Chapter Text
They had been far from subtle in their conversation about the infernal iron, so at this point, everyone knows that Karlach wants to go to the grove before they leave, and no one has the heart to tell her no.
Lae’zel comes the closest.
“If it will take significant time, we will return later. The druid is likely already dead, and we cannot delay any longer.”
“I promise, Lae. I just want to see if it's enough!”
And that's that.
When Astarion steps through the portal, Karlach is already ahead of him, legs pumping as she vaults towards the gate. She’s no match for him, however, and she laughs as he catches up, makes a point of getting farther ahead, and then slows down to match her pace.
Poor Dammon is in for a fright when they trot up to the forge, Karlach immediately talking loudly about the iron before he’s even registered their presence. The blacksmith jolts in surprise and fumbles to catch a sword sheath he is embossing.
Astarion hops onto the little table nearby while Karlach drops the infernal iron into Dammon’s gloved hands.
“This is great news!” the man exclaims. “I wasn’t sure you’d find any, but I drew up some plans, just in case. I admit, the idea of doing some infernal forging did excite me. It gets very boring around here.” He scrutinizes the hunk of metal, even pulling out a little monocle that hooks onto his nose so he can get a closer look.
Dammon hums consideringly as he dots about the space, lifting a cast iron bowl and placing it on the metal hooks hanging over the forge, then gently lowering the infernal iron inside, hand on his chin as he inspects it.
Karlach can't keep quiet any longer.
“Is it enough? Will it work?” She blurts out.
“It should be.” Dammon nods, still watching the iron. “I first want to try insulating the chamber to keep it from overheating. Once I get in there, I can get a better idea of some further changes, but we will need more iron for that…”
Astarion immediately decides that if Dammon says this will take all day, he will deal with the others.
He tells himself that it's because Karlach frightens him when she gets upset.
The pale tiefling begins to prod at the iron with a poker, and Astarion is shocked to see the material move in response to his touch. It is squishy and dark like an organ, as if made of flesh, malleable after only a few moments of heat.
“Give me a moment,” Dammon says under his breath, sticking his tongue between his teeth with concentration.
Karlach crosses over to stand by Astarion. Her shoulders are tense, and that giddiness has been entirely replaced by something sharper.
“One upgrade of many,” Astarion says apropos nothing. “It’ll be a start, if nothing else.”
“Ya.” She sighs, rubbing absently across her scarred shoulder. “If it makes me a little less achy, it’ll be a win. But gods, I want to touch people again. So f*cking bad, fangs.”
Her eyes are wet with unshed tears, and her beautiful face- usually smiling or growling with anger, is crumpled with grief, her teeth worrying her lip.
He doesn't understand this pain. There's novetly to that. There isn't much pain that Astarion hasn’t experienced, but being deprived of touch, missing hands on him, was never one of them. Even when isolated, what he missed was voices. Never hands.
Maybe it was different before. Maybe he used to have a love whom he missed while he worked late hours, whose arms he longed for when they were apart.
Maybe he has always been like this.
The vampire slips a hand into his pocket and rolls his fingers along the black stone there, worrying it back and forth, back and forth.
A placeholder, she called it. Not an IOU or a promise. As if the hug itself wasn’t the point, as if the touch wasn’t the point. It was as if the message Karlach wanted to get across to him at that moment was just as easily shown with a stone or a flower as it was with arms around him.
Like a thank you. Not a payment.
He lifts a hand to his breast pocket, where the little white flower is carefully placed, the petals a little limp from movement.
“If a rock is a hug,” he starts. “Then what is the flower?”
She breaks her vigil to turn to him, her eyes going to the hand he has placed over the stem. She smiles softly.
“Well, I may have wanted to give ya a little peck too.”
“Oh?” he asks. “How scandalous.” He looks at her through his eyelashes.
“I don’t know.” She sighs. “Felt like the thing to do.”
He co*cks his head at that, unsure how to respond, when Dammon says,
“Alright, Karlach, come over here!”
Astarion does his best to cover Karlach’s back while Dammon goes to work, hiding her exposed chest cavity as best he can with his slight frame and glaring daggers at anyone whose eyes wander a little too eagerly at the topless tiefling. He himself only saw a glance when she whispered a little incantation and the ribs started to open up. She hissed a little at it, but nowhere near enough to indicate it felt how it looked. However, it seems far from comfortable.
He will admit that he’s curious. The blood smell is more potent now for the exposed insides but not as strong as he would expect. He can hear the engine louder than before and notices for the first time that underneath the rhythmic whirring is the faintest thump of sound, like an artificial heartbeat. He pictures the softness of the infernal iron and imagines it pulsing, wonders if her artificial heart expands and contracts in that strange way infernal iron seems capable of.
