been more than one occasion that I had accused someone of being my sister who wasn’t, even going as far as to cut them down when they failed to convince me. Living with a changeling who didn’t always want to be known was hard. 

“Maygrad died some sixteen days ago.” I said, meaning the woman that Orin had chosen to look like. “Reaper Graft killed her as part of his marriage proposal to Hera.” 

She rolled her eyes, “Why you bother learning their names and lives is beyond me.” She muttered. “I’m surprised to find you down here, brother, I would have thought you’d still be… entertaining the lordling.” 

“I had Sceleritas bring him home.”

She chuckled, “Oh what a sight that must have been to see.” 

It was a simple sleep spell and a bag of holding, although, she was right—there was a great deal of comedy about the idea of Sceleritas having to stop to make sure Gortash could breathe as he traversed the city. 

She settled her body back, her white eyes looking over me lazily, “Tell me,” she began, mock-sweet, “was it ever so twee as he moaned your name? Or did it feel like sin—fucking something that would live to tell the tale?” She giggled, leaning down close to me, “Did he make you cry?”

I glared up at her, 

“Come now, don’t pretend. We all know.” 

She was trying to annoy me, which I knew, but I was more upset it was working. My Father’s followers saw me as an extension of his hand, immortal. Focused. Holy. I did have some concern that bringing Gortash here, his continued existence at my side, was watering down that view. 

“Did you actually need something, or did you wake early just to get under my skin?”

She pursed her lips, turning her head slightly to the side. I could see the swirling energy beneath her skin start to move a little faster, the way it often did if she was fired up about something. “There was something.”

I closed the book around my finger, regarding her with a touch more sincerity. 

“Out with it, then.”

She drew a slow breath, “Grandfather has suggested, now that you seem interested in taking living lovers again, that you and I should…” she paused, “copulate.”

She broke the word up, like it hurt to say. 

Cop. you. late.

I closed my eyes slowly, shaking my head. 

Of course he did. 

Me a father? Orin a mother ? I didn’t know which part I found more ridiculous. 

I considered her upbringing in this temple, how forgotten she always seemed to be. When she was a babe, I once found her crawling around the torture room, covered in her own shit. It was in her hair, across her face, streaked down her legs. She kept shifting forms and sobbing, when I brought her back to her mother, she sneered. 

Helena hated her daughter. 

A pest. A competitor. 

She and Sarevok often spoke about what they’d do with their daughter’s life—sacrifice her, eat her, send her off into the world with nothing. The only reason she was allowed to remain was after my constant insistence that Father had told me she was to stay. 

She was needed. 

Bhaal has spoken . 

It is one of the only lies I’ve ever told Sarevok, but one I repeated endlessly. 

“Orin, I am not—”

She laughed, throwing her head back, the sound echoing in the cavernous room. “I told him no, of course. Can you imagine?” This made me laugh too, though perhaps more darkly than she, relief that she didn’t somehow decide it was a good idea, just because Sarevok had said it. She leaned over the back of her pew to be above me, taking the book from my hands. 

“Thinking of converting?” She asked, tearing out more of the pages from the book. 

“Just scrap paper.” I replied, 

“Shame. I would have love to see you running through the darkness chased by wolves.” She said, dropping it back down to me. Then as simple as that she stood again. That was Orin’s version of being genuine—checking in to make sure we were on the same page while still threatening to burn the whole book at a moment’s notice. “I’m going to go find someone to kill. If you’d care to join me,” she said over her shoulder. 

Finally. A good idea. 

—

– Eight Days Later–

–Gortash–

It had been almost a tenday since we robbed the House of Wonders. The Fist had been swarming the place ever since, sniffing for clues like bloodhounds with broken noses. Apparently, though they arrived before all the Bhaalists got out, they hadn’t a clue what had really happened. To read the papers, you would have thought the whole thing was some sort of genocide against the gnomes. Apparently, some reporter had conjured some story about half-orcs storming in and setting it ablaze, though, if you were to go down there, the building itself was still entirely intact. 

It was misinformation that helped my cause, and kept the truth at bay—though I wondered how it sat with the Bhaalspawn. 

I hadn’t seen him since the night he dragged me to that godsforsaken hellhole beneath the city, forcing me to watch his little rituals and… whatnot. 

I didn’t care that he had taken some distance.
In fact, it wasn’t abnormal. In the few months we had been working together, he would often disappear for spells of time, sending his little lackeys to do his bidding rather than going about things personally. 

Still, I had to wonder if what had happened after the rituals was the reason for his current streak of silence. 

I had been sore for days, constantly finding new little marks he had left on me; bruises on my throat from his hands, teethmarks in the skin on my chest, long scratches across my stomach from his nails. My legs hurt, my back hurt. Even my eyes ached, for gods’ sake. I slept like the dead for two days just to feel half-alive again. The aftermath almost diminished the worth of the act. 

Almost . 

The worst little memory from that night was the butler. Sceleritas . I woke, not in Cal’s dungeon of a bedroom, but rather in my own home, the little fiend looming over me with a yellow grin. 

Thinking of it makes me shudder. 

Ever since then, I felt constantly like I was being watched by the little imp, like I could see that ugly hat peeking out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned, he’d be gone. 

His little giggles echoed in my dreams. 

In some ways, I was thankful for his presence. It at least meant the Son of Bhaal isn’t entirely finished with me. 

“Are you even listenin’ to me Gortash?” Rilnar demanded. For a single harengon, the rabbit-man had a warren’s worth of attitude. He snapped the lid of the metal barrel shut, and sat on it. “Eighteen thousand for the whole lot.” 

I scoffed, “You’ve lost your mind.” 

I didn’t love coming down into the sewers like this to meet with my suppliers but it was the safest place to discuss freely. Save for the guild members who wandered the tunnels, there was hardly anyone to see what went on down here. That being said, I made most of my money through black market trade, and meeting in person was essential. 

What wasn’t essential, however, was the way Rilnar was trying to rip me off.

““Ten was the deal. You don’t get to pull numbers out of your fluffy ass—”

“This is real adamantine.” He said, slapping the chest beside him, “And I brought you magic trinkets up the ass, Gortash. I’m not takin’ ten.” 

“You want eighteen thousand for one set of adamantine armor and some gold rings?” I scoffed, “You’d have better luck selling pisswater to a cleric of Kossuth.”

Though Rilnar was one of my most consistent suppliers, I had found him annoying of late. I didn’t know if it was because I was on to bigger things and he reminded me of where I had come from, or if it was just that he had been getting greedy. 

He rolled his eyes, tossing his head back dramatically, “It’s always negotiations with you, Gortash. You haven’t even seen the good shit yet.”

“Oh, there’s good shit now?”

He grinned, “Couldn’t get it down all this way without breaking it, I tucked it off in a tunnel back toward the warf. I’m tellin’ ya, you won’t be disappointed.” 

I let out a breath through my nose, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “Lead the way, you carrot-chomping extortionist.”

He grinned with all his yellowing teeth, sliding off the barrel and grabbing the torch. Two of his men moved out of his path to let us through, while the two guardswomen I brought down filed in behind me. 

He led us down a slightly winding route back to where he had snuck into the city, where the sewage dumped out into the ocean beneath the warf. Tucked in a little alcove was a tall something with a blanket draped over it, bound in the center by a cord of rope. 

Rilnar took the cord carefully, pulling it loose before pulling the sheet off of the item. It was a tall, rounded mirror, swirling with dark magic. 

“Huh? What’d I tell ya?”

“What is it ?” I asked. I had seen a litany of magic items in my life, but this one was different. Power radiated from it like heat.  

“Magic mirror—not the kind that you keep in your house to tell you you’re the fairest of them all, nuh-uh. This is a special kind of scrying mirror. Old magic. Helps people find things.”

“What do you mean it helps people find things?” 

“Name something you want. Tell it.” He said, stepping aside, “And it can’t be vague shit, like ‘a spoon’, ya gotta be specific.” 

I stepped closer, looking into the dark face of the mirror. I thought of something I knew, something someone had that was kept well away from here. Something specific. “Show me the Hammer of Orpheus.” 

The thing glowed with a hazy blue for a moment then… showed me the House of Hope, shifting through the rooms until the Orphic Hammer came into view. I could practically smell Raphael’s stench through the glass. 

As the mirror worked, I could hear it whispering in my mind, not quite words but feelings. Ones I associated with the House of Hope—loss, anger, fear. They crawled across my skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. 

The image held for a moment or two, then vanished. 

“Man that never gets old,” Rilnar said, rubbing his paws together. “You see? How invaluable is that. Definitely worth the eighteen when you consider everything else I brought, huh?” 

It was interesting, yes, and incredibly useful, but it still didn’t justify the price in my mind.
“I’d rather take this alone for four.” 

“Four? Four ?” He asked, “Stingy bastard, it cost me more than four just to get the damn thing. Twelve.”

“I came down here thinking I was spending ten . For your whole lot. ” I demanded. He threw the blanket back over it, 

“Come on, Gortash, you didn’t even look through everything, right? Come on, come…” he said, starting back toward where he came. 

I started to think of all the uses I had for something like that, the mirror. Finding where anything was when I needed it was nearly invaluable, and besides, Rilnar was starting to grate on my nerves. I had half a mind to take a page from the Bhaalist Book of Bargaining right there and then. 

As we turned down back toward the main sewer line, I saw Rilnar’s ears twitch.

“Wait, stop,” The rabbit said. He backed up a few paces, putting his arm out and motioning for us to push against the wall. Then after a few moments, I could hear it. 

Laughing.

The noise grew louder, accompanied by the sound of shuffling feet, and the sound of a man yelling. 

Rilnar inched up toward the mouth of our tunnel, looking around the corner. I tucked in behind him. 

There were people coming down the main tunnel, laughing and joking. Two in the front leading, four in the back, each holding a limb of a man who was struggling to get away.

They were… singing.

Call and response like school children.

Who splits the skull and births the scream?
Bhaal! Bhaal! Who reigns supreme!
Whose blade is kissed with sinner’s breath?
Bhaal! Bhaal! The Bringer of Death!
We drink the blood and toast the kill—
Raise the goblet, drink your fill!
We carve the name upon the skin—
He sees the cuts! He knows our sin!
Glory, father, blood and bone!
Together we will build his throne,
Slice their throats, and spill their blood—
Fill the streets with holy flood!

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few cultists,” I cooed against Rilnar’s ear. He snapped to look at me. 

“They’re Bhaalists , not Sharrans. If you’d like to become their next ritual slaughter be my fucking guest, but I’m not getting killed for no reason.” He hissed, turning back to the excitement. The four stopped at a rail, playing like they meant to toss the man over it into the murky water. “They’re always down here, it’s how they get around the city without gettin’ caught. They killed six of my guys last month.” 

I was about to tell him that as long as he wore the mark of the Black Hand, he’d be safe from them. It was part of the agreement Cal and I had struck, I’d stay out of his business, and he’d stay out of mine. This meant making sure if I was in the path of his kinfolk they wouldn’t cut me down. 

But as I considered extending this safety to Rilnar, another thought bloomed. 

“I tell you what, my fuzzy friend. I will go out there and speak to the Bhaalists and tell them you and your employees are to be left alone. In exchange… you honor me with a discount on your goods from here on out.” 

His dark eyes flicked back and forth in the dark. 

“They’ll kill you before you get a single word outta your mouth.” 

“I doubt that,” I retorted. 

He scoffed, “If you have a death wish, be my guest, Gortash.” 

I offered my hand, “Forty percent.”

“ Forty? You’ve lost your damn mind—”

“Come, won’t it be worth it? Keeping your friends alive?” I said, waggling my fingertips toward him. 

“Twenty.”

“Thirty.”

“Ugh, fine.” He shook my hand, his eyes darting back up the tunnel as though to see if they were still there. They were. Holding the man’s head down in the sewage while his arms flailed wildly. 

I sauntered past him. He probably thought I was a madman. I tried very hard not to blend all the little facets of my life—Bane, my dealings, my social standings. Because of this, I didn’t often share information that wasn’t needed.
Rilnar had no way to know of my dealings with the Bhaalists. To him, I was marching into certain death. 

As I emerged from the tunnel, one of the women looked up at me. I could see for a moment this flicker in her eyes. She immediately thought to spring at me, but then… recognition. I hadn’t spoken a word, but one look was enough. 

They knew me.
I can only imagine how it looked from Rilnar’s eyes. I emerge from the dark, the Bhaalists look up, their smiles fade, they drop the body into the water and it quickly rushes away. 

I crossed my arms over my chest, speaking loudly enough that they could hear, but he could not. “Is Cal with you?” I asked, “Or maybe… Orin ?” I added distastefully.  

The girl who saw me first straightened up a little. “Who are you?” She demanded, likely having only seen me the one time I had been at the temple. She slicked her hand back through her blood-soaked hair, it hitting her back with a thwop . 

“I am the Banite your Chosen reveres.”

“Reverence is a strong word,” Cal’s voice came somewhere out of the darkness, trailing along at his own pace behind his brood. 

He was dressed as he always was, in dark robes, a black fabric mask covering the bottom portion of his face. I felt a strange relief to see him, though I had evoked his name I didn’t actually expect he’d be out with a random lot from his church. 

“Is this why you always reek?” I asked sarcastically, turning toward him, “Do you spend all your time stalking the sewers?” 

“Go,” He said to the woman. They all took off, continuing down the path in the direction they had been heading. “I told you not to go back to the temple.”

He gave more than he meant to with the simple phrase. 

So the entrance is down here somewhere. I thought.

He stepped closer, “What are you doing down here? Looking for me?” 

He sounded annoyed. This wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned for our first… reconnection after the passionate night we had spent together. My heart drummed obnoxiously hard in my chest. 

“Hardly, I was simply taking care of business,” I said, thumbing back over my shoulder. 

The drow leaned forward, looking down the dark passage to where Rilnar, his men, and my guards were standing still, clumped together and nervously watching. 

“Mmm.” 

Cal pushed the hood of his cloak off of his face, revealing his features but also a large splattering of blood that started at his temple and dyed most of his white hair red. I arched an eyebrow. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” 

I looked at him, waiting for him to explain further, but when he didn’t, I rolled my eyes. “No matter, I came over to ask your little parishioners to stop accosting my suppliers. I assure you can make that happen.” 

He furrowed his brow, “Why would I tell them to do that?” 

“Because I asked you to.” 

“And?”

I arched an eyebrow at him, “and we’re supposed to be partners, are we not?” 

“So?” 

I couldn’t tell if he was being dense on purpose. Or maybe this was Orin. But… it didn’t make sense for this to be Orin, she had no reason to pretend down here, even for my benefit. So what then? “Pardon, are you angry with me?”

“No.”

“Then why are you being so fucking short with me?” I demanded. 

“I’m not.” 

That was fucking infuriating. 

I reached forward and pulled the mask off of his face. I needed to see his whole face to see if he was mocking me or not. 

He was as placid as a lake. 

“Fine then. I’m not asking. I’m telling you. You’ll keep your people out of the path of my suppliers or you and I will have problems.”

He closed the distance between us, putting his face close to mine. “What kind of problems?” 

“Knock it off.”

“No.” 

What did he fucking think? That just because we had sex he was in charge now?

I was about to argue further when he reached up and put a hand on my face. The gesture was so eerily tender it stopped me dead in my tracks. 

Blood stained hair. Emotionless expression. Defiance. Gentle touch. 

“I will consider your request,” he said quietly, dragging his fingers slowly down my cheek, “And we can discuss how you’ll pay me for it later.” 

I swallowed the violent words threatening to spill out. 

“When will I see you again.” I said, though it was a question, it didn’t ring like one. I wasn’t really asking when I’d see him, I was demanding to see him in private. We both knew it. 

“Soon.” He pulled his hand away, then slid past me like we were strangers in the streets. “Goodnight, Gortash.” He called, wandering off into the dark. 

When he was gone, my compatriots approached. “I can’t believe you’re fuckin' alive!” Rilnar said, putting his hands on his hips. He whistled, looking after Cal in the dark. He clamored over a different railing and dropped out of view. 

"Are you alright, sir?" One of my guardsmen said, but I didn't answer her. I was seething. 

Fuck. 

Chapter Text

“Let the weak fall upon their knees and offer up their throats, for mercy is not in the Black Hand's nature. The world is a chain, and each man must know his place upon it. Let no voice rise above thine own but Bane’s, and let thy will be his hammer. Where there is dissent, make silence. Where there is chaos, make fear. And where there is power, take it.”

-The Iron Creed of Bane, Book II, Line 17

Chapter 8: The Hand and the Dagger

— Cal—

I felt a blistering sense of trepidation as I stood outside of Gortash’s home. The place itself seemed asleep at this hour; windows dark, doors locked.

In earnest, I had been avoiding him. Not because of our little liaison, but because I had been experiencing something strange these last few days.

Silence . 

The Urge had been quiet in my head for days, and moreso, I hadn’t been hearing my Father either. Before the house of wonders, He had called me to go to Gortash, to slaughter the gnomes, to pave the way. 

Then… nothing. 

Normally when following his holy orders He at least offered me praise for a job well done. I had been so out of it that first night, I didn’t recall seeing him in my meditations, then the night after I was with Gortash at the temple, and never rested.

In the days that followed I went on as normal,

I killed. 

I prayed. 

I rested. 

Nothing. 

I chose not to tell anyone—Sarevok or Orin—for fear of what the fallout would be. 

I didn’t know how many more ritual drownings I’d actually be able to survive. 

I feared that I had drawn my father’s ire, trusting the Banite, bringing him to my home, sleeping with him. All of it was a far stretch beyond what I had been instructed to do. 

Swallowing my anxieties for the moment, I Misty-Stepped up to the little landing outside of his bedroom window. 

When he had accused me of bleeding all over the exterior of his house the other day, I didn’t realize the extent of it. Though it looked like someone, or maybe even several someones, had tried to clean it, there was still red staining the cracks in the stone. 

I pulled the window open and slipped inside. There was a fireplace in the corner, alive and roaring. His bed was vacant, blankets and sheets pulled up neatly and orderly. Everything in his bedroom had the same elegance as the rest of his house—gold everywhere, a chiffon canopy over where he slept, bookshelves carved from oak. 

In a chair by the fire, Gortash sat. That same silken robe over his form, legs crossed one over the other, a tome in his hand. “In the future,” he said without looking up, “I would prefer your use the front door, in lieu of crawling in through my bedroom window like a murderous kitten.” 

He had a glass in his hand, full of a dark amber liquid. He put it down on the small table next to him. When I didn’t say anything he sucked his teeth. 

“You know, I have quickly had enough with this new ‘silence as a measure of control’ technique you seem to be employing.” 

“What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about ?” He repeated. He had clearly taken the few hours since I had last seen him to put himself in a tizzy. “Earlier in the sewers, with the one word answers and pretending like you didn’t know who the fuck I am.” 

“You came up to my kin, making demands like you have any right—”

“I have every right, we had a deal!” He slammed his fist down. The glass jumped, the drink sloshing out. I motioned for him to be quiet, listening for any movement in the hall, but he didn’t seem to care. “I am not someone to be trifled with, Bhaalspawn. I am the Hand of Bane, his Chosen. If you defy me, you defy him, and I won’t stand for it.”

I rolled my eyes, “You’re upset because I’ve been ignoring you.”

“Oh have you?” He hissed, “I hadn’t noticed!” He ran a hand over his face, trying to calm himself down. “ You are ruining things. I had a perfect plan. All you had to do was follow orders. But you can’t help yourself, can you?”

“It isn’t entirely up to me, Gortash. I cannot just fall in line behind you and your god, that’s… faithless.” I said. I wandered closer to him, taking up the decanter and empty glass that sat on the table beside him. I filled it with whatever he was drinking and knocked it back quickly without bothering to ask if I was allowed. 

He glared into the fire for a long moment before standing. “What the hells was all of that the other night, then?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You and I both know you didn’t have a soft streak in your heart—what was that night? Some twisted performance? You fucked me in your god’s temple, then dropped me back here like it was nothing. If you’re trying to intimidate me, I’ll have you know it won’t work.”

No, I didn’t think it would. I looked at the dancing candle on his table, unsure if I should tell him why I had been keeping my distance. 

He softened ever so slightly, putting his hand under my chin, demanding my attention. “I am not asking you to follow Bane, Calrissian, I am simply asking you to follow me. ” 

I hesitated once again, “Has your god been… quiet of late?”

“What do you mean?” 

I hesitated, “Father bid me to help you at the House of Wonder. Despite frequent meditation and prayer, this was the last edict from him I heard. This is unusual for me.”

He said nothing.
He was right; that kind of silence was annoying. 

“Sarevok called me to bring you to heel, thinking you’d pull me under with your scheming..” I explained, “Father’s voice went silent the moment I chose to trust you. To… touch you. I thought I had broken something.” I swallowed, genuine fear and regret tasting like rot in my mouth, “Maybe I did.”

He seemed to think about it, “I don’t think my communion with Bane is the same as yours to Bhaal.” He offered, “My lord gave me a dream the night before our little heist, saying that you’d come to me and offer help. I thought it was nothing more than a dream before you ended up at my dining table. He claimed that you’d ‘pave the way’.” He pursed his lips, “And after that, the night you came to me, he commanded me to protect you.”
I furrowed my brow. I didn’t need protecting, not from Gortash of all people. “Why?”

