blueprints_bloodstains | Toppling from Cauldron to Blaze

Toppling from Cauldron to Blaze

Orin's stone has been obtained.

Enver Gortash is just coming into the floor of his office when the voice touches his mind. Familiar, though heavier. Closer. Like breath he can feel on the back of his neck.

Anticipation. He feels it himself, the sudden rush and thrill of the dawning thought that there were no steps but the last at this point. Soon the Dark Urge and the rest of the rogue True Souls would return and they would journey to the Underground to finish this. The Elder Brain would at least be back under heel.

The Absolute Plot, at last, would move confidently forward.

His men from the temple stand at the ready for orders. Better to get them posted in the city, just as soon as it was certain it was time.

There is no remaining trace of Bhaal's living flesh.

The Archduke halts mid-step.

Bane does not speak needlessly or without thought. His Chosen knows to heed his words and their clear intent.

Hear me. This changes nothing. The plan continues with or without Myrkul and Bhaal's hands to help guide it.

And he feels something like a hand closing around his mind. Not enough to hurt, but a clear sign it could. A warning reminder.

He responds immediately, with no waver in his voice because that is what that silent command requires. "This changes nothing." The Dark Urge is dead. And he feels the band around his chest tighten. He draws in a resolute breath. Because he will take in air. He will not show what presence in his mind and in the very air around him does not want to see. "The plan continues."

He was always going to be gone. Cruel to have deluded himself into thinking otherwise.

Feel that, and be done. There is more to do, imminently.

The disciples go about their duties at his back as he continues to cross the chamber. He doesn't notice when they actually fall. Neither of them do.

When they bring the stones, take them or bring the rogues along. It is time to assume your rightful place.

And that voice bleeds into every tendril of sensation, washing over those places that hurt like something caustic, refusing to soothe but unwilling to be what is chased away. Bane feels more present, like a firm hand on his shoulder. A presence in the doorway of his mind.

Prepared to see the end.

Reminding him, perhaps, that he rules alone today. As he should. But he never was, truly.

Footsteps bring him toward the back of the chamber. Some of the traps arm themselves.

He doesn't notice them immediately switch off.

The Black Hand is telling Enver now, because what would have happened if those people came to him and he knew only then that the battle with Orin had cut their numbers down? Rude. An attempt to compromise him. But he is prepared.

Feel what you must now. Then never again. You promised yourself this once already.

He doesn't realize until it's too late that the person he senses nearing him is not, in fact, one of his footmen.

Black. The feeling of fingers that were bearing down bleedingly hard, pried away.

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The fighting creates the channel he needs to filter all that anger into. In the end, he doesn't know if Raphael had fully realised what had brought the entirety of his fury down upon him, but he reaches a point where it doesn't matter. The devil is dead and that feels as though it could help Enver eventually.

The battle was hard fought and only just won, his companions in almost as much of a bloody mess as he is. His body feels beaten raw in so many different ways, though the single moment of what feels like healing doesn't come from Shadowheart, but instead Enver. Their eyes lock and, for a moment, all he can do is allow the full effect of everything he has discovered tug at his heart.

He wants to say that he remembers enough. Remembers that they have been far more to each other than he had known the last time they had met. So much has happened over the last few days that he doesn't know where to start, and all he can do is convey a look of promise. The promise of so many things.

"Are you alright, Enver?" Why pretend as though that isn't the name that presents itself to the tip of his tongue when he wants to call the man by name.

His given name has been used like a bludgeon since he was dragged here, drawing into sharp focus an old familiarity he had done much to purge from his life.

And beyond these unholy halls, saying it would have been seen as too personal in casual conversation with just anyone. It was an overstep that no one with any amount of decorum would dare to make -- and that was something Raphael both understood and felt called to trample on. He had always known him as Enver first, so the fact that it was seen as a violation was just a very easy low-hanging fruit for him to pluck.

So to hear it now, when the Dark Urge he had met at the Coronation would have never dared. Whose eyes didn't and couldn't look at him the way they did now. It all felt like a trick, even if -- beyond more of the devil's cruelty -- he could not imagine why such a thing would be attempted.

