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autisticlancemcclain · 9 months

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The ship was shaking like a kid holding a goldfish bag.

It was not, in case you were wondering, a good time.

Keith grit his teeth, planting his boots on the ground and half-walking half-climbing over to Allura, who was paler than Keith had ever seen her. The grip she had on her podium was tight enough to drain the blood completely from her knuckles. Despite his own fear, Keith’s heart softened for her.

“How is it looking?” he asked, shouting over the noise of a thousand asteroids and a million laser strikes. All while their lions sat, drained of quintessence, locked in their hangars

One goddamn thing after another. Jesus.

“It is looking bad,” Allura shouted, not taking her eyes off the space in front of her. “I can’t – Coran, I can’t hold it on my own!”

Coran looked back at her grimly. He had probably the most success keeping upright – seriously, was it posture or did he have a steel rod anchored to his back at all times – but even he was struggling against the whipping and shuddering of the massive castleship, attention focused on the controls. Trying to keep the shield up as well as possible, trying to get their own defenses running. Trying, as always, to keep the castle going, even when the odds were a million to nothing.

“You can,” he encouraged. The effect was less encouraging when a massive asteroid hit the side of the bridge point-blank, throwing him right off the controls and splat into the walls. Despite Lance and Allura’s cries of alarm, he made a startlingly dignified crawl back to the deck controls.

Hell of a man, that advisor.

He continued once he was steady, sweat beading on his brow but gaze soft and assuring. He waited for Allura to meet his eyes, then nodded, once. “Focus, girl. Hands on the spheres. Mind cool on the exhale. However we need to get out of this – you can guide us. Make your decision. Your team is behind you.”

“Yeah!” Pidge cheered, lifting her fist in emphasis from where Shiro held her steady, eyes trained on her computer screen. Blaring red lines of code Keith could not pretend to read flashing rapid speed in front of her, and she typed back at it just as fast, keeping their crackling systems at bay. “You got this!”

Allura breathed out. The tense line of her shoulders softened, just slightly, despite the ongoing chaos. She lifted her hands and rested them, gently, on the podium spheres as Coran instructed. They glowed.

“We retreat,” she decided, nodding to herself. “We’re already low on quintessence, standing to fight will drain us dangerously. We must get to safety if we are to survive with our home intact.” She bit her lip, eyes opening. “But, uh, full disclosure, I have enough strength in me to open a wormhole and that is About It. I will be out of commission the moment it closes.”

Hunk shrugged. “We’ll catch you, then.”

“Try not to wormhole us into a black hole,” Shiro suggested, smiling slightly. “We’ll manage anything else, Princess.”

She laughed slightly, thankfully, but within seconds called out for everyone to brace themselves. Keith did as she heeded, or he tried to – but the castle got hit as he tried to crawl back to his seat, sprawling him on the floor. He glanced over at Allura, panicked, but her eyes were already glowing, and the space in front of them was already starting to warp. He swallowed roughly, squeezing his eyes shut. The floor was shaking too badly for him to get his bearings. He couldn’t get his feet under him, couldn’t stand, couldn’t dream to crawl to his seat. He stilled, resigning himself – he didn’t know exactly what would happen if he wasn't strapped down and protected during a wormhole jump, but it couldn’t be good. He had to hope for the best.

“God,” sighed a voice to his left, “you’d die without me, Dropout.”

A hand clenched the back of his jacket and yanked, pulling him tumbling onto another body. Quick as lightning a seatbelt was stretched over him, clicking into place just as the space in front of the castle finally warped, bright blue, and the entire bridge lit up so bright Keith was blind with it.

When the light finally died down, Keith was half-convinced nothing had changed. The castle stopped shaking, but instead it was plummeting, hard and fast, controls dead and energy gone, towards the surface of a planet.

“Someone catch Allura!” Coran shouted, and on queue the princess’ eyes rolled up in her head and she slumped forward. Luckily, Hunk had been more prepared than the rest of them, seatbelt already off and arms extended to catch her. He carried her back to her seat, buckling her in carefully, and strapping himself in next to her. Wise move – trying to crawl back to his own seat, fighting against the G-forces, would be near impossible.

There was a click, and then a shove, and then Keith got to feel those G-forces firsthand.

“What the hell!” he demanded, barely managing to catch himself on the arm of the blue paladin’s seat. “I coulda brained myself!”

Lance shrugged, playing for innocent, but a smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. Keith could’ve strangled him. “What? Thought I’d let you get back to your own chair. You're welcome for saving you, by the way.”

