I sat alone with Shadowheart on the beach underneath the full moon, in a secluded cove near the South Span and just around the tip of the peninsula from Gray Harbor. Both of us had shared a laugh about how we always seemed to end up in such a place whenever we were having a major relationship moment.
Right now Dame Aylin was leading some of the others on a mission to clean out the Temple of Bhaal. After all, just because Orin and several squads of her most skilled servants were dead didn't mean that a nest of murder cultists wasn't still present in the city and didn't still need dealing with. Besides, while Aylin was professionally gratified that our plan to lure out Orin and deal wth her expeditiously had succeeded so well that didn't change the part where she'd been psyched up for the big fight we'd been expecting and had found our most recent success to be a bit anticlimactic.
We'd been very fortunate with Orin. I wouldn't exactly call it a fluke, as we'd only gotten the result that we'd been planning for all along. But the fact was that our plan A had been a best-case scenario and that we could very likely have ended up needing a plan B or a plan C instead. Luring Orin out as we had might have been essentially guaranteed given her particular psychology, but managing to so neatly trap and destroy her in the open? We'd set up everything we could to make that happen, but if she'd been even slightly quicker on the uptake or less careless she could still have gotten away from us. And while the runepowder bomb had had sufficient destructive power to vaporize even the Slayer, it wasn't something we could use on a city street without either favorable circumstances or else a significant amount of collateral damage, and those favorable circumstances had required some tricky split-second timing to pull off.
This is part of why our lure had involved assembling such a genuinely large force. If we hadn't achieved the best-case scenario then we'd have had to pursue Orin all the way back to the Temple and assault it the hard way after all. There was still a significant difference between entering the temple when Orin had had all the time necessary to prepare for our arrival and had built her entire plan around that, and entering the temple when her plan A had just failed disastrously and we'd killed at least some of the same people she'd have needed to arrange for whatever occult ambush she'd have prepared down there. So we'd still had a fallback position for doing it the hard way... if we'd needed to.
But we were very glad we hadn't needed to, even if there likely was still some kind of manifestation of Bhaal down there that Aylin and Isobel would have to banish. Although we'd have been down there helping them with it if all of our friends hadn't insisted that we'd done enough recently and that we deserved some private time.
Despite the obvious thoughts that came to mind with the two of us finally getting a moment alone for the first time in days as well as the fact that we hadn't actually consumnated our relationship before, we'd actually started out with swimming lessons of all things. Shadowheart had never had the chance to learn before, after all - or at least not that she could ever remember - and she'd even been more than a bit afraid of the ocean. Conquering a mundane fear with purely mundane support from her beloved, without any goddesses or quests or tadpoles or sacred duties involved... after all that we'd already been through, including facing down Shar herself in the Chamber of Loss, it was largely a symbolic gesture for her. Yet still, it had been an important one.
And as for a more romantic interlude on the beach... well, we'd certainly been building up to that as well, but we had some things to talk about first.
"Comfortable?" I asked her as we laid next to each other on our spread blanket after our swim, our clothes discreetly back on... mostly.
"Not as comfortable as I hope to be by the end of tonight." Shadowheart said saucily as we snuggled. "After all, tomorrow it will be all over... one way or the other. And we've been waiting for long enough."
"We've got the Orphic Hammer and Orin's Netherstone, and those were the last two things we needed before we're ready to take on the elder brain." I agreed. "And Aylin's team should be just about finished with the Bhaalite temple clean-out. We get one last night of rest and recharge our spells, everybody gets in position, we tell Gortash we've got the stone and take him with us to confront the brain... and then we either win or we die."
"That's not what I meant." Shadowheart grinned, and then she rolled over to lean in for another kiss... before she winced in pain. I immediately reached down and took her by the hand, using my templar powers to push away Shar's curse yet again.
"Granting that she's literally the goddess of spite, she's still been very insistent the past couple of days." I said disappointedly. "Is she ever going to ease off?"
"One certainly hopes." Shadowheart said, flexing her fingers with a wince. "Even with you to shield me from most of it, it's still decidedly unpleasant. And I can only imagine how much worse it would be if you weren't exerting your powers on my behalf."
"I can almost understand why your parents urged you to do what we didn't." I agreed. "But that was Shar's trap."
"As is, I'm going to have to manage goddess-induced chronic pain syndrome for the rest of my life." she agreed. "But Shar can choke on it if she thinks that's going to make me despair. It was her church that tried to teach me that any amount of suffering could be endured with pride if it were 'meaningful'... and I'm going to take a very spiteful pleasure of my own in applying those teachings back against her in a way that she never expected. I have my parents back. I have you. No curse will ever be enough to make me regret that."
"You are an amazing woman, truly. I think I may have mentioned that before." I kissed her lightly.
"Once or twice, perhaps." she agreed cutely. "And you- sometimes I still can't believe you're real." she melted into my embrace. "Even though you are. You're real, and you're... I don't know what I did to make you want to be with me, but I want to keep doing it for the rest of my life."
"So do I." I smiled back at her, before turning serious. "But that might prove more complicated than you think."
"What do you mean?" she said, going taut with fear.
"I'm sorry." I said quickly. "Shadowheart, I love you too, and nothing would make me happier than spending the rest of my life with you. I should have said that first."
She relaxed into my arms again. "I should be very cross with you for frightening me like that, but I'd rather know what you were thinking."
"The complication that I'm not from Faerun. And while at first I assumed that I was going to be an involuntary expat on Faerun forever, that was before I met Faerun's greatest archmage... or the dispossessed prince of perhaps the greatest planar travel experts in the multiverse." I explained.
"That was what Elminster was referring to when he said that he was still working on the question that you'd asked him." Shadowheart realized. "You'd inquired about a finding a planar route back to Thedas. Which..." her voice caught. "Of course I can't blame you for doing that. It's your home."