All of it could be a lie. The battle. His former keeper slain. The face he is seeing, the voice he is hearing.

And he feels something familiar creeping in. A hand closing around the heart beating in his chest. And he is raw. Because he might be facing down a deception but it's a beautiful one. He can have it for a moment because he knows what is about to come.

"Is it you?"

Grateful for his companions making themselves almost immediately busy, he limps to the human, pain secondary to his desire to close the space between them. Closer, he knows now, than they have been in some time and in all meanings of the word. He still stops at a respectable distance, part of him now understanding that he is not only drenched in the fruits of his violence, but also that Enver has been here, in this traumatic place, for too long already.

"Not exactly as you knew me," he admits, too far changed to ever claim otherwise. There's the matter of his disinheritance to explain, but there isn't the time now. Not when they still have the matter of the brain to deal with. He still needs to convince Enver that there is only one way that this can end.

All of that falls by the wayside for a couple of breaths as he simply soaks in the feeling of being close again. Of remembering parts of them.

"And I will explain it all to you, as soon as I can. But we must leave this place now. Together."

The brain.

The gravity of what remains to be done and what is at stake makes it real. If it were false, the moment would remain here. And he remembers standing in a similar place in Cania, with more to be done and the dire need to return to a less Hellish plane. Together.

And the Dark Urge did bring him back. They left that place, and they were safe.

It is that and the present, of bearing witness to a Dark Urge sating his need for violence on deserving flesh but not out of some internal call for blood but a fury he had never known in him and at the same time remembered on an intimate level. His limbs move without logical thought to guide them, and he grabs into him -- gore be damned.

Something familiar once but different. Some savage desperation to be nearer, to hear his heart beating and know it is real.

Even as he feels fingers somewhere within him, clenching like claws and threatening to tighten.

Just give me a moment.

Ready to catch Enver should he fall, he returns the touch, his hands reaching to hold the man in the only way that feels right. Here and now, it feels ridiculous that there could be anything getting in the way of a conversation they sorely need. One that's only about them, and not the rest of Toril.

All the more when his fingers feel the flesh and bone of a man once his lover. A man who he is - and was - in love with, and that he only realises now with the perspective this new life has given him. He wants to shout that part aloud, the sudden meeting of his past and his present clicking in a way that provides him such depth of understanding.

He almost forgets to breathe, the sudden shaky breath in a belated physiological reminder that it's still required. That they are both alive, and that none of that will matter if they don't stop the plan and destroy the brain.

"I have you," he says, moving to support and steer the human back towards the portal.

Even if it were a lie, it's a comforting one. A short instant of quiet and warmth that he last felt what felt like years ago. Back when the plan had really started. A plan that had been intended to come to an end in a way that would have twisted the dream it used to be.

A nightmare where he would be a passenger in his own body, as his God spoke with his mouth, saw with his eyes and claimed dominion on a captured world. And how long would a surviving Dark Urge have remained there?

All the more alarming a thought when they passed through that portal, the air around them was Toril's again -- and that presence in him comes down like a sudden weight.

That fist closed, and the human suddenly slumped. His eyes are overtaken by shadow.

Edited 2024-08-26 16:16 (UTC)

Even as they walk to the portal, the healing magic of Shadowheart bathes both him and Enver. He nods his gracious thanks, his focus primarily on getting to that portal and back out the other side to what awaits. With a sideways glance at his companions - checking on each of them with his eyes - he doesn't look back to the portal until he's satisfied.

Only when they're nearing it does he squeeze the human's shoulder, one last bolster of shared strength. A meaningful look follows, one that intends to show that they will pick this up on the other side, back at the Devil's Fee.

When he steps through the portal first, it is into the ritual circle they used as an entry point. How much time has passed here is difficult to tell, but even as his trailing hand comes through the portal, his fingers are still interlinked with Enver's. No portal would have him let them go when it came to leaving Avernus, so strongly had he felt about showing the man he meant what he said. Together.

He's barely got his gaze thrown back over his shoulder to search for Enver's materialising form that the ring around his finger kicks into action. Truly together, is the last thing his mind supplies him, the onslaught of sudden damage to Enver hitting him in an instant. The rest of the party are greeted with the sight of the duo motionless on the floorboards, hands still entwined, and after a stunned moment of inaction flood to their aid, trying everything they can think of to bring them back.

