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It's cold when Wyll first wakes and he stretches his arm out, searching for the edges of his bedroll to wrap more tightly around himself, only it isn't there. His nose wrinkles in frustration, and it is only when he shifts himself to one side and feels the softness of a bed beneath him that knows where he is with unfortunate familiarity.

"Uhn," he groans, mind foggy with exhaustion. His head is light from lack of horns.

"Dusthawk hill," a voice whispers urgently. "Come quickly." It echoes around his room the 'come quickly, come quickly' hissing from every wall.

He knows the voice is Mizora's, but it never sounds quite like her.

The nightmare again, then.

"Hurry!" The voice hisses.

Wyll casts off his blankets, stumbling out of bed, tripping over his boots just like he had all those years ago. His sleep shirt hangs loose around him and it is cold in the room, cold enough to send his teeth chattering even as he frantically searches out suitable clothes and pulls them on. The boots do not lace up quickly enough and he leaves them half done, grabbing his sword from where it is settled by the door.

He pauses only a moment in the hall. This is the moment when he should have gone for help, all those years ago. He dismisses the urge. This is a nightmare, there is no point. The past has already happened.

Still, Wyll runs to Dusthawk hill.

It is the stench of sulfur and brimstone that greets him. There is a crackling red-orange glow where there should only be the inky blackness of a very early morning. The light is enough to see his breath fog in front of him as he runs, the soft sounds of frost crumbling under his feet covered over by voices raised in a hellish chant.

He isn't too late. The cultists have only just begun to summon Tiamat and it will be a while longer before she is able to break free. He allows himself a breath of relief. At least this time it won't be that sort of nightmare, the one where he runs and runs and yet can only ever arrive too late.

"What would you give for the power to save Baldur's Gate?" Mizora purrs in his ear, her breath warm.

Wyll pulls away from her. The cultist's summoning circle glows dimly, but it is enough light to read her expression by. Mizora is annoyed with him. He hates how that simple thought makes his breathing pick up and his palms prickle over with sweat, but he does his best to hide his fear.

"What do you want?" Wyll asks her and his voice is harder than he means for it to be.

It surprises him when Mizora adopts an almost conciliatory expression. "I want the same thing as you. Why else do you think I called you out of bed?"

His hand tightens around his sword.

Mizora smiles prettily. "Even now Tiamat gathers her strength while her cultists work to bring her into this world. I work for the Archdevil Zariel. We cannot allow Tiamat to succeed here."

Wyll sucks in a breath, shifting his weight from side to side. It is rare for his nightmares to get bogged down in the minutiae of that morning. Normally all he gets are the highlights of his worst moments. He doesn't trust this reprieve.

"What do you need me for?" Wyll says, the words fitting awkwardly in his mouth. This many years hence and he no longer remembers exactly what he said.

Mizora chuckles. "Why dear, devils can't act freely on the mortal plane. Can you only imagine if that were so? No, without your help, there is nothing I can do here. I need you to become my warlock."

"A pact."

"Exactly. You're not so dull after all."

"No." 

The words punch out of his throat. He flinches even as he says them. His nightmares don't take kindly to being disobeyed.

With an impatient snort Mizora seizes him by one shoulder and turns him about to face the cultists. "Before you refuse, I recommend you hear me out and watch."

Wyll shivers, but her grip is firm, nails digging sharply into his shoulder.

As if the cultists have been waiting on Mizora's cue, the chant swells along with the near overwhelming stink of sulfur, and what had before been a summoning circle clears to show the landscape of Avernus, shrouded in its brimstone fog. A milky white eye peeks out, nearly as large as the circle itself, only for the nictitating membrane to pull back and reveal an iris of pale yellow. It focuses on the ring of cultists, pupil narrowing, before letting out a triumphant roar. The noise is enough to make his bones ache and the snout of Tiamat's first head begins to nose at the circle, eyes flashing in excitement.

"Do you understand now?" Mizora asks him, voice still all sugar-sweet and sticky. "Baldur's Gate sleeps on, none the wiser to the danger on her doorstep. If Tiamat is not stopped, she will rampage freely through your city. Zariel does not wish for Tiamat to succeed here, but there is nothing I can do without your help. I am offering you the power to save your city. All you have to do is say yes."

"Enough. I understand."

Wyll finds himself wishing, for once, that his nightmare would hurry things up.

Finally Mizora draws her hand back, leaving his shoulder throbbing.

"It is your choice," she says gently. "But what is the worth of your soul when thousands of lives hang in the balance?"

"What are your terms?" Wyll asks.

The firelight glints off of Mizora's sharp teeth as she grins.

"I knew you would see sense, boy. Let us discuss."

It takes only a snap of her fingers to summon two of her sisters from hell, as Wyll stands there shivering in the cool pre-dawn air. They titter at him, hiding their smiling mouths behind their wings, even as they look down at him with barely disguised malice. The cultists continue their chant, but with Tiamat now at the gate, their words have risen to a fever pitch. Wyll knows that once the first head succeeds at making entrance things will go very quickly. There is not enough time to examine the terms of the pact in full, there is hardly enough time for Mizora to read through the full thing once.

"To begin," Mizora says, smiling, "this contract stands between—"

"I won't harm innocents." Wyll interjects. He's pretty sure that's his line.

Mizora looks delighted. It clashes with his memory, incongruous.

"Innocents?" She asks. "Innocents is such a loose term. Perhaps we can agree on a suitable alternative. What if we were to limit your targets instead? Say, many of my enemies are of the . . . infernal persuasion. Shall we agree to the demonic, the infernal, and those in service to the demonic and infernal?"

"I won't hunt those in service to devils. Too many are enslaved and forced to fight."

"They are still choosing to work for devils." Mizora points out. "Oh well, too close to the skin, I suppose. Let's see then. Shall we say targets shall be limited to the demonic, infernal, soulless, and heartless?"

It's only his imagination that her voice lingers on the word 'heartless', but the thought stings. He might not have harmed Karlach, but the memory of how close he had come to hunting her down like a dog is still fresh in his mind.

"Well?" Mizora prompts.

Wyll closes his eyes. He is sweating no matter how cold it is and even though he knows this must simply be a dream, the fear of making the wrong choice clings to him.

"Agreed." He says tiredly.

"Excellent. Now on to the other salient points."

Mizora begins to rattle off more of the pact, but by this point Wyll is no longer listening. He is fairly certain he had fought with Mizora on other points that first time around, but he is tired and there is no use in fighting against his nightmares. He knows that.

"Any objections?"

"No."

There are so many complaints on his tongue.

"Then sign here."

The pen is in his hand as though it has always been part of his flesh. The bite of infernal magic ripping into him as he signs his soul away is worse than he remembers. A noise breaks through his clenched teeth, but then it is over and the pact disappears in another flash, dazzling in the dark.

Mizora's expression is no longer even halfway sympathetic, but a vicious grin, as she seizes him by the wrists.

"Now don't cry, pup, this is what you wanted, isn't it?"

With a lurching spin she wheels him about to face the cultists. A grinding noise like that of stone on stone accompanies the first head of Tiamat breaking through the summoning circle. For a moment all is silent, the cultists staring in hushed awe as the head lifts itself through, yellow eyes blinking and light glinting off its icy white scales. Then Tiamat inhales, throat swelling, spines lifting and sets forth a thunderous roar that breaks the clouds gathered overhead, revealing a hint of starlight under an immediate torrential downpour. Wyll is thoroughly soaked within moments and he stumbles over the muddy ground as Mizora drags him into full view of the cultists.

