Prototype's Gate

Glut’s armor cracked and split further as his limbs stretched grotesquely, spindly and otherworldly, giving him a looming, monstrous presence. His whip-like arm coiled back to grab his adamantine mace, the weapon now barely visible against the writhing sinews of his transformed body. His torso yawned open, revealing rows of jagged teeth in a grisly, unnatural maw—a creature born of nightmares, yet somehow, the fear it inspired seemed small compared to the dread growing within him.

Emerald eyes flashing, Glut cast a brief glance back at Alex. 'Don’t release your spores' ,the command echoed, firm yet reassuring, grounding him just enough. He gave a curt nod before turning his attention back to the duergar. Despite everything, he still felt that chilling sensation of being vulnerable, exposed.

"Meat-bag!" he roared, voice distorted as he swung his mace in a brutal arc, aiming to smash the duergar to dust.

But his strike met only empty air, landing instead in a spray of dirt and shattered stone. As the dust settled, he saw the duergar standing just a few steps away, a taunting smirk etched across his face.

“Haha! This mushroom’s got some tricks!” the duergar sneered. He raised his hand, gesturing to the shadows. “Get him, boys!”

From the murky pools around him, four more duergar appeared, identical sneers plastered across their faces. They moved like a swarm, their eyes alight with cruelty, mirroring each other’s every move with a sinister grace. Glut's mace cut through the air in another wide, desperate arc, but again he missed, striking only the ground. Panic bubbled in his chest as he realized that, for all his newfound power, he couldn’t seem to land a single blow.

The duergar in the lead sneered as he began to shift, his form twisting, the cruel expression contorting grotesquely as he morphed into something horrifyingly familiar—a disfigured, broken myconid, ichor dripping from its countless wounds, burns and scars marking it as a victim of a terrible fate.

Glut’s heart sank as the apparition stumbled forward, its dull, accusing eyes fixed upon him.

“Why did you abandon us?” it rasped, voice fractured and filled with pain. “It hurts! It burns!”

“Coward,” another voice hissed, as a second apparition stepped forward, this one even more mutilated, the scent of decay and burning spores thick around it.

Glut froze, the words sinking into his chest like barbs. “I... I had to run. If I had stayed, our circle would have died for good,” he pleaded, the desperate explanation feeling hollow even to him.

But the apparition only drew closer, pain etched across its desolate face. “You betrayed us. Left us to die. Weak. Coward.”

More myconid apparitions emerged from the pools, each one battered and broken, bearing wounds and scars from the massacre Glut had escaped. They swarmed him, their voices a chorus of accusation and agony. Each word drove deeper into Glut's mind, shaking his very foundation.

“No! I had no choice! I had to survive so that our circle could live!” Glut’s voice trembled, and as the words left him, he felt them losing power, as if even he no longer believed them.

The duergar closed in, feeding off his despair like ravenous creatures, their shadows stretching taller, sharper, until they seemed to block out all light. Glut’s chest heaved, tears—tears he hadn’t known he could shed—slipped down his face, mingling with the dark earth at his feet. He felt his strength draining away, the duergar growing larger with every sob, every shudder of regret that wracked his body.

The broken myconid spoke again, now only inches from him, its withered fingers reaching out. “We believed in you,” it whispered, the raw pain in its voice sending a fresh wave of grief and shame coursing through him. “And you left us to die.”

Glut’s eyes widened in horror as the apparition’s fingers brushed against him. In an instant, the duergar leaped, swarming over him like a horde of ravenous ants. He could feel their hands clawing, pulling him down, burying him under their weight. His body trembled, his strength faltering as the nightmarish swarm devoured every last fragment of his hope.

