Grabbed a tag from darling @optimisticgrey, thank you!
Something very short and simple today, just to appreciate the softer version of Deia, who, still to my surprise, looks so different to her usual normal self. No dark mouth, no shadow around the eyes, no smirk sharp enough to cut. A version of her that only Gale gets to see.
Gale notices her before she notices him noticing. It is a small mercy. Deia stands beneath the pale spill of moonlight, her hair tied back from her face, black waves gathered without their usual silver chains and sharp little ornaments. No dark paint on her mouth. No shadow around her eyes. Nothing dramatized, nothing arranged to strike first.
She looks almost unarmored. The thought catches somewhere beneath his ribs and stays there, stubborn as a hook. He has seen her dressed in black silk and fire. He has seen her with blood on her face and a blade in her hand, with her horns crowned in silver and her smile honed to a killing edge. He has seen rooms bend around her simply because she entered them already knowing they would. This should be gentler. Easier. It is not.
“What?” she asks.
Gale blinks.
“Hm?”
Her eyes narrow, but there is no true threat in it.
“You are staring.”
“Yes,” he says, because lying seems both pointless and unwise.
Deia’s mouth shifts, reaching instinctively for a smirk and finding, perhaps, that she has left the sharper version of it elsewhere.
“Should I be offended?”
“No.”
“Should I be concerned?”
“Possibly.”
That earns him a look.
“Gale.”
He steps closer. Slowly, though not with hesitation. He has learned the difference.
“I have seen you look like a queen of ruin,” he says softly. “Like a storm given manners. Like every warning in every old story decided to become beautiful out of spite.”
Her expression stills. His hand lifts, then pauses, asking the question without words. When she does not move away, he touches one finger lightly to the tip of her nose.
“But this,” he murmurs, “may be the most dangerous you have ever looked.”
Deia stares at him. Then, to his quiet triumph, color rises faintly beneath her pale skin.
“That was absurd.”
“It was sincere.”
“Worse.”
He smiles.
“I know.”
She looks down, briefly, as if the ground might offer her a weapon against tenderness. It does not. Traitorous ground.
“I am not dressed for anything,” she says.
“No.” His thumb brushes near her cheek, careful as the turn of a page. “That is rather the point.”
Her eyes lift again. There is something wary in them, and something painfully soft beneath the wariness.
“Do not make a holy thing of it.”
Gale’s smile fades into something quieter.
“I won’t.”
“You are about to.”
“I am about to be very brave and restrain myself.”
A small laugh escapes her before she can catch it. There they are: the dimples, sudden and devastating, appearing like two secrets the night has no right to keep. Gale’s breath leaves him.
“Gods,” he says, helplessly.
Deia points at him.
“No.”
“I said one word.”
“You said it like a man about to write poetry.”
“In my defense, I am suffering.”
“Good.”
But she steps closer when she says it, fingers curling lightly into the front of his shirt. Her smile lingers, shy and wicked and gone almost as soon as he sees it. Gale catches it anyway. He always does.
Got tagged by @lucretiouswept, thank you, my darling.
It was rather interesting to ponder. I used her hair variant that I planned for more ''refined looks'' and one of my favorite dresses. Of course, Deia would never go down this path, so it is all for fun and giggles, but... can we just agree on how good she looks here?
Hello! Time for me to host my first own Tag Game. Little backstory: I've been pondering about my own OC's evil endings after watching videos on YouTube that showed each origin character's evil endings. Honestly, seeing Wyll, who is the greenest forest on earth, go on a murder spree, was a little gutwrenching. So here is the idea:
What if your TAV/OC was an Origin Character and they could have evil endings? What would those endings be?
I wrote Deia's endings down in BG3 Narrator style. You can do whichever style you prefer. I just thought it to be appropriate. Enjoy :)
War Upon the Heavens (Revenge Ending)
You have claimed the Crown. For a moment, the world waits beneath you: bruised, trembling, obedient. Baldur’s Gate kneels in smoke and silence. The gods, distant as ever, watch from their jeweled thrones and call it judgment. But you have known their judgment. You prayed in the dark. You begged beneath knives. You called to names that did not answer, and learned that divinity is often only another word for absence. No longer. You lift your hand, and the Crown answers. Dragons hear you across planes, across old blood, across the marrow-song of creation. Gold and silver. Brass and bronze. Onyx, emerald, sapphire, storm. Wings unfurl in the spaces between worlds. The heavens split. Let the gods look down now. Let them see what neglect has made. Let them feel the heat of every unanswered prayer as it claws upward through their gates. Once, they abandoned a child to monsters. Now the child comes for the sky.