He wonders what they think of him then, a shivering boy being man-handled by a devil, as Mizora forces one of his hands to stretch out towards them and whispers the word for pain into his ear.

"Dolor." Wyll repeats and the world tears apart, the palm of his hand stinging as the writhing red bolt of pain leaves him.

He forgot what it was like, that first taste of infernal magic. It leaves him weak and shaky, sagging into Mizora's arms even as she cackles with delight. One of the cultists falls to the ground. Tiamat's gaze lands on the both of them, her maw stretching open as she roars in outrage. If it were only up to Wyll he would have crumbled under the sheer weight of Tiamat's malice, but Mizora keeps him on his feet and forces his hand towards the next cultist.

The cultists break rank. One pulls something from his robes—a dagger, perhaps—but it doesn't matter, he is dead long before he reaches Wyll. Tiamat bellows her fury, the force of it enough to turn his vision black for a heart-stopping moment.

Mizora tuts. "Is that really all you can manage? At this rate you won't be saving anyone, let alone all of Baldur's Gate."

Wyll sets his teeth. She is right, for all that her commentary is unhelpful. This nightmare is determined to drag him through every bloody moment it seems. Normally the pain would have woken him long before now.

More cultists fall, one after another, the word for the spell losing all meaning on his tongue. Somehow he finds enough time to breathe, to draw his sword in one hand. Tiamat thrashes furiously, attempting to drag herself free of Avernus before the summoning spell is finished and inadvertently crushes more than one of her own cultists into a muddy-red paste beneath her claws.

"Very good," Mizora purrs. "Shall we try something a little more difficult?"

Wyll has barely the energy to nod. His palm stings furiously and he cannot fully close his hand.

"Stand like so," Mizora nudges him at first, only to quickly grow impatient and bully him into place. "There. Now, take your arm and move your wrist like so and say the word and once you've built up the power enough flick your fingers out towards your target. Ready?"

Wyll nods.

"Arde." Mizora whispers.

Wyll chokes on the word. No matter how many years have passed, his nightmares remember this, the moment when his tongue stumbled and he nearly got himself killed.

"Ar-arde," he manages the spell just in time to dive out of the way of the spear thrown by one of the cultists.

It whistles past his ear with a hiss, leaving a stinging trail of blood behind it. Mizora does not wait for him, simply hauling him back on to his feet before he can so much as protest.

The cultists writhe, screaming, as fire consumes them. Tiamat strikes their still flaming bodies out of the way with a fury, a warm spatter falling across Wyll's face that leaves the taste of blood on his tongue.

"Now finish them, pet." Mizora pushes him into the fray.

There are too few cultists left to sustain the spell allowing Tiamat passage so now it is only a matter of cleaning up the loose ends. Tiamat struggles, hissing and growling, even as the portal shrinks, but it is easier to ignore her now that she cannot properly roar. Wyll fumbles with his sword in the rain, even as Mizora laughs behind him. When he meets the first cultist in close quarters it is not even a fight. His father had drilled with him every morning since he was old enough to hold a sword, while the cultist is clumsy and unpracticed.

They die on the point of his sword.

"Please," they beg even as they fall. It is already too late for them.

Wyll pants, struggling for breath. This is only a dream, a memory of a memory. It is too easy to dance to the rhythm of the nightmare, to let it pull him into its embrace. None of what happens now is real, he tries to remind himself.

The cultists hesitate now. A few of them turn to flee. Wyll is the first to move.

The ground is slick with mud and viscera. His sword catches one cultist by the arm, tearing their cloak away in one long strip, even as a shimmering bolt of light catches him in the gut. He folds, knees splashing into freezing cold muck, as the magic burns through his meager armor leaving a strip of boiling flesh across his stomach. His arm pulls away covered in blood. The world spins around wildly when he stands, but he keeps his feet.

A sea of fire washes over the few remaining cultists, several of them tumble to the ground, their backs towards him. Tiamat vanishes, the summoning circle glowing a malevolent red, pulsing with power, the ground scarred with charred grass, furrowed mud, and sinking pools of blood. Wyll begins to falter, swaying on his feet.

"There's one more, pet." Mizora says, catching him by the arm before he can fall. "Finish this and you can have your reward."

Wearily he places one foot in front of the other, Mizora's hand against his back driving him unerringly forward. There is a long moment of uncertainty where he is unable to see the cultist among the ash and rain and smoke, until suddenly they are there, underfoot. They have two bloody stumps for legs, where they have lost them below the knee, but still they frantically pull themselves along the ground, one arm in front of the other. Even when they knock an arm against his boot they do not seem to notice him, continuing to pull themselves along just the same.

"Let us be done with this," Mizora orders. "Kill him."

"He's . . ." Wyll does not know what argument he is planning to make, only that he cannot stomach the idea of killing this man in cold blood.

"He would have killed you readily, were your positions reversed." Mizora tries.

Wyll remembers this moment, though he wishes he didn't. The man had died badly. Wyll had been clumsy with exhaustion, his sword blow imprecise, and he had had no practice with killing men. His sword had pierced the man's lung and the man had set to screaming, an awful keening wail, until blood bubbled up from his lips and choked him. In the end Wyll did not remember how many blows it had taken for the man to die, only that it had been several, the man making horrible pleading noises all the while.

His hands are numb as Wyll raises his sword and takes the man's life in one easy blow.

He almost gasps from the relief of it, sinking to his knees. His nightmares never leave the horror of this particular scene off, sometimes dragging it out until Wyll wakes and brings the memory of it into the waking world as well. He had been sick all those years ago and he is sick now, only Mizora's quick thinking keeping him from making a complete mess of himself.

"Well, it wasn't the prettiest of jobs, but it will have to do." Mizora sniffs, looking around at the scorched wasteland of the battlefield. "I do believe you've earned your reward."

"No," Wyll pleads, attempting to wrench himself from her grasp, but not succeeding. "No, Mizora, I don't—"

"Oh do stand aside pup and stop your sniffling, it's only an eye, and the one I'm about to give you is much better."

Gasping sobs bubble out from between his lips, no matter how he tries to stop them. He cannot bring himself to move his hands, even knowing that Mizora will do so for him and that he'll be worse off for not having obeyed her in the first place. This cannot be a nightmare, he thinks, for surely no nightmare would be able to keep him in its grasp through this sort of pain.

"That's quite enough." Mizora says, "move your arms out of the way."

Wyll is helpless in the face of her command and his arms fall limply by his side. The pact cannot control his involuntary actions at the least and so he shivers as Mizora places the heavy weight of a stone into the ragged socket. The stone is thirsty for his blood and he can feel it wriggling about as it settles itself in the place of his eye and he thinks he is going to be sick again, until suddenly it is over, the pain from his eye ebbing away, the reprieve only serving to highlight all of his other bruises and cuts.

Baldur's Gate slumbers quietly in the distance, none the wiser, and it surprises him now just as it had then. No alarm has been raised, even in the aftermath of this fight, and what few smoldering remains there are of the fires he has started are succumbing to the endless rain. The corpses of the cultists are still there and great furrows of muddy dirt where Tiamat had attempted to claw her way through, but he knows in another short while Mizora will have cleaned up the mess and soon they will be the only two witnesses who remain.

His throat feels raw, though he does not remember screaming. Mizora stands over him, wings spread protect him from the worst of the rain. The horizon is a dull blue, hinting at the coming sun.

