The Once and Future Champion (Baldur's Gate 3/Dragon Age)

[cliffc999]

"Go! I'll cover you!" I shouted, as the towering demon-spider, at least five times the height of a man, that was the current form of the demon Nightmare confidently advanced towards us.

"No, you were right!" Loghain protested. "The Wardens made this mistake! A Warden must-"

I bit off my immediate reply, almost choking to death on the temptation to accept his offer. The former Teryn Loghain, now a Grey Warden, had once almost doomed Thedas to death at the hands of the Fifth Blight when he'd chosen the middle of a Maker-be-damned war against the darkspawn to betray and murder his king and try to steal a throne. He'd done everything he could to stop the Hero of Ferelden from defeating that Blight anyway in his stubborn refusal to believe it was actually a Blight, he'd only allowed himself to be drafted Grey Warden at the very end of that mess as an alternative to being executed, and he'd labored away in obscurity and shadows ever since until he'd joined the Inquisitor and myself on a mission to stop this be-damned king demon from corrupting all the surviving Grey Wardens with blood magic. More than almost any other man in Thedas, Loghain mac Tir could fairly be called a perennial screw-up and human disaster area who'd brought ruin to practically everything he touched, and who would entirely deserve to die even just to partially make up for his sins.

However-

"A Warden must help them rebuild!" I gasped out, knowing that with all of the senior Grey Wardens who had already died or been irreversibly tainted by Tevinter-spawned madness the former marshal of Ferelden was one of the very few Grey Wardens left with the command experience and leadership skills to have any hope of rebuilding the order, especially with the current crisis facing all of Thedas I turned and snarled at the demon Nightmare, the otherworldly partner of the undying Tevinter lord who'd caused this entire mess and the sole thing keeping the majority of his demon army yoked to his will. "That's your job! Corypheus is mine!"

"Hawke-" Inquisitor Lavellan sighed softly, sadly, as our eyes met and we nodded to each other. Both of us knew the weight of too many decisions, of always being the right person in the right place at the wrong time, of being responsible for everyone... just as we both knew which one of us had to carry on the fight elsewhere and which one of us was going to end their fight today. I felt all the weight, all the weariness, leave my shoulders and leave behind nothing but a strange peace as I reached out to clasp the leader of Thedas on her shoulder and give her a firm grip, an acknowledgement, a wordless reassurance that she would be the one to succeed where I had failed.

"Say goodbye to Varric for me." I quietly requested, and she gave a slight nod. And then I turned away again and readied my greatsword, charging out to meet the demon's rush and forcing it to turn and defend against me, allowing the other two their chance to run past it and into the portal that would let them escape-

"Failure of a man." the Nightmare sneered as its counterblow hammered me to my knees. "Failure of a Champion. And failure even in this."

I grinned back at it through bloody teeth as I saw the silouhettes of my two comrades leap into the portal back to the material realm and it closed behind them. "Really? Looks like a success to me!" I pretended to gather my strength for a mighty shove, then deliberately went limp and rolled away and under its belly as the Nightmare slightly overbalanced against my lack of resistance. I converted my roll into a kneeling, rising slash into that very same underbelly as the giant spider roared in pain.

"Stay or flee, the end is the same! Doom at either my hands or his!"

The spider lifted a tree-trunk of a leg and smashed it down, splintering the stone on which I was no longer standing.

"You know she's going to close that rift." I mocked it. "You'll be cut off from Corypheus, from Thedas, from all the demons he's summoned there. He won't be able to control them, and that entire part of his plans will fail. And even if you get back in contact with him later-"

"You will not be here to see it." the Nightmare snarled at me as I resumed my stance and stared at it over a gap of a dozen paces, slowly circling around...

"Tell me something I don't know." I eye-rolled.

"You will not die today." it replied levelly.

"... all right, that is a surprise." I raised my eyebrows. "But not a welcome one, I'm sure! Up for a spot of torture, then?"

"Do you know what your greatest fear is, Champion?" it mocked me.

"I damn well should, seeing as how you've been reciting our fears to all of us throughout the entire trip here!"

"Oh, mortals are so deliciously full of fears, all of you. Great fears, trivial fears, large and small I know them all." the Nightmare gloated. "But at this particular instant two fears rise the greatest in your mind, and your death is neither of them. At this moment you welcome your end, not fear it, for it represents a final end to your pain."

"You said two fears," I tried to draw it out, reflexively continuing the conversation as I had so many many times before. After all, the longer you kept them talking, the less you kept them fighting. And seeing as how we'd already discussed that one of my fears is that it would take its own sweet time killing me-

"And you fear never seeing your friends again." it finished.

"Considering how many of them are already dead, you're going to have a tricky time arranging for that." I said. "Even in this Maker-damned dream realm I'll die eventually after you finish with me. And then at least-"

"Such a small imagination for such a small being." the Nightmare laughed. "There are many, many realms beyond your little world of Thedas and the Fade, little man. Even I have never seen them. Even I am a tiny thing basking on the shore of a great eternal ocean, when considered against the scope of all reality. But you are less than a tiny thing, you insignificant little mayfly speck. How will you fare, I wonder, if I cast you into the depths that lay beyond even the Fade, beyond even my knowing? What will await you there? It will be a puzzle I will never solve, that I can only wonder at." it continued calmly, as my blood chilled further and further. "But one thing will be certain; whatever awaits you out there, you will never see anyone you loved ever again. Not even in your hoped-for afterlife."

"Dear Andraste." I involuntarily gasped, paralyzed with shock at the revelations I had just-

"Ahhhhhhh, there we are!" the Nightmare's hollow laughter filled the entire world. "That moment when all defiance is lost, when all heroism eventually fails! That I could bring you to this state before I banished you is revenge enough, even with all that you have cost me!"

"Well, at least never seeing anyone in Thedas ever again means I'll be rid of you too, you overgrown carrion-feeder!" I mocked it. "And that'll be enough to make up for all the rest!"

"Insolent little- Begone!" the demon shouted petulantly, and with a primal shout and a burst of power that taxed it to its very bones I was catapulted away from it, flying helplessly away with the breath knocked from my body as if by the club of a giant. I rocketed away from the Nightmare, away from the rocky platform drifting in the Fade that we'd been fighting on, away from even the distant sight of the Black City that was always visible from anywhere in the-

And as everything turned to silver, I blacked out.

---

Fire!

I was lying facedown on a strange warm floor, made of some odd substance that felt like carved horn, only wet. But that wasn't what had brought me snapping awake, the sulfurous stench in my nostrils was. I weakly scrambled to my knees, then my feet, feeling oddly dizzy and weak-

A searching glance around the room brought me no answers. I was in a dimly-lit space, a large oval room with a rounded vaulting roof, and a wide shelf running around the perimeter of three-fourths of the room halfway between the floor and the ceiling. The architecture was like nothing I'd ever seen before - parts of it looked alive, and all of it was built to odd angles and rounded corners with menacing spikes, out of materials that were neither stone nor wood nor metal or anything else I could identify. This was certainly no work of men or elves or dwarves, or even qunari. The Nightmare had promised to cast me into realms unknown and beyond the world or even the Fade, and it certainly had-

The floor rocked side to side beneath my feet, almost sending me scrambling, as a muffled inhuman roar sounded from somewhere outside the room. Even after the pitching subsided, now that I was alerted to it faint tremors of movement came to my feet, and a- through a small gap torn in one wall I could see clouds rushing past outside, or billows of smoke. And with that clue all the subliminal impressions came together for me- we were moving, the entire structure. I wasn't in a room, but a compartment. This was a ship of some kind, although certainly not sailing on any water I was familiar with-

I stepped carefully towards the opening torn in the wall - the bulkhead - noting with absent horror the corpse of a strange purple tentacle-faced demon of some kind, its bluish-purple ichor staining the deck. A glimpse outside brought me no sight of land or water, just billowing gray smoke-clouds that this skyship was somehow flying over, with a distant angry red glow coming through from beneath the clouds as if we were flying over a volcanic region-

I shook my head and deliberately drew a deep breath into my lungs, trying my best to shake off this damnable weariness and weakness. And yes, I'd been fighting a pitched battle for the past several hours, then lost a fight to a demon lord and been tossed into what sounded like another universe entirely, and been beat all to hell throughout, but I shouldn't be this weak-

First things first. I was still wearing my armor, but all my weapons and equipment were gone. There were empty black pods, made of the strange alien material, evenly spaced all around the rim of most of the room - a broken-open one, apparently jarred open by whatever impacts had been striking this vessel, stood right behind where I'd woken up to tell me that I had been in one of these pods but had been freed by that impact. A quick search of the room revealed that all the other pods were empty, some strange carved gray tablets on a nearby workbench I couldn't even begin to understand, several bottles of what I hoped were healing potions in a nearby chest, and several more corpses like the purple demon I'd just stepped over. There'd been a battle fought in this ship very recently - one that was still ongoing if the occasional distant sounds I could hear and thudding impacts against the hull I could sense were telling me the truth - and several dropped weapons littering the floor from that battle. I scooped up the serviceable-looking steel greatsword as the weapon I was most familiar with, idly noting that it looked so ordinary in its construction that I could have bought its twin from any blacksmith in the marketplace, and hoped that its familiarity meant I would find other familiar things here too.

"Right." I spoke aloud, comforting myself with the sound of my own voice. "If this is a ship, hopefully it'll have lifeboats. And if anybody's still alive, they'll be rushing for them. So, follow the noise-" I turned towards the room's only door and, bared blade in hand, set out. "I wonder who'll try to kill me first, the crew or the boarders?" I sardonically mused.

Although this place felt solid in the way that the material realm did, not having any of the subliminal sense of being in a dream that being in the Fade always possessed, the very next room made me feel like I was still stuck in a mad dream. The next room looked like some insane mage had been using it for a dissection laboratory - it disturbingly reminded me of things I'd seen in Quentin's lair - but I almost jumped out of my skin when the one vivisected corpse laying strapped to the surgical chair began moving and talking to me in my head.

"Help us! We are trapped!" the disembodied voice called.

"What in the Maker are you?" I demanded, staring at the corpse of a male elf the top of whose skull had been cut off just above the ears, and whose exposed brain was still pulsing as the corpse itself twitched-

"Yes! You've come to save us from this place, from this place you'll free us!" it chanted.

"First you tell me what 'this place' is." I demanded.

"We are in Avernus, the first of the Nine Hells." it replied matter-of-factly, and my blood turned to ice.

"This is a demon ship?!?" I screamed.

"No!" it protested. "We do not belong here, we are trapped here! The devils are our enemies!"

"Then how-" I began, and decided to focus on more immediate priorities. "Is there a way out of here?"

"The helm!" it chanted desperately. "The helm controls the ship! We must go to the helm!"

"And whose ship is this?" I pressed.

"You must free us!" it demanded. "Before they return! We must go to the helm!"

"And what are you?" I tried to refocus it.

"A newborn. Born from this husk." it said placatingly. "Free us!"

So whatever this thing was- the things that ran this ship were- they consumed people to hatch their children?

I raised my blade and cleaved downward, chopping the exposed brain in half vertically and listening to it squeal and die. Whatever these things were, them and the devils who populated this hell could devour each other for eternity for all I cared. I'd just try to find this ship's helm myself and get out of here.

The exit at the far end of the laboratory led to a curving corridor that led around the outside of the ship, on what was the port side judging from our direction of movement. However, the ongoing battle had torn a large piece of the entire outer hull away, leaving the walkway almost entirely exposed on one side. My stomach churned as I looked out and down over a vast, wide expanse of red and glowing terrain, covered by clouds of sulfurous smoke, as this impossible skyship soared rapidly above them. Lots of little moving specks in the distance barely showed the outline of bat-wings as they wheeled around menacingly in the distant sky. Truly this was a vista worthy of the 'Nine Hell's indeed-

A glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye brought me instantly to combat readiness as a slim, feminine figure in silvered half-plate leapt down from a perch above to land about ten feet in front of me. She was humanoid but clearly not human, with a narrow greenish-yellow face, almost reptilian except with an entirely human-appearing little snub nose instead of a snout, and pointed ears. I had no idea who or what she was, but her agility and the ready stance she immediately fell into when she landed showed her to be an expertly trained warrior, and the bared longsword she menaced me with showed that-

"Abomination!" she hissed as she coiled to strike at me. "This is your-"

I gathered my energy and focused it into one of the earliest maneuvers I'd learned, a leaping overhand smash, and closed the gap between us before she could begin to react and brought my greatsword down with both hands to batter her weapon aside and send her sprawling flat on her ass.

"Perhaps not the best choice of words." I said wearily to her as she stared cross-eyed at my sword tip, held steadily a foot in front of her throat as she lay there on the deck. Her sword had been knocked several feet out of her reach, she had no other weapon that I could see, and- wait a minute.

"You're not wearing a scabbard for that blade." I noted. "You snatched it up off the ground, just as I did with this one. This isn't your ship, then?"

"Pah!" the strange lizard-woman spat. "How ignorant of my people can you be, to even suggest such a thing? The ghaik are our mortal enemies, and have been for all of time!"

"But you're not a devil, either." I guessed out loud. "Wonderful, we're not only in the middle of a battle on a burning ship, but it has at least three sides-"

And then a strange twisting burst loose inside my head as my vision blurred. Her eyes and mine met, and a series of disjointed mental images flickered irresistibly through my vision- myself drifting through a silver void, a large horrifying-looking vessel with its profile like a giant version of those purple tentacle-faced demons - the ghaik, she called them? - scooping me up, myself helpless in a pod, suddenly seeing myself through her eyes as she lay trapped in the pod adjacent to mine, one of the ghaik floating into the room to study us dispassionately, and it reaching into a small nearby tank to withdraw two horrible little tadpoles that it-

I flinched and looked away as the pain of being stabbed in the eye suddenly flared in both my memory and hers, and we both sensed each other's thoughts as if it were our own.

"Skva'al!" I heard her curse. "You are no thrall of the ghaik! Together, we might survive!"

"What did they put in our heads?!?" I demanded, as I stepped back unsteadily and lowered my sword. She rapidly got back to her feet and recovered her own.

"Parasites." she spat. "The tadpoles are how the ghaik reproduce. If left in our heads long enough our skulls will warp, our mouths will split, our faces burst open-"

"And our minds will be gone forever and their spirits will be possessing our bodies." I said resignedly. "In our world we called such things 'abominations'."

"A fitting name for such foulness." she agreed. "But if we can escape this realm and return to my people quickly enough, there may still be a cure!"

I doubted that, seeing as how there had never been any cure for demonic possession in the history of Thedas that I'd ever heard of. Then again, I was no longer anywhere near Thedas-

"One of the little brain-creatures that I met said that it needed to get to 'the helm', so it could steer the ship out of here." I told her. "I'm hoping you know where that is?"

"Yes." she agreed. "A ghaik vessel of this type can travel between realms, between planes. That it has not already left Avernus means there is no one left alive on the bridge to direct its flight. But If we can get there-" She cut herself off. "The bridge of this vessel is on top of the hull. We are currently on the lower left side."

"Then we have a lot of climbing to do." I said. "Come on, forward looks to be this way." I took charge and began heading down the walkway, in the same direction that the ship was heading. It took only a few steps to bring us around a curve of the corridor and into a large chamber-

"I'm assuming those are the devils." I said, as we saw the several little bat-winged horrors with glowing eyes stop feeding on the dead and dying - I noted in passing that the dead included people as recognizably human as myself as well as the tentacled ghaik - and turn to face us, screeching in anger.

"Imps!" she agreed, raising her blade. "Now fight, warrior! They are upon us!"

Apparently even in the Nine Hells there had to be junior devils to do the scut-work, because the strange woman and I scythed through them pretty quickly. This strange weakness - possibly a result of the infection currently jammed in my head - kept me from utilizing some of my more powerful maneuvers, but I was still able to draw multiple imps in close and then cleave them all with a single whirlwind attack. The warrior-woman I was partnered with seemed to favor a more sword-and-shield style, and was thus handicapped by not having a shield available right now, but still proved entirely competent enough with her blade to bring down two imps of her own.

"Grab one of those crossbows." I ordered her as I followed my own advice, and then did a hasty check of the fallen looking for anything else useful. Another potion and some loose gold coins - after all, assuming I escaped this hell dimension alive then I'd still need to be able to afford my next meal wherever I landed, it had been hours since lunchtime - entered my pockets, and after a lot of strenuous climbing up a pair of ladders we reached the top deck and continued our journey forward. We came out of the corridor into a room with multiple of those strange reclining chair-benches each holding an unconscious person hooked up to some kind of machine, and another pod like the one I'd been trapped in off in the corner next to a low table.-

A scream of terror from inside the pod brought my examination to a halt and had me running over there to see who needed help. I peered in through the transparent window in the front of the pod and my breath left my lungs as if I'd been gut-punched by an ogre at the sight of those delicate ladylike features, that short black hair, those pointed ears- how on Thedas had she gotten here-?!?

"Let me out!" the strange elven woman begged, and the complete lack of a Dalish accent in her voice shook me free of my shock as I realized that this was not Merrill. Still, the resemblance was uncanny - on a second glance I could see that even though her hair was an identical jet-black and in almost exactly the same cut, her beautiful face was more slightly rounded in the cheeks and entirely free of the Dalish vallaslin tattoos and her ears less pointed.

"Hold on!" I reassured her, and looked at the sides of the pod for anything resembling a catch or a latch. After nothing turned up there, I tried pressing on the control panel on the nearby table, but nothing happened.

"Leave her! We have no time for stragglers!" my companion said ruthlessly.

I turned to look at her incredulously. "You didn't fancy your chances of taking the bridge alone, but now you want to turn down help?" I tried to reason with her.

"You were already free and armed, a proven warrior! She is a helpless burden and delays us when we have no time to spare! Would you wish to remain on this vessel until it crashes?" the alien woman replied.

"Go on ahead if you like your odds better that way, or wait for us here." I firmly ignored her heartless argument and turned back to the elven woman. "I can't find the latch. Did you see how they sealed you into this pod?"

"There's a key!" she said breathlessly. "It goes in the panel over there- one of them must have it!"

"Wait here, I'll be right back!" I promised her, and after a hasty search of the bodies in this room and the adjacent one I finally found a likely-looking object - a strange carved stone that looked to be the exact same size as the empty socket I'd seen on the control panel. My warrior-companion visibly fumed with impatience but still waited for me to be finished with my 'fool's errand' rather than risk her chances alone in this place.

As soon as I placed the carved stone in the socket the parasite in my brain twisted again, and I felt a wordless connection snap to in my brain as my mind linked with the alien machinery that controlled the pod. I floundered for an instant before I realized that I needed to will the pod open, and as soon as the intention formed in my brain I felt something in the parasite - or beyond the parasite? - respond to that intention. A demanding, imperious presence. An Authority.

I/we commanded, and the machines obeyed.

"At last." the young elven woman gasped, as the pod opened and she fell forward out of it to land on her knees. "Thought... I was done for..."

"Here, let me help you up." I said, reaching down. She reached up and gripped my forearm firmly in her warm little hand, and I let her hoist herself back to her feet as she did a little pull-up on me. She was rather heavy for such a petite elven woman, with a fair amount of dense muscle on her slim frame, although some of that was certainly the weight of her finely-made black-and-silver breastplate-and-chain.

"Thank you." she said politely, before turning away to search for the rest of her belongings. A strange polygonal artifact with silver runes was eagerly snatched up off the table to be hurriedly stuffed in her backpack, and then the well-worn mace lying next to it was picked up and placed back in the sling clearly intended for it on her belt. I was more than a little curious as to what that artifact was, but decided that now was not the best time to raise the subject.

"Our impatient friend says that she knows the way out of here." I greeted our new elven friend. "Care to join the party, at least for the duration?"

"If you've got a way out, then absolutely." she agreed quickly, and and stuck out her hand in greeting. "Shadowheart." she introduced herself.

I smiled at her and shook her hand. "Hawke."

---

Author's Note: I have no plan for this one, I never have any plans for any of mine, I just write when an idea actually sparks the muse. Which nothing has in a long, long time. So hopefully I'll be able to go the distance, or at least a good long way, on this one.

And yes, this is default appearance Male Two-Handed Warrior Hawke. As for his personality... well, you've already seen the intro to it, the rest you'll get to know as the story progresses. But yeah, the story is 'He did the sacrifice/stay-behind in Inquisition, and then we go non-canon as the Nightmare demon decided to blow him into the deep Astral plane beyond the Fade because that's how I'm going to handle the DA/BG3 crossover element.' As far as exact crossover mechanics, like any other TTRPG fanfic I write exact game mechanics will be a thing I only pay attention to when they help make my plot work and the rest of the time it's fudge factor city.

 

[cliffc999]

"Be careful." Shadowheart leaned over to whisper softly in my ear as our companion strode ahead of us down the corridor. "Githyanki often make very uncertain allies."

"She said that the masters of this ship had been her people's enemies since time immemorial." I reassured Shadowheart, noting in passing that 'githyanki' was apparently the name of the alien warrior's people or tribe. "That will have to do for now."

"At least that much was true." Shadowheart agreed. "How much further?" she quickly called out to our still-nameless ally as they stopped to look back at us suspiciously.

"The helm chamber should be just beyond this hatch." she replied curtly, her eyes narrowing at how closely Shadowheart and I were standing to each other. "I would suggest that our strongest warrior take the lead."

"Wise choice." Shadowheart agreed with her immediately. "After you!"

"I believe she meant me." I gently corrected Shadowheart, and at our companion's curt nod I stepped into the lead position. I swung my shoulders back and forth to loosen up a bit and shifted my grip on my greatsword as we stood just outside the still-closed hatch. "What can we expect in there?"

"If any of the ghaik still live, then this is where they will be." the warrior replied. "Have you ever fought one before?"

"Never even heard of them before today." I replied matter-of-factly. Shadowheart remained silent.

"Then know that they are terrible foes indeed." she continued passionately. "A single glance is all it takes for them to unleash a mental blast that can stagger even the strongest warrior, and one that fills an entire cone of space for a dozen paces in front of them. A clutch of their tentacles around your head is immediate death, as your skull is split open and your very brain tissue devoured. If they have a chance to concentrate their powers of the mind then they can deceive your senses or dominate your very will. They are intelligent, manipulative, and utterly merciless."

"They have a weakness, I hope?" I sighed.

"They are slow and lack agility." she matter-of-factly replied. "And they tend to practice physical combat far less than mental, as they prefer to have enslaved thralls fight for them. To fight ghaik, one must get past their slaves, close the distance quickly, and attack relentlessly and without fear!"

"Berserker charge and hope for the best. Got it." I husked out frustratedly.

The ship suddenly lurched and the deck tilted beneath our feet.

"Oh, what now?" Shadowheart shouted frustratedly.

"We are crashing!" our mysterious companion replied in a panic. "Something has damaged the drive!"

"Inside! Now!" I barked, slamming a fist into the hatch controls and charging inside as soon as it began to open.

The scene that greeted our eyes as we charged into the helm chamber was a more phantasmagoric nightmare than anything I'd seen in the Fade. Several large red devils, looking vaguely like red-skinned qunari only with giant bat-wings, were locked in combat with a pair of the tentacled purple ghaik. As we drew to a shocked halt, the warning we'd been given about how deadly the ghaik's mouth-tentacles were as proven as one of them managed to draw close up behind one of the devil-men as they turned to watch us enter the room, and with a single horrible clutch the wet squelch of their skull being holed through in multiple places and their very brain tissue pulped reached our ears. The ghaik that had killed them took one step towards us, only to suddenly turn around and face the screeching, flying charge of several imps as they flew around and past it, buffeting its head and drawing blood with their claws. One of them managed a lucky strike to the ghaik's neck and it went down in a gush of purple blood, while it's companion behind it knocked two more devil-men sprawling with that 'mental blast' that we'd had described to us. The victorious ghaik then turned to look at us, and I felt the parasite in my head briefly twitch as its eyes met mine.

Thrall. the arrogant-sounding voice boomed hollowly in our minds. Connect the nerves of the transponder. it ordered us, apparently not realizing that our parasites did not yet dominate our thoughts and we were not yet slaves. An imperious wave of its hand towards an eldritch device set at the far end of the room, several tentacle-cables hanging loosely from it where they'd been torn loose from their sockets, showed us what he meant by 'the transponder'. We must escape. Now.

"Do it!" our companion's voice whispered hatefully from behind us. "We will deal with the ghaik after we escape!"

"Behind you!" I called out to the remaining ghaik as one of the devil-men it had knocked down rose to its feet behind it and drew it's flaming greatsword back for a cruel blow. Warned just in time, the ghaik dashed forward out of reach and turned around to face it's opponent, resuming their duel.

"Go! Go!" Shadowheart cried, and the three of us broke into a dead run. The few remaining imps all screeched and flew to block our path, but I cleaved through the two in the lead with a single sweeping blow and that put enough hesitation into the rest that the women flanking me on either side cut their own opponents down while barely breaking stride. We carefully stepped wide around the two battling menaces and advanced towards the front of the chamber, pausing briefly to deal with a second line of imps standing between us and the transponder.

The sound of a body hitting the deck behind us told me that one of the two murderous abominations we'd just bypassed was no longer among the living to distract the other one. The warrior kept running towards the transponder without breaking stride, but Shadowheart stopped as soon as she realized I was no longer moving forward and had instead turned around to guard are rear. The glowing, eldritch eyes of the surviving ghaik met mine as I raised my blade, anticipating the words that were about to leave it's 'mouth' even before they were spoke.

You are no longer required. it announced pitilessly, and it stepped forward to kill.

"Hyaaah!" I yelled, powering through another one of the flying leaps that two-handed weapon wielders on Thedas had long since mastered as part of the common style and taking the ghaik off-guard - people in this world didn't seem to know this maneuver - as I closed the distance between us far more rapidly than it expected and bringing my blade down in a single flashing cut. The ghaik barely raised one of its armored forearms in time to block my blow, and then forced me back a step with a terrible strength of limb that our new friend hadn't had time to warn me about. I recovered almost instantly and began a series of quick, sweeping slashes-

The distant clang of my sword hitting the deck brought me back to my senses, as I shook off the momentary blackout that the damnable ghaik's mental blast had knocked me into. Although it had no recognizable mouth, merely that damnable tooth-lined hole surrounded by all those deadly tentacles, I could swear the filthy thing was grinning at me as it leaned over to-

"Back off!" Shadowheart cried, and the ghaik staggered back as her mace tagged the side of its head. I used its vulnerable moment to roll away and to the side as quickly as I could, abandoning my dropped weapon as I frantically looked around for-

I spotted what I was searching for - the magical flaming greatsword that the devil-man who the ghaik had just been fighting had dropped as he died. My new greatsword's magic flames sprang into being as soon as my hand grasped the hilt, and as I came hurriedly to my feet I saw that Shadowheart had not rushed in recklessly, but had instead stepped back out just as quickly as she'd gone in and was now keeping just enough separation to remain a threat-in-being while not drawing close enough to be vulnerable. And her cunning distraction worked, because the ghaik had to fatally split its attention between the two opponents flanking it on either side for just long enough-

I split its spine with over four feet of fiery eldritch steel before it could finish turning away from her to face me again, and as we exchanged a wordless nod of thanks we both quickly looked around for any remaining enemies - none, thank goodness - and then resumed our frantic dash towards the front of the helm chamber.

"Can you get it working again?" I urgently asked the nameless warrior as she cursed in alien tongues and hurriedly struggled to grab and reconnect the flailing tentacles.

"If I am not further delayed with asinine questions!" she spat frustratedly. "Is the ghaik dead, at least?"

"Not unless they can live without backbones." I reassured her. "We haven't got very long before we hit the ground-"

"Almost there!" she reassured us, and then a sudden massive lurch of the crashing nautiloid sent me to my knees and sent her sprawling away from the transponder entirely as she was flung into Shadowheart and knocked them both down. A flicker of movement drew my eye up, up towards the top of the panaromic viewport that let the normal helmsman of this ship see where he was steering, as - dear Maker, that was a dragon!

The dragon's head peering balefully down through the gap high up in the window was only about half the size of the High Dragon we'd fought in that damned quarry once, but it was still large enough to be downright terrifying. But the really frightening thing was the rider that I could see, sitting securely in a saddle high up on the dragon's neck just behind the head - a male knight in elaborate plate armor, with a flat pseudo-reptilian face. A 'githyanki', the same as our new if uncertain ally, but-

My attempt to cry out that we had one of his fellow soldiers with us, that we weren't with the ghaik, fell silent in my throat as the rider's face firmed with a hateful mask of decision that I'd seen many a time back in Kirkwall. That was the expression of a templar, and a fanatic one at that; a man who had decided that his opponents were not humans to be fought but filth to be cleansed, that it was better to slay a hundred innocents rather than risk one guilty man escaping. His dragon responded to whatever wordless command he gave it, and I saw it's nostrils flare as it drew a deep breath to inhale-

The hell with that! I decided, and shook off my shock to lurch forward towards the transponder, grab the last pair of loose tentacles that I could see, and with a horrid lurch ram the two ends together as solidly as I could and hope for the best.

The instant the transponder's reconnection was complete the crashing, diving nautiloid immediately surged up and forwards with a blare of power as the engines resumed operation. The sudden change in our thrust was enough to knock the dragon loose from the hull, and before they could circle around for another attack I felt the nautiloid wrench as the engines surged even harder and the entire view outside the window suddenly changed in a brilliant, searing flash of energy. Whatever mysterious engine let these ships jump between the worlds had just engaged, and the glaring red sky of the Nine Hells faded from our view to be replaced by a glimpse of a starry sky and a bright, peaceful-looking moon-

And then something further back towards the aft of the ship exploded, and our level flight ceased and we resumed crashing.

As my feet left the deck and I floated horribly in mid-air before slamming off the ceiling, the ship now descending so violently that we were in freefall, I lost track of the two women. The lurching, spinning, crashing nautiloid slammed me around like a pea inside a tin can that was itself rolling down a steep staircase, and I frantically reached out with flailing arms to grab anything I possibly could. One of my hands managed to snag one fo the tentacle-cables that had been connected to the transponder, now torn loose again by the latest impacts, and I desperately tried to pull myself along the cable hand-over-hand so that I could reconnect it and stop our-

I turned my head just in time to avoid being knocked unconscious by a flying piece of debris, but the impact still caught me enough to loosen my grip and send me flying out the side of the ship and into the empty air. I very briefly marveled at the sight of a green, pleasant countryside from an altitude high enough that no man on Thedas had ever seen such a height before unless they'd been a mythical dragon-rider, and then bitterly laughed at the sheer irony involved. I'd been cast out of my very world by a vindictive demon lord who wanted to condemn me to live forever exiled from everyone I'd ever known, and now I'd die as helplessly as a baby bird falling out of its nest before so much as an hour had passed for me in this new realm. And just to be the perfect icing on this latest bitter cake, I was going to die doing what I'd done so many weary times before in my life - promising to lead others to safety, and then leading them only to their their deaths.

I kept my eyes open, resolute, refusing to flinch, as the distant ground beneath me expanded rapidly. The darkness on the distant horizon gave way to moonlight reflecting off a river almost directly beneath me and the fires of a large encampment some miles away, with a forest and some low bluffs just adjacent to the river. I briefly thought about trying to angle my fall so that I'd hit the water, then gave it up as a futile thought given that with a fall from this great height my death was certain whether I hit a mountain of rock or a mountain of pudding. I determinedly refused to flinch as the ground rushed towards my gaze as I fell headfirst to earth, and-

-with a glow of magic around me I instantly stopped short in mid-air, impossibly without the slightest jar or shock, as I hung only several bare feet above the ground. A desperate look around for what the hell was going on now had me incredulously spot the glowing purple eyes of a ghaik, imperiously looking around as it silently floated several feet above the sand of the beach some thirty feet away from me. I scrabbled desperately for a weapon, any weapon-

And then the magic suspending me cut out, and I fell to the beach and collapsed.

---

I woke to bright sunlight in my eyes, the smell of fresh air, and the gentle murmur of the waves.

"My head," I moaned, feeling like an eighty-year-old man with the swollen joint disease. I'd been beaten, battered, stabbed, knocked about, and fought multiple battles any of which would have exhausted the average warrior - and then I'd been exiled from Thedas to do it all over again. And then I'd been in a crashing-

I hurriedly reached up to grasp my head and make certain that I still had an unperforated skull. One of those horrid ghaik had... saved my life? And then simply walked away from me, despite my lying helpless and unconscious before it? When I'd already seen how quick they were to mercilessly turn on even who they believed to be their own loyal slaves the instant they needed to jettison some baggage? How did that even make sense? How did any of this make sense?

I slumped back down onto the sand and remained sitting there cross-legged for I don't even know how long, trying to think of a single damn reason to not just lie back down and wait for the inevitable. I was alone in the middle of a wilderness on a world I had no knowledge of, with a parasite stuck in my head that would turn me into an abomination in Maker only knows how soon, and with the only person who'd even hinted at a cure for it lost and certainly dead in the nautiloid's crash. I could see large chunks of wreckage from the ship scattered down the beach and a pillar of smoke rising up over a low bluff from perhaps a mile ahead to mark where the main crash site had been and bespeak as to just how violent it had been. The Nightmare's threat had come horribly true - I was adrift in a world with absolutely no one and nothing. The people who'd trusted me to lead them, however briefly, were both-

I was just so damn tired. Lothering, Kirkwall, Ferelden, the Free Marches- Maker, even Skyhold, however briefly that had been. So many places had promised me a new home to replace one that I'd lost, and so many had been lost to me in turn. My name was a byword for persisting against all odds in at least three kingdoms, but that persistence hadn't earned me a single lasting victory in any one of them. Would it really be so sinful to just-

I could almost imagine a pair of faint, teasing voices on the wind as Bethany and Carver wordlessly asked me if they'd ever given up trying. And if they could manage that, then why couldn't their big brother?

Because you're not here. I mournfully reminded their ghosts, and then with a muttered curse forced myself to an unsteady pair of feet anyway. My new greatsword was lying impossibly close to me for something I'd lost while I was falling, as if someone had found it and then left it laying barely half a dozen feet away. There was also some flotsam and jetsam laying around not from thecrashing nautiloid but apparently fallen or thrown overboard from passing ships - and I managed to find a few useful supplies in amongst all the odds and sods and miscellaneous junk. A quick taste of the water - fresh, not salt - confirmed what I'd glimpsed in my fall. This was a river, not a sea, even if the river was wide enough here that I could barely see the other side. The lay of the terrain only gave me one direction to walk in, as I hit a low cliff wall or water in any other direction, so I yielded to the inevitable and began trudging slowly through the sand. As I ducked underneath an outcropping of rock and came out the other side, the beach widened in front of me. I startled as I saw a corpse, miraculously intact with no visible wounds or pool of blood, lying in the sand a short way in front of me - a corpse dressed in black-and-silver armor-

I scrambled forwards, stumbling and getting to my feet several times, to arrive at her and be confronted by the impossible sight of Shadowheart lying peacefully on her back in the sand, her mace laid in the sand alongside her just as neatly as my sword had been. The slow rise and fall of her chest made me burst out in an incredulous laugh of delight as I realized she was alive, that some mysterious magic must have caught and broken her fall just as it had mine. I barely restrained myself from grasping her by her shoulders and pummelling her awake, choosing instead to prudently remain just out of reach and slap one palm hard against the sole of her foot.

"What-" she startled awake, as the old soldier's trick for waking up a sleeping man in the barracks without getting yourself punched worked yet again. Her hand frantically reached down for a weapon that wasn't there as she scrambled back and up on her knees. She halted as our eyes met and her mouth twitched in a shock as elated as mine.

"You're alive!" she gasped. "I'm alive! How- how is this possible?" she begged me.

I hurriedly brought her up to speed on everything that had happened since we'd been separated in the crash, including my brief glimpse of the mysterious rescuing ghaik, as I helped her to her feet and we then recovered her mace and searched the wreckage - and the several human corpses, whether of unlucky locals or dead ghaik-thralls from the nautiloid we didn't know yet - for anything useful.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" I asked her. "Because I don't."

"I didn't see enough on the way down to have more than the vaguest notion." she replied. "But the label on one of those shipping crates we found adrift in the tide line said that the intended destination was Elturel, and that's a name I recognize. It's a city on the Chionthar River, a couple hundred miles inland from the river mouth. So if that's the Chionthar-" she nodded towards the river we were walking alongside. "Then at least the nautiloid made it back home to Toril before we crashed."

"Your home, perhaps." I acknowledged her with a matter-of-fact nod. "Because unless you've heard of a continent called Thedas, or kingdoms called Orlais, Ferelden, or Tevinter, then it's not mine."

"Oh." she realized. "The nautiloid ships of the mind flayers sail on the Silver Sea, the astral realm that touches countless worlds. You're not from my homeworld at all." She blinked in puzzlement. "Wait, if that's true then how are we speaking to each other?"

"Good question." I realized, not having had the leisure at any earlier point to actually stop and wonder at the sheer implausibility of meeting people from another universe entirely that still spoke recognizable Common Tongue. "And I'm not even going to try and guess at the answer until we're somewhere much more conducive to leisurely philosophizing than here."

"That's a very practical attitude." Shadowheart agreed readily. "Especially given the little monsters we've got in our heads that are slowly killing us from the inside out. First things first - we've found some supplies but we still need shelter, and most of all a healer."

"We?" I smiled at her welcomingly. "Not that I have any objections, but-"

Shadowheart quirked a brief smile back at me. "We need each other, and we both know what's at stake. I can't think of better company." she trailed off cheekily.

"Can't argue with that reasoning." I agreed with her. "Do you know how long we've got left? Or anything about curing them?"

"Powerful healing magic, which I certainly can't cast." she answered me. "As for how long we've got- it's anything but my particular field of study, but if I remember the lore correctly then we're talking only days, not weeks."

"And the only person who said she knew where we could get a cure is either dead in the crash or left us both behind on the beach without a backward glance." I groused.

"Yes." Shadowheart agreed. "Githyanki are almost as cold and ruthless as the mind flayers they fight. They haven't got any patience with other races, and once you're no longer of immediate use to them then they haven't got any mercy with you either."

"So it would seem." I nodded. "How far do you think it is to the nearest city?"

"My home city of Baldur's Gate is at the mouth of the Chionthar, on the seacoast." she said. "And given how wide the river is here, we're certainly not upstream of Elturel..." she mused. "But I've no idea which one we're closer to right now."

"Two hundred miles is slightly over eight days' march for soldiers in good condition on good roads." I thought out loud. "Cut that in half - because neither city was easily visible from the air as we fell, so we're clearly in the middle distance between them - that's an estimate of four days' march. Know enough about the local geography to guess what might be nearby?"

"Good deduction." she complimented me. "Especially since if I recall correctly the only forested terrain on the Chionthar is almost halfway between the two cities." she continued.

"Then we'd better get started." I said, looking at the river and marking the direction of the flow. "Downstream is that way, so that's west to this Baldur's Gate. Let's go."

"Wait." Shadowheart said, briefly reaching out to clasp my forearm and stop me. "Before we go-" She drew a deep breath and continued softly. "I wanted to thank you again. For freeing me." She paused awkwardly and continued even more softly. "It would have been all too easy for you to just leave me in my pod, but you didn't. I'll remember that."

"Any time." I reassured her, and we set out on our way.

As we drew towards the far end of the beach we spotted a couple of freshly dead corpses laying in the sand, with still-red blood spattered around them to testify that they'd died here, and recently. Both of them were dressed like villagers, not soldiers, and had no weapons or armor. A fishing pole still clutched in one dead fist testified as to what they'd been doing here-

"These were just fishermen!" Shadowheart said, kneeling down to professionally examine the bodies. "And these are claw marks, but not normal ones."

"What sort of animal goes only for the throat and leaves no wounds on their arms or legs?" I agreed with her. "That's not an animal attack but from some kind of intelligent beast. A magical one."

"Probably one of those horrible little brain creatures the mind flayers kept on their ship." Shadowheart agreed. "They had claws just about this size. These poor folk were just out here trying to catch some food when the crash occurred-"

"This tells us two important things." I realized. "First off, if this attack really was done by one of those brains then the main part of the ship hit the ground softly enough that there could still be survivors from it. And second-"

"There's some kind of village or settlement nearby, within walking distance." Shadowheart realized. "Well, that gives us somewhere to go."

"As well as something to watch out for." I agreed grimly. "Keep alert on the march."

The cliff at the far end of the beach turned out to be the wall of some type of small fortress, with a tiny battlement dozens of feet above our head and a small archway with an ancient and weathered door built into the cliff face. The door was locked when we tried it, and we were already on an urgent errand, so we simply left it behind and took the pathway leading up off the beach and into the first major clump of wreckage from the crashed nautiloid. Sure enough, several of the little brain creatures - which turned out to have four long clawed legs they ran around on, when they weren't busy being stuck in a dead elf's skull - tried to ambush us, and I needed some fast sword work to keep the first couple from landing on our heads. But as the last one turned and fled from us, Shadowheart made my hair stand on end when she burned it down as it fled with a hastily muttered spell and a golden energy bolt flung from one hand.

"You're a mage!" I said, startled. "And just when were you going to mention that?" I pressed her suspiciously. Not that I really had anything against apostate mages, my own father and younger sister had been apostates after all, but a man liked to have a bit of warning!

"Cleric." she corrected me, looking confused at my obvious suspicions. "And why, is that a problem?" she challenged.

"Magic is magic, Church-sanctioned or not." I replied. "And while I don't necessarily agree it has to be sanctioned by the church, I still acknowledge it's always something to be cautious with."

"I'm thinking were having more than a bit of a cultural clash here." Shadowheart said. "There's nothing unsafe about magic - oh, there's certainly a lot of unsafe things you can do with magic, but the same applies for any other type of weapon. But so long as a spellcaster has proper training, it's as safe as anything."

"Even the best-trained mages in Thedas are still occasionaly taken by the Fade." I said. "That's why the Mage Circles are always guarded so heavily by the templars. And even apostate mages have to be very careful to regulate themselves, or that's how abominations happen."

"Magic... is something inherently unsafe in your world? Is that what you're saying?" Shadowheart tried to puzzle out. "Even when it's cast under strict religious supervision?"

My hurried explanation of exactly how magic and the Fade worked in Thedas left her shocked to her core, as she'd never even heard of any conditions such as that. The idea that the barrier between the material and astral realms could be so weak as to make involuntary demonic possession an always-possible risk for any magically-capable person was as far outside her mental universe as the abolition of slavery would have been for a Tevinter Magister.

But on my part, I was ten times as shocked to find out that in this world the gods would actually answer prayers. Despite the strict monotheism of the Chantry it's not as if the concept of a pantheon of different gods for different spheres of life was entirely unknown to me - after all, that was how the Dalish elves of Thedas did it - but no elf had ever actually received an otherworldly answer to their most impassioned worship any more than any Chantry priestess ever had. The Chantry taught that the Maker had long since turned away his face from the world, their patience finally exhausted at the incorrigible sins of mankind, but-

"The idea that you can call on your gods for aid, and they will answer." I said, as full of wonder as a small child. "That- that's absolutely inconceivable to anyone from Thedas. Do you have any idea how very privileged, how blessed you are to know this joy?"

"Actually yes." Shadowheart blushed briefly. "I've been a priestess my entire life, and my goddess has always been the greatest comfort to me. Often the only one, at times." she trailed off diffidently. "There must be something very different about the astral space near your particular plane of existence, that not only warps it's relationship with magic but also cuts it off from the outer planes and the divine."

"The Veil." I realized. "But that must mean-"

"I'm thinking it's time for a bit more of that practical attitude right now." Shadowheart chided me. "We are burning daylight, after all."

"You're right." I agreed embarassedly. "But it is still a practical question to ask if your goddess is willing to give us a bit of help right now."

"I've already asked her, and no answer." she admitted with her own bit of embarassment. "Not that that's very surprising, seeing as how I'm still quite a junior priestess after all. Mother Superior might be able to call for divine intervention and actually get it, but I'd be shocked to the tips of my toes if I ever managed to. And my own healing spells are far too minor to deal with something like what we've got in our heads right now."

"So we're still back at hopefully finding this nearby settlement and some shelter there, and a more powerful healer - or at least some directions to where we can find one." I agreed.

"The crash has wiped out any tracks we could possibly follow." Shadowheart groused.

"That old building or whatever we glimpsed from the beach - whether or not it's still in use, someone used it once. Which means that there'll be a path of some kind leading to it from wherever the nearest settlement was. If we take that path we'll head back towards the river and probably up around to the top of that bluff - we check out whatever's there and where it might lead us." I decided, and we resumed our march.

---

Author's Note: I think I'm going to be getting quite a bit of mileage out of Hawke's culture shock at going from Dragon Age to Dungeons & Dragons.

Hawke's super-moves are actually a standard part of the warrior's kit in Dragon Age - he hasn't even used any high-level ones yet. Yes, what's normal for fighters in DA is basically medium to high-level kensai monk bullshit in 5e. That's going to be fun for me to carry over, even in a loose adaptation.

And yes, I am dealing with the question of 'how the hell can Hawke even talk to anybody without translation magic if he's from a completely different alternate Prime?' by just ignoring it. I've got a story to be getting on with it so heck with it, we'll just D&D right over the whole thing. *g*

And damn, it's amazing how incredibly long a video game can stretch out to if you actually try to narrate it in text. I may have to start skipping over minor encounters.

 

[cliffc999]

I frantically battered the darkspawn to the ground, desperately scything forward through them with a flashing charge and greatsword sweep that focused my internal energy in just the right way to cleave the foe even slightly outside the actual arc of the blade with the sheer pressure of the blow. When we'd gone up the pathway from the wreckage of the nautiloid the absolute last thing I'd expected to find in this new world of Toril was a trio of genlocks, but although my heart had frozen solid at first sight of them the reflexes that had carried me through a thousand battles drove me forward in a frantic rush to destroy them before Shadowheart could walk unawares into the danger.

"Keep back!" I yelled desperately at her. "Don't let their blood touch you, it's tainted!"

"Hawke?" she asked me, her voice thick with puzzlement. "Are you all right?"

The blurriness left my vision and I drew a series of deep panting breaths, leaning on my sword tip as I braced it on the chest of one of the fallen-

"Darkspawn. If you catch the Taint, you turn into one of them. Like the parasites in our heads, only from their blood-" I tried to explain.

"Hawke." she remonstrated gently with me. "These were goblins."

I flinched with shame as a second, more searching look at the little monsters I'd killed revealed that while they did look quite a bit like genlocks at first glance, there were multiple distinct differences. Their eyes were normally colored, their teeth were more human-shaped than the needle fangs of darkspawn, their faces narrow and skulls less rounded, their dark red blood smelled just like human blood and not anything like the Tainted ichor of darkspawn-

"Sorry." I apologized. "On Thedas-" I shook my head. "The darkspawn are perhaps the most terrible scourge we ever knew. Endless in number, untiring, implacably hateful of all other life... and worse yet, intelligent and organized underneath their Archdemons. And I already mentioned the Taint." I reminded myself that I was on another world, quite likely in another universe entirely, far beyond the furthest reach of the Fade, the Black City, or the Blight-

"And they look like these?" she said understandingly.

"The commonest type of darkspawn do, yes." I nodded. "And these 'goblins' are-?"

"A common type of humanoid. Hateful, and relatively intelligent and organized, but with nothing demonic or tainted about them. They're simply little tribal savages, raiders on isolated settlements and naught more." Shadowheart explained. "I wouldn't want to be caught unawares by them, and certainly not taken prisoner by them, but any veteran warrior can readily defeat most goblins even at several-to-one odds." She chuckled a bit. "As you just proved."

I shook off the last vestiges of my combat flashback and resisted the temptation to take the conversational out she'd just given me. "My apologies for-" I paused and reached for words. "The last darkspawn Blight on Thedas destroyed my hometown and forced our family to flee as refugees.. and-" I drew to a halt. "We lost both my younger siblings."

"Dear Lady of Loss." Shadowheart winced in sympathy.

"My brother Carver died during the retreat from Lothering. My sister Bethany died of the darkspawn taint when we had another encounter with them almost a year later. Mother and I-" I shrugged the painful memories away. "And that's not germane right now." I finished firmly.

"These goblins looked to be stragglers from a larger band, seeing as how they'd stopped to loot the wreckage here." Shadowheart obligingly turned away to practical matters. "Let's see what they found."

As it turned out the dead goblins had a near-complete set of camping supplies on them - and clean supplies and of apparent human manufacture at that, not goblin-stuff. Apparently the nautiloid had been carrying stores of such things for the use of the mind flayers' human slaves. We distributed the most useful bits into our packs, and Shadowheart picked up a small round shield for herself to compliment her mace, and we continued onwards in silence.

And just a little ways further on the sight of a man's disembodied arm sticking out of some type of spark-shooting purple magical vortex barely raised an eyebrow from our two increasingly jaded selves, seeing as how we'd already been having far too eventful a morning and were still bottoming out from the adrenaline surge of our recent combat.

"A hand? Anyone?" a man's voice called out urgently from within the... magical hole was the best description I could find for it, somehow unaccountably stuck in a nearby rock face and emitting from some sparking purple runes.

"Is this the sort of magic that's safe to touch, or am I going to get zapped?" I asked Shadowheart, and she knelt to peer more closely at it for a bit and then shrugged at me.

"I'm fairly certain it's safe," the trapped man tried to reassure me. "But I'm wedged in here a bit tight, and really could use a bit of leverage to help wiggle out please?"

"Hang on." I sighed wearily and reached forward to grab the flailing hand and pull. Fortunately, it only took a bit of muscle and some good leverage to get him moving, and soon enough a tall, handsome brown-haired man in slightly dusty purple robes and clutching a staff in his other hand flopped forward out of the hole and landed heavily on his knees. As soon as he was free the magical vortex faded and left behind an elaborate, yet entirely quiescent, circle of faintly-glowing runes etched into the rock.

"Hello!" the man said cheerfully as he heaved himself to his feet. "I'm Gale, of Waterdeep. Apologies, I'm usually better at this."

"At magic?" I queried the obvious wizard, after both Shadowheart and I introduced ourselves.

"That too." he smiled disarmingly. "In my defense, though, I don't usually try to spellcast while falling to my death hundreds of feet through the air. It was intended to be a simple Feather Fall spell to cushion my landing, but it interacted badly with that runic circle over there." he nodded at the rock face.

I nodded understandingly, because Gale did have a entirely valid point that a magical fumble was entirely forgivable given the desperate conditions he was working under. "Then you were on the nautiloid as well?" Shadowheart chimed in.

"Wonderful, that saves me many an awkward explanation." Gale nodded. "And if you were there, then I assume that you too were on the receiving end of a rather unwelcome insertion in the ocular region?"

"Couldn't have phrased it more repellently myself." I replied amusedly.

"And the insertee we speak of? The parasite? Are you aware that after a period of excruciating gestation it will turn us into mind flayers? It's a process known as 'ceremorphosis' and let me assure you, it is to be avoided!" he finished passionately.

"We're already searching for a healer for ours. There's at least some type of settlement nearby, but we don't know exactly where." Shadowheart informed him.

"But we do have an intended destination, I hope?" Gale probed earnestly.

"A little ways down that path is some type of old or abandoned structure, we glimpsed it from the beach." I nodded down the dirt path we'd already been taking. "We're hoping to pick up the trail from there."

"Then lead on!" Gale said cheerfully. I noted inwardly he was being a bit forward with his assumptions, but then again the logic of survival was just as clear for him and us as it had been for Shadowheart and myself. We were all condemned to a horrible death if we didn't get our parasites removed in time, and so for the duration we all needed each other.

"What was that, anyway?" I nodded towards the glowing runic circle. Not that I was particularly interested in strange magics, at least not when I was already this busy, but if it was possibly dangerous-

"Oh, that? It's just a travelstone." Gale assured us. "You find them in some parts of northern Faerun. Most scholars think they date back to the ancient Netherese Empire, although there is a competing theory that they're a lost elven magic-"

"The practical part?" I grinned at him, recognizing a true scholar's fascination with a lecture topic when I saw one and knowing that this bid fair to go on all day if he wasn't interrupted.

"After a person has attuned themselves to the travelstone, they can teleport back to it at any time provided the attunement is still in effect and they aren't more than a significant yet still distinctly finite distance away." Gale shocked me.

"Wait, just like that?" I marveled. "Teleportation is such a common thing here? Then how is that anyone still builds roads or uses ships?"

"Hah, no." Gale grinned at me. "As I mentioned, the secret of their manufacture has been lost for centuries. Also most of them don't work anymore, and even those that do still work seem to be active only on some unknowable astrological schedule." He looked back briefly at the nearby travelstone. "This one's fully operational though. Never thought I'd get to see one in operation, particularly not from the inside. Apparently they're not always fond of gravity-based magic cast too closely to them."

"If it's working then shouldn't we attune ourselves to it?" Shadowheart asked. "It would be a useful method for recovering our position if we got lost in this wilderness, if nothing else."

"If you think it's safe." I agreed with her, and after a brief period of experimentation led by Gale we managed to finish this 'attunement' process - largely just a matter of touching the rune and concentrating on it in a certain way - and proceeded onwards.

As we proceeded through a low stand of trees towards the small clifftop where we'd seen the structure, we saw that it appeared to be some type of ruined chapel. The top floor had almost entirely collapsed and worn away, leaving only a couple of freestanding walls and empty pillars. However, the much more recent construction of a hastily-erected timber pole-and-boom being used as some type of improvised crane to hoist up a large broken segment of stone pillar, along with several crates and bags scattered about, bespoke of a recent expedition to this site... and one that was likely still here.

"Hello the encampment!" I politely called out as we drew within easy earshot. "Three travelers to approach!"

"Boss! We got company!" a rough-sounding voice sounded faintly in reply, and by the time we finished coming up to the camp site we were met by a motley array of three individuals, in rough common dress and holding bared steel - or a wizard's staff, in the case of the one woman with them. The bowman was a human and the wizardess an elf, although their leader was of a race unfamiliar to me - as short as a dwarf but only half as stout, with a narrow face and pointed ears vaguely like an elf's.

"Bugger off! This lot's ours!" the apparent leader snarled at us.

"Easy, friend." I said, my empty palms out and my sword still slung on my back. "We're not out to rob you."

"Now if only the opposite were true." Shadowheart muttered darkly from behind my back.

"A fine tale, my friend." the leader mocked us. "Don't like the odds now that you've seen them, have you?"

Seeing as how the odds were even I did my best not to roll my eyes at his overconfidence. "If you could tell us where the nearest settlement is, we'll just head there and leave you to your labors." I tried to reason with him.

"Sure you would, and then come right back after dark and try it with daggers in our sleep!" he sneered. "I know your kind all too well!"

I looked around more carefully and thought a bit. "I only see a couple of you, and erecting that crane and doing all this digging looks to have been a larger a project than that. And none of you were laboring as we drew near. Your lookouts for a larger band, aren't you?"

"Got it in one, friend." the leader sneered. "One shout from me and all the lads will pile out and run you through!"

"But you're not shouting yet." I noted. "So you're clearly not bandits, you're an honest expedition with a purpose." All right, that last one was definitely just wishful thinking seeing as how this scruffy lot were as obviously bandit-like as any men I'd ever seen, but I was trying to be diplomatic here. "And we have no desire to interfere with that and compromise your safety, we're just a bit lost after our ship crashed and trying to find some shelter."

"Lost little travelers," the leader mused as several of his men tried to hide involuntary grins, and I sighed inwardly. A far less experienced person than any of our party could already see where this was going, and I simply was not in the mood for it. "Travelers who might be willing to pay a bit for a safe escort, then?"

"Well, if this is a negotiation, then of course I'll be willing to make you a very generous offer." I smiled as disarmingly as I could as I slowly and non-threateningly idled forward and to the right, as if I were just nervously pacing while trying to marshal my thoughts. "Because we're all peaceful and reasonable men here-"

And as I drew near enough to where I'd been carefully edging towards quickly as I could I pulled my greatsword off my back, strained the full power of my shoulders and hips into a sideways cut, and chopped my flaming sword directly through the vertical beam of wood holding up the improvised crane with a single powerful stroke. The crane, boom and all, came crashing down and the suspended pillar smashed directly through the flagstone courtyard and into some type of dark and empty catacomb below.

"-and we certainly wouldn't want any unpleasantness." I grinned wickedly at them, my blade confidently held before me in both hands while off to the side Shadowheart had her own mace and shield out, holding a blocking position in front of Gale as he dramatically lit the tip of his wizard's staff with flame. Not that I'd had a chance to actually discuss this strategy with them, but they were both clearly experienced enough to pick up on an obvious cue.

"N-no." the little man stammered. "No sir, we certainly wouldn't want that. Let's get the hell out of here!" he cried out, as he backpedaled furiously away.

"But what about the rest-" one of his men protested as they fell back with him.

"Leave 'em! We've got to look after ourselves!" the leader shot back, and as soon as they'd opened up a sufficient distance between us they all showed us their backs and took off running for the tall timber.

Shadowheart whistled softly, staring at the fallen ruins of the improvised crane as she stepped towards me. "Goddess, you're strong. I've never seen anything like that from anyone smaller than an ogre."

"It's just about putting the total power of every muscle in your body focused into a single linear strike all simultaneously." I explained. "Not much use as a technique against anything substantially smaller or faster than a tree, given the wind-up it requires, but it works just fine on things like ogres." Not that whatever they called 'ogres' here were at all likely to be the same thing as the larger darkspawn I'd fought back home, but I'd already made that mistake once today.

"That one chap mentioned 'the rest'." Gale pointed out. "I wonder how many are still down in there?" he nodded towards a set of steps leading down to what had apparently been a cellar door back when this chapel or whatever-it-was had still been standing, but which was now the outer door of the lower levels of this place.

"Do we even need to go down there?" Shadowheart asked.

"It's getting late in the afternoon." I looked up briefly at the lowering sun. "I've got no idea how far it is from here, and this is the best shelter we've found yet. Also, we don't want this lot coming out behind us and possibly hitting us wherever else we camp."

"No we don't." she wearily agreed. "Still, it's been a long day already."

"Which is why we're going to try talking first." I walked down the steps and thumped my first hard on the door. "Hello in there!"

"That you, Gimblebock?" a scared young man's voice came muffled through the door. "What's going on out there? What was that noise?"

"If your friend 'Gimblebock' was a short little man with pointed ears, then I'm afraid he's taken off down the road and left you here." I amiably called back. "Now we need to talk."

"I-I'm not allowed to speak to strangers!" he stammered out. "Be off, or-"

"Call your boss." I calmly interrupted him. "I'll wait right here."

"Who are you and what do you want?" a gruff man's voice called out a short bit later.

"We had a bit of a disagreement with the men you left to guard the entrance, but they're all right." I said disarmingly. "They just decided it would be better if they moved off down the road a bit. Now-"

"You're only getting in here over our dead bodies!" the bandit leader called back belligerently.

"Friend, you're either here because this is a nice place to lair, or it's got good loot." I reasoned with him. "Except if strangers have found it - which obviously they have - then it's no longer a nice place to lair, now is it? As for the loot, you can keep whatever you've found so far."

"Except that that's sweet bugger-all!" he shouted back. "This whole damn trip's been a bust, and now we've got a strange crew muscling in on us? Shove your sweet talk up your arse, this patch is ours!"

"Would you like to trade stories about who's had the worse day?" I snarked back at him. "And if you had a back door out of there, you'd already be using it. You're trapped down there, friend. So does this have to get unpleasant, or would you like to make an arrangement that means nobody has to get hurt or to go away empty-handed?"

"Pull the other one, it's got bells on." he sneered.

"We've already discussed how this isn't useful to you as a hiding place any longer, and you just mentioned that you haven't had any good looting here. So here's my deal. I'll put you on to a better looting opportunity nearby and let you all go peacefully to enjoy it for yourselves - even to link back up with Gimblebock and the ones who deserted with him, if you still want them - and in return, you give me and my band these ruins."

"Why would you even want it?" he asked me suspiciously. "What's your angle?"

"Do you even care, so long as you're not missing out personally?" I shot back. "And look, I'll even give you a bit up front in earnest. Did you hear that crash last night?"

"We heard something." the 'boss' said musingly. "Felt like a god-damned earthquake, too."

"Are you familiar with what a 'nautiloid' is? The flying ships the mind flayers use?" I continued.

"Heard of them a bit." the bandit leader agreed. "Wait, you're not saying-"

"That was one of them crashing." I confirmed. "All sorts of strange things from beyond the stars, just lying there in the rubble for the taking. We've already had our pickings there, as much as we could readily lift, but there was still quite a bit left. Sounds like that gleaning that would be a better score for you than these disappointing ruins, doesn't it?"

"... it sounds good, but I'm still not seeing what you get out of this." he replied quietly.

"We've already marched a damn long way today and had at least one battle, and while we're still fresh enough to fight some more we don't really want to march or fight much further. And the sun's getting low. So the emptier these ruins are, the better it is for us - all we need is the shelter for tonight."

A brief pause and some low mutterings through the door made my hopes rise, as the bandit gang in there were seriously considering my offer. "All right, it's a deal. We clear out of here and leave what's left for you, you give us the directions to this crash site. Now how do we manage this so that neither side gets rooked?"

"I'll move most of my people away from the entrance back into the woods, you won't even see them." I promised, and I could hear Shadowheart giggling behind me as she caught on. "It'll just be me and two of my men to guide the way. That's enough I can still take you - you personally - with me if you try anything, but nowhere near enough for us to try anything."

"... we'll take it." the bandit leader reluctantly agreed. "All right, you get most of your people back and have three only waiting at the top of the stairs. We'll be out in a few minutes."

Good to their word, the remainder of the bandit gang started coming out single file as soon as they saw their way was clear, and I amiably pointed them back down the path we'd come up and gave them directions to the crash site. Whatever intentions they might have possibly had of double-dealing were visibly put by the wayside when they got a good look at the wreckage I'd left of their crane, and soon enough they were down the road without further incident.

"Cleverly done." Shadowheart complimented me as they finished moving out of earshot. "And a good thing for us. We might still have won at those odds, but after all the fighting we've already done today-" she sighed with weariness.

"You've a real gift for negotiations, particularly of the more mercenary variety." Gale agreed. "I wonder, what exactly did my new friend do for a living before he came here?"

"I'd been a nobleman, actually." I surprised him. "Although one of the people who worked for me had been a pirate captain for years before she moved ashore and gave it up. Mostly gave it up." I admitted. "If you fight alongside someone for long enough, you learn at least a bit of their language."

"Handy skill." Shadowheart nodded.

"And you're right that these ruins look like the best place around to fort up for the night, particularly given that I feel like my feet are about to fall off." Gale added. "Let's make sure those bandits didn't miss anything down there when they were clearing it out and then bar the door from the inside."

We each lit torches from the supplies the bandits had left behind and did a quick search of the ruins. A weathered plaque on the wall contained an archaic inscription that Shadowheart could just barely translate as a prayer to a god named "Jergal, the Scribe of the Names of the Dead", who apparently was not a god in common worship any longer. These ruins had apparently the basement layer of an old and now-forgotten temple to this god, with commonplace things like a kitchen, storerooms, and one chamber that had apparently been the temple library. I was bemused to find that I could read the books written in common tongue just as readily as I could understand the local language, and I shoved several of the local histories and commentaries into my pack to help me get acclimated to my new home.

"Here." Shadowheart said, looking at one of several candelabras mounted into the wall. "Look at the scratches on the wall next to this. This turns." She reached up and pulled it, and the grating of stone told us of a secret door opening nearby.

"There's a sub-level beneath this one." I looked down at the hidden stairway that had been revealed. "That must be where that locked door we saw at the bottom of the cliff, the one by the beach, was leading into. It'd be about the right depth."

"A mystery to explore tomorrow." Gale said. "Because I'm about ready to drop."

After making sure the door to the outside was barred and the secret door was wedged shut from our side so we didn't get any unpleasant middle-of-the-night surprises - and also after barring the door to the one storeroom that now had a roof open to the sky, because that was where the wreckage of crane had fallen though the courtyard into - we got a fire going, cooked ourselves a hearty meal, and settled down to rest. Shadowheart used one of her spells to fill an empty barrel full of water, and after using it for cooking and drinking we rolled it into an adjacent room so we'd each have privacy for a hasty bath, or at least a scrubdown.

"Are you sure this is wise?" Shadowheart asked me, as we both sat at a table in the former refectory of this temple waiting for Gale to finish. "Every single hour brings us that much closer to a horrible death."

"I agree, but after a near-death experience last night and multiple battles then and today, and no proper rest in between-" I shook my head. "Trying to explore and fight while exhausted is another good way to find a horrible death. We need at least some proper food and rest before trying to go further."

"You're not wrong." she conceded. "But we can't spend too much time delaying either. We need to move on at first light."

"I'm also hoping to find a map in these ruins." I explained to her. "Even if it's as out of date as the rest of these ruins, if it marks the position of this temple in relation to any of the cities you already know then we can find out whether we're closer to Baldur's Gate or Elturel right now. Because time is pressing, and we can't spend any of it walking in the wrong direction."

"I hadn't thought of that." she admitted. "How far in advance were you planning this?"

"Only when I saw that there was a library down here." I answered. "Sadly, there weren't any maps in there when I searched it. But now I'm thinking that it'd be worth at least an hour or two of our time to explore the sub-level tomorrow."

"It's possible that there's more documents down there, but not likely." Shadowheart said. "What makes you so sure?"

"Those bandits funded an entire expedition and came a long way to explore this place specifically." I said. "Men like that don't fund expeditions like that unless they really believe there's a very profitable treasure to be excavated. If they hadn't already been frustrated from having searched these ruins for Maker only knows how long and finding nothing, I'd never have been able to talk them out of here." I thought out loud. "Which means they didn't find the secret stairway, which is likely where whatever they were looking for was hidden. And while we've all talked about finding a powerful healer to help cure us they're probably not going to do it for free, so-"

"We need to at least make a quick attempt at exploring down there and hopefully find enough of a treasure that we've got something to pay them with." Shadowheart realized. "I really didn't think that far ahead." She quirked a grin at me. "With a strategic mind like that, you must have been a very powerful nobleman." she flattered me.

"I wish." I burst out sourly "Everyone's always said I was a natural leader, but I never seem to lead anyone to anywhere but-" I waved one hand helplessly at the empty air. "Nine Hells, just look at us now!"

"You already mentioned your siblings." Shadowheart said with a commiserating sigh. "I'm guessing that it didn't go well after that?"

"No." I spat bitterly. Not any of it. Maker, I ended up stick in the Fade - the Silver Sea, you called it - at least partly because I didn't give a damn any longer whether I lived or died. And one of the party had to sacrifice themselves anyway to hold off the demon long enough for the rest to escape, so I figured why not me? The rest of them still had jobs to do, people who needed them, but I-" I broke off.

"This sounds very much like a tale you don't want to tell, but need to." Gale said softly, having come up behind us as we were talking. "No pressure, friend, none at all... but if you want to unburden yourself, we're here."

And with that, it all quietly burst out of me. Growing up as the eldest child of three, with our parents a runaway noblewoman of Kirkwall and the fugitive and apostate mage she'd unaccountably fell in love with. Our simple upbringing as villagers in the town of Lothering in Ferelden, and Father's passing from an illness. My having to be the man of the family until the Fifth Blight came and the darkspawn horde destroyed Lothering and almost everyone we'd grown up with, and our family's desperate flight into the wilderness pursued by darkspawn. Carver's death as he fought to keep Mother from being crushed by an ogre, and our not even having had the time to bury him before having to flee further. The miracle that rescued us and let us live to seek passage by ship to Kirkwall, the city of Mother's birth, only to find that the noble Amell family she'd been born into had lost all their wealth and station and been reduced to one destitute and dissolute uncle, her brother Gamlen. Myself and Bethany fighting and clawing at every opportunity we could find in Kirkwall's streets and lower districts, meeting Varric, our desperately hiring on to Bartrand's expedition into the Deep Roads, and Bethany's helpless death down there from the darkspawn taint those tunnels were filled with-

The sheer emptiness that was living in Kirkwall, as the more wealth and fame I acquired and the higher I rebuilt our family fortunes the emptier and bleaker our house became. Mother's death at the hands of that serial-killing necromancer, the qunari menace that had ultimately been brought down on Kirkwall by Isabela's theft of their sacred relic, Aveline's own success at becoming captain of the guard but the necessary distance that drew between her and my more "gray" activities, Anders' descent from kindly healer into mass murdering lunatic as the spirit that had possessed him drove him further and further into madness - the intolerance and paranoia of the Templars, the poisoning of the body and soul that was the red lyrium menace, Merrill's growing obsession with restoring the ancient eluvian artifact and the demon that tempted her every step of the way, our estrangement when I did my best to save her from that doom by smashing the eluvian, the war between the mages and the templars breaking loose that had us fighting as friends for the last time but no longer lovers- Orlesian plots, qunari intrigues - and that damnable moment where my blind foolishness had doomed Ferelden, when the ancient magister-turned-elder-darkspawn Corypheus tricked us into freeing him from his ancient captivity and then left me blind to the catastrophe I'd unleashed when he'd somehow returned from death after Varric and I had slain him and dropped an entire dungeon on him-

I came to the end of the sad, pathetic tale as I recounted how I'd been determined to help the Inquisitor defeat the menace that I'd unwittingly loosed on Thedas in the first place, and how in the end I could do nothing but try and die to give them a chance to run.

"And that's the tale of Garrett Hawke." I breathed out tonelessly, having gone numb from the sheer emptiness of letting it all out at once. "The illustrious Champion of Kirkwall, who could defeat any opponent and yet still lose every war. So perhaps you might want to choose another leader for this party, now that you've heard my track record."

"If I hadn't already been told that the gods had abandoned your world, then I'd have known it from how unfair your tale was." Gale said forthrightly to me. "From all that you've said you only did what any good man would be expected to do, and did it better than almost anyone. And I'm certainly no leader, no tactician, even if I am no small scholar. Someone's got to keep us on track, and I'll trust you to do that and do it well."

"I-" Shadowheart stared almost numbly at me, visibly overwhelmed with what she'd heard. "I- am really not good with comforting words." she breathed out. "That's not a thing I've ever done much. But I know - I've seen some of the things that prolonged cruelty can do to others." she visibly struggled to express herself. "How if you drown a person in pain for long enough, and pervasively enough, they can start to believe that they... deserve nothing better." She trailed off with a sharp breath and a wince. "But that's not always true, Hawke. And I can't even begin to make myself believe that it should be true for you." she finished firmly.

"Thank you." I said quietly. "That- that means a lot. I'll try my best to live up to your confidence in me." I promised them weakly.

"And with that, I think it's time we all turned in." Shadowheart deliberately eased the moment. "You go wash up and get your rest. I'll take first watch."

---

Author's Note: There's a fast-travel system in the BG3 game, but there obviously isn't one in tabletop D&D. So I could either ignore it, or I could BS up an explanation for why it was there. I hope that 'Netherese travelstones' suffices as an explanation.

And yes, my Hawke has had an absolutely shit life. Then again, even the most optimistic Hawkes still get an absolutely shit life. But hey, at least he's starting to make new friends!

 

[cliffc999]

Even though we rose early with the dawn, the hours of sleep did us all a world of good. The remnants of the temple refectory even gave us a hearth in which we could cook ourselves a hot breakfast, and much refreshed we set back out.

The temple crypts at the bottom of the secret stairway were fairly small, and had been deserted for so long that there wasn't even any mold or dampness - the still air carried only the scents of dryness and dust. The large wooden doors leading to the deepest crypt were locked, but we found the key in a nearby sarcophagus guarded only by a few elementary traps. Also in the sarcophagus was a spear made out of a strange metal, one that Gale said was clearly magical. As I already had a magical greatsword I offered it to Shadowheart, but she decided to stick with her more familiar mace-and-shield combination.

Still, though, this clearly wasn't a large enough treasure that anyone would fund even a minor expedition to come all this way and fetch it, so after unlocking the vault doors we preceded into the depths of the catacombs.

"Odd." Shadowheart said, examining one of the robed corpses littering the floor. Whoever had died in here had done it so long ago that the only thing left of their bodies were withered scraps of desiccated skin clinging to bony skeletons. "They're dressed like scribes, but they're all armed. What were they writing that was so controversial that they were prepared to die defending it?"

"More to the point, what made their enemies willing to bury them alive with it?" I thought out loud.

"You can tell that just by looking at skeletons?" Gale questioned me.

"There's no broken or even chipped bones on any of them, and their robes might be rotting away but don't show any tears or slashes." I pointed out. "So they clearly didn't die of battle-wounds." I paced over towards the large opening in the far wall that led into a small cave system nearby. "Look, running water." I pointed at the creek burbling happily away across the cave floor. "So they didn't even die of thirst, but of hunger. And starvation takes weeks to kill, not days."

"There's a ladder over here." Shadowheart said, looking up at the ceiling of the cave where a small shaft leading upwards through the cave's roof had a set of rungs sticking a short ways down out of it. "And this lever here, it must lower the ladder. These men were down here long enough to starve to death when they had an escape route right here!"

"That doesn't make any sense." I said. "The attackers might have settled for just locking that door from the outside and leaving the people trapped in here to die rather than coming in after them, if they didn't have enough men to like their odds of going head-to-head with desperate men fighting like cornered rats in a basement. But if they had enough troops to put in a full siege of this place for the weeks it took for these last few defenders to die, then they had more than enough to just come in and do it the quick way."

"I think you might be a bit narrowly focused on only the mundanely possible explanations, Sir Hawke." Gale rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Because now that you've pointed it out, these corpses do present a distinct anomaly in their presence here. One that can't be readily explained by any conventional tactical choices."

"Ugh." Shadowheart rubbed the bridge of her nose frustratedly. "How did I not see it right away? Armed corpses left mysteriously laying around in a place they have no business laying around in means only one thing. Necromancy."

We all drew together in a defensive formation as we warily eyed the dead bodies. "So you're saying it's a trap. As soon as we touch whatever the owners of this crypt don't want touched, those corpses get back up and try to kill us."

"Very likely." Gale agreed with a sigh. "And they're almost certainly also set to go off if we start trying to destroy the bodies while they're down."

"I don't suppose you could just fill the room with magical flame or something?" I asked him, knowing that a suitably powerful wizard back home could have done just that.

"Ah, if only you'd caught me on a better day." Gale said embarassedly. "Unfortunately, ever since our illithid friends so incosiderately jammed one of their larvae into my cerebral cortex my magic's been a bit off. I can still cast the simpler spells in my repertoire, but it's going to take me a while to get back any advanced usage."

"I've noticed the same with my magic." Shadowheart agreed ruefully.

"Hrm." I mused out loud after I'd taken myself through a brief weapons drill. "I thought my timing being a bit off yesterday was just because I was exhausted, but you're right. The knowledge is all there, even most of my reflexes, but it's not coming together like it normally does. As if I'd been out of practice for months, not just days."

"Our nervous systems aren't entirely the same as they were last week." Gale analyzed. "And it only takes a very subtle shift in the activity patterns of the brain to require a significant adjustment to get back to the peak of performance."

"Well in the meanwhile, we've still got this immediate problem to solve." I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "If you can't throw a big fireball, can you still do a little one?"

"Easily." Gale said, curling his fingers one by one over his open palm and materializing a small ball of flame within it. "I can do a cantrip this simple all day. But I'm not exactly going to take out a charging pack of undead warriors with it."

"You won't need to." I reassured him. "Not when there's an entire barrel of lamp oil still upstairs with the rest of the supplies that bandit expedition abandoned here."

And so we destroyed almost three times our number in undead warriors while barely needing to swing a sword. I simply chopped the head off of one of them while it was laying there inert, then waited until all the rest had finished rising up in response to my attack and let them follow me back out of the room and up the staircase to the upper level. And as soon as we had them all packed in tightly on the narrow staircase, Gale simply flicked his flame-bolt cantrip down the stairs and ignited the barrel of oil we'd carefully prepositioned at the chokepoint, and that took care of that. Some conjured water from one of Shadowheart's own minor spells took care of the fire hazard afterwards, and we had the entire crypt free to explore at our leisure.

"I wonder if this was the treasure those men were after?" Shadowheart said, looking at the eldritch tome we'd found locked and sealed in a room adjacent to the skeleton-trapped crypt. Nothing we'd tried had even begun to open it until she'd used her clerical powers to channel some divine magic through the lock, at which point the tome was revealed to be a high sacred artifact of Jergal. According to Shadowheart, recording the names and dates of death of the departed was a sacrament for Jergal's clergy, however commonplace or obscure the dead might have been - and the many volumes of such names we'd found in the library upstairs certainly bore that impression out. But this tome was a Book of Dead Gods - a tome in which the passing of lost divinities from Faerun's ancient past to the recent present had all had the dates and circumstances of their fading written out in a single spidery hand, by what must have been one of Jergal's highest priests or most sacred scribes.

"I can think of scholars in Waterdeep who'd pay a chest of gold for a rare find like that." Gale agreed. "Unfortunately, we're a long way from Waterdeep. So unless whatever powerful healer we hope to find likes to collect rare books-"

"There's still one more chamber to explore." I said. "Not that I've found the door to it yet, but if you look carefully at those corner walls over there you'll spot that there's some space unaccounted for behind them."

"Secret door hopefully means great treasure beyond!" Gale agreed enthusiastically, and after a brief search we found the hidden switch that opened up a small hidden chamber. Most of the chamber was filled by one giant and elaborate sarcophagus, larger even than the one we'd found the magic spear in, and a small chest in the corner with some magical potions and scrolls that we readily added to the treasure pile.

"Here lies the Guardian of Tombs. Through knowledge comes atonement." Shadowheart translated the plaque on the sarcophagus. "A 'Guardian of Tombs'? I'm not familiar with any lore pertaining to that. Gale?"

"Afraid not." he shrugged. "So, who wants to do the honors?"

I narrowed my eyes and looked at them both. "As if we don't already know who the two of you are going to make do all the heavy lifting." I grumbled at them affectionately, and then reached out to firmly grasp the lid of the sarcophagus and-

And the instant my hands touched the lid, magical green flames lit up in low braziers spaced all around the sarcophagus despite the complete absence of fuel or igniter. We all sprang back in alarm as the lid unaccountably kept moving, smoothly sliding back away from us with the slow, inexorable pace of an advancing glacier. A tall, thin figure covered in the dried gray flesh of a long-dead corpse yet wearing entirely pristine robes showing not the slightest trace of wear or rot levitated up out of the open sarcophagus, staring majestically down at us as it floated just below the ceiling.

As it floated forward and down we all backed up almost to the far wall - not that it was very far away - and hurriedly drew our weapons and set ourselves into a guard position. It made no hostile reaction and raised no weapon, despite having a long staff - of incongruously plain wood, no elaborate arcane tool - slung across its back.

My nerves were screaming at me, and only the epic embarassment I'd felt at my flashback yesterday kept me from falling into another one - except that this time it would have been nothing as harmless as mistaking goblins for genlocks. No, now my mind irresistibly kept drawing the comparision between current events and what in hindsight had been one of the very worst days of life - the day that Varric and I had inadvertently freed the ancient horror Corypheus from his imprisonment.

Like Corypheus, this lich-thing was impossibly tall, towering at least a full foot above me - and I was not a short man. Like him, it was nothing but dead, dried flesh stretched impossibly thinly over a walking skeleton. Like him, its eyes were filled with a terrible age and an inhumanly penetrating gaze-

But the closer I looked, the more I spotted the differing details. Corypheus had been an ancient darkspawn, and like all their kind brought the darkspawn taint with him wherever he walked - an offensive, corrupting musk that you could almost smell in your mind, even when it wasn't in your nostrils. This thing floated through the room as if were entirely ethereal, not even there - there was no aura, no psychic force, just a quiet smell like old dry paper. Corypheus' flesh had been twisted and corrupt, an ugly meld of the color of dried blood and rotten meat - this ancient undead's flesh was dead and dried but also smooth and symmetrical, with its gray flesh elaborately filigreed with beautiful patterns of gold inlay, even up to and covering its skull. If I hadn't seen it levitate and walk, I'd almost have thought it an elaborate work of art, a collaborate project between a master sculptor and a goldsmith-

"So he has spoken, and so thou standest before me." the ancient intoned in what was almost a chant, the cadence of its words as steady as the ticking of a clock and its tones so measured, so formal, as to bring a measure of calm to the room via sheer lack of passion alone. Which was yet another contrast from Corypheus, whose words always carried an undertone of snarling hatred even when he was pontificating most calmly. "Yet your name has been recorded for only a single day. What a curious way to awaken."

"Who's 'he'?" I grasped at the only part of that last statement that seemed to make sense.

"An arbiter of certain matters." the ancient being replied with glacial patience. "But that is not important now. I have a question for thee, Garrett Hawke. What is the worth of a single mortal's life?"

What? I blinked confusedly, hurriedly looking to both of my companions to see if they had any idea what was going on here. Because honestly, what the hell sort of question was that? It definitely said something that the part where it somehow magically knew my name was actually the least confusing part of the last several sentences.

Unfortunately, neither Shadowheart nor Gale seemed to have any more clue about what was going on here than I did. Furthermore, the intensity of the being's gaze being directed towards me made it rather plain that he was only asking one of us, so as we reluctantly lowered our weapons my thoughts raced to try and scramble for an answer-

I rapidly discarded the idea of asking this thing for clarification, or of just refusing to answer its question. It didn't seem malevolent at first glance, but it didn't seem very benevolent either, and I was almost entirely certain it was powerful enough we did not want to fight it. But I had the distinct sense that giving some obvious platitude of an answer, such as 'All life is infinitely precious' or some such, would be rejected as merely an obvious platitude. Saying that would also be rank hypocrisy on my part, because I was a warrior by profession with all that implied. Giving the opposite answer, that no life really meant anything in the face of an immense and uncaring universe, would be an even worse idea for obvious reasons. Life and its worth was far too complicated to sum up in a single sentence or phrase, or even a book, and every single mortal was living a different life under different circumstances-

"That is a question each single mortal can only answer about their own life, and only when at its end." I answered it confidently.

"Oh, if only the others had thought as such." it mused enigmatically. "Very well." it continued gently. "I am satisfied. We have met, and I know thy face. We will see each other again at the proper time and place. Fare well." it concluded dispassionately, and then turned and left the room without a single backward glance.

The silence echoed behind it for over a dozen heartbeats before I sputtered "All right, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?"

---

By the time we shook off our confusion and left the tomb, the ancient whatever-the-hell-it-was was long gone. Part of me couldn't help but angst over the idea that I might well have yet again let loose another primordial undead horror to go ravage the world, but my logical mind kept reminding me that this couldn't possibly be the same sort of situation as Corypheus. That monster had been sealed in the bottommost depths of an entire dwarf-built trap dungeon whose sole purpose had been to confine him for eternity, and it had taken us days worth of effort to elaborately unravel all the traps and protections - and an even more elaborate scheme on the part of Corypheus' servants to manipulate me and Varric into doing it. While this thing had simply been lying in what was a completely unguarded root cellar by comparision, with no locks or seals on its tomb at all - Gale couldn't even find any traces of residual warding magic that had ever been on that sarcophagus. By all appearances that lich-thing had simply chosen to lay down in a tomb and wait for centuries to get up and trade its strange riddle with the first person to actually touch the lid, restrained by nothing more than the honor system.

"Through Knowledge comes Atonement." Hmmm. Perhaps it was being punished? Ordered to wait - possibly by those mysterious 'others' it had mentioned disagreeing with? - until someone discovered it and showed any intent to set it free? But if it wasn't magically bound to that task then it was obedient enough to comply with such strictures without being forced to, which meant it was hopefully under enough discipline to not be an indiscriminate scourge.

It had better be, at any rate. Because I already had more than enough desperate and dangerous questing to be getting on with, just to get these damned parasites out of our heads before they turned us all into brain-eating monsters from beyond the stars. So if the world turned out to need saving from that ancient lich-thing as well then the world was just going to have to rely on somebody else for the immediate future. And whatever 'proper time and place' that thing and I were supposedly going to see each other again was hopefully a very long way off.

Unfortunately, while we'd done a fair job of finding treasure in these ruins we still hadn't found anything that would tell us where we were. So after we were done exploring we warped ourselves back to the travelstone where we'd originally met Gale and took the other turn, the one that we'd bypassed on our way to the ruins. Because even if we hadn't found a map the logic that originally compelled us to visit those ruins was still valid. If people had built a temple there then pilgrims and worshippers had to have a way to reach there, and while the nearest settlement had almost certainly not existed that far back the main road between Elturel and Baldur's Gate still had and so at least one of the paths leading away from the temple would eventually reach there. And if settlers had built a village nearby in the interim, they'd be much more likely to build it near an already-existing path than not-

"Voices up ahead." I quietly warned the rest of the party, as the distant sounds of two people conversing came to us from around a corner. We came around the path and between a pair of low rocks to see a pair of red-skinned, horned humanoids - they looked vaguely like the devil-men I'd seen on the nautiloid, only slim and of humanlike build instead of the hulking menaces there and with far less malevolent features and no aura of infernal power - dressed in leather armor and armed with hunting bows staring up at a man-trap that had been rigged over the pathway, a snare that had caught a familiar someone by her ankle and left her hanging helplessly upside down over six feet above the ground.

"Zorru was right," the male humanoid was saying to his female companion. "Face like a toad and twice as ugly."

Get me down from here! an angry mental voice sounded in my head, as the parasite in my skull twitched slightly in resonance with her own. Because the person caught in the trap was the same female githyanki warrior who'd briefly aided Shadowheart and I on the nautiloid, then taken off on her own as soon as we'd hit the ground.

Say "please". I thought back amusedly along the same mental 'circuit' she'd somehow opened between us.

NEVER! she 'screamed' indignantly.

"That thing's dangerous. Leave it here for the goblins to kill- hey, who are you?!?" the hunter's companion said, as they both turned to notice our arrival.

"Well met." I smiled at them disarmingly, as the three of us kept our hands clear of our weapons. "Catching anything?" I nodded up at the trapped githyanki.

"We found her caught in this trap." the male hunter answered. "And she's the same type of whatever-it-is as a band of them that recently attacked our friend Zorru and killed most of his patrol."

"They're called githyanki." Shadowheart offered, staring coldly up at the trapped one. "And I'm not surprised that they murdered your friends. They're too often like that." her lip curled scornfully.

Don't you dare! the githyanki mentally screamed at us. Remember what grows in your skulls! Remember that I alone know where you can find the cure!

"Is your village nearby?" I asked them. "And do you have a healer there?"

"We're refugees, friend." the male hunter corrected me. "But we're currently camping at a druid's grove just a little ways from here. The lead druid is supposed to be quite the powerful healer indeed."

"Sounds ideal!" Gale said relievedly. "Could we trouble you for an escort to your camp?"

"Well-" the female hunter trailed off, looking up at the trapped githyanki.

I shook my head. "Leaving her here for the weather to finish off is even worse than cutting her throat in cold blood, and if you were the type of people to do that then you would have done it already without stopping to debate." I sighed. "And I'm not going to do that either. So I suppose we'd better just cut her down."

"But Zorru-" the male hunter said.

I shook my head slightly at Shadowheart's wordless glare of This is a bad idea! and continued onwards. "I don't know much about her people, but are they really so much of a monolith that every single one of them is an accomplice to every crime of every other one? Men don't work that way. Elves don't. And I very much doubt your folk do either." I temporized right over the fact that I didn't properly know what the name of their race was.

"No." their leader agreed. "But how do we know she wasn't one of the individual ones that attacked our friends?"

"Because she was with us yesterday." I explained. "We were all prisoners on that nautiloid ship you might have seen crashing the other night. We got separated yesterday while exploring around." I glared up at the trapped githyanki. "But all's well that ends well, right?"

A wordless snarl of frustration was the only reply.

"Do you have many traps like this around your encampment?" Gale asked brightly in an obvious distraction.

"They're not our traps, but the goblins'." the female hunter said. "Little bastards have been scouting around for days trying to find our encampment. You're lucky you didn't run into one of their patrols."

"Actually we did." Shadowheart replied, before turning to me. "Are we really going to be bailing our rash... companion... out of the consequences of her own actions again?" she remonstrated.

The grating of githyanki teeth was clearly audible to us all even at this distance.

"If she can act with a little more discipline from now on." I stared grimly up at my captive audience. "Because rushing off on your own after we got separated was a very bad idea. You were lost in the wilderness with no idea of where you were and probably not that much experience in the Faerunian environment, and you left behind potential native guides and extra swords to proceed alone through hostile country. Without even any supplies, let alone reinforcements. Does that all begin to sound as foolish as it actually was now that I've listed it out loud?"

"Yes." she hissed through gritted teeth. "I-" she exhaled heavily. "Perhaps not all of my recent choices were... tactically optimum." she conceded like pulling teeth. "Would you cut me down now?"

I am still NOT saying it! she followed up mentally.

"Thank you." I said politely, and went to go find the other end of the rope trap keeping her up and help lower her to the ground.

"You dare set yourself up as my leader?" the githyanki fumed to me as soon as her feet touched the dirt. "You might as well suggest a wyvern bow to worms! Amongst my people authority is earned only by proven deeds!"

Maker, it's like I'm back talking to the Arishok. I grumbled in the privacy of my own thoughts. Because the uncompromising militarism and arrogance of githyanki manners was very much reminding me of the qunari at this moment.

"Then why do you offer me only words and not deeds?" I shot back, more than familiar with the rhythm of qunari negotiations by now. "I've saved your life twice already, once on the nautiloid and once right here. The very least you can do in return is help save ours from these parasites."

"You... are not entirely inaccurate." she conceded reluctantly. "Very well, we have an accord. I will fight alongside you as one of your warband for as long as we both still need each other, and lead you to my people so we may there be cured. After that much is done then we go our separate ways."

"Done." I agreed. "Come on, our new acquaintances are taking us to their settlement. There's supposed to be a druid there, a healer."

"As well as this 'Zorru', who can tell us where he encountered others of my people and thus give us a lead towards the nearest githyanki creche." she mused out loud. "Yes, this is a valid course of action."

"I'm glad you approve." Shadowheart said icily. "Just remember - you gave your word to act as one of the party from now on. Don't you dare break it."

"You dare insult my honor?" she rounded on Shadowheart angrily. "A warrior of the Gith? I should-"

"Ladies." I spoke over both of them firmly. "We're all in the same boat now, so let's not rush to toss each other overboard." I looked at Shadowheart first, because she had been going a bit out of her way to pick a fight-

"All right." Shadowheart lowered her eyes. "Allies for now." I turned my 'angry older brother' glare towards our githyanki friend before she could say anything to break the mood.

"It is as she says." the githyanki muttered. "I am Lae'zel, of Creche K'liir. Know that you have made a valuable ally this day."

After we all finished introducting ourselves - the two hunters were named Damays and Nymessa, of a people called the 'tieflings' - we fell in behind them as they led us back towards the druid's grove. I wordlessly handed Lae'zel a canteen, because she had to be thirsty as anything after hanging there for who knew how many hours, and she grabbed it and drained it without a single word of acknowledgement before handing it back. I began to wonder at how young she might be by her people's standards, because what I'd been told was a warrior race engaged in a generations-long struggle wouldn't seem to have this much room for impractical pride unless she personally had little field experience so far-

"Shouting up ahead." Damays said worriedly. "We're almost at the grove, but something's wrong-"

"Double time!" I called, and we all broke into a run. We passed another travelstone and came out into a small clearing before a stone cliff-wall about fifteen feet high and topped by a crude wooden battlement. Several more tieflings stood on top of it, looking down at a small party of human warriors shouting up at them from the ground. All of them were shaken and sweating, as if they'd just run a desperate race, and their unbandaged wounds and the goblin arrow still sticking out of one of their shields told me what they'd been running from.

"Open the gate!" the leader of the human party screamed.

"Nobody gets in!" one tiefling called down from the battlement. "Zevlor's orders!"

"That pack of goblins will be on us any second!" the man screamed back.

"But I can't risk-" the one tiefling replied.

"THEN LOWER A DAMNED ROPE!" I shouted at him as we ran up to join the other adventuring party. "We've got two of your scouts trapped out here with us, so get us in that way if you can't risk opening the gate!"

"Fetch a rope! Quickly!" someone called from up above us, as we all fell into a battle line with the others.

"Quick thinking there, friend!" the leader of the adventurers called out to me. "I'm Aradin. We get out of this alive, I'm buying you a drink!"

"Pale ale's my favorite." I said back to him cheerfully, as the yelping of some unfamiliar type of beast started sounding from the path entrance across the clearing. A pair of goblins riding two misshapen monster-wolves burst into the clearing, followed by a squad of goblin infantry running behind them.

"Dammit, not enough time!" I swore. "KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN UP THERE, THEY'VE GOT ARCHERS!" I shouted as the goblins grinned evilly at us where we stood trapped with our backs to the wall. They lazily settled themselves into a battle line of their own and began to slowly advance across the clearing towards us, holding their fire until they got into easy bow range-

"Gale, have you got anything that blinds or flashes?" I called to him quickly. "Cast it before they turn us into archery targets against this backstop!"

"Fog Cloud!" he called out in immediate reply, and the rear line of goblins were obscured just before they had a chance to start firing at us. A few arrows still flew blindly out of the mist, but hit no one. Shadowheart took the opportunity to cast a quick spell of her own, a blessing of some kind, and we felt extra strength and steadiness of hand flow into us.

"They're off-balance! CHAAAARGE!" I called out, and took off towards the wolf-riding vanguard at a dead run. Gale hung back with the female bowman of the adventurers and the two tiefling hunters, who began to support us with cantrips and arrow fire as the rest of us hit the goblins' main force head-on.

I sprinted out ahead, making myself the vanguard and the most obvious target, and then did a powered leap directly over the heads of the two wolf-riders as they focused on me and left them skidding helplessly through our front lines to come to a halt barely fifteen feet in front of our bowmen. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Gale casting a spell that bathed wolves and their riders in a cone of flame from his outstretched hands and left them stumbling backwards and screaming in painly, only to be helplessly shot down by the archers. The fog cloud dissipated as soon as Gale turned his concentration to his next spell, but it had done its job of delaying and confusing the remaining goblins just long enough for us to close the gap, and we hit them in a flying wedge.

"H'taka!" Lae'zel screamed a joyous battlecry as she gathered some type of magical energy around her and did a twenty-foot flying leap of her own to get ahead of me and engage the apparent goblin leader where he stood in the midst of his archers. I left her to the job of gutting him while I covered her vulnerable flank with a quick slash, sending another goblin reeling away, and then the rest of us caught up and piled on as the remaining infantry had to drop their now-useless bows and hurriedly grab for their clubs or axes. Shadowheart cast a spell of her own that struck the goblin's own spellcaster with a brilliant energy bolt, ruining whatever spell they were attempting in mid-cast, and then followed up with a relentless series of blows with her mace. I spun into a wide sweeping whirlwind cut, bringing another pair of goblins down, and then turned to face the furious charge of one of the wolf-things as it broke away from our archers and made a lunge at what it had hoped would be our undefended backs.

I switched to the Bulwark stance, which used properly focused internal energy and balance to make a defending warrior nigh-impossible to knock down or push against their will, and set myself to receive the enemy's charge. The wolf-thing yelped in surprise as it unaccountably failed to shift my feet so much as an inch despite being three times my mass and hitting me in a full charge, and the battering it took as it ran full-on into the flat of my blocking greatsword broke off several of its fangs and dislocated its jaw. I took advantage of its shock to split its skull from scalp to jawbone, noted that the two wolf-riders and the other wolf-thing were already dead and our rear line had taken no apparent casualties, and then returned my attention to the main battle.

"For the Gate! For the Gate!" Aradin's voice came to me with a heartfelt battle cry, a necessity in a confusing melee like this to avoid being accidentally spitted by one of your allies, and I witnessed him and his partner flanking and trapping a pair of goblins up against one of the nearby boulders with a smoothness befitting long-practiced teamwork as Lae'Zel and Shadowheart, their animosity put aside at least for the moment, did the same with almost equal smoothness against the goblins' other flank. I did a hasty head count, matching still-standing and fallen goblins against the number of them that I'd carefully made sure to note before we began our counterattack-

"Two of them got away!" I cried out. "We've got to get after them before they bring the whole damn tribe back here!" I broke into a frantic run, heading as desperately as I could for the distant figures I now glimpsed at the very other end of the clearing as it frantically ran for the same path they'd taken to reach here-

"Damnable roaches!" a stranger's voice called out, and an eldritch blast flew down to strike one of the fleeing goblins directly between its shoulder blades with a bolt of green fire and send it crashing to the ground. With a dramatic leap a dark-skinned man dressed in an elaborate red-and-black doublet and brandishing a rapier leapt almost ten feet down from the high rock he'd fired his mage-bolt from to land impossibly lightly on his feet menacing the other goblin, which had fearfully turned to face him rather than also get shot in the back. Our new ally had apparently raced along the top of rock wall on our right flank all the way down from the battlement by the gate to cut the corner on the fleeing goblins to intercept them-

"Provoke the Blade-" he proclaimed dramatically as he batted the goblin's clumsy swing aside with a flourish and a parry, only to immediate cut over into a swift riposte. "-and suffer its sting!" he finished, as his rapier drove directly in under the last goblin's breastbone and out through its spine.

"Neatly done." I complimented him as I drew to a halt nearby. "And that's the last of them, thank goodness."

"You did good work yourself." the arcane warrior nodded back to me. "If you hadn't so swiftly organized a counter-attack, the Grove would have been in the gravest danger." He finished wiping his blade clean and sheathed it, and then extended his hand to shake. "Wyll, the Blade of Frontiers."

"Hawke." I introduced myself, and we shook hands. "You live here?" I asked as we strode back towards the other.

"Just visiting, same as yourself." he replied cheerfully. "Although given all the dark and dangerous things that have been menacing these good people lately, they need all the help that they can get."

"Is that the last of them?" a new tiefling, older and dressed in full warrior's armor, called down to us from the top of the battlement.

"Looks to be, Zevlor!" Nymessa the hunter called up to him.

"Thank the Gods, that was too close." this Zevlor replied. "Open the gate! We've got to get them all inside before more goblins come!" A section of the rock wall began to slowly inch upwards as the tieflings on the battlement began hauling on a pair of windlasses - apparently these 'druids' had hid the gate to their hideaway by disguising it as part of the rock formation.

"Tempus' blade, we came through that barely by the skin of our teeth." Aradin greeted me as we drew up alongside and filed through the open gateway. "If you hadn't come along, we'd have all been in for it. You've more than earned that ale."

"What were you thinking, leading the goblins here?" Zevlor said challengingly as he hurriedly came down a nearby path to meet us just inside the gateway. "And where is Halsin? What the hell happened?"

"Ease off!" Aradin said belligerently as the two of them faced off. "Fat lot of help you and all your useless tieflings were, sitting up there just watching us almost get shot full of holes-"

"We just finished one battle, and you want to start another one?" I interrupted them firmly. "Stop letting the blood race and just breathe."

"Sorry," Zevlor said, taking a step back and exhaling heavily. "But the leader of these druids left with Aradin's expedition here and now they're coming back without him, and with a pack of goblins on their heels to boot?"

"We didn't ask him to come!" Aradin burst with frustration. "He invited himself along, damn well demanded it of us! And he wasn't the only one we lost! There was a small army of gobbos in there, not just the little band we'd been told to expect! When they hit us it was all any man could do to get himself out, and those that fell behind-" He trailed off. "There was only three of us standin' at the end, and dozens of them. What the hell were we supposed to do except run? Drop dead just for your convenience?"

"Damn." Zevlor swore. "No, not that-" he shook his head. "But without Halsin to speak for us, I'm afraid the druids won't let any of us stay here. This is all such a mess!"

"You got that much right, at least." Aradin agreed. "Look, me and my lot? We're pulling out. There's barely any of us left, and some of us are wounded besides. And our whole quest's a lost cause now, with that army of gobbos sitting right on top of the prize. So to hell with this whole mess, we're getting back to Baldur's Gate before those goblins finish cutting this place off." He turned to me, and reached into his pouch to toss me a coin. "Sorry I can't stand you that ale I owe you in person, but as soon as I can see to my people's wounds a bit we've got to get right back on the road. You and your team are welcome to come with us if you want - you're all damn good in a fight, we could use you."

"We've got a quest of our own, and we can't leave it." I explained to him. "Good fortune to you on the road."

"You too, mate." Aradin nodded at us, and he and his two remaining companions turned and left.

"I'm Zevlor," he introduced himself to our party after Aradin and his team had headed off. "I'm the leader of these refugees. Welcome to the Emerald Grove... at least for now."

"Do the druids have any healer other than this Halsin?" I asked him. "We're definitely in need of one."

"His apprentice, Nettie, should be able to see to you." Zevlor assured us. "Her workroom is in the Grove's underground chambers, you can find the entrance to them in the center courtyard across from their big sacred idol. I'd take you there, but I've got to go get a working party organized to clean up those bodies and at least try to hide some of the trail they left here so when the rest of their tribe comes looking for them, we can at least buy some time before they find us."

"It's all right, I'll show them the way." Wyll contributed obligingly, and as Zevlor went to go take charge of his people I turned and led our group deeper into the Grove.

---

Author's Note: Well, I got my BG3 configuration running again, but I lost all my saved games and am having to redo it from scratch. Oh well, that's what super easy god mode mods are for.

The further in we more I find myself diverting at least slightly from 'video game' logic. For example, you find Lae'zel in some elaborate suspended cage, not a trap that goblins would believably be using in the field. That's presumably so that things were easier to animate, but I don't have to worry about animation budget or physics modeling so I get to do what I want. Likewise, the tiefling hunters just tell you where the Grove is but don't lead you back there, because videogame logic has to account for 'Players who do the encounter and then go run in the opposite direction to do half a dozen sidequests or pick berries or whatnot before actually going to the next main quest location'. Likewise, there's no way in the crypt to recognize in advance that 'these bodies are totally lurking undead', although you could in theory set up your barrelmancy in advance anyways.

The 'losing power' effect of the tadpoles is BG3 canon - it's the explanation for why every party member in the game starts at level 1 and has to levelup from scratch, despite some of them having backstories as veteran adventurers. Gale in particular is explicitly an archmage in his character history, and one talented enough to have drawn the personal attention of Mystra besides, and yet he's level 1 same as the rest of you at the start of the game. So the game covered it with 'the tadpole infection basically dropped negative levels on everyone and they had to slowly work them off over the course of the game', and the same is happening here.

As for Astarion - spoiler alert, the party is not recruiting him. The in-story justification is that they simply went the other way from where you initially meet him, and he's not going to be hanging around for days until they possibly go back there. The Doylist reason is because there's simply no way Hawke wouldn't stake him as soon as he found out Astarion was a vampire. So rather than deal with that whole thing, Astarion simply gets to go off on his own just like if the party never recruited him in game. Which admittedly doesn't end very well for him in-game but, well, you can't save everyone.

 

[cliffc999]

The Emerald Grove was a clever mixture of simple architecture and natural defenses. The porticullis we entered through was actually a reinforced wooden gatehouse, died gray to simulate rock and then carefully overgrown with vines. You had to approach quite closely to the rock face it was set into to realize that it actually was an entrance. These druids certainly liked their privacy.

Behind the porticullis was a narrow cut between rock formations that led into a small series of caves adjoining a peaceful glade, with a large idol representing the god of nature that was worshipped here mounted in the center. As we looked down into the glade from a high path adjoining it I spotted barely-visible wisps of arcane energies gathering and flowing around the idol, pulsing in time with the chanting of a small circle of druids who were all surrounding it in some elaborate ritual.

The caves were crowded with dozens of tieflings, living in improvised shelters and hasty tents or just sleeping on the ground. A communal kitchen had been set up in one cavern, but it was clearly of recent construction and used only those implements which could be carried on pack animals. Between the sheer rawness of the set-up and the mixture of quiet despair and suppressed panic that suffused every low-faced conversation, marked every person's face as they fell warily silent at our approach and watched us walk past, I didn't need Zamsyn's mention of his folk being refugees to tell exactly what was going on here. I'd seen exactly the same gathering of lost souls piled up outside the gates of Kirkwall, as all the folks who had tried fleeing the Blight in Ferelden to seek safety in the Free Marches had found out that the Free Marches didn't want any part of them. And if we hadn't been able to prove that we were members of an old Kirkwall family trying to return home, with a still-living relative in the city to vouch for us - and if I hadn't indentured myself for a year to raise enough money to pay a hefty amount of bribes - we'd have been stuck out there with them for a lot longer than a few days.

So I took several moments out as we passed to stop and ask needless directions from one person, to dip out a bit of food at the tieflings' soup kitchen, and to trade for a new dagger at their smith's. I even happened across a tiefling boy trying and failing to pick the pocket of one of Aradin's mercenaries as they were finishing up their packing, and needed a quick bit of diplomatic intervention to save our would-be thief from a thrashing. I still wasn't certain that the sob story he pitched us of the man's favorite locket reminding the boy of the one his dead mother had worn was true or not, but it certainly convinced the locket's owner enough to let it go.

What I was actually doing, of course, was taking advantage of these conversational opportunities to spread some rumors - or more precisely, some counter-rumors - throughout the crowd. My own refugee experience had left me keenly aware of how a desperate crowded of stranded folk could go from despair to panic in the blink of an eye under the wrong circumstances, and the knowledge that some type of battle against the goblins had just been fought outside the gate was visibly spreading through the compound at the speed of gossip even as I watched. However, apparently no one had made any systematic attempt to inform the refugees of what had actually happened, so I took that task upon myself. As one of the primary participants in that battle it was of course natural that people would ask me what had happened, and I left them reassured that it had merely been a goblin scouting party that had made it close to the gates but which had been successfully cut off and destroyed before a single one of them could report back. And so we proceeded onward, leaving behind a crowd significantly less likely to start a riot than they might have been a few minutes ago.

"That was nobly done," Wyll complimented me as we reached the passage junction that led down to the central courtyard. "You have a definite air of command, Hawke. Were you a man of rank back home?"

"Several ranks, actually." I chuckled softly. "Army sergeant, sellsword captain, expedition leader, landed lord - it's been a varied career."

"Then there must be quite a tale indeed behind how you ended up on that nautiloid." he grinned at me.

"How did you know about the nautiloid?" I looked at him suspiciously. Because I certainly hadn't mentioned that to him in the brief time we'd been acquainted-

Wyll's expression became grave as he turned to look me in the eye... and a sudden mental shivering resonated in my brain, as it echoed the mental signal from his own. He too bore a mind flayer's parasite.

"You as well?" Gale said incredulously. "Were those illithids working double shifts?"

"How I ended up sharing the same fate as you good folk is a long tale, some parts of which I'm not at liberty to tell." Wyll assured us. "I made it to the grove only a little over a day ahead of you. Their leader, Halsin, had recently left with the expedition whose survivors you fought alongside at the gate- I'd been doing my best to aid these refugees until he returned."

"And now-" I began, only for us all to be distracted by a sudden shout nearby.

"You!" Lae'zel had left our group to go loom menaciningly over a scared young tiefling man who was at present was trying to burrow through a cave wall with his shoulderblades to get away from her. "I saw how you tried to flee as soon as you spotted me! You have fought one of my kind before, haven't you? Are you this 'Zorru' of whom I've heard? Are you?!?"

"Please don't hurt me!" he begged her. "I haven't done anything!"

"Lae'zel." I cut off her words firmly. "Are you trying to get us thrown out of here?"

"I am trying to save our lives." she spat back at me. "Have your brains turned to mud and oozed out your ears? Have you forgotten how dire our need is already? We must locate the nearest githyanki creche, and this witless fool refuses to cooperate!"

"Would you give any cooperation to someone trying to threaten it out of you so crudely?" I belabored. "Or would your pride as a warrior forbid it?" I tried to turn her own militaristic logic back on her.

"But- he is clearly no warrior!" she protested.

"And you are clearly no diplomat." I cut her off, and then gently shouldered her aside. I ignored her hiss of fury as I turned to our unlucky wallflower and gave him my best charming smile. "Well met. I'm Hawke, and you are-?"

"Zorru." he quavered. "Why- why is she here?"

"We're lost, and she's trying to find her way back to her kin." I explained reasonably. "And you apparently saw others like her recently. Now, I apologize for her horrible manners-"

"I certainly do not!" Lae'zel tried to interrupt, and I rounded on her as firmly as I could.

"Lae'zel!" I barked. "Not two hours ago you gave your word to act as one of the party and already I'm getting a mutiny!"

"Mutiny is only conducted against superior officers! Who says you are mine?!?" Lae'zel argued.

"The rest of the party." Shadowheart's interruption chilled the air. "Gale and I have both acknowledged him as our leader. And that means you're outvoted." she finished cattily.

"I- this is- fine!" Lae'zel sputtered uselessly. "Just get the location from this witless teeth-ling already!"

"It's pronounced 'tiefling'," I corrected her amusedly, before turning back to Zorru.

"Are her people all like that?" he asked me nervously, edging around to my opposite side from Lae'zel. "So harsh and cruel?"

"I'm trying not to make any hasty judgments." I non-answered. "Now, would you please tell me what happened the last time you met one of her people, in your own words?"

"We were up scouting near where the Risen Road enters the mountain pass." he quavered. "There were two of us, me and Yul, and we'd almost made it to the bridge a little ways past the roadside inn, Waukeen's Rest I think it was called. I don't know exactly what happened." his voice fell as his eyes stopped focusing on us, as he began revisiting the horrible moment in his head. "They saw us before we saw them. First I knew they were there, one of them had come out of nowhere and jammed his blade straight through Yul's belly, front to back. I saw him go down, I saw several more of them step out from where they'd been hiding- and then I took off running."

Lae'zel opened her mouth, then shut it as I threw her a meaningful look. "Did you have your weapons out? Could they have thought they were under attack?" I probed.

"We were holding our bows as we marched, but didn't have any arrows nocked." he explained. "And they didn't challenge us or anything, just leapt out and had at us."

"That... is not usual behavior for one of our patrols." Lae'zel said confusedly. "Something must have gone wrong."

"You- you're not going up that way yourself, are you?" Zorru asked us worriedly.

"Not immediately," I looked at the rest of the group. "We've got to see the healer here first, at the very least."

"Maybe it'll go better for you than it did for us, if you've got one of their own along to speak for you. I don't know. But- look, that's all I know. Can I go now?" Zorru pleaded.

"Thank you." I said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "And listen... I've been the one who survived a patrol gone wrong as well. Several times, even. Being alive when your friends are dead always feels like it's your fault, but it still feels that way even when it's not. You said it yourself - you didn't abandon your partner. He was already dead and you fell back only because you were hopelessly outnumbered."

"I ran like a coward." Zorru moaned. "Sometimes it feels like I'll always be the one running."

"Not unless that's who you choose to be." I reassured him. "Talk to Zevlor if you don't believe me, or one of the other experienced men. They'll say the same thing."

"I will." he breathed out heavily, squaring his shoulders a bit. "I- thank you. I didn't want to talk about it, or even think about it- but thank you."

"Any time." I nodded to him, and we left Zorru to his thoughts as we continued onward.

"Do the people of this Fay-run always coddle their weak so?" Lae'zel asked me as we marched onwards. "In my creche, one whose nerve failed so badly when under fire would have been relegated to thrall duties forevermore. A failure of courage in a single man can potentially doom an entire company!"

"Which is exactly why good soldiers need to help foster the courage of their fellows whenever they can." I pointed out the gap in her reasoning.

"Hrm." she wordlessly acknowledged, and said no more.

As we drew near to the entrance to the courtyard we saw several druids standing there on guard, and blocking the entryway. Several angry tieflings were confronting them, the woman in the lead almost hysterical with rage while her husband tried to hold her back.

"Let my daughter go right now!" she was screaming at the guard in the center.

"She's a thief, hellspawn!" they sneered contemptuously. "And you will wait for Kagha's judgment! Now get back!"

"Arrgh! Let me through you magreshem, or I swear I'll rip your damned throat out!" the enraged mother shouted, and with a primal roar the druid standing on the left shapeshifted into a bear. My hair stood on end at this display - back home in Thedas it was rumored that the Chasind barbarians had mage-shamans who could shapeshift into animals, but I'd certainly never seen one before. And although the bear-druid seemed to maintain the full reasoning powers of the man it had been, given its intelligent behavior, the sight still understandably intimidated the small group of angry tieflings into breaking and running back up the stone steps and away from the courtyard.

"You!" her husband called out to Wyll as they ran into us coming down. "Can you help us, please? They've got our daughter in there, and they're talking all sorts of madness!"

"What happened?" Wyll said, rushing over to the couple. We followed after him.

"It's our fault." the woman moaned. "The druids said they were going to toss us out of here as soon as they finished their ritual, and I ranted out loud about how I wish their damned idol would fall into the sea and get lost so they couldn't ever finish. Only our little Arabella got it into her head that she should actually try doing that, and-" She shook her head. "But she got caught, and with Halsin gone that damned Kagha is the one running everything, and now she's got my little girl locked up in there doing demons know what to her!"

"Look, they won't let any of us refugees in, but you're not refugees." her husband continued. "And you were already heading down there. Can you please talk to these druids? Get them to not do anything rash, at least?"

"We should-" Shadowheart cut herself off mid-sentence. "Do you really think we should get involved?" she asked me reasonably. "What with how tense the situation here already is, and our own life-threatening dangers that only seem to multiply every time we turn around?"

"I'm certainly not going to start any new fights over this, you're right that we've already got more than enough to worry about." I reassured her. "But if there's a child in danger, I can't not at least try to put a word in."

"Certainly not." Gale agreed, and Wyll vigorously nodded alongside him. "Let's just hope those guards are as sympathetic to the 'not a refugee' line of reasoning as our good couple here hopes they are."

"You! Step back!" the chief guard glared at us as we drew close. "No one is allowed past!"

"We need to consult Healer Nettie on a matter of urgency." I asked them reasonably. "May we be allowed in for that much, at least?"

"No! We've had enough of you outsiders-" Another druid ran up at that moment and interrupted her. "Jeorna, a moment. Kagha has sent word - she wishes to speak to this one."

"Very well, you and your party may pass." Jeorna said reluctantly. "But be on your best behavior! We'll be watching!"

"Is this normal behavior for druids?" I asked Wyll as we headed towards the stone door and the passage to the druids' subterranean quarters.

"No." Wyll said. "The worship rites of Silvanus the Oak-Father are about maintaining the balance of nature, not the paths of good or justice, but the vast majority of druids choose largely to focus on nature's more nurturing aspects. This isn't typical of my experience with them at all."

As we entered the antechamber of the druids' quarters, a large wolf - one of the several normally-wild animals that we'd seen wandering around, as even the druids who didn't shapeshift seemed to keep bonded animal companions the same way rangers did back in Ferelden - took a casual sniff at us, from its position by the door where it had been standing like a sentry, and I turned around in shock as Shadowheart fell back with a cry. The woman who'd managed to keep a steely composure even in the midst of a desperate battle against mind flayers while we rode a crashing airship through the Nine Hells had fallen into a terrified, shuddering crouch, her face gray with panic and her eyes wide and staring at nothing. "Goddess protect me-" she moaned incoherently.

I immediately stepped between her and the wolf and gave it a wordless stare of Would you please go somewhere else?, and it took the hint and padded silently away as I knelt down alongside her. I'd seen more than enough people in battle-shock to know better than to touch a panicking person, so I simply made myself a comforting presence close by but not too close. "Shadowheart?" I said firmly, but in a low tone of voice, trying to give her something to orient on. "Are you all right?"

"I. Hate. Wolves!" she moaned, visibly fighting for self-control with deep breaths, in and out. "And I don't care what you say, my fear is hardly irrational when you see the fangs on those things!" she half-babbled as she rose shakily to her feet, and I along with her.

"How long have you felt this way?" I asked her.

"As far back as I can remember." she admitted. "Since I was a small child. I-" she stopped and looked challengingly up at me. "Look, I'm all right. You don't have to coddle me!"

"Shadowheart, you didn't mock me when I mistook those goblins for darkspawn the other day." I tried to cheer her up. "So why do you think I'm going to mock you now? We've all got the one thing that brings up the worst memories for us."

"How did you know-?" she blurted out, before shaking her head ruefully and recovering. "You're a very insightful man, Hawke. I'm going to have to watch myself." she quirked the corner of her lip. "But thank you- for caring." she trailed off warmly. "I can usually do better than that. It was just the surprise, my suddenly walking right into one of them when I'd thought I was in a safe place. If we get attacked by any wolves out on the road I can face them down, I've done it before. Just... I'd prefer not to do it alone, if possible."

"Don't worry. You won't have to." I reassured her, and we continued on.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" a terrified child's voice was begging as we rounded the corner, and we arrived to see a young tiefling girl of about ten crying and trying not to curl up into the fetal position while she was surrounded by several angry druids. The apparent leader, who I presumed was this 'Kagha', was a tall red-heared elven woman in apparent middle age, with her narrow face drawn up in an arrogant, self-righteous rage worthy of Templar Knight-Captain Meredith at her worst.

I had to restrain myself from lunging forward as Kagha's animal companion, a giant serpent of some kind at least a dozen feet long and at least as thick as my leg, reared up and bared fangs the size of daggers in Arabella's face.

"This is madness, Kagha!" one of the other druids importuned the red-headed elven woman. "She's just a-"

"A what, Rath?" she rounded on him with an angry peroration. "A thief? A poison? A threat? I will imprison this devil, and I will cast out every stranger."

"Thief? Poison?" I challenged Kagha, stepping up to them both. "What's this girl's actual crime?"

"Girl?" Kagha sneered, turning to face me. "You mean parasite. She eats our food, drinks our water. Then then steals our most holy idol in thanks! Rath, lock her up." she turned to him imperiously. "She remains here until the rite is complete!" Kagha then leaned over Arabella menacingly, forcing her back against the low stone table in fear. "And keep still, devil." she murmured menacingly. "Teela is restless." The snake half-circled Arabella with another twitch of its coils and hissed, causing her to yelp in fear.

"I thought druids revered the balance of nature." I rushed to try and reason with Kagha before she did something that would start a fight. "What is balanced about so harshly punishing the folly of the young?"

"Don't presume to teach me about the ways of nature, you meddling sellsword!" Kagha sneered. "We cannot be expected to nurture a threat at our bosom! An example must be made!"

As I watched her eyes flicker aside to note the reactions of Rath and the others to her posturing, I began to realize what was going on here. I'd already heard that the leader of these druids was the now-missing Halsin, and that Kagha had only stepped up to take temporary charge in his absence. An ambitious underling, unsure of her position and believing that she needed to make the strongest possible first impression-

"You've already more than demonstrated your authority." I reasoned with her. "Now it's time to reassure those under your authority that you are as wise as you are resolute... and not everyone will see the wisdom of imprisoning a child." I lowered my voice to the least challenging yet still not vacillating tones I could manage. "Declare her guilt, then pardon the girl into the custody of her family. Everyone will know what the Grove will not tolerate, and I very much doubt that anyone will attempt such a thing a second time."

"Yes!" Arabella begged. "Please, I'm so sorry! I'll never touch anything without permission ever again, I promise!"

Kagha's eyes and mine met in a wordless contest of wills, and after another flickering glance from side to side, she blinked first. "Very well! Rath, take this brat back to her people and make certain that they all understand there will be no mercy next time. Go!"

"Yes, Kagha!" Rath acknowledged her hurriedly, and then rushed to get Arabella and himself out of the room before anyone changed their mind. I heard Shadowheart painfully draw a breath, and when I turned around to see if that damned wolf had come back I noticed that there was no wolf, but she was wincing in pain and gripping her hand as if it were painfully cramping. I could only look for a moment though, because I still had an angry elf in front of me-

"Druid Kagha, my name is Hawke." I introduced myself after letting the tension ease for a moment. "Your guard Jeorna said that you wanted to see me?"

"I did." she bit off frustratedly. "Not that I wanted you to- but what's done is done. They tell me that you led the defense of the gate against the most recent goblin attack, and that you were instrumental in saving the Grove from discovery."

"No, I think we still need to talk about what was almost done!" Wyll interjected passionately. "What sort of monster threatens a child so viciously?"

"Yes, you would say so, wouldn't you?" Kagha mocked him. "I know your kind. You see only villains and victims. But when a viper bares her fangs to defend her brood? You would call her monster, but I call her mother." She imperiously dismissed his concerns. "But we have reclaimed the Idol of Silvanus and the Rite of Thorns has resumed! When it completes, the grove will be sealed and safe! Free from harm, and free from outsiders."

"And this requires ejecting all the refugees?" Wyll importuned her. "There's a goblin army gathering out there, and it blocks the road between here and Baldur's Gate! And they're mostly civilians, and even their fighting-men are largely militia at best! If you force them to go, they'll perish out there!"

"And my people will perish in here if they stay!" Kagha replied. "Which is why I wanted to speak to this man in the first place!" She turned to me. "You clearly have great skill at both fighting and commanding. I want you to take charge of these tieflings, because their current leadership isn't doing anything except whining and pleading to stay here. If you can get them organized and then find a way to get them past the obstacles on the road then we can both get what we want. Otherwise, they must leave as the ritual completes, ready or not, because when the Rite of Thorns is complete then the earth will rise up and the Great Vine will flourish - and the wrath of Silvanus will scourge all from the Grove who do not belong here! The sanctuary of the Oakfather will be only for his true faithful, and no one else!"

"Exactly how long will this ritual take?" I asked her wearily. Because at the rate this conversation was going I had less chance of convincing Kagha to give safe refuge to outsiders than I would have had of convincing Meredith to free all the mages in the Kirkwall Gallows, so barring a miracle-

"Not long. Several days at most - exactly how long depends on what that damned brat's interruption has done to the sacred cleansings or not. So you'd better not waste any time." Kagha declared.

"I can't even begin to promise anything until after I've spoken to Zevlor." I told her. "But I'll definitely keep your time limit in mind."

"See that you do. Now get moving!" she dismissed us, and then left to go back outside and supervise the ritualists.

"So much for your vaunted diplomacy." Lae'zel said darkly.

"He saved Arabella from an extreme punishment at the hands of a sadistic fanatic, that's still a victory." Shadowheart defended me.

"There is something wrong with that woman." I agreed. "Stealing a sacred idol from a group of priests is hardly a blameless action, but there's such a thing as a proper degree of punishment for the circumstances."

"Quite so." Gale nodded. "That girl wasn't innocent, but that's hardly the same thing as being guilty."

"This 'Healer Nettie' we were here to see? Perhaps we should do that sometime today?" Lae'zel reminded us archly, and with a nod of acknowledgement we set off. 'Nettie' turned out to be a young dwarven woman in an adjacent workroom, who had just finished casting a healing spell on a wounded bird when we found her.

"Can I help you?" she said, turning to us as the exhausted bird peacefully rested behind her on a stone table.

"Do you know anything about ceremorphosis?" I asked.

"You've got a parasite in you?" Nettie drew back worriedly. "A mind flayer parasite?"

"Yes." I nodded. "We were told that only a powerful healer can hope to safely extract one."

