[Author's Note]
Please tell me the words in this chapter title are not related to one another...
...
Necromancy and Cake
...
Aegis watched Jaheira put the finishing touches into her frostbite remedies as Xzar dressed up in the new clothes Aegis had bought for him that day.
They'd found a tight-fitting green jacket with cuffs which had come up from Nashkel and was being sold by the very hedgewitch whose storeroom Imoen and Edwin had so molested the day before.
The garment had been expensive, as its interior stuffing had been made from a very thin layer of winterwolf hair. Xzar had reported he couldn't remember feeling so warm previously in his life, though he was highly suspicious of anything which had been woven from canine hair. However, after submitting the garment to Pretzels, who proceeded to roll herself all over it, he judged it acceptable.
They'd had the garment tailored that evening, and paired it with similar trousers. The boots had then taken them quite a bit of shopping to find.
"Tada!" the necromancer proclaimed, hopping down the stairs and then doing a little twirl. "Look! Look, look, look!"
Jaheira raised a brow, and glanced at Aegis.
The boots came up to his knees. The wrappings for the boots came to his thighs, with the material of the trousers peeking out from their tops. All sleek, slender, brown leather. The cuffs of his shirt were a little long and partially covered his hands, and he had secured green, fingerless gloves. Atop this all, of course, he still wore her cream and red Candlekeep Cloak.
"Am I beautiful?" he hoped, as he pretended to fluff his hair. "Well? Well?" Aegis sighed happily. He clasped his hands in delight, rubbed his cheek into his fingers, and wiggled happily in place, and gave a high, quiet: "Yay!"
There would surely have been a great deal of amorous doting between the two (which Jaheira would never have approved of), had a petite Enchanter not abruptly rushed up beside them with a look of grave alarm on his face, and a posture that suggested dramatic music ought to begin playing.
Aegis perked up. Did this have to do with the birthday party? Xan caught her gaze.
"The baker has fallen ill."
...
"There has to be more than one good baker in the whole town," was Aegis' response as she stood to attend to this grave issue.
"I can bake," Xzar piped up.
Xan shook his head at Aegis."For such a project they are accustomed to being booked greatly in advance. You must recall that the road into Baldur's Gate is still closed owed to the gate situation, and that the town is currently overflowing with transient guests who have more needs than the city's resident baking population is necessarily equipped to handle."
"I can bake," Xzar protested.
Aegis frowned, grasping her chin as Khalid gravitated worriedly over to see what was the matter. Viconia lifted a brow as if they were all idiots. "Do you think we can change their minds with gold? I mean we can pay much more than the average baked goods is worth."
"But I can bake," Xzar attempted to interject.
"I asked after that," Xan sighed, "And it could be possible- we are the town heros after all. But they said that we would have to speak with their clients, whom they were unwilling to discuss with me in the interest of professionalism." He paused. "I thought of Branwen in that moment, and managed to reign in my urge to charm everyone. Particularly as they all looked overworked and tired."
"Is this a bad time to mention I know how to make icing, too?" Xzar wondered.
"Well, d-do we need a professional baker?" Khalid wondered. "Any of the kitchen girls here can make cake, I'm sure."
"Eggs and sugar are the crucial ingredients for white or dyed frostings," Xzar explained, apparently to no one. Then he realized Minsc had also assembled, and appeared to be taking an interest in what he was saying. "Then you can add fruit juice to color them."
"Imoen would still appreciate, but this ought to have been one hell of a cake," Aegis sighed. "Not that I know much about differentiating pastries from one another. I don't have much of a sweet tooth myself."
"There's also the option of coca frostings or cake bases, which are more expensive," Xzar continued. "I wonder what sort of cake would be best? Fudge? Icecream? Fruit? Yogurt?"
"She once explained it as loving all cake, but nevertheless having a very refined palette for them," Xan was dismayed.
"Well," Minsc considered with brows, and it looked as if he was going to suggest something which took would take him a tremendous amount of goodwill and restraint, "the Evil Wizard might know what kind of cake to make for little Imoen...?"
"Well there has to be some g-grandmother or such we could employ," Khalid considered. "P-perhaps the innkeepers m-might have recommendations?"
"Oh that's true," Xzar mused, upon realizing that Minsc was referring to Edwin. "Do you know how to bake?" he suddenly thought to ask. Minsc bobbed his head excitedly. "Oh, I see."
"I'll ask," Xan sighed.
