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Chapter Text

Astarion crouches in the wavering shade of a sand-stunted pine for two hours before he even thinks to go in the sun. 

It's stupid, is the thing. He woke up under golden light that lavished gentle fingers over his cheekbones and warmed undead flesh—but woke up under it, implying he's been there for even longer. Then he was exposed for those long, long seconds before his body moved for him and carried him to the shadows, and he isn't hurt. Very clearly, it isn't hurting him. He knows this. That fact hammers against the impenetrable wall of two hundred years. 

Instinct fears. Experience desires. But it is the raw absurdity of the situation, a madness he can hardly comprehend to wake up on a beach with the sun overhead instead of a back alley on his knees, that has Astarion stretch a trembling finger out of the shade. 

He moves slowly, so slowly, fear boiling through his skin like a tangible thing—and touches sunlight. Nothing happens. 

Nothing happens.

Astarion uncurls from where he'd tucked his limbs in as though distance is what keeps them from ash, ligaments popping and catching, tendons straining to carry him forward; the sunlight crawls up his knuckles, his wrist, his arm, his shoulder. 

He stands under the sun, staring wide-eyed at the white-gold above, and he doesn't burn. 

A vampire spawn in the mortal realm. A slave on unclaimed soil. A thing occupying the same space as a person. 

He has no idea where Cazador is, no chain snaring on his ribs to pull him to his master's side. His fangs ache from only normal hunger, not punishment for the ever-present fantasy of thinking blood. His body moves under no thoughts but his own. 

The thrall, gone. Cazador, gone.

Gods. 

He's free.

Astarion laughs enough he collapses, running his hands through the sand; gods, he could burrow underneath this beach, root into the darkness there and hide from the sun—but he doesn't have to. He can just lay here, squinting up at that ball of fire so high above, and exist. 

…there is a thought, ephemeral but stubborn, asking why he's existing here. 

Astarion stands. Looks around—this beach is not Baldur's Gate, nor anywhere close, given by its unblocked horizon. Just emerald trees, a forest so thick it seems untouched, and the flaming wreckage of… something violent and glistening. None of the tamed wilderness of the city.

He is not in Baldur's Gate. He is not in the kennel. There is the chance Cazador blundered to allow him the escape of total insanity, but that's honestly less likely than anything else. 

Memories are hazy things but there's something flitting about the edges of his mind, prodding for attention. Astarion frowns at nothing in particular. He had been… conjoling a target in tow, knees already slick with grime from the alley. And then an enormous fucking tentacle shattered him, and there had been restraints made of flesh, the stench of dissolving brain matter, a creature, his eye–

Astarion paws at his face. Digs nails under his eyelid—and feels something fucking move behind it, gnawing into soft tissue. Fuck. Fuck.

Air hisses through his teeth. He doesn't need to breathe but he's doing it anyway, because he's always been a stupid bastard when he panics. Not the time for that. Okay. He needs to think. He needs to fucking think.

Mindflayers. Illithids. Apparently Astarion doesn't have enough of a brain to serve as their meal, which is fucking formulaic in its uncreativity but they put something inside him and then– released him? More memories, bashing his fists against visceral walls and drowning in the stench of alien blood, fire licking across the transparent surface, shattering, falling. An impact. 

Then waking up beneath the sun on a golden beach. 

Astarion stares at his hands. 

What the absolute fuck is going on. 

Maybe—he remembers the tentacle, the great grasping thing that wormed its way through the alley and plucked him up from sucking that drunkard's cock. Maybe they destroyed Baldur's Gate? Down to the rock and rubble. Cazador is a vampire lord, but he can still die. If something crushed him—then crushed his coffin—maybe that's why the words are there but no longer a part of him. No longer the skeleton to puppet his flesh. 

Astarion marvels at the thought. At the brief sting of frustration that someone else got to kill Cazador, then the relief that floods over it. 

But– that doesn't make sense. The commands are still there, wrapped around his undead heart; they're just intangible. Malformed. Muted, in a way. 

He runs his tongue over his fangs. 

Perhaps he has gone insane. That would explain the absurdity. He cannot quite decide whether this is a preferable outcome to the alternative.

Movement. 

More than movement—heartbeats, the rush and pulse of blood moving through a living thing's veins. Not his master, not his siblings; Astarion's ears perk, anticipatory dread curling in his gut. 

Wherever this beach is, he's not alone. 

He pats himself down with rising panic—but there's only what he always has, what he is allowed by his kindly sire. No money. No weapon. No nothing. Just shitty old clothes he's repaired too many times to have any of the original and the desperate smile of a whore with a quota to fill. He's free—which means he is a vampire spawn in a very unforgiving world, and he's fucking defenseless.

Astarion is breathing again, this ragged pant through his nose. He grinds that urge under his heel and stands fully, adjusting his shirt, his curls—prettying up what remains in hopes it is enough. It's worked under every flavour of shade and shadow—now it must under sunlight. Under whatever the fuck is going on. He can lie through his pointy teeth about anything so long as it works. 

The movement continues, the thud of feet over shifting sands; it's coming from his left, a little behind him, and Astarion turns. Makes the movement a stretch, actually, so it's less suspicious; curls his wrists above his head, boots braced. Normal. A person. 

Against the backdrop of a setting sun, the orange-gold cast, the glory, the warmth, are two silhouettes. One carries a whip-thin line off their hip as though a blade; the other stands with a shorter form and thick rope of a braid swinging behind. 

Adventurers. Or something too close for comfort.

Their heartbeats don't match, one faster than the other. But inexorably, they are moving towards him. And Astarion is standing dead fucking center of a beach so abandoned it doesn't even have a convenient boulder stack to shelter behind, so they've clearly seen him. 

Survival. Keeping a hold of this freedom, impossible and transient though it might be. 

"Hello there, strangers!" Astarion calls, stepping forward.

The man—the most conventional adventurer possible, if Astarion cut him a bard's stories would likely bleed out—raises a hand in greeting, smile already on his face. He's unfairly handsome, rugged and lithe, one eye in a stone's grey. The woman at his side is not smiling, nor seemingly with any interest in salutations. Half-elven, adorned with divine accouterments. She's scowling. A cleric. Astarion adjusts his threat assessment accordingly. 

"Hello," the man says, and of course he's got a deep timbre as well. There are maidens in towers just salivating over him, Astarion already knows it. 

Well. There's the first step taken—his script is ripe to bubble to his lips, playful teasings about how lonely the night is or how interesting the latest gossip, meaningless statements, an invitation for more. But that isn't– he isn't in a flophouse. He's in the world. 

He doesn't know what happens in conversations where he isn't trying to trick someone back. 

The man, thank fuck, seems equally confused. His pulse is the one faster, a rabbit-fast thread of disorientation. He's bleeding, just a little. A trickle of scarlet through frayed locs. Saliva pools behind Astarion's fangs. 

Bite now and be killed. Bite now and waste the only chance at freedom he's ever had. Bite now and be just as fucking stupid as Cazador always said he is. 

The man is staring at him. 

"Hello," Astarion purrs, because all he can think of is restarting the script as if he can twist it into a different path. "I don't suppose you know what the closest town is?"

He takes another step forward, because proximity is always a key factor of entrapping a mark, the option of trailing a hand over thighs and under jaws. The woman is still scowling, but the man's expression is clearing, something like relief–

Astarion gets within an arm's length. Then, in perfect synchronicity, all three of them fold in half with a barked shout. 

There's a fire behind his eye, clawed and toothed and biting—he sees the expanse of hells and moon-wrought spears and a hellhound's acrid blood and dark robes piled over carved stone. He sees from a shorter perspective and from a body stronger than he knows; feels divine potential spark over the meat of his wrist and watches a dragon writhe through stormclouds. 

Then he is Astarion again, two other lives slipping through his fingers, and he is retching into golden sand. 

  "Fuck," he snarls, bile dripping through his lips. The miserable little tadpole is still biting, toothing into the soft tissue he fucking needs, and he hasn't fed in days to have enough blood to heal the damage. If it even can be. 

And, damningly, the other two are also keeled over, agony wrought on their features. "By the bloody Triad," the man groans, palm pressed firmly over his eye—the other, patterned stone, stares blankly at the beach. "You were on the ship?"

Ah.

The ship. The mindflayer ship. The thing scattered around the wayside in chunks of steaming flesh. 

"I was," Astarion says faintly. What few thoughts he'd managed to connect flee again, leaving him clutching hollowly without the iron bars of commands to chain him to understanding. "You were as well?"

The man nods, weary. "And now we're here, it seems, wherever here is." He glances at the sea, brows furrowed. "That's the Trackless Sea, at least. We're on the Sword Coast."

Then he blinks, shaking his head. "Pardon my manners—I'm Wyll, the Blade of Frontiers. I wish I could say we were meeting under more austere circumstances."

There is a tadpole burrowing into his brain matter—and theirs? Is that what the resonance was about?—and none of this makes any fucking sense. Still, he knows a prompt when he hears one. "I'm Astarion," he offers, and smiles, fangs hidden but eyes creased. "A pleasure, really. You're rather a welcome sight after all that."

It doesn't work on them both. The woman upgrades her scowl to a glare, as though Astarion is the one to blame for the mind melding. "You're infected."

"And this is Shadowheart," Wyll says. They must not be long-term companions, by how uncoupled they seem. Or maybe they are, and Astarion has lost the eyes to gauge relations when not within taverns and flophouses and whorerooms. 

The thought is a bolt of iron through his gut. He's good at nothing else. He cannot lose the ability to read people. 

Astarion smiles wider—flicks his ears out, adjusts his stance so his shirt falls more readily off his collarbones. Do either of them look at that? Are they averting their eyes from a malplaced sense of chaste chivalry or apathy?

He's breathing again. A reedy, thin pant through his teeth, like the whinging of a fucking child. Panic, fed with two centuries' worth of kindling, croons low through his marrow. 

Then Wyll winces. 

It's faint. Just a knot of tension down his spine, like smoke from a distant fire. Shadowheart doesn't react, but her heartbeat picks up. Both of them, still standing, yet kissed by an unknown anxiety. 

Like a reflection. Like something shared.

Like folding in half as his mind was ruptured into two separate lives. 

Astarion stops breathing, then. That pesky little instinct stolen from a body he no longer remembers. He stops breathing because he has, in all manner of definition, shut down. 

There's a– resonance, in this corner of his mind he rather tries to ignore, because it latches with jagged words instead of thoughts; the pocket where his siblings sit, where the seven children of the sire are made one. Where they are nothing more than the bastard who killed them. 

It isn't quite like this. But much like Astarion can always know where his master is, where he must drag his shattered form back to each morning despite the limitations of flesh, he always can feel his siblings; the hackled edges of Violet's rage, Aurelia's placid-lake calm, Leon's determination. 

The man—Wyll—has a taste like woodsmoke and crimson to his emotions, muted by a darkness underneath. Shadowheart feels like a piece of parchment erased too many times to make sense of the lines.

And he can feel them. 

Doors are rarely open on only one side. 

Astarion chews through the tissue of his own mind. Something squalls within him, shrieking fear-fear-fear, rooted and untouchable—the terror that is more a part of him than blood or bone. What makes and made him. Oh, there are other pillars alongside: wonder at the sunlight like glass beads upon lace and the sway of uncertainty like a ship rocking underfoot, but always the fear.

Mirrored. Whatever the bloody tadpole shoved into his eye does is psychic, beaming out his emotions for all to hear if they have one of their own. Letting them see him. Letting them feel him.

Astarion grabs his emotions and slams them into a fucking grave. 

Near imperceptibly, a tension spiders away from their gaze. Not feeling his cacophonous array of terror, for all it seemed to get lost in their subconscious instead of actively noted.

Or Astarion hopes it wasn't. Wyll's eyes are sharper than they were a moment before, as though he's had a hand at mental bonds and knows Astarion essentially went dark. As though he can feel the shield Astarion has made of his mind.

Better that than the fear. 

"–sening?"

He blinks. Comes back. Begins breathing again. "Hm?"

"I asked if you were okay," Wyll says, curious. "And if you were aware of what happened to us?"

Astarion presses a hand to his face. Beneath the skin of his temple is just bone, but nerves on the inside can feel the movement of the jagged little thing there, the memories of it screeching as it tore through soft tissue. The tadpole. He's calling it that because he doesn't know another name for it, but it's clearly something else. Something dangerous. 

"I don't," he says. "Other than that we have something in our heads."

"They're illithid parasites," Wyll says, and severity draws his face away from its boyish charms. His stone eye is lifeless. "In seven days, they'll transform us into mindflayers."

Ah.

It'll make him a monster. Another one. And likely another one without freedom. Astarion doesn't know why he keeps bothering to hope. 

He continues to not think. It's easier. Just pushes forward, voice light. "Is there no cure?" 

"Well, scholars say there isn't, but there also isn't much of a precedence of those infected by parasites having free reign of the Sword Coast to find one," Wyll says, brighter now. He chases the dread from his face as though a stray dog, but Astarion can still see it—can feel it, actually. 

Astarion's mind is closed off, buried in a grave under a shield as solid as he knows how to make them, but Wyll and Shadowheart haven't done the same. They're more open, emotions spilling out to the wider air. Wyll is still afraid. He's just smiling around it. 

Curious. Informative. Relieving, in a way. Astarion can still figure them out. He can still do this. 

Seven days. Seven days of freedom, seven days where he could lay beneath the sun and let it heat him from the inside out—or seven days where he could find a way to pry out the beast from his skull. 

Seven days to save himself.

To save himself forever, if he can just figure out what the tadpole did to remove his thrall. 

Astarion notes Wyll's rapier, Shadowheart's mace. Warriors, or familiar with the wilds at the very least; dangerous to him, but also dangerous to those with a hankering for flesh instead of blood. Astarion has claws dulled from digging at the faux-glass of the pod that contained him and fangs he doesn't know how to use. 

Strength is not his to wield. But it might be theirs. 

"You're looking for a cure," he says, and pushes a note of want into his voice, honeyed and offering. "I don't suppose your duo has room for one more?"

Wyll smiles. His mind—his tadpole—sings a faint song of relief. "We'd be happy to welcome you, Astarion. All the merrier in this impossible task."

Shadowheart continues to scowl, but she doesn't contradict. 

It's not acceptance, but it isn't rejection, and Astarion knows to welcome scraps. 

"Thank you," he says, and returns the smile with one of his own—a thin sort, teeth hidden, lips curled, eyes half-lidded. A stage above amicable, a stage below seductive; he'll need to figure out where they lie on that spectrum, but he'll find it. 

There is a beach warmed by the sun behind. There is a chance for freedom before. 

Two hundred years of misery. Seven days of more.

For that, Astarion would do anything. 

-

It turns out the ship—the nautiloid, apparently, because they're frequent enough to have a name in common—was not carrying only three tadpoles to hand out like party favours, and as Astarion slots himself into the gaps of Wyll and Shadowheart's little posse, more strangers keep appearing through the woodworks to join them.

There are four in total, and they're all fucking insane. 

Wyll is, at the very least, a predictable sort of menace, princely and heroic and panicking in the absentia of infants to kiss on the head—or murderous devils to slaughter, both are fit for a bard's tales—and he takes out those nerves by carving into every goblin they face. 

Shadowheart is much the same as she was on the beach, even as their number increases. The most curious aspect is who she chooses as her enemy. While Astarion fears her divine power with a primal unease, she best wields it as a healer—which is why, of course, she antagonizes the githyanki fighter who looks like it would not be a duel but a massacre. Lae'zel is marvelous company, actually, giving naught a shit about mortals beyond whether they carry instructions to her precious crèche. And she's entirely unaware of Faerûn. Astarion hopes that perhaps she does not even know vampires to recognize him. 

Gale is a wizard, which is rather explanation enough, though one oddly used to wilderness travel and the long demands of the road. Never far from a soliloquy, though, and eyes too sharp for his making. He'd be tricky, but all of them are, so he's merely another drop in the bucket. 

Four of them. Four adventurers, all with strength of their own, all with tadpoles gnawing at their varying supply of brains. 

Four of them to find a cure in the four days left. To do the impossible where it has never been done before. Wyll repeated the same script to each new person they found, always sounding sure even as his mind pulsed with that echoing dread. The concept was elaborated on, even, as Gale offered more scholarly information and Lae'zel a wealth of vulgarities to tack on to the end. If Astarion could pronounce any of the githyanki words, he could tear the mindflayers who infected him a miserable new asshole. 

Instead, he walks in a pack of five, and he watches them, and he never stops watching. 

Because they are, in a word, powerful. Not all with muscle or blade, but they do things that Astarion can't dream of. They could kill him. They could replace him. Seven days for an impossible task, and he brings nothing to table. 

Well. He brings some things. But they are things he would prefer not to be reduced to, if he can help it. 

He keeps his mind buried in the grave, tucked behind the shield; the others leave theirs flitting all over the place, emotions spilling loose. Even Wyll's tangential grasp on psionics or Gale's wizard studies aren't enough to restrain their minds, which could be humorous if it wasn't so confusing. Why six siblings gives Astarion more wherewithal to contort his mind into something hidden. 

Because they do not get his fear. They do not get anything of Astarion, tucked behind his shield as he stays. Safer to be here. Better to be a mystery than to be known. 

Astarion drags a hand through his curls, shaking his head free. Terribly difficult to be intriguing when he spaces out—there is a camp to be participating in. Both of those terms are littered with generous post-scripts. 

The mindflayers weren't polite enough for any supplies to be gifted alongside the tadpoles, but Wyll and Lae'zel both had packs from wherever they were picked up, which is at least a start. Wyll has a proper tent canvas, which he immediately offers to Shadowheart. She takes it without even attempting to feign being undeserving. The others have to scrounge for the tattered sails from ships strewn about the wrecked harbour and posts filched from the woods—tenterhooks, apparently, because there are words for these things. Astarion follows their lead and tries to pretend like he knows what he's doing. 

So it means that now, three days into traveling with these strangers, he sits in a camp that can scarcely be called so under a setting sun. 

He takes another bite of Gale's offered dinner—it's probably lovely, considering the bounty of old potatoes and mixed greens, but ash churns through his gut regardless. Not entirely nausea, though approaching. 

There's this odd… scent in the air, so faint he can hardly put it to words. A memory more than the real thing. It prickles at his mind. He continues eating for a distraction. 

"You," someone says. 

Astarion's ears flick and he turns, a smile already set in place; he'd heard her approach from several steps over, their residential githyanki not being one particularly for a thief's vocation. Even now, out of her armour and in something that looks… rather more in his purview than hers, she's a clatter of leaden footsteps. 

"Hello, dear," Astarion says, lounging back. Lae'zel is a difficult target to prise apart and he hasn't made much progress, considering they just shot her down from an abandoned trap this morning, but he likes to think she'll be easier than the others. As long as he doesn't fall behind, she doesn't seem as though she'll cut him open. More interested in strength than subterfuge. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Her brow furrows. "I will not take pleasure from you," she decides. "But those blades. They are yours?"

He continues smiling. "In the ways that matter, yes."

They are now, at least. Twin daggers, purloined from a tide-bloated corpse when Wyll and Shadowheart turned their backs—they both had weapons already, he hadn't wanted to be without, and the body was right there—and already they've seen action. He raises them now, polished and only a touch too long in the grip. The leftmost one spilled a goblin's blood. Took its life, once he finished fumbling around in its side and back and finally cut its belly open. Organs reek a little more than he thought they would. Or maybe that's just from living things instead of dead. 

Lae'zel frowns. Without asking—rude—she plucks them from his hand. Tension flares a threnody under his shield but she just runs one over her forearm, testing the keen. Her skin creases but doesn't split. 

"They are useless," Lae'zel declares, dropping them without a second thought into the dirt. "Take these."

Then, from her pack, she pulls two different daggers—one curved at the end, the other with a notch in the back. Most of Astarion's experience with blades comes from Godey, who didn't much care whether they worked so long as they hurt, but even to his untrained eye these are a fine prize. Long, tempered, strong. He can't recognize the leather binding the hilts, something with a ruddy purple pelt. 

He blinks without moving. Lae'zel scowls and pushes them closer. 

Is this her way of giving him a gift? Why? He met her less than half a day ago, and for all Wyll busted her out of that miserable hanging cage where she had been snared like a wild animal left to die, he hasn't done anything in particular to endear himself to her. Actually, he's done the opposite—she is trained in psionic abilities, a precaution of all githyanki against their sworn enemy, and she'd noticed his mental shield immediately. Hadn't mentioned it, not exactly, but he'd felt the wash of revulsion from her tadpole. 

And yet she's here. Offering him daggers. Freely.

"That is… surprisingly generous of you," Astarion settles on, brows up. 

Lae'zel tches, a derisive click of her tongue. "There is nothing of charity here. I will not fail to reach the crèche because of your inability to move forward. These are standard githyanki blades, given to children upon their first mission. Far better than anything in this realm."

Pragmatism, he can work with. 

Astarion does accept, then. They're heavy, enough he worries about his ability to properly wield them, but he can see the quality of the metal, the edges sharp enough to bleed. To make others bleed, which is rather the point. Anticipation pulses under that strange scent cloying up the corners of his mind. 

"Then you can be assured I will guard your back with these," he says. "Thank you so very much."

Lae'zel fixes him with a curious sort of look, slitted pupils bleeding black over green. "We will reach the crèche only if all your backs are guarded," she says. "I am strong enough alone—you travel with me to make sure the world does not gain any more ghaik."

Astarion is pretty sure it was them that shot her down from the cage. He is also pretty sure it is in his better interests not to mention that. 

"Of course," he agrees. Then, a potential thread: "And I'm beyond grateful to have you around should we begin to transform."

Lae'zel nods firmly. It isn't relief in her mind, because Astarion thinks she genuinely couldn't give two shits about whether they want her to kill them when they start growing tentacles, but he at least supports her, which is more than what Shadowheart did. 

"And," he settles on, inclining her daggers, "I'll return the favour, if it comes to that."

She huffs. "You could not kill me, even weakened by the parasite. My blade will meet your throat. I will end myself instead."

Well. Yes. That's true. Nothing about her reads as derision or scorn—it's a fact instead of insult. 

There is something rather odd in using the tadpoles, how easily they slot into what Astarion already does by reading how pulses jump or heartbeats quicken. Marks in whorerooms aren't equal—some were weepy to their cups in a bad way, others wanting conversations that would drag out to sunrise. Astarion got very good at parsing apart who would work off of those biological signals, the glaring things only visible to a vampire spawn. Adding the tadpoles just… elevates it, really. Makes him feel the emotion instead of merely guessing. 

So he knows that Lae'zel, through the brusque macrocosm her mind exists as, is watching him carefully to see whether he treats the transformation with the respect it deserves. 

"Then I will settle myself for an easy death," Astarion says magnanimously. "Though with these daggers, we should reach your crèche even sooner."

She nods again. Confirmation. Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, she marches back to the wider camp. 

Astarion blinks in her wake. 

His mind races. 

She gave him a… lesser fools would call it a gift, others a safeguard. Astarion calls it what it is—an opportunity. 

Lae'zel is a confusing simplicity. She wants them to reach her crèche, which is something like a military base that also houses mythical purifiers and perhaps a full hot springs treatment should such miracles be believed, and she entertains the others' fumbling heroism through frustration. She is obtuse. Malleable. Consumed in the desire to drive forward as though a blade. 

Strong. 

Astarion hasn't been thinking like he did before, because he's free, because he's out, but new threats are emerging. New realities about the world the kennel didn't require. The tune has changed. 

He's free now. He can get off his knees—and he can die standing, too weak for what's beyond. Already they've been attacked by a troop of goblins, where the others scorched throats and bashed heads while he fumbled to cut through soft stomach flesh. More dangers will continue to present themselves. And Lae'zel is clearly strong. 

Astarion runs a thumb over the cleft of her blade. 

Cold pragmatism tells him not tonight, too early, too needy. She has done the equivalent of meeting his roving eye in a tavern; to slink his way over now is to be desperate. Some marks wanted that, wanted to feel so fucking gorgeous the world threw itself at their feet, but she doesn't feel like the type. Not pathetic enough. 

But for the first time in these three days, Astarion contemplates an actual plan. 

He'll find his way into her bedroll and sweet talk her into sharing blood and granting tolerance. Lying is a comfortable bastion to shelter in but should vampirism become a known thing, perhaps he can endear himself enough that she defends him. That he can continue on.

Seven days until he's damned. Seven days until he's remade, as much not his choice as the first. 

Astarion glances around the camp, where Lae'zel is already kicking through the remains of the stone pile gathered for their firepit for something to use as a whetstone, ears pricked and eyes steady. Wyll sits with Shadowheart, discussing something or another while Gale packs up from their evening meal. 

Four targets—four choices. Four options to wile his good graces into, to learn just how much he must grind down his sharper edges—four options for those that will protect him. Lae'zel is the most likely, but slim pickings are still pickings. He'll get someone. 

He can do this.

-

But he can't trance. 

Astarion splays himself upon the bedroll like a pliant devotee, anchored into the soil. The rest of the party is asleep, circling the campfire, heartbeats slow and breathing steady—and yet he's there, disgustingly conscious and shaking with it.

It isn't kindness that keeps him staring at an impassive sky. Something is wrong; all the breathless wonders his reverie has cradled in gentle hands after two centuries deprived are gone and even mortal sleep escapes him. He's just awake, still as a corpse beneath the crescent moon. 

Not a corpse. He's managed that lie successfully—calling himself a magistrate, calling himself a person—but it has been three days of this ruse, and he can feel it beginning to splinter. Not outwardly. Just within. 

Three days of choking down ash and dust. Three days without blood. 

On itself, that is nothing. Fucking hells, he's weathered longer absences when Cazador was pleased, rare though that was. But that is three days atop what came before, and he can't remember when Cazador last allowed him blood, if it was anything notable at all. The remaining scraps are eroded beneath travel and fighting and moving, so much more than the kennel, than the flophouses. He drains like a sieve. He drains like a void. 

Fucking or getting fucked was a measurable use of blood, allowing endless nights be tracked and counted. Adventuring is not. It could have been one tenday since his last meal; it could have been five. He doesn't know. His gut howls. 

Astarion digs his claws into the dirt around the bedroll. He's still staring up at that velvet-dark sky, thinking of the sun and the beach and the freedom and the hunger.

Something distant continues to reek and his senses cloud, thoughts tangling in a web of shredded wire. The night is achingly silent. Though he knows there should be the rustle of reeds and cluttering wildlife, sounds of life, he cannot hear it. His fangs ache like a mockery of heartbeats. 

Astarion doesn't remember sitting up. But then he is, hunched over his bedroll, claws dislodged, and he isn't breathing, but he is thinking. 

Or– less thinking, more wanting. Saliva pools behind his fangs now that he's allowed the hunger to rise from where it is caged between his ribs, latching onto his skull to dredge through the smothering dirt. It croons to him, sharper. A tenday at the least. So many days, all of them empty, and there is more than rats here; more than rotten corpses and the laugh of a broken-jawed skeleton. There is blood. Thinking blood. 

Three commands make him and have been strangled. Astarion hasn't returned or obeyed and known. He's far the fuck away in a primeval forest without a single stone of the kennel as punishment. He's free, as he keeps reminding himself.

He knows what it is like to live under another's mercy, and Cazador has none. But he's still bowing, still following all the commands he can though they do not puppet him. Still obeying his master.

There are four others in this camp, and gods, but he is tired of starving. 

Simple reasoning. Process of elimination. Lae'zel just granted him those daggers, the most readily-available thread to pull. Gale smells foul, a rot to his blood in poison instead of salvation; Shadowheart wields divine magic he is not willing to test his resistance to.

And then Wyll. 

The man, the leader, the hero. The Blade of Frontiers, yes, and a capable warrior with his bardic magic; perhaps that makes him taste like mulled wine, profound and rich, or youth has softened his edges into something saccharine. 

He is a thinking creature. He is a person.

Astarion has broken three commands but not the fourth. 

Wait, a terribly small part of him shrieks, the part collared to a piton in a doorless room very, very deep below. You shouldn't do this– what is going on–

Astarion moves. 

He isn't coordinated—lethargy at his limbs like oil, heavy in his peripheries. He shouldn't be this starved but he fumbles, an inelegant beast, too-long limbs and hunched center of gravity. His bedroll is kicked aside. A tremble deep through his bones; numbing saliva drips past his lips to smear on his chin. Slavering. 

Wyll is the closest to him, tucked near the fire. No tent, after he gave it up for Shadowheart. Just open, exposed, flat on his back and eyes closed. Like he's asking for it. 

He's a hunter, that miserable part screams. You know that– you're risking everything– something is wrong–

Astarion crouches over him, hands braced in the dirt. Wyll shifts, just a flutter of his eyelids, but he's asleep. He has to be. 

His fangs pierce Wyll's neck. 

For a moment, it is elysium. Hot, rich, full—more than any festering beast in the sewers and instead a banquet, something spread before the gods, divine and impossible. No fur between his teeth, just flesh, just the pulse of a person's heart and ichor and ambrosia and answer for everything he has ever been deprived–

Wyll's eyes snap open. 

There is only instinct behind them; he gets a hand around Astarion's shoulder and wrenches, tearing him free with a spray of scarlet over the grass. The bedroll shifts—reveals his rapier, ready and waiting, because he's a monster hunter, he's lived his life in the wilds, he knows what it means to be attacked, why, why is Astarion here–

Iron plunges through flesh. There is a blade in his gut. 

Astarion keens, ratcheting backwards. He contorts, fumbling, hands pawing at his stomach. Cuts his fingers on the edge, grasping at where it punctures through his shirt, bloodless where it emerges through his back, scouring at the dirt. The hilt. He needs to pull it out. He's choking. 

The world swims and staggers like a dying man. A figure sitting up, eyes pale with shock. "Astarion–"

He warbles, tongue thick and thoughts fleeing. He grabs at the rapier and flinches as it cuts his palms, unable to comprehend why this won't work. The scent keeps getting stronger, blurring his thoughts, drowning out everything but the crimson coating his fangs. His back hits the kennel's stone wall but it feels like soil, like nothing, which Cazador would never allow this doesn't make sense–

"Astarion!"

A summons, sharper. He kicks out at nothing, too far gone to present Godey with his willing wrists. He can fight until he's commanded not to, can struggle for just a moment to feel anything, to remember fire before it is burned from him. 

Hands, calloused, heavy, slam into his shoulders. Astarion chokes around a hiss, clawing at the dirt. The world is bitter black and he bares fangs at whatever swims above him. Eyes. 

Green eyes. Slitted. Familiar.

Lae'zel's fingers dig into his shoulders, keep him pinned, wrapped like a burial shroud. She's crouched behind him, poised as though in battle. Her heartbeat thunders. She is a moment from cutting out his throat. 

He stares up at her for a fractured second. 

Still his thoughts skitter and bolt but there are enough of them saying the same things for consciousness to connect. There is blood in his mouth and over his face, choking the hunger without taking its bite. Because he bit. Because he bit Wyll in the dead of the fucking night and was caught. 

Gods fuck him, he's ruined it. Three days—three fucking days and now they're going to kill him because he couldn't keep himself under control for a fucking second–

His shoulders hit the ground harder, rapier rasping over one of his ribs. "Stop fighting," Lae'zel snaps. 

"I won't," he babbles. He keeps twisting under her hands regardless, ratcheting deeper into the soil. Maybe he can run. If he can just get them off for a second, enough to buck their strength. The shadows are preferable to an ending. 

Two miserable fucking centuries wishing for death. Now he refuses to take it. 

His vision is slanted from being skewered to the fucking ground, but he can see the rest of the party get up—Gale, face ashen, Shadowheart with a palmful of divine fire. And Wyll, Blade of Frontiers Wyll, monster hunter Wyll, standing at the front, hand curled as though he wants to be holding his rapier except for how it is housed in Astarion's fucking stomach. 

Two bleeding punctures over his neck. A line of blood, crimson-dark and thick, weeping under his shirt. 

Astarion's chest hitches under Lae'zel's hands. 

"Look," he starts, frantic. "I'm not a threat. Truly, I'm just– it was a mistake, nothing more. You don't have to do this."

He has no script for this, no two-century pattern to follow. Just the shuddering ecstasy of a person's blood and disgust radiating out from four separate tadpoles. His shield seizes, fear-fear-fear battering against the inside. He can't fucking think.

He bucks against Lae'zel again—tries to heave the rapier out of the ground through force of will alone. It scrapes along his spine like a funeral dirge. 

"Cease this!" Lae'zel barks. "I will not warn you again, istik. You are not to move."

"If you stay still we can talk this out," Wyll says, blunt. The opposite is implied. He hasn't stepped forward yet. His rapier is still pinning Astarion to the ground. 

Shadowheart's face is underlit by golden flames. "He's already progressed past talking, hasn't he?"

Astarion wheezes air through clenched teeth. All his focus is on how Lae'zel's hands bite into his shoulders, how his thrashing leveraged nothing but the ache where bruises would form. He's brittle, breakable. Any of the party could kill him. It won't be difficult, now that they know what he is. The firepit is full of charcoal-sharpened sticks. 

"And he can explain himself," Wyll says. He touches a hand almost unconsciously to the side of his neck, where blood continues to trickle out; less than a normal wound. Astarion bit him too far to the left to hit his vein. He's never tried before. 

All he can think about is the blood. 

Wyll looks at him, splayed so piteously over the soil. Astarion tries to go stiff, to lay how he was thrown, limbs askew and crooked. Not a threat. The man's mismatched eyes bore into him. 

"I am going to remove my rapier," Wyll says, "and we are going to talk. Do you understand?"

Terms. Conditions. Astarion nods, frantic. 

"I hate to waste spells at night that are better used the next day," Gale tells him, matter-of-fact. "So please don't make me use hold person. We can talk like civilized folk."

"Instead of those who bite each other," Shadowheart says dryly. She is still holding that fire, tongues licking the air above her palm with a spectral glow. "I think you know not to run until we've talked, Astarion. I don't imagine vampires are very fond of clerics."

Vampires aren't fond of anyone, in no small part due to how no one is fond of vampires. By the look in her night-dark eyes, she has none of Gale's aversion to squandering spells. Astarion keeps his mouth shut. Just continues nodding. 

"Don't move," Wyll says—soothes? warns?—and nods to Lae'zel. In tandem, she pushes down as Wyll pulls out. 

