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It was funny, the Chosen thought, if one looked at it a certain way.
Once upon a time, it had sacrificed everything it had left - including the right to not be it - to quit being a whore. Yet here it was, rented out at Father's wish. Maybe this was because it had expressed a want, a desire. Surely, the carrion-hound that slips a scrap of meat from an altar craves the whole carcass shoved down its throat, yes?
Hmm. Perhaps a gnoll would. Lovely creatures, gnolls, so vividly violent in their creation. Don't think the heresy, He'll hear.
Perhaps that was the better way, destroying that which created you, being born from death and gore. It was good, righteous; it was how the Chosen had been made, after all, from the rotblack entrails that had so beautifully decorated the Boareskyr Bridge.
It was better that way; no heartbreak, no mourning. Don't think the heresy, He'll hear.
It was better that way, to be made whole and strong, never small and weak. It thought of a child held on its hip, lessons taught. It thought of when it had been small, lessons learned, and traced the scars on its throat, Sarevok's reminder.
Sarevok's lessons had driven it to accept the six-limbed second skin. Don't think the heresy, He'll hear.
Always in threes, everything in threes; perfection, perfection, perfection, every time, everywhere, in every act.
One: the Chosen looked up from its small reverie, where it had been hiding from the nausea curling in its gut in its wandering thoughts, towards the sound of sabatons descending the stairs.
Two: its companion offered an easy smile. Despite it all, the Chosen still found him charming.
"Ah, Ketheric," Enver called as he straightened. "We were beginning to worry."
That was all you, Enver, the Chosen thought wryly, the corner of its mouth twitching up.
Three: Ketheric Thorm was older than the two of them combined, and he acted like it. (To be most accurate, he was older than their bodies. There were more years of memory inside the Chosen's skull than this world had known.)
"How touching," Thorm said coolly, taking his time walking to them, despite the fact that they were objectively the ones doing him a favor here. "If I didn't know better, Gortash, I'd think you actually cared."
It was smart. It kept him from looking desperate. But one whore knew another, and Ketheric Thorm worked in threes, too. Selûne, Shar, Myrkul… yes, Orin could keep her comments to herself, when this specimen was walking the earth.
He hadn't quite needed to drag the Chosen into it, though. It felt like an echo of a punishment, or looking into an upside-down mirror. Here was a man who was ready to set the world aflame and condemn it in its entirety for the sake of having his daughter back.
Father was willing to sacrifice his pureblood daughter for the sake of destroying the world. The metaphor didn't need to be thought about any more than that. Don't think the heresy, He'll hear.
(Here is the fourth muted beat, out of tune: the Chosen locked its teeth together as Ketheric and Enver sized each other up, like two roosters posturing before a fight. It swallowed against a surge of nausea, the arcana in its veins tingling against the death-stench and stolen divinity that surrounded Thorm. It kept its hands still from going to its stomach. It was never alone in this body, but these days, it was even less alone than usual; part of its only friend the Banite lordling had stayed behind to grow in its belly.
Again: one whore knows another.)
The body revolted at creating life. It was shaped from death, for the purpose of making more death. It looked like an elf at a glance, skin night-orchid dark, a dangerous, pretty flower waiting to devour anyone who tried to touch it; the truth was clear the moment it bared its teeth, a predator's daggerfangs made for the tearing and crushing, marked so that it would never forget what it was meant for. By the time the prey saw, it was too late, and nobody was meant to meet it twice.
Save for dear Enver, and now Ketheric, apparently. Enver knew a thing or two about selling oneself too, if that angry little creature in the House of Hope had been any indication. The Chosen had been ready to play a particularly singular sonnet on the wretch's sinews, if only to see Enver smile as a favor it could collect later, but Enver had laughed and said that they were there to sneak, not to slaughter, but he appreciated the enthusiasm. It was nice, to hear him laugh.
Ah, they were looking at it. Had they finished their little dick-measuring contest?
"Tav, dearest," Enver said, and it looked at him, trained to answer to that name. "Are you ready?"
"This one has been ready," it answered in a carefully careless monotone. "It is your errant blathering that delays us."
A hit; a flash of irritation on Ketheric's face. Good. Enver laughed again, and the Chosen was privately pleased. It was less pleased to hear more footsteps on the stairs.