She has to do the installation herself, her flames too dangerous for even Dammon’s gloved hands, but he's instructing her carefully, and Astarion can hear the movement of metal pieces and flesh alike. “Hold that part back,” and “slide the piece behind just there,” and so on. After a shockingly short amount of time, Astarion hears the clicking of her chest closing back up and, in his peripheral vision, sees her tuck her shirt back on.
When he turns around, she looks at her hands in awe and then rubs against her chest, eyes shut gently.
“It feels better. Calmer,” she says quietly. “Like I could run for hours without tiring, but also like I can really relax. Is that normal?”
Dammon chuckles. “I can’t say I know. This is a first. Not just for me, but I think for anyone ever.”
Astarion notes that she's still radiating heat, that flames dance along her hair and shoulders. But the engine's sound is gentler, like a soothed beast calm enough to be guided back into its pen.
She opens her eyes with a smile, a softer one, a peaceful one.
“Thank you, Dammon. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.”
She glances over to Astarion. “And thank you, Fangs, for finding the stuff.”
“Anytime, my dear,” he responds.
Dammon is putting his tools away with a satisfied grin. “I already have more ideas. Once I could see it- well, I have an idea for a cooling chamber. I need time to draw it up… but I would be honored to make it for you when I do.”
“You’re the best, Dammon,” Karlach says, standing and stretching her arms. “How much do I owe you?”
He waves her off. “On the house. The opportunity to use my real skills out here to actually help someone? That's payment enough.”
Karlach turns to Astarion and gives him a spin.
“Do I look different? How do I look?”
“Hot.”
She gives him a sad smile. “Probably too hot, but it's a start, like you said.”
“We can give it a shot?” Astarion offers, extending his index finger out to her. Her eyes blow wide as she watches it move, and he holds it in the air between them expectantly. She raises a finger and slowly brings it up to his, now just a handspan apart.
With a quick little burst, she pushes forward and pokes the pad of his finger, tugging her hand back quickly.
It hurts, that's true, but it doesn’t leave a mark, doesn’t burn.
He shakes his hand slightly from the discomfort but gives her a bracing grin, proudly showing his unmarked finger. “Not a mark on me, love.”
And he thinks he may just be able to knock her over with a feather.
“Dammon.” She says without breaking eye contact. “I’m gonna get you that iron lickety split.”
“No one touch that chest.”
“Oh, you’ve only gone and guaranteed I will be touching it.”
Astarion is crouched in front of an iron lockbox and swipes his thumb over the lock, wiping off a smear of blood that he smells carefully before wiping on his pants.
The others had made themselves busy while Astarion and Karlach were at the grove. When the two of them stepped out of the waystone, they discovered a note left to tell them to use the waystones to get to Waukeen’s rest. Once they arrived, they spotted the team with their packs on, but Gale and Wyll had some smatterings of blood on them.
Apparently, there had been a pack of gnolls waiting for them at the portal site, but the said gnolls were feasting on the Zhents' missing caravan, so the strongbox was looted.
Astarion inspects the thick lock on the front of the iron case. Complicated, sure, but not impossible.
“Seriously,” Wyll repeats himself. “I didn’t even want to get involved with the Zhent, and I’m certainly not about to make them our enemies either.”
“What is even in it?”
Gale gestures with an open palm, and the chest levitates, primed to sweep into his bag of holding.
“Wait!” Astarion halts, and the chest thumps back into the dirt. “What if it's something dangerous? We wouldn’t want it exploding in our dear wizard's pocket now, would we?”
Gale looks like he's chastizing a student as he says, “They specifically requested we return it unopened. They were very, very clear on that stipulation.”
Astarion finds his way back to the chest within 5 minutes, Gale successfully distracted by a “missing” book.
The lock takes merely a minute to pick, and Astarion slips his hand through a narrow crack in the lid, sweeping his fingers along the seemingly empty bottom.
No, not empty. There's a small cushion of cotton wrapped around a…
A flask?
This big of a chest, weighted down to seem filled to the brim, all to transport one bottle?
He slips it out of the chest and closes the heavy lid silently, turning the flask in the other hand. It’s a stunning piece of ironwork, intricate embossings of leaves and flames and beasts twirling around the rounded bottom, circling the visage of a snarling devil face, the eyes glowing with the contained contents of the bottle. It's some sort of potion, likely, or an explosive.
Upon closer inspection, he discovers a tiny furled note adhered to the bottom.
“After throwing, take cover.”
He tucks it into his pocket.
Karlach twirls her new axe around her fingers, spinning it in the air once before catching it in a prepared stance, giving it a test swing for the fun of it.
“Watch it!” Gale squawks, needlessly ducking (she is nowhere near him).
The tiefling only grins and does another little acrobatic maneuver, this time with decidedly more bravado, catching the axe behind her back with a wink.
“Someone’s feeling better,” Wyll says fondly from behind her down the path.
It's true.
