Doomtryst | Astarion x Durge

Chapter 8: To Play with Yarn

Chapter 8: To Play with Yarn

A figure of a man's shadow was cast upon dark marble floors, he wore a red velvet robe, his hands behind his back. His black hair was short and his elven ears were tinged blue. He stood watching his empire from the window of his palace's tower. The Lord of the Mercasiel house, a long and noble family of Baldur's Gate. Their presence was once so strong that their members had owned nearly half of the city's bustling economy. Yet that all came to an end when the famines, drought, and hunger infected the city. Inflicted with curses and undead creatures, the family retreated into darkness.

Umbros Mercasiel, the headfather of the family, was the first to sacrifice himself to the darkness that lurked beneath the sewers of Baldur's gate. He had offered his own blood, making a pact not with a devil, but with Bhaal himself, the Lord of Murder. The agreement was this, Bhaal would run a little experiment. He would impregnate the third generation bride of a Mercasiel, and the husband of this bride would be sacrificed in a dark ritualistic act, but only when Bhaal saw fit. Why Bhaal decided upon this exact agreement, Umbros never asked. But it was more than a fair deal. His family would be blessed with guaranteed fortune and wealth, at a mere small price.

However, Bhaal could not hold back from the family and had gotten himself involved early on impregnating several more of the Mercasiel family's daughters. None of the daughters could bear the birth of the spawn though, for the children would be born deformed and dead upon birth. Only one Bhaalspawn remained, the first true Bhaalspawn, Indriak Mercasiel. He led a double life quite similar to Seraphina's, he was a philanthropist, a man of good faith. Yet whenever the Urge overcame him, he did unspeakable things. Though he would try so hard to restrain himself there were the occasional slip-ups. No matter what Indriak did, the Urges would return to him, putting him into a deep and frenzied bloodlust.

And on one fateful night, he had become so overcome by the Urge that he had slaughtered his wife and two out of his three children. His youngest daughter, Lilith had escaped, hiding in the palace's laundry under a pile of dirty clothes. While her father was upstairs, eating the flesh of her mother and her siblings.

In fact it was Sceleritas Fel himself who had to cover up the mess that he left behind. Feeling as though he was forever cursed by the Urges, Indriak attempted to break the pact that Bhaal had made with his ancestor, Umbros. After the bloodshed of his family, he sent away his last remaining child, to keep her safe from the Bhaalists which plagued Baldur's Gate. At the time, there was no term for his kind yet. He was the very first, no one had known what kind of monster he was, and the death of his wife and two kids was covered up as a most tragic accident involving a horrible owlbear attack in their cottage home.

Seeing how desperate Indriak was, Bhaal was gravely disappointed in his Firstborn. He had defied his father and would pay a severe punishment for his crime. Bhaal assured Indriak that he could do whatever he wanted, but that he would always find him.

''You, father...I detach you from me. You are not a part of me, you are but a parasite! You possess me! You haunt me with this Urge! This darkness! This evil!''

Indriak spoke to his father one night, holding a blade over his own beating heart.

''And I will remove you...from this world...I will end my bloodline!''

Indriak had come to the conclusion that his entire bloodline was now cursed by Bhaal. He assumed that Bhaal, for whatever reason, could only create a lineage from the Mercasiel line. Indriak therefore attempted to assassinate every one of his family members. He believed that for the greater good, the House of Mercasiel needed to die. The string of murders in the city were so elaborate, that all of Baldur's Gate was talking about it. And in one final elaborate plan, Indriak planned to bomb the entirety of the palace of the Mercasiel family; he had even sent an assassin to Neverwinter to kill his little girl, Lilith. He wanted to end it all in one fiery night.