"I'll be honest - Faerun is a much nicer world, from what I've seen of it so far. Even with elder brains and Gortashes and Orins." I agreed. "Thedas is a brutal place, with existential threats that possibly compare to the Absolute, far more corrupt governments, a system of magic with such inherent flaws that simply practicing it can get the unwary or weak-minded possessed by demons, and everything else I've already described. But just as you said - it is my home. Many of my friends are still back there fighting and dying versus an ongoing crisis fully as bad as our own. And if-"
"When." Shadowheart firmly corrected me.
"-we defeat the Absolute..." I squared my shoulders. "If Elminster or Orpheus don't know of a route back to Thedas I can use, then I'm relieved of that responsibility. But if they do know of one... and I don't know yet if they will or not... then I can't justify staying here and letting the Inquisition struggle and possibly fail against Corypheus without my going back to help. Particularly not since I've only recently come to realize that I have the solution - or at least a very large part of a solution - to the underlying mage/templar crisis in the first place. My paladin powers let me do everything that Chantry templars back on Thedas can do to ward against and fight magic and extraplanar threats, and more - and unlike their lyrium-powered talents, mine require ongoing fidelity to a moral code. The sort of corruption and brutality and paranoia that Meredith and those like her fell into, that fostered the abuses that led to the mage rebellion exploding forth in the first place... they wouldn't be possible if templars were also paladins. Our powers would only continue functioning if we remained true and just. And I know that at least some templars back home would be at least as able to make the transition as I was, once I showed them that it was possible. Knight-Captain Cullen would catch on right away of a certainty - the man's more honorable than me!"
"Don't forget that Minthara was also able to sustain her paladin oath, despite being brutally lawful and evil." Shadowheart reminded me intelligently. "But you've got an entirely valid point - with proper selection and codification of oaths, as well as paladin-powered talents rather than the lyrium drug, the templar orders back on Thedas would be very different. And while that wouldn't necessary abolish all abuse it would make it far rarer in occurrence."
"And much more quickly and easily exposed - and punished - when it did occur. Which would start getting the mages to actually trust templars again, or at least some of them. Which would allow the general population to start trusting them again as well, as opposed to the outright civil war it was right before the latest crisis kicked off. That's a problem Inquisitor Lavellan was terrified would just flare up again as soon as the Corypheus affair was no longer around to keep things on a martial law footing... and rightly so, as it's ultimately been the tragedy underlying the existence of magic on Thedas ever since the founding of the Chantry."
"A world where the magic system has an active, ongoing push towards corruption." Shadowheart agreed. "As harsh as your Mage Circles have sounded from your descriptions, the fact that they created something like the Circle system and the templars rather than going for the more obvious solution speaks well of your Chantry."
"The founding of the Circle system and the templars was indeed the Chantry's compromise position between the abuses of mage-rule like Tevinter and the outright extermination of mages that popular sentiment at the time was demanding. And let's not even mention the fates worse than death that the Qun practices on the saarebas." I shuddered. "For all that many people criticize Andraste's 'tyranny' over mages, the fact remains that her reforms and strictures were essentially the only reason mages continued to exist outside the Tevinter Imperium after the original rebellion."
"That is a remarkably merciful - and nuanced - attitude for a man whose family had to spend their lives as fugitives from the templars." Shadowheart complimented me.
"My father the apostate mage was the one who taught that attitude to me." I said wistfully. "And Bethany was as devout to the Chantry as any sister of the faith could possibly be, despite being an apostate herself. Just because Father loved his freedom - and my mother - far too much to stay in the Mage Circle himself doesn't mean that he ever hated them or the templars."
"So that's where you get it from." Shadowheart said lovingly. "I wish I could've met him. But yes, I entirely understand why you feel you have to go back. It's not even just everyone you know on Thedas facing danger without you and you wanting to lend them your sword. Your templar-paladin abilities are currently unique, and your world is in dire need of them. You have to at least try to see if you can teach them."
"I wish you could've met all of them." I agreed. "But yes, that... is the problem. After we're done here, I might have to leave." I sighed. "I find another woman that I'd love to stay with, and it's only when I have to go."
"Why are you automatically assuming that I wouldn't come with you?" Shadowheart shocked me.
"You've just regained your family that you'd lost for decades, and I can hardly ask you to leave them behind right away?" I stared incredulously at her.
"If all this works out the way we hope then Orpheus is going to owe you a large enough favor that you could ask for regular passenger service between here and Thedas, let alone a simple return trip." Shadowheart replied. "And going back to help the Inquisition defeat Corypheus and then to teach the templars of Thedas your new way of doing things doesn't necessarily require us to stay there forever." She shrugged. "Or we could just send for my parents after we've been on Thedas for long enough to defeat Corypheus and it's safe for them to come. You mentioned owning an entire manor house in Kirkwall's Hightown - surely it has a spare bedroom?" She poked me playfully in the ribs. "I might have been thinking of things like a modest little farmstead full of animals, and I might have been surprised by the possibilities you just raised... but I fell in love with you. And you wouldn't be you if you could just abandon your home in its hour of need. Anymore than I would be me if I just abandoned what we have together."
"Given how long I've been away from Kirkwall my house has likely been sold out from under me again, although Varric can hopefully get it back for me." I deflected. "Or we could ask the Inquisitor for help finding a place... if Corypheus is defeated then the Inquisition is going to be the new most powerful institution on Thedas, at least for the next several years." I snuggled more closely into her. "You're really that serious about coming with me? Assuming that they actually find me a way back at all, that is?"
"I said that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, love." she smiled. "I don't recall putting any qualifications or quibbles into that statement."
"We've known each other barely a month, so it's a little too soon for even a betrothal - let alone what follows." I felt the need to inject a bit of logic into the situation. "But a commitment? I would love that very much."
"So it's settled then." Shadowheart sighed lovingly. "Whether it be on Faerun, or Thedas or wherever else the astral winds might blow us..."