“Some saving, jerk! We're still falling!”

“Yeah. Personally, I would find somewhere to buckle up.”

“You’re so annoying,” Keith growled, and it was by spite alone that he managed to stomp back to his own seat and buckle himself in. He was bright red, anger making him hot – Lance always made him like this, so furious he could barely blink. One day they’d be making progress, working together like a dream, wiping the floor together, and the next it was like a switch was flipped. Like Lance was reminding himself that he and Keith could never get along. It was ridiculous, and Keith couldn’t for the life of him understand it. Was he so bad?

“Incoming!” Pidge shouted, shaking Keith back to himself. Her screen was now linked up with Coran’s, the only two things on in the entire castle – electronics seemed to come alive when Pidge touched them – and diagrams of the castle systems were blaring red, flashing with symbols Keith didn’t know, but recognised as bad. “The nav and power systems are down! It’s not safe to get anyone back there to force them back on manually, but I think I can get steering up in a sec. Shiro, I need your arm for power. Hunk, keep on Allura, make sure she’s upright when we crash, we don’t want a spinal injury. Lance, Keith, I’m turning steering over to you guys. Don’t fuck it up.”

Despite their bickering, both of them nodded. Neither of them particularly wanted to be turned into paladin pancake anytime soon, so they could collaborate for one thing.

Seconds after Pidge spoke, a screen flickered to life in front of Keith. Stats blinked back up, glitching rapidly as they translated themselves into words and symbols Keith could understand. The hologram shifted and expanded to its usual 3D model, joystick in the middle, thrusters and controls to his left, a screen with Lance’s comm line to his right. In his little screen, Lance met his eyes, eyebrows raised in question. Keith nodded. Together, they wrapped their hands around the joysticks, breathed out, and let their minds fuse.

As always, it was a freaky feeling. Imagine the weird, shuddery feeling you get when you say the same thing as someone at the same time, voices layering, tone mixing, for a moment your own voice and the voice of a stranger synching into one. The weird, deja-vu-but-not of it, the uncanny valley feel of recognising your own voice but…different.

Then multiply that freakiness by a hundred, and you still won’t quite get it.

On some levels Keith was aware that he was his own person. He knew his name, knew his hands, knew his history – or well, some of it. Nothing about himself had changed.

But at the same time, he was also Lance Esposita-McClain. He knew his name, knew his hands, knew his history, more of it than he could ever get from shared stories or mind melds. There’s no telling the way your sister’s arm feels hooked around your neck for the sixth noogie in as many minutes. There’s no explaining the way your breathing only gets calm with your feet in the saltwater. There’s no describing the curve of your mother’s smile. Nothing Keith was seeking out – no memories he would even know to look for – but they were there, simmering, triggered by a smell or the crook of his finger in a particular way. Memories stored in the body and the soul and the senses, not in the brain, shared when two consciousnesses become one.

Lance’s mind was hyperspecific. It complemented Keith’s well, with all his flitting, quick detail-oriented observance. As Keith jumped from angle to angle, noticing the planet’s curve, the pull of its gravity, the heat of its atmosphere, Lance zeroed in on an island, one of the only ones big enough for them to land. While Keith kept their craft in control, steering along the air currents, Lance kept them directed, single-minded focus on a stretch of rocky beach – not exactly a soft landing, but not a lot of living things for them to destroy when they crash. (Keith would’ve chosen to land in the meadow. Crushing frogs and bugs or whatever is never something on his top priority list of things to avoid. But he didn’t argue when Lance nudged them towards what is about to be a very bumpy landing.)

“Brace yourself!” he shouted, not daring to look away to make sure his friends were buckled. Trusting that they were, he held his position, letting them plummet, coming closer and closer to splatting on the planet’s surface before finally yanking on the joystick as hard as he could. He felt Lance’s strength twist and tangle with his own, and together the two of them levelled the castle almost parallel with the ground, letting them glide on their own velocity until they slowed down enough to let the bottom of the craft brush against the rocky outcrop.

It was the most turbulent landing Keith has ever felt, except maybe that time he and Lance crashed blindfolded into a sand dune, and every bump on the ground gave him whiplash. When the castle finally hit the ground for good, dragging them a gauge in the ground for several miles as friction finally slowed it to a stop, the leftover inertia yanked Keith forward so roughly the buckles of his seatbelt made something crack in his ribcage. When the castle finally stopped he got slammed back into his chair so hard he was almost surprised he didn’t fall right through the impenetrable material.