The scene that the Dark Urge witnesses feels akin to one he has experienced already, something like his final conversation with his father, but clearly not meant to be witnessed.

The black figure that addresses Enver Gortash is a shadowed mirror of his own, its eyes somehow empty but deep and unfathomable. Wisps and tendrils of smoke connect the two, flowing out of the human and appearing to feed into the vision he sees. Being confronted by a face like his seems to confirm something he already knew.

The Archduke of Baldur's Gate has a pained but angry look in his own eyes that seems to both offend but also not surprise Bane.

There seem to be words exchanged in all this, but when lips move it is not clear, and there are not sounds so much as feelings that somewhere there are.

Tell me that Raphael was lying and I'll believe you.

A bitter laugh that says No, you won't.

It's the clearest part of the exchange between the two of them. But the rest has a feeling of finality. Certainty that Gortash's part in this plan has come to a rather premature end.

But he will have what is promised to him. A Black Hand still exists coiled around some inner core of Enver Gortash, but the tethers of smoke holding them together outwardly shatter when it clenches.

And only when that clenching hand finds itself closing around nothing does Bane even appear to realize that they are not alone.

The Dark Urge might sense a presence at his back before he is back in his own body.

Enver Gortash moves, his fingers clenching at the runed ground beneath them as the world is present again. His lungs gasp in fresh oxygen as though for the first time and the sound of it rings painfully in his ears, and it intermixes with a thousand small things that are suddenly too vivid: the shuffle of feet, the murmur of voices, the creek of the floorboards and even the city out beyond.

He sees a familiar room around him brighter and more vivid than he had ever known it.

The others gathered are not certain what to make of the spectacle before them when they come through the portal. The two initially fallen, and it is only small details that tell them they have seen something like it before, in the temple of bhaal. They wait, tense.

But when Gortash finally moves, there are immediate changes that just seem to be there as soon as they blink. In pallor, in little ways in shape, and as he casts a look about in confusion: in his eyes.

He watches, though he's not sure through what. He doesn't have the sense he even has eyes, but still he gleans words as visuals, rather than spoken. The sentiment is easy enough to understand, the scene unfolding in ways that are echoing his own disinheritance. Time doesn't seem to exist anymore, but he feels the change as surely as he feels the blink of a presence behind him, and then nothing.

Not until his own consciousness comes back to him, though unlike Enver it is slower. Takes him a lot longer to even become aware again of a world outside the one in his head. His large form is still a crumpled pile for some time after his companions have moved to help Enver up, and somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind he hears a familiar voice advise: thrice shalt be dire.

Two times in two days he's been brought back, and he's distantly aware of that as he groans, his body feeling as though he's just sprinted the Sword Coast without interval or rest. He just needs a moment to catch his breath.

Enver absolutely does not expect to be touched and is still adjusting to his vision being strange, the light of candles seeming more brilliant and the shadows far less empty. And if the din of noise had been less overwhelming in the moment, it might have been more anticipated. As it is, he stumbles back, his balance ever-so-slightly off.

He's alive. That finally penetrates.

A hand falls to his chest, feeling the absence of something there that was once painful. His mind is empty of any presence, much as it had been in the House of Hope. But rather than a lock separated from its key, the lock was quite noticeably gone as well.

Bane had come to claim his soul. Possibly more than that, and now He was gone. Because...

His eye fell upon the ring on his finger, but whatever path he has been following to piece it all together comes to an abrupt stop.

His hand looks wrong. It is his hand -- both are, albeit drained of much of their olive hue. At first his brain tells him that it must be a trick of the light, but nothing else in the room is like that.

"...What have you done?" His voice still sounds like his voice.

He hears that groan distinctly and turns, and only then does he seem to unfreeze. Everyone else is invisible to him. His mind goes to that ring again, and he's only thinking the worst as he comes down next to the Dark Urge and a hand finds his shoulder.

He's breathing. They are both alive.

