I've been uno-reversed by @optimisticgrey, @cinder-rellish181 & @missfortunetherogue. Many thanks! 🙏
We've done two angsty ones recently, so... how about a combat scene? In every universe, Gortash must get his ass kicked (even the ones when he lives), and the Dark Mara AU is no different.
This scene is still a little rough, but here's a taste:
TW: violence, blood
Mara wasn't surprised by the bloodbath that greeted her when she returned to Wyrm's Rock. Gortash had always hated the nobility of Baldur's Gate, even as he desperately sought their approval. A few Banite clerics and fighters patrolled the ceremonial hall, but they were quickly dispatched by her allies as she sent tendrils of chaos to deftly destroy the traps and turrets lining the large chamber.
When she entered the upper level of Wyrm's Rock fortress, she was flanked by two repainted watchers and two women, a tiefling and an elf. Gortash had only three masked Banites defending him. She'd secretly slain all of his other guards and looted the place while his coronation was underway.
That act alone should have turned every Watcher in the city against her. That it didn't was proof that his power infrastructure was still nascent and woefully fallible. The puddles of dried blood hadn't even been cleaned up. She knew that had to annoy him immensely.
Gortash scoffed at the sight of her, but he couldn't hide his concern at the presence of her oversized cohorts. “We could have been allies, powerful ones, and yet… your actions sparked the fall of my Steel Watch—”
“Your Steel Watch? Technically, I'm responsible for blowing up what I built,” came a slightly distorted interruption from the watcher to her left, “but I couldn't have done it without Mara. It still feels odd saying her name in front of anyone else…”
“Toobin? HOW?!”
“How do you think? I've worked on the Auto-Guard for longer than you've been alive,” Zanner retorted, sounding every bit the gnome he was when Gortash first met him nine years ago, not the broken wreck who only yesterday had still been his slave. “For every shoddy, ill-conceived upgrade you tacked onto the design, I implemented a fail-safe to rapidly undo it, but I never had the chance until now. I also allowed for a few theoretical changes my partner and I didn't have the opportunity to test out before she disappeared.”
“This time, instead of being the one conducting it, you're part of the experiment, pumpkin,” Mara grinned devilishly. “Won't this be fun?”
At a flick of her wrists, Aurelia and Violet charged forward, one wielding daggers and the other a longsword, squaring off with two of the soon-to-be ex-Archduke's bodyguards. She kept her hands out, summoning dark orbs that Zanner and Lowa each thrust a Watcher fist into. Inky tendrils shot out into the few traps that had been repaired since Mara's last visit, zipping through and disabling them.
Gortash instantly activated a single-use explosive that deployed a kinetic shield around him and then fired his crossbow at Zanner, aiming for one of the few weak points in the armor. The infuriating gnome moved the watcher's arm at the last second, and Gortash snarled to himself as the bolt splintered uselessly against heavily reinforced steel.
Aurelia slid left as a Banite lunged, avoiding a spear strike as she pirouetted around behind him and sprang at his back. One dagger came down in the space between helm and breastplate, behind the clavicle, and the other went in up under his ribs, pincering the heart from two directions at once.
Mara felt a sudden pang at the sight.
She moves just like goose does, she thought. Did… She moves just like he… did.
Grief will still be there when this is done, she told herself, as Violet's scream pierced her thoughts, radiant magic scorching her undead flesh. The Banite in the larger, golden mask had either guessed the nature of her companions or simply had very few spells in her repertoire. Shrieking as her skin curled and peeled, still Violet slashed away at the cleric, driving her back toward a pillar.
Mara glanced at Gortash. As satisfying as it would have been to defeat him with cantrips alone, she remembered his clever little barrier. It reflected projectiles, magical and physical alike. She could almost see the gears moving in his mind as he computed how to inflict the most damage as quickly and as efficiently as possible—now that he'd pushed past the emotional outburst that had him targeting a lesser threat out of sheer spite. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of dragging this out.
She merely thought their name, and her stone and crystal sword was in her hands, blade pointing at the ceiling. The Archduke frowned momentarily, and then he fired his arbalest. Mara smirked, disappearing into the ground in a dusty blur as the bolt puffed through nothing and clattered to the floor of the anteroom. She did regret that she couldn't see the look on his face.