As Glut lay beneath the weight of his shattered hope and guilt, the massacre played on an endless loop in his mind—a sickening reel of his brethren, his children, torn asunder. Flames seared their fragile forms, blades cleaved their soft bodies, and limbs were torn from stems in a frenzy of carnage that haunted him every night. Every shriek, every pleading gaze was etched into his soul, leaving scars deeper than any physical wound could carve. His heart twisted with regret. 'If only I hadn’t pushed for growth so recklessly, if only we had remained hidden', he thought, a familiar, cruel knife of remorse twisting deeper. 'I should have died with them.'

“Yes, you should have died there, you big shroom,” taunted a duergar voice, snickering. “But don’t worry. You’ll be seeing your little mushroom friends soon enough.”

He felt the scrape of claws against his armor, shallow scratches that would have hardly fazed him otherwise, but now each one felt like a gouge through his spirit, unearthing every buried doubt and fear. He lay there, surrendering, hoping to feel the final blow and reunite with those he’d failed.

Just as he felt himself teetering on the edge, a memory flared to life, like a small flame catching in the dark—an echo of a conversation with Alex.

“Why didn’t you leave me dead?” he’d asked after the transformation. At the time, he hadn’t been able to comprehend why that unkillable abomination, Alex, had granted him a second chance, had bothered to shape him anew.

Instead of answering, Alex had paused, a rare moment of contemplation that seemed to linger in the air. “How does your kind view death?” he’d asked, his tone surprisingly gentle.

“Death is just a new beginning,” Glut had replied. It was a truth he’d been raised to accept, a cycle of rebirth that every myconid held dear.

“Yes, a new beginning, but...” Alex had said, a strange sadness glinting in his eyes as he continued, “but if I’d left you dead, your story wouldn’t have ended. It would have stopped.”

At the time, Glut hadn’t understood. What did an end mean to something like Alex, who seemed unbound by mortal limitations, who defied every notion of life and death?

But now, with the duergar closing in, he felt Alex’s words resonate in a way they hadn’t before. His friends, his brethren—they were lost to him, but he was still here. He was still breathing, and in that breath, in the raw, ragged sound of his own survival, there was possibility. The pain and loss that weighed on him had not come to finish him but to push him, to demand that he keep going, to honor the lives lost by refusing to let them fade into oblivion.

He felt his fingers clench into fists. A new fire, ignited not from anger but from resolve, blazed through him. 'Their story will not end here. My story will not end here. Not until I say so.'

With a guttural growl, he surged forward, every ounce of his massive form coming alive. He bared his teeth in a snarl, meeting the duergar’s astonished gaze head-on.

“You thought I would lie down for you?” Glut’s voice thundered, his emerald eyes blazing with a newfound light. He swung his mace, this time with a terrifying precision born from a will far stronger than his own flesh. The first duergar was crushed beneath the blow, the rest stumbling back, wary of the creature now surging with furious energy.

He could feel the spirit of his brethren with him, their memories no longer weights but wings that lifted him higher, that granted him strength. Each swing of his mace was a tribute, each step a defiance against the nightmare that sought to bind him. As the darkness recoiled, Glut stood tall, a towering figure of grief transformed into unbreakable purpose.

___________________

Lilimila’s body quaked as she watched the twisted form of her sister Valni approach, her once-sweet face now hollowed and twisted by the nightmare, her eyes devoid of recognition. Every instinct told her to draw her dagger, to defend herself, but her trembling hand halted just shy of the hilt. "This is my sister. I can’t… I won’t hurt her." She whispered, her voice breaking with the weight of her conviction.

Instead, as Valni’s brittle, crooked form lurched forward, Lilimila spread her arms wide, opening herself to the pain she knew would come. She pulled Valni close, wrapping her arms around the cold, decaying frame. She felt the scratch of her sister’s jagged claws as they tore into her back, slicing through skin. Blood seeped from the fresh wounds, yet she held on, her grip only tightening with each scrape.

