Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His body lurches out of the pod before he’s pulled his eyes open. Waves of heat knock into his body as his eyes rip open, head pounding something fierce.

A flooring that sticks to boots feet like rotted flesh provides itself as a footstool, a perch to survey the surroundings. It’s hot, something that registers as worth note in his aching, empty head. He’s a tiefling, a tidbit that’s nice to be able to recall, but very much should mean that heat must be exceptional for him to even be able to notice.

He’s a tiefling? The hands he lifts to poke around his temples are green and clawed, they poke at his skin as he feels around. Sharp. He likes that. There are horns, horns with holes and bands fixed around them. Horns he decorated in a time he can’t remember. And there are scales on his face. Does Tiamat do tieflings?

Straightening up, holding himself with a dignity that almost feels noble in origin, he tries to find anything else in his apparently rather porous mind. There’s no history, no skills, no self in his head, his aching head. Stolen from him, because he wouldn’t lose something. He wouldn’t lose to begin with. He’s more than that. But does he even have a name?

Somewhere in his minced mind, a voice whispers sweetly to him. Dark Urge.

That doesn’t sound quite like a name. Or at least like the sort of thing you’d want to introduce yourself by or name a child. More of a title, but it does register as coherent that he’d be the sort of person who wouldn’t need a name if a title would do. The sort of person who is in their life as he is right now—above.

The ship, with it’s construction of bizarre, unfamiliar metals and soft, easily ripped flesh , registers as a nautiloid. But of course it would be, he can feel that damn worm shifting in the back of his eye, desperately reaching for the soft and seemingly shredded matter of his brain. Becoming a mindflayer just seems like something for… other people, so that’s going to need to get out.

Claws click gently against sheets of metalloid material as he descends his way down a wrecked section of the nautiloid wall, only sparing a glance towards the rows of other pods. Most are filled with corpses; it’s just a waste of what seems like very limited time before this ship crashes entirely.

A ship that, based on the view outside the wrecked wall of the ship, is currently plummeting through the hells. Even if this thing crashes and he manages to live, that itself is a death sentence. He couldn’t even hop out, cast something, and hope for the best?

…He knows magic? That’s interesting.

With it as the only option, he strides into that other room, a nearly identical space of pods full of nothing but corpses. Identical, save for the shuffling of clothing from behind one.

“Oh gods, you’re a real person.” A lavender-skinned man appears from behind one, pale blue eyes wide at the sight of him. Short-cropped hair and small but still pointed ears give away that the man not fully a drow, which he supposes is useful in this situation. More likely he’ll have his priorities in order. “I thought you were going to be another one of those weird little brain things.”

It strikes him as awfully trusting that this man would simply make himself known at the first sign of another life. At the same time, he quite likes that sort of pathetically desperate way he looks at him, like he’s hung the stars. Like a dog looking at it’s master.

He can play along for now. There’s no standard that comes to memory to compare his actions to, but the half-drow seems fine enough to make an exception for if he keeps that up.

He feigns surprise, then relief, stepping closer to the man—shorter than him, but well built. Likely physically stronger than him. “Every person I’ve seen so far has been… been dead in those pods.” He gestures widely, imprecisely at the walls around them, reflects the half-drow’s expressions in his own and watches his guard lower even further. “You’ve not found anyone else either?” It’s the first time he’s heard his own voice, and while the sound itself is smooth, charming, something about it is a bit… more destitute, or perhaps poorly educated in its quality than he’d expected. Well worded sentences sound foreign on his tongue. Not a noble, then?

The man shakes his head. “I haven’t.” Nervous hands pull at monkish robes, no doubt uncomfortably hot in this environment. “So glad to meet you. To meet anyone else, honestly.” He sticks out the wrong hand, eager for politeness but not quite properly educated on how to go about it. Almost endearing. “I’m Peter.”

That is one distinctly human name. “Can’t quite remember my name, if I’m being honest. Hoping that’s just a consequence of…” He directs one clawed finger to point at his eye. “Did you wind up with one of those little worms in your eye as well?”

“Tadpole.” Peter immediately corrects, which is annoying. “But yeah, I did.” He bows his upper half forward just a tad, tilting his head. “I don’t think that memory loss is a normal symptom, but maybe the psionic energy of the ship is just messing with you…?”

He stretches his eyes to seem awed and performs an impressed hopefulness to keep his response from being seen as the irritated sleight it actually is. “Oh, are you an expert on these things?” He chirps. “You must know how to get them out!”

Peter’s face immediately goes darker in embarrassment—ha—as he sputters out a humbled response. “O-oh, no, I’ve just read a little about them.”

Learns quick, this one. “Oh.” The guilt on Peter’s face when he droops his shoulders and lets his tail fall to the ground is incredibly amusing. He wishes he had the time to enjoy him properly. “Well, ah, should we just head this way? There’s no other doorways from where I was.”

Peter comes to heel and follows his lead without question, trailing behind him as they proceed forward into the first space on this ship that’s looked at all distinguishingly different.

The two of them shudder at the same moment, feeling the same boldly invasive voice claw its way into their heads. Help us. We are trapped.

The sound echoes from a ledge above both their heads, no information on the source visible from his vantage point.

Peter steps forward ahead of him, examining the somewhat detached platform in front of the ledge and the grotesque-looking apparatus at the head of it. Finding himself once again slightly irritated, he follows behind. At least he looks back, waits, before he does whatever it is that makes the platform begin to rise.

Atop that ledge is a sharp-looking twisted chair and atop that chair is a man. One so close to death he could hardly be distinguished from a corpse outside of the occasional twitching of limbs. The entire cap of his skull has been shaved off, exposing a throbbing, unnaturally twitching mass of brain matter.

Yes! You have come to free us from this place. From this place you shall free us. The distorted, inconsistent tone clearly echoes in Peter’s head too. Then, a bit more urgently, Please! Before they return! They return.

Peter speaks to it first, but makes no move to get closer when he steps toward it. “What are you?”

Distinct, unhealthily swollen veins dot the surface of the brain, swelling and contracting a they get a response. A newborn. Born new from this husk.

“Oh.” Peter seems to make some sense of that description, but his own mind seems no more willing to provide information on whatever this thing is than it is to speak on his past. “Intellect devourer? It’ll probably be fine as long as it thinks we’re on the same side. Because of the tadpoles. Do you think you could get it out? Your fingers are thinner than mine.”

The task isn’t all that difficult. His claws curl around the mass of wet meat through the gap between it and the skull, ripping it free from the hollowed out, essentially dead body. For a moment, the trembling lump of meat sits in his palms, soft and sticky and oh-so delicate. The impulse to sink those claws of his in jolts through his mind.

Briefly, he lets himself indulge in the fantasy. Filling it ripping into it, filling it with the same holes his own mind possesses. He only thinks of it for a moment,

There’s a wet squelch. When he looks down, his claws have sunken into the brain, something like blood trickling down his fingers. Split-splat. A smile briefly passes over his face.

Stupid thing doesn’t realize he did anything to maim it. Unobservant, it shudders its way out of his hands and to the ground, sprouting twisting, bony clawed legs. Our freedom is ours! Friend! It goes silent as a thick wave of somethingpasses through the space, a something it clearly understands. To the helm we must go! We are going to the helm.

“Way out?” He offers to Peter. The half-drow seems a bit… uncomfortable. Was he bothered by him ripping into the intellect devourer? “Didn’t mean to do that.” He’s rather good at this, isn’t he? Keeping his face and words as exactly what another wants them to be. “It was too soft. It was an accident.” He shuffles his odd, clawed feet against the ground in something like guilt.

He softens immediately. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed. And yeah, we should follow it. You’re right.” Never found someone with string begging to be tugged on like this.

He forces his own shoulders slack, then motions to the bashed hole in the wall of the nautiloid. "Shall we?" He asks, staring out over hellfire and soot. The Blood War, out on those lifeless plains. Oh, what he would do to get a little bit closer, be able to put his eyes on the brutal chaos and constant death between devils and demons. Would be a beautiful spectacle…

And the nautiloid has left this ring of the hell all the more hectic! Around the live-meat contraptions that form this ship, singed by hellsfire into melted heaps of well-cooked matter that make his mouth water, a small number of full-grown, powerful red dragons bob and dive around the exoskeleton, lighting their throats with flame and taking their teeth and claws to points that resist the heat. No matter how the mindflayers wag their tentacles, they shall bring this ship down soon.

Before he can start down the path with this dark elf in tow and try and find a way of getting himself away from the ship, a flash of silver arcs from a level just over them and down to block the path—his mind alights with images of the body all that silver is attached to being buffeted by boiling hot winds, thrown off the ship to go splat down in Avernus, maybe plummet into the blood-lava and boil up instead of dying instantly.

Shame that doesn't happen. Instead, a githyanki greatsword is pulled from her back, pointed towards their bodies. "Abomination!" She roars. "This is your end!"

But before she attacks—and maybe, he gets to get that armor all melted up on his own with but one shove—another wave of pounding, infuriating headache knocks into him, the hell-heat on his skin doubles, and he catches a glimpse of both his own and Peter's face through this strange woman's snakelike eyes.

"My head…" The gith woman groans. "What is this…" But she jerks back upwards, brightened back up with sickly hope. "Tsk'va. You are no thralls—Vlaakith blesses me this day! Together, we might survive!"

"Who are you?"

Her chest puffs out with no small amount of pride. "Lae'zel of Creche K'liir. And your only chance of survival!" Her yellow tinted fingers raise towards her eyes. "We carry mindflayer parasites. Unless we escape, unless we are cleansed, our bodies and minds will be tainted and twisted. Within days, we will be mindflayers ourselves." No, they won't, something in his mind insists. Not denial, it's too pompous; irritated and inconvenienced. All die before he does.

Which is stupid, so he speaks up. "What would you suggest, then?" He asks.

"First we exterminate the imps." Lae'zel gestures down the butchered slope, to where imps have their teeth in a small number of corpses. "Then we find the helm and take control of the ship. We will address the matter of a cure when we reach the Material Plane."

With their nods of assent, they charge down the slope.

…And he's unarmed. It doesn't matter, really, because there's magic in his very blood and that will do just fine, and even if he didn't, creatures like that are so wholly and entirely worthless that they'd cleave through them in seconds without him—at his command—but it feels wrong. He is not unarmed, not really, because spells mean he is never unarmed, but his body being devoid of weapons is wrong, they should be here, in his very skin.

In his skin, in his hands. There's half a memory, a shape and weight and balance that he knows should be in his damn fists, weapons that were his. Extensions of him. Not gone, not lost—taken from him. He'd never be such a coward as to only fight with spells, he wanted warm blood on his icy-cold skin.

Oh, but the fight clears his foggy head. At least he has that—perfect mind, at the mere chance for death. Worthless, worthless fiends, so much that he could hurl a single mote of godsdamned fire at a thing that lived in Avernus and it would fucking crumple like a cicada beneath a boot.

His shaking hands snapped shut around the limp neck of the dead imp before it splattered against the ground, tossing it a handful of feet away and watching it slide to a stop beside another of its swarming kind. Another twist of the magic, of his malevolent blood, and the tawdry skin and flesh grows sharp and bursts.

And in doing so, he steals a kill straight from under Peter's nose. The half-drow blinks those watery-blue owl-eyes for a few seconds, drawing his arms back sharply. It's not his eyes that tell him why, but his nose, catching a distinctly richer iron-smell through the smoky scent of dead imp. Oh, he nicked the little elfy, did he? Peter will live.

He likes killing fine. He does, he thinks as he looks down at the imp-corpse. Good at it too. But it is well less satisfying to kill fiends when he knows they'll just reappear full-formed in their master's houses. And it is so, so utterly difficult to rip his attention away from the smell of fresh, live blood, from a humanoid no less! Should take more, need to take more, prove that… prove something.

He likes killing fine. He does, he thinks as he looks down at the imp-corpse. Good at it too. But it is well less satisfying to kill fiends when he knows they'll just reappear full-formed in their master's houses. Oh well.

He stands and saunters after Peter and the gith into another closed room, full of alien looking mindflayer machinery. But again near a wall there's a rare pod containing something other than a corpse. A half-elf is banging at the pod. "You!" Her wide eyes fix on their little group. "Get me out of this damn thing!" She begs.

"We have no time for stragglers!" Lae'zel tries to command them both, but Peter has already tucked his body down to investigate the latch, and by the time gith or tiefling have processed that sight he's already bumbling away, his legs moving a bit too quickly to be caught.

Lae'zel curses softly. He, for one, does agree with that more than noble wasting of time. "Gods. I'll go get him." He mutters to the gith.

Peter, where he's wandered off to, is digging through some dead elf's things. He would have either pulled him away or joined him to show him the many joys of playing with corpses, but he spots something that draws his eyes away and entrances them: a brain in a jar, suspended in a green tinged bubbly liquid. It looks familiar; he can recall, in flashes, the sight of a pallid-skinned head, its skin too lose for it…

"Hey!" Peter is shaking him. "Um, tiefling? I have a rune, we should be able to free that woman."

"Oh, yeah." He rips his eyes off the head. "Well, what are you doing, then? Go take care of it!"

The dark elf flushes and ducks his head; he prances off to go and do as he's told. Without protest, he notes. He likes that. Likes having an endearing pup of a servant scampering around.

He does not rush nearly so much to follow after Peter; by the time he's returned, the drow's fit the rune into some piece of the pod he cannot possibly try and interpret the make of and fiddles with it til the pod lid opens.

The half-elf trips in her rush to hurl her body out of the pod, crying out as she falls roughly to the ground. Ha. "I thought that thing was going to be my coffin. Thank you." She gasps out as she pushes herself to her feet, pushing some black hair loosened from her braid out of her face. As she straightens up, her eyes fixate on himself, then on their dear gith, filling with caution at the sight. "You keep dangerous company."

No thoughts on the drow, no thoughts on the tiefling? "Dangerous company is what you need in a fight." He interrupts, feeling some fire ignite in his cold, fogged over body. Fightfightfight.

"Fair point." She nods. Whatever dislike she'd hold is not all that intense, then. "Looks like there's plenty of fighting ahead. Let me come with you—I'm not bad in one, and none of you three look like you know much about healing. We can get off this ship and watch each other's backs along the way."

"That sounds great." Peter points to each applicable body as he speaks: "I'm Peter, he's… he can't remember his name right now, and she's Lae'zel!" The gith does not look pleased to be spoken for.

He notices that very subtly, she's backed herself towards the pod all over again. "Shadowheart." She names herself, a distraction as she sticks one hand into the bottom of the pod and retrieves something. "Now, lead on."

To their immense fortune, the destination both gith and butchered little brain had described is nearby indeed, a vast and lengthy hall now occupied by. a small army of imps and hellsboars. Only a couple mindflayers remain, locked in combat with better armed cambion admirals. One of the illithid manage to rip through the skull of a cambion, but it is cut down by mere imps moments later—which is frankly embarrassing for it.

The remaining mindflayer turns from its fisticuffs—and seems to not realize their awareness, speaking into their minds like they be meat puppets. Thrall. Connect the nerves of transponder. We must escape. Now.

"Do it!" Lae'zel seems disgusted to need to agree with an illithid over even a minor thing. "We will deal with any ghaik once in a less hostile plane!"

Peter bolts ahead, no doubt the fastest and best equipped for the task, as the rest of their lot provides cover fire. Githyanki weapons are always well-made; Lae'zel's sword cleaves through imps as easily as anything as his own magic and Shadowheart's clearly divine bursts cut through the thicker hides of hellsboars.

The fighting is good, the blood is good, but merely casting grows more intolerable the more he does it. Distant, impersonal. Cowardly like he'd thought before, so damned cowardly, flicking about like a shadow and not ensuring each of those tarnished lives doesn't know exactly what their undoing be. There are words on his lips when flesh goes stiff, half remembered sentences prepared for the rehearsing. But what good is that, he snarls to himself as he considers digging his claws into an infernal beast for satisfaction, when he does his work so distantly. The very moment he's off this thing, he shall rectify that situation.

Just a few feet from the transponder, Peter is swarmed by imps. He dives forward, ripping a knife from the still fist of a dead thrall and rolling to catch up with that quick-footed elf. His thoughts go from clear with the violence serving as tailwind to sharp and focused. Oh, that will do indeed. 

His aim is uncannily precise when he hurls it through the air into the eye of one of the winged freaks digging claws into bruise-colored skin. And he flings himself in turn to fetch his sharp new plaything, turning to the remaining imps and cutting, slicing, flaying. No damn time to prove you still have worth by butchering the cambions. Make it hurt. Make it a show.

But in the very same moment Peter bounds away from the scuffle, the great scaled head of a red dragon inserts itself into the space between smashed up walls, making itself apparent when it's sheer size, so massive none of their bodies would be longer than its snout, blocks out hell-light. It's jaws open, a gleam igniting in the back of its throat, and at least that naive drow has the sense to move.

It's all chaos from there.

—

Ash swirls into his nostrils. clinging to flesh and letting its burn-smell overstay its welcome. Beneath his inexplicably intact back, feeble-willed sand bends and shifts to his weight, too spineless to resist. Soft, rythemic movements of nearby water form a white noise backdrop to the lively hum of a thousand diffeent species of insect and just as many chittering birds. And, in the midst of all this life, in the center of rushing winds and warm sun and shifting cattails, there is him. Alive.

To add another fortune to his streak of luck, he’s somewhere in Faerun. Hells, if the environment is any clue, he’s near the sword coast, near Baldur’s Gate.

On the less fortunate end of his affairs, he’d… sort of hoped that Peter had been right and his memory might improve once he was out of that ship. But as he lays there, trying to find any scraps in his head, all he manages to gain is another headache.

He doesn’t even remember his own name. He’s beginning to wonder if he ever had one.

Once he manages to get to his feet and take a better look around, the only distinct paths forward around him are a river too wide to swim, the wreckage scattered behind him, and a trampled sandy path upon which he can see a corpse. As if pulled magnetically, he walks to the body, inhaling the scent of early decay. The smell is so very familiar, as is the mere feeling—the euphoria and satisfaction—of standing above that body, his hands so close to it. Fingers twitching beside the open, offal-stuffed cavity where shrapnel near bisected this fisher. Severed pathways and unused, fatigued neurons light up in his mind, the cold emptiness gone for a moment. It feels like home.

And for once, his mind opens up like a blooming flower, filling his mind with images of a thousand different dead beneath him, his mind teasing him with memories of adrenaline fueled thrill, euphoria, satisfaction. It alone is enough to make him want to go back to chasing the high all over again.

There’s no discomfort, only practiced confidence to systematically digging through every nook in clothing the dead man could have tucked something useful into. Disappointingly, he finds nothing. But the memory might be the most useful thing it had ever provided to anyone in it’s whole worthless existence.

Hints of that chemical-thrill lingering in his body, he finds himself standing over the unconscious body of that woman he met aboard the ship, eager to take her own mace and crack her head open with it. But, his rational mind points out, she has holy symbols across her armor. And he has a mindflayer tadpole in his head. A healer, or anyone who might know someone capable, is more pressing. He can get to the skull-cracking when the situation is resolved.

Begrudgingly, he wakes her. She flinches awake like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t, snatching up that metal prism of hers and scrambling to her feet. “You’re alive. I’m alive. How is that possible.”

“Not a clue. Doesn’t really matter as long as we are, does it?” He quickly brushes the conversation along, hoping to hear something a bit more compelling. “I figure there are more pressing problems.”

Fortunately enough, she has a good enough head on her to focus on things that actually matter. “You’re right, we might have escaped but we still have these little monsters in our heads. We need supplies, shelter, and most of all, a healer.”

That raises his eyebrows. “‘We’?” He prompts.

“We need each other, and we both know what’s at stake. I can’t think of better company.”

He doesn’t think he needs anyone. But as to whether or not he wants it… he quite likes being followed. As long as she has the decency to understand the chain of authority, it shall work well enough. He does quite miss the blind admiration and obedience of that half-drow, however. “All right, then. We should get moving.”

“I’m Shadowheart. I didn’t catch your name on the ship.”

He flashes a smile just sardonic enough to be viewed as self deprecating. “Can’t remember it. I’ll have to update you.”

—

On their first night of camp, he gets to see himself for the first time in the river they make camp beside.

And something immediately strikes him as somehow wrong when he looks at himself. He can’t immediately identify it—he’s handsome enough by most standards, the scales on his face are placed pleasingly, his horns aren’t unusually large. The scars from some forgotten fire on his face aren’t even that distracting. He’s even fairly tall, very well built. But something about his face looks a bit wrong. A bit too fiendish, even compared to most other tieflings.

Most tieflings have claws, many don’t have humanoid feet like he has his three-toed claw situation. Tails are almost a certainty on a tiefling, but most wouldn’t have a scorpion’s poisonous barb. Most tieflings would have sharper teeth, but not that sharp. He supposes it’s everything together that makes him so uncanny, every possible trait that could make him more dangerous than the common humanoid on one body, built from the ground up to match his more violent yearnings.

After some more in depth examination of his visage, he decides he quite likes it. Sharp. Deadly.

That night, his sleep is filled with violent dreams most anyone else would consider a nightmare. Though he’d like to think himself a man of more mettle, they wake him all the same, leaving him yearning for the flesh that had been ripping in his rest.

As Shadowheart remains asleep, he quietly creeps towards the crumbling, empty building they sleep beside, separated from them by a smaller stream bridged by a thick tree trunk. Once, those crumbling stone walls were high and regal, the fine craft of the core pillars indicating the pride and purpose they were originally constructed.

This building is dead now, filled mostly with rubble and its walls eaten up by moss. But amongst that rubble, he finds gravestones. Broken, crumbling gravestones, the natural world around them having long ago decided that the people who lay here do not deserve to be remembered.

Headstones feel as much friends to him as that body felt like home. If those fleeting memories and his own violent wants are honest, he supposes he must have been close enough to the idea of a grave to consider it a friend. He’d been feeding those open, hungry pits very eagerly.

He sits amongst them perhaps as a promise. If he somehow wound up like… this, he must have been starving this dear companion. What a terrible friend he has been!

His claws dig into loose earth like he intends to shake the soil’s hand and revive his old deal with the ashes and dust he had done his duty in returning many to. And, by way of sealing that promise, he seeks out the surfaces of those headstones to see if any legible writing is left.

On one he finds the name Harry. That’ll do.

When he finds his way back to camp, he’s surprised to find his companion awake. The half elf stares into the dark sky of a new moon, kneeled beneath the canopy of her tent. “Bit early to wake up, isn’t it?”

Her eyes drift away from the starless night toward him. “I could say the same to you. Didn’t take you for that early of a riser.”

“Ah, I couldn’t sleep and realized I didn’t know what I looked like. Was going and resolving that.” He jerks a thumb backwards towards the river.

That raises her eyebrows. “Your memories really must be scrambled.”

“Would probably be easier if they were. Less tangled up and more all gone. Don’t think it’s the tadpole, do you? Or would you know anything else from your cleric healer knowledge?” It doesn’t feel to him like it is, but what does he know, really?

She shifts into a more relaxed sitting position, propped up with one arm. “I don’t know that much about mindflayer tadpoles—if I did, I might be able to do something about it—but memory loss isn’t quite as uncommon as you’d think. There may be another cause.” She pauses for a moment. “Magic, head trauma. Sometimes simple repression. Some magic can undo it depending on the cause, but I’m not quite strong enough for healing of that caliber. Is there anything else odd going on that might have some hints? Other than the parasite.”

“...No.” He eventually decides. “Made some progress, though! Got a name.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear. Sounds good to have something to call you. Shouting ‘hey, you!’ in your direction every time I needed you seems like it would get old fast.” Her voice plays light. “Care to share?”

“Harry.”

“No surname?” She questions, brushing a lock of hair from her face..

“Oh, of course not. That would be too convenient.” That actually draws a smile out of her. “How about you? Why wake up this early?”

That draws her attention back out to the night, so lacking in moonlight that the nearest trees are swallowed up by the dark, indistinguishable from sky. “I like to be awake for some of the night during new moons. It’s the only time that night is entirely night, not touched by any moonlight.” Some amount of disdain flows at the last word. “But I should be going back to bed. We’ll need all the rest we can get. You should do the same.”

There’s a faint whisper in the back of his head. That’s how this whole song and dance goes, extracting trust from the sort of folk who’d have secrets: show interest, but don’t push. If they think you know something of it, they’ll almost always eagerly tell you themself. They usually happily tell on themselves from there. “Of course. Very astute. I’ll see you come morning.”

—

'Come morning' is a promise he breaks. Not that it bothers him too terribly. And neither is it Harry's fault even, which feels unusual.

A great crackling of fire in the night, and he and the cleric both sleep lightly and suspiciously enough that they know it too loud to be campfire. A thousand footsteps in the night, and shouting in undercommon.

"What in the hells is going on?" He grumbles to Shadowheart as he stumbles out of his tent. "It's not even sunrise…"

Shadowheart has no chance to respond to him as a flash of bright red and blue comes tumbling out of the night, coming close to tripping into the fire. "Hi, hello!" The body the bright dyes are attached to is trembling, though perhaps not from fear. There's a bear trap caught on this drow's shin—no, this half-drow's shin. Harry recognizes this boy. "I know it's a strange question but could I hide under—wait!" Diamond-blue eyes light at the sight of Harry's face as Peter steps a bit deeper into their campfire light, looking relieved. "Oh, it's you! From the nautiloid!"

"Indeed it is. Say, you wouldn't happened to know why it looks a bit like a forest fire has been started, would you?" The orange and red tones deep within the trees are growing brighter and brighter.

Peter's face twists with unbridled guilt. "What forest fire?" Piss-poor liar, this boy. Harry'd been under the impression dark elves were meant to be a little better than that at secret-keeping. Peter shifts his weight off the injured leg—his skin is going rot-darkened along the wounds, the teeth of that trap were poisoned—and laughs in strained breaths all the while, his skin sweat-licked.

That train of thought is cut short by an arrow whissing past Peter's face, the brow leaping backwards with near-supernatural timing, pulling his nose out of the way the very breath before it goes straight through it. Oh, but if he hadn't, to see jaw-bone and skull split-split open, gray matter and blood go all over this place, hear those pained sounds…

"Oh, shit." Peter says with great emphasis, staring with skittish eyes into the trees. Harry finds what he stares with such terror at easily: a trio of drow raiders, their eyes wrought of ill-will anything but impersonal.

"These ones harbor the fugitive!" The woman at the head shouts. In her left hand is a torch—these raiders bear responsibility for the developing wildfire. "Dos shlu'ta'nuat nez!" The other raiders echo the cry before rushing them.

The head raider rushes directly for their obvious target, a dagger appearing to glint between her fingers and be jabbed in Peter's direction. Impressive, admittedly, that the kid can keep moving so easily and light on his feet with that trap still caught on him.

Harry feels a crossbow bolt enter his side; feels his blood boil in time with its impact. Hot blood spilling down his side—how dare they attack him if they can't finish the job? He'll show them how it is done…

He takes a leap for his bedrool and seizes a dagger from beneath it, rushing the crossbow bearing drow who chose to make an enemy. The raider only raises it again. "How dare you hide the darthiir?!"

Easily answered: they hadn't! And maybe if they had asked nicely, show him proper and due respect, and bearing something worthwhile to trade for him, they could have gotten what they wanted.

With a burst of magic and the sound of thunder crackling, he casts a wave of arcane sound that shatters through some of this drow's armor in time with it flinging him back into the wildfire his own commander had caused; tiefling flesh handles fire better than any elf, he bears no real pains from leaping right after him.

No pains greater than the pains that surely come from killing-steel through the throat. Well, then again, that makes him too dead to notice that his body is burning up. Cut away the life breath, cut through all those worthless veins pumping along life-blood, and the dark elf dies quite quick.

Harry should be more bothered by his thoughts than he is, probably. But it's convenient that he isn't—his stomach turns not at the all-consuming, blood-rushing thought that he'd like to taste killing again.

Fortunate that there be two living bodies awaiting. Four, if he'd be a bit bolder, but live-flesh works just fine as retainers, and as hands to carry more killing-metal. That last bit, more hands to end with, is the thing that his mind provides as most fitting a use for meat that still breathes.

Near the campfire, Shadowheart's divine magic manifest a great deal of water to come down from above, quenching the wildfire-to-be, before she brings down her mace upon one raider. The half-drow still dances along with that trap making him bleed—Harry does appreciate the style of unarmed combat he brings. It is primal in its brutality, to break the body with bare hands, Harry only wishes he'd not spend so much energy trying to avoid killing only to eventually resolve to strangle life from that drow.

As reassuring as it is to know them both of some use, it still wounds him that both other drow die before he can go and take the lives himself. It's a waste. A real shame.

"So!" He clasps his hands together as he emerges from the trees, staring down the half-blooded dark elf who'd oh-so clearly lead the raiders to this point. "Care to explain?"

Purple skin becomes only more purple. "I—ah. Well, you can see me. You know what I am." Peter motions to his lavender-toned features. "I got up out of the Underdark and immediately got snagged by the nautiloid. They were looking to take me back, I guess." His eyes flick away. He lies… so obviously. How'd he even get to the surface incapable of convincing deception? "

"You come from the Underdark? You have a real human-y name."

Peter winces. Gods, this one is fun to mess with. "Not originally! I got snagged and I just ran away from House Faen-Tlabbar! Is that Underdark enough?"

He hears himself laugh. Nothing's funny; it's not genuine. It's just an odd, instinctual lie. "i'm just teasing. We're on the road trying to get the damn tadpoles out our heads. I don't suppose you know anything?"

"Um, no." The poison is beginning to make this half-drow pale. "But I guess you're right. I had been hardly thinking about the parasites with those three on my tail. They shouldn't keep being an issue, though! I don't think Lolth would want that many resources burnt over one half-drow."

Harry is no expert on drow society, but it seems strange that any resources would be spent trying to return a half-blooded dark elf unless there was some other reason to do so. But he can hardly think with his throbbing headache forcing him into such intense focus on the dark veins crawling up his leg. Drow poison is brutal, but this kid is just grinning and bearing it. How long would it take, how far would he endure, before he bothered asking for help?

"You're capable enough," Shadowheart interrupts, "if you're fighting with that thing on your leg. Join us."

"Sure," he agrees. "Come and see if we can get the damn worms out." This one is fun! He'll accept a trusting dog, too quick to forgive the master that kicks it. Hells, despite this one's apparent… softness, he'd probably still keep him even if it came necessary to cull the herd. This elf shall be his.

But oh, Shadowheart has to go and rip away his fun. "And if you do, get that trap off and let me look at your leg. You're poisoned."

Peter nods very rapidly. "Yeah, yep. I'll join. And I am." He drops to one knee, fingers closing around the trap and ripping it in twain with a great and noisy twisting of pain. The muscles in his arms hardly become distinct with exertion. Fascinating.

—

That stupid damn elf is so damn lucky it was Peter who went and tried to help him. He had perked up with naive, misguided nobility as that man had called for them. “You there! Over here!”

His hand had clasped Peter’s shoulder a bit too tightly, drawing him close to point into the thick grass behind him. Himself and Shadowheart had barely managed to catch up before the elf was speaking again. “I’ve got one of those wretched things cornered.” He points into the thick brush. “There, in the grass. You can kill it, can’t you? Like you killed the others.”

Harry’s eyes fixate on the bow on the pale man’s back. Shouldn’t he be perfectly able to kill a mere intellect devourer himself? Oh, but Peter, who’s looked at Harry like a god simply for existing two times over by now, of course he would blindly rush off, only to startle a goddamned boar.

A knife then flashes in the air, curling around the tender purple flesh of Peter’s neck. Peter raises his hands. “Hey, hey, no need to fight. Put that away.”

“Don’t we?” The elf sneers. All the attempt at de-escalation gets Peter is being flung to the ground, held in place by the sharpened steel still at his neck.

It’s about then Harry gets it into his head to make himself more known. “If that’s supposed to be a robbery, you’re doing a terrible job. They usually work best when someone’s alone.” He retrieves a dagger of his own, happy to brandish it in a show of his anger. Peter is his, thank you very much. Whether that be as a ward or eventually as another body is Harry’s choice because he found Peter. Peter followed him.

With the elf distracted, Peter surges upward, a nearly effortless hand pressed to the sternum of the elf enough to roll them both and flip him onto his back, the air knocked from his lungs. It’s a good reminder—Peter is naive and entirely too trusting, not incompetent. The first is tolerable because it’s just that which makes Peter so appealing as someone to follow him, to do as he wishes. The second would be far past bearability.

Before he can take the chance to gut the elf, some energy shudders into the empty air between them, the mindflayer tadpole wiggling against the wall of his skull. Himself, Peter, and Shadowheart share a pair of unfamiliar eyes, looking out on dark, filthy streets that spark some familiarity in Harry’s own memory.

The elf sputters, only getting even angrier as the memory fades. “What was that? What's going on?”

Harry, for one, would have still gut the elf if Peter hadn’t started talking before he could. “It’s the parasite! We have them too!”

That manages to stop him. “Of course, that makes sense. Somewhat.” Harry’s eyes pick up on a too wide smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. “My name’s Astarion. I was in Baldur’s Gate when those beasts snatched me.”

Peter flashes a smile far more genuine, shuffling his boots against sand. “I’m Peter. They’re Harry and Shadowheart.”

“A pleasure.” Astarion’s arms are too stiff when he rests his hands on his hips, the bend of his spine is too deliberately commanded. It’s not that the lie is particularly morally objectionable to Harry, Astarion is just… so much worse at it than Harry. “So, do you know anything about these worms?”

Straight to the point. Harry steps in himself then, eager to find some compliance in the elf. “Yes, unfortunately. They’ll turn us into mindflayers.”

While Astarion thankfully picks up on the venom in his tone, Peter does as well. He’ll have to patch that up later. Astarion, to his credit, has the survival instinct to not acknowledge it. Instead, he breaks into a false, sarcastic laugh. “Oh, of course it’ll turn me into a monster! What else did I expect?” He declares, loud enough to no doubt startle that boar again. “Although it hasn’t happened yet. If we can find an expert, someone who can control these things, there might still be time.”

Control. Interesting word choice. “Well, we need to be moving—“ He rests a hand on Peter’s shoulder, on the same spot the elf had been touching. “—but I suppose you can shelter at our camp.” Last thing he wants is someone so sloppily dishonest meddling with their real affairs.

Astarion understands the cue. “I do hate to turn down an invitation, so perhaps you’ll see me there. Good luck.”

As Astarion saunters off, Harry thinks he'd still like to make him nothing more than a pretty, silent corpse, string him up in camp as decoration to show Peter the benefits of following him. Of course, he doesn't think Peter would see it that way. Not yet.

—

It turns out that day is simply the day Harry will be collecting all the survivors of the crash into his fold. He supposes desperate people are more compliant and as much as his instincts would have him preferring very different means of dealing with them, he must have this knowledge of how to perform for people for a reason.

It’s the voices of two tieflings far more ordinary looking than him—red skin, black hair, undecorated horns. They seem to be related—that draw them toward the hollow where the githyanki woman they’d met is caught, to her clear humiliation and frustration, in a goblin trap.

The tieflings are discussing what to do with her quite loudly. “Is it dangerous?” The younger questions.

“Of course it’s dangerous. One of them carved up Zorru’s whole squad.” The reply is sharp, impatiently harsh.

Despite that, the young tiefling replies calmly. “So we should leave it for the goblins to kill.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If it escapes—“ It’s only then they notice Harry’s approach. “Oh. A guest.”

Lae’zel’s white hot stare pierces his mind, deferring to him over his softer or less sympathetic companions. Get rid of them.

Her harshness is rather appealing. A relief to think about having around. “It is dangerous.” He agrees, noting the slight pride in her countenance at the comment. “You should both get out of here—leave it to me.”

The elder tiefling ponders for a moment. “He’s right. Let’s go, we were sent out to go check out that blast.”

“A blast?” He prompts.

“You didn’t hear it? Shook our camp good so we came out for a look.”

They came from a settlement? And one close enough to hear the chaos? “We’re in dire need of a healer. Where is this camp of yours?”

It’s the younger who speaks up. “Northwest. Look for Nettie, she can heal most anything.” As her brother begins to maneuver his way out of the hollow, she steps backwards to follow. “Be careful. There are goblin traps everywhere.

“Nymessa. Come.” With only a single backwards glance from the woman—Nymessa, seemingly—they vanish into the untamed wild.

Slowly, he steps his way over to the trap, a smirk forming over his face.

“Enough gawking. Get me down.” The gith spits.

He flashes his most winning smile even as fire begins to appear at his fingertips. “Say please.” It earns a quiet laugh from Shadowheart.

“Never.” Her scowl—perhaps permanent, he’s not met many gith—somehow deepens.

He rolls his eye slightly, trying to catch Peter’s eye, and lets the fire loose, destroying the trap. With her feet back on the ground, Lae’zel shakes the trap debris off her armor and marches a soldiers march to Harry, her movements stiff but large as she speaks. An attempt at gaining authority. “The tadpole hasn’t yet scrambled all of your senses. Auspicious. But the longer we wait, the more it consumes. My people possess the cure to this infection. I must fine a crèche, you will join me.”

He’s sure to let his amusement show on his face, just to make it clear no such authority will be given over. “And what is a crèche?”

“It is many things. A hatchery, a training grounds, a shelter. Githyanki protocol is clear: when infected with a mindflayer tadpole, we must report to a ghustil for purification.”

It’s as good an option as any. “Alright. We journey together, then. Let’s find this crèche.”

He can practically feel Shadowheart bristling behind him. “I’ll trust your judgement, but I won’t trust hers.” She mutters. It’ll quickly rather annoying instead of entertaining if that continues too long.

Again, he finds himself looking to Peter, gauging his opinion, carefully weighing his reactions to things. “Give her a chance. We need a cure, that might be our only shot.” He provides, preening a bit at his opinion being sought.

Apparently, every one of the other survivors has taken it into their heads to make their presences as disruptive and obvious as they can. One of the runes, the sort that the magic in Harry’s blood can use to teleport through, has erupted into absolute chaos.

Harry chooses to approach it alongside Peter—the half-drow’s track record involving things that are obviously dangerous isn’t fantastic, and it’s only been what, a day? He almost insists upon being the one who tries to touch it when Peter makes the move to do so. The chaotic swirl of pure magic seems to burn Peter’s fingertips, making him jolt back, before, inexplicably, an arm lurches out from the dark center.

“A hand? Anyone?”

“Uh—“ Startled, Peter reaches out and slaps it with unexpected strength.

“Ow!” The owner of it, whoever it is, recoils slightly. “Perhaps I should have clarified. A helping hand? Anyone?”

“If he thinks that hurt, maybe we should just hack that hand off.” Harry speaks on utter base impulse, earning an admonishing glance from Peter that would probably be a whole lot more horrified if Peter actually thought he was being serious.

“Help him, Harry!” He gently shoves at his arm.

Perhaps wanting Peter to keep believing he was actually joking, he can’t help but tease. “What? But you’re so strong, you must be able to do it so easily.”

“You’re magic.” Peter insists. “Can’t you make it calm down? Touching that thing hurt!”

His eyes still trained on Peter, a relaxed, easy smile forms on his face as he extends a flat palm toward the sigil. Magic, utterly tangled up. Not the hardest thing in the world to undo, but Peter’s quite impressed by it, the quieting as he undoes those knotted threads of arcana.

“Whatever you’re doing, it’s working wonders! Now a little pull should do the trick…” Comes that voice, disruptive.

Ah, the impulse to hack his hand off is back.

Harry keeps his attention carefully focused on Peter. He’s not at all feeble himself, something he’s quite happy to demonstrate by pulling what turns out to be a rather ordinary looking male human from the stone. The impact against the ground knocks the air from his lungs, but Harry is strong enough—perhaps unnaturally so—that it’s easy to force him onto his feet with only a grip on one hand.

“Hello.” He begins, visibly caught off guard at being maneuvered around like that. “I’m Gale of Waterdeep. Apologies, I’m usually better at this.”

“At introductions?” Peter peers around Gale as he speaks, staring at the now peaceful sigil.

“At magic.” He brushes dirt off himself. “Say, but I know you?” His attention is now back on Peter, curious. Attention Peter reciprocates the moment magic is brought up. “In a matter of speaking, of course. You were on the nautiloid as well.”

Peter nods along. “Never mind the nautiloid.” His rather small body is immediately almost overwhelmed with interest. “How did you get stuck in a rock?”

“Well, I don’t know what transpired exactly, but the ship broke into pieces and I suddenly found myself in freefall. As I was plummeting to certain death, I spied a glimmer quite near where I estimated my body to impact with less than savory propulsion.” Some flickering of emotion that tastes like stomach acid winds his way into his throat at the eager attention Peter is giving. “Recognizing that glimmer to be magical in nature, I reached out to it with a Weaving of words and found myself on the other side as it were.”

“Not the most flattering showing, eh, wizard?” He taps the stone behind him and the now stable sigil engraved upon. “Didn’t so much weave as you did tangle everything up. You’re lucky other magic users were around.”

Gale gives a self deprecating laugh. “Like I said, I’m usually better at magic. It’s all just a bit harder when you’re hurtling toward the ground. How about you? How did you all survive the fall?”

Unable to resist, he flares his hands out with a smile. “Magic.” He sweeps past, dragging his tail against Peter’s thigh as he steps back toward the path they’d been on. “Come along then, wizard! Best to travel with company, hmm? I know you lot can be the squishy sort.”

It occurs to Harry a bit further down the road that it’s a bit unfamiliar feeling to focus so much about where a single person’s attention is directed as much as he seems to about Peter’s. The vague notion that such things are normal is quickly shaken off by his thoughts; somewhere, in the abysses of his mind where he knows nothing of what lies there, a particularly stubborn voice insists that he does not do that. Harry simply doesn’t. That thought is drawn out of him like instinct. He simply doesn’t.

Curious of his own sudden bias, he hangs back slightly, letting Shadowheart and Lae’zel bicker, to speak to him. “You’re awful trusting, aren’t you?” He observes.

“Huh?” His head jerks upwards. Seeing Harry so close to him, he’s almost magnetically pulled closer, walking with only inches between their arms. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the first of all these survivors we met was the elf. You went and tried to help him with an intellect devourer even though he was armed and could have simply done it himself. And then, after he attacked you, you still go on and want to help the wizard.. Change nothing about how you go about it.” He observes.

Peter appears to be a bit taken aback by the statement. “I think that’s the right thing to do.” Harry had almost been expecting—or even wanting—to draw a hint of embarrassment from him, but he receives nothing. “None of the others are the one who threatened me, that was Astarion. It wouldn’t be right to punish Gale for that, not when he was already in danger.”

His tail flicks. “And… you aren’t gonna try and make sure you don’t get beheaded in the process?”

There’s a pause as he appears to consider his words, leaving silence to be filled by the distant idle chatter of new companions and the twittering of birds. “I’m half drow.” Peter says eventually.

Harry nods slowly. “Yes. I did notice from how purple you are.” The same color as a day-old bruise. Harry quite likes the look of it.

Peter’s cheeks go a bit darker as he laughs. “I just mean that… well, people assume things. I’m really only out here, on the surface, safe—or safer, tadpoles considered—because there were people willing to give me a chance despite the risk. That saved me. I want to pass that on, you know?” One of his hands slowly lifts, palm pressing to his chest for a moment, then raising even further to adjust his collar. “If I can help one person like that, I think maybe getting hurt is worth it. Taking that risk is the stronger thing.”

Well, that doesn’t help with much of anything. He reckons that if Peter were naive it would be as good an explanation as any to why: he simply found it entertaining or cute in the way a pet was cute. None of the others were quite so wide eyed and he felt plenty of want to crack their ribs open if they stopped being useful as allies. So that would be the difference, why something else lit up in his mind at the sight of Peter and nobody else. Not that the whole thing isn’t sickly-sweet in it’s optimism, just that he does seem aware of the costs. The novelty of him should fade at that—that’s simply the way of most self-proclaimed self-aggrandizing do-gooders. As shattered as he is, he can recall flashes of the reality that the most value those sorts could normally provide was watching the way their expressions changed as they lost.

When he, for the sake of mere scientific method of course, imagines coaxing Peter away from camp that night and strangling him, watching his trusting, soft face change into shock, there’s some voice in the back of his mind that insists to not. That for whatever reason, this one should live for now.

Having all these instincts and impulses and all this inexplicable rationale with no context to them is terribly frustrating.

“You’re staring.” Peter shudders away from Harry’s gaze. “You look at people so intensely, you know that?”

Harry smiles, starting ahead to catch up with the others, guiding Peter along with two fingers to his shoulder. “There’s just something about you I can’t quite put my finger on.”

Peter blinks twice, frowning for a moment. He follows the guiding hand all the same, head tilting after a few steps. “Do you hear that?”

After a few moments, he picks up on it. The should of shouting and heavy footsteps, a distant rumbling foretelling the presence of other steps—steps at chase. There’s about to be a fight nearby, potentially at that settlement the tieflings had mentioned.

…His hands are still twitching from the thought of strangling. Feels quite appealing to choose a side and be able to get it out of his system. “Mhm. Sounds like a fight. ” He comments, the group rounding a stony heap blocking their trampled pathway from the noise. “Seems exactly like what you’re looking for, eh, hero?”

As the path opens to a view of a moss-eaten wooden gate, it seems he finally has something that will embarrass that drow. “I’m not quite there yet!”

A small band of pathetic little adventurers, bloodied with the force it had taken them to run from the band of mere goblins that give them chase. A few Worgs and gobbos would really give this pathetic band a problem?

"Open the bloody gate!" The human at the head demands. waggling an arrow at the tiefling who perches atop it.

An older man, yet one whom only just starts to gray despite the many, many lines upon his countenance, shouts down at him from the stone arch atop the gate. "You led the goblins here?! Where is the druid?" He demands

"Please!" The human spits the word like an insult. "There's no time!"

The tiefling shakes his head. "By the Nine Hells…" He mutters, giving his orders with no enthusiasm. "Open the gate!" He orders the guards—more tieflings—beside him.

But it's too late; the gate slams back down by no wrong of these tieflings when an arrow severs the jugular of a man beside the one clearly in charge, who'd been engaged in lifting the gate.

The older tiefling's eyes stretch wide in horror. "Kanon! No!"

"Shit." Sighs the adventurer, who starts barking at his companions. "Form a line!" He turns his back to the solid gate, drawing his weapons.

But though the tiefling make the practical choice and keep their bodies and bows to the high ground, one other joins the lot fighting on the ground—fighting, seemingly, only because of their own moronic choices. Another human, though this one far more handsome and carrying himself with far more dignity, his skin dark and his hair pulled into practical cornrows. His face is one that would normally be kind, but he looks upon the assailing goblins with righteous fury. "Damnable roach!" He snarls, brandishing a rapier with practiced, skilled ease and impaling one goblin on it like an olive on a toothpick. "Provoke the blade…"

The goblin dies on that sword and is discarded like the worthless flesh it is. "…and suffer it's sting." Finishes this man, turning his sword on the rest.

The moment the blade of that man sinks into the chest of a goblin and draws blood, he feels that hunger clawing at his chest again. The pounding in his head grows more intense, almost clouding him to the dazzled whisper of “Is that—“ from Peter beside him. His daggers are in his hands and by god, he needs to dig them into something or he might actually turn them on Peter.

As fluid as dance, he strides forward, raises one hand up beside his ear and lets the dagger slip out of his fingers like it were fluid. The blade glides into the neck of the goblin nearest to that warlock, felling it.

The moment it dies, his head clears entirely. It’s the only solid, confident thing, the only fact he’s entirely certain is actually true of himself—he should be doing that. More. As much as he can manage. The warlock catches his eyes, nodding in acknowledgment, but it more feels like rightfully-given permission.

The bugbear at the head of the raiding party lumbers towards him, raising a maul. He sidesteps to avoid the coming attack, but the longest spikes on the weapon dig into his cheek—only intensifying the thrill. He doesn’t think a person could ever be more thrilled to be hurt.

Peter darts by behind him, grasping one of the goblins by the head and bringing it to his raising knee. As they connect, the goblin’s skull echoes with a satisfying crack and caves inwards, sending a satisfying shiver up his spine, blood growing hotter.

The whole quite spectacular show of violence is perhaps the first moment of pure joy he can recall experiencing. Lae’zel clears out the goblin scouts atop that mound of stones in seconds, divine magic flashes into the body of the nearby Worg. Flesh rends beneath weapons and bubbles at the whims of magic, grass painted red. The whole show of barbarity is really rather artistic.

His dagger glides through the stomach of the bugbear, warm blood soaking his hand. He spins on his toes, raising his remaining blade to cleave into the center of its spine, an unexpected flash of divine magic around his own blade cutting it in two. He doesn’t pay mind to it in that moment, how could he? So many new bodies!

In yet another beautiful display, he watches Peter knock the only remaining goblin to the ground, putting his heel through it’s ribcage. Harry can’t imagine how he could possibly forget how brutally he actually fights—it’s enchanting. Being splattered with blood suits him. It’s really quite attractive.

After allowing himself that admiring glance, his focus turns to the sea of corpses. The tiefling who’d been stationed above the gate is saying something, but the pounding of blood in his ears drowns it out. Instead, he seeks out the dagger he’d thrown and begins rifling through the bodies for anything useful, stowing anything of value away.

