Chapter Text
Karlach had left the rest of the group behind in this opulent, if ruined, study, gathered around the still-warm body of one Lord Enver Gortash. “Enver Flymm,” Hush thought to themselves, “son of a poor cobbler, sold off to a cambion.” They stared at the pale, blood-speckled visage of a man they knew they should remember. The maltreated body was right there, just lying in front of them, awkwardly contorted on blood spattered marble. Sliced skin, bruised meat, and broken bones - all that was left of a cruel, cruel man. The one who had sold their friend into slavery in Avernus, who had ripped her big, kind heart from her chest and replaced it with the very machine that was now ticking down her few remaining days.
Hush stumbled forward, knelt on protesting knees next to the corpse and began to roughly pry the filigree golden gauntlet from its limp hand. The appendage was still soft and warm, not yet stiff with death, not yet cold. No, it would still take some time; if they just sat here and waited a while, as the sun moves further along the sky, closer towards the horizon, they should be able to watch as his jaw and face muscles begin to harden, then his neck – if they were to keep their hand on his throat they would feel it, that useless tensing of muscles, bracing for nothing but the afterlife. When the sun finally fully disappears and blankets the world in dark night, his entire body will be stiff and cool, his blood stale, his flesh rigid to the touch.
As they finished removing the gauntlet they suddenly found themselves being unnecessarily gentle with the body. Something in the back of their ruined mind flared painfully bright, yet strangely muted (something distinctly unlike their Urge, the tadpole, the Emperor, or even one of their companions’ sending spells) as Hush softly set the bloodied hand back down on the cold hard floor. Something was off. Something new. Hush sighed, they were tired of constantly feeling taken off guard by their own mind.
Having collected their price, Hush looked around and finally observed the state of the surrounding carnage - the battlefield that the duke’s private quarters had become.
Shadowheart was slowly making her way through the dead lackeys and guards that were scattered about. She picked useful and precious items from their corpses, much like an overgrown and heavily armoured mockingbird, before she deposited them in the corner of the room. All in a neat row, each with their eyes closed and limbs straightened out.
Wyll and Gale were scouring the desk and bookshelves, searching for any relevant pieces Information concerning the Absolute Cult’s plot and Orin; anything that would maybe give them an edge, a fighting chance in their tasks to come. Hush idly wondered, if there were any documents addressed to, or even written by their former self (not them, not them, not anymore) hiding somewhere in the mess Gortash’s rooms had become. But, judging by their increasingly frantic movements and sour expressions, the search seemed quite fruitless. Between Karlach's fiery rage, with both Wyll’s and Gale’s proclivity for elemental magic, as well as the damage wrought by the Archduke’s clever inventions and constructs, barely anything of any worth or use had survived the fight. Even the rather overlarge hardwood desk seemed but an errant wind away from falling apart.
Aside from their three companions and the corpses (wading through corpses, picking at bodies, wreaking destruction - this is the way, HIS way), the large room was empty. Astarion, Jaheira, and Minsc were in the adjoining hall, still busy keeping watch, dismantling traps, and searching that area for anything they might have missed on their way in. Halsin and Lae’zel, on the other hand, were holding down the camp at Elfsong. Everything seemed in order. Everything seemed just fine… Well, aside from one furious, injured Karlach, who had only just begun mourning her own life, who was now storming through the city. They would have to go find her soon. Though, Hush was likely the last person she wanted to see.
All that pain and discord, all those explosives and tricks, yet their ragtag group had succeeded once again, they had slain the Tyrant, the Chosen of the Black Lord, and recovered the second Netherstone. Yet the mood was solemn, not joyous, as Hush sat silently next to the dead body of the cobbler-hostage-duke, their tail slowly swishing over the blood-covered ground, and observed the late Enver Gortash. The corpse was lying in a puddle of his own cold blood, just beginning to harden and congeal. They slipped one ashen, claw-tipped finger through the thickening fluid, drawing a small line from the shallow pool to a less soiled patch of tiled flooring next to them, tracing small shapes and symbols on the ground. They were not really paying attention to their own actions, as the kept their gaze steady on the body.
They could, despite themselves, not shake the feeling that something about this seemed off. Something was missing. They must be forgetting something important, something essential. A derisive scoff escaped their lips; their brain was all but minced meat, full of holes - as if maggots had already had their fill, sometime before they had awoken on the Nautiloid (but they had never been buried in cold dark earth, had not been allowed the decency of quietly decaying while Toril lay still and dead continued on without them). Forgetting vital details, entire swaths of essential information even, had been the only constant in their experience since gaining consciousness. If only they had known from the start, who they were (what they were)... if only they had remembered the Absolutists’ plot. How different would things be now?
They shifted slightly, still staring at the dead man who they had hatched this terrible plan with. He had called them his “favourite,” had said, he “liked” them, and they wondered, how much he had known about Hush. Had they even been “Hush” back then? What had they been to him? Who had he been to them? Enemies in a self-enforced stalemate? Begrudging allies? Friends? Had the two of them only ever schemed together at the desks in the centre of this room, or would they have sat in the alcove behind the now ruined silk draperies, beneath those ostentatious glass windows? Would they have looked down upon the bustling city and the wide open sea and have talked about other, more menial things?
There was an itch in their throat - a heaviness in their chest that Hush knew they should not be feeling. This man was their enemy, the Chosen of Bane. He had taken away Wyll’s father both in mind and body, and doomed Karlach to an unfair, untimely death. They should be glad the pest was finally dead.
