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Two nights ago, this camp had seemed like a breath of fresh air— a place of respite, untouched by the shadow curse, with the glimmering jewel of Baldur’s Gate on the horizon. It felt like the final step of a long journey, and Vitaris had found himself hoping that, just maybe, it would be downhill from here.
He was more right than he could have imagined. He wiped a smear of soot off his face and cursed his wishful thinking.
Since then, they’d been attacked by vengeful Gith monks who, it turned out, had a very valid reason for assaulting them; they’d found out they’d all been made a fool of by the Illithid living in their heads; and they’d been stalked, manipulated, and threatened by Orin and Gortash, each wanting to use Vitaris and his merry little band as a weapon against the other.
Now, everyone was pissed. Karlach was mad they hadn’t murdered Gortash in front of his entire court; Lae’zel was mad they hadn’t taken Raphael’s deal for the Orphic Hammer; Gale was mad they no one wanted to honor his delusions of Godhood; Shadowheart had been… well, Shadowheart, ever since they’d been approached by that House of Grief brother in Rivington… the list went on. And somehow it all seemed to circle back to being Vitaris’ fault.
He hated to admit it, but their safe little camp had become a volatile, simmering bomb. Everyone seemed to be just one wrong word off of a metaphorical— or physical, in Karlach’s case— explosion. Vitriol was being flung from all sides, from muttered curses and slammed pots and pans to angry glares and the straight-up cold shoulder.
As he always had, Vitaris found himself attempting to escape with music. He picked a lonely, dismal little corner of the camp, pulled out his lyre, and began to strum a tune… or tried to, anyway, because it was like the more he focused, the more it slipped away from him, the more the noise of the camp seemed to crush in on his thoughts. He squeezed his eyes shut and brushed his fingers over the strings and, for many long moments, succeeded in doing nothing more than giving himself a headache.
If only he could remember where he’d last heard the song he was trying to play…
“Soup’s on,” Wyll’s sudden voice from right behind him caused Vitaris to jump, clutching the instrument to his chest. Wyll was maybe the only one who wasn’t mad at him, though the decision he’d made about his father definitely weighed heavily over him. “It’s mushroom.”
“I’ll be there soon… thanks.” As Wyll’s footsteps receded, Vitaris held his lyre out and checked it over for damage… and then it hit him.
His feet seemed to move of their own accord; his lyre slipped neatly into its case and he padded across the well-worn dirt towards the distant, purple glimmer of the Rivington runic sigil.
A starry sky stretched out above him, the distant sounds of Rivingtonians settling down for an uneasy night funneled, muffled, to his ears; and he reached out and touched the sigil, sparking it to life. With a rush of magic and blinding purple energy, Vitaris stepped through the travel rune…
…and emerged into a darkness so thick even his half-elf eyes had to adjust. As the purple light faded behind him, he began to make his way, slowly, deeper into the darkness… and as his vision shifted, he found his path lit more than adequately by bioluminescent mushrooms, splashing the path in glowering purple, blue, and green.
The very human sounds of Rivington had been replaced with the muted, burbling backdrop of the Underdark: the sound of distant dripping water; disembodied clicks, hoots, and howls; and the noise of his own feet on the stone. Ebonlake Grotto grew and morphed around him, and inhaling the first lungful of Myconid spores was, ironically, like a breath of fresh air.
**peace-bringer**, Spaw’s gentle boom wormed its way into his mind mere seconds after; two Myconids that had been nearby registered who Vitaris was and stood, revealing themselves. **life-chanter. You have returned to us. Be welcome.**
Hello, Sovereign, Vitaris thought, his words being telepathically transferred to the Myconid ruler, as he began his descent to the Myconid Colony’s heart, how are things?
**the circle flourishes, in no small part thanks to you.**
The iridescent brightness of the Myconid Sovereign was almost blinding compared to the more muted surroundings. As Vitaris approached, he was happy to see the severed head of Nere was well and truly inundated with spores— so much so, it barely resembled a skull any longer.