As he completes his loop of the field over the body of that bugbear, he doesn’t stop at just looting. He raises the dagger clutched in his hands and begins cutting into the shoulder of the body, cleaving deeper and deeper until he finds the socket of the joint. Hooking the tip of the dagger into the socket, he pops the ball out of place and quickly hacks through the rest of the arm, detaching it entirely.

He’s almost begun on the other before something stops him. “…Harry?” Peter asks, sounding baffled by his actions and a bit grossed out. “What are you doing?”

What is he doing? He looks down at the body, at his weapon and his bloodstained hands. What… what had he been doing? It had been so automatic that he’d not even thought of why he’d bother, he’d simply acted. He twists his neck around, looking to Peter. “You know, I’m really not quite sure.” He responds.

Peter stares at him for another few seconds before he jabs a thumb over his shoulder, towards the wooden gate. “That tiefling wanted us inside. In case there’s more goblins.”

“Ah. Yes. I’m coming.” He stands, gore sticking to his boots as he strides alongside Peter.

One of Peter’s ears twitches. “You never mentioned you were a paladin.” He comments.

His mind goes back to the flash of radiance on his weapon he hadn’t even put any mind to. Peter’s right, that’s the most likely explanation to it. “I didn’t know I was one.” He responds as they stride through the gate to where Lae’zel and Shadowheart wait.

The greenery and wildlife is somehow only more lively behind the gate, wildflowers growing in every gap between stones and vines consuming anything man made. The sound is so birdsong is so dense you’d think there was a wren for every branch on each of the many surrounding trees. But even that song can’t deafen the noise of a nearby argument.

“There are children here, you fool!” The tiefling roars at one of the adventurers, almost beside himself with anger.

“We was running for our lives.” The adventurer huffs out, the need to catch his breath not stopping him from anger. Out of the corner of his eye, Peter seems to bristle a bit at the hollow defense.

The tiefling—older, with an orange tint to his red skin and graying hair—raises his hands emphatically. “You lead them straight to us. And you let them take the druid too? Unbelievable!” Perhaps aware at their approach that others could hear him, his voice lowers to a growl. “He trusted you.”

“Nobody forced him to go with us—he insisted. And when things got tough, he couldn’t keep up. Simple as that.” The human’s eyes dart over to their approach, seeming more to defend himself to them rather than the tiefling. And, if Harry’s understanding the movement of his eyes correctly, he doesn’t see Harry as worth any more defense to than he does the other tiefling present.

Ah.

“My gods, you’re a coward.” The tiefling seethes.

The human’s eye twitches as he shifts his attention back to the tiefling. Oh, he’s about to blow.

Harry had been planning on settling back and watching them rip each other apart, but to his surprise he watched Peter dart forward and take a swing at the human, knocking him out cold entirely.

“That’s… that, I suppose.” The tiefling deflates as the human drops like a sack of bricks. His attention shifts to Peter. “You acted quickly. I’m just sorry I didn’t get there first.” His eyes rove over their cluster, flashing with recognition. “Thank you for your help out there. I’m Zevlor.”

“Peter.” He’s anything but comfortable at being the center of attention.

“Well met. I should warn you, visitors are no longer welcome in this grove. Whatever your business, I’d see to it quickly. The druids are forcing everyone out. This attack will only strengthen their resolve.”

Despite his discomfort, Peter’s a fly to honey at the mere idea of someone in need of help. “Why are they forcing you out?”

“There have been several attacks by different monsters.” Zevlor recounts. “The druids blame us outsiders for drawing them here. Nobody’s welcome anymore.” He can practically see the gears turning in Peter’s head. Damn it, he’s going to rope them into something. “They’ve started a ritual to cut the grove off from the outside world. We can’t say, but we’ll be slaughtered if we go—we’re no fighters.”

Weren’t they just—oh, damn it, Peters about to talk. “Is there really no way to convince the druids to stop?”

“I’ve tried.” Zevlor sighs. “Kagha, their new First Druid, won’t even see me. You, though… I know it’s not your business, but she owes you for saving this place. Perhaps you could persuade her. For more time to prepare, if nothing else.”

“I want to try and help.” Peter agrees, not even looking to the rest of them in his determination. “I’ll go and try and see her.”

“You’ll find the druids at the heart of the grove.” He gestures deeper into the thicket, towards a fork in the path through which one end is thick with plant life. “Please, make them see reason, before more lives are lost." Halfway back to the ladder, Zevlor turns, his glowing eyes staring at Peter. "You're brave to walk freely, without hiding your heritage. I mean no passive aggression—it's truly admirable. And I'll make sure everyone knows you helped us, you do not deserve hostility in turn for your aid."

Peter's shoulders go lax. "Thank you."

Didn’t even ask about a healer, did he? Zevlor is past them, reaching for the ladder that will return him to his spot on lookout over the grove before he can interject. Well, it seems Harry’ll be forced to ask that druid—Kagha—about it.

Peter cringes as they fall back into a walk through the grove. “You should keep being the one to talk to people.”

He laughs slightly. “You did fine.”

“I guess.” He mutters. “I just was so uncomfortable. And I didn’t know if I was making choices for us all that everyone else would hate.”

“Well, you did forget to ask him about a healer.” Peter groans, only drawing further laughter from him. “But really, you think I could magically know what everyone would and wouldn’t be okay with?”

“No, but you’re so confident nobody’s going to say anything about it.” As they approach the fork Zevlor had spoken about, Peter’s head roves in every direction, taking in their surroundings. Ruins carved from half-collapsed cave roof form the bones of what’s been built. Opposite the path that leads to the druids, the other path curls downward into a muddy hollow where ramshackle shelters are constructed from scraps of wood and cloth, barely with the space and stability to house rows of sleeping bags.

Peter’s eyes stop at a platform upon which a group of tiefling children practice swordplay against makeshift dummies. His face lights up. “Oh my gods, it actually was him!” Past hesitations forgotten, he rushes the platform, leaving the rest of their group to catch up.

The man from before, the warlock, is sparring with one of the children, wielding his rapier carefully around the delicate hands clutching a practice sword. “Go on. Give me your best shot.” To immense contrast with the venom in his voice during the fight earlier, his tone is effortlessly encouraging and gentle. Peter stops at the outskirts of the platform, watching with an almost starstruck expression.

The child swallows their nerves and lurches forward, sword too large for someone so young. The broad side of it impacts against the man’s sword as he parries easily. “Not bad. Again.”

The boy rushes him more intensely this time, only to end up entirely disarmed. “I can’t do it. I’m not like you.”

The warlock stoops down, his gentleness at sharp contrast with what his sort of magic would generally constitute. “Umi, I don’t need you to be like me. You just have to buy enough time to run. Come on, I believe in you. You can do this.”

It’s then that he takes notice of Peter. “Well met. The Blade—“

“I know.” Peter interrupts. “The Blade of Frontiers.” Respect and admiration oozes from every word. “You’re—“

Both suddenly shudder, the man’s smile bending downwards as both share in some immense discomfort. “Hell’s great fires—you were on the ship.”

This man has a tadpole too? His and Peter’s must have been connecting, sharing information neither would quite like to share like they had with Astarion. Peter, for some reason, seems to take this as something uniquely awful in comparison to the rest of them. “You have one too? Oh, gods, that’s awful.”

The man is only flattered by reaction. “Neither of us have sprouted any tentacles yet, have we?”

“I guess not. But you—“ Peter gestures at him from head to toe, braided hair to ragged clothing. “—you do so much more to help people. The world would be losing so much more.”

He shakes his head with a chuckle, averting his gaze downward and shaking his head. “If I disappeared, someone else would pick up where I’d left off. Anyone has the stuff to become heroic in them, it’s all lear—“

Another pained shudder. Their worms must be becoming fast friends. Whatever it is that Peter saw this time, the warlock seems to understand it as far more serious. “Shit. You saw her: advocatus diaboli.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Karlach. An archdevil’s soldier I swore on my good eye to kill. I tracked her through the Hells to that Mindflayer ship, but the illithids got to me before I could stop her.” Fire blazes beneath his words. “She must be out there now, preying on the innocent. If I don’t kill her, she’ll leave nothing behind but a trail of corpses.”

If that is the case, Harry privately thinks that they should let her do as she pleases—but he’s learned by now that those particular trains of thought are better kept to himself. Nobody’s taken too kindly to how he thinks so far.

“I’ll help you. If you’d like, at least. I try to do the sort of things you do, so it would really be something of an honor.” Peter glances over at the group. “And we could help you find a healer.”

“We?” The man follows his eyes. “You’ve found other survivors?”

Harry folds his arms and props them up, grinning with his too-sharp teeth. “Who’s your friend, Peter?”

“The famous Blade of Frontiers. He has quite the hero act going on.” Shadowheart’s paldrons brush with his shoulders—this man might actually be something if several of them have recognized him.

“‘Blade’, ‘hero’, those are all names strangers have given me. My friends call me Wyll.”

Peter seems thrilled by the implication.

Shadowheart isn’t quite so impressed. “Excellent. Should we ever become friends I’ll know what to call you.”

“You’re actually going to come along?”

“Of course. More good could be done as a group, even for these refugees. And I suspect that none of us being mindflayers yet isn’t just due to luck.” He joins their side. “If you’re able to get Kagha to speak with you, you should be able to find Nettie. She’s the best healer among the druids.”

Their collective footsteps make their way back across the fork and down towards a place where greenery thrives somehow more intensely. Even the minimal architecture is at its most stable here.

There are tieflings in some spat with the druids at guard on this path. It's just even more godsdamned petty squabbling, so he pays it no mind. Let the rest do some talking for once—they don't manage to wreck the whole situation, even. Eventually, they're let through. Though by that time one of the druids has become a bear, who glares at them resentfully as they stride through their grove. Their precious, nauseatingly lively grove, all blighted by the despicable pestilince of life and inane holy chants. He's indeed eager to get to the sliding wall they seem to be headed to.

Behind that wall, the cave interior is moist, easily providing support for all the sorts of life that enjoy the damp, cool space of caves. They make their way down a set of curved stone stairs, crags threatening to catch on all their feet. Along the furthest wall of the cave, separated from the path by a still pool of water, Harry’s eyes catch on a painted mural of druid and beast fighting together to drive monsters from their land.

Rather pathetic, he thinks, that they’d surrender that same land to monsters that have now returned with this ritual rather than need to raise their hands.

Peter reaches the flat place within first, raising his feet to avoid trampling on any paws of the wolves or rats that scuttle about.

Two druids crowd around a tiefling child, cornering her against a cluttered stone table. The girl’s dull claws grind against the table as she presses herself against it, trying to keep away from something. “Please! I’m sorry!”

One of the druids almost shields her with his body. “This is madness, Kagha! She’s just a-”

“A what, Rath?” Without hesitation the other crowds into his face, her movements sharp. “A thief? A poison? A threat?” What the child is cowering away from becomes clear. There’s a death viper slithering its way between the lot’s legs, dark scaled body weaving around the man to hoist itself upon the table, not letting the girl avoid it. “I will imprison the devil. And I will cast out the rest.”

In the back of his head, he can recall drawing the venom out of the bodies of those snakes. They’re quite efficient beasts, that he knows, even if not how. Bites fell grown men in a heartbeat—if bitten, this girl would die before the fangs were out of her.

Kagha’s eyes narrow on Peter’s approach, looking him up and down. He may not be a tiefling, but he is half drow… Harry supposes that would still very much qualify him as one of the monsters that mural has them driving out, same as Harry.

To his mild surprise, it does seem like Peter realizes it. His eyes go slightly wider, his mouth shutting where he’d clearly been about to speak. But it doesn’t stop him for very long. “Imprison a child? What’s she done to deserve that?”

“A child? She is a parasite. She eats our food, drinks our water, then steals our most holy idol in thanks!” She jerks her head upward at the other druid. “Rath, lock her up. She remains here until the rite is complete.” Disdain fills her as she stares at the girl. “And keep still, devil. Teela is restless.”

“Come, Kagha. We took back the idol. Surely, we could-“ Spineless, Rath is still approaching the girl as he speaks.

“Do it.” She looks to the viper, who hisses its approval. It is expected to strike if the girl struggles—and regardless of this Kagha’s thoughts on the matter, it seems to hope she will.

How could he blame it, really? The death of a child is truly the timeless sort of tragedy.

Peter gauges them carefully. “Wouldn’t doing so upset nature’s balance? She took the idol, but now you have it back. Things are back to harmony.”

She scoffs. “What would a creature like you know of harmony?”

Peter recoils, cheeks growing dark. Harry is about to flick his eyes towards the doorway and hope the child tries to run—or really, hope the snake gets to her and watch the horror sink into everyone surrounding—when apparently, he decides he hasn’t really given up. “We have a paladin with us. He should be the one passing judgement.”

What.

As he attempts to express his harm to Peter with his eyes, Kagha speaks. “Very well. We defer to his ruling.”

Peter doesn’t even look sorry. Just gives him a sort of pleading look as he stares back at Harry. It’s not as though he can say no. Not for Peter, just that denying would be, in current company, terribly disadvantageous.

Ah, but at least watching Kagha’s expression morph at the sight of yet another tiefling is very pleasing. “Oh, don’t you look so worried. Despite what many of your circle tend to think, not every tiefling knows each other.” He clasps his hands together once he’s closer to them. “Go on, make your case.”

“My circle has offered grace to these outsiders. We gave them shelter from storm, we gave food when they had none. In return, these devils lured in a hoard of goblins and their spawn stole the one relic that might keep us safe. We have taken back our relic, but I will keep the fiend cages until our protection rite is complete to ensure it will not be disrupted again.” She explains.

His eyes drift to the girl. Probably too late to agitate the snake, isn’t it? Damn. “Go on. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I-I was scared.” Her eyes flick from the snake to Kagha to Harry, then repeat, never lingering for more than a second. “They said when the rite was over, we’d have to leave. But there’s goblins out there! And worse! And it’s nice here, so I-I took the idol. I thought maybe then we could stay.” At last, her eyes focus on something for longer: him. “Please, ask them to let me go. I’ll be good, I swear!”

Well, it’s not as though Harry really gives a damn about the outcome. He apparently should if any of the people around him are enough to go off of, but he’s more than gotten the impression by now that what he does or doesn’t care about and how he thinks about things aren’t quite normal. Bitterly ironic, that he has to choose between the two now that he’s let the only fun option pass him by.

If he let Kagha have her way, perhaps the tension here would boil over. Chaos would be fun, and perhaps watching the two sides rip each other apart would make up for the disappointing loss that is the child apparently getting to live.

But on the other hand, the impression the others have of him right now is rather advantageous—potentially far more so in the long run. They all seem mostly to favor the tieflings. Letting it slip not that he disagrees—he really simply does not care—but that he just doesn’t feel that way about things, doesn’t have any innate need for things to be right and moral, doesn’t feel much of anything… that could lose a lot more. Lose a lot of his authority amongst them, his control. If they ever need to lose that impression, it’s more favorable to him for it to happen on his own terms.

Not that it’s not terribly annoying that he can’t do what he wants over all those logical, long term strategies.

“Return her to her family. You have her relic, she seems more than scared straight.” He waves a hand, one ear twitching as he catches Shadowheart gasping in pain behind him.

“Thank you! Thank you, thank you!” The tiefling darts away from the snake.

“Out, thief. My patience has it’s limits.” Kagha commands the snake to her, moving to look out over that mural, the girl breaking out in a sprint towards the door.

Disappointingly, Shadowheart hasn’t been at least bitten by one of the surrounding animals. Harry’d been hoping for some blood as a consolation prize—he’s beginning to find himself a bit twitchy.

She sighs at his attention, fingers prodding at a dark mark on one of her hands. “I know that look—you’re wondering why I was in pain before.”

“Bit hard not to be curious.” He remarks, trying to catch some better look at her hand.

“Well, let me just clear the air about that now.” At his attention, the hand carrying the mark vanished behind her back. “It’s just an old wound that hurts me from time to time. Nothing to be concerned about. It’s nothing to do with the tadpoles, at least, in case your imagination is in danger of getting away from you. It’s just something I have to live with.”

“How badly does it hurt?” He asks, hoping to extract something pleasing from all this.

“Quite a lot, if I’m being honest. But it always passes quickly, so I can manage.” Her eyes flick away, briefly landing on the wolves nearby in an almost planned movement. The wolves visibly make her nervous—she’s trying to use that to disguise her feelings on the matter.

The tingle in his spine is only a flicker up into the stem of his brain. Just makes him… even twitchier. He clenches the muscles in his hands, keeping them from starting towards the daggers he carries. “Just hope it doesn’t slow you down.” He remarks, turning back around.

They return to a clustered march, descending deeper into the hollow. None of them had been ordered to leave, nor was that likely what Kagha had wanted to speak to them about.

“Go on. Say it. You think I’m a monster.” Kagha says as they pass behind her. Much of the heat has left her voice.

“A monster? Too kind. A demon, more like.” Wyll… Wyll is beginning to fascinate him. There’s no flexibility to his beliefs, no hesitance or insecurity. He completely believes it. Like it means anything at all.

He shrugs. “I was curious to see what would happen.”

“Ah, so you just look at me through a monster’s eyes. You are no different from all the rest.” The way she speaks, you’d think she knew that what she’d just did was wrong—enough to think him wrong for not caring. “Where devils tread, chaos follows. No matter. I took back the Idol of Silvanus and the rite has resumed. We will seal the grove. Free from harm. Free from intruders.”

“You say that as if you didn’t want to speak with me, did you not?” Speak with all of them, really, but he can’t help but rub in the fact she had invited a tiefling to speak with her.

Her expression contorts in further distain. “You showed great mettle at the gate—the mettle of a skilled sword for hire. Provide your services to Zevlor and offer them a guide out of the grove. I’m sure they’ll reward you well.” Her eyes catch on Peter, who appears insulted. “Or do it for whatever you please. They are yo be gone before final prayer. If they are not, the viper must strike.”

“…We’ll speak to Zevlor.” He agrees. Not committal. Neutrality to keep things orderly.

—

They make no rush to leave the druid’s chambers.

Deeper within, huddled between shelves of displayed slates and books and woven baskets storing supplies, they find Nettie. She hunches over a wounded blue jay, tending to it with gentle hands.

Her words are a bit less gentle in tone. “I see you. Give me a moment.”

“Is there anything we could do to help?” Peter peers over her at the bird.

“A moment.” She responds. Her hands raise, palms facing the bird. A green glow spreads up her arms. “Vis medicatrix…”As the glow fades, there’s only minimal visible effect on the jay. “Now, what was it you needed.”

“We were looking for Nettie.” Peter waves a wide arm at their group.

Her arms fold. “You found her, but I still don’t know what she can do for you!”

Peter flushes in a bit of embarrassment. “Healing. As soon as you can?”

“Come here. Let’s have a look at you.” Even being relatively short, Peter has to lean down to the dwarf. “You seem healthy enough. A bit tired around the eyes, maybe.”

“Not tired, a tadpole crawled into my eye.”

Her brow furrows. “Crawled in? Some sort of bug, or—wait…” Her face lights in recognition, then concern. “Did it look like a tadpole, but from your worst nightmares? All slime, teeth, and tentacles?”

“You know? So you can help us?” Peter straightens back up, a jolt of hope passing between their party.

“I’ll… do what I can. Come, follow me.”

Energy renewed, both Peter and their companions follow Nettie away, into a private area that had been sealed off moments before.

But Harry… his eyes stay on the blue jay. It’s wings are splayed around it, feathers rumbled and dull. As its glassy eyes register him, he takes in its weak breathing.

The constant pounding headache grows more and more painful, blood pounding in his ears with each beat of his heart. He hates the sound. Hates the pounding thing within his chest and hates that the same exists in every person he can hear around him. Wishes he could make all that pounding go silent.

Red claws at the edges of his vision, his hands shuddering more and more violently. In a flicker of impulse, his hands shoot out from his sides and grasp the bird's wings. They pop out of the joints easily, the fragile, light tissue providing no resistance as the wings tear free.

And in the moment after, the pounding in his head is gone. He can think clearly.

If only it would ever last.

A pulse of illusory magic clears his hands of any sign of wrongdoing. He does yearn for the blood, once it’s no longer there.

Once he rejoins with the group, Nettie is gesturing to the corpse of a drow, laid out on a table. Peter’s… very pale at the sight of another drow, his hand raising to press against his chest yet again. He does that a lot when he’s nervous, doesn’t he? Or when people call attention to his heritage, or when the past is brought up.

With a clear head, it’s suddenly obvious how strange it is. How unsubtle.

“This one had the same problem as you. Attacked us in the woods together with some goblins.” Nettie gestures emphatically to the body. “Tadpole crawled out of his head soon after.”

“Another drow had the same kind of parasite?” Peter mutters, more to himself than to anything. He steps closer to the corpse, squatting down. He’s looking at the dead drow’s eyes, seeming only more shaken by whatever it is he finds.

“Seems so. Gave Master Halsin a right start. It’s why he joined the adventurers on their expedition: to find out what was happening.” She fiddles with the bottles on the desk behind her, producing a spiked branch. “A pity you got me instead of him.” She sighs. “He understands these things. Studied them. Still, we have options.” Her eyes focus on the rest of their lot, scattered about. “You don’t have to be here for this.”

None of them move to leave, only crowding closer around Peter. “The rest of us have been infected too.” Wyll explains. “I think we’d all like to know if there’s help.”

“Not gonna leave my buddy alone.” Harry says mostly to Peter, patting him on the back.

“I think any of us will take anything that can help.” Peter smiles at him for a moment, turning back to the healer.

She seems to grasp that branch more tightly. “Of course. Now, tell me what’s been happening. Any symptoms? Strange events?”

“I’ve been able to merge my mind with other infected people. Often not intentionally.” Peter responds.

“Victims can identify each other?” She murmurs to herself. “How’d you pick up the parasite? Halsin was desperate to find where all this was happening.”

Peter looks up for a moment before responding. “There was a mindflayer ship. That’s what crashed nearby, if you heard about it.”

Nettie shakes her head as if trying to loosen something out of her. “But Master Halsin was sure—“ She cuts herself off. “Look, you’ve been straight with me, so I’ll be straight with you. You’re dangerous. If you transform here, we’re all dead. But you seem like a good soul. You deserve a chance to save yourself.” Tossing the branch back onto the table, she produced a small bottle, extending it to Peter. “This is a vial of wyvern poison. Swear to me you’ll swallow if you feel any symptoms.”

“I thought you’d said you could cure it. What about that branch?” Again, Peter’s eyes dart over to the corpse.

“The thorn? Coated in a fatal toxin. It was a last resort, in case you couldn’t be trusted. I don’t have a cure, only a way out.” She signs, shoulders going lax. “I’m sorry for misleading you, but I had to make sure you weren’t a threat before I told you everything. I’ve said how that one was when we found him.”

Peter frowns. “Right. I get the assumption. Alright then, I swear.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but thank you. Here.” She pauses, almost moving to walk away from them. “You know, I’ve spent my life treating folk and never once saw a mind flayer infection. Then suddenly, there’s dozens of you—maybe more. Master Halsin and I were tracking them, studying them, trying to figure out what was going on. Because you should all be changing; there should be a small army of mind flayers out there! But you’re not. Weird powers aside, you seem perfectly normal.”

“You must have learned something.”

Nettie nods. “For one, the thing you lot have is like nothing you normally see from mind flayers. It’s one of their worms, sure, but it doesn’t turn you into one of them. Not yet, anyhow.”

Peter folds his arms behind his back. “Then you think it’s just a matter of time?”

“Could be. There’s a lot we don’t know. Infected—folk like you—have been converging on an old temple of Selune, and I’ve no idea why. When Master Halsin heard the adventurers were heading that way, he saw a chance to get answers. Joined on the spot. Whatever he found there, he didn’t make it back.”

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

She sighs. “I’ve sent birds to try and find him, but the place is rotten with goblins. None of us can get close. You though? You’re one of them—technically speaking, I mean. They won’t kill someome carrying their parasite. If you can find Halsin and get him out of there, we’ll know what he learned. And perhaps he can save you. How’s that sound?”

Peter nods slowly. “Of course we can try.”

As they leave, Harry thinks he sees Wyll’s eyes flick from the bird to him. Like he knows.

—

“Pete?” He says that night when they make camp.

“What’s up?” The half drow’s head perks up from where he sits peeling potatoes for whatever it is Gale would have them eating.

Harry pauses. “Do you know why there’s an undead in our camp?” He asks, staring across their hollow towards the shoreline, where a very clearly no longer living person stands, skin drawn right over bone, clad in rags and bandages.

Peter sets his potato down to look at the same… being. “…I don’t know. I tried to talk to him but I don’t really know what he was saying. He asked me something about how much I thought a single life was worth. But he didn’t hurt me.” He shrugs a bit, a tad confused over the subject. “So I guess I just didn’t do anything about him.”

Harry conceals his frown at the sight of the potatoes, thinking he’d prefer something else. Perhaps roasted dwarf. Good old long pig. “Huh. I’m gonna talk to him.”

The undead barely regards him. “…Not this one. Nor this one. And this one, even less worthy still…”

“Oh, are you the sort of undead that will tell me riddles? Will you give me a prize if I get it right?” He chirps.

“I riddle thee not. I speak only what requires telling.” Beady, dark eyes look out from sunken sockets. “I have a question for thee: what is the worth of a single mortal’s life?”

Ah, he’s giving them all about the same treatment. Well, there’s nobody within earshot. No point in keeping the facade up for a damn zombie of all things. “They live to die. That’s the thing that distinguishes them as mortals, isn’t it? Otherwise, they wouldn’t come apart at the seams so easy.”

“Some do.” The undead agrees. “Very well. We have met and I know thy face. I shall be here in thy camp, for when you have need of my services.”

Later that night, he asks Peter how he responded to the undead—who he’s chosen to simply start calling Withers, after he had refused a name.

“I told him every life was equal. Every person is invaluable; each individual is the only one capable of experiencing their unique life. I think that’s worth protecting.” He responds. “What about you?”

“...Said I wasn’t sure.” Peter gives him a sort of sympathetic look at that, leaving Harry’s pride a bit bruised. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

He folds his arms, bracing his back against the stone. “What’s up with that thing you do? Where you push your hand against your chest whenever you’re nervous.”

Peter’s teeth tug at his bottom lip, eyes adverted. “I don’t know what you mean. Just a nervous tick, I guess.” He mumbles.

Harry can’t help himself but smirk a bit, raising his palms. “Don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to. Just something I’d noticed.” He pauses. “You aren’t a very good liar.” He teases.

Peter ducks his head. “...Thanks.” He swats at Harry with one hand. “You’re just too good at reading people.” Perhaps he's not wrong. Perhaps it takes a liar to know a liar.

—

They've hardly managed to step out of the disgustingly lush Druid's grove, following an unexplored trail up and out of the mess of trees and bushes and unbutchered animals, their precious little hearts a-pumping, when they get themselves interrupted by.

A well-dressed man, one who's stepped a decade and change outside of what could be called young no matter how much he looks like he'd fancy himself handsome. His ensemble is all ruffles and silk—Harry would wonder what a noble is doing out here, but, well, a noble has nothing to do out here. So this man is not one. "My, my," he smirks, like he thinks himself the most charming person to ever live, "what manner of place is this?" His lazy-looking eyes wander over the fork in the path. "A path to redemption, or a road to damnation? Hard to say, for your journey is only beginning." A bard, then? Well, if he is, he's a bad bard. "What would suit the occassion? The words to a lullaby, perhaps?"

As he continues speaking, his hands raise as though he fancies to make shadow puppets before a campfire. "The mouse smiled brightly: It outfoxed the cat! Then down came the claw, and that, love, was that." He raises his chin. "They do know how to write them in Cormyr, don't they? Well met, I am Raphael. Very much at your service." And then, as Harry thinks it might be best if people stopped doing, he seems to take the tiefling for the leader. "It's not everyday one meets such a cavalier sinner such as yourself. A true, bloody pleasure!"

What in the hells is this bitch on about? Well, if he does know something about Harry, not a chance he'll let him know its something Harry does not. "Oh, you're familiar with my work?" Or is he just aware of the horns, and being an asshole about it?

"I'm rather the admirer of the sanguine arts, even if I wasn't quite born under a killing moon myself." What is he…? Either this strange man is truly just not a very good bard, or Harry should start worrying about seeing his own wanted posters around. "Shall we withdraw? We have much to discuss, to our… mutual satisfaction!" He's real sure of himself. "This quaint little scene is decidedly too middle-of-nowhere for my tastes. Come."

And while it becoming very apparent this man is not just a shit bard is probably to Raphael's personal benefit, being transported magically without asking certainly raises Harry's hackles. But he—and the rest, still by his side—finds himself in a quite lavish manor, with a well-set table of meats, fruits, and sweet breads and Avernus out the windows. "There," Raphael assesses with great satisfaction. "Middle-of-somewhere."

"And that somewhere?"

"The House of Hope!" Oh, maybe regardless of whatever form of devil this guy certainly is, he does fancy himself a bard-to-be. "Where the tired come to rest, and the famished come to feed—lavishly." Well. Harry doesn't particularly feel either of those things. "Go on, partake! Enjoy your supper, after all, it might just be your last!" He grins with what might be a few teeth too many.

"For your sake," he murmurs. "I hope you're not threatening me."

Raphael chuckles heartily. "Not at all. Just call it a ninth sense!" And he raises his arms, summoning a billow of flame to reduce that human skin to cinders and reveal him—predicably—a devil. The obsessive organization and deal-making of devils does make them very much that. "What's better than a devil you don't know? A devil you do! Am I a friend? Potentially. An adversary? Conceivably. But a savior? That is for certain!" He motions theatrically all the while.

Harry can feel that the three points of living-warm behind him have not moved a muscle. "You're quite sure of yourself."

"Come now! Why play hard to get when you're in deep over your tadpoled head? One skull, two tenants, and not an end in sight!" Raphael snaps his fingers. "I could fix it all like that."

But Harry finds that conviction flickering. Dying is for others. He'll be fine. He just will. "And we have other options, rather than someone who'd be sniffing around to get something out of it." He points out.

Raphael chuckles with a great, odd clicking sound. "Oh, by all means! Try to cure yourself! Shop around; beg, borrow, and steal. Exhaust every possibility until none are left. When hope has been whittled down to the very marrow of despair, that is when you'll come knocking on my door."

"Right, so are you going to offer me your business card or something?" He gets a scowl in response. "If not—are we done here?"

Raphael folds his arms, ember eyes glowing within his fiendish skull. "All those pretty little symptoms—sundering skin, dissolving guts, they haven't manifested yet. One might say you a paragon of luck! But I'll be back when it comes back." Right, whatever makes you feel better, bud.

Perhaps a bit bruised and minding himself a man who plays the game long, Raphael and his manor alike billow up in more fire, and they are left alone

—

“Do you hear singing?”

“No, but I hear a lute.” Harry hums. Please, gods, after Raphael he will slit his own throat before he hears another shit bard try to play verse with him. “Wouldn’t think a bard would be alone in the wilds.”

Round the bend, the bright reds, purples, and blues of bard costuming contrast starkly with the forest greenery. Yet another of the tiefling refugees sits atop a tree stump overlooking the druid’s inner hollow, hunched over the lute she plays to an audience of squirrels. “Dance upon the stars tonight. Smile and pain will fade away. Words of mine will change—”She cuts her tune off. “No. Become… ugh.” She grimaces, adjusting her lute.

“What’s that song you’re singing?” Peter asks.

She sighs rather dramatically. “More like butchering. Don’t know why I bother.”

“Is everything alright?” Peter’s head tilts to one side.

She scowls deeply, brushing strands of pinkish hair out of her face. “No. I’m moments away from a grisly death… at the hands of this bloody song. I can’t… nothing fits, you know?”

As annoying the waste of time is, it’s probably good for Peter to get all the helping people out of him before it begins to hinder things more. “Hold on, maybe I could help.” Peter sits himself down cross legged in front of her.

“Well, it can’t hurt. I have her… I have an extra lute.” She produces the second instrument, providing it to Peter. “Here, I’ll start from the beginning. We can take it slow.”

Peter fiddles with the instrument, adjusting it with obvious uncertainty as to how it should be positioned. By Harry’s eye, the instrument this woman just provided to a stranger is far finer crafted than her own, its surface engraven and its edges more precisely sanded. Even the strings look sturdier.. Peter’s fingers do their best to play in time, following rhythms unfamiliar to him. To his credit, he follows along rather well for his lack of experience.

“Dance upon the stars tonight. Smile and pain will fade away. Words of mine will turn to ash… when you call the last light down.” The two keep in time with each other, the tiefling becoming lost in her music as the lyrics come to her. “Moon reminds me of your grace. All the love I can’t repay… Rest and know that I will pray, farewell my dear old friend.”Her fingers still on her instrument, sudden grief twisting her face. She doubles over slightly, tears dripping down her cheeks. “Sorry…”

Peter’s hand grasps her shoulder firmly, body leaning close to her. His ever so open, sympathetic face stares into her eyes—that boy doesn’t blink often, does he? “Hey, it’s okay. Cry as much as you need.”

“She would have said the same thing.” The bard stares at the ground. “That’s the first time I’ve played since Lihala died. My teacher. She was playing her lute. We… didn’t hear the gnolls coming.” She swallows thickly. “There was so much blood. I can still smell it.”

“That’s awful, my gods. I’m so sorry.” Perhaps realizing what must be it’s origin, Peter carefully hands his lute back to her. “I’m sure she’d be proud to see you now. Still working at it.”

“Ha, she’d yell at me for that clunky verse and make me play until my fingers were raw.” Her face suddenly hardens. “And that’s what I’ll do. Finish The Weeping Dawn for her.” She pushes the instrument back toward Peter, determined. “Please, keep the lute. It’s what she would want.”

Flattered, Peter accepts it. “Thank you. I hope I can learn to play it somewhat decently. Do you both justice.”

—

A storehouse within the tiefling-half of the grove. The lock on it has rusted its way off, falling with a tap. But he can hear breathing within, curiously. Harry pushes one door inward; he can always claim he'd not known any better. "There's someone in here." He mentions to the others. "And it was locked. I wanna make sure nobody had gotten stuck is all."

“Stop!” A curly haired tiefling is collapsed on the ground within the ramshackle building. “This place is off limits. Leave.” She grimaces as she lurches forward—something is wrong with her motionless legs.

“Need a hand up?” The hints of a smile flicker on his face. A clearly helpless woman, all alone in a secluded area. Would be so easy to snap her legs, or do away with her entirely. Of course he’d only dig around with a group. But maybe if he can come back alone.

“Damn it, don’t you look at me like that.” She winces, tone wavering away from harshness. “Fine, stay. And I would just fall back down, my legs are as steady as a foal’s.” She hisses to herself, scratching at the floorboards. “Bloody potion!”

Peter kneels by her side. “Potion?”

Her arm snaps in the direction of the door. “From the old crone in the cave. The one with all the lotions and potions.” She says. “To her credit, it worked. I’m strong as a bugbear, and utterly fearless. Of course, she also warned of the side effects. Should have listened, now I’m stuck guarding… crates.”

“That doesn’t sound like a side effect.” Peter murmurs. “Hold on. This should be the sort of thing that… couldn’t you take care of it, Harry?”

“What?” This is certainly not the first time he’s been pulled away from his violent fantasies by Peter demanding he do something kind for some god-forsaken reason.

“It seems like she’s paralyzed. That healing thing paladins do, the one that’s not quite a spell. Shouldn’t that be able to get rid of it?” He turns hopeful puppy-dog eyes on Harry. Rude.

He’s lucky Harry likes him for some stupid reason. He’s far more trouble as a follower than he’s worth. “Fine. Hold still.”

Approaching the paralyzed woman, he calls on whatever spark of the divine he managed to steal away for himself, tainted and ugly as it must be. His stomach twists, filled with disgust with himself for even humoring the idea of healing another person. That disgust sticks to the insides of his mouth, sickly sweet, as healing magicks come to his fingertips.

And then that disgust suddenly turns to bright hot pain, his blood suddenly boiling in his veins. His limbs seize from shock, bracing so he doesn’t keel over onto the ground, the healing fizzling out before ever reaching the woman.

“Woah! Are you okay?” The moment he’s not trying to cast, the pain fades back into disgust, pure, almost disjointed annoyance with himself. There’s a voice in his head lecturing him. Why bother with performing for them at all?

“Fine. A fluke.” He snaps. It must just be the self denial that makes him feel so desperate to please that voice in his head, like an admonished child. Why in the hells would he ever want to listen to something—

He grabs that spark in a stranglehold, gritting his teeth in an act of spite towards… himself? By the gods, he can hardly tell. His blood burns all over again as he wrestles the magic into obeying him, shutting off any ways his body would dare show the ensuing pain.

When the healing washes over the woman, it’s as though every drop of blood in him is trying to escape his body.

She lifts herself to her feet, face lighting up in so much joy he feels something rise in his throat. “By the gods, I can stand! Thank you. Hells, you can go wherever you’d like—just don’t touch anything.”

(garbage with Edowin and worm talk, goblins in village. All the boring act 1 shit. Edit: this is your author speaking. yes, I know I forgot this. I will fix it soon. 09/24/25)

The road on the hunt for the she-devil Wyll is after is a long one, giving ample time to make camp.

With all the sharp eyes built for seeing in dark as belong to their encampment, maybe one of them should have noticed a horned figure approaching in the night, eyes aglow.

“I’m so glad I found—“ The approaching woman’s hands shoot up in surrender when every person surrounding her has their hands shoot for their weapons. “Wait, it’s me! Alfira, from the grove!”

…Perhaps it was actually more embarrassing that none of them caught the sound of the bells on the bard’s costume. Peter hops toward her first, eyes bright with recognition at the young tiefling woman. “Alfira!” He says, receiving her name for what is, in reality, the first time. “What are you doing here this late? It’s dangerous so far from the grove, thank the gods you aren’t hurt!”

Alfira eagerly gravitates towards the most familiar and friendly—well, it’s not as though anyone else but Wyll is trying—face in the camp. “I’m so sorry for barging in like this, but I just had to come find you.” She lets out a short laugh in relief. “You’ve, well, inspired me. I want to stand on my own two feet, to prove I can be half the bard Lihala was. I want to join you, to fight by your side. I want to help people—as you’ve helped me.”

“Are you sure? It would be far safer at the grove, even with the rite.” As Peter speaks, Harry takes a wide glance around the camp. Astarion, Shadowheart, Gale, Lae’zel—almost all of them express their clear doubt in their eyes. Hells, Harry doubts her himself: he doesn’t know much about the arts, but the half finished song they heard at the grove seems not enough to draw magic out of like most adventurer sorts of bards would. Peter is, despite it, completely ready to let her. Whatever good will he believes he’s offering, it certainly seems it would be a waste if she went and died early.

“True, but I’m a bard, remember?” She turns in a slow circle, taking in the wild lands around them as though they were the interior of some nobility’s lavish manor. “I want to do more than sing about other people’s adventurers. I want to make my own stories. And I can’t think of anyone else better to share that with than the people trying to help my own.”

“Well, I don’t see why not. I’d love to have you.” Peter’s become a tad bolder, not glancing around for fragments of validation before making decisions. “I think I need a real teacher for that lute you gave me myself, actually.” At the pointed stares, he doesn’t falter.

“Not that I’m not thrilled to be kept awake late at night by singing, but are we sure that’s the best of ideas?” Astarion raises his hands as soon as he finishes his damn sentence. “Not that I care, but Gale might not quite have the cooking skills for a whole banquet’s worth of people.”

“What?!” The wizard seems to entirely change his demeanor over the jab alone. “I don’t see how one person would change a thing about my perfectly acceptable cooking! Any extra dishes could be prestigitated clean all the same! Nor would supplies be a problem, Lae’zel is carrying a full year’s crop of potatoes and onions around every day as is! Why not let her try?”

“Would certainly be better than her tumbling around in the forest alone, stirring up all the monsters.” Shadowheart agrees. “Besides, if she falls behind in learning the tricks of our sort of trade, I’m sure the one who invited her will pick up the slack, hmm?” She then turns to Harry, perched up on some nearby stone. “But what say you, oh fearless leader?”

“…I say give her a shot and see how she fares.” Watching her get butchered out the gate would at least be entertaining.

Alfira blinks, a bit surprised. “Really? Just like that? I thought there must be some sort of test—“ She cuts herself off. “Thank you, I promise I’ll make you proud!”

The sun vanishes entirely below the horizon as, nestled in a distant corner to compensate for the noise, Alfira attempts to give his monk beginner’s music lessons. Harry can catch snatches of conversation between plucked notes.

“Oh, the places to see! Where do you all plan to next? Waterdeep? Neverwinter?” Alfira seems enchanted by the thought.

He can’t catch Peter’s reply.

“Do you think they’d like it if I wrote them all a song? No, that’s a stupid idea, they’d find it annoying.”

“That’s nonsense, anyone who wouldn’t like it isn’t worth your time anyways.”

Harry goes to bed soon after. Petty, wasteful things like that are anything but worth his time.

—

He is not in his bed.

Harry’s eyes open with a lurch, somehow standing despite having not been awake moments before. His arms are spread wide, hands coated in something warm.

And below him is a body, split open from throat to belly with all that would normally be within now without, spread around it like a work of art. Ribs are broken around the worst of it like the petals of a flower. Entrails and blood are spread around it into something of ritual.

With the state of it, eyes gouged out and face nearly peeled from the skull otherwise, it’s beyond recognition on it’s own. The only way to really identify it is the clothing—and the bright colors almost entirely snuffed out by the blood that now coats his own hands. That bard, that innocent bard, Alfira.

Blood. It’s warm, fresh. Despite the sheer amount of work done with her body, she must have died very recently. Harry can hardly care Alfira is dead in front of him or that he has no memory of how he ended up here, he can only take in the warm blood staining up to his forearms. It’s beyond familiar, it feels like a long forgotten piece of home the same as a childhood toy would.

And really, what point could there be in denying what’s been laid out? There are innumerable wounds on her body, matching the ache in his dominant arm. He must have been the one to do it—he’s thought about it often enough with almost every soul he’s met so far. And memory loss? That’s not new

By the gods, he just wishes he could have experienced it! Had the memory as his own to hold onto when he had to deny himself and his clear talents for too long! With how tempered he’s been, no wonder he’d go so overboard! Hells, if he could do this in a few scrappy hours, he can only imagine what he could have done with so many forgotten years, forgotten years where he wouldn’t have to perform like this—

The sun is beginning to peak its head out of the horizon. The others will wake soon, no doubt with opinions to cast at his feet about the dead body in their camp.

He’s a fair bit giddy at the thought of them seeing it, the fright and horror and pain it could cause, but going unnoticed seems almost as lovely a thrill as the killing itself, a way to keep the adrenaline flowing for even longer still. And that feeling is quite addicting on its own.

Keeping clawed toes light on the ground, he steps his way over to the river, scrubbing away the blood and watching the red tinge bloom in the water. For a single moment, it seems as though the blood doesn’t leave his hands. It vanishes, however, with a shake of his head—his heart merely yearns to feel it in his absence.

Once that is that, Harry returns to his bed. But with the sheer energy coursing through him, he doubts he’ll rest. There’s no use for a thing like that at this moment.

The giddiness, the thrill of it, only grows when he hears the inquisition form early in the morning. Gasps of shock and cries of horror or rage quickly fade into hushed, investigative conversation and paranoid ramblings. It proceeds for a fair bit longer than he’d expected before the flap of his tent opens and cold fingers shake his shoulders. “Harry. Harry, you need to wake up.”

He arches his back, rubbing false sleep from his eyes. “Wha’s up?” He slurs.

“Come on, Shadowheart said she needs you.” He pauses for a moment, letting Harry sit up before continuing. “Someone’s murdered Alfira.”

“What?!” He launches himself up at that. “How in the hells—on the first damn night?” He rushes out of his tent, being sure to glance around at the entrance as though he wouldn’t know where the body was.

Shadowheart makes no move away from her invasively thorough investigation at his approach. “...killer knifed her many times after she had died.” She observes to the nearby group. She rises to her feet at their approach. “Another waif dead before her time.” She comments to Harry. “I’ve been waiting on you. You’re normally up before any of us.”

“I rarely sleep well. Do you have any idea who killed her?” As Harry speaks, Peter appears from behind him, their shoulders brushing gently. The drow boy stays quite close to him.

Shadowheart glances around their encampment for a moment. “Was it you?” She says, calm as the woods around them despite her bluntness.

Peter only pulls closer to his side, face growing a bit harder at the comment. “What? He wouldn’t have.” He insists. Her eyes do not falter, the discerning insight of most any cleric prodding at him.

“It’s fine. I would do the same.” He meets her gaze, drawing up his best facsimile of emotion. “I saw nothing. I don’t sleep well often and my tent was set up so far away. If nobody closer heard anything, I suppose there was no chance I would.” He sighs.

It’s hard to discern if she believes him. “I suppose that’s right. I’ll have to continue investigating around later, we all need to be heading out. I’ll make sure Gale sees to it that she’s properly buried while he and Astarion are hanging back.”

Almost disappointingly easily, he’s passed over. Harry might not have wanted to be caught, but it would have been thrilling for it to have been at least more narrow of an evasion.

For some godforsaken reason, Peter leans his weight deeply into Harry’s side, his body heat making Harry’s skin prickle in disgust. “I’d really wanted to travel with her.”

—

The day’s hike through the many miles of wilderness surrounding the Risen Road sports their first few leads: first, a mind flayer pod by a river, the greenery around it reduced to still-glowing embers and ash, sooty footprints leading away.

Wyll’s brow had furrowed deeply at the sight, stepping cautiously toward it. “Karlach can engulf herself in hellfire. She burns hot enough to reduce any living thing that touches her to bone.” He had said, voice still so soft it was almost merely another breeze disturbing the grass. “I imagine she would have broken out around the same time we all landed, so she’s probably covered a fair bit of ground. Let me know if you see any more sudden burnt spots like this one. They may provide us more ability to track her.”

Further up, past the lip of the shattered bridge of the Risen Road, The singed corpses of hyenas and gnolls dot the path onward, felled by axe strikes and pure heat used as though they are a single tool. This devil they hunt, her clear power should serve for an impressive fight.

“You were hunting her alone?” Peter asks the warlock, concern lacing his tone.

Wyll’s smile carries resignation. “Only the most desperate often want to stay near me for longer stretches of time.” He says, and does not seem to care to elaborate as they march onward.

Does Peter realize the occult, eldritch magic Wyll is confined to the use of would mean? He must at least realize the contrast between both Harry or Gale’s sort of arcane magic and even Shadowheart’s reliance on the divine, that it’s something other from all of it. Peter is, despite how he likes to act, quite bookishly intelligent. Wouldn’t he know that sort of magic can only be gained by pact?

It is quite the interesting tidbit of information. Despite the heroics Wyll focuses himself on, if Harry is assuming correctly, whatever being Wyll binds himself to is not a pretty one. It’s no benevolent minor celestial to whom he’d promised to use the power for good, the logical means for a warlock so focused on helping people, likely not even an Archfey if it’s truly that unpleasant—nor do Wyll’s spells seem the sort touched by the feywild.

But that begs the question of why, if he sought power for the benefit of others, Wyll would form a pact with a nastier entity of enough magic to go around sharing it. Hells, if he wanted it badly enough, Wyll had a demonstrable proficiency with weapons. If Harry could somehow con himself into a set of paladin’s oaths, surely Wyll could swear some.

The trail of dead gnolls leads them over a bridge, blood and ash decorating every few feet, and yet Wyll hesitates, eyes roving over the multitude of path’s shooting off. “Wait.” He hums, his stone eye moving with the organic one down a path going riverside. Further down, pockets of fresh blood sit alongside charred shrubbery that’s coals are still glowing. “That all looks much fresher.”

The path stoops down a steep drop to the flat boggy mud beside the river, made harder to navigate by Wyll’s suddenly rapid pace. Once riverside, he freezes momentarily at another distinct choice in path, long enough for Harry to watch as his face contorts in utter terror as though he’d been granted a glimpse of his death, only to vanish as he forces his face into carefully crafted and maintained composure, confidently striding down the shorter path.

…Harry’s more than a little disappointed in himself at the thought he had so clearly not noticed that Wyll of all people is as guilty of performing as he and perhaps even more skilled.

Somehow, Wyll is entirely correct, a fallen log, it’s ends charred, stretches across the river. And on the furthest bank of the river is a woman with bright red skin, doubled over in pain as an inferno of fire so hot it can be felt from that opposite bank engulfs her body.

Wyll hesitates, giving enough time for the rest of their party to catch up before crossing, Harry, Peter and Shadowheart following single file. “One horn. The stink of Avernus.” He spits, voice changing from gentle breeze to hurricane in moments. He draws his rapier, pointing the blade towards her. “Advocatus diaboli.”