With every scratch, visions tore through her mind, each one a jagged blade of despair. She saw her oldest friend, Tanlen, leaving their village for Baldur’s Gate, his face full of promises to write letters that never came. Then she saw her sister, fragile and small, lying fevered and ghostly pale, only days after her birth, clinging to life with such a tenuous grip that each breath felt like it might be her last. Memories of old Dorfiz, the gnome who used to craft small wooden toys for the village children, filled her with a sorrow that felt endless. She remembered his gentle, wrinkled smile, how he always smelled like fresh-cut pinewood—and how, in the end, even he succumbed to time’s relentless march.

But even these old sorrows paled next to the horror of what followed. Shadows of possible futures flooded her mind, pulling her into a dark pit of despair. She saw herself taking up the mantle of adventurer, only to die in a thousand different, brutal ways. Visions of her loved ones flashed before her—lifeless, eyes empty, slain by merciless undead. She saw herself wandering, lost in the Feywild, searching endlessly for her sister but finding only a twisted, haunted reflection of herself. Fear and hopelessness clawed at her soul.

And yet, through each haunting vision, she held Valni closer. Tears streamed down her face, hot and unrelenting, mingling at her feet with the blood that trickled from her back. “It’s okay,” she murmured, her voice a fractured whisper against the storm raging within her. “You’re still my sister. I’m here.”

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the nightmare dissolved. Valni’s decayed form faded like mist, slipping from her arms and vanishing into a pool of darkness at her feet. Lilimila fell to her knees, her heart pounding, her breathing ragged, and for a moment she couldn’t move, her body and spirit exhausted.

But as she knelt there, her eyes locked on the dark puddle, she felt a strange, bittersweet warmth settle within her—a strength born from pain.

_______________________________

Astarion could swear that his heart was hammering against his ribs as he forced the psionic shield around him, a fragile barrier between himself and the twisted, grotesque amalgamation before him. Its face was a sickening blend of his own and Cazador’s, like some monstrous painting splattered together in a nightmare. His own haunted features looked back at him, etched with lines of pain and sorrow, while Cazador’s expression radiated cruel satisfaction—a smirk that dripped with malice. One eye burned a sickly red, like an ember of rage barely contained, while the other stared at him with the hollow lifelessness that once ruled his own gaze.

The creature stepped forward, its movements sinuous, almost taunting, and stopped inches from the psionic barrier. The Cazador half tilted, sneering. "The little pet thinks he can defy his master,” it sneered, each word dripping with venom. The other half—his own twisted, desperate face—looked mournful, broken. The twisted creature whispered, “What good have your tricks done, little fool? We cannot escape. You know this…”

Astarion’s breath hitched, his hands curling into fists as his nails dug into his palms. He wanted to scream, to lunge, to strike out, but he knew it would only feed this monstrosity’s power. Instead, he closed his eyes, gathering his psionic strength, each ounce of energy sparking with desperation as he prepared a strike powerful enough to obliterate this nightmare, to sever it from his mind forever. His head pounded, veins thrumming with the fierce, foreign strength, but he held on, blood trickling from his nose as he pushed himself further, the strain an agony that tore through his mind. Just as he gathered the final, volatile surge, the amalgamation spoke again.

“He will betray you,” Cazador’s side hissed, his voice silken and poisonous.

The other side—the reflection of himself, hollow and haunted—echoed the words with a shiver of anguish. “We’ve always been left alone. Used. And discarded. We betray, or we are betrayed. Such is our fate…”

The words tore through Astarion’s focus, the searing energy he’d built faltering as a wave of despair crushed against him, vicious and consuming. He tasted bile as his mind filled with moments of abandonment, of times he’d been discarded, unimportant, alone in his dark existence. And a terrible, icy doubt began to creep in, gnawing at the warmth he’d dared to feel in the company of his friends—especially him. The figure that made him believe, however foolishly, that he could be more than Cazador’s puppet.

But he fought back, grinding his teeth so hard they ached. “No… He’s not like you. He would never abandon me.” His voice trembled as he said it, yet in its fragility, there was an iron resolve. His entire body shook with the effort, rage and love fueling him, holding him together as his veins throbbed with the reawakened psionic energy.

