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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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.

A small chuff in response, and Enver steps in to claim a kiss now. Long awaited, and there is finally a time where he doesn't have to anymore. Where it is certain and real that this part of the Dark Urge, this part of them, still exists and is not either only to be remembered or waiting to be again. The taste of lips he knew, the shape of them on his own and a body he hadn't felt in too long.

He had been right in that letter. This is all he wanted.

The gentlest of rumbles in the earth. Short but still felt, eggs him to hold on a little tighter. He only gets a minute, and he is going to have it.

When at least he retreats for a breath, his eyes open but he does not pull back any further. "And a promise for the next. Tell me you're coming back."

"I will return to you," comes the low murmur of a promise, as though the air has been softly stolen from his lungs. Truthfully he finds himself caught up in a cresting wave of complicated emotion. He needs to leave but he wants to stay. Staying will seal their fate, though, and so walking away is the only option.

But the kiss is enough for now, all he needs to fully settle into a place still plagued by new longing but tided over by that moment of intimacy.

He holds the smaller man in his arms for a long moment, fingers scrunched into the fabric of his clothes. Breath eventually finding him again and he resumes a steady inhale-exhale.

"I will restore us," he adds, catching the brightness of the new shade Enver's eyes shine with. They have so much to discuss, and he intends to make sure they have time after to share themselves.

"I will leave you in capable hands. These people have been my only source of comfort and companionship since the crash. We will have work to do - reparations to see to - after this is done. But until then, I trust them to keep you safe, and I ask you to trust my judgement if you find yourself unable to trust them."

A very sizeable ask. Considering the state of everything that was his, and where all these people stand as once-obstacles to much of that, he's certain there is no love lost between any of them. But if they trust the Dark Urge, and so does he, then the are going to have to come to some manner of accord.

He has to tell himself there is still something familiar in this, that he has to place faith in. As allies they came together to solve a number of puzzles their shared trajectory wrote for them. But many times, when a task was left to finish or the needs of their respective temples calling them, there was a parting. He sent his chief assassin into the night to seek blood on the promise that he would be there to welcome him afterward -- whether that was a triumph for the alliance or for the Temple of Bhaal.

This is all it is. The Dark Urge has the name of a final target, and he will not fail.

"There is work to be done, and we will celebrate your victory afterward." His words echo ones he has spoken before, like a mantra.

The words - 'your victory' - aren't lost on him. And perhaps that's something he files away for later because he does believe there will be one. There has to be. The complexity of this particular situation, the many threads that are woven together, albeit fraying in places, are going to take time to pick apart again. Difficult as it may be, he welcomes the chance to work through it all and that he may do this with Enver is something he's only just realised is the fundamental basis he wishes to work from.

So he simply nods, holds the other man's gaze for a moment and then feels the need to turn to business proper else he never will.

"To the matter of the brain," he says with a note of finality and pulls away, moving towards the chapel doors and to his companions beyond. He hopes that Enver will follow him, but he understands if he needs a few more moments alone.

Treating this the way he would have any mission from before was the only way for him to control, in his mind, the outcome.

Even if the desire is there to use that solitude, Gortash pushes it down. If he has a plan to follow, if there are things to do, and if he knows how the machine is working, then he can ignore the rest for now. The ways he has changed. How hopeless parts of it feel. How the future is about to be very short or very large and uncharted in a way that does not sit well with him, either way.

So he follows Durge out to join the rest of the group beyond. His part in all of this is pronounced already, but he needs to see all the moving parts. There might still be more he can offer.

Considering his presence does not lead to immediate shouting this time, he feels secure in the idea that he won't be attacked, at least.

In the end, they had needed to call in every ally and favour they had banked, and still the group of them had to fight tooth, nail, claw and tail to make it across the chosen battlefield. The drow half-elf, formerly bhaalspawn, now something else by choice, doesn't hesitate when it comes to the final call.

The brain must be destroyed, there is no other option.

Everything that comes after happens in a haze, time streaks by and they fall from the sky on a netherbrain careening out of control. He thinks briefly about the sweet embrace of death again, remembers how peaceful it was, and then recalls that he's got more to do. More things to achieve. More time to fill. More dawns to do better.

