Author's Note: ... I know it's a bit short, but. It's an update. That's better than usual, right?

(*)

Chapter Twenty-two

(*)

It had, Imoen felt, been goin' pretty well up until she almost got eaten.

The Iron Throne tower was the single nicest building she had ever been in, and she'd grown up in a magic library. Every candlestick was silver, every doorknob was brass with gold inlay. The doors were mahogany and the carpeted paths along the marble floor were so cushy she felt she was going to sink into them. Someone here had made a lot of money being very evil, and she wanted to steal all of it just on principle. She'd seen the mines at Nashkel, seen what happened to caravans in the woods, seen the burning of the Undercellars. People just trying to live their lives, miners and whores and petty merchants just going day to day, even if they weren't doing a very good job of it sometimes. And then Sarevok came into their lives out of nowhere and stepped on them like they were just bugs, and it wasn't right that he should be rewarded for it.

But as much as she wanted to clean this place out from the doorknobs down, walking out the back door with a sack full of gold and a smug expression wouldn't save anyone. Someone like this, little crimes didn't matter. Only the big ones would stick, and so she needed to prove they'd already happened. And that meant approaching things with her traditional cunning and wit.

"I hate you, child," Dynaheir murmured. Because she didn't fully appreciate cunning and wit.

"It ain't my fault you're our best fake noblewoman," Imoen replied, locked into step just slightly behind the witch while they strode down the halls like they owned them. Because, as far as anyone was concerned, they did.

Imoen's plan had been simple and one-fold, and it relied on the fact that most people were, frankly, idiots. The Iron Throne had to be spending a ton of money on all the bribes and murders and election campaigns (all equally evil in her mind), so it only made sense that someone would be very unhappy with Sarevok further up the business food chain. Now, Dynaheir did not actually look like someone from Sembia, but Imoen had no idea what a person from Sembia did look like and she was willing to bet most people in the Gate also didn't. So when a strange woman, surrounded by guards, just randomly showed up in the tower proclaiming she was here to inspect the premises on order of the main branch, pretty much nobody was willing to gainsay her. More than one guard had outright just left, torn off their insignia and left the building to go find another job.

"Yes, but the hat," Dynaheir muttered.

"Need a hat. Hat's the key to the whole operation," Imoen said.

"It does seem to be helping," Jaheira said, her tone oddly strangled as if she was trying not to laugh, but of course that was impossible because she had no sense of humor. None.

The hat, Imoen had to admit, was not one she'd have worn herself. It was a noble hat, not for a guttersnipe like her: It was a foot tall, then another two feet after that from the ostrich feather on top (imported, that was, very fancy). It was bright red with green velvet worked along every seam. It practically glowed with authority and hideousness. Anyone who wore it knew they were in charge, because if you wore it and were not in charge you'd be laughed out of the room. You did not argue with a hat like that. She'd 'found' it on their way to the tower through 'legitimate means' and worked it into the plan.

And so it was that Chief Inspector Dina Heer of Sembia (plus entourage) had entered through the back entrance only executives knew about and informed the guards stationed at it that she was looking for the chief accountant's office please, and anyone who said a word to Lord Sarevok would be looking for another job. Dynaheir was very good at being imperious and none of the tower guards were even half so difficult to get the attention of as Minsc, so it had worked out very well so far.

"I thought this was a serious situation. Why am I then being humiliated?" Dynaheir whispered. More loudly, she said to a young clerk walking by with a sheaf of parchment, "You there! Boy! Why has the chief finance officer of this building not reported to me?! I requested his presence nearly thirty-five seconds ago!"

Imoen grinned as the kid ran for his life. "See, you're having fun."

"More importantly, the staff has barely made any move to dissuade us," Jaheira murmured. "The guards are abandoning their posts at the first opportunity, and the offices are half-empty. This feels more like a crypt than a place of business."

"T-the whole building s-s-mells of fear. Th-they aren't sure if they're m-more afraid of leaving or s-staying," Khalid said softly. "I h-have seen it before."

His wife nodded with a grimace. "In slaver dens, where they know the law is coming for them, but have too much 'merchandise' to flee and know their master will kill them for abandoning it. Sarevok's mind is degenerating more quickly than expected, it seems."

