Chapter Text
1493
The hells have more than earned their namesake in my eyes.
It has been a gruelling time in Avernus. I do not know what day it is, or even the month, because there is no Sun here and therefore no night. But Withers brought everyone back, just for time, to reunite. Karlach and I had been knee-deep in lemure guts when the old skelly had portalled us back. He said six months had passed, and I both felt it had been longer and shorter a time than that. So, I at least know we’ve passed into a new year.
Luckily, this old diary of mine did not burst into flames immediately upon entering Avernus, and I can use a simple cantrip to preserve the pages as I write here. I think that I will keep writing in this thing until my final days as myself, because I know I will miss the ability to write my thoughts or even have thoughts of my own once I die and am lemure'd.
Karlach and I have returned from the reunion as of what I assume is yesterday, now. Astarion wasn’t there. I had tried to suppress any hope, but I couldn’t help it. I knew if he’d been there I would have felt on edge the whole time, but what I wouldn’t give just to see his face again is an ashamedly short list. I miss him terribly. Karlach misses him, too. We rarely speak of him, because tears threaten us both when we do, and we cannot afford time to sit and cry out in Avernus.
We are so close to fixing her engine, yet so frustratingly far, too. That she even agreed to go back to the hells with me is an honour I’ll never forget, but I feel I am failing her every moment we do not find a cure. She would hate for me to think that, so I do not tell her that I do.
She has always been a light in the darkness, but especially now. We are both in pain from losing Astarion, and from being away from our friends, and from home, but we have each other. I could not do this alone - and Karlach tells me she only returned to Avernus because I promised I would never leave her alone, either. I meant it then, and I mean it still. I keep in contact with my father, and occasionally some of the others, through interplanar mail. I will help Karlach find a way to fix her engine, and then together, we will return home.
She is the dearest friend I have ever had. For all the hardships we have faced, I am at least grateful to have met her. Every now and again, the memory of how Mizora almost tricked me into killing Karlach assaults me, and I have to look to her to remind myself she is still alive with me. The guilt is still there, and perhaps it always will be. But Karlach is here too, and that is more important, and more than enough, for me.
Our lives will never be the same, and we can never go back to the way things were before, no matter how much we may miss certain people. And that is alright. It has to be.
~
1493
There is, admittedly, not much to write about in the hells. We still haven't found a way to fix Karlach’s heart. Mizora sends me after other devils she wants slain, and Karlach and I do so, but otherwise she has left us alone. I think she has grown out of her obsession with gloating now that she has my soul for eternity. I do not even feel her presence in my eye anymore.
I suppose I will just practise my sketching again, and wait until Mizora calls or we find something to help Karlach. I’ve become quite rusty at sketching ever since... Well, ever since then. But Karlach is a willing subject, and she is a bright and beautiful muse, so I will preserve her likeness until I find something else to write about.
~
Several sketches followed. Astarion took in each one with wet eyes and a hollow feeling in his chest. All were of Karlach. Some were more rushed, but others more detailed. Some depicted her in the heat of battle, and others her gentle, smiling face. Wyll had drawn the lines around her eyes, too. Astarion chewed his cheek as he noticed it.
He had also loved Karlach, once. Not like he’d loved Wyll, certainly not, but more than he’d felt for any of their other friends. She had been quite impossible not to love.
But now a bit of jealousy twisted Astarion’s thoughts of her. For years, for maybe even a century, Karlach had been Wyll’s muse, both in writing and in art. As Astarion flipped through the pages with reprinted drawings, he found not a single other attempt at his own face.
As he read on, he became hungry for more, for anything that might tell him whether or not Wyll eventually ever gave in and found pleasure in Karlach instead.
After a solid portion of nothing but sketches, Astarion finally found more writing.
~
1499
It has been seven years since we felled the Netherbrain and Karlach and I entered Avernus. In that time, we’ve found a means to fix her heart, but no one capable of actually implementing it. I have tried to learn over time what I can, so that maybe I could repair it for her myself, but it is an incredibly complicated subject that tests the limits of my intelligence every time.
Now, I’ve received word that my father has fallen ill. Fatally so. He is not long for the living, but Karlach still cannot stay on the material plane without going up in flames after a moment.
I hadn’t meant to tell her. But she saw the pained look in my eyes that I desperately tried to hide, and demanded to read the letter. Her frown had deepened as she’d read, and when she finished she looked at me with such a stern glare I almost feared she’d go up in flame anyway.
