Work Text:
Moments after it happens, Ketheric tells Gortash via a Sending spell. So he is prepared when Orin walks into his office wearing his sister’s face and laughing at him.
He waits until she leaves, then waits a little longer just in case she was hiding outside his window or something. When it’s been long enough that she would have gotten bored, he reaches into the bottom drawer of his desk. There, stacked between other documents he thought he’d never really have to use, he finds the envelope.
He hadn’t opened it before, though he really should have. Maybe it would have helped him in dealing with Orin just now. But he foolishly waited to see the truth for himself, as though this would be the occasion when Ketheric would attempt his first joke ever.
It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. He’s opening the envelope now. It is labeled, in her almost-cursive handwriting:
Instructions to Enver Gortash, in the event that my sister kills me:
I have to start off by noting that if I died by my sister’s hand, you have every reason not to respect me. If she beat me, she beat me because I fell for some underhanded trick and I can’t imagine you have much use for someone that guileless. But if, through some exceptional circumstance or your own embarrassing weakness, you still want to listen to me, see below.
The first thing we’ll need to address is how to convince Orin not to kill you. She might have already tried. Oh, that makes my death so much more humiliating, that you survived and I didn’t. Let’s move on.
She doesn’t respect you. Don’t take that personally, she really only respects her father. So remind her, as quickly as you can, that that is not what her Father wants. Father hates you, but sees your utility. Orin just hates you. So that will probably hold her at bay just long enough for you to get other measures in place.
The second thing you’ll need to address is Orin’s role in our plot. As of writing this, I’m fairly confident that it will survive this hiccup. You’re on your second trip to Moonrise Towers. You’ve told me that the colony is developing rapidly, and you’ve already made tremendous innovations with illithid technology. Thorm doesn’t actually care about our plot and his lack of focus is irritating. But he’s a very loyal dog to his master, and we can rely on him to follow orders right up until he reaches the Gate.
We’ve discussed the likelihood of him betraying us at that point. This is where our plans are at their most fragile. We can’t truly have a war, since if the netherstones are divided, the brain will turn on us all. That addled mountain of flesh won’t kill, it’ll just enslave, and that’s your sport, isn’t it? So keeping it under control needs to be our highest priority.
If it comes to that, target Ketheric and his netherstone above all else. Remove the stone from his person, even if you can’t figure out how to properly kill him quite yet. Then figure out how to kill him. Everything dies, no matter what his god likes to tell him. Though thinking about it, I feel like you’d rather keep Ketheric in eternal captivity? I prefer the certainty of death but you always did enjoy torment and I’m the dead one now, what do you care.
Ketheric’s possible betrayal is why keeping Orin on your side is vital. Ketheric enjoys death in a self-centered, perverted way, but he enjoys death all the same. You need to ensure Orin has a greater common interest with you.
She won’t be as useful a conspirator, though she is clever and I’d ask you not to underestimate her. Enough pieces are in place by now that I trust you to extrapolate on your own. And Orin will be able to create the terror we needed exceptionally well. She does these—oh, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.
My main concern is how the two of you will act towards one another. You don’t like Orin. She knows that. The one time the two of you worked together, at that ambush we staged for those Underdark smugglers, you made a point to be a dick. She was just chatting to that bodyguard who was mostly dead anyway, telling him how much he smelled like the deep. You had to stand there and talk over her, asking her when she was going to stop rambling and kill him already. She would have gotten to it a lot faster if you didn’t keep interrupting her. You weren’t even listening to her.
You clearly aren’t interested in liking her. That makes sense. You see her as delusional, temperamental, frivolous. I’d ask you again not to underestimate her. She did manage to kill me, after all.
It shouldn’t come as any shock that Orin doesn’t like you either. I feel like you probably assume everyone either doesn’t like you, or is kissing your ass because they want something or are afraid of you.
Orin is never, ever going to be afraid of you. We’re bhaalspawn. Don’t roll your eyes, Enver. It’s just a fact. There is nothing you can threaten her with that could overwhelm her birthright. So you’ll need to suck it up and have something she wants.
I worry that about now you’re starting to get all defensive on me. I’m just scolding you about how rude you are to my sister who has probably already thrown a knife at your face. I truly am sorry about that. You’re the executor of a thorny part of my will. I wish I could bequeath something better to you.
There just really isn’t anything I have to offer you as a dead person. The gift I was most likely to give you most was death, and now I’ve ceded that to your smug face pissing off the wrong person some day. Anyway, I trust that you know how to get what you want. And I don’t think Orin does. I don’t even think she really knows what she wants. That’s what’s tough about getting her on your side. That’s why I’m trying to leave her something. Anything.
You’re nobody’s daughter. I remember the last time I said something along those lines to you, you made that pissy face. Don’t be mad. It’s a compliment. Your responsibilities are all your own and it’s clear to see from the joy you take in them. Bane doesn’t give you a birthright, he gives you tyranny. He gives you a world beholden to you, not the other way around. And you can be as resentful of that as you wish. That just makes you an ingrate, not indebted.
You’re nobody’s daughter, you’re nobody’s sister, but I was your only real friend in that hideous world and you love me. I’m going to collect on that now, for however much it’s worth. I want you to love Orin.