The Draconic Conquest (Tyranny Ending)
You have claimed the Crown. The Material Plane lies open before you, soft and faithless, crowded with cities that call themselves eternal because they have never seen a dragon wake hungry. Baldur’s Gate burns first. Not all at once. You are not wasteful. You let the people see the shadows pass over them. You let the towers tremble beneath wingbeats. You let kings, dukes, priests, and patriarchs understand, in their last clear moment, that stone was never power. Gold was never power. Crowns were never power. Only fear tells the truth. At your command, dragons descend. They do not raid. They claim. Temples become roosts. Palaces become hoards. Streets run black beneath ash, and the old banners fall beneath talon and flame. The age of small folk ruling over borrowed earth ends screaming. They called you beast. Abomination. Failed experiment. Now they will learn the mercy of correct names. Stormborn. Sovereign. Dragon. And the world, at last, belongs to its oldest blood.
Queen of the Ashes (Ruler Ending)
You have claimed the Crown. And still, the ache remains. No throne fills it. No obedience softens it. No chorus of enthralled minds can drown out the memory of chains, of cold stone, of human hands cutting divine silence into your skin. You look upon the city you saved and see only mouths that would have condemned you if the story had been told differently. You see nobles fattened on suffering. Priests selling comfort beneath indifferent gods. Soldiers following orders. Cowards surviving by looking away. Humanity disappoints you one last time. So you make the disappointment simple. Fire takes the Lower City first, running along rooftops like a hymn learning anger. Then the Wide. Then the docks, the counting houses, the temples, the high estates where the powerful finally discover how small their screams are. When dawn comes, no bells ring. You sit upon a throne of cooling stone and blackened bone, your hands clean only because the fire has eaten everything else. The survivors do not speak your name. They have no need. All know who rules what remains. The Queen of the Ashes smiles. And the world lowers its eyes.
The Dragon-God Ascendant (Godhood Ending)
You have claimed the Crown. Power floods you, vast and bright enough to murder thought. Mortal flesh was never meant to contain such hunger. But then, your flesh was never merely mortal. It was written over in blood, broken open by ritual, bound to dragonkind, touched by gods who thought their touch would be enough. They were wrong. Bahamut calls it blasphemy. Tiamat calls it theft. You call it inheritance. The Crown reshapes the living into worship. Minds bend. Armies rise. Thousands kneel with empty eyes and speak your name in a single voice until the planes shudder with it. The old dragon gods stir. Let them. You remember the first lesson Gale taught you of the Crown: that divinity is not born from goodness, nor mercy, nor worth. It is born from power that refuses to remain mortal. Once, such knowledge frightened you. Once, you looked at Gale and begged him not to mistake a throne for healing. But that was before Ansur’s soul burned beneath your ribs. Before Io’s blessing sang in your blood. Before Bahamut’s favor crowned you with a legitimacy even the heavens could not easily deny. Before you understood that gods are not greater because they are good. They are greater because the world agrees to kneel. So you make it kneel. You have been child, weapon, exile, supplicant, survivor. You have worn every chain the cosmos could offer and broken each one with your teeth. Now you will wear divinity. Not granted. Not blessed. Not permitted. Taken. And when the first prayer rises to you from a throat that no longer has a will of its own, you understand the final cruelty of godhood: It does not matter whether they love you. Only that they answer.
The Last Fire (Given Up ending)
You have claimed the Crown. But victory arrives too late. The city cheers. The companions look to you. The world waits for command, for mercy, for the shape of tomorrow. You search yourself for hope and find only ash. Too many hands. Too many gods. Too many years beneath the earth, and too many mornings spent pretending survival is the same as being whole. The Crown hums against your thoughts, eager as an open wound. It offers dominion. It offers revenge. It offers silence. Silence, at last, is tempting. You turn toward Baldur’s Gate. Fire blooms. Not conquest. Not justice. Not even hatred, in the end. Only exhaustion given form. Streets vanish beneath white-gold flame. Towers fold inward. The river reflects a second sun and carries it trembling out to sea. Those who loved you call your name. Perhaps you hear them. Perhaps that is why you smile. When the blaze has eaten half the city, you lift your face to the smoke-veiled sky. No god descends. No answer comes. Of course it does not. So you give yourself the only answer left. The Crown cracks in your hands. The fire turns inward. And for one breath, brighter than dawn, the girl who survived the dark becomes the light that ends her.
P.S: I was rather bored and recorded myself actually acting out one of the endings in voice, as if I am the narrator. It was... fun. Do tell me if you want to hear it, I will send it privately. :]