"We shouldn't have come," Xan said flatly. "He has to know his own organization will have him killed for what he's doing to their operations here. If he thinks we're with them, he'll kill us on sight. Or if he recognizes us from the attack in the lobby. Or if he's just in the mood."

"So we make sure he doesn't see us, Mr. Negative," Imoen said, sticking her tongue out. "Nobody's in a rush to go find him, ya note. We just need to keep this up until we get into the recordkeeper's offices and get to look around. We walk in like we own the place, steal every piece of paper with his big ugly name on it, and walk out. Anybody who goes to tell the big man we were here is risking getting a sword shoved up his arse and they know it. We're golden."

She opened a door, and there was an ogre on the other side.

She closed the door.

"Okay, did anyone else see that, or…"

The door opened again, creaking as the wood snapped in the hands of something gigantic and strong, and the ogre lowered its head to step through the human-sized door and look down on Imoen. Down. And down. And down.

She noted, very distressed, that it had fresh blood on its lips.

"You smell familiar. Why is that?" Tazok asked, surprisingly softly for a six hundred pounds of pure muscle. He idly reached up to scratch at the scars on his neck where Sarevok had chopped his head off to drag it back to the Gate for resurrection; the clerics told him it should not hurt, but he swore it still did. "You are intruders, yes? Good. Hungry night."

Imoen drew herself up to her much less than impressive full height, really hoping her comrades had gotten the hint and were going for their weapons while she said, "Excuse you, sir?! We are the guards and attaché of Lady Dina Heer of Sembia, here to inspect this tower for the Iron Throne main branch, and-"

Tazok chuckled. "Not an inspector. These my chambers until Sarevok sends me off to kill for him, and everyone knows to stay out of my room, because last time a guard woke me up I ate him. So if you was really an inspector, they tell you not to come here."

"Well, we-" Imoen began.

"And second," Tazok hissed, drawing his hand from behind his back to reveal half of what Imoen really hoped was not, but definitely knew was, a human heart, "This was the inspector from Sembia. Came in the middle of the night. Made the mistake of announcing to Sarevok his visit. Now, all of you is too much to eat at once, but I was thinking of making jerky. So you should start running now."

Imoen considered this, knowing full well that Jaheira and Khalid were literal seconds away from drawing weapons and charging, Dynaheir and Xan most likely had spells half-ready, and that the only reason Tazok hadn't already clamped his teeth down on someone was that he didn't think of them as a real threat. She then considered that Sarevok had smashed them up like cheap glass the last time they'd run into him, and therefore they should not be getting into a fight when he was most likely right upstairs.

She had only instants to consider a plan.

And so it was she picked what was going to be precisely the wrong option, but in her defense she didn't realize this at the time.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK, OGRE!" she shrieked, pulling her dagger from her belt and chucking it at Tazok's face from six feet away, before turning to run away as fast as she could. "GUARDS! GUAAAAAAAARDS!"

(*)

Acherai considered his options, and he was not at all happy with them.

The most obvious choice was to murder the Iron Throne door guard right then and there, in the middle of the street. The issue with that was that it would definitely cause a giant panic in scenic downtown Baldur's Gate, and the last thing he wanted was for his face to be burned into the memory of a few hundred angry citizens. Even barring the fact someone would almost definitely sell the information to Sarevok, he would like to come back to this city someday. And rob it.

He could run away, but that would torpedo the plan right then and there. The entire idea had been to make Sarevok paranoid about the trust he'd placed in the Flaming Fist, cause him to lash out at his own allies and, in the view of everyone else, turn against the city itself. He was maniacal and violent enough to do it, Acherai had worked that much out, but If he knew that this was anything other than his pawn in the organization making a power play against him then it would all fall apart. He needed to think they had been real guards trying to really investigate him, even if they'd never gotten past the door.

And the third option was to act like a real guard and go inside the building. This was a terrible idea. But…

But, and this is going to make Coran a smug ass, it seems like the only one that will work.

He turned toward the door guard, putting on his best 'no-nonsense' face, the one that you got right before you ended up sharing a cell with Shady Pete for the night even if they couldn't prove you actually stole anything, and said, "Well. I think we can safely say that this is an active crime scene now. Step aside."