There. Wyll thinks. The worst of it is over. His nightmare should now skip forward, to that moment when his father's face shuttered all emotion away before casting him out. Perhaps if he is lucky, this nightmare will be soothed away by dreams and he will only have a half-memory of it in the morning, easily forgotten in the light of day. Otherwise he will awake at any moment, in his own bedroll, covered in sweat and exhausted, but at least he won't be here.

Nothing happens.

"On your feet," Mizora orders, but she does not make it a command and Wyll struggles to obey.

His fingers clench and open automatically and he realizes at some point he must have lost his sword. He glances around for it, but that only makes the black hole where his eye was torn out all the more apparent.

"That eye is a precious gift," Mizora says wiping away some of his blood or some of his tears from his cheek, he cannot tell. He flinches at her touch. "It is a sending stone which will allow me to give you orders without always darting about to this awful plane. When I give you an order, you must acknowledge it, you understand?"

Wyll nods mutely.

"Understand?" Her nails prick into his face.

"Yes, Mizora." Wyll says.

She smiles, satisfied and steps away from him. "Good. Now rest up pup, there will be plenty of work to do once you have healed. Why, I look forward to it already. You'll shape up into quite the obedient hound, mark my words."

There is a shower of sparks and she is gone, leaving Wyll alone. The rain has slowly begun to peter off as the sun rises, but it is still a cold morning and he is shivering violently. If this nightmare—if that is what it truly is, and not some sort of fiendish device of the hells like Wyll is thinking it might be—won't skip forward like he feels it should, he might as well plod along through his past, repeating the lines already written for him.

Wyll wonders how it might have been if he had had those few hours of peace that first time around. If he had only had time to gather his thoughts, to choose his words, things might have ended up differently.

His past, however, is written in stone.

Wyll does not mean to sleep, he only sits on the edge of his bed to think for a while and try to understand what is going on with this nightmare, but his exhaustion does not care and soon enough Wyll is fast asleep.

It is cold when Wyll wakes. The pain is gone, so for a moment he feels a relief that comes with waking, then he cracks open his eyes and both of them are there and he cannot stop the tears that spring into them.

He must have stumbled into a particularly nasty part of the hells. Wyll is almost certain of it.

"You must come quickly to Dusthawk hill," a voice whispers urgently.

"What fresh hell have you gotten dragged me into this time, Mizora?" Wyll demands.

The voice falls silent and even though Wyll waits, he doesn't hear it again. Bemused, he slips on his boots and a better coat to ward against the chill air and makes his way towards where he knows the cultists must be gathered. The night is dark once again, the sky inky black with clouds, and morning still a ways off, though the horizon hints at the coming dawn.

He is close enough to hear the chanting when Mizora finally makes herself known. One moment there is nothing there, the next Mizora is stood there in the path, wings spread to bar his way.

"I don't believe we've yet been acquainted, Ravengard's get, so how is it that you've come by my name?" Mizora bristles, poorly hiding her discomfort. Her clawed hands reach for his face, stopping just shy of seizing him by the chin as she hesitates. Wyll flinches at the memory of her plucking out his eye, a memory which feels not even an hour old at the moment. "You haven't been brought under contract," she adds, quietly.

Wyll wavers between honesty and anger. Fear wins out. Cautiously, he says, "you don't know what is happening, do you?"

"I know that forces are working to bring Tiamat into Baldur's Gate even as we speak. But somehow I imagine that what you're asking about is different." Her narrowed eyes watch him closely.

The chanting of the cultists suddenly rises into a shout and Wyll finds his gaze drawn unwillingly towards the noise. He would be a fool to let that distract him, but then again how certain is he that he understands what is happening here?

"I've lived this day before," Wyll admits.

"Have you?" Mizora replies in condescending fascination.

"Yes," he strains to remain polite. "I believe I'm trapped, forced to repeat this day by some magic of the hells. Do you know of a place like that?"

Shaking her head, Mizora says, "well, the hells are vast. I don't know everything, you know. Tell me, if you've lived this day before, how does it end?"

He should have known that Mizora would be no help.

"You're certain you know nothing?" Wyll presses. "Nor any way to escape this?"

"Why would I help you?" Mizora asks.

"I am . . . your warlock." Wyll admits. "If I remain trapped in the hells, then I can no longer be of service to you."

Tiamat's roar cuts through their conversation, neither of them have been paying any mind to the cultists at this point, but it is impossible to ignore the change in the air. A glance in that direction reveals the violently pulsating glow of the summoning circle. There isn't time to have this conversation, not properly.

Mizora recognizes this too. "Is that so? Then surely, there is no reason for you to not pact yourself with me now. Let us put a stop to Tiamat and then I will see if I can help you with your predicament."

Wyll knows it is a bad idea, but he agrees. This Mizora is likely only a figment of whichever part of the hells he is currently trapped in, but she might also be able to provide genuinely good advice. Doubts sit heavy in his gut—the last thing he remembers is traveling through the Shadowlands, nowhere near the hells, so how did he come to be here?

Pushing those doubts to the back of his mind, Wyll goes to fight Tiamat and her cultists. He wins. It is easier now at least. Mizora watches him with something like intrigue in her eyes.

"Now where were we?" Mizora purrs. "You believe yourself trapped in a part of the hells that is forcing you to relive a single day over and over?" She licks his blood off her fingers.

Exhausted, Wyll nods. He should have known she wouldn't consider the fight over until after she took his eye.

"And you want to know how to escape it, hmmmm? Well," she smiles, "I don't know of any such place, but if you truly are trapped in the hells, escape won't be easy. A place like that would be designed to wear you down until there is nothing left. You want my advice? Hope it kills you quickly." Then she laughs and leaves him there in the rain.

Wyll limps home. He forgets to avoid the cook.

She screams loud enough to draw the Flaming Fist. Before Wyll can even sit he is surrounded by half-a dozen mercenaries in uniform as they ask him pointed questions and he is forced to dance around the answers, his tongue burning. It is a relief when Florick finally arrives and orders him into his father's office, the Fist left to wait outside while a runner is sent for a cleric from one of the nearby houses of healing. For a long moment Florick stares at him, helpless, before her lips set into a thin line and she goes to the sideboard and pours him a measure in one of his father's glasses, handing it to him wordlessly. The bottle she poured from is an expensive one, Wyll knows that much.

Wyll takes the glass and stares at the swirling amber liquid.

"What happened?" Florick asks as she settles herself in the arm chair across from him.

The newly healed flesh of his face prickles. He has to mind himself not to scratch at it. It's cold in the room and Wyll wishes he was closer to the fire. Wyll takes a drink to put off answering and it burns as it goes down his throat. It's not the same thing as being warm, but it is a welcome substitute.

Florick knows that he is avoiding an answer. "Your father will be home from Elturel soon."

"It doesn't matter." Wyll says. "You won't believe me and I can't tell you."

Florick studies his face. "Fine. You'll be confined to your room until your father is home. I won't have you getting hurt again. If you have need you can send for me. Understood?"

Wyll nods.

His room feels smaller than it had that morning. It feels colder too, though someone has stirred up the fire. Wrapping himself in a blanket, he sits on the edge of his bed and tries to think. He has never heard of a place in the hells that matches the description of where he currently finds himself, reliving a memory over and over again. He regrets the drink now, his thoughts are foggy and sluggish and his exhaustion is magnified.

