Hubris
by glenarvon
Throughout the years of his life, peaceful sleep had been Phedran's most elusive quarry, one he could never catch up to, much less slay and hang on his wall as a trophy. His dreams were always vicious. Not for the blood and the death waiting behind his twitching eyelids, those were the currency and pleasures of his waking mind. In his slumber, he was the prey, the victim of a loss of the sense of self. Always, always, he was struggling, reaching for his power only for it to slip through his fingers, taking all the control with it, the illusion of it anyway, for in his dreams, he'd never even had power to begin with. Here, he was a mote of dust swept away in the storm only to drown in a battered ocean of steel. Not even forgotten, just meaningless.
He did not fear many things in the world, but going to sleep, putting his head on the pillow and closing his eyes, it was an enemy he dreaded to face throughout all his waking hours. Though, at least for as long as he was awake, he did have power and in his experience, a cup of bloodwine usually blunted the edges to a bearable level. He could spend his time fighting and fucking and killing, tiring his body and mind to a point where the bloodwine was just about enough to drop him into heavy and dreamless sleep. And for bad nights, there was always a brew of lilac wormwood he could fall back on.
Tonight he's fallen asleep with undeserved peacefulness with just a little wine and a milk-skinned vision of a girl. Sound asleep next to him, even her quiet breathing didn't annoy him enough to get rid of her. He could always smother her later if she became a bother.
Phedran sleeps.
Until he dreams.
He stands in perfect, utter blackness. There is nothing underneath his feet and he's not falling, because there is nothing to be falling towards. He takes a step, reflex, meaninglessly. Leather whispers as he does, making him aware that he's fully dressed, armed and armoured for slaughter. He settles his hand on the hilt of his dagger, searching for the magic within himself. For the first time in his dreams, it came to him like the faithful lapdog it normally. Flames and ice crackled from his fingertips, slipping along the blade. He shudders, steadier now as his mind clears in unhoped-for ways.
He turns on his heels but finds nothing but more blackness. His magic illuminates nothing but himself.
A boot clicks behind him and turns around, all his reflexes at their knife's edge, ready to lay waste to any intruder only for him to still as he sees the man, standing elegantly poised just out of easy reach.
The man is old, stunningly handsome even at his advanced age, keeping his back almost perfectly straight. He's dressed in a leather travel, material worn down over time, patched in numerous places, shaggy fur only providing an irregular trim. He watches Phedran from dark, shadowed eyes, pensively waiting. In all his years, he's never seen him like this, so human, so mortal. A gift, perhaps, one wrapped in poison ivy.
Phedran drops to his knees as if felled by an axe to the back of the knees.
"Father," he says in a prayer.
Bhaal just waits for a timeless instance in the featureless nothingness of the dream.
"I love you, know," his Father says. His boots click again as he steps forward. Cool electricity emanates from his body as he gets close and Phedran feels it caress his body through his clothes. He shudders and when his Father reaches down to place the tip of his finger underneath his chin, Phedran sighed at the sensation.
His Father guides him back to his feet like this, until they stand facing each other, eye to eye and his Father's expression remains gentle.
"Where am I?" Phedran asks. "It's unlike any dream I've ever had."
Bhaal smiles slightly. "Hmm," he makes. His hand slides to Phedran's collar, fingers resting on the uppermost clasp of his armour. "You're not dreaming, my bittersweet child," he says. The clasp slipped open and he moved on to the next.
Questions crowd Phedran's mind, but they stay behind his clenched teeth. For now, all he wants is to enjoy his Father's closeness, the little pinpricks of alternating pleasure and pain as clasp after clasp is undone.
Bhaal stops at the belt, looks up at Phedran and smiles. Then he steps aside, movement smooth and fluid, the deadliest of all warriors, grace beyond imagining. Bhaal's hand traces over Phedran's shoulders as he passes behind him and metal snaps and his coat trails down his back to pool around his feet. One by one, the fastings on the back of the arms are undone. The tight fit of the leather slowly peeled away from his body, protections being removed one by one.
"Then what is this place?" Phedran finally asks. Bhaal now stands on his other side and reaches out to touch his face again so Phedran looks at him.
"My domain," Bhaal says. He keeps his gaze on Phedran as he undoes the belt and finishes the clasps down the front of the coat.
"You've never been here," Bhaal continues. "You should not be. You were never meant to be."
He steps behind Phedran again, both hands sliding around him, then dip underneath the armour. Phedran shudders at the immediacy of the contact, now that only a thin layer of cloth remains between them. Like the most expert of butlers, Bhaal unhooks the armour and slides it off Phedran's shoulders, off his arms. The weight lifts and Phedran wants to crumble under the sudden, crushing weightlessness of it.
"I don't understand," Phedran said. He begins to turn, as his confusion begins to tip into frustration and from there, into anger. He has never been afraid of his Father, he's not afraid of another's power, however much it might outmatch his own. Bhaal settles his hands on Phedran's hips and brings their bodies close like a lover. "Why not?" Bhaal asks and the spark of mirth in his face is a challenge Phedran can't help but revel in.
There's too much in his head, Phedran thinks, too many thoughts and too much sensation in his body. He's never been aroused like this. Oh, he takes great carnal pleasure in his service to his Father, but now there is no such distance between them. He thinks, and he knows even as he moans, watching Bhaal glide to his knees in front of him and continues to undress him.
"I'm dying," Phedran says. "Someone's killing me."
Bhaal looks up at him, one hand against the back of Phedran's calf, the other opening the buckles of his boots. The look on his face would make any high-prized harlot envious, the moment a vision to preserve for many cold and lonely nights.