Gortash watched the two vampires tear out the throats of his remaining guards, bright red glistening from their noses to their chins as they locked their feral eyes on him. Two Gondians he'd enslaved, whose families he'd held hostage and threatened to maim or kill for the slightest inefficiency, advanced on him in the very inventions he'd forced them to construct.
He did not want to call on Bane for aid. He knew the price if he failed. Die valiantly for his god, or stand a better chance at living through the day?
In the same second that Gortash questioned why he was debating what to do at all, the throne behind him exploded as Mara burst up through it just as if she'd been traveling with her xorn, but that was… impossible. They were dead.
He was in mid-whirl, still dumbfounded as she drove the blade into his lower back. The second the tip of the sword touched his skin, Gortash heard Da'arr hiss in his head, “Vaárkh!”
Bane arrived unprompted, ripping his mind like tattered shreds of flayed skin, and his consciousness fell into a void.
As Gortash plummeted into the dark, suddenly something caught him. It felt like a web. He could see nothing, but the threads vibrated.
In their motion, he heard Mara whisper, “Perfect.”
Self-indulgent Sunday / Memory Restoration Monday / Tragic Love Tuesday
Thank you for the tag, @lucretiouswept & the uno-reverse @missfortunetherogue! 🖤💜💙
Popping back over to the Dark Mara AU (Dead Gale/Dead Everyone) to write that universe's Zanner reunion, which goes a bit differently than the one in her canon universe...
Mara exhaled slowly and let her fingertips graze his.
Before his hand curled and folded her fingers under his own, before his breath had even hitched, her mind flooded with him.
His hair was longer then, brushing his shoulders. The morning light painted it with streaks of pale gold. The eyes beneath the blindfold had once been beautiful. Where Gale's were dark, smoky quartz crystal and bittersweet chocolate, this gnome's were acorn shells and a cup of very strong tea. A brown so vibrant it was only a few shades away from red.
“You dropped this,” he had offered, smiling brightly, the same hand held out to her, a smooth green gemstone resting in the dip between his third and fourth fingers.
She watched the smile deepen as his gaze wandered over her face.
Mara glanced at a pouch on her belt, then found the small hole by touch and replied, “It seems I did.” She spoke the words of a mending cantrip, then smirked as she flirted, “Do you intend to return it?”
His smile went crooked as he answered with a question, “Does my open, outstretched hand not demonstrate my intention clearly enough?”
As she took the stone, she appreciated his dark lashes, his plump, bite-able lips, his sharp cheekbones, and his prominent nose.
The things she could do to that face…
“Thank you,” she lilted as she put the stone in the pouch. Then she turned on her heel just fast enough that her hair whipping over her shoulder would bathe him in the scent of it.
As expected, she heard him trotting after her in seconds.
“Are you new to Baldur's Gate?” he puffed when he reached her side.
“No, but I've been away for a time.”
As they rounded a corner, he nodded, “That explains it.”
She'd cocked an eyebrow at him.
“I know most of the gnomes in the city—unless they don't mix with their own people, that is,” he explained.
“Even the deep gnomes?”
“You're svirfneblin?”
She nodded.
“Are you with the Iron Hands?”
“No.”
“That's a relief. They used to be all right, but their new leader is radicalizing them. You're not a Gondian, certainly, or we would have met sometime in the last fifty years.”
“Like I said, I've been away, but no, I don't follow Gond, either.” She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the pin on his vest and asked, “Do you intend to convert me?”
Chuckling, he rejoined, “Only if you want me to. Nevertheless, among every sort of gnome, you… stand out.”
“I must,” she teased. “Enough for you to chase after me.”
“Who says I'm chasing you? We're walking in the same direction. I caught up because I didn't want you thinking I was following you, but… it appears I've failed in that.” He cleared his throat and added, “I've never been a particularly subtle person.”
“Lucky for you, I don't mind the company of the unsubtle,” she returned, hooking her arm through his as they entered the main archway into Bloomridge Park and turned right.
His warm smile creased the corners of his eyes as he introduced himself, “I'm Zanner. And you are?”
