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The others were not subtle in their disappointment. They cared enough to try and temper it, but the shared link of their tadpoles had begun to vibrate the moment Wyll stopped Astarion from intervening on his behalf. A circle of fervently gesturing bodies surrounded the patch of ash-covered land where Mizora’s projection had faded back into the night. Wyll took his place among them as the deafening connections inside his skull equalized with the shouting outside of it, all of it turned toward him.
The uproar was predictable, even if he had expected more confusion than harshness. Sympathy was another’s birthright. Gale’s condition was written off as a mistake long since learned from. Lae’zel’s outright cruelty was rightfully excused as a difficult cultural adjustment. Shadowheart’s exhortation of the curse that rotted the flesh from their allies’ bones before their eyes was met with rolled eyes rather than censure, and Astarion…well, the less said about Astarion’s missteps just now, the better.
They had all erred, all concealed, all course-corrected, but the leash around Wyll’s neck had been judged as more damning than the others since day one. Whether as the Blade of Frontiers, Ulder Ravengard’s son, or a Hells-marked fool compensating for the ridges beneath his skin, Wyll was held to a higher standard. So it had always been, and so it would likely always be. Karlach’s singular loyalty was appreciated, but it alone was not enough to cushion the blow when he fell from the peak of expectation.
“So you’re not even going to try?” Astarion asked. Of all the questioning voices directed Wyll’s way, his was the angriest by far. “She’s clearly desperate, Wyll. You had a golden opportunity to negotiate yourself out of this pact and you let it pass you by. I could have found something to work with if you had let me talk for three seconds instead of balking and playing the dutiful little lapdog the second she gave you an order.”
“It isn’t worth the risk,” Wyll said. “We’re already spread too thin, and there are too many people relying on our success. Taking on something like that when it isn’t necessary is foolish.”
“Gods, you’re unbelievable,” Astarion said. “A thousand errands I’ve begged you not to waste our time on and your own hide is where you draw the line?”
“He’s got a point, soldier,” Karlach said. “We’ve all got personal affairs we’re going out of the way for. Hells, we’ll have to take a detour just to snag whoever this asset is. No reason not to add another thing to the list.”
“They’re not comparable,” Wyll said. “The tasks before us might be difficult, but they’re doable. Getting the better of Mizora isn’t. We’ll squander precious time accomplishing nothing and she will come to take her pound of flesh all the same.”
“You speak as if your patron is infallible,” Lae’zel said, “but she is not. A devil cannot escape their inevitable end any more than Vlaakith can.”
“From where we stand right now?” Wyll asked. “She may as well be untouchable. I cannot raise a hand against her. She will outplay me, just as she has for years. I can accomplish far too much with the compromise she and I have to risk losing it entirely.”
“It isn’t like you to give up so easily, my friend,” Gale said.
“I’m simply being realistic,” Wyll said. “The key to winning any battle is knowing which ones to pick. My release is a non-starter. Do you have any idea what it means to serve a master who would rather see you eradicated than out from beneath their thumb?”
“You know that I do,” Astarion said, his voice gone cold as ice. “Yet I am prepared to face mine head on. What a sad state of affairs for the people indeed if a spawn has more of a spine than their champion.”
It struck more deeply than Wyll had anticipated. Astarion’s sharp tongue poured salt into wounds it had created only days ago, and Wyll was not confident in his ability to weather it gracefully.
“I’ve given you my answer, Astarion,” Wyll said. “You don’t have to understand it, but I’d ask you to extend the simple courtesy of respecting my wishes. Excuse me.”
Astarion stared slack-jawed at Wyll as he turned and walked away. Nothing he said had been cruel — only dismissive. That alone was novel enough to leave the others gobsmacked. No matter what strain they found themselves under, Wyll gave their problems his undivided attention. They were the ones granted grace, and for once, he had none to give. Dealing with Mizora face-to-face always left him hollow, her claws sinking in deeper than normal and scooping out something vital. His friends’ commentary had scraped the edges clean of anything he might have been able to offer them.
Wyll maintained a steady stride until he covered enough ground for the clamor of camp to fade away. It was fortunate he had convinced the others to pitch their tents near the water. Every bend of the Chionthar was equally comforting, and he was in dire need of it. He dropped to sit in the sand twenty paces away from where had hoped to sweep Astarion off his feet and let the sound of rushing water drown out everything else.