Sleep will only bring him back to that morning, but Wyll doesn't fight it, letting himself sink into his bed with something like relief.

Mizora is of no help to him.

Wyll has now tried a dozen different lines of questioning in the hopes that Mizora might know more about what is happening than she is letting on. All of them have ended in failure. Even when he wove his request for information into the pact he learned next to nothing. He is beginning to believe that this Mizora actually does not know anything of use to him.

This does not justify his attempt to go to the cultists of Tiamat for help, however. No, that moment of inspiration was one of particular stupidity.

Wyll stumbles backward, falling over himself as the cultist lunges for his abdomen with a dagger. Another has stepped away from the summoning circle, hands raised as he calls forth a spell in a deep baritone voice, a sickly sort of light gathering around the man's hands. Even as Wyll scrambles over the muddy ground he knows he will not get his feet underneath him in time.

"Mizora!" Wyll calls.

Time slows and he feels the impression of her fingertips pressed into his cheeks.

"Yes?" Mizora asks him.

"The pact," Wyll says, gasping for breath. "I'll agree to it."

"Hmph." Mizora pouts. He can feel the sharp point of one claw poking into the corner of his eye. "Why would I help you now? You weren't interested in my help earlier."

"I'm sorry, Mizora, please."

"Tell me, if you die, will you simply wake to relive this day again?"

Wyll freezes even as his heart hammers in his chest so violently he is sure Mizora can see it.

"I don't know." Wyll says.

"Well, why don't we find out?" Mizora croons.

"You won't be able to stop Tiamat by yourself."

"Zariel will be upset with me, true. But you've convinced me that you're telling the truth. And I am rather curious. Tell me, won't you, what happened when we next see each other? I've always been curious what dying is like for you humans."

The spell lifts and time resumes its steady pace. The cultist comes to the end of his invocation.

"Mizora, you b—"

The spell takes him in the chest and Wyll's heart stops.

He wakes clutching at his chest, struggling out of his linens, and cursing at the wind. The small whispering voice beckoning him to Dusthawk hill is drowned out under his ragged breathing. When he finally has control of himself, Wyll sits there for a long moment listening.

"Dusthawk hill." A voice whispers. "Hurry."

I'm going to stab Mizora, Wyll thinks.

This sentiment is long overdue. The pact which has shackled him for the last seven years has no power over him here, but even still Wyll hesitates. The Blade of Frontiers might have had a hope of winning the coming fight, but he isn't the Blade of Frontiers now. He is only seventeen, his body hasn't yet reached its full height and his limbs are gangly and out of proportion. He has no magic. What Wyll feels he should be able to do and what he actually can do are at odds with one another.

He knows that if he fights Mizora he will likely die. Knowing that his death will only begin the loop again should reassure him, but it's not enough to fully soothe away the fear. That's the thing about the hells—they aren't predictable. If Wyll starts to assume that he knows how this works, that is when it will turn on him.

But by the gods, he wants to stab Mizora.

Wyll laces his boots and pulls on one of his well-oiled jackets, aware even as he does so that he is procrastinating. When there is nothing more to do, Wyll picks up his sword and ties it to his belt, before he runs to Dusthawk hill.

Mizora greets him with a, "sweet dreams?" in his ear, but she is already several steps away again before he has fully drawn his sword. "Now don't startle, boy. I'm here to help you," Mizora chides him. "What would you give to have the power to save Baldur's Gate?"

Looking her in the eyes, Wyll says, "Everything."

And Mizora smiles.

The smile is gone when he pushes his sword point into her gut. The strike is perfect: a killing blow for anything human; Mizora is not.

"You stupid, stupid boy." Mizora sneers. "Do you understand what I was offering to you? I should never have expected better from Ravengard's get. Too fool headed, stubborn, and ill-bred. I suppose it is left to me to teach you proper manners."

The blow went too deep to make retrieving his sword easy. Mizora hisses at him as he does try to pull the sword free, truly hisses, the sound more that of a snake than anything human.  Her reach is longer than he expects and the backhand takes him across the face and sends him spilling to the ground, the force behind it sets his head ringing.

At least Wyll's hand is still on his sword when he picks himself up off the ground.

With one hand pressed to her stomach, Mizora says a few words in infernal and the flow of black blood from the wound begins to slow. Her attention turns to Wyll.

He scrambles backward, putting as much distance between himself and Mizora as he can, even as he regains his feet. His jaw smarts and his ears are still ringing and the pale light cast by the cultist's summoning circle is not enough to keep his eyes clearly focused on Mizora's silhouette as her wings fold open, towering over him.

"Bow to me, beg for your life, and I might consider sparing you, if you make your pleas pretty enough." Mizora says.

His mouth opens. Wyll almost considers it. He knows how to plead with Mizora, knows which words she wants to hear and how to say them so that she will listen. It wouldn't be the first time he has swallowed his pride. His tongue goes dry in his mouth.

Wyll does not beg. Instead he raises his sword and sets his feet.

"Fool." Mizora sneers. "You'll only die badly. You would think your father would have at least taught you when to run from a fight you cannot win, but then again I shouldn't have expected much from a Ravengard. Poor breeding. Had I more time, I'd at least train that ill temper out of you, but I have more important matters to attend to than dealing with a whelp like you."

Wyll exhales, clearing his mind as best he can with his ears still ringing. The comment about his father does not sting like it once might have. Seven years under Mizora's thumb have inured him to the worst of her insults. He has imagined this fight many times over the years.

He strikes first, Mizora is faster.

His sword catches the upper part of her shoulder, leaving a shallow gash, as Mizora commands: "Ad Lapidem."

A heaviness sinks into his bones, hangs off of his limbs, and turns his muscles to lead. Mizora shrugs off the shallow strike, dancing around his sword. Wyll cannot even tremble in the spell's hold.

"The things we might have achieved together." Mizora cups his cheeks in her hands, looking down at him. "I was so looking forward to it. You would have been my masterpiece. Alas. What a waste of potential." Her thumbs press into the soft flesh underneath his eyes making his eyes water and his head ache.

She kills him swiftly, one quick jerk to break his neck and then he is gone.

Wyll jolts awake in his bed to the sound of Mizora's voice crooning from the corner.

"Dusthawk hill." It calls.

It is madness to try to kill Mizora, but this entire situation is mad. If he is trapped in the hells anything he might attempt will only help this place wear him down faster. Wyll knows this.

But by the gods, it's satisfying to see that expression of shock and pain on Mizora's face when he strikes quickly enough. Wyll dies many times over, but he also learns how to be more clever about it. One good strike becomes two, becomes three, and finally five good strikes before his progress plateaus and try what he might Wyll is unable to manage anything further.

"You're certainly a determined mongrel," Mizora says as Wyll groans, his very breath being pressed out of his lungs by a particularly nasty sort of spell. "Why fight so hard when there's no chance you'll win?"

“That’s . . . What you . . . Think." Wyll manages to choke out.

“That is what I know.” Mizora rejoins. “The irrationality of man.” She tsks.

But the spell eases up the pressure on his chest. It is only enough to afford him a sip of air when he wants to guzzle it, but that is all he needs.

“I’ll try again, and again, and again.” His head is hazy and Wyll is not sure he is properly articulating his words. “I only need to win once. You can’t win forever.”

She snorts, an ungainly sort of laugh. “Surely you don’t believe that. No God is going to waste their time on resurrecting the likes of you.”