“Less free with my identity,” she countered with a wink.
He chuckled again, eyeing her expectantly as they cut through the park toward the central watch tower, but she didn't elaborate. She simply smiled, letting her gaze flit to his mouth once or twice as they strolled in silence.
When they neared the east exit from the park, Zanner prodded, “You won't tell me your name… why?”
“Because you have to earn it,” she enticed, leaning closer.
His pupils dilated; he wet his lips. Both actions stirred in her a rather tantalizing impulse to kiss him. She didn't act on it, though.
“I have to earn it, do I? But I already gave you mine.”
“I did not request that exchange,” she refuted casually. “You offered your name freely, yet expected it would generate a transaction without considering whether or not I wished to participate in it.”
“Hmph, it seems I did, didn't I?” He smiled broadly, then sighed and remarked, “You are… unexpected. In every sense of the word.”
“Yes, I am,” she quipped as they reached the plaza. Gesturing toward the alley west of Bonecloak's Apothecary, she lamented, albeit lightly, “It seems we must part. I'm going that way.”
Zanner indicated Sorcerous Sundries as he said, “And I'm going this way, but I do wish to earn your name. Will you… teach me the requirements?”
“Good answer.”
“It was a question,” he corrected.
She laughed heartily. “It was, indeed. Be on the balcony of the Singing Lute at sunset… if you wish to begin your tutelage.”
“I will.”
Zanner's dark silhouette leaned against the railing outside the small waterside tavern, his head turned toward the sun as it sank into the bay, possibly watching the ships slowly mooring and casting off, possibly thinking he'd made a mistake in coming there. He'd changed into a fine beige suit and trousers in a simple but fashionable cut that drew the eye to his shoulders and his waist. He'd left the collar of his bright blue shirt open—possibly because it would still be warm even hours after sundown, and possibly because it revealed a triangle of his chest that he might have hoped would catch someone's eye.
Hidden in shadow on the terrace above him, Mara stalked her newest prey. He took a sip of rose-colored wine and glanced over his shoulder, eagerly scanning the small group of nearby patrons first, then the road near the entrance, a tiny crease appearing between his brows, then he eyed the stair leading up from the harbor, and finally he fell to squinting at every dark shape on the road, across it outside of the Blushing Mermaid, and into the distance. Not finding who he sought, his gaze flicked to the ground as he sighed softly.
His observer soundlessly hopped into the street just out of his sight line, her tendrils ensuring a soft landing, now so controlled that they were all but invisible to the unaided eye. She peeked around the corner and found his gaze still quite riveted to the floorboards. He lifted his head when her blood red toenails shined up at him from her sandals.
He startled and his wine glass slipped from his hand. She caught it, aided by undetectable threads cradling the lip and applying a filled blackboard's worth of equations regarding the distribution of force in fluid dynamics in a split second just so that it did not spill a single drop. She placed it on the table next to the railing as if both acts had been effortless.
Laughing through the fright, Zanner commented, “You came…”
“And you obeyed…” Mara intoned, “a woman you just met whose name you don't even know. Why?”
“Because I want to know it. I want to know you.” His eyes were even more magnetic when shaped by intensity. “Surely, I'm not the first person to do exactly what you tell them to do just because you smiled at them. You're far too beautiful for this to be a first, and I know I'm not that special.”
“You might be. In what way do you wish to know me?”
“In every way you'll let me,” he returned boldly.
“Another good answer. I believe a more difficult question is warranted. What if I were to draw you close to me, so close you almost can't breathe, hold you there until you unravel in my hands, and at the end of it, still… you would not know me? Would that be enough for you?”
“It would… not.”
Mara invaded his personal space, near enough to feel the gentle heat rise from his body in the instant before touch either melted tension or ignited a fire. There, she waited. She smelled the moment anxiety coiled into disquietude and sweat sprang up on his skin, yet he did not flinch or shrink before her. Even as she took his wrists in a grip that was so firm it scent-marked cruelty like a territorial cat, even as she pinned his arms to his sides, still he held her gaze, his eyes full of a yearning that certainly knew better, yet was not helpless before her.
Longing not as a battle against resolve, but as an ache that chose itself.