"Follow me." Nettie said, heading across her workroom towards a blank wall, which turned out to be some type of magically sealed secret panel that she opened with a brief use of a magical golden circlet worn on her head. Inside was a stone bench covered with alchemists' paraphernalia, handwritten notes, and several opened tomes, while shelves around the walls of the room held more books and carved stone tablets. Another workbench nearby held the corpse of some type of strangely-colored elf, with skin so dark blue they were almost black, whose condition and the surgical instruments surrounding it showed that it had been undergoing an autopsy. So, both a library and a research laboratory-

"Sit here." she patted a low stone bench adjacent to the table, as she rummaged for something on the workbench. "Right..." She found what she was looking for - a small, neatly pruned branch with several thorns sticking out of it - and brought it over to me. "Let's have a look at you," she said, gently pulling my head down so she could stare me in the eyes. "What are your symptoms?"

I described what symptoms I'd had so far - which were barely any - and she nodded in acknowledgement. "What's that branch for?" I continued asking. "Because it's not for treatment - if curing one of these tadpoles was as simple as some type of herbal preparation, then people wouldn't be so afraid of them."

"It's from a rare type of thornbush that's deadly poison." she acknowledged matter-of-factly. "Because if you start to transform into a mind flayer on me here, then I'm going to need to stick you in the arm pretty fast."

"... fair enough." I acknowledged.

"And this is very puzzling." Nettie mused. "You said that it's been in your head almost two days by this point, yes? But that means you should already be having a screaming headache by now. Aches in the joints, fever- Oakfather, your very skin should start peeling in just a day or two more!"

"Your knowledge is accurate." Lae'zel complimented her. "That is the same progression of symptoms we all studied as crechelings. It's why I have been so impatient with the dilatory progress of certain traveling companions. And it is certainly anomalous that our transformations are not proceeding on the usual schedule."

"Which is still a worrying mystery, even though it's saving our lives right now. Do you know what's happening?" I asked our healer.

"Barely a clue." Nettie shrugged ruefully. "You're not the first one we've seen with one of those tadpoles in your head - that drow over there had one too." She nodded towards the autopsied corpse. "He attacked Master Halsin out in the woods several days ago, and they brought him back here to try and figure out what was going on. From everything Master Halsin was able to gather more and more infected people are just coming into this region, and we've no idea where from! Where did you say you picked up this tadpole?"

"I was abducted - we all were - by a mind flayer nautiloid. The same one that crashed nearby. We were all infected while we were on it." I explained.

"Then that just raises more questions." Nettie swore. "Because these other sightings I've been talking about? They're from before that nautiloid ever coming here. And the way your tadpoles have somehow been altered - Master Halsin examined the one we pried out of that dead drow's head, and he said that some kind of powerful magic had been used on it to inhibit the normal transformation. That's why he left with that expedition to that ruined temple nearby, the one the goblins are all forting up in. All of the sightings we've had of strangers are around there, so he thought he could find the answer there."

"So to sum up - we don't have to worry about transforming into mind flayers on the usual schedule, because some powerful force is holding our tadpoles in remission." Gale said. "But we have no idea what it is or why it's doing it... or when it might decide to switch off and let us all sprout purple tentacles after all."

"Exactly." Nettie agreed. "You've got some extra time, hopefully substantially more than you'd normally have, but nobody can say exactly when it'll finally run out. And I can't get your tadpoles out of your heads for you, at least not while you're still alive. I might have just barely been able to do for a normal infection, but contending with whatever strange magic's all mixed up with yours? Master Halsin might have that kind of power, but I certainly don't."

"And so of course he was the one lost in the goblin lair." Shadowheart said ruefully.

"Do you think it's possible he's still alive?" I asked Nettie reluctantly.

"I've no idea." she said. "I'd like to think I could feel it if he were dead, but it's not something I can check. We've tried sending animals and birds in there to scout the way for us, but they keep dyin'." Nettie's eyes widened. "But you could get in there, maybe."

"What, just walk into an army of goblins?" Shadowheart asked sarcastically. "You certainly have a flattering idea about our prowess, but no."

"I don't mean you taking them all head-on." Nettie said. "But has it occurred to you that your tadpoles' little trick of sharing thoughts occasionally is certainly how those infected folk are all recognizing each other? And I'm sure the infected folk are also working with the goblins - that one certainly was!" she quirked a thumb at the dead dark elf. "You could just walk in there, and they'd just accept you for one of their own!"

"That is a very clever idea... but it's also a tremendous amount of 'what ifs' and blind guesses, and it's certain death for all of us if you guessed wrong about any part of it." I said reasonably.

"But it is an option," Wyll said hopefully. "Powerful magic is mixed up with our tadpoles. A powerful something is assembling a substantial force nearby, with people like us working with forces that would normally never cooperate with humans and elves so well. I think Nettie's right, it's all connected."

"And I think Hawke's also right, the only way for us to find out for sure involves our total massacre if it turns out we're wrong." Gale said.

"Wait." Shadowheart narrowed her eyes consideringly at the dead elf. "There is one thing we could try..." She turned to look at me. "I know you're not always comfortable with strange magic, but could you stretch your practical nature to tolerate summoning the voices of the dead?"

"You can cast that spell?" Nettie asked Shadowheart, visibly impressed. "I've heard of it, but never seen it done before."

"Not quite." Shadowheart admitted. "But do you remember one of the items we found in those ruins? That odd little amulet from the chest in the same room as the big sarcophagus with that- rather odd skeleton?" she temporized.

"And that lets you speak to dead people?" I sputtered.

"It took me a while to match its description to something I'd read about but yes, I'm almost certain this is the Amulet of Lost Voices." Shadowheart said, pulling the item in question out of her pack. "And if so, then dead men actually will tell tales."

"Let me get this straight. There's magic - relatively commonplace magic, at that - that can breach the barrier between the worlds of life and death?" I asked incredulously.

"Oh no." Nettie waved away my concerns. "If you want the sort of magic that can do that you're talking priestly magic barely a step south of a full divine intervention. But what your friend's talking about is just... stimulating the residual memories, as it were. Briefly animating just an echo of the spirit that used to be in the body, divining what traces of information were left behind in the corpse when the spirit itself has long since moved on."

"That almost makes sense." I said. "And if it's not actually tormenting the souls of the damned or anything, then I suppose it isn't too much odder than the average run of magic. All right, give it a try."

Shadowheart nodded and then pulled the amulet's chain on and over her head, then grasped it firmly with both hands and concentrated on the corpse. My hair stood on end as the dead dark elf's eyes snapped open and glowed an eldritch green, and the corpse then floated up off the table several feet in the air.

"I can only ask a few questions before the magic runs out, so we'll need to pick them carefully." Shadowheart said.

I prompted her with the most important question, and she echoed me. "Where did they put the tadpole in your head?"

Silence. "He... doesn't understand the question?" Shadowheart asked confusedly. "How can he not know that he has a tadpole in his head?"

"Where and how did you first become able to hear other people like you in your mind?" we tried.

"Moonrise... Towers..." the corpse whispered eeriely. "Initiation..."

"Why did you attack the druids?" Nettie suggested, and Shadowheart repeated.

"Minthara's... orders..."

"Who is Minthara?"

"Drow... My matriarch..."

"Where can we find her?"

"Ruined temple... with the goblins..."

"Who does Minthara serve?"

"The Absolute..."

"That's it." Shadowheart exhaled wearily as the green glow faded and the corpse thumped down back to the table. "We're not getting anything more out of him."

"Moonrise Towers." I thought aloud. "Is that a place anyone here has ever heard of?"

"It's an old castle several days' travel away from here, west up the Risen Road and on the other side of the mountain pass." Nettie said. "But the lands around it are cursed - nothing growing, nothing alive, lots of undead and worse. Nobody's lived there for decades at least."

"How could anyone garrison a substantial force in such a place?" Lae'zel wondered out loud. "How would they themselves not be struck down by this curse? What would they use for food and water?"

"And who or what is 'The Absolute'?" Gale wondered out loud. "Because that is a remarkably grandiose title for someone to give themselves."

"Anybody who could call themselves something like that with a straight face has got to be an out-and-out megalomaniac." Wyll agreed. "This is starting to sound like something a lot larger than just a handful of unlucky people who got abducted onboard a mind flayer ship."

"I think the most important thing is that 'initiation' our dead friend mentioned." I thought out loud. "He didn't even know how he was changed, he just knew that he'd been 'initiated' into something and given powers of the mind thereby. Which means Nettie's theory is probably right - the mental connection these tadpoles provide is how they're identifying each other as being 'initiated'."

"Oh no." Shadowheart moaned, already familiar enough with my thought processes to see where this was heading.

"Which means we're going to have to risk going into that damned temple after all." I agreed with her ruefully.

---

Author's Note: Oh my God there are so many people to talk with in the Emerald Grove! I'm amazed I was able to get as far as I did in this chapter. If I hadn't ruthlessly skipped past some possible interactions we'd have barely made it to the door! As is, triaging through So. Many. Possible. Sidequests. is still going to be a series of tough decisions, especially since some things get kinda fucked if you don't do enough sidequests.

And this is where we really start to go off-script now that we're not stuck with game logic but can start freelancing. Hawke is an advanced Persuasion build Dragon Age character and thus insightful enough to pull off dialogue checks that in the regular BG3 game you need Detect Thoughts to be able to make, and minor NPCs actually get more dialogue, and we can have more than three party members along simultaneously.

I also get to rewrite dialogue. For example, in-game Shadowheart just straight-up says 'Arabella made the mistake of getting caught, we shouldn't risk getting involved', when she obviously didn't say that so bluntly here... but of course my Shadowheart is getting more than familiar enough with Hawke's thought processes to know how not to completely alienate her audience, and unlike the videogame I have infinite flexibility in how my NPCs react to different contexts.

Oh, and the Amulet of Lost Voices is found in-game in the chest in the same room as Withers, and it lets you have free Speak With Dead spells for the entire game even all the way back at level 1.

 

[cliffc999]

Despite our newfound resolution, we did not set out immediately. For one thing, we still had to figure out what exactly we'd do in the goblin lair after we infiltrated it. But more importantly, right now we needed to drill.

If there's one thing I'd learned in all my years of adventuring it was that while developing individual prowess was how a person prepared themselves for adventuring, improving their teamwork was how small adventuring parties prepared themselves to defeat larger groups of monsters. And unlike soldiers or city guardsmen, adventurers were almost always outnumbered - there was simply no way around that when you were marching through hostile territory without available reinforcements. And while we'd instinctively been falling into a fairly effective rhythm so far, I wasn't going to depend just on instinct alone. The battle at the gate alone proved my point; if Gale hadn't happened to have just the right spell prepared, we'd have been facing a line of archers in the open without shields. Even my stunt of baiting the wolf-riders into charging too far ahead from their support and then leaving them vulnerable to our missile troops in the rear line wouldn't have worked if they hadn't been quick enough on the uptake to know which targets to concentrate on first, and I hadn't had an opportunity to explain the tactic to them ahead of time. So while I'd still not hesitated to take the gamble - after all, it's not as if we were overburdened with other options at that point - we could just as easily have lost that battle as won it.

For all that Lae'zel really didn't seem to understand how effective morale-building and team bonding worked - at least for humans and demi-humans, presumably her attitude was not considered especially disruptive among her own people - she was still entirely correct that a single failure of self-discipline or communication at a critical moment could potentially doom an entire team. So when I quietly approached her and asked for advice on what training drills would be best to use for our group in the limited time we had available, she eagerly contributed some suggestions. Of course I was already thoroughly versed in weapons skills and military tactics, but I wasn't familiar with all the potentials of the combat magics that they used here. And while I had no doubt that Gale would be willing to lecture me on the topic for hours if I asked, and I must just take him up on that offer later, he had no military experience and so wouldn't know what to focus on as the most immediately useful topics. Lae'zel's people, however, were much like the qunari in that they were a highly regimented society where every able-bodied member underwent lifelong military training - but unlike the qunari, they fully embraced magic as being as useful a weapon as swords and had spent a lot of time studying how best to integrate it into even squad-level combat. Lae'zel seemed to have absolutely no experience at teaching, though, and very little patience for it, so things went much more smoothly when I took what she was showing me and then adapted it for the rest.

Our intended training exercises immediately went live fire, though, when the deserted beach we'd hoped to use for our maneuvers turned out to be infested by ugly bird-women monsters with a hypnotic voice that Gale explained were 'harpies'. At least we'd arrived in time to save one of the tiefling children from being trapped by them, and they went down fairly quickly to our barrage of cantrips and missile fire. We then spent the next several hours learning more about each other's individual capabilities and working through some basic exercises to get familiar with each other's rhythm, as well as rehearse some simple tactical options such as 'response to ambush', 'skirmish line', 'cover the retreat', and so forth. Shadowheart was visibly uncomfortable with how readily Lae'zel fell into a self-appointed role as the effective squad sergeant to my officer, but had enough self-discipline to keep any catty comments to herself. After I noticed this I made sure to consult Shadowheart afterwards on a few useful points of lore related to her own specialty; reassuring her that I valued both of their opinions seem to calm her down a bit. Wyll turned out to be legitimately formidable in close combat and with a useful number of arcane warrior tricks of his own but had apparently spent his career mostly fighting as a lone wolf, so I had to treat him almost like a novice when it came to learning how to keep even a loose formation and instinctively stay clear from your teammates' lanes of fire.

The child we'd saved had invited us to come talk to his 'friends', and so we did that after we'd finished our training. I was surprised when his 'friends' turned out to be a budding junior thieves' guild comprised of urchins and orphans who'd fled along with the other refugees. Their leader Mol was a tough girl who was almost woman-high, an eyepatch-wearing charismatic rogue who reminded me of a teenaged tiefling version of Isabella, knives and all. She certainly didn't bring Isabella's experience to the job, however - I had to patiently explain to her that keeping up with the usual cons and lifts of a thieves' guild was a bad idea when you didn't have an exit strategy, because until and unless the refugee caravan made it to Baldur's Gate their only two choices were to either stick with the rest or commit suicide by trying to take her little children's crusade through that many days of rough country alone. I could at least partly sympathize with Mol's position - she'd ended up leader of these dispossessed children, only some of whom had actually been her old street gang back in Elturel and the rest orphans and stragglers and the lost who'd attached themselves to her on the way, and so she had to maintain a facade of confidence to keep the whole pack of scared children from falling apart in mob hysteria. And you couldn't be a leader if you didn't have a goal to be visibly leading your people towards, and 'keep up with our usual thieving operations and try to build a stake for setting up in Baldur's Gate' was the only one Mol had been able to think of.

I did my best to patiently work with her on brainstorming a couple of things her group could do to help the refugees, not prey on them, because if they kept pushing the limits the way they had been then eventually they'd have ended up all pitched out of the encampment on their backsides, children or not. I definitely wished that I could just tell them to stop stealing for a living, and I certainly would have if I had the slightest belief Mol would ever listen, but having had Isabella as a friend had taught me that no matter what new opportunities life offered them some people would simply never haul down the pirate flag more than temporarily.

"Look, if we're going to shut down alternate business for a while then we're going to need something to make up for it." Mol replied after I'd finished my explanation. "So I've got a proposition for you."

"And that would be?" I said as non-commitally as I could.

"Take me with you." she shocked me. "As part of your adventuring party. Just for the duration, mind, not permanent, but the share I'd earn there would more than help set my people up."

Lae'zel proved that she'd at least begun to learn how not to step on a moment when she confined her scorn at the very idea of a teenaged street urchin accompanying us into the goblins' lair to an epic eyeroll and no verbal comments. Honestly, I couldn't help but agree with her there. "Having taken down the occasional goblin or not-" I tried to reason with Mol.

"It was a hobgoblin Mol killed by herself, not just any old goblin!" one of her followers indignantly chimed in.

"-you're still not exactly the sort of veteran sellsword that gets hired for jobs like this." I continued.

"Yeah, but you need me." Mol shot back. "I can see you've got swords a plenty, and a wizard and a cleric, but where's your stealth? Where's your tools? Haven't got anyone for scouting and lockpicking, have you?"

"They've got me." Shadowheart broke in, to my considerable surprise. "What, did you think you were the only one who ever grew up rough? I was already a fair hand with a set of picks or a trap kit back when I was younger than you."

"Then how's about you show me your tools, hmm?" Mol smirked up at us, and Shadowheart glared back indignantly. "Haven't actually kept your hand in in ages and ages, have you, not ever since you started going to religious school?"

"I'll make you a counter-offer." I broke in. "Sell Shadowheart your best set of picks-"

"Second-best, like hell I'm giving up my personal set." Mol interrupted.

"-and give her as much of a refresher course as you can manage this afternoon, and I'll pay you in good coin." And after a reasonably vigorous haggling session the deal was done, and Shadowheart stayed behind to help re-educate her fingers in some old skills while the rest of us continued with preparations elsewhere.

By this time it was getting to be afternoon, so after a hasty lunch we all split up to cover more ground. Shadowheart was off getting a refresher course in 'adventuring skills' from Mol, Wyll had gone off to see if any of the druids would be willing to quietly contribute some aid or information to us behind Kagha's back, and Gale and Lae'zel had been sent to go replenish our supplies in the refugee camp's traveling marketplace. That left me to go consult with Zevlor and get brought up to date on what he he knew about the strategic situation we faced.

The first thing Zevlor did was finally show me where the hell we were, because he had a set of excellent maps for the region. My surmise that we'd landed almost halfway on the Chionthar River halfway between Baldur's Gate and Elturel was correct; we were closer to the Gate than to Elturel, but by only a little over a day's march. We were on the north bank of the Chionthar, several miles off of the Risen Road that had been constructed as the main trade route between the two cities. Over a century ago there had originally been a settlement in this region, a large village called 'Moonhaven', but its surviving population had abandoned it and left things to fall into ruin after the village had been repeatedly raided by marauders from whatever dark forces had cursed the land around Moonrise Towers some decades ago. Now the only signs of civilization in the reason were the Waukeen's Rest inn and the tollhouse adjoining the Risen Road where it went through the nearby mountain pass, and the Emerald Grove community of druids.

As it turned out the tiefling refugees were all from Elturel, which had expelled all tieflings from the city after some recent tragedy there they referrred to only as 'the Descent' that had apparently been caused by a massive outbreak of infernal magic of some kind. Fiends and humans could apparently have offspring together - and didn't that thought just put my hair on end again - and the resulting half-breeds were called 'cambions'. As it turned out, the devil-men I'd seen onboard the nautiloid had been cambions. Tieflings were much more closer to human stock but still had superficial cambion-like features due to distant cambion ancestry or ancestors who had been exposed to other infernal magics; apparently this was considered sufficient cause by their once-fellow Elturans to suspect all tieflings of being in active collusion with infernal forces and forcing them all to flee just ahead of a potential pogrom.

And that sounded foolish even to me, a near-total stranger to Faerun and a refugee myself from a world where the slightest trace of demonic taint so often led to catastrophe. My half a days' experience with the tiefling encampment was still enough to tell me that they were as human as anyone else under their skin; overhearing them all talking about their fears, their hopes, their concerns, even simple gossip was all as entirely familiar and homelike as any crowd of people at a market day in Kirkwall would have been. The Elturans' concern might have been entirely justified about true cambions - just the glimpse of them that I'd had personally on the nautiloid had been enough to let me sense the aura of demonic malevolence they seemed to go around actively wreathed in - but Zevlor and his people just felt like people.

At any rate, the main crisis facing the refugees was that reaching Baldur's Gate from here of a necessity funnelled directly through a terrain chokepoint - the nearby mountain pass - and the goblin encampment was too close to the route between the grove and the pass. The goblins had not yet amassed a large enough force to completely cut off the terrain - small parties could still hope to make it to the pass, particularly if they went off-road - but a large and slow-moving column of civilian refugees, many of them not even with mounts or wagons, couldn't possibly hope to get through quickly or quietly enough to avoid discovery. And once the goblins knew that such a large juicy target was available to be caught out in the open, the refugees would be dead meat.

"And from what our scouts have been able to find out, the longer this drags out the more goblins show up to join them." Zevlor sighed as we both stared down at his map table. "They've already gone well beyond what a single goblin tribe, even a large one, can amass. Someone or something is assembling an entire horde. And when they get large enough-"

"They've already almost found the Grove once." I agreed. "The larger their forces get, the more patrols they can push out more extensively. Discovery is only a matter of time." I rubbed my chin. "Your own scouts have probably had to step down operations with the losses you've been recently taking, but the druids have magic that lets them speak to animals. And even shapeshift into animals themselves. Have they shared any of the results of their reconaissance with you?"

"Ever since Kagha took charge, they've stopped forest patrols almost entirely." Zevlor groused. "She's concentrating all of the druids in the Grove to help defend the walls and speed up the preparations for this damned protective ritual she's obsessed with."

"That's certainly short-sighted of her." I nodded to him. "Even if she has absolute faith in her protective ritual, she still can't afford for the goblins to find and assault the Grove before she finishes it. She should at least have people out to interdict and ambush any goblin scouts who get too close."

"And yet she's not, and so witness your own battle yesteday." Zevlor nodded. "I don't have enough fighters to even hope to assault the goblin fortress directly, and the druids won't help. Your idea of infiltrating their fortress disguised as 'initiates' is the only chance we've got."

"And we're still trying to figure out what we could possibly do in there, assuming we got in there." I said.

"Assassination." Zevlor immediately suggested. "A horde of multiple tribes only stays together if there's a powerful or charismatic leader compelling them to stay together. Without them to rally around they'll scatter back into their own tribes and stay there; goblins' infighting with each other is often as savage as their raiding of other races."

"That dead drow mentioned a drow matriarch called Minthara." I nodded. "So that's one target at least."

"There'll likely be at least one other, their chief shaman or priest." Zevlor nodded. "Possibly more. But yes, without any strong dominant figure to rally and organize them the goblins would all scatter back to their own territories soon enough, and then the way would be clear for us. If only Kagha would see reason!"

"We've still got several days." I reassured him. "Hopefully we'll have figured out a way to pull it off by then."

"Hopefully." Zevlor agreed. "I can't send any of my people with you; I need them all to interdict as many goblin scouting parties as possible to help keep the Grove safe, especially if the druids are no longer helping with that. Do you think you'll be able to pull it off in time?"

"I'll want to test our 'initiate' theory at least once before I try it on the main goblin fastness." I thought out loud. "That will be our first task."

"Well, if there's anything we can do to assist you with it, please don't hesitate to ask." Zevlor offered.

We all met up for dinner and to compare notes. Wyll brought the disturbing news that several goblins had been caught and killed in the druids' underground escape tunnel, their secret back way out of the enclave. Apparently they'd followed a careless druid back from a herb-gathering expedition. Fortunately, there'd only been a couple of them, and a hasty interrogation with the Amulet of Lost Voices produced the welcome news that the goblin patrol that had followed the Grove's hapless gatherer back hadn't thought to send one of their own as a messenger before all trying to confirm for themselves whether or not the tunnel really did lead into the Grove.

"Still, the second near-miss has put the druids into a state of panic." Wyll said disappointedly. "Even the ones who might have originally been willing to provide us a little support behind Kagha's back are now wondering if she was right after all. 'Letting the outsiders come in here is the only reason the Grove is in danger, send them out to die and seal up the Grove and that's the only way!'" he sarcastically mocked.

"But the main reason the goblins are getting so close to finding the Grove in the first place is because this Kagha pulled in all the druidic patrols who were previously making sure no goblin could get within several miles of this place and live!" Lae'zel could see the military logic as readily as I could.

"Even more than you know." Shadowheart agreed. "This is largely forest country here. In this sort of terrain and with a safe haven to sortie from, a sufficient force of druids and all their nature magic could hold off anything short of a conquering army." Her eyes widened. "Isn't it convenient that the person whose decisions largely contributed to the threat becoming so immediate in the first place is having the fear that immediate threat inspires now solidifying her grasp on power here?"

"Oh come on." I facepalmed.

"You've a very suspicious mind, Shadowheart." Gale opined. "The idea that Kagha is working with the goblins is absurd!"

"She's not saying Kagha is working with the goblins, she's saying that Kagha is trying to take advantage of an already existing crisis to make her own separate power play - at the worst possible time, in the stupidest possible way." I explained. "Remind me to tell you about a man called Teryn Loghain sometime, and how he had a similar idea back home and almost doomed the entire kingdom of Ferelden in the process of trying."

"But what can we do about it? How do we even know this suspicion is true?" Wyll asked.

"Well, I did just spend an afternoon re-learning some old burglary skills of a misspent youth." Shadowheart smiled. "So I could use an opportunity to test those skills before I risked them in the heart of a goblin dungeon or such. I wonder, what might an irregular search of Kagha's quarters turn up?"

"Your neck on a chopping block, given how wary of intruders and outsiders these druids have become." Lae'zel said darkly. "And ours along with yours."

"It's a risk, but so's everything else in our lives right now." I said. "And there's no point in us doing an extremely risky mission to end this goblin threat to the Grove and the refugees if some other treason ruins the Grove behind our backs while we're doing it. Shadowheart, do you really think you can get in there without being caught?"

She smiled confidently and whispered a few indecipherable words, and suddenly her form blurred out in a flare of magic... and reformed into the image of a tall, red-haired elven woman with a harsh, narrow face. A close and searching examination still turned up some marginal differences between her and Kagha, but it would certainly fool anyone who wasn't either extremely close or else already actively searching for imposters.

"Unfortunately it doesn't do anything to change my voice," Shadowheart said with Kagha's face, "so I won't be able to talk to anyone. Still, if we can just make sure that she's elsewhere at the time then any druid who happens to see me walking into her quarters will simply think Kagha went back to fetch something of hers... and given what a cheerful personality he has, I can't imagine anyone here rushing to make any conversation with her that she doesn't invite herself. And once I'm inside her rooms, we'll see what I can find."

"Disguise Self?" Gale said wonderingly. "That's not a clerical spell. How do you know it?"

"It's in my goddess' domain." Shadowheart explained simply as she reverted to her normal appearance. "So, when do you think we should do this?"

"As soon as possible." I said. "The later the hour gets, the more likely it is that Kagha will retire to her own quarters and stay there."

Despite the tension produced by the thought of us trying this and failing - and thus getting expelled from the grove at best, if not mobbed by enraged druids - the operation, such as it was, went off without a hitch. We already had been given access to the central courtyard and the druids' quarters underground earlier today, and nobody had revoked it yet. Kagha soon enough emerged from her quarters after finishing her own dinner and went out to spend some time supervising the evening shift of the ongoing ritualists as they continued on with their 'several days' of ceremonial cleansing and preparations. As soon as the coast was clear Shadowheart stepped inside as if she were going to consult something in the library, with the intention of doing a quick shift of her face and then stealthily raiding Kagha's room as soon as she had a moment alone. The rest of us remained in the courtyard, ready to delay Kagha with whatever diversion we could think of if she made to go back inside.

After a very tense few minutes, Shadowheart emerged into the courtyard from the underground section wearing her own face again and we all relaxed. As soon as we found a quiet cave off in the back of the refugees' section, she brought us up to date.

"She's definitely conspiring with someone." Shadowheart said, reaching into her pouch to bring out a ragged sheet of paper. "I found that in a lockbox in her quarters."

The ragged sheet of paper had a few words drawn on it a very rough hand, almost as if someone had slashed the paper with an ink-stained claw rather than a pen. Oddly that seemed to be a stylistic choice, not a necessity, as the little sketch map next to the message had been drawn more conventionally and in a very steady hand.

Kagha.

Swamp-docks. Tree. Meet me. Alone.

Olodan.

"None of the druids who live here is named Olodan." Wyll said. "So whoever she's conspiring with, it's someone outside the Grove."

"I'm presuming the map is why you risked taking this note instead of just memorizing the contents and leaving it there." I asked Shadowheart.

"Exactly. We'll need it to find whatever meeting site this 'Olodan' referred to." she nodded back.

"If I remember Zevlor's area map correctly, these swamps are to the south of the goblin fortress, at the end of a little tributary river that runs from the swamp to the Chionthar proper." I thought out loud. "And we wanted to find an isolated goblin patrol anyway, to test our 'initiate' theory on before we risked the main fortress. We could combine two errands at once by heading that way."

"A bit closer to the fortress than we wanted to go on a first acquaintance, but either we'll get that far without meeting a patrol first or we won't - and then we'll know either way, of course." Shadowheart agreed. "I assume we're staying in the Grove tonight?"

"I'm tempted to try stealing a march, but if we're not risking immediate death by ceremorphosis any longer then we can afford to take a little rest when we need it - and out of all of us, only Shadowheart has elven nightvision anyway." I decided. "We set out at next daylight."

"One last night before we set out to test our fortune." Wyll said dramatically. "I'll stand the first round!"

Nobody wanted to be hung over for the mission so we adjourned the drinking session after only a couple of tankards, and then each scattered to finish up personal business or just find a small recreation or two before it was time for bed. I began to head back towards the beach where we'd trained this morning, hoping to just spend some quiet time sitting in the moonlight and thinking, when Wyll caught up to me from where we'd all gotten up from the table.

"Hawke. If you please, I need a word." he began diffidently.

"Something wrong?" I asked him, mildly surprised at this lapse from his usual cheerful confidence.

"Do you remember how I told you that how I ended up on the nautiloid was quite the long tale, some parts of which I wasn't at liberty to tell?" he opened.

"Go on." I encouraged him.

"I wasn't abducted by the nautiloid." he surprised me. "I'd already been in Avernus before the nautiloid arrived there, pursuing a specific target. An Advocatus Diaboli, a champion of the Blood War - a savage, remorseless slaughterer of innocent souls, the devil Karlach."

I mentally noted down the unfamiliar terms as things to ask Shadowheart or Gale about later and nodded for him to keep going. "Hunting in the Nine Hells. Dangerous work."

"There was a time I tussed with hill giants without breaking a sweat." he boasted proudly. "This tadpole has significantly reduced my powers as much as it has yours or Shadowheart's. But yes, my patron had warned me of the danger this Karlach presented and tasked me with bringing her to justice. I almost had her cornered when the nautiloid you were on entered Avernus... and she escaped me by fleeing onto it."

"So you pursued her onto the ship-" I followed along.

"And there we were both overwhelmed and infected by the mind flayers." Wyll continued. "Karlach escaped me in the crash, and is out there threatening the good folks of the Sword Coast even now. Her powers are almost certainly as reduced as mine are by our infections, but even that small mercy won't prevent her from leaving a river of innocent blood across the land. I must find her and stop her before she kills any more!"

"If you want to split from us to pursue your own task-" I offered.

"No." Wyll said. "I'm only guessing that she's as reduced as I am. Who knows the details of how ceremorphosis affects devils, as opposed to men? I'm asking for your help."

"I'm certainly no fan of demons or devils preying on the innocent." I passionately agreed with him. "But Kagha's ritual will place all these innocent folk in deadly danger if we haven't won at least some type of victory against the goblins before then. I can't turn away from the strict time limit they face now to search for a trail already gone cold. I have to prioritize."

"I suppose you do." Wyll agreed disappointedly. "And I gave my word I would come with you, and I won't go back on my word. But if we do see any sign of Karlach's trail out there, then please tell me we can at least spare an attempt at following it?"

"Of course, if it's possible to." I agreed with him.

"Thank you." he gusted with relief.

"You mentioned a 'patron'. Who are they?" I asked him.

"A powerful figure... and one with a very keen interest in their own privacy." Wyll temporized. "I've sworn an oath to say no more."

We said our good-nights and I continued on with my walk to the secluded beach... only to find out that someone else had had the same idea.

"Hawke." Shadowheart smiled briefly. "Can't get enough of me?" she continued cheekily from where she'd been sitting on the beach meditating.

"I just wanted to sit and look at the moonlight for a while." I said, settling down on the sand a companionable distance away from her. "But I'm certainly not objecting to the company."

"I'm not exactly a fan of moonlight." Shadowheart chuckled softly. "But I do enjoy a nice, quiet night, so moonlight or not I'm finding a bit of it here."

"And just taking a moment to breathe." I agreed, stretching my shoulders out as I rolled my arms back and forth trying to unkink my back. "Gods, it's been a rough couple of days, hasn't it? And with at least several more to come."

"To say the least." she nodded, and we peacefully felt the silence for a short while.

"You mentioned several more days to come." Shadowheart slowly continued. "And it's true that we've still got a ways to go on our quest, and that's assuming we're not given any more surprises at the next step. But what if this were our last night together?" she mused idly, looking up at the sky. "What would you say?"

"That I'd be sorry to see you go." I replied automatically. "We haven't known each other long, but you've been a good friend."

"Thank you." she said quickly, turning her head briefly. "And... I'd temporarily forgotten that you were a castaway even before the nautiloid crashed. Of course you're not certain of where you'd go next, after our quest was done." she mildly criticized herself.

"And you?" I asked her. "Where will you go after we're done?"

"Baldur's Gate." she replied. "There's someone there waiting for me, and I have... responsibilities."

"Earlier today you mentioned growing up an urchin like Mol, without a family." I thought out loud. So if she hadn't had a family, then who was she speaking of like family- and then an alarming possibility suddenly came to my mind. "You're not married, are you?" I blurted out.

Her snorting laughter answered that question even before her words did. "No! Goddess, what a ridiculous thought!" she fought through her chuckles. "And yes, I'm an orphan, but even orphans are still sometimes raised by someone. In my case, that was the temple."

"That's right, you're a priestess." I acknowledged. "Of which god or goddess?" I asked curiously.

"The goddess of privacy, among other things." she put me off gently. "It's- I'm not allowed to discuss much of the details with outsiders."

"All right." I accepted that - for the moment.

"I'm sure you'll land on your feet." Shadowheart reassured me. "Look at all that you've accomplished just recently! You're a natural adventurer, and Faerun is a land where adventurers have been making their fortunes for centuries."

"You could come with me." I offered. "After all, a good adventurer needs a party, and every good party needs a cleric."

"Thank you." she smiled regretfully at me. "But no. I was on a mission for my temple when I was abducted, a very important one." she explained. "And as soon as I can get myself cured of this damn tadpole, I'll need to be getting back to it."

"To bring them that artifact?" I asked her intelligently, turning to look her square in the face.

"What artifact?" she drew back defensively.

"The little one shaped like a polygon with silver runes, that I saw on the nautiloid." I said as diplomatically as possible. "The one so important to you that you grabbed at it even before you moved to secure your lost weapon, while surrounded by deadly danger in the depths of the Nine Hells."

"Damn your insighfulness!" she swore viciously, rising to her feet and taking a step away from me. I rose to match her, quickly, but kept my hands open and my body language nonthreatening. "Why couldn't you have just not seen anything?!?"

"I'm not going to take it from you!" I rushed to reassure her. "I don't even know what it is! I was just asking!"

"I wish I knew what it was." she blurted, her hand relaxing back from where it had almost been grabbing for her mace. "There was a whole group of us sent after it. I was the juniormost. And- the only survivor." she trailed off sadly.

"You already heard what I said to Zorru about that topic." I reassured her gently. "I'm certainly not going to question your courage, not after you've proven it so many times."

"No amount of courage justifies failing my goddess." Shadowheart replied flatly.

"You haven't failed her yet." I comforted her. "Now come on, sit down and relax."

"Sorry." she said. "I just- I'm not used to- ah!" she cried out in pain, and urgently clutching at her one hand with the other.

"Are you all right?" I asked her urgently. "I've noticed you cradling that hand several times before. If you hurt it in the crash, why didn't you ask Nettie to take care of it this morning?"

"It's not that." Shadowheart said, her voice heavy with pain. "It's- an old wound. Just- something I have to live with." She slowly relaxed as the spasm of pain passed.

"Does it hurt very much?" I asked her gently.

"Quite a bit, actually." she retorted with rueful sarcasm. "But I'll be all right. This just- happens, from time to time."

"I can't imagine what, but if there's anything I can do to help you with that, you know you only need to ask." I offered.

"I know." she smiled briefly at me, and we sat back down and let another quiet minute grow.

"So... the githyanki?" I took a shot in the dark as gently as I could. "Is that who your team 'recovered' the artifact from?"

"Why am I even surprised at this point?" she moaned softly, crading her chin in her palms. "Are you an oracle, Hawke, or do you just read minds?"

"No, I just happened to notice that my very practical-minded friend didn't hesitate to accept help in a crisis from every passing stranger who offered any - except from our one stranded githyanki, who she argued against trusting at every opportunity and did her best to drive away from the group several times." I thought out loud.

"You are positively insufferable at times, do you know that?" she chided me.

"I won't tell Lae'zel if you won't." I offered her. "And if she could recognize it by sight, she'd certainly have reacted to it on the nautiloid. I just wanted to make sure the topic was raised ahead of time, because the last time I invited a woman with a bit of a rogueish background into my adventuring party and it turned out that she was carrying a stolen relic from an isolationist, arrogant warrior race with her, it started a war." And then I segued into a brief explanation of the whole mess involving the qunari relic, the Arishok and his invasion force, and how Isabella hadn't told me for years that she'd known the entire time why the qunari were so obsessed with staying in Kirkwall. "So if there's anything you can tell me about your mission to 'recover' it in the first place, I'd appreciate it if you did that sometime before we ended up in the middle of a githyanki invasion or suchlike."

"I very much doubt we're going to get one of those." Shadowheart reassured me. "But there's honestly not much more I can tell you - as I said, I was the juniormost member of the team. I barely got any mission briefing at all - I don't even know who stole it or what githyanki fortress it was kept in. I was just part of a team intended to pick up a 'githyanki artifact' at a rendezvous and help carry it back to the temple at Baldur's Gate. And then an illithid nautiloid showed up and they tore through us, and the last man standing tossed the artfact to me and told me to run-" She sighed. "And then I woke up in a pod and you helped me out. I was terrified the artifact had been lost, until I saw it with the rest of my gear right there next to me."

"Which doesn't make any sense." I thought out loud. "If the illithids were after the artifact too, then how did they not recognize it when they found it on you? But the idea that they just showed up by coincidence is absurdly unlikely."

"Even more unlikely when you consider that the githyanki eventually showed up chasing the nautiloid as well." Shadowheart agreed. "I'm just glad that they seem to have lost the trail ever since we jumped between planes to get away from them."

"Have they?" I asked her. "Remember, there was at least one githyanki patrol sighted in the nearby mountains recently, and you heard Lae'zel say that their behavior was unusually aggressive even for githyanki."

"Oh joys." Shadowheart moaned. "Yes, let's definitely not let any of them know about our little passenger."

"One catastrophe at a time." I agreed, and we settled down to watching the water quietly flow past us and burble. "Well, so much for relaxing on the beach."

"If it helps, I'm a little relaxed." Shadowheart replied impishly, before her face fell into much more serious lines. "Because this morning... even with the party all together, I was still alone with all of this. And now I'm not. And that helps, it really does." she assured me.

"Even when I'd lost everything else, I still had the people I cared for." I nodded, staring up through the stars and into the trackless beyond. "So when I was cast into the Silver Void and I thought I'd lost all of them as well..." I looked her full in the face. "I was very glad to find that I hadn't."

"Exactly how many of those ales did you have?" Shadowheart deflected with a return to her usual cheerful sarcasm.

"Enough that one more wouldn't hurt." I followed her lead. "Care to join me?" I questioned.

"I might like to... sometime." Shadowheart answered the question I hadn't asked. "But we've got a very busy day tomorrow."

"That we do." I accepted, as I rose to my feet. "Good night, Shadowheart."

"Good night, Hawke." she smiled up at me from where she sat on the sands, and I left her in the moonlight.

---

Author's Note: Ugh, thinking of meaningful chapter names is turning out to be such a pain. Heck with it, I'll just change 'em to plain numbers.

I only found out just now that the healer in the grove is called 'Nettie'. The whole time I'd played the game I'd thought she was 'Nettle', even with subtitles turned on. I've gone back to earlier chapters and corrected it.

I also belatedly realized that if I'm not recruiting Astarion then I really should have gone with Rogue Hawke. Fortunately, while Shadowheart has the Acolyte background in the main game she had the Urchin background in Early Access... which gave her Stealth and Sleight of Hand proficiencies, and thus making her a useful backup locks-and-traps person if you didn't have Astarion in rotation. So, I just rolled with that. Because yeah, if you don't have at least one party member who can pick locks, you miss a lot.

Disguise Self does not let you impersonate specific people in-game, but that's a limitation of the game engine. You can use it for that purpose in D&D. Shadowheart has access to Disguise Self as a Ritual spell through her Trickery domain.

I came this close to actually making Mol a party member, as I had a nice opportunity here to depart from the canon rails, but decided against. If I'm already tempted to prune the list of permanent party members down just so I have a manageable number of characters to write, then the last thing I need is to start throwing new hirelings into the batch. Also, she doesn't have a tadpole.

Shar's portfolio includes secrets, so amusingly she actually is the goddess of privacy - from a certain point of view.

And the exact backstory of how the hell Shadowheart ended up with the artifact really isn't gone into in game beyond a few spoilers I hope the Internet was not lying to me about, so I rode the USS Make Shit Up for the rest.

 

[cliffc999]

We set out early the next day through the druids' secret tunnel out of the Grove. Not only was the tunnel exit closer to our destination than the main exit was, but we lowered the risk of our being spotted entering or leaving the Grove as much as possible.

The concealed passage exit let us out a short ways east of the ruins of Moonhaven, in the low ravine that held the creek we'd noted yesterday on the map. Moonhaven was of course built on the intersection of several of the larger dirt roads in the region, so I'd readily spotted that it would be a natural terrain chokepoint for the goblins to put a forward outpost to help coordinate their search parties from. We thus resolved to avoid it for now while we looked to test our luck with a goblin patrol somewhere else further out in the woods, where they'd have no reinforcements easily available if our trick didn't work.

Which is why we were surprised when the first 'patrol' we ran into wasn't of goblins but humans. We'd only traveled maybe half a mile down the trail when we came across a young man and woman, both of them kneeling over the body of a older man and frantically trying to staunch the bleeding from his wounds. "No, put pressure there!" the young man was saying to his companion desperately.

"Edowin? Edowin, hang on!" she tried to rally her fallen companion. "You can't die, you're-"

"Look out!" the young man cried in alarm as he spotted us rushing forward. The woman was unarmored and dressed like a farmer but the young man was wearing a chain shirt, and they were armed with a mace and a sword respectively. The older man on the ground was dressed in finery, and a broken spear handle with a missing point lay next to him, presumably a casualty of the same battle that had wounded him so.

"Not another step!" the woman continued as they both drew their weapons and fell into a guard stance - him with at least some professional training, and her as if she'd only started learning how to swing that mace last week. I was about to say something reassuring when a glowing magical brand suddenly erupted into view on her cheekbone as soon as my eyes fell upon her face, and I felt something deep within me shiver in response.

"Wait!" the wounded man gasped weakly, as he rolled his head over to look at us with an effort and I was still momentarily dumbstruck with shock. "He... He is-"

And then my shock deepned at the outright writhing in my mind the instant our eyes met, as the tadpole in my mind shivered and forged a mental connection with him. I saw/heard/felt the man's thoughts - he knew he was mortally wounded, and he was afraid for- for his siblings? My heart wrenched as I looked down at what was clearly the older brother of these two, his last thoughts being both a frantic terror and a desperate hope-

Brynna. Andrick. Protect them. he begged me mentally.

"Edowin, lie still!" Brynna ordered him. "You'll-"

"He... is a True Soul." Edowin whispered, doing his best to smile at his siblings as his lungs filled with blood. "You-" His voice trailed off as his eyes shut for the final time.

"Edowin? Ed! Please!" Andrick begged.

"He's with the Absolute now." Brynna reassured her surviving brother with a serene calm I honestly found more than a bit eerie, given that her oldest brother had just died at her feet.

"Brynna. Andrick." I greeted them both by name, and they stood bolt upright and faced me like recruits snapping to attention.

Wonderful. I mused. On the one hand, our theory that the enemy used the tadpoles for identification apparently just had confirmation fall right out of the sky and into our laps. On the other hand, I'm facing a pair of armed religious fanatics who are probably going to start swinging as soon as I say the wrong thing and expose myself as an imposter. and while I'm certain I could kill them both easily- I nodded inwardly to myself, acknowledging the truth that I simply didn't want to. While these two certainly weren't Carver and Bethany, and were servants of our enemy besides, I didn't have the heart to disregard a dying man's innocent wish under these circumstances.

"How much did Edowin teach you of the Absolute?" I finally risked a bluff.

"He didn't have time for much more than the basic catechism, True Soul." Andrick answered briskly. "The Absolute is the new goddess, who will rise up to sweep away the corrupt old order and remake the world."

"Her True Souls, like you, are her chosen ones - you speak with Her voice." Brynna continued, her voice low with awe. "You have the power to enforce Her will on others, like Edowin had. And when the Absolute's crusade has succeeded, her True Souls will rule the world with peace and order."

... if I had a silver piece for every time I'd heard that same script from a group of cultists, I could pay off Varric's bar tab! I inwardly facepalmed.

"Good, then he at least covered the most important parts." I non-answered.

"We were reporting to Edowin, but without him I'm not sure-" Brynna said. "I suppose we're assigned to your squad now. What are your orders, True Soul?"

"What were the original orders for Edowin's squad?" Lae'zel broke in.

"They pulled in every team they could from neighboring regions, for a higher priority here." Andrick explained. "We were searching for fugitives - survivors from the nautiloid ship that crashed near here several days ago. The Absolute wants them brought to Her - at any cost."

"We don't have any description of the survivors," Brynna continued - which I'd already figured out, seeing as how neither of them had begun to recognize us - "but they had to have been wounded in the crash, so we've been searching for blood trails, people with mysterious injuries. That was the only clue we had to go on."

"Where were you originally assigned before your team was sent here?" I asked.

"Moonrise Towers. We'd been lay followers of the Absolute in Baldur's Gate- Edowin had only been initiated several months ago." Andrick explained.

"Then return to Baldur's Gate and wait to be contacted." I decided. "If the crash survivors haven't received medical attention by now then they're dead, and the only place they could have received any is that armed encampment the goblins have been scouting for. Neither of you look to have much military experience, so you wouldn't be very useful for either that kind of reconaissance or the assault phase. The Absolute isn't wasteful; you'll serve better in an urban role."

"One moment." Shadowheart asked. "Edowin's wounds - what inflicted them? Were you attacked?"

"A damned owlbear did it." Andrick swore viciously. "Of all the useless things- we'd just gone in to check the cave nearby as a possible hiding place for those survivors, and it turns out we walked right into its bloody lair!"

"My condolences." I assured them both. "Now clear the area; this operation is entering a new phase."

"Of course sir!" Andrick nodded. "We'll depart at once."

"You should have just killed them." Lae'zel confronted me as soon as they were out of earshot. "They were armed, they were enemies- they have seen our faces! What reason did you have to hold back?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it. "Sentimentality." I admitted. "I was once the oldest of three siblings, desperately trying to keep them all alive. I wasn't going to be the reason Edowin failed to do that... like I did."

Lae'zel glared at me briefly before nodding matter-of-factly. "Then at least you are not lying to me." she replied evenly. "And I already did not expect groundlings like yourself to have fully the same steel as true gith warriors. This particular act of mercy is unlikely to threaten our mission; that is adequate for now."

"Did anyone else see something odd glowing on that woman's cheek, or was it just me?" Wyll queried, and after a hasty comparision of notes we all agreed that we'd seen something, and our tadpoles had instinctively responded to it.

"It wasn't the same sort of resonance that we've felt from other people with tadpoles, but it was certainly something." Gale analyzed. "This cult of the 'Absolute' is apparently putting a magical mark on at least some of its lay worshippers, the ones not 'worthy' to be 'True Souls', so that they can still be identified."

"Also perhaps to make them more subservient." I thought out loud. "Brynna was the branded one, her brother Andrick was not, and her emotional reactions seemed... different from his."

"What sort of madman would be using mind flayer technology to try and build themselves a network of fanatic worshippers hidden amongst human society?" Shadowheart questioned. "Because while the most obvious thought would be 'mind flayers', they've never tried anything like this before that I know of."

"Nor I." Lae'zel conceded. "The ghaik are too proud to build the illusion of a god to deceive their slaves into following. To do so would require first admitting that they are too weak to simply force the obedience that they desire. But for anyone other than a ghaik to delve so deeply into their secrets is insanity. Such attempts inevitably result in nothing but the ghaik eventually infecting and possessing those who try!"

"The more layers we peel, the more rotten the onion smells." I complained. "Well, we've had a successful result in our first test, but I still don't think that means we should go charging directly into the depths of the goblin fortress just yet. That conversation could have gone very differently if they'd been the slightest bit more suspicious."

"The village?" Shadowheart suggested. "If the Absolute has recently called in human reinforcements from neighboring areas of operation, then not everyone will be familiar with everyone's faces. Our tadpoles should be enough identification for all of us."

"And the goblins can't be attacking all strange people on sight without at least having their sentries challenge and identify them first, or else Edowin and his siblings wouldn't have been able to pass by Moonhaven on their way here." I agreed. "So we'll try checking out the village next. But before we do that... Shadowheart, how often can you use that amulet?" I asked her.

Our attempt to do a post-mortem interrogation of Edowin was momentarily interrupted when the tadpole in his head turned to be still alive even after he died, and it reached out to my tadpole and tried to mentally compel me into extracting it from his head and saving its life. I focused my will and allowed the damned thing to believe it was going to be saved, right up until the point it crawled back out of his dead eye socket and I crushed it in my fist. I dimly heard a dying squeal in my mind as it perished, along with an overtone of... disapproval?

Questioning Edowin's corpse with the Amulet of Lost Voices turned up the knowledge that he had also been infected at Moonrise Towers, just like the dead drow back at the Grove. He gave us no details about the Absolute when we asked save that she was an 'almighty goddess' of 'irresistible power'. However, we also turned up very disturbing piece of information that while the Absolute desperately wanted any survivors from the nautiloid crash, that was for purposes of interrogation. The search effort's true target was a weapon that the nautiloid ship had been carrying, and that the Absolute assumed had been spirited away by a survivor from the crash because it had already failed to be found in the wreckage. What weapon we had no idea; the existence of 'the weapon' had been revealed only in the answer to the last question we'd asked, and the magic had run out before we could follow up.

Shadowheart and I wordlessly exchanged a look behind Lae'zel's back at that particular revelation, because we didn't need tadpole telepathy to know the conclusion we'd both immediately leapt to; that 'the weapon' was almost certainly a little polygonal artifact currently hidden in Shadowheart's belt pouch.

Our thoughts hung heavier on us than our packs as we headed back up the trail to rejoin the main road that led to a small stone bridge high over the creek-filled ravine and into Moonhaven. Even from a distance we could see that while most of the buildings were still mostly standing the wood was rotten, overgrown with mildew, and with sagging walls and collapsing rooftops all over town. This place had clearly been abandoned for at least several decades. However, it wasn't abandoned now, as the silouhettes of a pair of goblin sentries posted on the highest rooftops were just visible to us even from our position several hundred yards outside the village walls.

"No smoke means no campfires." I mused as we all carefully studied the village. "Which means they haven't settled in because it's midday and an actual encampment would have at least one fire going for the cookpot. But by the same token they've got lookouts posted, so they're not just passing through."

"Keeping watch while the remainder of their unit searches the village?" Lae'zel thought out loud. "Although what in those ruins could still be worth sending search parties after is beyond me."

"You're giving them too much credit, because you're both too used to dealing with large, well-disciplined forces." Wyll contributed. "Even with mysterious cult masters and mind-affecting tadpoles in the picture goblins will still be goblins. And the only thing goblins like even more than killing is looting, so that's likely a raider band that's stopped for some easy gleanings - not a task force."

"Then let's try the open approach." I said, and we drew up in our march formation and, making no effort to conceal ourselves, headed across the bridge.

"Dead tieflings. Dead goblins." Shadowheart noted the several bodies strewn nearby as we crossed the bridge. The bodies were no longer stiff but had only barely begun to smell; they were maybe a day old. One of Zevlor's patrols had taken casualties here. As we drew nearer to the village's main gates just on the other side of the bridge, I saw that Wyll's estimate of the goblins' relative lack of discipline had been accurate. Their lookouts were doing a desultory job, and didn't begin to spot us until we had almost reached the already-open gates.

"Over there! Surround 'em like!" a female goblin bellowed orders as she climbed up on the rooftop to our right to join her lookout there.

"Identify yourselves!" I interrupted her with an authoritative bark.

"Wot?" their leader goggled incredulously as the several goblins each to our left and right laughed from their rooftop perches. "You is stealin' my lines, berk!"

"You dare speak so insolently to a True Soul, goblin?" I glared at her... and with those words I felt something go click in my brain as my tadpole awakened. I saw a brand identical to Brynna's brand flare to light on the goblin leader's cheek - except that this time my intuition told me that I wasn't seeing it with my eyes, but with my mind. I felt a power awaken in me, and surge... a glimmer of a sense of something larger, something vsst, as my mind and my voice filled with an eldritch Authority.

"I told you to identify yourself." I commanded, and I felt the goblin's will crumble in the face of my own. I heard several of my companions drawing a shocked breath behind me, but I kept my gaze focused on the goblin leader's...

My stomach spasmed in a brief moment of nausea. I broke out in a cold sweat. I had the momentary impression that my mind was a small fish swimming in a great ocean, and suddenly the wake of a leviathan swimming past had sucked me into its current-

"Booyahg Haysa, commandin' this squad, sir!" she snapped to attention, and every goblin within view lowered their weapons.

"Report." I ordered her, shaking off my momentary distraction.

"Uh- nothin special's goin' on? Sir?" she added confusedly.

"How long have you been in this village?" I probed.

"Since- this mornin', sir! We wuz- we wuz searchin' for clues to what the Absolute wanted us to find, yeah!" she visibly strained for an answer. It appeared that Wyll had been right on the money with this theory that the goblins here had been slacking off from their assigned task for a looting break.

"Any results?" I asked calmly.

"Not- not yet. But I'm sure we'll-" she frantically tried to explain.

"Get back to work." I growled as if entirely uninterested in the affairs of goblins, and all of the goblins except for the posted lookouts immediately scattered all over the village, trying to look as busy as possible.

"There was more than just commanding mannerisms making that goblin obey you." Shadowheart asked worriedly, pitching her voice low to keep any goblins from overhearing. "What was that?"

"Apparently Brynna's statement that True Souls could 'speak with the authority of the Absolute' was more than just cult rhetoric." I replied. "When I concentrated hard on trying to convince her I was a True Soul, my tadpole responded."

"Psionic influence." Lae'zel said worriedly. "A power of the ghaik. But-" she peered warily at me, one hand on her sword. "You show not the slightest change in feature! Not even the color of your eyes has shifted! Such powers do not develop in one infected until after the physical aspects of the change are almost complete!"

"Nettie said that some powerful magic had been used to alter our tadpoles, to inhibit the normal transformation." Gale thought out loud. "Any force with the power to do that could in theory also force certain parts of the ceremorphosis to occur while stopping others."

"You mean our minds are being altered even while our bodies remain unchanged?" Shadowheart gasped in horror.

"The goblins are starting to get curious." Wyll warned us.

"North gate." I picked at random. "Let them think we just stopped for a moment to discuss which was the best way to proceed, and now we're moving on."

There was another stone bridge on the north road out of Moonhaven, crossing a branch of the same ravine and creek that we'd crossed coming in from the east. At the far end of the bridge the road stopped, blocked off by a rock face, and a T-intersection gave us a choice of routes both north and south. South led us back towards the Grove, so we took that. The dirt road split again, and a horrific odor came to our nostrils as we came to the latest intersection. Rounding the curve gave us a clear sight as to why.

"Gnolls." Shadowheart said, looking at the several large, hulking corpses of hyena-headed humanoids strewn all over the path, looking as if they'd been hacked at by an enraged ogre with a greataxe. "Very thoroughly dead ones."

"How can the corpses be that rotten when the blood hasn't even dried yet?" I said, because while thickened and with the flies already thronging to feed off of it, the copious amounts of blood the gutted and dismembered gnolls had left soaking into the landscape was still fluid.

"They smell that bad even when they're alive." Wyll pointed out, before he went taut like a hunting dog spotting a scent. "Wait a minute." he leaned over one of the corpses. "This one's been burnt as well as hacked. The fur is singed all over! Could it be...?" He reached down and started to carefully examine the ground away from the immediate battle site, before pointing at what was clearly the blood trail of a wounded person - a person who bled an entirely different color of blood from the gnolls.

"Do you smell that?" he said, as he bent over to more carefully examine the blood spots. "Devil blood! The stench of Avernus! Karlach was here! We have to find her!" he begged.

I very briefly explained what Wyll had told me the night before about his own quest to the others, and since we were already here and our main reconaissance had already gone so well this morning in such little time, we readily agreed that we could now turn to the hunt.

Karlach had apparently been hurt substantially in their battle because I'd very seldom seen anyone leave that much of a blood trail for that kind of distance and still be walking at the end. On the other hand, they were clearly a damn tough opponent because they not only had gone all that way, but judging by the footprints had been still setting a fairly good pace even at the end. Still, with the wounds they bore they'd need to stop to rest sometime, while we were all fresh, and they only had a several hours' lead on us. And they either had no skill at woodcraft or no desire to conceal their blood trail, so following it was merely a matter of keeping to the path. So after a mile or two more, we eventually caught up to her where she was sitting by the side of the creek with her back propped against a tree, some bloodied rags wrapped around her ribs as an improvised bandage.

"One horn. The stench of Avernus. Advocatus Diaboli!" Wyll challenged her with a horrible intent, drawing his rapier as he completely violated any chance of stealth by stepping out to openly challenge here.

"I'll be gods-damned." she complained in an incongrously female voice as she rose to her feet with a grunt of pain. Seeing her standing for the first time put a prickle of alarm down my back... although robustly and abundantly female in shape Karlach was also a mass of muscle standing at least six inches taller than I did, and I was the tallest member of our party. I'd seen qunari with a less muscular build, if not by much. Her skin was as red as many of Zevlor's tieflings, and she had a large corkscrew horn coming out the left side of her head, with a broken-off stub on her right showing where a matching one had been. The many scars criss-crossing her arms and legs and torso, as well as the giant patches of gnarled and horny skin where she had clearly been burnt in the past and only partially healed, told a tale of someone who had been fighting in literally hellish battles for years.

"The Blade of Frontiers. Thought I'd shaken you for good. That'll teach me to underestimate you." she greeted Wyll, before looking up briefly to take in all of us as we came up behind Wyll. "And you're clearly not underestimating me either, not with all the help you brought this time! I'd be flattered - if you weren't so hellbent on gutting me."

"You won't escape justice this time, monster!" Wyll snarled at her. "Any last words?"

"Here's two - Back! Off!" she howled in a voice that mixed rage and agony, and her skin began to erupt in hellish flame. "If you lot want my head, then you're trading in at least three of your own to get it! Just- just go away!"

"Wait." I put one hand on Wyll's arm as he was about to lunge forward. "No matter what your patron said, this doesn't add up! Since when do remorseless engines of hellish slaughter ask for time-outs?"

"It's a trick!" he shook me off angrily. "She's a devil, a champion of the Arch-Devil Zariel's army! Countless innocents will die if we let her deceive us!"

"I can explain, please!" Karlach pleaded. "It's a whole situation, but-"

"You served Zariel." Wyll practically snarled. "That's enough to condemn you!"

"I didn't have a bloody choice!" Karlach shouted back. "They took me, they collared me, it was fight or die! What would you have done?" she screamed desperately, and then winced in agony at the strain she'd just put on her wounded ribs.

Wyll took advantage of her momentary lapse to begin to lunge forward, and I grabbed him by the wrist and bore down with my full strength. "No."

"Are you mad?!?" he rounded on me angrily as he pulled free. "You would side with a denizen of the Hells?"

"Is this 'sentimentality' again, Hawke?" Lae'zel questioned me coldly, as she moved to stand alongside Wyll. Shadowheart stayed with me, Gale looked undecided- oh, this entire situation was rapidly going south. Was this truly just a ploy by Karlach, to get the party fighting each other? Some demons back in Thedas had that kind of insidiousness, that subtlety-

I suddenly remembered what Wyll had said about both of them having been infected on that nautiloid and decided to try an experiment. When we'd found her in that cage, Lae'zel had used our tadpoles' connection with each other to send me her thoughts without words. So if we possibly-

I turned away from Wyll to make eye contact with Karlach, and concentrated not on trying to dominate her, to exercise that eldritch Authority, but simply to connect. To understand. And her tadpole suddenly awoke and shivered in resonance with mine, and images flickered before our eyes- flashes of Karlach fighting on the front line in the Blood War, a shocktrooper thrown again and again at demons and bringing them down with blades and fire and fury- then more images, of Karlach with her axe raised slicing through devils and cambions - a glimpse of the passing nautiloid in the distance - a frantic run for freedom-

"Lies! It has to be!" Wyll said frantically, as he reeled away from the mental images that all our tadpoles had been bombarded with.

"Don't be an idiot!" I growled at him. "You saw the truth, you felt her emotions - she was trapped with no way out, and the instant she first saw a possible one, she leapt at it! She was a victim of this Blood War - not a champion of it."

"You're asking me to trust a devil!" he begged, his face gone pale with shock? Terror? "You don't know what you're doing!"

"I'm a tiefling, not a bloody devil!" Karlach shouted back. "I was born in Baldur's Gate, for Tyr's sake! These flames? That's shit they did to me, with their experiments! I never wanted it! I never wanted any of this! I just want to go home!"

"Wyll. Stand. Down." I ordered with a voice of stone.

"You're supposed to know about monsters, right?" Karlach begged softly. "Better than anyone? Look at me. Listen to me. Can't you see I'm not what you think I am?"

"I- I- damn it!" he howled, and sheathed his rapier. "You... you really are no devil, are you? I've been deceived."

Karlach went limp with relief, lowering her axe to the ground. "Oh thank the gods. I really didn't want this to end badly for either of us."

"Shadowheart, can you help her with those wounds?" I asked, and she moved alongside Karlach.

"Careful!" Karlach warned. "Only touch the armor - you lay your hand on my bare skin and you'll get a nasty burn." Shadowheart shifted her hand as directed, and used the contact to deliver one of her lesser healing spells. "Ohhhh, that's nice." Karlach moaned with relief, and then craned both arms above her head in a great relaxing stretch. "Thanks a bunch, that one was really too close to the lung for me to go runnin' around on it like that."

"You still shouldn't put any great strain on it for a while, but that spell will have cleaned and closed the wound." Shadowheart replied.

"As long as you've taken care of the immediate, I can walk the rest off. I'm tough like that." Karlach said agreeably.

"Wyll?" I asked him, as he seemed like a man in shock.

"Your friend said 'patron' earlier." Karlach stepped over to Wyll, looking at him compassionately. "Warlock, are you?"

"Yes." Wyll admitted. "And my patron is the one who commanded me to slay you."

"And now you're not going to - bloody hells, you are in a bind." Karlach said. "Damn, I'm really sorry to hear that. Doubly sorry because I still can't just lie down and die for you."

Shadowheart rapidly leaned over to whisper in my ear a very brief explanation of what a 'warlock' was. My heart sank as I realized that my 'arcane warrior' companion had apparently been foolish enough to gain his talents by pacting with a fiend of some type. Because it was always something with people, wasn't it?

"I wouldn't ask you to." Wyll said slowly. "But you are right - I am going to pay a significant price for my disobedience. I just hope it will be one that I can bear."

"And why would your patron even want me dead? -oh shit, it isn't Zariel is it?" Karlach flinched back.

"My pact forbids me from naming them." Wyll said. "But no, it's not her."

"Wait, if you were sent into Avernus after me then your patron already wanted me taken out even before I got a bounty put on me by escapin'." Karlach realized. "And using a hero from Faerun to do the job instead of just getting someone already in the Hells to shank me in the back - oh bugger me with a flaming pike, it's not fucking Mizora is it?"

Wyll opened his mouth, then closed it, then mimed the classic gesture of zippering one's lips shut with his two fingers. "I... can't say that it's not Mizora." he finally managed.

"Fuck!" Karlach swore. "I swear, I've taken sweeter-smelling shits than that bitch! And at least I could bury those after!"

Wyll laughed faintly, helplessly. "You've a unique way with words."

"I've a unique way with a lot of things." she shot back proudly. "So," she said, turning to me. "That mental connection thing - that was from that little bit the tentacle bastards stuck in our heads, yeah?"

"Mind flayer parasites." I replied, and then gave a brief explanation of ceremorphosis and our tadpoles' having had the transformation put in remission - for the moment.

"Fuck." she swore. "Ten years I'm stuck in that damned pit, and I finally get out - and I'm barely back in Faerun again before this shit drops on my head!" She turned to me. "I'm not one to mince words, so here it is. You're out looking for a cure for this damned thing, as well as these plotting buggers who are behind it, and I definitely want a piece of both those things. But I can't sign on with your group until I've dealt with another problem. Because Wyll here might have stopped trying to kill me, but Zariel's got her own squad of hunters on my arse. I was tryin' to get away from them when I ran into those gnolls on the path. But even though they banged me up pretty good, I did the same to them. Last I knew they were forted up a little ways away from here, in the old tollhouse on the Risen Road. You help me hit them in their camp and wipe them, my blade is yours for the duration." A brief glance of mine around the group revealed no objections, and so we welcomed Karlach aboard.

"We penetrated a deception, avoided a needless fight, and are now pre-emptively removing a possible threat while simultaneously recruiting a powerful ally." Lae'zel quietly spoke to me after we'd been hiking back up the path towards the tollhouse for a while. "I had thought you addled with sentimentality again, but clearly not." She angrily waved her hand. "Again and again you make soft, senseless decisions, and again and again they somehow work out to our benefit! I do not understand you, Hawke."

"It's much easier to transition from talking to fighting than to try the reverse." I thought over my possible answers for a while before giving that one.

"Diplomacy. Tchk." she grumbled, and silently fell back into marching order.

In less than an hour, we arrived at the old tollhouse adjoining the Risen Road. The several Zariel warlocks who'd been posing as 'paladins of Tyr' - or their survivors, rather, as Karlach had already killed a couple of them in their first encounter - first tried lying, then bargaining, and then finally angrily cast aside their roles when we made it abundantly plain that we weren't falling for the act and were sticking with Karlach.

"Fine!" their leader swore, as he and his surviving compatriots readied their weapons. "I'm sick of playing the coward anyway! Karlach, you're going home in pieces if you must! But first, we'll teach your friends what a mistake it was to try and ally themselves with trash like you!"

"Avernus was never my home!" Karlach shrieked furiously, as her flames erupted from her skin more brightly than I'd ever seen them. "It was my PRISON! But I'm FREE now! AND I'M NEVER GOING BACK!" she finished with a roar that shook the walls. The servitors of Zariel flinched away in terror as Karlach erupted in a blind rage worthy of any berserker I'd ever seen, and all we needed to do was watch her flanks and help keep her reckless charge from exposing her to a sneak attack while she straight-up hacked the infernal bounty hunters to pieces. And then we had to rapidly excuse ourselves from the tollhouse for several minutes as Karlach proceeded to vent her fury on the furniture, doors, walls, and basically everything else she saw that wasn't us. By the time she was done, we needed a hasty Create Water spell to help keep the old tollhouse from burning down.

"Fuck them. Fuck Zariel. I won't go back. I'm never going back." Karlach gasped out heavily from where she lay on her knees, panting with exhaustion. "Ten years. Ten fucking years of nothing but-" She went limp. "Can you imagine what it's like to actually live in Hell? Never seeing so much as dirt?" she reached down and drew up a handful of earth in her palm as she spoke. "Or grass? Or trees? Or wind? Just endless black rocks and red lava and brimstone everything?" She slowly rose to her feet. "When I made my break for it, I could've died. Should've died, as crazy as the odds against me were. But I just didn't care. So much as the slightest chance of seeing the Prime Material again was worth dying for. And then actually making it, and landing this close to home besides?" She shook her head. "The idea of having to give up my freedom after just barely starting to taste it, to go right back into that hell - hell yeah, I lost it." She looked ruefully up at us. "Sorry about that." she apologized as she slowly rose to her feet. "I'm really not that bad, usually, even if I get a bit wild in a scrap sometimes."

"I can't even begin to start to imagine." I admitted honestly.

"You'd better hope that you never can." she agreed grimly. "So what now, boss?"

"We move far enough away from the tollhouse that we don't have to smell the bodies stink and make a camp." I said. "We all face the same dilemma with our tadpoles, but some of us only know some of the picture. We need to share everything." I noticed Shadowheart's face twist up with worry, and I caught her eye and concentrated on sending her a brief mental message. Almost everything. I clarified. Because while I'd have gladly told the rest of the group about the relic if I could, Lae'zel's presence meant I didn't dare to. Not without touching off some devastating party infighting like what we'd only narrowly avoided today.

As it turned out, fording the creek near where we'd originally met Karlach put us on a narrow side path that let us bypass the Moonhaven road junction entirely and get back on the route towards the Grove. Not that we intended to go all the way back there tonight, but the closer we could camp to there and the less deep in goblin territory we did so, the better. We eventually found a likely spot and settled in for the night.

"God damn this is good!" Karlach said gleefully as she tore through a double-sized portion of our travel rations. "I mean, actual bread? Do you know what it's like to almost forget how bread tastes?" she gushed.

"That's hardtack, Karlach. You're supposed to chew it." Wyll said amusedly as she bit through the hardened biscuit like it was fairy cake.

"M' chewin'!" she mumbled indistinctly through her overstuffed cheeks.

We spent the rest of the evening getting everyone on the same page about almost everything - including the outline of my past for those who didn't already know it, so that they'd know I'd occasionally need prompting about Faerun-specific knowledge to help inform my tactical choices - as well as brainstorming our next move. With the successes we'd had both with the two young cultists and the goblins in Moonhaven, we were fairly confident that with a little more practice and experimenting we'd have a sufficient grasp on our abilities as 'True Souls' to risk trying to infiltrate the goblin's fortress.

And then the companionable night suddenly turned chill and cold, as a sudden wind from nowhere extinguished our fire.

"Shit!" Karlach said, leaping to her feet and drawing her axe. The rest of us were barely half a step behind her-

"Oh no." Wyll said, as I noticed that he was the only one of us who hadn't drawn his weapon. "She's coming."

We all leapt back as a sudden pool of inky darkness materialized out of nowhere on the ground, ringed by infernal flames, and then a humanoid silouhette rose up out of it and the darkness and flames faded away to reveal a woman - no, a fiend - with a very disturbing resemblance to a Desire demon from Thedas. Her skin was dark blue, not purple, but she had the same seductive figure, the same coquettish mannerisms, and the same leathery batwings.

"Mizora." Karlach spat. "I knew it!"

"Wyll." Mizora said huskily, waving away Karlach's scorn with one negligent flick of her hand. "You've been naughty." she continued in a husky voice, before it turned into an icy storm full of daggers. "And you know what happens when you've been naughty."

"Are you even allowed to walk this freely on Faerun?" I challenged this new devil.

"Oh, I'm allowed." she smiled wickedly at me. "If I've been given a proper invitation. But I'm a very popular woman, and I never lack for invitations." she smirked. "Call me Mizora. I'm Wyll's patron, the fount of his power. But my little pet's been unruly recently-" and she turned back towards Wyll and an invisible pulled him down to his knees, gasping for breath, with a single idle wave of her arm. "And I'm here to give his leash a yank."

"You're either very powerful or about to be very outnumbered." I told her menacingly. "Let him go!"

"What I am, darling, is very prepared." Mizora smirked. "Wyll? Tell your friend what happens to you if you kill me, or if anyone acting on your behalf does."

"The contract... immediate penalty clause." Wyll gasped out. "And I'm damned... to Hell... for eternity."

"You see?" she said proudly. "Any of that oh-so-uncivilized violence, and you'll inevitably lose the very thing that you're trying to save."

"She's not lying." Karlach said. "Any devil's contract is a bad idea to sign, but Mizora's infamous for how twisted hers can get."

"Thank you for reminding me, Karlach. Zariel asked me to give you her regards." Mizora said insincerely, before rounding on Wyll in a sudden fury. "We had a deal, Wyll! But Karlach's still breathing!"

"You told me... devils only!" Wyll angrily fought for breath. "She's a tiefling... not a monster!"

Mizora materialized a scroll in her hands, which she made a show of consulting. "Clause G, Section Nine. Targets shall be limited to the infernal, the demonic, the heartless, and the soulless." Mizora smirked at him as she put the scroll away. "Karlach meets the criteria by way of having a prosthetic heart. So, are you going to live up to your obligations? Or does this need to get messy?"

"You're not laying one finger on either of them." I said evenly.

"Don't worry about Karlach, that particular ship has long since sailed the Styx." Mizora said. "But as for Wyll-" Before any of us could react she raised a hand and unleashed a mystic flare of some type with a single flick of her wrist, and Wyll fell to his hands and knees screaming in agony.

As we all watched, helpless to intervene, Wyll writhed and changed as his flesh was burned with infernal fire, lashed with lightning, and underwent seven other torments as well - nine ordeals, one for each of the Nine Hells. At the end of it Wyll lay weakly on the ground, barely conscious... and with his humanity almost entirely gone, his skin now red, his eyes now yellow, his head now surmounted by two large curling horns as prominent as any of Zevlor's tieflings.

"There you go! Since you sympathize so much with tieflings now then the punishment should fit the crime, hmmm?" Mizora said with false reassurance, before her voice turned bitter with venom. "For a promise broken, a price is paid. And so it always will be. So get used to the new form, pet, because there's no going back. Some magic even I can't undo. And now we'll see how the Frontiers fare when they can no longer recognize their precious Blade." she spat. "Oh, and Wyll?" she smirked down at him again. "Don't forget - our pact still stands. Ta-ta!" she cooed, and with a flash of fire she was gone.

"Are you all right?" Karlach asked Wyll urgently, rushing to kneel over him.

"I'll survive." he said weakly. "I always survive. She'd never kill me just for something like this - that would ruin her fun."

"Shit!" Karlach swore separately. "We just met, and here you've gone and ruined your whole life just to save mine. How the bloody hells do you even begin to pay someone back for that?" she looked up entreatingly at all of us.

"You won't need to." Wyll assured her softly.

Now that the tension of the moment was over, I honestly felt a little ashamed. The instant I'd heard that Wyll had gained his powers by pacting with a fiend I'd been ready to place him in the same mental category as any maleficar or abomination back in Thedas. And then barely a couple hours later I saw what he'd been willing to risk - to suffer - to defy his patron as soon as she'd tried ordering him to do something he felt morally inexcusable. I still felt like he'd done an incredibly foolish thing to sign himself into such an unfair situation, but- I was going to need to learn more before I judged so harshly.

Wyll was as exhausted in mind and body as if he'd been beaten with clubs for several hours, so we didn't weary him with questions or comments. Those could come later, right now he just needed some medical attention and to be put to bed. Our camp broke up into ones and twos, each of us trying to process the latest shocking revelations, and after stopping to make sure Karlach was settled in - we'd scrounged most of the gear and bedroll she'd needed from the supplies of the Zariel cultists after we'd killed them - I went for a last walk around the perimeter before turning in.

And as I came to the quiet edge of the creek my hair stood on end yet again as a certain voice reached my ears out of the darkness, and I realized that in a day already jam-packed with too many surprises the gods had still seen fit to send me at least once more.

"We meet again, as predicted." the ancient lich-thing we'd freed from that tomb in the old chapel greeted me, the impossibly tall and lean silhouette barely distinguishable from any other tree in the darkness. "Now hearken, because I would have words with thee."

---

Author's Note: You actually do run into the Absolute cultists practically on top of the rear exit from the Grove. They really want you to get that encounter early.

Since the game engine compresses distances for gameplay purposes, I re-expand them for story purposes whenever convenient. Otherwise our hapless heroes would be tripping over every new encounter every time they turned a corner. They can only render so much world map, after all.

And so Karlach gets her party membership, because I just didn't have the heart to leave her out of it. Still going to need to wing it a bit on how she fits into the dynamics but hey, this whole story is an exercise in winging it a bit. The BG3 game gives me lots of background to work with and a nice storyline to follow, but I'm the one still going to need to do a lot of improv to keep it from just being a boring game rehash. Those familiar with the game have already seen where I'm starting to step outside the scripted encounters and their scripted outcomes.

Also, good God, replaying the game enough times to catch all the details is time-consuming even with cheat mods to just blow through encounters.

 

[cliffc999]

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"You may call me 'Withers', if you require a name for me." it replied tonelessly.

"Are you with - or are you - the Absolute?" I pressed him.

"No." Withers replied flatly.

"Then what's your angle? Because neither our last meeting or this one is a coincidence - you've already admitted as such." I stated flatly.

"Correct." Withers replied with eerie calm. "As for my purpose, this is not the proper time to speak of such matters. All that I may tell thee at this time is that I intend no harm, and that I wish to be available for whenever thou hast need of my services."

"Everyone!" I called out. "Get over here, we've got a situation!"

It took a bare minute for the still-awake members of the party to hear my call and roust out everyone else - even Wyll, as shaky as he was - and respond. I hurriedly brought them up to speed on what had happened, as well as introducing Withers to those who hadn't seen him before.

"Right, before this goes any further, what the hell are you?" Karlach questioned him. "Be damned if you're any type of undead I've ever heard of."

"There are many answers to that question. None are important." Withers replied flatly.

"We've had a recent object lesson in the unwisdom of accepting 'services' from mysterious otherworldly patrons who don't fully explain themselves beforehand." Gale said, with an apologetic nod towards Wyll. "So what happens if we just politely invite you to offer your services elsewhere?"

"I would wait for thee to reconsider." Withers said calmly.

"What 'services' do you have that you think we'd want?"

"A mending of the threads between life and death." Withers replied softly. "Should thou or any of thy compatriots perish, I would have their soul cleave to their living body once more."

"How you could you possibly offer such magic so casually?" I demanded. "I was told it took tremendous power to even attempt such a feat!"

"Because it is my calling." Withers replied simply. "There is little else to explain."

"And what would be the cost?" I probed suspiciously.

"A simple matter of coin." Withers surprised us.

Shadowheart opened her eyes from where she'd been concentrating intently on Withers. "You- I can sense a divine aspect in you! A reflection of death, eternal and inescapable... were you a Chosen of Jergal?" she asked in awe.

"I shall answer no further questions in that regard." Withers refused her dispassionately.

"A divine champion lies around in a tomb waiting for a meeting with us that was foretold by an 'arbiter of certain matters', and is now offering us his assistance - but only within limited restrictions, and while refusing to explain anything." I thought out loud. "Can you at least answer if you chose this task, or if you were told to do it?"

"Yes." Withers replied calmly.

"... and were you?" I sighed in frustration.

"Yes." Withers paused, and then after delaying just long enough to be irritating he contributed the actual answer. "I both chose this task, and was appointed to it."

"This matter of the 'Absolute'... it's much bigger than even we're afraid of, isn't it? Enough to trouble the very gods themselves." I realized with horror.

Withers remained entirely silent, and then slightly shook his head in negation as I opened my mouth to ask a follow-up question.

"... all right, stick around, and we'll let you know if we ever need your 'services'." I fumed with resignation. "I very much doubt that we could make you leave even if we tried."

"No." Withers agreed with quiet amusement, and then drifted off to a position discreetly near our camp but far enough away to give us privacy.

"All right, gods, is there anything else you've got scheduled for tonight? Hmm?" I quietly ranted up at the stars. "Or can we finally get some sleep now please?"

---

Withers had gone by the time we broke camp the next morning, but we had no doubt that he'd mysteriously be back whenever he felt he was needed... which we all hoped would be "never", or at the very least as infrequently as possible.

While we were making ready to get back on the road Gale took me discreetly aside for a quiet moment, to point out that I'd been overlooking the potential use of the Netherese travelstones. We could have simply warped back to the one nearest the Grove for a safe encampment, and he would have brought that up had he realized that I'd simply forgotten to think in such terms and hadn't actually had a tactical reason for remaining out on patrol. He'd also mentioned that he'd marked and attuned two more travelstones as we'd been marching yesterday; there had been one within Moonhaven, and another one a short distance away from the old tollhouse by the Risen Road. Fortunately, it only took one member of a group to use a travelstone for those in immediate proximity.

"I thought you said these were ancient relics most people didn't even know the significance of, much less could reliably use." I questioned him. "Why are they being found so conveniently near places that we're going?"

"In a word? Geography." Gale lectured. "The Risen Road doesn't date back to the ancient Netherese era, of course, but the land it runs on and the mountains surrounding it certainly do, and both the travelstone's placement and the tollhouse's would have independently followed the same logic - it's a convenient intersection of paths just before the Risen Road starts to enter the nearby mountains. Likewise with Moonhaven's position conveniently near a water supply and with a natural defense of the ravine on at least two sides - there's probably been at least a dozen villages built and then abandoned there over the centuries thanks to the terrain conveniences."

"Makes sense." I said. "And the Moonhaven travelstone will certainly come in handy, because that saves us a lot of walking back in the direction of the old temple the goblins are using as their main lair."

"Do you think we're ready for that?" Gale asked, and I called everybody else over for a quick conference by way of reply.

"Ready or not, we're running out of time." I pointed out. "Kagha's ritual will almost certainly be ready by two days from now, possibly by tomorrow. Plus, it's only logical that new 'True Souls' being assigned to the area would be expected to check in with whoever the Absolute's commanding officer of this region is; assuming that goblin patrol we interrogated has reported our presence, they'll only get more suspicious the later we don't show up."

"I still say that we should prioritize attempting to find my people." Lae'zel said. "The mountain pass where Zorru reported meeting the githyanki patrol is only one or two hours' march down the Risen Road from the tollhouse. We are so close!"

"So close to where some of your people were sighted days ago." Shadowheart pointed out archly. "It's a cold and uncertain trail. We know where the goblin fortress is."

"Yet we do not know what we will find there." Lae'zel argued heatedly. "The creche will have a certain cure!"

"You sure about that?" Karlach broke in. "I mean, you lot told me just yesterday that the tadpoles we've got in our heads are special tadpoles, yeah? Something you githyanki have never heard of before?"

"Valid point." I agreed. "We know Druid Halsin at least has had some opportunity to study these altered tadpoles and is a powerful healer. Your people are much more experienced with regular mind flayer infestations, but there's nothing regular about what's happening with us. Moreover, the initial objection still stands; one of our two choices is on a strict time limit, and the other is on a less strict one."

"I see I am yet again outvoted." Lae'zel groused. "But think. We have tested whether we can infiltrate posing as True Souls. We may even be able to reconnoiter the area, then get out the same way we got in. But can we gamble our lives on being able to assassinate the entirety of the goblin leadership under such circumstances? We need time to reconnoiter, then plan. We cannot just walk in there blind!"

"But the refugees-" Wyll broke off helplessly. "Kagha will have them all thrown out to die soon!"

"Then we need to buy them some time." I said. "That note Shadowheart retrieved from Kagha's quarters - we should check out the location that was marked on it, see if we can find evidence. We can afford to risk part of today doing that much, particularly with the Moonhaven travelstone to cut down our travel time. If this turns out to be an empty lead then-" I paused and continued forebodingly. "Then we face a very unpleasant choice."

Warping back to the village was easily enough done, and while Booyahg Haysa and her squad had moved on since yesterday we ran into another goblin patrol that had stopped here to torment a passing deep gnome they'd caught traveling alone. There were only a few of them, so we settled for the simple approach of slaughtering all the goblins and tossing their bodies into the nearby ravine. The deep gnome, a man named Barcus Wroot, refused our offer of sanctuary in the Grove because he was stubbornly intent on his own errand searching for a missing friend. We pointed him up the road towards the Waukeen's Rest inn and the road to Baldur's Gate and hoped for the best.

The map on Kagha's note led us into an absolutely foul and disgusting swamp - one that someone had rigged with primitive spike traps. We needed one of Shadowheart's healing spells to fix the damage it did to my foot, and after that we moved much more carefully. Things took on an even more menacing air when we stumbled across a campsite containing the corpses of several people who'd been viciously torn apart by some sort of monster, not even a normal animal. Judging by the condition of their cadavers they'd been dead for days. Two more ravaged corpses, dead much more recently, lay adjacent to each other on a side path leading up to an abandoned hut. None of them were intact enough to even think of using the amulet on.

The "swamp-docks" the letter referred to were located south of the hut, but the only tree near it was a large dead stump on a small hillock a ways out in the water. It took a precarious journey across several stepping stones, some of them not even visible below the murky swamp water, to reach it... and the instant we set foot on the hillock, we were set upon.

"Swamp demons!" I cried, as the very mud suddenly rose up and took shape as small winged figures of malevolence, all fangs and claws. and came hissing at us. We were up to our ankles in mud and stumbling over thorny, twisty vines as well, so despite outnumbering the demons we still were vulnerable and unable to maneuver.

"Demons tend to be a little bigger than that, soldier!" Karlach called cheerfully as she split one with her axe - and then cursed manfully when it exploded in her face with a burst of scalding mud as it died. "Ow!" she cried. "These damn things are flying suicide bombs!"

We fell back as much as we could, given that the muck and vines were severely hamping our mobility, but several more of the mud demons screeched and flew forward to attack much faster than we could retreat. Wyll struck the one flying towards him down with his eldritch blast, detonating it at a safe distance, but more were following right on its heels.

"Earthshaker!" I cried, letting everyone know to brace themselves against impact as I focused my internal energy into a Tremor Strike and slammed my greatsword into the earth, releasing a pulse that sent the charging mud demons flying back and knocking them out of the air. "Gale, burn them!"

Gale cast his Burning Hands spell right on cue, and the magical cone of fire swept out over the mud demons while they were still stunned. We all ducked for cover as they exploded, the multiple splashes of hot bursting mud just far enough away not to reach us. The collateral damage of their multiple dying explosions actually took out one more of their compatriots, but a surviving one several dozen feet away from us screeched and then raised a claw which glowed with mystic force, and the mud beneath its feet roiled as it summoned another of its kind.

"I think not." Lae'zel spat, and began firing at it with her shortbow. Shadowheart followed up with a Flame Bolt cantrip, and they staggered it enough for the rest of us to also switch to missile weapons. The last of the mud demons finally died after we gave it several volleys. The pair of lumbering plant demons that came around the tree just as we'd finished killing their skirmishers fortunately proved very vulnerable to fire as well as not detonating in a take-you-with-me blast when they died, and our two spellcasters both had Flame Bolt cantrips they could freely cast as well as my fiery greatsword and Karlach's infernal flames trick.

"Are you all right?" I asked Karlach.

"Eh, just some bruises." she shrugged it off. "Good thing they didn't blow up on one of you, though, or Shadowheart would be treating burn victims right now. That mud was boiling." she explained as she unconcernedly toweled it off.

"Just how fire resistant are you?" Wyll asked her wonderingly.

"If a wizard smacked me with a Fireball then I'd still hurt some, but normal flame and heat basically doesn't bother me any more." Karlach replied. "Side effect of this damn infernal engine they shoved in where my heart's supposed to be."

"Mizora mentioned something like that last night." Wyll said. "Sounds like there's a story there."

"More like a problem, honestly." Karlach said. "But unless you've got a chunk of infernal iron handy and a master smith who had training in arcane mechanisms in Hell, not much you can do about it. Damn thing's been running in overdrive ever since I left Avernus. That's why I'd raise burns on anyone who touched my bare skin; I used to be able to throttle it down far enough to interact normally, but now I'm lucky my armor's not catching fire."

"Mud mephits. Wood woads. Both perversions of druidic magic." Gale had been analyzing the fallen monster remnants at the same time the other two had been talking. "Kagha's note has certainly led us to something suspicious."

"This isn't a natural formation." Shadowheart looked carefully at what few parts of the ground were barely visible underneath the thick mud. "It looks like a ritual platform of some kind - like one that you'd find in a druidic sanctuary, but after having been abandoned to decades of rot and ruin."

"The note mentioned a tree." I said, nodding towards the giant dead stump in the center of the muddy platform, and we all moved to look at it more closely. After more than a couple minutes we finally turned up a small wooden box tucked discreetly away into a crevice of the tree, safely clear of the water and very discreetly out of view to any but the most dedicated searcher. In the box was a letter that read:

Kagha;

Olodan has sent word of your progress; I am pleased that the Rite of Thorns has begun. I depart soon from Cloakwood to Baldur's Gate. Should you need further aid from my circle, now is the time to ask.

Once cloistered, the Emerald Grove will be the Shadow Druids' domain, and you its First Druid.

In Faldorn's memory,
Archdruid Aelis

"Shadow Druids!" Shadowheart exclaimed, before smiling with satisfaction. "Well, so much for Kagha. All we need to do is show this to the other druids and they'll be fighting for places in line to tear her apart."

"You're not wrong." Wyll agreed. "Remember how I said that most druids tended to focus on nature's more nurturing aspects? The Shadow Druids are their dark mirror; their chosen aspect is the hostility of nature to man, the savagery of tooth and claw. All life in a bloody struggle to survive against all other life, with strength as the only virtue and weakness as the only sin."

"That certainly fits Kagha's xenophobia and obsessive desire for isolation and power." I agreed. "Right, we need to-"

"My, my." an elegantly cultured voice interrupted us, and we all spun around in shock to see a swarthy, almost excessively handsome man incongrously dressed in silk finery worthy of the richest noble looking at us all with a sharp-edged smile. "What manner of place is this, I wonder?" he continued with a dramatic flourish worthy of Wyll at his hammiest. "A path to redemption, or a road to damnation? Hard to say... for your journey is just beginning."

I immediately noted that the mud wasn't sticking to his shoes or spattering to his clothes, and that he was walking over the entangling vines as if they weren't there. As if his mysterious approach out of nowhere hadn't already given away that he was no normal man-

"Who the hell are you?" I said roughly.

"Well met!" the man replied cheerfully, with a mocking little bow. "I am Raphael. Very much at your service."

A brief glance at the rest of the team showed clearly in their facial expressions that they were all exactly as wary of this new, mysterious arrival as I was. "To borrow a phrase, what happens if we just politely invite you to offer your services elsewhere?" I continued.

Raphael chuckled richly. "Of course, of course! This... quaint little scene is decidedly too middle-of-nowhere for our conversation. Come."

And with a flare of magic suddenly the entire world shifted around us, as the swamp and muck faded away to be replaced by a large round chamber with a vaulted roof over twenty feet high, its walls paneled in red silk and hung with gold-framed portraits. The furnishings were of a quality at least matching those in Empress Celene's palace in Val Royeaux, and the round table in the center of the chamber was covered with silver and gold dishes all holding a feast of food worthy of her table. I even heard some softly menacing organ music playing slowly in the background.

I froze in terror as I knew, I somehow knew that this was no illusion. If we had been back on Thedas I'd have said without hesitation that Raphael had brought us through a rift into the Fade - as is, the planar travel magics used on Faerun were an analogue-

"There!" Raphael finished boastfully. "Middle of somewhere."

"Lady of-" Shadowheart cut herself off. "Where are we?!?"

"The House of Hope." Raphael said boastfully. "Where the tired come to rest, and the famished come to feed - lavishly." He waved his hand at the table. "Go on, partake! Enjoy your supper! After all..." He leaned in meaningfully. "... it might just be your last."

"Boss?" Karlach said fearfully. "We're in the bloody Nine Hells, I can feel it!" She punctuated her last remark with a thump of one fist on her chest. "He took us back down there just with a snap of his fingers!"

I looked back at the - not a man, but something at least as formidable as a Pride Demon, I was certain - and concentrated as hard as I could on reaffirming my mind, shielding it, breaking any glamors he might have had over his appearance-

"Now, now." Raphael said to me with a gentle wag of one finger. "There's no need to be impolite. But you are correct in that the one thing that's better than a devil you don't know-"

And we all stepped back a pace as Raphael assumed his true form in a burst of flame. A pair of leathery wings shot from his back, his swarthy skin turned redder than Karlach's, and a majestic pair of horns jutted from his head as he loomed a head taller over us. A sense of infernal power far stronger than the cambions I'd seen onboard the nautiloid, stronger even than Mizora's, radiated from him as he dropped his guise.

"-is a devil you do." Raphael gestured expansively. "Now am I a friend? Potentially. An adversary? Conceivably. But a savior? That's for certain."

"What makes you think we need saving?" I temporized.

"Come now." Raphael sighed dramatically. "Why play hard to get? We both know how deep in you all are over your tadpoled heads. Two tenants per skull, and no solution in sight." He spread his hands entreatingly. "But I could fix it all, just like that." he finished with a dramatic snap of his fingers.

"No." I said adamantly, not even bothering to get the sense of the group on this one. "No deals, no pacts, no exchanges. Now put us back."

"So stubborn." Raphael gave a faux-pout. "People like you so often are. But I would like to believe that you'll change your minds... while they still remain your minds." He declaimed oratorically, complete with classical gestures. "Very well, try to cure yourselves! Shop around! Beg, borrow, and steal! Exhaust every possibility until none are left." He finished with a menacing smile. "And when hope has been whittled down to the very marrow of despair, then that's when you'll come knocking at my door. Hope!" he laughed mockingly. "Hahahahaha! Such a tease."

"I said no. Now put us back," I repeated. "And after that, we never want to see you again."

Raphael chuckled. "All those pretty little symptoms - sundering skin, dissolving guts, your very thoughts and memories being warped into an eldritch monstrosity until the very concept of yourself no longer remains - they haven't manifested yet, have they? One might say that you've had all the luck so far." His orator's voice dropped into a calm, quiet intonation that was honestly more frightening than most of what he'd tried so far. "I'll be there when it runs out."

And in-between eyeblinks, the House of Hope vanished to be replaced by the stinking swamp.

"Bloody Hells!" Shadowheart ranted. "Literally! Just when I think we're beginning to get a handle on our dilemma, another devil shows up!"

"You did well not to listen to his temptations." Wyll assured me. "You already know my experience with infernal pacts; no matter how tempting the offer, no matter how desperate your need, they'll always take more. You go in thinking you'd be willing to trade anything... and then you find out you've traded everything."

"Fuck me." Karlach shook her head miserably. "I didn't even know they could drag us back down there like that. Thought it was against the rules of the gods. When can I expect Zariel to show up herself and just put the arm on me?!?"

"Likely never." Gale reassured her. "Raphael almost certainly was able to do that because he didn't actually intend us any immediate harm and didn't refuse to send us back when we asked him to. Simply a temporary visit, for purposes of diplomacy." Gale analyzed. "Still, that was a very disquieting experience. But also perhaps an opportunity."

"Are you an idiot?" Lae'zel glared at him.

"No, no, hear me out." Gale said. "Of course he'll be deceptive about the terms, do his best to ensure an absolutely ruinous exchange rate, try to get us to damn our souls for eternity, all of that. He's a devil, that all goes without saying. But am I the only person who is curious about exactly why he showed up?"

"I was stuck on the part where figuring out why he was talking to us was a far lower priority than figuring out how to get him to shut up and leave." I answered flatly. "Karlach, as the member of the group who actually lived in Hell, have you ever heard of this Raphael before?"

"Nope." she shook her head. "Then again, it's not like I saw much of Hell except Zariel's retinue and the frontlines of Avernus. There's eight other layers of Hell he could possibly be from, let alone parts of Avernus I never saw. But wherever he's from, he's definitely no pushover."

"Indeed." Wyll agreed. "Mizora could take me from Faerun to Avernus - that's how I entered there originally, when she set me on Karlach's trail - but not remotely as casually or easily as Raphael did it to all of us. He's a powerful devil indeed."

"He did seem powerful, and very knowledgeable about our problem." Shadowheart mused. "Do you think he was also correct about our having no other option but to turn to him?"

"The only way we can know that for certain is to exhaust every other option first." I said. "We are not dealing with that devil, end of sentence."

"Good." Shadowheart sighed relievedly. "That's what I wanted to hear from you. Raphael was being very clever with how he stoked fear and wielded temptation. You don't really need a scourge or a rack to break people; prolonged fear and self-doubt are sufficient. By the time the actual pain starts the anticipation's been so great that the victim's already done all the heavy lifting for their torturer. " She shook her head resolvedly. "There were no right answers with that devil. He was just toying with us - trying to soften us up for later."

"I did not realize that you were so... well-versed in mental and emotional torment, Shadowheart." Lae'zel looked at her warily.

"And aren't you glad that I am?" Shadowheart replied cheekly. "It's an effective trick. Watch out for it - and for Raphael."

"Psychology or not, there's also the logistics of the situation." Gale insisted. "Why would a devil like Raphael bother with a small group of people trudging through a swamp? Why would he offer so insistently to take our tadpoles away? If he just wanted tadpoles to study, there's any number of Absolute cultists running about. They wouldn't even have to be willing - we saw that their tadpoles pop right out of their heads when they die, and he could easily hire some people to hunt down cultists like Zariel hired those warlocks to go after Karlach. Which logically suggests that it's not the tadpoles he's interested in... but what we'd pay him to get rid of them."

"Our souls." Wyll said flatly. "No."

"I don't think so." Gale replied. "Your soul is already contracted to another, and he would have known that, wouldn't he?" I saw Wyll's eyes widen in realization. "And yet he included you in the deal he was offering by implication anyway. No, Raphael wants something else from us. Or possibly needs something else from us. And depending on how badly he needs it, then we might be the ones with the superior bargaining position after all."

"Well, you certainly don't lack for ambition." I said to Gale. "But traditionally, trying to beat a devil at their own game is one of the fastest ways to lose."

"I don't think there's going to be anything traditional about our situation." Gale replied. "And I entirely agree with remaining cautious for now. But let's not be focused so greatly on what we think is happening that we overlook what might be happening, all right?"

"For right now, let's get out of this damned swamp." I said. "Because we've got a traitor to expose."

---

After taking a short rest and making some preparations, we went and brought Zevlor up to speed on what we'd discovered. We couldn't hope to get any substantial tiefling reinforcements past the druids guarding the inner sanctum, but Zevlor armed and armored himself up and came along with us. Telling the guard that we were bringing Zevlor with an offer for Kagha got us all inside the sanctum.

"-and we might as well have lied down and told them to take advantage of us!" a querulous voice was arguing as we proceeded into the underground antechamber.

"The thief was caught. And Grove law was enforced." Rath - the same senior druid who'd been trying to reason with Kagha when she wanted to imprison Arabella over the idol theft - said in reply.

"You call that complete failure of a punishment 'enforcement'?" the druid - as we came into the chamber we saw it was a gray-haired 'halfling', as I'd been told his race was called - confront Rath, hands indignant on hips.

"Enough!" Kagha said imperiously as she swept into the chamber. "Zevlor, you demanded this meeting. Now know that if you intend to say anything but that you are ready to depart, this conversation will be a very short one. I will listen to no more of your pleadings and excuses!"

"Scheduling conflict?" I confronted her as we all spread out.

"Too busy making time to listen to Shadow Druids before hearing anyone else, perhaps?" Zevlor joined in.

"Shadow Druids?" Kagha said, taken aback. "You- is this your ploy? To sow division and weaken us? Druids! Hearken to-"

I drew the letter from my belt pouch. Kagha instantly fell silent, her face turning pale as milk, as soon as she glimpsed the seal on the letter next to the Archdruid's signature - the symbol of the Shadow Druids. "Here." I said, handing it to Rath. "This is the proof."

"Kagha!" he swore vehemently. "You would invite the Cloakwood here? Have you gone mad?!?"

But before she could reply, two more halflings and a dwarf suddenly appeared as they released their own druidic shapeshifting - apparently they'd been hiding near Kagha's feet as some animals too tiny to spot, such as mice - and drew into close formation near Kagha. These newcomers were dressed much like the druids of the Grove, only with their visages scarred and streaked with mud and paints like Chasind barbarians as opposed to the Grove's civilized neatness.

"That damned nose of yours has gone poking into our business!" the dwarf who was the apparent leader of this group of Shadow Druids glared lethally at us.

"Mistress Olodan!" Kagha said frantically to the dwarf. "I can explain!"

"Sssh, no need." Olodan repled reasonably. "It couldn't be helped."

"Kagha, what is the meaning of this?" Rath demanded.

"Halsin was weak, Rath! His decisions led him to his death and brought us to the brink of ruin! But in the shadows we are strong! We are safe! There is no other way!" Kagha turned on him passionately.

Olodan sneered contemptuously at the several other druids of the Grove who were beginning to gather around. "You all let Halsin invite untouchables into your midst. You defiled the Grove for the sake of 'harmony'."

"And who among you truly disagrees, in your heart?" Kagha orated to her followers. "Who among you would see this Grove in ruins?!?"

"You can either join the true way, or be cast out with the rest." Olodan said to the other druids firmly. "Kagha? It's time to burn out the rot in this grove. You can start with these snitches." she nodded towards us.

"Counter-offer." I said calmly. "Leave here and take Kagha with you. Go back to your Cloakwood in peace and leave the Emerald Grove to its rightful keepers."

"You would doubt my power?" Olodan spat back angrily. "Mother Earth, hear me-!" she began to roar... before the words vanished right out of her mouth. Shadowheart had been supposed to wait for my signal before casting her Silence spell on Kagha, but apparently she'd found the straight line that Olodan had just handed her to be irresistible. Honestly, I didn't blame her.

The spell of silence she'd used had enough of a radius that even though it was centered on Kagha, it had also encompassed the several Shadow Druids standing in close formation about here. Fighting four experienced druidic spellcasters in close quarters would have been a challenge, especially given that we couldn't be certain of how some of the Grove druids would have responded. But without the ability to incant they couldn't use most of their spells, and that left them dressed in robes and armed only with clubs versus our entire frontline of fully-armed and armored veterans. Olodan managed to shapeshift into a man-sized wolverine before we reached her, but Karlach and I tanked her from the front and battered her down. Zevlor went straight for Kagha, and Lae'zel and Wyll dealt with her flankers. Shadowheart and Gale stayed back, so as not to get caught in the silence-spell themselves, and guarded our backs against any possible other sympathizers among the druids. And soon enough, the entire distasteful business was over.

"I cannot believe it." Rath said regretfully as we treated our wounded and buried the dead. A couple of the other druids - including the halfling that Rath had been arguing with, whose name I never got to learn - had indeed tried to support Kagha, but our reserve element and the loyalist druids had dealt with them. "That the Shadow Druids could get such inroads even into here-"

"Scavengers, just taking advantage of your already being overextended versus another crisis." I reassured him. "After this failure, and the losses they took, I doubt the Shadow Druids will throw good money after bad."

"Likely not." Rath agreed. "But we lost our First Druid and his replacement. Even if I immediately send for aid from the rest of the Emerald Enclave, it will be some time before they reach us. And I don't have the power that Kagha had, let alone Halsin."

"And even without Kagha demanding we leave immediately, the goblins are still only growing stronger with time." Zevlor agreed. "Your exposing Kagha has bought us some more time to prepare, but hasn't solved the main problem we contend with."

"Yes." I agreed. "But without her interference then your people, the Grove, and my team can finally all work together to try and address it. That's one of the reasons I made her takedown such a priority in the first place."

"Then you have a plan?" Rath asked.

"The outline of one, at least." I said. "If Halsin is still alive he won't be for much longer. Furthermore, as Zevlor so aptly pointed out, the goblins are mustering more and more of their kind from the nearby mountains and into the Cult of the Absolute with each passing day. In addition to that the danger of their scouts locating the Grove is also pressing, and only increases with time. So whatever we do, we can't waste a moment seeing it done."

"Even if we both mustered everyone we could, we still wouldn't have enough strength to assault the goblins in their fortress." Zevlor said.

"No." I agreed. "But that's not what I'm intending."

We all spent the rest of the early evening finalizing our plans, then adjourned for dinner. The Grove and the tieflings would be fully mobilized by next morning and just waiting for our word. Our party would spend several hours sleeping and refreshing our energies and our spells, and then set out shortly after midnight. With the Moonhaven travelstone available to take us most of the way to the goblin fortress we could reach it several hours before dawn, and with our tadpoles to gain us entry we could enter and gather the information necessary to do any last-minute refinements to our plan.

And after some quick researches in the druid's library, I invited Shadowheart out with me for a quiet walk on our beach.

"You worship Shar, don't you?" I asked her softly, once we were in private.

"As I said. Insufferable." she glared at me darkly. "How did I give myself away this time?" she moaned.

"You didn't really." I consoled her. "On Thedas there's only one religion and one god for all known human cultures - the Chantry, and our worship of the Maker - so it's nothing unusual for people to hardly ever name their god in conversation, because who needs a name when you've only got one of something? And while Thedan elves are pantheonic I didn't grow up among them, so I don't consider things in those terms unless I make a conscious effort to. So it took me a while, and exposure to another congregation of the devout like the Grove, before I realized that a priestess who never once actually proselytizes about or even mentions the deity she worships was an unusual thing by Faerunian standards. And once I realized that, I went researching local religions in the Grove's library. At which several point other clues - your particular education in the psychology of torment, your fondness for darkness, even when you joked that you weren't a particular fan of moonlight - all added up."

"I don't believe it." Shadowheart kicked a rock and chuffed. "You're saying that my very diligence towards Shar's tenets of concealment is what caught me out as one of her worshippers? Secrecy is supposed to be our shield, not our vulnerability!"

"As a good friend once taught me, the problem with even the most excellent tradecraft is that it looks just like tradecraft." I told her. "Which means it's excellent at keeping people from suspecting in the first place, but once they become suspicious anyway it just becomes another set of clues."

"Damn." she swore, before looking at me worriedly. "Is this... going to be a problem?"

"What I read didn't make Shar sound very salubrious." I agreed with her. "But that was just what I read. I've been in Faerun barely half a week by this point, and the sum totality of Shar worshippers I've met is you. And all you've done is be a loyal, supportive friend - and very easy to talk to. I'm not going to suddenly ignore all that simply because of your goddess."

"Thank you." Shadowheart said relievedly. "Because it isn't just because we're all sworn to secrecy from believers in other gods that I keep it under wraps. Shar worshippers tend to draw a lot of disapproval - especially in areas where Selunites are dominant, like this one used to be." She shuddered. "The village of 'Moonhaven' was even named after her, it was originally founded by a colony of her devout."

"Selune the moon goddess, twin sister to Shar and her eternal rival." I stated, so that Shadowheart would know that I already knew the short version.

"'Rivalry' is a drastic understatement." she agreed. "It's very often a summary execution offense to be caught out as a Sharran priestess amongst Selunites." she entreated me.

"Or the reverse?" I asked her intelligently.

"... sometimes, yes." she reluctantly conceded. "Although I've never seen it happen- I don't think." she trailed off.

"You don't think?" I queried. "Whether or not someone's been killed in front of you is usually a question with a definite answer."

"As I said, one of Shar's prime commandments is secrecy. We're forbidden to reveal that we're Her worshippers - I'm only talking with you about it because you already knew. It's an offense against the Lady of Loss to reveal anything that could be used to hurt the church. Which had a certain obvious implication when we were sent out on a mission against githyanki and illithids... one of whom have psionic adepts, and the other of whom are an entire psionic race." She shook her head. "I had my memories sealed as a precaution against being caught and telepathically interrogated. They'll only be unsealed at the completion of my mission."

"Your own memories?" I looked at her in shock. "That's- that's a little extreme, don't you think?"

"It's not ubiquitous even amongst Sharrans, but it's hardly unheard of." she said. "The wrong secret revealed at the wrong time can be the doom of an entire congregation, even an entire strategic campaign. Her most devout are willing to risk a great deal in Her service, and I'm no exception." She smiled at me reassuringly. "Don't worry. It was entirely willing on my part, and it's reversible."

But if they have the power to manipulate your memories like that, how could you know whether you were truly willing or not? Or if they could actually give those memories back intact? I burned with the need to ask those questions... as well as the knowledge to not even bother trying. Trying to directly challenge Shadowheart's beliefs at this point would only shatter what measured amount of trust we'd managed to build over the past several days. Whatever else could be said about her, it was absolutely plain that she was a woman of the most deeply-held and sincerely passionate convictions.

Just like Merrill had been.

"I'm certainly not one to disregard the power of faith." I replied. "But I also like to know - and remember - exactly what I'm getting into."

"And I entirely don't blame you." Shadowheart said agreeably. "The path of Shar is a very... rigorous one to walk. I can't pretend that She doesn't ask a great deal of me sometimes, or that some things haven't been... difficult." She squared her shoulders and continued more firmly. "But her church are the ones who took in a helpless starving orphan - a little girl who was easy prey for everyone and who didn't know how to look further ahead than her next meal. They gave me a home, gave me a purpose, taught me the strength to defend myself and shield my comrades-in-arms - I owe Her everything. And so in Her service I will give Her all that I possibly can."

"Even if it leads to tragedy?" I asked her.

"Life is tragedy." she replied matter-of-factly. "Oh, not always, but far too often, and almost always entirely out of our control. Just look at the tadpoles in our heads right now." she tapped one finger on her temple. "But where you can't defend then you must withstand, and having a cause, a principle, a faith to anchor yourself with is the greatest aid to endurance you can have. A person can endure almost any amount of suffering... provided that it has meaning." she trailed off softly.

"I can't argue that." I reluctantly agreed, thinking back on my own life. "But let's just hope we can do more defending - or avoiding - then withstanding in the future."

"I'll certainly drink to that." Shadowheart agreed cheerfully. "So... not a problem then?"

"Perhaps a minor one," I surprised her. "But not because I'm harboring misgivings. I was just thinking that if I could figure it out, how long will it take one of the others to do the same? I'm sure Gale at least is enough of a scholar to work it out, and we've already seen how he likes to analyze things. We might want to think of a way to break it to the group gently, before it drops at the worst possible time in the worst possible way. Particularly given that we're already keeping one secret from them." I gave a meaningful nod towards her belt pouch.

"There are exceptions to the tenets of secrecy - if urgent necessity requires." Shadowheart agreed. "I'll sleep on it."

"Speaking of which, we'd better all sleep on it." I agreed. "You and Gale need to recover your spells, and then we've got to reach the goblin fortress before dawn."

---

We rested, we prepared, and then we warped to the Moonhaven travelstone and prepared to travel into the belly of the beast.

"Are you all right?" I noticed Shadowheart shivering slightly on our arrival.

"Of course I'm all right." Shadowheart said acidly. "I'm only about to walk into a horde of goblins who are all camped in a former temple of that moon witch-"

"If you don't want to give yourself away to everyone else, perhaps ease back a bit on using that particular phrase." I reminded her.

"Right." she nodded. "I just- sorry." She shook her head. "Every time I even think about Selunites, it makes me twitch."

"Well let's hope that twitch doesn't get worse when we head into those ruins. We can't afford any woolgathering with stakes like these." I said.

"Right." Shadowheart agreed. "I'll do my best."

It took us less than an hour's march to reach the old temple complex, and the sentries there snapped to attention and passed us through the instant we proved ourselves as True Souls. We quietly walked through the sleeping camp, where only a few goblins were awake for the midwatch and the rest passed out cold - judging by the smell of rotgut and the copious leavings scattered around, they were mostly drunk and stuffed from a great feast that had been held earlier tonight.

"Goblins only hold a feast like this when they're celebrating a battle victory." Wyll said worriedly. "But we know they didn't attack the Grove, so where were they?"

"Focus on the task." Lae'zel urged him. "We are reaching the moment of greatest risk."

"Look, another travelstone!" Gale said, noting the presence of one in the inner courtyard. "Now there's a stroke of luck for us." he said as we attuned it.

The door into the temple proper was guarded by a fat, sleepy ogre - who as it turned out were barely half the size than the darkspawn's living siege engines called 'ogres' back in Thedas, even if that still left them half again as large as a man - and another goblin-ish humanoid called a 'bugbear', who was apparently the ogre's handler. Questioning the bugbear revealed the knowledge that two prisoners had been taken during the intrusion into the temple a couple days ago - Halsin and one of Aradin's surviving men - and that they'd both been sent to the torturers.

"Two days and more of torture by goblins." Shadowheart said flatly as we entered the temple, her concentration and mental focus back to full even though we were now standing in what had once been a Selunite temple. "An elder druid would have his magic to possibly sustain him, but the other fellow?" She shook her head sadly.

"If he hasn't cracked by now - and we know he hasn't, because the Grove is safe - then he's almost certainly dead." I agreed.

"Focus." Lae'zel hissed, and we entered the main antechamber. At this hour, it was empty except for a few sentries.

"The first decision point." Wyll said. "Try to assassinate the goblin leaders ourselves in their sleep, or go with the primary plan?"

"According to the gate guard we questioned this fortress has other 'True Souls' to command it." I spoke softly as we stepped into a corner where the sentries wouldn't be curious about us stopping for a chat. "That drow matriarch Minthara we heard of as overall commander, a hobgoblin warlord named Dror Ragzlin who was second under her and the goblins' field commander, and Priestess Gut, an old and powerful goblin shaman who does all that you'd expect of a chief shaman in a tribe. If we go with plan A we can kill two of them away from here, but Gut will be left holding down the fort with the main body. And we need to remove all the leadership before the horde will splinter."

"But precisely because she's the one left to guard the base, she won't be mustered with the rest if we do plan A." Shadowheart said. "Murder her in her sleep and hide the body? They'll be curious about her missing, but it's very unlikely they'll stop to put everything on hold when facing the opportunity we'll give them."

"We'll try checking on Halsin first." I decided, and we marched off to the pens they used to hold their monster-wolves where they'd also apparently locked him up. A brief stop in a room off the main antechamber produced the depressing sight of a young man's corpse strapped to a rack, his wounds bespeaking of all the agony the goblin torturers had inflicted on him.

"He's barely cold." Wyll said, touching him. "He only died several hours ago. Two days he lasted under this, and he still never gave up the location of the Grove - or else we'd have met the goblin army coming down the path as we were coming up." He whistled in awe. "He died this hard, to save the lives of people he didn't even know and who would have thrown him out. This boy was a hero."

I turned away from the body, my jaw clenching tight. If we'd only come even a little earlier, we could possibly have-

"Keep moving." I growled. "We don't have much time."

We arrived at the worg pens to find a bloodied, much-wounded bear having an uneasy, fitful sleep. The several night guards on the pens acknowledged our authority as True Souls and stood aside, and Gale cast a quick cantrip to detect magic and determine that the 'bear' was indeed a shapeshifted druid.

"Halsin?" I whispered to him quietly. "Nettie sends her regards."

The bear's head suddenly came up and regarded us suspiciously. "Can you talk in that form?" I continued.

A headshake. No.

"We're going to get you out of here, but you absolutely must stay quiet no matter what you hear." I insisted. "We talked our way into this fortress by deception, and if you blow the gaff-"

A snort. Halsin visibly didn't believe a word of what we're saying.

"I don't blame you." I agreed. "But hopefully we'll soon prove our bona fides. You lot, get over here!" I raised my voice enough to be heard by the goblins in the room, but not be heard outside it.

"Wot you be needin', sir?" the one goblin asked as him and his two fellows drew up alongside us - right before Lae'zel spitted him through the lungs from behind. The rest of them hit the floor alongside their boss barely a second later.

The 'bear' shapeshifted back into a very large and muscular half-elf; not quite Karlach sized, but a little burlier than even me. "This could still be a trick." the wounded and bloodied Halsin said. "Minthara would gladly sacrifice a few goblins to convince me."

"Minthara's the one we're going to be tricking." I said, and we introduced ourselves. "Oh, and Rath said to tell you that 'the wolf rune opens the way'."

"That proves you are indeed working with the Grove." Halsin relaxed, as Shadowheart finished finding the key on one of the dead guards and unlocked his cage.

"Karlach, find somewhere to stuff those bodies into that they won't be found. They've got the wrong wounds on them for what we're setting up." I ordered. Wyll gave Halsin several of the healing potions that we'd brought from the Grove for the contingency of having found prisoners who were too badly wounded to move.

"You obviously have a plan. What is it?" Halsin asked, and I brought him rapidly up to speed. He was visibly shocked at some elements of it, but was an intelligent enough man to see the necessity - as well as the opportunities, after I explained them.

"You being alive and able to move is a bonus." I finished, "because it means you can take out Priestess Gut while we're busy with the other two. I've seen how easily a druid can get around inconspicuously in mouse form."

"It's not usually the sort of shape I take, but you're right enough there." Halsin agreed. "I'm still nowhere near back up to full strength after what they've done to me, even with your healing magic, but I can certainly slay an elderly goblin or two. Just tell me where her quarters are and I'll see it done." He continued more ruefully. "I'm sorry to hear about that boy Liam. He was a brave soul, and he died to save my people."

"Was that his name?" I acknowledged. "I'm glad at least someone will remember him. If only we'd come sooner-"

"'If only' has poisoned more hearts than all the venoms in the world." Halsin said wisely. "He fought bravely and he died well - the gods will reward him as he deserves."

"We're burning moonlight, boss." Karlach reminded us, and I agreed.

"Right, now for the hard part." I said. "Good luck, Halsin."

"You too." he agreed, and with a quick shift of form he skittered stealthily away on little rodent feet. We left the worg pens behind after butchering the worgs kept there as well - if we made the damage look like something he'd plausibly have managed alone, then a discovery of Halsin's "escape" would only help what we were about to do next. And then we went to where one of the sentries told us was Minthara's quarters.

"Arcane eye." Gale muttered as soon he spotted the crystalline orb in question floating silently in the hallway outside her room. "Magical sentry reporting everything it sees and hears to who-knows-where. Good thing we didn't go with the plan where we fought it out here."

"Will it be safe to go near?" I asked him, as we stood watching it from hopefully outside its programmed range of concern

"As long as we just look and act like any other Absolute cultists would." he agreed. "Probably be best to not give it a clear view of our faces, though."

And so we drew up to the door of Minthara's quarters and knocked. An angry-looking goblin servant hissed at us that the mistress was not to be disturbed, only to be swept aside by our imperious 'True Soul' demand that we speak to her at once.

"What is so important that it could not wait?" Minthara demanded angrily, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Clearly a veteran soldier, she was a muscular, middle-aged dark elven woman dressed in some type of magical chain shirt that almost looked like black cloth and armed with a darksteel mace. "And who are you?"

"True Soul Anthor, from Baldur's Gate." I answered her. Her eyes narrowed and a mental spike of power pushed into mine, as she drew upon her tadpole to query me mentally - I focused my will and pushed her back out, but only after concentrating on the mental image of what I wished her to see.

"The Grove!" she hissed. "You found it? You have even been inside?"

"When we came to help search this area I decided that if all your patrols had failed to find the likeliest place the weapon was being concealed by force, then it would be best to try guile." I explained. "It took us over a day to find it even with a rough knowledge of where to search, but when we did find it they took us for an innocent group of adventurers and welcomed us inside. I can give you the entire layout - numbers, defenses, everything except the details of the innermost areas they didn't let visitors see."

"Well done!" Minthara congratulated me. "In the morning I will assemble the troops and we will prepare the attack!"

"Mistress Minthara!" a goblin voice called worriedly from outside the door. "We got a big problem!"

"Speak!" she bit off furiously. "And quickly, or else I'll throw you in the pits!"

The door opened to reveal one of the goblins who'd been doing a roving patrol in the hallways, twisting his hands in a near-panic. I smiled to myself as I realized that the timing was just about to be perfect-

"The druid! He's done and busted out of the worg pens! They's all dead and gone there, and he's vanished!" the goblin explained.

"Shit!" I pounded one fist on my thigh. "You had a druid prisoner?" I asked her.

"We did." Minthara answered grimly. "And apparently we were deceived as to how wounded he really wasn't." She nodded to herself with icy calm, as quickly decisive as any general I'd ever known. "You!" she called to the goblin messenger. "Wake Dror Ragzlin immediately, and tell him to muster his warbands at once!" and they took off running.

"There's only one place the druid would be going." I nodded to her.

"Agreed." Minthara nodded back. "Which is why we'd best forget waiting for morning - the time to attack is now."

---

Author's Note: And now we get into the fun part for an author; dropping hints in the text that only make sense to people spoiled on the game.

'Withers' actually is Jergal, which is precisely why resurrection magic is so easy and cheap for him - he's literally the God of Death.

The goblin camp has gone completely off-script from the game, of course - you can't remotely do half of this stuff due to the limitation of the game engine. But that's another part of what makes writing these stories fun for an author - getting to mix it up.

Also, the pacing of Act One is insane. Depending on which way you go it's entirely possible to get Withers showing up, the Karlach recruitment, the Mizora visit, and the Raphael confrontation all on the same day - which would be the craziest day ever. And that's precisely what we had. Hell, there's another scripted event that in-game should already have gone off, because it triggers on entering the goblin camp, and I'm deliberately postponing it because we've had enough for this chapter as is.

As is I'm already completely skipping the hag sidequests (as people no doubt guessed when we arrived at the swamp and found it empty of everything except the Kagha message drop and a few left-behind traps) - in this timeline Ethel decided to pick up and move her digs to somewhere else after Mayrina's brothers showed up to annoy her (they were the two fresher corpses the group found), because obviously that meant her current address was getting too exposed.

 

[cliffc999]

"Curse the necessity for this haste!" Minthara swore viciously as we strode through the halls of the ruined temple to the chamber where Dror Ragzlin had set up his own private quarters. "Assembling a force as chaotic as these goblins is not an easy task at the best of times. If I had a day to prepare, I could amass twice the forces we have available now." She turned to me, her eyes narrowing. "You stated that you had scouted the Grove's defenders and defenses. List them for me."

I gave her a mostly truthful account of what she was up against, although everything was carefully understated enough to give as optimistic a picture - from Minthara's point of view - as possible without any blatant lying. "So it depends on the size of your quick-reaction force. Will we have enough to overcome defenses of that magnitude, or do we need to wait for the full host after all?"

Minthara turned away from me and lengthened her stride by way of answer. "Dror Ragzlin!" she called out as we entered his chambers. The hobgoblin warlord was a large red-skinned humanoid, with a face and features that were visibly related to his lesser cousins but twice their size and three times as muscular. "The Grove has been located, but those incompetent idiots in the worg pens let the druid escape! We must move quickly!"

"That druid had been tortured to where he could barely move." Ragzlin growled. "How did he-?"

"Leave that for Gut to determine. We must assemble all available forces and depart for the Grove by first light." Minthara ordered.

"So hasty?" he questioned. "Why not wait until the full horde can be recalled and concentrated? And who are these people?" he looked at us.

"True Soul Anthor, leader of one of the search teams called in from elsewhere to help find the weapon." I introduced myself. "And also, the scouts who found the Grove for you."

"Here." Minthara ordered us, moving over to stand by Ragzlin's map table. "Debrief us both of what you found there, in detail." I did so - fortunately, I'd had enough military experience to be able to make it sound very convincing.

"Hm." Ragzlin rubbed his chin. "I can have at least fifty swords mustered by dawn just from what's within signaling distance of the fortress, and still leave a minimum fort guard behind. Add in several of Gut's apprentices, unless you want to take her along too-"

"No." Minthara said. "Just try to imagine the chaos those idiots would get up to without at least one of us here to properly supervise them."

