Chapter Text
He had been expecting it—Orin was impulsive at best, maniac at worst.
Memories trickle back, slowly at first, then a flood, the longer they blunder through the maze that is the Lower City, snatched from loose lips, gleaming teeth, whispered by assassins who eagerly throw themselves on his dagger and his fangs with their throats bare, Bhaalists who gaze upon him as though they might know him.
And so, Orin wounds him yet again.
She tickles him with the point of her knife, turns and twists it under a scale. The knife is sharp enough. The scale lands like coin on the ground. Insignificant and small, smeared with blood. His blood and his scales. She takes them off one by one as she would wings off an insect. A slow sawing motion that might have been soothing had it not been her.
He can feel the magic of the netherstone as it brushes against his throat. He jerks in pain when she cuts to deep, knocking her away, and it is only then he realizes that he is shackled, shoulders pulled at an unnatural angle as his knee slips from under him, toes, feet grabbing nothing.
Somewhere close by, he hears a groan—Master, oh master. It’s Sceleritas, head half-smashed in, his remaining eyeball gleaming malevolently in its socket.
He heaves.
Bhaal is not without mercy. Orin kicks his head. He is knocked out.
He wakes to a mouthful of pennies, a sense of belonging and a hollowed-out ceiling he thought he’d never see again. The Temple of Bhaal is carved from solid rock but it had its charms. He had long admired the black maw hanging over him in the place of a sun.
“Look how it sleeps, unknowing, soft.”
He rolls his eyes.
She hates him. He knows that. He does not scream as he should; he does not plead or beg.
He bleeds and bleeds in silence and she hates him for it.
Oh little sister, little sister—he thinks, don’t you see?
“You drugged me.” He rasps. “Were you so afraid?”
She shrieks at the accusation, twitching, maligned. Her skin flows like water and she is him, a dragonborn, a chosen, a bhaalspawn.
She has no idea what he is going to do to her.
“Afraid of you?” She asks in his voice. “A maggot, too weak to stand?”
He laughs and it echoes, it reverberates through his skull. It chases away the deep gnomes chipping away at the insides. The Bhaalists stare at each other, unnerved.
“You’re still a little girl with her little dollies, playing at things she does not understand.” Her skin ripples and it is her again. Soft. Meat. He adds, “Your mother knew better.”
There is, was, a knife in his chest. His skin parts easily, like roast pork dripping with grease, an apple peeled over remnants of dinner, the little ducklings at Halsin’s feet, growing in size. He remembers, the owlbear cub tried to eat one and Lae’zel, being the smallest of them, had to stick her hand down its throat to get it out. Despite Halsin’s assurances and Scratch’s tender tongue, the cub had struggled, muscles swelling under the patches of fur and feathers.
Lae’zel, he knew, would have been impressed by its sharpness. Shadowheart would have called it an overkill.
His chest expands as he draws breath and his guts spill out.
Her eyes widen. He has taken her by surprise once more. Orin, Orin, Orin—his fractured mind hums. This is why. This is why she is the least, a novice content to mewl over his brother’s knees. She flails at the most basic concepts. Bhaal has no need for ceremony, for blood. A camp full of poisoned goblins is just as worthy as a babe drowned in a well. It is all the same to him. It is a numbers game, little sister, you should know better.
She should have known better than to hold a knife against him without intending to use it.
He remembers her as a child, pointy-faced and rabid, held fast to her mother’s hip. Even then she was trying to mimic him. It was endearing once.
Now.
A spasm in his leg and he seems more of his life blood gush from his belly. Pink intestines unspool into his lap. It reminds him of the gnolls he saw on the Risen Road. The way they chewed and chewed themselves out of a hyena’s womb. Perhaps he too is birthing something anew. Maybe this is him being reborn.
Orin kicks Sceleritas forward, demanding he fix it—fix it!
The Bhaalists look at each other aghast. Their domain is murder, not preservation. This is a mockery of their father in his house, at his temple.
He smiles.
His hands are freed. He had. He had always been good with his hands. Medical knowledge was useful when prolonging suffering, when he was looking for something and could not find it from the mouths of dead Fists.
There is no thread, no needle, no hot water and not a single clean hand. He can’t find a friend among the faces that weave in and out of his room.
They’re not looking at him like he’s a threat.
He could kill them so easily.
If they are here, they are not under the sun wreaking havoc in Baldur’s Gate. If he could hold them here with his carcass, then maybe. Maybe he can save the world after all.
Or.
A thought intrudes into his mind so abrupt and clear, he knows that it is not his own.
Slow. The tadpole coaxes. You must slow your bleeding. Help is coming.