The sharpness left her smile, and a softness moved into her eyes. She knew she should have run from it. But she didn't.
She brushed her wetted lips against his, eyes open, watching him, a tease that tortured them both. He didn't close his eyes either. He held still for her, just as if she'd told him to, and not because he wanted to.
“Say yes,” she whispered as she drew back from him a small measure.
He swallowed and asked, “What am I saying yes to?”
“Knowing me.”
“Yes.”
Hindsight told her that moment was his first victory, the crossbow bolt whose path she had stepped into, believing she could shrug it off, heedless of the bitter scent of poison under the intoxicating sweetness of his fear. Or maybe she had smelled it, and she didn't care?
That he could have resisted her, that he sensed the danger—feared it, even—and chose her over it, was why the simple conquest of yet another slice of entertainment had changed her in ways she could not have fully understood if not for the journey that had brought her to this moment, right now. Others before and since had wanted her for the danger, for the power she held, and for what that power could grant them, but not Zanner.
All he wanted was her.
Only one other had ever wanted her so purely.
If you want to read some Durgezan pre-canon romance after Mara has already met Gortash, it's here. It's not finished, but it will be.
What does your OC's Dream Visitor look like, and why?
Thank you for the tag, @lucretiouswept! 😁
I do enjoy picking apart the Emperor...
My personal headcanon for why the specific physical appearance for our Dream Visitor gets chosen is one that I extend to all of my characters, and it is two-fold...
First, the Emperor chooses a face that is at the very least similar to someone from our character's past in whom they placed implicit trust.
Second, it chooses a form they will find sexually or at least aesthetically appealing based either on relationship history or on fantasy.
That is to say, the Dream Guardian character creation interface is the Emperor sifting through our character's brain, trying out faces, and gauging our reactions. If you've romanced the Emperor, you know that it is fully capable of erasing any memories it doesn't want you to keep.
Pre-tadpole, my gnome Durge Mara could never actually say the words out loud or even consciously admit that she was capable of feeling them, but she was in love with this guy:
Zanner Toobin, the Gondian who was in charge of the Auto-Guard project before Gortash twisted it into the Steel Watch.
They never actually broke up; she disappeared. They were a couple for eleven years. Mara and Zanner were as close to married as she'd ever been with any partner.
Gortash in Mara's story is consumed by his envy of their relationship and tried to have Zanner killed only a few months after he met him. She knocked Gortash around his office like a rag doll and threatened to literally eat him alive if he tried something like that again.
Zanner Toobin may be the only person in the history of Toril who was assigned a protective detail composed entirely of Bhaalist assassins.
Their fic series is here: Not Today
Inside-of-head screenshot jumpscare
Larian didn't bother to close the eyes the Banites “cut out” under that blindfold. It worked for me, because then I didn't have to guess at Zanner's eye color.
Her Dream Visitor has Gale's hairstyle because... the original used to wear it similarly.
Zanner asked another Gondian to cut it shorter for him because it kept getting caught in the damn Prinski collar when he was working. In Mara's story, the collars weren't used until after Orin's attack. Thus, she had no memory of them, or of him with shorter hair.
Also, by the time the Emperor appears in her dreams, she's already been fantasizing about running her fingers through Gale's hair.
In Act 1, Gale's face hasn't yet reached the level of immediate trust that Zanner's inspires.
If the Emperor had chosen how to appear based entirely on connection and trust over potential romantic inclination, it would have chosen to look like Da'arr:
[Image of a Xorn from the D&D Monsters Manual, source D&D Beyond]
That's her murder baby. She raised them from an egg she picked up thinking it was loot in a Dao lair. Mara would do anything for Da'arr.
Rule: List the first last line of 10 fics/or chapters (posted or WIP) and see if there's a pattern. If you don't have 10 fics, then as many first lines as you do have!
Thank you for the uno-reverse tags, @saylofwaterdeep & @carnivaley!
Yeah, sometimes, it's more than one line...
Or It Would Have
“And if you want to die, after all of this is over with, I'll kill you myself,” Thaniel promised vehemently.
Wiping her eyes, Mara said, “I might just hold you to that.”