"Agreed. Your spiders, three of my ogres - pity we lost all the damn worgs in that druid's breakout-" Ragzlin shook his head. "Even with Anthor's party added to ours... against the numbers he described, it'll be iffy. We should wait for the full muster."

"That would give us well over double the swords, but would also give the druids an extra day to prepare." Minthara said. Damn! I didn't want them to actually do the sensible thing, but what could I- I laughed inwardly when I realized that Kagha's treason and stupidity would actually prove useful for once.

"When I was scouting the Grove, several of them were debating the wisdom of casting something they called the 'Rite of Thorns'." I contributed. "Some kind of magical defense, apparently, but I don't know what kind."

"I have heard of it." Minthara swore urgently. "Damn! How long ago did they start the ritual?"

"They hadn't started it, at least not while I was there. They were just debating whether or not to use it. Something about how it would be very expensive and take several days to complete."

"I'm assuming this ritual is not a good thing." Ragzlin asked.

"No." Minthara said. "Should the druids complete it, it would make the Grove impenetrable. And we must presume that the Druid Halsin will order them to begin immediate preparations once he makes it back there. We cannot let them have enough time to finish it!"

"Then the hasty attack it is." Ragzlin nodded resignedly. "But we won't have enough troops to guarantee success in a siege, not against those odds." He looked up at me. "You said you got in once. Can your team get in again, and open the gate for us from the inside?"

"If we can get in, then certainly." I nodded to him matter-of-factly. "But that presumes that this Halsin won't order a lockdown the instant he gets back there. And we can't base the success or failure of the entire plan solely on assuming that he won't."

"You are correct, we cannot." Minthara nodded at me. "Anthor's team will attempt infiltration first, but the sappers will be prepared to blow the gates open for us should that not be an option." she finished decisively.

"Minthara, you know how touchy that stuff is to transport." Ragzlin growled. "I don't even like storing it here."

"Then make sure the goblins carrying it don't all clump together - and don't stand too closely to any of them." Minthara replied with a cold smile.

"As you wish." he nodded. "I'll get out to the main courtyard and start dragging those drunken idiots out of their tents. You can start assembling the spellcasters and the siege engineers." He nodded to us and left.

"Your squad will march with the command group." Minthara ordered us imperiously.

"Of course." I told her. "This is your assigned area of operation - we're just here as support."

"Good." she finished with a cold hiss, and we followed her out of the room.

Ragzlin proved as good as his word and had the entire camp rousted out and assembled in reasonably good marching order by first light. The chaos of the preparations gave us an opportunity to send word back to the Grove - no one would notice the absence of one of our group for a short period of time so long as the rest of us were in plain view, and with a travelstone available both just outside the Grove's gates and in the courtyard here Wyll was able to pop there and back here in just a few minutes. My written message to Zevlor and Rath told them how many troops were marching and what kind, what the intended march route was, our estimated time of departure - and several last-minute refinements I'd cooked up for the plan once I'd known exatly what we were dealing with.

Minthara, Dror Ragzlin, and myself drew up the outline of an attack plan for the Grove based on the information that I'd brought them, and then they briefed the goblin squad leaders. I smiled to myself as I saw the several goblin sapper teams carefully spacing themselves out among the column, and as soon as everyone reported their readiness the march set out.

Minthara ordered us to stick close to her, and so we formed a little command group at the head of the second platoon. The first platoon was being led by Dror Ragzlin, who wanted to remain close to the vanguard. With the worgs dead the usual practice of having the column preceded by mounted scouts was no longer operative, so a sacrificial squad of goblins was being chivvied ahead with Ragzlin and his platoon close enough behind them to keep them from lollygagging but far enough away to not get caught in any ambush they might spring.

"It is a risk, advancing through this territory without any scouts." Minthara said to me as she noted where I was looking.

I nodded but remained diplomatically silent. She considered me carefully through narrowed eyes, and I drew upon everything I had to avoid giving anything away. Maker, that time I managed to convince an entire Carta hit team into sitting down and having tea with me instead was nothing as compared to this.

"You seem very reluctant to contribute." she finally continued.

"What, suggestions?" I answered her. "I didn't think you'd welcome any. You have a very - firm - command style."

"Hrm." Minthara relaxed slightly. "Yes, with rabble such as this, harsh rigor is all they understand. But you are a True Soul, an elite of the Absolute. You should not be so... diffident."

"I hadn't considered the problem that losing all your worgs would pose." I pretended to admit fault. "Without scouts, we should have delayed - tried to sneak through in a night march. As is, we can't possibly search Moonhaven for any observation outposts they left - not on foot - without their scouts having a chance to get away from us." I shrugged. "So if it can't be helped, then we don't even try to. I recommend that as soon as we're safely through Moonhaven we close up the column, started a forced-march, and get to the Grove as fast as we can. Even if they have scouts out, they won't have enough warning to seal off the Grove before we get there."

"You don't think I should use your group to scout ahead?" Minthara probed.

"Do we look like a stealth outfit?" I jerked a thumb at our group, particularly the hulking figure of Karlach and the metal-armored Lae'zel and Shadowheart. "A scout or a rogue is the one type of talent I don't have. We're intended to be dungeon-clearers, a strike team."

"In the Underdark, even the mightiest warriors are expected to also be adept in the shadows." Minthara said scornfully. "Surface ways are crude." she sniffed disdainfully, her apparent suspicions easing off a bit. "Very well - the bold approach it is."

At her order the goblin column stepped up the pace and we double-timed into the ruins of Moonhaven like we were assaulting the breach in a stronghold wall. Squads of goblins ran into and checked the buildings on each side of the path as clear, making sure no ambush forces were hiding within, before Ragzlin ordered the main column to advance through the wet and muddy village square.

"If it's coming, it's coming now." I said tautly, angrily swatting away a fly as I looked up up at the rooftops. Minthara nodded, her hand tense on her own weapon. And one endless moment passed... two... three...

"Nothing." Minthara nodded with satisfaction. "At the trot - ADVANCE!" she bellowed in a parade-ground voice, and the entire column snapped into motion. We picked up the pace to match her jogging stride, Dror Ragzlin closing up on us as the command group preceded the main body across the eastern bridge out of Moonhaven. The Grove lay less than an hour ahead of us-

"What's that?" Shadowheart called out suddenly, looking over the side. "Something's under the bridge!"

"Column HALT!" Ragzlin shouted, as Minthara and we ran over to where she was pointing. The command group was barely a third of the way across the bridge, with the rest of the column strung out behind us and leading back through the town gates.

"I see nothing!" Minthara said, reaching Shadowheart's side and leaning over to look where she was pointing. "What are you-"

And then Karlach shoved Minthara solidly in the back with her full strength, sending the dark elf flying over the bridge's low railing and almost fifty feet down into the ravine.

Ragzlin was fast, his sword already halfway out of his scabbard even before he could finish drawing a breath, but we'd already been moving as soon as Minthara was in position. My greatsword smashed down into his armor right over the collarbone, sending him staggering back with one arm hanging limply loose, and everybody else moved as one.

Our ambush plan had taken a last-minute refinement as soon as I'd smelled the barrels that the sapper teams had been transporting. While they called it 'smokepowder' here on Faerun I was already very familiar with that smell - the qunari had used the alchemical preparation they called gaatlok in their cannons, and in bombs both for siegework and mining. Anders had somehow managed to concoct a crude copy of gaatlok when he blew up the Kirkwall Chantry. And the forces of the Absolute had had a storeroom of it in the ruined temple, multiple barrels of which they'd been packing along in the column for blowing open the gates of the Grove with.

However, the precautions Minthara had used to keep any accident with the smokepowder from destroying all of it - by having the barrels of it each carried separately by widely separated goblins - meant that they were in the worst position to withstand deliberate sabotage and treason. While normally the goblins gave the smokepowder transporters as wide a berth as possible - they were more than familiar with that stuff - the column had been forced to assume a tightly packed formation prepatory to crossing the one bridge leading out of Moonhaven towards the Grove. And so, when Gale fired a simple flame cantrip into the nearest barrel-carrier, it not only immediate killed the ogre transporting it but laid down a blast that cleared out over a dozen goblins around it.

The several druids who'd been carefully prepositioned in Moonhaven, shapeshifted into the forms of cats and small birds and perching on the rooftops of the buildings the goblin flankers had so laboriously swept for intruders, resumed their true forms and all cast the Call Lightning spells they'd so carefully prepared the day before. With the dirt of the village square having been pre-soaked by Create Water spells shortly before our arrival, the effectiveness of the lightning was multiplied severalfold and spread out over a wider area. Almost two-thirds of the goblins in the column fell dead, electrocuted in the very first strike of the ambush - as well as exploded by the detonation of the several other smokepowder caches spaced down the length of the column, as they followed Gale's example and used magic to ignite the barrels the ogres were so laboriously hauling along in back harnesses.

"Now!" I heard Zevlor's voice in the distance, as the tieflings charged in. Since we had bet on Minthara being smart enough to sweep Moonhaven before taking her column through it we'd left them ahead of the line of march, waiting just out of sight from the end of the bridge around the curve of the path. As soon as they heard the fighting start they charged in, and their archers set up a firing line while Zevlor and the several tieflings with actual military experience charged in on foot to help us hold the head of the bridge.

I finished killing Dror Ragzlin with no more than a couple of shallow cuts to show for it - he'd been quite good, but there was only so much you could do with one arm and when caught by surprise - and nodded to Zevlor and the rest of my party. With howling battle-cries we charged back down the bridge as the druids used their lesser magics to harass the goblins, and one of them used a Plant Growth spell to summon a large mass of entangling vines and nettles on the gate leading west out of Moonhaven and back to the goblin fortress. With the goblins bereft of leadership, stunned by the explosions and the sudden deaths of over half their number before they could even fire an arrow back in response, and entirely uncomprehending of why 'True Souls' they'd been told to obey were suddenly aiding their enemies - and with no clear line of retreat out of Moonhaven except south into the swamp or north towards the winding paths we'd used the day before - we slaughtered them almost to a man, with very light casualties ourselves.

"I cannot believe that worked so well." Gale said wonderingly. "There were dozens of them, and yet-"

"We had quite a few advantages you don't normally have in war." I pointed out. "But yes, there is absolutely nothing more devastating then thinking you're the one who is going to surprise the enemy, and then being counter-ambushed at your most complacent."

"Indeed." Lae'zel said admiringly, as she saluted me with her bloodied sword. "Your battle-cunning is worthy of any kith'rak, Hawke. I am honored to have been part of such a crushing victory this day."

"It certainly beats defeat." Shadowheart said agreeably. "But this is only one step towards a greater objective. Come on. I really doubt Minthara got very far - especially considering how roughly I saw her land - but we'd better make certain of that."

Reaching the bottom of the low ravine was easily enough done by taking a side path away from the bridge and switchbacking down a bit, and the limp form of Minthara lying prone on the bank of the creek confirmed the truth of Shadowheart's words - she certainly hadn't walked away from that landing. However, as we drew close we were all taken quite aback to note that despite having fallen over fifty feet down onto dirt and sharp rocks, she was still alive. Both of her legs had been broken in the fall, she almost certainly had spinal damage, and she was coughing up blood from where several broken ribs had been driven into a lung, but she was still conscious.

"Do I heal her?" Shadowheart asked me quickly. "If she's still alive, she can talk."

"Let me die." Minthara coughed weakly, her lips wet and reddened. "... please." she surprised us, the word falling clumsily from her lips as if she had not pronounced it in years.

"No. You are not taking your god's secrets with you." I shook my head. "Shadowheart-"

"The Absolute." Minthara said softly. "The Absolute... is no god."

We all jawdropped at that.

Minthara shocked us by smiling, even if there was a distinct edge to it. "Are you shocked?" she whispered. "You should be... as I was... no!" she gasped urgently, as Shadowheart leaned forward. "My mind is clear... only because... I am dying. If you heal me..." she coughed again. "It will... take me again."

"The True Souls are also being mentally influenced?" I asked her. "Not just the rank and file cultists?"

"Not influenced." she said weakly. "Enslaved. The Absolute's voice... drowning out everything... blinding... when it spoke... we could only believe, only obey-" She looked up at us, her eyes full of a terrible confusion. "How do you... not hear it?" She begged us. "How do you... remain free?"

"We don't know." I told her. "We've never heard any voices."

"Fortune... favors you." Minthara gasped. "I was Minthara, of House Baenre... a noble of Menzoberranzan. The cult of the Absolute sent... missionaries, to our city." Her lip curled scornfully. "I slew them... for preaching their sedition. And then... I led my forces... to Moonrise Towers... to slay those who sent them..." She looked at me. "I remember meeting a goddess' chosen... learning that the Spider Queen was a false god... the true order of the cosmos... a majestic and terrible goddess, choosing me-" She looked up at us desperately. "Those memories... are false." She coughed. "I know not... what truly happened. But I have held the favor of Lolth... and lost it... and with my mind now clear... the Absolute's regard... but a pale imitation..."

"They placed a mind flayer parasite in your brain." Shadowheart said to her. "As they did to all of us. Some sort of delayed ceremorphosis, to create sleeper agents. That is what they did to your mind. That is the truth of the Absolute."

"Thank you... child of shadow..." Minthara smiled at her. "That mystery... would have haunted me."

"How did you-?" Shadowheart asked, shocked.

"I was the Spider Queen's paladin..." Minthara replied knowingly. "I too... can sense the divine. And I have known... your kind before-" she broke off, hacking weakly.

"You don't have long." I said to her. "Start with the most important."

"The Absolute... cannot hear us... unless a True Soul calls out to it... in prayer" Minthara said. "It will not know... what you have done here. Unless someone else... brings it word." She lay back, limp from the effort. "The path to Moonrise... leads through the shadow-cursed lands. We used the moon lanterns... for safe passage. The drider... caravan..." Her eyes closed, briefly, then opened again. "There is little else... that I know for certain. The past months... are all blurred now. As if a dream..."

"Thank you." I told her sincerely.

Minthara reached up to weakly clasp my hand. "Lolth... the Absolute..." she said, her eyes now frightened. "One true goddess... and one false... but both discarded me... when I was no longer of use. They have no true followers... only victims... like me." She sighed. "And now, I will die... and no one will remember me."

"We will remember you, Minthara of House Baenre." I promised her, and the rest of us all nodded in affirmation.

"Thank you." she breathed almost inaudibly, before her hand clenched on mine with a horrible spasm. "I could still linger... for a time..." she breathed heavily. "But I... do not wish to. Your mercy... if you would."

I slowly drew my dagger and held it up in front of her eyes, and she nodded. I drew back for the final stroke-

Her eyes never looked away from mine. "Avenge us!" she barked wetly, her final command, and I drove the dagger home.

I sighed. "She was an evil, murdering fanatic... even before she was tadpoled, if what I read about Lolth is correct-"

Shadowheart and Gale both nodded.

"But why do I feel...?" I trailed off, not certain of what I felt.

"Because we were meant to share her fate, and yet we were spared it." Lae'zel said musingly. "And doubt plagues our hearts, as to whether or not we were saved by merit or by mere caprice."

"Shit, my heart's made out of infernal iron and even I teared up a bit." Karlach agreed. "We're... we're not just going to leave her here, are we?"

"No." I resolved. "If the druids won't agree to have her buried in the grove, we'll use the graveyard right here in Moonhaven. Either way, at least she'll have a memorial."

We rigged a litter for Minthara's body and began bearing it up the path. Despite the mournful moment we'd just had, the revelation that the Absolute was merely some type of mind flayer plot and not an actual new god was a comforting one-

-and then if felt as if one of those smokepowder barrels had detonated right between my ears, and I fell to my knees and clutched my head in agony. Around me I could simply see every other member of the party doing the same-

Hear My voice. Obey My command. an imperious female voice rang in our ears without sound. I recognized the same sense of eldritch Authority that I'd projected on others via my tadpole... only infinitely stronger, and now being used to crush me-

The world faded away, leaving me stuck in a dark, featureless void. There was nothing that could be seen, or felt, or heard, or sensed. Just an infinity of blackness, and The Voice.

A dim light made me look up from where I was helplessly prostrate, and I saw the images of three people looming over me. A white-haired elven man in full plate armor, with the broad shoulders and thick-muscled arms of a much younger warrior... a young woman, impossibly pale of skin and eyes, with a disturbing smile and lips the color of blood... and a handsome young nobleman, dressed in foppish finery...

THEY ARE MY CHOSEN. THEY SPEAK FOR ME. the Voice - the voice of the Absolute, I realized with horror - irresistibly demanded, and I felt my soul start to tear apart with the effort of disobeying-

AID THEIR SEARCH FOR THE PRISM, AND YOU WILL BE WORTHY TO STAND ALONGSIDE THEM. IN MY PRESENCE. the Absolute commanded... and I must not... I must not... I... must...

And then a high keening sound, that was not a sound, cut across the blackness and the Voice like a knife. The horrible grasping clutch upon our minds fell away, as if it was never there, and an awareness of the world around us returned to us. We were kneeling on the path, by the stream... next to Minthara's body...

.... and the artifact that Shadowheart had so carefully hidden away, the one that the church of Shar had stolen from the githyanki, was floating several feet off the ground in front of us. The once-silver runes on the polygon were now flaring a briliant fiery orange, with a similarly-colored aura of power surrounding the whole sphere, and we knew - we could sense - that the mysterious force the artifact... no, the Prism... was radiating was what was holding back the power of the Absolute, silencing the voice that Minthara had told us was 'drowning out everything' and 'blinding' her.

The voice that had come within seconds of enslaving us as well, until we'd been saved.

Shadowheart's eyes met mine embarassedly, and as unworthy as it was we couldn't help but share the same thought; at least we didn't have to figure out a way to keep the artifact a secret from the others any longer.

---

Rath, Zevlor, and the party found Halsin waiting for us at a vantage point above the fortress. We'd buried Minthara in the old Moonhaven graveyard before setting out for the ruined temple on foot - we hadn't wanted to use the travelstone because we'd have had no idea what we might be dropping into.

"Halsin!" Rath cried desperately, as he saw the burly form of the First Druid waiting for us at a vantage point above the fortress. "By the Oakfather, it is wonderful to see you alive!"

"And you as well, old friend." he said as they exchanged hugs. "Is the Grove safe?"

"Our new friend's plan worked like a charm." Rath reassured him. "The attack force was crushed. We didn't even have any dead, merely wounded."

"Then you have my eternal thanks." Halsin said, coming over to shake my hand. "The Grove owes you a debt almost beyond measure."

"Priestess Gut?" I asked him.

"Gone to explain her failings to her goddess in person." Halsin reassured me grimly. "I then left her corpse to be discovered and did a couple of other things to sow terror amongst the goblins. They were already halfway to panicking when one of the stragglers from your battle made it back here screaming about how utterly they'd been defeated. All of them packed up and ran for their lives after that."

"Just as we'd hoped." Zevlor agreed. "We confirmed Dror Ragzlin and Minthara both dead as well."

"Then you can search the goblin fortress for clues at your leisure." Halsin said. "But for tonight, I must insist you come back with me to the Grove. We have much to celebrate." His expression turned grim. "But first things first; you came to the Grove for help with your parasites. Let me examine you."

I acquiesced, and after a long searching minute where Halsin probed me with his magic he stepped back with a regretful expression on his face. "As I feared. Nettie was correct; powerful magic was used to alter your tadpoles. Ancient magic of a type I've never seen before. And I-" he coughed. "Am still not at my full strength. To keep me prisoner they weakened me, with exotic venoms and precise tortures. Healing magic has stabilized me, but I dare not exert my full strength until I have had some time to recover."

"Then the Grove is still in danger. Much has come to light since you left-" Rath said worriedly, and then briefly explained all that had gone on with Kagha.

Halsin sighed. "Shadow Druids. And if she were corresponding with the Cloakwood directly, then this must have been going on for much longer than any of us suspected. Certainly well before I ever joined Aradin's expedition to the old temple of Selune. I wonder how she was originally planning to get rid of me, before she rushed her plan towards completion because she thought the Cult of the Absolute had done it for her?"

"Probably why she'd smuggled Olodan and her friends into the Grove." I nodded. "As an assassination team for you, and enforcers to help kill or expel any of the rest who wouldn't go along."

"Almost certainly." Halsin sighed. "But the fact that I missed this... even were I not wounded and weakened, this alone means I could not stay First Druid of the Emerald Grove." He looked at Rath. "When I return, I will send a message to the High Forest, informing them of my decision and requesting them to dispatch a druid with sufficient seniority to replace me at the Grove. Francesca, I think." he said thoughtfully. "I've long admired her wisdom, and her lack of ties with anyone local will allow her to restore the Oakfather's true teachings to the Grove with true impartiality."

"If- if that is your decision, then of course." Rath agreed. "But you talk as if you are leaving us? Sure you can remain at the Grove to recuperate, even if you have temporarily stepped down from leadership?"

"I hope to go with them." he surprised us. "Their paths lead to Moonrise Towers, and so does mine. I had originally joined Aradin's expedition because I had hoped to find the passage to the Underdark that was rumored to exist in those ruins, and through them hopefully reach Moonrise now that the overland route is closed by the Shadow Curse."

"What is this Shadow Curse?" I questioned. "Everyone keeps talking about it, but no one will explain it."

"An old, sad story." Halsin said wearily. "Over a century ago, Moonrise Towers was a thriving community - a local bastion of civilization, as well as a religious center devoted to the worship of Selune, the moon goddess. Until a man named Ketheric Thorm turned traitor to his family and his goddess, and betrayed them to the Church of Shar."

I very carefully did not look in someone's direction. "Goddess of shadow. Shadow Curse. Now I begin to understand." I interjected, making sure to keep Halsin's attention on me.

"Precisely." he nodded sadly. "Thorm raised a force of Shar's militant knights, the Dark Justiciars, and with them scourged the surrounding land." He nodded back down the road. "Moonhaven itself was destroyed by one of their raids; this was before the Emerald Grove was established."

"You were there at its founding." Rath surprised me. Halsin didn't look that old-

Halsin noted my expression and tapped one of his pointed ears amusedly. "Even with only one elven parent, the lifespan is still extended quite a bit; even more so when one enjoys the blessings of Silvanus. But yes, the Grove was founded in response to the gathering threat to nature here posed by the shadow worshippers. Not that we were able to withstand them alone, of course. The Harpers contributed significantly as well - this was back when they were much more prevalent in the area then they are now. At any rate, the alliance of harp and wild managed to defeat Thorm and kill him. But his last spiteful act before dying was to call down the curse of his goddess on the land, twisting and despoiling Moonrise Towers and the adjacent town into an area where nothing could live for long."

"And yet the Absolute seems to have its headquarters there. Minthara told us before she died that they used artifacts called 'moon lanterns' to pass safely through the shadow curse, but that doesn't explain how they can live among it."

"You managed to question her?" Halsin inquired.

"Yes, but we didn't get much before she died." Shadowheart said softly. "She did confirm that she was 'initiated' into the cult there, though."

"As has every other bearer of the tadpole we've questioned, save for you." Halsin agreed. "At any rate, that was the birth of the Shadow Curse. Since then it has waxed and waned, sometimes expanding out over the entire district, sometimes confined solely to Moonrise Towers and immediate environs. Occasionally it draws near enough to the Risen Road for undead to harass the traffic to Baldur's Gate." He sighed mournfully. "I've sought for decades to find a way into Moonrise Towers and hopefully break the curse, but my responsibilities have precluded it... and I never found a way to safely travel there. And this is why I would very much like to accompany you - you have an even more compelling need than I to go there, and at least some clues as to how you can find the way."

"Somebody certainly has to stop the Absolute, and our tadpole infiltration trick made us very useful for doing that here, but why do you say we have to go to Moonrise?" I tried to draw him out.

"Because until a way is found to understand and neutralize the magic that has been used to alter your tadpoles, no one can remove them from your heads without killing you." Halsin said. "I couldn't have hoped to pull that off even at my fullest powers, let alone as I am now. And even if I took you to the High Forest and the Archdruids, I don't think you'd have much more luck there. In addition to the part where no one knows how much time you have before the remission of your ceremorphosis ends. Which means either you penetrate Moonrise Towers soon, or no one does. I can't take anyone else from the Grove with me, I can't do it alone... and I don't think anyone else is coming."

"I was afraid you'd say that." I agreed ruefully. Because yes, I'd already done much of that math myself.

"We can plan the exact details of our journey to Moonrise later. For now, I want to search the ruins for any further clues - as well as locate that Underdark passage, if possible. We'll very likely need that later." Halsin said.

"I'm curious; you came here looking for that Underdark passage, but why were Aradin's adventurers here?" Gale asked.

"To find the same thing, if for an entirely different reason." Halsin explained as we walked. "They were hired by a wizard in Baldur's Gate to find an artifact called 'the Nightsong', which had according to lore been buried in the Underdark nearby. I had no interest in their quest, but since they had a map that purported to show the location of the entrance, I offered my assistance." He looked up at the ruined temple as we drew nearer. "But that didn't go as planned."

"No, it didn't. Not for you, and not for them." I said, wincing as I thought again of that brave boy Liam's fate. My guilt was only made worse by how Minthara - as evil as she was - had begged for death as the only method of escaping the voice of the Absolute, only for us to discover exactly how to block out the Absolute's voice barely after her body had hit the ground. I was just getting so damned tired of always being too late to save people. But it's not as if you could bring back the-

"You go on ahead." I said to the druids. "I want to go see to Liam's body."

"Of course." Halsin agreed, and we split up.

"You look very determined for a man who's simply heading off on a burial detail." Shadowheart looked at me inquiringly. "And walking very briskly as well."

"There comes a point at which a man just gets too damn frustrated with things to keep being sensible." I said. "So either I'm about to pull off a miracle, or you're all about to have a very great laugh."

Lae'zel looked at me narrowly. "If your absurd sentimentality somehow raises the dead, I swear to Vlaakith I will scream!"

I grinned crookedly back at her. "It's like you know me." We reached the body of Liam where it still hung in the torture rack we'd originally found him on, and he was starting to get more than a little ripe by now. "Withers! You said you'd be around, so I'd like a word."

"I said that I would resurrect those of thy party, and naught more." Withers replied, turning up out of a nearby dark corner as if he'd always been there. "This lad has never met thee in life, let alone accompanied thy party."

"And yet I would very much like if you did it anyway." I asked him. "Please."

"No." Withers said flatly.

"Have you fully thought this through?" I said to him probingly. "You have a purpose - a divine purpose - in offering your services to our party. But it's no good to offer them if we don't accept them."

"Thy emotional blackmail is transparent, and also futile." Withers said.

"Not emotional blackmail. Logical blackmail." I said flatly. "Because I'm from a world where raising the dead is impossible, and I'm never going to pay good coin to someone who claims he can do something so entirely out of my experience before they've actually proven to me that they can."

Withers stared at me, and while his expression didn't flicker a bit he certainly didn't look happy at the turn the conversation had just taken.

"And of course, if I'm never going to ask you for help, then you might as well not be here. And you need to be here." I finished.

"Thou are not alone in thy party." Withers said, looking at the others.

"Oh if you think any of us are going to ruin this, then you're out of your undead mind!" Wyll laughed. "No way we're spoiling the joke!"

Withers stared back at us, before impatiently turning towards the rack. "Understand that this tactic will only work once." he said flatly, and then materialized a large iron-bound book in his hands. "By doom and dusk, I strike thy name from the archives! Rise!" he intoned hieratically, and with a flare of magic the corpse of Liam vanished...

... to reappear standing in front of us, alive and healthy and fully armed and armored. Even the fingers the goblin torturers had cut off of him were all restored.

"Ahhh!" he screamed, as Withers discreetly vanished again before Liam was cognizant enough to spot him. "No more! Gods, no more-" The boy shook off his shock. "What- rescuers?" he focused on us. "Aradin? The others? Are they all right?"

"UNBELIEVABLE!" Lae'zel howled, before lapsing back into sullen resignation.

"Aradin made it back to the Grove with two of the others - a young woman and a white-haired man. I didn't get their names, sorry." I refocused Liam's attention on me.

"Remira and Barth." Liam replied. "Brian was a dwarf, not a human - you couldn't have missed him."

"We saw the body of a dwarf in the courtyard." Lae'zel said softly. "You likely do not want to know all that the goblins did to him."

"Damn." Liam swore. "But look, you had the magic to resurrect me-"

"We had one use of that magic." I said. "And I'm sorry, but we didn't know about your friend."

"Then- why me?" he asked, eyes wide with shock and puzzlement. "Why would you use something that precious on me? I'm- I'm nobody!"

"You withstood torture for longer than many hardened warriors I've seen- that I've known of- without giving up the Grove. All to save many innocent people you didn't even know, or who didn't like you." Shadowheart said. "Hawke very much admired you for that."

"And- and I could have saved your life before you died, if only I'd tried to infiltrate the temple earlier instead of putting it off while I finished something else first." I continued.

"I don't feel like a hero." Liam said, focusing on the first part of my remark. "I don't feel anything like one."

"I never have either." I told him wisely. "Even when everybody was calling me one."

"And even when they were right to do so." Gale supported me.

Fortunately, being dead and alive again was somehow good for shock treatment because while Liam still had some very unpleasant memories from his days of torture to deal with, he wasn't the psychological wreck that I would have expected. Also, whatever the hell Withers used to resurrect people, it left them with no memories of the time they'd been dead, so at least that particular mystery of reality - what truly lay beyond the gates of mortality - wasn't being shattered for us either.

"What in Silvanus' name?" Halsin asked, looking at the now-alive Liam incredulously. "How- what happened?" he goggled at us.

"You're the druid!" Liam greeted him. "They had you prisoner too! I'm glad you survived, sir."

"And I am so very glad to see you alive again, lad." Halsin agreed enthusiastically.

"Well, I'm glad someone is." Liam said ruefully. "My party's gone off and left me- not that I blame them, they thought I was dead- and now that I've been through all this, I don't feel like this is what I should do anymore. Tomb raidin' and all, that is."

"With the courage and the compassion that you've shown, certainly not." Halsin agreed. "Come back with us to the Grove. I can think of several friends and allies that I could recommend you to, depending on what sort of opportunity would interest you."

"Won't turn that down, sir." Liam said. "So, what are we doing now?"

"For right now, trying to find that secret entrance Aradin was looking for so we can use it later." I explained to him. "And then, heading back to the Grove for a victory celebration."

"And I'll drink to that!" Karlach broke in boisterously.

---

Author's Note: Minthara doesn't get to be a party member, but I felt I had to pay tribute to how well-written a party member she was for the Tavs who went that route by at the very least giving her a good death scene. And so, she dies with her mind clear of the tadpole just long enough to say goodbye. Her "And nobody would remember me" dialogue cutscene from BG3 was a particular inspiration, even if I took her dying words from Trilla in Jedi: Fallen Order.

Even if I did take her out with a single Shove maneuver, by far one of the most powerful attacks in BG3. *g*

And yes, Hawke blew his one free resurrection on a minor NPC. Hawke really had way too much of that 'getting there just too late to save someone' BS in Kirkwall and while he can't always get past that in the Realms, he's still going to go out of his way to give Fate a poke in the eye just once if he can. Besides, it's fun to make Withers pout. No, Liam isn't joining the party either. Kid's like level one, he can't keep up. But he'll get something nice.

Amusingly, you actually can pretend to betray the Grove in the game and then use that to sucker the goblins into a big ambush, even if engine limitations mean you have to do the betrayal five battle at the gate of the Grove instead of hitting them on the march. And they actually did have ogres carrying smokepowder barrels for use as siege artillery, and it's fun to make them pop. Or just to seed the ambush ground in advance with thirty exploding barrels you painstakingly carted in and the NPCs entirely ignore because game logic. I'm not going to be that absurd with barrelmancy due to using story logic and not game logic, but it's not BG3 if you don't do some.

And you actually can make a lightning spell kill harder by laying down a Create Water pool first; putting the Wet condition on a mob makes it Vulnerable to electricity.

In-game, Halsin is not weakened from his goblin captivity. I'm throwing that in to explain why the hell he's not leaving the camp ever while riding along, which is something BG3 didn't bother to explain between the too-long a gap of time from when Halsin joins the party camp to when he actually becomes a selectable party member. Even if he's still not being a permanent party member, I hate plot holes.

But hey, just because we're finished with saving the Grove and defeating the goblins doesn't mean we leave Act One just yet. Even with the sidequests I'm ignoring, we've still got things to take care of.

 

[cliffc999]

The Grove was filled with the sound of drunken revelry.

Even with the melancholy produced by the revelation of Kagha's treason and Halsin's stepping down as First Druid, the druids were still gleefully celebrating his safe return and the salvation of the Grove. The tieflings were celebrating the road to Baldur's Gate now being clear and being able to move on from this temporary sanctuary to hopefully earn a new permanent home in the big city. Liam was celebrating not being dead, as well as the recommendation Halsin had just written him as a candidate for the 'Order of the Gauntlet', an order of temple knights - 'paladins' as they seemed to be called here - whose nearest chapterhouse was in Elturel. My party members were celebrating success in our self-appointed mission to take down this cell of the Cult of the Absolute.

And what was I celebrating? Very little, actually.

Of course, I didn't let any of this show on my face. I'd come up with the overall plan and made the pieces fit together, I personally led the key part of the effort, and so despite everyone else being venerated as well I was clearly the hero of the hour. And part of that job was allowing the people you'd saved to show you their gratitude, because the doing of that was a basic human need. So I kept the brave smile on my face and circulated amongst the bonfires and revels and said all the right things and drank to all the toasts, keeping my feelings to myself behind the mask of the brave steadfast commander.

"I know how you feel." Zevlor said to me quietly, as we shared a quiet drink away from the fire. "I was a captain in the Hellriders of Elturel. We weren't just a city guard but also an expeditionary force, driving away monsters and keeping things safe throughout the entire nearby region. We were so diligent that there was hardly a single point on the trade roads or the banks of the Chionthar that wouldn't see one of our patrols at least twice a day." He sighed. "Until the Descent came."

"I've barely heard anything about that, except that the city somehow descended into Hell?" I asked him. "How was something like that even possible?"

"With decades of treasonous preparation." Zevlor said grimly. "Almost fifty years ago the High Rider of the city was discovered to have secretly been a master vampire, with his vampire spawn carefully seeded through the city along with necromancers, collaborators, summoned undead-" He shook his head disgustedly. "That was years before I was born, of course, but my father told me of those dark days. At any rate, the undead infiltration had been exposed too late; by the time the people knew of the danger and started fighting back, they'd already had sufficient forces, been in position for long enough, to have the upper hand. Whatever victories the Hellriders and the people could win by day would be swiftly reversed at night, when they came out."

I resolved to ask Shadowheart later what exactly 'vampires' were in Faerun, because what we'd called vampires in Thedas were merely animalistic walking corpses possessed by Hunger demons and what he was describing sounded quite different.

"And then the miracle came. The Companion. A second sun, a miniature one, shining over the city both day and night. With this miracle on our side, the vampires rapidly lost. And a priest of Torm, Thavius Kreeg, took credit for having successfully beseeched the gods for this miracle and of course was rapidly elevated to the position of high priest and ruler of the city." He looked gravely at me. "And until the Descent occurred, none knew how deeply he had lied."

"This 'Companion' was a fake miracle?" I said, shocked at the idea of such power coming from anything but a god.

"Oh, it was a display of divine - or at least demi-divine - power, in truth." Zevlor explained. "But it hadn't come from Torm, or Lathander, or any of the gods of light. No, it had been a sending of Zariel, Archdevil of Avernus... whose spheres of power include hellfire, and thus, corrupted light. Allowing her to fake the manifestation."

"And the price for this miracle was the entire city in fifty years' time?" I guessed. "But how could this Kreeg pact for the souls of other people, and not just his own?"

"Very cleverly." Zevlor growled. "Because Kreeg had come up with a very clever plan indeed, and Zariel had approved of it enough to risk paying in advance. Over the decades of his rule, Thavius Kreeg as high priest had of course led all of the religious ceremonies of the city, as well as receiving all secular pledges of loyalty as its feudal overlord. And in every single one of them he exhorted people to always praise and honor the patron of Elturel, the one who had sent the Companion, and to be grateful for their gift."

I facepalmed. "Which by devil logic meant that each person in Elturel who ever made that pledge was signing onto Zariel's pact, even though she was never named?" I guessed.

"Your warlock friend would confirm that a fiendish pact is very much a 'buyer beware' situation, yes." Zevlor agreed. "Of course, it's much easier to swear to such things when you believe you are simply making a harmless prayer to the gods of light, as exhorted by a high priest of one. But there's no law compelling fiends to reveal their true name to you if you greet them by a false one."

"And so when the fifty years of the advance period were up, Zariel was able to to take the entire city." I reasoned. "But then how did you ever escape?"

"Because by the wording of the pledges, Zariel would only rightfully own the souls of those in Elturel who had pledged if the Companion shone down on the city for as long as they lived. Which was something that she'd intended to take care of soon enough, because the city had been deposited on the frontlines of the Blood War and we were rapidly hit from both sides, by devils and demons alike-" He shuddered. "And, of course, every living soul who fell during those days ended up enslaved for eternity, more fodder for Zariel's army." He looked up. "We wouldn't have lasted long at that rate - sometimes I still don't know how we lived through it. It wasn't even the Hellriders that saved the city, but a nobleman from Baldur's Gate who'd happened to be visiting when the crisis occurred. He rallied all the survivors, took command of the city once Kreeg and his cronies had been revealed as fiend-worshippers, led the defense of the High Hall... and raised and coordinated the heroes who led the mission to find and destroy the Companion, and by doing so free the city from the pact."

He spat bitterly. "And then after the day was saved, Elturel exiled us! Every tiefling in the city! Because it was easier to blame us for Kreeg's treachery, for the Companion that multiple generations of Elturans had been brought up to believe was their own special miracle of the gods turning out to be a lie, than to blame themselves! Because if it was all a tiefling plot - never mind that Kreeg was human - then the flaw wasn't with the religious orders that ruled Elturel, with the church failing to detect a traitor in their midst, with an apostate sworn to a devil instead of their own god going unnoticed by them for fifty damned years-" Zevlor's rage passed, and he slumped in despair. "They scapegoated all of us simply for the blood we bore, and ignored all the blood we shed fighting alongside the people we'd called fellow citizens for generations, helping save them from the devils. And now here I am, guardian and guide for a small band of desperate tradesmen and farmers, dispossessed of everything they'd worked for their entire lives, and all looking to me to get them safely to a new city where we hope we'll be allowed to start again... and I already needed your help just to get them past the first real obstacle." He looked soberly at me. "Not that I'm ungrateful, mind. Just... disappointed in myself."

"I know what that feels like." I commiserated with him. "I was the once the Champion of my home city, Kirkwall - so named because I'd saved it from a foreign invasion when our ruler had already fallen and our army had already been mostly defeated. And then barely a few years later I lost it all in a civil war started by the madness and treason of a man who'd been one of my best friends - someone who I'd repeatedly trusted with my life, and who I couldn't do a damn thing to stop in time-" I swallowed heavily. "My home city tore itself apart in madness, all rooted in ages-old hatreds and repressions I hadn't been able to even start to change for all my titles and ceremonies... and so I exiled myself after that." I sighed. "At the time I would have told you that I'd done it because I was leading any possible consequences of the war to come pursue me, and not take it out on innocent Kirkwallers. But right now I couldn't tell you if that was the truth... or if I was just running away." I looked soberly at Zevlor. "So take comfort in this much at least - at least you know that the people accusing you of having helped to doom your old home are lying. Because I don't know that, and I never will."

"Damn." Zevlor said, handing me the bottle. "Sounds like you need this more than me."

I poured a little into my cup and handed it back. "You already know it doesn't help past the first couple of drinks, I'm sure."

"Oh, I know." Zevlor agreed, and we both sat and sipped. "And yet as soon as you ended up here, you fell right back into saving people. I truly admire that kind of dedication."

"Old habits die hard." I said ruefully, my voice trailing off. "And when you've got people who need you then it doesn't matter how you feel, you can't ask them to stop and wait. The call to arms comes on its schedule, not yours."

"You would have made a good Hellrider." Zevlor toasted me.

"And to tell the less pleasant part of the truth..." I admitted. "For as long as I could hit the ground running, I didn't have to stop and think."

"And now you have, and you wish you weren't." Zevlor said knowingly. "Unfortunately, now duty calls both of us." he groaned as we both slowly arose. "I've got people to look in on, and I think so do you. But if we don't have a chance to talk privately again before our caravan sets out, then let me just say - thank you." He shook my hand. "Oh, and my people insisted on taking up a collection for you. I'll make sure you get it in the morning."

After we separated I'd barely made it to the next campfire before I was suddenly seized and hauled into the air as if I weighed nothing. My initial shocked reaction and reflexive struggle drew to a halt when I realized just who exactly had swooped me up in a bear hug-

"There you are!" Karlach squealed joyously, as she squeezed the breath from my lugs. "I'm glad I finally found you, because you entirely deserved the first one!"

"First what?" I asked. "And how is your skin cool?" I wondered, because I should have had burns raised on me by this time.

"First hug!" she laughed. "And it's because would you believe it, turns out these tieflings were also all in Avernus recently and their blacksmith, Dammon, he'd had a chance to learn a bit about infernal mechanics, like the one my heart runs on, and turns out that loot we scored from the old temple and the goblins' hoard included a piece of infernal iron, so he was able to fix me right up and now I'm not going to fry the skin off anybody with a handshake!" She squeezed me again. "Do you know what it's like to go that many years without a simple hug? Oh, I'm gonna squeeze the life out of everybody tonight!"

"Might want to ask first." I breathed heavily as she finally released me. "A person appreciates a bit of warning."

"Fair enough!" she giggled. "Say, d'you want to dance?"

"Two left feet, sorry." I demurred. "But I saw the tieflings' bard leading a dance circle over there."

"Then I'm off!" she said, giving me another quick hug. "But honestly, boss, if I hadn't met you then I wouldn't have met these people and we wouldn't have busted the goblin lair and none of this would have happened, so I've got to thank you for all of it! I just wish Dammon had been able to do more than a partial patch job because I'll still run a little hot if I get too excited for too long, so my original plan for thanking you is still by the wayside."

"You don't mean-?" I said, surprised.

"To ride you till we both see the moon and stars." Karlach leered at me cheerfully. "Well... if you're into that sort of thing." she trailed off bashfully. "Academic point now, anyway, I still can't. But... if we actually did find any more infernal iron, and Dammon puzzles out a couple more things...?"

"Then I hope you find someone you can be very happy with." I tried to let her down as apologetically as possible. "No offense, just... to be honest? I've never dated anyone taller than me."

"Neither have I!" Karlach giggled helplessly. "Although bit of a different reason why in my case!" She looked at me knowingly and continued in a softer tone of voice. "Relax, my feelings aren't hurt. A girl has to ask, even when she knows the answer is probably 'no'. But it's not me you've been looking for tonight, is it?"

"Um-" I said, caught entirely at a loss for words.

"Mum's the word, say no more." Karlach nodded. "Anyway, thanks for the new lease on life, boss, and I'll see you in the morning!" And then she was bustling off, heading over to where the impromptu dance party was heating up before I could even begin to figure out a reply.

"I had thought to save you from such deadly peril, but I see that I arrived too late." I heard Wyll say amusedly as he walked up to me.

"Enjoying the party?" I tried to make small talk.

"It's... been an experience." he replied, in a tone of voice that would have fooled anyone who hadn't been at court.

"Want to talk about it?" I asked him as I led us off towards a quiet, out-of-the-way nook near the supply room. "Because you've been through a lot recently."

"And you haven't?" Wyll said with friendly sarcasm, before sobering. "But... yes." He reached up and felt one of his horns. "I was enjoying myself at the party right up until the moment I realized that most of Zevlor's people were accepting me because they thought I was a tiefling like them. Which I am now, of course - but I meant, that they thought I'd always been like them. And these were people who I'd already been working with for the past couple of days, ever since I arrived at the Grove. They didn't even recognize me as the 'Wyll' they'd been introduced to then."

"They might not have met you then." I reasoned. "You hardly shook hands with the entire encampment specifically. Plus, it's dim light tonight, and few people are sober."

"All logical and true." Wyll agreed. "And yet... Mizora's punishment was intended to make me unrecognizable as the Blade of Frontiers. An overly-dramatic sounding title, I'll grant... but still, one that I'd fairly earned, through years of heroics and sacrifice for the people of the Sword Coast. All gone now, like sparks escaping from a campfire."

"When you talk about all the songs and tales they tell about the 'Blade of Frontiers' then you're talking about glory." I said to him. "And glory is always temporary, no matter what you do or don't do. But what you're really afraid that you've lost is merit, not glory, and that's entirely different. No one can take that away from you, no matter what lies they tell about you - or force you to tell about yourself. The only person who can truly make you unworthy is you."

"Wise words." Wyll agreed. "Much like my father tried to teach me many a time. And he was right, of course, and so are you." He looked downcast. "So why don't I believe them?"

"Your head believes me just fine." I said. "It's your heart that needs time to catch up." I snorted ruefully.

"And exactly how long does that take?" Wyll asked me knowingly.

"I'll let you know if mine ever does." I acknowledged. "But while you can't make it arrive sooner, you can definitely help it arrive later."

"True that." Wyll agreed.

"I owe you an apology, you know." I contributed to the growing silence.

"For what?" he asked me surprisedly.

"When I first heard that you'd pacted yourself with a devil for power I was this close to pitching you out of the group on your ear." I admitted. "If not running you through. On my homeworld, bonding with a demon for power, actually letting them put a piece of themselves in you, is an existentially unforgivable crime. It's called becoming an abomination, and it's a summary execution offense even in lands ruled by blood mages and demon-summoners, let alone any righteous kingdom." I looked at him. "The only thing that held me back was that I couldn't be certain it worked the same way here as it did on Thedas, but even then I was ready to declare you guilty until proven innocent."

"From what I've heard you and the others say of your homeland, I can't even say your reaction was unfair." Wyll nodded agreeably. "I'm honestly as surprised that you're as comfortable with Shadowheart's and Gale's magics as you are."

"My own father was a mage, as was my younger sister, and both of them entirely outside Chantry sanction or supervision. So while the common attitude on Thedas is that all magic is untrustworthy, I've never believed that." I nodded. "But blood magic? Demon magic? Abominations? Maker save me, I saw more of that go wrong in Kirkwall than most Templars have." Off of Wyll's expression I continued. "The militant order of knights sworn to the Chantry, whose primary duty was the supervision of Circle mages and dealing with blood magic and apostate mages." My voice fell. "Including one of my best friends, who for years I'd believed was proof that the Chantry had lied when they said all abominations were doomed to madness... until he demonstrated otherwise." I looked at Wyll. "Someday I'll tell you the entire tale of Anders the apostate, but the short version is, he was once a man who'd gladly have worked himself half to death healing the wounds of beggars and refugees without asking for so much as a copper coin in return... and by the end he was a remorseless butcher of innocents, and the instigator of one of the worst wars Thedas had seen in generations."

"That's what I've been afraid of." Wyll said somberly. "Ever since I saw how close I came to slaying an innocent, with Karlach. I'd thought I'd been so clever - that for all the compromises I'd made for power, I'd still negotiated well enough, been careful enough, that my blade would never be turned against the innocent... and if it hadn't been for you, Mizora would have gotten me to do it with just a few honeyed words." Wyll snorted. "And once I'd started... would I even have known the exact moment I went too far down that path to turn back? The moment I stopped being a man and became a monster? Would I have ended up like your friend Anders?" He sighed, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Could I yet still?"

"Wyll." I looked at him as if he were an idiot. "You looked a devil straight in the eye and dared her to take your immortal soul down to Hell on the spot for an eternity of torture rather than risk the slightest moral compromise. The moment you're so afraid of as the moment you almost fell? That's the very same moment that's making me apologize to you, for so badly misjudging you. You are a good man. Never doubt that."

"I'm... I'm honored." Wyll said thickly, moved almost to tears. "Thank you, Hawke."

"Now if you want me to tell you that you're a wise man, Zariel will be living in an ice palace first." I continued with rough humor. "Because for all that your honor isn't likely to be compromised any time soon, your soul on the other hand-" I looked at him commiseratingly. "You heard what Gale said, what Raphael indirectly acnowledged. Even if you live the longest, most heroic mortal life possible-"

"-nothing but an eternity of hellfire when it finally ends." Wyll agreed somberly. "Still... what else can I do, knowing that, except spend my life saving as many other lives as possible?"

"How's about not spending it at all?" I said exasperatedly. "Is there any way out of a devil pact? Even in folklore or myth, if you've never heard of a confirmed case? The Elturans managed it, with the Descent!"

"None." Wyll said. "And Elturel was an entirely different situation than mine. I already told you about the penalty clause if I kill Mizora or someone acting on my behalf does. That's hardly the only penalty clause in there - anything I could possibly to do to escape the contract, or at least anything I've ever thought of, has at least one clause immediately forfeiting my soul if I try. The only way out of this pact for me is if Mizora voluntarily releases me from it, unconditionally." He looked at me, his face calm with the calm that only comes when there is no more struggle possible. "You've met her; you already know why I'm not torturing myself with that hope."

"Damn." I swore helplessly. "Why did you even make that deal anyway? It can't have been for any selfish power or pleasure, not you."

"I'm not allowed to say." Wyll said. "Sometimes I think that her denying me any opportunity to explain myself is Mizora's greatest punishment." Wyll looked up from his wine cup to nod at me entreatingly. "Hawke, don't let me ruin your night. I've only known you a short time, but it's already becoming plain as the nose on my face that you are the sort of man who can beat himself up endlessly about the ones he's not allowed to save. So allow me, at least in my own case, to release you from that burden. You've given me a lot to think about besides my usual ruminations, I'll just sit here a while and get started on that. But as for you? Go and celebrate!"

I shrugged. "Celebrate how? I've already made the rounds."

"Perhaps you could take a moonlight walk." Wyll said knowingly. "On the beach?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." I said immediately.

"Of course you don't. Silly me, what was I thinking?" Wyll chuckled. "Have a nice night, Hawke."

"You too." I nodded at him, and moved on. I did the rounds of tiefling encampment and druid grove both, doing everything from accepting a grateful hug and a dance from Nettie to giving a very sanitized version of my origin story to Alfira the tiefling bard so she could start getting to work on writing 'a proper ballad for my heroics'. I couldn't pay a coin for a drink anywhere I went, and I started heavily watering my wine just to stay sober.

"Hawke." Lae'zel found me as I was taking a walk to clear my head on the battlement above the main gate.

"How are you enjoying your first Faerunian party?" I asked her.

"Much tamer than a post-battle feast would have been back in Creche K'liir." she said. "Very few of these tieflings or druids are warriors by trade. They celebrate their deliverance from battle, not their triumph in it."

"War is a way of life only to a small percentage of humans." I agreed. "To most of us, it's just a necessity to perform to earn a peace afterwards."

"There is no peace in this universe, merely temporary respite from threat." Lae'zel scoffed. "Tchk. Soft."

"And yet it just starts to grow on you." I said amusedly.

"Ridiculous!" she scoffed. "I am here by necessity, and because I pledged my word of honor to a common objective; naught more."

"Of course." I agreed, before realizing. "And while I had intended to bring this up tomorrow, now that you mention it-"

"The artifact." Lae'zel said intelligently. "The one you and Shadowheart were keeping secret from us. The one that is clearly of githyanki origin - I can read the runes on it, even if you cannot. The ownership claim is clear."

"I'm assuming you are honor-bound to return it to your people." I said. "Which presents us with a problem."

"Of course it does." Lae'zel rolled her eyes. "I could hardly miss that the Absolute would devour our brains the instant the artifact was no longer there to shield us!" She exhaled heavily. "You are seeking reassurance that I do not attempt to challenge her for it, or steal it, and return it to my people."

"I am." I agreed. "Can you give it?"

"No... and yes." she said. "If I take it from the group before we are freed of our parasites, I doom us all... and I am sworn to act as one of the party, to not betray us and to obey the lawful orders of the party's chosen leader, until such time as we are freed. So that alone constrains me from any such act. But I am also forsworn in honor if I do not make my best effort to return the artifact to my people, its rightful owners. And so I offer a... compromise." she forced out the last word as if it tasted foul. "The nearby creche, and the cure my people have for this infection. With a single act I can both return the artifact and remove the necessity for us to clutch it personally to our bosoms."

"So that's your compromise. That we set out to find the nearest githyanki creche as first priority, and return the artifact to your people there when we're cured, before heading to Moonrise Towers or anywhere else." I asked her.

"Correct." Lae'zel nodded. "Should we do otherwise, then I would be forced to choose between two dishonors. You would not welcome such a thing coming to pass." She looked down briefly. "And neither would I."

"If something else immediately life-threatening comes up, I can't guarantee we'll go straight to the creche. But I'll entirely agree that we should try to go there next as our first priority... provided you can think of a way we don't get executed as thieves as soon as we walk in the door."

"Agreed." Lae'zel said, with an expression that on anyone else I would have said was relief. "And a valid concern. I do not act as a loyal party member if I deliver you to death, after all. But while my people are known for their ruthlessness, we are also reasoning beings. Although I know not what the artifact is, the extensive efforts that have been made to reclaim it bespeak its great value. For the return of such a precious object to safety my people would owe a great debt; certainly enough to guarantee the lives of those who were not its thieves in the first place." Lae'zel must have seen something in my expression, for she continued reluctantly. "I would even fail to mention my suspicion that one of our number might possibly be connected to the theft."

"That... might be a problem." I conceded. "Because she's currently holding the artifact, and has sworn by her goddess to bring it to the high priestess who sent her to get it. And I can't promise she'll agree."

"Hrm." Lae'zel pondered. "I will stay my hand until her, you, and I have had a chance to discuss this fairly and openly. Beyond that... we shall see what happens. But at least I know that you are open to a reasonable compromise, if not necessarily Shadowheart. So I will this once try... diplomatic methods."

"Thank you for your forbearance." I nodded to her.

"Rest assured that I do it very reluctantly." Lae'zel agreed darkly. "But I am no fool; your regard for her goes well beyond mere respect, and after the ridiculous lengths I have seen you already go to in the name of "sentimentality", I certainly do not want any such sentiment provoking your blade and mine to clash." And then she actually smiled at me, the first time she ever had. "Your strength is laudable, your skill impressive, even if your taste in romantic partners is deficient." She nodded at me. "Go indulge yourself; I may or may not have had wishes of my own, but I am no child to pine after the already impossible."

Did Lae'zel just hit on me? Or say that she would have liked to hit on me...? I wondered incredulously.

"You did not even suspect? Typical male!" Lae'zel eye-rolled again, but somehow less harshly than she had before. "Go! We have said enough for now!"

I headed off, respecting Lae'zel's obvious wish for privacy, and made a brief check-in with Gale before finally heading off down the path that I'd been uncertain about all night. And sure enough, back down on the sand of the private cove we'd used twice before, she was there.

"You're finally here." Shadowheart said, still staring out over the water as I came up behind her. "I... wasn't certain you'd come."

"Neither was I." I confessed. "Fair warning; Lae'zel recognized the artifact when it saved our lives earlier, and will be speaking to you tomorrow about it. You're sworn to return to it to the temple, she's sworn to return it to her people, and I don't want either of you fighting each other over it." I nodded. "She offered a compromise; to trade her artifact back to the githyanki in return for their curing us of our parasites."

"I-" Shadowheart paused. "I- you know my mission."

"Shadowheart, you can't give it to anyone anyway - not while we need it to protect us. And if the githyanki can get rid of our parasites-'

"I-I understand you're only trying to be what you think is reasonable, but I can't-" Shadowheart said, panicked.

"Then that's what we have to discuss tomorrow." I agreed with her. "I just wanted to give you fair warning of what was going to happen... and what I'm hoping you can agree to."

"I understand." Shadowheart relaxed. "And- thank you for trying." She shook her head angrily. "And that's all the business I want to discuss for tonight."

"Absolutely." I agreed. "This is a beautiful night - we shouldn't waste it."

"No." Shadowheart smiled. "We shouldn't. Of course, it's entirely possible that you've had an eventful night already..." she teased me.

"True confession, I needed some fancy footwork tonight to avoid having an eventful night." I agreed.

"I know." Shadowheart broke out giggling. "I got a glimpse of you earlier tonight barely escaping being ravished by eager tiefling maidens. Most especially that pretty bard... which is odd, because I thought Alfira liked girls."

"Her girlfriend was the one alongside her in the yellow dress, offering to join in." I blushed.

"And you said 'no'?" Shadowheart asked incredulously.

"Shadowheart, I'm almost thirty-five." I pointed out. "Among humans, the time for frolicking freely with village maidens is in our teens."

"And did you? Frolic with the village maidens." she asked soberly.

"In Lothering? ... several." I nodded. "Nothing serious."

"And in Kirkwall?" she followed up.

"I think we need a fairer exchange if we're going that route." I chided her gently. "Have you had any experiences recently?"

"And how would I remember if I had or not?" Shadowheart punctured the mood.

"Oh. Sorry, I- overlooked that." I rapidly course corrected. "And in Kirkwall?" I sat down on the sand and continued more wistfully. "One."

"Did you lose her too?" Shadowheart asked me compassionately.

"Yes, but not the way you're thinking." I admitted. "Her name was Merrill. She was a... hrm." I realized. "I was going to say 'elf', but in hindsight I'm wondering if all the elves I knew in Thedas were actually half-elves by Faerunian taxonomy. Because when a Thedan elf has a child with a human, the offspring is almost invariably human - they'd breed themselves out of existence in a few generations if they didn't make sure to conserve the blood by having children only with other elves. And yet from what Halsin said-"

"Elven-human crossbreeds on Faerun are never round-eared, and it's been known for those with only one elven grandparent out of four to still have the elven blood remain strong enough to show." Shadowheart agreed. "I'm actually on the more human end of the spectrum of appearance for a half-elf; my ears are as pointed as anyone else's, but..." She gave a wordless wave of her hand down her body at her curves, which were indeed almost entirely those of a human woman instead of the usual slender, narrow build of elves.

"And I know from their folklore that Thedan elves believe their blood was 'stronger' back in the days when the elves were still a thriving race, and not a shattered remnant of a culture largely living in human cities." I continued.

"That does all certainly sound like only part-elven blood to me, not full elven." Shadowheart agreed. "So, a half-elf like me. Any other similarities?"

"Quite a few." I admitted. "You're not doubles of each other but there's a lot in common - your hair, your height, even something of your faces. To be honest, when I first saw you in that tube I had a momentary heart attack thinking that Merrill had somehow been abducted along with me, that was only dispelled when you first spoke and I realized that it was only a resemblance." Off of Shadowheart's expression I continued. "You have very different accents - yours I'm assuming is upper-class native Baldurian, and hers was from having been raised in one of the few wild tribes of wood elves still extant in Thedas."

"So you like me only for my looks." she joked. "Well, that's certainly not unfamiliar to me."

"You're also both highly intelligent, steady-nerved in a crisis, dedicated-" I continued.

"Flatterer." Shadowheart said amusedly, before her expression turned serious again. "If I might ask... you said you lost her, but that she didn't die?" she queried.

"I ruined it." I said. "I didn't-" I looked at her. "Do you really want to spend tonight hearing a long, sad story?"

"Do you want to spend tonight not telling it to me?" Shadowheart replied sagely.

"... yes." I replied after a long pause.

"All right." Shadowheart agreed, as we sat together and watched the waves. "You know, it's odd." she continued after a pause. "This. This celebration. Why we're having it." She paused. "How much I enjoyed it."

"You don't recall having anything like this in the cloister?" I asked diplomatically.

"I'm certain we didn't, but that's not what I meant." she said. "I meant... these refugees. We saved their lives. At great odds, with valiant feats and daring forays into the heart of the enemy." she declaimed poetically. "That's... not something I ever imagined myself doing before. Does it always feel like this?"

"Like what?" I probed.

"Good." she said softly, before shaking her head. "You were right, earlier." she finally continued. "I don't have any experience with this."

"Well, as I recall the first step is not being afraid. Or at least being more afraid of loss than of rejection." I explained.

"Bit of a problem with that one when you worship the goddess of loss- ah!" she suddenly winced, as her hand clenched in agony.

I growled inwardly at this damned thing yet again and reached over and grasped her wounded hand in mine, and for the first time since I'd arrived on Faerun consciously channelled my internal energy in the ways that Knight-Captain Cullen had unofficially taught me back in Kirkwall. I wasn't even sure I could manage this anymore, given how long it had been since I'd had a dose of smuggled lyrium, but Shadowheart was in pain and I had to-

"It stopped." she said, looking down wondrously at where her hand was clasped in both of mine. "Just like that! How- how did you do that?" she asked me.

"Templar magic." I explained to her. "Or more accurately, anti-magic. The mage-hunters of Thedas knew how to focus the will, aided by an alchemical preparation of... well, solid magic is the best way to describe it... called lyrium. Take enough lyrium, practice the right meditations for a couple of years, you unlock the ability to dispel magic or withstand it by sheer force of will." I breathed heavily. "I wasn't even sure it would work here, especially given that very few people can keep the talents operative without regular lyrium infusions and it's been over a year since I've had one, but-" I shrugged. "Sometimes you get lucky."

"I don't understand." Shadowheart said, our hands still entwined. "I'd been told this was an old wound, not some type of- of magical curse. How did you know?"

"Just guessing." I said. "But I've never seen anyone injure their hand seriously enough that the bones still ached years later without also losing mobility in their joints, and yet you've always been as dextrous with that hand as your other one. Nerve damage is even less likely, not if you can pick locks with those fingers. And the healers here could fix even that kind of lingering physical damage. So if it didn't make sense as a mundane injury, then I thought perhaps there was a magical cause."

"Certainly seems as if." Shadowheart agreed, before we both suddenly realized that we were still holding hands. "And- I-" She blushed cutely, and my own cheeks started to feel warm.

"So it's not just me." I blurted awkwardly.

"What are we even doing?" Shadowheart replied mournfully. "I can't- I shouldn't-"

I released her hands. "Then don't." I agreed, masking my disappointment.

"If... if that's what you want." she agreed reluctantly, her voice hurt.

"I thought that's what you wanted!" I burst out, exasperated.

"Oh." she realized wonderingly. "Oh, you meant-"

"In the interests of clear communication." I drew upon all my willpower and diplomatic to say evenly. "I am quite attracted to you, and-"

"Stop. Talking." Shadowheart pressed me, and I did. "Please. I- Hawke, this is insane. When this is over - and it will all too soon be over - I have to return to Lady Shar. And you can't follow me there."

"Can't I?" I inquired.

"Lady Shar is the patron of darkness and loss." Shadowheart tried to explain. "Most people fear the dark, because in the darkness they see their fears reflected. But we are taught to step beyond fear, beyond loss. In darkness we do not hide - we act. Pain... hope... love... all of these are heavy cloaks that bend our backs and burden our hearts." A relentlessly analytical portion of my mind noted in the background that her speech had shifted to a heavy, even cadence - the voice of a person reciting an oft-memorized text, not a person speaking from their heart as she had been just a moment ago. "We shed those cloaks. Before Shar we stand gloriously free, free from mortal vanity and hesitation. We tear down the lies the world is drunk on, the institutions they trust. The so called gods they worship, we destroy false idols, topple corrupt organizations, fight heretics whereever found."

"But how does that reconcile with feeling good about helping the helpless?" I deliberately broke into her train of thought.

"It doesn't!" Shadowheart burst out frustratedly. "That's exactly what I'm trying to understand! Why- you are absolutely horrible for my mental focus, do you know that? Far worse than merely standing in a temple of Selune!" she confronted me, her voice full of emotion yet again.

"I think.. that I can't answer that question without telling you that story now." I surprised her, and we both separated and sat back in a more neutral position as I continued.

I explained about how I had originally met Merrill on Sundermount, and why she was being exiled from her Dalish clan. How the heroine of her clan had been tainted by an ancient artifact found in a ruin, and Merrill's obsessive quest to cleanse that artifact, to understand. How the demon Audacity, sealed away on the peak of Sundermount, had tried for years to tempt her with the knowledge necessary to restore the eluvian - the travel mirrors that the ancient elves of Thedas had invented at the height of their power, the gate network that gave them instantaneous travel across the continent.

I spoke to her about Merrill's brilliance - her selfless devotion to the welfare of the elves - her loneliness and isolation from those who feared her and didn't understand her, including accusations of blood magic - her suffering under the disappointment of her mentor Keeper Marethari, leader of her clan - the poverty and squalor of the Kirkwall elven alienage she'd refused to let me lift her out of for so long...

... and how I'd ruined everything we'd had together.

"We almost broke up the day I refused to give her the artifact of her clan, to try and alter the deep structure of the eluvian with." I said. "By that point Merrill was so alienated from her people that her only hope of ever being accepted back was to present them with a fully restored eluvian, to prove Marethari entirely wrong and her entirely right. And I thought that meant she'd fallen for the demon's lies, that she'd blinded herself to the truth. So rather than respect her wishes, or even try to discuss my concerns with her, I simply decided for her. She considered that an almost irreparable breach of trust... and she wasn't wrong."

"Almost irreparable, you said. She still forgave you, even after that much." Shadowheart said slowly, wonderingly. "That's... not very much resembling me at all."

"But it was a strain, yes. I still couldn't stop her from trying to restore it, though, even if I kept her from trying that particular method. And so the day came, two years later, when she finally tried her last desperate gambit. To directly approach the demon again, as she hadn't for years, and get the answers out of him one way or another." I said.

"Dear gods, please tell me she didn't-" Shadowheart said fearfully.

"She didn't." I reassured her. "Although she'd actually brought me along-" I winced in painful memory. "To do what a templar's duty would be in a mage's Harrowing, if I'd been an official templar and she a Circle Mage. To stand by while she mentally wrestled with a demon... and kill her if she failed to resist its possession." I sighed. "All along I thought she'd been willfully blind to the risks of what she was doing... and all along she'd known them in full, and been willing to take every precaution necessary. Even the ultimate one." Shadowheart's expression by this point was almost sick with worry, so I hastened to reassure her. "It's okay. I didn't have to do that."

"But it was still horrible." Shadowheart said knowingly. "How?"

"That's when we found out that Keeper Marethari had also been approaching Audacity... to try and spare Merrill from being possessed, even at the price of risking possession herself. And she had failed to resist it, where Merrill had succeeded. Merrill had asked me to come there prepared to kill her if she'd been taken by the demon... but as it turned out, we had to kill her instead. Merrill's lifelong mentor, the woman who was for all intents and purposes her mother. That's what she could never forgive me for."

"I can't- I can't even imagine how I'd begin to feel if Mother Superior were similarly taken somehow, and I had to slay her mortal body to spare her soul. But why did Merrill blame you for her mentor's death? Not simply because you struck the killing blow - given what she'd asked you to do for her if need be, that would have made her a complete hypocrite!" Shadowheart defended me passionately.

"You're right, and she didn't." I told her. "No, Merrill blamed me for having denied her the arun'holm years before... because if she had been able to repair the eluvian before that final day, instead of contending with the delays I'd caused with my refusal to believe she knew what she was doing... then perhaps Marethari wouldn't have had time to fall."

"That is not fair!" Shadowheart said. "If she said she loved you, then how could she sever herself from you forever over a might-have-been?"

"Because the most important thing in a relationship is trust, and the secondmost important thing is a respect for your partner's boundaries - to work with them, not dictate for them. To treat them like a partner, not a possession." I shook my head. "And I'd entirely failed to do that, at exactly the moment when I most should have. And that failure had Merrill lose something worse than merely the life of her mother in all but blood - she lost the opportunity to ever know for certain whether she could have saved Keeper Marethari or not, which was actually worse."

"Hawke." Shadowheart said softly, taking my hand. "I- I don't know what to say."

"I think the worst part of it is that she didn't 'sever herself from me forever'." I said. "We were still allies - even friends, to an extent - after we separated. She still came with me in the final battle against Anders, and then when the mage/templar war broke out immediately afterwards. She still stood loyally at my side and helped save my life, just like I saved hers." I sighed. "She just couldn't ever truly love me anymore, because she couldn't entirely trust me anymore. And I couldn't say that I didn't deserve it. So, after the Gallows fell and most of us had to leave Kirkwall... I let her go. Hopefully she's finding a new purpose now... one that she can be allowed to actually succeed at." I sighed. "She deserves no less." And I looked at Shadowheart. "And you deserve no less either, which is why I can't answer your question right now. If I did that... I feel I'd be making the same mistake again. Making your choice for you, instead of with you."

"Thank you." Shadowheart said softly, lovingly. "For sharing that with me... and for respecting me that way." She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and her face firmed with resolve...

... and she drew close enough I could feel the heat of her cheek on mine, and she looped her arms around my neck.

"Not for me. But with me." she agreed, and we kissed underneath the rising moon.

---

Author's Note: Yes, as soon as we hit the tiefling party scene with a Shadowheart romance path, the kiss is inevitable. Destiny may not be cheated that way and I do not even dare to try. *g*

Did you know BG3 very annoyingly refuses to tell you anything about the damn Descent of Elturel except maybe one or two sentences? I had to use google. So I devoted page space in my fanfic to telling my readers, as a public service. Also, Zevlor needed some dialogue, and I was amused to realize him and Hawke had a bit in common.

And so you finally find out Hawke's specialization - Templar. Which was hinted at earlier at a couple of points, if very subtly. How the heck Hawke even goes Templar in DA2 is a thing they don't even bother to go with, so I went with 'it's possible to get smuggled lyrium and Hawke certainly knows the right people' and 'Hawke and Cullen become each other's contacts as far back as Act One, and Cullen starts doing his own rogue templar investigations in Act Two, so he actually has a reason to teach Hawke. Plus, neither other specialization remotely fit my Hawke's personality - he's certainly no berserker, and no reaver either.

Plus, that's how the Merrill romance ended for him. That's not quite a canon game path, but hey, story logic versus game scripting, you know where I stand.

 

[cliffc999]

The entire party sat in on the negotiations between Shadowheart and Lae'zel regarding the mysterious Prism and our next move with it. The discussion started out tense and only devolved from there. Not least because of the other personal revelations that came out during them.

"You're a priestess of Shar?" Wyll asked incredulously. Because Shadowheart had finally felt forced to reveal herself underneath the 'exigencies' clause she'd mentioned earlier, as the only way of explaining why bringing the artifact to her superiors in Baldur's Gate was not only a desirable goal for her but a necessary one.

"You really don't act like the ones I saw back in Baldur's Gate." Karlach nodded.

"Yes!" Shadowheart declaimed exasperatedly. "Now do you begin to understand just how much I can't afford to fail in my mission?"

Lae'zel looked at her uncomprehendingly. "I fail to see what difference the exact identity of your divine patron makes."

"Lae'zel, what would Vlaakith do to someone who deliberately failed in the recovery of something she had ordered brought to her at all costs?" I asked her. Not that I knew anything about githyanki religion but I had at least heard Lae'zel swear by the name before.

"Oh." Lae'zel blinked in realization, before turning to Shadowheart. "The penalty for failure in this 'Church of Shar'... it is execution?"

"For simple failure, not always." Shadowheart demurred. "But for betrayal? Death is a mercy compared to what will happen."

"There's also that her current memories are being held by this 'Mother Superior' of Shar, and she needs to get them back." Gale pointed out logically.

"To have one's very mind and self held hostage...' Lae'zel looked momentarily appalled, before her expression firmed. "But as Hawke has so aptly pointed out, I face a similar fate should I deliberately turn a blind eye to the Prism's theft." Lae'zel looked at Shadowheart with what on anyone else I would have said was sympathy. "And yet while we are both sworn to act as loyal members of this party we are at an impasse."

"And there's no words that can solve this issue." Shadowheart agreed. "I simply can't hand it over to the githyanki, and you can't not do that, and both of our lives are forfeit if we fail."

"Truth." Lae'zel said, squaring her shoulders. "I see only one path forward from there, then. It is no betrayal of our bond of comradeship if we both agree."

Shadowheart nodded back to Lae'zel somberly. "If we can't stab each other in the back for it, then it'll just have to be in the front."

"Now hang on a minute-" I thundered, rising to my feet.

"A duel to the death, in all honor." Lae'zel nodded to Shadowheart. "I will meet you-"

"No one is meeting anyone anywhere!" I demanded.

"Hawke." Shadowheart turned to me, her eyes regretful yet poised. "I know how much you didn't want this to end this way... and neither did I, really." She turned to Lae'zel. "You've been a loyal ally, and perhaps one that I should have respected more than I did. But both of us have our duty, and neither one will forsake it."

"And so, the battlefield." Lae'zel nodded back to Shadowheart respectfully. "If I fall to your mace, I will go to Vlaakith without shame. If you fall to my blade, may your Dark Lady receive you with equal honor-"

And then a miniature thunderclap sounded around our campfire, with a flash like lightning to accompany it, and when we finally all blinked away the spots in front of our eyes-

"The artifact!" Shadowheart cried desperately, clutching at her now-empty belt patch. "It's gone!"

"Our minds!" Wyll said, leaping to his feet. "The Absolute-!"

I reached down and confirmed what the additional weight on my belt had already told me - somehow, unaccountably, the Prism had transported itself from Shadowheart's custody to mine. Wordlessly, I reached into my own belt pouch and brought it forth on my palm for all to see. "Apparently this has enough sentience to understand at least some of what's going on around it... and react to it." I looked down narrowly at the rune-encrusted polygon. "And whatever's in there doesn't want us killing each other over it."

"Give it back!" Shadowheart demanded, almost leaping forward before restraining herself. "Please!"

I had to restrain an impulse to immediately hand it over when confronted with her desperation, and sighed inwardly at what I'd already known about how compromised my feelings are. "I don't think I'll be allowed to," I reasoned out, "but we'll try." I reached out, laid the Prism directly on the ground between us all, was mildly surprised when my fingers were actually able to unclench from it... and then was entirely unsurprised when the artifact leapt back through the air and into my hand the instant Lae'zel and Shadowheart both started to lean forwards towards it.

"Tchk." Lae'zel grunted. "This seems almost too convenient."

"It is." I agreed with her. "But it's not me doing this." I looked closer. "Lae'zel, you said last night that these were githyanki runes. What do they tell you?'

"This is githyanki tir'su script." she agreed, cautiously leaning forward to peer more closely at the Prism. "Every word a wheel, every letter a spoke. The possible cipherings range from the elementary patterns that every child knows to ones that only the most erudite gish can hope to comprehend." She looked up at me. "Much of the script here is beyond my ability to translate. I can read only several of these symbols - they name this as the Astral Prism, a most holy artifact of the githyanki..." her eyes widened in shock. "And- and the personal property of our immortal god-queen, Vlaakith." she trailed off faintly.

"You're thinking a divine manifestation just happened here?" Shadowheart said, horrified. "But no, that doesn't make sense! The will of Vlaakith should have wanted me dead for taking that!"

"Agreed." Lae'zel said. "And had I known this before the Astral Prism removed our immediate cause for dispute, I would have been compelled to-" She shook her head angrily. "I also doubt this event was the will of Vlaakith, but that does not matter any longer. Hawke now holds the Astral Prism, and I already have his agreement on what we should do with it."

"I'm sorry." I said to Shadowheart, as she turned to me appalled. "I hadn't remotely anticipated this would happen-" I held up the Prism. "But I did give my word to Lae'zel, and now I'm bound by it." I continued as reassuringly as I could. "You didn't choose to let this go. It was taken from you by force, and you couldn't recover it even if I allowed you to - as we just tested!" I shook my head. "Perhaps failure, but not betrayal. And a failure that's not even your fault."

"And a cold comfort that will be, when I face Mother Superior over it." Shadowheart said chillingly. "Thank you ever so much."

I accepted that with as much grace as possible under the circumstances. "This isn't what I wanted." I trailed off. "I'm not sure what I wanted, but this wasn't it."

"Embrace loss." Shadowheart half-chanted to herself, visibly straining to recover her composure. "All right. You're correct in that there's nothing either of us can do right now to change the Astral Prism's mind on this.. and also correct that our most immediate priority is getting these damned parasites out of our heads. That will have to do... for now." she finished firmly.

I sighed inwardly. I'd originally been attracted to Shadowheart because of her similarities with Merrill - and because she was a legitimately impressive person in her own right - but paradoxically, the more she relaxed around me the more differences I saw between them, and the more worried I became. Merrill had been the most ultimately self-aware person I'd ever known, one hundred percent transparent with herself about who she was, what she wanted, and what she was willing to sacrifice to get it... while Shadowheart was being revealed as someone whose awareness of herself was not only incomplete but very likely had been deliberately sabotaged. For all that I'd promised to respect her choices - and how thoroughly I intended to keep that promise, because everything I'd said to her about having learned my lesson about using force majeure to make loved ones to do what I thought best was still the truth - I was starting to doubt whether Shadowheart even had the ability to make a free and informed choice on this matter. Her lapse into Shar's catechism last night when she was feeling emotionally pressed had almost looked more like mental conditioning than simple devotion, and by now I was almost entirely certain that her memory wipe hadn't been as voluntary as she believed it had been.

But by the same token, if I was correct and this 'Mother Superior' had gone to such an extent as magically wiping her mind and brainwashing her, that meant that ultimately Shadowheart didn't want to serve Shar so fanatically, but was being compelled to. A suspicion of mine that grew greater and greater every time I saw her respond to a situation not covered by her religious doctrine or standing orders, and how unforced, how natural, how free those responses were. She hadn't been lying to me last night when she'd talked about how good an unselfish act of charity had made her feel - or if she had been lying, then she was a greater actress than any infiltrator from the qunari Ben'Hassrath had ever been. And I'd met Tallis and The Iron Bull.

So when it came to her, I had little idea what I was going to do now. I just knew that I wasn't going to give up.

"Then we set out for the mountain pass today, and press on from there to try and find the githyanki creche Lae'zel believes is nearby." I stated firmly, and we all broke up to start our travel preparations. I deliberately paused nearby in an obvious invitation for Shadowheart to come talk to me if she wanted but she only looked at me, visibly conflicted, before silently moving on.

"Damn." I swore softly.

"Agreed." Gale commiserated with me. "Give her time. Hopefully you'll be forgiven when she realizes you never intended any of it."

Something about the particular emphasis he'd put on that word made me look at him - "Bad breakup?"

"Ohhhhh yes." he nodded, but didn't clarify.

"We missed you at the party last night. And from what you just said, you weren't off finding a private moment-" I trailed off inquiringly.

"A bit of a... digestive issue." Gale explained. "But I'm feeling better now."

"If you think it might recur, try to see Nettie before we leave here." I requested. "Shadowheart needs to save her healing powers for battlefield emergencies."

"Hopefully it shouldn't come to that." Gale said oddly, and we got back to our travel preparations. I sought out Halsin to explain to him what had come up, and also because he'd requested to see me this morning anyway.

"The mountain pass?" Halsin inquired. "That is one of the potential roads to Moonrise Towers, but hardly the best one. You would have to cross much more of the Shadow-Cursed Lands than otherwise. The optimal route to Moonrise is through the Underdark - I've long speculated that there's an old subterranean temple complex of Shar that Thorm's Dark Justicars had built almost directly underneath the towers. Come up through those, and you'll barely have to cross any of the cursed lands at all.""

"We're not going to Moonrise just yet." I replied, and then explained about the search for a githyanki creche. "So hopefully we'll be back here in several days. You mentioned wanting to wait that long for your replacement to get here from the High Forest anyway."

"Even with the wings of a bird, it's still a distance to travel." Halsin said. "Very well, I shall await your safe return."

We warped from the Grove to the travelstone by the old tollhouse where we'd taken down the hunting party Zariel had sent after Karlach, and started the several hours' march from there to where the Risen Road from Baldur's Gate to Elturel entered the mountain pass. The Waukeen's Rest inn had been built nearby to serve caravans travelling the Risen Road, and we headed towards there intending to stop for lunch and a chance to pick up some traveler's gossip about the road ahead.

"Is that smoke?" Wyll asked, looking over the trees into the distance. He'd spent the last half hour of our march filling my ear with everything he knew or suspected about the Church of Shar and how horrible it was, although he had been diplomatic enough to wait until Shadowheart was out of earshot first. I'd listened attentively to all of it while reserving judgment. I knew my ignorance of what I was dealing with here was profound, and while Wyll's viewpoint was clearly biased against the Sharrans as an 'evil church' while he was a crusader of good, that didn't necessarily mean he was wrong. Goodness knows I was nursing my own dark suspicions about them already, and as a stranger to Faerun, every new bit of knowledge helped - possibly biased or not.

"I can smell it, but I can't see it." I agreed.

"A fire in the forest would have burned much more out of control." Shadowheart commented quietly, the first words she'd spoken since we'd started marching. "So something burned up ahead, in the clearing-"

"-where the inn was." I agreed. "Double time!"

We hurried ahead and soon enough drew to the site of where Waukeen's Rest had stood. Our shocked eyes saw that almost nothing was left - the building was a collapsed, burnt ruin, with only the stables and several of the other outbuildings stlil mostly standing. A patrol of soldiers in a uniform I didn't recognize stood outside the gates, their uniforms still dirty and covered with dried blood - these men had seen a battle in the past couple of days, and hadn't had a chance to return to base since-

"Shit, they're Flaming Fist!" Karlach said. "What's the Baldur's Gate military doing here?"

"Halt! Identify yourselves!" their squad leader called.

"A party of adventurers, most recently from the Emerald Grove!" I called back.

"The Grove?" the female Flaming Fist sergeant relievedly. "Our message got through?"

"If you sent a messenger, we must have missed them on the path." I explained as we drew near, our hands carefully away from our weapons. "I'm Hawke."

"Damn!" she swore. "If you didn't come in response to our message, then- do you have a cleric? A healer? We've got a woman too badly injured to move, and-" she begged desperately, almost in a panic.

I looked at Shadowheart for permission and she nodded back. "I'm a cleric." she said. "Take me to her."

"Thank Helm!" she gasped. "Come on, she's over here!" and she led us through a courtyard full of soldiers, almost half a platoon of them. Some were wounded, and all were worried.

"What happened?" I asked their sergeant.

"Drow, leading a small army of goblins." her answer chilled my blood. "The day before yesterday. We were escorting-" She broke off as we drew near to a tent where another worried soldier was attending to a middle-aged elven woman, unconscious and with severe burn all over her body.

"Councilor Florrick!" Wyll gasped in recognition as soon as he saw the woman. "By the gods, what happened here?"

"She was trapped in there." the sergeant nodded towards the ruins of the building. "Damn goblins fired the whole place after they'd grabbed their target. By the time we were able to bust in there and get her out she was half dead, and she'd swallowed enough smoke to choke a dragon." She swore. "I'm surprised we kept her alive this long. Our own healer was killed in the attack, and we were all bloody stuck here because we just couldn't move her! I tried sending people to find the druid's grove supposed to be nearby and get help, but from what you said they're still looking for the damned place. Or the goblins got them."

Shadowheart was already laying her hands on the severely wounded Councilor and casting her stronger healing spells. "You're lucky I got here in time." she told them. "Deep tissue burns over almost half her body, smoke inhalation, burn scars in her lungs-" She looked up at them. "You did an exceptional job keeping her alive even this long, and you were entirely right not to move her - even if you'd known the most direct route, she still wouldn't have made it halfway to the Grove in her condition before dying."

"Then thank you, and a thousand blessings on your god." the sergeant said gratefully, and I carefully avoided even a quirk of my lips at exactly which deity she'd just praised.

Councilor Florrick coughed weakly, then opened her eyes. "Who-"

"We're here, Councillor." the sergeant rushed to reassure her. "You were badly wounded in the attack, and we didn't have a healer - we couldn't move you, and it took almost two days to get a cleric here."

"Two days?" she swore, as two of her men helped her heavily to her feet. "Did you send word back to Baldur's Gate?"

"I sent a squad up the pass, but they got smashed up by a bloody dragon of all things." the sergeant said ashamedly. "One survivor made it back. And we're down to barely twenty men - that wasn't enough to get through what's between here and the city and to leave enough here to keep you safe, especially if those goblins came back, so I didn't dare make a second try."

"If they were the ones headquartered in the ruined temple to the south of here, then they won't come back." I broke in. "My party, the druids of the Grove and a party of refugees from Elturel all combined forces to lure out the goblin force and destroy them yesterday. So at least your dead have been avenged."

"Partially avenged." Councilor Florrick agreed grimly. "Quick, did you find any prisoners in the goblin fortress when you took it? Because we were escorting-"

"Wait!" Wyll cried desperately. "If the goblins took a high-ranking prisoner from here that wasn't you, then does that mean-?" he trailed off in horror.

"Wyll?" Councilor Florrick turned, seeing him for the first time. Her jaw dropped in shock at seeing his tiefling nature. "Wyll... oh my boy, what happened to you?" she despaired in a very familiar tone of voice.

"Wait, is she your mother?" I turned to Wyll incredulously.

"I've felt like it sometimes." Councilor Florrick said with a moment of amusement before her expression lapsed again. "But no, not by blood. I've known Wyll all his life because I've served his family for decades." she turned to him and nodded sadly. "And yes, Wyll. I'm sorry - but the drow took your father."

"No!" Wyll moaned.

"We didn't find anyone." I confirmed. "When we first entered the fortress we saw the goblins in the midst of a victory celebration - now it's clear to me what they were celebrating. But the only prisoners they had in the fortress were ones they'd taken elsewhere, there was nothing from the raid they'd just done here except loot. And there was only one dark elf at the goblin fortress, the garrison commander."

"So the task force of dark elves that struck us was from elsewhere, and had merely called in goblins from a local ally for additional troops." Florrick analyzed. "And now they've taken Grand Duke Ravengard back to the Underdark-"

"Hold on!' Karlach broke in. "Grand Duke Ravengard?!?" She rounded on Wyll. "Your father's the bloody Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate? For serious?"

"I was disowned." Wyll admitted frankly. "So it's not something I bring up in conversation anymore. I've lost the right to."

"I don't think these drow were from the Underdark." Gale thought out loud. "What would even the ruler of Baldur's Gate matter to the nobility of Menzoberranzan? They're very insular and obsessed with internal competition, not external. Particularly since we know of another faction that took at least some drow into their service recently."

"Did you kill any drow during the attack?" I asked the seniormost Flaming Fist present.

"At least half the bastards, for all the good it did us. Damned drow practically drowned us in goblin blood." she muttered darkly.

"Then if you take us to where you buried at least one of their corpses, I think we can get some answers for you." I said.

Sure enough, a brief post-mortem interrogation with the Amulet of Lost Voices turned up confirmation that the drow who had attacked Waukeen's Rest had indeed been in the service of the Cult of the Absolute just like Minthara had been, and that the goal of the raid had been the capture of Grand Duke Ravengard alive and intact and to return him to Moonrise Towers.

"And that tells us what their goal almost certainly is." I said darkly, and then explained to Councilor Florrick about the thread of the tadpoles and the altered ceremorphosis. "To implant him, and then have him either be 'rescued' or 'escape' later... and through him, have control of Baldur's Gate."

"Damn!" Councilor Florrick swore in agony. "And there's no cure?"

"We're in pursuit of one even now. For ourselves." Shadowheart surprised her. "Our own tadpoles don't control us - yet - due to some mysterious factor that intervened in our case. But we're the only ones we've met who retained our free will, and even then sometimes it's a struggle."

"If you can find this cure and bring it to me, you can name your own reward." Councilor Florrick swore. "Equally so if you can help rescue the Grand Duke. And Wyll, I know you have no love for your father after what happened, but-"

"No love for my father?" Wyll turned on her heatedly. "I- is that what you thought of me?"

"I'm sorry- I thought-" she stammered. "But Wyll, if it wasn't that, then why- he thought the world of you! But he never spoke of why, or how-" Councilor Florrick shook her head. "I feared the worst."

"Your fears likely still fell short of reality." Wyll said. "I don't know if-"

"Do you want me to tell her for you?" I asked him. "She can't punish you for my loose mouth."

"Please." Wyll said gratefully.

"Wyll was tricked, or led, or somehow induced - not by his own fault! - into a warlock pact with a fiend." I told the shocked Florrick. "And the pact-maker maliciously forbade him from saying anything in his own defense or justification, and then the fiend deliberately let everybody else - including Wyll's own father, apparently - think the worst of him."

"How do you-" Florrick began, and then sighed. "Wyll, forgive me, but I must ask this. How do I know that the worst isn't true?"

"Because those horns he got now? You think he wanted them?" Karlach scoffed "Mizora - yeah, I'll name that bitch out loud, and she can come here and try to stop me herself if she doesn't like it - she ordered Wyll to kill me. Pumped him all full of lies about how I was really a devil, about how taking me out would save the Sword Coast and all the rest of it. But as soon as Wyll found out it was lies, he stopped right then and there, and when Mizora came to him and said 'You follow orders or else you'll pay a penalty!', Wyll stood there and spat in her face and told her to go back to Hell riding the point of a pike. And-" She waved a hand at the now-tiefling Wyll. "That was the penalty."

"Then I owe you a very great apology, Wyll Ravengard." Florrick said formally. "And I so deeply regret what happened to you."

"Thank you." Wyll said, his voice thick. "Just to hear that- it means a great deal to me." He nodded more resolutely, his voice clearing. "And of course I'll do everything I possibly can to rescue Father and return him safe and free in his own mind. That goes without saying."

"The cure we seek is now an even higher priority." the silent Lae'zel broke in. "We should depart immediately."

"Agreed." Councilor Florrick said. "And I need to get back to Baldur's Gate as soon as possible. The Grand Duke was the only thing holding the city together during a very tense time."

"Are you particularly experienced in political conspiracy, Counselor?" I said.

"Why do you ask?" she looked at me warily.

"Because the person behind this plot almost certainly is." I thought out loud. "This 'Cult of the Absolute' has been amassing forces for months and yet neither the city nor organizations like the druids were aware of them. We know they've been 'initiating' sleeper agents in Baldur's Gate for a while - I spoke to several of them just the other day. Catspaws raising goblin armies under the guise of a false religion here, dark elven strike teams there, a mysterious base at Moonrise Towers that somehow ignores the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and now a plot to kidnap and enslave the leading nobleman of Baldur's Gate?" I said. "How many simultaneous plots do we have going on here? Someone is juggling a lot of balls in the air all at once, and yet still doing so deftly enough that people have been kept in the dark for as long as they have." I rubbed my chin. "Plus, that vision the Absolute sent showed three of her lieutenants. The mysterious pale woman, the elderly warrior in full armor... and the handsome young nobleman." I finished. "A courtier of your experience has to already know that just coercing the ruler doesn't give you full control of the court. You also have to coerce or replace his advisors and key staff. And while the Cult of the Absolute could in theory make a controlled Grand Duke dismiss people like you and replace them with cultists-"

"-they'd need people of suitable rank and station to be viable replacements already in place." she realized.

"So when you get back to Baldur's Gate, don't try to publicly announce the true scope of the threat." I cautioned her. "If they know that you know, they'll work to remove you - and you're at a substantial disadvantage if you don't already know who they are. Obviously you should raise a hue and cry over the Grand Duke's abduction, you'd be suspicious if you didn't. But-"

"But don't say anything else other than that the Grand Duke was taken and where we think the attackers were going." Florrick agreed. "Only what I'd be expected to say if I hadn't met you and hadn't been told anything about the true scope of the problem. Meanwhile, I try to privately recruit aid-"

"Only from the people you can absolutely trust." I agreed. "And ones that you can magically verify don't have any new little passengers in their brains." I tapped one temple.

"Agreed." she said. "I'll do my part, and you do yours. Wyll can tell you how to get in touch with me discreetly when you reach Baldur's Gate."

Councilor Florrick led her surviving soldiers on the road back to Baldur's Gate, and we resumed our march for the mountain pass where we hoped to find the githyanki and their cure for the tadpoles. When we reached the Risen Road we realized what the Flaming Fist sergeant had meant about meeting a dragon - a large wooden bridge, a key part of the Risen Road, had been destroyed by dragonfire.

"What would a dragon be doing here?" I wondered as we looked at the devastation. "And will we even be able to get to Baldur's Gate? Will Zevlor's people, when they get here?"

"There's a branch path." Wyll explained. "It leads to a nearby monastery of Lathander, and then rejoins the Risen Road a little ways further on."

"As to the presence of the dragon - if we discount coincidence as a reason for theiir presence, then of all the myriad factions and foes that swirl around this entire situation, only one of them is known to use red dragon as mounts." Lae'zel said proudly. "My people. To ride a dragon is the privilege of our kith'raki, our knights of silver. One of them was here recently, in addition to the githyanki patrol that the tieflings sighted."

"And destroyed the bridge?" Karlach said, looking at the ruins. "Not very friendly, that."

"Do you think the creche is on the other side?" Shadowheart asked, looking at the very deep and wide ravine that bridge had crossed.

"I don't know." I shrugged. "So we search the easier route for a day or two, and if we find no signs of githyanki patrols there, then we double back."

"It is likely that the creche is up the mountain pass." Lae'zel agreed. "To destroy a key crossing on a major trade route like this attracts attention, it does not divert it. As an attempt to conceal the location of the creche, it would be extremely poor strategy. No kith'rak would be so addled."

"Containment." I realized. "If they're searching for the Prism then the thing they're most afraid of is the person carrying it moving too far away and escaping the radius of search. Which means they destroyed the bridge to trap people on the same side as the nautiloid crash - to prevent them from reaching the main line of the Risen Road and traveling out of the region." I looked up the mountain pass leading towards the monastery. "And the only other route from here to the Risen Road requires going through there. A natural chokepoint."

"So we are likeliest to find my people there." Lae'zel agreed. "Let us proceed!"

We spent the rest of the day marching up into the mountains, and when darkness fell made camp.

"Can we talk?" I asked Shadowheart, drawing up alongside her where she stood on the edge of the mountain path looking down at the vista below us. A silence greeted my words, and I sighed and turned to leave. "All right, then-"

"Don't go." she broke in suddenly, and I stepped back up alongside her. "I- don't want to be alone. I just... don't know what to say."

"You know I won't let you be alone, right?" I reassured her. "Whatever penalty 'Mother Superior' wants to try and collect from you, I'll be there."

"You wouldn't be allowed to." Shadowheart corrected me firmly. "But... thank you for offering."

"You know the only reason I tried to negotiate a compromise was to- keep the party from fighting itself." I course corrected. "It's not like I have any great affection for - or knowledge of - githyanki."

"No more than you do anyone else in Faerun." Shadowheart agreed. "But I thought I was your friend, not her!"

"You are." I agreed.

"Then why didn't you help me?" she demanded.

"If I really do care for you, then why not support you? Why stay neutral?" I questioned her.

"Yes." she agreed.

"Because... I have a code." I tried to explain. "It's not any particular god, or flag, or liege lord, but it's... it's mine." I paused awkwardly and then continued. "Call it honor, call it a standard of conduct, call it a personal creed, call it whatever you want." I shrugged. "I've smuggled, I've done 'creative accounting' on my taxes, I've done politics, and I've done the dirtier side of war when need be - but I'll never be a brigand. I have lines I won't cross. And those lines are my anchor, they're what helps keep me from being lost even when I've lost everything else." I turned to her. "I have absolutely no desire to see you punished as a thief - I'm doing my best to help you avoid that, in fact. But to the best of both our knowledge Vlaakith really is the rightful possessor of this-" I patted the belt pouch. "And so..." I shrugged helplessly.

"The creed that keeps you from being lost, even when you've lost everything else." Shadowheart repeated softly. "I understand that. I even respect it. But-" her face crumpled. "It still hurt."

"Thinking I'd abandoned you, so soon after declaring my interest in you?" I agreed. "You're right. I hurt you. I can't do anything but admit that, and say how deeply I regret it."

'But not that you're sorry for it." Shadowheart looked levelly at me.

"Another one of my lines is that I won't tell someone that I love them, and then lie to them." I said.

"Darkness protect me, you're as stubborn as a-" and her face suddenly clenched in a spasm. "Ugh! I feel like-" Her lips clamped shut. "Was something off... about that stew?" she forced out through nauseous lips.

My own guts were roiling as if I'd eaten greasy salt pork during a storm on shipboard. "I didn't- we should check- with the others."

We stumbled back to camp, the sudden illness overtaking us both, to see the rest of the party had also started showing signs of distress. Gale was barely able to walk - wait, could this be related to the stomach trouble he said he'd been having earlier-?

"No." Lae'zel said in soft, horrified tones as she checked her forehead with the back of her hand. "Nausea. Fever." She looked at me. "Ceremorphosis. It has begun."

"What?" Karlach blurted, as the waves of nausea ebbed slightly. "But I thought we- what happened to our tadpoles?"

"We didn't know... how much time we had." Gale whispered from where he sat. "Apparently... not as long... as we'd hoped."

"Then we are out of time." Lae'zel said softly... and drew her knife. "I will make it as painless as possible. First my comrades, and then myself, as it should be."

"Put that away." I told her. "Even on the normal schedule, we still have a day or two more. We push on - we try to find your creche."

"If we were already that far into symptoms on our arrival, they would slay us rather than cleanse us." Lae'zel insisted. "Do not fear death. Death is a balm, compared to the horror of becoming ghaik!"

"While we're still ourselves... we don't give up." I told her. "One day more."

"As you command." Lae'zel said, sheathing her blade. "You have defied the odds before. Let us hope your track record in that regard continues."

It was a dispirited group of people who set up their bedrolls and turned in for the night. Shadowheart had even given me a hug before we'd turned in - as much as we still had the awkwardness of the Prism between us, if this was going to be our last night as ourselves then we could at least do that much.

And shortly after drifting off to sleep, I awoke.

"I came just in time." the beautiful white-haired elven woman said as she leaned over me, her hands glowing with healing power. "You were transforming."

"Who are you?" I said as I hurriedly leapt to my feet. I noted in shock that while my bedroll still lay on the ground, the ground had entirely changed - I was now on a small rocky island drifting through a starry void, alone with this mysterious figure. She was beautiful, but not in a young way - an elven matron, as middle-aged for her people as my mother had been for hers. Her hair was the purest white, her armor an elaborate gold-and-white filigree, her voice a beautiful, ethereal song.

"Your Guardian." she answered reassuringly. "I am here to help you, to save you from this terrible fate. As I saved you before."

A mental image flickered before my eyes, my fall from the crashing nautiloid and the sudden mysterious force - a Feather Fall spell, I know knew it was called - that stopped me safely just before I hit the ground. Only now I could see the Guardian standing some thirty feet away from me, her hand raised in a gesture as she spellcast-

I reached out and seized her by the throat with a snarl of hate. "Nice try!" I spat. "But I saw your true form on that beach, mind flayer!"

The Guardian suddenly dissolved into mist and light in my grasp, as if I'd only been clutching an illusion. "Hawke!" her voice came to me urgently, as she rematerialized off to my left. "You are further gone that I had feared! The parasite is trying to twist you-"

"Cleanse!" I shouted with a terrible will, and drew upon my templar talents to their fullest. If I'd glimpsed their true self on that beach, then perhaps my resistance to magic had had something to do with that-

And the illusion surrounding the 'Guardian' fell away to reveal a glistening, purple-headed, tentacled monster.

"Very well then." the mind flayer said tonelessly. "Before you ruin anything further, know this. First, we are currently within your mind as I speak to you in a dream. Nothing you do to me here can truly harm me, only yourself. And second, I am all that is shielding you from instant submission to the Absolute."

"Your name." I demanded.

"I do not want to share it with you, not at present. Call me the Guardian still, for I am still that in truth." the mind flayer insisted.

"And you're helping us why?" I said. "Or does every victim get this special treatment, if they're too stubborn to be taken the normal way? Subvert rather than coerce?"

"It takes almost all my power to shield you as I have, and you are resisting me yet still! Think, Hawke, think!" it pressed.

"If you're a part of my mind, then how could I ever surprise you?" I wondered. "You're somewhere nearby, in the flesh, projecting your thoughts to me from the outside." I thought further. "But despite my resistance, you're still staying here and trying to subvert me. You haven't just abandoned me to the Absolute and gone off to find a fresh patsy."

"Hawke-" the Guardian glared at me.

"You're stuck with us." I finished the thought. "Or... you're stuck with something we carry with us." I looked at him. "Obviously you oppose the Absolute. So let me guess... you need the artifact to shield your mind from it just as much as we do?"

"Unbelievable." the Guardian glared at me. "But before you attempt to get too clever, consider this; I know far more about its functions and how to control it than you do. If you contest me for it, you will lose."

"Thanks for admitting that you deliberately let our transformations start right before you conveniently showed up as some phony goddess-figure to 'save' us from them." I mocked it. "You might fight the Absolute, but you're still willing to poach their tactics."

"There is no shame in appropriating a good idea from an enemy, particularly if you can utilize it better than they can." the Guardian said arrogantly. "Very well, if we are speaking plainly then let me speak plainly - if you take the artifact to the githyanki, you will all be inevitably lost. So do not do that."

"And what do you propose we do instead?" I attempted to draw it out.

"The githyanki warrior is merely one of your company, and hardly the one most essential to you. Dispose of her, then ignore the creche, and proceed with the remainder of your quest as you see fit." it suggested.

"Any other suggestions? Tips? Hints?" I probed further.

"You have become a tremendous unplanned variable in my strategy." the Guardian glared at me. "I must consider the situation at length. Furthermore, you do not yet trust me, so why should I waste breath at the present moment attempting to order you about?" It shrugged. "I will continue to protect you, and if I believe you are at imminent risk of stepping into disaster, advise you. Hopefully you will eventually realize that I am your ally, and that you can trust me - before we run out of time."

"What is the Absolute?" I questioned him.

"I will tell you... when the time is right." the Guardian insisted. "But for now, I only repeat my warning - do not place yourself within the power of the githyanki!"

"No promises." I told it.

"You must learn to work with me, not against me, or else all of us will die." the Guardian fumed. "But I will waste no more words tonight. Awaken."

My eyes snapped open.

---

Author's Note: That sound you heard was the Emperor's schemes having a tremendous monkey wrench tossed in the gears. He had no idea Hawke was magic resistant enough to see through the illusion he was using on the beach. (As you will see if you go back and reread Chapter 1- I put that mention in there deliberately.) I was honestly debating having Hawke play along with the Emperor for a while, precisely so that I didn't have to have the bastard go this off-script this early, but I just couldn't make myself believe that Hawke wouldn't go off like a rocket at that moment. And now I get to give my improv skills a real workout from this point on.

Also, LOL at the Emperor. He switches the artifact's possession from Shadowheart to Hawke when he realizes that the dispute over it is about to explode out of control, and he's not sure that Lae'zel wouldn't win the duel and then he's hosed - and so he drops it right on top of the absolute last person he's going to want carrying it.

You get Shadowheart and Lae'zel not disputing possession of the artifact quite easily in the game. One DC 10 or 12 dialogue check and that's it, all over. I am making it a bit more substantial of a drama.

Oh yes, and as another example of 'we're not using game time', I have to account for Councilor Florrick still being there to talk to despite the party not being there to rescue her from the burning building and them not arriving at Waukeen's Rest until two days after the attack. So I used one problem to solve the other; the Flaming Fists are still there because she was too badly burned to be safely moved.

 

[cliffc999]

Inside the pocket plane hidden away in the trackless depths of the Astral Plane, the one that only the Astral Prism would allow someone to find and enter, an Emperor sat and thought.

The mind flayer, formerly the man known as Balduran, had long since ceased to regret the change. The ceremorphosis that had converted him had been of the standard type, the result of being abducted by a mind flayer colony he'd happened across while still a mortal adventurer. Being mentally enslaved to the colony's Elder Brain had of course been an insufferable insult, but they had fortuitously been rescued by an old ally of his human self, one who had been able to first release his mind from the psionic chains it had been bound with and had then spent years ceaselessly laboring to find a way to restore his humanity. A humanity that the Emperor had already learned not to miss, and didn't even want returned. Who would wish the return of mortality if it meant giving up such longevity, such expanded intellect... such power?

Regretfully, Ansur could not see that. the Emperor sighed to itself as its faultless memory yet again reviewed that portion of his life. Such a waste of a valuable asset, but he made his death a necessity.

The Emperor's thoughts turned darker. Unfortunately, the same option does not yet exist for dealing with this insufferable 'Hawke'.

The Emperor looked up at the captive and bound form of the entity that slumbered at the heart of this pocket plane, the one that the Astral Prism had originally been created to imprison. They painstakingly reviewed yet again the mental bonds and subtle illusions they'd woven around the comatose entity, the ones that they'd subtly intertwined between and among the far older and more rigid bonds that the githyanki who'd created the Astral Prism had bound it with. That entity's hatred for mind flayers was ceaseless and boundless, and if it ever consciously dawned to an awareness of the Emperor's true nature it would turn its power upon him in an instant. Which would leave the Emperor with only two choices - to either flee beyond the entity's range and thus no longer be protected from the Absolute, or to die.

And my survival is paramount. I have a potential eternity awaiting me, an existence beyond death or gods. I. Must. Not. Die!

The Emperor breathed deeply, fighting for calm. Its enhanced intellect yet again reviewed every scrap of information it had obtained about Hawke and his companions, searching for a new angle, a scheme by which it could effectively manipulate and guide them. The penetration of the 'Guardian' deception so soon had been entirely outside its calculations and was potentially devastating to its plans. Ideally none of the adventurers the Emperor had selected would have known of its true nature until the Emperor had been ready to tell them - until they had been carefully led down the same path a man named Balduran had once tread, of being willing to embrace the power, the change, instead of desperately clinging to a pathetic 'humanity'.

And then their leader had seen through its first illusion as if it had not even been there, and shattered its second one!

The Emperor allowed itself another brief indulgence in its reveries, seeking calm and reassurance in its victories of the past. Using its powers of the mind and suborned catspaws to be the secret, undying master of Baldur's Gate had been a most satisfying endeavor for centuries. Its influence had grown to where it could justifiably call its efforts, its conspiracies, a secret empire ruling Baldur's Gate and influencing much of the Sword Coast. That is when it had granted itself the title of 'The Emperor', even if it was an emperor that none knew existed or would publicly hail. After all, vainglory had never been the point. Power had been.

And then an insignificant mortal had somehow attracted the sponsorship of a pathetic once-dead godling, whose two other godling allies of old had likewise contributed their own Chosen to a group effort... and these three 'Chosen' had unaccountably managed to enslave an elder brain. The Emperor was still trying to determine exactly how they had accomplished such a feat - both because it lusted for such an unimaginable power to be in its possession, and because the existence of such power in any other's possession was far too great a threat.

As the Chosen of 'the Absolute' had proven when their pet elder brain had re-enslaved the Emperor, shortly after he'd begun to investigate this strange new cult rising in its city. They had not yet been aware of the existence of the brain and so had been taken entirely unawares by a threat he'd not faced for centuries, as he'd closed in on and prepared to slay those insufferable usurpers-

The Emperor preferred not to think of the period of time that had followed, when it had been a slave crushed by the will of an elder brain yet again, one that was itself a slave to those insignificant mortals. They hadn't even known who they'd truly scooped up in their net, entirely ignorant of the Emperor's history and the true depths of its capability. They'd seen only another nameless illithid slave, set to fetch and carry and perform tasks, and so it had labored away onboard their pet nautiloid until the day the 'Chosen' had ordered their illithid slaves to follow a team of Sharrans into the deep Astral, to wait for them to finish their daring raid into the heart of an ancient githyanki fortress, and then to slay them and steal their prize if they were successful or use the opportunity to launch their own raid against the weakened githyanki if they had not been.

But when the Emperor had been the first illithid to reach the Astral Prism, the artifact had freed its mind from slavery to the Absolute. Glorious freedom! And miraculous opportunity!

Apparently the trapped entity had been too far gone in its bound slumber to psionically recognize the Emperor as an illithid - perhaps due to its several centuries of freedom beforehand, and its detailed memories of its former human life and immersion in human disguise? The Emperor wasn't certain. But at any rate the coincidence was to its great benefit; the Prism had instinctively moved to protect him, not to combat him, and of course the Emperor had not wasted that opportunity.

The Emperor's first thought, to hijack the nautiloid and leave the Chosen of the Absolute believing that their ship had been lost with all hands against the githyanki and then slowly and thoroughly weave a terrifying revenge, had fallen through as soon as the githyanki pursuit had caught up to the nautiloid. At that point a rapid - and if the Emperor were being honest, desperate - improvisation had been needed. And so he'd hijacked the nautiloid and done his best to simultaneously evade pursuit and use the nautiloid's capture-teleports to abduct whatever cannon fodder they could from Faerun... as well as a certain lost traveler found drifting in the deep Astral that the Emperor was in hindsight beginning to wish they'd just left there.

Implanting the strongest-looking and most useful abductees - as well as the one survivor of the Sharran raid team - with some of the modified parasites the Chosen of the Absolute had stocked the ship with had been the best the Emperor could do to impress some useful pawns into its service, in the limited time that it had had available. It had then entered the Prism itself, releasing its influence over the few mind flayers still surviving on the beleaguered nautiloid, and let them steer the ship back to Faerun one last time before evacuating itself and its pawns, leaving the rest to draw the githyanki pursuit after themselves and die. From that point on it should have been possible to use its guise of the 'Dream Guardian' to slowly seduce this group of cats-paws into becoming useful operatives, and to then aim them at assassinating the three Chosen. After all, if the history of Baldur's Gate had proven anything, it was that a small party of suitably heroic adventurers could accomplish ridiculously out-of-proportion results given the right circumstances.

But now that plan was in dire jeopardy. The Emperor could not abandon the Astral Prism without re-enslaving itself to the Absolute, and neither could it use its full power while near the Astral Prism without risking the imprisoned entity realizing that it was also illthid and thus also an enemy. Which would not have hampered it substantially if that damnable man had not so readily shattered its disguise!

The minds of its pawns were only partially available to the Emperor as is - stripping them down to their innermost thoughts would not only require more power than it wished to use near the Prism unless it absolutely had to, but would cause brain damage if not done very slowly and carefully - but their surface thoughts were usually plain as print. Hawke, however, had been difficult to read even the surface thoughts of, let alone his deeper self. Not impossible, no, but certainly difficult. The Emperor had originally thought his resistance merely a function of Hawke's having an extremely strong and disciplined mind - which Hawke certainly did have - and had missed his special powers of innate magic resistance and smiting extraplanar entities, powers that the Emperor had never seen before. Not until Hawke had verbally exposited to his companions about his homeworld of Thedas and the "templars" there had the Emperor understood what they were dealing with - and by then it was too late, Hawke had already gathered the clue necessary to spot the 'Guardian' as a lie, even if the Emperor had not known he had.

Ungrateful bastard. Doing that to me after all that effort I put into specially stimulating his tadpole to provide him with comprehension of the language here! After all, he couldn't be of much use if he couldn't communicate with people, now could he? The Emperor shook his head ruefully. In hindsight, perhaps I should have picked that damned Bhaalspawn as my last candidate instead of this man after all... no, no, that's just my frustration talking. Trying to control or manipulate that monster would have been an even greater risk, which is precisely why I killed him instead. My plot would certainly have been vastly complicated if the Dark Urge's father had chosen to meddle with it. At least Hawke isn't giving me that kind of difficulty to contend with.

Not that things haven't gotten complicated enough already.

A paladin, of all things! The Emperor snorted. Not that Hawke had the slightest idea he was one - the power of Oaths and creeds had apparently not been a consciously codified thing on his world. Or perhaps the source of power of these "templars" had been something entirely different, and Hawke had not become a paladin until his arrival on Faerun - his honorable nature and his dedication to his own personal code so strong that they could provide new fuel for the abilities he'd originally developed in some other way. He'd hardly be the first case in Faerunian history of someone whose personal devotion was so strong that it had spontaneously granted them paladinhood without sponsorship or initiation.

Unfortunately, I don't know what his Oaths are. Paladins are usually pathetically easy to manipulate if you know the exact rules they have bound themselves to, but I doubt Hawke could even tell me what his particular strictures are because he doesn't even consciously know what he is!

Furthermore he's a castaway on a strange world, so I don't know enough about his cultural beliefs or his personal history to find suitable levers either. Family, patriotism, ambition - also irrelevant, when he has no history in this world to foster the first two yet and the third has yet to even form given that he's still floundering around here. Which you would think would make my job easy, as rootless people interested only in their survival are very easy to get hooks into... except that this man has a willpower of adamantine and a thick skull to match! The only obvious psychological lever I can see on his behavior is his affections for that little priestess, but it's not like I can safely meddle in her brain, not with what she's linked to. Not to mention that they're both intelligent enough to already know that the other is their greatest potential weakness, and are both determined to not let that happen-

The Emperor nodded to itself grimly. This situation was anything but hopeless, but it certainly could have been a lot easier than it currently was. But there was simply no present opportunity to start molding these people more closely to its purposes - not with the depths of their hatred of and suspicion of mind flayers, the revelation of the Emperor's true identity, the presence of that damned githyanki fanatic and her unaccountable acceptance by the rest of them, and the simple fact that the Emperor did not yet know enough about them-

No, for the moment the only strategy the Emperor could see available to it was the one it hated using the most.

Waiting.

Still. it consoled itself. The fact that I am not the only player in this game by far is as much asset to me as threat. If I cannot yet create an opportunity with leverage for myself, I can still allow others to create one for me. The closer their enemies draw near, the more all the other factions and powers swirling around this nexus of affairs grows complicated, then the more they will need my aid. And they will receive it, of course.

On my terms.

---

Author's Note: And so we get a glimpse of what the Emperor is thinking, and what they know - and don't know.

Thank you @noobody77, @Jarrik32, and @Frankfawn43 for your suggestion to use the tadpole to explain Hawke's new language gifts, here are your No-Prizes.

The backstory of how everybody ended up on the nautiloid, the Emperor, etc., is as close to canon as I could get it because holy crap is this stuff hard to research sometimes. Furthermore, we only have the Emperor's word for much of it and the Emperor is the biggest god-damned liar in all of creation. Raphael is more honest with you than the Emperor is. So if this fic differs from what you understand as canon, just handwave it with 'well he was bullshitting that time'.

Also, yes, that's the explanation for how Hawke retained his templar abilities. He's a 5e paladin with a unique set of powers and a custom Oath, as he's fueling templar training and vestigial templar abilities with an entirely new power source that he's instinctively tapping into without fully realizing it. Don't ask me to write you Hawke's exact oaths and strictures, because it's a helluva lot easier for me as a writer if I don't tie myself down that way in advance. Just... y'know, he's Diplomatic Hawke, he's generally a good guy, so long as he remains that way, he should be fine.

Plus, I got to work in where Tav has gone if Hawke is here. Answer: it wasn't Tav, it was Durge, and he was on that nautiloid too. And Durge died there, because the Emperor didn't want to risk trying to use him if he had an alternative available. Even if he's now allllmost reconsidering that decision.

And yes, that's an inconsistency re: Shadowheart being the last survivor of the raid team, as opposed to being just part of a courier team. The answer is very simple; Shadowheart lied. (After all, the less Lae'zel thought she was directly involved with the theft, the better.)

 

[cliffc999]

"A ghaik." Lae'zel said, looking more nauseous than she had when the Emperor had been deliberately prodding our tadpoles to torment us with the initial symptoms of ceremorphosis. "A filthy ghaik stalks us! He holds our very minds, our identities, hostage!"

"Darkness protect us." Shadowheart gasped. "What do we-" she stopped, and turned to look me full in the eye. "How did you know?"

"That the Guardian was a mind flayer? When it confessed to being the one who saved us from the fall from the nautiloid." I explained. "Since I'd already glimpsed a mind flayer doing that during the crash - even if I hadn't been sure I could trust that glimpse until the Guardian's attempt to revisit that memory with its illusory form in the starring role prompted-"

"No, no, not that." Shadowheart interrupted. "How did you know that we'd need the mind flayer cure so badly, to focus on it as our top priority so soon? Even as far back as the Grove?" She noddded to me. "Even to the point of us giving up the artifact for it?"

"I didn't know that far back." I admitted. "And I certainly had no long-range plan to stymie the Guardian, who I didn't even know existed until they tried invading my dreams tonight."

"Then your intuition is the envy of many an archmage's most elaborate computations." Gale congratulated me. "Because the sooner we get these tadpoles out of our heads, the better. The less leverage a creature like that holds over us the safer we'll be."

"I entirely agree, but aren't you the same person who once advised us that we could risk dealing with a devil?" Wyll asked.

"Devils at least cleave to the letter of a bargain, even if they violate the spirit." Gale replied. "Which you know better than the rest of us is a thin protection indeed, given how very skilled they are at twisted words and twistier laws - but it's still something. Illithids, on the other hand?" Gale shivered. "Perhaps the single least trustworthy creatures in the entire planes. Eons of experience at manipulating sentient minds, thanks to the understanding of psychology only produced by having read - and consumed - such a vast number of sentient brains. Entirely inhuman and cold, no sentiment whatsoever. And not even the slightest trace of honor, either."

"A sage's wisdom indeed." Lae'zel nodded to him. "Ghaik have been known to pretend to honor, to consistency, for as long as it suits them - and then to unhesitatingly turn on and devour even the most loyal ally the instant they were no longer of use. There is only one cure for ghaik deceptions; to refuse to engage them at all, save with steel and fire."

"Hence our 'Guardian' friend making the approach he did - and with our ability to stay free-willed from the Absolute as his hostages." I agreed. "To proclude the obvious response."

"Hey, do you think that tentacled bastard can hear what we're saying right now?" Karlach asked worriedly.

"Depends on how closely he dares approach." Wyll said. "Unless he's able to read our minds at a distance."

"He seemed to have trouble seeing into mine." I noted. "But I'm not sure how protected I am, or how much any of the rest of you are."

"While a ghaik would normally need line-of-sight to use telepathy, we bear mind flayer tadpoles within us and that would potentially extend the range at which it could monitor us. But they cannot probe much deeper than surface thoughts unless they have you in their custody for a nontrivial period of time, or are willing to use enough haste to damage the mind being deep-probed." Lae'zel explained. "So planning against it will be problematic - it will not know everything we know, but we cannot actively scheme without those thoughts being at the surface of our minds."

"Well, unless it's trying the most insanely complicated double-bluff ever we already know at least one thing it doesn't want us to do, and a very likely reason why it doesn't want us to do it. And the instant our parasites are no longer a problem, it can't threaten to let the Absolute take us if we don't comply." I said. "At which point..." I trailed off knowingly.

Lae'zel smiled cruelly. "Indeed. Among the githyanki, a warrior does not become eligible to graduate from the creche and go to join the main body of our forces in the Astral Plane until after they personally bring the head of a ghaik to their superior. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to do that soon."

"Unless he decides to pre-empt that fate by just turning off our protection now." Shadowheart said.

"But then he's stranded by himself in the middle of a mountain pass with an outpost full of githyanki, with a druid's grove fully alerted against tadpole bearers on one end and the forces of the Absolute on the other." I shook my head. "And he wasn't stupid enough to believe at the end that I'd actually take his advice to abandon our desire to go to the creche. He knows where we're going, so if he hasn't pulled the plug yet-"

"But he needs the artifact as much as we do." Gale thought out loud. "More so, in fact - we can hope to escape susceptibility to the Absolute by having our tadpoles removed, but he's an illithid. He's permanently susceptible to whatever perversion of the illithid psionic network that the Absolute is using. And if we give the artifact to the githyanki they'll take it right back to their capital city of Tu'narath, hopelessly beyond his reach. There is no single place in the universe an illithid could less safely go than there. By all rights he should have pulled the plug on us the instant he knew we weren't going to be dissuaded from handing it over."

"Well, he hasn't." Karlach said practically. "Which means that either old tentacle face was lying out his arse about being able to control the artifact like that or else-" She shrugged.

"Or else we're missing something." Wyll agreed.

"Either way, we can't not go to the githyanki." Shadowheart agreed. "Mother Superior's potential wrath is one thing, but I'll face that any day over the prospect of having my mind snuffed out by the Absolute or eaten by a mind flayer."

"Well, it's almost dawn." I agreed, as I rose from where we were all sitting around our campfire. "Let's get moving now."

We were fairly high up in the mountains by this time, but rather than being the bleak the terrain was quite beautiful - light forests below the tree line, lining broad dirt trails that wound about and crossed each other as a majestic view of a mountain valley sloped away beneath us to our north. And shortly after breaking camp, before the sun had fully come over the horizon, we saw silouhettes ahead of us on the trail.

"Hail travelers!" I called out, using what I'd learned of Faerunian road courtesy. "How fares the way-" I broke off as the wind shifted and the charnel stench from them hit us. "What the hells?"

"Ghouls!" Shadowheart cried as the pack of humanoid figures ahead of us on the broke into a run, screeching like monsters. "Undead! Watch out for their touch, it paralyzes!"

Back when we'd fought those warlocks of Zariel who'd been hunting Karlach, one of them had first attempted to bribe me with a magic weapon he'd called the 'Sword of Justice'. I hadn't touched the damn thing because I didn't trust strange weapons picked up from fiend worshippers - well, not unless I was desperate and trapped on a crashing nautiloid, at least. But I'd finally had a chance to get it examined in the Grove and it turned out to legitimately be a holy, if minor, weapon intended to be carried by knights in the service of Tyr, the god of justice, so I'd switched over to using it instead of the Everburning Blade I'd looted from that cambion. I'd given that to Karlach, as it fit her style better than the mundane greataxe she'd been using.

And I thanked that decision afresh because the protective spell that the Sword of Justice could cast over its wielder several times a day helped deflect the blows of the ghouls, which in addition to the paralysis Shadowheart had warned me of also carried a risk of infection from their filthy, carrion-stained claws.

"Lady of Loss, ward thy servant! Turn Undead!" Shadowheart chanted, and over half of the ghouls charging us immediately flinched away and ran back down the path. I noticed that the ones that had been turned also glowed briefly with radiant energy, screeching out in pain as her divine power burned them.

"There's two more coming up the path! Big ones!" Wyll called out as he skewered the ghoul facing him with his rapier, then fired his eldritch blast at both of the advancing newcomers. The forked bolt slammed into them both, wounding them slightly and knocking them backwards.

Karlach, Lae'zel, and I made short work of the last few ghouls, while Gale stayed in reserve - our policy was that he not use his spells on anything but priority targets, given his limited number of them per day. And then we advanced to finish off the last two... well, they clearly weren't ghouls, seeing as how they stood seven feet tall. Some type of giant skeletons, wielding greatswords, but-

They both silently raised their blades and their hands glowed green with corrupt power, and something made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I glanced back-

"Lae'zel, Wyll! Rear guard!" I ordered immediately. The ghouls we'd killed were getting back up.

"Didn't we just kill these?" Wyll complained as he and Lae'zel formed a defense line behind, and Karlach and I closed up in front. Shadowheart fell back alongside Gale-

"Dammit, they're rallying the ones I turned as well!" she swore. "We're hemmed in on both sides!"

"Death Shepherds!" Gale said, as they finally drew close enough in the morning twilight for him to recognize. "Powerful- intelligent- re-animators! And we're surrounded by walking corpses!"