Nights he will never have.
"Someone?" Bhaal asks pointedly.
The boots come loose one by one, and the leather of his trousers unsheathes his legs. Phedran sucks in a deeper breath, and catches himself wondering if he'd be allowed to return the favour, but before he can, his hand stills in midair. Shards of anger pierce his bliss.
"Orin," he says with a sneer. "How dare she?"
Bhaal sits back on his heels, looking up at his son. "Killing one of mine," he says. "Is a cheap offering, but I will not reject it." He raises an admonishing finger, belying the supplication of his pose. "It's on you. Your carelessness, your mistakes, your hubris. You thought you would always see her coming." He tilts his head. "You still do. Even now."
A flick of his wrist and in the blackness in front of them, Phedran sees the bed in his rooms in Moonrise, massive and opulent, standing on nothing. He sees himself, naked under the soft, cotton blanket, body lascivious and prone, ready for the taking. The milk-skinned girl of his latest indulgence walks around the bed as she changes. Orin stands over his helpless form, smiling brightly.
"That's not possible!" Phedran declares as if it makes any difference. "I know her scent! I'd never fall for that."
Bhaal snorts, the amusement of a former mortal who understands these types of follies better than he wishes he did. He stands back up and for a moment, gives Phedran the space to focus on the scene playing for the pleasures of his self-flagellation.
Orin indulges herself by taking a sniff off the bloodwine cup, grin widening as she scoops up some remnant drops and places them on Phedran's sleep-slack lips. Some slow-acting paralysis poison, Phedran's mind suggests a dozen different options to distract himself from the truth of it. Orin casts back the blankets and looks at his prone body. Phedran expects the knives to come out then, braces himself to see done to him what he has inflicted countless times on others. And then, because Orin surprises him tonight in all the ways he cannot count, she does not. She mutters a spell and power flows from her into his body, making it stand up and move as a puppet. There is nothing of his own mannerisms in it, no grace at all, nothing titivating even in the naked beauty of his body as it follows Orin mindlessly through the darkened halls of the tower. Down they go, ever down, through the cold of the basements and further until it grows warmer again and the walls begin to breathe.
Phedran shivers and flexes his muscles in a feeble attempt to combat the sensory confusion of watching himself and feeling something else. He becomes aware of himself in Bhaal's arms. The old travel-coat is abrasive on his sensitive skin and he realises that while he's been watching his destruction, his Father has divested him of his clothes until he has nothing left to guard against the night. Nothing but his bare skin and his Father's embrace.
"You deserve your punishment," Bhaal whispered cruelly, yet stroking his arm soothingly all the while.
Phedran feels a tingle at the back of his throat, it might be laughter, but it comes out as wail as he realises where Orin is taking him. In the bowls of the tower, where the mind flayers are she strikes his body down. He's accused her of childish playacting with her victims, but for the first time, she is an efficient killer in front of him, a butterfly emerging from her chrysalis. A small part of him is proud of her in that moment, even as she flays him. She's listened to him, all the words he thought he's spoken into the void, she took them all to heart.
Bhaal frees Phedran's hair from its battle-ties and lets it spill a lave-flow down his back. Bhaal brushes through the silken strands, then pulls his son closer into his arms. Phedran melts into him, becoming boneless as his willpower bleeds away like the blood seeping from his body. Phedran wants to stand tall, let go of his Father instead of clinging to him like a helpless newborn, but his body is shaking now, his grip weak and his skin tingling with cold sweat. Is it his imagination? The power of the not-dream or just his dying mind disintegrating. He knows the answer, he knows. He moans into his Father's shoulder, burying his face there, seeking mercy where there has always been none.
Death is never a pretty sight, violent death even less so. The body on the floor at the bottom of the Moonrise might have been perfect flesh, but even so, it is weak and as the mind shatters, to body fails, shudders in vile ecstasy, blood, piss, shit and semen slowly draining from natural and newly-cut orifices, pooling underneath it, the distorted death-mask of his beautiful face soiled in tears and snot and spittle, hair soaking up the filth with none of its lustre left.
Bhaal guides him forward, slowly, ever so slowly, one twitching step at a time so he doesn't fall to his knees and has to crawl. Phedran is breathing hard, he hears the rattling in his ears, feels the beating of his heart in his chest, hard enough it should break his ribs. His muscles twitch and convulse with each step, resisting him, failing him. He whimpers as Bhaal guides him down, lays him into his own body. A spark flares white-hot in Phedran's mind as he expects his perception to shift, but he feels nothing at all. He has already died, there is nothing left that can feel, only the last vestige of his soul in his Father's cold, bony fingers. Then he slips free of his Father's arms to lie motionless in the soiled bed of his own making.
"You know what's the most surprising thing about apotheosis?" Bhaal asks though the broken carcass of his son cannot hear him anymore. The lord of murder merely indulges himself as he continues, "How little power a god has to reject an offering within his domain. I am sorry, my bittersweet one. Someone else will have to come and save you. And after that? Who knows, maybe you will save yourself."
Eventually, in the pulsating hallways of the — waiting-sleeping-anticipating — illithid colony, someone does.
End of Hubris
Author's Note: That's my old Bhaalspawn. Who did ascend. Thus, we achieve canon-divergence. Well, laugh. That's also my new Bhaalspawn. He's a gorgeous monster.
Anyway, I'm out of practice and I don't know how to write anymore.
I also don't like to share my custom characters, because is there anything more boring than someone's over-powered canon-Sue character? (I mean, two of them, probably, just look at this drivel.)