The Crit-Fail That Murdered the World
She lay down in his cold blood next to him, her head on his lifeless shoulder, her knees curled up against his hip, her fingers in hair so thick and soft it was an offense that it adorned a corpse.
She shivered and wept until sleep finally took her.
The Invitation
Gale: And back together again. [sighs happily] I can't wait!
A Dirge For D
Effigy was too rough a word for what took such time and care to erect.
It was a shrine.
The Gondian Inconvenience, chp 10
At least three people were bleeding in the next room, and one of them still wasn't eating enough greens.
Her Hand, His Throat
Gortash whispered into the stillness of his now empty house, smiling, “Of all the assassins I've met, she's certainly my favorite.”
Kressa's Notes
I would very much like to have my pet back.
Would You Still Want Me...
Gortash: [Chuckling] Asshole…
The Ribbon, Part One: A Gift For An Equal, chp 15
The human opened his mouth to advise his partner against voicing theoretical methods of murdering their ally, but he was stopped by scaled lips and a large blue tongue snaking into his throat.
A Dead God's Dream and the Man Who Invented Himself, chp 2
That hideous smile would live in his nightmares in one form or another for the rest of his life.
I shall tag (gently): @litsenn, @defira85, @echoechowhiskey, @bladesingerlily, @optimisticgrey, @afilmnoirdetective, & @woundedsoul12
More of my gnome Durge and Gortash's toxic dynamic... mostly Gortash's POV, suffering as usual.
TW: jealous Gortash, threats of violence, language, psychological warfare as flirting, rage boner
A smile slipped across his face as her black and crimson gaze fell upon him. When she returned it, his skin went all warm and tingly.
“You're late,” Gortash announced, his chin uplifted as if the comment was some sort of victory.
“I am not,” she defended confidently, her voice a lover's caress: smooth, purposeful, and intimate despite the physical distance between them. “I said: between noon and one. Is it one yet?”
He watched the long hand of the elaborate Gondian wall clock tick from just shy of the number twelve to right on top of it, the short hand pointing directly at the number one. His reply was practically a groan, though he fought not to smile. “It is now.”
“And I'm already here. Thus: not late.” She shrugged.
Dismissive. He hated when she was dismissive.
“I expected you earlier,” he pointed out, regretting his tone instantly.
“You should stop making assumptions,” she advised, eyes narrowed, a tiny edge of heat to her voice, but she tempered it with an attempt at levity which fell flat. “I hear they give humans stomach ulcers.”
Why did she have to constantly point out their differences?!
As she turned her head, her braid shifted, revealing a small, red mark at the crook of her neck. A lovebite. Knowing exactly who put it there sent envy searing through Gortash like a wildfire.
Why would she let that Gondian mark her? He was nothing! She didn't even try to cover it, either.
His temper annihilating his pretense of nonchalance, he asked, “Do you know how long I've been waiting?”
One corner of her mouth curled upward as she inquired, “Are you sure you want me to answer that?”
“Of course, you know,” he seethed. “There's this thing people do… for their friends—even for their business associates—and more so for potential allies, it's called common courtesy. Have you heard of it?”
“I have, and you haven't earned it from me. You haven't earned punctuality, either. Still, I arrived within the time window I'd allotted. Be grateful I didn't leave you waiting here for another hour. Because we both know you would. And if you take that tone with me again, I will cut out your tongue and shove it up your ass.”
“Right here in the Counting House? Oh, please… If you're going to make threats, my dear, they should at least be plausible.”
“There is not a person in this building who could so much as hinder me. Not to mention no one here likes you enough to risk it.”
“Have I done something to anger you?”
“Besides holding expectations of me that you haven't earned?”
“Are you this rude to everyone who hasn't mapped out a… flawless personality profile of you to anticipate your every whim?”
“The only one here who wants their whims anticipated is you. And no, I'm not rude to anyone who hasn't earned it.”
“I've earned less than a random person you meet on the street now?”
“You're a Banite who has repeatedly disrespected me,” she hissed quietly. “Of course you have.”
“Is this about what happened at the party last night?”
“I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. We have business to conclude. If you want to have a discussion, it comes after.”
With that, she glided through the gates into the vault waiting room; it was empty, the last clients not having yet returned from within.
