Chapter Text
You were the daughter of a mortal woman and the god Savras. Your father had many titles: Savras the All-Seeing, the Lord of Divination, He of the Third Eye. Once a mortal wizard with an exceptional talent for the art of divination, Savras ascended and became the god of wizards.
You were blessed to have been old enough to remember your father’s greatness and cursed to live long enough to see his fall.
Savras the All-Seeing had been challenged by the powerful mortal wizard, Azuth, and lost. Azuth rose to power as your father fell. It is said that he lost on purpose because he saw something in his visions that was yet to happen. It was a decision that many of his faithful worshippers said demonstrated the wisdom and insight of their god. Wisdom and insight, they called it. You would rather call it docility and wasted potential.
Azuth imprisoned your father in a magical artifact that would later be known as the Scepter of Savras, in the hopes that he could harness Savras’ powers and use them for himself. The scepter disappeared before Azuth’s plan could come to fruition. More than a thousand years after the imprisonment of Savras, the scepter was found and Azuth agreed to release him if he swore a pledge of fealty to him. Savras accepted.
Unfortunately, the scepter displaced itself immediately after Savras’s release, taking with it the majority of his divine powers. Once again, the Scepter of Savras had disappeared and it continues to be lost, constantly moving, with only a chosen of Savras or someone with a touch of the divine being able to wield it. Someone like you.
After his fall, Savras went from being the god of wizards, to the god of divination. He became little more than Mystra and Azuth’s lapdog. A mere shadow of his former glory. You had never been close with your father, but his downfall made him a disappointment to you. After he fell, you felt ashamed to be related to someone as foolish as him. He had wasted his potential.
A potential that you would happily exploit yourself, should you ever get your hands on the Scepter of Savras and claim your father’s old powers…
You were born with an innate gift for divination magic. It made you a sorcerer by technicality, though you would eventually study and become a powerful wizard as well, following in your father’s footsteps. Sorcerers were widely looked down upon by the wizards that made up for most of the population of the city you were born in, though you had been a special case because your father was still the god of wizards at the time.
Your powers allowed you glimpses into the future. Your visions were quite random, though they became clearer with age, and you had found a way to strengthen them: by physical touch. When touching another person’s skin, you were able to look at the threads of fate and time that bound them: their past, their present, their future. You only needed to know what to look for.
You were born in the kingdom of Halruaa. It was the same place your father had once lived before he ascended and became a god. It was a land of magic in the southern part of Faerûn. The magocracy of Halruaa had once been created by Archwizards who had foreseen the fall of Netheril and fled the empire.
You yourself had been born a few hundred years after Netheril’s Fall, but you vividly remembered the stories of Karsus’s Folly that were told to you by some of the old Netherese refugees. It was because of one of those survivors that your own threads of fate were to be bound to Raphael’s.
It was about 250 years after Karsus’s Folly and some hundred years before your father would fall to Azuth in battle. You were at the very beginning of your immortal life. Your mother had died when you were just a child. A 500-year-old wizard by the name Melesmer had taken you in and he became like a grandfather to you. You looked up to him, listened to his endless reminiscing about Netheril and clung to every piece of wisdom he bestowed upon you.
Melesmer was most likely the last person alive to give first-person accounts of the old empire at that point, but he was also at the end of his time. Old age was starting to eat at him despite the magic that had slowed his aging. When you were only twenty, you had seen him die peacefully in his bed in one of your visions. You knew you only had a year or two left with him, but you did not have the heart to tell him that.
Melesmer spoke Halruaan like you, but the more his old age started to eat at his memory, the more he started rambling to himself in Netherese. Sometimes it seemed as if he had completely forgotten everything around him and found himself back in Netheril. You had learned just enough of the Netherese language to understand what he was saying over and over again:
“They are screaming and crying…” he would mumble in Netherese while his eyes looked empty. “The children. They are under the rubble. Our children…”
You had one day come home from the market and you heard the sounds of talking coming from inside the house. There was nothing odd about that in itself. You were used to young apprentice wizards visiting Melesmer every now and again. They would often be seeking out the old wizard’s wisdom or wanting to listen to the stories he told of the old empire.
What made you stop in your tracks, was the fact that they were speaking in the common tongue. Melesmer never managed to adopt the same skepticism towards foreigners that was commonplace for the born and bred Halruaans who feared that outsiders would come and steal their magical secrets.
You put down what you had in your hands to go and see who this foreigner was that was visiting.
