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Sometimes we like to think of decisions as happening in a flash after some great event. That there is some simple cause and effect to the world. That the threads of fate comb themselves out by their own decree, and not by the blood, sweat, and tears of those who perceived the strands and struggle to comprehend them.
Sometimes we forget that sometimes, the most consequential decisions happen while watching a pack of gulls rip apart fish guts at the docks.
The sun begins to wane on their first full day in the Lower City. Zefira’s been here for a quarter of an hour or so. She sits on one of the ledges above the docks, and watches the afternoon fishermen come in, clean their catch, and throw the food to the ravenous gulls. The horde is always hungry, never full.
Her companion steps into her side view. He crouches down, feet flat, folded like a spring.
He listens.
“They remembered me,” Zefira starts. She tries to keep a light tone, but it falls apart with barely a breath. “Bill’s still there, and Vastala. And they remembered me. They cried. They didn’t know what happened to me. Well, they did – they showed me this whole investigation they did, they thought a vampire was involved –” She runs her hands up through her hair. “I don’t understand, I don’t remember - look, I was fifteen and trying to impress my crush! It didn’t mean I deserved to die!”
Her voice shakes, and she clenches her fingers then spreads them wide, breathing in and out, ministering to herself in her mind, repeating all the things she knows to tell others.
He is almost motionless. He listens, to the river, to the gulls, to his heartbeat, to hers.
“And so there’s this little shrine, almost. In the basement. Vastala sketched us.” Zefira looks at her hands, remembering the drawing. “Luthor looks like an angel, and I look like a cherub. All they remember is the lie. All they remember is the lie.”
She rocks herself a little, trying to balance between relief and becoming a spectacle, but the birds in front of them keep taking the tossed guts from the fishermen and no one wants to bother with the racket.
“I never told them how nasty he was,” she admits. “Kind of something my mum and da always drilled into me. Stay in line, keep your head down while stones are thrown. Don’t explain the way we live. Call your pledge- and hearth-fathers Uncle. Don’t talk about Lord Brandobaris, because people’ll accuse you of all sorts of crimes to pass it off of them. If you feed the grapevine of gossip, you reap the wines of discontent.” She closes her eyes and sighs. “And I was a kid. Maybe I should have done more, back then, but I wasn’t who I am now. I’m me now, because I was who I was back then.” She drops her head down. “And so now, I've got to do better. Because I know.”
Zefira opens her eyes, turns her head to Rune, and tells him, “We need to kill Garrett.”
Her companion’s response is simple: he unbends back up to standing, takes a scan of the area to ensure there is no one in hearing distance, crouches back down, and gives a single, shaky, nod.
(She would learn later that the shaking was from excitement and not fear, but then again, she would learn many things later.)
Zefira speaks softly and quickly. “We know what he is now. Astarion's one thing, but Garrett’s a lich – he chose to be what he is, and he's done nothing but try to consolidate power since we crashed. We’ve only just got back here, he’s still getting his bearings, it's the best time to strike.”
Rune gives another nod, firmer this time. Zefira takes it as a strengthened assent.
“Alright. Look, I have a plan. It's dreadfully unimaginable, which is why he won't suspect it.” The halfling gives a nasty smile, one he rarely sees on her – one entirely shrouded from their leader’s eyes. “With the way Smiley fucked up my business conversation with the fellow of negotiable affection, he knows I’m… bothered,” she smiles tightly at the metaphor, “and on top, he knows I fancy him.” Something about ruthless assholes, she thinks bitterly, but shoves it back to focus on the plan. “I’ll light up the hookah tonight and draw him in, I'll make him an offer I'll regret, he'll take it so he can use it against me later, and we’ll hop over to Stelmane’s old room since,” her voice cools, with each word pronounced with casual disdain, “I’m a nasty pervert who wouldn’t mind such a thing.”
Rune glances towards the Elfsong. Zefira follows his gaze.