“I’m not sure.” The shadows flickered across his face as I tried to think. “Is that really all this was? Here I thought you were worried about falling madly in love with me.”

“I thought maybe if I left you be, I could atone.” I admitted. “Sarevok is pushing for me to bed Orin.” The thought was still repulsive to me, but I had been considering that perhaps he knew something I didn’t. Some prophecy or plan I hadn’t discovered yet. I didn’t want to sleep with Orin. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill everyone. There was no more need for more Bhaalspawn; I’d be the last one alive at the end of the world. 

So long as Gortash followed through on his plans and I could leverage them as I intended. 

He sighed, regressing from outraged to annoyed. “Look, let’s just put this all aside for tonight,” he said tiredly. “In the morning I will take you to the Obsidian Chapel. We can make offerings and prayers. Perhaps Bane can give insight to your little crisis.” 

I nodded, putting the glass down. I moved past him back toward the window almost automatically, thinking to head back home. 

“You could stay, you know,” he said. 

There was something in the way he said it, another one of his coy little manipulations.

If I said no, he’d be angry. 

If I said yes, and assumed he meant with him, here in his room, he’d chide me for being presumptuous. 

If I assumed he meant in his home, but apart from him, I’d be a prude. 

He had already established that he’d no longer accept a lack of answer as answer, either. 

“Do you need me to stay, Gortash?” 

He raised his eyebrows, “Need? No.”

I stepped closer, “Do you want me to stay?” 

He tossed his hand, scoffing, “I simply think it would be… inefficient to slink off to that little rat’s nest you call a temple, only to crawl back here by sunrise.” 

I was… disappointed by his response. Unexpectedly so. I suppose it read on my face because he laughed. 

“What’s that look?”
I closed the distance between us. I didn’t know how to tell him how I felt. 

That I wanted him to want me to stay. 

That I didn’t trust him, but I wished I could. 

That I wanted to kill him but didn’t want him dead. 

That I felt alone. That he made me feel less alone. 

He didn’t make me say any of it, though. Instead, he placed his hand on the small of my back, leaned in, and kissed me. 

Soft and gentle. Just the once. 

“Stay, Cal. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow, alright?” 

This was different. It felt more real. He was kissing me because he wanted to, not because I had coerced him into it, or because he was scared.

 It wasn’t a power play for once, it was… an invitation—a kind one. 

“Okay,” I whispered. 

—

That night, while Gortash slept, I lay beside him in curious silence, watching him breathe. I didn’t understand any of it; how it fit into Father’s plans, what it meant for my life. Was all of this a gift? A punishment? I wasn’t sure. 

All I knew was that three months ago, Gortash had trained his eye on me, and I had been trying to catch up ever since. 

I rolled flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness, quiet, still, consciously trying to rest, when suddenly… 

Woosh . 

The world shattered around me.

There was a brief sensation of falling before landing somewhere hard. My head smacked back against a stone ground. For a second, I thought that Gortash had Dimension Doored us away somewhere, but when I opened my eyes, I was alone in a dark space. Not regular darkness, magical darkness. Endless. Eternal. Pressing in from every direction.

A familiar hum resonated through the air, accompanied with the sickly smell of something sweet.

This was the Outer Plane. Not wherever my Father normally called me, but still in the Outer Plane nonetheless.  “Father?” I called, the word seemed to echo off of the air itself, hitting me from all over, coming back to my ears again and again. 

The shambling sound of clinking metal followed.

I struggled to my feet; it felt like fighting through a windstorm, the atmosphere oppressive, trying to shove me back down to the ground.  

“Father?” I called again, but it was not my father who emerged through the darkness. 

First was a massive visage of a creature, a colossal creature made of bone and metal that stood at least ten times my height. It stepped past me, the ground quaking as its skeletal feet moved it forward. Dense chains dangled from its body, a triangular metal cage encasing its head and shoulders. It dragged behind it a scythe, twice the length of its body, the metal kicking up sparks against the stones. 

I knew without being told—this was Myrkul, God of Death, Lord of Bones.

After him, a godlike humanoid emerged from the abyss, just as tall but much more… meaty . A menacing, strong-looking man in long robes with a sword in one hand and a tome in the other. His eyes glowed with a green aura that seemed to trail behind him. He passed on my other side, each taking a seat on thrones made of stone that seemed to appear at their will. 

Bane . 

Every part of my body felt heavy with dread. I became certain that they had called me here, Myrkul and Bane, to destroy me. Two gods at odds with my Father, and I his Chosen. A divine judgement. 

Only then, amid my terror, did a third throne appear.

Lord Bhaal, Murder King, My Father. He appeared humanlike but not, his face distorted with charred flesh, white and cracked-looking. His body was covered in blood and shrouded in robes as he took the final seat. As he did, he jabbed the butt of his dagger against the arm of the chair. A loud BANG popped in my ears and inside my mind. 

I collapsed to my knees in a tangle of reverence and fear, meaning to bow but succumbing to terror as I tried. I covered my head with my hands, tucking my face down between my knees. 

If I could have run, I would have, but there was nowhere to go.

I could barely bring myself to move. 

Collected across the cosmos, I had been called by the Dead Three. 

Chapter Text

“Bend the knee not in weakness, but in wisdom—for the strong do not yield, they choose. Let the fist rise not to shield, but to strike. Let the mind be sharpened, the will be forged. Those who obey without question are exalted. Those who resist are broken, then rebuilt in the image of Order. For the Lord of Tyranny commands not loyalty born of affection, but obedience born of fear and awe. This is not cruelty. This is the clarity of chains.”

-Tome of Iron Edict, Verse 14

Chapter 9: Divine Intervention

-Cal-

I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy… I thought, practically rocking back and forth on the ground. It was the most real, most feral terror I had felt in my entire life. I had faced death many times before, but this was different. I felt as though I was on the edge of undoing , as though I had been called here specifically for the purpose of evisceration. 

I was not fearful of pain or the abyss, I was simply in a state of dread beyond which I can explain. 

I was convinced it wasn’t real. 

I was convinced it was the most real thing I had ever or would ever experience. 

Every thought was pulled from my mind, slipping through my ears and nose like smoke drawn by a current. I could hear them aloud, though I did not speak them. I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy— they echoed all around. 

There would be no lies here, not a single idea that I could hide from them.

The Dead Three: Bane, Myrkul and Bhaal.

It was Bane who spoke first. “Your Chosen is a shambling mess.” His voice sounded like that of a withered grandfather, but impossibly loud. “His violent impulses will be his undoing. Look how he trembles, even now. If I pressed too hard, I could reduce him to dust.”

“Yet, he could slay yours in an instant and feel no remorse. My child is my perfect weapon, and it will be he who brings chaos to the realm of man,” Father claimed.

“And yet in death he will be nothing,” Myrkul growled. 

My father hit the hilt of his blade against the stone once again with a boom before affixing his eye on me. I was a mess. 

“ Rise.” He ordered me. 

I forced my trembling hands to the ground, demanding them to move, to push me up. I drew one foot beneath me, forcing my weight down on it, my whole body trying to bring itself into standing at his command. The suppressive atmosphere of this place felt like it would crush me. Once I stood, I felt frozen there. Exposed.

“You have wallowed in your mortal urges long enough. You mistake my silence for abandonment, disobedience for devotion, shame for strategy,” he bellowed. 

“I’m sorry, Father, please—”

“ Silence,” his voice echoed through my body. His cadence was slow, each word heavy and purposeful. “I did not bring you here for a public flogging, my child. My silence was the sign of divine work, not of desertion. The Pact has been reforged. A trinity reborn. The Dead Three have aligned once more.” He motioned to the other gods, practically turning my head with his hand to observe them. “Your world rots, corrupted by sentiment. Mercy. The arrogance of peace. By the hands of our chosen, we will see it returned to its sacred state.”

“Order,” Bane said.

“Death,” Myrkul mirrored.

“Blood,” Father continued. He leaned forward, his very image shifting before my eyes. They had chosen forms that would make sense to my mind, but the longer I stared, the stranger they became. Blood leaked from the cracks in my Father’s skin, and beneath it, I could see white shining bone. “You, my child, will be the bridge between the living and the dead, the slaughter and the siege. Fail me, and I shall tear your name from this realm. Serve me well, and I will carve it into history, eternal.”

“You will become the blade,” Bane posited, “Empowering the Lords of Death and Murder with your kills. Gortash will become the crown, imposing tyranny across the lands. We will deprive all other gods of their domains.”

“You are the key,” Myrkul growled. “You will go to my Chosen.”

“This is the will of your Lords,” my father finished. When I looked at him, I saw words unspoken. These theatrics were an act. The command was true, but further instructions were to come. 

I dare not let the thought bloom for fear of who may hear. 

“Who is the chosen of Myrkul?” I choked out. The bone lord put forward his hand, chains dangling from his wrist clanking together. 

Purple magic rose from the ground, particles swirling into an image. An older man with long white hair, adorned in heavy armour. In the spectral image, he wielded a massive sword. 

“ Ketheric Thorm. ” The words were whispered directly into my mind, imprinted on me. 

“In union, you will bring destruction most glorious.” 

I had so many other questions, but I dared not ask them. I wanted to leave this place. I wanted to be far away, anywhere but here. 

I didn’t have to wait long. 

“The Chosen of Bane has heard my edict and will begin his plan anew,” Bane announced. “Amid your murders, tyranny shall rise.” 

Then, in a flash of smoke, it was all gone. 

—

“Wake up !” Gortash demanded. He poured something cold over my face, jolting me from my nightmares back to reality. As I shot forward, I produced a blade from within my robes and immediately put it up to his throat. 

I didn’t know who he was—I thought something was attacking me.

“For fuck’s sake—it’s me ,” he barked. “You weren’t breathing.” He didn’t even flinch. It was becoming so commonplace; me with a knife at his throat. He wasn’t even threatened by it anymore. 

I don’t know what words I said; they came out garbled and mushed together amid my panic. My brain hadn’t caught up yet. The vision still clung to me like oil. I could see bone, and blood, and thrones of stone. Whatever the words I spoke, he seemed to understand what I meant.

“I know , I saw, ” he said, pulling away. He leaned back, returning the porcelain vase to the nightstand. Water dripped from his wrist, trailing down to his elbow. The flowers that had been in it lay in a pile at the foot of the bed.

I was breathing hard, my hand over my hammering heart. 

I found his calm unsettling.

“You saw ?” I parroted. 

“Yes. Well. No.” Gortash sighed. “Not exactly. They came to me first. In a dream.” He scoffed, “Well, I suppose… it wasn't a dream, was it?” He ran a hand down his face. “I’ve been awake for over an hour. You were seizing. I couldn’t rouse you.”

I finally lowered the blade, my hands trembling more than I’d like him to ever see of me. 

“What did you see?” I asked. He rolled his wrist almost flippantly.

“The Pact. The same as you, I imagine. Bane made it very clear that I’m to keep you alive.”

“How generous,” I muttered, realising my father had made no such command to me, though I knew better. 

We cannot kill Gortash. I said in my mind, though, it felt like there was no one to hear it but me. In addition to my father’s silence, the dulling of my Urge was no coincidence either. He was quiet. Slumbering in the back of my mind like a dog at rest. 

Be it Bane or Bhaal, one of them had been keeping me in better control of my faculties. I pushed my hand through my hair, feeling it slick with sweat. “How long was I gone?”

“At least an hour, maybe two. You stopped breathing a few times. As I said, I couldn’t wake you.” 

He wasn’t saying I was worried about you , but I assumed this was as close to sentimentality as either of us was capable. 

I was vulnerable. He wasn’t shoving it in my face. This was friendship to him. 

“You’re quite… composed,” I muttered, swinging my legs off his bed. 

He shrugged, “I had time. You’ll be fine, breathe.”

“They said I was the blade, due to sew chaos across the land,” I told him, standing. I didn’t know why I was standing, but sitting there just seemed impossible. I doffed my robe, now wet, throwing it across the chair by the fire.

“And I, the saviour, come to restore order,” he said as he watched, “It would seem our new plan is not so different from the one I originally proposed to you, but now we’ve been called to bring in the Chosen of Myrkul.”
“Ketheric Thorm.”

“Do you know him?”

“His name is familiar to me,” I recalled reading some story about him in a book, about how he fought the harpers, and died. If I knew anything else about him, then I couldn’t draw it forward amid the haze of fear I was still trying to leave. “In stories I’ve read, he was a legendary follower of Shar, not Myrkul.” 

Gortash shrugged, “Perhaps he was a useful follower, and the Bone Lord sought him out in death. No matter who he is, we will find him.” 

“I think I have that book somewhere...”

He had his eyes on the ground, his expression thoughtful. “We won’t need it,” he said after a moment. "'The Gods work in mysterious ways," he muttered, repeating something I had told him days ago. He stood from the bed, striding toward the door. "Come." There was an obstinate part of me that wanted to refuse, but given what I had just gone through, I was okay with Gortash marching me around for the moment. 

I barely had a sense of up and down. 

He seemed grounded. 

The house was silent as we stalked through the halls. It was odd to see the place so quiet. I assumed the staff were still present, most sleeping, as I saw a few wandering about. Gortash ignored them, leading me down one flight of stairs, through to his kitchen, then down another flight of stairs which came out into a small cellar beneath his home. 

As I had grown to expect, there was a vast collection of expensive vintage wines amid crates and barrels of food and other household supplies. We walked past the racks and crates, straight to the back corner of the room. There, Gortash moved a heavy chest out of a corner, sweeping back loose straw and dirt from a section of the floor. 

Beneath it was a hatch, which he opened, and motioned me to follow him down into the dark. “What I don’t understand is that they seem to have a specific plan,” he said, traversing down a rope ladder into the darkness. “Why not simply tell us what they want us to do instead of all this rigamarole?” 

I cleared my throat, finally settling, “My Father once told me that there were laws of how the gods could interact with those on the Material Plane. They can influence things, give direct orders even, but they cannot alter fate.” 

“So? If our fate is to rule the world regardless, I’d rather have clear instructions,” he muttered. It was amusing that he wanted the gods of death to hand him an instruction manual for taking over the Sword Coast. 

“I would assume some of it is a test. Loyalty and faith.” I stepped off the ladder into the dark, peering around at what looked to be more crates, stacked three or four high in the space. The air was colder down here, sharp with metal and dust. The ceilings were lower, and I had to keep crouched. It felt more like being in a mineshaft than a rich man’s home. 

Gortash rolled his eyes, taking up a torch and fishing something to light it with out of a box near the rope. Instead of waiting, I just cast the cantrip ‘light’ on my hand. He squinted at me. “You know, my mother used to tell me magic is cheating.” He said, abandoning the torch inside the box.

“I wasn’t aware you were magically inclined.”

“Perhaps I was…” He shrugged, “I don’t really remember, and my later master didn’t give me much of a chance to learn.”

“Master?” I asked. He started to walk down a path between the boxes, staying within the scope of my spell so he could see. 

“Yes, he was an unforgiving person, to say the least. Regardless, I never learned. Wizarding doesn’t much appeal to me, nor do I intend to make any pacts with devils .” 

“I could teach you. It’s not that hard.” I said, though I knew I was misleading him ever so slightly. I had been born with a great connection to magic, and pursued yet more of it through pacts. At the same time, if someone as smart as him wanted to learn a few spells, there was nothing really stopping him. 

While I was thinking through how magic would strengthen him, I hit my foot into a sturdy chest. I glanced down to see what it was and saw a metal arms box, the kind meant for transporting weaponry, especially on ships or across great distances.
There was a faded logo of the Zhentarim on the side. No doubt where he stole whatever it was from. Beside the box was an open crate, inside of which were stacks and stacks of metal with a reddish glimmer.

“Is this infernal iron?” I asked. He looked back over his shoulder. 

“It is.” 

I looked around at the piles of it, stacked between crates and chests. Quantities I wouldn’t have expected in a foundry, much less beneath Gortash’s home. 

“Why do you have so much?”

“A large part of my trade is done with it. Infernal weaponry is hard to find topside of Avernus.” 

I picked up a small piece. Heat pulsed through it, like a heartbeat amid coals. “How do you get it?”

“I have my ways,” he said, “are you coming or not?” 

“Is it Zariel—”

“I am not going to tell you,” he snapped, “let's go.”

I wasn’t thrilled with his tone, but again, I followed him. 

I had begun to sense something devilish about Gortash himself. I wasn’t sure if it was the way he talked, or the fact that I knew he had connections in Avernus—the iron, with Karlach’s deal, now his infernal engines—but whatever it was, it was certainly there. 

 The path he was following rounded a corner where there was a larger room and a door. The floor was dirt, and as he stepped down onto it, dust plumed up around his feet. “I made a recent acquisition I think could help in this little quest of ours.” He muttered, mostly to himself, as he approached something large tucked away in the corner. “Give me a hand, would you?” 

I stepped closer to him, helping him pull a sheet off of the shape, watching it flutter to the ground with a certain level of elegance. Beneath it was a mirror of sorts, tall and sturdy, but its face, rather than reflective, was dark. 

“What is it?” I asked, 

“I’ve yet to name it,” he said thoughtfully, “but something fitting: the Mirror of Finding maybe.”
“Convenient. What does it do?” I reached out to it, magic radiated off of it in waves. I could feel it humming beneath the surface.

It felt divine. It felt sinister. 

I liked it. 

“It shows you things you’re trying to find—or at least, it shows you things you’re looking for, so long as you’re specific.”
“Someone once told me using magic is cheating.” I quipped. 

He rolled his eyes. “Move,” he said, pulling it away from the wall just slightly so we could see its face better. “It’s a very powerful magical item, assisting us in a quest from the gods. Even my sanctimonious viper of a mother would allow magic in these circumstances.”

“How does it work?” I asked, 

“Like so,” he faced the mirror, his chest forward, his tone commanding, “ Show me Ketheric Thorm. ” 

The mirror awoke at his command, a blue haze emanating from it as its face swirled. The vague reflection of us in the basement waned and was replaced by something different. Clouds, then the vague outlines of buildings came into view.

I covered my mouth in a form of reverence, not for Gortash, like he had suggested today in the sewers, but for the mirror.

Something like this was incredibly powerful, forbidden magic that served without question, no matter your intent. 

I could think of so many things I could use it for. It made me wonder what other toys Gortash had up his sleeve that he had yet to share. 

He furrowed his brow. “When I used it before, the image was much clearer.” He mused, stepping closer. 

“It is clear, it’s just dark,” I told him, dropping the spell from my hand, hoping that equaling out the darkness would help him to see. The glow died. The cellar dimmed to blue-black, lit only by the mirror’s eerie pulse. The image became slightly clearer, nighttime over a village.

“What does that look like to you?” He asked, squinting at the image. He could barely make out the shape with his human vision, but with mine, I could see some of the details. A hospital, a toll house, a graveyard. 

“I’m not sure,” I said, but the longer I stared, the more I realised this wasn’t ordinary darkness. Like in the Outer Plane, it was magical. Even I could barely see through it, and my kind tend to live in the Underdark. “It could be the Shadow Cursed Lands.” 

Gortash’s eyes flicked over the image with recognition. He nodded, “The Archduke sent Fist troops to investigate something out there… rumours of a creature living in the dark. I have a meeting with a few commanders tomorrow about a different matter, but I’ll prod them. See if they know anything.” 

“I'll come with you.” 

He looked at me, “You can’t come with me to a military meeting." He scoffed, "I can’t exactly rock up with my favourite assassin in tow. ‘Hello, yes gents, this is the son of Bhaal, I thought he may have good ideas for your operations’.” 

“Say I am whoever you please. I will be there.” I said. I wasn’t about to start on the whole diatribe that I wanted to be more actively involved in his plans again. I didn’t need to. His god had just told him I was to be involved. He seemed to remember this as he frowned.

"Fine." He muttered, annoyed with my continued and inconvenient existence. A moment later, the mirror quieted, its magic sealing back into itself and darkening. It was pitch black in the room, leaving Gortash stumbling in the dark.

It was odd, seeing him when he thought I couldn’t. His hair was wild after sleeping for a few hours. His face was tired, but amid all of it, I could see the excitement in his eyes. Eagerness where I felt trepidation.

Trusting Gortash was hard enough, but adding another Chosen into our midst would be harder still. Conflicting gods would only play nicely together for so long. Every day I was near him I could feel myself walking a line between killing him and becoming friends with him. I wasn't sure which outcome was worse. Ketheric Thorm was a new evil about which I knew next to nothing. I trusted my father's vision, but I knew there was more to it than a simple instruction to go forth and bring the world to ruin. We needed to understand Ketheric before running to him with open arms.

While I pondered this, Gortash stepped closer to me amid the shadows. He reached out and touched my arm. I thought for a moment that he was seeking out my hand like a torch so that I would light his path, but when he found me, he grabbed me roughly, shoving me back toward the wall. 

“Are you still scared?” Gortash asked after a few moments, his tone somewhere between curious and mocking.

I didn’t answer him. He grinned, then pressed his body against mine, walking me back until my shoulders hit the stone wall. It was cold, like the rest of the basement. 

"Enver--" 

“It’s going to be ours, you know." He whispered, "History rewritten in our image, dominion. Death. Reverence." He cupped a hand around the back of my neck, his fingers tangling themselves up in the hair at the base of my neck, “All we’ve ever wanted. Ours.”

Then he kissed me.

No, he was ignoring me. He was kissing himself. His glory. 

