At last, here it is. A while ago, I had the pleasure of commissioning the wonderful @lokorum to portray my beloved idiots in all of their tragic glory.
So without further ado, after months, here's the first chapter of my durgetash-centred, possibly very long, post-canon Genfic (cuz even if he's not featured in the picture, he's very much the one behind it, and yes, I said genfic but they do fuck, there's just also other themes that are more important than whatever it is those guys got going on).
https://archiveofourown.org/works/63147115
Rated M; further elaboration, summary etc behind the cut.
As per usual, please mind the tags. This is rated mature and may turn explicit depending on—let's be so fr—nothing but my mood. It IS a tragedy. I know how it ends. Trust me when I stress the tragedy part. I'm writing this story through tears at times. There's fluff, there is hurt comfort, there is true old man yaoi but there is just as much 'doves that aren't simply dead but rotten' and pain.
So to everyone who's not scared shitless yet (which is very valid), here's a summary:
The year is around 1530 DR. The once-revered and reformed Bhaalspawn returns to the city he had both saved and nearly doomed, emerging from his exile in the Underdark. Though he claims to seek only rest, the city's de facto ruler, Archduke Gortash, sees through the monster’s carefully crafted facade.
Perhaps if the elf had never saved the Banite all those years ago—when he was little more than a blurred and distant memory—his own fate might have unfolded differently, perhaps even more mercifully. But regrets have long since lost their weight. The past is immutable, and all that remains—all that truly matters to him now—is the purpose that once again draws him into this treacherous den.
And on a personal note; I'm still squealing and shoving this artwork into the face of everyone I meet irl. I absolutely adore it. I'm not sure I'll be stopping with that soon. You will see reblogs.
Again. Tragedy. I mean it. There's fluffy moments, but I will absolutely exploit them to enhance the pain. I'm dead serious about Bhaal being able to learn from me. I caused his kid more agony than he could ever dream of delivering. And I haven't even shared the worst parts yet.
Edit: I also mean the psychological warfare tag. It's my guilty pleasure. And whatever over one year of obsession amounts to.
No rating; i just felt some kinda way; it's rly just fluff (by my standards); they're fucking hurting me; unedited cuz I am rly just feeling some kinda way abt them. 1.3k words. Potentially, possibly, a hint of hurt/comfort; or no comfort—depends on how you understand it
Statuesque—perhaps the only fitting word to describe how he appeared now. Caged, as if the moonlit ray had trapped him on that field of blooms never meant to meet. Trapped, as if the weight of his little world had finally, truly halted his endless steps. As if the man had indeed turned ghost; as if his marble skin had solidified, true to the stone it resembled, the only movement coming from the uncoordinated, untamable silver strands cascading down a scalp bowed toward its celestial captor.
He couldn't tell how long he had stood there, nor how long he would continue to stand. For all he cared, he could spend an eternity here, unmoving beneath the moon’s warm, white rays, comforted by the natural silence that had finally found its way to him. Stagnant. Still. Like the chests whose rising and falling he had ceased with his own hands.
But it was never that easy, was it? It couldn’t be.
He had ignored them, those faint sounds of light footsteps, when they first reached his ears. Whoever it is will pass me by, he had convinced himself. But they didn’t simply pass by. The steps grew louder, nearer, before ceasing altogether—shattering the silence with just a single word.
"Abbil," she spoke. His head turned, his eyes widened as soon as he heard.
"How—" It wasn’t so much a question as it was a plea. His voice shook, as fragile as the pallid fingers that had awoken from their rest, crawling toward a face no longer serene, no longer still.
But she simply smiled—that gentle smile no one had ever thought genuine, the soft expression few believed she was capable of. But he knew better. He had learned. "Where else would I be?"
She spoke as though she belonged. As if they were meant to be here. As if she had always been destined to find him in this place—to witness this realm from which they had been banished millennia ago. Just as she always did. Gentle smiles, softened gazes, and, daring as ever, she took another step closer to something anyone else might have mistaken for an ancient statue.