"But-"

"For M…Torm's sake, man, lives are in danger! Stand aside, or better yet, go wave down the nearest patrol and tell them to come back us up!" he snapped, barely catching himself on swearing to the right god before he proceeded to Fake Justice. He resolved to offer Torm a few dozen gold later on in the week so he wouldn't get cursed for lying about devotion, and pushed past him. "Everyone, clear the building please! Flaming Fist investigation, chief Dosan's orders! Anyone who interferes will be in a holding cell until midwinter and don't you doubt it!"

Less loudly, to Coran and Shar-teel, he said, "Right then, let's try to not actually find who's screaming. Steal anything that looks official, especially documents they don't want us to take. And for all the gods' sakes do not talk to Sarevok directly, if he knows the Fist well and realizes we aren't them, we're dead."

"You realize, of course, that we have no idea what he looks like?"

"He'll be the one most unhappy to see people here. Move."

(*)

Winski Perorate was Sarevok's oldest and (by process of elimination, at this point) most devoted servant, and he was a very strange man.

He had made a great study of Bhaal and his children, ever since the day he had first come to suspect Sarevok's true heritage all those years ago, but he had certainly never been a devotee of the dead god, nor Cyric after him. In truth, he cared nothing for the gods and was reasonably sure they cared nothing for him, and he was quite pleased with this. Nor could he be said to be one of Sarevok's worshippers, the maniacs drawn in by the aura of power and blood he exuded as effortlessly as breathing. He had been the first to notice it, the first to suspect the boy's effortless warrior skill and daunting bloodlust might stem from a darker source than mere human ability, but he had never become the slavering fanatic so many others did. Nor could he be said to love Sarevok in any sense of the word; not as Tamoko did, certainly, but despite being the young demigod's most consistent male role model for most of his life, he held no familial affection for him either. In fact, Winski's goal in life was so charmingly mundane it was almost irreconcilable with the skill of magic and politics that man had given over wholeheartedly to his young patron for years upon years of plotting, maneuvering, and bloodshed.

Winski (and Sarevok nearly laughed out loud every time he thought about it) wanted to be famous.

He wanted his name to be known in every land of the world, written in history books, spoken by children from Chult to Kara-tur. When the War of Bhaal shook the Realms, when blood flowed and chaos was sown, he wanted the survivors to remember that it was he who had instigated it. He who had found Sarevok, tutored him, given him the knowledge and tools to ascend the now-vacant Throne of Bhaal. When the immortal Sarevok tore life from the masses a thousand years from now, they would curse the name of Winski Perorate for giving him the opportunity. He would be recalled as one of the greatest villains in all history, reviled and cursed for millennia to come.

It was, he claimed, the only true immortality that a man like him could hope to achieve, and therefore the only goal worth seeking. Sarevok personally found the entire concept somewhere between pathetic and idiotic, but it kept the man loyal. Or at least as loyal as someone with absolutely no morals and a bottomless well of narcissism could be.

"We have finished the repairs to the temple, milord. You were right, of course; it was an old shrine to Bhaal, and a very unholy one. Semaj reports that he couldn't even see original color of the stone through the old blood caking the floor. It was clearly a ritual site for the Bhaalists to hold mass human sacrifices near the city. An exemplary find!" the old mage said, smiling widely.

"It wasn't a 'find.' I knew it was there. Rieltar might have spent years trying to convince me it was a nightmare, but I never really believed it…" Sarevok murmured, studying his blade idly. He had not allowed it to leave his hand since Tamoko had… either failed him or betrayed him, it hardly mattered which. He could not be in full armor at all times, perhaps, but he always held the sword. It was the only thing he could fully trust. "The Deathstalkers tried to kill me there, once. It was some ritual to bring back their dead god, I assume. Childish idiots, wasting their time trying to resurrect their own slavemaster because they were too afraid to face the world without him. Whatever death found them, it wasn't painful enough."

"Well, for now, all that matters is that it is an unholy site of Bhaal that still retained some power, and was able to be repaired. I could not imagine a finer place to hold the final ritual, once your war has begun. I shall begin studying the Cyricist libraries we've raided for-"

"Ah, yes, the war," Sarevok said, his tone oddly soft. "I think it may not be necessary, in fact."