I realised now why he wasn’t shaken by the vision we had each seen. He was eager. Ready. This was everything he ever wanted. Permission to be terrible. Permission for control. For Tyranny. A kingdom. I had never needed such permission. My god bade me to give into my darkest desires with great enthusiasm. Where he was being let off of his leash, I was being clipped to mine. 

He shoved me against one of the crates along the wall until I was sitting on it, dominating my mouth with his. He planted his palm against my stomach, his other hand coming up to cup my chin.

He pulled away after a moment, his breath heavy.

“It’s like I’ve been telling you,” he breathed, “you and I are going to rule the world.” 

Chapter Text

Note from the Author:
Hey all! This is another ‘romance’ chapter, this time with Gortash in control, some of the content here tips the edge of non-con. This is what a toxic Dom/Sub dynamic looks like. So if you’re skipping the Porn/Smut and reading for the plot you can skip ahead to chapter 11.
Enjoy! 

-Eli

—

Chapter 10: Control

- Cal- 

“Give me your hands.” Gortash breathed. He was quick to leave his musty basement and get me back up to his room. I wasn’t in the mood to play his games, but he didn’t ask, and I wasn’t annoyed enough to leave. In the aftermath of horror on a cosmic scale, I had been traumatised enough to stay.

I didn’t want to be away from him. 

I needed him. 

I was giving in.

I let him put my arms up above my head, positioning me like a corpse, as I lay on his cushy mattress. My shirt was long gone, the ties on my trousers loosened by his nimble fingers. His hands, warm and soft, slid up my arms, positioning them where he wanted them. “Stay,” he whispered, slipping away from me to his nightstand. 

He pulled a neatly bound length of cord from the drawer, letting it unravel toward the floor. He took up one end of it and approached me again, threading it between my wrists before tying them together. 

I felt immediately like he had been planning this. If not for me, then for someone. Supplies at the ready, close at hand. The concept of the bindings being used on one of his past lovers sent a hot streak of rage through me that I didn’t like. 

Jealousy. 

“Bane teaches that order, domination, is the only true path to freedom…” he whispered as he worked. Methodically, slowly. He looped the rope around my wrists, pulling it tight, then tied it off to an anchor point on the wall, leaving my arms as taught as the cord. “There is something exquisite about control. My lord teaches that mortal men are meant to be ruled; I will be the arbiter of such control…”

He was speaking mostly to himself, each word sounding like scripture. Holy. Pure. This wasn’t just sex, it was worship—love, not for me, but for his master. 

I was a prop in his ritual, an offering. Nothing more. 

“I have always been troubled by you Bhaalists… you think control to be cruelty, but this is only because you’ve never given into it.” His hands explored without restraint as he preached control, dragging across my skin with quiet calculation. His fingertips danced over recent bruises and old scars while his eyes followed with a curious gaze. “Real control doesn’t restrict. It refines . It makes worshippers out of nonbelievers. And gods out of men.”

He stepped back just slightly, looking down at me, examining his work before cupping my chin. I made some sort of expression that caused him to grin, baring my teeth ever so slightly. 

Though I wasn’t a Banite, I understood control; over my flock, over my urges, over myself. Giving all of that to him felt more wrong than when I had taken him apart the other day.

 Stripped him bare and made him kneel for me. 

I hurt him then. I knew it. 

Then I abandoned him to fixate on it for nearly a tenday. 

Though he didn’t seem interested in any of this before our Lords called us into the dark, I couldn’t help but wonder if some sadistic part of him wanted to ruin me the way I had done to him.

Ceremony. 

Domination. 

Control. 

My discomfort with it all was present in my body. He trailed his fingers lower, grazing them over my crotch, realising quickly that I was not nearly as aroused by all of this as he was. The smarmy smile on his face was cruel.

“Oh, little Cal, are you still frightened?” He cooed, raising an eyebrow, “Can’t bring your mind back from the abyss?”

 He moved down toward my feet, shuffling off my trousers and tossing them to the floor, leaving me in only my pants. He pressed his palm into me, watching me with amusement as he pressured my stubborn lack of arousal around in a small circle. 

“Or perhaps you’re worried if you submit to me… then it changes things…” I hadn’t said a word since the basement. He had hardly noticed until now. “Come on, Cal, speak up. I’m curious—”

“This doesn’t do anything for me.”

“Oh?” He grinned, “What do you need then, hmm? Flowers and wine? Or perhaps you’d rather stab me?” He asked. Despite myself, the thought moved something within me. Slick blood across his hairy chest, running in droplets down his abs. Shock and horror on his face as my knife carved through his skin. 

He grinned, monstrously.

“Is that it, oh Child of Bhaal?” 

He climbed up onto the bed, crawling over me. He rooted his fingers into my hair and pushed my head back, exposing the column of my neck. Then he leaned his face down to my ear, his fingers still rooted in my hair. 

“Your depravity never ceases to surprise me, Calrissian,” he breathed. 

I swallowed.

Whenever he spoke my name, it always felt wrong. 

Though many knew it, he was nearly the only one to use it. Orin occasionally called me by my name to mock me, Sarevok when he wanted my attention, but most of the time I was called ‘Chosen’, ‘Son of Bhaal’, ‘Slayer’. Mine was a name given to me by my worldly parents when I deserved none. The last part of them I dared to cling to. 

From Gortash’s lips, it felt like a holy sin. 

He settled his weight down on my hips, cocking his head to the side as he straddled me. “Imagine it then, all the things you’d do if your hands were free.”

“Gortash—”

“Shhh,” he breathed. His tongue flicked out, tracing the curve of my ear, “I want you to go there… to that depravity… Tell me, Calrissian, all the ways you want to hurt me.”

I want to kill you . 

I swallowed, staying silent. Though he was asking for it, I was almost certain he didn’t want to hear it. 

How I wanted to slit his throat, spill his blood, bathe in it.

Fuck his corpse until it was useless to me. 

Plunge myself into loneliness once again while his intestines served as toys to fidget with. 

Keep his head as a face to talk to, like a puppet, when he was gone. 

“Oh, don’t be modest, Cal…” he pressed himself down on my awakening erection, grinding softly. “I know how much you want to gut me,“ he chuckled, but it wasn’t a joke to me. 

If I lost control and killed him for real, I’d be fucked in a much less literal sense. 

He had faith in me, but I had faith in Bhaal. Rage. Destruction. Death. It was all that lived inside of me. 

Maim. Kill.

These were my only instincts. 

I tried to push the thoughts away, but he was insistent on drawing them forward. “I wonder, would you slice me up, piece by piece, nice and slow?” He mused, “No, that’s not your style… something so grandiose is much more Orin. You… no, you’d thrust that dagger into my neck and twist. It would be but an instant… but in the aftermath, the relief you’d feel…” 

Between his honeyed words, he bit and kissed his way down my throat, his hand trailing lower. “Tell me,” he breathed, wrapping his hand around my cock, “I want to hear you say it, Cal…” 

“Stop.”

He grinned, “ No .” His hand started to work, moving up and down my shaft in a slow but demanding pace. He was eager. Prideful almost. 

It felt good. 

“Tell me, Cal.” 

“I’d fucking gut you,” I growled, as I spoke my head jerked outside of my control, an old habit turned compulsion after a century of trying to keep my urge just below the surface. 

“There it is…” he whispered, chuckling, “Now we’re having fun…”

“I’m not—” 

“Shh...” He put his other hand over my mouth, “You’ll speak when I tell you to.” He retracted his hands; the one from my face, and the other from my undergarments, pulling himself off of me now that he was satisfied we were on the same page. 

He went back to the nightstand. 

There was nothing keeping me here but his words. The rope, though symbolic, could be burned away with a simple spell. Though he was atop me, I could have easily cast him aside. I was letting him have this, because he needed it, not because of any—

“Have you ever been to the Underdark?” He asked suddenly, “I know you appear drow, but based on what you told me about your lineage, I wasn’t sure.”

I swallowed my annoyance long enough to answer him, “Once.” 

“Mmm. Then you may be familiar with the Sussur Flowers that grow there.” He mused. 

Barely . 

I remember my mother telling me not to touch them, though I could hardly recall why. She had taken me down there to help me feel connected to my race, but it was so dangerous we only stayed for a few days, lingering amid a colony of myconids. 

“Sussar Blooms create a sort of antimagic field,” he continued, pulling out a small black bag, “But they lose their potency outside of the Underdark. Unless you keep them shrouded in darkness.” 

He dropped the bag on the bed, and I felt my whole body tense, then go limp. My magic was gone . Sapped from me in a sensation that felt like the reverse of a lightning strike—ripped away violently in an instant. 

Entirely gone.

It was like losing an arm. 

“Fuck, fuck—get that the fuck away from me—”

He laughed, “true submission, dear Chosen, comes from a loss of control. Loss of power.” He took up another length of rope, moving toward the end of the bed again. “I will give you your magic back when I’ve finished with you.”

“This isn’t funny.”

He slowly unravelled the cord. “If you disobey, I’ll keep you longer. Understood?” 

“This isn’t devotion, it’s ego,” I growled, trying my hands against the rope, but it was tight. The strength in my muscles felt weak. Behind my panic was a sense of curiosity: how much had my magic been carrying my body all of these years?

He scoffed, “Maybe so, but you’re not in a position to argue.” He took up my foot, moving me around like a doll, he tied it off to another anchor point on the bottom of the bed. He left my other foot free for the time being. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

He doffed his silky robe and climbed back up onto the bed, settling himself on my hips again and admiring his work. 

I was angry. 

He liked that more. When I had him at the temple, I recalled how much he got off on my abuse. He liked giving up control to me, being dominated by me, but it would seem that came from a place of worship. Letting me take control was an offering to Bane; this, its reversal, was even more stimulating to him. 

He slapped my face playfully, then turned my head with his fingertips, just because he could. “My perfect little plaything.” 

“If you put your cock anywhere near my face I’m going to bite it off,” I growled,

“Mm, well, first you’ll learn to listen when I tell you not to speak.” He ordered, “If you keep talking, I will gag you. And then only when I’m satisfied with your obedience will I give you the grace of my cock in your mouth.” 

Motherfucker.  

“ If I push you too far, you will tell me. Other than that, hush,” he ordered. Patting my face patronisingly one last time for good measure. 

Then, his hand settled against my cheek, lingering and trailing across my skin with tender care. He gazed upon me with half-lidded eyes and turning my mouth to his. His kiss was tender and careful, working my lips until I stopped clenching my jaw closed. He moaned sweetly as I softened, allowing him access. Permission. Submission. Control. 

He ran his fingers through my hair, tugging on the ends softly, just enough to give the sensation of pull.

I wanted more. I wanted him to hurt me. To wreck me.

If we were going to do this at all, I wanted him to destroy me entirely. 

He didn’t. 

He slid off of my body as he kissed me, positioning himself on the bed at my side.  He moved me, pushing my free leg over my bound one to put me on my side. His palm pressed into my stomach, then slid down lower and lower until it found my obstinate erection. I grunted, biting my lip as he touched me. 

I hated how fucking good it felt. How much I had been thinking about his touch this last week. Every free moment in my head I wanted to be here, and now that I was I was torn between giving into it or demanding he stop. 

With him behind me, I could feel his erection pressing into my hip. He started whispering into my ear, “Now, where were we… oh yes… You were imagining all the ways you’d like to kill me... I’d love you to be creative when the time comes. I know speed is your forte, but I think I deserve elegance. Perhaps you’ll fuck me to death.” 

He continued on like this, suggesting yet more ways I could harm him. 

Beat him. 

Cut him. 

Hang him.  

I was quickly unravelling, moaning with each subtle movement of his hand. I was desperate for him, my body slicking his hand with precum and driving me even wilder within minutes. 

He had me imagining it was his blood, painting me pictures with sweet words of such depravity. I was all but lost in him when he reached around my head with his other hand. He pushed his middle fingers into my mouth, slicking them with saliva, curling them into my mouth to hook me like a fish. He stopped touching me, just long enough to pull my undergarments down as he settled behind me, the back of his nails grazing my skin in a way that made me shudder.

He took his damp fingers and pushed them around my entrance, easing them in one at a time. “Fuck, Gortash—” I hissed. He went too quickly, and it hurt. 

“Shh…” 

As soon as he started moving them, I didn’t care. Not about the pain. Not about anything. Stolen magic. Edicts from the Gods. It was all a haze. 

Whatever he was doing to me was working. Heat radiated across my skin, coursing through my body. I needed him inside of me with a desperation I had never felt before. 

Fuck--Fuck--Fuck him. The Urge growled. 

Well. That was new. 

He didn’t make me wait long.

He scissored his fingers back and forth, prodding around until he found my prostate. When he did, he pressed firmly against it. 

“Beg me for it, Cal…" He breathed, pulsing them up and down, "I want you to tell me you need me. I want to hear you tell me you want me inside of you…"

“Please— ah, fuck , please, Gortash…” I managed. That seemed to be enough for him. He kissed my cheek as he aligned himself behind me, angling and pushing. I gasped as he sheathed himself inside of my body, feeling his muscles tense behind me. He moaned against my neck, gripping my hips almost painfully.

He lay beside me, rocking me back and forth, matching the pace of each of his thrusts. His mouth was slack open, his eyes watching mine, reverent and quiet, grunting softly with each thrust. 

It was dreamy, almost. I couldn't help but look back into his dark eyes, seeing my own debauched reflection in them. He was right there with me, sharing deeply in our intimacy in a way I hadn’t expected. The night I fucked him, I had been calloused. I was trying to hurt and break him. This was that in his own way, smothering me in tenderness he knew I did not expect or deserve, while still stripping me of any autonomy I thought I had. 

He turned my chin over my shoulder to him, kissing me again. Caressing the inside of my mouth with his tongue, with every thrust into my body, I was panting and moaning. Without my magic, all I could feel was him, Gortash, inside me, beside me, around me. I bit his lip, demanding more from him, demanding that he treat me more roughly, dominate me properly, but he refused. 

He broke away from my stubborn kisses, nuzzling my neck instead. “Fuck you feel so good, Cal,” he breathed. “I’ve been thinking about this all week…” 

He wrapped his hand around my erection again, pumping in time with his thrusts. I was beyond words, barely comprehending what was happening anymore. It was like he had put a spell on me–lulled me into this sense of lust and security while stripping me of everything. 

I wasn’t the son of Bhaal in this moment, no fighter or killer. I was simply there, a thing, existing for him, for his pleasure. 

I didn’t realise how close I was until I came, hot and fast, all over his fist. 

“ Ah,” I panted, “ Ah–ah…” as his hand slowed, milking out the last drops from me. 

“See, that wasn’t so bad, now was it?” He whispered, chuckling.

I shook my head, not in agreement but in disbelief, “ Bastard .” I panted, 

He laughed, still touching me, still thrusting, “Oh, you’re right, what a bastard I am... I’ll be sure never to do that again.”

I rolled back toward him, looking him in the eyes, “More.” 

He arched an eyebrow, “More?”

“More.” 

Chapter Text

“They call us mercs. Thugs. Killers. And we still run the Gate. You want peace? Pay the Fist.”

- Gauntlet Tanner, as quoted in the Baldur’s Mouth Gazette, Edition #4

Chapter 11: The Flaming Fist (Pt1)

-Cal-

I rarely sleep. 

Elves in general don’t need to sleep, not really. We can meditate, entering a trance to rest rather than succumbing fully. I don’t sleep unless I have to, most of the time. I find dreams strange, not just the sensation of dreaming, but the way dreams cling to you when you wake. False, hazy memories of things that never happened. 

I have enough memory problems without dreams in the mix. But after Gortash finished using my body as his personal plaything, I chose sleep. 

It was fitful and odd. I dreamt of Orin, of Father, of Gortash too. 

Waking in his bed was somehow more disorienting.

 Gortash was long gone, but I was still bound. Wrists tied above my head, one ankle fixed to the footboard. My shoulders ached. My hands were numb.

He left me like that. 

He had the good graces to pull my undergarments back on but made no other effort to cover up the evidence of our sex. 

 I awoke when the little dwarf came in, the same one who held me hostage in the bath weeks prior. She wasn’t even concerned with my state, as though to find someone utterly indisposed in Gortash’s bed was an everyday experience. 

If anything, I think she was relieved, finding me like that.
I am easier to deal with tied up. 

She brought me the clothes I had left here last time, cleaned, just like Gortash said they would be. She cut me loose, gave me a cloth and a basin to wash myself in. Made me drink a potion to help with the lingering pain. Then she started reravelling the ropes and putting them away while I dressed, fixing up the room like it all meant nothing. 

I would have argued about privacy, but this wasn’t the first time she had seen me naked, and I was starting to think it wouldn’t be the last.

We didn’t talk much. Just a few instructions from her here and there, and a short message her boss had left with her. 

“Master Gortash will be headed to Wyrm’s Rock at noon. He said to have you meet him there and to wear something… appropriate,” she looked me over with a judging gaze. 

Once I was clothed and thoroughly embarrassed, I left. 

This time, through the front door like a proper guest. 

It was strange, wandering topside through Baldur’s Gate in the daytime. The streets seemed different in the light. Though I had lived here my whole life, I felt like I was lost. 

The smells had changed. More people were out. The colours of everything were more vibrant.

I don’t think I had seen the sun in months. 

It hurt my eyes. 

I made my way to the southwestern side, down to the docks, where there was a back entrance into the sewers. It was by far the long way to get to the Temple, but I didn’t think moving a manhole cover and slipping into the ground would go unnoticed in the bustling street. 

I walked through the sewers like a man on a casual stroll, past the hidden guild hall to where Sarevok had built my home. 

If waking up bound like a present in Gortash’s bed was humiliating, returning here just to be screamed at by Orin was somehow worse.

“This is distraction incarnate! We are killers, not politicians,” she practically yelled, pacing around my room like a caged animal while I tried to dress. I had told her of my vision, about Ketheric and the Gods. “You should kill him. You should kill them both!”

I threw my robes on the floor. My butler scooped them up in his arms, dashed out with them and returned a breath later, arms full again.

Wear something appropriate. 

Everything I owned was black and smelled like death. Apparently, so did I. 

Gortash had told me as much, too many times for me to ignore it any longer. If I wanted to be at his side in public, I had to be ‘presentable’. 

“You would have me refuse orders from Father Himself?” I asked her as Sceleritas tossed a more formal set of clothes onto my bed. I snapped at him with my fingers, pointing to the door. 

I didn’t need help with this, nor did I want his prying ears on this conversation. 

I knew Orin wouldn’t be thrilled about the new plan; I wasn’t either. However, I did think that if I at least told her this was Father’s will, His plan, she’d be willing to fall in line for the moment. 

I was wrong. 

“You are yoked by Gortash already, and you intend to bind yourself to yet another chosen of a lesser god?” She scoffed, “You are weak.” 

She was right, of course, about being yoked. 

That was inarguable. I still had the marks on my wrists to prove it.

“Our temple will rot. The rivers of blood we carved through this city will dry. All under your sorry reign, while you love the little lordling,” She mocked, “You are unworthy.”

I put my hands on her shoulders, stopping her pacing so I could look into her grey eyes, “ Listen to me. I want to kill the world. This is Father’s will, but to do that, we must think beyond killing thrice daily and stringing up corpses in His name. This is divinity.” I tried to explain, “It aches, Orin, following Bane’s pet like this. But I assure you, it is the outcome I am chasing, not the journey. Destruction. Death. I intend to bring it all. Gortash will lead us to a slaughter most holy. His demise will come amid the ashes of the world he wishes to rule. Father bids me to follow, for now. To have patience. This is a test of my faith.”

She pushed my hand away, pacing past me, arms crossed.

“You are giving in to him, becoming like him.” She hissed, “It is unbefitting of the elegant depravity MY Lord demands. You are undeserving of your title, Chosen, of slaying on his altar. It is not art to you. There is no love. Just death. You sicken me–”

“I will accept no challenge from you, until you show some damned respect,” I hissed. 

She lunged—snarling like an animal—but I caught her wrist, spun her, and slammed her to the ground. A blade skittered away from her hand across the floor. 

I felt bad the moment I did it. Looking down at her. 

I shook my head, pushing my fingers through my hair.

She pressed herself up on her hands, glaring at me from beneath loose tendrils of her hair. She wanted me dead. I couldn’t blame her.

“ When I kill you, it will be art worthy of His name.” I knelt and took her arm, carefully, helping her back to her feet. She kept her eyes trained on me, angry and tense. “Go on, then, run off to your little tyrant.” She picked up the blade, nicking the floor with the metal with a shing . “Let him give you a kingdom to bleed dry. I’ll be waiting when it rots beneath your feet.”

Then she cut her arm, intentionally, holding the wound over my only set of clean clothes, soiling them. Lastly, she threw the blade between my feet and stormed out of the room, hopefully to go kill something to calm herself down. 

Well. At least I didn’t have to worry about telling Sarevok anymore.

She would do that herself. 

—

Rather than cobbling together something from the temple’s wardrobe, I decided to just buy clothes in Wyrm’s Crossing. The woman at the store had a field day making me pretty, putting me in splendid clothes when I came in shrouded in rags. 

Before I left the temple, I dug through my desk and found a scroll of Seeming, choosing to look like a human instead of a drow. Though my features still looked like me in a way, everything else changed. Blue skin turned beige, white hair now black, eyes more human. The spell hid my tattoos and scars like they were never there. 