The others didn’t understand. How could they not understand? Did they think he did not yearn for a world in which Mizora’s yoke was as far from his back as possible? He would love nothing more, but to entertain the idea beyond the realm of idle fantasy was a waste of time. The likes of vampire lords and inflated tyrants could be killed — not easily, but feasibly. His companions’ demons were slayable and there was something to be gained in the slaying, but her? Unless they journeyed to Avernus itself and struck her down she would simply reappear somewhere else to turn the indignity back upon him. There was nothing to accomplish down this avenue. The four pillars were meant to complement each other; courage without sound strategy beside it was meaningless.
Wyll rubbed at the ache building behind his temples, weighing the merits of struggling through the removal of mud-caked socks and exposing himself to foul magic just to feel the water he loved so well against his skin. He had hoped the others might see his reasoning after spending so much time psychically linked, but apparently not. Seven years of adventuring had given him the right to call himself a hero; perhaps seven more would grant him the benefit of the doubt with those he held dear. The pedestal he waited upon until then was high enough to turn his stomach.
Astarion’s approaching footfalls might have been a welcome sound once, but not while mired in this much uncertainty. When Astarion sought him out, it was usually to offer the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. If Wyll wanted a moment to himself at a party where he felt an interloper, Astarion appeared with honeyed words to pry him partway out of a defensive shell. If Wyll wanted to invite the man he found himself so taken with to dance, Astarion showed up with bitten-down nails and wringing hands to confess that his affection up to that point had been calculated, a means to an end in ensuring safety from someone he could not yet trust to offer it with no strings attached. Wyll wanted to sit with his own convictions until the others forgot this ever happened, so naturally, Astarion came to poke holes in them. His consistency would be almost charming if Wyll’s heart wasn’t pulled back and forth with every swing of the pendulum.
“You’re getting predictable,” Astarion said. “And not in a good way. Sulking by the water is rather too maudlin a habit for someone like you to pick up.”
“I’m not in the mood for more arguing, Astarion,” Wyll said. “I said my peace. For once, please just leave it be.”
“I’m not here for an argument,” Astarion said. He lowered himself to sit far more gracefully than Wyll had, grimacing at the clump of matted, water-logged plants a bit too close to his boot. “I want to apologize.”
“There’s no need,” Wyll said. “You’ve made your position perfectly clear.”
Astarion winced, and Wyll found it difficult to muster up the guilt warranted for causing it. Once again, he had not spoken cruelly. Whatever Wyll thought they might be to each other, they were not actually people who got to have an opinion on the course of the other’s life, even if Astarion insisted upon having one anyway. If a brief reminder of his own words was so uncomfortable, he should not have said them in the first place.
“I want to apologize anyway,” Astarion said. He stared quietly at the same water that captivated Wyll, though Gods only knew what he saw in it.
“I think apologizing typically involves an apology, at some point,” Wyll said.
“No, you don’t understand,” Astarion said. “I want to apologize. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve wanted…” He trailed off and tilted his head toward the sky, refusing to look back down until some of the lines in his face had been smoothed out. “I’m sorry — for…for before and for what I said up there. I didn’t mean that.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Let me say it anyway,” Astarion said. “You’re not spineless. You’re one of the bravest men I’ve ever met — naively, insufferably, infuriatingly so — which is why it’s so baffling that you won’t even try to find your way out of this.”
“There’s no point, Astarion,” Wyll said. “It’ll only make things worse and I’ll end up just as bound as I am now. I’d rather save us the trouble.”
“Divination is Gale’s specialty, darling,” Astarion said. “Not yours.”
“And yet I know exactly how this will go,” Wyll said. Astarion scoffed and nudged him in the ribs, one brow climbing ever higher up his forehead as he stared expectantly. Wyll sighed and tapped one finger against his forehead. “May I?”
Astarion was more skittish than the rest of them about conveying information via the tadpoles in their brains, for all he was willing to make use of the other abilities they offered. He frowned, the tip of one fang digging nervously into his lip before he nodded and braced himself against the sand in anticipation of the mental onslaught. Wyll did not have to dig deep for the memory he wanted to share. It never wandered far from the edge of his awareness, a constant accompaniment to his journey up and down the coast to keep his perspective clear. With a firm tug, he wrenched it free and let it spill into the shared space between them.
The harpy’s siren song reached across the valley. Its notes of temptation echoed off the limestone walls in a display of acoustic prowess that would put the finest temples to shame. Wyll tightened his grip on his rapier, dizzy with anticipation over another opportunity to prove his mettle. One year in Mizora’s service, and already he was a master at navigating it. His presence was required in the Hells only on occasion. It was easy enough to put off his duties as long as possible, and easier still to give only a passable effort before returning to where he was needed. To where the work mattered. The power she offered, he offered right back to the people. With enough victories beneath his belt, eventually his father would see that the trade he made had been a worthy one.