The rapier squelches free with a gouge against his spine—pain is immaterial and Astarion breathes through the absence, dead organs slithering around open space. Wyll steps back, glancing down the length of the blade; instead of blood, a viscous rot clings to the metal. Remains of Gale's meal he'd choked down and not yet had the time to throw up. Wyll's brow furrows.

Astarion wets his lips. It carries the last of the blood into his mouth, coating his tongue with sparks of immortality—and then he swallows to send it away. Not the time. He has one chance to explain himself; wiping the slate clean, though it will be forever marred by this. His thoughts are still clustering and congealing in his skull, too worn, too sluggish, but that can't be an excuse. It is survival or failure. This has to work. 

"I apologize," he croaks, and tries for a smile. Is quite certain he doesn't achieve it, by the sour pulse from Wyll's tadpole. "I really didn't mean to, I swear. There's something in the air, I don't know what–"

A stick snaps in the surrounding darkness.

It echoes—shock ripples through the party's shared mental space, Wyll's grip on his rapier tightening. Astarion's explanation, pitiful and half-formed, shatters. They are not alone. 

"Kaincha," Lae'zel spits, springing to her feet; a battle stance takes her, though her longsword isn't in her hands. Fists are enough for the moment. "Who is there? Show yourself and be slain."

Astarion twitches without her hands pinning him down. He could– he could get up and leave. Gale has both turned to the sound's direction, his magic focused elsewhere, and Wyll's tadpole has a bristling line of paranoia temporarily pointed at something else. A chance. He shifts, getting a hand over the grass. 

Divine fire scorches an open palm. Shadowheart stares him down. Astarion goes still like the corpse he is. 

Then, from behind Shadowheart, through the thick of the trees, a man emerges. 

He has the look of an adventurer, born and bred for the wilds. Leathers, straps, belts, pouches, crowned with an unkempt beard and hooded eyes.

"My apologies for the surprise," he says, voice mellow. The man takes his foot off one half of a shattered branch, a deliberate announcement of his presence. He hefts a crossbow aloft. "But I thought better than approaching too quickly."

The surprise is still very much there. Wyll's coiled tight at the ready, rapier up. Then his tadpole blanches, mirrored on his face; because he stands at the front of a clearing with someone flat beneath him, the aroma of blood heavy in the air. More is splattered over his neck, pooling in the pockets above his collarbones. 

"This isn't what it looks like," Wyll says. 

That draws a huff of laughter, surprised and open. "I believe you," the man says. "I would be a poor monster hunter to think this situation was any fault of yours."

He raises his crossbow, aimed at nothing in particular, and bares a crest on its underside. A halfmoon, edges embroidered in deep forestry. The mark of the Gurs.

Cutthroats. Vagrants. Thieves.

And, most damningly: murderers.

Astarion is still flat beneath Shadowheart's gaze, still terrified, yet he bites clean through his lip. Pain is not enough to snuff the plume of fury. 

"A hunter?" Lae'zel repeats, the first interest since the entirety of this hells-be-damned adventure. "You do not seem capable."

"I do my best," he says diplomatically, taking another step forward. Wyll tenses—Astarion stiffens. "And I do apologize; I had thought it would be traveling alone, and that my methods would limit its suffering." He bows his head to Wyll. "I am to blame for your injury, if you will allow me to heal it."

Wyll blinks. Surprise filters through him, piercing the haze of battleworn instincts. Some spark of bardic magic is doused out, though his rapier stays upright. He looks at Astarion. 

He tries to stay still, to flatten his limbs, to bare his neck—the mannerisms of a lamb beneath the wolf's fangs. Of a wolf pretending quite desperately to be a lamb so it is not slain by the farmer. But nothing seems to fit together—even the pain in his gut is a mercurial concept, distant as a grave. He can't focus. He can't fucking focus.

Wyll turns back to lock eyes with the hunter. "Astarion doesn't act like this," he says, a strange clarity. "What did you do?"

"A pinch of powdered ironvine," the Gur says. "It incites vampires, worsens their instincts, heightens their madness. I feared it would stay hidden unless I drew it out."

Drawn like a fucking rat into the cage, prize laced with poison. Astarion whines through his teeth, shaking—at least that's an answer. A something. Because the scent continues to clutter up his thoughts, boiling under the memory of Lae'zel's hands and Wyll's rapier, shredding rationale beneath this iron-thread terror that had been anger that had been hunger. Still here. He needs to be present, to be thinking. He needs to beg mercy and plead off what is going to happen; to try and save himself from what he knows is coming. He needs to fucking run.

Shadowheart holds divine fire and watches him. There is a rapier slick with innards.

"Powdered ironvine," Wyll repeats. 

Astarion doesn't know the name, nor the meaning, but he can feel the effect—can grasp the wriggling bloody tail of it within his skull, a needling destruction as sure as starvation. It's like he's back in the kennel, something barking and slavering at the bit for anything without thoughts of consequence. He knew Wyll was a monster hunter. And he still fucking bit. 

He claws at the ground, not daring to struggle up. Blood burns in his gut. It is not enough to fill but plenty to damn him. 

"An alchemic effect," Gale says, his own tadpole simmering with curiosity. He tilts his head to the side. "What is your name, stranger?" 

The Gur nods. "I am Gandrel; you are?"

"Gale of Waterdeep, wizard of some renown," he says. "And I'd like to use a dash of my skill, if you'll allow it—I believe your ironvine is causing some distress."

There is a pause. A moment of consideration. 

Then Gandrel nods. "No sense in aggravation now," he agrees, and extends a hand. "I set it upon my inner wrist."

Gale waves his hand with a flash of prestidigitation, a puff of smoke, and Astarion sags—a spider-thin web snaps in his mind and the thoughts it had corralled come tumbling back, howling for space. The scent is gone. The scent and its madness is gone, and what is left is a rapier through his stomach, stone against his back, Lae'zel's hands on his shoulders; a Gur hunting him. A party that knows his vampirism. A party he bit.

That sliver of consciousness begging him not to bite is the majority, now. It is the sanity and the sense. It is the trained dog that knows how to roll over when prompted, and Astarion didn't do that. He savaged his master instead. He ruined everything.

Lae'zel stares down at him, backlit by the distant moon. "Control yourself," she says. 

"I will," he croaks, words rasping along the edge of his tongue. There is a fractured relief amidst the terror; at least he will die in his own mind instead of the beast he becomes. "I won't do anything. I promise."

She clicks her tongue and shifts as though to release him, fists unclenched. Astarion waits a moment with bated panic, watching the space between them increase—moving back, moving away. Then he gets his hands beneath him, ignoring the line of fire through his gut, and begins pushing to his feet. 

Gandrel raises his crossbow. 

The clearing halts. Astarion goes stiff. 

"I would ask you not to do that," Gandrel says. If it is a threat, it is one said mildly, his face never losing its unstrained warmth. "It is going to run, and I fear what damage it will do in its efforts to escape."

Shadowheart's palms are still burning; Gale is still watching him. Astarion isn't going to fucking run. He shakes, instead. 

"I think you misunderstand," Wyll says, cautious. He has not released his rapier—Gandrel has not lowered his crossbow. "Astarion is a member of our party. He travels with us."

"Then it has tricked you," Gandrel says. He sounds almost mournful. "It is not an elf but a vampire spawn; one more dangerous than it seems."

Astarion isn't dangerous. He has dulled claws and untested fangs and more commands than sapience—even here, away from Cazador, he is a skulking thing under the pantomime of personhood. He is still shaking. He wishes he could stop. 

Wyll shifts weight back and forth. There is an eldritch tension in his mind now, something poised like clutching talons. Hard to be willingly ignorant with two punctures in his neck. 

In absence of a response, Gandrel lifts his free hand, palm up. From his prone angle, Astarion can only see a fraction, but it is enough. 

A needle, made of an iron so dark it seems as coal. Thin and poorly carved, too thick to serve as an awl or other mason's labour, crooked to one side. Despite its size, it seems to pull at his arm, a weight more than its mass. 

Gandrel turns his hand. 

The needle rotates to point at Astarion. He turns again. It maintains its target. 

"I know what it is," Gandrel says simply. "I bartered for knowledge of its position, and I am protected against its charms. Whatever it told you was lies. It is a monster from Baldur's Gate, and I have long sought its capture." 

Capture. Gur. 

Cazador.

The ironvine is gone but something beyond rationality makes Astarion surge, kicking at the ground. He lurches to his knees and turns, claws digging in, released like an arrow—and then Lae'zel barks a curse and crashes into him, tackling back to the dirt. He buckles under her, mind awash in a manifested hellscape, tearing at her grip. It doesn't yield. He thrashes. 

Wyll's hands knives through the air. "Astarion, stay down!"

He wheezes against Lae'zel's arms, drawn taut upon the rack. "Stop this," she snarls, hauling him up so he is sitting, facing the party. Her hands encircle his shoulders, unfailing. A whine locks behind his fangs, subhuman; nothing connects in his mind. Capture. Gur. Cazador.

Gandrel hasn't lowered his crossbow. Its bolt watches Astarion with an iron eye. "Now you see," he says. "I can assure you, I am a trained monster hunter, and this is not my first time dealing with vampires. I can transport it safely back to Baldur's Gate without fear of any others getting hurt."

"We aren't killing him," Wyll says, hotter now. "And you aren't, either–"

Shadowheart steps forward. 

She points at him, sacred fire still simmering along the edges of her hands, a gold so dark it seems bloody. "You can't take him," she says, monotone, as though this entire conversation is so rote she cannot understand why it is happening. "He's infected—we all are. And unless you're feeling up to wrangling a mindflayer, going back to Baldur's Gate isn't an option."

For the first time, Gandrel falters. Shadowheart holds his gaze, mind bleeding cold focus. A current of unease is ruthlessly squashed. 

"There's a mindflayer ship on the coast," she says, nodding in some inane direction. "Crashed and destroyed now, but not before cursing us with tadpoles. We're on our way to find a cure before transforming."

Astarion scarcely dares to breathe. He doesn't know what is happening. 

Gandrel's hands tighten around his crossbow. He looks around the party, to all the others. "Is this true?"

Lae'zel scowls. She shifts, still holding Astarion, but with enough give to glare at the hunter. "The ghaik are dead, but their problems are not. You will not stand in the way of my purification."

"What she means is yes," Gale says, swooping in. He's smiling pleasantly, hands spread. "And it is quite the story, if you catch my drift, but one I think best to tell when everyone is comfortable. Here, allow me–"

He cups his palms together and drops a spark into the firepit; within moments, he coaxes a blaze through the last of their gathered wood, an ethereal mage hand grabbing more from their surroundings. "Will you join us, my friend?"

Gandrel doesn't lower his crossbow. He stands there, not stiff but unrelaxed, too caught up in the tension despite how he seems to be open to the idea. Astarion doesn't move either. He could root into the soil here, a statue, a memory. There is a whisper of something crueler than hope here; a chance.

The party is doing something.

"We can talk without weapons," Shadowheart says. She doesn't glance over, but her tadpole twitches, the sheen of a prompt. "He won't run." 

Lae'zel's hands. Divine fire. Hold person. 

"Of course," Astarion rasps. He dips his head as though a bow, too deep for mere acknowledgement. All his pretty words, his aphorisms; Gandrel's presence defangs them. He is a creature made to lie about his existence. Having the curtain ripped away is a garrotte. "I won't."

Slowly, cautiously, Gandrel withdraws his crossbow. He hitches it to the side of his pack, keeping the arms extended and bolt loaded, but no longer actively aimed. Astarion feels four identical pulses of relief. 

His thoughts are still whinging beasts. He doesn't understand.

"I will admit to preferring a good sunset for storytelling, but night has its own charms," Gale says, chipper, bright—he continues fixing the fire, summoning more mage hands to pluck their surroundings dry of branches. "And we do have rather a story for the ages, all things considered. Sit, my friend—we've little in the way of food or water to offer, but I'm sure I can find something."

Something about the wizard's boisterous hospitality makes Gandrel look away from Astarion, focusing on the conversation. Eyes drawn away. Astarion exhales fragile air, lungs half-inflated and weary with it. 

Lae'zel tches, derisive. "It will only be a story once I am purified," she snaps, but releases him—marches to her bedroll, longsword leaping to her hand. Away. No more hands on his shoulders. 

Astarion doesn't move, because he was told not to run and moving feels too similar, but he is– he is present. He's thinking. The powdered ironvine is gone with a gorge of terrible understanding left in its wake, and between that is a daze of fear so potent it circles back to pacifism. To sit there as though a doll, eyes blank and face empty. 

The party hurled him aside and demanded answers. A Gur arrived and offered them. And somehow, instead of chaining him up for Gandrel to take, they're speaking about a story.

He's missing something. That much is very clear. But knowing he's stupid doesn't actually solve the fucking problem. 

Wyll exhales, lowering his rapier. He frowns at the rot over the metal and trails a hand an inch above; a spark of bardic magic and the decomposing food melts away, dissolving into smoke that smells of brimstone. The last evidence of Astarion's façade, choking down meals as though they were nourishment. 

There is blood slicking Wyll's neck. 

But the hero doesn't acknowledge it, sheathing his rapier without flourish and turning to the party as a whole. Gale is yammering to Gandrel, who seems entirely flummoxed by the verbosity but responds in stilted kind, and Lae'zel is patrolling the far reaches like a hackled wildcat. Shadowheart stands to the back, watching over, arms crossed. 

Thank you, Wyll mouths, directed to her—Astarion barely catches it. She doesn't bother with a response, eyes still hooded and flat. Her tadpole shirks unease again. 

More things he's missing. None of this makes any sense.

Astarion stays silent. There's still the matter of the hole through his sternum, but he's a little distracted on other problems. The injury is hard to be spotted, even, considering there had been an ounce of reason past the ironvine for why he'd chosen tonight to bite—he doesn't have the blood for an arterial bleed. Just a splattering of scarlet, invisible in the dark of night. He curls over it regardless, tense as a caged bird. 

A cerebral pulse of disquiet. Wyll is looking at him—when their gazes meet, the hero inclines his head to the campfire, where a merry orange heat crackles. Six logs spaced out around, a perch for each member. The rest of them are already sitting. The implication is clear. 

Astarion stands slowly, each movement deliberate. Walking is even moreso; his nightclothes seem intangible, billowing, too easy to rip off. No weapons, just claws. Just monstrosity.

He settles on the stump, Lae'zel to his right and Gale left, Gandrel opposite. There is a fire between him and the hunter. It does not feel like enough. 

"As I was saying," Gale continues, waving a hand, "I managed to teleport out of my containment, though the parasite greatly affects my spellcasting and threw me awry. A quick mishap with a portal and generous summoning of a nearby tree to pull me out later, and I was wandering the coast when I stumbled onto the rest of this party." He taps a finger along the side of his temple, above the strange, ink-black tattoos caressing the edge of his eye. "We have a… psychic connection, I believe is the best way to say it. Like senses like, and can respond in rather unpleasant ways. But it has helped our motley crew come together, which is a silver lining I'm happy to accept!"

Gandrel nods, hesitant. His eyes are uncomfortably sharp, cutting through the gloam with experience—he isn't looking at Astarion, but next to Gale is too close. Astarion digs claws into the wood until it splinters. 

"But we haven't escaped our fate quite yet. Seven days until transformation, though we haven't felt a symptom of change to this point. Lae'zel has high hopes–" it is not hope, she corrects "–that a githyanki crèche is our salvation, and there is one within the area." He smiles a touch ruefully. "We're venturing off in a vague direction it could be; a tenday ago I could have divined its exact location, but with these parasites, I am reduced to guesswork."

Then Gale sighs, eyes closing. "And it is the catalyst for something larger than us, I fear. Goblins we've encountered keep speaking of something called the Absolute—a new deity, they seem to think? It likely isn't difficult for some sufficiently powerful being to convince goblins of such, but the fervour and the spread is concerning, particularly how they seemed to recognize the parasites' power. If I were a pessimist, I would fear a new cult has formed."

Silence stretches in wake of his soliloquy. Gale reopens his eyes and nods to Gandrel, smiling pleasantly once more. 

The Gur just sits there, heartbeat heavy and irregular. Some vicious satisfaction flares in Astarion's gut. 

"I see," Gandrel says eventually, though he clearly fucking doesn't. "When did this happen?"

Lae'zel scowls. "Less than three nights from now. Did you not notice the gh'ath as it crashed?"

"I have been inland for the past tenday," he says. "I haven't seen anything of illithids."

Astarion bites back a frown. 

That feels… off. A tenday here, however far they are from Baldur's Gate, in addition to the days of travel—he has only been missing from his master's side for a few days. Cazador couldn't have sent someone that fast, particularly with Astarion ending up on this forgotten patch of map. 

Gandrel must be lying. Trying to convince the party that he is merely a valiant monster hunter doing his duty for Faerûn, killing those that deserve to be killed. It would hardly be in good form to name the one who hired him when they are a monster as well. Perhaps even a mention would serve as summoning—three syllables, Ca-za-dor, and red eyes gleam from the shadows. Wouldn't that be just fucking fitting after this all?

Astarion unpries nails from his palms. 

"Three days," Gandrel repeats. "And you only have seven?"

"Four, now," Gale says. His eyes are sad. "That is why we are running ourselves rather doggedly towards this crèche; if we do not reach it, well." He shrugs a shoulder, mind shivering through an odd fear. "Then we will have to decide how we end the threat before it can bloom."

"I am sorry," Gandrel says, and he must be a fantastic liar indeed because it sounds sincere. "I did not know what burden you were carrying; to choose between ending your life and hoping for a miracle."

Lae'zel hasn't unnarrowed her eyes in several long minutes. "It is not a miracle. It is the crèche of the githyanki."

He inclines his head. "My apologies."

She huffs. 

Astarion chances a look around the campfire—the rest of the party is watching the hunter, eyes hooded. Caution flickers through their minds, their pulses erratic; they're more in sync than he's ever seen them. Even acerbic Shadowheart is merely watching. 

Then Gandrel is the one who nods, a vague gesture of his head. "This is more than I could have thought," he says. "Even in all my years, I don't know of a way to restrain a mindflayer, nor the havoc it would spread across the coast. And to think of an entire cult of them is…" he trails off without finishing. 

"You believe us," Gale remarks. 

"I do," Gandrel says. Something changes—a flicker in his pulse, a quickening. His gaze flicks up to lock with Wyll's. A switching of the target. Dread pools in Astarion's gut. "But I have a tale of my own, if you will hear it."

There it fucking is.

The Gur, directing his sob story to the most heroic of the bunch, precocious Wyll and his Blade of Frontiers habit—Gandrel's eyes are wide and earnest. There is still a bolt in his crossbow. 

Wyll nods, because he is the type to respond when baited. 

"I am a monster hunter," Gandrel says. "But this is no regular hunt, not for me. I am on a mission from my tribe, back in Baldur's Gate, to find the one who attacked us in the night. We were unprepared, and though he was fought back, it was not before he took several of our members. Including–" he draws off, head dipping. His voice quiets. "Chessa and Kass. My daughters."

Astarion goes cold. That– he has a vague recollection of that night. Another of Cazador's directions, another batch of targets, another inescapable path forward; and he did it, without needing a command, because he hasn't needed commands in a very long time for things such as that. 

And, much like his vampirism, that is now bared to the party. 

Four pulses of iron-hot surprise snake through the tadpoles. They're looking at him; the weight of their eyes burrows into his skin, voracious like maggots. Like retribution. 

Of course they're worried about the fucking children. It doesn't much matter if the monster would have been lovingly flayed and cored out with holy water should the missive not be followed; there are children missing. 

Missing and drained and dead, the lucky bastards. They got to leave.

Astarion isn't sorry about them. Gods, he couldn't give two shits about any way they're cut. He will never disobey Cazador but there had been a vague glee at this command, a mission he welcomed; gather up the descendants of his murderers for their own tribunal. 

There is none of that glee now. Just terror. 

"I… see," Wyll says. He still hasn't released his rapier. "I am sorry, Gandrel. I didn't know."

Astarion grits his teeth. Wyll is looking at him. Wyll is looking at him, his tadpole swimming with a hesitancy so bright it appears to be screaming about the children, and Astarion is not looking back, and he refuses to flinch.

"That is why I hunt him," Gandrel says, watching Wyll carefully. "It is not a cruelty; I don't seek to kill him, merely bring him back to my tribe for answers. In the hope that my children are still alive."

Fuck. Fuck.  

Gandrel's a right fucking bastard who can see who the easiest to manipulate in the party is, the soft one, the heroic one. The one who has likely killed vampire spawn before, who knows their monstrosity through the lens of his black-and-white world. 

The party just finished explaining that separating him is to damn the coast with a mindflayer. That Astarion can't be brought back to Baldur's Gate without adding to the death count by an order of magnitude. That Gandrel can't do whatever the hells he's been paid to do. 

Wyll is still fucking looking at him.

"Astarion," he says, quiet, as though this is a tender moment and not an interrogation, "what happened to Gandrel's children?"

They got drawn and fucking quartered, for all he knows. Too small for a proper meal, so maybe they were bled like pigs down to rot in the sewers, all that blood wasted. A stack of miniature bones given to Leon as yet another shitty prize for being the best behaved.

There is a fine line between seething and shaking. Astarion threads it with experience. 

"I don't know," he says. It is both sweet and flat. 

"You don't know?" Wyll repeats, incredulous.

Astarion digs fangs into the cleft of his lip. For a moment, he imagines cracking his shield, letting the others see the truth of his words—but that isn't what they'll see. They'll be consumed in the howling fear-fear-fear that he is made of, and gods, what will they assume he's afraid of? Or if they dig past that and see that he would kidnap those children again, without any remorse or shame?

He can't risk it.

So he closes his eyes instead, dipping his head. "I'm sorry," he says, this time politely. "I truly don't know. I wasn't told."

"By your sire," Gandrel says sharply. "The one who commands you."

Yes, Astarion wants to hiss. Go hunt down him instead, you miserable bastard.

Anyone who knows spawns knows this is pointless—just revenge stamped over with a thin veneer of purpose. Spawn are but slaves, wriggling things in the gravedirt to be puppeteered for whatever reason their master conjures up. And yet Gandrel is here, like Astarion knows anything. Once more Cazador gets away scot fucking free, only his spawn to bear consequence. 

But the party has not given him to Gandrel yet. 

Daughters and other children, two bleeding wounds on Wyll's neck. Still they're all talking in this saccharine manner, still holding onto their spells and divine fire. There is a chance here. His bite has wilted it as though a late frost, but it is four days of something instead of nothing. It is four more days of freedom instead of being returned to his master. 

"He doesn't command me any longer," Astarion says, near sweetly. "Now I travel with them. And they're a far better bunch than he was, I can assure you. I'm only helpful now."

There is a faint pulse of olive-cloud confusion from Wyll, before it fades back to wariness. The others simmer, focus plucked like a harpsichord. Symphonic concentration. 

"Yes," Gale jumps in. "And a most well-behaved companion he has been, until your stint with the ironvine; nary a bite nor scratch on us or others. You have nothing to fear from him staying with us, and we really can't risk any one of us being transformed."

Astarion nods and notes those stipulations. Then notes that there are stipulations at all.

Hope is a rotten, wretched thing, and it unfurls within him regardless. The way they're pushing back against Gandrel, laying lines in the dirt—rules to follow, commands to obey. That isn't the way to treat someone you're soon to kill. It is more the manner of one kept. 

Perhaps they won't hand him over. 

Perhaps he will stay free of Cazador just a little longer. 

Astarion lets this idea root deep into his esophagus. There are familiar struts in his mind where his last commands were laid, and it would not be difficult to show how easily he follows more. To prove to the party why he should be kept around instead of being gifted to a Gur. 

Head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. He takes the familiar position for what it is. At least here, fluttering words and platitudes are appropriate. Welcome, even. 

"I am terribly sorry for the bite," he says, directed to Wyll. "That ironvine—I couldn't think, driven mad with that accursed anger. Far from my actual intentions; I truly do want to turn over a new leaf from my past. To be better." 

Is that what they want to hear? It isn't the truth, and he fears they both know that—that he would have gladly drained any of them down to corpses if he thought he could get away with it, to sup of a thinking being after two centuries of a yearning so desperate it consumes him. Astarion smiles wider. 

"Just–" Wyll's gaze flicks back to Gandrel, tadpole pulsating in orange wariness. "Don't bite people, Astarion. Right?"

The first command lies at his feet. Astarion feels it hook into the fetters, a dangling of four days instead of nothing. They might be keeping him; both keeping him alive and keeping him, instead of Gandrel.

"Of course," Astarion says, hand clasped over his chest. "Like I said—it was only the ironvine, love. I hadn't bit any of you, and I intended to keep it that way, before all this."

He keeps Cazador's command under his tongue. Likely a poor idea to say how he's salivated over thinking blood for two centuries, only bound by laws; much better to imply it's his own selfless spirit. That he's one of them. 

"There we go," Gale says, chipper. "A lapse in judgement, that's all. And now you must understand why Astarion can't return to Baldur's Gate, far better to stay with us in our search for a cure. We're hardly one to deprive others from justice, but if Astarion wasn't told, there is no information to be gathered here. Perhaps his master left behind documents or drudges with his plans."

Wyll nods. His hands dig into his knees, mind wrought in these jagged edges. Dissertation and relief and a cold familiarity. Astarion can't parse it apart. "I am sorry," he says. "I wish we had kinder news, but we must stop the transformation before worse things happen. Better a vampire than a mindflayer."

He's a spawn, not a vampire; he's well-learned the difference. To be a vampire is to imply as though Astarion is the one that chooses to do what he does, as though he rushes into eternity with a smile on his fucking lips. As though he has powers and abilities and a reason to keep pushing on instead of just starvation and fear. 

He could correct it, but the point feels, frankly, moot. 

Astarion smiles at Wyll. For the first time, he doesn't bother to hide his fangs; lets them shine, dagger-sharp, on display. "I couldn't agree more, love."

"Precisely," Gale agrees. "And with ceremorphosis so close on our heels, we really can't afford to dally about."

"Then allow me to travel with you," Gandrel says. His eyes are sharp. 

Wyll's tadpole lights up in violet-blue. "Excuse me?"

The rest of the party sits up as well. Even the campfire intensifies. 

"I can accompany you," Gandrel says. "To the crèche, or wherever you find a cure. An extra precaution along your journey, if you truly only have four days left."

Lae'zel's mind prickles. "We have no need of you," she says. "I will not allow you into the crèche unless you seek healing."

"That is fine," Gandrel says easily. "I don't mean to weigh you down, but I'm handy with fast travel and I know these woods. I'm also not infected myself, better able to help mitigate the transformation should that come to pass."

Oh, that seems like a fine and pretty reasoning, but his undertone rings clear. 

To watch the spawn.

Well. Astarion doesn't need an enforcer to confirm his loyalty—Cazador rarely needed to command him by the end, only for some particularly impossible movement he was too broken to force himself into; Astarion is quite used to obeying. His best skill, almost. Though there is a flavour of distinction to this obedience—because there are stakes. Under Cazador, the threat was the kennel or the knife or the tomb, but all came with the implication his position would never change. Here, should he fail, he is killed. An ending. 

Or he is given back to Cazador when the Gur takes him. 

Astarion continues smiling and says nothing. 

"Why?" Gale asks. "Not to reject your offer, but I rather think our condition is not one that makes us desirable traveling companions for those without the same affliction. Particularly so near our day of reckoning."

Gandrel exhales, wane. "I have no wish to see five mindflayers descend upon the Sword Coast; to help you in avoiding this is the only sensible act." He lets his gaze drift over the party, meeting each of their eyes. "I will leave if you tell me, but I wouldn't call that the correct choice."

Well. There goes even more heroics to dump into the pot as though it will reduce into something morally right. Oddly enough, frustration flares through all the party's tadpoles, Wyll and Lae'zel in particular. Astarion can't piece apart what they're frustrated at.

He stays still. A threadline between two cliffs, neither stable. 

Shadowheart taps nails over her log. "What can you offer, then? Beyond a cursed needle."

Gandrel's eyes crease, something wry in his face. "It is only spelled to him," he says, nodding to Astarion. "No use otherwise, except as a particularly dull skewer. But I am a skilled tracker in lands far more meddlesome than here, with a handful of spells for protecting travelers and traps for gathering food. Should any of my other kin be in the area, they will also have their own aid I could barter for."

"And you would be willing to help us?" Wyll confirms. "All of us?"

Not an outright rejection. This is negotiations, then. 

Allowing the monster hunter—the mercenary—into the party. Which makes sense. Of course it makes fucking sense. They'll allow Astarion his continued existence so long as he doesn't bite; why wouldn't Gandrel, who has only been a perfectly well-natured hero, be given the same honour?

A phantasmal rapier hungers in his gut. 

"Naturally," Gandrel says easily. "Whatever I can do."

Wyll nods. "Then we are in agreement," he says, no room for squabbling, and stands—the punctures on his neck have dried to scarlet pits, one line trailing under his cropped shirt. "Gandrel, if you will come with me?"

The Gur raises a brow, gaze flicking to the rest of the party. Astarion keeps his own fixed on Wyll. He… seems as though it is an alliance made, that the command is set, but–

But what? But what? Wyll goes and talks to Gandrel about vampire spawn, about the needle, about anything and everything; all that matters is how Astarion has been given a line to haul himself out of one abyss into another more shallow than the last, and this is what he wants. This is all he has. 

He survived. He is allowed to continue, to have a taste of freedom and then back underneath, but he is not dead and he is not in the kennel. So. He won, really. He fucking succeeded. 

There was a chance he could have gone the other way, he thinks. Lae'zel is sharp enough to cut and yet willing to be led to discoveries of this new world; Shadowheart could have been plied with wine and bitchiness, things which came easily and freely and she seemed to enjoy; Gale with a soft touch of academic interest and willingness to listen to his prattle; gods, even Wyll could have been convinced to tolerate him, so long as Astarion minded his tongue and trotted at their heroic heels–

No longer. Because a monster hunter lit his mind on fire and he bit the party before he could have ever seduced them for protection. 

Astarion won't cry. He's quite good at that, all things considered; moisture is a luxury Cazador never much allowed, and blood too valuable to waste on whinging patheticness. Only Leon cries, young as a fucking infant compared to Astarion, still so soft.

He won't cry. But a part of him considers it. 

Gandrel stands, adjusting his crossbow where it is hooked around his back, and lets Wyll lead him out of the camp proper, fading into the trees beyond. The party watches them go, still wound tight. 

Then the steel of Wyll's mind disappears, and no more footsteps sound from the woods. 

Lae'zel tches, setting her longsword back in its canister. "This was stupid. We do not need him."

"And I don't need more interruptions," Shadowheart gripes, adjusting her braid as though she wishes it would be a noose around their throats. "If everyone wouldn't mind just falling asleep."

"On that we agree," Gale says. He slumps back against the log, dragging a hand over his face. "Can't the threat of ceremorphosis be enough? Now we have to handle things such as this when we're already in a race against time."

Astarion watches their exchange with still that stupid, idealistic twist of hope in his chest. 

They aren't killing him. He can't rule out the possibility they are waiting for an easier target and he simply won't wake from trance, but– but they are turning away and shuffling to their bedrolls, leaving the fire for Wyll to snuff out upon his return. Upon his return with Gandrel, the mercenary who now travels in their midst. Who is welcomed alongside the monster he hunted for a master, so far away. 

A rapier through his gut and hands on his shoulders. Two centuries he's wanted to be free—well, here it is. Dirt under his nails and blood behind his fangs. He's free. Isn't he fucking satisfied?

Astarion gets up, slow. Only Lae'zel twists to watch him, eyes slitted. But she returns to her bedroll, Shadowheart already hidden beneath her tent canvas, Gale bedding down with creaking knees and muttered complaints. 

Still a hole in his gut; he could ask Shadowheart for healing. But her hands smoke with the memory of golden fire, and undead flesh bucks and shies from the thought. Astarion merely pads back to his own corner of the camp, furthest from all the rest, each step as though the movement against a mountain. Laying down is an impossibility. He manages it regardless. 

Not dead. Not captured. A new command, one far easier to swallow than the four previous. The taste of blood in the back of his throat and hunger muffled under the feast. 

Gods fuck him, but Astarion could even call this a victory.

Chapter Text

Astarion is still alive the next morning, which is a lovely little surprise on top of everything that happened yesterday. No stake as a sunrise greeting. How charitable. 

The party is awake and unwillingly so. By the look of it, none of them slept, least of all Astarion, and fatigue doesn't play nice with the nerves still prickling over the atmosphere. But the birds have begun empirical songs against the four days remaining, so off they go. Transformation won't wait for beauty rest. 

And with everyone up and moving, it is very hard to ignore how the dynamic has changed. The number as well. Many things have changed. 

Both Gandrel and Wyll are here. Neither died in their little meeting out in the woods, which is a damn fucking shame, and now Gandrel is a new addition to their party.

Astarion lingers around the peripheries of camp, a spectre without a voice. A spectre smothering its own voice, more like. He has grown very used to chatting freely and frivolously over the past three days, but no longer; the chance is still too fledgling. He doesn't want to draw attention. 

No one has brought up the bite. No one has settled in for further interrogation. They're all just– ignoring it in favour of ceremorphosis, which should be a comfort but is very far from it. He can't endure what he doesn't know. The other boot is going to fall, and Astarion is familiar enough with cycles to know he will be beneath its heel when it does. 

But for now, Wyll packs up his section of camp without complaint as though they are all disgustingly domestic. His neck is clean and unmarked. Perhaps a healing potion, or Shadowheart is more of a rogue than he thought. 

Wyll glances over, midway through folding up his bedroll. "What can you tell us about where we are?"

Gandrel considers his question with a hum, drumming fingers over boiled leathers. He seems the most rested, the most aware—and he had looked at Astarion, upon rising. It wasn't a long look, just an exchange of eyes. He has no crossbolt loaded, no gathering swarm of magic. As unarmed as a mortal man can be. Astarion has still put the entire camp between them. 

"We are south of Baldur's Gate," Gandrel starts. "Old forest, one that has never been entirely civilized, only in patches. There is a settlement to the east of here—a grove, kept by druids. They are the protectors of this land, trading with smaller towns and fishing harbours, though their gates have been closed the past few tendays."

Lae'zel lifts her head. "Did they speak of a crèche?"

"If they did, I wasn't privy to it," Gandrel apologizes, which does nothing because Lae'zel has already turned her attention away. Astarion could have told him that wouldn't have worked. "I hoped to share words with their archdruid, but outsiders weren't welcomed, particularly those of different faith."

