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Marco's Heart
You find yourself in a bright white, circular room. It's nearly empty; too bare, almost clinically so. But the bareness of it means that what is visible here stands out:
A podium in the center, where a familiar figure sits, head buried in his hands. Three paths running from the podium to three different spots near the edges of the room - not corners; circles don't have corners - where three doors leading seemingly nowhere stand with no regard for their complete lack of structural support.
It doesn't take you long to figure out where you are, does it? You only have to decide where to start.
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"I-- I just want it to stop. I...!"
"You don't want him dead, you want to kill him!"
"You want to HAVE him!"
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"I am not a stupid man. I know that Marco hates himself for the things he has done in his madness and his hungers. I know that this Heart wants me to understand all that he is done and render judgement as I see fit. I know. But I am not a goodly man either and there is nothing he has showed me that would make me despise him, no matter how hard you and this illusion of Kaphlar try.
"So he was mad! Many men go mad! Many men do horrific things while mad! Many men recover from madness if they are given help! Show me what you will, but I do not think my opinion will change. Marco is a man with both kindly and bloody instincts and it does him great credit that the kindly ones win out so often as they do. If he is given help, he will be able to begin to right aught that he has set awry."
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Hesitantly, Marco peers at Jarlaxle over his own hands.
"How... How did you...?"
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The voices in the background are fading to a murmur. Marco looks very, very tired.
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"Do not be sorry," he says softly. "I am not angry at you. I want to help you, so that you no longer wish to die, but I don't understand your religion and I suspect there are more things about your world I still do not get. So I have not been very good at helping you so far. But I do like you, Marco, and I do not think any revelations about your misdeeds will change that much—and I would be very happy if you decided that it might be worth it to live after all."
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"You can show me or tell me the other things that have brought you to this pass when you are ready," he says. "I can wait for you to get your equilibrium back. I did mean it when I said that I do not think that there is anything you can show me that will make me despise you. I have too much blood on my own hands and too many mistakes in my past, even in just the things I remember, to condemn you without being the very worst hypocrite. I do not know if that this is something that helps, mind you. But it is something that is true."
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... But Kaphlar's reaction, on the other hand, is a dismissive -
"Tch." He crosses his arms. "How about I expedite things, then?"
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Everything blurs. The world zooms past, back behind the alley, behind the arena, until Jarlaxle is in the audience for a press conference.
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But he's stepping up to the podium now, with a perfectly diplomatic smile on his lips and something distant in his eyes.
"Thank you." That's how he opens. "Thank you all for coming, on this... very important, very non-standard day. Thank you for the trust you have placed in me. I hope I may continue to rely on your trust in the coming days. I expect them to be... unprecedented. Unprecedented, I think, is the word."
A pause.
"But that is probably enough beating around the bush. You didn't come here to listen to a rich man say nothing of consequence. I'm sure you get enough of that in your job." His smile is a convincing facsimile, from a distance. It will not fool Jarlaxle. "My announcement is as follows:"
The room is utterly silent, awaiting Marco's words.
"From today on, I, Marco Evangelisti, vow to make the public aware of a threat that has menaced mankind since its inception. For centuries, all manners of inhuman creatures with supernatural abilities have lived among us in secret, and they pose a danger to us all."
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"Oh," Jarlaxle says. "So that is how you planned to die. I could see the deathwish in you after spending so much time with Zaknafein and later Artemis Entreri, but I was unsure of the method. And it is clear that you hate what you are—the things you showed me in the other door, with the phantoms of your madness, made that very clear. So you thought to incite violence against your kind, hoping to eventually be swept up into it. A vampire lord is a powerful creature and is not likely to be taken down by a single warrior however strong—and like with my friends before, your instincts towards life would fight against your longing for death—but a group of warriors, a party... or many parties, as it would be. It would work."
He says this thoughtfully, but if he is judging Marco for this, he keeps such things out of his voice.
"Was Kaphlar's exposure of you that I saw before pre-planned? It did not quite feel that way to me, and you did express the wish to kill him, but perhaps that is only because he is the kind of person that invites such things."
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"I-- I'm not a vampire lord. I think."
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