You entered the room and the man in front of Melesmer looked up at you briefly. The man looked young, around twenty like yourself. He had brown hair, brown eyes and was dressed in expensive Halruaan silks, no doubt in an attempt to fit in with the local customs. The young man gave you a brief polite smile before turning his attention back on Melesmer.
There was something odd about the stranger and you felt it immediately. You put your hand on Melesmer’s shoulder, to interrupt his talking and ask him about his guest.
“Grandfather,” You greeted in Halruaan and then nodded to the stranger. “Who is this man that you are talking to?”
“Sibylla, dearest,” Melesmer answered in Halruaan. “This man has travelled far to hear about the fall of Netheril and Netherese magic.”
“Raphael,” Melesmer said in the common tongue, addressing the stranger. “This is my ward, my pride, Sibylla. She is the greatest seer in Halruaa there have been since her father became a god and left the city all those years ago.”
“Grandfather,” You said sternly, warning him not to speak any more of it in front of this stranger.
“Is that so?” Raphael asked. His eyes had lit up by what Melesmer had said, and his smile widened. He got to his feet and walked closer to you.
“I swear it,” Melesmer said, the old man’s voice full of pride and his soft features turned into a bright smile.
“What an honor,” Raphael said and took your hand. “It’s not every day that one meets the daughter of a god.”
Raphael looked you in the eyes and placed a kiss on your hand.
You took the opportunity of the touch to figure out who he was and what he wanted.
When Raphael touched you, a vision flashed behind your eyes, and you saw what he really was. You withdrew your hand from him immediately, as if you had been burned.
“Leave,” you hissed at him. Magic was crackling around your fingertips in warning.
Raphael smirked at your realization.
“Grandfather, this man is a devil. This vermin is taking you for an old fool,” you said to Melesmer while not taking your eyes of Raphael for a second. “He is a son of Mephistopheles himself.”
By his reaction, Raphael seemed to at least know the Halruaan word for ‘devil’, and his smug expression faltered slightly at hearing his father’s name. Melesmer blinked in confusion and looked at Raphael.
“It is quite rude to talk over one’s guests. Especially in another language. My Halruaan is rather unpracticed these days, so I will simply assume that whatever you said was a compliment,” Raphael said smoothly with a tight-lipped smile and narrowed eyes. “I am not here to harm anyone…I am merely seeking information.”
“You’re seeking the Crown of Karsus,” you said to him.
Raphael looked genuinely taken aback for a second, but quickly returned to his smug self.
“I am…” he said.
“Your father has it in his vault where it will stay for at least a thousand years more,” you said coldly. “You’ve got more than what you came for, cambion. Leave.”
He looked at the ground as if in thought for a moment and a flash of fury washed over his face, though you got the sense that his anger was not pointed at you. His fists clenched and his eye twitched slightly before he looked up at you one last time.
That look sent another vision through you, this time manifested through a feeling: familiarity. This would not be the last time you saw him.
“Thank you…” Raphael grumbled and then snapped his fingers. He disappeared in a flash of smoke and embers.
You would not see each other again for another couple of hundred years, but ever since that day the devil was keeping an eye on you.
You changed a lot as you grew older. After your father’s fall, you completely discarded his teachings and dogma. You were not supposed to use your sight to further the goals of others or to meddle with fate, and you were also supposed to only ever tell the truth of your visions. You threw it all away and started your new life, cutting the already fragile and barely-there bond to Savras.
You had long since left Halruaa behind. Your services became well sought after and your reputation as a powerful seeress quickly spread throughout Faerûn. Your reputation often proceeded you whenever you arrived in a new city, and you rarely ever had to seek out your clients yourself.
You whispered in the ears of dukes, emperors, and kings, ensuring their rise or their downfall, depending on how you felt about them and how they could further your goals or fill your gold purse. It came with enormous power. A few whispers in the right ears could mean the rise to power for one person, while hiding parts of the truth could make another walk carelessly into their own doom.
Even though you were a savior to some and a villain to others, it never changed how many wanted your help. Your luck was that dead clients usually could not complain about your services and if anyone dared to question how your earlier clients met their demise, you would simply tell them that they did not heed your warnings.
You quickly became well-known and your recognizable features, that spread both awe as well as fear amongst the smallfolk, worked to your advantage. You had the silver hair and ghostly pale eyes of your father.
Myths and whispers about you spread quickly. Some more outlandish than others. One described how you had seen your own death in a vision and it had shocked you so much that your hair and eyes lost all their color. Another one was that you were a long lost goddess who wandered on Toril in human form. Myths and rumors were usually good for business, so you were not going to tell them otherwise.