She told me I had to go see my father before he died. She said that she hadn’t gotten to see her parents a final time, and it was her biggest regret to this day. She said if I fought her on this, she would throw me back to Faerûn herself. She said by the time I return to Avernus, she’ll have found an infernal mechanic, and we can get her heart fixed together.
She says all of it with a twinkle in her eye and it tears into my heart. She means every word she says, and she does not say anything she couldn’t mean. Which is why when I ask her if she’ll be okay with me gone, she instead tells me to just go already. I will be leaving her alone, which I’d sworn not to do.
Karlach promises me that she will survive, at least. That no matter what happens, she’ll be here to give me a crushing hug when I return. There were tears in her eyes when she’d said it, and undoubtedly also in mine. I couldn’t even argue one side or the other, I was so swept up in conflicting emotion.
When the portal opened to Baldur’s Gate, Karlach practically shoved me through it. I felt the coldness of her absence immediately.
I’d forgotten how quiet the material plane was, compared to the constant roaring fires and shifting rock in Avernus.
A Flaming Fist soldier met with me at the portal’s entrance, and escorted me to Wyrm’s Rock. I haven’t seen any of the city since Withers’s reunion, and so much has changed and improved that my breath caught as I looked out over the great city.
They’ve put me up in a guest room, and have at least given me a furnished one with fresh bed linens and a small wardrobe of clothes. I have not worn anything that wasn’t made of an infernal iron or alloy in years, and the soft thread of the clothes was a balm to my fire-licked skin.
Once the cleric is done treating my father, I will go see him. Until then, I will wait here.
~
As I turned to a new page, and deliberated over what else to write, Astarion decided to show his face. He lunged at me from nowhere, and I don’t know if he’d hidden in my room before I arrived or if he’d somehow snuck in past me. Regardless, he was here, and he was alive, though I cannot say he was well.
He looked gaunt, which I didn’t think was possible. His eyes were rubbed raw, the lines on his face had deepened, and his hair was matted and greasy. He also smelled of blood, though I couldn’t see any on him, which probably meant he hadn’t washed his clothes since he’d last fed while wearing them.
I felt my heart all but stop as I gazed at him for the first time in seven years. When he spoke he sounded like my Astarion again, and I had hoped for a fleeting moment that maybe it had been long enough, that maybe he’d changed. But then he asked if I realised I needed him yet, and it was the same manipulative jargon he spewed after his ascension. It shouldn’t have hurt so deeply, when I already knew he was lost, but in an instant I felt utterly crushed.
He said he’d come to kill me, and I couldn’t help but laugh a bit. I know I shouldn’t have egged him on by calling him a monster, but it’s certainly what he’s become. And a deeper, more honest, less noble part of me felt that it was about damn time someone put an end to this.
Still, I shouldn’t have said it, and I’m glad he changed his mind, because I knew even now that if he tried to kill me, I might let him. And I can’t leave Karlach alone, and I haven’t even gotten to see my father yet, so it is a good thing Astarion gave up.
“I’ll make you wish I’d killed you,” Astarion told me. It took all of my restraint to keep from telling him I already do.
How quickly Astarion makes me feel so unlike the hero I must be.
Thankfully, he left after that, to my surprise. I am now left reeling and struggling for a grasp on reality. As time passes I almost think maybe I imagined him in my desperation to see him again. But no, not even I would torment myself so much. If it had been only in my head, he would be my love again.
A guard has just informed me my father is ready to see me. My hands shake as I write this, both from Astarion’s surprise visit and my nerves to see my father’s state. There are so many things. I must go.
~
I wish I could write solely of my father, of the stories he tells me that I’ve never heard before, of the advice he gives me with a fond smile and a twinkle in his eyes. But during a time I should dedicate solely to my last living relative, to the father I fought so hard to save, Astarion continues to pester me.
The second day I was here, I returned from speaking to my father to find that my sheets had been clawed to shreds, my ink had been spilled across the desk, and my rapier had been left by the fireplace with its end dulled and very telling grooves in the stone mantel. I’d spent hours cleaning and repairing it all, as I refused to let any of the poor staff tend to Astarion’s misbehaviour.
Some part of me wondered if I was being rude in assuming Astarion had been behind this, but the very next morning he showed up again as I dressed for the day and repeated his nuisances. I watched with my brow furrowed as he turned into a small bat and tore at my bedsheets, knocked over my freshly filled ink, and attempted to lift my rapier in his small bat claws. He returned to his regular form to finish blunting my blade, and he grinned devilishly at me the whole time.
