#reithwin has indeed been the exact inverse of how it was for hector

[blackjackkent]

All right. Time to go in and see Malus.

-----

The blood smell is even worse in the surgical theater. The air feels thick with it. Rakha can taste it as she breathes in.

Like the rest of the House of Healing, this place was once fine and has deteriorated terribly. The walls are lined with seating and stairs and balconies of polished wood long since left to rot. The tilework floor is stained with long streaks of dirt and blood. The creeping vines of the curse have broken through the ceiling and walls.

At the very center of the room is a raised platform even more stained with blood than the rest. Four more of the strange, blank nurses stand in a circle around a half-naked body stretched on an examination table. And next to them is a form quite unlike anyone Rakha has ever seen.

A tall, lanky figure - his ears are elven but the rest of his body looks deformed, misshapen. His arms and legs are wrapped and stretched and replaced by tarnished mechanical limbs twice their intended length. His metal "hands" twist, revealing sharp, curved, blade-like fingers. His eyes are covered by a strange goggled mask that gives him the appearance of a staring, gaping madman. Every part of him, every fiber of his clothes, is drenched in blood.

"The objective of the scalpel, sisters," he is crooning softly, somewhere between an academic lecture and a lullaby, "is to soothe, for the scalpel indeed is an extension of Shar. See how the patient reacts when I but stroke the right nerve. Hear its comfort. Hear the very melody of mercy..."

He drops one of his long, taloned claws and drifts the blade eagerly across an open wound in the side of the body stretched before him.

Their victim, it seems, is very much still alive. At the brushing touch of the blade, the broken man squirms and cries out in terror and pain, too weak even to put full voice behind the sound.

"Pray, sister," Malus says. "Show us the extent of your beneficence." He gestures one of the nurses forward.

She steps forward, lifts a rusted-looking scalpel in one hand, and takes an unsteady swing with it down into the victim's midsection. There's a sudden splash of blood. The man whimpers piteously.

"STOP!" Malus snaps. "Stay your hand, for it slaps where it should stroke. We can hardly hear the patient's sighs of solace..." The man's whimpers seem to punctuate this speech.

Malus turns slightly. His eyes are hidden by the goggles, but his gaze has clearly fixed on Rakha as she enters the room.

"Perhaps it is our unexpected audience that makes you quiver..." he purrs. "Come - step forward!" He gestures again with his strange mechanical hand, this time to Rakha, gesturing her towards the dais. "You are no sister, but that matters none. Every student is welcome!"

Rakha's mouth has gone very dry. She doesn't move.

She is remembering, suddenly, the flickering set of images which the noblestalk provided to her in the depths of the Underdark. The only clear memory she has ever attained of her past before the nautiloid.

Rakha and Sceleritas, side by side at a vivisection table. Blood spatters across her hand as she severs capillaries one by one, delicate, careful. The search for perfection in agony. She shoves Sceleritas's face into the corpse as he clips the aorta, killing her victim too quickly. Another failure. Another not-quite-perfect death...

The blood pulse thumps in her head and her vision blurs. Yes, growls the beast in her head. This man understands. He knows... everything that we once knew...

"A student. Yes," she hears herself say, her mouth moving without her volition. "Do please... enlighten me..."

"Absence..." one of the nurses murmurs vaguely.

"Absence," Malus agrees with a sort of casually manic satisfaction. "No other word captures the heart of Shar so very perfectly... it is the scalpel-led journey that leads from pain to peace..."

As if to punctuate his words, he turns and swings two sharp blows with the knives of his hand, puncturing into both of the restrained man's eyes. The man screams weakly and spasms on the bed as a new river of blood pours out onto the soaked wooden floor.

"Hells," Wyll hisses under his breath. "Only a monster would inflict misery and call it medicine."

Malus looks down at the bleeding, shivering man before him and smiles, pleased. "See? What is the light of eyes but the cancer that causes one to witness the laceration of being? If light is the symptom, then darkness is the cure, for in light there is presence, but in darkness there is absence."

"In light is presence, in darkness absence," all the nurses intone together in unison.

Malus turns back towards Rakha. That unsettling smile still touches his lips. "But you... look how the succor of Shar eludes you!" he cries. "See how painfully present you remain. We do not wish to see you suffer so..." He takes a step forward on his long, gangly, metallic legs, his smile widening. "Let us cure you..."

Rakha's head has begun to ache. Her vision is whiting out at the corners and the beast is roaring in her head with sudden eagerness - and with anger. In her own voice it cries out within her, echoing down from that memory of the long-ago vivisection.