He brushes a hand over an amulet sat around his neck; a circle in the image of the full moon, cut through with an iris and seven reflected stars. A pretty thing. The only polished piece of his whole attire. 

"You're a Selûnite," Shadowheart says, because of course that's what she focuses on. 

Gandrel regards her mildly. "I am."

Right, the tetchy little problem where she hasn't revealed she's a Sharran yet. Gale and Wyll exchange a look over food supplies. 

But miracle of miracles, Shadowheart doesn't push, just purses her lips. She returns to dismantling her tent with a vendetta. 

"The grove is of no matter. A githyanki crèche would not leave another challenger in their territory," Lae'zel declares. "It will not be there. We must push on."

"Ah–" Gale hesitates. "I will confess that my rest was fragmented, last night—I do not have all of my magical reserves back. Should we encounter a threat, I am ill-equipped to manage."

Shadowheart's tadpole thrashes with frustration, but she nods. "I as well."

"That is no matter. My strength is enough. There is no sense in waiting for your… spells to return when we must make it to the crèche."

Shadowheart sneers. Wonderful. Perhaps getting to see her and Lae'zel rip each other apart will distract the others from last night all the more. 

"I have my magic back," Wyll cuts in, then sets a hand on his rapier. "And other means beyond. Astarion, are you rested?"

His first time being addressed. Astarion doesn't flinch, but it's a close thing. 

"Perfectly so," he says, less smooth than he wants. 

"Then we're well enough to continue westward." Wyll nods opposite the rising sun. "With any luck, we'll find it or another indication of its presence. Is that fair to everyone?"

Gale—who, considering yesterday and Shadowheart's attempt to slit Lae'zel's throat telepathically, probably wishes he was traveling alone—just nods. Both the women don't look at each other but don't oppose. 

Gandrel, for his part, just watches them as they finish breaking down camp, offering help where needed and keeping quiet. Vigilant. 

Astarion doesn't know what he's thinking. Already it seems he's getting too comfortable with having a constant finger on the pulse of the others, gauging their reactions for everything he does. Easier to stay where he needs to when he can feel exactly what they do, which he doesn't have for Gandrel. This singular advantage when he is so very deprived of them, gone again. He's infected, and it still only helps him a fraction of the time. 

Mindflayer tadpoles, illithid parasites. The gift that just keeps on fucking giving. 

They march.

-

Traveling with six is… odd. 

By itself, it isn't—just an increase to a number, and closer to that of his siblings, even. Astarion slots in as well as he did before, though he wavers now on who to stick close to. The path is wide enough for three to walk abreast but rarely do they, and less now. Only Gale and Shadowheart travel together, the rest drifting. Chatter is muted. There is a constant throughline of unease rooted in everyone's mind. 

Astarion holds himself within someone's sight at all moments. There has still been no mention of the bite, of fucking anything that happened; as though Astarion grievously insulted one of Cazador's guests and was merely released back to the dormitory afterward. Something is wrong. He just doesn't know what.

The forest wanes and fades, slipping to copses in a meadow and then a girdled valley, cliffs on one side and dense canopy below. And within this nook of nature is a place—or what used to be, at least. 

It seems as though it had been a village, some festering little town not close enough to the sea to be important and certainly not deserving off its own merits. A hovel, more aptly. There are walls ringing its core, a guard against the wider world, made of old stone and rotted wood; but heartbeats within. Movement.

Perhaps it's the lack of rest, the exhaustion, how heavily last night hangs on them—but by the time they notice the goblins, there are arrows pointing at their chests. 

And exhaustion or not, it's Astarion's shitty luck that leaves him at the front of the party—he'd been trying to slip away from Gandrel, who was striking up conversation with Wyll despite how the man's tadpole fluttered through an odd caution, and also away from Shadowheart, pulling further ahead despite how his sternum aches, and then–

The goblin scowls at him, drawing her bow further back. "Said not another bloody step," she shouts. "Ya deaf?"

Instinct takes over. "Far from it," Astarion sneers, the pointed tone against tavern keepers who thought themselves clever enough to recognize his face. His mind sings with four reflections of panic, of grim readiness for yet another battle, but they melt away to old wood and familiarity. Dusty torchlight and the raucous call of drunkards. "Are you truly going to try this? Don't make me laugh."

The goblin hackles, a brutish response to insult, and her arrow shines in the sunlight. Which is marvelous, because Astarion doesn't know what the fuck he's doing sniping back like this and if a bloody goblin is the one to kill him he's going to scream. 

Then she pauses. 

She's looking closely at him, even stepping forward to peer over the edge of the roof. Her bow is still held steady, back straight, yet something has changed.

Astarion tilts his head to the side. There's an… image over her eye, made up in jagged lines that aren't quite real, though close enough to hurt. The rest of the party fluctuates, a writhing mass of insects with Gandrel at the center. Unsure. 

More stretching silence. She shifts back and forth, dithering, wound tight. "True Soul?" 

Well. Isn't that interesting.

There's a weight in how she says it, an emphasis heavier than her feeble mind can comprehend. It's a title, not an epithet—something on a hierarchy. And there are only so many taverns and flophouses in Baldur's Gate, only so many places for pliable fools to drown their despair in shitty drink and warm hands; Astarion has had to pretend to be others so many times he nearly lost himself, if there was much of anything left to lose. 

True Soul settles over him like a warm cloak, slotting into crevasses and bones. He keeps his head cocked, expression biting, and hedges his bets.

"The Absolute sent me," Astarion says, affecting the brush of an imperialistic growl. "Get out of the fucking way."

The goblin bows her head and flees. 

Other heartbeats pick up and leave, light glinting off retreating arrows. In moments, the entire gate is empty, just a passage deeper within the ruined village. Astarion stands in the center of what had been a threat, and is safe. Is successful.

Power, alien as it is desired, flits over his mind. 

Astarion hasn't figured out what the party wants from him, because they allowed Gandrel in their midst and thus he must be better than that, but also he must figure it out by himself, because little doubt the party won't water weeds in aiding him. His normal avenues are lost. He's too much a monster to get on his back for these heroes, to entrap them when his fangs are on display. 

But lying? 

Astarion lies like it's the only thing that keeps him surviving. He lies for great reason and for no reason at all. He makes it a habit and he makes it a lifeline. There's a certain sense of satisfaction in directing the narrative, no matter where it leads; something he can control. And there hasn't been much Astarion could control throughout his undeath.

And this lying just got the party through a barred gate without a single fight. 

Astarion breathes in deep—regrets it, as unwashed reek and rot rewards him—and turns back to the party, lips quirked. "Shall we?"

He can see how Lae'zel already had her hand on her longsword, how Gale was palming stray tendrils of lightning. Gearing for a fight. One he defused. 

"That was aptly done," Gale congratulates. "You're quite the deft hand with subterfuge."

Astarion preens, only a touch emptily. He doesn't look at Gandrel. "Of course I am. I much prefer this outcome over being shot with arrows, really. Don't you?"

"Entirely so! Particularly when goblins tend to come in hordes instead of stragglers."

Shadowheart clicks her tongue and says nothing. 

He avoided an even greater threat, then. Kept them safe. 

Wyll is watching him. Gandrel is watching him. Astarion pulls the cloak of True Soul higher on his shoulders and marches past the gate. 

Far from outer appearances, the town is actually worse within the walls, given how carrion-picked the goblins have left it. Scarcely a building is unmolested, grime and shit littering the paths, gateways left like the ribcage of a long-dead beast. 

There's a sign, surviving despite it all; cracked and wearied, but legible. The party gravitates to it, clumping closer than any of the day of travel behind them. Thin lettering, archaic styles. 

"Moonhaven," Shadowheart reads, a note of disdain turning her lips down. 

Gale coughs a little under his breath, gaze flicking to Gandrel's back. "I believe it's called so for the valley," he says. "Crescent-shaped, slotting in amongst the trees. More poetic than I would have thought from this rather small corner of the map!"

One of the passing goblins squints at him. 

They've made it in but are entirely still a gaggle of fools; talking while maintaining cover is not their purview. Astarion hackles. 

He isn't the only one to sense it—Wyll's tadpole churns, agitated. He walks them up an alley and before a storeroom, bolted shut and secured. 

Wyll's eyes flick, meaningfully, to the locked door. He's looking at Gale, the wizard, the one most likely to have these spells. But there are more things to be learned in dark places than lies. 

Astarion steps forward. "Allow me."

A needle from under his hem and sharpening of his ears; Astarion crouches before the keyhole, every sense honed. Short, built at a standard height, made for a human. Nothing too extravagant. A deterrent more than a threat. 

That's always been the catch for lockpicking—because such things are meant to be opened. An empty wall is an impossibility; a door is to open for its master. All Astarion does is trick the door into believing he is its master. 

A flick of his wrist, a coaxing of the tumblers like a lover's caress, and the latch clicks. Astarion tests it with the back of his palm, nudging it further open to see if it catches on a tripwire—because that is a trick you only have to fall for once—before pushing it wide enough for them all to slither through. 

Wyll blinks, and then a strange consideration flashes over his mind, mirrored on his face. "Thank you, Astarion."

He glazes on a smile in response. 

The building is a storeroom; a forge, actually, just stacked so high with discarded boxes and detritus it fulfills both functions. Gale hums something appreciative under his breath as he scans the myriad blueprints scattered throughout, conjuring a faint ball of light to guide their way. The door groans shut. 

Gale, peering under a tarp, remarks: "That mention of True Souls—it's an odd turn of phrase for something that has very little to do with souls or soul-adjacent topics."

There's a plume of dust and he pulls back, coughing. Astarion thought ancient libraries would've prepared him better for this. 

"And how she only left with the mention of the Absolute," Wyll says. He's frowning, brows drawn. "She seemed… I don't want to call it worshipful of True Souls, but it's too close for comfort. The Absolute as a deity, and True Souls as paladins, maybe? Or clerics?"

"Certainly a position of power," Gale agrees.

Astarion is still wearing the cloak, something haughty and superior. He adjusts it to add more of the spectral goddess they've heard mentioned too many times to be a coincidence. 

Lae'zel scowls. "This is a waste of time," she chides, in the same manner of an executioner. "Once there is no threat of becoming ghaik, you can investigate this false god. Not before."

She stands stiff by the door, hand on hilt, shoulders up. Unwilling to separate. Her tadpole bleeds agitation. 

Wyll nods, only a step below holding his hands up in surrender. "Then let's try to find any supplies to gather or information about the crèche."

She huffs but allows it.

"We should split up," Gandrel says. 

It's the first time he's directly proposed something to the party, and Astarion watches that knowledge spread; in the caged light of Gale's palm, Lae'zel's eyes are slits. "You are no leader amongst us, istik. You do not decide."

"I mean no offense," he says mildly. "Only that four days is a limiting time frame, and this village could be larger. We will move faster in troops, and then we can continue on." 

Appealing to her argument, to her sensibilities. Lae'zel's frown deepens despite it. 

"I suppose that makes sense," Gale says. "Though we should proceed with caution—perhaps the next group of goblins will ask more questions than the first, or simply skip congeniality and go directly to steel." A beat. "Shadowheart, if you would like to–"

"Done," she says immediately. 

Astarion wavers. Lae'zel doesn't seem like a terrible choice, two of her daggers still tight to his sides. Wyll he bit last night, which rather removes him from the options, so Lae'zel it will have to be.

Gandrel is watching him. 

"I can accompany you," he says.

Right. Of fucking course.

Wyll's tadpole surges, a ruby-red pulse like the veins of a creature bleached so pale it's transparent. A ripple through the others. 

This is a terrible idea. This is a truly horrible idea, the kind other ideas will gather around to point and laugh at. Pairing Astarion and Gandrel is dropping two plagues into a population to see which kills more than the other. 

And Astarion could reject it, if only last night doesn't thunder over his mind as it does. Because gods, had this been before, maybe Astarion could have convinced Wyll off his back alone; could have wiled his way into the hero's better graces. Could have plied him with gifts and trinkets, convinced him for a quick fuck that turns terminal, smoothed over their alliance until he's secure and protected. 

But it doesn't matter anymore, does it? 

"You are the least likely of us to be able to sweet talk your way past goblins," Astarion says. "I can serve as your protection, then."

The silence following this is long enough it echoes. 

Then Wyll, slowly: "Astarion, are you sure?"

"It's just good sense," Astarion says with a shrug, words pitched up in reflex. "Six of us, three groups. You and Lae'zel will likely scour this whole place before we've finished looking through a barrel, so it hardly matters at all."

He smiles, disarming, at Gandrel. "Lead the way."

-

Leaving the party takes all of his courage and none of it. Astarion is well-versed in walking towards a terrible fate; he did it every morning before the sun rose. At least this time he doesn't have to tuck himself into Gandrel's side like a lover. 

There's a pantomimed attempt at actual investigation before Gandrel leads them into another abandoned building, staircase hidden under a trapdoor. Down they go. Astarion hasn't dropped his smile even once. 

The cellar isn't much, a few crates of old supplies hen-picked through so only rotten remains are left. Astarion's nose wrinkles, limbs pinned tight to his sides. He turns, taking in the whole place, all the dust and filth. Not terrible, as far as final places go. At least it's made of wood instead of stone. 

Not enough room to fire a crossbow, equally lacking in places to run. Did Gandrel bring him here just to kill him? Perhaps shovel talks can be extended to digging graves. Astarion rests a hand on the railing, hip cocked, head tilted. He has no delusions of outrunning a hunter's spells, but even the facsimile of defense soothes. 

Gandrel takes a deep breath, settles himself. The coward. 

"You killed my daughters," he says quietly. It isn't a question. 

Astarion didn't, actually, if the Gur gave a shit about the difference of sire to spawn, but the point seems moot. 

Two daughters, both young, if Astarion's patchwork memory of the night filled with skulking children is correct. Gandrel hardly seems wizened enough his cock has retreated to grey shores; it wouldn't be that much a hassle to just make some more and leave Astarion alone.

"I am sorry," Astarion says sweetly, and doesn't care if the lie bleeds through. With the party, he needs to fool them, to prove his worth and his willingness; he'll never convince Gandrel of anything but his fangs. "So terribly sorry. It wasn't my choice."

"And yet you're here, free, traveling with heroes."

"It's like they said—don't bite people," Astarion underlines with an emphasis. "So long as no paranoid bastards walk around with powdered ironvine on their arms, I'm going to be a consummate professional. Nary a glimpse of my fangs. Don't worry your pretty little head."

Gandrel doesn't snap at the bait, though it seems he wants to. Just stares, too cold, too callous. He has a goal larger than jousting. There is something fanged and insectoid gnawing in the air. 

"I asked," Gandrel says, slow, deliberate, "whether they would promise to put you down if you proved to be the monster I know you are."

At least someone isn't mincing fucking words here. Astarion continues smiling. Perhaps this is the party's way of shelving the blame onto someone willing to carry it, having Gandrel say the poor, sad news that they're none-too-fond of a monster in their midst unless he sheds his monstrosity. He'd been expecting it, really. Only surprising that they're going with this circuitous route instead of telling him outright. 

Half a miracle they found a time to chat this through in the cramped confines of their proximity without him noticing, unless this is what Wyll's little chat was on that first night. It seems Astarion is just as bloody blind as Cazador always said so as to miss it. What a surprise.

His claws are biting into his palms. Astarion extracts them. 

That was a fun little part of Cazador's third command, thou shalt not leave my side unless directed. Constant use would have been an annoyance after two hundred years, but it was an easy option should Cazador ever think Astarion was getting too fucking comfortable.

Because without a blanket directive, then he would have to ask for permission to go whore himself out for victims. 

It's a nonsensical query, because Cazador told him to bring people back, but he is also not allowed to leave his master's side, and flophouses are just that. So there is a thin circle where those commands overlap without combining, and it is one of Cazador's preferred playing grounds. 

A particular pain, to beg for torture. To beg to be allowed to debase himself, if there even is much left to debase. 

All accolades to Gandrel, then, for managing to create such an artificial similarity. 

"I wouldn't dream of proving it," Astarion purrs. "I'm tamed now. Perfectly loyal."

Gandrel's eyes sharpen. 

"I've given them advice. My tribe has hunted your kind for milenia, illithid-touched or not. You will not be able to kill them."

Oh, trust him, he's well fucking aware. A vampire is, in accordance with itself, a nasty little beastie. Terrors of the night, all miseries worn, the perfect villain to serve as a backdrop for a timeless romance; hardly the traveling companion for such pinnacles of humanity. But that is a vampire—vampire spawn are considerably less dangerous. Claws, fangs, yes; but beasts have those, and still the wilds were conquered. 

Astarion is not a threat, in more ways the one. If he had just been allowed to show his use to the party, he could have proven that. But now he's a spawn, openly, and his options are considerably limited. No more ducking under the shelter of a magistrate. He has far more ground to cover to claw his way back to tolerance. 

But Gandrel—there is something about all the cards being on the table, about facing a man who so clearly hates him yet is bound by his perception of morality. If their roles were reversed, Astarion would take him right here, drag Gandrel back to Cazador before the others even realize they're missing. But Gandrel doesn't. In a very strange and incomprehensible manner, this makes him pitiable. 

"I'd offer to shake your hand if I didn't think you'd gut me for it," Astarion says, all smiles. "But we're in accord, then? I'll keep my pearly whites to myself, and no one tries to make me a pincushion."

Gandrel doesn't have a tadpole to read but it isn't necessary; frustration builds a codicil on his face, multi-faceted and complex. Astarion's flippancy is driving him mad. 

Good, Astarion thinks, vicious. And good, he thinks, still vicious, when he watches that madness crest and plummet. 

"We are," Gandrel says thickly. "Hold to your oath, spawn. You will not have a second chance."

Are they calling it oath, now? As though obeying a command says more about the slave than the master? Incredible. Astarion runs a thumb over his daggers, still smiling, and imagines what Gandrel would look like with his throat slit. 

There's a push against his tadpole, something dark and creased like old paper—Astarion glances up, dust falling off his shoulders. It's more deliberate than the emotions he's used to; after a moment of hesitation, Astarion cracks the very outer edge of his shield, extending a probe of his own. 

Wyll's voice, fettered and hazy. Come back, Astarion.

Ah. So they have started to figure out how to use these bounties of potential waiting in their skull before it consumes them; so long as they never grow strong enough to break past his shield, Astarion welcomes the ease of communication. He sends a pulse of acknowledgement back.

"There's our cue to continue this elsewhere," Astarion says, tapping a finger against his temple. "They're calling us."

Gandrel hesitates. Astarion fights the urge to roll his eyes. Of all the times he's lied, this isn't it. This is him telling the truth. He followed the Gur into this abandoned cellar with nothing more than the idea of searching for supplies, as content as could be that they would either talk or fight to the death, and now the fucker is getting cold feet. 

The command is set. The bonds are made. The part of Astarion that wants to try and haggle, to claw any further freedom from the world, is not larger than the part of him that just wants this whole scene to fade away. 

Finally, Gandrel nods, turning to the staircase. He pads up, head on a swivel, until he's fiddling with the trapdoor. After a moment, he shifts his stance to get both hands in the mix, because he isn't the deft touch necessary to keep the rusted hinges from locking shut. 

His back is turned. His attention is focused elsewhere.

Astarion presses his tongue to the flat of his fangs, feels numbing saliva pool in anticipation. It wouldn't need to be the loud, garish event of before; just a bite, fast as a jackal, then nothing. Then he returns and spins some fucking story about a rogue goblin. The party wouldn't believe him, would rather close the page on his story themselves, but perhaps it would be worth it; a revenge taken and a death won so far from his master's shadow. 

He wants to kill Gandrel, if only for the memory of personhood. 

But, well. 

He wants a lot of fucking things. 

Astarion follows Gandrel out of the cellar.

-

The others are standing in the central courtyard, watching goblins walk by with only a tightening of their hands on hilts; there's an odd pulse through their tadpoles, like catching the last note of an orchestra without the full song. Like they'd finished talking without him. 

Gandrel, hand on his crossbow. 

"There you are," Wyll says, a faint note of– something. Something. "What did you find?"

"Just some herbs," Astarion says, smiling. "Shall we continue?"

-

Setting up camp that night is curious. 

Gale and Shadowheart ventured below an apothecary's shop, searching for more healing supplies and instead finding rather the opposite in a necromancer's laboratory; Shadowheart seems stilted, tucking memories close to her chest, whereas Gale cannot shut the fuck up about the tome he took from the depths. He speaks more about it than the literal corpse found nearby, apparently. 

Astarion feels his hackles ripple over. Even clasped in Gale's arms, the book… chatters at him, wordless and intangible. There's a whisper of something purple-blue against his mind, lapping at the edges, the hollow socket of its mouth drawn tight between flayed skin. Not anything particularly dreamy of composition, and he imagines the body of text wouldn't be any more pleasant, if only Gale could get the damned thing open. 

Unlikely. For a wizard, he's been rather shit at solving their problems thus far.

Wyll and Lae'zel went to the far reaches, where Wyll spent so very long trying to find a way to free a captured gnome that Lae'zel just kicked the shit out of a worg as an example until the others fled. Two brands of diplomacy. 

They traveled on for hours after, until night fell and it was more a danger to continue than waste precious time from their doomsday counter. Just as before, Lae'zel grows sharper each moment they take a breath. Stopping does the equivalent of jamming a poker up her ass. 

Gandrel seems at ease. He settles fast, beard trimmed and leathers oiled, looking as though he managed to find a civilized bone in his body despite the wilds. The camp comes together easily under his hands, guiding Wyll in better ways to secure tents against the surrounding foliage or which bark to better harvest for tinder. 

Astarion sits there, under the shabby canvas that still reeks of fish, knots tied through rope as though he knew what he was doing. No longer is he masquerading as a magistrate, but a part of him notes that the party hasn't actually asked for clarification now the secret's out. Vampire spawn is, after all, not quite a profession so much as a state of being, and yet they don't question him. Perhaps they don't need to know anything more than monster.

Gandrel's words keep echoing through his mind. 

He has never been a good slave, nor a particularly quiet one. But that was in the streets, in the dormitories, when the commands were ever-there; here, with Gandrel in their midst, he has no such confirmation. Just the knowledge he must convince the party to keep him instead of the hunter. That he cannot prove he is the monster he has never been able to escape.

Don't bite people. That's both simple and deep as the tides. It is the embodiment of the perception he is yoked under, as though the taste of blood is all that separates him from the living. 

What they are actually commanding is to not be a monster. Rather the difficult task for a monster. 

But there is no other alternative. Gandrel wants to kill him. If he slips, that's the foregone conclusion; and if he falls behind, perhaps they don't kill him, but just leave him behind as their adventurers take them to more arduous pastures. 

He isn't wearing it, but the cloak of True Soul lingers around him, the feel of tumblers under his hands. Skills the others are lacking or unconfident with. Things he can offer. Things he can be. 

All Astarion has to be is perfect. And gods, hasn't he heard that before?

He creeps past Wyll's tent and filches a bottle from Shadowheart, one of those gathered on the beach. A swig proves it to be a fine whiskey, which is rather why he stole from her, considering her taste is elevated above the rest of these fools. She's still off talking with Gale over the bloody book, and Astarion kips it back to his tent and disappears beneath the sail canvas. 

Gandrel's heartbeat, slow and steady, across the camp. 

Astarion drains a quarter of the bottle till its false heat simmers through his veins. 

Three more days. Three more days until it all comes crashing down. 

-

The next group of goblins they encounter doesn't ask questions before attacking, unfortunately. 

Two dozen of them, booyahgs and strikers and tracers, all hooting and squalling like piglets in the mud; the party surges to action with a kind of relief for an understandable interaction. Gale seems remarkably at peace as he launches firebolts into shrieking faces. Some things never change. 

Others do. Gandrel's crossbow sings as it fires, great swaths of thorns tearing through the dirt and pinning victims in place. Astarion stays far away from him, lurking in the overhang as he waits for something to stumble too close. 

One does, and he slits its hamstring, leaves it gasping, cuts again, wailing through throes as it joins its brethren. Dead, dying. They last such a terribly long time before they go still.

He can feel their muddy blood in the air, coating his tongue like ichor. It spills dark and rich over the stone, over his blades, over the world.

But Gandrel watches him, each time a new corpse is laid to ruin upon the road. A bolt always set in his crossbow, tense despite all their enemies slain. 

I'm not going to fucking bite, Astarion wants to scream. They've only given him one command and by all the bloody uncaring gods, he's not so stupid as to forget it; just one. He can follow that.

He is waiting for more, with a shivering kind of anticipation; he'd like to believe Lae'zel about the crèche's healing, but that's far from a certainty, and there are only two days before he loses what's left of his humanity. Two days for the party to get desperate—two days for the party to decide they wish to partake in one last enjoyment before the end. It's coming, he knows, and has resigned himself to it. Just another day.

It's worse, almost, because they're so fucking timid. At least Gandrel didn't play coy with the fact he's handed his leash off to avoid being dragged back to his master's feet. There. Simple. Yet the party is too cowardly to give him another. 

Astarion tears out worthwhile frustration in another goblin, belly split like a sack with nothing worth lifting. He's snarling, snapping; lurching from shadows and melting back in. Nearly too far gone.

Two dozen goblins die easily, filling the air with the aroma of scorched flesh and viscera. Astarion peels out of the canopy, fluffing his hair and pampering himself as though a housecat to distract from the blood, from the hunger he has not allowed himself to quench with Gandrel always watching. 

Twenty corpses, all with blood to spare. And goblins are hardly people, when looked at through a hero's eyes; the party has certainly killed them without losing any sleep in the process. Even now, they're chatting amongst themselves, the low murmur of those standing over a red-washed killing field.

Gale bemoans the waste of magic, Shadowheart torn between consoling and ignoring him. Wyll investigates each of the corpses for convenient notes and journals. Lae'zel takes a handful of sand to scrub the worst of the gore from her armour, tadpole losing the pale shade of her battle frenzy. The strongest of their merry bunch, little doubt. 

All of them are strong. 

Astarion runs a finger alongside his dagger, clearing away the blood there in idle distraction. He learned how to fight, if escaping those in flophouses or watching Godey's expertise can be called learning, but yesterday at the village seems further away. He can kiss the taint of these heroes in offering them lockpicking and subterfuge, but fights are– less his purview. Not out of it, but a more distant territory than other things. And for some funny fucking reason, Astarion doesn't think he could wring orgasms out of goblins as a substitute for killing them. 

He still isn't a threat. But to keep up with the others, he will have to become one—and one that does not threaten them. A very thin line to walk. 

He had said he was a magistrate, at first. An untouched, doe-eyed one, who fenced barbs with Shadowheart and wormed under Wyll's skin but was, inherently, undangerous. Perhaps they think that holds true past the fangs; that he's some stumbling virgin who wouldn't know a war if it bit him.

Well, fuck them. Astarion isn't going to roll over just because they won't tell him the specifics. 

He steps over a goblin's corpse, taking pains not to get blood in his boots, and strides on after the others.

-

"–a deal to find him?"

Astarion's ears prick, despite himself. He continues stitching a new line into the gash over Lae'zel's armour—he offered, look at him, look how helpful, look how fucking obediant—even as his attention swivels. 

Wyll and Gandrel are sat by the campfire, the last of Gale's meal packaged away and cleaned for tomorrow. They're at an odd angle, and Wyll's tadpole murmurs unease but also a rapt, poignant interest. Focus.

"Aye," Gandrel says. A wane cast settles over the splinter of his face Astarion can see without making it too apparent he's watching. "One with the hag of these lands."

Wyll stiffens. Astarion does as well, when Gandrel shifts and reveals the topic of their conversation; the needle, sat in his palm. It points at him. 

A deal with a hag, for that.

Gandrel rotates his palm so he can watch the needle move. "She is a dread creature indeed," he says. "I met her first at a civilization not far south of here, where she masqueraded as an elderly woman offering aid to tiefling refugees; and when I said I knew her nature, I found myself leagues from where I had been just a moment before, stuck in the middle of a fetid swamp."

Wyll is a marvelous listener, all drawn up like a child before a bard peddling for coppers. He even inhales at the right moment. "Her territory?"

"Indeed," Gandrel says, nodding. "A wasteland of redcaps and poisoned thorns, awash in curses and corpses alike. I was not the first to be teleported there, though I doubt she knew of my particular prowess—a day I spent trekking through the marsh, following her trail, until I came upon her lair."

Astarion throws caution to the winds and adjusts his position, crossing one leg over the other as though to provide a better canvas for Lae'zel's armour—it has nothing to do with how he faces Gandrel now, watching the Gur spin his story. 

"She invited me inside, though made sure I saw twin corpses splayed upon her doorstep, less than a tenday old. A warning, perhaps. I did not recognize them, but by their weapons, they were attempting a slaying instead of a deal."

Astarion's needle bites into leather hard enough to puncture through the other side; he tugs it out, pinning the thread through the flats of his teeth. There goes a monster, murdering as she likes, corpses left out as lawn decorations—and still he hunts Astarion. Still he declares a spawn as all wrong with the world instead of those in control of their own fucking actions. 

"She allowed you in without even a trial?" Wyll asks, tadpole simmering with concentration, the latent shadow of catfish in a deep river gorge. 

"Yes," Gandrel concedes, jaw tight. "I believe it is because she was with child."

Wyll bristles at that, knuckles pale around his forearms. So it seems hags reproduce in ways other than getting dicked down, then. "What?"

"She hid it well, but I could see it in how she carried herself, in the remains of an empty larder and kitchen. I believe that is the only reason she made a deal with me so quickly, instead of weeding out my strengths and weaknesses. I was hardly within her lair for an hour before I was forced out."

"But you were able to make the deal," Wyll clarifies, as though they don't already know. 

Gandrel lofts the needle, nestled and coal-slick. Even now, it points unerringly to Astarion, the edge quivering. His ears flatten against his skull. He misses his next stitch and goes back to re-anchor it, using the tip of his dagger as an awl. The needle hums in the back of his mind. 

"I was," Gandrel says wearily. "And I paid dearly for it, despite her haste. She could sense my desperation."

"What did it cost?"

Gandrel closes his hand around the needle. "Do you actually want to know," he asks, "or do you want to tell me it wasn't worth it?"

Wyll swallows. There's something sad in his eyes, even as he pulls his searching gaze away like the cost was something as simple as a missing limb. His gaze shifts to Astarion, who doesn't look back, for all he can't unspool the tension threading around his spine. Wyll's tadpole simmers with a gossamer nerve, deliberately calm. 

What a mercy, that Cazador bound his mind to so many others and forced him to learn the intricacies of no privacy, so that Wyll doesn't get to feel how badly Astarion pictures Gandrel's throat split between his fangs. 

He made a deal with a hag. He chose, willingly, to seek out a fey being of eldritch deals and cast himself upon the rocks at her feet like she was going to ask for the colour of his hair or mastery at lanceboard. And yet Astarion is the one too monstrous to go unleashed. 

Astarion returns to mending Lae'zel's armour. He feels twin pairs of eyes on his skin. He doesn't look up. 

-

Seven days come and pass. 

They push on furiously, faster than ever, moving as though the very whips of the hells are behind them—and encounter only more trees. More bloody trees and old game trails and not even a whisper of a githyanki crèche.

When dark falls, it does so in a wretched kind of slowness, as though to stretch their failure into infinity. First it is grey, and Gale weaves a bobbing parade of lights to guide them through the forest; then it is black, and those with darkvision are pushed to the front; then it is nothing, and they are tripping and slowing down and waning like twilight before Lae'zel stops. 

"It is not here," she says, cold. "We have not reached the crèche."

Astarion fades to a stop, musculature he doesn't have wheezing in his legs. The others are slumped and wearied around him, fine tremors over spent limbs. Pushed as far as they could and for nothing. 

Because it's been seven days, and seven days was all he had. Seven miserable fucking days, because sunlight cannot make up for a monster hunter and party that seeks to bind him. He doesn't even get to die full, a howling thing of misgrown claws and salt in his gut, because he hadn't dared hunt with Gandrel in their midst. 

He stares at the dirt beneath his feet. At least it isn't stone. At least there is that one singular fucking consolation from this nightmare. 

Lae'zel's hand wraps around her sword. "It has been seven days," she says, grim and choked. "I will not give my enemy any more warriors. This is the end."

Astarion swallows. Four tadpoles pulse in an array from violet-mint concern to maelstrom animosity, but it is Gale that steps forward, eyes soft, shoulders bowed. "You know something is wrong," he says quietly. "We should have felt the first of the changes by now, even if only a foul mood. But nothing has happened."

He holds up a hand, testing the flex and give of his wrist. "Still human. I know the githyanki have studied this beyond understanding, but we are facing an unknown here; and even if the changes progress as known from now, we will have plenty of time to end ourselves before finishing the transfiguration. There is no harm in waiting one more night."

Lae'zel doesn't say anything. Just stands there, not quite shaking, a coil of tension and bitterness and terror so complex it bleeds through the dark.

Her sword clatters back into its sheath. 

Shadowheart releases her palmful of sacred fire, still stiff. She'd cut her eyeteeth on her own spine before allowing Lae'zel to kill her, it seems, and yet relief bubbles under the rage. 

"Very well," she says. It is more of a hiss, because she needs somewhere to direct her anger, and Gale is a fine enough target for the moment. "You will live tonight, wizard. Do not ask for another."

"Thank you," Gale says. "That's all I want."

He locks eyes with Wyll over her head—something must pass between them, a building understanding. Sorrow, almost. Astarion can't quite parse through the tangled emotions fast enough before they change. 

"I am here," Gandrel says, nodding to Lae'zel, though she doesn't look at him. "Allow me to keep watch tonight; should the worst occur, I will do what I can."

What a sacrifice. What a perfect little monster hunter, offering them the chance to avoid their transformations and the promise of death should it happen. Will he even think of them as alive once they become mindflayers? Or will all these heroes he's spent time and fought alongside become just caricatures once they no longer meet his gaze with human eyes?

Perhaps that's why the others are so fucking determined to prove themselves as good people before the end. As though they must atone for the sin of becoming a monster. A crime of existence. 

"Thank you," Wyll says wearily. He looks around the group, at those who wore themselves to the bone trying to reach a fabled destination none of them knew where it lay and still failed. The stories never mention that. There is no eleventh hour savior here, nothing to reward them for trying as though the gods give a shit about mortals. 

They don't bother with setting up camp, with eating. Five bedrolls are spread beneath the forest's canopy, Gandrel perched on a nearby stump with sightlines over them all, and they lay back, none willing to speak. 