It was definitely about the party. What had he done wrong? Fuck…
“Fine,” he agreed, stalking after her. “Business first. But we are having the discussion.”
She only looked at him, her face unnervingly calm. Possibly the slightest bit amused.
“Ugh. Will you have this discussion with me after our business is concluded?”
“Perhaps.”
Dismissive. Again.
“Perhaps? I expected better of you than ambiguity. You can't give me a yes or no?”
“Expected… again?” One black eyebrow rose as she smirked slightly. “Your mother used guilt on you often, didn't she? To extort acceptable behavior from you?”
“What does my mother have to do with anything?!” he whisper-yelled.
“It worked in the moment, stopping a poor behavior, but it never created better behavior, and it built up inside you, coming out in destructive rages, elaborate, vindictive plots, and a deep-seated need for approval from anyone who has power over you, alongside a seething hatred for them. You want to see her dead only slightly less than you wish to see your boot on the back of her neck. You think that if she could just say the right words, if you could believe them, the gaping, jagged wound inside you would heal. It's infected, and its rot has spread throughout every fiber of your being. Is there even a man left in there somewhere? Or are you nought but wounds and scar tissue?”
For the first time in Gortash's adult life, he had no words; his voice and his thoughts failed him. He stood there for a moment, flabbergasted yet wordlessly screaming on the inside.
How dare she?! How dare she be so fucking right?
Just then, the vault doors scraped open. Rakath Glitterbeard led a dark-skinned woman wearing a green dress with fluffy, shoulder length grey hair that was neatly pinned behind her ears but free in the back to his desk. As she passed him her signed paperwork and gave him a curt nod in farewell, he glanced up at his next two clients. The former kingpin turned small-time politician, he recognized with a humorless smile. When his gaze fell upon the gnome accompanying him, his smile vanished, and his neck began to sweat.
After the woman left, Gortash quietly snapped, “If you already know me so well, then why are you angry with me for behaving as you'd expect?”
“Knowing why you act like this does not mean I have to tolerate it,” the assassin replied in her infuriating, castigating tone just before descending the stairs.
Godsdamnit, how the Hells did she always get the last word?! And why was his stupid cock hard again?!
Here's a little something that will be in Not Today, Part 2: The Gondian Inconvenience chapter 13 (it's about two chapters out).
This is the scene the poll was about, and I'm going with slight repetition, since two-thirds of the vote is saying that. (Only four of you couldn't resist calling me a fuckwit. I don't blame you; I fucking love that word.)
TW: blood, dead body, jealous Gortash
“What a mess,” Gortash laughed dryly. “That's one way to make nobles scatter like flies. It appears we have a madman on the loose in the Upper City… Someone in the Watch will be fired tonight.”
The assassin shot a sidelong glance at him, a flash of rage and disgust contorting her features for less than a second before her smirk reasserted itself. He was watching the crowd and didn't see her reaction.
“However,” he went on, “a spectacle like this could be a distraction someone's using to rob the place, or a means to funnel a group of patriars to a specific location where a cadre of thugs lay in wait. Imagine the devastation if… that stretch of road had been rigged with traps during the party. Certainly an effective application of terror, if under-utilized.”
He didn't catch the assassin rolling her eyes at his obviously Banite take on the situation as he turned back toward her and her date. Zanner was staring intently up at the body hung by its sinews from the clock face high above the doorway.
“Got you a bit green around the gills, Mister Toobin?” Gortash gibed with barely restrained excitement at the prospect of having discovered what a Bhaalist would surely consider a shortcoming in him. “It is quite a lot of blood.”
Moonlight glistened in the pools and spatter peppering the cobblestone in front of the doors to Caldwell manor.
“Hmm?” the Gondian frowned, without looking down. “Oh, no, I've seen plenty of blood.” His brow raised back up as he rubbed his chin and added, “You'd be surprised at the injury and casualty rates among Gondian initiates. In the pursuit of innovation, particularly headstrong creators have been known to accidentally flay themselves alive trying to prove a point. It's usually explosions and burns, though.” A half-grin curling at the corner of his mouth, Zanner rolled his alert, bright gaze toward the Banite and asked, “Have you ever seen someone's entire arm become a blister? It's horrifying, and… fascinating. This is… remarkable.”