Xzar narrowed his eyes. "Can you make all those tiny little leaf shapes and flourishes and such with icing?" Minsc bobbed his head more excitedly. "Well then... Perhaps..."
Aegis sat back on her heels. "Can anyone in our party bake?"
"WE SHALL MAKE THE CAKE!" Minsc announced triumphantly, charging forward and nearly knocking Aegis and Khalid both over, and startling Xan into a jump.
"Beg pardon?" Xan exclaimed.
Minsc pulled an eeping Xzar forward by one arm. "A cake is needed, and a cake shall be had! We shall do this! For Imoen! Come with Minsc, funny wizard!"
And, with Aegis, Khalid, and Xan all staring on in horror, Minsc dragged a bashfully waving Xzar off to the inn's kitchen to negotiate with the good people there.
"I don't think my lover should be allowed to be in rooms where an entire tavern's worth of people's food and drink are prepared," Aegis managed after a few seconds.
Xan and Khalid both gulped. "I'll monitor them," the former said after the paralysis of his initial shock had finally abated, and then he dashed off after the two.
...
When Gorion's shoulder was mended and the duo had ransacked the Bhaalite/Myrkite shrine, they turned their attention to the hallway, across which their passage was still blocked by the mass of a very large gelatinous cube,
Before attempting anything else, Gorion sent Tallix up to see if the ooze would identify her as food. It didn't turn on her, even as she podded it with the tip of a shortsword. Next, Gorion himself drew near. The cube was neither interested in him. Satisfied that the cube would not hinder their escape, Gorion pointed up at the gape over the top of the jelly.
"We'll go over it then." Tallix agreed. "One at a time. It's a fine time to redouble my basic defensive spells, come to think of it."
Tallix smirked at the idea of having to slash apart a jelly while rescuing a Stoneskinned wizard. "Ladies first," she said, and then stepped out of the way and bowed with a flourish so that he could lead.
...
If it hadn't been immediately obvious to either Gorion or Tallix, it was now clear that the lowest floor of the tomb had been built to handle the graves of everything from high-profile criminals to magical anomalies.
Why a lich was lurking about in its depths, Gorion could only guess. He had some hypotheses: Perhaps the lich's phylactery had never been found, so his enemies had weakened him into an inanimate state and buried him on hallowed ground? Perhaps the tomb's recent desecration had then awakened said lich?
"Strange," Gorion remarked as Tallix reached him. "The undead have all run off on us."
"They know we just found that shrine," Tallix remarked. Then she lifted a hand and signed to him: "Will wait and ambush us."
Gorion signed back: "He not know we can use all stuff. I will hold back. Trick." She nodded, and together they crept slowly along.
The layout of the tomb seemed more like a prison than a grave. It's halls were segmented into numerous different kinds of alcoves, all of which were either barred with doors or which had suffered having their doors torn from their hinges. Even the hallway was segmented, though something had long ago battered through the majority of its gates and left them as depleted shells.
By the way the doors buckled, Gorion reasoned this meant something large was down there with them. It also seemed reasonable to suspect that many types of questionably-safe bodies (such as those belonging to victims of demon possession, or, perhaps, vampires) might have been interred within the basement. Yet as he and Tallix crept along, it became clear that certain attributes of their surroundings were not lining up into a cohesive story.
Mostly, this was because none of the sarcophagi looked to have been disturbed. Stone caskets lined the walls on either side of them, and filled gated alcoves beyond. All of them, however, were reinforced with metal, magically sealed, bolted shut, and barred off into their little hovels. There were no signs to suggest any of them at all had been opened.
"Odd," thief and mage finally expressed, simultaneously.
As they traveled along the main necropolis 'roadway,' the duo emerged from cramp burial arrangement into a long, tall, open hallway that did not seem at all pragmatic on space. Gorion frowned and stepped hesitantly on to a pathway of raised stones which wound across the hall. Immediately he could feel that he had entered a tunnel of protective energy.
Whispers rippled across the room, building layer by layer. The whispers mounted into distant crying, then sobs, than loud shrieking and gnashing of teeth. Shimmering white shapes, transparent and thin, fluttered by the dozen among the pillars. There were easily two hundred of the ghostly shapes immediately in view; some chasing frantically after things that could not be found, some curled up alone and wailing over bundles of cloth, others using nails to claw at their own faces and hair.
"Ah," Gorion murmured, peering in disturbed wonder up at all the spiraling shapes. Starting a collection was certainly not anything Gorion had presumed one could or should do with ghosts, but then again if one rapidly removed them from their original hauntings and yet did not have time yet to deal with each and every individual spirit, one would need a location to store them.
