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bespeckledstars · 3 months ago

Text

I Need You To Trust Me

Chapter One: The Crash on Faerun

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ Read on AO3

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ Synopsis: When you find yourself at the mercy of unimaginably powerful entities who want to toss you and your house into another universe, you wonder if it's your lucky day. But, falling ass first onto a nautiloid wasn't the arrival you imagined. With no clear way of returning home and companions in need of rescuing, the journey of a lifetime awaits you. The only question is, can you keep that a secret?

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ Word Count: 44,472

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ TW / CW : violence, blood, gore, mentions of death, fantasy racism, loss of consciousness, body constriction, lying, attempted blackmail, attempted deception, mentions of brain parasite/larvae, temporary captivity, threatening behavior, minor fatphobia/body hatred

˚��· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ Author's Note: Hiiiii! I hope you’re ready for an incredibly self-indulgence isekai fic dedicated to my all-consuming love for this game and all its characters with a special emphasis on Astarion and how his story helped me through a really difficult time in my life :D

My aim is for the rest of this fic to not be so beat-for-beat/word-for-word, but I’m still working on how to do that and include what I feel are the important moments of the story (you'll see what I mean once you start reading lol.) I’ll most likely write what I see fit as important to characterization, I think.

One of the many purposes of this fic is for me to “spend time” with the characters, as it were. A little character study, some theories; I think it'll be very fun :> I think a fair warning to include at this point is this fic may well come off as a novelization regardless of what I say. If you’re not ready to buckle in for a long haul, I understand.

I plan on doing small unrelated one-shots and mini-series, as well, so there will always be something cooking. Anyways, hope you enjoy! I’m still going to write and publish regardless of notes, but leaving a like and comment would really go a long way into giving me more motivation ;] - ✎ (❁ᴗˬᴗ) ༉‧ ♡*.✧

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ Songs of the Chapter:

Memories of Mother by Bear McCreary ft. Eivør: Freeing Lae'zel

La flor de la canela performed by Juan Diego Floréz, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Gustavo Dudamel: Refectory Bandits

Rex Incognito by Yu-Peng Chen and HOYO-MIX: Skeletal Guard at Withers' Temple

De Selby 1 by Hozier, De Selby 2 by Hozier: Bathing Feet at Camp, Disguising your Absense

“Don’t be scared,” says the first voice. A guide in the darkness.

“We’re going to make this as painless as possible,” says another, wispier one.

Within the absence of light, touch, smell, or any sensation to ground you in place, you follow the sound of the voices.

“It’s time to make your choice,” says a grumbling voice, different from the first two.

“I hope you’re ready,” speaks another. It flows over you like a rushing river, drawing you in closer as the darkness remains.

“Where am I?” you ask, but your voice is a million miles away.

“At a crossroads, of sorts,” says the wispy voice.

“We’re here to send you somewhere safe,” the grumbling one mumbles.

“What’s happening? Who are you people?” you ask again. Your voice bounces all around you, without direction or origin. But you are here, in the darkness, as sensation slowly burgeons around you. A brush of your pillow against your cheek, then a touch of your blanket. What, or where, or… how? Who could bring you to a realm of nonexistence, and control the rate at which you perceive?

The four voices call your name at once. Through that noise, your form takes shape, and feeling returns to your limbs. It is still dark, but the sense you are in your house envelopes you with a delicate touch.

“What do you want?” The voices ask. To know what’s going on, for one thing.

What did the clock say when you last checked it? 12:37? 4:29? What time was it when you arrived here, wherever that was? The last memory you can recall: laying in your bed, tossing and turning. The shadows of your room, moving and shifting. Your rug. Your desk. Your computer.

You had been in the middle of yet another Baldur’s Gate III playthrough, this time playing as “yourself.” The idea of making a self-insert Tav had been on your mind for a while, and you had finally gotten the proper mods to make your body shape, hair style, and desired accessories available in the game. After playing for a few hours, you had turned off your computer for the night, calling it quits with the defeat of one of the Reithwin-town Thorms. The moment between getting into bed and this moment now did not follow one after another. There is no other question to ask.

“To figure out what’s going on?” you inquire.

“We’ve brought you, and your home, to a space in between. Now you must decide where to go,” the first voice says.

“My house? It’s here too? Literally here?”

“Please just choose,” groans the flowing voice.

A space in between what, exactly? The idea of a higher power, or powers, taking you to another world crosses your mind every day as of late–given the current state of the Earth. Even still, where can you choose to go? There are an infinite number of universes to choose from, each with their own denizens, stories, choices, and consequences for the unknown variable that is you. In all a universe’s vast organic equations, where do you fit? If you die, who will resurrect you? Will you be able to return to Earth if you leave? If this is the moment of no return, where no time and space can let you remake this single choice, it is paramount you make the right one.

“We can’t hold you here forever, child,” the grumbling voice informs you. “It’s time. Tell us where to place you.”

“Wait! I haven’t had time to make my decision! I can’t possibly make such an imp-”

“Faerun it is,” chuckles the flowing voice. A finger snap sounds in the darkness, and then a coil snakes around your waist. It tugs with the ferocity of a great storm, but instead of snapping you in two, the force pulls you away from the voices and the perception they allow you. Whatever makes you up now races through the unspace you float in. You have no visible body, no hands to flail, no hair to whip around your face. You phase in and out of being, with sensation and pain and pleasure and deprivation warping into a mass of confusion and numbness. All around you, an orange light grows brighter and brighter. Smoke and embers fill your lungs, and then you hit the ground.

The fall knocks the wind out of your lungs, but that description doesn’t match exactly how you feel. It’s more like the air disappears from inside your lungs, and then comes back again, all without you taking a breath. Your side crunches under the weight of your body, and you don’t have the strength to take a breath. And, the smoke coming from the flaming nautiloid certainly doesn’t help.

Suddenly, your indecisiveness feels like a final, terrible nail in a coffin you aren’t prepared to get into. It’s something you struggle with regularly, but the sluggish state of mind from just a few moments ago now appears to be the hammer to your fate. While the voices from above seem to mean you no ill will, dropping you in front of a tadpole nursery certainly aren’t the actions of people with your best interest at heart.

Rolling onto your back, you take short, choppy breaths before your eyes adjust to the light from burning fires. From the smell of it, you’re in hell. Avernus, to be specific. The smell, so foul and dank, is not one you think you remember from Earth. It’s entirely alien, and objectively hostile to your senses. You understand now just how real, and dangerous, getting off of this nautiloid will be.

Immediately, you take stock of your surroundings. You can’t decide whether or not you are surprised or impressed at Larian’s incredible job sculpting the exact scenery around you, because it matches up perfectly. In front of you sits the tadpole nursery, and across the chamber stands the rejuvenation pod, and the door leading to the bridge. In this moment, knowing how much time lay ahead of you, and all the horrors you will now witness personally, takes residence in your chest. It rolls and spasms, bringing you to the precipice of a breakdown.

You rub the horrified tears from your eyes, and gaze at the alien ship. The sphincter door ahead taunts you, like it knows it will never feel your feet step across it. Though you know it to be a hollow pursuit, you look across the floor for any sign of the companions you hold so close to your heart. You know each and every location you will eventually find them, but the fear of missing them now, of leaving them to fall and be at the mercy of “the Emperor” twists you into knots.

You catch what breath you can in the stench-filled room, careful to avoid the combustible tadpole pool. The lotus shape of it sports a multitude of cracks and sharp edges, and the last thing you want is to put your eye anywhere near it. Turning around as fast as your screaming side lets you, the empty semi-circle of pods concludes directly in front of you. The only occupied pod holds a creature with white scales and empty, red eyes that meet your trembling ones.

It’s him, the Bhaalspawn.

The Dark Urge.

Splatters of his deep, red blood coat the inside of the pod. You can only surmise the failure of his attempt to smash out, and Withers’ or Bhaal’s reach into the Hells not yielding results.

You recall many of the notes left throughout the world. Kressa Bonedaughter experimented too deep into his skull, and must have left him susceptible to increased damage from future cranial trauma. What made the pod door open for some, and not others? How had he made it this far, only to be stopped by a piece of otherworldly glass? Why is he dead, and you here?

The more time you ponder this, the less time you have to escape, a voice in the back of your mind says. It’s your sense of self-preservation, begging on its hands and knees for you to get a move on.

A quake from the nautiloid breaks you out of your stupor and into full-scale survival mode. Despite the fact this is your first time in Hell, or any other universe, you’ve run a simulation of this exact event a dozen times over. Realistically, Lae’zel and Shadowheart can hard-carry you, a 21st century plebeian through–medieval? Renaissance-era? You personally think Faerun most closely matches Earth’s 17th century due to the game’s setting of emerging industrialization, but ultimately know from forum reading there’s no use equating this realm’s timeline to Earth’s–well, whatever time period swords and guns and magic belong.

Though the endless turmoil of your mind’s storm threatens to engulf you in its torrent, your feet manage to make it up to the rejuvenation pod. It’s a hard habit to break, regardless of your Tav’s HP or your health at this moment. Now though, it’s much more difficult to quantify how many hits you can take before going down for good.

Stepping into the cool, herby miasma, the twitching tentacles gently caress your head and cheeks.

“Not totally unpleasant,” you say to yourself.

You give the chamber one last look. There are a lot of things you don’t want to leave behind, like items to keep or sell, but the nagging feeling in your gut tells you that waiting around to carefully loot the corpses and chests doesn’t bode well for your future participation in this adventure. There’s no telling how long you truly have.

Through the slimy, taut aperture you find yourself in a much larger chamber, one that you recognize as the “Us” room. The scuttling of talons echo by your ears, and while the little brains with legs don’t quite bother you, looking down to check for the sound’s creator doesn’t feel like the action of someone wanting to keep their stomach contents on the inside.

You approach the room’s furniture with apt caution. When examining the horticulture of another culture, it is natural to be curious, fascinated, and excited to learn about new botanical arrangements. The brains and tentacles encased in fluids leave a smidge to be desired. Though the text carved into slates holds no meaning to your eyes, you vaguely remember some talk about the general histories and species present in Faerun. It seems like the Illithids like to do their homework. Heh. Squid homework. You snort.

The gaping archway leading towards what you know to be feeding imps might tempt a braver soul; getting another ally on your side had usually been the difference between life and death at this stage in the game. Stepping up to the floating platform apparatus, you realize abruptly you don’t have a tadpole. Thanking whatever gods put you in this mess feels like the first and best course for prayer, but you then think of every instance having a tadpole actually comes in handy, and is quite necessary for the plot to move forward. Without the psychic link between you and your companions, and the rest of the Absolute’s cult, what hope do you have of leading your band of weirdos?

“Don’t fret little one, it was not lost on us you would need assistance in this matter,” calls the wispy voice.

As soon as you register the words, your mind lurches forward, enough to put the most experienced party-goer back on their ass, or perhaps their face in a toilet. So much mental exertion for what may as well be flipping a switch for the pilots of this ship. The ebbing of your awareness inflates and shrinks against the inside of your skull, applying the most pressure you’ve ever felt in your life. The platform you stand on begins to move, and before you can eject your final meal from Earth, you reach the deceased victim of the mindflayers.

It takes all your effort to not vomit at the sight of a spoiled body, up close and personal. The smell of rotten flesh hammers your gag reflex, fighting with everything it has to cause a mess in front of the dead humanoid. You slowly creep around the body, knowing Us to be waiting with eager anticipation of escape from their bony prison. While a d20 roll certainly gives an easy figure to understand a success or failure, stepping up and hearing the cacophony of noise coming from the little creature doesn’t provide you much hope of getting them out without problems.

“We are here! Here!” Us shrieks. The jerks of stimulation from the expectant intellect devourer travels down the length of the dead man’s body, causing you to jump in response to the involuntary movement.

“Yes! You’ve come to save us from this place,” squishes its way into your mind’s ear, and squirms around, pulsing like the larva that does not exist, and hopefully never will. The wholly unknown feeling of another voice inside you doesn’t make the fact go down any smoother.

“I’m going to try to free you now,” you squeak, voice unsteady. Testing the barriers of the bisected head, you gently pull on the edges of the skull keeping Us from fully forming. You can’t see a way you can force the skull to fan out any wider than its current circumference. The pressure alone makes it impossible to slip in between Us and the bone without squeezing them. It had been a few weeks since you ran through this in-game. Investigating is always an option, so you make your best guess as to how to extract Us.

Through the cries carrying fear and panic, you deduce Us growing to be the cause of their predicament. The word for “a swelling of the brain” escapes you, but the need for care does not. The layers of voices make concentrating harder than you think possible, but Us quiets when you press your fingers gently around them, and wiggle your hands back towards you, left and right. With a disgusting pop, you free Us.

Letting the little creature drop to the floor becomes the only sound decision once they begin to tremble with newfound freedom. You assume Us compels themself forward, and they fly out of your hands and onto the muscular ground. Tendrils sprout and limbs manifest, and Us is thankful for your assistance. Nothing moves or speaks until you hear the voices of Us lap around you excitedly, not unlike a slimy, wrinkly dog.

“At the helm we are needed,” echoes a fragment of them. Keeping Lae’zel waiting is never a good idea, so you jog alongside Us to the neural apparatus and return to the floor below you. The force rocks you just as hard as before, but the pressure is substantially less invasive. There is hope for you yet.

Once you make it to the open side of the nautiloid, imps and a red dragon scream past you like jets and missiles. The heat coming off them toasts you as far away as you are, and the percussive beat of dragon wings nearly tosses you off your feet. Such strength from a distance puts you in a state of awe at the majestic feat of the winged beast. Even so, it doesn’t deter you from pivoting and refocusing on the ledge above you, where a green and silver being stalks you and Us.

Like Gollum creeping across a stretch of rock in the shadow of the ship’s ligaments, Lae’zel recoils at your gaze. It’s clear she didn’t calculate for such a perceptive being. Rather, you feel guilty for your deception in knowing she is there. Watching her execute a perfect vault off a flying ship to land squarely in front of you with her blade drawn adds both fear and admiration in you. She isn’t the best fighter from Crèche K’liir for nothing.

“Abomination! This is your end!” The furious cry of the githyanki warrior awakens a new dimension to the spirit of courage within you. Maybe a flying squid ship in hell plagued by flying, man-eating demons and red dragons whose sole purpose is to bring down the ship won’t be your doom after all. Her face sparkles with sweat and flecks of blood, and before you can protest your innocence, your minds become one. You watch her sneak up on you from her perspective, and let the shock of your eyes meeting hers rumble through you. Your face, your eyes, and your fear all become the focus of her attention as she braces for her landing. The violent smash of your minds coming together matches how they separate, and you are left with a singular feeling bubbling up from both you and Lae’zel: horror.

“Are you alright?” you ask her, cautious of her blade and careful with your tone.

“Hah. You are no thrall, Vlaakith blesses me this day,” she exclaims with fervor. She’s clearly as excited to have an ally as you are to see her. With Lae’zel at your side, you’re one companion down, nine to go. Pretty good for your first day in Hell.

“La-” you stop yourself before your mouth is able to force a conversation you are in no state to have. You clear your throat a few times before continuing.

“Let’s go! This ship is going to be torn apart or crash any moment. We haven’t a second to lose.” You beckon her to fall behind you, peering around the corner as the less fortunate victims of the mindflayers are feasts for the imps.

“Wait!” you whisper-plead, holding your arm out before she can charge the hellspawn.

“I don’t have a weapon. Let’s survey the battlefield for a short sword before we make our move. If you want my help, I’ll need something longer than my own arm. You’re wearing armor, so you charge in to distract them, I’ll send the brain to flank one side, and I’ll sweep through on your right. Sound like a plan?” You lay out your strategy with less-than elaborate hand gestures. You aren’t earning any high marks in military hand-gestures class, that’s for sure.

“Efficient. We may yet survive this,” Lae’zel comments. It doesn’t take a seasoned player to tell her tone reveals, in the previous five seconds, she didn’t believe you capable. You aren’t exactly raring to prove your worth to her just yet, but you know she’ll see your skills in time. Getting out of hell is the easy part; setting up crowd control in the House of Grief fight is the real nightmare.

“On my count. One, two, th- oh for fuck’s sake,” you whine as Lae’zel let out a ferocious, almost animalistic battle cry. She certainly understands the meaning of drawing enemy fire. Revealing your position a mite too early, the three of you make a mad scramble as blood-soaked maws let out terrible, heart-stopping screeches, and let chaos commence.

By either deeply embedded memory or a stroke of pure luck, you find a short sword near the corpses of one of the mindlayer victims. Not that you have any kind of formal sword training, but potentially cutting or slicing off an important bit of the little shits seems a lot more likely to hurt than raw bludgeoning damage from your fists.

“Your right!” bellows Lae’zel, just as an imp slashes into your side. Doubling over, you lash out clumsily and catch the fucker’s arm just as it circles you for another swipe. The horrible shock of a newly acquired type of pain leaves you reeling, and the snap of a crossbow bolt thunking into thick devil flesh jolts you just as badly as your new wound. It stings like a bath in alcohol, the warmth of your blood meeting the arid atmosphere of Avernus to create a burning the likes of which you’ve no desire to ever feel again.

One imp goes down with a wet gurgle, just as Us wipes out another. Two more surround Lae’zel just as another dive-bombs you from above. Your first attack failing doesn’t mean this one will end up the same, right? Determination fills you, and you move to the side just as the imp reaches out to cut your face into strip steaks.

“Take this!” you cry, swinging the blade as fast and forceful as you can. The edge of the blade comes down on the front of the creature’s face, and causes a gash to spurt blood directly onto your own. The blood on your face is like sitting in front of a bonfire, but the imp goes down just as Lae’zel finishes her own fight. You stumble over to her, and worry that another legion of devil babies will continue the onslaught of their predecessors.

“You prove surprisingly adequate in battle,” Lae’zel says.

“Thanks,” you reply, “I have absolutely no combat experience whatsoever.”

“None at all?”

“With these doughy arms? The only thing I’m cutting up is my morning bagel,” you joke. Humor may not be appropriate at a time like this, but getting Lae’zel used to your preferred method of coping skill as early as possible is assuredly the “best course of action,” as she might say. She furrows her brow, then moves toward the platform on the far side of the chamber.

It’s at this moment, speedlimping with a gushing wound behind Lae’zel and Us, that you wonder how in all the realms Wyll and Karlach make it aboard this godsforsaken vessel. You near the edge of the chamber but dare not peek over across the side of the nautiloid. Heights on Earth never felt this dangerous, and climbing a mucus-made “rope” ladder certainly makes you feel as far away from home as possible.

“Wait, please, I need to use this healing thing. I’m bleeding really bad,” you gasp. The only thing present in your mind is pain and the need for it to end. You lose your balance and careen off into the glowing pod, slamming your shoulder into it as what you can only imagine to be spores fill your wound. The bleeding stops, then the most peculiar sensation of flesh reassembling sends shivers all over your body.

“Tsk’va, do not take long,” Lae’zel calls as she loots weapons and other supplies from around the chamber. Your wound continues to fade into a faint scar, and soon only the blood on your… linen tunic? remains. You rejoin Us and your githyanki friend just as she ascends to assess and collect the most accessible items on the stray corpse near a hanging wall of… something.

You catch up to Lae’zel, and silently hand her the sword you found during battle. She gives you a “ch’k” but takes it nonetheless. Slipping it into a leather strap at her waist, she makes her way up the wall of mucus, and you follow after her, taking much longer to follow than you’re sure she likes.

Looting the odd corpse and making it to the second floor of the nautiloid proves just as difficult as killing a living creature, which you decide to not process until much, much later. Fate doesn’t give two wet shits about how the feeling of cutting into another creature makes a piece of your soul flit into the ether, even if they are murderous little bastards. And gods only know how many more living beings will have to die for the sake of your survival before the end comes for you.

“If you’d stop heaving like an old man, we could continue,” badgers Lae’zel. Glancing over your shoulder to the far side of the floor, you notice an opening across a gap that you imagine leads to another part of the ship. Could Wyll or Karlach be there? Gale? Astarion? Gods, you worry about Astarion. You peer as long as you can before Lae’zel makes another agitated noise and turns to leave you.

“Oh gosh, wait up!” you say, spinning on your heel to follow after her and Us. The thought of Astarion seeing you, but you not seeing him makes all the knots in your stomach combine into one. Leaving him here to fend off all manner of hellish soldiers, mindflayers, and gods-know-what else terrifies you, and makes your heart so heavy. You don’t want to leave him behind, but there is no time nor ability to search for him now. The sphincter door relaxes, and you pass through it to see Shadowheart slamming her fists against her transparent pod door, the futility of it all clear as day in her eyes.

“Let me out!” she cries, and makes eye contact with you as you rush to the front of the pod.

“You! Let me out of this damn thing!” her voice quivers with rational fear, though Lae’zel saddles up beside you with her arms crossed.

“We have no time for stragglers,” she huffs out.

“You have no idea what’s waiting for us at the helm, the two of us can’t do this by ourselves!” you protest, adding, “I know I can get her out of this pod, just wait right here!” you run off to the right of the pod, towards where you know the rune to operate the pod’s control mechanism lies.

Running as fast as your feet can carry you, the intellect devourers and doomed victims you pass retreat to the corners of your mind–at the behest of your self-preservation–as you hurry up the steps at the far end of the room to the dead thrall laying on her side. You stumble to your knees as you hear a more humanoid set of feet coming up behind you. Lae’zel approaches, but you nick the rune from out beneath the dead woman along with what you imagine to be her wedding band, and a piece of gold from her pocket.

“Istik, now is not the-” she begins, before you cut her off with, “I’ve got it! Let’s get back.” You quickly wobble to your feet as a quake rocks the ship. You run and kneel back down towards the man near the front of the door to this side room, finding a piece of gold in his tunic along with a key.

“Tsk’va! What manner of wizardry did you perform without my knowledge? You could not have known the control key for the ghaik pod lay in this room,” Lae’zel accuses you with plenty of reasonable cause. It is a conversation you’re hoping to save for camp later, but as you slip the gold and rings out of your hand and into your pocket, a cold, sleek rectangle is instinctually clutched in your grasp.

“It was my,” you stop, mind completely melting at the feeling of your phone, just chilling in your pants pocket. Processing so many new sensory inputs must have caused you to neglect the feeling of it against your leg, but now that you are here, dropping metal against glass, the clink is as loud in your ears as Avernus is outside the ship.

“Your what, istik? Speak now,” Lae’zel commands.

“Nothing, don’t worry, it’s all under control,” you spit out as fast as your brain can form a response. You insert the rune into the control panel, and stare at it as hard as you can. Generally speaking, psychically interacting with alien technology isn’t a common skill among Earth folk, but somehow you manage to connect with it. It’s a mix of thought and feeling, like the panel itself is inserting thoughts into your mind, and dressing them as you own. You think about opening the pod, and at that moment, a burst of steam ekes out from all exhaust tubes of the pod door. Shadowheart tumbles out and lands on her hands and knees, recovering from a daze. Before you can even process it, your body is reaching for her, your hands run across her shoulders and you hoist her onto her feet. Of course you are. She’s Shadowheart. She’s your best friend.

“I-I can stand up on my own,” she pushes you back slightly, taken aback by your physical helpfulness.

“Gods, I thought that damn thing was going to be my coffin,” she scoffs, completely devoid of any comical overtones. She opens her mouth to thank you, but just like Lae’zel, your minds force together. You feel her apprehension at the sight of Lae’zel, and you do everything in your power to focus only on the images of Lae’zel on the nautiloid, and nowhere else. Anyone peering into your mind, of all people, is a slippery slope you are not intent on sliding down.

“You keep dangerous company,” she snarks, and your first serving of no-longer-fantasy racism falls at your feet like a wet clump of hair. Eugh.

“Any problem you have with githyanki can be placed in the ‘discuss later’ section of your brain. Let’s all just get the fuck out of here,” you say, quickly stringing together multiple thoughts to get everyone moving again. Shadowheart’s face quirks.

“What in the Hells is that noise coming out of your mouth,” she says. There is almost, almost a hint of a smirk there. While back home, you always protested you never had an accent. Everyone, even those from inside the American Midwest said your Chicago accent was pretty damn clear to them. Rubbish, the whole thing! You talk with complete accent neutrality, thank you very much.

“Did I say something you take offense with?” you ask as you shuffle slowly towards the door leading to the helm. She reaches back into her pod to take the Astral Prism, though she nor Lae’zel know you are aware of what she carries. You continue to move towards the desk creeping up behind you, since the chest’s contents are up for grabs, and selling. And, you’re passing within a few feet of it on your way to the bridge anyhow.

“You could say that, but I was talking about your accent. Where did these monsters take you from?” she stares at you quizzically, expecting you to not dodge the question. Unfortunately for her, you give a look between her and Lae’zel, then turn to pilfer the mindflayers’ measly treasure.

“Are you deaf, istik?” Lae’zel says with indignation. You follow that up with a “mmhmm” and not much else as you sift through the chest. The intrusive thought banging around the walls of your mind demands much more attention than Shadowheart or Lae’zel.

Your phone, potentially burning a real hole in your pocket, mentally feels like a flaming brick dangling off your body. You’re who you assume to be the first person from Earth to be on an alien spaceship, with multiple different aliens AND another kind of humanoid species, with the capability to document all of it but no opportune moment. While this won’t be the last time you have the chance to travel to Avernus, it is certainly the last time you will be standing in a goddamn flying squid ship.

Getting the two most cautious women in your entire party to turn their back on you is not an easy task, or perhaps even a possible one. You take one last glance back over your shoulder toward the door leading to the floor level change, before Lae’zel rolls her eyes in your peripheral.

“Out with it istik; you’re looking for someone,” she grumbles.

“What?” you sputter, knowing full well she has both the audacity and the perception to notice you keeping your eyes peeled for Astarion, though she knows not it is him you yearn to see. Gods, any of your other companions would be a welcome sight.

“We don’t have any time to go searching for anyone else. We either make for the helm, or die as would-be ghaik thrall,” Lae’zel serves you the truth the three of you know without words. At that moment, a solution to your previous dilemma appears in your mind.

“I agree. Let’s use that rejuvenation pod, animal… thingy, and face our tentacled captors,” you say, motioning toward it near the sphincter door to your left.

“Fine by me, I could do with some rejuvenation,” Shadowheart quips as she and Lae’zel make for the pod. With what could only be a few seconds, you whip out your phone to take a picture of your allies as they approach the pod. Tapping the screen, it lights up with your beloved lock screen and camera hotkey. Tears of joy line your eyes as you rapidly snap a few photos of Shadowheart and Lae’zel. Their faces aren’t visible, but they don’t have to be now. You also turn and take more pictures of the room around you before shoving your phone back into your pocket and grabbing whatever you can fit in your fist from your unlocked desk chest. With it safe in your left pocket, you catch up with your team just as they pivot to make sure you aren’t distracted.

“I must say, I was not sure what manner of so-called ‘intelligent’ life I was to find on this plane. I see now I have been given a most peculiar of ally,” Lae’zel says, snide her in tone.

“Be assured I would not have asked for you as an ally either, gith,” Shadowheart rebukes as the three of you step out of the pod and through the now open sphincter. One last connecting room, and you’ll be face to face with your final task aboard the nautiloid.

“I was not speaking about you,” is all Lae’zel gives back. It is going to be a long few weeks with these two. But you’re ready, come all the death glares and homoerotic, violent tension between them. The final corridor leading to the helm is all that stands in between you and the transponder.

“Once we cross the threshold, do as I say,” Lae’zel instructs you. The urge to follow her without question and your knowledge of the multitudinous overlapping directions this fight can follow clash inside you. Lae’zel has much more experience than you do in terms of combat, but you know what lies ahead. Your pondering, however, cannot win the battle for your full attention when put head to head with another jab from Shadowheart.

“Who put you in charge? I’ll trust my own judgment, thanks,” she stabs, and you have to avoid taking a deep, calming breath to keep the stench around you at bay. It would have been useful, after Lae’zel hurls a rather nasty explicative at your Sharran friend.

“Can we save the tearful hugs and kisses for later, you guys,” you mumble with eyes finding particular interest in the ground in front of you. The two women sniff with offense, but say nothing. Your feet carry you to the edge of relative safety, and it opens to reveal a raging battle between mindflayers and Avernus’ foot soldiers.

“Split the intruders apart! Avernus is ours!” cries the largest “man” you’ve ever seen. He towers above the mindflayers that weave like raptors around him, the allure of his captivating brain and devilish arrogance surely enticing his enemies to consume him.

“Thrall, connect the nerves of the transponder. We must leave. Now. Hurry.” enters your mind. It expands like ripples on the surface of a lake, and fills you just as easily as water might a bowl.

Lae’zel follows up with, “We’ll deal with the ghaik after we escape. Stay behind me.” And she doesn’t have to tell you twice.

As the furious legion of Zariel’s forces repel the on-their-way-out mindflayers, Us leaps into battle, striking down an imp with comical ease. At the far end of the helm, the transponder awaits your shaking hands to take you to the wilds of Faerun. The commander, a fiend named Zhalk, shouts more terrifying threats that follow you as Us keeps themself to your left, like a brainy shield. You see the air shimmer in between his curling horns, and that name, title, and species information appear as though by magic.

“A gift for your reference, though these three pieces are all you will receive,” a wind whispers in your ear. Clearly, at least one of the voices from the dark is watching over you, even now.

“Throw them into the Styx!” comes a cry from Zhalk. You eye his Everburn Blade, knowing just how useful it could be in the right barbarian’s hands. Though you’d only gotten it in less than half of your playthroughs, the most efficient method you came up with was using Shadowheart to cast “Command” on him, and force him to drop the weapon. While deep in thought, an arrow from Lae’zel’s crossbow whizzes through the air, only a few seconds from flying through your nose. You barely dodge, but you’re lucky enough to stumble out of the way.

“Hey, do you think you can use some kind of command spell to force that fiend to drop his sword?” you say to Shadowheart and she looks at you like the tentacles are already sprouting from your jaw.

“Are you quite sure you’re not insane?” she gasps just as another imp meets its end at her mace’s discretion. On the other side of the bridge, the precision of Lae’zel’s devastation cuts down a hellsboar, leaving nothing but the rest of the mindflayers and Commander Zhalk in front of you.

“Not quite sure, actually, but just think of how cool we’ll look once we get out of here with a flaming sword,” pausing, you add, “and think of how many we might also intimidate with it too.” It wasn’t your intention to ever be intimidating, at least for the most part. Auntie Ethel, on the other hand, might need to see the Everburn Blade right up in her face.