Karlach hasn’t felt this alive since she left Avernus. The tadpole did something to her power—that stifling is unmistakable—but it wasn’t until the ship crashed in Faerun that her engine started to…change.
It started as a stuttering, which she imagines must be similar to heart palpitations in anyone else—a little thready double beat that made her throat tight. But it progressed quickly. A few days in, she could feel gears in her sternum and her back, the farthest-reaching pieces of mech scraping near her spine—nothing debilitating, more like a tickle than anything—or more like an itch.
It's been more reactive, too. Going into a rage, a battle-fuge state, will ramp it up, of course—that's the point of the thing—but it has become temperamental. The emotions no longer have to be extreme for the thing to rev up, for the pistons to start kicking, for flame to shoot out of shoulder vents and too close to her friend's skin.
Too close to his skin.
Astarion, who sometimes gets this far-away look in his eyes that overwhelms her with her desire to squeeze the cold right out of him. Astarion, who broke the compulsion of a hag strong enough to warp reality itself, yet flinches and snaps when Shadowheart tries to heal a wound.
Astarion, whom she’s known for such a short time, yet found the material needed to help her engine only hours after learning of its existence.
It was the most kindness anyone had done for her in…well, a long time.
But now she feels a settling in her chest. It's still raging hot, but it's satiated. It’s soothed.
She’s never felt more powerful.
Gale chuckles at her antics as they approach the goblin camp. The sky is choked with fragrant smoke and ash—roasted meat over spits, no doubt. Karlach recognizes the smell well. She knows it well enough, too, to know when it's not just pork or venison.
After some deliberation, it was decided that Wyll would take place at the front of the troupe, Astarion just behind in case some tadpole finagling needed to happen. The plan is to infiltrate as a pack of True Souls, find Halsin, and smuggle him out.
Lae’zel expects they will claw their way out of this camp.
Having Astarion at the front proves to be the right choice nearly immediately. No sooner does Karlach approach from the back of the group to the goblin sentry post than she feels the tickle of her tadpole behind her eye—not directed at her, but an acknowledgment of its brethren nearby.
She doesn't hear what Astarion says, doesn't know what words he weaves to maneuver the illithid passenger, but the Gobbo who was shaking them down nearly drops into a full grovel to let them pass, and Astarion stalks ahead with a haughty smirk at the prostrating man.
It's unreasonably hot.
The goblins past the gate must trust the security team because no one bothers them once they pass through and head for the bridge to cross to the temple.
They don’t make it halfway across before things go wrong.
It hits as sharp and sudden as a blow across the temple, then escalates to the sensation of having one's skull trapped beneath the boot of a soldier, grinding your cheek into the dirt. Karlach gasps and stumbles, gripping her head as it gets tighter and tighter- her companions falling to their knees in tandem.
Through her squinting eyes, she can see Gale trying to do some counterspell or something, but his arms convulse and refuse to cooperate.
Karlach catches Astarion’s eyes blowing wide when a voice begins to speak in their minds.
“Hear my voice. Obey my command.”
The voice has no discernable characteristics, as fluid and shapeless as one's inner dialogue. It's less like listening and more like thinking , thinking in words that aren't hers.
The bridge fades away, leaving them kneeling in a featureless shadowscape. Dark clouds as cool as winter air on every side, and three figures descend from a beacon of light. She can’t see their faces and doesn’t know their names, but there's an assuredness in her heart that she will know them when she needs to.
“These are my chosen. They speak for me. Aid their search for the weapon and earn my embrace.”
The pressure doubles. Karlach collapses all the way to the dirt now, shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to rise again. The worm wants to listen; it's twisting her mind, and Karlach finds that, with horror, she wants to obey—to submit.
There's a sound, a high-pitched hum from her left, and the clouds dissipate. The figures vanish into the smoke, and the pain leeches away, leaving the six of them gasping and scrambling to their knees in the dirt of the bridge. Karlach’s eyes follow the sound and see a bright orange light humming and bouncing in place like an excitable honey bee. It takes a moment for her vision to stop swaying, and she realizes what it is.
The artifact.
As the pain leeches into nothingness, the light from the prism dissipates and falls dormant into Shadowheart’s outstretched hands.
For a while, no one says anything, too busy catching their breath and trying to process what the f*ck just happened.
“It would seem,” Astarion brushes off his knees with a prim scoff, “that there was some truth to that dream visitor's machinations.” He says it with a dismissive wave, but Karlach catches the way his hand shakes with the movement. Lae'zel looks shaken as well, but this presents itself with a bite. She's fuming, eyeing the artifact in Shadowhearts hands with a strange combination of loathing, wonder, and…dejection.
"It would seem there is some truth to it, yes," Lae'zel says without breaking eye contact with the prism. “It may protect us from the voice now, but we have no guarantee it will continue to do so."
"Agreed." Wyll sighs. "Let's get in and out with Halsin before we find out, eh?"