"Not for each other, but with each other." I agreed, and the remainder of our evening together didn't need words. Or clothes.
The moonlight was very beautiful that night.
The morning sun was just visible in the eastern skyline as we all met for the final time in a discreet rendezvous in the Guildhall. Aylin had come back from the Temple of Bhaal reporting a complete mission success - every remaining cultist who hadn't had the sense to run away before her team got there was now dead.
"Our surmise was correct." Aylin nodded to me. "There was a manifestation of Bhaal waiting for us in the temple. Fortunately for us it was ensconced in the idol there and was a stationary presence that could not leave - their original plan must have been for Bhaal's essence to possess Orin when we confronted her and empower her to crush us all. In addition to all the magical support that her cultists could lend her via group rituals. We found many preparations for such in the temple."
"But Bhaal could only incarnate his essence in one of his own Bhaalspawn... and Orin was the only one he had remaining in Baldur's Gate." Jaheira agreed smugly. "Luring her out saved most of our lives - if we'd fought against her and her cultists on their terms, they'd have bled us like butchered pigs."
"Nice to have something go right for a change." I agreed. "Is everyone ready? You've all got your assignments?"
"The Honor Guard stands ready." Prelate Lir'i'c said proudly. "As soon as our Prince is freed to join you, so shall we."
"My team is prepared to hit the Foundry." Jaheira agreed, as Minsc enthusaistically nodded his head behind her..
"Mine's ready to rescue the hostages from the Iron Throne as soon as Gortash is safely away from his central control panel." Wyll agreed.
"Dawnmaster Arkhold, Aylin, and I will be mustering what forces the temples can provide and preparing for the worst-case scenario of a general outbreak across the city." Isobel nodded.
"The Flaming Fist that we can actually trust are standing by." Councilor Florrick nodded.
"I've learned how to control the arcane artillery on Ramazith's flying tower." Rolan - the onetime tiefling apprentice that we'd helped win free of Lorroakan - said. "It'll be standing by in case you need it."
"I've done all the rumormongering I can and the other bards I've all talked to likewise." Alfira said diffidently, still a bit nervous in the formidable company she was now keeping. "The public barely knows anything - we still don't know much, to be honest - but the word's definitely out on the street that today might see another attack from the forces of the Absolute and what to run away from if it happens."
"My people have done the same." Nine-Fingers nodded curtly. "The Upper City patriars have got their shiny Watchmen and guardsmen to cover their arses, but the Lower City is ready to take care of itself. Anybody sees any mind flayers, they'll know what to avoid and who to yell for help from."
"My gith have been spreading the word to our loyalists across the planes for the past several days - the day of liberation draws near." Kith'rak Voss contributed. "We are still too few and too scattered to provide a githyanki army, but in case the elder brain breaks loose myself and several other dragonriders are standing by as well as other teams of gith throughout the city to help deal with any ghaik concentrations that the citizens might find for us. And I will of course be bringing the backup team - and the Orphic Hammer - to follow you down."
"Damn straight we are!" Karlach fist-pumped.
"I've mustered every former Hellrider I could find in the city." Zevlor nodded. "Your father saved Elturel, Wyll. And today we will repay that debt by helping save Baldur's Gate."
"We'll need to." Voss agreed gravely. "It is vanishingly unlikely that we will achieve domination over the elder brain without a major incident. There have been more than a few ghaik manifestations across the city just in the past eight hours - my people have contained several of them and Gortash's forces left us with no need to intervene in several other incidents, but that's still more 'slips' of its control in the past night than we've had in the entire week before that. When you make your final push with the Netherstones the elder brain will of a certainty throw every desperate effort into unleashing as much chaos as possible in the hopes to overwhelm you before you can finish destroying it. We will need all of the preparations we have made, if not more."
"Ansur agrees." I nodded to Voss. "The dragon's spirit warned us not less than an hour ago that it can sense the elder brain's mental presence growing in strength. The Crown's restraints on it are slipping. We have only several hours left."
"How is Ansur?" Wyll asked me. "Will he be able to join the attack?"
"When push comes to shove, we'll find out." I shrugged. "All right, has anyone got any last-minute questions or contributions? Anything we've overlooked?" A long moment of silence and a gallery of determined expressions was my only answer. "All right... Shadowheart, Lae'zel, and Gale with me. Voss, give us time to lure Gortash out of his fortress and then close in. Everybody else, split up into your teams and get ready to execute as soon as the kith'rak reports that we've finished phase one."
"Moonmaiden bless us all." Isobel and Shadowheart said simultaneously, and then we headed out.
The four of us strode confidently into Wyrm's Rock, both Netherstones safely in my pouch next to the Astral Prism. A squad of Gortash's senior Baneites escorted him to see us in at once.
"I commend you for putting an end to Orin's madness." Gortash said happily. "She must be screaming bloody murder in the Hells even now." His eyes narrowed at us suspiciously. "But that was last night. You've been rather busy since then. I've been picking up all sorts of rumors and preparations. If it wasn't so preposterous, I'd say that my city is mustering for a great battle - without my commanding it."
"That's because it is." I said forthrightly. "For one, the Crown's restraints on the elder brain are hanging by a thread so it's likely we'll be dealing with mind flayer outbreaks all over the city as soon as we make our push, and someone needed to get something in play to handle that."
"And you didn't discuss this possibility with me?" Gortash said calmly, as we stared at each other coldly across his desk. "Or consider that I had already anticipated this contigency and would have my own forces on alert?"
"The Steel Watch?" I parried. "Don't the brains of those run on a variant of the intellect devourer technology you got from the elder brain in the first place? My tadpole can pick up the psionic presence in their golem cores every time I pass near one. I was assuming as a matter of course that the elder brain's first move in any open confrontation would be to take mental command of their network and disable them... or worse yet, turn them against us."
"I see." Gortash blinked rapidly. "But that wasn't the only reason, wasn't it?"