It wasn't just ghosts either, by the look of things. Spectres stood quietly flanking the tunnel, their eyes dark with focus and their forms marked with signs of violent death. Above them, coiling, billowing, cloth-like shapes with claws curled about through the room; wraiths. High near the rooftop, Allips babbled and whined in constant strings of madness, suicidal even after death and lashing out in vain at other spirits drew near it. Shadows twisted along the pillars and floors without forms to cast them. Umbral animals, black and distorted, wound their way aimlessly about the walls and ceilings. There were even forms of incorporeal undead which he could not identify!
And yet, all of the undead seemed to be relatively docile for their circumstances. The temple's priests must have taken great pains to neutralize each specific case.
"I'm guessin we're not ta leave this nice path of stones," Tallix remarked. "At least without some protection from incorporeal undead."
"That seems to be the case," Gorion agreed. "This tunnel must have been a means of viewing and communicating with them without relying on spells. It suggests they were meant to be visited by priests, once."
"If I was a lich, I'd ambush us here," Tallix told him. "Even without the natural hazard, it's too broad and easy to get around us. I say we back up and find another way to walk."
A somewhat nasal sounding voice interrupted them: "The lich? She most likely already has her 'men' creeping up behind you."
Gorion jumped, and then looked up to see a wraith hovering very near to them, with its fingers long and black, and its eyes like maroon coals. For a moment, he was certainly he must have identified the wrong ghostly originator of the voice. Then he raised a brow. "Erm. Hello?"
The wraith inspected him. It's attention was far greater attention than any other spirit, almost as if it alone could see them. Perhaps that was the case; perhaps ghosts were oblivious to most things they could not sense living energy emanating from. "Hello," it (he?) acknowledged after a moment. "My concept of time is foggy, but it seems it has been a long while since living people walked these passages."
Gorion straightened curiously. Where once he might have experienced an instinctive urge to unmake this undead abomination, now he felt only curiousity and a begrudged respect that anyone's sanity could have survived so many years cooped up with the wailing and gnashing of hundreds of other ghosts. Perhaps age has mellowed me. "You seem remarkably well put together for a wraith," he decided.
"Well," the wraith sighed long and low, "I was a magus, once," he offered by way of explanation. "With it comes the skill of focus." Then he tilted his head to the side. "You are most likely not in the position to make conversation. I surmise you are being herded as we speak, so I will be brief: You cannot expect to wade through her armies and survive."
Gorion frowned. "We are reasonably capable individuals," he pointed out.
"Be that as it may, you are against infinite numbers," the wraith counseled. "You must understand that her control at any one point in time is limited, and she is still recovering from acute weakness after being entombed on hallowed ground for so long, but she can immediately replace what she loses."
What a bizarre conversation. "How?" he asked as Tallix kept an eye on both doorways. "We've seen no opened tombs, and the closed ones look well proofed against intrusion."
"Against physical intrusion, yes," the wraith explained. "Yet after inspecting some of her toys, I am certain this is no pure feat of necromancy he is conducting. This appears to be a work of conjury, and is connected to a power node she's harnessed that peeks over the center of this tomb."
"The High Hedge ley lines," Gorion blurted, because this made sense. His eyes widened. "This is the reason for the black skeletons on the surface?"
The wraith seemed excited. "Ah! Good you are no fool! Listen quickly, then. She has a zombified dragon- dreadful thing, but small- and there is some kind of shrine reachable through a long hallway you can access with a sconce to the side of this chamber." He pointed a long claw. "Which might help you evade him. You will have to protect yourselves against energy drains, or evil, or some such if you plan to walk across it, however."
That put Tallix ill at ease: "And I suppose ye are just providing this information out of the goodness of your heart?"
"Banish the thought," the wraith replied a little snidely. "I would like to get out of here. I am not particularly picky about how, though I'm rather sure I made some religious mistakes towards the end of my life and would appreciate not being smited. I've little eagerness to meet the Abyssal viper who has stake out a claim on me. But we can discuss that bidding process at another time. For now, I intend that you survive. Find whatever she has done around this node of power, and disrupt it before you face her! "
...
Tallix was already impossible to track, and Gorion had spells raised to make himself invisible to anyone, including Elminster. As they hurried down passage after passage, they spotted an arcane eye that hovered blindly past them. Without a map, homing in on the center of the prison was not easy. The best clue they had was the general curve of the corridors, but at times even those could be misleading.