Edited 2024-08-26 20:08 (UTC)

There's more than one pair of hands on him, that he eventually is aware of. He can hear the same muffled voices and unintelligible words and for a moment he wonders if he's partially lost his hearing. His mind is active again, taking input and trying to process it accordingly, but it takes a few moments longer for the fogginess to lift enough.

Another hand at his shoulder and this time he shifts, lifts his head from where the back of it has been rested on the floor. Somebody must have turned him onto his back. Bleary-eyed, his gaze finds familiar faces looking back at him, ranging from relieved to amused. And then there's Enver who looks.... different.

"Are--?" His mouth feels like it's not his own in the most immediate sense, or as though the thought-to-word relay is lagging today. The 'you alright' is missing from the end of his question, but hopefully the sentiment is understood.

What's happening? is left unsaid. Wary glances at each of the people around them. He sounds like him. At least he thinks he does. But does he look anything like himself? Why did he change?

But looking down at the Dark Urge, his eye moves from the ring on his finger to a matching one on his, and he suddenly realizes he might know what this is and what was happening back in the House of Hope. Bane did try to take his soul and kill him right there for refusing him.

Probably not how this magic was meant to work, but the change in his own skin? The heightened sound and vision?

A hand goes into his hair to feel one of his ears.

He's not human anymore.

All of this will have to be worked out later.

He had no idea where they found these rings, but their limits had probably been thoroughly tested today.

"Alive," he answers, finally allowing himself to hear it aloud. A halfhearted "You?" follows. It's not much of a joke but the answer has changed several times recently.

Moments they don't have spare trickle by and, though he can feel them too significantly to delay the inevitable moving on from this moment, he allows himself a sliver to feel gratitude. This side of his fury, drained by the fight and let go of now that Raphael has been removed from this plane of existence, at least, he feels the vulnerability of both of them all the more keenly. So much so that he reaches up from where he's shifted to his knees and hooks a hand around the back of Enver's neck, pulling him closer until their foreheads touch.

For now, the changes matter less than his incredibly intense need to just be together.

It lasts too little time, but when he pulls away again, his mismatched eyes search Enver's face, catch on the details that are markedly different. He couldn't miss the shade of his skin and interpret it as anything other than he understands on a level that they are the same now. Whether some of the fabric of what makes him up was pulled at to replace what had been taken from Enver, he isn't sure. But those vibrantly golden brown eyes and the peek of an ear point in that mess of dark hair are things he can accept without hesitation.

"I'm here."

Once, the gesture was as intimate as a kiss in their own language. His mind immediately calling back to its first. I will not use you to worship my father. He made a promise then, too. They didn't fall to more that night, even if there had been plans here. It felt too important. It was something, like the man he knew, that he was certain had been lost.

It's him. He's here and he remembers me.

And Gortash has to stop himself from completely flying apart. That inward, silent command grabbing hold. This is not the time and they are still in the domain of a devil for as long as they remain here.

A rumble is felt in the ground. Subtle, but noticed.

The brain will not wait much longer.

The plot - it can't be anymore. It was never going to, as he imagined it. But the brain still has to be stopped, or everyone will be changed or killed. He draws in a breath. "You have the other two stones."

"And I need you to give me yours."

It's almost as though he's following on from Enver's sentence, though even as he's picking himself up - and drawing the former human up with him, that'll need some contemplating - he's acutely aware of how much he needs to explain. But not here. He dealt with Helsik in a manner that wasn't the most friendly to begin with. Once the truth of what they'd wrought at the House of Hope is eventually discovered, they need to already be on to other pressing matters.

So he takes stock of his companions - all of them - and gestures for the group to move out. They'll need to reconvene back at camp and plan their next steps. The sooner the better, especially so considering the quake.

"Will you come with me?" It's a simple question and yet what he's asking is so specific. Don't go back to the fortress. He won't underplay what he's asking of the man, especially given the magnitude of how much the plans have shifted. He simply hopes that he can convince Enver there is only one resolution to this mess that they started.

Of course he feels his gut reaction first. The hand where the stone sits clenches almost reflexively, and he hesitates.