If anyone in that room knew who I was, a criminal, a Bhaalist, or someone suspect, I would do my best not to make that Gortash’s problem. He’d already made it clear he was anxious about me tagging along: ‘ I can’t exactly rock up with my favourite assassin in tow,’  he had said. 

I could have used the scroll to change my clothes, too, but I didn’t bother. If Father was going to have me and Gortash galavanting across Faerun together, there’d no doubt be more occasions when I’d need to be presentable.

…Maybe Orin was right. Maybe I was becoming like him. 

I had to, for now.

Once I looked like an upstanding citizen instead of a ‘sewer rat’, or whatever creatively cruel thing he called me behind closed doors, I made my way to Wyrm’s Rock.

I leaned against a wall, waiting for what felt like a long time, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. 

When Gortash made an appearance, it was like the world slowed down. He came in from the lower city, surrounded by people demanding his attention. A human woman had a stack of papers he was signing, while a dwarf seemed to be pitching some sort of idea at his side. A dragonborn trailed behind with an armful of paperwork, nearly tripping to keep up.

Gortash didn’t even glance at them. He just kept nodding and signing. 

He wanted to be a Lord.

By looking at him, I would have thought he already was one. 

A Flaming Fist marched him through the hall, clearing his path.

His brainpower was being used on other things; papers, deals, whatever else kept his god-given ego aloft.

As he walked past me, I simply stepped into the fold behind him, following him first into the mess hall, before he stopped at the door that led up to the Audience Chamber. I assumed this was where the meeting he was meant to be going to was. 

He was speaking to the dwarf, “---I have no interest in funding you a storefront. You can seek out your other customers for that. What I am interested in, Baelen, is funding your missions in the Underdark. I’ve heard Noblestalk can be quite useful, and there are a number of other alchemical ingredients down there that would pay you for. That being said, make a proper proposal. Put it in writing. Bring it to my office. I might even read it.”

“Uh, y-yes, sir,” The dwarf said, bowing slightly as he stepped back. Gortash did a little check of everyone around him as though to make sure he had attended to all the things he needed to. It wasn’t until this moment that he realised I was with him, and even then it took him a beat to realise it was me.

When he did, his smile was genuine. 

“My my, you clean up well,” he said, casually. Clean clothes. Human. Kempt. Normal. 

He motioned with his finger for me to turn for him. I’m not sure why, but I did. 

That made him smile even more. 

“Perfect,” he said, putting his hand into the small of my back, drawing me beside him like we were old friends instead of weird knife-fueled lovers partnered together by the Gods.

Lovers. 

It was the first time the word had occurred to me. 

I hated it.

As we ascended the stairs to the Audience Chamber, he leaned in close. “Stay quiet and keep to the back, don’t speak unless spoken to.” 

I nodded, growing increasingly and viscerally uncomfortable with every step. 

I had put myself in this position, but none of it was my forte. 

I was the Slayer of Bhaal, not some politician. I belonged in the shadows, slaughtering children, eating tasty dwarf meat. Not sitting in City Hall, listening in on a meeting with the Flaming Fist.

Beyond all of that, Gortash was an entirely different person by day than he was at night. Suave. Efficient. Terrifying in an entirely new way. 

I almost wondered how he did it all, keeping all the moving pieces of his life from crashing into each other. Was it that he was a Banite, and order was demanded of him? Or was it that order was so demanded by him, it had become his faith? 

It didn’t matter. 

I didn’t know who I was to this version of him, where we stood. 

I felt like an intruder in his life’s narrative more than his equal.

The Fist we were following opened a door at the top of the stairs to a large, open room. The space was commanding, meant for coronations and deliberations that would change the history of the city. Benches lined two of the walls, and a long table had been brought in. At the table were a dozen or so people with papers in front of them, pouring over notes and swapping ideas. 

I suddenly understood Gortash’s hesitation to bring me.

Sitting at the far end of the room were four people in throne-like chairs. 

Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard.

Thalamra Vanthampur.

Dillard Portyr.

Belynne Stelmane.

This wasn’t just a military meeting, it was a meeting of the Council of Four. The other people in the room were high-ranking members of the Flaming Fist. Those at the table were Blaze or Manip. Those on the benches were Gauntlets. Other than myself and a smattering of assistants, lawyers, and patriars, they were all mercenaries or soldiers. 

I recognised some of their faces from run-ins over the years. I had killed the friends and families of many people in this room. One woman stood out to me, a Gauntlet called Soapstone. I only recognised her because she looked like her brother, whom Orin had beaten to death with a sock filled with sharp rocks and a bar of soap.

Soap . Stone .

My sister enjoyed the irony. 

I suppose I did, too.

Gortash pulled his hand away, and every part of me seized like a snapped trap. “Go sit over there,” he whispered, pointing into the stands. 

I was as obedient as a dog. 

There was a strange nervousness that had crept over me. It wasn’t really about being caught, though that may have been a small part of it. It was being around people. Outsiders. I had been in my little cult, tucked away where I understood the rules and expectations for so long that this all felt wrong to me.  

The Urge, who had been lazily slumbering in my mind for weeks, started to rouse.

I sat in the little benches that were behind each side of the table. The seat was hard. The staunch clothes I was wearing clung to my body. The room was loud with chatter, voices all melding over one another. 

I don’t know how Gortash did this kind of thing. 

Barely a minute in, and my head was already starting to throb.

Gortash sat at the table, and his escort pulled out his chair for him. He wore a polite smile as he shook hands with the people on either side of him, giving a laugh I could see was fake, that they’d never suspect. 

His eyes were different around these ‘civilised’ folk. 

I much preferred the version of him who lurked in the dark. 

As I tried to get comfortable and push down the paranoia that people were staring at me, a Blaze with fluffy red hair stood at the end of the table closest to the Dukes. She banged a gavel against the table. 

“This meeting is now in session. Please take your seats.”

Chapter Text

Note from the author,

TW: Gore near the end of the chapter. If you’re squeamish, you can skip from the line “Eager are we?” to “Are you quite finished?” in the final sequence. 

With Love, 

Eli

PS: Thank you for 300 views! I am new to writing, so please leave any constructive feedback in the comments. 

—

“ Peace is just the pause between punishments. In Baldur’s Gate, the Flaming Fist ensures the wicked don't get too comfortable. ”

— Manip Hale Evern, Flaming Fist, as quoted in Baldur’s Mouth Gazette, Edition 5

Chapter 12: The Flaming Fist (Pt2)

-Gortash-

“This meeting is now in session. Please take your seats,” Savora said, standing at the head of the table. She placed the little gavel beside her stack of papers, her eyes flicking over the information on the top page. “My name is Blaze Savora, and I will be leading this session,” she said. 

As far as I could recall, this was the first meeting she had ever been put in charge of. In the past, it had been Liara Portyr or Ravengard himself. Portyr was off on some mission. Ravengard had too much on his plate. This left Savora.

Her nervousness was palpable. This was going to be a chaotic performance. 

The only person in this room who seemed more uncomfortable was my murderous companion.

Calrissian, a Bhaalspawn, tucked in the sidelines in a room full of Fist . 

It was almost laughable. 

I could understand his insistence on coming. He was still wary of me, even if the Gods were telling us to trust one another. He wanted to see, I imagine, all that I was doing with my time while telling him I was working toward our mutual goals. 

Still, proper society was no place for a Bhaalspawn.  

Even now, when I glanced up at him, I could see the discomfort etched on his borrowed features, the way he sat away from anyone who might try to talk to him. He was fidgeting with his fingers, switching his gaze around the room like the walls might collapse. Now and then, his head would do that adorable little twitch. 

No one else seemed to notice it, but I did. 

He was fragile. 

I was surprised to see him looking so normal when he found me downstairs. He was wearing green for gods’ sake. When I left him this morning, all tangled up in my bed, I suppose I thought he’d stay there. 

After all, he had seemed quite shaken last night. 

Hells, I was shaken, but this meeting was too damned important to miss, especially if I wanted insight on the Shadow Cursed Lands from someone who had actually been there. 

So, here we both were. 

Savora cleared her throat, “Our first order of business: trade disruption along the Chionthar.” She announced. The room settled in, the focus switching to her. She swallowed, “Reports indicate significant interference in shipments from Elturel and beyond. The Council requests an assessment of causes and proposed solutions. Commander Elin, you may begin.” 

Commander Elin stood, clearing her throat. She was a thin woman with an elegant stride, but she spoke with all the subtlety of a siege ram.

“I'll say it plain and simple,” she barked, “The Chionthar River’s been overrun with pirates and mercenaries. Elturel's shipments get hijacked before they hit the city limits. I have intel that implicates the Zhentarim. They’ve made good business from stealing off those shipments and then selling off the goods here in the city to the highest bidder.”

Several people immediately started chiming in, cutting her off. Half-formed protests, corrections, and the usual political posturing. Elin raised her voice, but another man, a Patriar by the look of him, spoke over her.

The problem with Savora leading this meeting was who she was as a person. She would never be able to rein everyone in, not the way Portyr could. It didn’t take long for the room to devolve, the Council of Four trying to hear different opinions by keying in on who could shout the loudest. 

The advisor to my right made some offhanded comment about how we should install the first Fist Naval Division and send them up the river with cannons and swords. The woman to my right laughed. 

“Stability is control,” I said, even though everyone was speaking all at once, “We should be protecting our merchants at all costs—even if we charge them a cost for it.”

They both nodded, and for a brief moment, our little section of the table was able to have a productive conversation before it all began to devolve again.

— Cal—

I didn’t realise how long this meeting was going to be, and it was starting to drive me crazy. I was sitting there, picking at my nailbeds, imagining how I could kill each person in the room. 

I had ran out of ideas, and now I was bleeding.

Hours had passed, arguing about patrols, recruitments and pirates. Finally they moved on, coming to no conclusion, and agreeing to talk about the city of Elturel. It was falling apart, and the influx of refugees coming to Baldur’s Gate was starting to become an issue. The council wanted proposals about how to deal with this issue. 

As they went around the table, the sentiments were simple, each person speaking like they had already decided who deserved to starve. 

“Keep them out, we already have enough on our plates without having to patrol needy people. Needy people become thieves.”

“Let them in, we can’t turn our backs on the needy, that’s not what the Great Baulduran would have wanted.”

“The Fist are limited already, we don’t have the resources.”

“Neither do the refugees.”

And so on. 

This went on for about forty minutes before the Duke started shifting in his chair. He had likely put this on the docket himself, wanting to get a feel for where his citizens stood on the matter. His eyes shifted over the table, landing on my partner with a slight squint around his eyes. 

“Master Gortash, you’re being quiet, that’s unusual for you,” he observed.

A few of them chuckled. That polite smile graced Gortash’s face once again. 

“Well, mother always said if you have nothing nice to say…” he trailed off. This garnered a few more laughs, but not from Ravengard. He held up his hand, then motioned to the man, bidding him to continue. 

Gortash rolled his wrist, sighing slightly, “My personal opinion? We should welcome every refugee who comes to our door.” He paused, “provided they pass the necessary checks and balances. And of course, once accepted, they must contribute. There is no shortage of work that needs doing in Baldur’s Gate. Labour, militia service, public maintenance. Refugees who seek our protection should be eager to repay it. I propose offering them immediate employment, with wages taxed appropriately to cover the cost of their housing and supervision. Perhaps our wealthier citizens would even be willing to sponsor these individuals or families, provided they commit to useful service until their debts are paid.”

There was no uproar, but it was clear that many found the prospect unsettling, exchanging glances. 

It was indentured servitude, but said in Gortash’s polite, political way.

“It may sound cruel, but it is a pragmatic way to deal with a real problem that will likely be at our gate in months and last for years. An influx of mouths requires an influx of coin, food, shelter, sanitation. We cannot afford such charity, not across the board. Mutual obligation ensures the city thrives, and the refugees survive.” 

He turned over his shoulder, looking at the people in the benches behind him,

“Master Szarr, for example.” He gestured lazily toward one of the nobles seated at the edge of the room. Cazador Szarr, a centuries-long resident of the Lower City, struck all the same notes as Gortash: wealthy, calculating, shrewd. “You have quite a large estate, surely you could do with more hands at a reasonable wage?

“I would consider it,” Cazador said thoughtfully, wearing a grin that others might find unsettling, “especially if the city offered a tax break or something similar for allowing them into my home.”

“There you have it,” Gortash said, turning back to the table. He looked down at the stack of papers in front of him dismissively. 

The Duke seemed to be weighing it in his mind. “We will move this matter to the next session when we have all had time to consider it further. Blaze Savora, if you’d please move us along to our final matter.”

Savora swallowed, nodding. Her shaking hands picked up the agenda in front of her. She cleared her throat, “Our final topic on the docket today is the expansion of the Fist’s jurisdiction…” She lingered, reading, then closed her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was meek, quiet, “And the ongoing issue of corruption and bribery within the Fist’s ranks.” 

The room was loud before, but nothing compared to what followed.

She banged that gavel about a dozen times, blanching while red-faced soldiers stood and shouted, drowning her out. Even in the stands, the little lords and lower-ranked soldiers began to voice their disagreements, appalled at such an accusation. 

I covered my ears, curling in on myself like a turtle. When I finally looked up again, Gortash was eyeing me. He shook his head every so slightly, his lips in a thin white line. 

Get your shit together .

I forced myself to breathe.

Amid the growing chaos, a man stood, whistling through his fingers. He jumped up on the table, flailing his arms like a bird, trying to get people to quiet down. I’ve never been more thankful for some self-righteous golden boy desperate to save the day. 

Within moments, the room quieted.

“You are, all of you, better than this, please,” he said. It took me a moment to recognise him. Wyll Ravengard . The Duke’s son. Gortash had made me aware about a month ago that the young man was rising through the ranks. He was very clear with me that we were not to kill Wyll off, yet . He wanted to leverage the death of the Duke’s son at a time that would grant him the most power. 

I wondered if that still mattered now that we were moving onto a more divine plan that we knew very little about. 

Wyll’s head would look nice on a pike. I imagined shoving one up through the roof of his mouth into his skull and twisting… then had to push the thought aside as I felt the Urge rolling inside. 

“Please,” Wyll repeated. “This city is our home. The Flaming Fist was established to protect Baldur's Gate, not to serve personal interests or engage in petty disputes.​ I understand the challenges we face—the influx of refugees, the strain on our resources. But turning our backs on those in need? That's not the city I swore to defend,” he said. How heroic. “And as for corruption within our ranks, let me be clear: accepting bribes, abusing power, these are not just violations of our code. They're betrayals of the very people we are meant to protect.​ We must remember who we are. We are the shield that guards the city, the sword that strikes down injustice. Let's not tarnish that legacy with actions unworthy of our oath.”

A moving, but entirely false speech. 

Everyone knew the Fist could be hired for the right price. They were a bunch of power-drunk mercenaries who considered themselves the city’s heroes. Though my flock were keen to kill them rather than pay them off, more than once we had given them money to keep the name of Bhaal out of their mouths. 

Many of them knew that the bodies in the sewers, alleys and along the beach were sacrificial kills for my Lord of Murder. We paid them well to make sure they said ‘serial killers’ rather than ‘cultists’ in this very room.

The fewer people like Wyll who suspected us, the better.  

The Duke nodded, “I believe what my son means to say is, if you’re taking bribes, then you aren’t a Fist. I am not asking you to police each other, but I will say this: if you find yourself lining your pockets with gold, turning a blind eye to injustice because you cannot bear it, then you need to ask yourself if you deserve to wear that mark.”

“Then what with that whole bullshit about the House of Wonders, huh?” Manip Bakshi barked out, standing, “Why are you lot having us walk around pretending like it was a bunch of half-orcs who sacked the place? There is a mountain of evidence that there is some sort of organised crime in this city that pulled off that massacre. I was there, I saw it with my own eyes. Those weren’t no Orcs, those were assassins .” 

Ravengard raised a hand. “The events at the House of Wonders are still under active investigation.” He said, “I will not hear more about it at this time.” 

The uproar started again. 

I fixed my eyes on Gortash, but he didn’t even glance my way. Probably for the best, given we were the ones who did the sacking. 

The rest of the meeting went on in this manner. The Duke or one of the more level-minded members of the group trying to inject sentiments, half the soldiers hearing it, half of them rebelling. 

Eventually Savora just banged her gavel and called the meeting to a close just so people would stop yelling at her. 

We had been trapped here since noon, and it was starting to get dark out. 

I was stressed, my senses in overload, agitated and anxious. My scroll of Seeming would only last for a few more hours, and I wanted to get home. I didn’t even care that I didn’t learn anything about Ketheric or the Shadow Cursed Lands. I wanted to be as far away from this room and the Fist as possible.

Unfortunately, Gortash didn’t seem to feel the same. 

I barely moved when the rest of the ‘audience’ started to shift around, mingling in with those who had been more active in the meeting. I stayed pinned to my seat, mute and dumb like I had just come out of a stupor. 

When I finally stood, I moved off to the side, staring blankly at Gortash until he finally made his way over to me.

“You are shaking , compose yourself,” he said, smiling through his teeth like we were talking about the weather. 

“This was a huge waste of time,” I said, trying to mask my bloodlust as anger. “I thought you said they were talking about the Shadow Cursed Lands, Ketheric, not… whatever—”

“ No, I said that there was a meeting with the Fist, some of whom just came back from the Shadow Cursed Lands. That debrief was weeks ago, and I didn’t attend because I didn’t need to.” He nodded and waved to someone who had grabbed his attention, not really looking at me. “Which is why I also told you not to bother coming.” 

Last night, in his basement he had made it seem like he didn’t want me here because he was scheming, which is why I had insisted on coming. 

I didn’t have a moment to tell him as much, as one of the fucking Fist walked right over to us. 

“Ah, Gauntlet Leythim,” Gortash said, smiling.
The man made a gesture with his hand, palm out, before folding his fingers down. It was a subtle gesture I would have missed if I didn’t know it.
Gortash did it all the time. 

Leythim was a Banite. 

He clapped his hand on Gortash’s arm in a friendly gesture. “I got your note, I’ve gathered up a group of them soldiers who was out on that mission,” he said, likely meaning the excursion to the Shadow Cursed Lands. “We’s headed out to the Blushin’ Mermaid after this, Firebrew makes for loose lips if you’d like to come along.” He looked at me, then squinted like he was trying to place me before realising we had never met before. He blanched slightly, likely thinking he’d given something away he didn’t mean to in front of the leader of his church. “But if you’re busy with, um…” he motioned to me,

“Calvin.” Gortash introduced me. 

Calvin is not my name. 

Calvin is not a name I would ever choose to be called. 

Calvin ? 

He put his arm over my shoulder, awkwardly, given that I’m taller than him and I was standing as rigid as a signpost. That shameless shit eating grin was plastered on his face, “We’d love to join you.” 

—

—Cal—

I was in Avernus. 

The Blushing Mermaid was one of the rowdiest, seediest bars in all of Baldur’s Gate. Built in the body of a crashed pirate ship, owned and operated by said pirates, it was a breeding ground for bad decisions. 

The whole building reeked of sweat and smoke. 

A perfect place for a bunch of rowdy, repressed soldiers to go and blow off steam. 

The character I had been playing all day was dissolving quickly. I didn’t know how to socialize with these people, nor did I want to. I wanted to kill them. All of them. Dismantle them piece by piece until there was nothing left. 

Half the fucking Fist were here, taking up tables and flirting with the busty barmaids. At ours was a mix of them from different ranks. Gauntlets Leythim, Yeva, and Dion, with Fist O’Hara. Others kept cycling in and out, talking to us, getting too close and being too loud. 

I had been trying, at some point, to remember their names, but they had all blended together and were now in my head just a gaggle of talking corpses.

While they sat and laughed, I was struggling to keep from lashing out. I wasn’t able to be like them, laughing and happy, swapping stories and reveling in them, but at the very least I was able to sit still and keep from killing them all.

For now.

I had not anticipated their meeting to go for so long. Nor was I expecting to go to a second location after. The way Gortash had said it the night before, I thought it was a debrief conveniently about the Shadow Cursed Lands, but I had realized over time he only meant he would be in the same room as some of the soldiers who had been there and would try to get their insight. 

I regretted my insistence to come. Gortash was good at Gortashing. I was not. I was good at killing and lurking in the shadows. Neither skill was required here.

The noise of the bar was grating. My skin itched. My senses were in overload. 

O’Hara kept touching me, trying to draw me into the conversation. 

Gortash was annoying the shit out of me. 

It was the same as it was before, with the bath. I had cleaned up, changed, dressed how he wanted me to. It made him forget what I was: murder in humanoid form.

He was having this whole other experience, a cheeky sort of game.  I was his dirty little secret. He was parading me around in public. He kept putting his hand on my knee under the table, and I kept thinking about hacking it off.

It was thrilling to him. Some part of him thought we’d go back to his home and he’d tie me up all over again, a twisted reward for my good behaviour.

I was unravelling. Rapidly. 

He didn’t notice.

“And then, you wouldn’t fucking believe it, the fucking Harpers were there, climbing around in the trees like squirrels. I about shat myself,” Dion was saying, throwing a tankard around as he gesticulated with his hands. The beer sloshed over the top, splashing onto the table like blood on cobblestones. 