Undead began patrolling the corridors for them.
They knew they were getting close when they heard a pained roar, and the footsteps of what very much did appear to be a dragon.
"We need to get to the spellwork first," Gorion muttered. "No point taking down a zombified dragon if it isn't even real and will be re-summoned immediately afterwards."
"Gotta try and find a side way through," Tallix muttered.
He nodded, listening to the footsteps draw closer. Then he straightened and looked around. "Something is hallowed. Not far from us. Another shrine?" he wondered.
"Maybe," Tallix realized. "If we're near the center, there very well could be a big shrine. Hold up, I see some seamwork."
"Hurry," he told her as she sheathed a dagger and went to investigate a few stones. The dragon paused. Then it resumed coming near her. He did not risk speaking, and instead signed to her: "Hurry!"
He heard a click behind him, and turned to see a door branded with the dual mark of Myrkul and Bhaal. Tallix pressed it open, and Gorion followed swiftly afterwards. He spun about to face the door as soon as they had entered, and quickly drew a sigil for Silence upon the surface. Done. The sounds of the zombie dragon cut off sharply, and a permeating quiet spread across the room.
"Ri," his halfling elbowed him. He obeyed her, and twisted around. Ironically, they ended up precisely where they'd meant to.
Laid out before them was a large and heavily damaged temple. Half of it was indeed hallowed, although everything within it looked to have been destroyed by explosive magic. The other half of it had fallen into rot and disrepair, and appeared to have been desecrated. Smeared across its center was a thick, corroded, black smudge on the ground. It's location seemed almost arbitrary, but the red spell circles drawn in blood immediately clued Tallix in: they'd found the 'conjuration node' they'd been looking for.
"That's it," she hissed, scarcely believing their luck. "Ri!" She paused. "Gorion?" She glanced back behind her, and saw his attention had fixated on something else entirely. In fact, he had wandered off to the side (though still well within the reach of the hallow spell) and was staring at something. She raised a brow and then came over to see what he had found. She found him gazing down at the temple's main altar, where a single object had gone undisturbed by whatever cyclone had struck the room.
...
It was a knife.
It rested there, it's hilt carved from mahogany wood and tied with a bow of brilliant, golden hair. It's blade was the discolored yellow of old bone. That was what it was: a knife of bone, glutted with the taint of dozens of slain Bhaalspawn, heavy with the souls of murdered babes.
Gorion's face was slack. He stared at the artifact where it lay so innocently upon the table. Then he turned a slow, disbelieving look onto Tallix.
"You knew," he breathed. "This was no hunch. You knew what would be here."
"Nae!" she hissed in surprise, just as startled to see the knife there as he was. "O course I didn't! How could I have? What's it even been left here for?"
"This is one of the knives," he whispered. "The ones I helped to make. Tied up with her hair."
Tallix caught the judicial edge in his voice and took a second look at him. "Hold on, Ri," she said, keeping her voice low. "Calm down. I had no clue that we'd-"
"You led me here," he murmured in realization, shaking his head and stepping back from her. "Through this temple, with its convenient story of religious harmony and respectful burial."
"Gorion," Tallix growled, rounding on him cautiously. "This isn't time for another of your fits."
"You were the one who sought me out in Waterdeep," he spoke aloud, as the pieces of this story began assembling with crystal clarity at last. "You were the first one to offer me council and comfort; To say that I hadn't been owned by him, and that I'd avoided his machinations. You were the one who placed all of those ideas into my head."
"I'm nae yer enemy, Ri!" she interjected in an angry and frustrated whisper. "How many times do I have ta bloody repeat that to ye before it sticks? I was a Zhentarim assassin, aye! But I were ne'er any god's housemaid, or spendin me days handlin one's dirty laundry!"
The aasimar's eyes widened at her. Laundry?!
"Yet still ye doubt me? I told ye true as I knew about Aegis!"
"Oh did you? And yet, there," Gorion uttered, advancing a slow step on her and pointing towards the knife, "is the proof he has puppeted everything from the start. He-" tears threatened at his eyes, but he bit them back with cold fury because his daughter still needed him to figure out what to do next, "He meant for me to have her, and my defiance was an illusion. It is a holy weapon worthy of a high Priest of Bhaal, waiting for me, tied up in a bow so I'd know exactly who had left it and why. And you brought me here."
She shook her head rapidly, stepping backwards to give him space and lifting her hands as if to appear placating. "Ri ye need ta calm down. This is a bad place fer ye ta fall apart. We can argue later."
