haunted

In the ensuing weeks, Syryth keeps his distance from his new partner. Sarevok impresses upon him that Carmen is important, that they bear the same responsibility, and Syryth won’t hear it. She is years late to claim her birthright, and thus years behind in training. He doesn’t know what to make of her temperament, which is often sinister, quiet, and not precisely inviting. When she speaks up, she can be deeply arrogant. She’s always commanding, ordering attendants and followers as if she had always had a place here. When faced with an audience outside of the inner sanctum, Carmen carries herself like she is already being worshipped.

The veneer of Syryth’s distaste for her is admittedly thin. When she commands another, something within Syryth feels compelled to listen. Occasionally, her particularly cruel orders sent a shock of static down to his fingers, where he itches to unsheathe his sword– to strike the recipient, that is. It’s a feeling that his conscious mind doesn’t metabolize as jealousy, but it is jealousy nonetheless.

His walls seem to crumble at the lightest tap. He trails around her like a curious animal, in glimpses between his duties. He begins to suggest that they can take their meetings with Sarevok together, then their meals, and eventually their prayers. 

And then there is the first hunt. As they strike out together, they seem to align not just in thoughts but in their bodies, responding to each other’s movements on a cellular level. Syryth and Carmen stalk dark alleys like twin currents commanding a river of carnage. Their blades move as if they share the same hand. Their bodies never stumble. With the smallest glance or touch, they move into place on either side of a victim. They know who steps forward and who stays behind. What was meant to be a meager handful of sacrifices becomes a giddy, childlike slaughtering spree, lacking the usual care that at least Syryth would take to choose those souls no one would miss. Their muscles tremble with adrenaline and ecstasy, minds filled with a dizzying fog of their Father’s approval. 

As the sun begins to rise, Carmen leans back against a stone wall, and Syryth falls to his knees. Somehow, she knows she isn’t having a vision alone. In a field of endless, hazy red, they watch a hand, at once a stranger’s and intimately familiar, claw a single drop of blood from its body. It hangs in the air, scarlet and shimmering, until the other hand comes to split it into two. The blood swirls and swells, blooming into viscera that wraps itself with ropelike muscle, then ribbons of taut skin. One drop, one soul, two forms. They don’t need to watch the full transformation of this gnarled flesh into mortal bodies to understand what they see. 

They move into the same chambers within a day.

— — —

Their joined room has to be newly made, by Sceleritas’ insistence, and he babbles incessantly about how lovely it is to see them get along. Two opulent beds are placed in it, on the back wall but truly as the centrepiece. No expense is spared; it is subtly gold-laced and less subtly bedecked with tailor-made furniture and fixtures. And it becomes their sanctuary.

Syryth takes to chatter and endearments. He has a playful side, often leaning over to face her and battering her with questions, promises.

I often feel like the smaller piece of what we are, and I believe this means you’re destined to consume me.

I would wade neck-deep across an ocean of flame if you had left a single earring on the other side.

When I die, would you hold the blade? I dream of it, you know. 

Carmen is less inclined to talk, and perhaps less initially convinced of a grand destiny, but she grows fond of her brother’s strange devotion, if only internally.

They bathe together. Syryth takes special pleasure in scrubbing the day’s waste from her body, buffing her heels and cleaning her nails, and most especially brushing her hair. He enjoys the ability to make her sigh when his hands are scratching her scalp or working the tension from her muscles. 

Carmen’s head feels cottony when she looks at Syryth. She finds it difficult to answer his questions at times, and finds herself ignoring him frequently in her overwhelm. His efforts to pledge himself to her only increase when she gets distant, which further fuels her overwhelm and confusion. There is something she feels, perhaps many things, and she feels she’d need the hands of several people to pick whatever it is apart. 

Syryth is nothing if not patient. He believes that one day, only they will exist, and he will belong to her utterly, and she will acknowledge him in all the ways he craves to be acknowledged, including punishment for his faults. His soul is hers, and they have the lifetimes of generations of mortals for fate to embrace them. So he lives in service without reward, save the ability to make her crack a smile and permission to be close to her. 

It feels lucky for Carmen that they’re not together all the time. As leaders-to-be, Carmen takes a more active role in regular slaughter, while Syryth is mostly in charge of making connections. The space he jokingly calls his war room is kept meticulously with endless lists and notes on contacts, constant flows of schemes in the works, and enough diagrams to fill a small museum. He has a scale model of Baldur’s Gate, although it doesn’t see much use. His plans are detailed, to say the least— always a contingency plan for every contingency plan, and a chain of dominos that, if toppled, would fall far from the cult. He floats all of his plans past Carmen, and always includes her in the big ones— especially if there is to be a massacre. 

Carmen has more of a face within the cult itself, demanding more active worship and keeping those subjects who get the privilege of witnessing her from getting too high on themselves. Her innate bloodlust combined with her training as a soldier gives her a gift for training ranks of new killers, who can efficiently and discreetly spill blood for their lord. 

Eighty years pass in this dance of closeness, a proximity to each other far more powerful than their ties to any other person or thing on the mortal plane, but a proximity that never spills over into something that’s spoken aloud or explored more deeply.

One thing, however, is immutably true: the Cult of Bhaal hasn’t enjoyed the level of power or influence they’ve given it in centuries.