“If you can’t do it, don’t push yourself. No one here will be upset at you for just surviving,” you duck behind her to continue the perilous zigzagging around tanks of nebulous purple fluid and killer beasts.

“Don’t underestimate me,” Shadowheart fumes, and each of her footfalls hit the ground with much more force as she shouts, “Impero tibi,” and casts a shining light in front of the fiend. She shoves her hand out, palm down, and swings her arm through the air as though smacking the sword out of Zhalk’s hands herself. To your delight, the sword flies toward the mindflayer, and thus toward you. Us vaults themself into Zhalk as you scoop the hilt up. Immediately, you stop near dead in your tracks. The sword is much too heavy to use by yourself.

Fearing for your life after hearing, “Take this ship, or Zariel will have your head!” you turn to see two cambion soldiers with tridents charging your motley crew. The mindflayer places itself between you and Zhalk, tanking an unquestionably powerful slam to the face. It gives you enough time for all the adrenaline your body can produce to surge into your arms and legs, dragging the sword behind you as Shadowheart and Lae’zel push forward toward a new squad of imps and hellsboars. They and Us lead the charge, drawing the worst of the fire away from you and clearing your path to the transponder.

You’re still lagging from the weight of the sword, but after you begin to spin, the weight from the sword carries you forward and provides a wide, flaming arc for anyone hellish to avoid. Somehow, you don’t hit Lae’zel or Shadowheart who both give you incredulous glares. But, they can’t deny your actions that push the enemies directly into their own weapons’ deadly edges.

You reach the transponder and fall across it, the momentum from the sword taking you off your feet. Lae’zel rushes up to the transponder as well, taking the Everburn Blade away from you before you can pull any more stunts with it. Peering up at the mass of writhing tentacles, the amount of potential locations for you to accidentally find yourself overwhelms you. How can you be sure which ones will take you to Withers’s front door? You will undoubtedly need him in order to succeed, and don’t want to have to attempt anything in “honor mode.”

“Connect the nerves, istik, before the Hells claim our skins for themselves,” Lae’zel cries as she charges, Everburn Blade in hand, back towards Shadowheart, who is battling a fresh wave of imp and hellsboar. She keeps pushing back to the transponder, while Zhalk rips at the mindflayer who may inadvertently be saving your lives.

“Rip out their spines and throw their corpses-” Zhalk gets no chance to finish as the head of a dragon pokes through the front opening of the nautiloid, and gazes down at you with fierce eyes. There isn’t a moment to waste as you take the two closest tentacles to you and examine them. There is no telling whether these are the ones that will take you to Faerun, but you have to believe that whatever force Withers speaks of all the times he intervenes or informs you means something here now.

The two closest tentacles–one on the lower left half of the apparatus at its center and the leftmost tentacle on the right side above your head–squeeze together, and before you can pluck the connected nerve, the dragon’s breath cuts a swath across the entire front of the helm. All you can do is duck behind the transponder and pray it won’t melt under the fury of the dragon’s fire. The ship hums with a skittering groan, then cool light engulfs all of the helm.

Gravity no longer means much, and everyone flies downhelm, though Shadowheart and Lae’zel manage to catch onto various edges of the walls for stability. You, on the other hand, slam into the back wall high above the sphincter entrance. Without gravity, the force of the impact leaves you only mildly jostled, but it quickly pulls you back toward the transponder as the nautiloid, in its confused, dying state, teleports through different planes at random. You grasp and reach and swing around with abandon, hoping to catch onto any of the clutter falling with you to latch it into anything. Slipping through the nautiloid’s front openings would mean the jig is well and truly up.

The transponder approaches rapidly, and you stretch your hands out to claw onto it for dear life. You catch it, thankfully, and dangle above a sea of stars. Both hands are battling cramps and the weight of your body, but you lift one to slam it back down and hoist yourself closer to the vibrating nerve. All you have to do is pluck it, and you’ll be okay. A searing bolt of electricity spreads to your arms and back, but you reach with the fire in your heart, the passion in your mind and the love in your soul and somehow grasp the nerve. You let it go just as quick with a practiced tug, and the nautiloid rights itself ever so slightly.

You drop down onto the ground, only for the nautiloid to let out a loud explosion, and tip forward. You slide across the floor on your butt, and then crash into another wall near a porthole. Quick as you can, you peer outside and see trees, a river, and lots of flaming tentacles. Gods, you’re here.

The mindflayer who battled tooth and nail and bought you time enough to escape holds a wound at its side across from you, but before you can gaze into its eyes to see if there’s anything behind them, you remember the piece of rock or some such that knocks Tav out and through the hole at your side. You cross your arms to your right side at your head, and look through the “X” to watch a sparking blue chunk slam into you. It hits you hard, and pushes you right out of the porthole.

The nautiloid gets farther and farther away as you fall through the air. The force didn’t hit you directly in the head and knock you unconscious, so you are able to flip forward through the air into a skydiver’s position. You look around for any signs of other falling party members. You see Shadowheart above you, and Gale falling from the other side of the crashing nautiloid.

Your eyes hone in on him instantaneously, the immense relief of his survival washes over you. He’s surrounded by something purple, and it’s sparkling something fierce. You want nothing more than to call out his name, but the fear of distracting him, and the question of knowing his name make it impossible. So you watch him go down, and hope that he pulls off whatever maneuver he’s attempting. The waypoint awaits him below.

There are still no signs of Astarion, Wyll, or Karlach. The crashing ship spits out too much smoke and fire to see anything close to the ship, and with the river closing in on you fast, you don’t have time to get a really close look at anything around you. The wind howls past your ears and the reality you’re about to crash land into a river with questionable depth seizes you in an instant. Terror rips through your chest as you fall down, down, down, the water mere seconds away from you. Curling into a ball, the fear shuts down all thought and movement as you break through the water’s surface, and lose consciousness.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

“Do you think they're dead?” you hear. It’s the flowing voice, carrying you towards a light.

“Well if they are, it’s your fault for not catching them properly,” the other voice says. It's that light one from before, the first that spoke. These voices keep popping up, but when you open your eyes, you’re face down on the edge of the river. Your arms don’t respond to your commands, and the sand gets in your mouth. The grit rubs against the bone of your teeth, and all you can do is spit and pray your body will respond to you.

“Oh, you’re awake!” the first voice says. A large, strong hand grips your arm and raises you from the beach. On your feet, your eyes perceive your saviors for the first time. Towering over you and blocking out the sun with their hair, the two men give you gentle smiles. You, however, are stunned and everything you thought to say dies in your throat.

There is no mistaking it.

These are two of your own characters, from the book you’ve been working on for years.

“Wh-ah, how.. Uhnn?” you verbalized. They smirk at you without any malice, and the one wearing a cloak of greenery dusts you off with a single brush of his hand.

“Little seer, welcome to Toril,” he says.

“You-”

“You may address us as Tea and Ay. We have some rules to go over, before you retrieve your companions,” Tea chuckles, his aquamarine eyes shining like the sea.

“The most important for now is how we’ll assist you during this journey,” Ay chimes in, followed by, “to receive any boons, you will need to make pacts with one or more of us.”

Your mind reels from the inundation of information. All you can think about is your companions, where they are, and how to get to them. And, your beloved characters, the people you spend so much time with in your mind, are here to help you on your journey. Your knees can’t hold up all of the stress, and you collapse, heart hammering with stress.

“Oh cheer up! On our honor, all pacts will be made fair and equal,” Tea assures.

All you can do is shiver on the ground as your body’s natural reactions take over. You have been ripped from your home, killed living creatures, and been separated from your companions, who are real.

Faerun is real. You’re here, standing on a beach with gods you created in your mind.

Or so you thought. Now, they’re roping you into some number of deals in exchange for something, or multiple somethings. The wreckage next to you, illuminated in the daylight, still smokes and burns further northeast. You wonder for everyone’s safety, and pray to… someone that they’re alright.

“There are a few things we will be giving you free of charge,” Tea continues, though offers no acknowledgment of your teary eyes or shaking body. You’ve been wrung dry by the air, your blue-eyed benefactor, or some combination of the two.

“The medicines you take daily will be provided once you make it to your campsite,” says Tea.

“Protection of your mind is not up for pacting. There are many here who, given full access to your unfettered mind, would learn secrets of devastating consequence. It is in everyone’s best interest you remain a puerile, misplaced egg from beyond the farthest reaches of the cosmos,” Ay adds.

“You look quite ill. Let’s get you on your feet,” Tea says. He raises his hand up, and your body follows with him. You feel ready to puke, but you don’t think there is anything in your stomach to come up. The nausea rolls through you like the current of the river behind you, but there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

“Uhm, Tea?” you ask.

“Yes, little lad?” he responds.

“What the FUCK am I doing here?” you cry. You can feel the heat in your cheeks burning away any semblance of calm. Before this moment, you found no time to check in with your body or mind. Dressed only in light linens, with a deep v-neck and pants cropped at your mid-shin, you feel your pockets and let a fraction of your stress release as your phone and treasure lay safely within. But the monster of pain, confusion, and terror welling within you does not stop in its growth, even with the comfort of your pocket items. Your hair, quite long but split and fraying, dangles around your hips as your bare feet curl and crunch in the sand. The monster inside whispers over and over you’re exposed, you’re unsafe, but all you can do is stare ahead of you at Tea and Ay.

“It-It’s a complicated subject,” Ay says, “but regardless, you are here. We have many opportunities for you to regain some of what you lost, and gain new treasures for yourself, and your friends. But we need you to succeed, for your sake, and many others.”

With that, more fissions from beyond the beach manifest in the air. Two more figures step through the veil and you recognize them immediately as the final two men of your main pantheon. They look exactly as you imagine them, and you can’t help but cower in their wake. The four of them gaze at you, so much smaller and more timid than they, but in your heart of hearts you know they mean you no harm. The immeasurable gorge between a god and mortal is one you cannot cross in this moment, but one of the newly arrived figures places his hand on you in gentle recognition.

“Do not be afraid, little one,” he says, and his voice wafts over you like a midday breeze.

“How can I not be fucking terrified right now?” you cry. Tears now fall from your eyes, but he wipes them before they can roll off your face.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way. For now, you may call me Ess. We won’t hold you here for long, but we must begin with your first pact between the four of us.” He steps back, and you stand up, not confident in your knees but trusting them nonetheless. Ess brings your hands to your shoulders, crossing them over one another so that your left holds your right, and vice versa. Your hands begin to glow a gentle blue, not unlike the color of jeans or Tumblr’s defeat. The irony of that isn’t lost on you, but before you can make a snarky comment to yourself, light shines from each of your saviors’ eyes. Your body lifts off the ground, your feet dangling above the sand.

The air around you shimmers again, and from behind your benefactors, it changes to an opaque blue, like the one coming from your hands. It obscures the world around you, and your body locks in place as the higher powers in front of you begin to speak.

“You may not disclose who we are to any native or inhabitant of Faerun. Dost thou consent?” chants your unnamed benefactor, though you imagine from their established pattern is Yew. He waits, unmoving, for your response.

“I-I do,” you say, though without the confidence you wish for.

“You may not disclose where we are from. Dost thou consent?” chants Tea.

“I do,” you say, much firmer this time, but with a grain of fear remaining.

“You may not disclose the method by which you came across past and future knowledge of this world. Dost thou consent?” chats Ay.

“I do,” you say, figuring this one makes quite a bit of sense. It still brings forth a bit of sadness at the inevitable deception you must perform.

“You may not disclose details of your mission before they come to pass. Dost thou consent?” Ess chants.

“I do,” you affirm, and begin to think of all the moments you will need to be particularly cautious of what you say to be convincing.

The four gods chant in unison now, speaking the words, “In times of great intervention by a denizen of considerable power or influence, we may enter your mind for matters of protection of the truth. Dost thou consent?”

This one trips you up for a moment. If these are truly the beings you know, holding even one of them in your mind has the potential to cause lasting damage to your very being. Like stuffing the sun into a coffee mug, your mind sees no possibility of it walking away intact. Four suns, however, feels even farther from that already lofty impossibility. Even so, against all better judgment, you agree.

“I do.”

The currents of the air around you shift, flowing in a different direction. A new layer of color spreads within, this time a beautiful pale and cool-tone lavender.

“You shall wield the power of song, for yourself, for others, for the propagation of good tidings and the success of your missions. Dost thou consent?” chants Yew.

Power? For you? Different Tavs and Durges of yours fell into the role of bard quite often, and now you can follow behind them in that respect. A flutter of excitement rushes through you.

“I do,” you say, with a chirpier tone than before.

“You shall channel your heart and soul, pure and true, into each tune with passion and grace providing. Dost thou consent?” chants Tea.

Passion and grace providing? The archaic language tickled you at first, but riddles never bode well for anyone. Even so, you release an “I do” from your lips.

The pressure your hands place on your body becomes more painful the further you go on. From your fingertips, streams of light wrap around your whole body, binding your arms to your torso and your legs to each other. The word choice of “pact” now rings like an alarm bell in your mind, as they are often most associated with “binding” and “contract.” Even if these more-than-men mean you no ill will, a warning of the constrictive nature of the ritual would have been appreciated.

“You shall manifest the vehicles of music and show into the material world, for power or for pleasure, and let the strings of your soul guide your form in the merriment. Dost thou consent?” Ay chants.

“Are you sure I can’t get a copy of all this for later?” you ask. There is an uncomfortable pause before he whispers, “We shall provide. Dost thou consent?”

“I do,” you quip with an eye roll.

“You shall limit the time spent making song to one hand for action and six for rest between a sunrise and its successor. A challenge must be put forth for more. Dost thou consent?” Ess chants. It appears you’ll have to ask for clarification on terminology at a later time.

“I do,” you say. You wonder when this will be over. Not that you’re ungrateful for power, but as the bindings of the pacts begin to sink into your skin, they burn as they go down. You can’t help but wonder if they’ll sink to constrict your very soul.

Just as before, the final part of the contract is spoken in unison: “You shall consent to these terms, and all future additions to these pacts and others, in perpetuity. Dost thou consent?”

“Woah woah woah,” you start wiggling in mid-air, but the bonds of the pact tighten. Their eyes darken as does the obscuring wall of blue air around you, turning closer to black.

“Dost thou consent?” their voices are louder now, but remain firm and calm.

“How do I know I’m not getting jerked around here? What’s stopping you from forcing me into as many of these damn things as you want with any rules you choose? How do I know you’re not going to hurt me?” you fire off. Even if you know them, even if you trust some version of them, the burning doesn’t cease.

“Need,” grumbles Yew.

“Discuss,” urges Tea.

“Bargain,” says Ay.

“Promise,” whispers Ess.

“Consent,” they all say at once.

The rage of color and wind drops to a subtler temper, and the lights settle. You know there is nothing left to say on their end. It’s up to you to trust your benefactors, come what may.

“I,” you pause, closing your eyes and swallowing the lump in your throat, “I do.”

The winds cease and you drop to the ground on your feet. Your benefactors disappear, but the wispy voice of Ess says, “Good luck,” and you’re left alone on a ravaged beach in broad sunlight, with nothing but the clothes on your back and the items in your pocket.

The world around you is vast, stretching out in all directions farther than you can see. As you turn, the awesome beauty of nature stops your chest from taking in air. Tall, rocky bluffs surround the water, and lead toward the unknown at your left and the Hag’s swamp to your right. Greenery abounds and the water is blue and calm, save all the illithid mess leaking into it from the wreck on your right. For now, you are alone. But you seek to change that very, very quickly.

Turning to look ahead, you see Shadowheart lying unconscious on the ground. With no more interruptions, relative safety, and a mind all your own, you rush over to her to check she’s okay. Underneath drying tentacles and stepping through ash, you make your way over to her with all the grace of a baby learning to walk. Fleeting grips of terror pass through you, leaving as you get closer to your friend who has never met you.

She sleeps, and for the first time ever, you see her up close. The most surprising feature you notice right away is her resemblance to her voice actress. It’s almost a complete match between the two. But there’s all manner of minute details that are wrong. Her lips are slightly bigger, her head is slightly smaller, and her ears are… pointed! Elf ears in the flesh! You crouch down next to her to examine them with precise focus. What’s more, her hair–jet black–looks much thicker, and shines with a near perfect, smooth texture. Her skin is smooth as well, but with many small scars and the large one that runs over her nose and under her left eye. She’s bigger too: taller, and a touch more plump as well.

You recall in your mind her voice matching the depiction of it in-game. It is the only thing consistent about the two women. You remember the name of her voice actress–Jennifer English. The pair look close to the same, but with a number of minor differences that add up to be quite a lot. And then there’s the matter of her personality…

The thought of her indoctrination by Shar and her cult pierces your chest and brings forth a withering sadness. You close your eyes above her and make a vow, under the light of the sun on a beach in the middle of nowhere, that you will do everything in your power to help her escape the evil of her wicked goddess.

You peer down at her plush features, the old scars and slight scowl doing nothing to hide her beauty. She’s a vision, and you almost feel bad ogling her unconscious body. But you know you’d never do anything to anyone in their sleep. It’s not who you are, and the thought itself makes a lance of sickness pass through you. With Astral Prism in hand, you are indeed tempted to take it and shake it around, if only to piss off the Emperor. As hilarious as you think that is, you instead elect to shake her away. She gasps, her eyes going wide at the sight of you. She slowly stands up, and holds her hand over one of her eyes.

“I’m alive,” she starts, but pauses, shaking her head.

“Yep, and so am I,” you say, “Crazy stuff.”

“How is this possible?” she asks.

“No idea,” you lie. The thought of breaking a pact this early into the game sounds like a bad idea to you, thus the fib must be told. She looks at you and studies your face and clothes.

“I’m not from around here,” you finally say. You don’t think Shadowheart is the kind of person to pry into the secrets of someone verbally; she is much more likely to silently watch, and potentially stalk, her way into them instead.

“Clearly,” she says. She continues with “We need to set our priorities straight: supplies, shelter, and most importantly, a healer.”

“I agree!” you say. She’s ever the pragmatist. “I think if we head up the beach, we’ll find civilization eventually.”

“Well, which way then?” she quips.

“The bodies go in that direction,” you reply. She doesn’t seem scandalized by your answer, but rather she nods in recognition. A breath of relief releases from the grip Shadowheart’s aloofness as she leads the way forward. She buys your half-assed reasoning, even if the over-explainer in you claws your lips, pleading for you to add what are probably unnecessary details for a woman who is already picking at a corpse a few steps away.

You approach her but keep your distance, the stench of the baking corpse an assault on your nose. She glances up at you, then her eyes narrow ever so slightly, for a moment. She looks down at the body, then to you, and her features soften.

“I want to thank you for rescuing me. You could have run right past my pod, but you didn’t. I’ll remember that,” she says, and you know she’s being earnest. You see her pick up a backpack, and shove the Astral Prism and a floppy hat inside it.

“Of course,” you say, “I’d have done nothing else, even if Lae’zel smacked me over the head for it,” and that’s your first slip-up, for all time. It’s not a terrible one, as it’s possible you and Lae’zel exchanged names before meeting Shadowheart.

“Is that the name of the gith? I’m surprised, I didn’t think her the type to politely introduce herself on a flaming nautiloid,” Shadowheart chuckles.

“She didn’t. I asked for her name,” you cover for yourself, and hope Lae’zel doesn’t introduce herself to you officially and blow your lie up in everyone’s faces.

“I didn’t ask for your name yet though,” you say. “What is it?”

“Shadowheart. And you?” she responds. You tell her.

“Fascinating. I’ve never heard a name like that before. Wherever you're from, it must be far, far away.” You nod to yourself, and the two of you continue carefully looting your way up the beach. Keeping to the edge of the water, you eventually find your way to the door leading into Wither’s temple. The door is locked from the other side, as you remember, so you instead walk over to the ancient sigil circle carved into the wall to the door’s left. It glows purple with magic, the Weave, and you’re immediately entranced by it. Clambering onto the ledge underneath it, you stare at all the lines and shapes that dance with a heavenly violet hue.

“Like the pretty lights, do you?” Shadowheart teases.

“I’ve,” you pause, “never seen this before. Can you tell me what it is?”

“It’s a traversal sigil. A waypoint. It allows people who interact with them to travel place to place. They are very common in large cities. You haven’t been to one before?” she tells you, and you run your hand along the edge of it, tracing it with all your fingers. A jolt of purple energy seeps into your fingertips, though it doesn’t hurt. You pull your hand back rapidly, and look back at your companion. She gives you a leery look, then pivots to begin up the hill where the nautiloid smokes, lying dormant.

“Woah, hey, are you sure we shouldn’t look around a little bit first? There could still be things we missed,” you say, hoping to keep her from an attack of rabid intellect devourers.

“Like what? Don’t tell me you’re worried about finding the gith,” Shadowheart sneers.

“I know she’s capable of handling herself, I just,” you motion to yourself, up and down, “don’t have much in the way of protection.”

“Mm, I suppose you’re right.” Shadowheart taps her chin, and you think to yourself how cute she looks scanning the area for armor, or at least a weapon. Along the beach, all manner of food, water, money, and items to trade find their way into your packs, but weapons and armor come up short. Books, papers, and other such materials lay in your pack, while food, water, and money lay in hers. She keeps scanning regardless, not particularly enthusiastic about lending you one of hers. Even so, you suggest it to her.

“What if I take your crossbow?” you propose. She gives you an odd look, but you add, “I’ll give it back once I find my own weapons.” With a roll of her eyes and a sniff of indignation, she unstraps it from her back and hands it over.

“Have you ever even used a crossbow before?” she asks you.

“Point the pointy bit, squeeze the trigger?” you say, careful not to let the trigger touch you or your hand.

“In the most basic terms, yes. Just don’t shoot yourself, or me,” she cautions.

You keep it in front of your chest, holding it firmly with both hands as the two of you make it up the slope and face the open midsection of the destroyed nautiloid. You see a knife strapped to a dead man’s side, and immediately take it into your right hand, and hold the crossbow in your left. The crossbow is much lighter than the dagger, but you can’t put your finger on which is easier to use just yet. The intellect devourers spot you and Shadowheart before you can tell her to get up to higher ground. They are about to give you time to test the ease of use of your weapons.

You let out a wild screech as the little monsters scuttle their way over to you and Shadowheart. She holds her palm forward and casts a brilliant beam of light from her hand, torching the closest intellect devourer almost immediately. A critical guiding bolt, you imagine.

“Are you going to help me?” Shadowheart sputters as she’s accosted by the other two brain monsters. You aim the crossbow at the farther one, hold yourself still, take a deep breath, and shoot. The arrow lands a bit farther down in the creature than you want, but it still causes a spurt of some gray, viscous fluid to spill out. While Shadowheart wails on one, the other with your arrow in its side skitters at you.

You step back, horrified, fear coursing through your body like an underwater current. It seeps in everywhere, touching all parts of your body. Your hand lets go of the crossbow and it clatters to the ground, and a stray thought hopes it isn’t broken. You clutch the knife in your shaking hand and crouch down into a more stable position. At the last second, you strafe, and stab the knife directly into the top right side of the brain. Its legs spasm, and you drag the knife through to the left side of the brain. Shadowheart finishes off the other one simultaneously, and gives you a satisfied look.

“Our survival may not be such a distant prospect after all,” she says to you, but it falls on deaf ears.

The gap a ways ahead of you leads off to another part of the river. There’s a beached raft, and some boxes. You know where it leads, and you know to whom it leads.

Instead of acknowledging Shadowheart or facing the confrontation head on, you distract yourself with looting around the nautiloid. You climb up and take items out of an illithid chest, then loot some corpses, and lastly do your utmost to not think about Astarion waiting for you to come get him. His face, his eyes, his knife at your throat, what he’ll smell like, his skin…

“Are you listening to me?” you hear Shadowheart say.

“Sorry, no I didn’t hear you, what did you say?” you shake your head and face her. Her eyes peer into yours, in what you imagine to be an attempt to eek out the thought that kept you from responding to her. She scrunches her nose up–cute!–and throws her hands up with a scoff like she expects you to know why she’s upset. You don’t.

You turn back to stare at the large opening. He’s only a few moments away. He’s waiting for you to rescue him, but taking him with you means helping him rescue himself. And you’re ready for it.

You’re ready to see him, almost alive and definitely traumatized. There is a fear of him recoiling at the sight of you in disgust, of not even wanting your help, of taking his chances elsewhere. You want to help him so bad, be his friend, go on adventures, heal.

To keep your erratic heart from racing straight to him, you leisurely pick at the wreckage near the edge of the river. Shadowheart shakes her head. She also doesn’t immediately follow after you. You glance over your shoulder to see her picking around the wreckage still. You wonder what she’s thinking about you, if anything. It’s now clear that the individuals you travel with have free will. An obvious truth, you tell yourself, but now you’re meandering until she decides to return to you. This adventure may take longer if everyone can walk away on a whim. You finally have the opportunity to start moving up the hill when Shadowheart steps back into your general space. The two of you begin to move west, casting your gazes up a small hill. There’s a locked crate that you want to break into, but out of instinct, you turn to have Astarion open it.

And he isn’t there.

“You’ve been looking for someone ever since the nautiloid,” Shadowheart points out. She doesn’t follow that up with anything, just observes your mind’s built-in reaction to a locked item.

You pause to think about what you’re going to say. Part of you wants to be honest, the rest of you can’t figure out how to be. So all you can do is vocalize an affirmative “hmm,” and look up the hill at the smoking pod with no one inside.

As you stalk your way up the hill, purposeful in your footfalls, you notice the foliage obscures Astarion from view. By choosing to go right instead of left after the brain fight, and turning left to recruit him instead of right again to rescue Gale, it makes sense how he might pretend there’s an intellect devourer in the grass and trees. However, you always come from the left side of the nautiloid, straight to him. Always. You wonder how he’ll react now.

“What exactly are we doing over here?” Shadowheart asks. She looks over to your left where a small cliffside overlooks the river, then back up toward the nautiloid.

“What we’ve been doing: finding supplies and looking for survivors,” you say, going deeper into the grass and stopping directly behind what you assume to be Astarion’s pod. Your eyes adjust to the small cave across the way, far enough to make you squint. It’s difficult, but you make out an odd boulder, one you know has treasure hidden underneath it. To your left, you see a boar racing away from you. It stumbles across the way, then disappears after taking a leap off the cliff. You hear a far away splash a moment later.

“You should reconsider looking for the gith. She clearly abandoned us as soon as she could,” Shadowheart says, coming to stand next to you. “I doubt she decided to go for a swim.”

“I know,” you sigh, “I just hope she’s alright.” Shadowheart snorts, and then you hear him.

“You there! I can hear you! Come here, I need help!” he shouts, and you poke your head out from behind the nautiloid pod and see him standing not in front of it, but closer to the nautiloid. Not too much closer, but enough that he’s not near the edge of the cliff like normal.

“That’s weird,” you mumble to yourself. You focus on him across the path.

Your eyes and his lock, and you know from this moment on you will plan, scheme, and many any pact necessary to make Cazador’s death the most painful, humiliating, legacy-destroying annihilation possible. And Astarion is here in front of you. You can technically reach out and touch him, even if it earns you a dour look or a stab to the hand. Your heart can’t stop smashing itself around your ribs and into your lungs as he fires a dubious look at you.

“What was that?” he shouts again.

“Nothing, coming,” you hear your voice say, but you don’t remember thinking about choosing the words or moving your lips to let them out. You don’t think about your legs carrying you forward, out of the brush and closer toward the other side of the path. He’s standing much closer to the bushes and trees now, near the southwest gap leading into the nautiloid. You step around the pod and pause right where the gray-hued dirt and muck stops.

“Hurry, I’ve got one of those brain things cornered. You can kill it, can’t you? Like the others?” His voice is deep and raspy, and he points into the grass surrounding the nautiloid.

“You shouldn’t be so close, it could jump out and hurt you,” you say, playing along with his little game. You need to make sure to keep some distance between the two of you. If he gets close enough to touch, you know hearts won’t be able to help but bulge out of your eyes in the most cartoony fashion imaginable. That, and he’s liable to tackle you to the ground in an attempt at blackmail.

“Here, let me get my–” you reach for Shadowheart’s crossbow, but it’s not on your back. You turn to her just as she shakes it at you in one hand.

“I think we should wait to find you weapons of your own. Until you prove you’re capable of not forgetting them on the battlefield,” she tuts.

But her eyes widen, and you realize turning your back on the vampire about to mug you could not have been a worse choice. You side-step as quickly as you can to the left, though he catches you from behind and brings the knife closer to your throat than you like. You slam your head back, but only enough to throw him off balance. He lets out a grunt of frustration, but the knife stalls enough for you to drop down and reach for his leg through your open pair. You wrap both your hands around it and pull as hard as you can between your own. Self-defense videos come in handy, after all.

“ARGH!” he screams, and falls to the ground as you whip around and bring your knife over his heart. He’s on his back, and his eyes are so terrified of you that all you can do is stare at him and hold in your tears. Then your minds meld together, and you’re reliving a cold, dark, lonely night in Baldur’s Gate as he hunts for unsuspecting prey that will never return to their lives. A vision of you waking up in front of the tadpole nursery, and then rescuing Shadowheart, plays in front of your mind’s eye, and you’re glad for it. Any thought of him, no matter how kind or platonic, spells the end of your little charade. You need to tell them on your terms, not the tadpole’s.

“What the hells is going on?” Astarion starts, still gripping his knife with near-transparent knuckles. His skin is so taut, you might as well be looking at his bones. You dash away from him, but hold out your hand to help him up. He doesn’t take it. He gets up on his own and keeps his blade pointed at you.

“Right, yeah. Well for one thing, kidnapping. Our captors infected us, and now their larvae allow us to connect with each other’s minds,” you say.

“Their larvae? Hmph, it’s clear you know something about these tentacled monsters, though it’s clear they took you too. I saw it during… whatever it was just now. I think I remember now: you stumbling about on the ship, whilst I was held in that pod. It seems you were just making your escape,” he grumbles, finally lowering his blade.

“I only escaped because I had help. I’m sorry you can’t say the same. If I had seen you, I promise on my life I would have freed you too,” you say, and you try your best to avoid direct eye contact with him, though the rubies within whisper to you from only a few feet away. At the last phrase, he gives you a furious scowl, as sour as a lemon, and you freeze up. It’s over in an instant, and he fixes his posture, assuming that all-too-charming persona.