Bonethief, defiler, desecrator, the Chosen thought, Father's wrath rising in its chest as it bared its teeth. A bloated corpse past its prime, another child who would be a god! O would-be heir of Irenicus, the Abyss is too kind for you -
"General," the fat leech called. "A moment."
"Make it swift, Balthazar," Ketheric snapped. "I have waited long enough."
Father, it desecrates our blood and bone, the Chosen begged. Its heart does not beat, but surely this injustice must be punished. Father, Your knife aches to cut and kill, reclaim what was taken, please, please -
There was a chill in its spine, a tingling, an echo of Father's laughter.
"General, you cannot truly expect this to deliver to you what we have worked for," Balthazar said with a pointed look towards the Chosen. "If you would only allow me some more time to continue our experiments with our artifact -"
Show the pretender what he pretends to know, child.
The Chosen snarled, the four-armed monster's voice echoing in the great hall, the air turning with the chill of an impending storm. It made all of their petulant mouse-squeaking stop, and its temper only flared brighter when the bonethief looked at it like a particularly desired piece of corpsemeat.
"Hear this, little thief," the Bhaalspawn growled. "Mind your tongue. You pretend at understanding the works of gods, leashing their power, and yet you are as a child playing with fire. The lessons of Irenicus are there for you to see, and yet you remain blind to them."
"I have accomplished things that Joneleth Irenicus only dreamed of," the bonethief retorted. "He -"
"He was a child who thought he could be a god, as are you," the Chosen snapped. "Irenicus paid for his sins, and so will you. You are as a maggot, feasting on the leavings of something you cannot comprehend, a leech that only sustains itself on the things it cannot hope to recreate -"
"Enough," Ketheric sighed, and as a favor, the Chosen paused, baring its fangs. "You had your chance, Balthazar. If she fails, you will have another. But my lord has made me an offer, and I mean to take it."
Fool, the Chosen thought. You think that the gods will give you what you seek without sacrifice. You think that you will be able to step away from all of this and take your prize someday and leave it all behind. Foolish, foolish child.
"Our Lord would not sully His Chosen with this rabble," Balthazar argued. "General, when have the Dead Three ever united without betrayal?"
"Careful, now," Enver said lightly. "Or we'll start to think you speak of your own plans."
"Enough," Ketheric said again, exhaustion showing even in his commander's voice. "Enough of this bickering. I will hear no more of this until we return. If we return with what I have worked for, then the discussion is over."
The bloated bonethief was not happy about that. Good.
"After you, General," Enver said with a grand sweep of his arm. The Bhaalspawn spared the bonethief one last glare, its eyes flashing blood-red for a moment, before it turned to follow.
Remember, corpsemaggots, the compact. Your realm can be starved if the blood ceases to flow. You need us far more than we need you.
It consoled itself with that under Enver's the Banite's possessive touch as they walked behind Ketheric. Not Enver, Father, just the Banite. Disposable, as prey should be. It needed to pray on this. Forgive me, Father, for I cannot help but admire the Chosen of Your sworn foe…
The begging for forgiveness prayer-mantra carried it through the walk in the deep shadows. Even the Chosen's eyes couldn't see through these; Shar had outdone herself with this. Such a glorious showing of power from his former goddess, and yet Ketheric had turned from her anyway.
Unlike him, the Chosen was loyal. Unlike him, it had never had a choice. Divine prostitutes they both might be, but unlike him, it knew the only place being god-chosen could lead.
To know love was to know the whip. To know divinity was to know death of the self in every possible way. Unlike Ketheric, the Bhaalspawn knew the truth: one could sing a thousand hymns, but the reward would only come when one scraped one's own soul like stripping meat from a rib, and offered one's own self on the altar. And yet the whipped hound will ever return to the hand that maims it, if it can receive kindness once in every hundred times it is touched.
To be loved was to be destroyed. It should have remembered that, before it offered its body to the Banite. There was no escape.
Mortals, the Chosen mused as they walked the mausoleum, were just as capable of soul-destruction, and perhaps they deserved more credit for the ingenuity they showed in doing it. Some would have counted the scattering of bones through the tomb-hall a desecration; the Bhaalspawn counted it as a wasted effort, and a waste of marrow and meat.
