A/N: for the record, I am actually very fond of Aerie as a character. This little nugget sparked from a sleepless night and a "what if" took hold. Also, I doubt the piece works without knowing Aerie's character from the source/lore.

As a final aside, I penned this one-shot on my phone which lacks my spellchecker complete with archaic words, so please forgive any typos. Sure, I could look each up bug who has time for that when one has only fifteen-twenty minutes to scrawl and scribble?

Aerie, Aerie, so contrary

What a liar and slatten you are

Here is the truth about "Aerie", a faithless, wicked creature if ever there was one.

As a young elf of unremarkable parentage, in a middling town of no consequence, "Aerie" as she would later call herself dreamed of many things. It was, in fact, the wilful inability to separate fantasy from reality that led her down the path of lying, sociopathic tendencies. Much of this can be traced to her mother who never saw fit to explain the consequences of deluding oneself and others.

As a child, Aerie had a favourite game: getting her friends and peers into trouble. It started when she accidentally mispoke, and then she found herself backed into a corner. It was over something as trivial as chores and pie, and losing one and being given more of the other.

So it was, rather than lie outright, little Aerie planted the seed of doubt, something that couldn't be proven but sounded reasonable whilst making herself blameless. She had observed adults doing this many times.

This grew from an means of exonerating herself to wilfully and actively landing others in trouble. As adolescence broke, the focus of this pastime shifted but not the goal. At the apex of her most devious scheme, now a comely young woman, she set three young men of prominence against one another, whispering falsehoods to each as she secretly lay with them. "Oh but I couldn't, " she would simper, not having yet affected her signature stutter: that was to come later. "You don't know how jealous he is, what he'll do with he finds out." A lowering of those wide blue pooling eyes, her forefinger wrapped around her golden locks.

In each, she inspired the need to protect, to prove himself, offering little, promising much, using her body to achieve her ends, which, when paired with her words, proved much more effective than words alone. And so, the trap laid, she whispered the words that saw strife and rivalry beget bloodshed and tragedy.

Three swordarms, three deaths. Aerie was banished from the town, her wide eyed simpering and protests of innocence no longer enough. Years of injustice bubbled to the fore, from the unproven yet suspicious townsfolk and Aerie realised this time she had gone too far.

Her mother always said a wild girl should join the circus, and having witnessed one a few weeks before, Aerie was caught up in the dazzling, giddiness of it all, especially the magic.

And so, she reinvented herself, creating a fictitious backstory, and set her new trap. A less than comely gnome with an ego far larger than his bulbous nose fell for it with pitiful ease. The lies involved being orphaned, and desperately large eyes that looked up towards the grandeur of her new mentor, and cranial messages in exchange for arcane lore.

But it wasn't to last. Soon her eyes sought out another, equally foolish gnome so ripe for the taking she couldn't help herself: the games began anew. "Kalah" the mighty was born from her backhanded insinuations, those slow, small murmurs over what a true mage was, how pitiful his parlour tricks were.

Over the months, she slowly fed her mentor, now lover, a series of lies, half truths, and bought his silence through the knowledge of his perversions, perversions that would ruin him if they ever came to light. To the rest of the world, he was now "Uncle", her doting mentor. To Kalah, he was the wicked tyrant that scorned his very existence and the only thing standing between him, his toes and Aerie.

When the Bhaalspawn broke through Kalah's enchanted kingdom, Aerie saw her greatest play yet. The game began anew, this time the backstory was a masterpiece, the poor, broken, stuttering wingless elf. Little did anyone know Aerie had never had wings, that the scars were a product of a horrific explosion during her bouts of magic, and her little stories were taken from grandmas, travelling merchants, and other childhood legends.

But the biggest lie of all? To the Bhaalspawn, her dashing, daring saviour she was a maiden, pure, innocent, in need not just of saving but of a teacher to show her how to stand up for herself.

He would fall for it too. They always did. And what was more significant than being the consort of a demigod? The lover of a god. And who knew where it might lead from there?

...