#alternative ethics

Haaaaaappy Biiiirthdayyyyyy @perahn!

Keeping in the theme of this year, have a Khem-leficent and her minions polymorphed friends in coloring book style, judging the hell out of something (as they do).

Happy Birthday @perahn!

Thank you for always blessing us with your beautiful, heartbreaking writing (dnd-related or otherwise). I hope this music does the beauty of Khem’s Letter justice!

Go out on a clear night and look up at the stars. Look long, and if you are susceptible, your throat will begin to ache with a strange longing for those beautiful, distant sparks of light. You want, and other things pall while tsu-yareth holds you. But it is a temporary phenomenon, and a very manageable one. You go inside, or you fall asleep, and in sunlight or firelight, you recollect yourself. Oh, they are pretty enough, but what do you really want them for? You cannot hold them or keep them; they are not part of your world. You could fly so high the air died away, and come no nearer. If, by some mad chance, you could reach them - what then?

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Khemuret Xul/Zilnith Taevar, Jarnath Vierin/Rylfein Orloth Characters: Khemuret Xul, Taliesin Harper | Taliesin Ferryman, Ceitidh Mhùilneir|Katy Miller, Aunrae, Rizven, Jarnath Vierin, Zilnith Taevar, other assorted Vhaeraunites Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Party equivalent, General, maybe more of a vignette, Alt Ethics being themselves but with less charity Series: Part 3 of Alternative Ethics, Modern AU Summary:

The Alt Ethics party get drafted to help out with the Shadow Night party for the Church of Vhaeraun’s youth group. A long dark night is had by all.

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Tabuirr had given Jarnath six months and a frankly absurd budget to arrange the party; Jarnath had spent most of it on ‘inspirational envisaging’ and ‘stress reduction’, and successfully purchased a six-pack of Diet Coke for thirty children to share. There were five days left before the party, which Khem spent mostly in driving large quantities of food and decorations to the church hall. Harper stopped even pretending to sleep, arranging the traditional party games and constantly on his phone finding out what the traditions were in the first place. It generally sounded something like, “What do I know, I just think maybe something blunter than butter knives for literal children, fuck you, Vhaeraun, I don’t work for you, what do you mean I need six pieces of faceted black glass and a matching obsidian, who even sells obsidian, do I need to rob a museum or something?”

Katy was in an artistic ecstasy of draping every available surface with black materials of different textures and choosing the best places for the mirrors and candles. “This one burns blue, Khem, it’s going to look so cool, the churchins will love it.”

“What,” Khem asked carefully, “is a churchin?”

“The youth group? Church urchins?”

Khem has a clone, sealed into a coffin and waiting for her soul to animate it should the body she was born with be killed. So do Harper and Katy, even if Harper’s is currently in the keeping of his lover Medhredel, who has inexplicably chosen to turn the casket into an ornate piece of furniture. She knows which spells she will ready, although it is still too early to do that work. She is about as prepared to cross planes and challenge a dead god as it is possible for her to be. It is a thought that does not make sense, while also having an inevitability about it: there have been events enough, her dreams and other prophecies, the voices of gods, that she has known this day was coming for some time.

That doesn’t mean she really expects to survive it. They are very good at what they do, the three of them, but the power differential between mortals and a god in his own domain - even the broken leftovers of Cyric – is huge. Moreover, there is no reason to expect that, should they die,  their own souls could slip out through the bars of a cage made for a god to reach their clones at all. Even assuming Cyric does not have some means to quench them completely, which is a large and completely unjustified assumption.

This is likely the end, then. It is something Khem can accept almost calmly; after all, it is a familiar refrain. You choose, and sometimes the consequences or circumstances are such that you can reasonably expect to die of them. Not something she wants, but an equation she has always known how to balance. So far she has been just skilled enough, or assisted, or fortunate, but this is a god.

So there are preparations to make, a question she will ask – later – and responsibilities to discharge.

One is lying across her feet, very solid and warm. Twitch is mrring softly as he dozes, sprawled out on his back in the pose of one supremely contented with life. His forepaws are tucked comfortably against his big black chest; midpaws and hindpaws are spread out so that he takes up much of her floor. He has twined his tentacles around her ankle, so that she cannot possibly rise from her chair without waking him.

