A Bardic Comfort

A Baldur's Gate 3 Fanfic

By Bentarb Jade Bronze

Alfira's hands covered her mouth as she stared wide eyed at the sight before her. Earlier she had seen Tavarius, the dragonborn paladin that had helped save the grove from goblins along with the other adventurers, wander off from the party, and decided to follow him and make sure he was okay. It was the least she could do after everything he'd done.

She never would have guessed that she'd find him sitting on the ground, chewing at his own tail like a desperate beast stuck in a trap, seemingly blind to the world around him as he tried to make it as mangled as his head and as tattered as the dust covered clothes he was wearing.

Alfira stood there, not knowing how to react, unaware that she was moving forward until the snapping of a twig underfoot shattered the silence and made Tavarius snap his head towards her. The two stared at each other, blood dripping from Tavarius' scarred mouth while Alfira's heart thumped against her ribs, her instincts telling her to leave.

"I…" Alfira tried to speak, her voice failing her as she felt like a cornered animal. "I'm sorry, I was just-"

"Leave," Tavarius cut her off with a snarl. "Leave me alone!" He then turned back to what he was doing.

The rational part of Alfira's mind told her to do what she was told, turn around and go back to the party and forget she ever saw any of this. But another part of it – motivated by either gratitude, stupidity, or general benevolence – told her to get closer. It insisted that she couldn't just walk away from someone who was in obvious pain, couldn't let him mutilate his own body and do nothing to help. After a few seconds of internal debate, she made what may have been the dumbest choice she could in her position.

She stepped closer.

"No," she said as she approached, steadying her voice in a bid to hide her nerves. "No, I won't leave."

"Leave!" Tavarius snapped again, blood and spite flying from his mouth along with his anger.

"No," Alfira insisted, reaching his side and getting to her knees. "You saved me and everyone else at the grove, and now I'm going to return the favour."

"I don't need saving."

"Well your tail does," Alfira countered. "And since your tail is attached to you, I reckon that means you also need saving." She stayed there, staring at Tavarius as he sat with his tail in his mouth. "Give it here." She placed her hands on his tail and gently tugged, almost scared that he'd turn and bite her instead. He didn't though, instead letting go.

"Fine," he said. "Just hurry up." Looking at the tail, Alfira saw that Tavarius had been chewing the two segments just before the spikes at the end.

"Well, at least you didn't chew the spikes," she said, examining the wounds. "That'll make it easier. And I don't see any bone, so that's good." She reached into her satchel and pulled out a clean rag with which she began dabbing at the wound to clean it. Once most of the blood and spit was gone, she put the rag on her lap before pulling out another one and a bottle of balsam ointment.

"The wound came from my mouth," Tavarius pointed out as he spied the ointment. "Surely I needn't fear illness from my own body."

"Well I don't know what you've been eating, or how clean your teeth are," Alfira said as she applied the ointment to the rag then begin wiping it over the bitten area. "Didn't your order teach you not to take chances when it came to cleaning wounds, paladin?"

"Maybe," Tavarius answered with a shrug. "I don't even know what order I belong to. If I belong to any at all." That made Alfira pause and look up at him in confusion.

"How do you not know what order you belong to?"

"I know nothing of my past but my own name," Tavarius answered.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing," Tavarius repeated. "The oldest memory I have is waking up aboard a mind flayer ship, and the first interaction I had with another person was when Lae'Zel almost attacked me, believing I was a thrall."

"That… I'm so sorry. That sounds awful," Alfira said as she resumed applying the ointment. "I can't imagine what that must be like."

"…you're the first person to say that to me," Tavarius explained sadly. "No-one else seemed that worried. The rest just seem to think our… mutual problem is to blame, and Karlach even called me 'lucky'."

"Lucky? Really?" Alfira finished applying the ointment, put it and the rag down, and grabbed a bandage roll from her bag.

"My guess is she believes that because she wants to forget her time in Avernus, anyone who loses their memories is to be envied," Tavarius speculated with a tone of annoyance while the bandage was being wrapped around his wound. "And maybe she's right. Maybe my life before all this was absolute shit. Or maybe my life before all this was great. Maybe I'm the head of my order and there's a group of paladins and clerics out there trying to find me. Maybe I'm married with children, and my family is terrified for my safety. And maybe Karlach is a callous idiot for saying I'm 'lucky' to have forgotten everything, when she knows nothing about me."