“Well then: larvae. What grows inside us such that we now possess powers of the mind?” Astarion places his fists on his hips, jutting one out to the side to exaggerate his silhouette.

You resist the urge to bump your index fingers together before saying, “Mindflayer tadpoles?” You say it more like a question, and his face screws up before he lets out a deep, unsettling laugh.

“Oh, of course it’ll turn me into a monster, what else did I expect?” he presses a hand over his eye and breathes out a sigh.

“Well, apologies. Here I was ready to decorate the grounds with your innards. Why don’t we start again, and politely introduce ourselves,” Astarion says as his eyes flick to Shadowheart behind you. You swivel your head to see her hand on her weapon, eyes narrow and knees slightly bent. You shoo her hand down, but she remains steadfast. You roll your eyes, but introduce yourself to Astarion.

“That name… you’re not from Baldur’s Gate, I take it? I was in the city when those beasts snatched me up. My name’s Astarion,” he smirks and does his little bow, but your eyes are anywhere but him. He’s so close, you can smell him. You give him a little “mmhmm” and then your brain reroutes you back to the treasure at the bottom of the cliff. All the bottom of your mind swirls with his scent, his body, his face, his eyes, his hair. You can’t afford to be distracted now, but the quicker you get the rest of your companions, the sooner you can make camp and let your mind wander to thoughts of him. It’s embarrassing how quickly you’ve already lost yourself, but throwing yourself into the mission is all you can do now.

“The silent type, alright,” he says, and you’re a little perturbed that he decidedly left out the “strong” in “strong and silent.” It isn’t like you’re rolling in eight-packs and sculpted calves. He’ll see for himself, then, just how strong you can be.

“Are we finished here? I’m not too eager to stand around until we transform,” Shadowheart chimes in from behind the two of you.

“Yes,” Astarion says thoughtfully, “but we haven’t transformed yet. There may still be time to find an expert, someone who can teach us to control these things.” You aren’t exactly thrilled at his idea, but now is the time to say the words you’ve yearned to say ever since you landed on this godsforsaken plane.

“Well, why don’t you join us? We’d be glad to have another ally. We’re stronger together,” you blushed. You had hoped, in the thoughts of him during car rides, doing the dishes, and sitting at your desk, that you would at least be able to hold it together for your first meeting. It seems like that wish won’t be coming true now. He knowingly smirks at you, then motions for you to lead the way. Shadowheart rolls her eyes again and begins to walk away before you can say, “Wait!”

“What?” she scoffs.

“You’re going the wrong way,” you say, then make your way over to the edge of the cliff. Sitting down on your butt, you slowly scoot your way down the side, carefully not to release the pressure of your heels from the rock. You hear mumbled “huhs” and “wha-,” but by the time you hear a “where are you going?” you’re already scurrying across the wet rocks. You aren’t known for sure-footedness back home, but you manage to not faceplant or slip into the river before making it to the cave. You turn around to see your two elven companions standing at the edge of the short bluff.

“I’ll be back in a second, I’m just getting something!” you shout. You aren’t sure about moving the rock by yourself, but getting around it and pushing against the wall with your legs might yield the best result. Upper body strength isn’t your strong suite.

You squat down, back to the boulder, and let it hold you as you press your feet to the rock. You adjust them slightly, finding the flattest spots to keep your soles from nicks or cuts. You take a deep breath, grip the rock, squeeze your stomach muscles, and push. The rock actually moves, and before you know it, your legs are perfectly straight. You drop them down and stand, turning to see your prize. A small, microwave size chest lays in a hole. You lift it triumphantly.

“Hah!” You exclaim, showing your allies the fruits of your labor. Making your way back as carefully as possible, you set the chest down and dry your feet on your pant legs. There was no time, on the nautiloid, to complain about your lack of shoes. But the feeling of dirt and water mixing underneath you makes your skin crawl, so you do the best you can.

“How do you do that?” Shadowheart asks, adding, “you did it before. On the nautiloid. You ran off for barely a minute then brought back the key to my pod.”

You look up at her slowly. Now, like many times to come, it is of critical importance you choose your words carefully. So naturally, your mouth finds a way to say something dumb.

“Magic.” is a childish answer, and you know it, but it comes out before you can stop yourself.

“You don’t know magic,” Shadowheart states.

“Yes I do! It’s just, from where I’m from is all,” you look down at the chest again, fiddling with the lid before it opens to reveal a book, paper, treasure, and a potion. You pick up the scroll and recognize the script: Thorass. Unfortunately, your semi-bilingual language skills can’t force the letters to become English or Spanish. You know it chronicles the common tongue, so there’s hope to learn it. You need someone with high-proficiency in the language, someone currently trapped in an unstable portal a few hundred yards away.

“Can this ‘magic-where-you’re-from’ find you shoes? Your feet smell as though you’ve raked them through a pig pen,” Astarion sneers down at you. You look up at him and huff a piece of hair away from your face.

“Through a dying nautiloid, for your information,” you snap back. You don’t think you sound malicious, but he rolls his eyes, makes a show of covering his nose, and reaches down to the chest. You throw the paper back inside and close the lid.

“You didn’t help me carry it back here, so I’ll just hold on to it, okay,” you say, scrunching your face at him. You can see, kneeling down underneath him, fine wrinkles and creases in his face. His scrunkles, you like to call them. Scrunched up wrinkles that make him look his age. But even still, he looks so young. No older than 30, by your estimate. Elf aging makes for youthful looks, you decide.

Like Shadowheart, he bears an almost exact resemblance to his performance actor, one Neil Newbon. Unlike Shadowheart, there are only a few minute physical details that separate the man and the pale elf before you. His lips are slightly plumper, his skin is like snow, and his ears stick out far from his head. He’s gaunt, but relatively shapely, and his hair looks thick and healthy. His eyes are like a setting sun, and his face is smooth; his clothes are pristine.

He’s perfect.

And he’s an asshole who tried to mug you in broad daylight, so there’s that. The creature before you is unsettling, arrogant, unkind. There couldn’t be a wider ocean between him and the actor from your world. Nothing can conflate the two in your mind, and you are glad for it. It’s been a few seconds, but the break-neck speed of your thoughts capture all this and more and he harrumphs at you, then turns away.

You whip your pack off your shoulders, and stuff all the contents from the chest inside. You rise from your knees, and begin to walk in the direction of a certain indisposed wizard.

“Off sniffing for treasure?” Astarion snarks at you.

“In a way,” you say back. Crossing under the ceiling of the nautiloid, you look ahead to see a dying mindflayer, reaching a talon out toward your party. The creature stretches farther when it sees you, and you decide to tie up this particular loose end, before an unsuspecting victim gets pulled into its psionic web.

Approaching it puts Astarion and Shadowheart on edge, but they don’t speak up against you just yet. Behind the far wall, dead goblins and their supplies waste away and you imagine beating the mindflayer to death with one of their scimitars. You speed behind the mindflayer, then pick one up off the ground outside. Shadowheart and Astarion wait some feet away, watching you with cautious eyes.

“We are trying to get away from these things, you’re aware?” Shadowheart says.

“We can’t just leave it here. It could regain strength, come after us. We need to end it here,” you call over your shoulder.

“And if it attempts to trick you into putting your head in its… tentacles?” she calls back.

“I doubt it.” And with that, you slam the scimitar into the mindflayer’s eye. You bash the scimitar into your friends’ captor’s head, like a punk might destroy their guitar on stage. You’re brutal and untrained, but crush the thing until its lights go out. You stand, heaving, and look on as the dead squid lay beneath you. Once you catch your breath, you look for anything to take on its person. On the edges of its armor, you notice a jewel. Using the edge of the scimitar, you pry the rock from its metal encasing, and stuff it in one of your pockets.

Your companions, ones you believe to be enamored by your wild display, are no longer behind you, but picking at the loot from the goblins to your right. You join them, gray-bloody weapon in hand. You kneel down with them, and take a deep breath.

“Alright guys, come on. Let’s divvy up,” you say, carefully taking things out of your pack.

“Oh? Are we expected to share all our finds with you, and settle for dust in return?” Astarion huffs.

“Ugh, I was just joking before. We should all carry what makes sense for us to use. I’ll keep my scimitar, you can have the bow, Shadowheart can have the potions and scrolls, and we’ll split the gold evenly. That’s fair, right?” you propose. You look to Astarion, whose eyes are lower on your top then you care to think about, but they snap back up to yours, only for him to grumble out a “fine.”

You take care separating what items you possess between the three of you. Keeping the more useful items to Shadowheart, weapons with Astarion, and useless sellable junk to you, the elves before you remain silent as you work. As you do, you can’t help but admire and examine their ears. You wonder what kind of cartilage supports the extended shape, what tissues make them up, and how they might react to stimuli of all sorts. But you catch yourself, and realize staring is rude, no matter what the reason. You don’t look away quick enough before Astarion catches you.

“Why are you doing that?” he asks you, eyes narrow.

“What?” you ask, busying yourself with your sorting.

“Stare, like you’ve never seen an elf before,” he says. There is no harm in telling him this truth, right?

“Well, I haven’t seen an elf in real life before.” You look up. Shadowheart looks up. Astarion guffaws.

“Never seen a-” he stops himself, and allows his flabber to be gasted, “how?! What kind of backwater–” Astarion presses his hand over his face and chuckles a deep, lukewarm laugh.

“This one’s a bit rural,” Shadowheart whispers to him. You scoff.

“I have… a reason.” You finish packing. Gale’s portal awaits just a few paces ahead of you. “Maybe once we find shelter for the night, I’ll re-gale you with that tale,” you say, leaning into the pun that most likely comes off as misplaced emphasis.

Jogging up to the sigil circle, it crackles and spins with that same purple hue from Gale’s fall off the nautiloid. Though it does look dangerous, the man inside is well worth the peril. Your hand brushes over the sigil, and this time it does shock you, leaving behind a pale residue of light in your fingers. You let out a yelp and shake your hand to let the pain dissipate.

“That’s what you get for touching an unstable waypoint,” Astarion taunts, and Shadowheart adds, “this one’s never seen a waypoint before today.” You can imagine the horrified shock on Astarion’s face, or his thousand-yard stare as he realizes you have no idea what is going on around you. Before anyone else can make a comment at your expense, a grunt comes from the sigil’s opening, and a hand pops through.

“A hand? Anyone?” says a voice, one you know to be Gale. His arm waves around, as if attempting to latch onto anyone outside. A thought inside your mind tempts you to slap his hand– in a high five–and before you know what you’re doing you squat down to give Gale a high five from below. You pull back, shocked at your own impulsivity.

“Perhaps I should have clarified: a helping hand? Please?” Gale says, clearly annoyed.

“Sorry!” you say quickly, before stabilizing your stance in front of the portal, and grabbing onto his arm with both hands. You pull, and feel resistance from the sigil. It wants to keep him inside. You yank and pull and strain with your legs, though you underestimate your own strength, and how hard Gale is fighting to escape. Your combined might release him from the sigil, but can’t stop him from landing on top of you. His chest hits your head, and for a moment you feel a presence gnaw at your forehead.

You yelp, and push Gale off you as Astarion and Shadowheart snicker from the sidelines. Gale huffs and puffs, but gets to his feet faster than you do, and bends down to pick you off the ground.

“Oouh, there you are,” he says as he helps you right yourself. He grabs your hand before you can give it to him and you share a firm handshake. His hand itself is quite soft, you note.

“I’m Gale, of Waterdeep. Apologies, I’m usually a touch better at this,” he says, now dusting himself off.

Your eyes flicker over to Astarion and Shadowheart for a moment. For a reason you hope isn’t the one you’re thinking, their expressions are unreadable. You flick your attention back to Gale, his big brown eyes warm and inviting.

“At landings?” you quip, the barest smirk on your face.

“At magic,” he says, his voice softening.

“But say, I know you don’t I? In a manner of speaking? You were on the nautiloid as well,” he says, a smile forming on his mouth. It’s handsome, thoughtful, and a touch out of place given the circumstances. You imagine he means to be polite.

“We all were, yes. How did they take you?” you ask. Of all the things you know about the game, this simple, obvious detail escapes you. You ask him that, and his smile disappears instantaneously.

“I uh… was out for a walk,” he says, and you deduce he’s lying, but only partially. The defeat in his face tells you he was not prepared for an illithid attack when they took him, and now, he’s away from Waterdeep with no magical artifacts to consume. You make a priority mental note to find him something as soon as possible.

“It can only follow then, that you too were host to a rather–unwelcome–insertion in the ocular region,” he says while motioning to his head.

“Ceremorphosis. An uncommon affliction, to say the least. We’re on our way to look for a cure. This parasite is beyond any of us,” you tell him, once again putting multiple revelations together in one string of breath. Gale’s eyes widen at your declaration, but he regains himself just as soon.

“Well, you seem to be quite well-fared in this subject then. Might I suggest we lend each other a hand once more, and look for a healer together?” Gale prompts, and you affirm him. Glancing left and right, you decide to retrieve the shovel and treasure before looping around for Lae’zel, a path that takes you left.

“Oh!” Gale reaches for your hand as you begin to walk away, and you let him properly hold it.

“Before you think yourself embarking on a journey with most ill-mannered a man, I wanted to say thank you, for rescuing me from that stone.” As he says it, you gently rub your thumb over his own. It may well be the first touch of kindness from a human in a year, or more. You aren’t the type to withhold care from a friend in need. And Gale is the type of man to make fast friends. You’re sure the subtle brush of pink against his cheeks is just adrenaline.

“Don’t mention it,” you smile, pulling back your hand, and add “it's a kindness you need not repay me. A parasite shared is a parasite working twice as hard, or whatever,” you joke, playing off his attempt at humor, now your own jest for his amusement. He flashes you a toothy grin, and you return it with a cheeky smile.

“Now, enough dallying. We’ve got treasure to find and companions to recruit,” you announce with a dash of flair, hoisting your pack onto your shoulders and crossing back to where Astarion and Shadowheart stand in waiting. They give each other an odd look.

Steps leading up to the path you wish to take lay in dying flames, so you take a jug of water from your pack, and throw it onto the fire.

It does nothing.

You realize that, without substantial force or uncorking it, the water can’t put out the fire. You throw your head back and let out a wild, joyous laugh, and snort at your own silliness. You leap around the fire carefully, then snatch the jug and douse the fire properly. You can’t help but wipe a tear from your eye and let out a “holy shit” before moving up the hilly terrain to the dirt mound, ready to bequeath you your shovel.

The walk is harder than you remember. Getting up the path isn’t difficult, per se, but rather longer. The extra time gives you space to process Gale’s appearance in your mind. Just like Astarion and Shadowheart, he bears a striking resemblance to an ever-so-slightly younger Tim Downie. But there’s something very wrong about that youthful look. His skin is clean and clear, but freshly so, like dirt or excess skin was there one moment, gone the next. His beard isn’t well-kept, with a litter of small nicks and cuts in the process of healing where his hairline sits in an uneven mess. His eyes are overcast, their brightness dim now with the weight of impending death doubled up on his docket. You glance back at him out of the corner of your eye to scan over him one more time, but he catches you, and you look back ahead. Despite the dishevelment he may look, it’s honestly more enticing than clean-shaven, perfectly smooth Gale. He’s hot when he’s a mess.

“Pardon me, but I couldn’t help but notice your accent earlier. What part of Faerun do you hail from?” Gale saddles up beside you.You jump, but only for a moment.

“Oh y’know. Here, there, everywhere. Nowhere. Jump around, turn about, do a flip. Somewhere around there,” you prattle.

“That’s not a location,” Gale says astutely. Too astutely.

“Uh, yeah, but like, so what? I’m just chillin’,” you gently sass.

“Chilling where exactly?”

“Anywhere I can really.” It’s a lie, but only for now.

“Ah. Forgive me, I didn’t mean t-”

“It’s fine. Things are just complicated right now. I’ll talk about it later, okay Gale?” you meet his eye. He nods without another word. Thank god.

Getting to the dirt mound takes a major portion of your wind away. When you finally arrive, you stop to take a breath and look up at the sky. Simple acts like this are normally impossible inside the coded world of the game, but watching fluffy white clouds saunter across an open blue sky bestows upon you a most restful moment of peace. You allow yourself the few seconds to bask in it before you retrieve the shovel and pat the dirt, careful not to hit the shovel on the ground too harshly.

“Oh good gods,” Astarion sighs, stopping as you line your shovel up with the earth.

“Erm, not to question your leadership, but is digging holes the best use of our quite limited time at this particular moment?” Gale asks you quizzically. You shovel strikes the ground in the same moment your mouth opens to respond, the ground around you moves as if another compels it. The soil clears around the small chest, enough for you to drop down around it and sit. Your companions stare at you, mouths agape.

“I daresay you have more important things to do than search through my purview. Let you always be hasty in your hunting,” Yew, the grumbling voice, says into your mind.

“Uh, thanks?” you answer aloud. You step down into the hole and rummage around. Inside a large, thick tarp lay a wrapped kit of thieves’ tools, gold, and a nice looking cup. You take the cup and gold, and hold the thieves' tools out behind you. When no one takes them from you, you turn around and say, “Astarion.” as if he knows your ways already.

“You want me to carry that?” he grouses.

“I want you to have it. They’re yours, for when doors need unlocking and such,” you say instead.

“Hmmph. So I see,” he says, taking them from you anyway.

“Well, that’s the last of that, for now at least.” You jump out of the hole and look north. You can see the top of a stone plateau in the far distance, but nothing else over the rocks directly in front of you. You take the shovel in hand, and realize there is nowhere to put it but your back. You secure it in between your back and your pack, and hope it doesn’t fall out.

The path to Lae’zel winds right, then left, and all manner of turns you didn’t expect on the way to the tieflings keeping her. You can see the rope holding her cage as far back as you are, but it's still much farther than you remember it being. Distance in Faerun is shaping up to be much bigger than you expect. You keep your footfalls light as you sneak up behind the two tieflings. You get close enough to them to speak, but they spook and draw their weapons.

“How will you–O-oh, a guest,” says the tiefling to your right.

“Damays, she’s dangerous. Let’s leave her for the goblins to kill and get out of here,” the other one says, to your left.

“Someone is trying to connect to your mind,” Ess whispers in your mind’s ear, “shall I let her in?”

“Yes,” is all you say, which “Get rid of them,” follows, from Lae’zel.

“No problem, I got this,” you say back, staring into her eyes from below.

“This githyanki warrior is surely not alone. She hails from a highly organized, militaristic culture. I doubt her fellow soldiers are far behind her. I will take care of her for you, with my travel mates. Get to safety while you can,” you cross your arms, widen your stance, and attempt to appear imposing. You choose your words carefully, not de-“human”izing Lae’zel, while also stressing her lethal capabilities.

“You’re right. We need to leave, and check out that blast,” Damays says to you.

“Blast? I didn’t hear anything,” you say. And in truth, you don’t hear a blast, nor did you before now. How can you miss something like that, you ask yourself.

“At our camp. We should go. Nymessa, come,” he says to his companion, and they both leave you to free Lae’zel.

“Wait! Where is this camp? Our company needs a healer,” you say. Your eyes are sincere, and you grasp your hands together, as if in prayer. It’s a bit much, but the tiefling closes his eyes and sighs.

“It’s northwest of here. Find Nettie. Whatever ails you, she can heal it.” He and Nymessa jog out of view, and you’re left with four of six main companions.

“They’re out of earshot. Get me down, now,” Lae’zel says.

“I wouldn’t. She was eager to leave me on the nautiloid. We can’t trust her,” Shadowheart places her hand over your arm, but you take it and give it a gentle squeeze.

“She was just scared of death at the hands of her greatest enemy. I’m sure she’ll be a great addition to our merry band.” You smile at her, though she does not return it.

“We’ll see about that,” Shadowheart says, and you make your way down the slope to stand beneath her cage.

“I know what grows inside you, and I know of a cure. You must release me at once!” Lae’zel fumes from above you.

“Well, what’s the magic word?” you say, teasing her, and stalling. You investigate around the tops of the trees and rocks where the rope holding her cage can be cut, but you can’t find a good angle. Lae’zel shoots daggers at you with her eyes.

“It’s ‘please,’ by the way. Are you going to say ‘thanks’ if I let you down?”

“Never.”

“Alright, I wasn’t going to hold you to that anyways. Just let me get you down from there and we can speak more,” you say. Looking up at the cage, its wooden bottom looks easily breakable. Though, without any kind of ranged fire, you’re unsure of how to burn it. You ponder for a moment, thinking back to the words of your music pact. “Passion and grace providing,” the words your benefactors said on the beach. Your thoughts drift to burning wood, and songs evoking embers in your heart. One comes through clearest, with sorrow tying the title to your mind. It’s a deep, cold melody, but it invokes in you a mother’s passing into flame.

Tilting your palms up ever so slightly, you begin to hum, mimicking the woman of the track. To your shock, the voice coming from your throat is not yours, but hers, projecting out of your closed mouth as embers rise from your hands. As you continue, your body thrums with other voices, loud and clear. You look up to see Lae’zel bewilderment. The song plays through you, as if you are the singer, the choir. Your humming is still the center of it all, as more and more sparks touch the bottom of Lae’zel cage. She grabs the sides and hoists her feet up as the fire touches her prison, travelling through the wooden beams and letting the embers of the trapdoor fall down around you. The voices swirl from you and around you, as if standing there themselves. It’s song born from your very being with your love as a guiding hand. The fire moves through the wood like dolphins through the sea, disintegrating it and leaving a gap for Lae’zel to jump down through. She lands next to you with a thud.

“Your sorcery proves ever-confounding,” she says, without frustration in her tone.

There is a light around you now, and you examine around you to locate its source. You twist around, attempting to see if it’s behind you. You grab a fistful of hair to see red, orange, and yellow lights fading from your tresses.

“What the–” you whisper.

“Enough of this. Though the tadpole has not scrambled all your senses, we must make haste. The longer we wait, the more it consumes,” Lae’zel says.

“We need to find a crèche, yes? Your people possess a cure for the infection,” you follow up, hoping to keep things moving along. Your impatience, however, causes a snarl to cross Lae’zel’s features.

“You know more than you share. But you speak true. We must find my people, and seek the ghustil. This is the only way you or I will survive,” she maintains.

“So that’s it? We’re just going to follow a githyanki to their supposed cure?” Shadowheart scoffs.

“If she says she’s got a cure, what difference does it make from a normal healer? Why would she lie about that?” you challenge her.

“Because she’s gith! She only means to take advantage of your kindness; even if her people possess a cure, we will not receive it.”

“So she’s just recruiting us to load us into the cannon? So we’ll be the fodder that clears her way?”

“If the need arises, though it is not my first choice,” Lae’zel growls behind you. Shadowheart throws up her hands as if to say, “I told you so,” but you don’t let her drop it there.

“No one, not even a githyanki warrior, can make it alone. This situation calls for tack, thorough investigation, and a dab hand with persuasion. We need to stick together. Our chances will always, always be better as a group,” you shout, a pinch of your temper peeking past your normal kindness.

“So I’m going to find that flaming sword, some food, water, a safe shelter for the night, and some goddamn fucking shoes. I’m going to get off this beach and find a healer, be they gith or otherwise. You can either roll with that, or die in a ditch. I’d really prefer it if you stay, though,” you end your vent kindly, hoping to be convincing rather than divisive.

“I’m with you, whatever lies ahead,” Gale says and you smile with one side of your mouth in recognition.

“Of course you are,” Astarion sniffs, making no indication he disagrees. You look at Shadowheart and Lae’zel who eye each other like fighting dogs.

“As long as we make it to the camp the tiefling mentioned, I’ll see how I feel about traveling with the gith. I’ll trust your judgement, not hers. Not until I get the measure of her,” Shadowheart says. You nod, then start your feet toward the crypt, beneath which a certain bone man lay.

“Indeed. You have made an ally from Crèche K’liir–few know such honor. Call me Lae’zel,” she says. You wince internally, realizing you spoke her name to Shadowheart before on the beach. She looks between you and Lae’zel but says nothing, and you happily continue to skip forward, content in the luck your slip isn’t mentioned.

The beaten paths winds, looping and twisting with rocks and lush forest creating a canopy over you and your companions. On Earth, scenery like this would’ve inspired you to take out your phone and snap a few pics, and you debate with yourself on whether now is the best time to reveal yourself to your companions. Perhaps, in the morning, you can take the pictures of the environment and the proof of the wreck when you’ve spoken to them about your origins. For now, the top of the crypt, still farther than depicted in game, stands behind tall trees and rocky hills.

Astarion jogs up behind you, the telltale smell of rosemary, brandy, and bergamot hitting your nose before he can speak. It’s heavenly. If all the winds of this world could smell like him, you are certain you would never stop breathing. He’s silent behind you as you walk, but his proximity is enough to make your neck hair stand on end. You wait for him to speak, but he keeps quiet. He only follows you, close enough to notice but not enough to feel. You round corners and tread light, the path growing thicker with bramble and roots. Avoiding the edges of the path, the trees and shrubs dissipate as you cross over the stone floor of the crypt entrance.

Fenced in by stone, you see a pair of benches overlooking the beach. It’s still, and death lays atop it like a thin linen sheet on a summer home’s bed. Next to you, a tree provides shade for a corner, and you pull the shovel from your back. You tap its point to the earth, and let Yew take care of the rest. Inside the chest, you find some scrolls and some gold. Gale walks up behind you, eager to look at your find.

“I hope you don’t take offense, but, what manner of magic are you trained in?” he asks you. “Your display back there was wonderful, might I add.”

“Eh, my kind of magic?” you respond, unfurling the scrolls to examine them. They hold depictions of actions you can always spend time later deciphering, so you hand them over to Gale in the meantime.

“Ah. So, not a wizard then.” He takes them and tucks them into his robes.

“Oh, be serious, I can’t even rea–” you cut yourself off by pressing a hand to your mouth. Your eyes and Gale’s meet for a moment, but you look away just as fast. You’re going to need to get better at stopping your mouth from saying silly things.

“Aha, forgive my presumption, but you don’t speak as if you’re illiterate. Your manner of oration tells me you’re educated,” he tuts, rolling onto his tiptoes and down again.

“Something remains malfunctioning in your head in any case,” Lae’zel chimes in. Gale gives her a half-stern look, but remains cordial with you.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. My parents were talkative,” you offer in the hopes he’ll bite.

“I’m sure they were scintillating conversationalists,” he gives back.

“Okay Mr. Sesquipedalian.” You roll your eyes, and he laughs in response. You giggle with him.

“It’s all in good faith, I assure you,” he pats you on the shoulder, and it scares you in the sense that it’s the first touch of a friend, by another not of your world. It feels just as real as if you were at home.

“I’ve never encountered a bard quite like you, in my experience. Though I’ve heard tell of some using their very bodies as their instruments. Is this how it is for you?” he asks you.

“Uh, kinda.” You hop over the edge of twisting vines, and scan the open ruin before you. This conversation sounds like it's going in a direction you’re not allowed to traverse.

“Kinda?” you hear Gale say behind you. It’s not like you won’t tell him eventually. But the day is still long. Your little secret must wait a bit longer.

A decrepit statue blocks your front-facing view, but you can see on either side the stairs and ladders that lead higher into the ruin. Voices argue from behind the statue, and you creep around it to listen in.

“I haven’t seen anyone else out here but us. It’s just wilderness,” says the taller man. A high elf graverobber named Taman, by indication of the words floating above his hair.

“You’re all twice as tall as me, but have half the bloody backbone!” shouts the shorter man, a gnome.

“We don’t even know what the damn thing is. And what about the crypt?”

“Ah, forget the crypt. Mari and Barton have been trying to break in for days. If they haven’t figured out a way in by now, they’re never gonna. I’m telling you, that thing out there’s a ship. I say we cut our losses and make for the–stop!” he shouts as your form crosses too close into the light. You startle at the volume of his voice, but you’re alert, and know exactly what to do.

“Got ourselves some competition, ay? That’s our ship,” he shouts, face screwing up in contempt.

“You mean the nautiloid? With the mindflayers on it? We just had to kill a couple, and there are more milling about. Y’all sure you want to risk death for a dead squid ship?” you ask, flashing the gray blood on your scimitar at the gnome. He gulps, then looks at his partner.

“Well-uh. Right then. No use getting killed. Second worm gets the cheese and all. Come on you,” says the gnome. You hear the elf man say “Actually, I think it's the second mouse, gets the cheese?” They argue and go around the other side of the statue, and you watch them wander off westward.

“You’re sharper than you look. I thought that was going to end in a fight,” Shadowheart says, passing by you and smiling.

“It would have been quicker to kill them,” Lae’zel groans, but you smile to yourself that the complaint didn’t come with the draw of a blade.

The group spreads out around the overgrown ruin, looking through crates and looting the bedrolls and various supplies laying about the area. You stare at the door ahead and look around, deciding the best course forward. The best thing you can think of is cutting the large stone above you and letting it fall through the cracked center of the ruin, and hope you can convince the idiot behind the door that one of his bandit buddies broke it instead of you.

You scan the area to find where Lae’zel is, and you spot her atop the higher level of the ruin on the right side searching through crates. You make your way to her and tap her on the shoulder.

“Do you think you can shoot that rope down? I want to create a pretense for getting into the crypt,” you whisper to her. “Also, jump down when the rock lands, to muffle the sound of your fall.”

She rolls her eyes at you, but you hold up your hand to signal her to wait. She obeys, and you circle up the rest of your companions to deposit them right outside the door. They’ve already snatched the remaining bedrolls and supplies laying around, and in whispers you explain your plan to them. In rough terms, though. You don’t want to spoil the funny part.

You signal Lae’zel to shoot the rope, and she does so with perfect precision. Her jump is quiet enough without the sound of the rope snapping and boulder crashing through the cracked stone flooring, but you’re glad the sound doesn’t travel. You let out as deep of a scream as you can, then carefully step around sizable pebbles and branches to approach the door.

You don’t mask your footsteps but do keep them light. The gnome probably weighs about a third as much as you do. A voice calls out from behind the door.

“Is that you Gimblebock? Everything alright out there?” Within the split second you must reply, your mind enters a state in which time passes in intervals only a tardigrade can comprehend. You call forth all the vocal stims, accent imitation, and memories of the deep, growling grunts of the gnome’s voice. Through this, you speak in your best impersonation of the gnome.

“Yea, it’s me. Lemme in!” you grunt. You aren’t sure whether or not you succeeded until you hear “You sound a bit shaken boss; hold on while I find the key.” You let a sigh of relief tacitly escape you, but the click of an unlocking door chases it right back into your lungs.

