Hello, and by the way I do not own Baldur's Gate or the characters there in except Thorn, and perhaps a few others along the way. It is all the property of Bioware, and they can keep it as far as I'm concerned.

This is my first fanfic so I have no idea what I'm doing. Well, some idea.

This chapter may actually be considered R material, but it's nothing gratuitous and it won't be like this all the time.

Read and review please.

Chapter 2. Warm Blooded

The room was dark except for the eerie yellow glare of a lamp that hovered listlessly over a rusty chair. It was a formidable apparatus. Splinters and leather straps protruded from the seat and armrests, the latter of which were encrusted within a black substance, dried blood. Upon making this horrifying observation Thorn's entrails churned and spun nauseatingly, and she renewed her efforts to extricate herself from his crushing embrace, but it was all in vain. The mage placed her in the feircesome recliner as delicately as if she were made of porcelain, strapping her in securely with the leather bands. Then he stood back to admire his handiwork. Thorn could not bare to look at his gruesome face, more disfigured then the instrument of torture she occupied. At length he began to pace the room slowly. His gate was as unnatural as the rest of his attributes. It was regal, sustained, and direct, yet heavy and coiled like a large cat ready to spring on the instant. He was a living contradiction, appearing to be indubitably fastened, nay, rooted to the earth yet simultaneously to be floating like a dancer, or a wrath, it was both fascinating, and baffling to behold, and Thorn watched with not a little fear, and wonder.

"Do you know why you're here?"

She didn't answer so great was her hatred, and terror that it drained the warmth from her blood leaving her tongue, and limbs, inanimate.

"Look at me." Her captor's voice was firm.

Thorn continued to hide behind her clenched lids, hoping desperately that when she opened them this would disappear like a foul dream.

"Look at me." A hand seized her chin in a pincer grasp.

She yelped at the splitting pain it produced and stared to find his face just inches from her own. Thorn could feel his blistering breath like magma on her skin. His eyes glittered with a hellish light.

"That's better." He released her throbbing jaw, stood back and crossed his bulging arms. "Now I repeat the question. 'Do you or do you not understand why you're here?"

Thorn shook her head weakly.

"Yes I suppose you don't, you have been confined by ignorance up until this point. Very well, I have chosen to place you under my tutelage, because you possess a tremendous amount of power."

"You are referring to my heritage." Thorn felt a spark of clarity penetrate the shroud of madness that had encased her like an ill fitted sarcophagus.

"Yes, how very insightful you are, insight is the first step to understanding. You must know what it is you want before you comprehend why you want it, you must know first that you are a child of Bhaal with limitless power before you can harness that power and utilize it to your advantage. However you will require more then just insight to achieve your highest potential, you must have strength, endurance, cunning, potency and the will to take what is rightfully yours. I can...teach you... awaken these merits if you will."

"Hah!" A terrible laugh like crushed bone cracked the girl's larnex. "And what might that entail pray?"

"Only your full attention, and believe me my dear under my instruction attentiveness is never lacking."

"I don't want that power least of all under your tuition!" She spat at him with all the fire she could muster. The mage remained stoic in the heat of her protests, his sinewy chest rising and falling methodically. His vacuity staggered her, she felt as though she would be pulled into it.

"That is unfortunate for I'm afraid at this point you are without much choice. You will learn."

"Where is my sister?! What have you done with her?!"

The sinister elf (for elf he must have been once, his ears were sharp as razors) began to tighten the leather bonds until the bones in her forearms buckled and she had to clench her teeth to keep from gasping, not about to give him the satisfaction of seeing her externalize her pain.

"She is secure for the present as I told you earlier. Her performance throughout the duration of my little experiments was rather impressive. I expect still more from you."

Thorn's vision raged crimson.

"Monster!" She shrieked in the wildest of passions. Twisting as wrath coursed acidly through her body like a blood fever. "I'll never succumb to your torture! You're mad! Fire! Fire! I'll kill you, you, wretched animal!"

In truth Thorn would have enjoyed killing him just then. She would relish tearing out his entrails with her bare hands and bathing her hands in the blood spouting forth like wine.

In contrast the man appeared pleased. The corners of his mouth had curled almost imperceptibly, and it was not lost on Thorn. She arrested her outburst to gape at him white faced, aghast, it was the first facial expression that she had witnessed him use, and she had expected anger not amusement.

