WIP Whenever - Gods Chapter XVIII
I haven't been tagged or anything but here's some POL anyway! Still inching along to the end of Act 1 over here!
They came together after nightfall, appearing one by one to sit around the fire, silent, staring into their goblets or laps or the flames, as if they might find there what they hadn’t so far anywhere else.
“Well,” Shadowheart said after a long moment. “I suppose we should discuss what our next move is.”
“‘We’?” Astarion repeated. “‘We’ have been following the gith all this time, and we’re still as tadpoled as ever.”
“Vlaakith tests me,” Lae’zel muttered. They all turned to look at her; she kept her eyes on her hands, clasped in her lap. “Only the heaviest souls soar to the Astral.”
Astarion rolled his eyes. “Would that your judgment were as sharp as your blade, darling.”
“Enough, Astarion,” Wyll said gruffly.
“All I'm saying is that we've followed her frankly fanatical lead, and what do we have to show for it?" He gestured at the sun, at himself, and sneered. "And besides—perhaps we aren't all so eager for its removal. My fortunes are quite improved—I'm finally free of Cazador, and I'm in no hurry to return to him. Ever.”
“I get it, mate,” Karlach said. “I'll die before I serve Zariel again. But I don't think going it alone is the answer.”
“She’s right,” Wyll agreed. “It's bigger than the tadpoles themselves—for the Absolute to have an entire army at its command, let alone the ability to capture a Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate…”
“...there's no corner of the Sword Coast beyond its reach,” Gale said softly. “Nowhere to hide.”
Astarion scoffed. “Speak for yourself, darling.”
He fell into a sullen silence with the rest of them, though, and for a long time no one spoke. Tamsin kept time by the embers in the fire—snap, pop, snap, pop—a primitive metronome, marking out the seconds she didn’t have to waste. All the while, the forest looked on—timeless, enduring, alive—with the maddeningly detached indifference of nature.
She felt their eyes all turn upon her. Gale began to nod, slowly, only half a step behind her. “Halsin, was it?”
Astarion sneered. “The one who got himself captured by goblins?”
“Nettie said she and Halsin had been studying the tadpoles for a while,” Tamsin recalled. “She said if anyone could tell us anything about them, it'd be him.”
“Hopefully he knows more about illithid tadpoles than he does about not being captured by goblins,” Astarion persisted.
“Zevlor did say the area is overrun with cultists,” Wyll countered. “Goblins, True Souls—the Absolute has the whole region in a chokehold. There’s no route through that territory that doesn’t run straight through them.”
“So we can’t go around,” Shadowheart said.
“We can’t go around,” Tamsin confirmed. She looked at each of them in turn. “So we go through.”
Across the fire, Lae'zel gave a single, slow nod. She didn't speak, but it was enough. Tamsin scanned the others’ faces as they considered their options.
“Didn’t you lot say there was a mechanic from Elturel at that druid Grove?” Karlach asked after a moment. She rubbed her breastbone, where her engine hummed just below. “One who’s worked with Infernal iron before?”
Tamsin nodded; Karlach set down her goblet.
"Right," she said. "When do we leave?"