He can breathe again, even if he can’t muster up the energy to so much as lift his head. Wyll wonders whether Mizora let up the spell intentionally or whether it has simply run its course. 

“I’ve lived this day before, Mizora.” It is nice to be the one who knows things, while Mizora is on the back foot. “And every time I get a little closer to defeating you. There are no gods here, just you and me in this fight forever.”

“Am I supposed to believe you? Points for creativity, I suppose.”

“I was your warlock, Mizora. For seven years. I plan to repay those seven years in full.” Wyll declares.

“Is that so? I don’t remember you.”

“You will.”

Wyll dies laughing.

Wyll’s attempts to kill Mizora walk a narrow line between self-punishment and catharsis. This is never more apparent than when he manages to take Mizora’s eye.

He had not been consciously trying to take her eye, but somewhere along the way he had starting aiming for her face. Mizora had always been a thing of vanity, so when she hissed and spat at him for cutting off part of her hair, it warmed something in him and so he kept trying.

So when his sword sinks into Mizora's eye, Wyll lets out a surprised squawk of triumph.

An inhuman screeching noise comes from Mizora. It is high and keening and impossibly loud, drowning out the noise of the cultists and even the sounds of Tiamat's claws grating against stone as she tries to wrest herself free from Avernus. His ears are left ringing and for a moment Wyll is uncertain whether he will ever be able to hear anything ever again.

He feels strangely dizzy and though his eyes never waver, it is as though he can't quite see straight. Mizora is hunched in front of him, hands covering her ruined eye, her mouth moving though he can't hear anything save for the lingering ringing in his ears. She paints a pitiful figure. His stomach cramps with a queasy combination of exultation and sympathy. This is his best chance to kill Mizora, now that she is distracted, but he does not.

Wyll hesitates, though he can't put his finger on why. It is enough for Mizora to regain her bearings.

She spits something at him, presumably insults or invectives, Wyll does not need to hear the words to understand the meaning. Tiamat herself could roar and fail to drown out her meaning.

The eye bleeds freely, a weeping black pit on one side of her face, as Mizora moves her head strangely, tilting slightly as she tries to see more of her surroundings. Wyll winces in spite of himself. It had been the work of many long months to grow used to a gaping hole where his vision had once been.

Mizora strikes and Wyll dodges smoothly, leaving a raking blow along her flank as he slides past her. It is a pathetic attack and Mizora knows it. She draws her wings up around herself, blocking Wyll's view of her. Naturally, this means Mizora can't see him either and Wyll takes the opportunity for a killing strike.

His sword never makes it there. The world goes soft and gummy around him, all sense of urgency vanishing from his mind. The sword point hovers in the air, mere inches from Mizora's unprotected spine, before it falls slowly to the ground, burying itself in the dirt. Wyll knows he should be afraid, but he is strangely unconcerned by the turn of events. This isn't a spell Mizora has used against him before, but it is one he knows of. She had explained it to him in great detail on one of the bad days.

It means one important thing: Mizora won't kill him. No, she wants him to suffer. Wyll isn't sure what it means for this hell he is caught in. Can he awake to that morning again if Mizora won't let him? If his mind was still left to him, Wyll would have been seized with terror. As it is, the most he can muster is idle curiosity. What a way for him to fail, trapped here in this a hell of a memory by a not-Mizora of his own making.

He half-falls, half-sits as he loses the will to stand. He should run, he technically can run, but wanting to run? Needing to run? Those feelings are impossible to summon.

Mizora takes her time walking over to him. It is all the effort Wyll can summon to simply sit there, instead of slumping fully to the ground. What remains of Mizora's eye has stopped bleeding somewhere along the way, but it is a wound that he suspects will never fully heal. Wyll should be proud of this, to permanently mark a devil is no small feat. Wyll should be afraid of what Mizora will do to him.

Instead, he feels nothing.

Mizora strokes the side of his face, infernal magic shuddering through him. Her healing is nothing like that of Shadowheart's, which is like being plunged into the depths of a frozen-still pond. Instead the infernal magic lances through him, biting and burning, ensuring any pain he might have been saved by the healing is paid for thrice over.

The ringing in his ears dulls, just enough to hear her. "Don't worry, pet." She speaks to him slowly, as though he were a particularly stupid child. "I won't take your eyes. I'll leave you your sight, for now. So you can watch as Tiamat destroys your precious city."

She tilts his chin up to look at her, even as she plunges her clawed fingers down through his right shoulder. He cannot care to stop his screams and so he doesn't. Whenever his screams falter down into whimpers, a twitch of her fingers are all it takes to set him screaming again while she plays about in the ruined meat of his shoulder. The only reprieve he gets is when she takes the time to lick his blood off her fingers while he shudders against the ground.

It feels impossible that Tiamat has not entered Baldur's Gate yet. Wyll is no stranger to pain, but surely it has taken the better part of an hour for Mizora to slowly slice her way through his shoulder. When he bleeds too fiercely, she uses infernal flame to burn his wounds shut again. When that is not enough she applies just enough infernal healing to bring him back from the brink. When his arm falls useless in front of his eyes, his own calloused palm facing him (the wrong way around, impossible, incomprehensible), all he can do is weep through the pain.

"I've got an idea for you pup. With your sword arm gone, you can't be such a pest. How about I were to keep you as a pet? You'd be obedient for me, surely?"

A long moment passes before Wyll can summon the wherewithal for words, but Mizora waits patiently. It is as though Tiamat is no longer of any concern to her. Wyll wonders about that. Perhaps Zariel has sent another one of her lackies to cover Mizora's failure.

Perhaps none of this is real.

"Go to hell Mizora." He spits out. "I'll never serve you."

"Pity." She strokes his face with her bloody fingers and he shudders. "On to the other arm then."

At some point, Wyll realizes the screaming he can hear is not just his own. He had let his eyes slip closed from the pain or from the fear, had turned his face into the dirt and tried to let his consciousness wash away in the torrential rain falling from the sky. Now he opens his eyes and what he sees is the silhouette of Baldur's Gate on fire.

Mizora makes a pleased noise. "It couldn't be helped. You were such a naughty little boy. Together we might have stopped her, but look at things now." She tsks. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

She doesn't let him close his eyes again after that.

"I should leave you for your father to see." Mizora suggests while his left arm hangs by a narrow thread of muscle. "Think of it. He comes home, the city in flames, and his only son just a wriggling eyeless thing. I'd leave you your mouth to scream of course, but not your tongue. Hmmm, perhaps I should leave you with an eye? Can you imagine the expression on your father's face? Do you think even the Grand Duke will weep when he sees you? He has such a hard reputation, who can say. Would your father weep for you?"

Wyll can think of another time in which he broke his father's heart.

"Oh well." She finishes off his left arm. "I have plenty of time to think of ideas. An eternity if you will. Now, which is your favorite leg?" Her hand strays towards his waist as she smirks. "Let me guess."

Finally, blessedly, unconsciousness takes him.

Wyll wakes screaming in his bed, sweat soaked through his cotton shirt and freezing against his skin. Shivering sets in immediately and Wyll cannot stop his teeth from chattering. His arms don't feel quite real and it takes barking his elbow against the post of his bed before Wyll lets himself believe that he is truly back at that morning. The pain grounds him. It feels real.

He breathes hard, chest heaving. Trying to kill Mizora was a bad idea. What could he, a boy of seventeen, do against a devil? What could he do against the cultists of Tiamat, all by himself?

Wyll closes his eyes and wishes in that moment, more than anything, to see his father's face again.

