𝐀𝐋𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐈𝐓 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋𝐒 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐄𝐑 to breathe despite the lingering shadows, already that horrid dryness that's coated her tongue begins to ease. still, her mind churns as discontentedly as the dark river before her, restless with that question that's lingered too long. weighted footfall, however, interrupts her thoughts and arlis works her jaw silently, fingers flexing and unflexing at her side.
a part of her is surprised he's accepted her request, made the trek from his tent beneath withered tree through a camp treating him with all the hospitality one might show a serpent. ❛ we're going to have a talk, you and i, ❜ arlis glances over her shoulder and for a brief moment, he looks disarmingly like the gortash she'd once known. intricate garb replaced by something more practical, gilding swapped for leather. it discomforts her; it's dangerous to think there's anything left of that man. ❛ isn't that what allies do, hm? have conversations without dreaming of all the different places a knife might fit nicely? ❜
the sharp sting of her words at moonrise has faded now, replaced by an almost hollow bitterness; acceptance with gritted teeth. ❛ if nothing else, we owe each other honesty, ❜ she turns fully now, features stony but certain, ❛ i'm too tired for lies, gortash, regardless of how pretty you might care to craft them. can we promise each other the truth, at least for a few minutes? ❜ and she does need the truth, even if the thought of it makes her stomach lurch violently. for that, a delicate hand is extended even as the memory of the chill of his grip around her wrist flickers to the forefront of her mind. ❛ you'll forgive me if i don't care to swear it on a god. you'll have to take my word for it instead. ❜ @banedicti
as previewed prior, it's so interesting to me that the character parallels the most is gortash (aka @banedicti the only gortash i know) and yet, despite having so many similarities that should have them as allies, kindred, they're just destined to always be in opposition to each other. there's also no small amount of tragedy in that, because one of them breaks that vicious, hungry cycle of trauma & the other doesn't.
gortash grew up in a loveless home and was sold by his parents to a devil. arlis grew up in a loveless home and was bartered by her parents to myrkul in exchange for power & protection. gortash spends his childhood surviving the all-encompassing horrors of the house of hope and grows up under raphael's shadow. arlis flees her home and spends a fair amount of her youth starving on the streets of baldur's gate, trying desperately to escape myrkul's shadow. they both make their living by being criminals, although gortash has an ambitious streak arlis has no interest in mirroring.
yet, despite all that solidarity, their paths divert so sharply that there's no middle ground. he's chosen to fight for tyranny, she's willing to die for liberation.
arlis looks at all the horror she's suffered, all the misery and trauma, and decides that the best way to get revenge against it all is to be better. she's hardly a saint, and is the first to admit it, but her great rebellion against all of the horror is subvert the natural, cruel order of the world where she can.
gortash, by contrast, makes the decision to overcome the horror by being worse than it. how do you ensure you never have to return to the grief & fear that stole your childhood, how do you protect yourself against those years of helplessness? by grabbing the whole world by the throat with a gilded fist.
for all their commonality, for the fact it seems they're almost destined to be side by side through this, she wants to be better than all the terrible things she survived and he wants to be even crueler than the worst things he's known. arlis breaks free of the cycle, gortash doesn't. there's only going to be one of them left standing at the end of this, it can't be both of them and that's heartbreaking.
she listens as lord enver lays his proposal at her feet. another offering to Father, the lord's newly minted position ever more secure - a refusal is the furthest thing from her mind.
but he bores her near to death with the details. that she cannot stand. lark raises a finger in the midst of enver's speech to fill two waiting goblets with the reserve she'd requested. ❛ you do not need to convince me. ❜ the heft of his payment half-accomplished that on its own. the rest - well. call it admiration. she smiles at him over the lip of an already-half emptied glass. ❛ consider the deed done. and- ❜ abandoning her wine, lark pads to the doorway, pauses, and returns to the table, patting it, before returning to the exit. ❛ you'll need this. ❜
enver takes the vial she leaves behind gingerly, frowning at the antidote for a moment - then catches up. ❛ is this supposed to scare me? ❜
she turns to peer back at him from the doorway, eyes glinting hungrily in the dimmed hallway. ❛ what it's 'supposed' to do is your choice, my lord.❜ she taps the frame of the door once, thrice, her grin blossoming. ❛ we shall meet again soon. ❜ then she is gone as she came, a shadow lost to daylight. enver's fate is his own.
it's the firm grip of gale's fingers around her own that get her through the rest of the day, his touch steady and true even as the ground feels uneven beneath her boots. she steels herself as best she can, features expressionless even as her jaw is set firm enough to ache, but it's clear the others are equally as unnerved judging by the unusual silence that marks their eventual trek back to the upper floor of the tavern.
they all know why she's so quiet, they give her space.
