antemortem

SUMMARY

He wore that easy smile of his—the one he wore when he was the Blade of Frontiers, saving innocents and slaying beasts. Was I the innocent or the beast?

we both know the answer to that question.

NOTES

when you're near / the creatures inside me go still and quiet / and watch you from behind my eyes. (A Softer World, #1075)

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The Underdark stretched around us like the gullet of some ancient beast, its stalagmites and stalactites forming jagged rows of teeth ready to snap shut. I sat cross-legged on the cold stone, letting it bite through my breeches. Behind me, our companions’ tents stood silent as they slept—so foolish-vulnerable-trusting.

Bioluminescent fungi crept the cavern floor in clusters of sickly blue-green, their light too weak to pierce the perpetual gloom. Like watching eyes. Like the way Alfira’s had gleamed, right before—

Her lute weighed heavy on my lap, an accusation made manifest in polished wood and silent strings. fracture it! splinter it! shatter it! I gripped the lute tighter, forcing my attention to the muted crackling of our campfire. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, each drop a metronome counting out my sins.

Wyll kept watch beside me, his gaze sweeping the shadowed expanse. Condensation beaded on his stone eye, catching the firelight like tears. When he broke the silence, his voice carried a warmth that seemed to chase back the incessant chill of these depths. “You know, I could show you how to play that properly.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Alfira’s lute.” His voice softened around her name, gentle but unflinching. “You’ve been carrying it like a memento mori.”

In the campfire’s glow, the lute’s polished wood gleamed, disturbingly pristine—clean of the blood I’d spilled. “Is it wrong? To keep it?”

“No,” said Wyll, his mismatched eyes studying me intently. “But perhaps it’s time to make it sing again.”

“I didn’t take you for a musician.”

“Ah, there’s much you don’t know about the Blade of Frontiers,” Wyll replied with a soft chuckle. “Father insisted; he hired the finest tutor in Baldur’s Gate—spent coin we barely had. He wanted to make sure I had every advantage he never did. I didn’t appreciate it then, too busy dreaming of swordplay, but…” He faltered. “Well, let’s just say music has a way of keeping the devils at bay.”

Something in his voice—a vulnerability I recognised all too well—made my throat tighten. Curiosity burned, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I held out the lute. “Show me?”

His face softened, and for a moment, the hero’s mantle fell away. “It would be my honour.” He took the instrument with familiar ease, fingers brushing over the strings like one greeting an old friend. He tuned it by ear, and then, with a quiet confidence, he began to play a soft, sombre melody. The notes that followed hung in the air, heavy with muted sorrow—the kind carried across long years.

I watched him play, entranced. The campfire shone a light on his features—the elegant twists of his hair, the faint shimmer of his stone eye, the scarred lines around his cheek. For a fleeting moment, the guilt in my chest dulled, and the hunger in my head fell silent.

He’s beautiful.

The music died. Wyll looked at me, and for one terrible, electric moment, neither of us spoke.

Shit, did I say that out loud?

A voice threaded into my mind—not mine, not that hateful rasp that haunted my thoughts, and not that parasite’s low, insidious croon. This was different—deep and measured, like the first breath in freshly-donned armour: Not quite.

Wyll smiled. The heat rushed to my face, and I looked away. My mistake. I had no idea.

Don’t apologise for speaking your mind, he replied, his words cooling my thoughts like steel against skin. Well. So to speak.

I wrested the growing smile from my lips and severed the mental link, the sudden silence ringing in my skull. “You’ve got a real talent,” I managed, the words rough in my throat, hoping to move past my social—mental?—blunder.

“Lute lessons are still on the table.” He offered the instrument back to me, wearing that easy smile of his—the one he wore when he was the Blade of Frontiers, saving innocents and slaying beasts. Was I the innocent or the beast?

we both know the answer to that question.

And yet. The offer hung between us like a drawn blade. Our fingers brushed as I took the lute, and his warmth jolted through me, incendiary against the blight spooling in my chest.

The lute’s neck writhed in my grip, twisting until wood became flesh—infernal and purple and pliant—and my hands closed around her throat, tighter and tighter as her swan song blistered the air, loud-shrill-endless—

“You’re disappearing again.”

Wyll’s voice cleaved through my thoughts, and his eyes found mine, stone to flesh. His look wasn’t unkind, but it excoriated me raw, searching for what I hoped he never would. If I had less will, less spine, I would let him. Lay myself belly-up and hand him the knife. Slice through sinew, scrape the rot clean, and find whatever festers beneath. I almost wanted to see it myself.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. The dread I wore must’ve been as plain as armour to him, yet his sword hand never found the hilt of his rapier.

“Nothing a few music lessons couldn’t fix,” I managed, swallowing hard. “That is, if the great Blade of Frontiers has the patience to teach an amateur.”

Wyll’s face lit up with unshakable joy. “Really? Brilliant! We could start tomorrow, if you’d like. The basics aren’t too difficult, and you’ve got steady hands.”

Steady hands.

strangler’s hands.

I glanced away, but his excitement was infectious. “Tomorrow, then,” I replied. “But I need your word. When I say you leave, you leave. No questions. No heroics.”

His expression sobered, but he didn’t withdraw. “Agreed. Though I think you’ll find I’m harder to get rid of than you expect.”

A memory clawed its way up, drawn forth by his words—that night at the tiefling celebration. The bitter taste of wine stolen from the druids’ stores. The way Wyll’s shoulders had slumped, his usual bravado stripped away by grief and drink.

“This is your day,” he had said, raising his tankard. “Have a dance. Enjoy the music.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” I dropped beside him, watching the moonlight ripple across the river’s surface. “Besides, why aren’t you out there? The tieflings are alive because of you. They look up to you, you know.”