He could, he realizes, see his father's face again.

A servant knocks at his door, cracking it open after a moment.

"Are you well, saer?" He asks. "I heard screaming."

"It was nothing." Wyll lies with a smile on his face. "Only a nightmare. I'm sorry I woke you."

"Are you sure you're well, saer?" The servant pauses, face concerned, as he tries to think of a way to politely tell Wyll he looks like he's been through the hells. "You seem feverish. I can call a healer."

"All is well." Wyll says. "Thank you."

The man leaves. It is quiet in his room once more. And from the corner a voice whispers 'dusthawk hill'.

Wyll laces his boots while he thinks.

Attempting to kill Mizora had not been the best of plans, but he had learned a few key things from it. The first was that his consciousness and unconsciousness framed the loop he found himself trapped in. On one side he wakes in his bed, and on the other death or unconsciousness claim him. Mizora must, of course, never find this out or she might attempt to keep him and he does not know the limits of what her infernal magic can do.

The second was that Mizora can let Tiamat win. This is a small comfort to him, but a comfort nonetheless. There had always been a voice of doubt in the back of his mind, small but clear, that perhaps if he had not signed his soul away Mizora would have been forced to stop Tiamat regardless. It was no guarantee, true, and his soul for the lives of all of Baldur's Gate was a cheap bargain, but on the worst days he had worried it had all been for nothing in the end.

The third was that Mizora could be killed. Oh, it would be hard. He could not hesitate nor give her a moment's mercy, not if he were to have a chance, but it could be done. He might have succeeded in killing her this last time around if only he hadn't hesitated.

The final thing he had learned, was that he cannot kill Mizora and stop Tiamat. Killing Mizora might be possible, but not without its cost, and by the time she is dead he will be too exhausted or injured to go after the Dragon Queen.

Wyll picks up his sword and runs to Dusthawk hill.

"Well?" Mizora asks, after laying out the details of the pact for him.

"Yes." Wyll says.

When the fight is over and he is left shivering under the torrential downpour of rain, Wyll picks himself up and makes his way back home. He lets the cook see him and by the time Florrick arrives he already has a strong drink in his hand and a warm blanket around his shoulders—though it does nothing for the cold that has sunk down into his bones.

"What happened?" Florrick asks him once they are in private.

"I was in a fight." Wyll says. 

He has the practice of seven years to get through this conversation and he knows that will not be enough. Florrick has always had a keen sense for when someone is avoiding the truth.

“I can see that.” Florrick says dryly.

“The other guy looks worse.”

“Your father would not approve of your fighting duels.”

He cannot say it wasn’t a duel because then it would be too easy to play a guessing game of ‘what is it not?’ With his pact. Mizora was, at the very least, thorough.

“I don’t fight duels.” Wyll says instead. 

Florrick looks less than impressed, but she is at least familiar enough with his father’s stubbornness to recognize the same look in him.

“Who attacked you?”

The thread of the Pact presses around his throat. It would be amusing to say that it had been the other way around actually, Wyll had attacked her, but there are limits to Florrick’s patience and he only has so much he can say before Mizora will make her appearance.

“It doesn’t matter.” Wyll shakes his head. “I only need to stay awake until father gets here.”

“Wyll—“

“I’m sorry, counselor, I can’t tell you. I need to speak with my father first. Please.”

“It will be at least a day before he returns. I’ll send for a healer.”

“No,” Wyll says. 

A cleric’s power pulls on the body’s reserves as well as their god’s strength and Wyll cannot afford to exhaust himself any further. He must see his father; he must stay awake.

“But—“

“I can’t fall asleep. I cannot sleep. Please.”

“Your father wouldn't approve.”

Wyll’s mouth falls into a grim line.

“I know.”

It is harder than Wyll thought it would be, the staying awake. It only takes a moment of carelessness, of letting his guard slip, for his eyes to close or for his thoughts to wander, and that moment is enough for sleep to claim him and for him to awake in his bed, once again.

And it is so godsdamn cold! 

He hadn’t noticed it before, not when he had been preoccupied with understanding what was going on or with killing Mizora, but when he wakes it is cold, when the rain pours out of the sky it soaks him through with icy needles, and every moment that passes the cold gets worse. It is tempting then, to wrap himself in blankets and settle himself in front of the fire, but that is only a trap seeking to lull him into sleep.

The day begins and the day ends the same way, over and over again. He forces himself to try something new every loop, in the hopes that it will break up the monotony. Most of the time it simply makes things worse.

Coffee does little to help—it just sets his nerves alight. The best thing, he finds, is to pace, but there is only so long that his legs can keep him moving.

“You should rest.” Florrick tells him. “Your father will be here soon. I sent a messenger to meet him, but worrying won’t bring him here any faster.”

“I can’t sleep.” Wyll repeats for the umpteenth time.

Florrick looks worried. He hopes she won’t send for a healer, like happened three loops ago, bringing an end to one of his most successful attempts yet.

“I’ll be alright.” He shoots for a candid smile. The Blade of Frontiers has a lot of practice with candid smiles at the end of a long day. “I just need to speak with my father.”

He does not succeed that time, either, when he leans too long against the fireplace.

Wyll wakes in his bed and groans as he hauls himself from the comfort of his blankets, shivering. His fingers fumble with his boot laces, his mind is fragile with exhaustion even while his body feels whole and well. The hells are taking their toll on him and he still has no idea as to how to escape this place.

He does his best to hurry to Dusthawk hill where he finds Mizora waiting patiently.

"Your soul for all the souls in Baldur's Gate." Mizora offers him. "A small price—"

"No." He says.

Mizora's wings flare behind her and he cannot help but flinch.

"No?" She demands. "Do you not understand what I am offering you? Do you not care for the fate of your city?"

"No." Wyll repeats. "I refuse. I won't sell my soul."

"Not even for the lives of thousands? Tens of thousands?" Mizora almost seems amused. "What a selfish little boy. I would have thought your father raised you better."

"I don't need your power, Mizora." Wyll says.

"Against Tiamat?" Mizora sneers. "What chance does a boy like you stand?"

The infernal magic Mizora gifts him is a boon against the cultists, this is true. It also draws on his stamina. Perhaps if he can just avoid using it he will be able to remain awake long enough to see his father again. It is not an answer to his problem, but it is a goal to focus on, to keep him standing on his feet and climbing out of bed for however many more rounds it will take. Without a concrete goal, he might as well just lay down and never get up again, for all the good it will do him.

"I don't need your help, Mizora," Wyll says. "I just need you to stay the hell out of my way."

A flurry of emotions passes over Mizora's face, each there for only a heartbeat, and then gone. Wyll could only read her so well because his survival had depended upon reading Mizora's mood for the last seven years. First she is taken aback, then annoyed, then amused which does not bode well for him.

But Wyll has all the time in the world to get this right, so he steps around Mizora and hopes that she will not take this as an opportunity to stab him in the back.

The cultists chant, the portal pulses with that strange infernal light, and Wyll creeps softly over the grass and mud to reach them while Mizora does nothing more than watch.

He starts with the cultists furthest from the inner circle. Wyll has not always been the strongest in a fight. In fact, it  has been a rare day where the monsters he hunted did not prove to be a challenge. As such he has learned a thing or two about using stealth for his advantage. With the sun not yet cresting the hillside and the cultists focused on their chanting to bring Tiamat into this plane, it is a far sight easier than most of the quarries he has hunted over the years. True, his feet are not as sure and steady as he is used to, but that is a small enough handicap to overcome.

