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Fic Prompt #3

Fandom: Baldur’s Gate 3 Characters: Dame Aylin/Isobel Thorm, Shar; also features Selûne, and Balthazar, that wretched walking content warning Length: ~4000 words Summary: Aylin prays in the Shadowfell, to a mother who can't hear her - and an aunt who can.

What can silence the Nightsong? @stachless prompted "nightmare" and also drew [this art]. Brainworms heavily inspired by @featherwurm's [art] and its followup [here]. Also inspired by a bunch of Aylin's Shadowfell dialogue, the extremity of what she went through, her mother, and the Jesus-Christ-Superstar-Gethsemane of it all. Then we have my own need to see her cherished and taken care of and protected, along with a bit of weird fascination with how the Calm Emotions spell is actually supposed to work.

Hurt/comfort. Warnings for canon-typical violence and references to torture.

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Once, there would have been a steady hum, a warmth blooming eternal in her chest. An undeniable, reassuring presence, like a hand on her shoulder, and a loving murmur in her ear as if her Mother were there, but only just out of sight. Now there is nothing.

There is worse than nothing; there is a tug, a pull, a leeching so unnatural and wrong it makes bile rise in Aylin's throat. Makes her first steps into a stumble, as she pulls herself to her feet from where the latest Sharran had felled her, leading her so close to the bounds of her enclosure that the sickly glow of the grasping claws starts to manifest.

So instead she kneels, as she has done countless times before: in magnificent temples and humble shrines, in muddy battlefields before and after skirmishes, in winter storms and in bright summer showers. Privately, or as one in a crowd of worshippers. Or, a traitorous little shard of her heart pipes up, with Isobel, whose devotion was always catching like the most pleasant of flames.

"Moonmaiden, hear me," once she finally speaks, Aylin's voice is strong to her own ears, rising clear and resonant from the depths of her chest, unhampered by her predicament or by the bitter sting of grief. It is a bracing thing to note, and it makes it easier to straighten her shoulders and persist.

The odious essence that permeates the Shadowfell makes calm, comfortable meditation a distant dream, but Aylin does her utmost to shake off the worst of it. She chooses instead to focus on going through all the well-practised, familiar, reassuring motions. Hands open, relaxed, palms resting on her thighs, eyes closed but not clenched shut, chin upturned slightly, waiting for the light of an absent moon.

"Weaver of the silver loom, look upon me with mercy and pluck the threads of my fate to lead them away from this place, away from this dungeon of loss and dark and grief."

It is easy, natural, to intone the words, even as the recitation feels slightly more formal than Aylin is used to. The conspicuous absence surrounding her and blanketing her heart does nothing to deter her.

"Guide me out of the grasp of shadow. Turn the tides, so that I may vanquish Your enemies once more and shield Your faithful from the darkness in turn, under Your watchful eye."

Ketheric will bleed, a Sharran plot that was allowed to fester and grow much too far will finally be thwarted, and Reithwin salvaged, recovered, a haven for those basking in the light of the moon once more.

Surely, whatever time Aylin has spent here… surely it is enough.

Her only answer is a coward's blow; a would-be justiciar who has snuck down to her prison oh-so-quietly, who has chosen to anoint herself with the blood of an unarmed, unaware opponent knelt in prayer.

In the rush of her own lifeblood Aylin could swear she hears laughter.

"Hear me. Moonmaiden," the words are ground out this time, slowly and painstakingly. "Our Lady of Silver. Shine Your gleaming light upon me, dispel the grip of shadow and pain, bolster my heart with Your radiance…"

There is an arrow lodged in her flank, and another one near her shoulder blade, still burning with the telltale traces of poison. This one wanted to make sure - a good Sharran: thorough, prepared. Lurking in the shadows and well out of reach, even for this. Truly meant for his mistress' embrace.

"I, whose hand has ever borne Your sword against wickedness gladly and with pride…"

The third in what can't have been more than, what, a day? But how to tell, when her own body falling and rising is the only thing she can rely on to try to gauge the passage of time? In any case, Ketheric is ramping up the production of his army, that much is clear.