And he simply stood. The words he had longed to speak suffocated in his throat as dark eyes found a new, fragile shine. As if this were nothing more than an illusion, and any attempt to speak would shatter it. As if blinking away the painful surge behind his eyes might tear her from him once more. As if enduring the burn could somehow preserve this fleeting moment.
But something would shatter anyway, wouldn’t it? The ice would thaw. The seasons would turn again. The same way they always did—whether he wanted them to or not.
Just as her warmth always had. That gentle determination wrapped around his frosted shoulders, his weathered back, stripping him bare in ways no force ever could. Crushing him in unimaginable ways. Remaking him, again and again and again.
He had always been taller than her. Taller than any of his kin—a trait gifted by a creator who had taken just as much as he had given. But it didn’t matter now. It had never mattered with her. As if by instinct, he arched his scarred back, bending toward her presence, meeting her where she stood. Laying a weary crown upon shoulders far too strong to ever belong to anyone but her.
He had always been taller than her. Taller than any of his kin—a trait gifted by a creator who had taken just as much as he had given. But it didn’t matter now. It had never mattered with her. As if by instinct, he arched his scarred back, bending toward her presence, meeting her where she stood. Laying a weary crown upon shoulders far too strong to ever belong to anyone but her.
He had always been taller than her. Taller than any of his kin—a trait gifted by a creator who had taken just as much as he had given. But it didn’t matter now. It had never mattered with her. As if by instinct, he arched his scarred back, bending toward her presence, meeting her where she stood. Laying a weary crown upon shoulders far too strong to ever belong to anyone but her.
"It must've felt like an eternity," her voice drifted, dark and slow, trailing off like a whisper caught in the wind. The fabric draped over her figure darkening with dampness, as idle fingers traced the changes in his skin—skin altered by time, by absence, by wounds too deep for the eye to see.
And he replied the only way he could in her presence. Not with barbed words, nor with the venom he had swallowed so often before, but with the silent stream of tears too vast to contain. His hands clutched at her sides desperately, holding onto her as though she were the last tether keeping him from crumbling entirely. Little, broken sounds slipped from him—sniffled fragments of grief too long suppressed.
It had been an eternity. Perhaps longer. And the price paid for this reunion had already been far too great. The price still left to pay—looming, inevitable—would be even greater. He knew this with painful clarity. But it didn’t matter now, did it?
Not here, not in this fragile, fleeting moment. Not when he was wrapped in the familiar scent of iron and herbs—her scent. The scent she had always carried. The scent of home.
Her hands moved slowly, reverently. Fingers threading through strands that had lightened even further since she'd last seen them, smoothing them back with the deliberate care only she had ever possessed.
She said nothing more—she didn’t need to. Every small gesture was a language of its own, a silent dialogue they had always shared. Speaking through the weight of a touch, through silences stretched thin with understanding. His hands, rough and calloused, scarred and worn, spoke the same language. Clinging to her, gripping the fabric of her clothing like a man anchoring himself to reality, to this moment.
His tears soaked into her shoulder, but she only held him tighter for it. Her arms wrapped around him with that same quiet, unbreakable strength she had always carried.
No demands. No explanations or reassurances needed. They had never required such things. They simply were—existing in tandem, as they always had. The wind, a breath of something returning at last to his place of solemn solitude, stirring the field around them to life, sending petals adrift like soft remnants of forgotten prayers and unspoken pleas.
His forehead rested against the crook of her neck, her body leaning into his as if determined to share every last ounce of warmth she had left to offer.
"I was so tired," he finally confessed, his voice hoarse from grief unshed for far too long. Steadier now, but never truly steady.
"I know," she agreed, her fingers tracing slow, lazy circles over the scarred ridges of his spine. "But you can rest, however briefly, now."
Her words didn’t promise salvation. They never had. She never pretended the pain hadn’t happened, never lied about the cost they had paid—or the price still left to pay. And he had always valued that in her: the quiet acceptance only someone who had walked through their own personal hell could offer. The understanding in her voice that no one else had ever given him—the acknowledgment of a burden far too heavy, carried for far too long.
The wind carried on again, as it always did, stirring the world around them with indifferent grace. But to them, the rustling of life simply faded into the background, and silence reclaimed its rightful place between them—familiar, unbroken, and profound. They stood as they always had; two fractured souls, reunited not by words, but by presence alone. No explanations needed, no apologies spoken.
