#magnulia

They approach the party as separate groups. Barry and the twins, then the two old geezers, followed lastly by Magnus with Lucretia on his arm. She flashes an invite to the doorman, and they stride right in. The place is full of people, all dressed to the nines. Waiters in suits walk around with their trays of tiny food and champagne flutes. A band is tucked away in a corner, playing a medley of classical music and Candlenights carols. Magnus spots the rest of his friends further into the fray. With a clever combination of makeup and magic, no one pays the seven of them any mind. Tonight, they aren’t the saviours of the universe, they’re just some rando rich folk at this fancy party.

“So,” Magnus leans in closer to Lucretia, “what’s the plan? Get in here and fuck shit up? Cause if so, step one accomplished, time for step two.”

Lucretia laughs and squeezes his arm. “Hold your horses there, big guy. We’re biding our time for a little while. Lup came up with this whole scheme to get him alone and cornered, then we can fuck his shit all the way up.”

“Fuck yeah.” He looks around, “so where is our esteemed host for the evening? We should say hello.”

A strange look crosses Lucretia’s face, but before she can answer him, the music changes. At the top of the grand staircase a tall, bald man with a short grey beard appears. “Friends,” he says loudly, throwing his arms out, “colleagues, plus ones, welcome to my annual Candlenights party. Please indulge yourselves in the food and wine, they weren’t cheap and we wouldn’t want it to go to waste!” He puts a hand to the side of his mouth in a mock-whisper, “meaning we wouldn’t want any staff to be stealing it for themselves!”

The crowd laughs and Magnus frowns. “This guy sucks,” he mutters. Something that he can’t quite name bubbles in his chest as this man speaks to the crowd. Lucretia squeezes his arm again and leans into his side. It comforts him some, allowing the unpleasant feelings inside him to calm to a simmer.

The party carries on boringly. Magnus snacks on whatever food comes his way as the waiters wander through the crowd. He keeps an eye on their host- what was his name again? It doesn’t matter, Magnus hates the guy. Every time he looks at him, he just wants to punch something. Preferably that guy’s face. He spots Lup talking to him a few times, Taako and Barry pretending not to watch from the other end of the room. At one point, he sees her laugh exaggeratedly and playfully hit their host on the chest, which then morphs to her very obviously commenting on his muscles. Magnus doesn’t even need to hear her to know that’s what she’s doing, it’s a move she’s used plenty of times to convince dumb men to do things for her.

“Is her plan to flirt him into a corner so we can kill him?”

Lucretia glances at Lup across the room and sips her champagne, “I guess so. But she seemed really excited about her plan, there has to be more. She’s played the plain flirting angle before.”

He nods. Lup finishes schmoozing with the host, and makes a smooth exit. “She’s walking away,” he looks away from her and back to Lucretia, “I wonder what she’s planning.”

Lucretia smiles and pops a mini bruschetta into her mouth, “you never know with Lup.”

Then a shriek rings out through the entire room. Magnus turns just in time to see Lup grab a champagne flute in each hand and throw them both over Barry. He’s sure she must’ve used magic to produce more for the sake of the show, because Barry gets way more soaked than what’s in two glasses of champagne. She runs out of the room with her head in her hands, Barry and Taako hot on her tail saying something about “it’s not what it looks like!”

The host, freshly buttered up, grins in such a smug way that it makes Magnus despise him even more, and follows the commotion.

Lucretia tugs on his arm and says, “I think that’s our cue.”

Magnus nods and lets Lucretia walk him through the crowd. They take a meandering path towards the door, trying not to look like they’re following the drama on purpose. They get out into the empty foyer and look around, trying to figure out which way to go. A not-so-inconspicuous “psst!” comes from above them. They look up, and Davenport stands near the top of the stairs, peeking through the bannister. He stage-whispers, “up here!”