The woman raises herself back onto her feet, standing head and shoulders above every one of them, her shoulders and chest broader with pure muscle than even the thickest trees surrounding them. From her choppy, undercut black hair emerges one dark horn, the other broken off. Her red skin, covered in tattoos and similar burn scarring to that which crosses Harry’s own face, seems to glow from within at the chest, the shadows of her sternum and ribs apparent through her skin. “Well I’ll be godsdamned. The Blade Of Frontiers—thought I’d shaken you for good. That’ll teach me to underestimate you.” The apparent truth of it is made only more apparent by her far too Baldurian accent. She’s not quite tall enough, her remaining horn isn’t quite long enough, she’s entirely lacking in wings—the Karlach Wyll has been hunting is no devil, just yet another tiefling.

Her eyes shift to the company Wyll keeps, then back to him, her angle shifting slightly. “An honor to be chased by the Blade of Frontiers, really, but—”

As parasites connect yet again, perhaps something they should all get used to, they all stumble back as a wave of heat knocks into them—her heat, enough to match that of the hells that stretch up around her as she tears through years and years worth of demonic armies. There had been snatches of the omnipresent conflict of the Blood War in Avernus visible from atop the nautiloid, but this woman is far more familiar with it than those distant snapshots Harry had seen. Wyll had not been entirely wrong—she had been a warrior of it.

“The fuck was that?!” Karlach rears up, losing whatever faith she might have been holding in Wyll’s fresh, potentially swayable allies.

“Evidence.” Wyll spits insistently, but the tip of his sword is beginning to tremble. “Proof that you’re a devil, a gladiator in the archdevil Zariel’s army.”

“I can explain! But it’s a whole situation, if you’d just hear me out—” Karlach pleads. She’s not gone for her axe, nor has Wyll gone to attack. She sees the chance, the opportunity that being able to show someone her memories can provide. And despite what his tone, his performance wants to impress, Wyll doesn’t quite believe it anymore, does he?

“Wyll, I’m not sure—” Peter brushes past Wyll, between their lot and the burning woman. But before he can make whatever point he’d like to, another burst of shared memory comes forth—perhaps not chosen by Karlach, but she’s clearly not protesting it anymore.

From the connection of the tadpoles, Karlach’s blade is raised, slicing not through demons, but through devils, servants of Zariel normally on the frontlines of the Blood War alongside her. Rage and desperation seeps through the connection, fueling her as her eyes dart around through the chaos, seeking escape.

“She must be trying to trick us. Don’t believe her lies.” Wyll is desperate. Even as he speaks, he’s drawing his blade back from it’s pointed state, resting it by his side. In a matter of seconds he’s become as scared as she’d been in her escape.

She raises her hands, almost placating, pleading to them all with eyes aglow with the fire that consumes her. “You saw the truth. I never wanted to serve Zariel. I was enlisted into her army against my will; I had no choice but to fight, and fight I did.” Karlach pleads. “When I saw an opportunity to get away, I took it. I’m finally home—or near it, anyway.”

“You served her! That’s enough to damn you!” Wyll bellows.

“We all saw the same thing! When things like that happen with the tadpoles, including with you, it’s impossible to control what goes over, you know that!” Peter’s entirely willing to put himself between a stranger and a man he clearly idolizes. “She’s—gods, Harry looks more like a devil than she does!”

Karlach’s face twists into a light wince at the wording behind them both, catching Harry’s eyes in an attempt at… sympathy? Solidarity? Harry’s not quite sure. Perhaps it’s not the most delicate wording, but Peter is right.

Sheer dread twists Wyll’s face, but it’s not directed toward Karlach. “You don’t know what you’re asking! You’re asking me to trust a devil.” Hells, who had it even been who’d put Wyll on Karlach’s trail that he’d keep pushing even when he didn’t even think—Oh. Oh. Oh, that’s going to be fun to watch.

“You know that’s not true! She’s no danger. Couldn’t you at least give her a chance?” Peter pleads.

Karlach steps towards Peter, careful to not so much as brush her new ally with even her tail. “You know monsters, don’t you? Better than anyone. Can’t you see I’m not what you think?”

Perhaps all Wyll needed was some defense from choosing that level of defiance himself. “Shit.” Almost as though it’s about to burn him, he sheathes his rapier. “You really are no devil, are you. I’ve… I’ve been deceived.”

Karlach relaxes, looking significantly less imposing at ease. “Oh, thank the gods. Thought I was going to take your head!”

“You would have died in the attempt—but there have been more than enough threats today.”

A wide grin crosses Karlach’s face as she begins to shift from foot to foot, shaking her hands. “Truce, then?”

The flickers of a smile form on Wyll’s face. “Aye. Truce.”

“I’m Karlach. But you already knew that. How ‘bout you?”

Peter tries to instinctively shake her hand and nearly singes his fingertips off in the process.“Peter.”

“Well met, soldier. Nice to meet a friendly around here, it’s been tough going so far.” She beams at Peter. “I may not be a devil, but I can put the Blade’s reputation to work. How would you feel about helping me kill some evil bastards?”

“I think I may just owe it to you.” Wyll murmurs.

Karlach’s eyes brighten, punching the air. “Fuck yeah! A little background, if your moral compass needs something to point at: You already know I fought in the Blood War. I was good. Really good. Had a bit of a knack for killing demons. That made me a bit of an asset to Zariel, the archdevil herself. She took a liking to me, in her own way.” Karlach grimaces. She speaks quickly and energetically and, perhaps to make up for all the time saved, she seems to speak quite a bit. “I had to play along until I could get the fuck out of there, but devils don’t like to lose their assets. Zariel liked it so little, she sent a bunch of goons, these fake paladins of Tyr, to bring me back. But I’m not going!”

“Then let’s send them back to where they came.”

“Fuck yes!” Karlach leaps in excitement, nearly shattering the log in two. As she continues, her gestures grow more exaggerated with her enthusiasm. “They cornered me at the tollhouse just up the hill there. Doubt they’ve gone far after the scorching I gave them! Then we can get these worms evicted and take Faerun by the short hairs! Sound good?”

“I like her.” Shadowheart comments. “She seems like she could throw me over her shoulders and carry me to safety—should the need arise.”

Peter tilts his head back far to look at her that close. “Wow, yeah. I mean, I’d love to help if you’ll have me.”

“Been a good second since we’ve been in a decent fight. Why not?” It occurs to him that his own accent sounds similar to hers. Scrappy, decidedly desitute and from the streets.

“Oh, we’ll get on great, you and me!” She jabs a finger towards Harry, then grins down at the comparatively tiny half-drow. “Gods, I would hug you if it wouldn’t burn your skin off. All of you.”

—

“So! Wyll. Now that we’re buds, how about we get to know each other properly. What’s your story?” Even on such a short trek, Karlach is eagerly chatty.

Dread and regret—not regret for helping her, but regret for going that far—pours out of Wyll. “Not so much a story as a pantomime. And I fear I’ve played my part all too poorly.”

“Go on. I’m listening.” Karlach chirps. “Come on, not fair you know that much about me and I only know a bit about you.”

“It means a reckoning’s coming. And I’ll be the one to pay up.” His words are selected with a deliberate sort of caution.

Karlach peers at him, not seeming to take his hazy description personally. “You make it sound like a harvester devil’s coming for your throat.”

“You’re closer than you know. One night soon when we make camp, the veil will be lifted and I will face my penance.” Wyll shakes his head, somber. “None of you are in any danger, I promise. I just can’t say the same about me.”

As they reach the doors to the tollhouse, Harry passing to the front alongside their newly acquired barbarian, he can’t make himself hide his smile. “Pissed your patron off, didya, warlock?” He whispers into Wyll’s ear as he passes, audible to the other man only. The look of surprise and shame on his face is so very worth it.

Karlach strides straight into the core of the tollhouse, outpacing Harry with her wide strides, Within, past rotting crates and barrels and cobweb covered windows, a far better preserved room lies. A deep crimson rug stretches below a shiny desk, an armored man leaping out of the chair behind it to face their coming might. Behind him, two roguish looking women stand, a halfling rushing to the paladin’s side like a guard dog while a half elf remains hunched for a burnt body, guarded.

The fake paladin raises his hands and cowers in a rough approximation of what fear should look like. “Please, no more! Leave us in peace, and we shall leave you in kind.”

“Oh, cut the crap, Anders! I know what you are.” Karlach’s eyes gleam.

“Don’t let her hurt us, please! We just want to go home.”

Harry glances around—three deaths is certainly more appealing than merely one. “Oh, surely you can prove you aren’t who she says, right?”

Even as he speaks, his two wards position themselves quietly, preparing to strike. “I’ll tell you whatever you wish to know. Just let us live, please.” In time with a subtle twist of his hand, the halfling takes to a further spot.

“Oh, this is rich. You serve Zariel, the biggest liar in all the realms. Seems her servants have picked up some of mummies little tricks. Believe me, these sneaky bastards won’t stop ‘til they have me hogtied at her feet.” Karlach snaps.

“It isn’t true! Half of us are badly injured, the other half dead. I admit we ambushed you, we were asked to by our god, Tyr.” Anders’ eyes scan their party, looking for any wavering resolve. “We thought you a devil. And with your flames we were proven right. But Tyr will not consign us to our deaths. He is merciful. Leave us, and we’ll leave you.”

It’s all the same to Harry, and yet… “Not particularly good liars, are they, Karlach?”

Her face lights up, the flames that flicker over her skin growing brighter.

Anders’ facade drops like a switch has been flipped, face going calloused, eyes cold with loathing as he draws his blade. “Enough. I’ll not play pretend anymore. Karlach, you’re going home. In pieces, if you must. And you, you all will learn better than to ally yourselves with the likes of this garbage.”

The flames on Karlach begin to grow higher, erupting into a more intense blaze than when they’d first met her. “Avernus was never my home. It was my prison. And I’m never. Going. Back!” She roars, drawing her axe and cleaving in a wide swing at Anders.

Her fearsome swing manages to cleave through his armor, the smell of blood hitting Harry’s nose. From a far wall, the halfling unleashes a arrow at Karlach. It sinks deep into the muscle of her shoulder, but she merely shakes it off.

Peter grapples the other woman, forcing her to the ground and the weapon out of her hand as blasts of greenish, eldritch magic fling the halfling into the wall. Harry loops his way around Anders, opposite Karlach, and digs both his daggers into the weak, leathery pieces of his armor, sinking to his back. Anders lands a smite that would knock any other piece of their ensemble unconscious into Karlach’s broad chest, swinging backwards to drive his pommel into Harry’s temple. The might Karlach shows might as well be contagious because, no matter the divine energy, Harry feels almost like it glances off of him. Really, he feels almost unstoppable.

He twists the still-embedded daggers upward into the tender flesh of Anders’ lungs, ripping a scream out of him, then pulls, sinking his body halfway into a kneel to hold the man in place for Karlach to take her fury out on him.

Karlach cleaves down once, cutting through his armor and exposing him enough for him to be properly gutted on her next go around. In time with it, Wyll lunges forward out of the hallway, casting a cloud of whirling, opalescent daggers onto the archer. She screams in pain, her next shot going long into the ceiling rather than hitting Karlach. And through that narrow, now abandoned doorway, Harry gets an excellent view towards Peter’s brawl.

The woman drives her dagger into Peter’s ribs, rolling her way out of his grasp, only for, after a brief glance around him, Peter to unleash some thin white rope at her, reflecting the surrounding candlelight. The silvery threads furl out where they stick to her chest like the formations of spider webbing, allowing him to yank her back to him and, in perhaps the closest thing to quick and merciful that can be done with a person’s bare hands, drive a flurry of fists into the thin area of skull near her temples until she’s no longer moving. Opalescent webs dissolving into mist, he dashes towards the halfling, finishing her off at Wyll’s side

Karlach’s focus is singular. In her first enraged swing, his skin and muscle bloom open. In her next, ribs shatter and innards spill out, his life only lasting long enough to process a few brief moments of pain before he falls limp.

And as he rips his daggers out of the dead paladin’s chest, she simply stands there, panting roughly as neither her rage or the fire even begins to go down. “Fuck them.” She spits. “Fuck Zariel. I’m never going back. I’m never going back.” The axe hasn’t left her hands. “And if any of mummy’s little friends want to pick up where the others left off they’ll find nothing but a pile of ash.

“Tear this place apart.”

“Zariel’s gonna stop fucking with me, you know? I’m finally free! I’M FREE!” With a manic laugh, she swings her now flaming axe into the nearest crates.

Once the tollhouse is utterly decimated and the rest of them have crowded into its hallway to avoid being burnt, she returns much calmer and with her flames burning a bit lower. “Phew. Had to burn of a little steam after facing off against those ingots. Granted, the fire’s lasting a bit longer than it should. How do I look?”

“Like you could make both sides of my face match. How can you stand it?”

“Honey, I could go all night.” She pats out the worst of the flames in her chest, “Besides, you’re just really damn cold. Are you a Mephistopheles tiefling? You feel around the same temperature as Cania.”

He gives own hand’s a glance. “Pretty sure, yeah. How the hells do you burn like that?”

Karlach raps a fist against her chest twice. “Infernal engine for a heart. Lets me burn as hot as the hells. Seems to be running a bit overdrive since I left Avernus.” She shrugs. “Well, I won’t be seeing my mechanic any time soon, so I’ll just need to make the most of the extra heat.”

“Isn’t there a smith in the grove who worked in the Hells for a time?” Peter offers. “One of the tieflings.”

“Perhaps I could make his acquaintance? Couldn’t hurt to get touched up. Maybe with help I could manage a bump or a pat without killing someone.”

“Sun’s setting, that would have to wait until tomorrow.” Harry’s hands shake behind his back as he gives a glance through the window behind them, taking in the purples and pinks painting the sky.

—
Peter has been called a lot of things over the years of his life. Sure, Peter Parker is the main one, an awfully human name for an awfully not human looking specimen of a half-drow. But there was, if he counted his vague, distant memories of his mother, also Peter Faen-Tlabblar, but it was only Otto and the Eilistraeans he’d met who’d called him that. While he was in the underdark, as little as he liked to think of that time, he’d been Peter—normally pronounced very strangely by folk who had no familiarity with how names in Common should be spoken—of House T’orgh. Actually, they had called him that very little. Mostly he’d been called things like jaluk and rivvil, and after the thing stuck itself to his chest, mostly ogglin, which he’d understood were bad long before he’d figured out what they meant. When he’d been hiding out with the man, Otto had occasionally called him aurvel, a dwarfish word he’d never figured out the meaning of.

…The main point was that few of the things he was called in his youth were kind. Maybe that, beyond mere Eilistraee, as weird as it felt to call as goddess mere, was what made his aspirations for the future so ambitious. It wasn’t like he could do nothing now that he was capable of doing something.

It wasn’t that big of a deal that his efforts into doing good had gone unnoticed, because Peter supposed it would be a while before he’d done enough for it to be noticed as a pattern and for people to realize it was a single person. Hells, it would be fine if people never noticed, the fact that people were saved was enough. But that didn’t mean Peter didn’t want to be called things like hero quite desperately, no matter the fact that, being quite visibly of drow heritage, most people tended to assume him another threat rather than something stopping threats.

Of course Peter knew of Wyll, The Blade of Frontiers. Peter wants to be him. Had since he’d first heard of him. It had only gotten better when he’d met the man and he hadn’t even been a let down. Wyll seemed to Peter everything he was supposed to be—every bit as gentle and empathetic and understanding in times of peace and every bit as focused and principled and fierce in strife as any fairytale.

Perhaps the whole kerfuffle with Karlach should have been the let down that Shadowheart and Astarion and Lae’zel and really almost everyone seemed to expect from Wyll, but it had all seemed wrong to him, a sixth sense picked up recently. Wyll might have been saying certain things, but his demeanor didn’t quite reach it. As unnatural as it had felt to put himself between his idol and the person his idol had been hunting, Wyll seemed to Peter glad for it. And Wyll had mostly seemed terrified.

Which Peter didn’t know was a thing The Blade of Frontiers could be. Maybe it was more the sort of thing that was only Wyll.

Of course he was curious about it. To Peter’s, by some perspectives, fortune, it hadn’t even been a day before he would learn why. It had merely been the hours until there was no sunlight left in the sky.

“Hell’s fire. She’s coming.”

A cloud of black smoke, thick and smelling of sulfur, began to gather before their campfire. The wisps twist together into a spiral, growing more dense until it looks as though a perfectly circular pool of ink has formed. The surface ripples, shining with reflections of their fire, and out rises a devil. A real, genuine, honest to god devil this time. “Wyll. You’ve been naughty.” Her voice sounds unnatural, an exaggerated idea of what should sound attractive, too ladylike and too melodic.

That had felt like whiplash. Peter could recall that Wyll had hunted Karlach through Avernus itself, but he doubted that even hunting a specific mark would have Wyll, with his unfavorable opinion of Raphael, seeking out devils for advice. Nor would those devils be particularly prone to seeking out random mortals. So why would this be what Wyll had so ominously referred to.

Before anyone else could process the intruder, perhaps a token of her clear familiarity, Karlach leaps up, running to Wyll’s side. “Gods damn it! Anyone but you.” She snarls at the devil.

Peter jogs up to stand behind them both, guarded, trying to find anything to go off of on Wyll’s face and only finding resignation. “What the hells is a devil doing in our camp for?”

The devil presses a manicured hand to her chest—just like her voice, awkwardly proportioned into a facade of attractiveness. “Wyll, you absolute stinker! You kept me a secret?” She scoffs in false surprise. “Call me Mizora. I’m Wyll’s patron, the found of his power. My warlock pet’s been unruly—” Her hand shoots out, body twisting to follow it, and her fingers close in the open air. Feet away, Wyll stumbles forward, eyes opening wide as his hands grasp at his throat. His lips open, sucking in desperate lungfuls of air as his legs give out. “We had a deal, Wyll.” Mizora spits. “And yet Karlach’s still breathing.”

Peter’s instinct is denial. There’s no angle he can turn the piece that makes it make sense or makes it fit into the picturesque landscape that is Wyll’s character. Why would a hero seek out a devil for power? Why would a devil grant power it knew would be used to do mostly good? It’s obvious something is missing, but what? And straining at it’s chains is the urge to do something to help Wyll, but he couldn’t go and interfere with a devil’s business. It could only make things worse for Wyll.

His confusion has allowed the conversation to march on without him. “I’ve taken more pleasant shits than you, Mizora, and at least those can be buried after.” Karlach’s fists clench, the brief, worried glance towards Wyll the only detour she takes from literally burning tiefling.

Mizora pouts slightly. “Well, that’s no kind of talk for a lady. By the way, Karlach—Zariel sends her regards.”

His head twists between the two. By the Gods, is Avernus just a small world? How likely is it they’d all know each other? But then again… then again, of course she would. Mizora must have been the one who demanded Karlach be hunted.

Wyll manages enough breath to speak. “You told me-devils only. She’s a tiefling-not a monster.” He doubles over, caught in a coughing fit.

“Ah. Finally found his bark.” Mizora gives Wyll the same look a city-dweller would give a rat spotted in the sewers. “Clause G, Section Nine: ‘Targets shall be limited to the infernal, the demonic, the heartless, and the soulless.” Karlach meets the criteria by virtue of having no heart.”

The encounter lapses into stalemate. Despite the growing flames on her skin, now rising high enough they can be heard crackling, Karlach hasn’t moved to do anything more than speak. It’s awfully lucky Mizora hasn’t already killed Wyll, isn’t it? If he’s still alive, the odds he’s simply to be killed are probably low. Peter thinks so, at least. He doesn’t know all that much about devils. Or the sort of pacts a warlock could form, other than that they’re bad. Similarly, it seems likely things would only be worse if they attacked Mizora. All the same… “You’re not taking Karlach now. We won’t let you.

And despite the perilous position Wyll is in, a flash of approval is clear in his eyes.

“Oh, don’t you worry. That promise is broken, that ship has sailed the Styx, I have only come to make sure the price is properly paid!” Her grin shows the rows of fangs behind delicate-looking lips, her dark eyes gleaming as her hand is suddenly overcome with the same inky blackness she’s manifested herself from.

A strangled sound of pain overcomes Wyll, one drawn from deeper than just merely his lungs. The desolate magmas of Avernus bleed through his eyes, darkening them with those starless skies. The putrid waters of Dis rot in his mortal veins, the bogs on the lands of Minauros blight and bloat along his skin, forming cancerous-looking ridges. The largest and most vile of those growths form upon his back, then upon his temples and tailbone, the polluted ash of the deepest circles building upon them in layers according to their order—then the glacial formations of Stygia makes them sharp. Mizora has taken infernal power in her hand, fashioned it into an arrow upon a proverbial bowstring, and shot it through Wyll's very humanity.

“What the hells have you done to me?!” Wyll cries, voice left hoarse. The dark horns arching up out of his head curl high, spines sticking out of his pain-arched spine. Similar leathery wings to hers lie limp at his sides, twitching with the movements of his shoulders alongside a long, curled tail. He’s not become a tiefling like Harry or Karlach, he’s become an honest, genuine devil, the same as his patron.

Sadism gleams in her expression. “That’s better. You knew the terms. Get used to the new form—there’s no going back. Some magic even I can’t undo.” Her smile grows unnaturally wide. “Lets see how the frontiers fare without their precious Blade.” Her wings pull close to her body. “Oh, and Wyll! Don’t forget. Our pact still stands.” Smoke and ash rise around her, Mizora disappearing as it flashes and subsequently turns to bright sparks.

Silence follows. Peter’s first impulse is to run to Wyll, help him to his feet and back to his tent, but would he welcome being touched now, now that his body is hardly really his own?

Before he can decide, Wyll is forcing himself back onto his feet, stiffly and silently walking straight back in the direction of his tent. His head is raised, though it sways slightly under the new weight on his temples, a desperate grasp at his remaining dignity as he rapidly disappears into his tent.

The fire along Karlach’s skin lower’s to it’s normal flicker. She glances to Peter once, then twice, bouncing from foot to foot. “I’ll be honest, soldier, I’m reeling. Wyll hardly knows me, but he chose my life over his.” She remarks to him softly. “Been a long time since someone stuck their neck out for me like that.”

“I guess that’s just what a hero does.” The words don’t seem entirely like enough, yet he can’t think of any that would be.

“I’ll say. When he was chasing me through Avernus, I thought he was just another sad merc. How wrong I was.” She pauses. “I should thank him. But I think I would want to be alone after that if I were him. But I guess he’s also not me, so…” She shrugs a bit helplessly. “Dunno, soldier.”

He shakes his head, feeling helpless. “Me either. Maybe… I don’t know. Someone should-I’ll make sure he gets dinner after that. And I can tell you… how it seems like he’s doing. Unless you’d like to!”

“Wouldn’t be right for me to take credit for your kindness, soldier. You should go ahead.” Karlach refuses.

—

Peter takes a knee beside the closed tent, setting the filled plate down and rapping his fist against the ground. “Hi. There’s food.”

The flap raises. Wyll takes the plate off the ground, subdued into almost complete silence. Eye contact is avoided entirely, his newly horned head ducked low as he takes the plate and slowly begins to eat. For a moment it feels as though he’s waiting for Peter to disappear, but doing so feels a bit wrong.

“Um,” he says. “You know, you’ve always been really inspiring to me. When I got back to the surface, I started hearing things about you really quickly. All the things you did to help people. Well, sometimes it would be people threatening me, for being half-drow. But I’d heard worse, so I didn’t really care. But you were someone who helped people, protected them. Just because it was the right thing to do. I really wanted to be you, I guess. And hearing that you were helping people by commanding fiendish beasts, using a sort of magic that seemed scary… I didn’t know the source of it at the time, of course, but it made it feel a little more possible that I could be a hero too even though it was just me that people thought was scary.”

Wyll’s stopped moving, his newly clawed fingers loosening around his fork slightly. When he doesn’t break the silence, Peter pressed onward. “It’s also the sort of thing that Eilistraee—the goddess who… who tries to help drow escape—wants us to do. Most of the surface dwelling drow who worship her move around in groups and just help people where they find people who need it. When I was traveling with them and that sort of thing would happen, a lot of the time people would be afraid and run even after we helped, and that sucked a lot and hurt. But a lot of the time, even when people would look afraid to see drow show up or to see more drow show up, they’d still recognize we helped them. It’s been like that a lot for me when I go out alone. A lot of the time people just think I also want to hurt them, but sometimes they can tell I want to help them, and they’re grateful, and maybe they’ll see things a little differently in the future. It’s hard to be working against that sort of thing, or need to try and convince people you’re a person, or even when they don’t hate you outright to still be held to different standards of what you’re allowed to feel or express than other people, but… well, you’re the reason I really ever thought I had a chance to make things better for other people, so I thought that it might help to hear that it’s still… possible. It won’t be everyone.” Peter doesn’t say that people have to be able to learn, at least when it’s Wyll. If nobody’ll want to reconsider for him, then there’s not much of a chance for Peter. He doesn’t think either of them would benefit from that being voiced.

Wyll sets the plate back onto the ground with a near silence that seems almost practiced, raising himself to sit with his arm crossed over his bent knees. His head tilts, slow to account for unfamiliar weight, his rounded eyes regarding Peter carefully. “You know, I’m not used to being the one on the receiving end of pep talks. I’m usually the one giving them.”

The tips of Peter’s ears burn. He can’t read Wyll’s tone; it’s as soft and gentle and kind sounding as every word he’s ever heard Wyll say, something that in this moment is making it hard to tell if what he’s said has helped or been entirely unwelcome. “Yeah.” He says lamely. “Sorry.”

“Not at all. There’s no purpose in me sulking like this. Nor would it be fair to you or either of our tiefling friends for me to do so mourning a luxury you all have never gotten to live with.” He motions a hand to the layout of their camp behind him. Karlach is speaking with the utmost enthusiasm to Shadowheart, the flames on her skin flickering off into drifting sparks as she gestures. Peter nearly misses the other tiefling—Harry is sitting on a stone directly behind them, eyes unblinking as he watches them both.

It occurs to Peter then that Harry probably looks far more fiendish than Wyll does. His legs are unnaturally long and bizarrely shaped; if he were to stand up with them fully straightened he’d probably stand at well over seven feet tall. The skin of his arms and legs is dotted with short, blunt spikes, made of something harder and darker than the rest of his skin. And factoring in his clawed hands and feet, the shape of his horns, the barb on his tail… he’s sharp, everything to him is sharp. He’s not sure if pointing out that fact would be rude, so keeps it to himself

“Well, being a devil is probably a little bit worse.” Peter bobs his head from side to side. “But I bet the tieflings at the grove will be understanding at the least.”

Wyll sighs. “I worry about reminding them about the reason they were thrown out of Elturel to begin with.” He extends his hands away from his body. “I’ll be returning to them as the same thing they’ve been blamed for the actions of.”

“I don’t think that’s quite true.” Peter responds. “You’ll be going back there as someone who was also the victim of a devil. I think you’ll understand each other a bit better.”

Something in the man’s expression shifts. “I’m forbidden from speaking much about the pact, but I’ve never thought myself a victim of it. No matter the circumstances of it or what has happened to me over it, I’ve never regretted it. Still don’t. But I suppose she’s never done something like this before.”

Peter finds himself fiddling with the straps of his shoes. “I… also don’t really think you’re doing anything wrong by me or anyone else by being upset. If it were me, it wouldn’t all be about how people would act. If someone turned me into a… dragonborn or something, I’d be upset. It’s your body. And it was changed against your will.”

Wyll doesn’t respond to that. The breath he draws in rattles like an abandoned home in a storm. “I think I’d like to stay in camp for a day or two, if that’s alright. It is difficult for me to even keep my balance while walking right now.”

Peter nods. “I think everyone’ll understand that.” He slides his feet back under himself. “I’ll get out of your hair and let you rest.”

Before he can stand entirely, a now-clawed hand rests on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. “Before you go, Peter, thank you.” Wyll says. “And know you’re not giving yourself enough credit. Any person who could be inspired to do what you want to do is someone who already had it in them to do it.”

“Oh,” he says, and he finds himself speedwalking in the opposite direction, unable to string together anything to say until he’s laying in his tent. Something like, well, that’s also true for you, right?

—

Wyll Ravengard cannot sleep.

He still feels it in his body, as though the Nine Hells have layered themselves between his skin and muscle. The lavas of Avernus burn at his flesh, the blight of Dis eats at him like acid, the poisoned waters of Minauros rush in his blood, the oceans of Stygia bear down on his lungs, suffocating him. The horns, tail, and agonized wings all feel as heavy on him as lead out of Malbolge, sting at the places where they'd connect to his ordinary body as though the brutal colds of Cania brutalize him with every movement.

He feels like he's been made a manifestation of Nessus himself. Truly a miracle that poor Karlach would approach him with compassion rather than look upon him, her hunter, in a body that is a manifestation of her torment.

So often do people call him the hero. But so often does his goodness pale in comparison to that possessed by those around him.

Wyll can remember being a young boy and looking out his bedroom window in Baldur's gate, seeing winged tieflings, owlin, aarokocra, and joyous aasimar darting through the air and conversing. He can remember the depth of his envy towards them—oh, how he longed to know the feeling. But even if he can manage the strength to drag the massive weight just added to his body, to fly on devil's wings…

The fantasy loses its gleam.

But he will need to be able to walk. Due to the same force that had turned him into a monster—Mizora—it had been so very long since he'd had company on the road for a long time. More than he is afraid of being turned into a mindflayer, Wyll is afraid to feel this chance slip through these now fiendish hands of his. And, within that time, he owes it to that fiery woman to earn the forgiveness she'd given prematurely.

Tonight is as good as a time to built up the strength he'll need to simply move from now on.

His wings nearly knock his tent over as he wriggles out of bed, but when he manages to finally scramble to his feet against one rock, it does not immediately seem as though he's managed to wake anyone. Good—they all need their rest.

Wyll drags his body—weighed down in most every way it could be—up a small incline. It's not a long path, nor is it all that steep, but it still burns at his lungs. Is that what Mizora would do? Do she think that she's as good as enabled him with her magic, so she's resolved not to just leave him tainted but useless?

But, perhaps is his nature deeper than even the hells could touch, he finds some optimistic thing to cling to. This little path ends on a small cliff overlooking the wilds, one he hadn't yet seen for himself. It overlooks every beautiful thing this stretch of land could offer: mountains standing tall and proud to one distant direction, beaches of the river to the other. Happy, lushcious plantlife in the spaces between. The moon is over his head, proud and gleaming, and more stars than he's seen in ages along with it.

Sights like this have always lightened the burden of being thrown out of home so young. Oft were they the things keeping him going. If he must, he shall look for things like this when the pain of his own body threatens to crush his bones.

…Very suddenly, he thinks someone must be watching him. That with newly supernatural senses, he can hear breaths as if they were given right into his ears.

It occurs to Wyll that he’s alone, that he hadn’t even thought to bring his rapier. He’s not far from the encampment by any means, but it is still enough space he may have put himself in danger by doing so—particularly, he realizes, because he has no idea of if his ability to use magic has been altered by his transformation.

“Show yourself.” He commands. Perhaps, looking like this, there would be other ways of getting out of the situation.

In the split second in which he blinks, the path before him goes from stretching on empty in front of him to being blocked by a demonic, green skinned figure. Their other tiefling is standing in front of him, the easy smile that didn’t reach scarlet eyes as cold as Auril’s hall wiped away, replaced by completely slack neutrality. Like every one of the muscles of his face were things he’d been needing to command individually all along. It doesn’t take much for Wyll to realize that it had, in fact, always been the case.

Very few ways the tiefling emoted reached his eyes, but he’d done so enough otherwise that Wyll hadn’t questioned it much. In retrospect, when Harry thought nobody was watching him, he stared at the other members of their party rather intently—particularly when their companions were in moments of specific emotion. Perhaps it was mostly mimicry.

The idea doesn’t alarm him as much as it might otherwise. Harry is staring at him, but his hands are empty. Regardless of what might be going on behind his eyes, he doesn’t appear to have any intentions of harming Wyll right now.

“Devils. They say they’re particularly instinctual for sentient creatures. Plenty of academics arguing that drow or goblins or gith become cruel by way of their society.” Harry comments slowly. It is, Wyll realizes, a rather strange contrast that Harry speaks with. An attraction to articulating things in a way where the vocabulary would make him appear noble or learned—which he may well still be—despite how the specifics of his accent speak to the deepest, most undesirable parts of the lower city. “But not for fiends. All that vindictiveness and ambition, violent misanthropy, nobody’s trying to persuade that it’s not just wired in.” Cicadas and crickets fill the space he leaves in between there. “Do you feel that?”

It had been one of the things that shook Wyll to think of the most, perhaps the thing that had lost him the most sleep. “I don’t believe so. Or at least I haven’t noticed it yet.” He responds. “And if I do, I’ve always believed how a person chose to behave was far more important. Anything like that is something I cannot control, but I can control what it is I actually do.”

There’s the slightest twitch to one of Harry’s brows. He stands there silently, gears so clearly turning in his head Wyll almost expects they could open up his skull and find he’d been an escaped automaton learning humanoid behavior the whole time. Then his lips draw part, razor sharp teeth clicking together as he lets out a sound that only might be laughter. Then, a too-wide grin splits his face, and he jabs one clawed finger at Wyll. “You… are so good at being good.” He states.

Wyll doesn’t know what to make of that. “I don’t know if there’s enough of a right way of being good for that to be possible.”

“Bullshit.” There’s no annoyance or anger in his tone—there’s just nothing. “There’s rules. I can tell. You and Karlach and Peter like to follow them and Shadowheart and Astarion are aware of them enough to see themselves as… rebellious when they don’t follow them.”

His brow furrows. “I don’t think legality is quite the same as morality.”

Harry blinks. “I know.” Again, his scarlet toned eyes drift away from Wyll slightly. He doesn’t seem like he at all understands why Wyll would bring up the bounds of law. It only makes things more unclear for Wyll. There’s infinite variation in what a person’s set of morals would look like. Experiences shape the emotions that make those choices. “You and the rest all know the baselines of what all that is. You and the drow especially so, and you’re a lot less flexible about it. You both just know it. The wizard and the cleric both know ‘em because they both get weird about it when they know they’re breaking them, they just care more about other things. Elf just likes himself more than he likes them. But all of you know. Except the gith, and she’s not from here at all. So she hasn’t learned them.”

It clicks then. Shape the emotions. The moral impulses any of the members of their camp possess are emotional. Examining Harry's face more closely, he thinks he understands where the issue is lying for him. “...For most people, regardless of whether they follow it, the things that intuitively are right and wrong is determined emotionally. It’s what people feel. I think most who want to say their morals are anything logical are simply trying to find patterns in their emotions.”

Briefly, Harry looks like he thinks Wyll is fucking with him. “Oh.” He jabs the barb of his tail into the dirt passively.

“But,” Wyll assesses, watching as the tiefling’s tail begins to flick. “You don’t feel much towards other people.”

Harry’s eyes narrow on his face before he nods. “I don’t.” He articulates slowly. “Far less towards everything else as well, I imagine.”

It occurs to Wyll that he should probably find that more directly alarming than he does. More dangerous. But, regardless of what his intentions are right now, whatever he’s thinking, the fact that Harry is asking is what Wyll believes deserves his priority. What he’d said earlier goes both ways—the tiefling hasn’t yet done anything to warrant hostility, and that remains true until his actions say otherwise.

“I’d expected you’d be more upset if you noticed.”

Wyll folds his arms, a smile flickering over his face. “Why so?”

“You say that the reason almost everyone understands those rules of what would be right or not is out of emotion. You have built your entire life on that rightness, which you’re telling me exists because of how people feel, something that I do not do.” There’s nothing resembling guilt or shame in any part of him. It’s simply an assessment, his reasoning, and not unfair.

Wyll shakes his head softly, finding himself all the more aware of the weight of horns and wings on his body, and huffs out a laugh. “Like I said. You’re not in control of that, but you are of how you act.” The muscles in his back and thighs are beginning to go stiff from the weight, so he drags himself over to a boulder and sits. “I’m sorry, I’m aching quite a lot right now. Though, I do want to know what you were trying to get out of coming to talk to me.” He offers another smile, reassurance he doesn’t know if Harry would even care for. “As honestly as you could, if you’d please. It all stays between us, if you’d prefer that.”

Harry pauses, folding his arms and finding a log across from him. Mirroring him, Wyll notes. “Not going to get angry if you don’t like my reasoning?”

“You have my word. I’m afraid I can’t offer much more than that.”

Harry leans backwards, claws digging into the log, locking into a hollow stare. “It’s rather obvious that the way I naturally want to act is considered wrong and punished when others notice. I don’t care much about if what I am doing is wrong, but I have very little to go off of if I want to feign it.”

Wyll… was expecting Harry to try and lie to him, at least in some minor way. “What do you mean, the way you naturally want to act?”

“I like violence. The only time I think I’m ever really happy is in a fight, or when I’m killing someone. Or, I like the smaller things too. Stealing. Or anything else that hurts people. I want to do it.” The tip of his tail flicks more and more rapidly, fingers clenching and digging his claws into the log.

Yet another thing clicks in his mind. “You killed Alfira.”

“Not intentionally.” When it registers that Harry’s not lying, that this too is honest, it’s somehow more of a shock than that he did it to begin with. “I woke up over her body. Certainly did it, though, I could feel the ache in my arm.” His words are growing more and more rapid. His pupils are slits, his hand seeming to move at his subconscious command, fingers curled like around a dagger, jerking forward in small motions. “But I liked that I’d done it. I liked that I’d done it so brutally, that she must have hurt. Really, I just wish I could remember it.” Wyll watches as, for the first time, he sees an actual smile on his face, one that wasn’t a facade. “Liked the fact I got away with it. For the same reason I like stealing, I think. Doesn’t make me happy like hurting people does, but I like the adrenaline. It’s like a drug.” His eyes, the slits of his pupils narrowed into pinpricks, lock on to Wyll’s. “Don’t look like that, it’s not compulsive. I imagine killing everyone I meet, and yet you’re all still alive, huh?”

Though his first reaction is… anything but kind, he swallows it. It remains largely true that Harry hadn’t done anything: it still registers as absurd, but that was somehow honest, he hadn’t chosen to do so. For some reason, due to some little mechanism of the tiefling’s brain he can’t comprehend, Harry, who spoke so candidly about the idea he enjoyed violence, had chosen over and over to keep not acting on it. “I am curious, is it a lie that you have amnesia?”

“It’s the truth. I can’t remember my real name, I found this one on a grave.” Without being prompted, Harry continues to talk. That faux-high class manner in which he words things is shattering, but it’s doing so in time with his muscles going slack. He’s… eager to talk about those things he’s been hiding under the performance he gives the rest of the party, in no small part because Wyll’s calm and lack of condemnation has left him comfortable. “Only things I can ‘member are that I’ve definitely killed a lot of people, and that I don’t think I love people. Or get attached, whatever.”

“I see. If that’s the case, I am curious as to why you’re traveling with us.”

His teeth grind together for a moment. “I can hardly go a day without horrible headaches. It’s more reliable. And I like the drow, and the drow’s a sap who keeps letting people mooch off our camp.”

Wyll tilts his head. “Didn’t you say you don’t grow attached to people? Why are you favoring Peter?”

“I don’t like the drow out of mushy feelings, if that’s what you’re asking. I like the drow because he almost fucking worships me. If I didn’t need the rest of you to survive an’ I could get away with it, I think I’d keep him, whether I just culled the herd a little or did away with all of you. He follows me around like a dog, hangs off every word I say. I like that. I like to feel powerful. Certainly not attached to him. It’s fun to watch him keep running off and trusting people and getting punished for it over and over. He’s almost a pet to me, and I think that’s as good as it gets for anyone.”

Wyll leans back, puts an easy smile on his face as if it’s not a deeply unsettling thing to hear. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t murder me, too.”

“Wouldn’t kill you. You’re useful. You’re the only one who I can do this with. The drow is my favorite, but the cleric, the gith, and that other tiefling can actually handle themselves out here.” His face contorts into something like disgust “The wizard’s never seen a real fight, and the fucking elf just sits around. When we found him, he tried to attack the drow, then just lied his way into getting in, and he has the audacity to sit around drinking wine all day. At least the wizard maintains the place.”

He speaks it as a passive comment. “Are you not doing the exact same thing with Peter?”

Harry’s words are slightly distorted, high enough to sound sharp and uncanny, thoroughly tainted with hints of the lowest planes, his eyes stretched wide as he stares intently into the grass, the exaggerated movements of his jaw threatening to rip the skin of his cheeks. “He shouldn’t have because Peter’s mine!” The moment the words slip out of his mouth, clenched fingers shoot up to his head. “Rgh!”

Wyll says nothing. All his impulses say that, regardless of his prior thinking, maybe the tiefling being comfortable might be for the worst. This man very clearly is a danger, the chances that not intervening in what he’s hiding from the party will end horrifyingly are incredibly high. But, right here, for the moment, he does and says nothing.

Harry’s claws draw bleeding lines into the planes of his face as he lowers them. “I get headaches.” He repeats. His jaw sets, brows knitting together as he returns to directing his gaze at Wyll.

“Why do you perform emotion? There’s not a need, we’re not exactly at the luxury of kicking someone out for a thing like that.”

Almost mechanically, the near-manic look relaxes into slack neutrality. “I’ve experimented, to see if I could ask what I asked you. It disturbs them when I do it for even a second; they’ll pester me on if I’m feeling particularly illithid or if something’s the matter.” He continues speaking before Wyll can. “And I care about that because it’s more useful to have them like me. It is a bit exhausting, but it’s still easier.”

“Is that why you’re enjoying talking to me?”

There’s the slightest confused twitching in his face, like he hadn’t realized that he liked it. “I guess so.”

A rather specific theory has lodged itself into his mind. By all means, he shouldn’t. It’s likely to end terribly. But with those suspicions comes a name from stories he heard as a boy, one he’d very much admired. “Okay, I’ll help you learn.”

Harry’s surprised, but he leans back and stares at him expectantly as though he expects Wyll could do it all now. He shakes his head at that, letting out a bemused chuckle. “You won’t get anywhere if I just list you things most people consider bad. It would be far too shallow for you to get anything from it. What you need is for things to be explained in terms you’ll understand.” Harry’s staring at him rather blankly. “Every few days, we’ll find a more private spot when we make camp. I will explain any events from those days, and you’ll talk to me.”

“What are you getting out of that?” Harry doesn’t hesitate for a moment. “Seems like everything you just said is benefitting me. I’m not planning on offing you ‘cause we talked, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Wyll forces his body upward and back onto his feet, stretching out his legs and trying not to topple over in the process.”I’m afraid you’ll need to make your peace with not knowing.” The gradual blues of the sunrise are beginning to appear between the trees. “I’m surprised you’d tell me that much, when I might tell someone.”

Harry scoffs. “You don’t have the nerve. I’d respect you more if you did it.” He hops off his log, heading back to camp only a slight distance behind him. Wyll watches passively as, the sight of figures appears down the trail, the tiefling’s face shifts from blank to something faintly smiling, loose and confident. Something not-so entirely unnatural. He supposes it’s an impressive thing to play a character at every moment.

—

The tiefling smith raises his pale-haired head before they can make themselves known, inhaling deeply like he can smell it. "I thought I sensed an infernal around here. But you aren't from Elturel. What's your story?"

Karlach bows her head. "I spent a good bit of time in Avernus. Enlisted against my will by the archdevil Zariel. Same as you, if you're from Elturel." Her voice laces with anger. "The devils were delightered when your city was swallowed up. I thought I had you for keeps. Glad you got out."

The smith grimaces. "I got lucky. It looks like you did too. And… you brought some infernal machinery with you."

"A little gift from Zariel." The word is spoken with immense sarcasm. "Keeps me burning hot."

"Very hot, by the smell of it." He tilts his head back, contemplative. "Might be burning out a piston ring, or leaking oil. Mind if I take a listen?" Curiously, he doesn't need to ask what the machine is or where it was placed in her. And only looking with his ears—this man is good.

"Be my guest." She tucks her arms behind her back. "But don't get too close, or your eyes'll melt shut."

The smith ducks close, staying far enough away that his hair doesn't begin to light. His eyes shut—but don't melt that way. A small grimace begins to form, one of pain—"Phew!" When he pulls away, he does so somewhat enthusiastically. "You really are burning up! Whoever put that engine together tried to house metallurgised demono-valves inside a ra-gnax alloy casement. Very risky." Harry would think half those words were fake if this man didn't speak them as seriously as he does. "I might be able to help, but I'll need infernal iron. And a prayer my hammer'll survive the work. That thing isn't meant to operate outside Avernus. I'm not sure how much longer it'll run, the way it's going."

Though Harry himself has never heard of such a metal, Karlach's face lights up—and not with fire. "I managed to squirrel a bit away before I ran!" She chirps. "Here—" The metal is pitch black, unmelting even in her flaming-hot palm, but it's edges glint with crimson like bismuth does every other color. "Will you be able to turn down the temperature a bit? Worried I'm gonna go in for a handshake and singe someone's arm off one of these days." She raises a one of her very-on-fire hands as if to demonstrate.

"I'd worry about surviving the night first." The smith says gravely. "But help one, help both. If we can cool you off, it'll stabilize that engine and allow you to touch whomever you please." He tells her.

The metal is given over. "See what you can do."

"Can't imagine this weight where my heart should be." The smith utters sympathetically as he takes it. "Give me just a moment, and I think…" He practically slings the stuff into his forge, working it well and with expert precision, but also much more quickly than Harry'd expect.

Soon enough, it's shaped into an odd, horseshoe-shaped casing with a great number of holes around its top. "There. You'll need to install it yourself; I'm not sure there are gloves thick enough in all the realms to withstand such heat."

Karlach turns away to install it, but Harry thinks he catches a glimpse of hellsfire, an enforced ribcage swinging outwards from the sternum, and a lot of gorey muscle. But when she turns back, she is unphased—and quite chipper. "That feels… good!" She utters with immense enthusiasm. "I'm still burning hot as Hell's hole, but I feel… less changeable! Cheers, mate!"

"Pleasure." He truly means it, his eyes glittering like topaz. "And as for the heat, though I haven't got any solutions now, I'm not giving up. Could be the combustion chamber needing its own insulation, or enhanced coolant…" He looks like he's been reignited by the idea of finding solutions himself. "Find me again in Baldur's Gate, and if I'm worth my salt I'll have figured something out by then."

"What's your name?" Karlach questions. "Gotta know who to look for."

He looks like he has to quiet the reflex to offer a hand to shake. "Dammon." He responds.

"Karlach. And hopefully, by then, I'll have some way to repay you, Dammon!"

Dammon replies to that with a stern shake of the head. "No, no. After Elturel, us tieflings must stick together—and that applies to you, even if you weren't from there. You were victimized the same."

—

After a day and change on the road without the warlock, Wyll drags himself out of his tent and, despite the way his wings still weigh down his body, offers to rejoin them on the road. Perhaps just to babysit the lunatic he's realized travels with them. That, however, is not the part of that day Harry knows he'll remember.

A gnoll pack on one road, amongst the butchered remains of a Zhentarim caravan. Harry would probably barely recall the Zhent bit of it either, but what he knows his mind is the type to crave remembrance of is the hyenas that linger amongst the gnolls, and one half-dead one he'd found squirming about on the ground, in pain. The smell of the hyena would be deplorable to any other than himself, but he knows the smell of its nearly corpsed body better than most things in the world.

This pathetic animal's death will bring forth life not of its own species, but one far more demonic and grand, a species that he feels a flicker of abnormal, unexpected affection for. It'll have a young gnoll crawl from its bleeding entrails. Who would he be if he didn't give Yeenoghu its dues and enjoy the show?

Rib-bone snap as the hyena is at long last hollowed from the inside out, it's stomach skin splitting open like a rotted fruit, intestines and other offals spilling forth alongside a frenzy of claws and fangs bearing the constant starved state of its demonic master. The raw hate of life, reared from the miracle of death! Oh, it would bring a tear to his eye. The fresh, bloodstained gnoll would descend in cannibalism upon the flesh it came from if it weren't for his beating heart before it. A shame to kill it when it stands a kindred spirit, but of the two he is the stronger, and that is merely how the world be.

At the least, none of these gnolls are particularly exemplary specimens. It's not as much a tragedy as it might be to cut their lot down.

Harry is then enthusiastic to follow the path of creatures that are the only life he's ever enjoyed knowing existed. He likes killing them as he would anything else, which probably leaves it a net even, but it's more than he could offer any other live creature! Of course he'd still pulp them, but they all pulped those Zhents so well! He almost craves to pat them on their fluffy, murderous heads as he fells them.

Their path leads him up to a cave with a duo of trapped, pathetic Zhentarim within. If such creatures could make intelligent allies without devouring them, Harry would surely side with gnolls over Zhentarim—who tend to be just as slimy, and not as, for lack of better word, cute—gnolls will always descend to devour flesh.

He notes, however, that a parasite crawls from the corpse of the pack's leader—and he wonders how deeply he could have commanded it. Could he have had the best of both worlds and made her and her pack devour those two men?

But no, he has to tolerate meat that can speak. "By the gods, you're a sweet sight!" The elder cries at the sight of them and dead gnolls. Harry, however, finds himself too infuriated by all the noise a living humanoid can make to respond. He lets Peter do the talking—and lets himself make life as hard as he can for this bitch. "Did any of my crew manage to survive?"

"No, it's a grim sight." Peter says, as obvious to Harry palming some keys and pouncing upon the guarded cargo as anyone could be.

Somewhere in this man and his worthless gray matter's opinions, he offers a password for some place near Waukeen's Rest up the road: little serpent, long shadow.