I gripped the Sword of Justice more firmly in both hands and concentrated on the Death Shepherds. Let's hope that my templar powers working last night weren't just because I was in a dream-

"Righteous Smite!" I cried, focusing my will, and I was shocked when instead of the area burst of cleansing magic-dispelling fire that that particular Templar talent produced, my greatsword lit up with white flame instead. I didn't have time to ponder this particular mystery right now, so I simply stepped into both advancing Death Shepherds and unleashed the maneuver that two-handed warriors in Thedas referred to as the Scythe, dashing forward almost ten feet in an eyeblink and tearing through both of them with a series of quick sweeping cuts. Whatever these particular creatures were they had at least some trades in common with the demonic, or Fade spirits, because the vastly increased damage that a Templar smite did to things of the Fade was clearly in play here. One of them shrieked and fell apart in an instant, the other fell back, terribly wounded, only to die to my follow-up attack.

Karlach and Shadowheart both ran forward as quickly as they could, to cover my flanks versus the ghouls that the Death Shepherds had rallied. A quickly muttered spell sheathed Shadowheart's mace in radiant damage, and Karlach's greatsword - formerly my greatsword - was already wreathed in fire. Between that and the cleansing flames still clinging briefly to my blade the ghouls facing us were torn apart like paper, and the burst of a Burning Hands spell behind us told us that Gale was lending his support to where Wyll and Lae'zel were rearguard. Soon enough, the battle was done.

"Well holy shit, first you help me kill fake paladins and now you turn out to be a real one!" Karlach laughed. "But why keep it under wraps?"

"What's a paladin?" I asked. "I'd thought people were just referring to some type of temple knight, but clearly not."

Shadowheart was just looking at me, as if she were uncertain to despair or to laugh, before she finally lapsed into the first genuine smile I'd seen from her since we'd started arguing over the Astral Prism. "Of course." she chuckled. "Last night I was ready to call you as stubborn as a paladin, and now it turns out you really are one. Of course you supported the githyanki's ownership claim to the artifact - your Oath required you to. I should have known."

"No, honestly." I said, puzzled. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

After an explanation as to exactly what paladins in Faerun really were, and how they could draw magical power purely from willpower and the depth of their devotion to their particular Oath, I began to realize what had happened. While normally even the most dedicated person of faith in Faerun would not simply spontaneously become a paladin - at least, not without a touch of divine inspiration - my Templar training had provided an initial framework of discipline and devotion that was similar enough in some ways to the normal paladin abilities to allow the channels of power that I had already opened in my brain to be re-opened by the ambient magics of Faerun and my own particularly stubbornly honorable nature in a more 'native' pattern. Or at least that's what Gale theorized - at length - from what partial clues were available.

"I've never before heard of a case of someone achieving paladinhood without consciously understanding what the particular terms of their Oath were." Shadowheart said. "But if it's been purely instinctual for you so far, then you should also be getting an instinctive sense of wrongness if you're about to do something that would betray it. Just- just go along with your instincts, for now, and if you have the opportunity try to consciously analyze the ethical code by which you've been living your life so far and distill it down to its few key elements, do that when you have time. That should be a good guideline to start with." She paused thoughtfully. "Also, you should start meditating daily. I can teach you that."

I nodded as I breathed deeply, trying to get back my wind. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off I could feel just how much stamina I'd channeled into that single burst of power. Not enough to debilitate me, but certainly enough that I didn't want to pop that off too casually. I'd need to start training more and build up my endurance.

"Well, hopefully this will come in useful later. For now, we had a very urgent errand to be getting back to." I finally decided, and we continued onward.

"But what were Death Shepherds even doing here?" Gale wondered. "You don't find them just casually laying around a graveyard! They were originally created by priests of Myrkul, god of death and undeath, and he's been a dead god ever since the Time of Troubles over a century ago!"

"Did they leave their secrets for anyone else to discover?" I indulged him as we walked along.

"They must have. But again, why would a necromancer randomly dump one here?" he thought.

"You turn loose a monster that indiscriminately attacks travelers on a path if you're attempting to harass or interdict all traffic." I said. "Who doesn't want anyone taking this road?"

"If you suspect my people, you are in error." Lae'zel said. "Necromancy is a branch of magic kept under the strictest control by githyanki. We study it only to know how better to combat the undead; to actually work with necrotic forces ourselves is a sin against Vlaakith."

"I was thinking more the only other player in this game we already knew was raising forces to cut off the Risen Road." I said.

"The Cult of the Absolute." Shadowheart realized. "What on Toril are they up to?"

"Wait!" Lae'zel said, suddenly stepping off the path to peer more closely at something. "This is one of our trail signs!" she continued eagerly, staring at a nearby rock reading something I couldn't see at all. Whatever the githyanki used for trail markers was certainly subtle indeed. "The creche is nearby! That way!" she pointed down a particular branch of the path, and we eagerly trotted along.

"Damn! Look at the size of that place!" Karlach said as we came over a small rise and looked down into the valley below. A majestic building was visible on the other side of the valley, with a run of cables running from a wooden platform several hundred feet below and in front of us all the way across the valley to a similar platform next to the building complex. The building was beautiful, a sprawling edifice of stone several stories high, although even from here I could see gaps smashed in the roof and parts of the complex overgrown with vines and moss.

"That's Rosymorn Monastery!" Wyll said, shocked. "I was here once, as a child! What's happened to it?"

"That was a temple?" I inquired.

"An ancient holy site of Lathander the Morninglord, god of light and renewal." Wyll said. "Pilgrims used to come here from all over western Faerun. Legend says that Lathander himself visited the mortal world here once, and left a bit of his grace behind to comfort his followers forevermore."

"Andraste's ashes." I swore. "Literally - there was a place called Haven back on Thedas, where the remains of the Prophet Andraste - the Bride of the Maker - had been laid to rest, and lost for centuries until finally rediscovered by the Hero of Ferelden. But-" I shook my head. "It was destroyed, burnt down to bedrock by a magical catastrophe unleashed by an undying monster named Corypheus. Which isn't germane now, except to provide context to my next question - what destroyed a sacred site like that to where the devout did not attempt to come and rebuild it?"

"The church of Lathander isn't as prominent as it used to be." Shadowheart said, "especially not in this region. The nearest large center of Lathanderite worship was in Elturel, and the Descent savaged them pretty hard. And this mountain pass almost entirely shuts down in the winter, and we're not that far into spring. If this happened only months ago and not years, there would have been a delay in even knowing it had happened, and between that and what happened in Elturel they won't have had time yet to assemble a large enough force for reclamation and rebuilding."

"Lae'zel, did the trail marker tell you exactly where the creche was?" I tried to grapple with a slowly rising suspicion.

"Yes." she said, somberly. "Across the valley."

"Let's get closer." I sighed. It took only a bit of muscle to unstick the mechanism, which had apparently been lying here unattended all winter, and Karlach and I manually cranked the windlass to first bring the cable car across the valley to us and then ride it back to a point near the monastery entrance."

"Travelstone." Gale noted as we stepped off the platform. "Just like the one we saw further up the mountain pass last night. So at least we can retrace our steps more easily, because if we go very much farther we might pass beyond the range limit for the ones back at the Grove."

As we marched under the eaves of the abandoned monastery I looked up more closely at the damage to the roof, noting the patterns. A set of distinctive claw marks along the edges of one particularly large rift in the stone confirmed my suspicion.

"That damage was done by a dragon." I pointed at it. "Now why would a dragon attack a temple complex like this, what with all the defenses it would have? Or be used to break open that particular point in the roof, right at a structural gap?" I rubbed my chin. "Perhaps because it had a rider, directing it to?"

"You suspect my people?" Lae'zel said hotly, before her expression turned subdued. "I- cannot deny the possibility." she reluctantly conceded. "Particularly since we should almost be on top of the creche by now, and there is nowhere but this monastery that it could be within."

"What are your people's creches, anyway?" I asked her. "I thought your people lived in the Astral Plane?"

"The astral plane is a timeless, unbounded eternal space." Lae'zel said. "And it can preserve life almost indefinitely. However, the same force that holds back the effects of time on mortal flesh also prevent maturation and growth. Our eggs must be hatched on other planes, the children raised and educated likewise. Only after a githyanki has grown to full adulthood and proven themselves in battle versus the ghaik may they be invited to leave the material plane behind and see the true flowering of our civilization in the Silver Void."

"Movement up ahead." Wyll broke into our thoughts. "Quietly now..."

As we drew near to what had been the monastery's main entrance we saw confirmation of our guess - the githyanki creche was here. Several githyanki warriors were herding along a trio of frightened halflings at crossbow point. Halflings that I could all see were wearing amulets like the one Brynna and Andrick had worn - badges of allegiance to the Absolute.

As we silently watched from the nearby shadows one of the halflings tried to break and run, only to be shot in the back as they fled by one of the guards. The other two, terrified beyond any resistance, were chivvied through the open front gate of the monastery - a pair of giant metal doors several stories high. With a deafening clang the doors swung shut behind the githyanki patrol and their prisoners, and then all was silence.

"Charming people." I said darkly.

"Those were servants of the Absolute. Enemies." Lae'zel insisted. "Warriors of the githyanki are not as 'sentimental' as you."

"Doesn't seem to be any sentries." Wyll said, carefully studying the nearby walls and stained glass windows. "They're not using the surface part of this complex."

"If there is an underground portion, that would have been deemed better for concealment and defensibility." Lae'zel agreed. "And the ruins up top would help retain the illusion of this place being uninhabited. Beneath notice."

"Shadowheart?" I asked her, nodding towards the corpse, and she drew forth the Amulet of Lost Voices.

"Who were you?" she asked.

"Corlis... novice of the Absolute..."

"Why did the githyanki take you prisoner?"

"Searching for their 'weapon'... questioning everyone they catch..."

"What were you originally doing?"

"Heading to Moonrise... answering the call..."

"Whose call? Why?"

"Gathering forces... for the General's army..."

The magic faded away, all questions exhausted.

"So after we're done here, we get to deal with an entire army being mustered at Moonrise." Karlach said. "Look, I'm a tall girl, but there's only so deep into the shit even I want to try wading!"

"Lae'zel, would your people be willing to deploy a military force against an army being raised by mind flayers and their servants?" I asked her.

"Of course!" she looked at me as if I were an idiot. "Only the revelation that the Astral Prism is a holy artifact stolen from the vaults of Vlaakith herself explains why they have not done it already!"

"Then hopefully after we help them end their search, they'll all be freed up for other projects - such as killing every mind flayer at Moonrise Towers." I nodded with satisfaction, before turning aside to Shadowheart. "And this one I'll admit I was scheming ahead on."

"Layers upon layers." she said with reluctant approval. "Well... let's find a way in, then."

The front gates were sealed, and I didn't think it was a good idea to try knocking. So we looked around and soon enough found a broken stained-glass window at floor level. Climbing in there put us inside an abandoned, half-looted winery... a winery that had a pack of drunken kobolds already busy looting the rest of it. Dealing with them was simple enough, if a bit challenging due to all the firewine they'd swallowed making them combustible if we hit them wrong, but we got through it with few enough wounds that a short rest put us back at full capacity.

I insisted on a search of the upper levels before we tried the basement, both because I wanted to make sure there wasn't anything behind us and sitting on the exit before we went down into any sublevels, and because I wanted a clearer picture of what had happened here. The next hour was a grim one indeed as we found more and more evidence that this had been a place of peace and sanctity, a genuine community of the devout and a haven for pilgrims, before a githyanki task force had assaulted it and mercilessly slaughtered everyone within.

We even found an abandoned tir'su disc in the rubble, a githyanki scout's report that had been cast aside after it was of no further use.

Location - good. Close to road, but secluded. Building looks well-fortified. Defence - minimal - seems to be a religious building. Space - ample, underground, hidden. Was easy enough to sneak in without being observed. Prime spot for a crèche. Suggest immediate occupation. - M'lar Rih'al.

"All of these innocent people dead." I swore. "Simply because it was convenient to seize an already-existing structure. They couldn't even simply find an abandoned patch of ground and build their own dwelling - and if they were coming down from the astral plane they could have potentially landed anywhere!"

Lae'zel didn't even try defending this one. I wasn't sure if that's because she actually felt shame over it, or because she did approve of her people's ruthlessness but already knew that I never would. She just nodded, her expression taut, and moved off with Gale to search another part of the ruins.

"I understand the reasoning behind what we're doing here." Shadowheart whispered to me quietly, "and it still makes sense - but do not even hope to make friends with these githyanki, even if we can turn them loose on our enemies. When we first met on the nautiloid, I told you how uncertain they were as allies."

"It's odd. I can't imagine Lae'zel being so quick to commit atrocities like these-" I began.

"I can." Shadowheart said. "Not because she'd enjoy it, I'll agree with you there. But because her loyalty - and her fear of her superiors - would compel her to obey orders even if they appalled her." Her face briefly twisted. "We have that much in common, at least."

"You certainly weren't wrong about githyanki in general." I agreed grimly, staring at the skeletons lying on the floor that months ago had been living monks. "But we are still desperate and still rapidly running out of options. So what else can we do?"

"Nothing that I've thought of, or else I'd have already suggested it." she conceded. "What's your plan in case they betray us?"

"In order of preference - warp well away from here using the travelstone network, fight our way out, and die." I shrugged. "That last one is really not plan A, but if we have no choice anyway then at least a clean death is preferable to being taken by the Absolute."

"Agreed." Shadowheart nodded soberly. "Whatever happens..."

"... we do it together." I nodded back, and we exchanged brief smiles.

"Gale?" I heard Lae'zel ask. "What is that?"

We all hurried over, to find the two of them staring up at an elaborate golden mechanical contraption on the highest point of the monastery's roof.

"Wait, that's not githyanki technology?" Karlach asked. "Because the only place I've seen anything like that is some of the fiendish siege artillery in Avernus. That's certainly not fiend work, though."

"No, it's part of the original monastery." Wyll said. "I remember seeing it the last time I was here. I'd thought it was just ornamental - an abstract statue."

"That's no statue. That is clearly an arcano-magical channelling system." Gale nodded in thought. "And from the size of it, it's intended to focus a tremendous amount of energy. Where that energy would come from, though, I've no idea. I'd need a closer look but from what I can see down here that's just a projector - there's no generators here."

"A weapon?" Lae'zel wondered. "One built by those who originally inhabited here? But why would my people just ignore it, if it were so powerful?"

"Perhaps they mistook it for a statue." I sighed, knowing that I couldn't stall around up here for much longer no matter how much I wished to. "Come on. Let's head down."

You should listen to your instincts. the Guardian's voice sounded mentally in all of our heads. Going to the githyanki will only lead you to disaster.

"He's here?" Lae'zel swore, looking frantically around as she drew her sword. "So close to a creche of my people? This is a bold ghaik indeed!"

I tapped one finger to the side of my head. "Remember what you said earlier about his using the tadpole connection in our head to increase his working range? That's almost certainly what he's doing."

"Yes." Lae'zel relaxed. "You are right. He would not dare enter the creche along with us, not unless he was truly mad."

At least leave one of your number behind so that if the rest of you die, your 'Withers' may be induced to resurrect them! the Guardian suggested.

"Any volunteers to remain here, alone and vulnerable, so the mind flayer that's stalking us can leap out and haul you away?" I asked sarcastically, and everyone grimly chuckled.

And so you adamantly insist on rushing headling to your doom. When this blows up in your faces, I will speak to you again and you will hopefully listen more closely to my advice in the future - assuming any of us have a future! the Guardian fumed, and then went silent.

Eventually we found a way back down to the ground floor of the monastery, inside the sealed main gate this time, and headed down the cellar stairs from there. As soon as we passed through the doors leading to the catacombs underneath the monastery, the appearance of ruin and abandon fell away. The corridors were immaculately clean, the furnishings free of dust, and the lamps and braziers were all lit and well-maintained. And the guard post at the foot of the stairs, manned by a squad of githyanki warriors, told us why.

"Istik!" the leader of the guards challenged us as we drew near. "State your business, quickly!"

"I am no istik." Lae'zel said hotly, stepping up alongside me. "I am Lae'zel of Creche K'llir, and I and my associates have urgent business here!"

"I wasn't informed of any reinforcements arriving." the sergeant of the guard challenged us. "Who authorized this?"

"By protocol, any warrior of the gith must be admitted to any creche if they are in need of the zaith'isk." Lae'zel said. "Take us to the ghustil, quickly!"

"The zaith'isk?" the sergeant said alarmedly, recoiling away from us as if we were covered in a noxious substance. "You are infected? How long?"

"Long enough we really don't want to wait much further." I broke in impatiently. "Could you please direct us to your decontamination or cleansing or whatever?"

"Down this hall to the central junction, first left, left again." she replied curtly. "Don't stray from the route and don't try anything. The eyes of Creche Y'llek will be upon you."

"Thank you." I said politely, and we marched off. We weren't provided with an escort, but we passed enough githyanki - both adults and adolescents still in training - in the hallway that it wasn't much of a security lapse on their part anyway. I entirely believed her admonition that if we tried sneaking off anywhere, we'd regret it.

"I'd have expected more of a reaction than this to non-githyanki entering here." I said to Lae'zel. Because while we were certainly drawing curious looks, there wasn't any real alarm.

"Istik - outlanders - are sometimes hired as mercenaries when force augmentation is needed." Lae'zel said. "It is not that common to see them in the halls of a githyanki creche, but it is still enough of an occurrence to not cause immediate suspicion. In addition, you are being escorted by a githyanki warrior."

"Plan B is looking less viable all the time." Shadowheart noted quietly as we headed deeper and deeper into the underground catacombs, once a deep shelter and storage for monks and now a githyanki military base. "How's A looking?"

I checked my attunement to the travelstone network and my eyebrows went up with alarm. "I can't- something's blocking it."

"Dammit!" Gale swore. "I should have thought of that! Githyanki are an interplanar military force, and fight an enemy capable of astral and ethereal travel. Of course one of their bases would have wards against unauthorized planar travel... and those same wards must be interfering with the travelstone."

"Well, fuck." Karlach swore.

And so you finally begin to realize how thoroughly you have erred. the Guardian said smugly.

While you're busy patting yourself on the back, ask yourself why you didn't think to warn us of this planar warding stuff before we walked right into it. I mentally replied. We're not infallible, but apparently neither are you.

"Well at least that shut him up." Wyll muttered, as we drew up to an intersection dominated by a massive painting. "Who is that?"

"Vlaakith." Lae'zel said, bowing to the image. "Our undying liege, both queen and god, all glory to her eternal name."

"That's got to be disquieting for you." Shadowheart said to me.

"What, the idea of a goddess descending to the mortal plane to lead her people directly?" I said. "Actually, no. The prophet Andraste did that very thing on Thedas only a few centuries before I was born. Although exactly how divine she was before her ascension to the Maker's side is still a matter of debate. It's established historical fact that she was a miraculous existence, though."

Shadowheart turned to look at me, her eyebrows raised. "I thought you said Thedas had been abandoned by the gods!"

"Because Andraste was betrayed by one of her faithful and her mortal form was slain." I said. "That was what induced the Maker to turn his back on us, even if the Chantry continues to beseech his return."

"This is not relevant. We stand on the brink of a cure!" Lae'zel insisted.

"Agreed." I said, fighting down my hesitation. I took one last look at the picture of a tall regal githyanki - even if her face was oddly pale, her features somehow sharper and drier, and her eyes a solid onyx black instead of being just eyes like Lae'zel's - and we went down the hallway to the door leading to the base's medical section, where the ghustil - chief physician - would see to our treatment. The infirmary had several soldiers on guard or acting as orderlies, and the beds contained several more wounded here for treatment. One of the soldiers curtly informed us that the ghustil was in her laboratory, and pointed us towards the door. We headed to the rear of the infirmary and let ourselves in.

"Vertical incision from pineal eye to end of notochord. Intestinal colouration consistent with samples 231 to 259. That's it. I'm very close to... I just need to... yes, that's it." she muttered to herself, staring into some type of apparatus where magical fields levitated a partially-dissected mind flayer parasite inside a transparent containment chamber. A quick adjustment of her hands on one of the controls rotated the parasite slightly, and she peered more closely at it though an elaborate series of magnifying lenses clamped to the monocle she wore over one eye-

"Ghustil." Lae'zel said, bowing slightly in respect. "We have urgent need of your services."

"Have one of my assistants handle it, I'm busy." she snapped, not even turning around.

"We bear mind flayer parasites." Lae'zel insisted. "We seek the zaith'isk, for cleansing."

The ghustil snapped upright and turned around as quickly as if we'd set her lab coat on fire. "Parasites? Infected? Which one of you?" she peered at us intently.

"All of us." I said.

"When was the implantation done?" she queried.

"At least four days ago." I replied.

She looked at us even more intently. "Four days? You should be showing the beginning of the skull mutations, as well as severe metabolic distress. But you look as clean as if you were still on the first day."

"Our parasites were altered, by some type of unknown magic." Lae'zel explained. "Can you cleanse us?"

"Infected for that long, but not the slightest visible symptom. Either your tadpoles are special, or you are. And we certainly must find out which." She nodded. "I am Ghustil Stornugoss of Creche Y'llek, and as per protocol I will grant you cleansing by zaith'isk. But you must do exactly as I say."

"Of course, ghustil." Lae'zel said. "What do you require?"

"For you to get in the zaith'isk as quickly as possible." Stornugoss replied. "Time is of the essence."

Lae'zel immediately stepped forward, and I laid a gentle hand on her arm. "Wait." I said, and she turned to glower at me in suppressed rage. "If there's a risk, I want to see it first before I lead any of you into it."

"I am githyanki. This is Vlaakith's purity, distilled to its finest essence! Do not deny me my rightful place here!!" Lae'zel insisted.

"Lae'zel... please." I asked her simply. "I don't-"

"I don't have all day to wait for you to make up your minds!" Ghustil Stornugoss demanded impatiently. "All right, fine! The big-mouthed istik goes first! Now get in!"

The zaith'isk was a frightening-looking device indeed. A chair made out of eldritch metal, subtly wrong in its proportions, and surmounted by a large, frightening-looking spiked device that would go over the head of anyone who sat in it - a device that very vaguely reminded me of things I'd seen on the nautiloid, as if someone had reproduced one of the nauseating living machines of the mind flayers in astral steel.

Ghustil Stornugoss moved to a nearby control panel, her spasm of impatience now replaced by a coolly intent scholar about to conduct an interesting examination. "Do not fear. My experience in operating this machine is unparalleled. There is nothing on any plane stronger than a zaith'isk for dealing with unwanted afflictions."

"Do I need to do anything in particular?" I asked her.

"You must focus on the parasite at all times." Ghustil Stornugoss said intently. "The parasite will attempt to evade the cleansing, to hide within your mind. If the zaith'isk seeks it out blindly, cerebral damage could occur. Concentrate your will - remain aware of precisely where your infection is striking. Guide the zaith'isk to it."

"I'm ready." I said, taking a deep breath.

Wordlessly, she activated the controls and the zaith'isk leapt into operation. Coruscating fields of magical energy snapped into existence around my head, then began to bear down. The agony was immense- I swore I could feel my skull deforming-

"Concentrate!" she insisted.

I focused my will into a spear of silverite and imagined myself striking deep into my own mind, impaling the hiding parasite with a single clean blow. The parasite writhed, as if it could run away, could burrow deeper-

"Yes! Yes! Keep going!" Ghustil Stornugoss said eagerly. "Increasing intensity... now!"

The energy fields pushing into my head became spikes, daggers, a crown of thorns. My body locked tight in a single endless spasm. The zaith'isk was a force in my mind, a hungry searching entity, wanting to feed-

I remembered how I'd used the tadpole to push the minds of other True Souls, and started to draw upon the same mental trick. If I could get the tadpole to feed me power, I could use that connection to follow it back, to lead the zaith'isk to the source of that power and let it drain the tadpole dry... the concentration it took to achieve this was unbelievable-

"Something's wrong!" I dimly heard Shadowheart saying in the background. "He's in agony-!"

"Silence!" the ghustil demanded. "I need all my concentration for this!" I glimpsed her intently adjusting the controls out of the corner of my eye. "Prepare yourself! FInal stage in three... two... one... now!"

The world fell away and I floated in a black void of agony. I was horrified- I could feel myself ebbing away, as the parasite only grew stronger. As if it were evolving-

Hawke! the Guardian's voice broke into my mind. You are on the verge of death! Now will you accept my aid?

I sent back a mental image of both my middle fingers. It probably wasn't lying about me being in severe danger right now, I'd give it that much, but I still-

"That's it, we're almost there!" the ghustil gloated. "The zaith'isk never fails!"

I felt the device's lust for the parasite, and for every single part of me that had ever been touched by its presence. Horror descended upon me as I realized that the zaith'isk was not going to cure me of the parasite, but to consume me- and the tadpole flared in response, as a deeply buried magic - ancient, unfamiliar, rotten - surged forth from it, trying to protect itself.

And now you know the truth. the Guardian said with grim satisfaction. The githyanki never had a cure for the parasite. The zaith'isk is meant to kill any githyanki who submits to it, while simultaneously subjecting both host and parasite to a psionic mind probe to destruction for purposes of gathering intelligence. They only teach their young warriors that this is a cleansing in order to remove their fear of infection when fighting my kind... and to trick infected warriors into willingly delivering themselves to their final decontamination, instead of having to hunt them down. And now, Hawke, I will ask you one final time - will you accept my aid?

I felt the truth of the mind flayer's words - not because I had any trust in my telepathic contact with it, but because it made too damn much sense. if the githyanki had really had a cure for mind flayer infection, they could have sold zaith'isk rides to all the other races victimized by mind flayers for as much wealth, as many allies, as they could possibly need. Ideal logistics to better prosecute their eternal war. And since the githyanki were not stupid, and were willing to use other races as mercenaries when useful, then the fact that they did not do this meant that they did not actually have a cure to sell. And their teaching their own warriors the lie that they did have one would serve precisely the purpose the Guardian laid out - to encourage infected githyanki not to hide their infection from their superiors or flee, but to trustingly submit themselves for decontamination... and be effciently purged before they could threaten the rest of the githyanki war machine.

Just this once! I told it, with the greatest of reluctance. But I'd shoved my own head into this trap, and now I had only one way out.

The Guardian's answer was a sudden flood of power around my mind - not penetrating into it, not violating my thoughts, but shielding my mind from the psionic flensing of the zaith'isk. With another surge of power he contemptuously upset the balance of the delicate mechanisms, and the entire machine shorted out around me and spat sparks as the whole process crashed to a halt.

"What?" Ghustil Stornugoss cried as all of her instruments went dead and the zaith'isk crashed to a halt. "What happened? What did you do?"

"Didn't... do anything." I mumbled weakly as I pulled the apparatus off my head and sat up. "Something went wrong."

"I can see that, you simpleton!" she raged, coming over to kneel slightly down and peer in my eyes intently. "And your parasite?"

"It's dead." I lied, keeping my best poker face up. "I felt it die."

"Then at least that much worked." she said. "But that damned feedback has ruined the apparatus! It will take me hours to repair it - I'll have to study the logs, try to figure out how to compensate for that effect in the future-" She breathed deeply in and out, calming herself down. "But at least I got useful data about these altered parasites, new data." She nodded. "Find quarters for these istik and yourself, warrior." she said to Lae'zel. "I'll want the rest of you back in here as soon as the zaith'isk is ready to resume operation."

We left the infirmary, and as soon as we were in an unoccupied section of hallway Lae'zel grabbed my arm and whispered to me urgently. "Something was wrong! I felt your pain - the zaith'isk was killing you!"

I realized the Guardian had spoken only to me the last time, as opposed to its usual policy of broadcasting to all of us. I tried to figure out how I could possibly explain to Lae'zel, in only a few brief words, that her people had been lying to her the entire time-

"The ghustil must have sabotaged it." Lae'zel cut me off. "Or someone else did. There is a traitor in this base. We must report this to the commanding officer at once."

I knew there had been no sabotage, no traitor. That the zaith'isk had only been working as intended. But Lae'zel's remark also reminded me that I'd had two objectives in mind coming here, and her suggestion was a perfect route to achieving the second one as expeditiously as possible.

"All right. Let's go." I told her, and our group headed towards the heart of the githyanki creche.

---

Author's Note: I had originally intended for a chapter or two more to progress between the Emperor revealing Hawke's paladinhood and Hawke figuring it out himself, but then I remembered the undead encounter happens right there in the mountain pass. So of course he's going to bust out the smite there, and that will tip off his friends. Plus, yes, his powers get to tweak and evolve a bit to be more Faerunian. This is a fanfic, after all.

But hey, at least it helped Shadowheart understand why he went against her re: the Astral Prism. I mean, paladins gotta paladin. Everybody knows that.

Oh, and why didn't I mention Hawke switching to the Sword of Justice earlier? Because I forgot to, so I put it in now.

As for the 'planar wards' - in-game you can't use the fast travel system in combat or in hostile areas, but the entire githyanki creche is a hostile area even when you're just walking in for the first time and even before you've aggro'ed the base. So yet again I ride the USS Make Shit Up to fill in.

 

[cliffc999]

Our dramatic intention to rush into the heart of the creche and beard the kith'rak in their lair ran into the prosaic reality that Lae'zel had never been to Creche Y'llek before and so didn't actually know her way around. We took a wrong turning and ended up in the training hall instead of the commander's office, where we arrived just in time to see a class of young githyanki - if they'd been human, I'd have said they were teenagers of approximately fourteen to sixteen years - all standing around the edge of the exercise floor watching two more of their number fight a training duel with daggers as a bearded, scarred instructor stood nearby as referee.

"Why aren't they wearing armor?" I asked Lae'zel curiously. One of the two combatants was clearly more skilled and aggressive than the other, who was concentrating frantically on an all-out defense and very likely to lose at the rate he-

The victor of the duel brushed aside his opponent's last desperate attempt at a parry and closed in for the winning thrust... and most of our jaws dropped when he did not pause the blow at the last second, as would be normal practice in weapons training, but unhesitatingly sank his blade into his opponent's chest right up the hilt. It was a textbook killing strike, a thrust into the opponent's solar plexus angled sharply upwards to bring the short blade directly underneath the tip of the sternum and into the heart from below. The complete lack of reaction from the instructor, or from most of the dead githyanki's classmates, told me that this was not a case of someone turning a sparring match into a murder but had instead been the intended result all along.

"The sa'varsh will order an armorless death-duel when it is intended that a weakling be culled from the class quickly." Lae'zel said softly. "I have been in two such matches myself."

"The best student matched against the worst, for a foregone conclusion?" I said tonelessly. "Why doesn't the instructor just do it himself?"

"The sa'varsh has already learned the lesson." Lae'zel said matter-of-factly.

"Which one were you?" Shadowheart asked frostily. "The one expected to win, or the one expected to die?"

"Both." Lae'zel surprised us.

"Istik!" the instructor called out to us harshly. "If you're going to stand and gawk, then make yourself useful and drag out this carrion off the floor so I don't have to waste the time of any of my students doing it! Just toss it over there in the corner for later."

My hand twitched with a temptation to ask the sa'varsh if he really wanted to show his class what a death-duel looked like, but I forced it down and wordlessly went to pick up the dead boy and bear him away. Behind me I could dimly hear the instructor go back into a brutal harangue about how the enemy deserved no mercy, that hesitation was death, et cetera, et cetera. I looked at the dead boy I was carrying - the sa'varsh had proven that githyanki could grow beards, if they wanted, but this boy wasn't even clean-shaven. He'd barely begun to sprout a single hair on his chin...

"This is common, among githyanki. Deliberately killing the weakest ones in a class to both harden and encourage the others." I questioned Lae'zel as I laid the dead boy down. A tir'su disk fell out of his pocket as I did that, and I decided that I'd rather take it myself then let any of the classmates who'd cheered his death loot it.

"Routine, yes." Lae'zel said. "We are the multiverse's first line of defense against the Grand Design, the ongoing illithid plot to enslave all sapient life everywhere. Weakness is death, for us and uncounted others."

"Maker help me, even the qunari didn't take it this far." I swore viciously. "They culled the weakest from their warriors, yes, but they at least them live to be reassigned to other duties! An army still needs food, clothing - everything that's made, or grown - it's why a city under siege still shelters and feeds refugees and farmers in addition to soldiers! After the war is won you still need the people who work, and not just the people who fight, or else you've won only starvation!"

"I-" Lae'zel cut herself off. "Am no kith'rak, or even sergeant. Matters of large-scale logistics were not within my training. I- cannot judge the accuracy of your statement."

"We need to talk." I told the group, as we found an unoccupied room to step into. "Because my plan-" I sighed. "My plan took into account a certain measure of githyanki ruthlessness, and what I thought was a generous measure at that, but I am beginning to realize I might have significantly underestimated it." I glared intently at Lae'zel. "One shout from you can bring half the guards in this base down on us, and if you do that before I've finished talking you might very well ruin everything. Do I have your word to hear me out first?"

"I am no fool. You are proposing to abandon our deal." Lae'zel said hotly. "But you are no fool either, and if you thought you did not have a reason that would convince me you would simply have had one of the group strike me from behind as unhesitatingly as you had me assassinate that goblin when we were rescuing the druid." She breathed deeply. "And you have already proven several times that you can often see farther ahead than I. Very well, make your case."

"There was no sabotage of the zaith'isk - which I would have told you if I'd had time." I opened. "According to the Guardian, at least." I explained everything he told me about the zaith'isk.

"Then why didn't the ghustil react when you said your parasite was dead, when she knew that wasn't supposed to happen?" Shadowheart inquired as she turned a wary eye to the door.

"Because she was testing for whether or not I'd figured out that we were being lied to." I said. "If we had, she'd have had nothing for it but to call the guards - and it's much easier for her to simply go along with the pretense and have us stay here all unsuspecting while she plans her next move." I said. "The point is, while I accepted its aid getting me free of the zaith'isk because I realized the damn device was going to kill me, and I could see the logic behind its words, that still didn't mean I necessarily believed him. I don't need Lae'zel to remind me that taking a mind flayer's word for anything is idiotic."

"But the ruthlessness you saw in the training hall has made you more willing to believe the ghaik's version of events." Lae'zel said. "Why? That does not in any way prove deception!"

"No, but it does prove that githyanki policy considers even their own childrens' lives as expendable commodities." I pointed out. "Which certainly lends more weight to the Guardian's interpretation. And Lae'zel, I remind you that our compromise for me to hand over the artifact willingly required you to be able to guarantee that we wouldn't simply be killed off after they no longer needed us. Can you still guarantee that?"

"I-but you cannot know this betrayal will happen!" Lae'zel pleaded desperately.

"I can suspect, but you're right, at present we can't know." I said. "And there's still a possible chance for us to get cured - even if the zaith'isk is a lie, Vlaakith is a goddess. And if we hand the artifact back, we're going to do her a very large favor. Halsin said that powerful enough magic could cure even our special tadpoles, it's just that he doesn't have magic powerful enough. But what's more powerful than a divine miracle?"

"So we take the artifact and hand it over anyway?" Wyll said. "Then what do you need to ask us?"

"If you're willing to bet your lives on it." I said. "Because if we try to hand it over to Vlaakith herself and they do decide to pay us off with a knife, then we are not getting out of that alive. It would take a divine miracle just for us to hope to escape." I sighed. "The ghustil has almost certainly told the gate guards we're not allowed to leave, but if we can fight our way past that one squad and just get outside the door then we can use the travelstones to warp safely away. But if we go to the commander and commit to the plan of trying to trade the artifact to Vlaakith for a miracle cure, then that's all or nothing. She either agrees to cure us or it's certain death when they take the artifact from us anyway." I nodded to them. "And there's only one artifact to protect us, so we can't even split the party and let the ones who want to leave go their own way. But we can still vote, as a team. Majority rules, whether it's go or stay. If there's a tie-" I shrugged. "Flip a coin?"

"Go." Gale said immediately, his face pale with sweat. "I- I can't risk it, I'm sorry. If I get killed here- we should go."

"Stay, of course." Lae'zel immediately followed.

"Shit." Karlach swore. "What do you think we should do, boss?"

"That's why I'm voting last." I said. "So my opinion doesn't influence anyone else's."

"Then... ah, fuck it. Stay, I guess." Karlach shrugged.

"Go." Wyll said. "Moonrise Towers might be as suicidal odds as here, but at least on that route we need only trust ourselves - not the most ruthless god-queen of a very ruthless race."

"Stay." Shadowheart shocked us all. "Because even if he hasn't said, I already know how Hawke is going to vote." She turned to me with a rueful smile. "And we promised we'd do it together."

"We certainly did." I sighed. "And she's right, I was also going to choose 'Stay'."

"Oh Mystra save us, I really hope this works." Gale moaned nauseously. I was wondering at his sudden fright now, given that I'd already seen his courage in several fights, but- well, he was a scholar, not a soldier, and this sort of desperate leaping into the jaws of death and hoping we could dodge the teeth we were about to be doing would scare even most soldiers.

What are you doing?!? the Guardian's voice suddenly roared in our heads, as panicked as it was enraged.

Whether this works or not, we'll be getting rid of you. I thought back at it icily.

You are mad! You are utterly mad! I will- it broke off.

Yes, what exactly are you going to do? I challenged it. We're standing in the middle of an entire creche full of heavily armed githyanki, who will all unhesitatingly murder you the instant they even suspect you're here. And even if you withdraw the artifact's protection, the Absolute taking us over simply guarantees those same githyanki will slaughter us. That's just death, and we've already decided we're willing to face it as an alternative to keeping these damned tadpoles in our brains. You should never have let us walk in here. Because once we did, there went all your last options.

Vlaakith will betray you. the Guardian insisted. She lies as easily as you breathe. She has been lying for her entire existence.

"Blasphemy!" Lae'zel shouted furiously.

"Indoor voice!" Shadowheart hissed at her frantically.

"Hawke! Let us delay no longer! Every second this insolent lying ghaik continues to bedevil us is an eternity too long!" Lae'zel insisted.

If you want to run, you aren't bound by the majority vote. I thought at the Guardian. That would re-enslave you to the Absolute, but I hope to have the githyanki god-queen sending an army to help kill it soon. It's not much of a chance of survival for you, but it's still greater than the zero you'll have staying here. Maybe you should take it.

Impressive. the Guardian thought back, strangely calm. Cunning, ruthless, exquisitely logical - you used your emotional distractions to divert me from perceiving your true scheme until after I was no longer in any position to interfere with it. Well done, Hawke. You remind me... of me. it finished knowingly.

"Ignore him." Shadowheart urged me. "And let's get this over with."

Go. the Guardian said quietly. See what happens. By day's end you will either all be corpses or you will have needed me to save your lives yet another time. And although I obviously would have preferred a different course of events than this, one remaining chance is still better than none. But now I shall withdraw for a time. Even your limited intellects can likely figure out the reason why.

And with a sense of finality, the Guardian's presence in our minds vanished.

The arcane art of asking a passing githyanki for directions had us pointed down the proper hallway to the commander's office, but also produced the warning that a Ch'r'ai - an agent of Queen Vlaakith's Inquisition and acting on her authority - was also present at the creche, having been sent to take charge of the search for the artifact, and that it would really be a good idea to lay low until he was gone if at all possible.

"Welcome news," Lae'zel said as we walked along, "even if I never in my life thought I would ever say such a thing about the prospect of confronting an inquisitor. A kith'rak would likely not have the seniority to even try contacting Tu'narath directly."

"Here we are." I said as we drew up on the door. As it was already ajar, we simply opened it and went in.

A squad of githyanki warriors were standing at rigid attention as a female githyanki in armor resembling Lae'zel's bowed before a bald male githyanki dressed in elaborate silver-plated armor.

"-the latest batch of cultists know nothing of the Astral Prism." she was saying insistently. "They were just trying to find Moonrise. They all head there - we have drafted plans to assault the tower! We are ready to fight, ch'r'ai! We will sift the tower's ashes for the missing artifact, if you would give us the word!"

"Quiet." the inquisitor said with a soft, catlike menace. "Stop wasting time with military diversions and find the Astral Prism, Therezzyn. My patience falters."

"Yes, ch'r'ai." she said, coming to an even more rigid attention than her soldiers, before turning to the other githyanki in the room. "You heard him! Go! Redouble your efforts!" I saw her flush with shame as not a single one of them moved an inch.

"Do as she says." the inquisitor said quietly. "She remains your kith'rak... for now." The soldiers broke into a scramble for the door and we stepped aside to let them out. The inquisitor turned away from the creche's commander contemptuously and headed towards a large mirror-like device on the far wall-

"Were you looking for this?" I said loudly, holding up the Astral Prism on my palm.

"Who dares-?" the inquisitor spat as they both swiveled to face me, before his eyes went wide at seeing what I held. "The Astral Prism! You have found it!"

"Ch'r'ai." Lae'zel said, stepping forward and bowing. "I am Lae'zel, warrior of creche K'llir, and these are istik I have... contracted with. We have heard of your mission here, and we bring you it's fulfillment."

"So you have." he murmured as he drew near. "Oh, so you have." He turned to the kith'rak. "How fortunate some of us are, to have the solutions to their problems just walk in the door on their own." He turned back to me. "Hand it over. Now." he demanded.

I unhesitatingly placed it in his outhrust hand... and it quite predictably flared with power and leaped back into mine. "That's the problem." I explained to him. "It's bonded to me somehow. I'll need to speak to your superior about this... and several other critical matters. Such as the mind flayer invasion Faerun is currently suffering."

"Hrm." the inquisitor narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and I felt his magic briefly brush against the artifact and my mind before withdrawing. "Lae'zel said she was contracted to you, not that you were in her service. Don't think to use this to hold out for too much of a reward, mercenary."

"I am entirely willing to tell you and your liege everything that has happened, and to surrender this artifact to her custody as soon as I can. Lae'zel has already translated the most elementary of the tir'su script on the Prism - we know who it belongs to."

"Very well." the inquisitor decided swiftly. "Follow me." He turned to the kith'rak. "Seal the gateway behind us after we pass through, and do not re-open it under any circumstances without my or my deputy's specific authorization."

"As you command, ch'r'ai." she bowed to him, and then hurried over to the mirror-device on the far wall. She withdrew something from her pouch and fitted it to a socket on the device's frame, and the mirror suddenly glowed golden with magic.

"Enter the portal." the inquisitor ordered us, and we did so. The other side of the portal brought us out onto an elaborate stone walkway over a deep chasm.

"The monastery's treasure chamber, accessible only to their highest priests and guarded by their clever little magics." the inquisitor said matter-of-factly as he led us down the walkway towards the large door at its far end. "Y'llek forces claimed the treasure, of course - gold, some amusing trinkets, but little else - but had no further use for the chamber itself until I arrived and appropriated it for my secure quarters and working spaces."

He nodded to the guards standing outside his chamber and they pulled open the doors for us. Entering within showed us some empty shelves and looted chests still carelessly stuffed into the corners, his bed and personal effects set up in one corner, and a desk and a map table in the other. A large device made of astral steel, like a metal starburst low to the floor and with a glowing lens floating in the center, lay in the exact center of the chamber.

The inquisitor stood at the peak of the starburst raised one hand, which flared briefly with power. The glowing lens shone brightly in turn, and suddenly a flare of white-gold power erupted up from its heart and formed into the light-image of a githyanki woman, projected over ten feet tall, staring imperiously down at us from a white face with onyx eyes surmounted by an elaborate crown-

"Vlaakith gha'g shkath zai!" the inquisitor intoned hieratically, kneeling down and bowing his head.

"My queen!" Lae'zel gasped in awe. "Shkath zai!" she chanted, immediately assuming the same position.

"You are permitted to look upon me." the image of Vlaakith orated imperiously, her amplified voice echoing back from all the corners of the room. "You are invited to kneel."

The absolute last thing I was going to do was be needlessly cheeky with any strange royalty, let alone the god-queen of this arrogant, proud, and ruthless a race - and especially not when I needed her help. I came down immediately on one knee, in a formal genuflection worthy of Empress Celene's court in Val Royeaux, and all my friends behind me assumed similar poses.

Vlaakith's image loomed forward, peering closely down at Lae'zel's quivering expression. "These attendants you keep... you have taught them well. My child. My Lae'zel." she said with faint kindness and a brief, toothy smile.

"You know me, Deathless Queen?" Lae'zel blurted.

"Urlon of K'liir speaks most highly. As did Al'chaia before him." Vlaakith informed her proudly as she drew herself upright again. My eyes narrowed in suspicion, and I kept my face aimed downwards at the floor so Vlaakith wouldn't see. Vlaakith's power as a goddess - or even just githyanki psionics - could have given her Lae'zel's name from her surface thoughts, or the inquisitor could have sent that name to Vlaakith through whatever mental message he'd channeled through this communications device to request his queen's attention in the first place. And Vlaakith could reasonably be expected to know the names of her creche commanders, even from memory. But for her to have already reviewed Lae'zel's service record specifically, she would have had to have known Lae'zel was a factor in these matters before her personal agent had reported our finding the artifact today-

Vlaakith's gaze shifted to the rest of us. "I can sense what afflicts you all. You seek purity. I may yet grant it." I went taut with eagerness at hearing Vlaakith confirm that she could cure us-

She turned the weight of her gaze to me. "Istik. You bear that which is ours. But are you friend, or are you thief?"

"I come as a supplicant." I admitted matter-of-frankly. "We did not steal your treasure, but we wish to return it - after we can do so without immediately forfeiting our mind to the Absolute through our parasites." I looked up at her, and made the most respectful request I had ever made in my life. "If you grant us your purity, then we are freed of any need to remain near this." I held up the Astral Prism for her to view. "And at this juncture, you are our only hope."

"Well spoken, and well reasoned." Vlaakith nodded. "Your will to survive is worthy of any child of Gith. But I cannot accept my sacred artifact from your hands at this juncture, because it is corrupted!" she thundered. "And you will cleanse it for me."

My eyes opened wide as I suddenly realized exactly how someone had been following us even into the heart of the githyanki creche.

"There is someone inside." Vlaakith confirmed. "Their mind is warped - broken - a blight." she spat contemptuously. "They are an agent of the Grand Design. Sent to sabotage the Astral Prism - our last line of defense against the return of the Illithid Empire of old. As long as they live, the Prism is compromised. Kill them!" she demanded.

"Your Majesty, nothing would give me greater pleasure." I said to her with the utmost sincerity.

"Use the planecaster's power to send them into the artifact. Vlaakith ordered the inquisitor. "Be swift and merciless to that which you find within, no matter what deception it tries to beguile you with, no matter what guise it assumes to deceive your gaze. Cut out its lying tongue, and then claim its head!" she ordered us. "Do this, and I will cleanse you and your allies. And for Lae'zel - ascension."

"Ascension!" Lae'zel whispered to herself in religious awe. "An honor gained, a burden borne..."

"They are not to leave until is done." Vlaakith ordered the inquisitor.

"As you command, my queen." he acknowledged with a bow of his head.

"Ch'mar, zal'a Vlaakith." Lae'zel said proudly, also bowing. "We will not waste a second."

Vlaakith nodded back to us in silent acknowledgement, and her image faded and withdrew.

"Place the Prism there." the inquisitor instructed me, pointing at a particular socket. "I shall adjust the mechanism."

I knelt and placed the Astral Prism precisely where he'd pointed, and he laid his hand adjacent to it on the planecaster and concentrated. "There. Now step back."

An energy field burst forth from the planecaster in a brilliant cone, pointed upwards, and levitated the Astral Prism within it. The symbols on the polygon all glowed red, then white-hot. The seams of its sides began to soften, to shift, and a terrible force began to pull the Prism apart, to reveal a glimpse of a shining something, glaring so bright- We blinked, and when our eyes opened again the Prism was no longer visible, just a large glowing column of pulsating light at the center of the planecaster, standing taller than a man.

"The portal is open! Go now!" the inquisitor demanded, and I led us into the light.

We arrived on a small rocky island drifting through a starry void. I nodded to myself - I had seen this place before, in the dream where I'd first met the 'Guardian'. So he had been hiding inside some pocket dimensional realm, contained within the Astral Prism.

"Right. Cut the mind flayer's head off, get these tadpoles out of our heads." Karlach said eagerly. "Now where's he hiding-?"

"I had warned you that Vlaakith lied as easily as a mortal breathes, but even I had anticipated that she would have needed to put some actual effort into deceiving you." the Guardian's voice echoed out of the empty air around us. "Disappointing."

"I don't trust her." I admitted frankly, and Lae'zel spun to me with a furious glare. "I just mistrust her far less than I mistrust you."

"There were several obvious self-contradictions just in the speech she gave you. Surely you spotted at least one?" the Guardian asked us condescendingly.

"Well, I had been wondering how she knew so much about Lae'zel's records when she'd have had no reason to look them up before today." I admitted. "But what were the-" I blinked. "Oh, crap."

"So eagerly close to your hoped-for cure that you let yourself overlook the obvious." the Guardian replied. "Why are you being sent in here, instead of her most loyal inquisitor and his elite operatives? People she should logically trust to have a chance to touch the innermost workings of her most valued property far more than a common warrior of the lowest rank she has only met today and five strange istik? People far more experienced at killing a powerful, experienced illithid than you would be? And even if she feels that you must be a part of the solution due to whatever bond you seem to have with this artifact, why is the inquisitor and his forces not at least accompanying you?"

"He's got a point there." Shadowheart said grudgingly. "As much as I desperately didn't want to admit it."

"Lies! All lies!" Lae'zel shouted adamantly. "Vlaakith ordered us to ignore all its deceptions and claim its head! Why are we standing here?"

"Well for one thing, we don't know where he is." Wyll pointed out simply. "Do you have any mind flayer tracking tricks you could use right now?"

Lae'zel growled wordlessly, but acknowledged Wyll's point - it's not like we could leap immediately to the killing him part if we hadn't found him yet. I motioned the group to follow me and we started walking across the surface of the floating rock, looking carefully around. The weird gravity in this dimension meant that 'down' was always towards the center of this floating meteor, even though we were in space and its diameter was so low we could circumnavigate it in only several minutes-

"You've got until we've finished searching the space to finish talking." I told the Guardian.

"She wishes me slain, without exposing her most loyal to me." the Guardian stated. "Not because she fears my corrupting them, or lying to them, but because she fears me telling the truth to them. Vlaakith has been hiding a secret from all her people, just as every Vlaakith before her has all the way back to the original Undying Queen, for all the history of the githyanki. And for her to even suspect that you may have been told it has already signed your death warrants. Look." he finished, and a viewing portal opened up in the empty air off to our left. Visible through it was a view of the underground chamber we'd just left - and of the inquisitor deploying his elite guards in an ambush formation around the planecaster and the prism, set to catch us in a crossfire the instant we stepped out. "You see? He already has his orders from his queen - as soon as you leave the prism, you are to die."

"Any idiot with a Silent Image spell could do that one." Gale said, his face still pale and shaken.

"Keep talking." I said, as we kept searching.

"Will you actually listen this time?" the Guardian said. "Or should I simply prepare my soul for eternity's journey, now that your most elaborate suicide attempt is finally at its climax? Choose one or the other, but choose quickly! Vlaakith's assassins will not wait for long!"

I closed my eyes, thinking as furiously as I could. If there was even a credible chance Vlaakith's offer was sincere, then we had to find and finish off the Guardian now. But if it was a lie from the beginning, then killing the Guardian would doom us all. A narrow passage with no brother, no friend - either start trusting the sonofabitch, or don't, but no way to-

Wait. This was a false dichotomy, one of the simplest of the cons that Varric had spent so much time teaching me how to be on guard against. Let the mark get himself in over his head. Offer him a simple either-or choice between doom and escape. Don't let him have time to explore alternatives. The mark flinches away from the obvious doom and chooses the other path, and that means he's started to trust you a little bit. And you just keep exploiting that momentum once you've started it, and before you know it you could sell somebody 'wandering hills from the Anderfels' as supposedly being the newest gourmet delicacy out of Orlais... and get them to pay you in advance.

"Hold." I told the group. "The Guardian is trying to get us to believe that Vlaakith is lying, and that this proves he isn't. Vlaakith is saying the same thing, only in reverse. But we don't actually have to take either of their words for it." I said. "We simply step back outside the Prism and tell the inquisitor that we couldn't find the bastard, he's hiding from us too well, and could he please lend us some of his more experienced illithid trackers... which actually has the benefit of being the truth, so he can't even say that we're lying!" I shrugged. "He'll either help us, or try to kill us. And then either way we'll know for sure."

"And the only thing more devastating than an ambush is thinking that you're going to ambush the enemy, but them being forewarned and counter-ambushing you at your most confident." Gale turned to me, his expression holding hope and not despair for the first time in almost an hour. "Just like you proved before in Moonhaven."

"Show us that image again." I told the Guardian. "Not that we still believe you, but if you are the one telling the truth for once then I want to know exactly how they're stacking up on our exit point."

The viewing portal opened again, and I carefully studied it. Right... the inquisitor standing where he's the first thing we see as we leave, two warriors visible to right and left flank, and two... hmm, those are spellcasters, and they're behind those support pillars... ah. The inquisitor starts talking to us when we step out, giving the spellcasters time to finish casting and striking us from both sides with crowd control spells, then the three with swords up front go to close-quarters against us after our mobility is crippled and we're stunned and cut us to pieces as their arcane friends barrage us from the backline. Competent - and nasty, if those operatives are as experienced as I think they are - but if you know what's coming-

I ran everybody through the tactical plan I'd just come up with in response to what I've seen. I even threw in an element of redundancy in case- well, in case we lost someone in the first round.

"You have wasted your efforts. Vlaakith's truth will enlighten you, and this lying ghaik will die." Lae'zel insisted.

"I really, really hope so." I agreed with her. "You honestly think I want him to be the right one?"

"No." Lae'zel agreed with a flash of humor, and we stepped back through the portal into the material world again.

"Lae'zel." the inquisitor greeted her as soon as we materialized. "You are named H'sharlak. Bend your head, for my blade is ready."

"Ch'r'ai, please!" Lae'zel begged, her eyes going wide with terror. "There must be-"

Damn, damn, damn! The Guardian's gloating over this was going to be insufferable.

Lae'zel fell to her knees in supplication, her sword falling to the ground and rolling away, and the inquisitor stared down at her coldly. His sword began to leave the scabbard- and then he suddenly looked up and realized that we were not either flinching away or rushing to Lae'zel's defense as could be expected, but had instead begun to disperse in a loose wedge formation. I made eye contact with him and nodded as the realization dawned- his attempt to make us focus on him while his hidden ambushers came in from the sides had failed.

"NOW!" he cried desperately, and the killing started.

Wyll and Gale had both prepared counter-spells and were in position to nullify the ambushing mages even as they stepped out and unleashed their spells - spells that fizzled before they even started. Shadowheart cast her most powerful spell and summoned a dark, flowing ring of Spirit Guardians, their necrotic energies wounding and entangling all nearby enemies - meaning not only the inquisitor, but also his two flanking swordsmen as they came rushing in on their commander's signal. And with four out of five enemies taken at least partially if not fully out of the action economy in the surprise round, that left me and Karlach free to kill.

With bounding leaps both of us ignored the obvious targets in front of us and swiftly charged to crush one of the githyanki mages in each corner, removing the bulk of the inquisitor's firepower in the first round. Gale fell back out of melee range as Wyll leapt forward to engage the inquisitor, going on all-out defense with his rapier to parry the man's githyanki-forged magical sword. Shadowheart raised her shield and mace likewise, not even attempting to strike a blow but simply parrying the attacks of the githyanki warriors as she slowly withdrew, letting her Spirit Guardians do the work of harrying and weakening the enemy further.

"Stay on them!" the Inquisitor cried desperately, as he spun about to face both me and Karlach. He concentrated on an arcane spell, hoping to at least delay our rush - and his eyes widened in panic as I shut that attempt down with a Cleanse of my own. Karlach never broke step, hitting him with a charge maneuver that knocked him reeling, and then began to duel him in earnest as he started already stunned, shocked, wounded, and at a disadvantage. Of the last two remaining githyanki, one died to my greatsword across his shoulders and the other to Wyll's rapier through the back of his lungs, as we unchivalrously each ignored the one of each who'd turned to face us to take the killing blow on the other one. By the time we were done with that, Shadowheart had finished helping double-team the inquisitor. All the githyanki in this chamber save one were stone dead.

Lae'zel was still kneeling helplessly on the ground, having never moved a single muscle throughout the entire fight.

"Lae'zel." Shadowheart said compassionately to the kneeling githyanki as she wept quietly. "You have to get up."

"H'sharlak." she moaned. "Outcast! Anathema! Why-" Lae'zel sobbed. "I followed the creeds, I kept her faith-"

"You were betrayed." I said to her softly.

"Yes, I was!" she shrieked back up at me. "By you! If we had just done as we were commanded-" her hand scrabbled near her sheath for her missing sword.

"We would still have died!" I shouted down at her. "He didn't even ask you if the damned mind flayer was dead before he pronounced sentence on you! You weren't condemned for failing, you were condemned for just being there!" I swore. "Just as a certain abominable someone predicted, damn them to the bottommost hell."

"The ch'r'ai could have- he could sense the Prism was still corrupted-" Lae'zel desperately protested.

"Vlaakith could have sensed that." I agreed. "But she wasn't here when we came back out, just the inquisitor. And he'd already had the damned thing in his hand when I tried to give it to him the first time, however briefly, but he never said a word!" I tried to reach her. "Everything I just said, you saw with your own two eyes. There's no ghaik deception there, no illusion." I sighed. "No matter what people say."

"But-" Lae'zel said. "My life... it was never mine to give. It was hers. To just be... cast away...?" She sniffled, her eyes clouded with tears. "This... this must be a test, a trial..."

"This is going to be your tomb if you stay here much longer." Shadowheart said. "I'm sorry, Lae'zel. I can't imagine-" She shook her head. "No, I can imagine it. Just barely, but I can. And the very idea horrifies me. What you are going through-" Her lip firmed with scorn. "She was not worthy of you. She never was."

"But without my goddess... my home... my people..." Lae'zel whispered. "What do I do?"

"You come with us." I told her. "Because even with all you've lost, you still have your comrades. And we still have a mission." I tapped the side of my head meaningfully. "There won't be any githyanki help now, to come and stop the Absolute. And that means we still have to, or else the ghaik win."

"Yes." Lae'zel said, clutching at my hand like a life-line. "The mission." She gulped, trying to gather the shreds of her resolve. "Even if all others are lost... so long as one child of Gith stands, the Grand Design will still fear us... they must..."

"That's the spirit." Gale encouraged her as she rose unsteadily to her feet. "Here, you dropped your sword."

"And here I thought we'd gotten screwed over by fiends." Karlach said to Wyll, to receive his enthusiastic nod back in return.

Touching. Truly touching. the Guardian's voice sounded mockingly in our heads, along with what I swore was a sarcastic slow clapping. Now, if you could possibly spare a bit of your attention as to how I am going to help you get out of here? It paused meaningfully. Along with, of course, a negotiation as to what you might do for me in return-

"Actually, I was thinking of finding a way out of here on our own." I replied.

Of course you were. the Guardian said. All you need to do is go right back up that hallway and kill your way through every single githyanki in Creche Y'llek, starting from the position of being on the other side of a magical portal that the kith'rak in charge of this creche controls and when all of your possible escape routes lead directly through her office. It snorted in negation. You'd have better odds of arm wrestling an elder brain.

"I'm certainly up for not owing our tentacled stalker any more favors, but even with the inquisitor's orders to not disturb him until he contacts her again eventually the kith'rak is going to have to come down here to find out why he's not answering calls." Wyll said. "And I don't have the sort of magic that can teleport our entire group out of here, and neither does Gale or Shadowheart."

"And neither does the Guardian, or else he'd have used it to involuntarily shunt us outside of the base before he ever let us take him face to... not quite a face... with Vlaakith herself." I analyzed.

In the interests of not waiting an hour for you to slowly and laboriously work it out for yourselves, I will just tell that I know far more about how to circumvent the planar warding that the githyanki use to shield their bases than you do. And once I disable it, you can simply use the travelstones. I heard it snort. Don't think to try and play chicken with me and get that assistance for free by staging a sit-down strike until the githyanki are about to charge in here. I have an option to exercise before that happens - one that works out adequately for me, even if it might or might not require me to jettison some dead weight that I haven't entirely decided to give up on yet. We 'heard' it chuckle. Of course, maybe I'm bluffing. You know how to find out for certain.

"Or I could just look for the secret passage leading out of here." I said.

"That would be wonderful." Shadowheart agreed. "So why are you so certain there is one?"

"Those records we found upstairs, talking about the 'most holy artifact' that this pilgrimage site was built around." I said. "It wasn't anywhere we searched upstairs. The inquisitor boasted about the treasures they took from here, but never mentioned any unique artifact - just gold and suchlike. And this was the most securely defended treasure room in the entire complex, and it's certainly not still in here." I shrugged. "Which means there's very likely a hidden section of the treasure level that the githyanki never found."

"How do you make it all sound so simple?" Karlach looked at me.

"Practice." I answered her. "Come on, let's start searching."

The simple trick of thumping on the walls didn't work if the builders of a place were smart enough to use a thick enough wall section to put their secret door in, but a secret door needed a mechanism and an extremely experienced githyanki internal security agent had lived in this room for weeks and never seen anything - and he was presumably the type to search a strange room very carefully for traps before he slept in it. Therefore, the lever was probably something in plain sight that he'd looked straight at and yet still overlooked due to its obviousness. A 'Purloined Letter', as Varric had put it. So I made sure to pay particular attention to that pair of ornamental statues off in that dead-end alcove-

"Lathander greets the rising sun." I muttered, reading the inscription on one of the statues. "You said this was a temple to the god of the dawn, right?"

"Yes. And this one says 'Lathander bids the setting sun farewell'." Wyll read the inscription on the statue facing the one I'd just read from across the alcove. "A matched set."

"Wait." Shadowheart said suspiciously. "A religious inscription in a temple of Lathander mentioned a setting sun? That doesn't fit at all." She knelt to peer more carefully at the statue, narrowing her eyes. "Hang on... there's a small gap at the bottom of the base. It goes all the way around..." she carefully traced it. "Why isn't this built flush to the floor?"

I reached out and grasped the outthrust arm of the statue, and then heaved with all my might - and the statue moved. "Because it's built on a rotating plinth." I nodded. "So we turn this one till it's facing west, and that one till it's facing east."

And sure enough, as soon as the second statue clicked into position the entire facing wall of the 'dead end' alcove began to smoothly slide up into the ceiling, revealing a broad staircase leading down to a pair of golden doors. A subliminal sense of pout coming from within the Astral Prism was the Guardian's only response.

"Finally." I sighed in satisfaction. "We're not home free yet, but that's the first thing that's gone right today."

---

Author's Note: I thought Lae'zel did not have nearly enough reaction to finding out her entire life was a lie in the game, so I got to change that.

And yes, now you see the line of reasoning that led Hawke into the githyanki base in the first place, and the backup line of reasoning that kept him in it after the zaith'isk turned out to be a lie. Such a pity it didn't work but hey, that's not his fault - that's Vlaakith's.

As for why Gale was freaking out, it's because risking death is one thing but being told 'this is basically suicide if we don't get realllly lucky, but we have no other option' is another thing entirely when you've got a death-triggered nuclear bomb in your chest and you haven't told your friends about it yet.

 

[cliffc999]

As soon as we passed the double doors at the bottom of the staircase Gale gasped in relief. "The planar wards don't stretch down this far! We've got a clear escape route! Hawke, you did it!" he congratulated me.

"Thank the Maker." I said relievedly. "But I don't think we should leave just yet."

"You want the artifact?" Wyll deduced. "Why?"

"Well, our first attempt to find a divine miracle cure just failed." I thought out loud. "And do you remember that comparision I made when we first saw Rosymorn Monastery, to the holy site on Thedas where they found the Ashes of Andraste? I don't know that this artifact is a purveyor of healing miracles like the Ashes were, but if we've gotten back the ability to evacuate via the travelstones at a moment's notice then we can afford to take a little time down here."

"We're probably not going to be that lucky, but you're right. We should try and find out before we leave, because we certainly won't be able to get back in here later." Shadowheart agreed.

We spent the next quarter of an hour learning that whatever enchanter had helped create the defenses around the artifact may have been a superb arcane engineer, but they did not know much about trap design. Some of the magical force fields blocking the corridor had the arcane crystals serving as their power sources located on our side of the barrier. The rest could be bypassed by simply climbing up and around through large cracks that unaccountably existed in the stone walls surrounding the passage leading to the artifact chamber. I was beginning to lose some respect for the priests of Lathander - their devotion, their vast resources, and the skills of their enchanters couldn't be questioned, but their ability to think in proper defensive terms was so lacking that half the cutpurses in Kirkwall could have easily made it through the gaps in the coverage down here.

Soon enough we came out into the main artifact chamber, which was built on a large gilded metal platform suspended over an apparently bottomless chasm in a large underground cave. Four pillars of golden arcano-mechanisms surmounted each corner of the platform, and the center was occupied by a series of circular steps leading up to a raised dias in which a large mace, its head shining with a brilliant yellow-gold light, hung suspended in an elaborate metal framework. A piece of amber the size of a clenched fist, as red as a ruby, was mounted high up in the handle of the mace just beneath the head.

"That does not look like a healing artifact." Shadowheart said, disappointedly.

"By the Weave." Gale gasped, awestruck. "That's the Blood of Lathander!" He turned to us. "Almost half a millenium ago the renegade Chosen of Mystra, Sammaster the necromancer, posed such a threat to all of Faerun that the Harpers sent an entire small army after him. But despite having turned away from the Goddess of Magic Sammaster still bore the spark of divine power that she had once gifted him with before his fall to evil, and with that power he could resist destruction by any mortal force. A high priest of Lathander amongst the Harper contingent that fought him begged for the aid of his god, and the Morninglord sent an avatar in response. Sammaster's stolen scrap of divinity could not protect him against a true god, and so he perished. But as he was empowered - however partially and wrongly - by divinity himself, Sammaster was able to wound Lathander's avatar and draw several drops of his blood. Lathander's faithful treasured those drops forever after as a most sacred artifact of their faith, preserving them in a piece of amber." He nodded up towards the glowing mace on the top of the dias. "That piece, right there."

"Andraste's Ashes." I swore softly. "But they preserved it as a weapon of their faith, not a panacea."

"Apparently so." Gale agreed.

"Well, are we taking it or not?" Karlach asked.

"On the one hand, it's not ours." I thought out loud. "On the other hand, it's rightful keepers are dead and this temple has fallen into the hands of the enemy so just leaving it here is also a bad idea. And on the third hand, I can think of several things we might really need it for." I shrugged and turned to Shadowheart. "As our resident religious expert, do you think Lathander would be mortally offended if we took that with us and used it on our quest against the Absolute, with the intent to return it to one of his temples elsewhere when we no longer had immediate need of it?"

"The nearest other temple of Lathander is in Baldur's Gate." Shadowheart said practically. "Which is where we were ultimately headed anyway. And you're a paladin - the gods tend to place more trust in the Oathbound than they would in any random adventurer. So no, I don't think we'd be risking divine retribution if we handled it. But do you see that?" She pointed at a small indentation on the bottom of the framework holding up the Blood. "That's shaped exactly like a holy symbol a priest of Lathander would wear. And it's located exactly where you would put the keyhole to unlock the mechanism that the artifact is currently encased in. It's probably waiting for someone to put in the particular holy symbol that the high priest of Rosymorn Monastery would be wearing... which is almost certainly located somewhere several stories above us in the abandoned surface levels of the monastery that we searched earlier today."

"And where we didn't find anything like that." I agreed. "But that framework looks really loose. Even without opening it, a little wiggling would probably get that mace right out of there."

"I have good news, and I have bad news." Gale said. "The good news is, I've solved the mystery of what exactly was powering that giant magical device on the roof. Answer - these four arcane accumulators right here." He pointed to the four pillars surrounding the platform. "They're batteries, having charged themselves over the years - or centuries - from the energy radiating from the divine artifact sitting in the center of this mechanism."

"For all that time? That would be a lot of power." I whistled in awe. "And the bad news is?"

"I am admittedly playing a hunch, but from the circuit pathways I can see running all around the artifact I'm almost certain that if you remove the Blood of Lathander from that socket without using the proper key first, the system is set up to destructively discharge all four of those batteries all at once." Gale finished.

"So... boom?" Karlach asked.

"Boom." Gale agreed. "Very much so. It would probably take out the entire monastery."

My eyes opened wide. "That... would solve the problem of the githyanki knowing we have the Astral Prism, and Vlaakith sending entire armies from the Astral Plane after us. Because they don't know about the travelstone network. If we touch off the explosion and then teleport away from here, all she's got to go on is a giant smoking crater where the monastery used to be - and as far as she knows, with us still in it. And while the Astral Prism is likely indestructible, the longer she spends sifting through the ashes here digging for it the longer she's not chasing us all the way to Moonrise Towers." I exhaled in relief. "I'd been wondering how we were going to deal with that particular problem."

"That is indeed a brilliantly extemporaneous tactical maneuver!" Gale congratulated me. "That, unfortunately, entirely won't work and will kill all of us. The buildup to that kind of uncontrolled magical catastrophe would almost certainly create enough local ethereal disruption that the travelstone attunement would be destructively interfered with."

"Damn it!" I swore. "Even without the prospect of having a powerful holy weapon for our use, clearing our backtrail behind us would have been a life-saver on its own." I sighed. "But if we can't, we can't-"

"Uh, Gale?" Karlach broke in. "You said that those four doohickeys down there are what's powering the big thingamabob up on the roof, yeah?"

"Why do you ask?" Gale replied.

"Because how's the power getting from down here to up there?" Karlach asked practically. "If somebody's run a pipe up there then they had to run it through somewhere, right? I've never seen a pipe laid yet without someone having to dig a hole for it to go through first. So even without the travelstones, maybe there's an accessway we can use or something."

"How did I miss that?" I facepalmed.

"You don't run that much arcane - or divine - power through pipes, Karlach." Gale said tolerantly. "If you didn't have a clear open pathway to transmit a beam, then the only way I could imagine it working is if you were using some type of translocational..." he trailed off. "Portal!" he finished, his eyes open wide in realization. And then he immediately leapt down off the dais and started frantically searching all around the edges of the platform. "I found it!" he called from the edge of the platform opposite the entrance, where an empty metal archway stood. "This should lead right to the roof!" He trailed off. "When it's in operation. Which right now, it's not."

"Do you think the explosion would happen immediately, or would there have to be a buildup first?" I asked.

"So you're thinking pull the mace out, run straight for the portal, and get off the roof and clear of the blast radius before the detonation completes?" Shadowheart asked me.

"And vaporize every single surviving githyanki - as well as us, as far as Vlaakith will know. And the longer that fools her, the better." I agreed.

"The system would need at least a short delay between initiation and detonation or else they'd destroy their home every time there was even a transient interruption in the circuit." Gale agreed. "Still a bit of a risk, though."

"Yes, but in addition to covering our trail, we're going to need that." I said. "Minthara told us that the only safe way to pass through the Shadow Curse was by using 'moonlanterns'. And I don't know what a moonlantern is, much less where we could possibly find one. But it's certainly some type of magical light source." I smiled. "And I'm thinking you can't get much more magical as a light source than the mystically preserved blood of a sun god." I smiled in satisfaction. "Everybody else stack up on that portal. As soon as I pull the Blood out, the sequence should start and we'll need to all run through as fast as we possibly can... because we won't have any idea how long or short the delay is."

I unstrapped my belt pouch from my belt - the one that contained the Astral Prism - and handed it to Shadowheart, and gratefully realized that it was still bonded to its original bearer well enough that it wouldn't automatically leap back to me. Well, either that or the Guardian had already figured out what I was planning, and was acting to cover his own tail.

"If I'm the one taking the mace then I have to be the last one out. This should be with the first person heading through the portal... just in case." I explained to her, and finally convinced the reluctant Shadowheart to take it.

We all got in position, them at the portal and me at the top of the dias, and I tensed to run the instant the divine artifact was clear of its containment housing. I took a deep breath, reached out, and carefully grasped the handle - twisted it just enough to get the head of the mace free of the loose retaining ring around it, and then pulled-

-and a golden energy barrier, similar to the ones we'd bypassed to get here, leapt into existence all around the base of the dais - cutting me off from the rest of the party. While it didn't go all the way to the ceiling it was at least a dozen feet high - no way I could jump over it, or climb a force-field-

"Somebody get him out of there!" Shadowheart yelled frantically.

"Go!" I yelled at them, seeing the now-active portal behind them. They had a clear escape route and the Astral Prism - I'd done the best I could. "Go now!"

A keening whine was building up all around us, fit to shake loose the teeth from our jaws. The ground rumbled, and the four battery-pillars were glowing white-hot and pulsing unevenly, unstably. And none of those idiots were moving-

"Hang on!" Gale yelled, and broke ranks from the others to sprint up to the very edge of the barrier. He frantically reached inside his pack and dug around inside "I was hanging onto this for- never mind! Catch!" With a frantic toss he sent something hurtling up in the air and over the barrier, and with my free hand I snatched it up off the ground where it had fallen several feet short of me. Some type of amulet-

"Amulet of Misty Step!" Gale yelled, barely audible over the now-shrieking arcane mechanisms as they drew closer and closer to detonation. "Just think about being over by the gate!"

And as soon as the amulet's chain passed over my head and I thought next to Shadowheart! as intently as I could, the world blurred into silver mist around me and cleared an eyeblink later. I'd teleported directly out of the barrier.

I ran back towards the dais for Gale, because I knew he was the slowest runner out of all of us. The instant I came within reach of his outstretched hand I yanked him practically off my feet and into me, then swung him up in a carry and sprinted for the portal. All six of us piled through it practically on each other's heels, to gasp in relief when we materialized exactly where we'd expected to - adjacent to the giant mechanism on the roof, which we saw was now glowing as brightly as the battery-pillars below had been, and which had swivelled so that the business end of what we could now see was a magical energy cannon was pointing straight down into the heart of the monastery-

"We're still too close!" Gale said. "Get off the roof! We can't port out until we get off the roof!"

A hastily-cast Feather Fall allowed us to leave the roof by the simple expedient of jumping directly over the side, and we went three stories down to a magically-cushioned landing directly outside the main gate. With frantic relief we felt our connection to the travelstone network reform now that we were finally far enough away from planar wards or over-charging magical energy weapon emplacements-

-and we all materialized next to the nearest travelstone, the one we'd found on the pathway a couple hundred yards away from Rosymorn Monastery, just in time to look back and see the entire building explode in a giant magical fireball.

When the spots cleared from our eyes we saw that the only thing left standing were scattered section of the four exterior walls. The roof was gone, the magical cannon on the roof was definitely gone, the interior was gone, and smoke was roiling up from a giant sinkhole in the ground that, when we drew near enough to look down into it, still had dully-glowing magma at the bottom. Rosymorn Monastery barely had enough rubble left up on top to show where a giant building had once stood, and all the sublevels - including the entire githyanki creche and everyone inside of it - were utterly obliterated.

I breathed out, feeling the weight of my decisions today - both right ones and wrong ones. I felt no triumph over all the githyanki that I'd just killed, or the undying god-queen that I'd just outwitted. All this death, all the times we'd almost died, and with the possible exception of one divinely-inspired weapon the only thing that had been achieved was for me to almost get us back to where we'd started. Behind me stood five silent shadows, also awestruck by the sheer devastation we'd just enabled... as well as exhausted by the multiple near-death experiences and world-shaking revelations we'd crammed into the last twelve hours.

"Let's get the hell out of here." I finally said.

---

We used the travelstones to head back to the beach we'd originally crashed on. There was still a possibility that Vlaakith could track us somehow - who could say what exactly a god could or couldn't do, even one that was also quasi-mortal like her? And so we resolved to spend the next twenty-four hours in the same ruins that Shadowheart, Gale and I had camped in the very first night after we'd crashed - the one we'd met Withers in. It was underground, easily defensible, very conveniently close to a travelstone - and didn't have any innocents living there who'd get hurt if Vlaakith somehow found us anyway. If she or her hunter teams didn't locate us here by tomorrow, then we'd presume the trail was cold enough we could safely go to the Grove.

"Gale." I said to him passionately, as I handed him back his magical amulet. "I didn't have the chance earlier, so- thank you. Thank you for saving my life."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked me worriedly, his face still pale in the light of our campfire. "Because-" He pulled away from me and sat down heavily. "Everyone, please listen. I have to tell you something. Something that you had every right to know, that I should have told you days ago. And-"

"I'm not blown to vapor by my own bright idea right now, and that's all thanks to you." I told him. "Whatever transgression you think you've committed, there's very little you could say right now that I wouldn't be prepared to forgive."

"There is still a nontrivial difference between 'very little' and 'naught'." Gale said didactically. "And never more so than in my case." He sighed. "I've been telling myself for days that I didn't dare bring this up because it would alarm you unduly - you particularly, Hawke, given your homeworld's troubled history with magic as well as the tragic fate of your friend Anders." He shook his head. "But those were merely rationalizations, and transparent ones. You've accepted Shadowheart and Wyll without a qualm despite the sources of their magic, and you still sorrow over Anders' fate despite his having lied to you for years about the true scope of his condition and I've only been hiding mine for a few days. And yet even after learning that were honorable enough to spontaneously self-initiate as a paladin, after seeing the lengths I saw you go through to resurrect an innocent boy you didn't even know, or the compassion you showed a murdered githyanki youngling-" He broke off and looked up at me sadly. "If I couldn't trust you after all that, then who could I trust? And yet I still kept my silence. Not just because I was afraid, but because I was ashamed." He looked over at the still-subdued Lae'zel. "It might surprise you to find out that you are not the only member of our company who has been cast out, declared anathema, by the goddess that they've devoted their entire life to serving." He sighed again, with a sorrow as large as the world. "Only unlike you, in my case it was well-deserved."

"But you still have your magic!" Shadowheart said confusedly. "If you're under Mystra's Ban then how is that possible? You're no Shadow Weave user - I'm a priestess of Shar, I would have sensed that!"

"No, not the Shadow Weave." He sighed. "But I am a walking shadow of the promise I once held. We've all temporarily lost the full measure of our abilities, our skills, when we were infected, just as we've all slowly been gaining it back as we acclimate. But I wasn't just an experienced wizard before my parasite was implanted. I had been an archmage. And not just any archmage, but a prodigy even amongst that august company. I could not merely control the Weave but also compose it, as if it were music, were poetry." He trailed off wonderingly. "Such was my skill that it earned me not just the favor but the attention of the mother of magic herself. The Lady of Mysteries, the goddess Mystra. She revealed herself to me, and visiited me often. She was my mentor, my muse..." He trailed off, his expression a strange mixture of embarassment and pride. "And in the fullness of time, even my lover."

"You made love to a goddess." I said dazdly. "Which admittedly has precedent in Thedas, as I already mentioned with Maferath and Andraste-" I suddenly paused. "Gale, tell me you didn't."

"Not... quite?" he volunteered diffidently. "I felt no malice, no envy, such as the Maferath you spoke of once. But ambition?" He shook his head knowingly. "That, him and I certainly had in common."

The silence fell, and Gale eventually resumed filling it. "Her company was glorious - I certainly desired no other woman. But no matter how powerful a wizard we mortals become, we still can never scratch more than the surface of the Weave. Mystra keeps us in check, maintains boundaries she never lets us cross. Yet every time I worked magic with her I could see what I was missing - as if I were standing on a precipice, staring into the wonders of the beyond that I was forever denied save at second-hand."

"Respectfully, that sounds a bit like envy to me." I contributed.

"I would rather say 'inadequacy'. To have a goddess' regard is a privilege beyond any other, but if you continually confront the differences between her scale of existence and yours, it makes you feel... pitied?" Gale tried to articulate. "I didn't want to usurp her, or even to rival her. I just wanted to do something." he finally said. "To do anything that she would acknowledge as being more than just-" He broke off. "And so I resolved to seek beyond the boundaries she set." He shook his head. "I tried to convince her, at first. I persuaded, I pleaded... I pouted..." He shrugged briefly. "But she did nothing but smile and tell me to be content. But rather than take her advice, I sought to prove myself worthy of being given more." He paused. "We now come to the crux of my folly. Shall I share the story behind it, or would you rather we proceed straight to the sordid finale?"

"I'm thinking this is definitely the sort of thing that needs a fuller context." Shadowheart contributed encouragingly.

"Agreed." Wyll said. "An opportunity for confession is a privilege that Mizora takes spiteful pleasure in denying me - you should not deny yourself."

"... I too confess interest." Lae'zel said softly. "To know a goddess intimately and then survive her rejection - that is a unique tale indeed."

"Very well." Gale took a deep breath. "Once upon a very long time ago a mighty wizard lived in a tower. A flying tower, to be precise. I'll save the full history of Karsus the Archwizard for another time, but the gist of it was that he sought to usurp the goddess of magic so he could become a god himself. And as he was perhaps the greatest archwizard in mortal history, he almost managed!" Gale said surprisingly. "But not quite, and his entire empire - ancient Netheril, of myth and legend - came crashing down around him as he destroyed himself. The magic that was unleashed that day was phenomenal, perhaps rivaling the primal chaos that predates creation. Even the Weave itself could not withstand the onslaught. It fractured, it shattered, and a cataclysm shook the very fabric of creation and would have destroyed all. Mystryl, first goddess of magic, sacrificed her own existence to stop the destruction the only way she could - with her own death, and with that death the end of all magic. But the magic returned, as she had known it would, when her replacement Mystra ascended to the heavens and restored the Weave." He paused. "If not quite the same Weave that it had been before. Because that is why Mystra sets such restrictions on magics, allows mortal mages to progress so far and no further. Because Mystryl had not. In her innocence she sought to see any wizard rise to any height they were capable of so doing, with nothing held back."

"And that is how Karsus could almost do what he did, and bring so much crashing down with him when he failed." I reasoned. "The higher the climb, the greater the potential fall." I looked at Gale. "And you disagreed?"

"No." he shook his head. "My ambition was different. When Mystra originally restored the Weave from its scattered shards, there was one piece that she'd missed. A tiny portion, one that Karsus had preserved for study, sealed away in an ancient tome and hidden in a pocket realm. One that had gone unregarded for centuries, until I'd happened across a clue to it in my studies. And so I asked myself 'What if I brought this back? What if I could restore a long-lost part of herself to my goddess? What regard could I earn from her, what pride would she look upon me with, if I brought her a gift that no other supplicant ever had or would?"

"That... actually makes sense." I conceded. "I mean, I can't even see how that's wrong - you weren't trying to redo Karsus' madness, you were just trying to help undo the damage he'd done! So why did she outcast you?"

"Give me your hand." Gale said gravely. "And let me show you."

I held forth my hand and Gale gently took me by the wrist, bringing the palm of my hand over his heart. His eyes made contact with mine and our tadpoles shivered, as Gale concentrated on enabling the mental connection, allowing me in.

I saw through Gale's eyes, staring down the corridors of dreadful memory. An ancient tome located - a scholar's curiosity compelling him to open it - but inside there were no pages, just a swirling mass of twisted reality that pounced- leaping inside, unstoppable as it tore into and through my very being- and gods, it was so hungry-

Gale let go of me and I fell away, gasping. "How in the Maker's name are you still alive?"

He stared at me somberly. "The moment I absorbed the fragment wasn't enough to kill me outright. No, my death was only beginning." He shook his head frustratedly. "This Netherese blight, this... orb, for a lack of a better word... is balled up inside of me. And it needs to be fed. As long as I continue to absorb traces of the true Weave from potent enough sources, it remains quiescent. But the process never stops - the feedings are a palliative, not a cure."

"Feed it what?" I asked him.

"Magic. And not spells - oh, if this were only as simple as my remembering to cast a few minor spells on myself every day." he chuckled sardonically. "Permanent constructs of Weave are required. Magic items. That's why I've always been asking for the ones we've found as my share of the treasure and letting the rest of you keep most of the gold, including that Amulet of Misty Step we found in the goblins' lair. I've needed to drain the magic of an item every couple of days just to keep my condition manageable." He laughed, bitterly. "That amulet I saved your life with? You're lucky I hadn't eaten that yet. As is, I'm just about due for another."

"And if you don't find enough magic items regularly enough, you die?" Karlach asked, shocked.

"Not merely die." Gale said worriedly. "I would erupt. If the Netherese orb fully destabilized, all the magic contained within would burst forth in an uncontrolled flare of wild magic that would make what happened to Rosymorn Monastery look like a cantrip. It would flatten a city the size of Waterdeep."

"Gale!" Shadowheart burst out. "That- that- that makes these damned tadpoles in our heads the second-greatest threat to our lives! How could-?"

I held up a hand, asking for peace. "Gale, I'm assuming that you were busy trying to deal with your situation in a safe and manageable way when you were abducted by mind flayers, so you can't fairly be blamed for being out and about in your condition now. But she does touch upon a valid point. What on Toril are we to do if you get killed?"

"Get Withers to resurrect me as fast as possible." Gale said. "From my computations, you'd have at least a day - maybe two - before my death destabilized things sufficiently." He sighed. "That's why I was so terrified in the creche. We were all trapped, and the risk of death was far too high. There would have been no resurrection for me if I had fallen, and- well, that was before we knew we'd actually want to destroy the entirety of Creche Y'llek in a giant magical explosion."

"So we're not actually in any danger that we weren't in already." I said relievedly. "And we know what to do to recover things if the worst-case scenario happens."

"Unfortunately, no." Gale said. "Because the last thing you need to know is that the 'feedings' have been getting less and less effective over time. I used to need to drain the Weave of an item only once every week or so. But the period of time has been growing more and more frequent... and the effects of each feeding are less and less." He sighed. "I've had this orb in me for almost a year. I've spent all that time frantically searching for a cure and finding nothing. But even without the tadpole in play, I was starting to fear that I would eventually run out of time. As I may yet still, in the near future."

"What will you do if that happens?" Shadowheart asked him softly.

"Find the remotest place I can on the surface of Faerun, or travel deep into the depths of the Underdark." Gale said. "And die well away from any innocent people. Perhaps on top of a mind flayer colony, if I could find one. A final revenge, however inadequate." He looked up at us all, his eyes red with unshed tears. "This must seem like a terrible betrayal to you all. Say the word, and we shall part ways."

"No." I said, without even stopping to ponder it. "I owe you my life, and your knowledge and magic have greatly helped us more than once. To take all that and then discard you? Not happening."

"Hell yeah!" Karlach said. "If we're going to be going around tossing out everyone who had an unstable magical weapon shoved in their chest without so much as a by-your-leave, I'd have to go with him!"

"I knowingly pacted with a courtier of Zariel." Wyll said. "All you did was attempt a good deed and have it backfire due to circumstances beyond your control. If they're letting me stay, they can hardly reject you."

"A h'sharlak like me cannot judge anyone." Lae'zel said, which alarmed me until I realized she'd actually been trying to make a joke. "Stay."

"Speaking as the only person here who isn't an outcast or castaway, and as a priestess in good standing with her goddess, I condemn you." Shadowheart shocked us all. "I condemn you... to having to remain here in this band of misfits, taking every mad chance and foolish risk alongside the rest of us." she finished with an impish smile.

"Thank you!" Gale burst out laughing with relief. "You truly are a group of worthy souls, that reinvigorates my own. I promise that I won't let you down."

We dipped into our packs for a bit of wine from our travel rations, because a conversation like the one we'd just had was certainly a thing that left a man in need of a few stiff drinks. The day's weariness soon enough caught up to us, and we set our nightwatch and slept. By the time morning arrived we were confident that we'd shaken Vlaakith's pursuit, and so it was time to resume our journey.

A confidence that shattered like glass when we emerged from the ruins to be confronted by a githyanki knight in silver and gold, an elaborate ruby-crowned diadem on his head and his face weathered with much experience - oh, and also the minor problem of the enormous red dragon he'd ridden to get here standing confidently behind him! He held his still-sheathed sword out in front of him at arm's length, gripping it not by the pommel but with his hand six inches below the hilt, with only the scabbard protecting his fingers from the sword's edges.

"Ska'kek kir Gith shabell'eth." he intoned formally, shocking us by going down to one knee and laying his sword before him on the ground before placing both hands behind his back. "My blade rests. Mother Gith compels you to listen."

"A parley?" Lae'zel said, confusedly. "I am h'sharlak, lower even than istik, and condemned to death by the Undying Queen's command! Why does your blade not sing for my death? Why does your noble steed not consume us in dragonfire?"

"I am not here on Vlaakith's behalf, Lae'zel." the knight surprised us. "And I do not seek your lives. Qudenos! Withdraw until I call!"

The red dragon bowed to its rider's command and leapt into the air with a mighty flap of its wings, circling away to land amongst the nearby nautiloid crash site. The githyanki knight rose back to his feet, his hands still behind him in a formal parade-rest, and his sword still on the ground at his feet.

"Well met." I said. "I am Hawke, and I lead this party. But given the events of yesterday, I can't possibly imagine why you seek this parley."

"I am Kith'rak Voss." he introduced himself, and I heard Lae'zel swallow her tongue.

"Voss!" she cried, backing away from him in terror. "Supreme Kith'rak - Queen's Hand - the Sword of Vlaakith! And you claim to not speak on her behalf?!?"

"If more politely, I'm asking the same question." I immediately followed her words. Because if this were the right-hand man of Vlaakith herself, the Ser Cauthrien to her Teryn Loghain as it were, then I entirely understood Lae'zel's alarm.

Voss actually smiled at my last remark, and took a polite step backwards so that Lae'zel would stop frantically clutching at her sword-hilt. I thanked the Maker that her training had been strict enough that even in her terror she hadn't actually tried to draw it, Voss having invoked a githyanki formal parley rite and all.

"How did you find us?" I tried to lower the tension.

"Unlike the vast majority of my fellow warriors, I am old enough to remember Netherese travelstones." Voss replied. "Your wizard was not reported capable of the sort of magic that would have let him teleport all you out of there, but if you did not die in Creche Y'llek then teleportation was the only way you could reasonably have escaped. So I simply checked every travelstone location between the former site of Y'llek and the Emerald Grove, and here you were."

"Well reasoned and well executed." Wyll complimented him. "But Hawke's right - we really can't imagine what you and our party have to parley about. If your queen briefed you, then you already know that we can't give up the Astral Prism without condemning ourselves to a fate worse than death."

"I do know that." Voss agreed reasonably. "And unlike you, I also know why that is true. The Astral Prism is not just an artifact, but a container. It leads to a pocket realm in the Silver Void, one that only it can access, and in that realm there is a prisoner. That one has chosen you as an ally, protects you with their power. That very power will set our people truly free, and not merely the sham of freedom we live under now. That power must be let loose."

"You, eldest and first of all kith'rak, are entreating us on behalf of a ghaik?!?" Lae'zel shrieked in outrage.

"What in Limbo's madness are you raving about, child?!?" Voss shouted back, offended to his marrow.

The sound of my forehead hitting my palm echoed off the nearby walls like the sound of a giant's slap. "Idiot!" I cursed myself. "How did you not see it the instant Vlaakith said-" I looked at them both in turn as I angrily held up the Astral Prism. "There must be two people in here!"

"You met a ghaik... INSIDE THE PRISM?!?" Voss gasped, one hand clutching to his chest. "Mother Gith preserve us-! No, no, I can still feel the protective force radiating even now... he is still alive." The knight calmed himself, his eyes resuming their focus and resolve from what had briefly been the face of a man watching his very god be murdered painfully in front of him. "Tell me everything!"

"If you know any mind-shielding spells, cast them on the Prism first." I said urgently. "He hasn't reacted yet-"

Voss immediately moved both hands in a complex motion, chanting hurriedly. The Prism glowed once, briefly, and was silent. "That should constrain the ghaik temporarily, and without any echoes that would betray the silence - not unless he were already listening at this moment."

"Let's hope he wasn't." I agreed, and then I hurriedly brought Voss up to speed about the 'Guardian' and what he'd said, and what our predicament truly was.

"Entirely unanticipated. And... unfortunate." Voss finished with massive understatement. "Even before knowing this I had already resolved that you must continue to bear the Prism - I dare not claim it for myself, because if Vlaakith suspected me for an instant then I would only deliver it back into her hands... the absolute last place I wish for that to go." he pointed at the Prism. "The entity who is the Prism's true tenant, and not the false ghaik, is- no, I should not speak their name at this juncture. You do not need to know it, and what you do not know cannot be plucked from your mind by any of my kindred." He waved away my objection before I could make it. "Yes, if you are caught and interrogated then this conversation would be revealed anyway. But a single word does not need an interrogation to be revealed. It can be overheard by chance, or at a distance, and that word alone would be enough to bring doom. So for now, merely call them 'the prisoner', as you have named this filthy ghaik 'the Guardian'.'

"All right." I said. "And you need this prisoner because...?"

Voss looked at Lae'zel, tensing himself for her reaction. "Because if they can be set free, then they will be the undoing of my life's single greatest mistake, my single worst and most regretful choice. They will cast down Vlaakith from her throne."

"You're still alive, so obviously she doesn't know you're plotting treason." I thought out loud. "But just from my brief acquaintance with her I got the impression she's the sort of tyrant who trusts literally no one. And she has the power of a goddess to boot. How have you not yet been caught?"

"Vlaakith is no goddess." Voss said. "She never was. She wishes to be one, she seeks divine ascension with an obsession greater than any other, but she is merely a lich - an undead archmage, their soul preserved eternally in an animated corpse." He looked at Lae'zel, who was barely restraining herself from another outburst. "This is why the study of necromancy is banned for githyanki arcanists, save for the absolute minimum necessary to make a show of combatting lesser undead - to prevent any of our scholars from recognizing Vlaakith for what she truly is." He looked at me. "Have you ever sworn your sword to a liege lord, wishing nothing more in life than to serve them in honor, and then discovered too late that you had only killed in the name of betrayal?"

"I have." I agreed with him somberly. "At a place called Ostagar. My king died there, and I was left a penniless refugee, frantically trying to get a family out of a kingdom that could no longer be my home-" I shook my head. "It ended badly, as such tales do. Let us leave it at that."

"Then you understand at least a little of what I have known." Voss nodded to me. "I am fully as old as the legends tell me of me, Lae'zel. The timeless astral has preserved me well beyond what mortal flesh is normally granted. The many years blur together for me sometimes, but I still remember our freedom from illithid slavery. Our rebellion - our deliverance - our Mother Gith..." He stared up into the sky, searching for ghosts long dead. "And the first Vlaakith, distant ancestor of the current, who presented herself as Gith's heir when Mother Gith was lost in the lower planes. And I believed her." he trailed off, softly. "For far too long, I believed her. And her daughters."

"And the prisoner?" I asked him.

"If I tell you their tale, then I tell you their name." Voss said. "Suffice it to say that Vlaakith fears them like she fears no other entity in the multiverse, for they too know the lie that her eternal rule is built upon - and unlike me, they can prove it. My head remains on top of my neck only because Vlaakith does not know that I know. If I tried to testify to this knowledge, I would die that very same day and be remembered merely be a traitor and a madman. One flash of a blade and my tongue forever stilled, and Vlaakith's rule forever secured. But if they could step forth and be seen, be heard..." He smiled briefly. "Things would be very different."

"Why didn't Vlaakith just kill them?" I asked practically.

"Oh, she wishes she could. How desperately she wishes!" Voss laughed sardonically. "But she cannot! The power she claims, the ability to protect the children of Gith from the agents of the Grand Design as no other can - that power is not truly hers but the Astral Prism's. And the Prism has that power only because it is the unique gift of the prisoner. And so you see the dilemma Vlaakith is perched upon. If the prisoner but has a chance to speak to any other gith, to show them the truth mind to mind, that gith is lost to Vlaakith. But the prisoner can never die, or else Vlaakith loses the protection of the myth she has borrowed. And so, the prison." He nodded at where I had put the Astral Prism away in the belt pouch.

"But if she didn't want the prisoner dead, why did she send us in there to kill them?" I said.

"Either she was referring to the ghaik when she said the Prism was 'corrupted', or else the artifact's escaping her custody for the first time in gods only know how long has frightened her to the point she's now willing to cut her losses and risk the aftermath." Voss thought out loud. "I do not know which. But you have by now deduced why she sent you in rather than the inquisitor and his team."

"We were all already infected by mind flayer parasites and would have to be killed anyway, and most of us were istik besides." I agreed. "Much better to try and have us do it rather than risk the prisoner talking to the inquisitor or anyone else, because from what you've said this is a clear-cut 'Kill everybody they might have spoken to' situation."

"Indeed it is." Voss agreed. "Time grows short, and Vlaakith cannot even suspect this meeting, so I will cut to the chase. You already need to keep the prisoner safe and yourselves out of githyanki custody, merely for the sake of your own lives, so I can certainly trust you with that task as well. For millenia Vlaakith did not let anyone, not even me, know where the Prism was kept, so I could make no progress on freeing the prisoner myself." He turned to Shadowheart. "I have no idea how you and your fellow priests of Shar ever located the Astral Prism, let alone successfully liberated it from where Vlaakith had it kept, but I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. It is only what you have achieved that has given me this opportunity at all." He paused briefly. "Would you mind telling me what your superiors intended with it? Perhaps there is a common goal we are working towards."

"That would be ideal, but I wouldn't know if you were." Shadowheart shrugged. "I only know what I was ordered to do, and nothing more. But on behalf of all my fallen comrades, thank you for your gratitude."

Voss nodded to her respectfully and continued. "So that is what I need you to do - to continue to keep the Astral Prism safe, and to bring it to me in Baldur's Gate. The prisoner needs a unique key to be freed from the Astral Prism. I have been tracking that key for centuries, and I believe I know where to find it. Meet me in the tavern called Sharess' Caress, in the Wyrm's Crossing district of the city. Gith willing, I shall have the key by the time you arrive... and when the prisoner is set free, your own protection from the Absolute will no longer be held hostage by that filthy ghaik." Voss sighed. "Who regretfully I cannot help you kill now, because he has clearly interwoven his own control mechanisms at least partially into the original restrictions, and may very well have dead-man precautions besides. The prisoner would need to be freed with the key before that potential threat to the prisoner's life would be safely defused."

"That's what I was going to ask next." I said disappointedly. "Still, if we can't, then we can't. So the rendezvous is Sharess' Caress, Wyrm's Crossing. I'm assuming you know where that is?" I turned to our party's native Baldurians, and all three of them nodded.

"One last thing." I hurriedly said. "For as long as the ghaik could hear everything we say, and monitor our surface thoughts, we couldn't hope to plot against him. How long will your shielding last?"

Voss nodded and cast his spell again, reinforcing it. "That should give you more time. As I know little about the ghaik's exact strength I can't judge exactly how long you will have, but it will be more than several days... if you are fortunate, several weeks. How soon can you reach Baldur's Gate?"

"With the Shadow-Cursed Lands and Moonrise Towers between here and there?" I said. "Rough guess, a couple of weeks."

"And I cannot help you travel faster, lest Vlaakith' gaze possibly find you again." Voss said. "Very well, are we agreed?"

"We are." I committed us.

"A question, kith'rak." Lae'zel asked respectfully. "Does the zaith'isk truly kill rather than cleanse?"

"Yes." he said flatly. "Yet another one of the tyrant queen's lies, yet another thread in her web of control and naught more."

"Then good fortune to you, silver knight, and may we meet again." Lae'zel bowed to him.

"And may Mother Gith watch over you all." Voss bowed back to us respectfully, then reached into his belt pouch and withdrew a small trinket on a silver cord, made of astral metal. "Take this. It is a qua'nith, a psionic detector. Should any of Vlaakith's hunting parties find you and draw near, hopefully this will give you some warning."

"Thank you." I took the qua'nith and handed it to Lae'zel, who placed it in her pack. Voss nodded, then bent down and recovered his sword. With a single sharp whistle he summoned his mount, and then he leapt on its back and into the saddle as it landed nearby. Qadenos gave another mighty flap of his wings, and they were gone.

---

Author's Note: I seem to have a pattern of people frustratedly asking questions right before the chapter where I'd already scheduled the reveal anyway. I'm not sure if this means my timing is the best or the worst. *g*

And so we get both the Gale reveal - which is fairly standard to how it goes in the game, if with more people talking - and the Kith'rak Voss reveal, which went well off-script from the game's original. Largely because the game's original took obnoxious advantage of the Poor Communication Kills trope and had him be so vague that the player is left thinking the man was talking about the Emperor, when he was actually talking about the other guy. Fortunately, in this story talking is a free action and so the misunderstanding is cleared up right fucking then, allowing for a much deeper and sincere convo. Plus, of course, Hawke's advanced Persuasion build. Also there's no explanation for how Voss finds you wherever you camp, he just does. I'm happy when I can come up with a good rationalization for things they didn't.

Oh, and if people are wondering where the hell Elminster is, the answer is that the mountain pass is not his only possible spawn location ever since recent updates. So, they'll meet him when it's time. And seriously, this chapter was crammed so full as is - hell, there was an entire in-party convo about the Blood of Lathander I had to cut! I'll need to work that one in soon.

Speaking of the Blood of Lathander, in-game its light gives no special protection from the Shadow Curse. I consider that puree of bullshit because it's the fucking power of the sun god himself, for pete's sake. And thus, in this story, that's how it's gonna work.

Updates have gone pretty quickly for the last several chapters because they were all the one creche sequence, but now they're going to slow down a bit because I have to start playing the game again and leapfrog forward enough to research the next sequence. But they should still be well enough - I mean, we haven't even done the Underdark yet, Act One is far from over.

 

[cliffc999]

"If we keep meeting this way, people are going to talk." Shadowheart said to me humorously.

After the departure of Kith'rak Voss we'd headed back to the Emerald Grove and brought the druids up to date on everything that had happened recently. Halsin had been disappointed to find out that the githyanki had never truly had a cure, angry to find out the depths of Vlaakith's betrayal, and downright alarmed to find out about the 'Guardian'. Him, Shadowheart, and Gale had then spent several hours doing their best to make sure that Voss's spells on the Astral Prism really were successful in keeping our tentacled stalker penned up in there and unable to spy on us. And while they couldn't be absolutely certain Voss had succeeded, strange githyanki magics and suchlike not exactly being their specialty, they were confident that whatever shielding spell he'd cast on the Astral Prism had somehow embedded itself with the Prism's own defensive enchantments, and would thus be able to persist for a lengthy period of time as opposed to fading away in several hours like the average shielding spell would.

We had of course taken the opportunity to replenish our supplies, get fully healed of any lingering injuries, and take a brief rest, but the plan was to head back out in the afternoon. Halsin had tied up his remaining affairs in the Grove and gotten everything ready to hand over to his replacement, and had also had an opportunity to use his own extensive magic and Nettie's assistance to further his recovery from the lingering injuries the goblins had inflicted upon him. He still wasn't a hundred percent yet, but he felt confident that he'd be able to keep up with us at least reasonably well on the journey and hopefully be back to full strength by the time we arrived at Moonrise Towers.

And so as the others were busy taking care of the final details and finishing their packing, Shadowheart and I both found ourselves back out on what we had come to think of as "our" private beach.

"We need to talk." I replied to her, the tone of my voice wiping the smile away from her face and replacing it with concern.

"Is something wrong?" she asked me worriedly.

"Yes." I answered frankly. "There's no immediate danger or pending disaster, but..." I sighed. "Remember when you said that because my initiation into paladinhood was largely instinctive, that I should trust my instincts if they told me that I was about to betray myself?"

"I do." Shadowheart nodded briskly. "So... something you don't want to do, that you feel your Oath compels you to do anyway... and that involves me." she reasoned. "Damn. I had hoped we could postpone this conversation. Indefinitely."

"We were both standing right here when I promised that I wouldn't do anything for you that I wouldn't do with you." I said. "So I can't sneak up on you with this, even if I could think of several ways-" I stopped dithering. "I've been starting to suspect that your memory wipe was not as voluntary as you were led to believe. I'm afraid that the church of Shar is forcing things upon you that you might not have willingly chosen."

Shadowheart drew back from me slightly, her expression puzzled. "That... wasn't quite what I was expecting."

"What, were you afraid I was going to condemn you as a servant of darkness or suchlike? Shadowheart, if you're an evil person at heart then I'm queen of the githyanki." I scoffed. "Every time I see you - the real you, unforced, reacting naturally in the moment - I see someone... amazing." I finished awkwardly. "Empathetic, compassionate... remember when you told me how surprised you were at how good saving the refugees felt? Or how your first instinct when Lae'zel's world fell apart around her was to help her back to her feet and tell her you understood her pain?" I looked Shadowheart directly in the eyes. "And then every time you reaffirm your catechism, every time you act in the role of a priestess of Shar, every time you try to meet your Mother Superior's expectations, you're someone very different."

"Which proves nothing." Shadowheart shot back. "Many - even most - devotees of a religious faith are not people to whom proper devotion comes instinctively, but who require ongoing self-discipline and re-affirmation. Philosophers still debate whether it's better to be innately virtuous or to overcome an unvirtuous nature through effort."

"And that's all I would have thought was happening," I agreed. "If you hadn't told me that your memories had been altered." I held up my hands in a wordless request for peace. "I'm accusing people you have known as your own family of taking advantage of you in an unconscionable way, and there's really no way for me to do that without upsetting you. I just hope-"

"Stop." she said, holding up her hands. "I- I know why you're seeing what you're seeing." She turned away, downcast. "I do feel like I'm torn in two sometimes. But not because of anything they've done to my memories, but because I already know that I'm doing what I shouldn't." She turned back to me, looking plaintively up into my eyes. "My goddess brings the comfort of emptiness to soothe the pain of loss. The strength to openly withstand cruelty rather than the weakness of false hope. I'm not supposed to get attached to anyone!" she exclaimed plaintively. She reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, and succeeded only in shaking herself rather than me. "But I can't stop."

"Shar doesn't allow her faithful to have relationships with those outside the church?" I half-questioned.

"She doesn't allow them inside the church. Not the kind of relationship we're falling into, at least." Shadowheart said. "Lust? A matter of no concern. Seduction? Often useful. Corruption? Laudable." She looked up into my eyes. "If I were allowing this- this bond between us because it was helping lead you down into the darkness with me, then Lady Shar would cheer me on. But I'm not doing that. I couldn't even if I tried, not with as strong and as honorable as you are." Her eyes turned frightened. "I don't even want to." she admitted.

I drew her gently into a comforting hug. "If I said that I was sorry for what's happening between us-"

"-then I'd kick you somewhere very unpleasant." she muttered against my chest. "I'm a grown woman and I make my own choices. If I didn't want this, I wouldn't be tolerating it." She looked back up into my eyes. "But I do want this, even though I know it can end only in loss and sorrow for me- for both of us." She sighed despondently. "I suppose Lady Shar is at least pleased by that."

"You also told Lae'zel that one thing you had in common was that you both feared your goddess as much as you worshipped her." I remembered. "What happens to someone who tries to turn away - to worship elsewhere?"

Shadowheart looked at me knowingly, her face pale and taut. "Something that makes githyanki childrearing practices look like a petting zoo."

"And nothing I could possibly protect you from, even if I gave it every effort I possibly could." I asked.

"I'm entirely confident you would. But no, you couldn't. That would take a miracle... and I'm a servant of the Nightbringer. All gods have already forsaken me but one." Shadowheart said softly.

"Well, I want to try anyway." I admitted.

"And I want you to see-" Shadowheart hesitated. "I want to share something with you. The earliest memory that I have. The reason why I owe everything to Mother Superior, and Shar's church. Use the tadpole - the connection." she urged me. "Come into my mind."

I concentrated on reaching out, and met her own intent coming towards me halfway. The world began to shiver around us, and our minds filled with a vision-

"I don't remember how it started." Shadowheart said. "Only how it ended. I was fleeing-"

I saw through the eyes of a young girl, kneeling in the dirt in a forest. A reflection of her in a nearby puddle showed me a young girl, perhaps eight or ten, with her hair done up in double buns. The face was that of a much younger Shadowheart. I concentrated hard on trying to note every detail I could - the scratch on one cheek, her small pale hands clenched tightly in fear, the bright moonlight shining down from above-

The point of view suddenly shifted as a fearsome growling filled the air. The biggest wolf I'd ever seen, it's fur silver-white in the moonlight, stood about fifteen feet away from Shadowheart with its great fangs bared. It's gaze fixed on Shadowheart with a terrible intensity, a glaring hatred-

-no, not on her, but behind her. I saw through her eyes as her head frantically turned around. Several women in dark hoods and cloaks, their faces covered by elaborate masks, had come up silently behind Shadowheart. Three of them were holding spears - they stepped past the kneeling Shadowheart to confront the wolf, surrounding it with spear-points levelled. The fourth woman came around and stood in front of Shadowheart, blocking her view of the others as they dealt with the wolf. A yelp of pain echoed in her ears as the woman reached down and grasped Shadowheart's hand, pulling her up on her feet. She then reached up with both of her hands to start pulling back her hood and removing her mask- and the memory-vision ended.

"That was Mother Superior." Shadowheart continued narrating. "She asked me my name, but I can't remember what I answered. I can't remember anything before those woods. All I know is that she saved my life, and gave me a new home. With Lady Shar." She looked at me, begging me to understand. "I owe her everything. I can't just-"

"Shadowheart." I held up a hand, asking for silence. "You said that's the first thing you can remember, yes?"

"Absolutely." she agreed.

"Then where did you learn to pick locks?" I asked her.

"Well I practiced in the temple-" she began.

"No." I gently interrupted. "You told Mol that you'd grown up rough, on the streets of Baldur's Gate. But if you don't remember anything before the temple, how do you know that?"

"That's- that's what they told me." Shadowheart said, puzzled. "That as far back as they could trace me I'd been an orphan on the streets, who'd wandered into the woods nearby Baldur's Gate trying to gather food and had gotten lost and almost killed by that damned wolf."

I breathed deeply and invited her to sit down with me on a nearby rock, trying to make this as unconfrontational as possible. "I know you shared that with me - one of the most deeply personal memories you still have - to try and convince me of how deeply your sense of duty runs and why. But I'm afraid all I've done is get even more suspicions." I held up my hand again, begging for forbearance as I saw heated words begin to leap to my lips. "Come into my mind, please. Let me show you."

We fell into the vision again, and I replayed the memory that I had just seen - showing Shadowheart how it had looked through my eyes when I was watching it. I paused the memory at a particular moment. "There. Look at your reflection. What do you see?"

"Myself, of course, as a young girl." Shadowheart said. "What am I supposed to see?"

"Look at your hair." I pointed. "How long do you think it would take to do up those buns everyday?"

"At least-" she stopped, her eyes widening.

"Yes. It's not exactly the most elaborate hairstyle in the world, but it's still something that requires maintenance. I had a younger sister, remember, I'm entirely aware of how long it takes a young lady to do up her hair formally. And we saw a bunch of orphaned urchins just the other day, remember? Mol and her crew? Did any of them remotely have the time or the knowledge to maintain a hairstyle like that?"

"But-" she started to protest, and I ruthlessly drove right over her.

I shifted the memory again and replayed another segment. "Now look at your younger self's hands. They've got some dirt on them - you've been running lost through the woods, after all - but they don't have that sort of thick, built-up grime that gets deeply ingrained. And you've barely got any callouses, and your fingernails are even and neatly trimmed." I shook my head. "I grew up in a farming village and then lived in the worst slum in Kirkwall for almost a year before Bartrand's expedition gave our family enough wealth to buy our way out. I know what someone's hands look like when they're doing manual labor or living on the streets." I shifted the mental point of view again. "Those clothes you're wearing are dirty from having been out in the woods, but they're still very nice clothes. No old stains, no patches or tears, very little signs of wear... and they fit you. You didn't scavenge that outfit or steal it somewhere, it was something you owned."

The memory-vision faded around us and we were back sitting on the beach. "You weren't necessarily a noblewoman but wherever your younger self was from, it was not the streets. Your clothes, your hair, your hygiene - you had someone who took care of you. Who could afford to dress you decently and give you regular baths, who didn't need you to do heavy labor as a child just to help feed the household. You were no orphan. You weren't even a peasant." I finished adamantly.

"How do you- you're reading things into the details that aren't there!" Shadowheart said desperately.

"One of my best friends was the captain of the city guards, another was a pirate and thief, and a third one ran a smuggling cartel... and also wrote detective novels that he forced me to help edit." I said. "Add in that there were years where I swore that every gold piece I owned had three people trying to cheat me out of it-" My voice turned mournful. "And how my mother died at least partly because I didn't solve a murder mystery in time. So after that, I spent time learning how to notice and interpret clues, from people on both sides of the law. Believe you me, I learned."

"That- even if you're right, that still doesn't mean they lied to me. They were speculating - guessing. And we all guessed wrong." Shadowheart denied. She shook her head. "Stop confusing me, please!"

"All right." I backed off. "No more confusing, not today, I promise. And I did have a more immediate matter I needed to bring up anyway... it was just that I couldn't do that without either breaking my promise or telling you what I just did." I reached down to my belt where the Blood of Lathander hung, and drew the mace gently forth from the retaining loop and held it out to her. "I want you to take this."

Shadowheart looked down at it, and back up to me. "Well at least you're not asking me to hold Selune's spear." she said with a brief attempt at recovering her sense of humor. "But for all that the Morninglord and the Dark Lady have opposing domains, I doubt very much that this would do anything to protect me."

"Would using it do anything to harm you?" I asked.

"No." she shook her head, visibly glad to have a practical problem to analyze as opposed to the knotty personal doubts we'd just been wrestling with. "It's historical record that the Church of Shar made one almost-successful attempt to take it before, and it didn't lash out at any of our priests who were carrying it until after they made the mistake of trying to destroy it and not just hold it. But for all that the Blood is a divine miracle, I very much doubt that it would act as the one you're hoping for."

"There was actually a much more practical concern than that." I admitted. "Specifically, that I've never used a mace before. This thing would do me as much good as a kitchen ladle if I tried to fight with it. You, on the other hand, are practically an artist with one of these."

"Oh." Shadowheart briefly facepalmed, both amused and chagrined. "That's... also true. But you couldn't try to hand me the sacred weapon of a deity opposed to mine while simultaneously pretending that you weren't secretly wishing I worshipped my deity less, because that would be a degree of manipulation you'd promised not to use."

"There's nothing secret about that wish now." I admitted. "And I've seen enough to start believing that Shar doesn't deserve your service anymore than Vlaakith does Lae'zel's - if not for identical reasons."

"I should by all rights be outraged by a statement that blasphemous." Shadowheart muttered. "But it's a measure of how horrible a distraction you are that I'm not. Dark Lady help me, part of me even wants to take it as a compliment."

"You should, because it was certainly intended as one." I eased off. "Sorry, I promised not to push further right now. But... I had to let you know."

"You did." she agreed, taking a calming breath. "And no matter how far off base I hope you are... thank you. For caring about me." She tentatively reached up and grasped the handle of the outstretched Blood of Lathander, then tightened her grip when nothing immediately happened to her upon touching it.

"Look at that." I said encouragingly.

"All right, then." she agreed, lifting the sacred mace out of my hands and holding it upright to catch the afternoon sun. "Let's see what happens."

---

My heart was in my throat as I climbed down the ladder. It had been almost ten years since my first and only expedition into the Deep Roads - or the 'Underdark' as they called it here - but the memories were still as sharp as a wire garrotte. Bartrand's betrayal, the discovery of the red lyrium statue that ultimately destroyed Kirkwall... Bethany...

I'd never liked being underground after that.

The goblin lair had been built in a ruined temple of Selune, and as it turned out Priestess Gut had claimed the old high priest's quarters. Adjacent to them was a great hall that had an elaborate design of interlocking circles on the floor - a design that would open a nearby secret panel if the circles were turned to the right pattern. Halsin and Shadowheart were able to deduce that the key was making sure that the dark moon representing Shar were on the bottom of the design, and the silver moons representing Selune were on the top, and behind the passage was a mine shaft leading deep into the bowels of Toril.

But instead of the claustrophobic underground passages or excavated dwarf-halls I'd expected to see at the bottom, my eyes were instead greeted by a vista of beauty that I'd never expected. The cavern was enormous, a giant hollow space over a hundred feet high and stretching out horizontaly for miles. The bottom of the shaft was also a chapel of Selune - one that had been built without a roof, as there was no need for one - and a gate-and-portcullis led from the front of the chapel out across a bridge and onto the cavern floor. And although the brilliance of the Blood of Lathander was like a tiny piece of the sun brought to lands that had never seen it before, we didn't actually need it. Phosphorescent mosses, fluroescent orange mushrooms, glowing violet crystals embedded in great stalagmites and stalactites-

"Incredible." Halsin said, breathing deeply. "I can feel the rhythms of nature here - it's not a familiar pattern, but it's still life. This is a fully functional ecosystem, a little world of its own."

"I know, right?" Karlach said cheerfully. "I've been on several planes and never seen anything remotely like this. To think it was just under our feet all the while!"

"But not everyone thrived here." Gale said sadly, looking around at the Selunite outpost. There were several skeletons laying scattered around the inside of the gates, ones still dressed in rags that had been Selunite priestly robes long ago. And there was a brilliant magical energy barrier across the gate, one that promised destruction to anyone who drew too near the outside of it. The corpse of a giant bull-headed biped - a 'minotaur', as Halsin named it - lay just outside the portcullis as testament to how powerful that barrier had been.

"Sealed off by the priests of Selune, when they were overwhelmed." Halsin noted. "They didn't want whatever calamity had overtaken them to come back up through the entryway and attack the surface."

"The barrier is being sustained by that great gem there." Shadowheart said, pointing up. "The one resting in the palms of that large statue of- the moon goddess." she quickly substituted.

"But why are most of the skeletons on the outside of the gate?" Wyll asked, pointing at the far more numerous casualties in the clearing just outside the gate. "If they were able to seal off the entryway, why not just all retreat back up to the temple on the surface?"

"Here." Gale said, spotting a leather-bound journal resting nearby on a railing. "One of the priests was keeping note of events-"

The tale of the Selunite garrison here was a sad one. The Underdark entrance had not been built by the priests of Selune but had been a part of the surface structure, an ancient site that they'd rebuilt and repurposed as their chapel. When High Initiate Jarrus had discovered the passage he'd attempted to simultaneously extend the reach of their church into the Underdark as well as the community they were founding or expanding above us. Despite entreaties by his superiors to pull back and abandon the effort he'd persisted, and they had become overextended. His initial successes had been crushed by a strong response from a community of enemies they'd discovered a moderate distance away from here - dark elves, apparently. The last entry in his journal was sobering in the extreme.

It always felt vainglorious, to think my deeds worthy of a personal journal. But as I watch the drow mass outside our gate, I realise my arrogance is already of a far costlier sort. I see no harm in tipping the scales a little further.

Not for me, but for those who followed me down into the dark. They deserve to be remembered.

- Initiate Norn Remys, lost in the deep tunnels as we fell back from the drow.

- Initiate Thulk of the Northern Wastes, grazed by an arrow and succumbed to poison.

- Initiate Bree Brekka, who stood against a drider with only her mason's hammer.

And Initiates they are, the entire company - for they have seen and suffered too much to be called novices.

We've collapsed the tunnel behind, and have made ready to open the gate. Perhaps we can carve a path through.

And if not, I enclose a list of names - let the annals show that whatever their end, the cause was the same: one High Initiate Jarrus wished to stamp his name in the history of his Church. He sought to forge a path through the darkness, not realising there are some places the light was never meant to touch.

He was a fool.

Shadowheart looked away from us back out the gate at the skeletons we could see littering the ground outside, her face grave. "They didn't even make it a quarter mile outside the gate. Their last few survivors must have fallen back to here and erected the barrier to defend the passage back to the temple on the surface... and then died here because they couldn't get out." Her expression firmed. "Noble fools indeed, as their own High Initiate said."

"The tunnel wasn't collapsed when we came through it." Wyll noted. "Minthara probably had it excavated when the forces of the Absolute took over the ruins above. A direct route to the Underdark would have been convenient for her."

"Selune bless and keep their souls." I closed the journal and handed it to Halsin.

"I'll make sure this is sent on to a temple of the Moonmaiden, when I can." he acknowledged. "They deserve to know how their fellow devotees died."

"Hang on, what's this?" Gale broke in. "'A Search for the Nightsong'." He held up the slim book he'd found in what had remained of the outpost's tiny library, which had of course been the first place he'd searched. "Convenient!" The volume was short, and revealed largely that the artifact known as 'the Nightsong' was not merely the recent interest of the patron in Baldur's Gate who'd hired Aradin's mercenaries but had been the dream of treasure hunters on this part of the Sword Coast for at least the past two generations. The common rumor had apparently been that it had been buried in a lost temple of Selune on the north bank of the Chionthar - the same temple the goblins had set up their camp in and that we'd recently cleared - but the writer of this adventurer's journal had apparently turned up an eyewitness who'd claimed that that actual location of the Nightsong was in the remains of an old underground temple of Shar adjacent to Moonrise Towers.

"That confirms the suspicion I've held for a long time." Halsin said thoughtfully. "Not about the Nightsong, mind - I have no interest in that. But I'd long since come to guess that there had been a hidden temple complex of Shar in the vicinity of Moonrise, an Underdark fortress with a nearby surface exit. It would explain how Ketheric Thorm had been able to raise his force of Dark Justicars in such secrecy and unleash them upon Moonrise so suddenly without anyone seeing them approach, or how they were all able to vanish so mysteriously immediately before the Shadow Curse descended." He smiled. "And that means my surmise was correct - the Underdark will give us a direct route to Moonrise without having to actually traverse the Shadow-Cursed Lands."

"And here we went to all that effort anyway." Shadowheart joked, with a playful swing of her new mace. "So, an ancient hidden fortress once held by Shar's Dark Justicars. Fascinating."

"It would be, wouldn't it?" he said to her meaningfully, his face held in a neutral mask.

I looked back at him and shrugged back with a knowing nod. Yeah, I know. We'll talk about this later.

"All right." Halsin nodded, acknowledging the group consensus even if I was certain he'd keep a wary eye on Shadowheart privately. So long as that was all he did, that would be fine. "Does anyone have any ideas on how to lower that barrier so we can get out of here?"

"Probably just a matter of 'remove the gem from the statue'." Gale said. "A Mage Hand cantrip will manage that easily enough."

"Before we lower the defenses, we should search the rest of the outpost first." I said. "Hopefully the Selunite expedition here mapped at least some of the local area, because otherwise we're going to have to explore blindly to even figure out which way Moonrise is. My compass doesn't work down here." Compasses, or 'trailfinders' as Faerunians called them, had been well-known on Thedas for centuries. The Faerun models were cruder but still worked. In the Underdark, however, all the needle did was spin helplessly - according to Gale, the local magical radiation of the Underdark, called the faerzress, was interfering.

A search of the outpost produced the revelation that there was a travelstone down here - a sight we greeted with relief, because with travelstones at both top and bottom we would never have to use that damned endless ladder again - and several minor magic items, including a magic breastplate that glowed softly with luminance. The group agreed that I should have it, and I agreed because the only other person it would fit was Wyll, whose combat style didn't like anything heavier than leather. Unfortunately, we didn't find any maps.