That’s good to hear. I, uh… I was wondering… I was hoping I could just… be a part. Of the song. For a while. Vitaris scratched at his neck, the prestidigitation holding his hair in precisely coiffed buns sparking a little. I kind of miss it.
**it is expected to miss the call of the song. the song is family. the song is life.** Spaw held out his hands and brighter, almost rainbow spores lifted from his fingers; Vitaris bowed his head in reverence, and inhaled.
All at once, the gentle melody that had been tickling at the back of his mind erupted into a brilliant symphony. It was all consuming, the song— and it was more than music. It conveyed emotion, reason, it had meaning. And as he lost himself to the tune, his body drifted off in a roving, wobbling numbness, rather similar to how he felt after Astarion fed on him.
His last coherent thought was Astarion… I didn’t tell him where I was going… before the song fully overtook him. He lost his body to the pull and draw of the song; here the Myconids danced to see him, their Life-Chanter; here there was a jig, celebration for the new spores, and the song was full of light and life. Here there was a sorrowful dirge, for an old Myconid whose physical body was giving way. They were to be broken up into smaller shoots, and new life would sprout from their remains. Here there was a marching tune, as the perimeter was explored and expanded upon; here the song became call-and-response, as there were tasks to be done in a timely fashion.
Through it all, Vitaris stopped being Vitaris; he became one with the Colony, with the spores, with the song. It was bliss. He couldn’t hear the screaming, berating of the Emperor; couldn’t imagine the hate in his tentacled face as he’d crushed the Astral Tadpole beneath the heel of his boot. He couldn’t see Karlach’s hurt ire or Wyll’s sad desperation or the false face of Halsin as it broke and shattered into Orin’s blood-splattered, swirling form. He could not, in fact, remember any of these instances, or these people, or even, really, who he was; there was nothing but the music.
It would have gone on for much longer, but all at once the song became shrill and discordant; **danger**, the Myconids sang, **danger comes to the Circle**.
Vitaris— or Vitaris’ body, rather— stumbled into a run with the other Myconids, who approached the front line of whatever battle may be coming. Something began to prick at the back of his mind, interrupting the song— he tried his best to ignore it until Sovereign Spaw boomed loud as thunder **LIFE-CHANTER.**
The spell was broken. Vitaris blinked his bleary eyes— they felt so dry, like he’d not blinked in hours— and realized he was staring into the flame of a torch.
“You WILL give him back,” Lae’zel was screaming, fire in one hand, longsword in the other, “or there will be NOTHING left of your Circle save a smoldering crater.” Karlach stood behind her, flanked by Gale and Astarion.
“W-wait, stop!” Vitaris’ voice was thick, his words didn’t want to come; his throat was parched, and every muscle in his body hurt, like he’d been doing nothing but dancing for days. “It’s okay, I’m not— I came here by myself. Of my own volition.”
“You did?” Gale asked. “Why?”
Vitaris ignored him. “I’ll go back. We’ll go.” He felt atrocious, but he turned back to Soveriegn Spaw and bowed. “Thank you for sharing this experience with me. I will never forget it.” A lowing, deep melody responded, and Vitaris stumbled away, heading with the rest of the party towards the Ebonlake runic sigil.
“What is WRONG with you?” Lae’zel snarled, falling into step beside him; Vitaris made a pained noise, eyes over sensitive from the light of her torch.
“Leave it, Lae’zel,” Gale said, sounding equal parts disgusted and concerned, “he looks like he’s about to fall over.”
“I feel like it,” Vitaris muttered, squeezing his eyes shut against the flashing purple light and the too loud, too active, too human expanse of Rivington before him. He ended up having to lean on Gale to make it back to camp, and couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why he felt so weak.
Astarion reached out his hand, and Vitaris thought he was going to brush his cheek; instead, his fingers disappeared just to the right of Vitaris’ head, and he plucked forth a large mushroom, apparently sprouting from Vitaris’ hair.
“What were you doing?” His voice was distant and cold in a way it hadn’t been since their earliest days. Vitaris felt it like a twisting knife in his (very painful) gut.