But by the time they stumble their way there, Waukeen's Rest is in no state for welcoming them. Ablaze! Oh, goody, so much destruction on this day.

"Drow!" The Flaming Fist at the entrance screeches; in seconds she goes from praying over some dead body to shrieking up a storm and pointing a finger at Peter. "More drow! Stay back, we'll not let you cause more damage!"

Peter raises his empty hands. "I'm harmless! Unarmed!" He cries. "I only want to help."

The Fist backs down, but her eyes stay on Peter. "If the Counsellor dies, we'll have your head!" She snaps, nodding at the inn door.

Peter ushers them all for the door, going to speak to the lot trying to bash it open like a child going for goat bone marrow. That Fist takes one look at him and shouts, though this time the words aren't so… that. "Grand Duke Ravengard might be inside! Don't just stand there—push!"

"What happened to this place?" Peter asks.

"Your kind happened!" She snaps. Ah, nevermind. Killed that benefit of the doubt fast. "Now, unless you're here to finish the job, get over here and push!"

Peter obliges, doing a damn good job of it too. The inn door shatters under Peter’s strength, startling even the drow himself. A whirl of shocked stares from the Fists immediately fix to them, but are soon once again turned inward toward the burning building. As though they hesitate not to assume freak-strength is just a feature of all drow, and they should just be glad that power is on their side right now.

Arson is overrated. Usually can't see the victim die. Unless at the stake, which is better than arson. Only fun for the number of dead it can rack up, and even then it requires too much organization to truly come from within.

“Stay where you are!” The apparently-lead Fist hollers into the smoke. The band of them go charging blindly in one after the other, no strategy other than hitting things until it starts going well.

Typical Flaming Fist, the recesses of Harry’s mangled head provide. He can’t recall the specifics of ever needing to evade them, only that at some point he must have and that it wasn’t particularly hard to do so.

The moment they’ve stepped into a haze of thick smoke with red-hot cinders dotting every Peter’s ever-wide, sort of bug like eyes are trained up the staircase. “The door’s blocked, there’s no way to get her out quickly that way.” He murmurs. “We need to find a way around.” His legs are twisting in the opposite direction in seconds, directing those eyes around at the rest of them. While Wyll and Karlach turn in overeager trust, Harry’s feet find themselves still.

“I can hear another person.” He sounds more offhanded than he’d really like to his own ears, so he plays up urgency and worry when he continues. “You all go, I’ll try and find them.”

All their faces are open books—admiration from his drow, the sort that’s only sealing whatever trust he thinks he has in Harry, a satisfying tinge of mistrustful hesitation from Wyll—so he’s not a complete blind moron, that’s good to know—and annoyance from Lae’zel. Not towards Harry specifically, she’s simply making no move to conceal the fact she’d rather be doing anything else.

Once they’re all scurrying off in one direction, any need to rush or seem rushed fades from Harry. He can take all the time in the world to watch them make their way to begin such an adorably heroic little quest. It would certainly be cute to watch the drow in a situation like that, he thinks he might even miss not being able to! Ah, he can always pick Wyll’s mind about it later. Frame it like he wants to mimic the valiance of him or whatever. There might not be many other chances for what Harry is looking to get out of this small tragedy, but Harry feels certain there will be plenty of other chances to watch Peter skitter around, so full of optimism, as he tries his hand at more helping, only to look all owlish when it blows up in his face. Wyll at least should know better than to let the kid get too damaged outside of his watch.

Turning, he saunters in the direction of the cry he’d heard. There’s no rush for him, he’d prefer it if the flames were a bit hungrier before he made his way into things. Harry likes the adrenaline.

The adrenaline is also his form of measure. It’s rare he physically responds to something emotional—there’s little anger or fear that his mind can manage, and though it manages anger easily and in droves, the rushing in his veins that comes after is almost independent of how much his heart beats.

Harry stands at the secondary doorway, staring at the annoyingly intact room within. There’s flame beginning to creep down the carpeted stairs, but that’s piddling. He can be patient, he can watch the fire descent the steps and alight the wood beneath, light the draperies and bedsheets of the room within. It makes his heart beat just a bit more quickly to witness it. But not enough.

The room he waits with the utmost patience to step his way into is one so devoured by inferno that no part of it’s former purpose is visible. He draws in a breath and steps in, the flames that lick his thick skin setting his blood alight. It’s to his immense delight that the fire can hardly touch him. He has all the time in the world to make his way up a now delightfully fragile staircase, feeling wood strain beneath him, and make his way through.

The poor bastard has even managed to remain alive. A completely ordinary man, a thousand like him in the world, pinned beneath fallen supporting beams. Too feeble to shove them off himself. Without magical healing, it probably wouldn’t matter anyways. He’d be taken out by collapsed lungs, or by his system being overwhelmed by necrotized flesh in his crushed arm. Things are merely the same with Harry there as without him—no harm done. Harry is merely letting the world do things the way it would like to.

“Help… me…” The man rasps, his free arm going slack against the debris. “Please… I can’t…”

A wide grin spreads across Harry’s face. “Na.” He whispers, leaning backwards until he meets a wall. It still clearly reaches the man’s ears. His eyes go wide, and he begins thrashing, no doubt putting only more strained on what must be a chest filled by shattered ribs. Only killing himself faster.

His nails scrape against the thick, heavy beams. “You must!” He chokes out. “There are Fist…”

“Right, and they’ll arrest me over this?” He laughs aloud. “They’re Fist. Not a single one of ‘em is stepping back in here once they’ve got all the rich folk they’re paid to give a damn about out of here.” He lifts a leg, slamming down one foot atop the beams. Not enough to kill this bastard, but enough that his eyes bug out enough he imagines them popping out entirely. “Nothing’s gonna save you.” Harry trills out.

The fire up here is already beginning to crawl over the beam, then this person’s clothing. He cries out, the sound muffled by the ashes coating his esophagus. Flame eats through his clothing, the remaining cinders sloughing off skin as it is set alight. Pathetically, he doesn’t even have the strength to really struggle or scream, his jaw simply falls open in a silent scream as flesh melts. It’s a beautiful thing, pale flesh growing as hot as coals and taking on the appearance of something stiff and solid. If he went and got his fingers all over it, the illusorily tough meat would come apart in ashy layers. And as it blackens, that’s exactly what it does, without needing the prompting of someone’s hands.

The beam protecting some small space of his chest doesn’t save him for long; the blaze merely eats its way around the covered skin, devouring his fingers and traveling up his arms in slow movements, as though savoring this man. But soon, that’s not enough for the mindless force, and the fire lights its way up his arms and begins to light his face.

It might be only a few blissful seconds where flame burns at his face and he screeches so fierce, but beauteous seconds they be.

—

Again, Peter’s body weight is enough to utterly destroy the rubble blocking this doorway. It’s easier to just fling himself into it—there’s not a chance in the hells he’s put his own secrets over the safety of innocents, but, maybe a bit selfishly, Peter does just want to avoid the questioning that being that strong would inevitably draw. He rolls on his shoulder, landing on the balls of his feet into the space, littered with barrels and crates.

A familiar spark down his spine draws his eyes up. There’s a burnt hole in the ceiling. Bingo.

Through the smoke, he can see the dark shapes of twisting horns and wide wings rushing in ahead of the curved, intricate shapes of Githyanki armor. Their footfalls come to a sudden stop when Peter drives a kick into the nearest crate, sending it sliding across the floorboards to a stop centered beneath that hole. “Start stacking crates beneath that gap so we can get her down.” His voice comes out so commanding it immediately makes Wyll and Lae’zel’s faces both twist, and another jolt passes through him, his chest growing sharply cold. No, no, what the hell is he doing, who does he think he is? He’s gonna get—, he should be—

When the smoke grows a bit thinner for a second, the sudden freeze stops. They’re not angry with him—he has to repeat that to him over and over. They’re not angry, they’re not, they have no reason to be. Wyll looks proud, and even through Lae’zel’s near permanent scowl is a glint of something like respect.

He shakes his head, backing to the far wall. It’s making his skin prickle, being watched, but now really isn’t the time to get caught up in such things. There are, and will always be, more important things than Peter being uncomfortable. He breaks into a hard sprint.

Peter’s feet meet the top of the crate, knees bending to propel him upwards. He meets the flooring above their heads with his fingertips first, paying no mind to the glowing cinders that sear the undersides of his hands. Kneels drawn close to his chest, he contracts every muscle in his arms, lifting himself at the same time he’s drawing his bent legs up through the space between his arms.

He hands on his feet amongst a fierce tunnel of fire, eager and hungry enough that his sleeves are set ablaze the second he’s standing, tongues of flame lapping over his face in searingly painful stripes. Peter shakes his attention off the stripes of heat lighting up then lingering on every inch of his body. It’s not important right now.

Peter rattles the handle of the door on the opposite end of the blazing hallway, receiving stubborn rattling from the other end in response.

A commanding, direct voice echoes from beyond the door, who’s wood has stubbornly refused to alight. “I’m trapped. Someone, open this door!”

“I’m coming, stay where you are!” Peter hadn’t expected smoke to brutalize his voice so quickly. Even thinking of it has made him brutally aware of the clogged-feeling ache in his lungs.

He raises his hands, rapping knuckles against the outside of the door, waiting for the hollowness of a weak point or the muffled echo where a hinge muddies sound. Then, he backs a body-length or two away from the doorframe, hoping desperately that neither of the others could somehow see him up here. Then, Peter drops into the crouch, extending his arms outward, palm up, towards the doorway.

The opalescent threads shoot from his wrists and secure tightly to the points he’d singled out, their ends flared out like spider webs. Just like they always do. And just like always, the sight makes him shudder.

But they’ve also always made a better focus for his strength than even his own hands. When he draws his arms back toward his body, puts his muscle into yanking at them, the door doesn’t come off its hinges. It breaks clean in two.

Peter ensures they’ve vanished before the wood elf woman who stumbles out, hand drawn up to her face to muffle her coughs, has the chance to see them. There’s a gleam of gratitude in her strict features when she raises her head to look at him, but it rapidly morphs into startled fear at the sight if his features—of purple skin, pointed ears, and the redness in the whites of his eyes.

“Wait!” Peter flings his hands into the air. It’s one of the most appealing things about fighting with only his own fists; people are always more willing to hear out an unarmed drow. And she, an elf herself, should be able to infer from how short-cropped his hair is, shouldn’t she? “I’m not with the raiders, I swear! I’m here to help. I saw that the Fist wouldn’t be able to break in from that side, so I found a different path. I have people with me!” People who aren’t even a sliver drow, he doesn’t say.

Her eyes travel from his empty hands, to his hair, then to the silver figure adorning the brooch pinning his robes shut. That severe, commanding look is plastered back into place as she nods curtly to him, emerging from the cracked doorframe. “I’m afraid my thanks will have to wait. You have a way out of this place, correct?”

“Yes! Yes, just follow me.” She keeps up with him far better than he’d expected, only trailing inches behind him on the sprint back towards the collapsed floor. Lae’zel and Wyll have crates staircased all the way up to that gap, so he hops to the halfway point and offers his burn-blistered hand, helping the woman down. She freezes, briefly, at the sight of Wyll’s new visage, the clearly fiendish nature of him. She knows him?

It doesn’t stop her for long. The bottoms of her shoes click against the final crates, and then against the expanse of wood that can hardly be called flooring, eager to make a brisk exit.

When Peter follows, pathing through one of many doorways he’d left shattered, a hand suddenly squeezes his shoulder. Wyll’s jaw is open, dangling in the air, yet still silent for a moment. “...Impressive work.” He says, and Peter thinks he’s left the words so simple because they both know that the silence before was more flattering than anything he might have said.

Now that Peter’s body is still, surrounded by cool and clear air, he finds himself engulfed in a quite sudden burst of soreness and pain. He briefly raises his hands towards his face, taking in the darkened, soot stained stripes lining his arms and hands. It can wait. He knows he can keep himself standing.

As if following some sort of cosmic queue, there’s a mote of green rushing towards him. Clawed hands are gripping his wrists, raising the limbs he’d just been looking at to inspect them. “Shit, Pete.” Harry murmurs, eyes roving over his burns, then over their companions as if inspecting them for the same. His mouth falls into a frown at the sight of how comparatively intact both are, his eyes meeting Wyll’s and boring into them. The moment he’s looking at the warlock, his expression becomes something harder, a bit angrier, before his attention turns back to Peter. “By the gods, they didn’t just let you go and fling yourself in there alone, did they?”

Peter, however, is finding it a bit difficult to focus on whatever that exchange was for more than a few seconds. Pete. He’s Pete now. Oh, wow. His legs are jelly, simply following the path Harry sets as he pulls them both towards the fountain that Flaming Fist have begun to surround the Counsellor against, sitting Peter on the ledge of it. Harry pushes his legs apart, sinking to his knees between them and yet still so tall he can easily inspect Peter’s various scattered burns “Uh,” he says, but there aren’t any other words or… sounds waiting behind his lips.

Beyond Harry’s very close face, a thing that’s hard not to focus on, Wyll has drawn his wings and tail tight to his body. “Counselor Florrick! Are you alright?” He does know her, then.

The sound of splashing water reaches his ears, then, ever cold as winter, Harry’s wetted fingertips are rubbing soot off his face. Heat rushes to his cheeks, but this heat is anything but unpleasant. Harry… has a very nicely shaped jawline. And nice horns, they have a really nice… curve. Or something. Peter thinks he’d like to know how they’d feel in his hands. Is that weird, would it be the same as how drunk people outside of taverns used to make comments about him being a drow, the sort he liked even less than people just being afraid? Either way, he thinks he shouldn’t say that.

Peter misses it immediately when Harry’s fingertips draw away, but they linger only inches away from his cheeks. Does Harry want to keep touching him too? He really hopes so. “May I?” Harry asks.

“...a new duty calls. Drow have taken Grand Duke Ulder Ravengard. Westward, if my eyes and ears can be believed.” The counselor's words drift vaguely through one of his ears and out of the other. That name sounds important.

“Won’t… won’t it hurt you? It did before.” Peter stutters out. In time with the recollection of long scarlet hair, it occurs to him it makes complete sense that he develops crushes this easily. Harry even has red hair too, doesn’t he? And red eyes.

Harry laughs, one of his ears twitching. Peter can feel his breath. “I think I’m in more of a state to handle it than you are.” He briefly presses a fingertip to Peter’s nose.

Right, he’s a tiefling. Despite how he’s frigid cold in comparison to Karlach’s roaring hot, he’ll deal well with fire all the same. Oh— “That person you heard, did you get them out?” He blurts out, only to feel something in him drop in time with Harry’s expression.

The conversation behind them is getting increasingly hard to focus on. “Report to the manip and send for reinforcements. We must find the Duke.”

“He was dead before I could get to him.” Harry says gravely, shoulders slumping and hands falling slack into his lap. “Trapped under rubble. I thought there might be a chance, he was still sort of twitching when I found him, but once I got all off him…” Harry shakes his head. “Nerves can just… do bizarre things in the recently deceased.”

Peter reaches his hands out, brushing his fingers along armored shoulders. The leathers Harry wears are as soot-ridden as his face. “Oh, damn.” He murmurs. “I’m sorry. That’s awful. I’m sure there was nothing you could have done.”

Wyll’s face has dropped too. “No, no, it can’t be. You don’t mean—”

“Yes, Wyll.” The Counsellor cuts him off. “The drow have taken…”

Harry’s bottom lip trembles slightly. “You’re right, I just wish…” His shaky speech drowns out the rest of the statement behind them. Peter hadn’t expected him to be so affected by something of this variety, he’s unbelievably composed over most forms of violence. Then again, most forms of violence they’re confronted with aren’t involving real innocents. “I hate to feel powerless.” He says, and there’s something thunderingly, stunningly honest to it, something drawn from the depths of Harry. “Will you let me at least do this? Please?”

How could Peter ever imagine saying no to him? “Of course, yeah.” He nods rapidly, one of the downswings landing his jaw back into Harry’s hands. The tiefling smirks a bit, his eyes half shut and amused. A series of strange noises leave his throat, so he closes his own to prevent any more of… that.

Harry exudes a constant frigidity, but the healing that flows in a stream from his palms isn’t a frozen lake, it’s only in possession of the coolness a spring brook would be. It’s as though he’s been laid back first into that very brook, the rushing water cooling his burns before beginning to merely wash them away, little by little.

The magic works from the worst of the burns to the lesser wounds, Harry’s hands beginning to slide down his face as it works. His fingers drift along Peter’s jawline, then dip lower, one of his fingers then pressing gently against Peter’s pulsepoint. It occurs to Peter then that maybe, he should be alarmed by having Harry’s hands around his throat. Moreso for the sorts of… suspicions about Alfira he hears Shadowheart and Gale cast around in whispers. But he’s not.

Every nerve in Peter’s body is absolutely electric by the time Harry withdraws his hands. Man, they must put something into that… paladin… healing, he thinks as he pulls his eyes open.

“Feeling better?” Harry chirps, settling back against what Peter thinks qualify as his heels.

He can’t make himself not be smiling, the muscles in his face just refuse. “Yeah, a lot better.” Peter’s lowering eyes catch sight of the narrow end of Harry’s tail coiled around one of his ankles, the barbed end of it resting harmlessly against his shin. Oh. “Thank you.”

—

When they stride out behind the no-longer-burning Waukeen's Rest and swing open the door to the Zhent's place, the first thing that Harry notices is a large quantity of Firewine stacked before the doorway—Firewine, famously explosive. Zhentarim indeed.

As they stride in, another thing becomes apparent; a younger man crouched between the shelves, both himself and this man spotting each other in the same moment. His palm ignites as he curses.

"Little serpent, long shadow." Seems very Zhent to force someone to be willing to snuff themselves guarding a place.

The fire flickers away. "Helm's orbs, I thought you were Flaming Fist!" He cries in relief. "Down you go, then. They'll be on us soon, so if you wanna trade you'd better be quick. Entrance is hidden behind the wardrobe."

Their procession takes them downward, yet almost instantly Harry's sticky fingers are wandering, finding produce, meat, and cheese amongst this here spread of crates. "Harry?" Someone croaks out warily, and he groans.

"They're Zhentarim. They're not trading in this. They won't notice." He insists. "All the important junk is below, this is a cover."

He's not sure if they believe him, but who cares.

The true body of the hideout leaves itself beneath yet another ladder, though one indeed behind a wardrobe, one that descends down past water smoothed sandstones into the body of a larger cavern, with smaller gaps allowing in enough sunlight to function. Torches dot overshadowed areas, not allowing this entrance the slightest touch of privacy.

The dusty brown, almost burnt looking walls split into the illusion of a fork. On one end, sturdily set iron wrought gates seal out the way down into the belly of the cavern, the steep pathing no doubt at least somewhat trapped. On the other, half rotted makeshift scaffolding reinforces an opening in cave wall that overlooks the greater part of the cave, but no path is provided down into it. The second they step into the area this great gap exposes, the purpose it exists for becomes quite clear.

“Hold it!” A pale, round faced woman with hair as dust colored as the surrounding stone—a natural camouflage—barks out at their approach. She has herself situated on a platform on stone formations nearly entirely parallel that which they make their way across. A crossbow sits heavy in her arms, one built with more power than the difficult to make out individual behind her points at them as well. “That’s far enough. State your business, and maybe we’ll kill you clean.”

Before any of them can respond or any of their allies can too-hastily draw their own weapons, the secondary guard’s crossbow falls a bit slack, hushed words falling into the dust-haired Zhent’s ears. She grins a wolf’s grin. “Ah, nevermind, you all must be Rugan’s saviors.” She jerks a hand over her shoulder. “Come on in. A friend of Rugan’s is a friend of the family.”

Watching from above, Harry watches as she signals to one leather-clad figure below them, who saunters off to fiddle with some combination of levers. With a click, the locks on the iron gate slide their way out of place.

After a decent walk down a sloping stone passage, they emerge down below into a maze of hastily constructed wooden platforms filled with Zhentarim labeled crates and chests and, bizarrely, carefully positioned and fused smokepowder barrels. The leather clad man who’d fiddled with those levers emerges from behind them. “Don’t get comfortable.” He hisses. “And don’t keep the boss waiting.”

Through the maze and up yet another set of ladders they go.

“I was glad to see Rugan,” The Zhentarim woman remarks, “until I took the shipment and found it empty. He denied knowing anything about it.” Her eyes go hard, lips tense. “Failure creates debt. And debt requires repayment.” The expression darkens into a deep scowl. “I owe you for saving my people. Even if it was Rugan.”

A pouch of gold is tossed their way, prevented from going flying off the edge by Peter’s quick hands. Harry watches as the drow’s eyes dart from the pouch to the Zhent woman and back, brow furrowed with anxiety. His mouth opens, then shuts silently, eyes flicking toward Harry, as though he thinks Harry could read his thoughts.

“That’s worth some coin. And my thanks.” She nods curtly, turning and walking a few paces. “A pity we didn’t have you on the job from the start.” Her footfalls slow in an almost contemplative gesture, head tilting over the drop down to the most narrow nook in this greater cavern. “I tell you what? One of you go and repay that particular debt, and our trader can go and show you some of our more exotic items.”

Harry’s suddenly acutely aware of the sounds of blunt impacts from that narrow fold in the rock. “We’ll take care of it.” The high, disturbed noise Peter makes in response barely registers to his ears. His focus is trained on the sounds of knuckles against skin below him.

The body of that kid is strewn out motionless in the dirt, his motionless yet terrified face pointed upward at the ceiling, jaw slack against his slit throat. Beyond him and the narrow trail of blood extending from him, another leather clad Zhent stalks about amongst a heap of crates and explosive barrels, a table set up behind him sporting a heavy iron hammer and pair of tongs, bottles and plants arranged around them distinctly lighting up Harry’s memory as implements for creating poisons. In the center of the arrangement, Rugan is firmly bound to a chair—though Harry doesn’t think he’d have a chance of escaping even if he wasn’t. The Zhent occasionally drives a clenched fist into the man’s face, seeming to put effort into catching Rugan off guard.

At the sight of their approach and at the distinct sense of eyes from above, the Zhent withdraws, watching on with a vicious gleam in his eye to see what unfolds.

Harry hears his dagger glide out of its sheath before he realizes his hand has closed around the handle of it. As he raises the blade into view, he hears a soft sound from behind him.

“Harry, you aren’t actually going to—” Peter cuts himself off at a cold glance from that pantherlike Zhent. His expression then hardens and he actually starts to march up like he plans to try and stop him, his fingers outstretched towards his dagger-arm.

But, well, if Peter ever seemed anything less than particularly weak willed, Harry would probably like him less. The warlock is the one who stops Peter, surprisingly. Despairing shock fills the drow’s expression, eyes flicking from Wyll to Harry and back. But Wyll’s not looking at Peter, he’s looking at Harry.

What, does he expect Harry to try and practice? For the sake of learning that Wyll hasn’t even given him yet? Fucking hells. “Would you rather be fighting all of them? Whole lot more good to avoiding that and getting what we can here than in him living. Especially when I bet you that shipment didn’t just go missing.”

With that, he stalks forward, drawing his dagger through Rugan’s throat. His eyes bug out, his mouth opens, but he can’t get words out before he’s choking on his own blood.

“And just like that,” the sandy-haired woman declares from above. “Everyone profits.”

Given his brief respite from the nonstop migraines, Harry couldn’t agree more.

Once he’s turned back around, away from the now still body, he watches Peter retreat away from him, his back tense. Well, that might be a bit annoying. Not intolerably so, Peter wears his heart on his sleeve; it shouldn’t be too difficult to get him over it.

Peter has wandered off towards the warlock. That raises his hackles a bit—if Wyll knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep his mouth shut about anything Harry said the prior night. But the heroic types like him generally don’t know what’s good for them, and if Wyll was an exception he wouldn’t be a devil.

It’s not a hard conversation to overhear once he determines the right distance, however. And Wyll continues to… maybe surprise isn’t the right word. The man’s behaviors are entirely illogical. “I would prefer if he hadn’t killed him either, you know.” He hums, his voice hushed. “It doesn’t seem just; we don’t know with any certainty what he did or what happened to it. But I think I understand his reasoning. It’s anything but pretty, but it is, in it’s own way, an attempt to protect us.”

The frustrating thing is that, in reality, Wyll probably does know Harry’s reasoning after the previous night. He’s just lying to Peter, who looks at him like he’s Tyr walking amongst them, to cover for Harry. It’s not as though Harry can frame that under Wyll putting some immense value on his word; all over again, if that were the case he wouldn’t be a devil.

Harry, increasingly, has no choice but to play along with whatever Wyll thinks he’s getting out of their arrangement. He has no fucking grip on how the man works anymore and continuing on is a far too uncertain and uncontrollable thing until he does.

The drow’s clearly folding, however. At least a bit. “...I still don’t like it.” He insists.

“As is your right.” Wyll agrees.

That part, unlike whatever bolt is loose in Wyll’s head, is something that seems a bit easier to fix.

“...I have no issue with your decision.” Harry nearly leaps out of his skin at the sound of Lae’zel’s voice. With his attention actually upon her, she jerks her chin upwards. “He only got the consequences of his own failings. It would be foolish to prevent proper punishment for such weakness, moreso to endure their hostility over it.”

“Thank you, I think.”

Her arms cross. “There is no need for thanks. I would merely prefer that your leadership not grow soft.”

“...Right, of course. My mistake.”

The Zhent’s trader is perhaps the only cheery looking fellow amongst them. He perks up at their attention, his overly optimistic demeanor not entirely disguising what must be a somewhat rehearsed sales pitch. “Well, don’t you cut a fine figure! Want your portrait done? If you have the gold, my pet artist will make you a most heroical likeness.”

Is that even a word? “You’ve got yourself a pet artist?”

A grin splits the trader’s face like he’s been waiting for anyone to ask. “Call us his patrons, yeah? Found him wandering the wilds alone. He needs protection, so his paintings will be covering out costs.”

Peter frowns. “Isn’t that kidnapping?”

“That’s just business. If you’re wanting to buy him, I’m open to offers. Otherwise, you should watch how you talk.” The smile isn’t so pleasant anymore, so Peter flinches back. It seems a bit as though Peter’s nobility has been broken down for the day. He simply slinks backwards, chastened and silenced, then goes and has a meek little chat with the foppish-looking painter.

Harry fixes his eyes on the trader, letting out an aimed sigh. “Mmm, sorry. He gets a way about certain things. Let me see the rest of your stock.”

Dumping all the assorted junk he’s managed to stuff into his pack on the bastard lines his coinpurse nicely—though through the process, Harry takes care to avoid a certain, currently weighted down pocket along one side. “How much are you looking to get out of the painter, anyways?” He questions offhandedly, offering a hefty handful back in exchange for a blue and red cloak—the fabric is thick enough to seem nearly reinforced; Harry recognizes the magic well enough to sense it works about that purpose. And his drow is going to go and get himself killed one of these days if Harry doesn’t start doing something about it.

“I doubt your coffers could handle it. Thousand gold.”

He sighs. “I’ll do a thousand if you can throw in going over there and making a show of it like I’ve threatened you or something.”

The trader almost perks up a bit at that. “Sure! Always wanted to be an actor.” He bunny hops off in the direction of the crouched drow and the artist, before shifting his pace into a stiff jog.

To his credit, the trader actually does a decent job, flicking his eyes back towards Harry for a spare few moments leading up to stopping in front of the huddled pair. He shoves trembling hands into his pockets, clearing his voice before speaking in a tone that still shakes a bit. “You’re off the hook. Just get the hells out of here before you cause me more trouble.” He jabs his finger at the artist, then paces off, wiping imaginary sweat from his face.

It’s not enough for Harry to decide against palming half that gold back into his pockets before sauntering off towards Peter.

Peter’s head flicks between pointed towards the trader and at Harry. “You!” He finally settles on looking at Harry. “That was you?”

“Haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.” He grins at Peter. “C’mere, stand up.”

Peter does as he’s told, his brow slowly furrowing. “But why? This… it’s all just not the sort of thing that would normally bother you.”

Harry wraps the newly bought cloak around Peter’s shoulders. “Sure, but it was bothering you. Not much to be done about the rest, so I took care of that. Just looking out for you.” He pats the fabric. “And that’s to help you stop getting so roughed up. Don’t like the idea of you going and dying much.”

Peter’s fingers run along the fabric, expression conflicted. “But that’s so much gold, Harry.”

“And I think I get to decide how I spend mine.” He steps away, playing a moment of hesitation. “You’re not still mad at me, are you?”

Color rushes to the tips of Peter’s ears. “What? No, why would I be—” His laugh comes out uncomfortable. “Sorry.”

“No sorrys, I’m a bastard.” He claps the kid on the shoulder.

—

Peter tends to people-watch, and not… quite for as benevolent a reason as he wants to pretend he does. Surface-dwelling people oft fancy themselves of inherent moral fiber denser than that possessed by others, but he's been thrown beneath the proverbial wagon by that sort just as often as other drow. He knows, by the light of the moon, that he should be more willing to trust but doing so is an act he's been relegated to doing with immese, immense effort. Something more conscious than, surely, it should be.

…Anyways, Gale looks bad. Like, sick. Peter's a bit paranoid, but he'd like to think that one of the better parts of being so… dreadingly observant is that if something's wrong, he'll be able to notice it and, in ideal circumstances, help.

When each tent be pitched—and despite being… a formerly-homebody wizard, Gale is struggling more than usual to do so on his own—Peter moves to assist with dinner. Gale takes his eager hands and puts them to use chopping up mushrooms as he performs some feat involving a lot of fish and butter. Peter doesn't understand it, but the little fish-shaped pastries he winds up with are utterly delightful. "You know, you really are good at this whole cooking thing. Where'd you learn?"

"Oh, my mother insisted upon teaching her kids all the basics! And, of course, even then I was enraptured with magic, so I just applied cooking to alchemy and alchemy to cooking." The wizard responds, seeming cheerier for the topic. "You know, I'd thought it would be more daunting to try and create meals for eight people with such limited resources, but the restrictions just make it more fun!"

"I'm glad you enjoy it. But if you need a break to get over your, um, cold, I think we could all pitch in." He slowly speaks it, careful in the face of potentially unwelcome prodding.

But it only serves to make Gale briefly confused. "My col—?" He echoes. "Oh, you know." He chuckles stiffly, splashing hot oil into the campfire as his mage hand pulls the next finished pastry from the fire with a quiver. "I was rather holed up in my tower in Waterdeep, the physical exertion is more than I'm used to!" He then pauses. "…But this illness is something I am. Used to, that is. I'd been hoping none of you would notice until I could find a way to circumvent it myself, but… perhaps that was foolish of me."

"You're making me worry."

Gale blinks, settling on a log. "I… I cannot tell you not to." He murmurs. "I'm ailed by a condition most permanent, and I cannot call it any 'mere' ailment. I'd feared the burden I would place upon you all by informing of it." Then he pauses for a moment before shaking his head. "No, not the burden on you all. I suppose I had mostly worried for how the opinion towards me might change. This is something I've never had the courage to tell any living soul, except for my cat."

Peter's uncomfortable chuckle bubbles out of him before he can stop it. "You're talking about this like you're about to tell me you've murdered a nobleman."

"Far worse," the wizard responds gravely, "though the specifics of my ailment are quite personal, I've learned it can only be eased in one way." With that, Peter can only assume it be treated with the distilled blood of cherubim. "Every so often, I must find a powerful magical item and absorb the Weave inside."

"…That's it?"

Gale still looks about as solemn as though he had asked to pulp a celestial. "I know it a great tragedy to destroy such great arcane work—and greater still the financial cost." He sighs. "But you have a good heart and I do not have access to my collections back in my tower." But… maybe there is something that makes him view it as something so horrible, something that he just can't disentangle from his relatively innocent admissions.

Peter shakes his head, reaching for his bags. "No, no, it's nothing. Here, we got this in return for returning that little girl in the grove to her parents." He produces a simple copper locket; the magic within it is magic Peter can tell is relatively simple. He can only hope it enough to help. "And I think one of the weapons we took off those paladins who were hunting Karlach is enchanted! I can go get that too—"

"As much as I appreciate the enthuasiasm, I don't need to consume so much magic at once. Save it for a rainy day, shall we?" Gale's warm hand accepts the locket. "But truly, I cannot thank you enough. I know the sacrifice I'm asking for." He tells Peter earnestly.

The reaction that comes with absorbing the magic is one that provokes twofold thoughts in Peter. The side of him that took to pouring over Octavius's research is utterly enchanted by the sight of the wizard drawing the trinket close to his chest: some great dark abyss reaches claws out from him, darker than dark, and rips the very light from the object, pulling the shine and glimmer from metal like a black hole. The so-gentle grip on the thing begins to shatter it when the light fades, slight touches reducing the now tarnished, rusted metal to dust like brittle micah. The other half of Peter is worried—by the look on the face of the man as lightning laces his eyes, this must be bone-rattlingly painful, even if he be relieved when it is done.

"I've never seen or heard of anything like that. Is there a way to permanently cure it?"

Gale dusts his hands off on his robes. "Few would have." He only succeeds in smearing as much coppery dust on his clothing as on his hands. "And no, it would be impossible. Trust me, I've spent many years seeking such a thing."

Peter sits back himself, eyeing Gale. Indeed, he looks better. Brightened, like a painting restored by expert hands, with his wincing and coughing quieted. "I imagine the story to that illness is not quite so simple as you make it out. I don't think you'd see asking for magic items, when we've found plenty, as the end of the world if there wasn't a reason to think of it that way." He begins.

Only, doing so has succeeded mostly in causing a great deal of shame to wash over Gale, the sort Peter can clearly imagine would have been found if—as hard as it is to believe, he brought his mother home less-than-satisfactory grades at… wizard school. The density of it is more worrying than anything such far, even his own worst assumptions.

"…You don't have to tell me, but…"

Gale's fingers drum against his leg. "Perhaps it would be right if… at least someone here knew all of who you're traveling with. But I'm a selfish man, so I'll ask it stay between us—though I don't know if I'll fault you if you must go back on that."

Peter's eyes dart away—and he swears he feels horribly guilty for it, for wondering if Harry is noticing or watching in that unblinking way he does, because there is something that Harry is confiding in Wyll about and not him, and he feels guilty because he might only care about that because he wants Harry's attention, and also because gods, how can he claim to seek good-doing when he's thinking about things this selfish when someone else is asking for his support, and also by Illmater's rack, Peter, is it just that you only want to help other people for attention? Is that it?! And do you only venerate the Dark Maiden in that because those pulp novels have gotten to your head and now you're obsessed with fixing broken peop—

Not now. "No, not at all. Swear it."

Gale momentarily shifts his focus back towards dinner—and only succeeds to rip open a pastry. No, little not the fishie! "I was what one would call a wizard prodigy," He begins as he tries to fix torn dough. "From a young age, I could not only control the Weave, but compose it like a musician or a poet. Such was my skill that it earned me the the attention of the mother of magic herself: the goddess Mystra. She revealed herself to me and became my teacher, and later the relationship became of a nature I expect few would believe me. Though we enjoyed each other's company, I still desired more. You see, no matter how powerful a wizard a mortal can become, we can only scratch the surface of arcane magic. Mystra keeps us in check. There are boundaries she does not let us cross, yet being with her allowed me to stand on the precipice and catch a glance of what laid beyond. I eventually sought to cross those boundaries."

It's hard to not let Gale's prior catastrophizing cast a haze on how Peter thinks of his words, but is doing such patronizing? "How so?" He asks.

"I tried to convince her to allow it. I swore my ambition was only to serve her better. But she only smiled and told me to be contented." But if Mystra placed those rules for a reason, why would she not explain more thoroughly? If she had known the risks, why would she have taken them in getting so close to a mortal? "I wasn't satisfied with what I had, so I had sought to prove myself. Now, I must come to the crux of my folly: have you ever been told the story of Karsus?"

Peter thinks he can recall such a name amongst Octavius's tomes. "A wizard from Netheril, the ancient kingdom whose mastery of magic was said to rival the gods? And he sought to… overthrow Mystryl, who was the goddess of magic then. The attempt killed him, destroyed Netheril, and briefly destroyed magic itself." He looks up. "Is that right?" He asks.

"That is the gist of it." Gale confirms. "Though the Weave had been destroyed into shattered fragments, it was Mystra who wove them back together. Reunited them all, or so I thought until in the course of my studies, I learned of a Netherese tome in which a piece of it had been sealed beyond her reach. 'What if,' I had thought, 'What if I returned this lost part of herself to the goddess?'"

Though it true that Mystryl and Mystra were connected, they were different entities in many ways. Peter finds himself wondering if a piece that had stayed of Netheril would be something the latter goddess would even be able to claim. He does not speak the thought.

"I was convinced my deed of raw power draped in romance would convince Mystra to take me by the hand and welcome me into her hitherto forbidden domains. When I had my hands on the tome, I took it into my study, and…" Gale sighs and looks downward, to the wispy, swirling outline set into his skin beneath his collarbones. "The piece had been corrupted. It balled itself in my chest, and the blight needs to be fed. I only fear…" The wizard shakes his head—Peter looks down at the pastry he'd been trying to fix, and finds that the other had only managed to patch the hole in it with an unsightly, bloated lump of dough over the gap. It probably would have been in a better state if it had just been fried as is. "As long as I feed it," Gale says instead, pushing the malformed fish into oil. "It lays dormant. But if it ever destablilizes fully, I think the resulting eruption would be able to level a city the size of Waterdeep."

"I hope you won't take offense to me asking," Truly, he doesn't mean anything by it. He only wants to know, to be able to consider things in their full context. "Did you do it for her, or for yourself?"

Gale slumps. "I don't know for certain. Oft I wonder if there'd be a difference."

There's a lot to consider in that, a lot to wonder about and try to unravel and find the truth of. But still, he should try and find something to say in response, right? If he just leaves this in silence it'll only make things worse. "If there's any consolation in hearing it, I've long held on to something I envy the thought of being able to destroy that thoroughly." He whispers, pulling down the neck of his camp-clothes.

The same fascination he'd known moments ago alights Gale's face, drawing his focus away from those old mistakes. "Now what in the world is that?"

__

“You know, I am a bit curious.” Wyll begins, settling across from him in some rocky nook, so deep in that Zhentarim hideout that the camp’s chatter can’t reach them. It’s a bit dark, but there’s enough space for two people to be “If I had rejected you, what would you have done?”

Harry drags his legs up onto the stone, bracing his elbows against his knees. “Killed you. Or threatened you, whichever I thought would be more effective.” It wouldn’t have been that hard to get away with. He’s sure the rest of the group could come up with all the reasons a man-turned-devil would disappear without his prompting. Wouldn’t ever have to know he’d left his tent that night.

Wyll chuckles, which surprises him. Despite how… cloyingly, disgustingly sweet everything about him, all that heroism is, how much it makes Harry sick at times, he doesn’t entirely know what to make of him. Out of everyone, it wasn’t him Harry had expected to be capable of being so calm and unflinching in the face of every last thing he thinks. “I suppose I should have expected that.”

Must be something severed in this man’s brain. “Still don’t understand what you believe you’re getting out of this.”

Wyll merely smiles serenely at him in response.

Fine, then. “Why’d you cover for me?”

“Cover for you about what?”

“Rugan. You know full well I don’t give a damn about things like that.”

Wyll’s wing pull tight against his back, his chin tilting back to regard him with an inquisitive raise of his eyebrows. “If I answer that, will you answer a question for me, and promise to do so honestly?”

Harry pauses. “I’ve been answering your questions honestly already, and you ask a damn lot of them. Don’t get why you’re asking me this now.” He pauses, watching his tail tip flick at his subconscious whims against the stone. The small, almost rocky spines along the back of his tail click softly with each impact. “I like that more,” he decides. “Question for question.”

“Indeed.” Wyll agrees. “I suppose it’s a complicated thing. I’m not sure entirely why I did it myself. I suppose the biggest thing is that I reckon I won’t be able to wean you off unnecessary violence entirely. If what happened to Alfira was truly a compulsion, I’d prefer it not be done with innocents above all else.” He then pauses. “I would prefer it kept to monsters. I’m no fan of the Zhent, but I’m also no fan of their ideas of fitting punishment.” Harry doesn’t follow, but Wyll’s words trek onward, unconcerned. “Did the person in the inn actually burn to death, or did you kill them?”

Technically, he burned to death. Harry huffs loudly, rolls his eyes. “Are you going to interrogate me every time something unlucky happens? He burned, you can go look at his body if you want to.”

Silence stretches out between them. “I’m not sure I believe you,” Wyll says eventually. “But I’ll let it go for now.”

“I got the Zhent, I didn’t need you on my ass over some random.”

Wyll goes still in response, brow furrowing. “How’d you know that would happen?”

Harry stoops over, reaching for his pack. He fiddles with the button closing a pocket noticeably distended with a dense but noticeable weight. Fingers dip inside, fastening round the bottom of the single item within. What he extracts is an iron flask, it’s only real distinguishing feature the intricate patterns carved across its surface, the most obvious of which is a large circular face wearing a large grin. He tosses it in one hand. “No clue why they’d be so concerned with it.”

A deep frown appears on Wyll’s face, his eyes stretching wide. “So you’re why it disappeared.”

“Didn’t do it planning for much to happen to him. I just wanted to.” He doesn’t know why he’s defending himself. He shouldn’t have to, that’s low. “To see if I could. And clearly I could.”

Wyll only looks truly uncomfortable for a fraction of a second. “Ah.”

“Don’t know what you were expecting.” He tilts his head, grinning and showing his teeth. “Is your father why you’re doing this? You feel like a fraud, so you’re trying to fix me?”

Wyll doesn’t respond for well over a minute. “It’s not exactly that.” He articulates.

“Right.” He leans forward, his claws drawing against the stone. “I’ll play along.” Drawing his lips back, he shows his teeth once again. “You think that your own being good is lie, because everything else you present about yourself is.” He ponders aloud. “I’m awful. You know that.” His speech stops suddenly, some part of his ground-up brain matter connecting two distant dots. “No, it’s not that I’m awful. It’s that I’m a liar. Everything about me is a lie, and you know that now. And you hate that you’re a liar, but you know it doesn’t bother me. If you can make me good, or at least make me behave like I am, then…” That connection seems to have sparked a thousand more. “From me, acting that way’s a lie. But to you, a good lie. If me pretending to be something I’m not can be good, you can tell yourself it’s not bad when the same is true of you. And… you say that it’s still a choice, regardless of what someone thinks or feels. But you think you’re a fraud. If I can be horrible and a liar, and you can still make me good, you think you’ll be able to forgive it in yourself.”

“And what do you think?”

The response is essentially conceding Harry as correct. “I think that for me, there’s not a difference.” He responds. “But I know it’s not going to work. It’s only that I’d like to watch you have to swallow that. You know I feel none of it. And you know I want to do the opposite. It’s a fool’s errand.”

Wyll folds his hands together. “I guess we’ll have to see, then. I think that, and this is also true for many of our companions, every person has a reason for going down the paths they do. It doesn’t change the harm done, but it’s there. I expect that’s also true of you, even if you can’t remember it.”

Harry knows, from deep in the tainted rot within him, that it’s not the case for him. It simply is not. “Right.” He draws the word out, intentionally mocking.

“Through my father’s influence in Baldur’s Gate, I knew others who, if nothing else, wound up struggling to or incapable of feeling much emotion similar to you. Many of them went down unfortunate paths, but many of them did not, and lead normal lives. I also…” Wyll pauses, regarding the words with raised hands and a tilt of his head, as though it’s of especial importance. “I also knew of a man who had similar compulsions to you, and wound up saving Baldur’s Gate despite it.”

The sentence makes something deep inside him lurch. Blood rushes in his head—that man, the man Wyll speaks of, not Wyll, that man, he wants to tear him to ribbons with his bear hands, crush his skull to dust, bleed him dry, he needs to watch the life leave him—

In the few seconds in which those thoughts rushed madly through his head, Harry has managed to throw himself across the space between himself and Wyll, the claws of one of his oddly shaped feet closed tight around his neck, the other holding him down by the chest. His daggers are in his hands. And clearly, he hadn’t just compulsively grabbed Wyll; there’s a smear of blood against the stone behind the man’s head. The instinct of what he must have done still thrums through him—just raise and lower those claws, with force, crack-crack.

When he doesn’t simply do so, a spike of pain sears through his head, bloody and cold as though Harry has actually been stabbed straight through his by an unseen force. He hears metal clattering to the ground, his empty hands raising to clutch his head.

Wyll huffs out a clearly startled, adrenaline-soaked laugh. “Welcome back. Would-would you mind getting off my throat? I’d like to breathe.”

‘Yeah,” Harry mumbles, almost falling off him. His limbs scrape awkwardly against stone, one hand in his hair so his claws can dig into his scalp; if he can’t draw another’s blood, drawing his own usually makes it hurt a bit less. Like he’s releasing pressure in his own head. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

“I figured.” Wyll’s gingerly clutching his own head, like whatever it is Harry’s body had been doing without his agreement was to compel someone into solidarity with him. “Do you have any healing potions with you? I’ll give you one of mine when we get back.”

He offers one over. “Forget about it. I cracked your head open. And I’d prefer not owing you over it.”

Wyll accepts it without hesitation, his hands shaking as he uncorks it—not, as far as Harry can tell, out of fear. Though maybe he should have expected that. It’s more as though he’s managed to concuss the man. “Not at all.” He drinks it eagerly, quivering hand jostling droplets onto his chest. “...Gorion’s Ward died almost a decade ago, of old age.” He eventually adds, as though he just knows Harry will find meaning from it, “when I was around fifteen.”

And Harry does. Bitterness fills him, the origin of it unknown to him. At least he doesn’t go and try to smash his head again. “I don’t know the name.”

“Clearly,” Wyll responds, “you do.”

They lapse into silence.

“Should we be getting to what I agreed to this for?” He inquires.

“Certainly.” Wyll sets the empty glass bottle to the side, the click gentle. “You weren’t wrong to try and explain yourself as you did. There are many people who’d consider it, if not moral, not the worst option. Though I can certainly infer that you’d choose that for the opportunity, or if not that because otherwise would be inconvenient, plenty of people would think that the death of a criminal would be worth the connections, or if not that than worth protecting the people around them.”

His head tilts. “Doing it for the connections sounds like something I’d already be doing.”

Wyll shrugs slightly. “I won’t deny that. I suppose the difference is that, for many, while they may be loose with how much they care for right and wrong with some things, most people will still have things they consider too far. Harm to children, in many cases. In others people have a greater good that supersedes most or all other beliefs in regards to how they act; such is likely the case for both Lae’zel and Shadowheart, though I imagine they’d not like being told that. Shadowheart is a cleric, and Lae’zel comes from a very strict society. The teachings of that come above any other personal beliefs, or in some cases the ability to hold them at all. Anything for a believed greater good.”

“So to be convincing, I just need a hierarchy of how I go about things. And to be consistent.”

“Your reasoning would also need to be.” Wyll points out. “Myself and Peter act specifically to help others, because we believe it’s right and that the power we have should be used to benefit others. Our wizard friend, Gale, he has similar power but doesn’t act similarly with it. I can’t tell you why specifically he wants to do so; for many wizards, they study magic purely for the sake of it. In some ways, that’s purely to their own benefit. But I feel somewhat confident in saying there are things that Gale wouldn’t want to do specifically because he thinks of them as bad, or things he would because they’re right. It merely doesn’t define the entirety of his conduct. In many ways, if I can go off what interactions I’ve had the opportunity to have with her, Karlach is similar, but she’s… not had the luxury of going about deciding how it would affect her life and how she conducted it. As I’ve said, Lae’zel and Shadowheart are mostly guided by a belief in something and what that asks of them. Astarion is guided mostly by his own self interest, and I imagine he has his reasons for doing so.”

“I see. And for my purposes, I’m also essentially trying to create something that will still let me act how I want to as much as I would want.” His tail has gone back to flicking against stone.

Wyll stretches his wings out for a moment. Most winged tieflings Harry can vaguely recall meeting had far broader shoulders to handle the mass, and often had that curled forward more to balance. Wyll possesses neither. “I suppose you are.” He echoes. "But you could just do that anyways, couldn't you?" He points out.

Harry rolls his eyes in as exaggerated a fashion as he can. "I also quite like being liked, Wyll."

"I can tell."

—

Harry doesn’t know if he sleeps that night, but he believes he must have dreamt. Not that much of what came to him in the night would be a dream for anyone else. Visions of red skies, of seas of blood, of bodies in heaps. A dead world, expired flesh around him, and he is the last being alive. A crimson sun going out as he drives a dagger through his heart. If not that, then he dreams of killing. Wandering about the camp with daggers in hand. Often of the drow specifically, like his mind is trying to decipher the right trophy to take when it happens. Elven pelts are good wall hangings…

Perhaps it’s not meant to be mere dreams for himself either. He wakes shouting, or he wakes with his body tangled in his bedroll like he's been thrashing, claw marks dotting the space around him. As though they aren’t the sweetest of imaginings indeed.

But that night, his mind is only on that bard. That girl that he killed without even knowing he was doing so. In his sleep. In his sleep, meaning the memory of it, the murder he got away with so easily, simply does not exist.