He has Enver, too. He cannot contemplate a world in which the former human did not survive.

He's dripping as he climbs up onto the dock, following his people as they all stumble in from what feels like the wildest storm of an indeterminant time. The city still stands, though parts are looking worse for wear than others. And perhaps they do too, the party that return bloodied and weary but not broken. Not defeated. There will be a time for that but, for now, he closes his eyes and just breathes.

Enough of the end is seen for Gortash to realize that the Dark Urge, in his time since losing his memory, has gathered a veritable army of his own. There are signs of them all over the city as it descends into chaos, attacked from all sides, even the skies, as the Netherbrain's forces emerge with the added force of every Absolutist as their transformations are triggered.

It is a ghastly mirror of what the Plot had been intended to be, and racing through the Lower City, the once-archduke, once-human, once-Baneite understands the weight of seeing what he had helped to bring about and now had very little power to even help undo. But flanked by two of the Dark Urge's companions, he finds himself providing what support is possible. If only because staying put was just waiting to die at this point.

And before he technically "died," he had made an oath to protect this city. He had taken it with his Baneite perspective on what those promises meant at the time. But even then, this was not what he had bargained for.

Armed with his heavy crossbow (that had suspiciously wound up in the camp's spoils), he was not likely to be recognized -- a different race and bereft of his familiar finery. Save of course until they reached a part of the lower city near the remains of a shop he had avoided. There were two mindflayers that very well might have taken any prey that crossed them, but something sparked as recognition to him.

He felt very little about putting his parents down, save that it took a little long -- long enough to attract more enemies -- and the efforts of his two sitters helped significantly.

Through it all they kept a weather eye where they could on the brain, where they were certain their companions were doing battle, trying to make their way around to where it was, but never quite near enough to make the climb themselves. More called to them on the ground to take care of.

Including the odd Baneite. The first of whom did not recognize him until the instant before an arrow caught him in the eye. And the rest from then on were easily identified.

They were not the best at moving in shadows. Not while the shadows themselves had teeth and tentacles right now.

Somewhere in all of this, while he could chalk the boost in stamina up to adrenaline, what he took in almost immediately was that moving around felt easier. He ran with greater ease. The odd cut or scrape that he suffered, while hardly instant, had begun to close normally by the time potions were administered.

As it was, by the time the nautiloids fell from the sky, and the brain with them, Enver Gortash was not dead, nor even black and blue. The brain was defeated, and gods -- if they were up there he had no idea if they had the means to safely come down. But they made haste for the docks.

The Harper's voice behind him. "That was Astarion -- the others must be close!"

He does not even take notice of who ran past, but with a swallow he picks up speed, coming to a skidding stop when there are people, and prickles of recognition strike him.

The sunrise casts light upon the water, deepened the shadows of smoke and rubble in the remains of the city that form a crescent around the bay. He can hear nothing but his own heartbeat for a moment, his eyes tracing a familiar black shape against the coming light.

Clear, perfect. Alive. And at last their eyes meet.

It was over. They are here. Finally.

The blur of battle had seemed to slow into a lengthy descent as the brain had sailed straight into the sea off the coast. Being plunged into water for the second time in short order had been the thought his mind had fastened on to, as though the enormity of everything else was just a fraction above what he had left to spare. A humorous notion despite the very grave prospect of drowning.

When his gaze locks on to Enver's, he feels whatever scraps of resolve he has left melt almost instantly. The man is standing perfectly in tact, as though the city behind him isn't aflame and crumbling. As though there hasn't just been an assault on life as they all knew it.

He'd promised he would return and this moment, fully realising he has delivered on that promise, steals from him the last of his exhausted-many-times-over strength. He doesn't dare take another step, not with how close his knees feel to buckling. Soon enough somebody will come along with some healing magic, or will press a potion into his hand, but right now he just stands and stares. Congealed blood clinging to him. Bruised and battered and... smiling.

He's got enough for that. Always enough for that, he thinks, as his lips curve upwards and he starts to laugh, cheeks surprisingly wet with more than just sea water.

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