He is magnificent, Khem thinks fondly, as she had when she’d first seen him. He had belonged at the Pick and Lantern, then, and sought her out when that tavern burned down. She’d never really understood how or why, but from the first moment she had returned to the Skullport house and seen him waiting – for her – it had been… easy. Not just to ensure that he had what he needed, what would make him happy, but she had loved him. Just like that, with no complications or doubts, nor even surprise when she had named it. It just was.

“Twitch,” Khem says softly, and he grumbles. “I want to get up. Let go, or I’ll probably fall on you.”

He hesitates. The gleam of his eyes suggests he is considering the potential amusement value of tripping her, but then he yawns in elaborate nonchalance and uncurls his tentacles.

“Thank you,” Khem says, and sits down beside him. She begins under his jaw as his eyes lid over – slow careful scratches, just the right degree of pressure. She’s learned that, over the past few years. “I don’t know if I should explain,” she murmurs in that tone that had startled her the first time she’d heard herself doing it. “I don’t know if I can, really.”

He glares balefully at her as she lifts her hands to spellcast. His teeth catch gently at her wrist just as she finishes the spell and his warm animal thoughts seep into her mind. They are wordless: images, smells, demands, emotions. There is a cold place behind his right ear and she should fix it. The room smells bright and cozy, his den is safe and his person is in it, where she should be and paying him all her attention, which he deserves. Her skin is a little salty when he licks it, and there is a dark bitter blot, which happens when she spends time playing with her little sticks.

“You know better than that,” Khem says, and sets her fingers to his neglected ear. “Ink is not good for you, and you will additionally rasp off all my skin.”

Twitch sighs and plonks several paws across her lap.

“Don’t go looking for me if I don’t come back this time,” she tells him quietly. “Jim will look after you, as always; I know you are fond of him. Well, of course you are, he feeds you. He’ll keep doing it. You’ll always be cared for here.” Carefully she works her way over all the spots that itch or that he likes. There is no alarm or fear in his mind, only that deep contentment she occasionally envies. “Thank you. For all the quiet times like this, and the half-shredded stirges you insist on leaving near the bookcase, and the bruises when you knock me over, and the black hair on my red robes that prestidigitation somehow always misses. Sometimes I don’t understand why I love you.”

He half-opens one eye at that.

“Yes,” Khem agrees. “Because you deserve it. Naturally. Thank you for coming to me. I’ve learned a lot from you, you know. Not the happiness, but I’m not sure my kind of people can ever achieve that the way you do. Maybe the words get in the way and we should all start thinking with our noses.” Khem finishes her massage of the sixth pawpad. “I don’t know if I’ll need my bed tonight, but you should take it anyway. Every night while I’m away, all right? I’ll tell Lucky Jim.”

‘Bed’ is one of the words Twitch understands very well; his mind rouses from contentment to excitement. He has campaigned persistently to be allowed onto Khem’s bed, and rarely succeeds. At his tightest curl he takes up a quarter of it; when relaxed he covers it all and his tentacles hang off the edge. Twitch on the bed is not compatible with Khem sleeping in it.

“Yes,” Khem says, patting his flank. “Bed. Go on, you might as well take possession immediately.”

Twitch rolls himself up onto his feet, stretches in his boneless way, then leaps to the bed. He settles himself down and sighs gustily. It is good. It is comfortable and soft and smells of his person, who should come up too and have a nap. It is good to nap.

“I am sorry,” Khem says, standing up, and leaning over to scratch the base of his tentacles. “I need to go and find Abesh.”

Twitch sneezes in distaste as a memory of sharp ozone scent and a prickle of static in his fur flashes across his mind.

“Don’t worry too much,” Khem says. “He won’t be around for a little while either. You need not be jealous.”

Well, of course not. This is his person, even if she spends too much of Twitch’s time with little lizards. Little lizards that stink and sting and scuttle around where he can’t reach, which is unfair.

“Enjoy your nap,” Khem says, and lays her hand on the great curve of his skull. The fur is dense and soft beneath her palm, and very warm. There is something tight in her throat.