It pleased you to no longer be known as Sibylla, the daughter of Savras. You were simply Sibylla the Seeress, now. Your own person and removed from your father, who you hoped would be forgotten to time eventually.
It was in the then young city of Athkatla in Amn, that you would run into Raphael again, a few hundred years after your first meeting. Your client in the city was amongst one of the city’s most powerful men. A rich merchant by the name of Bernard Barth.
Barth was an old and greedy man who had grown paranoid in his last days. He was certain that the younger rising star amongst the city tradesmen, Garrick Mordell, was out to steal his place amongst the nobility of the city.
Barth was an excruciatingly frustrating client. He was a loud, opinionated, and stubborn man. His son, who would one day take over his father’s business, was even worse. They were the perfect image of the overindulgent upper class. It was so clear that they had never had to struggle a day in their life, and it irked you, but the Barth family’s generous payment for your services were more than enough to sway you to stay.
You were sitting in Barth’s opulent office, and the two of you were waiting for someone. You had seen who would be joining you in your visions: a middle-aged dark-haired stranger. You did not think much of it before the man entered the room.
You immediately recognized that there was something about him. He dressed like all the other upper-class citizens of Amn, but you could have sworn that he looked familiar. As if you had seen him somewhere else, though you could not quite put your finger on it and no visions sprang to your mind.
“Raphael,” Barth lazily mumbled in greeting. “You’re late.”
“Saer Barth,” the man greeted with a bow and a smile. “My deepest apologies.”
That voice and that name. You had definitely met this man before, but where? You would have to touch him to learn more about him.
You rose from your chair and held out a hand to him.
“I’m afraid we haven’t met before,” you said with a smile. “Sibylla.”
“Raphael. A pleasure to meet you,” Raphael said with a smile and shook your hand.
Your brow furrowed slightly when no visions came to your mind at the touch. You looked down and noticed that he was wearing gloves. You kept smiling politely but your eyes narrowed at him. He looked at your expression with a teasing smile, before sitting down and turning his attention to Barth.
You were barely listening to what Barth was rambling about. He wanted Raphael’s help for getting rid of his competitor, though you could not figure out how exactly. All you learned were that Raphael seemed like a man who had good connections. Besides that, it sounded like Barth’s usual paranoid speeches about Lord Mordell’s rise, so you tuned him out.
You were much more interested in who this man was. He seemed so familiar and yet it escaped you who he could be. Your eyes kept drifting to Raphael as you tried to place his face in your mind. At some point he caught you looking. He looked back at you with a knowing smirk, which only made you even more frustrated.
He knew who you were, there was no doubt about it, you thought. Now you had to figure out who he was. If only you could somehow touch him, if only for a brief moment.
“That’s the short of it,” Barth grunted after rambling for about an hour. “We will reconvene tomorrow and see if you can come up with a solution. Leave me.”
Barth waved the both of you away with his usual rude and entitled manner that you had grown so accustomed to. You both left the room, and you walked slightly faster to catch up with Raphael.
“Saer,” you called to him. “A moment of your time, please.”
Raphael turned around and faced you with a smile.
“Yes?”
You got a chance to study his face a bit closer, but it still did not ring any bells. There was just an overwhelming sense of familiarity.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” you said. It was less of a question and more of a statement.
“Have we?” Raphael asked with a mock innocent expression. “I am quite certain that I would recall if I had met someone like you before.”
You narrowed your eyes at him. A look in his eyes told you that he was playing with you.
“Yes, we have,” you said. “Who are you?”
His smile widened.
You got frustrated and reached out to grab him, trying to pull his gloves off or get your fingers under his coat.
“My! Aren’t you eager?” Raphael laughed and raised his arms so that you could not reach them. “I did notice how you were stealing glances at me in there. I’m afraid I’m not interested, dear.”
You reached out to touch his face instead, but he dodged it.
“We know each other!” you said stubbornly and pointed at his face.
He laughed at your frustration.
“So insistent,” Raphael said and pulled off his glove.
He held his hand out to you, and you took it. A vision passed your mind’s eye. Your eyes widened in recognition. Then your brow furrowed, and you looked him up and down.
“A pleasure to see you again,” he said smoothly.
“You got…old?” you said with a slight sneer. “You looked younger when we last met. I thought your sort didn’t age.”
“I look more matured, not old and we do not. My appearance is by choice,” Raphael explained.