No, here was the hidden barb, the sting: the tomb inscriptions. The Chosen had done enough sneaking to find the truth, that Isobel and Melodia had both been sickly; the girl's mother had had their tombs built well before their demise, inscriptions carefully drafted, every detail thought of. But Ketheric had rewritten his wife's, in a final gesture of ownership, erasing her mother tongue as the Chosen's had been erased and replacing it with his own high-elvish. E armiel telere maenin hir.
You hold my heart forever, the ghost of Gorion's Ward whispered, translating. Had Ketheric meant it as poetry, or as a taking? Had he thought it beautiful, when he laid his words over hers, making a palimpsest of her voice in favor of his own? They had taken the words from the Bhaalspawn, too, when it had been young. Had he ever considered her a person, or just a thing to be owned? The Chosen knew very well which side of that line it belonged on.
But it wasn't her they were here for, so they carried on.
The Chosen did not need any borrowed memories to translate this inscription. Ssussun elgg oloth; words from home the deep places, where the shadows laid deep. Light destroys darkness.
It was sort of funny, really. The Bhaalspawn lifted the sacrophagus lid with a flick of its wrist, the stone floating like a feather. Ketheric complained at the sound of it hitting the ground; the Chosen cared not.
And into darkness falls a star, it thought, looking down into the tomb, taking in the neatly arranged bones. The girl had had a clean death, with no damage left on her skeleton.
Ketheric was saying something. It didn't care. It took in the sight, the immense expense of the funeral regalia, the markings of a dark-elf drow hybrid, and it carefully didn't think at all.
"Do you think you can do it?" Enver asked, a whisper in its ear.
"There is no thinking," the Chosen explained sharply. "There is only the doing."
Failure was not an option. It withdrew the diamond from its pocket, the weighty thing worth a mortal life, and it recalled sister Sendai's lectures and memories.
Sendai would have done this in their her mother tongue, but that was a way meant for the Scattered Seeds of a century past. Father had new favorites now. It would cast in the ways of simpler mortals, or in the grander ways of dragonkin.
Father did so love those with scales.
"Lantyz bartossa saelot vāedis," the Bhaalspawn began, the Draconic feeling like an armor of scales. "Hen ñuhā elēnī, hāre vestretis, se gēlȳn irūdaks ānogrose. Hārossa letagon, aōt vāedas…"
Two heads to a third sing; from this one's voice, three have spoken, and the price has been paid with blood magic. To bind the three, to you it sings…
It took an hour, chanting all the while, opening the door. Was it a sacrilege, doing this in front of the girl's mother, weaving flesh around dry bone in a parody of creation with the spell, calling the soul back from its rest?
Normally, the soul had to be willing, but Father had never particularly cared about willing. Very few bodies went on His altar by choice, after all. But it was a perversion, doing this like this, and the Chosen could feel the wrongness of the spell. Myrkul's power was never meant to be channeled through a Bhaalspawn, nor to be used to undo a death and return a soul from its rest. Its own soul rebelled at the sharing, the foreign arcana flowing through its body, and it could feel the warning; just this once, Myrkul, don't take it for granted…
The tyrant certainly seems to have taken more than 'just once'. Why shouldn't I?
In time. If she misbehaves, you'll have your chance, I assure you.
The body itself revolted against the act. A Bhaalspawn had two purposes: to kill, and to make more Bhaalspawn. (The Slayer had two as well: to kill, and to obey.) Expecting a Deathbringer to turn around and create life was already a divine comedy; to do this, doubling the effort of creation with a body already strained…
It ached. It hurt. It was too much, and Father didn't care. The pain was the point, with Father's ideas; it was the carbon in the steel of His Blades, making them strong. It was excruciating, when the Chosen finished the spell. The offered diamond vanished, and the girl drew breath into sickly, despoiled lungs.
The Chosen could smell it on her; graverot and clotted blood, the legacy of death and decay.
Its stomach turned, and it clenched its teeth. Breathe in, breathe out, updraft, downdraft; a knife-hand must be steady.
It was unprepared for how deeply a single word could cut, when Ketheric said his daughter's name like a prayer.