“Wait, wait, where was this?” Gortash laughed, flicking the ash off of a cigar he was smoking. He was being this weird, plastic version of himself. He didn’t care about the harpers, or the Fist, or this stupid story. Neither of us did. But he was able to make them believe he was so invested. 

Gods I wanted to leave.

“Outside of Reithwin town—one of them nocked an arrow aimed right at my fucking face,” he went on, “Yelling that we had no ‘jurisdiction’ out there.” 

“Reithwin, isn’t that in the Shadow Cursed Lands?” Gortash pushed, playing dumb.

“Oh, don’t even get him started on Reithwin town and the Shadow Cursed Lands.” Yeva said, drinking her own cocktail. She had been eyeing Gortash like a meal ever since we left Wyrm’s rock. It was apparent she was unaware of his lingering fingers trailing up and down the inside of my thigh. “He wouldn’t stop talking about it for a tenday when he got back,” she laughed.

“Hey, you haven’t seen peril till you’ve been to that place.” The first man, Dion continued, “The fuckin’ air is trying to kill you out there, stepping a beat off the road was death, and the shadows were constantly trying to draw us into their ranks. And the monster–”

“So there is a monster?” Gortash interjected. Dion nodded,

“Tall as a tower and as strong as a dragon. Made of pure shadow. It looked like an elemental who had drank a Elixir of the Collossus, then got Enlarged.” He described, “We didn’t go out there to slay it, just to confirm it was there, but the damn thing ran us out of town. Poor Zake, Gods bless his soul, he died just so all of us could live, fighting the thing while we were hiding like rats below the old mason’s guild.”

“What happened to him?” Gortash asked,

“Beast caught up to him. He fought as long as he could but… I mean his guts just blew out everywhere.” 

I made some sort of a noise at this, one I thought was a gasp but may have been more of a moan the way Gortash kicked my foot. He shot me a stern look that read ‘ No gratification at the dinner table’. 

Still, he slid his hand up further in a way I’m sure he thought was flirtatious but I read as intimately grating. Worse, O’Hara was watching me with a look that told me he knew Gortash was touching me. He sort of wiggled his eyebrows and grinned. 

I pushed the Banite’s hand off, again . 

Without looking at me at all, Gortash pushed another drink toward me. Like my stilted behaviour was the result of sobriety, rather than divine bloodlust boiling me alive. 

“I need to go.” I whispered to him, 

“Not yet, hush,” he replied quickly. 

I couldn’t stand him ignoring me. My reason for leaving wasn’t ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I have somewhere to be’. It was ‘if you don’t let me leave I’m going to kill someone right here, right now in this bar, in front of the entire city guard’. 

He took another drag on the cigar and then tried to hand it to me. 

I refused. 

O’Hara chuckled. 

Dion kept talking, “It lives in the base of that fucking tower, I’m telling you.”

“What tower?” Leythim asked, 

“There’s this big fucking tower out there. It’s like a castle, twice the size of Wyrm’s rock, easily. It was the only place in the whole town that had any life to it. Torches lit in a few of the windows. We tried getting close, but every time we did the fucking beast would show up and kill off more of our numbers. Duke Ravengard sent like twenty of us out there, only eight of us came back in one piece. Pagnola almost lost an eye.” 

Gortash gave me a look. I didn’t know what it meant. That was bad.

I had gotten very accustomed to reading his face, knowing his thoughts, but in this moment it was impossible for me.

“One of the recruits, this kid named George, he ran up to it with his sword drawn before we really understood what it was, and I swear, it drew him up into the air and it was like his skin evaporated. His body spun around, his bones being pulled from the meat and then SPLAT he—”

“I’m going to get some air.” I said, standing abruptly. 

I didn’t bother looking at Gortash for permission. He was talking to Dion, trying to get him back to the tower and away from the gore. 

I stumbled out the door, down the little ‘dock’ to the dark space below the bow. 

With all the Fist in the city in one place, the streets were empty. 

I leaned against the wall, hunched over like I was going to vomit. 

The world was spinning. 

I was a twitching, miserable mess. 

My head was pounding. My stomach ached. 

Kill. Maim. Fuck. Slay them all. Rip out their throats. Bathe in it. We should be drinking blood, not ale. Paint the walls with it. Father would be so proud. In His holy name. What glorious bloodshed to kill all the Fist in one swoop—  

“You feeling alright, there?” O’Hara said. He must have followed me out, but how long he had been watching me, I wasn’t sure. It hadn’t occurred to me that one of them might be concerned . I tried to wave him off but he only stepped closer. Chuckling, “A little too much to drink?” 

“No,” I choked out. 

He crept closer in the dark, putting a gentle hand on my back, soothing like I was sick. I straightened up to face him. He slid his hand up to the back of my neck, then to my chin. “You know, Gortash always seems to have the prettiest friends,” he whispered, trailing his hand across my skin. 

I should have been worried that the spell I had been using to disguise myself would falter under his touch, but I wasn’t. All I could think about was how ‘pretty’ his insides probably looked. 

“Tell me, does he pay you? To hang around him? To… look at him like that?”

“What?” I replied dumbly. He put his hands on my splendid new jacket, pulling on the lapels, straightening me out. 

For a moment, I wasn’t sure who was the predator, him or me. His eyes said he was going to eat me alive.  

“It just seems odd that a man like that could get someone as handsome as you.” He continued, “Gortash is a prick… I mean, he didn’t even notice you left.” His body swayed under the influence of the drink, his green eyes skimming over my face in the dark. “I bet he can’t even afford to touch you properly… someone like you must be expensive… I’d fucking worship you.” 

I couldn’t even comprehend what he was saying. 

“How much for a kiss?” He asked, smiling. When I said nothing, he leaned his face close to mine and planted a soft peck on my lips. 

He gasped as I grabbed him roughly, slamming him against the wall.

“Hah, eager are we?” He breathed, “Mm… I could treat you so much better…” He reached out and cupped his hands around my jaw, bringing me back to him, kissing, and muttering sweet words against my mouth. I wasn’t hearing him. All I was hearing was the Urge in my head. Stirring. Growling. Applauding. 

He slipped his tongue into my mouth, moaning, his growing erection grinding against my hip.

My dominant hand pressed into the wall, keeping both of us upright, while my other hand landed on his throat. 

It felt like claws, digging their way up my throat, to my mouth then—The Urge ripped me open, split in two. My blade slid up my arm, muscles calling it forward by instinct, and I slammed it into his stomach and pulled. The wound yawned, his intestines spilling out onto the ground with a wet slap . 

My other hand squeezed, choking out his screams before he could air them. O’Hara’s wild eyes locked into mine, his mouth agape as he tried to understand what had happened.

“Oh, fuck…”I breathed, leaning my cheek against his. My eyes drifted over the glistening entrails between our feet. The pounding in my ears stilled as my body shuddered with release. “Thank you… I’m feeling much better now…” I told him. 

Then I stabbed him.

In his chest. 

In his face.

In his neck. 

I stabbed him until his body was an unrecognizable heap.

And then I stabbed him some more. The ravenous hunger in my body evaporated, and I felt like I could breathe. I threw my head back, closing my eyes and relishing in it for a moment. 

I had just killed someone, practically in the middle of the street, right under the bow of the Blushing Mermaid. I hadn’t killed so recklessly in years. 

It felt shameful.

It felt divine.

“Are you quite finished?” Gortash said, standing behind me, arms crossed looking almost bored. I gaped at him, panting. “Look at this, Calrissian, look at this mess.” 

I was wrong, earlier. When I thought he had forgotten what I was. He knew the monster was still there. 

He just didn’t care. 

“I’m sorry—”

“You’re not.”

You’re right.

The words hit harder than any blade. I blinked at him, stupid and shaking, blood dripping from my hands.

“Well, go then.” he said coldly, like I was a mutt that had pissed on the floor.

I was confused, “What?”

“You can’t exactly come back inside you’re covered in blood,” he said. 

I wiped my face, clearing some of it away. “You’re angry with me.”

“ No, I am calculating the consequences of this. I don't have time to be angry with a wild animal, now go .” He ordered. The shame swelled. 

I had tried so hard. So hard all fucking day to be all the things he wanted me to be and for what? I learned nothing, I knew nothing, and I felt like a mess. 

It felt like losing. 

I was losing. 

He turned back toward the ‘dock’, casually, like all of this wasn’t any more significant than me spilling a drink on my lap.

As he did, a realization settled over me.

I wasn’t a project or a partner.

I wasn’t even a pet.

I was a tool.

Something he used. Something he would throw away.

A wild animal . 

And I hated him. 

Chapter Text

“Her darkness eclipses even death—for the night belongs not to the Lord of Bones, but the Mistress of Loss.”

— Tome of Shadow Psalms, Section 3, Verse 8

-

Chapter Thirteen: Loss 

-Cal-

“Well, I’m so pleased you finally decided to join me,” Gortash muttered without looking up. I didn’t answer. I just walked in, dropped into the chair across from him, and waited. He was either going to berate me or he wasn’t. I didn’t have the energy to fight about it.

He finished up what he was doing like I wasn’t even there, scribbling on parchment while I sat in silence.
His office in the Lower City was small, tucked up in the back of a municipal building. I hadn’t been here since before the House of Wonders, the night he first kissed me when the Urge knocked him on the floor. 

He had gotten a new desk since then. 

A new chair, too.

It had been four days since the Blushing Mermaid, and in truth, I had been avoiding him. Once I finally got out of my murderous stupor that night, I summoned Sceleritas and made my mess his problem. 

He was fucking giddy; ecstatic to be called to help me with something so urgent. 

I guess the Fist all thought that O’Hara and I had snuck off somewhere together. He had a reputation for flirting, and disappearing with a handsome stranger wasn’t out of the ordinary for him. It took them a few days to realize he was even missing, and when they did, Gortash spun some yarn that O’Hara and I had taken off to Waterdeep. 

He was annoyed by the whole thing.

Once again, he was wasting time cleaning up my messes. 

Meanwhile, I was lying in bed imagining the look on O’Hara’s face, wondering if I felt more aroused or ashamed by the whole thing. 

I didn’t want to see him. I had been ignoring his coded notes, pretending his messages passed through his subordinates and never reached me. I was wrestling with my newfound realization that I couldn’t stand him, and I didn’t have the patience to hear his whinging. 

I hated him. I also admired him. 

I liked his calculative mind. I liked the way he saw the world. 

I found him interesting. 

What I didn’t like was how he thought of me. Us. 

He thought he knew me. 

He didn’t. 

He had seen a very curated, very small part of my life, stripped it down, and created this image of a person who barely existed. 

Worse, he had named that image Calvin . A sin I found unforgivable. 

None of that mattered, though. Our Lords had demanded that we work with one another. It didn’t mean I had to like him; it just meant I had to take over the world with him without shoving my dagger down his throat, no matter how much I would have loved to watch him bleed.

“ After you made your abrupt departure, I managed to learn a little more from the stupid soldiers,” he snapped. He stood, walking to the front of his desk, crossing his arms, sitting back on the wood. He was wearing that golden gauntlet again. As he drummed his fingers against his arm the metal click, click, clicked. “ It would appear that Myrkul’s Chosen is hiding in Moonrise Towers.” 

The name had the vaguest air of familiarity, but I couldn’t place it. 

“Luckily, I happen to know the man who constructed the towers—well, in a way. I know his spirit—it doesn’t matter. I intend to go speak to him and see if he has any insight about the curse, or Ketheric.”

“Okay,” I said. 

His jaw tightened. The way he looked at me was venomous. He hated it when I gave him nothing. When he couldn’t mock or push me. Silence was an affront to everything he stood for. I had started to wonder if he kept a little journal somewhere labelled ‘Ways the Bhaalspawn is Inconvenient to Me’ with meticulously kept notes of our every interaction.

This would go down as a historic exchange, I was sure.

“ Once I’ve spoken to Morfred about the Tower, we should begin planning our trip out to Reithwin,” he continued. “It will be about a five-day journey out, so long as the roads are clear and no horrors befall us. Then we’ll find Ketheric, convince him to join us if Myrkul hasn’t already. Then planning. He may insist on staying there. I think we ought to convince him to return here for convenience. Then it will be another five days or so back—all in all we’ll be gone at least two weeks, maybe a month.” He ran a hand over his face. I could see the stress etched into his features, stress I originally thought was caused by me, but now I could understand the cracks in.

“We should leave tomorrow.”

He scoffed, “I can’t just up and leave, not for that long. I have to settle all my affairs in the city, make sure my bases are covered within my actual duties, not to mention tie up loose ends with my trade business, and make sure my church is in good standing.” 

“Then I will go on my own.” 

“ No ,” he snapped. Then he properly laughed at me, “I’m sorry, you want to go speak to the chosen of Myrkul alone ? You have more than proven you’re incapable of such… delicate conversations. No. I will go. You will wait for me.” 

The Gods demanded we bring Ketheric into the fold. I didn’t see a need to wait until he had his affairs in order. I imagined, without knowing much about the man, that Ketheric and I would be inclined to see eye to eye on a number of things. Bhaal wanted murder, which created death. He and Myrkul were not so far apart in that. It was Bane who demanded control and order, both of which I detested. 

I had hoped the general would too. 

I thought myself more than capable of going on my own, but some part of me wanted to watch Gortash bumbling through the Shadow Cursed Lands. I decided not to argue with him, and instead pray about it. If my Father said to go without him, I would go. 

“In the meantime, here.” He handed me a piece of paper with a list of names, twelve in total, two circled with dates and locations beside them.

“What’s this?”

“More people I’d like you to kill. That last one, Savilla? Do be sure to drag it out, I’d love to know she died a horrific, painful death.” He walked back around to the backside of his desk, sitting again, reclined back. 

I looked at the paper. Then back to him. 

“I thought we were done with your inane lists.”

“Why would you think that?”

Because Bane told you we are equals. 

In lieu of answering him I stood, making my way toward the door.

“And Cal? Do try to keep your knives out of the gullets of anymore Fists. As much as I love lying to them, I don’t care to get caught up in a murder trial. I’ve much too much on my plate as it is.”

“Keep lecturing me, Enver. Maybe one day you’ll convince yourself you’re in control,” I said, crumpling the paper and tossing it at his smug, handsome face.

I didn’t need to see his face to know that he was seething when it bounced off his nose.

After that, I left. 

–

Two Months Later

-Cal-

Days bled into weeks as Bane’s chosen got his shit together. 

Those days were some of the slowest in my lifetime. 

Though I had lived nearly a hundred years before Gortash came into my life, it was like without him I didn’t know how to be. The first week was the worst. Then by the second I decided I wasn’t going to simply sit patiently for him to call on me. 

While he continued on Gortashing, I sharpened my skills.
I started making a practice of going to ground three days a week. Trips to the bustling streets of Baldur’s Gate in the middle of the day, where I did not permit myself to kill anyone or anything. Of course, I made up for this at night, cutting down anyone I saw fit, not worrying about Gortash’s political plans or the ‘fragile structure of Baldurian society’. 

I got better at listening to people and blending into a crowd. Polite conversation came easier after a while, and my little excursions went from being an hour, to two, then three. 

I was practically reintegrated. 

It did have some benefits, too, more than just being able to sit quietly in the back of a tavern without slaughtering everyone in the room. I started to learn things about the city around me. Gossip mostly, but some information that I could stow away here and there for future use. 

I even caught up with Hannah, the young girl whom I had been watching before all of this business began. 

My murderous prodigy. 

I introduced myself to her. Gifted her sharper blades and a pittance of coin. Brought her to the Temple and made sure she was fed. 

I did not push the ideals of my father onto her right away. Though she had some inklings about it.

I had told her I was religious, and she guessed that I was no follower of Ilmater or Lathander, given that I didn’t go to her trying to change her ways or fix her. From the moment we first spoke I encouraged her to steal less and kill more, telling her death was the key and the rest would come later. 

She took her time to trust me, and I took my time revealing more fully who and what I was. 

When I finally told her that I worshipped the Lord of Murder, she wasn’t afraid. 

She knew vaguely of my Father’s legacy, but she couldn’t read. Expelled from every orphanage and school from here to Elturel, for everything from theft to stabbing, she knew about survival, not studying. I taught her what I could and answered whatever questions she had, even if they weren’t about Bhaal. Though, I’d never finished my own schooling, and my expertise didn’t exactly extend past murder and mythology.

She admitted to me that when she killed, it wasn’t usually because she wanted to, but rather needed to. 

Usually.

When I told her that I killed for fun, because I wanted to, that my God not only bade me to but opened up every path to allow me to, there was a spark in her. Within a week, she had moved her sparse belongings into the temple, finding a little nook beneath some scaffolding to make a room. 

She slept when it was light, and when it was dark, she became my shadow. She was a worthy distraction, keeping me busy enough that I didn’t show up at ‘ Master Gortash’s ’ window in the dead of the night.

Anything to keep busy. 

Praying. Indulging the Urge. Mentoring. 

He and I did not see each other in those days, but we communicated as we had been before. Through birds, drop points, and our subordinates. 

I played a fun little game of sending Orin to him. Often. 

She hated it. 

He hated it more. 

I found some solace in that. 

After a while he finally sent me what he learned from the architect he knew. It was about the same as what I had found researching Ketheric and Reithwin Town on my own.

The General, Ketheric Thorm, was once a Selûnite, then Sharran, and apparently, now he was a follower of Myrkul.

Moonrise was constructed as a great monument to Selûne during his first lifetime, a place of worship that was meant to be her most holy place, but when Ketheric changed his religious views, he invited the Shadow Curse into the lands. 

I continued to learn anything I could without involving Gortash in my findings. A large part of this research became stalking the Sharrans around our dear city and learning as much as I could about their faith. 

I transfixed on them in a way I didn’t mean to. They were orderly in their secrecy, elegant in their destruction. It wasn’t envy exactly—but it wasn’t disinterest either. Watching them became integrated into my nightly routine. 

I wanted to figure out where they worshiped. Really, I was hoping to get inside and speak to their God. 

It may seem silly, but there was some part of me that thought if I went to her earnestly as the son of Bhaal that I could get some kind of protection from her. After all, the Shadow Cursed Lands were her lands. We, the chosen of Bane and Bhaal, were about to be trespassers. The least I could do was knock on her door and ask to cross the threshold. 

I felt I was getting close. 

That’s when it all went to shit. 

It was the dead of night and I was creeping down the alleyways of the lower city, following behind two of them that I had uncovered in the last few days. Sharrans. One was a girl with long black hair and a biting attitude. The other was a man who looked like he could be her brother. They were both young—no longer initiates, but not as skilled as some of the higher ranking of their kind. 

They had been looking for some relic, or so I thought. I had overheard them at a tavern out in North Baldur’s Gate, a place called Three Old Kegs, talking about a place called the Shadow Fell, where their Goddess resided. 

They were looking for information then, and I followed them the subsequent nights as they searched the city for whoever or whatever it was they had lost. The irony was obvious to me, two Sharrans trying to undo loss, one of the very tenants of their religion. 

Last night, I followed them for hours only to lose them somewhere between the Lower and Upper City. I abandoned the trail when I ran into a Harper fighting a vampire thrall and decided I didn’t want to end up between the two.

Anyway, tonight I thought I had them. 

I crept down one street, hiding in the dark, then rounded the corner to another.
I was following the girl, her pony tail whipping behind her as she stalked back to her home. 

She turned to the left and then… she was gone. 

Suddenly and explicitly gone. 

The alley went quiet. No footfalls. No ponytail.

I blinked. 

And then there was a knife at my throat. 

It all happened quite quickly, and I wasn’t ready for a fight. The young woman pushed me back against the wall. I threw her off with an Eldritch Blast. She flew away, I got my feet, but then there were eight of them . 

I was surprised, and left without time to react before they descended on me. One of them threw something that shattered at my feet, making a bright blast of light. Two more got me at the legs, and another jabbed something painful and sharp into my neck. 

I was paralyzed before I hit the ground. 

The one saving grace I had was my little shadow. I didn’t know Hannah was following me, but as I fell I could see her red hair poking out from behind a crate at the edge of the road. Her bright eyes looked at me in horror, like she knew she was supposed to help, but didn’t have any idea how.

The last motion I was able to make was a sign to run.

I just hoped that she was smart enough to get Sarevok instead of Orin. He would come for me. She would not. 

After that, my memory goes as black as Shar’s domain. 

Loss. 

Chapter Text

A note from the author:
Hey all!
This chapter is pretty heavy on Cal’s story, but bear with me, the next chapter is mostly from Gortash’s POV.

With Love,

Eli

—

“Only in the dark may the self be seen. Only in loss may we be forgiven—for Shar does not demand perfection, only surrender.”

— Tome of Shadow Psalms, Section 3, Verse 12

Chapter 14: …and the Lady Thereof

– Cal–

Get up, a voice called inside my mind. It was so busy in there sometimes, between my thoughts, my father’s edicts, and the Urge. 

I couldn’t even tell who was speaking, only that the words rang true.

You need to get up, now.

I opened my eyes, and all was darkness.
The floor was stone, cold and damp beneath my head. The air smelled like a mix of mildew and burning incense. I tried to sit up but found my hands bound tightly behind my back with a cord that cut deeper into my skin the more I struggled against it. 

I tried, immediately, to summon Sceleritas. 

I was out of spells for the day. 

Fuck . 

My muscles were screaming as the paralytic poison made its way out of my system. It felt like when you sleep on your hands too long, first numb, then tingling, then painful. I tried to keep as still as the darkness around me as I assessed my wounds. 

