The previous night had not been a fluke, as they had hoped. Every snippet of dream was the same, or at least a variation on a theme: their body, beyond their ability to redirect or dissuade, bore down on a victim with malevolent intent. They had heard you weren't supposed to be able to discern faces in dreams, but they could make out the details of every single one. Sometimes, a name would float through their mind during the act of savagery that followed, but just as often, their focus was entirely on the process, with little regard for who the victim might have been. As soon as the light in their eyes died, the scene would both change and remain the same, the cycle beginning anew.

Some of those named, The Dark Urge could recall meeting without killing, such as Lae'zel, or the bard lass at the grove, Alfira. This allowed them some comfort - perhaps it was possible some of these dreams were memories, but at least some of them must only be memories of fantasies. They had such a fantasy every time they met someone for the first time; though they wished to blame the tadpole, a cold feeling in their gut insisted they had always been like this, from the moment they could walk and talk. Not that The Dark Urge could remember learning either, of course.

Most of their victims were unnamed, even by the whispers of their past. This was troubling in its own way. Were they unnamed because they were not just an imagined butchering, but an imagined victim? A fantasy of killing someone they had met in their previous life, whose name had never been learned, a stranger on the street? Were they a memory of a butchering where learning their name had not been important? Or were they an important victim, whose name was just one more piece missing from their puzzle of their mind?

Another change of venue. This time, instead of market streets or dank crypts or forest trails, they were floating in a sea of endless stars. A githyanki bearing no small resemblance to Lae'zel opened her mouth to speak, but The Dark Urge could not control their body within a dream. Their limbs lunged for the gith's throat. They found no purchase, fingers clutching nothing but ether. The gold-clad gith favored them with a disappointed look, before giving a dismissive wave of their hand.

The Dark Urge woke with a start, as they had earlier that night, as they had the previous night. They remained still, save for their heaving chest, and listened. Others were awake, and either had not noticed the light gasping, or had long since dismissed it. They listened closer...Taylor, Gale, Shadowheart, and Astarion. This was last shift, then. Astarion needed less sleep than the rest and so slept through first shift, joining Wyll on second and Taylor on third. The two of them would keep watch while the more learned casters prepared their spells by one means or another.

They took a deep breath and sat up, rubbing the cobwebs from the corners of their eyes. A glance over brought an interesting sight: the others were all crowded around a phase spider lying dead on the floor. Their eyes drifted to the youngest of their little group. The girl was an oddity, although a bit less mysterious of one than she'd been the previous morning. The Dark Urge had never heard of worlds even more separate from their own than the Outer Planes, but Gale seemed to speak quite authoritatively about such things.

Certainly, if anything indicated the girl was other, it was the utter naivete and lack of experience that inexplicably accompanied her prophetic capabilities. The world and life she had described the previous night made it clear she came from an affluent background sheltered from the harsh realities of life. She had made noises about criminal problems in her city that were far more significant than other settlements of similar size, but that was like comments about the weather changing every five minutes, or improperly-maintained roadways: everybody always thought they had it worse than everyone else.

They could not recall what experiences had led them to have this instinctive conclusion, but the truth of it was reflected in the faces around the fire that night: Lae'zel's open scorn, Shadowheart and Astarion's well-masked skepticism, Wyll and Gale's earnest belief. 'The Blade Of Frontiers' was a sheltered city boy pretending at being a rugged adventurer, no matter how many scars he had to back up his claims, and the wizard was clearly some fresh college graduate who'd had a silver spoon in his mouth from the moment he was born.

The conversation had turned to harvesting, causing their ears to prick up. Gale knew which parts of the creature were worth harvesting, and Shadowheart knew how to milk the venom sacks even after death, but none of them were sure if the meat was any good. It wasn't. Or rather, it wasn't bad exactly, it wasn't inedible, but it would be a good deal of work to harvest properly and the ethereal nature of the creatures would make all the meat light and airy, barely filling at all. The venom sacs, the eyes, and the phase-spindle would be worth harvesting; the rest was only if they were desperate for any amount of food, which they were not.

