I. You find: a broken tiefling horn.
Fray shakes the excess blood from his blade, shooting an irate glare Gale’s way. Gale is not paying attention; neither is Shadowheart. They are trying to figure out how to get that gith down from her cage. Shadowheart doesn’t want to get her down at all. Gale is telling her that’s nonsense.
In truth, Fray trusts the gith no more than he trusts the tieflings that are now sprawled on the ground. One dead, one unconscious. They ought to both be dead, their souls freed from the Hells’ grip. But Gale had threatened to put him in a holding spell if he made a move on the unconscious one, and Fray cannot afford to lose his few allies. The living tiefling will keep its captive a little while longer.
Speaking of tieflings.
That one that was on the ship is lurking around here somewhere. They disappeared at the start of the fight, which is no big surprise. Fray’s just glad they didn’t join the other side.
He spots them now, from where they’ve perched themselves atop a high rock. Their eyes linger on him, then drop to his feet. Fray looks, and finds the detached horn of the dead tiefling. It had shattered when Fray brought his sword down on its head.
Vague disgust ebbs through him. He nudges it aside with his boot.
When he looks up again, Right is still watching him.
II. You find: a pair of tattered hyena ears.
It is one thing to fight a gnoll. It is quite another to see one be born.
The thing that rears up out of the gory mess that was once a dying hyena stands eight feet tall, its spotted coat covered in viscera. It staggers forward a step on unsteady legs and falls, looking for a moment like a warped mockery of the animal that spawned it.
“Demon,” Fray growls under his breath, scarcely audible even to himself, and nocks an arrow.
There’s a great deal of brush and overturned carts between him and the monster. He’ll have to wait for a shot. He does, watching the gnoll push itself to its feet again and take a few more wobbling paces. Will it fall upon one of the still-living hyenas to gorge its unnatural hunger, ushering in another gnoll? Or will it sate itself on one of the humanoid corpses that the beasts have already savaged?
He follows the gnoll with his arrowhead, waiting for his shot.
To his surprise, it moves neither for the hyenas nor the humanoids. It wraps its gangly arms around itself and peers around at the massacre that birthed it, its ears pinned back against its head. Slowly a sound becomes audible: the gnoll is making a low, laughing whoop as it looks from body to body. Mocking.
Its still form is a perfect target. The bow twangs once, and an arrowhead buries itself in the back of the demon’s neck. It drops like a stone.
It’s grim work, making his way into the bloodied spot on the road and making sure everything that needs killing is killed. He severs hyena heads from their bodies with a neat chop of the sword. When he reaches the gnoll, he finds to his surprise that its eyes are still open, and following him. They are wide and whale-eyed, and its tongue lolls with its frantic panting. He must have only paralyzed it.
Grim work, he thinks again as he drives his sword into its brain. The eyes close forever. Gray matter clings wetly to his blade. His stomach turns.
It had only been him, there at the clearing. The others were investigating a trail of goblin tracks, and he only mentions the gnoll that night when they make camp.
When Right—looking down at their snake-like tail, curling and uncurling around their hooved ankle—when Right says, “Do you know that laughing sound they make?” there’s no pause to wait for guesses. “They do it when they’re distressed. It’s an ‘I’m scared, don’t hurt me’ noise.”
They pay no attention at all to Fray when they say it, and do not see the way his face twists in disbelief.
III. You find: a piece of masterwork goblin jewelry.
Fray’s blade bites deep into the shrieking goblin’s back, and it is not shrieking anymore. A rank smell permeates the place, and Fray cannot remember if it was already there when the fight began.
Three goblins lie dead. Another five cool in pools of their own blood in the building behind them—him and Wyll. Fray wipes blood from his face and looks for the next patrol.
“Forgive my asking, but do you have something against goblins in particular?”
Fray’s gaze cuts to Wyll, who watches him expectantly. When Fray does not reply right away he continues. “It’s just that you seem particularly … bloodthirsty, here.”
