Fireside with Muhtar

Every Wednesday, I play DnD as Iris, a Great Old One Warlock, because apparently I am so vain I named my character after myself, then built her out of my own psychological plumbing, unresolved weirdness, and whatever was leaking behind the ego wall that week.

Sue me. Narcissus had a pond. I have eldritch invocations and dice.

This is a dialogue between Iris and Muhtar, our party cleric: a fallen aasimar who escaped Xvim’s evil little landlord cult and is now trying very hard to be a good boy for Lathander. Naturally, we do not see eye to eye, because he believes souls are tied to gods, and Iris believes the gods can keep their holy paws off mortal ethics.

It’s a bit long, darlings, but it says plenty about Madame Obscura’s position on divinity, redemption, and why cosmic indifference still leaves room for personal responsibility. Read on, if your attention span has not yet been mugged by modernity.

---

The fire had opinions. Bad ones, mostly. It snapped and spat between us like some tiny domestic god auditioning for relevance.

Muhtar sat across from me in that heavy old armour of his, all silvered hair, holy shame, and sunrise stitched over the ruins of a black altar. The kind of man who had betrayed one god, crawled to another, and now looked at everyone else like we were late to confession.

“You speak of mortals as if we are loose coins dropped into the dark,” he said.

I smiled. “Darling, we are worse. Coins at least have a face stamped on them.”

His jaw tightened. A beautiful little earthquake. “Every soul belongs somewhere. Every soul is called. Lathander offers renewal. Xvim offered dominion. Even in my worst days, I understood that mortal life is not severed from the divine.”

“Mm. Convenient. So the gods make the trap, name it purpose, and when the mouse kneels politely, everyone calls it theology.”

“You mock what you fear.”

“I mock what keeps interrupting me.”

He leaned forward, firelight crawling over his breastplate. “You think ethics can survive without heaven?”

“I think ethics only means anything without heaven.” I tapped ash from my glove. “If you behave because a glowing landlord is keeping your soul deposit, that is not virtue. That is rental compliance.”

Muhtar’s eyes flared gold for half a heartbeat. Fallen, redeemed, still carrying the old voltage. “You confuse obedience with devotion.”

“And you confuse devotion with a leash that smells faintly of incense.”

“The gods answer prayers.”

“So do things in wells, if you drop enough blood in.”

“That is exactly why mortals need gods. Without them, we bargain with horrors.”

I laughed softly. The trees did not like it. Good. “Muhtar. Sweet repentant cathedral with cheekbones. I bargain with horrors professionally. The difference is, I know when something vast is using me as furniture.”

“And still you kneel?”

“No. I bend creatively.”

He looked away, disgusted despite himself. “You make damnation sound like fashion.”

“No, darling. Fashion has better tailoring.”

For a while, only the fire spoke. It had less doctrine and more honesty.

Muhtar said, quieter, “I served Xvim because power made sense. Cruelty made sense. Then I saw what it did to the weak. To the frightened. To those who had nothing but their prayers.”

“And now you serve Lathander because guilt needed a prettier room.”

His gaze returned to me, wounded and furious. “Yes.”

That stopped me, briefly. Annoying. Sincerity. The worst spell.

“Yes,” he repeated. “Maybe I do. Maybe every dawn I pray because I cannot bear what I was in the dark. Maybe I need the Morninglord because I do not trust myself alone.”

I watched him across the flames, this holy warhorse of a man, trying to drag his soul uphill by the teeth.

“Well,” I said. “That is almost honest enough to be dangerous.”

“And you?” he asked. “What keeps you from becoming what whispers to you?”

I looked up. The sky was clouded, but beyond it, beyond the little painted ceiling of weather and bird shit, the old dark waited. Vast. Patient. Unmoved. Full of minds that did not know us from mould.

“Nothing,” I said.

His hand went very still.

“Nothing keeps me,” I continued. “No god. No promised garden. No cosmic magistrate with a ledger and a smug little feather. That is the point. I choose. Every day. Badly, sometimes. With excellent boots and questionable instincts. But I choose.”