The roiling nausea in their gut, as well as the piercing pai, twisting and thrashing inside their skull, seemed to – for once – agree; they should not be sad right now. Something wretched deep within their mangled mind told them, with a putridly sweet sing-songing voice that they had done well. (What a fine young master, what a good little spawn, to destroy one of HIS eternal enemies’ Chosen). Hush felt their face scrunch at the thought and sharply bit their lips until they tasted blood, spoilt - hot - rotten.
Enver’s death was but another thread to their past, now irretrievably lost. Even more questions concerning their past life had now slipped out of reach. Maybe Hush should simply eat the damned Noblestalk after all, instead of keeping it safe, should Shadowheart eventually want it. Maybe they should have made that deal with the hag back in the wetlands, should have let her pry into their addled mind to retrieve whatever Orin’s violence and Kressa’s sick fascinations had not excavated from their not-quite-dead carcass. Maybe then they would finally have some answers.
Now Orin was the last person alive, who had known them before. Orin, their bloodkin and the next person they would kill (Orin, the usurper. Orin, doomed from the start. Orin, with the pale hair and bony shoulders). Staring at the still-cooling body of the Tyrant (black hair soaked in thick blood, carelessly greased with motor oil), they wondered how they would feel standing like this over her corpse. Had they had been close to the bloodthirsty Shapechanger? Had they grown up together? Had they bickered and fought and played like normal siblings? Was Hush the older or younger one? Had they loved Orin like family? Something deep within their chest twinged painfully, as their ravaged brain protested the attempted recovery of something lost. Another wave of nausea had them lie down on their back, even as their knobby spine and mal-shaped shoulder blades protested the action. As Hush laid there, throbbing skull on the cool marble, some of the constant pain seemed to seep out into the stained marble tiles.
All those questions would never be answered, they resigned themselves. The answers, like any they had sought since waking that day, would not matter anyhow. After all, they and Orin had been destined to kill one another lost memories or no. Both Bhaal and their current quest demanded their kin’s blood… A wry smile stretched scarred lips – fratricide was such an odd thing to have as the only constant between their old and new lives. A bleak comfort, that was not very comforting at all. (It always comes back to murder, in the end).
Quietly they sat back up on their knees, disregarding the ever-present pain in their joints and bones. The following days would be even more excruciating; their body’s petty revenge for not heeding the many pleas for rest and respite. Hush would ignore those too; since the Nautiloid, the ache in their body had been as ever present as the gaping emptiness in their mind. It was almost a comfort to them now, almost grounding. It made them feel more real, more tethered to this body, even if they still could not truly recognise it as their own. After all, it only ever stopped aching, when they lost control.
Hush barely noticed that their companions, who had long since finished their various tasks and had begun to gather and recuperate in one of the few intact areas of the study, had been alerted by their movement and were now watching them carefully. Jaheira amd Wyll were the first to carefully approach Hush, as they fumbled with the clasp of their cloak and the collar of their simple robes, before finally pulling out the pendant from Withers’ tomb. The ashen Tiefling slowly stood up, clumsily supporting themselves on their quarterstaff with a whiteknuckled grip. All eyes were on them, as they quietly began the familiar incantation, pitch black eyes flaring the necrotic green they had all grown to associate with one particular spell.
Gortash's limp body began to hover slightly above ground, eyes open but unseeing, as it awaited the questioning. All were silent, breaths held as a moment passed. Then two.
“Who am I?” Hush asked quietly, voice rough but clear enough to be understood by all those present in the dead room.
“Bhaalspawn… Chosen…,” answered the corpse, empty lungs poorly imitating the voice of a fraudulent duke.
“Who am I to you?” they demanded more forcefully and tightened their grip on the amulet.
“My favourite… Ally…,“ the dead air, forced through stiff vocal cords and cool lips, reiterated. An absurd echo of those same words uttered at the coronation.
“How did we come to meet?” Hush attempted, more calmly after a steadying breath.
“I sent Messengers… You sent Corpses…,” the body forced out cryptically.
Hush bristled visibly, they felt the way their spine and shoulder blades shifted beneath their ill-fitting skin; they felt phantom muscles pulling at ligaments that were not there, attempting physical feats this body was not capable of. It ached. They gnashed their teeth wildly, spitting bile and blood, as they barked the next question: “Who was I to you?” There was an animalistic, unhuman, growl at the edge their tone, that had not been there before.
“My favourite… Ally… ,“ not-Gortash-anylonger repeated once again, unfazed by a feral attempt of intimidation that his dead eyes, glowing that familiar arcane green, could not see.
“No! Answer properly! Who was I to you?” Hush roared, before their voice tapered off into a high pitched whine, broken and overused, too loud inside the ruined study. Their words echoed in the dead silence that had come into the carnage of this ostentatious place; along the tall, cracked walls, and blood smeared floors and into the fissures of their lacerated brain. Their desperate yell burrowed deep into their hollowed skull - where their Urges sat quiet, content and sated, where the fattened tadpole had curled itself up comfortably in ample space, where too many voices and wills had already invaded to force their hands – to reach something beyond. Somewhere deep inside their patchwork being, a long forgotten piece of themselves, mangled but not destroyed, flinched in anticipation at the words the spell would once again force out of the dead man’s body.
“My favourite… Ally… “
Silence.
Cold, dead silence.
The body remained silent, un-animated, dead, and dropped back down into the cold pool of its own blood.