Instead of the real thing, his half-sleeping thoughts concoct fantasies of the act. Bloodsoaked intestines spilling from torn flesh, his hands fastening around exposed ribs to wrench them apart as personally as he can. Breaking horns, crushing organs. And that all cannot be reality, because all Shadowheart assessed he’d done was stab her. Stab. Stab. Dozens of times.

At some point his eyes open. His body leads him out of the camp, his breath coming out in spiked huffs. Tonight, he is the most and the least himself he can recall being, yet also the least. His skin is uncomfortable, poorly stretched over something, something that must be beneath. Behind him, his shadow stretches out slightly too far, interlacing with the ones left by trees and undergrowth. All of it, all of it feels like it must belong to him.

Something brushes the back of his knee and he whips around, hoping to find something he can rip apart. What his eyes find is a truly wretched little creature, smaller than a halfling, possessing a goblin-like countenance despite what appears to be a fiendish nature. It’s body is bony and thoroughly withered, covered in wrinkled skin, like an elderly individual recently deceased. It’s face is bone white, though the rest of it’s skin is greenish. Eyes as red as his own peer out from above a beaklike nose that is seeming composed of bone. The clothes it wears were once fine, suitable for a noble’s servants, but now sit in tatters.

It’s lips contort into something loosely resembling a smile. “Milord? Jubilant day! I have found your vile self at last!”

This thing knows him. And this thing clearly recognizes his confusion, looks almost as though it had expected it. “Sceleritas Fel. Your loyal and ever adoring butler.” Its—his?—knobbly fingers knit together. “I followed you, my dear rotted master. We’ve been parted so tragically long.”

Two lines of thought collide violently in his mind, pain rattling him. What in the hells? Harry can’t even tell what this thing is, how would something like it know him? But he knew he must be someone, must be someone important,important enough to have house servants. Then why does he talk like this? And what sort of position would gain the servitude of such a creature? He’s a tiefling, not a cambion, and his magic is drawn eternally, not that of a warlock. Does it matter? He deserves this, every one of his instincts knows that. But accepting something unquestioningly is unwise, stupid, foolishly vulnerable, why does he want to just—

Harry’s head hurts. “Butler.” He echoes. “About time.” Those words leave him in a guttural hiss, without his command.

It cackles in response. “My lordly rebrobate! I missed you ever-so.” He registers that, though Harry certainly doesn’t sound like that, they’re similar in speech by one key factor. Harry wants to speak nobly, yet his cadence, his dialect, is entirely urchinlike. And he’s been followed by a piteous being who’s voice is shrill and demonic, it’s speech a far more cartoonish facsimile. “I found you, following the stench of that bard. She reeked across the coast like a piece of dog-muck on the road.”

“Was it you who caused me to kill her?” He demands. He’s compelled against his better judgement to just accept this, he wants to fall into this flattery. If that’s the case, perhaps it could overpower his rationality further. Harry has no care for whether or not he’s violent, but being out of his own control? It’s unthinkable.

Sceleritas ducks low, raising his(?) hands in some show of subservience. “Such fine work could never be done by a wretch like me!” That act, as though he’s not but a servant, it appears genuine. Even down to loyalty, and something that might be called affection. But there’s something else… “Anyways, I came in haste bearing a part of your dreadful inheritance. You earned this iniquitous prize through your great show of exceptional violence the other night.” What Sceleritas presents him with is a mantle of red suede, it’s end coming to rest at his shins. An inch or so above the hem, perfectly needled patterns of gold embroidery, and on the opposite end, curved to fit a person’s neck, it’s hard leather that forms the head of it. Though even the leather is decorated. It’s an odd contrast to it, grasping for an air of regality while being composed of materials meant to be able to survive wear.

He runs his fingers along the fabric as the other continues to speak. The texture is familiar, the proportions as correct as it would be if tailored. It to him or him to it is another question entirely. “It was quite impressive to your betters, you getting right back on top of your barbarity so quickly, without even needing prompting.”

His betters. The idea, unexpectedly, does nothing to bruise his pride; it only makes some brief emotion he doesn’t recognize shoot through his chest. Whatever it is, it’s colder than he is. “You,” he snaps, shying away from the feeling—it’s wrong, it’s unbecoming—”are going to tell me everything.”

“Though I would love to regale you with your past triumphs, I cannot. I am forbidden. Our betters would not allow it.” Our. He doesn’t want to, at minimum, give off the impression to Harry that he sits in league with, or on equal footing to, whoever that refers to. Harry is below them, and the infernal entity before him below him. Perhaps knowing better than to risk it, Sceleritas gives a bow. “Be true to yourself, my lord!”

In a blink, Harry is alone.

__

Harry registers pretty quickly that somehow, and by somehow he means Wyll, the cycling through of who’s on the road at any given time has perfectly aligned so that the only people who’d be inclined to resisting abject immorality just so happen to be the ones surrounding him when they approach the goblin camp. Or maybe Wyll, the very clear culprit, thinks Peter alone can keep Harry behaving and just decided to invite Karlach because he wanted to treat himself to a woman both about a foot taller than and a decade older than him.

…Actually, it might also be that Wyll actually is okay with him taking things out on goblins. But he’d rather be bitter.

The sky above the goblin camp is dark with a rainstorm. Though the greater bulk of it can be seek through the trees—a crumbling old temple, banners of torn cloth, splattered paint, and makeshift fortifications crowding the gaps in its walls.

But this particular goblin hoard is unexpectedly organized, lead in an attempt at strategy. A hoard of them crawl over a makeshift guardtower along the road inwards, like roaches over a discarded corpse.

The goblin warrior seeming to be in charge of this squadron raises his head with bared teeth at their approach, laying a hand against the shoulder of the Worg beside him. The others are reaching for their weapons, eyes gleaming with hate, until they very suddenly aren’t. Until they’re all overcome with a fearful respect.

One that Harry finds is directed towards Peter.

Without even a word to them, that warrior who’d been standing central in the road is ushering a confused looking Worg away. “Come on, Klaw, drow needs through.” He mumbles, not looking at Peter for more than a second at a time. Not even as he’s speaking to him, the monk looking utterly caught off his guard to be the one addressed. “Minthara’s inside, Bet she’ll be wanting to speak to you, if you were scouting.” He then hastily tacks on, “your greatness. Sir.”

They stride quickly away, glances exchanged the only communication until they’re out of earshot, slowing as they approach the stone bridge into that former temple. “I don’t know what that was about.” Peter mumbles immediately.

“I don’t think any of us were assuming you would, Pete.” The tips of his ears go dark again at his words. Easy. “But I imagine you’re not going to want to be the one talking once we get ourselves inside, yeah?”

Peter ducks his head. “I won’t know what to say. You’re way better at that sort of thing.”

“It can’t be that bad! Come on, you just need to be confident. Gobbos seem to be willing to listen to anything from a drow.” Karlach cants forward, her arm outstretched, before she freezes, withdrawing her hand before the flame on her skin can touch him.

Peter only responds with a shake of his head. “It’s not the goblins I’m worried about. He mentioned ‘Minthara’, I bet you that’s the name of a drow. If I mess up while talking to…” There’s a hint of hesitation. “...them, that would probably be much worse. And we don’t know what any of the drow sent out were supposed to be doing. I’m not going to be very good at dancing around that.” His head bobs in Harry’s direction.

“The worms have been usable for some sort of telepathy, haven’t they? You have a lot of confidence in him—” Wyll nods towards Harry. “Perhaps he could instruct you through that.”

Karlach jolts to look at Wyll. “They can?!” Her eyes narrow on him, and the warlock promptly blushes.

The look Peter gives Harry is deeply confused, prompting a shrug and a shake of his head in response. “...Would you be willing to?”

“Of course. But it’ll probably be more convincing if you don’t look horribly guilty the whole time.” He pokes Peter in the ribs, who promptly tries to straighten up his face and swat away his hand at the same time, both with debatable results.

Only one step onto the bridge, they get battered by some great intangible force, one that knocks their legs out from under them without any sensation to come with it, forcing them all to prop their bodies on their hands and knees. Pain rattles through every nerve in Harry—and worsens the headache tenfold.

At first, he thinks the great clouding of his vision is due to his throbbing skull, the shadows being over the pain causing his consciousness to slip. But from those thick shadows comes first a thundering, irresistable voice, but also one intangible. Hear my voice. Obey my command.

It feels like the tadpole authority they've been able to use on others, only thousandfold stronger, turned against them all. And from those shadows emerges a hazy vision: three figures, a graying elf who's plate armor bears emblems of death and decay, an odd blurred man whose face flickers between youth and age and smoothness and crease.

And a pale woman, glad in some particularly gorey form of leather, with a long, ornamented braid and even paler eyes. The sight of her pallid self ignites pure, boiling rage in his gut.

These are my Chosen. They speak for me. Aid their search for the Prism, and you will be worthy to stand beside them in my presence.

And as if summoned, the artefact Shadowheart carries bursts out of nowhere, floating a few feet over the bridge and moving as though it have a mind of its own—with too much intelligence. It wobbles in place over their heads, but its presence pulses an energy able to beat back the all consuming one that is that booming speech. The pain of his migrane eases, fades to a duller one, and the voice is pushed a bit more distant.

My power grows, the voice utters as it slowly grows softer and softer in that odd trinket's presence. My forces gather. The reckoning draws near…

And with that, it flings itself into Harry's chest, growing limp once more the moment his hand fastens around it. "What in the hells?" He mutters to nobody in particular. Did Shadowheart know about that? Why did she have it anyways?

He sits on his haunches, staring at the object as Peter utters a question far more intelligent: "The vision, the voice, what was that?"

"I bet," Harry mutters, feeling a bit too confident in proportion to what he actually knows, "that that was this Absolute we've heard about. Seemed willing to control us. But this thing was a shield. I'm more curious as to what it is."

Peter strides up to him. "It's not like anything I've ever seen. But the voice was on about a prism—and that's certainly one." He points out.

The rune-spotted artifact is quickly shoved into a pouch in Harry’s pack before any of the goblins can get a look at it. "Let us keep moving." He mutters. "I'll bet you if we find who's in charge, they'll have something to say about what it is they're trying to find."

It looks like whatever is going on beyond the bridge is what the goblins would consider a party. Central to the crumbling courtyard of the temple, it’s entrance mere feet away, a broken fountain has wood and massive bones piled atop it, providing a stage for… that annoying human bard from the grove, who’s strained singing seems coerced at minimum. Surrounding, tables—or rather, one large table chopped into smaller tables, are surrounded by goblins, hobgoblins and the two strangers they’d met beside that dying dwarf. Atop those tables is plenty of alcohol and roasted Rothe, which probably being produced in loads by the makeshift spit near the door, which is currently loaded up with something distinctly not Rothe. By the gods, it smells absolutely delicious, and certainly damn familiar.

…Stealing some of it straight off the spit seems far below his talents.

The two they’d met, followers of that True Soul, saunted straight up to them as though they expect to be greeted as friends. “It’s good to be amongst allies, isn’t it?” The woman says brightly.

The older man nods agreeably. “The little buggers managed to scrounge up some decent drink. Hope you enjoy the party.”

Peter opens his mouth, then pauses, his hand half raised to gesture at the temple door. His eyes find Harry’s, a strange energy flooding his senses at the glance. Adjacent to how it often feels when he loses control, but far stronger, far calmer, and smelling faintly of honeysuckle. Please. He hears, echoey as a cave, in the back of his mind.

He tries to reach out similarly, find the other’s tadpole in the same way it had linked unwittingly in the past or been able to find purchase in the minds of branded creatures. It’s not difficult to reciprocate the connection, but Peter flinches the moment Harry connects the circuit. He finds himself frowning. Clearly, Peter having Harry in his head is far less pleasant than it is to have Peter in his. If we rush, there’ll be expectation we have something important. We might, but we also might not. If we find we have something worth that, they’ll probably be to focused on whatever it is to notice us not rushing.

“We will.” Peter’s voice is still lacking in much confidence. “It’s… quite the party. Where did this stuff come from?”

The woman’s eyelids droop slightly, her smile distant. “I heard there was a mission to spread Her word up near Waukeen’s rest.” She says no more, suddenly seeming a whole lot more drunk than before. “You all should have a drink!”

“Maybe we should.” Harry says. “How about I get us all a tankard?” He plasters a wide, sardonic grin on his face.

Peter tilts his head at him. “Can you… carry four on your own?”

“I got a tail, and I’ve found this situation” He raises one of his strangely-shaped feet, “is a lot more dexterous than I expected. I bet I can make it all a whole lot easier than otherwise.”

Wyll glances at him, his jaw looking rather tense in this sort of company. Company, it occurs to him, that is nearly entirely responsible for terrorizing and slaughtering the outcast tieflings he’d been protecting. Perhaps that’s really all it was, perhaps Wyll is more than okay with Harry indulging in mass-killing here. Maybe The Blade is a bit more spiteful than he wants to admit.

“You know, I used to work as a bartender in the Gate.” Harry comments casually. “Fancier establishment, they taught me how to mix drinks. Our friend Nettie… I recall her giving us something I recall going almost perfectly with almost anything!”

“Didn’t you say you—” Peter cuts himself off, noticing the massive basin of alcohol sitting entirely unguarded. “Oh, yeah. I remember that.”

Harry rocks, his claws scraping against what remains of the stone tiling beneath their boots. “After all the work everyone here has been doing, I bet they deserve such a treat!” He’s struggling to control his voice, lilting slightly higher in excitement. “Our victory,” He carefully seizes that conversational tone, fitting it back into place. “The Absolute’s, I mean, it’s inevitable. As are… plenty of future battles. Much easier to make sure everyone gets what they deserve now.”

It’s Karlach who winds up looking the most conflicted about his unsubtle suggestion. Her eyes go a bit wider, glancing about the camp. “I guess you’re right.” She eventually concedes, her voice the most quiet and subdued it’s ever been. “Won’t be this peaceful for long.”

Wyll doesn’t respond to him verbally, but it’s visible on his face. The protests of his honor, of any sense of dishonest conduct, dying beneath a floor of the faces of murdered innocent tieflings. His face goes stony. Good to know, then, that even when he’s uncomfortable, he can be coaxed to neutrality with other bits of his morals.

He strides across the courtyard, suddenly very aware of the mantle atop his shoulders. Whatever it’s enchanted with, it’s similar to the rather grotesque magic in his own veins. It’s almost as though it, nothing but an object fastened from leather, is egging him on.

Wyvern poison, he ponders as he glances down at the vial in his hands, is powerful stuff. Perhaps any other who takes to killing would consider it something saved for a truly special death. But bodies in droves is far more appealing, far more special, than wasting the stuff on a lone person.

He knows this poison well himself. Not tasteless in the same way most drow poisons are—though that stuff is more than lovely to get one’s hands on, entirely undetectable in food or drink—but far more so than most stuff as effective. Whatever combination of alcohols have been dumped unceremoniously into the tub, it should conceal it flawlessly. And, he thinks as the poison pours near soundlessly, the color is just as untraceable in shit that’s wound up this dark.

Tucking the vial away, he slinks around to stand beneath an archway, waiting for the chaos to start.

And oh, does it go better than he could have hoped. An already rather tipsy goblin fills her tankard, then begins shouting at the rest of the hoard.

With more than a dozen of her fellow goblins gathered around, tainted booze filling each goblet, she manages to spot him. But he’s far beyond caring, there’s little he could do to change the consequences. Already in motion. “Watcha standing there all dry for? C’mere! Have a drink!” She stumbles over, snatching an unattended cup off a nearby table, filling it, and shoving it into his hands. “Wha’should we toas’ to, eh?”

“Oh, I’m glad you asked.” He glances to the substance he now carries, then offers a winning smile. “How about you tell everyone to gather round?”

She grins in return. “Lads! This’un’s giving us a toast!”

Feeling his heart pounding in his chest, feeling the ever-addicting rush of adrenaline begin, he can’t help but tempt fate. No fun if there’s no risk! “To drinking ‘til we die!”

None of the damn idiots hesitate, calling out declarations of future victory with complete abandon. The one beside him nearly spills her tankard as she turns back to look at him. “G’on! Drink up!”

“After you. I shouldn’t drink before the host.”

She laughs uproariously. “Tha’s how you end up dry, mate! Not that I’m complainin’.”

Down goes the booze. And then, after a mere few seconds, down go the goblins. Like dominoes.

The surviving lot of them rush to stand beside the fallen, actions idiotic and slow with drunkenness. “You!” One eventually says, pointing towards Harry. “You poisoned us!”

The irritating wriggling in his skull senses it—that marking, like so many supposed Absolutists possessed. “Do you really believe a True Soul would do so?” He lays a hand against his chest. “Clearly, you all should start looking for whatever heretic might have passed through.”

The goblin flinches backwards at his words, face dropping in shock. “‘Didn’t know you was a True Soul. W’ll get on it. Whoever did it migh’ be anywhere by now.”

With that, he strides back toward the group, stepping between bodies on his way over. Nobody says a word for a lengthy moment, all three looking some measure of conflicted. “Don’t give me that. Think it’s only fair every one of my kin,” he pauses, then gives a wave of his hand towards Karlach, “our kin they cut down deserves their pound of flesh.”

The words seem to somehow make Karlach look as though she feels guilty for her own prior guilt.

“I think we should go inside.” The drow pipes up. “I don’t know if we should be around to get caught in the aftermath.”

“Lead on.”

The stone-fashioned body of this temple is largely far more intact than it’s exterior. Within the first impression of the grand, spacious anteroom, every wall and even it’s high ceiling are sturdy and intact. Even the balconies overlooking the entrance are stable, save for crumbling railings. It’s things like that which show their wear: floorings and railings, the outsides of doorways, some stairs or minor, thin walls to equally minor walls. The foundations and architecture of the building itself are impressively sturdy; the temple and it’s wear don’t seem on first glance to be of an attack, only of abandonment and age. At least here, most goblin touches are more decoration than anything else.

Much of this area has been abandoned by more strict and conquering senses of civilization: the village they passed through is rotted and abandoned, yet the grove—and it’s forest— are robust. Perhaps it’s a uniquely fine area for Shadow Druids to seek radicalizing. The natural world has already been the thing to survive and stamp out all other settled life.

Whatever divinity used to find this place hollow, it was no mere lesser power or quasi-deity. To have a place of worship this finely made, large, and shamelessly out of the open implies it was used for a quite popular god, and one with no illegality or unscrupulousness tied to their worship.

A small group of goblins stand about the doorway to deeper into the temple, speaking to each other in raspy, irritated sentences. “Up front, Pete.” He reminds the other man, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder.

His fingers still. He’s suddenly aware of his claws, the sharp implements they are, and how thin Peter’s robes are. He’s quick, Harry knows that, he’s watched him, but when something lands it lands. It is good then, Harry thinks, that he got the damn drow that cloak. It’s enchanted to protect at least some from anything.

Anything, his thoughts repeat, as his own claws slip down the cloak and off Peter. What’s getting into him? Inevitable slaughter is the entertaining part of having someone like him around. Getting so caught on it being himself who does the job is against the whole point.

It’s not love. His muddy mind provides that to him eagerly. No denial, no desperation. It’s something he’d already realized or known before, no matter what before was. Harry does not do that, it’s thought of as a fact, like that Umberlee is the god of the ocean, or that faeries live in the feywild. Devils live in the hells, demons live in the abyss, Bhaal is the god of murder, Baldur’s Gate is on the sword coast, Waterdeep has annoyingly strict laws and Harry is not capable of meaningful attachment. All the same.

One goblin—bald headed, with skin the color of old stale peaches—moves to stop them “Oi! Ain’ no party in ‘ere. We’re doing the Absolute’s work. State yer business.”

The goblins have been pretty consistent about treating drow as though they’re high in ranking. And the fool out near the gate mentioned scouting. And someone called Minthara. Stick to that. He shoves the words into Peter’s mind, causing him to almost stumble.

“I’ve got an audience with the one in charge.” A bit more confident that time.

“You one of those moonrise types, then?” Her eyes then narrow, crouching and shuffling forward like she’s about to leap onto Peter like an angry cat. “Your kind don’t normally deal with Boss Ragzlin or Priestess Gut. Guessin’ you’re after Nightwarden Minthara.”

Peter nods, crossing his arms behind his back. “I’ve got an audience with Minthara.”

“You one of ‘em scouts.” She mutters to herself. “Audience is right. She’s an uppity one, an’ no mistake. But she knows ‘er business. Even been ordering the warchief around. Next raid’s gonna be a big ‘un.”

The large foyer is more of the same impressive architecture—the tall statues to a female goddess are mostly intact, their masonry detailed and impressive. On the floor beneath their feet, patterns of white, blue, and gold mosaic cover most of the central flooring, entirely intact, only covered in dust. Central, near the twin staircases leading upward on the backwall, and the two further cutting into either wall, a makeshift shrine of bones and ripped fabric stands proud. Most of the goblins nearby stand in a circle around it, but distant. Only a single one is standing truly close to it.

And the entire room smells like burnt flesh. It doesn’t register as unpleasant. Only makes Harry think of whatever they were roasting outside with immense yearning.

Do we just go straight to Minthara? A pause from Peter, who stalls. Wherever she is?

It’ll look less suspicious. And we can come back afterward. Just look confident.

Still hesitant with lack of directions, Peter turns and forces his expression serious, choosing the right staircase to stride urgently towards.

They mount the summit of them in time to see goblins crowding a man along the edge of scaffolding fashioned over a pit in the floor. He grips an emerging support pole, his feet slipping for purchase on what few inches of space he’s been allowed. “At least give me a sword!”

He gets a laugh in response. “We wan’ ya dead, ya dumpknuckle. Not dead an’ heroic!” A firm shove destroys the man’s balance, sending him over the edge. “Get down ‘ere and stop complainin’.”

The thud sounding from his landing is rough, but certainly not deadly. And it’s not the fall that causes the worst of the pained cries that follow. Something’s down there, scuttling with many legs around it’s prison.

Peter’s eyes jolt towards the ledge near him and downward. Whatever he sees makes him shudder, turning and striding eagerly towards the door that leads in the opposite direction. Fortunately, it appears to be the right one.

The cobweb encrusted bookshelves are fitting, because it’s a drow woman who lurks among them. A full blooded drow, not like their own, her white hair tied tightly clear of her face, wearing leather armor in the distinct make of Menzoberranzan. She hunches over a map, speaking in dagger-sharp words to the goblin beside her. She must be Minthara.

Peter comes to a stop to dictate his thoughts into Harry’s ear. I’m worried. I’m only half drow, which might cause problems. I’m also… He hesitates, teeth catching on his lip. Not a woman. This might go badly. Harry feels more than confident that wasn’t what he was originally going to say.

If it goes too poorly, someone else can start talking. And if it goes bad-bad, then we’ll just lob her head off for you.

Peter nearly begins speaking aloud at that, but he catches himself. His eyelids shut, a lengthy breath entering and leaving him. His will steeled, he marches toward her.

Whatever conversation she’s caught in, it isn’t going well. “Your scouting party has not returned, and half the intruders escaped your guards!” She barks.

“Sorry, mistress. We mucked up.” The goblin grumbles, quiet, in response.

Minthara steps slowly towards him. She may be relatively short, but she still towers over the goblin warrior; even if they were on any equal footing, her deadly fury would be enough to get results. “Until their sanctuary is found, I will take something precious from you every hour that passes.” She hisses. “A trinket, a tongue, a limb.”

The warrior raises his hands, palms towards her. “Ain’t no use without me limbs! The lads’ll make the prisoner squeal soon enough, swear it!”

“Silence now, creature! Or I will silence you forever.” She turns, facing their small group. For a brief moment, she looks relieved to see another drow—but upon closer look, her face fades into something like disgust.

After a moment, her thoughts reach out and mingle with theirs. Theirs, all of them, a one way link she secures with an effortless, practiced ease, one that feels like a cold caress, one that could lose it’s gentleness with no notice. Through it, an image is projected. A young woman, pale eyed, pale skinned, pale haired, in red armor wrought from something that registers to Harry as red-dyed leather made from human skin, whispers into Minthara’s ear. One of the chosen that voice had spoken of. Again, the strange woman registers as distinctly familiar, but Harry cannot recall from where. Nor can he force the image to stay for longer to try and focus, it flickers away at her command.

Ultimately, the purpose is clear; asserting her authority, as someone selected straight from one Chosen. “You may be a True Soul, but do not think that makes us equals, jaluk.” That is not for all of them, only for Peter. “Are you here to join my hunt?”

Peter doesn’t look much hurt by the turn, only something close to chastised. “How… how could you tell I’m a True Soul?” With whatever mental links they could form compromised, he’s trying to stall.

“Why you ask? Surely, if you were deserving despite your… status, you feel the Absolute moving through me, just as I feel Her in you.” Whatever smooth composure spoken with dissolves back into strictly delivered orders. “Now, you will obey me, jaluk, in Her name.”

It’s not something Harry can quite describe, whatever has come over Peter. He looks distant, shrinking back to make himself look smaller. He looks about ready to just fold and do as she says, and similarly avoids looking into her eyes at all. Even without the link, he can feel the fear radiating off him. “What’s the target?” He responds.

Her voice fills with loathing. “Worshipers of a false god. Their existence is an insult to the Absolute’s claim on this territory. There is a weapon the Absolute seeks—I am certain the wretches have hidden it away there. I will find it, and pull it from amongst the dead and ashes.” Her tone is fanatical, excitement palpable. Through faint remnants of the psychic link leak thoughts of victory, of unbeliever’s blood spilt. And through that link seeps an image, one of the weapon they’re seeking.

The weapon she seeks is the artifact, the one that had prior been in Shadowheart’s possession, yet seemingly appeared of it’s own accord, protecting them as they entered this very encampment. Peter seems to realize it too; he stumbles backwards a bit, arm raised as though he’s about to reach into Harry’s pack and retrieve it for her.

But Minthara continues to speak. The deeply ingrained fear Peter possesses towards her is the thing that stops him—he doesn’t dare to interrupt. “The thief whimpering in the dungeon tried to flee to their sanctuary. We will continue to remove parts of him until he tells us exactly where it is. He’s been resilient, but he’ll talk.” Then, thankfully before Peter can perform the foolish act he’s clearly compelled to perform, her eyes land more fully on Harry. “I’ve heard word that those who harbor the weapon also harbor a number of exiled tieflings. They’d no doubt know the location as well, and you’ve managed to catch one under your authority despite even your diluted blood.” Whatever her emotion, it can’t quite be called impressed. “If you haven’t been able to make him talk, I’m sure it could be handled here.”

There are plenty of goblins here to be slaughtered, and just as many bodies with hearts still beating at the grove. To lure her and her soldiers out into the open, then cross them will surely be tolerable to the rest of them. And, if they took the opportunity to cull through the few who’d remain here, it would be the maximum number of fresh corpses he could dream of managing without drawing ire. “I’ll talk.”

Immediately, there are three threads clawing for purchase in his mind, desperate and horrified by the implication. Smoke, honeysuckle, and a jarring combination of sulfur and rose, all very clearly not pleased. He seizes them for only a moment, hoping that it’s not long enough to be noticed. Trust me. I got a plan.

Honeysuckle and smoke both withdraw from him, but the last—Wyll—remains for a moment. If you side with her, I side with the grove.

I’ve got no plans of siding with her. Appeased for the time being, the warlock departs from his thoughts.

“Praise be.” She murmurs softly to herself. “Through Her, you shall be my eyes.”

A splinter of ice sinks into his thoughts through the cracks he can feel himself, piercing his memories and sorting through them, the discarded flashing in front of his eyes. He does nothing to resist as she rifles through his thoughts. Wilds, tiefling faces, then the gate, with the adventurers retreating inside.

“The cowards taking refuge among the desperate. Perfect.” Her attention turns back towards Peter. “All of you have been there before, You perhaps most surprising. That sort of softness may be to our advantage, particularly if they do not realize an ally has become the knife to their throats. I order you go to that refuge and make your way inside. As a friend.”

Whatever horror Peter may feel at the idea, it’s not enough to break through the paralytic, almost instinctual fear he possesses. He’s nodding before he can so much as think. “It’ll be so.”

“Once you are inside, I shall gather a raiding party and move into position. When the time is right to strike, you shall open the gates for us.” Determination fills her. “We will cleanse the place of infidels and burn it to the ground. And then we will be first among Her favorites.”

Peter is beginning to sway slightly, still not entirely present. “It shall be so.”

Her attention directs back towards the goblin, dictating orders and striding away with him at her heels, vanishing. The moment she’s too far gone to notice, Wyll’s hands fix to his shoulders, steering him out of the war room and into an nearby, but seemingly empty, room.

Karlach beats him to the following punch. “Woah, soldier. What did you just do?” Wary, and a little angry, she marches closer to him than he’s seen her get to anyone.

“I truly hope you have something in mind worth telling her that.” Wyll lets go of him, sounding strained. Beyond him, Peter doesn’t say a word, still not looking all there.

“I’ve already decimated much of their camp.” He snaps, tone a bit harsher than he’d like. “They’ll have to nearly clear this place to get enough people in fighting condition. I tell you confidently that few guards will remain around their other commanders, that priestess we already saw and the goblin’s boss. Even if they’ve got a few still around, we’ll be able to cut ‘em down easily with it cleared out. Then, nothing’s requiring we help her at the grove. We’ve essentially just lured her into the open, with her trusting we actually intend to be on her side. With the grove’s fighters on our side, and her on the opposite, the druid’s grove will come to little harm. What will happen is we’ll kill far more goblins than we would otherwise. The tieflings can’t stay there forever. Even without the hostility, the druids don’t have the resources to sustain them. By taking on as many of the goblins as we can, we’ll be leaving the road to Baldur’s Gate far safer from them.”

He reaches and snags Wyll’s thoughts. Whatever you’re thinking, I’m not lying as much as you expect. It’s the most death I can pull from this, and all are the same that you’ve been killing to defend the tieflings.

Save for any druids or tieflings who die defending the grove! Comes the immediate, almost shouted response.

Probably the same that would be slaughtered on the road if we killed fewer. That shuts him up.

Wyll turns, raising his hands to squeeze some of his anxiety and frustration into one nearby bookshelf and lower his head. The stone he grabs onto breaks off in his grasp.

“Listen to me.” Karlach has wound up so close she might leave burns along his left arm to match his face. “I’m trustingyou. But if you disappoint me, it’ll be the last thing you do.”

“I have no plans to. If we left them alive, the tieflings would die on the road. It’s the best thing we can do for them.”

She’s not entirely convinced, but something else catches her attention. “Shit, soldier.” She murmurs, her attention on their slightly shell-shocked companion. “You look… not alright.”

Peter lurches towards a wall, sliding down it to sit. “I—um, god, I’m—” He runs tense fingers through his hair. “A coward, I guess. I shouldn’t have said all that, I was about to…” He trails off, eyes trained on the floor, like his terror of making eye contact with Minthara has transferred to all of them. “...I spent most of my adolescence in Menzoberranzan. I was born on the surface, but I got grabbed at some point. I can’t really remember that, or anything before then. Apparently, when they found me, it seemed like I’d had my head smashed up against something. That’s not really relevant. But I was male, and not a full drow, and a surface dweller, so even if they didn’t kill me none of it was great, and things get not good fast if you’re any of those things and are defiant. I sort of felt like I was there.”

“If either of you don’t believe the rest, then believe I wanna lay my daggers into her for that.” He grumbles, stepping a bit closer to Peter. He’s a bit surprised to realize his own sentiment is true.

Peter glances up, offering him a smile.

Karlach’s expression is soft. “...I know the feeling. I probably would have ended up in a similar state, if it was a demon and not Mizora we wound up meeting the other night. Don’t know if that type of thing ever goes away.”

“I’ve been out of there for a long time. Years.” He shrugs, eyes meeting hers. “It hasn’t ever. You’ll… probably get more stuff like those paladins too. I’ve certainly never been left alone.”

Would drow really find it worth raiding just to get their hands on a single escaped individual, one not even a slave? It seems uncharacteristic. It also seems to Harry like there’s not a combination of bloodline, gender, plane, and faith that could make a drow suddenly able to manifest those threads like Peter had done, and it also seems a bit as though those things are probably connected.

But their conversation is cut off by the sudden entrance of a rare human in this temple. A priest—but a bizarre one, clad in less robes and more odd iron wrought pieces that aren't positioned to protect, but do possess brutal sharp edges that bite into this man's skin. His skin is covered heavily in bruises, flecks of his own blood dried on him as well. "Greetings." He murmurs, paying no mind to what they'd been doing. "I've met few aside from goblins here. Ah! Are you here to assist with the prisoners?"

Why would a priest be assisting with them? "What do you mean?"

"I was invited to teach them some of my techniques. I live for pain and its intricacies, you see." He motions to the things lining this room; Harry notes that all books nearby tend to imply the influence of Loviatar, the goddess of pain. Her priests tend towards torture, but they don't often see it as such. "But these goblins tend to thrive only on the crude and primitive. Pain without purpose is a terrible thing, wouldn't you agree?" The haughty decorum of his blood scoffs: only the lowest would settle to the spectacle of their own gore.

Mostly, confused glances are exchanged between the few of them, but few would become clerics of such low-brow gods without being self assured perhaps to the point of comedy. "Forgive me." He looks about them, but of course it has to be himself who catches most of his fascination. He's all barbs and spikes, maybe his painful looking skin is just fanciful to this man. "But that look in your eyes, something terrible has happened to you."

Never reveal too much. Let them all assume it just be the worm. "Clever man, how'd ya know?"

"Because I see those same eyes when I look in the mirror, dear one." Not quite the same, Harry'd theorize. Maybe just on opposing sides of what would be called sadomasochism. Or maybe not, anyone who took a shine to Loviatar might just be both. "We've all suffered in these dark times. It is little wonder you bear scars of such pain and anguish. Please, let me alleviate this pain." He offers.

"Sure, I like trying new things." The words fall off his tongue before he can think twice. Or maybe not, maybe he too is the compound.

—

Selling the illusion has them making camp in some unnoticed room deeper within the temple, empty and untended. Same sparkle-blue, same stonework. All quite monotonous.

But, delightfully, Shadowheart looks entirely and intensely miserable. "The fuck is up with you?"

"This temple used to be one to Selune." She mutters bitterly. "At least, its now a nest to filthy goblins. A fitting end."

"Not many would have such strongly negative feelings towards such a harmless goddess." He comments. Not many—much less out of a cleric. Only a select few of even the foulest gods would order their followers feel such pure loathing. A very select few. Not even the Dead Three would care so much, it would mostly be gods such as Mask, Umberlee, and in particular…

Shadowheart bristles. "Do not call that moon witch harmless! Alright, you want the truth, fine. I worship Shar, Mistress of the Night. Her twin and foe. Now that I've told you, don''t make a big fuss about it."

He glances at her tent, her armor. All that big black disk scrawled over them. You know what? That should have been obvious. "I vow on everything in my being: I do not give a shit. Though I know her worship is outright forbidden in parts. I wouldn't have expected one of hers to be willing to bear her symbology so unsubtly."

"Well, if my faith bothers you, perhaps you should fetch the bailiff to arrest me…" She bends forward, looking in the space about them with exaggerated eyes. "Ah! But there's no bailiff here, is there? Just leagues of wilderness and the dangers lurking within." She scowls. "We're in this together, but I'll happily go it alone. She'll keep me company just fine."

A goddess that primordial and with so many followers as Shar, bothering with some single cleric? Sure. "Is that what that weird injury of yours is over?" He asks.

She nods stiffly. "Yes, it is my burden from her. I can feel her influence in it."

"And why does she want to go and cause her cleric pain?" His tone is devoid of compassion; after all, he feels none. So many profane powers will extract everything they can from their toddling-along clerics, but offer nothing fun or enjoyable in turn. It's just pathetic to seek a divinity that offers nothing in their worship itself.

"She has her reasons." Shadowheart insists. There it is, so blind the followers of those gods. He supposes it fits the one who brings nightfall.

He flicks his gaze over the odd purple blotch on her hand; bruiselike in how it appears, yet Harry reckons if it were one it would somehow be more interesting to him than a wound caused by some god. Right now, it more disgusts him. "Hope it won't flare up in a fight and get your head lobbed off."

"It's never done so before. Besides, no god would want to waste the life of their followers." He finds he doubts that for some reason. "Pain is sacred to followers of Lady Shar. Pain will give way to loss, and then to the peace of her eternal darkness. You can tolerate a great deal of suffering so long as it has meaning." Her tone hardens. "She would not waste it."

He waves a dismissive hand. "Right, whatever. You're not upset that artifact came to me, are you?"

"The way it shot out of my tent? I doubt it would stay if you gave it back to me." It does seem like she's not pleased by that.

—

—

That evening, the air is heavy on his body. Harry's head pounds as great as it did when the voice had made it feel like it was about to melt. The world swims every time he blinks; he cannot tell whether or not he loses consciousness between them.

"Ch'k'l ghaik Vlaakith m'zath'ak!"

There is steel on his neck. Steel from the hand of a githyanki woman.

"Lae'z—?"

He can't get the word out over the tide of words from the gith woman. "Can you feel it crawling through you? Tendrils squirming in your chest? Gripping your heart, piercing your belly? Your bones popping, your flesh swelling?" She sounds most mad. "I can. I see it in you. I feel it in me. We are lost." She hisses with unwavering conviction. "I will be quick. First you, then the others, then myself."

"What in the world are you on about?" He catches doubt in her eyes and pounces upon it. "I've got a migrane." In reality, Harry wouldn't know if he felt the things she described. His head aches too deeply. "Nothing else. And apparently, you're just too anxious—paranoid. If it doesn't break by morning, you can dance with that dagger all you

"Tsk'va…" The steel draws back from his throat. "I will not let the ghaik take me." She hisses to him, firm. "I will wait. But know this: I am watching. And if the sickness does not pass by morning, I will do what must be done."

And as if in response to that, this night is one where he does not dream of only blood and guts. His mind's eye brings him an image new to him; a face familiar despite its entirely uncanny nature. Skin withered tight, skull-like. Fierce eyes and exposed teeth. Strange features, a wide mouth and flat brow, sharp cheekbones.

His mind does not know what to make of it. It almost twists before him, as though his psyche is desperately struggling to interpret it: first just the image of a skull carved from dark stone with bleeding eyes, then a human with the same face, his eyes sunken and his skin leathery, his hair grayed. The sight of him shakes him to his core. Eventually, though, the face he settles upon is spotted like a gith. "I came just in time," the face says in a voice raspy and almost froglike. "You are transforming."

Well, that's a little unfortunate. And a bit embarassing; he'd been so convinced it was impossible. Maybe it was only denial after all.

"Don't worry." The smile, despite its owners best efforts, is anything but reassuring. Far too uncanny; the skin nearly shreds at the edges with how unnatural such a happy look would be. "You will not become a mindflayer. Not while I'm around. I'll protect you."

Harry's blood rages bitterly against it; soft things out of this mouth are unbecoming and deeply, deeply wrong. But if he's being turned, he's not in a position to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Who are you?"

"A guide, a protector." The body that familiar visage is attached to rises. "Listen, we don't have much time. But there is great potential within the parasite; your instinct is to resist the power it gives, but you must accept it. I will keep it from consuming you. But for the sake of us both, you must learn to wield it. For a fight for Faerun. A fight we are losing."

Some long buried instinct in him knows, knows very deeply, that any power that face offers him is power he should accept gratefully. Power he should take as a brutal, ruthless gift. "Okay," He blurts out before he can think twice. Danger-danger to hesitate before this man.

"You can change the tide," This man pleads as though he hasn't already agreed. "Only if you embrace it." This… isn't right, why would this person bother coddling him? Why would they offer it so gently, speak in niceties? It is the kindness that makes him hesitate, somehow. "I must go, the enemy is closing in. I will be back. Wake now."

He does as he's told—but his blood insistently says something is off. His blood, with no small sense of bruised pride, also tells him to obey.

Based on the looks on every sorry soul in camp, they've all had similar dreams. But with their confusion and… wonder, in some cases, he suspects they didn't see that man.

—

It’s agreed that it’s best to clear out the camp itself before making their way to the grove. Doubling back once they have betrayed these bizarre cultists is incredibly foolish. Having already spotted her, the priestess is first on the chopping block.

She hasn’t moved from her altar to join with the raiding party; noticeably, however, the room she resides in is nearly emptied in comparison, only a couple lingering about the edges.. It leaves it an easy task for her to spot them, but remain unalarmed. The tadpoles seem to allow them to register as allies to not just Minthara. “Now, here’s somebody special! The Absolute has touched you, hasn’t She?” Her short legs haul her towards a brazier, filled with glowing live coals. A branding iron rests inside. “Priestess Gut needs to touch you too.”

Peter remains up front, the purple-skinned face of their party amongst this camp of people who especially value it. “Why… why are you branding people?”

She seizes the poker in one fist. “Ready for the fire, are you? It’s a gift. Lets the faithful recognize each other quick-sharp. That way, nobody’ll mess with ya. Soon enough, I’ll have it on the whole camp.”

“One of the leaders.” Wyll murmurs. His voice lowers, suddenly cold and vengeful. “Make her squeal.”

Oh, Harry knew he had it in him. “Dunno about them, but as much as I’ve always wanted to smell my own burning flesh, I’ll have to settle for yours.”

The threads of his self control fray. He lunges for the priestess, seizing her about the neck and hoisting her head first into the coals. An agonized screech echoes, so he simply pushes her further down, disregarding how it makes the coals begin to eat at his own fingertips. The commotion that follows is roaring, but quick. A blast of eldritch energy stuns a goblin in place for long enough Karlach’s axe can easily nearly split it entirely in two. Opposite them, it seems to require little effort from Peter to snap one’s neck.

From the metal gate beyond Priestess Gut’s shrine, two goblins rush upward. Harry heaves the now motionless and very, very burnt body in his hands at them, the limp thing tumbling into a heap beside one. That goblin seems to think he’s missed.

He hasn’t. Harry reaches out, commanding his spark of the arcane towards the body, and closes his fist. The cavity of the chest bursts, shards of bone and hardened flesh impaling the nearby goblin. The other is cut down soon after, the axe Karlach flings and another blast from Wyll ripping the life from it in sync with each other.

Her parasite. The voice of the dream visitor croaks into his ear. Harry finds himself shivering; he cannot still recall where he’s heard or seen it before, but it evokes a primal, almost desperate terror in him.

The tadpole hauls itself out of Gut’s ear, slimy and fleshy. No matter it’s rush, it’s not moving quickly enough to outpace even a slow walk. Harry plucks it up off the stone, rifling about in his back to find a jar to stow it away within to inspect later.

“Well,” Karlach looks over the space, shifting from foot to foot. “None of you too roughed up, yeah? Should we just go and take care of the gobbo’s boss?”

“I’ve not been touched.” Wyll confirms. “I believe we took them a bit off guard. I don’t believe many had the chance to do much.”

Harry raises his sooty fingertips. “Only got what I did to myself.”

“We haven’t found Ragzlin yet. He’s probably a hobgoblin.” Peter lifts the fallen branding iron carefully, inspecting the symbol on the end. His head raises. “Gut’s a priestess. They’d be around normal goblin camps—worshiping Maglubiyet instead of whatever they’ve converted to, but they wouldn’t be leading. Or, well, clerics could come into power, but probably not of a hoard this big, one with hobgoblins and ogres around. The main leaders, the one commanding all the raids and such, that’s usually a positioned gained and maintained by raw strength. So it’s often bigger goblinoid species. Like hobgoblins.” He pauses. “I don’t think that would be Minthara either. She had authority, but she was pretty focused on taking that artifact. And with the mentions of Moonrise, whatever that is, she’s probably an outsider. Not their permanent leader. It’s not like most Lolth-sworn drow to want to deal with other species long term, at least.”

“He’s right. I can’t recall taking much interest academically in my youth, but as the Blade, most goblins have been lead by hobgoblins. Occasionally bugbears.” Wyll agrees. “Perhaps we should start at that larger door near where we’d found Minthara. I expect their leader would take a liking to a place more grand.”

"Let us find the grandest doors in this damn place, then," Harry grunts.

—

The hobgoblin, species just as Peter predicted, stands over the corpse of a mindflayer, clutching a scroll too small to properly fit between his meaty hands. His fingers carefully arranged to cover as few words as possible, he gestures with the other hand in messy imitations of somatic spellcasting just as he bumbles out loose imitations of the words one would use to invoke speech out of dead. “I command you, corpse. Speak!” He roars.

The body quivers, a sickly green glow enveloping it. But it dissipates as soon as it appeared, leaving the hobgoblin increasingly frustrated. “Nothing.” He growls. “Must be reading it wrong.” He turns it upside down, inspecting it to see if he finds clarity, then huffs. This is likely Ragzlin. He then turns to them, the same loose psionic energy that had emanated from Minthara leaking out similar information. The taste of recently swallowed ale. The smell of bile. “Another drowTrue Soul. As if there weren’t enough of you.” He grumbles. He inspects the scroll once again, than glances over at them. “You ever talk to a dead squid? Now’s your chance.”

"Oh, but you put yourself through so much to get to do it yourself, didn't you?"

Ragzlin scowls. "I'm no good with magic." He grunts, seeming to shift his weight with the mere bruise to his pride.

"How about me and my friends here solve your problem for you." He beckons the group forward. "You can ask the mindflayer all the questions you want if you're dead too."

Quite the beautiful fight breaks out from there, if Harry does say so himself. It's odd—he might have been at command in many battles before, but this feels different. There's an urge in him to watch his back for he never knows what a follower could do, but it quiets with these.

"Right," Harry says when the bloody deed is done. "Lets see to those tieflings." Perhaps he shouldn't have worded it like that, Wyll gives him an uncomfortable look.

—

There are half buried explosive barrels in the ground around the gate into the druid’s grove, poorly covered with dirt and leaves as a means of disguise. The air here is now still, devoid of birdsong or footsteps. The only sound surrounding them is the thwip of a loosed arrow, embedding itself into the ground beside one of Peter’s feet.

“Wait!” The still is broken with a rushed cry from Zevlor above them. “Bows down!” He commands to a row of armor-clad tieflings. His attention them diverts back to them below. “Gods above, we took you for goblins. Get up here! I want the gate sealed before they arrive.”

Wyll breathes out a somber sigh. “I only wish,” he murmurs in a low tone, “we did not need to put more strain on them.”

It’s every fighting body the refugees still have that does their work up above the gate. Bows atop every back in sight as barricades are built and braziers set alight—prepared for arrows to be lit within. “Gods above, you’re alive.’ Zevlor strides quickly to meet them. “A little light when the day seems darkest. I’d given you up for dead at the goblin camp. I’m damn glad to be wrong.” He twists, eyes narrowing out towards the treeline, where dark shapes flit about. “What happened? We’ve seen them massing in the woods?”

“It’s me who failed you.” Peter steps ahead of them. “There’s something off about the whole camp. The drow leader was able to dig into our minds, and—it’s my fault, really. And not only because in the same way you and the other tieflings are kin, I…”

…What the hell is he on about? He loses nothing by just saying Harry had done it. Harry had done it, after all. He takes a close look at the drow’s face. Peter bears his heart on his sleeve, no matter if it’s his fear, his pain, or his unwarranted guilt. Sweat already dots the violet brow of his, much like his anxieties when he’d been speaking with Minthara. Does he take it as though it’s his fault because he believes his paralysis pushed Harry to act in his place.

“Truly?” Zevlor tilts his head, expression devoid of any resentment Peter seems to expect. “You have nothing to apologize for. I don’t know how one would fight off that sort of mental assault.” He exhales, his eyes shutting. “We were almost ready to leave.” He drives his heel intensely into the ground, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter now. If it must be bloodshed after all, I’m glad to have you with us.”

“What do you need? There must be something by ways of help we can provide before things begin.”

Zevlor crouches, looking out at the explosive-dotted ground. “I believe we’ve prepared as best we can. We’ll need to thin out the goblin numbers quickly if we’re to have any chance of survival. We’ve buried all the oil we can spare out in front. We’ll blow the horn to draw them in, and pray our fire arrows strike true.”

Peter peers out over the ledge, inspecting the placements of those barrels. “We’ll get you through this safely. I swear it.” A slight frown crosses his face. “I’m no good at range, though. I’ll probably need to drop down once they come.”

That same tenseness Harry felt at the goblin camp is back. Alone, Peter would draw too much attention. He’d be cut down in moments. And that shouldn’t bother him, he hates that it bothers him. It’s not even as though Wyll’s whimsical feelings about Harry becoming good hold any water, because every brush against the drow he feels still has him imagining his death. It’s just turned to images of somewhere from the recesses of his memory, somewhere where he pictures dark stone beneath Peter’s back and red light bathing them both.

“If you must. I fear what fate would come to you if you did so, but it is ultimately your own choice.” The look Zevlor gives Peter is one as though he’s already dead. “Make your preparations, then sound the horn. They won’t resist such an invitation.”

When Peter hurrys his way down to the lowest ledge, Harry follows at his heels. “You don’t really need to go down there.” He whispers to the drow. “I’ve seen you use that… spider web stuff. You could just yank them up here.”