There are practical reasons bolstering the foolish that make him want to immediately say yes. Yes because the plan was always to go to confront the brain as a united front. Yes because there will be Baneites waiting for him to reappear back at the Fortress, if they are not converging in this location this very minute, and they will mean to kill him.

But the most important was the foolish: because he had said it himself before. If the Dark Urge were to come to him and ask him to go with him, he would. In a heartbeat.

"I'm not going anywhere else --"

It is only then as they are emerging onto the street that he's noticing broken Steel Watchmen.

It is barely peeking over the tops of buildings from here, but if he strained he could probably see a plume of smoke billowing from the docks. The initial reaction is a mixture of confusion and outrage. Of course it is.

But he wouldn't have been in control of the watch anymore at this point, if any remained. But it would have been easier to take some of this shift if some of his firepower still remained. Firepower that could at this point be easily turned against him. How much damage? And will it be enough?

He's feeling too many conflicting things at once right now, and they're exposed.

The city feels like it's shaking apart around them, and perhaps it isn't unhelpful distraction as they traverse the distance from the Devil's Fee to camp. With Enver in tow, even changed as he is, there's no telling what his black hand Baneites will do given half the chance, especially now that he's separated himself so distinctly from his former god.

It makes two of them godless now, and nothing has felt quite so surprisingly sweet as that. He barely has the space spare to contemplate what the end of Raphael signifies either but, considering his lack of wanting to deal with the devil, it's another victory he'll tuck away for later.

So it's with a flurry they arrive back at camp, not all too long, it turns out, after the group who had targeted the Iron Throne. Something that he realises very abruptly that he needs to address given who is already at camp. After letting the raised voices get so far, he interjects and cuts off the anger with a suggestion of delaying until after they actually have a city left.

And so it's in the disused chapel that he finally finds some time and space alone with Enver, closing the doors to the rest of camp and hoping his companions' trust of him extends just a little further.

He sits on one of the pews, the wood creaking and complaining beneath his weight. Hopefully it doesn't break, but all of a sudden he's feeling incredibly tired. He makes the effort to look at the other man before he speaks.

"I... don't know where to start. Just that we have precious little time and it feels as though we never had enough time to begin with."

To say that Enver Gortash is a little in shock was an understatement well before this point.

His mind is still attached to reflex-reactions to things that he technically has no tie to anymore: Why is his foundary on fire? What do you mean you were sending people to the Iron Throne? You want me to hand you my netherstone?

All of that belongs to a pathway he very suddenly is not on anymore.

Then you figure in that he just spent a day in Hell.

That he technically died.

That the Dark Urge died. Again.

That Bane not only turned on him but had been planning to all along.

Take all of that, add that he is undergoing a kind of complete sensory overload because Half-elves do a great deal more seeing and hearing than the average human.

Then top it all off with the sheer number of people he is surrounded by that have agreed to tolerate him but also seem very keen to drop him once some line is crossed?

There is a lot.

So when he is taken somewhere quiet to be alone, it's only then that he is starting to sort of shake apart. But it's coming in spasms that he is at turns shaking off just to be hit with one again.

"Just." A breath to steady himself. No. Don't let yourself fall apart right now, even if a moment alone reawakens a desire for closeness. To feel something like it was before. But he's awake enough to know it's not the time. "Tell me there will be more. Tell me what you're planning, because I have nothing." Tell me we're not about to go die again.

It's difficult to watch on from where he is and not feel the brimming urge to close the distance purely to comfort. He's spent long enough around these people now that he knows what that looks like. Could even explain it if he was asked to, and it would be convincing because his breadth of emotion and experiencing the world is everything it had always threatened to be. There had been signs long before the tadpole.

Was it the overwhelming arrogance of gods that convinced them they truly could control mortals?

It seems fitting he's thinking about it on the cusp of this particular conversation. There's too much to try and work through, and he's had the benefit of a day to shut away his own family-related drama until such a time he can look at it again.

Unfortunately neither of them have the luxury of time now. So it's with slight relief that Enver's words look immediately to what comes next.

"The brain needs to be destroyed. It's why I need your stone. ...I may have once wanted what Bhaal wanted, but not anymore. I cannot unlearn everything that I know now. And to strive for anything else would be the antithesis of who I choose to be. Not what I was made to be."