“Why would anyone choose to look old?” you asked. “Eternal youth is one of the few upsides of immortality.”
“I do not look…” Raphael closed his eyes and sighed, before changing the subject. “You are taking all this in stride it seems. I would have expected more hostility from you once you remembered me. Not at all that fiery young girl I remember meeting all those centuries ago, it seems.”
“Things changed,” you said with a shrug. “I’m just trying to make a living. Same as you, I suppose.”
“Indeed,” he said with a smile before changing the subject. “I heard about what happened to your dear father. The great All-Seeing robbed of his place in the Heavens and trapped in a stick that no one seems to be able to locate. What a shame.”
“A scepter, not a ‘stick’,” you said. “What’s it to you?”
“I merely wanted to offer my deepest condolences,” Raphael said with a smile that showed the complete opposite meaning of his words. “I do wonder if this is the reason for this little rebellious streak of yours. I hear all sorts of surprising things about you these days, little goddess. Recently, I’ve heard rumors about a certain powerful noble in the city of Illusk whose family met a quite brutal death when a horde of orcs had invaded the city district that he ruled over…”
Your pale eyes narrowed at him. You knew exactly what he was talking about, but he should not be able to know about that.
“So?” you asked with slight shrug and crossed your arms over your chest.
“Don’t play dumb, dear,” Raphael purred. “He was a client of yours, was he not?”
“He was,” you said. “And?”
“One has to wonder why you neglected warning him about this. I also find it such an odd coincidence that the High Captain of the city seemed so well-prepared for the assault, though he did not spring to action before after the horde had marched through your client’s district. The High Captain who, coincidentally of course, was also known to be very outspoken about his low opinion of your client.”
“Yes,” you said with another shrug, smiling. “What an odd coincidence.”
“Isn’t it just?” Raphael said with feigned wonder.
You looked him up and down. You had to at least be impressed by the fact that he had managed to do his research so well.
“I told the High Captain, and he offered me a small fortune if I did not warn my client of the assault,” you admitted. “As I said…I’m just trying to make a living…”
Raphael chuckled.
“My dear, you would put some devils to shame,” he said. “I wonder what old Savras would think if he knew what his daughter were up to.”
“Couldn’t care less,” you said coldly and avoided the subject. “Are you spying on me or something?”
“’Spying’ is such a cynical term. I’m keeping an eye on you, yes,” Raphael said. “You seem like a useful person to know. Not to mention, I find you deeply fascinating. Especially now that you are no longer clinging to the boring and rigid dogma of your father.”
It irked you that he kept mentioning Savras. Especially when his own relationship with his father seemed to be at least as messy as your own, from what you saw when you touched him.
“You keep bringing up my father,” you said with annoyance and defensiveness. “Should we talk about yours instead? I saw plenty of interesting things to talk about when I touched you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Raphael said with a hint of annoyance, though still smiling.
“I thought not,” you said with a smile. “What are you doing here? Out for old Barth’s soul?”
“Did your little visions fail to reveal my intentions to you?” Raphael asked.
“What I saw was a mess of contradictions, which suggests that you are undecided on the matter, so no,” you said and looked him up and down. “All I really care about is if you intend to kill my current employer.”
Raphael smiled.
“Would you be opposed to it if I was?” he asked.
You raised an eyebrow at that. There might be an opportunity here, you thought.
“In principle, no. Let the old bastard rot in the Hells for my sake,” you answered coldly in a lowered voice in case anyone was eavesdropping. “Though the old bastard in question is still paying me a ridiculous amount of money, so what do you have to offer in return if I let you?”
Raphael’s smile widened.
“Perhaps, you and I are not so different after all,” Raphael said in a lowered voice as well. “You help me procure the soul of both old and young Barth, and I will give you all of the gold that Lord Mordell has offered me in exchange for their demise.”
Your eyes widened a bit at the revelation. Perhaps Barth had not been as overly paranoid as you had thought. Mordell really was out to get him it seemed. Though Raphael must have been instrumental to his plans because you had not seen any threats of Barth’s demise in your visions yet.
“How much gold are we talking?” you asked.
“Fifteen thousand,” Raphael answered casually.
Your jaw almost fell to the floor. That was twice the amount you had managed to squeeze out of Barth during all your time with him. At the time, it was enough gold to buy a house or two.
“And you would just hand that over to me?” you asked in disbelief. “I find that very difficult to believe.”
“I’m a devil, dear. Gold is of little use to me. The economy of the Hells runs on souls…” Raphael explained.