The old mage stopped mid-sentence, his jaw looking as though it wanted to detach itself from his head and burrow through the floor. "M… milord? Are you… are you quite serious…?"

"Of course. Look around you, old man. Slythe and Kristin have not returned from Silvershield's estate, and my spies have not found proof of his death. And of course, the chaos in the Undercellars… my acolytes are dead. Cythandria is dead. Tamoko… I would have thought her too powerful to fall alongside those dolts, but she has not returned. My election to Grand Duke is by no means guaranteed. And now Angelo has betrayed me."

Winski sighed, looking at the dead guard in the corner of the room, the man struck by a blow that had nearly cut his torso in half through his chain shirt. "I was wondering if you killed him for a reason."

"He opened the door to tell me the Fist are raiding the tower and Tazok is running wild on the lower floors. I lost my temper and needed blood to calm myself," Sarevok said. He had honestly forgotten the corpse was even there until Winski pointed it out. "Didn't you hear the screaming?"

"My hearing is not what it once was, milord. One more reason to consider my legacy, I suppose… these old bones have only a decade or two left in them, hm?" Winski said. "But… sir, is this not an issue? There is evidence of quite a lot of wrongdoing within these walls. If guardsman find it and leave alive, your appointment to Duke Eltan's seat…"

Sarevok smiled, and even the ruthless, amoral old man, who had killed at least a hundred men in his long life, paled at the sight. "I don't need it anymore, you dolt. All these years, all this planning, to kill a few hundred thousand mindless, helpless idiots? A 'war.' Murder on a grand scale. I thought that was what I needed, but now… my brother and my sister. Her shining in deluded self-righteousness, running into the front lines to survive again and again, despite all odds. And him skulking in the shadows, stabbing me in the back at every opportunity before I ever even knew he existed. In the space of a few months they have ruined plans I laid for years. They are the key! Their lives, sacrificed to me!"

The young man opened his eyes, and the golden glow in them was so intense that Winski actually took an involuntary step back. "That is my path to power. Their two souls will be worth more than everyone in this misbegotten city combined. And when I have it… when I have it, the war to come will be a very different thing, Winski. I will stride this world like a colossus, cutting down my brothers and sisters one after another and eating their hearts while they still live. The streets will run red with the blood of anyone who stands in my way. I will leave this continent a charnel house, a monument to bloody death, and it will become the tower that raises me to the heavens. No need for plans or armies, no need for hiding in boardrooms or wasting my life with the political machinations of insects. With my own hand, I will burn them all."

Winski considered this for a long moment, and with what haste he could manage on his old joints, fell to one knee before Sarevok. "What aid I can offer, my lord, is yours. Now, more than ever."

Sarevok's grin turned slightly mischievous, and against all odds this made it somehow more horrible. "And when the name of Sarevok is shouted out as a lamentation of the dying, the name of Winski Perorate will be whispered in hatred by the survivors as the one who first set him on his path? He will be remembered as one of history's most despised men?"

Winski smiled, the expression stretching his thin face across his skull in something that looked far more like a grimace than any expression of joy. "Yes. But he will be remembered."

"A fine answer, old man. Rise, and return to Semaj. Tell him to begin desecrating the temple, destroy any sign of Bhaal's influence there. He is dead and gone, and has no place in what is to come. I need the power of the place, not of the dusty old corpse that once dwelt there," Sarevok murmured, grinning ever wider at the roar of fury that rose up in his blood at the words. "My blood is not fuel for Bhaal's return, his corrupt old bones are the pyre that will light my ascension. My first temple should reflect that."

"And your… siblings? How will we bring them to you? They have thus far proven… difficult. And you have little left in the way of disposable fodder to bring to bear against them."

The younger man sighed in annoyance. "Are you deaf? We won't have to. This is destiny, old man. They will come to me, to be the first sacrifices to my impending divinity. There is no higher purpose for them."

"As you say, milord. I will go now. Do you require transport?"