Peter spins on his heels, suddenly very pale. “You saw that? I didn’t think any of you had…” He shakes his head, backing away on his heels. “You don’t get it, and I can’t explain it quickly. But nobody can see it, if I can avoid that.” Just as he’d backed away, he’s suddenly stepping very close to Harry. “I’ll use them if I need to, to protect the refugees. But not for… me. It’s never been a good idea in the past.”

“Then I’ll be passing my bow off to one of the tieflings and coming down with you.” He squeezes Peter’s bicep. “Listen. If you go down there alone, you’re dead. All of your attention will be on you. I’m not letting you get ripped apart like that.”

Peter shakes his head rather vehemently at that. “You can’t, that’ll just get you killed too!”

“Then either you’re staying up here, or we’re both dropping down.” Harry decides for them both. “Sorry. But I like you quite a bit more than most of the bastards we travel with. You’re… cute. I’m not about to let you go and stage your own heroic suicide.”

“Oh!” He suddenly crosses his arms behind his back, dragging one foot through the dirt. He’s smiling, just a bit. “Woah, yeah, I’m glad I wasn’t reading too deep into things. I was pretty sure, but then you started going off with Wyll, and I thought you might—wow, I should stop talking.”

Oh, he thought Harry meant romantically. Ah, he can live with that. Peter’s rather pretty, he’d like having him in his bed, now that he’s thought about it. “Wyll? No, I’m pretty sure he’s got his eyes set elsewhere.” They swivel in sync; the warlock is in conversation with Karlach as they speak. His gloved hand drifts upward, almost brushing her cheek, then stops. Both their companions’ expressions fall a bit, before Karlach’s following sentence manages to make him laugh.

Peter’s and his eyes meet when they face each other once more. “I’m worried I’ll fold or freeze up again when Minthara shows up.” He admits. “You’re right that it’s a pretty horrible idea to be the only one on the ground, but I bet you that Minthara won’t be commanding them from there, at least at first.” He pauses, tilting to press their shoulders together. “I want to take her on myself. Just to know I can, really. Will you face her beside me?”

Slowly, almost not trusting himself to keep his fingers loose and on the correct side of Peter’s neck, he lays a hand against the back of Peter’s neck. His thumb works against the short hairs on the back of his head. “Gladly. And it won’t be too bad, Pete. They’re just goblins.”

Peter shakes his head. “Not her.”

“Yeah, and we got a drow too.” He ruffles his hair. “So it’s even. Besides, even if she has some weird ameteur god on her side, you have whatever it is that’s giving you those webby things.”

Peter’s hand, certainly not for the first time, raises and presses to his chest. “Yeah.” He agrees. If that’s on equal footing to him, Harry reckons it might be fair indeed he suspects that’s not all Peter has at his disposal. “I hope we don’t die.”

“We won’t.” Harry won’t, at least. And he’s, apparently, become very set on the idea it would only ever be him killing this one. He takes yet another look out over their surroundings, trying to predict what outcomes he can. Karlach’s got an impressive heap of javelins and handaxes beside her, throwing them much more suited to her than a bow would be. She’s positioned on one end of the where the gate opens below, with Wyll on the other beside the horn. Decent fortifications have been built to prevent most projectiles, but both ends of the sloping earth leading up here, if one could jump up past the steeper, more hostile exposed stone, are difficult to defend. The hill opposite them would be appealing for anyone wanting to begin the fight as a commander—it’s the obvious choice for Minthara. It conceals whatever may lie in the forest from the grove’s defenders, but it also demands that the forces she leads must either divide to come from either end of it or focus on only one.

Additionally, he realizes, if Minthara does take that position initially, she certainly won’t want to actually be fighting there. The entire surface is bathed in sunlight; that won’t change unless a sudden storm rolls in. Highly unfavorable for a full drow.

The horn sounds before he can point that out to Peter, the low, droning tone rattling the trees. As though they’d made them drop like acorns from those quivering branches, footsteps roll out in thunderous hordes from the treeline. They go in two splintered groups, divided by each side of the stone heap, but the group opposite himself and Peter appears thinner, mostly goblins save for a single hobgoblin. Goblins on both ends of the split have barrels strapped to their backs, lit fuses trailing down near the ground. His eyes flick towards the oil embedded in the ground—someone could make that backfire very easily.

Aside from the expected number of hobgoblins, a massive ogre brings up the rear of the line, it’s slow approach rattling the earth. And, on the more unexpected hand, massive spiders approach on either end, their quick and many legs leaving them due to arrive far more quickly.

“Get that damn gate closed!” Zevlor barks from above them. It thuds down with far less grace than normal. His following words are muffled by distance and direction—he’s turned back towards the other tieflings. Whatever his speech, it is not intended for them.

But, from the furthest treeline, a mote of shadow has detached from the shade and begun to rush at maddening speeds. With the sprint it maintains, it vanishes behind the hill rapidly, only to emerge atop it, revealing herself in careful, precise steps that entirely conceal any prior speed. Her arms fold behind her back, pale red eyes surveying the scene.

The steady hand of some tiefling above them looses an arrow, one primed to sink straight past her armor and into her heart. But Minthara’s lack of guard is farce; one gauntlet clad hand surges upwards, the back of her hand angled precisely so that the arrow would slip against the leather and sink harmlessly into the ground. With the depth it manages despite that, whoever shot that might have been able to do their job for them had it not been deflected.

Minthara’s attention shifts, her icy stare boring down towards himself and Peter. The half-drow beside him goes rigid, his expression dropping. “I can hear her.” Peter whispers to him.

Harry slides his way behind Peter, brushing against him, carefully leaving his fingertips against his opposite shoulder blade. “You know, regardless of what she thinks of you because of who you are, you’re the one who actually has an advantage here,” he hums out into Peter’s ear. The other stills in response, a bit more relaxed. “Haven’t you realized? She’s in the sun. If we get to her before she can move, she’s as good as dead.”

Something in Peter’s whole body shifts—the man is no longer rigidly stiff, just tensed. He’s not locked up, nor is he frozen by the icy spikes that come with any invasion of Minthara’s into one’s thoughts. Power sparks beneath his skin, following the grain of the muscle, carefully honed and directed as Peter shifts, bringing his forearms into a careful guard and lowering himself onto bent knees.

Minthara’s expression contorts in fury, lips pulling back to expose her teeth as she rips her mace off her back. As she does, the goblin hoards begin to spill into the hollow, arrows piercing through the air from above.

“I’ve got your back.” He nods to Peter, daggers in hand.

Peter leaps from their shared stone outcropping, darting between rushing goblins towards the hill Minthara stands on, ignoring every creature he passes with his focus to get straight to her. Harry progresses a bit more slowly, eyes on him. Peter could benefit from cover fire; he carefully slings motes of fire and icy knives towards nearby raiders, disrupting any attempted attacks.

That ogre lingers at the midpoint; there’s very, very little Harry could do to damage a beast like that with only a single spell or thrown blade. “Peter!” He calls in warning, but he fears that even with his own rapid footfalls, the roar of the battlefield drowns him out.

Peter doesn’t seem aware of the massive, clublike fist raised above his head, something that doesn’t change when it plummets down towards him. Despite that, with an almost supernatural ease, his feet twist and propel him forward in a leap at the last moment. He turns in the air, his boots dragging in the dirt as he skids to a stop. Ogre’s aren’t known for being particularly intelligent—this one stares at where it’s hand leaves a crater in the earth, confused to the lack of drow beneath it. Peter takes the chance, leaping atop the fist and stepping with confident footing up its arm and over its shoulders. The ten-foot height of such a creature is more than enough to fling himself to the top of the mound of stones upon which Minthara stands, prepared to face him.

He twists up a quick spell, mist rising over him. When it dissipates, he stands atop one lower outcropping on the hillside, facing outward over the battlefield. Some of those explosive barrel bearing goblins are getting close to the gate, and they aren’t the only ones. There are dozens currently crawling through the hollow like ants, unaware of or paying no mind to the oil barrels in the ground.

With one hand, Harry vaults himself upward and over onto the next highest stone. With the other, he concocts a small bolt of fire into his palm, then blows it like a kiss. As he lands and then hurls himself onto the top, he can hear chaos and burning behind him. Zevlor wanted their numbers culled; he’s gotten his wish.

Before him, the clash between drow unfolds. Both are incredibly quick, their alert movements making it near impossible for strikes to do more than graze each other. Peter’s footwork is quick, hopping about like a fencer to evade most swings of Minthara’s mace, though how much he’s being forced to move, he’s not able to take many swings himself, at least not ones that can do much damage.

Minthara’s firmer positioning has provided her with one thing: she’s slowly driving Peter towards the cliff-edge of the hill. But Peter seems like he’s taken note of that, crouching before springing away. Doing so gives her the chance to drive a brutal blow into Peter’s back, radiant energy flashing off the weapon. He stumbles, tripping to a stop beside Harry. Round eyes flick upwards towards him.

Across from them, Minthara turns slowly, her back straight and shoulders set. She has carefully sculpted her outward behavior to be intimidating, but, taking in her intense squint, perhaps much of her furrowed expression isn’t merely her loathing. There’s body to the pause she requires to look out over the battlefield and truly assess the damage. “Disappointing. But you’d be foolish to think that our forces were that limited.” Any disdain she feels towards Peter is almost equal to what she feels towards her own dead. “You will be ash all the same.”

“Get behind her. Flank. If either of us have to move, that’s fine, just keep opposite each other.” Harry orders. Peter tilts his head in acknowledgement, then darts off, far faster than Harry could achieve without magic.

He charges as well, putting all he can in those initial seconds into keeping her attention on him. A shard of ice forms in his hand, which he flings into her sternum, exploding on impact. She stumbles backwards, guard lowered. Reaching her, he draws back a dagger and thrusts it into the thinner, more flexible leather near her stomach. She cries out, then thrusting the end of her mace’s handle into his shoulder to knock him back.

Then her body suddenly seizes slightly in time with two impacts opposite Harry. Peter draws back, out of reach for a strike in revenge.

Minthara’s swings are wild, few landing as a consequence, but that’s not as much of a grace when the ones that hit feel like being hit by a truck. The same sort of paladin-radiance Harry knows well sears off her strikes, along with flickers of fire. Harry’s more fortunate on two fronts—fire doesn’t harm a tiefling nearly as much as most others, and that she seems far more intent on Peter’s destruction than his. Something Harry can’t seem to draw her off of. It’s rather frustrating, the lack of anything to render this actually exciting.

It’s no longer just that Peter isn’t properly armored to take the rare hit his light feet can’t dance away from. The cloth of his robes is tearing, exposing bloody gashes and deep bruises. And Harry can’t do enough damage forcing blades through leather to draw her away from him.

A particularly nasty swing shreds through the chest of Peter’s robes, the hollow sound of cracking ribs like thunder. Peter stumbles back, the shreds of colorful fabric drifting in the breeze around his now exposed chest. Only, there’s less chest exposed than expected; sunlight reflects off something reflective, briefly blinded him. Had the kid been wearing better armor beneath the whole time?

His vision clears, revealing the narrow, silvery twists that metal is shaped into.. Whatever that is, it’s not armor. The way the steel twists together, eight thin arcs extending outwards, it looks like a spider, amethyst laid into the body formed at the center. The ‘legs’ seem to be embedded into Peter’s skin.

Minthara stills, her eyes fixed on the object. Her expression goes slightly glazed over, slightly confused.

In a flash, her neck has been cleaved open, a third of the way to decapitation. There’s nothing slow about the way blood oozes from her throat; it bubbles out in guyserish spurts, coating her armor in moments, hot and sticky.

The same as the stuff that now coats his hand, dripping off his dagger. Warm, hot, sticking to his exposed fingers. Crimson, like his eyes.

MInthara’s mace cracks into the side of his head, sending him reeling backwards. His skull rattles with the impact, his vision rippling like disturbed water. There’s warm blood dripping down the side of his head. Finally. Finally, something that hurts. He could very well be concussed, but he’s far more focused on the buzzing beneath his skin.

He can’t help it, he can’t even tell why he does it, he just bursts out laughing. And, ah, perhaps she’s not as composed as she thinks, because that seems to really bother her. She stalks towards him as he pants, remaining a bit winded. Her mace raises.

A hearty crack echoes through the air. Minthara crumples to the ground with the roundhouse kick delivered into her jaw, one hand raising to brush the site of injury. When her mouth opens, blood floods out in a crimson wave, staining the grass red. Harry looks upward. The sun is a halo around Peter’s head, leaving him angelic in his appearance. The light leaves his hair honey colored, reflects off his sweat-slick skin.

Harry flashes the man a grin, seizing his dagger from where it’s landed in the soil. Now that Minthara has stopped moving so much, it’s simple to force it beneath her third rib.

He thinks she must know there’s no coming back from a stab wound like that. She’s a drow—regardless of her allegiances now, her armor and sensibilities leave him thinking she must have been deeply ingrained in Underdark society at some point. She must know a fair bit about assassinations, about wounds that leave someone dead while they still breathe. But she scrambles backwards with her hands while still on her back, towards her mace. Like she wants to take one of them with her. “Heretics!” She snarls, words thick with blood and nearly deafened beneath the sound of broken bone fragments grinding beneath skin. “You will be hunted down like dogs.”

The bottom of Peter’s boot comes down hard on the pommel of the embedded dagger, forcing it to sink down to the handle. Not another word leaves her.

“You’re alright, right?” Peter bends down, yanking the blade out of the dead woman’s chest and handing it to him. The blood that coats every inch of the weapon spills over Peter’s fingers in thick droplets, then over his own when he takes it.

Their fingers don’t brush, but the gore connects them. “Fantastic.” The goblin hoards in the hollow beneath them have been thoroughly thinned, bodies piling up over so much of the grass the remainder are struggling to navigate. It doesn’t matter much now—they’ve noticed the fall of their commander, and most have turned and tried to fall back into the woods, arrows striking them down in their retreat. “They’ll probably want the help clearing out the rest of them. Let’s go.”

—

Zevlor convenes with his tieflings afterward, gives some speech and prepares them to move out. Then afterwards, he and his uncharacteristically light face move for their group as they lick their wounds. "We owe you a great deal. Now, I think you might be owed the credit for showing us that when fights come, we're strong enough to fight them ourselves." He smiles a genuine smile. "I took a collection from all of us, any who wanted to give. It is not much—" the lightness of the sack he offers demonstrates that. "—but you all earned it."

"Thank y—"

Of course the half-drow interrupts him. "No, keep it. You all will need it more than us when you find somewhere to take refuge." Damn it. All that coin, a final worthwhile reason to help other than killing, gone because of the idiot half-elf's heart…

He bows his head. "That's good of you, thank you." The tiefling's gaze shifts over the height of the gate. "I can think of someone else who might want to give their thanks to you." In front of the gate, a massive elf approaches, one uncharacteristically bulky for his heritage. "As for us, no armies at our heels… it's quite the gift. We can finally leave!" And his attention returns. "But perhaps we need not speak of farewells yet! We'll join your camp tonight to celebrate, if you'll have us! It is a great victory for us all."

A bit tacky, to invite the lot of them ov— "That sounds wonderful!" Damn it, Peter.

Oh, but at least Harry gets to watch Kagha get chewed out when they step off the gate.

"You took it upon yourself to undertake the Rite of Thorns?!" Halsin bellows, face every bit the wrath of Mother Nature in the harshest thunderstorm. "I ought to exile you from this place! Forever! Instead, I will hear the explanation I am owed."

Brave—and stupid—it be that Kagha would keep her stubborn conviction in the face of a superior. "I owe you nothing! Goblins swarmed us like locusts as you stumbled after the past! You chose to abandon us—I chose to protect us." Great job she did—so easily, he could have intercepted things and brought Minthara in to burn the place down.

"Silence!" Halsin roars. "The rite has ended. I will allow you to stay, but consider yourself a novice anew. You have forgotten our ways, our place in the natural order. You shall learn it all over again, right here. Backslide, and nature's fury will crush you."

At least this woman has some ability to pick her battles. "As you wish, Master Halsin." Venom laces her tone.

"You're a confident man to allow her another chance." Harry finds he does this sort of thing oft. More a chameleon than the demon he looks, he fits himself into whatever he knows those whom surround him would like. It can get a person places. And this druid would want wise; but Harry cannot stop himself from being brutal. "Cruel blood like that is a life companion. And that ambition is in her very blood." She seems the sort who'd only take this setback as fuel in the fire.

Halsin considers his words for a moment. "There is naught a clear and meditative mind cannot overcome," he says. "After we stray, we return to the fold, having learnt to do better. And in the fold, Kagha is needed." But that be the thing—Halsin assumes her mind clear. Halsin assumes anything can be overcome, but stakes it on a clear mind—what happens when the lack of clarity is what needs conquered? "But enough of that. I owe you my thanks. The grove stands, nature prevails. I am Halsin, First Druid of the Emerald Grove. And I sense you seek my help with something."

"Nettie implied you might know something about mindflayer tadpoles."

Halsin's expression becomes cautious, but with a flicker of glowing gold he then shifts to something resigned. "…It is true. Oak Father preserve you, child." He utters. But, annoyingly, the worm doesn't come out with that fancy bronze gleam of his. "But something is different. You know the monster inside you. You do not bow to the Absolute like those calling themselves True Souls do. How is that possible…?" He utters.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because someone is using very powerful magic to modify the tadpoles you and they carry. They use them to exert control over the infected. Unfortunately, I cannot undo that magic. I cannot cure you. But I can still help: At the goblin camp, I hoped to find a way to remove the tadpoles. I failed—but I learned where they came from." He responds, a slightly distant look overcoming him. "I am certain a cure could be found there: Moonrise towers. But it is complicated—the journey—and extremely perilous. To get there, you'll need to get through a terrible, cursed place. You'll not find life, light, or anything natural there, and any who linger too long are twisted by it."

Harry folds his arms. "It doesn't sound like we have a choice." He asseses.

"Half right—there is still the choice for how to get there. Going overland would be easier at first, but you will find the curse eventually. You could also go under—there is a tunnel beneath that ruined temple, leading to Moonrise through the Underdar—"

"Let's go through the mountains!" Peter blurts out, startling Harry. He'd not even realized the kid was there… "I think that's where Lae'zel said her creche was!" But that's very clearly not his whole reason—this boy was raised in the Underdark and escaped. Of course he'd balk at the idea of going back.

Halsin blinks slowly. "…I'll let the lot of you make the choice between yourselves, but hear this of the Underdark: long ago, a man named Ketheric Thorm build a secret stronghold deep down there, before rallying an army of Dark Justiciars—Sharran warriors." He reckons Shadowheart would take interest in that; Harry'll need to keep that from her if they mean to go overland. Though it would be fun to watch Peter squirm… "The adventurers I went there with were looking for a way down. Someone had promised riches should they retrieve a relic called the Nightsong. But there was more: From the stronghold, Thorm's forces could access both the temple of Selune and Moonrise itself. He was defeated before he could launch an attack, but I'll wager a more direct path lies there, and it may even bypass the worse of the curse. A dwarf called Brian had a clue on how to find this path—wherever they left his corpse…"

Harry reckons he knows just where. Oh, he might not see all those bits of delicious dwarf wasted after all. He can only pray that clue will be complex enough to enrapture attention deeply enough for him to hide roasted meat—should they retrace their steps to the temple.

"I would offer to join you, as I have long sought to return to Moonrise Towers, but the grove needs stewardship more than ever. Good luck."

—

Harry lays out bloodstained drow-leathers, pockmarked with holes. The magic it takes to repair them is almost nothing, though he’ll have to go and wash the blood off when their camp isn’t full of a few dozen barely-familiar tieflings. Other looted trinkets and equipment are laid out in orderly rows with it, though his attempts to identify what some of it is enchanted with fall through. He’ll have to hand it off to Gale—and hope that he doesn’t eat anything useful.

It occurs to him it’s not the best idea to leave it all in the open, so he rolls the fabric he laid it all out on and shifts it into a chest. No point in lingering, his absence will likely be noticed if he does.

“Ah, there you are!” Shadowheart saunters past him in the direction of her tent, corked wine bottle in hand, despite the number of empty or half empty bottles still lingering in front of it. “I’d been wondering where you were.”

There are so many celebrating tieflings occupying their camp that her tent is the only one he can make out. And it’s the one closest to his, being directly behind. She’s managed to keep the area clear. Though, going off the multitude of empty yet wine-stained glasses, the emptiness is recent. “What, did you miss me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Shadowheart is too light to be properly sardonic, but she’s close to it. Or perhaps sardonic is the thing she wants to be, but she doesn’t have the heart she or her goddess would want her to.

His eyes lower to the bottle. “Not planning on drinking all of that yourself, are you?”

“Could you blame me if I did? We haven’t been able to scavenge any decent liquor.”

He shifts his weight onto one foot. “And by decent, you mean elven?”

She stills, blinks, and then half-smiles at him. “Being any amount elven means nothing we have is good for actuallygetting tipsy.” Her eyes then flick to the spread in front of her tent. “Perhaps I’m just stowing away the good stuff so we don’t have to trek through the Underdark dry.”

“Oh, I’m sure. And is tipsy something you have in mind for fun or courage?”

Shadowheart hesitates. “Fun.” She says, and it’s a lie. “But don’t mind me. I believe a certain noble drow has been trying to find you.” He gets the sense she’s also a bit more invested in that than she’s letting on. “It seemed very important.”

“I’m sure.”

She turns and confidently trots off, then lingers around the opening of her tent, assessing the crowd around the campfire, then tracing the outlines of present shadows.

He begins slipping through the throngs of people, tail coiled tight against his legs to cover the barb. Surveying the camp turns up every one of their party but Peter—Gale is performing simple, showy spells to entertain the refugee children, Lae’zel paces in front of her tent, Karlach is on her back, staring at the stars, empty plate beside her. He can even spot Wyll through gaps in trees, seated on a log in front of the river. But no Peter.

He steps carefully through the trees and over a narrow brook that splits off from the river, coming up directly behind the warlock. “Not one for parties?”

Wyll jumps. “Balduran’s bones!” He cries. “By the gods, Harry…” The man’s eyes clearly catch the tiefling’s smirk, but he just half smiles and shakes his head.

“You’re a noble’s boy. Thought it would be your speed.”

Wyll pauses, then shakes his head slightly. “I do enjoy it normally. But, ah, I suppose I just worry. I don’t believe the group thinks less of me for what Mizora turned me into, nor do I think the refugees would. But it doesn’t change the fact that devils, being treated as though they are the same as them, was the reason they were thrown out of Elturel. I hate to remind them of that.”

Harry doesn’t think that is entirely the case. “Oh, definitely. They’re awfully spiteful, all those… starved and afraid refugees you’ve already been saving. I’m sure they would just leap at the chance to punish you.” He says dryly.

Wyll laughs. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

“I don’t.” Harry rests a bit more of his weight on the log, which collapses beneath him, rot within. “I just think you’re being an idiot. You seen the drow?”

The warlock is silent for a moment, a slight smile on his face. “Not for a while, no. I know he was drinking with Shadowheart, Gale, and Karlach earlier.’

He lets out a displeased sound. “Shadowheart’s the one who put me up to it. Should I be worried?”

“For his health? He’s as half-elven as Shadowheart, so I doubt he’ll be getting alcohol poisoning easily, even if he can’t handle his liquor.” He lifts his hands in a shrug. “For him? I, ah, suspect that Shadowheart wanted to get him a bit drunk.”

He feels his brow go tense. “And why did she want that?”

“You.” He responds simply.

Oh, that’s rather obvious now that he’s said it. “I suppose I should have guessed that. Well, I’ll leave you to sulk.” He lifts himself onto his feet. “Hope he hasn’t wandered into the woods.”

Wyll chuckles softly to himself. “Good luck.” Then, he speaks again before Harry can walk the whole ways away. "You know, he spoke to me."

"Did he now? What did he say?"

"He seems an emotional drunk; I think he thought you and I had something going on—and he was quite destraught by the idea. I think he told me that if I pursued you, he wouldn't have a chance. Worked himself to tears at the idea." Wyll's face then grows rather serious. "If you have no interest in him, I would not tell you to court him. But if you do…" He sighs. "I'll beg you behave gently, though I understand it's not your nature. I can tolerate much from you, I will not tolerate you mistreating him in such a way."

He waves a hand. Of course he wouldn't abuse the stupid drow—what advantage would it currently have? "Whatever you say, Wylly boy."

Harry’s path goes past Karlach, whose eyes follow him, then drift in the direction he came from. She says nothing, but he can guess it’s not him who her mind sits on. He finds himself pausing for a moment, eyes on her as she shifts in place. He jerks a thumb towards where he'd come from. "He's sulking. You should go get 'im."

—

“Harry!” A dopey smile forms on Peter’s face as he spots the tiefling, cheeks flushed as he tumbles forward, loose fingers outstretched before they fasten on his upper arms. His feet slide in the mud; by the gods, how much did he drink? Peter’s mouth opens like he plans to say something a bit more intelligent, but he ultimately winds up merely saying, “Harry, Harry, Harry!”

Harry gently ruffles his hair. “Peter.” He responds, which makes the drow burst into giggles.

Peter sways a bit. “I like sayyyin’ your name.”

“Thank you.” Peter, for some reason, decides it's a good idea to start leaning very far backwards on his unstable feet, only held upward by Harry seizing him by the wrists. “Woah, woah, let’s not do that, maybe, okay, bud? You’re gonna knock us both over.”

Peter’s reddened eyes fix on his face, his grin growing even wider. “Soooo…” He pulls him up on Harry’s outstretched forearms, throwing his solid body into Harry’s chest. “So, this is alright?” His chin is set against Harry’s sternum, his hands linked together behind Harry’s back.

“Better.” Harry agrees. More balanced this way. “You’re feeling bold.” He observes.

Peter hums slightly. “I feel really good.” He says seriously. “An’ you’re very pretty.”

“Am I now?” He braces his hands against the backside of Peter’s ribs, guiding them both backwards until his own back hits the thick bark of a sturdy tree trunk. One of his clawed feet fastens to Peter’s nearby knee, gently bending it as he slides them both down to the roots and soil beneath him. “How much did you drink, buddy?”

“A little.” Peter responds, kneeling on a flatter stretch of root. “Mmm… can’t remember.” He frowns at the root, then pushes himself forward, perching upon Harry’s thighs.

And Harry doesn’t do a thing to stop him from doing so. Just feels himself faintly recall their conversation before the battle, then raises one hand to press his palm to Peter’s cheek. “I was looking for you. What’d you wander into the woods for?”

“Can’t remember.” Peter repeats.

He can’t stop himself from chuckling. “I was worried you’d go and get eaten by a bear or something.”

Peter looks thoroughly puzzled. “Wha? No, I like… mmm… red hair’n prettiness. An’ I don’t like to—” He blinks, his expression shifting a bit. His lips press together, shaking his head. “I could fight a bear, I think.” He says eventually.

Harry’s also a bit confused now. “...Alright, then. While drunk?” Peter seems confident when he nods. “Okay. Then I was worried that you’d trip into a river and drown.”

Peter sulks slightly. “Fine, okay.” He slides his knees over one of Harry’s thighs, shifting himself to one side. “Nex’ time, you’ll drink too and we’ll go an’ drown together.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Harry can’t say he thinks drunkenness wouldn’t be fatal. Not for him. But it would probably have a body count.

Peter moves to press himself to Harry’s chest, then stops with only his hands against Harry’s shirt. “You meant it, right? Like, actually?” He says abruptly.

Harry reaches out, tugging gently on Peter until he settles with his head against his collarbone like he’d quite clearly been planning to do. He’s not sure if Peter is just an exceptionally warm little drow, or if his reverse body heat has left him experiencing the world a fair bit colder than he thought. It could be both. It could also very well be neither. “Meant what?”

Peter shifts, chewing on the inside of one cheek. “You said you think I’m cute.”

“You are cute.” He responds.

Peter’s eyes gleam slightly, fixed on his face. There are gears turning in that head of his, perhaps a little slower from the booze. Eventually, his eyes leave Harry’s face; one of his hands paws around to find one of Harry’s to hold. They’re left in silence. Harry can’t describe the piece of himself that has him raising his free hand to gently run his fingertips through Peter’s short hair; it’s not other, but it’s not familiar either. A self foreign, but still a self. One he hasn’t been or met with in a long time.

Crickets and cicadas harmonize to fill their silence. Harry can make out distant chatter and, only fractionally closer, the crunching of leaves. The night is cool, cooler for the breezes stirring the branches overhead, leaving Harry all the more fortunate to have a warm, living body atop him. “You’re not cold, are you?” He murmurs to the drow. No response comes; he finds Peter’s eyelids have fallen shut, breaths soft.

It’s an odd feeling, to realize Peter has fallen asleep so easily. It’s a vulnerable thing, is it not? The drow would never know if someone wrung his neck or slit his throat, if he were gutted, if he were left in the same state Alfira was left in.

His claws remain as they are, combing through short hair. The hand Peter grasps moves to only run his thumb over Peter’s knuckles. Harry isn’t certain his body would follow the command to stop if he tried. It’s strange, to feel so peaceful despite the faint, alien pains that begin to appear in his body, like acid coats everything beneath his skin. Comparable, he realizes, to what pain rises from healing.

The back of his head thuds against the tree, his own eyes shutting. Cicadas and crickets in the foliage around them. Warm drow in his lap. He’s never been more unsettled by something he liked.

Leaves crunch, heading towards him. He grunts out a sigh at the loss of privacy, raising his head to find Wyll, who’s eyes now glitter far more than they had when he’d spoken with him earlier. He looks hopeful. Gross.

“Harry!” Wyll waves slightly, voice lowering when Harry shoots him a glare over Peter’s hair. “We still have that staff that can create water, don’t we?”

“It’s in my tent.” His eyes narrow. “Why?”

Wyll waves one hand vaguely, the wide grin on his face clearly meant for someone else. “I’ll tell you later.”

A few moments later, faint splashing echoed from the direction of camp. Oh, right. They’re traveling with a woman who is constantly on fire. A woman who Wyll’s taken an unsubtle shine to. He probably should have put that together more easily.

He sighs, glancing downward. Harry is familiar with a lot of things, there are tidbits of information and deeply ingrained muscle memory in droves. It’s normally at least enough that he can roll with the punches, infer and gather and puzzle things together until it feels like his mind is stitching itself back together. Harry knows, in the same way he knows where the heart is on most humanoids, that there are things expected from the sort of dynamic he’s stumbled into with Peter. And he knows what that would constitute. Interlaced hands, kissing, shared bedrolls, trust, care, intimacy. Harry… does not know how to do that.

He knows how to do a lot of things he doesn’t feel. Harry is very good at pretending. He’s rather certain he’s pretended all of these things before. Harry does not know how to do this, therefore, in those times, Harry never had to.

But, well, Harry is in pretty deep already. Not that he wasn’t the one who decided to sink. He just has to… figure it out now. Improvise. A thing his memory loss has not forced him into, because apparently he’d simply been carved for a violent life, before now.

Harry hates the thought of it. That’s probably why he felt so bitterly uncomfortable before, must be. Gods, he’d really rather not sit out here in the mud, but the drow’s already a bit clingy and it would certainly be better for him to stay that way.

“I’ll take care of you, kid.” He murmurs. Nobody is nearby, but if someone were to walk up or if Peter were to wake, he’d rather appear convincing. But Peter is out like a light, something only made more and more apparent by the limp weight of his body as Harry tries to shift him into his arms. Peter is solid, heavier than most people of his size, and he’s certainly stronger than Harry, but he manages just fine. Peter’s head goes limp, dangling over his elbow like he’s gone and fallen dead on him.

Harry shifts his arms, folding Peter a bit closer together and resting his limp head against his chest. “I’ll take care of you.” There’s no need to do it that time. Just practicing, learning. Trying to find the way it’s meant to come out of his lips.

There are ruins just outside of camp, ruins where Harry stole himself a name and ruins he now needs to pass to get back. From somewhere within the crumbling stone and crawling vines of a place long dead, there’s the very much alive rustling of clothing and gust of hot breaths.

He sees yellowish skin and black hair in flashes from beyond the stone, and turns away. Harry knows very little about attachment. But he has never thought that loving someone and hating someone seemed that different.

What they get up to is not a thing he particularly cares about.

Would it be a bit too much to leave the drow in his own tent, see how he feels about being amongst the silky fabrics Harry's sticky fingers have hoarded instead of his own nauseatingly love-soaked quilts? Probably not, the kid clings to his heels-and to any attention he’s given.

Chapter Text

Up past Waukeen's Rest, along the Risen Road, the sun is briefly blotted out by a great and vast shadow, but one that's shape shudders and shifts. A raising of their eyes reveals something red and scaled—an ancient red dragon, beating its wings above their heads but making no move to attack.

"Our Kith'raks ride atop red dragons." Lae'zel describes; she had of course insisted she come through the mountain pass if her kinsfolk resided there—the interesting thing was that, despite alleged dislike having prior had the cleric seeking little overlap between their time on the road, Shadowheart had left camp as well, insisting she was cooped up too long. Harry now doubted the truth to that, not that he'd mentioned seeing them. "If that dragon was not a githyanki mount, it would have lit us all in a heartbeat." Chromatic dragons are indeed aggressive—she is most likely correct.

The bridge crawls with Flaming Fist, in some petty spat with githyanki. Gith who ooze far more confidence than they—but of course they would with a beast like that on their side of this conflict. "Drop your weapons!" Their leader demands, though he looks seconds from dropping his own.

"I'll feed your innards to the ants before I do that, istik!" A pallid-skinned gith woman sneers.

He steps an inch backward. "This is y-your last chance!"

"No, look up!" Above her shoulder, that massive dragon has looped around; even from a distance do its wingbeats kick up winds. "That was your last chance. Now burn!"

The dragon bellows a mote of fire over the Fist and their flimsy wooden bridge. The ones who do not burn to death are left to fall from the shattered planks. And the great beast alights beside the carnage it wrought, an older-looking githyanki man—this one having lost the toad-faced lottery gith men seem to endure quite badly—hopping off its broad shoulders. "Stop wasting time, Baretha!" He snaps. "You are not here to play with the locals."

Her confidence fades in response to her sharp-toned superior. "Of course, Kith'rak. We merely sought to—" Despite already looking a tad chastened, she is not allowed to finish.

"No excuses." He barks. "Question, kill, then move on. Find the weapon. Our queen watches us; fail her at your peril."

Beside Harry, Lae'zel speaks reverently. "I envy its knight—would that I rode upon such a steed." She breathes. "A creche must be near. Come. My kin await."

"That thing made a barbeque of those Flaming Fist." Peter utters cautiously. Heh—that's pretty funny. Lae'zel takes things pretty literally, maybe this dragon rider merely thought that something was horribly wrong if a Flaming Fist wasn't all that ablaze. "Are you sure this is safe?"

"The dragons serve githyanki. It will do you no harm—unless you do something to deserve it." The woman responds, tone back to severity. "We are close to the cure we seek. Follow me." She strides forward without waiting for another word, leaving them to follow or not.

Shadowheart makes a dismissive noise. Like she didn't choose this.

Lae'zel marches directly to the dragon rider, ignoring the lower-ranked warriors. "Rider, my time is short. Lead me to—"

He silences her with the close of a hand. "Sh-sh-shh. Such a familiar tone." He growls. Harry supposes that explains it—githyanki are not any less cold with each other. "Were I not merciful, I would slice the skin clean from your meat. Yet you are not bleeding, for I am nothing if not merciful." Harry gets this funny sense that those Flaming Fist might disagree if they had intact jaws to do it with. "Your name, child."

"Lae'zel." She responds, bowing briefly in some level of apology.

At long last this toad-faced gith stops speaking like he's trying to make his own subordinates bleed with each word. "'Lae'zel.' Proud. Regal, even." He murmurs, approving as if he'd been the one to christen her. "You will call me Jhe'still Kith'rak." It is clearly only a title, but Lae'zel herself gleans something from it.

"Voss, Knight Supreme. The queen's silver, the queen's sword." Which doesn't sound like the thing he asked to be called, but he seems fine with it.

"I am who you say." He confirms, then becomes serious. "A ghaik vessel has fallen from the sky, Lae'zel. Thieves aboard have taken a weapon most precious. It is polyhedric in shape, and inscribed with the sacred runes of our people. The thieves possessing it must remain nearby"

Shadowheart is unsubtly anxious the moment the description meets the air, but himself, he's just a bit bewildered why everyone and their mother is pissing themselves over some trinket. Whatever reason that is, he can only hope Lae'zel has the foresight to not reveal its existence.

"Take word to your creche." Kith'rak Voss instructs. "You are to join the search. Speak up—affirm your mandate."

But even she hesitates, seeming to understand the way the suspicions of the othe githyanki—and that if she revealed it, she'd be killed for it. "…You honor me with this duty, Kith'rak. I shall alert my caretaker with haste."

And he nods, content with the answer. "You serve your queen well, child. I fly now to Vlaakith, our Undying Queen. She will see your faith rewarded in this plane and ours." But something in his eyes flickers—he lies. Wherever he will bring himself and his mount to, it not be Vlaakith.

The man spins on his heels, barking an order to the dragon he lifts his body onto—though the pair exchange a glance that says more. "Qudenos: to the sky!"

The searching warriors depart as that massive beast raises itself into the air on powerful wings, leaving Lae'zel alone. Alone to start silently cursing when none remain in earshot but her allies. "Damn it all!" She snaps. And by way of explanation, given unprompted: "The Jhe'stil Kith'rak would have flayed our skin and left our carcasses to burn in the sun, for he would have assumed us the thieves. As he should." She mutters. "The creche is near, in the valley below. None, not even he, shall keep me from my earned purification."

—

From the peak of this mountain, they can see for miles.

Gorgeous, sunbathed woodland atop craggy, sheer walk, the treetops stretching out looking more gold than green, all bearing down on a peaceful-seeming section of the Chionthar, whose still blue waters stretch out towards only more mountains on the other side. And indeed, more rugged stone creeps upwards from beyond this pass on their side too, grand and high. Birdsong fills the air around them, creating a stretch of land that alights each sense. And a ways below them, an old Lathanderite monastery, one perhaps once used for pilgrimage.

Harry feels towards it all the same loathing he feels towards most things. Clear skies, warm air, bright sun, flora and fauna, all hideous. Maybe the Underdark would have at least been a less brutal hike.

"Would githyanki build their creches out of abandoned buildings, Lae'zel?" Peter's eyes are bright, his curiousity is genuine.

She huffs. "Not abandoned; githyanki would have their creches built from inhabitable buildings. If githyanki sought to create one in an area like this, it would be more likely they cleared the monastery themselves."

At least it is funny how uncomfortable that makes Peter. "Oh." He responds, the word forced, and says no more. It does make Harry wonder—do the gith remind him of Menzoberranzan? Is he just desperately grasping for some thread of repulsion in Lae'zel, who has no problem with how her kinsfolk do things?

A bit further down the trail, a gondola has been installed to carry pilgrims to the monastery, with a plaque beside it. Approach the ferry in Lathander's grace. May his gaze light upon you, pilgrim. Ugh, he doesn't know how such hollow sentiments don't turn everyone's stomachs. "Lae'zel, could you be convinced to stop the night before we go the rest of the way?" Harry pauses—how would this woman want to hear an idea? "I imagine you'd want to look your strongest for your people, not ragged and exhausted."

—

“Harry.”

It feels too early. There’s little birdsong, the air is still chilled. His teeth shift against each other, hands twitching with a passive desire to draw his claws across the face of whoever decided to wake him up before dawn.

His eyes crack open, and he’s vaguely glad he hasn’t. Peter’s eyes are bright, the slight redness to his sclera receded a bit. Does make sense he’d handle the dark a bit better. “Harry.” Peter repeats, spotting the crack in his eyelids and shaking him by the shoulders. “Come on, I’m trying not to wake anyone else up.”

“There’s not even the sun.” He jabs a finger up at the dark sky. The stars have been devoured by the first rays of morning, but those rays are truly the first. They leave the night barely tinted blue, barely any different from night. No different. And yet, despite the fact he’d very much like to be sleeping after they spent the prior day navigating the mountains, he finds himself sitting up, running a hand through his mussed hair. It’s getting a bit long. “Gods, what is it?”

Instead of explaining, Peter grasps him by the forearm and pulls. He’s lucky Harry’s legs are actually constructed in a manner where he could get his feet under him like that, they might have just fallen into the campfire otherwise. Is Peter going to answer his question?

Side-eyeing Peter through sleepy slits, it becomes clear he does not plan to. He keeps his eyes on the drow as he stretches out one clawed foot, his fickle impulses prompting his next mindless motions. Stretch one leg, then the other, then perform the rare act of actually standing up straight. Harry was merely curious; Peter didn’t ever react much to anything violent, off-putting or frightening he did. They were both naturally shorter than most men, but, regardless of how shaky and imbalanced it felt to do for long, straightening out his legs left him head and shoulders taller than the whole camp.

But without so much as a twinge in the drow’s face in response, he settles back down. It’s not the sort of thing Harry could dismiss as mere foolish heroic bravery—Peter does not conceal, he just does not react. For someone who knows as much as he does, his actions have a way of seeming unbelievably stupid, naive at best. “Why did you wake me up before dawn?” He repeats.

Peter blinks, snapping back into the present. “Oh!” He straightens his pack on his shoulder. “You wanted to know about the…” Peter’s forearm thrusts away from his body, wrist pointed upwards, shining strands fastening to Harry’s shoulder. They dissolve as fast as they appear. “The, um, that. I thought we could go and talk. Spend a bit of time alone before we all get to the Shadow-Cursed Lands?”

“…Yeah, alright. You should warn a guy, though, I woulda gone to sleep earlier.”

Peter blinks in time with the awkward, unwitting slurring between words. Harry’s own frustration rises again; it doesn’t feel like sharpened teeth or the strange shape of his tongue are the things to sabotage his ability to speak properly. It’s memory, his pride bruised trying to reconcile his conviction of his station with the unrefined way he speaks. A thing he cannot get over. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know how to… I was nervous.”

He waves a passive hand. “Where’s it you wanna go?”

—

Peter leads up a ways back up the mountain, to the gondola leading down to the crèche. “Hope you don’t think that it’s a good idea to go talk down there.”

Peter’s head jerks back and forth frantically. “No! I just thought we could sit together and watch the sun rise…”

Harry finds himself frowning, the impulse not as ordered as he’s used to. “Oh.” He replies simply, left to tread water in his own mind. “Sorry, buddy, I didn’t mean to give you a hard time.” His claws sink into slightly muddy soil, muck that clings to him and squelches as he steps towards Peter from behind. It grasps at him like it’s trying to pull him away. “It’s sweet. You are cute.”

Peter’s lips quirk upward. “I’m not upset.” He pivots on one foot, a teasing smirk on his lips, dragging Harry’s hand over his back as it falls back to his side. “Maybe you’re just cute when you’re grouchy.”

“I do not get grouchy. I’m just always a bastard.”

Peter regards him with an expression almost exaggerated in its seriousness. “I guess that’s why you’re always cute.”

Damn. “Smooth.” He gently prods Peter in the forehead, who swings back on one leg dramatically like a metronome.

The wood of the gondola creaks beneath their feet like its shock at being used after so long must be vocalized, but holds firm and stable. Peter skitters to the edge on light toes, sinking down into a seated position on the edge in a single smooth motion. HIs head twists over his shoulder to wait on Harry, who follows to swing one leg over the edge, the other’s claws digging into the wood.

“Are you afraid of heights?” Peter asks.

Harry shakes his head, peering over the edge towards the vast river down below. “No. Just being careful.” If anything, he enjoys the height. Despite the supposed danger of the mountain pass, it has been ages since anything stimulating has happened. Plastering a smirk on his face, he rips his eyes off the hundreds of feet between them and the water and forces them onto Peter. “Oh, but I bet you don’t need to, do you? You stick to walls, spider-boy?” Peter jerks back, a startled blush appearing on his cheeks. “...Do you actually?”

Without a word, Peter scoots even closer to the edge of the gondola, pressing his fingertips to the wooden edge of it and lowering himself over the edge. He hangs over open air on inches of fingertip for a few moments, then one hand detaches. That palm is pressed flat to the underside of the gondola, Peter releasing his other fingers with a lack of hesitation that bleeds confidence in this particular ability of his. Harry fixes his other set of talons around the edge and bends, curling his spine downward to peer at Peter, who’s climbing the underside on his palms with the same ease he walks. Upon reaching the craggy cliff face on the other end, Peter hesitates. Muscle visibly shifts beneath purple skin as he pulls himself upward, flipping himself to sit upside down on the wood, his hair drifting downward in the air. “I was going to just crawl the whole way around, but I forgot that there would just be more cliff there.”

It works through clothing, then? It’s not just Peter’s skin? “Damn.” He comments. “You just gonna stay down there?”

“Should I?” Peter tilts his head, smiling slightly. With a shake of his head, Peter crawls his way back up on all fours. He even moves like a spider, Harry notes.

Peter settles with his legs dangling over the edge once again, but he’s now far closer to Harry. Their hips are brushing, knees threatening to bump together if either of them shifts. “So,” Harry begins, “I figure that’s got something to do with that metal thing on your chest.”

Peter ducks his head, self conscious laughter bubbling out of his throat. “Yeah, you got me.” He keeps directing brief, nervous glances at Harry’s side, but not the sort of nervous that having a metal spider-thing embedded in your chest would imply. It’s too… youthful. “I was going to ask if you’d ever been to the Underdark, but I guess you probably wouldn’t remember.”

“Wouldn’t know.” Harry agrees. “Feel like I know an okay amount about the drow, though. Don’t like much of anyone who’s one of them. Barely like each other. Worship Lolth, whole society sort of revolves around the religious beliefs around her. That’s the reason for the cruelty, how cutthroat people become trying to get to the top. Status is everything. Were you born there?” Lolth. Queen of Spiders. Her worship is the center of the Underdark in most every way, even for any society that doesn’t worship her. Why’s his skin suddenly so itchy?

Peter shakes his head. “No, I was grabbed at some point. I can’t really remember much before then, apparently I was really roughed up. But, well, I was taken by drow raiders. They’re probably just dead. Being half-drow is the only reason I’m not. Not that I was welcomed, I’m too human for them and too drow for most people up here. I wasn’t ever going to be an equal, I was a resource. Drow go through soldiers really quickly, and elves in general aren’t really able to have children fast enough to really deal with that. Which I guess is part of the reason they do so much slave trading.” As he pauses, he jostles his hands out in front of him. “I’m getting side tracked. Apparently, my mom was from the house that found me, so they took it like they were entitled to me anyways. I wasn’t dirt to them like any hostage of another race would be, but I was never going to be a real member of the house or a real drow to them. I was just fine enough to train to fight and use as a soldier, or to try to, anyways.”

It occurs to Harry, as passive as noticing birdsong, that what Peter wants is for Harry to invite him to lean against him. He resolves to hold off for the right moment—it’ll stick more with Peter if he does it at the right time. “I find it hard to imagine you acting that cutthroat.”

Peter laughs humorlessly. “Well, I didn’t. That was kind of the thing. I felt horrible whenever I did do it, so I tried to avoid it and do what was right wherever I could. I didn’t get around doing the horrible things that were asked of me entirely, I couldn’t get out of everything, but, ah, I got caught a lot.” He mutters, hands shifting to tug at his robes. “Honestly, I'm shocked that didn’t get me killed either. Anyone else, even full drow who did similar, they were usually killed unless they could get away. They usually just cut on me for a while. I… think that it was only because my mom was the Matron Mother’s favorite before she ran away—according to most of the nobles, at least—that I didn’t just die. And the house I lived under was especially fanatical about Lolth, so maybe they were jumping at the chance for one of those punishments to be done. It was a formality, everyone just thought that I would end up a drider at best and I’d probably just wind up with my soul eaten by Lolth.”

“It doesn’t look like either happened.”

Another shake of Peter’s head. “No.” He concurs. “I already told you this house was particularly fanatical about Lolth. They didn’t let me have much time around other noble houses, or at least not much that would let me learn much about them, but it did seem like there were a lot more priestesses. So I was carted off to some temple for the trial, and what happened after that is really jumbled in my head.” Fingers raise to scratch at the back of it, then float in the air. Harry can see Peter’s eyes flick towards him, then back fast enough that he can brush his hand against Harry’s while not looking at him. “It was simple. I was just supposed to fight something that there was no chance of me being able to kill on my own. Some sort of aberration, I couldn’t tell what specifically.. If I’m being honest, I was just sort of okay with dying. I figured it was going to happen eventually if I was going around undermining things like that.”

Without a word, Harry dangles the carrot and lays his palm over Peter’s hand, the span of his own enveloping it. Something about the texture of Peter’s skin registers as interesting; soft, uncannily smooth and flawless skin is a trait shared by most elves. Makes them particularly desirable. Curious, he runs his thumb along Peter’s fingers.

Like clockwork, Peter’s tense jaw becomes far softer, the tips of his ears darkening. “I don’t really know what happened, but the aberration just went out of control. I made a run for it. The thing had broken through some walls and…” Peter trails off, his hand sliding out from beneath Harry’s to fiddle with his robes. They fall open over his chest, exposing metal tinted pink and orange by the first lights of the sunrise. “I stumbled into some vault or something, one unguarded in the chaos. This… thing just latched on to me, I couldn’t pull it off or get it to let go or anything like that. And I wasn’t just going to stand there and keep trying, so I took off.”