“I shouldn’t be celebrated tonight. That’s why I left.” He took a swig. “Same reason you’re hiding here, I’d wager.”

I raised my mug in answer. “Guilty as charged.”

A cool breeze carried the scent of smoke and celebration from the distant camp, where the surviving tieflings still danced and sang.

“I share your guilt, too.”

“No.” I met his gaze, unflinching. “I killed her. My hands. My blade. Not yours.”

“Karlach was as much my fault as—”

“I meant—” I stopped. Karlach’s death hadn’t even crossed my mind until now. Too consumed by my own guilt, that I’d forgotten my part in her fall. “Alfira. I meant Alfira.”

“Oh.” His face fell, and he took another long drink, shoulders sagging. “Dead is dead, whether by blade or betrayal. They’re gone because of what we chose to believe, what we chose to do.” His voice cracked. “I led us to Karlach, proclaiming half-truths about what I truly am. Your blade, but my word that guided it. Another ‘monster’ crossed off the list. Gods know how many other of my victims were people like her.”

“I could have stopped. Could have listened when Karlach tried to explain.” Memories of her burned bright behind my eyes: her greataxe raised high, fierce gaze meeting mine. My sword had already begun its arc. “But I didn’t hesitate, did I? I struck without thought, without mercy, charging in like an attack dog.”

Wyll shifted, his steady gaze anchoring me, unwilling to recoil. I almost wished he had.

“And Alfira…” The name scraped my throat raw. “She never had a chance. Not from me.”

Wyll closed his eyes, his breath slow yet uneven. “She came to me first, you know. Asked me some bold question about how a blade becomes legend.” He exhaled. “I promised to keep her safe. To show her what it meant to be an adventurer. I should’ve done better, should’ve—”

“Don’t—don’t do that hero thing of yours—”

“I’m no hero.”

“And I’m no paladin.”

The waves crashed against the shore, engulfing the silence.

“I can shoulder the guilt, Wyll,” I said, desperate for duty. For penance. “So you don’t have to.”

“My father once taught me that a true leader shares both glory and burden.” His knee pressed against mine, the night-chilled sand seeping cold through our clothes. “We both failed them.” The steel in his voice softened. “I refuse to let you carry this alone.”

He leaned closer, wine on his breath, his stone eye catching slivers of moonlight. A hunger burgeoned in my chest; it had nothing to do with the insatiety in my head, and everything to do with how he looked at me, how he narrowed our distance into a pinhole.

The world narrowed to a knife’s edge. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and for one mad moment I imagined closing that final distance.

But I’d wrenched back, just an inch, just enough to witness the hurt that flashed in his eyes, an ulcerating bite in my chest. I fled like prey, seized the nearest bottle, and let the alcohol cauterise his wounded look from my mind.

The memory faded, carving me hollow like a broken oath; wine soured to ash in my mouth, and only the subdued campfire and faint glowcaps pierced the dark. Wyll hadn’t moved. His dogged gaze stayed on me, burning a treacherous warmth against my skin. I set the lute aside, careful not to look at him.

“I should check the perimeter,” I said, my voice coming out more strangled than I’d like. “Make sure we’re secure.”

I didn’t wait for an answer. The phosphorescent gloom of the Underdark swallowed me whole, the fungi-dotted walls blurring past as I strode away. My fingers twitched, closing around the spectre of a hilt.

you know how this ends.

I know. Every connection led to carnage, every touch to terror. I’d proven it with Alfira, hadn’t I? Sweet, foolish girl with her songs and her dreams.

this is what you are.

Blood called to blood. Fist rasped against wall, and I welcomed the sharp bite of stone. The pain felt distant, unreal, but the blood that welled from split knuckles—that was familiar. That was certain. That is what I—

“What are you doing?”

Wyll’s voice cut through the darkness, and the boundless hunger went still. Dead silent. I turned, catching the worry carved in his brow, his jaw clenched against whatever else he wanted to say.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, but the words lacked conviction. How could I explain that he was salvation and damnation both? That his mere presence made the beast in my head curl up and whimper like a beaten dog?

He stepped closer, and the chasm in my mind felt vast and empty. “Someone has to watch your back.” He glanced at my bloodied knuckles. “And keep you from challenging every cave wall to a duel.”

“Doesn’t seem like a fair fight, does it?” I flexed my injured hand. “I think the wall’s winning.”

His laugh bounced off the cavern walls, deep and unguarded. The sound filled my skull, and for one breath, I felt steady. Whole.

“Come,” he said, beckoning. “Best not to wander too far from camp. I’ve hunted bulettes in the Underdark before. Magnificent creatures, really—until they’re erupting from the ground beneath you.”

He extended his hand, scarred palm upturned in invitation. I stared at it, then at his face—the gentle curve of his smile, the fine strokes of scars clawing down his cheek. Looking at him felt like the moment before drawing a blade. That perfect, obliterating clarity.

It had to be Wyll.

Only he would do what needed to be done. The Blade of Frontiers, doing what he did best, true to his calling. A clean end: hunter and hunted in their rightful places. Not tonight, but someday—when the hunger grew too strong, when my control finally splintered. Lay myself belly-up and hand him the knife.

Concern creased his brow, but his hand stayed outstretched, steady, patient, damnably certain.

And I took it.

My (strangling-killing-bleeding) hand took Wyll’s, strong and warm and alive. He pulled me forward, and I let him. Away from the mire of bloodthirst, and towards the light of the campfire. With every dogged step, he anchored me to the present, to this moment where I hadn’t destroyed him yet.

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