They take the steps two at a time, and follow Davenport down the hall. Lup and Barry are standing outside a door and wave them over. Lup pulls a wipe out of her clutch and starts cleaning away the makeup on Magnus’s face. He sputters a little in surprise, “what are you doing?”

She puts the wipe away and says, “I just think you should take this one au naturale.” She pats him on the shoulder, "get in there, Maggie."

“Aren’t you guys coming?”

“Taako and Merle are already in there,” Barry says. “As much as the guy sucks, seven against one is a little too unfair for my taste. We figured we’d let tres horny boys handle this one.”

Magnus quirks an eyebrow and considers his friends for a moment, the silence only broken by muffled grunts of pain and effort through the closed door. He shrugs, “alright, let me at ‘im!”

“Atta boy,” Davenport says, patting him on the hip.

He opens the door and walks into a fancy study, trashed slightly with the evidence of a short battle. Papers and books are scattered across the floor, the desk has been swiped clean, a side table has been knocked over and the lamp that was supposedly on it is shattered. The host is sitting on the floor, backed up against the desk. His nose is bleeding, and his fancy tux is torn and smouldering. Taako and Merle stand over him, the smoke of recent magic still curling off their hands. They turn when they hear the door open, and Taako smiles. “There you are! Just in time to finish him off.”

“Really? Already?”

“Yeah, this guy ain’t as beefy as we thought.”

“And we already got our hits in, it’s your turn,” Merle says.

“You!” The three of them look at the bloodied host. His eyes are wide as he looks at Magnus. “It’s- it’s you!”

“Yep!” Magnus puts his hands on his hips. “It’s me, Magnus Burnsides!” He cracks his knuckles and advances on him, “and you’ve been a very naughty boy.”

“Oh, wait,” Taako puts a hand on his chest to stop him, “just wait a sec, Mags, I’ve got one more thing I need to do.”

Magnus gestures for Taako to go ahead. He turns back to the host and leans in. He grabs him by his lapels and jerks him up so Taako’s right in his face. He says something that Magnus can’t quite hear, then drops him back to the ground unceremoniously. Taako dusts off his hands and says, “now he’s all yours. Come on, old man.”

Merle follows him out, leaving Magnus alone with the host. He advances, and the host shuffles further back against the desk. “Magnus,” he says, “come on now, you don’t have to do this. We can talk this out. I didn’t- you know I didn’t want to do it, it was a matter of pride. You have to know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. He flexes and hears several seams in his shirt and jacket tear. “I’m just an elf following orders.”

“What?”

“Ho ho ho motherfucker.”

A short time later, Magnus reemerges to his friends waiting in the hallway. They all look at him expectantly. He gives a thumbs up and says, “naughty boy has been taken out.”

“How do you feel?” Merle asks.

Magnus shrugs. “Fine? It’s just another bad guy. Just looking at him I could tell he sucked.” He looks around at all of them, “so what now?”

Lup grins. “Phase two.”

“What’s phase two?”

Lucretia links their arms together. “You’ll see. Come on, let’s go back to the party.”

Back down in the crowd, Magnus shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. “What are we still doing here?” He whispers. “We killed the guy, let’s go home.”

“Just wait,” Lucretia whispers back. “Look,” she nods towards the door, “Barry, Dav, and Taako just came back. We’re almost done.”

“What about-”

His question gets cut off by a puff of smoke in the middle of the room. As it wafts out and dissipates, he’s assaulted by the smell of peppermint. When the minty cloud is gone, Merle, in full Santa regalia, stands in the centre of the crowd. He addresses them loudly, “rich people of Faerun! I am Santa Claus, and I am here to tell you that you must change your ways! All of you were at the bottom of the naughty list! Your greed and bigotry have poisoned you! You must change! If you don’t, you’ll end up dying! Brutally! Like this evening’s host!” A murmur goes through the crowd.

“He’s good,” Magnus says. Lucretia snickers.