“A mortal will is fragile.”

“So is a candle. Still rude to piss on it.”

He frowned. “Your metaphors are diseased.”

“My patron likes them moist.”

“I did not need that image.”

“You did. Your redemption was getting smug.”

He exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh, then crushed it because clerics are trained to murder joy in the cradle. “Personal ethics are not enough.”

“They are all we have that are actually ours.”

“We have grace.”

“You have grace. I have consequences.”

“Grace is not ownership. It is invitation.”

“And if one refuses?”

“Then one is lost.”

“No.” I leaned closer, letting the fire paint my smile into something untrustworthy. “Then one is alone. There is a difference. Lost means there was a path assigned. Alone means no one gets to draw the map but you.”

Muhtar stared at me. “That is a lonely gospel.”

“It is not a gospel. That is why it still has all its teeth.”

“You would deny the gods even while walking in their world?”

“I deny their right to own what mortals suffer to become.”

“Souls need anchorage.”

“Souls need courage.”

“They need light.”

“They need a spine.”

“They need forgiveness.”

“They need to stop outsourcing morality to the nearest immortal with branding.”

His gauntleted hand curled. “You are arrogant.”

“Yes, but I moisturise, so people forgive a great deal.”

“Must everything be a joke to you?”

“No.” The word came out colder than I meant. “Only the things that would kill me if I said them plainly.”

That quieted him.

The fire sagged. Somewhere in the dark, an owl made a scholarly noise, probably judging us both and rightly so.

Muhtar’s voice softened. “What do your stars give you, warlock?”

“Perspective.”

“And what has perspective ever saved?”

I looked at him. Really looked. The old god’s shadow behind his eyes. The new god’s dawn trying to get in. The man in the middle, exhausted from being a battlefield with a pulse.

“Me,” I said. “It saved me from believing suffering must be meaningful to matter.”

His face shifted.

I pressed on, because apparently I had chosen violence with feelings. Disgusting. “The universe does not care. Good. Let it not care. Let the gods squabble over souls like drunk nobles dividing inheritance. I care. That is smaller, yes. Dirtier. Less radiant. But it is mine. When I spare a life, when I keep a promise, when I drag some idiot out of a cult basement while wearing entirely impractical leather, I do it because I decided the idiot matters.”

Muhtar’s mouth tightened. “And if your decision changes?”

“Then stop me.”

“I may have to.”

“You may try.” I smiled again, softer this time. “Wear the shiny armour. It helps me aim.”

He shook his head. “You are infuriating.”

“And you are a sermon someone taught to hold a sword.”

“I am trying to be better.”

“I know.”

That one landed harder than the insults. He looked into the fire, and the hard holy lines of him loosened, just a little.

After a while he said, “Perhaps Lathander does not own my soul.”

“Careful. That sounded dangerously like thinking.”

“Perhaps,” he continued, ignoring me with clerical discipline, “I offer it because I want the dawn to mean something.”

I nodded. “That I can respect.”

“And perhaps your ethics are not as empty as I thought.”

“Oh, they are very full. Mostly of spite, tenderness, and poor impulse control.”

“A rotten foundation.”

“Faerûn was built on worse.”

He almost smiled.

I stretched my hands toward the fire. “Pray if you must, Muhtar. Kneel to the morning. Kiss the hem of the sun. Write Lathander little love notes in your diary. I will not stop you.”

“How generous.”

“But do not tell me mortals need gods to be good. I have met gods. Many are just powerful children with temples.”

“And your ancient void-things?”

“Worse children. No temples. Better aesthetic.”

He sighed. “One day your mouth will get you killed.”

“Promise?”

“Do not flirt with martyrdom.”

“I flirt with everything. It is called diplomacy.”

The fire cracked again, throwing sparks up between us like tiny souls escaping jurisdiction.

Muhtar watched them rise. “I believe souls are called home.”

I watched them vanish.

“I believe,” I said, “we make homes in the dark because nothing calls.”

He looked at me then, not converted, not convinced, but listening.

Dreadful thing, being heard. Almost as obscene as hope.