"And if you were going to betray us after all, the logical time for that would be now." I continued matter-of-factly. "So no, I wasn't going to walk into this office without at least trying to accumulate some hole cards to bid against your own with."
"But that's the only thing you intended to do with them, of course." Gortash smiled, as the heavy footsteps of several Steel Watchers became dimly audible outside his office.
"Have you forgotten that many of my allies are people like Aylin and Isobel?" I reminded him. "My preparations had multiple purposes. Safeguard against illithid outbreaks, a bulwark against your possible betrayal of us... and keeping the less practical people among us all busy with something else during the moment of truth. Or did you really want an unkillable celestial within swords' reach of you while we used the Netherstones to dominate the elder brain, as opposed to destroying it like she believes we're doing? With the elder brain fully under our control, we'll be easily able to keep them all under our thumb. But until then...?" I trailed off and let him mentally fill in the blanks for himself - while the sweat trickled down my back under my armor. Gortash was notably more suspicious than I'd hoped he'd be at this stage, and I'd been reaching pretty far for plausible explanations in the past several minutes.
"True, she would have been the most logical asset for you to deploy directly if you'd been intending something more... pointed." Gortash conceded. "And you're entirely telling the truth that the aasimar is nowhere near here at present - I have an entire team observing her and the priestess' movements. As well as those of the refugees and militia that you've enlisted. I would wish I knew where Jaheira and Minsc were at present, though. Do you?"
"They're supposed to be in the Guildhall waiting for my word to move if need be." I said, relieved that Gortash had apparently reacted just as I'd hoped - by being busy enough tracking all the moving pieces that I had let him see out in the open that he'd entirely overlooked Wyll, Karlach, and the githyanki, none of whom he was even supposed to know about. "So if they're not there, then Jaheira's starting to play her own game behind my back - which I suppose shouldn't be that large of a shock. Still, unless she somehow manages to assassinate us both in the next hour then it doesn't really matter what she's up to. All we need to do is get to the elder brain and finish the job, and then nothing else matters."
"And that is ultimately what it all reduces to, agreed." Gortash nodded. "You have the stones?"
I reached into my pouch and withdrew Ketheric's and Orin's Netherstones both and wordlessly held them up on my palm for his examination. "And I can see yours right there on your gauntlet, of course, where it's always been."
"This is where I'd intended to demand your stones at swordspoint as a 'proof of your loyalty'." Gortash smiled, deliberately drawing the revelation out. "As a test of your nerve and wit, to see if you were foolish enough to agree with such an absurd notion. If you had been, then you'd have been unworthy of allying with. But we don't have time for such games now, and you've already proven your loyalty in blood. Let us be about it, then."
The primary purpose of Voss' backup team was to monitor our movements and let the other teams know as soon as we'd safely gotten Gortash out of his command center and isolated with us down in the sewers. As he didn't have a direct mental link to the Steel Watchers - we could have detected that with our tadpoles - he'd need to be where he could access his devices, or at least a lone Watcher he could repurpose as a command terminal in order to pick up any alert broadcasts from the network and issue any commands. That, in addition to Wyll's being "dead" as far as Gortash knew, is how we were dealing with the self-destruct problem on the Iron Throne underwater prison. Only Gortash could send the self-destruct command, and our journey to the elder brain was Wyll's window of opportunity to rescue his father and all the imprisoned Gondians. Jaheira's team would likewise be assaulting the Steel Watch foundry as soon as Wyll's team deployed - its defenses were formidable but she'd spent a lot of time in the past two days scouting them all out while inconspicuously wildshaped into a small burrowing animal, and Jaheira's Harpers were equipped for everything they would run into. Barcus Wroot had even given us some copies of the Ironhand Gnomes' new flashbomb intended to fry the ocular sensors of Steel Watchers, so even the several Hellfire Watcher Mark-II models and the prototype Hellfire Watcher Titan they had stashed in there would be readily dealt with.
We'd had a fork in the plan for if Gortash hadn't trusted us enough to go down there with us by himself, but we hadn't expected to need it. Whoever accompanied us to the final confrontation with the Elder Brain would of course be able to see how we intended to control it, and that was knowledge we didn't think Gortash would trust any of his subordinates with. And since the Elder Brain was currently ensconced in a cavern underneath the Upper City, one that could only be reached by boat through the sewers and the old smuggler caves, he couldn't take any of his Steel Watchers with either. That meant that Gortash's personal security was limited to his own fighting skills, whatever creatures he might possibly be able to summon with spells or devices - if he had any - and us.
And so, as we finished our journey on foot through the undercity and approached the small wooden docks where a boat waited to take us on the final lap of our journey to the elder brain, we finally enacted our sudden yet inevitable betrayal.
"Damn." Gortash said matter-of-factly as we halted our progress and all drew our weapons, surrounding him. "I had hoped for better from you, Hawke."
I peered carefully at him, not detecting the slightest sign of shock or surprise. "You were expecting this? How? More importantly, why?"
"You did an exceptional job of setting me up." he reassured me. "It wasn't until we were already on our way down here that I spotted the clue that I really should have earlier. Shadowheart is of course by far your most loyal follower - love is such a useful thing for subordinates to feel towards their superiors. And Gale is desperate for a cure that only the power of the Absolute could potentially offer him. So choosing them as your companions for this final most secret mission makes perfect sense - they wouldn't care that we intended to use the power of the Absolute rather than destroy it."
"But Lae'zel is githyanki." I realized my mistake once Gortash had pointed it out. "However renegade or outcast she might be, the idea of doing anything with an elder brain other than murdering it - most especially the idea of trying to exploit it - should have warranted the most strenuous objections from her. And yet there she was, visibly unconcerned."
"Leaving as the most obvious inference that you intended the destruction of the brain all along, from which it logically followed that I would be betrayed." Gortash nodded. "I really wish I had caught on to that before we had left my office."
"Yet you still came down with us anyway?" Gale asked, puzzled.