"I don't think that's a maybe," Alfira commented. Making the last loop of bandage over the wounds, she made a split down the length with a small pair of shears, looped one half around the tail one more time, then tied the two strips into a tight knot.

"There we go," Alfira said as she put away her equipment away, before getting off her knees and sitting in a more comfortable position. "So… was there a particular reason you were trying to eat your own tail? Or was it just general stress of everything getting to you?"

"My concern, not yours," Tavarius answered.

"Come on. I told you about why I was struggling to write my song, so I'd say it's fair for you to tell me what's troubling you."

"…only if you promise to keep this between us," Tavarius insisted.

"I promise not to tell anyone."

Tavarius was silent for a moment, staring blankly at his bandaged tail before beginning to speak.

"I wanted… I wanted to side with the goblins," he finally said, stunning Alfira.

"You… I'm sorry, you wanted what?"

"I wanted to side with the goblins, okay!?" Tavarius barked, getting to his feet as Alfira flinched back in shock. He put some distance between himself and Alfira, tail lashing back and forth, before turning to look at her with his face showing a conflicted mix of anger and sadness. "If things went my way, me and my companions would have sided with the goblins to raid the grove, and the only reason I didn't was because of you and the other tieflings!" He held his head in his hands as he tried to ground himself. Alfira meanwhile was trying to wrap her own head around what she had just been told.

"I… I don't understand. Why would you want to raid the grove at all?" she finally asked. "Even if my people were able to leave, you'd still be killing the druids. Why would you want to do that?"

"Because they deserve it," Tavarius answered with no hesitation. "The druids of Emerald Grove are murderers and cowards, and Halsin is a failure of a leader. He wasn't gone for two days, and his second in command was trying to cut off the grove from the rest of the world and threatening to murder a child, a frightened child, for trying and failing to steal a fucking statue!" He bent down to grab a stone, turned sharply, and hurled it over the river.

"And then there was Nettie, the wretched quim of a 'healer' who tried to poison me when I asked her for help!" he continued without turning back to Alfira. "I go to her looking for help with something very urgent, she tries to fucking murder me because I'm not sure how I got sick in the first, and she's meant to be better than the fucking goblins!?" His tail had gone back to his mouth and he was chewing it again.

"No!" Alfira said as she leapt to her feet and ran to Tavarius, taking his tail into one hand and placing the other on his snout. "I just got done bandaging that up! Let go!" She gave a light pull, and after growling slightly, Tavarius relented and let go. Alfira gave it a quick once over before letting it fall. "There. Fortunately you haven't put any more holes in it."

"Humph," was Tavarius' only response as he stood clutching his head once again. Only now as she stood this close to him, did Alfira really understand the height difference between them. She wasn't short, being an average height for a tiefling woman, but this beast of a man towered over her. Seven feet of muscle wrapped in scales of white and red, like blood splattered snow.

'I don't want to imagine what it was like for the goblins,' she thought. 'To have someone like this tearing through their lair, leaving a trail of corpses behind him.' She took a breath to clear her head of these thoughts. Now wasn't the time to make herself nervous when she was trying to lend a sympathetic ear.

"I heard about the girl that was caught trying to steal something," Alfira explained. "But this is the first time I've heard anything about their healer trying to poison someone."

"Apparently if you don't like the answers your patient gives you, or they ask why you're questioning them in the first place, medical procedure is to just kill them."

"Well that's the murderer part. But how are they cowards?"

"Half the druids disagreed with performing The Rite Of Thorns," Tavarius answered. "But none of them tried to stop it. Even Rath, the one who spoke against punishing Arabella, wasn't willing to try and actually help her. He could have defied Kahga and returned the girl to her parents, and if Kahga objected then he could have fought against her. They could all have fought against the goblins!" He stepped away and started pacing in frustration as he ranted. "Nettie said that she wouldn't stand a chance against them because her birds couldn't get close. But she wasn't a bird, she was a druid. She had power, they all do!