And slowly, the trembling in his hands stilled. The ache behind his eyes dulled—not gone, never gone, but eased by the comfort of her nearness. The steady beat of her heart thrummed against him, a lullaby older than memory itself, steady and unyielding in its promise; the way it's always been.
No. What he truly despised—what he loathed more than the man himself—was the undeniable truth that they had once been close enough for this to even be possible. That once—long ago, in a life he could scarcely remember—they had stood side by side. That he had been foolish enough to work with a man like this. That he had trusted him.
That the remnants of it lingered still, clinging to them both like a ghost that refused to be purged.
I had hoped to have some art but uhhhh, apparently the writers curse is very very real, this week has been an absolute mess and the "most progressed" WIP I have is a dark blob. Sooooooo here's a bit of the next chapter that I edited in my lunch break skyxkskss
No pressure but if y'all would like @flamemittens @elinorbard @defira85 @quacaserous @beecreeper
I had a spontaneous idea. So I'll torment u with it.
Growing pains - excerpt of a Bhaalspawn's journal
You find a booklet hidden deep within the temple's chambers. It appears tattered and stained, blood long dried and translucent watery marks covering every inch of the yellowed paper and leathery case.
As you open it, a Bhaalspawn's experiences reveal themselves before your eyes.
It hurt.
When it first happened, it hurt.
Even afterwards, every time it happened, the pain was unimaginable. It was as though my body was ripped apart, tendons snapping under pressure, skin being shredded, intestines torn and bones crushed.
It was agonising every time it happened. And yet, the more often I had to endure, the pain seemed to lessen. Not by a lot, of course. The agony and terror never fully vanished. But one could still say that I grew used to it. This twisted rite of passage, the 'growing pains' someone of my kind was expected to endure. Expected to celebrate.
Perhaps it was precisely that which lessened the pain. Their expectations, allowing me to feign ignorance. The love that always seemed to accompany this pain. The care and adoration for the monster it festered.
A gift he had called it. An heirloom passed down to his favourite. A treasured possession only those deemed worthy were graced with. And so I deluded myself. Fooling myself that this pain had been the greatest act of fatherly love he'd ever shown. That this was his care, and that a little pain was a worthy price for the adoration he'd shown.
Perhaps their love had made me ignorant towards the screams of warning and looming doom my body had thrown at me.
But I didn't listen. I got drunk on the love so desperately desired. This false showcase of compassion that I should've known was nothing but cruelty, and yet looked away from.
And nowadays, sometimes I wonder. When I'm alone and the blinded sheep returned to their quarters. When his love and the ecstasy it accompanies fades. What if I had listened to the screams? What if I had heeded the warnings?
Could I have avoided these crimson-stained hands? The guilt that haunts me? The unimaginable pain that doesn't seem to numb anymore? Would it have preserved this fickle thing, humanity they've called it, if I had listened?
thank you for tagging me @lilac-lich 💕 its from the latest chapter of durgetash funsies I'm working on, but underneath a cut.
Cw for commentary on grief by a god who holds the death domain. Specifically not Bhaal. A kinder one. Who am I kidding it's Sehanine.
Like a larva weaving its cocoon, shedding its old form, love wraps itself in the silken funeral shroud of grief. And from the sorrow of loss, from the weight of its aching, it will then emerge again—no longer as it once has been, but morphed into something new. A fragile, trembling butterfly, forever changed yet no less real than before.
I won't outright tag y'all with the tag function cuz of the subject matter and circumstance, but if y'all see this post; Defira, Elinor, Flame and everyone who likes, please go ahead. You are tagged. Tumblr breaks every 5 minutes anyway.
Judas Kiss / Betrayal - Part 2 of Gortash week, kinda?
A kiss, also known as the simple yet intimate act of pressing soft, ever so slightly pursed lips against the skin of another.