Astarion stares at the grey overhead, at the leaves hiding the familiarity of a night-black sky. This isn't the kennel, isn't the hell he knows, but grief wells within him regardless. 

He'd like to believe Gale, because optimism is a fine pastime to dabble in, but he's not so simplistic. Far more likely their grueling pace has hidden the signs of changes from them, when bleeding patches match a goblin's attack and hunger matches the pangs from long travel. 

Despite everything he's done to survive, he's going to become illithid. 

Astarion exhales, nicking his fangs on his inner lip. There is no blood to spill but the pain is a comfort, in a way. A reminder of what fate this transformation will allow him to avoid. Even Cazador does not favour him enough to keep a mindflayer in his keep. 

This isn't the escape he wanted, but it is an escape regardless.

Astarion closes his eyes. 

-

And Astarion trances, caught in reverie and moons of pale red, and sees a man before him; one soft and gentle and reaching out, never to touch, to harm, merely to assure. To promise safety. To protect.

And Astarion wakes, and he is not transformed. 

None of them are.

Chapter Text

The whispers of a stars-touched plane and monolithic skull. They fracture as his eyes open. 

Sound or movement must have been the instigator, because he isn't alone—the rest of the party is shifting, moving upon their bedrolls, pulled from the dreaming. Astarion sits up, regular motion. Grounded fears have him poke at his skin, run fingers over his arm, explore his mouth. He doesn't have quite enough blood for fine sensation, but it feels the same as ever, hair attached, nails set. Even his fangs are still sharp. 

Nothing happened.

He hasn't changed. One monster instead of the other.

Astarion stands slowly, testing his feet; everything feels in order, the rest of the party fumbling upright with the same caution. Lae'zel has fully removed her top to inspect herself, actually, which has Wyll flush and turn away, though she at least seems like she isn't about to strip fully starkers. She prods at her sternum with a frown. Gale flicks through half a dozen cantrips, each sparking easily to his grasp. Shadowheart is staring at the ground. 

But it is Wyll that has a sallow cast to his skin, the only discernible difference, and the grip he holds his rapier with is tight. 

Astarion notes that. Notes a lot of things, actually, with the stray pulses of a mind he has left. Every thought feels like a cacophony, from the still-healing puncture through some arrangement of vestige organs in his gut, the dirt under his bedroll, the early morning light. He is feeling everything and also nothing. A very odd combination. 

As the party assembles, Gandrel stands to one side. No crossbolt set, no blades drawn. Just waiting. 

They haven't transformed, and still the monster hunter is here. Astarion is a deft hand with rouge and powders given his lack of reflection, but certainly not enough to hide a full fucking set of tentacles. So Gandrel's lackadaisical reason for sticking around to help keep them becoming mindflayers is hollow and ash and all other senseless justifications. 

He's already standing, too high off the ground to grab his daggers, but he pictures it. Wants it, in parallelism to the immense hatred for the bastard in front of him. 

Is it going to come crashing down, now? Where clearly Astarion can be hauled back to Baldur's Gate in an elven corpse instead of an illithid one? Where now the threat of terrorizing the corpse for brains instead of blood isn't the pressing one but merely his innate fangs and eyes?

Everyone is bleary, hazy. Perhaps they'll be so distracted by their miraculous rescue they won't notice him running away. 

Hold person. Divine fire. There is a hole through his gut still, hidden under armour and clothes, no blood to heal and no blood to soothe. 

And gods, but Astarion doesn't want to risk what happens if he's wrong. 

His hand twitches again and he crushes that urge under his heel, breaks it down to the detritus and misery far below. Just shakes his head free, plastering something bemused and open expression as he faces the others.

They're staring back, mostly. Some are still partaking in a one-sided glaring match with the ground, but it's Wyll that sighs, something long and carrying centuries on its tail. "It didn't happen." 

Astarion swallows a scoff. Isn't that an understatement. 

"It did not." Gale bites his lip, eyes raw with curiosity. "I've half a mind to sleep again just to test, but I've another hypothesis to follow, if no one minds a prying into their affairs—did any of you happen to have a nightly visitor?"

What.

Fuck, there was, wasn't there—he remembers a soft-eyed man, features indistinct but for a genteel nature. A hand extended, palm up. Familiar in the way all faces are familiar after two centuries. But Astarion isn't one to pay much attention to his reverie, considering the overwhelming majority of memories there to reexperience. Did the phantom say something? Do something?

The others react to this much more strongly than expected, these tempestuous crashes of answering emotion—though strangely, Lae'zel's has a pulse of shame—and Wyll leads the verbal charge, nodding. "I did," he says. "A figure appeared to me, promising safety should I stay within its reach."

That's the most trustworthy phrase in existence, really. Perhaps it's an unfortunate thing Astarion doesn't remember any specifics from his visitor; his reaction to that must have been entertaining. 

"Mine as well," Gale agrees. "She said that this party has been under her protection, and that we will continue to be so without any cost of our own. So long as Shadowheart is here."

Astarion blinks. Turns to her. 

The cleric bristles under the attention, standing stiff, but she pulls out the artefact she's borne since the beach. It's an odd thing, geometric and biological in turn, old iron and bloody red. She stares at it, balancing in the palm of her hand. Which is an interesting direction to take the conversation.

"It said it is this," she says flatly. "Or living inside; I couldn't figure it out. But yes. It said it is protecting us."

The… artefact. The inanimate, unsapient object with enough spikes to flirt with a porcupine. That is what's protecting them. 

Astarion chances a look around the camp to see if anyone is wearing the incredulity they should be—but instead, they look considerate. Or furious, in Lae'zel's case. She kicks at the dirt. "Do not trust it," she snaps. "It is ghaik, that is clear. A manipulation. A trick."

"Be that as it may, we are unchanged," Gale points out, unreasonably cheerful. "And for all my caution remains up, I will raise a glass to that!"

Lae'zel snarls something wordless. Gale, steadfast, ignores that. 

Wyll's caution—this strange, mahogany-ash recurrence that has lived in the undercurrent of his tadpole for the past four days—resurfaces stronger as he releases his rapier. He shakes out his hand, scaring away whatever ghost haunts his steps, and turns to Gandrel, the only one not celebrating or staring stone-faced at the ground. "It didn't happen," he says, a note of repetition. "Did you notice anything?"

Gandrel shakes his head. "Nothing." He's staring at them, not quite damning, but shades too close for comfort. The wariness of a man faced with a labyrinth, unsure of what creature lay within. "You are not transforming," he says, as though it is a clarification they have to give. 

"It appears that way," Gale says, running a hand over his face. "I, for one, have a distinct lack of tentacles nor cerebral appetite, and my unwilling passenger seems… lulled to rest, for all I can still feel it."

Astarion prods at his own. It's there, teeth sunk into his cortex, but it isn't biting. Just stationary, an ever-present threat without a puppeteer to pull its marionette strings. Beyond this… guardian.

He's been under the claw of a master too much to trust the promise of protection. But it is equally difficult to ignore how he is being protected—no commands, no burning, no death. 

None of this makes any sense.

"And if this nightwalker speaks true, then I fear it points to something greater than a rogue nautiloid," Gale continues. "This Absolute, the True Souls—we've been granted a miracle for the time being, but I would hazard that we are still very much in the middle of it. Things such as this are rarely isolated."

"Yes," Gandrel says, quieter now. Still cautious. "And what is your plan now?"

"To keep on as best we can—I'm happy to be untransformed, but I would like it to stay that way permanently." 

Wyll steps in, smiling over the carcinogenous unease in his tadpole. "And investigating the Absolute further; anyone who incites this many goblin troops is not one I'll allow on the Sword Coast."

"They are both wrong," Lae'zel tells Gandrel. "We are continuing to the crèche for purification." 

"That's the gist of what I said," Gale corrects.

Gandrel stays quiet. Astarion, for fucking once, isn't the target of his attention—he keeps flicking his gaze around the party, never lingering on one for long. Investigating, or something else. 

The scrutiny doesn't go unnoticed. Shadowheart's face closes off, a non-expression. Lae'zel starts to hackle.

"My friend," Gale prompts. "What is on your mind?" 

Gandrel sighs, then admits: "I fear this is beyond me."

Astarion's ears flick up.

"What do you mean?" Wyll asks, too directed to be casual.

"I am a monster hunter," Gandrel says. "And my expertise lies with only that—I've a hand at snares and vegetation, not nearly so for gods and illithids. My help could offer something, but I would rather bring my tribe what information I can before they send another in my wake." 

Astarion doesn't move. The others prickle with nerves, a feeling akin to gravel in boots. The mental air simmers with a sharpened focus.

None of today has made any sense, from a second transformation to nothing to guardian to shared dreams. But Astarion had been settling himself into this new reality, toothing into what he knows is happening with a party of six and a crossbow aimed at his back.

And now Gandrel is speaking of returning.

What information he brings to his tribe is fraught—there are very few courses of action a tribe of monster hunters would prepare in response to a rogue spawn, particularly when heralded by a man so blindly devoted to daughters that are less than dead. To say nothing of what Cazador will do when he learns of his wayward favourite. 

But in the telling, Gandrel goes away. Gandrel leaves.

Does he mean to leave alone, or with an unwilling prisoner? 

Astarion doesn't look at the others to see their response. Just holds himself perfectly still, caught in the frigid north, in the stone far below. Both options are damning, but one allows him room to breathe beforehand. This is what he needs. 

The party regards Gandrel for a terribly long moment. 

"It would be best for our paths to part, then," Wyll says. 

Gandrel nods. 

All fucking gods, Gandrel nods.

And apparently there's no time for that revelation to stand because then he stands, hitching his crossbow to the side of his pack, everything already gathered after a night of nothing set out. Astarion hardly dares to breathe. 

The party didn't let Gandrel take him once. He must hope they will do it again.

Gandrel looks at him, then. Astarion is in the back, a spectre more than a thing, holding his tongue for fear of being noticed. But he is noticed now. One hand set on a crossbow, over a crest of howling wolves. 

I asked whether they would promise to put you down if you proved to be the monster I know you are.

If Gandrel tries to take him now, Astarion is going to kill him. Fuck the consequences. Fuck the death that comes after. If Gandrel even thinks about taking him back to Cazador, Astarion is going to slit his fucking throat.

Gandrel's hand falls away from his crossbow.

"All I ask," he says, and lets his eyes pull away to settle back on Wyll, "is that you hold to what I said."

Wyll's jaw sets. "Astarion stays with us."

"Then," Gandrel says, and proffers his hand, "just in case."

After a moment of hesitation, Wyll mirrors him—and Gandrel sets the needle in his palm. Cold iron, fey-touched. As always, it swivels to face Astarion. 

The gift of a hag. The curse for a spawn. Now in the party's possession.

If Astarion tries to run, if he chances his luck anywhere else in the world than caged at its side, he will be found. He will be taken.

Wyll stares at the needle. His arm clenches. He puts it in his pocket. 

There's fucking that, then. 

Gandrel nods, as though they had just discussed something profound. Astarion watches him with slitted eyes. He's still smiling, poised and anticipatory, fingers going through the motions of adjusting his sleeves. Gandrel is watching him back, as with the past four days, eyes familiar enough Astarion can feel their weight upon his skin. Eyes that see him for what he is, something deserving of being put down. 

He's already proved himself a monster sevenfold times over, really. He has for every miserable second of the past two centuries. How long since Cazador had to command him to gather victims? How long has merely the implication pushed him onto the streets? 

Astarion will survive. This is the singular fact that defines him, back when death was not an option against eternity and here when death is a response to failure. And because dying is not surviving, he won't. There are locks to pick and shadows to skulk and goblins to manipulate. He is worth more alive than dead. 

Gandrel hefts his pack higher, crossbow swinging.

"I wish you more luck than words can hold," he says, nodding to each in turn. His gaze lingers. "I hope you can stop whatever this madness is, and should you find yourself near Baldur's Gate, I would welcome a retelling."

"We will gladly do so," Wyll says. He's still standing stiff, the most unfriendly yet. 

Then Gandrel strides into the forest, cutting off the main path into the brush, and it is scant minutes before the sound of his footfalls fade away. 

Gone. Back to Cazador, to Baldur's Gate, but gone. No more a crossbow aimed at Astarion's chest. No more eyes that can peer past the veneer of heroism. Just gone. 

Nothing about today makes sense. Astarion should be celebrating—wants to, even—but things never go this well. Something must be wrong. Something is wrong. He just doesn't know what.

Wyll exhales, loud in the absence. As if on cue, the party finishes their silent vigil, adjusting shoulders and misplaced clothing. Gale has a hand parsing through unkempt hair.

Relaxing. Breathing. As though they are watching the tailend of a storm head opposite their location, which is exactly what happened, but that reaction should be his instead of theirs. And yet there goes Wyll, tadpole simmering with this relief of muted cypress. What the fuck.

The morning is freshly hatched still, yolk-yellow and pale blue, but none of the party looks particularly ready to tramp off into the wilds. Least of all Astarion. Particularly since he is flying completely blind.

There's a faint noise, the rustle of a temperamental forest, something humming underneath. Wyll tilts his head to the side as though listening. Then he turns to Gale with a meaningful look, a hand tapped to the side of his temple. Astarion cracks his shield just in time to hear: Gale, is he gone yet?

The wizard flicks his hands—something of a surveillance spell snakes out, splitting in each cardinal direction, though he dismisses those opposite Gandrel's path. His eyes close, moving under his lids as though taking in a hundred sights at once. 

When they reopen, he is smiling. "Gandrel is very well gone," he says. "Nearly past the river, as it were; he moves quickly."

Wyll exhales, more of a sigh, and sags onto the half log the hunter once used. "That's a relief."

Pardon?

Astarion tenses without conscious effort, ears pricked and jaw set. There's this undercurrent spreading through the party, the cusp of a wave without cresting, but much too fucking close to be understandable. For why a party of heroes says it is a relief when another hero leaves. 

"I would normally delight in a well-versed traveller accompanying us, but I am not loath to see him gone," Gale says, releasing the last of the spell. "Remarkably tricky to get an ample rest when I'm focused on maintaining our guise."

"You certainly were able to call him friend easily enough," Shadowheart says with a roll of her eyes, but they're creased on the edges. "Don't tell me you're such a pure, unbothered soul that a little lying gets under your skin. I was just starting to think better of you."

"Thank you," Gale says dryly. "Waterdeep has allowed me more than my fair share of falsehoods, being full of aristocrats as she is; I am just used to taking them off like an uncomfortable robe when I return to my tower. Tara and I had no reason to lie to each other there."

"Of course it's about your cat again."

"She is a tressym."

Wyll cuts in, nodding to Shadowheart. "You'd make a marvelous bard," he says, and it sounds strangely genuine. "By the Triad, I cannot believe how close we were to spoiling a fight before you stepped in to direct his attention elsewhere."

She shrugs, but with a prickle of auburn pride. "It's an acquired skill," she says. "I'm well versed."

Lae'zel tches. "There was no need for it. I could have taken him—he did not have the make of a fighter. What you did was a coward's avoidance."

"What we all did," Shadowheart corrects. Astarion watches even the moment of levity with Gale burn away, irascible once more. "Or is the gith too scared of lies?"

Gale hastens in, the memory of Shadowheart crouched over Lae'zel with a knife a touch too fresh. "Little doubt we could have taken him in a fight, but there was no need," he says genially. "Better to gather what information we were lacking and press on towards our goal."

"He was no hunter. He was a fool, and it would have been a mercy to kill him."

Gale blows a lock of hair out of his face as the target for his frustration. "Yes, perhaps that would have been easier, but what's done is done. We have another mystery to face instead."

"We would have traveled faster to the crèche without him," she snaps. "He should have been killed."

Then, sharp: "Lae'zel."

Wyll isn't standing but he's tense, bardic magic sparking alongside the flat of his wrists. "We weren't going to kill him," he says, firm. "I would have if he forced my hand, but his death gains us nothing but taking a man from his people. He stopped when we told him to, traveled alongside us without making an attempt, and left peacefully. What we agreed upon came to fruition. Can we focus on that, instead of fighting between ourselves?"

Lae'zel grimaces and turns away. Doesn't push it.

Astarion stares. 

What the fuck are they talking about.

The only agreement he knows of is his death sentence, but this– doesn't sound like that. Doesn't feel like it. Too sharp, too conscientious. Which means there must be another out there, tucked away in a corner he isn't privy to, something made concerning him without the fucking decency of letting him know the terms and conditions.

A pit drops out of Astarion's stomach.

Or maybe they did, and he missed it.

He knows that keeping his shield up interferes with more precise communication, a worthy cost to keep the fear-fear-fear firmly in his own skull instead of anyone else's. Particularly when the party seemed so averse to utilize that potential. But now it seems he's been sitting deaf while they talk over him. He's hidden himself and hidden them as well—even minutes ago, when he'd needed to crack his shield to hear Wyll's questions to Gale. The village, how they'd reached out to him only after he'd responded in kind.

Gods, how much do they know that he doesn't?

Then he looks up, and Wyll is staring at him. 

"Are you okay?" Wyll asks. 

He's apparently as blind and stupid as a fucking infant, but he doesn't think that's what Wyll is asking. Astarion settles for smiling. "In the pink of health, really."

"I'm glad for it," Wyll says, with what honestly sounds like sincerity. "I didn't think he would travel with us—I thought he would hear mindflayer and turn around."

"So did I," Shadowheart mutters. "Any sane person would."

Lae'zel seems faintly disgusted by agreeing with her. 

"Sanity doesn't seem to be a particular requirement for those we've encountered thus far," Gale notes. "He was a fascinating character, narrow worldview aside. I would be curious to know whether he was the norm or an outlier for his tribe."

"But now he's gone."

"Now he's gone," Gale agrees. "We are once more five traveling through an unfamiliar world with neither guide nor mentor; and there is a strange part of me more glad at this than six."

Are they– Astarion doesn't understand fucking anything that is happening here. Are they saying they dislike Gandrel? Not a difficult opinion to reach, considering the man's everything, but then why lie? Why allow him? Why do anything of what they did?

He continues smiling as Gale turns to him, errant inquisition drifting off his tadpole. 

"You composed yourself remarkably well," he says. "I can't imagine it was a pleasant thing to entertain that man, but I must thank you for your assistance in holding the whole thing together. Wyll is right that we had no reason to wish his death, but it is nice to get through an encounter such as that without shedding blood." A pause. "Well, more of it, besides."

There is a hole in his fucking gut, but it didn't have blood to shed. Is that what they mean?

"And in that vein, while I rather think we've missed the iron being hot to ask your motives, I must request you don't actually bite us," Gale adds. "For all our tadpoles seem surprisingly benign, I would rather have my full strength about me as we figure out how to remove them."

No one disagrees. Shadowheart nods, even. Gale is leading this conversation for some reason, but the others are behind him. Are in agreement.

Astarion clings to that one stable piece of understanding no matter how much it cuts his palms. The new command to anchor this volatile ceasefire. Don't bite people.

This he can do. 

"Like I said," Astarion purrs, "I really had intended never to bite you. So long as any stops at abandoned apothecaries don't include ironvine, I will be a perfect companion. In a fortnight, you'll forget I'm anything else at all."

Gale chuckles. "Well, my friend, you rather match the portrait a touch too well for that, even if the sunlight had me second-guessing myself."

Astarion's smile thins. An underhanded statement, really, considering he doubts perfect hero Wyll would have stayed his blade had he recognized what he traveled with in advance, but he's used to low blows. "I'm afraid I haven't a reflection to see for myself." 

"I'm thankful I didn't ask, then," Gale says, rueful. "As Shadowheart can attest, I found myself far too curious about your appearance, particularly when the sunlight seemed so incongruent to being a vampire. But I suppose the parasites have more mysteries than we assumed, hm?"

That's an open-ended question. An invitation to explain further, to elaborate. He can feel Gale's whistling curiosity from here. 

Astarion pitches his voice two notes up. "I had meant to reveal it myself, once the moment was right," he says prettily. "With the tadpoles mucking up time and barking on our heels, I figured it would be easier to lessen the number of distractions until it was either dealt with or that particular revelation didn't matter."

He laughs a little, unbothered and contrite. "Then along came the worst possible manner of it. Perhaps it would have been better if I had just nipped it in the bud myself."

"Better than nipping us, yes," Gale notes. He glances at the wider party, first to Wyll, then to Shadowheart. "But we're all in accord now, yes? Hurdled the rough patch, so to speak. Nothing more to worry about."

So that's their angle. Lovely. 

Astarion was the favoured spawn to be sent out to nobles, being gorgeous and svelte and the picture of an exotic capture, one to relish in. And sometimes those nobles would be those familiar with the song and dance, having certain caterings they enjoyed over others—and sometimes he would be their first. Sometimes he would go to a new house, caged and bound and gagged, and they would stand over him, not quite sure of themselves, and he would wait the long, long seconds before arousal overtook morality. 

And then, at the end, he watched for the moment where they decided what they did was justified. 

The party's closer to the second, by his guess. They have a monster as a kept pet and believe it the better course of action; they believe that if he had introduced himself with vampire spawn tacked to his name, this whole thing would have gone better instead of worse. That this was a regrettable casualty they can shake their head and bemoan. Like there was any fucking way his vampirism could be revealed that doesn't end up with being pinned to the ground with a blade through his gut.

Well. Who is Astarion to get in the way of their delusion? It works better for him as well. 

"Of course," Astarion says. "If ever we find more ironvine, I'll ensconce myself away before anything dire should happen." He casts his gaze about the wider party. "Now, there was something said about making a plan? I believe we could all use a proper path forward."

The jump is just brisk enough to push Wyll back into hero mode rather than whatever this moral masturbation about how Astarion just should have told them. 

Gods, he needs the distraction. Not even distraction. Because apparently the game has entirely changed and he needs to adjust to this. Whatever the fuck this is. 

Astarion isn't thinking. It's all he can do to stay sane. 

"Right," Wyll says, nodding, though his tadpole is still a simmering mire. Gale sets back, conflict successfully avoided, Shadowheart still hackled. Lae'zel pays attention for the first time. 

He snags a branch from the ash of the fire, dragging through the charcoal. "We should turn around," Wyll says, marking out a rough map of their surroundings in the dirt—or what seem to be, circles standing in for trees and a vague blob where the village stood—and taps the end opposite where they are. "Gandrel spoke of a grove, one run by druids; healers, if I had to guess. Do we think it's closer to the sea or more inland?"

"There is nothing they can do that the crèche cannot do better," Lae'zel snaps. "Githyanki have fought the ghaik since the beginning of time; a mortal healer is a child before our knowledge."

"Yes," Wyll concedes. "But I'm worried we aren't heading in the right direction; all we have to go off is tracking where the nautiloid was aimed for, and it could have been thrown aside or asunder in the crash." He taps the stick on an empty stretch of dirt. "We could be walking in entirely the wrong direction, and we would never know."

Lae'zel is still scowling, which has Shadowheart looking delighted. Everyone seems to be taking the conversation swing on the chin. "I do not see why we must waste time going there. To continue on is to find it eventually."

"All civilization carries maps, markers," Wyll says. "If we want to find a route to the crèche, this Grove would know. And–" he hesitates for a moment, before pushing on. "I was honest when I said I would not ask you to fight this alongside me, but the advocatus diaboli is a murderer from the hells; I fear she would head to gatherings of people first, rather than the wilds. At the Grove, we can gather supplies and a map to the crèche, and I hope to kill her there as well, before she can slaughter any more."

More about this devil. She seems like rather exactly the type they shouldn't be hunting, if she can cut through devils in Avernus like wet paper. 

But that's hero types for you.

Gale claps him on the shoulder. "A fine choice, my friend. I would agree that this is where we should go; while we can continue on and do what we must, I can't say I wouldn't wish for more advanced tools," he says, inclining a finger towards their tents—half of which are still filched sails from the beach—and his cooking stack, with what could only generously be called a pot and a blade dull enough to make parsnips a legendary battle. "Civilization would do us good, I believe."

Wyll brushes a hand over his shoulder near unconsciously, as though the memory of touch lingers. Not one used to it, then. But wanting it, by how he seems to cradle the indentation, clutching for the warmth.

Gods, but it is infuriating, to see all these idiosyncrasies in which Astarion could tease his way into neutrality, to trip this blushing virgin hero into his bedroll and wring a promise for protection through his clever tongue—to do anything, if only he hadn't bit. If only he hadn't damned himself before he'd had a fucking chance.

"I agree," Shadowheart says, if only to disagree with Lae'zel. "I want actual supplies before we push on."

Wyll nods. "Astarion? What about you?"

It's a curious sort of question, one he hasn't much had the bandwidth to acknowledge with the threat of their no-longer-so-imminent transformation. Because yes, he has been following the party and will continue to do so, to the crèche for the githyanki or to this grove for supplies, but it's another question that none of them have to ask. 

Astarion prods his tadpole. It wriggles away from the touch, teeth sinking into a new part of his brain, only amorphous sensation and a resonant pulse of red-grey. 

If it is removed—if he is, as they say, healed—will Cazador's commands return?

Gandrel is not here. But there is little doubt he is returning to Baldur's Gate with news of an Astarion that walks under sunlight and stays far from his master's side, and Astarion cannot believe for even a second that Cazador will not hear it. 

For all the tadpole returns him to sunlight, Astarion holds no delusion that Cazador could not retake him. 

"Astarion?" Wyll prompts again. 

Ah. Conversation. 

"I would like civilization, I believe." He doesn't look at Lae'zel, whatever peace he'd been brokering gone in the empty choice to support the majority. He doesn't look at Wyll. He doesn't look at anyone. He isn't thinking. "A rest in a proper bed would do us all good."

Wyll nods, a little hesitant. Still doing that miserable thing of smiling over all the emotions churning like stormclouds in his mind. "Tomorrow, then. We can rest for today." 

How fucking magnanimous. 

Lae'zel clicks her tongue, somehow carrying a world of derision in the sound, and stalks off for her longsword without so much as a by-your-leave.

Astarion follows her lead to duck back under his sail canvas, sit there, and just try to breathe. 

Well. That's one horrendous fate avoided, neat as could be. Tied off with a fucking ribbon. 

Wyll returns to his map and the others sit back on their bedrolls, as though those in an orgy that don't know what to do with themselves with more than one partner. Content to wile away the morning after a seven day sprint, lazy and lurid. Parsing through Gale's filched books, caring for neglected armour. Lae'zel eventually puts her shirt back on, which has Shadowheart and Wyll's tadpoles murmuring something Astarion can't place, if only so she can properly brace the hilt against her sternum to sharpen its blade. 

He sits there in his tent, saying nothing, thinking less, but it is impossible to ignore one change to the status quo. 

Gandrel is gone. Gandrel is gone and Astarion is not gone with him. The Gur has left this motley crew and though vampirism is no longer a secret but a known threat, Astarion is still here. He has not been killed. He has not been cast out. 

He has, slim though it is, a chance.

And in that chance comes a harbinging. How he plays this will affect the rest of his miserably short freedom, should he go about it wrong. But wrong is a very thin fucking line to walk, and this idyllic day of rest might be his only opportunity to better prepare himself. 

There is still a hole in his gut. He would like it gone, if he could. If there weren't four obstacles standing resolute in his path. 

Astarion watches the party with narrow eyes. 

He could wait. He likely should, all things considered, but the hunger is something he would rather smother now than showcase in a manner more likely to prove him a monster. 

In that regard, no Wyll. No Shadowheart. No Gale. All are too sharp, too accurate. There is the memory of hands still digging into the sockets of his shoulders but they are hands bruising with simple strength, simple reasoning. No historical slaughters. 

Across the camp, Lae'zel sharpens her longsword.

She is the least heroic, virtuous member of them all, though perhaps edged out by Shadowheart, who is observant in a way that removes her as an option. He holds two daggers that are hers still. She is the best choice. 

She is, perhaps, the only choice. This is a familiar sort of pit to throw himself in. 

Astarion stands in the abject silence, little more than a hapless spectre, and then slinks on up. He stands politely out of the way as she inspects the tempering of the blade, the fashioned guard over the hilt. 

Lae'zel's ears prick and she glances at him, jaw set.

"Hello, love," he says, dove-bright and earnest. "Would you terribly mind if I went out for a spot of hunting?"

Her brow furrows. "You are asking," she says, a strange clarification. 

Astarion nods despite the lurch in his throat. "I am," he says, stretching it out in a languish sweep of words. "But I can keep mention of it to myself if you want, dear. I'd hate to be an annoyance."

Lae'zel is still looking at him. Her brow continues to furrow.

"I'll gladly bring back whatever I catch," Astarion continues. "That way, we're both happy. Have you any preference for hare or hind, love?"

Just fucking say yes.

She has a finer grasp on her tadpole than the others, not in hiding but in sensing, and he can feel her subconscious brush against his shield as though she wants to peer deeper. He makes that shit impenetrable, the deliberate crack patched up. Nothing gets out. Astarion continues smiling. 

"Go now," she says eventually. "Do not stay out too late."

"Quick as a bird, love," Astarion agrees, and slips into the forest before the rest of the party can look over. 

And then he's gone. 

It's like throwing off a cloak, a doffing of something miserable and drenched in ink. He stops breathing, stops hiding his fangs, stops pretending to be anything but what he is and just runs—faster, faster, sprinting through the trees, tearing at his face and clothes. 

This is not Baldur's Gate. This is the wilds, and he is a monster, and he finally can understand why that is called an advantage.

Rats in corridors, stray mutts in back alleys; Astarion is hamstrung through starvation but he pounces regardless, tearing into some stray thing lurking behind brambles. It bucks in his arms, squalling, and he bites—bites and bites and bites until there is nothing to do but drink. 

And gods, does he drink. 

It is not quite elysium; not quite the depth that thinking blood brought him, when such a bounty made his dead heart jolt. But it is blood and it is blood without a master deciding the amount, and Astarion drinks until it hurts, until his shriveled stomach bloats and runs fat in his chest. 

Astarion digs his fingers into the thing's fur, hardly conscious of the species or the size or anything but the crimson lapping through his veins, the heady return to sensation. How the air brushes his curls, how the soil is uneven beneath his knees. How this is, in its own odd way, freedom. 

He's thinking again, unfortunately. Most of it is hazy under the satiation but he can feel the perforation in his gut stitching closed, patching up. At least he hasn't eaten anything he has to throw up later. That was a regrettable part of the disguise. 

And now it's gone. Now it's all fucking gone, and he has to think about it because he has enough blood to think, and there is no one around in this miserable forest to see him think, and so Astarion crouches in the dirt of the Sword Coast so far from Baldur's Gate and starts thinking. 

Everything has changed. 

Gandrel gave Wyll the needle. A homing device of sorts, a compass with a vampiric north—something that is, very notably, useless to one in the same party as said vampire. One that is also very notably only of use to one who wants to hunt Astarion, namely Gandrel, and Cazador through him. So. 

The expectation is that Astarion will run, or be cast out, or slain in some other excessively violent way. The needle guarantees that. He can no longer run, if that was ever an option with the tadpole. With the wretched scuttling thing chewing at what brain he has to offer. A tadpole and a needle and a rapier through his gut.

Astarion pauses.

The needle is only useful without the commands. 

Of course it is. All Cazador has to say is come to me and Astarion will bite off his own limbs to escape the chains binding him—there is no world in which Cazador needs something so superfluous as it. 

No world except this one, where an illithid tadpole mutes the commands. 

For a moment, Astarion imagines Szarr Palace, what bacchanal is going forth in his absence. Is Cazador taking it out on the others, perhaps? Is it darling Dalyria under the knife, or Leon deprived of his cushy room? Or is Cazador just sending every mongrel with a knife out to the wilds to reclaim his lost pet?

The tadpole keeps him at a distance. The tadpole keeps him safe, however much a threat transformation is. And all he can do is think about that.

The pulse of blood through his gut is still an alien thing, though this is not elysium. But it is blood and it is healing and it is sanity returned, though wavering on the edge of delirium. 

Because this is not a plan. This is barely an idea, a manifestation, but Astarion has always been shit at plans, and all his centuries yearning for freedom never held much in the way of concrete intentions. Just out and safe and gone.

The tadpole did that. Seven days have come and passed. Perhaps seven more will do the same, and more after that—maybe Shadowheart's little artefact truly does protect them from transformation, and it smothers four phrases more his skeleton than bones. Astarion doesn't trust it, not forever, because he's made a deal like that in a back alley and saw what came from it—but while the personification is unpredictable, the power is not. 

Something about the illithid tadpoles have removed Cazador's commands. Not removed, but softened. Weakened. Temporarily severed. 

If Astarion learns how to utilize it, could he make that permanent?

He hums into the dead thing's fur. 

Because this thin wire for a way out is also a garotte. Two contradicting goals—Astarion needs the tadpole's power to be free, and the party needs the tadpoles removed. Both cannot be done.

This is his dilemma, then. Or, rather—not dilemma, but choice. He can choose between helping them and damning himself, or not helping them and getting killed in the process. 

Or. Or.

Or Astarion finds a way to faff at their side, helpful and dog-eyed and biddable, steal the tadpole's power when they aren't looking, then remove his own when it's safe to do so. 

No threat of Cazador. No threat of transformation. Nothing but open fields and sunlit skies and the warm, gushing nectarine of fresh blood. 

All he has to do is stay at their side and be useful enough not to be killed, nor have any of his more duplicitous actions be evident. All he has to do is thread this needle, not the one that binds him here, until he can sever two centuries and the promise of more.

Well. It isn't like this was any fucking easier when the only goal was avoiding death; he already gave his leash over to the party. This is just maintaining it, with a few actions slipped under the surface. Another timer set, though one without the ease of trackable days. Astarion has no idea how long it will take to learn how to master illithid powers, nor how to even start, but he has to. Much like he has to succeed, which means he has to obey, which means he has to be theirs. 

He has to do a lot of things. This is, as it often is, the way things go.

But this is a chance. This is a way he can take it to the end, that he can survive, that he can follow with the party for as long as it takes to complete their little mission, and then he can leave them behind. Run away. Find some sanctum so far from Cazador, forever stuck wondering where his favoured spawn went. No more commands than those newly given.

He thinks of his grave back in Baldur's Gate, when the fancy strikes him, when the melancholy of his terminal existence is not enough and he must reach out for more intangible miseries. Old stone, worn and wearied by centuries of long neglect, overwrought with moss and cracks and ruin. No one left to take care of it. No one left to care. 