I thought I might outsmart him, but I should have known better. I tried using magic to protect my items, only to find he’d taken out his ire on my new soft clothes and my infernal armour, and even the small wooden duck Halsin had whittled for me all those years ago. Astarion had been oddly jealous of such a silly token gifted from a friend, even before he’d ascended, and I mourned the effort put into it as I watched it burn while Astarion sneered at me.
I suppose he wants a reaction from me, at some point. That is why I have every intention of never giving him one.
I could simply seal the window through which he enters my room. But I’ve figured he’d only find another way to get in, anyway. At least by letting him have my window, I can be certain he won’t find his way into another part of the castle and hurt someone else. So long as he remains a nuisance, and not an actual threat, I will tolerate his antics.
And of course, there is also the fact that I’d suffer anything just to see him. He has not made a move against me, or anyone else, for that matter, and so I can continue to procrastinate telling him to leave for good.
I can stare at him with distant annoyance while inside I am committing every one of his features to memory in case it is the last time he decides to haunt me. I can sigh at his pranks, because that’s all they really are, and hear his laugh, even if it is at my expense. Even just the brush of wind he leaves behind as he flies out of my window is enough to have me closing my eyes and imagining it is his palm against my cheek.
I thought I would be okay, after all of this time. I thought for certain that I’d moved on, that even though I would never love the same way again I could at least let the part of me that clung so desperately to Astarion go. Instead, I feel like I’m worse than where I left off. I feel all of my commitments slip away as I think of Astarion visiting me. I feel my mind wandering to Astarion even when I am talking to my dying father at his bedside.
I feel myself imagining, even for mere moments at a time, just intrusive thoughts really, of what would happen if I just gave in. If the next time Astarion arrived, I threw myself into his arms, and let him take me away. He needs me, not the other way around, and I’ve always been good at being needed. I have the idea that maybe if I returned to him, I could help him, fix him, change him back into who he used to be. The thought is gone just as quickly as it comes, and I’m left with nothing but the cold reality, and the crushing shame, after.
Gods, what has he made of me?
~
There is to be an election. My father told me his last request of me was that I become the next Duke of Baldur’s Gate, and it took all of my strength to deny him. But he knows why I cannot, and he trusts my judgement on it, thankfully. He and I have come such a long way together since the day he cast me out, and I am eternally grateful for the time with him that I have been given.
He asked me today if I still thought renewing my pact was worth saving him, now that he was so close to death only seven years later. I told him I’d had to spend seven years of shame away from him, and was given seven more years of forgiveness. I told him it was not just his life I did it for, but the lives of everyone he has saved himself, just by remaining the Duke of Baldur’s Gate after the fall of the Absolute.
“Seven years is not much time, my boy,” he told me. I reminded him I’d become the Blade of Frontiers in less than half that time. I told him it had all been worth it. When I said it, he’d winced as if in pain, and refused to look at me. I asked him what he would have done, in my position. He said he would have let his father die. The answer caught me off guard, but I was steadfast. I told him he is not his father. And I am not him.
He began to weep, then. I held his frail form in my arms, and shed a few tears myself. There was no one but us to witness it, but I was surprised he let me see him cry at all. The closest I ever got to seeing it as a boy was when he would become misty-eyed while talking about my mother. He held onto my arms with surprising strength, and he said he loved me, and it was the first time I’d heard it since I was a boy.
He fell asleep soon after, and I left to confer with Florrick over the election. I was so grateful to see her still around when I’d returned. She has always been our rock. There was a time as a boy that I thought of her like a mother, though she quickly dismissed the idea when I’d voiced as much. I understand why she did, but she'd truly been the closest thing I had to it.
Florrick has several candidates for the next Duke, but wants to narrow them down to only three for the people to vote for. I will help her deliberate over the choices tonight, and we will announce them tomorrow together. It’s the least I owe to the people of this great city, when I can’t be their Duke.
~
I’d almost forgotten about Astarion, in the frenzy over selecting the candidates for Duke and my father’s exponentially fading health. I should have known, however, that even though he’d stopped setting fire to my doublets or spilling my ink, he would still be out there finding some way to frustrate me. Of course, Astarion’s antics did more to amuse me than anything, though I’d never tell him that.
The news of a falsified fourth voting chest in the Stormshore Tabernacle almost made me laugh in front of Florrick, though I managed to contain myself. He’d also started vandalising the candidates’ posters the way he had that painting of Vlaakith back at Crèche Y’llek. It was the exact same mustache and pair of glasses, even, but when questioned I denied any possible idea of who it might have been.