“I figured it would be something of Lolth’s. It’s a spider and you’ve been getting chased by drow since I found you.” He assesses. Taking his newly free hand, he prods at where one leg sinks into Peter’s flesh. Torn skin has merely grown up around it to seal the injury. Harry can feel more stiffness where it sinks deeper into Peter’s muscle, but it’s never seemed as though it obstructed much of Peter’s movement.

Peter flinches, wincing. “It is. I wouldn’t have gotten out of there without it, though. I found myself climbing on walls, stronger than I was before, and I could use those, um, webs, and I just wasn't in any position to look a gift horse in the mouth. I just used it where I thought it would help and got as far from Menzoberranzan as I could before I was too exhausted to go on.” His fingers briefly fiddle with the opened fabric, tugging the edges inward for a single moment. But they release, letting them merely hang in place. “And, um, it wasn’t the most fun after that. I was still young, I hadn’t meant to take it and I certainly hadn’t even meant to run away. But that culture isn’t one that’s ever really going to care about anything like that. So there were people hunting me, which I guess you’ve seen already.”

“I know that travel between planes isn’t one to one, but Menzoberranzan is almost a thousand miles away, isn’t it?” Now that he thinks of it, how did Peter find a way out to begin with? Getting into the Underdark is hard enough, but getting out on your own is near impossible if you don’t know where to look.

Peter elbows him in the side lightly. “I was getting there!” He protests, but there’s no fire, he doesn’t really mean any anger. Peter doesn’t really come off as the sort of person strong enough to hold on to anything negative like that. “Are you familiar with Eilistraee?”

The itching flares into near-painful prickings of needles deep into his flesh, the stabbing pains across his body flashing his ordinarily cool body uncomfortably hot. Patience and control wear threadbare; this topic is annoying. Infuriating. Those names are unimportant, insulting, that’s what it is, it’s insulting. It’s insulting Peter would bring this up to him, the same as it was when Shadowheart brought up Shar. That was what irritated him then, Shadowheart was insulting him then, she just was, and Peter is insulting him now. But he can’t show that on his face, that he knows. Why can’t he? Why is he bothering with trust, it would be so much simpler to make them afraid? It’s not necessary yet, they already obey him for the most part. No point in doing something that risks it entirely. So he just has to tolerate it, does he?

Peter expects him to respond. He is expected to respond. “Not particularly.”

“She’s a drow goddess, but she’s… she wants to help. When Lolth was cast out and pulled the drow into the underdark, she went into exile willingly to give a second chance to anyone who’d be willing to take it. I wasn’t enough of a drow for Menzoberranzan, but I was enough for her to notice me and want to help.” Harry’s eyes catch on the penannular brooch that normally holds Peter’s clothing in place over that relic of his. It sits limp with nothing to pin in place, silvery metal bearing the decorative silhouette of a dancing woman carrying a sword. He wants to pull his own teeth out. “I heard her song and she lead me to people who could help me.”

His tongue feels swollen. “But not to the surface?”

Peter shakes his head. “I was starved, dehydrated, and exhausted. I didn’t know where to go once I got up there. I needed a bit of help before then.” His hand returns to Harry’s, but this time it’s his laying on top. “So I was led to a couple of researchers. A lizardfolk and a… half-duergar, half-goliath, they helped me out. I didn’t think I had anywhere else to go, one of the few pieces of before I held onto was knowing that my dad had a brother and he’d met me a few times, but I didn’t have much of a clue of how to find him. So I just stayed with them for a few years. I didn’t think I could stay forever, but I didn’t know what else I could do. They taught me a lot, though.” Peter’s stopped looking oh-so distant and hazy. He grows brighter in time with the sky, turning to focus on Harry. “Eventually, I found out where my uncle was living and I left. Traveled most of that way with other Eilistraee-worshipping drow, and—well, they were surprised I wasn’t dead, but I stayed there until the Nautiloid got me.”

Other Eilistraee worshippers. As in, he’s one. The implication grates against his skin like sandpaper. Why does he care? “You didn’t ever mention you were religious.”

“It didn’t feel relevant. But of course I am, you know?” He half-laughs out the words, not out of humor but out of what Harry can only guess is the ridiculousness of anything else being the case to Peter. “She saved me, she saved my mom. She didn’t ask for anything from me in return, I did that myself, but if that help is the thing that kept me alive and safe I want to pass that on.” Peter twists his back to peer at Harry’s body entirely, searching, brow knitting together as a small frown appears on his face. “You haven’t mentioned your god either.” Peter says eventually.

He blinks, taken aback by the sudden implication. Where’s he getting that idea? “I’m not.”

Peter directs a finger towards one of the baubles decorating his horns, then reaches to pull it into the corner of Harry’s view. A small disk of bronze-toned metal with a design embossed into the surface, the chain not long enough for him to see it properly.. “Sure you are.” Faint light reflects against the engravings, revealing the design: a skull, droplets surrounding it in a ring. “I’m still not the best with the symbols of surface gods, but… I mean, I’m not going to judge most anything. I didn’t with Shadowheart.” He pauses, then smiles a bit teasingly “Unless it was Lolth, I’d be a bit upset about that. Or, like, Bhaal. Being murdered is kind of a deal breaker.” He jokes, gently shoving him.

At least it figures that he wouldn’t have seen that. It’s not as though he can turn around to see his own horns. And his reflection won’t help him see something dangling behind his head. “Well, if I was worshipping any god, I don’t think I am anymore. Sort of hard to follow any tenets if I can’t remember anything about it.” The pain, the constant headaches through the gaps in his mind, is suddenly flaring to life so much more intensely.

“Yeah, I guess that would be true.”

Gods, what in the world is up with him right now? “So, you getting followed around by drow raiders is a new thing?”

Peter’s face falls, slightly flirtatious hands falling away from. “No.” He says stiffly. “I mostly just hid when the first few came looking for me while I was with my aunt and uncle. I was just being a coward. I had all those abilities and I could fight better than anyone there. I was trained for it. But instead I just didn’t and it got my uncle killed.”

And there it is. “Oh.” He opens that arm to Peter, letting the other lean against his side. “I’m sorry.” The sunrise bathes Peter in yellow; it falls on the contours of his face, the intensity of illumination painting purple skin with every color the sky bears. It leaves Harry’s armor in sicklier shades of brown.

Peter merely hides his face against him. He’s spent the last half an hour being entirely open to Harry, and he’s left himself raw as a result. Harry knows all the rules of speaking on painful subjects, expectations of delicacy. But Peter isn’t the sort to pick up on subtle infractions of social laws, and Harry just can’t resist the idea of peeling back the skin on the noble, honorable, untouchably good exterior of Peter’s goodness and finding that the fruit-flesh beneath is rotted. “Of course you wouldn’t hate other drow like you, but you must hate those who stay violent and hold power in Menzoberranzan.”

Peter goes quiet. “Consciously, no. The drow there do terrible things, but of course they would. They don’t know any better. They’ve never been given a chance. And I’ve seen a lot of how that world works, they convince their youth that it’s good and right and they believe it themselves, because their goddess has instructed them to go about it in a way that’s just brainwashing.” He speaks slowly, follows it with a pause. When he next speaks, he speaks as though he’s trusting Harry with one of his deepest secrets. In his mind, he probably is. “...But many of them have still done terrible things.” Peter articulates slowly. “And I… don’t know if some of them would ever give it up. They benefit from it. And when it comes to the raiders who killed my uncle, that’s a moment that I relive in my dreams a lot. And I don’t think it’s just to create a world where he doesn’t die.” Peter’s eyes are stony, his words laced with bitterness. “I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t hate them.”

There it is. It’s just as satisfying to see those cracks, to taste the sickly sweet rotted flesh of the peach, as he’d hoped. Perhaps he could break Peter further, enough to keep him around when… when something.

“I would too.” He twists his slight smile into something more strained.

Shaky, emotion-thick breaths leave his armor moist. “Sorry. I don’t want to go back there like this. Someone’d probably comment on it and I just…” The warm breath vanishes; Peter’s eyes meet his, a little red at the edges once again. “And I kinda wanna be alone with you for a little longer.” He murmurs.

“...I wouldn’t mind.” This has been going considerably well for Harry. He’s still a bit giddy that it only took a bit of perceived trust and prodding to get Peter to break. That’s something that he should be rewarding.

Both him and Peter are facing each other entirely now. Peter seems a bit awkward, his hands on Harry’s thighs but swaying between getting himself closer or further away from Harry. But Harry’s played this game many times, and no part of Peter has yet strayed from being unceasingly and uncomplicatedly easy. Peter does nothing to bother hiding the fact his idea of romance is based on fiction. And very fortunately for Harry, his own love is entirely fiction itself. He can play that part.

It’s simple. His own fingers start at Peter’s hip bones, making the boy let out a nervous noise, a hand snapping to cover his mouth. Harry drifts upwards til he can grasp him by the waist, tug him closer til Peter almost straddles one of his thighs. Peter clearly can’t tear his eyes away from Harry’s lips. “Would it be okay if I kissed you:?” Peter blurts out. He didn’t expect Peter to be forward enough to be the one to ask. “Um, my aunt always said it was best to ask, so I thought I should…”

It is certainly an interesting contradiction. The thousands of threads connected to his fingers, wanting to tug and twist each situation into one where he comes off perfectly, every little thing tailored to the person he speaks to. And yet he can’t keep himself from pressing buttons, pushing the boundaries, toying with anything he can. This one doesn’t compromise too much, but Harry knows full well it’s just for fun. “Na.” He draws back to stand and relishes the sight of Peter’s face falling, round eyes wide, looking like a kicked puppy. Peter’ll bite. “We can do a little better than that, don’t you think?” A clawed hand reaches to pull him up after him.

“What?” Peter’s demeanor twists into a somewhat self conscious confusion, though he takes Harry’s hand, standing beside him. Peter makes no move to let go, so Harry refrains from doing so.

He scrapes talons against creaky wood, the rapidly shifting weight making the gondola sway slightly. “We’re alone, it’s sunrise, the view is beautiful. Perfectly fine, but a bit cliche, you know?” He whispers.

Peter’s cheeks grow dense with color. “I thought it was nice.”

“Oh, it is. But you’re more special than that.” He reaches to swing his things off his shoulder, mind alight. Where are those potions? “You monkish types don’t get hurt from falling, right?”

Peter blinks slowly, catlike. Harry can see every gear turn in his head, the startled blush turning into further uncertainty. “Um, not entirely. It still hurts, just less…?” He eyes the pale violet vial with apparent caution. “I don’t understand what that has to do with this.”

He downs half the contents, then presses it into Peter’s hand. “Well, I’ve seen a few giant eagles around here, and it just had me thinking…”

The drow promptly turns several shades more purple than his normal. “That’s a bit fast!” He sputters out. “Not that it’s bad to—It’s just—I mean, I’m not Ast—You know what I mean!” He twists around, doubling over to hide his face in his hands.

He prods Peter in the back. “Not what I meant, you. Don’t take your clothes off.” Peter groans into his hands, but creeps around again in little steps, peering over his fingers. “I don’t think humanoids are built to get it done in that little time anyways. Unless drow are just extremely efficient.” …Aaaand his face disappears behind his hands again. A bit impatient, Harry takes that hand to tug him out of this embarrassment, drawing his own feet towards the very edge of the gondola.

Peter’s feet shuffle towards the ledge, the tips of his shoes between Harry’s. “…How would we get back up?”

“Well, apparently you can stick to things and I have magic. We’ll be fine.”

Peter simply stares at him for a lengthy moment. In this position, Peter stands in Harry’s exaggerated long shadow, his own not even jutting out, merely entirely swallowed up. Peter’s focus on him is too entire to notice a thing.

Harry figures it would only be polite to actually give him something to look at, he steps backwards and tips himself into nothing. Finally, some feeling. It’s not bloodshed, it’s not the thrill of breaking and ending, but it’s some sort of a thrill, and he’s so godsdamned wound up that it has his blood pounding in his veins. The salmon-toned strands of his own hair drift past his face, blown wild by rushing air, alongside—

His eyes catch on that disk. The tug he feels, it must only be—

Peter cries out in shock, then his shadow overtakes what little light reaches his own, falling a few feet too far above Harry. A thick strand of those webs of his furls out towards Harry, clearing the gap between them. Only, Harry could not have any less of an interest in going back up right now—he’d far more enjoy getting Peter down to him. When the end of the strand reaches him, he seizes it and yanks.

Peter is flung towards him a bit more quickly than he’d anticipated; he winds up bringing the drow to a stop with his hands against his waist. Peter looks about a thousand different things in that moment: shocked with Harry, shocked with himself for following, exhilarated to have done so. And more than willing to take him up on that offer. Warm palms press to either side of his neck, drawing him in.

Their lips meet, warm and slightly chapped, with matched confidence that he hadn’t expected. Heat and energy, Peter moving into him with the same fervor he moves into Peter. Peter keeps being a good bit more than he expects, doesn’t he? Still every bit gullible, naive, and slightly doglike, but interesting. Bold in the way his leg hooks around Harry’s to tug him closer, or the audacity it takes to seize one of his horns to deepen things. It’s eager in a way his normal spinelessness would never begin to imply. And by the gods does Harry like him more for it. Maybe he could actually be whipped into something sharp enough to keep around after all.

His back is the first thing to hit the water, displaced droplets surging upward to escape the plummeting mass, reflecting light like shattered crystals suspended from a lit chandelier. It furls out on either side of him like the wings of a dove caught in fox-jaws, hollow bones shattering as they flutter. Fluid arches through air in a sizable wave that is both one and a thousand separate beads at once, like a whirlwind of feathers dislodged in a doomed struggle, leaving a body only more broken for trying to escape.

And through it all, the thing around him that takes up the most of his senses is the other person falling with him.

—

A lot less fun when the girls join them on the gondola. Don't even have the decency to shut it and enjoy the worthless view.

"I'll be keeping an eye on you, understand?"

"If I choose to kill you, you will not even see it."

Is that supposed to be flirting?

"So, gith. Aren't you worried your kind will punish you for consorting with us?"

"My name is Lae'zel, k'chakhi, and my kin will understand my need for servants."

That has to be flirting.

I hate you both, he does not say. Wyll should pop a damn bottle open for his restraint.

When the finally—fucking finally—get down to the monastery, a feeling of uncertainty stirs within the artifact. Your curiosity is getting the better of you—do not let it. Stay away from the gith. They're hunting you, they want the artifact. They will stop at nothing to take it from you.

That voice makes him flinch for a moment, his impulses pleading he obey. Obey—and then what? Be left in the dark to whatever happens there? Show weakness with his obedience, and therefore also allow himself be puppeted like a mere huntsdog? Retreat through the Underdark with his tail between his legs?

Fuck off, nobody tells him what to do.

If Harry didn't have the strength to hold on to it, he would not deserve to keep it. But he does. and if the odd, skeletal man from his dreams deserved to command him, he'd have it in him to force him to do as he was told.

…Anyways!

After his pride is set a-snarling, he at least gets some amusement. Most every door on this sickeningly radiant monastery has been sealed fast. And based on the reactions of the guard within that entrance, they'd not been expecting anyone to try and come through either.

"Tsk'va!" She cries with a start, spinning. "Where did you—" She bounds for her weapon. "Journey's over, istik! It'll be swift."

And oh, killing absolutely would have made him feel better! But he doesn't seem to get what he wants! "Hold." Lae'zel interrupts, lowering this woman's hackles. "I must speak to your ghustil. Our queen's protocol demands it."

Yes, and his demands death. Ugh.

After a moment of assessment, like she's trying to figure out if Lae'zel had painted spots atop her skin, she sighs and lowers her arm. "Right. Report to the infirmary, Ghustil Stornugoss will see you."

Getting healed by a person who's name sounds like a sneeze. How fitting.

He keeps his sulking going the whole way to the infirmary, which is just as pale-stone and shiny gold as everything else here is. Being in this foul place is making him want to rip all his skin off. Terrible, terrible, like Lathander remains here and has chosen to kick him in the dick instead of the people who slaughtered his monks.

The healer of this place hunches over some sort of magnifying device, a dead tadpole suspended in the air before it. She speaks softly—not to herself, but to an animated quill jotting down her words. "Vertical incision from pineal eye to end of notochord." He refuses to think those are real words. "Intestinal coloration consistent with samples 231 to 259. Do you have a question, or are you just going to stand there gawking?" Neither tone nor focus break. He doesn't even think the quill stops writing.

"I am a child of Gith, not discarded rat-flesh!" Lae'zel hisses. "Am I not due your respect?"

"Perhaps," This woman turns, and her quill finally drops. "Perhaps not. Let the istik with you speak, and I will decide what respect you are owed."

…Which one?

Peter, apparently, but only long enough to stop bearing that attention. "Um, I think Lae'zel should speak instead."

That only seems to annoy this woman more. "Lae'zel, is it? Fine—and be quick. My work is of vital import."

"We carry ghaik tadpoles." Being dismissed has only seemed to make a constantly angry woman angrier. "And we have for countless days, yet we show no symptoms. We must enter the zaith'isk." She demands, bristling.

That actually seems to catch the Ghustil's attention. "You are infected, but show no signs of cerebral impairment? Facinating." The glimmer in her eyes is slightly… slimy, too distant to really recognize them with any connection to reality. "Either your tadpole is special, or you are. We will find out which. Go to the zaith'isk—I will ensure you are cured." She agrees.

The zaith'isk is a contraption of odd, leathery flesh and metal, slimy looking and possessing some sort of spiderlike mandible. Viscerally, gorily disturbing to look at in a way that even the way he mangled the bard had not been.

"Praise Vlaakith. Let it be done." Lae'zel steps atop the platform this disgusting heap had perhaps grown from, and he doesn't think anyone would dare to go before her. Peter out of sheer, earnest politeness and himself and the Sharran because gross. Harry can't imagine that contraption would even have the dignity to bleed.

"Sit, child." The Ghustil commands. Lae'zel does so, scooting herself onto the bottom piece of muscle and metal. "Let the zaith'isk end your suffering." Which is an interesting way to word it, but Harry cannot imagine that should this thing actually kill people, the one who operated it would just… let it out like that. "You must focus on the parasite at all times. The zaith'isk will do the rest." This woman really likes the word, doesn't she? Well, if the thing does kill Lae'zel, she can go in next.

The top and bottom halves close around the gith almost like jaws, the mandible-thing positioning itself over the githyanki's head, a pink-tinted light beginning to eminate from it. The psionic forces of perhaps anything a gith would make begin to batter Lae'zel, chasing down the tadpole. In response, Lae'zel recites some inscrutible gith words.

"Yes, child! Speak the Tla'ket! Meditate on its verses!" Well, at least the Ghustil be enthusiastic about all this.

He just watches the spectacle, his own tadpole absorbing facinating, delicious little snippets of agony. Rending of the skull, shattering and rearranging of every cell. If Lae'zel dies, what would they find in her skull? Would it just be hollowed out, or would what remains of her brain leak out her ears. Or, better yet, would it just explode entirely? That would be something to watch.

And die she will. She will die if she stays.

"Yes, child! Ch'mar, zal'a Vlaakith! Call to your queen!" Oh, the false healer knows indeed. She's perhaps even more excited to watch this girl die than he is. Enough that she'd stumble through subtlety.

And Lae'zel just obeys. So convinced that nothing of her culture could ever turn to bite her. "My Queen, hear me!" It really is quite amusing…

"That thing is killing her!" Shadowheart says, with too much horror for her maintained hate.

Peter understands it too, draws his quarterstaff off his back and narrows his eyes towards that machine. Rare that such a spineless little elf would be willing to show any force.

Harry does nothing. If Lae'zel would walk into her death, he bears no fault in that.

The blunt end of the quarterstaff goes hard into the Ghustil's thin temple-bone, knocking her out in a deep crack—no doubt going to cause a long, painful death by hemorrage. Then, he brings the staff against the flesh-machine, and as though it would if he'd just tapped it, it bursts, every little moving bit of it shattering.

"Damn it all!" Lae'zel scrambles away from the remains of the contraption, her eyes blazing. "The parasite, I can still feel it! I AM GITHYANKI! I WILL NOT BE GHAIK!"

She's right. It won't happen—these worms are different.

Peter, bless his adorable little heart, helps her to her feet, the woman still raving madly as he does. "I followed the protocol! I kept to my faith! Yet the zaith'isk might have killed me!" Her fury finds the unconscious doctor and clings to it, magnetic. "The ghustil tampered with it!" She grabs the idea in proverbial hands and squeezes it like iron. "You did well to incapacitate her, elf! But there may be more still—we must tell the creche Kith'rak!" Her passionate, blind loyalty finds direction, not even shaken by near-death. Stupid.

Peter, for his part, mostly just looks adorably sad, like a wet cat. Blindly trusting himself, but not so foolish as to misunderstand what just happened. "…Are traitors common among the githyanki?" He questions meekly, a weak-willed and small attempt to get her to ask questions herself.

"Vlaakith has taught us of Hshar'lak—traitors hunted, slaughtered, and erased from our histories!" She describes. "Few would dare dishonor their queen. Fewer still would be so brazen. Now we must hurry! She shall awake soon—it would be most auspicious for us to inform those in charge here before she does!"

—

"Please, ch'r'ai, I can explain!" The creche Kith'rak is pleading to another frogish, balding man when they enter. Seem to be a lot of those amongst the githyanki. "The last batch of cultists knew nothing of the prism; they were just trying to find Moonrise. They all head there—my gith have drafted plans to assault the tower. They are ready to fight. We could sift the missing artifact from the towers ashes, if you would give us—"

The man dismisses her words with a raised hand. "Quiet. Find the Astral Prism, Therezzyn—my patience falters." He snaps, himself and his bodyguards ushered through an archway.

Though her eyes flash with bruised confidence and fear in equal measure, she only raises her chin. "Yes, ch'r'ai…" She utters prior to turning to the gathered batch of warriors, watching the shaming of their superior with disdain. "You heard him!" Her scathing tone is a feeble grasp for control as they bleed their respect for her. "GO!"

But that lost authority is made apparent when they hesitate on her word alone, many lizardish eyes fixing on the bald man. "Do as she says." He orders. "She remains your Kith'rak—for now."

And rush away they do, out the door with no mind to their odd bunch of Shar-cleric, tiefling bearing… whatever symbol it was Peter noticed, Eilistraeen drow, and bruised-up little Lae'zel. This lesser Kith'rak shifts herself over to a contraption by the doorway, pulling one of several rubies from it and causing a barrier to manifest over the path he'd gone down.

But when Lae'zel leads them through, despite having been near-mincemeat at the hands of something her own people had created, her eyes flash with the same disrespect the other warriors had shown this woman.

"An istik. In my creche. You had better be one of the mercenaries tasked to bring the weapon?" This woman sneers.

And Lae'zel promptly sneers back. "The istik is with me, honored Kith'rak." As though it would be greater to serve a half-dead woman than this one.

"So noted." She snaps in response. "But the question stays unanswered: do you bring the weapon?" The little bauble hardly seemed a weapon.

Don't tell her anything—Harry almost wants to do so just to spite the insubordinate little dream-voice. Behaving so very well; Wyll should let him stomp the skull of the next feeble fool he sees as a reward.

"I'm afraid that must wait." Lae'zel dismisses. "There be hshar'lak amongst you. I request audience with the Inquisitor."

"And whom is it you would accuse?"

Her arms fold, bruised in flesh and in spirit and hating to be treated as low. "Ghustil Stornugoss." She murmurs. "She had tampered with the zaith'isk. One of these istik had incapacitated her when it nearly took my life, but we must see the Inquisitor before she comes to." Oh, but she won't. Not ever-never. Brain got bruised like they actually had shoved her in her precious machine, near-irrepairably so! Let it be drawn out, so all her precious knowledge can leak from her mouth before anyone finds her!

The Kith'rak pauses for a moment. "Make haste—both in telling and in the informing. He is here on important business."

—

Great iron wrought doors are flung open—and none among the three not-gith need to verbalize that this Inquisitor will not be help. It has never been so simple before; Harry thinks Peter specifically would humor it because, in his sickly good intentions, he'd believe Lae'zel needs to discover the wrongness to this way of life for herself. And he thinks that'll happen, ever.

"Ah," the bald toad of a man utters, slimy as such an amphibian would be. "Our esteemed guest! Please, approach: you have something we want, and I have the knowledge you need." He, so openly, already knows they do possess it.

Lae'zel bows deep in greeting, but he pays her little mind, only spares the effort of a small collection of words. "My ardents spoke of one of our kin that escaped a ghaik slave-vessel." He regards.

"Ch'r'ai." She names. "Vlaakith's justice in flesh."

"You have accomplished much." He oozes. "I am pleased to finally meet you all—even the istik. I have heard there is so much goblin blood on your hands is soaks their children's nightmares." That would imply goblin-spawn to dream of the corpse-mountain they left. "To business: I suspect you plucked something precious from the ghaik ship. Something that belongs to us." From faux-charm to hollow intimidation he slides, like a sewer rat through its own shit. "The weapon. Give it to me."

Don't do it. The weapon is how I protect you! Pathetic little slime-voice, just as feeble as this man. And so utterly wrong, the possessor of those rasping, grating tones would never request things so pitifully. Punish them both for the slight—provide a taste of what this ugly, spot-bearing waste of blood would want, and rip it away. He be strong enough for it.

"Do it." Lae'zel rasps. "Do not disobey the Inquisitor!" For once, less the fool than normal. Hand the little bauble over, then rip it out of his unmoving, death-cold fingers!

So Harry pulls the teensy little heap of metal that so many worthless lives have already ended over and provides it with a grand smile.

No…

"So, it is found." That is a new voice, one belonging to a woman, one echoing like bottled thunder. A illusion manifests, standing a dozen or more feet over every life occupying the room. An aged, withered githyanki woman, bearing armor resembling that which her people clad themselves in, with a crown upon her head wrought of similar metal.

The Ch'r'ai falls to one knee: "Vlaakith gha'g shkath zai!" He cries.

Lae'zel follows suit. "My queen! Shkath zai!"

Vlaakith's intangible form scowls down at the outsiders before her. "You are permitted to look upon me. You are invited to kneel."

"The Deathless Queren has spoken!" Lae'zel snaps. "You will obey!"

Na. Nobody tells him what to do and few have earned the respect to so much as make respects. Deciding it would be more disrespectful than to do nothing, Harry just waves at the Lich Queen.

"I expected little of istik education, but here we kneel before our Queen." Good thing she's not his queen. Vlaakith bears forward, narrowing her luminous eyes towards Lae'zel. "Your choice of allies is most vexing. They do not become you, Lae'zel.

"Ch'mar, zal'a Vlaakith." The woman utters reverently. "You know me."

Vlaakith's face becomes less tensed. "Urlon of K'liir speaks most highly, as did Al'chaia before him." Her voice is low, but lower still when she recalls such names. "You seek purity. I may yet grant it." At last does she pay any real, intense mind to those who do not belong to her. "Istik. You bore that which is ours. But are you friend, or are you thief?"

As tempting as it is to speak true—it is mine by rights, if you wish to have it be strong enough to take it—he is more than a little interested to see where this goes. "I did not take the thing from you, but I did return it, didn't I?"

"An unexpected servant." Nevermind, he shoulda just made her squirm. Never could he stomach that sort of sleight. "Extend your fealty one step further, and you will be rewarded beyond your mortal reckoning: the Astral Prism, the artifact you carry, it is corrupted. There is someone inside; their mind is warped, broken, a blight. They are an agent of the Grand Design, sent to sabotage the Prism, which be our last defence against the return of the Illithid Empire. As long as they live, the Prism is compromised. Kill them: do this and I shall cleanse you. Do this and ascend."

Lae'zel's face alights. "Ascension? My queen. An honor gained, a burden borne. We shall do it." She determines. For him. Gods, he's really gonna do it this time.

"You will use the planecaster's power to enter the artifact. Be wary of the creature's lying tongue. Cut it out, if you must." Vlaakith demands. "Chi'r'ai, they are not to leave until it is done."

"As you say, my Queen."

Oh, delightful.

Lae'zel leaps to her feet as the illusion of her queen vanishes. "Vlaakith has spoken. We will not leave this room except to enter the Prism. Turn your back on me, and you will feel my blade against it!" Right, like he's the sort of idiot who'd leave his back exposed to anyone.

Peter's still got that disgustingly sympathetic look on his face, like Lae'zel be a fox with it's paw in a trap, as the woman activates the contraption. From it, intense heat begins to billow from the Astral Prism, its many triangular pieces spiraling out around it, crafting a vortex that none of them touch, yet consumes them all the same.

They are spat into a space beyond time or even sensation, a vast abyss like that which would suspend the stars. A silver of the Astral Plane, chopped out of the whole and contained, chained. The air here is light with lacking, feebled gravity, yet they'd all drift out into it with one mistep.

Though they enter through an arch upon a fragment of gnarled rock, A larger crag of it sits below them. Any leap down to it must be made with caution.

But Lae'zel feels no such apprehension. "Boundless, timeless—like every dream that ever was, stitched together. It is home." She breathes out, and takes the leap before them all.

The leap gives a better view of what this crumb of infinite contain: The stone seems to have grown off a massive skeleton, one which could hold all of them in its fingertip if it still had life. Within its crown-bearing skull, he can see some sort of omni-colored shield cast outwards.

They are all fortunate to not manage to float into nothing.

"Well, this is what you wanted." Harry directs his eyes down at Lae'zel. "Go on." The cave spirals beckoningly in purple mists.

No. The voice speaks with three others in harmony. Has… has the visitor a unique face that speaks to each of them. That maks Harry's stomach twist. We will speak in private, just the two of us. It was you who handed over the prism.

Seriously?! "Fine!" He spits, marching forward.

Within the cave, the mists fade away; the rot-faced man from his dreams sits amist carved out ruins and a small grove of unliving-undying plants, so brittle the slightest of touches would have them crumbling. "I may have made a mistake trusting you." Murmurs the skull-faced gith. "I told you to stay away from the githyanki. But you just couldn't help yourself, could you? And now you've come here to murder me."

"You make assumptions, though I'll ask you explain yourself."

A long, pathetic little sigh from the Visitor. It does not suit him—it is wrong from that face. "I stole this artifact from Vlaakith indeed, and since then she has become desperate. Vlaakith wants me dead because I know her secret, one so great that if her people ever learnt it, it would be the end of her rule, the end of her. That same secret is how I've been protecting you from the Absolute. I've been on your side since the very beginning—can't you tell?"

Slimy, pathetic words, words that bathe in their own filth to craft pity. Harry finds no offense in it, it's only so unfathomably off putting it could knock him off his feet. "If you're such a threat, why aren't you already dead?" He demands.

"She's trying her very best—she sent you, did she not?" An owlish, faux-stupid little blink, trying to paw at his ego. Something is not right. "She lies to her people, she pretends she knows how Gith destroyed the mindflayer empire, but she knows nothing. If the Illithid Empire were to ever return, she would be incapable of stopping them. But that power is how I've been protecting you—I suppose she was hoping to extract it from my corpse."

His arm feels like he's dragging it through mud when he raises it, unnaturally slow and heavy. "My head's scrambled, but you're not right." He mutters. "I… know you, you'd never act this pitiful." He insists, feeling his blood rush in him.

"You must be remembering something else." An oblivious look. "We have never met before this." Liar. Insubordinate, deceptive little rat. Better be grateful he must keep living. "I have delayed long enough; the next attack on me is overdue and I cannot risk you getting caught in the middle of it. You were on the right path before, to Moonrise Towers. Return to it. And be warned: The Inquisitor awaits your return from this place with orders to kill you."

With that, Harry feels himself be almost pushed from the cave, and something in his head twist and go snap.

Lae'zel is upon him immediately. "Speak! Have you killed my queen's enemy?!"

Has Harry? It is suddenly very difficult to recall what had happened in there. The man with the familiar face had said things to him, it had been… civil, he thinks. Had been civil, that man was rather helpful. Shoulda avoided this place like he said. "Actually, Vlaakith was lying." Well, obviously. He already knew that.

"Vlaakith does not lie to her faithful!" Lae'zel is beside herself with offense. "Open your mind and show me!"

That, Harry feels unexpectedly certain, is a bad idea. "Listen, that Inquisitor is going to try to kill you when we leave. If such happens, let that be proof of my honor." He is anything but honorable, but for once he is certain of that. Even though he can't…

"I have a mind to end you here and now, but either you believe your own words or have suddenly mastered the duplicitous arts." Oh, she really does not suspect he does anything deceptive. Every lie that crosses his face over every second of each day is one she buys. Interesting. "To the Inquisitor. We will see who speaks with the serpent's tongue."

—

"Lae'zel. I have been waiting." The Inquisitor bears a sort of practiced malice—almost a rehearsed one. "You are named Hshar'lak. Bend your head, for my blade is ready."

"Ch'r'ai, please, summon Vlaakith! There is deceit—"

But she is silenced; with a glance to his side, Harry can tell that of them, the Menzoberranzan-raised half-drow realizes it quickest: the outcome to this was already determined regardless of what would happen within the Prism. Vlaakith never had any intentions of letting any of them live. "Irrelevant, ghaik harborer. The queen has spoken, and your death is decreed."

Well, at least there was some death to come of all this.

Harry had nearly been excited to see what sort of brainless denial Lae'zel would find to cling onto during the duration of bloodshed, but once the lot are dead, she speaks nothing.

The drow does, with his pallid eyes wide as the moon. "I'm so—"

He's cut off, flinching like it was Minthara who spoke, or someone similar, and not their own ally. "Silence. Let us leave this place—I must think."

But over Lae'zel's shoulder, Shadowheart looks at the githyanki woman stares with the most strained look in her eyes he can possibly fathom, like she sets her jaw and swallows both vomit and worry—but worry she'd already drooled prior when Lae'zel had been close to death. She resents whatever occurs in her heart.

—

That night, Harry can already see it over the horizon: the cliffs near where the entrance to the Shadow-Cursed lands had been marked upon their map now crawls with gods-know how many githyanki. Passing through that land is no longer an option—they must now head through the Underdark.

It is more than clear that Peter does not want to think about it, though he knows it the case too.

Though, in that night before the retracing of wasted steps, they have one last encounter with the githyanki. A yawning blue void opens in the center of their campsite, with that dragon-riding Kith'rak Voss and a masked githyanki woman stepping through. Both do not wear the proud, gaudy armor githyanki would normally—both clad themselves in dark leathers.

From a silent contemplation, Lae'zel leaps to her feet, face flashing. "Supreme Kith'rak! Has Vlaakith sent you to slay me with your own blade?!" She demands, though fear shows in her eyes.

"I've not come to kill you, Lae'zel." The man says in a whisper. "I've come to aid you." He kneels, laying his sword at his feet. "Sha'kek kir Gith shabell'eth. My blade rests. Mother Gith compells you to listen."

"Speak. My ear is yours." She acquieses, looking wary.

Voss returns to his feet, his sword returning to his back. "I know you carry the Astral Prism. Within it lies the seed to Vlaakith's demise. I intend to help you bring it to fruition." His tone lacks any of the brutal, efficient severity of before. Impressive, if it had all been naught but an illusion.

A well-woven anger flashes on her face, but at the least the events of the past day have made her hesitate. "The visitor from the dreams must be an illusion of the tadpole." She whispers. "If they are not, speak."

"If they have not said who they are, they must have good reason. And I won't be the one to betray them." He says gravely, but with a twinge of aching, aged yearning. "But the one within has chosen you as an ally and protects you with their power, the same power that can end Vlaakith's tyranny. The tenant of the Prism must be let loose. I have sought their freedom for aeons. When the Prism went missing, I feared the worst. Instead, you have granted me the opportunity I've so long awaited. All that remains is the key that will uncahin them, but I have found one who can provide it. Bring it to Baldur's Gate, and I shall wait in a taproom called Sharess's Caress." Voss is eager, he seems to believe Lae'zel doubts it all. But as he speaks, Harry can spot many years of nonstop conviction cloud her. "Lae'zel, we together will break our chains and be Vlaakith's slaves no longer."

And that wording is the thing that allows it to burst free. "I am no slave, Jhe'stil Kith'rak!" She looks confused and desperate, half-broken, like she's convinced herself he is merely testing her. "The Undying Queen is my freedom! It is she who will purify me, and she who will ascend me." Desperate, desperate, trying to find a way that this might be the final test, a last trial before Vlaakith provides what was promised.

"Lies, Lae'zel." To his credit, Kith'rak Voss has the patience for her conflicted hesitance. Perhaps he's known it in the past. "Every last one. There is no purification, no ascension. The zaith'isk does not purify, it extracts memory and kills the infected. Nor does the lich queen glorifty the ascended. She feeds on most all of them to grow her power and pursue true godhood."

Lae'zel looks almost shattered by his words. "Madness. You flood me with this… this heresy! I will hear no more of it." Her hands, quaking severely, reach for her sword.

And the drow can tolerate no more, can sit and wait for her to come to it on her own no longer. "Lae'zel, I know how it feels, please believe that. But you must know he speaks true of the zaith'isk. You don't need to merely endure what Vlaakith does—you can fight for yourself." He beckons to everyone around. "There are people who will be there."

And those shaking hands withdraw, her face knitting tight together with pain. "I served Vlaakith the whole of my life. Learned her words, fought her battles! Yet…" She can hardly manage the next of her words. "She names me Hshar'lak. Your words carry truth." Lae'zel's words carry shame for doubting him—shame for the fact she'd not be whole in her convictions regardless of where they pointed. But at the core of it, he'd bet there's shame for being exploited. One she can only handle with clinging to a new cause. "I will meet you in Baldur's Gate. Do not make me regret it."

"Lae'zel!" Oh, how proud this man sounds. Offering all the praise and reassurance he can. "I see T'lak'ma Ghir in you. Sister in Freedom. Together we will be our people's light." He too is still constrained, unable to know how to act around so many decades beneath a silver-forged boot. "I am afraid I must go—Vlaakith's gaze pierces the skies and sees. She believes me loyal and I cannot afford her mistrust. Keep the Astral Prism close. Let no one take it from you. Slay any who try. Now—" Another sky-toned portal appears at his back. "—to Baldur's Gate. I will be waiting, Lae'zel."

Like overly noble clockwork, Peter vanishes to join Lae'zel's side, offering an ear and something resembling advice, maybe. Harry wonders if Shadowheart will go, but he finds her quailing, then returning to her own tent. Whatever is going on there seems… strange, even for matters he already struggles to truly understand.

Shadowheart, however, does notice his curious look. "I hadn't thought she'd turn on the Lich Queen so easily. Wonders never cease." So dismissive, yet she clearly does care about the topic. "I suppose it would be hard for me to understand betraying a lifelong loyalty so readily, but I'm not sure why you think I'd care."

"You're the one who started talking." He points out, and she turns red, setting her jaw.

—

Within the goblin camp, Harry knows well just where to find dwarf corpse—how could he ever forget?

It's not on the dwarf-roasts themselves, though all but him falter at the thought of looking, but shoved in the pocket of a goblin that had died due to poisoning. An old poem in a loopy hand: A son of Selune fell here in the dark below; and we sealed his grave in her holy glow. May the full moon never touch the stars once more, may darkness never conquer the Moonmaiden's door.

Rambling words for dead, pulped dwarf are penned beneath, but if he would not be able to escape being butchered by goblins, Harry doesn't know if his thoughts are worth the cheap paper he wrote them on. The others grow contemplative over the whole page, though, and long enough that he can stuff a good number of those chunks into his bag.

Of course, it is not so puzzling once they find the damn door. A variety of spinning blots of white and black attached to four circles overlapping one another. One of them sits bathed in moonlight. Once it be the dark lit in the glow, the far wall opens, and they might proceed. First down a staircase of wood and stone alike, then, upon finding a platform built over a great depth of eerie light, a ladder.

At Harry's shoulder, Peter shivers at the sight—he would know the disconcerting Underdark, both in its shadow and the uncanny luminensce it bathes in.

A disgusted scoff escapes Shadowheart’s throat at the small entryway the ladder downwards leads them to. Any confusion that he might have felt at her immediate disdain fades immediately; at the very base of the ladder is placed a fine altar, covered in indigo cloth dotted with silver stars. Behind it, a large piece of fine metalwork: a silver circle, intersected by intricate swirled patterns and dotted with deep blue gems. But the center of it carries no subtlety: A pair of well carved eyes, staring outward. Selune.

“At least the temple was ransacked.” She mutters softly. “I guess the goblins didn’t ever make it here to finish the job. Don’t know why they’d bother being down here anyways.” Shadowheart isn’t speaking to them, but perhaps she’s not speaking to herself either. There’s a brief dark flash near her sleeve, followed by the smallest flinch.

She is correct about that, however; the Selunite stronghold is in far better shape than the temple above, its fine stonework and the many emblems of the goddess honored have gone almost entirely untouched. No person has stepped foot here since its abandonment. Despite it’s lack of ceiling or full-height walls, nothing has been able to make it inside. An impressive feat in the Underdark.

But it appears that preservation might only be due a very direct sort of protection. A statue of the Moonmaiden, perhaps predictably, is situated in the dead center of the stronghold, her bent soapstone-carved arm raising a staff crowned with moonstone. Arcane energy streaks from the glowing gemstone towards either side of a scratched iron gate. It’s not hard to put together. Hells, the thought is slightly gleeful: Selune could protect her holy ground, but she couldn’t protect her followers. Hells, how well can she even protect this place if both Shadowheart and himself have made it here? He can feel it. There is divine power here, and it is uneasy with him.

Impulse seizes him, though not so hastily that he doesn’t decide against speaking aloud. Silently, he prods at Peter’s mind. Both Selune and Eilistraee share the moon, do they not?

Peter radiates discomfort, glancing at each corner of the forsaken site as though the shadows are going to jump out at them. They’re allies. He responds, a bit edgy, but not defensive. No envy, only discomfort at the reality that a deity with far more power than his beloved savior-goddess couldn’t hold out for long.

It is apparent Peter believes in that allyship. He walks more easily here than anyone, and that’s not speaking to the navigation that he’s hesitantly agreed to perform. Perhaps others might buy into it, but Harry knows how he feels about this plane. All to say, Peter is confident enough in his presence to palm open the book that sits abandoned and coated by dust atop the base of the statue.

With each page of faded notes Peter flips through, his face falls dark, as does his confidence. “Drow,” he murmurs when Harry approaches him from behind, placing the book back down far more gingerly than he took it, as though he thinks the defense system fashioned from it is about to strike at him. “That’s what got to them. Obviously, I guess. Wouldn’t be anything else.” Peter pauses. “There’s something called the Nightsong in Moonrise Towers.” He adds offhandedly, trying to conceal his prior tone.

“You’re uncomfortable.”

Peter always responds to blunt with blunt. It is, in Harry’s opinion, one of the finest things about him. “Allies is great until your ally is being worshipped by people who spent their lives doing the exact shit that kills your own followers!” He eyes the moonstone cautiously. “I don’t want to go in the direction that’s aimed at. I don’t know how it’s judging who to kill. Could just be everyone.”

Harry squeezes Peter’s shoulder, turning him away. “Then don’t. Half the walls here are short as shit, we can just climb over.”

“You’re right.” Peter makes a strained, distressed noise through his teeth, spinning and pressing his face to one side of Harry’s chest. “Gods, I’m just getting paranoid. I hate this place, I hate everything about it.” That’s another part of Peter that Harry has grown fond of. Nobody here can keep up with or will ever keep up with him. Peter makes up for that by listening when he’s told what to do. It’s nice to not have resistance when, in almost every situation, Harry is right.

He wonders if he ever trained dogs before his loss of memory; it’s simply very intuitive, that rewarding good behavior is as effective as punishing the bad. Harry only needs to hook one arm around Peter’s back and tug him in for him to relax. And he’ll remember that.

—

“Don’t step near the orange mushrooms, they’re Torchstalk. If you do, step away from them quickly. They’ll blow up, and if you’re unlucky they’ll throw you off the edges of pathways.” Peter knows that bit from experience. The metal tangled up with his chest never hurt, except for the times where he’d been trying to hike with broken ribs. That had been agony. Damn it, just find another plant. “There’s also Bibberbang, which are just… Torchstalk, but they don’t need to throw you around. They’ll just kill you. I’ll point them out if we see them, but hopefully we won’t. The little blue ones are fine, though. You can eat them in a pinch, they’re just really bland.”

The layout of the Underdark itself hasn’t changed. It’s still all cliff faces shaped in just the right manner that no amount of glowing fungi will completely light things, narrow rocky paths with sheer drops on either end, caves and tunnels and caves in caves and tunnels in tunnels, man-sized—no, rothe-sized stalactites and stalagmites, built in all sorts of miserably craggy ways that create too much shadow. Shadow, that’s the problem, everything is dark here, there could be anything hiding anywhere at any time.

“If you harvest those turquoise crystals, or the pink ones, you can make poisons.” Keep talking. Look for more things to talk about, do not look at the shadows. There’s nothing there. “The tiny glowing green mushrooms can be used to create fire-resistant elixirs. And the ones that are similar in color but a bunch of tiny mushrooms with long stalks are poisonous.” Peter wasn’t taught alchemy until he was with Octavius and Kurrt. There were merely points in being on the run where you learned what was and wasn’t poisonous out of desperation.

Gods. Gods, he hates it here. Bioluminescence barely illuminates anything beyond the plants possessing it. At least in the surface world’s night hours, the stars and moon hit everything, which meant it wasn’t so easy for someone to be hiding on the surface, and the places where someone could be hiding weren’t everywhere. “Be… careful around any mushroom that’s tannish and has a bunch of holes along the top. They release spores that cause befud—”

A few gentle, melodic notes of song float on the air, soft as a whisper yet refusing to be held back by the ambiance of the expansive caves of the Underdark. His heart leaps into his throat with the sound, as caught off guard and modest as ecstatic. This isn’t like any other song he’s heard, he’s being drawn somewhere, shown something, but that thing isn’t freedom.

Who in the world would deny direct communication from a deity? Peter certainly isn’t the type who’d try and delay. He twists away from the path he’d selected essentially at random to follow, facing the unassuming path formed from one of the many indistinguishable natural arches and moving quickly. For a brief few moments, there is no purpose to his anxieties towards the shadows. She wouldn’t lead one of her followers into a trap. Instead, the chaotic sway of his eyes in every imaginable direction is simply a matter of identifying where he’s being lead.

But even that is unnecessary. The source of it is marked proudly to him, to Peter specifically, bathed in bright silver moonfire without any present caster, tucked away in one of the overshadowed niches he would have otherwise eyed warily, disguised with growths of mushrooms and cascaded-down vines. Within, a stone altar fashioned into being so subtly it could pass for ordinary stone without a closer look. The bastard sword protruding from that stone is of make as close to flawless as he can possibly imagine, the metal of it entirely devoid of any visible wear. The flickering moonfire traces inscriptions along the center of its blade, dances up the leatherbound handle, guiding his sight to every intricate little detail of the sword. It makes no secret of the Eilistraeen fashion it was forged in, but even within that graceful, intricate style, it is anything other than ordinary. It is a weapon that, with a single glance, smiths would spend their entire lives trying to create something to match it. The leather scabbard laid out in front of it matches its splendor.

If it were just any sword, Peter would not have been led to it. Peter brings his fingertip to the blade without hesitance, spilling a single drop of blood against the razor sharp edge in acceptance of the offered gift. The blade rises from the stone and hangs in the air, waiting to be embraced. As its end is freed from stone, gentle song bleeds out into the air, emanating from the sword itself.

Shock numbs Peter as his hand wraps around the leather hilt. Surely… surely if it was him being gifted this, it was only for the lack of anyone else around to accept it. Peter is thoroughly cowardly, he does not have the sharp will necessary to use or deserve something like this. Perhaps someday he could, but not now. Not as he is.

But more than Peter feels any of that towards himself, he trusts the goddess who saved his life. If she wants him to have it, he will have it.

“Pete!” Oh, Peter just ran off without a word, didn’t he? The sound of claws skidding against stone emanates from behind him and an icy-cold hand presses to the opposite shoulder that Harry appears over. “Gods, what’dya run off like that for?” Goosebumps alight across his spine when Harry’s tail wraps around his shin. Only because Harry is cold. Yep.

Wordlessly, he turns and faces Harry, meeting his unblinking crimson stare as he holds the still-singing blade where all three of them can see it. He thinks, even if Harry does not understand what specifically he holds, Harry can still guess what it is that happened. Harry has a way of simply knowing things, reading the expressions, words, and behaviors of other people in an almost uncanny fashion. It’s one of the central pillars holding up the blanket of how… disarmingly alluring he is, charming and effortlessly cool and so fascinating.

But even if Harry always knows, the group is not wanting for people with the education needed to guess. “That’s no ordinary Eilistraeen blade, is it?” Shadowheart’s only shrewdly curious, not as angry as he was worried lunar feuds might provoke. “I’d like to think I know a good bit about other faiths, but I can’t recall seeing a genuine artifact of a god’s before.”

Frigid fingers fasten to the edges of his robes, tugging them upwards. Peter finds himself faintly appreciative—had they slipped that low? “I was being told where to go. I had to listen.” He allows himself to lean backwards against Harry’s chest slightly as he speaks.