“Everyone else will turn to me,” she assures him. She holds up her hands and counts off her fingers, doing math she's agonized over for long weeks. “Gale thinks Garrett’s a bastard, but he's intimidated by him, so if we remove Garrett, Gale'll stay with us. Lae’zel was a tough sell, but after the idiot tried to talk her into going back to Vlaakith – fuck’s sake – I reasoned some sense into her. Shadowheart’s been on my side since he failed to dump her into lava at Grymforge – can’t believe he thought I was easier to manipulate than the –” She stops her words, pauses, considers, continues, “person who’s had a lot of her memories of how to identify manipulation erased. Astarion was the easiest! Turns out getting a fucking monastery dropped on him stayed with him! Then I suggested Garrett might try to take on Cazador alone, or even trade him back for Cazador's support, and boom: one vampire spawn on our side.” Zefira rubs her neck self-consciously, but doesn’t mention the added reason. A second level spell was a small daily sacrifice. “Wyll and Karlach already hate the fucker, so no worries there. And once I could show a full hand of support and plans on how I wanted to move forward – like hauling ass down to the Guild to ask Fingers what the fuck, Jaheira was down pat.”
She looks up to Rune, trying to see if she needs to convince him further, but she can see the tension in their hands, the craving simmering under the surface, and she nods to herself.
The dice are cast.
Garrett accepts Zefira’s smoke-tinged come-on exactly as expected. She can almost hear him salivate over the cudgel she’s handing him. The bundle of clothes lumped under Rune’s bedsheets convinces Garrett he’s already in bed. The “human” and halfling sneak out as planned.
Rune has no interest in Zefira’s degradation. Once she and Garrett are in bed, she simply crawls down their leader until her head is next to his crotch, and Rune shoves a blade up through the slit in the bedframe and up into Garrett’s ribcage.
It takes the killer a few moments to scramble out from underneath. By that point, the fountain of gushing blood has fallen to a burble, and glassy blue eyes tilt towards him.
Zefira rises slowly. Blood slicks her hair to the back of her head, and dribbles down her face as she looks up. “Is he–” She’s interrupted by a tongue, running up her chin and lips and around the curve of her nose. Black eyes glint next to hers. While she’s startled, she wisely chooses to close her eyes and mouth, and let him lave every drop of blood from her face.
Although she does interrupt when she feels a sharper caress along her ear, after he sucks a curl dry. “Hey, heeey, easy with the teeth,” she reminds him, and opens one eye to take him in, to see if there were any unholy floating eyes or red-splashed runes being drawn in the air, or any of the other lovely hallucinations she’d caught when he was… more taken with his madness. There were none so far. Merely a half-feral demigod half-elf (?) taking up the taste of their enemy on her skin, and if he had a preference for which flavor it wasn’t evident yet.
(She would find the truth out soon enough. Of the nature of his cravings, of the actions that created the consequences they all fought through. Not yet, though.)
“We’ll have to kill him again,” she pipes up, like the softest whistle she can think of. Zefira knows from her studies that a young lich can be snuffed out, even without finding his phylactery, with regular slayings after natural resurrection. She’s not sure if they have to take the blade out of his chest to do it. And with the way her partner in crime is pulling her close, wrapping her in arms that spasm and twitch her tighter every so often, she doesn’t really care about asking. Not now. Not yet.
The priest has never claimed to be lucky in all things, and love is clearly one place Beshaba rules her fortunes. But she will play the hand she’s dealt, and so she delicately rubs her cheek back against his scar-textured chest, and finds a comfortable place here.
It takes eight deaths for the body to stop reanimating.
Rune savors each one. Zefira watches, and recalls another face for a few of those ends.
When they leave the room, Withers holds out a platinum band broken in two. Zefira picks one half from his boney palm, and Rune, pausing, takes the other.
Perhaps she should have recognized the marriage symbolism then, but – as she’s said before and will say again, that is another story.