You studied him for a moment. You were interested in the idea, but you had to make sure that you were not letting him somehow rope you into a deal. You would also have to be sure that this would not be traced back to you.
“I will encourage them to sign your deal. You will pay me half before their death and the rest after. I don’t care how you mean to kill them, but make sure it’s not too messy and it can’t be traced back to me. You will also leave their wives and children alive…gods know they’ve suffered enough by having to deal with those two idiots…And I am also not signing anything.”
“Demanding little thing, aren’t you?” Raphael said with a smile. “Fine. We have an agreement.”
As soon as you received the vision of your client’s demise, you left the city. You were staying in an inn, well on your way to Esmeltaran when Raphael popped up out of nowhere. You jumped at his sudden presence. He snapped his fingers and a bag of gold appeared on the nightstand. He looked around your room before seating himself in an armchair.
“Not quite living accommodations befitting a demigoddess, I would say,” Raphael said while looking around at the shabby room of the inn you were staying in.
“I don’t like staying in one place too long,” you said. “You’ve handed me the payment...”
“I have,” he said with a smile and snapped a bottle of Amnian dessert wine and two glasses into existence.
“So…” you said and made a shooing motion with your hands. “Go. Leave.”
“Is that any way to treat a business partner?” Raphael asked and feigned offense. “Where are your manners?”
Raphael smiled at you and held out a glass of wine. You looked him up and down and reluctantly took it.
“To us,” he said and clinked glasses with you.
You were looking at him with a deadpan expression.
“You are getting off on this, aren’t you?” you asked. “The fact that you managed to strike a deal with a demigod. That’s why you keep talking about it, isn’t it?”
“Perish the thought,” Raphael said and sipped his wine. “Can I not simply be thrilled about managing to strengthen the bond between myself and an incredibly useful acquaintance?”
You rolled your eyes and sipped the wine.
“This is a one-time thing,” you said. “And I would really appreciate if you stopped spying on me.”
“You are making it very difficult for me to do so when you are so fascinating to spy on,” he said. “I don’t see why we should not do this again. I think you would find it quite useful to have friends in low places with the direction you are currently headed in, dear. We could be good for each other.”
“I can see how my moral compass is a bit all over the place at the moment, but that does not mean I want to work with you, cambion,” you said and sipped your wine.
“You keep calling me that, as if it is meant as a slight. I am what I am…Although I do much prefer the term ‘devil’,” Raphael said. “I have long since raised above the station of a simple cambion.”
“I’m sure you prefer that, but it doesn’t make you any less of a cambion,” you said. “You are a half-mortal, like me, and there is no running from it. You are no more a devil than I am a god.”
“What a depressing way to view things,” Raphael mused and swirled the wine in his glass. “We are what our father’s made us, are we not? It is their blood that ensures that we are still alive, where had we been mortals, we would be long dead. It is their blood and the powers granted through it that has gotten us here. It is evident to anyone that there is nothing mortal about us, and yet you cling to the notion. Do you really think that we cannot be the same as our fathers, if not one day more than them, simply because we were once carried in mortal wombs?”
What he had said struck a chord, but you were never going to admit that to him.
“Thank you for the wine…and the philosophy lesson,” you said in a stern tone. “You should go.”
Raphael smiled at your urgency to get rid of him.
“I am sure you will warm up to me eventually,” he said. “We have an eternity to get to know each other, after all.”
His persistence was starting to truly infuriate you. You were not going to be business partners, or even acquaintances, with a fiend. You had heard all the stories about the vermin of the Lower Planes, and you did not want to be associated with them. It was beneath you.
“No,” you quickly said and emptied your wineglass before putting it on the table. Your eyes turned threatening. “You will leave me alone after this, do you understand? I am not interested.”
He chuckled at your growing hostility.
“Or what?” he asked with a smile. “Will you smite me, little goddess? I am at least a couple of thousand years your senior, do you really think you could take me?”
Raphael walked closer to you until he was right in front of your face. He was still wearing his smug smile.
Your eyes had turned thunderous at the blatant provocation, and magic was crackling over the skin of your hands in warning. Raphael looked down at your hands, without moving his head.
“Should we find out?” you asked with a tight smile.
His eyes drifted from your hands and back to your face. He was still smiling as his eyes went from the smile on your lips to your pale eyes. You saw a hint of admiration in his eyes. He lifted his hand, ready to snap.
“We will see each other again, Sibylla,” he said in a low voice and then snapped.
He disappeared in a flash of smoke and embers.