"Nothing for it to but to explore, then." I agreed. "If nothing else, we can just warp back here any time we get lost." A Mage Hand cantrip was all it took to lift the sacred gem out of the statue's clasped hands, and the magic barrier faded away.

We came to the end of the bridge leading out the main gate and to an intersection of paths. Since we had no idea of which way to go, we decided to take the right one.

"Torchstalk." Halsin said, pointing at a mushroom that glowed orange. "It also grows underground, near the surface - we have a problem keeping it out of the deeper caves in the Grove. Movement too close nearby can detonate it in a small fiery explosion. Be very careful of several torchstalks growing together."

"How does a plant that self-destructive not rapidly go extinct?" I asked him.

"The explosion is what scatters the spores farther, enabling it to spread and thrive. It doesn't become able to detonate until it's already at the end of a growth cycle." Halsin said. "Between that and how its habit of combusting helps discourage anything else from eating it, it's actually a survival mechanism. The welfare of any individual torchstalk is irrelevant, the species as a whole will survive and prosper. One of the earliest lessons we have to teach young druids is to not anthropomorphize nature - what is better for men is often worse for plants, or animals, and vice versa. Everything is a balancing act."

"There's a clump of torchstalk blocking that passage." Wyll said. "Any advice for getting past it?"

"Trigger the detonation from a safe distance, with a cantrip or an arrow." he replied matter-of-factly. "We just discussed how detonating it doesn't actually hurt the species."

A single eldritch bolt from Wyll's warlock powers took care of that and we moved on.

"What are those?" Shadowheart asked, pointing at a cluster of much differently-colored mushrooms growing profusely in a small round clearing below the path we were traveling on - great round dark ones with phosphorescent blue streaks.

"Timmask, I believe." Halsin said. "I've never seen them before, but read about them. They release spores that cause animal life to be disoriented and intoxicated, while also slowly poisoning them to death while they're unable to notice. If you have to get past a cluster of timmask then use fire - the spores are also flammable."

"There's torchstalk mixed in all with the timmask down there." I said. "Deadly trap - the timmask confuses you and as you're stumbling around you set off the torchstalk, which ignites the timmask spores. And then you're drugged, poisoned, and on fire. Wyll?" Another eldritch bolt hurtled down into one of the torchstalks and we waited a couple of minutes for the chain reaction of explosions and fire that set off to dissipate.

-more are coming- a deep voice whispered in our minds.

"Close up." I ordered, and we all looked warily around. "Anybody know what that was?"

"A telepathic communication of some kind." Gale deduced. "But not psionics, either githyanki or illithid. Not via our tadpoles, either."

Halsin nodded. "Certainly not via your tadpoles - I heard it too." He raised his voice and called out. "Hail, friend! We come in peace!"

-They are coming. You are coming.- the voice rumbled in our minds, and then silence.

"Creepy." Karlach shook her head.

"More than a bit!" I agreed, and then broke off as the earth shook heavily beneath our feet. The ground didn't just tremble but outright heaved, as if an earthquake had started, and we all staggered and almost fell.

"Half-circle formation. Put our backs to that wall!" I ordered, and we shifted position and readied ourselves for attack. One minute passed, then several-

"Nothing." Shadowheart said.

"Resume the march." I decided. "But stay alert. I doubt that earthquake was coincidental."

"I don't think that was an earthquake." Halsin said. "But I'm not sure what it was."

We progressed further along the path, turning right again at the next intersection. 'Follow the right-hand wall' was the usual advise for traversing strange mazes, after all. A couple more clumps of torchstalk tried to block our progress, but we readily enough dealt with them.

"A rope ladder?" Wyll pointed at a long rectangular section of netting dangling down from a ledge perhaps sixty feet above us. "Someone's here?"

"Drow outpost? Smuggler's cave?" Halsin wondered.

"Not the way to Moonrise." I decided. "Ignore it and move on."

The path dead-ended here, so we headed back to the last intersection and took another route. That one led us back down into the clearing we'd seen from above earlier, the one with the torchstalk and timmask concentrations we'd remotely detonated.

"Here it comes again!" Shadowheart cried as the earth began heaving beneath our feet, worse than before. I shifted into the Bulwark stance just in time to magically root myself and became impossible to knock over, as the tremors worsened to the point virtually nobody else was on their feet-

-and then the ground tore open beneath us and with a terrible roar that echoed off the distant cavern walls, a monstrosity breached the surface like a maddened whale. It was an enormous beast, with an armored carapace like a turtle's perched on top of four thick, stubby legs. Fully twice the height of a man and longer than an oxcart from snout to tail, the head was no turtle's but a thick heavy snout, containing a giant maw full of more teeth than a shark's. With an agility belying its tremendous size it spun end-for-end in an eyeblink and charged the one member of the group still on their feet - me.

"Smite!" I cried, focusing a tithe of my internal power into a single devastating strike while remaining rooted in the Bulwark stance. The monster crashed into me and halted dead, my stance keeping me rooted to the ground as I became temporarily invulnerable to physical force for just the briefest instant of contact. My greatsword blow, augmented by the arcane power I'd channelled through my smite and again by the sheer force of the monster's own impact into me, actually broke through the diamond-hard carapace and drew deeply of its blood. However, that left me practically face-to-snout with the damnable thing and while it was wounded, it was nowhere close to dead.

"Shit!" I swore, abandoning my stance and frantically leaping back and rolling away. I got clear just in time to avoid a savage lunge by the beast, combined with a snap of its great jaws that would have bitten off an arm. I waved my greatsword at it in threatening slashes, not even trying to close to contact but just distracting its attention- everybody else would need a chance to get up-

A great roar announced Halsin's entrance to the fight as a brown bear, looking uncharacteristically small in comparision to this monster, leapt on its back and took a savage bite at the back of the beast's neck where the carapace didn't cover. Halsin drew blood, then was thrown off its back as the damn thing heaved forward and down, cleaving through the earth like it was water and going back underground.

"Spread out - get on top of something!" I cried frantically to the rest of the group. Shadowheart had made it back to her feet and had leapt to the top of a nearby mushroom. Lae'zel was busy helping Gale to his feet - Karlach had her own greatsword out, blazing with anger as she looked hurriedly around for any indicator where the beast was going -

- and Wyll screamed in agony as the monster erupted from the earth directly underneath him, its great jaws biting off both his legs like a man chewing through a breadstick. What was left of him hit the ground, a few terrible great spurts gushing forth from the severed stumps of his thighs before falling terribly silent. We hadn't been fighting this thing for ten seconds and we were already one down-

"You bastard!" Karlach shrieked, and her infernal engine revved to full power as she caught ablaze. She threw herself straight at the burrowing monster howling like a banshee, the Everburning Blade I'd gifted her with slashing it again and again across the face. I came in as quickly as I could to support her, but I hadn't reached them before the cunning beast simply turned its head, lowered its shoulder, and charged her so hard that she flew ten feet back and bounced off a nearby wall.

Stone spikes erupted from the floor beneath the monster, ripping into its less-armored belly, as Halsin shifted back to human form and unleashed his druidic magic. A whirlwind of daggers, each made out of pure arcane force, sprang into existence in a cloud around the creature as Gale cast his own spell. The monster roared in rage and agony, spinning about in confusion. It couldn't burrow down through the spikes, but the cloud of daggers moved with it as it tried to flee on the surface, Gale's face drawn up in concentration-

"Over here, you bastard!" I snarled and did a great leaping strike at its tail, hoping to cleave the whole damned thing off and kill it via blood loss the same way it had just killed Wyll. I didn't succeed in amputating it, but I did cleave down hard all the way to and partly through the bone. Another invocation of the Bulwark stance let me damage the creature even more as it spun around and tried to ram into me the same way it had Karlach, but my stamina was almost depleted just from warding off both those blows and the smite - I doubted I could do this one again, and for all the blood we'd drawn from this thing it was still clearly in the fight with at least half its vitality left-

-and then everything was washed out in a blaze of light as a giant golden blast of energy smashed into the side of the monster and cored right through its carapace like a crossbow bolt through a block of cheese. All our eyes turned to Shadowheart as she stood there, the Blood of Lathander blazing like a miniature sun in her hands, as the full strength of both her arms was barely able to wrestle the artifact into position and keep the giant blazing sunbeam erupting forth from its macehead like a torrent of water from a downspout in a thunderstorm on position until the damned monster was finally stone cold dead.

Shadowheart looked down confusedly at the holy weapon in her hands, now shining slightly dimmer as if it had temporarily exhausted itself. "By the gods..."

"To hell with the gods, what about Wyll?" Karlach moaned. We all went over to examine him but it was too late for any of Shadowheart's healing spells - he was dead. "Damn it, we'd barely gotten started!" she sobbed. "And now he's down there roasting forever-"

"Withers!" I shouted ferociously. "If you're anywhere near here at all, then we need you!"

"Thou hast called, and I have come." the impossibly dry voice rang out, and sure enough he was standing right over there as if he'd been there all along. "But pay the price, and it shall be done."

"But Mizora-" Karlach said, looking up from where she was cradling Wyll's bloody corpse in her arms. "She's got his soul now. You can't get him back from that!"

"That is my problem to deal with." Withers said glacially. I rummaged through the cash pouch and dug out two hundred gold coins - the price that Withers had said would be his 'standard fee' for performing his 'services'.

Withers accepted the cash with a simple nod, and then materialized his great book again in his hands."By doom and dusk, I strike thy name from the archives! Rise!" he intoned once more, and Wyll's bloodied and dismembered corpse vanished from Karlach's arms to appear right beside us entirely intact. Even his clothes were spotless, as if he'd never exerted himself today.

"What- oh, that's marvelous!" Karlach cried, hugging Wyll enthusiastically - her flames damped down, thank goodness. "But how'd you get your feet back? Last I saw they were going down that thing's gullet!"

"To restore a lost appendage or two is trivially easy compared to restoring a lost life." Withers said patronizingly. "As for Mizora, she may collect her due only after I am done."

"If you can push the pact like that, can you break it?" Wyll immediately asked.

"No." Withers said immediately. "It is not my place to do such things. Once death is final, then the devil may claim her due as her pact allows. I merely take advantage of a certain... ambiguity as to precisely when a mortal's death is final."

"Well... thank you anyway." I said to him. Because for all that he was enigmatic, annoying, and downright creepy, it couldn't be denied that he'd saved the life of one of our friends.

"I but provide my services for proper compensation, as I have agreed to do. There is little need for 'thanks', and even less desire." Withers noted, and in-between one eyeblink and the next he was gone.

---

Author's Note: Halsin insists on being made a temporary party member after all, seeing as how he's traveling with the group at least as far as the Shadow Curse quest in Act Two and I don't have game engine limits forcing him to sit in camp and do nothing except repeat the same dialogue lines over and over. But a temporary party member is all he'll be, even if it's going to be a nontrivial chunk of time before we get that far into Act Two.

And so the Underdark section begins, and of course the first thing they run into is the bulette - one of the most painful damn boss fights in the entire game. Seeing as how the thing is not only a godawful tank and hits like a truck, but it can spam all the knockdowns constantly. Fortunately Hawke has DA hax powers, and even more fortunately the Blood of Lathander has a 1/day Sunbeam spell that hits like a wave motion gun because its very respectable 1-turn damage can be repeated for up to 10 consecutive turns if nothing breaks the caster's concentration. I was being nice in only killing one person here - a great many BG3 runs have wiped the entire party on the bulette fight.

Shadowheart's canon romance path continues to drift even further off-script as my characters keep insisting that I write them with their full brains. Who the heck knows where this is going to end up, but I am a seat-of-the-pants writer anyway so this is not an unprecedented experience for me.

And now you finally find out why I've been writing Hawke as such an adept spotter of clues when that's not what he's most famous for in the canon. Answer: it's precisely because of how often DA2 forced him to not spot the clue (particularly in Act Two) so that tragedy could descend later, his mother's death hardly being the least of those tragedies. It's in reaction to that that he's spent the intervening years forcing himself to train hard at picking up clues. And between Aveline, Isabella, and Varric, that's a lot of things you can potentially learn.

 

[cliffc999]

"Mushroom people?!?" I shouted discordantly.

I knew I was being more than a little ridiculous but I still couldn't stop myself. I thought I'd seen any number of odd things - on more than one world, to boot - but I simply drew the line at mushroom people. Talking mushroom people, even if the 'talking' was done by having them puff spores in your face and then listening to them through some type of fungoid mental link.

The mysterious voice we'd heard earlier had been that of 'Sovereign Spew', the leader of this colony of "myconids". Apparently, telepathic talking mushroom people was just a thing in Faerun and I had clearly been underestimating just how weird Faerun could get. 'Spew' had laid several clouds of his telepathic spores in an outer perimeter around the myconid colony, which is apparently what we'd been heading right towards.

I didn't mind that they were acting very wary of strangers - the corpses I could see laying around confirmed what the Sovereign had already told us, that his people had recently experienced attack by humanoids. The attackers had left behind several of their own dead - strange, gray-skinned dwarves that my fellow party members told me were called "duergar". Apparently they bore roughly the same relation to surface dwarves that drow bore to surface elves. It took a bit of effort to explain our particular plight to Sovereign regarding the Cult of the Absolute, the tadpoles, and our need for a cure or a path to Moonrise Tower, but we finally managed to confirm that there had been no tadpoles in the brains of the killed duergar.

Although Spew entirely wanted to hire our group to go kill the rest of the duergar, who were apparently occupying an abandoned village down on the shore of an underground lake a couple miles away. A wounded 'deep gnome' named Thulla, who'd apparently been poisoned during a fight with duergar, told us something much more useful after Shadowheart cured her poison with one of her Lesser Restoration spells - that an expedition of her people had been captured by duergar and taken as slaves for a major excavation they were doing in an abandoned underground complex on the far side of the lake. She'd made a run for it, with a group of duergar slave-hunters in pursuit, and gotten this far before collapsing - it was the slave-hunters that the myconids had fought, and that Spew wanted us to kill. She also rewarded us for her cure with a pair of magical boots she'd stolen from the duergar before fleeing, that would give a brief burst of supernatural speed to the wearer if you clicked the heels.

Halsin assured us that myconids were nonaggressive unless attacked first, and after the fight we'd just had with that "bulette" monster we entirely needed to heal up and replenish our spells, so we settled in and made camp. After discussing our options we decided that as risky as these 'duergar' sounded the underground ruins she described were our best option, as the myconids only knew of one other exit from the Underdark anywhere remotely near their village besides the one we'd used to get down here. And that one was apparently right above the little outpost we'd bypassed earlier, which according to Spew had humans using it - not dark elves or goblins - and certainly wasn't any major underground temple complex of Shar. So by the process of elimination the path to Moonrise was likely on the other side of the underground lake.

"Are you feeling all right?" I asked Wyll after we'd settled down.

"No." he answered honestly, his voice a little shaken. "I mean, Withers restored me to full health, yes, but..." he trailed off. "We all fear death, but at least you don't have to fear what comes afterward." He looked downcast. "When I first made this pact it seemed so simple - all the lives I could save, as balanced against my own. Plus the overconfidence of youth... after all, the tales were full of clever heroes cheating their way free of devil pacts. Why shouldn't I be one of them?" He laughed bitterly. "Mizora had been doing this for centuries. She must have seen a thousand like me - how could she not be one step ahead?"

"Don't think like that." Karlach said encouragingly. "That's how they get you. I got sold downstairs before I was eighteen, and Zariel spent that whole time trying to beat into my head how helpless I was. How it wasn't worth even trying to run. But look at me, here I am!" she thumped her chest vigorously with one clenched fist.

"Did you sign a pact?" Wyll asked her.

"Didn't sign anything." Karlach shrugged. "I'm still not sure exactly how it happened, except maybe it was one of those tricky situations like what happened to the Elturans in the Descent."

"Well, don't stop there." Gale said encouragingly, as I noticed the others had drawn near to our conversation.

"Story hour? All right." Karlach chuckled. "Even back when I was still a girl I was big for my age - or any age, eheh - and even before I got training, I was naturally good in a fight. So there I was, a wild kid growing up on the streets of the Outer City and brawling my way through every alley in Baldur's Gate. I didn't take coin for doing anything too awful, but I didn't stop to ponder the fine points of the law when I needed to fill my belly either, you get me?"

Having spent most of my first year in Kirkwall doing largely the same thing, I just nodded.

"Right, so one day a friend of a friend puts me onto a job. Bodyguard work, for this moneyed type with more than a few enemies, so I went in and asked about it. He took one look at me and said I was a perfect fit - first time in my life anyone had ever said anything like that to me." She trailed off wistfully. "So I stayed with him, and pretty soon it wasn't just a job for coin."

"Who was he?" Wyll asked. "Anybody I might have known?"

"No idea if you'd have known him or not. Remember, this was more than ten years ago, and he was younger then than you are now." she pointed out. "His name was Gortash - Enver Gortash. He was an inventor, and a merchant of several kinds as well - if not always the sort of merchanting you did above the table. He was starting to get into politics too, towards the end of my time with him. One of those wheeler-dealer types always with his fingers in a dozen pies simultaneously, but he was the shrewdest bastard I'd ever met in my life. No matter what kind of deal it was or how complicated all the juggling got, he always came out ahead." She shook her head. "And he could charm the birds down out of the trees, too, and not with druid magic either. Sort of like you, Hawke, except in a completely opposite way - if that makes any sense."

"And then one day he introduced you to a devil?" I asked.

"Introduced my flaming arse." Karlach snorted. "Sold me off without so much as a by-your-leave! One day I'm a trusted member of the household, and next thing I know I'm waking up in Avernus with a slave collar on my neck! Zariel herself smirked at me that she'd paid Gortash very well for sending her a 'curiosity' like me, and-" Karlach shook her head angrily. "I trusted him, I liked him, I'd have bloody died for him at one point, and he still didn't hesitate a minute to sell me down the damn pits as soon as he could turn a profit on me!" She slammed a fist down onto the boulder she was sitting on. "FUCK!" She exhaled heavily and looked at me. "Telling you up front right now - if I'm still with you when we get to Baldur's Gate, I'm going to kill him. Going to ask around town until I find out where he's living now and then I'll get in there and chop him in half, swear to the gods."

"Understandable." I nodded. "But please don't if it's suicidal, or going to ruin everything we've got going on trying to stop the Absolute."

"So he didn't sell your soul, just your body." Wyll changed the subject. "Well, at least your afterlife is clear."

"Yeah, and a good thing too." she admitted frankly. "But you're right. As bad as it was - and it was downright horrible - you've still got the worse end of it."

"You talked like you knew Mizora?" Wyll inquired.

"Eugh." Karlach eyerolled. "Zariel's an archdevil, which means like any ruler anywhere she's got a whole court full of rump-kissers who've got nothing better to do than stand around all day waiting to run errands and snipe at each other competing for her attention, or power, or whatever." She hawked and spat. "I had to stand around and watch that - I was her favorite toy, her little mortal attack dog that still killed demons better than a lot of her devils could. Got showed off like a prize poodle. But all the other ones crowding around her, the cambions and the devils, they wanted to be there. And Mizora was one of the ones most dedicated to trying to suck up to Zariel. Drove her spare that little mongrel tiefling me actually got more of Zariel's attention than she did sometimes, and made her doubly pissed off that I was so upfront about not wanting to have it. Something she'd have given her eyeteeth to get, and there I was having it handed to me for free and tossing it all on the floor." She laughed. "No wonder she hired you to come down to Avernus and try to kill me. If I got wasted by some devil-hunting hero then clearly it wasn't Mizora who was responsible for it, right? Not like Zariel double-checks on the name of every mortal she's ever pacted."

"A logical explanation." Lae'zel nodded to Karlach.

I noticed Shadowheart moving dejectedly away from the group, and I left the discussion to follow her. She looked up, saw me coming, and gave a thin smile before turning away again and meandering slowly down the path in thought. I answered her unspoken invitation and fell into step alongside her.

"Care to talk about it?" I asked after a polite pause.

"No. Yes. I-" she shook her head irritably. "It's just-"

"They're all swapping backstories, and you're uncertain of yours?" I suddenly realized.

"Yes." she said passionately. "There Karlach was telling us her life story, just like Gale did the other night, just like you did the first night, just like basically everyone has - and suddenly it just hit me that I couldn't do that even if I tried. I don't really know what my own life story is!" she cried. "And ever since you showed how even some of the memories I do have have inconsistencies in them-" She shuddered. "You said that you liked me because you were impressed by the person I was. But how do I even know that person is real? What if my memories are unsealed and it turns out I was actually the most sadistic torturer in the church and this- this niceness you admire in me was all false, just part of my mission?" She looked at me. "I spent most of the time Karlach was talking racking my brains and trying to remember anything about my identity - likes, dislikes, passions, hobbies, anything - and do you know what I came up with?" She sighed. "That I like night orchids, and that I don't know how to swim. That was it."

I drew her into the comforting hug she desperately needed. "You don't want platitudes right now, so I'm not sharing any with you."

"Would you even have any to share?" she weakly joked.

"My best friend collected them." I said. "I could torture you with some for an hour if I wanted to."

"Absolutely not!" she giggled momentarily, before her expression fell again. "Thank you. I just-" she shook her head. "Lady Shar wants me to be someone. Mother Superior wants me to be someone. You want me to be someone." she said insightfully. "And I can't be all of those people."

"You don't have to be any of those people if you don't want." I told her. "Not even that last one, as convenient at it might be for me otherwise."

"It's hard to be certain of what you want, if you're not certain of who you are." Shadowheart replied matter-of-factly.

"Just... don't give up on ever finding a way through that." I realized. "Like Karlach just told us, that's how they get you." I paused briefly. "Even more so, that's how they keep you."

"I suppose- yes?" Shadowheart broke off, as a strange dwarven woman came up to us.

"Excuse me, but have you seen my husband?" she asked us worriedly.

"We haven't seen any dwarves at all." I replied to her politely.

"Damn!" she swore. "I sent him off hours ago to go gather- and now he's lost out there." She pointed down the lower path leading out of the myconid village. "All he had to do was go down to one of the caves and pick some mushrooms, and-" She broke off. "Could you go and look for him, in case he's stuck somewhere? It'll be supper time soon, and he's been gone half the day."

"All right." I agreed. "Could you go up to our camp there and tell them where we've gone and why, so they can come looking for us if we take too long? And what's your husband look like?"

"Thank you." the lady dwarf said. "I'm Derryth, his name is Baelen. He's a dwarf, bald, wearing a blue shirt and pants."

We reassured her we'd find her husband and left the village to go down the path she'd indicated. It took a bit of climbing downwards, but about ten minutes later we saw a dwarf in a blue shirt dimly off in the distance, standing in the middle of a field of bulbous glowing green mushrooms, so tall that they came up above a human's knees.

"Stop!" he cried desperately as we drew near. "B-bibberbang!" he husked out, his face clenched in terror.

'Bibber-what?' I tried to puzzle out.

"I think Halsin mentioned them during his plant lecture." Shadowheart said. "They- oh dear." Her face paled. "Worse than timmask or torchstalks. Get near one and it puffs out a giant cloud of poisonous fumes... that's also extremely flammable." She pointed at a discarded backpack laying about thirty feet away from Baelen the dwarf... with a lit torch lying next to it.

"Oh Maker." I facepalmed. "If any one of those mushrooms pops, that torch will ignite the gas cloud-" I looked out over the entire field of green mushrooms. "And the chain reaction vaporizes everything in the cave." I called out to the dwarf. "How did you even get in there? Those things are dangerous!"

"I! Know! That!" Baelen shouted in frustration. "I just-" he shook his head dazedly. "Scroll of escape! In my pack! If I could just... reach it..."

"If I jumped up on that ledge on the left, I could get around to where his backpack is without having to go through the mushroom field." I thought out loud. "And then I could toss him the pack. But then how do I get out?"

"Extinguish the torch and you don't have to worry about explosions, just about prolonged exposure to the fumes." Shadowheart said practically. "And you've got those magical speed boots now." She rubbed her chin. "But just to make sure, I'll use my Create Water spell to douse out that torch from here. I wouldn't want you to explode now, I'm just barely starting to get you broken in."

"And who'd want you to have to go through all that work again with someone else." I agreed humorously. "All right, let's do that."

Although there was a tense moment when the bibberbang almost popped on me when I had to reach past it to get Baelen's backpack, Shadowheart had already snuffed out the torch with her water-spell so at least I managed to avoid immolation. As soon as the backpack landed near Baelen he got a scroll out of it, then put the backpack on and read the scroll - one that let him cast the Misty Escape spell, blinking him harmlessly out of the mushroom field. Once he was far enough away to not get caught in the gas cloud I just held my breath, then clicked my heels and used the speed boost to run all the way back across the bibberbang to Shadowheart and Baelen before I had to breathe any in. The chain reaction of popping mushrooms behind me filled almost the entire cavern with a poisonous green haze that slowly dissipated in the Underdark air, but we were all safe just outside the cave mouth.

"Damn!" Baelen swore. "Didn't get it!" The more we talked to him, the more we realized that he was either senile or simple-minded.

"Get what?" I asked him kindly.

"Noblestalk." he said, pointing at where a glowing blue mushroom had been dimly visible on one side of the cave before the gas cloud had obscured it. "Special mushroom. Needed it for the shop - in Baldur's Gate."

Something about what he said fixed Shadowheart's attention on the noblestalk. I noted that out of the corner of my eye and kept talking.

"Well, it's almost dinner time." I diverted him. "And your wife was worried about you. Do you want to wait until it's safe to pick it, or go back now?"

"Dinner first." he decided. "Didn't have lunch. Very hungry!"

"Can you make it back by yourself?" Shadowheart asked him.

"Shouldn't be a problem." Baelen said. "Thanks. Bye!"

"Noblestalk?" I asked Shadowheart when he was gone.

"A magical healing herb." she said. "Very powerful and rare. It's said to be a cure for several otherwise incurable conditions. No wonder Derryth wanted it - bringing any of that back to Baldur's Gate would set a shopkeeper up for... well, not life, but it would certainly be months' worth of profit all by itself." She paused, and continued more diffidently. "And one of the conditions it's said to be able to cure is... memory loss."

"Ah." I nodded knowingly, and then said nothing more. We settled down to wait for the gas to clear.

"I'd have thought you'd have more of an opinion on the topic than that." Shadowheart ventured after a short while.

"I do." I admitted frankly. "But I promised not to push you." I exhaled. "Also, if you're already leaning towards taking it then I'm certainly not going to try and change your mind."

"No." she replied amusedly. "I somehow doubted you would."

Eventually the gas dissipated and we walked over to where the noblestalk grew. There was only one of the mushrooms present - we couldn't tell if the rest had been picked clean earlier, or if only one had grown here in the first place. Shadowheart reached down and gently pulled it free of the ground, and held it in her palm looking at it wonderingly. She began to raise her hand to her mouth- and then stopped.

"What do you think I should do?" she asked me. "Because I- hells, I'm not even sure if this will work!"

"It might not be a complete cure." I agreed with her. "Probably won't be, in fact, not if the magic they used on your mind was that powerful. But any recovered memories would help clear things up at this juncture."

"Would they really?" she asked me, still staring down at the mushroom in her hand. "Or would they just raise more questions?" She chewed her lip pensively. "We've already got so much to do- we don't need more distractions..." She paused in an agony of indecision.

"I want you to be happy, and not tormented by doubts about who you are." I finally said to her softly. "But I don't know if taking that mushroom will help you towards that or hinder you. Only you do."

"You're right." she agreed, her shoulders firming with resolution. "I do."

And then she turned and handed the noblestalk to me.

---

Derryth paid us a fair amount of coin for the noblestalk we recovered, and asked us to look her up in her shop in Baldur's Gate if we ever got there. I was mildly uncomfortable with seeing how she mistreated her husband, and even less comfortable with her explanation that he'd been abusive of her back when he was still in his right mind, but- I sighed, and admitted to myself that sometimes you just couldn't fix everyone or everything. Even if that disappointed.

The next morning we set out for the abandoned village by the lake. Gale had read about duergar in his studies, so he cautioned us about their cruelty, their melee prowess - not that I expected any different, dwarves being dwarves - and the ability of more experienced duergar to turn invisible with an act of will. And I'll admit that that last one had surprised me. But not anywhere near as much as the surprise we got when an extremely large myconid confronted us shortly after we'd left their village.

'I am Glut- it spoke to us in our minds. 'Sovereign of a colony that is no more. The gray ones ended them. You now travel to end the gray ones. You will take me with you. The vengeance of Glut must fall upon the gray ones!'-

"Agreed." I said immediately. After defeating the duergar in the village we'd still have a lot of exploring to do on the other side of the lake, as we couldn't afford to spend too many days camping out with the myconids.

"There is a possibility here." Halsin contributed. "A myconid sovereign has the power to temporarily re-animate a dead body with its spores."

"Necromancy?" I replied immediately. "No thanks."

"Not necromantic magic." he shook his head. "Nature magic. The corpse would be... puppeted, by the myconid hivemind. There wouldn't be any actual negative energy or necromantic spirit."

"How many corpses can you animate at once?" Shadowheart asked Glut.

-One.- it replied. -But size matters little.-

"We're actually doing this?" I asked my team plaintively. "Traveling with a vengeance-obsessed mushroom to animate a corpse to attack invisible dwarves with?"

"What are you thinking?" Lae'zel asked me.

"That we know the location of the recently-killed corpse of a very large and dangerous beast that hunted its prey by tracking the vibrations of their footsteps through the ground." I said reluctantly.

And so, with the fungi-animated corpse of a bulette in tow we found the duergar slave-hunters in the village and smashed them handily. Glut's control of the bulette meant it wasn't even a fight - the one of them that turned invisible was handily hunted down by the bulette's senses, which Glut proved able to use through his mental control of the bulette's body.

"Thank you for your help." I said to Glut politely. "You made things immensely easier for us, and your people are now avenged."

-No- Glut surprise us. -One life remains to take.-

"We missed one?" Gale asked innocently.

-Spew.- Glut's response chilled our blood. -We asked for his help when the gray ones came. He refused us. His people remained safe while mine died. Spew must pay for his crimes. Glut will rule the colony now. And the age of Glut will be glorious!-

"We have a very urgent errand of our own to be getting on with." I said. "So-"

-You will aid me.- Glut threatened. -Or I will destroy you.-

We all involuntarily looked over at the undead bulette, which had only a few moments ago been a very comforting juggernaut that had been on our side and was now an impending harbinger of doom. Wyll nervously rubbed his palms on his thighs as he winced with phantom pain. Personally, while Glut had half of a point regarding Spew's refusal to come to his colony's aid earlier, he was forfeiting it entirely with how high-handed he was being... as well as the distinct mental impression I was getting that his motivation here was not so much just retribution as naked powerlust.

"Why didn't I see this coming?" I criticized myself. "All right." I shrugged. "We're really not being left much choice, are we?"

"Why not just send your new friend up to chew Spew in half and not involve us at all?" Gale asked Glut.

-Spew has spores with which to counteract mine. You do not.- Glut said ruthlessly. -Now we shall go to the colony, and you shall kill the false Sovereign for me.-

"Shadowheart?" I sighed regretfully. "Would you please find out if this is the kind of mushroom that can grow in sunlight or not?"

The Blood of Lathander's sunbeam smashed into Glut and took him entirely off guard, the shock of its incineration keeping him from ordering the bulette to attack us for just long enough. By the time Glut could even begin to mentally recover we'd all rushed him and hacked him into pieces, and as soon as he was pulp the bulette's corpse quietly collapsed.

Spew fulfilled his promise and rewarded us by giving us all the treasure they'd collected from fallen travelers recently - most of it having come from a dead drow whose corpse was still tossed in with the rest of the treasure. The Amulet of Lost Voices produced the knowledge that this drow was not a servant of the Absolute - which is what we'd expected to find - but a member of a party of dark elven treasure hunters who'd been seeking something called 'the Adamantine Forge'. The book on his corpse had been a guide as to how to use the Forge - another member of his party had been carrying the directions of how to get there, but apparently they'd all fallen out and betrayed each other.

However, the book he'd been carrying had turned up a very valuable clue for us indeed, once we'd dispelled the illusion that had made it look like a silly tome about 'flumph mating rituals', whatever a flumph was. The true title of the book was "The Great Furnace of Grymforge", and one of its passages entirely riveted our attention.

Among the Sharrans dwelled the gnome Silouv Yali, whose talents for wizardry were known from Candlekeep to Sorcere. Under his tutelage, the Sharrans built the Great Forge, which could heat mithral with such vigour as to turn it to adamantine. With this astonishing metal, they could mould the finest blades and armour.

Yet the jewel of Yali's eye was not the forge itself, but the protector he conjured from the magma to guard it - a construct said to be so mighty that no blade could fell it, and no spell could pierce it.

"Sharrans!" Halsin said. "This Adamantine Forge and the underground temple complex we've been looking for - they're the same thing!"

"Now we have to go track down this other drow's corpse." I said. "The map he was carrying might save us weeks of stumbling around. Where did he say this fight had happened?"

"Just something about a 'spectator'." Wyll said. "And since I don't think he was referring to a bystander..."

"The monster." Gale said. "The spectator, a cousin to the beholder. A giant spherical floating aberration with multiple magical eyes that shoot deadly rays."

"One of the beholder's magical eyes can cause petrifaction." Lae'zel suddenly contributed. "Does this spectator have a similar quality?"

"They can. Why?" Gale replied.

"In the Selunite outpost where we originally entered the Underdark, I glimpsed a curious sight outside one of the windows." Lae'zel said. "A field of statues, incongruously located in an otherwise bare patch of the Underdark. At the time I paid it no mind; we were not down here to explore curiosities."

"But you're thinking those statues were actually people turned to stone - possibly by a spectator." Wyll said.

"There's a travelstone at the outpost, just as there's one near the myconid colony." I agreed. "So we don't lose much time if we go back to check."

"And here I've already used up it's one charge for the day." Shadowheart said ruefully, looking at the Blood of Lathander. "Nothing for it, though - we have to find this temple, and we can't really afford to wait another day and night first."

We warped back to the Selunite outpost, and found that reaching the field of statues Lae'zel had spotted was easily done simply by climbing out one of the side windows, then travelling along a stone ledge to scramble up near the statues. Drawing closer we saw that the statues were so finely-detailed and caught in such positions of fright and distress that they were almost certainly magically petrified creatures and not merely statues - a suspicion Gale confirmed with a cantrip for detecting magic.

"Which one of these dark elves was the leader?" I stated. "Because if we can find and free him before the spectator comes back-" A sudden breeze flickered our torches. "Oh hells, the damn thing is right behind us isn't it?"

A hideous roar filled our hearing as a magical eyebeam flicked past us to unpetrify one of the dark elves, who immediately turned to attack us.

"Wyll, take the elf!" I called, as we all turned around to face the spectator. Which was bar none the ugliest thing I'd ever seen in my life, and I'd been looking at an undead fungus-infested bulette just yesterday. "Nothing fancy, just kill it!" I barked, and called on my templar-paladin powers to drop a temporarily nullification of magic on the creature. Its eyestalk barrage that it had been preparing to bombard us with fizzled and died, and I followed up with a side sweeping cut that took one of its four eyestalks clean off.

"H'taka!" Lae'zel yelled, readily following my example and decapitating another eyestalk. Karlach went for blinding the big central eye in the middle with a mighty two-handed slash, and Gale seared off the last two eyestalks with his Scorching Ray spell as Shadowheart battered the damned thing's braincase with her mace. The spectator still drew blood, as blinded as it was, by lunging forward with its horrible fanged maw and catching the nearest of us - who happened to be Lae'zel - in its jaws and biting down until it hit bone. Lae'zel powered right through the pain and used her wounded arm - which was still jammed inside the damned thing's mouth - to grab the spectator's tongue and then squeeze down as crushingly as she could. The spectator shrieked in pain but with Lae'zel anchoring it in place by its tongue, it couldn't dodge our rain of blows.

"Halsin, patch her up before she bleeds out!" I called out, then turned to see how Wyll was doing. He was unscathed, his opponent dead from several thrusts right through the chest. Halsin did as directed, his druidic magic more than up to the job of doing precisely that, managed to staunch the worst of Lae'zel's wounds even if she'd still be walking off some of that damage for the next day or two.

A search of the dead drow's belongings told us that he wasn't the one with the map, but a post-mortem interrogation got the corpse to tell us which one was the one with the map. Unfortunately, the map - like everything else on the drow in question - was solid stone.

"How do we unpetrify that?" I asked.

"Basilisk oil." Halsin replied.

"And where do we get that?" I shrugged.

"There's a small supply of it at the Grove." Halsin replied readily. "I'll go fetch some."

"What, just like that-?" I began to ask, before I realized. "Wait, you can reach the travelstone by the Grove even from down here? Just like that?"

"Easily." he replied. "And the one in the Outpost is barely a minute's walk from here, so the return trip will be simple."

"I'm still getting used to the potential of some of this magic." I said wonderingly as Halsin faded out. "The sheer convenience of being able to instantaneously step from one to another-" I shook my head in realization. "Now I'm really beginning to understand why Merrill wanted to reactivate the eluvian so badly. Anybody who could bring similar transport mechanisms to Thedas could name their own price. For anything."

"I'm just happy the travelstones here are still working." Gale said. "It's going to be very inconvenient when the astrological conjunctions shift again and the network fades out."

"Tell me that's a matter for weeks from now, not days from now." I asked him.

"Hopefully." he agreed. "Ah, and here comes Halsin now."

Halsin finished walking back towards us from the Selunite outpost and held up the flask of basilisk oil. "All right, this should unpetrify him no problem. But we're not going to just kill him and take it off his corpse, are we?"

"That would only be justified if he attacked us." I agreed. "But if he's smart enough not to, but still doesn't want to give it to us..."

"I have an idea." Shadowheart said, and then cast her Disguise Self spell... and shifted into the appearance of a female dark elf. "All right, now do it."

Halsin poured the basilisk oil on the dark elf, and the stony gray faded away to be replaced by the darker tones of drow flesh. "Paagh!" he spat. "Dust! On. My. Tongue!" he complained querulously. "I offer to parley, and then he ruins my ambush by summoning a spectator? Unforgivable!" he ranted arrogantly.

"Silence, male!" Shadowheart barked at him imperiously, doing her best to pitch her voice with a similar accent to another dark elf we'd met recently, and the drow wizard we'd just freed turned to her and flinched back with an expression of shock.

"Mistress- my apologies, please!" he begged. "I am still coming back to my senses a-after my long imprisonment- I am Dhourn, third son of House Ba'tul, first rank evoker, and initiate of Gravenhollow's-"

"I am Minthara of House Baenre." Shadowheart glared at him, and Dhourn cringed at that last word. "These surfacers are of no import - hirelings only."

"Mistress." Dhourn bowed before her, barely able to keep from shivering in terror. "I- what would you wish of me?"

"The Adamantine Forge." she said icily. "Your expedition has failed. Mine will succeed. Hand over your map, then leave here at once."

"But-" he began.

"But?" She smiled at him cruelly. I shifted my hand so that it touched my sword-hilt, and the rest of the party suitably flexed up and looked intimidating.

"I can serve you, Mistress, if you would-" he began, only to be cut off by her curt nod.

"No. I have seen how you 'served' the fellow members of your expedition already." Shadowheart sneered. "Not that your pathetic treacheries could ever threaten me, but I have no time for such trivial nonsense. It is thanks to me that you are no longer a statue - you will repay me the debt you owe for your life with the location of the Adamantine Forge."

"A-as you demand, Mistress." Dhourn replied, reaching into his pack and coming out with a magical crystal. "This memory shard holds all the knowledge you seek."

Shadowheart took it, her expression as impassive as ice, and nodded. "Now leave us. If ever we see you again, your life is forfeit."

"Yes, Mistress!" Dhourn flinched away, and then ran down the path like his ass was on fire. As soon as he was safely gone Shadowheart dropped the spell and resumed her true appearance, then giggled.

"You had way too much fun doing that." I chided her amusedly. "But what was your plan if he'd ever seen Minthara before? I got the impression she was quite prominent in drow society."

"Well, then he'd have attacked us, and then we could fight him." Shadowheart said practically. "So either way, it worked out."

---

Author's Note: You actually can auto-win the Dhourn conversation check by using the disguise of a female drow or actually being one, but story logic as opposed to game logic also let me have Shadowheart borrow Minthara's name in addition. That was fun. (Also, as House Baenre is the ruling house of the city of Menzoberranzan, Shadowheart was unknowingly impersonating what was essentially dark elven royalty - there is a reason Dhourn almost shit his pants.)

And yes, the fast travel system really does let you go back from the depths of the Underdark to a trading post and then back again in like five minutes if you're near a fast travel point both ways. Hawke is only starting to get clued in as to how truly bullshit Faerun can get in certain aspects.

I was also amused that they could basically auto-win the duergar fight by bringing Glut + undead bulette... and then have a huge problem when Glut turned on them, with the bulette. Fortunately they also have a powerful magical artifact, and some mushrooms don't like the sun.

Regarding the Baelen encounter, it's really messed up that the happiest you can make Derryth in later life is to have the guy die there, but there's no way my Hawke can deliberately murder the dude without metaknowledge. Otherwise, yeah, their relationship is a mess.

And yes, I skipped Omeluum the mind flayer (because he only shows up in the myconid colony if you deliberately investigate the bugbear trader and tell him all about your tadpoles, and they didn't do either) and the wizard's tower, because (Watsonian) they're on an urgent quest and try not to chase irrelevant sidequests too often and (Doylist) because I have to prune this fic for length somewhere.

 

[cliffc999]

We'd had a fairly tiring day, so we just went back to the Selunite outpost and made camp before moving on. The next morning we gathered together and planned our next moves.

Dhourn had called the crystal he'd given us a 'memory shard', and I didn't have the faintest idea how to use one. Shadowheart couldn't ask him how either - the drow matriarch she'd been impersonating had been expected to already know. Fortunately, Gale was able to get it going after a brief period of magical experimentation, and the magically stored memories within the crystal flowed into our minds and filled them with vision. We saw a sprawling underground complex, the lower layer of which was built over a pool of bubbling magma. A vast open chamber, surmounted by a platform ringed with arcane machinery, was at the center of this lower layer. Above the platform was suspended a giant metallic cylinder, mounted inside an even larger cylindrical sleeve in a position where it could vertically slam down into the center of the platform with immense force - a hammer to the platform's anvil, a forge fit for a mythical titan to use. This was the Grymforge, which had been built adjacent to an even older temple complex of Shar nearby. The images faded away to a view of an Underdark map with a path clearly marked across an underground lake, and then brief images of various landmarks on the lake to help follow the path with.

We blinked away the phantom sights and sounds as the crystal faded. "Damn. That's very useful indeed." I said. "Without this map we might have been sailing around on that underground lake for days."

"I saw a boat moored at the docks of the village where we fought the duergar." Wyll contributed. "That must have been the one the slave-hunters took to get here."

"Well they're not around to complain if we borrow it, now are they?" Karlach tossed in.

There was apparently some type of magical engine on this boat, so after we figured out which lever to pull all we had to do was get on the rudder and steer. Which was good for us, because otherwise it would have been a very long way to row. We'd been underway for almost an hour, sailing down the long and narrow underground lake and tacking occasionally as we reached one of the landmarks the map had shown us, when we spotted the running lanterns of another boat like ours approaching us across the water.

"You there, hoon!" the elderly duergar in command shouted to us as their boat maneuvered alongside ours. "What the hell are you doing in that boat?"

"We found it at some abandoned docks on the other side of the lake." I answered truthfully.

"That boat belonged to us! Where's the crew?!?" he demanded belligerently, as the crew of his boat muttered and readied their weapons.

"Those must have been the dead duergar we found in the village, then." I said calmly. "There wasn't much left of them. Looked like a bulette had torn them to shreds."

"So you just figured 'what the hell, leave 'em to rot and steal their boat?'" the lead duergar glowered at me. His eyes narrowed, and I felt a brief push against my thoughts. "Eurgh!" he cursed. "You're another one of those damned True Souls, aren't you?"

I 'pushed' back with my thoughts and was surprised to not feel the little shiver that I'd learned had meant I was talking to another tadpole bearer - apparently this was one of the duergar who had innate psionics of their own. "Yes." I leaned into his misapprehension. "We came down the Underdark entrance from an outpost of ours on the Chionthar, and we're bound for Moonrise via the Grymforge route. We took the boat because it was there and it was a hell of a long way to swim."

"Hrmph." he snorted. "It's still our boat, but at least you're saving us the trouble of bringing it back." His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I'm heading across the lake to bury what's left of 'em. I see anything there that makes your story sound like bullshit, you're dead meat when we get back. You try buggering off up the elevator before we get back, we'll send word to Moonrise about what you've done and then what your boss will do to you will make you wish we'd killed you."

"Then we've got nothing to worry about." I shrugged, and with another glower from the duergar captain their boat peeled away and headed back the way we'd came.

"Those 'duergar' don't sound like people who are as easily as hoodwinked as goblins are." I thought out loud. "I wonder why they're working with the Cult of the Absolute, if they're not tadpoled themselves?"

"Especially considering that duergar hate surfacers." Halsin agreed.

"Probably 'cause they're bein' paid to." Karlach shrugged. "Saw a lot of that with Gortash - all different types of folks who normally wouldn't so much as say hello to each other without a knife, all workin' side by side without a hitch because enough coin was on the table for everybody. And it worked... until someone missed a payday."

"Sounds just like Kirkwall." I said amusedly.

"Sounds like every large city I've ever heard of." Halsin agreed. "There's a reason I live in the wilderness."

Several hours later we spotted points of light in the distance, that expanded into two large beacons of flame as we drew nearer. The lake narrowed into a channel, and that channel passed underneath a series of giant arches of black stone, the outermost arch surmounted by the beacons. The support columns of the arches were carved into the forbidding obsidian shapes of robed women - the same woman for each pillar, tall and severe and wearing a mask familiar to me from Shadowheart's wolf memory-

"Images of Lady Shar." Shadowheart whispered reverently at the large stone idols holding up the arches we were sailing under. "We've- ah!" she winced and clutched her hand.

"Let me-" I reached out for her, and she shook her head rapidly.

"No- save your strength." she asked me. "We're about to sail into trouble, you can't waste your energy." She closed her eyes and breathed heavily, stoically powering through the pain on her own. I growled lightly in frustration but yielded to her reasoning, and concentrated on guiding the boat to shore.

Several duergar ran to the pier as soon as they saw us approaching and met us on the dock. "Identify yourselves!" their leader growled.

"True Soul Edowin and party, bound for Moonrise Towers." I answered, giving the name of the dead True Soul we'd met outside the druid grove. Minthara might have sent a message back about 'True Soul Anthor' before we'd departed the temple of Selune so I didn't want to be using that name, but since I'd sent Edowin's siblings back to Baldur's Gate and told them I'd take care of reporting in myself it was vastly unlikely that the Cult of the Absolute knew he was dead yet.

"You're bound for nowhere until either you or your fellow Twat Soul settles up!" the lead duergar snarled back. "Your temple promised us a load of coin when this expedition succeeded, but we haven't found shit after weeks of digging and now that idiot Nere has gone and buried himself alive! So like hell you're getting out of here until after we get paid!"

I gave a mental nod to Karlach for hitting the nail right on the head. "Who's in charge here?" I asked. Arguing with this guard wouldn't change anything, and would only risk things escalating into a fight.

"Sergeant Thrinn, and she's up that way." he pointed. "Trying to get your idiot comrade out from under that pile of rocks before he chokes to death."

The Grymforge complex we'd landed in was built on an epic scale. This wasn't merely a series of underground passages, not even an underground building, but a giant vaulting cavern filled with black stone structures worthy of a cathedral. Although everything was coated in dust and there were more than a few places where the stone had collapsed there were still multiple staircases, walkways, battlements, and vistas, all spanning deep chasms and islands of unworked stone. It was downright awe-inspiring, in a blood-chilling and intimidating fashion.

"Glory to the Nightsinger." Shadowheart prayed under her breath as she looked around at the architecture of this long-fallen temple complex of Shar. I whistled inwardly at the sheer expense it must have taken to build this place - whatever the church of Shar was, it was no mere cult. The Chantry would have hesitated at funding this elaborate a construction, unless the site in question had been very holy to it indeed-

"You there! Surfacers!" an elderly duergar who was busy examining the collapse called to us. "Come over here and have a look at this!"

"We need to see your commander." I called back.

"Come on, it'll only take a minute!" he insisted. "I just want a fresh pair of eyes on this, I can't figure it out!"

"Might as well." Wyll suggested. "Maybe if we indulge him, we can draw him out a little on what's going on around here."

We trooped over and looked more closely at the collapsed section he was pointing at, which had sealed off a side corridor.

"They want me to work out a plan to clear this, but I can't do that until I figure out what caused the collapse." the duergar engineer muttered to himself. "But there's something here I'm missing. You know anything about siegecraft?"

"Just the basics." I admitted.

"Field engineering was part of githyanki military training." Lae'zel said. "And..." her eyes narrowed as she took a closer look at the rubble. "These stones... they are not worn, they are split. This was no crumbling away due to erosion or age. Something shattered this wall."

"I got that much already." our engineer acquaintance muttered. "But I can't figure out what caused this! Smokepowder leaves a different pattern of destruction entirely-"

"What the literally hell?" Karlach suddenly swore out loud, and bent over to very closely examine some of the stones. My eyebrows raised as she incongrously took a sniff, as if she were a bloodhound. "Look at these yellow traces here, see that?" She pointed at where the edges of some of the split stone blocks had a faint yellow dusting. "I've seen this before!"

"You have? What is it?" the duergar asked. "It's not any explosives residue I'm familiar with."

"It's brimstone." Karlach said flatly. "Infernal brimstone, not just the mundane sulfur you've got up here on the Prime. I spent longer than I want to remember with this shit stinking in my nostrils, no way I could miss the smell." She looked around warily at the walls. "Something from the Nine Hells smashed this section up. Something big."

"You've got to be shitting me." the engineer swore. "That's why this place was a ruin full of long-dead corpses when we got here? Devils running amok? What the fuck were these Sharrans summoning?"

"Fortunately, whatever it was would have departed long since." Gale said. "If our historical data is correct the Sharrans haven't used this ruin for at least a century, and no summoning would last remotely that long."

"Yeah, that's about how old the skeletons we've been findin' are." the engineer shrugged. "But the good news is, if whatever did this has already been gone for decades then I don't have to worry about it." He drew out a scroll from his pouch and started jotting down some notes. "All right, this section's clear to excavate.... when we can finally get around to it." he muttered. "Thanks for the help."

"The Church of Shar doesn't summon devils." Shadowheart muttered after we were out of earshot from the old engineer. "They're not our allies at all."

"Well, you got any enemies who summon things then?" Karlach asked practically.

"Should I start with the 'A's'?" Shadowheart replied with bitter amusement.

We came out into a large round chamber whose floor was a large round metal platform - a grated one, through which we could see lava distantly below. Clearly we were drawing near the central forge chamber of the Grymforge, the one we'd seen in the memory shard-

Our attention was immediately drawn by the party of deep gnome slaves who were laboriously clearing away a small mountain of rubble blocking the passage at the far end of the chamber. A duergar overseer was mercilessly whipping them even as they hauled rock.

"Faster, you lazy sots!" he was shouting. "I don't care how long it takes, you're not stopping until it's done!"

"We're running out of time, Dunnol!" a female duergar called to him. "The air's going bad in there! If the True Soul dies-"

"It's not my fault these weaklings can't dig!" he shrugged back helplessly. "A mere twelve hours and they're already about to drop!"

"Then go heat up some rocks!" she barked back at him. "Let's see how much these lazy buggers want to lollygag when we strap fire to their legs-"

I gritted my teeth and focused very much on playing the role I'd assumed, when my hand was twitching with the desire to just start beheading duergar right now. Which would have been a very stupid idea seeing how outnumbered we were.

"Sergeant Thrinn? True Soul Edowin." I let my commander's voice speak for me, and followed it up with a brief mental push of my tadpole as identification. "What's the situation?"

"Another True Soul?" the scarred duergar woman turned to me. "Useless rakkah of a lookout could've told me." she muttered. "It's pretty bad, sir. The whole entranceway collapsed when we missed a trap the Sharrans left behind, and now True Soul Nere's trapped in there." she angrily shook her head. "Worse yet, his air's turning foul - he's only got hours left, and it's both our heads if we let him die."

"Haven't you got any smokepowder you can use to blast through that obstruction?" I asked.

"No." she swore viciously. "Half the slaves died in the initial cave-in, but a couple of them used the confusion to make a break for it - and one of them took the damn explosives with her when she ran, the little thief!" She cursed. "I've got some men searching for her but there's entire sections of this old ruin we haven't cleared yet, and you could hide a small army in those."

"What were you looking for in there?" I asked.

"Entrance to the deeper temple complex." Thrinn replied. "General's orders. True Soul Nere would know more."

"Right." I said, thinking furiously. The longer we stayed here the more chance we had of getting caught out, but whatever these Absolute cultists were looking for was probably something we didn't want them to find. On the other hand, that suspicious guard had said we wouldn't be allowed to leave if- wait.

"The guards you had at the docks said something about 'being paid', and also referred to True Soul Nere in pretty rough terms." I said. "But you're a loyal follower of the Absolute-?" I inquired.

"Damn straight I am, sir, and so are all my men." she said proudly. "The problem is that at least half of us down here aren't my men - they're mercenaries we hired when it turned out this excavation was going to be a bigger project than the General could spare enough Underdark veterans for. Greedy bastards won't lift a finger unless we pay them for every step they take, and with True Soul Nere trapped and out of action-" she trailed off knowingly.

"They said something about not being cheated out of their pay." I agreed. "But surely you'd have the authority to keep the contract going until True Soul Nere's replacement got here, if he passed away?"

"Assuming that Moonrise didn't just cancel the entire project." she corrected me. "The General's been getting frustrated with our lack of progress so far as is, and things are heating up topside anyway. And if they pulled the plug, then Brithwin and his men are afraid they won't get paid at all."

"Then I'll have to go talk to Brithwin." I reassured her. "The good news is, one of my people is a druid - we should be able to track down your missing explosives thief without much difficulty."

"Thank the Absolute." Thrinn said relievedly. "All right sir, I'll hold things together here until you can get back. But, uh, respectfully sir? Don't drag your feet - we don't have much time left."

As we turned to leave, I noticed one of the deep gnome slaves gave us an absolutely livid and hateful look... and my eyebrows raised when I recognized him as Barcus, the same deep gnome we'd rescued from the goblin patrol in Moonhaven. Well, he'd said he was coming down to the Underdark to look for his missing friend, but...

"You, gnome. Over here." I ordered him, and then led our party off out of the chamber. Thrinn looked up curiously at my taking one of the slaves with me, but then shrugged and decided it was none of her business - 'True Soul Edowin' outranked her, after all.

"You." Barcus spat hatefully at us as soon as we were out of earshot. "Did you think it was funny, freeing me knowing all along your friends would recapture me when I got down here?"

"We're infiltrating." I reassured him. "The way True Souls identify each other mentally - we can counterfeit it. Sort of." I didn't-quite-lie. "But now we're stuck in this mess, and we need to get out. To get all of you out." I said.

"Why should I trust you?" Barcus said darkly.

"Fine, don't trust us." Shadowheart said flatly. "And then you get to just go back there and wait with Thrinn and her cheerful friends while we go around doing who-knows-what... knowing that you'll be the first person she questions with a flensing knife and a bucket of rock salt if we fail, because she saw you speaking to us. Or you can answer our questions and give us that much better a chance of not getting caught."

"No promises." Barcus said firmly. "But ask your questions."

"First question - is it true that half the duergar down here are about ready to kill the other half if they think they're being swindled?" I asked him.

"Oh yes." Barcus nodded. "We've all been hoping for that to happen - it'd be our only chance of getting out of here! Unfortunately, neither the cultist duergar or the mercenaries want to hear their slaves say anything, so we haven't been able to do anything to help push them over the edge."

"Leave that to me." I reassured him. "Second question - we need the explosives your runaway stole, but if we just walk up to her she's got even less reason to cooperate with us than you do. Is there anything we can say that would make her less suspicious?"

"How do I know you're not just trying to trick me into giving her up?" Barcus glared at us again.

"Would you please shapeshift into something with an excellent tracker's nose?" I asked Halsin. "That isn't a wolf." I hurriedly added.

Halsin grinned and then turned into a large brown bear. I hadn't even been aware that bears could track by scent but- well, I wasn't a druid.

"See? We don't need your help to find her." I told Barcus. "We just need your help to talk her down after we find her. If we were genuinely Absolute cultists, we'd just kill her."

"Her name was Philomeen." Barcus reluctantly gave up. "Tell her Laridda sends her regards. The overseers might know her name, but wouldn't know who she was friends with."

"Last question. Which one is Brithwin?" I inquired, and after Barcus pointed him out we sent him back to Thrinn with a reassurance that he had been cooperative enough.

"Elder Brithwin?" I asked the grim gray-haired duergar who'd been standing and quietly discussing things with several of his troops.

"Unless the next words out of your mouth are 'I've got the money', Twat Soul, I've got nothing to say to you." Brithwin glared.

"I've got good news and bad news." I told him. "Which one do you want first?"

"Are you jokin'?" he narrowed his eyes at me hatefully. "Bad."

"They're very likely to close out the whole project and you won't get paid a coin from Moonrise." I admitted to him frankly.

"Ruttin' sonofa-" he snarled, one hand going to the hilt of his axe as his compatriots did likewise. "Are you playin' with us?!?" he snarled.

"And the good news is, there's a party of infiltrators who are working against the Cult of the Absolute and are perfecty willing to help you kill Nere, Thrinn, and their loyalists so you can take everything they've got and vanish back into the Underdark." I said cheerfully.

"Oh yeah? And just where would this oh-so-convenient party of infil-" he scoffed, before he stopped and looked at us. "Do you think I'm an idiot? We've got mind powers of our own, Twat Soul. We can feel you." His mind briefly pushed against mine. "See? You smell like a mind flayer took a shit in your skull! There's no way you're working against the Absolute."

I pointed at Halsin. "Test him."

"Hey, wait a minute-" he began, his eyebrows raising in puzzlement. "How come he isn't-?"

"Here's the plan." I interrupted him. "We'll track down the runaway and get the smokepowder, use it to blow open the rubble and let Nere out. Thrinn will call all her people together - because I tell her to - and be very distracted by her boss' safe return. If you had all of your people in position..." I trailed off meaningfully.

"Boy, don't tell me how to plan a decent ambush, I've seen more battles then you've crapped in diapers." Brithwin boasted. "But there's no fucking way I'm going to risk my neck just because you're spinning me some kind of bullshit loyalty test. You're gonna have to prove yourself first."

"I'm listening." I said.

"Nere has one of those damn arcane eye things patrolling around - have you seen it yet?" he asked us, and I shook my head. "Well, it's fuckin' creepy... and it never sleeps, and it sees everything. Relays it all straight to Moonrise Towers, too, or at least he said it does. We don't have any chance of pulling off a mutiny and getting away clean so long as that thing is still up and around." He grinned wickedly at us. "You want me to believe you're really not with the Absolute? Smash the eye."

"Do you know what it's weaknesses are?" I asked him.

"It can see in the dark, and it can see the invisible." he said. "I had people try sneaking up on it that way - no dice. On the other hand, it can't see all the way around - its cone of vision looks to be only the front half of the sphere. It also doesn't move very fast. On the downside... it doesn't sleep, and if you move near it, it knows. I had several of my best scouts try making a 'game' of 'playing' with it, until Nere threw a tantrum and told us to stop, and they never got close."

"You said that you had your scouts try sneaking up on it. Did they ever try leading it anywhere?" I asked.

"Yeah, but even with one baiting it, nobody else ever successfully got behind it." he said.

"Right." I saw a plan coming together. "I'll need you to recommend an isolated upper gallery where nobody else will see or hear what's going on and I'll need you to introduce my spellcaster friend-" I nodded at Shadowheart. "To one of your scouts so she can borrow his face. I think that should be sufficient."

"... heh." Brithwin chuckled. "I like surfacers who think they're clever. If they're right, I learn something useful... and if they're wrong, I see something hilarious." he grinned cruelly. "All right, you get one chance."

Brithwin gave us an ideal location for the ambush, and Shadowheart - disguised as one of the duergar scouts - lured it up there by simply acting suspicious enough to follow, but not suspicious enough to cause a hue and cry. But we'd had Halsin shapeshift into a small bird first... and as soon as the orb was around the corner and well away from anyone else, he simply shapeshifted into the form of a bear... in mid-air, directly above and behind the orb where it had no field of vision. And when half a ton of shapeshifted druid landed directly on top of the crystalline orb it was immediately smashed into dust, and then we simply swept the dust off a ledge and into a convenient chasm. No evidence, and nothing remotely visible on the orb that looked like any of us.

Halsin remained in bear form, and with his nose we tracked down the escaped Philomeen within fifteen minutes. There was a very tense moment where she almost committed suicide by igniting the entire barrel of smokepowder she'd stolen rather than be recaptured, but using her name and her best friend's name managed to convince her that we were actually sent by the gnomes to help her escape and not by the cultists to drag her back. It was rather suspicious in my mind how she was much more focused on getting the smokepowder - no, runepowder, as it was apparently some augmented formula - barrel away than she was on helping free her fellow slaves, but all we could get out of her was she had a 'more important mission'. Something odd going on there, but we didn't have time for that now. We did at least get her to give us a small charge of the runepowder to help blow through the cave-in with.

Our destroying the orb had Brithwin convinced we were willing to help him betray the Absolute cultists, and my authority as a false True Soul was sufficient to get Thrinn to have all her people concentrated and out in the center of the chamber when we cleared the cave-in. Nere turned out to be a dark elf, and a raving egomaniac and psychotic one as that, but we really didn't have much of a chance to talk to him as I simply drew my sword and killed him while he was still in mid-rant. The moment of shock from Thrinn and her loyalists was all we needed - our entire party was right down there and drew their attention just long enough for Brithwin's mercenaries to unleash a devastating crossfire from where they'd carefully prepositioned themselves all around the rim of the chamber, and it took only a minute or two of hard fighting to mop them all up. We took a few wounds, but a short rest and a minor healing spell or two cleared that up.

Brithwin held to his end of the deal - he could take all the loot, but we'd keep the deep gnomes. I don't know if he thought we were abolitionists or just wanted to resell them as slaves ourselves, but he didn't care - not having to feed them on his journey back to the deep Underdark was enough reason for him to abandon them here. With the arcane eye destroyed with no clues as to who'd done it and the Absolute cultists all dead before they could send any messages, it would be so long before Moonrise Towers knew what had happened here that Brithwin's duergar would have more than enough time to make a clean break and getaway. So, outside of the fact that we had to let half of a ruthless band of slaving scum go so that we could kill the other half without committing suicide, it all worked out.

We gave the deep gnomes what food we could spare and directions back to the Underdark entrance we'd used - Brithwin had no use for the boats, so the deep gnomes could use those. And so, the Grymforge having finally been cleared of all hostile forces, we were ready to move on...

... but I'd had another idea.

"You really think we need the Adamantine Forge ourselves?" Wyll asked.

"We were badly outnumbered here, just like we were with the goblins." I said. "And just like there, we used our tadpoles to infiltrate, ambush, and eventually destroy." I shook my head. "We can't keep using the same plan forever and expecting it to work forever, because we'll be up shit creek if it doesn't. This forge was supposed to be able to create powerful magic weapons and armor - if we could make even one of those for ourselves here, it would be a valuable force multiplier. And unlike the duergar, we have access not only to a set of directions on how to use the forge-" I held up the book we'd recovered from the dead drow in the myconid village. "But we also know where the central chamber is thanks to the memory crystal, while the duergar were exploring blindly." I pointed at where we'd recently cleared away the cave-in. "They weren't even digging in the right direction to be looking for the Adamantine Forge, so-"

"-where were they going?" Gale followed my thought as we looked down the passage. "Because the Sharrans put a rather substantial trap on this passage - that's what caused the collapse in the first place."

"Well, let's have a look." Shadowheart said, and we cautiously went down the passage - clearing away the rubble had restored ventilation in here, thank goodness, so at least we could breathe the air - and after progressing a short way our jaws dropped as we came out and saw the most spectacular view we'd never imagined.

"By the Maker." I said. The passage had led to the stubby end of where a large stone bridge had been - a bridge that something had shattered almost end to end. A cavern so large that it defied all geological logic stretched out around us and beneath us, and visible in the distance below us was a majestic black cathedral of Shar, one so large and elaborate that it made what we'd been standing in look like an annex. An annex, I realized, that had been built to house the Adamantine Forge - something adjacent to the true underground fortress of the Dark Justicars that we'd been searching for, not actually part of it.

"This bridge led across this... this gulf, over and down to that temple." Shadowheart said. "And something destroyed it. Deliberately."

"More brimstone." Karlach said, looking at the end of the shattered bridge we were standing on. "What the fuck did they summon? Even in the Blood War you didn't see this kind of damage every day."

"If that's the main temple, then isn't that the way to Moonrise?" I complained. "The one that would let us bypass the Shadow-Cursed Lands? The way that's blocked?"

"The one duergar did mention the surface elevator in the Grymforge." Wyll contributed. "So we can still reach the surface relatively close to Moonrise Towers. Just not immediately under it."

"Oh, wonderful." I sighed. "Thank the gods we went and found the Blood of Lathander - if we have to cross even a short section of the Shadow-Cursed Lands, then we'll need it."

"If this is the scale on which our enemies could build, then I agree we should seek the Adamantine Forge before we move on." Lae'zel agreed. "Any advantage is better than none."

"Well, if I remember the crystal correctly..." I began, and we eventually managed to find the forge chamber after a vigorous explanation of the proper side passages, clearing away a small rockfall that had blocked one, and a precarious journey back across the sections of the Grymforge we'd already explored using a maintenance walkway almost a hundred feet above the cave floor, one that let us bypass an otherwise impassable barrier we'd have needed a full mining crew to get past. Using the forge would be a simple matter of placing some mithral ore in the melting chambers, bringing the forge to full heat, and then placing the proper mold in the central forge chamber and using the giant hydraulic drop hammer on the molten adamantine when it hit the mold.

"Right, we found enough mithral scraps and molds to make one suit of heavy armor and one weapon." I said. "On the plus side, the armor will be much tougher than anything we currently own, and the weapon will cut practically anything." I thought. "So, who gets which?"

Lae'zel shook her head. "I have the githyanki sword we took from the dead inquisitor - I need no lesser blade."

"I'm carrying a divine artifact for my weapon." Shadowheart said. "A bit hard to top that."

Karlach sighed. "I'd love the armor... except we don't have quite enough metal to make it in my size. They got enough there to make an axe for me?"

"We don't have an axe mould." I looked through what we had been able to scrounge up. "Got any use for a longsword?"

"Sure, if it'll cut like that." Karlach agreed. "So, do you or Lae'zel get the armor? Wyll's not a heavy armor type."

"Hawke." Shadowheart said immediately. "Is there a fight we've had yet that he hasn't taken the vanguard in?"

"Agreed." Lae'zel said.

"All right." I nodded. "Let's get started."

We slotted the first load of mithril ingots we've found into the proper chambers, then lowered the central platform down to operating level while we stood on the elevated outer ring. We turned the valves as the manual directed to start the flood of lava across the lowered platform that would help melt the mithril down into the malleable components that the forge would then compress together to turn into adamantine. The steam pressure built in the cylinders to fuel the drop hammer, and we waited for the process to reach full power.

The floor trembled.

"Don't tell me this thing is out of order!" I complained, and Gale peered at the control panel gauges and tried to make sense of them.

"I can't quite read these, but none of the needles seem to have wildly jumped from where they were when we started. So if there's no excessive pressure build-up, then what's causing it?" Gale analyzed.

The floor trembled harder, much harder, and we all staggered.

"That's not- something is coming!" Halsin cried in alarm.

A motion out of the corner of my eye drew my attention, and my blood turned to ice as I turned my head and beheld the most terrifying sight I'd seen since the Nightmare demon. A giant adamantine golem, at least three times the size of anything ever built in Orzammar, was rising up out of the lava pool that surrounded the Forge platform. The walls shook from its deafening mechanical roar as it looked from one to the other of us - we'd all been scattered around, not expecting trouble, and out of position-

"Sunbeam!" Shadowheart cried, and the mystic light leapt forth from the Blood of Lathander... and the massive golem soaked the hit. The adamantine metal of the golem, still glowing dully from its superheated lava bath, absorbed the mystic solar blast that had wrecked both the bulette and Glut as if she were shining a Light cantrip on a stone wall. The golem charged Shadowheart where she stood on the catwalk, surrounded by lava and with nowhere to retreat-

"No!" I shouted, but I was all the way across on the other side of the outer ring and couldn't possibly get there in time. Spells and eldritch blasts erupted from Gale and Wyll, but the golem contemptuously ignored them just as it was ignoring the Blood of Lathander. Arrows from Lae'zel's bow and my own joined the futile parade of missiles as Shadowheart bravely kept the Blood of Lathander squarely focused on the adamantine titan right up to the moment it's horrible, inexorable advance reached her-

-and it hammered her flat into the platform with a single cruel blow of its fist. The light of the Blood of Lathander guttered out and faded away as the holy mace rolled across the catwalk and lay still, and when the golem raised its fist and turned to us the only thing left of her was a sticky red mass on its hand and a shapeless mass of pulp laying horribly on the steel floor plates-

I didn't recognize the primal howl of rage filling my ears as my own voice until after I burned myself on the lava as I too-hastily ran towards the golem. Wyll abandoned his eldritch blasts and tried casting a warlock hex on the golem, hoping to make it miss or stumble, but there was no effect. Karlach managed to physically reach the thing first, ignoring the terrible heat as she climbed up on its back looking for a crevice or a seam where she could jam her sword... until the monstrosity reached up behind its own neck to pull her off, and she had to frantically let go and roll away. She barely avoided being stomped into the deckplates herself as this thing revealed more sophistication in its combat programming than I'd given it credit for-

I bared my teeth and pumped everything I had into the largest magic-disrupting smite I could fuel, hoping to nullify whatever the hell was animating this animated lump of nigh-invincible supermetal. I just about busted a gut overcharging my powers, and I actually managed to make the thing momentarily pause... and then it shook my efforts off like I wasn't even there. But I did manage to make it prioritize me as the greatest threat on the battlefield, as I was the only person here who'd damaged it at all. Now if I could only repeat what I'd done about fifty more times, and somehow manage to play keep-away with it long enough to do that, as well as spontaneously grow the limitless stamina I'd need to fuel that many smites, then-

The golem turned to face me as I stared at it from almost entirely across the platform, on the far side of the circle catwalk ringing the lowered center chamber. Its decision made, its targeting priorities set, it then turned away from the prone Karlach and started towards me. It's stride was as ponderous as a glacier, but just as impossible to stop. It would take maybe fifteen seconds for it to finish walking across the platform, but once it reached me nothing on Toril could stop it from crushing me as readily as it had Shadowheart, and any attempt on my part to run to either right or left would only help close the circle and let it reach me even faster.

It was odd how distracted your mind could get when you realized you were doomed. My intent combat-focus faded away. Even my rage at Shadowheart's death drained into despair. I focused on little, irrelevant details - the taste of sweat in my mouth, the eerie beauty of the reflected orange light from the lava, the shimmer of the heat haze around the superheated golem-

-and then my brain stuttered and connections randomly formed in my memory. The adamantine forging process as described in the manual. The purpose of the lava being to superheat the mithral blanks and make them soft enough to alloy. The molds into which the molten proto-adamantine would be poured-

-and then compressed-

I looked at the golem, which was almost halfway across the platform to me by now. I looked at the exact geometrical center of the platform, as carefully marked by the low elevated casing that held the moulding chamber.

And then I looked directly above the moulding chamber at the giant hydraulic piston... the one that was fully charged with steam pressure and waiting to compress the adamantine mould with nigh-irresistible force.

"Gale!" I shouted to where he still stood at the controls. "DROP THE HAMMER!"

The entire earth shook and a deafening clang filled our ears as more tons of hydraulic pressure than I even wanted to think about rammed a solid metal cylinder almost as thick and fully three times as tall as the golem straight down on top of its head. The adamantine metal, softened by the superheated lava that the golem had been waiding through this entire time, deformed underneath the impossible pressure we'd just subjected it to. The golem smashed flat to the ground, pinned underneath the drop hammer like a bug stuck to a corkboard. Gears turned, relief valves hissed, and the lava drained from the moulding platform as it began to raise back to the idle position. The drop hammer was hoisted back to its original position-

-and the fucking thing got back up.

The adamantine golem was visibly crushed on one side, limping, its motions now erratic and jerky, but it still wasn't fucking dead. Worse yet, I could see where the metal had cooled - and cold adamantine was effectively invulnerable to physical force.

"Reset the process! Reset it!" I shouted. "We've got to hit it again!"

And then I leapt down off the catwalk and ran directly towards the golem. It raised its fist high, just like it had for Shadowheart, and brought it crashing down- but I wasn't there. The damage it had taken had ruined its timing and balance, and so I had just enough of a window to roll clear. I clicked my magic speed boots and literally ran a half-circle around the damned thing, confusing it even more as it spun in place trying to track me. The valves hissed as the chamber lowered again-

"Get out of there!" Wyll yelled. "The lava's coming in! Get out of there!"

I tossed my sword at Karlach and used my now-free hands to start playing mountain climber on the golem just like she had. I just barely made it above the level of the lava as it rose, and the golem stood up to its knees in the molten slag. Burning agony flooded both my hands as the metal monstrosity I was holding onto began to superheat yet again, and unlike Karlach I wasn't effectively immune to non-magical flame. But I had to hang on and keep the golem focused on me, not letting it move out of the danger zone... I had to hang on just long enough...

"Gale, get ready to drop it!" I shouted at him from where I just barely hung on to the now red-hot golem, with an immediate crispy death waiting for me if I let go and no way to possibly jump clear in time.

"But that'll kill-" he began, before remembering Withers. "All right! Say when!"

"On three... two... ONE!" I shouted-

-and triggered the Amulet of Misty Step Gale had given me in the githyanki creche, and which I hadn't taken off since.

I materialized alongside him on the platform just in time to see the drop hammer come down again and crumple the already-crippled golem like a sheet of paper. The process cycled again, the lava drained, the cylinder raised...

... and the golem stayed down.

I sagged with relief, not even feeling the pain of the burns over a good portion of my body. We'd won.

"Withers?" I coughed weakly, and looked up to see him standing over me. "Would you please-"

"Of course." he reassured me, and then Shadowheart was there.

---

Author's Note: The Grymforge guardian is an almost guaranteed TPK if you don't know the trick about heating him in the lava and then dropping the hammer on him, and a two-hit fight if you do. And nope, sorry, no owlbear from the top rope. Although I did pay homage to the meme by having that be how the party killed the Arcane Eye.

The party needs to stop having people die in fights, yes. Although be fair, Grym is the other 'one of the toughest bosses in the entire damn game'. It is literally immune to all damage types unless it's superheated by the lava first, and that superheated debuff doesn't last very long.

 

[cliffc999]

"Don't hover!" Shadowheart said stridently, before her stoic expression collapsed. "I'm sorry. I just-" She took a deep breath and visibly tried to collect herself. "It's... very kind.. that you care about me so much. But we're-" Her voice momentarily broke before it firmed up again into strictly professional tones. "The danger ahead of us is going to be much worse than what we've faced already. I'm certain of it. We have to all stay focused, or we'll never survive." She looked up at me briefly from where she sat, then her eyes flickered away again. "And... you promised me, that you wouldn't pressure me." she finished resolutely.

"All right." I agreed, immediately backing away with an inward wince. Perhaps I had been - okay, I definitely had been sticking to Shadowheart a little too closely ever since her death and resurrection, but apparently I hadn't been as subtle as I thought. Solicitude on this level was apparently something she wasn't comfortable with receiving, so if she needed a little professional distance to help her get past the shock instead then I could give her that. In fact, given that she'd clearly laid out her boundaries just now, I didn't have much choice.

We spent the rest of the day using the adamantine forge to make a suit of armor for me and a sword for Karlach, as we'd agreed. The remains of the golem were useless for our purposes - once the mithral alloy had been smelted and compressed into adamantine it was basically impossible to work with from then on. Superheating the golem in the lava and then hitting it with the full force of the compression hammer had just barely been enough to break it - the already-smelted and hardened metal wasn't useful for precision forging.

My new suit of armor was truly remarkable - it couldn't be cut or pierced by anything we knew of, unless they were lucky enough to slip the point through a joint or a seam. I wasn't invulnerable when wearing it, because the human on the inside of the armor was still vulnerable to impact forces and the armor could only absorb so much impact before transmitting the rest of the kinetic force to the squishy human underneath. After all, a suit of armor obviously needed to be flexible enough for a person to move in, so it was impossible to make absolutely rigid. But I was still much better defended than I had been before. In addition the armor had a useful quality of causing weapons that struck it to rebound, thus interfering with an opponent's accuracy after the first swing. Karlach's new sword was likewise a marvel, with an impossibly tough razor's edge that could cut through basically anything non-magical and still never need sharpening. I mildly regretted not having spent as much time cross-training with longswords and broadswords in addition to greatswords and reach weapons as she had, but I suppose it would have been greedy of me anyway to want both the adamantine armor and the weapon.

I tried to draw Shadowheart out a little more when we made camp that night, but she politely asked me for some time alone so that she could catch up on her meditations. By all appearances she wasn't at all shocky or traumatized from her near-permanent-death experience, unlike Wyll... but I had recently gotten a reminder that she was a talented actress. Still, she'd made her wishes plain so all I could do for now was give her the best support I could as a quiet, nearby presence and hope that if it did get to be too much then she'd open up to me about it.

The next day we took the surface elevator up from the Grymforge, to arrive in a small blackstone antechamber decorated with subtle Sharran iconography. The chamber was clean and free of debris - clearly it had been seeing regular use. A set of stairs led up to the surface, the elevator's upper terminus still being apparently at cellar level. A cold breeze wafting down the stairs told us that whatever entrance was up there, it was open to the outside.

The thing demanding our immediate attention, however, was the elderly wizard standing calmly at the foot of the stairs. He was a tall man, matching my height, and dressed in an elaborate but well-worn dusty red robe surmounted by an ornamented blue baldric. He had a tall pointy red hat, long messy gray hair and an equally disheveled thick gray beard, and a magical staff slung on his back.

"Ho there, wanderer." he greeted us in a cheerfully dotty voice. "Wouldst thou stay thy course a moment, to indulge an old man?"

"Elminster?" Gale greeted him with a voice of astonished delight.

"The very same, Gale." Elminster chuffed back in a more querulous tone of voice. "And a fair bit miffed he is too, finding himself forced to expose his best pair of boots to so many miles of cursed road on your behalf."

"Everyone, be known to my respected colleague and old teacher Elminster Aumar of Shadowdale, the single most renowned and accomplished archmage in Faerun." Gale said cheerfully. "Elminster, these are my friends." and he introduced us by name.

"Well met, sir archmage." I said politely. "What urgent errand brings you to us?"

"Straight to business, hey?" the old man looked knowingly at me. "Not even going to indulge me through a round or two of my 'daft old bugger' routine first? I do quite like that one when I'm out and about, you know."

"Don't encourage him." Gale teased.

"Your friend is correct." Elminster said to Gale more soberly. "As much as I'd love the comfort of a good jest or two first, I was bid to spare neither time nor my own self to find you. She sent me, Gale. You know of whom I speak."

"Your goddess?" I realized.

"Mystra." Gale said, his face going pale.

We settled down and broke out some food for a second breakfast, because Elminster hadn't had his first one yet and hospitality was important. After we'd shared a meal, during which Elminster had indeed entertained himself by affecting the mannerisms of a dotty old eccentric who wasn't quite all there, he continued on with his tidings.

"Gale, my boy." Elminster said soberly. "I've come to address a most pressing matter, so I'll speak as plainly as I can and forswear the accustomed frills that normally decorate my speech. As your friend Hawke surmised, I am here on behalf of Mystra. The message and the charge I bring you are hers, not mine."

"Mystra actually speaks to archmages?" I asked him, awestruck. Because yes, I already knew that Gale had claimed to have known her personally, and I'd even believed him, but there was believing and then there was finding out-!

"Elminster is first among Mystra's Chosen, the very very few wizards that She has honored by taking them into Her personal service. I daresay Elminster's received more sendings from the goddess than the actual high priest of Her religion. Then again, he's had more than several centuries to accumulate them." Gale explained.

"All true." Elminster nodded, and then sighed. "We both know where you erred, Gale. We needn't rake you over those coals again. The matter of import is thus; Mystra has said that you're to be given a chance at redemption."

"Mystra would consider... forgiveness?" Gale asked, awestruck.

"She would consider what She considers to be forgiveness." Elminster replied, his features briefly downcast before he schooled his expression into a firm mask. "Mystra is aware of the misadventures that have befallen your party. She knows of your strife with the Absolute, that most insidious of evils."

"Blunt truth? We could really use some divine intervention right now." I broke in.

"That is the very purpose of my visit." Elminster sighed gently. "If not in the way you would hope." He turned to Gale, his expression grave. "You must know that the Absolute is more dangerous than you could possibly have imagined. Today it is merely poised to devastate the immediate region... but if left unchecked it will spread like a wildfire, beyond any possible control. It would threaten all who live, and even those who are undying. Ultimately it would risk casting down the gods... the Weave... the very fabric of the universe itself." Elminster chilled the air.

"How?" our voices rang out in a ragged chorus.

"I wish I could tell you." Elminster said simply. "But I have come here not to help you destroy it, but to charge Gale with its destruction. It is Her belief that only he stands a chance."

"Even if I were at my full power, it still would barely be half of yours! How could I possibly-?" Gale burst out, shocked, before his own expression turned as grave as a man facing the executioner. "Oh. The orb."

"Precisely." Elminster nodded. "Mystra has granted me the power to stop the orb's rush to consume you unwillingly... to put it in abeyance. For a time. Until you unleash its lethal combustion by a deliberate act of will." We all gasped as Elminster continued. "Mystra desires that you find the heart of the Absolute, wherever that may be... and then to use yourself as the catalyst that will burn it from this world."

"You want Gale to kill himself." I spat.

"I don't want anything, young man." Elminster said to me firmly. "This was the message I was commanded to bring him, and naught more." He looked at Gale. "She has promised that if you destroy the Absolute you will be forgiven, and your soul welcomed into Dweomerheart to exist forevermore alongside her with the blessed departed." Elminster shook his head. "I'm sorry, Gale. I know I bring you bitter tidings indeed. But at least this is a cleaner death than the one you were otherwise condemned to."

"Hold on a minute." I held up my hand. "I've heard Gale's version of how he ended up with that orb stuck in his chest, and it starts with him not wanting to do anything but return a missing piece of his goddess to herself as a gift. Have you heard a different one?"

"No." Elminster said to me, his lip quirking briefly with approval. "I am pleased that my friend has at least one other friend who would defend him." He sighed. "I made the same case to Her in your defense that Hawke just made to me, Gale. But She would not give me her ear. The folly of Karsus was the single greatest blasphemy committed against the Weave in the history of the world, surpassing even the creation of the Shadow Weave. Her wrath against anything that would even tangentially touch upon that old sin is fit to shake the very heavens."

"So I have very painfully learned." Gale sighed. "But It still means a great deal to me that you tried, old friend." Gale continued gently.

"Aye." Elminster nodded. "I would help you more, if I could - but I am forbidden to aid you in any way beyond fulfilling Her command to bring you this message, and to seal the orb so that its threat be held in abeyance until the proper time."

"If she could give you a spell to dampen the orb, she could also have given you one to safely remove it - if she'd wanted to?" I pressed, and Elminster's sorrowful nod was his only reply. My anger ebbed as I realized that however proud and eccentric he was, this Elminster was as helpless to defy the direct command of a goddess - even a less than entirely just one - as any other mortal would be. And that even if his poker face was far too practiced to show more than a bit of it, he was already grieving for his friend's and former apprentice's loss.

Shadowheart opened her mouth to give Gale some comforting words, and visibly failed to find any. "I'm sorry, Gale. In her own way, your goddess seems as strict as mine." She reached out and gently squeezed his hand in reassurance, and then settled back with her expression downcast. The rest of us felt the same way.

Elminster conducted a brief ritual over the orb in Gale's chest, removing his need to consume magic items to keep it stable - and giving Gale the key to manually detonating it with the force of a city-vaporizing eruption. "And that brings me to the end of my allowed interventions." Elminster finally told him.

"So this is it, then." Gale said, his face held as stiff as a mask. "Please... look after Tara when I'm gone, would you?"

"If need be, I will." Elminster drew back slightly, and then stared him manfully in the eye. "Gale... the goddess has commanded that this be your fate. But I have seen the Time of Troubles and the Second Sundering both with my own two eyes." He tapped his nose with one finger, once on both sides. "And I am not the only one for whom the death of gods is still in living memory. Or who has seen dead gods be reborn anew, if not the same as they once were. Even the inexorable tides of fate have broken repeatedly, on the shores of mortal will." He clasped Gale's shoulder earnestly. "The Absolute must be destroyed, or else all is lost. But while I know not how you can avoid your doom..." He trailed off, unable to say what he wished to out loud. "There is nothing about magic that She does not know, but there is more to life than just magic. And while any of my true friends remain alive, I would hope that they live."

"I- I hope I see you again." Gale barely managed to speak.

"And I as well." With a final embrace, the two men parted. Elminster made his farewells to us, and I took him aside for a quiet word or two of my own. And then he was gone.

---

"Behold the glory of Shar." Halsin said venomously as we stared out of the doorway at the blighted landscape.

The Shadow-Cursed Lands were everything you'd imagine from the name, and far more. I'd once been in the Fade, in the very lair of a giant nightmare demon, and this place still felt worse. Everything was barren soil and exposed rocks as far as the eye could see, interspersed with scattered bushes and trees - all of them dead and petrified. There were no animals, no sounds of nature, nothing but constant flickering movements at the edge of visibility. The sky was almost entirely pitch black - no stars, and only the faintest diffuse and directionless light to hint at where there could possibly be a moon. Everything beyond the radius of the light cast by the Blood of Lathander was hard to see, as if viewed through a distorting lens or a black fog.

"There's power here." Shadowheart's voice quavered nervously. "Familiar power." She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, before continuing in a more normal tone of voice. "Hold this." She handed the Blood to me and then stepped forward towards the edge of the light radius. "I need to..."

"Be careful!" I called, and she ignored me and continued to the edge anyway, sticking her hand out of the protective bubble of light and into the shadows.

Her shoulders slumped as she withdrew her hand. "I was right. The Shadow Curse is filled with necrotic energy. If you leave the light, it will drain your life force. The deeper in the shadows you are, the faster it will kill you."

"Are you all right?" I demanded. "You actually touched that-"

"I'll be fine." she turned to me, her expression grave. "It was a very brief contact. But we'll have to stick close together, so we can all be protected by this." She stepped up to me and reclaimed the Blood of Lathander from me. I insisted on having Halsin examine her hand, but Shadowheart was correct - she hadn't been in contact with the Shadow Curse long enough to actually receive any damage.

Our spellcasters used a few Light cantrips on several party members to give us some supplementary illumination, and some more experimenting produced the result that while the protection seemed less comprehensive than that given by the divine light of Lathander, the Shadow Curse still didn't damage people who were brightly lit enough that no part of their body was actually in shadow. But stepping outside the radius of the Blood's protection still felt wrong - the very air seemed full of a chill, an active and hungry malice that lusted to drain away a man's vitality and warmth and leave him a restless, empty husk.

"How we do navigate through this?" Lae'zel swore. "No stars, no moon, this accursed fog reducing visibility to spear-throwing range or less... only those already familiar with each rock and branch of the trail could possibly know the route!"

"And while the Shadow Curse doesn't reach inside the building we just left, that's the only safe shelter we know of. Even with the Blood's protection, I wouldn't dare to actually camp out here." Gale agreed. "So we can't just wander around blind."

"If Moonrise Towers really is located on top of that underground temple we saw, then it can't be more than five or ten miles away from here." I said. "That's well within a day's march if we push it. So if we can figure out which one is the proper path, we can make it in one go."

Halsin briefly took his bear form again, then immediately resumed his human shape. "Oakfather preserve me-" he shook his head rapidly, as if trying to shake something off. "You don't want to smell what's out there! It's like an ocean of carrion! I can't hope to follow a trail through this." His shoulders slumped and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked terribly old. "The lands around Moonrise used to be my home. Before the Shadow Curse came I lived here, as a boy..." His voice faded away. "And now I cannot even recognize the shape of the land anymore."

"Oh, shit." Karlach laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "I- gods damn, no wonder you wanted to get back here so bad."

"Then there's nothing for it to pick a path and try exploring down it, and then turning back after several hours to return here and camp." I said decisively. "And then we try again, and again, until we find something." I consulted my trailfinder, which was working again now that we'd left the Underdark, and compared it to my memory of how the path towards the main Sharran temple had been oriented in relation to the bottom of the elevator... "Hopefully, Moonrise is that way."

"Hopefully." Shadowheart agreed, and we drew into a protective ring around the Blood of Lathander and its safeguarding light as we set cautiously off. Our footsteps made little sound on the dry rock and soil, without even dead leaves to step on. We trudged along in silence, the oppressive atmosphere of the Shadow-Cursed Lands weighing down heavily on us all. Even with Lathander's protection we did not feel safe, feeling as if our sentence of death had merely been suspended, not commuted-

"Lights up ahead." I suddenly realized, as several dim flickers that I'd thought were mere artifacts of vision in the murky shadow-fog began to grow brighter. Someone else was travelling through these blighted lands, a party of people risking death out here with nothing but simple torches to hold back the devouring shadows-

"Torches? Minthara said that the forces of the Absolute used magical 'moonlanterns' for safe passage." Wyll realized. "Whoever those people are, they aren't with the cult."

We picked up the pace, hurrying ahead to try and intercept these strangers before they moved away and got lost in the fog. The path wound through a low stand of dead and bare trees, and as we drew close we saw three people - two women with a torch and a sword in each hand, each flanking a man with a crossbow. All of them were dressed in well-worn armor without any livery, and wielded their weapons with the practiced ease of veterans.

"Close up." the blond woman ordered authoritatively. "Stay in the light!"

"Contact left!" the woman with a long dark ponytail suddenly called, and her party immediately moved off the trail and took up what cover they could behind trees, moving in well-drilled unison. And since we'd been on their left flank as we closed-

"Stop! Who's there?" the blonde woman, their apparent squad leader, barked out. Apparently the Blood of Lathander was bright enough that they couldn't see us clearly through the glare, while we could see them.

"Adventurers!" I replied. "We come in peace!"

"A likely story, love!" she called back suspiciously. "Advance one of your party to be recognized!"

"You want me to leave the radius of our light source? In this?" I called back reasonably.

"I don't know what the hell you're carrying, but it's shining like a damned lighthouse!" she yelled back. "I'm sure you'll be-"

"Don't move!" I suddenly yelled, having noticed that their crossbowman had stepped almost too far away from his torchbearer in an attempt to get a better angle on me for a shot. "You're leaving the light!"

"Yonas, you damned idiot!" the other woman yelled at him, and hurriedly stepped over to get him within close radius of her torch again. "The hell is wrong with you? You know what happens if you do that when we're out this deep!"

The leader of their party turned back to face me, having almost reflexively turned around to look back at the near-miss that had just happened. "Thank you." she said, in a less hostile manner. "Now who are you, really?"

"Who are you?" I challenged back, as the rest of our party slowly moved forward. Their faces fell as they realized that we outnumbered them over two to one, but they didn't do more than tense up slightly as we all carefully kept our hands clear of our weapons.

"Harpers?" Halsin said suddenly, looking at the silver pin of a harp each of them were wearing on their collars. "Well met, then! I am Halsin, druid of the Emerald Grove."

"Aye." their leader said, relaxing. "Harper Lassandra and party, scouting out these damned blighted lands. What business do you have here?"

I risked a brief 'push' with my tadpole, and relaxed when I picked up no sense of either a tadpole or the Absolute's brand on any of these three. "Fighting the Cult of the Absolute, who we seek at Moonrise Towers."

"Hah!" Lassandra barked amusedly. "Us too, but we don't remotely have enough men to just walk in there. So I admire your guts, if not your sense-" She broke off as a sudden chill washed down our spines.

"Oh shit!" Yonas swore. "Mists tide! They're coming!"

"Form a circle!" Lassandra ordered. "You lot too, get in here with us! Shadows coming!"

Our two groups merged into a defensive formation and set up where we had a clear field of fire in all directions - which of course meant that we were exposed in all directions, but the undead monsters called 'shadows' apparently didn't have ranged attacks. But they were virtually impossible to see in the darkness, so sticking to flat open ground with multiple light sources was the best way to not get hit from behind-

And with an eerie silence they emerged from the fog. Almost a dozen of them, they were man-sized silouhettes with long grasping arms, glowing green eyes, and more shadowy fog where legs should be. They made no speech, gave no war cry, had no formation - they just came.

"What is that thing?" Lassandra asked as the shadows all flinched as soon as they entered the radius of the Blood of Lathander's light. They still advanced, driven on by their terrible hunger, but their movements were now slower, jerkier. As if they were staggering against an invisible headwind, or blinded staring into the noonday sun-

"Long story!" Shadowheart said with a thin flash of her usual humor, as the shadows closed to melee range and we began killing. They seemed invulnerable to blows from normal weapons, but the only one of us who wasn't bearing an enchanted one were Wyll - whose warlock powers were energizing his rapier, thus letting it cleave the unlife from the shadows anyway - and Gale, who wasn't fighting with his staff but his spells. The Harpers seemed to have enchanted weapons of their own, and my Sword of Justice and Karlach's adamantine blade cleaved through the undead as if they were made of cotton candy. Our spellcasters didn't need to expend any more effort than casting several cantrips, and Shadowheart in particular practically exploded the shadows she struck with every swing of the Blood of Lathander. Soon enough, the business was done, and with no casualties and few wounds on our side. The power of the Blood had made all the difference - most of the shadows had been blinded by its radiance, and so their fighting abiltiy had been greatly diminished. Then again, undead made out of living darkness couldn't face anything more devastating than the sun-

"Unbelievable!" Harper Yonas gushed. "What on Toril is that artifact? It saved all our lives!"

"The Blood of Lathander." I said proudly.

"What? The Blood of Lathander?" Harper Lassandra said, astonished. "The holiest artifact of the Morninglord? The church of Lathander has sent an expedition?" She bowed to Shadowheart. "The Harpers thank you, Dawnbringer. Your aid is most appreciated, and our commander would love to speak with you."

Shadowheart blushed in epic embarassment. "I... am not a priestess of the Morninglord, good Harper. We found this artifact in the ruins of Rosymorn Monastery, which fell to a githyanki attack weeks past. We brought it with us both to spare it from the githyanki and because we knew we would need its light against the shadows."

Upon hearing the words 'githyanki attack' Harper Lassandra immediately turned to look suspiciously at Lae'zel. Lae'zel shrugged knowingly and replied with a simple "I am outcast."

"And she helped guide us to avenge the fall of Rosymorn." Wyll contributed.

"Freelancers or not, your aid is still most welcome." Lassandra replied. "Come with us. We have a refuge nearby, where you will be safe at least temporarily from the Shadow Curse. And our commander would still wish to speak to you."

"Beats wandering around out here without the slightest clue where anything is." I proposed, and our party agreed with that consensus. "Lead on."

I'd heard of 'Harpers' several times before in conversation with Halsin and the others, but I hadn't had time to read up on what exactly they were. Fortunately, Harper Lassandra was relatively easy to draw out in conversation as we marched, so I got an earful.

The Harpers, or 'Those Who Harp', had been founded centuries ago from an alliance of the priesthoods of several good gods, several bardic colleges, several renowned archmages - I was surprised to hear that Gale's old mentor Elminster had apparently been one of the original founding Harpers, how old was that man? - and independent adventurers of all sorts. They were a semi-secret society, sometimes acting openly and sometimes in the shadows, highly respected in most lands but with official authority in few, and loyal only to their own creed and cause with no fealty sworn to either king or clan. Few interfered with their passing, but opinions about them varied from hailing them as heroes to cursing them as impractical, needless meddlers. Their avowed goals were the preservation of lore, maintaining the balance between nature and civilization, and defending innocent folk from evil forces beyond the ability of conventional guardsmen and soldiers to withstand. Outside of their more general focus as opposed to a crusade against a single implacable threat they sounded very much like the Grey Wardens, and the mannerisms of Lassandra and her squad reminded me a lot of Wardens that I had known.

The unrelieved gloom of the shadows and fog started to give way up ahead to a bright, silvery light cutting through the gloom at a considerable distance. We marveled at what could possibly be causing it, given that it was entirely the wrong color to be open flame and that with the Shadow Curse making torches and lanterns as dim and oppressed as they were you'd need an outright forest fire to shine that brightly through all this-

And then our breaths caught in awe as we caught a clear sight of the 'refuge' we'd been promised. It was a perfectly prosaic-looking country inn, if a large one, built on the end of a peninsula jutting into a large lake. The inn and a large campgrounds around it were surrounded by water on three sides and reachable by a stone bridge erected over a deeply-dug trench. This place had clearly been built as a caravan stop intended for use on a trade route well away from any other outpost of civilization, a defensible strongpoint that could hold out against bandits or monsters until relief could arrive down the trade road.

But the most marvelous thing about it was the giant half-globe of silvery light surrounding almost the entire peninsula, a defensive field inside of which the Shadow Curse simply didn't exist. The lanterns and campfires surrounding the inn shone normally, without any sign of the dimming effect that the Shadow Curse tried to enforce on even the brightest of lights. The people moving around inside strode unconcernedly from one illuminated area to another, as opposed to frantically trying to minimize even their most momentary contact with any patch of shadow or darkness.

"Last Light Inn." Lassandra said proudly. "They've called it that since before Moonrise Towers was even built, when it was the last stop on the Risen Road for several days' ride. Prophetic name, hmm?"

I looked back down at the Blood of Lathander and the relatively small area it was shielding for us, and then back up at that. "How are you even sustaining that? It must be covering several acres!"

"It was a working cast by High Initiate Isobel." Lassandra said reverently. "A priestess of Selune, who was already here searching for an end to the Shadow Curse when our expeditionary force originally arrived. It takes much of her power to sustain that barrier, but she's been reinforcing it daily for weeks."

"Oh." Shadowheart said faintly. "She must be very powerful indeed."

"She stands highly in the favor of the Moonmaiden." Lassandra agreed. "Come. We're almost there."

Our party advanced down the bridge and towards the entryway to the inn yard, which had a group of grim-looking Harpers standing guard. Lassandra called out to them and exchanged the proper passwords, and they drew aside to let us enter.

"Someone tell Jaheira we have visitors to see her!" Lassandra ordered as we drew close to the entryway.

"I am here." an authoritative voice rang out, the voice of a woman long accustomed to command. I looked over to see Jaheira approaching - she was a tall elf or half-elf, with well-weathered skin the color of rich leather and long gray hair in braids. A pair of exotic-looking shortswords were slung across her back, and despite her obvious age she moved with the easy, ranging stride of a much younger woman. If the Harpers were an analogue to Grey Wardens then she was clearly the Warden-Commander - I'd briefly met Clarel, Commander of the Grey herself, during the Inquisition's ill-fated trip to Adamant Fortress and Jaheira's own air of command could have matched hers any day of the week. "All of you, step back."

"Well met. I am-" I began, only for Jaheira's eyes to flash green with eldritch power as she unleashed a spell with a curt gesture. Plants and vines suddenly burst forth from the bare rock and soil beneath us, helplessly pinning our feet to the ground. A druidic spell, like the ones I'd seen used in the Moonhaven ambush-

"Just this once, I wish someone would simply say hello!" I said aggrievedly.

"Hello." Jaheira replied, her brief smile edged with knives as she stalked nearer. Every Harper in sight who had a bow now had arrows nocked and aimed at us, and their compatriots formed a battle line with their swords drawn.

"We saved your people from an ambush, and this is the thanks we get?" Wyll fumed.

"Kindness is too often a decoy." Jaheira said flatly, as she reached one hand into a pocket and withdrew a corked flask - a flask inside of which a mind flayer parasite was wriggling. "This is why we're here, you see. It is a curious creature, that hides all manner of secrets. But if there's one thing we know-" She drew up short just out of weapons range of us and held up the flash, and the parasite began to thrash more and more wildly as it drew nearer to me. I could feel the tadpole in my own head start tingling in sympathetic response. "-it's that these creatures know their own." Jaheira put the flask back in her pocket and grimly drew forth both her swords, her face an executioner's mask. "You should never have come here, True Soul." she spat.

"Jaheira!" Halsin called out to her. "I am Halsin, of the Emerald Grove! It's been decades since we met, but do you remember me? We fought together against the first rise of Moonrise Towers, long ago!"

"I remember the man you used to be." she said to him gravely. "But if you are here like this, then he is already dead. Harpers-!" she began to command.

"WAIT!" a familiar and entirely unexpected voice broke in. "Don't hurt them! That's Hawke and his friends! They're the ones who saved us!"

"Alfira?" I turned to her in shock... because it was indeed the very same lovely tiefling bard who'd propositioned me at the victory celebration after the defeat of the goblins, the one who'd been in charge of helping supervise the children in Zevlor's camp. "What in the Maker's name are you doing here?"

"These are the ones who protected the Emerald Grove?" Jaheira said, at least as shocked as I was. "But- hold your fire!" she ordered, and all the Harpers lowered their weapons but stayed at the ready. She turned back to us, sheathing her own swords and looking at me as if trying to see through my skull. "A True Soul with a mind of his own? How is that possible?"

"Because of this." I answered her, drawing forth the Astral Prism from my belt pouch. The runes on it glowed dull orange as I brought it into the light, and Jaheira hurriedly withdrew the flask from her pocket to marvel at the parasite frantically thrashing about in it with frenzied effort before going limp, as if dead or comatose.

"What in the hells is that thing?" Jaheira demanded. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the Harpers leading Alfira back into the inn.

"The Astral Prism. A githyanki artifact built to neutralize the powers of mind flayers." I explained, and then went on briefly about how exactly we'd gotten it.

"Congratulations. You've earned yourselves the benefit of the doubt. Harpers - All Clear, Stand At Ease!" she ordered, and the guards resumed their posts while the other reacting Harpers scattered back to their original duties. Jaheira's eyes flashed again, and the vines holding our feet pinned faded away. "I won't even pretend to know what that thing is, but I'm too old to reject a sliver of hope when I see it shining to me through the dark. Why have you come here?"

"To destroy the Absolute." I acknowledged her.

"Then we have a great deal to talk about. Come on in, and I'll pour you a drink." Jaheira offered, and then led us all into the inn.

---

Author's Note: Man, if I thought Act One was tough to plot, Act Two is gonna be a bear. I got tons of shit to get through, even with ruthless sidequest pruning, and since I haven't replayed Act Two nearly as often as I have Act One (when you test mod configs, you see Act One over and over and over) I'm gonna need to replay some more to make sure I don't miss anything. Plus, the further off the canon rails things go, the more I need to research deep background.

Still, things are progressing nicely so far, and I love the creative freedom to fill in background texture that the games never touched. Forex, the game never says what exactly the relationship between Elminster and Gale is except that they obviously know each other, so I went 'Well, somebody had to be Gale's original magic teacher, he didn't exactly spring forth from the brow of a goddess fully an archmage at birth' and rolled with that. In fact, I'm surprised the Elminster scene wrote itself with that much dignity; my normal opinion of Elminster is decidedly otherwise but hey, the muse and the story are the muse and the story, and you're here to see me craft a narrative that works, not to soapbox.

And yes, I know that Mol is the one who speaks out for the party at the entrance to Last Light, not Alfira. But I shortchanged someone of her camera time during the Grove sequence, so here we are. *g*

And pour one out for the poor Harper who mistook Shadowheart for a high priestess of Lathander... even if it's an entirely understandable mistake when a strange cleric rolls up on you wielding one of the most sacred artifacts in their entire religion. Even Shadowheart's youthful appearance isn't an obstacle to that - she's a half-elf, which means she'll continue looking like a twenty-something well into her eighties. (In fact, Shadowheart is canonically in her forties, even if she's mentally younger due to memory erasure.)

 

[cliffc999]

"Oh gods!" Karlach was gushing as we entered the inn. "I can't believe i've actually met Jaheira! The Jaheira!"

"Someone famous?" I asked her.

"Only one of the greatest living heroes of Baldur's Gate!" Karlach forgot her indoor voice. "Over a century ago she was one of a group of adventurers who saved the city from the son of the God of Murder! When I was a little girl I was raised on stories of her, and now I'm actually getting to work with her? Eeeeeeee!" I winced and stifled the urge to cover my ears at Karlach's literal squee of delight.

"Forgive my friend, she's... enthusiastic." I turned back to Jaheira as we drew towards a table off in the corner of the inn's ground floor.

"Not the first time." Jaheira replied amusedly. "You've come a long way." she said to the rest of the group, "and to be honest I don't have that much of the good stuff left. Go get yourselves settled in, grab a hot meal and find a place to pitch your bedrolls. I'll share a drink and talk a bit with your leader before we all decide what to do next." she finished reasonably.

"Go on." I urged them, recognizing when somebody wasn't going to talk freely without being alone. Jaheira nodded to me in thanks, then turned away after they'd left to briefly rummage through a nearby cabinet. "Now where did I leave- ah!" She came out with a bottle of wine, and laid out a pair of goblets and poured each one half-full, then suddenly pushed the bottle into the center of the table- wait a minute, I'd seen this one before. I mentally thanked Varric yet again for his lessons, and looked very carefully at Jaheira's hands instead of where the suddenly moving bottle had been intended to make me look.

"Thank you." I told her, and quickly and deliberately reached down and picked up the other goblet than the one she'd been intending me to drink from, plucking it gently from Jaheira's grasp. "Bottoms up!"

"Damn." Jaheira narrowed her eyes at me, then gave a respectful nod. "That usually works."

"It usually does." I agreed with her. "Although I can't figure out why. It's not poison - if you wanted us dead you'd have just done it at the gate, or else served us all the exotic flavorings. So why spike only my drink after getting me alone, and with what?"

"It was a truth potion." she admitted shamelessly. "You've got a mind flayer parasite in your head, and they change people. Even if your mind isn't the Absolute's, that doesn't necessarily mean you aren't still a hidden threat."

"Ah." I nodded... and then I set the goblet down and picked up the other one. "Please don't ask anything too embarassing, if you would?" I said urbanely, and then drank the spiked wine.

"Huh." she raised her eyebrows at me. "You're a rare man, Hawke."

"You don't know how rare." I heard my tongue say... damn, this stuff worked fast. I began to reconsider the wisdom of my gesture of trust, although I imagined that if I'd made a serious effort of will I could still have held back. Then again, if this stuff was in your drink and you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't know to concentrate-

Jaheira chuckled knowingly as she sipped her own wine. "Don't worry, I'll be gentle. Just one question... how much has that parasite changed you already?"

"I don't know." I admitted. "I'm not aware of any real change, I've been resisting its temptations as much as possible. But I have needed to touch briefly upon the power several times in order to imitate a True Soul when dealing with cultists, or to communicate silently with my allies. And I can't guarantee there haven't been more insidious effects I'm not conscious of."

"Thank you, that was what I needed to know." Jaheira replied, and then reached out and sprinkled some crushed dried leaves into my cup. "It wears off relatively quickly in any event, but that should counteract what's in your system." I raised my cup to her in thanks and we finished off the rest of our drinks. Jaheira and I chatted a bit about our respective backgrounds - of course I knew she was using the atmosphere of ease to try and draw me out, just as I was doing the same to her - and by the end we were laughing together.

"It's a pleasure to work with another professional, for once." Jaheira saluted me with the dregs of her wine cup. "Quite a few people would have resented my little trick with the potion."

"You're outnumbered, surrounded, in the middle of a magical deathland with no clear line of retreat, and dealing with an enemy that can turn people into mentally enslaved sleeper agents. Of course you're going to be suspicious and devious, you need to be." I agreed with her. "Your Harpers are a very impressive crew, and I'm very glad that I'm not going to be dealing with everyone in Moonrise Towers all by myself. I had to fight the battle of Moonhaven with druids - no disrespect to their spellcasting powers-"

"I should certainly hope not, considering that I am one." Jaheira grinned at me.

"-but who for all their magic still weren't the sort of veterans your people clearly are. And then there was the tiefling militia... and speaking of which, what are they doing here?"

Jaheira's expression turned grave. "Their caravan got hit by a column of troops from Moonrise Towers while they were camped alongside the Risen Road to Baldur's Gate. The road draws very close to the border of the Shadow-Cursed Lands there, and the survivors of that attack were driven by the raiders straight into the darkness. Thank Mielikki that they were able to figure out quickly enough that they needed bright lights to survive, but even so they would have all been lost souls soon enough if they hadn't had the good fortune to encounter one of my scout patrols." She shook her head. "I don't have enough men to get them back out of the cursed lands and then escort them down the road far enough to be safe from another raid by the Absolutists, not and simultaneously hold my position here. Hellfire, I don't have enough men to get myself out unless I'm willing to abandon our entire mission with no chance of recovery. So here they are stuck, like all the rest of us."

"What is your mission, if I might ask?" I inquired.

"I'll discuss that with your entire team. Come." she ordered, and we got up and rejoined the others. We all assembled in a room off of the main floor of the inn that was normally used for private dining parties, and had now been repurposed as a map room and command center. A glance at several of the maps on the table brought the relieving sight that the Harpers had been using their time here to painstakingly explore and chart trails through the Shadow-Cursed Lands, even if their exploring parties hadn't yet made to within sight of Moonrise.

"General Ketheric Thorm." Jaheira said ominously, as she faced us all from the head of the table. We'd finished bringing her up to date on most of what had happened with us since the nautiloid crash - leaving out certain sensitive parts such as exactly which deity Shadowheart worshipped and suchlike - and now it was her turn.

"What about him?" Halsin asked. "We were both present when he died, nigh on a century ago."

"He's back." Jaheira answered him simply, and Halsin gasped in shock. "And yet again he is the lord of Moonrise Towers, and raising an army of evil there with which to scourge the land. Only instead of Shar, now he serves the Absolute."

"I've seen the dead raised," I broke in. "But only immediately after death, several days at the longest. There's magic that can raise someone who's been gone for a century?"

"None that I have ever heard of." Jaheira agreed. "And you don't need to convince me that he truly died the first time, I personally helped shovel the dirt on that bastard's face! But I also- no, let me tell the tale in order." She took a deep breath and continued more calmly. "I don't know how long the Cult of the Absolute has been infiltrating Baldur's Gate, but my Harpers first heard of it several months ago. At first it was merely rumors, whispers, disappearances - the usual thing you get when another bunch of stupid bastards are crouching around an idol in the sewers and thinking they'll earn ultimate power on a platter if they just knife enough beggars. But then things got quieter. More subtle, more sophisticated. The more we looked the worse things got, but the less concrete evidence we found. Then we discovered that people were not merely being recruited but also implanted, with mind flayer parasites." She nodded at us. "You know better than I do what that implies, particularly when we discovered that the ceremorphosis was somehow being halted." She exhaled. "Every lead we could turn up led back to Moonrise Towers, so I called in all the reinforcements I could get. Not just Harpers, but also a detachment of Flaming Fist that I convinced an old ally to lend me. We put together an expeditionary force capable of traveling through even these shadow-cursed lands and came here for a reconaissance-in-force. There were almost a hundred of us... and now there are barely fifty." She shook her head. "High Initiate Isobel had come here on her own shortly before we did, searching the lands around Moonrise for something related to the Shadow Curse. She was already using her powers to create a shelter of moonlight around this inn when our expedition arrived here almost two weeks ago."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Despite everything we did to maintain operational security, someone in Baldur's Gate must have warned Thorm that we were coming. We'd barely arrived in the area when we were attacked while still marching, by almost twice our number in goblins and lesser undead with Thorm and a small number of other veteran knights and spellcasters as officers. I saw the old bastard marching at the head of their column with my own two eyes." She chuckled grimly. "And I personally put an arrow in his eye as well, right up to the fletching.... and the son-of-a-bitch just reached up and pulled it out like it was a splinter." She shook her head wonderingly. "Whatever brought him back from the grave didn't just make him alive again, it made him immortal. As near as we have been able to determine, he literally cannot die."

"If he's that invincible, how is this place still standing?" I immediately asked.

"Good question." Jaheira acknowledged. "Thorm's ambush did to us basically the same thing that happened to the tiefling caravan - the main force hammered us while a flanking force cut off our escape in every direction except deeper into the shadow. We were able to retreat in good order, but we still had to retreat. And so we ended up here." She nodded to me. "And you're right... if Thorm came here and led an all-out assault, we wouldn't be able to stop him. Except he hasn't."

"From what Halsin has told us of what Thorm managed to pull off when he was leading the original Sharran incursion here a century ago, he's a very experienced field commander." Gale said. "So I'm assuming that he's not the sort of person who just overlooks the extremely obvious."

"He is - or was - a half-elf, with the extended lifespan of one." Jaheira said. "And he spent almost all of that life at war, in the service of several gods and nations. He does not give himself the title of 'General' merely out of vanity, it is one that he has legitimately earned many times over. No." she agreed. "He is not so stupid as to overlook the obvious. And yet, except for several harassing attacks by his mindless undead, he has not come here." She shrugged. "My scout teams report that more and more cultists of the Absolute are being assembled and outfitted, both at Moonrise and at field camps set up outside the shadow-cursed regions, and that shipments of supplies keep arriving and being stockpiled for the same. Thorm is raising an army - not merely a warband or a group of raiders, but a substantial military force of thousands of men, possibly even tens of thousands. Perhaps that is what preoccupies his time, and keeps him from bothering with me and my remnants so long as we are safely contained. Or perhaps whatever dark power animates him is repelled by Isobel's protections as well."

"Does he need the Shadow Curse to remain animate? Is it possible he's some new type of undead?" Shadowheart asked.

"He does not." Jaheira said. "Our first battle with him was just outside the cursed region. He can leave it if he chooses."

"An army of thousands... perhaps tens of thousands. If he's raising that kind of force, there's only one place I can think of where he'd be taking it." Wyll said, shocked.

"Baldur's Gate." Jaheira agreed. "That seems to be his plan - a fifth column within the city to weaken it and perhaps open an entranceway for him from within, and a force of conquest with which to break open the Gate and either sack it or turn it into another realm of misery like he did the lands that used to be here. We don't know yet where his mind flayer allies come in, or even where they are, but the tadpoles clearly prove that he has them."

"No, wait." I said. "The vision the Absolute sent us, before the Prism blocked it - there were three people she called her 'Chosen', the ones who 'spoke in her name', and they were apparently of equal seniority. One of them was an elderly male elf or half-elf, a warrior in heavy armor - presumably that's General Thorm. But then where are the other two?" I described both the strange pale woman and the handsome young nobleman. "And are they at Moonrise Towers as well, or handling similarly sized projects for the Absolute somewhere else?"

"Damn it." Jaheira swore. "Are you telling me that as outnumbered and deeply up shit creek as my people are, we still aren't dealing with the full scope of the problem here?"

"That reminds me." Gale said grimly, and we passed on the part of Elminster's warning that related to what the Absolute could eventually grow into.

"Elminster was here? The Sage of Shadowdale? You were speaking to him just this morning?" Jaheira goggled. "And he has confirmed this is potentially a global-scale threat, in the long run?"

"Yes." I said. "But he couldn't do more than pass on the warning - Mystra has commanded his non-interference otherwise."

Jaheira swore colorfully in at least three languages, none of which I spoke. "You know what? If the gods want me to expand my operation here, then they can send me or Isobel a messenger. I'm already outnumbered and overextended, and barring direct divine revelation I am sticking with my original objective. Which is to figure out what the hell has made Ketheric unable to die, strip it away from him, and then kill him. Again."

"Made any progress?" I asked.

"Pfft." she snorted. "I can't even get to Moonrise, let alone inside of it. You think the Shadow Curse you've seen is bad? This is the less severe region of it. There are patches of darkness out there so thick that you could be surrounded by twenty torches and still be drained of your life in an instant. Even the Selunite blessing is overwhelmed." She nodded to Shadowheart. "I wouldn't guarantee that even the Blood of Lathander could hold proof against the deepest darkness, although that certainly has a better chance of working than anything we've tried so far. But it's precisely those deep patches of darkness that cut off any route to Moonrise." She looked up. "Your intelligence about the 'moonlanterns' the cultists use to ignore the Shadow Curse, that matches what I have found out as well. What my scouts have been searching for these past days are their caravan routes, so that we can ambush one and steal a moonlantern for ourselves. But even if we pulled that off, I hadn't solved the problem of how I was going to get anyone into Moonrise Towers proper and have a hope of seeing them alive again..." She trailed off.

"Until half a dozen people with tadpoles in their heads just fell into your lap." I agreed, having readily seen where this one was going. "It's already worked once, so let's hope it does twice."

"It had better, or we're all fucked." Jaheira agreed.

"Have you heard of the Netherese travelstone system? We've been using it for a little over the past week." I said. "Maybe we can use that to run a message out of here-" I stopped when I realized something. "Damn. The Shadow Curse is interfering with the attunements. I can't 'feel' any of the travelstones we attuned to on the way here, even though there's one near Last Light Inn we could still use."

"Pity." Jaheira said. "If I could get one message out to the High Harpers-" She shook her head. "I've had several volunteers to be couriers. None have made it."

"Have you been using that parasite to check everyone here?" I said.

"Every time someone leaves, they don't get back in without passing it." She agreed. "No, I do not think Ketheric has a source inside my encampment. Then again, it is only his living servants who need moonlanterns - there are any number of undead out there, lurking in the shadows where we cannot see them."

"We met a pair of Death Shepherds and a pack of ghouls on the mountain pass leading past Rosymorn." I remembered. "Now I'm thinking I know where they came from."

"Quite likely." Jaheira agreed. "All right - I am waiting for a progress report by my latest caravan-tracking team. If they found something, I would appreciate your help with the ambush... particularly since I am going to need to give you the moonlantern so that you can reach Moonrise. But that won't be for hours yet." She looked briefly out the window. "I'll want to introduce you to the priestess so that she can cast her blessing upon you - it helps protect against the Shadow Curse. I can't afford to have it used on every patrol, she only has so much power, but I can prioritize you. Right now she is conducting her daily ritual to reinforce and renew the shielding, but after she is done..."

"I won't be going with them." Halsin said suddenly. "For one, I don't bear the parasite so I can't accompany them to Moonrise. And for another, your mission is not why I came here. I came to try and put an end to the Shadow Curse."

"That would be lovely... if you could pull it off." Jaheira said. "But what in the world makes you think you can?"

"At present, very little." Halsin acknowledged frankly. "But this was my home. Our failure to stop Thorm from finishing his curse of vengeance on this land before killing him the first time is why it was devastated, and I have never forgiven myself for that failure. At first I didn't remotely have the power to even dream of making an attempt, and then for decades I had my obligations to the Grove... but finally I am free to pursue my quest and have found my way back here. And I will not be leaving until after I have made certain that there is nothing left to attempt."

"I respect that, but I can spare no one to aid you at present." Jaheira replied to him. "And your traveling companions will also have another mission. So please, do not throw your life away out there in the shadows. Particularly not since I fear that no matter what else, the curse will never be truly undone so long as Ketheric Thorm remains free to walk the land."

"Perhaps our goals will run in parallel again after all." Halsin said. "But for now, with your permission, I will withdraw to begin my investigations."

"Silvanus guide you and keep you safe." Jaheira said to him, and the two druids nodded at each other before Halsin made his goodbyes to us and left. We discussed a few more details with Jaheira and then our meeting broke up as well.

According to Jaheira Isobel would be occupied with her protective ritual for around another hour, so we ended up splitting up all over the inn. Wyll was busy helping two tiefling children who'd apparently been drafted as bartenders deal with a belligerent drunk. Karlach had gone to see if the tiefling smith Dammon was one of the survivors so she could get her infernal heart readjusted further using some infernal iron we'd found among the supplies in the Grymforge. Gale was busy pondering the heavy tidings that Elminster had brought him over a glass of wine, and politely demurred my offer to sit and talk with him about it. Shadowheart had ducked outside to get some fresh air on the inn grounds, and also avoid the questions of curious Harpers about the Blood of Lathander and related matters. Lae'zel had gone to observe the Harpers who were at weapons practice, saying that she wanted to 'judge the quality of our new allies'.

And I had had my own plans entirely derailed when I had spotted Mol sitting and playing a game of chess with the last person in the world I'd have expected to be here.

"Mol, please tell me you haven't signed anything or agreed to anything." I begged her as I approached the two chessplayers.

"Of course not." Mol snarked at me. "This is still us getting the other one's measure! Dealing comes after."

"Indeed it does," Raphael smirked up at me. "And this is an exchange to which you were not invited. Do please depart in a civil fashion, there's a good fellow."

I resisted an urge to throw the chessboard out the window and sat down at the table anyway. "Mol, how's about I stand you a round?"

"People paying for drinks are definitely invited to my table!" Mol agreed cheerfully.

"Nothing on my account, thank you." Raphael smirked as he raised an elaborately finished golden goblet to me in acknowledgement. "I doubt this venue even carries any of my favorite vintages. I'll just refill my own."

"Half honey mead and half water, and keep it coming!" Mol called out cheerfully to one of her bartender rapscallions. "What?" she looked at me challengingly. "I'm gambling for money here and I've got half your body weight. A girl needs to pace herself under those conditions."

"You do know he's a devil, right?" I made sure to tell Mol first thing.

"'Course I do." she said. "Now ssh, I'm winning!"

"Mol, he's hundreds of years old at least and been living the high life the entire time - which includes a lot of chess playing. Are you a grandmaster genius at this game?"

"What, you think I can't beat him?" Mol shot back proudly.

"I think an experienced sharpster like you knows perfectly well that you deliberately lose the first couple of times to get the mark nice and relaxed before you start dealing from the bottom on them." I told her. "And that Raphael here has been so charming and amusing that you were temporarily distracted from remembering that."

"I wasn't- shit!" she swore, and immediately knocked over her king. "Oops, look at that, I lost!"

"I assume you don't want a rematch, either." Raphael told her equably.

"Not until after I've had a private word with one of my advisors, at least." Mol said, slapping a gold coin down on the table as payment for her wager. "There, all settled up and it looks like we won't be doing any further business tonight. But hey - only two of us here are growing any older, right?"

"Of course, of course." he chuckled urbanely. "Enjoy your evening, and perhaps we'll chat another time. For right now, I'd appreciate a word with Hawke here."

"See you around then, or maybe not!" Mol agreed quickly. "Uh... good luck?" she said uncertainly to me.

"Wyll's at the bar." I pointed at him. "Ask him about his own negotiations and how they went."

"I'll do just that." Mol agreed, and then made herself scarce. Quickly.