It took a minute for everything to hit. His connection with Lance had been severed the second they hit the ground, too focused on being, y’know, crashed to keep holding on. After the shock of being tossed around like dice in a cup wore off, which did not take long, Keith’s body made it very clear that yeah, no, armour actually only does so much, and crash landing is one of those things that’s just bound to hurt. His skull pounded. At least one of his ribs was most definitely cracked. His wristed and knuckles ached from the strain of holding up the entire weight of the castle as he’d steered it. He was alive, obviously, but – Jesus. Being alive sucked.

“Sound off,” croaked Shiro from somewhere left of him.

“Ugh,” groaned Pidge. “Screw you, Keith, I hate it when you drive.”

“Next time I’ll be sure to let us crash,” Keith responded flatly.

“Um, you did, bozo, I asked you to land us –”

“The castle was dead! What did you expect me to –”

“Allura and I are both fine,” Hunk interrupted. Amusement lined his voice. “She’s still out, but she’s breathing fine, and I didn’t let her hit anything on impact. She should still get checked out, though.”

“Roger that,” Coran agreed. “Ease your worries, Number Two, you did well. I will have her in the MedBay as soon as our systems are up and running again.”

“Oh, whew, that’s a relief, because I didn’t want to say anything but she kinda jammed her elbow into my sternum by accident and I’m not blaming her or anything since she’s unconscious but I think my spleen may be a little dead, not a huge deal I’m sure but –”

“Everyone quiet!” barked Shiro. “That’s six accounted for! Who’s missing?”

Immediately, heart pounding, Keith whipped to his right. His stomach dropped. The Blue Lion Command Chair was empty – seatbelt torn somewhere on the shoulder, cracked helmet overturned carelessly on the seat. The crisp blue and white lines were marred by a small splash of red. Panic clawed its way up Keith’s throat, and he was out of his seat before he could register unbuckling his own straps, looking frantically around the bridge.

“He’s here somewhere,” Pidge fretted, “he couldn’t’ve just disappeared –”

Coran had a gloved hand clenched in his hair. “The windows and walls should be almost impenetrable, there is no way the crash broke them enough to let someone in –”

“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck –”

“Guys,” a soft voice interrupted, and Keith could’ve collapsed with relief. The castle has been flipped sideways during the fall, floor suddenly now 90 degrees, and standing at the side of the control board, now the very high top, was Lance. For whatever reason he had climbed it while they bickered, and now stood very still, gloved hand pressed to the glass of the windshield. Blood trickled from his temple, tracing a line down the side of his face, disappearing in the neckline of his armour. “We got company.”

Shifting gears – Keith was about to tear him a new one, when Shiro says sound off you sound off – but froze when he looked out the window, following Lance’s gaze.

Marching towards them, in numbers Keith couldn’t pretend to count, was an army.

— — —

part two

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oathkeeper-of-tarth · 2 months

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Dame Aylin does not worry; she strategises.

This is something I started as part of a little examination of writing Aylin's voice, but think might be neat as its own post. It does provide a nice quick look at how she constructs her glorious dramatic proclamations and when exactly she refers to herself in the third person.

So I give you, directly from the game files: every time Dame Aylin says Dame Aylin.

To kick it off, the line she has if you attack her in camp:

You defile our alliance with violence. A disappointment - but not a threat to Dame Aylin, immortal.

Some lines from the end of Act 2, the Moonrise debrief, and the first time she comes to camp:

You have defeated Ketheric Thorm, yet you who were content to leave Dame Aylin in his thrall until it served you best. How do you account for it? But Dame Aylin's life is neverending. And she does not forget. Now - I believe Isobel asked a question of you. We will meet you in your camp - is it agreed? Do not speak so abruptly to the mate of Dame Aylin, daughter of the Moonmaiden, paladin of - You would deny Dame Aylin, daughter of the Moonmaiden, paladin of the selfsame Selûne? And you - Sharran. Cleric of the Lady of Loss, who is so much more than she appears. You and Dame Aylin have dangerous ground to tread. Moonmaiden, I ask you to cleanse the wickedness in the heart of the slayer of Ketheric Thorm! Forgive them the sin of sending Dame Aylin into his foul clutches! Hmm. Ketheric Thorm. Father of my one and only love. Enslaver of Dame Aylin. Why, she already has. She has brought her sword to your side. Dame Aylin.