 Here, the grave is fresh and unsullied, held in place with a needle of cursed iron and fetters the party seems far too content to pretend aren't there. Here, Astarion bows his head and cannot fuck his way out. He obeys for a chance of something greater—but he obeys regardless. Bites and enslaves himself, to bring the metaphor to its miserable peak. 

If he stays, he is allowing them to own him. 

If he runs, he will never be free. 

Perhaps some things are meant to break. 

-

Another discovery—running water does not kill him. Astarion scrubs himself until it hurts, re-coiffing his hair and adjusting the set of his top. There is no reflection in the wave-caught surface but through touch and taste, he knows there is no blood left on his face, on his claws. 

The plan doesn't call for a monster. The plan calls for the lack of one, actually. It is better to deny his nature. 

-

When Astarion hauls the young doe back—Lae'zel nods approvingly—everyone is sitting together around a crackling fire in their midst, the canopy overtop bushwhacked so nothing catches with the drifting embers. 

They're talking, actually. He came back in the middle of a conversation, likely important—but Astarion drifts away, mind and ears full of blood and satiation. No words reach him. 

It's not quite thinking, where he's at. There is an audience he must perform for again and that stops most of it, but they're not talking directly to him, and thus the back of his mind can bother about itself. The needle and the tadpole and the Absolute. 

He ducks under his canvas, arranging himself on the shitty fabric that makes for a bedroll. Tomorrow they go—probably to the Grove, considering Lae'zel can only fight against three stalwarts for so long. The same instinct that made him do something in the dormitory so his siblings would see a less easy target makes him pick up armour, inspecting without seeing. Busy hands. At least he doesn't have to fear someone stealing his things. Probably. As soon as he finds enough to steal, he'll collect a plethora of worse ones to leave out while his true ones are hidden.

"Astarion?"

Wyll is approaching, pulled away from the chatty circle around the fire. Wonderful. Astarion would've preferred even one day to trance away the memories of Gandrel, but here they are. He smiles, glancing through his lashes. "Hm?" 

"We're going to leave early tomorrow," Wyll says, as though it is some marvelous plan and not the concept of filching more hours from the day than Gale's preferred schedule allows. "To the Grove, for supplies and information. And–"

Instead of continuing right away, the man shifts, tadpole brimming over with a complexity. It isn't dithering, nor anxiety in the way Astarion is familiar, the kind of blushing schoolboys and nonsensical virgins—more the hesitation of a bird in flight, choosing a target to perch upon. "I wanted to ask if you were okay, truly." 

Didn't they already do this? How many more times is Astarion going to need to explain through his pointy teeth that he is conceivably happy about these events?

He isn't dead. He isn't being sent back to Gandrel. He has blood in his mouth and a plan to harness his tadpole. He is, by all accounts, doing more than okay. Compared to his previous baseline, this is in the upper echelons of all existence. 

His well-deserved paranoia doesn't end now, but he has a chance. A chance to prove himself as a regular, normal, perfectly abject companion in this party. Which is apparently none too fucking difficult, given how they let Gandrel into the camp. Invited him even, like a vampire knocking at the door—then battered the spawn down as though both could coexist. As though there wasn't the implication only mildly hidden in post-script of torture and general bodily harm for answers. 

Gandrel isn't a saint. He sold something to a hag, ignoring two corpses out front, and walked around with a maddening drug on his wrist like a fine cologne. But he's given the red carpet treatment—all of them are, Gale's little bomb treated as a mild concern and Lae'zel's attitude merely cultural difference. Wyll's neck, untouched, unbroken, Shadowheart or a potion's work. 

Why is it that Astarion slogged through four days of a hole in his gut without the same preferential treatment? Why is his autonomy less?

He's spent so long dreaming of freedom, imagining it would be better than this. 

Silence stretches. Wyll leans forward, shifting a hand to flit through where his gaze has drifted, a little too far to the right. "Astarion? Are you listening?"

There's a crack in his shield now, a purposeful one, hairline and tucked under the bristling defense—he cannot risk missing their telepathy, not when it echoes around him and he sits deaf and blind and dumb beneath it—and Wyll's proximity ignites the spike of fear-fear-fear to a howling pitch, just loud enough for a single note to escape through.

Wyll freezes.

Fuck. 

He made this plan two fucking hours ago. It cannot be falling apart already. 

Astarion shakes it off, slamming his shield closed, smiling politely. "My apologies—I drifted. What did you say?"

He's still staring. Astarion hackles, fangs slotting behind his lips. Fuck off.  

"You're… uncomfortable," Wyll says. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

When the words finally reach him, fighting through, Astarion wants to laugh. Oh, is he feeling guilt over his actions? Is he finally falling free of the delusion that Astarion is sticking around from some lotus-patterned desire to make friends with them all, when they parlay with a hunter from Cazador and promise to put him down should he be who he is? Is he coming to terms that enslavement butts up against delicate sensibilities?

Bully for him. Astarion needs survival more than he needs comfort.

"I am fine," Astarion repeats, enunciating each syllable. "Perfectly fine, love. Happy to go to the Grove, as it were."

Then, in case Wyll doesn't buy it, he shrugs. "Just a touch jumpy from the fright this morning. Gods if the thought of becoming a squid didn't soothe my nerves much."

"And Gandrel," Wyll points out. Correctly. 

Astarion doesn't look away, but he does huff, light and unbothered. "Perhaps. But he's gone now."

Gone, back to Baldur's Gate, back to his master, carrying word of his escape. The party didn't give him over, but they didn't stop him, either. So very much against the idea of killing Gandrel. Of taking a man from his people, as it was phrased. 

He wants to ask why, almost. To see Wyll fluster under the question, biases surging to meet his desire to be righteous in the eyes of the world; but there's no point. He won't get an answer, and they'll grow cautious around him. 

He is still weaker. He is still stumbling after their headstart to prove himself useful. In absentia of strength, he must flatter and charm. 

"I'm sorry," Wyll says, tadpole singing green worry. 

"There is absolutely nothing to be sorry about," Astarion says. "You saved me from a rather nasty fate—and by all the gods, where are my manners? I haven't even thanked you for it. But none of us want to suffer through that, so instead let's trek on to this Grove, hm? Perhaps these druids know something about the Absolute."

Wyll looks as though he chewed something sour. 

Tough luck. Astarion doesn't want to be here either. But destiny has never been so kind. 

He continues smiling. "I'm ready to go when you are." 

Fuck all of them.

Chapter Text

It takes three days of backtracking—three days where hares must fill the void a dozen goblin skirmishes leave behind—before they find what Gandrel spoke of in a trail carving through the trees, overlaid with the dug furrows of wagons and plodding oxen. A route to the Grove, considering that's the new plan. Or something along those lines. 

They also find a dog, a scraggy little mutt named Scratch, of all things. Shadowheart perks up and does her damnedest to pretend she isn't, but her tadpole beams interest loud enough even the un-psionic members of the party can feel it; so Wyll downs a potion of animal speaking scrounged up from the village and convinces the cur to follow them. Fucking lovely. 

Then– something. Something rich. 

Astarion's ears prick, despite himself. 

There's blood here, scattered over the wayside. Not fresh, some days hence, but there hasn't been rain to wash it away and he can still smell it. Humanoid, dark and rich; goblin with its sour profile. A battle. Something larger than what they've been fighting. Blood enough that multiple lives were lost. 

He doesn't say he can smell it, though. Leaves that poignant reminder to the wayside and instead tightens his grip on his daggers as they grow closer and closer to the stench. It only takes a few more turns before something swims out of the green to greet them. 

There, nestled in the cliffs, is a gate. A portcullis, almost, carved wood and chains; twice his height and heavy in the earth, a balustrade against mountain walls. It stands over a flattened clearing, the remains of wooden stands and platforms cast aside like rubble. 

Astarion scuffs his boot over a patch of brown—too dark to be empty dirt. There was a battle, blood splattered against the base of the gate and fire scorched into the rocks. Droplets, even, as though molten iron seared through stone in deep, riveted pockmarks. Something fierce happened here. 

Something fierce still might, considering the malignant tension in the air. Lae'zel has already grabbed her longsword. 

Wyll marches forward, ever their leader, and stands before the gate with his head craned back. He waits instead of calling for attention—already footsteps sound on the other side. 

A woman appears over the top of the gate, backlit and crowned in antlers to match her druid's garb. She's a stern look about her, elven heritage not enough to keep scowl lines from marring her forehead and souring her lips. A murmur of a spell and her gaze sharpens, an eagle's eyes arrowing through the sunset to see them all. 

No tadpole, no emotions whispering across the mental ballroom. At least some people in this coast didn't all originate from the nautiloid. 

Wyll nods, posture open. "Hello," he calls. "We mean you no harm; we are travelers, seeking supplies and a visit to your healer, if you'll allow us."

Polite, composed. There's little reason Wyll stands to head their adventures, rather than contending with Gale's verbosity or Lae'zel's ruthlessness. 

The woman stares at him for a moment longer, then flicks over to the other members, each in turn. Her scowl never fades. 

"Move to your left," she says, jerking her head to the section of dirt before the gate. 

Wyll blinks. "Pardon?"

She scoffs, eyes still far too sharp. "Under orders of the Archdruid Kahga, you will stand in the sunlight before being allowed to enter. We've had warnings of vampires."

Astarion goes very still. 

Four strains of emotions brush against his shell; anxiety, compounded over itself, a confusion so tense it threatens to blister. Lae'zel has her hackles drawn, teeth set. Gale's lips purse. 

He can stand in sunlight now. He's wandered blind with two white spokes in his sight where he'd stared at it for too long to know that. If prompted, he could pirouet in that little stretch of gold until all the druids call him savior. This isn't a problem.

The woman's face. She's watching them.

"Astarion," Wyll says, quiet, so quiet, "would you like to find a place to set up camp?"

Of course. Better not to risk it. Better not to expose themselves for what they are and what they kept, because he's a liability. Good, well-mannered civilization doesn't keep monsters at their beck and call. Popping his gob into the Grove means they might be caught. Might be accused. 

Instead they'll all shack up with running water and heated food while he curls in the wilderness. One night, multiple—will this transform him? Will he stay behind as Shadowheart ventures further into the Grove, and Astarion feels every bone break and remake itself into a new monster because he's too untrustworthy to allow in?

He'll do more. He'll try harder. He won't be left behind. 

Astarion nods. He wants to set a hand on Wyll's shoulder, to capitalize on the man's desire for touch, but Wyll is standing just far enough away the motion will seem awkward. So he smiles instead, wide enough to shine and thin enough to hide his fangs. "Of course, darling. Any preference on where?"

"Somewhere close," Wyll says. "We should be back before dusk, I hope."

And what are the chances that is true?

Astarion just nods. Easier to roll over. 

He can hear Wyll begin to shout back up to the druid guard, perhaps explaining why one of their number is leaving, why they should be allowed entry—but it's all rather vague, nonsensical. Like words heard underwater. He's already gone. 

Then, just to be unsuspicious, to be safe, Astarion steps to the left as he goes. The sun ghosts over his shoulders, running down his back as he strides back into the forest, as he leaves the party behind. Ephemeral and eternal. 

Two centuries of wanting sunlight. Fitting, perhaps, that it feels like another threat.

-

When the others return, there is another in their number. 

She's tall; perhaps towering is the more accurate phrase, because she's at least a head above Wyll without her horn and broad enough to wield Shadowheart like a quarterstaff. Her skin is smoke-flecked, raw red like embers over coals, layered in molted scar tissue as though scoured by acid not too long ago. A greataxe rests over her shoulder, armour stretched taut over her muscles. Tattoos like the topographical map after an earthquake. 

Somewhere beneath her scarlet eyes, a tadpole croons. Orange-yellow-gold, a joy so infectious it spreads like a plague. 

She is, strangely, familiar. 

Astarion lingers on that thought for too long—most people that he encounters are familiar simply because of the amount he has purred sweet nothings into their ears as he fucked or was fucked, every shape of nose and brow and eyes making up his memory. But instead of a mélange of two centuries, she is distinctive; a woman with a missing horn, iron ports and metallic scars, red as the fire that spills through her fangs.

Ah. 

She looks rather like the devil Wyll kept describing. The one he pledged to kill.

But here she is, walking with a bounce in her step and well-stuffed pack. Astarion is no stranger to kind smiles over fangs, but she looks the opposite; there's a bite to her like gnoll's teeth, like punctures in unwilling flesh, and the fire snaking through her skin is far from natural. Yet she's here. Walking around. Distinctly un-murdered.

And Wyll–

Wyll looks awful, actually. Nothing from battle, and Astarion can't smell any blood, but he's sallow and taut and his tadpole beams chartreause-black nausea like a funeral dirge to all those who can hear it. 

Something has certainly happened. 

Astarion set up the camp as they prefer it, five spots close enough to a river, his the furthest away, and still it feels unfamiliar as he stands to greet them. The woman is so tall. 

From his curled nap, Scratch lifts his head, tail wagging. Her eyes widen to take up her whole face. 

"No," she breathes, tadpole surging back up to stellar brightness. She has a voice like an avalanche, boisterous and deep. "Hells fuck me, you got a dog! Why the fuck did nobody mention that!"

"We do," Gale chortles, eyes creased. "His name is Scratch, a fellow miscreant off in the wilds."

"Scratch," she coos, tail wagging just as furiously. 

According to Wyll, there is a list of atrocities in her name some leagues long. Her bicep is roughly his head plus another half. 

Astarion keeps a fair few feet of distance between them. 

But instead of petting Scratch, as her entire body language screams that she wants to, she instead shakes out her arms, hoisting a pack higher over her shoulders. "Sorry, but he's my new favourite," she declares, then continues scanning the camp. Her eyes land on him. 

She cocks her head to the side, hair half-shaved and the rest bound in a messy braid. Maybe not shaved, actually—burnt off. The edges are frayed and curling. She scans him, up and down, lingering on his neck. "You're the vamp, yeah? Er– Asarc? Astarn?"

Right. Time to nip that in the bud. 

"Astarion at your service, darling," Astarion says, dipping into a melodramatic bow. Her tadpole sings a little louder at that, orange-yellow-gold, so he takes the effort to extend a hand as though to kiss the back of hers. 

She laughs instead, a touch weary. Pulls back. "Next time, soldier," she says, and pounds a fist over her chest—it echoes, metallic and hollow. "I'm a bit too hot to touch at the moment. Maybe later, yeah? But I'm Karlach—was on the ship wit' the rest of ya, but guess I crashed farther away. Was kipping at the Grove 'til you lot came on up."

It's too much information—Wyll should have killed her but didn't, something about the hells in her scent and her strength, she came from the Grove that fears vampires but doesn't seem to react to him, she doesn't want to touch—but Astarion knows his dance in the dives of Baldur's Gate too much to shut down. 

"Charmed," he says, smiling. "Why later, love?"

"Oh, well," she says—still as bright as before, but her tadpole wilts, orange-yellow-gold darkening to something grey. "Baldurian born and bred, but a right bastard got me shipped down to Avernus to fight in the Blood War for the past decade. Ain't no winning, not for mortals, but that's why Zariel tore out my motherfucking heart and shoved an engine in its place." Karlach thumps a hand over her chest again, that metallic ring like a hammered gong. "Infernal iron, hearthstones, the works. I run a li'l too hot for the mortal realm."

A twist of her lips, not quite wry. "Dammon—one of the tieflings back at the Grove—called me impossible. He knows how to make a gal feel special."

"I'll allow a rain check, then," Astarion elects. He can feel her nerves under the gleam, ants in a meadow. She wants to be touched, terribly so; even now he's watching her tail twitch through the grass, curling around her ankle and batting at the leather skirt he's convinced must be partially skin. Or all skin, considering how everything else would burn away. It's a touch macabre, really. 

To have a heart made of iron and fire, an epithet of a demon, and a monster hunter stalking her heels. Half a wonder she made it as far as she did, even moreso that she did so in one piece. Astarion has watched many fall down pits and learn the definition of the word bottomless; he has never seen someone climb out so intact before. 

"Huh." Karlach looks at him, considering. "You're taking this all without a flinch, mate. Really thought I'd have to muck about in that worm-mind-thing again." 

"Far from necessary," he agrees. "Who wouldn't believe your elegiac self?"

Karlach spits phlegm on the grass—which then catches on fucking fire, so Astarion folds that in his danger assessment—and bobs her head. "Aces," she says cheerily. "Keep tossing those pretty words at me, fancy-boy. I bet you'd charm the knickers off a siren if you tried."

Quite despite himself, Astarion snorts. "I haven't found any yet, but I promise to give it my best attempt."

"Next one I see, I'll shove 'em your way before cutting their head off," Karlach promises, tongue between her teeth. "Scout's honour 'n all that."

"I'll take your word for it."

The jesting is light, conversational, and Astarion ponders it. She seems a firecracker, too bright for the sullen mess surrounding. And she knows he's a spawn but isn't run ragged at it; perhaps it wasn't brought up? Perhaps they told her a different story?

The lack of information cuts. 

"How did you meet the others?"

"When they came tramping in asking about healers," Karlach says. "The main one left 'bout a tenday ago and his apprentice couldn't help, but she sent 'em towards me. And that's about when–" she pauses, gaze acute. "When Wyll had a question or two."

Ah. Testing the waters. Astarion smiles beatifically. "I am remarkably glad to hear you aren't the mass murderer he warned us of," he says. 

Her shoulders unthread. "Fuck no I'm not. Well– murder, yeah, but killing demons doesn't count." 

"Not even a fraction," Astarion assures. "I'd have to take points off your good-person score if you hadn't. Perhaps you can tell me how easy splitting their skulls is at a later date; I'm curious if they really do bleed fire."

That gets her attention; she grins, sharper than before. "I've got more stories 'bout that than anything else, soldier. Hells, get a pint in me, and I'd crow out the world on how to kill a spinagon. Give lessons to the li'l kids 'n all."

Then she hums, leaning more against the stump, tail tapping out a steady beat. "But yeah, the others. I've been kicking it at the Grove for… what, a tenday? Something like that. Got real cozy after I busted my arse through some goblins nibbling at the gate and helped out the tieflings there; didn't really know my next move beyond not Avernus, so my schedule was plenty clear by the time your mates came knocking."

Karlach huffs, grinning again. She doesn't much seem to use another expression, though the depths it portrays are vast. "'Course, they made a mite of an impression when they came howling for my head. That woman—Lae…xer? Laecal? Lae-something—damn near dropped us all in the thick of it before our worms acted up, and hells if that wouldn't have been a right shitty fisticuffs."

She… isn't quite as torn up at the thought of the fight as Astarion rather thinks he would be. "Don't tell me you're that strong, love. I have it on good authority Lae'zel packs a punch."

Karlach shrugs. "The worm's a bitter little bitch; stole most of my strength, but not all. Four'd be tricky, but I'd figure it out."

She's not lying, or at least believes her own answer enough, and there is a mixed terror and grief welling under a relief so palpable it consumes her. "But they didn't, and now I'm here! A break from the Grove'll do me good, since I didn't even know there was a timeline until it's gone; anything to get this bugger out."

Curious. Astarion continues to tug the loose thread. "I take it the Grove wasn't much help in removing them?"

"Eh, not really," Karlach says. "They tried, and their main Archdruid was researching 'em, but he's not there. And with the whole fucking thorns ritual, I doubt they'd heal anyone that wasn't one of their own."

More information overload, but he narrows in on the one familiar name. "Archdruid Kahga isn't their leader?"

Karlach snorts. "Oh, she's a right proper bitch and a thief, that's for fucking certain. I'll kill her one of these days; just won't while the druids are still pissy. The Grove's a mess right now with Halsin out."

"Perhaps I'll wait to visit, then," Astarion decides. 

"Good choice. Don't get me wrong, getting the worm gone is my main goal, but I'll be going back to clean house after. Those fuckers need a kick to the bloody rear before they go banishing any more tieflings out to the wilds." She sighs, leaning back, resting her weight against one of the half-stumps. "There's so much I wanna do."

Astarion regards her for a long moment. 

She's hungry and bitter and desperate for contact without actually being able to touch. She knows he's a vampire spawn but without the tangible memory of his fangs in Wyll's neck. She wants to be free and she's powerful enough to get there. 

She is an option. 

"Well," Astarion decides. "You sound like a delightful companion to join our quest, love. So if there's anything on that list you want help with, feel free to count me in."

"It's a plan." She sets her tongue between her teeth, as though to hold a cigar that isn't there. "And you're not too bad yourself, for someone so pretty. Really thought you'd be a right little prick, after all the horror stories told about me."

"Oh, I haven't had the chance to be properly catty yet," Astarion assures. "It's one of life's few pleasures, after all."

"Nah, mate," Karlach says, shaking her head. "Life's fucking full of pleasures. Avernus didn't have shit, but here? Here I've got grass, flowers, trees, the sun. There's nothing I wouldn't do for this."

One thing in that list catches his ears. "The sun?"

"The sun, soldier," she says. "Avernus doesn't have shit in its sky but ash and smog; when I first got up here and saw it, I cried like a fucking baby. Now I've got all this to grab and never let go—gods, I'm going to live forever, looking up at a sky so blue. What could be better than this?"

He has genuinely no idea how to answer that. Just stares at her. 

Karlach scrubs at her face, hair crackling at the touch. "And then I go and get all mopey before I've had the chance to meet everyone. Fuck me. But thanks for listening, yeah? You're not half bad, fangs."

Astarion blinks. "Pardon?"

"I'm shite with names," she says. "Avernus didn't have much and what they did I didn't really wanna learn, so I'm out of habit. I'll get 'em soon, though. Just give me time."

She grins at him one final time and pushes off the log, leaving a half-scorched ring where her thighs touched. The air smells faintly of smoke. 

Astarion sits there for a moment longer, recontextualizing his position, his potential. The route that stretches before him, if he's willing to break past the few options Gandrel left him. Nothing from the original four, but from Karlach—maybe. 

But just as with Lae'zel before, not tonight. Too early, too needy. He has to ease her into it.

So Astarion stands, shaking out his arms and heading for the stack of goodies being stacked around the peripheries. There are plenty of things to investigate, such as the actual tents they managed to afford and a set of cooking utensils Gale seems to coo over as though a fledgling child. Astarion picks his way through the lot, pocketing what he thinks he can get away with and noting the rest. More weapons, more armour. They're expecting further fights. 

Karlach is drifting to the others, not quite nerves but the lingering friction of someone new added to an established group. Astarion missed their introduction, but she's missed the past tenday, and little doubt she can feel that. He can see her mouth Lae'zel to herself as she walks, practicing. Shadowheart and Gale seem to come easier, Wyll said with a teasing lilt. She knows him, in a way, and her tadpole still bleeds that orange-yellow-gold, undercut with nerves. She wants them to get along, more than sparing her life when they– what, mind-melded, like back on the beach? Whatever her tadpole shared must have been a hells of a kick, considering how bent Wyll was about killing her. A warlord and murderer and all things most foul, now another companion who coos at dogs and wags her tail when she gets excited. 

Their number is back to six, then. And Karlach doesn't have a crossbow and two daughters she can use as excuses to rationalize revenge, though Astarion is not quite so much a fool as to call that safety. But it could, perhaps, be an opportunity.

Astarion tilts his head to watch the sky darken and colour bleed out of the world. 

His thoughts keep circling around to Karlach. The newest arrival, poised and battered and tadpole singing like a robin; and untouchable. The rest of the party hardly seems willing to deign to fuck him if they could chase the memory of Gandrel far enough away to do so, and likely they've already told her about it, but there is the thought that she still couldn't.

Or she could try, and he would burn to death, and that might be the preferable outcome. 

Little doubt the party welcomed her into their midst with tales of the beast that nearly killed their leader and was pursued by a hunter willing to barter with a hag just for his location; Astarion can genuinely not picture any other scenario in which they would tell her about him being a vampire. That isn't exactly the type of casual nomenclature that comes up naturally, particularly when actively within a Grove that fears his presence. And she mentioned it to him right off the cuff, practically her first words.

She knows. And still she's talking to him. 

Maybe her. Maybe he can work with her. 

Then the fire burns a little darker, though the wood hasn't reduced. Gale frowns, turning towards it—"My apologies, I let it die,"—and Wyll goes very, very still. 

"Karlach," he says, too fast. "It isn't your fault. You didn't do this."

She pauses. "Er–" 

The fire explodes. 

"Motherfucker–" Karlach shrieks, rearing back with her greataxe drawn—the others tear over the dirt, weapons raised and tadpoles screaming. Astarion fumbles for his daggers, every nerve alight, too hairline of a trigger to impale himself upon; something inside the fire keeps growing, taller and taller, wings unfolding like the shadow of a distant storm. 

She's a tall, miserable thing, wearing a neckline so gauche Astarion wouldn't use it as a breechclout. Wings, horns, the stench of brimstone and shadow of despair—straight from the hells. Her heart beats fiery blood like an eldritch pulse. 

He thinks, for a moment, it's Zariel, or someone similar. That Karlach gets damned the moment she's found, back to the hells for another ten years if she's lucky, an eternity if she isn't. 

And then she turns her gaze on Wyll. 

The hero is just standing there. The others thrash about like a horde but he doesn't move, doesn't react; his mind is a plane of ice. Astarion gasps underneath it, a dread so encompassing it bleeds into the air like blood before a shark. He drops one of his daggers. 

Gale's eyes are lit up like collapsing stars, Weave coalescing over his hands. "What is going on?" 

The devil doesn't look at him, no sense of the threat, if the wizard can even play pretend at threatening her. She just keeps smiling, head tilted, golden coins spilling over her long hair. "Now, this is certainly a welcoming party, isn't it?" 

Her voice is low, melodious. Practiced. Astarion has seen Aurelia dance this enough times before to know this isn't her normal voice. 

"Mizora," Karlach snarls. Embers bleed through her teeth, dripping like ichor. Her eyes are pitch black and burning. "The fuck are you doing here?"

The devil—Mizora, known to two members, the rest pale with shock—turns to her, smiling. "Karlach! You're looking well." A deliberate pause. "Well enough, I suppose. Do try and find a healing potion for your shoulder—Zariel gets terribly displeased when you go ruining where she wants to put your next tattoo." 

The grass around Karlach's feet bursts into flame. 

"Mizora," Wyll says, empty. "What are you–"

She clicks her tongue, condescending. When she crooks her finger, Wyll stumbles forward, hands wrapping around his throat as though tugged by a leash. 

Astarion's claws bite into his thighs. 

"Wyll," she admonishes, too familiar, too friendly. "If you have enough time to disobey commands, you certainly have enough to introduce me. Or are you hoping to keep calling yourself a bard?"

She leaves him choking on the ground for a while longer. The rest of the party is frozen. 

Mizora loosens the leash, and Wyll climbs, slowly, painfully, to stand before her. If he's shaking, it's only because it is so instinctual a tremor he seems motionless. He inhales something raw and strangled. 

"You're here for me," he croaks. "Your business isn't with the others. We can talk alone."

She laughs. It roils in her throat, the twit of some high-altitude bint who thinks herself invulnerable. But instead of pearled dresses and exotic feathered hats, she is a devil, and power bleeds through fire instead of class. She continues laughing. 

"Oh, pet," she says. "You made it involve them, when you didn't kill dear Karlach. After all these missions done alone; it does seem that company makes you softer. Or did you forget the rule, pup? You've certainly jumped when I told you to before."

Wyll licks his lips. There's blood frothing at the corner, a ring of purple bruises already encircling his neck. "She isn't a devil or a demon. She isn't part of our deal."

"Very good. I see your remaining eye is still functional. But she does obey clause g, section nine," Mizora corrects with the cadence of a magistrate. "Where you agreed—asked for, even—to kill the infernal, the demonic, the heartless, and the soulless." 

She steps out of the ring of fire, bare feet against burnt grass. Astarion flinches back; outside of the circle she seems more tangible, more real. As though she could reach out and touch him. Take him. 

"And she doesn't have a heart anymore, does she? Go on, look. You can still do that, hm?"

Karlach's tail whips the dirt, but her eyes are pale now, fists clenched. She doesn't meet Wyll's gaze, just stays locked on Mizora with all teeth. "You can thank your fucking pimp for that."

If it's meant to be an insult, it doesn't land. Mizora seems strangely proud of the connection.

"Zariel wants you back," she says, conversationally. "My pet was simply the closest option to go and grab you, though it seems he wants to be your fairytale prince instead. Hard to manage that when he kept trying to kill you."

"Let her come on and try herself," Karlach snarls. "I'll cut out her fucking heart."

Mizora laughs again. As though the idea is piteously humourous.

Wyll steps forward. He's still the Blade but now he's a fractured piece of it, so small, cut beneath this devil's presence. Astarion can feel that deliberate nothing in his mind, a tarpit to drown the terror. It's too familiar. All of this is. 

"Do what you will, Mizora," he says. Quieter, now. Resigned. "I won't kill her."

Mizora clicks her tongue. "There it is," she says, damn near cheerfully, wings spreading. "Saying no. I thought we agreed you wouldn't do that again. Was my first lesson not enough?" She shakes her head. "You'll have to relearn that, pup. Because you misunderstand this relationship. You made your choice, and now I make them for you. Or wasn't it you that gave me your soul?"

She crooks her finger again, and Wyll stumbles forward. She lays a hand aside his face, ignoring how Karlach growls like a tiger, and leans in. Does something Astarion can't see. Wyll's mind washes through with that calculated emptiness. 

"I'm not done with you yet," she murmurs. "But do try to stay in a more useful form; death isn't a release, and you'll still have your missions, even if you're not in the same delicate little mind you are now. But I can't have you walking away thinking this sort of behavior is fine, can I? Otherwise you might try and find more bitches to keep."

There is a long silence. Karlach seems to burn anew but she doesn't step forward, doesn't cross this impenetrable line in the grass; Mizora is too close to Wyll. Too dangerous to interfere. Astarion has seen her expression on Dalyria too many times to count because she never learned to cut loose empathy. It seems Karlach is the same. All of this is the same. It's hard to think around that. 

"I'm not going to kill her," Wyll says. "She isn't a monster."

"Yes, you said that already," Mizora notes. "To me, to her, to all of your little friends. How kind that she's the one you're choosing to save instead of all the others; she's rather too hot for you to fuck, pet." She pats his head, the other coiling his invisible leash through her fingers. 

She smiles—Karlach is bristling, Wyll cowering without moving, the others buzzing like queens in a hive—and Mizora is smiling. 

"So here's a reminder," she purrs, sibilant. "Next time, perhaps you'll think of this instead of a pretty face." 

Then the fire surges and swallows Wyll whole. 

He screams—this animal, bestial cry, gutted upon barbed wire where to move is to draw him further in. When he stops, it is only because Mizora is over him, lovingly peeling his skin away. It's practiced, how she flenses the man for the skeleton beneath. Pockets of yellow-white fat, liquefied in the heat, bones charred black. He's sobbing and choking and drowning on his own viscera as Mizora keeps ripping him apart, new flesh bubbling up, calcifying over his skull. She remakes him. 

Karlach moves. 

She's big, too big, and some part of his brain thinks of her like a part of nature, inconquerable in the way a mountain is. But she's not so one-faceted, because she's also fucking lightning when she moves, hauling her greataxe up and forward and through Mizora's shitty neck–

The devil vanishes in a plume of smoke, still laughing. 

"Fuck!" Karlach roars. She crashes to kneel beside Wyll, shaking, hands trembling inches above his skin. Her chest bleeds blue-white flame, screaming through her ports. "Fuck, mate, Wyll, Wyll–"

He isn't bleeding out, because he's too burned to bleed. A tail drenched in ichorous fluid writhes at his side, each new bone cracking and snapping into place. His neck isn't broken under the weight of his new horns, but it's close. He's still trying to cry out, this guttural, closed-teeth moaning. Twitching like a corpse that doesn't know what it is yet. 

"Shadow," Karlach bellows, and there's the hells in her, a voice for battlefields and arrays of corpses. Her eyes are lit up in crimson-black, infernal engine howling—Shadowheart flinches and comes back to herself, fire over hands. "And– wizard, your name, get the fuck over here with some water, he's fucking burning–"

Wyll sobs, plastered against the ground, weeping and clawing and tearing off sections of skin as something new and ridged pushes up from underneath. As he is killed and remade and turned into something else. He's still screaming. 

Astarion leaves. 

-

Boars have tougher fur than he thought. It digs into the soft flesh of his face—bristles, the name might be, if he's recalling the ancient lesson right. A natural defense against attacks along their flanks and head. Astarion had a dagger. And fur doesn't work against that, hardened though it is.

Astarion drinks and drinks and does little else. 

When he sits back, full, moonlight pale through the gaps in the trees, the boar is a dried, dead thing, meat so drained it isn't worth bringing home to the party. But he rather thinks it isn't necessary; they'll be staying in place for a day or two for healing, and Lae'zel is never one to miss the opportunity for hunting. Perhaps they can buy more from the Grove, should anyone have a particular craving. Maybe a hellish tongue wants different flavours. 

Wyll is a warlock. The howling powers he's been using are not bardic magic, and the past he's stayed mum on has come out to play. Isolated, neither of these are a particular surprise, though if Astarion had known in advance he might have been able to better prepare himself for a flaying. He's watched his siblings undergo it innumerous times, to say nothing of how often he was called to assist in the process. 

To his credit, Wyll handled it well. If he passed out, it was a temporary thing, and his vocal cords were damaged but not irrevocably ruined. Not even a broken spine from contorting himself to get away—Leon did that some half a dozen times before he learned, the little idiot. 

And this is at least one mystery solved; why Wyll seems tangentially aware of how to use his tadpole, for all he can't crack past Astarion's shield. It seems he shares his skull with another visitor as well. One particularly uncompromising and fond of dragging the party into infernal politics.

And Karlach is escaping Zariel, and Gale carries a bomb in his chest, and Shadowheart stole from the githyanki, and Lae'zel serves a culture so violent she seems surprised she hasn't killed one of them yet, and. And. 

Many things have changed. Others have not.

Astarion leans back. He wipes a hand across his face, smearing blood into the matt of sodden curls. Old habits have him lick it off his palm despite the mud there. Hard to know when he'll next be fed; he has never been one to waste food. 

It's likely been long enough. Mizora gone, Wyll handled, the others bedding down. 

Astarion drops the boar and heads back.

-

He was right—the fire has gone out, just embers in the stone ring. Brimstone hangs heavy in the air still, lingering. The grass is only silhouettes. Ash everywhere the darkness isn't enough. 