My knees hurt, and my sinuses burned. I was in pain, but I would recover.

I should be dead. 

I blinked hard, forcing my eyes to adjust. I was lying on a polished floor made of stone, my face down and my knees curled into my chest. Around me in the cavernous room, I could see a few tables here and there, chairs along the wall, nestled between bookshelves. 

I grunted as I rolled onto my back, then used my hands to come to a seated position.

The chapel, or what I assumed to be one, was forged in black marble, surfaces glimmering with shards of shadowglass, ripples of purple light occasionally pulsing through veins in the stone. 

I felt small. And not in the mortal sense.

I was being watched.

“Who are you?” A voice boomed amid the shadows, loud and ethereal. Thaumaturgy, I assumed, but still intimidating.

“A victim of a misunderstanding,” I mumbled, attempting to plead my case before the Sharrans gutted me for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. I realized then that following them was a bad idea, then again, it wasn’t like I could have just approached them and said, ‘ Hi, I’m the Bhaalspawn, I’d love access to your temple, I promise not to kill anyone’ . 

Even now, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to kill anyone. 

“You have followed my agents and interrupted their missions. Who do you work for?” The voice cut through the air like ice. Feminine. Deep. Measured. Every syllable was chosen and purposeful.

I went to lie, and found myself unable. The words I wanted to say caught in my throat like sap and slid back down into my body. They had given me something, more than just the paralytic. Something that made it nearly impossible for me to lie.

“I seek an audience with the Goddess Shar,” I said, still trying not to give my hand.

As I did, purple light flooded the room as thurbiles burst into vibrant life, lit as though by magic. Emerging from the dark was a woman.

She stood far across from me, up a short set of steps to an elevated platform where she could preside over the room. Her hair was white and long, falling in sheets over her shoulders, a contrast to her blue-grey skin. She was older than she looked, timeless and strong. 

Viconia DeVir.

Shit.

Sarevok had told me over the years of many people I ought not fuck with. Viconia’s name came up more than once. I thought she had lived in Waterdeep though, not right under my nose here in Baldur’s Gate. 

Her armour was sleek, black mithral, shaped to curve around her body like fabric. She didn’t smile. Like most drow women, she looked upon me like I was a worm. 

“You seek an audience?” She echoed, stepping forward. “Yet, you are a liar, a rogue, and, I suspect, a thief. Faithless to my Lady of Loss. I will ask you once more, child, who are you and who do you serve?”

I glanced around the room and realised we were not as alone as I had originally thought. There were a dozen or so Sharrans along those stone walls, waiting and ready to dismember me if I so much as blinked at their Mother the wrong way. 

“Should you continue to evade my questions, I will find more creative ways to draw them out of you,” she said.

I didn’t doubt it.

I rolled forward on my knees, “When I tell you my name and my Lord, you will think I have come to this place to harm you. I have not,” I explained. Her silence was more intimidating than her voice. I cleared my throat, “I am the Slayer, Son of Bhaal, and leader of his flock.” 

She cocked her head to the side, “The Slayer who means no harm?”

“Not today,” I said, honestly, because I had to, because of whatever they had drugged me with.

“And, if not to maim and kill my children, what would the Slayer of Bhaal be following them for?” She asked, 

“To find this place.”

“Why?”
“I seek an audience with Lady Shar,” I repeated. She stared at me, stern and disapproving. I wasn’t even trying to evade her question that time. I shook my head, trying to summon my inner Banite. Without really meaning to, I started to mimic Gortash’s cadence, “My Lord calls me to march into the Shadow Cursed Lands. It was my earnest and only intention to speak to the Lady of Loss and ask for her guidance as I crossed to her domain, that’s all.”

“You need only pray for my lady to hear you.”

“I need more,” I told her. I was a child of the gods. I knew better than most the idea they were always watching was a myth. Shar may have looked upon me if I had prayed, but I was Bhaalist. She didn’t have to listen to me if she didn’t want to. In the immortal scheme of things, she outranked my Father. If Viconia thought me a worm, Shar likely thought me worse. “You do not trespass on a king’s land without asking permission. You do not draw blood in a temple without consequence. The Shadow Cursed Lands belong to your Lady. My Lord has demanded I go there, to the home of Ketheric Thorm.” 

She tilted her head, her eyes searching my face like the truth might be written there. 

“You presume a great much, Bhaalspawn,” she said after a moment. “What is your intention with Ketheric Thorm?”

“I mean to kill him. Eventually.” I said, a very honest, very curt response, even I did not expect. Obviously, it was not my immediate intention to slay the Chosen of Myrkul, but there was some part of me that understood that was the long game. 

It was the Urge, I realised, who had pushed the thought forward. With the drugs in my system, I was unable to filter myself, and by extension, my dark companion. 

Somehow, it was exactly what Viconia needed to hear from me. 

She motioned with her hand, and one of her followers came away from the wall, walking down to me. It was the same young woman I had been tracking. Long black hair, and pretty green eyes. 

She made her way behind me, releasing the cord that was keeping me bound. When she stepped in front of me I saw it was barbed and tangled. My wrists were raw and bleeding. The young woman summoned magic to her hands and waived them over me, and in a moment, they were healed. 

“Stand,” Viconia ordered, “Come forward.”

I did, closely followed by my new friend. 

Viconia walked ahead of us, down steps on the other side of the platform, leading out to a narrow walkway. Beneath it looked like endless nothingness. Her footsteps echoed in the cavernous space, the sound bouncing off the high ceilings and across the dark abyss on either side of the path.

I chose not to speak, for fear of what I might say. 

The walkway ended at a large, circular door that opened as Viconia approached. Behind it was another room, just as grand and large as the last, but with fewer furnishings. In the middle stood a massive, elegant statue. 

Much like the rest of the temple it was carved from dark stone. The visage of a woman, arms crossed over her chest with each of her hands resting on her shoulders. Adorning her head was a massive headpiece, one that covered where the woman’s eyes would be. Different parts were accented in gold—around her wrists, and marking the fine curves of her clothing. 

The artistry of the thing was unreal. It looked like she could come alive at any moment, stepping off the pedestal. 

This was Shar. 

“I can guarantee you nothing, Slayer, except that Shar will hear you,” Viconia said. Motioning forward. “Kneel.”

I knelt. 

“Shadowheart,” she said to her subordinate. She made a stilted motion with her head, not unlike the one I made when shaking off the Urge. The woman pulled a lever that closed the door we had come in through, plunging us all into darkness once again. 

This time, however, my darkvision did nothing for me. 

I could hear their footsteps moving away from me. 

I settled back on my heels.

When I was a little boy, I often prayed to Lolth. I didn’t know why, I was not born in the underdark, even if I appeared drow. My adoptive mother was a high elf, and her husband was human, but she would encourage me to pray to the Spider Queen if that’s what I felt I needed. She wanted me to feel connected to a lineage I did not have, to a culture I never experienced. 

Orin jokes that this is why one of my eyes is red, and the other white.

Blood for the Spider Queen. Bone for my devilish Father.  

The day my butler came to me and told me my true lineage was the last day I prayed to Lolth, or any god other than Bhaal. I was entirely devoted to my father. Anything else felt like blasphemy.

The intimate silence as I knelt in front of Shar’s statue felt eerie and strange. I took a breath, settling myself. I didn’t know how to begin, so I simply started talking, “I am calling upon the Lady of Loss,” I whispered, “I pray that she will hear me.” 

I felt nothing except alone. 

I closed my eyes,
“I don’t know if you’ll care to hear me. I am not worthy of it. I serve another. I have killed your followers. I likely will again,” I continued, “but I come to you as a traveller, a pilgrim destined to walk through your lands, to beg your blessing, so that I may see the true darkness of Shar.” 

There was a stirring in the black, followed by this sensation of disconnection. It was as though I had not only left the world behind, but myself with it. There was no Urge here. No feeling like my Father’s hand was guiding my path. I was alone. 

This was loss.
“You are bold. Chosen of Bhaal.” I heard her voice. The statue emerged from the black, though the rest of the world stayed gone. Unflinchingly stoic, the noise came from within. “You have killed many of my children, with and without knowing their faith. Why would the Son of Murder ask for a blessing to trespass into my land?”

The voice that had been in my head, bidding me to wake, wasn’t one of mine at all. It was her. Shar. Her tone was eerily kind, almost maternal, even if the words were sinister. 

“I mean to find Ketheric Thorm,” I said. I wanted to tell her that I was going to slay her former chosen, that I wanted her blessing because it was the decree of my father but revenge for her that Ketheric chose another God. This was a lie, however, and I could not form the words.

I never realized how often I lied until the ability was taken away from me. It was practically an instinct to keep the truth unspoken. Speaking like this felt like walking on a tightrope, and my further attempts to deceive were as painful as swallowing glass. 

I shook my head, choosing honesty, “I have followed your children; their brutality, efficiency and skill has impressed me.” I’d become quite obessessed.

The statue was quiet for a moment. When the voice came again it was calculated and cutting. “ You are not unfamiliar with loss, Son of Bhaal , ” it said, “ Your lord demands a great deal of it. I see you. Your life. Your fears. You destroy all that you touch. You are alone. ” 

I could feel dark tendrils of magic, worming themselves through my very being, caressing my mind with their gentle touch. 

“ But you are no child of loss. You still have much to loose. ” 

My mind cycled to a few things. My temple. My faith. My sister. 

Gortash.

I didn’t like that he had wormed his way into the mix of things I would consider caring about losing. 

“ I will bless thee, son of Bhaal… in exchange for your memories. ” 

“My memories?”

“ Yes ,” she replied, “ I will extend my protection to you and your bloodkin, and in exchange, I will take from you a memory most precious. One of your choosing. Should you choose to decline, my shadows shall eat you alive.”  

The chilling tendrils wormed their way into my mind, seeking. I felt more vulnerable now than I had in a long time. Sleeping with Gortash, the whole experience with the fist and O’Hara, the morning I woke in the Banite’s bath—nothing compared. 

She was stripping me apart until I was only fragments. Holding up the pieces of myself I found most precious in front of my eyes and threatening to break them. 

She drew forward a set of memories. 

An early birthday where my father—my worldly father—gave me a sword, and told me the story of how he met my mother. 

Sitting on a hillside at sunset when Orin was just a child, laughing as she tumbled in pursuit of a twee little squirrel she wanted to kill. 

A few of my earliest kills. 

The face of a man I was once fond of, among others.

“ Choose .” 

Uncomfortable with my thoughts being aired like laundry, I chose quickly without truly considering the cost.

The man’s face evaporated from my mind, along with his name, and the story of him. 

My face felt hot, and tears welled in my eyes. No sooner did the memory leave did I wish I could bring it back. I hadn’t expected to feel so shattered, but I was. Utterly and completely overwhelmed with loss. I couldn’t even remember why I was so upset. Had something happened between this me and this man? Did I love him? 

Even as I write this now, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know. 

“ Your tithe has earned you my gift, Son of Bhaal. I will shield you from my darkness— but do not mistake this kindness as charity. I will keep you from the shadows alone, but you will remain subject to the things that lurk within. ” 

“Thank you.” I whispered, sadly. 

“ Go now. Embrace this tender loss. ”

I shook my head slightly, eyes closed, lips pursed. 

The words left my mouth even though I did not want them to. 

“I travel also with the chosen of Bane.”

The silence came again, stilling and strange. 

“I request, please, that you extend your protection onto him.” 

“ And what will you give in return? ” 

“A promise.”
“Oh?”

“Upon your lands, unto those creatures, I will sow great loss.” 

Whether Gortash wants me to or not.

Chapter Text

My will is iron.
My place is chosen.
I bow to strength above me,
And crush weakness below me.

By the Black Hand, I do not falter.
By the Tyrant's gaze, I do not waver.
Fear is my weapon, and obedience my shield.
Through order, I conquer.
Through conquest, I serve.

Let the unworthy break.
Let the faithful endure.
Let the chain be unbroken,
From my blood to His throne.

-A Banite Prayer

Chapter 15: The Road Ahead

— Cal—

We had been waiting for the Banite for over two hours before I decided I’d had enough. If Gortash couldn’t be bothered to be timely, then I couldn’t be bothered to wait for him any longer. 

I stood up, beating the dust off my robes. “Come on, let’s move out.” 

Ciri clapped, giddy as a schoolgirl, rounding up the rest of my followers that I had selected for this journey.  

They were all excited to be leaving Baldur’s Gate behind, even if only for a little while. 

It had been a few days since I got ambushed by the Sharrans, an event that put my entire flock into chaos, mostly at Orin’s behest. 

For me, it was all sort of a blur. I remembered Shar, the gift she bestowed on me. I remember rising to my feet and feeling the faint buzz of magic pulling me back to the darkness of the Sharran Temple. But once I was in that darkness, there was another stinging pain in my neck, followed by nothing.

Viconia knew casting Sleep on me wouldn’t work. She opted for the more direct method of paralysis and blunt force trauma.

I woke up in a heap in the sewers, with the world spinning sideways, and a myriad concerned faces looming over me.

Hannah had done right by me.

I found out later that she made it back to the temple like I told her. She found Ciri, one of our Death’s Heads, who roused everyone who was sleeping to come to my aid. They couldn’t find where I had been taken, but when they reconvened down in the tunnels, there I was. 

Bloodied, but intact.

At first, my sister had little to say about it. Then the longer I did nothing to retaliate, the more upset she got. In the few days since then, she had all but declared war on the Sharrans, insisting their choice to attack Bhaal’s chosen was a challenge that demanded blood.
I didn’t feel the same, nor did Sarevok. I chose to go to them, and moreover, I didn’t want to spark a fight between Shar and my Father over it. 

I stalked them.
They caught me.

Viconia had sent me on my way, alive. 

As far as I was concerned, the matter was settled. 

Half of the cult agreed with Orin, the other half wasn’t as keen to die over nothing.

To her, it was just more proof my leadership was flawed, that I was cowardly, and soft. She was screaming for days that Father demanded blood, and I had been lazy about giving it to him. 

I was too busy looking at the big picture to listen to her ramblings. 

While she seethed, plotting against the Lady of Loss, the Hand of Bane finally decided he was ready to embark on the mission our Gods had put before us. 

He had sent a simply worded note through one of his subordinates. 

We leave tomorrow.

Be ready at dawn. 

Meet outside the gate. 

All of which was fine. It was the last line in his coded message that caused the biggest problem. 

Don’t bring Orin. —E.G.

He’d had enough of her after my insistence on using her as our messenger in these last few months. I assumed that she had brought him all the same theatrical bloodlust she gave to me each day. He knew I intended to be a thorn in his side, and he didn’t want to have to deal with both of Bhaal’s chaotic children. 

In earnest, it was never my intention to bring Orin. 

In my mind, Sarevok was supposed to be dead. If something went wrong while I was away, it would be Orin to deal with it. My volatile bloodkin wasn’t necessarily the most level-headed, but she was devout. The temple would live on while I was away, and I intended for her to lead it. 

She didn’t care. 

She was thirsty for new blood. 

When I told her she was staying behind, it was like igniting a bomb. 

She destroyed my room—ripped books from shelves, shattered jars, kicked furniture to splinters. She killed Sceleritas six times over, then summoned him back just to beat him bloody.

I couldn’t say anything to console her. 

She kept demanding that she was meant to be a part of this, that it was her mission too, that she belonged. She thought I was punishing her for her insolence, when in reality, I was rewarding her for decades of faith. 

She spent the night sulking, stabbing, and scowling as we packed up. When we finally left, she didn’t come to say goodbye, and I couldn’t find her. 

I left a note, a list of things to remember while I was gone.

Then, just like that, we were off. 

Gortash had said to be here at dawn, but the time had long since passed. I didn’t know if it was some power play or if Bane’s special child had gotten caught up in something. I didn’t really care. 

I wasn’t eager to see him. 

I was fairly certain he wasn’t eager to see me either. 

So, off into the early day’s sun, we started our trek to the Shadow Cursed Lands. 

—

—Gortash—

I was, perhaps, later than I intended. A few last-minute concerns demanded my attention, and we made some necessary stops at Wyrm’s Rock before departing in earnest. Purchasing supplies, leaving a few final instructions for my many operations. 

I had expected the Bhaalspawn to wait, as instructed. 

I’m not sure why.

He had been defiant of late. Choosing to play games rather than facing me. Ignoring my letters, disobeying my requests, sending Orin to my house . 

He was becoming more vexing than he was valuable, though I didn’t know what phase of his mood annoyed me more: when he was overly dependent, or cruelly silent. He couldn’t be trusted with a simple tavern dinner without causing a scene. Yet for months, he’d acted like I was the nuisance.

It didn’t matter.

We were moving forward as planned. If I had to threaten him into submission to get back on the same page, then so be it, but right then, we were in different books. 

Needless to say, when we were just outside of town and I saw one of the symbols from our coded messages carved into the trunk of a tree, I was seething. 

For someone who was constantly doubting his intelligence, he was quick to come up with a code that was hard to decipher but easy to remember.

The symbol meant down . 

I got off my horse and wandered over to the tree. Brushing back the brambles, I found a crudely scrawled message scratched into the dirt. Petty and infuriatingly vague.

He essentially said he’d gotten tired of waiting and to catch up with him on the road. 

Typical .

I closed my eyes, swallowing my obvious annoyance when Ignur dared to speak. 

“Are they still coming?” He asked. He was a newer recruit to the Black Gauntlets and had not yet been broken the way many of them had. Numia drew closer on her horse as well, looking at the etching with a furrowed brow, trying to determine its meaning.

I couldn’t exactly say, “ The Chosen of Bhaal is an insubordinate bastard ”. I needed them to think I had Bhaal’s chosen eating out of my hand the way they did, so instead I deceived them. 

“Yes. I told him that if we weren’t here by a certain time to move on without us. We’ll meet them on the road.” I straightened up, making my way back to my horse, and mounted it. “They’re likely on foot, they won’t have gotten too far. The Bhaalists aren’t exactly known for strategic planning.” 

“Historically, no,” scoffed Yanthus, my ever dutiful scribe.
I had decided to keep our party small and told Calrissian to do the same. I didn’t want Ketheric feeling ambushed, nor did I want us to be ambushed on the road, moving in a large group. 

Two sturdy fighters. Someone to document the glory of it all. That was all that was needed. 

With them, I had taken two extra horses. The likelihood that Cal had a secret stable hidden in the sewers was, of course, nonexistent. I briefly considered leaving them here and making Bhaal’s Chosen walk the whole way to Reithwin... but I’d rather he keep pace than get left behind.

The first few days of travel would be easy; the paths to Baldur’s Gate were well forged and well maintained, especially with the refugees beginning to arrive from Elturel. After the third day or so, the paths would be narrower, less trodden. I wanted to get there in a reasonable amount of time. 

I had told the city’s officials that I was taking a trip to Fort Morninglord to learn more about what was going on out that way. It was a reasonable way to leave the city for so long without raising suspicions, while keeping my job as a military advisor for the Duke.

We set off, moving at a steady pace away from the city. The most dangerous thing so close to civilisation would be the boredom. We crossed the grand bridge and out into the farmlands, passing caravans and travellers along the way. As time rolled on, I found myself watching the trees more than the road, scanning for signs that Cal had passed through.

It was in the late afternoon when we saw the first signs of them. 

Along the banks of the River Chionthar was a corpse.

I was sure it was a corpse, even from a great distance, by the way it was destroyed and displayed. It was once an Elven woman, but in death her chest had been ripped open, organs spilt out into the dirt. 

It looked like someone had cleaved her in twain, straight down from her forehead to her toes. 

The kill was fresh. 

The flies hadn’t even found it yet. 

“Well, at least we know the Bhaalists are doing fine,” Ignur joked, looking down at the body as we passed it. 

“Loot it and drag it off the path, we don’t need to be followed,” I ordered him. He and Numia dropped off their horses quickly, snapping to follow orders. 

Obedient. Faithful. Loyal. 

A breath of fresh air. 

At first, I wasn’t certain it was Cal’s little troop that had left the body behind, though it was certainly their style. I became more certain, however, the closer we got to their camp.

In the hours that passed, we saw six more bodies; one group of two and another of four. The latter one had clearly been part of a caravan. Their cart was ransacked and picked over, belongings chaotically strewn across the blood-slicked path, and the corpses stripped of armour but left with dulled daggers in their bodies.

So much for subtlety. 

I didn’t mind the Bhaalists wetting their blades, but their inability to clean up after themselves was infuriating. I kept my composure, despite being irritated. Each scene we passed delayed us further, and by the time we finally reached them, it was night. 

I was beginning to suspect they were courting conflict. 

They had made ‘camp’ in a clearing, if you could even call it that. There was a large fire made with wet wood that was billowing with black smoke high above the trees. They had tossed down a few bedrolls and pinned some blankets up in the trees to use as tents. 

The first thing I noticed was the number of them. Cal had brought a dozen or more. Six women I could see, five men, his insufferable butler... and a fucking child. 

Whether she was bait, an offering, or a snack for later, I wasn’t sure.

One of the men was sitting near the fire, tapping loudly on a hand drum while one of the women, naked and soaked in blood, danced around and laughed. The others were drinking and revelling in a day of death and destruction, touching her outstretched hands as she passed by.

She was singing. 

The same woman who had been in the sewers weeks back. 