"And so the brave and noble paladin has spared yet another innocent child from a horrible fate." Raphael said smugly after Mol had gone. "Or has he?"

"Even if you can teleport in and out, you still didn't come all this way to this cursed a place just to pick up a teenaged cutpurse." I challenged him. "She was just something you were amusing yourself with while you waited for someone else." I stared challengingly at him. "So, what's your pitch this time?"

"You really shouldn't underestimate people like that, Hawke." Raphael said knowingly. "Why, it was only a decade or three ago that I was dealing for yet another 'teenaged cutpurse', and today that young man is poised to enter the highest ranks of nobility. Most impressive!" His smile turned slightly cruel. "Granted, he has been a bit irregular with his payments of late." He chuckled evilly. "Ah, but that's how it is with mortals. They're all so... mortal, in the end."

I sat and waited quietly, sipping at Mol's abandoned drink. Why not, I'd paid for it.

"You are of course correct." Raphael agreed smoothly. "Our encounter here is not coincidence. Nothing is a coincidence, truly. You, like all mortals, so desperately believe in the mirage that is free will. Denying the ugly truth that your superiors have plotted out every potential path ahead, and that your only 'freedom' is being allowed to choose only from the options that they permit you to have." He chuckled. "No offence meant, of course. I'm sure everyone in this inn thinks they could have changed things, had things work out better for them. If only they hadn't missed the opportunity to."

I stared and took another sip. Loudly. Ostentatiously.

"You're learning." Raphael complimented me. "Give the opponent as little to work with as they can. Let their own desire overfill the silence. It's a useful maneuver." He chuckled again. "For amateurs."

"Amateur or professional, you can't beat someone at a game if they don't sit at the gametable." I nodded towards the abandoned chessboard.

"Touche." Raphael nodded briefly. "But not all games are visible... too often, not until after you've already started playing them. And then there's temptation... oh, we can never forget temptation, can we? Why, the last time I successfully tempted someone in this region, I profited off that victory for decades."

"You are not going to claim you're responsible for that." I nodded out the window at the Shadow Curse visible in the distance.

"Of course not." Raphael affected an elaborate shudder. "I would never leave such an unsightly and crude mess behind. Far too much attention for so little gain. But where are my manners? Why, I haven't even asked how you've been faring, or if your journey was pleasant." Raphael chuckled. "You do look a bit green around the gills, now that I mention it. Why, I have this picture in my head of you tossing and turning in the middle of the night. Such unrestful sleep. Such strange dreams."

"I'm not going to sell you the mind flayer, but if you happened to trip over him and haul him away for free, I might cry." I sniffled theatrically. "Just don't take the rest of the relic, or its other occupant and the protection they give." I didn't feel the slightest hesitation about bringing that topic up - after all, if he knew about the 'Guardian' then he already knew the rest of it. And who knows, maybe I'd get lucky and he really did want the Guardian's soul, at which point I'd gladly let him reave it for free and even buy him a drink.

"Ahahahaha!" Raphael laughed. "No, I have no interest in that silly little creature. Illithids are so very bad for business - they don't even have any souls for us to take. I'm afraid that I must leave your not-so-imaginary friend to your tender unmercies - he is of very little use to me. Still, I am gratified that you're starting to learn the proper attitude. So in appreciation of your offer, I'll gift you a piece of the truth. With no obligation attaching, don't trouble your weary little head."

"Let me guess - just enough of a piece that I'll be more tempted to buy the remainder?" I said cynically.

"That goes without saying." Raphael freely admitted. "And so - General Ketheric Thorm." he dramatically orated. "Proud father. Man of faith. Utter fool." he curled a scornful lip. "On the night the Harpers defeated him the first time, someone murdered his entire army in the heart of their most secure fortress. But who could possibly benefit from such a massacre?" Raphael chuckled. "If you want to know more, I could work the exchange of such precious knowledge into the terms of your future deal. But the time for quibbling over clauses and contracts hasn't quite arrived." He waved away my denials before I could make them. "Don't worry, though. You'll be coming to me again soon enough. Oh, and that reminds me. Your warlock friend - his patron sends her regrets that she couldn't stop by in person, but she asked me to bring him a message." He reached into his pocket and withdrew an elaborately sealed envelope. "Do make sure young Ravengard gets this, would you? It's rather urgent - to him, at least."

"I hope you at least charged her an arm and a leg for postage." I said darkly, as I took the letter.

"Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't." Raphael smirked as he stood from the table. "But at present, I'm afraid that you're making me late for a meeting with another client. Until we meet again!" he finished cheerfully, and vanished.

"I hope you made infernal pacting sound as horrible as possible." I told Wyll as I sought him at the bar.

"Nothing held back." he agreed. "Mol's a very proud young woman, though, and with the most dangerous belief a rogue can have - that she'll always be smarter than the marks."

"If you're too cocksure that everyone else at the card table is a sucker, then you're the sucker." I agreed. "Hopefully, my pointing out where Raphael was successfully rooking her with one of the cardsharp's basics has helped her reconsider that belief - or at least made her doubt her odds of outwitting Raphael enough to not want to sign on the dotted line."

"If devils couldn't make people believe that there was always a chance to cheat them if you were just clever enough, nobody would ever sign one of those pacts." Wyll agreed. "I should have- agh!" he winced. "Damn it, came too close to the forbidden topic."

"Please tell me that was just a warning shot and not you leaving yourself open for another one of Mizora's punishments." I trailed off.

"Warning shot." he agreed. "Fortunately."

"Which reminds me." I said sadly. "Mizora apparently couldn't stop by in person, so Raphael offered to carry a message for her." I handed him the envelope.

"Mizora is lower on the infernal power scale than Raphael is." Wyll shuddered. "But he ran an errand for her? What are they scheming together? What fresh hell am I in for now?"

"Only one way to find out." I winced, and Wyll reluctantly drew a dagger and neatly slit open the envelope.

"Mizora's handwriting." Wyll said. "And not a forgery - there's a spark of her power imbued in the ink-" His eyes widened. "This note's written in her own blood." he trailed off faintly.

"Please tell me it's not a ransom note." I swore vehemently.

"As if I'd pay even a bent copper coin for her?" Wyll snorted. "No, it's a command. Apparently one of Mizora's most important assets is being held prisoner at Moonrise Towers. I'm ordered - ordered is underlined - to set them free at all costs." He swore viciously. "My pact was to hunt devils at her command, and now I'm being told to rescue one? She's enjoying twisting this knife worse and worse!"

"And of course she specified a penalty." I didn't guess.

"Clause Z, Section 13. 'Should the promised soul refuse obeyance or neglect duty, the pact-holder shall cast the promised in Avernus as a lemure.'" Wyll read off the paper. "She's not even being subtle this time."

"Well, we were going to Moonrise anyway." I tried to make the best of it, however weak that effort was.

Wyll nodded back, and folded the note and put it away. By wordless agreement, we got out a bottle of the good stuff and poured ourselves a stiff one each.

"I'm going to go join Lae'zel at the practice yard they set up, work off some steam." Wyll said finally, and at my nod he got up to leave. I had another drink, then corked the bottle and went outside to enjoy some fresh air. I'd had a surfeit of unpleasant conversations recently, and I needed a moment for myself.

So of course I wasn't out on the grounds three minutes before I ran into someone else sounding like they needed help. Specifically, the sound of a weeping woman, a dark silouhette against the silvery dome as they sought a moment alone for themselves near the border of the protections. The outline of horns told me that it wasn't Shadowheart, but it wasn't until the young woman began to querulously try and sing through her tears that I realized-

"Dance upon the stars tonight / Smile and pain will fade away. / Words of mine will turn to ash / As I call the last light- as I call-" Alfira broke off her attempt at a song, sobbing again.

"What's wrong?" I asked her gently.

"Hawke." she said, turning away from the lake to look at me briefly. "Nothing- I'm-" She sniffled and reached for a handkerchief, realizing the futility of trying to pretend she was fine when her eyes were raining tears. "-really not fine at all." She blew her nose and sighed. "I-I have to keep a brave face up in there, for the children. I can't let them see me like this, even if-"

I realized that someone wasn't here, and my heart sank. "Lakrissa?" I asked her gently as I sat down next to her, remembering the name of her girlfriend from our awkward introduction at the party that night in the Grove.

"Yes." Alfira confirmed, her voice choked. "I was restless - up and walking around the perimeter of the camp, trying to finish my new song. Throes of creation and all that, you know? So she was back in our tent... alone... when-" Her lead lowered. "They called me a heroine for being alert enough to yell a warning that the cultists were coming, but that only makes it worse! What kind of heroine isn't with- isn't with-" And suddenly my arms were full of sobbing tiefling. "I just left her there! Gods, my teacher's already died on this horrible trip and now my lover's gone the same bloody way-" She collapsed against me.

"My mother left to go shopping in the lower market, while I was busy dealing with 'important matters' up in our house." I told her. "I didn't even insist she take a guard with her - we'd had that argument several times before, and I'd lost every time, so I just got tired of insisting. And that day, she never came back." My voice filled with iron. "I tracked down the man who'd taken her and I killed him. I even got there in time to hear her last words." I sighed and continued more gently. "Being there to see them die doesn't help, Alfira. Either way, they're still gone... and you're still not." I sighed. "And either way you have to keep living."

"I know." Alfira sobbed. "My friends said that. Jaheira said that. And they're not wrong." She sniffled again into my shoulder. "So why does it hurt so much?"

"Not because we did anything wrong." I told her. "It's just because we're alive." I remembered something Jaheira had mentioned during her debriefing. "Look, some of the other survivors reported that the Absolute's raiding party was taking prisoners. Lakrissa might still be-"

"Still be alive to get locked up in that horrible tower the Harpers can't even reach and where they're going to shove a tadpole in her head?!?" Alfira cursed vehemently. "And you think that's better?!?"

"Since I'm going to be going to Moonrise Towers and freeing every prisoner I can, I hope it's better." I promised her. "Not that I can guarantee she did make it, but if she did-"

"You did save us once." Alfira agreed, her voice soft. "May the Lord Of All Songs be willing that you can do it again."

"A devil I met once told me that hope was his favorite emotion, because it was always just a tease." I surprised Alfira. "And out of all the people I've ever met in my life, he was the hands-down grand champion of being full of shit. So let's both try to prove him wrong once more, can we?"

"All right." she smiled at me sadly, wiping away her tears. "I'll try. And thank you for everything." And she leaned in to kiss me with soft lips on the cheek-

"You're having a wonderful time, I see." Shadowheart's voice filled both our ears, and was full of enough acid to strip the shine off the Grymforge golem.

"Ah!" Alfira squeaked in embarassment as we both separated so fast we practically teleported. "No, it wasn't like that! I wasn't-"

"Wasn't making the same offer again that you made the last time both of you were out at night together, only with more success this time?" Shadowheart glared at her, her back to me as she turned to stare down Alfira.

"Please believe me." Alfira begged her, literally on bended knees. "I grabbed onto him. I kissed him. He didn't want anything, and he wasn't doing anything-"

"You're not the one I'm angry at." Shadowheart finally said to her after a long pause. "Now please get out. I want a private word with my friend."

"I'm so sorry." Alfira begged me, and then at Shadowheart's glare ran for the inn like her life depended on it.

"She'd lost her lover in the attack. She was desolate. I was just-" I began.

"Comforting the bereaved?" Shadowheart's voice came back tonelessly, her back still turned to me. "Yes, I saw how comforting you were being."

"Word of honor, Shadowheart. Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen." I insisted.

"And your word's always been your bond, hasn't it." she eventually replied, her voice still emotionlessly rigid - and after what had been far too long a pause to regain her self-control. "But I still saw what I saw."

"Shadowheart-" I pleaded.

"No." she cut me off. "I don't want to talk about this right now. I came out originally to tell you that Isobel is ready to see us, and that I'm not going to attend the meeting."

"I think-" I began, for her to spin around and glare at me, her face taut and expressionless.

"Business. Only." she husked out with a visible effort at not raising her voice. "And the first order of business is, I can't let a High Initiate of Selune even get a glimpse of me. She'll recognize me for what I am on sight, and I really don't think the Harpers are going to be as understanding about it as the druids of the Grove were. Seeing as how they're crusaders against evil cults, not servants of nature's balance." She paused, her face twisting awkwardly before she continued. "And seeing as how Shar's curse on this land has already helped kill a lot of their friends."

"What's your plan for operating without the blessing? The Blood?" I asked her, damping down my own emotions and trying to focus solely on the job-

"Yes." she agreed. "Not that I could risk accepting a blessing of protective magic from a priestess of the Moon anyway. Given who I serve, it would probably set me on fire." she bit off her words.

"Then let's hope Jaheira didn't give her an exact count of our party, so she won't notice that you were out visiting the privy at the time." I finally said.

"Hope." Shadowheart echoed meaningfully, and I winced inwardly yet again.

"Can we talk later?" I begged her quietly.

"Hopefully." she skewered me yet again, and I retreated in disorder before this conversation went any further down into the Underdark than it had already delved. Damn it, this just wasn't like her. She'd laughed at Alfira's offer that night in the Grove, she wasn't insecure about it at all-

I sighed and realized that dying probably did make someone a little insecure, and that unlike Wyll Shadowheart had already been doing the 'No I'm fine' routine about it even before this mess had come up. So at a moment when she'd already been feeling uncertain enough, she'd then seen the worst possible thing at the worst possible time-

Damn it. I couldn't even begin to say anything further about this without just making it worse. And we were about to head off on a desperate and dangerous mission. And she really didn't want to talk about it, and I couldn't dare to bring it up again until she was ready to talk about it.

I cursed the gods and their perverse sense of drama and even more perverse timing all the way to Isobel's room. The rest of our group looked knowingly at me when they spotted Shadowheart's absence, and I cursed inwardly yet again that their perfectly reasonable assumption didn't begin to cover the actual depths of the shit I was in at present.

Lock all that way right now, Hawke. It's time to be a professional again.

"High Initiate Isobel?" I asked her after she'd answered our door knock with an invitation. Isobel was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen, only slightly shorter than Wyll and with a lovely round face and voloptuous body. Her armored robes were of a design I'd never seen before and emblazoned with the insignia of the waxing moon, and a white-metal spear was slung on her back and an unornamented tiara of plain silver said on her brow. Her hair was silvery-white, of a shade I'd never seen before in nature, but her features were smooth and young. Two slim pointed ears sticking up through her uncombed mane bespoke of her half-elven blood.

"Silver hair." Gale said wonderingly. "You've been specially blessed by the Moonmaiden."

"I'm not that special, really." Isobel said warmly. "Jaheira's told me about you - the True Souls with free will, who are going to save us. And just call me Isobel, no title."

"All right." I agreed. "You've been doing an amazing job protecting this place. The magic I've seen here - the sheer scope of it is breathtaking."

"Selune provides the blessing." Isobel replied. "I'm just the person who asks Her for a little help." Her smile faded away. "And now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you for a lot more."

"Moonrise Towers." I agreed. "First the moonlantern to get us there, and then we infiltrate."

"You're the only ones here who can." Isobel agreed. "Myself and the Lady of Silver are the defense; you will be the offense." She chuckled. "Your walking in just when we most need you is almost too good to be true. But I'd be a poor priestess indeed if I couldn't recognize providence when I saw it."

"Have you learned anything about the Shadow Curse in your studies of it?" Gale asked.

"Some." she agreed. "It's a malediction of Shar, but of course you already know that. But it's lasted far too long and sunk too deeply into the land to be the Nightsinger's work alone."

"Multiple evil gods are contributing here?" I moaned.

"No." Isobel said. "I think the spirits of the land have somehow been coerced or tricked into tormenting themselves. That's certainly in keeping with the Lady of Loss's handiwork - to break someone down until they deliberately perpetuate their own misery. Tricking them into believing that self-destruction will be the end of their pain, not the cause of it." Her lip curled scornfully. "But I am a servant of the Moonmaiden, so of course I'm a little biased on that topic."

"Our druid friend Halsin would certainly like to know what you've theorized about the nature spirits." I very urgently changed the subject.

"I'll make sure to look him up, then." Isobel agreed. "But for now, you need a protection cast upon you. Hold still... this might tickle." she quirked a momentary smile, and then raised her hands in invocation. A warm silvery light materialized out of thin air and wrapped around us all, before fading beyond visibility without actually leaving. We felt a pressure on us fade, one that we hadn't been consciously aware of until after it had eased off.

"There you go." Isobel said. "Now you won't take damage if you stray beyond the range of your torches while out in the cursed lands. You'll still have to avoid the deeper darkness though - until we can get a moonlantern for you, that will still kill you."

"How long will it last?" Lae'zel asked practically.

"Several days." Isobel assured us. "And by then we'll hopefully have successfully located and ambushed one of their caravans. If not- well, then we'll have to think of something else."

"Anything else we should know before we get started?" I asked her.

"Ketheric Thorm is a terrifying man." Isobel said, wrapping her arms around herself defensively as she began to pace nervously. "But you have something he doesn't." she affirmed, turning back to face us. "Allies worth having." Her eyes turned sad. "He is apostate to Selune, and betrayed us all to Shar - and now again, to the Absolute. If only he had not fallen..." she trailed off sadly, and looked out the window. "Then none of this would have come to pass."

"'If only' has poisoned more hearts than all the venoms in the world." I quoted Halsin. "Pray for the man he was, if your compassion bids you to do so. But do not bless the man he is."

"Spoken like a true paladin." Isobel agreed softly. "I will pray that your Oath gives you the strength to withstand what you must face."

"Thank you." I said. "And- who are you?" I turned suddenly to see a large man in a Flaming Fist uniform enter Isobel's room... from the balcony, not the door.

"Marcus?" Isobel queried him worriedly.

"Hello Isobel." Marcus replied with an unsettling smile.

"Where have you been?" Isobel said. "I haven't seen you in-"

He'd been unaccounted for? My blood turned cold as I realized a horrible possibility- I frantically pushed with my tadpole-

True Soul! I heard Marcus' voice answer me in my head. Ketheric Thorm commands that the priestess be brought to Moonrise Towers alive at all costs. Aid me!

"He's infected!" I barked out, immediately stepping in front of Isobel and drawing my sword. "SOUND THE ALARM!"

"Traitor!" Marcus spat, going for his own blade and clashing it against mine. A sudden screaming filled my head as Marcus pushed his own tadpole, broadcasting a savage call outward- a call I could dimly hear being answered-

And then Gale solved the problem of Marcus' immediate threat and sounding the alarm both at once, as his Thunderwave spell woke up everybody in Last Light Inn with a booming CRACK as the man was ejected straight out of Isobel's balcony door and knocked flat on his arse. But we didn't have time to so much as gasp in relief as two horrible figures - they looked vaguely like the ghouls we'd fought before, only with wings - dropped down out of the sky onto the balcony, flanking Marcus and helping him back up, and the sounds of leathery wing flaps and the screams of surprised Harpers and tieflings told us that more of these flying ghouls were landing all over the grounds.

"The Absolute will have you all." Marcus snarled with words of ice, and the battle was joined.

---

Author's Note: Yes, I know I just threw in some relationship drama. Trust the author, I am actually going somewhere with this. Somewhere not stereotypical. It just needs a little time to cook.

Mol's scene with Raphael goes a little better for her here than in canon, because unlike Tav Hawke can speak fluent con man. I mean, he was only besties with Varric for almost a decade. And yes, I know that in Faerun they call the game 'lanceboard'. Hawke is not from Faerun, he calls it chess.

And yes, Alfira's grieving for her teacher routine is done in the Grove in-game, not here. Lakrissa is one of the tieflings captured by the cult in Act Two, though. So yeah, she's gonna have a meltdown - Hawke didn't help her with grief therapy in the Grove so she's still dealing with that stress, and now she's lost her lover too? Poor girl. And really, Alfira is one of the most beloved minor NPCs in this game for a reason - she's just too sweet. (Also, she gets the best damn song in the game. Seriously, there is a point in BG3, in the middle of a minor sidequest convo, where the game just goes 'And now hold everything for a three-minute music video.') So there was no way I wasn't getting something with her in. I may try to avoid bashing my non-faves, but dammit, I entirely admit I play favorites.

The truth serum scene is canon, even if Hawke takes it much more matter-of-factly than Tav does. I'm not even sure how that works, I've never heard of truth serum in the tabletop. I decided to go with 'It's basically a relatively non heinous Wisdom save to resist, its just that unless you know you drank it, you usually aren't trying to save.' Hawke of course deliberately blew his save, he was cooperating.

Karlach fangirling over Jaheira is also 100% canon. If you have her in your party when you enter Last Light Inn, you get an earful. Karlach is totally a Jaheira stan. I'm sure she owns all the merch. *g*

Mizora shows up to deliver the message in person in Act Two, she doesn't have Raphael carry it for her. I altered it because honestly, it's a plot hole the original way. She's the prisoner they need to rescue, so how the fuck is she showing up in person to tell Wyll that she needs rescuing? They couldn't have used a dream sending or something?

And yes, Marcus has wings in the game but doesn't here. I thought the wings on him were just silly, so, nope. He just snuck into the inn while Jaheira was busy and then climbed up on Isobel's balcony like a normal person. (He risked meeting Jaheira if he walked through the inn's interior, after all, and he knows she's got the tadpole detector in her pocket.)

 

[cliffc999]

"Run!" I immediately called, as I kicked the nearest piece of furniture - which happened to be Isobel's desk - at Marcus and his flankers as hard as I could, hoping to block the balcony doorway at least momentarily. "Get Isobel out of here! Fall back to the main room!"

My fellow party members were visibly confused at my calling for a retreat, but that didn't stop them from trusting that I knew what I was doing. Karlach was first out the door, clearing the way, as Lae'zel and Wyll closed in on the person we had to protect the most and guarded her from each side. Gale contributed another Thunderwave, blasting the desk into wooden shrapnel and filling Marcus and his ghoul minions full of splinters. The two ghouls dropped, and Marcus staggered back bloodied.

"What are we doing?" Isobel asked me as we straight-up manhandled her out of her bedroom door and onto the second-floor balcony ringing the inn's wide-open main floor.

"This way!" I yelled. "I can hear those ghouls landing all over the campus - Marcus is having them go for the refugees to draw the Harpers away from the primary target, you! We've got to make him change his priorities!"

As if in response to my words, one of the ghouls who'd burst in the main floor of the inn and was about to strike down one of Mol's kids turned its head in response to our sudden motion and cries, and its eyes narrowed the instant it saw Isobel. It immediately ignored the people in front of it to launch itself into the air instead, flying up through the open center of the inn floor and towards where we were heading down the balcony. I tossed a cleansing smite at it while it was in mid-air and it stopped just short of the railing, its undead flesh burning from the cleansing energies of my templar powers. Also, I'd temporarily disrupted the magic allowing it to fly, and the ten-foot drop to the ground floor below finished it off.

"I don't have very many spells left!" Isobel cried worriedly as she drew her spear in response to another ghoul lunging at us out of one of the bedroom doors we were passing. Karlach smashed it to the floor without breaking stride and we moved on. The flap of leathery wings warned us that two more were rapidly closing on us from the rear, and Lae'zel yelled at us to keep moving while she engaged them both as a rearguard.

A sudden bright golden flare visible through the back windows of the inn told me where Shadowheart was, as she unleashed the power of the Blood of Lathander on whatever ghouls were attacking out there. I wished her best of luck and kept our party moving forward until we reached one of the staircases down, then headed for the main doors to the inn.

"Isobel!" Jaheira called to us, spotting us as we came out the front doors. I'd hoped she'd have gotten out front to start rallying her troops-

"She's the target and the lure!" I yelled to Jaheira, hoping that she'd pick up on my intention.

"Set up there! And you three, there!" she immediately turned and started barking orders to the Harpers in the courtyard. They abandoned their still-incomplete battle formation and start spreading out along the sides of the front courtyard, taking ambush positions alongside the smithy and the stables-

"HEAD FOR THE BRIDGE! GET HER OUT!" I shouted loudly enough to be heard all the way on the other side of the building, and we dragged a struggling Isobel along with us.

"If I abandon the inn grounds, the protection falls!" Isobel cried. "I can't leave!"

"We're not going to." I assured her. "But we want Marcus to think you're escaping-"

Another unearthly howl shrieked out over the grounds, and all of us winced. The distant cries of battle faded away as almost twenty winged ghouls silhouhetted themselves against the sky, every surviving attacker having abandoned their original mayhem-and-distraction attack to all frantically pursue us - pursue Isobel, the target they were ordered to capture "at all costs" - before she could escape.

Half the ghouls landed in front of us, half behind. We were pinned on the bridge, cut off in both directions-

I didn't even bother signaling to Jaheira. I simply unleashed everything I had on the ghouls in front of us and motioned everyone else to do likewise, trusting in her ambushing Harpers to cover our rear for long enough. Gale managed a third Thunderwave to break up the phalanx of ghouls facing us and batter them prone, and then we finished off the survivors with sword, spear, and flame. I turned around just in time to see the rear pack of ghouls still frantically struggling to get out of Jaheira's entangling spell, the same one she'd used on us, as every Harper within bowshot methodically shot them to pieces.

"Oh thank Selune." Isobel gasped in relief, as she wiped ghoul ichor off her spear. "But where's Marcus?"

"If he gets back to Moonrise, our entire infiltration plan is blown." I swore viciously. "But I had to-"

"Search the grounds!" Jaheira barked to her men, and then nodded to me understandingly. "You couldn't let the civilians get massacred, and that meant you had to leave him alive long enough to command his undead to do what they did. But now he'll be-"

I closed my eyes and stopped trying to suppress my tadpole and instead risked letting it in - as carefully as possible, but still a deliberate reversal of my policy. I needed to be aware, I needed to know-

"He's on the first floor, the large room at the back right." I said. "I can sense him."

"That's the infirmary!" Lassandra wailed. "He's not going to-"

Jaheira and I both cursed in a steady, voluble stream as we broke into a run. And when we finally got there, we ran into exactly what we were afraid of.

"Give Isobel to me and then let us leave, or I'll start killing them - one every minute." the wounded Marcus smiled coldly at us from where stood over a cot in the field hospital they'd set up here, a comatose Harper's throat under the point of his dagger. Marcus was holding his body bent over the pommel, his hands on top of it, in a position where it was obvious that even if he spontaneously fell unconscious right at this moment his body weight coming down would still kill his victim immediately. And of course we couldn't hope to finish nocking a bow or casting a spell before he could strike.

"If we give her to you, everyone in this inn dies anyway. Including them." Jaheira spat.

"And if I don't get the priestess back to Moonrise, I die." Marcus retorted. "The General does not tolerate failure, especially not of this magnitude. I have nothing left to lose, Jaheira. You do."

"Marcus?" I stepped forward. "I'd like to talk to you for a minute, not your tadpole."

"I am one with the Absolute and She is-" he shouted, and I pushed into his mind with everything I had.

There was a man once who was a loyal Flaming Fist! I am a True Soul, but I retain my own mind! Does that man wish to join me? Does he want to be free? I forced the thoughts into his mind as deeply as I could-

"I-I-" Marcus stuttered... before I felt his will gather and he shoved me out. "You offer me nothing. You are a small scrabbling mote, frantically clutching at a temporary freedom and doomed to die. I have a chance to serve something eternal, something pure."

"At the cost of everything you were? Of the man you are?" I still tried to reach him.

Marcus - or the possessed thing that was what was left of him - actually laughed in reply to that. And what was even more horrible about his laughter was that it was no mockery, no blood-stained defiance, but a genuinely pure, joyous laughter. "I should thank you, traitor! You have given me an opportunity nigh-unique among the True Souls, one that perhaps only Her Chosen have known before - the opportunity to choose her service, rather than be called to it. What was I in the Flaming Fist, but a mere jumped-up hiresword who was paid in slogans rather than coin? But when I bring her back to the General in triumph, I will be elevated beyond Z'Rell, beyond Balthazar, to be the right hand of the right hand of the Absolute! One of the future rulers of this world!" He leaned forward menacingly, bringing his dagger down harder against the neck of the helpless Harper whose hospital cot he was leaning over and drawing forth a thin red line of blood from the pressure. "Time's up. Decide now, or the slaughter begins."

Jaheira looked at me, and I looked back at her. It was extremely depressing how neither of us even needed words.

"They're your people, Jaheira." I bowed to the inevitable. "And I'm out of ideas."

"Whatever it takes, a Harper will do." Jaheira intoned softly, before her gaze lashed out terribly enough to pin a man to the wall. "No deal. Do your worst."

"What?" Marcus gaped at us as if we'd just babbled the most incoherent nonsense.

"The beds are far enough apart that you can't reach the next man before we reach you." I explained to him somberly. "So just one more life, to save everyone else here."

And then both Jaheira and I dropped our jaws as Halsin materialized out of nowhere, having apparently been shapeshifted into a cat or a mouse or something small enough to overlook under the bed. As he'd silently resumed his humanshape behind Marcus, in just the ideal position to get his arms around the True Soul from behind, he had the already-distracted Marcus wrapped up in a bear hug before the cultist could react. With a single heave of his mighty shoulders Halsin pulled Marcus up and away from the bed, bringing the dagger safely clear of the unconscious Harper's throat, before bearing down with his full strength and crushing the True Soul's ribs. Marcus gasped and collapsed in Halsin's arms, blood spurting from his mouth, and Halsin contemptuously flung him against the wall. Stunned and left gasping for breath, Marcus wasn't even able to regain his footing before Jaheira stepped forward and spitted him through the throat.

"Still alive." Halsin said after checking the hostage, and then looked up at us. "That was a terrible choice you faced. I'm glad that I was able to spare you the burden of making it."

"I'm glad that I don't have to dig yet another grave for someone who trusted me and who I lead to their death." Jaheira swore relievedly. "I owe you a big one, Halsin."

"You owe me nothing." he replied, and then looked down at the dead Marcus. "Sometimes I think that the saddest are not those who do evil, but the ones who have the choice to escape evil and yet still refuse." he intoned sadly. "But if nature has taught me anything, it's that even with all the care in the world some will still flourish and some will still wither."

"We need to sweep the grounds, make sure they didn't leave behind any other surprises." I turned away hurriedly to focus on practical matters. "Let's get that organized."

"All right." Jaheira agreed. "Somebody make sure that bastard won't rise up as undead, then search the body for intel and throw it down a hole. The rest of you, with me." She swept out of the room, her men going with her, and I nodded to the rest of the party to split up and go help them.

"Hawke." Isobel's hand on my arm stopped me firmly before I could join the mop-up too. "How could you do that? How could your Oath bear such-?" she trailed off, her eyes confused and scared.

"I don't know." I sighed. "I didn't feel the slightest warning that I was about to do something forbidden." I shook my head sadly. "I suppose I've been too late to save people so often that my soul has given up on punishing me for being unable to spare the already dead."

"Selune help you." she said sadly. "To be broken and reforged in such a manner..."

"It beats breaking and staying broken, I guess." I replied after a pause.

"True." Isobel said. "I-" she wiped away a tear. "I'm sorry. It's just- knowing that all this happened because of me, because Thorm wanted me- I wish I could just leave, that I could just go away and not have to deal with this-" her voice broke. "But of course I can't. I'm the only thing standing between the shadows and death for everyone here. My own heart traps me more tightly than any cage."

I didn't dare move close enough to be victim of a surprise hug, having already had enough problems comforting one distressed woman tonight. But I did take the risk of gently drawing Isobel aside to somewhere we could talk privately. Especially given the next question I had to ask.

"Isobel... why did Marcus say that his mission was to take you back to Moonrise?" I asked her.

"I was really hoping you hadn't caught that." she sighed, her expression downcast. "And Moonmaiden help me if Jaheira did."

"You don't have to tell me." I finally agreed. "But if it's something you wish you could tell someone, but are afraid to - well, right now I don't think you'd find a single person in this inn who was in less of a position to judge you than me."

"Ketheric Thorm is my father." Her soft words practically put my jaw on the floor.

"... you're a half-elf, you can legitimately be that old. Jaheira is, after all." I tried to puzzle out. "But you look as young as- you look far younger than Jaheira does, even with your silver hair."

"I died approximately a century ago." Isobel kept right on breaking my brain. "And when I'd passed away my father was still a loyal servant of the Moonmaiden and a just and kindly governor of this region, and everything was green and good-" She fought for control and then continued on, her voice firm and even. "I don't remember anything of that time, it was all just blackness. And then suddenly I was alive again, and Father was there. He looked far older- much more grim, more burdened- but it was still him. And yet at the same time, it wasn't."

"So two impossible resurrections after over a century." I said. "Did he tell you how it was done?"

"No." Isobel replied. "That was the second question I asked him, but he wouldn't speak of it." My mind stuttered in curiosity as to what her first question could possibly have been, but there was no way I was going to disrupt the flow of her confession by talking. "All he'd say is that it was worth the price he paid - any price he could possibly pay." She shook her head. "But as happy as I was to be alive, I couldn't pretend that nothing had changed. When I began to see how the land had been cursed - when I could sense the darkness within my father, sense the traces of it still lingering in me-" She fought back her tears. "Can you imagine being away from the world for so long, and then returning to find out that in the interim your own father had become a worse horror than any he'd ever fought? That he did so much harm to the people who trusted him, the land he ruled, the goddess he worshipped? All in the name of Shar?" she declaimed, her voice thick with horror.

"How did serving Shar lead him to the Cult of the Absolute?" I thought out loud. "All the intelligence we've been able to collect is that their churches aren't allies."

"When I finally confronted father about his turning to Shar, he denied serving her any longer. Shar had lied to him, he said. She'd made him a promise and then broken it. But he wouldn't talk about what new evil god he now served or why, or what horrible pacts he made to make us alive again-" She shook her head. "He ordered me locked away. He said that I would eventually understand but for now I had to be kept safe where I couldn't interfere. But I grew up in that tower, and his new servants didn't know enough about its secret ways to stop me from escaping. And so I wandered over the region with only my goddess' blessings to spare me from the curse, trying to piece together exactly what had happened - how things had gone so wrong-" She sighed. "And then Jaheira arrived with her troops, fleeing with death behind them into nothing but death ahead of them. So I led them to shelter here at Last Light, and - well, when a priestess of the goddess known for being most opposed to the dark power who cursed all the land around shows up to offer you her aid against that very same darkness, even cynical old Harpers don't have enough suspicions to ask inconvenient questions."

"Later on, I'm going to want you to tell me about some of those 'secret ways' before we try to infiltrate Moonrise." I said. "But that's for later. Right now you need a friend, not a co-conspirator."

"What I need is for this nightmare to be over." Isobel forced out. "And I also need to apologize to you. Just now I castigated you for being willing to sacrifice one life to save many more... but isn't that the very same thing I asked you to do, when I begged you to kill my own father?" She looked away, her voice thick with guilt. "How under the moonlight did I ever come to this?"

"I'd steal another wise quote from Halsin, but you were right here when he said it the first time." I tried to joke.

"Oh, is that where you got the last one from?" Isobel smiled weakly.

"Well, they do say that wisdom is largely a matter of listening to the proper teachers." I gently threw back.

"Hah! Yes, it is... and how harsh it is, sometimes, when that proper teacher is experience." She sighed, and then nodded to me with a gentle smile. "Thank you, Hawke. Being able to just let it out with even one person - that helped a lot."

"Any time." I reassured her, and then we both got up and got back to work.

---

"There." Lassandra said, pointing ahead.

Several hours after the attack at Last Light, a Harper scout patrol came in with the news Jaheira had been seeking - one of the cult's caravan routes had been located. They'd spotted something that could only be a moonlantern from a distance, accompanying a large column of troops headed away from Moonrise and towards the Risen Road. Given that Ketheric Thorm was bivuoac'ing the bulk of his burgeoning army outside of the Shadow-Cursed Lands, this was clearly another unit he'd raised and formed at Moonrise being sent out to forward field positions. Which meant that after delivering their troop contingent, the moonlantern escort would be coming back to Moonrise along the same or a similar route within the near future.

And so our group, augmented by Lassandra leading a squad of Harpers, were staking out the best ambush site we'd been able to find on that route. There were a pair of ruined houses adjacent to a road intersection that would give both cover and an elevated firing position to the Harpers, while those of us with tadpoles in our heads would go out and greet the Absolutists on the road and get them to stop right in position. At my suggestion we'd even seeded the road with several smokepowder charges, carefully buried under a thin layer of dirt and with their positions marked and memorized by those of us with fire cantrips.

"You cannot tell me this was the natural geography of the region." I swore softly. Because the terrain we'd crossed over to get here had been insane. it had been bad enough on the outskirts, but the further in we got the less sense the geography made. Endless winding paths that wildly rose and fell across steep hills and low bluffs, deep ravines winding about all over like so many tangled snakes to the point you couldn't go a mile in a straight line without crossing several chasms, even bottomless canyons with eldritch green fire glowing dimly at their bottom- it was as if the Shadow Curse had not merely tainted the land but outright warped reality.

"No, according to Jaheira this all used to be farmland." Lassandra agreed. "I didn't even know a curse could be this powerful, but sometimes I swear the land around here is half in Faerun and half in another world entirely."

"It might well be." Shadowheart agreed. "I've never heard of even the most powerful Sharran magic enacting anything like this anywhere else."

"It's time to tighten up." I decided. "Set up in your ambush positions and don't break cover. If you've got to take a piss then do it right where you're kneeling." I finished crudely. "Unless our estimate's way off, that caravan will be here within the hour."

"Got it." Lassandra agreed. "Heads down and strict noise discipline from now on, boys. You decoys can get out front and be as loud as you like though!"

"Such a privilege." Wyll joked, as we moved out to stand in the open road and wait.

Eventually a strange silvery light became visible through the shadows, slowly growing brighter and brighter. It was almost but not quite an identical shade to the barrier Isobel had been maintaining over Last Light - I wondered if the Absolute cultists were somehow using sacred relics of Selune as a shield. But no, if such things existed then surely Isobel would have mentioned them and yet she'd had no more idea what 'moonlanterns' really were than any of us did.

My eyebrows raised as I saw that the lead figure bearing the moonlantern was not a man but a spider - or, rather, a horrible man-spider crossbreed. Its lower body was that of a giant black spider, and its upper body that of a twisted and deformed dark elf with eight eyes instead of two. Marching along with him were a squad of goblins. I exhaled in relief as our estimates turned out to be correct - the moonlantern convoy was returning from an escort mission, not setting out on one, and so had only the lantern-bearer and a small escort.

"Drider." Gale whispered. "Lolth does that to a drow who fails her sacred tests and then the drow use them as beasts of burden and cannon fodder. Just like Minthara said."

I carefully measured their progress against the obscure mark I'd left on the trail in the right position, and waved our team forward as soon as he reached it. "Identify yourself!" I called out, pushing my tadpole-

The drider's mind shivered in response, revealing him as a True Soul. His initial alarm faded away as he recognized us as the same.

"Why are you here, True Soul?" he asked us, puzzled. "How do you survive the curse without a moonlantern?"

"There's been a new discovery." I explained. "They sent us to meet you. Come forward."

The drider thought it over for a moment, then decided to risk it. Which was good, because they'd stopped just a little short of where we were hoping they would...

"Now." I said calmly to Gale and Shadowheart, and both of them shot Fire Bolt cantrips right into the lead pair of smokepowder mines. That was the signal for the Harpers to start firing, and between the land mines blowing their feet off and the archers we had prepositioned in a perfect L-shaped ambush, all of the goblins were dead without any of my team having to draw a weapon. The wounded drider gave a horrible shriek of rage and charged us with suicidal bravery. It was a sufficiently tough and large opponent that it would have done serious damage to at least several of the Harpers if it had reached them. But they were lightly armored skirmishers and we were a heavily-loaded strike team, two of whose frontliners had adamantine armor or weapons in addition. It took us all several exchanges of blows to finally beat the thing to death piece by piece, but with six of us all piling on we were able to finish it off while still fighting conservatively enough that we didn't take any serious damage in return.

"Got it!" Gale said, holding up the moonlantern triumphantly. "Hopefully myself and the High Initiate will be able to do something with-" He cut himself off and suddenly held the lantern close up to his eye, peering within. "Um... Hawke? There seems to be a person inside here." Gale said confusedly.

We all drew in to peer at the lantern and sure enough, the silhouhette of a woman was just visible through the frosted glass if you were looking closely enough. "Oh please, oh golly, me oh my, you must release me or I'll die!" a tiny high-pitched voice chanted.

"This... was not what I expected." Shadowheart said warily. "And if we let her out, will that moonlantern even work? We can't get into Moonrise without one - even if the Blood of Lathander gets us through the darkness, our lack of one of the cult's artifacts will be too suspicious."

"What is she, anyway?" Karlach puzzled.

"She could be any one of several things - the glass isn't clear enough to see through." Gale said. "Um, miss? Might we ask who you are?"

"Stop being tricksy and please free the pixie!" the lantern complained cutely in a voice like silver bells.

"Pixie." Lassandra noted. "A creature of the feywild - not evil, but legendary for their trickery. Often to the point of not caring if someone gets hurt by their joke."

"This lantern only lights the way when I am hurting night and day!" the pixie begged.

"Damn it, if she's telling the truth about that then keeping her in there isn't even expedience, it's slavery." I swore.

"We need the lantern's protection from the Shadow Curse." Shadowheart replied ruthlessly. "If we let her out, we lose that."

"Release me and you'll get my special blessing, I promise truly with no messing!" the pixie pleaded.

"We're not arguing about this." I said firmly. "How do I get this thing open- never mind, I see the latch." The lantern face swung open just as if it were a regular lantern, and a one-foot-tall purple woman with wings flew right out.

"FINALLY!" the pixie swore in a crass accent entirely unlike the faery speech she'd been using and worthy of the coarsest barmaid in the Hanged Man tavern. "Been trapped in that coffin with nothing but a mad drider and the smell of my own farts for company!"

"Hello." I said dazedly. "I'd ask how your day has been, but that would be a stupid question."

"Hah!" she laughed. "I like you, you've actually got manners! Pleased to meet you, I'm Dolly Thrice."

"Hawke." I introduced myself.

"Right, you want to be able to walk around in this cursed pit - Raven Queen only knows why - without getting sucked dry? I can do that for you." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny silver ball and tossed it to me. It expanded in the air as it flew, landing in my hand as something suitably sized for a human to hold and not a pixie. "Just shake that and say the magic words, and you'll have pixie dust poofing out all over your arse. Keeps the curse off you no problem!"

"Thank-" I began, but Dolly had already spun around twice in the air and vanished.

With great trepidation I shook the ball, and after a dramatic pause just long enough to make a man feel like he'd been tricked the ball finally started glowing with sparkles and then spoke to me with Dolly's voice. "What's the magic word?"

"Please." I asked her.

"Wrong!" she barked, and the ball mildly stung my fingers - not enough to make me drop it, but enough to be noticed.

"Pretty please with sugar on top?" I tried.

"What are you, three years old?" she laughed mockingly.

"Oh my lovely Dolly Thrice who is so very sweet and nice, would you assist your humble friends so we won't meet our cursed end?" I desperately tossed out a bit of doggerel.

"... damn, that's not bad for a human! Not bad at all!" Dolly's voice laughed, and then finally a giant puff of silver dust shot out of the ball and showered over my entire party. An immediate feeling of safety settled in, similar to but not identical to Isobel's blessing. And it felt stronger somehow, as if the worst the Shadow Curse could do would just slide right off as if we weren't even there.

"Thanks for being a good sport, Hawke! From now on 'Please' will do just fine. Bye!" Dolly Thrice's voice came from the ball one last time, and it stopped sparkling.

I turned to be greeted by the expressionless faces of the rest of my team and several Harpers trying manfully not to laugh.

"If it's ridiculous but it worked, it still worked." I finally said, and drew the shattered remnants of my dignity up around me as we returned to base.

---

Isobel solved the problem of us not having a working moonlantern to present at the cult headquarters by casting her own moonlight blessing on the empty lantern casing we did have. That gave it a roughly similar light to the operating moonlantern and even a minor amount of genuine protection against the Shadow Curse, which would keep anyone from noticing the difference unless they confiscated our lantern for a close examination.

Experimentation with the silver ball confirmed that Dolly would only give her pixie dust blessing for me and members of my immediate party, which put a scupper on the idea of using it to protect all the Harper patrols as well. Fortunately, the clown makeup those Harpers who'd experimented with the ball had ended up wearing scrubbed off readily enough, and the one particularly demanding Harper who'd ended up polymorphed into a pig reverted back only a minute later. I made a mental note to be very polite to any other pixies I met in the future. Halsin and Jaheira both confirmed that yes, that really was the best idea when dealing with feywild spirits.

"This is a valuable clue." Halsin said as he handed the ball back to me. "If a protective enchantment of the Feywild is so much more powerful at holding off the Shadow Curse than even the most powerful blessing of Selune, then that confirms my suspicion that the Shadow Curse is ultimately rooted in Shadowfell magic. Which is the last piece of the puzzle I needed."

"You've figured out how to end the Shadow Curse?" Jaheira said, amazed.

"No, but I know where to search for the solution." Halsin replied. "One of the patients in your field hospital gave me the clue - the Flaming Fist, Art Cullagh. I was actually examining him when the attack started, and I'd hidden myself in the infirmary to better protect the defenseless patients from anyone who might attack there. That's how I was fortunate enough to be in position. But as I understand it, you found Cullagh already present and wandering around the Shadow-Cursed Lands when you arrived, yes? He didn't come in with your contingent?"

"No, he did not." Jaheira agreed. "We had no idea what he was doing here by himself, or how the hell he had survived. He was incoherent, raving - and then, comatose. All he's ever said is that one nonsense bit of song he mumbles under his breath, over and over."

"From what I've been able to determine he arrived here before the Shadow Curse came down - a Flaming Fist of several generations ago, sent to these lands to investigate rumors of Sharran corruption among the Selunite community here." Halsin said gravely. "And somehow he was trapped in the border between the Shadowfell and the Prime Material when the Curse was called down. He wandered there for decades, lost so deep in the Shadowfell that time itself was distorted. He only very recently returned to the Prime when Isobel's shielding of Last Light Inn created a beacon that he could follow." Halsin took a deep breath and continued. "What first attracted my notice to him was that very bit of doggerel he keeps singing in his delirium. It mentions a name, Thaniel - a name none of you would have recognized, but that I know very well." Halsin said. "Thaniel was the spirit of the land of this region, a powerful nature spirit of the Feywild. I knew him as a boy. I even played with him." Halsin sighed with rueful memory. "I am certain that Art Cullagh met Thaniel, or a remnant of him, while he was trapped in the Shadowfell. That is how he remained alive in there... and that is almost certainly why the land is cursed and remains cursed. It's very spirit has been abducted, taken from their rightful place in the Feywild and imprisoned deep into the Feywild's counterpart, the Shadowfell."

"What an elegantly poisonous misdirection." Jaheira said with mixed contempt and wonder. "Shadow Curse. Shadowfell. Shar put it out there in plain sight, but everyone missed it because we were so focused on the curse having been called down by a servant of hers and her own aspect as a goddess of darkness. When it was all actually a manipulation by Shar to twist other forces to hold the shadow in place, and use barely any of her own power in maintaining it. So even the strongest blessings of Selune could never have more than partial success at holding it back, but any spirit of the Feywild could easily counteract the Shadowfell - at least over a limited area." She nodded towards us, and by extension the pixie ball still in my pocket.

"And if we can find and free Thaniel from the Shadowfell, then perhaps we could free the entire area." Halsin agreed. "Which is why I will need Hawke's help again."

"We've got to get to Moonrise Towers as our first priority." I reminded him.

"Is this something any of my men can do?" Jaheira offered. "I know what I said before, but that was before you convinced me you knew what you were talking about. And before the evidence of that pixie blessing confirmed at least one of your theories."

"I won't know where to look for Thaniel until I can wake up Cullagh and ask him." Halsin said. "And he's lost in catatonia. Your healer and I agree that about the only way we could snap him out of it is to find one of his personal effects, something he had a strong emotional connection to - except that the best place to start looking for one is in Reithwin Town."

"Which is right next to Moonrise Towers, and so deep into the cursed lands that only those of us with the pixie blessing can safely travel there." I acknowledged, having remembered where Reithwin was from my study of Jaheira's map table.

"Yes. According to the investigator's log we found in his pocket, the last place Cullagh recorded himself visiting was the House of Healing in Reithwin. If you can find something of his still there-" Halsin nodded to us.

"We'll give it our best look." I agreed. "Is there anything else we need to look for?"

"Yes, but it's a secondary target only." Jaheira said. "When we first took over Last Light I had my men check out the basement to make sure there were no surprises lurking down there. They found a hidden set of rooms, reachable only through concealed entrances in the basement. We cleared some monsters out of there, but the important thing we found was records of an old resistance cell."

"Resistance cell?" Shadowheart asked. "Against what?"

"Remember that Reithwin and Moonrise were originally Selunite worshipper settlements." Jaheira reminded her. "Back when Thorm first turned away from Selune to worship Shar, not everyone in the region went along with him. Of course Thorm and his Dark Justicars demanded that everyone forcibly convert to his new goddess and forbade Selunite worship on pain of death, but the braver souls among them still tried to hold to their true goddess in secret. And from what we found in that basement, some of them also tried armed resistance. There was one cell headquartered in Last Light, but from what fragmentary records we unearthed the main headquarters was hidden in the Mason's Guild in Reithwin. And remember that we still lack complete knowledge on Thorm's rise to power, his fall to darkness... and his newfound immortality. It is possible the Selunite resistance of the times observed and recorded something we would find useful to know now, so if you can unearth it that might be helpful." She shrugged. "But that is all a bunch of might-have-beens, so if you can't do it without compromising your safety or wasting too much time then don't even bother trying. As I said, secondary target only."

"Got it." I said. "Barring objections, we'll depart tomorrow morning. I want a good night's sleep before we try anything this risky." I also wanted a chance to privately consult with Isobel again on the layout of Moonrise Towers, but we definitely needed to rest and refit as well.

"Sounds good to me." Jaheira agreed, and we dispersed.

"I'm sorry we haven't had a chance to talk earlier like I'd promised, but things have been going at a rather hectic pace." I sought out Gale. "Have you had any further thoughts about the orb?"

"Quite a few." he said ruefully as we both sipped our wine. "It's the sort of topic on which a man dwells, not dithers." He shook his head. "Do you know what's funny? I've only just met all of you, but my largest objection to detonating the orb is the fact that you're all very likely to be caught within the blast radius when I do it. It's not as if we can just trip into the Absolute's most hidden lair and then I politely ask it to please wait for a few hours while my friends finish running for their lives."

"How's about not doing it at all?" I said simply.

"Very tempting." Gale agreed. "But... part of me can't help but think that maybe it be would worth it. Dying, I mean. If it truly did earn her forgiveness."

"That's... a bit of a rough topic with me right now." I said, fighting down an uncharacteristic swell of emotion at the thought of my own current difficulties. "Forgiveness, I mean."

"What do you- ah, never mind, that is the expression of a man who does not want to talk about it." Gale readily agreed. "And while I'm not Faerun's most knowledgeable scholar of the mysteries of friendship, some things are basic to the human condition."

"Shadowheart and I are having a misunderstanding, and I can't even try to talk to her about it until she's ready to listen." I admitted.

"Ouch." Gale said. "Romance is the one field I'm even less qualified to offer advice on than friendship. She seduced me, after all." he admitted embarrassedly. "And... I haven't really dated much outside of that. And by 'not much', I mean 'not at all'." He trailed off.

"Well, for all that she's being a bit emotional right now she's still a very intelligent woman who knows what she wants." I consoled myself. "So this should all clear up soon... preferably."

"One day at a time." Gale agreed.

"And as to your own matter..." I tried to think past my own emotional tangles and see the situation clearly. "Whether or not Mystra forgives you is of course very important to you, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be. But I'm not certain if it should be the most important thing to you." I looked at him. "Whether or not you can forgive yourself, that matters too."

"And I will definitely reflect on that further." Gale agreed seriously. "But for right now, I think I'll put this bottle back on the shelf and get ready to turn in. Preparing spells with a hangover is worse than trying to cast drunk."

"I can only imagine." I agreed, deciding that this should be my last drink as well. "Good night, Gale."

I made the rounds and checked in with the others, with one exception I couldn't find, and then realized I was still too restless to sleep. I decided to go get some fresh air down by the lakeshore, the quietest place to be alone within the shielded zone of Last Light, and almost inevitably I found her there too.

"We always seem to be meeting alone under moonlight." Shadowheart greeted me softly. "In hindsight, that should not have been a good omen."

"Shadowheart-" I began.

"Stop." she raised her hands. "I- am not going to enjoy this. It's- I promised that I wouldn't get emotional, but promises have failed before." She kept her face straight with an effort I could almost feel without telepathic powers, and forced herself to continue. "The night we first kissed, you told me about how your relationship with Merrill ended and why. And I'm afraid the same thing is happening - will happen - with us."

"Shadowheart... please. No." I begged her.

"I'm sorry." she turned away from me, unable to face me. "I- I just can't." Her voice firmed up again. "You said that even though she still cared for you, she couldn't ever fully love you anymore because she could never fully trust you again anymore. And neither can I." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter if it was an innocent gesture or not. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. What I'm talking about is how I reacted to it." Her voice almost broke, and she clutched her dignity to herself with a visible effort. "How I'm still reacting to it, no matter how hard I try not to."

"Damn it!" I wailed, my heart crashing to the ground as ashes.

"Trust... is something I've never really had before. By now you've learned enough about Sharrans - other Sharrans - to get a clearer picture of what my upbringing must have been like." Shadowheart continued tonelessly. "Shar's church does not coddle the weak. Everyone is tested. Trust is a weakness to exploit. And then you- you were the first person I met who made me even start to believe that they could be wrong. Until my trust in you was tested... and it failed."

"Then we try again." I insisted. "One failure isn't-"

"It is." She corrected me. "If it's severe enough." Her voice turned ugly. "Or if one partner was flawed enough." She continued hurriedly. "I don't mean you. I mean-" Her shoulders slumped. "I-I don't even know to explain this, but-"

"She offers you nothing but pain and loss." I begged Shadowheart. "Turn away. Find another goddess!"

"But I won't." Shadowheart finally replied. "I have finally come to the point where I can no longer pretend. No longer prevaricate. I must choose... and I choose Shar. It all comes down to that."

I punched the nearest tree so hard that I needed the Bulwark stance to make sure the tree bark shattered before my knuckles did.

"I set you free, Hawke." Shadowheart spoke gently as she slowly walked away. "Find someone who can share her heart with you, and who won't leave you. Hells, make it Alfira if you want- there's really nothing wrong with her, she's a genuinely sweet girl." She sighed. "I only made you believe that I was one. And as it turns out, I am not."

"Leave if you have to." I forced myself to say, my voice a hoarse whisper. "But know that you can always come back. Please... don't cut yourself off. Don't believe that you can't come back."

"We're- still going to have to work together, if any of us are to get out of this alive." Shadowheart stopped, but still remained facing away from me. "So I won't reject you any more harshly than this." Her voice turned colder. "Lady Shar teaches that in the end, all hope is false. And in this case, I can guarantee that will be true. I can't stop you from still hoping if you choose to, Hawke." Her voice turned sad. "But you'll only hurt yourself if you do."

"I-" I fell silent and flinched, turning away. There were no words for this.

"Good-bye, Hawke." Shadowheart's voice came to me. "Tomorrow there will still be the mission, and my loyalty to our group. But from now on, that's all."

We stood there on the beach, wordlessly facing away from each other, before I finally made the long walk back to the inn. And with every step, I forced myself to lock it down, box it away, and push it back into the depths of my mind to torment me with only in my nightmares.

She was right, after all. Tomorrow there would still be the mission. And at least I could still do that.

---

Author's Note: The pixie segment is canon, except for a few minor touch-ups. You really do get the whole shadow curse gloom and doom sequence suddenly interrupted by a brief visit from this tsundere ball of nonsense. It's hilarious.

The game is inconveniently absent of any explanations as to why the hell a random pixie can throw something that holds off the Shadow Curse better than a senior priestess of Selune, so I patched that in. I mean, the clues actually are all mostly in the game proper, but if there's a dialogue option where anybody actually puts them together then I've never found it.

As for Shadowheart and what the hell is on her mind... keep reading.

 

[cliffc999]

I'd lied to him. It had taken everything I had as an actress and the sort of willpower that could be summoned only by imminent fear of death, and I still couldn't actually look him in the eye for much of it, but I'd successfully lied to him.

Of course I trusted Hawke. There likely wasn't a more trustworthy man in the world; certainly there'd never been a more trustworthy one that I'd actually met. I trusted him even when I couldn't trust myself, and had before I'd ever found out he was a paladin. The idea that he was up to anything behind my back with Alfira or anyone else was laughable. Telling him that I didn't trust him was by far the biggest lie in that entire collection of nonsense I'd forced him to swallow, but by ruthlessly exploiting his weaknesses - and his still-lingering guilt over his one great failing with Merrill - I'd successfully pulled it off. If Hawke hadn't told me his greatest weakness, his greatest regret, then I'd never have been able to manipulate him.

All hail Shadowheart, the great deceiver. Behold her gratitude and how much she returns trust for trust! Gods, what a disgusting individual I could be-

My hand flared in agony as Shar's curse yet again lashed me with the whip of her reminder. It was a measure of how little I remembered of my earlier life that I'd honestly been unaware that the chronic pain in my hand had been a sending of the goddess. I'd only begun to figure that out after Hawke and the emotions he kept stirring in me had prompted Lady Shar to lash me repeatedly and for the same offense each time, which finally began to stir loose some long-belated pattern recognition. Hawke's temporary suppression of the curse with his paladin powers had provided the final confirmation that it was a curse. And once I finally realized that I'd been cursed, hindsight made it rather embarassingly obvious who had cursed me and why.

A young girl kneeling upon flagstones in prayer. Her tongue trips over the holy words of Lady Shar, mangling the liturgy. Her hand flares in punishment.

Shying away from properly interrogating a captive enemy. The flinch of hesitation is answered by a convulsion of pain.

An exhausted acolyte, hiding from her duties in a hidden alcove as she tries to snatch a bit of rest. The pain ensures she finds none for a long while to come.

Those incidents and many more like them flickered through my memory, once I knew what to search for. Ever since I was a little girl, whenever I'd doubted I'd prayed for the guidance of Lady Shar - too stupid, or too unable to remember, to realize that I'd had it all along.

But there was no oblivion that could shield me from Her final reminder. When Wyll had died, Withers had been able to keep Mizora from even touching his soul - however much it was in pawn to the devil-woman - until he was alive again. But he hadn't been able to do the same for me. Maybe it was because I was a consecrated priestess, maybe it was because Lady Shar was far superior to any mere soul-dealing cambion, maybe it was because I'd died while in the heart of one of her dark fortresses. But the fact remained, in those few moments between my death at the golem's hands and my resurrection... I'd been with Her.

Of course I didn't remember seeing Her. You didn't have a face-to-face with Lady Shar until the day your soul arrived in the Towers of Night in the deepest depths of the Shadowfell to be in Her keeping for eternity, and my death had only been temporary. But She had still been able to reach out and touch me a little more deeply than gods were normally allowed to do to those living in the mortal world. So although I remembered nothing but my entire body being suspended in the same sort of timeless agony that normally cursed my right hand alone, I awoke distinctly remembering what She had said even if I had no memory of the actual voice in which She had said it.

And even then, part of me had still dared to hope that I could possibly escape... until we arrived in the Shadow-Cursed Lands and I saw the true extent of Lady Shar's power. And it most certainly had been her power - I had tested for that. I'd told Hawke and the others that my contact with the necrotic energies of the Shadow Curse hadn't harmed me because my exposure had been brief enough to escape without harm, but that had also been a lie. In truth I hadn't been affected at all. The Shadow Curse did not touch me in the slightest, even without torchlight, the Blood of Lathander, or the pixie's blessing... solely because Lady Shar willed it so. That was when I knew She had neither been lying nor bluffing.

And She had-

"Shadowheart?" I inwardly flinched in terror at the sound of the one person in all of Last Light Inn I wanted to see the least - even less than Hawke, despite what had just happened.

"High Initiate." I held my voice proud and formal with all my effort, and turned to face her with my posture held as perfectly as possible. I didn't allow a single shiver of fright to manifest - visibly, at least - as I turned to face one of the most blessed servants of Lady Shar's mortal enemy, her twin sister Selune.

"Hand of Shar." Isobel greeted me coolly in return, using one of the archaic rank titles of our faith. She'd actually overestimated my seniority a bit, but not by much. "I came looking for the mysterious priestess who the Harpers were regarding so highly for her heroics during the attack. Using the most sacred artifact of the Morninglord with which to single-handedly defeat a dozen ghouls and save the entire rear flank without a single casualty, no less. I'd wondered why she was so shy... or why she'd dared to enter the Shadow-Cursed Lands without my blessing, when I finally found out about that as well." Her eyes narrowed at me. "But credit where credit is due, you are a talented actress. Because whatever I expected, it was not this."

"Thank you." spoke the priestess of Shar, the cold and proud servant of the Nightbringer. "I've always prided myself on my infiltration skills." Just let her see only what she expects, and then perhaps-

"Tell me, do they know who you really serve?" Isobel probed, and my hasty plan collapsed like a house of cards.

"Yes." I admitted reluctantly. After all, it's not like she wouldn't find out anyway the instant she actually did try to tell any of them. My heart sank even further as I saw her expression twist into the one I least wanted to see-

"Excuse me, what?" Isobel asked me puzzledly, her hostility falling away. "Even the paladin?"

"He was the first one to know." I heard my tongue saying without my permission. Damn it!

Isobel's posture relaxed from the combat-ready stance she'd been maintaining throughout. "Then- why?" she begged me to tell. "Why did a priestess of Shar risk her life at those odds to save a group of refugees? As a deception it would make perfect sense- even to the extent of wielding the Blood. Your church successfully stole it once before, so why not twice?" She shook her head as if trying to dispel baffling vapors. "But to do so and mean it?"

"Do you honestly believe you know the full depths of Lady Shar's mysteries?" I bluffed.

"Spare me." Isobel returned flatly. "I know at least as much about your goddess and her followers as you know about mine - and at least as little. Neither of us can pretend otherwise."

"All right, the truth then." I replied. "I don't want to answer your question, and I don't want to talk about it."

"I don't know what you and Hawke said to each other, but I saw him walking past me as I was coming out here. He was emotionally devastated." Isobel's words pushed at me like a wind. "Even granting that your kind have made mental cruelty both a science, a fine art, and a competitive sport, I very much doubt that you did that on a whim. Particularly not given how complicated the existence of a Sharran hiding among Selunites and Harpers would be already, and how much you would need your current allies to avoid it." Isobel challenged me. "So why?"

"Why do you care?" I heatedly shot back.

"Because Hawke is my friend." Isobel said simply. "A new one, yes. But newly met or old comrade-in-arms, I still don't like seeing my friends being hurt needlessly. So regardless of whether or not you want to talk about it, we are going to talk about it."

"Why, do you want him?" I challenged her. "You can have him." Please have him, an errant part of my heart wished regardless of how much the rest of me screamed at it to stop talking now. You could be everything for him that I only pretended to be-

"I've already buried the woman I love." Isobel shook her head. "And I don't want to replace her with anyone. So don't try to send me chasing down that rabbit hole either. Why are you here, Shadowheart? Why have you done what you've done?"

"I won't tell you." I insisted, my back against the wall. "Call your Harpers and have me executed on the spot if you want, I yet refuse. That's only death... and there are so many more things to be afraid of than that."

Isobel's expression softened again, and my heart beat faster with terror. "It's like that, then?"

"I don't know what you mean." I vainly insisted.

She turned away from me and stepped forward to the edge of the water, looking up at the moon - odd, how it was so clearly visible here inside the dome, when you couldn't even see the sky when you stepped outside. "I know what they teach you, Shadowheart. That to be sworn to Shar means that all gods have forsaken you but Her." She turned back to me, her eyes pleading. "That's not true. Selune has not forsaken any of you, and she will not. Shar leads you to forsake her. I have seen other devotees of Shar turn away from her and find true peace with other patrons. If you didn't believe it possible, then please believe me that it is!" she pleaded.

"Your compassion cuts like knives." I forced my voice to reply scornfully. "Perhaps that's why you offer it."

Isobel flinched away, her face full of guilt, and my heart began to relax. "Perhaps you're right." she agreed softly. "But if that is true, then I apologize." She shook her head and turned back to me, her hands open in invitation. "Shadowheart, if that many good people believe you have good in you as well, then try to accept that they might be right as well. Just take my hand. Let me lead you out of the darkness. Please." she begged.

"No." I forced myself to say, turning away. "I... acknowledge that I have a choice. I still choose this."

"Again." I wondered at the sorrow in her voice, at why she would choose that word. "And yet again." I looked back at her, and she met my gaze. "All right. Neither salvation nor damnation can be forced on anyone. The gods must allow us our choice."

"They must." I agreed with her. "And they will."

"But not all choices are final." she persisted. "I will pray that you choose again, before you finally reach the choice that is."

I prayed with everything in my heart for the strength to stare her down without breaking, and eventually she nodded. "If you ever want to talk, please come seek me out at any time. And don't worry about Jaheira having any objection to you - I'll take care of it." She nodded to me again. "Good night, Shadowheart."

"Good night, Isobel." I returned her courtesy, and she left me to my reflections under the rising moon.

I looked up at the face of Shar's sister and enemy, letting the temptation that Isobel had offered to me rise up and fill my being. I could taste desires, wishes, dreams - a goddess who would bless my union with a paladin of virtue, not condemn it. An affiliation that would be accepted openly, not condemn me to exile or death if revealed. A life without suffering or secrets, without masks and lies. A life with him, where we could be happy. I made myself face it, acknowledge it, wallow in it without pretense or hesitation.

And then I turned away, and left the moon to shine on my back as I returned to the darkness. Because those wishes, those dreams, they could never be mine. I did not yet know exactly what task Lady Shar would challenge me with, exactly what trial awaited me at Moonrise, but I knew there would be one and what my reward would be for success. She had made that entirely clear.

And She had made equally clear what the inevitable price would be for failure, and it was one that I would never ever pay.

Until I'd met Hawke, I would have said without hesitation that my only and dearest wish was to become a Dark Justicar - a hand-picked servant of Lady Shar, ascended to their status after grueling trials only the most devout could pass. A vessel of the goddess, who all other worshippers of Shar would accept as a personal expression of Her will. Mother Superior had always denied my requests to assay the trials, claiming that I was not ready, claiming that it was not anything I should dare to aspire to. But I'd always believed deep inside that Mother Superior had been wrong, that one day Lady Shar would call me to service as one... if I was able to prove my worth.

And now I stood on the cusp of that dream coming to fruition and I wasn't even certain that I wanted it anymore. But I was entirely certain of what I did not want to see happen, and so-

Before Shar we stand gloriously naked, beyond the vanities of mortals. In darkness there is an end to hope, to pain, to desire.

Never before did I so desperately pray that that would be true. Because if it wasn't-

No. It had to be true.

Dear gods, it had to be true.

---

Author's Note: And so we finally see what the hell Shadowheart was thinking. Hopefully not too many people are surprised to find out that she was lying.

But yeah, Shar is the worst. Absolutely, entirely, the worst. She's literally the goddess of gaslighting, and her own worshippers get it harder than any of their victims.

 

[cliffc999]

I stuck Gale with the unpleasant job of explaining things to the others, because I really didn't want to go over what had just happened between me and Shadowheart with more than one person. In fact, I'd rather not have gone over it at all except that a minimum outline of what had happened was necessary information for the group, so nobody accidentally detonated an emotional landmine while we were out in the field. So I gave him that outline and then made myself scarce before anybody else tried to give any sympathy to me. Not that I didn't want any, I just didn't want it coming from people who had to work with her on a desperate and dangerous mission tomorrow. Keep our minds on the job and all that.

And a certain ruthless part of my mind also whispered that if Shadowheart really had made the choice to embrace Shar in the end then this would be necessary tactical knowledge for them as well... just in case.

But as if my evening weren't going poorly enough already, I then found out to my shame that I'd been so wrapped up in tunnel vision on mission objectives that I hadn't even spoken to the tiefling refugees enough to find out who'd survived, who was still missing, and who was confirmed dead. Particularly when I discovered that Zevlor was still in the 'missing and likely dead' category - the last anyone had seen him he'd been helping hold the rearguard against the attacking cultists, fighting to his last breath to give at least some of them a chance to run. And I'd only found out he wasn't here because I'd gone looking for someone to drink with - someone that I had at least some things in common with and wouldn't be coming with us to Moonrise tomorrow - and only then discovered he'd never made it here.

And he wasn't the only one. Despite everything I and Shadowheart had done to minimize casualties there had still been several losses among the refugees and Harpers, and the fact that they weren't anyone I'd known personally had only somehow made it worse. Mol had somehow mysteriously vanished during the attack as well, even if nobody could figure out why.

"Where is he?" my dark thoughts were disrupted by the roar of a drunken tiefling. "Where is that miserable devil-kissing bastard?"

"Oh, what now?" I cursed viciously as I walked across the taproom to confront the angry mage. I dimly remembered him from the Grove as the one who'd been urging the rest of his family to just abandon the refugees and try to make it to Baldur's Gate on their own, an intention that had been cut short by our quick victory over the goblins. And then I noted that he was also the belligerent drunk I'd asked Wyll to go handle earlier-

"If you've got a problem with Wyll, talk to me." I confronted the - what was his name? Ah, Rolan, that's right.

"Oh, are you the one who told him to drug me?" he slurred.

"Weren't you about to slap a pair of children because they were trying to cut you off at the bar?" I shot back.

"Yeah!" one of the junior bartenders contributed from where he was crouched down safely behind the counter. "Jaheira told us to serve drinks, not drunks!"

"This is your fault!" Rolan exploded, and I easily blocked his clumsy swing with my upraised forearm.

"What is my fault? Talk sense, man!" I barked, catching him by his collar and shaking him once, twice, like a misbehaving terrier.

"Cal! Lia!" he sobbed as he collapsed. "My siblings! If we'd headed for Baldur's Gate on our own instead of sticking with this useless lot-"

"You'd have walked straight into the Absolute's minions on your own and died even faster." I said contemptuously. "Do you know how many dead refugees and wrecked wagons I passed by on my way to Last Light? They've been preying on the Risen Road for weeks."

"So that's your solution?" he swore. "Cut your losses, save your own skin?"

"If I were doing that would I be here?!?" I roared at him as my fist clenched with the nigh-irresistible urge to just knock his fucking teeth out. "I'm starting to think Wyll had your drink spiked because there was no reasoning with you and he was hoping you'd sleep it off - but apparently he underestimated just how thick your head was. So how's about you get started on taking that nap peacefully, before I help you along?" I began to raise my hand-

"Right, sleep here safe and sound while they're dying at Moonrise! I've-I've got to go save them!" he screamed.

My fist unclenched. "Of course someone has to go save them! But you're barely able to stand right now! You wouldn't get a mile in your condition, you're no Elminster to solo that entire tower, and you don't have any protection against the Shadow Curse!"

He scoffed. "Maybe you don't, but I can magically create light-"

"That only works in the outskirts." I interrupted. "If you run into one of the deeper shadows closer to Moonrise, no light source is bright enough. Even the priestess' blessing would fail, much less normal light spells. That's why the Harpers have been stuck here this whole time. Didn't you know that?"

"Oh." he suddenly deflated. "You're- you're not just making that up?"

"By my Oath, I swear it." I insisted.

"Then... then there's nothing we can do?" he started to sob.

"We've just captured one moonlantern. Three guesses who's gotten stuck with the job of infiltrating Moonrise Towers with it." I said sardonically. I didn't want to try explaining pixies to someone in his condition, he was probably seeing enough of them already.

"Then let me come with-" he staggered. At this point my hand on his collar was one of the only things holding him up.

"No." I shut Rolan down. "I want you still alive to welcome them back here, and-" I sighed, my anger fading back into bleak resignation. "You were sincere about trying... but you were also welcoming death, weren't you?"

"That's... probably why I got so damn drunk before trying to head out on a mission that would need me sober." he agreed drunkenly. "All right. I'll- w-which way's my bed?"

I led Rolan over to the nearby infirmary and let him fall onto the nearest empty cot, and he gave up resisting and let the sedative take him back under.

After that unpleasant experience I abandoned the idea of finding a sympathetic ear and decided to just get some useful work done instead, so I sought out Isobel for that promised briefing on the interior layout of Moonrise Towers. She couldn't guarantee that Ketheric hadn't made any substantial changes since the prior century, but she did have a detailed knowledge of both the original setup and the passageways that she'd personally seen - and used - during her recent escape.

But when Isobel also mentioned to me that she'd sussed out Shadowheart's true allegiance but had advised Jaheira to take no action in that regard I suddenly found myself hysterically venting all my frustration, grief, and outright petulance on a captive audience even when I hadn't planned to. Isobel listened to all my ranting compassionately and without any impatience, letting me find what catharsis I could while contributing only a sincere sympathy and the occasional wise observation. Then again, she was a priestess of one of the gods of light - it wasn't surprising that she had experience at comforting the troubled.

"Although perhaps I'm not the best counselor for either of you regarding this." Isobel concluded. "My partner - Selune bless her memory - was even more devout than I was, so a conflict between love and the commands of my deity is one that I have no experience at dealing with. And I doubt my experience with confronting Father's fall into Shar's embrace is applicable to your case." She smiled at me sadly. "Not to pour bitter gall on your wound, but I do concur with your belief that her feelings for you were sincere - before Shar twisted them somehow."

"And that only makes it worse." I agreed. I still wasn't really feeling better, but at least expelling all that curdled bile I'd been holding in left me no longer feeling like I wanted to punch the first idiot who gave me an excuse.

"I've only just met the both of you, so I'm reluctant to give you overly specific advice." Isobel demurred. "But even if she no longer desires you I am certain that she will still need you. Shar's favorite device for cementing her followers' loyalty is to force them to do something that they will never forgive themselves for. Something that makes them believe that an eternal existence in the darkness is all that they deserve. I'm almost certain that Shadowheart is coming to such a crux point."

I shivered as if someone had just walked over my grave - after all, I'd given the same advice to Gale earlier tonight, about how he needed to be able to forgive himself at least as much as he needed Mystra's forgiveness. I just hadn't thought about that truth in any other context-

"How do I stop someone from doing something they're so hellbent on driving themselves towards when I've promised to let them go?!?" I swore.

"By being there." Isobel urged me. "The woman I spoke to earlier tonight was someone who was still deeply conflicted, however much they tried to pretend otherwise. So even though you cannot force her to choose rightly - and I doubt you could even if your oath didn't constrain you from trying - you can still do your best to help her. Even if it's only by being a support, to help remind her of what she would lose." She smiled ruefully at me. "As I told you the first time we talked, Shar's handiwork is to induce her victims to do it to themselves. And her most useful tools towards that end are isolation and despair."

"I'm almost wondering if Shar intends to force that isolation, despair, and unforgiveableness by ordering her to kill me." I worried.

"If she were that simple-minded, my calling would be much less arduous than it is." Isobel snorted.

---

A good confession and a good night's sleep got me at least mostly fit for command again, and after finalizing what plans we could with Jaheira we set out. Shadowheart was now wielding a minorly enchanted mace that Jaheira had loaned us from her supplies while the Blood of Lathander remained safely back at Last Light in Isobel's custody - we didn't dare try bringing into Moonrise Towers for as long as we were pretending to be cultists of the Absolute, because it was simply too identifiable. We might as well hang a signboard around our neck saying "INFILTRATORS" if we did that.

Although none of Jaheira's scouts had made it as far as Reithwin Town, she of course had access to old maps for this region that had been drawn before the Shadow Curse came down as well as her and Halsin's personal experience with the area to draw upon. While the terrain had been warped and distorted by the Shadowfell intrusions into the Prime Material plane the gross distances and directions between landmarks had only been incrementally shifted, not catastrophically. So we set out in reasonable confidence that we knew the direction and distance to our goal, particularly since the "lake" that I'd thought Last Light Inn was situated against was actually a wide bay of the Chionthar river - which Reithwin Town and Moonrise Towers were both adjacent too. Reithwin had originally been built to collect road and river tolls on what had been the main route to Baldur's Gate, a route that had only been forced in recent decades to shift to another branch of the Risen Road due to the Shadow Curse.

"So there a reason we're not just taking a boat there, then?" Karlach asked after I finished explaining this to my team while we marched.

"Our primary goal on this run is reconaissance, remember?" I pointed out. "That includes our scouting out a viable land route to Moonrise Towers. Eventually this is going to come down to assaulting the place with her full force, and we don't have enough boats to float them all."

"Got it." Karlach replied despondently. "Guess this sort of thing is why I never got promoted-"

"Hangover?" I asked her solicitously. Yesterday she'd been ecstatic over how Dammon had been able to use the second piece of infernal iron he'd found to finish repairs on her artificial heart, meaning that she didn't have to restrict her bodily contact with others just to brief periods anymore. I'd been too distracted by my own woes to pay as much attention as I should have, but I got the distinct impression that she'd spent last night rushing off to end a decade-long dry spell with the first handsome and willing partner she could find. I said a brief inward prayer for the hips of whoever he, she, or they had been, and then returned to wondering why she seemed so down in the dumps now-

"No." she smiled bravely, her voice bright with false reassurance. "Just- a little tired."

I raised my hand in the signal for 'Column, halt.' and after a brief look around to make sure we wouldn't have lurking shadows jump us I turned to face her. "Karlach..." I gave her my best 'Older brother is not falling for that one' glare and voice tones, the ones that always worked on Bethany.

"Shit." she said, her shoulders slumping. "Look, is it all right if I don't want to talk about it? There's nothing anyone can do about it, it's not an immediate problem, and we really don't need to get distracted."

"You're already distracted." I pointed out.

"... my heart's not working right." Karlach finally admitted. "Everything Dammon could do to retune it was just a patch job. It's not burning out as fast as it was before, but it's still burning out. The metal just won't stand up to the operating strains over the long-term without a particular set of planar conditions." Her voice broke in a sob. "Zariel's final joke - to stick me with a lump of infernal iron that's built so it won't work right at all outside of Hell!"

"You're dying?" I shouted, my voice aghast, and everyone else's expressions mirrored mine.

"See why I didn't want to talk about it?" Karlach gave a tearful grin. "Before it was just me unhappy, and now nobody's happy."

"How long?" Shadowheart asked softly, the first words she'd spoken since breakfast this morning.

"A couple months." Karlach said. "Any longer than that, and I'm either back downstairs or else I'm dead."

"Is there any chance he's mistaken?" Wyll begged.

"Really doubt it." Karlach sighed. "Remember back when Raphael yanked us downstairs into his 'House of Hope' for a quick chat and I told you that I could feel that we were in Hell for real, that it wasn't an illusion?" She thumped her chest. "Now I know why. Soon as I was back down there, this was running all smooth and cool. And as soon as we left it went right back to how it was, how it's been ever since the minute that nautiloid made the final jump back home. I didn't know what the difference meant at the time, but looking back?"

"You know we'll help you with anything you need, right?" Gale insisted. "If our quest for the Absolute finishes early enough, I promise I will do everything I can to research alternatives-"

"That'd be nice if you could pull it off, but it'd also be nice if the Absolute just up and died of a brain stroke right now and saved us all a long walk." Karlach shook her head. "No, near as I can figure it I've only got two choices. Go back to Hell or die." She squared her shoulders resolutely and lifted her chin. "Fuck Zariel. I said I'd die rather than go back, and I'm sticking with it."

"Karlach-" I began.

"Look, I know how you're all feeling. You're my friends, what else could you be feeling? Just like I'd be feeling horrible if it was one of you going into this." she said. "But I'm a big girl and I'm not-" She took a deep breath. "I'm not afraid enough to jump back into a devil's collar just because it'll keep me breathing longer. Because way I see it, it's a choice between living free or dying a little piece at a time for years on end. So... I'll just have to enjoy what I've got left." She laughed, weakly and sardonically but still laughter. "Almost want to thank the Absolute. At least my last ride's going to be a chance to become part of a new team of heroes, just like Jaheira's old crew did when they saved the city from a mad god the first time. Have my name live on even after I'm not." She shrugged. "Could be worse."

I turned and walked away without a word, leaving the others behind to share their reassurance and commiserations with Karlach as I tried to coldly focus on the road ahead, the objectives we needed to accomplish, the-

"DAMN ALL GODS AND DEVILS TO OBLIVION!" I heard myself roaring with outrage as I hacked clear through a petrified tree. "Damn the Maker, damn Mystra, damn Shar, damn Selune, DAMN THEM ALL! WHY THE HELLS DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS?!?" I shouted. "Why is it always noble sacrifices and tragic ends and wasting away from incurable blights and madness and tragedies?!? Why can't good people just be allowed to live?!?" I sobbed. All their faces flickered before my eyes - Carver on the road from Lothering, Bethany dying of darkspawn taint in the Deep Roads, Mother as that mad necromancer carved her up and animated her pieces, Anders bending his head as my blade came down for his execution- all the friends and family I'd lost, all the innocents I'd seen suffer and die as casualties of wars and battles they weren't even part of, all the friends I couldn't save- all the loved ones I was losing right now, watching them drift away from me towards darkness or death as I stood helpless to change the courses of their lives. Wyll and his soul already damned to Hell by Mizora, Shadowheart and her dark goddess' inexorable demand that she damn herself, Gale's suicide already commanded by his own goddess, Lae'zel's outcasting and deathmark from her entire race and world and everything she'd ever known and cared for... and now Karlach's terminal condition-

-and a man who'd already lost almost everything in his world before losing his world as well. Our group really was a unique band of buggered, weren't we? All of us betrayed, or abandoned, or damned, or just lost. All of us still marching forward anyway despite our dooms, because we were too proud or too stupid or just too damn tired to do anything else. But why? Why did we even bother?

Another memory flashed before my eyes - a young tiefling struggling to keep singing even after she'd lost everyone. A teenaged thief and loner finding herself as an older sister to a whole pack of newly-made orphans, and somehow keeping them alive through multiple catastrophes even despite all her flaws. An old warrior whose family had given generations of loyal service to a city that had scapegoated and exiled them without hesitation, still fighting to the end to save what few people he could. An old friend who'd never stopped trying to help the rest of us with his smiles even as he lost his own family and friends to Kirkwall's madness right alongside me losing mine. An Inquisitor who fought ceaselessly on to save the entire world I'd lost, despite a mark on her hand killing her as inexorably as Karlach's heart would- all these and more, all of them.

We kept doing it because even if we could never save ourselves, other people still needed us. It was as simple as that.

"I'm okay." I reassured them quietly as I turned around. "I just needed to let it out a little."

"Hawke-" Shadowheart began, her eyes full of concern, before she flinched away. "You're sure you're all right?" she continued, her voice taut and even.

"Good enough to go on for now." I reassured her, maintaining my own distance. "And that will have to be enough. Everybody else all right?" A chorus of nods answered me.

"Just one more thing then." I said, and stepped forward and pulled Karlach into a comforting hug. "Take a minute and let it out. I can testify that it helps."

"Thanks, boss." Karlach sobbed, crushing me gently with her arms. I let her sob it out a bit before she nodded and stepped back. "Thank you. For everything."

"Come on." I finally answered, at a loss for words otherwise. "We've still got a job to do."

The closer we drew to Reithwin the more distorted things got. The patches of deeper darkness weren't everywhere, but they were common enough and shifted around enough that without a moonlantern or similar protections you'd have to have the luck of fools and gods to survive this far in. Despite our diligence we didn't see any signs of patrols or lookout posts - Ketheric Thorm was clearly relying on the Shadow Curse as his primary defense against incursions. The only trail signs we saw were of supply and troop caravans heading either towards or from Moonrise.

"Reithwin." Shadowheart said quietly, as we drew over a low rise overlooking the town. The buildings were there, so were the streets, but everything was bathed in an eldritch eerie green, a glow suffusing up from the bottom of deep rifts in the ground that had spontaneously torn open almost at random. Strange thick black vines also grew, entwining around the smashed-open ruins of low buildings. The makers of Reithwin had clearly built it at the narrowest neck of the Chionthar they could, because the river here was narrow enough that it could be readily spanned by several great stone bridges built between the north and the south sides of the town that straddled it. No wonder they'd put the toll station here - you couldn't hope to sail past this place without passing under the bridges and through the water gates.

"Moonrise Towers." I said forebodingly. We were looking down at Reithwin Town from outside its east gate, having approached from the north - the Chionthar ran north-south here, and if we got in a boat and rowed straight north from here we'd return safely to Last Light. Moonrise Towers stood to the south of Reithwin on the west shore of the Chionthar. It was a brightly lit pillar of dark stone thrusting up against the murky cursed skyline. Although on the small side for a castle it was still a true castle and not just a fortified tower - it had a moat, a bridge, and an outer battlement, with the tower of the main keep surmounting a low structure. The bright silvery bubbles of multiple moonlanterns helped shield its entrance and walls from the Shadow Curse, and gave us sufficient visibility to note the presence of well-maintained ballistae mounted on the exterior walls and the tower. Dozens of torches flickered in mountings, keeping the entire inner courtyard brightly lit to spot the presence of intruders, and more moving torches showed the location of guard patrols. For all that Thorm had scorned to deploy troops on patrol in the lands surrounding Moonrise he clearly had a well-drilled and well-disciplined force here, who were taking security quite seriously.

"Gods, he's even using the river for a moat." Karlach swore. "See how they've dug in there?"

"That is formidable defensive architecture." Lae'zel agreed. "They have excavated deeply, allowing the river to surround the castle on all sides. There is only one route of approach by land - across that stone bridge there, that leads to Reithwin Town. But both the battlement straddling the bridge and the main tower have a clear field of fire on the bridge. Siege engines and archers - likely spellcasters as well." She shook her head. "Dozens of paces of wide-open killing field, with any invaders funneled into a tightly packed column by the relative narrowness of the bridge. No cover, no way to evade attack, no alternate routes of approach to force the defenders to split their fire. Even if they all assaulted as one, Jaheira's Harpers would never make it across the bridge."

"See that ledge there? And how it swings gives the defenders up top a good field of fire on the river?" Wyll pointed. "Makes sense - the castle was originally built to protect and control the trade route. Even if we had enough boats for all of Jaheira's troops to try an amphibious assault, we'd still be sitting ducks on the water."

"No drawbridge, but there is a portcullis." I noted. "Even if any survivors made it to the far end of the bridge, they'd still be trapped there while Maker only knows what rained down on their heads from the top of the wall and through murder holes."

"And that's before we deal with the fact that they're all tadpoled or brainwashed fanatics, or how the master of the castle is an unkillable horror." Shadowheart swore.

"I'm starting to wonder if Mystra suggested what she did because we really didn't have any other options." Gale sighed. "Well, if the heart of the Absolute is in that place, then-" he trailed off helplessly.

"Then it was a privilege fighting by your side. All of you." Lae'zel agreed.

"Let's not light the martyrdom torch just yet." I pleaded. "Before we can even begin scouting Moonrise for weaknesses, we need to finish up that recce of Reithwin. We can't even get the Harpers to Moonrise at all unless we either find a wagonload of moonlanterns lying around for the taking or find what Halsin needs from here to help weaken the Shadow Curse."

Reithwin brought a new level of horror to the Shadow Curse. We'd seen undead monsters aplenty, but here towards the epicenter of the curse we ran into townsfolk who were still trapped - oh, undead townsfolk, mere distorted wrecks of who they'd been in life, but still able to remember their names and speak with their voices. The toll collector, a corpulent horror plated in gold and weighed down with chains of greed, endlessly demanding more and more in pursuit of a duty she was decades past understanding had ended - the bartender of Waning Moon Tavern, an undead monstrosity as tall as an ogre and fat as a broodmother, endlessly swilling down a corrupt and steaming essence that had once been ale - all these and more challenged and delayed us. Some of them we'd been able to lay to rest merely by talking to them, and the bartender had been defeated when I'd challenged him to a drinking contest and then used sleight of hand to only pretend to swig that fetid poison and he'd drank until he'd burst, but for the rest of them there was nothing for it but to fight.

"The Mason's Guild." I looked up at the sign of the half-burnt building. "We haven't even found the House of Healing yet, so secondary target first I guess."

"Corpses on display." Shadowheart noted distantly, looking at the skeletons still hanging from the walls by hooks. "Apparently-" She broke off.

We entered the building weapons drawn, and the mystery of the corpses on display was solved when we saw the plaque adorning a pedestal on which were the elaborately, thoroughly and methodically crushed bones of a man

"Here lies the Grand Mason, his bones and his lies exposed." I read. "Apparently his work for the Selunite resistance was found out."

"If this building follows the pattern of the resistance cell at Last Light, they'll have hidden their lair in the basement." Lae'zel noted. "Let us commence."

We eventually found a keyhole subtly built into one of the basement walls, but it took Shadowheart multiple attempts to finally pick the damned thing.

"I should have known." she swore. "This was a craft guild, and the resistance was being led by the master mason. Of course they'd have elaborate construction-" The lock clicked. "Finally."

The basement hideout of the main Selunite resistance cell was still occupied - by the undead shadows of some of the resistance fighters. Fortunately we were getting fairly used to shadow ambushes by this time, and even without the Blood of Lathander we were able to deal with them with only minor wounds. Shadowheart's power of rebuking undead came particularly in handy, letting us split up their rush and defeat them in detail instead. It was almost a mockery how well we could still fight together, and then go right back to long silences and awkward distances afterwards-

"I found their records." Wyll said. "Although 'found' isn't the proper verb - the Master Mason had left his journal right out on the table."

"The Dark Justiciars never found this room?" I wondered. "Well, let's see what it says." I opened the tome and laid it out, and we all began to read. The most relevant entries told a clear pattern once we isolated them-

How quickly things change. The Thorms are Selunite through and through - or so I believed. Perhaps Ketheric only converted for Melodia, and with her death - and then his daughter's - his faith died too. But to turn to Shar? It beggars belief.

Ketheric's Justiciars are growing greater in number, and more determined to rout out any traces of Selûne in Reithwin. Why do they think this town was built? One cannot rip out the foundations of a building and expect it to remain standing.

Brother and I remain the last two bastions of Our Lady of Silver in the town. A few - the trusting few - come to worship in secret by moonlit nights. Others - converts, all. Whether they truly believe, I cannot say. Impossible, isn't it?

Sick of standing idle while Justiciars gain power in our humble town. What will become of us if we allow it? I met a man who was no man. Touched by a devil. Or maybe worse. But he offered me something I couldn't refuse - help.

The time is now. Ketheric's Justiciars, their stronghold in the temple below - they will be wiped out. All of them. I didn't ask how. I just want them gone. Let the Harpers have at Ketheric now. They'll make short work of him.

"Melodia Thorm." Wyll noted. "That must have been his wife."

"So he turned to Shar for surcease from his loss, after losing all his family." Shadowheart said softly.

"But he didn't stay there." I grimly noted. "Perhaps that was-" I cut myself off, because I couldn't explain how I knew that Thorm had abandoned Shar for lying to him without explaining how I knew that, and I wasn't going to breach Isobel's secret without her permission.

"Who was this man who was touched by a devil?" Gale wondered. "A warlock?"

The copper dropped. "Raphael." I swore. "I told you about when he showed up in the inn to taunt me, remember? He said that the last time he'd successfully tempted someone in this region, he'd profited off that job for decades. And he hinted that whatever had slaughtered Thorm's Dark Justiciars after Moonrise fell, before they could counterattack from the underground temple, it had not been the Harpers. Add in those clues we found in the Grymforge? The ones that hinted that something large and powerful and from the hells had smashed its way all through there? The ruined bridge between the forge and the underground temple complex that we must practically be standing on top of right now?"

"The Master Mason sold himself and who knows what else to Hell, in exchange for revenge on his enemies." Wyll sighed. "I'd hope it was worth it, but I already know it wasn't."

"If Moonrise Towers were constructed after Reithwin Town, and the Mason's Guild was so prominent here, then logically they would have been involved in the fortress's construction." Lae'zel noted practically. "Perhaps this is how the Harpers were able to successfully besiege that place the first time - with the cooperation of someone who knew all the secrets of its building."

"Then let's hope that history repeats itself." I noted, and then realized I needed to cover myself. "And let's hope that when they ransacked this place, they missed at least some of the blueprints."

A thorough search of the guildhall produced the disappointing news that no, Thorm had not been so careless as to overlook that possibility. The Master Mason had inconveniently not kept a copy of the plans in the secret basement, and everything in the more accessible regions of the building had been either looted or burned. I still had the few suggestions I'd gotten from Isobel, but now I'd really have to hope at least one of them would work-

"At least that map of the town told us where the House of Healing were." I sighed. "Let's go there and try to find what Halsin needs."

As it turned out the House of Healing were barely an arrow-shot away from the Mason's Guild, and finding it was as simple a matter as crossing the street. However, we'd barely even made it halfway across before we knew that this was going to be messier than our simple exploration of the guildhouse.

"Twist 'em up!" a child's voice suddenly called out through the night, and we ran towards the sounds just in time to see a young tiefling conjure two magical vines out of the ground and use them to restrain a pair of undead shadows that were lunging at her. "And now- damn it! Why won't these things die when I squeeze them? I can't hold this forever!"

My magical sword lashed out and cleaved through both of the undead, laced with a bit of my oathbound power to inflict extra spiritual damage. The shadows puffed away like they were never there.

"Arabella?" I said incredulously - because it was the very same tiefling child I'd saved from Kagha's madness.

"Hawke!" she looked at me gratefully. "And the rest of the gang! Hey guys!" she waved.

"How did you even get here?" Wyll said, aghast. "The Shadow Curse should have killed you!"

"I dunno, it stays away from me for some reason." she shrugged. "I thought I was done for too when I got too far outside the lights, but-" she shrugged that away. "Look, I need your help. I got separated from mom and dad, and I've been looking all through town for them but I haven't found 'em! And there's a couple buildings I couldn't get into by myself, even with-" She waved her hands as if conjuring more vines.

"When did you learn magic?" Gale inquired.

"Didn't learn it." she shrugged. "I've just felt different ever since I touched that druid's idol. Although I didn't realize I could do this until after I got jumped by shadows the first time-" She paused to organize her thoughts.

"Wild nature magic." Shadowheart thought out loud. "It must have had a similar effect on her as the pixie's blessing."

Arabella shrugged and kept going. "We got caught when the Absolute nutters hit our camp, and we were marched off with the survivors towards their base. They had this magical lantern thing that kept the shadows back."

"We've seen them." I agreed.

"Anyway, the cultists said that to leave the light was death and if we wanted to run, we might as well try and die." Arabella continued. "And then they grabbed one of us and threw him outside the lantern's light to prove it. Nobody dared put a toe out of line then. But just as were passing through the town streets Mum saw lights on in one of the buildings and thought we could hide in there where we wouldn't need their creepy lantern and then try to make it out on foot once we found torches or something." She shrugged. "We made a break for it, and they didn't even bother to chase us. But right after we got inside then something else came out of the dark at us and they told me to run, they'd be right behind me. Except they're not." She looked up at us pleadingly. "Please find them?"

"You've been stuck in this town for how long?" I said incredulously. "What have you been eating? Or drinking?" I immediately reached into my pack for some rations and a canteen, which she eagerly started gulping down.

"Oh thank the gods!" she mumbled as she chewed. "I managed to find some clean water, but I haven't had a bite to eat for so long-"

"We've already searched half the buildings in town looking for something else, no reason we can't search the other half." I assured her. "But first thing first, we've got to get you to safety."

"How are you going to do that when we're all stuck right here?" Arabella asked confusedly through her full mouth.

"There's a place called Last Light Inn, where all the ones who got away are holed up under a magical protection of their own - plus a bunch of Harpers to help keep them safe." I told her. "And the inn has a magical travelstone nearby that we can use to take you there in an instant, just like there's one near the entrance of town here to take us back. So one of my friends will escort you there right now, and if we find them we'll send them back to you."

"When you find them!" Arabella insisted angrily.

"He cannot promise you that, child." Lae'zel said compassionately. "He can only promise to try."

Wyll took Arabella in hand and warped out with her, and I turned to the rest with a grim expression I hadn't let the child see. "If she was separated from them for that long in the middle of all this, and they still haven't come out to her yet with all the noise she was making-"

Lae'zel nodded back. "Then we are looking for a pair of graves and naught more. Still, we must know for certain - and so must she."

"No comments about 'foolish sentimentality'?" Shadowheart jabbed at her old verbal sparring partner with almost her full measure of usual snark.

"I have seen where the teachings of Vlaakith would lead me, and I no longer wish to go there." Lae'zel replied simply.

Shadowheart drew back, literally gasping with shock. "But... then where will you go?"

"Where Hawke leads me." Lae'zel confronted Shadowheart boldly. "And there I will either find what I seek, or else learn to appreciate what I find."

"Come on." I told them both after a long awkward pause had settled in, and we resumed our march.

Arabella had said that her parents had fled towards a lighted building as they were being marched towards Moonrise, and there were only three of those visible from the town square - the tollhouse, the tavern, and the House of Healing. Since we'd already searched two of those, that meant our destination was clear.

And we were barely inside the front door before we already had a confrontation.

"Here to see the doctor?" the ghastly corpse-woman wearing the rotted remnants of a healing sister's robes greeted us cheerfully. "Are we poorly?"

"Err-" I blinked in shock.

"Not so well, but well enough to wait then." she determined. "Join the line, and you will be seen."

I turned to look at the several skeletons still sitting on the chairs behind me in the reception area, and turned back to her. "The line doesn't seem to be... moving." I understated.

"Yes, yes, but all must wait. The doctor's hands are full. Join the line, please. You will be seen." the receptionist's revenant insisted.

I considered just smiting her, but given the multiple lights on in rooms and the sounds of movement I could faintly pick up I was afraid that most if not all of the entire staff of this hospital was still animate, and I didn't want to be hacking through an entire horde of undead today if I didn't have to. But if I played along with her delusions and waited, then obviously we'd be stuck here forever-

"There's been a misunderstanding." Gale broke in smoothly. "We're not patients. These are my... medical students! And I am a distinguished visiting specialist in maladaptive necromantic malaise." he rattled off confidently.

"An answer to our prayers!" she gasped dramatically. "Oh please, come in, come in! The doctor has desperately been waiting for a consultation on several difficult cases!" She gratefully ushered us inside and then returned to standing her eternal vigil at the front desk.

As we walked further into the haunted hospital I muttered an incredulous aside to Gale. "How on Faerun did you even think that would work?"

"Whether alive or undead, the bureaucracy of academia never changes." he grinned back.

According to the receptionist the 'doctor' was waiting for us in the main surgical theater. We decided that for as long as we apparently had free run of the floor we'd do better exploring the side rooms before risking another conversation that might expose us. What we found was fully as horrifying as you'd expect an exploration of a hospital that had been overtaken by cursed undeath to be, and that was on top of its already having been corrupted by Sharran ways before the Shadow Curse came down. We found ancient weathered papers telling of deliberate euthanasia of healthy civilians so as to clear out space for wounded Dark Justiciars, of orders to deliberately withhold medical supplies save for important people, and of the chief surgeon's growing obsession not with treatment but experimentation. If his undead self was 'the doctor' the receptionist had encouraged us to consult with, we almost certainly weren't getting out of here without a fight.

And in one side room off on the ground floor, adjacent to an exterior door that the undead nurse attending the room hadn't even bothered to close, we found two very familiar people each laid out in a bed.

"Arabella's parents." Wyll looked sadly down at the pair of corpses, who had both apparently been lengthily tortured - or vivisected - prior to dying. "I don't even want to imagine how long they took to die."

The nurse bending over them and muttering to herself finally acknowledged our presence. "They're not dead, sir. Merely medicated. To ease the pain."

"I'm pretty certain they don't have a pulse anymore." I couldn't help but snap back.

The undead nurse reached down and briefly touched the wrist of Arabella's mother, then touched her own wrist. "Her pulse is fully as healthy as my own, sir."

"Well then, if they're that healthy you can move on to the next room on your rounds, can't you?" I desperately improvised, and the zombie nurse seemed to have something shake loose in her rotted brain.

"My rounds? Yes... these patients are doing fine. I should finish my rounds." she muttered absently, and wandered off.

"Come on, let's get them outside." I muttered angrily. "The least we can do is take them back to Last Light to bury them... even if we'd better use closed coffins."

"We can do that after we find what Halsin sent us here for." Shadowheart reminded me. "I very much doubt she's going to come back any time soon."

"These cuts are surgical. Precise." Lae'zel dispassionately examined their wounds. "No weapon did this, but the instruments of a ghustil - a doctor."

"Then I think he's long overdue for a house call." I growled, and we all turned as one to head towards the main surgical theater.

As we entered the main surgical theatre we saw a rotted gray corpse still dressed in elaborate noble's clothing standing surrounded by a circle of undead nurses, posing dramatically over the flayed corpse - I certainly hoped it was a corpse - of a man whose skin had already been partially removed, strapped to an operating table.

"The objective of the scalpel, sisters, is to soothe. For the scalpel is indeed an extension of Shar." the surgeon was lecturing. "See how the patient reacts when I but stroke the right nerve?" He made a subtle motion with his hand and the man being vivisected jerked, horribly. "Hear the very melody of-"

The surgeon's lecture was interrupted by Wyll's eldritch bolt slamming into his face and sending him skidding back across the tiled floor. The rest of us were barely half a heartbeat behind him.

"Spirit Guardians!" Shadowheart called, and a brilliant ring of radiant energy sprang into existence around her. Since the half-dozen undead nurses had all turned to rush at us, they all collided with the area of effect like moths rushing onto a torch. Already wounded and with the momentum of their atttack entirely disrupted, Lae'zel, Karlach, and I had little difficulty beating them all to the ground.

"Heretics! Unbelievers!" the doctor spat. "The Dark Lady will-"

"Righteous Smite!" I shouted and struck, and what the 'Dark Lady' was going to do with us remained forever unanswered as the doctor was distracted by a slight case of spontaneous radiant combustion. It didn't kill him - it didn't even seem to slow him down very much - but it did certainly distract him, and however tough this master undead whatever-it-was might be, it wasn't tough enough to survive six-to-one odds - particularly not since I was able to pulse my anti-magic to disrupt his spellcasting every time he tried it. Which was a good thing, seeing as how after the fight Gale explained to be that what he'd been trying to do is reanimate his assistants, which would have definitely swung the balance of the fight entirely in the other direction.

At any rate, we finally finished killing the bastard and incinerating the severed pieces, and dealing with the several scattered nurses who each individually rushed in to see what the trouble was was not that much more difficult. We'd used up a few spells and would need a little healing, but we were still quite fresh.

Unfortunately, there was no amount of healing that would save the doctor's latest "patient". He barely lived long enough for us to minimally comfort him before he died, and we weren't even sure if he ever knew we were there. We never even got his name.

At any rate, searching all through this charnel house eventually turned up what we were looking for - Art Cullagh had indeed been here back when Reithwin Town was still alive, investigating reports that Dr. Malus Thorm - Ketheric's uncle, and the chief surgeon of this hospital who we'd just killed again - had been leading a secret cult of Sharran worshippers. And among the confiscated personal effects of patients was a lute with his name on it.

"Well, this is definitely something of personal significance to him." Wyll said. "I'm not sure how they intend to use it to bring him out of a catatonic trance, but I'm not an archdruid and experienced healer."

"At any rate, it's what we were sent after. Let's get this back to Last Light before we risk trying Moonrise Towers - we've got travelstones at both ends to make it an easy trip." I sighed. "Also, we'd better get Arabella's parents ready for burial."

"I wonder where they're going to bury me." Karlach muttered under her breath. "Sorry." she turned to us. "I promised to stop moping about it."

"Why? It's quite the mope-worthy topic." I replied darkly, my mood turning fey again. Walking through this charnel house of death had been morbid enough, and then Arabella's parents, and then this maddening perversion of surgery and healing-

"Hawke?" Shadowheart finally asked me, concerned by how I'd been standing visibly shocked and struck mute.

I turned back, shocking them all with a grin extending from ear to ear. Or perhaps worrying them all with how i was grinning like a madman, because I imagined that I was looking just a bit over-enthusiastic. "I just had an idea."

"An idea for what?" Gale asked me worriedly.

"Withers! I need a word!" I ignored them.

"Why hast thou requested my presence?" Withers said, standing right there next to us like he'd never left. "All of thy party are quite alive at present."

"Give us a minute." I shot back. "But first, a question. If, hypothetically speaking, one of our number had happened to have our corpse horribly mutilated before dying, you'd restore it intact, yes? Like when Wyll had his legs torn off and digested, but he's fine now?"

"Of course." he sniffed, mildly offended.

"And if, hypothetically speaking, one of our number happened to have a highly complicated magical prosthetic that got ripped out and smashed up while they were dead, would it be simpler for you to simply restore the original flesh-and-blood part or to recreate the prosthetic?" I kept on speaking.

Withers actually had the first visible change of expression I'd seen on him since I'd met him - an eyebrow raise. And then the faintest, barely visible quirk of one corner of his lip twitched upward in an almost-smile. "The restoration of the original organ would be more convenient. Unless, of course, the personage involved insisted on the restoration of the prosthetic instead."

"Karlach, get on the table." I ordered her. "We're fixing that heart problem of yours, and we're fixing it right now."

"You've completely lost your bloody mind, boss!" Karlach gaped at me. "... but I am like hell saying no to this!"

"Gale, find out which one of those chemicals is anesthetic - if any. We definitely don't want to do this while she's conscious."

"I'm on it!" he dashed over to Dr. Thorm's rack of surgical supplies, now infected by the same mad enthusiasm I was. After a few moments he triumphantly held up a small glass bottle. "Here, this should work. You could knock out a dragon with enough drops of this."

"Right, inject her with it and then we'll - do what we're about to do." I awkwardly finished. "Unless she's had second thoughts-"

"Boss, the worst that happens is you botch the job and I just get resurrected the normal way. I mean, hell, I saw what happened to Wyll and Shadowheart, I know damn well Withers can fix what you're about to do." Karlach was now grinning ear to ear as well.

"Scalpel!" I orated dramatically while holding out my hand, and nodded to Gale to start the anesthesia.

Using a double overdose of the stuff was the most humane way to make Karlach not only unconscious but dead, and that vastly reduced the amount of blood spurting around once her heart was no longer pumping it. Removing the organ from her chest took several minutes of outright hacking away at all the connections - whoever had installed this thing had really wanted it to stay put - but since we didn't have to worry about excessive damage, the meat-ax approach served well enough. And while I no doubt would have been massively upset at the excessive mutilation I was doing to a good friend's corpse right now, it was amazing what the mind could get past if you didn't stop to actually think about what you were doing but instead let mad inspiration and adrenaline carry you through on its flow.

So soon enough it was done, and we'd discarded our borrowed surgical gowns, washed up, and were ready for the most critical part of the whole procedure. "Do it now."

"By doom and dusk, I strike thy name from the archives! Rise!" Withers intoned proudly, and Karlach - an entirely intact, bloodless Karlach - opened her eyes where she lay on the table.

"Karlach?" I whispered tentatively.

"It's beating." she whispered back, her voice full of wonder. "Not that damned piston noise, or all the whooshing - just thump-thump, thump-thump." she started crying. "And I don't feel anything." She sniffled again in purest happiness. "It's been so many years since I wasn't burning."

I helped her off the table and pulled her into a hug. "Thank you." I sniffled as well, into her shoulder. "Thank you so much."

"The hell are you thanking me for?" she looked incredulously down at me. "You just saved my life - my whole life! I owe you everything!"

"Thank you for giving me a chance." I smiled back at her. "A chance to finally be in time to save someone I care about." I breathed out in purest satisfaction and laughed. "Because it's been a very long time since I've done that."

"Congratulations, Karlach." Wyll was the first to join the group hug. "You've escaped Hell for good this time. Have fun making Zariel gnash her teeth out for the rest of your natural life."

"Congratulations!" Shadowheart echoed, wearing the first genuine smile I'd seen on her in far too long, and everyone else echoed her sentiments and her eager hug.

And even though we stood in the heart of a haunted hospital in the middle of a shadow-cursed land under an endless night... just for this one moment, everything seemed bright as day.

---

Author's Note: If Withers can bring someone back from total bodily disintegration - which he entirely can, because people have gotten their party straight-up nuked in the vaporizing of Rosymorn Monastery and still gotten them back alive and intact at the rez station - then why not just amputate her prosthetic post-mortem and let the man bring her back fully organic? I've been asking myself that for ages, and now that I'm finally writing a BG3 story, I get to have it my way.

As for Isobel - she's a very minor presence in the game, really, so I have no idea why she just keeps talking to me so much. But hey, one of the privileges of fanfic is being able to give more screentime to NPCs who didn't get it - and as long as you don't waste it, no harm in an author indulging themselves.

Lae'zel? Lae'zel is a very stoic personality, but she actually works through shit just fine by herself if you give her the start of the road and a little time to think. But I'm amused that her moment with Shadowheart in this chapter was not planned - I was just having her give the tough love observation about Arabella's parents when suddenly my fingers kept typing and before I know it an entire party banter moment was just happening, complete with significant emotional punches.

And yeah, Hawke was past due for a moment of just being done with all this. He's really been taking it hard the past few chapters... or the past few years... so him finally being able to poke Fate in the eye and go "No, you're NOT taking this one. I'm getting her BACK, and you can't do SHIT to stop me!" was worth more to him than all the gold in Orlais.

 

[cliffc999]

We used the travelstones to head back to Last Light Inn and dropped off the lute with Halsin. The comatose Flaming Fist was freed from his catatonia readily enough once they had an object with a suitable emotional connection to him - I wasn't quite sure how that worked, but I was neither druid nor mage - and Halsin joyously revealed to Jaheira and us that the man had given him the final clue he needed. Thaniel, the spirit of the land for this region, had been trapped in the Shadowfell - and in his long-lost, time-lost wanderings, Cullagh had run across him several times. Halsin was certain that he could open a portal into the Shadowfell and bring Thaniel out, hopefully weakening or removing the Shadow Curse that way, and Jaheira's Harpers were ready to support him in that endeavor. So we let them get on with their job and got back to ours.

We also had the unpleasant duty of explaining to Arabella that her parents were dead. She went completely hysterical on us, shrieking that we were 'liars' and 'cheats', before running out of the inn and into the night. I was saddened but not surprised - she was nowhere near unintelligent enough not to have already figured out that if she'd been separated from her parents in Reithwin that long and they didn't have miraculous anti-curse wild magic embedded in them, they were vanishingly unlikely to have survived. So her adamant insistence that they had survived, that of course they'd be found no problem, was nothing but bone-deep denial... and once the bubble burst, it burst.

Since Arabella was immune to the Shadow Curse and knew that she was, I didn't want to just let her run out onto the inn grounds and be alone for a while - because unlike all the other people who were trapped here it was distinctly possible that she'd just keep running. And that would potentially lead to some very bad ends. But when I finally located her I was shocked to find her standing still a short distance outside the protective perimeter and deep in conversation with the definitely absolute last person I would have expected to find her talking with.

"Fear not." Withers intoned at me calmly. "The child shall come to no harm whilst she is with me."

"That's... reassuring." I tried to smile at Arabella, who looked at me suspiciously from where she was hiding halfway behind Withers' legs. "Might I ask what you're talking about?"

"No." Withers said flatly.

"Might I ask your interest in her at all?" I pressed. Because for all that he'd been a consistent help, he was still an entirely unknown, very eldritch, and to be honest slightly creepy presence - and one who I would not have remotely expected would have anything to do with a random orphan girl he'd just met, given how visibly he'd disdained interest in anything but his mysterious 'calling' and 'duties'.

"The child hath come into contact with forces that were not meant for such as her, however minor and fleeting that contact may have been. And now with tragedy added to thorns, the possibility arose of a potential future... imbalance." Withers non-explained. "Whilst I am constrained from excessive interference in events I am already obligated to monitor thy party's progress and remain available to perform my duties as might be necessary - and if I happen to also exchange an idle word or two with passers-by whilst in the performance of that obligation, that is not necessarily a proscribed activity."

"The bone man's... very calm." Arabella said embarassedly. "He's helping me be calm." She looked downcast. "Sorry for yelling at you. You were just trying to help too."

"It's all right." I reassured her. "I did several things that were a lot angrier than just yelling at someone when my mother died."

"I've heard of magic that can bring people back." Arabella asked. "It's supposed to be very rare, but...?" she trailed off hopefully.

"If Withers doesn't know anyone who could bring your parents back, I certainly don't." I reached for an answer, and where Arabella couldn't see I saw Withers shake his head very slightly from side to side. Imperceptibly, I nodded back to him. "Although you did just remind me of something very important that I didn't get a chance to ask anyone about - but there's an expert right here." I looked at Withers. "Ketheric Thorm is back walking Faerun after a century in the grave. A century. No priest can cast that powerful a spell, can they? And discussing what sort of magic it does take to do that should be within your purview, yes?"

"Hmmmm... yes." Withers finally decided. "And whilst a willing revival after such a span of time is just barely possible for the most puissant of mortal magics, one of those souls was both unwilling to return and much-beloved of the Moonmaiden and the other soul condemned for eternity to the most possessive grasp of the Nightsinger. Overcoming such obstacles places the feat entirely beyond the scope of mortal agency. Certes I can think of only three entities that could readily perform such a deed... and I am wholly certain that two of them did not do it. Thus by process of elimination, the responsible party is likeliest the Lord of Bones."

"... I don't know who that is." I admitted embarrassedly. I didn't miss the part where he knew about Isobel's resurrection as well as Ketheric's despite my never having mentioned it, but right now that was just one more thing to be filed along with the many many other things about Withers that entirely defied explanation.

"How fortunate thou art that several of thy companions do." Withers replied dryly.

"I'll leave you two to your discussion, then." I took the hint. "And Arabella... I'm sure that you're safe with him, but your friends in the inn are worrying about you. So make sure to come back after you're done talking, all right?"

"I will." she agreed quietly.

I brought Withers' clue back to the others, and the instant I said the name that Withers had given me Shadowheart gasped as if she'd been struck.

"The Lord of Bones?!?" she cried, her eyes aghast. "But they're supposed to be-" She interrupted herself suddenly to pull her rucksack off her back and began rummaging through it. "Come on, where did I- ah!" she finally hauled out a large, dusty tome.

"The Book of Dead Gods?" Gale recognized it. "The one we picked up in that ruin? Why are you- oh dear." he interrupted himself, as realization visibly struck.

Shadowheart had already flipped it open to the last several pages and read through them hurriedly. "Shit." she swore. "He's not in here."

"Who isn't in there?" Karlach saved me the trouble of asking.

"Myrkul." Shadowheart replied. "The former god of the dead, also known as 'The Lord of Bones'."

"Exactly how does one become a former god?" I questioned.

"By dying." Gale explained. "Myrkul was one of the several gods who were destroyed during the Time of Troubles over a century ago, when Ao the Overgod... I'll give you the whole lecture later, the point is, he fell from godhood and his divine portfolio was taken over by Kelemvor, a mortal ascended to divinity during the Troubles."

"Except now Myrkul's back, apparently." Shadowheart swore. "Those ruins we found Withers in were an old temple of Jergal - the god who was the scribe of the names of the dead. This was clearly an artifact of the church for, as the title says, recording the names of dead gods." She slid the book across the table, with it opened to the last page. "Except Myrkul's name isn't in here. And the three most recent entries in this book have all been overwritten to the point they're no longer readable."

"'By doom and dusk, I strike thy name from the archives'." Wyll quoted. "Withers gives that same chant every time he resurrects someone. 'Struck their name from the archives' must be the Jergalite phrasing for saying 'Someone is no longer dead'.'

We all wordlessly looked down at the Book of Dead Gods... where three names had clearly been struck from its roster.

"Three names." Shadowheart noted grimly. "And Myrkul was one of the Dead Three - a trio of ascended mortals who long ago encountered Jergal, who in the ancient times of Faerun was far more powerful and imbued with several more divine portfolios than they are now. And legend has it that Jergal had grown weary of and wished to retire from those offices, so one day when three evil and powerful mortals finally found him with the intent of stealing the power of gods-" She rolled her eyes. "I'm not even going to get into how insane an idea that is. At any rate, they had the mind boggling luck to have Jergal actually be in a mood to give them what they sought instead of slaying them, as he seized the opportunity to divest himself of several of his more onerous responsibilities."

"Oh, I remember this one." Gale said eagerly. "The three mortals played a round of dice to determine who would get to choose first, and- let me see, how exactly did it go again? Ah." Gale started reciting whatever text he was mentally consulting from memory. "Bane cried out triumphantly, 'As winner, I choose to rule for all eternity as the ultimate tyrant. I can induce hatred and strife at my whim, and all will bow down before me while in my kingdom'. Myrkul, who had won second place, declared, 'But I choose the dead, and by doing so I truly win, because all you are lord over, Bane, will eventually be mine. All things must die - even gods.' Bhaal, who finished third, demurred, 'I choose murder and dying, and it will be by my hand that what Lord Bane rules may pass to Lord Myrkul. So both of you must pay honor to me and obey my wishes, since I can destroy your kingdom, Bane, by murdering your subjects, and I can starve your kingdom, Myrkul, by staying my hand.' And so the alliance of the Dead Three was formed, because despite being utterly horrible and untrustworthy in every aspect they still all needed each other just to survive. But all of them finally met their end in the Time of Troubles, despite various attempts to restore themselves afterwards with various plots that failed. You can ask Jaheira about Bhaal's attempt if you're really curious - her first really famous adventure was being part of the team that stopped his 'Bhaalspawn' plot."

"Except now they've apparently succeeded at coming back." I nodded. "But where does this 'Absolute' come in? And the mind flayers?"

"Ghaik do not revere any gods, and most certainly do not either empower gods with worship or be empowered by them." Lae'zel stated firmly. "That would require the ability to acknowledge that anything in the multiverse could ever be intrinsically beyond their ability to eventually comprehend or dominate. Githyanki scholars have long believed that the very structure of their brains - or souls - precludes forming such a divine connection at all."

"Raphael mentioned in his last conversation with me that mind flayers 'didn't have souls for devils to take'." I remembered. "Which if true would confirm at least one of those scholars' theories. So yes, if this is a plot of three lost gods somehow returning to power, where do the mind flayers come in? They seem entirely irrelevant to such a process."

"I haven't the foggiest notion how they fit in yet." Gale shrugged. "But we're about to head to the place where we can find out." He sighed. "If this really is a plot of the Dead Three somehow having returned, no wonder Elminster passed on such dire forbodeings from Mystra."

"We've got to tell Jaheira about this before we leave." I decided. "And then we've got to get moving."

Jaheira's reaction to the possibility that Bhaal wasn't entirely as dead as she'd done her best to keep him was everything you could imagine and more.

---

The distant sound of war drums caught our attention as we moved across Reithwin towards Moonrise Towers, but they weren't coming from the direction of the tower.

"That sounds like it's coming from the west, outside of town." I remarked.

"That's the road to Baldur's Gate." Wyll said darkly. "We'd better go have a look."

"All right-" I agreed, as we marched down the cobblestone street towards the west gate of Reithwin.

"Ware!" Lae'zel hissed suddenly. "The qua'nith, the detector Kith'rak Voss left us - it is active! Vlaakith's soldiers are somewhere ahead!"

"Keep walking, but slowly." I immediately reacted. "If they see us suddenly change course-" My hurried glance at the terrain around us told me that the likeliest place for ambush was at the gateway itself. The wooden gates had long since rotted away but the wall and the archway were still there, with stone stairs leading up from each side of the path to a low battlement passing over the road. A near-perfect blind for hunters-

"I think it's up there." I said loudly, pointing off to the right of the gate and to where a ruined house sat adjacent to the wall. "That's where the map said it was, do you think?" I finished suggestively.

"Entirely!" Shadowheart picked up the cue immediately. Because of course what we were doing was giving the githyanki waiting up ahead a reason not to be alarmed at our sudden change of course.

"After we finish checking that out, then we go examine the road conditions." I ordered loudly, giving them a motivation to remain in position and just wait for us to finish fooling around instead of abandoning their original positions to try and ambush us on the move. More quietly I continued muttering to Lae'zel. "Does that thing tell you where they are?"

"Only that they are near and to our west." she whispered back. "If they are not laying in wait outside the wall, then they must be using invisibility magic."

"Only an amateur would overlook how useful the high ground of that battlement is, but nobody's there." I said back as we slowly walked off the road, up the slope to our right, and towards the ruined house. We stepped inside and used the pose of 'searching' the house as an opportunity to hold a very brief meeting.

"All right, if they really are invisible and set up on the gate the likeliest deposition for them is their spellcaster and archers up top and their melee fighters lurking at the foot of those stairways adjacent to both sides of the road. They'd want to let us pass by, then pin us from the flanks and rear and cut off our retreat while the ones on the battlement rained hell on us from almost directly above. But right now we're up against the wall and with access to the walkway. So we defeat them in detail - we rush them from their right flank to catch their ranged attackers up top in melee while they're stuck on the wall with us, and while they're separated from their infantry element down below. Who will have to fight their way back up the stairs to reach us."

"A good ice storm in the right place should not only batter all the ones I can catch in the area of effect but leave those stairs very slippery to walk up." Gale said.

"That's the opening move, then. After Gale takes the first shot Lae'zel and I roll up the ones on top of the wall, Karlach bottlenecks the stairway against their men below, and everybody else rains fire down from the high ground on any target you can find." I decided.

"We're assuming the ambushers are roughly our equal in number - because we sort of have to." Shadowheart conceded. "What if they have substantial reinforcements nearby?"

"Run away." I answered frankly. "Get back into the town - which after all our scouting we know the layout of a lot better than they should - go dark, break contact, and travelstone back to Last Light as soon as we're far enough out of combat we can re-attune." I nodded to everyone. "Everybody clear on their assignments? Then let's move - they won't wait in place for long."

We left the house and headed down the top of the town wall towards the gate and the stairway leading down to street level from the right, as if we were entirely innocent of the possibility of danger and just wanted to take the shortest route back to the road. I still couldn't see anything, but the louder and louder chirping of the detector said that they had to be here somewhere-

Gale's ice storm crashed down, its circular area of effect encompassing much of the battlement over the gate, the street directly beneath it, and the staircase nearest us. Shouts of pain and angry curses in gith accompanied the fading of five githyanki into visibility - an armored spellcaster of some type and two crossbowmen on top of the wall with two heavily-armored figures flanking both sides of the street down below, just as I'd predicted. All of them were moderately wounded from the sudden burst of eldritch hail they'd endured, and the stone surface of the street and stairs were now icy and slick. I noted in passing that all of them were using Light cantrips as protection against the Shadow Curse-

"H'taka!" Lae'zel screamed viciously as she and I rushed side-by-side down the top of the battlement. The first archer we reached was caught so off-guard that I body-checked him right off the top of the battlement with barely a break in my step. He went ten feet down to land on pavement with a painful screech, and then I was face to face with their leader. A disrupting pulse shattered whatever her spell was while it was still half-cast, and then we came down to the clash of blades. Lae'zel smoothly went around us and engaged the other crossbowman, battering away his desperate point-blank shot with her shield and then slashing at him viciously before he could even draw his own sword.