“Ladies first?” you whisper to Shadowheart and Lae’zel. Of the two, Lae’zel guffaws and pushes past you to open the door. You lean over to whisper a joke to Karlach, and find nothing but an empty space at your side. If there’s anyone you can crack jokes with, it’s her. She would be nothing if not accepting of all your verbal idiosyncrasies. But you haven’t even made it to the Grove yet, and now is not the time to be undermining your ability to lead. You decide to save that bit of humor for later. You follow behind Lae’zel with the rest of the party. Once you’re in, the man who unlocked the door stands frozen, his face a picture of confusion.

“Hang on, who are you?” he shouts, but Lae’zel has already drawn her greatsword. She cleaves it down across his chest, and a spray of warm blood coats her face and armor. You’re spared the worst of it, but are more concerned with how Astarion is faring with the scent of human blood in the air. You decide to pay it no mind, however, and instead face the man, now dead on the floor.

You kneel beside him, closing his eyes. The first sacrifice for your mission. A man who drew his sword and died because of it. There isn’t much you can say, not knowing anything about him but his occupation and current mission, but you close your eyes and wish his soul well nonetheless. A dead man lays in front of you, and all you can do is crouch above him and close his eyes. Despite everything, he doesn’t deserve this fate. Not that you think he knows, but you hope he can hear that from you, wherever he is now.

“Are you going to rain your pitiful tears over every dead enemy we encounter?” Lae’zel snides.

“No, just this one,” you say. You wipe a few tears off your face with your sleeve and stand up, brushing the rocks from your soles. They sting you, and it’s fair payment, you think to yourself. You’re the reason he’s gone.

“You are weak. Our enemies will never shed a tear over you. Do not afford them any of your charity,” she chastises.

“Well it’s not like I’ve had someone killed right in front of me before!” you cry out. She whips her head around to shoot daggers from her eyes, but you continue, “With a greatsword no less! I admit I’m privileged in that regard. It’s not something I think anyone should have to go through.” You lose steam as her sneer gets deeper, and finally her look silences you.

“Then I suggest you familiarize yourself with the sight and stench of death quickly. I will not shield you from any such event, now or ever,” she snaps.

“I wasn’t going to ask you to,” you say. She loots the corpse and you move on, and the action itself is like ripping away from hooks. It’s hard, and it hurts, but the body isn’t going to start moving and the day isn’t going to stop, so you continue. But you’re still thinking about it.

You and your companions spread out amongst the hall. You quickly move to the bookshelves to see if there is any blank paper and writing utensils. While you find dusty tomes, scrolls chock-full with words you can’t read, and quills in dried-up ink wells, you don’t find any spare paper or pencils. Though you think it futile, you close your eyes and ask in your mind, “May I have paper and a pen?”

“What kind of pen would you like?” Ess answers back.

“A Pentel RSVP ballpoint pen, fine tip, black ink. Or, a Pilot G-2 10. Ooh! Or a Pilot Precise V5 RT!” you rattle off. Your admiration of pens is an uncommon trait amongst you and a few friends back on Earth, but you imagine to the layman it may come off a bit autistic. Which you are, so, oh well. You’re a writer, and an artist passionate about their tools is as natural as the rising sun.

“I will let you choose one,” the wind whistles through your ear. You elect for your third option, otherwise known as your work pen. The first pen you use for journaling, and the second for writing. It all makes sense in your mind, and that’s all that matters.

“Don’t tell the others, alright?”

There is a woosh inside your brain, and then a pen and a large, leather bound journal appears on the table in front of you. You hastily grab it and open it, gently clicking the pen and getting to work with the books. Most are in tatters beyond recognition, but a few still have their titles on the spines. You pull each from the piles and shelves, then set them in a stack.

“Gale?” you call out. He’s perusing the cheeses on the long table behind you, but his head turns up to look at you.

“Mmm?” he replies.

“Come here?” you say it like a request, but you’ll walk over to him regardless of if he comes to you.

Lae’zel hunts through crates, Shadowheart examines food, and Astarion stands by the fireplace. Gale makes his way over to you, and you hand him a book.

“What is the title of this book?” you ask him.

He smirks at you for a moment, as if he believes you’re playing a game with him, then he says, “The Unclaimed.” You open the journal to the first page and click your pen, not thinking of if Gale or anyone else will react. Of course, everyone turns to the source of the noise, unmasked by your casual, instinctual, natural gesture. Gale looks down as you copy the title he told you down, underline it, then mark one tally.

“For someone who claims illiteracy, writing in front of others seems like an action antithetical to your professed status,” he points out, rather obnoxiously. Even while you find it humorous, he doesn’t need to say it like that.

“I can’t read Common. That doesn’t mean I can’t read other languages,” you shoot back. You hand him another book. He tells you the title. You mark it down.

“Forgive my assumption then. In any case, that’s quite a quill!” he beams at your pen. “I’ve never seen one quite like it. How does it work?” he asks you.

“The ink is kept in a small tube on the inside, and springs push the tip out. One of these would probably last about a year with average use. Maybe half of one with serious usage,” you explain to him.

“The ink doesn’t dry out? And it uses springs? The place you come from must be quite impressive indeed! I’ve never heard of a quill like that on all of Faerun,” his eyes light up as he speaks, and it sends your heart aflutter.

“Well… don’t you get out much?” you ask and then immediately choke, horrified at your brain’s inability to simultaneously know information and let it guide your choice of words. You even notice Gale stifles a little at your comment. That alone rips your heart right out of your chest, but what really gets you is your lapse in judgement. Of all the idiotic things to say to a man who’s been in self-imposed solitary confinement for a year, that’s what you choose to say? So much for being a quick thinker, you chastise yourself.

You hear Astarion snicker before Gale says, “I think word might have reached my tower in Waterdeep of a quill that uses springs to conceal and protect its nib,” he says.

“We’re an insular community, my home. Not one for sharing our advancements for the betterment of others. I’m glad to be away, in that regard. I had no right to judge you then, for however many adventures you do or don’t have to your name. I’m sorry,” you apologize.

“Ah, well. Consider it forgiven,” Gale replies. The pair of you share a smile. You flip through the rest of the books in quick succession, knocking out your list in mere moments. Then, out of the corner of your eye, Lae’zel approaches the door leading to the rest of the crypt.

“Wait!” you whisper-shout. She can’t help but scowl at you as you put your journal in your bag, leaving Gale to put the books in his.

“Why do you ask me to wait?” she growls.

“I-” you hesitate, then close your eyes. You take a deep breath, and open them again resolutely.

“There are bandits behind that door. I want to set up a proper attack pattern.” you kneel down and close your eyes again. In your mind's eye, you allow the memory of the room’s shape to guide your finger in the dirt. You stop and occasionally tilt your head up–eyes still closed–to appear as though you’re using some kind of magic. Once the general walls are shaped, you open your eyes to add the doors, bandits, and barrel location in the dust and dirt.

Your companions have gathered around you, eyeing your diagram with varying degrees of curiosity and confusion. You draw the door in front of you last, then look up.

“There’s a large oil barrel behind the door. If I can ignite it as soon as the door opens, it may explode with enough heat and force to kill at least one of them. Then, Gale can lay down some ice coverage while Astarion and Lae’zel push forward to attack in melee range. Shadowheart can cover finishing attacks and healing.” You draw symbols to represent each companion, then point to where you want them to stand.

“How do you know all this?” Astarion asks you.

“I saw it, just now. We should be quiet before we make our strike. And let’s be quick. I don’t want to spend more time here than necessary,” you tell him.

“I agree. Your plan sounds reasonable. That is, if you aren’t lying,” Lae’zel affirms.

The five of you take your positions. Leaving yourself to open the door, you inspect the lever on the left and deduce it is in working order. Even so, you know you want the door to swing open and for a mote of fire to ignite the barrel as soon as possible. So, you move off of the steps and stand a few feet away from the center of the door. Like before, you close your eyes and think of a song to summon the passions of fire into the real world. One song in particular sticks itself to you, and you bring your hands up near your chest to begin resonating with the sound.

The warm, mellow tone of a clarinet radiates from your chest. It sings softly, richly, and you move your hands as if conducting the orchestra. You add swirls and embellishments as the strings and brass come in, tapping the tips of your toes on the ground to the rhythms. Once the music slows to allow for the introduction of the tenor, your mouth opens, and another voice comes out. Your companions stare at you, some with mouths agape and others eyes glued to you, but you continue to weave your hands together until they push forward, and a glowing orange rune appears in the door. You don’t recognize it immediately, but the lines and dots tickle something inside your mind. A thought for another time. The light from the room, and from a source behind you–assuredly your hair–bathes the room in warmth. But you don’t keep it that way for long.

On a rest in the music, you take the opportunity to slam the door forward on the next upbeat. It flies off its hinges and condenses into a small ball of flame, sparking the oil barrel and engulfing the room in fire. You motion for your companions to move forward and they thread through each other like shoe laces, one after the other, crossing into the room and laying down cover before you begin to step with resolute power, the sound of the man’s voice and his accompaniment rolling out from you in waves of fiery force.

As the song goes on, the world around you begins to dim and fade. You focus in on one bandit, a spellcaster, who grips her staff with white knuckles and speaks something you can’t hear over the sound of your own music. You step into the fire and continue to push forward, lifting it from the ground to keep from burning your feet. It swims in the air, and pulses with the beat of your song. You spew an arc forward, scorching the robes of the woman. It catches on her skin and hair, and she collapses in terrible pain. Your voice drowns out her screams, rising higher as the song reaches its climax.

You can only see the flames now. You and her exist in a realm of pure light. Your vocal chords strain and cramp under the stress of sounds you’re sure you can’t normally make. The song ends as you project the final note like a shattering wave, silencing her forevermore. The room around you snaps back, and you’re left to stare at the disfigured, charred body underneath you. Your knees give out, and you stumble into the wall, exhausted and disoriented.

The breath in your throat burns and catches as you cough and choke on what you hope isn’t blood. It takes you some time, but you regain your composure after a few moments of rest. You turn around, pressing your back into the wall. Your head lolls over, and you meet the eyes of your companions. They’ve each finished their own battles, and the blood pools on the floor. It’s a layer of muck you mean to avoid. None of them move, however, each eyeing you with their weapons still posed to attack. You huff out a sigh.

“Water?” you choke again, pointing to your mouth. Gale whips off his pack and hands you a jug in an instant. You remove the cork and let the cool liquid run down the inside of your throat. It helps, but only marginally. You finish the jug off quickly, and hand it back to Gale. The embers are still hot, but you press ahead to loot the first room, now on your right side.

“Are you alright?” Gale asks you. You give him a small nod.

“I’m just not used to using… my magic. That’s it. There was never a time or place back home when I needed to use such strength or violence. We weren’t peaceful, not at all. But death and destruction never crossed this close.” Your voice is quiet as you pick through the room. It’s dark, but none of the candles are lit. Gale comes up behind you to light one, his proximity enough to let his scent of old pages, citrus and the sea surround you. It rolls through you like a mist, tranquil and lovely to breathe.

You hear a deep, sharp harumph behind you, and step out from in front of Gale to put some space between you. You glance at Astarion to see him attempting to look preoccupied. His head turns away fast, but not fast enough for you to notice his eye peering back at you. All his staring and silent nearness puts you at a greater loss, but you continue to stuff things into your pack as a means of ignoring the growing heat on your face.

Once you finish, you make a beeline straight for the skull-shaped switch at the back of the refectory. You instruct Gale to light each of the standing candelabras, and catalog any unique or interesting books while you loot around. You approach the back of the room, and investigate the skull on the wall. You don’t see any kind of lever or switch on or around it. A thick layer of dust and cobwebs coat the top and sides of the bone structure, and you wonder if the bandits ever even cared to examine it.

“I’ve finished with the books, whenever you’re done with, ah, whatever it is you’re doing,” Gale chirps as you get closer to the jaw of the skull. A pair of bony jaws clamp down on a scroll, carved and dusted with some kind of filigree. It’s mostly dust now, and shows deep scratches with missing spots all over. Bandits, huh. You take a few moments to fidget with various parts of the scroll, until you hear a “click” from somewhere behind the skull. You say a small prayer for the appreciated lack of spiders on the thing.

“What did you find then?” you ask Gale once you’re satisfied with your own work.

“Six volumes of ‘The Unclaimed,’ two volumes of ‘The Curse of the Vampyr,’ eight volumes of ‘Death and Divinity: A Godly Guide,’ one adventure novel, and seven volumes of ‘The Mortal View: Eyewitness Accounts of the Bhaalspawn Crisis.’ Any of those strike your fancy?” he rattles off.

“Uh, yeah actually. Given mindflayers, hell pigs, and all other manner of strange creatures actually seem to exist, does that mean vampires are really real too?” you ask with feigned innocence. Astarion snorts and then catches himself, mumbling something about the dusty crypt upsetting his usually pristine nasal cavity.

“I’m afraid so. They’re not taken by the simplicity or scarcity the wilderness brings to life. I doubt we’ll find any so far from a large settlement. And if we do, you can count on me to help defend you,” Gale smiles and his genuine charming self gives you a pat on the arm.

“But do not expect such treatment from me,” Lae’zel says with a “ch’k” as “A vampire will meet their end on my blade before ever entering our group” follows it.

You sneak a peek at Astarion, who looks all too ready to make a swift exit out of the room and thus the conversation. Something seems to be brewing underneath his white curls as his eyes are dark and narrow, yet full of thought.

“Vampires are ferocious monsters to be eliminated on sight, just in case you weren’t aware. If you see one–gods above–do not try to reason with it,” Astarion says with a mouthful of sarcasm.

“I don’t know Astarion, vampires seem to be enchanted with the sophisticated and comfortable. I’m sure we could chat out their blood needs over teacakes and brandy,” you joke back at him. He scoffs. Shadowheart rolls her eyes, as does everyone else, but they follow your form through the archway to the door that now sports a previously absent knob. Now, the wooden sphere turns with ease, and you slip into the room separating your party from the rest of the crypt.

“Hold on a second. That doorknob wasn’t here earlier,” Astarion puzzles.

“Really? I didn’t notice,” you lie.

“Well, I did. When did it appear?” he ponders further.

“I don’t know.” You open the next door. Normally, the game jumps ahead and places you directly in the dank crypt below. Now, you’re face to face with a flight of stairs leading into the darkness.

“Anyone got a torch?” Your companions each pull out their own torch and light it with their own version of magic.

“Gosh, I wonder how we’ll see down into this dark and foreboding stairway without any light.” There isn’t a response to your sarcasm save Gale’s little chuff of a laugh, and the five of you descend into the darkness.

The air is stale, and your nose prickles as dust and debris from untold years wafts up at your disturbance. The light is plenty, though shadows still cling to the vaulted ceiling above you. There’s a distinct whiff of decay present, and as you descend further, it gets stronger. You pass by a skeleton who could almost be mistaken for a pile of dust, and the scent passes as you move on.

At the bottom of the stairwell you come to a long hallway. At its center it bulges outward, allowing for an open center supported by a single stone pillar rising into the dome roof. Light from your torches races to the edges of the chamber, illuminating a room full of fabrics, wooden poles, furniture, and all manner of other camping supplies. From the fabric patterns and colors you instantly recognize your companion’s four tents. The lack of a fifth, however, means only one thing.

“You guys can have the tents and stuff, I’m going to take a little look around,” you say. You wouldn’t want any of them to have to rough it on just a bedroll or cloth sheet. Of all your companions, one in particular deserves some material possessions and a space to have privacy. He makes a beeline toward a red and orange one, throwing all manner of pillows and a rug into the center before bending down to fold it all up.

With the party’s torches in metal holders embedded in the wall, you take the opportunity to study the arches in the ceiling, leading to a point around the room’s central pillar. On the opposite side of the room’s entrance, the hall proceeds further downward ending in front of a large, arched doorway. Inlaid with gold and silver, it reminds you of the entrance to Moria from The Lord of the Rings. The swirls and speckles glimmer with passing shadows of your companions as they finish assembling their packs.

Your companions pick the room clean in mere minutes. As they do so, you bumble down the stairs alone, then you look up to see if anyone can see you. There is just enough depth in the flight to give you some space, and time enough to whip out your phone and hold it directly in front of you to snap a picture of the door’s design. You keep the flash off, but there’s just enough light to make out the best parts of the metalwork. A rustle of leather against stone startles you, and you angle your body fast enough to slip your phone away just as Astarion stops in front of you.

“Sneaking ahead of the group are we?” he quips.

“Only ahead of you, fancy-pants. God forbid we enter the next room only to be accosted by beasties that ruin your perfectly pressed outfit of the day,” you tease back. He sneers back at you, but there’s a smirk underneath. He’s willing to play.

“How dare you! This is my outfit of the hour, after which I’ll slip into something more, shall we say, form-fitting,” he waggles his eyebrows at you.

“Well I hope you have a plan for peeling yourself out of whatever little number you decide to get yourself into, because none of the goobers up the stairs seem likely to help you out at the moment,” you say, gazing up the stairs to see Gale attempting to diffuse a disagreement between Shadowheart and Lae’zel. You decide, a touch too quickly, you’ll let him deal with that to spend a moment alone with your star.

“Excuse you, I’m perfectly capable of getting myself out of whatever number I get myself into, thank you,” he bites. Your eyes flit back to him to see that same half snarl, half smile. You hope he’s enjoying your banter.

“Ah, I’m so sorry m’lord,” you put on a fake British accent and sweep your arm in front of you in a dramatized bow, “however shall you forgive my most heinous transgression? Of course you can do whatever you like, seeing as you’re the most capable elf in all the world. Whatever shall I do to redeem myself in your eyes?” you theatricalize. You earn one full smirk from the vampire. It’s enough to make you breathless.

“You’re really not from here, are you? That imitation was gods-awful. Are you ever going to tell us where you’re from?” he rolls his eyes with a jeering tone.

“Of course, friend. When we find a place to camp for the night I’ll tell you my tale.” You cock your head to the side just a little, playful with a wink. You see yourself at the back of your mind, completely dumbstruck, as someone inside you makes the executive call to flirt with him, of all things. He seems to pick up on it wonderfully, as he returns with his own flirty look, albeit false.

“Why wait, when you could tell me now and let the others suffer in their excruciating ignorance?” he steps a little closer to you as the sound of angry shuffling gets louder above you. You can hear Gale’s voice saying, “Is all this necessary now?” but Astarion’s breath on your cheek draws you back in.

“I promise I can keep your secret,” he whispers now, his signature seductive tone coming out. You look away, to try to tear the guilt from your heart. You don’t see the face he makes after. It comes with that all-too-familiar feeling, the dread of knowing the man in front of you is wearing his mask of deceit and fear. If you didn’t already know his entire story, the face in front of you makes it all too easy to understand how a complete stranger might fall for his ruse. His smile is impeccable, his eyes narrow in just the right way. He’s good at this.

“What are you two talking about down there?” Gale calls as he, Lae’zel, and a particularly miffed Shadowheart tread down the top of the stairs.

“Your mother, the most fascinating topic in the world, as we all know,” Astarion snips back. You bite the inside of your mouth to keep a laugh from coming out.

“I’m sure if you met my mother, you might not be so inclined to jest about her qualities,” Gale pushes past Astarion to the door, pushing it open to reveal the dank crypt you inside and out.

Light from above reveals the center of the room, while chests and candelabras stand ready for you to light and pilfer through. While it would be incredibly easy to use your phone’s flashlight as a light source, you resolve to wait until you camp to reveal yourself. It feels right. You ask for one of your companions to light the room, and with a quick gesture and a quiet whisper, flames jump from Gale’s fingertips and engulf all the wicks in the room. They fly through the air like laser blasts, all at once draping orange and yellow hues over the walls.

You make short work of the chests, looting through vases and pots as you see fit. The final room to your left holds a myriad of tasks, so you settle for the room on your right. Pushing the ginormous doors open à la Aragorn returning to Helm’s Deep proves a bit too difficult, so you settle for pushing each door fully open, one at a time.

“Don’t follow after me, okay?” you address your group.

“What? Why not?” Shadowheart asks you.

“There are traps. Lots of traps. Just trust me. Stay right here.” you say. You make your first step deliberate, then the next, then the one after that. Your natural inclination to look down as you walk serves you best in this very moment, as grooves and unevenness in the floor fails to fool you into touching them. You stop at the center of the room, standing on the left side of the sarcophagus.

Something stops you from moving forward. A memory ripples at the back of your mind, and you close your eyes to allow it full space to unfurl. You know which spots to check, and which not to check. But something near can make the experience much less harrowing, someone tells you inside. A tutorial video plays back in your head and you look over to see a small button deeply embedded within the stone pillar to your left. You press it, and multiple simultaneous “clicks” go off around the room. The traps are now disabled.

You make simple, easy work of the room. You take various weapons, armors, sellables, and stack them at the entryway. Only one item in the room gives you pause. Buried with a body is a soul coin, a currency fit only for infernal engines. Taking it with you puts Karlach at risk, and selling it puts it out into the world. The desire to loot completely pulls on you, but exposing a friend to something akin to their drug of choice–one they’re trying to quit, mind–is stronger than that urge. You gently lift the skull of the person lying in rest, and hide the coin underneath. You move on, and hope never to return here again.

It takes some elbow grease to move the main sarcophagus’s lid off, but once inside you nab the spear and the key to Withers’s tomb without fear of triggering a trap. You give yourself a little pat on the back for remembering such a small detail.

“If our hunting for a crèche is as fruitful as your treasure-sniffing, we may yet live,” Lae’zel comments. You pass her by with a wink and haul a chestplate over your shoulder. Strength is a complicated stat for you: on the one hand, you are quite capable of short, powerful bursts of strength, and on the other, carrying your work bag for too long winds you enough to feel as though you’re running a fever. Ever since your second COVID infection, your body changed in ways you’re still figuring out how to manage. At the very least, the leather and chainmail isn’t pulling too hard on your stamina. Lae’zel gives you a neutral face of displeasure before hauling the rest of the armor onto her own form.

The final door approaches. Or rather, you do. Taking out the key, you insert it in and twist. It doesn’t budge. You hand “The Watcher’s Guide” to Shadowheart, and use both hands to force the key to turn. It relinquishes with a low groan of gears turning, and the door swings open of its own accord.

The statue of Jergal with its portentous aura looms large over the room. Through a crack in the ceiling, light shines on the hooded skull some fifteen feet above you. Even in a tomb like this, one dedicated to a personification of endings and death, to see his image surrounded by plants and growth is oddly charming. The chamber is cold, but not through a lack of heat. Rather, the air is so excited by your presence it rushes to greet you, immersing you in a chilling wind rather than settled snow. That thickness, the untold centuries of potent miasma clinging to the atmosphere in the room, causes no coughing, wheezing, or sneezing though. It just flows in you and from you, pulling and pushing. Gale reapplies his spell of candle-lighting to the room. It’s quiet.

“Why are we down here?” Astarion whines. It’s not high-pitched; it rumbles through your back like a passing train, but it still has that deep annoyance to it. You can imagine he’s not too pleased about going from a sun-filled wilderness to a deep, dank crypt. You resolve to keep the upcoming fight quick.

“Just lookin’ around, I suppose,” you say with a slight tinge of sarcasm. The chests and undead servants of your future butler aren’t going to loot themselves.

“Excuse me? We’ve been infected with soul-destroying parasites that will turn us into monsters, and you’re ‘lookin’ around’?” Astarion imitates you with air-quotes.

“I suppose,” you finish. You give him a half-smile and a nod, and he throws his hands up before looking at Lae’zel who shakes her head. Aww, they’re bonding.

Your counter-clockwise looting takes you past the staircase into Withers's final resting place to a few wooden boards nailed and roped together hanging off of the edge of the upper floor. After giving it a quick, gentle tug, you surmise it is not capable of holding your weight while using it as a ladder. Not that you’re much of an eye for estimating this sort of thing. You never give your environment the benefit of the doubt in its ability to support you. Even so, you slowly lift your left leg up and hook it around one of the stone railings. You lift yourself up like getting out of a pool, and quickly use momentum to flip yourself up and over. You land on your back with a thud. A stray thought passes your mind’s landscape like a lone tumbleweed, and says, “I hope my ass looked good.” You pull your legs back, sit upright, then stand from there. You dust yourself off as Astarion and Gale follow behind you.

For some reason, Shadowheart and Lae’zel aren’t with your group. They’re across the way, with a coffin in between them, back to back and trying desperately to ignore one another. Sneaking off and up the stairs isn’t fair, but at least they’re still close by. You finish your dig through dusty, opulent chests and nicking the weapons off of the skeletons laying around. Though many are still spellcasters, getting stabbed isn’t on your to-do list for the afternoon. The final room, now to your right, holds the final treasure of the crypt: the book of dead gods.

Gale washes the room of darkness, and you immediately reach out for the book without even looking. You swipe it right off of the ledge to your left, and bring it to your face. The lock mechanism looks pristine, while the rest of the book nearly falls apart in your hands. You know the lock is magical, so you wonder if there is any way to channel your power of song through the lock to bust it open. You place your hand over the book, close your eyes, and imagine all the little twists and interlocking turns the lock might possess. The haunting, shrill whistle of a flute emanates from your lips, and with a few turns of your wrist, the lock comes undone. You hear Gale let out a satisfied chuff and you look over your shoulder to see him closer than you anticipated. His eyes meet yours in shiny pride, and you smile back at him.

In the book, many names are written out in a script you don’t recognize. You carefully flip the pages, and the last one contains three names you know, even though you can’t read them. Bane. Bhaal. Myrkul. They’re scratched out, burned, torn. All manner of methods are keeping them hidden from you, and you smile a little, thinking of the pettiness of Jergal for trying to hide his own mistake here. You place the book in your pack then make for the rest of the room. Your companions seem keen to leave as the room is empty, devoid of treasure. While a soul coin in one of the sarcophagi may make for a nice sellable trinket, Karlach means more to you than the money. In any case, everything already seems to be laying in the packs of your companions.

“Aha, see, you’re getting the hang of travelling with me,” you say with a silly smirk.

“If it keeps you moving, I’d take the crown off of a queen’s head,” Shadowheart grumbles. You laugh, genuinely, happy she’s giving some inclination of warming up. You take a breath, then stop directly in the doorway, scanning the room ahead of you for best positionings for the fight to come. A cold, thick wall of metal smacks right into you, and you stumble forward. Lae’zel pushes past you with an assuredly nasty remark in Gith.

“Hey, what was that for?” you cry.

“Only the most witless stop in a doorway while others mean to leave,” she remarks to you.

“I was only trying to get a feel for the room! I want to get a set up going,” you tell her.

“Set up for what?” she sneers. You mime stabbing, spellcasting, shooting, and then let out the same scream Mario makes when he falls down waving your hands and arms around like a tube man. She doesn’t find your display amusing, although Astarion laughs at your expense. Even if you must clown, seeing him smile at all is a win in your book.

“Come on Gale, let’s get you in position first.” You reach out your hand, and he takes it. You walk him over to the space in front of the entryway door, and leave him there. Next you bend your finger at Astarion, beckoning him over to you. The two of you stop in a shaded corner. As you walk back to Lae’zel and Shadowheart, he whistles at something. You return the gesture with a stink face and a raspberry. He rolls his eyes, but lets the barest, thinnest smile out anyway.

Shadowheart follows you of her own volition as you stop her next to the opening leading to the eastern exit. Lae’zel is last, and you park her right in front of Jergal’s statue.

“Alrighty everyone, get ready,” you say, loud enough for your voice to bounce off the walls. You retreat into the darkness, the wall leading to Withers blocking you from view. Scanning the wall, you can’t immediately find the button. It’s too dark. You let your hand ghost over the wall, feeling for anything button-like. Your nail catches on the edge of something, and you press it, hoping it’s what you’re after. A click in the wall tells you’re right.

The sliding door reveals a simple tomb, with a few vases, a chest, and the main resting place. It’s surprisingly bare for the resting place of a god, but when you imagine Withers in a lush mausoleum adorning with riches and gifts from worshippers, this looks a lot more realistic. You hear Shadowheart call your name, and you poke your head around the corner to see the skeleton warriors guarding Withers rise, necromantic power surging through them.

You want to tell your companions one thing in this moment: it’s going to be okay. Not just in this battle, but tomorrow. And the day after. So much of their lives up until this point has been just survival, and nothing more. Now, you’re all so much closer to finding the peace and happiness denied over the past year, decade, decades, centuries. It’s time. You clean up Withers' mess, he keeps you alive, your party forces each other to become better people. And it’ll all work out.

Sitting in front of his likeness, your mind already knows the tune it wishes to project. In your head, the sounds of the guzheng are clear as crystal, and in front of your sitting form it swirls into being from the air itself. Your fingers move as the music, not you, compels the notes from the string and you pluck out the melody in a song meant for a king concealed. You let the guzheng pluck its own notes as your hands now move into position to play an erhu. An educational music festival in your youth provides your basic knowledge for producing sound from these instruments, so you’re able to at least set yourself up before the power takes over.

All around you, as the song becomes more percussive, stones in the floor shoot up and down underneath the skeletons’ feet. When one foot goes down to stabilize them, another stone shifts to keep them off-balance. You keep the beat with your nodding and bobbing head, allowing your jamming to carry you through the song while your companions clean up the skeletons with ease. The floor only keeps your enemies stumbling, which Astarion, Lae’zel and Shadowheart take full advantage of with their melee attacks. Animated bones become dusty remains once again, and you finish playing as the battle comes to a close.

“You’re quite the useful little travelling companion aren’t you?” Astarion purrs coming up to you as your instruments dissipate and you stand up, readying to retrieve your sixth camp inhabitant.

“Ah, I was just about to say the same!” Gale comes up to the both of you, earning him a scowl from Astarion. You leave the two of them to their not-quite-play-fighting, as your fighter and cleric ascend the steps ahead of you.

Five wayward souls enter the grave of a god forgotten of his own volition. None of them make a sound, though one bends down to light the candles whose wax clings to the floor as if it’s a part of the stone dais itself. You who bends down to turn on the lights for a lonely god of death ask for help from your wizardly companion, who is all too happy to teach you a basic fire cantrip. Guiding your hand in his, you pinch each wick to life, and a warm red spark dances happily, illuminating the room and dazzling your senses. You’ve just done your first bit of Faerunian magic! Not that Mystra is happy to make your acquaintance, as each wick puffs out, blown by a wind neither here nor there.

