Shade's Gate [Baldur's Gate 3/SI]
Some would argue a life well lived was its own reward.
Those would be fools.
As I fell, plummeting to my doom, I wondered -how had I gotten there? How was I supposed to get out of it? Was the ground growing closer? It was, indeed, and though there was the coastline, water would be as hard as cement if I impacted at terminal velocity.
As I fell, the unbidden cacophony of thoughts came to the forefront of my panicking mind.
You are falling, the world many kilometers beneath you. Instinctively, you spread your arms and legs-
Maybe, just maybe, I could go absolutely limp and survive this by bouncing off in some manner of zany cartoon-like way that I was not privy of.
THE WEAK SUFFER. I ENDURE.
I doubted I could survive the fall. No, these were my last moments of life. Nothing more. Nothing less. I did not remember boarding a plane; I did not remember falling from a plane, but there I was, plummeting. Falling. Heading for my inevitable demise.
You could have stayed at the Inn. It would have been nice to stay at the Inn. Or to refresh your Latin before heading out.
What inn? What Latin? Wait-What's feather and fall in Latin!?
"Pluma cadit!" I yelled. There was a bang, a noise, and a shower of feathers soon fell in front of my face. I sputtered a couple out, coughing and wheezing as the ground threatened me with its ever-growing presence. No, pluma cadit wasn't right. Something else was. It had worked. I could do magic. Well, I could speak latin. I had to speak latin. Which words. I didn't want to fall. I didn't want to die.
"Volo!" I tried again, this word had to be close. It had to be. Something seemed to ponder; I could feel gravity attempt to change its course, but then it collapsed once more. For the briefest of moments I wondered, wasn't there somewhere else I could have attempted to learn magic than freefalling?
The ground is just there. Try to avoid suffering too many injuries.
Injuries. Injura. Non. Non-
"Non fit injura!" I snarled, swinging my arms and widening my fingers as if to grasp some manner of invisible, etheral strings and drag them down, clad myself in them and spin hooks to anchor my body to.
Abruptly, something snagged into the depths of my brain and blood. Something boiled and bubbled; something grasped at the very tendrils of my soul and yanked, something breathed and gasped and cried out in sheer agony as my teeth tightly pressed against each others to the point where I believed, quite firmly so, that they would crack.
And then my body began to slow its descent, gravity itself kneeling to the words of the ancient tongue. I held on, my fingers grating on steel and nails of some manner of metaphysical reality, my ears drumming with the cacophony of my pounding heart. And the coppery taste of blood was on my lips as finally, my feet touched the sands and I collapsed on my knees, exhaling in sheer relief.
"Blessed ground," I whispered. "Blessed solid ground," I knelt cheek first to touch the sands, which felt warm from the sun's rays.
I exhaled, closing my eyes and basking in the glow of my survival. The sound of waves crashing against the shore lulled me into a false sense of security, one which was starkly broken when the rest of the ship came crashing down.
The rest of the Nautiloid ship.
The very real Nautiloid ship that meant Illithids, that meant tadpoles, that meant death for everyone except those blessed by the Artefact that eerily reminded me of a twenty-sided die and was currently in Shadowheart's possession. That very real thing that was a really real problem with the Absolute being an Ullitharid and stuff-and-and I had to get moving off the beach before something from the ship came prowling out looking for a brainy snack.
I swiftly looked around, wondering why I was the only one there on the beach; technically, someone was meant to nearly fall to their deaths and get saved by the Tadpole. I didn't feel like I had a tadpole in my brain; nothing saved me from the deadly fall but myself. Perhaps I had been lucky? Perhaps I wasn't going to turn into a squid?
Still, moving became my priority even as I noticed the absence of an unconscious Shadowheart on the sand. The Nautiloid overhead kept twitching its massive tentacles with its last dying throes, and I pushed forth, ignoring the pain in my legs as the adrenaline finally wore off, leaving me with the mother of all headaches and the father of all terrors.
I needed water, food and some manner of backpack. I also needed-the pier, the small pier, the small rickety wooden pier that was just a short distance away, past the very real corpses of dead fishermen, which had a backpack filled with fresh water. I remembered that detail.
"If there's fresh water, a settlement is nearby," I muttered. Was I a sorcerer? Did I get sorcery points? Did I have stats? And what was I wearing? This looked like leather. Could a Sorcerer cast spells while wearing leather armor? No. That wasn't possible. But this wasn't a game with dice rolling, I hadn't seen any dice being rolled, I hadn't rolled any dice-was I a bard?
I hoped I hadn't dumped all of my points in Charisma and forgotten about constitution. I didn't wish to try my chances at having low hit points with explosions abunding in this place-seriously, explosive barrels were a threat to anyone wielding fire as a main weapon...
Fire.
Latin word? Ignis.
"Ignis!" I snapped, my left hand abruptly slamming forward as a thin bolt of fire struck a nearby rock and exploded harmlessly. I smiled at that. I could do magic. Ignis was a cantrip. Was it a Bard's cantrip? I didn't remember. It could be. I mean, it didn't feel like it was, but it had to be, right? Otherwise, how was I casting it? I could throw it as many times as I wanted now, couldn't I? Experiment. See what I could do with this. Maybe manage the impossible feat of learning a Latin sentence that could send me back home. I had food to cook.
My stomach growled as I reached for the rickety pier. The burned fish that was apparently the dead fisherman's snack coupled with water and some apples did not appease it much, but it was better than nothing. As I settled briefly on the pier to snack, the telltale sound of something heavy smacking against something equally sturdy caught my ears.