"And I look forward to learning who that is."

In another life, if Raphael had never appeared at the fortress, there is every possibility that Gortash would have seen the Dark Urge returning from Bhaal's temple, having left his father's service -- and he would have felt as he did now. Fully willing to support that decision or whichever he came with, if they were still to journey to the underground to face the Elder Brain.

"I don't...understand everything that is at work here. What you have been doing. And I am not going to pretend I agree with it all. But my stake in that died when we stepped out of Avernus. Everything I was doing before was tied to a plan several years in the making and I have nothing to go on, now. You have a bit of a head start to starting over compared to me."

"I don't recommend the forced lobotomy."

Though it gave him the kind of fresh slate that may have been needed to make this much progress in such a short time. His humour is still dark in places, that isn't likely to change. Perhaps something that does hark back to a time in the past they shared.

"I have so much to tell you. Good and bad. But if I start now we will lose not only this city but each other. Again."

He pauses there, frowning. They have never had the pleasure of time to truly lean into. He recognises that thought without having the full set of memories to confirm.

"If I don't do this now, we won't have time to find out."

He shifts on the pew, the wood creaking again, but he ignores it this time. More important matters to focus on.

"...and I need you to stay off the front line."

Enver nods, understanding the weight of what is coming down. They are near the end, a little sooner than he wanted. And everything is snowballing at once. The brain doesn't have to just be brought under control. It has to be ordered to die.

But the first thing they are going to do is what they must, and there is the one thing he wanted most even when the plan was still the plan: Time. Time, specifically, with this person. That was worth going to Hell for. It was worth stealing the crown for. Taking over the city and every endeavor since. Even the few that he felt less than approving of, even when figuring what "must" be done.

So he's on board to move foward: right until Durge's last statement.

"...what -- no!" The outburst even surprises him a little. He's not even certain what he is trying to argue, just that he has to. "That's twice I've watched you go now only to receive word you died, I can't send you off again. I won't!"

It's a moment of full vulnerability, and he feels the difference in himself this time. The yawning space where his urge to move in for the kill at such a confession would have been floods with empathy and understanding instead. He understands what he's asking Enver to face again. He hadn't the first time or second.

And yet he must still ask it.

"I know."

Here the pew groans for the last time as he rises, upright and holding out a hand for Enver. Out of his armour, there are a distinct lack of claws and, rather than his hands being weapons of murder, here and now they are the only bridge he can think to build between them.

He tries to find more words, but the truth of the matter was out before he was even certain what was being said. There is the very real possibility this is it. If that brain has evolved, it might be impossible to contain. If they go down there, it comes with every possibility they are going to die and the Grand Design begins anew. But this time, there is no other plan, something they built meticulously over time, risks assessed. But if it ends, then together.

And the Dark Urge is telling him to stay behind. So this is it.

This was something they were facing in a smaller capacity before. An understanding that all of this would have to stop and only resume again once all was done. Ideally.

They don't exactly have the best track record for ideals right now. But the Dark Urge has been very good at defying the odds, and that's the only thing Enver can hold onto when there's nothing left he can argue with.

The once-human takes his hand. He can't speak without breaking, in the moment. It's the only thing he can do to answer. To show he's listening. That he will follow.

The reassuring weight of that hand in his own, palm over palm and here and now - at the start of the end - all he really wants. He squeezes just enough to be felt, but not enough to be painful. His eyes drop to their intertwined fingers, lips twitching up at the very edges as he realises he's attempting to burn this moment into his mind as though he's worried about forgetting again.

He just hadn't understood all that Orin had taken from him. Not until it's almost, in some ways, too late.

"Would you have a kiss from me now? Or have me deliver it when I return?"

The hint of a humour older than this moment, stretching back to before. Something remarkably casual given their previous positions and modes under which they had been introduced and made colleagues of a kind. In this moment, there's also the new. The quiet confidence that doesn't need violence to be persuasive.

No, this is a way of being that had come all too easily the longer they continued their relationship. And that had been just part of what he'd been forced to sacrifice, in the end, and it had been for Bhaal.

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