“They’re evil.”
Wyll tilts his head questioningly.
Fray suppresses a groan and straightens up. Why does he have to explain this again and again? His mentor told him the outside world lived in blindness to the Revelation, but really? “Evil god,” he says slowly, trying to meter out his words so his throat does not seize. “Evil acts. Murderers. Torturers. Always. Monsters.”
“Quite the sweeping generalization.”
“They add nothing good to the world,” Fray snaps. Wyll shrugs, looking over the small, crumpled bodies. As he begins to examine them for anything helpful, Fray tries to clean the blood from his sword.
“Look at this,” says Wyll a minute later. Fray looks as he holds up a small, sparkling object. It is a hairpin, of all things, made of polished bone and inset with tiny pieces of sparkling rock. It is beautiful. Fray immediately wants it. “What do you make of it?”
“Pretty,” Fray says.
“Goblin make, I’d wager. I suppose even goblins can make beautiful things, hm?”
Fray looks at the goblin it came from, and how its guts spill out over the cobbles. His gorge rises. He swallows to force it back down.
IV. You find: a gnawing sense of foreboding.
“Five of us,” Fray grinds out. His throat throbs with pain. “Two dozen goblins. Need t, to. To thin them out.”
“You want us to fight two dozen goblins for one gnome,” Right says, unmoved.
“Needs us.”
“And how do you know? Did your sword whisper it to you?”
In answer, Fray jabs a finger toward the distant windmill, where the deep gnome tied to one of its arms yelps again. “Maybe he wants to be there,” says Right. “Maybe he’s a thrill-seeker.”
“Goblins,” Fray repeats, frustrated. “Evil. Sava—savages. Tormenting him. For fun.” Surely even a tiefling can’t deny this is wrong.
Right regards him coolly. “Fine,” they say eventually. “We’ll get him down, on one condition. You don’t attack without talking first. I don’t need my tail chopped off because you couldn’t stand the idea of so much as speaking to them.”
Fray grunts irritably. He’s not going to waste the precious few words he can afford for the day on goblins.
“Agreed?” Right says.
“You talk,” Fray answers, but he sheathes his sword.
In the end, talking really was all that was needed. It needles at Fray. Right had gotten Gale to do the speaking, and then planted themselves where they could keep an eye on Fray. No blood is spilled. All that’s required of Fray is a glare at the goblins and a display of running his tongue along his teeth, grasping at his weapon’s hilt. The creature Gale is talking to gives in with nothing more.
Fray’s gut twists with anxiety as he watches the goblins stream out of the shattered place around them, thinking: now they’ll just find some other hapless thing to torture. I could have stopped it.
The sword on his back grows heavy. Its disdain with him crawls over his skin like a slime. Fray’s head swims and his insides seize with trepidation, though if it is for the goblins’ future victims or himself, he cannot tell.
No one else notices.
V. You find: two pieces of forbidden fruit.
The monstrous Karlach laughs easily and merrily. She adores Scratch, the dog; she asks Shadowheart about her hair and Astarion about his appetite, when he eats nothing in front of her. (The vampirism is made mention, and she takes the news with a thoughtful look and a question regarding bloodborne diseases.)
Everyone likes Karlach. She is eminently affable. Even Lae’zel, when she makes her once-a-tenday appearances, seems to find her acceptable enough. It shouldn’t surprise Fray that Right keeps sneaking glances at her, either. Tieflings with tieflings; it makes sense. And while Karlach makes no overtures of her own, she returns the attention as it is given.
What Fray is not expecting is the envy. The easy swing of the tieflings’ conversations, the back-and-forth; Karlach’s attention when Right shows her their lockpicks; and, somehow, Right’s attention when she tells them about her beloved axe. The immediate camaraderie between them chafes in a way that makes Fray feel like there is a sword at his throat. He tells himself it is to be expected, that devil spawn would of course be drawn to one another.