“Ah, don’t be discouraged,” Gale tells you, and you give him a little pat on the back.

“It’s alright. Let’s just get our butler and go.”

“What?” he asks you, but you simply step onto the dais holding Withers and place a hand on his sarcophagus.

The candles at your feet burst into flames again, the bright green casting abominable streaks of light across your face. You step off and shield your eyes. The scrape of stone against stone grates on your ears and when your eyes open again, Withers is rising up into the air. He hovers over you for a moment, staring down with his empty eyes. You hold each other’s gaze for a moment before you realize he means to land.

“Oh, sorry mister!” you say, and step back a bit. You bump into Astarion and Shadowheart, and mumble sorry to them as Withers lands in front of you. He gives you a once over. Then, he lets out a deep, rumbling groan.

“Thou art… a surprising sight,” he hesitates.

“Oh. Right, well-” Withers holds up his hand, and you shut up. His hand twists into one that waits for something, and you stare at him dumbfounded.

“I uh–huh?” you stumble. He says nothing. Panic sets in, and the first thing you can come up with is to give him something from your pockets. You pat them down, and suddenly feel something similar to your phone on your right side. You pull it out, and find yourself holding a leather badge wallet. You sputter and choke, but you hand it over to him anyway. He flips it open examining the contents inside. He looks at the wallet, then looks at you. You give him your best smile. He groans again. The wallet disappears, and he asks you his question.

“All mortal life is precious. Short though it may be, when it connects, it shares. It grows and expands. One life leads to another. Mortality is a chain we hold to stay together, to avoid getting lost in the infinite darkness of eternity,” you tell him. All the available options present back on Earth never satisfied you enough, so getting to finally tell him your answer, not anyone else’s, makes you just the slightest bit giddy. He seems to ponder this for a moment.

“But a single life, alone and separate from all others–what is the value of this life?”

“There’s no such thing as a single mortal life. If it’s in our nature to leave after a time, we have to arrive to begin with. And we never arrive alone. There will always be another, until the last one. And whoever they end up being, I hope their wait to rejoin the rest of us isn’t too long.” He doesn’t take a breath, per se, but nods and appears thoughtful.

“Mmm. I am satisfied. We have met, and I have seen thy face. We will see each other again at the proper time and place. Farewell.” And just like that, he’s strolling out the door and around the corner. Your head follows him out until it turns your body around 180 degrees. You now face your companions, who are rubbernecking just as hard as you.

“I think he likes us,” you say.

You look at Astarion, and he looks at you, and in his eyes you see the beginnings of tears form. He steps back, melting into the shadows like he’s merely an illusion, rather than flesh and blood. You feel a chill expand out from your heart and rush in from your arms toward your center. They meet in the middle and reflect back, pushing all manner of tingles and prickly feelings through your torso. It’s eerily quiet, as Gale and Shadowheart exchange a look. Lae’zel locks eyes with you.

“What was that you gave him?” Shadowheart asks you.

“I don’t know. It wasn’t in my pocket before we got in here, I’m certain of it. Someone, or something, must have put it there. Like, magic,” you say.

“Some thing? I thought we were on better terms,” Yew grumbles in your mind, though a cheeky sarcastic tone laces through it. Your mind’s eye rolls.

“I am hasty to point out that’s not how magic works. It requires a conjurer or caster. It doesn’t just act on its own. Even the goddess of magic, in all her mysteries, casts and weaves. It’s a wonder,” Gale tells you, his eyes already gathering that dreamy look. Your nose scrunches at the mention of Mystra, your feelings toward her complicated at best.

“Either way, that was one weird dude,” you skip a few steps out the doorway to see Withers looking around what you imagine he might consider a shrine to himself or something he relates to, though, you aren’t totally sure.

Astarion materializes in the shadows of the steps, now crouching down. The stress of so much new sensory input and devastating information must be overloading him, especially now his nervous system is on the way to developing the Sword Coast’s most diabolical cocktail of PTSD symptoms known throughout time. You approach him, keeping your feet scuffling on the ground not to spook him. Laying a hand on his shoulder, even in comfort, may be too much for him now. So, you crouch down next to him, mirroring his position. He’s muttering something to himself, words you can barely hear and still don’t understand.

“Hey, star?” you let his nickname slip. He whips his head around and shoots a flurry of daggers at you with his eyes, but you only return with the sincerity of a concerned friend.

“Are you okay?” He glares at you, snarls, then looks away. For a moment, you wonder if he’s going to disappear again. Without your other companions present, he may only be mostly considering lying to you. Perhaps, say, 99% in favor.

“Perfectly alright now, darling,” he croons, straightening upright and slipping on the mask on you dread to see on his features, now and always. Apprehension fills your mind, but he’s not going to give you anything else just yet. Perhaps a little schmoozing is in order.

“How did you do that, by the way? Disappear into the shadows like you’re made of them… that was really cool. Do you think you can teach me to do that?” you offer. He gives a perfect little sniff and smirk.

“Well, unfortunately, only the most gifted among us can perform such a feat; moreover, someone with such a… dazzling personality–like yours–would have quite a difficult time blending in,” he sweet-talks you, leaning over you.

“Mm. ‘Dazzling.’ That’s a new one. Most people find me obnoxious, burdensome, and repetitive in the most dull ways imaginable.” Astarion makes a valiant attempt at suppressing a real smirk of laughter, but it peeks out along with a particularly elongated canine. You can’t imagine he’s even thinking about flashing it the way he’s doing so; it makes you giggle inside. In the time you rib each other, your other companions filter out of Withers’ cramped little nook and now stand around, trying desperately to appear laborious. Lae’zel looks most perturbed of the bunch, eyeing you and Astarion with entirely perceptible scorn. You detach yourself from your elven rogue and approach her with a spring in your step.

“Ms. Of K’liir, I come to you now presenting two possible paths–”

“My name is Lae’zel, istik, not ‘miss’,” she snaps at you.

“It was. I was just,” you sigh, “okay, anyway: we find a place to camp for the night, gather supplies, plot a route to your crèche and get some rest, oooooor we go investigate whatever noise your tiefling captors heard earlier and risk getting our asses handed to us by whatever forces of chaos they’re dealing with,” you present to her.

“No one will be handing me my own ass, I will cut their hands off before they can touch me,” she says, resolute.

“Do our opinions not matter to you then?” Shadowheart folds her arms and cocks her head to the side.

“Of course it does! I was going to put it to a vote!”

“Are you quite sure those are our only two options? We could always explore further and camp later. It’s not so late in the day the sun wishes to bid us farewell just yet,” Gale comments.

“But taking time to find an advantageous campsite with fresh water that hasn’t been touched by the nautiloid leakage, cover enough to rest without fear of being found, game enough to hunt for provisions and also finding our friend the withered mummy man seems like it could take a few hours, and by that time it could be dark. I’m not good at staying up past my bedtime,” you list off. Everyone save Gale rolls their eyes at your last comment.

“Well gods forbid our little leader doesn’t get her beauty rest,” Astarion taunts.

“Their beauty rest. I’m not, ah, I’ve got. Ugh, Christ, that’s a conversation for a later time,” you shake your head. Your companions give you a strange eye, but say nothing.

“So? Let’s vote. Do we start making camp or continue on our way?” Gale and Shadowheart raise their hands first. You raise yours second, Astarion third. Lae’zel is ready to spit fire, but she gnashes and stomps before letting out a “fine,” and nothing more.

“Well gang!” you clap your hands together, “let’s get searching.”

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

As is typical of you–on Earth and now on Faerun–you spend a great deal of time thinking deeply about things that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter that much. Locating the exact campsite from act one seems like an exercise in futility, but by the grace of recalling a few hours spent adjusting camera angles and analyzing geographical data, you deduce the clearing you seek is somewhere northeast. Cool water glides over your feet as you examine the rushing rapids ahead of you. The river can take you there, you think. You step out of the water and back into the cavern where your companions wait with increasing confusion. Though, for some of them, they may be getting familiar with your antics already.

Getting back down to the beach to gather materials for a river raft is your first priority. You don’t want to trudge all the way back through the crypt with wet feet, so you ask Gale for a rag and he hands you one. Drying off your feet while leaning on the stone walls for support, you dry your feet and hand him back the rag. He tags it with a bit of a restrained arm, but you don’t notice until after he returns it to his pack. It’s something you’ve been working on for years on Earth. Noticing facial expressions and body language too late makes for awkward exchanges and heavy guilt on your end. You hope with time you’ll learn your companions true tells before you make a complete ass of yourself.

The lever that sends the ladder above you down gets stuck momentarily before it lowers fully, and the ladder itself nearly takes your head off before you jump away in time.

“Lae’zel, you go first,” you motion. She doesn’t respond in any way, but rather steps ahead of you like letting her proceed is the most natural conclusion in the world.

She begins to make her way up and you realize too late that her warrior’s leathers don’t leave much to the imagination. You avert your eyes as Gale goes up behind her, then Shadowheart, then Astarion. You make sure you go last, but it takes a bit of silent pushing to get Astarion up before you. Unfortunately, he takes the opportunity to sway his hips a little more than necessary, letting the curves and motion of his lower assets speak for themselves. Again you avert your eyes, instead focusing on making sure each foot finds its hold on the ladder. Looking down also provides enough cover for your face’s deep red flush.

When Lae’zel makes it to the top of the ladder, she punches the hatch door up and the hinges rip, and splinters fly into the air. The light from above shines down far enough for you to see it reflect off some of the water on the ground underneath you.

“AHA!” she cries. The suddenness of the noise startles you enough to trigger your body into clamping down on the ladder, by instinct. It shakes with the force of you, your feet flailing as you attempt to regain composure.

“What the hells is wrong with you, are you trying to get us killed?!” Astarion yells down at you.

“Sorry!” you look at him. His ruby eyes are shiny with something like fear or sheer frustration. “I got startled! Lae’zel, what’s going on up there?” you call past Astarion.

“The devil’s sword returns!” she exclaims. She hoists herself out of the hole with a quick pump of her arms, and the rest of your companions follow suit. You stop right before you can get your feet up to the second highest rung and watch as Lae’zel inspects the Everburn Blade. A scorch mark in front of you with a small incision into the ground reveals its fate after the crash.

“Are you really just going to let her keep a giant flaming sword?” Shadowheart says with a scrunch of her nose.

From the chest down, you’re still concealed by the hole down into the crypt basement. You cross your arms and rest them on the ground, eyeing her like a sibling hearing some bullshit for the fifth time that day. You sigh deeply and offer, “Well, she’s the best trained soldier among us. It’s the best weapon we have so our best warrior should wield it. Efficiency is okay, sometimes,” you joke with her. She’s clearly not receptive, as she grimaces as you. You gaze at Gale now, who–upon meeting your eyes–offers his hand to help you the rest of the way up the ladder.

“Thanks.” You give him a little smile. He returns it threefold.

“Are you two lovebirds finished tenderly embracing over there?” Astarion quips at you as Shadowheart and Lae’zel socially distance while examining the vines leading up to the entrance level of the crypt. You look down to the forearm’s length between the two of you, then back to him.

“You know, you can always just ask for help getting up next time if you’re so upset about not getting any.” You poke at him and he waves you off with a sassy hand. Perhaps this bit of banter hits a little too close to home, because he steps ahead of you and scales the roots before you can say anything more.

“What is your plan after we make camp?” Lae’zel asks you as you observe the roots. You know for a fact you can’t climb them; you’ve got no muscles, can’t do a pull up, nor is climbing cliffs without equipment even a possibility.

“We’ll make for the tiefling’s campsite, or whatever it is. There was a name mentioned–Zorru. He may remember something that could help us locate your people,” you tell her.

“Good. I am glad we are in agreement then.”

“Yeah, me too.” Shadowheart scales the roots as you speak to Lae’zel, and Gale follows.

The prospect of being left behind terrifies you, but without warning the roots begin to tremble, then whip out and wrap around your waist and legs. You screech, and Lae’zel removes her sword to cut you down. The roots are somehow faster, and launch you straight up and onto the edge of the cliff. Your companions behind you draw their weapons, but the vines retract and settle back down.

“I hope my assistance will be considered timely, and not intrusive,” Yew’s voice bubbles inside you.

“Any warning at all would have been appreciated!” you yelp out loud. You grumble and sputter but only on a surface level. Without turning to look behind you, the sound of armor clanking gets farther then closer in a matter of seconds. Lae’zel grabs hold of the base of the roots and hoists herself up, avoiding all but the beginnings of them in her ascent.

Through a series of shovel-assisted angle checks on the edge of the temple, you discover another chest and unearth more thieves’ tools and some gold, all of which you pass to Astarion. It seemingly cheers him up, and you hope your closed-mouth smile conveys sincerity and warmth to him. The rest of your company eyes you wearily.

You return to the courtyard of Withers’ temple. Casting your gaze down at the drop between the stone-floored temple steps and the beach, it dawns on you just how far the drop will be. Leaving up the hatch did return the Everburn Blade to your party, but without the press of a button or two to check your party’s spell slots, you wonder how you’ll get down without having to take the long way around.

“Ah, I see we’re in need of a magical assist!” Gale nearly purrs. He steps up next to you and stretches his hands out, casting a white-blue field of feathers around the five of you. He takes a leap off the temple and gracefully lands down below, floating like a leaf on a nice summer’s breeze. The rest of your companions follow after him, leaving you alone at the top of a far fall.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never experienced the wonder of a feather fall?” Gale teases up at you.

“So what if I haven’t? Normally gravity is to be obeyed at all times, and this jump could kill me!”

“Don’t be so dramatic! Just get down here!” Astarion calls after.

You don’t want to appear cowardly, but this is new. Unknown. Variables like your weight, the direction of the wind, your ability to receive enchantments all compile like indecipherable mathematical equations around you. A strong gust of wind, however, knocks you right off the top and you let out an undignified squeal. You squeeze your eyes shut and flail as hard as you can, the fall scaring you much more than you think it reasonable. Your body reacts to each new thing now on instinct, the weight and length of the day bearing down on your weary mind and nervous system.

“Are you going to put your feet down?” Shadowheart rolls her eyes. You open yours and see you’ve been thrashing barely two feet off the ground.

“Oh. Hehe.” You let your feet return to the earth.

“I saw a busted up raft on the other side of the nautiloid. Let’s use that as our base craft,” you say. Picking up some rope left on accident and heading in the direction of Astarion's retrieval, you and your party split up in the search for materials to construct a stronger, larger raft.

Lae’zel and Shadowheart both eye the wooden fishing dock to your left, while you, Astarion and Gale break down empty barrels for their wood and metal. Materials you scavenge all make their way to the raft, now pulled inland and set flat, ready to be made acceptable for traversal.

It takes some time, but the five of you manage to tie enough wooden planks together to make a decent raft with a sail repurposed from old shirts and pants you tie together. The tiller is the last piece you find, as Astarion wanders off in search of a large enough tree branch. He takes one from the cliff near his pod, and brings it back with some heaving and swearing.

“Thanks, Astarion!” you beam. He doesn’t return your happy face.

“Are we ready to set sail?” you ask with a silly swing of your arm. No one responds, not even Gale.

“Alright! Let’s just get a move on,” you sniffle, so clearly upset by your companions’ lack of willingness to play along. The raft pushes off from the shore, and you make your way onto the river, Shadowheart in charge of the tiller.

You come to a fork in the river, and she asks you, “Which way?”

“Left.” She pulls the tiller to the right, and you steadily turn left, now sailing north.

On the river, you take a moment to rest and enjoy the beauty of the wilderness surrounding you. The bluffs now take on different shapes and heights, growing taller as you sail further north. Erosion from unknown years creates magnificent openings and archways to sail under, with a picturesque bird or three sometimes flying underneath. The wind and sun on your skin calms you, and you glance at Astarion. His eyes are closed with his face basking in the rays of light. You can’t imagine how good this all must feel.

The river pulls you east by the time the landscape you know recedes into the distance. Around a bend in the river, you can no longer see the beach when you look behind you. The lack of foresight scares you, but the campsite can’t be too much farther ahead.

Without knowing by heart what lies ahead of you, taking the time to passively observe your surroundings and do your best to etch the scenery into your memory comes to you as naturally as the waning sun. A little less than a league away, you notice the forest around you gets thicker, and a small stone archway stands strong against the eroding forces of the river. You think it’s the one overlooking your beloved campsite, and you hope beyond reasonable levels it’s the one you think it is.

Many minutes pass and the archway comes and goes, though you are seemingly no closer to camp than you were when you first saw the natural stone gateway. You close your eyes and search your memory, realizing what you thought is a stone archway is actually a wall of solid rock. Damn.

“I think we can speed this along,” Tea chuckles softly in your ear.

“I agree,” Ess murmurs. A strong gust of wind shakes your raft but the sail holds, and the water beneath you picks up as well. Around twists and turns Shadowheart does her best to keep the raft upright and on point, but it takes a bit of guidance disguised as luck to keep you all from falling into the river. The stream bends eastward, passing by a lake at the bottom of a shallow basin on your left side. You make a full course correction southward, and the wind blowing you north stops dead.

“Unusually advantageous weather patterns on this ‘Fae-run,’” Lae’zel comments.

“It’s actually pronounced ‘Fae-rune’,” Gale corrects her. She hums at him.

The water gets shallow after another few minutes, and through a thinning portion of the forest you see what looks like your camp further ahead. You stand to get a better view, and spot Withers standing next to a beached canoe.

“Hey, there’s that guy!” you exclaim. Your companions look up from their thoughts and notice the old bag of bones casually resting with his back toward you.

“Did he sail here in that fucking canoe? Holy shit!” you exclaim to no-one in particular, who is also the same person to respond to your unrequested commentary.

Shadowheart slows the raft to a crawl, and the five of you disembark from your craft. The clearing is as you know it to be. The ability to turn your head skyward reveals tall hills and trees blocking winds from the south. The forest stretches out in all directions, even over all the hills. You wonder how far you can see from the top of them.

“Thou art here,” Withers announces.

“When thy preparations are complete, I would have words with thee,” he gestures directly at you. You don’t remember him singling out Tav ever, so you figure it must be about your… home.

Astarion wastes no time selecting his tent location. With its back to the rocks, it will be much harder for anyone to sneak up on him from behind. You watch as your companions steadily unpack their items and equipment, building up their resting places for the night. Despite his rush to begin setting up, you witness the struggle between Astarion and his tent. No camping experience really means no camping experience. He stops occasionally, rethinks his method, then tears his work down and starts again. Setting up a tent isn’t in your repertoire either, so you make another note, this time in your journal, to ask Wyll to help Astarion once he arrives. Oh gods, where is Wyll? And Karlach? The thoughts get your heart beating an unsustainable rhythm, so you do what you can to distract yourself.

To clear your mind, you begin to clear debris from the center of camp, stacking sticks where the campfire looks like it normally goes. Some discarded boxes, tarps, and large wooden beams all come together by your hand to create a covered desk area, one you plan to use for work and planning. Using rocks next to you, the wooden beams are snug in place, and you connect the tarp before sticking them into the narrow gaps between the rocks. All in all, you’re proud of yourself.

“Are you planning on sleeping under a pile of books?” Astarion comes up behind you, giving you a start.

“What? Oh, well, there wasn’t enough material to make a tent for myself, so a desk will have to do. Now all I need is a chair and I’ll be all set,” you say, admiring your hard work. Astarion makes a show of craning his neck up at the top of your makeshift wind blocker.

“You’re sure you didn’t have enough materials,” he questions sarcastically.

“I don’t know how to assemble a proper tent,” you groan.

“Then what’s this then?” He points at your tarp, and you give him a stink-eye.

“It’s basically a lean-to; it’s balanced sticks and pinned sheets. If I need to put a blanket down, I’ll be fine. What about you? Your tent isn’t even complete yet! Why are you making fun of me?”

Astarion’s face scrunches, lemon-sour and angry as a honey-badger. He stomps off and resumes setting up his tent. He pitches down an awning with some other branches he whittles furiously before whipping the entrance flap to his tent as hard as possible. He doesn’t come back out. The tent isn’t what you’ll find next to the word “sturdy” in a dictionary, but you can certainly tell his effort is all there.

You finish up moving some logs to sit on near the fire before Lae’zel and Shadowheart approach you together.

“Are you going to let the elf sulk in his tent? He must contribute to end-of-day duties,” Lae’zel demands. Oh boy.

“Do you share that sentiment, Shadowheart?” you ask her.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she huffs, then says “I just think we all have our own weight to pull. I won’t be pulling his.”

“So you do agree with her then,” you follow.

“Why are you insisting on semantics?” she raises her voice at you. Something inside you immediately shuts up tight, and you shrink under her temper.

“How am I supposed to know if you’re here to make a formal complaint about the group or about separate things? Adults know how to take turns talking, generally speaking. And besides, what do you want me to do? Drag him out by the ear and tell him to get to work?” you squeak, upset but not to a point you’re incapable of defending yourself or Astarion.

“Yes!” they both say in unison.

“No!” you shout finally, drawing out the “o” for emphasis and annoyed sarcasm. “He’s as close to a regular civilian our group is going to come across. He needs time to take in the fact there’s a very serious risk of him dying.”

“So he’s to be a burden on us then, allowed to cry and whine and snivel whenever he chooses to?” Lae’zel interrogates you further.

“Yes, and you would be allowed to as well if I didn’t think you, personally, had the ability to telepathically suck your tears back into your eye sockets.”

“Maybe I do,” she flashes you a fangy grin.

“Now that I have a WORK STATION, I’ll be taking the time to write out what everyone’s role in camp will be, and the morning and evening chores they’ll be assigned. Everyone will get tasks that match their strong suit, and everyone will get their fair share. Okay?” you emphasis the desk you made for yourself over Shadowheart’s shoulder, and see no ruffling from the inside of Astarion’s tent.

“Once I finish, everyone will have something to do to prepare for tomorrow. Is that to your satisfaction?” you ask the two women.

“We shall see what you come up with, and I shall decide if it is agreeable with me,” Lae’zel concedes.

“As if you’re capable of anything agreeable,” Shadowheart mumbles under her breath. Lae’zel hisses. You make a swift exit before the crossfire catches you too.

You take a moment to search the nearby derelict building for something to sit on at your stone desk. You find a chair intact on the far wall, and bring it back with only a foot falling into the creek separating your campsite from the eastern side of the forest. You empty the vast majority of your pockets, leaving only your phone in the left one while your pen and all the treasure from the day sprawl out in front of you.

“Gale?” you call, facing right to watch him pitching his tent and laying down some books.

“Yes?”

“Can you bring all the copies of books we found over to my desk please? Be sure to keep one for yourself if you’re interested in reading it!”

He bows curtly and gets set on sorting all the books carefully stacked on the ground. While he does that, you open your notebook and write your name at the top of a new page, followed by Wyll, Gale, Lae’zel, Astarion, Karlach, and Shadowheart. Next to each name, you put leader, second-in-command/secondary scout, third-in-command/scrollmaster/cook, equipment manager/tactician/secondary hunter, treasurer/primary hunter/camp watcher, inventory assistant manager and transporter/camp preparer, and doctor/alchemist. You’ve spent so much time on Earth debating what each companion might be in charge of, the only reason you don’t get it all written out faster is the limitation of your own hand.

You complete your list just as Gale brings over all the extra copies of the books you want to sort through in your own time. Smiling, you stand from your chair and gather your three companions at the center camp. Giving yourself room to project, you read off the list, omitting certain individuals and roles that might not make sense. Astarion taking the primary charge of hunting won’t make sense until he decides to be honest. You describe each of the roles you’ve assigned them in some detail, but do your best to stay to one or two sentences for each one. Lae’zel listens intently to her portion, and nods along in confirmation she accepts your assignment.

“Why is the wizard in charge of cooking?” she asks at the end of your reading.

“Wizards are homely types, no?”

“Hmm. Well spotted.”

It’s all smiles until you have to approach Astarion’s tent to coax him into helping Lae’zel get dinner for the night out in the forest.

He doesn’t initially respond to you, even after you put on the sweetest voice you can muster.

“Please? We all have to do something to get ready for tomorrow. You can help make sure everyone is energized for the long trek ahead of us. Besides, if you leave now, you may get the opportunity for some private hunting. I won’t tell the others if you take extra time for yourself to take a break, find more meat, cook it up or something.” There’s still silence for a few moments. When the tent flap reveals Astarion, his face is blank. Lae’zel smirks and the two of them walk off toward the east. You watch as they walk off together, then let out a deep sigh.

“You’re just a bundle of confusion, aren’t you?” Shadowheart comments before walking off to her tent.

You shake your head at her back and pull all remaining loose items to the center of camp. Bringing your chair over, you spend the next hour or so sorting through everyone’s items, marking what you find sellable and what everyone should keep. It’s tedious, but you enjoy it anyway. Sorting things is always a fun activity, and looking up every now again to see Gale’s face flush as he looks away makes it all the better. You evenly distribute gold to everyone as well, making sure the extra goes in your pack. It’s easier that way: no one has to carry that little extra weight, and you can save up for something important when it appears with a merchant.

With little left to do but tend to your lack of footwear, you crawl with some difficulty onto the rocky ledge behind Astarion’s tent for a better view of camp. Perhaps, you think to yourself, you’ll spot a pair of abandoned sandals in a bush or behind a rock. How your benefactors can bring you to the open wilds without proper foot protection is beyond you, but a sudden wind chill up your spine startles you out of thought.

“Shoes are quite important, yes, but I wonder if there is an… alternative method of travel you might be interested in,” Ess says by your ear. You’re not sure if the others can hear, but when you glance their way, they look deep in mediation or study. On separate ends of camp, Gale and Shadowheart are as far from you as they are each other.

“Like what?” you finally answer.

“Like… flight.”

Your eyes shoot open. Flight? Permanent flight?

“Yes little one, but a boon so potent requires a sacrifice most extreme. Are you interested in making such a pact?”

You’re being given a choice. Attain permanent flight, keep yourself from slowing your companions down, and traverse even the harshest of landscapes with ease. Whatever the sacrifice, you believe yourself ready to make it.

“Assume the position.” You move your hands to your shoulders, and close your eyes.

“Grant ye consent to this trade: the ability to walk for the ability to fly?” Ess chants, the air around you turning a pale, almost white blue. The trade off is in progress, and you aren’t sure if you’re allowed to back out. So you ask. He tells you it’s possible, for a fee to be paid in blood. You weigh this, and weigh it again. There must be some upcoming or future loophole to this. So you say, “I do.”

“Grant ye consent to this curse: your feet shall never again rest against any ground, floor, or step?” Those words sound binding enough, and you can feel it as thin chains begin to constrict around your feet. They aren’t painful. Yet. “I do.” It comes out like a whimper.

“Grant ye consent to this blessing: this gift may be spread to those you call ally, friend, or foe, one for every four rise and set?” What is to be risen? Setting sounds like the sun… perhaps days? “I do.”

“Grant ye consent to this gift: through labors of the hand and mind, worldly treasures may keep you from pain; gloves of the land to be bestowed on the seventh day.” Too much prose, so many rules. But all you can say is “I do.”

The chains get tighter, then hotter. Like before, they sink deep into your skin and disappear, leaving only the feeling of them to linger like scorching sands on the soles of your feet. The feeling of Ess over your head leaves as well. It takes you a moment to adjust to the pain, for now a dull ache, something that can be ignored. You wonder how much that will change in the coming week.

“How long are you going to stand up there?” Gale calls. “I found something for you!” Your eyes open, and you spot a pair of thick-soled sandals, just like espadrilles, directly in line with your eyes. Gale holds them up like a lion cub, and you chuckle.

“Shoes!” you cry.

“I spotted them in one of the logs near the firepit. Can you believe it? If only you’d been standing next to me,” he spouts with a tad too much charm, not that you’re complaining. You slide off the rocks and walk up to him, with a sharp pain stabbing into your sole as you get closer. On the seventh step, you think. This is going to be a long week. But good things require work, sacrifice. Hard choices are yours to make now. And you must make them.

“Thanks so much, man, I’m really glad you spotted them!” You take the shoes from him and walk toward the river. Dipping your feet in, you wash them off and dry them on your pant leg, then slip the sandals on.

“Protection from the elements at last,” Gale cheers.

“Thanks to you!” you beam up at him. His smile is full of pride, and you hope everything you do from now on protects that same smile.

“By chance, you didn’t happen to be meditating like our cleric up there were you? I can’t help but think you looked a little pained, to be honest,” Gale shifts, his tone a touch more serious.

“Oh, that. Well.” You aren’t sure what to say, since putting you on the spot is the last thing Gale seems likely to do. Or perhaps it is. You don’t know him. You have to think of something, quickly.

“I’m just a little tired, that’s all. Being on bare feet all day will do that to you,” you shrug. He thinks about this for a moment, as if the world is waiting for the roll of your deception. You pass, seemingly, as he pats you gently on the shoulder and says, “Come, let’s prepare for Lae’zel and Astarion’s return.”

Time passes with the setting of Faerun’s yellow sun, the edges of it dipping into the horizon line just as you begin to think the daylight can’t wane without you telling it you want to rest. The night reaches for camp, spreading over the river before making its way over to you. With your companions orbiting the outer ring of the campfire itself, now seems like as good a time as any to have the conversation you—truthfully—are dying to have.

Lae’zel and Astarion return with a deer and two rabbits, Gale cooks them separately with some vegetables and spices he pulls out of thin air (or so you believe,) and now the five of you sit in silence, sipping at the stew Gale labored over for a number of hours. Though your bowl lays untouched, you thank Gale many times during his time stirring and distributing. An intolerance to meat is not the topic you wish to discuss now.

Before you make any attempts to begin the conversation, you examine Lae’zel in the firelight. Her features are the hardest to pin down, but you can see something of her Earthly counterpart, Devora Wilde, in her face. Her eyes and mouth, mostly. Her signature nose is so cute and small you can hardly compare it to anyone but her. Her voice is the same, but she’s rougher, meaner, staring back at your studying of her.

“Why are you staring?” she growls at you.

“Just looking,” you say, nonchalant.

“Stop.” You roll your eyes but oblige.

Awkward silence sews the following minutes together. Everyone eating but you, and Astarion making a truly brave attempt to appear to be too. He’s barely taking sips of his stew, but when his spoon is barely full he pulls it into his mouth completely. You hate to see him suffer this way. You mean to give him some reprieve.

“So…” you begin. Your companions look up at you, waiting for you to continue. “Is it really so obvious I’m not from around here?” you ask them.