"They could have turned into bears, or boars, or wolves and torn the goblins to shreds. They could have called lightening from the sky, covered the ground in flesh piercing thorns, and turned the worgs against their masters. But instead of trying to solve their own problems and fight to protect what they held sacred, they just hid in their precious grove.

"And when it came to their leader, they just left the task of finding out if he was even alive to some random adventurers, who had no reason to care. And when it came to you and the other tieflings…" He sat back on the ground, head in his hands. "You were parasites to them. Not people who lost their homes, not frightened children being trained to fight for their lives, just parasites." He fell silent, and stayed that way. After a few moments, Alfira concluded that he had nothing else to say, and decided to try saying something in a bid to help.

"So, let me see if I've got this right," she began as she walked over. "You arrived at the grove, saw how the druids treated us tieflings, got rightfully angry about it, almost got murdered when trying to get healing, and wanted to side with the goblins to kill every druid at the grove?"

"Correct."

"And the only reason you didn't was because you didn't want us getting hurt?"

"Correct again."

"Well in that case, I guess the druids have us to thank for being alive right now," Alfira joked, getting a chuckle out of Tavarius. She knelt down when she reached him. "But seriously, you might not have wanted to do it, but you did the right thing. And I'm not angry at you, or scared of you. What about your companions? What did they say about this?"

"I haven't told them," Tavarius answered. "Karlach, Gale, and Wyll would likely try to kill me for suggesting it without letting me share my thinking, Shadowheart doesn't seem to care about any of it either way, and the other two don't give a fuck about morality and would just want to kill everyone for the fun of it. Besides, after how they brushed off my concerns about the thoughts inside my head, I don't think I want to share anything with them."

"What thoughts?" Alfira asked.

"…violent thoughts. Dark and murderous desires that have… in the grove, we saw a squirrel and I-I just… I don't even remember kicking it." Tavarius stopped himself, but Alfira didn't need him to finish. "I've told all my companions about these compulsions, the whispers to kill, and not one of them took it seriously. Gale just said 'We all have those from time to time'. My mind is in ruins, but I'm certain wanting to hack someone's hand off is vastly different to being angry at someone for getting the last copy of a book you wanted."

Looking at him now, Alfira didn't see a kind hearted protector of children, or a menacing slayer of goblins.

She saw a sad and lonely man, his only memories being violence, his only companionship being people who didn't take his concerns seriously, and his own mind leaving him afraid of what he might do. He'd put himself in danger to help people he didn't know, but had no-one to help him. Alfira felt this wasn't fair, but she didn't know what could be done about… until inspiration struck her.

"I know what to do," she said, stepping back from Tavarius with an excited smile on her face. "I know just what to do. I'll go get ready. You go to the party, or go to sleep, and I'll see you again in the morning." With that she turned and ran off, leaving Tavarius confused and curious about what she was planning. Shaking his head with a sigh, he took the bard's advice, and went to his tent to try and get some sleep.

Waking up from a restless night of fitful sleep, Tavarius dragged himself from his bed roll and left his tent. The sounds of arguing and heated conversation reached him and following them to the centre of camp he saw Gale, Astarion, Shadowheart, Lae'Zel, and – to his surprise – Alfira.

"No! This tiefling bard cannot join us!" Lae'Zel insisted, her voice and expression as serious and unyielding as always. But what she said caught Tavarius' attention.

"What's going on?" he asked as he approached. Everyone turned to look at him with Lae'Zel looking angry – as she almost always did – and Alfira looking excited. "Alfira, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you have left with the rest of the tieflings?"

"I've decided to join you," Alfira answered, bringing Tavarius to a halt.

"You… I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

"I've decided to join you," she repeated, smiling at Tavarius as he looked at her like she had grown a second head. "I'm grateful for all the help you've given, and I want to pay it back."

"And you're sure this is how you want to do that?" Shadowheart asked. "Travelling with us will be a dangerous undertaking."

"I know, but you've, well, inspired me – to fight by your side. I want to help people, as you've helped me. And I want to help you in turn." She looked directly at Tavarius as she said that last part, and he remembered what she'd said the night before.