Karlach is nearly seven feet tall, with ember-red skin and one wicked horn. Her body is punctured with metal rings to vent the immense heat she generates. Her very heart is missing. And Right, Right is taller than he, and bigger, yet seems able to disappear at will. Their skin is the same green-gray as the sky before a great storm. They move in silence, their eyes glow like magic light. The pair are both tieflings, and by its nature a tiefling is a kind of evil construct, a flesh-and-blood prison for goodly souls. This is what Fray knows to be true; this is what he has been taught all his life.
Why, then, can he not keep from lingering around them? Why does he make up excuses to cut into their conversations? Why is he consumed with a fiery resentment when he catches them smiling at one another, laughing, happy?
Why can he find nothing evil about them?
When it is his turn to keep watch, Fray shirks his duty. His eyes keep wandering over the sleeping forms of his tiefling companions, tracing Karlach’s warped and scarred flesh, the elegant arch of Right’s elongated legs.
After Shadowheart comes to relieve him, he lies awake, burning with revulsion at his own thoughts.
VI. You find: the consequences of your disbelief.
Astarion will not drop a line of inquiry if he thinks he can get away with it. This is how the camp learned that Fray is not, in fact, without means of fluid communication. But Handcant is unique to his Order, taught for the sake of those who have accepted the gift and surrendered their voices. He is not allowed to teach it to anyone, he had explained after Astarion spotted him signing his prayers and made enough of a fuss that the whole camp gathered to see this novel language. “It’s a language?” Gale asked eagerly, when Fray explained it as such. “I do believe I have a scroll of comprehend languages somewhere, I would be fascinated to see if it would work on a non-verbal one.”
“Secret language,” Fray had said, slightly desperately, and Gale mercifully dropped the subject.
Do not be afraid.
Two ethereal arms, so thin as to be skeletal, sign out each word. They hang suspended over where Fray’s blade lies before him, where he kneels before it. Here, in this clearing too distant from camp to be noticed, the presence of his god is overwhelming. The silent signs boom at him, an intense force, like being squeezed. Fray does his best to suppress his flinch.
I say to you, do not be afraid.
But he is afraid. Fear grips Fray’s heart, almost calming in its familiarity. This is part of it. It is not possible for man to stand unafraid before the Revealer; the heart quails before Them. You fear, and know that the fear is proper. You fear, knowing you are unworthy of looking upon Them. You fear, but you know They are good, and just, in all They do.
He repeats the lines of the most comforting canticle he can think of to himself, the words of the Revealing Light from time out of mind: I will guide you faithful to the paths of plenty; I will show you who keep me in your heart the knowledge of right.
Frayed Saint. O best beloved, why do you call upon me?
“Most High,” signs Fray, his head bowed but eyes lifted, as is proper. “I come before you, your sword in the country of evil. I call on you in search of understanding. I walk among those who are unrepentant and those who are suffering. I am fearful of losing my way. I need your guidance, for I cannot find my way alone.”
Tell me your troubles, dear heart.
Fray falters, just for a moment. He checks himself; he is not trembling, which is good. He braces himself and carries on. “Sire,” he goes on, focusing on forming each word clearly. “Evil has entered me. I seek a way to cast it out.” The Revealer knows this, and, Fray is sure, knows what must be done to free him of the tadpole. But you cannot simply ask. The Revealer does not grant boons on request. “I travel with others under the same curse, seven of them.”
He hesitates again, remembering watching Wyll’s writhing body as his patron expressed her displeasure.
Speak.
That commanding pressure again. Fray’s heart judders; his breath catches. “Forgive me,” he signs hurriedly. “Two among them are tieflings, and one a vampire. We are joined only until we have freed ourselves, for we are all far from home and allies, but I know I shame you by their company. My lord, I beg your forgiveness in this transgression.”
The sword, below the hands, seems to flash with a violent light. Transgress you have, it booms. Chosen of the gift, you dishonor My name by walking with the wicked?