“Yes,” they all respond at once. You nod your head in half-defeated acceptance. Your first words to Shadowheart back on the nautiloid took any pretense you might have saved for this moment. You pause for a while, debating what you want to say next. What can even be said. I’m an alien from another world? I’m a traveler lost in a different realm? I’m just a kid and my fictional gods are taking care of me? It causes you too much stress, so you get up to take a lap, and end up near your desk. Your pen and journal rest in front of your chair. Planning travel on top of weather on top of battle strategy on top of history and investigations. It’s all going to end up somewhere. The spill-over is going to need an extra place to go. Reaching into your pocket, you grasp your phone before letting it go.

“Would you like to know where I’m from?” Your back is to them, but still you feel their eyes. This captures each of their full attentions, as they wait for your reveal with full mouths or bated breaths. You shift nervously, bite the inside of your mouth, look away and fight the moment from passing too fast.

“Have you guys ever heard of a planet called… Earth?” You turn. They stare.

Silence.

You look at them, and they look at you. And you look at them. And they just don’t say a damn thing.

“What’s that?” Lae’zel finally snaps the quiet in two.

“What’s what?”

“A plan-et, an–Earth? Do you mean to say ‘plane’?”

“No, I mean a planet. A spherical mass, with an atmosphere and an orbital pattern around a star,” you explain.

“A self-contained world then, surrounded by a crystal sphere,” she concludes.

“No! I mean a planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a supercluster, in a universe! Ninety-two billion light years of nothing but a pale blue dot!” you wave your arms around, animated but not frustrated.

“I don’t think you understand how cosmology works,” Shadowheart snarks.

You let out a gasp of indignation. “Just because our cosmological models and terms are different from yours doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about! Gale, come on now, you’ve heard of Earth right? You believe me?” All eyes turn on the purple-robbed wizard, who bundles it up in his hands like he wants to disappear inside it forever.

“I, um. Well, er–I don’t recall.” He throws his hands up finally and you groan with true frustration now.

“Well! If you’re an alien, then I’m a princess of House Nightstar, and I’m married to a tarrasque named Jonathan,” Astarion sasses, to which everyone rolls their eyes or groans.

You know there is one thing you can do now to convince them. But a poke at the back of your mind gives you pause. Is this really what you want to do? From all corners of your mind, a resounding “yes” ripples outward.

“Fine!” You finalize the choice to pull out your phone, an irreversible decision, but one you intend to stand by no matter what. They’ll understand now, but it’ll change things. Forever. You’re going to have some fun with this, regardless of the panic inside you.

Your execution of the reveal is multifaceted. Making no major show of it, you pull out your phone and don’t hide it in your hand. The purple glass, cracked all over from persistent refusal to put on a case, isn’t hidden well enough by your fingers. Every pair of eyes widens at the sight. Despite this, you turn around and open your phone. At your desk, you stand and flip open your notebook. Making a note, you write, “Tomorrow’s Weather:” before checking your weather app. To your shock, it opens like normal, except the UI is completely altered. Temperatures are present for “Emerald Grove” as well as the region’s upcoming weather patterns and stats. How is this working? An unspoken boon from your benefactors? You put down, “Rain in two days” after your first note.

“What… is that?” Gale interrupts your writing.

“What’s what?” you say sarcastically, “I thought I wasn’t an alien.”

“I never said you weren’t,” he corrects.

“Huh,” is your reply. You slip the phone back into your pocket now. Playing this game with them is fun, because the reveal is right on the tip of your tongue.

“But what was that?” Astarion asks. “That thing you put in your pocket. Show us.” He’s challenging you on this now. So, what better time to be truthful? You return his brazen stare, although your own lacks the bite of anger his contains. You let your phone rest in the palm of your hand, displaying it like you’re offering it to them. The cracked purple back reflects firelight, shining onto confused and curious faces.

“What in the hells?” Astarion wonders aloud. He looks to you for answers. You decide you’re done with teasing.

“It’s my phone. It does a lot of things. It can make calls, take pictures, connect to the Internet, record videos, and remind me of tasks. And a whole lot more too! It’s one of the most important things I own, and somehow it survived the nautiloid,” you describe, tapping your screen to see a dangerous 15%. You let out an “EEK,” then let the screen darken.

“Why does it need to make calls? You’re more than capable of talking loudly,” Lae’zel asks with her confused voice.

“What’s the Internet?” Gale asks.

“What’s a video?” questions Shadowheart.

“Is this ‘picture’ like a portrait?” Astarion looks at you with those eyes, the big round ones he hides only for private moments, and for a moment you think he’s allowing you to witness his true curiosity. When you return it in earnest, he looks away and narrows his features.

“Well, I can do my best to show you what I can. Astarion, will you model for me?” You crouch down in front of him on your knees. He glares at you with enough suspicion to indict someone of criminal lying, but he hardens up into his hollow persona.

“Of course, who better than I to pose for a portrait?” he flaunts, a proto-Blue Steel crossing over his face.

“Is that really the face you want to go with?” you question him, permitting him a chance to make his first picture a little more serious. He lets out a hot stream of air, but changes to a simple, neutral expression.

“Perfect!” You pull up your phone’s camera and adjust the settings until you get the clearest, best-you-can-do framing of his head and shoulders in conjunction with the background. You let in the right amount of light, and line everything up just so, then tap the capture button. No sound is released, especially not when you turn your phone around to show Astarion. The air itself teleports right out of his lungs as he stares at his own face, for the first time in two centuries. Giving him this–his face–back is a good thing, right? So why does he look like he’s about to suffocate? The stress, then the joy, following confusion and confusion and confusion. You aren’t to know what this means to him now. But you do. You want to give him everything. But now, you think, it may be too soon. It’s like watching his mask crack in multiple different places, the panic of him trying to hold it all together in front of others. Oh god. What have you done? Well… too late now. Might as well put both feet on the floor.

You flick the photo away to let the camera capture him in real time. He gingerly grasps your phone, as if his hand can’t believe what he’s holding to be real. He brings it in line with his face and holds it at a normal mirror’s length away.

“A mirror that can capture portraits instantaneously, and save them? This is… fascinating,” Lae’zel notes. You believe she pauses to keep herself from saying impressive; you can imagine she isn’t quite ready to admit you to be impressive just yet.

“A mirror that can take so many portraits at once they move. And relay the words and sounds made at the same time, all together.” You reach your hand out to take your phone back, but don’t before asking, “Can I show you?” Astarion looks up at you with conspicuous bewilderment.

“Gods… I’m absolutely beautiful,” he whispers. His eyes are wet and glassy, but the mask remains intact. You don’t know how to feel. Your other companions make tired groans, not knowing the depth his words conceal. “And to think, no one has ever had the good graces to paint my portrait.”

“And they still haven’t. A picture isn’t a painting. It’s light bouncing off of you, condensed through lenses and processed by crystals. It sounds like magic, but it's science.” Astarion doesn’t stop you from taking the phone out of his hands, but they remain unmoving as if it still lay with him. You watch as his waterline fills, but when your eyes meet and he knows you see it, it all somehow recedes from view. God, how terrible must a life be to learn such a skill.

You walk a few passes backward to allow everyone space in view of your front-facing camera. You stop and think for a moment before lifting it up a few inches above your head, and hit record.

You introduce yourself to no one in particular. “Today, I woke up on an alien spaceship in Hell as dragons and another, different species of alien tried to take it down. I’m not sure how I survived without getting cut in two, but I think I owe it to these two lovely ladies right here,” you point to Lae’zel and Shadowheart. “If I’m not mistaken, I’m the first person from Earth to meet and survive an extraterrestrial encounter. Thus, I’m taking it upon myself to create a little series of videos about my exploits on this new planet.” You bring the phone closer and turn around, only keeping yourself in view. “Tonight, I hope to run all kinds of illegal and unethical experiments on the only other human of the group,” you cackle in a comedic, evil voice.

“Does the other human get a say in this, or is he to just accept his fate with open arms?” Gale sputters, now off-camera. You giggle and end the recording. Turning your phone around now, you crank the volume and let the last few moments replay again.

“If these experiments involve technology from your world, I daresay I may be open to consensual participation,” Gale says after the video finishes. The others don’t make any effort to hide their sounds or expressions of disgust.

“Guys! I was just kidding!” you whine. “You know I was just joking, right?”

“You’re not a very serious person; I suppose I should have suspected,” Shadowheart gripes.

“The night’s still young! Why don’t we all get to know each other,” you say like you’re tossing a ball at a dog who only wants to bite your hand off. Diluted faces, weary of you and your offer, turn away from the light of the campfire to dissuade you from pushing them further.

“Or, we can turn in for the night, I guess,” you suggest, defeated.

Lae’zel and Shadowheart say some form of “good night” that doesn’t feel warm or homey. Astarion stares at you and the phone in your hand. He looks to be in pain, the fight against his urge to curl inward and suffocate himself a waning war in his eyes. Before he can let slip any truth, he leaves without a word, his gait tight and uniform. Your eyes flick up and down his backside, staring at the sway of his hips and ass, and then up at his back. The flowing fabric keeps any impression of mutilation safely away from your prying vision. You curse your brain for even looking at his body, despite the fact nothing crosses in or out of it as you bring your attention back to Gale.

“I think I’ll warm myself by the fire, for now. What do you plan on spending your evening with?” he asks you.

“The river, I think. The cold water might help with my aching feet.”

“I’ll keep watch then, for a little while.”

“Thank you.” You nod at him before turning away. Withers watches you hobble on spent muscles to the banks of the river, where you place a less-than-sturdy board to keep the mud off your butt. It’s not perfect, but it keeps your warm-colored linen pants clean. You remove your sandals and place them to the side. Keeping them far away from the water is paramount, especially since they aren’t waterproof.

The water hits you like icy wind on a winter day. Away from the fire, the darkness brings with it a cold unlike any other. On Earth, the comforts of home and central heating were never far. Now, the risk of death by exposure is only a night’s rest away. Giving your companions the tents feels like the right thing, and yet with each pass of your hand, your feet feel colder and colder.

“It is time.” Withers materializes next to you, and your body reacts as it always does with an involuntary jump.

“Is this about what I said earlier?” you ask him. The pit of your stomach opens like a black hole, pulling the organs above it into a sickening spiral down creating a mass inside you. There is no indication of any emotion on Withers’ face, just a blank, tired stare.

“The judgement of the heavens shant wait a moment longer,” the gravel of his voice tumbles over you. You can imagine both your benefactors and the Faerunian pantheon must have demands of you, or perhaps even punishments for breaching some kind of multiversal rule of continuum. Whatever their reasoning, the powers above, and maybe even below you, request your attendance. And it doesn’t seem like they’re willing to wait.

With a wave of his hand, the air around you thickens with a sickly green hue, not unlike the one that burst from the candles in his tomb. It sparkles and glows in certain places, and you look up to see an unreadable face on the skeletal man above you. You can’t move your body after a moment. You’re frozen in place as the world around you melts into view; it’s like mirage lines on a summer-warmed highway. Your panic spikes, but another moment frees you of the invisible chains.

Elysium soon cuts through Withers’ fog, the bisexual tones of the sky and sea around you admittedly the most gorgeous sight you’ve ever seen. On a stone platform, you gaze out into the expanse before you. A number of kingly thrones stand in a semi-circle, each one empty save for the center. Four giant women block your view of who resides in the throne, but you are almost certain from the scenery you know the very goddess they shield from sight.

“I must take my place,” Withers groans. He floats away to the throne on the leftmost edge from your perspective. To call it a throne is also a service as it’s merely an armchair with a high back. When the giants part to reveal Mystra, who looks not entirely happy to see you, you jump with a start of panic, excitement, and fear. The feminine half of the pantheon you know and feel a bit queasy to see all fix their eyes on your shivering form. You didn’t expect the darker half of the gods from your novel to be discussing anything with Mystra, but if anything you’re just glad to not be a smoldering pile of ashes.

“Seer,” they say in union. The proclivity of your benefactors to speak all together is something unknown to you before this moment. They each manifest a seat closer to you but further down the stone platform, which dips now to give them room on a lower tier.

You scan your surroundings and find it to contain the following: a clamshell wall most commonly found in an amphitheatre–the place you find yourself now–and a tiered seating area in front of you. It projects your every scuffle and shuffle to the women and Withers above you, all eyeing you with some form of scorn. White marble inlaid with mother-of-pearl allows what you believe to be crystalline linework of the Weave itself to pop with its purple and adjacent colors. Your masculine benefactors appear and seat themselves, as a knight and a woman with sharp cut bangs take their thrones between Withers and Mystra. To her left, bones, blood, and blades make up the appearances of the three beings of indeterminate gender. The auras of death around them in conjunction with their main feature all point to the deadly identities behind the swirling vortices. Finally, a dark cloud hangs near the edge of the platform: present, but not united with the rest of the gods.

“Do you know who we are?” Mystra finally asks you. Her voice is simultaneously right behind your ear and far above you on her high tier.

“Yes,” you tell her honestly.

“How?”

“I am not allowed to say.”

“Why not?”

Your eyes flick down to your benefactors, and hers follow. She sighs and grumbles.

“Are you aware of the sickness around us?” the knight asks. His gauntlet comes to rest in his lap, and the painted eye on the dorsal side reveals his nature in an instant. But you wonder for a moment if this a trick, if he means to gauge your understanding of the illithid resurgence, or of the catastrophe waiting outside the bounds of Toril’s borders.

Elysium, in all its splendor and opulence, seems like an odd choice for many of the most important gods of both Faerun and the Absolute crisis to join. The towers that stretch into infinity above and below you are magnificent indeed, and the sparkles would be cute if you didn’t find them so particularly frustrating on a particular woman. She stares down at you with malignant eyes, and none of the other gods or creatures speak. They watch you observe the plane around you, and can perhaps even see the gears turning in your mind. Why are you here? What happens in the dead of night on a mundane weekday, where you suddenly find yourself the center of attention for so many divine entities? One answer, a fear of unavoidable destruction by happenstance, rattles through your skull.

It surely can’t be that, can it? The blue-black terror ripping through the void, burning universes like teabags under a match. A fiery death and then nothing at all. Does Toril know? Does Ao know? Has it already spread here too?

“The illithid resurgence, or the other thing,” you finally say. You keep your answer vague enough on the back end, but telling them about the squid comeback should be okay, right? Wrong! The implication you know anything about the illithids and the Absolute at all causes brows to raise or furrow, though mostly furrow. You can’t even picture what they think you mean about “the other thing.”

“Our seer is familiar with the crisis of which we informed you moments ago,” one of the divine feminine voices calls. Her face is like earth with a deep and warm brown hue, and it carries a sadness of eons to it. You imagine she means for you to call her Kay.

“And you expect us to allow your lump of shit to muck up the mess? Ours and yours?” The blood curdles, and a piercing voice hits your ears like so many needles to bodily meridians.

“There are others involved in that process, I assure you,” a blonde-hair goddess says. Her pale skin and orange eyes bore into you like the noon-day sun, and images of a scholarly trio flash in your mind. Oh. That crisis. You chide yourself for assuming the big one is underway. You’re sure the Eye would be displeased to hear you call her a lesser catastrophe. But you take a moment to let your confusion unfold. If this isn’t the event you think, and that happens so much earlier, then what year is it? You don’t have enough time now to answer these questions, and a shrill voice takes up your attention.

“I do not care about your sick mist, I care about my spawn! My progeny! The one who would lead my church in the glory of bloodsoaked cities. Yet you intervened during his resurrection! You let him die!”

“A price must be paid for this transgression,” the blades ring.

“Balance must be reforged. Doth this assembly know the proper terms?” You watch as Withers and your benefactors exchange looks. Ay and Ess both share a look, then turn their attention to you. It feels more like a sentence, rather than a reprieve.

“You do not belong to this world. The rules of fate do not hold sway over you. The events of the next three months must not be influenced by external forces in an uneven manner. Thus, the Terran rule of threes must be invoked. To compliment you, two of your oüispri must accompany you on this journey,” Ay announces.

Oüispri? It’s the language of the gods, that much you know, but the exact term it refers to in English is lost to you. Even still, right at the back of your neck you can feel a twin set of tingles rush down your spine and across the whole of your nervous system. The feeling reaches to the most intimate parts of you, the shivers so intense it almost makes you numb. Like a limb waking up, buzzing takes each part of you and tickles you mindless. It all expands independently, in your hands and arm and feet and legs; each ripple starts at an offset from another. And then the burning comes, set into every cell you call your own.

When you crumple forward, your chin hits the bottom of the amphitheater. Above you now, Ess has both palms hovering over you with one red light, one blue at the center of each. Tinges of his power, the slightest hint of pink, outline each shining orb. When he speaks, it’s so garbled you’re sure the only reason you know what he’s saying is because he’s speaking it directly into your soul.

“The first: a taurian, born man, pure.” White and red ropes descend from above you out of thin air and wrap around your left arm. They’re a warm hug; a reunion between two friends.

“The last: a demon, born woman, sundered.” Black and blue ropes follow suit to your right. A restraint born from self-suppression.

Ess calls your full name. Middle and everything! The words appear and float to Mystra, who captures them singlehandedly and ignites them. She points the flame at you.

“Born between the hands of the Scorpion and the Centaur, the three of you share a history, a path and a destiny. Kin in spirit, triplets of the soul, yet lives lived in complete separation. To be born a minotaur, you might’ve found truth sooner; to be born a demon, you never find the light of family. Both burdens in their own right. Carry them until your task is complete, human. Shirk them at your peril.” Mystra calls out, hand outstretched as your mind is filled with thoughts, feelings, sensations, and ideas completely foreign to you.

One says your name.

Sometimes, when you say your name too many times, it begins to sound weird in your head and mouth. But not now, when he says it. It sounds like the only thing anyone ever calls you coming from him.

Meadow. His voice is deep and relaxing, like a sunny day sitting by an open window.

“Meadow?” you whimper. You want him to protect you.

“Where am I? Where are we? How are–” Tall, muscular, brown fur with red hair. His horns are creamy, and exit his skull from his temples to curl up in a soft “S” shape. He appears inside your head as clear as those in front of you. You take him all in at once for the first time, his handsome face stronger by virtue of his hazel eyes. He’s here. But then, your body rises and seizes as the blue and black ropes spread farther up your right side.

“YOU!” her voice cuts you in half.

Ecthrois. Hated, beloathed, your burden.

Black and white swirls just like a hypnotic pattern materialize in thick stripes rather than thin–her face–and stretch out to form the rest of her head and neck. Her hair is short and spiky, and she’s snarling, that faux-punk look right at home on her lips. Inside your mind she launches herself at you, and in reality your body knocks back with the force of her impact. You punch her, and she flies back. Strength in your mind is different then in real life, evidently.

“Out of all the idiot, braindead, absolute goober-ass things you could have pulled, getting us roped into the Absolute crisis is just so fuc-king you,” she snarls.

“Oh, like I asked to be whisked away from Earth and dropped on the nautiloid,” you fire back.

“You were practically begging! Oh please my darling celestial lords, take me away from this god awful place, so I can avoid all my problems instead of strapping in and actually contributing something meaningful to society.”

“All you do is complain, how’s that for contribution? Do you ever get us up and email our representatives? Do we ever make calls? Read theory? Volunteer? No, you just sit around like a lump and brood!”

“Is this how it’s gonna be all three months you guys?” Meadow finally chimes in.

“Seems like it, I fucking guess,” you sigh. Ecthrois smiles like she’s got something in her teeth, and you finally refocus from the argument inside your mind to the platform. Each of your benefactors look at you with such pity and fatigue, save for Ess, who just looks sad.

“This is the burden you must bear until the end. A benevolent monster and a biblical demon. Take care, little seer, and watch your step,” Yew calls from his throne. Mystra looks over at the Dead Three, who can only be described as glowing now that you’re bearing such a curse. Withers floats off of his armchair and back down to you, resuming the same position from your arrival.

The last thing you see before Withers’ mists envelope you again is Helm drawing his sword and cutting a swath through the manifestations of the Dead Three, and the silent black cloud disappearing. You jump but see nothing else, and the mists dissipate soon enough to have you on the banks of the river once more. Across the river, a fox jumps and runs away. Your feet are still in the water.

“Have I just been… sitting here this whole time?”

“Thou wert humming, and singing, and… whistling,” Withers tells you.

“Oh.” is all you say back. Your feet are perfectly clean now, but in the reflection of light from the moon you see Ecthrois’ face in the water. You give her a sneer, and bring your feet out to dry. Replacing your shoes, you wonder if Gale is still near the fire. Sure enough, he’s warming his hands as the rest of your companions work on something in front of their tents. You catch Astarion’s eyes across camp, sharpening his dagger as he watches you. At risk of losing yourself in the rose bushes that are his eyes, you turn away and refocus your attention back on the river.

“Maybe he’s already thinking about pene-”

“Maybe, I’m thinking about killing you already,” you spit at the river. You slap her face and the water splashes, and she snickers like a hyena at a comedy club.

You brush yourself and make your way over to Gale. His palms take in the warmth of the burning sticks. As you approach him, a shooting pain pierces you right as you stop a few paces away from him. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments all spasm in torturous agony, but only for a moment as your leg lifts and recedes away from the earth.

“Go to Hell,” he grumbles.

“Yes, good evening to you too, Gale. I hate to break it to you, but our space ship already crashed. If you didn’t get a good look while we were flying over the blood-soaked fields you’re gonna have to wait a little while to go back,” you jest at him.

“Ha! You’re a good sport,” he says, much more chipper but still a bit dejected.

He recites his piece about the triviality of the expression and the mismatch of how the day’s events and the words themselves weigh on him, though the latter is something you glean on your own. You notice Gale’s hair and take a moment to consider it. Groupings of strands each sport their own length with signs of them being cut recently. You wonder how long Gale’s hair grew out before he decided to cut it in an attempt to return to whatever his normal was before the orb. Now, three distinct thoughts all skitter around at once, “Running my hands through that would be nice.”

“It would be,” Meadow speaks inside you. You continue to give Gale a once-over, and he turns to face you.

“Care to share? I can listen,” you say, though not without a fumble over “I” and not “we”.

“Devils, dragons, mindflayers - they used to be abstracts. Pictures on a piece of paper. Heh… what a difference a day makes. Now we have tadpoles slithering through our heads like carnivorous foeti.” Gale finally turns to face you, and you can see the fear in his eyes for the first time. It’s soft, and scared, and he looks like he’s been left out in the rain without anyone to care for him. You can feel a force inside you–cold and damp, just like that look–straining out to comfort him. To your surprise, it’s Ecthrois.

“I need him to be close to me. I need to be close to him. I need him in my arms,” she whispers. The feeling of her inside you, under your skin, pulses like liquid hit by sound waves. You take one step forward, then another. Barely an arm’s length apart, you give him a flat-handed pat on the arm. You don’t want to make him uncomfortable with any forward affections, no matter how platonic or kind-hearted they may seem to you.

“I’m not too worried about us. I know we’ll find a healer one way or another. I think you should get some rest now. I’ll speak with the others to gauge where everyone is tonight, and we’ll make a plan together tomorrow, okay?” The warmth of Meadow and the chill of Ecthrois running through your veins keeps your arm from moving back to your side slower than you like. Gale’s eyes flicker to your hand as it falls away from his sleep shirt. His eyes crinkle with some sort of affectionate smile.��

“That’s the spirit. Let’s be up with the lark then, before the wee one gets hungry.” He places his hands behind his back and bows to you, then makes his way around the fire toward his tent. You watch him before turning your eyes back to Astarion, who picks at something under one nail with another in an ill-fated attempt to appear to be doing anything other than watching you and Gale. You do your best to take far strides over to him, keeping your steps to less than seven. A jolt fires up through you anyway, on six, and you hear “How hard is it to count to seven, numb nuts?”

“Your magician seems dour tonight. Must not relish the idea of sprouting tentacles.” Astarion crosses his arms. Then he uncrosses them. Your head cocks to and fro as he continues, “It’s understandable. Can’t say I’m a fan of the idea either. It’s just hard to join in on conversation or planning when all of this feels so new. The night normally means bustling streets, bursting taverns. Curling up in the dirt and resting is… a bit novel.” All while Astarion speaks, you know you won’t be able to avoid his eyes forever. You make contact for the first time all day, and something tells you he notices it too. His voice becomes more sultry, and his lids lower at just the right moment to appear even more breathtaking than he is to you already. Such a rich and radiant red, only for thorns to be in wait underneath. It takes you a moment to compose yourself after he finishes speaking, but you manage to trick yourself into thinking you appear to him a pondering person.

“I’m sure there is medicine or something calming around here somewhere. I could play you music, or make you some tea?” you offer him.

“Ah, well. Tea isn’t really my drink I’m afraid. And, I’m going to be up for a while longer anyway. I need time to think things through, and process, well, this,” he points to the space above his eyebrow. “You sleep. I’ll keep watch,” he says. Your eyes brighten a little, despite the weariness pulling them down.

“I’ll sleep well for it. Thank you. Be sure to wake someone once your turn is over, I want you to rest too.”

“Ah… thank you. Sweet dreams.” He gives you a slow blink and a nod, as you make your way over to Shadowheart, you stop, glance back over your shoulder, and say, “And by the way, he’s not my magician, you know. He’s our magician,” you flash him a wink and raspberry combo, then continue on your way around the rocks, tree, and bushes. You think you hear a snort from him, but Ecthrois pushes the thought out of your mind.

“Focus, ding-dong. Stop going gooey-eyed before we even get through nightly rounds.”

Shadowheart stands at the ready, eyeing you with suspicion as you approach her. The involuntary spasm of your foot sends you on a final hop over to her, and you land unceremoniously with a heavy thunk.

“Any particular reason for concluding your arrival with a rabbit impersonation?” she snides.

“I thought the Hot Topic kiosk you call a tent could use some cute energy around it,” you chuckle with a wink.

“Are you talking about me behind my back already?” she scoffs, motioning over to Astarion.

“The only two conversations I’ve had tonight have been in front of you though?” you puzzle. She rolls her eyes at you, clearly unbelieving of your conceptualization of her words. And yet, she’s trained under Shar’s Dark Justiciars for years. And the conversations did take place on her front side. A sinking suspicion you’ve misinterpreted her meaning comes and goes as she shakes her head and you, then continues.

“No matter then. You’d better get some rest after doing your little rounds.” She then peers around you, at Astarion again, who looks deep in thought as you both observe him without moving from where you stand. You snap back into place, and she raises an eyebrow at you.

“What were you two talking about?” she asks you.

“Oh! We were just discussing next steps, same with me and Gale. I want to get everyone’s input on what their priorities are so we can balance them tomorrow,” you clarify. She quirks her shoulders and gives you a curt, “I see.”

After a pause, she tells you, “I’d be careful with Gale.”

“What’s wrong with Gale?” you squeak.

“He’s a wizard. All they care about is power,” she shrugs as if it’s the most natural conclusion in the world. “Let’s just hope we rapidly find a healer.”

This–knowing her racist attitudes toward the githyanki, and their own racist and xenophobic beliefs–is what makes what you want to say next a match on an oil spill. You plan to lay out a rudimentary schedule of the week tomorrow morning to appease as many of your companions as possible. Gale will probably agree with whatever you say, and Astarion will want to stay with the group no matter what. Shadowheart and Lae’zel will be the hardest to convince, given their opposition to each other’s desired plan for a cure. Even if they have no idea how deep this goes, giving them a goal post to cross will allow for your cleric and fighter to find some semblance of peace in their mind.

“You seem… somewhat reliable. At the very least, you’re organized. I think you know how important it is that we find someone who can cure us. It’s best we focus on that,” she formulates, laying down an almost-compliment and a half. She affirms her direction to you, and it makes the morning’s conversation seem all the more daunting. You know your elven companion is contemplating something at the front of his tent, so you choose your next words thusly:

“I agree with you, but we need to be cautious. We’re in unfamiliar territory. We don’t know what the locals are like, if there are any groups that might mean to do us harm, or if the mindflayers have any presence in the region. One could have escaped, or more. We need to keep away from unnecessary conflict,” you tell her, listing off possible problems you may encounter. You also try to slip in that mindflayers may have more to do with the area’s issues than she may think, although you doubt she catches it, as she follows up with, “Caution is a luxury we don’t have. Let’s wake at first light and be on our way.” You sigh and nod with eyes drooping from more and more sleepiness.

Lae’zel is your last stop before you’re left with Meadow and Ecthrois. They make no effort to appear in the world, and simply rest behind your eyes. The warmth and chill blend to create a buzz under your skin, something that spikes as you pass Astarion. The wind caresses him and brings his earthy scent to you. You stop your lungs for just a moment to avoid taking in an obviously deep breath. You make a glance behind you at the bedrolls on the ground to break up your suspicious avoidance of his eyes. And face. And body.

“Where are we supposed to sleep tonight? On the ground? There are bugs on the ground!” she whines.

“It’s not like we have our bed here, do we? Of course we have to sleep on the ground,” Meadow sighs.

“If I get bit by a single little freaky beaky, I’m killing everyone in this camp and then myself,” she grunts as you stop in front of Lae’zel. She’s hitting her thrown-together dummy quite hard with her sword, making deep slices and wearing down the quality on its first day of existence.

“A monster forms inside us, yet you waste time with idle chatter,” she accuses you without stopping her assault. She sneers, flashes a fang, keeps her eyes trained on the hastily assembled mindflayer head.

“Speaking about our next steps isn’t idle, it’s pragmatic,” you tell her. She gives you a diabolical side eye; it’s a glare that puts the fear of God in you.

“And you dare come to me last? When I am your salvation?”

“I want to hear everyone’s opinions and desires, Lae’zel. We have time before we transform to at least get a list of priorities together. I came to you last because you are our salvation. You’re the only one who knows of a definitive cure. The others may not believe you, but they’ve offered no other solutions up until now. I know I can balance what everyone thinks is best, I just need to sleep on it. But I wanted to confirm your wishes with you too. Okay?” You stumble out your reasoning as she brandishes her great sword in front of you. There’s been no talk of any sort of resurrection, or resurrections, from your benefactors. If she kills you now, you’ve got no money to give to Withers. Or, perhaps, a place to go once you’re free of your mortal shell.

“I knew your kind to be fragile. But I didn’t foresee the severity. You talk of balancing wishes and making peace. Had I known you cared more for pleasantries than survival, I would have left for the crèche hours ago,” she snarls. She then adds, “My wish is for you to be quick about your rest. We must locate the crèche.”