The Dark Urge rose to their feet and approached, drawing a knife. Astarion was the first to go - the most dangerous of the four present. A quick slice across the throat and his blood spilled forth. Shadowheart's shield came up, prepared for treachery. This small blade wouldn't pierce it easily, so they send a torrent of wind instead. The shield, angled for deflecting a dagger from someone much taller, almost acted as a kite...catching the wind and driving her arms up and behind. Her balance lost, she fell and cracked her skull on the tomb's unyielding stone floor. The two mages were no threat while within reach. The Dark Urge dispatched Gale, before reaching for

They started cutting into the spider as the others observed.

[Disapproval gained.]

Astarion made himself useful by going upstairs and returning with several empty (if a bit dirty) glass vials. As they collected all the eyes into one of the larger containers, they reflected once more upon their brief fantasy. There was a part of their mind that wished to believe it was merely paranoia - a battle readiness triggered by some ancient trauma consciously forgotten but subconsciously driving action whenever The Dark Urge believed themselves under threat. They didn't want to kill their allies, they were just...ready for battle, should it become necessary to do so. It was simply good sense.

But another part of them knew in their bones it wasn't true. The Dark Urge sought violence and conflict to some unknown end. Every person they met was evaluated and tested in the fires of imagined combat. The threat posed by those wasn't completely irrelevant, but it was generally a secondary concern. The primary concern was how fulfilling the kill would be; if the threat mattered, it was less because it made planning their death a priority, and more because it made the prospect of testing them in real life more tantalizing. But they would not give in to those feelings. There were bigger threats, too big to handle alone. This lot had accepted them in, watched their back. They would not be victimized by the The Dark Urge.

[Disapproval gained.]

They flinched minutely. The cord was still wrapped around their chin, the box still sitting among their horns. Were it normal material, it might've been crushed in the night from tossing and turning. But with magic coursing through every ounce of its design, it would only be damaged by a targeted assault.

It was an interesting thing, this little phylactery. The way Gale had described it, the little artefact would provide guidance, affirmation or castigation depending on how their behavior...and intended behavior...aligned with that of their deity's wishes. The Dark Urge could not recall ever worshipping a deity, but that was little surprise for they could not recall much of anything. However, they did not even feel the instincts of piety they might've expected.

There was an awareness that it was a bad idea to be a godless heathen, there was the silent acknowledgement when meddling in the domain of a god they could recall - it was just good sense to offer a small prayer to Sylvanus, that first night in the grove, for it was his domain moreso than the druids who kept it. But that was very different from proper worship, from finding a deity who's ideology echoed in your soul, whose followers found you a kindred spirit.

Whatever deity it was they had aligned themselves with in the past, it seems their desires were in line with the urges and fantasies...and they were disappointed when The Dark Urge held themselves away from that violence and slaughter. There were not many deities so steeped in bloodshed, and fewer still that were not repugnant. The most likely candidate, to their mind, was Talos the Storm Lord, who demanded mass destruction and devastation from his devotees.

The Dark urge stood, finished with their dissection. Absentmindedly, they scratched at their arm, attempting to soothe the lightning and thunder that boiled beneath the surface, begging for release. There would be plenty of time for that later.

The vials Astarion brought had come from a necromantic laboratory just upstairs from the temple of Jergal. It was much more recently abandoned than the tomb had been, if the cadavers were any indication: there were a few skeletons with signs of having the bones scraped clean and reassembled into proper shape, as well as bodies left whole that looked to be perhaps three months dead without exposure to the elements. Gale was examining a warded chest with intent to abjure, while the others kept their distance.

Lae'zel was glancing their way when Gale finally tried something. There was a horrible crunching sound and the wizard screaming as the magical backlash swept over him. His head cracked against a column while the wave of magic burst through the room, sinking into every last corpse. Eyes and eye sockets alike glowed with necrotic power and the living dead lurched towards the reeling adventurers. Pain would be insufficient, it would take excessive force at the joints to properly disable these creatures. They grabbed a staff leaning against the wall and swung it like club at the knee of the nearest Lae'zel jabbed their chest. "Clear skies," she muttered insistently. The Dark Urge took a steadying breath and leaned next to the staff.

