Chapter Text
Irva breaks the companionable silence first.
“Now that Mizora’s no longer got your tongue… tell me — how did your pact begin?”
A girl danced in the tall grass, dreaming of when it would go up in flames.
Not long now.
Not long at all.
They have been traveling for two days since they left what will soon be formerly known as the Shadow-Cursed Lands. But Irva’s mind isn’t on the broken land they’re leaving behind, nor is it on the city ahead.
All she can think tonight is that Wyll looks beautiful in the moonlight. It glints off of the enchanted rapier he stows carefully after cleaning. It illuminates his profile as he ponders Irva’s question, reflecting off of the contours of his arms and horns.
He wears them well, Irva thinks to herself absently.
In response to her question, Wyll poses his own.
“If your home were under siege,” he asks softly. “What would you sacrifice to save it?”
Irva frowns. “I hope you know I’m not passing any judgment on you…”
“I know, but… humor me?” Wyll chuckles.
“Very well,” Irva shrugs, thinking of ancient temples, vaults, and scriptures. “I like to think I’d have given my life to protect what was mine.”
“As would I,” Wyll says grimly. “And more.”
He opens his mouth, and his voice cracks for a moment. Irva imagines that he is testing whether his wretched patron truly is a cambion of her word.
“I was seventeen,” Wyll recalls. “Father — Ulder Ravenguard — had just been named a Grand Duke, and was called away to Elturel to help settle a dispute.”
His face hardens. “That’s when the Cult of the Dragon made its move.”
Irva’s heart thuds inside of her chest.
Twenty-five voices, calling out as one.
She had never heard anything so beautiful.
“Come child,” Father had called. “It is time.”
“The… Cult of the Dragon?” Irva asks quietly.
“It’s a bold name for a fractured religion,” Wyll explains. “Some believers hold that undead dragons will inherit the world. Others believe much worse. The ones who came to Baldur’s Gate in particular worshiped the dragon goddess Tiamat. Their intention was to conjure her and lay waste to Baldur’s Gate… and then the world.”
The campfire crackles in the quiet, chilly air. Their other companions have either turned in for the night or are on watch.
Or… perhaps they’re eavesdropping in as well.
Wyll continues his story with a haunted expression upon his face. Irva listens silently, having gone very, very still.
“A tenday after my father left, I heard a whisper as I slept,” he recalls. “It said, ‘Dusthawk Hill. The Queen of Chaos awakens. Go alone.’”
“Mizora,” Irva mutters unnecessarily.
Wyll sighs. “The same.”
Irva clenches her hands in her robes. When she takes control of the Absolute for her queen... the damned cambion will the first to go. Painfully, preferably.
The girl was still barefoot long after she stopped dancing upon the grass.
She ate what was offered. Drank the chalice that was passed.
She wondered whose blood was in the wine tonight.
“...so I grabbed a rapier and set out,” Wyll continues. “There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, yet not a single star was shining.”
Chanting filled the air. The girl could pick out her father and sister’s voices among them. Even though she wasn’t a part of this ritual, she joined in when it was time, the words falling from her lips — practiced and as clear as crystal.
“...and there they were, gathered at the foot of the hill,” Wyll hesitates. “I know it is much to ask, but may I show you what happened?”
Irva nods after a moment, entangling her hand in Wyll’s and letting their temples bump together. How strange that such a gesture has become so natural to the two of them, tadpole connection or no.
An iridescent aura shimmers around Irva’s vision. Her head buzzes — and then quiets — as his consciousness interweaves with her own. The connections pulse between them like constellations, each thought shimmering like a falling star.
As Wyll’s memory manifests itself before her senses, Irva feels three waves of grief rush in and converge upon her tightening chest.
One wave for what he lost.
One wave for what she lost.
And the other…
…for what will be lost for both of them.
In the looming shadow of the mount, Wyll saw five groups of five figures each encircle a lofty totem. Atop each totem, a dragon’s head had been carved, with a massive orb held in its mouth.
From her own memory, Irva knows…
…a girl had traced her fingers over a red dragon’s head, marveling at the detail of its scales but not daring to touch the orb.
With their shared memories intermingling, Irva sees two simultaneous views of a resplendent moment.
The cultists chanted, first softly, then crying to the starless sky.
Irva feels tears spring to her eyes.
Even after all these years, the awe still feels fresh.
There was a crack of thunder, a gust of wind, and a dragon’s white head appeared in the storm.
‘There she is!’ the girl wanted to cry out in jubilation, but she didn’t want to distract the summoners. They had a job to do, and she had hers.
She must keep up with the others — make their way into the city towards their quarry…
Wyll blinks back tears as well, grimacing as the memory continues to drown out the real world around them.