“I know. I just need time to rest and think about this. An exhausted warrior is hardly an effective one, you know,” you grumble as you rub your eyes.

“Hah!” she exclaims, and it startles you. A burning feeling crosses over your skin, signalling a shock to your nervous system.

“You are quite bold to call yourself a warrior. And misguided. You carry a thickheaded notion in a complex circumstance. Do you suppose the parasite dares to rest? That it will not turn you at a moment’s notice? That the ghaik do not still pursue us with each peal of the bell?” You wonder what the phrase “peal of the bell” means for a moment, then she scowls at you again.

“Take your rest. I will stand watch; and should a single tentacle split your skull, I will not hesitate to end you.”

You cower under her wrathful gaze as you nod and turn back to the fire. A figure within startles you, but your eyes adjust to the light to recognize Ay.

“Take off your shoes, place them in front of the fire,” he instructs you. You slowly approach him, gazing at his form in all its magnificent light and heat. He offers out his hand to you, as you kick your shoes off and keep them far enough away from the hungry flames. The sticks collapse from a pyramid to a flattened square. The fire burns still.

“We must discuss a few more things before you take your rest,” he tells you. You look up at him, and notice the discoloration in his form over the fire as well as the distortion in the space around him. He must not truly be present.

“Come now.”

It’s difficult to overcome your fear of flames. The burning, the melting of skin, the pain. Fire is human’s natural enemy, but also its strongest tool. In the ever-running semantics analysis department of your brain, you ponder the meaning of stepping foot first into the fire, or taking Ay’s hand and then stepping in. Independence or dependence. Trusting or isolating. What does it mean to do both at the same time? The longer you stare down at the space awaiting your feet, the dimmer Ay becomes.

“You take too much time to think about things that no one else is contemplating,” his voice calls, fainter than before. You look up.

“I’m just scared,” you say. You can imagine speaking to no one looks pretty bad right now, but you’re too tired to care.

“I know. I can’t take that away for you. I can only allow you the choice to do what you think is best,” he says. His hand still waits for yours. You gaze back down into the fire. If you do it quickly, maybe it won’t hurt as much? Or maybe, just maybe, the master over flames might just protect you?

It’s not even a hard jump, really. You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and hop barely a foot over into the center of the square. Your feet are bathed in the flames, but they don’t sting or scream. They don’t even touch the ground itself, because Ay sucks your body up into the flames, and they grow to encase you. Flames behave like water, and your body falls into weightless bliss as your eyes turn skyward, and the fire overtakes your head.

As you gaze into the stars above, you feel yourself rise through the fire and into the sky. You look down below to find your body remains levitating in the fire, with your hair billowing behind you like a cape. You fly higher into the sky, the land around you growing bigger as you get higher. Camp fades from view until it’s a speck in an ocean of darkness, and you watch Astarion and Lae’zel shrink into tiny figures. Turning skyward, Ay’s white and red robe whips around above your face, blocking the rest of the sky from view. And above him, an enormous spinning disk comes into view, and you take sight of a large waterfall draining off the side you approach from. Ay takes you in close, and you run your hand through the rushing water as you catch a glimpse of yourself, Meadow, and Ecthrois. The water itself reflects some unseen light, creating an iridescent sheen around you. When you clear the top of the platform, Ay sets the four of your down on a landing.

The platform may as well be the Garden of Eden. Trees abundant with fruit stand on the left, right, and far ends of the platform. At the bottom of the three step staircase, lush and flowing grass dances in an unfelt wind. Light orbs of varying warm tones sway around the tree leaves, and at the center, four thrones command authority overlooking a fire pit. Standing on four different animal feet–bear, fin, and bird claws–you let yourself draw closer to the intricate engraving of scenes you recognize. Battles won, planets born, and souls your benefactors create dance together as one continuous, everlooping mural. Out of mist the other three gods appear in their thrones, and Yew waves his hand to topple the fire pit into a raised platform.

“Take your place, little one,” he commands you. A shiver goes through you, either from fear, the sound waves, or something else.

Before you can take the dais, Ess hands you a blue and pink pill.

“Your medicine,” he says softly.

“Oh, thank you,” is all you can say back. You’re sure he understands how important it is that you stay consistent on your medication. You throw it into your mouth and swallow. An orb of water manifests inside of your mouth, and it helps you get your nightly meds down.

“You come to us with a need. Name it,” Tea says from his crystalline throne. He crosses his legs and gives you a funny look, like this meeting is an inside joke between the two of you. Only one of you seems to know what that joke is, however.

“I haven’t asked for anything yet though,” you tell him. His eyes sparkle with mirth.

“The elf. You want to bring him back to life, hmm?” he prompts.

Oh.

Finding a cure for Astarion has always been what you imagine he and Tav do together at the end of the journey, occasionally going down to the Underdark to take care of the spawn below. But looking for a cure and potentially making one are two completely different things.

“What must I do?” It’s not a question of if. Not ever.

Ay steps forward as Tea reclines further. He motions to his brother, and you shift your focus.

“Answer this question: do you know what life requires to enter this plane, or be exchanged from one to another?” Ay rises above you, such that you must crane your neck to see his face.

“Sacrifice?” you guess.

“Anything else?” he intones.

“Love and friendship?”

Ay closes his eyes and takes a disappointed sigh.

“There is more you need to consider if you wish to save the elf,” he says. Bringing up a form forged in fire, you read parts of the rules off the parchment.

“Is that what I need to do?” you ask. Of all the constraints the pact places on you, you notice one above all else: the end conditions of the pact.

“Yes, though I imagine you’re familiar with this, seeing as you wrote it yourself.” He raises the parchment to let you read over it. Time spent on Earth thinking of deals you could strike with various gods to save your elven “lover” all culminated into this. You know the damn thing by heart.

Though long and verbose, you summarize the main points: you sacrifice the freedom to consume food and drink of Faerun. A nutritious plant you grind, roll, and light will provide you the sustenance you need to survive along with an energy drink and two canned water, each and every day. If your benefactors deem it appropriate, they will allow you to consume in special circumstances. On the first sunset in Rivington proper, you will venture into a plane of darkness to retrieve the power to remake Astarion, body and soul. A ritual performed in view of the setting sun will rebirth him, and he will be an elf of a new, proto-divine bloodline, unless you fail in your control and curse him to vampirism no matter what the gods of Faerun choose to do to him.

The parchment mentions more details, but you know the most important parts of the pact. A plume appears above the signature line, and you worry your lip between your teeth as you meander over the rest of the pact.

“You do recall the time spent creating this deal, do you not?” he leans down now, getting closer to your face. You don’t feel any malicious intent, but the closeness of his eyes to yours are startling.

“I do, I’m just preparing myself.” The plume quivers in your fingers, awaiting your signature on the page. You take a few shaky breaths, then brush the tip of the feather across the page. Initially, nothing happens. But, after a few seconds your name appears in shining light, and the parchment rolls itself up into a scroll, then flies into Ay’s hand.

“I believe in you,” he tells you. The scroll disappears, and he pats you on the head.

“Don’t be discouraged, little one. We know your intentions are well made, and you won’t be alone in your struggle. Take heart, and trust in your own mettle,” he offers you. It won’t be like you’re starving for months on end, right? Exactly. Astarion is worth this sacrifice, and it’s barely a choice at all. His life for your… transformation.

“We have something else for you.” Ess comes to you. The wind drapes itself over your shoulders and pulls you back a few paces off of the dais, enough space for another person. Ay waves his hand in a swirling motion, and the air ripples with heat to reveal a woman. Her long hair and bright eyes entrance you immediately, and you know her by her smile. The main character of your novel stands before you beaming in brilliant old age.

“Hey Seer! I know time isn’t linear and you probably haven’t met me in person yet, but I wanted to send you a little message on your first big adventure! Pèpep told me you’d been brought out into the big, wide multiverse, so here’s to you! I can’t wait to meet you somewhere in all this time and space. I’m really proud of the person you already are, and I just know the person you’re going to be will be even more amazing. Good luck on your adventure, and tell these old sons of bitches to go easy on you, okay? We’re all waiting for you, see you soon!”

She approached your frozen body, a decade of emotions–fear, fatigue, depression, excitement, resilience, hope–suffocating you as air and blood stop dead inside you. The image of her rushes forward and captures you in a tender embrace, one you can feel intimately. She caresses up your back, kisses you on the top of the head, then runs a warm hand over your cheek. Tears fall fast, from this moment and moments ago, drenching your face and neck before she pulls back, gives one final, dazzling smile, then vanishes into thin air. As if on a mission to catch up on lost time, your heart and lungs roar back to life, thrusting their elements back into motion. A light-headed feeling overtakes you, and you fall to your hands and knees on the dais.

Tears spill in waves. At first, the faces of your friends and loved ones flash across your mind. Where they are now, and whether or not they are safe chokes you harder than any pair of hands ever can. Your arms give out, and you collapse into a fetal position. Then, you take in the day in totality. The blood, the screaming, the gore, and finding people you thought to only be real inside a simulation. Ones and zeros. Nothing else. Now flesh and feeling under you somewhere. It makes you sick to your stomach, enough for the tears to mix with sobs that bring on a barrage of coughs, enough to almost throw up. At last you think of yourself: the pain and fatigue that wracks you, the hunger you just now notice, and the fear. It takes up most room of all the emotions breaking up against your psyche like a hurricane on an already weathered shore. You let yourself cry and cry, until you’re so exhausted all you can do is suck in sputtering breaths. A warm hand rests atop your head and your eyes open to reveal Meadow, sitting on the single step of the dais. His big, wet cow eyes meet yours, but he smiles, and you see his tail flick behind him.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks you. You nod a little. He nods back.

Ecthrois swings from a tree behind Ess’s throne. She looks sated enough for now.

Each of your benefactors sit without movement in their thrones. Each one of them fixes their eyes to your broken little body, but you find the strength to push yourself up into a sitting position. They don’t move for a moment, only exchanging glances between themselves. Finally, one of them makes a move.

“Let’s get you back to Faerun,” Yew tells you. He places a hand on your shoulder and grasps you gently, while Tea summons a cloud-shaped mist. The three of you place yourselves on the cloud with Meadow and Ecthrois floating around you, and descend through the stars, passing through Toril’s clouds and skies until you can see camp far below. Your body remains floating in the fire. By the time you slip back inside your form, your benefactors are already flying back into the sky.

Your eyes are closed. Inside your mind, you, Meadow, and Ecthrois sit in an alternative version of camp. Comfy backyard chairs hold each of you, and surround the fire in a triangular pattern. Each egg-shaped seat with stiff grass limbs and fluffy pillows floats and sways calmly. There are no other tents, and no other signs of companions besides the ones in front of you. The three of you stare into the fire in silence before someone makes a sound.

“I’m surprised you went through with that,” Ecthrois tries, daring you into a verbal spat. You make your best effort to decline.

“What else was I gonna do? Not take that deal? We needed to find a way to get him into the sun,” you mumble.

“Well, I’m perfectly happy with this arrangement. Maybe you’ll finally lose some weight and I won’t have to help your sorry ass along with vampy-pants,” Ecthrois whistles at you. You scrunch your nose in warning at her, but ignore the blatant provocation.

On the left side of your chair, a gust hits your hair and blows it into your canthus. Your eye reflexively closes in pain, and you look for the source. To your left, there is only a yawning black ellipse. Somehow, you recognize it immediately as your mind’s eye. You cast your eyes back to Meadow.

“I think you have to be out there for it to be ‘on.’ That’s what we’ve been watching from,” he tells you.

“Really?” You look back to it.

“Yeah. I don’t really know how you’re here too, but I guess normally you don’t have two other versions of yourself inside you? It’s the same for me,” he chuckles, and that dry wit makes you feel right at home.

“So, I should try to occupy my body again? How do I do that?” you ask him.

“Try closing your eyes and clenching your asshole?” Ecthrois says with a roll of her eyes.

You give her a stink eye and decide instead, you will gaze deeply into the fire and then close your eyes, and try to tune into your body. After a few moments of staring, the shape of the fire stays with you behind your eyelids. You take slow, deep breaths, and allow all sensation to creep in, something you usually don’t allow. The feeling of the chair, however, leaves you after another moment, until you feel much heavier than before.

The fire in your true camp feels like a warm blanket with a cool fan blowing over it. Your eyes peak open just barely, enough to see Astarion and Lae’zel sitting in front of their tents watching you with rapt attention. You don’t have enough energy to open your eyes fully, so you close them again and bask in the feeling of nothingness.

It is at this moment, under unfamiliar stars in a land that’s not your home, you make a solemn promise to all who will listen.

“I will protect them all.”

“I will care for them all.”

“I will see to the challenges that await us, and I will overcome them.”

“I will help my friends.”

“I will be their light to finding the better path.”

“Are you gonna fucking shut up now?” Ecthrois yells from somewhere behind you. You imagine a hard, heavy object and throwing it at her. You hear a thunk and nothing else.

It does take some time to fall asleep. All the feebleness inside you takes control, and you drift away slowly, not even noticing, too tired to care. It’s nice. Rest is finally here.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ☆｡･:*:･ﾟ★｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

Astarion doesn’t like how you’re talking to the wizard. He watches as you bring your arm to his shoulder, how long it takes you to return it to your side. He thinks about you and the day, all the events bleeding together at the edges. Your kindness toward all those on the road today, even him. The thieves’ tools. The strange foresight, your overall weirdness, the “Earth” thing. And then he thinks of his face. He studies it in his mind, pouring over every little detail of it again and again. He can see the outline of that blasted little mirror in your pocket, but he doesn’t know if he can nick it again while you’re awake. You seem… perceptive. Perhaps annoyingly so. Astarion resigns himself to rolling this dilemma around in his mind until you fall asleep and he can take it from you. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t the foggiest on how it works, if push comes to shove he’ll just watch you use it and then take it later.

He watches you bid farewell to Gale and make your way over to him. The cornered animal he denies is his heart hisses at you, raises its fur, but you stop before you can get close enough to kiss. Good.

Astarion hears his voice say things to you. He’s present for the conversation, choosing his words and saying them perfectly. But he can’t seem to catch your gaze. It’s always off somewhere behind him, or following convoluted loops that occasionally pass by his eyes. When he finally catches your eyes in his, he makes the most miniscule pass at you. A drop in pitch, a half-lidded stare. Astarion watches as the first crack forms in your defenses: a blush accompanied by a pause. Oh yes. This, he can work with.

He finishes the conversation and watches you intently as you walk away. Then, you surprise him by throwing a little look over your shoulder and teasing him. A game he’s so familiar with he may as well have invented it. Astarion lets you go, then listens to your conversation with the cleric. The only thing he finds of value from it is your desire to treat everyone’s opinions equal, and that you mean to be cautious about going near civilisation. The information turns over inside him as he studies you further, listening to the githyanki berate you many times over. At the front of his tent he stands, yet Astarion feels the looming mass of fear, confusion, terror, and hatred all roiling at his back. It stands above him, watching over his white curls from the rocky overlook behind his tent. And, it grips the vast majority of his mental space as well.

Astarion is already a monster. He tries to hide from this fact every day, and every night. Yet it follows him all the same. Like a stalker on the street, sometimes with the company of a real one, he tries to shake it in winding alleys and underneath the lantern lights that hang in so many taverns he traverses in a night. It never makes a real difference. And yet, this tadpole has given him an incredible gift: freedom from all the yokes he lives under, and distance from the one who holds them. Now, with a body all his own and a mind mostly there too, all he needs to do is convince an idiot do-gooder to help him slay a truly vicious monster. Unfortunately, the most promising candidate he’s found is holding a thousand-yard staring contest with a fire pit and talking to the air. That is, until an unseen force hoists their voluptuous frame up into the air and into the fire itself. Astarion and Lae’zel each make a move toward the fire, with Astarion beating her to the punch by the skin of his fang. He watches as your hair expands away from you as if in water, and your eyes roll back into your skull. Astarion’s knife flies into his hand before he can call upon it consciously, and Lae’zel’s greatsword points at your chest before you can even make a move. And yet, you don’t. In fact, by Astarion’s measure, you look about ready to pass out in blissful sleep. Your eyelids weigh down on your bottom lashes, and Astarion swears you let out a little snore. Shadowheart approaches late, though in full armor with mace in hand.

“By the gods, what’s happening?” she exclaims.

“The earthling has not revealed all their tricks to us,” Lae’zel spits.

“Oh come now, surely it can’t be tha-WOAH,” Gale shouts, coming from around the rock that separates his tent from the campfire. He walks around you with fitting caution, at least by Astarion’s standards. He circles slowly until he stands a few paces from Shadowheart. Astarion watches you intently, but takes stock of the reactions of the camp. No one seems to be hiding any kind of foreknowledge. This is just as shocking to them as it is to him. The other three wait and observe you for a moment, then lower their weapons. Astarion lowers his last, but keeps it in his hand nonetheless.

“Wherever this ‘Earth’ is, I imagine the people there must be quite extraordinary,” Gale says first. Astarion snorts.

“Yes, I’m sure they’re all just as attuned to the whispers of the wind and talking to themselves,” he says. Gale gives him a sour stare.

“You can’t seriously believe this ‘Earth’ is real, wizard?” Lae’zel jeers.

“I don’t know, that purple mirror was pretty convincing,” Shadowheart rebuffs her. The two of them lock eyes in preternatural rage. Gale makes an attempt to diffuse the situation with a, “And then pen! No quill like that exists on Faerun, I know for certain.”

“There are many such advanced technologies in many crèches and githyanki settlements. The technology of Faerun is pitiful at best,” Lae’zel declares. Gale and Shadowheart roll their eyes, and share something between each other. Astarion doesn't care to read into it.

“I will watch over this earthling, and should they prove to be less innocent than they lead us to believe, their blood will be dry before the sun rises,” Lae’zel finishes, her blade at rest for the moment. She makes her way over to her tent and crouches down, resting in an upright sitting position.

Gale and Shadowheart both look at you. “What should we do with them?” she asks.

“Well, considering it appears they’re fast asleep, I say we all get some rest and worry about their immunity to fire tomorrow,” Gale suggests to her.

“And then what? We follow them into the new dawn after the nearest bit of treasure?” Astarion counters. Gale shrugs at him with neutral displeasure, and Astarion shakes his head with a scoff, exasperation shooting off into the darkness.

“If ‘treasure’ includes a cure, then I’m more than happy to follow in their footsteps. But a man needs rest in order to walk, so I will bid the three of you a good night.” Gale nods curtly, then walks back to his tent. Shadowheart and Lae’zel fire one last nasty look at each other before Astarion is left with your unconscious body and a knife in his hand. He knows sleep won’t come to him any time soon, so he elects to make like Lae’zel and watch you instead.

There’s almost a comfort to that, in a way. He lays down his knife and watches the rest and fall of your chest. He hears your blood flow and smells it too, though he makes a true effort to not lick his lips. Hunger is a natural part of his life, and he’ll survive another night. But with so many new scents around him, he wonders how long he’ll hold out. But at the very least, he knows one thing: following you to the end of this is the only thing he has, and by the end of it, he will be free.

The night is long, and cold.

Astarion will endure it until the end, right up until the sun burns him to a crisp.

But something inside him wonders, as he watches you cast light farther than the campfire in the previous hours, if he’s found a sun worth chasing. And if he has, is it possible to wrap his teeth around you?

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alizha · 7 months ago

Text

𝗂𝗆𝗆𝗈𝗏𝖺𝖻𝗅𝖾 𝗈𝖻𝗃𝖾𝖼𝗍𝗌 | 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗍𝖾𝗋 𝟤

—Rolan x Tav | NSFW

Word Count: 8.7k (whoops)

Tags: female bard tav, tav is not described, angst, sibling relationships, sexual tension, kissing

CWs: explicit sexual content, references to canon-typical violence, references to fantasy racism, physical abuse, oral sex, outdoor semi-public sex

Summary: Rolan has only ever had Cal and Lia. They insist he’s family, but he doesn’t even need that. He’s never needed or wanted anything more.

← previous chapter | masterlist | cross posted to ao3

Rolan should have known how quickly gossip spread around the inn. It takes all of seemingly a half a day for the news to reach Cal and Lia.

“You dog!” Cal says.

His brother takes a running jump over to where Rolan is sitting at the bar and lands with his hands on his shoulders. It knocks the wind out of him a little. Rolan lets out a strained cough.

“I knew you two were acting weird,” Lia says, dropping one elbow onto the bar and jabbing an accusing finger in his face.

“Didn’t know you had it in you, Rolan,” Cal says, wiping a pretend tear from his eye. “But you’ve finally met someone who managed to take the stick out of your ass.”

Rolan swats away Lia’s hand. “Oh, shove it, you two.”

“Let me have a moment, at least! I thought you were going to be alone forever,” she says, resting her chin cheekily in her palm.

“And I might still be,” Rolan tells her grimly.

Cal gasps dramatically. “What? Was it that bad?”

“What are you on about, you dope? Mystra save me, all I did was kiss her.”

“That’s not how I heard it. I heard from someone who heard it from Bex that you were practically on top of her.”

He and Lia stare at their brother, horrified.

“Gross, Cal! Urgh! I much prefer remaining blissfully unaware that Rolan even knows what sex is.”

She smacks Cal lightly, spurring on a bout of playful roughhousing between them. Quickly, though, they join forces and turn their poking toward Rolan. He buries his face in his arms on the table, desperately hoping his siblings don’t notice his blush.

“Rolan! Your ears are red!”

He doesn’t see her again until after the shadow curse is broken, and even then, it’s only for a brief moment. The land was still enveloped in darkness, but everyone could feel a change had happened. As had become typical, no one bothered to explain to them or any of the other refugees what the hells was going on exactly.

Naturally, Rolan’s concern turned toward Tav. It seemed likely that whatever was going on, it’d been set into motion by her. Within the hour, the Harpers have mobilised and Jaheira is on her way to Moonrise.

“It’s the shadow curse,” Cal says. “Do you think they broke it?”

“We’re not taking any chances,” Lia says sharply. “We’re staying our arses right here until someone officially tells us it’s clear out there.”

Rolan agrees with a short hum. “It could still be dangerous.”

“But Rolan,” Cal gives him a worried look. “Your apprenticeship. We’ll barely make it as it is. If we wait any longer…”

He shakes his head firmly. Risking their lives again for his sake—Rolan won’t hear of it, apprenticeship be damned.

Just then, the doors to the inn crash open. Rolan feels like he’s been struck by lightning. Tav. She’s alive, although she looks just about spent. She hurries over to them with Halsin at her side, her other companions probably waiting somewhere just outside.

“Jaheira,” she pants, leaning slightly over with her hands on her knees.

“She took the Harpers to Moonrise,” Lia offers, jumping up. “You can catch them if you go now.”

“Right,” Halsin says with a grateful nod. “Tav.”

She holds up a hand, apparently needing another second to gather herself. When she does, she straightens with a groan.

“We’ll send someone as soon as the curse is gone,” she says, still breathless. “And once it is, you have to leave straight away, so be ready.”

Rolan’s stomach lurches. “What?”

“Your apprenticeship. You can’t be late. What would the great Lorroakan say?”

“You idiot,” he says, shaking his head. She’s about to dive headfirst into another battle at Moonrise looking like the undead, and she’s concerned about his apprenticeship.

“We’ll be ready,” Cal assures her for him.

Rolan almost wants to scold some sense into the both of them but stops when he sees Tav’s heavy smile.

“You’re gonna do great. I expect it’ll be a bit before we make it to the city ourselves.”

It feels like something is hanging in the air between them and simultaneously pressing against his throat. The spark of annoyance that runs through his head at that moment is laced with an equal amount of amusement. If she wants to ask him to meet her in Baldur’s Gate, she ought to just come right out and say it.

“Tav,” Halsin says again, taking an expectant step toward the exit.

“Coming,” she says. “Good luck, you three.”

She takes off at the same time as the druid. At the last second, Rolan shoves down the knot in his throat and shouts at her.

“Good luck, Tav! You’ll know where to find me!”

He’s not sure, but he thinks he sees the skin of her temples flush a little pink.

Rolan is ready for a lot of things when he finally reaches Baldur’s Gate. Curses being thrown at him, dirty looks, uncomfortable stares from children.

Mutters of ‘foulblood’ don’t hurt him. They never have.

What he wasn’t expecting was having to leave Cal and Lia in Rivington. His letter declaring his apprenticeship is a little crumpled and stained from everything it had to endure in the corner of his pack while they were on the road. Still, it’s enough to get him past the guard at Wyrm’s Crossing. Not so for his siblings.

After everything they’ve been through. After getting right back on the road after the shadow curse broke and splitting off from the other refugees headed for Moonrise. Rolan whirls on the head guard, ready to argue, but Cal hurriedly motions for him to drop the issue.

“It’s okay, Rolan! We’ll be fine!”

“I’ll sort this out with Lorroakan,” he promises them, fists clenched at his sides.

“Go!” Lia says, making a shooing gesture. “I’ll take care of Cal!”

He takes another moment to just look at them fondly before taking off. The fortress looms high above him as he crosses the grand bridge to the city proper. He’ll make sure they’re together again soon, no matter what it takes.

Ever since he was a young child, Rolan’s always been a good student. He was self-motivated, hard-working, prone to reading everything he could get his hands on. Everything a wizard’s apprentice should be, really. All he has to do is prove it to Lorroakan.

He’s admired the man from afar for years. The distance from every fantastical thing that happened to him on the road from Elturel overhauls his focus. His only goal is to become a great mage and protect his family. It always has been.

His days are spent tending to the shop—to familiarise himself with the magical items, his master tells him. And his nights are spent maintaining the tower. There’s plenty to do. Mountains and mountains of scrolls and tomes and potions that seem to have been piling up with very little semblance of organisation.

It’s all rather tedious work, but Lorroakan always seems to have his reasons for the tasks he sets him on. Eventually, he’ll start on proper lessons and research and the like. Rolan figures everything has a purpose. He’s managed to get Cal and Lia into a hostel somewhere in the city, and that seems good enough for now. He doesn't want to overreach.

The latest of his trials is cataloguing the alchemy ingredients in the tower’s lab. Even though he doesn’t want to seem greedy, he misses his family. His island is fractured, and he feels afloat—at sea without Cal and Lia.

So, Rolan forces himself to work through his exhaustion and manages to finish the cataloguing ahead of schedule. Feeling triumphant, he ascends the tower in search of Lorroakan, hoping his master will be amenable to discussing the subject of finally bringing his family to the tower.

The master of Ramazith’s Tower liked to spend most of his time on the top floor. Purportedly, he was always occupied with conducting his research, though today, he appears to be entertaining a guest. A waifish elf woman in a dress of deep sapphire that dips past her sternum.

He’s always found this room beautiful. The sunlight streaming in through the high windows illumines the specks of dust swirling around specks of blue light scattered below the vaulted ceiling. It reminds him of the Emerald Grove, in a way.

“Master Lorroakan,” he greets the mage with a respectful bow.

Immediately, the displeasure stamped on the mage’s face makes Rolan uneasy. Lorroakan, lounging on a throne of tomes, whispers something to his visitor seated at his feet. She nods and scurries off, and Rolan doesn’t want to make assumptions, but he supposes a man who never leaves his tower must have certain services transported in.

“What is it, boy? You’re supposed to be working on the elixirs. I won’t tolerate laziness in a student.”

“No, of course,” Rolan says quickly as he gets up and stalks toward him. “It was alchemy ingredients, actually, and I’ve just finished with that—,”

Lorroakan cuts him off with a string of tuts, shaking one finger at him. “That’s not possible. If you were doing the work right, you would still be occupied.”

A pit of worry opens its maw in Rolan’s stomach. He hadn’t even considered that his haste might dissatisfy a man as thorough as Lorroakan. A shameful oversight on his part.

“I don’t want to find out that you made a bunch of idiotic mistakes just to finish the work faster.”

“Yes, Master Lorroakan. I will double check my work. But while I’m here, I was wondering if we could discuss getting my brother and sister moved into the tower—,”

Thwack.

Rolan reels, then stands frozen. His vision, blurred for a second, refocuses on the expression of pure venom on his master’s face. There’s a stinging pain right above his cheekbone, pulsating with heat. He reaches up shakily but is too afraid to touch it.

“Back talk,” Lorroakan spits. “I will not have it. You will not ‘double check’ your work, tiefling, you will do it over. From the beginning.”

He can’t speak or move. Rolan stays rooted to the spot until long after his master has swept out of the room.

Whatever it takes.

The quizzing starts that night. Lorroakan throws him question after question, the likes of which entirely flabbergast him. Rolan pores over his repository of autodidactic knowledge, amassed over years of self-study, but he can never seem to find the right answers. And for each answer his master deems deficient, he raises his hand to him again.

He lies in his tiny cot afterward, unable to sleep. Thinking about Cal and Lia makes his chest ache more, and his thoughts constantly wander to Tav. Where she might be right now, what she might be doing.

He thinks about his unfounded suspicion of her back when they first met at the grove. He imagined she was perhaps a spy, or that she could be working for the goblins’ leaders, or even that she was trying to get between him and his family.

The truth, of course, is that the only one getting between Rolan and his siblings is himself. If he’d been strong enough back in the shadow-cursed lands, he could have prevented the cultists from taking them. If he was strong enough to prove himself to Lorroakan now, he would have them here at his side. He needs to toughen up if he’s ever going to become a great wizard. And he needs to do it before Tav inevitably shows up in Baldur’s Gate.

She wouldn’t understand. Wouldn’t understand the lengths he’d go to, or that he’s admired Lorroakan for years, or that even though he isn’t an adventurer like her, beneath the velvet and the silver plate, Rolan knows something of survival.She’d take one look at him and see a damsel in need of rescue again.

Cal and Lia might not be in Ramazith’s Tower, but they’re in the city, sheltered and fed, and he’d done that. A long held oath to the woman he took far too long to rightly consider his mother. Lia always liked to think of herself as the mother hen. She’d wiped their noses and chased off bullies for them countless times, true enough. But it was Rolan who made that promise at the end.

The rumours are true. The group of adventurers who had caused a stir at Archduke Gortash’s ceremony was Tav’s. It’s only natural that as the tremors and street killings plaguing the city go on the rise that she would soon follow.

Rolan doesn’t see them enter the shop until they’re at the counter. He’s not given enough thought to what he would say to her. The moment he realises the woman standing before him is Tav, all his breath seems to vacate his body.

“Tav.”