Moving on to Act 3, talking about Lorroakan looking for her (and possibly discussing Aradin and his fellow mercs as well):

Is he indeed? Pray tell, what does he seek from Dame Aylin? Let them come, and let them find me. Dame Aylin will strike down any who seek to bring her to harm's home. Do not speak false to Dame Aylin. Not after all we have endured. Dame Aylin will face him. You will wield your glorious might at her side. Let us split him, crotch to crown, and let his twin halves fall where they may. Your intuitions are my lodestar, darling. But consider: now that Dame Aylin has returned to the fold of time, she could use allies and interlocutors. Hmm. If you judge him worth the endeavour, then I will do as you say. Now that Dame Aylin has returned to the fold of time, she will need allies and interlocutors. But Dame Aylin's deeds are great; her presence - present. Sooner or later, he will discover that the daughter of Selûne lives. Dame Aylin does not worry; she strategises. Our camp has been besieged by bribelings. And Dame Aylin is the prize that seduced them. There can be no doubt about it. But even Dame Aylin experiences lapses in her fine judgement. To Ramazith's Tower they were meant to take me. Ho! Won't Lorroakan be surprised when Dame Aylin trounces him in his own citadel. Oh, I hope he tries. Please, Lorroakan, come to me with your magicks and your flaccid charms. Attempt to lay one hairy finger upon Dame Aylin, daughter of Selûne most high.

Then, the showdown in Ramazith's Tower proper - first two if you side with her, the rest if she is betrayed:

Magicians and their plans for Dame Aylin. Predictable; sadistic; flaccid. Dame Aylin is watching. She is indomitable. And when her face lights the shadows of your wrongdoing, you are broken by its beauty. Dame Aylin does not go anywhere quietly. Do not tell Isobel what fate has befallen Dame Aylin. She must not enter this viper's den. When next we meet, no words will cross Dame Aylin's lips, but her sword will find your flesh and make of it her sheath.

Post-wizard camp conversations:

Set your mind at ease, my friend. Dame Aylin is more well now than she has been this past century. Ha! I am not surprised. You have a great talent for tearing down Dame Aylin's enemies. Thank you, my friend. From the bottom of my heart. But fear not: When the time comes for you to face the foe of foes, Dame Aylin will stand at your side.

A couple of battle cries - first one from the Act 2 final boss if you don't free her until then, and the second from the Act 3 final battle:

MOONMAIDEN, HEAR ME! DAME AYLIN IS FREE! Dame Aylin will not let this place fall!

I'm also going to include her introductions, though that's obviously a bit of a different case:

I am Dame Aylin. Out of this hellish realm I carry my sword by the blessing of my mother, Selûne. I am Dame Aylin. Daughter of the Moonmaiden, Selûne; champion of her causes in this fine realm. You will address me with due deference. I am Dame Aylin. And you are a whelp without honour, without pride, with nothing but a tower full of trinkets.

And, finally, we have a couple of written notes - very, very different in tone. First, a threatening, ominous promise she leaves behind if you betray her to Lorroakan, but he dies and Rolan fails to bind her:

Dame Aylin has never had an enemy She did not destroy, A traitor She did not undo. Dame Aylin has never died And stayed dead. No, she waits, waits, until The one she hates sleeps, alone, in bed and then and then she strikes.

Chilling, and calls to mind her vows of vengeance if you mess with her in the Shadowfell. I don't know if I'd find it scarier delivered in an angry scrawl or with some perfect fancy penmanship.

The second note is, alas, her epilogue letter if Isobel has died:

Ally mine, It has been a full half-year since last we spoke. Your great victory against the wicked brain of brains still plays before my eyes by nights; ho, it was a sight I'll cherish for the remainder of my infinite days. I hope these last turns of my mother's face in the sky have brought you rest and peace. But rest has not found Dame Aylin, no - I pursue the heels of a villain no less foul than the so-called 'Absolute'. An assailant who has targeted Selûnite enclaves across the coast. But fear not! Dame Aylin will find them. And you have seen yourself what she does to those deserving of her boot. The road is long. It is lonely. And I have not forgotten all I've lost. But I cherish what I have found, too. Yours eternally, Dame Aylin Daughter of the Moonmaiden Selûne The Nightsong-no-more Anon and Everlasting

And finally, to end this post on a high note, the beautiful PS she adds to Isobel's epilogue letter:

P.S. IT IS I, DAME AYLIN! I SEND MY REGARDS!

There you have it! Hope at least someone finds this amusing and/or useful.

#dame aylin #my beloved #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #datamine #she just can't help being absolutely iconic can she #i just love that this giant resplendent serving of distilled essence of Paladin was added to the game out of love for me specifically #HO!

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