No. He does not understand after all. He has it wrong. There is no peace to be found in this slow torture. One kills to see the body twist and writhe and bleed and pass out of the world in unpeaceful agony, with no answers, no closure, and no serenity.

Kill him. He insults his craft.

She shakes her head sharply, trying to clear it of these thoughts. Malus is monstrous, yes, but Wyll would find these thoughts in her head equally so.

And yet this is who she once was, isn't it? Another killer, another cutter and slicer of flesh. They are two monsters staring each other down over this brutalized half-corpse, each only differing in the philosophy behind their blades - Malus and the beast, with Rakha as she is now caught between them like a struggling fish on a hook.

She clamps her jaw down tightly and tries, desperately, to focus.

[INVESTIGATION] Examine the sisters and their implements.

Narrator: The sisters' blades are bloodied and dully. Only the most measured hand could make a clean incision.

Pitiful, murmurs the beast. This is not perfection. This is amateur. Slipshod. Pathetic.

"Their blades are uneven," she says abruptly. "Efficient surgery will require further training." There is a plan forming in the back of her mind - and she cringes inwardly even as she thinks of it, because it is the beast's plan and not hers. It smells of viscera.

Malus tilts his head thoughtfully. "Their incisions are, as yet, still streaked with imperfection - that much I must concede," he says, with the air of a man discussing the weather. "How to steady their hands, I wonder..."

Rakha's harsh, off-kilter gaze bores into him. [PERSUASION] "Why not have them hone their skills on each other?"

Her mouth is operating without her. This is the beast speaking, the past version of herself that exists only in that single fragmented memory, reawoken by the familiarity of this blood-soaked room.

And Malus drinks every word down eagerly. "Yessss..." he hisses, his smile never shifting. "For are we not all in need of a cure?"

He draws back, lifts both grotesque hands in the air, and calls out to the nurses. "The scalpel does not discriminate! Let each and every one of you partake in its soothing journey! Absence, sisters! Acquaint yourselves!"

It's incredible, the alacrity with which the sisters obey.

Within moments they have cut each other apart. Four fresh corpses lie stretched on the floor, and Rakha sways dizzily as the beast feeds on the sight with eager hunger.

"It is a proud moment," Malus says dreamily, "when one sees one's teachings so lovingly taken to heart."

He turns slowly towards Rakha and flexes the mechanical joints of his piercing fingers. "You are to be commended for their graduation," he murmurs. "Rewarded with the promised cure. Come... I will acquaint you with the Lady's dark-fingered embrace..."

Rakha tips her head to one side and the beast's strange, feral smile tugs at her lips. For a moment she is aware of no one else but herself and Malus - of his madness and her own. [PERSUASION] "I would rather acquaint myself," she says, her voice calm and flat. "If you show me how."

(A/N: Slight artistic license - Rakha had a [BARD] persuasion option here instead, but it was much more verbose and performative and not Rakha-ish. This is the actual fallback dialogue line that is normally offered if you don't have a class-specific option.)

A long silence. Then Malus smiles again.

"Your diligence is exemplary..." he murmurs. "Very well. Your own scalpel will you be. Observe - then succeed me, into the succor of Shar!" His voice lifts in a sudden fanatical yelp--

And then without the slightest hesitation, he sinks one of his blades directly through his eye and into his brain. His body topples over backwards with a heavy, clattering thump and is still.

-----

Silence.

Rakha sinks slowly to her knees, staring at the sudden pile of corpses which has taken over the dais. She is trembling all over. The beast purrs in her head, sated, satisfied.

"What... in all the hells... was that?" Wyll asks faintly.

She jumps. She'd half-forgotten that he was there, or any of the others. "I... I don't know," she mutters. "I hardly knew what I was saying."

"An efficient resolution," Lae'zel says, just the slightest bit dryly. "Though I would not have objected to a fight."

"It is as I have already said," Minthara says, quiet and disdainful. "The Sharran philosophy is selfish, self-indulgent. This was a foolish performance, and Rakha put an end to it." She fixes Wyll with a pointed glance. "Or do you wish to say she has erred in securing that abomination's death?"

"No...ooo," Wyll says cautiously. "He had to be dealt with, that's certain. I'm just surprised, that's all."

He knows, of course. He was the only person to whom she explained the memory that the noblestalk gave her. He knows this echoed something terrible in her, and that she gave that echo voice, even if the cause was good. He is kind enough not to say anything, but he knows, all the same.

She hates it, all of it. And she hates that he knows, most of all.