So much of Reithwin has paraded before her eyes. People she had lived beside, even if for a little while, coming here to kill her. Some of them acknowledge the fact, even - let her know they never trusted her, sneer about their welcome and respect being but pretence, or forced by fear of divine retribution. Others avert their eyes and pretend they weren't the ones to help her pick out flowers for a bouquet to gift Isobel early in their courtship, just as they weren't the ones to help with the delicate petal-cups of the moonflower arrangements for her funeral.

If she thinks of what has happened, what must be happening to the ones who she hasn't faced here, the rage mixed with the bitter bite of failure threatens to overwhelm her utterly. They were hers to protect. Just as Isobel was.

She can't reach the accursed arrow in her back to pull it out. The sting mounts and mounts and meets the agony driven deep in her heart.

"Moonmaiden, hear me. As You guide the lost back onto their paths, as You set before our feet roads out of darkness, I pray. For my path is winding, never-ending, yet I have ever heeded--"

How much more? How much, how much, howmuch…

The spear to the heart she would have taken for one of the quick and merciful ones - but no. Because the Sharran misses, curse them, and then stops to deliver a tirade - before being swallowed by vicious, hungry shadows.

"The tides turn, inexorably," she mutters, half-dazed with blood loss, stumbling to her knees. "The tides, they… in Your strength, as all things, they…"

Aylin's head lolls forward, proud chin meeting chest, prayer cut short. "Enough. It is enough. I have borne--" What, she cannot say. Penance? Some crucial holy burden? Instead, she ekes out syllables around the agony in her chest, where the spear is still lodged. The spear left in her in disgust, once the acolyte realised it was a mere inert replica of the artefact they sought, incapable of delivering true death, of elevating them beyond a mere ordained assassin. Before their own fate was sealed so very efficiently.

One does not become the Chosen of a goddess by choosing themselves, after all.

"Please."

In the silence, she scrabbles with bloody hands and pulls the spear out herself, inch by painfully slow inch. Throws it into the abyss with a roar of fury and disgust, for she has no use for a weapon here. She cannot fight and tear and kill her way to freedom, a sword that cannot cut itself free. The best she could achieve by destroying her captors here and now would be oblivion, to be forgotten here.

Lost.

"Mother," she whispers, and feels burning shame at prayer being reduced to pleading. "Mother, please."

Nothing.

The necromancer visits again, when she is barely recovered from the last freshly-made justiciar, still catching her breath and clutching at newly-unshattered ribs.

Aylin has goaded him before. Barked out whatever insult came to mind, every threat and vow of vengeance most bloody on both him and his coward of a general, who so adamantly refuses to come face her. But this time - she will find she cannot remember, after, what it was she said that led to this - if she even said anything.

But whatever she does or mutters or simply is right then crosses some threshold, unfathomable to her. Something that permits such aimless, gratuitous cruelty, justifies it in the mind of the truly monstrous.

Balthazar is uncharacteristically silent, the usual sick gloating absent, when he gestures for the hands to pull her to her knees, to hold her in place; when they grip her neck and claw her head back and rip her jaw open against all her mighty strain, as if she is not even trying to resist. When she tastes the rust of the blade and then the rust of her own blood.

Her mouth burns, jaw and chin and palate aflame, agony spreading from the carelessly cut lip down to her throat. She spits blood, and blood, and blood, but it will not stop, and it chokes her. Dizzying, mortifying. Hunched over after she is released, one hand clenched in the dirt of her rocky prison, barely holding her up, the other scrabbling at her neck.

She cannot speak aloud the words that old and young, great and small throughout Faerûn know will bring the Moonmaiden's keen-eyed, loving gaze to them. But then, she has never really needed to. Selûne has ever kept watch over Her daughter, Her sword.

Mother. Aylin tries to think, upwards, upwards, imagining flying up to pierce the shadowy dome. Mother, hear me, when they would silence me.

Nothing.

Balthazar shuffles into her blurred view, doing something with a jar, and silver-flecked muscle and--

And what will he do with it? What does he do with all else he steals from her? It is a horror she does not want to contemplate.

Her tongue, made for poetry, made for battle cries and striking fear into the unworthy and the wicked, into the scheming and the twisted. Made for jubilation and proclamation, made for testifying the glory of her Mother and the good, righteous cause she championed so gladly. Made to argue and philosophise. Made for joy and pleasure taken in the mortal and worldly and wondrously, preciously, divinely mundane: tasting fine wine and succulent food and the sweetest of lips and the softest of skin and most cherished of flesh, all hers, once, all of it -- all of it taken, gone.