“Yes, sire.”
Very well. Is that all you have to confess?
It is a question, and it is not a question. The Revealer already knows; They are simply making him admit it. It is the least that Fray deserves. “No,” he signs, and now his hands do quake. “There is more. The vampire—he is evil. There is no argument to be made about that. I will accept my correction for tolerating his company with gladness. But my question—I am—I am struggling with the tieflings.” (Here he grits his teeth and tries to will his pulse to slow.) “I … cannot find fault with either of them. I do not see evil in them, only misguidance. Much of the time they act in accordance with your will.”
The Great Revealer waits for the rest of his confession.
“And I … I find myself drawn to them.”
And how is that?
A deep breath under the crushing silence.
“Tempted,” signs Fray. His ears burn. He feels ill. “Seduced.”
Such is the company you keep.
“That is my question. I have been taught that tieflings are against your order, that they are evil. But these—my lord, these are not. Must tieflings always be wicked?”
The closeness of that place narrows further. Fray feels as if a thousand eyes are upon him, peeling away his skin, examining every flaw. Then, like a breath being let go, it releases. My son, signs the Revealer. Yours is a heart that longs to see good in the world. Be glad of this. But you must remain vigilant. Is not deceit the chief of sins? Can that which is spawned by devils ever do more than put on a mask of goodness?
Fray is meant to agree. He knows he is meant to agree. It is not his place to argue with gods. Yet his hands lift anyway. “Is it not also taught that the races of men may be of good or of evil?” he protests. “That no one can be said to be purely good?” Karlach’s laugh. Right’s smirk. “Surely there are tieflings who could be considered more good than evil!”
The clearing feels, all at once, like the inside of a closed fist. Fray reels from it, words forgotten. Before him, the sword shivers, then leaps upright. One of the hands takes it, leveling it at his face. The Revealer answers aloud.
Be still.
His hands lock. His arms hook themselves behind his back, crossed; reflexively he struggles. That great fear comes rushing back, weaving through his ribs, and his chest heaves. Bile laps at the back of his throat. He thinks of Wyll, passing through the layers of the Hells before his eyes.
“Mercy,” he pleads of his master, voice breaking in the quiet of the grove. The sword does not move. “Mercy on your s, servant, my lord, I beg you.”
You have been led astray through your negligence of your duties, he is told, the voice patient and implacable as it rings in his ears. Now your faith is under attack. I do this for your benefit, my son, that you might not fall prey to those who would destroy you.
“My fai—f, faith is—”
Be still, the Revealer commands, and Fray is pulled to his feet by unseen forces. Panic eats at him, guilt and shame floods his mind. He has been disobedient. He has strayed from the path. His arms are released. Prepare yourself.
“Sire,” he says, and in his own ears it is a pathetic whine. He stares up along the blade of his own weapon. Not for the first time. “Please. Please.”
His master’s voice is clear and calm, but he cringes from it all the same. Do not defy me a second time.
He is too frightened to do anything but what is required of him. Quickly as he is able with his shaking hands, he removes his cloak, his tabard, his shirt. He pins his hair out of the way, haphazard and ugly. Once more he falls to his knees.
Recite your prayers.
The words rattle from his stunted throat, and though he tries to mean them they feel like noise. O Revealing Light, which shines on all, it is by you that I see the path. Before him his sword begins to glow. Fray closes his eyes to it. Make of me a channel for your blessings, and a font for your grace. He hears the hiss and groan of the metal, and the crackling of the air around it as it heats. He tries to breathe.
Keep me from evil. See me safe to your green places.
The looping, winding, patterned scars that cover much of his body—scars precise and beautiful, scars imbued with magic, scars he secretly and shamefully despises for the way they affront his vanity—begin to shine with holy light. They ache, and then sting.
Forgive me my follies, and purify me of all that is loathesome in your sight.