“Well, if it isn’t ‘ the Banite my Chosen reveres ’,” she quipped, laughing, still dancing. She moved close to me as I dismounted, putting her blood-slick hands on the lapels of my coat. “We were beginning to think you were never coming.”

I scanned around once more. It wasn’t just wood in the fire. There was a body on a pike, roasting. The scent was nauseating, reminiscent of burning pork. 

She hummed and twirled with her arms in the air until I grabbed her wrist.

“ Where is he ?” I demanded. Though it was a question in nature, I spoke it like a command.

“What, you’re not having fun, Master Gortash?” She giggled, mocking me. “Come on, dance with me… You might even enjoy it…” 

“He went to get cleaned off,” the little girl said, looking up from her spot on a log. She had a book open in her lap and a pen. From what I could tell, she was teaching herself to write, “I will get him.” 

Cleaned off? I thought, but before I could ask further, she stood and disappeared into the trees. I had never known Bhaal’s child to ever voluntarily bathe. Even the first night we spent together, he was still crusted in blood. 

I don’t know why, amid all of this, that unsettled me. 

I stood with my arms crossed while we waited, quietly instructing Numia to create a proper perimeter while Ignur unpacked our things. Yanthus seemed terrified of all of them, sitting up on his horse, dumbfounded and refusing to move. 

Cal finally emerged a few minutes later, following behind the red-headed girl wearing his signature black robes. Except now, they were flowing and open, showing off his body, save for the parts covered by his breeches. He was rubbing a piece of fabric over his damp hair. 

Clean. 

I felt a surge of emotions after not seeing him for so long.

Most of them were vile.

Why did you bring so many murderers here? 

Why are you making a smoke signal that can be seen from miles around?

Why did you bring a child?

Why couldn’t you have just waited like I asked?
Why have you been ignoring me, you cock-sucking asshole?

I resisted the urge to start yelling. 

“I see you caught up,” he said plainly, approaching with such a casual gait as if he’d invited me to his home for a party. Not as if we were meeting for divine cruelty. 

“I wasn’t aware it was a race.”
“Well, if it was, I would have won,” he said, crossing his arms. It was fucking smug. 

I was hoping that in his two months of absence, he would have cooled off, but apparently, he was still seething. I didn’t know why. It wasn’t my fault, what happened with O’Hara. In fact, he should have been thanking me for covering him that night. 

Or maybe it was when I had tied him up and stolen his magic that had him cross. 

It didn’t matter. 

We were in a stalemate. I couldn’t berate him without his followers gutting me. He wouldn’t obey me unless his God commanded it so. Neither of us wanted to appear weak. 

It was a whole different thing than meeting with him in private where we each were free to try to control the other. That felt like a game, and it had at least ended in pleasure on a few occasions.

This felt like swallowing thorns. 

“Quite the lot you assembled,” I said. “I thought I told you to keep it to a minimum.”

“This is the minimum.” He replied coldly. He was doing that thing again, curt responses with no substance as he tried to get under my skin. 

The look in his eye told me he knew he was doing it. 

I rolled my eyes. 

We were clearly getting nowhere. 

The Black Gauntlets stood rigid and silent behind me. The Bhaalists had set a body on fire and called it dinner theatre.

I let the silence stretch. If he wanted to play indifferent, fine. I’d let it stew long enough to make even his zealots twitch.

“Is there anything else I should be made aware of?” I asked, “Any more dancing rituals? Child acolytes? Or did you stop at theatrical absurdity?”

He cocked his head slightly to the side, slowly. “The dancing is for merriment, and the child is of no concern to you, Gortash.” He looked over his shoulder, like someone might need him. As far as I could see, they didn’t. “Settle in. I trust you’re exhausted after a day of… sitting.”

I stepped closer to him, “Listen to me, Cal. Do not embarrass me. I can make this whole excursion hell for you and you know it.”

“The sentiment is mutual,” he said. “You keep to your own. I’ll keep to mine. As it has been, so it shall be. Understood?”

I said nothing. He backed up a few feet, keeping that tense gaze before tending to his flock. 

Infuriating. As always, the Bhaalspawn was nothing but blood and contradiction. 

We didn’t speak much that night, but I kept feeling his eyes on me. Whenever I caught him staring, he didn’t even have the good sense to look away. There was something almost reverent in his hatred. Or perhaps I was flattering myself.

I couldn’t tell if he was undressing me with his eyes or planning my demise. Though, occasionally I did hear the special little mantra he had made for me muttered beneath his breath.

We cannot kill Gortash .

Chapter Text

“On Kings and Keepers”

They met with fire in their veins,
One chasing thrones, one pulling chains.
A bond was struck, but never true—
For power splits what passion knew.

Beware the love that seeks to rule,
A clever heart, a softened fool.
The end comes not with sword or flame,
But whispered doubt—and then, the name.

-Volothamp Geddarm, Volo’s Complete Compendium of Doomed Romances: Volume III - the Era of Upheaval

Chapter 16: A Million Times More

- Gortash-

The evening rolled on with a tense peace between my small troupe and Cal’s enclave. We set up our tents on the far side of the clearing, looking out toward the road. Resting our horses and taking to camp the way normal travellers would. 

The Bhaalists continued to dance and drink, swapping stories of kills and revelling in the bloodshed of the day. 

Cal barely spoke a word to me, except once when he whistled to get my attention. 

“You should not let your people eat that,” he had said. Motioning near the fire where his kinfolk were serving up something they’d cooked.
“Oh, what, you’re going to be stingy about food too?” I had snapped.

He rolled his eyes, “It’s dwarf meat.” 

…I made Ignur drop the plate and forage for something else instead. 

When I told Cal he was a barbarian, he simply shrugged. 

“Meat is meat.” 

At night, he took up one of the bedrolls the Bhaalists had set out, and within minutes, they all were cuddled up next to him. It wasn’t adorable, like watching a brood of puppies with their mother, but sinister. 

A den of hyenas poised to strike. 

He lay flat back to meditate, and one of them, a blonde woman named Cirian, tucked herself up beside him. Then on his other side was the dancing woman, still naked. I learned she was a bard simply called ‘Splice’. Behind her, her male counterpart, Spaulder. Behind Ciri, two others piled in. 

It was like to touch him was to be a part of his legacy. 

He made the little girl sleep aloft in a tree, away from potential harm and the half cocked murderers.

The rest rotated out on watches. 

I made Numia and Ignur do the same.

I barely slept. When I wasn’t thinking about the road ahead, I was bothered by the sounds of the camp. Especially the little Fiend, Sceleritas. He would shuffle around in the dark, curious and prodding, creeping around corners with his strange little grin. 

I didn’t know why, but the Butler had taken a special shine to me in the near half year Calrissian and I had known one another. He appeared in my dreams. He followed me around the city. I constantly felt like his sickly little eyes were watching me. 

Part of me wondered if Cal put him up to it.

A larger part of me worried he didn’t. 

It was still dark when I gave up on sleeping, leaving my tent to go sit by the dimming fire. 

I was surprised to see Bhaal’s chosen, up, alone, already beside it. The rest of them were still cuddled up in the trees. 

I almost thought better of going to him. We were clearly at odds and I didn’t want to make it worse, but then again, if he was going to be insufferable this whole trip we’d be at each other's throats in days, not years. 

I approached him the same way one might approach a barrel of runepowder too close to a flame.

– Cal–

“Perhaps we can both dispense with the belligerent posturing,” Gortash said, standing behind me, “And be as we are for a moment?” 

He had his arms crossed over his chest, that gaudy gauntlet still around his hand even though he was at rest. 

I looked behind him, in the distance, where his Gauntlet Numia sat at the edge of the clearing, an awkward distance away from Zekkek, one of my blades. They were ignoring each other, and neither was paying more than a passing attention to us. 

I motioned for Gortash to sit beside me. 

I was almost surprised when he did. 

“Truce,” I offered. He nodded, leaning over to where two half-drunk bottles of wine sat wedged between the rocks. He handed one to me. Ithbank. I much preferred whiskey, but I wasn’t about to push away his olive branch. 

He pulled one of his knees up toward his chest, resting his elbow on it, casting his gaze into the fire. I had been watching him all night, trying to figure out where his head was at. It was one thing, ignoring him at a distance, but when he was in my camp and amid my followers it was like he was a beacon, drawing me in. 

He had consumed every thought I had since we hit the road.

When I saw him, it was like we had started over from the beginning. No trust. No patience. Except now, we were both angry with one another. Much like the few times we had slept together, each move was calculated, trying to maintain a dominant position over the other. 

I hated it. 

“You’ve been distant lately,” he said quietly. “You know, when Bhaal and Bane came to us, I thought we’d be working closer together. And I certainly thought I’d be seeing less of Orin.” 

I closed my eyes, “You left me standing in that alley with my pants down, Gortash–”

“ You did that—”

“—I tried to tell you all day I needed to leave—”

“—and you should be able to handle yourself in public—”

I threw my dagger into the dirt between us. Hard. I had been cradling it in my lap. His eyes widened just enough to show he hadn’t expected it. 

The blade stuck out of the dirt, a hair's breadth away from his leg. 

We can’t fucking kill fucking Gortash. 

I looked away from him. Composing. 

“I told you I needed to leave, and you ignored me .” I couldn’t quantify all the ways that Gortash upset me. The list was long. My life was simple before him, and now it wasn’t. I kept to the points I thought he’d understand.  “You then called me an animal. Not to mention the state you left me, tangled in your bed, that morning—I’ve grown tired of being embarrassed by you.”

“Well, the feeling is mutual,” he hissed. He grabbed the dagger, and tossed it back at me, handle forward, not to hurt me but to dismiss its threat. 

“If I’m such an inconvenience to you, Enver, maybe we’re better off apart. We can still work together at a distance.”

“I don’t want that,” he snapped. He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking up into the night sky. “You vex me. Greatly , Chosen. But it doesn’t change the truth. You and I are the same. Cut from the same stone, pieces of bone and ambition. You…” he breathed out a huffy breath through his teeth, turning toward me. “I need you. I don’t know how many more times I need to say it.” 

At least a million times more.

I said nothing, looking back into the fire, trying to come to terms with the fact that Orin was right, and I was yoked. 

Irreparably. Deeply yoked. 

“Here, before I forget,” he said after some time. He fished around in his pocket for a moment, before producing a golden ring. I looked at it, then took it between my fingers. It was a dense band, with a red ruby inlaid in the metal.

“What’s this?”

“Magic,” he said, motioning to a matching one on his forefinger. “As good as I’m getting at reading your facial expressions across the room, these will let us communicate internally.” 

They were each etched with small, infernal writing, the bulk of which I didn’t understand.

“Rings of Message?”

“Yes and no,” he said, rolling his wrist. “I’m not entirely certain how they work. I haven’t used them.”

I stared at the little circle for a long time. I didn’t really want Gortash in my head. 

He scoffed, “Look, we’re clearly having some communication issues . I think it will make things easier if we don’t have to speak aloud.”

I tried to hand it back to him, “I can cast Message and speak to you as needed.”

“ I cannot,” he said bitterly, pushing my hand back toward me. He took offence at my hesitation.

“What does it do , Gortash?”

He rolled his eyes, exasperated. “They once belonged to the Demon Raphael. He used them to communicate with his concubine while he was off galavanting around the realms. As far as I know, they could speak to one another and occasionally see through the other’s eyes. I took them when I went to visit the infernal architect who built Moonrise Towers.”

The realisation dawned on me slowly, “You stole from a demon?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he snapped. “That bastard owes me this and more. He won’t even notice they’re gone.” 

He offered no further explanation.

Something told me not to push.

“At least wear it while we’re travelling. I can deal with your bitter indignation in private, but when we are leading, we need to act as one,” he muttered, downing the rest of his bottle. “Your petty hatred is not helping any of this .” 

He still didn’t get it.

“This is the last time I will tell you, Gortash,” I said, speaking slowly as I slipped the band onto the ring finger of my dominant hand. “From the moment we met, you’ve been tightening a leash around my throat. You do not own me. You do not run the temple of Bhaal. When I want to kill, I will kill. When I want to go, I will go. When I want to stay, I will stay. I will do my best not to… undermine you, Enver, but I will not march to your beat.” I turned the dagger over in my hand. “If you need me, then fine. You keep saying you want a partner at the end of the world. You will treat me as a partner.” 

He stared at me, then reached out with a touch that was almost tender, turning my chin and forcing me to look at him. 

“I need you to be in control of yourself.”

“I’m working on it,” I told him, which was honest. I was. 

He nodded. 

The silence stretched longer. 

His hand pulled away. 

I could feel my mind attune to the ring, connecting with his. I couldn’t hear his thoughts unless he allowed it, but there was a strange sensation, being linked to him.  

I could feel him. I was a part of his mind while being separate from it.

I could sense his conflict, his simmering rage.

Beneath it all was a spark of excitement. An eagerness for all that lay ahead. 

I got so lost trying to worm through his mind, trying to use this connection to understand him in that moment, that I neglected to realise he was doing the same to me.

Surface thoughts. Conflicted feelings. A brief look at my Urges. 

“You know, Cal,” he said after a moment, his voice low, “You don’t have to like me to fuck me.” 

I swallowed, not realising that had been such a paramount thought in my mind until he voiced it. 

I had been thinking about it. 

Seeing him. Touching him. 

Ever since that night in his room, the Urge had adopted a third thought to its mantra. 

Maim. Kill. Fuck.  

I had let my body become a revolving door to anyone who wanted me, but none of them quelled that hunger. 

It was inevitable. Gortash and me. 

I couldn’t kill him, but I could certainly use him in other ways.

“Alright.” I dumped the bitter wine into the fire and stood, wandering off toward the trees. 

“Alright?” He repeated.

I looked back over my shoulder, “Are you coming or not?”

Chapter Text

A note from the author :
Y’all don’t need me to warn you. There’s spice ahead. If you’re reading for the plot and are skipping scenes with smut/porn, you can go ahead and skip to the next chapter.

All my love,

Eli

—

Chapter 17: Sin

-Gortash-

“Fuck— ah , easy…” I breathed while Cal bobbed his head back and forth on my cock. I was already close. I put my hands down in his hair, trying to still him, but he was ruthless, bringing me to the edge and then refusing me release. 

It was driving me insane. 

He kept dragging his teeth over the tip, teasing my sensitive skin, switching up his pace over and over so I could never adjust. 

It was like he was trying to swallow me whole.

I was more than happy to let him. 

After all the frustration of today, it was… cathartic. 

His hair was soft.

I liked the way it dragged through the metal of the gauntlet around my hand. 

He pulled away from his ministrations with a lewd pop, coming up to my face. I could taste myself on his lips as he kissed me, assaulting my mouth with the same demanding force he had the first time we did this. 

Eager. Passionate. 

His style of lovemaking bridged the gap between fucking and fighting.

He pushed my back up against the tree, putting his knee between my legs and pinning me there with his body. 

Then there was stillness, contemplation. 

I drew him closer by his hips, holding his body against my own. My hands roamed the expanse of his bare chest, hidden just beneath his flowing robe. He had so many little scars on his blue-grey skin. I wanted to make a map of them.

He rested his fingertips against my lips, his eyes half lidded and his head cocked ever so slightly to the side. “This is a sin for me, Gortash…” he whispered, “Every time we meet like this and I don’t end you.” He lingered there, his gaze glossy, glimmering in the dim moonlight. “I want the same from you.”

I smirked, “Sin?”

He nodded. 

I let my eyes fall to his lips, “And what sin do you want from me, Calrissian?”

“I want you to submit to me,” he said, “Give up your precious control.” His fingers trailed lower, down my chin, onto the soft flesh of my neck.

My jaw set without me willing it to. I swallowed. 

“This is what I need from you. To set things right,” he continued. I could feel the pressure of his hand resting around my throat. “You need me. I need this.” 

Sin .

He didn’t wait for a response. 

He knelt down again, dragging his hand down my stomach, then to where he had pulled my breeches down my thighs. He tugged them further, returning his attention to my trembling, aching mess of a cock. 

When he took me into his mouth again, I gasped, moaning louder than I meant to. “ Fuck, Cal…” I breathed again. I rested my head back against the tree, closing my eyes, feeling him. “Don’t stop…” 

He didn’t. 

It felt so good. 

I was wrapped up in the sensation of it all when I felt his hand slide between my legs. Slicked with spit, he was prodding at my entrance, his fingers pressing into the tight, sensitive spot.

I felt a rush of cold through me. I tensed, putting my hand on his shoulder. 

“ Relax, ” He cooed, pulling away, his other hand coming up to touch me, stroking me softly while he pushed his fingers inside. My body still wasn’t sure about it. Submission. Compliance. It wasn’t in my nature. 

It felt like sin.

I gritted my teeth, then gasped as he pressed into my prostate.

“ ah–Fuck… ” 

He grinned contentedly, putting his mouth back where I wanted. A simple reward for not pushing him off. I bucked my hips forward without meaning to. He looked up at me with this heady, annoyed expression before moving again. 

When he pushed his other finger in, I had to steel myself against the tree to keep from doing it again. 

It’s not submission, it’s partnership, I justified. 

— Cal—

I threw Gortash down onto a rock beside the rushing water of the Chionthar, chest first, pushing his shirt up his back to expose more of his skin. 

I wasn’t exactly strategic about where I had taken him. I was mostly focused on finding the sweet spot between ‘the distance I could still hear if there was screaming in camp’, and ‘the distance away where they won’t hear all the things I am going to do to him’. 

The river dulled the noise. The boulders made a good enough surface to pin him down on. The trees hid us from the path. 

He pushed up slightly on his hands, looking back over his shoulder at me, cheeks flushed and eyes hungry. Though I had doffed my breeches, I hadn’t bothered to take any of his clothes off. The simple shirt and breeches he was trying to sleep in still hung loosely from his body. 

My heart was hammering.

“Did you mean to stop?” He asked sharply.

“No,” I breathed. More honestly, I was drinking in the sight of it all.

I had been trying not to mock him or tease him with my words. What we had was fragile, and he was letting me take more liberties than he wanted to already. 

Still, I wondered what his little followers would think if they saw him like this. Indisposed. Debasing himself for me. 

I understood why he revelled in power. 

It was fucking intoxicating. 

There was a long list of creative things I wanted to do to his body, but I restrained myself. This was a reacquainting, a new understanding. We needed to walk before we ran. 

I positioned myself behind him, taking a fistful of his rich, dark hair in one hand, while I put my other hand on his hip. I pushed my hips forward, sheathing myself in his heat.

“ Gods,” I moaned. My muscles shuddered. 

I felt him lie flat against the rock again, his uneven breaths settling as he adjusted to my size. I tightened my grip in his hair as I thrust, first slowly, then without restraint. 

Each little noise he made was like music to me, repetitive and rhythmic with each movement of our bodies. I leaned over him, biting the soft flesh on his neck, trying to elicit more of those sweet sounds.  

“Tell me you missed this…” I whispered. He tried to look at me, but I didn’t let him. 

“Don’t be a prick–”

“Say it, Gortash.” I breathed, “Tell me you thought about me… when you were alone in your bed at night.”

I didn’t need to hear him say it to know it was true. The rings were still connecting us, and though I couldn’t hear his thoughts word for word, I could get a general sense of them. I knew how good this felt, how he had longed for it. 

“Asshole–” he muttered. I bit his earlobe, driving myself deeper inside of him.

“Ah, Fuck .”

I wanted to watch him.
I pulled out quickly and took a step away. There was something desperate in the way he stared back at me, “What are—”

“Come here,” I whispered, walking backwards into the soft sand and motioning for him to follow. 

He straightened up, his legs trembling as he came toward me. 

I can’t explain what happened next in any more elegant terms—I tackled him to the ground. 

The motion knocked the wind out of him, but when he recovered, he laughed. 

“ Cal .”

“Shh…” I ran a hand down his abdomen, right to his cock, red and angry, weeping out beads of precum. I pushed his legs apart and settled between them again, pushing back inside of him, curling over his body as I thrusted deeply. 

His hand found the back of my neck, pulling me down to him, pressing my forehead to his. Facing him felt much more intimate. It was like when he bound me in his bed, the way he looked into my eyes then. 

I wanted that. 

More. 

I leaned down and kissed him. He moaned into my mouth, the needy sound reverberating in my throat. His other hand planted on my hip, drawing me closer as I moved inside him. 

He put his head back, and I trailed my kisses lower, first biting on his bottom lip before dragging my teeth and tongue down over his jugular. 

His cock was pulsing in my hand, his heart drumming impossibly fast. 

“Ah– AH… ” he moaned, orgasming all over his stomach, the sticky cum splurting across dark tufts of his body hair. His head snapped forward with urgency, looking down at his release. “Fuck.”

I let go of his cock, and pushed his leg forward, rocking my hips forward and back. 

I wasn’t far behind.

“Look at me, I want to see you… I want to see you,” he breathed. Gripping my chin.

Fuck, Gortash. 

I looked into his eyes, grunting, my hips snapping forward into his ass, “ Gods, gods… ” 

I gave one last shuddering breath before I came. 

“Good boy…” He breathed, “Oh, good boy…” he pet the back of my head while I panted, our sweat intermingling and dripping down his forehead. 

I lowered my face, licking it away. 

He scoffed, biting his bottom lip to keep from properly smiling at me. 

I flopped back into the dirt at his side, trying to catch my breath. His chest was also heaving as he rolled toward me. He put a hand on my chest, propping his head up on his hand. 