the myriad of emotions are churning so furiously within her that she swears they're going to pour out from her, her stomach twisted into sharp knots that pulse and shift and creep into her throat. gale folds her into his embrace the moment they have the luxury of at least some privacy. it quells the churning nausea in her and even if it is difficult to decipher the affirmations quietly whispered into her hair and against her brow over the ringing in her ears, arlis does not doubt the adoration imbued in every word. he has never given her anything less, her gale.
the sun's already set by the time she reaches for her cloak, the rest tucked away into their respective corners. gale offers to come with her, an offer to share in her grief as much as accompany her, but there is understanding in his eyes when she quietly replies that this is something she must do alone.
she moves through the city streets with practiced ease, one of innumerable shadows passing beneath torchlight. for a moment, it all feels impossibly familiar, as if she'd never left, but then there is that insidious wiggle inside her mind and she is pulled back to the present.
it doesn't take long for her to reach the inn and hop over the gate to the small park behind it. arlis sighs when her little garden, tucked away out of sight amidst stone wall and behind flowering tree, comes into view. it isn't a surprise that neatly tended rows are now disorderly with weeds, nor that nurtured blooms have turned dark and brittle, but it disheartens her all the same. she kneels and pulls back her hood, gaze carefully tracing over disarray until a relieved sigh falls from her lips. there, delicate beneath the moonlight, is what she came for.
the rest of her trek is uninterrupted. she knows the cramped, messied alleys of the lower city intimately. arlis reaches the little house set aside the cliff-face and notices there are no candles or lamps lit within, only darkness behind the dirtied windows. distantly, arlis wonders if its occupants are forced to stumble throughout it upon nightfall, night after night until the first rays of dawn. her next thought is that they deserve it.
she makes her way towards the door, to the neatly engraved plaque hanging aside it, but instead moves beyond it to the small patch of earth alongside the home. there is no attempt to hide her movements or mask her presence as she kneels. even if sally and dravo wished her gone, they hardly can force her away.
her fingers splay and dig into the cool soil, eyes closing in concentration as she moves to find where it is its most rich. in other life, in a gentler life, she'd have been an herbalist. she'd have trained beneath a proper healer and tended a vast garden, opened up her own little shop with its own little storefront. still, arlis is reminded as her eyes flutter open when the right place is determined, this life is her own because she could run fast.
enver flymm had not run as fast as she had when they came for him.
her own words ring back through her head now, sharp and cruel. she had meant them then, alongside that shadow-drenched river, and the fury behind them feels just as rightful now. however, arlis knows she would've changed them, even if she cannot discern how, or even why. her words would have been different that night.
reaching into her pack, flower is tenderly withdrawn with earth still clinging to its slender roots. it's a fragile thing, possessing a simple beauty, and it isn't an apology as he'll never receive one, he doesn't deserve one, but it is recognition. it isn't an excuse, but it is a memorial to a little boy who deserved better, who deserved more.
no one else will mourn him, but she will.
arlis delicately folds it into the soil and the sharp sting of tears clouds her vision. there is no attempt to dull it, rub it away. she lets herself cry for a child that hadn't escaped, that hadn't run out into the night and ran and ran until they'd collapsed like she had all those years ago. she grieves for a child pawned, a child sold and while none of it allows for the horror of it all, none of it pardons the cruelty and the malice deep and black and bitter, it does explain it.
@banedicti | asked: ❝ there is no wound that you can give me that i have not already given myself. ❞
Orin's eyes narrowed at the lordling his confidence grated on her every nerve. He was SO CERTAIN that he had elevated himself so high that not a single cut would ever mar his flesh. How it dreaded that oath now. Why they ever agreed to it Orin could no longer say ; but now approaching Bane's chosen required more tact that it was accustomed to. If there were ever an issue to arise, Orin knew the option of burying her blades into the belly of the opposition was ALWAYS POSSIBLE. How forceful it would twist the blade within, tangling their innards 'round the extension of her Lord's will until the light faded from their eyes.
It was not possible for Gortash.
" Well of course, your COWARDICE has made so sure that my blade can never carve my will into your unworthy flesh. Oh but if there was no oath, no binding, I would make PURE ARTISTRY of your viscera and bones, " Orin giggled manically at the imaginings swirling within her mind of ALL OF THE CARNAGE it longed to exact upon Gortash's body. The memory of their promise came to the forefront of their mind matter and Orin pouted out of disappointment. " But you must serve as the tyrant's little puppet for him to plick and pluck at your sinews. " But when it was all over, Orin would find the means to severe the pact, would cut it away as the abscess it was. She would kill him one day, of that Orin was certain.
What a simple question. It’s a shame that providing any sort of answer requires her to slip not through a simple soirée mostly unnoticed, but an active battlefield with a target upon her back. For this space is not composed of Salome’s typical — if admittedly aristocratic — clientele, but instead a room full of turncoats; wanton and vicious for the demise of anyone who lies in the way of their fraught clamor up the ladder of power.
