Chapter Text
The flames of Avernus burn .
You can hardly believe your eyes– no , any of your senses. And yet there is no denying the physical world around you, not the motion of the gargantuan ship beneath your feet nor the scent of fire and brimstone and viscera in the air. This world is unfamiliar and hostile and alien to you.
… And yet you recognize it immediately.
“I’m dreaming…” You say.
But are you? Even as you repeat the mantra to yourself the heat does not subside, the world doesn’t distance itself from you. It is here and it is real . You can taste every mote of burning ash on your tongue, smell all the acrid odors that waft from the decimated pod at the center of the room… You can hear the red dragons, which cannot exist but do, roaring from outside and the sound of the ship groaning under their attacks. If you have well and truly lost your mind, then your imagination is far more powerful than you’d ever given it credit for.
But, if it is real…
You swallow. This is no time to dwell on the unknown. If it walks, talks and quacks like a duck…
If this is a figment of your imagination (as you hope it is) then no harm done.
But if this is real then your life is very much in danger of being snuffed.
You crawl to your feet, your head throbbing with a horrible migraine (you try not to dwell on the wriggling reason why), and brace yourself against the pod you had been ejected from. The fleshy matter pulses beneath your fingers and you retract your hand as if burnt, stomach rolling and churning with revolt.
It’s too real .
You shake your head and take stock of your person instead of dwelling on the horrible reality settling around you. You are wearing the clothes you remember putting on that morning. You even find your cellphone in your back pocket.
The date on the home screen tells you that three days have passed since you last remembered. What happened during that missing time is a mystery.
Somehow, you are on the nautiloid ship from Baldur's Gate 3.
You wrack your brains for any information, any evidence , that you have been gifted the powers or expertise the character meant to be in your position would have. But nothing comes to you. You feel just as you always have. Normal, human, mortal…
Helpless . You are helpless.
Even if you do manage to make it out of this room, even if you manage to pry the intellect devourer from the corpse in the next room over (the idea itself makes your stomach churn) and enlist its assistance… What are the chances of you surviving the countless battles to come?
You know the answer already.
There is no chance in hell .
As impossible as it already is for you to be trapped in a literal fucking video game , it is even more impossible to conceive of a future where you make it through this world and all its horrors unscathed. Your destiny is death or worse and you know it.
A deafening hiss pulls you violently from your thoughts.
You scramble back in alarm when the pod beside yours suddenly unlatches and opens, white fog spilling out from inside. You hadn’t even noticed it was occupied with your thoughts so scrambled and disorientated. The vapor obscures the occupant from your sight and you hold your breath, watching with rapt attention, as they pull themself out.
A white scaled hand grips the edge of the pod.
You feel your heart sink to the pits of your stomach when The Dark Urge pulls himself from the chamber and collapses onto his hands and knees at your feet. Your heart is beating against your ribcage like a trapped bird as you take in the large and pale dragonborn. You’ve never seen anything like him before. His great head lulls and you can practically count the hard pink scales that line every inch of his face. You spot sharp fangs peeking from his maw. You take in his talon-like claws that you know will yearn to rip and shred and revel in blood and murder .
Dark Urge blinks, confused, his reptilian red eyes roll in their sockets before landing unfocused on you.
You turn tail and run.
~*~
You blindly make your way through the nautiloid, only focused on getting away from the mortal manifestation of literal murder . You run without regard for where you are going, the fleshy walls and the orifice doorways all blending into one another, too panicked to realize that the layout of this place does not match the one of the game you played. It isn’t long before you are completely and hopelessly lost.
You run out onto a passageway where the walls have been ripped clean off, muscle and sinew flapping uselessly in the wind, and before you stretch the whole of Avernus in all its fiery glory. Your eyes widen, illuminated by the orange glow of literal hell itself. When a red dragon flies past, larger than any creature you have ever seen in your short (and about to become much shorter) mortal life, you fall backwards and collapse in on yourself, the last dregs of your adrenaline leaving you a puppet cut from its strings.
This can’t be real. None of this can be real. You want to wake up already.
You don’t want to die.
“Please, god, let me wake up,” you whisper.
Something about what you say lingers with you, even through your mind numbing and paralyzing fear.
God.
There is no god here is there? Not in this world. But…
… But there are gods .
You suck in a sharp breath and wonder if that will actually work. Gods are literal beings in this world, near and dear to every living thing in this universe. Hell, Gale was a bed warmer to an actual goddess. Shadowheart was stolen away from her own by a jealous and petty Shar who liked to break her sister’s toys. Prayers did not fall on deaf ears in this world, even if the gods chose to ignore them.
But… What god can you pray to?
What god will hear your begging and swoop in and save you, a stranger to this world and their ways, when they let their own followers die all the time?
Hadn’t one of Raphael’s debtors said the same thing? How he prayed for coin and food to feed his family but it was only the devil himself that answered his prayers in the end?
Raphael…
You let out a shaky breath, aware of how profoundly stupid the plan just hatched in your brain is. But… The alternative is death. Even if you can figure out which god to pray to, there is little chance in literal hell any one of them will answer.
But the devil? A devil you can bargain with.
And better yet, you already have the perfect bargaining chip sitting right in your skull.
~*~
Somewhere in Avernus, lounging in his House of Hope, Raphael hears his name.
A satisfying shiver runs up his spine and he smiles, already able to taste the victory of another deal on his tongue. Some poor desperate soul is crying out to him specifically . And who is Raphael to deny them?
It has been a long time since someone has called out to him by name though. It piques his interest. Who is this little mouse who cries out for him so sweetly? He longs to find out. Perhaps he’ll reward their good taste by being more lenient with his named price.
“Haarlep, I’m leaving.”
His incubus slides out from beneath his desk, smiling slyly up at him, pressing their hands to his chest and moving their lips to his ear. Cheeky minx.
“Don’t stay away too long,” Haarlep coos and presses a kiss to the shell of his ear before slinking off, hips swaying enticingly as they make their way back to his boudoir.
Father is certainly good at picking his distractions, Raphael thinks as he stands and dusts off his clothes. But it is of no great importance for now.
For now, this devil has business to attend to.
~*~
You gasp for breath, exhausted from shouting your throat raw. You move away from the opening, lest a dragon or its githyanki rider notices you, and curl up on the ground, pulling your knees to your chest and bury your face between your arms.
It’s hopeless, you think. You don’t know why you thought shouting a devil’s name would magically summon him. You are going to die here. It’s only a matter of time before the nautiloid crashes. And even if the Emperor decides to save you (though you don’t know why he’d bother), there is even worse yet to come. You’ve already spent the last of your luck somehow evading the notice of the githyanki and Avernus imps. But just because they haven’t happened upon you yet, does not mean they will not soon.
“It’s hopeless…” You mutter as hot tears prick at your eyes.
“Nothing is hopeless yet, little mouse.”
And you look up into the face of the Devil himself and hope blossoms in your heart for the first time .