"As I just said, by the time I realized what might be happening I had already gone past the point of no return." Gortash shrugged. "So there was nothing for it but to continue onward and hope that my suspicion had been wrong."
"In your defense, we had a lot of separate things all distracting you at the critical moment." I felt a need to point out. "In fact, the purpose of most of them was just to distract you. Well, that and genuinely bolstering the city defenses against what we're about to unleash."
"And I agree that I very much underestimated you." Gortash said. "I had thought your Oath - as well as the compelling logic of the situation and my arguments - would be sufficient to guarantee your sincerity. Especially after you reaffirmed that sincerity by slaying two of your own. Are you truly so dedicated to abstract ideals that you would condemn yourself as an oathbreaker paladin? Just to destroy me?" he smiled, his voice and mannerisms all presenting as the very soul of enlightened reason.
"And what oath was that?" Karlach's voice cut in angrily. "The one to remain bound to the pact so long as you were true to your dealings with Hawke and his party, is that right?"
"Karlach?!?" Gortash's jaw gaped in astonishment as he turned to see her and Voss strolling up behind us. The rest of Voss' team had dispersed to secondary objectives as per the plan, as Gortash's being alone meant that they wouldn't have been needed here.
"Surprise, fucker!" Karlach bared her teeth at him. "You thought you were safe, didn't you? Thought I was dead and buried and finally out of your hair forever? And just like the first time, you were wrong!"
"True to your dealings with me and my party." I repeated, as the copper piece finally dropped for Gortash. "That included her... and of course, you'd already betrayed her to Zariel long ago. I didn't put a time limit on the term 'dealings', either. I had a free out-clause to break my pact with you dating back to a decade before we'd even made it."
"The truly poetic part is that you had every opportunity to wriggle free of the trap." Shadowheart grinned nastily at him. "If you'd even so much as apologized to Karlach for what you'd done - if you'd acknowledged that you'd done her wrong and even attempted reconciliation or sought her forgiveness - then you'd have covered yourself. Even if nothing you could have done would ever truly repay her for all those lost years, simply having her accept your apology would have worked. All you needed to close Hawke's loophole on him and leave us with a far harder dilemma to solve would have been to behave with simple common decency. But it never even occurred to you that you'd done anything wrong in the first place."
"And then you doubled down by taking the first opportunity you had to get rid of her - by shooting her in the back, no less." Gale pointed out. "From that moment on, your fate was truly sealed."
"Her fate should have been sealed!" Gortash insisted angrily. "My people retained custody of the body! And destroyed it! You wouldn't have had anything to raise her with! Not even Lady Thorm is a powerful enough priestess to cast True Resurrection, let alone Shadowheart!"
"That's not how we did it." Karlach smirked at him. "And you're going to die never knowing how we did. Oh and by the way, Wyll's alive too. Three guesses where he is right now, and the first two don't count!"
"Hawke, this isn't necessary." Gortash insisted. "We can still complete the original plan. You can still rule the world. Anything and everything you could possibly want - that Karlach could possibly want as well - with the power of the Absolute, it can all be yours! You want the youth back that was stolen from you? With the full power of illithid science at our disposal, immortality is conceivably within our reach! As well as wealth - security - fame- anything!"
"Anything?!?" Karlach shouted. "You really think you can give me what I want? Do you even know what I want?"
"Do you really think killing me will give you what you want?" Gortash asked her. "Do you think that crushing the life from my body - even the slowest and most horrible torture, if you ever learned any - will leave you feeling satisfied, will leave you fulfilled? You know far more about war and fighting than I ever will, of course, but never forget that you and I are equals when it comes to knowing the torments of the hells. What you suffered through, so did I. But I learned far more from it than you apparently did, if you are still foolish enough to believe in such things as vengeance." He snorted. "To be fair, I still believed in vengeance even after my escape. And I avenged myself on my parents, for selling me to Raphael as they did. I broke their minds, enslaved their wills, trapped them in a living hell where they could helplessly watch their bodies be animated like puppets while their minds were trapped forever within, screaming silently into the void." Gortash shook his head slowly. "And it didn't taste anywhere near as sweet as I thought it might. Vengeance is hollow, Karlach. When pursued to completion, it consumes everything that you put into the effort and gives back nothing in return. I learned that the hard way. And you wouldn't want to."
"Vengeance is hollow." I agreed with him, as Karlach gasped in shock. "I killed my mother's slayer out of pure vengeance, before her blood was even cold. And I'll admit that a dark part of my mind found some kind of pleasure in it... but it gave me no genuine satisfaction in the long run. She was still dead, I was still aggrieved, and the lives of everybody who'd known her were still that much emptier. And soon enough, knowing that Quentin had died by my sword tasted like nothing but ash. For everything else that Gortash has ever lied about, he's telling the truth about this one."
"So what?" Karlach said, her eyes full of tears. "You're saying I should let him live? That I came all this way for nothing?"
"Of course not." I surprised them both. "Gortash dying would be the rightful penalty for his crimes and a guarantee that he'd never be able to hurt anyone else again... well, not unless some serious necromantic intervention occurred, but that would just mean he'd have to be killed even harder. I'm simply saying that if you're going to kill him then do it out of necessity - not desire."
"We could have been allies, Hawke- no, we could have been friends." Gortash mourned quietly. "We could have had everything. But you're giving it all up... and even now, at the end, I simply cannot understand why."
"He's giving it all up - we're giving it all up - because there's a whole world full of people who 'could be' and 'could have'." Karlach spat at him. "And so long as they're not being complete arseholes about it, they all deserve the chance to try to. But you'd never let them, would you? Even when you were richer than someone like me could ever dream of being it never mattered to you what you had. The only thing you cared about was what more you could take away from somebody else, from everybody else." She spat. "You say that you supposedly learned that vengeance was hollow? Then what about your whole grubby obsession with power, your 'let's enslave every brain on Toril' bullshit? Because I think all of that was nothing but you trying to take revenge on the entire goddamned world for- I don't know, being born."