He returned to studying the corpse.
“I wouldn't call it that,” Gortash drawled quietly, stepping closer and squinting, wondering what his rival was seeing that he wasn't.
To his eyes, a grisly murder at an Upper City event was an apt demonstration of the shortcomings of the City Watch, and an opportunity to be exploited, but he failed to see the purpose of hanging the semi-skinned victim as they were. A rope affixed to the peak of the roof above would have served just as well. It was needlessly elaborate.
Von Quint jogged up behind them, his grey-streaked beard bouncing. Glancing up and then hastily away, he puffed, “Watchmen are on the way. It's gonna be hellish to cut them down from there.” He cocked an eyebrow at the placid look on the face of his friend's unnerving partner and commented, “I see you don't flinch.”
“Not often,” she answered softly.
Just as Von Quint pondered whether or not he'd heard amusement in her tone, the clock began to toll.
“Mister Gortash… you might want to step back,” Zanner advised in a tone with just enough authority to make Gortash bristle.
“And why should I?” he inquired with a frown, additionally annoyed that he still wasn't seeing whatever it was that the Gondian saw.
Another toll.
“Because… this is not a work of madness; it's a work of genius.” Zanner paused as the clock tolled a third time, then predicted, “And if you don't move before the… twelfth toll, you're going to become closely acquainted with a lot more than blood.”
As the fourth bell tolled, the sinew attached to the corpse's left leg snapped, making it flail slightly, splattering a little arc of blood before it stopped swinging. The assassin chuckled and slipped a hand around Zanner's waist, resting it on his hip. He brought his arm up around her shoulders as she nestled in closer to him.
As Gortash hastily stepped back, the fifth toll rang, but nothing more happened to the body. As he tore his eyes away, he noticed something. Unlike everyone else, the object of his affections was neither watching the clock nor enthralled by the body; her eyes were only for the Gondian.
A sixth toll.
The look on her face was so raw. He'd never seen her look like that. She was… waiting… in unmasked anticipation.
A seventh toll.
She wanted to see how Zanner reacted. No one else.
His envy burned almost as brightly as the realization dawning within him: this was her doing.
How did she manage it? She'd left them a few times during the party, but not for long.
A breath before the next toll, the Gondian whispered, “Eight. Another.”
This time, the clouds shifted just enough that a spear of moonlight bounced off the blade slicing through the sinew attached near the clock's eighth numeral.
“Ye gods,” Von Quint breathed. “You reckon it'll drop at twelve, Toobin?”
“Aye.”
As the ninth toll rang, Gortash internally questioned the mathematics, then spoke up when the clock was again silent, watching the assassin as he did, “If it's one sinew at every four tolls, I hate to break it to you, but it will still be hanging at twelve.”
She didn't even look at him, Bane damn her!
“The arm sinews will both be cut at twelve,” Zanner corrected. “Otherwise it would be extremely difficult to get the body to land in the precise spot one had chosen. If done one at a time, the already stretched tissues of the second one might snap under fatigue from the increased load, like a weakened rope or a frayed wire. Then, momentum could cause it to land unpredictably, missing its mark. I doubt the person who did this would make that kind of mistake.”
As the tenth bell tolled, Gortash watched a small, insidious smile ghost across the assassin's face. Or one he thought should have been ghosting… yet it didn't leave.
The Gondian turned his thoughtful, curious gaze from the suspended corpse to the woman in his arms. Her expression didn't change, but his did. It softened slightly, his lips parting for half a moment. Then she suggested, “Shall we move a little closer?”
Eleven.
“Hmm…” he mused conspiratorially. “What do you think… two and a half steps?”
“Let's make it three.”
As he nodded, they took three steps closer to the doors of Caldwell manor in unison. Their faces tilted upward as the clock struck the twelfth bell. He watched the body. Still, she watched him.
Two small knives located at the ten and the two severed the sinews of both arms, just as Zanner had predicted, dropping the corpse onto the doorstep with a meaty slap. It sent droplets of blood sailing toward them.
Gortash backpedaled instinctively, but didn't take his eyes off the couple.