Lost.

Instead, violation and violence. A cut throat, and spilt guts. And here comes one with a cruel mace - atypical, for Sharran clergy. She would laugh at herself, a half-mad thing, at the spark of absurd, sick excitement at being murdered slightly unusually - but what else is there? What is there, here, in the void?

Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. Pain, or nothing.

Her.

Aylin does not attempt to pray when she next rises. She screams curses and barely-coherent tirades against her hated, hateful aunt, if only for there to be something, anything else.

"Silence," comes that rarely-heard voice. Despised, yet known. "My sister spawned a rabid dog, it seems."

A gleam of feeble triumph warms Aylin's heart. A response provoked. A goddess' hand forced, even if in a matter so very small. She stands, as tall and proud as she can in bloodied rags. "I was chosen to bear her light, to be her sword, to champion her cause--"

"She did not choose you," the voice cuts her off, growing louder and closer, echoing in the endless chasm of its domain, surrounding. "She made you. And what a pitiful job she did of it, too." The disdain is palpable, radiating out of every wisp of shadow swirling around the lonesome platform. "She whelped you to hunt down my faithful."

"She charged me with protecting her own." Aylin glares into the darkness, turning this way and that, trying to fathom where to best aim her fury from her perch in the eye of a growing storm.

"She who seeks always to steal from me, to supplant me, she who knows no measure, whose ambitions know no end."

The raging shadows swirl ever closer, angrier and angrier still. But Aylin refuses to be cowed, refuses to yield, faced with the one who gives her purpose. For the Sword of the Silverlight is a necessity, yes, but it is not Selûne who makes it so. It is her spiteful sister and her misguided followers, ever prowling and looking to harm.

"You lie, as always, Lady of Loss. She wishes only for peace, for her faithful to be left to make their own way, to flourish. Without your schemes, there would be no need for my service at all."

A clap of thunder behind her; Aylin turns, but not in time to see the grasping shadows that rush towards her, wind around her legs and arms, around her neck and chest. Restraints nothing like the eerie, necrotic claws, but just as cold and cruel and unmoveable.

"Ah, so my sister needs to bind her paladins with chains of bloodline to ensure they serve her?" The voice is mocking, and so very, very near. As if Shar herself is standing there, speaking in Aylin's ear as her shadows mercilessly pull her down. "Perhaps, for once, she is right. For I have claimed a prize from her already, and he has brought me you."

"I am not bound," Aylin spits out, pulling against her fetters, grinding her knuckles to dust and bone on the cold stone of her prison. "I am not bound. I choose, I serve, I am faithful--"

"You are a failure."

"I am-- I am Dame Aylin Silverblood, Sword of the Moonmaiden, Moon Daughter, Bearer of the Silverlight. When I am free, there will be a mighty reckoning. I will bring it on wings of silver, on the edge of my blessèd sword, in the name of my Mother, and in my own name."

"You are a failure," the darkness repeats, unphased, calm, certain, factual, "and so you have been discarded."

"I am," Aylin starts, barely forces out, then stops, gritting her teeth against the burning pressure, the rancid atmosphere cloaking her prison. "I am--"

"I am the Nightsinger and you are my Nightsong, and so it is mine to silence you."

The darkness becomes tangible, cloying, suffocating. Aylin tries to draw breath but finds that she cannot. Cannot see through the thickening murk even to the sickly blazing runes of her prison-circle.

"The moon does not shine its foul light here, and it never will. Here, in my perfect dark, we are gloriously free of it. Howl your foolish prayer-ditties, Nightsong - they will fall upon no ears. Your ever-whimsical, capricious mother has abandoned you to my care."

The shadows tighten and Aylin chokes on darkness like she choked on blood. Her back burns with phantom pains, spiking up and down her shoulder blades, and every wound and indignity feels visited upon her again. A scream feels like it should tear itself from her throat, but there is only silence.

"In the creation of my army, I have given you purpose. Much more than my pathetic sister ever has. And once that purpose is fulfilled, I will silence you forever."

