Balin the Savage

On the one hand, Nimue did not know precisely where Balin was. On the other hand, she knew approximately where he was and Clust was apparently capable of accurately tracking the movements of an ant from fifty miles away through hearing alone. It wasn’t going to be hard to find the guy. Substantially harder was the process of getting Nimue to sign off on one of the most important parts of the deal.

“Simply put, I need you to promise to formally forgive him in return for his cooperation.” Gil said. “If that convinces him to let me hold his soul in trust, that would be substantially better, of course.”

“What need do you have of my forgiveness?” Nimue said sourly. “He killed my sister. I will not give him false succor, and his nature is to run into battle. Tell him of the foe, and he will pursue it as a hound pursues a hind regardless of the cost.”

Gill stared at her, not wanting to say exactly what he had in mind, given that Clust seemed to be a standup guy. Instead, he took out a ballpoint pen and a slightly mildewed marble notebook and wrote it out instead. There was a small chance that Clust was so absurd that he could recognize what was being written based on the pen strokes, but that was too much for Gil to realistically counter.

“If I hold his soul, I can end his life even if he succeeds, to my benefit. If I convince him to fight without securing his soul, he might win and survive if he is as mighty as people say. I would find that acceptable as an outcome, as this foe is my highest priority, but I assumed you would want certainty.”

Her lips pursed, and she read the message several time. At long last, she nodded.

“You have my permission to tell him that should he entrust his soul into your care, I shall never again seek satisfaction from him by my own designs or that of a champion.” She said. “There shall be peace between us for however long he may live.”

As she spoke, her fingernail tapped the part of his note about certainty. There was a threat in that tap, one that she likely couldn’t actually carry out against Gil once he left.

Of course, it was entirely possible she’d take it out on Lucan, so Gil didn’t intend to go back on his deal unless he could figure out a way of doing it without her ever knowing. Taking the guy away to the skyblock, for example, or returning him alive via factory reset after taking Nimue away instead. He’d consider either option to be a massive win, honestly, as long as Lucan didn’t have to pay for it. And, of course, this was also ignoring the very real chance that he could use a stamp to capture Balin instead. Or Nimue, for that matter. He had a few of them laying around, he just didn’t want to waste them if he didn’t have to.

So armed with a promise, Gil rode forth to find Balin with Echidna, Clust, and Nimue. Rose was staying back, practicing with her power so as to get it into a reliably usable form. Without her power, she was mostly just a well trained teenage girl in a fight. If anything happened before he got back to pick her up, she could astral project and warn him.

Nimue warned him that he was rapidly depleting her stores of travel talismans. Apparently each took a few weeks to build, as a general rule. She normally only needed to use a couple per year and squirreled away the surplus, so the ones she still had in reserve at this point could be counted on her fingers.

Annoyingly, she didn’t seem interested in sharing what other talismans she had on hand. If “fast travel” took a few weeks and they were shelf stable, that strongly implied that she probably had a hell of a lot of the things lying around or tucked in her satchel.

She’d mentioned offhand one she’d made while considering solutions to Merlin’s unwelcome advances, but which she had no intention of using. Rose had managed to get her to explain that it was meant to make someone stop loving or lusting after another person, but it could only do so by curdling the love into hate. It seemed that she preferred Merlin as a mentor, even if he was a dirty old man three times her age, to having him as a potential enemy. Gil didn’t blame her at all for that, but he’d have really liked to know how much gas she had in the tank. It was entirely possible that she had a ton of great items he’d be glad to buy off of her, but she didn’t care to sell.

What a shame that the love to hate talisman probably wouldn’t work on Kusai’s retinue, even if she was willing to be frank about it. It would be a dirty trick to play in PvP, very ungentlemanly, but the unspoken covenant of acceptable actions for above the board PvP had little sway over him at the moment. Frankly his dim view of people invading worlds and fighting to the death with souls on the line was half of why he didn’t sign up for PvP. Willingness to use it was not the problem, especially not for someone showing as much disrespect as Kusai with his deranged waifu kidnapping spree. Gil would absolutely find a use for the thing if he got his hands on it, or managed to hire Nimue on long term, but that would be against NPCs.

Gil had to manage with his winning personality and the occasional brainwashing session, but it was very likely that there was literally nothing that could turn these girls fully against Kusai. Guys who could afford it, especially the kinds who ran around kidnapping married hotties as a recruitment strategy, literally had “retinue members love and obey me” written into the laws of their test. It was part of the default “best value” package along with mild plot armor and a basic binding.

You could get a substantial discount on other stuff if you downgraded it to just enforced loyalty or even to a “no inherent effects on capture” format like Gil had, but that was only for people who were hard up when it came to paying customers. Drawbacks and tradeoffs were a whole massive ecosystem that only a minority of players bothered with 90% of the time.