Gorion upper lip curled in a sneer, and he gave a slow shake of his head. "Stop belittling my arguments by citing my soul-sickness; my thoughts are suffering no lack of lucidity. Do you think I am so helpless as to curl up crying, afraid of him, willfully eating whatever tosh I'm fed? Did he honestly believe I would take this, or does he offer it now to mock me? No, perhaps that is your role... To slip in under my paranoia and convince me it might be put to some benevolent purpose...?"
"I dinnae give two fucks about the fate of a knife," she hissed angrilly. "Ri, ye are going down a hole. Ye need ta listen ta me!"
"You are to be the judge of this?" he snarled, his fingers already curling to access the weave. "Of my sanity? So that is his purpose with you then: to employ the necessary emotional and logical manipulations in his stead."
"Yer brains are scrambling thoughts, ye stupid bird! Can't ye see how big a time frame he had ta put it here?! He had a whole bloody decade! He coulda elected ta do it years afterwards-!"
Harsh draconic crackled through the air; Ice was crackling out along the ground from where Gorion was standing and the air had grown even more chill around her.
Tallix sucked in a quick breath. "A dance then," she growled as the first shards of ice came hurdling at her en masse.
...
The crackle of ice; the spray of snowflakes. A brush near his side and he knew she'd evaded. She'd wear through his protections with small touches? A halo of cold then! He was going to have to resort to magic missiles to catch her, but he had little doubt he'd needed more than that to pin her down.
The jolt of the earth was painful, particularly as it came up to meet him faster than he thought he could fall. She slammed her palm down on the back of his skull, and stuffed his face into the floor with a force that bloodied his nose. He got halfway through through his next spell, and mist writhed about him in claws and hooks
Then pain lanced up through his hands as she bent his fingers and drove her thumb into a pressure point he didn't even know he had. He lost his grip on the weave. Damn! Get her off! He bucked against her hold, sputtering past blood and trying to cast with his other hand. She was not so large as to be able to grapple with him! Yet the contact had allowed her to force her way through the majority of his defenses, and his free hand went numb with a sharp prick.
Enough! Spitting draconic, he got his knees under himself. She was no more than the size of a child and could not physically keep him down! Yet the halfling realigned her weight, dug her heels in for leverage, and the torque she applied to his arm blinded him for a moment. Get OFF! He tried to heave her away, but her hold was so painful that he found he could barely move. A frustrated exclamation burst up from his breast.
"Ye are pinned!" he heard her hiss.
No. No, this would not be the way Bhaal took him! He had one thing left, one old double-edged sword! His brows furrowed and his teeth clenched. With a splash of freezing air, ice crystals crackled out from beneath him. He took in a deep breath between his teeth. The ice began twisting up in spikes, and cold vapor wrapped about his shoulders. "I will not be calm for him!" he spat out the words, each exercise of his voice cloaking him in more frost, as crystals formed between himself and her and spikes grew up from near his elbows and knees. Cold; he focused all of the leeching power of cold at her.
He had to be hurting her. Had to be. No? She didn't move!
There was too much at stake and he had to dislodge her! That knife (the knife the knife the knife), wrapped in that hair, (that thing, that woman he had slept with), in all his amazingly broad and deep lies (it had pretended to love him, for years, he had told her he loved her and she had not existed), the babies, his babies, the children, Chai, Chai-!
...
Tallix shifted her weight, altered her grip, and then rammed her knee solidly into the thrashing wizard's kidney. The air went out of him with a shocked exclamation, and mounting hooks of ice crystals halted before they could get tall enough to pierce as well as freeze. She didn't take her hands off of him, and with good reason. When he suddenly lunged to the side, it was with such force that the two of them nearly dislocated his arm. He howled, though whether it was more in frustration or pain she could not tell.
The halfling shot a worried look towards the entryway, but if no one had come then no one would come; they were being plenty loud of enough. The wards must have held. She looked back at her charge as he debated himself like a fish out of water, kicking and worming and doing quite a number on his pinned shoulder. She'd never held on to anyone who'd powered through the agony of a joint lock quite so ferociously before, and she was reluctant to pop his shoulder socket in such a dangerous location
"Gorion!" she hissed as the ice crackled about them but failed to rise any higher. "Snap out of it!"
She must have said the wrong thing. Gorion managed to prop himself up swiftly on his numb arm, and his shriek of rebellious hatred was more bestial than human. He stayed poised like that, gulping for air as if starved of it, and breathing outward in enraged pants. His fingers were bloody where they'd clawed into the sharp edges of the ice.