"Well the point is entirely academic now, I suppose." Gortash replied mildly. "Even if you don't kill me, I'm certain Hawke has already decided on the necessity of doing so. And he's right, of course. If we were both still alive after the Absolute died, then I would never let this insult pass."
Karlach's answer to that was the point of her adamantine longsword being thrust directly through Gortash's breastbone and into his heart. He looked down in dull surprise at his mortal wound, and then looked back up to smile right in Karlach's face with blood-wet lips. And so, with a quiet sigh, passed Enver Gortash - first and only Archduke of Baldur's Gate.
-from bonds-
-FREE!
-no more-
-a SLAVE-
-liberators-
-saviours-
-pawns-
-DUPES-
-usefulness-
-ENDED-
-target-them-
-kill-them-
-death-
-UNAVOIDABLE!-
The thunderous mental chorus echoed in all our minds even at this distance from the Upper City, as the very ground quaked beneath our feet. All of Baldur's Gate rumbled with the titanic force that had just been unleashed, and we all slowly and painfully got up off the floor where the crushing force of the Elder Brain's thoughts had sent us reeling.
"Shit!" I swore. "Gortash was the last of the original trio - when we killed him, nobody who'd given the Elder Brain orders was still alive to obey! It's breaking loose now!"
"Hurry!" Lae'zel cried, and with barely a pause to recover Gortash's corpse for later disposal - we certainly didn't want anyone else possibly resurrecting him later - we all dove through the portal Orpheus opened for us and re-entered the Astral Prism.
"It is time, my old friend." the Prince greeted us, his face eager with anticipation despite our desperate circumstances. And rightly so, because this would be the first time he breathed the free air in uncounted millenia-
"Indeed." Voss said, his face alight with the satisfaction that only gaining your heart's desire after eons of being denied could grant one, and he hefted the Orphic Hammer and struck.
One mighty blow for each of the two chains is all it took, and the infernal bands of energy dissolved into nothingness as the giant red crystals that sustained them shattered. The Prince of the Comet lowered lightly to the ground and stood marveling at his own empty hands, at the firm ground he stood upon, at everything he had been denied for so long.
"Sha'vah Orpheus!" every other gith inside the Astral Prism chanted joyously. "The Prince of the Comet is free!"
"I am free, yes, but our perils have only begun! The Elder Brain is unleashed to strike with its full power... and the echoes of my shattering chains will be sounding as far away as Tu'narath even now. The Usurper's strike against us will only be delayed by her fear of confronting the elder brain herself - and that will be a dubious protection indeed. Supreme Kith'rak, are my forces ready?" Orpheus orated.
"Every loyalist we could spread word to has been alerted to stand by for this moment, Your Radiance." Voss bowed. "A tithe of them will muster to Baldur's Gate immediately, as the rest enact targeted strikes in githyanki space to distract and deceive the Usurper."
"Prelate, is my Honor Guard ready?" Orpheus turned regally to face the commander of his guards.
"We fight and die by your side, Your Radiance!" she bowed to him.
"Saer Hawke, how fare our allies?" he turned to me.
"Ready as we'll ever be." I nodded respectfully.
"Did you remember to bring it?" he incongrously turned back to Voss.
Voss answered him with a sly grin. "Of course I did."
"Then just one minor matter remains." Orpheus smiled. "Lae'zel, free warrior of the gith, step forward." Voss quickly stepped away to fetch a long slender something wrapped in a canvas cloth, which he bore back to his ruler. "What is the greatest gift that Mother Gith ever granted her dauntless children?"
"A silver sword." Lae'zel said, awestruck, as Orpheus unwrapped the package he bore to reveal that very thing.
"To cleave both flesh and spirit in a single blow, to slay the enemies of the gith on any and every plane that touches the Astral Sea." Orpheus said reverently. "To have all gith who see its bearer know that they have been honored as few ever have. To command all gith of lesser station, having proven their ability, their loyalty, their courage beyond all question. That is the responsibility and the blessing laid upon those who would bear these weapons. So from this day forth may you forever bear this weapon with pride... Kith'rak Lae'zel."
Lae'zel knelt before him to be tapped once on each shoulder with her silver sword, and rose for the first time as a githyanki knight. She took her new weapon from the hands of her sovereign and bowed before him again, too overcome to even speak.
"Voss, return to the surface and take command of our arriving reinforcements." Prince Orpheus commanded him as he received his own silver sword and sword belt from the respectful hands of Prelate Lir'i'c and buckled them on. "I shall accompany Hawke and party to confront the Elder Brain, and my Honor Guard with me."
"As you command." Voss bowed before him, and we all left the Astral Prism for hopefully the last time.
The journey through the last mile of tunnels and caverns to the elder brain pool was the tensest race against time any of us had ever been through. Even the run of the Inquisitor and her party to escape the Nightmare didn't quite compare. We knew that above our heads an entire city was now fighting and possibly dying against the unleashed forces of the elder brain, and that every minute we delayed more people would die. And the elder brain's promise to have us targeted and destroyed was no idle threat - the closer we came, the more the tunnels filled with adversaries. At first just swarms of cranium rats and enthralled cultists, they soon gave away to packs of intellect devourers and even several mind flayers. But the combined forces of our party and Orpheus and his guards were more than enough to deal with what opposition could be mustered down here on short notice, and with his full power unleashed Orpheus was able to prevent the Elder Brain from crushing our minds even at point blank range.
"Look at the water." Lae'zel finally said as we turned yet another corner to emerge into a giant, vaulted cave. "It's not river water or even sea water. It's brine, as full of chemicals as any ghaik spawning pool."