“If you don’t believe me,” Merle continues, “just go look in the study! But I must warn you, Santa doesn’t hold back.” He raises his hands to the sky and cries, “change your ways! If not for others, for yourselves! Pay your staff well! Help the poor! Don’t take over cities with your money! This is your only warning!”

He disappears in another puff of peppermint smoke, and the silence hangs for a moment. Then there’s a scream, and Lup comes running in. She cries, “he’s dead! In the study! Dead!”

The crowd starts bustling in every direction. Some run out and up the stairs towards the study, others start throwing money at stunned waiters, and some just run out of the manor itself, screaming.

Magnus and Lucretia manage to stick together through the commotion, but it proves impossible to meet up with their friends until they’re outside and away from the manor. “Well,” Magnus says, “that was certainly dramatic.”

“What can I say,” Lup says, “I love some good drama. It was a Candlenights gift to myself.”

Barry pulls a bottle of champagne out of nowhere and holds it out. “Mags, would you do the honours?”

“Would I?!”

He takes the bottle and opens it, exclaiming happily when it pops. He pours it into the seven glasses Barry also pulls out of nowhere, and Taako holds his up, the rest of them following suit. He says, “to us, to Candlenights, to killing that son of a bitch,” he raises his glass in Magnus’s direction, “and to you, my man. Joyous Candlenights.”

He smiles, “Joyous Candlenights, old friend.”

after the initial reveal, we get a series of flashbacks jumping back and forward in time, slowly fleshing out details of how much Magnus knows, how much Julia knows, and just the general vibes of their relationship with Barry, plus, eventually, their relationship with a Lucretia who needs their help to gather the Relics, but is paranoid about Barry's influence at basically all times to great comical effect lmao. highlights include:

Magnus manifesting magical powers and getting visited in a dream by a scary ghost, except the ghost's voice sounds like Literally Just Some Guy and he explains, seemingly honestly and kind of sheepishly, that he doesn't know how to undo the warlock pact because they made it For The Bit when they were slightly drunk

Magnus trusts the Red Robe because he doesn't want to lose his new puppy friend; Julia trusts the Red Robe because once they meet in person, she decides he's too anxious to be an effectual evil mastermind

Barry helps out the Raven's Roost rebellion, scaring Kalen so shitless that he doesn't even try to bomb the support pillars and that's why Julia lives

Magnus knows his patron sometimes goes unresponsive for months at a time, but doesn't know why, just that he always warns him in advace and it's never forever

when Phandalin comes along, Magnus knows Alive-Barry is familiar but he absolutely cannot place it, and Alive-Barry is equally as confused, and as unhelpful as humanly possible

the main focus of this AU is on Magnus and Barry as found family, and Julia and Barry as found family by proxy, with of course Magnulia running in parallel — but my absolute favorite underutilized dynamic (Lucretia and Barry oscillating between being serious archnemeses versus just being siblings with a hilarious petty rivalry) is baked into the core of the whole premise, too

idk about the details but I like the idea of Magnus getting in big trouble with Kravitz and, much like Merle, losing a hand or a limb or something — which Barry angsts about a little bit, convinced that it was all his fault for dragging Magnus into this, but it turns out Julia is a super competent artificer and Magnus winds up really loving the prosthesis she rigs up for him

Barry does not change the "show up and monologue ominously to the Reclaimers" strategy at all but there's a lot more goofy banter with Magnus sprinkled in now

Lucretia is constantly paranoid that Barry is spying on her through the eyes of a dog (except she's correct, he absolutely is)

OH and Magnus was asked by his patron to keep an eye out for the Umbra Staff, so he recognizes it when Taako finds it in the vault (he asks if Barry wants him to steal it, but Barry is weirdly insistent that no, it should stay with Taako)...

and I want to say that it's still not an immediate realization, but he does therefore give Barry a head start on figuring out that mystery, and once he tells Barry what Angus told him about that time it burnt "LUP" in the wall, it also becomes a Lup freed early AU :')