No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Originally Published: 2025-12-07



I still hear the screaming.



Still feel the heat radiating from the abyss as the last good thing I had in this world was dragged away, all the way down to the same Hells that had stolen everything else from me.



Zariel was an evil freak, and after ten agonizing years serving her, I guess I was too. Wyll used to tell me that he saw the good in me. He could always see the things I couldn’t—even had the nerve to make me believe them sometimes.



I loved him, gods, I did.



But I couldn’t save him.



It all happened so fast. The Absolutists had captured Mizora—his patron, Zariel’s lickspittle. They annihilated her before we could stop them, and that meant that Wyll’s contract was broken. The ground split open and swallowed him whole. I screamed until my throat was raw. I tried to reach him, to save him somehow, but nothing I did made a difference.



It never does.



That’s the problem, isn’t it?



My parents were good people, and they raised me to be good—and then they went and died, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Afterwards, that snake Gortash slithered into my life, with his sweet words like poisoned fucking honey. Maybe I should have known better, or maybe he would’ve gotten his claws into me one way or another no matter what I did. I worked with him, protected him, cared about him, and he thanked me for my trouble by selling me to a devil behind my back. It didn’t matter how good I had been, how hard I had worked, or how much I had cared. Nothing I did mattered.



Nothing ever does.



I woke up to Zariel’s rotten smile looming over me. She was so fucking pleased with herself. She told me she had cut out my heart and replaced it with an infernal engine, said she’d make me the perfect soldier. It was my heart, it was mine. But that didn’t matter either, did it? When people have the power to take, that’s what they do. They take and take and take until there’s nothing left but a scraped out shell, or a scared, stupid girl on an operating table.



Zariel put me to work right away. I tried to get away at first, but I never got far before someone would find me and drag me back. She told me she liked it when I ran, she said a feisty captive was more fun. She told me she loved me, and she did alright. Loved me like a prized pet in the hands of a wicked child, or an insect she could pluck the wings off of. After a while, I stopped trying to escape, because nothing I did made any difference. Zariel wanted a weapon, so that’s what I became. It’s not like I had anyone to go home to anyway. She needed a fighter, so I fought. She needed a killer, so I killed. I never realized how easy it was to end someone’s life until then, never knew what it felt like to watch the light drain from their eyes. Devils, demons, and men all die the same in the end when you think about it, all twitching and gasping and bloody. Before long, I could cleave my battleaxe through anyone and anything that stood in my way without a second thought.



You know, I really tried making friends at first. Learned my lesson on that quick though; friends aren’t something you get to make in the Hells. Devils aren’t people you can trust or turn your back on for a second, not even when they like you. So I kept to myself and got used to the loneliness.



The fucking loneliness.



Hours stretched into days and weeks and months and years. Hard to tell how time passed, really, what with no day or night to speak of. Restful sleep was a luxury, and one I sure as fuck couldn’t afford. I slept with my hand around my axe, ready to split the head of whatever tried to off me in my sleep.



Sometimes, I almost hoped they’d succeed.



And then there was Wyll. Sweet, stupid, heroic Wyll. The Blade of Frontiers, sworn to slay monsters and fiends and their servants. Sworn to kill people like me. He was chasing me through Hells on the day that a ship from fuck knows where came crashing through Avernus, and in the chaos I took my shot. I didn’t think I’d actually make it out, I’d given up on that idea a long time ago. I just hoped this time they’d finally kill me, and that I’d take as many of the fuckers out with me as I could. Or maybe it would be Wyll, and he’d finally have his quarry. I didn’t much care anymore. But it wasn’t the devils or their soldiers or even The Blade who captured me, it was a different kind of monster, a squidy looking freak they call a mindflayer. I was snatched up and infected with one of their tadpoles, and even though I didn’t know exactly what would happen next, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I transformed into one of them, and my body would once again be stolen from me for someone else’s sick plans.



Then the ship crashed onto the Material Plane, and just like that, I was actually home. Not Baldur’s Gate, not exactly, but back on Faerûn, the land I never thought I’d see again. I saw the sun again for the first time in a decade, and with it came a warmth that was pleasant instead of torturous. At least, it would have been pleasant, if it weren’t for the churning hunk of metal where my heart should be. But I didn’t even care about that, what mattered is that I had gotten out of the Hells.