It could not think. It could not think of it, lest its Father become angry. It could not think. It turned, and it did not run, but it did walk swiftly to the exit, and it made it to the graveyard of ignoble lives before it doubled over and was violently sick.
Of course it was violent. Of course it hurt. The pain was the point, and true creation required sacrifice. Of course it was all anathema to the wretched thing's very being, because it belonged here among the dead ones, busy with the work of making corpses instead of living flesh.
It mourned what little sustenance it had managed to force down; the way its ribs pressed against its robes with each heaving breath was proof enough of the cost of the paradox. It was funny, if one looked at it a certain way.
It retched again, and the body had nothing to give. It spat bile, and gasped for air.
"Stay away," the Bhaalspawn panted, clutching at gravestones to stay upright.
Enver tsked quietly. "I find it remarkable that among your congregation, not a single one knows how to brew a simple medicinal potion."
Once upon a time, the Bhaalspawn had trained as an herbalist. Those days and ways were far away now, and dealt with plants that grew in the dark. Not this wretched cold Sharran darkness, but the warm-dark of the Underdark.
"They can't know," the Chosen pointed out, swallowing. "You know this."
"Would they not celebrate?" Enver asked, and it heard him stepping closer. It flashed its teeth; he ignored it.
"They would call it a defiling," the Chosen told him flatly. "A despoiling, a betrayal, a failure, the Blood of Bhaal made into Bane's whore -"
It doubled over again, coughing once it could breathe again. It would not whimper nor weep; it was unbecoming.
"Now, dearest," Enver tutted, much closer now. "We know that's not true, don't we? This has always been a partnership of peers, as it should be. Why do you care what they think? Thin the flock, if you must, to those who can keep the faith."
How little you understand, Enver. Do you think anything past the first was a choice freely made?
"You don't need Orin's undisciplined knives," Enver continued. "And truthfully, Tav, you don't need Orin."
"Do not speak her name."
"I know you're attached to her, but it blinds you," he pointed out sharply. "Surely you can see how she hungers for your position. And especially given your current state, I find myself rather invested in your wellbeing -"
"Fuck you," the Chosen said lowly as it straightened, wiping at its mouth. "You have no claim here, Enver Gortash, and the Blood of Bhaal does not simply lay down and die."
It turned to meet his eyes, and Enver tilted his head slightly, grinning crookedly at the defiance, their game. Never mind that it had just been well and truly shown that the Bhaalspawn's body was open for the using by any of the Dead Three that saw fit.
"There you are," Enver purred.
You truly don't understand, the Bhaalspawn thought. All this body can give you is death, Enver. That's all it's good for. This fantasy in your head will never draw breath. This story was written before we ever saw each other.
Enver, oblivious, showed it a kindness, and pulled a waterskin from his belt. The Chosen took it, grateful in its heart even if it was not allowed to show it, and it rinsed its mouth before drinking deeply. It passed the water back with a nod, and withstood the inquisition of Enver's sharp look.
"The Crown will have to wait until tomorrow for another attempt at its taming," the Chosen said, its voice evening out somewhat. "Ketheric's gift took the strength that might have gone to that."
"A worthy sacrifice to gain an ally," Enver pointed out. "A single day does not make much difference. Patience is the game, here. Shall we go and collect our gratitude?"
"Fuck him," the Chosen spat. "Fuck both of them. Let them come to us, grovelling, thankful on bended knee."
Enver laughed, and it was glad to have passed off its own idea as a plan he liked. "Then let us set our trap, dearest," he said, offering an arm the way he'd taught it to take like a pretty little bird when he wanted to show it off among the patriars.
There was nobody to witness, and it had a part to play, to keep the Banite as an ally. That reason alone was why it took the offer, and not because it was a secret pleasure to be touched and not have it hurt.
They went. Pale eyes watched from the shadows, and the clock ticked closer to midnight.
—
"What are you looking at? The orthon's this way! I'm sure these poor fools were all terribly interesting, but we have a job to do!"
"Give her a moment, Astarion, some of us give a damn. Hey, soldier. You alright?"
"It's… nothing. I just felt like I'd… been here before."
"Huh. Well, I suppose that makes sense. You look a bit peakish. Want some water?"
"…Yes. Thank you."