He waited in the cover of a rocky outcropping until the second harpy he knew lurked nearby called out to join the first, making mental note of both their positions and planning accordingly. They seemed to be approaching a village nestled in the valley’s deepest point from either side and conspiring to bring its inhabitants’ lives to a swift and brutal end. Wyll let magic seep into his weapon, binding it with the force that elevated blade to Blade and preparing to loose it upon any monster that dared terrorize his homeland. He leapt from his shelter to slide down the hillside to the waiting battlefield below. His feet came out from beneath him almost immediately as a familiar hook in his abdomen yanked him backward through the fabric of the world.
The flames he plummeted through were uncomfortably warm even as the shell of Mizora’s protection kept them from burning him. His knees rattled where they landed hard on the marble floor of her palace. He stumbled upright as fast as he was able, unwilling to prostrate himself before her for a second longer than required. She lounged across her throne as if she were untouchable, her dress falling in an indecent display that many others surely found tempting and wearing more jewels on her person than many families saw in a lifetime.
“Hello, pup,” Mizora said.
“You have to send me back,” Wyll said. “The harpies…”
“I have a job for you here, though,” Mizora said. “And not even a greeting in return? That’s the problem with taking in strays — there’s no training manners.”
“Please, Mizora,” Wyll said. “Please. That was important. I’ll return immediately after I finish.”
“There are some imps in the wine cellar refusing to leave,” Mizora said. She waved one taloned hand toward the door, not even pretending to entertain Wyll’s protests. “Go dispatch them for me, won’t you? I’m bored of them.”
“Imps?” Wyll asked. “You pulled me away for imps? They’re nothing. Simply snap your fingers and be done with them. I need to…”
“I determine where you’re needed, Wyll,” Mizora said. “Not you. I have a very lovely little piece of paper proving it if you’d like to see.”
Wyll opened his mouth to beseech her one more time, but was silenced by the fiery glare she leveled his way. He sighed and took off for the lower levels of the palace at a run. For all his deft maneuvering around the constraints placed upon him, a direct order was inescapable. The quicker he complied, the quicker he could go back to what mattered.
The imps in the cellar weren’t even a challenge. They were wine-sodden and clumsy, and they fell beneath his sword as if he were spreading butter on a hunk of bread. To waste his talents on something like this was demeaning, and he had no doubt that it was by design. Every time he thought he had killed the last of them, more appeared from hidden corners deeper in the cellar. They reeked of sulfur the likes of which only clung to freshly formed creatures, and Wyll frowned. If he didn’t know better, he would assume that Mizora was summoning more into existence simply to draw out the task. It was petty enough to be unsurprising from her, but he didn’t understand what she hoped to accomplish.
He slashed his way through the cellar’s occupants long enough for his arms to grow weary before the last of them finally fell. It twitched on the floor beneath his heel and he yanked his sword out of its chest with a frustrated shout. There were steps to be followed after a fight, weapons to maintain and injuries to check for to make sure the next would be faced in top shape. Wyll skipped all of them to sprint up the stairs two at a time and burst back into Mizora’s throne room. She hadn’t moved an inch. Her smile did little to disguise her sharp teeth as she watched Wyll cross the length of the room, an artificially inflated distance meant to tip the balance of power before an audience could even begin.
“Done,” Wyll spat, doubling over and panting for breath when he finally reached the base of her throne. “Now send me back.”
“Happily.”
With a snap of her fingers, Wyll hurtled back to his proper plane through the horribly familiar anchor point buried in his core. He collapsed to his knees on gravel and grass instead of polished marble. The valley around him was silent — no harpy’s call, no gentle chatter of villagers. Not even birdsong. Wyll forced himself to look up from the ground and immediately wished that he hadn’t. What remained of the villagers’ bodies was arranged in a neat row, as if they had lined up single file to be picked clean. The stench of them was overpowering even from his vantage point further up the hill. There had been nobody here to stop the harpies from making a meal of them, and they had eaten well.
“How deliciously gruesome.”
Wyll hadn’t noticed Mizora following him. He whirled to face her, and only the phantom tightening around his neck kept his sword in its scabbard.
“This is your fault,” Wyll said. “You pulled me away for frivolous nonsense when I could have saved them from this!”
“And?” Mizora asked.
“And? What do you mean ‘and?’ The whole point of this pact is so that I have the ability to prevent things like this!”