Tallix bit down hard on further words, grimacing. She kept a firm hold on his other arm, and tried to figure out whether pushing him to the ground would cause him to hurt himself. What could she say? There was nothing she could say. Nothing she could do, either, but hold him down. Sense wouldn't get in; At least, not the sort of which she knew how to say. Damn it, but a woman with a prettier tongue could doubtless have shaken him out of this!
He jerked his weight to the left, but she held him in place. A furious sound escaped him, inarticulate and raw. Another followed it, though more strangled.
Tallix felt the shudder passing through his back muscles before the change happened; Then the next cry which left his lips was anguished and low. He breathed in shakily, and lost a sob.
She watched as Gorion's posture lolled. For a moment he seemed to try and hold onto his thoughts, and his breaths were angry and terse over the endeavor. This his arm gave out, and he slumped stone floor with an exclamation of mental pain. A shaky sob oozed up from within his chest. Another came right on its heels, and another. He lay there, a mighty wizard laid low by little more than pressure on his right elbow; impotent, vulnerable, and helpless; shaking and whimpering and crying such that the tears could be heard pattering upon the ice. It seemed as if he would curl up in a ball if it were not for the pressure she was exerting on his arm.
Talli'x fingers loosened on his arm. When he didn't lash out, she released the pin. She eased gingerly off his side. He didn't budge. She tilted her head back and took in a few long, slow breaths. A moment passed in tear-filled gasps for air and sputtered helplessness. Then, with a grunt, his halfling seated her rump down against his side, and reached over tiredly to pat his hair.
A whimper trembled its way out of him, confused from his chest to his mouth.
"I'm here," she muttered faintly, wondering if she had what it took to handle this, to keep him safe. She'd never been particularly great with words.
...
T-Tallix. He lifted his chin from the ice, weakly. Tallix...? He turned his head slightly to catch some sight of her, any sight of her; her, the real woman who had traveled three thousand miles on behalf of sentence fragments signed with his 'G.' Tallix; he wanted to touch her, desperately, desperately, and he didn't know if he dared.
"Its okay," The halfling murmured, her fingers still chafing through his hair and over his shoulder. "It's okay. Yer comin back together even as we're talkin. Ye're gonna be fine."
"The Timeframe-!" he blurted, seizing on to the fragmented, rolling pieces of sense which were churning about with all the feelings, because he had to stake down that piece of sanity for fear it might elude him again for the ease of draconic. The timeframe. That was the tiny anchor, the bit of thought that needed to be expanded upon and examined for validity if only everything would calm down.
"Just breathe lad," his halfling suggested. "No emergency, looks like. Nae this time."
"I-I-" the aasimar sputtered, lifting up his bloodied hand to look at it. "I can't tell," he mumbled. "Gods! I can't! I can't tell!"
"When ye aren't yerself?" she asked, drawing out her pipe and leaf. "I can, though it's a devil of a time gettin yer ear on the matter when it counts," she grumbled.
He listened to her small motions, so quiet, muted leather against muted leather. She was warm against him, in contrast to his chaotic spellwork. The ground was coated in frost. Tallix struck a match to light it, and puffed away to get the tobacco properly smoldering. He listened as some tears dried and others formed. "How?" he requested quietly.
She took in a draw of smoke and let it out slowly, leaning slightly back into him. "Well, it does ye no good ta hear that ye go ruthless, tunnel-blinded, and damned senseless; on account of the fact ye've no way of tellin that apart from bein angry and paranoid for valid reasons." There was a sharp edge to her voice, and he winced. She sniffed thoughtfully, thinking about the question. "The Gorion I know," she mused slowly, "doesn't panic. Even when things are bad. He holds his cool and acts logically and fast, ta the point where people who don't know him well enough presume he's just cold."
The aasimar stayed where he was, swallowing past hard lumps. "Doesn't panic," he repeated. "I panicked. I saw a reminder of everything and I panicked." The word weighed on him, but she kept petting over his hair and shoulder. "Tallix... Am I mad?" he asked her quietly, not daring to look back.
The questioned seemed to disarm her, for his halfling laughed. "Ye think we don't all have our demons? Ye had a god stalkin ye. If that didn't unhinge ye, I'd be worried." His fingers tightened reflexively on the ground. "Ye ain't see one of those since back before were were close, and ye know exactly what Iv'e been. Those puzzle pieces line up damn easy in a mind, whether they're cut fer each other or not"
He choked out a bemused moan. "How are you able to tell me I'm crazy and yet somehow sooth my churning stomach and pounding heart all in the same breath?"