"Kill me will you?" He purred. "Excellent! You anticipated the first lesson and how well you have performed. You begin to feel the call of your blood, your insatiable appetite for death. You are surrendering to your baser instincts, and that is good. I am very pleased with you."

To Thorn's great astonishment he undid the bonds that pinned her hands, and leant his perverse face within reach of them.

"Go on then. Release your rage, tear me to bloody fragments I will not resist, it will only bring you closer to the slayer within you. It is yours to become."

Her shock was immediately replaced with renewed animosity. Fervently she extended her clawed fingers trembling with the consuming desire to gauge that burning blue eye from its socket. She embedded her nails in the skin of his cheeks and began to rip. But she hesitated as soon as she felt the first trickle of warm blood lace her knuckles. Her captor had remained visibly unaffected throughout the ordeal, and Thorn knew that he would remain so had she mauled his flesh from his bones. What had truly arrested her assault though was that she was suddenly hit with the sickening realization that the ire and thirst for blood she was experiencing stemmed from her Bhaal essence, and she was succumbing to it. The intelligence horrified her; she began to gasp and sweat, her lovely face pallid, and contorted with grief. Then her muscles lost all life and her ebony head slumped upon her chest, arms dropping inert.

It was some time before she realized that her hand was being supported by something. Lifting her head with great effort from its resting place her skin recoiled to discover that the mage was cradling it in one of his own. To stunned to protest or even to draw it away she watched the sadistic creature as one who knows they are witnessing something remarkable. He traced the fine lines of her palm with his fingers. His face was unusually intense; the eyes were now rampant with private fires when before they had been so frigid, his expression was difficult to define. Eventually his questing finger found the rivulets of his blood that adorned her wan knuckles, the same blood that flowed from the gash she had made in his temple. He smiled oddly. It was almost a wince as if the effort of manipulating his visage to form an expression pained him.

"What's the matter? Did you expect it would be cold?"

Thorn could not answer.

Then he laughed and dropped her hand as if it burned him. Standing above her his malformed face was black then ashen, something had awakened, and Thorn shriveled with dread to look upon that torrid countenance where it lurked.

"Yes, it is indeed interesting that my blood should still be warm. After all, every other feature usually attributed with life has all, but... faded from me. I am nearly a shell now. She has taken everything, everything that made me a living, functioning organism. Yes you're right, this blood should be cold, but you, you girl are so warm." His voice was quivering with underlying emotion.

Thorn watched this outburst with forlorn absorption. "Who? Who took everything from you?"

He started as if he had forgotten her presence.

"Demons from my past come to torment me again, and we will leave it at that."

"Who are you?"

Unheeding her last inquiry her subjugator, put a hand to his weeping temple, and muttered a spell under his breath. In a brief puff of blue light that expanded from his fingers the wound disappeared. Then with a flutter of his left hand a creature more skeleton then man appeared by his side in shackles from a dimension door. Thorn gawked, transfixed as the mage then proceeded to chant the incantations of the bolt of lightning spell whilst forming the movements with his hands. The ravenous web of electricity impaled the man through his stomach and he collapsed onto the floor with a wail that pierced Thorn to the marrow. He lay there for what seemed like an eternity jerking and flailing convulsively, yellow froth coated the blackened tongue that protruded from his mouth like a scorched piece of meat. The sweet smell of burning fat inundated her nostrils, her head swam, and the last thing she saw before the darkness claimed her once again was her captor gazing upon the bloated, bubbling, bag of sizzling, twitching flesh in an intrigued sort of way. Then he fixed his sadistic attentions upon her his face papery, and radiating a deranged light.

"Are you ready for the second lesson? Come, let us begin."

Many thanks to my first and only reviewer, I'm sorry this took so long, but my computer had/has a virus and I haven't had access to it for some time. I am pretty sure that updates will be much faster after this, and so far I have no intention of stopping.

For impatient people, this is not a PC torture fic in the slightest. The merry band will be escaping in chapter four, because (if you have not already figured it out) this story follows the basic plot structure of Shadows of Amn, only with more developed characters, relationships, and alterations at points in the plot line. So please BARE WITH ME.

I do not expect a lot of reviews, but if anyone is reading this please review, have mercy.