'You saved me and everyone else at the grove, and now I'm going to return the favour.'

"And tell me, istik. How do you plan to help?" Lae'Zel asked with a venomous tone. "Will you play your lute as we fight for our lives?"

"Well I don't know about you, but I reckon having some music around here would be a welcome addition to our sometimes gloomy camp," Gale interjected.

"And having someone around who annoys you is a personal plus for me," Shadowheart added with a smirk, earning a scowl from Lae'Zel.

"And will you have her sing our enemies to death?" Astarion asked.

"Well, I can't do that. But I can bash a lute over the heads of smarmy elves," Alfira remarked back, before looking back at Tavarius. "And I'm certain you could use someone able to bring cheer to your group. Wouldn't it be nice having something to look forward to when you get back to camp after adventuring?"

Tavarius simply looked at her in shock before putting his head in his hands.

"Alfira, I appreciate the offer, but you don't know what you're getting yourself into," he explained, before pointing to his companions one-by-one. "Astarion for example is a vampire who somehow doesn't burn in the sun. Shadowheart is a Shar worshipper tasked with bringing the only thing keeping us from turning into mind flayers to her superiors at Baldur's Gate, and doesn't even know why because she had her memories erased.

"Gale has an orb of unstable weave in his chest that's likely to explode, killing everyone within a Waterdeep sized area. Karlach's heart was replaced with an infernal engine that's burning her up so she can't even touch anyone, and Wyll, The Blade Of Frontiers, is the son of a Duke who disowned him, I assume because of Mizora, his warlock patron and devil in service of Zariel." Everyone now looked at him in shock, albeit for different reasons.

"What the hells is wrong with you!?" Shadowheart demanded in anger. "Who said you could just share our biggest secrets like that!?"

"She was going to find out eventually!" Tavarius snapped back. "Better she knows now so she can make an educated choice knowing what she's getting herself into, rather than in three days time when it's too late to change her mind and catch up with the other tieflings."

"Well it doesn't matter, because I'm not changing my mind," Alfira insisted with a shake of her head. "Telling me it'll be dangerous won't deter me. I've been running since Elturel – and when we finally arrived in the grove, we found danger there too. Unless I hide away from the world, I can't avoid it. So I'd rather face it head on – with you."

Tavarius stood for a moment, thinking. Alfira was right, her people faced danger since they took to the road, and they would likely face more of it during their journey. With the group or her fellow tieflings, Alfira would likely risk a violent death either way, so what difference would it make to let her join? And a selfish part of Tavarius – the part that felt alone and misunderstood – wanted her with them, with him, risks be damned.

"Okay. You can come with us," he finally said. "But you'll need to be able to keep up."

"Oh, thank you – thank you so much," Alfira exclaimed, her face bursting into an expression of joy. Astarion and Lae'Zel however looked less pleased.

"Oh, fine. She can tag along I suppose. But if she reaches for that lute it's firewood," Astarion warned.

"G'lyck. Fine. Just keep it quiet, hear?" Lae'Zel scoffed.

"I won't let you down. I promise," Alfira assured.

"Splendid! Now, with that settled, let's have breakfast and hear what Halsin knows about our tadpole problem," offered Gale. As everyone followed him eager to eat, Tavarius caught up to Alfira and tapped her on the shoulder.

"Are you certain you want to join us?" he asked. "I told you last night that I have violent compulsions and have blacked out. Most people would want to stay away someone who confessed to such things."

"You also said no-one listens to your concerns," Alfira reminded, gently poking Tavarius in the chest. "But I did. You need someone willing to listen, and I'm going to be that person."

"You don't have to be," Tavarius argued. "You're not a paladin, you've sworn no oath to-" He was cut of by Alfira stepping forward, standing on her toes, and placing a swift kiss on his lower jaw.

"Consider that my oath," Alfira said, twirling round and following the rest to breakfast while Tavarius looked at her slack jawed. "I've made my choice, and I won't regret it." Finally getting his mind in working order, Tavarius followed with a feeling of warmth growing in his cheeks.

He had no idea that Alfira was correct when she said she wouldn't regret it. But in a few nights, he would come to greatly regret not insisting that she return to her fellow tieflings.