The scars erupt with pain, like scalding needles beneath his skin. Fray chokes, half-screaming, then martials himself back to composure. He stumbles over the words, crying out again when the very tip of the sword is driven into the tender skin of his throat.
I commit myself to you in all things, body and mind and soul.
Fray’s world becomes a confusion, a nonsense, a wounded animal scrabbling and howling in its search for relief. The pain stops short of being unbearable, but as new wounds are drawn around the length of his neck his voice leaves him. He can do no more than mouth the rest.
I thank you for your mercy, wisdom, and love.
The sword is drawn away. The pain stays hot and bright a few seconds longer. It is all Fray can do not to clutch at his throat. Instead he presses shaking fingertips to the place the sword had been, and feels a new scar. It is soft and tender and hurts horrifically to touch. Nausea floods him; he nearly retches.
I do this out of love, Frayed Saint. This mark will protect and mind you. The Hells shall not have you, my chosen one.
“Thank you,” Fray tries to sign. It comes out a smear of shaking fingers and wrists. “Thank you, Most High.”
I place my faith in you, O best beloved. You know in your heart what the path of right is.
“So be it,” says Fray, and passes out.
VII. You find: an unconscious half-elf.
Nearly an hour passes before the bushes stir so faintly they may as well have not moved at all. A delicate hoof presses itself, silently, to the loam and earth. Another follows, and behind them a carefully-held tail, its gray-green skin dappled with shadow and melting into the foliage.
When they reach Fray’s side, Right stops. They consider the beautiful greatsword that lies inert on the leaf litter. They consider the beautiful half-elf that lies unconscious beside it. They consider, cautiously, the ring of faint runes marked around the half-elf’s neck, shiny pink-white. A new set of scars to go with the ornate collection.
They consider the used-up scroll of comprehend language in their hand, and resolve to burn it later.
What will the half-elf do if they wake him, Right wonders, crouching at his side. What will this “Frayed Saint” make of a tiefling leaning over him, so soon after whatever it was that Right has just witnessed?
grayscale illustration of Right finding Fray unconscious
It would probably save lives if they were to kill him here, they think to themselves. That’s probably the wisest move. This man is genocidally xenophobic at best, and empowered by something that intends to keep him that way. Probably they should kill him, now, before he can do more damage.
But they grip his shoulder and shake him anyway. It takes a long time to stir him awake. “You look like you had an adventure,” Right remarks as Fray blinks unfocused eyes. His gaze lands on that sword. He lurches back from it, and turns to stare at Right. “Everything alright?”
Fray’s chest began to heave as soon as he caught sight of the sword. He presses his palm to his heart now, visibly trying to calm his breathing. His lips move, but Right can’t catch what he’s trying to say. They wait.
“I’m fine,” he gets out, eventually. His voice is splinters and shattered glass. His hair is askew, full of dirt and leaves “What’re … why are you … ?”
“You’d been gone for a long time,” Right says, which is true. “And you told Karlach you’d show her how to make curry.”
“Karlach?” Fray says, weakly.
“I’m worried she’s going to try to do it on her own if you don’t get back soon.”
“Right,” he says. He grimaces. “Y, yes, I mean. Okay.”
“I knew what you meant.” They allow their lamplight eyes to flick across the sword that lies in the dirt before turning them back on Fray with an intent interest. “Didn’t expect to see you passed out. Did something happen?”
Fray wets his lips. In the moment when Right had looked away, he had put his hand to his neck, and he takes it away again now. He paws hair from his eyes and pulls his shirt from where it lies beside him, trying and failing to cover the network of scarified patterns that ring his body like stripes on a cat. “Communing,” he says. He breaks off to cough into his elbow, grimacing with obvious discomfort. “My patron.”
“Must have been quite the discussion.” Fray fusses with the fabric in his hands, and nods. “What was it about?” Right prompts.
A long silence.
“I had sins to confess,” Fray says, sounding sick, and pulls on his shirt.
Illustrated by Payne.