He smiles wryly to himself. Perhaps there was some good yet to that tadpole in his head, as it had forced him to remember what it was like at the beginning, how to fight when one was so weak.

He strikes then, one arm clapping over the cultist's mouth, the other driving a sword through his back. They die after a convulsion or two and Wyll drags them back far enough out of the dim light before laying their now cooling corpse out on the ground and going for the next most likely target. No one notices him except for Mizora who is watching him with a sly smile on her face, never staying in the same place, but instead suddenly appearing out of the fog, her wings framed a lighter gray against the inky black sky.

She is planning something, but Wyll cannot worry himself about that now, for the ground is breaking as Tiamat pulls her first head into Baldur's Gate, pale yellow eyes blinking in the pre-dawn light.

He loses his footing when she roars and then the rain shakes loose of the clouds in a terrible downpour. It takes him a moment to find his sword in the mud and that moment is more than enough.

Tiamat is watching him and the sheer weight of her malice slams into him like a boulder falling from the heavens. Wyll wheezes as he collapses onto his side, his chest feeling like his ribs have cracked and caved in on themselves, his lungs limp and unable to take in air.

Gods. Was this what it truly was like to stand before an Archdevil? He had truly underestimated how much Mizora's power had shielded him from Tiamat's wrath.

As though called by name Mizora appears in his field of vision then, smiling. The world feels gummy and slow. This then, was her plan.

"Have you reconsidered my offer?" She asks, eyes glinting in the fire-light. "This is your final chance."

"I don't need your power." Wyll repeats. "And I don't need your help."

With a small smile she is gone and then there is no more air in his lungs and his back is breaking where it is pressed into the mud and stone of the ground, something grinding between his shoulder blades and he has not the strength to so much as raise his sword though Tiamat has not even touched him—

Then he is light.

Wyll groans as he sits himself up, spitting out some mud that had gotten into his mouth. He almost loses his sword again, but his fingers spasm around the hilt and hold faster. Tiamat blinks at him, but this time his feet hardly stutter. 

"Don't tell me you're just a one trick pony." He says to Tiamat. With a swipe of the back of his arm against his forehead he tries to dash the rain out of his face, but it just keeps falling implacably. 

The cultists know he is there now and with the first of Tiamat's head risen from Avernus they are able to break ranks and send some few of their number after him. They have magic and he doesn't, but Wyll's heart beats steady in his chest with an eerie sense of calm after the artificial terror Tiamat pressed into him. It feels like he has all the time in the world and Wyll supposes he does. 

He smiles. He'll see his father yet. 

A sparking beam of hellfire crashes down at him from the heavens, but Wyll slides to one side and then one foot in front of the other in one long stride gets him close enough to take a cultist in the chest, move around the body before it has fully fallen, and sweep the legs out from underneath another cultist. He is flying, sword flashing out to slap aside upraised arms or take them in the chest or throat and send them sprawling across the blood-and-rain soaked mud. Tiamat roars, but even with his ears ringing, Wyll manages to hear the whine of infernal magic and duck before whatever it is can hit him in the chest. The magic eats away at the ground instead, sending up a clump of dirt and mud as it hits, hissing and spitting steam. 

Wyll laughs, delighted.

One of the cultists who had brandished a spear at him pauses at his laughter, then turns to run. They do not make it far. Tiamat does not suffer cowards among her ranks and soon enough the poor cultist is nothing more than a bloody smear across the ground as she thrashes and strains and roars to free herself. 

The portal that was meant to bring her into Baldur's Gate falters, shrinking now that it no longer has the power to stabilize a path between the planes. There is the ghost of a hand against his throat and Wyll almost chokes, freezing in sudden fear, but then it is gone. 

Mizora, he senses, has decided not to stick around for the outcome of this fight. 

A flick of his sword frees it from the latest corpse and Wyll turns to hunt down the last of the cultists. Some of them die fighting, but more of them die badly, running or limping away, their backs disappearing in the downpour and the fog, but their tracks clear enough all the time. When enough of them are dead Tiamat's head slips back down into the portal in silence, the yellow-pale eyes glaring malevolently at him. Tiamat will not forget him, of that much he is certain. He almost wonders at the fact that he managed to brave the hells even knowing what awaited him down there, but then again, Mizora never left him much choice. 

Finally, he stands there in the rain, sword tip pressed against the ground, listening for any noise that might let him know this is all finally over. He is not as exhausted as he expected himself to be. That is good. He'll manage the wait for his father with ease then.

When he is satisfied at the quiet, interspersed by the song of seabirds as they begin to rise from their nests to greet the day, Wyll sheaths his sword.

He knows it is a mistake a moment later when he hears the squelch of footsteps in the mud behind him. Whirling around he reaches for his sword, but only manages to get it half drawn before a spear's point is punching through his chest then lung then out the back of his shoulder in the sort of incomprehensibly lucky strike he often dreams about making. His legs buckle into the mud, any strength he might have had wheezing out of him alongside all of the air in his lungs. A child's face blinks down at him, the young cultist who had stayed behind and hid waiting for this moment looking as surprised as Wyll feels. The child is a small boy, with a hollowness in the face that comes from being underfed for too long. Wyll hesitates to bring his sword up. What loss is it if he dies here? He'll return again . . . though the boy too, will be here again for him to kill. 

It is then that Wyll thinks that he was—is—near the same age as the boy. At seventeen he looked older than the child before him, but not by much. A child.

The boy tentatively tugs at the spear lodged in Wyll's chest and without thinking he brings his sword up to cut the boy's throat. It is an awkward angle and would not have possibly worked if the boy had not come too close, too inexperienced to understand that even as badly hurt as Wyll is, he is still deadly. 

Not that it matters much. Wyll is dying.

His movements made slow and clumsy by pain, Wyll somehow manages to break off the haft of the spear. The wood is softer than it should be in his hands, the thing poorly made or poorly maintained or both. A wonder that the boy was able to put enough force behind it to wound Wyll so badly. The sort of luck that should have kept him alive, but the boy is dead and Wyll staggers to his feet. This fight does not matter—everyone here died seven years ago, save for Wyll. 

And now he is dying too. 

The rain is fading, the sun climbing in the distance and Wyll knows he will not be able to remain awake for long enough to see his father. Not this time around. The shakes are already beginning to set in, his skin clammy and feverish and yet cold, so godsdamn cold it aches at his bones. He will have to begin again, but he is tired. 

With first one hand on what remains of the haft, then the other, his fingers clumsy and thick, he manages to grip the shaft and uses the last of his strength to pull it out of his chest so that he might bleed freely and die a little faster. He tries to throw what remains of the spear some distance away, but it slips from his hands and falls in the mud at his feet. No matter. He is dying quickly now.

Wyll sinks to his knees in the mud and closes his eyes. 

Open your eyes. A voice commands. 

He refuses. 

Open your eyes. The voice insists.

With a growl, he does so. "What, Mizora?" He snaps, only to find himself speaking to the empty air. 

Mizora is not here. No one is here with him, but there is a strange sensation growing in the palm of his hand, tingling over his fingers. He must be hallucinating from the blood loss because his hand seems to glow. Lips pursed into a frown, Wyll places the hand against the wound in his chest.