Gale deposited him at Astarion’s tent; Vitaris crawled inside, thankful to not be vertical. Shadowheart picked that moment to attempt to descend on them, but Karlach put a hand on the cleric’s shoulder. “Leave it. There’s nothing you can say that Astarion can’t say… worse, I guess.”
Vitaris was left alone in Astarion’s tent for what seemed like forever; he felt like he’d been banished, or exiled. Just as he was getting ready to get up and go looking, Astarion pushed in through the doors and shoved a lukewarm bowl of mushroom soup into his hands.
“What,” he began, in a tepid, brittle tone, that suggested he was very much holding back, “the bleeding hells. Were you doing?”
“T-taking a break,” Vitaris said, lamely. He shakily lifted a spoonful of soup to his mouth and discovered it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
“A break?” Astarion half-scoffed, half snarled.
“Just for a little bit,” Vitaris insisted.
Astarion squinted at him. “A little— do you even know how long you’ve been gone?!”
Vitaris shrugged. “An hour or two?”
“Three days!” Astarion roared, almost coming off his feet with rage. “You’ve been gone for three. Days. Vitaris.”
“Oh.”
Astarion ran a hand through his white curls and spluttered indignantly. “I mean— do you even— we all thought— you’d been kidnapped. Caught. Indoctrinated. Killed. The Emperor couldn’t find you, and once he found you, he couldn’t reach you. What on earth were you thinking?!”
“I…” Vitaris’ bicolored eyes shifted down to stare at the ground. “I just… needed a break.”
“So you went to inhale some toxic spores and become a mushroom? A happy little day trip posing as an extant form of decay?”
Vitaris narrowed his eyes. “You don’t understand—,”
“Really?” Astarion all but spluttered. “I don’t understand the desire to cultivate dissociation in order to deal with all the horrible shit you can’t put up with? Me?”
Vitaris closed his eyes. He wished they’d left him down there and he’d danced himself to death. At least then this nightmare would be over and his body would have a purpose.
Astarion reached out and really did touch his cheek, this time, cupping it and brushing his thumb through tears Vitaris’ didn’t even realize were falling.
“I was… terrified,” his vampire said, in that heartbreakingly soft way, the kind that tied Vitaris up in knots, “I thought we’d lost you. I thought… the worst. Orin, maybe. Or even Cazador.” His brows knit with a barely concealed rage, but Vitaris saw his eyes were shining with unshed tears. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened, all at once.”
“I’m sorry,” Vitaris said, voice scratchy with disuse and dehydration. “I should’ve told you where I was going. But I— gods above, it sounds so pathetic, but I’m tired of everyone relying on me. I just needed to… not think, for a moment.”
Astarion’s face turned hard again. “You don’t get that luxury. You well and truly discarded that luxury when you saved Wyll from Mizora. Saved Karlach from Zariel’s hounds. Saved Gale from his suicide and saved me from… well.” He took Vitaris’ face in both hands, firmly squeezing his jaws. “If you want to not be relied upon, you need to stop being so damn reliable.”
Vitaris’ face broke in a shaky smile. “I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me.”
“Oh, my sweet, I hate you so much right now I am incandescent. I could light up the entire Underdark. But I love you just the same.”
Vitaris leaned in for a kiss, though he more or less fell forward, his abdominal muscles giving up the ghost after three days of constant movement and no nutrition. But it was all right— the empty soup bowl was discarded and Astarion swept him up into his strong arms. Vitaris trembled against his chest, shaking and hiccuping with little pathetic sobs as his exhaustion well and truly sank in.
Astarion sniffed. “You need a bath. And you taste like dirt.”
Now that he was laying down comfortably, the ache of his overused muscles hit Vitaris like a hammer. “I don’t think I can stand right now. Just— just throw me in the river, I guess.”
Astarion heaved a sigh and let his head loll back dramatically. “Fine, fine. I suppose the bath can wait, for now. It’s not like it’s any worse than normal, anyway. Do you know, while you were gone, Gale rustled up a most interesting author’s edition of A Pleasurable Deal…”