“Do I?”
It’s not as if it would take much. The Shadow Thieves can be connected to her just as easily as they employ the wretched family she no longer keeps. Still, the opacity of the organization’s structure and constant supply of trivial tasks are why she’s still standing now. Keeps her nose clean so many years later. It is a kind of resiliency, Salome supposes.
The faces, though. She remembers them, even when they are changed; hardened and battleworn by time and plagued by personal demons. They blur together with the warm patterns and colors of the rugs that her and the other abandoned girls would weave in the sweatshops of the Lower City to have just enough to pay for a cot to sleep in. It has been decades, but recognition clicks. For the Underground may be expansive, yes, but how often does one encounter others like yourself who are being robbed of their youth? Truly?
A lithe form tenses — ochre eyes quickly scanning the whole of the gala for potential eavesdroppers — as Salome positions herself carefully. She did not expect this, or want the attention, but is stuck with it anyway. So without much else to do, she quickly signs, perhaps too boldly, in the Cant.
Gortash was always such a delight in dealings. Earning a call from the man left a pep in his step. Enver wasn’t like the other nobles the hired blade served. As clean as hands looked and well kept as he presented himself, they were still worn, just like the collection of scars on his face. He looked of wealth that was well earned, not fed from a pretty unscathed palm. Couldn’t fail to mention he was oh so generous with the weight of gold he left in deep, greedy pockets. Even when Dakara started demanding more than he knew wasn’t earned. And Enver allowed it.
The ranger’s tongue was sweet and trained, but the younger one knew. He could very well sense that his folly did not worm itself further than earshot. It all only added to Gortash’s unique charm that kept Dakara close. Easily drawing him in again and again.
Little was the space between them. Toe to toe, one sigh too heavy and it’d be felt across a cheek. Something had started to waver between them. Dakara, a bold force that threatened to break through the cracks of Enver’s walls. Bring it crumbling down in a pile of rubble and riches.
@banedicti ❛ you know what i’m waiting for . ❜
Oh, but he did. Though he shant admit. Nor shall he give way.
"So, am I now expected to detect your very thoughts and desires? We’ve worked together for some time, Enver, yes, but… mind reading? Glad you assume me ever so talented.” A beat passes, carefully he shifts closer, “Do you lack the will to tell me what you want all of a sudden?" The ranger quips, lips curling into a familiar smirk, one that tells of nothing good to come. Something smart and intrepid was on the cusps of falling thoughtlessly from his tongue. A dance he knew step for step. His partner's rhythm, whether skilled or clumsy footwork, did not hinder his own performance. Leaving him to move freely across the open floor of the ballroom. And perhaps there was a small show to put on."You usually adore telling me what you want. It's what makes our... arrangements so appreciated."
"Oh well. Let's see, shall we..." lips pursed, mismatched eyes narrowing, first his index rose skyward ( one by one the next rose ), "You've already bought my loyalties, you have my list of services laid out, and even my wonderfully kept company. On occasion. Though you want more."
Steady were the feet that carried him closer to the man. One foot after the other as he all but stalked about him. Like an animal stalking its prey. He must be careful for he was not the only hunter here. Words dip low into a husk whisper, spoken dangerously close against the other’s ear, “Perhaps, you yearn to know what my flesh would feel like against yours… eager to know how I might taste on your tongue… but, I suppose we cannot be for certain. We shall wait a while longer.”
“Unless you speak. A little bark cannot hurt you, Enver. I'd even let you bite me.”
❝ you know me. i’m rare to praise, but when i do, it’s sincere. ❞
𝐀𝐒 𝐔𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐒 to conjure venomous reply, mold that ugly tempest of emotions that seize up in her in his presence into words, he does speak true. for that, the look cast in his direction contains only a fraction of its usual balefulness. perhaps it's the proximity of ketheric's netherstone, perhaps it's the fact that his proposed alliance has been accepted, perhaps it's the fact that, miraculously, he's remained unharmed despite the long list of people in camp eager to have their fists become personally acquainted with his smug smile, but regardless of reason he's before her now and is, apparently, impressed.
❛ don't worry, i haven't forgotten, gortash. ❜ she replies flatly, because she does remember. any praise from him would've been dizzying a decade ago, any compliment hard fought and well-earned for its rarity. lifting her gaze from the map beneath her fingertips, arlis sighs and scrunches her nose irritably. ❛ don't think i'm going to say thank you, if that's what you're expecting. ❜
❛ besides, that was hardly the vaulted general ketheric thorm at the end. ❜ even now, a sharp shiver arches down her spine to think of him, all broken angles and empty gaze. ❛ that was just some sad, hollow thing wearing him. ❜ her head cants lightly to the side, gaze assessing. ❛ thank goodness it wasn't myrkul that chose you. i just don't think death would look particularly becoming on you. ❜