She looks to be in a much better state than she’d been in last time he saw her. Clean, not as tired, even her clothes and armour have improved. An odd feeling washes over him. A feeling like the Tav he knew on the road to the city was different from the one here now.

“Rolan.” Her brow is furrowed. “What happened to your face?”

His dismissive response comes quick and rehearsed. He’s had to repeat it a number of times to Tolna and a handful of shop regulars.

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

The residual pain from the cuts on his cheek and across the bridge of his nose are like background noise to him now. He barely gives them a second thought. But Tav has an uncanny way of seeing right through him.

She’s done so ever since the grove. One look at him was all she needed back then to know he was to be pitied. A miserable excuse of a man who didn’t even have the conviction to get his family to Baldur’s Gate alone or stay and fight of his own accord.

“But never mind that. What are you doing here?” he says in the cheeriest tone he can manage without it sounding entirely out of place coming from him.

Her frown deepens, and Rolan holds himself steady. After everything he and his siblings have been through, after they held him up through the years when he surely would have fallen without them, after they sacrificed their own comfort to get him to his apprenticeship on time—

“I have business with Lorroakan,” Tav says. Her words are clipped. He wonders if she knows he’s lying and is angry with him. It doesn’t matter.

“What is it regarding?” he asks, readopting an air of professionalism.

“The Nightsong.”

“Ah, you too? Seems all I deal with these days are adventurers inquiring about the Nightsong,” Rolan sighs. “All the information you need is on those pamphlets. You’re welcome to them, of course.”

He points to the neat stack he spent much of his precious time in respite folding, sitting on the desk near the entrance to the shop. Tav doesn’t bother following the line of his finger. Instead, she bites at the inside of her lip, hesitating.

“No, I mean I have the Nightsong. She’s in our room at the Elfsong right now,” she says.

An awed scoff escapes his mouth. If he had to bank on a group of adventurers to actually find the thing, it’d be done, he supposes. But her choice of words sticks in his head peculiarly.

“You must be mistaken. The Nightsong is an ancient relic.”

Her lips press together into a thin line. At first, he thinks she’s going to argue with him, but apparently she decides against it. After a moment, Rolan appends his reply.

“But if you have relevant information, I’m sure Master Lorroakan will want to see you. Head upstairs. You’ll find the way to his tower up there.”

Tav nods once and goes to take a step toward the stairs before pausing and turning to him again. “You’re sure you’re alright?”

He’d expect to find her persistent concern irritating, but it somehow worms its way into his heart and spreads warmth through his chest. Rolan crushes the feeling into a ball and banishes it.

“I’m fine.”

She nods again, stiffly, and leaves after that. Rolan watches her disappear up the staircase with her companions and, confoundingly, almost wishes she had planted her hands on her hips and demanded he come clean. But he recognises the idiocy of that—he’d been the one who insisted it was of no concern to her.

Maybe, he just figured that with her dogged penchant for inserting herself into other people’s matters, she would find a way to force the truth out of him. That would have been unfair, though. In the handful of times she’s intervened in his life since he’s known her, she hasn’t forced him to do anything he didn’t want to do.

He waits, tending to the counter with seemingly every muscle tensed and eyes darting over to the stairs far too often. When he finally glimpses movement there, Rolan turns and pretends to be busy. Coward, he admonishes himself as he nonsensically moves scrolls from one stack to another. He’ll just have to rearrange them later.

“Rolan,” Tav calls. He should have known that wasn’t going to work.

“Yes?” he says, straightening and facing her.

She’s leaning over the counter on her forearms and gestures with one hand for him to come closer. Rolan eyes her friends as he approaches—Karlach, Gale, and Astarion are bunched together near the door and speaking in hushed tones to each other.

“Is something going on?” he asks.

“Do you get any time off?”

He blinks at her. Suddenly, his heartbeat is in his throat. Is she going to ask him to come out with her somewhere? Alone?

“You should try to stay out of the tower tonight, if you can,” Tav continues. “And make sure Cal and Lia are with you.”

“Cal and Lia—,” he chokes off his words at the end. She raises a questioning eyebrow at him, but he clears his throat and changes trajectory. “Why are you saying this?”

“Just trust me. I have a feeling it won’t be good to get yourself in the crossfire of what’s coming.”

The pained expression on her face escalates his concern. Rolan grips the edge of the counter. “What’s coming, Tav?”

“Please, Rolan.”

She reaches for his hand, and the scratch of her calluses on his skin is just as electrifying as the first time. The tenderness she uses when she gives his fingers a light squeeze muddles his desire to demand a straight answer.

He sets his jaw and doesn’t respond. Tav understands his silence as the dissent it is and withdraws her hand. And then, in a blink, she’s gone again.

As nightmarish as the shadow-cursed lands were, it all felt like a dream looking back now. Especially in those last few days when Rolan deluded himself into thinking Tav could ever be anything more than a fleeting whim. The craving of an appetite he never thought he harboured and never expected to awaken.

Ships passing in the night.

What did he think she would have done if he’d told her the whole of his situation? Would she have marched right back up to the top of Ramazith’s Tower? Barged in on Lorroakan and sent him off the edge of the wrap-around balcony herself?

Maybe, she would watch him get smaller and smaller and disappear through the misty clouds surrounding the tower before turning around and striding back inside, backlit by the sun. Order her companions to leave. Wait until they were gone to scream at him. Call him a prat of the highest degree for getting himself into this mess. And then, he would silence her with a bruising kiss.

Wait. Where is his mind taking him? Lorroakan is in the foulest mood he’s ever seen him in, and Rolan reminds himself to stay focused if he doesn’t want to endure a particularly brutal lesson later. And that aside, he’s not sure if he could face Tav again if he continues down this line of thought.

She’d been trying to warn him of something earlier that day in the shop, but he wishes she could have just been frank with him. He thinks that perhaps if Cal and Lia really were staying in the tower with him the way Tav assumed, he might have tried harder to listen to her. But as it is, some sinister combination of shame and fear prevents him from shirking his duties even for one evening.

The woman appears seemingly out of nowhere. There’s no characteristic whoosh of the portal to Sorcerous Sundries, and the enchantments on the doors haven’t been disturbed. Just a strong rustle of feathers, and then she’s there, standing in front of Lorroakan when Rolan looks up.

“What have we here? A magician in a tower, hiding away from the frightening world.”

Her armour is brilliant silver with accents of pale gold, and in the light of the sun low in the sky, her hair and skin almost seem to meld with the hues of it. Rolan glances at his master, but Lorroakan is calm, face twisted in signature arrogance. The portal whirs softly. Tav steps out a moment later, along with the same friends that had accompanied her before.

Her eyes immediately snap to his. She’s chagrined he’s there, but she’s not surprised. The presence of Tav and her party do nothing to shake his master’s confident mask.

“What are you so scared of, magus? Not the Nightsong, surely. Why, she is nothing but a relic to be purchased and pursued.”

Rolan throat feels like it’s sinking into his belly as Tav’s words echo in his head. “My gods. The Nightsong is a person,” he breathes. “Master Lorroakan—,”

The mage cuts him off with a drawl. “There you are, my dear. At last.”

He catches himself recoiling from nothing more than a simple slight. What is the matter with him? Hatred threads sharply between his ribs, constricting his chest. Hatred directed at Lorroakan, yes, but also himself.

“You will address me with due deference,” the woman—the Nightsong—intones. “I am Dame Aylin. And you are a whelp without honour, without pride with nothing but a tower full of trinkets.”

“My apologies, Dame Aylin.” Lorroakan’s affability is transparently condescending. “I meant no disrespect. I asked our mutual friend here to make an introduction that I might get to meet the famed daughter of Selûne.”

The deliberate look and sly smile on his face when he turns to Tav makes Rolan’s stomach roil. Lorroakan holds out a hand in a welcoming gesture.

“Perhaps, my friend, you could help bridge the gap?”

“I came here to watch Aylin rip you to shreds,” Tav says without missing a beat.

Her words strike Rolan through like an arrow. This was why she had been reluctant to divulge the details of her plans. He’d spent so long singing Lorroakan’s praises. He should have realised she was uncertain of how this would affect him, having to choose between her and his idol.

What she didn’t know was that his resolve has already been steadily slipping. It was unthinkable that the ‘relic’ Lorroakan had been searching for all this time was a real, living person. By the time he outlines his plans to cage her for her immortality, Rolan’s at his breaking point.

“You know, a man named Ketheric Thorm already tried stealing Aylin’s immortality,” Tav says. “He’s dead now.”

She flickers her gaze briefly to Rolan. A signal. She wants him to back off, to run before things get ugly. There’s no chance he’s going to flee. Lorroakan is his problem to deal with as much as he is hers.

“Pity. You could have reaped the rewards of my good favour,” Lorroakan tuts. His face quickly contorts in scorn as he turns to Rolan. “Boy! At the ready. Once I’ve taken control of the aasimar, she must go directly into the caging runes.”

“No, Master Lorroakan,” he says, making a conscious effort to meet his withering gaze. “I would never have assisted you if I knew you planned such horrors.”

“Watch your tongue, you child! I could make it such that no wizard in the realm will touch you!”

Lorroakan’s face has turned an even more impressive shade of red than him. Rolan glares down his nose at this man who suddenly seemed very small and wretched indeed.

“If they’re all like you, I think that sounds like an excellent bargain.”

In the end, the bastard got what he deserved. Neither Rolan nor Tav get the pleasure of dealing the killing blow. That honour goes to Dame Aylin with a blow that rattles the bookshelves, and Rolan supposes that’s poetic enough.

The moment Lorroakan’s body hits the ground, he staggers back and braces the railing. Combat magic is exhausting, he feels drained to his core. How does Tav do this multiple times in one day?

“Are you alright?” she asks him. That question again.

“Better now,” he says. And it’s the truth, despite the tremor in his legs and the smell of singed cloth coming off his robes.

He lets her help him to the ground and sits leaning against the cold metal. There’s a new scar on her neck right above the high collar of her leather armour that he hasn’t noticed before. It wasn’t there the last time he was close enough to her to notice such things. Probably from an errant arrow that happened to just miss her.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Tav says, moving aside the burnt fabric of his sleeve. “Astarion said he’s seen enough beatings to know someone was knocking you around.”

Rolan hisses involuntarily as some of the tatters brush against his angry burn, and Tav’s fingers jump a little, startled. She slows her movements, careful not to make the same mistake again.

“It was him,” he says bitterly, glaring at his former master’s corpse cooling on the red carpet.

“Then, I only wish we could kill him again,” she says.

She holds her hand over his wound and whistles a soft tune. The blue light of her healing magic evokes the scent of pepper and florals and instantly soothes his skin. He’s amazed by her.

“Combat magic and healing,” Rolan says. “Is there no end to your flaunting?”

Tav scoffs, but she can’t hide her amusement. “Me? What about you?”

“I didn’t do anything special,” he says as she draws back to let him readjust his sleeve. The velvet is ruined, but maybe he can find something better to replace it now.

“Rolan,” she says, frowning. “You were incredible. I’ve never seen a Magic Missile with such concentrated force.”

She’s flattering him, indulging him again, like at the celebration before they left the grove. It isn’t necessary.

“It’s rudimentary. Common spells any novice wizard would know.”

“That’s not—,” she shakes her head staunchly. “You’re not formally trained, are you?”

“No. I had to rely on myself mainly. But what does that have to do with this?”

Tav’s gaze slides over to Gale’s for a moment. The others have gathered themselves and appear ready to take off to wherever their next heroic appointment is taking place. Gale makes a small gesture with his head to indicate that they should get moving.

“Nevermind. Will you be alright here on your own?”

“The tower has considerable defences. And I won’t be alone. I’ll move Cal and Lia in immediately. They’re going to love it,” he says.

She grins. “All hail Rolan, master of Ramazith’s Tower.”

He likes the sound of that better than he should admit.

The books disappear from the tower’s vaults that night. It’s too much of a coincidence for it to not have been Tav’s doing. Lorroakan might have been too incompetent to upkeep his vast inventory of tomes, but there were measures put in place in case of thieves.

Rolan isn’t in a hurry to track down the books and find out why Tav has taken them. He’s been too busy with securing his ownership of the tower and moving his family in to bother. And besides, it’s likely she has her reasons.

Getting away from the tower is difficult, to say the least. There’s a trove of knowledge in the vaults, clearly amassed by Lorroakan, that’s never been touched. Truly a waste, in Rolan’s eyes, to leave so much valuable magic gathering dust.

He sets himself to work, with his siblings’ help, learning everything he can about Ramazith’s Tower. Perhaps, he can’t fight at Tav’s side, but there’s still plenty for him to offer as the tower’s new master. They start in earnest after breakfast every morning, enjoying the serene quiet of the sun-drenched top floor—after an extensive cleaning, of course. Rolan feels like he’s in his element again.

“Wonder when Tav’ll drop by,” Lia says, carrying a new stack of books to the desk and flanked by a couple piles of more books hovering at her sides.

He’d tell her she doesn’t need to bother with the heavy lifting at all if he thought she would actually listen to him. She plops her cargo off with a grunt as the magicked stacks line themselves up neatly on the ground, then dusts off her palms.

“She said she’d come visit, didn’t she, Rolan?” Cal says from the armchair he’s been reclining on. The directory he was meant to be working on is lying open on the floor beside him, and he’s toying absently with his quill instead.

“Sometimes, I wonder why you insist on helping if you’re just going to loaf around instead,” Rolan says pointedly.

Cal pretends to scramble to straighten up and starts miming furiously writing on his hand. This draws a beleaguered sigh from Rolan.

“She… implied that she’d come back as soon as she could get away,” he admits.

“That could mean anything,” Lia says, dropping into a chair across from them. “That could mean after the bloody Absolute’s been dealt with.”

Rolan grunts. He’s come to pretty much the same conclusion already. And he doesn’t want to put too much stock into an unspoken promise, anyway.

“Yeah, she’s probably just busy with Absolute stuff,” Cal agrees, tapping his chin thoughtfully with the quill. “I’m sure she’s not avoiding you or anything, Rolan.”

“Grand,” Rolan says impassively, sending his brother a scathing look. “Not that I asked.”

Cal leans forward in his armchair abruptly, lifting one finger as if he just came up with the cleverest idea. “Why don’t you just go visit her? You know where she’s staying.”

“I don’t remember either of you being this enthusiastic about your respective romantic prospects,” Rolan mutters, indignant.

“Oh, come on, Rolan,” Lia says. “You know this is different. It’s like you don’t even want to see her.”

His temples are starting to pulse. Rolan puts down his own quill a little too roughly. “Different how?”

Lia blinks at him. “You’ve been through danger together, triumphed together!” She raises a fist theatrically. “Surely, you’ve come out the other end closer than ever.”

Rolan digs the heel of his palm into his eye and groans. “This isn’t some romance novel, Lia.”

He’s always believed his aversion to romance made him the most sensible of his siblings. Just because he and Tav defeated Lorroakan together doesn’t guarantee them a happily ever after.

“I have you two to think about, and now, an entire wizard’s tower and all the power and magic it has to offer,” he says. “And I haven’t even scratched the surface!”

Cal and Lia are staring at him. After a moment, they share a silent glance, and Lia gets off her chair to approach the desk. Rolan raises a suspicious eyebrow at her right before she gives him a hard flick to the back of his hand. He yelps, rubbing the stinging patch of skin.

“What the hells was that for?” he demands.

“Stop being a baby,” Lia snaps.

“You can’t use us as an excuse anymore,” Cal says, folding his arms across his chest. “Stop trying to shoulder everything yourself, Rolan. Ask us for help once in a while.”

Rolan knows he’s gaping, but he can’t seem to pull himself together. His brother’s words feel like a bucket of cold water poured over his head.

“Just because you say that doesn’t mean I’ll suddenly feel alright with it,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady.

Lia chuckles. “You stubborn dolt. We know.”

Tav visits Sorcerous Sundries on a couple different occasions without heading up the stairs to take the portal up to the tower. Rolan knows because she interacts with his projection at the front counter. She sells off her junk, just like she used to back at the Emerald Grove, purchases elixirs and the odd scroll, then goes about her business. It’s all rather mundane.

Rolan wonders what right he has to intrude on her time when she has the fate of the Gate to worry about. He considers manning the shop himself on numerous occasions just for the chance that he might run into her on one of her shopping trips. But surely, he would come out disappointed when, inevitably, she would cut their meeting short to run off and play hero.

He reads the Gazette. Religiously. Trying to glean from the vague words what kinds of things Tav and her ragtag group might be up to. They’re hardly ever mentioned at all, and when they are, it’s not always in the best light.

Several nights after the talk he had with Cal and Lia, Rolan finally decides to make his way to the Elfsong. He invites them along, of course. Cal looks like his head is going to implode when Lia insists they stay and watch the tower for him while he’s gone.

His new robes aren’t far removed from the style of his old ones—Rolan’s tastes don’t skew quite as opulent as his former master’s. They do, however, make him feel a little out of place when he steps foot in the tavern. But no one in the boisterous crowd really pays him any mind. Until Karlach notices him.

The statuesque tiefling waves at him enthusiastically from across a few tables before urgently nudging Tav with her shoulder. Tav glances up to look at whatever Karlach is pointing at, and her eyes light up when they land on Rolan. His stomach does a somersault.

She mouths his name. Or she yells it, and he can’t hear over the crowd of other patrons. Regardless, she’s gesturing for him to come over, so he obliges, and she gets up to meet him halfway.

“It’s a bit loud in here,” Tav says close to his ear. “Would you come up to the roof with me?”

Rolan’s gaze snags on Karlach and the others sneaking interested peeks at them from their table, and he decides the roof is an excellent idea.

“Alfira likes to practise up here during the day,” Tav tells him as she waits for him to climb the last few rungs of the ladder. “But it’s a nice place for quiet at night.”

Rolan follows her to the railing at the front of the tavern facing down onto the main street. She leans forward on her elbows against the rail and gazes at the passersby below.

“I spoke to Gale, by the way. He says it’s very likely because you were self-taught that your spells have slight variations. It’s fascinating.”

There she goes again, speaking at him like he was only a wall. Rolan steps into line with her but remains stick-straight.

“Oh, how are Cal and Lia? Is everything well with you all? And the shop?”

“Cal and Lia—,” he tries to start, but his throat closes off a little. “Tav, I came here for a reason. I need to speak to you.”

She twists and rests her cheek in her hand. “We are speaking.”

“No, you are. Do you ever let anyone else get a word in edgewise?” he snaps.

The corners of her lips curl up impishly, sending a pang of awareness through him. She deliberately set him up for a jab. Damn bard.

“Y-you—you,” Rolan pauses his sputtering and tries to take proper control of his tongue. “You are an exasperating woman.”

“You can do better than that,” she says with a pout. “What about gorgeous? Incredible?”

“Incredibly meddlesome,” he supplies.

She hums in contentment, eyes fluttering closed. “Keep going.”

The sound of her voice makes his stomach clench tight. Unlike him, she’s wearing her casual clothes, and the way she cranes her neck exposes the arrow scar in full view. Without fully thinking it through, Rolan reaches out to trace the line of scar tissue with his thumb. Tav shudders beneath his touch, eyes flying open.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he says. “It’s maddening. I can hardly focus on Ramazith’s Tower because I’m always wondering where you are. If you’re alright.”

His voice breaks a little on the last sentence, and it’s humiliating. He can barely look at her.

“I was trying to give you some space,” Tav says softly. “You deserve time with your family.’

“How noble of you,” he says bitterly.

“I don’t have a family, Rolan. You’re so lucky, and so are Cal and Lia. I could tell from the beginning you were the most caring, devoted brother anyone could ask for.”

She brushes her cool fingers against the knuckles of the hand, making the stifling warmth blooming inside him even more pronounced.

“You stayed in the grove for them. You would have done anything for them,” she says almost reverently.

“That sounds like you. Your friends down there, they’re your family. You’re constantly putting yourself in harm’s way for them. I saw the way you threw yourself in front of Gale when we were fighting Lorroakan. You’re a bard, for gods’ sake. Let someone else do the protecting.”

“Who? You?” Tav grins. “I know you cast Mage Armour on me.”

“I wouldn’t have had to if you weren’t so reckless. Honestly, is that how you always fight?”

Her brow lifts sceptically as she steps a little closer to him. “Do you really want to know?”

Rolan swallows thickly. He’s almost certain he does not, but her proximity is making it difficult for him to vocalise his response. Tav’s hand on his shifts, sliding up the length of his arm to wrap around the ribcage threatening to burst in his torso. The moment she presses herself against him, he forgets every argument he had for resisting.

“You deserve to be taken care of, too,” she whispers against his jaw. Humid breath ghosts against his skin like a caress, carrying echoed vibrations of arousal down to his core. “Let me take care of you.”

The protestations in his mouth crumble. All he can do is nod, and perhaps it’s a little too quickly and a little too needy, but Tav immediately gives him what he wants. Her free hand cups his cheek, dragging his lips to hers, and it’s everything Rolan wishes their first kiss had been. Slow, at first, working its way up to insistent, until his head is swimming like he’s been stuck to the bar at Last Light Inn for too long again.

Through the haze, he’s somewhat aware that there’s longing in the way she slides her tongue against his, and it seems so nonsensical to think that someone like her would want him half as much as he wants her. Tav, who draws people to her like a planet with her own gravitational pull. He should be wary of the ego boost that notion gives him.

Just as Rolan feels the dizziness start to set in from a lack of air, Tav drags her lips from his mouth up the line of his jaw. The warbling sound he releases when her hand glides down his chest and past his abdomen is embarrassing. He leans into her, finally finding control over his own limbs to adjust the hand on her neck around to her nape.

She’s agonisingly soft. He can’t remember the last time a girl even deigned to stand this close to him. And they had been girls, because he must have been young and fumbling and undoubtedly a disappointment.

Rolan doesn’t want to be a disappointment to Tav, but when she closes her hand around his clothed groin, he’s entirely too much at her mercy to do anything about it. His hips jerk forward entirely of their own accord, seeking more of the delicious friction of her palm. Every sensation in his body suddenly narrows to his swelling cock. He’s desperate to know how her hand, her lips, would feel around him without the obstacle of fabric.

Tav pulls her face from his neck just far enough to meet his gaze, and although he’s pretty sure she can’t hear the jumbled array of filthy thoughts running through his head, her eyes burn into his. Licking her swollen lips, she walks him back against the railing.

“Is this alright?” she asks.

It’s so far from alright that she looks so in control of herself while he’s a mess slumped against the rooftop railing of the Elfsong Tavern. The only worse thing Rolan can think of is stopping her now.

“Yes,” he gasps, fighting the urge to rut into her hand again.

His breaths tremble as she dips down, folding onto her knees. Gods, she can’t really be doing what he’d just been imagining. The anticipation as Tav pushes aside his robes and loosens the ties of his breeches threatens to push him over the edge of release right then and there. Rolan’s hand shoots out to grasp her by the shoulder.

“Is it too much?” She looks up at him, and the sight of her with her chin resting over the bulge between his legs is almost too much to handle.

“I just—I’ve never done this before,” Rolan huffs. “Or, no one’s ever done this for me, I suppose.”

Her eyes drip with such gentle adoration that his heart aches. “I can stop if you want,” she says, tracing a line up his thigh with the back of one finger. “But I don’t think you’ll want me to.”

Rolan doesn’t realise he’s holding his breath as she eases the hem of his breeches down to release the hard length of his cock. He doesn’t have any misgivings about this part of his anatomy, and the mildly pleased expression on Tav’s face confirms the merit of his confidence. Without wasting any more time, she wraps her fingers around the base, and Rolan finally inhales sharply.

Tymora’s luck. She’s going to make him convert if she keeps going.

“You can hold my hair back if you want a better view,” she says, and she doesn’t wink, but her tone of voice invokes one.

With a groan, Rolan releases the white-knuckle grip he has on the railing and sweeps her hair up off her neck.

“That’s it,” she murmurs approvingly. “That’s perfect, Rolan.”

Finally, finally, she leans forward and takes him into her mouth, tongue swiping a sinful line from the underside of the ridge surrounding the head up to the slit at the tip. Rolan instinctively fists the hand he has tangled in her hair, head falling back. The wet heat of her mouth is more alluring and spectacular than he could have ever expected.

Tav opens her jaw wider and moves further down his length, flattening her tongue against him. Rolan peeks down at her, looking for some indication that she might be enjoying herself as much as he is, and catches her eye—she’s watching him attentively, pupils lust-blown and hungry.

Even though he can feel the oversensitive tip of his cock butting up lightly against the sloping walls at the back of her mouth, he’s still only halfway in. She holds his gaze and swallows. Rolan lurches, the feeling of her throat constricting setting off flashes of white behind his eyes.

She’s going to kill him.

Strangled refrains of her name tumble from his lips. She starts moving again, carefully bobbing back and forth as her hands brace the backs of his thighs. It takes every last bit of Rolan’s self-restraint to keep himself from bucking into her with abandon. Instead, as mindfully as he can manage, he rocks ever so slightly in time with her pace, slowly rolling his cock deeper into her warmth.

“You’re—ah—you’re gorgeous. Incredible,” he murmurs, surprising himself with his own ability to recall any portion of their earlier conversation at all.

Tav moans around him, the noise inflating his chest with pride. As if in reward, she hollows her cheeks and sucks hard before swallowing again. Rolan can’t stop the jolt his hips give in response. He feels himself hit the back of her throat and startles when she gags.

“Shit, sorry,” he says, pulling back until he slides out from between her lips with a pop.

“It’s fine,” she says breathlessly, wiping moisture from the corner of her mouth. “Do you want to keep going?”

He’s already regretting the loss of her warmth, but Rolan lets her hair fall from his hand and takes her chin between his fingers.

“Let me return the favour, Tav,” he says. “Please.”

He needs to. His cock strains at the thought of his nose pressed against her clit as he plunges his tongue inside her.

“Don’t you ever just take, Rolan?” she says, turning her head to press a kiss to his palm.

If anyone had asked him back at the grove, he’d have staunchly asserted that he would never want anything from Tav except for her to leave him alone. That attitude holds tight to him, entwined around him like vines, because letting go of deep-rooted habits is an uphill battle.

“Please, tell me what you want,” he says as she leverages his arm to push herself up to her feet.

With what he could only describe as a wicked grin, Tav reassumes the spot she began in, leaning back this time with her elbows against the railing. “I want you to do that thing you did back at Last Light.”

Rolan’s heart is beating high in his throat as he closes in on her. Eagerly, she tilts her head to bare her neck to him, and his eyes land on that scar again just before he latches his lips to it. Tav reacts immediately with a soft hiss and throws one arm over his shoulder.

He’s hyperaware that his cock is still exposed. It aches, weeping for release, and he presses it almost unconsciously against her stomach. Despite her obvious attempts at keeping quiet, Tav releases a string of stifled moans as he opens his mouth against her skin and tests the feel of her scar against his tongue.

Her hand moves against his thigh, toying with something between their bodies. It’s only when she starts shoving that he realises she’d been working on the fasteners of her breeches. Rolan feels his insides twist up the moment his cock brushes against soft skin.

“I want to feel you,” she tells him, taking his length in her hand. “Do you want that too?”

Carefully, he scrapes his teeth against her skin and preens at the sigh it pulls from her lips. “Gods, yes.”

She doesn’t need him to repeat himself. His words are barely out of his mouth before she promptly hikes one leg up to his hip and presses the tip of him to where he needs to be. Rolan similarly doesn’t wish to deny her any longer. He leans forward and rocks into her with short thrusts.

Tav lets her lips fall open as she welcomes him, gripping tight to his arm until he’s fully seated and—rapture. Rolan tips toward and rests his forehead against hers, trying to catch his breath. Before he can compose himself, she gives an experimental roll of her hips, and he sees stars. A familiar throbbing at the base of his spine that had been just out of reach draws his attention. And his panic.

“Stop, Tav, don’t—,”

She seems to understand and stills. “I want to watch you come undone,” she says, voice low.

Rolan glares into her eyes. It’s not fair that she’s just asking for things that are actually for his benefit. Too bad he doesn’t have the determination left to quibble about the semantics.

He tries to temper the firmness of his grip on her thigh as he starts to move in earnest with little regard for his impending release. She seems to respond to his confidence, contracting around with each thrust until she can’t keep up with his erratic rhythm anymore. At the last second, when he feels himself falling into the clutches of his orgasm, Rolan pitches forward to capture her lips with his and slam himself into her as deep as he can go.

Their muffled moans mingle together as he shudders against her, spilling his release into her. Tav moulds her mouth to his, cradling his shoulder blades as he comes down from his high. Once his panting slows just enough, she moves her lips, kissing him languorously and fondly.

“Are you alright, Rolan?”

That infernal question. He props himself up with his hands on either side of her. “Don’t I look alright? I should be the one asking you that considering…”

“Next time,” she says with a laugh. “Maybe, we could try indoors. Don’t want to make this a habit.”

So, she was expecting a next time. Rolan’s chest lifts a little from the elation. Love. What a pretty word for such a terrifying emotion.

Rolan answers the call to High Hall the moment it comes. He’s been waiting for this, but he’s far from ready for it.

There are faces there he doesn’t recognise, and others that it feels like he hasn’t seen in ages. Zevlor, Dammon, even one of the refugee children whose name he doesn’t remember. Rolan can’t help feeling a little forlorn that he did not speak to them much on the road, but they each still greet him warmly when he shows up.

Tav and her friends are the last to arrive. They look like they’ve already been in the thick of it when the real battle’s hardly begun. Rolan has little to do with the strategizing—his only real job is to activate the cannons on Ramazith’s Tower when the signal is given. He hangs back as the others ready for the fight ahead.

It’s not long before Tav comes to find him. She pulls him wordlessly outside. The sky is thick with an oppressive cover of cloud. Sections of the city are on fire, chaos raining from above, but standing above it all here, with Tav gazing solemnly at it all, instils Rolan with a sorrowful sense of peace.

“When you need me out there,” he tells her, taking her hand in his, “you’ll have me.”

She looks into his eyes. Even in the dull orange light, Tav is radiant. “Thank you, Rolan.”

Her free hand comes to rest at his cheek as she lifts up for a kiss. His heart is on the verge of shattering from the anguish of her lips.

“Come back to me, Tav,” he murmurs against her mouth. “Come back to me. Please.”

“I will,” she says. “I’ll know where to find you.”

Rolan chuckles weakly and takes a deep breath. “I love you.”

There’s awe in her eyes as she pulls back to gaze at him. Full of renewed hope, she smiles. “I love you, too.”

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