Chapter Text
There are three things she knows about herself.
One, her name is Markolak. Two, someone in the past has called her ‘the Dark Urge’. Three, her hands know death like it is part of her as much as the magic that swirls in her blood.
“So,” Gale says behind her. He is oddly cheerful for a man in the same predicament as she is. It grates against her like the memory of the desire she’d felt to bring her sword down on his wrist. “What’d you do?”
She looks over her shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow and flicking her tail as she does so. Lae’Zel stomps ahead, muttering about keeping their eyes open while Shadowheart observes her with a still expression. The hills spread around them, rustling and green, brimming with unseen threats. Her hand itches for the hilt of her sword.
They are all…useful, even if she wishes Gale shared Shadowheart and Lae’zel’s propensity for silence.
“Well, you know,” he gestures at her, “you’re an oathbreaker paladin. You did something, right?”
“I don’t know,” Markolak says sharply.
“Right, sorry. Personal question.” The wizard holds his hands up and her eyes latch onto the fragile bones of his wrist. She could walk forward, just a handful of steps, seize his hand, twist, break, snap -
Bile rises in her throat and she rips her eyes away, focuses on the dirt beneath her feet that clings to the surface of her boots.
“I mean,” she says, trying to force the hoarseness from her voice, “I don’t know. I remember nothing before the nautiloid.”
“Oh,” Gale blinks and even Lae’zel pauses.
“Perhaps it’s the parasite,” she rubs a gloved hand along the shaved side of her head. She hasn’t had a chance to deal with it so it is more like stubble, the end of her ponytail ragged after days of little care. She feels the bump of the scar on her head she doesn’t remember getting.
“Maybe,” he says, a little dubiously, “it’s not a known symptom of ceremorphosis, and I believe the rest of us have retained our memories.”
“Perhaps mine is particularly wriggly,” Markolak says, dry as a desert, and for a moment Gale just stares at her before he laughs.
“I didn’t know you were capable of joking.”
“Who said I’m joking?” She holds his gaze long enough for the wizard to shift before she smiles with a hint of fang and he chuckles again, this time with a hint of nervousness.
They are interrupted by distant shouting. Her head snaps up, hand grasping at the hilt of her sword.
“We should check it out - carefully, mind you,” Gale advises and she nods, stepping forward until she and Lae’zel are almost shoulder to shoulder.
There is a gate, goblins, and shouting, arrows in the air, a man with a rapier springing to the defence of the trapped adventurers, but something hungry in her is stirring.
Save them, the quiet part of her says. Kill, kill, kill, says the louder part.
She draws the sword she’d taken from the cambion on the nautiloid and smiles as the flames erupt and lick down its blade. She holds for a split second, her voice coming out as cold and hard as a blade, “Gale, take care of the scouts. Shadowheart, keep us alive. Lae’zel with me.”
If the githyanki grumbles about being given orders, she still follows when Markolak charges forward, hearing the crackle of lightning behind her. They thunder towards the goblin warriors but by the time they reach the skirmish, a worg is already gnawing on the neck of one of the adventurers.
A goblin spins towards her, raising its spiked shield to thrust at her. She sidesteps and brings down the Everburn Blade. The goblin shrieks, the stink of burnt flesh rising, and she realises she is smiling, a haze of red over her vision.
Kill, kill, kill, her ruined brain insists, and so she does, with sword and fire and the magic dancing in her blood. It feels good. It feels like what she was made for.
She kills until an enterprising scout jumps on her back as she’s pressing burning hands to a bugbear’s face. Markolak snaps her head back, the sharp point of a horn slicing across the goblin’s cheek. She shrieks and Markolak is bearing her to the ground. At such close quarters, her greatsword is more hindrance than weapon, so she drops it and reaches for the dagger at her belt.
She slips it through the gap in the goblin’s ramshackle armour. Stabs again. It’s somehow better, the almost intimacy, the pain and fear in the eyes staring up at her. Helpless vermin, squirming against her blade.
She wants to savour it. Linger. But there are more deaths to be dealt so she stabs up under the goblin’s chin and she goes still.
Markolak climbs to her feet, hands bloody, picks up her sword from the ground and joins Lae’zel in hacking at the worg.
When the battle ends and the gate creaks open, part of her is disappointed. Another part recoils as the bloodlust fades. When Zevlor calls what they’ve done courageous she wants to deny it. There is no courage in wanting to savour someone’s death, even a goblin raider.
What is she, to delight in suffering?
“You seem disturbed,” Shadowheart remarks once Zevlor departs, watching her in that careful way she does. “Are you injured?”
The only pain she feels is the sting of a few bruises and the bone deep spell exhaustion from using her magic.
“No,” Markolak says and thinks about Gale asking what did you do, “I am fine.”