Sarevok ran his hand along the edge of the Sword of Chaos, enjoying the feeling of the razor edge slitting open the darkened skin of his hand, brilliant red sparkling against it in the low firelight of his chambers. "No, no, not yet. I will summon you when I'm ready to begin the ceremony. For now… I am free of my last obligations, you see? I shed the Iron Throne, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Therefore, I may, for the first time in my life, do whatever I want. So, I believe I am going to kill everyone in this building… just because I want to."

Winski coughed. "Very good, milord. Um… you should perhaps consider exempting Tazok from that… if it pleases you."

Sarevok's smiled widened once again, far past the point of twisting his features into something inhuman, his face looking like nothing so much as a skull with twin flames lit in the eye sockets, silhouetted in the darkness of his chambers.

"No promises."

(*)

"All right, nobody move! This is a surprise inspection, and…" Acherai began as they ascended the stairs to the second floor of the tower.

Several things happened then.

First, a very pink young woman slid down the bannister past him, screaming "Killitkillitkillitkillitkillit…"

Second, the stairs up ahead of him were shattered as a creature at least four feet taller than him slammed down on them from the floor above. Through the floor above. He took a shocked moment to analyze this, because he almost couldn't not; it was an ogre, and a distressingly familiar one, bloody foam on its lips and a Iron Throne guard's sword in its massive hand. The weapon was almost comically too small for the creature, and the blood on its hilt suggested that the ogre was not its owner, and further that its owner had not given it up willingly. An armored half-elf with a sword was hanging from its back, hacking away at its shoulder, but the ogre did not appear to notice or care.

Third, the creature took one look at him, roared so loudly Acherai felt his skeleton vibrate under his skin, and swung the blade in at his head.

The counter was not graceful, because there was no counter. He had a sword he barely knew how to use, a dagger that would be as much use as trying to kill the monster with a toothpick, and a chainmail shirt that weighed down his limbs and made spellcasting awkward at best. He did the only thing that could be done in the quarter-second he had to react: went totally boneless and fell backward down the stairs between Shar-teel and Coran, leaving them in the line of fire while he painfully rolled down, using gravity for speed and relying on the helmet and chainmail to avoid a concussion.

"… Ass," Shar-teel and Coran muttered in a rare moment of perfect unison as they had just enough time to realize what had been done, before the creature was on them.

(*)

Jaheira had only fought something along the lines of a dozen ogres in her career as an adventurer. Most of her work for the Harpers was, sadly, done in cities, dealing with the corruption that so often arose there; and when she did have occasion to walk in the wild as she preferred, it was far more likely to encounter orcs or goblins, the fastest breeders of the monstrous races. Still, she liked to think she was enough of a veteran to not be surprised by anything an ogre could do.

And then the damn thing had charged through their group with speed that she'd have called off-putting in wolf, much less a creature of such unwieldy bulk, eight hundred pounds of solid muscle moving with more grace than she'd ever felt herself move with, to be sure. The mages were caught entirely flat-footed, and she firmly suspected that she'd be dragging a dead elf out of this building to find a suitable priest, had the creature not been so firmly dedicated to the death of young Imoen.

A death I almost wish to let it visit upon her, for this is entirely her fault, if it did not have my husband clinging to its damn back and trying to chop its head off with a butter-knife! She thought as she ran, blood pounding in her ears as she tried in vain to chase a creature with legs twice as long as her own through a damnable maze of a building that it knew well, and she had never been in. She did not know if the two mages were still following her, but she did know she was certainly in better physical condition than either of them, and that she couldn't wait.

Under normal circumstances, she would have cheerfully assumed her husband was more than able to face down such a beast. But they were in hostile territory, and that thing was strong. Khalid might be able to chip it down over time, but time was exactly what they did not have, and so it fell to her to keep her husband alive until such time as she could kill him for making her worry so.

Something roared and shattered on the floor beneath her, and she cursed under her breath, murmuring a spell to armor her flesh as she prepared herself to leap into battle beside her husband or heal his wounds, whichever he called to her for. She took the final steps between her and her quarry, rounding the corner…

And an elf, blood running from his nose, slammed into her as something hurled him up the steps like a ragdoll despite a (painfully) heavy suit of Flaming Fist guard armor.