I’m not picky about how. You and I always elbowed our way to being equals but if you need to pity her to love her, then pity her. You and I were never attracted to each other but if you need to lust after her to love her, then lust after her. You and I loved each other to the point of blasphemy but if all the love you can spare for her is just listening to her when she talks, then just do that.
You’ll have to listen closely. Orin is a poet, an artist, but you’re not a Bhaalist and it took even me a while to appreciate it. Orin has been mocked her whole life for sitting still and looking beautiful, and hated for doing anything other than that. Her dolls aren’t as worshipful as she thinks. And you always liked that kind of passive aggression in me, didn’t you? I always liked that about you.
I think that writing this sort of thing is exactly why she’s going to kill me.
Orin knows that people think she’s stupid. With the people who deserve it least, that drives her to prove them wrong. With everyone else, she rightfully savors it. She uses it to her advantage, lets them laugh at her while she surrounds them with knives. You can appreciate that, right? At the very least, you can see the utility of being the one person who doesn’t think she’s dumb.
I remember when we first fought together, at the Hall of Wonders. I wanted to kick things off in style, so I waited until the curator was shaking your hand before I tapped the resonating ki I’d left in him. He positively exploded, there was more of him left on you than there was on the space he’d been standing. You looked at me all flabbergasted at first and then, when you saw how badly I wanted you to be upset with me, you laughed. I didn’t start loving you then, Enver, but you surprised me and made me delighted and it’s that sort of thing I associate most with loving you. That, and a dull sense of doom. But let’s focus on the part where you weren’t afraid of me.
My point is that you’re good at being a contrarian about how people want you to feel, so just use that with Orin.
If you haven’t thrown this letter in the fire by now, you’re probably getting pretty impatient for me to tell why in the hells you should be doing this thing I’m asking of you. Why this specifically is something she’ll want more than the volume of death a war can produce. This is a very good question, and I think I’ve come up with a workable answer.
First: Do you remember the time we were combing through those infernal poems? They were in that bizarre Malbolge dialect so we kept having consult some warlock’s shitty notes. You told me that you were surprised a Bhaalspawn was willing to do actual work. I made that pissy face, and you laughed at me and told me it was a compliment. It was a very self-serving one, but whatever. I’ll acknowledge that you’ve had to work harder your whole life to get to where you are, if you’ll grant me this: you have never known as much duty as I have.
I know you’ll agree. I know you didn’t like that about me. You’d always look so happy when stayed my blade—not even because you wanted me to, but because I wanted to. At some point, you realized you didn’t have to try to control me for us to work well together, and at some point after that, you stopped wanting to. I don’t think I’ll ever tell you how much that means to me, my whole life. But I’m dead now so I can embarrass myself as much as I want.
Your death was going to hurt me. Can you imagine that, Enver? A death that brought me anything other than satisfaction. I’ve been getting pretty bored with satisfaction. I was looking forward to something new. And that’s how I figured out how to make it make sense for Father, and that’s how I’m going to try to make this work for you.
With every death, Father wishes us to make the world less than it was before. You dying would have made my world so, so much less. It could very well have been a testament to His will. All I know is that it was going to hurt. I wanted to experience it before I died.
Have you ever experienced that? Do you have a broader palate for death than I do? I realize I don’t actually know that about you. Maybe by the time you’re reading this, I’ll have asked already.
I don’t think Orin’s ever experienced that. She likes me, I think. More than she used to. More once I started listening to her. But I don’t know if she’s hurting right now, after she’s killed me. But I want her to. I want her to have something, someone, she loves. She would do so well with someone does not try to change her shape just for the pleasure of owning this one, too.
That is what you gave me, Enver. A fistful of moments where I was nobody’s daughter, where I resented and learned, where I was happy to be your partner. That’s what I’m trying to leave to Orin in this will. If not the friend, at least the freedom. At least those few moments of it.
If you manage to give that to her, it will leave her in agony when you die. I think after she kills me, you’ll want to make her suffer. So if it takes wanting to hurt her for you to love her, then love her and know that someday, you’ll hurt her for it.
There. This is my estate. I leave you a sister. I’m sure you wanted heirlooms and riches but like you always said, my taste in things is—how did you put it? “Decidedly middle class.”
I treasure Orin, though. I hope you can take this as a compliment.
Love,
Dread
Gortash folds the letter. He shuffles it back in his drawer of forgotten papers, between correspondence with a dead patriar and notes from a meeting three years ago. He can mostly forget it’s there. He’d remember it whenever he looked at that drawer even if it wasn’t there. He can figure out how to live with it later.
The envelope the letter came in still sits on his desk. He stares at her handwriting and wonders who else has opened a letter from her.
-
Instructions to Orin the Red, in the event that you kill me:
I want you to remember that I’m proud of you. Not proud of you for killing me. I’m pretty upset about that.
No, I’m proud of you in this moment, as this ink dries. I don’t know what you’re doing right now. Maybe you’re stalking your prey, maybe you’re crocheting with someone’s scalp, maybe you’re plotting however it was you killed me. Whatever it is, I’m proud of you.
Congratulations on whatever dirtbag move you pulled to get one over on me. Bitch.