43. Gate Tricks Reloaded

"Father shall be furious," growled Sarevok Anchev, grinding his teeth against each other and his fists against the hardwood headboard. He leaned further in, against the resistance of his own pressed arms, and touched his domed scalp to the wood. "Our sabotaging sabotaged. All because I failed to kill them. I failed."

His companion and consort, Tamoko, laid a hand upon his bare shoulderblades, and rubbed it slowly across the wide muscular back splayed across the bed, smearing a light layer of some plum-fragranced ointment. "It might be them, might not. Messenger did not know," she whispered in a calm and silky voice.

"I know," he insisted, and leaned his head back up off the pillow, inhaling the fragrance and trying to hard too calm himself with it, negating the intended effect. "I failed."

Tamoko sighed at this, and continued to rub. "I failed you, aisuru ," she bowed her head slightly. "I fell while you fought, my aisuru bishonen ."

Sarevok jerked his body, forcing Tamoko to pull her hands away with the ointment still applied unevenly. "Irrelevant," he growled, never looking back at her. "A failure it remains."

Tamoko sighed. "To err is human."

"No!" Sarevok howled and flipped over, his shoulder knocking Tamoko's arm with a blow that would have toppled most from the bed; she was pushed it its edge but hung poised like a cat, one leg over the edge and air, opposite arm counterbalancing naturally. "I am more than that."

Tamoko closed her eyes. "You are a man. My bishonen , my beautiful man."

"I am SAREVOK!" he threw himself off the bed to the floor, pushing Tamoko carelessly out of the air. While his wide bare feet landed with bootlike thumps on the carpet, the slight Eastern woman fell to the floor, landing almost silently on all fours with spalyed toes and fingers. She hopped away from him as she took her feet, with a face showing only pragmatism, no resentment. She opened her mouth to sneak some apology, but he bellowed, and smashed his fist into the wall, crunching through hardwood and cracking mortar beyond.

Tamoko sank to her knees, and bowed. "Being a man does not keep you from your goal, my lord, it empowers you." She looked up, taking in the near seven feet frame of hard muscle that towered over her.

Sarevok growled, calmer but colder. "It is not enough. You do not understand. You have never understood, Tamoko. You never will." He strode past her, and she sat silently on her feet, hands in her lap, watching him with an impassive, resigned face as he threw on a black tunic, pants and long ill-weather cloak and riding boots. Carrying his towering, monstrous physique with civilized confidence that few of the city's slouching elite would have matched, he stormed out of the door, spurs clicking, and the moment it slammed shut, Tamoko's eyes opened, glazed with a film of trapped tears that now flowed down her coppery cheeks as she sobbed, hugged herself, and let free a wail.

--

Sarevok threw open the doors to the lab of his mentor, Winski Perorate. "The Amazons were found dead outside the mine's secret entrance. Not only was our operation sabotaged, the entire bottom level of the mine collapsed!"

The wizard sat occluded by his high-backed metal chair, which faced with the convex bay window, circular and multipaned like a fly's eye. Rather than showing the city though, the panes now reflected scrying images of a wide variety of persons, creatures, and scenes. A wrinkled but unshaking hand appeared around its edge, gesturing faintly with a small silver wand. Each image in response showed the face of Sarevok as he now stood glowering in the mage lab.

The austere throne turned without sound or visibly force, to reveal Winski. Sarevok arched an eyebrow, since their last meeting he had shed his black hood and cloak for a gray three-piece suit, put pounds and sun onto his gaunt and pale features, and grown a disciplined fu man chu.

"Hello, Sarevok," he spoke in a calm and fatherly but ultimately hollow tone. "I've been waiting for you. You have many questions, and though your powers are altering your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo some of the prophecy you will understand, and some you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant."

"What do we do?"

"Your life is the residual of an unbalance of power inherent to the Time of Troubles. The twins are an anomaly which despire our sincerest efforts we have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a scheme of nefarious precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably... here."

Sarevok sneered, and clenched his fists. "You haven't answered my question."

"Quite right. I wish to alert you to the others."

"Others? What others?"

"The Matriarch of our faith has detected the emerge of five others before you."

Sarevok frowned. "There are only two possible explanations, either no one told me, or no one knows.

Precisely. As you are undoubtedly gathering, the phenomen is widespead – its wake sowing chaos in even the most simplistic villages.

"I shall be chosen!" Sarevok howled and waved his fist, as did each scrying image in mimicry.