Cazador’s half chuckled, a guttural, mocking laugh that dripped with malice. “Oh, you poor thing. So naïve. So weak.”

Meanwhile, the hollow, tormented side—the twisted version of himself—released a soft, broken sob, echoing from somewhere deep within. The sight clawed at him, a painful reminder of the vulnerability he’d locked away so long ago. But he refused to let it own him, refused to believe that he was doomed to be alone, to betray or be betrayed.

“No,” he spat, lifting his head, his gaze fierce, fire lighting his eyes with defiance. “I choose my own fate.”

With every ounce of strength he could muster, Astarion summoned his psionic energy, letting it obliterate everything around him, pushing away the darkness that had plagued him for so long. This wasn’t just an attack; it was a declaration. A promise that he would fight, that he would cling to the love he’d found, and that he would defy any part of himself that sought to drag him back to the shadows.

The creature recoiled as the energy grew, its twisted smirk replaced by a flicker of fear. “You can’t—”

“Watch me,” Astarion snarled, and, with a roar, he unleashed the full force of his psionic power, pouring his defiance, his love, and his determination into one devastating strike that shattered the nightmare into nothing but wisps of darkness, leaving him alone with the silence of his own victory.

Astarion’s breath came in ragged gasps, his body barely holding up under the strain. But he couldn’t let his guard down—not yet. He’d turned around to see the grotesque hybrid creature, brushing off the dirt from it's clothes as if his attack was nothing more than a little push. The thing looked up with a half-smirk, half-grimace, mocking Astarion’s efforts. It stung like a slap in the face.

The creature's face twisted, the fusion of Astarion’s own defeated gaze with Cazador’s cruel amusement.

“We cannot kill him,” the voice of his defeated self whispered in the back of his mind, the despair seeping back like poison. But then, in a manic surge of defiance, Astarion laughed. It began as a chuckle, the sound of exhaustion, but quickly morphed into something crazed, a laughter edged with madness as he sank to his knees. The futility of it all was maddening—he’d poured his soul into that attack, his strongest psionic strike, and yet his nightmare lived on, just as powerful, just as taunting.

Hands trembling, he reached for the hellfire crossbow at his hip. It was a gamble, a weapon he had saved as a last resort, knowing its magical flames could burn through nearly anything. With a soft hum, he activated its power, three scorching rays crackling with a fierce orange-red light before blasting from its muzzle.

Astarion closed his eyes, bracing himself for failure, expecting the flames to wash over the amalgamation and leave it unscathed. But then, the sound of a shriek tore through the air—a scream filled with agony and rage. His eyes flew open, disbelief written on his face as he saw the creature writhing in flames. The fire consumed it, gnawing at its hideous form, eating through its flesh, and with each passing second, he felt his own dread start to lift.

He summoned a psionic shield around him, a trembling, pale barrier as blood trickled from his right ear, but he didn’t care as for the first time, he felt the grip of that nightmare beginning to slip.

Astarion smirked, a twisted satisfaction glinting in his eyes as he watched the abomination suffer. “Ah, those screams,” he muttered, his voice low and almost breathless. “They’re sweeter than any wine.” The pain, the suffering of this nightmare, felt like his own twisted justice.

“Scream more, you fucking bastard!” he snarled, and with a final surge of defiance, he raised his crossbow. Barrage after barrage of fire bolts. Each bolt tore through the darkness like a miniature comet, raining down on the creature, fueling the blaze that devoured it from the inside out.

The abomination thrashed, howling, its faces contorting as it melted and warped, its grotesque form reduced to a smoldering pile of ash and embers. And as the flames died down, a stillness settled over Astarion—a silence that finally, after so long, felt like peace.

"I can't wait to do the same thing to the real Cazador . " Astarion said as he put down the crossbow.