Astarion pads in, adjusting his ruff and sleeves from their hunt-shifted positions. Flips an errant curl back into position. The world is quiet, even the wildlife chased away, too much for what it is. The camp seems abandoned. 

Karlach lifts her head to stare at him. 

She's been crying, or what he can assume so, with everything evaporating against her skin. But her eyes are red-ringed and hazed, deepset in her face like a skull. Knuckles red-white where they're clenched in her lap. That joyous orange-yellow-gold is gone like it'd never been. 

He makes a bit of a show of looking around, searching for the others. Gale and Lae'zel are asleep, though a fragile, bothered sort. Shadowheart's mind is a wearied mess from within the largest tent, where Wyll's contorts and bleeds scarlet agony on repeat like the peal of a temple's bells. 

Karlach's tadpole is still. A lake without ripples. For the first time, he cannot see what is beneath. 

"Where were you?" 

"Hunting," he says, flashing a carmine smear across his palm. "I figured it was best to get that in before our days got considerably more busy."

Karlach grits her teeth. Restrains some feral thing under her skin, but her engine whines, a low, droning pulse like the flash of metallic gears. Transcendent. "While Wyll nearly fucking died."

Astarion shrugs. Continues angling for his tent. "I knew you wouldn't let that happen." 

"You met me an hour ago, mate. Not long enough to figure that out."

"And yet I trust you," Astarion says, brushing a hand through his curls. He takes another step forward, within the grass circle proper; she's still tracking him. "You just have that kind of face, love. I knew you could handle it. There's no need to question me."

He's only ever seen her grin—this one is entirely humourless. "If you didn't want questions, you wouldn't have fucked off for a bite while Wyll needed us."

There's a distance growing in him, the first cut of the knife before it slides underneath. That metaphor has lost some of its weight amidst scraps of dark skin he can see scattered through the clearing. 

Then Karlach stands, and all this tension comes pouring in, as though the moment before a blow. She's so bloody tall, stalwart in the dark. A halfday ago, he laughed with her about archdruids and goblin guts. It's Lae'zel again. An evening of thinking her a potential target, and then he fucks it all up. 

"Look," she says. "I know I caused all this shit, but this isn't a fucking joke. Breaking contract with a devil means getting turned into a pile of screaming flesh where you're lucky if you're mindless. Wyll could've killed me and saved himself, and he didn't. It wasn't fucking mercy that kept him from becoming a lemure; it's some bigger plan. But Wyll didn't know. He still saved me. Do you get that?" 

She's angry, in a bitter, destructive way. Turned inward. Without Mizora, there are no targets to be properly angry at, and she doesn't have enough skin to hold it all inside. 

He doesn't know how to navigate this new mood. So he stays quiet. 

"All that shit she was spewing isn't anything. But the threat is. We gotta keep him safe from whatever other bullshit she pulls, and–" her engine pulses, something fire-bright and ravenous. Karlach squeezes her eyes shut. Breathes deep. Reopens. "And that means sticking together. Right?"

The others aren't awake, aren't receiving the same lecture, but it was him that left while they stayed. Another mark in the sand for his own difference. Yet another reason to be other.

There evaporates his plan, then. She protects those that protect her, and Astarion cannot think of a single situation in which he could do anything to save her. And he can't even let her fuck him to sneak around Wyll, either. So it goes. 

"I understand," he says instead. 

Karlach exhales. She sags back to her seat, tail limp around her ankles. "Don't mean to bite your head off," she mutters. "Just– you're the only fuckers I have, really. And I don't want to lose anyone. We have to stay together."

Her tadpole ripples once. The lake settles for a memory of a wide-open field, red rock and storm overhead, and an expanse of endless misery—the crystalline thought that it should be freedom, but it isn't, and she is going to die here. Then it clears and she's just sad. 

Astarion casts his dice and walks around her, deliberately light. She doesn't stop him. He fades under the canvas of his tent and ties it closed. 

Karlach stays outside. She is presumably not waiting for his guard to lower so she can eviscerate him for the crime of abandoning her new beau, because he is much too weak to put up a fight even with tendays to prepare in advance, though admittedly that could still be in the cards for tomorrow. He chooses to believe he will have one night of rest, which is wonderful, because Astarion wants very little but to trance away the echoes of Wyll's screams. Vampire spawn never had enough to bleed like he did, this mingled aura of blood and despair, but the sound of misery is one universal. He'd screamed like he wished he was dying, like a fucking animal. 

He lays back in his tent. Listens to Karlach's tadpole wriggle in the air outside, no closer to sleep and seemingly not intending it. Standing guard. Because now they're scared enough to have a guard. Wyll is enough of a person to guard, whereas Gandrel was an annoyance. 

Envy tastes sour, tonight. Too bitter. So Astarion shakes out the last of the memories and lets trancing carry him far, far away from anything that tries to latch onto his mind. He almost succeeds. 

Chapter Text

As it turns out, Wyll doesn't die. 

He gets close, by Shadowheart's assessment, but when the morning rises and the sundial turns, he's still there. Burned, beaten, battered, more patchwork quilt than man, and living nonetheless. A resilient little bastard, all things considered. Mizora left even more scars to join the museum's collection he already wore. Astarion would tip his hat if it wouldn't be taken as an insult. 

Karlach isn't quite looking at him. Which is fine. Fucking preferable, even. Better than making him think he could convince her to his side, which worked, until it didn't. That conversation wasn't a fight, but it leaned closer to that than to casual conversation. Under Gandrel, he knows what that would have earned him, but Karlach just avoids his eye. She doesn't seem to have told the party, though Astarion also missed Gandrel having a whole bloody conversation about putting him down when his back was turned, so he can't be certain. 

Wyll survives, and so does Astarion. There. Exactly what he wanted. 

Shadowheart drags Gale and Lae'zel with her back to the Grove, the only two that can hold more supplies. Astarion isn't welcome in, and Karlach refuses to leave Wyll's side, and thus the party is split, huddling off in the morn. 

Astarion has had some time to think, with the sounds of Wyll's screams faded and boar's blood warming the cockles of his undeath. And this morning is a lovely fine thing for thinking, brimstone burned away and ash like a carpet in the grass. Even spawn burnt to soot under sunlight don't provide so wonderful a backdrop after suffering. Wyll really outdid himself. An inspiration. 

What Astarion is thinking isn't much worth it, but it's all he has. Just the same circling fears, looming figures in the dark, the reek of powdered ironvine. Plans are as opposite his forté as generosity, but one is more necessary for survival than the other. And yet all his plans keep fucking falling apart. 

Seducing the party was never going to work after he flashed his fangs and let Gandrel weep over children instead of just slitting his throat. And now proving his use is growing more and more difficult as the gap widens, with Karlach's indomitable strength a boundary he could never reach. Lies and subterfuge are useful, yes, but in much fewer situations than a greataxe and musculature is. And she is very, very strong, however much she lets her heart command her. 

He glances at Karlach through his lashes. She's sitting there, hunched, every tendon stretched to the breaking point. Is it guilt she feels, for not allowing Wyll to kill her? For not sacrificing her freedom for his body?

We have to stay together.

That could be something to exploit, if he lives long enough to try it. For now, Astarion waits around the campfire and does his best to be obedient in advance. 

Which is somewhat waylaid when there's a groan from behind, raw-rich and haggard. Wyll. 

The change couldn't remake him from being a rather deplorable little hero, insofar as he staggers out of his tent with blood still cascading down puckered wounds around new horns and weeping from the corner of his eye. He's still scorched, skin a mosaic of colours, bruise-purple and fish-pale. What Shadowheart is collecting healing supplies for, if Astarion had to guess. She's mentioned the tadpole sapping her strength, and this does seem rather above the broken bones and lacerations handled for the party thus far. 

Wyll takes a step forward, every muscle trembling. His tail drags, catching on stones and tenterhooks, a flinch with every movement. There's a hole cut through his pants, horribly done, but something just to let it through. Every stitch seems to catch on his new ridges. 

And still he comes out into the world as though running from something. A miracle he made it to… however many years old he is. Thirty? More? Very tricky to tell with humans. 

Now he makes his way over to the campfire, still scattered with ash and dust. Karlach pulls her limbs in, tadpole drowning under a tidal wave of self-loating. "Pretty sure you're supposed to be resting, soldier," she says, hesitant. 

Instead of listening, Wyll lurches the last few steps to collapse on the log opposite her. Blood is already beading over the bottom of his feet, skin so new it's untested. Astarion's nostrils flare—he smells almost acidic, the hells both inside and out. Scratch whines, circling without touching. He paws next to Wyll's limp tail. 

"I know," Wyll croaks, haggard. There's a timbre in his voice now, deeper than before. "And I will, I promise I will, just–" he squeezes his eyes shut, the right cooperating slower than its pair. Still unfamiliar. "Can you talk, please? About anything. I just– need to listen to something else."

Karlach looks fucking shattered. "Don't have a lotta good stories, mate," she says, drawn. "Avernus ain't really the place for a bard. But, shit—from after? Everything that's happened to me up here? I could do that?"

"Yes," he manages. "Please."

Astarion shifts, lips firmly closed. Wyll is talking to Karlach and her to him, both seemingly forgetting his presence; if he gets up to wander elsewhere, they'll remember. And another part of him wants to listen. To know what both of them will say in the wake of yesterday. 

Karlach drums nails over her thigh—full claws, Astarion notes with an idle curiosity. Most tieflings tend to buff theirs down for ease in society, but not her. Likely Avernus required things sharper. 

"Okay," she says. Licks her lips. "Landed 'bout a tenday ago, I think. Came crashing down in one of those miserable shitty pods, punched my way out, and damn near broke my neck climbing to the highest peak I could find to see the sun. Got real close, close as I could. If there'd been a dragon around, I would've ridden it just to get closer."

She huffs a little. "But even with all that, I knew the worm meant something. So off I trotted to find anybody with a steady hand and willingness to do brain surgery on someone they couldn't touch." A quieter note. "Or anybody at all, really. Hells if Avernus wasn't great at casual talks."

Wyll seems to be wilting more and more as the canvas of this woman—this person—keeps being unveiled, the idea of who he came so close to killing, but he listens as though enthralled. Both their tadpoles are snagged on the other. 

"That's about when I found the Grove, all stoppered up and being attacked by goblins. Carved through 'em like butter and that's about when this right little prick named Aradin tried to shove me out for being yet another squatting tiefling." She snorts. "Oh, he was a real fucking ray of sunshine. Killed him 'n his cronies, and got up in Kahga's face when she tried to kick me out. Then I heard she had a tiefling kid in a cell, and actually started threatening people." 

Karlach grins. Her teeth are ivory, too white; as though the heat from her infernal engine burns all else off. "Storybook villain, that one—had a bloody snake 'n all. I folded that thing into a shipknot and handed it back to her. Got my message across in one. Suddenly there wasn't a problem with me sticking around, particularly after her vines melted when she tried to hold me. Running hot as the hells has a few kickbacks."

"Next day, I had a li'l council with Zevlor—old Hellrider, him—about what he needed for his people. Didn't know 'bout the worm's timeline, and hells, I'd still do the same thing even if I did; I just needed something to do. Couldn't relax, not yet. I knew Zariel was coming for me." 

She winces, doesn't make eye contact with Wyll, and pushes on.

"That's when I got told their story, why they were sheltering in a druid's grove when Kahga clearly fucking hated them. Turns out they don't have much a choice. They're straight outta Elturel, fleeing the war, hoping to reach Baldur's Gate. But the route's not safe. Nothing is, these days. All they're doing is training up as much as they can before they're forced out when the ritual ends."

Wyll's lips part, considering. "Baldur's Gate?"

"Yeah," Karlach says with a shrug. "If they're not natives, they'll bunk with those who are until they're established. It's the best place for us, apparently. After Elturel." A grim, sardonic sort of snort. "'Cause we're just so bloody scary, you know."

Ten years in the hells, then coming onto the surface to discover further isolation. Astarion stays quiet and stops breathing for good measure.

Wyll has something like mourning in his eyes. A monster his rapier can't defeat. "But they can't get there with the threats on the road," he says, as though for clarification. "They're still in danger."

Karlach sighs. It's large enough her chest moves like a bellows, the tenor pitch of a dragon. "Yeah," she mutters. "Yeah, they are. The gate'll stay closed, it's built good enough for that, but they can't leave and Kagha, the cunt, won't let them stay. Even with all my polite li'l mentions about how I saved their sorry asses only bought them time, not security. Sooner or later, she'll kick them, and I'm worried it'll happen before I get back to stop it."

She looks at the sky then, nodding to the distant sun. Doesn't say anything more. Her tadpole mourns. 

Wyll sits further up on the log. His tail drags over the grass, barbed tip flicking. He's focused—too much so for the agony he must still be in, enough Astarion can feel the echoes of it in his mental presence. It doesn't show on his face. 

"What are they most in danger from?"

A pause. She considers it. "The goblins," Karlach says. "There's a camp of 'em, not far from here, and they're boiling out day after day, hunting for something. Keep hitting the Grove, waiting to break it down; hells, that's probably where Halsin ended up."

Wyll tilts his head—muffles a ragged gasp, horns dragging at his skull. "Halsin?"

"The actual Archdruid, not the bitch who took over," Karlach spits. "Never met the guy, but he's got enough of a reputation Zevlor thought the Grove would be safe to come to. But he ventured out with Aradin's gang on hunt for a growing threat in the region and never came back. No ransom, no demands, so the idea's that he's dead or held by the goblins."

"If Halsin were found," Wyll says, not quite a question but hesitant like one, "would the tieflings be allowed within the Grove?"

Karlach blinks. "Kinda." She tilts a hand back-n-forth. "Zevlor isn't too keen on setting up base there, with the druids seeming a mite too happy to kick 'em out even if Kahga's calling the shots, but Halsin could give better supplies and maybe a guard or two. They want to get to Baldur's Gate most of all."

Wyll sets a hand on his thigh then flinches, new claws digging through baby-soft flesh. Gods, Astarion can still smell blood, leaking from so many patches of baby-soft skin. It's pooling on the log, under his bandages. His brows furrow. 

"Hey," Karlach says. "Hey. Wyll."

He blinks, refocuses. 

"Stop thinking," she says, not unkindly. "You just got your fucking skin burnt off; rest for one bloody day, yeah? The tieflings'll still be there tomorrow. We'll all be fine." Then, to go for the kill: "Please rest. I don't want you more hurt."

"I will," Wyll says. "Sorry. I will."

Astarion doubts that. 

-

It's kind of remarkable, really, what the party has collected for healers. 

Shadowheart, when she deigns herself to waste precious magic on keeping them alive instead of missing every single bolt of divine energy she hurls at their foes, tends to prefer to do so with a flicked mote of light or palms heated this side of scalding. And it turns out that Lae'zel, when given an armload of healing potions, tells Wyll to, quote, hold his breath, and then dumps the lot of them down his gullet. 

He does look a touch more perky after that, at least. Mission success. 

Another day passes in this helplessness, Karlach coaxing Wyll to stand and speak and practice living once more—she seems to have taken his transformation as her fault to bear and is determined to help him through it. Considering she's the only one of them with horns and a tail, it's a fine enough choice. Gale is utterly fascinated by the concept of learning to control a new limb, though he has a surprising amount of tact to keep it to himself. 

And then, on the third day, when Wyll slithers into clothes loose enough not to catch on his new ridges and holds his rapier in a lily-weak grip, he stands before the party and declares they are to go destroy the goblin camp. 

"Mate," Karlach groans. "C'mon, you need rest. Not– another battle."

"I won't hold us back any longer," Wyll says, voice brooking no argument. Gods, but he's stubborn as a fucking aboleth. "The goblins will only continue to keep invading, and the tieflings need safe passage. We're going in the same direction as them. Destroying the camp clears our path."

Lae'zel's eyes flatten. "Saving others will not save ourselves from the parasites," she says, only a shade above a hiss. "We must go to the crèche."

Karlach stares at Wyll. He stares back. Something pleading in his eyes. 

She sighs, digging a hand into the puckered flesh around an exhaust port. "There's a druid there," Karlach says. "A right bloody powerful one, by my count—the actual Archdruid, not the bitch Kahga. And he's been researching the tadpoles; even had one on his desk. Might not be as good as your folk, but he's worth a shot."

"There is nothing worth a shot but my kin," Lae'zel corrects. "Your mortal healers will only risk us."

"And what is there to risk?" Wyll asks. He says it so evenly; Astarion can see it's something he's repeated, whether to others or to himself, many times over. "We should have transformed but haven't—every day is another day to try and do good where we have the opportunity. Culling the goblins will help more than ourselves."

Maybe the argument would work on other heroes the way it works on Karlach, but Astarion watches Lae'zel steadfast refuse the idea as though toxic. The very concept of traveling opposite the crèche is an impossibility. 

But it is Shadowheart that tilts her head to the side. She's perched on a stump like a porcelain doll, hands laced, eyes flat as the stones of a riverbed. "The last time we listened to your suggestion on where to go next, a devil appeared in our camp," she says, tone lilted. "Why should we trust you have no ulterior motive for this?"

Wyll sighs. Builds up for another practiced response. 

Karlach steps forward. 

Fire crackles over the ground, searing dirt and wisping grass away in chunks of ash. Smoke belches from her ports, eyes backlit in black; she's bigger, suddenly, like her skin isn't enough to contain what's underneath. Her tadpole moves, swirling alloy. Sharp teeth.

She's still grinning, but it is not from levity.

"It's been a trying fucking day or two, so I'm gonna ignore that," Karlach says. "The goblins are bastards, and they've got a lead on our worms. Kill 'em both to be good folk and get a chance to free our brains. Nothing ulterior. Everybody wins."

Astarion isn't moving. No one is. 

Then Karlach sighs, scrubbing a hand over her face. The shadow fades. 

"Look," she says. "Wyll's the one who got his life hucked in the shitter, not you. Cut him some slack. He's doing good."

Wyll stares at her. Gods, Astarion can practically taste the wonder in his eyes.

"She's right," Gale sighs. He seems haggard. "We're better than this, my friends—childhood squabbles are best set in the past instead of those who must avail ourselves of an illithid transfiguration. We do ourselves no favours by choosing to fight each other instead of those deserving."

"Better way of phrasing it," Karlach concedes. "But it boils down to that on our way to the crèche, we'll take a pitstop and cull a shitload of goblins. Stress relief. Everyone square with that?"

No one says otherwise. Wyll looks miserably relieved. 

Astarion folds this into his assessment of Karlach as well.

-

Karlach pads off to the Grove once more, hauling Gale and Lae'zel along for those that can actually carry maps, and comes back with a rough diagram of their surroundings—including a vague circle to the far west, past the bog Gandrel spoke of. Lae'zel perks up, because apparently she terrified the shit out of a tiefling into telling her what he knew of githyanki and he had mentioned something in that direction, and Wyll frowns over it for the rest of the evening, searching for avenues of assault. 

Unfortunately, from what Karlach scraped together and Lae'zel's militia background, there are no easy answers—the goblin's camp is tucked in a sheltered corner hemmed in by heavy forest and canyons, their bridges the only stable approach. A six person party, no matter how much Karlach seems as though she could devastate armies with a lash of her tail, cannot beat what would greet a frontal charge. 

The question isn't necessarily of strength, since Karlach assures there will be no real risk once they're in the thick of it, but she's quick to admit she has little in the way of ranged attacks and most goblins use arrows to compensate for weak form. She scratches idly at a puncture scar through her left shoulder while she talks. 

Gale drums his fingers over one of the maps. "A month ago, I could have teleported us all within their inner sanctum and hardly felt the strain," he says mournfully. "Now, I can get myself close should we be within viewing distance, but I don't see what help a single wizard would be for quenching a battalion of arrows."

"You'll get fireballs back any day now, mate," Karlach says, in what is likely encouragement. "Spilling guts every which way."

"Be that as it may, we have rather a fair number of guts to be spilling here." Gale taps at the symbol for the camp again. "Goblins don't tend to travel light when it comes to populations, and I don't think it's a question of whether we're outnumbered but merely by what order of magnitude."

Wyll's tail flicks like a cat hearing a bird but not seeing where it is, brows furrowed. "The problem is approaching," he says. "If we come all at once, they'll do everything in their power to stop us—but maybe if we divide into groups for each bridge entrance, we can spread their focus enough to get close?"

"Chk. If we must do this, then do not cripple us with such a brainless charge. A single strike to the front entrance will not shatter their defenses, and becoming less than six in number makes no difference. It is basic understanding not to attempt a siege without a greater force. Are none in this realm taught that?"

Shadowheart sneers. "We aren't all raised like war dogs. Some of us learn other strategies."

"I did not ask for the opinion of a thief on battle."

"Don't call me that."

"Guys," Karlach pleads. "C'mon, we gotta work together on this. Can't you at least pretend to get along?"

Lae'zel scowls and, pointedly, doesn't look over. "That is a stupid idea."

"For once we agree," Shadowheart mutters. 

Astarion couldn't have asked for better entertainment than a top box seat at the Oasis. Perhaps he could egg them on even more from the shadows. 

"Shadowheart," Gale says, reaching out as though to grasp her shoulder before reconsidering. He can be smart sometimes. "What do you think we should do, then?"

She clicks her tongue. "We can't fight our way in, because that is a waste of our time and our effort, and a risk to our lives should anyone here have overestimated their own strength. That leaves either sneaking in or launching some attack from afar." She smiles pointedly at Lae'zel. "And you can't do either, can you?"

Lae'zel, for a singular moment, seems to weigh the consequences of cutting Shadowheart open, and there is a world in which Astarion sees both of their corpses decorate the forest path. Wyll looks unnerved. Gale has something dark veiled under his eyes. 

But in absence of wanton violence, Shadowheart's words bounce through him. An idea to both defuse and prove himself. 

"That is an option," Astarion says, stepping forward. "What if we could simply walk right in? I doubt they've wasted much of their defenses pointed in when they're so concerned about the outer world."

Gale lifts a brow. "And are we to assume they've increased their hospitality to a frankly concerning degree?"

"Not in the slightest. Just that I would persuade them." 

Karlach glances him over, considering. "Can you do that, er, charm things vamps do? Trick 'em into thinkin' we're pals?"

Spawn, Astarion thinks. What he says is: "Only via my magnetic personality, I'm afraid. But I was rather thinking of another strategy."

He shifts focus to Wyll. "Do you remember that little hovel we visited, dear? With the goblins running amuck and pawing over scraps?"

"Moonhaven?" Shadowheart asks, because of course she remembers the name. 

"That's the one," he agrees delicately. "And, more precisely, my trick at the entrance—perhaps it would work again, were I to infiltrate." Astarion taps a finger alongside his temple, letting his shield ripple like a stone in a pond. "They certainly seem fond of True Souls."

That catches attention. Karlach turns to him—the first time since their little spat, wonderful—with her brows up. "What trick, soldier?"

Right, she wasn't there; time to be as subtle as a rock to the cranium. He adjusts his shield, driving a chisel into the crack so it pries apart; the others flood over the nexus, all the latent thoughts he closes his way out of. 

Something of thoughts, of thinking. He drags a mental finger along the edges of her mind; focuses on leaving a ripple of humour in his wake, a deliberate stirring. 

It's nothing. It's a parlour trick. It's simply a reversal of the default state—only instead of his actual emotions, he's feeding her one by choice. He snakes it around her thoughts before pulling back, letting his shield regrow until it consumes him.

Karlach shivers, eyes blooming black. "Huh," she says, appreciative. "Shit, that'll work—where'd you learn that, soldier?"

Oh, by focusing on pain rather than fury when Cazador commanded him to tell the truth of his thoughts, mostly. It has a surprising application here. Astarion smiles. "A touch of experimentation," he says. "If these tadpoles truly are content to kick up their feet and laze about instead of transforming us, I see no reason why I shouldn't test their abilities."

Lae'zel bares her teeth. "They are not to be trusted."

"And I'm not trusting them," Astarion corrects. "I'm using them. Entirely separate meaning."

And in the using, perhaps he can find a way to use them forever. To sever shackles before they have a chance to return. 

They're all looking at him. Tension and exhilaration tangle in his chest; proof he is developing something the others are not. Proof of usefulness. 

Despite the offer, Karlach hesitates. She worries her lip between her teeth. "You sure you're up for it, fangs?"

"More than I can say, love. I'm not one to misplace an advantage, and if I can get us into that camp without an arrow to the throat, wouldn't that be worth it?"

He shifts his gaze—meets Wyll's, holds it steady. Thinks of Gandrel in the cellar and the idea of being put down. "I'll get you inside," Astarion says. "You can trust me on that."

-

The bridge approaching the goblin camp is appropriately horrendous. Architecture is a term that doesn't apply here, and Astarion is more focused on it collapsing than how he's crossing running water. Every step makes the bloody thing shake. 

But he marches across, shoulders held high, the party's entire stock of throwing daggers and elemental arrows in his quiver, mind flying before like a waving flag. 

The party isn't far away, crouched in a copse of trees just near enough to see the gate should they squint but not to be within range. He can feel them on the edges, minds open for the signal once he's greased the wheels to let them in. Either telling the goblins he's bringing reinforcements or by finding a hidden passage. But first he has to get inside. 

Confidence works in his favour. He can smell blood all around, feel heartbeats up in the watchtowers and braced on the gate, but nothing strikes him as he crosses the bridge. As he walks, fearless, untouched, to the gate.

There's a triad of visible goblins, lounging around with a deck of shit-stained cards and raiding detritus. Some dozen more scattered about through arrow windows and what Astarion thinks is a trapdoor to explain how some minds seem to echo from below, but these three are the guards. The ones to speak to. 

They don't look very powerful. Astarion knows power, both of a master and of brute strength, and these are decidedly not it. There is only one he notes to keep an eye on—the worg in their midst mouthing at something, a hint of vertebrae visible through its fangs. It watches him approach with the lean, starved look of a lion in a noble's menagerie. 

"Oi," one of the triad says, clicking his fleshy little fingers together. "Klaw ain't the guard, I am. An' Sentinel Olak don't take shit like bein' ignored."

Is that an attempt to bolster his reputation? It's a lackluster failure. Astarion hums under his breath. He does switch his gaze over the hobbled little leader, piteous in his inadequacy. Olak, hardly deserving of a title like sentinel. This is what happens when someone on the bottom of the totem pole gets a touch of injected courage and then goes about thinking they can upset the order of things.

"Move," Astarion says, cold, cloak wrapped up and around and throughout. "Get out of my way."

Olak sneers. "You ain't gettin' in, ranga. Not 'less you got a reason."

"A reason," Astarion repeats. He leans over, just so he can stare at the whinging whelp without the veneer of distance. Pulls reference from old history to model his expression after. "Let me give you a reason."

Then he reaches. 

The goblin does not have a tadpole—but he has a mind strangely marked for one, as though a cavity was carved to house it without being filled. All the goblins do, and he can feel those hollows, like nets with too wide of holes to be caught in. It is this emptiness he latches onto, teeth and bubbling poison. 

It—or perhaps Astarion—isn't refined enough for words. But he doesn't need that yet. He just needs attention. The one thing he has been able to figure out.

Astarion takes the goblin's mind and dumps rage into the gap. 

He has many emotions, but only three he can summon with any strength. Fear is a constant. Hunger is another. Neither are particularly conducive for a True Soul—but rage is. And gods, of all three, rage is the only one he likes the taste of, wine-rich and heavy on the back of his tongue. Even through the tadpole it is a malevolent, thrashing thing, edges like glass and thorns. 

When it is summoned, it consumes. 

Olak stumbles back, tripping over the worg's paw. Blood drips from the corners of his ears, froth over his lips. Wide-eyed and shaking. 

Astarion rises back to his full height, cloak not so much settling on his shoulders but enveloping him. He isn't a vampire, nor a vampire spawn; he's a True Soul. He's powerful. He's a person. 

To these goblins, he is untouchable. 

"That's better," Astarion says, smiling like a slit throat. "Mind your manners, next time. I won't be so generous."

"Beggin' your pardon," Olak manages. "Havta give all visitors a bit o' testin'– just standard, didn't mean nothin' by it–"

More visitors than him, then. Interesting. He can't read their minds, but looking at Olak's shivering form, Astarion doesn't think he has to.

"Then make yourself useful," he drawls. "What news is there?"

The triad glance at each other. "Jus– more raids," Olak says. "Had a successful one a few days ago, party 'n everything. Still can't find the bloody grove. Gut—er, Priestess Gut—keeps searchin', sent 'nother one out a bit ago." He twitches. "'less you're here 'cause you found it…?"

Astarion makes a show of sneering. "As if I would tell that to the likes of you. I only speak to other True Souls."

Olak stiffens—the other two goblins haven't moved but oh, Astarion has upset the balance of their little triad, hasn't he? Dethroned the king of a very shitty hill. How terribly sad.

He could bring the rest of the party in—likely wouldn't be that difficult, just beaming more fragmented rage into Olak's head—but the mention of a raid piques his attention. The absence of a raiding party could make the camp easier to attack, or perhaps it is more in their interest to go and kill the raiders while they're out of familiar territory; and likely Karlach would want to go protect the Grove. 

And Olak hardly seems the type to give Astarion the information he needs. He's done here.

The worg crunches bones between its teeth. But it doesn't move, and the goblins scatter before his path as though rats under torchlight. Astarion strides forward, unhindered. 

The inside of the camp is no better than the outside. Discarded buildings, armour racks rotted by rain, shit and piss and blood making a mélange out of muddy floors. More goblins, wandering troops and stragglers kicked out for being runts. If this is militaristic, it is far from anything Lae'zel speaks of. Just a roving assembly of bandits who haven't yet figured out anything beyond crudely sharpened sticks and spells. 

The building at the far back seems to be the centerpiece, caged in by gate-walls and barred windows. Its door is the tallest, the most complete. And guarded by an ogre. A full fucking ogre. Astarion notes that with some fervour. 

There is, also, a relatively new decoration, given by the uncongealed pools of oil-dark blood puddling underneath. 

An illithid corpse, strung up by an iron bar through its chest, tentacles pinned to the surrounding walls like the rays of the sun. Its orange eyes are glossy and blank, the mottled pink of its brain smearing against stone; the one from the initial crash, maybe? It's a touch macabre, though Astarion can't say he isn't appreciative. 

And also confused. Don't they worship those with the tadpoles? Is this the equivalent of archaic cultures sacrificing aasimar under the delusion it freed them from a mortal form?

Astarion gives it a wide berth as he enters. 

If this building was actually made by goblins, he'll do something obscene and unexpected. While appropriately hideous, the walls are far too sturdy, actually holding up rafters and an arched ceiling high overhead. Hells, even the stone bricks are roughly equal in size, topped and piled with actual grout between. It almost seems functional. Which is entirely incongruous with the moronic little idiots darting around underfoot. Astarion claws at his cloak, tugs it higher and more complete over his shoulder, suffused into his very essence. A single glare chases away a goblin ambling in his mere direction. 

He isn't checked again; just allowed through the wider camp. Gods, this is going to be even easier than he thought. Maybe they could have just walked up. 

But instead he gets to prove himself. To show he has worth, even if his methods mean little when paraded before a champion like Karlach or one of their prolific spellcasters. Something over nothing.

His ears prick. 

The crackle of burning flesh; an aborted scream. It echoes against the stone. 

If nothing else, history says that's promising. Astarion adjusts his direction and ducks through a cramped gateway, two guards hardly glancing in his direction; those that make it past the gate are given free reign of the world, nothing to dog at his steps. One little flash of his power and he becomes more, less a cloak of persona and more a state of being. So far above all these cretinous goblins.

So long as they don't attempt to string him up like the mindflayer. 

This is a larger room, its focal point a brazier with a skeletal throne behind, red fabric like viscera woven between the ribs. The walls are lined with further archways branching into other paths, but here there is life and action, goblins huddled around the brazier or tucked by the support pillars. 

And one in particular at the center, gnarled hand wrapped around the hilt of a white-hot brand. 

The drawing claimed from a goblin's corpse, fumbling and unsure in the strokes but not in the silhouettes; one tall, one broad, one staffed. Three leaders. 

Astarion rather thinks he's found one. 

She's a squat, miserable thing, cloaked in feathers and baubles and a shitty excuse for armour. The titular staff is leaning against the throne behind her, considering she needs both hands to hold the brand and the brandee.

"Chin up, maggot," she tells the squalling goblin. Astarion gets a flash of its skin—raw lines of a fresh brand, a handprint with a skull for the palm. "Marked by the Absolute you are; bit o' pain's nothin' in face of that. Get you gone."

It flees from her, clutching naked flesh, stumbling and tripping over its own feet. She—Priestess Gut, if Astarion has to guess—scoffs, setting the brand back in the fire where the remains of skin smoke and crackle off the metal. It isn't hot enough to do a proper job. For a brand worth anything, it needs to be overheated until it sears instead of burns, lest it simmers off excess oxygen and doesn't manage to reach the lower levels of skin. Gut only has a regular fire, wood-fed and smoking. Not hot enough. Gods if she isn't both a lunatic and an amateur. Astarion can handle one, not both. 

He pads into the room proper, posture sardonic and toothed. There's a loose rock—he kicks it aside, just to watch it clatter. Easy violence. By his own hands instead of any others. 

The noise draws her attention. She squints at him, one eye milkier than the other. "Oi," she says, with a voice that deserves to be killed far more than any of the crimes she's committed. "What're you looking for?"

Astarion hums, stepping forward. It's akin to armour, power; he drapes it over himself until it trails down his legs, pools in the cracks of his façade. She's not quite as subservient as the lesser goblins, those flinching and cowering from his gaze, but she's not attacking him, either. He isn't a spawn here. He isn't a slave.

"I'm here to meet with the leaders of your little camp," he says. "Orders of the Absolute."

"True Soul?" She asks, more as confirmation than question. He can feel a parasite in her skull as well, a rippling cloud of ash-excitement and poultice-pride. It bridges the gap between them, a mania laced through with certainty, and bounces off his mind. She scowls. "One with a damn fancy shield, too. What're you up to, hiding the Absolute's gift like that?"

He strokes the outside of it, lights it up with home-grown feelings of satisfaction. "None of your business."

"The Absolute is my business," she retorts. "Chosen 'n made better by Her; then you go off actin' like She's something to bury. She ain't. Should be shouted from the rooftops."

Oh, she's a fanatic as well. Wonderful. 

Gut pauses then, looking him over, before she gestures to the brand. An ugly grin, all teeth. "If you want'a hide, I could give you a li'l sign, if you're in the market. Only those sworn to the Absolute see it. Keep your fancy shield but nobody gets confused."