She finds herself sprawled on the ground, suddenly free of the restraints, as the final, threatening proclamation rattles through her muscle, deep into her bones.

"The loss of a daughter," Shar sounds amused, almost, a cruel smile tainting her words, "is devastating, I hear. It will make a fine gift for my deserving kin. Now rise. One approaches who must prove their worth."

Aylin's mind is flooded with Isobel, Isobel, Isobel, and her chest feels like it will cave in on itself.

The air rushes in, finally, and Aylin tastes blood in her mouth from a bitten cheek, feels a pounding in her head - and very little else. A cool balm, a much-needed distance has been put between her and the red-hot thornvine of the past century, and it allows her to breathe.

She blinks, and knelt before her is Isobel, alive and whole, in a simple nightgown, hands aglow with the remnants of a freshly cast spell.

"Aylin?" She asks, cautiously, with the telltale downturn of the corner of her mouth that means she is concentrating. Her eyes are wide and filled to the brim with such tender concern, the restrained but clearly pained tremble in her voice more agonising than any Sharran knife. She keeps her distance, though the tension and the need to leap forward, to be close, to hold, is palpable.

"You were… I tried to wake you, but you weren't responding. It was like you were lost to me."

Lost.

"I am…"

Aylin stops, because she does not know what words could follow and not be lies.

"This will only last a minute. Please, stay with me, Aylin. Alright?"

Aylin nods.

"Breathe with me."

Aylin does.

"May I touch you?"

Aylin hesitates, where she should have roared her enthusiastic consent. But her entire body still feels raw.

"...yes," she says only when she truly feels it to be true, and Isobel seems… proud?

The lightest, gentlest hand comes to rest on her cheek and jaw. Familiar, loved, ever so slightly colder than… than before. Isobel.

She would have nuzzled into it happily, usually, pressed a kiss or two to the soft palm. It is a bit much at the moment, though, just that little bit too close, and so Aylin slowly pries it off her cheek and holds the hand between both her own instead.

Then the minute is up and the spell wears off, and the veil that was between her and what seems like the rest of the world abruptly falls away. Aylin draws air in with mounting effort, then lets it out in a hiss at the flood of sensation.

But the hand between hers serves to ground; Isobel's eyes, luminous in the moonlight that seeps into the room, hold her own and seem to encompass her entire.

"Should I cast it again?" Isobel asks softly, free hand already rising towards Aylin's temple.

She moves to decline, muster up some sort of casual air, but stops herself at the last moment. Digs down to the soldierly disposition that has been a help to her, an ingrained way to make sense of so much. It does no good to overestimate one's own capability. Her mind rattles off, almost of its own accord. A correct measure of one's strength is key to all engagements.

"Once-- once more, please, my love," Aylin asks, and is mildly surprised at the complete lack of shame and nauseating sense of inadequacy that had, for a time, become her stalwart companions.

"As many times as you need," Isobel says reassuringly, already leaning forward and reaching out with both hands. "There is no shame in accepting help."

It is a song and dance they both know well by now. The words Isobel has spoken what must be hundreds of times, in an effort to make them real and true to Aylin.

Her touch on what feels like the sides of Aylin's troubled mind accompanied by a murmured incantation take all of a second, but the coolness and numbness and the slight drowsiness ripple outward and encompass her again. The separation from herself, the distance from everything, is always mildly discomfiting and ever-so-slightly reminiscent of the Shadowfell - a reassuring fact, as Aylin takes it to mean she is in no danger of craving it, or growing to depend on it.

It is but a moment of reprieve each time. But it is just enough to buy her a chance to shore up her own defences, when they have been so cruelly torn down by the workings of her own unconscious mind. She places her hands over Isobel's own once again, breathes in time with her, and thinks, very deliberately, of little else.

This time, when the minute runs out, the shock of being plunged back into the world is barely noticeable.

There is no brand-wound placed on her by Shar, like brave Shadowheart still bears. And yet it still feels so often like her aunt's cruel grasp is lying in wait behind every shadow, waiting to snatch her up and pull her down, down, down, until her knees meet the cold rune-inscribed rock in the heart of the Shadowfell.