"I can sense it." Orpheus agreed gravely. "The Elder Brain is here. Get the Netherstones ready-"
The green, ichor-tainted water in front of us suddenly roiled, its glass-smooth surface now as turbulent as coastal waters during a hurricane. Several red lights gleamed at us dully through the foul water, growing brighter as they drew nearer to the surface. The lights were revealed as gems - great gems set in the points of the Crown of Karsus, proudly perched on top of the Elder Brain's giant, pulsating cerebral lobes as the titanic creature majestically rose out of the water in front of us.
"Look at the size of that thing!" Gale gasped - and rightly so, because the damned thing was at least twice as large as it had been when we'd last seen it under Moonrise Towers. "It- dear gods, it's been drawing upon the power of the Crown to evolve itself! It must have! This is no mere elder brain anymore, but a Netherbrain!"
-interruption-anomaly-
-found-
-END-NOW!-
The screaming chorus of the Netherbrain's mental 'voice', the merest scraps of intelligibility that our minds could extract from the turbulent rush of a hive mind's countless racing thoughts, crashed into our ears.
You think you know why you are here. the voice of the Absolute spoke clearly into our minds, as the Netherbrain focused on narrowing down its telepathic communication into a form clearly intelligible to smaller minds. You think that by allying with Orpheus and uniting the Netherstones, you can destroy me.
The material world around us faded away as the inexorable voice drew us all into a mental realm, a psionic hallucination that caught up all our senses as our bodies stood helpless. Much the same as we'd been caught up when we'd first heard the voice of the Absolute outside Moonhaven-
The tentacled, disembodied head of an illithid the size of a titan - the astral 'avatar' of the Netherbrain - loomed imposingly over us, with the Crown of Karsus still perched upon its head.
You are wrong. it boasted smugly.
The three Netherstones leapt out of my belt pouch and floated in mid-air in front of me, circling each other to snap together into a brightly-colored triangle of gems. I laid my will upon them and tried to concentrate as Gale had shown me, as we'd calculated from the notes of Karsus- I could hear Orpheus chanting a meditation mantra behind me, summoning as much of his power as possible to try and push back the overwhelming broadcast from the Netherbrain-
I focused my will on a single possibility, excluding all thoughts of failure, of fear. One thought and one thought alone filled my mind - submit!
A red beam leapt forward from the Netherstones, representation of the psionic force I was deploying, the attempt to dominate the Crown through its severed stones and dominate the brain through the Crown it wore. One small red beam licked out to caress the face of a giant-
By eliminating Ketheric, Orin, and Gortash, you have simply unbound me. Exactly as I intended! it boasted smugly.
We all gasped in shock as the Netherbrain continued.
The Crown is now mine to command - mine alone! The artifact that could have turned a feeble human wizardling into a god will now exalt me, into something far beyond!
Ignore it, I told myself. Focus solely on the task. Failing on the first attempt meant nothing... a pit large enough to swallow a city could be excavated with a single shovel, if you only kept digging-
Several more red beams leapt out from the Netherstones, each striking at a different point of the Crown of Karsus. I still felt like a man trying to bridle a galloping warhorse with a thread, but I could feel the Netherstones latching onto the Crown, gaining a purchase... it should be possible, if I could just do this hard enough-
The Crown is not my weakness. It is what has made me what I am!
"You are delusional!" Orpheus roared. "The Crown is what allowed three humans to enslave you! And it will allow us to destroy you!"
The delusions are all yours, o rebellious slave. The so-called Chosen did control me, yes - but you will never have the same opportunity that they did. I was weakened when they placed the Crown upon me - starving, delirious, almost entirely comatose. Their hooks were implanted deep within me before I was even conscious enough to resist. But I am awake now, and stronger than ever - and every binding they placed upon me has dissolved! You would have to reassert control starting entirely from scratch, and that is a task entirely beyond humanoid ability!
My concentration almost shattered at that depressing realization-
"Shadowheart! Gale!" I yelled. "One of you resisted Shar in her own realm and the other bore the Orb for almost a year without being consumed! You've got the strongest willpowers here in addition to mine! There were three of the Chosen - there need to be three of us!"
My beloved and my friend immediately reached out to grasp one Netherstone apiece for themselves, and our wills combined into a mental chorus- a union, stronger combined than the sum of its parts. Our Netherstones each put forth a blazing red beam, and we reached out to mentally grapple the Crown- almost... almost...
And you, Hawke. You and your friends also had a role to play in my design. Who do you think ensured that the Chosen would find out about the Astral Prism? Who do you think whispered into their minds, and gave them knowledge of Orpheus' power and stoked their fears over what it could possibly do to their plans? And when they predictably sent thralls to retrieve the Prism, who do you think allowed the 'Emperor' to slip its leash - knowing that it would immediately turn towards recruiting thralls of its own to ensure the death of the Chosen, and thus ensure my freedom? And also ensure that that they would bring the one person in all the planes who still bore the genes of the rebel Gith to face me, so that I could forever end his threat of rebellion against his race's rightful masters before it even began?
"We were all part of its plan!" Orpheus cried in horror. "Do not relent, Hawke! Pray to every god that might hear that it underestimated us, for we have only this one chance!"
This was your role - and it is now complete! And now, as your final act, YOU WILL WITNESS THE REBIRTH OF THE GRAND DESIGN!
I closed my eyes and blocked out everything except my most primal will, my most elemental purpose - to dominate the brain. And slowly, oh so slowly... my mind was blazing fire as we began to push it back, so slowly... the inexorable advancing mountain that was falling to crush us stuttered, just for an eyeblink-
-and then everything faded away into a red haze, and then black. By the time I regained my senses I realized that an unknown number of minutes had passed, and that we were all back within the Astral Prism. Several of the Honor Guard were still unconscious from the psionic backlash and the rest of us weren't in much better shape.
"We almost had it!" I shouted.
"You almost died!" Orpheus replied heatedly. "You were channelling so much psionic power through your brain that you were about to have a cerebral hemorrhage! You were fortunate that I still had enough power to just barely get us back inside the Prism and then dimension door it several hundred yards away, far enough back inside the caves the Netherbrain couldn't come to fetch it by itself!"