"Scary known are significantly less upsettin than scary unknowns," she decided "When ye've got a hand behind a viper's head, ye can manage it's bite a wee bit better." He wormed and twisted about to look at her, feeling tired, sick, and weak after such an outpouring. After a moment, he reached weakly back to brush his knuckles against her pant leg, arm, and armor. He needed the physical reminder of her existence, tactile proof that she wasn't some phantom or imaginary construct. She seemed to understand, touching his hand gently and then chafing over his arm. "Ri..." She let out a puff of smoke, and then eyed him seriously. "Ye sure ye dinnae want ta geas me?"
He looked away. "I can't. I need you to have complete free will," he said.
She tilted her head to the side. "Why?"
"Because those are the only circumstances under which your loyalty means anything."
She snorted and looked down to tap her pipe lightly against an ice crystal and redistribute the ashes. "That's silly talk. Knight's make vows, lad. It ain't like ye'd be forcin me into it; I'm volunteering."
He grimaced, fumbling through explanations. "Perhaps I don't really believe you couldn't shirk a geas, and so it would do nothing for my security. Perhaps I take comfort in these conversations, and would be left bereft if you tried to convince me of your innocence each time with the canned 'I'm geased.' Perhaps I merely want to exercise your capacity to do the right thing, as opposed to making choices easy for you through an artificial compulsion." He rubbed his face. "Or perhaps I am morally opposed to casting a geas on someone I desperately need to believe has genuine affection for me."
Tallix glanced down at him again. "Lad, ye'd just be tying up a difficult loose end that's hard to rest yer brain about otherwise."
"That would be true, if I were thinking logically," he blurted in a rush, lifting a hand to cover his face and then touching gingerly at his bloodied nose. "But I have been to places where logic and convictions blend into soup and fail to serve a man by pointing in any direction, and the only thing which led me out again was blind faith. You are, by the way, one of those places."
Tallix shifted uncomfortably, because she was, and she knew it, wrapped up in his head with the issue of Lullorin.
"So a geas does nothing to settle my nerves. All I have by which to understand you- all I've ever had since you showed up peddling gnomish turnips in Waterdeep- is my faith. Blindly, and with complete vulnerability, because you've never made sense."
Tallix reached out and mussed through his hair. He looked up at her. "Deep down, lad, what do ye believe? D'ya believe I'll help Bhaal?"
He swallowed. "No."
She raised a brow. "Why?"
"Because he doesn't mean anything to you," Gorion told her.
"And how da ye know that?" She half-turned towards him and fixed him with a stern expression. "Perhaps I'm his most fervent follower and both me younger ones are Bhaalspawn. Perhaps everything ye know about me's a lie and I've got no kids at all, and just trained one ta play the part." His eyes widened slightly, but Tallix pulled no punches whatsoever in handling him: "Perhaps everything that's happened from the beginning were all in Bhaal's plan ta get Aegis ta the top of the food chain in the Bhaalspawn crisis, and then boil her soul to nothin as he takes her place"
Gorion scrambled for purchase on the ice and then both roughly and shakily pushed himself up to a sitting position. Tallix blinked, and then arched to lift her head as the wizard's mouth violently stole possession of hers. He grabbed tightly hold of her, dragging her into him, owning her.
Tallix seized his shoulder and pushed him back an inch. Her green eye was stern. "How many times did ye fuck with that blonde-haired doppelgangar? How many mornings did ye laugh together? How many evenings did ye lie together and talk about morality, or the future, or gods?"
He cringed, trying to pull her to him. "Tallix-!"
She kept him there, her fingers tight on his cowl. "Remember, lad, how long, how cleverly, how well he planned that seduction. And remember he did it for a reason: to induce a mental breakdown. Ta weaken ye. Remember why! remember that he picked ye ta counteract the ambitions of his own high priestess. That he broke ye, on purpose, but there was a reason. Because he couldn't be everywhere. He wasn't all-powerful. He was waiting for a perfect pawn, and he got leverage on you, and you were in the right place at the right time for what he needed."
"-Why-!?" he protested his lecture.
"Listen to me, boy! When ye are scared- whenever ye dinnae know what to believe in!- ye dinnae have to hinge everything on a person. What he did ta ye made ye feel helpless, but ye weren't. Ye got out from under his thumb. Ye evaded a god. And twere a fragment of yer own soul- Chai- which figured out the riddle of how he'd done it! Oghma couldn't have reached ye, if Chai and ye hadn't figured the puzzle out first. All he did was help ye get back on yer feet and keep tryin! All he did was show you there were still summat ta live for once she'd died!"