It makes Aylin still want to laugh at herself, sometimes. Her knees are, in fact, resting on the finest mattress of the grandest bed Waterdeep's House of the Moon could provide. Her legs are entangled with duvets filled with the softest down, with sheets of finest silk. And yet, and yet.

But she does not let out any bark of bitter, self-deprecating laugh, for even after everything, there is Isobel. The anchor. The crux of everything. The eye of a swirling storm. A beacon of light so blessedly blinding it washes out all else, all pain and sorrow and acrid, biting memory.

Isobel, whose mere presence drowns out the roaring winds of the Shadowfell, fills up the Lady of Loss' cursed silence that steals and numbs everything it touches.

Isobel, something to focus on when all else is too much, or too little. Who scuttles closer to Aylin on the bed once she sees her calmed enough, and leans in until they are pressed shoulder to shoulder.

"Would you like to talk about it?" Her thumb rubs small, delicate circles into the back of Aylin's hand.

Aylin sighs. "I cannot possibly begin to explain… to put into words…"

"Could you try? For me, my love, and for yourself?"

The only thing silencing Aylin now is she herself.

Truth and honesty, ideals to strive for - and the light that chases away any Sharran shadow. Aylin draws in a deep breath, as much as her chest that still feels cramped will allow. Squares her shoulders as if preparing for combat.

And still her words come out hesitant, almost meek. "I would not have wanted you to bear witness, then. To… to their crimes, their sins against me. To my shame. And so I do not want to make you a witness to them now, even if it is only through my telling."

She feels reluctant to expose Isobel to any of it. Even when, yes, she is an accomplished cleric and a healer and has seen and dealt with her own share of horrors, but…

"Aylin," the palpable pain in Isobel's wide eyes is already too much as she reaches out a gentle hand again, turning Aylin's face towards her. "You are the woman I love, and the chosen of my heart. Nothing will ever change that."

"It has been nigh a year." Aylin knows she sounds petulant. Knows she would have thoughtlessly blinked away the meagre span of a single year, before.

"Compared to a hundred?" Isobel shakes her head, looks at her almost pleadingly. That way she does, the way she seems to have reserved for whenever Aylin insists she should think nothing of the way she hastily exited a too-tight or too-dark space.

"Fine. Fine, my love, for you," Aylin breathes out. "But… outside. Let us first recover somewhat, in my Mother's light."

Let Her hear as well.

Isobel rises, takes her by the hand, and pulls her along, gently, out onto the balcony. Theirs is a spacious, luxurious suite situated in the prime spot of the temple complex housing wing, overlooking the luscious inner gardens in the House of the Moon. Usually, neither of them care for the pomp and circumstance their visits tend to invite in Selûnite spaces. But this time Aylin feels grateful for both the privacy and the position under the moonlight dome, as she does little but breathe in the scent of the moonflowers, freshly opened for the night, each cupping a little mote of moonlight and embracing it in blue.

For a good while, until Aylin feels ready, Isobel chatters, hums, softly fills any second of silence. She has come to understand so much, and Aylin is so grateful as she lets the sweet voice buoy her heart, carry her.

It felt near-blasphemous, at first, these calls to a goddess over things she would have once called trivial. But the joint efforts of her Mother and her beloved have convinced her they are anything but.

Mother? Aylin sends out the simplest of thoughts as she gazes upward and feels the moonlight bathe her face, fill her heart to bursting, settle around her shoulders like a blanket.

I hear you, daughter. I see you. I hold you under my gaze, safe.

This, too, is her birthright. Simple reassurance.

Under her Mother's silver eye, guarded in the circle of Isobel's arms, Aylin speaks. Once her words run dry and she is left feeling drained, scoured out, head dizzyingly feather-light, Isobel finally moves from her side. She returns within moments, wraps herself around Aylin and wraps them both in a star-embroidered coverlet.

"Never again," Isobel whispers, all moon-bathed steel, as she presses a dozen soft kisses to Aylin's face, then holds her to her chest. "I will not let anyone harm you again."

It is a heartwarming, if impossible thought. Aylin doesn't have it in herself to do anything but believe it.

The moon continues on her path across the sky, her Tears shining bright, as the night descends into a silence that is both warm and comfortable.

#🥺🥺🥺#moonangel #bg3 #I'm wrecked a little thinking about aylin recognizing the people who came to kill her (at first)

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