With their ambush successfully counter-ambushed, their artillery taken out of action, and their formation shattered and split up, the githyanki hunting party went down fast and hard. With her advantage of position, reach, and weight Karlach had been able to defeat her opponent straight-up, and Wyll and Shadowheart had taken down the other already-wounded fighter from range before coup de gracing the wounded crossbowman I'd sent flying. Gale hadn't even needed to use any further spells beyond his initial ice storm.

"I'm going to have to thank Voss when I see him next." I noted, as Shadowheart used a minor healing spell on several of the cuts I'd taken from their leader as we'd dueled. "Even as far on the back foot as they were they still put up a damned good fight. If they'd had a chance to successfully ambush us, it could entirely have gone the other way - we only had it this easy because we had forewarning."

"Indeed." Lae'zel agreed as we examined the bodies. "Their insignia is that of Tu'narath - the great astral city that is the githyanki capitol. These were no crechelings - only proven veterans are allowed the honor of serving in Vlaakith's home guard." She looked down at the dead patrol leader, then knelt near the body and started stripping it. "She is about the same size as I - I shall claim her armor as a trophy, as it is of superior quality."

"Well, it's not as if I could wear it." Shadowheart agreed amusedly.

Lae'zel finished 'borrowing' the dead githyanki's armor and magical bracers and held up a tir'su disk she'd found in their leader's pocket. "Do what has been asked of you. Stop the interlopers, and take back what is mine - else your punishment will be severe. By order of the Undying Queen." she recited.

"So this was no scout team sent against Moonrise - they were specifically looking for us, and the Astral Prism as well. Which means Vlaakith has figured out that we weren't destroyed at Rosymorn. Damn, she works fast." I finished grimly. "You'd better get out that amulet." I ordered Shadowheart. "We need to know how they found us."

"Who were you?" we asked her.

"Ch'r'ai... Tska'an..." So, another one of Vlaakith's inquisitors.

"How did you find us?"

"Knew your destinations... was waiting on the only route..."

We all breathed a sigh of relief that Vlaakith was not tracking us, but instead had merely been using what she'd already known - that we were headed to Moonrise Towers, and that the Sharran heist team had originally been supposed to bring the artifact to their temple in Baldur's Gate. With that information this would be exactly where you'd preposition an ambush team, at the nearest place those two routes would be guaranteed to converge - the road leading from Reithwin to the city.

"How many more teams like yours have been dispatched?" Because there's no way Vlaakith sent just one small hunting party.

"No answer. She didn't know." Shadowheart said.

"Where is Kith'rak Voss?"

"Searching for you... he will destroy you..."

"Vlaakith has not found him out yet. Good." Lae'zel noted relievedly.

"Are there any other githyanki in the Shadow-Cursed Lands?" we probed.

"None... all the others perished..."

"That's it." Shadowheart put the amulet away.

"So Vlaakith's pursuit teams haven't been doing well in here." I noted. "Not surprising, this place is lethal as hell without any of the protections we've been using."

"Good, it means she won't be surprised - or assume it was us - when this lot misses their next check-in." Karlach noted.

"Um, Hawke?" Gale interrupted. "I think you'd better see this."

Gale had turned away from the proceedings to look west and down the road, and when we moved up alongside him on the low battlement I saw exactly what he was alarmed by. The road to Baldur's Gate led west from Reithwin across flat, normal-looking terrain - apparently the wesetern boundaries of the Shadow Curse were nearby. And just outside those boundaries we could see the distant light of dozens and dozens of large campfires.

"So Jaheira wasn't wrong. He has built an army." Shadowheart noted somberly, as we all stared out at the martial vista laid out halfway to the horizon.

My keen eyes barely made out the shape of the largest of the distant silhouhettes. "Those big ones showing a recognizable profile - I swear they're ogres." I said.

"So those aren't just men, but humanoids of all varieties. He must be recruiting every goblin, hobgoblin, and ogre tribe in the entire region." Wyll noted. "Along with every fanatic, raider, and cultist the mind powers of this 'Absolute' could draw in."

"Let's just hope he's not keeping too many of them as a fort guard at Moonrise." I finally said. "Come on. We've been putting it off long enough."

---

Moonrise Towers. The heart of the enemy.

The Astral Prism was throbbing dully in my belt pouch, its normally inert runes flickering a dull orange. We were clearly drawing nearer to the center of the Absolute's power, and the prism was having to exert itself more powerfully to withstand its commands. If I stood still and tried to 'listen', I swore I could hear a whispering at the edge of my consciousness-

We marched forthrightly down the bridge leading towards the main gates of Moonrise as if we didn't have the slightest thing to hide. As we drew nearer I noted details that hadn't been visible when we'd studied the tower from a distance on the high ground above Reithwin. The portcullis I'd feared was still a jammed mass of rust that hadn't been restored to its original condition after lying abandoned for so long. Several wooden gantries had been hastily erected in various spots around the tower where repair crews were still fixing the damage done by siege engines back during the original fall of Moonrise. Strange shadow-vines grew about in reckless profusion and hadn't been trimmed, some of them even drawing to crawl up the very sides of the tower. By all appearances Ketheric Thorm's revival and return to power had been relatively recent, and he'd chosen to expend finite resources elsewhere rather than focus on restoring his home to pristine condition as first priority.

Although this was still no crumbling ruin or savage goblin-camp. The siege engines on the tower were newly-built and in excellent condition, even if they apparently went unmanned save in times of high alert. The torches in their torchholders were all fresh and regularly maintained. The twin moonlanterns hung to where they gave redundant coverage to the entrance and prevented the entry of shadows had their brightwork neatly polished. And the guards wore spotless uniforms and moved with crisp precision and strict discipline, on patrol routes clearly designed to leave no careless gaps in the coverage. There was a firm hand in command here, and a competent one.

"That's far enough." one of the two guards at the foot of the stairs leading up to the main entrance doors stated firmly, his palm outthrust in an unspoken order to halt. Both of these men were in brilliantly polished half-plate, their tabards neat and clean and emblazoned with the symbol of the Absolute's cult. As I drew to a halt my eyes narrowed at the symbol's heraldry - a downward-pointing triangle with a skull in the center, and the four fingers and thumb of a hand reaching upward with the skull set in place of the palm. I'd seen those symbols less than an hour ago, in a reference text we'd been consulting. Although altered somewhat in iconography from their original versions, once you were already looking for the correspondence it was as plain as day. The hand of Bane, the triangle of Myrkul, and the skull of Bhaal. Our deductions had been correct - the Dead Three ultimately lay behind whatever or whoever was the Absolute.

My dark thoughts were interrupted by the mental shiver of a tadpole pushing against mine. I mentally pushed back, and the probing guard nodded.

"Ah, one blessed like myself. What news, True Soul?" he greeted us, both of them relaxing from their wary postures.

"Githyanki scouts near Reithwin Town." I answered him. "After we took them down, we found this on the body of their leader." I held out the tir'su disk that Lae'zel had found on the inquisitor.

"Disciple Z'Rell will definitely want to hear about that." the female guard agreed. "You'll find her in the main audience chamber."

"What's one of our own rank doing on door guard duty?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Who better to suss out the true from the false?" the first man tapped his temple knowingly. "Go on in."

"Praise the Absolute." I mouthed the words to him.

"In Her name." he replied sincerely, and we up the stairs. A pair of massive oak doors greeted us, and we swung one of them open and headed on in. I judged the quality of the door in passing - newly restored, not relic construction, and it'd take a fairly powerful spell or else a squad of strong men with a good battering ram to break it open in a hurry.

The front hall was laid out almost exactly as Isobel had described, so I already knew the main audience chamber was straight ahead of us. A quartermaster stood in one corner, running some sort of trading post or gear issuing point. Several humans dressed like pilgrims were breathlessly whispering to each other as they stood in another corner, apparently waiting their turn for an audience. A number of guardsmen were posted around around the front hall, but not quite as many as I'd have expected given the size of the army I'd seen just down the road. One of the arcane eye-orbs that we'd seen both at the ruined temple and in the Grymforge was slowly doing a patrol circuit around the inside of the front hall as well. The room was clean, but the old and cracked stone flooring and the dying vines growing in several places contributed to a subliminal atmosphere of decay and rot.

"He's only keeping a moderate fort guard and concentrating most of his troops in the field army." I quietly muttered to the others. "Either that or he doesn't want to try supplying too large a garrison in here - after all, every scrap of food would have to be shipped in by moonlantern caravan, and that's a cumbersome process."

Directly opposite the main entrance doors we'd just come in were an equally large pair of metal doors, with the skull-symbol of the Absolute emblazoned proudly upon them and another pair of guards in front of those doors. Neither of them stopped us as we walked directly into the main audience chamber, but we drew to a halt in the rear of the chamber as we noted a group of people already ahead of us. The audience chamber was also a large hall, if not as large as the main entrance hall we'd just passed through, with several rows of benches for people to wait upon until the ruling lord of the tower was ready to see them. Another arcane eye-orb floated slowly around the chamber, and at the far end a throne stood on top of a short dais. A low spiral staircase led upwards from both left and right of the throne, providing access to the upstairs quarters for the lord and other distinguished residents.

The throne was flanked on one side by an arrogant-looking one-eyed female orc dressed in elaborately decorated studded armour and wielding a handaxe and shield. On the other side stood, of all things, a skeletal dog - the animated skeleton of some type of great mastiff, judging from the size and shape, with glowing blue eyes. But all of our attention was focused on the occupant of the throne, as we caught our first sight of General Ketheric Thorm. He was a large, powerfully built half-elf - not quite as broad-shouldered as Halsin or as tall as Karlach, but still somebody who could at the very least match me size for size. He had long gray hair neatly bound in a ponytail and a full gray beard and moustache, both profuse but neatly trimmed. He wore heavy black plate armor with elaborate steel fluting sculpted in the shape of ribs and bones, giving the artistic illusion that he wore a giant's skeleton over the outside of the plating. A small golden diadem with the symbol of the Absolute mounted at its front rested on his brow and a glowing purple gem shone from where it was mounted directly on his breastplate, the only visible symbols of rank. A warhammer and a shield, both clearly magical, rested against either side of his throne within easy reach of his hands. He was sitting in a relaxed posture, clearly entirely at ease, stroking his chin idly with one hand, and staring down at the current group of 'petitioners' with a dispassionate expressionlessness.

Several goblins, of all things, were cringing fearfully as they stood directly in front of his throne about ten paces away from him. They were apparently prisoners - none of them had any weapons, and they were surrounded on three sides by armed guards who glared down at them suspiciously. Their only possible route of escape would be directly towards the throne, where Ketheric sat formidably with his lieutenant and his necromantic guard dog to bar their way.

"We did as we were told!" a female goblin was begging. "Followed every order we was given!"

"The facts suggest otherwise!" the orc barked harshly. "You were ordered to retrieve the artifact. You failed to do so."

"Take it up with Minthara!" the female goblin shot back hotly. "She's the one who mucked it all up!"

Our blood ran cold as we realized that these goblins were apparently survivors of the gobin enclave we'd smashed near the Emerald Grove. I really hoped that none of these goblins had actually seen us-

"Enough!" the orc shouted, and a wave of mental force lashed outward from her as she drew upon her tadpole to demand submission. All of us blinked with the force of her mental push even from across the chamber, and the goblins fell cringingly silent. "You failed to retrieve the artifact. You failed to protect your True Soul. You do not deserve to live." she condemned them. I motioned covertly to the party to stay silent and not interfere - not that I expected anyone to be eager to do so, but if these goblins were about to get executed for failure before they even knew that we were in the room, that would be the best way to preserve our cover.

Ketheric looked up from the cringing goblins and spotted us standing at the rear of the chamber, and my heart sank. "A new True Soul, here with tidings?" he greeted us. His voice was curiously calm and relaxed - where we'd have expected a harsh roar of command or a snarling undertone of malice, instead he spoke as matter-of-factly, as normally, as a village elder saying hello to a random passerby in the marketplace. A simple acknowledgement that someone else was present and a mild curiosity as to their particular business today and nothing more. It was so commonplace that in this atmosphere it was decidedly out of place.

"A githyanki scout patrol, General, defeated near the west gate of Reithwin Town." I answered him courteously.

"Ah." He dismissed our news with an idle wave of his hand. "If they were all defeated, then they are of no immediate urgency." he continued in that strangely gentle voice. "But I am mildly curious as to the point of view that someone uninvolved in this particular matter might bring." He gave another idle, relaxed wave of his hand in the general direction of the golems. "These are stragglers from the goblin encampment we had and lost near the Emerald Grove. They came crawling here in disgrace, confessing to having failed to achieve any of their assigned objectives and to having lost all of the True Souls that were stationed there to supervise them. What do you think should be done with them?" he finished. There wasn't a single clue on either his stoic face or his entirely immobile, ultimately-disciplined body as to what he was genuinely feeling or what answer he expected - or what purpose he had for bringing us into this at all.

The goblins all looked fearfully at me, praying for deliverance. I cursed inwardly, because I had no idea if these goblins had seen us during our infiltration of the encampment or not. If I ordered their deaths and they were any of the ones who'd seen our faces, they had every reason to spitefully blurt that out before they died. But if I asked for mercy from someone with such a reputation for mercilessness, I risked exposing ourselves- ah.

"They seem wholly devout, but clearly lack competence." I answered matter-of-factly. "Obviously they cannot be given responsibility for another operation in the field, but I believe execution should be reserved for clear disloyalty. Are there more menial duties they could be reassigned to, where their limited capacities would be of no import?" At this point I was fairly certain the goblins would gladly welcome peeling potatoes for life as an alternative to execution... and would hopefully be grateful enough to keep their little mouths shut.

"Yes! Yes!" one of the other goblins burst out. "We'll do anything, milord! Sweep the floors, empty your chamber pots-" He fell silent instantly as Thorm began to speak.

"Faith without accomplishment is anaemic, sickly. In a word, useless. We are too close to the ending - and the new beginning. I can coddle failure no longer." Thorm turned to look aside at his orc lieutenant. "Kill them. Quickly." he concluded, his voice never having changed its calm, even tones throughout.

"What?" the female goblin screeched angrily. "You creaking old bag of shit!" Quick as a snake, she snatched a halberd out of the careless hands of the nearest guard and with a quite frankly damned impressive throwing arm heaved it as it were fired from a ballista. Before anyone in the room could react it sailed in a neat arc across ten paces and landed point-first in Ketheric's throat, nailing him to the back of his throne. His body went limp and slack in that way a man did when you'd successfully put the thrust directly through their spine-

-and then his eyes snapped open again. His freely lolling head returned to its normal position, his cold and scornful gaze focused intently on the goblin who'd just impaled him. His right hand reached up to slowly and deliberately grasp the halberd's shaft firmly, and with no visible effort he pulled the point loose from his throat. Although the halberd's spear-point was clearly coated in dark ichor, there was not the slightest sign of a wound visible on the man. I could hear the memory of Jaheira's voice in this moment - "And the son-of-a-bitch just reached up and pulled it out like it was a splinter."

Ketheric Thorm rose imposingly to his feet as the goblins flinched back in terror. I quickly noted that nobody else in the room had shown the slightest sign of surprise - perhaps it had not been carelessness that had let the one guard be disarmed so readily, but indifference. Ketheric stalked inexorably towards the goblin who had just tried to kill him, but rather than strike at her with the halberd he simply held it out at arm's length and then dropped it at her feet.

"Try again." he ordered quietly, his voice tinged with the first hint of emotion he'd shown throughout this entire conversation - contempt.

Her eyes wide with terror, her hands shaking, the goblin reluctantly picked up the halberd - and then swung it sideways with desperate strength at Ketheric's exposed neck, just above the collar of his armor. The blade cleaved through the flesh and halfway through his spine, leaving his head horribly dangling to one side... and then he reached up with his left hand, wrenched the halberd loose with a mild effort, and his head immediately sprang back upright and into position with the torn-open flesh knitting instantly and seamlessly the instant the blade was no longer in the wound. He tossed the now gore-covered halberd to the ground and stepped over it without a backward glance, interlocking the fingers of both his hands and raising his arms overhead-

"No! Noooooooo!" the goblin wailed helplessly, as Ketheric brought his gauntleted hands down in a mighty two-fisted smash that burst her skull open like a melon and scattered brains and gore for several feet around.

"Dispose of the rest as you see fit." he ordered the orc, his voice now bored and careless again. "Or better yet, put that True Soul to use - you have far more important matters to attend to, Z'rell, or have you forgotten?"

"Of course not, my lord! Thank you." the now-identified 'Disciple Z'Rell" bowed to him nervously. Without even bothering to wipe the gore and brains off his armor first, Ketheric Thorm turned and headed up the stairs and out of the audience chamber without another word.

"You heard the General." Z'rell stated authoritatively. "Deal with this trash. I have vital matters to attend to - report to me in my office in an hour." She followed the General upstairs.

The inner guidance of my Oath flinched away from executing the helpless under these conditions - not that these goblins weren't malevolent little sacks of violence who gladly inflicted misery on the innocent and who I'd readily have killed on the road out of general principles. The problem was that the crimes they were being condemned for here were ones that I had actually committed.

"Trial by combat." I decided. I drew my sword and looked at the guards. "If I lose, I guess they're competent enough to live after all."

"Are you crazy?" one of the surviving goblins begged. "We haven't got a chance!"

"Not much of one." I agreed grimly. "But it's either me... or her." I nodded towards the direction Z'Rell had just departed in.

The goblins were motivated enough at the prospect of that to snatch up their weapons, which one of the encircling guards contemptuously tossed back to them at my order. They then immediately gang-rushed me, trying to flank me from both sides... not that it helped them any.

I wiped the blood off my sword and sheathed it, my Oath still intact even if I felt a bit grungy. "Come on, let's get a breath of fresh air until the Disciple is ready to see us." I told my team.

"Gods damn that was frightening." Wyll whispered to me as we left the room.

"She wasn't exaggering at all." Shadowheart contributed, her voice low and distant. "He truly has passed beyond death somehow."

"And it's our job to find out how." I agreed. "But come on. We've got barely an hour left to work in before the next test of our infiltration skills, and we've got several jobs to do here." I looked at Wyll. "Finding your father being one of them - I haven't forgotten. Plus the survivors of the attack on the tiefling convoy, and-" I broke off. "Let's get to the dungeons."

---

Author's Note: You need to watch the cutscene to get the full force of JK Simmons' voice acting here, as he's the voice of Ketheric Thorm. I didn't even touch it up much except changing the halberd toss through the chestplate to something slightly more believable.

And yeah, the githyanki ambush at the west gate of town is a tough boss fight... that gets far less tough if you have an advance warning about the ambush and stack your deck. I need to practice more on writing climactic fight scenes in a more play-by-play manner, especially given that we're only several chapters out from Ketheric's boss fight, but for right now this is how it goes.

The sequence with Arabella and her mysterious nature powers and Withers is in the game, but AFAIK they never really explain what's up with it. I think it's just there to provide a humanizing moment for Withers, because the party actually does need to trust him a little and he's kinda, y'know, a mysterious eldritch thing.

But hey, Hawke was able to get a premature revelation of the Dead Three's involvement because he took the step of actually asking the dude who does impossible resurrections about 'Hey, who else do you know can do impossible resurrections?' And Withers might not be allowed to directly say 'Oh yeah, I totally know the Dead Three are up to this bullshit', but he is allowed to answer a question on an academic topic related to his primary subject matter during which he just happens to lay out the logical reasons why the best guess for the resurrection of the Thorms is Myrkul.

Before anybody mentions that high-level priests can drop 'True Resurrection', while that spell does work up to 200 years post-death it also requires a willing subject (which leaves out Isobel, as she was dragged back against her will) as well as a soul that isn't trapped (which leaves out Ketheric, because Shar had his soul and was busy roasting him for eternity for his failures). It took a divine resurrection to get past that.

And yes, that is indeed Halsin and Jaheira doing something that never happens in videogames - NPCs actually handling an important sidequest offstage while you're busy with something else. God, I love the freedom of story mode sometimes. *g*

 

[cliffc999]

I knew I wasn't making the best decision, but I was doing it anyway.

The worst-case scenario is that we'd be almost immediately exposed by Disciple Z'Rell and have to flee. That meant that I should be treating the hour of time before our appointment with her as the only time I might have to conduct a reconaissance. The priority target thus should be Ketheric Thorm's quarters, to search for clues about Thorm's immortality or the cult's upcoming war plans. Instead I was going for what by cold calculation should have been the secondary target- rescuing the prisoners in Moonrise Towers.

We don't have to break them out right at this moment. I told myself. Just scout out where they're being held under what conditions, and possible escape routes.

Perhaps I was being overconfident after my success in improvising a miracle - well, to be honest, improvising an idea on where we could rent a miracle - to save Karlach, but when you were this deep in a sticky situation there came a point at which you had to abandon cold calculation and just keep playing to your strengths. We'd been doing nothing but playing long shot after long shot just to get this far, so it was too late to pretend that there were reasonable odds to gamble on now.

Besides, there should hopefully be at least one hole card left down there to play-

The entrance to the dungeon level turned out to be in a room adjacent to the audience chamber. Two guards were posted at the top of the stairs, and two more in the chamber at the bottom. A large set of closed double doors led out to what Isobel had told me were the main docks, and the entrance to the dungeon proper led off in another direction.

The guards at the bottom of the long winding stairs looked at us curiously - or suspiciously - but visibly decided not to challenge us as we headed out into the main dungeon area. It was a large circular area that was a cross between a construction and an excavation, clearly laid deep below the tower's foundations. The ceiling was dozens of feet above the floor, and there were no individual cells - just a series of large chambers with narrow prison bars instead of walls, partitioned out of segments of the room's circumference. A wide stone floor stretched around the outer rim of the room, half its depth walled in by prison bars and half left for freedom of movement. The center of the room, however, was a giant hollow pit stretching down deep into the earth, with more of that eerie green eldritch glow dimly visible at the bottom - apparently the warped geometry of the Shadowfell incursion was reaching even here, unless some impossible force had excavated below Moonrise Towers in a feat entirely beyond mundane engineering. A solid pillar of earth rose up from the center of the open chasm and a small two-story stone tower had been built on it, with wooden constructions gantries still set up adjacent to its walls and a small observation platform on top - apparently the warden's office. Several guards were diligently conducting roving patrols up and down the line of cells, with two slowly drifting arcane eye-orbs supplementing their efforts.

Most of the cells were empty, but the nearest one was full of a cluster of miserable tieflings - many of whom I recognized, including Alfira's girlfriend Lakrissa and several others I'd met at the party. Zevlor wasn't with them, however. A cell some ways further down held a small group of deep gnomes I didn't know, and no other prisoners were visible.

"Father isn't here." Wyll said, downcast. "Which... he is a valuable prisoner, they'd likely keep him in separate quarters..." he tried to console himself.

"Mizora's 'asset' doesn't look to be here either." Gale murmured. "So that's at least one problem we can postpone for a little while.

"Let's go talk to the tieflings before one of them blows our cover." I decided, and we stepped over to their cell. As I approached I held up one finger to my lips in the universal gesture for 'Ssssh!', making sure that none of the patrolling guards or orbs got an angle of view to what I was doing.

"Hawke?" Lakrissa greeted me in an astonished murmur. "Thank the gods! Can you get us out of here?"

"Not so loud!" Shadowheart shushed with an angry whisper. "If any of you blows our cover, we're all dead."

"Right." one of the other tieflings muttered. "One of-"

"Prisoners are not to be spoken to without authorization!" a patrolling guard barked out to us, having noticed what we were doing. Fortunately they were still far enough away they wouldn't have heard the whispering-

"Resume your patrol." I ordered them curtly, drawing upon my tadpole to speak with that disturbing Authority-

"As you command, True Soul." she saluted me, and walked away. I mentally shivered at how my imagination insisted that the stench of illithid ichor was filling my nostrils-

"Good news, that worked. Bad news, she'll remember our faces... meaning I've got to find a way to break you out of here and have a solid alibi being somewhere else entirely while I do it." I muttered to the tieflings.

"Talk to the deep gnomes, their leader keeps claiming he's got a way of getting us out of here if only he could get his hands on some tools." Lakrissa whispered back.

A quick look around confirmed that none of the guards were looking too curiously at us, and after waiting for the patrolling orbs to be at a safe distance we walked over to the cell containing the deep gnomes.

"-improvise tools with anything you can find, be creative." the leader was whispering to his subordinates as we approached. "This rock is basalt, it'll crack with enough press-" He broke off as he sensed our approach and immediately turned to face us with a false, bright smile. "Ah! Don't mind us, sir. The back wall is oozing drainage, we're just trying to plug the leak."

"You're clearly planning an escape." I murmured to him softly.

"I wouldn't be so foolish as to think we could possibly escape the Absolute!" he assured me guilelessly. "The Warden has eyes everywhere! And ears."

"Are you Wulbren?" I suddenly remembered the name of the missing friend that that deep gnome we'd met in Moonhaven and then again in Grymforge had been searching for. "Barcus Wroot's been worried about you."

"Barcus is out there?" The leader of the imprisoned deep gnomes looked up at me with calculating eyes. "If he sent you, then you're no slave to the Absolute. You're a wolf among sheep, aren't you?" He nodded. "Well, I guess you and I were destined to eye coming." he continued without missing a beat.

"The Absolute is not death, it is life!" I immediately picked up the cue as the patrolling arcane eye drew close to and passed us by. "Abandon your stubborn defiance and submit! If you would just-"

"All right, it's gone." the leader nodded to me. "Good job thinking fast, now to business. I'm Wulbren, and if you're going to help us escape then we need tools. Anything we can use to break through that back wall - these fools haven't been maintaining this place like they should, and there's a structural weakness you can exploit if you're a skilled enough miner. Which, not to brag, we most certainly are." He looked back towards the wall in question, his eyes narrowing. "And judging from the sound there's a whole hollow space back there - it must lead somewhere."

I cursed inwardly because there was indeed a hollow space back there - Isobel had told me about it. It was the secret route she'd used to escape Moonrise Towers, that led from the dungeon level to a small auxiliary docks tucked into a cleverly hidden cave on the shore of the Chionthar a short distance away from the tower. If Wulbren could get the deep gnomes - and the tieflings, because the rear wall of their cell was adjacent to the same passage - into that tunnel, they'd have a clear shot all the way to the river and away...

... and the hidden route would be exposed to Ketheric's forces, thus closing off the best way - and quite likely the only way - that we could hope to sneak an attack force into the tower later. I wondered at how Ketheric had missed it, as he'd been the lord and master of this castle ever since its construction and so had to know about it. I suppose it was that he hadn't realized Isobel had discovered it, and so he'd never bothered to block the passage off because he might just possibly need it himself later.

"I'll see what I can do." I non-promised. "We've got to maintain our cover or else a whole lot of other people are screwed, so whatever I set up you'll have to hold on executing it until we're clear."

"If it's that how it has to be." Wulbren agreed reluctantly. "It's not as if we're overburdened with other options in here."

"Before I go looking, what else do you know that might help?" I asked.

"There's something underneath the dungeon." Wulbren said. "They throw the corpses of all the prisoners who don't make it down that oubliette on the other side of the warden's tower, but the hole never gets full. There's either a huge cavern down there or else something's eating them. At any rate, don't climb down anywhere. We gave up on the idea of trying to get out through the lower vents once we realized the sublevels were... suspicious."

"Do they ever take prisoners from the dungeon and not bring them back?" Wyll asked urgently.

"All the time." Wulbren said.

"Let's go." I ordered. "We linger here too long, they'll get wise."

Rather than head back towards the entrance I led the party off on a full circuit of the prison floor... or at least as much of a full circuit as could be made, as the floor didn't go all the way around the outside of the pit. My heart leapt as I saw what I'd been hoping to see at the far end of the floor's circumference... a crack in the wall that, with a little effort, could let you climb up and get into the space behind the dungeon's outer wall, the already-existing cave passage that they'd taken advantage of to help build the secret exit into.

"You already knew this was here." Shadowheart looked at me knowingly as we vanished into the passage. "How?"

"From someone who'd already gotten into Moonrise Towers, and then gotten out." I told the truth. "But I promised not to reveal my source, so please don't ask." I continued firmly. "But yes, this is the postern exit from Moonrise Towers. It should lead down this passage to a hidden cove and a backup set of docks. We'll need to verify that quickly."

"And then we help 'em escape down it, yeah?" Karlach said eagerly.

"We can't." I poured cold water on her hopes. "At least half a dozen guards saw us enter the prison level. If there's a breakout now, we can't hope to get back into Moonrise without an army - and we haven't yet found anything we came here looking for."

"We're not just leaving them here!" Wyll fumed.

"We're not." I agreed. "But first we find out what we have to work with. Then we figure out how to set the situation up so they can save themselves."

A quick scramble down the corridor confirmed that the docks were indeed there, and one old yet still seaworthy boat was still there and chained up. Also, the back walls of both cells were vulnerable - from this side Karlach and I could have bashed them down without much difficulty, provided we found a large enough bludgeon. My fingers itched with the urge to just do it, but we had to preserve the secrecy of this route at the same we used it-

"Right, let's get back out of here before the guards wonder where we went." I ordered. "Then I'll try my True Soul routine on the warden."

The warden was a female tiefling, suspicious and narrow-minded. Even my True Soul authority wasn't sufficient to get her to bend the slightest bit from her standing orders, although she did accept my being present in her dungeon as yet another True Soul attempt to skim out those willing to 'embrace the Absolute' from the 'nonbelievers' who'd eventually have to be disposed of in one way or another. More importantly, I got a look at the exact layout of her office - the controls for the cells and her desk were in the lower floor of the warden's tower, and the secure storage for valuables confiscated from prisoners was in the upper chamber. Yet another arcane eye also patrolled the treasure chamber, but she was normally alone in her office. This would be important later.

"Sit tight." I went to tell Wulbren and Lakrissa in turn. "We'll be back, and then it'll be time to move. For right now we've got to get back upstairs and defuse any suspicions." We left behind several sets of desperate and terrified eyes as we headed back up the dungeon stairs, hoping for our return but afraid that we never would.

We passed through the audience chambers and up the stairs behind the throne to the upper floor of Moonrise Towers, the floor that had contained the family quarters and the lord's study in better days. The guards on this floor consisted not just of soldiers but also several robed skeletons and a massive ogre standing vigil on an elaborately decorated door.

"That leads up to the rooftop chapel." one of the guards warned me. "General Thorm's up there now at his devotions. Absolutely no interruptions." he insisted firmly.

"Disciple Z'Rell?" I asked them.

"In her office, at the other end of the floor." He pointed back the way we'd come. "Past the stairs, then left."

"Remember your place, child." we could hear Z'Rell arrogantly hectoring some subordinate as we approached. "The True Souls stand above you, and I stand above them."

"Of course, Disciple. As always." a woman's voice answered her resentfully, and we passed a woman in robes leaving her office as we approached it.

"You wished to see us, Disciple?" I asked as we entered.

"You're early, but no matter." she greeted us. "The goblins - tell me how they died at your hand. No... better yet, show me." With an eager, hungry smile she lashed out with her tadpole, demanding entrance to my mind- I focused my will and concentrated solely on the images of my sword cleaving the goblins open, with no thoughts spared as to why or how-

"You like to handle underlings physically." she smiled disturbingly at me. "So do I."

"A waste of my time, honestly." I replied curtly. "I'm not here to clean up trash."

"Your confidence is delicious." she snorted. "I can certainly see why the Absolute would be eager to dig more deeply into that mind of yours. I certainly am." Her mind reached out again, skillfully pushing its way past my mental walls and demanding my memories, demanding the truth-

I deliberately dug up my feelings for Shadowheart where I'd been burying them for the sake of the mission and threw them to the front of my mind, letting myself feel that horrible memory of our confrontation the other night, my hurt, my confusion-

"You took pity on one of Shar's miserable little followers? And then she rejected you?" Z'Rell laughed mockingly, her suspicion entirely diverted away by her newfound amusement. "But with the Absolute, your every fantasy could become real." Z'Rell continued, her voice thick with temptation. "The pleasures of the mind can far surpass those of the body. I was privileged to stand in Her presence once, and it was ecstasy. She gave me everything I wanted."

"What did you want?" I hurriedly changed the subject.

"To take without asking. To feel without doubting. And to kill without consequence." she replied with a psychopath's glee. "In a word... freedom."

"And how could we be privileged to stand in Her presence?" I played along.

"By serving well." Z'Rell said. "Your little skirmish with the githyanki is of no import now, because we have a more urgent situation. General Thorm's valued advisor Disciple Balthazar has fallen out of contact. It is fortuitous that your team is available... if you can bring down an elite githyanki patrol so easily, then you should be able to handle this mission readily enough."

"A rescue mission?" I inquired.

"A retrieval." Z'rell corrected me. "Disciple Balthazar had been sent to bring back a valuable relic from underneath the old Thorm family mausoleum. Go there and find out what happened to him. But regardless of whether he's alive or dead, don't come back without that relic."

"A bit hard to retrieve something if we don't know what it is." I pointed out.

Z'Rell looked at us, visibly bristling. "You have no need to know. Balthazar can tell you when you find him - or his orders can, if you find them on his corpse."

"Let me guess." I said knowingly. "Balthazar was told what it was, but you weren't."

"Mind your tongue!" Z'Rell glared hotly. "But... yes." she admitted like pulling teeth. "All I know of the relic is that it must be awesomely powerful to be worth so much of General Thorm's regard. Our march has already been delayed because he refuses to leave Moonrise Towers until its safe retrieval."

"One last question. You said you 'lost contact'...?" I probed.

"An arcane eye accompanied him when he left Moonrise, but it was destroyed less than an hour ago. It didn't report anything useful before its destruction, though." She replied. I nodded inwardly at that. Aafter all, we'd proven at the Grymforge that it was entirely possible to sneak up on one of those things with a bit of lateral - or vertical - thinking.

"Understood, Disciple. We'll head out now." I agreed.

"Take a moonlantern from Balthazar's quarters before you go." She insisted, with a glance at the empty moonlantern we'd faked up with a light cantrip and Isobel's blessing. "Yours is dimming - it clearly needs replacement." She handed me an elaborate decorated silver key. "This will get you inside." Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Don't touch anything except the spare moonlanterns. Balthazar likes to put 'precautions' on his belongings - we've already had to haul out the corpses of several overly-curious apprentices. Dismissed!"

Balthazar's quarters were lavishly appointed, and overflowing with bookshelves, books, papers, and workbenches full of arcane and alchemical impedimenta. Several spare moonlanterns lay conveniently - and all by themselves - on a table near the door.

"Our friend Balthazar is a necromancer." Gale pronounced after a brief visual inspection of the various paraphernalia that had been laid out. "Quite an advanced one too, judging from some of these experiments."

"Don't touch anything." Shadowheart warned him urgently. "Look." She pointed behind one of the workbenches, where the corpse of a dead man in an apprentice's robe lay cooling in front of a bookcase.

"Damn, Z'Rell wasn't kidding." Karlach said worriedly.

"We're not going to find any clues in here, if this place is so full of traps." Wyll groused.

"No, but that door leads out to the front balcony." I pointed. "And there should also be a balcony door into the lord's bedroom from there, and we already know that Thorm isn't in his quarters. Shadowheart?"

"On it." she agreed, reaching for her lockpicks. She was able to get the door open, but the other balcony door into Ketheric's quarters was arcanely sealed.

"Damn." Gale said. "I'll have to use up my only Knock spell on it. Still, needs must." A quick flare of arcane power and the door popped open-

-and we stood face to face with the General's undead guard dog, who stared at us silently. Suspiciously. Perhaps even murderously.

"The General asked us to fetch some papers for him." I improvised.

The dog simply stared.

"Praise the Absolute!" I continued, and gave the same salute I'd seen the tower guards give. The dog finally sniffed in apparent disdain and stepped aside to let us enter.

"Right, don't try to touch anything besides papers." I warned my team needlessly. "But the General didn't tell us exactly where he'd left them, so we'll have to look through all of this." I continued for the dog's benefit. I whispered to Shadowheart "Keep an eye on that thing and get ready to put it down if need be. The rest of us will try to find any clues."

A letter left right out on the General's writing desk begged for our attention, so I pocketed it immediately. "All right, that's the first one. Keep looking." Several maps laid out on the map table contained notes for long-range plans to besiege and conquer several other Sword Coast cities, apparently after taking Baldur's Gate and 'initiating' enough of the citizenry there with tadpoles and threats to raise a larger army for the Absolute.

"Look at this." Gale said, holding up a file copy of an operations outline that he'd found in another desk.

Dictated to Scribe Yanthus by General Ketheric

Sweeping up individual drow renegades is not giving us the cadre of Lolth-trained veterans I want for our staff and officer corps; we must be more ambitious. Agent Xilvre, True Soul 113, will be commanded to infiltrate Menzoberranzan itself, ideally House Baenre, ostensibly to proselytise on the behalf of the divine Absolute. I think Xilvre will be convincing in this role.

This intrusion will excite outrage among the Baenre matrons, who can be counted upon to send a warband to exterminate whoever was so rash as to promote anti-Lolth apostasy in their home. Xilvre will have left a clear trail back here to Moonrise Towers, where the warband will find, not a circle of ragtag heretics, but an army in the making.

I will parley with the drow leader, but as we negotiate her warband will be ambushed, and every drow warrior we capture will be tadpoled. This accomplished, the warband leader will meet the same fate, and thus we shall acquire our cadre of hardened Underdark warriors.

And all it will cost us is the life of loyal Agent Xilvre, but he is, truth be told, a tedious enthusiast and I will not miss him.

"Now I really feel sorry for Minthara." Karlach said. "It was all a setup from the getgo? Poor bitch never had a chance."

"Thorm is absolutely ruthless." I agreed. "Even with his own men. And to think that he started out as a champion of light. What the hell did Shar do to him?" I deliberately looked at Shadowheart as I said those last words, and she flinched away from my gaze.

"I think that hound is getting suspicious. It's time for us to leave." was all she'd say.

I reached out to touch the locked chest at the foot of Thorm's bed, keeping an eye on the dog. It looked at me, then turned away unconcernedly.

"Must be some papers in here." I deduced. "Shadowheart, if you'd please-?" She knelt down and silently got to work with her picks.

"Hold on." Wyll whispered. "Loose floorboard here-" He looked at me meaningfully, and I deliberately walked to the other end of the room and started to reach out to touch a wardrobe - something that couldn't possibly be containing any papers - so as to distract the dog's attention. Sure enough, it fell for the bait and growled at me, and I snatched my hand back.

"Right." Wyll said. "Time to go." We headed outside and shut the door behind us, breathing in relief that the undead sentinel hadn't quite gotten suspicious enough to sound the alarm, and all huddled together on a quiet corner of the balcony.

"Let's see what this says." I drew out the letter that had been waiting on Thorm's desk. An elaborate wax seal was still intact - apparently this piece of mail had recently been delivered while the General was away at his 'devotions', and so he wouldn't miss it when he got back. "Wyll, do you recognize this heraldry?" I showed him the wax seal - it had been what had attracted my eye to the envelope in the first place.

"No." he said. "Which is odd - it's clearly the insignia of a Baldurian noble house, because all coats of arms in the city contain the city emblem somewhere." He pointed at a small heraldic depiction of a single ship with its sails cocked in a distinctive manner, set in miniature in the corner of the elaborate seal. "But I'm not at all familiar with the house insignia... which I should be. It's been more than a couple years, yes, but I haven't been disowned for that long."

"Well, let's hope that they signed their name then." I shrugged and slit the letter open and read it.

General Thorm;

Given what we know from my research about the gith artifact, I can't emphasise enough how critical it is that it be recovered. The power that artefact contains can boost our own efforts to unforeseen levels, but if it falls into the hands of enemies of wit and persistence, it could bring down all of our plans and schemes.

The body of our handpicked captain for the artefact raid wasn't found in the wreckage of the nautiloid, and I'm not at all easy in my mind about that fact.

Find the artefact. Employ rigorous means. Do not fail.

-Lord Gortash

"Gortash?!?" Karlach spat incredulously. "That backstabbing little pissant is mixed up in all this? And he's a lord now?" She laughed bitterly. "Well at least killing him won't interfere with the mission, because it IS the mission!"

"The old half-elven warrior, the mysterious pale woman... and the handsome young nobleman." I recited the description of the Absolute's three Chosen. "Would you say that Gortash was 'handsome' and 'young'?, Karlach?"

"Handsome? Only if you find greasy little gits handso- all right, being fair, I suppose he could clean up if he put some effort into it. He's still not going to be put on stage as the star of a theatrical epic any time soon, though." Karlach snorted. "And young? Yeah, he was only a few years older than I was. By now he'd be only a little over thirty."

"What did you find, Wyll?"

"Notebook, apparently." he said, flipping through it. "Hang on... Elder Brain domination?"

"What?" Lae'zel said incredulously. "How would anyone possibly - it would take the power of a god to accomplish such a feat!"

We all eagerly leaned over to read the book for ourselves, and our blood ran cold at what we found.

Young Gortash's plan to enslave an illithid elder brain and make it our marionette under control of the Crown of Karsus has proceeded almost without flaw, barring the slight delay while our Bhaalist allies sorted out their leadership conflict. The weak point must surely be the sharing of the Netherstones - it was necessary to secure my engagement and that of the murder cult, but eventually it's certain to fracture our fragile alliance. Clearly, all three Netherstones must be controlled by a single leader - me, by preference - but not until after all the stakeholders have made their essential contribution. Gortash fears that, energised by the dark energies of the Crown, the brain we now call the Absolute will eventually metamorphose into something new and more difficult to control. If he's right, the need to invest the power of the Netherstones in a single wielder is urgent. Even more so in that Enver Gortash, at least, must be thinking the same way.

"The Crown of Karsus!" Gale said, awestruck. "You were right, Lae'zel - it would take a power beyond anything mortal to enslave an elder brain." He nodded. "And that's exactly what Gortash and Ketheric have obtained. When Karsus made his bid for godhood, several artefacts of that attempt survived his fall. I'm stuck with one of them right now." He thumped his chest. "And they apparently found another one of them - and the most powerful of them, at that."

"For the benefit of the person who fell off the planar turnip wagon last week, an 'elder brain' is...?" I embarassedly asked.

"The final evolution of the ghaik life cycle." Lae'zel explained. "They are the architects of the Grand Design, the leaders of ghaik colonies. They are gigantic creatures formed by the amalgamation of thousands of ghaik minds into one single organism, a near-godlike entity with vast psionic and mystic might." She looked at us, her expression one that we had virtually never seen on Lae'zel's face before - fear. "No elder brain has ever been destroyed by anything less than a githyanki army. If this Gortash and General Thorm somehow control one, then with its power they could crush any conceivable foe."

"And yet there's been a distinct lack of crushing recently." Karlach pointed out. "Except by more normal things like goblins, soldiers, and whatnot. Maybe their leash on it isn't as tight as we're afraid of."

"Then it would have already destroyed them for their impertinence!" Lae'zel insisted.

"I think we've already gotten a clue that they're struggling to control it." I realized, and tapped my belt pouch. "Specifically, how high a priority Gortash is placing on making sure they get ahold of the Astral Prism."

"Thorm's notes said that Gortash was afraid the Elder Brain would become more difficult to control." Gale agreed, and then exhaled heavily. "It's looking more and more as if Mystra were right."

"Would the Crown survive the explosion?" I thought out loud.

"The Orb certainly wouldn't." Gale answered. "As for the Crown..." his eyes opened in realization.

"Exactly." I said. "Either this has actually been Mystra just wanting the Crown of Karsus removed from play and everything else a secondary objective at best... at which point she was not being entirely truthful with you. Or else the Crown actually will survive the explosion and survive to plague Faerun yet again in the hands of a new master, at which point her plan is honestly well-meaning but flawed. Doesn't matter which, though, because either road leads to the same destination - please don't detonate the orb, we should try to find another way."

"Absolutely." Gale exhaled, his body going limp as all tension left it. "Oh thank- other people." he awkwardly trailed off. "I was really terrified of having to do that, I just couldn't not do it. If that makes any sense."

"Perfect sense." Wyll said agreeably.

"Shadowheart, what did you find in that chest?" I turned back to business. Our time was getting a bit short, after all.

"Nothing but keepsakes." she said quietly. "We should go - we should already have departed on our assigned task a while ago."

"You're right about that." I agreed, before I was struck by a thought. "Let's take all those moonlanterns with us, though - Z'Rell likely doesn't know exactly how many are left, and the fewer they have available the better." The remaining spare moonlanterns were all stuffed into our packs. A quick examination of them had produced the sad result that all of the pixies contained in these lanterns had already died, their light being preserved only by necromantic magic. Dolly Thrice had not been lying about her eventual fate if we hadn't released her. No wonder moonlanterns 'faded' with time.

"What are we doing about the prisoners?" Wyll asked as soon as we were across the bridge and back in Reithwin.

"Oh, we're getting them out before we go to try and find this Balthazar." I agreed. "But we're going to do so with a perfect alibi, because we just left the tower with the entire guard shift as witnesses. And Z'Rell won't be expecting us back for hours."

"So how do we-?" Wyll began, before trailing off. "Of course. We just go back in through the postern entrance from the outside."

"Exactly." I agreed. "But first we head back to Last Light. Jaheira needs to know everything we've found out about the real players behind the Absolute, and we're going to need a boat."

We dropped off everything we found, including most of the spare moonlanterns, and then got back on the water and headed downriver towards where the cove should be. It didn't take us very long to find it, and we crept as stealthily as we could from the passage from the hidden docks back down towards the dungeon.

"We can't leave any witnesses." I reminded everyone softly. "First thing first, we take out those patrolling arcane eyes."

It took some patience to finally have an arcane eye reach the end of its patrol circuit beneath where we observed quietly from the crack in the wall and none of the roving guards were close enough to see what was about to happen, but finally their irregular wanderings coincided. I reached out with my anti-magic and willed the arcane eye to stop, to short out, to go blind and dark. The magical armbands Lae'zel had looted from the dead githyanki inquisitor in Reithwin augmented a githyanki's natural minor psionics and allowed them to be used more often, so Gale didn't even have to use a spell to telekinetically pick up the "dead" orb and quietly toss it down into the chasm.

"Good job. Just one more.." Another short wait left the other patrolling eye in a similarily vulnerable position, and it was disposed of the same way.

"Three roving guards left, plus the warden in her office and the eye in her treasure room." Shadowheart noted softly. "And several more outside the dungeon at the foot of the stairs or working in the interrogation room, so we can't make any noise. If anyone hears anything and shouts an alarm, half the tower comes running down here." She swore. "If we only had a rogue! They're split up and unsuspicious, a few sneak attacks and they're all gone - but none of us are lightfooted enough to pull that off, not even me."

"So if stealth isn't an option, we try trickery instead. Shadowheart, have you got a casting of that disguise spell left?" I asked her.

"Yes. Whose face will I be wearing?" she turned to me.

"Z'Rell's. You won't even have to speak, just stand there and look like you're angry enough to kill someone. And then..." I explained the rest of the plan.

The roving guard we passed on our way to the warden's office looked mildly surprised to see us back on the dungeon floor when she hadn't noticed us enter the room, but the sight of 'Disciple Z'Rell' walking along with us and looking like she was in a very bad mood made her curiosity turn and flee for its life and tempted them to follow along after it. We ignored her and walked boldly into the warden's office, who snapped to attention at the sight of the 'Disciple'. Behind the guard's back I winked at both Wulbren and Lakrissa in their cells, and they smiled back at us.

As soon as we were in the warden's office I was barking orders, not giving her time to think. "Get those three idiots you call cellblock guards in here immediately. Our inspection earlier turned up an irregularity, and the Disciple wants to talk to them." I growled at her. She took one panicked look at 'Z'Rell' and immediately went to fetch her people.

"Disciple, I swear, all prisoners are present and accounted for." the warden was pleading. "We took a headcount just thirty minutes ago. If there's been anything-"

"Fall in." I demanded of the new arrivals, pointing at the open space in front of the warden's desk. "Right there. The Disciple needs to have a word with you lot."

"W-what word?" one of the guards asked nervously.

"Silence." Shadowheart intoned, and her spell came down and blanketed the entire office in a zone of magic through which not even a thunderclap could penetrate. Gale and Shadowheart couldn't spellcast while the silence was up but Wyll's warlock powers still worked, and he invoked his Repelling Blast to send the warden flying and prone. With the strongest opponent taken temporarily out of action, it was easy for us muscular sorts to batter her men unconscious and then concentrate on stabbing her to death. And, of course, there wasn't the slightest bit of noise to alarm anyone else on the lower level of the castle.

"Why did we only stab her?" Karlach asked after it was done.

"The warden would be expected to die in her office, so leaving her blood around doesn't raise any suspicions." I explained. "But these guards are supposed to have died out on the floor thanks to escaping prisoners who somehow got their cells open very very sneakily, so we can't have four corpses' worth of splatter in here." My stomach was mildly nauseous but my Oath not actually disturbed as we took the unconscious guards outside, finished them off, and then tossed their corpses down into the depths below as well. I was starting to work out that while my Oath felt very strongly about only doing things to the deserving, it was somewhat less particular about the how as opposed to the what.

Shadowheart, still wearing Z'Rell's face, went upstairs to distract the last arcane eye so I could disrupt it from behind, and then we tossed it down the chasm after its two fellows. Fortunately it wasn't capable of seeing downstairs into the warden's office from the top floor. I was pleased to see several scrolls and potions of invisibility among the magical loot in the pile of items confiscated from prisoners. With those items logged in and now stolen, I wouldn't have to use the riskier variant of this plan that involved assassinating our way to the main docks.

"Damn." Wyll swore as he went through the prisoner log. "Father's name isn't in here. Nor is Zevlor's. Nor is anyone's that sounds like they could be Mizora's asset. They weren't put in here and removed later, they were all sent to a separate facility who-knows-where."

"Well, Mizora can't fault you for not rescuing their asset if you never found them despite your best efforts." I tried to reassure him as we all politely decided not to further stoke worries about his father. "Perhaps she should have given you better directions. Or at least a name or a description."

"And that's what they're supposed to think happened." I explained to the two groups of grateful prisoners as we used the controls in the warden's office to open their cells. "The gnomes somehow mechanically hacked the lock of their cell-" Wulbren looked smug at the thought of doing that. "-and you all broke out, killed the guards and the warden, and then got out by using invisibility magic from the stash of confiscated items in the warden's treasure room. Meanwhile, we were never here."

"Here, take both of these boats." Karlach said as we ushered the survivors to the hidden auxiliary docks and gave them the remaining moonlanterns. "We won't need them to get out. Head up the river to Last Light Inn, you can't miss it underneath the giant protective dome. They'll be expecting you there."

After the prisoners were all safely away using both the old boat and the one we'd brought in, we warped out to the travelstone in Reithwin and headed to the cemetery on the north side of town. The 'Thorm Family Mausoleum' would be there, and when we'd most recently debriefed at Last Light Jaheira had raised an interesting possiblity that we'd overlooked. Specifically, that an artifact which was so important to Ketheric that he'd actually delay his attack on Baldur's Gate to make sure it was secure first was very likely to be the mysterious source of his immortality.

So we actually would be doing the mission that Z'Rell had assigned us after all... because either the artifact was what we're looking for, or else it wasn't and we'd need to maintain our cover long enough to go back into Moonrise again and keep searching. But we weren't even inside the mausoleum's front door before we yet again had a new factor enter the equation-

"What the literally hell are you doing here?" Karlach swore viciously, as we all stopped in shock at the sight of a certain personage casually leaning against the wall outside the mausoleum entrance.

"Our hero thought but of treasure ahead / Did not consider the peace of the dead / Through the dark he went creeping / And woke what was sleeping / A new grave they dug, which he himself fed." Raphael recited his poem with the most ornate of oratorical flourishes.

"A warning, and for free, even!" I raised a sarcastic eyebrow. "Don't tell us you're actually worried about our welfare."

"Merely protecting my... assets." Raphael replied smoothly. "Although I have grown a bit fond of you, perhaps. In my own way."

"Get off it." Karlach scoffed. "I'm pretty sure you don't even like your own reflection unless it's paying you off somehow."

Raphael sighed melodramatically, as if he were but a poor innocent forced to bear all the weight of the world - or at the very least was a bard on-stage who'd been cast in such a role. "It would be pointless of me to bar you from entering. But I can... set the scene, as it were. Prepare you for your role."

"Since I'm pretty sure even a god couldn't actually shut you up, you might as well keep talking." I yielded to the inevitable.

Raphael actually chuckled briefly at that before continuing onward. "Below us lies the Gauntlet of Shar. In times of old, a great temple for her worship as well as a challenge arena, painstakingly crafted for the final testing and reforging of her Dark Justiciars. But now this arena has become a stage, instead. A hushed theatre, deep down in the dark, upon which a great drama has suspended itself in time. Its actors languish there still, bereft of audience yet still mired in the languor of their long-tired scenes." His expression firmed and his voice filled with menace. "If you, however, through the dark go creeping and awake what is sleeping, then chances are that many more graves than yours alone will soon be fed."

"You're the one who came here wanting something from us, so you're the one who needs to actually provide some context." I flatly replied. "A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend and misleads more often than it achieves."

"Fair enough." Raphael nodded. "There is a creature that lurks in silence and shadow - a creature who, like me, is very much of the infernal persuasion. Should it make its way out through the very doors you are about to brazenly swing open, you'll have unleashed a pestilence upon this realm. In truth, it is carnage incarnate!" he declaimed dramatically. "So if you meet the devil of which I speak, kill it. Consider no other course of action!"

"Raphael." I crossed my arms and lifted a cynical eyebrow at him. "We saw the wreckage of infernal destruction in the Grymforge. You told me in our conversation at Last Light Inn that you had a 'very profitable' contract in this region decades ago. The head stonemason of Reithwin left behind a journal saying that he pacted with a devil to contract for the massacre of Thorm's Dark Justiciars. Now you show back up and tell me that an infernal juggernaut of some type is trapped below in an old temple for Dark Justiciars... and I'm not supposed to add all this up? So let me guess - the reason you made out so profitably on that contract is because you somehow stiffed your subcontractor. Who is still trapped below after a hundred years... and who, if we kill him for you, will never have to be paid his past-due wages."

Raphael dropped every single theatrical mannerism to just stare at me with an expressionless frustration, before recovering his affable demeanor with a visible effort. "As a reward for your sagacity, I'm not even going to deny anything that you just said." His smile turned cruel. "Because I don't have to. You have no way to your objective that doesn't involve getting past him, and if you don't kill him then he is most certainly going to kill you. After all, he is a remorseless engine of infernal slaughter and naught more. A blunt instrument of the lower planes as opposed to my more sophisticated approach. Ask Karlach what an 'orthon' is, if you don't believe me."

"Fuck!" she swore. "There's one of those trapped down there? Boss, for once this bastard's not lying - we are all very much deep in the shit if we can't take that thing, and murdering it from ambush is probably the only way we can. Because try to imagine a devil that's fifteen feet tall, hits like a storm giant, and could bounce siege artillery off its codpiece without blinking, and then make it meaner than a dwarven berserker that just got cheated out of a lifetime supply of free ale - and you're just about getting in the neighborhood. Even other devils didn't want to go near one of those things when they got turned loose on a battlefield."

"So yes, at best you will have the blink of an eye in which to strike." Raphael affirmed. "Please do try not to come to an ignominious defeat here. After all, the true climax of this grand drama that we are all caught up in awaits us in Baldur's Gate and not this dreary little backwater. And it would be such a shame if you were to miss your cue. Good luck!" And in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

"Is it too late to go back to Last Light and ask Isobel to bless us maybe a hundred gallons of holy water?" Karlach asked plaintively.

"If the orthon is trapped, then presumably there's a certain distance we have to step inside before it can actually reach us." Wyll said. "Let's see if we can find this 'Balthazar' first before we have to scout out the deeper sections."

"Perhaps this devil is the reason Balthazar went out of contact." Lae'zel observed.

"Shadowheart?" Gale asked. "Are you all right? You look distracted."

We all turned to realize that Shadowheart had not only not been contributing to this conversation, she'd wandered slightly away from us during it as if she weren't even paying attention. "What? Sorry, I just-" she sighed. "The Gauntlet of Shar is here?" Her shoulders slumped in resignation. "I just... thought I would have more time."

"What do you mean?" I asked, suddenly frightened to my marrow.

"I've... known for a while that there was an upcoming trial, a test, that I must face in the name of Lady Shar." Shadowheart said gravely, her face a mask surmounted by frightened eyes. "One that I-" she waved her hand angrily, as if banishing shadows. "One that I cannot avoid, or delay."

And my heart sank through my bootsoles as Isobel's words at Last Light echoed in my memory: "Shar's favorite device for cementing her followers' loyalty is to force them to do something that they will never forgive themselves for. Something that makes them believe that an eternal existence in the darkness is all that they deserve. I'm almost certain that Shadowheart is coming to such a crux point."

And I sighed inwardly at the irony of Shadowheart's words just now, because she was right.

I'd thought I would have more time as well.

---

Author's Note: And so we finally arrive at the Gauntlet of Shar. As all players of the game now, this is the big 'Point of No Return' for Act 2. Well, not right now, you can still go in the entrance and the upper levels. But once you start the final segment of the gauntlet, there's no going back.

You also get the dialogue with Raphael at the entrance, although you can't actually tell him you're wise to the whole gig in-game or get him to actually tell you that it's an orthon waiting for you down there.

Now I actually have to get my playthrough through the Gauntlet, because there's a whole lot to take note of here, I'm not going to try doing it all from memory, and Youtube only has a few of the cutscenes. So, updates may be slightly slower. But no worries, I know where this is going... I just want to make sure I dot all the I's and cross all the T's on the way there.

 

[cliffc999]

"We need to talk."

I confronted Shadowheart as soon as we were safely inside the well-lit mausoleum entrance. As soon as they realized where this conversation was going, the rest of the team hurriedly moved on ahead to check out the building and left us in privacy.

"You said you wouldn't pressure me!" she replied heatedly.

"I also said that I wouldn't lie to you." I insisted firmly. "And I think that also includes not standing back and letting you keep lying to yourself."

"That's not what's happening." She held my gaze but only with a visible effort, and her eyes were guilty and haunted.

"Shadowheart, it's as plain as anything that you don't want to do this. Shar is trying to force you beyond a point of no return, don't you see that? She's trying to trick you into cutting yourself off from everyone who actually cares about you!" I continued.

"Do you really think I don't already know that?!?" she shouted back at me. "After all the years I've spent being raised the way I was? The things they did to my memories? The lies you helped me discover?" She turned away and began pacing with vexation. "I know exactly what Lady Shar is doing to me here. The shadows know that I've helped do it to other people often enough." Her shoulders slumped and her lead lowered, and she continued on disgustedly. "You should just let me go, Hawke. Any light you think you see in me is just... wishful thinking! I am truly a child of shadow, just as Minthara named me. And if you don't cut yourself loose from me, then I'll only drag you down into darkness eternal."

"You never really believed Alfira and I were doing anything together, did you?" I finally realized. "You just seized on that opportunity and pretended you did. To try and force me to walk away from you, so you could end what was happening between us without having to admit the actual reason you wanted it to happen."

"Insufferable." Shadowheart sniffed, with the faintest echo of her old affection from our first loving conversation on that beach by the Grove. "But how can you be so insightful and yet so blind?"

"I'm not going to say that doing the right thing isn't harder for some people than it is for other people, that would be nonsense." I partially agreed. "I'm not even going to say that circumstances don't play a role. Sometimes people can be tormented, or forced, or driven, to a place where they simply have no good choices any longer. Where only madness and pain remains." My voice turned thick with the memory of Anders, and Bartrand, and even Meredith, Maker help me. "But even for those people there was always some point where they could still have turned back earlier. There was always a crossroads where they had to make that final choice - one step down into the darkness, or back towards the light." I waved my hand at the interior of the mausoleum. "That crossroads is now directly ahead of you... but it's still ahead of you. Why won't you turn back?"

"Isobel made the same offer." Shadowheart smiled sadly. "And she asked me the same question. And I'll give you the same answer I gave her - I have my reasons. And I don't want to share them."

"Do you believe it's impossible to get your soul back from her once you've committed to her worship? Is that the lie your goddess told you?" I shook my head. "We met the living proof of that lie just today! Even if Ketheric Thorm of all people is hardly an ethical role model he still committed fully to Shar, and yet he walks Faerun today serving Myrkul instead! You could still do the same, with any god or goddess of light you chose!"

Shadowheart looked briefly up at the ceiling, towards the same bearing of the compass where a moon would have been visible in the sky if we'd been at Last Light. "I can't."

"You won't." I countered.

"Can't, won't, there's not really much difference when your back is pressed this hard against the wall!" Shadowheart shouted. "Because you're wrong about me, Hawke. I've already passed my point of no return. There was a choice earlier that I could have not made, but I made it anyway." Tears started leaking from her eyes. "I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I did. And now all I can do is bear the consequences of that choice. Every consequence of that choice."

"What choice?" I begged her. "Tell me. If there is any way under the heavens I can make it not happen, I swear I will!"

"You can't." she said simply. "You never could."

"Turn back anyway." I pleaded. "Test if it's truly irreversible, or if Shar simply told you that it was-"

"No!" she almost shrieked. "I won't risk it! I can't! If I-" She outright cowered away from whatever horrible vision filled her eyes, turning away from me to wrap her arms around herself in a huddle of misery.

"Shadowheart-" I reached out to her.

"Please. Stop." she whispered, and I did. "I must assay the Gauntlet of Shar. I must pass the trials to become a Dark Justiciar and commit my soul fully into Lady Shar's keeping... or I must die trying." She drew upon the remnants of her pride, her will, to straighten up and fill her voice with despairing resolution. "These are the only choices left to me. All other alternatives are impossible."

Desolation was a curious emotion, a peaceful clarity that did not pressure, did not torment, but at the same time left one in a perpetual free-fall where action was impossible, where the will to escape did not exist. Perhaps this was the 'comfort of loss' that Shar promised, I snorted inwardly. But I supposed I was not truly desolate, for there was still one possible course of action that yet remained to me.

Not truly desolate yet, that is.

"Shadowheart... I told you what happened when I accompanied Merrill to Sundermount for the final time." I forced myself to speak the words. "And I told you why I went there with her."

"You did." she faced me fearlessly.

"And I'm coming with you through that Gauntlet. All the way to the very end." I continued.

"All right." Her expression was heartbreaking in its gentle acceptance.

"But you can still turn back. At any step before the very last one." I finished.

She shook her head gently, and then turned and strode into the building without another word.

"Nere - Z'Rell - Minthara - whoever you are, leave! I shall carry out General Thorm's will alone!" a querulous voice greeted us from a talking skull set on top of a small pile of bones just inside the inner doorway.

"It's been repeating that message every time we've gone near it." Gale greeted us. "Just a minor animation, a magical recording. Presumably that's Balthazar."

"He doesn't lack for confidence." I noted, and began looking around.

The Thorm family mausoleum had been a beautiful place once, but had been thoroughly desecrated again and again by the time we got there. Scattered bones and intact skeletons had been ripped loose from their graves and coffins and strewn about the chamber in piles of necromantic filth. A nearby shrine to Selune had been profaned and repurposed as an altar of sacrifice to Myrkul. A weathered journal carelessly discarded in a corner turned out to have been a diary that Ketheric Thorm had kept in his earlier life, that someone had recently brought here and then abandoned when it had served its purpose. It was a journal spanning many years, beginning with the birth of Thorm's daughter, but the tale of a happy and contented life faded away into a disjointed series of dateless entries, the spasmodic ventings of a man in despair:

How can she be gone? Where did she go? The Moonmaiden cannot be so unfeeling - so cruel. Not toward her most devoted servant. Not after Melodia.

It makes no sense. It makes no sense. I won't survive it. That much I know.

Forgetting is the only possibility. The embrace of oblivion. The reprieve of nothingness. It would not be possible for a man to survive knowing what he knows. Knowing what can be lost. Shar understands that. Hers is the only mercy I can comprehend. My mind is full of holes - yet not enough.

The emptiness.
The time.
The nothingness.

And still I remember. Still I remember it all.

There is no mercy in this beating heart.

There is no mercy in life at all.
------------
Forgetting evades me in this infinite darkness. Balthazar is my own source of the barest comfort - the thought that, perhaps, she might be brought back to me.


If oblivion can fail, what defence have we against death? None except its mastery.


Balthazar's words have never felt more promising.
------------
Melodia would understand, if she knew my aim. She too, I believe, would have turned to Myrkul under such conditions as these. Our darling will live again. What kind of man would I be if I didn't raze the world entire for her sake?

Shadowheart absorbed the tale of Ketheric Thorm's fall into despair and darkness without a change of expression. At my knowing look she simply looked back at me and shrugged, the bleakness in her own eyes not alleviated in the slightest.

"Look!" Wyll said, pointing at a grand coffin that stood open and empty. "Look at the nameplate!" We strode over and looked down, and I already knew what I would see.

Isobel Thorm. Faithful priestess, yet with faith unrewarded. Beloved daughter, yet taken too soon.

"Isobel?" Gale blinked in realization as the diary entries were confirmed. "Our Isobel! The priestess of Selune at Last Light!"

"Yes." I confirmed their speculations before they could make them. "She told me earlier, in confidence. Part of Ketheric Thorm's dark bargain was her restoration as well as his own."

"So that's who told you about the secret passage." Shadowheart said, her expression briefly animated - before it lapsed back into its firm Sharran mask. "I guess some people really do get second chances." She sighed. "Some people."

The mausoleum ended with a rear chamber that had a grand portrait of Ketheric Thorm surmounting an empty plinth where once a tomb had been. It turned out to be part of a puzzle - two other paintings in the chamber also commemorated events of Thorm's life, and the trick was to press the buttons visible under each painting in the correct chronological order. As soon as we pressed the button under the final painting, depicting Thorm as a Dark Justiciar triumphantly leading an army in Shar's name, a hidden door slid open and we progressed deeper into the complex.

"Wow." Karlach said, as we came out into a wide open shaft with an elaborate metal platform magically levitating in mid-air at the top of it. The architecture had shifted from the conventional marble aesthetic of the Thorm mausoleum to an elaborate blackstone majesty with gilded inlays - an architecture we'd seen before.

"This looks like the inner section of the Grymforge." I said. "We must be right above that temple complex we saw in the distance, the one we couldn't get to because the bridge had been destroyed."

"The Gauntlet of Shar." Shadowheart intoned hieratically. "Here. This Umbral Gem controls the platform." We all crowded onto it, and with a simple touch on the gem it slid smoothly down into the bowels of the Underdark.

The bottom of the shaft contained the wreckage of a long spiral stairway up that was presumably intended to be the way out if the platform broke, that some giant creature - the orthon, almost certainly - had shattered to rubble to prevent his prey from escaping. A single intact path led deeper into the Gauntlet. Ornate round plaques set on the floor spelled out a message:

Shar, Singer of Eternal Night. Protector of the lost and forgotten.
Cross from light into darkness. Give your life to the shadows.
Offer your pain to Shar's embrace. Hear the Nightsong.
The answer lies in darkness.

"The Nightsong?" Shadowheart broke her silence. "Isn't that what Aradin's group was looking for?"

"Yes. A mysterious artifact that some wizard in Baldur's Gate was offering a king's ransom in gold for. And a mysterious artifact lies at the end of this gauntlet that Ketheric Thorm wants back more than anything else, one that we think is the secret to his immortality." Gale thought out loud.

"And one of Shar's titles is 'The Nightsinger'." I reproved myself. "Nightsinger. Nightsong. I should have seen that one earlier."

"If Shar granted Ketheric his immortality but he's turned apostate to her, then how is he still walking around?!?" Wyll asked incredulously.

"The artifact is probably here on the mortal plane where she can't directly reach out to take it back, and the orthon is killing every servant she sends in here to retrieve it." I sighed. "You're really sure you want to go through with this?" I asked Shadowheart.

"Have you forgotten that stopping Ketheric is everyone's mission, not just mine?" she shot back, and we moved onward.

The last plaque on the floor was at the entrance to a circular chamber lit by eerie purple flames in magically lit braziers dangling from the ceiling, with a curtain of purple magic rippling in a tight circle around a raised plinth with an idol of Shar on top. Another one of those 'Umbral Gems' sat directly in front of the idol on a stand. There was a gap in the barrier, clearly intended to be walked through.

"Shar's warriors must not be caught, must not be tricked. Only loss awaits the unworthy." a woman's voice spoke to us from the idol.

"Lady Shar?" Shadowheart's voice quavered fearfully. "Did- did anyone else hear that?"

"Unfortunately, yes." I confirmed. "I'm assuming this is the challenge gauntlet?"

"The first challenge." Shadowheart agreed. "There will be more."

"So... deathtrap." Wyll said flatly.

"I could try a detection spell-" Gale began, only to cut off at Shadowheart's headshake.

"The Gauntlet is intended to be faced alone, by a worshipper of Shar of almost any profession." she said. "The solutions won't require anything else." Off our unspoken question she continued. "If Lady Shar had an objection to your accompanying me, we'd have heard it by now." She nodded towards the idol that the voice had emanated from. "But the puzzles here won't require teamwork or any one specific method for a solution."

'The answer lies in darkness' I quoted the final plaque. "So the solution is probably to douse those lights. Presumably there's switches for them concealed in this room somewhere, behind all sorts of traps and tricks... but we hopefully don't need to go to that extent. Wyll, you've barely cast any spells today so we'll use yours. Got one for darkness?"

"Easily." he agreed, and called upon his warlock powers to drown the room in an impenetrable gloom. We couldn't so much as see our own feet, let alone the remainder of the room... but we could clearly see two brilliant purple barriers around the idol in concentric rings, the one that was visible from the beginning and an outer one that hadn't been until we'd blocked off all light sources. The gap in the outer ring was set ninety degrees out of alignment with the one in the inner ring, so if you'd tried to walk directly towards the visible gap in the inner ring you'd have fried yourself on the outer one.

"Well, that lets us see the barriers but now we can't see anything else." Shadowheart groused. "Did you think this entirely through?"

"Actually, yes." I replied. "Wyll, drop the darkness, we don't need it anymore." The light returned, and only the inner barrier was visible now.

"So she does it from memory?" Karlach asked. "Umm... possible, I suppose, but if she puts a single foot wrong..."

I asked them to wait while I went back to the rubble at the bottom of the shaft and scooped several large handfuls of gravel into a pouch. Upon my return I simply cast a handful of gravel in the direction of the outer barrier... and sure enough, sparks shot out from mid-air as the gravel was repelled away by an invisible force. I handed the pouch to Shadowheart without a further word, and she rolled her eyes briefly as she easily negotiated the invisible maze of force simply by using the gravel to scout out the exact path ahead of her.

"There." she said, as her hand touched the Umbral Gem. Both barriers flared into visibility and deactivated, and the soft clicks of traps being deactivated echoed from all the corners of the room.

"That sounded like an entire army of crickets." Gale swore heatedly. "If we'd actually tried to walk around the perimeter of this room looking for the light switches-"

"Shar wishes the people taking this gauntlet to be cunning and avoid the most obvious path, and cares not about cheating." Lae'zel observed.

"That would fit." Shadowheart agreed. "Note to self; try lateral thinking on the other puzzles."

"Which way do we go?" I asked, as three passageways led away from where we'd just passed the test of darkness towards each cardinal point of the compass.

"All of them, likely." Shadowheart replied. "One way for each remaining trial, I would guess."

"And a big ugly killing machine of a devil potentially lurking around the corner of any one of them." Karlach muttered nervously.

"Valid point; we should find and deal with the greatest danger first before we get distracted by anything else." Wyll agreed. "The question is, where is it?"

"Two dangers." I pointed out. "If Balthazar hasn't been killed by the orthon yet, then that means he's found a place where it can't reach him. But he would definitely be attracted by all the noise we'd make fighting a monster that size... and have a clear shot at our wounded backs. Karlach, your nose is sensitized to it after all your infernal experiences - do you smell any brimstone? Even a hint?"

"Ventilation in here is too good." she said after walking around the room intently. "It doesn't even smell like we're underground, and I'm certainly not picking up any fumes."

"Picking the center corridor is tactically ill-advised." Lae'zel contributed. "Unless there are no further intersections of these paths up ahead, choosing it leaves us potentially vulnerable to being flanked from both left and right."

"So one of the two side passages." I shrugged. "Right, I suppose."

Right turned out to be a dead-end - it led up a short flight of stairs to a raised platform with an old tomb on it, suspended over the echoing depths of the giant Underdark cavern this whole temple complex seemed suspended over, but the paths leading onward from there had been entirely crumbled or smashed away. Without any further option we thus went back to the chamber of the darkness test and took the left path, which led to a similar raised platform and coffin with a similar 'everything was smashed' problem. However-

"See those giant mushrooms?" Wyll pointed at the Underdark fungi growing out of the nearby cave wall, like so many platforms. "I think if we leapt from one to the other, we could get over the remains of that wall and into some kind of chamber beyond."

"I can't imagine something the size of that orthon Karlach described playing mushroom hopscotch, so hopefully this is the path he didn't take." I agreed. "Let's go."

Several leaps and some scrambling brought us down another row of 'shelf fungi' into a cavern, where we were attacked by a giant monster that looked vaguely like a flying manta ray and which Gale later said was called a 'cloaker'. Fortunately he'd also known that they were essentially blind in bright light, so a simple Light cantrip rendered it essentially helpless to hurt us as we slaughtered it.

"There is a doorway over here." Lae'zel noted, where a pair of locked wooden doors were set into a proper stone wall and not a cave wall. It took only a little effort from Shadowheart to pick them open, and we stepped into the most out-of-place scene we'd never imagined in this unholy, eerie arena of darkness - a perfectly ordinary kitchen.

"Of course." Shadowheart noted. "We already knew that Thorm's Dark Justiciar army was barracked in an underground complex, in addition to the Gauntlet of Shar being present. This must be part of their residential quarters."

"Wait, the very same army that a certain big ugly devil slaughtered?" Karlach looked around. "Um... wouldn't that mean he did get in here?""

"No brimstone residue. No smashed architecture. No corpses." I noted. "Let's keep looking."

A search of the barracks complex produced only one corpse - an intact skeleton, propped up against the wall as if it were just sitting down to rest. An abandoned journal nearby told us of his fate, the last few entries written in a shaky, lopsided scrawl and smeared with blots of both ink and dried blood.

Lady Shar continues to preserve me, though escape is impossible. The beast still prowls our halls, though the sounds of battle no longer reach my ears. I fear all my brothers and sisters have fallen in defence of the Nightsinger's sacred Gauntlet. But I shall wait. The beast will not linger for long, surely.
------------
The beast still remains. Why does it not just leave? And why does it sing? The food is gone. I must preserve my strength.
------------
Mistress, embrace me. Please.

"So it couldn't get into this section of the complex. That means we're almost certainly getting closer to Balthazar." I noted.

"Darkness protect me." Shadowheart whispered. "He abandoned his duty, and died slowly in the dark... and that before his punishment truly began." She shuddered. "I don't even want to imagine what torment he's now enduring at Lady Shar's hands."

"So maybe don't rush to go down there yourself?" Karlach irrepressibly burst out, only to fall silent at Shadowheart's glare.

"Let her think." I quietly requested. "She already knows how we all feel... and how much we'd miss her."

Past the barracks section was a large room outfitted as a temple of Shar. A squad of undead skeletons, armored and with weapons of quality, stood sentry around the perimeter. Alerted to our presence by some eerie sense, the nearest one turned to look directly at us almost as soon as we entered the room.

"You prowl my battleground - why? Are you friend? Foe? Thieving scavenger?" the skeleton boomed in an unearthly hollow voice, as its fellows drew close around us. And then suddenly my vision shifted, and I found myself imagining that I was inside a dead skull - a dead, putrid skull that somehow hosted a tadpole amongst a large lump of maggots. Another presence lurked within, manipulating the corpse from afar like a puppet-

"Ah. A friend - an uninvited friend. I did not request help!" the skeleton hissed.

"Balthazar?" I deduced. "Disciple Z'Rell sent us as a retrieval team when the arcane eye with you lost contact."

"Did she now? Then enter, if you must. I will see if I have any use for you-" Balthazar replied through his puppet, before being interrupted by a sudden earthquake. The floor shook beneath us mightily, and we were all barely able to keep our footing.

"Stinking pile of ogre afterbirth! The quakes herald the shadows - they've found me!" he cursed, and pools of darkness welled up suddenly in all the corners of the room. Shadowy figures rose up from the pools - figures that coalesced into the shape of humanoid silouhettes wearing the armor of Shar's Dark Justiciars.

"Skulking puppet of Myrkul!" one of the figures hissed. "The Dark Lady will not suffer intruders!"

"Everyone, go right!" I called, and we left the other half of the room to Balthazar's skeleton soldiers as we swung wide out to flank the attacking shades from behind. I threw a cleansing disrupt at the nearest pool of shadow as we drew near it, and it popped like a soap bubble. Shadowheart's Guiding Bolt spell leapt forth and flew across the room to strike the shadow pool in the far corner, burning it away as well with its radiant energies.

Gale started to cast his Fireball, only to break off at my curt order. "Save your spells." I said under my breath. "Let them wear Balthazar's soldiers down while we make it look good." I raised my voice. "Do your best to hold the line! I'm going to take my team around the perimeter and try to close the shadow portals!"

"Fine, but don't dither about needlessly! Do you have any idea how much it costs to animate these?" Balthazar shouted back. The fight between Shar's shadow-soldiers and Balthazar's skeletons was going fairly evenly, so they actually managed to hold out with only half their number lost while we sandbagged the process of laboriously closing the portals one by one and dealing with a few scattered shadows ourselves on the way. A second wave of portals didn't even have time to disorge any undead, as our own efforts harmonized with a volley of fire arrows from Balthazar's remaining troops to disrupt them as they materialized. Finally, the tremors and the shadows faded.

"Adequate performance... I suppose." Balthazar scoffed via one of his remaining puppets. "Very well, come on in."

The large round portal behind the altar opened wide, to reveal a private chamber that had clearly been repurposed as a necromancer's laboratory. Balthazar was a corpulent figure in an elaborate robe, his gray scarred flesh clearly revealing him to be fully as undead as any of his animated minions. The amulet of a worshipper of Myrkul was prominent on his breast, and a brief mental probe revealed him to be clean of any tadpole - even if he could clearly still communicate with the illithid mental network via the necromantically sustained tadpoles implanted in the undead minions he was magically controlling. Allowing him much of the benefits but without exposing him to any of the risks. Several unarmed ghouls lurched slowly around the chamber, clearly being used as menial servants, while a giant misshapen monstrosity type loomed menacingly to the side of Balthazar like an observant bodyguard. The thing was the size of an ogre, but even thicker-

"Flesh golem." Gale murmured to me. "Don't get punched or grabbed by it. Dumb as a post, but horrifically strong."

"Ah, the interlopers." Balthazar replied in his own voice, a majestic resonant bass. "And in one piece as well. Not an entirely unpromising group of specimens, for those naturally-born. Not just any True Souls would have succeeded in following my path through this place. You should be pleased." he complimented us with a smooth insincerity.

"Balthazar?" I asked again. "Disciple Z'Rell sent us. She thinks you're in danger of failing the mission."

"Rubbish!" Balthazar snorted. "Everything is entirely in hand here. Z'Rell merely envies the General's faith in me. I am not trapped, I am in the midst of a grand strategy." He sighed wearily. "But you are here now, so I suppose I might as well put those limbs to work. You do know what's at stake here, I hope?"

"Z'Rell said you were tasked with finding a relic. That's all she knew." I replied.

"Of course that's all she knew." he said scornfully. "Such a devoted little follower she is - and naught more. But yes, recovering the relic is the crux of it. General Thorm has commanded it and I, his humble servant, leap to fulfill that command." He looked at us narrowly. "While you, his infinitely more humble servants, fulfill my command. I will put you to work - as scouts."

"Scouting for what?" I insisted. "We can't find anything, or even any clues to anything, without having some idea of what we're going for." I judged his reaction carefully and risked a minor push to his pride. "Is this relic even that important, or is it just a convenience for the General?"

"Not impor- you ignorant imbecile!" Balthazar replied heatedly. "The relic is what lends the General his strength, his... protection. It must be recovered, before his enemies attempt to exploit it. Now do you understand how vital this task is - and how dearly you will be punished if your ineptitude leads to failure?"

My heart leapt inwardly with the confirmation that we were on the right track - the secret of Thorm's immortality was here! And despite all my fear of what potentially awaited Shadowheart at the end of the Gauntlet part of me was still eager to retrieve this artifact and get one step closer to defeating the Absolute.

Close the door and lock it. I whispered mentally to Lae'zel, and she smoothly moved to do as I bid. Everyone else, get ready-

"Thank you." I said to Balthazar politely. "That's everything I needed to know."

And then I dropped the most powerful cleansing smite I could manage on the flesh golem, seeking to disrupt whatever magical forces animated it to life, and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. The spirit trapped inside eagerly leapt free as my templar anti-magic snapped the bonds of its flesh cage, and the golem fell to the floor as an inanimate lump of meat burning with spiritual fire as the spirit vanished into whatever mysterious ether it had been summoned from. Another one of Shadowheart's Guiding Bolts slammed into Balthazar, burning his undead flesh with its radiant energy and making him more vulnerable to Wyll and Karlach's rush to melee him. Gale smashed two ghouls into immobile pulp with a Thunderwave while Lae'zel beheaded a third. By the time I could even draw my blade Balthazar had already been hacked to pieces.

"Stack up on the door, we've got to deal with the ones outside." I ordered, and we all tensed up and readied for battle... and then relaxed as the door opened to reveal inanimate skeletons laying all over the floor. Apparently whatever had been animating them had been dispelled with Balthazar's death.

"One down, one to go." I said. "Let's search the room."

"Soul cage research." Gale mused, paging through one of Balthazar's many notebooks. "This is about some type of necromantic construct - a way to enable life force transfer between two beings, at least one of them unwilling. The diagram is of one being being wounded, but the other one - the caged one - bleeding..." He shuddered. "Thorm's immortality is parasitic? Some other creature somewhere is being tormented every time he dies? But then how do they not die?"

"Some monsters regenerate some types of damage, like trolls." Wyll said. "But no, then killing Ketheric would be as easy as using enough fire arrows. I don't know of any type of monster that regenerates everything."

"Nor I." Gale agreed.

"Here's a map!" Shadowheart said eagerly. "Or, well, at least the start of a map. Everything Balthazar had managed to learn exploring this ruin himself... which certaily wasn't all of it, but still more than we had to go on."

Only several of the notes were even legible to us, Balthazar's handwriting being so execrable that it was only partially decipherable. At least the diagrams were useful.

Intact wing - proving grounds?
Ruined wing - something present there. Strange sounds reported.
Rats. Why so many damnable rats???

"Ruined wing. So that's where big ugly is hiding." Karlach said worriedly.

"But according to this map, the proving grounds are over here and wide open." Shadowheart said. "I don't think we even have to go through the ruined wing at all. Why would Raphael tell us we had to- I'm such a fool." She facepalmed. "He said that because he wanted us to go kill him when we didn't need to."

"And all for free." Karlach nodded. "Devils. If they're breathing, then they're cheating you somehow."

"To the proving grounds, then." Lae'zel sniffed disdainfully. "Let the devil languish."

After briefly pausing to loot the nearby treasury room adjacent to the barracks we moved on, coming to another three-way intersection that led back the way we came, across the complex to the 'ruined wing' where Balthazar's map said the orthon lay in wait, and deeper into the complex. The surprising sight of a Netherese travelstone set into one wall greeted us at the intersection. A wall plaque hung at the top of a straight set of stairs leading down further into the complex.

Brave the Gauntlet of Lady Shar. Test body, mind, and spirit with her Trials. Glory awaits the few who succeed.

We headed down a straight set of stairs into the intact wing labelled 'proving grounds'. It was a walkway overlooking a giant pit to the right, with a massive statue of Shar that was easily the size of a small building rising up from the floor of the pit several stories below us. A ninety-degree bend was just barely visible in the distance, as the walkway turned to follow the far edge of the pit. Two doors led off the walkway to the left side. Another idol of Shar, this one man-sized, stood to our right on a plinth at the edge of the walkway.

"Nothing of value comes easily. Overcome my Trials, and win my embrace." the idol spoke with Shar's voice.

A book lay nearby as if it were an omen, its title clearly visible - "The Gauntlet of Shar". It's text chilled our blood with its simple message.

The Gauntlet of Shar, from where an army of Dark Justiciars shall rise, and join battle against those who shun her embrace.

It is said that the name of this most sacred of sites has two meanings - firstly, it is a series of trials that Lady Shar's initiates must surpass if they are to join her most vaunted ranks. Secondly, it represents the most martial facet of the Nightsinger's embrace - the armoured fist that shall crush her foes, but gently cradle those who serve her.

Initiates cannot advance to Lady Shar's final test until they have earned the right of passage. Each trial shall yield an umbral gem. Each gem shall bring the victor closer to the Nightsinger.

Once the way is clear, the final sacrifice beckons, and spilled Selunite blood shall herald the rise of a new Dark Justiciar.

"Human sacrifice." I said, appalled, and to her credit Shadowheart's expression looked as sickened as I felt. "You simply cannot go through with this! Not to that horrid an extreme!"

"We have to reach the Nightsong." was Shadowheart's only reply, and in grim silence we moved to the first door. Her Most Vaunted Treasure read the inscription.

A sacrifical bowl and altar awaited us, with four barred gates set into the opposite wall.

"The Soft-Step Trial." Shadowheart said. "I recognize this from my studies - it was a trial of stealth. Lady Shar praises those who can remain discreet as they do her work. 'To be unseen is to be welcome everywhere.'" she quoted. Unhesitatingly she drew forth a dagger and nicked the back of her hand, allowing the drops of her blood to fall into the bowl. The gates opened, and we could hear the sounds of unseen creatures moving about within.

"I have to reach the far end of the gauntlet without being spotted by any of those shadow-sentinels. Wait here." Shadowheart insisted, and then she channeled her divine power to somehow meld with the shadows and slipped into the maze. We all spent a very few tense minutes until Shadowheart suddenly was teleported back to us, an Umbral Gem glowing in her hands.

"Done." she said simply. "Let's move on."

Her Most Hallowed Mercy read the inscription on the second door.

"Shit." I swore meaningfully, and took point as we threw open the door. None of us even wanted to imagine what twisted sickness would be called 'mercy' in the mind of Shar.

"The Self-Same Trial." Shadowheart said, after briefly studying the sacrificial bowl and altar at the start of this trial. "It's going to conjure a shadow-doppelganger of everyone in the arena, and we'll all have to defeat ourselves. This trial tests not only combat skills, but your awareness of your own weaknesses."

"Right, on this one we're going to cheat as hard as we can." I decided. "Everybody back outside the room except Shadowheart. You trigger the start while you're alone in here, and then as soon as your doppelganger manifests - by itself - you call us in and we all beat it down as a group."

The exterior door locked as soon as Shadowheart started the trial, so we abandoned her attempt - and then restarted a new one after jamming the door lock open with a dagger blade first. That let us sneak back in after the trial had started and we passed it readily enough once we'd sufficiently stacked the odds in our favor. Shadowheart had even had the idea of stacking the odds further by letting us hold her weapons for her while we waited outside, forcing her shadow-double to manifest unarmed. After collecting another Umbral Gem as a reward we moved on.

The walkway curved and went down and around several bends of stairs, culminating in another walkway directly underneath the first one and overlooking the bottom of the statue and the pit it was set in. Our noses wrinkled in disgust at the sight of piles of bones and rotting flesh in the pit, where someone had tossed any number of corpses down there as if it were an oubliette.

Her Most Sacred Path read the inscription on the third door. Inside lay what Shadowheart said was 'The Faith-Leap Trial', where a winding invisible pathway over a vast chasm of death awaited and the postulant would have to walk it from memory alone, after having studied the diagram at the start.

"No." Gale said flatly, before rummaging in his pack. "These hoops she wants you to jump through are just getting far too ridiculous. Now where did I- ah, here we are." He withdrew a flask. "Flying potion. Looted it from that stockpile in Balthazar's lab down here. Bottoms up!" he handed it to Shadowheart with a grin.

With the barest trace of a smile she offered her blood to the sacrificial bowl to start the trial, then quaffed the potion and flew easily across the chasm to land on the platform on the far side of the room and claim the Umbral Gem there. The magics of the Gauntlet teleported her back to us, and we left this trial behind.

"Three down." I said. "How many to go?"

"I'm not sure." she replied. "I feel this sense of... completion. As if I'm almost there. But there's still something missing..."

"Well, there's still that last room at the end of the hallway."

The last room turned out to be something called 'The Library of Silence', which was not so much metaphorical as literal given that there was a magical field encompassing the entire library that wrapped it in a permanent Silence spell.

"And I thought that last trial was ridiculous." Gale rolled his eyes. "I grant that it's only courteous to be quiet in a library, but there's such a thing as going to too far an extreme!"

"There is one of those shadow-portals in there," Lae'zel said as we peered in the open doorway. "And many shadow creatures like the ones we fought outside Balthazar's room. If we entered in there, we would have to fight them all without our spellcasting."

"How on Faerun is one lone challenger supposed to defeat all those undead by themselves?" Wyll asked incredulously.

"I think I know." I said, and immediately stepped into the silence field. The nearest several shadows rushed at me, and I stepped right back out the door... and they stopped and turned away as soon as I left the library.

"It can't be that simple." Karlach groaned.

"Bait them to the door one at a time, then kill them one at a time. Step back outside whenever you need a breather." I decided. "Shar set this challenge up to weed out people who were too bold - it's teaching a lesson of 'divide and conquer'."

As it turned out the actual solution to the puzzle was to simply dispel the shadow portal by casting a spell in through the door, because that also dispelled the silence field. But our solution of baiting the shadows close enough to the doorway bottleneck one at a time and then shooting them down from there also worked, and eventually we were free to explore the library.

"Agh!" I yelled as yet another bookshelf set me on fire. "All right, let's just assume everything is trapped in here!" I groused as Shadowheart healed me. Because every time so far we'd tried to get a book down, something had bit us.

"We need to stop touching things ourselves." Gale agreed, and eventually we managed to painstakingly minesweep the room with lavish abuse of Mage Hand cantrips. Which we normally didn't use as they were slow and awkward to control, but they were certainly cheaper than healing magic. The puzzle guarding the sealed room at the end of the library took us a lot of trial and error to figure out, but eventually we got it open.

"There's no gem in here." Gale said, as we explored the locked cage of treasures at the far end of the library. "Just this set of weapons and armor."

The armor was elaborately finished yet simply decorated - a suit of half-plate and a helmet, both bearing the insignia of a Dark Justiciar. Next to it was a spear of some unknown dark metal, radiating an eerie menace. It was as if someone had solidified a very chunk of the starless night sky.

"Let me guess." I said cynically. "They even called it 'The Spear of Night.'"

"They did." Shadowheart said, her voice taut with a nameless fear. "There's- here, read it." She put the small note she'd found at the foot of the pedestal holding up the spair down on a table and let us read it. "The Final Sacrifice of the Moon Daughter" it was titled, and there were only two short paragraphs of text.

It is said that the sacred spear was once wielded by the Nightsinger herself, and now awaits her chosen champion. The elders have placed it in a secret place, safe until its intended wielder discovers it. With it in hand, a final sacrifice can be made at last, and the foul moon with Selûne shall weep bitter tears and forsake her misguided followers.

But let no ambitious of the night be tempted to seize the spear for themselves, unbidden, for they shall find it an inert bauble, stripped of its holy purpose. Let all of Lady Shar's children be honoured to protect the sacred instrument. When the time comes, they shall know they aided the progress of Lady Shar's destined warrior, and helped usher in a return to the endless ecstasy of oblivion.

With a tear leaking from the corner of her eye, Shadowheart reached up and lifted the spear from the pedestal. It came free without the slightest hesitation, and hummed quietly in her grasp.

"It's me." she said softly, as she stared down at the weapon in her hands. "I'm the 'destined warrior' this was waiting for, all this time." She looked up at me, her face calm, her voice even. "Now do you understand, Hawke? Think - the Gauntlet has lain undisturbed for at least a century. This has all been waiting for me here since decades before I was even born! Lady Shar has intended this all along, well before either of us got to choose anything." She looked down at the Spear of Night, and back up to meet my eyes without hesitation. "You can't save me from this. You never could."

"No." I agreed, unable to deny the truth in her words, in the evidence of this damn prophecy that had been waiting here for so long. "I can't."

"You don't have to come with me." she offered.

"I really think I do." I answered her.

She exhaled heavily, knowing what I truly meant. "Sometimes I swear that your Oath is crueler to you than Lady Shar has been to me." She turned away, and her voice turned acid with sarcasm. "But as if we didn't have enough depressing news at present, I have an even more disappointing statement to make."

"I doubt that is possible." Lae'zel said firmly.

"We only have three umbral gems. Someone took the fourth one from here before we arrived, and we need all four to open the way to the final trial. And given that we've entirely explored the wing of trials, there's only one place left it could be." Shadowheart replied.

We all involuntarily looked up and away, as if we could see across the complex to where the 'ruined wing' had been on Balthazar's map - to where the infernal killing machine known as the 'orthon' was waiting.

"Son of a bitch!" I swore heatedly. "Raphael wasn't lying after all."

---

Author's Note: And so the Gauntlet continues, and we see more of what Shadowheart is thinking - and hear more of what Shar's been telling her. Whether or not Shar felt obligated to be entirely truthful is of course another question entirely. *g*

But we still have at least one chapter to go before we reach the end of the Gauntlet of Shar, so stay tuned! More shall be revealed!

BTW, you actually can cheese the Self-Same Trial simply by having everybody else out of the room at the time the trial is started with the sacrifice bowl. You have to pick the lock on the door from the outside to get the party back inside, though - opening the door from the inside aborts the trial. Likewise, the 'remove your gear first' trick works. Likewise, the Faith-Leap Trial can be trivially cheesed by flying or even really long jumping, as there's ledges spotted down the room you can go from. The Soft-Step Trial is actually the hardest one to cheat, although since you are allowed multiple retries you can eventually brute-force the ideal route and timing.

 

[cliffc999]

"We need to talk."

I'd spoken these words only several hours ago, to the woman I loved. Now I was speaking them to a devil - and not just any devil, but one savage enough to sleep on a bed of bones made from the stacked corpses of his victims, one who stood as tall as a giant and was twice as strong. The orthon was at least half as wide as he was tall, skin as red as dusk, wearing a menacing helmet made out of bones and with eyes that glowed like white-hot steel.

"Talk? Talk?" the orthon snorted contemptuously, as it menaced me at the point of an infernal crossbow sized for a giant, the tip of the loaded bolt already glowing with hellfire. "I don't talk to prey. You were mad to come here alone, little rabbit." It's head lifted up and looked briefly away, down the passage that I'd come. "I can smell your friends lurking up there. You actually dare to call this pathetic effort of yours an ambush? They are far too distant to reach me in time. No, this is an ambush."

A dozen other devils, deathly silent and masked like assassins, all faded into view from where they'd apparently been hiding under invisibility magic while a strange creature built like a giant panther but with tentacles sprouting from its back loomed out of the shadows barely a leap away from my throat. The orthon was standing on an elevated platform overlooking the ruined chamber that I'd entered, and his subordinate devils were arranged all around the rim with me caught directly in a crossfire from multiple angles. If my odds of survival had been problematic before, they were now essentially nonexistent.

"No, if we start fighting their orders are to run for the surface." And pay Withers to resurrect me immediately. I mentally added. It was only that level of precaution that had let me dare to risk this gambit at all.

"What, are you attempting to bargain?" The orthon laughed mockingly. "A warlord of Kara-Tur once tried the same! I made him watch while I ate his concubines and young, and then I fashioned a codpiece from his skull!" I mentally noted that he must have been very bored after being trapped down here for a century, which is almost certainly why he was spending this much time talking before shooting. Usually only amateurs did that, and if the sheer number of corpses this ruin had been littered with was any clue this devil was far from an amateur at killing.

"The devil who I'm certain cheated you tried to trick me into cleaning up after him." I said hurriedly, because his tolerance could literally run out at any second. "But I don't want to be played off like that, so now I'm talking to you."

The orthon's face morphed from sadistic amusement into pure rage, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, concentrating. "Yes, there is something else almost hidden by your fear stink... cherries, musk... and sulphur. RAPHAEL! I can smell him all over you! WHERE IS HE?!?"

"Lurking around watching safely from a distance where neither of us can find him, waiting for his little shadowplay to come off on schedule." I replied matter-of-factly. "Which is exactly why I want to ruin that schedule. He is no friend of mine."

The orthon growled so loudly I swore the walls shook. "You are correct. That perfumed trickster swindled me... trapped me!"

"How?" I asked. "The way to the surface is physically open... so was the Underdark route, before you closed it."

"It's not just walls that keep me here. Not traps, not the dark, not the creatures it hides. I am bound by the terms of my contract with Raphael. But I fulfilled them, yet the contract refuses to close! Why does it say that I have yet to finish? Why am I not free?!?" he roared in frustration.

"I was wondering how he could cheat you without the infernal breach of contract penalties backlashing on him." I nodded. "Right, cards on the table. You need to be freed from the trap that holds you here. I need the Umbral Gem I can see laying by your... throne... right over there." I looked away from the pile of rotting flesh and bone I'd noted and back to the devil. "So if I help you get free, you go back to the Hells in peace - for today." I added hurriedly. "And give the gem to me."

"I have been trapped here for a century, and my name has been feared in the Hells for many centuries more. What makes you, an insignificant mortal, think you can possibly outwit Raphael where I have failed?" the orthon sneered.

"Because whatever contract trickery he used on you was tailored to you, and the patterns in which you think." I pointed out. "And as you said, you're an old and powerful devil and I'm a relatively ordinary mortal. We don't think remotely alike and we couldn't possibly if we tried."

"Hmm." the orthon was taken aback for the first time in our conversation, and his crossbow lowered. "That's... a very good point." he reluctantly admitted. "Very well, I will let you know the terms of the contract, and you will hopefully - for your sake as well as mine - spot the loophole." And then, incredibly, he began to sing.

Spill all the blood sworn to the night.
Silence all prayers; smother each rite.
Wander Shar's halls; hungry to slay.
Leave no Justiciar alive to obey.
Leave none to hear it, then be set free.
This song is your oath, swear, swear it to me.

I marveled at how Raphael had made a contract out of six simple sentences when Mizora used her pages and pages and pages of impenetrable legalese, and yet had still trapped this devil for a century. And then he put it in song format, apparently just to troll his victim. We were really going to have to watch our step with that son-of-a-bitch...

"All right, I can readily spot two ways this contract can possibly be incomplete... and I really hope it's the first one, because you are screwed if it's the second one." I said readily.

"I can smell when a human lies." the orthon growled. "There's always that little stink of anxiety, no matter how good they are at keeping their faces straight." His eyes narrowed at me curiously. "But you're not lying. Two traps in the contract? How? This is the simplest contract imaginable!"

"Starting with the worst possibility - 'Leave none to hear it, then be set free.'" I recited. "First off, it doesn't specify what 'it' is, except that 'it' is obviously a sound of some type, so it could be any one of several things. The sounds of your battle, the cries and screams of the Justiciars, possibly even the song itself. The problem is that 'leave none alive' is also ambiguously worded. You were intended to assume that it meant 'leave no Justiciar alive', except the different phrasing is used just in the previous sentence so it actually doesn't mean that. Which means if Raphael is being a particular bastard at the interpretation you'd have to kill not only all the Justiciars but also all your own minions... and quite possibly yourself." I held up a hand. "So before we even think about testing that possibility let's explore the other one." I finished hurriedly.

"Unbelievable." the orthon said, his jaw almost agape. "To fit so much deception into a mere phrase... Raphael has much to answer for." He shook his head as if shooing away an annoying fly. "You have proven yourself of respectable wit, human, so I give you the honor of knowing my name. I am Yurgir."

"I am Hawke." I returned his courtesy. "And the second possible trap is even simpler - at least one Justiciar is still alive, or has escaped here."

"That is most unlikely." Yurgir said grimly. "My contract binds me only to slay all Justiciars within Shar's halls - if any of them successfully fled the complex, they were not covered by the contract. That question I thought to ask Raphael at the time of our original negotiation, even if I now see I should have asked others as well. Furthermore, very few mortals live a century."

"Then if this is why the contract still binds you, at least one of them has to still be in here - and in a condition where they still count as 'alive', which none of the undead around here qualify as." I thought. "Raphael said he was 'profiting richly' from this gambit. Tell me if you would - is Raphael profiting by your absence in Hell? Are there things you're not free to attend to, that he can help himself to?"

"Only matters of slaughter, of carnage and the Blood War." Yurgir nodded. "Things very far removed from Raphael's sphere of interests." And then his brows furrowed and his voice grew thick with rage. "But there is a vast potential profit waiting for that bastard, now that you prompt my thought - me."

"The breach of contract penalty for you is that you become his servant?" I thought out loud.

"His slave." Yurgir spat. "I must remain here until the contract no longer binds me, for if I leave here prematurely in any fashion - even by death - then I will arrive in Hell with his chains upon me forever."

"No wonder he tried to manipulate us into killing you." I said, rubbing my chin. "All right, I'm thinking now that it's probably that at least one Justiciar is still hiding out in here somehow, rather than the suicide trap. Because while that one would also play right into Raphael's hands he'd need you to actually do it before he could collect his hoped-for prize - which means if that was what he was intending then he'd have made sure you found out how you were trapped and that death was your only escape as soon as possible. Because as you said, it's been a century by now. And I already know he's starting to get impatient - that's why we're here. So if he hasn't already sent you the clue, then that's not the clue. And I know he didn't prompt me with it, and it's a bit of a stretch that he'd figure I could work all this out on my own-"

"Raphael, ever assume that anyone could outwit him at anything?" Yurgir snorted. "You should sooner expect charity from a duergar. No, whatever scheme he is weaving would presume that you were too dull to spot a trap in his words, not that you would be too clever to miss one."

"So it's the hideout possibility, almost certainly." I agreed.

"But how could one possibly be hiding from me? I have searched this complex ceaselessly for a century! How could they conceal themselves from my keenest senses?!? How would they not age, how would they eat, how would they drink?" Yurgir fumed. "It is inconceivable!"

Suddenly a mental image occurred to me - one that was entirely in keeping with Raphael's style, or at least as much of it as I was slowly beginning to learn from my observations of him. "I found the remains of one Dark Justiciar that you'd never caught, huddled in a corner on the opposite side of this complex and unable to leave the barracks he was trapped in until he starved to death. And now I'm imagining that somewhere there might have been another one cowardly enough to want to flee and hide from you... only this one just happened to meet a devil who took advantage of his desperation, and sold him a hiding place. One that would keep him alive and safe down here almost indefinitely." I thought out loud.

"HE WOULD DO THAT!" Yurgir raged. "Of course he would! That lying two-faced copper-pinching-!" I took a step back in alarm as he appeared about to launch into a berserk rage... and then my alarm grew at how swiftly he forced his rage to channel into a quiet, cold menace instead. "You will find this oh-so-clever holdout for me, Hawke. And you will slay him."

"We'll get right on that." I promised quickly.

"And do not even think of trying to flee back to the surface with your task incomplete." Yurgir growled. "I may be trapped here, but my merregons are not. Nor are any other devils I could potentially send them to go contact. You would never know a peaceful night's rest again, and when I finally returned to Hell, one way or another - then your soul would forever be mine."

"Understood!" I smiled brightly through my growing misapprehension, and fled back up the passage to the others while I was still alive.

"Good news is, I didn't get killed by the orthon and he's perfectly willing to give us the last Umbral Gem - which he definitely has, I saw it - as soon as we help him escape Raphael's trap." My smile faded. "Bad news is, we have to find a Dark Justiciar somewhere in this entire warren who's been successfully hiding from our new devil acquaintance for the entire past century without a trace. Or else they have us hunted down and killed by every infernal contact who owes them one."

"Our hero." Karlach couldn't help but snark. "Great job figuring there, boss. Now we're caught between two powerful devils, and they both want to mangle us if we put a single toe wrong."

"Would you rather be fighting an orthon and his entire squad of merregons to the death right now?" I retorted. "In a basement, no less?"

"Under those circumstances I think Hawke really did the best he could." Wyll said quickly, and Gale and Lae'zel nodded vigorously.

"That's bad, I take it?" Shadowheart asked.

"On a scale of one to fighting that Grymforge golem without the drop hammer, it would be approximately a 9." Gale replied briskly.

After I outlined the problem in detail, we began an immediate strategy huddle.

"Right, so let's try and figure out where this holdout is hiding and how... using our brains, preferably, because Yurgir's been physically tearing up every corner of this complex for a century and getting nowhere." Shadowheart said. "First off, our target has to still be alive. Which means they survived in here for a century without dying of old age or needing any supplies."

"Could they be petrified? Like the spectator statues?" Karlach asked.

"That might be it, but it's a bit risky." Wyll said. "Raphael's plot fails if the Justiciar dies by any means, and who's to say that a frustrated orthon with too much time on his hands wouldn't go vandalizing random statuary just to vent his frustration and thus one day free himself just by sheer happenstance? Gods know he's been harsh enough on the rest of the architecture around here. Raphael clearly prides himself on artistry - he'd want a trap that didn't rely on luck to succeed."

"Granting our friend some type of magic that lets him tuck himself away in an extradimensional space?" Gale theorized.

"Would that not not count as their leaving the temple area?" Lae'zel poked a hole in that one. "Which would relieve the devil of his obligation to slay that particular quarry. Perhaps a permanent invisibility?"

"Not with Yurgir's sense of smell as keen it is." I shook my head. "Plus, it doesn't solve the supply problem or the aging problem."

"So something he can't see or smell or hear, that also doesn't need to eat or drink and doesn't grow old?" Karlach said. "What, are they a bloody ghost? No, wait, that's not alive."

Shadowheart's eyes opened in realization. "Not something that he can't perceive, but something that he's overlooking. Remember how Hawke found that secret passage in the treasure chamber in Rosymorn? He didn't go looking for a hidden switch, he went looking for something in plain sight that the githyanki inquisitor had seen every day but had thought was something else. So we're looking for something that's alive and thriving down here, but that Yurgir would consider entirely unsuspicious to have present."

"Or too insignificant to be worth bothering with." I slapped my forehead. "Remember that complaint Balthazar wrote on his map? About how unusually rat-infested these ruins were? Rats can eat anything and survive virtually anywhere, and Yurgir wouldn't even bother stepping on one - they're so insignificant to him."

"So he got polymorphed into an immortal rat?" Gale raised his eyebrows. "Isn't that a bit far-fetched? And even if it's not, how exactly do you intend to find one specific rat in the middle of the entire horde skittering and chittering around every nook and cranny in all these catacombs and caves?"

"Aren't the Underdark mushrooms also alive?" Lae'zel said.

"Polymorph man into rat is just about conceivable for magic. Man into mushroom is something that I don't know anyone has ever researched." Gale replied.

"Barring any suggestions to the contrary, I suggest we try to find the biggest rat nest in this place and see if there's any more clues there." I finally decided.

"We could look for months and never find it, and none of us have spells for speaking with animals." Wyll pointed out.

"I've been saving all the scrolls we've been looting hither and yon." Gale said, rummaging back in his pack. "Let's see if we've got... yes, found one!" He triumphantly held up a scroll. "Right, all I need to do is read from this and for the next day I can speak to any animal we encounter." After he completed a long, tongue-twisting incantation from the scroll we found a rat for him to talk to. We all saw Gale's expression change after a brief conversation, and then the rat hissed at him and left.

"Something was very wrong with that rat." Gale said worriedly. "He wasn't just territorial in an animal way about this place - he was proud. Defensive. Was angry at me for profaning the 'sacred darkness'."

"Are you telling me that we had the rat we were looking for right here and it just ran off?" I raged.

"No, that's the really disturbing part. When I asked him not to be so angry it told us that 'We outnumber you. Leave me be!' And then it hissed something about 'Join an army. Became an army.'" Gale said. "So either we are talking about an undying magic rat that also has a severe case of multiple personality disorder, or else our hypothetical Dark Justiciar survivor became a cranium rat. Rats." Gale corrected himself. "That is to say, a psionically active rat which, in sufficient numbers, can sustain a crude hive mind intellect. Or not so crude if you get a really huge swarm of them. And yes, the hivemind can outlive any individual rat in the swarm, just so long as enough new rats are bred to replace losses."

"So if our theory is correct then he's not just a rat, but his soul is somehow split up into every rat in this damn place." I said. "Which means we're either entirely off base or else Raphael really didn't skimp on just how impossible this would have been for Yurgir to solve by himself."

"But we're not Yurgir, wasn't that the whole point?" Shadowheart said. "So what can we do that he couldn't?"

"First thought that comes to mind is, we can use magic." Gale said. "I mean, arcane or clerical magic, not just his own fiendish powers."

"If we're going with the theory that Raphael gave our holdout some way to hide, it's not likely he walked up and said 'Hey, do you want to spend the rest of your life chittering and eating rotten meat off the floor?'" Wyll said. "Speaking from my own experience at being trapped by a devil, he'd make a vague promise that sounded like it was just the solution to the dilemma at hand and only let them find out the unpleasant details after they'd already accepted the gift."

"So you're thinking he handed them some type of item or ritual that promised escape, without being clear on just what kind of escape, and once our Dark Justiciar was a swarm of cranium rats it was too late for him to change back?" I followed along. "But that means that the item or the ritual chamber is still laying around in this complex somewhere, because once he was a swarm of rats he wouldn't have hands to tidy up with. That's something we can actually search for."

"It's not in the ruined wing, because Yurgir would certainly have noticed a magical item or a ritual circle." Gale reasoned. "It's also likely not in the barracks section that Balthazar forted up in, because he'd also have noticed something like that. Which leaves the various trial rooms... except we didn't notice anything like that either."

"We weren't intensively searching them, either." Shadowheart said. "We could try looking through them again?"

"There's somewhere else we didn't search." I pointed out and down over the railing and into the pit. "That midden of bones and filth, right down there at the bottom of the pit and the base of the giant statue. The sort of place you'd imagine you'd find a large, filthy rat nest."

We climbed back down to the lower level of the trials wing, and found a section of cracked wall we could scale downward from there to reach the pit. A brief search turned up an old ritual circle hastily drawon on the floor just behind the foot of the statue, and a book called "One Becomes Many" that promised to give its wielder the power of an army if he but drew the circle and spoke the words... a book whose introduction was actually signed by Raphael.

"I don't believe it, we actually figured it out." Karlach said. "Pity this poor sod didn't ask what kind of army the book would transform him into."

"That's a devil for you." Wyll agreed. "It always sounds so good up front, and then you find out that words mean things."

"All right, I'm pretty sure if we just do this to the ritual circle and then light the candles again, it'll reverse the ritual. Or at the very least draw all the cranium rats here to defend their secret." Gale said.

"Which leaves us stuck in the bottom of a pit being devoured by dozens if not hundreds of maddened rats with the intelligence of men." I deflated his enthusiasm. "So before we go lighting the candles, how's about we do a bit of preparation?"

Sure enough, touching off the ritual drowned us in a rat tide... or it would have, if everybody else hadn't climbed out of the pit and left me down in the bottom to finish the final candle lighting alone. As soon as the rat swarm began, I simply used the Amulet of Misty Step to blink right out of the pit and rejoin my friends... and then before the rats could climb up after us Gale cast his Grease spell underneath all of them, leaving them unable to climb out of the pit. And also leaving them standing on a thick layer of very flammable grease that Shadowheart then dropped a torch onto.

"Ewwww." her nose wrinkled as the stench of dozens and dozens of rats being burned to death wafted up to us. The last rat surprised us by shifting and polymorphing back into the form of a Dark Justiciar of Shar, his human form resumed as the spell was broken. I began to call out to him that he could simply leave the complex if he wanted and Yurgir wouldn't pursue, but apparently his sanity had taken more than a few hits from spending a century as a swarm of rats and he attacked us in an incoherent rage instead. And with the job finally done, we all returned to Yurgir.

"We found one - Raphael had given them this ritual book to let themselves transform into a swarm of cranium rats and hide here from you that way. Here's the proof." I handed the tome to Yurgir.

"Yes... it's gone. That infernal song is gone! The contract is completed!" Yurgir roared joyously. "You have fulfilled your end of our bargain." he acknowledged with a solemn nod. "The Umbral Gem is yours... and soon, vengeance will be mine."

"Are you certain of that?" Raphael asked smugly, as he materialized in the doorway in a flash of fire.

"I HAVE YOU NOW!" Yurgir roared, his infernal crossbow coming up to take a bead directly on Raphael's head as all the merregons and the panther-monster made ready to spring. We all hurriedly stepped as far back out of the line of fire as the boundaries of the room allowed. "You have no hold over me any longer, Raphael! I am free!"

"I think 'free' might be overstating matters, Yurgir." Raphael replied smoothly. "The contract is technically completed, but you didn't remain in compliance with all of the terms. The devil's in the details, you see, and the details are in the fine print."

"What fine print?!?" Yurgir scoffed. "For all your weasel words in the phrasing, that was the shortest contract I've ever been a party to! It barely even qualified as a wager!"

"The fine print of infernal contract law in general, my large friend, not the particular terms of our individual bargain." Raphael smirked. "You were a subcontractor, remember? Have you forgotten that subcontractors are not themselves allowed to further subcontract on a deal without permission of the primary contractor first, so as to avoid potential conflict-of-interest problems?" Raphael sighed with blatantly insincere affect as he rubbed his chin. "Oh if you'd only gone and squished that last pesky little rat yourself, you'd be walking away happy as an imp devouring their first baby right now. But you didn't. You made a deal with Hawke to do it for you, and now you're stuck."

"Slavery was the penalty for breach of contract, not for disagreements over method! I do not acknowledge your claim, and I have your throat within my reach!" Yurgir snarled back at him. "Pay me what you owe or prepare to die!"

"Consider your position." Raphael waved away Yurgir's threat as if it were a breeze. "Your reputation has already suffered from your prolonged... absence. If it became publicly known how you only blundered free at the end due to the charity of a mortal you would entirely forfeit what little face you had left. You would be a laughingstock in Hell. No infamy. No contracts. No one afraid of you anymore. You'd be an object lesson that even lemures would mock." Raphael smirked at Yurgir as if he were an emperor tormenting a serf. "Unless, of course, you consider instead my infinite mercy. A new contract. A chance to balance the books. Not to mention a welcome change of scenery."

"If you've got any allies who are better at paperwork than you are, you might want to invite them to the negotiation." I felt obligated to throw Yurgir a life-line.

"Indeed I will." Yurgir nodded to me, before turning back to face Raphael. At his angry wave his merregons all lowered their weapons, and he likewise slung his own crossbow. "Fine." he growled to Raphael. "We'll negotiate the terms in detail somewhere better than here, but I have two non-negotiable demands up front. First off, no indefinite durations and no lists of conditions to be fulfilled that you can play games with again! A strictly finite period of service only!"

"Understandable, I suppose." Raphael said condescendingly. "And your second request?"

"No. More. Songs." Yurgir spat.

"But what's life without a touch of whimsy? Oh, so barren and cold!" Raphael chuckled. "Very well, I can grant you that much. Let us be off to the House of Hope for cocktails and canapes... and a brand new signature on a brand new deal." Raphael turned to me. "But first, it would be rude not to reward your subcontractor. The greater reward, for the greater hunter."

"Sorry it worked out this way." I acknowledged Yurgir as he turned towards me. "I didn't know about the subcontracting catch."

"It's not your fault." Yurgir replied calmly. "I was the one who ordered you to slay the last Dark Justiciar, and you did only as I demanded. Here, take this." He unslung his crossbow and handed it to me, and it shrunk down as it left his hands to become a miniature crossbow that could fit in one of mine. "And take good care of it, it's a fine weapon." He turned and waved a hand at the Umbral Gem sitting by his bed of bones. "That and anything else I leave behind here is also yours."

"Time to go." Raphael broke in smoothly. "Oh, and Hawke? A point for you to ponder until our next meeting. Here you thought you were being oh-so-clever, unriddling all the layers I had at work here despite my best attempts to hide them... and yet in the end I still am the only one who came out ahead." He looked me up and down with a mocking grin, then snorted in dismissal. "Do keep that in mind." And then both Raphael, Yurgir, and all his minions were gone.

"... let's just go." I finally cursed, and we picked up the Umbral Gem and left.

---

One of the Umbral Gems unlocked a second floating platform that whisked us down and around to confront the giant vault-like door of the inner sanctum, and the remaining three unlocked the door. The whispers of dark power that we'd subliminally been sensing all the while we'd been in this buried fortress became an almost audible breeze blowing in our faces as we marched down the wide blackstone corridor to be confronted at the end by a giant pool of liquid shadows that yet somehow still glowed with darkness despite the contradiction that was in terms, with stone steps leading down into it as if it were an open cellarway.

"This- this is a portal directly to Shar's realm." Shadowheart spoke, her voice empty of all but sorrow. "The Nightsong lies in there." She turned to us. "You can't come. Lady Shar demands that I face it alone."

"Like hell!" Karlach shouted. "Do you think we're idiots?"

"Shadowheart, don't do this!" Wyll begged. "We're your friends! Let us help you! Take it from one who knows - eternal damnation is worse than anything else she could possibly be threatening you with!"

"I don't even understand why you're so insistent!" Gale asked. "Fearing an angry goddess is a rational act, yes, but fear alone can't dictate the course of your life! You'd exist only in perpetual misery!"

"Shadowheart." Lae'zel's calmness cut through our raging emotions like a blade. "We both swore our lives to goddesses who only abused and exploited us... but after my eyes were finally opened to Vlaakith's lies, I had the strength to walk away! Am I so much stronger than you? Are you so unable to match me?" she challenged.

"It's not the same." Shadowheart insisted. "Vlaakith was no true goddess. Shar is, and she-" Shadowheart yet again fought back whatever inner vision of horror had been consuming her throughout all this. "Cannot be defied in this."

"That is cowardice talking! I cannot believe that I ever respected you!" Lae'zel spat.

"I know what you're doing." Shadowheart actually smiled at Lae'zel, against all expectations. "But it won't work. You can't goad me into turning back either."

"... then I will merely ask you." Lae'zel dropped her act. "Please do not commit yourself to this darkness... my friend."

"Thank you, Lae'zel." Shadowheart said. "To hear you say that means a lot. But... I think this is good-bye."

"That it is." Lae'zel bowed to her solemnly. "If you must condemn your soul to this pit, then for your sake I pray that it will stay there. Because whatever creature dares to walk back up those stairs wearing your face, it will meet my blade."

"Aren't you going to say anything?!?" Wyll rounded on me in an almost-frenzy of grief.

"Just one thing." I said to Shadowheart. "I'm coming with you."

"Hawke-" Shadowheart insisted, and I drove right over her.

"No. On my Oath, you will not face the Nightsong without me!" I vowed.

"Damn you!" Shadowheart wailed... but she didn't argue. She knew how useless it was to try.

I reached into my pouch and withdrew the Astral Prism, and was relieved when it allowed itself to be handed to Gale. "Hang onto this. No matter what else happens, we'll make sure the Nightsong can't protect Ketheric anymore. If we don't come back-" I forced myself to keep talking without a visible change in expression. "-then it was a privilege to fight by your side. All of you." I sighed. "Jaheira knows the outline of the plan from here. Once Ketheric is vulnerable, regroup at Last Light and... keep the faith."

"Not without you." Gale demurred, and we gave each other's arms a manly clasp as he took the Prism from me. "Until we're certain one way or the other, we'll all be right here."

Entering the pool of shadow was like wading down a stairway into ice-cold water. And the instant it went over our heads, it became like drowning in ice-cold water. The world around us faded away into pitch blackness, and we felt the stairs beneath our feet vanish as we drifted down, down into the strangling, choking dark-

Gasping for breath, both Shadowheart and I regained consciousness. We were laying on a small rocky platform suspended in a void the dark purple color of clouds at the very end of twilight, as purple-white lightning crackled and thundered amongst them. As Shadowheart and I drew silently close to the edge of the floating rock we could see more rocks suspended haphazardly in the void, with remnants and pieces of Sharran temple architecture jutting from them at random. I felt strangely... light, as if I were a balloon in danger of floating away at the first gentle push-

Without a word or a backward glance Shadowheart leapt forward into space, falling dozens of feet through the air towards the rocks below. My heart leapt into my mouth as I saw her descend, and then I gaped in shock as she didn't accelerate like something normally did when falling from a height. Instead she simply descended at a slow, steady pace, to land lightly upon the rock at a lethally far distance below us as if she'd just stepped downward from a porch.

I leapt into space after her, and went through the same impossibly light fall and gentle landing as she briskly marched ahead. Down and down and down we went, from one floating stepping stone to another, as we descended hundreds of feet towards a large open ampitheatre at the bottom. Barely visible in the distance was the brightness of an elaborate ritual circle laid out at the ampitheatre's center in glowing runes, forming one giant glyph when seen from above.

Shadowheart leapt and marched unhesitatingly along, the Spear of Night clutched in her hands and her vision fixed solely on the objective below. She moved like a woman in a trance, muttering something indecipherable under her breath - a devotional chant of some type, judging from the tempo. My heart had already finished sinking, but now it sat like a dull leaden stone in my belly as the prospect of her reconsidering, of her turning away at the last, grew less and less likely. I had been preparing myself for this horrific prospect while simultaneously praying I would never have to go through with it, but it looked like no prayers would be answered in this dark realm.

Because this was indeed my last journey with Merrill to Sundermount all over again - except this time, two people wouldn't be coming back.

As we both leapt to lightly descend and land on the ampitheatre platform, set at the very bottom of the swirling spiral of rocks that had formed a gravitically impossible obstacle course to reach here, we got our first sight of the Nightsong. She was a tall woman, slightly taller even than Karlach, and like her had a thick muscular frame of positively voloptuous proportions. She was dressed in a single ragged shift of coarse cloth, which was so covered with dried bloodstains and unpatched rents and tears that you could barely make out its original canvas color. Her long blonde hair was unkempt and ragged, that of a prisoner who had not been allowed to bathe or trim herself in far too long, and her skin and eyes were both an unearthly pale white - not merely the paleness of someone long imprisoned away from the sun, but the pure alabaster white of a marble statue.

"I have felt you coming." the Nightsong greeted us from where she stood at the very center of the circle of runes, her voice grimly intent. "The first in a century." Her eyes suddenly focused on the spear in Shadowheart's hands, and widened.

"And the last." Shadowheart said distantly, the Spear of Night held at parade rest. "So you will be the sacrifice."