She was not amused, on any level, but now was not the time to let the idiot have a piece of her mind. Because up the stairs behind him, thin red slashes over his chest and face that he barely seemed to notice, the ogre stormed upon her like a mountain that had learned to walk.

The elf was not dead, judging from the hacking coughs that spoke to her of a rib pressing painfully against a lung, an injury she was familiar with from both angles. But he was also not moving near quickly enough for the situation, and weighing her down he was going to get them both killed, so she kneed him in the chest, ignoring the half-hearted moan of agony as he rolled off her; he was a Flaming Fist, after all, and they had proven themselves hopelessly corrupt, even if this one seemed to be on the right side of justice unlike his comrades. She would heal him later, unless he did something else to irritate her.

The ogre was already nearly upon her by the time she got her feet beneath her, and so she did the one thing that these creatures never expected, and used her kneeling position to lunge atit, meeting the creature's charge head on. The incoming blade, more like a long knife than a sword to the beast, swung at the spot she had been rather than where she was, and she used the moment of imbalance to dance to its side and slam her staff against its unarmored elbow, in hopes of making it drop the weapon entirely.

The impact would have broken a man's arm like a twig, left his elbow bent backwards at the joint.

Tazok appeared not to notice.

The creature stepped forward into her, wrapping an arm like a tree trunk around her waist, and began to squeeze, the pain so sudden and intense that she could barely hear as it hissed. "Elves, elves, elves, everywhere damnable elves. Last one only lived as long as he did because he brought so many damn arrows, wench, you'll die easy…"

The attack came from two directions, just as she felt the first rib crack; her husband to the left, and a woman in Fist armor that she did not know to the right, bringing blades slashing in with expert coordination borne of two veterans choosing to fight together, even though they had never met. A pair of long, heavy blades, each one taking the ogre on a different shoulder and cutting in toward the center with intent to cleave his torso into four pieces.

Each blade pierced perhaps and inch into his body.

Tazok appeared not to notice.

With a terrible, bloody grin, he squeezed harder.

(*)

Hells hells hells, Imoen thought, realizing only after she'd hit the front door that nobody was actually following her. I'm gonna have to go back for them, and all 'cause they didn't run good. Why is everyone stupid but me?!

"Who. The Hells. Are you?" said the cute elf in the Flaming Fist armor that had been huffing and puffing along behind her in armor that was clearly too heavy for his skinny elf butt. "And what. Did you find. Up there?"

"We found a frickin' ogre!" Imoen snapped, pulling her bow from her back. "Look, I gotta go back up and shoot it, so if yer here to arrest me for saving Seffie, I'm gonna have to go through you."

"Sef… Sephiria?! Is this about damn Sephiria of Candlekeep?! Gods, I should have known you were involved with that lunatic. Everything she touches devolves into extremely moral insanity," he muttered, tossing aside his helmet with an expression of disgust and beginning to strip off his chainmail shirt.

Imoen coughed. "I, uh, actually don't want your clothes. Nothing personal, I'm sure the ladies love ya, but I'm kinda busy…"

"I need to get this mess off me so I can cast spells properly, you idiot," he snapped, revealing to her great relief that he had clothes on under his armor. "Look, you've ruined everything I was trying to do here, but I can still salvage it if when we leave, it looks like the Flaming Fist attacked the tower and killed half the guards."

"… Wait, you know Seffie?" Imoen asked, her mind clicking onto the words of a few seconds past, before he distracted her with takin' off his drawers.

"Try to keep up. I'm saying that if you don't have anything you came here for, and I don't have anything I came here for, we might as well work together since we clearly aren't friends of the Iron Throne," he snapped. "My party is fighting that beast on the floor above. If we both engage as distance support we should…"

He trailed off, his face going more pale than usual, and his eyes widening as he turned to face the staircase.

"They're not doing well. I would have killed them, but Tazok hasn't had any fun in a good long time," Sarevok said softly, descending the stairs, lightly tapping a huge, wicked blade on each step as he walked. "And I felt… something. Further down."

He touched what remained of his eye under the black patch, and smiled at Imoen. "I remember you."

He turned to Acherai, his smile fading to be replaced by an expression that was at once hungry and empty. "And it's been a long time, but… I remember you, too. It's just like I told the old man.

"Destiny."