As the maelstrom howled, Mizora’s lips pressed to his ear.
“She will destroy Baldur’s Gate,” she whispered to him as he watched on in horror. “Grant me your soul, and I will give you the power to save it.”
The stormy memory fades away with her last simpering word, leaving Irva and Wyll huddled together and shivering beside the campfire.
Wyll pulls away — only by a bit as he checks over Irva’s wan expression.
“She read the terms while two devils stood witness,” he recalls heavily after a moment. “And I said yes. One soul for one city.”
“Just like that,” Irva manages to say. “A brave choice — and a frightening one, in the face of so much power.”
“I don’t know that it was brave,” Wyll says resolutely. “I just know that it was right.”
He continues to cling to Irva’s hand, mismatched eyes flicking as the memories finally have the freedom to manifest into words. “The moment I agreed, I burned with the fires of Avernus and oozed the rot of Dis. The cultists…”
…choked on the poisoned fumes; burning, running from flames that inexplicably rose from the ground. A fiendish army had manifested out of seemingly nowhere…
“We have to go back!” the girl barked to the others.
She was running back towards the ritual before they could stop her.
She had her role to play, sure, but she also had her family…!
“...when we were done, all that remained were five gray orbs atop a pile of ash,” Wyll sighs.
The charred dragon head had crumbled under the girl’s trembling fingers.
Her fingers fell through to press against the inexplicably unbroken crystal orb — still cool to the touch.
“Forgive me,” she croaked.
“And so… my soul was bound, and my lips were sealed,” Wyll concludes bitterly.
Irva looks up at the night sky. Despite the bright moonlight, there are still stars visible — so many of them.
The girl had watched them all wink back into existence.
All that work… all those lives…
For nothing.
“Irva?” Wyll prods his companion, rubbing her hands between his own. “I apologize if my dark tale was too much for either of our tadpoles to bear…”
“It’s not that,” Irva reassures him hurriedly. “I was just thinking… surely Mizora doesn’t actually care about Baldur’s Gate. So why would she want to save it?”
Wyll lets out a short, bitter scoff.
“She didn’t,” he scowls. “She came on the order of her mistress Zariel. Tiamat made a play for power. Zariel had other plans. That’s the most Mizora’s ever said; all that mattered was that she got her prize: another pet added to her warlock menagerie.”
Wyll shoots a resentful gaze towards his new, enchanted rapier — a bitter boon for their perilous quest.
“My father returned to an unsuspecting city and a wayward son with a smirking devil at his side,” he swallows, voice breaking. “I tried to tell him the truth, but my mouth couldn’t form the words. I led him to the battlefield, but Mizora had swept it clean. I showed him my stone eye but he only turned away. After, he said only one word: ‘Go.’”
Wyll closes his mismatched eyes. “So I did.”
Irva’s heart continues to race.
After all, Wyll’s story leaves out an important detail — one she can recall intimately.
A young man — a boy, really — stood slowly before her. His hand was remarkably steady as it retrieved his blade. His face, which still had spots and had been contorted in a scream just seconds earlier, was firm and resolute.
Blood poured down his cheek from a destroyed, unseeing eye.
Dagger raised, Irva didn’t know why she hesitated then…
…and she doesn’t know why she hesitates now.
“Irva?” Wyll asks, and his voice, his eyes, and — dark lady — his touch is gentle as he steadies her hands. “You’re… trembling.”
Irva searches his face.
“Wyll… your eye…” she begins.
Wyll nods, grimacing. “Indeed. It’s the one scar I ever bore from the battle.”
He gestures helplessly at it. “You were right, of course — the new eye is a sending stone, courtesy of Mizora. She uses it to track my location and call from a distance. I could flee to the Spine of the World or the depths of the Lowerdark, and still never shake her.”
Irva withdraws her hands, tucking them carefully into her sleeves as glances away from the warlock.
“Hells, is it something I said?” Wyll asks sheepishly.
Irva stills, forcing herself to meet his gaze.
“It’s a harrowing tale,” she manages, her voice strained. “And it’s fortunate you survived to become who you are today.”
“Mind flayers aside,” Wyll jokes half-heartedly.
“Mind flayers aside,” Irva repeats, the side of her mouth quirked up in a smirk.
She stands to excuse herself, pausing one more time once on the other side of the campfire. This time, she turns fully to the bemused warlock.
“You’re a brave man, Wyll,” she tells him quietly. “Your father should have been proud.”
She walks off, one hand clutched around a battered amulet tucked perpetually away beneath her shirt.
—
That night, when Irva is done with her prayers, she buries one extra coin behind Wyll’s tent.
Just in case.