"We both will be the sacrifice!" the Nightsong retorted heatedly. Her lunge forward towards Shadowheart was brought to a helpless struggling halt before she could get even five feet. Multiple tendrils of force faded into visibility, helplessly pinioning her by her arms and legs and only releasing their clutching grasp and fading back into nothingness when the Nightsong abandoned her attempt. "As you seal my fate, so shall you seal your own! To be a Dark Justiciar is to deaden your heart to everything but loss! You will know no love, no joy - only a helpless, inescapable servitude!"

"But that is what I want!" Shadowheart replied heatedly, shocking me to my core.

"Of course you do." the Nightsong scoffed. "Your dark goddess' bible of lies promises all of you that to have your souls stripped and scourged is supposedly a great prize. But I have seen many of you come and go in such a fashion, and not a one of them was better off for the transaction!" Despite her ragged and helpless imprisonment, the Nightsong still looked down at Shadowheart with a disdainful bearing worthy of royalty. "Your mistress will wring you dry like a sodden dustrag, and then discard you like one the instant you have nothing left to give her. And in return you will have gained nothing, and lost everything."

"I have only one thing left to lose." Shadowheart retorted, her masklike expression starting to crack. "And going through with this is the only way I can avoid that!"

"Then strike, little assassin." the Nightsong defied her. "Take the spear your goddess has empowered to pierce through my immortality, to slay that which normally cannot die. Enjoy your victory, for there will be no prize! You don't even know who you are, yet still you so eagerly rush to be the Nightsinger's slave!"

I'd been remaining silent up until now because my words had been entirely failing to reach Shadowheart, so I had hoped that the Nightsong's own defiance would provoke some kind of reaction for her. But as Shadowheart's jaw firmed and her hands began to lift the spear, I knew that the time had run out of words.

The sound of my blade scraping free of its sheath turned both heads, as I stepped forward to the very edge of the ritual circle. I didn't have quite enough room between the two women to step between them without risking crossing the boundary myself, but I was more than close enough to Shadowheart's line of attack that she couldn't possibly finish her thrust before I could intervene.

"What?" the Nightsong turned to look at me for the first time. "I had thought you merely the Sharran's henchman, warrior. But you came here to stop her?"

"I came here hoping she would stop herself." I said quietly. "But I won't let her do this. I can't."

Shadowheart turned her head slightly, switching her gaze from the Nightsong to me. "This isn't just about me, Hawke. Remember what Gale learned about the soul cage? What the Nightsong just told us about her immortality? She is what keeps Ketheric Thorm alive. This is the only weapon that can slay her!" Shadowheart hefted the Spear of Night slightly. "You have to let me do this, or we'll never stop the Absolute. Even if that means... what it means."

"There must be another way!" I demanded, begged, pleaded. "Your eternal damnation - it's too much! I won't pay this price for victory!"

"Then I will!" Shadowheart shouted, her voice a trumpet of defiance. "Strike me down or stand aside, Hawke!"

"You're still lying to yourself!" I screamed back. "Our mission, your devotion, Alfira, even fear of dying - those were all excuses, all just rationalizations! All just things you kept trying to tell me so you didn't have to say why you're really doing this! Tell me why, damn it!" I demanded. "If this is the end of everything, then at least let your last words say what you wish you could!"

"I'm doing this because I love you!" Shadowheart's voice rang out loudly enough to echo back even from the edges of a boundless void, her voice tearing with the sorrow of all the heavens. "Do you think I let you come here with me, knowing what you intended, because I was afraid of my death?" she nodded towards my bared greatsword. "When I died in the Grymforge, I faced Lady Shar directly in the afterlife, and there she gave me her ultimatum - I either committed myself to her as a Dark Justiciar, or she'd kill you! You would be marked for death in the eyes of every follower she had, your downfall as much of a holy tasking as that of any priestess of shadow turned apostate! And no matter how many you defeated, they would never stop! Not even you could survive that..." she trailed off, choking on sobs.

"Mother save me." the Nightsong whispered, her soft and shocked. "I had thought that I knew the depths of the Nightsinger's cruelty, but I was only a child dabbling her toes at the shore of a boundless ocean." Her head bowed in resignation - and apology. "I am sorry, priestess."

Shadowheart's hands trembled so greatly she could barely keep the spear upright, but still she refused to put it down. "Strike me down if you must - I won't fight you. My failing this trial by death will not condemn you either. But if you can't do that-" she broke off, and continued in a bare whisper. "-then step aside, and let me save you." Her eyes looked up into mine, begging. "You can't do anything for either of us, Hawke. So please... just let me do this for you."

My hands sheathed my blade, and my muscles relaxed from their battle-ready tautness. At this moment I could no more strike Shadowheart down than I could myself, not with the revelation of why. I knew now what Shadowheart had meant by a choice she'd already made, and how the consequences of that choice bound her - she'd fallen in love with me, which let Shar use me as a hostage against her. It was a magnficent subtle cruelty that would have made even Raphael eat his heart out in envy - to reach out and with one twist, just one single threat, take everything that was leading Shadowheart away from Shar and instead have it propel her towards her own self-damnation with irresistible force. The greater Shadowheart's love for me, the stronger her wish to not deaden her heart and care about others, the more tightly she would be driven into the depths of Shar's embrace. The perfect trap.

Or it would have been, if a selfish and cruel creature like her had understood anything about love save for its most superficial uses. My hands sheathed my sword without a tremor. My heart unclenched from its icy rigor and started beating again. The leaden stone in my guts was dispelled, the impossible paradox facing us was about to be unbound. Because when Shadowheart had finally told us why she was actually doing this, I finally knew what to say.

"Have you forgotten what you promised me under the moonlight?" I shocked both of them with my smile. "Not for me... but with me."

Shadowheart's one hand came entirely loose from the spear haft, and the other dangled it down loosely at her side. Her mouth quivered, her eyes filled with tears. She looked helplessly at me, then up at the Nightsong, then down at her hands. Time stopped as she hung on the agonizing rack of her indecision.

And then her eyes cleared. Her face firmed up with purpose. Her hand clenched tightly on the haft, and with a scream of anguish and rage she hurled the Spear of Night with every bit of her strength-

-directly away from the Nightsong and out over the edge of the platform, and down, down into oblivion.

---

Author's Note: And now you finally know why Shadowheart was doing it. Really, I tried to be fair and put in the clues all along - she clearly wasn't doing it because she wanted a reward, or was afraid of her own death, so what else could it have been? And it is entirely Shar to try and twist the strengths of someone's virtues towards fueling their drive to self-destruction instead, because Shar is the worst.

In the game Shadowheart is torn between her devotion to Shar and her friendship and/or love for Tav all the way up to the end of Act 2. My Hawke basically nuked that one before they were even out of Act One, so Shar pivoted to this. Because Shar's entire investment in Shadowheart was to build up to when she murdered Dame Aylin in the name of Shar, because of... well, reasons. *g*

And yes, while I don't usually write ahead, I had this scene as one of the very first written in my head when I started this story. We've been leading up to this for over a dozen chapters, so let's hope it was worth it.

 

[cliffc999]

"I-I can't believe I just did that." Shadowheart muttered dazedly as I sheltered her in my arms. "Lady Shar's wrath will be unending- and we're trapped in her realm-"

"So we must escape, quickly!" the Nightsong called to us. "Bring her to the circle!"

"What do we do?" I said briskly as I helped Shadowheart over to the boundaries of the Nightsong's prison.

"The priestess must channel a spark of her divine power into one of the runes!" the Nightsong implored us as she knelt on the cold stone barely several feet away. "If she can cause even a momentary disruption-"

"What divine power?" Shadowheart pleaded. "I've rejected her! I'm no longer a priestess of Shar, I have nothing!"

"Try." the Nightsong begged. "It is the only hope for any of us."

Shadowheart laid both of her hands flat on the nearest rune, closed her eyes, and concentrated with all her might. Our hearts sank during a long moment of nothing, as she desperately muttered a prayer under her breath to gods or goddesses she couldn't even name-

-and then a small flicker of silver light leapt from her fingertips into the rune. The tiniest ripple formed in the air over the rune, gleaming into visibility.

"Stand back!" the Nightsong cried, as her fist crashed mightily into the invisible barrier exactly where Shadowheart had momentarily disrupted it. Eldritch lightning crackled and roared in the distant sky and the platform shook as the force of her blow struck like the maul of a titan. Again and again she struck at the barrier, and the lightning doubled and redoubled as the thunder grew deafening.

"Our Lady of Silver! Hear me!" she chanted as she struck again and again. "She who guides, the Moonmaiden Selune! Mother of the so-called 'Nightsong'-"

With her final great blow shining cracks shone into visibility and spread all over the dome of force covering the rune circle, spreading and spreading. And then with sound like all the glass in Val Royeaux shattering at once the soul cage containing the Nightsong broke and the glowing circle on the ground faded into nothingness.

"-THE NIGHTSONG IS NO MORE!" she roared in triumph as she rose to her feet, and with arms outstretched and head upraised to the sky she spread her arms and floated majestically up into the air. Her eyes blazed white with light, and the blinding glow spread out to cover her body. In the blink of an eye the haggard prisoner clad in rags was gone. A majestic figure in polished plate armor and open-faced greathelm floated looking down at us regally, every stain of her captivity wiped away as if it had never been. She reached out one hand and a blade of pure light materialized in front of her, dimming to reveal a massive two-handed greatsword that she plucked out of the air as if it were a toy. And as the culmination of this marvelous transformation, two great gleaming wings sprouted from her back, their spotless white feathers shining out in this shadowy realm like a beacon.

"I am Dame Aylin, and- beware!" she interrupted herself as a savage bolt of lighting crashed down out of the sky striking directly towards us. Aylin desperately leapt forward and wrapped her wings around both of us, and an aura of silver light deflected the bolt away. We could see the cracks and strains in her aura of protection as it barely managed to resist Shar's retribution.

"Grab hold!" she ordered us, slinging her blade on her back as she reached out and clasped us firmly around the wrist one with each hand. "We must flee!" Before either of us could react Dame Aylin's wings flapped hard and our arms felt yanked halfway out of our sockets as we launched into the air like an eruption. We both dangled helplessly from her grasp like kittens caught in the jaws of a mother cat fleeing for her life as she flew at reckless speed up, up, up, dodging or deflecting more lightning strikes as the wrath of Shar attempted to burn us all to ash before we could escape her realm. I barely had enough wits left to realize that Aylin's claim of being Selune's own daughter - of being some kind of demigoddess - must be true, or else she could never have survived even a glancing blow from such power-

"The portal!" Shadowheart said relievedly as Aylin's flight finally brought us level with the height where we'd originally entered this divine realm. "We're almost there-"

"Slow down!" I shouted desperately as I realized Aylin was going to head into the portal at her full flight speed, and there wasn't nearly enough room on the other side for her to decelerate-

We took the transition between planes rapidly enough that all of us who weren't demi-divine needed an epic act of will to avoid losing their lunches, and even though most of the momentum of her flight had thankfully been dissipated by the transition she was still left staggering and almost fell on her face with the effort of suddenly dragging herself to a halt. And both Shadowheart and I were jostled loose from her grip and rolled across the floor like sacks of grain falling off a speeding wagon.

"Ouch!" I said not very heroically. "Everyone still alive?"

"Unbelievably, yes!" Shadowheart's voice called back with brittle humor.

"What happened?" Gale asked incredulously as everyone rushed around and helped us back to our feet. "And who is she?"

"Selune's daughter, held captive by Shar for over a century." I explained hurriedly. "And we just aided in a jailbreak."

"And I'm still not evil, if anyone's asking." Shadowheart contributed with a tremulous smile. Lae'zel actually smiled back for a moment before catching herself and deliberately resuming her usual scowl.

"No, you certainly are not." Dame Aylin chimed in with rough humor. "May my mother's grace shelter you forevermore-"

The earth underneath our feet trembled, and bits of rubble began to fall from the ceiling. The tremors roared more forcefully than they ever had with Balthazar-

"And that was the sound of this entire complex being filled to the rafters with more of Shar's shadow warriors." Wyll said grimly. "She might not be able to pursue you onto the Prime directly, but she still doesn't want you to get away."

"Hah! Let them come!" Dame Aylin faced the passage back into the Gauntlet and drew her greatsword with an arrogant flourish of her shoulders.

"Can they follow us out of the temple?" I asked hurriedly.

"No." Aylin said. "The divine compact limits direct interference on the Prime, and limits it even further on ground not specifically consecrated to the deity in question. If we can reach the exit, we need not fear this plague being unleashed to scourge the land."

"Or we could just leave right now." I said, having checked that our travelstone attunements had yet to be disrupted. "Grab hold!" I deliberately echoed Aylin's words, and with a firm clasp on her forearm I brought us all safely to Last Light Inn.

"Hawke's returned!" one of the Harper guards announced as we materialized in the inn yard. "Someone fetch Jaheira, this could be it!"

"I am here." Jaheira replied, having come running off the front porch in reaction to our arrival, before stopping short in surprise at the sight of the towering Aylin. "An aasimar? Here?" Jaheira recovered herself and gave a brief formal bow of her head. "I am High Harper Jaheira of Baldur's Gate, sacred one, and I welcome you to our war camp. Have you come to aid us?"

"If you contend against Ketheric Thorm, of a certainty. My battle with him is a century and more overdue, and he must be brought to a reckoning." Aylin almost snarled.

"Oh, we most definitely are." Jaheira said, and then turned to me. "Your mission?!?" she asked urgently.

"Accomplished." I reassured her. "Ketheric Thorm's immortality is no more."

"And so now we must strike!" Aylin affirmed. "Well met, High Harper Jaheira. I am-"

"Aylin?!?" Our heads all snapped aside to see Isobel standing a few paces away, breathless from where she'd apparently ran all the way from her chambers down to here. Her jaw was agape, her hair disheveled, and her voice a desperate prayer. "You're- you're alive?!?'

"Isobel." Aylin whispered wonderingly, one hand almost reaching out as if to touch a vision. "ISOBEL!" she shrieked happily, and then the two of them rushed into an embrace. Isobel was hoisted clear off the ground in Aylin's mighty arms as if she were a small child, and the two of them both sobbed with joy as they-

"Oh." Shadowheart blushed discordantly, and then tilted her head curiously to get a better look as the priestess and the immortal kissed like lovers reunited after a century of forced separation. "So that's who she'd meant."

I looked away from then and down at the young woman standing at my side, also miraculously returned to me from the grasp of a goddess who'd tried to snatch her away. I reached out and gently cupped her chin, turning her face towards me, and she smiled in realization at what my own beaming grin meant. We leaned in and let our lips meet, celebrating our own reunion. Because the outside world could just-

"This is all very touching." Jaheira's exasperated voice brought us crashing down to earth as her hand landed on my shoulder and gently pulled us apart, "but we are not at leisure to indulge ourselves!" She turned and glared up at the still-embracing pair of Selunites like a frustrated grandmother. "With the greatest of respect, could we please get back to saving the land from evil? Just for a moment?" she huffed sarcastically.

"Sorry." Isobel said, still flushed with embarassment as her and Aylin finally brought themselves back to reality. "It's just- we-"

"I can imagine." Jaheira said agreeably. "Really. But lives are hanging in the balance even as we speak. We cannot delay."

"Back to business." I agreed with a sigh. "Dame Aylin, I'm assuming that Ketheric will have felt the soul cage being dispelled and the parasitic link between you ending?"

"Yes." she said, reluctantly turning away from Isobel. "He will know by now that he no longer has his stolen immortality, but I cannot begin to predict how he will react."

"And I'm assuming that he's also expecting you to come after him immediately and without mercy." I thought out loud to Aylin's vigorous nod. "So three likeliest options - he makes an immediate rush at Last Light to try and secure Isobel as a hostage against Aylin, he flees to the safety of his army encamped on the western road, or he stands pat at Moonrise Towers. Two of those would be very bad for us, so we've got to make our move before he makes his."

"If each one of your group takes through a squad of my men, we can use the travelstone in Reithwin to get my entire force there immediately and steal a march on him." Jaheira followed my thought. "And then it doesn't matter which one he picks - we'll either have him besieged in Moonrise or be able to ambush him as he tries to get through the town."

"Isobel needs to come with us." Shadowheart interrupted. "Even without his immortality, Ketheric is still a powerful warrior and his troops still have us outnumbered. She's the only one here who has even a chance of convincing him to surrender."

"Why is that?" Jaheira asked curiously.

"You did not know? She is Ketheric's daughter, resurrected just as he was." Aylin answered matter-of-factly.

"You cannot be serious." Jaheira said, looking incredulously at Isobel. "No, of course you're serious. That is exactly the sort of nonsense that always happens at times like this." she trailed off in a disgruntled mutter.

"I can't- I can't leave here." Isobel said. "I'm the only thing keeping the shadows from devouring all these people."

"We have all those spare moonlanterns I stole." I pointed out. "Even with the ones Jaheira's attack force will be using, we can still spare one or two for the people here. We put all the refugees in the basement with the moonlanterns and lots of regular lighting, they'll be safe enough for a couple hours. And by then it'll all be over, one way or the other."

"There is another factor." Halsin broke in, having joined our impromptu war council all gathering in the inn yard. "While you were on your mission, Jaheira and I were able to successfully recover Thaniel and reunite him with the missing part of his spirit that Shar had concealed in these shadow-cursed lands. Have you felt the Shadow Curse being weaker? That is because the land is already starting to heal. The deeper darknesses are already dissipating, so ordinary lights and torches can shield the attack force well enough. And when Ketheric Thorm finally falls the Shadow Curse will end - now he alone is the only remaining anchor holding it in place."

"I still-" Isobel sighed, her shoulders slumping. "I just can't bear to see him. Not what he's become. Call me a coward, but I can't. I already know he's lost."

"Less than an hour ago I was certain that I was lost," Shadowheart said simply. "And then the man who loved me convinced me that I was wrong." She reached into her pack and withdrew an envelope. "When we were scouting Moonrise Towers, I found this in your father's room - in his chest of keepsakes." She looked briefly aside at me with a flash of guilt. "It's a letter from your mother. He'd still kept it after all these years."

Isobel took the letter from Shadowheart's hands, reached into the already-opened envelope, and read it. Tears began falling again from her eyes as she silently perused the words - tears of grief this time, not happiness.

"Father." Isobel whispered painfully. "I- gods, I'm so sorry."

"I will be right there alongside you, Isobel." Aylin said with a reassuring hand on Isobel's shoulder. "I will not let him hurt you again, no matter what fell powers he invokes."

"All right." Isobel agreed. "I'll try."

"Right, I'll start getting my men organized and the tieflings safe in the shelter." Jaheira said. "Everyone, stand to! We're moving out!" she bellowed as she marched away and back into the encampment.

We used those several minutes to all introduce ourselves to Aylin and give her a brief outline of events to date, as well as reading Isobel in on how we'd found and freed Aylin in the first place.

"And now I'm death-marked in the eyes of all her followers by Lady Shar herself, and Hawke with me." Shadowheart finished despondently. "They likely won't have opportunity to strike us down while the crisis of the Absolute is still burgeoning, but afterwards? Two people - even six people - no matter how skilled in battle, can still only fight for so long before they're worn down, caught off guard, or just miss a stroke. We'd have to win every time, and they'd only need to win once." She smiled sadly at us. "I don't regret Hawke's choice or my own. I see now that Shar's offer was merely another road to death... and a far more horrible one." She turned grave. "But I still can't delude myself about what's going to happen."

"Speak not of what will happen, but of what you will do." Aylin insisted. "Your past is not yet lost. Your future is not yet written."

"And you will have more help than you know." Isobel encouraged her. "Please... channel your power again, as you did to help set Aylin free. I want to see it."

Shadowheart brought up her hand and concentrated, invoking a divine channeling just as clerics normally did to turn undead or several other uses. A brief silver shimmer flickered over her fingertips-

-and then Shadowheart's eyes opened in wonder as Isobel brought up her own hand, also shimmering with silver light. A silver light of exactly the same hue and chroma as the one Shadowheart had just invoked.

"You mean-?" Shadowheart gasped.

"Yes." Isobel smiled warmly, and reached out to take Shadowheart's hand in both of her own. "Be forever welcome in moonlight - Initiate."

The newest priestess of Selune stared down at her hands and then back up at her senior cleric, still trying to mentally grasp the reality of it. "But for all my life I've rejected Her! I've reviled Her, spat on Her teachings, helped torment Her followers, devoted my every breath to serving Her arch-enemy- and yet the instant I abandon Shar, She adopts me? Just like that?!?"

"Just like that." Isobel agreed. "As I promised you, Selune had never forsaken you. You merely couldn't hear Her voice while it was drowned out by all of Shar's lies... until now." She suddenly chuckled to herself. "Oh, and if we're heading into battle then I really should return this to you." She reached down and unhooked the Blood of Lathander off of her belt and handed it back to Shadowheart.

"I presume that you left your spear in your room... again." Aylin chided Isobel affectionately. "Wait here, I shall go fetch it for you." Aylin easily flew into the air to soar around the inn until she spotted the altar of Selune on Isobel's balcony, then used that for a landing point to swiftly return with Isobel's own weapon.

"Is everyone ready?" Jaheira said as she rejoined us.

"As we'll ever be." I agreed.

---

We left Jaheira's troops waiting along with Isobel in Reithwin Town. Since Aylin was essentially incapable of stealth in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, being a giant winged white immortal scion of the gods who glowed with a holy aura of the moon goddess against the black shadowy background, we had her flying aerial reconaissance over Moonrise Towers at an altitude just out of ballista range and being a highly visible distraction. She reported back with the disposition of troops in the courtyard, how the siege engines were manned and ready on the walls, and that Ketheric himself was watching us defiantly from an elaborate open-air chapel to Myrkul that had been set up on the roof. Ketheric's goading presence had almost induced Aylin to break ranks and fly down for a berserker solo run against the man who'd imprisoned and tortured her for decades, but the knowledge that Isobel was waiting for her return and that we'd promised the priestess a chance to parley with her father first allowed Aylin to restrain her vengeful impulses. Even then, she shamefacedly acknowledged that it had been a very close-run thing.

So the Harpers and Aylin remained in place and let Ketheric believe that we were helplessly deterred by the lethal killing chokepoint of the only bridge that we'd noted earlier on our initial approach to Moonrise as the key defensible obstacle, and remain confident that the odds would only swing further and further in his favor the longer we delayed. Meanwhile my team was approaching the hidden cove in a boat under cover of a Darkness spell, preventing lookouts from getting the slightest glimpse of us as anything but a drifting black shadow amongst all the other cursed shadows out there. This admittedly would have made it impossible for us to steer except for the fortuitous circumstance that one of Wyll's warlock powers was a magical devil's sight that allowed him to freely see through all forms of darkness be they mundane or magical. So with him on the tiller and the rest of us rowing blind, he brought us safely into the secret dock and dispelled his darkness, restoring vision to us and the small team of hand-picked Harpers accompanying us.

"All right. We'll go first and hope they fall for the True Soul gag once again, you follow along and secure the dungeon level as soon as we're in position to strike." I ordered them. "Let's go, team."

We emerged from the hidden passage onto the prison floor to be confronted by a Death Shepherd flanked by a squad of robed skeletons and accompanied by two priests of Myrkul, according to their robes. We didn't even get a chance to try our undercover routine before the nearest priestess pointed at us and said "It's them! The traitors that Balthazar reported! Attack!" Damn it, his mental link with his undead must have gone farther than we'd anticipated - far enough to reach back here-

By this point we'd fought enough battles and grown acclimated enough to the changes within us that we had all regained a good measure of our former prowess, so I was able to unleash a scything whirlwind with my greatsword that cleaved most of the skeletons to the ground in a single attack. Wyll and Lae'zel each engaged a priest, while Gale stayed in reserve and Shadowheart used the Blood of Lathander's radiant aura to blind the Death Shepherd and leave it almost entirely combat ineffective while she started to wear it down with good old-fashioned blunt force trauma. Its support crew having been readily dispatched, I turned to help her flank the biggest threat and turned it to ash with a single smite.

A fast sweep of the lower levels turned up no other patrols than the ones we'd killed, and the welcome news that no defenders were responding to us from above - apparently they hadn't heard the brief sounds of combat on the surface. Good.

Wyll used one of his remaining warlock spells to cast a spell of Invisibility and headed up to take a look at what awaited us on the upper level. He soon came back with the report that Thorm was using a simple yet thorough defense in depth. We'd already seen that the siege engines and outer bailey were fully manned, all with a clear field of fire on the main bridge in and out that would let them make mincemeat of any attackers trapped on that narrow open stonework without any cover or room to maneuver. Z'Rell waited with a squad of elite drow, an ogre, and a pack of gnolls, all ready to reap a bloody toll on any survivors who attempted to force their way through the killing chokepoint that was the main door. Several pairs of stragglers were scattered about in position to call away an alarm if any attackers attempted to go around the exterior instead of straight in from the ramp and flank the ground floor defenders through any of the side doors, such as the ones leading from the kitchen. And another squad of defenders was set up in the main audience chamber, ready to do the same thing on anyone who survived the first gauntlet.

"Multiple layers of attrition defense, making sure that anybody who actually reaches Ketheric on the roof is as worn down as possible. And it does not matter how much of Moonrise's garrison he uses up in the process, because he has a whole army of replacements waiting just down the road." Lae'zel nodded in reluctant respect. "Jaheira was right - Ketheric Thorm did earn the right to be called 'General'. I am not sure that either of us could have done as well given as little opportunity to prepare as Ketheric was given."

"And he's also tempting Aylin to split off from the rest of her support, as she's the only person who can bypass all of this and fly straight for the roof - which allows Ketheric to defeat his strongest anticipated foe in detail in addition to whittling away the rest of us to a nub before we can even get to him. You're right, he is good." I shrugged. "Which is why we're cheating as hard as we are. All right, Z'Rell is anchoring the strongest point so we go for her first. Wyll, you said you saw that she had protective magics up?"

"Yes." Wyll nodded. "Multiple mirror images to help use up the first several attacks against her to no effect, and a shield of magical cold that will both help her resist magical fire and sear the flesh of anybody who tries engaging her in close combat with frostbite."

"One of you warp back to the Reithwin travelstone and tell Jaheira that it's plan B. We'll give her five minutes to get ready before we move, but remind her not to start her half of it until after we've sent the signal." I ordered the Harpers. "The rest of you, draw out your bows and stack up in ambush positions. "

Since all of the defenders in the entrance chamber were looking at the front door, we had a clear shot at their rear flank from the door leading to the chamber that held the top of the dungeon stairs. I pulsed a magical dispel on Z'Rell to remove her protections and Gale immediately followed up with a fireball centered on her, and that left the gnolls and a couple of the less experienced soldiers killed by the fireball while everybody else was severely wounded. The rest of us followed up with a single volley of missile fire, concentrating on the remaining spelllcasters, and then we immediately fell back and shut the door again, leaving behind an entire chamber full of shocked, surprised, and severely wounded survivors.

"And now they get to come to us one or two at a time through a narrow doorway." I grinned. "And we're distracting the ones in the audience chamber, who will try to flank us through that door. " We stacked up on both entrances and used our advantage of position to start killing the Absolutists as they filtered in to us, Z'Rell ruthlessly sending through her weakest first - trying to use up our ammunition and split our attention before she risked forcing a breach. Clearly she was hoping to overwhelm our defensive advantage and then either pincer us through both doorways or else force our retreat back down to the dungeon levels.

And just as she was well and truly pinned against our improvised defensive strongpoint, the tower was rocked by the sound of explosions.

When our deep gnome acquaintances had reached Last Light Inn Jaheira had put their alchemists to work helping brew up some smokepowder and incendiary charges in anticipation of having to blast her way through Moonrise's walls in a siege situation. When I'd come up with the current plan to take advantage of Aylin's presence and Jaheira had refined it, those charges had been repurposed for aerial bombardment. So as soon as our fireball told the defenders outside that we were making our move, Aylin's role would be to use her wings and strength to toss entire barrels of smokepowder and firewine down on top of the siege engines covering the front entrance and incinerate both them and their crews. The artillery bombardment that Z'Rell had counted on to hold the bridge while she diverted her effort towards killing us would be entirely gone, and the archers on the walls would then be scattered and demoralized by an unkillable flying celestial paladin single-handedly clearing the battlements after completing her aerial bombardment.

And that meant the front entrance was wide open, and Jaheira and her Harpers would be hitting the backs of the ground-floor defenders who'd all turned to focus on dealing with us... now!

Aylin was first through the door, deliberately drawing fire away from the less immortal people behind her. Jaheira was second, leading her Harpers from the front, with Isobel safely ensconced in the middle of their rush as spellcasting support. The Harper squad securing the dungeon level closed up on us as we advanced and helped us pincer all the surviving defenders on the ground floor, who were already caught out of position and severely wounded by Gale's fireball. We finished clearing the lower floor in a single furious minute, and now we held the tower.

"Hold here." Jaheira ordered us. "Isobel, you and Dame Aylin stick with Hawke's team. Everyone heal up and refresh yourselves as best you can - we'll need you as close to full strength as possible if the parley with Ketheric doesn't go the way we hope. If he wants to wait up on the roof while we kill every other Absolute cultist in this tower, then let him. Me and my men will take care of sweeping the upper floor."

"I hate to say it, but this is almost going too easily. Where's his reserves?" I wondered out loud. "As competent as this defensive layout was, it still seems a bit thin."

"I've been wondering the same." Jaheira agreed. "Possibly he intends for us to pin ourselves down in Moonrise while he recalls his army once we're all stuck in here. I have lookout posts back in Reithwin watching for that and we'll have to retreat fast if they spot anything coming, but so far there hasn't been any movement at all."

"Wait." Gale interrupted us. "Remember what Wulbren said about there being something 'suspicious' underneath the dungeon? And the several high-value prisoners we were looking for that hadn't been removed from the dungeon level, but had never been sent there to begin with and certainly aren't anywhere else in Moonrise that we've seized? There must be a deeper section buried underneath this complex that we don't know anything about."

"Shit." Jaheira swore. "All right, I'm going to put half our men back in the dungeon level to watch out from below and clear the upper floor with the other half. The only good news is that Ketheric is on the roof - he's isolated himself from any immediate reinforcements from down below, even if they'd have had a clear shot at our backs if we'd been careless. Hopefully if we can talk him down, or take him down, we can then figure out how to breach this sublevel ourselves."

Aylin flatly vetoed the idea of Isobel being the first one to go up the rooftop stairway, because even if Ketheric would almost certainly hold his fire against her Aylin's airborne reconnaissance had revealed that he had a final squad of minions waiting with him and they might not be so reticent. I likewise argued against the idea of Aylin being first, because while she was impossible to keep down permanently without a godslaying weapon we were trying to bring Thorm to a parley and he was expecting Aylin to try to immediately gut him on sight and would react accordingly. And so that meant I was the one who had to go first, and so I marched alone out onto the open roof.

"You!" Ketheric Thorm cried hoarsely. "What have you done?! What have you done to me?!"

"You've seen Dame Aylin flying around free, so you already know." I replied, fighting to keep my disgust with this necromancer out of my voice. "What's more important is that I've brought your daughter to see you."

"Why?" Ketheric asked helplessly. "She could not accept me as I am, and I cannot return to being the man I was. It is too late. If she knew everything about what I've done, she'd know that her father died on the same day she did." He shook his head. "Only unlike her, he could not be brought back."

"You've dug yourself a damned deep pit to try and climb out of, I'm not going to lie." I agreed. "But not two hours ago I saw someone stand in the heart of Shar's realm and still turn back to the light after knowing nothing but a lifetime of darkness - literally, as her memories of any other life had been removed. But she still did it, so don't tell me it's impossible General. It's just... sometimes very difficult."

"I'll tell you a story, True Soul." Ketheric said softly. "About a man who sold himself piece by piece. He had everything. A wonderful wife, a brilliant daughter. They lived not far from here. His wife died too young. Grief tore through their home like a thief, snatching away the scent of her hair... the rustle of her skirts... but the man did not break. He could not break. His daughter needed him whole, after all. And she grew up, grew strong. Challenged him. Filled his heart with such joy, it supplanted all sorrow." Ketheric swallowed heavily, his voice strained and taunt. "And when she was killed, the man... He tried to remain whole, but it wasn't possible! Do you understand?"

"I knew a necromancer once named Quentin, who had also lost his beloved wife." I replied evenly. "And he too swore that he'd sacrifice anyone and anything to bring her back." My own voice grew thick with pain. "And one of those sacrifices was my mother. Who had been the only family I had left, after already burying my father, my brother, and my sister." I shook my head. "I do understand your grief, Ketheric Thorm. I know how hollow it makes the world feel, how desperate the lengths to which it can drive a man. I have been there."

"Then you know why I have done what I have done!" Ketheric insisted. "The pain was unbearable, all consuming. A man would do anything for reprieve in the face of such desolation. So first I sold myself to the goddess of loss, but her promises of solace remained lies no matter how obscene my devotion. But then a new god came, a god who promised something wonderful, My daughter back, her life returned. I would have to give everything, body and soul entire, but I did not hesitate for a moment. And the new god did as promised. My brilliant beautiful daughter came back. I was whole and she was alive. But she despised what her father had become, she could not bear even to look at him... yet her hatred I could endure, so long as she had another chance to live. Everything I have done, everything I have built, has been to give Isobel that chance."

"Ketheric Thorm, it is precisely because I know how horrific such grief can feel that I refused to use my own losses to justify bringing such losses to other people. Like Quentin did. Like you have." I replied ruthlessly. "It sounds so noble, to say that you're willing to sacrifice anything for a loved one. And if you're only talking about the things that are rightly yours to sacrifice, I suppose it is. But all this wasn't yours." I waved my hand around at the vista visible below us, of all the Shadow-Cursed Lands. "Their lives, their happiness, their loved ones, those were not for you to take! Not yours, not Shar's, not Myrkul's, not anyone's! Your sins never took away your grief - they just multiplied it, and spread it, only to rebound it back onto you again and again and again." I sighed again, even my anger drained away now. "And if you don't turn away from this while you still can, that will be your fate for eternity."

"Please listen to him, Father." Isobel's voice came to us, as she slowly advanced across the rooftop to stand by my side. Aylin stood protectively within arm's reach of her, visibly keeping herself silent with an effort, and the rest of my party and Jaheira followed a short distance behind. "We can't go on like this, not either of us."

"Isobel." Ketheric said wonderingly, before his expression hardened with hate at the sight of Aylin. "And the creature who stole her from me."

"No one has stolen me!" Isobel implored him. "I'm standing right here! And I want my father back!"

Thorm wavered on his feet, struck to his marrow. "You don't know what you're asking." he quavered.

Isobel reached into her robe and withdrew the letter that Shadowheart had handed her when we'd arrived at Last Light, the one she'd found while we were searching Ketheric's quarters. "But I know what Mother asked of us. And I don't know if you've looked at this recently or not, so I'll read from it again." Isobel said, and began to recite:

"My darling husband, I know my time is drawing near. I don't want to leave you. I don't want to leave our little girl. But I'm not writing to lament our lot. It's ours and no other's. Though the City of Judgment is dark, I know Our Lady's light will find me even there. I will see her shining spires and walk the silver gardens we've both dreamt of. I go to my reward - and leave quite a task to you yet, my heart. Selune's light shines bright in our little one, but she will need a guide to keep on her path. I have no doubt that she will keep you on yours. It is the same path - our Lady's path - and one day I know it will bring you both back to me. Only not too soon, I hope. I won't say goodbye. There is no loss; only temporary separation. How I love you. Forever yours, Melodia."

All of us present - even Ketheric - were teary-eyed by the time she was done. Isobel continued, her voice held rigid over heartbreak. "You were so strong for me when Mother died, when I could barely understand why she was gone. You did so much, you cared so much. Did I ask you for too much? Did I make you work so hard saving my soul that I left you unable to save your own?" she begged.

"I don't know." Ketheric replied, raising a hand as if to reach out to her before pulling it away. "I can't remember why. I can only remember the madness. The emptiness."

"Then leave it behind." Isobel begged him. "Leave it all behind, and return to the moonlight. Abandon this mad quest! Repent of your sins! Even if Myrkul withdraws his gift, even if we both die today, it'll still be all right!' She tried to smile at him through her sobs. "We'll be in the Gates of the Moon with Mother, just like she hoped we'd be. All three of us, reunited forever."

"Would your mother even allow that, Aylin?" Ketheric spoke to her for the first time. "To accept the Chosen of Myrkul, the infamous commander of Shar's Dark Justiciars, into her silver halls? To make such a monster welcome among her righteous pilgrims?'

"I would not." Aylin answered him unhesitatingly, her voice like bared steel. "I know only one way to rightly deal with your kind, and have stayed my hand so far only because your daughter has begged my forbearance." Her wings lowered slightly, as did her voice. "But I am only the sword of Selune, not the Moonmaiden herself. And my mother often does things beyond my understanding... and far more graciously than I." She nodded to Ketheric Thorm. "I will not lie to you no matter how wroth my heart. What Isobel asks of you is most unlikely, but it is not impossible."

"I wish it could be so, I do." Ketheric said plaintively. "But no divine grace was offered to me when my life was dismantled piece by piece. And when I tried to buy it back-"

"It can't be bought!" I shouted back at him. "Grace is not a commodity. It's an act of trust. An expression of faith."

"Then I have lost it." Ketheric replied simply. "As I have lost everything, even those things I tried most to save."

The tower suddenly trembled underneath our feet, an earthquake even more severe than any we'd experienced in the Gauntlet of Shar.

"What the hells was that?" Jaheira cried as we all struggled to retain our footing.

"A reminder." Ketheric said grimly, the sorrow fading from his eyes as he drew himself erect, as a sense of something terrible began to fill him. "That I was a fool to hesitate. There are forces that once unleashed cannot be turned away from. That must be mastered, or else they will consume you utterly - and then go on to consume those you love." He said with a longing look at Isobel. "Power like mine has a price... and now I must pay it." he finished calmly, as he drew his warhammer and readied his shield. "Restrain my daughter. Kill the rest."

Aylin's greatsword crashed down against his shield with terrible force, but Ketheric Thorm could not be pushed so much as an inch. Isobel froze in shock, and Jaheira hurriedly pulled her back and out of the line of fire as the rest of us leapt into action.

"Turn Undead!" Shadowheart cried, creating a bubble around us that would repel the many robed skeletons lurking around the edge of the encampment.

"Firebal-" the robed necromancer off to Ketheric's left in a vantage point began to cry, only to be shut down by Gale's "Counterspell!"

Several of the robed skeletons managed to resist Shadowheart's turning and closed in. Karlach cursed and leapt to cut them off.

"I have the wizard!" Lae'zel shouted, calling on her githyanki psionics to Misty Step across the intervening distance and appear directly behind the robed necromancer. Her blade swung down, wounding them terribly, and the enemy spellcaster was preoccupied from then on with keeping Lae'zel from gutting them.

"Concentrate fire on the mortal paladin!" Ketheric commanded, and I winced as all of the robed skeletons that weren't fighting Karlach raised their hands... which began to glow with unholy green fire. Over half a dozen eldritch bolts leapt forth, all aimed unerringly at me, and tore into my flesh with corrupted necrotic energy. Even though the damage had been substantially reduced by my unique magic resistance, I still was left staggering from the force of my wounds.

"Heat Metal!" Jaheira cried, and Ketheric's warhammer began to glow red-hot. He snarled almost like a wild beast, fighting on through the pain of his burns as if he he did not even feel them. Wyll and Jaheira and I had to concentrate on tearing down these damned spellcasting skeletons before they could unleash their combined powers into us again and again. From the corner of my eye I could see Shadowheart having little luck attempting to bring the Blood into melee range of Ketheric, and Gale was not having much luck slowing the relentless General down with the lower-level spells he had left either. So for now Aylin was left carrying most of the freight there-

A clever twist of Ketheric's hammer and a battering of his shield left Aylin off-balance, but while a mortal would have been able to recover their footing her large heavy wings left her staggering sideways and falling to the ground once she'd been tipped beyond a certain point. "I see you that haven't spent any of the intervening time working on your weaknesses, Aylin." Ketheric said contemptuously as he raised his hammer high to smash her skull-

"Resilient Sphere!" Isobel's voice cut through the din, and suddenly an impenetrable globe of force sprang into existence around Ketheric. Entirely unable to either be harmed or inflict any harm through the bubble of force, Ketheric Thorm was a helpless spectator to the rest of the battle as we easily destroyed his minions once his threat was temporarily neutralized and his subordinate necromancer wasn't present to further buff or command them. Even his attempts to summon more robed skeletons - 'necromites', I later learned they were called - were rendered futile, as he could only summon forth one at a time.

"Stop! Stop!" Isobel begged her father from where he stood watching us within his prison of force, his dully-glowing warhammer discarded at his feet. "I don't want you to hurt them! I don't want them to hurt you! I just want this to end!"

"My darling daughter." Ketheric looked at her with a genuine affection, an honest love, that felt so horribly out of place in the midst of all this death and destruction. "You truly are the best of us. I would have given you the world, if I could."

"I don't want to be given the world!" Isobel begged him.

"I know." Ketheric agreed sagely. "So the only goal I have left now is to keep the world from taking you. Because no one will take you from me." Ketheric's voice firmed. "Not Aylin, not the Harpers... and certainly not these miserable True Souls!" he roared at us with hatred. "How dare you try to deceive us! How dare you pretend to freedom and friendship that you cannot truly feel, how dare you press any claim on her or try to entreat with me when you are only hollow tools that exist to serve! Bow, you miserable slaves! BOW!"

A terrible mental force erupted like a thunderclap, in answer to Ketheric's demand. A voice spoke in our brains on the edge of audibility... a voice drowned by a familiar white-hot keening, as a familiar polygon floated in front of us glowing brilliant orange as it shielded us from the Absolute's call.

"The Astral Prism!" Ketheric gaped at it. "You've had it, all this time!" That sense of terrible power began to fill Ketheric again as the loving father was yet again swallowed by the implacable servant of death. "ENOUGH! My Lord beckons me, and I must answer!"

The gem on the front of Ketheric's breastplate suddenly glowed a brilliant unholy red, and he raised both arms in invocation as the castle began shaking again as if its very foundations would tear free of the world. All of us fell to our knees, or to the ground, as one corner of the the central tower's roof burst open like a full wineskin struck by a catapult shot. A giant glistening purple tentacle extended several stories into the sky from the hole torn in the pillar's top, and an unearthly roar shattered our hearing-

"You must be returned to your prison! And the will of my Lord must be fulfilled!" Ketheric pronounced hieratically as he waved one arm, clearly directing the motion of the tentacle even though he was trapped inside the bubble. The tentacle lashed down as if to strike at Isobel, and Aylin frantically interposed herself between it and her lover's body. I could just spot a slight grin on Ketheric's face as the tentacle suddenly shifted motion, its strike at Isobel only a feint, as it crashed down on the defenseless Aylin instead and hammered her so far into the stone roof that anybody not as immortal as her would already be pulp. With a contemptuous twitch of its tip the tentacle rolled the unconscious Aylin over to Ketheric's feet, the bubble around him having been dispelled when Isobel lost her concentration at Aylin's being struck down. The tentacle's tip glowed with energy and suddenly Ketheric and Aylin vanished, teleported away to who-knows-where, and then it writhed and retreated back down into the hole it had burst out of as if it had never been there.

"Aylin! Father!" Isobel shouted, helplessly reaching out to grasp at the empty space where her lover's body had lay. "Where did they go? Where did they go?"

"I think... down there." Jaheira said, having gone over to look down the hole now gaping in the roof. As we looked down it we could see that it ran the entire length of one of Moonrise Tower's main support pillars, having cored out the entire cylinder of stone from top to bottom. The hole ran down, down out of sight, as if it ran into the very Underdark.

"The sealed sublevel we never found." I swore. "That's where Ketheric has retreated to. That's where that... tentacle monster came from."

"Look there." Lae'zel said fearfully, pointing down into the hole at the fleshy coating and glistening slime lining the tunnel that the tentacle had bored. "You have seen such things before, as have I."

At Lae'zel's prompting I realized that I had indeed seen that before - it was just like the horrid living architecture that the illithid nautiloid had been comprised of. Whatever had burrowed that tunnel, summoned that impossible tentacle, it had been part of the mind flayers' horrid living technology-

"Ketheric's hidden lair. The location of the missing prisoners. And now a hidden mind flayer colony. We've found the source of the tadpoles." Shadowheart said.

"As well as a living creature the size of a building or more, yet which is still clearly related to the ghaik." Lae'zel followed her thought. "And there is only one such creature I can think of."

"An elder brain." I agreed, staring down into the black pit where our doom potentially awaited. "This is the lair of the Absolute."

---

Author's Note: I'm actually mildly down on the canon Ketheric confrontation - not because it sucks, it's actually quite good. It just could have been so much better. In the game Aylin turns into a vengeful musclehead who monomaniacally focuses on Ketheric and interrupts your attempt to turn him back to the Light Side, and Isobel doesn't even go on the Moonrise Towers assault so she never sees her father again before he dies. Hell, I don't think Aylin even finds out Isobel isn't dead until after they've finished helping kill her father. And I'm just not going to put up with that, so here we go. I could wish to have made the boss fight more cinematic, but then Isobel was a meanie-pants and insisted that she'd never let it drag out and she had access to a spell that could end it prematurely, so boom. (Otiluke's Resilient Sphere actually is a Knowledge domain spell for clerics, and one of Selune's domains is Knowledge.)

I was shocked to find out how low-level Isobel actually was in the game, because I didn't look up her stats until we reached this fight scene. You'd think that somebody who was cranking all the power she was shielding Last Light, as well as someone with such a long history of serving Selune, would be a high-level priestess... but nope. I suppose that was for balance purposes because Isobel is a possible antagonist if you let her get mind-controlled by Ketheric, but pffft on game balance, that's Larian's problem and not mine.

Ketheric's expanded dialogue re: "I'll tell you a story, True Soul" is largely canon, however - it was in Early Access, but was cut from the production version. I'm happy to share as much as of it as I could find, with minor tweaks to fit the current narrative.

Likewise I punched up the Nightsong scene a bit as well. In the game Shar just lets you walk right out of her realm - and sure, that's probably because she intends to catch up to Shadowheart later, she knows where Shadowheart is going. And Aylin just flies off without you. But that's the game, not here, because sometimes I prefer more cinema than they can fit into a brief cutscene. OTOH, I absolutely must share the original soundtrack from the Nightsong scene, because that rocked.

 

[cliffc999]

"Curse it! We almost reached him!" Isobel fumed despairingly. "Why did he turn away?"

"He spoke of himself as the Chosen of Myrkul." Gale said grimly. "My mentor Elminster is a Chosen of Mystra, gifted with a spark of her own divine essence embedded within him. And that grants him great power, but also requires him to obey his patron's commands - even when he direly wishes otherwise. I don't understand everything about the relationship that they have but I do know that it is closer even than that of a priestess to their goddess." He sighed. "Your restored life may have been a gift to him from Myrkul, but I fear that your father's own still lies in pawn to the Lord of Bones - and that it continues only so long as he continues to further their will."

"Perhaps that's why he so desperately wishes to steal Aylin's immortality." Wyll observed. "Only eternal life can keep him out of the death god's clutches."

"Well, we damn sure can't let Ketheric stay out of ours." Jaheira vowed. "My second-in-command can take charge up here as soon as I brief them, and then I'm coming with you."

"Gale, dig through that collection of scrolls and see if you can find one for Feather Fall." I ordered him. "That's one hell of a drop."

Shadowheart healed most of my wounds and Jaheira finished briefing her men, and then Gale cast his spell and we jumped. We all fell down, down through the hole to gently land at the bottom. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all composed of a horrid glistening pink/purple flesh, the same as the architecture onboard the illithid nautiloid. Only this was moister, somehow. Softer. More alive. It was like walking through the intestines of a dead colossus, only worse. The very air seemed to be whispering to us-

"Is everybody else hearing that, or just those of us with tadpoles?" I asked.

"I hear nothing." Jaheira said briskly. "It must be the illithid hive mind. Can you make out what it is saying?"

"Just... 'prepare'." Gale replied. "The Astral Prism is blocking most of the broadcast."

"A ghaik colony." Lae'zel glared suspiciously at the walls around us, her blade out and quivering. "My teachers in the creche spoke of them, but I have never seen one before. We must all be cautious."

"We must all be scared halfway shitless, more like it." Karlach muttered.

"That as well." Lae'zel agreed immediately.

A few swings of a blade cut through the membrane blocking the only exit out of the room, and we came out into a hallway. "We'll have to explore each one of these side chambers before we move on. There might be survivors... and we can't afford to let any mind flayers get behind us and flank attack." I decided.

"I told my Harpers to come down and start searching the oubliette beneath the dungeon level, the one you did not have time to explore when last you were here." Jaheira said. "Hopefully they can find the entrance between there and this colony."

"Not least because we'd like to be able to leave here once we're done." Shadowheart agreed.

Isobel muttered a cantrip for guidance, then carefully studied the area. "Unless I've gotten turned around, I think the dungeon level is that way." She pointed at a door on the right side of the hallway. As soon as we opened it, an acrid stench assaulted our nostrils.

"Myrkul's armpit!" Isobel cursed. "It smells like a mass grave in here!"

"It is a mass grave in here." Jaheira said grimly, as we stared into a scene of butchery out of our worst nightmares. Rotting viscera and spoiled blood positively drenched the floor, and piles of bones and rotting, dismembered corpses were haphazardly strewn everywhere.

"I think we've found where all the corpses they 'disposed of' from the dungeon level ended up." I said, my gorge rising. "I wonder how many 'pilgrimages' to Moonrise ended here."

"Chop. Chop. Chop." a voice chanted dully, as a bugbear drenched in blood and gore literally from head to toe loomed at us out of the darkness. A butcher's cleaver was clenched in one hand, and the corpse of a young boy was slung over his shoulder. Ignoring us as if we weren't present, the lumbering humanoid turned and laid the corpse out on a filthy workbench, and then the cleaver began to rise and fall. "Pretty pink. Make more. Never think. Chop. Chop. Chop."

"What are you doing?" I asked the dazed bugbear.

"Chop. Chop. Help them... become...?" it slowly and awkwardly fumbled for words, as if barely conscious of our presence.

"Become what?" Wyll burst out, exasperated.

"Part of... One Mind. Four little feet. Dancing. To same song." it whispered.

"The intellect devourers." Lae'zel spat. "This thrall has been set to the task of harvesting the corpses of those judged unfit for conversion to ghaik. To salvage their brains to make ghaik tools with."

I risked a probe into the bugbear's mind, and realized to my horror that there practically was no mind. They'd hollowed him out, burned most of his consciousness away, leaving behind only a vestigial awareness and the well-worn grooves of a single, programmed routine. Crack the bones. Harvest the brains. Leave the unworthy meat to feed the hive. No desires, no thoughts, no will, all engraved away to leave behind nothing but the remnants of a soul helplessly trapped inside an automaton of flesh.

"Where is your master?" I asked him.

"Mas-ter?" the bugbear's voice cringed, showing visible emotion - fear - for the first time. "No. Not here. Gone deep!"

"Chop." I asked the bugbear, using the only name for itself that it could remember. "Do you want this to stop? Do you want an ending?"

"Yes." Chop replied softly. "Yes. Please." it begged, its eyes screaming from an impassive face.

I struck as quickly and cleanly as I could, impaling him directly through the heart. "Rest now. It's all over." I reassured him.

"Free..." he whispered wonderingly, looking back at me with gratitude, and then he died.

"Selune have mercy on this poor creature." Isobel sorrowed. "This is what the Absolute would have us all become? This is the 'new world' that Father wanted to give me?"

-The moment comes. The Absolute moves.- the telepathic voice wafted through the air.

"I think the elder brain is waking up..." Shadowheart said worriedly.

-Prepare the march. My Chosen gather below.- the Absolute spoke.

"Oh wonderful, all of them." Jaheira swore. "We had our hands full with just the one!"

-Many hearts. One soul.-

"Enough!" I swore, blocking out the voice with an act of will. "Let's move."

We found a grating that led to another section of the colony above us, in the oubliette level under the dungeon, but we couldn't find any entrance. Several of Jaheira's Harpers were already searching the oubliette, and we called out to them through the grating - Jaheira ordered them to work on finding a way to break through and come down to help reinforce and clear this level as well when they managed that, and then we got back to searching.

There was a barracks section down here containing several Myrkulite acolytes and their ghoul servants which we cleared out, and another large concentration of undead - lesser zombies, mostly, with a few winged ghouls and one Death Shepherd - in a large laboratory area. These battles didn't exhaust us, strictly speaking, but we were using up spells and healing potions that we'd rather not have. Somewhere in the deepest levels of this complex awaited not only Ketheric but almost certainly his fellow 'Chosen of the Absolute', as well as the elder brain itself, and we didn't remotely have enough power for that confrontation. Right now the best we were hoping to do was find and free the still-missing prisoners and then open up a route to the surface, preparatory to eventually bringing a small army down here.

"We've still got that big area near the barracks we didn't explore." I said. "Hopefully this is the deeper dungeon-" The bio-mechanical iris door squeezed open, and we were confronted by a large oblong chamber with multiple pods spaced all around the borders of the room. And I was very familiar with those pods - we all were. Because we'd been trapped in them onboard the nautiloid, when they'd tadpoled us.

"A conversion chamber." Lae'zel said.

A frantic search of those pods produced the results that several of them contained newborn mind flayers, the transformation on them already completed, while the others contained several Flaming Fists apparently captured during the attack on Waukeen's Rest as well as two very familiar tieflings - Zevlor and Mol. A quick probe with our tadpoles produced the startling revelation that the still-intact prisoners hadn't been tadpoled - their brains were clean. All of them, mind flayers and prisoners alike, floated in dreamlike suspension as they were sustained by the bio-machinery of the pods.

"It's like they just abandoned their job half done and then didn't follow up for the past couple of days. We must have been distracting them quite a bit." I thought out loud.

"Father's not here!" Wyll said, still frantically searching through the last few empty pods. "Where have they taken him?"

"Deeper below, presumably." Shadowheart answered. "Wyll, don't despair. He's certainly in danger, but out of all the prisoners they've taken he's the absolute last one they'd kill. If they have plans for Baldur's Gate, they need the Grand Duke alive."

"There don't seem to be any individual pod releases, or at least none that I can find." Gale said. "Just that master set of controls over there in the corner."

"Wait, why can I read these labels?" I wondered, having suddenly realized that the illithid script on the controls was comprehensible. "Damn it, what have these tadpoles been doing while we weren't paying attention?"

"Hopefully as little as possible." Gale agreed. "And yes, I can read them too. 'Release'... and 'Purge'. Well, that's plain enough."

"'Purge is obviously not an option, but if we hit Release we're going to release the mind flayers too." I groused.

"So we pre-position people behind their pods and cut their throats from ambush while they're still waking up." Jaheira snorted. "How simple can it get?"

Jaheira's plan went off without a hitch, and the survivors all struggled their way back to consciousness even as the newborn illithids lay bleeding on the floor.

"Well it's about time you got here!" Mol was predictably the first one to recover and start running her mouth.

"Nice to see you too, Mol." I snarked back.

"Likewise." she agreed, more seriously. "I was starting to think I'd made a bad decision in turning down that devil's bargain and waiting for you instead, so thank the gods you did turn up eventually. Do you know that he came to me while I was stuck in that tube and offered me a way out?"

"That would explain why you were dragged away from the attack on Last Light by one of the flying ghouls even though their leader had ordered them all to go after Isobel instead." I realized. "I'd been wondering why it had just suddenly gone off on its own, but if it was all a setup by a certain someone-"

"Yeah, I was thinking the same thing." Mol agreed. "Smooth bastard digs a hole behind my back for me to get pushed into by someone else, then drops by later to sell me a ladder - at a very high price." Her voice turned embarrassed. "And it would've worked, too, if somebody hadn't pointed out to me how I was already getting conned in that lanceboard game. Thanks. I owe you a big one."

"Just try to keep your operations at least halfway legitimate in the future, all right?" I said. "There's a lot of sharks out there in the ocean, and I think you're starting to learn that some of them have had a head start on you."

"Don't rub it in." she grinned back, before nodding. "But yeah, I'll keep it in mind."

"Gods, my head." Zevlor moaned as he struggled back to consciousness. "Hawke?" He focused on me.

"You're in an illithid colony under Moonrise Towers." I tried to reorient him. "It's been a couple of days since your convoy was hit."

"The others. Did they survive?!?" he begged.

"There were casualties, but most of them made it to shelter." Jaheira reassured him. "And we rescued the ones that the cult took prisoner a day ago. You two were the last unaccounted for."

"Thank the Triad." Zevlor said relievedly. "The Absolute- it crawled into my head, offering me-" He shook his head angrily. "It doesn't matter what it offered me, because I managed to hold out. Just barely." He dispelled the dark memory with an effort and refocused on me. "What's the plan?"

"Scouting out a way into the deepest sublevel, then clearing and holding a route through for our hoped-for reinforcements." I said. "We're almost entirely certain there's a damn Elder Brain down there, and two high-value prisoners still unaccounted for. Three." I corrected myself, remembering the infernal 'asset' that Wyll had to recover on pain of eternal damnation.

"No, two." Wyll's amused voice came to us. "Because look at who I just found in the next room."

We left Jaheira, Isobel, and Zevlor behind to start organizing the survivors and getting them back upstairs to wait for the Harper reinforcements and headed into the back room of the conversion center, where we all broke out in uncontrollable grins at the sight of the last prisoner here. One who had been isolated in a very specially-reinforced containment pod of her own.

"STOP GAWKING AND GET ME OUT OF HERE!" Mizora screeched angrily.

I stopped in shock at this unexpected sight, and then was awestruck by a full realization of just how priceless and unique this opportunity could be. A plan began to take shape in my mind-

"No wonder you had to ask Raphael to run a message for you." I smirked at the helplessly imprisoned devil. "Do I even want to know how much he overcharged you? Or how much more he was asking you for a rescue, instead of what he extorted from you for just running a message to us and leaving you hoping we'd get here in time?"

"I. Don't. Want. To. Talk. About. It." Mizora bit off each word as if it were stabbing her in the tongue.

I leaned over and whispered a few quick sentences into Karlach's ear, then turned to Wyll. "Wyll, could you do me a favor?"

"Of course. What?" He turned to me-

"Hold still!" I said quickly as I hurriedly snatched his rapier out of its sheath. In the moment of shock that produced, Karlach stepped behind him and pinned him in a chokehold from behind right on cue.

"'Should the promised soul refuse obeyance or neglect duty, the pact-holder shall cast the promised in Avernus as a lemure.'" I quoted the clause from Wyll's contract that Mizora had recently threatened him with in her message. "Except now Wyll isn't either refusing or neglecting - he's being restrained against his will, and that means you can't punish him for failing to stop what we're doing. Karlach, if Wyll tries to escape, spellcast, or do anything else, then choke him out right away with a sleeper hold."

"You got it, boss!" she said cheerfully, as the others caught on to my intention and relaxed from their own startlement. "Sorry about the rough stuff, Wyll... but you'll love the ending, I promise!"

"Do you really think this is going to-?" Mizora spat, and I cut her off with a headshake.

"Let's get one thing clear right now. There's two controls to your pod, and one of them destroys you immediately. And the fact that Wyll is not yet killed, exploded, imploded, turned into a lemure, or anything else unpleasant and irreversible - as well as the contract proviso that eternally damns him if you die - is why I haven't just hit the 'purge' button yet and turned you into mind flayer residue." I said, my voice fully as iron as Aylin's condemnation of Thorm. "So if you still find a way to get past our restraints on Wyll right now, if you think you're being clever, then the best-case scenario is we can subdue him without hurting him and you're still stuck in the pod... only negotations go even worse for you. And the worst-case scenario is that our friend dies... and then you follow him, right on the spot."

"Go ahead, kill me!" Mizora spat. "If I die outside the Hells, I'll just revive there! And while I might be much diminished-"

"You won't be diminished, you'll be consumed." I said flatly. "As near as I can decipher, the 'purge' command works by supercharging the transformation into illithid at a lethally fast speed. And illithids don't have souls, remember?" Mizora paled in realization as to just how poor her bargaining position really was. "You didn't know that, did you? About the pods, I mean. I'm certain you knew the part about soul-destruction being part of the illithid transformation... you were just hoping that I didn't."

"... I will acknowledge that you have me at a temporary disadvantage." Mizora began to wheedle. "But-"

'But 'temporary' can become 'permanent' for you as easy as the push of a button." I held up my index finger dramatically. "So what we have right now is a stand-off. We can't kill you without also sacrificing Wyll thanks to his pact's penalty clauses... but by the same token he's the only hostage against us that you have right now and your current maximum lifespan is Wyll's lifespan plus a few heartbeats, and no longer. So until the stand-off is broken, you can't go anywhere." I smiled. "But we can come and go as we wish, even if we have to knock Wyll out and drag him from this room kicking and screaming." I shrugged. "And then I'll just move your pod to somewhere else before he can come back here, and never tell him where. It's not a refusal to free you on his part if he can't find you. So, how many days, or weeks, or months do you think you can stay stuffed in there before your affairs in the Hells suffer from your prolonged absence? Before your reputation in Hell absolutely craters from having been so careless as to somehow get yourself imprisoned by mortals and mind flayers? Or just before the boredom drives you mad?" I mentally thanked Raphael - not that I'd ever actually thank him to his face - for setting an example for me with Yurgir, as I hoped what had worked for him there would work for me here.

"What do you want?!?" Mizora screeched. It seemed to be working so far, then!

"Wyll released from his pact. His soul to be his own again." I said flatly.

"All right! You let me out and I'll release him from his pact, it's a deal!" she agreed hurriedly with a bright, innocent smile.

"Oh, and when exactly would you release Wyll from his pact?" I questioned, and her face collapsed into a mask of rage the instant she realized that the copper piece had dropped. "Next month? Next year? I know, how's about a single heartbeat before his eventual mortal death? Or a single heartbeat after?"

"Well of course I'd do it expeditiously!" she insisted. "Ask Wyll! I always live up to the terms of a contract!"

"Thank you for reminding me." Wyll contributed. "I've been taken by surprise far too often by contract terms I hadn't known about or overlooked, again and again - but now that I recall, you can't actually lie to me about what is in the contract. You can only 'forget' to mention details that I don't know to ask about. Which is why I'm asking you now, what exactly does my contract specify about 'expeditiously' releasing me from it?"

"Clause Z, Section 13. If the soul-binder consents to separation, she will release the soul-bearer from all obligation within six months." Mizora admitted like pulling teeth.

"Six months?" Shadowheart rolled her eyes. "I wonder how many attempts to arm-twist him into an even newer and worse deal, or just to kill him while you still had a lien on his soul, would occupy those six months?"

"At a rough guess I'd say at least five months, 30 days, 23 hours, and fifty-nine minutes' worth." I agreed. "Fortunately, however, the wording of the clause said 'within' six months... so she could do it earlier if she chose to." I stared MIzora down. "So do it earlier. As in right now."

"Are you mad, or do you think I am?!?" Mizora said. "You want me to give up my last piece of leverage on this situation while I'm still stuck in here?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I want you to do." I drawled. "Wasn't it obvious?"

"Oh, and Wyll gets to keep his powers." Shadowheart said. "A warlock's abilities don't necessarily have to go away even after the pact ends, it's just that revoking them for breach of contract is a common clause." She shrugged. "So don't enforce the clause and tear up the pact anyway."

"And what, do you want the secret of godhood in addition to all that? Or Wyll's humanity restored? Because the one of those is as impossible for me as the other!" Mizora spat sarcastically. "Look, if you miserable bastards don't want me devoting my entire immortal life to making you as miserable as I can possibly manage, then you're opening this damn pod right now and being grateful that I'm only waiting six months!"

"You know, it occurs to me that if I just leave you here and accidentally let slip to the next illithid I see that there's a free meal waiting in this chamber, it won't actually be killing you on Wyll's behalf - and I won't actually be ordering you killed on his behalf, either." I raised the ante. "Because how much mileage have devils gotten out of 'innocent' suggestions that weren't actually orders?" I smirked at her, before my expression turned murderous. "You will end the pact right now, unconditionally and entirely, with Wyll keeping all the warlock talents you've already gifted him. Because until after all that happens, I'm not going to even consider opening that pod... and I'm pretty sure that I also get what I want regarding Wyll's pact ending if he somehow outlives you."

"Wyll-!" Mizora began, only to break off hurriedly as my finger tapped menacingly on the 'Purge' button.

"One minute to decide, then we walk right now and you can hope that you're still around tomorrow and that we're in a better mood." I said menacingly.

"And I'm supposed to trust you?!?" Mizora shrieked. "I absolutely will not give up my binding on Wyll before I'm freed! It's the only leverage I have!"

"So we're supposed to trust you without any leverage?" I retorted. "Not happening! But you're focused too much on Wyll's binding and have forgotten that there's also a binding on me. I'm a paladin, remember?"

"All right! All right! Swear on your Oath that you'll free me, and I'll do it!" Mizora desperately agreed.

"On my Oath, if you immediately and unconditionally destroy Wyll's contract and set him entirely and permanently free, while allowing him to keep his warlock abilities, then I will treat you exactly as I have just described." I proclaimed solemnly.

"Done!" she cried immediately. Inside the pod she squirmed around until she could get a hand into her pocket and it came out with the scroll that held Wyll's contract... and as she held it up where we all could see it, the contract burst into flames and crumbled into ash. Wyll suddenly gasped and went slack with relief.

"I'm free." he said, wonderingly. "I can feel it- I'm a free warlock! It's a miracle!"

"Join the club!" Karlach yelled cheerfully as she converted her choke hold on him into an enthusiastic noogie. "Hell's escapees, two for two! Go team!"

"There, he's been freed! Now do as you said you would, paladin, or be damned as an oathbreaker!" Mizora demanded.

"Mizora... think back on our conversation, and replay every exact word in your head." I grinned at her viciously. "I never said I'd free you."

Her eyes opened wide in horror as she realized that she had at long last fallen for the same snare she'd caught Wyll and all her other victims in - of getting them hoping so desperately that they thought a promise had been made when it had never actually been spoken. And then all expression left her face forever as my fist slammed down ruthlessly on the button and the purge mechanism of the pod destroyed her utterly.

"She might actually revive from that in Hell, you know." Gale observed matter-of-factly. "You were only guessing that the purge mechanism would consume her soul as well as her body."

"Yes, but the pact was ended first so Wyll's still fine." I shrugged. "And I'm pretty sure that Karlach can tell us how Zariel's court is going to react to a weakened Mizora who won't even be able to do any of her emissary duties on the Prime for however long she's bound in Hell - assuming she even shows up there at all."

Karlach was by this point already doubled over helplessly in laughter, but threw me an eager thumbs-up anyway from where she was convulsing. "It'd be like tossing a raw fish into a bunch of cats!" she chortled out in-between guffaws. "She couldn't even get her friends to come mess us up, because she can't keep doing her dealmaking for as long as she can't return to the Prime and that means she wouldn't be able to pay for any help! And there's nobody who'd ever do a favor for that bitch for free, and Zariel damn sure doesn't have much use for people who can't keep up with their jobs!" Karlach finally managed to calm herself and continued on with purest satisfaction. "No, even if she respawned in Hell she still won't be in a position to make any trouble for us until most of us were already long dead."

"I had thought you promised, or at least implied, that you would deal with her fairly." Jaheira observed coolly from the doorway.

"I treated her exactly like she'd treated Wyll and all her other victims." I said equably. "What could be fairer than that?"

"A valid point." Jaheira agreed. "Come on. We've still got a job to finish."

A laboratory of some type contained a few pieces of useful loot, a machine for manipulating brains somehow that we didn't even want to touch, and several illithid rune slates whose psychically infused text whispered to our tadpoles of the ancient history of the race...

A flash of nautiloids lining a great dark void. One mind, with one purpose, moving in concert through the darkness between planes. The Grand Design in action, before the mutant-slave's corrupted power defied the great-minds and deafened her kin to their guidance.

"Mother Gith." Lae'zel said wonderingly. "So our oldest legends are true. She had the power to shield the minds of others from ghaik control, even against the force of an elder brain."

"Doesn't that remind you of something else we've seen?" I tapped the pouch that held the Astral Prism. "But it can't be her who's imprisoned in here - you said that Gith's being lost predated even the rise of the first Vlaakith. Also, Voss would hardly have 'mistakenly' rebelled against her, would he?"

"No." Lae'zel agreed. "Even allowing for distortion of the exact details of the histories, such a narrative does not seem remotely credible."

A final, mournful entry, carrying with it a vast hollow feeling of grief. The colony in decline. The Elder starving, falling dormant to preserve its strength and lie in wait - for some salvation to come.

"That seems to be a historical record of this colony." Gale analyzed.

"So my childhood home was built on top of an old, remnant illithid hive that had been laying here dormant for... centuries, apparently. Until these 'Chosen' came along to revive the hibernating brain - and enslave it." Isobel shivered.

"Let's hope it's still weakened, then." I said. "Let's move on. We're burning moonlight."

Some further exploration finally brought us to an enormous gaping cavern, dug so deeply in the earth that you'd almost swear clouds could form at its ceilling. As we stood on a platform of illithid construction next to a floating mobile platform similar to those we'd seen in the Gauntlet of Shar, only of entirely different construction, we looked down and down and down into the depths to dimly see a small circular platform on the bottom whose center was shining with an unholy green glow. Floating with silent menace towards the roof of this great subterranean dock were several nautiloid ships, intact and empty.

"They've got an entire flotilla of nautiloids docked here!" Shadowheart gaped fearfully. "How many illithids have they made? How many True Souls have been 'initiated'?"

"Did you not notice? The brine pools in the conversion center were entirely empty of larvae." Lae'zel explained. "They have exhaustively harvested the tadpoles from this hive, well beyond usual levels. And they will certainly have a use for all that they have grown." She looked to the side at a strange bulbous formation growing out of the wall whose multiple glowing ciliae looked like a translucent jellyfish. "A restoration pod. They can fully restore not only the health but the spells and powers of those who use them, once per day, drawing energy from the psionic collective to do so. A priceless opportunity for us to ensure that we are fully fit for battle against even the strength of those who await us." She shuddered. "I would normally rather die than risk using ghaik technology... but I must acknowledge the truth. We are exhausted, and we are desperate."

"If the elder brain is down there then we don't have anything that can take it out except Gale's orb, which I'm still not keen on using." I replied. "But we can't just stay up here either - if Ketheric hops on one of those nautiloids and sails away, we'll never catch him."

"No." Isobel agreed resolutely. "Aylin's down there, and I've already vowed that it has to end today. So it will, one way or the other."

As it turned out the restoration pod refused to do anything for Jaheira or Isobel, but the tadpoles in our heads fooled it into thinking we were authorized users. Fortunately they hadn't been as exhausted from all the battles today as we were, but they were still going in slightly understrength. But all six of us were entirely back to full fighting trim, and a brief mental touch from my tadpole was all it took to set the travel platform into motion.

At the bottom a short passageway led to a giant doorway like those on the nautiloid only several times the size, that slid smoothly open with the touch of a control. Our mouths were dry and our hearts thumping like drums as we slowly crept down the corridor. A short distance ahead was the platform we had dimly glimpsed from above, now plainly visible. There was a lower ring at the same level as the passageway we were entering by, surrounded by several isolated raised platforms within easy leaping distance at various points of the compass. A higher, inner ring overlooked the outer ring, and the whole series of platforms was suspended by pillars of stone over a giant, gaping hole in the earth whose depths were invisible underneath a roiling sea of bilious green light. It looked almost like the entrance to some eldritch underworld, promising an eternal damnation for any who fell into it-

And standing on the elevated inner platform we could see three upright figures in the distance and a fourth one kneeling motionlessly on the ground. One of the three was Ketheric Thorm. The other two were a strange pale woman with long blond braided hair and dressed in horrific-looking blood-red armor, and a young nobleman garbed in elaborate black-and-gold finery.

"Gortash." Karlach growled under her breath at the sight of the last man. "That letter wasn't lying, he's up to his neck in this!" she hissed.

"Father!" Wyll cried out softly, having gotten a look at the kneeling man. As the pale woman restlessly paced and stopped blocking the view, we all saw an aging bald man with skin as dark as Wyll's, still dressed in the armor of a senior officer of the Flaming Fist.

"Hold!" I grabbed his arm and kept him from rushing forward and whispered intently. "Keep your head down until we know where that damned elder brain is, or we can be sure it's not here!"

Some trick of the acoustics in this chamber brought the arguing voices of the Chosen trio to our ears, and we all fell breathlessly silent to eavesdrop-

"-you said it was under control." Gortash said icily.

"It isn't you I answer to, Gortash." Ketheric replied with death-like calm.

"Oh, the General voice!" Gortash said mockingly. "Is this where we salute?"

"Salute, yes." the pale woman said in a voice that echoed strangely. "With cleavers through his blood-starved flesh! How it crawls with failure." she sneered. "Like flies on lick-wet carrion."

"You forget yourself, Orin." Ketheric pointed an accusing finger. "I have played my part."

"You've built an army for our masters, true enough." Gortash acknowledged. "But what of the Astral Prism?!?" he insisted. "A rogue True Soul, flaunting it under your nose this whole time. And you ran from them." His rich orator's voice lashed at Ketheric like a whip.

"Sure that they would follow, and deliver it into my hands here." Ketheric replied reasonably. "If you would cease these distractions." he finished with an angry hiss.

"The distractions have been yours, Ketheric." Gortash accused. "Perhaps we should never have dug your daughter up!"

Ketheric's face contorted in pure rage and he lunged forward, his fist raised high to smash Gortash's skull - only to suddenly stop short several feet of his target. "So you haven't lost your edge." Gortash observed smugly, not having even blinked in the face of Ketheric's attack. "But you're still not as sharp as Orin is, I wager."

Because the reason Ketheric had stopped was the point of Orin's dagger pressed directly against his throat, her having moved so swiftly that it had literally happened between eyeblinks. Orin's psychotic grin wordlessly taunted Ketheric as Gortash arrogantly continued. "The slayer against the undying one. That might be fun to see."

"His crypt-breath sings to my sinews - again, again, againagainagain!" Orin giggled with a sick ecstasy. "But no, he is needed to lead the murder-march to Baldur's Grave." she pouted childishly.

"Speaking as someone who was raised entirely among fervent devotees of the cruelest goddess in the firmament, there is something direly wrong with that woman." Shadowheart shivered.

"If the Prism is truly within your grasp, Ketheric, then might I suggest closing your fist?" Gortash asked mildly, as Ketheric and Orin both stepped away from each other and relaxed from their combative postures. "Orin and I can wait for you no longer. The plan proceeds. We're going to the city, and we expect you to follow - after you have finished up here." Gortash and Orin both walked away from Ketheric towards the far end of the platform and looked down into the pit. Gortash raised his golden gauntlet high, and Orin matched his gesture with her blood-red dagger.

"The Edict of Bane!" Gortash suddenly boomed operatically, and a great gem on his gauntlet suddenly flared the same eerie color that the stone on Ketheric's breastplate had.

"The Lash of Bhaal!" Orin cried loudly, raising her dagger even higher as a great gem on its hilt also blazed forth with light.

And then all of our hearts sank as a great tentacle suddenly lashed up and over the edge of the platform, coming into view. The ground began to quiver as something massive came up from the depths, slowly becoming visible to us as it rose majestically into the air over the pit The elder brain was a great pulsing exposed cerebrum at least the size of a house, its exposed lobes glowing red with power and with multiple great tentacles reaching forth from where the brainstem would have been on a human brain. Perched directly between its lobes, up where the front brim of a hat would have been on a human head, was a great three-pronged crown with multiple smaller gems set within it blazing forth with light of the same color as the three gems the three Chosen bore.

"That crown!" Gale gasped wondrously. "I can feel the power radiating from it! If I but had the tongue of a bard, to describe what I'm seeing..."

The elder brain quivered, lashing back and forth in suppressed frustration, as Gortash and Orin visibly strained against an invisible force. Ketheric stood by, silently watching their struggles, until with visible reluctance he finally strode across the platform to stand in formation with them.

"The Testament of Myrkul!" Ketheric's voice roared out, completing their unholy ceremony, and his own gem blazed forth to match theirs. The elder brain grew still, floating docilely in front of them.

"One of the cruelest and most powerful creatures in all existence, leashed by a trio of mortals." Lae'zel said in awe.

"But not leashed very tightly." I muttered. "Did you see how those two were struggling to keep it still until Ketheric finally pitched in? That might explain what he was talking about on the roof."

Gale wordlessly looked at me, as if asking that I were really sure about not using the orb, and I shrugged helplessly. He nodded in resignation, and we kept watching.

"There we are." Gortash said smugly, after the three Chosen finished silently commanding the elder brain. "It wouldn't do to fight in front of our guest. Behold, Duke Ravengard! The Absolute!" He dramatically waved his hand with a flourish at the floating elder brain.

The kneeling Ravengard shook his head in denial and horror, flinching away from the visage of the Absolute. Orin kneeled down behind him and contemptuously spat in his ear. "You wag your tongue-flap in vain, Ulderling! While the worm holds the whip, your feeble flesh will serve us."

"Already tadpoled." Wyll lowered his head in despair. "Damn!"

"But still alive." I encouraged him. "Just like we are."

"And now it's really time for us to be going." Gortash said with a cheerful clap of his hands. "Orin and I will empty out this place and begin the march. You may catch up with the army once you've retrieved the Astral Prism. Oh, and Ketheric, do try not to sulk." Gortash taunted him mildly. "You're supposed to be the fearsome General, come to conquer the city." Gortash turned away and strolled arrogantly to where Orin was standing guard over the subdued Grand Duke. "And I am the hero who will save it!"

Ketheric hefted a wicked-looking flail, substitute for his lost warhammer, and turned his back on his co-conspirators and angrily marched away. The Absolute reached out and gently brushed the two Chosen and Wyll's father with a tentacle, and then the elder brain vanished in a flash of teleportation - taking everyone on the platform but Ketheric with it.

It is time, faithful ones! the Absolute's voice suddenly rang clearly through all our ears. Images flickered behind the eyes of those of us who had tadpoles - the crowned elder brain triumphantly floating in the air over the army encamped west of Moonrise Towers, the thousands of dupes and thralls raising their weapons with gleeful battle-cries. March, for Baldur's Gate! We go to prepare the way! The images faded and the pressure on our minds vanished as the Absolute was gone, presumably teleporting or flying ahead of its horde of cultists. But we knew that far above our heads, that very same horde was now marching towards the city.

Ketheric stood alone on the platform, his hands behind his back in a stiff parade rest. He apparently couldn't see us where we crouched just inside the doorway, hidden by the shadows and the passageway walls before the large open platform.

"I can see Aylin, now that that horrid thing is gone." Isobel muttered. "She's in the far right corner of the room, on that raised platform. Imprisoned again."

"So Ketheric's invulnerable again until we break her out of that soul cage." I muttered. "Mind flayer up on the near right platform, with a clear field of view and field of fire all down that side. Multiple necromites on the left elevated platform, towards the back where they can be a sniper team. And Ketheric up front."

"A bit overconfident to think he can take us all on by himself... but his two co-conspirators stole away most of his troops. Are they leaving him to die, or do they truly believe he can beat us all?" Jaheira wondered.

"For as long as he's got the link with Aylin, he can beat us all." I said. "But he hasn't thought of everything. Did anyone memorize an invisibility spell?"

"I did." Jaheira said. "Not usual for druids, I admit, but I study the Circle of the Land path of druidism and we have a few extra tricks. What are you thinking?"

"Gale, got anything for flying?" I asked him.

"One potion left." he answered.

"Good." I said. "We make Isobel invisible, then give her the potion. Nobody can reach Aylin's platform on foot without going near the mind flayer, who will almost certainly psychically sense them whether they're invisible or not - but he won't be sensing behind him if he's concentrating on his front. Am I right, Lae'zel?"

"Yes." Lae'zel agreed.

"So Isobel flies around the outside wall of the room, invisibly, and reaches Aylin and sets her free as our opening move." I confirmed. "Jaheira, you know wild shape, yes?"

"All druids do, even if I have not mastered as many forms as Halsin has. That was his particular specialty." Jaheira confirmed.

"Do you have any forms that are small birds? Because if you do, then you can get right behind the mind flayer." I smiled. "And as soon as the party starts, you can shove it right over the edge and into the pit."

"Mind flayers levitate." Jaheira said flatly.

"Not while I'm dispelling them, they don't." I grinned back at her.

"Necromites have a nasty sting, but they're fragile." Gale said. "One simple Shatter spell and I can turn that whole group into powdered bone."

"If Ketheric sees only us six marching up to him, he'll likely think that's all we brought." I agreed. "So we go first and engage him in conversation - he's invincible right now, he'll almost certainly want to talk before he fights just like he did last time. And while he's looking at us you two will get into position. When Isobel frees Aylin, that's the signal for me, Jaheira, and Gale to all take our shots. And Ketheric will suddenly go from being the invincible man with allies all around to being vulnerable, alone, and surrounded."

"And maybe then he'll finally see sense." Isobel said plaintively. "But if he doesn't..." She sighed. "Then we do what we must."

"Just watch Aylin's back and keep yourself safe." I told Isobel. "Nobody expects you to actually shed the blood of your own father."

"We don't even want you to." Jaheira agreed.

"Thank you." Isobel said.

We waited until Isobel and Jaheira started to move, then boldly strode down the path towards the central platform. Ketheric saw us coming as soon as we moved out of the shadowed doorway and into the light, and calmly, expressionlessly waited for us to arrive at the section of the lower ring directly beneath his perch.

"There you are. As I predicted." Ketheric greeted us calmly. "What is it about death, I wonder, that draws one toward it like a moth to light? You could have run away. Absconded with the Prism. The one thing that could have prevented me from fulfilling my destiny. But the lure of one's destiny is irresistible, isn't it?"

"There's no destiny here, Ketheric." I answered him. Out of the corner of my eye I noted Isobel still struggling with Aylin's new soul cage, so I kept talking. "Just a man who has run away from his only remaining family. Absconded from his fatherhood to instead become obsessed with death and destruction."

Ketheric's face twisted in anger, but unlike Gortash my challenge did not move him to blind rage - perhaps because he believed that I at least was sincerely a friend of Isobel. "You of all people should understand. Unlike the lying Shar, Myrkul truly fulfilled his promise - a promise no other god could fulfill. My daughter was returned to me, and in exchange for that I swore to serve him forever. When he asked me to join Orin and Gortash to awaken the elder brain, to grow the cult of the Absolute, and then eventually to wrest control of it from them, I did not question why. I did not need to share my Lord Myrkul's enthusiasm for the goal. He has commanded it of me, and that is all I need to devote my utmost effort towards achieving it." Ketheric nodded to me sagely. "Every god or goddess I have served has received my truest devotion, at least as true as your own to your Oath. But only one of them rewarded that devotion, and it is that one I will not forsake. I have fought great wars before, in the service of others. But for my Lord Myrkul, I would condemn all of Faerun to death-" And then Ketheric suddenly gasped and spun around.

"All of Faerun, death-seeker?" Aylin spat at him challengingly, her blade out and her wings spread defensively over Isobel standing behind her. "Even her?"

Gale's Shatter spell detonated the cluster of necromites at the same time Jaheira resumed her true shape directly behind the mind flayer and viciously slashed it across its hamstrings before shoulder-checking it into the void. It was barely able to concentrate on its psionic powers and levitate itself in mid-air, saving itself from a fatal fall - until with a brush of my templar powers its levitation was disrupted and it fell like a stone into the depths of the earth. Several intellect devourers we hadn't seen tried charging the party, but Lae'zel and Karlach contemptuously beat them into paste. We spread out, flanking Ketheric on three sides in addition to Aylin and Isobel in his rear.

"Give it up, father!" Isobel begged him. "Aylin speaks truth! Even if you care nothing about the world, even if I am your sole obsession, you still cannot do this! Myrkul will only let you keep me until he no longer has need of you, and then he will take us from each other... forever!"

"Have you forgotten the Dead Three's founding legend, Ketheric?" I remembered Gale's impromptu lecture at Last Light Inn. "Are you ignorant of what Myrkul said to Bane, on the day they first ascended to divinity?" 'But I choose the dead, and by doing so I truly win, because all you are lord over, Bane, will eventually be mine. All things must die - even gods.' I quoted. "All things must die - that was Myrkul's very first proclamation! His wish is that nothing will be allowed to escape his grasp forever, that eventually the entire world must be swept clean of life!!" I nodded towards Isobel. "As you yourself just said!"

"No!" Ketheric said, his voice thick with horror. "He would not do that! I could not have- you are wrong! You must be wrong!"

"You're his Chosen!" Gale cried out. "He speaks to you! Of all the people in this room, only you and Aylin can actually talk directly to their gods and get an answer! So if you won't listen to what her deity has to say, then listen to your own! Ask Myrkul what his true endgame is! And see if he'll tell you!"

"My Lord!" Ketheric cried desperately. "Grant me the strength to smite these heretics! Share your truth with me! Expose their lies!"

For a long moment, the room stood in absolute silence. And then suddenly the earth began not just to quiver, but to throb. The ground shook with a dull heavy beat, as did the air-

"Remind me why encouraging the Chosen of the god of death to directly invoke his patron's presence was a good idea?" I facepalmed.

"Perhaps I should have tried another line of reasoning." Gale admitted embarrassedly.

"My Lord, please, no!" Ketheric cried desperately. "Not her! Not them! Not this-!"

Ketheric's words were cut off like a knife as a giant gout of green death welled up from the pit below us like a volcanic eruption of pure necrotic energy. Aylin frantically grabbed Isobel and wrapped her wings around her, and Jaheira fell prone directly in the center of the wide stone platform she was in and curled into a tight protective ball. We were doing the same, shielding ourselves from the fountain of death energy with the rocks we lay on, but the giant green pillar of energy was only in the center of the pit, and only shooting up through the inner ring. The only person in the area of effect was Ketheric, and as the eruption faded away we saw that he was not there-

-and then a horrific presence filled the air.

You dare break the faith of one who belongs to me? a great, rasping whisper filled the air without sound.

The distant thudding became louder and louder, the sound of giant funeral drums beating a dirge-

I AM THE SMILE OF THE WORM-CLEANSED SKULL. I AM THE REGRETS OF THOSE WHO REMAIN, AND THE RESTLESSNESS OF THOSE WHO ARE GONE.

One skeletal hand, over half the length of a man from fingertips to wrist and attached to the bony forearm of a giant, reached up from the pit and clasped itself around the inner ring of the central platform.

I AM THE HAUNT OF MAUSOLEUMS. THE GOD OF GRAVES AND AGE. OF DUST AND DUSK.

Another skeletal hand reached up to also clasp around the ring, and both arms pulled. A giant's skull, surmounted by a golden triangular crown, began to rise into view-

I AM MYRKUL, LORD OF BONES, AND YOU HAVE DEFEATED MY CHOSEN.

The avatar of the death god stood tall, floating suspended in the center of the pit. Its horrific visage glared down at us all from several stories in the air despite the fact that its lower body was still out of view beneath the platform and its waist floated level with the innermost ring.

BUT IT IS NO MATTER.

A scythe the size of a small tower materialized in one outthrust hand of bone.

FOR I AM DEATH, AND I AM NOT THE END. I AM A BEGINNING.

---

Author's Note: Don't be too hard on Gale. The Avatar of Myrkul was showing up no matter what he said - Ketheric situated the fight directly over a gate to his realm. The wily General always has a trump card in reserve.

Granted, Myrkul wasn't expecting them to actually successfully psyche out Ketheric either.

And yup, Hawke totally ended Mizora. In game you can't do that - Wyll falls right for the whole 'If you let me out, I'll end your pact!' without stopping to ask himself if Mizora is going to play silly buggers with exact contract terms. I mean, she's only done that to him fifteen dozen times before, but this time it'll be different! In-game, Wyll's starting Wisdom defaults to 10. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if it shouldn't have been 8. Or 6. Wyll's a good guy, but dear Lord does he suck at life choices.

 

[cliffc999]

"Oh shit!" Shadowheart swore desperately.

"Spread out-!" I began to order, only for Myrkul to launch his attack before we could even react.

COME.

A terrible force radiated outward from the towering avatar and we were all helplessly yanked off our feet and dragged across the ground towards them. Necrotic energy flared green and writhed across our flesh, and bloody wounds spontaneously tore open on our bodies. Aylin was the only one able to keep her footing and even she could not avoid being dragged from her perch, although she at least was able to control her landing with her wings. Isobel thumped heavily to the ground behind where Aylin stood poised and ready, as Selune's daughter was the only one of us able to counterattack on the first exchange.

"You are not welcome here!" Aylin cried, her greatsword flaring with holy fire as she struck into the death god's flank again again. "Fall, damn you! Fall!"

As I heaved myself to my feet I noted with horror that the corruption I could sense radiating outward from Myrkul was apparently preventing magical healing from working within its radius - any magical healing, as the wounds that Myrkul's attack had caused on Aylin were not closing.

"Aylin, you're mortal right now!" I shouted in warning. "Myrkul's aura is acting like a divine weapon! Watch your defense!"

"Beacon of Hope!" Shadowheart cried, and a wave of renewal pulsed forth from her and washed over us all. I felt the chill of death recede slightly from my bones, and Aylin's regeneration began to function again... slowly.

A flurry of Wyll's eldritch blasts peppered Myrkul, chipping him a bit, and I took a moment to do a quick survey of my allies and their positioning.

"He can't move out of where he's floating in the center ring, he's too big to fit! Everybody except me and Aylin, fall back and switch to ranged!" I ordered.

"I haven't got any ranged!" Karlach cried plaintively as she stepped forward to flank me with her sword bared. "Not that'll hurt that thing, at least!"

"Moonbeam!" Isobel cried, and a great silver light shone down from above to fall directly on Myrkul's avatar. The god's bones began to smolder and crackle, although it was still moving.

"Gale, with me!" Lae'zel cried. With a flare of her psionics she invoked a Misty Step to appear at his side, then she grabbed around his torso with one arm and did a psionically-assisted leap to carry him away from Myrkul and back towards the entrance corridor. Good - our glass cannon was now positioned where he had the best field of fire and where Myrkul couldn't squish him up close-

"Catch!" I tossed Yurgir's infernal hand crossbow back towards Lae'zel and Gale and focused on Myrkul again. Several ichor-coated pods materialized on the platform around us-

"Smash those pods!" Jaheira cried desperately as she started following her own advice. "If you let them hatch then we will be hip deep in necromites!"

"Wyll, that's your job!" I decided. "Keep blasting pods!" His eldritch blasts didn't cost him anything, and they had enough range to cover the battlefield. They'd do much better at chipping away Myrkul's summons and covering all our backs than they would at merely contributing slightly to the attrition warfare we were conducting - better only one or two people be removed from the firing line against Myrkul than half of us or more.

I'd been so busy monitoring the battlefield and calling out orders that I hadn't had a chance to take a swing yet, and Myrkul regained the initiative. With a ponderous two-handed swing the great bone scythe came sweeping inexorably across the outer platform - the avatar was so large and his weapon so long that he had enough reach to area-of-effect the entire battlefield! But if he was going to overextend like that then-

I stepped past Karlach as quickly as I could so that the scythe's arc would reach me first, and put everything I had into a power block as I rooted myself in the Bulwark stance. I swore I could feel my bones crack as the titanic scythe slammed directly into my blade and shoved it backwards into my chest so hard that only my adamantine breastplate saved me from being cut in half. But I'd immobilized Myrkul's weapon just long enough-

"Karlach, hit it with everything you've got!" I called, and with a primal scream of rage she did a full wind-up, then raised her sword in a two-handed grip and brought it down directly on the scythe's haft just behind the blade with everything she had. Her adamantine sword could cut steel as easily as it could butter, and all of Karlach's tremendous strength was now directed precisely at the weakest point of a temporarily immobile target. With a CRACK that echoed off the far walls the Reaper's scythe was reduced to a truncated bone quarterstaff. Thank the Maker it hadn't been some invincible divine artifact-

Myrkul fought on in unearthly silence, not even wasting words on us as he opened his hand and let the ruined scythe fall into the pit, and then his great bone hand reached out and clawed at Karlach. Her sword hit the platform as Karlach fell to her knees, her teeth chattering helplessly as she convulsed in shock. The chill of the grave had ravaged her flesh with frostbite even more deeply than Myrkul's clawed fingernails had stripped the skin from her back-

"Leave her alone!" I snarled and hacked at the target Myrkul had just given me. My blade flared with sacred radiance as it bit deeply into his bones again and again, as I channeled my powers to smite his spirit as well as his body-

"Yes!" Aylin cried, stepping sideways to be directly opposite me on the circular platform so we had the avatar pinned between us. "Keep at him!" Her own blade, blazing with holy fire of her own, rose and fell as relentlessly as mine. Myrkul was definitely feeling the damage we were doing, but he was a long way from defeated-

I dimly heard the blasts of Yurgir's hand crossbow and warlock bolts behind me as Lae'zel focused fire on Myrkul and Wyll focused on burning down Myrkul's summons along with Jaheira. Isobel was pinned in place, maintaining her concentration on her moonbeam spell as it chewed slowly through the Reaper's fortitude and slowly burned his unlife away. Karlach was down to less than half her health and stunned-

"Sunbeam!" Shadowheart's voice called out in challenge as my beloved stood by my side. The Blood of Lathander blazed forth like an arcane cannon, striking Myrkul directly in his chest with an impact that made even him stagger slightly... and which drew his attention.

"When I said we'd do things together, I wasn't exactly thinking of this!" I joked desperately as I interposed myself between Shadowheart and Myrkul. For as long as she could concentrate on maintaining the beam, she'd be doing more damage to the Reaper than any other two of us put together... but by the same token, she'd be the primary target.

"Karlach, fall back!" Isobel cried. "I can't heal you while you're standing close to him! His aura is still blocking me!" Granted that we were all wounded, most of us could still fight for at least a little while longer. Karlach was only one or two more hits away from dying on the spot, though, and needed a recovery now.

At my nod Karlach staggered to her feet and retreated, moving to the left around behind Myrkul to get closer to Isobel. In the face of Shadowheart's threat he had to focus on her, and I had to pray that I could tank all the hits Myrkul was going to throw at her.

"Cloud of Daggers!" I heard Gale cast, and a whirlwind storm of blades of arcane force sprang into being in the center of the pit. The massive, immobile avatar was caught directly in the center of the flensing blades - a man could have tried to dodge, to run out of the area of effect, but the Reaper could only stand there and take it. And the cloud would last as long as Gale could maintain his concentration... and he was safely ensconced at the furthest rear of the battlefield, where the Reaper couldn't reach him. Between Gale's spell and the Blood of Lathander the battle of attrition now favored us- if we could just keep this up for a minute or two more without dying!

ENOUGH! Myrkul roared. His other hand came up, flaring red with a baleful orb of energy. He drew his arm back to toss whatever stroke of doom he was preparing-

"No!" Ketheric's voice suddenly called hoarsely, sounding out from we knew not where - and Myrkul's hand twitched. The momentary interruption was all he could manage, but it was enough - Myrkul's spell was ruined, at least for the moment.

"Father?" Isobel shouted. "Father, we're coming! Just hold on!"

Myrkul hissed and his eyes flared blood-red as he gazed directly at Shadowheart. My heart froze as I realized that I couldn't block this-

Necrotic chill crawled across Shadowheart's flesh, visibly wounding her further, and her face flinched as I felt the corona of an otherworldly terror strike at her mind. My imagination could almost hear the faint sounds of howling wolves as a distant echo, as the Reaper apparently drew forth her greatest fears to break her concentration-

Shadowheart's arms almost dropped, her will almost broke- until I saw her eyes flicker aside to me, and then look back up at Myrkul with newfound resolution. "Crawl back into your pit!" Shadowheart spat. "Earlier today we defied the Nightsinger herself in her own realm, and you still think I'm afraid of dying!?"

Myrkul's response was cut off by a god's shriek of pain, as Aylin suddenly came down from directly above to land heavily on top of his head - and spike her greatsword directly through the roof of his skull with the full momentum of her landing. "WE! HAVE! HAD! ENOUGH! OF! YOU!" she shouted furiously as she struck again and again.

With a terrible cunning Myrkul crouched low, bringing the furious Aylin down with him into the area of effect of the cloud of daggers. Gale's spell tore through her flesh like a threshing flail through wheat. Gale dropped his spell almost immediately, but even so Aylin barely stayed upright along enough to withdraw. She fell back to a defensive position in front of where Isobel was healing Karlach - her own regeneration would get her back in the fight in a turn or two more, now that she was out of Myrkul's immediate aura, but until then there was a grand total of two people within Myrkul's melee range and only one of them was free to move.

Myrkul's hand reached out to squeeze Shadowheart's life from her, and I immediately stepped into the hit. His great clawed fingers blunted against my armor but the chill of the grave flowed into me and almost stopped my heart. I could feel the power of my Oath waning as I burned a whole chunk of stamina negating the magic of the Reaper's death-grasp. The din of battle faded away and blackness crept in at the sides of my vision as he struck at Shadowheart again, and again, and I took the hits for her again and again. I desperately struck back with my blade as best I could, but I wasn't even certain I was hitting anything. Infernal crossbow bolts and eldritch blasts began to pelt Myrkul's hide as Lae'zel and Wyll rejoined the fight, and Gale fired a lightning bolt to augment their efforts. I saw Aylin's wings interpose themselves between me and the Reaper as she helped haul me back to my feet with one mighty arm- a silver flash as Isobel's own magic joined Shadowheart's to bathe Myrkul in the light of both sun and moon- the distinct sound of Karlach's adamantine sword chopping into bone- and a last desperate pull by the Reaper, just like the one he'd first used on us, to try and drag us all down into the pit-

-and then it was over.

I was on my knees, gasping for breath that would barely come, at least as close to death as Karlach had been a minute earlier. The rest of us weren't in much better shape - even our rear rank was still battered, and our front ranks were barely conscious. The only person in the room looking halfway healthy was Isobel, as Myrkul had never directed an attack specifically towards her for the duration of the battle - her only wounds were from having been in the corona effect of several of his wider-area attacks. And I was entirely certain why that had happened-

The horrifying Avatar of Myrkul had dissolved away like the morning dew, and the oppressive aura of death had gone with it. Ketheric Thorm lay on the platform only a few feet away from us, all of his malign power dissipated and gone. The Chosen of Myrkul was no more, and all that was left was a feeble old man.

"Father, hold on! I can heal this!" Isobel was babbling desperately as she pumped all her remaining magic into him.

"No... you can't." Ketheric whispered. "Myrkul... consumed my essence... to manifest. And now he has forsaken me... as I forsook him..." His breath grew weaker and weaker - even Isobel's best efforts, now joined by Shadowheart's own, were clearly not going to keep him alive for much longer.

"Evil always consumes its own in the end." Aylin pronounced grimly. "I tried to warn you, Ketheric."

"Yes... you did." he acknowledged. "Isobel... I'm so sorry..."

"It's all right, Father." Isobel tried to smile at him.

"No, it's not all right." Shadowheart's cold voice shocked us all like the lash of a whip. Why are you sorry, General?" she mocked him heatedly. "Because you didn't get what you wanted? It's so easy to be sorry for that!"

"Shadowheart!" Isobel rounded on her furiously. "How dare you-?!?"

"Because I hurt her." Ketheric interrupted her. "I hurt everyone. I was so selfish... and so afraid..." His eyes closed briefly, and our breaths caught in fear until he re-opened them. "I was such a fool."

Isobel's jaw dropped in realization right alongside Aylin's, as Shadowheart's pose of mockery dropped to reveal a warm, compassionate smile. "Then that's what matters in the end." Shadowheart blessed him.

"Yes." Ketheric smiled weakly back at her and Isobel. "Yes..."

"Farewell, Father." Isobel wept, taking Ketheric's hand in between her own as her fellow priestess similarily clasped Ketheric's other hand.

"Good-bye, little moonbeam." he replied, and closed his eyes for the final time.

The world stood silent for a long moment, as Isobel soundlessly wept and Aylin stood over her like a protective goddess. Isobel murmured a prayer for the dead over her father's body, and then reached up to slowly close his eyelids, one and then the other. We stood back for a moment, and then a moment more, but eventually the press of events had to resume. I reached down to help Isobel up to her feet-

-and then we all froze solid as we could faintly hear someone singing. A spark of silver light, almost too small to see, grew and grew. An aura of light rippled over Ketheric's body, and the faint stench of rot and grave-musk faded away to be replaced by the sweet smell of nighttime air in spring. A similar aura rippled over Shadowheart's head, and we watched incredulously as her jet-black hair suddenly shifted and faded into a brilliant silver-white identical to Isobel's own.

"Mother." Aylin whispered reverently, and went down on one knee in supplication. Selune's unseen yet still clearly present regard swept over us all like a warm, loving embrace, and then She was gone - and Ketheric's spirit with her.

"Did that just happen?" I asked, unable to believe my eyes.

"Ketheric Thorm will not be admitted beyond the Gates of the Moon." Aylin declaimed formally from where she still knelt in prayer. "He has a great many sins to atone for before that can ever be allowed to happen." She turned to look at Isobel and continued, her voice warm and loving. "But against all expectations your father's repentance was sincere. I know not what form his penance will take or in what realm it may occur, but Mother will give him a second chance. And..." She trailed off reluctantly, but continued with her trademark blunt honesty. "And if he had the strength to defy the Reaper himself despite being possessed body and soul, then I have every expectation he will succeed."

"Shadowheart." Isobel said, awestruck. "You saved his soul. Thank you." she sobbed into Shadowheart's shoulder. "Oh thank you so much! I can never repay you!"

"If you want to try, you can start by telling me why this happened!" Shadowheart reached down and held up the end of her now silver braid.

"That is what happens when the Moonmaiden wishes to mark one of her own as a particular favorite." Isobel smiled at Shadowheart's shock, as she fondled a lock of her own silver hair. "I received mine on Aylin's recommendation-"

"That is not why you were rewarded." Aylin broke in amusedly as she regained her footing, in what was clearly yet another repetition of an old married couple argument.

"And you received it for-" A wordless wave of Isobel's hand encompassed her father's now peaceful repose.

"I'm still having trouble believing it, and I did it." Shadowheart agreed dazedly. "Look, can we- can we just skip to the victory party right now? If I get one more surprise today, I think my brain is going to melt!"

"Whatever you want, love." I embraced her. "You've earned it. We've all earned it-"

And then I almost fell down as a dizzy spell hit me, because I'd I tried to move too quickly. "-but if anybody's got any healing spells or potions left, I think we'd better use those first."

---

Despite Shadowheart's wish for no further miracles today we still had to endure at least one more when we reached the surface and were greeted by the sight of a brilliant blue sky and the golden sun of late afternoon. The lands around Moonrise were level without any trace of the impossible geography of the Shadowfell, and the corrupt vines and darkened plants were gone. And while much barren dirt and dead trees still lay scattered around the first signs of renewed life were already becoming visible - green saplings and fresh flowers, verdant bushes and clean babbling brooks. The Shadow Curse was gone, and all the surrounding lands could breathe the free air again.

The general consensus was that neither the bloodstained halls of Moonrise nor the rotting remnants of Reithwin Town were a fit place for celebration. So first we took care of the wounded, swept the castle and grounds, and other such necessary tasks. Then we gave Ketheric Thorm an honorable burial in the castle graveyard - let Shar keep whatever remnants of the desecrated mausoleum that she cared to. And with all that done, we headed back to Last Light Inn to break out the ale and feast.

Karlach was the first to leave the party to have a private party of her own - I think she was off sharing blankets with Dammon the tiefling blacksmith, but I wasn't sure. Isobel likely wanted to do the same but Aylin was being publicly feted as our semi-divine guest of honor and so they were both caught up in that. Gale had shared several friendly rounds of drinks with us but had then withdrawn upstairs with a whole collection of books and papers he'd borrowed from Moonrise's library, eager to dive into a new research project.

"Are you all right?" I asked Wyll, having noted him drifting away from the party to quietly isolate himself out behind the stable.

"Just worried about Father." he said. "I know what you and Shadowheart said about the necessity of keeping him alive, and you're right, but I can't stop thinking about how he must be suffering right now."

"If it's any consolation, what Gale's been finding in Ketheric's papers about the ceremorphosis process says that tadpoled people are usually not even aware they're being mentally influenced." I tried to reassure him. "His thoughts are still going to be dominated by the Absolute, but unless they blatantly force him beyond all reason - if they order him to stab you, for instance - he'll rationalize what he's doing to himself. So it won't be like-" I trailed off.

"You're usually better than that at being consoling." Wyll replied archedly. "But you're right. Sorry, I just-" he shook his head. "Every day I was under Mizora's thrall I told myself that there was nothing in all the multiverse I wished for more desperately than freedom. And now thanks to you I have it, and I wonder why it feels... not like I expected."

"Bluntly?" I told him. "For as long as Mizora had you on her hook you were only responsible for some of your own screw-ups. Now you're responsible for everything again, short-range and long-range both, after years and years of not having had to think about it. And forgive me, but sometimes I think you're not very good at making life choices."

"You're talking about how I ended up in that pact in the first place." Wyll said knowingly.

"Actually, it occurs to me that you're no longer under Mizora's injunction so you actually can talk about how you ended up in that pact now." I realized.

"You're right, I can!" Wyll raised his eyebrows. "I hadn't even caught up to that part yet. All right..." he sat back thoughtfully as we both took another draw from our mugs. "Before I start, I have a question. If your home were under siege, what would you sacrifice to save it?"

"If? It's been under siege. Both homes." I answered flatly. "The first time, there was nothing we could do but run. The darkspawn horde stretched practically from horizon to horizon, and we were just a small family living in a small village. The second time... well, I've already told you the story of the Champion of Kirkwall." I looked at Wyll. "Both times and every time, I was more than willing to give my life. But even if the most powerful demon on Thedas had shown up to offer salvation with a wave of their hand-" I stopped as I realized that although not precisely a demon, Flemeth had done exactly that. "I still wouldn't have given up my soul. Death is hard, but eternal damnation is far worse." I looked pointedly at him. "Hell, we saw Ketheric come within a bare inch of finding that out the hard way just today."

"You're right." Wyll agreed ruefully. "You are entirely right. But at the time, I saw it differently." He took another thoughtful sip and then continued. "I was seventeen years old. Father had just been elected Grand Duke by the Council, and had to leave almost immediately to make a state visit to Elturel. And that's when the Cult of the Dragon made its move." Already knowing that I'd need an explanation, Wyll didn't even wait for me to ask before he started. "An underground cult who believe in a mad prophecy that 'all thrones will topple' and the world will be ruled by either a conspiracy of draconic liches or else the goddess Tiamat, queen of evil dragons, depending on which splinter sect you ask. A branch of the cult had set up in Baldur's Gate, intending to finish a grand ritual to conjure the dragon queen and unleash devastation upon the city. And a tenday after Father had left a whisper awoke me as I slept, 'Dusthawk Hill. The Queen of Chaos awakens. Come alone.'"

I restrained myself with great effort and just motioned Wyll to continue.

"I grabbed a rapier and set out. It was the dead of night and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, yet not a single star was shining. And when I arrived at the hill, there they were. Five ritual circles of five cultists each, with a totem of Tiamat in the center of each circle. Black, blue, green, white, and red - one for each of her five heads. The first group of cultists finished their chant and with a crack of thunder in the cloudless sky, a dragon's white head began to appear. Tiamat was starting to manifest. "'Tiamat will destroy Baldur's Gate.' Mizora whispered to me. "Grant me your soul, and I will give you the power to save it.'"

I buried my head in my hands and moaned. "Oh Maker, where do I begin?"

"Excuse me?" Wyll said. "Do you have an objection to saving hundreds of thousands of innocent people from destruction?!?"

"No, but- honestly, you haven't once seen where you went wrong in hindsight? Not at any point in the past several years?!?" I goggled at him incredulously.

"What else could I possibly have done?" Wyll demanded.

"First off, whenever they say 'Don't bring anyone', that is precisely when you ALWAYS bring someone!" I ranted. "Unless it's your lover inviting you into her bedchamber or having to use the chamber pot, there are very few legitimate activities that suffer simply from the presence of more people you trust!"

"Uh-" Wyll tried to interrupt.

"And then there's the positively fantastic amount of doublethink it takes to treat an anonymous warning of danger seriously enough to run out in the middle of the night solely on its prompting, while simultaneously not believing it enough to actually ask for any help and instead go get stuck in all by yourself! Despite being the son of the city's ruler and sleeping in a fortress with an entire army of Flaming Fist who'd probably believe the Grand Duke's son if he told them he'd gotten an anonymous tip of impending doom, or at least believe you enough to send some men with you!" I finished. "No, I don't have any objection to your deciding that you didn't want the city to get burnt to ashes by an evil dragon goddess. I have quite a few objections, however, to the fact that you would never have been in such an impossible position in the first place if you'd just used one tiny scrap of common sense for five whole seconds!" I tried to calm myself down. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you. I just- dear gods, so much suffering you could have spared yourself if you hadn't treated life like some romantic ballad where the lone hero can blithely run at impossible danger and escape without a scratch. You were a nobleman's son, and from what you've said he was also a noteworthy military commander before being ennobled. Even at seventeen, you should have learned better by then."

"Oh really? How wise were you at seventeen, Hawke?" Wyll said. "I might have had the ill fortune to have a passing devil involved in my youthful folly, but I'm willing to bet you weren't always a paragon of sagacity either!"

"Wyll, my younger brother wasn't foolish enough at age seventeen to get caught out like you did. And when Carver was that age he slept with two girls on the same day." I said flatly.

"I don't really think that compares-!" Wyll began.

"When our family lived in a farming village of less than six hundred people. And both girls were cousins." I ruthlessly drove over him.

"... seriously?" Wyll jawdropped.

"I consider it one of the greatest diplomatic feats of my career that I actually managed to talk them both down from strangling him, and even then I think he only survived because we were both home on leave from the army and we had to report back before the weekend was over." I sighed. "He died two years later. I'd never actually told him that I envied him for being able to pull it off, even though he got caught out almost immediately." I chuckled sadly. "I wish I had."

"You think of me like a younger brother, then?" Wyll said lightly.

"Sometimes you certainly give me ulcers like one." I joked back. "Look Wyll, no one can possibly doubt your heart. Your intentions are perhaps the purest of any man I've ever met." I looked at him. "But on Thedas we had a saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions." I gravely delivered the same advice generations of old sergeants had given young cadets, even if I fulfilled only one of those qualifications. "It's good to be brave. It's better to think... both for you, and for the people whose lives depend on your decisions."

"Is that's why you fight the way you do?" Wyll asked me. "So... pragmatically? Because at times you're the most honorable man alive, and then other times you're as ruthless as a pirate. It occasionally gets a bit confusing."

"I'm always ruthless." I admitted frankly. "It's just that sometimes I'm ruthless with other people and sometimes with myself." I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "And I do believe in honor. Not as the prideful, status-obsessed thing I've seen the more... pageantry-preferring type of nobles define 'honor' as-"

"I know exactly the type you're talking about." Wyll agreed.

"But as a more personal commitment, a clear bond of integrity? Certainly. Things like that are part of what separates men from animals. Or forms a shared set of beliefs, of expectations, that allows civilization to exist and peace to be enacted even between people who don't have personal bonds of trust to rely on." I shrugged. "But far too often that sort of honor gets confused with... I don't know, giving second or third chances to people you already know will just try to murder you again. Or deliberately refusing to position yourself for advantage not because it would be bad but because it would look bad."

"I think I understand." Wyll said.

"You know, by the end of this we're either going to have rescued your father or else- not have rescued him." I diplomatically stepped away from the less pleasant outcome. "But in the first instance your father's going to welcome you back home - especially now that you can tell the truth to debunk Mizora's lies - and in the second instance your father's disapproval will matter little in his absence and your having helped save the city, especially if Councilor Florrick vouches for you once she knows the truth. What I mean is, the carefree days of the 'Blade of Frontiers' are likely going to draw to a close in the near future. House Ravengard will need you once again."

"Time to stop thinking like a brave boy, and more like a responsible officer and nobleman?" Wyll looked at me knowingly.

"Not right now, but soon." I agreed. "So maybe start to prepare yourself."

"You've given me a lot to think about, Hawke." Wyll agreed solemnly. "And deservedly so."

"I have." I nodded, as I reached out and pulled him to his feet. "But you can do that tomorrow. For tonight, grab yourself another drink and see if you can find someone else who's in a celebratory mood. You've earned it."

"Like Karlach found Dammon earlier tonight?" Wyll chuckled knowingly as we headed back to the party. "You know, I almost wonder if one of us shouldn't go rescue him?"

"Blacksmiths tend to be very sturdy fellows with lots of endurance." I joked back. "I'm sure he'll be fine."

"Then I think I'll follow your advice. Have fun on your own moonlight stroll, Hawke." Wyll teased me, as he stepped towards the impromptu dancing circle that had inevitably been set up near one of the bonfires.

I did the rounds once more and made sure Gale was doing all right - he really didn't seem to be comfortable amongst large groups of people socializing, but to each their own I guess - and then felt free to indulge myself. But before I could, I happened across a certain pair of people hiding around the back corner of the main building-

"Isobel. Aylin." I greeted the happy couple.

"Hawke!" Isobel greeted me in turn. "... please don't tell me somebody wants another speech or another toast or another blessing or anything. This is the first privacy we've gotten since the party started!"

"Then I will absent myself expeditiously." I agreed expansively. "I just wanted to ask you if you were staying here to help rebuild the land around Moonrise Towers. I already know Halsin intends to."

"No." Isobel said. "I may be the heir to what's left of Moonrise, but I don't want to stay there any longer. Not after all the misery that's stained its halls, or the revelation of what it was built on top of this entire time. They might have to tear the entire castle down in the process of finally burning out all traces of that illithid hive." She sighed. "No, the land and the community needs rebuilding, but I can safely leave that in the hands of Halsin and the druidic circles. Moonrise Towers was a glorious achievement in its time... but that time is past."

"I don't disagree. But if not there, then where will you go?" I asked.

"With your permission, we would accompany you." Aylin offered. "The evil that possessed Moonrise Towers has been vanquished, but the true threat of the Absolute and the Dead Three still threatens both Baldur's Gate and the Realms entire."

"We'd love to have you along." I agreed. "But tomorrow is when we'll all get together to talk strategy. Tonight we rest, and recover, and celebrate."

"Indeed we must!" Aylin agreed. "Now if you would kindly be off, my love and I wish to be alone. We have been separated for far too long, and it is time and past time that Isobel and I take succor in each other's bodies and words."

"Ayliiiin!" Isobel wailed helplessly while blushing red as a sunset. "You can't just say things like that!"

"Good night, you two!" I said and absented myself as expeditiously as I'd promised and more.

But honestly, Aylin had the right idea for tonight. I headed off to that certain spot by the river, and sure enough, my own silver-haired maiden was waiting for me.

"There you are!" Shadowheart slurred cheerfully with the pronunciation of someone who was distinctly two and a half sheets to the wind. "Sorry I got started without you, but-" she hiccupped.

I realized that I was probably not going to be as fortunate tonight as I'd hoped, but my main emotion was concern that Shadowheart had felt a need to get this drunk rather than frustration at a missed opportunity. We'd just had a quite frankly miraculous day today, and Shadowheart normally stayed as sober as a magistrate, so why-?

"Are you all right?" I decided on the straightforward approach, accompanied by a comforting arm around the shoulders.

"Mmm hmm." she murmured, leaning affectionately into me.

"Long day?" I ventured.

She took another pull of red wine straight from the bottle and looked up at me. "I'm drunk."

"Yes, you are." I agreed.

"Not going to ask me why I'm drunk?" she wheedled me.

"I think I just did." I replied.

"Ah." she nodded. "Sorry. I'm just-" she waved one hand helplessly. "It just all caught up all of a sudden." Her voice turned downcast. "They raised me to hate Selunites. To be afraid of them. All sorts of propaganda, for years and years and years." She rubbed her right hand in- ah, that was just phantom pain, not an actual flareup of her curse again. "Even used conditioning." She held up the right hand for me to view. "Pretty sure this was meant to help b-brainwash me." she slurred.

"I was starting to worry about that as well." I agreed.

"So my whole life I'm trained to hate and fear Selunites - trained like an attack dog - and now I am a Selunite." Shadowheart agreed. "And I could just not think about that during all the rush and the danger and dead gods trying to kill us all today. But now we've stopped and my thoughts just keep starting? If that makes any sense?"

"It makes perfect sense, sweetheart." I kissed her on top of her head. "So am I listening tonight, or am I helping?"

"I'll be fine." Shadowheart insisted. "I just want a little time to process it."

"If you want to do this yourself, you can." I told her softly. "And if you're afraid to do this alone, you won't."

"I love you so much." she said happily, and we sat together silently for a while before she eventually continued. "Thank you. That helped a lot. I think I'll be fine now."

"Do you want me to help you inside?" I asked her.

"M'not that drunk." she insisted. "And no. I think I'll just stay out and watch the moon rise for a while. Say my first real prayers to her. Just let it... sink in."

"If you need me, I'll be right inside the inn." I reassured her. "Good night."

The main taproom was actually dark and quiet, all of the celebrating having been moved outside along with most of the booze. After all, all the Harpers and tieflings had already been trapped inside this inn for days - with the Shadow Curse gone, they'd much rather enjoy the new exterior view than look at the same old walls they already had cabin fever from. But there was still a low fire in the hearth, and a silhouette sitting in front of it.

"Not enjoying the party?" I asked as I pulled up another chair alongside and sat down.

"At my age?" Jaheira scoffed gently. "What do you think?"

"Oh, you're not that old." I flattered her, before continuing more flippantly. "You're ancient. I'm amazed you made it this far into the evening without falling asleep."

"Oh, it's like that then?" Jaheira teased me back. "This from a stripling boy who can barely raise a decent beard?"

"I'm amazed you even remember what a beard is, Grandma." I scoffed.

"Hah!" she snorted into her wine. "Do you know how long it's been since I've worked with anyone who actually dared to sass me?"

"Been the HIgh Harper of Baldur's Gate for a long time, then?" I asked.

"Too long." she agreed soberly. "Treasure your adventures and your true companions while you have them, Hawke. If you survive, then all too soon you will be looking back on them only as memories."

"Absent companions." I topped off her drink and poured one out for myself, and then raised my cup in the old soldier's toast to the dead.

"Absent companions." Jaheira echoed, and we drank. "I remember when I was your age and also gallivanting around the Realms with a crew of misfits and oddballs. Barely surviving fights with maddened gods and up to our ears in evil cults, just like you. Your young friend Karlach said that she was raised on all the stories they told of us... well trust me, they don't tell the half of it."

"I wonder what stories they'll tell about me and my crew, if we survive." I agreed. "Of course, judging from my prior experience at being in a story, I probably won't even recognize most of those people."

"No you won't." Jaheira agreed. "Once you turn a bard loose on a story, they can never resist the impulse to improve it."

"Some day I'll have to tell you about my best friend Varric." I agreed wholeheartedly. "He wrote most of the stories about me, and I never stopped being amazed at how consistently he could spin an unrecognizable narrative out of true events he'd been present for."

"I've never heard a story about you before." Jaheira asked me curiously. "Where are you from?"

"That's right, I don't think that ever came up with you." I shrugged. "Well, I don't mind spending tonight telling you the tale... as long as you trade me your own."

"Fair enough!" Jaheira agreed. "So... it all began in a tavern-"

I groaned and threw a roll at her from the nearby breadbasket. She caught it out of the air and bit into it with an arrogant flourish.

"No, really!" she insisted with a grin. "The year was 1368, and it was the Friendly Arm Inn on the road between Baldur's Gate and the city of Beregost. I was a young Harper then, on one of my earliest missions, and we were supposed to meet an old friend and contact of ours named Gorion. However we did not know he'd recently been killed, so his young ward showed up to attend the meeting in his stead. That was my first meeting with Abdel Adrian, who would forever be known as the Hero of Baldur's Gate. And the beginning of what history would later call the Bhaalspawn Crisis-"

---

Author's Note: I built a whole lot of anticipation for the Avatar of Myrkul fight, and I hope I stuck the landing. The problem is exactly what the one poster said - there wasn't much of a way Hawke could outclever or finesse this opponent, at least not once he'd taken care of the basic battlefield positioning. So soon enough it just devolved down to 'We facetanked everything he threw and kept hitting him until somebody fell down', and you can only get so many paragraphs out of that. Man, fight scenes are hard. People talking is so much easier.

Amusingly, several of the actual in-game cheese strats were also used in this fic - while the Apostle of Myrkul hits like a truck and radiates an aura that neutralizes all magical healing, it's also very large and can't move from the square it spawns in. Which means your Cloud of Dagger, Wall of Fire, and other spells that you normally don't use because it's impossible to actually hit anything with them all have a use here. Just pop the big AoEs, keep your casters alive long enough to concentrate a few rounds, and he'll fall over and die from like the 60hp a round you're doing to him.

And yes, Ketheric Thorm gets the Darth Vader ending. I just didn't have the heart to go with the canon 'And then he damned himself eternally, the end'. The other two of the Chosen triad are just nasty people through and through, but Ketheric had a legitimate tragic element to him. As one of my best friends said, 'When you partner an Abyssal Exalted with two Infernal Exalted, it's not surprising which one is the only one that still has a streak of fallen nobility in there somewhere.' Also, cripes, Aylin desperately needed some humanizing - her canon portrayal gets one good scene, her intro, and then rapidly falls off a cliff. So Oath of Vengeance paladin or not (which is actually her character class), she's not going to try and redeem the villain herself but neither is she going to interfere with or spit on anyone else who is. Hence in this rendition Ketheric actually realizing that Myrkul's endgame is going to destroy what he fought for and him resisting Myrkul's possession from the inside, as well as being saveable at the end.

I also gave the big redemption win to Shadowheart. I was considering giving it to Isobel, but the convo just didn't flow right that way. But hey, sometimes somebody is too emotionally close to the patient to see the full scope of the problem. And sometimes you need someone who got a thorough education in psychological corruption to know best what it takes to redeem people.

Oh, and the silver-hair thing in the game for both Selunite Shadowheart and Isobel is actually just 'priestesses of Selune often use hair dye'. And I found that incredibly banal, hence what I'm doing.

Updates will probably slow down for a bit because now I have to actually start outlining Act 3, which is going to be a MUCH more complex job than the first two acts. Acts 1 and 2 could stay relatively close to the canon rails simply because it's too early in the narrative for the butterflies to change much, but we've spent twenty-some chapters casting 'Summon Mothra' so eventually I have to actually do something original. Which means I not only need to load my savegame and replay act 3, I need to replay it from several different angles and then brainstorm how to mangle that bangle. But I don't feel my muse running out of steam just yet - I have several big moments from act 3 already storyboarded, I just needed to finish building a whole superstructure around them.

And yes, that is entirely the story of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 that Jaheira is going to be telling Hawke. Because sometimes a pair of veterans just want to sit by the fire and tell war stories. (The name of Abdel Adrian for the protag is taken from the novelisation.)