Of course, Zariel wasn’t letting me go that easy. She set her yappy little dogs on my tail right away, and I sent a lot of them right back where they came from. Either I would kill them or they would kill me, but at least I was free now. One of her dogs, Anders, told me he was there to bring me home. But Avernus was never my fucking home, it was my prison, and I was never. Going. Back.



Not ever.



Wyll caught up to me somehow; turned out he’d picked up the same infection as me when he was chasing me through the Hells. He was traveling with a group of adventurers, a real ragtag bunch. There was the Wizard—friendly, but talked too much for his own good. The Vampire—snarky but scared, maybe more afraid than anyone I’d ever known. The Cleric—dodgy and secretive, reminded me of a few devils I knew. But she seemed more confused than anything, like she didn’t really know who she was. And then there was the githyanki soldier, a warrior through and through, though I’m not sure she really understood what she was fighting for.



Wyll said he was finally going to kill me, but the worms in our heads connected our minds. He saw me fighting my way through the Hells, saw that I was a victim of the Blood War, not an agent of it. He let me live, even though I soon found out it could’ve cost him everything. Looking back, maybe he should have just cut me down when he had the chance.



Nothing good comes from getting close to someone like me.



For a little while, things were good. It had been so long I’d forgotten what “good” felt like. But for once, I was traveling with people who weren’t constantly trying to kill me. And Wyll… godsdamn it. I swear didn’t mean to fall for him the way I did. Maybe if I hadn’t been so godsdamned lonely for so goddamned long… Maybe then I could’ve stopped it, I could have saved him from myself instead of dragging him into my mess. He put his life on the line to protect me right after meeting me. He stood up to that bitch Mizora to save me. Me. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had stuck their neck out for me like that. Mizora cursed him with a devil’s horns, then she mocked him and told him he couldn’t be a hero anymore. But she was wrong, she didn’t know a damn thing, because Wyll was stronger than she thought. His persistent goodness was stronger than the devil who tried to corrupt him. He wasn’t like me. He was good. The way I wanted to be. The way I was convinced I couldn’t be any more. But he told me he saw the good in me, and he promised that he wouldn’t lose sight of it. He wouldn’t let me drown in the misery and self-hatred that constantly choked me like a tide pulling me under. He gave me something to live for again.



But it didn’t matter in the end.



Because nothing. Fucking. Matters. Because nothing can stay good around me for long, certainly not the only person who really saw me since my parents died, the only one who could make me believe that maybe I wasn’t just a stupid fuckup who ruined her life before it even got started. He saved me, but I couldn’t save him, I couldn’t do a fucking thing when he was dragged away from me forever.



Oh, and my heart? Doomed as everything else in my life. Even when I found an infernal mechanic, there was nothing he could do to stabilize my heart outside of the Hells, not in the long term. I was going to burn out like a bloody candle, all because a stupid girl trusted an evil bastard and got her heart ripped out for her trouble. Nothing I did mattered, nothing I wanted to be mattered. Even killing the bastard who sold me to the devil didn’t change a fucking thing. I was still dying. I was dying. I was going to die.



And everyone else would go on living, laughing, dancing, fucking, fighting, all of it. All of it. And all of it without me, like I never even fucking existed.



Nothing mattered, not any more. Maybe not ever.



And that’s why I did it. That’s why I took over the netherbrain when I had the chance. I killed the manipulative mindflayer bastard that called itself “The Emperor” and I took the netherstones for myself. I took control of the brain and used it to control the minds of everyone else. The things troubling my traveling companions stopped mattering too, and all with the snap of my fingers. I finally had power, real power. The power I needed to take control of my fate for the first time ever. I wasn’t a stupid kid or a devil’s plaything any more, and nobody could resist me or forget me or run from me. I was everything Gortash had wanted to be and more, and would finally be the monster people always saw when they looked at me. Because the one person who saw me differently was gone now.



And why shouldn’t I be a monster? Being good couldn’t save Wyll, it couldn’t even save myself. I tried, godsdamn it, I tried so hard to do good.



But it didn’t matter.



Nothing did.



I lost my innocence, my heart, my freedom, my life, and the only person who made me believe that maybe I wasn’t too broken to be fixed.



But he was wrong.



This world broke me, snatched me away from my home and made me heartless. So I’ll give them what they want. I’ll become the devil they always thought I was. After all…



No good deed goes unpunished.