"The first clergyhood under the Matriarch was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art – fearsome, sinisister. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of the Troubles are apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherit in every being and thus gods themselves. Thus, the Time of Troubles was designed to more accurately reflect the mortal frailties of such beings, resulting in a number of grotesqueries corollary to our nature. Faced with the inevitability of his own demise, your father came, however, to understand that immortality required a somewhat lesser avatar, or perhaps a vessel less bound by the parameters of divinity. This required a number of partners, but if he is the father of this prophecy, then she would undoubtedly be its mother.

"His Matriarch. Amelyssan."

"Please. As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly all spawn would be sacrificed in infancy, while they were only aware of their own gifts at a near-unconscious level. While this answer functioned, it was obviously fouled by the Harpers, thus creating the emergence of the conditions for the prophecy which if fulfilled might threaten the entire world itself. Ergo those that survive, while a minority, if unchecked will constitue an escalating probability of disaster."

"This is about Baldur's Gate."

"You are here because the Sword Coast is soon to be destroyed – its every living inhabitant slain, its every farmstead pillaged and burned. Your function is to engineer strife on a scale worthy of your source, reinstating its primary power. Failure to succeed will result in a cataclysmic war with the others in the south which coupled with the extermination of Baldur's Gate will ultimately resule in the entire scorching of Toril."

"Are all my competitors that inclined to survive?" Sarevok hissed, clenching his jaw and fanning his own resolve.

"These competitors are by design imbued with a similar proclivity – a contingent antagonism that is meant to create a profound hatred for the rest of their own and all kindreds, facilitiating the function of the triumphant one. While the others have experienced this is a very unambiguous way, your experiences have been far more conflicted – vis a vis love."

Sarevok gasped out the name of the woman each scrying illusion changed to reveal. "Tamoko."

"Apropos, her love extends to only the man Sarevok, not what he could be, and she would dare to contravene us and preserve your mortal life, at the cost of her own."

"No."

"Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw of humanity is ultimately expressed, and your mortal vessel revealed as both beginning and end. There are two doors. The door to your right leads to the stables, where you should ride now to visit the princess of your faithful and the salvation of her designs."

"Cynthandria?"

"The door to your left leads back to up the hall, to Tamoko and the demise of our plan. As you adequetately put, you are chosen, but now it is you who must do the choosing. But we already know what you are going to do, don't we? Already, I can see the chain reaction - the chemical precursors that signal the onset of an emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason - an emotion that is already blinding you from the simple and obvious truth. She is going to betray us or die trying, and there is nothing you can do to stop it."

Face wracked, Saervok shook his head in denial, then looked woundedly at Winski. "Whether she lives or dies, it shall be with honor."

The wizard smirked, distorting his small beard. "Honor and morality. They are the quintessential human delusions."

Sarevok grunted in agreement, and marched for the door on the right, Winski nodding in vague approval. "If I were you, I'd avoid slighting her honor again."

Winski shrugged flippantly. "I won't need to."

--

Four hooves thunderclapped against the cobblestones of Baldur's Gate. The clouds that had that day rained upon his adversaries to the south, had over the night moved up to the Gate to drench it, appropriate enough for Sarevok's mood. His heart thudded in his great chest with each slam of his steed's front hooves, images and memories of Tamoko taking his senses from the dreary night. The sight of her art with the katana, the sound of her poetry in haiku, the feel and the grace of her body. As he rode northward through the gates into the old city, and then northwest up the wealthiest streets, the further he drew away the harder it became to deny it. She loved him, yes, but only Sarevok the man, she had never loved what he would become and never would.

"She does not see that I do as she would have be!" he shouted, snarling at that same blasted gnome on the barrel, who held out a wooden icon of a skull wreathed in purple flame as he galloped by. Sarevok swerved, plowing his loyal warhorse for the barrel, but the gnome laughed, jumping from the barrel and disappearing into a magical sanctuary. Sarevok's mount blew through the barrel, splindering beam and twisting metal rim and thundering by, but he looked over his shoulder and snarled when no blood or body was seen laid out upon the cobblestones in due sacrifice. "She would believe one must honor the father!" he snarled to himself.

"All shall be made agents of Tiax!" was screeched from somewhere on the cobblestones as Sarevok grunted and thundered on.

He dismounted by the front steps to a towering five-gabled estate, tethering his mouth, and marching up the steps. He bashed his fist against the heavy oak door of Cynthandria's estate.

Both swung open, held by an identical pair of figures. Each wore ivory-white three piece suits, with long coats, chalky albino skin, and dreadlocked hair powdered to match. Night as it was, their eyes were occluded by shaded spectacles that looked blankly into his own golden orbs.

"You're late," one intoned in the crisp, jaded brogue of a Waterdhavian dilettante.

"…she's been waiting," echoed the other with a smirk.

Sarevok said nothing, throwing back his overcoat as he marched with steps as long as many men's prone bodies into the great foyer of the estate. A marble floor stretched away, growing into twin curling staircases flanked by statues on the banisters and weapons upon the walls, meeting in a high terrace.