His cloak is still intact; the sneer he bares has no shade of unease. "As if I would let the likes of you mar me."

Gut just cackles, rasped and corroded. "One of 'em prissy Moonrise types, eh? I'm as True Soul as you, half-breed."

Moonrise, half-breed—does she think he's drow? An excuse for his red eyes, at least. Astarion buries his confusion and scoffs. "Hardly so, if you're stuck here and I'm out in the wider world to complete the missions of the Absolute." 

"Then you're shite at it," she jeers, "or else late as fuck with the Absolute's orders. Minthara's been gone for half a tenday, and Ragzlin's out with the raid—got something from the squiddie and went hunting. He'll be back with the Absolute's prize soon enough, mark your words."

So they did kill the mindflayer. He frowns. "What did he get from it?"

"Now you're askin'." Gut laughs, sour and insufferable. "Think ya earned it? You'll just have to wait before we win. The Absolute'll crown me, not you."

Astarion sneers instead. "Then why haven't you found her prize yet? If you're so certain."

Nerve struck there. Her eyes narrow. "We've been lookin'. And we've got a lead now."

A lead. Astarion tilts his head to the side. It seems something is happening in the wider area, something the party will little doubt be interested in. And Gut knows more about it. 

Gut knows more, full stop. She sensed his shield instantly, knows of its existence, uses and abuses it—could understand more about its potential. About how he could use it himself. 

For a moment, he thinks about diving into her mind. He hasn't dared do it to the party, and all of the goblins they've encountered only have that empty hollow instead of a parasite—this is his first real chance to know what the true extent of this power is. To free himself. As if sensing his indecision, his tadpole shifts, gnawing just behind his eye. It hungers. It wants to bite. It wants to consume.

Gut watches him. Still the echoes of how she spoke of the Absolute, frenetic, reverent, like it really is a goddess. Old screams. 

The brand smokes in the brazier. 

Astarion turns away. Ignores her, deliberately, to let her know she is being ignored for better options. "I'll be the judge of that."

There is the wet smack of phlegm hitting the ground as he walks back to the corridor.

He has no real destination other than away—his feet take up through a side hall, where a trio of traders in Zhentarim garb give him a curious look, and up a set of stairs that creak and moan under his feet. He emerges onto the high wall of the outer gate, an extension of the palisade with arrow-slits between the sharpened trunks. No goblins on this section, though he can feel their minds but a hundred feet away. A watery-thin consciousness bespoke of anything real. 

Astarion lingers on that for a moment too long, letting it drift around him. In the fresh air, he can't smell burning flesh. He can think, instead. 

Three leaders. Three silhouettes, and only one within the camp. Minthara already gone for half a tenday and Ragzlin out with a raid—but where? And why?

That's for the heroes to puzzle over. He can give them all the information he has and they'll make the plan for whatever comes next. Easier off his shoulders. The camp is defanged without two of its leaders and most of its raiding party, and while Astarion would certainly choose to attack it now, he has a feeling some of the more do-gooders in the party will want otherwise. 

Astarion makes a deliberate crack in his shield, just faint enough for a vague tension to escape instead of anything else. He reaches out, past the bridge, the pathway, to the cluttered copse where the others wait. Five minds, each their own shade and sensation, all waiting for him. 

Astarion connects with them, worming into their subconscious. It's odd, so broad a gorge between, and still he can feel the pulse of their emotions. There's a raid happening now, he says in lieu of any greeting. Could be heading to the Grove. One of the leaders is with them.

Shock filters back, muddied over distance. But Karlach's fury is crystal clear. 

Wyll's inflections carry into his tadpole, though tinted oddly red and wooded. Astarion can practically see him nod. We'll stop them, he promises, the resonance of four other agreements from the rest of the party. We'll go now.

There's that decided, then. Really such a surprise. 

Astarion drums his fingers over the edge of the palistrade. They'll be off to partake in glorious combat, their particular skill of choice. To follow is to try and drag himself after in a field he is woefully outmatched. To seem lesser. To be lesser. 

I should stay, he says, so they don't suspect me. What do you want me to do here?

He gets a pulse of uncertainty back, stained blue-yellow. Keep searching, Wyll decides. See if you can find the druid.

Astarion hits them all with a wave of understanding and severs the connection, an odd exhaustion echoing behind his eyes. Strain, it seems. He's dabbled in his tadpole, but it's a muscle atrophying that never had strength in the first place. The distance didn't help. 

But there. Another missive; another thing they are telling him to complete. Telling him instead of anyone else. 

If Gandrel tried to infiltrate this camp, he'd be slaughtered on the spot. Astarion entertains himself with that image for a moment. Maybe he'd become an element of decoration like the mindflayer, strung up to be paraded. A mocking testament to heroism. 

It's a thought. A pleasant one, even. 

Yet thinking is not the directive, and it's hard to seem unsuspicious when he stares with a single-minded focus to a particular copse of trees past the wall's borders. Little doubt Gut doesn't leave her precious little stage, but he doesn't want to risk it. 

Astarion looks over the goblin camp, the miasma of wretched little bodies worth more dead than alive, and stalks back within the sanctum. 

He circles around where Gut is, the hiss of the waiting brazier audible through the walls. She's the first one with a tadpole he's encountered, which could almost be potential enough to mind his tongue in asking her questions but the way she had held the brand, how she had scanned him as though searching for the best cut of meat to place it. Half-breed.

He'll search the rest of the camp first. If the druid was her prisoner, Astarion doesn't suspect he was alive for very long anyway. 

Up he goes, composed, making all goblins flee before his long strides. It's an acceptable balm amidst ears pressed flat as though from an approaching storm. There's too much fucking stone here. If he had the option, he'd remake it so there was nothing but wood, the better to rot away and disappear. Stone… echoes too much. 

There's a room behind hers, with another throne set on a stage, more of those ancient ribs curling up like set dressing. Blood scattered out and about, too dried to do anything but stain. Drums, as well; large ones, positioned in both lines of sight and tucked in corners. Astarion pauses over one, running a finger over the stretched skin. No dust. Whatever their alarm system summons, they've used it recently. 

On the druid, perhaps? Or for whatever made the third leader leave? Minthara, Gut said—and of the two remaining silhouettes, Astarion believes that name to belong to the tallest, a mace or something similar drawn in childish lines by her side. What could be more important? What is this Absolute trying to do?

Gut shouts something, earning a prompt shriek. The rasp of burning flesh. 

Astarion takes the side corridor instead. 

There's a door, one large and braced with a bolt so large it seems as though an uncarved trunk—a prison, perhaps, to explain the security. And, considering Astarion has never been strong, not something he can enter. 

Thankfully for him, this camp has been gnawed with maggot trails of side passages and routeways. One ladder climb and a tense moment with a guard walking underfoot when he was only halfway up later, Astarion presses himself to the rafters, hands splayed and only ego keeping him from shuffling on his knees for balance. 

Two branching paths—one to a side room without a door, just a chasm that looks like it once held a bridge. He can't hear any heartbeats, only the reek of old blood. 

Along the rafters to the left, however, is a stone chamber, terraced and full. Astarion creeps forward, hands steady on his bow—he doesn't want a fight, but he's also not particularly here to get killed by some feral beast. 

And there are, unfortunately, feral beasts here. In the far back of the room are two cages; one with a pair of snarling worgs, muscles bristling but stomachs gaunt, nothing much in the way of winning fights to collect corpses from. Perhaps Karlach really did carve her way through their ranks. 

In the other cage is a bear. 

That's a touch understated, considering Astarion has seen bears over the past tendays, and none were this size; it seems to fill the entirety of a cage, for all its ribs protrude and it lays flat against the ground. There's a corpse in there as well, a naked man with the remnants of torture littering his chest, but no toothmarks, despite the bear's obvious hunger. 

If the size wasn't sign enough, that's about as clear an indicator of a wildshaped druid as can be.

Astarion settles his weight on his toes, hackles up, unwilling to stretch any further into the light. Gods, of course the only armour he's found to fit has to be unstained leather, a garish tan, and his own skin glows like moonlight from the very shadows he needs to survive. Just another of those marvelous idiosyncrasies from being a monster in a world that seeks to vehemently counter his existence. Made to hide in darkness and yet it flinches from him.

But even the slight shift is enough to see the rest of the room, where a goblin brute decked in proper steel lounges by a storebox of mixed food and papers. Others roam about, practicing with weapons or hollering gibberish at the bear—it doesn't react, just lays there, cuts bleeding over its nose and flanks. A pitiful thing, really. 

The bars don't look that powerful, particularly against a druid with the skill to transform into such a beast. The corpse in its cage seems to suggest there were some other prisoners taken, but Astarion can't quite fathom willing starvation to protect those likely already dead. And for what? The druid is still captured. He still has to hope for random adventurers on some inane tangential mission for rescue. 

And he is a druid. One from the Grove, from the order of Silvanus. Astarion won't play pretense at understanding nor giving a shit about the difference of gods when each and every ignored his pleas, but there is another memory hanging in the curtains of his mind. 

Under orders from Archdruid Kahga, you will stand in the sunlight before being allowed to enter. 

Astarion regards the bear for a moment longer. 

Then he retreats. The other room is a more interesting prize anyway. 

It's smaller than its twin but altogether inhospitable. There had been a bridge, it seems, and in its collapse there is actually no way over but through the rafters; even in the gloam he can see dust over the tables and armour racks. And the papers—so many papers, stacked up and around each other, littered with brush strokes. Information. 

More particularly, information without goblins skittering about underfoot. An ideal situation. 

Astarion spiders through the rafters and finds a half-rotten rope; a test of its give and he lands lightly in this other room, securing it behind a snuffed torch for later. The dust billows under his feet, a haze like memory in the air. 

And there are quite a number of memories here to be seen; it looks as though a war room, the papers of maps and censuses of the camp. Astarion ponders that one, tapping through the list of witless names. 

Whatever this room was, it clearly had a purpose—and now the bridge is collapsed and it is full of dust. Purposefully collapsed, almost. The ropes that would have held it up are hacked cleanly through, not the frayed mess of age or use. 

Deeper in the gorge, a troop of spiders the size of a fucking horse skitter and rasp at each other, seemingly as starved as the worgs had been, as though Astarion needed any further indication not to fall. They don't… seem to be looking up, though little doubt they could climb out if they sensed something above. 

Astarion stops breathing just for good measure and pads back into the room. 

The papers—those are interesting. More than interesting. He paws through the first bundle, edges creased and yellowed with what he can only hope are age—most of them are maps of the surroundings, redrawn and scrawled over with thick lines of surveillance. Research. They've been sending out raiding parties for quite some time, scouting out the area on the hunt for the Grove, mostly to abject failure. He shuffles through a few more, the calligraphy increasingly jagged. Some lines puncture right through. Seems the erstwhile general wasn't the serene type. 

Oh. 

Oh, that's a little concerning. 

Astarion lifts the paper with a drawing of Shadowheart's artefact on it. The thing with the dream visitor that promised it was the only thing keeping them from transformation. The thing that is, very likely, directly opposing the Absolute's conquest. 

Gut had mentioned she was hunting down something called the Absolute's prize. 

The soft-eyed phantom couldn't have been any worse a sign for dying times, far too tranquil and unconcerned with the impending death for all they'd worked to convince Astarion of the usefulness of the tadpoles, but as it stands, they're what stands between him and a face full of tentacles. So Astarion is rather invested in keeping them away from this cult of lunatics. 

He folds up the parchment, pressing the edges flat, and tucks it into his armour. Perhaps the party will have an appropriately thankful reaction to this evidence. Gods only know they've been lackadaisical about why a nautiloid appeared after so many centuries departed—except for Lae'zel. And that's why she's his favourite. 

Astarion pauses. 

An echo brushes against his shield—a whisper at first, then louder, fractal and growing. The taste of rotting vegetation and the colour white; he flinches, arms up, daggers drawn. 

Teleportation cracks, striking the walls with the hiss of escaping smoke. The presence redoubles. Harsher. 

"Not s'pposed to be here," Gut says. 

He turns. She's standing on the other side of the gorge, spiders quieting in her presence. Off that stage of hers, she rests most of her weight on her staff, a handful of bells clinking off each other at the top—or, skulls, actually, emptied and hollowed with trinkets in the cores for noise. Cheery. 

She watches him with eyes like pits. Hungry. 

"I'm a True Soul," Astarion snaps. "There are no doors closed to me."

"Wasn't a door. Just a cut rope." Gut scans the room, but in absentia of a magically remade bridge, her brow furrows. "How'd you get across?"

"Obviously I flew."

"Ain't seen a knife-ear do that before," she snorts. "Li'l birdie, then? Got some wings you wanna show off?"

Astarion hisses. She's insipid and drollard and bearing the stupidity of those who swear themselves into willing slavery. All this… trite banter means nothing. "Only if you prefer them bladed, goblin. Fuck off."

"Oo, hit a nerve, eh? Thinkin' you're fresh shit?"

His tadpole wriggles anew, toothing into frustration. Hers pulses in response, pressing against the edge of his shield, all awareness. Too sharp. The budding realization of a powderkeg beneath one's feet. 

Astarion is still hissing. Is still meeting her gaze with his hackles up and claws curling. Is still standing in the dim light of her glowing staff. 

And he is still wrapped around her tadpole when he feels it flash with realization. 

"Oh," she says, a fervour creeping under the rushes. "Now tha's interestin'." 

"Care to share with the rest of us?"

Gut grins—grins something rictus and barbed. "Jus' that I got it wrong, first time. You ain't above us. Those crimson peepers ain't drow."

He goes very still. 

She cackles, mirth like the death of a neuron star. Laughs so bloody hard she bends over, clutching to her staff. Laughs like she'll keel the fuck over right there and save him the trouble. 

Astarion snarls. He's bristled like a dog beneath the whip, unable to look away from the target he's bade to bite. "What are you talking about?"

"Where'd all your pretty words go?" Gut taunts, straightening back up. Her eyes fucking glow. "Lost 'em back with your manners, I reckon. Haven't seen your ilk 'round since the first days, an' never not on a leash." Her head tilts. Lips split. "What orders are you here for, spawn?"

For a miserable second, he thanks the uncaring gods that the party isn't here to hear that. 

The cloak is torn from his shoulders, power splintering—he clings to it still, fangs out, eyes burning. "I'll rip your head off your shoulders before you can say an order."

She just laughs harder. "Aw, think you can hurt me? I've the power of the Absolute on my side, spawn—dunno wot She was thinkin' to give some to you, but She's got her ways." Gut's expression brightens; one of the skulls on her staff glows with a pale luminosity, spilling through empty eye sockets. "Sent here to be a li'l pet, were you? Ragzlin killed the squiddie b'fore I could get my claws in it but you—good enough replacement. Wanna give a new master a try?"

He could kill her. He could fucking kill her. There is no command saying otherwise, only on the method, and he is still, at this moment, a person. Astarion grinds that into his fucking core and gathers himself—no practice but surely the tadpoles must be more than communication. If he can forge a connection and hurl all his thoughts in a cacophony of noise and ruction, she'll stagger, she'll break, she'll look away for the moment it takes to hurl a dagger into her face–

The glow in Gut's staff redoubles and she disappears. 

Astarion has a second to flinch before the air shatters and Gut slams her staff into his throat. 

He chokes and fumbles back; she raises it again to wallop him and he ducks under it, each step staggered, slavering like a rabid animal. A second is all he takes to fall apart. 

"Ickle blood-puppet wants to play," Gut cackles, sweeping her staff wide—every skull lights up, air growing heavy with magic. "Ain't gonna roll over, tha's good—I like 'em with a bit o' teeth."

He's got more than she thinks. Astarion tightens his grip on both daggers, ignoring his throat for lack of a need to breathe, coiling tension. He lopes back, sideways; tries to carve out more area in this cramped room, the table-slab only an obstacle. Gut isn't fast but she keeps pressing in, staff up, cackle crescendoing. 

She's a miserable old crone. She reaches the corner where the table sits and makes to turn around it, creaky bones keeping her head straight on. Astarion throws himself over the flat, parchment flying everywhere, daggers out. 

He goes to hack at her face. Gut strikes her staff. 

The stones boil, clattering as golden light worms through the grout; spilling up and up and up as a barrier weaves into existence, fire-black-heat, but just a wall, just a barricade. He is already moving, already lunging through with eyes fixed on her throat– 

Divine.

Astarion shrieks, tearing himself out of the fire—it clings to him with golden claws, gouging chunks out of his arms, scorching the flesh behind. Paper flutters away in burning scraps and he crumples, skidding over the surface to collapse on the other side. A shivering miasma in flesh. He can feel pieces of himself dust over the ground. 

Agony is familiar and inconsequential. Astarion stands, veined in fury, remaining dagger held tight. The other clattered somewhere away. The room is both enormous and so cramped he couldn't breathe even if his throat was hale. 

You conniving bitch, he thinks instead, a mental roar. 

Gut reaches into his mind. She bashes against his shield, wrapping teeth around the defense as though to pop it; a moment of split focus. He lunges through the gloam.

She hits her staff again. One of the skulls explodes, a shockwave of more divine power—Astarion hits the ground. A tooth flies out of his mouth. The last dagger disappears. He can't feel it. He can't feel anything beyond the fire. 

"Got plenty more o' those," Gut jeers. "Tha's the power of the Absolute through me. What'd She give you? I don't think it's enough."

Astarion drags himself to his feet, shaking. Daggers and arrows and bows and still the unconquerable boundary of going up against the divine. Stone walls. The only way through is forward, and forward is where Gut leans on her staff, grinning, every skull glowing with radiant light. 

Astarion stopped breathing hours ago. He's pistoned up in the terror and the rage and the inevitability; he presses himself in the corner between two walls, gearing up, hardening his resolve as Gut pads closer, still grinning. 

"Not gonna kill ya," she says like a cheer. "Gotta clean you up but you'll get the blood ya need, all the corpses. Fair deal, eh? Better than anythin' else. Spawns ain't exactly friend 'round here."

Three walls. One priestess. The rope is too far to grab and the rafters too high. Perhaps the spiders will be kind enough to just fucking eat him. 

Astarion coils, teeth and trial, a final reckoning. Singular pain. Not even a month out and a whisper is enough to make him this skuttling, worthless thing, so fragile, and now he's going to be enslaved again because he didn't choose death in the fucking alley– 

The air breaks. 

Gut spins, palm out—and then stumbles. Gurgles wetly. Air whistles through her slit throat. 

She falls over dead, and a dwarf tucks a bloodied dagger back in its sheath. 

Dark eyes regard him. Confident in her stance, entirely unbothered, sulphur lingering where her dagger had struck. She teleported in from nowhere and killed Gut. 

Astarion scrambles away as the divine fire fades, air still crackling with heat. No daggers but his claws curl, tremors up his arms and rooting into the marrow. She barely deigns to look at them. 

"You know there's no use in trying," she says, voice a tenor rasp. "Waste your attempt elsewhere."

He seethes, knuckles fracturing. Sane understanding left with the fire and he wants to kill something; to kill Gut, to kill her, to kill the world so long as it is him standing over its corpse and not the other way around. To do something. To show he has anything.

But she's right. Gods fuck him, she's right. Thoughts reconstitute slowly but he has no daggers, no spells, nothing but a bestial violence that leaves him abandoned after two centuries without a chance to learn it. The hunger for blood—not even to drink, just to be the one to cause hurt instead of hurting—cannot be allowed to overpower survival. 

He bites through his tongue. Reaches up and crunches his neck back into place, windpipe threading back to his lungs. Not entirely. But enough. He just needs to be able to talk. 

"Who are you?" Astarion spits, flattened into a hiss. 

"Korrilla." She leans over to peer at Gut's corpse, unsheathing a second dagger, this one curved and notched. With unbothered efficiency, she scalps Gut, tearing off the flap of skin by pointy ears. Plunging a hand into the viscera of her brain, she roots around for a moment before tugging out the tadpole; it snaps and thrashes in her grip, spraying blood everywhere. She regards it for a moment, then shoves it into a pouch hanging off her belt. Its psionic presence disappears the moment it is beneath the fabric. "Contracted out to be your savior at the behest of my master."

She straightens, shaking out her hand. The blood is a mere annoyance. The parasitical transformer a curio. She slit Gut's throat like it was nothing. She said she was his savior. She said it was from a master.

"Who's your master?"

Korrilla hums. "You'll meet him soon enough. He says you're interesting—but I wouldn't hold out hope you're interesting enough for me to save you a second time."

Blood weeps from Gut's corpse. 

"I didn't need you," Astarion snaps, caustic.

Korrilla shrugs. "Then next time, I won't be there."

A plume of sulphur, and she disappears. 

Astarion is left alone with the corpse of Gut and only motes of divine fire as a remembrance for what nearly took him. The thought of chains and cages and a cur whipped into battle, snarling at the bit. More beast than person, if he was ever one at all. 

He stands slowly. All his weight is shifted, slumped and awkward; nothing fits where it needs to. The thump of his feet hitting the ground peals like a gong inside his skull. Gods, but he can barely think. 

If what he did before can be called thinking. It wasn't. It really wasn't. He had just wanted to kill something when his cloak was stripped away, and of course the undead chooses to fight the priestess, no matter how cruel the patron goddess. Isn't that how the stories always go? The monster has to be stupid. Otherwise the heroes wouldn't win. 

Well, then Astarion is playing his role like a godsdamn actor. Maybe someone will lift the curtain to throw him a fucking rose. 

And he isn't alone here, the stage large enough for two. Korrilla reeked of the hells and used the word master—a warlock of some variety. It could be either Wyll or Karlach's past boiling up to haunt them, but she also said he, and besides, neither Mizora nor Zariel's games seem to extend to saving them. Him in particular. 

And he had to be saved. 

He had to be fucking saved.

Astarion made it into the camp with nothing but his mind and his wits, draping himself in the cloak of a person so completely he could taste the power—and then one glance later, and Gut nearly rips him open.

If he had been thinking, he'd have jumped through the divine barriers, heedless of the pain, until Gut's throat was slit or the spiders ate him or he made it away. If he had been anything other than what he is, he would have made it out; but it took a hellsdamned bitch to save him. Slave saving slave. 

A month under the sun, and he's still no better than the magistrate dying in an alley. 

Movement is a haggard, bitter thing, steps slumping as raw flesh moans. Astarion splays a hand over the burns, feels heat against dead flesh—radiant, yes, but not… well, fatal. It seems the tadpole has softened that habitual weaknesses without the decency of just fucking removing it. He prods his tongue into the gap of a missing tooth; not a fang, one from his lower jaw. It's a dull pain, more the absence than a present thing. His throat is shattered cartilage and vertebrae too close to misalignment for comfort. Not the easiest thing to hide. 

He'll need blood of some variety, whatever he can come by. If he can hunt before telling the others of the raids. 

The thing is that there is a corpse right in front of him. 

Astarion regards Gut. The party will want to see her corpse to prove she's dead, given the state of the camp as a whole. They will see her. They will see her and know he was the one to kill her, all grisly bits aside. The scalping is… more vicious than he wants to appear, but there's not a fucking chance he's telling them about Korrilla, so he'll have to grin and bear it. 

How closely will they inspect her? Could he bite? Are their enemies really people?

Those are all fine questions. But the real one is whether he wants to risk it. And that answer is no.

At the very least, Astarion pads over and nudges the flat of skin back over her brain with the tip of his boot, her ratty hair streaked with soft tissue. A facsimile of hiding it. So maybe the others won't ask why he carved her open like a pliant sacrifice. 

Then he turns away, shaking. 

The daggers are easily reclaimed. One skidded worryingly near the gorge but he gets both, tucking them back into his sheaths. Neither are bloodied. He never even got close.

The rope still holds his weight as he hauls his way back into the rafters, as far away from the enclosed stone as he can manage, and presses his back against a support beam directly over Gut's corpse. He can taste a spawn's blood in the cleft of his tongue, a false promise. 

This pain is not the hell as he knows it, the enduring kind that renders this variety almost mundane. Divine fire wasn't Cazador's preferred method, given how easily it could reflect back on him, but it's enough Astarion knows the flavour profile. Not a bad vintage. Godey would call it practice. 

Astarion leans his head back against the supports. 

He has enough blood for the healing to begin, though slowly. Already he can feel his throat begin to stitch together, airways opening so he could talk if he wants, all the ways he can build up to something heavy and hungering in the darkness. He takes time to readjust his armour, peeling gashed sections off to tuck underneath others. Not perfect, but the divine burns can be hidden. 

There is a corpse full of blood on the ground far beneath him, and Astarion sits in the rafters and waits for it to be discovered. 

But it seems Gut wasn't lying when she said it was off-limits; though he can hear confused shouting from the broader hall at her absence, no one comes here to check. The missing bridge likely doesn't help, for whatever reason it was cut down, and the troop of spiders continue to hiss and spittle below. A walking disaster. 

Somewhere out in the wider world, another master watches him enough to intervene. Enough to play savior.

The words are not wrong so much as tonally impossible. Masters sending their slaves out for dangerous tasks, yes, that's expected—but not to save other slaves. Unless Korrilla's master is hoping for an in with Cazador? But if that was the case, Astarion would be bound with an apple in his mouth like a hog and dropped on the doorstep of Szarr Palace. And he isn't. Yet. So this can't be happening. 

Korrilla hadn't– he doesn't know what to think about her. She was well-dressed, powerful, wielding daggers with easy precision. Stronger than slaves typically are. Stronger than any of Cazador's. 

But that doesn't matter. None of it does. Astarion isn't at Baldur's Gate, isn't bound under those commands. He's free. He needs to remember that. 

He claws at the rafters until splinters threaten to pop his nails out. Then he sits there, shaking, more fury than flesh, all coiling and twisting and rebounding within itself until he doesn't know what he wants to be anymore. 

Then–

A feather-soft brush against his shield. Astarion brings it down a crack, leaves a dock for the others to board without seeing through to the core of himself—and waits. Continues waiting. 

The probe is still out there, he can feel them, but they can't quite manage to make the connection over so great a distance. Not as adept as he is. 

It should be reassuring. But it is a cold comfort after Korrilla. 

He bridges out to reach them, forming the connection himself. Wyll meets him first, presence wearied even through telepathy. We found the leader, he says. A hobgoblin—he wasn't at the Grove, but he was close. 

Dead now, Shadowheart chimes in, a touch vindictive. Seems he was a difficult opponent. 

They're strong enough to kill one leader. Well. Here's his fucking chance, then. 

I've killed the second, Astarion says. 

Surprise filters back to him, a citric curiosity. Well done, Wyll says, then pauses. Are you okay?

Sure. Let's go with that. 

I'm fine, Astarion assures. Did it in secret, so the camp hasn't exploded. Two down.

What about the third?

Astarion closes his eyes. He digs claws into the divine burn over his upper arm. The third leader isn't here, gone for half a tenday. I don't know where. Then, because he can feel Wyll's nerves rising like petrichor after a rainfall, simmering against his shield—and I found the druid.

The connection jolts when a firestorm of vengeance hijacks words, teeth-bright and thrumming. Fuck yeah, Karlach rumbles. Hoping he can open the doors for me to wring Kahga's miserable little neck; where's he at?

In here, Astarion says, and cracks his shield just a hair wider to send a faint image of the cage, the bear pacing within. I would prefer having others here so I don't get mauled, however.

A faint amusement—chuckle, almost—from both Karlach and Wyll. Understandable, the man says. We'll be there soon.

Okay. He can just sit in the rafters for a little longer. One of his vertebrae shivers as it lurches back into place. 

Astarion loses time, staring at the wood overhead instead of the stone beneath. This is easier. Preferable, even, to exist without consequence, just a thing with hands and feet and chest and head, rather than one expected to act. It could be minutes or hours or days. Marble dust tickles his nose.

His mental net is what pulls him out—a distant feeling of five approaching. Battle-worn, but ready. Considering their enemies are a collection of goblins already driven to panic at the loss of their leader, it shouldn't be a fight so much as a massacre. 

They were strong enough to kill a hobgoblin and raiding party. Strong enough to do that and then circle back to slay the camp proper; he fought a single priestess and fucking failed badly enough a master had to send in a slave just to save him. 

The party doesn't know that, not quite. But Astarion cannot hope to keep his weakness a secret. Not if he continues on as the thing he has been thus far. 

Astarion fingers one of the arrows in his quiver. 

The connection opens easily this time, distance reduced. Wyll's mind lights up with a vague question as to why. 

I can give you a way in, Astarion says, pushing a recollection of the camp into everyone's mind. He scores a line to the entrance of the sanctum, where the ogre and milling soldiers sit; where the majority of the population is. The gate is the first problem, but not the last; they'll need more than a strong central charge to bust in. This is exactly what Lae'zel was talking about. 

All they can hope is that the lack of leaders means the others will be left as a thronging mass instead of an army. And Astarion can help to close that gap a little further. 

Wyll's mental confusion is patterned like sunlight on water. Astarion scrambles together a thought of arrows and deep night. 

Yes, comes Shadowheart's response. Do it.

Astarion stands, balancing neatly on the edge of the rafter—his mind isn't quite there and it means he moves instinctually, steady and unthinking. Over the abandoned room, past the brazier; he peers through a window overlooking the main courtyard, the entrance visible just beyond. It's a thin window, made for arrows, and he rests his weight against the support as he locks in on that distant gate. He can barely make out the worg, the triad of guards alongside. Still chattering. They haven't noticed anything wrong. 

The five presences get closer and closer. He can feel them like electricity in storms. 

Wyll's presence nods. Go.

Astarion sets the arrow to his bow, draws to his ear, and fires.

Two tendays has made something of him after all; it isn't a direct hit but it's close enough to the gate to stick into it, plunging the entrance into darkness. Clouds of ink, of vapour; the elemental incarnation of the word night. Immediate high, piping shrieks from goblins, and the boom of an eldritch blast tearing the gates open. The approach of a five-band army. 

So begins the end, as it goes.

Daggers are heavy by his sides. Astarion wants to fight. To tear something open. Under the darkness, little doubt he could steal blood by the gallon with no one wiser. 

But if he fails, if he falls, then the party will see his weakness for what it is. 

It's better to wait. To let the heroes do what they're made for. 

-

He was correct, at least. It's entirely a bloodbath. 

Astarion looses arrows through the window until his quiver only has the elemental stock, and then he waits, letting the party tear themselves in bloody carnage through the lot. Even the ogre is only a focusing of attention—Lae'zel hacks at its grasping arms until it charges her, and then Karlach swoops in from behind and beheads the thing in a single fucking swing. She whoops, her mind a raging wildfire, deep as a river and coursing just as fast; she's a nightmare on the field, terror incarnate. Gods, but he can see how she devastated the Blood War. 

The others are terrifying in their own right. Most of the battles they've fought around him have been once-off scraps, minor things with the rest of the day stretching ahead to conserve strength; not now. Lae'zel knee-slides through a cluster of five and handily removes them from existence, Shadowheart leaving hordes writhing in her wake. Wyll switches between hurling lesser foes to shatter against the far walls and cutting them apart himself. 

Blood, heavy, floods the air. Fills it as sure as any dream. Muddy and dark, ichorous and impossible. Thinking. 

Astarion clutches at the window, continues staring, and then turns; finds the original ladder and slips down, the sounds of battle still echoing through the stone. The inside is empty, entirely cleared as all poured from within to do glorious battle straight into a massacre. Even Gut's brazier wilts without someone to feed it more logs. How wonderful. 

None of his thoughts will connect. He's moving, daggers clutched, steps harried—then Astarion shakes his head and reassembles himself. Places his feet with purpose, erasing any pain underneath his layered armour. He isn't hurt. He isn't injured. He is nothing more than a victor over a leader of this miserable camp going out to meet his party, and that is all. That is better.

He pads through the front entrance, still avoiding puddles of blood. The darkness is fading now, wisping off into stretches of grey-black. The battle is equally fading. Some poor bastard is shrieking through a slit throat off in the mist. 

Five presences blister overhead, caught up after the battle—Karlach's burns like a dying star, a crevasse of the old world. She's standing atop a slump of corpses, flicking something off the blade of her greataxe. She's laughing, maniacal. Sparks fall through her teeth. 

Wyll kicks the last goblin away, grimacing as his horns nearly throw him off balance. Gale shakes ash off the sleeves of his robes.

"This way," Astarion calls, five pairs of eyes snapping over. He shifts his hold on his daggers as though he had been a part of the fight from the very beginning, raising a brow at the lot. 

Karlach grins. She's still hefting her greataxe, blood splattered up to her elbows. "Don't tell me there's more!"

"There's the druid," Astarion offers. "If you're still up for freeing him."

"Ready as ever, mate." She pops it up so the shaft sits on her shoulder, smoke curling around her shattered horn. A bit of organ hangs off her boot. "Lead on, yeah?"

The way to the bear is barred, the gates closed and poorly barricaded with a collection of broken furniture alongside the latch-bar. Even less possible for him to get through. A last defense it seems, when they heard the bloodbath outside. Astarion hums. "There are rafters," he says, nodding at the ceiling. "Easy enough to get in."

Karlach huffs a cousin to a laugh. Her eyes are black-black-black, pupils swallowing out the orange; more warrior than woman, a force of intention and impulse. The very air burns around her. "No need," she says, toothed, and just touches the pile. 

Smoke bleeds through her fingers, infernal engine whining, and the whole fucking stack kindles to a blaze. 

Gale immediately blasts it with a wave of created water, gushing down the stairs and swallowing the base. "We are susceptible to fire," he says reproachfully. "And I don't imagine our soon-to-be druid friend would appreciate having all his oxygen burnt up before we rescue him."

Karlach flinches. Her tadpole bleeds guilt. "Shit," she mutters, pressing her hands back to her sides. "Shit."

The shadow around her fades. Astarion feels the brimstone reek leave, though he hadn't noticed its arrival. 

"That's– something I did in Avernus. Easier to get through." She shifts her weight, tail coiling to knots. "I can just– instead–" 

She hefts her greataxe, taking a careful step forward even though Gale's spell has made things too waterlogged to burn, and bashes open the door the old-fashioned way. It splinters apart as if detonated. 

Karlach shoulders aside the broken remains, peering in. "Hey-o," she says, all teeth. The guilt is burnt away. "Gonna fight or give up?"

Hard to see around her bulk, but it doesn't look much changed. Half a dozen goblins, if that, stragglers from the main conflict. Still the one brute at the front, more armoured than before, but entirely worthless. The worgs hiss and snarl at their bars, drawn taut. 