“What, you’re not going to demand another round?” he panted.

I shook my head, “Your people will notice we’re gone sooner than later.”

He chuckled, “How pragmatic.” He traced the long, thin outline of a scar across my chest, “Do you still hate me then?” 

He grinned like he wasn’t in my head, skimming my thoughts off the surface. 

He knew I didn’t hate him. 

That I couldn’t, even though I was trying my hardest.

I rolled my eyes, leaned over, and kissed him again. 

This time, with a smile. 

Chapter Text

While changelings possess the curious gift of gentle shapeshifting, dopplegangers are their grimmer cousins—deceptive, predatory, and far less interested in consent. Where a changeling seeks a place in the world, a doppleganger seeks your place in it.

I once shared a drink with a man who claimed to be his own uncle. 

Turned out he was neither! Classic doppleganger.

— Volothamp Geddarm, Planar Anthropologist, Amateur Escape Artist from his work “ Dopplegangers and Changelings: Know Thy (Other) Self ”

Chapter 18: Shapeshifting

- Gortash-

I slept like the dead, awaking curled up in my bedroll long after the sun had crested the horizon. 

Though my body ached and I had small bruises from Cal’s biting, it was the first decent night of sleep I had gotten since the Gods first put their plans into my capable hands. There were no eerie dreams from Bane commanding me forward. No rolling around wondering what the Chosen of Bhaal was planning. 

It was deep, restful sleep. 

Calrissian and I were finally seeing eye to eye. Things had changed. 

I felt ready. 

The morning passed in quick succession. Mouths to feed, gear to be packed. The Bhaalists were just as loud in the daytime as they were in the night. Cackling and throwing things. One of them, Spaulder, seemed to have taken a liking to Ignur, making a game out of seeing if he could frighten him. 

It was decidedly easier than I would have liked. 

I made a mental note to punish my newest Gauntlet later, publicly, for such disgrace. 

Cal kept himself busy ordering his little butler around and playing teacher to the child he had brought along. 

Hannah was her name. 

Last night, he had been making her write the words from some Bhaalist prayer in a little notebook she carried with her. I assumed she was learning to read from him.
This morning, he was showing her how to throw a knife at a target from a pretty sizable distance. 

It was morbidly hilarious to me that he had chosen his Butler for practice. The little creature would scurry about, trying to pack bags and get the other ruffians prepared to leave, meanwhile, his master threw blade after blade to his feet. 

Hannah’s aim was impeccable. Several times, she knocked that ugly hat off the fiend’s head. 

It was a typical morning in the Camp of the Dead Three.

Until it wasn’t.

We were readying our horses when I first noticed it. Cal’s little murder family was finishing their packing up, when one of them curled over, grunted and shifted . 

Their black hair sucked back to their skull, their pallor shifting from brown, to white, then grey. Their elvish form dropped and revealed their true nature, and one by one, half of the Bhaalists followed suit. 

Doppelgangers.

Not changelings like Orin, but proper doppelgangers.

Elf-like, but not, their greyish skin looked strange under the morning sun, their gangly limbs stretched too long for anything truly humanoid. 

I stepped closer to their master, taking a fistful of his cloak to grab his attention.

“When did you intend to tell me half your travelling party was Shallar?” I asked, taking a count. The dancing woman, Splice, had stayed as I knew her, as did Cirian, and the one named Spaulder. Cal finished hefting the child up onto the back of his horse, then looked over at the creatures quizzically, as if it wasn’t even something he had considered an issue.

The one he called Zekkek started knitting together his human-ish ensemble for the day, his yellow eyes bulging slightly before turning completely white, then growing handsome green irises. 

“Do they bother you?” The Chosen asked.

I blinked at him, “Did you bring them with the intention of bothering me?”

“No,” he said. 

Then he caught himself, knowing his clipped little answers annoyed the shit out of me. 

He rolled his eyes. “Sarevok has always worked with the Shallar. They’re efficient killers. I brought them with the intention that if we got caught up in a fight, we’d win,” he explained. “ Do they bother you , Gortash?”

“In that case? No.” 

I couldn’t say the same for my scribe, however. Yanthus was staring at them with the fear of Bane in his eyes. Looking from them to me as though I would banish them to protect him.

“Good.” Cal stepped into the stirrup, swinging his other leg up so he was sitting behind the child. I was right about them not having horses. I was also right that Bhaal’s chosen looked quite good sitting on one. “The Shallar are not just some sewer dwellers I hired for coin and company. They are of my flock, they are my kin. Do you understand?”

I nodded, albeit begrudgingly. 

Orin was one thing, but Shallar were another. From what I knew of them, they were typically solitary, conniving, and skilled. They were the perfect assassins, able to assume the form of any person they had studied enough, quicker to assume the visage of a person they’d killed. 

Sarevok was smart to employ them.

Cal was an imbecile for thinking of them as his kin. 

They’d gut him and not think twice about it if it served them. 

Then again, he’d do the same.

There was no honour among the Children of Murder.

I kept my mouth shut, mounting my own horse like they’d been part of the plan all along, like I hadn’t been surprised at all. It was a face of control I needed to keep, especially in the presence of my Gauntlets.

I was adjusting my reins when Cal’s voice slipped into my mind, “ Are we okay?”

I almost forgot that he had accepted my little gift and we could now have private conversations out in the open. 

I felt an odd sense of relief.

“ We’re fine. ” 

—

- Cal-

The road along the river seemed to look the same no matter how far we travelled. Green trees, grassy hills, dirt roads, rushing water. 

I didn’t know what was wrong with me that I was so easily bored. I am not one to carry on idle conversations, and I had started tuning Gortash out after the second hour or so. He was quite fond of his own voice. He was going over what our plan was for today, how far he’d like to travel tomorrow, and how we should prepare for crossing into the Shadow Cursed Lands. 

I realised at some point he wasn’t really talking to me, but to this man he had brought along with him. A half-elf with stringy blonde hair and a pointed nose. The wrinkles around his eyes showed his age, and the simple clothing he wore showed his lack of wealth. 

He wasn’t a fighter like the Black Gauntlets. In fact, he was as jumpy as a Bukavac. He lacked the order and grace I had come to expect of those in Gortash’s orbit. Even Gortash’s little house dwarf held herself together amid my chaos. 

I hadn’t thought much of him last night, assuming he was someone from Enver’s personal staff I just hadn’t met or recognised, but there was something strange about how he hung onto the Banite’s every word. 

I was too busy reading over Hannah’s shoulder as she copied the words I had scrawled out this morning in my dreadful penmanship that I didn’t realize that Gortash’s little follower was writing too. 

“What is that?” I asked. With the man riding between Gortash and I, I could get a glimpse of a page, affixed to a piece of wood to make it easier to record on while he led his horse. It was scribbled over with a litany of quotes from Bane’s chosen, a self-aggrandizing account of the journey so far. 

“Yanthus is a scribe,” Gortash said. 

We were on a mission from the Gods that entailed killing a lot of people, uprooting governments, and a myriad of other questionable acts. Of course, the best course of action was to invite someone to write it all down on our behalf. My expression gave away how I felt about the idea. 

He rolled his eyes, “Come now, he’s not Volo Geddarm . Someone is needed to document our glorious ascension—”

“If my name ends up on a single piece of parchment in your scribe’s possession, I will kill him,” I snapped. The scribe blanched, chuckling uncomfortably.

“I assure you I don’t mean to expose you in any way… um…” he paused, trying to figure out how to address me, “ sir. ”

“He’s not joking,” Hannah said dryly, without looking up from her little notebook. “He’ll drive a dagger through your eye. I’ve seen him do it.”

The false smile on Yanthus’s face faded, and he let his horse drift behind us, slowly, falling back somewhere behind Spaulder and the other horse the Banite’s had brought for us.

Good . 

“ Really, Cal, when all this is said and done, there will need to be a record of it. The great collaboration of the Dead Three. Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul. The not-so-mere mortals who brought all of Faerun to its knees.”

“Your God isn’t even a deity of death,” Hannah muttered disapprovingly. 

I grinned, “The Dead Three were once mortal men, then gods, then mortals again. The other gods believe them ‘dead’ more or less. Hence their name.” 

“They took up the mantle of Jergal ,” Gortash said, his voice whining and petty, as though arguing with a child was a good use of his time. “But I bet you don’t even know who that is. Without Bane, there is no order. Order is the one thing demanded by death. All things die, even things that think they can’t.”

If he meant for the last words to be threatening, it didn’t land. 

“Jergal cared for nothing more but the counting of lives, and knowing their fates. Order.” I told her, “Bane is order. But Jergal was the Lord of the End of Everything, this is the will of our Father and Myrkul beside him.” 

She nodded, though she said nothing. She hated being corrected. After months of encouraging her to murder whoever annoyed her, I could see her itching to cut Gortash open. Mentally measuring him for a shallow grave. 

She’d have to get in line.

Sensing this, he smirked, “You know there is quite a complex history between Bane and Bhaal…” he said, starting off on a long-winded diatribe about the legacy of our gods. Their rise to power, the Time of Troubles, and so on. The longer he talked, the more pastoral his lecture became. It ended abruptly when Hannah finally threw her book at his shoulder with all the force she could muster. 

We rode in peaceful quiet after that. 

—

— Orin—

I watched my Father’s chosen at a distance with more malice than a frog observes a fly. I hated his little looks at Bane’s special flower. The way they seemed to speak with words unspoken. 

The lordling would glance at brother dear and raise an eyebrow. 

The Chosen would smirk and shrug. 

The Banite would smile and nod with his head just so. 

Brother would laugh.

I found all of it sickening. He used to only smile for Father, at the sight of glorious bloodshed. Now he grinned and played with the Child of Tyranny. I had been hopeful these last few months that the Slayer would make good on his promise to kill his little toy, that the day would come sooner with each passing night. 

I was wrong then.
But I was right to sneak my way into his little journey. Right to slither behind him in the dark. 

He could not be trusted. 

Not with this.

Not with father’s sacred plan. 

Certainly not with Gortash.

The presence of his little protege made it all worse. They looked like twisted little parents, both of them. Whispering instructions to the girl as if she were a puppy learning new tricks. Sit. Kill. Smile. Murder for Daddy. 

I never received such coddling. 

If I’d known we were playing house, I’d have brought a knife for the nursery.

Before this was over, I would kill them all. Paint the ground with their joy and serve their bones to Father. 

Then He would see who really listens.

—

—Cal— 

It was hours later when the road pulled away from the river, turning around a bend and narrowing. Rocky hills grew on each side as we passed through a sort of canyon between them. 

The air was colder here, and it was starting to get dark. Enver had said earlier that our next campsite was supposed to be across a bridge on the far side of the river, but I was starting to think we wouldn’t make it that far. 

His Gauntlets were wary. His scribe was a skittish mess. And though my people had been taking turns riding our spare horse, they were about ready to drop. We stopped to rest here and there, but there was only so much I could expect from our strange little lot. 

I was about to say as much when the road narrowed further, and my predatory brain kicked in. 

This would be a perfect place for an ambush . 

Though it was a passing thought, it likely saved us. 

I pulled my horse slightly in front of Gortash’s to slow him down. 

“Do you see something ?” 

“Not yet .” 

It was a feeling more than anything. The way the shadows draped across the path, the little footprints in the dirt. 

Then I saw what left them.

Wandering out onto the road with its arms crossed and a devilish grin on its face was a squat little goblin. Orange-skinned with a necklace of teeth dangling down against his bare chest. 

“Oi! Hold up there, civilfolk,” he called. Gortash raised his hand, motioning for our little brigade to stop. For a moment, it was like we were proper soldiers and not… whatever we were. 

I slid out of my saddle quickly, taking my horse by the reins and letting Gortash pass me. I turned the horse around, walking us back amid the rest of our party.
Though Hannah was a unique killer, she was still a child, and I wanted to preserve her as long as possible. Besides, though my flock found me charismatic, Gortash was better suited for talking than me. 

From around the bend, two more goblins stepped forward, and then a massive-looking hobgoblin. Red skin. Dark eyes. Dragging a chipped sword behind him like a toddler with a toy. 

Big attitude. Small brain.

“Well, would you look at this,” the first Goblin said, showing his yellow teeth, “Fancy jacket. Shiny horse. You must be as rich as you are lost and stupid.” He laughed, “Don’t you know this is goblin land?”

Gortash raised an eyebrow, sitting up a little straighter. He wore a strange, almost sympathetic smile. “I highly recommend letting us pass, little roach. Lest you have an army hidden in those trees.” 

“Who says I ain’t?” The goblin retorted. 

I started to do a little mental check of my body. I had two daggers up my sleeves and a rapier at my hip. I would kill all four of them pretty quickly.

“Didn’t ya hear this here’s a toll road now? Coin, weapons, mounts. Hand ’em over nice, and we won’t decorate the trees with yer entrails.”

My little weaponess shifted around in the saddle, her green eyes watching them intensely. She could take out a goblin or two easily. Eagerly. She was sizing them up in her little mind. A cut here, a thrust there. 

“I will warn you one last time, you rot-brained, gutter-grown afterthought,” Gortash responded, speaking his insults slowly as though to make sure the goblin understood them. It ssneered.

“Big words for a man outnumbered.” More of them started to emerge from the shadows. A few from above us in the rocks, two more coming up behind us along the road, more in the trees ahead. “Wanna see how loud I can make you scream when I turn yer guts into garland?”

He thought he had the upper hand. 

An entirely fatal mistake. 

Gortash sighed, gesturing with his hand as though to say I tried.  

“Well,” he looked over his shoulder at me, sounding inconvenienced by the whole thing, “Kill them.”

It all happened very fast. 

Blood spilled. 

Goblins gutted. 

Greenish heads rolling in the dirt. 

My cult did not need a reason to kill, but they revelled in earned bloodshed. Splice was a bard whose powerful voice could cut a man in two. Hannah pitched two knives, one after the other, that nearly decapitated the goblin in charge. The Shallar made ruthless, swift attacks. I found release in the act, turning their small bodies into pulp with a mix of blades and sorcery. 

It was all going so well. A wonderful end to a day of dreadful travel.

Until two of the hobgoblins teamed up on Spaulder and crushed his head in with a rock. 

It should have been a fatal blow, but instead, something worse happened. 

Spaulder’s body rippled. Then shifted, then seemed to burst into a plume of skin and dust. 

From within, Orin emerged. 

I could have fucking killed her.

She sprang up from the ashes, surprising them, tackling one to the ground while Cirian attacked the other. 

My sister slaughtered alongside the Black Gauntlets and our family while I stood with my mouth agape wondering why I was so stupid. 

Why didn’t I assume she would find a way to come along? 

Why didn’t I clock any of Spaulder’s behaviour being different from what I knew of him?

When it was all said and done, I was afraid a second battle was about to come to head.

“The one fucking thing I asked you to do was to leave her at home–” Gortash was screaming, pointing his golden finger in my face. I pushed his hand away and he put it back, “You can’t fucking listen! She is a liability; her presence here puts this whole mission in jeopardy!”

From behind me, Orin hissed and charged forward like she meant to stab him. I knew the moment I touched her that it was only an act. I grabbed her easily by her waist and threw her back. 

“Orin is my right hand, my bloodkin, where I go, she follows. To bring her was my choice, not yours.” I lied, defending her. She approached more softly the second time, giggling, as she coiled herself around my arm. She rested her head on my shoulder, chuckling and making a kissing gesture at him. He was red-faced. Angry. “If something happens to me, she is my Father’s chosen. This journey is hers as much as it is mine.” I practically quoted her. 

“Mark my words, Chosen, that woman will be your end,” he snapped. The concept of dealing with both Orin and Gortash at the same time was genuinely nauseating. 

“ We’ll talk about this later, ” I said in his head, trying to convey with my eyes that it wasn’t some personal slight. Trying to convince both him and myself that there was a good explanation for her presence.  

He huffed, threw his arms out, and marched back to his horse, bitter and stiff with rage.

Orin chuckled and planted a kiss on my cheek. 

I shot her the most venomous look I could, then pushed her off more forcefully than I needed to. Rage. Not bloodlust but rage. 
“I told you to stay home,” I said quietly.

“And I told you no ,” she whispered back, leaning down to a corpse between my feet, my blade still sticking out from its eye. She pulled the dagger free and licked the blood off of it before handing it back to me. 

Chuckling, like it was all a joke. 

I couldn’t even do anything about it.

I had already taken her side. Lied to Gortash about her being here, and then lied again to cover up that I didn’t know she was here. There was no point fighting her now—not when I’d be fighting him about it later.

Instead, I just took the dagger from her, looking it over to make sure that my father’s blade was undamaged, and then stowed it back at my hip. 

“Aw, are you sad, little Cal? Am I ruining your romantic getaway with the Banite? How unfortunate…” she mocked, backing away. Her laughter echoed in the trees as she turned back to the carnage, looting bodies for merriment more than necessity. 

I let her go. 

If she kept any closer to me, I would have killed her, right then, just to watch the life leave her eyes. 

“Such an appalling act of kindness, my liege…” Sceleritas said, finally jumping down from the tree he had sprung up in. “Lying for the sake of your little sister… Your Father would be greatly displeased.”

I wasn’t in the mood. 

“Keep speaking, and I will show you exactly how unkind I can be.” I snapped at him. I was often curt with my butler, but he must have seen the malice in my demeanour, given the way he bowed placatingly, nodding quickly. 

“Yes, my lord—o-of course, your unholyness, Sceleritas was speaking out of turn…disrespectfully, unintentionally, with the utmost regret, your ruthlessness…” 

“Clean this shit up. Get the corpses off the road and let's get a move on.” I said, walking past him back toward my horse to make sure it was still intact. 

Protect little sister. Hide the bodies. 

The Urge scoffed.

I was sounding more like Gortash by the minute. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 19: Penance

“ And my Father said to me, such compassion is sin by which I cannot abide, and such sin can only be repaid in blood.”

- Letters of Penance, Sarevok Anchev

– Cal—

“Forgive me, Father,” I whispered, letting the blood roll down my trembling arm, the dark droplets pooling in the crook of my elbow, “For I know not what to do with your daughter. She vexes me. Though to kill her may bring great honour to you, my Lord, I know also that she is your child. Orin was made perfectly in your image, a weapon and a tool for your ultimate bloodshed.”

I pulled the blade out of my palm, and more blood flowed from the wound, dripping onto my clothes and the leaves. I let out a shaking breath, the pain rippling through my muscles. I bit back the tears threatening to well in my eyes.  

“I beg your forgiveness, Father, for my compassion for her. Guide my hand, to either her death or to peace, oh Lord of Murder, whichever be your will, for I cannot continue on in this way.”

I laid my hands atop my thighs as I knelt in the dirt, my palms up to the night’s sky and my head bowed down toward the dirt, waiting. Hoping. 

The gods were finicky things sometimes. 

Pulling me from my world when it pleased them, and ignoring me when it was cumbersome.

I waited in silence for a few moments, letting the Urge speak its own piece about all of it.  He was insatiable. Thinking about what it would be like to peel back that swirling skin of hers, just to see what lay beneath. 

Muscles and sinews, blood and bone, all that of a changeling who could change them at her will. 

Slip into any crowd. Kill any man. Unnoticed, like a ghost.

He wanted to wear her like a suit. 

I was halfway through deciding to kill her when I heard something in the trees. My heart skipped a beat, thinking I had summoned Orin by thoughts alone, when Gortash emerged. 

“I’m not in the mood—”

“Are you alright ?” He asked, pointing to my hand. I looked down at the blood. I had cut deep, intentionally, hoping to please my Father with my own bloodshed. I knew better than to believe the Gods would have sent Orin to vex me, but if it was some cosmic punishment, I wanted to show true penance. 

“I’m fine,” I said, closing my fist, and feeling pins and needles tingling in my fingertips. “Did you need something?”

He held up his hand, pointing to the ring, “No, I could sense you were in pain and was making sure there weren’t more Goblins pulling you apart for revenge.” 

I made a mental note that I shouldn’t wear the ring all the time. Giving him this much access was going to prove fatal eventually. 

“You didn’t come to get some revenge yourself?” I asked sullenly. 

He pinched his nose, “I am not angry with you,” he said sternly, “Not anymore. It’s fine. She’s here. That was your decision, and it was perhaps… unfair of me to push you otherwise.”

I arched an eyebrow, “Was that an apology , Gortash?”

“No.” He scoffed, “Your church, your flock, that’s your business. As you’ve said. Mine is mine. If we each keep to our own in those regards, I think things will work out better than letting the rivers cross. I will trust you to manage your sister in your own way.” He paused, leaning back against a tree, “Besides, we were getting on quite well, and I don’t want to let Orin, of all people, ruin it.” 

That’s exactly what she wants. To ruin it.

I nodded. 

He pursed his lips, “Now, would you please have someone heal that?” 

I looked down at the wound. 

“Not tonight,” I said quietly, “This is penance.”

“For what?” He asked, 

“My continued civility.” 

“Right,” he rolled his eyes, scoffing again, “I’m going to sleep. Let us start anew tomorrow, shall we? I’ve had enough of being at your throat,” he paused, smirking at the innuendo he didn’t care to air. 

I’d rather be in it. 

“Rest. Stop fretting about your sister. She will earn her fate in due time.” He said, somewhat cryptically, before stepping back in the shadows toward the dim glow of the campfire, “Goodnight, Cal.”

“Goodnight.”