“Wait, if this new thing thinks that Tav is the Godsbane?” Wyl tries, but he’s interrupted. “There is no thinking, there is and is not, and she is the Godsbane. Born of a mother crafted from its essence lying with the newly undead god of murder. A creation whose very nature is in constant battle with the other, and yet, she is the recipe for perfect symbiosis,” Withers explains before he gestures to Tav. “Your hunger, your thirst for violence, is not born simply out of these urges. They are as real as Astarion’s, as palpable as Gale’s need for magic with the orb in his chest. The Godsbane could kill the divine, could wield enormous unseen power, but it had a cost. It must be fed by mortal souls. Just like your father, just like any of the Dead Three.”
She killed so many on their journey. From the undead to the freshly created, from human, vampire, ithilid, beasts, to foes of every foul variety. She’d defeated Myrkul. She thwarted her father’s chosen and Bane’s. Over and over and over, she has killed with a tenacity that only further assured them she was, in fact, a Bhaalspawn. Yet, it's hearing Withers confirm the nature of this hunger for the first time that scares her deeply. That sparks something in her rotted belly, and rings true to a feeling she’d never known how to name.
Killing always felt good, even if she hated the idea of it. She’d always been so talented at it. Yet, there had been moments. Inherent to her sense of self, and familiar to those around her if they were paying attention, that speaks to this. What did she say to Astarion during their night at the Elfsong? Her mind's eye flashes back, she remembers the dancing, the drinking, and the quiet confessions on the roof. She remembers the ache in her voice as she admitted to him her most secret desires, “I don’t want to hurt you, I just want your soul. I know I can’t have it, that to take it is wrong, and that it would kill you, but there is a part of me that wants to rip it out of you. Cradle it in my hands, kiss it with my own two lips.” He’d seemed unafraid of it then, alarmed and intrigued, but never afraid of her. She now knows her hesitations and fears about those sensations were worth caution. Worth distance. Deep down, the voice purrs in a new tongue. We could have devoured it. Devoured him, devoured all of them. Keep them forever, make them mine. Mine, mine, mine, forevermore.
“She isn’t just a Bhaalspawn, then,” Gale mutters tiredly. “She’s a demi-god. She’s descended from the Godsbane. Hells, is the Godsbane? Do you have any idea what that thing did? What its last master was capable of? What that... that insane creature did? It’s madness, he was madness!”