The aasimar's lower jaw drooped, and he stared at her in horrified wonder, his eyes wide and his fingers tight on her shoulders.
"Dinnae put everythin on me!" she protested. "What if summat happens ta me? Hells, what if I done been geased by someone else? What if I were impersonated by a shapechanger? If Bhaal himself were alive, he could do it! Are ye gonna trust whatever comes out of me mouth, without using yer sense?
"Ye are are a wizard lad- and a cleric ta boot!- and ye've the brilliance ta dig yerself into and out of some of Faerun's most terrifyingly complex holes. Yer brilliance is yer tool, not blind faith! Look for motives, and means. Tie up loose ends! Ye did not keep Aegis hidden and safe and untainted for twenty bloody years by blind faith! Ye did it by being an anally retentive perfectionist who patiently circumscribed and closed up every problem, every gap, every weakness, every adversary ye could find. And I bet if ye racked yer brain through with a garden rake, ye could even figure out how anyone managed to find her in Candlekeep. Most likely, ye know whomever was responsible. Most likely, ye even know the man who ran ye through."
He was struck mute by her; he hadn't even the verbal capacity to stammer.
"And that's another thing: By all the gods, lad, if ye need ta have faith in me, dinnae give yerself all these unknowns by which ta question said faith when things look bleak. How can I diffuse you? I ain't got the words for it! My track record be iffy enough as-is without leavin yer sensitivities wide open. Place the geas as best ye know how, and close up ninety percent of all problem possibilities ye can foresee. And investigate what ye know about me! Do I really. got three wee ones, do I have a family, what would they say about my convictions if ye were able ta ask em? Am I real? These are questions ye can find evidence for! Evidence is how ye establish yer control of a situation!"
"Ye are not powerless. Ye are not helpless. Ye dinnae have ta put everything ya have into one hope. I will help ye take care of yerself, but I will not hold this show up alone, and I will nae sit idly by while ye teach yerself impotency, and hinge yer entire sanity onto irrational belief in the infallibility of one very flawed and mortal person! Even gods should not get by so unquestioned!"
Gorion was quiet in staring at her. Tallix considered whether she had any more words to share, and eyeballed him. She waited as if for some kind of confirmation or acknowledgement that he understood, but when none came she slowly released his cowl. He continued to watch her for a long moment. Then his gaze lowered, and he reached quietly up to grasp one of her hands and draw it up for his assessment.
The halfling winced slightly, and glanced down to see her only ungloved fingers, the fore, middle, and thumb, were raw and blistered.
"I've hurt you," the aasimar realized quietly.
"Ye were trying ta, remember," she reminded him. "A fool with a crossbow can pin me once in a blue moon, and yer an archwizard I've no situational advantage over. Ye'd have ta be daft ta think yer so powerless as ta be unable ta touch me."
He set to unbuckling her glove.
She grimaced. "I'll be fine if I sip on a potion, lad."
"Let me see," he requested. "So that the next time I panic, I remember what I'm risking."
She watched his face as he unclasped the glove along the forearm and wrist, and then gingerly eased the glove off. Her forearms were bathed in the raw red and yellow of shallow frostbite, and bruises were forming where ice had torn small veins from the inside. His lips pressed together and his brows furrowed in dismay. She swallowed at the sight of his concern, and then slowly lifted her free hand to dab blood from his cheek.
Her wizard looked up at her. After a moment, he reached forward and tried to tug and coax her into his lap.
She scowled. "Ye realize we're sittin a bloody hundred paces away from that circle... and if the lich wanders in after all that screaming, while you're being too sentimental to disrupt it, I'm gonna nag yer ear off."
"Yes," he said simply, and somehow that was enough for her. She ended up in his lap, with his embrace folded around her as he fussed over her injured hands.
"It's fine," she muttered.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. "And you are right. About..." He rested his chin against her temple as he felt about for a healing potion. "I need a little longer to process everything you just said. I'm... still stunned. Grateful for having you, and stunned."
"Well, least yer brain reactivated," she muttered, scootching to find a comfortable place to sit on his thigh, and straining her ears for any sound of encroaching monsters.
He turned his face briefly into her hair, and then lifted it again and opened the potion.
...
[Author's Note]
Nothing to see here, just having a breakdown in the middle of a dungeon...!