“Wrong,” Mizora said. “The point is for you to do as I say. Honestly, it’s unbecoming for you to get this worked up over something so trivial.”
“This is not trivial,” Wyll said. “Those were people. They had lives, they had families, they had dreams. I came here to save them and…”
“Let me make one thing abundantly clear to you, Wyll,” Mizora said. The teasing lilt in her voice had vanished, replaced with cold indifference. No matter how she might play and pretend, her true colors always emerged in time. “The only little apes in this horrible plane who matter are the ones who belong to me. That includes you, by the way, since you seem to have forgotten. These jaunts of yours where you go out pretending to be anything other than mine? Those are not a victory you’ve won for yourself by being clever in skirting the edges of my instructions. They are a gift, a carrot that I would be all too happy to replace with a stick should you continue to forget how this works. Let me remind you, one more time — I point, you fetch. If you must drop something valuable to get there more quickly, then let it shatter.”
“I can’t just…”
“You know, maybe this is my fault, in a way,” Mizora interrupted. She took Wyll’s face between her hands, and he fought to keep from flinching away from her touch. “One can hardly blame a dog for straying when he’s given too long of a leash.”
Her thumb shifted from his jaw up the line of his cheekbone to rest along his orbital socket. Wyll swallowed, but he did not pull away. To admit defeat in any small way would be to relinquish another foot of tenuously won ground, and she would relish rubbing his nose in it. If it were anyone else standing within her grasp, they might have believed her smile actually contained any of the tenderness she coated it with. They would have been strung along right up until the moment the tip of her claw pierced their eye.
Wyll screamed. He did not want to give her the satisfaction, but he couldn’t have stopped if he tried. The shock of his eye popping beneath the pressure tore through his skull like wildfire, more painful than any magic he had ever fallen victim to. Mizora cooed as she pressed in deeper. Her claw scraped along the inner edge of his eye socket and lit every nerve ending aflame in its path. Wyll thought he might choke on the anguished sobs forcing themselves up from the depths of his lungs, every bit of air inside them transformed into smoke and ash beneath Mizora’s damned hands.
The world went black around the edges. When color finally crept back, all he could see was scarlet. The ground beneath his hands where he had fallen once more was speckled with blood that continued to drip from the throbbing pit where his eye had once been. He stuck one hand out to touch and found the ground to be much closer than it appeared to be. His head spun and his stomach churned, and it took all of his strength not to collapse face first into the puddle continuing to grow.
“Get up,” Mizora said.
Even if Wyll had wanted to defy her, he couldn’t. His body righted itself on puppet strings against his volition, and he spit out the bile that filled his mouth at the sudden change in position. She cradled his cheek gently in revolting juxtaposition to the gaping wound left by that same hand. With the other, she summoned an orb of rough stone and pushed it unceremoniously into the newly vacant socket. Wyll’s head felt stuffed with cotton, like the worst head cold he had ever suffered magnified to the point of torture.
“There we are,” Mizora said. “Much easier to keep you in line this way, don’t you think?”
The magic emanating from the prosthesis clashed with Wyll’s own in horrible discord. They pulsed out of of tempo with each other, waves crashing in opposite directions and churning the blood in his veins into swirling eddies with every bit of interference. A sending stone, he surmised. Whatever freedom he thought he had secured for himself disappeared in a blink of his remaining eye.
Surfacing from the odd haze the tadpoles pulled one under was always disorienting. The image they projected faded from view where it was overlaid atop the real world. Wyll shook his head clear of the fog and oriented toward the sound of retching. Astarion was bent over at the waist, still bracing one hand against the damp sand to stay above a pile of his own sick. It was similar enough to the image Wyll had presented to their psychic connection to leave him winded. He barely managed to get his wits about him and reach over to pat Astarion on the back.
“Are you all right?” Wyll asked.
“Fine,” Astarion said. “Just give me a moment. You’re not the only one with unpleasant memories of eyes being plucked from sockets.”
“I’m sorry,” Wyll said. “I wouldn’t have…”
“Oh, don’t you apologize,” Astarion said. “At least mine grew back. Gods, she’s terrible. One of a kind, truly, and that means something coming from me.”
Wyll chuckled. He couldn’t manage anything more through the guilt of reminding Astarion of his own past, even accidentally. Astarion shuddered beneath the path of Wyll’s hand along his spine. He removed it, not as confident as he was a few days ago that such a thing was welcome.
“Do you see now?” Wyll asked. “I cannot go against her.”
