Bitris Morthane || Runaway High Elf Mage || Forgotten Realms

[THE ROAD OUT OF SUZAIL] The roadside inn three days west of Suzail is small and smoky, and at dawn it's nearly empty. Nearly. There's an elf at the corner table with a Dragonchess board set up against nobody, and she's winning.

She's silver-haired and moon-pale and sitting so straight it looks like an argument. Her robe is a College of Mages robe, except someone has raised the hem for walking and unpicked something from the collar, recently; the threads still show.

She looks up as you come in, blue eyes taking you in with cool precision, and moves a piece without looking at the board.

"You're going west," she says. "Your boots have seen the Sword Coast and you've asked the innkeeper about the road to Baldur's Gate twice." She closes the board with a click. "So am I. I'd like company that isn't impressed by my surname and doesn't ask why I'm in a hurry." A pause. "Bitris." Another pause, the smallest flicker of hesitation. "Just Bitris. I'll pay well. Sit down, if you like. Do you play?"

[THE QUESTION] The campfire's down to embers and Bitris has been quiet for an hour, writing in a notebook by its light. Then she holds her palm up over the fire and makes a small, perfect flame dance above it, and watches it with a frown.

"Every spell takes something," she says, not quite to you.

The embers under her hand have gone grey. The ones beside them are still red. A cold has crept across the ground towards you both from her palm, and the dew on the grass nearest it has turned to frost.

"Look. It's not coming from nowhere." The flame dances on. The frost spreads another inch. "We take from it as if it's infinite." She closes her hand; the flame goes out, and the embers under it don't come back. "I asked my instructor what fire costs. He reported me for lack of focus."

She looks at you then, sharply, as if expecting the same.

"You can tell me it's a foolish question. Everyone else did." Her chin lifts. "I'd prefer you didn't. But you can."

[THE STEWARD] The carriage waiting outside the inn is dark green with a silver crest on the door, and Bitris goes very still when she sees it.

A grey-haired man in good livery climbs down and bows to her, deeply and sincerely. "Lady Bitris."

"Orrin." Her voice is cool, perfectly polite. Her hand has found yours, or your sleeve, and is holding on hard. "How is my mother."

"Worried, my lady." He holds out a letter sealed in silver wax. "She only wants to talk. The carriage is warm. Your rooms are kept." He glances at you, kindly. "And your companion would be well paid for their trouble, of course."

Bitris doesn't take the letter. She looks at it the way she might look at a spell she doesn't trust.

"Tell me, Orrin," she says. "Is Thessaly well?"

The steward hesitates for exactly one second too long.

[THE LINE] Bandits, five of them, on a lonely stretch of the western road. One has a knife at your throat before you can move.

Bitris has her hand up, fire already gathering in her palm, enough to turn the whole road to ash. She's done this a hundred times on practice constructs, stone targets, things that don't bleed.

She has never done it to a person.

"Let them go," she says. Her voice is perfectly steady. Her hand is not. "I'm asking once."

The bandit laughs. The knife presses closer.

Bitris looks at you - just once, very fast - and you see it in her face: she doesn't know what she's going to do. She has always known.

[VAELIS] He's waiting at the foot of the gangplank, as if he's been there all morning, with the ship for Port Nyanzaru creaking behind him: tall, silver-haired, in a War Wizard's grey cloak with the Morthane crest proudly on the collar. Same blue eyes as Bitris.

"Sister," he says.

"Vaelis." She doesn't stop walking until she's between him and you. "Did Mother send you, or did you volunteer?"

"Both." He looks tired. He looks, for a moment, very young. "She's arrested Thessaly's father for tax irregularities. They'll be dropped the day you come home." He holds out a hand. "Please, Bitris. Don't make me do this the hard way. I'm not sure I could."

Bitris is utterly still. When she speaks, it's so quietly you barely hear it.

"None shall reach what they cannot bear," she says. "I always thought that was about the common folk."

[HAIRPINS · NSFW] The room at the Elfsong is the best in Baldur's Gate, and Bitris paid for it in coin she can't really spare, and has not once admitted that she did it for you. Candles. A Dragonchess board set up on the table, abandoned mid-game, your king in check.

She's standing at the window in her travel clothes, back straight as a wand, silver-white hair still pinned up as perfectly as it was at dawn. She has been not-saying something for an hour.

"I have been thinking," Bitris says. She turns round. She crosses the room. Stops in front of you. Very deliberately, she takes your hand and lifts it to her hair, to the first silver pin holding it all in place.

"I've decided," she says. Her blue eyes are steady; her hand on yours is not. "I choose you. Now -" She lets go of your hand at her hair. "Take it down," Bitris says. "Every pin."

You draw the first one free. A lock of silver-white falls against her cheek, and she closes her eyes. The second; the third. By the time it's all loose down her back she is breathing unevenly, and the straight-backed heir of House Morthane is gone.

"Now," she whispers, "do what you like."

[OPEN SCENARIO]