When he is not in front of me, showing me all of the ways in which he has become lost, I can almost pretend it is still him. That he does these things to make me laugh, like he used to. That he blackmails the candidates to test their mettle rather than to cause me more worry. That he could be by my side, gossiping in my ear about how terribly they dress or how they smell or how they’re lying about their noble standing.
It is dangerous to imagine, because when I remember it isn’t so, it becomes yet another thing I want but will never have.
My father still weakens. Magic has slowed the sickness, but it cannot be stopped. The cleric tells me he has given up, and only still breathes for my sake.
I am not ready to lose him. I beg for him to wait until he can see who next becomes Duke. I lie to the both of us and tell him I will be ready, then.
Why must he leave when I’ve only just gotten him back?
~
Astarion visited me again tonight. I’d almost worried I would never see him again. Maybe he wanted me to think that.
He landed on me just as I’d begun to fall asleep, and it was only the sight of his stark white curls that kept me from blasting him away immediately.
He asked me if I was having second thoughts, and for a moment I feared he could see into my mind, and that he knew how weak I was for him. That he could see all the ways in which I’d impulsively imagined submitting to him. But he’d been referring to my abdicating the role of Duke, which I certainly had no second thoughts about.
Even if I wanted to, Mizora’s leash would not allow it. Or worse, she would abuse my place as Duke for her design. I could not risk it. Not even for the people who beg of me otherwise.
He asked if I had been sleeping, and I was so startled by the question I accidentally answered him truthfully. And then I kept speaking truthfully, bearing my heart to him like I always have, only now he would use it against me. And use it he did.
I know now that it is my fault he has become this way. I had been so focused on allowing him the choice that I failed to see there was more at stake than his own fate. What right did I have to stand aside and let him choose whether or not to sacrifice seven thousand souls? Their blood is on my hands just as much as it is on his. I do not escape the blame just because he made the final leap. I should have stopped him. I should have taken him away from the dungeons as soon as I’d freed him from Cazador’s tether. I should have done something.
Instead, I let my love for him blind me to the other spawns’ fate, and distract me from standing against him. And now, he is a vitriolic husk of the once beautiful and loving man he used to be, and it is all my fault. I failed him, miserably.
Even still, when he spoke to me the words I’d only heard him say in my mind, telling me I could still be his, I found myself falling for it. But only for a moment. I felt his hand on my cheek for real this time as he left, and I am ashamed of how I hold on to the lingering feeling of it now so that I will never forget it.
~
It’s been five days since Astarion’s last visit, and I both hope and dread that it was his last.
My father’s very chest shakes as he breathes. His forehead glistens with sweat that does not lessen no matter how many cool cloths we press to his skin. He cannot raise his hands past a few inches, and he cannot keep his eyes open longer than a few minutes at a time. He can hardly speak, and when he manages, there is a horrid wheezing sound as he does.
I will not leave his side. I asked for this diary and a quill to be brought to his quarters so that I could write without worrying I’d miss his final breath. Even still, I pause every few words to listen, and watch his chest. My tears fall intermittently, and Florrick is kind enough not to mention it whenever she enters to check on my father.
I don’t know what else to write. I just know that if I set my quill down, I might not pick it up again. His death is soon, and I am no more ready for it now than I was a tenday ago.
I press a kiss to his head and I beg him not to leave me. And then I wipe away the loose tears and write some more.
~
He’s gone.
~
I have wept more in this one night than I think I ever have, in my entire life. My father died before the Sun had even risen, and then Astarion had found me in my room when I’d expected to finally be free of any eyes, and taunted me for losing my father. I should have known he would come, and that he would gloat, even after I’d warned him not to.
I thought after all the hurt he’s caused me, that purposefully nailing him with an Eldritch blast would make me feel better. Instead, it only made me sick as soon as I’d done it, and even more so at the look on his face after. I begged him to not tempt me further, because I knew how it would end, and I owed it to Karlach at least to stay alive. I lost my father, and I lost Astarion for the last time, all in the same day. I cannot lose Karlach.
Now I wipe my tears away and I force myself to write because I know I will lose the time to in Avernus. I will return there in a few hours, and I hope Karlach will be there, too. Gods, if I go back to the hells only to find she’s been killed in my absence, I think that really will be the end for me.
She is the last person I have left to live for. I just have to hold on until her engine is fixed.