Of the lot of them, Lae'zel was the only one that knew their nature. Taylor and Gale were so close-minded that they'd not even made a tadpole connection with the others. The Dark Urge had seen Shadowheart and Gale before being seen in turn, and so the mindmeld did not immediately expose them to fantasies of their own murder. Astarion had seen it, but they had been reveling in the death of the illithid at the time; fantasies of turning him into the perfect corpse only came once they'd come down from that high.

But Lae'zel...they had seen her the same second she had seen them. The Dark Urge had seen her mental state in that moment, and seen that she saw theirs as well. She had borne witness to her own murder, and had never forgotten. She watched them like a hawk - and endless vigil bereft of judgement or conspiracy. It was if she took a pride in being the first line of defense, should the urges take hold and turn fantasy to reality. It was comforting, in its own way: that the person they were least sure they could kill in a fight was the one most ready for such a betrayal was all the more incentive to stay their hand.

Taylor was watching the two of them curiously, but didn't say a word. Behind her, the previously-spherical ward structure had become as a vertical whirlpool, funneling every last bit of mana straight into Gale's awaiting maw. It was more than a bit unnerving to witness, if they were truthful, but it set their mind ablaze with possibility. Perhaps a twist of their own magic could replicate the feat, turning away harmful spells or ending ongoing ones? Perhaps Gale would be able to give them some pointers later - it wouldn't exactly be hard to get him talking, after all.

The village was quiet as the grave. It was big enough to house perhaps a few hundred, and so there were rather quite a few buildings. Bodies littered the ground, once again three months old based on deterioration and relative exposure to the elements. Whatever was going on with these goblins, it had been brewing since before summer began. There were goblin bodies too. Most were of similar age to the rest that had been left to rot, but a surprising number were fresh enough that the meat had not yet had time to spoil.

Astarion had mentioned something about a ghost, but The Dark Urge was skeptical. Apparitions did not manifest with the weapons they wielded in life, assuming they were the type to be armed. Instead, they fought in the nature of the living dead: necrotic limbs reaching through your body to drag you to the grave early, possessing you to turn your weapons against your allies, even literally scaring you to death depending on the circumstances. Here, every fresh body was wounded as if shot multiples times, having succumbed to gutshots and nicked arteries.

Taylor continued her work directing the group from one patrol to another. Every goblin who got too close to them was ambushed and slaughtered - to the approval of whatever The Dark Urge had worshipped before. At one point, instead of goblins they found a trio of ogres hanging out in the ruined remains of a pub. That had been far more exciting than the usual handful of weaklings, they had actually been challenging.

The ogres had employed some creative architectural alterations in order to enter the bar in the first place, and it left the whole building a fragile shell waiting to collapse in on itself. Shadowheart and Gale created small explosions within the main area, catching a monster and a couple support beams each. As the building imploded around the ogres, Astarion and Wyll tossed some everburn bottles onto the pile of timber. One ogre survived the concussion and blaze, likely due to what appeared to be a rudimentary familiarity with magical theory, and rushed them with club raised. They knocked his weapon away with a spell, just in time for Lae'zel to duck beneath their legs and cleanly cut their hamstrings.

Taylor looked sick about having played part in such a thing, but they paid her no mind. She would get used to it, or she wouldn't. All it would take was one encounter where something slipped past the rest of them and gave her a good knock upside the head before she'd feel her own mortality creeping in and start embracing the wanton violence. The skeletal figure in the tomb had all but given her an ultimatum passed down by Ao himself: if she died here, she would never rejoin her own family in...whatever afterlife existed in her own world. She would learn it was kill or be killed soon enough.

[Approval gained.]

The Dark Urge shifted in place. That...was not a comforting reaction from the phylactery. It was only a statement of fact, but it was the first time since they'd donned the thing they had gained approval instead of lost it. Even fighting the ogres hadn't warranted enough death and destruction to make their god happy. Was their guess wrong? Was it the Lady Of Pain who held their soul, who wished for suffering? Or perhaps Shar, who sought to sew seeds of despair in the hearts of the desperate? Or perhaps these simple, straightforward deaths that risked nothing were too boring for even Bhaal to approve?