Front and center of a mural beneath the terrace with her hands poised upon her hips and her legs crossed, was a cream-gowned voluptuous woman of regal bearing and a face as beautiful as it was haughty. Her moony yet skeptical eyes never left his as she saunted across the floor until she came face-to-chest with Sarevok.

She looked up at him and snapped, "Sarevok…" in a voice of impatient wont.

"Cynthandria," Sarevok pronounced the name of his old consort dryly, "How enchanting."

She smirked. "My power only grows."

He smirked back. "If it comes with experience."

She slapped him across the cheek. His head did not budge, and she snapped, "If you want to the key to your machinations, come with me." Without waiting for an answer, she turned. With the liveried albinos flanking him, Sarevok followed her back up the right stairwell, and with nary a gesture on her part the double doors at its back flew open to allow her passage into the central second-floor hallway of her estate. She waltzed on, never once turning to look at him, though his bootsteps were loud enough to indicate his acquesinece so far.

The last door on the left flew open and she led him into a sprawling bedchamber. A four-poster wider than long was its centerpiece, artwork depicting wizardesses unleashing various spellpowers lined the walls, and Sarevok noticed Cynthandria herself was unfailingly their subject, often little of her left up to the art consumer's inference. He noticed that champagne was chilling in ice, and magical waterfalls sprung from the walls here and there, trickling their way gently to rivulets in the floor. The room was evenly bathed in a low, romantic candlelight without of any visible source.

Sarevok raised an eyebrow as her seeming bodyguards stepped through the doorway.

Cynthandria smirked at this, and cooed with hollow sympathy, "Assassination hasn't been the buyer's market of late, has it my lord?"

Sarevok clenched his teeth and fists, face reddening and eyes burning bright.

Uncorking and pouring the champagne, Cynthandria admired herself in a mirror, glancing occasionally from her own reflection to Sarevok's, and continued, "They are unsurpassed."

Sarevok snorted, and the twins smirked back.

One droned, "We're the best…"

"..we'll prove it," the other smirked and they clenched their fists.

"No you won't," Sarevok snarled and took a stride for them.

"Enough…." Cynthandria hissed. "Winski vouched for us, my lord. He would not want any of you damaged."

Sarevok grunted. "They don't look like much."

Cynthandria giggled evilly. "That is precisely the idea."

With a node from her, the pale twins abruptly morphed into greenish creatures with lipless fangs and deepset eyes.

Sarevok's eyes burned bright. "Dopplegangers!"

Cynthandria tossed her hair back in small triumph, saunting right up to and offered the second champagne glass to Sarevok while sipping her own glass, and looking over the goldenrod surface of the liquid at Sarevok. "Twins of anyone for any reason. My lord. Assassinate, impersonate, frame…"

The doppelgangers shifted back into their chosen human forms, and silently drifted back out of the room, smirking as they closed the door. "I also keep werewolves, if you prefer," Cynthandria offered with a lift of a bare, olive-skinned shoulder, "After all, how many people keep silver arrows in their quivers?"

"What is your price, woman," Sarevok demanded impatiently.

"My lord!" Cynthandria gasped in mock offense, and swished her glass, "Did I not once swear to serve you in every capacity I could? And to that end, I desire you to kiss me."

Sarevok snorted. "Why did I know you were going to say that?"

She smiled, downing the last of her champagne and tossing away the glass, with telekinetically levitated down gently where it had first been. She sashayed her hips as her eyes kept on his like a striking snake. "I desire you to kiss me as if you were kissing her ." As she came up to his chest, Sarevok grunted in acquesience, leaning in and sealing his lips over hers for a moment. "Terrible," she broke away, shaking her head and strutting toward the mirror the even out her lipstick. Sighing with faux-despair, she cried, "How can I possibly best serve my lord's ends when he won't let me stand at his side?"

Sarevok rolled his all-gold eyes, but they drew to her posterior sculped tight by the gown as she bent over the vanity mirror. "Very well," he growled in a low, calm tone, shook his head, and unclasped his cloak. As she reapproached, he struggled for a moment remembering the propler way to wrap his arms about her, then took one about her waist and the other behind her head, and leaned down, closing his eyes and letting his mind carry away as he performed a kiss of storybook-caliber deepness and passion.

Their lips parted moistly, and he straightened up with a confident grin. Cynthandria smiled drunkenly, rubbing a finger down his lips and cooing, "I believed in you since I first laid eyes upon you, my lord."

Sarevok threw his head back and bellowed in laughter and reverberated across the dark bedchamber. "I shall be the one! All fear the coming revolution!"