Parents may kiss their offspring in an act of affection and care. The young patriars' heir may kiss one of the crudely adorned ladies to display his charm, perhaps even insinuate what he'd like to offer in a private exchange. The lovers giving in to the throws of passion behind locked doors, the friends bidding a quick farewell. A kiss was perhaps the most natural thing one could encounter if they just spent enough time in the presence of other sentient beings, as they seemingly enjoyed conveying their meanings through simple gestures like this rather than carefully woven words.
Truthfully, the very person pondering this particular act had partaken in it plenty of times himself. Kissing a babe out of false goodwill and to boost his ever-rising station, the patriars' haughty way of greeting and bidding their farewells, imitating their ways to slip in between their tightly bound circles, it had all been oh too familiar to him.
Indeed, Enver Gortash was used to, if not unbearably skilled, at the simple show of hollow tenderness everyone always seemed to delight in and quite frankly, he had never once shied away from using the universally beloved practice, even if he himself had continuously failed to grasp the true intentions behind it.
Or at least such was the lie he had preached to himself again and again when the disgust threatened to break free from the confines of his throat. A kiss, to the man in question, was nothing but the acidic taste of swallowing his pride and the choking sensation of grovelling beneath yet another highborn who'd never understand the meaning of 'work', no matter how desperately one might try to explain the concept to them.
The thing so universally beloved and celebrated left nothing but the rotted taste of shame on his chaffed lips each and every time he found himself once again forced to play the role of someone inferior and placate yet another being undeserving of the power they held, with only the promise of seeing the very person that considered themselves superior, looking down upon him the way they did, giggling at whatever they must've seen, one day grovelling before his own feet, serving to silence the storm brewing underneath his carefully crafted facade.
Truly, Enver Gortash never understood the sweet sentiment people proclaimed a kiss to be and never once dared to imagine he ever really could. He was confident the mundane, delightful and shallow act that had been so tooth-rotting to him would continue to be unreasonable until the day he'd find himself at the receiving end of one such gesture, preferably with someone who used to hold him in such low regard profusely prostrating before him.
But, of course, even the greatest mastermind may find his plans disturbed upon the introduction of a new variable, and Fate had never seemed to take his side when he needed it. So it appeared to be almost natural that it couldn't be the long-awaited touch of one of his loathed patriars' that would reveal the mysteries of this most human act to him.
No, instead, the final farewell he bid the lamb he handed off to its butcher would serve to enlighten the fortress of a man as to why his peers had valued such shallow intimacy. It would be the slightest graze, tinged with betrayal and a fate inescapable, the painful, almost bittersweet taste of forsaken affection that would teach him what his cold calculations, ruthless logic, and resentments never could. Only with the taste of regret lingering on his lips would he understand the meaning of this foreign, utterly distasteful notion for himself.
Definitely not canon, tragic angsty durgetash shit below as I struggle with the block™️. I don't know how many words, kinda description of injuries, ig? Anyway, not for kids. But it's tame compared to my usual stuff. Maybe I'll upload it on Ao3 one day.
Perfect archduke
Nothing could've prepared him for what he'd witness at the docks.
He had considered a plethora of scenarios on his way here. Distractions from the searing pain shooting up his leg whenever he took another step, daydreams about all the 'what if's' that could've been, explanations for the elf's actions down in the ruins. Just any kind of thought so that he may be able to ignore the hell unfolding around him, but not a single one of them led him to ever consider the horrors displayed before him.
The temperamental little girl who spat her words at him mere hours ago, the brave soldier who had survived all he'd done to her and still retained her fiery passion, was finally donning a look of utter defeat as she held onto the bundle in her arms. The snarky elves who had refused to leave his dear companion's side, who refused to control their ever-waggling tongues for just a second, couldn't even look at the man they'd been constantly circling before.
"What happened?" A calm, firm voice, finally asking his first question in what must've been decades. Still ever carefully masking the bile that continued to rise in his throat as his eyes focused on little red droplets hitting the soiled ground.
"The brain, we- the fall- I-" the Tiefling had become a stuttering mess, a mess that soon crumbled onto the pavement.