"Blasted door!" the snarl caught my attention. I exhaled. I took a quick look around and then grabbed the fisherman's backpack; he wouldn't need it wherever he had gone, and I could use someplace to put the various gold knicknacks that I'd inevitably find around the world.
Thus, I put on my most peaceful and calm demeanor and slowly made my way to the back of the armored cleric of Shar who was really a traumatized amnesiac Selunite child who had been kidnapped by Sharran cultists because her parents, and her goddess, had an incredibly stupid concept of 'child safety measures' and 'it's gonna be good for your growth to go alone in the dark forest', no, but seriously Selunites, you really need to check your surroundings. Couldn't a city park have sufficed? The moon's big, bright and pretty much everywhere in the sky.
"Excuse me!" I yelled at a relatively safe distance, causing Shadowheart to predictably turn, mace raised. "Do you need a hand?" I asked.
She stared at me, angrily for the briefest of seconds. Then, her features schooled themselves. My unassuming and clearly not-a-threat face won out. It was that or the sheer fact that I was lacking any form of recognizable weaponry on my person. Probably the latter. But mages existed here. And monks. So then, an unarmed opponent could be even more dangerous than an armed one.
"No," she said. "I'm headed for Baldur's Gate. I hoped to find supplies in here, but the door won't budge."
I blinked as I realized no impromptu thought-reading had gone through between us.
I didn't have a tadpole in my brain.
I smiled brightly at that. Absolute dopamine and serotonine blast. No squirming tadpole in my head. No artifact-distance-worrying about. I was feeling frigging elated and happy about life and everything, and-
"Why are you smiling like that?" Shadowheart asked, her eyebrows narrowing in suspicion.
"Because you just told me the best news ever, sweet half-elf maiden of raven locks," I smoothly replied with a wink in her direction, "I too am headed for Baldur's Gate! And I think that on this perilous road ahead that awaits us, two is definitely better than one!"
"That...may be so," Shadowheart grumbled, "But I have a mace, and I know how to use it."
"Worry not," I said again, a hand to my heart, "I have one too, and it's staying sheathed because this isn't really the time for anything but getting somewhere safe," I continued with a dreadful sigh. "So, my name's Shade!" I grinned. "I am an unlucky Bard, singer of many songs, knower of many things, speaker of a lot of fancy words. Also, magic-so much fun!"
Shadowheart slowly walked towards me, regret filling every pore of her face. "Shadowheart," she said.
"It is a pleasure to meet you," I said gently, "though I feel I have a bit of a bad news. I think, if we want to reach civilization, we're going to have to cross the wreckage of that Nautiloid over there," I pointed a finger in the direction of the crashed Illithid ship, "with all the filth that it entails."
"I'll lead the way," Shadowheart said, firmly taking comand.
"Be my guest," I said with a hum, and as soon as I hummed, I felt something.
It was in my stomach; it bubbled through the pores of my skin. The humming was a song. The song was a hum. The voice carried the song, and the song was a pattern etched onto the very fabric of reality. It wasn't just a song. It was inspiration, in its purest form. It was liquid courage, distilled into notes that rang in the air. I had never sang anything properly; my voice was horrifying usually. I could kill with my singing, and yet, just the humming threatened to make my throat spill words that held proper intonation and power to them.
"All the kids in the marketplace say - whey oh whey oh - walk like an Osirion-" I snapped my fingers and something flowed from the words. The truth of the world perhaps was written in song? The primeval reality of life was singing? Maybe it wasn't, but certainly, regardless of how serious it had to be, some levity could be found. And as that something flowed, I noticed a tiny skip on Shadowheart's next step, as she felt the rhythm of the song do its magic.
"What's an Osirion?" she asked as we crossed beneath a rocky arch.
"Osirion is a city in the Inner Sea," I mused, recalling what I remembered. "Built by Azghaad with aid of his god Nethys, the All-Seeing Eye; but it's on another plane-Golarion, which isn't really that accessible to us, but the reason for the song is that they tend to depict figures on walls in an intriguing style where-"
"I did not ask for all of that," Shadowheart interrupted me. "Also, be ready with more than your words, there's more of those blasted creatures up ahead-" and as she noticed the things that I had not, I dimly realized this was not going to end well.
I mean, I could definitely point my finger and repeatedly yell 'Ignis', but was it really gonna stick? I needed a dictionary. Or I needed to recall more words. Maybe if I got my hands on a book of all possible spells-how hard would it be to read the local equivalent of Latin?
We shared the same alphabet, right? Was magical-alphabet the same as normal-
"Ignis!" as I heard the pittering of four clawed feet and saw the cerebral monstrosity lunging from the shadows of the ship's carcass, I chanted and moved, watching the bolt of fire impact against the gelatinous brain mass of the Intellect Devourer and wincing as the thing didn't seem keen on stopping, whistling to gather what brief spark of courage I had in my frame to bolsten the inevitable upcoming pain as its claws looked sharp and ready.
Shadowheart's shield struck the creature's side, as I proceeded to chant a second time -was the time frame respectable? Were six seconds really flown by? Was it just coincidence? I wasn't ready to stop and count, not yet anyway.
But if this was the prelude of things to come, why...I wondered just how miserable they'd be. Especially because, apparently, I wasn't even the Protagonist of this tale since I lacked the fundamental Tadpole meant to be necessary for a lot of important stuff later on.
But then, if I was just an extra pair of hands in this setting...
...where was the protagonist?
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