They trudged on, restless. They bounded up a set of steps carved into a hill, climbing towards the windmill at the top. This was the highest point in the village, with few tall buildings nearby to avoid obstructing the wind. But now, there was no wind, and the windmill was still save for the occasional creaking twitch as its weight shifted ever-so-slightly. Here, there were more goblin bodies scattering the ground, and so the party got to work scavenging anything of value, as they had many times previously.

The Dark Urge leaned down and efficiently searched the body, ignoring the various bugs nestled in their filthy forms. As they searched them one by one, a pattern emerged: this group at the windmill had been shot as many others had, but their wounds were at an odd angle, as if shot from far above. Someone had snuck into the higher levels of the windmill and rained down death on these poor creatures. They wandered over to Taylor and quietly asked if there was anybody hiding in the rafters of the windmill, and the girl responded to the negative. With a nod, they cast a spell to rebuke gravity and took to the sky, soaring upwards through an open window on the top floor.

There were signs of recent habitation, so their analysis wasn't completely off the mark, but whoever had been here had packed up quite thoroughly; if it weren't for the area up here that had been cleared of debris, there would've been no sign it had been recently disturbed. The Dark Urge turned around and gazed out the window. In the distance, a large building was burning merrily next to the road. There were no visible statues so that was less likely the temple and more likely the inn. It wasn't too surprising: it wasn't built with defense in mind, so once it was raided of everything remotely valuable, it had little remaining use, and goblins had a tendency to resort to arson if given half an excuse.

Movement attracted their attention, and a quick spell sharpened their vision to mimic that of a hawk. Far in the distance, they could make out four figures amid the flames. Leading the way was a man in black armor with yellow highlights. Behind him, and keeping her head on a swivel, was a woman clad head-to-toe in black, wielding a pair of hand crossbows. That must be Gale's drowess savior. Behind her was a short figure - child, halfling, or gnome, too hard to see from this distance even while enhanced. And bringing up the rear was a darkskinned woman wearing expensive purple robes and wielding a staff emitting bits of lightning now and then.

The lot disappeared into one of the side buildings near the burning inn, which was also just beginning to catch fire. Durge shook their head sadly; it would be an okay place to hide out from the goblins ransacking everything, but it was as likely to burn to the ground as everything else in that same courtyard. Without an underground route, or some strong fire suppression effects, they would burn all the same.

Their eyes turned towards the temple, just barely visible from the same viewport. What could be seen of it was bustling with activity. Physical infiltration would be almost impossible, while social infiltration ran the risk of working just long enough to get surrounded. It made their scales itch, but it was their best way of getting at the leaders and disrupting the goblin forces enough to make their escape. That it might scatter the horde in the week to come, giving the tieflings a safe-enough path to Baldur's Gate, was just a bonus.

[Disapproval gained.]

Grimacing at their gods scorn, they bounded over the window sill and sailed downwards. Gravity's hold on them was as absolute as ever, but the landing was feather-soft despite their crashing speed. They gave a whistle to attract the others attention, and explained to them about the burning inn. It was of little use now, but when the fire finished consuming most of it, the hollowed-out shell of a building would be a decent place to hole up for a few minutes to plan their approach. They also told the others of the group that had disappeared into a side-building; if any of them were alive by the time the fires finished, they might make useful allies against the goblins.

Nobody disagreed, and the group began making their way towards the inn, following the path given to them by Taylor. For their part, the Dark Urge could only think of how satisfying it would be to set the temple alight and burn the goblins out of it. It would be a cruel sort of justice, but exactly the kind such vermin deserved.

[Approval gained.]

But they shook their head. As tempting, as thrilling, as satisfying as the idea sounded, it had its downsides. An old adage floated through their mind, one that must be so ingrained from having talked them down from previous similar bad decisions throughout their life:

Pillage, then burn.