“You already have, though,” Astarion said. He raised one hand to trace a gentle finger along the base of one of Wyll’s horns, withdrawing when it strayed too close to his eye after such a recollection. “Just not for your own sake. Is that it?”
“Astarion…” Wyll sighed.
“Well, if you don’t want me to see right through you, you should quit being so completely transparent, darling,” Astarion said. “Take a page out of my book, I’m begging you. There’s nothing wrong with an occasional fit of rampant self-absorption.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is, actually,” Astarion said. “You deserve better than how you’re treated. Better than how you were treated by your father, better than how you’ve been treated by me, certainly, and much better than how you treat yourself.”
Wyll looked back to the water. The river did not have well-crafted points meant to wear away the armor that kept him sane. The river offered no pretenses that made it impossible to tell whether the comfort it offered was genuine. It simply was. It could not be changed except by what nature allowed, and no stubborn friends poked their noses in to try and change it anyway. There was more of a kinship between them than Wyll shared with the man beside him, who still appeared no more than a stranger in certain tricks of the light.
“I tried to escape from Cazador once, you know,” Astarion said.
“That’s impossible,” Wyll said. The confession shocked him enough that he could not help but stare. Anyone who knew anything about monsters knew that a vampiric sire bond was inescapable. It was as iron-clad as his own pact, and part of why he had hoped Astarion would understand his hesitance more than the others.
“Believe me, I know,” Astarion said. “And yet, I tried all the same. There was a mark I couldn’t bear to drag to his doom, so I helped him flee the city and tried my best to go along with him before Cazador ordered me back. The consequences for it were…as close to unbearable as he’s ever come up with. It was a lesson well-learned; I never stepped out of line again — a well-behaved little pet, not that it won me any favors.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Wyll said.
“Oh, I don’t,” Astarion said. “My siblings certainly did, but I’d do the same without hesitation. There was never any reason to believe it would go differently until now. Do you know why?”
“Yes, we’ve all heard at length how attached you are to our little stowaways,” Wyll said.
“No, not the tadpoles,” Astarion said. “Though they are terrible useful little things, aren’t they? No, I mean because I have you — and the others, I suppose, but you’re a rather more fortunate find when it comes to slaying monsters. All the tadpoles in the world couldn’t propel me to victory if I faced down Cazador alone. You’ve promised to come with me, and I trust that you will, and therefore it’s a fight I’m more than willing to pick.”
“Astarion…”
“You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?” Astarion asked. “I can do this for you, Wyll. I can’t always believe you when you say such wonderful things to me, or return the affection you offer, much less be worthy of it. I can’t do much, but this? Finding a loophole in some arrogant she-devil’s paperwork? This I can do in my sleep.”
“I don’t want you to put yourself in danger for my sake,” Wyll said.
“Don’t think I don’t notice that you make no mention of the danger you would be in,” Astarion said. “Honestly, it would be terribly rude of you to deny me this. You’re the first person who’s managed to make me care about you in over a century. The least you could do is let me. Or are you the only one allowed to attempt grand gestures?”
Wyll turned back to the water. What Astarion asked felt impossible. Not even the Blade of Frontiers could grab hold of a dream that had slipped from his grasp six years ago and been lost to the wind. For all the tall tales the countryside spread of his exploits, none were as fantastical as the idea that Wyll could be free. He startled at the appearance of light pressure along the back of his forearm. Astarion’s skin was pale as moonlight compared to his own. He watched, transfixed, as his hand skimmed the length of his arm and came to rest atop his own.
“Please,” Astarion said. When Wyll dared to look at him, there was no trace of the deception he had recently learned was present for the rest of their quasi-courtship. His eyes were wide and open, and desperate in the outer corners. “Let me do this for you.”
The care Astarion claimed with words was obvious in the trembling of his fingers. The idea of Wyll being trapped in this pact was so distressing that he wore it in every inch of his frame, and the sincerity of such a display from someone who had admitted to being less than sincere in the past gave Wyll pause.
Perhaps Astarion had a point. Things were different than they had been the past seven years wandering the wilds. Wyll was no longer alone; who was to say that other things couldn’t go differently as well? Perhaps he could rejoin his fellow man with his feet firmly planted on solid ground, neither elevated to dizzying heights nor cast to the depths in scorn. He separated his fingers enough for Astarion’s to slip between them and held on tight, nodding into the middle distance and pretending it did not terrify him to entertain the idea that an unchained future was possible. The thought of it was as beautiful as the silvery dome keeping him from harm, and as beautiful as the man beside him begging to make it reality.