He didn't try to ask another question, seeing how the woman before him had stopped being capable of answering him or anyone else for that matter. So, instead, he resorted to the one method he knew would never fail him: studying the situation himself. It had been quite obvious what, or rather who, the person within her grasp had been. The eccentric suit of armour, the carelessly tied greyish hair. There had been but one person who'd ever grace people with such a look, but still. It couldn't be him. Someone who had rejected the god of death and lived couldn't possibly end up like this. It was impossible. You can't kill death. You may outfox it, escape its view, or grasp for a while, but you could never defeat death nor its child. This must've been another tomfoolery of his. A tasteless joke, childish revenge for something he remembered.
The man kneeled in front of the red lady before a calloused, gold-clad hand reached for strands dyed in uncannily warm colours, pushing them away to reveal the cruel truth hidden beneath. He didn't quite know what he expected to find, if he was honest with himself, but certainly not this. The ruby red orbs that had always carefully taken in their surroundings remained hidden. The old scar he himself had traced countless times had begun bleeding again, once more tinting the ashen cheeks he had witnessed flushing in days long past. The cruel hands he had used to crush so many of his foes began shaking as it traced the familiar ridges and curves of a face he'd known for ages, and the pain in his leg began to flare up yet again.
"Heal him." A firm command. Just another of his usual orders directed at the white-haired woman beside them. A tyrant's decree that would be all but ignored.
"You're a cleric, aren't you? Then, fulfil your duty and heal him." His voice grew louder. He would've loved to clench his fists, yet he couldn't bear to lift his hand from the man it had been so desperately grasping onto.
"I'm sorry I can't." The woman refused to look at them. Her eyes darting just about anywhere except the voice's direction.
"Will somebody finally do something?!" His voice grew into a rage-filled scream at her refusal. All these skilled people, and yet none of them did anything. "You know magic, don't you? You've brought people back before. I saw the records. I saw what the bunch of you has done, so fix him, or do you need a personal invite?!"
"I'm sorry, but this- this is beyond what I can do. What anyone could-" the woman finally turned to face them—translucent streams clearing away a path in the marks of battle placed upon her.
"Then get someone who can!" He continued to criticize her, ignoring what she had tried to tell him. The truth everyone but him had already acknowledged. "Why are you still standing there? Go, get-"
"Stop it!" The other pointy-eared man finally raised his voice, silencing the ramblings of the madman in front of him. Refusing to listen to his denial any longer. "It truly is a miracle how someone as dense as you has managed to rise to the position of Archduke, so let me spell it out clearly for you." The vampire's voice dripped with sarcasm, "he is dead. Gone. Ceased to breathe. And there's nothing you, she, or any of us can do about it. Your glorious grand design has killed him." He met the tyrant's rage-filled eyes. A look one could almost mistake as pity veiling the seething anger hidden within his own as he did.
"Congratulations, Archduke," he hissed.
"At last, you've freed the city of all its Bhaalspawn with your own stained hands."
Hi, hello, how are you, wanna be mutuals? Wanna watch me write something self indulgent yet again? Cuz I decided fuck it, who gives a flying fuck, right, nobody, so imma have Durge cradle the tyrant yet again. I needed to rewrite his death scene because Larian why do you deprive me so.
But this time, no cursing. Have soft Gortash. Have the "hero" Gortash. Have the archduke and the dark sun Gortash. I'm a whore for pain and I shall be feasting tonight. Also, I just love throwing Durge thru all stages of grief. Love you baby, that's just how I express it—bonus; aaaaaaangst.
This one, is just rated M, because yk what? I've tried to be chill. Not much physical pain, this one is emotional baby. Read here on Ao3, as usual, a snippet below. Mind. The. Tags.
Fairytale
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
"There's still time," the Bhaalspawn sobbed as the floods of pain dripped onto the aged skin, his rationale vanishing in the face of the unavoidable, "a chosen can't be killed this easily. I've taken a knife to the head, and yet I'm here. You'll come to take revenge on me, hm?"
"Sure," his brows wrinkled in pain, "just a short rest, and I'll return. You'll threaten me again, and I'll laugh it off, offering you some of the liquor you'd never turn down instead. It'll be as it's always been. As though nothing ever happened."
The man pulled him even closer, clutching so tightly onto his old companion that not even a sheet of paper would've found any space between them, "you've promised. You will return. You have to."