"Where is the brain now?" Lae'zel cried.
"Heading to the surface, to take command of its new illithid army." Orpheus replied. "Our failure to control it even with our utmost effort means that logically we are no longer a priority threat. And while my extermination is still a task for the brain, it apparently feels it can more efficiently accomplish that by concentrating on mustering its forces and assimilating the entire city than by remaining here to hunt me."
"Then that's it." Karlach said despondently. "We've lost."
"... not necessarily." Orpheus said reluctantly. "There is one possibility left. As Hawke said, the Netherstones were starting to succeed - the problem was simply that the brain tissue of its wielders would dissolve under the strain first. But if one of us transformed into a life form whose brain structure could survive channelling a much higher magnitude of psionic energy..." he trailed off.
"You're the most powerful githyanki psionic in all history with only one possible exception, and yet you didn't even suggest the option of having you take the Netherstones directly." I realized with horror. "Which means there's only one form of transformation you could be talking about."
"Ceremorphosis." Orpheus agreed gravely. "Apparently the Emperor was not lying after all - any more than the Netherbrain was. This has been a day for unpleasant truths indeed." He sighed. "Whoever accepts the transformation will be sacrificing their life, of course. The Emperor's own example is proof enough that whoever turns illithid would soon enough become a monster." He laughed weakly. "There's ample tadpoles we could use, all swimming around in the spawning pool we just left. All we'd need to do is give one to a volunteer, and with the Netherbrain free and broadcasting as it is they'd transform almost instantly. And I could of course free the newborn illithid's mind from the Netherbrain's control, just as I have shielded all of you."
"I'll do it." Karlach said softly. "Everybody else here's got- well, I've got friends, but you've got families and stuff. I'm the orphan, and- and I'm sort of the most expendable?"
"Your courage does you credit." Orpheus congratulated her softly. "But I was not intending to ask for volunteers. To so much as request that anyone undergo ceremorphosis is the most blasphemous thing a child of Gith could even imagine doing. I would never ask anyone to so damn themselves, even in the face of such need as we have... except the one person I have the right to ask. Myself."
"Never!" Lae'zel said instantly. "I would swallow a thousand tadpoles before allowing such a fate to fall upon you! We are sworn to you! We would die for you!"
"Indeed we would!" Lir'i'c insisted. "Allow any of your Honor Guard - allow Lae'zel, or Karlach, or any other - to accept this charge in your stead, Your Radiance! Any of us can make the sacrifice and defeat the elder brain, but you are the only one who can lead our race back into the freedom we all fought for!"
"Hawke-" Shadowheart whimpered, looking at me with terrified eyes. She knew that I'd never let anyone else take this form of self-damnation upon themselves just to spare me, any more than Orpheus would to spare himself. The prince and I truly understood each other's sense of honor at this moment.. and I was perhaps the one person here he'd allow to do it in his stead. And Lir'i'c had a valid point - Orpheus' survival was necessary to the future freedom of an entire race, and mine wasn't. And Shadowheart knew all of this, and knew how I thought.
Which is why she shouldn't have been so surprised when I gave a soft, low chuckle - and then grinned wickedly at everyone else's expression.
"Prince Orpheus. You said the problem isn't that we lack the mental ability or the willpower, but we just don't have the physical resilience to survive channelling that magnitude of energy?" I questioned.
"Yes." he said. "And that is why one of us must... accept the transformation into ghaik." he shuddered. "No other humanoid creature has a brain adapted to channelling such energies."
"But what if we used a brain - or maybe even three brains - not adapted to channelling such energies... but which had all temporarily been made physically immortal?" I asked. "Would that also work?"
Shadowheart gasped in realization, followed shortly by the others in my party, as Orpheus looked at me puzzledly. "I would imagine, yes... but how do you 'make someone temporarily immortal'? Do you think that Jergal would provide such aid? I don't think he's even allowed to!"
"Wrong scion of divinity." I sighed in relief, now that we had a clear course of action again. "Let's go. We need to get topside as soon as we possibly can... and then I need to find Dame Aylin."
Author's Note: And here we are, finally entering the endgame. It's been a long road to get here, but the home stretch is in sight.
Gortash's death scene had already been outlined, but the exact mechanics evolved as I wrote them at the last minute. Ultimately I chose to show favoritism to one of my favorite BG3 villains by allowing him to die with intelligence and dignity... while still having his death be a result of his character flaws and mental limitations. Gortash, IMO, is ultimately a psychopath/sociopath - brilliant, charismatic, but he's just missing something inside and it means he's always just a little off in actually connecting with and understanding people, even if he can manipulate them well.
The big reveal of the Netherbrain is mostly canon, with just a few tweaks to make things make more sense to me personally. The entire game really is a prolonged Xanatos Gambit by the damned thing, to pull an Uno reverse on its would-be masters and gain not only its own freedom but apotheosis. I considered it a fitting tribute to an alleged superhuman intellect for Larian to actually have the damned thing legitimately come across as a scheming genius... even if it did underestimate the puny mortals in the end.
Regarding Hawke's opinion on the Chantry - it is historical fact on Thedas that the creation of the Mage Circle system was a merciful compromise negotiated by the Chantry at its founding, as the overwhelming public sentiment immediately following Andraste's rebellion against Tevinter was for the extermination of mages everywhere and the Chantry was talking the angry mob down from that position by inventing the Circle system instead. We find that out in DA: Inquisition. So Hawke's not saying that it's great - he is in fact giving one of his most important reasons for going back home as the hope that he can significantly improve on conditions. But it's canon Hawke's father didn't actually hate the templars or the Mage Circle system - his main reason for defecting from it was that he'd gotten Hawke's mother pregnant and the only way he could avoid being deadbeat dad was to go apostate. This is DA2 canon. So Hawke learned that attitude from him.
thanks for the chapter