“Well, it was obvious you followed her church, but I wasn’t expecting her to like you that much.” Is Shadowheart jealous?

Still handling the sword with the utmost care, he lifts its scabbard and sheaths it. The singing goes muted as he does so. “I wasn’t either.”

—

more are coming.

Only a few meters from that sword, and the spores that waft through the air start speaking.

"That voice… you all hear it too, right?" Shadowheart asks.

Behind her, their tiefling's eyes glint, like he's surprised the rest of them notice. Peter puts the thought of Harry's indifference to the side. “Hold on, it’s nothing to be alarmed of.” Peter holds up one hand. “It’s just Myconids. They’re peaceful. Maybe we should be trying to find their colony, it’ll probably be a good place to rest.”

they're coming. they're coming.

"And how ominous it is shouldn't be a worry?" Karlach inquires.

Peter hears himself laugh. "They do kinda just talk like that. Either they're trying to tell the rest of the colony about us, and we got caught in it by accident, or they're trying to warn us." Really, he knows they're never hostile. Not… usually at the least.

they're coming. And then, as though this conversation has been overheard. you're coming. Peter reckons the myconid is trying to be helpful, but it does not seem as though the others see it that way.

The curious thing is more… "Oh, they've got torchstalks and Timmasks near the entrance of their grotto. Something bad is happening, if they've planted those."

"You've not mentioned Timmasks." Shadowheart prompts.

"Oh, yeah." His attention is, admittedly, elsewhere: there's a safe path between the dangerous fungi, if one steps carefully. "They make you go a little confused. I bet the strategy is that anyone trying to attack them, they'd inhale the Timmask's spores, and go running like a headless chicken through the Torchstalks."

A pause. "And you're not concerned about that?"

"No? We're not attacking them." Isn't that obvious? "Just only step where I do!"

That's not satisfactory, he can tell, but these mushrooms are spaced far enough apart for at-ease feet to navigate. Peter holds his breath near the puffing Timmasks and steps wide around the rest. Not too hard, all one has to do his step light and hop away when their orange bulbs begin to swell.

By the time he gets to the opposite side, he… does hear one pop and ignite behind him, and both tieflings cry out. But they are tieflings—surely, one mushroom won't burn them too badly? And the more vulnerable Shadowheart appears beside him just fine!

A pale, luminous myconid greets him near the entrance to the colony, as peaceful as expected. Its spore-song calls for its sovereign and tells it of their presence. The greater, brassier song of that entity rises in the chorus, reaching out to the one it can recognize as being more familiar and wearing a pin symbollic of peace. It is unusually cautious, but the field outside had been unusally protective. Myconids would have a reason. It demands a reason, and he provides honestly. They come without intent to harm, and seek only a safe place to rest and healing, if it can be offered.

The cautious, thorny melody to the song eases, one slow and bright taking its place in welcome, the soveriegn inviting him to speak with it personally

The minefield of dangerous mushrooms fading into the distance behind them, they step through an archway of the rare sort of fungi within the Underdark that is truly harmless. Peter finds he cannot recall their names, but those giant, flat-topped, flame-toned mushrooms are essentially the foundation of this entire colony. He’s only seen them around Myconids, actually.

Just beyond the entryway to the colony, a series of very deliberately grown massive mushrooms, their sturdy caps layered atop one another so closely they form a staircase. That, if Peter could hazard a guess, is where this colony’s sovereign would position itself.

Dotted along the sides of this pathway, barrel-shaped stalks ooze visible spores into the air around them. If they’re sitting out in the open, they’re probably not all that dangerous, are they? Curious, he sticks his head into one cloud and inhales.

…Oh, that is something else. His heart begins to hammer at his ribs, pumping pure energy into every inch of his body, even into the tips of his fingers and toes. He feel he could run a mile, run one in a third the time he’d need normally. He feels like he could run a mile in a minute!

Those energizing spores, sadly, do fade in a number of seconds once Peter steps away from the cloud, lingering about as long as the lungful of air he took them in with. His curiosity still straining to learn more, he tears himself away.

Atop the final, broadest cap, the colony Sovereign curls its body over a heap of duergar corpses, the beginnings of further fungi growing atop the stout bodies. Peter takes the first step forward, just to see one of those corpses twitch.

It’s no corpse. It isn’t even a duergar. It’s a Svirfneblin—a deep gnome, her body curled in pain but still very much alive. Her eyes narrow on him when he moves towards her side. It’s not just because he’s drow, Peter reminds himself, deep gnomes endure so much maltreatment they tend towards suspicion of most anyone. “Don’t.” She hisses, fierce despite the fact she can hardly move.

Peter recognizes the cause. She’s been poisoned, not by any sort of cultivated snake venom or product of rarer wild forage, but by a common Bullywug Trumpet toxin. It was no notable event to the poisoner, just a matter of making sure she’d die without an antidote. And a matter of not expecting her to be able to access one. It’s evident she hadn’t, but he knows he can change that.

His pack has grown a good few pounds heavier with alchemical forage he recognized since they’ve entered the Underdark. His hands rifle through broken mushrooms and bundled together stalks til he finds the ordinary looking reeds and fuzzy purple weed he was looking for. Peter thrusts the clump of weeds towards Harry, who accepts them and gives him a blank look. “Burn that and give me the ashes.” He orders, taking the thick reeds into his own hands and snapping them in half.

As a sour, ashy smell begins to drift through the air, Peter gets to work grinding the stalks beneath a pestle, his shoulder aching by the time he has the lilac-toned sludge he’s seeking. From Harry’s palms comes a heap of slightly sandy ash. When combined, the two quite thick and dense substances combine into something impossibly clear and liquid. “Here.”

Though her face betrays distrust, the gnome seems to understand she’s not in a position to refuse potential help. The first sip is small and cautious, but she blinks. Her expression softens, fingers raising to pull the antidote from his hands and down the rest. “Ah, gods.” She sets the bowl on the ground, eyeing her own fingers as strength returns to her. “Why’re you helping me?”

“There doesn’t have to be a reason.”

“Tends to be one from a drow, but I guess you’re not all one.” His skin prickles a bit at that. Why does it have to be that half that makes me do the good things? He doesn’t say; she has greater reason to be wary of him than any surface dweller does. “I thank you for your help, but I gotta get movi—” It’s simply bending one knee that puts her in unbearable pain, hissing through her teeth. “Garl’s garters, I don’t have time for this!” She doesn’t make another attempt at moving.

Now, Peter has the sword on his back and the brooch atop his chest. He knows what he’s to do. “Tell me what I can do.”

Not entirely consumed by her pain, she notices as well. “Oh. I didn’t think you lot were real.” She states, but brushes past the topic. “If you are, then you can help rescue my kinsfolk. Ironhand clan gnomes, best artificers in Baldur’s Gate. We were on an expedition down here when the duergar got to us. I got away from the greys, but not any others. That ain’t even why they bothered poisoning me, we aren’t worth that much to them. Stole some damn boots.” The offending item is trapped, or more likely hidden, beneath her pack. “They’ve got the rest digging up some damn ruins across the lake, if you can get them out of there. Some forge.”

“I’ll do what I can.” He tucks his supplies back into his pack. “That might just be where we’re needing to go anyways.”

Her head thumps against the ground. “Perhaps you can scare them into it. Wish I could go with you, but I think I can only mark about where on your map and wait. Not much choice.”

When Peter raises himself to his feet, he finds that the Sovereign has raised its fungal head from the heap of collected, slowly molding dead to observe the exchange. Its droning, focused melody reaches out to him, shifting as it ceases focusing on the bodies. Myconids do not prefer to communicate in words, it choosing to do so will be only for lack of another option.

It offers a memory in the mournful notes of a dirge. Duergar bring axes down on the remains of small Myconids, splintering their bodies into shreds. Young Myconids, not even within eyesight of maturity. The image is followed by a concentrated burst of emotion, peace that shatters like glass. It shows then the scrappy outpost of the invading duergar before reflecting the shape of his own holy symbol back at him, then displays the shape on the bodies of a group of drow that had passed through months ago, appreciation and respect in its song. Drow he realizes are familiar to him. He can spot very recognizable stark red hair amongst them. They, he discerns, had helped. It hopes for the same from him.

“I understand.”

—

“Is that a godsdamned mindflayer?” The words fall out alarmed. To the others, Peter processes, it would be shocking at the barest least. Mindflayers are quite plentiful down here, and on occasion they do manage to break away from the hivemind. He can recall Kurrt and Octavius hosting one on a few occasions, and it had not meant harm.

It’s apparent immediately that this one likely originates from similar means; Peter recognizes the emblem both it and the hobgoblin it speaks to as the same of his two mentors. “It’s nothing,” he insists to the rest, finding himself slightly grateful that Lae’zel, still shaken from the creche, has bound herself to camp for the past few days. For a few seconds at least, until he mostly just feels horrible for thinking that. “There’s a lot down here, but some of them break from the hivemind. I know the symbol it’s wearing, so it probably isn’t dangerous.”

He doesn’t need to turn around or hear them speak to know they probably don’t believe him, but Peter knows just fine on his own that there’s no danger here. If there was, he’d be trying not to double over in pain from shocks emanating out of the metal in his chest. Besides, Peter can’t refuse the chance to ask. “Hello, there!” He calls. The rush of anxiety that comes with the words has nothing to do with danger; it’s merely a touch more ordinary. There are about a thousand ways he may be about to humiliate himself.

Both turn towards him, the hobgoblin offering him a warm smile. “Greetings!” He rumbles. For a moment, his focus drifts towards the obvious surface-dwellers lingering behind. “So many surface-dwellers traveling through here recently. It brings me hope that perhaps things will someday improve. Are you guiding them?”

“Ah… basically, yes.” Peter peers over his shoulder. “I think they’re just a bit cautious of Mindflayers, I’m sorry.”

The mindflayer does not speak, but its voice, as heard telepathically, is the same low, booming tone every illithid possesses. “I take no offense. Not many have the arcane skill necessary to shelter their soul from the obliteration that would normally occur.” It bows slightly. “I shall return to supervising my samples.” It drifts away, odd, clawed feet never making contact with the soil. Peter can’t help but try and see where it is going to, curious as to what a creature like it would want to study.

Ah well, maybe he can ask later. “You’re both with the Society of Brilliance, right?” He gestures to the hobgoblin’s getup.

“Indeed.” He confirms.

“I’m really sorry if you don’t, I don’t want to waste your time, but you don’t happen to know anyone by the name of Octavius, do you?” Some part of him is already bracing for embarrassment. Why, of all things, is that what he’s afraid of? So many close encounters with death and he still can’t handle having a conversation?

To his fortune, the hobgoblin’s dark eyes light in recognition. “Oh, yes! Would that make you the boy he was mentoring?”

Peter responds with a proud nod. “Yes, sir! It’s been a good long while since I had the chance to see him, but I, um—would you know how to contact him?”

“I believe himself and his lizardfolk companion were due to pass through our lodge in Baldur’s Gate. That being said, the Society of Brilliance does have arcane means of contacting one another.” He offers. “It might take a day to get a complete response, but I could send word for you, if you’d like.”

Peter’s mind lights up at that. Finally, the chance to maybe, just maybe have some answers. That does assume that Otto had been able to find anything on the stupid thing, but… “Yes, please! If it’s not too much trouble.”

"Let me introduce myself properly: I am Blurg, and my companion has christened itself Omeluum. I am afraid I do not recall your name if it was told to me, only that you hail from House Faen-Tlabbar."

"Peter." He provides.

"I see. Well, then, Peter Faen-Tlabbar, what would you have me tell him?" Blurg begins to sift through his desk of things.

That makes him pause—what would he ask to have said of such a strange item, and one he hesitates to let others see? "Tell him that some of the gemstones have been changing color, and that I found a Singing Sword, if he knows anything on either topic." He drags one of his boots through the ground. "And that I miss him."

"See me before you leave the colony for good, and hopefully I'll have something for you." The hobgoblin tells him, and casts.

—

Peter does step through the Underdark with renewed confidence after that. The path between that duergar camp and the colony is short, but he spends the whole while plucking up forage. It's a bit easier to keep fog out of his head when now, he knows that there likely won't be other drow nearby. Duergar? Deep gnomes? Myconids? Too dense for drow—but he can handle all those things!

The decrepit, ruined village that the duergar he'd been shown were meant to reside in sits abandoned. Even more notably abandoned than the uninhabitable place would imply: wood walls are eaten by fungus, as are further remains of the dwarven population. However, the living men from the vision do not have a place amongst the dead.

"The duergar it showed me aren't here." He murmurs to nobody in particular, stepping out of building wreckage to get a broader look of things. Doing to only draws his attention to the deep, hazy waters that stretch outwards from this village. Two fragile docks have been built here, but only one still has a raft beside it. "They must have fallen back after the attack." Then, he hastily tacks more words on to justify it. "Maybe they're occupying that stronghold."

No doubt it's obvious that it's not really why he'd want to follow, but when he makes a delicate hop over onto the woven-together wood, the rest follow, a multitude of hands to his aid as he unfurls its sails and looses it from the harbor.

Away they drift into deep, deep black. Dark that devours, would reach out its hands and snuff any light that dared shine. Lighting a torch in this would be like lighting it in the water. The only point of light is sanguine eyes inches away.

That is, until the isolating dark is broken by shattering the loneliness. With a muffled, shifting glow like a lantern, a foggy yellow light appears on the horizon, growing larger and larger. Another raft, this one bearing a small hoard of duergar. It bears intently in their direction; trying to dodge away would no doubt only worsen matters.

The speedy raft drifts to a stop directly across from their own, a duergar with a paler beard than most regarding them with wary, angry violet eyes. "You!" The cursory glance he gives the other three is dismissive, he only deigns to bother with the other creature who's skin is painted with cool tones. "What are you doing on Gekh's raft?"

When Peter succeeds at the torrid task of not completely condemning himself, the bees of this duergar's paranoia settle into the hive for a light rest. He hops across. "Where's Gekh?" He demands.

"I saw a great number of bodies left by myconids—your friend is most likely dead." Don't act like you care so much, duergar won't believe anything like that from a drow.

"Damn." He remarks. "The seargant'll be pissed about her boots." He lets out a long, drawn out sigh. "Come on, let's get you to shore. You're the one telling her what happened." The duergar tosses sharp words over his shoulder at the lingering raft. "You lot, keep patrolling. I'll be heading back with this one."

The duergar directs the steering of their raft with sharp, cold, all-too-familiar barks. Peter hasn't yet killed the part of himself that begs for him to just obey. But that's not the dwarf's fault; he's like the drow back home in not having ever had a chance to know better. That's why Peter desperately shakes his head at Harry when he sees a barbed tail raise in response to his own quaking hands.

But the dwarf steers the watercraft into a place very Sharran indeed, as Halsin's description would have implied. Dark stonework stretches into high arches over their heads, the spaces in the walls left by each occupied by a statue of the night goddess. An unexpected amount of this stronghold is metalworked—Peter had thought masonry and amethyst was meant to be far more emblematic of Shar. Carved rock and sapphire tended to be commonplace with her sister, and Shar enjoyed nothing more than stealing her twin's things so subtly nobody would notice the change in management.

But Peter does not think these dwarves care for Shar. Come to think of it, even if Ketheric Thorm had been defeated, why wouldn't a stronghold of this magnetude have been reclaimed.

A duergar woman leaps to greet them, ignoring the strangers to focus on the one who'd guided them. "Greymon, you shithead. Time you showed up—we got trouble!"

Greymon makes a noise of dense displeasure. "Spit it out, Morghal. Seargant finally choked on True Soul Nere's prick?" He sneers.

"The True Soul caused a rockfall." It's hardly a report as much as it is a complaint. "Trapped tighter than a ring on a fat finger."

"You're shittin' me. He pay up?" Frankly, Greymon seems like he'd try to find some way to leave this Nere trapped if he had.

Morghal steps away from the dock, letting Greymon step off beside her. "That's the trouble. He's got the gold on him. Seargant's arm is falling off with all the gnome-slaves she's been beating." That makes Peter's attention light up. Those must be the people from the Ironhand Clan. But it's like she can hear his thoughts. "But what are you doing bringing drow in here?"

Greymon jerks a stubby thumb over his shoulder. "He sniffed up Gekh's corpse. Found them sailing his skiff."

"That so?" Her eyes fix to Peter's, and by now quite familiar wiggling echoes in his head in response.. But it's odd—this dwarf is not infected, the psionic stirrings from her are different. "I'll be. You're one of them cult freaks. Felt the tingle." From her side is yanked a small hunting knife. "Your chum owes us a lot of coin. You want through? Make a donation."

Peter feels his stomach sink. He's not bold enough to do much other than stick his hand into his—

"He's not giving you a copper. Unless—" Harry's hind claws snag the dagger, tossing it to his outstretched hand. Unimpressed, he examines it. "—you're planning on selling your own heads." Whatever he finds is not enough, it is dismissively tossed into the lake. Man, he's so cool.

"Unclog your hole—just shitting around." With a grimace, she watches the metal plop into water and sink. "But I'm warning you, that cult fool ain't settle up soon and there'll be hell to pay for the rest of you buggers." She scowls at them all as she trots off, like the dagger might get added to the total.

Harry bumps his horns against Peter's cheek. "You know, I think I see a lift opposite us on the other end of the dock." Red eyes meet his own, unreadable. "But you want to help the gnomes, don't you?"

"I do." He agrees.

The tiefling's head suddenly tips to one side. "We could die today, huh?" He doesn't sound the most horrified by the sudden observation

What? "…Do you not want to?"

"No, no, I'll do whatever you'd want for us to do." Harry reassures as he saunters off, but his tone is strange. Distant and curious, like that interaction might've not had anything to do with the gnomes for Harry.

That was…

Confusion lingering, Peter follows after him, eyes wandering the strange, massive forge they've found themselves in. Thoroughly of a religious nature, never deviating from shadows and night. What business does the Absolute have in this place, and what business would Shar have in the Underdark?

Harry's flicking tailtip is his ill-focused guide. Peter swears Harry leads him intentionally like that—half the time, it feels like Harry must be psychic in a manner unrelated to mindflayers. More Alaundo the wise; the way he sets himself in situations seems near precognitive.

But still, with Harry's focus directed onward, at lava-flows and gnomes chipping away at rock, Peter finds himself overhearing a more soft-toned conversation. Peter knows duergar don't have a quiet sort-of culture, which implies this is of secrecy.

Maybe Harry's past is only lost to him because he's just some lost fragment of dead Jergal, stringing the wheel of life to rotate as it should be. It would be rather spectacular to be courted by a demigod.

"Seen her run with a barrel under her arm. Just a small one, but enough to blow the drow out." The bald-headed man grumbles. "Someone should grab it. Slaves are never gonna manage with pickaxes."

The woman folds her arms, tasting the idea. "Can't go chasing maybes. The seargant is our ticket in." She dissents.

The elderly dwarf freezes in place, then turns. Oh, shit, was Peter breathing too loudly or something? During training, they— "Would you look at that, Kur? Someone's having a listen." Through the same faint energy he'd felt earlier, he tastes ancient resentments. "Oh, True Soul, no less. What do you think? Should we take Nere's debt off him?"

Harry is a few dozen feet away now. Harry cannot save him. And Peter isn't like him, he doesn't have the edge for threats. All he has is sincerity. "I don't like the cult any more than you do."

"Yet you got the stench. If I didn't know better, I would say a mindflayer shat a worm in your head." Well, he does not in fact know better. "Should split your head open and poke around if you lot don't pay up."

Oh, boy. "…I used to be one…" Ugh, Peter lies like fish fly. "But the cult used me, and I want revenge. Seems like it did you too, in a way."

"Revenge, eh?" Seems like it was just enough to get him what he needed. "In that case, I got a propsal. Thrinn's after the Absolute's glory, that's why the gnomes are digging out Nere, but we don't need glory. Just coin. He's got plenty. Free him, and then your lot and my chums will grind him up. Whatever in his pocket, we'll drop you a fat cut. You in?" His sunken eyes gleam, as though the whole fiasco is enough for killing Nere to be as satisfying as the payday.

But it is a perfect chance—and one sweeter for having earned it himself. "Don't give me coin. Just let the gnomes off the hook."

The old dwarf hums to himself. "Fine. None of my business if your bleeding heart is gonna lose you a heavy coinpurse." He agrees. "The story'll be worth it: nobody's gonna believe me about a noble-hearted drow."

Feeling his face burning, he marches awkwardly back to his tiefling's side—who's staring at the gnomes, looking blank at the sight of duergar putting lashes into the back of the gnomes' shins. But whoever would be able to know what's going on in his head? "Um, I think I can get them out of here." He whispers. "Just need to get the guy who's trapped out and kill him. Have any spells?"

That makes Harry perk up considerably. "No, but I think I picked a bomb off the Zhents!" He rummages around through his things, eventually providing a fuse-laden orb of clay. Once it's in Peter's hands, he flicks his tail and folds his arms behind his back, stepping away for Peter to proceed.

"Har…"

"It's your heroics! I don't want to keep stealing credit just 'cause I got the resources." Almost cartoonishly, he spins to put his back to the scene of rubble.

"Okay." Peter whispers, not quite to Harry's back as to himself. He shoves the bomb against his robes and strides up to the woman. "Um, ma'am?"

She groans, whipping around and facing him with eyes that blaze hotter than the magma beneath the iron grate. "What now?!"

"I hear you're in need of help with the trapped drow."

"Here to collect your blood? Fine, I'm glad someone is here to take responsibility, rather than harassing me for how long I think it'll take him to die." She glances past Peter, scowling. Or maybe that's just her normal. "Tunnel collapsed with Nere inside. Trapped with poisoned geysers. If we don't get him out soon, it's both our heads."

Peter produces the fuse-bearing ball. "I have a bomb." He cringes internally; he can only hope it didn't sound like a threat.

That makes the Seargant pause slightly, perhaps to determine if it was or wasn't one. "…Aye, that should work." She agrees. "Set it near the rubble and ignite it. That'll blow the drow out." The seargant mutters.

"Should the gnomes move first…?"

"Obviously!" She snaps. Peter feels himself flinch in response. She directs a sharp, meaningful look at the man who's handling the enslaved gnomes. Though he does allow them to remove themselves from the danger zone, it's only by way of shouting abuse. "Now get it done."

The explosive he was given was not built for these conditions. While a place as cold and often mustily still as the Underdark would not normally cause issue, Peter thinks he may be lucky it's not blown up either in his hands or Harry's pack within this boiling forge.

The fuse lights like it had merely been waiting for the slightest provocation, his already quick-racing thoughts spilling out of his mind into his muscles. Peter's throw at the rubble is, consequently, one sloppy and rushed.

…By the gods, with how far some of those chunks of stone are launched, Peter reckons that bomb going off while he held it would have split him clean in half. Hells, he half-believes the drow they were trying to dig out will be in pieces from it.

But, by some miracle, the man seems largely undamaged, emerging from the haze of dust and soot with a spat-out, "Finally!"

Most drow would be shorter than even Peter, who is himself only up to the shoulder of everyone who isn't Shadowheart. Not this man. His appearance is foretold with the fearful scattering of the gnomes who'd found themselves trapped with him, his long but thinning hair stark white beneath a thick layer of ash. "Worthless slaves!" He snarls, even his very slow footsteps cornering a particularly bedraggled gnome woman against the lava. "Your incompetence has been my ruin! Nere. Does. Not. Fail." Faint magic flickers between himself and the woman, who can do nothing to fight against his spell hurling her into the lava.

Her screams are bone-chilling, their briefness only making them more nauseating. Peter registers the choked cry of anguish one of the other gnomes lets out at the sight.

What is he doing, freezing up like this? "Stop!" At least the pause he gives this drow is enough to delay more deaths. "I'll not watch you kill more innocents, Nere."

Lazy eyes, wet jelly which oozes ego, raises to his face. The flicker of disdain is hardly anything new; whatever Nere feels towards his unusually but distinctly too-bulky physique and blunter ears changes not with the faint stirring of the tadpole in recognition. "You care for the weak, True Soul? Most… curious." That seems to be the least of his curiousity, frankly.

"I do not stand to let anyone suffer, not if I can do something." Nere looks at him with the same distant, somewhat incomprehensive look, yet expects him to be drow enough to align with him on that solidarity. Whether Peter exists as a drow or a human in this one's mind is just whatever is most convenient.

"The Absolute demands their slaughter, yet here you stand in bold defiance." His voice is gratingly shrill, makes Peter's teeth ache. "A test—yes, you must be. The Absolute bade you to try Nere's faith!" With every ounce of self-importance a single person could possibly manage to possess, Nere instead beckons the duergar seargant forward. "Thrinn, carve out his heart and serve it to the rothe. If he is indeed a True Soul, let the Absolute save him."

Peter's never been the best at trying to examine what's around him with any amount of subtlety. He's fortunate that old dwarf had positioned himself so close. "Wouldn't it be only polite you settle your debts first?" He speaks pointedly.

"Damn right." The man emerges with no moment of hesitation, gravelly voice dark. "You owe my crew a tenday's worth of coin—and the reckoning's come." With the scrape of iron on the stone beneath them, a warhammar is raised.

"You bargained with this wretch?" Nere chuckles, a curt and almost reheared sound. "How vexing. Nere is not without mercy, True Soul. That rat has just given you a chance to earn my favor." Peter registers with no small amount of bewilderment that this drow truly believes his words, despite the numbers of duergar that raise arms to direct them at every vital part of Nere's body. "Strike him down—prove your faith." He truly thinks the Absolute would somehow grant the strength to conquer through them all—but perhaps, if he still bids for allies, the Absolute, whatever it be, does not believe in him.

…That just makes him a little sad. The Absolute has close to complete control over the infected—who would any of these cultists be without this misfortune?

He'll not, however, even think of justifying putting the gnomes in punishment's way for it. If Peter fancies trying to do this sort of thing, it'll be on him to bear the hard things like that. "I have none. The Absolute is not what I defend."

"Heretics!" The drow responds with fury, and perhaps beneath it disbelief. "Let Nere be your end!"

—

The severed head falls at the Myconid sovereign's feet, the fungal head of the creature peering over the slackened jaw and rolled eyes curiously. "This man was at the head of the terror the dwarves inflicted upon you." Peter explains to the sovereign. "I offer his remains to rebuild with."

Bending its flexile matter over, its fingers wrap around Nere's unmoving face, lifting it. The song of the colony grows only more intense as it begins to weave its power into the dead flesh; then the song develops a melody just for the person to provide such a gift.

In response, its hands raise, a small bundle of fungus forming within the cradle of its palms: blue, with strands in a whirl like rose petals. He recognizes—from diagram, rather than memory—the shape and color of a noblestalk mushroom, a rare species known to be able to cure most any ailment. His mind lights. "Thank you," he has the good sense to tell the sovereign before he bolts.

"Harry!" He finds the tiefling and takes one of his hands in his own, enthusiastically—but also unceremoniously—dumping one of the rarest things he's ever touched into them. "Eat that!"

Harry stares at the blue fronds for a few seconds. "What is it?" He asks, drawing the words out.

"It's a noblestalk mushroom!" He responds. "It can cure anything—or close to it. They're really rare, but the sovereign offered me this one for the help."

Harry sounds perplexed. "And you want me to have it?" He inquires.

He nods. "Of course." Peter can glimpse Harry through the corner of his eye; the other man’s claws are dragging gently along the thin, delicate petal-like fungal formations that make up such a thing. “Are you gonna take it?” His impulsive, animal brain can’t comprehend why in the world Harry would be hesitating. But Peter hasn’t ever lost his entire memory before, so he supposes it wouldn’t be something he could understand to begin with.

Harry makes a noise that can be described as affirmative. “I’m gonna.” He mumbles, but Peter can see a slight tremble to his hands, a faraway look in his eyes. Is he afraid? It would be reasonable. Almost a circular thing, actually; Peter can’t imagine not leaping for the chance because he has his own, because he knows his own make him himself. But if he didn’t have them, if what they could be were a total mystery… Harry would be risking suddenly transforming himself into an entirely different person. That is a bit existentially terrifying. “Do I just shove the whole damn thing into my mouth? Seems like a choking hazard.”

With a light nudge of his shoulder against Harry’s own—well, more against his bicep, he offers a wry smile. “Sorry, those things are rare. Even I don’t know.” Harry’s tail begins to sway gently, the blunt end of its stinger batting gently against Peter’s foot. “But I promise I’ll help if you choke.”

He watches as Harry’s ruby-toned eyes roll slightly, a smirk on his face. “My hero.” He teases, cupping his palms around the fungus and tilting them into his open jaw. His face screws up as he chews; it must be quite the unpleasant taste. Though Peter swears he could recall some book he’d blazed through with Otto saying they should taste sweet…

Suddenly quite worried he’s managed to poison his… poison Harry, Peter nearly dives for his forage for the second time in only a few days. But Harry doesn’t double over or anything of the like. In fact, Peter can’t find much of anything on his face. Only blankness and a slight twitch in one eyebrow. “...Did it help?”

Harry frowns. “No,” he eventually settles on, but it’s very much something settled on. Harry was, somehow, not sure.

…Actually, that wasn’t even close to the strangest thing. Noblestalk could cure anything short of death. Anything.Foragers risked their lives delving into the Underdark because of the price tag that such a thing could fetch. What in the world was going on with Harry’s head if it couldn’t fix it? Or if any change was so minor Harry wasn’t certain there was one at all?

“Hey, no choking, though!” Harry chirps, his eyes suddenly almost unnaturally bright. “Stop looking so damn worried all the time, you’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

Peter feels his cheeks burn. “I was only thinking—”

The heat only grows more intense when, with a tail around his back pushing him, he finds himself all pressed up against Harry’s chest, one of those sharp black claws tilting his chin upwards. “Then stop.”

Well, it’s certainly much harder with him so close.”Um, ah… you’re very good at doing that.” Gods, Harry so often leaves him outright dizzy when they’re near enough that Peter can smell him. Oh, apparently enough so that Peter didn’t actually say the end of that sentence. “...for me.”

“Well, I’m glad then.” The claw tries to pull away, but in that moment, the only coherent thought in Peter’s mind is that he does not want that. He follows the contact like a moth to a flame, stretching his shins and feet as far as they will go, and when standing on his toes still isn’t enough to keep it, he leans all of himself forward.

And then very suddenly, there’s no touch at all, only the rushing of air past his face followed by the harsh impact of the muddy ground.

—

“That mushroom did something, didn’t it?” Wyll’s tone maintains the facade of something passive. Doesn’t stop how terribly annoying it is that, apparently, knowing Harry is lying at all makes it clear when he is. What sort of excuse would it take to figure out what the tells are?

“Obviously.” Harry scoffs. “Didn’t fix everything, whatever’s in my damn skull is still no better than mincemeat. But I got something.”

Wyll himself, though, has plenty of tells. Though a devil, he shares a decent number of qualities with the average tiefling; tieflings tend to have at least one spare limb, sometimes more, and in every individual Harry has encountered, those limbs tend to express more than the bodies of other humanoids would. And though the average tiefling often comes to suppress the most obvious or revealing of these reactions, Wyll has not lived in his own body for long enough to, by Harry’s assessment, realize the movements of his wings or tail reveal so much.

Harry can’t remember doing it, but there’s a voice in the back of his head reminding him to fake any sort of expressiveness experienced by others. It’s possible Karlach notices too, but Harry imagines he’d know more than most because, at one point, he had to learn to fake it.

Wyll’s tail is flicking, slightly cautious. “What did you remember, then?”

Harry raises his eyes, fixing them on Wyll and the terribly concealed discomfort on his face. “You won’t like it.”

“I think I expect that from you by now.”

Fair enough. Well, if that’s what Wyll wants, then he shall make sure to give the man every last gorey detail. Try and put him off his increasingly obvious, and therefore annoying, delusion he can fix him. “I saw some place I think I must have been living in. Looked like a castle or something.” It also looked like ruins, but Wyll doesn’t need to know that. “I was somewhere that I had decorated with trophies. Skins and pelts, jars of pickled organs, mounted heads or horns. From anything, man or beast. Most of the bigger tokens were damaged.”

Lately, he thinks as Wyll can only hide the discomfort from his face, Harry has been particularly pent up. He has been particularly self-denied, particularly angry, particularly obstructed. Harry can’t kill Wyll, because he’s been quite vigilant about making sure the rest will know where they will be and because Wyll, to his credit, has been keeping up his end of things for the most part. That doesn’t change the fact that, recently, Wyll’s moronic conviction that he can wrench some amount of change from Harry has developed into a bit too much of a barrier against Harry’s ability to twist his way into getting blood when he wants it. Harry is very good at playing pretend, he knows it, and he can play pretend so well that when he wants things, he can make other people believe he wants them for whatever reason he comes up with.

Lately, Harry has been, though not planning Wyll’s death, often been taking note of ways Wyll could potentially be maimed just enough to keep him off Harry’s ass for a while. For now, he will take what he can get from making Wyll as disturbed as he can. “I don’t think I was doing it for the hunt, I think I was doing it to kill. Even the pretty things displayed, gold dragon heads and stuffed unicorns, they’d been cut into before they’d ever been stuffed. I liked the hurting, and I liked being able to show that off. You know, elven skins are a hell of a lot softer than anything else. And tabaxi skins aren’t just restricted to common cat colorations. Didn’t matter how noteworthy any of ‘em were, anywhere they’d been knifed through was displayed just as proudly.” He leans back, back thumping against some sort of glowing fungus. “I think I was hacking the wings off an aasimar.” He muses. “Oh, I’m sure you already know celestials bleed in all sorts of colors, but did you know that their guts are that same color?”

…Just once would he like Wyll to just take the bait. Actually, truly react. Having no reaction is as fucking fake as everything about Harry. What, is he supposed to be chewing on knowing that Wyll is in some small way a liar, is that supposed to be enough to squeeze blood from? “Is that all you know of that place?”

“Yes.” Harry braces his chin against the heel of his palm, mustering as much scorn into his voice as he can muster. “Wyll, if I wanted to hide something, I wouldn’t have told you a damn thing. Or I woulda bullshit you.”

The arrow-head tip of Wyll’s tail flicks against the stone, his eyes focused on nothing at all. Wyll suspects something. About Harry. There’s something in that well-educated noble-born head of his that he thinks could have anything to do with Harry.

He’s as relieved as he is frustrated. Wyll is not so stupid nor patronizing to think there’s any better nature in Harry, at the least. Wyll’s not so convinced of his heroism as to borderline on senile. A relief, then, that he won’t go so mad as to become useless. But oh, the thought that Wyll might hold some fragment of information over Harry’s head is somehow mountains worse. He is no thing to be studied, he will not be treated as below anyone. Hells, Harry has half a mind to crack his damn skull open and wrench whatever it is out himself.

But that, even that, would be an admission that Wyll has any power over him. Harry does this because there is one, just one, tiny thing Harry can squeeze out of him that he cannot gain independently. Whatever it is Wyll thinks he knows, Harry will be finding it himself. He will not be allowing Wyll the satisfaction.

“The staff I borrowed the other night,” Wyll starts suddenly, the shift jarring for both, “you’d not mind if I kept it, would you?”

He waves a hand. “I don’t care. You and Karlach knock yourselves out, I don’t have much of a use for it.”

The warlock brightens considerably at the mere mention of her name. “I hope that we find Dammon again, and that he’s able to fix the rest of her heart. I can often see it, when she wishes to touch me but can’t for fear of doing harm.” Ugh, the lovestruck look on his face is going to make Harry nauseous. “She’s been very forgiving. And very deprived of that sort of thing. I want to make up for it all when I’ve finally got my chance.”

Harry doesn’t bother holding it back, because isn’t that what Wyll wants from him? Honesty? And Harry certainly did not fucking ask. “And why are you telling me all that?”

“Because we’re friends.”

He barks out a laugh. “Are we friends?” Funny is the only thing that it would be, if it weren’t for the fact that it thoroughly shatters the idea that Wyll does this only to in some way study him. Harry supposes he’s only stupid, then.

Wyll shakes his head as though he’s merely being teased. “You tell me things that you don’t tell anyone else, and I’ve spoke to you more on topics like my father or… being made into a devil than I have anyone else, save maybe Karlach. To me, a friend is a confidant. That makes you a friend.”

“Really? I was under the impression that would imply I gave a damn about you.” He mocks.

“And I’m aware you believe you aren’t capable of normal attachment. But you clearly trust me in some way; you wouldn’t say as much as you do otherwise.” Wyll points out. “As much as I fear pointing it out means you may stop to spite me.” He chuckles slightly; the fact that it’s so clearly truly meant to just be teasing only irritates him more. “But to me, that’s about the same. I don’t expect you to go about much of anything in an ordinary way.”

At the least, Wyll actually has handed him something he can enjoy slowly and painfully ripping to shreds. “Sure. If that’s really what you think, then by all means. Friends.” He laughs again, twice as scornful.

—

Just going with Peter’s little crush has been anything but the worst thing in the world. Anything but. Probably the best option, actually. For many reasons.

There’s a gap overhead, a rare glimpse into the surface of Toril, the first glimpse of sky they’ve seen in several days. It’s sunlight reaching through right then; frankly, Harry thinks it entirely plausible that in this place, one so unabashedly devoid of it, it wouldn’t matter how close to the surface they were—the sun simply wouldn’t truly make it into the caves.

Moonlight, though, feels a bit easier to reconcile with the stale caves around them. The sky around a full moon will still be as dark as the stony ceilings around them and the strands of light that reach them from the night sky wind up about as sickly as the bioluminescent flora that provide most luminance down here.

Silver looks good on violet skin. It emphasizes the lines and shapes of muscle in a much more enthralling way than shadow, pure blackness and dark muddying the vibrant tones no matter their contexts. Peter has been hesitant to allow anyone, including Harry, to see him in any state that could be called disrobed. He was plenty touchy, plenty affectionate, but his behavior was often as strict as if he were devoted to Illmater, though seemingly a lot more self conscious than truly seeing it as goodness.

Plenty worth it if this is the circumstance that Harry first gets to see most of his skin in, positioned like a legendary painting, cradling that sword beneath the only celestial light in days, metal almost identical to the sword glittering on his chest. He’s a lot more bulky than he appears, every part of his torso wide, his arms and legs somewhat thick as well. He is not a person who’s form was built with any regard to aesthetics, only to the power and strength necessary to keep surviving.

Power, however, might as well be the only aesthetic Harry cares about. It’s what everything in the world comes down to.

“So, should I look away so you can cover up, or did you intend for me to see this?” He chirps, making Peter jump.

That flawlessly made bastard sword doesn’t leave Peter’s hands when he turns to face Harry, entirely unabashed over his own bared flesh, his hair lit into a lunar halo. Harry can spot his everyday clothing folded into a neat pile on a higher protrusion of rock, that broach sitting on top. It becomes rather clear then that the figure depicted is just as bare “Oh, it’s fine.” Peter responds, handling the blade with a reverence that contrasts his casual tone. “I’m not coming on to you like that yet. Besides, it would be pretty rude for me to do it in front of…” He gestures upward towards the source of the silver. “I don’t think she'd want to see that.” Ah, this is an Eilistraee thing. His skin, somewhat predictably at this point, begins to prickle quite painfully.

He saunters closer; his eyes wander. Peter notices, orienting himself in a manner that shows little regard. But he still noticed, and that’s really all Harry wanted. “Really?” He gestures Peter up and down. “But she does want…?”

Peter rolls his eyes, lifting the sword in one hand to prod Harry in the chest. “Well, yeah. Not like that, but I’m supposed to when it’s a full moon.” The blade goes from pointed firmly at Harry’s chest to raised skyward, towards the crack where the night bears such a moon. “I’m glad I could find it. I don’t know how long we’ll be in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, it might be the last time I can for a while.”

“Then, I’m guessing the full moon is an event for your faith.” He cranes his own neck back, taking a depthless glance at the moon. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why ask me to come? I’m no drow, let alone one of her faithful.” There’s the scent of iron in the air, rich and sweet. It draws his focus in like a shark, like sugar ants to a dropped fruit. There are the faintest, shallowest of nicks along Peter’s wrists and ankles, scabs not yet darkened.

The moonlight glints against the sword as it lowers, tip sinking into the soil. Harry notices only then the faintest traces of crimson along its blade. Bloodstains are, to Harry at least, the default state of any worthwhile weapon, but the one in front of him has not yet seen battle. “You don’t need to be either of those things.” Peter responds. “It’s not that strict or secretive or whatever. It’s just important to me, so I wanted to see if you’d share it with me.”

It is a reasonable thing for Peter to want from someone he courts, and just as common for someone courting Peter to want to do so. “I’d love to.” He brings one foot forwards, dropping his chest to level with the sword and drawing his fingertip against a bloodied place in the blade, feeling the half dried, powdery redness cling to the ridges in his skin. “What’d you do that for?” He murmurs, straightening his back and rubbing that finger against another as though to rid it of the blood, and not coat the surfaces of both fingerprints.

“It’s to ask her blessing on it.” He presses his chest out slightly in pride—it did work, then. “I figured she’d be happy with something that was already hers, but… but it’s nice to know for sure I’m watched over, you know? I guess that’s a bit silly, considering that I already was led to it.”

Harry finds himself scrutinizing the blade, like he thinks he’d be able to see a blessing upon the intricate patterning. See nauseating radiance glowing where it reflects moonlight. “Neat.” It really is an impressive sword. A shame it’s built for a task so feeble. “But I’m guessing that’s not what you’re reserving every single full moon for?” He doubts anyone could go through weapons that quickly.

Peter shakes his head. “No. If I was with a group, it would be a bit different and a bit more elaborate. A lot of singing and dancing and hunting. On my own, it’s a bit simpler. As just one person, without an ordained cleric with me, I’m not in a state to go and try and bring down any remotely impressive beast. So mostly the dancing.” That would explain it, how focused he seems to be on trying to find the balance of the sword properly, stretching ankles and wrists.

“I’m not much of a dancer. You sure about me joining in? Don’t want to draw down divine wrath.”

Peter stops in place, looking contemplative. “I don’t want you to if you’d be uncomfortable.” Harry lets him assume that. “But the way you fight is sort of like it.” He places his flat palms parallel to each other, gesturing up and down towards Harry. “Like dancing. You’re fast and light and precise, your feet aren’t ever in the same space for more than a few moments.”

That takes Harry aback momentarily. Really, that’s the thing he notices about Harry in combat? He knows intimately of his own swift precision, but it is nothing he’d ever bother to romanticize beyond its efficiency. “Not many people would describe it that way.” He murmurs. "But I imagine if you did so, you did with a reason."

"Spar with me." Peter invites him.

Oh, that sounds like a very bad idea. Sounds like it would end with rended flesh or lost limbs, with entrails splatting onto this moonlit stone, crimsony-silvery gore. Sounds like at both best and worst, it might end with half-drow corpse discarded in a shallow grave. "Yeah, okay." He agrees.

And after all, it's an amusing opportunity even if it ended harmlessly. Watch the elf bumble around with his god-touched stick, rap him on the knuckles til it falls over the edge, and knock him on his face. Humiliate him, watch his ears go dark in shame, replace him subordinate. From there, once he's been made a fool of, the fork in the proverbial road: watch his face go all shocked when his sparring partner does not stop, or fawn over him for it enough to make the embarassment sting in chastisement all the more. Castigate him before his goddess.

Peter twirls the sword in his hands, keeps finding the balance of it. No doubt lacking in much experience if he's taking so much damned time to do something so similar. "I say you join me armorless. We have potions; spar to first blood. I trust you'll not be too extreme."

…He shouldn't!

"Sure." His casual voice stands in stark contrast to his rushing blood, to the drool pooling behind his teeth. As handsome as Peter very much is, it is only violence that ever interests him enough to be exciting. But Peter can assume whatever he'd like. Perhaps if Peter could ever actually step in time with him—or exert power in time with him—he'd be enough to truly catch his fancy. But fragile, this one. Without the backbone to truly act upon his grossly bright heart. The most infuriating sort of cowardice. Lucky he's pretty.

Skin exposed, he steps onto the stone. Harry had not, in honesty, expected to turn and see Peter looking concerned. He'd been hoping for distracted. "You've got a lot of scars." Peter comments.

Harry glances down. Peter is indeed right, he's mottled by them as thick as a tabby-cat's stripes, so numerous it might at a distance seem more like a pattern set into the pigment of his skin. They cut through the patches of scales that occupy some of his body, even split through the odd spiked growths along his arms and legs. "Guess you're right." He agrees, examining the ways they layer over one another in various states of heal, like a sliver of oak tree revealing rings of age. "Afraid I can't tell you why. So, anything other than the first blood in terms of rules?" He's not sure why he's so eager to escape the subject.

"If one of us is knocked off the rock, we stop. Just to make sure neither of us twist our ankles or something. " Peter decides, pacing to the opposite point on the stone. "On your go?"

Well, if Peter wants to forgo an advantage, Harry won't stop it. It'll just make things easier—the plan is already in his mind; the positioning of feinting and where limbs should be in space, where to strike on knuckles and where a shallow cut on the backs of ankles and knees would make a person's legs buckle. Simple, if the drow keeps standing so unguarded. He hardly has eyes on the real world, but he hardly needs to. Could Peter, with a weapon he holds so mistrustingly, really move quickly enough?

"Go." The word is passive, but the lunge is not. Feint to one side, slice into his fingers, duck around him and go for his legs.

Only, the steel swings through empty air and meets nothing, and all the careful mechanics of where Harry's body should be in space are off without soft flesh to sink against, his balance entirely and embarrassingly incorrect. He's still reeling, processing the fact he's cut absolutely nothing, when the broad end of a sword raps into both of his hands and loose, unsure fingers release. Then, harder, it raps into Harry's legs, flipping him entirely.

With the raspy sound of air knocked from his lungs, he lands flipped upside down several feet away.

What… what? No, that's impossible. That is absurd. That does not happen, he does not lose fights, he is fucking untouchable. Especially by those types, he's buried gods-know-how-many with ideals that naive! There must be something, his blood insists, furious, as his mind is thundrously loud and coldly silent at once, trying to find how this could be. There was something else at play, he hadn't noticed the levelling of the stone or some gust of air from above or someth—

No, Harry thinks, and his blood silences. No, he'd underestimated him. He'd dismissed someone he shouldn't have. He's not so vain as to act in self-deception, not when it could risk his guard.

…Oh. Peter actually laid him out in seconds. That is fascinating.

"Are you okay?" Peter appears in his vision, upside down from his position. "I didn't hit you too hard, did I?"

He can't help it. The idea that Peter bested him is so absurd, so unbelievable as a thing to exist in the material world, such a fiction, and yet it had happened. Peter alone did it. Peter, with all his silly-seeming noble thoughts and all his fluxuating, fickle confidence did it. Real strength from someone like him is impossible—yet, possible, but only from him.

He bursts out laughing. "What—what the hell are you fighting unarmed for?"

Peter stares at him with owlish-wide eyes. "People are more willing to hear out the drow who says he's there to help if he's not carrying a weapon." He responds.

And that is such a sickly-sweet, typically Peter thing that it just makes him laugh harder. Saying silly things like that like he didn't just keep up with—more than keep up with—him. That's ridiculous. And yet it is the real, waking world. Something in his noisy blood is bruises, sulking, but why'd he care about that? This man is not possible, this man is not how the world works, he's a violation in how things work.

Very suddenly, Peter is entirely, wholly, the point of fascination all on his own. Any physical way he responds to him is all to Peter's credit. No longer just some funny little pet to toy with—oh, this drow is enthralling! Enchanting! He hardly looks like the same person! "Let's go again!" Oh, he's giggling like a schoolgirl. Is Harry blushing?

Peter relaxes slightly. "Oh, if you're sure." He offers a hand and pulls Harry to his feet.

For the duration of the night, Peter matches him. Perhaps being defeated so easily was just Harry's pride, but the half-drow matches each shallow cut from Harry with one of his own. Neither of them can gain real, noticable ground from each other.

By distant sunrise, they stand in stalemate, positioned mirrored with both their steel pressed to the other's throats and their legs a reflection. The positioning is entirely balanced, entirely equal and level. And Harry thinks, with intense bitterness, that this could only end with that broken, by one of them taking weakness and smallness by pulling away.

Or maybe not. Maybe there's another option, one where he impales his own jugular on Peter's sword and slits the drow's throat, and they both just bleed out in an ugly lifeless heap. Never breaking it, dying the same as each other. Dying gasping and collapsed.

But Harry doesn't do that; that would just be cutting the curiousity short without unwinding how a person like that could be real. He takes the third option, raises his off-hand to direct the motionless, heavy sword in slow, cartoonish parry followed by riposte. But not riposte to strike for blood, but only to twirl the blade harmlessly around the back of his neck and pull Peter close. Chest to chest.

Peter laughs, harmlessly knocks his pommel into Harry's hand. All three weapons fall onto stone in a noisy heap. "Hey." He says, comfortable despite a thousand shared cuts as he rests his weight against him. One of his thick arms raises, pushing Harry to lie against him in turn.

"Hey." He obliges, feeling his claws slip on the stone.

Peter meets his gaze, pale eyes as firm and calm as an undisturbed lake. "I'd like for you to kiss me now." He instructs.

Harry's tail has set itself to quivering madly all on its own. He bunts the bases of his horns into Peter's forehead. "Okay." He purrs, and obliges him.