It is not goodbye. Not quite yet.

She finds Abesh in the basement, clinging to the ceiling with six stubby blue legs and giggling to himself in small sparks of lightning. Her throat tightens again, and when she calls him, it is barely recognisable as his name.

“Nytha!” he squeaks, and drops from the ceiling into her arms. Khem staggers a little under his weight, and thinks that if she does come back, she’s going to have to persuade him to stop that. He is growing rapidly now, and what was charming in a hatchling of a few hundred grams is not a sustainable behaviour in someone who will gain over a tonne in less than a decade.

He swarms up to her shoulders and settles himself there like a collar, and she puts up a hand to stroke the smooth scales of his head. “Nytha!” he repeats, and continues in his baby-simple Draconic. Mama, I look and look but no bad people today. No burgles to eat. Am still good boy?

“Axun,” she answers, and repeats herself in Common. Draconic is his native tongue, but while he lives with the rest of them, it’s better if he can communicate with the others. Which means Undercommon as well, at some point – and there, she is planning for his future as if she will certainly see it. “You do not need to kill burglars to be a good boy. What have you been doing today?”

It is so stupid, Khem thinks as Abesh prattles, such a narrow margin that brought him into her life. Accidental, and unchosen, and yet –

They had found themselves in the lair of a nesting pair of behir, who had taken the intrusion as a convenient arrival of food. After the behir had been killed, they had found the egg. Not too large, clearly viable. Valuable, obviously, and so they had taken it with them. Khem had even – well, not forgotten, exactly, her memory had been too thoroughly trained to prevent the easy loss of information, but the egg had been of such low priority she hadn’t thought about it beyond a vague assumption that Harper would sell it, probably to Trinia Burdock.

But they hadn’t gone to the Waterdhavian apothecary, and the egg had hatched.

And there he was. They had a baby behir in their care. She had fetched up the little she knew about them, got him a copper rod to chew on as his teeth came in, and refused to name him. She had known that she should not grow attached to him – had known it with a determined vehemence intended to cover that it was already too late to guard herself.

It, too, just was.

It didn’t make any sense at all. She’d encountered more than her fair share of orphans, children in need that Harper cared about and Katy fussed over and she – helped, because that was what they wanted. It didn’t go any further than that.

But this little six-legged dragonkin had looked up at her, and squeaked, and there it was, a thread of lightning around her throat. Nytha, he called her, mama – and Khem had never known a mother or wanted one, but she is a diviner. She knows the truth when she hears it, even if she still doesn’t really understand it. Even if she doesn’t know how to be a mother, if this mixture of love and responsibility and fear to fail him sit too sharply in her throat to swallow.

Even if, one day, she will have to explain that his proper parents had died trying to keep the burglars out of their lair, and they had stolen him.

Or – and why was it so difficult to remember when it was the entire context of the moment? – Cyric will destroy her and she’ll never have to face that conversation. Well, either way.

“We’re going to see Xunasorax,” Khem tells Abesh.

“Aunty Xuna!” His feet drum against her shoulders in a complicated dancing pattern. She wonders, and not for the first time, if there is a somatic element to behir communication, a part of his birthright he will never claim under her care.

“Is there anything you want to take with you?”

Abesh squeaks and jumps down, skittering rapidly over the rough stone floor to a crevice, from which he emerges with a copper rod in a forepaw and a dry rat’s skull in the opposite hindpaw. “Present,” he says, with deep satisfaction, and waves his legs at her to be picked up again.

Khem does, tickling the pale soft-scaled stomach and making him giggle in little bursts of static. “I’m going to go away for a while. Xun – Aunty Xuna will look after you.”

“Aunty Xuna nice,” Abesh says, with immediate acceptance and approval. “Big! Don’t bite the mushrooms.”

“Yes,” Khem agrees, as she closes the door of their home behind her. “Don’t breathe lightning at them either. And pay attention to what Aunty Xuna tells you.” Xunasorax is erratic, and not exactly sane, but the shadow dragon is the closest thing to an adult behir she can give him. The only person in this city to whom she can entrust her child.

Harper: stole it from a specialty shop

Katy: long shopping trip to become the Princess of Pickles