Power floods through him, nothing like the infernal power he has grown used to that cuts and saws and burns its way through his veins, no this one sings along merrily, smoothing and soothing and refining where it goes until he is able to draw in a deep shuddering breath all at once and know that his lung has been healed and where the wound was there is only a patch of sticky blood already quickly cooling. 

Wyll stares down at his hand in numb contemplation.

"This isn't real." He speaks the words aloud, even as they vanish under the patter of the rain. "It doesn't matter."

But the words ring hollow. 

He has often dreamed of how things might have turned out differently. Of course he has. Those first years he spent under Mizora's thumb it was a thought he came back to over and over again like a tooth ache, poking and prodding and wrestling with it. What if he had gone for help at Mizora's first whisper, instead of giving into embarrassment and pride and going to handle things himself? What if there had been someone else, some adventurer in the city who had heard Tiamat's cries and come to silence her in his stead? What if the Gods had given Wyll power, so that he need not turn to Mizora instead?

What if Wyll had had faith?

Well, here is one possible answer. He sits now in the mud and the rain and shivers because even though nothing has changed, everything has changed and he can feel the power of it coursing through him now. He doesn't know which god, specifically, has given him this power, but he has it now and he knows that if he had refused Mizora all those many years ago he could have had this same power back then too. There was never any reason for his pact, never any need to have been thrown out of the city. A tentative part of his thoughts nudges up against the idea of 'what would his father say, to see him now?' and Wyll cannot bear to think of the answer.

Suddenly he does not wish to speak to his father again.

Wyll makes to stand, but the mud has a hold on him and he sprawls instead, sinking up past his wrists when he catches himself against the ground. He lays his head against the ground for just a moment, closes his eyes. 

None of this is real. It does not matter, because Wyll cannot change the past. Cannot free himself from the pact. His father was right, he is a godsdamned fool. 

"Dusthawk hill." Mizora hisses in his ear.

Wyll opens his eyes to find himself back in his bed. "You're not real." He mutters. "None of this is real. It doesn't—" He can't bring himself to say that it doesn't matter.

Somehow he had fallen asleep and the day had begun all over again. Even slipping the noose on his pact and yet still defeating Tiamat had not been enough to free him from this day. It was easy enough to understand why. The past could not be unwritten, Wyll knows that. What's done is done. It should not matter to him now to know that it could have gone so much differently. 

It is cold in his room. Someone must have forgotten to stir up the fire. There is frost riming his linens, just past the tips of his fingers. He could hear Mizora calling him, but then she gave up, and now there is nothing to hear but silence. Curling up into himself doesn't help much against the cold. He could stir up the fire, though a glance tells him it is dead, gone out, and the very idea of standing right now presents too much of a problem. 

It doesn't matter. The cold won't kill him and even if it does, he'll simply wake up in his bed again and again and again to face his day. Wyll watches the frost creep closer. It climbs over his fingers, takes his hand in its. There is a peace to this, Wyll thinks. 

In the distance he hears what he suspects must be Tiamat's roar. Soon it will all be over.

He closes his eyes.

"Wyll! Wyll! Godsdamnit you're not leaving us like this! Get up!"

His chest is on fire. Wyll jerks away from it, trying to get away from the pain, but then there are burning hands on him grabbing him, dragging him away from the peaceful cold, then picking him up, lifting him—his whole being is on fire and Wyll tries to scream, choking on cold and ash as he struggles in the embrace of something that is trying to burn him from the inside out. He is back in those layers of Avernus and this is it, this time he will stay and become a mindless plaything for Mizora. His soul is gone. It must be, the price he has paid for what he has done. What he did not do, all those years ago.

"I have him! I have him! Shadowheart, what do we do? He's so cold."

"Let me see him." A clipped voice responds. "Set him there."

He still struggles even as he burns, his eyes—no eye, he only has one of them now—are open and yet he cannot see anything but darkness. The burning thing is not flame, it is solid and unyielding, and yet it places him gently down against cool stone, a soothing balm against his back even as the rest of him burns. He cannot be a lemure, then, can he?

"Is he dead?" Another voice asks dryly. 

Wyll jerks, choking on the air. It burns down his lungs like hellfire. His fingers feel as though they are cracking, fractured in a thousand places by the cold.

"Not yet it seems." The voice answers its own question. 

There is a gentle touch, a press of fingers against his chest, above his heart and Wyll plunges into a watery pit of perfect darkness. He does not burn here, does not freeze, does not feel . . . anything. The loss of feeling aches in its own way, though he is glad for the reprieve. Wyll sinks.

When he opens his eye, a long while later, he has to squint at the bright torch light that hovers above him. Wherever he is now, Wyll had hear the murmur of conversation happening a short distance away. He is in a bed of some sort, but it is not his bed. What in the nine hells is going on?

He tries to sit up, but is soon forced to give up with a low groan. Everything hurts right down to the very marrow of his bones. The horns on his head feel heavier now that he has gotten used to not having them again. Damn Mizora. It will be too soon if he never has to see her again. 

"Wyll?" Someone asks.

It takes him a moment—a long moment—to place the voice. As far as he is concerned the only voice he has heard for the past few weeks was that of Mizora, or rarely Florrick or some poor Fist put in charge of guarding him. It does not yet feel real that he is back here in the world he had left with a tadpole in his head and then devil—tiefling—he had been chasing through the hells apparently standing vigil at his bedside.

"Karlach?" His voice cracks. His throat feels worse than that time he caught a cold when he had been passing through some small towns north of Neverwinter and been snowed in. He had spent near a tenday laid up with fever and a burning throat until Mizora had gotten frustrated enough with him . . .

Wyll pushes the thought from his mind.

"Wyll!" Karlach says. "You're awake! I knew it'd take more than a little shadow curse to keep you down!"

Then her hand is on his shoulder. She is touching him and he isn't burning.

"Kar—" Wyll tries to call her name again, but is interrupted by a bout of coughing. "Water." He wheezes out. 

Karlach dutifully helps him to drink down water. (Wyll struggles not to scream when she helps him to sit up in bed. Everything hurts.) As she does, she chatters on about everything that has happened in the days Wyll has been asleep. It is hard to Wyll to follow the story, but what he gathers is this: he went too far into the shadow curse, Karlach carried him out, and by pure luck they had come across a place that was protected from the shadow curse, which is where they were now.

"'Last Light Inn'. Pretty on the nose, don't you think?" Karlach says. "That's not all, the harpers are here. They're also trying to figure out what's going on with these tadpoles and the Absolute and 'true soul' nonsense. And even more: Jaheira's the one leading them. The Jaheira."

"The Jaheira." Wyll echoes. He has certainly heard of her, one of the heroes that saved Baldur's Gate a hundred years ago.

"Yeah, I'll introduce you two. I bet you'd get along great. But first you've got to rest up. You'll be alright, won't you Wyll?" For the first time since the start of their conversation a hint of worry slips into Karlach's voice.

"It doesn't matter." Wyll says automatically.

"Of course it fucking matters Wyll!" Karlach says. "Gods! Listen to yourself. You nearly died out there!"

"My pact." Wyll says. "It doesn't matter—" and his tongue burns and he chokes and all at once Wyll is so angry, so fucking furious with Mizora and the entire horseshit of his pact. Everything he had been through and now he cannot even talk about it, cannot even warn his companions about what it means to fall into the shadow curse!

When he feels he can speak again, Wyll tries his best to smile. "I'll be alright, Karlach." He says. "Just give me a few days and the Blade will be back in top shape, you have my promise."

And so saying, he places his hand over his heart.