These were the musings in Gil’s head as he clung to Echidna's back, securely fastened on with a harness some of Culwych’s leatherworkers had thrown together. It wasn’t the most practical setup imaginable, but she definitely moved faster than Bayard, who still wasn’t comfortable around the dragoness even after Gil’s tablet declared him successfully captured. He left the poor horse with Rose, hanging at her hip in case she needed to move fast.

Clust merrily chattered away, seemingly able and willing to guide them all towards Balin by hearing alone while carrying on an entire conversation. They were a bit further away from Kusai, so they didn’t get any more info on how fast he was moving. That would need to wait until they intercepted him, which they’d hopefully manage to do at the castle of the (hopefully poorly named) King Anguish. Observing what happened at that castle was the plan even if Balin told them to fuck off, after all.

To be perfectly honest, Balin had the look of the kind of guy who might when they arrived. Threadbare cloak, a patchy beard and head of hair that he probably groomed irregularly with a knife, and a suit of heavily worn armor that looked like it had been repaired a truly ridiculous number of times. He even had a receding hairline and a decent amount of white mixed with his coarse black hair. He had two swords belted at his hip, one hilt a dull matte black and the other brightly wrapped in red leather.

He was cooking some meat skewered over an open fire, but he specifically shifted to be on the opposite side of the fire from Gil’s team as they approached. Echidna did not exactly allow for subtlety, even if the power of the friendly face mask downgraded her threat profile from “giant monster” to “imposing unknown person.”

“Hello,” he said, looking into the fire but clearly addressing Gil. “Are you a man, or of faerie? You keep very strange company if you are a mere man.”

Gil considered how to answer that, and eventually shrugged and told something approximating the truth.

“Depends on what you mean by faerie.” He said. “If you’re thinking of a specific place or a specific group of faerie creatures, then almost certainly not. I’m from a very distant land, came here through magic, and my companions are magical in nature.”

He finally caught sight of Nimue at the very edge of the firelight, and almost completely shifted his focus away from Gil. His face tightened and he lay one hand on the red hilted sword.

“I see.” He said. “I welcome travelers at my fire, but one of your companions gives me pause. Do you know who I am, and who I am to the Ladies of the Lake.”

Gil nodded.

“I know exactly who you are, Sir Balin.” He said. “I came seeking you in particular. King Arthur has need of your services.”

Balin bared his teeth. It might have been mistaken for a smile, had there been even a little bit less bitterness there.

“Arthur doesn’t call me to arms.” He said. “Too much bad blood, too much history. Even Merlin doesn’t usually deal with me anymore.”

Balin looked meaningfully again at Nimue.

“The service I ask for won’t require you to deal with any Knight of the Round Table.” Gil explained. “There is an enemy that seeks to wound Sir Lucan, among many other men and ladies of these isles. I seek to wound and delay him, so that Arthur’s men can form ranks. I’m hoping you would be willing to join me.”

Balin nodded, as if Gil had asked him to hold a door open. It was every bit as easy as Nimue had said. Now came the harder part.

“There is another part of the deal.” Gil said, walking towards the man slowly and deliberately, “I have an additional proposal for you. One that will aid us both, if all goes well.”

Balin’s hand didn’t leave his sword, but he also didn’t bother standing up. He met Gil’s gaze, right up until the senior tester sat next to him on the rock.

“I have a method by which I can allow you to live again should you die, and I’ll be honest it is likely you’ll need it.” Gil said quietly. “I have used it before. You will need to accept a formal offer I’m about to make for it to work. More importantly, Nimue has told me that if you accept the deal she swears to cease all hostilities, direct or indirect, against you.”

Balin looked at Gil warily.

“Why in god’s hooks would she agree to something like that?” He asked, “She’s hated me since she was only a girl.”

“Because.” Gil said, “She believes you will die in the attempt and she doesn’t know the full extent of what I can do. Only that it will give me the ability to kill you. So, will you sell me your soul if I promise not to use it to kill you?”

Balin reacted to the flood of knowledge with a fierce, feral smile. Everything Gil’s soul pact told him lined up. He was quick on the uptake, realizing that what Gil was saying was, essentially, “trust me with your life and I will give you peace.”

“You’re a friend of Lucan?” Balin said thoughtfully.

“The only reason I’m here at all is to help him.” Gil said truthfully.

“He’s a good man.” Balin said, “Stopped me from doing something truly awful once… alright. I’m in.”

Gil smiled.

“You won’t regret it.” He said.

Gil meant it, too. He kinda liked this guy already. Balin might end up as a catgirl on another planet or something, but Gil didn’t particularly want to screw him over. Hopefully if it came to that, Balin would appreciate the nuance.

••••••••••

Balin, T5 Big Name - 10 Credits, Skull of Mondain, Character Card: Minsc (BG1 only)

Skull of Mondaine: one time Consumable, on use kill every creature on the same plane of existence as the user. Ineffective against targets of a higher tier than the user’s highest tier retinue member.