The Gondian startled just a bit as a splat of red struck his neck and chin. The assassin blinked slowly, almost as if she knew the precise moment when the blot would hit her cheek.
“I guess it was two and a half,” she acknowledged, grinning up at Zanner.
Oh... he was going to kill that fucking Gondian.
[Yes, I shamelessly steal Gale's in-game lines and give them to pre-canon Zanner Toobin. Mara has a type.]
My late ass thanks thee for thy tags, @defira85 & @litsenn.
Here's the second WIP... a showdown with the raccoon man.
[After rejecting Bhaal, this Durge had a respec. The thing about warlock pacts is that they're written in blood or other bodily fluids. Ofc a Bhaalspawn's pact was written in blood. If you don't have any of the same blood anymore, they're null and void (because I said so). She was a necromancer/pact of the blade warlock. Now she's a crit-fishing bladesinger/shadow sorcerer/champion. Shadow sorcerer isn't quite right for her lore, but it's the closest available.]
Gentle tags for: @flamemittens, @ligmabhaals, @bladesingerlily, and @woundedsoul12.
“Of course you destroyed my Steel Watch. Tell me… did you enjoy the condition I left your pet Gondian in? You weren't aware I overheard you all those years ago. It was the only time I ever heard you wax poetic about a subject other than murder. You said that every time you looked into his eyes, it was like coming home from the Blood War. Do they still draw you in now I've gouged them out?”
“Wow… you are twice as tall but half the man he is, aren't you? None of this would have worked without him. Or me. Your mini hellfire assault engines masquerading as peacekeepers would never have made it past the planning phases, would they? You don't have to answer. Zanner told me all about it when he helped me blow the place up. You are a fraud, Gortash, and such a fucking coward.”
“Ha, not Zan. You don't remember him either, do you? At least in that, we finally get the same from you.”
“Would you like to know what I felt when Counselor Florrick called you Lord Gortash? I don't know why I asked; I'm going to tell you anyway. Sick. I felt sick. When I saw you, when you called me your favorite assassin, I felt nothing. Zanner's voice alone… hearing it was like coming home. To a home I don't remember, but it was real. As real as the one I've made anew. When Karlach gets done with you, I hope you enjoy Bane's tender mercies. I'm sure he'll be very forgiving.”
After the fiery tiefling had her say, Gortash's smug façade shattered, her righteous rage a sight to behold. Yet still he called her a brat and clung to the notion that he was in control.
“Perhaps I shall hang your corpse in the Wide—”
Instantly, the two Black Gauntlets nearest to Gortash turned and attacked him. She used everything he thought gave him strength against him.
His favorite assassin's musical, mocking laughter interrupted the threat, stirring places in him he had sorely wished to forget existed during her absence.
“Impero te!” she commanded, setting a blade woven of shadow itself singing in her right hand. The devil's tongue dagger he'd woken up to find at his throat on the night he first met her moved in time with it.
I shall tag: @litsenn, @bladesingerlily, @afilmnoirdetective, @optimisticgrey & @defira85.
In the same vein as your lovely Durgetash piece, I'll share a bit of post-game, my gnome Durge talking with Zanner Toobin about her past (since he knew her much better than Gortash did).
It just so happens that Gortash is the subject she's asked him about here. It's basically all dialogue at this point.
“So… I truly didn't want to kill him?”
“No, you did. You wanted to kill him from the moment you met him. Who wouldn't? He's like… licking honey off of sandpaper. Starts out a bit sweet, then grates the top layer of skin off your tongue. And he tells you to stop being dramatic as you choke on your own blood.”
“Based on the thoughts I used to have, that sounds like something the old me would've done.”
He chuckled and replied, “Probably.”
“Why is it funny if I do it, but awful if he does?”
“I don't know. Because I love you. Because you're you. Because you'd never do it to me.”
“Yet you were with me in spite of what I was?”
“No… It's hard to explain.” Zanner took a breath and asked, “You don't blame a hawk for being a hawk, do you?”
“No.”
“You might be angry if it ate your pet rabbit, for instance, but you don't begrudge it eating rabbits; it has to eat. It would have been unrealistic for me to expect you to always behave counter to your nature.”