In the far cage, the bear raises his head. 

The lead goblin snarls something wordless, clutching his spear. Others heft their weapons. Gearing up for a proper fight, then. 

Behind Karlach, Gale sighs. "Are we in agreement that we are doing nothing else tonight?"

"Yeah?"

"Wonderful. Karlach, duck, please."

She obliges—has to practically crouch so he can see over her shoulders—and Gale promptly hucks a firestorm into the room. 

Astarion skitters back, the others alongside. Karlach faces the blaze without flinching, eating the heat before it can reach them. She's smiling. 

The fire blows away, dispersing into tendrils of yellow and smoke. An array of corpses greet them, charred black and still burning around the edges. Within the back cage, the bear is entirely unharmed, if with wider eyes than before. 

"Fuck yeah," Karlach says, appreciative. "See, soldier? Said you'd get your fireballs back."

"Ah! Yes. It is rather nice to not have to sit through studying everything I've already learned; I merely have to wait for my reserves to return to how they were." Gale blows soot off his palms. "And there is no better place to master oneself than around allies."

How many did he kill in one attack? A dozen? More?

Astarion holds his daggers tighter. 

"The druid," Wyll reminds, glancing around at the corners. They've cleared the goblins, but Astarion can still see nerves entwined with his core, someone who has faced these cavernous hordes more than once. Interesting. 

They pile into the room proper, stepping over scorched stone and avoiding bodies that are more ash than anything else. Lae'zel nods approvingly at Karlach. Shadowheart has a peculiar consternation over her face. 

The bear rumbles, shifting his bulk. He has these wide, expressive eyes, even with the blood pooling in the cracks of his muzzle and patched fur. Every inhale sings in his chest like a bellows. 

Karlach laughs again, metallic resonance. Her eyes are still orange, but embers spark through her teeth. "Kip on back, mate," she warns, and the bear does his best to obey, shuffling to the far side of the cage. He pulls the nude corpse alongside. 

In the singular compliment to the goblin's architecture, it takes two swings of her greataxe before the bars implode. 

Dust billows out. Astarion squints through the grey. 

Freed from the cage, the bear shakes once, every bit of fur unfurling to motes of silver light, and then an elf is standing there. A very tall elf. 

"Hello," he says, in a baritone so deep it shouldn't be possible. "I am the Archdruid Halsin; I see you've been looking for me."

Chapter Text

Halsin cannot remove their tadpoles. The others prickle with disappointment, vindication in Lae'zel's mind, but they accept it. Astarion adds his regret to the miasma and doesn't mention how Korrilla pried one out like a barnacle from a rock. That will invite questions he doesn't have acceptable answers for. 

But the available leaders are dead and the camp slaughtered; the tieflings are saved. They're heroes, right and proper this time, pay no mind to the charred corpses left behind. Corpses so fucking charred their blood is dust now, actually. So Astarion will simply have to hunt instead of risking a bite to the dead. 

There is at least one silver lining to risking his freedom on goblins—the party has no qualms about looting their camp down to the nails holding it together. Which alleviates some of the sting of divine fire. 

The Zhentarim traders had a fine stock, and a few goblins were clearly raiders for the surroundings; Astarion filches more elemental arrows and a fine set of boots with some sort of enchantment in the heels. Shadowheart examines an ink-black glaive with curious eyes. Gale is half a second from cooing over a stack of ash-flecked scrolls. 

No one checks Gut's corpse for how she died; even Gale only offers a passing question at her staff. They don't notice the brain, the scalp. Astarion is both relieved and furious. They ask how it happened and take his word for it—Wyll compliments him again on managing the feat, and Karlach grins and says how proud she is, asking how he got the drop. Astarion smiles through his teeth and calls it a trade secret. 

The divine burns are hidden under his armour. His weapons are appropriately bloodied. He walks without limping or staggering. His shield holds strong. 

There is a corpse without a tadpole and a master that is watching. 

He doesn't want to think about that. 

To them, he did his part. He did what they asked him to do. Gods fuck him, he did it well, even. He got them death and information and a way in. He got them everything. 

He got them a parchment with the drawing of an artefact upon it, which he hands so prettily to Shadowheart. She frowns at it. Everyone frowns, actually. A great big funeral tragedy. Maybe they'll be more scared now, more willing to push on instead of hankering away for these meaningless cullings; but Astarion doesn't know what he wants them to do. 

He wants to be free. He wants to keep the tadpole's protection without the threat. He wants Cazador dead. All of these are incongruous and intersecting. They don't overlap except in an impossible future. 

He wants to survive. But how?

Astarion doesn't fucking know.

-

"I," Karlach announces, striding into camp with a barrel braced over her shoulder, "have some marvelous fucking news."

Astarion hums, setting his new clothing down. She's back early—she'd taken Halsin right off to the Grove as soon as she'd told them her plan without a hint of guilt: putting Halsin back in charge means she doesn't have to worry about anarchy when she guts Kahga. 

Halsin shifted weight between his feet, but didn't say anything. For all Karlach's a bleeding heart who cries when Scratch brings her a stick to toss and professes adoration for Lae'zel offering to spar so vigorously even the githyanki looked flustered, she's on the run from the hells—and those within the Grove are tieflings fleeing Elturel. That likely hits a little too close to home. 

And Karlach freed him. The least the druid can do is let her murder someone. 

Judging by the splatter of blood up her front, it was a mission success. 

"Oh?" Wyll says, glancing up from where he'd been categorizing the pile of spell scrolls from the goblin camp. Gale has already laid claim to those he doesn't know or thinks he can reteach himself after the tadpole stole his repertoire, and Wyll—wisely—has elected himself to divide the remainder amongst the party. "What of? We could use some good news, I feel."

Karlach tips over to slam the barrel on the ground. Something within sloshes. 

"Zevlor 'n the others are right chuffed by Kahga's death, and Halsin unlocked this whole secret treasury stuffed full with booze. We're having a fucking riot tonight."

Astarion can't help a noise of surprise, something crossed between a snort and question. Judging by how Gale's tadpole brightens, he isn't the only one. 

"What?" Wyll asks. 

"A riot. A party. A bash," Karlach lists. She taps the barrel then jerks her thumb behind. "Halsin's bringing more, then the tieflings are coming 'round dusk. Getting plastered to celebrate not dying—that's a classic."

The one barrel is already the size of her chest. Just how much is she planning?

"This is a ceremony?" Lae'zel clarifies. 

"Nah, soldier—it's a right proper excuse to drink 'til our bones melt and shag anyone within earshot." Karlach laughs, bright and wild. "Gods, haven't had one of these with mortals in forever; I'm gonna go crazy."

She certainly looks it. Lae'zel seems enthusiastic, and Gale is already sniffing around the barrel to see if it matches his Waterdeep expectations, and Astarion can see how even Shadowheart wants to be stoic but cracks a little at the thought. Hard work, being a hero where the only reward is more battles; a party will soothe those ruffled feathers. Or perhaps the alcohol will. Both are acceptable. 

But it's Wyll that brushes a hand over his horns, worrying his lower lip. Doesn't jump to the beat with the others. 

Karlach spots it right away. Her eyes sharpen, wholly focused. "You up for it?"

Astarion watches him wince; didn't want to be caught dragging his feet, then. Alas for Karlach's perception. 

"I am," Wyll insists. "They deserve this, after all they've been through. I'm happy we can provide such a night for them."

"For us," Karlach corrects. "All of us, soldier, we've damn well earned a night to let fucking loose." Then, when this argument doesn't spontaneously convince him, she frowns a little. "Why wouldn't you wanna join in? After all you've done?"

Wyll casts around for any easy reasoning, a different way to word it—then sighs. He gestures to his infernal eye, his horns. "They just escaped Elturel, and I look like a devil," he says quietly. "I would hate to ruin their night."

Karlach inhales. Guilt bleeds wordlessly through their shared mental space. 

"I'll help set everything up," Wyll rushes to say. "Then just– hang around the edges, while the festivities are happening. Please, don't feel the urge to lose your night to my melancholy."

There is a pause. Everyone has turned to watch; Astarion can see how their attention is piqued, for all they stay quiet. This is more than what's on the surface. Deeper. The long shadow of something swimming overhead. 

"Right," Karlach says eventually. "Right. Time to make this clear, yeah?"

She steps as close to him as she can, heat bleeding off her skin. "I'm from the hells, yeah? No, shut it–" she says when he tries to cut in, "–I am. Baldurian in blood, but I got more than my heart remade down in Avernus. I slaughtered anything that crossed my path, and not all were from the pits. Imps, mortals, other tieflings; everything Zariel pointed at, I killed. End of story."

Something crosses her face—it isn't wistfulness, but close. Her tadpole murmurs in the song of old lament. 

"Then I get out, and I'm up here, and the first time the tieflings at the Grove saw me was when a buncha fucking warlocks pretending to be paladins showed up to kill me. Threatened to bring Zariel right back on their bloody heads, just for being in the same continent as me. Don't get me wrong, Mizora's a right bitch, but most tieflings don't have ties with her; just Zariel could drag them all back to Elturel if she gave a fuck. And sending those paladins was her way of giving a fuck. And you know what? They still want me around."

Karlach nods at his rapier. "You just killed Dror Ragzlin and cleared their path to Baldur's Gate. Hells, you've got a banging set of horns, and I know half a dozen singletons who'd climb you like a bloody tree if you gave 'em half a chance—they want you there. I want you there."

Wyll's mouth is parted, eyes wide. He stares as though he has never quite seen someone like her before. 

Karlach grins; this wry, poignant sort of grin, like she could light a flame off it alone. "So I'm telling you— come to this motherfucking party, or I will find a way to twist your nips until you squeal."

Wyll flushes. Behind, Shadowheart lets out a startled ha!

"She put it better than I could, my friend, but please do come," Gale adds, stepping forward to clap Wyll on the shoulder. "You don't quite have to turn it into a night of debauchery like I'm sure most others will, but it would be good to see you relax."

"I do relax," Wyll protests, seemingly on reflex. 

Karlach snorts. "You absolutely fucking do not, mate." She grins at the wider party, eyes creased and orange-yellow-gold. "So that's a yes, yeah? All in favour?"

"Aye," Gale chirps. Shadowheart lifts her hand in a shrug that can't quite disguise her excitement. Lae'zel is two steps from popping the barrel open early. 

Wyll chuckles. He's still staring at her with shades of awe. "Aye, then."

Astarion raises his own hand, easy agreement, but he's watching Karlach. 

She's bright, brash, bold—a firecracker in more than her engine, more than her greataxe. Sometimes her eyes go black as her engine roars and sometimes she begs Gale to cast ray of frost on sticks so she can play fetch with Scratch. She is both a deeply understandable person and an enigma.

She also appears to be taking over leadership from Wyll. 

Not completely. Not consciously, either, but little things add up; she knew the Grove, knew the goblins, knew Halsin, and by the time Wyll looked to her for direction the coup was already half complete. The others follow her step, trust her leadership, and she's proven she's willing to strongly reprimand those that try and snuffle out some weakness to exploit. Wyll is under her protection, and the party also wishes to have her as their guardian, and so she's slotting in at their helm. Their new leader. 

His new leader, in particular. 

Astarion ponders this. 

She wasn't there for the bite, for Gandrel, but there's little doubt the story has found its way to her; hard to bring up how they discovered Astarion's vampirism without the rest of the tale following suit. She is the one who will decide what to do with him, should it come to that. 

And Astarion cannot think of a single thing to sway her to his side.

He can't fuck her—even if she could be touched, he's seen the way she looks at Wyll and how Wyll looks at her when he thinks she doesn't notice. He can't defend her, not after she decapitated an ogre and laughed at how far away she managed to land its head. He can't do fucking anything.

Somewhere in the shadows, Korrilla waits with a dagger and a master. Somewhere in this party, Astarion builds a reputation of strength and trickery with nothing to support the myth. 

Well. Perhaps it's a good thing he doesn't know what he wants, since he couldn't get it anyway. Everything too raw, too narrow. The world collapsing in. 

He's far from the goblin camp, but there is cold stone beneath his feet. 

-

The party is horrendous. 

Properly horrendous, in the way that's hard to be as a party. Oh, everyone else seems to be having a blast, considering they're replacing blood with alcohol and shitty food, whatever scraps could be taken from the goblins and Grove. Halsin had made three trips with a barrel under each arm. 

Astarion doesn't know a single fucking person, because he never made it to the Grove and no one seems to remember that enough to introduce him, not that he'd want it. So he grabs a bottle of wine and hunkers under his tent, watching the debacle with eyes he hopes are flinty enough to chase any hopefuls away. 

Not a riot or party or bash in any sense of the word. Just a gathering of miserable people all too clueless to recognize that. 

Spite is, at least, an acceptable flavour to marinate in. Astarion drinks atrocious wine and watches everyone blunder around to make fools of themselves. It seems his observation was correct; Wyll's tucked in a miniature ball, half shielded by Halsin's bulk, but he's here, sensitive bits presumably un-scorched. Gale is sitting beside a fellow incompetent wizard and making pretty sparks in the air. Shadowheart and Lae'zel are fencing barbs over drinks and look two seconds from discovering knives can be used in foreplay. 

Karlach is doing rounds through the party, lighting shots off her tits to raucous cheers and checking in on everyone, offering lyrics to the bard and her insipid songs, making sure the barrels are all topped up. The leader, now. A bloodless revolution and new crowning. Hells, even the fucking tieflings look like they would follow her. 

And then she starts to wind her way over to him. 

Astarion's fingers tighten around his wine.

"Heya, fangs," she says, plopping down beside him. Grass smokes under her thighs. "How you feeling?"

Like I wish we were still killing things. "Like I severely underestimated how much our esteemed party can drink," he says, inclining his glass towards the rack of barrels. "Don't tell me I'll be forced to get up and go rescue them before they're pickled."

Karlach snorts. "Nah, I'll fish 'em out before."

Astarion takes another drink, ash in his mouth. 

"And they deserve it, yeah? After yesterday. Gods, haven't had a proper scrap like that in ages—where you're scared but not scared. When you know you'll win but it's still a fight." She prods at one of her arms, flexing it. "Dunno how I'll get my strength back after the worm's out, but fucking fantastic to know I still got it."

She decapitated an ogre in a single blow. Yes, she does increasingly still have it. Astarion can see the mirage of her in Avernus if he squints; standing tall over imps, corpses woven into a red carpet as she carves through the front lines, roaring all the way. Eyes black. Burning.

"You gave them a most inglorious death," Astarion says sagely. "I hope they understand how lucky they are to have been killed by you."

She grins, all teeth. "You sure know how to make a gal feel like a treat."

"I do try."

"Damn right." Karlach stretches out her legs like a cat conquering a bed seven times larger than them. Watches the tiefling bard play another salacious tune, tail flicking by her ankles. Calm.

He's prickling, hackles up and bristles drawn. She isn't inside his tent, not risking the flammable fabric, but she's closer than any others have been. A line in the dirt he's never going to verbalize but just hope is obeyed. And she can't touch him, can't be touched, and still it tooths at his spine. 

"What brings you to this sad little corner of the map, love?" Astarion says, because the silence was preferable alone and bites with company. "I'd have thought you'd be up in the proper midst of it all."

"I have been," she snorts. "Just gotta simmer off the buzz a little; it'd be a damn shame if I made this whole party then had to snore off a blackout before it really kicks up."

"I see," Astarion hums. "So I'm a downer, then."

"You're funny," she corrects, and ignores his bafflement. "Feels like chatting up a fairy, all these pretty words and bitey little insults. Wish I could've been there, to hear you talk up the goblins. The best entertainment 'round here."

From what she knows, yes. Astarion continues smiling. "I'll be sure to recreate it for the next batch of Absolutists we encounter."

"Fuck yeah." She's a little hazy; her eyes drift to his nose and then back up. "But what about now, soldier? Got plenty of targets for your fancy words. Could have your pick. What about–" she scans the crowd, all the silhouettes with sloshing drinks and piercing voices. "Rechel? Toron? Or, wait– Halsin! He's a real sweet guy. You talk to him much? Gods, the way he's been chatting up the party; we'll have to quarter off the woods for whatever he's planning."

Well, Astarion is an affront to nature and blemish upon the world order, or something similar. He'll confess to not paying much attention to how he is an abomination in the eyes of all the gods. He settles for smiling at her, thin enough to hide his fangs. "He's not my type, really." 

"Huh," Karlach says. "Can't relate. Then again, after ten years, I'd say everybody fucking is—gods, maybe we can hunt down a fire elemental or something on our way to the crèche." She pauses, lips pursed. "Where do you lean, actually? Birds, blokes, both?"

Astarion hasn't exactly had the wherewithal to make a choice in quite a while. He can suck cock or eat cunt like a man starved, if need be. Preference doesn't much matter. 

"Any I can get my claws in," he says. Or would have, if he hadn't bit Wyll before he'd had the fucking chance. He could've had Lae'zel. Could've had Gale. Could've had Karlach. Instead they know he's a monster. Instead he follows orders that aren't clearly given in hopes of being right. 

Korrilla slits Gut's throat, or she doesn't, and Astarion dies at the behest of a party that refuses him. That's the consequences of changing masters. Some parts you keep, some parts you lose. 

"Claws, huh?" Karlach says, considering. There's a bit of a smile teasing her lips. "Any in the group you've got 'em locked onto, then? Any kiss-n-tell secrets?"

He snorts into his glass. "Oh, entirely not you lot. No need to worry your pretty little head. My claws will stay far away from you."

A faint hurt darts through Karlach's tadpole, then is gone. "You're in a right tart of a mood," she notes. "Something biting at your arse, soldier?"

Oh, just all of the commands and chains and threats. Nothing much, really. He waves a dismissive hand. "I've never been much for the party scene, at least not when it looks like this. Far more content in my little corner. You can go back to it."

Karlach looks at him. Her eyes are too sharp for the amount of ale he's watched her consume. 

"We're all pals here, y'know," she says. "You don't gotta avoid us."

How fucking polite of her. How magnanimous, considering what she missed from the very beginning. 

It would be easier if she stopped pretending. He could act his part all the better if it wasn't some coy thing to play at, if the commands were laid out in plain language so he could stop contorting himself to figure out what they want. 

If they had just let him between their godsdamned legs, he wouldn't be trying to be useful in ways he has never been before. 

"I'm here, aren't I?" Astarion is speaking to the wine instead of her. "I could have fucked off long ago and yet stayed. Isn't that good enough for you?"

"S'got nothing to do with that, soldier," she says. "Worms brought us together but we're a party now; I've got everyone's back. I wanna be with you lot."

"Well," Astarion says, unable to shut his fucking mouth, "clearly I don't."

She stiffens. He doesn't stop. Can't, maybe.

"I don't particularly want to be around you." His voice is raising. Across the way, Halsin—who has known the party for precisely a day—watches this exchange with a layered curiosity. Wyll, Lae'zel; even Shadowheart is looking over, cold consideration in her shaded eyes. He is dissected beneath the lot. He responds in kind. "Not you, not anyone; you're a bunch of stupid fucking heroes that refuse to look past your noses at how the world actually works. Gods, at least whores don't believe their customers love them."

Karlach's tail lashes. Her eyes are still orange and there isn't that shadow taking up more room than her body, but she's gone all stiff and pointed. Brittle. "You're drunk, fangs. Time to sleep it off, yeah?"

"I am miserably sober," he hisses. "Rest assured, if I could be drunk to get through these interactions, I would be."

All these falsities. All these lies. All the ways there are divine burns under his clothes and he must pretend to be so fucking happy. 

The celebration is still continuing, but those closest are watching—are looking at him, fangs and eyes and all. Here's his fucking introduction to the tieflings, then. As if they needed any further confirmation of what monsters vampires are. 

"Nobody's forcing you here," Karlach says. "You could go."

It becomes apparent that old habits die hard. Astarion finds himself in a pit and keeps digging. "Yes, yes, of course. I leave, transform, and then am killed at fifty paces—I'm not a fucking idiot. Gods, did Zariel take your brain as well? Are you hoping I'll be easier to slaughter than an imp? So terribly sorry I can't be interesting enough to get your jollies off–"

Karlach's glass shatters in her grip. 

In immediate retrospect, Astarion considers he's said too much. 

She doesn't flinch, wine pouring through her fingers and shards tearing at her palm. Just stares at it. Her blood is acidic and hot enough to steam. 

"I get it," she says, monotone. "I get it. You can stop now."

The last of his frantic offense dies in his throat. 

Karlach doesn't meet his eyes. She's drawn up, limbs tucked in, as though she can fit herself into something smaller. All her fire burned away. 

Her tadpole says nothing. Just smoke. 

Astarion sits there, frozen. His own words echo in his skull, slamming against cranial fragility; he said that. He said that and kept saying that and said it over her when she tried to stop him. He just kept going.

"Karlach," he says. "I'm–"

Then he draws off. 

He's what? Sorry? Some other useless emotion that will excuse what he said? Astarion backed himself into a corner and bit. He meant every single second of it because he didn't think past the moment, and– well. There it is. He doesn't particularly need the party to like him, though that would have been preferred. But now he's managed to not just burn the bridge but immolate it, nothing to rebuild from. 

She's so quiet. 

Korrilla called him weak. And now he's thrown away the only chance he had of securing protection. 

He won't cry. He looks very pretty when he cries, he knows. 

For the second time, for the second time with this party and with her specifically, Astarion gets up and leaves. 

-

He finds himself somewhere far away, dredging through old game trails and the memory of a civilized world. 

The words are still in his mouth, cutting his gums, and he lets them sit instead of swallowing. There's far more there, from little digs to outright accusations about her time in Avernus, anything and everything he noticed in the past five days that could be construed as weakness. He'd been midway through continuing when he'd seen her face. 

Gods, her face. The lack of it. Just practiced nothing. 

He doesn't– he doesn't want to play nice, necessarily. To fawn over the party like sterling jewels, to give them the out of pretending as though this is anything near a willing relationship. Gandrel cut out the possibility and this is just establishing that for all. But she didn't–

Karlach didn't deserve that. He met her five fucking days ago; even though she'd pushed at him the night after Wyll, she'd also talked and chatted and been the picture of a fairweather companion as well. Defended all the party from threats, held their supplies, bartered for more. Swore to protect them all. 

She'd been kind.

His feet are taking him somewhere. 

Astarion lets them, trailing blindly through a gap in the branches. Darkvision means the world swims before him in cloudy greys. It seems fitting, almost. If there are beasts out, he can't sense them, a pale ringing in his ears. Just him moving through the darkness. 

Packed dirt transitions to wood. 

He glances up to see the goblin camp. 

It's more a mess than before, remnants of Wyll's eldritch blasts charing up the palistrades and corpses spread as a feast for the circling crows. He pads over the bridge, ears pricked, but evening has settled velvet-dark and left this place abandoned. It likely will be for some time, considering he doubts the party will take a tenday just to clear it. No time to focus on ecological devastation when their minds are bored like worm-chewed apples. 

The worg is eviscerated, a feast for maggots. Sentinel Olak is nowhere to be found. Astarion can smell fire, the remains of it from a day past; the wood is charred and cut through. Inside is the ogre corpse; its head is across the courtyard, oozing viscera over a shattered barrel. Karlach did that with a single blow. 

They looted everything and then moved on. But he can't. There's a piece of him still here. 

Astarion thinks he knows where he's walking to. 

Up into the rafters, gazing over the corpses from a higher vantage point, clambering through the twisted racks. In the gorge, the troop of spiders are gone, only webs left to prove their existence. There's a splinter of wood that he can make out now, a remnant of the long-dead bridge. 

He clambers down the rope and lands lightly in the abandoned war room. 

Gut's corpse is still there. Her staff is moved from where Gale poked at it, asking questions about how she used it which Astarion refused to answer because his cover story is catching her with an arrow from half a continent over, and that's it. Her scalp attached, her death unchallenged. 

Astarion is shaking. It's not very much. But it rattles in his undead heart in his ribs and makes him ache something fierce and unforgiving. Gut is dead, Korrilla gone, and yet he's here to suffer out the consequences. 

If Gut hadn't challenged him– if she hadn't dragged him down to where he frayed under terror– if he had been in control so he wouldn't bite back and destroy what slim chance he had–

Astarion crouches to get a hand around her neck, digging his nails into the slit left by Korrilla, the mess of a mangled brain and split scalp. He hauls her upright, hunched over, limbs askew and dangling. The scene flickers; how the skulls in her staff lit up, divine fire belching like industrial smog in the grey. Cackling, teleporting, the reason she was their priestess. 

The derision in her cold black eyes when she stripped his cloak of power and called him spawn. 

He's still shaking. 

Astarion pulls her off the ground, sagging in his grasp. More of her brain drools through her skull. Still a person. Still a fucking person, power over herself and others. With a single word she'd torn that ownership away. 

"You don't get to take that from me," he hisses. 

But she did, didn't she? She didn't have to try. It was just done.

As a True Soul, he had been a person. And even that was on borrowed time. 

Gut slips out his grasp, splattering back upon the stone. He'll leave her here for the rats to eat, if they even fucking bother. Maybe she'll stay as a relic of what Astarion could have been if only he filed down his fangs and tore out his eyes and hid everything under the veneer of a True Soul. 

Everything seems made of cotton. He stumbles away from her, too close to the gorge, but the monsters there have already left. It's just him, a corpse in a camp full of them; tongue still full of vitriol aimed at every member of the party. Things he stored and stockpiled for no other reason than to have. 

It's a touch, he realizes, like his siblings. 

Astarion could throw himself at Petras, screaming insults, raking claws over his face, splitting him to the withered organs—and he would be punished, flayed or otherwise, and then go back to trance in the same dormitory. Petras would still be there. Astarion would still be there. They had no recourse from the other, no place to escape that was not where they would be the next morning. And they hated each other. Gods, did they. Astarion would have sacrificed any of them to Cazador in his stead—and he did, as much as he could when he was the favoured spawn—and he knows they would and did do the same. 

But he could never harm them in a way that mattered, because Cazador wanted them as slaves and thus slaves would they stay. Insults were the only injury he could offer that would linger. He has quite a catalogue; or he did, but two hundred years means he's used up most of them. All that's left are petty things that insult both them and himself.

And then the party. Then the dichotomy between masters and those he's stuck with by an illithid parasite. Then those that he stays with and isn't commanded to.

Karlach's face, quiet, blank. She had only asked him to stop. 

Astarion hauls himself back into the rafters, going higher, higher until he's on the palistrade wall, less corpses here than the courtyard. Less blood. Less dead.

He sits there, back against the beams, clouded sky overhead. Astarion exhales stale breath and tries, valiantly, to think. 

The bridge is burned, tolerance cut away with a chirurgeon's precision. It's too much to apologize, and Astarion won't. He cannot lie about two things, not with the weight of failure stretching before him—he can either be friendly, or he can be useful. The first seems rather impossible now, and they don't know not to believe the latter. He can fake that, or learn quickly enough to where it is true, and stay a bastard so they never get close enough to notice. They don't need to like him to send him into enemy camps or to lockpick hidden passages. 

And maybe that doesn't matter, because he bit again, even if in words instead of fangs, and he's killed upon his return. 

He can still argue for himself, perhaps. Lay himself more willingly upon their tasks. There are subsects of survival he is willing to accept, if it comes to that. 

Well. Tomorrow gets him his answer. Either he can be a bastard, or that is too similar to monster for comfort. Either he can stop pretending, or he won't live long enough to regret his choice. 

Astarion leans his head back against the wood, staring up at the silver-stained sky overhead. The clouds are hazy things, just outlines against the darkness behind. They are so very far away. 

-

The celebration didn't stop in his absence, it seems. 

Every barrel is cracked open and fair pockets of ale are left spilled in the sand. Only two tents are still standing and they don't look happy about it, bowing and sagging under kicked supports. The tieflings are gone, back to the Grove, and the party is milling about in the low, fumbling steps of those nursing a truly remarkable hangover. 

Karlach is sat under the flagging poles of her canvas, elbows on knees and back to him. Her tail is motionless like a dead snake. Wyll sits beside her, close as can be without touching, both tadpoles tangled. They face the dawning horizon without words. 

Astarion hovers in their fringes for longer than he wants, ten minutes before he even chooses a path to walk into their midst. Certainly not Karlach, nor Wyll, no Lae'zel—but there is a route that carries him past their residential wizard. He elects on that. 

His movements are steady, sure. He walks forward as though there is nothing wrong. 

Deliberately loud footsteps—Gale raises his head, looking at him. His gaze is flat and even. "You're back," he says mildly. "I don't suppose you found anything while wandering?"

Astarion smiles. "Not a single thing."

Gale's face hardens, and Astarion doesn't move, readying himself, muscles coiled. Preparing for something. The lurch of white-hot flames through a battered door. 

"I see," Gale says instead. And then he says nothing else, returning to the book set in his lap. And Astarion continues to walk past him without being stopped. 

He slips to his tent, one of the last remaining. Someone took out the wine he had been drinking but it is otherwise untouched; nothing broken, no example made as punishment. A swipe under his bedroll proves there isn't even broken glass put for a trap, which is the baseline of what his siblings would choose had he insulted them like that. 

Astarion lets out a breath that's been growing old since last night. 

That was– something. He's not dead. Gale seemed frustrated but willing to let dogs lie, and despite how vicious a dog Astarion is, he is quite adept at rolling over. He glances at the rest of camp, where Lae'zel is sharpening her longsword with no regard for the screeching sound and Shadowheart's tent is closed. Wyll and Karlach are still turned away. Halsin is nowhere to be seen. No one is coming for him. 

His head stays attached to his shoulders. This is a fact he must think about for longer than it should take. 

He is… free, in a way. Free to stop dragging it out like a whore convincing a man his cock is some splendor of nature. Free to be a bitch and a bastard but a useful one, and he hasn't strayed into monster quite yet, and that's all that matters. This isn't an answer, because he knows things will get worse, but a slow kind of worse. Survivable. 

He's still in the party, just without the fallacy of comradery for the others to shelter under. All it took was shattering his budding position into pieces so small he can only be useful instead of anything approaching welcomed. Not that he was ever going to be. Gandrel made sure of that. 

Astarion sits in his tent. Where Karlach had been sitting are blackened pieces of grass, waving morosely in the morning wind off the sea. She'll never do that again. He can kiss their budding congeniality goodbye. Isn't that what he wanted?

Well. There he goes. A fucking success. 

He busies himself with fixing up his supplies. 

When Lae'zel finally finishes sharpening her sword, Shadowheart emerges from her tent, shaking out her braid from where it has been redone. Her eyes are sharp, no hangover; and judging by how she hits Gale, Wyll, and Karlach with a lesser restoration, it's little wonder why. That's a marvelous cheat code. The only acceptable reason to become a cleric. 

She, notably, does not go to Lae'zel. Lae'zel, notably, does not ask her. This is particularly notable considering Astarion remembers their interaction during the party. 

This prompts the others up, movement just beginning to slide though it is nearing noon. Halsin reemerges from somewhere within the woods, already bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as though standing beneath a single tree exfoliated off however long he spent in the goblin's prison. 

This is when Lae'zel marches to the center of the camp to nab Wyll's attention. He blinks, his tadpole shifting as it is blasted with her mental determination like liver-green fields. "To the crèche," Lae'zel demands. "We have delayed for long enough. My people will heal us."

Wyll looks a touch bewildered—maybe the lesser restoration couldn't take the full bite off his hangover—but does nod, glancing to his left. "Karlach?"

"Yeah, it's time," she says, pushing upright. "Zevlor's bringing the lot around to Baldur's Gate, and I think we're at the point regular healers can't get these bloody things out. Crèche is our best bet."

She casts a gaze around their circle; her eyes pass over him like all the others. "Sounds good?"

Astarion nods with the rest. It's the only option they have, it seems. 

Halsin nods. "I must investigate the shadowcurse for a short while," he says, "to better prepare myself for it. But should we meet upon the road at the mountain pass, I hope you would allow me within your ranks."

"You'd be more than welcome, mate," Karlach says, grinning. It's boisterous, but less than normal. More wane. "Think you'll catch us there, or should we dive in when we get to it?"

"I do not suggest anyone dive into the shadowcurse," Halsin says a touch dryly, but he's smiling. "But yes; the Absolute is something I fear is larger than us, and its timeline unknown. It hunts even now."

She grimaces. "Sure fucking does."

Halsin clasps his forearm over his chest in lieu of an offered shake. "Farewell, my friend."

Karlach mirrors him. "Right back at ya."

Then the druid finishes gathering his supplies, only taking a portion of food for that day's dinner, and slips into the surroundings. A puff of citrus-scented magic and he's entirely gone, not even the thrum of his heartbeat. Neat trick. 

Lae'zel seems to expect they'll hop right up and to the crèche, but the others still suffer from mortal concerns, and they'll be slower to get going than that. A day of rest, first. More than just a lesser restoration. 

Astarion drifts back to his tent. Pulls out something to change into instead of what he wore through the night. Inspects it again for anything planted—a curse, wire, something set to cut—and finds himself genuinely bewildered when nothing turns up. Are they more advanced at finding locations than he thought? There should be at least something.

The pulse of a heartbeat. Something approaching, heavy footsteps over soil. He continues petting his clothing for an action, ears kept purposefully still. 

"Hey." 

Karlach is standing before him. 

Astarion licks his lips, tweaking a curl so it flutters out of his face. "Yes, dear?"

Old instincts attach dear to the end, as cemented in his vernacular as lies. Empty and meaningless. It is no more a term of endearment than any of Cazador's nicknames for him.

Karlach works something around her jaw. Behind, Wyll hovers at the edge of the conversation, and Astarion can feel five tadpoles prickling with anticipation. He is not out of the maelstrom quite yet. Now for the rocks. 

"Last night was real fucked," Karlach says eventually, "and you aren't going to talk to me like that again. Me or anybody else. You understand?"

Here is the leader. Her own transformation is complete. 

Astarion tilts his head to the side. "Like what, exactly?"

Still orange, but the black of her pupils expands. "Like a fucking bastard. Be a dick all you want, but leave it at that. We're a party. No attackin' anyone."

Ah. 

It seems there is a line in the sand that he merrily crossed, but a second he did not; the first for defining, the second as a finality. He cannot be a bastard, as she so aptly put, but a dick is fair game. Which is wonderful. He loves being a dick. 

Two tendays he's all but begged the party to give him firmer rules, to know what he can and cannot do. If he had known insulting them would have gotten him what he needs, he'd have done it before ever leaving the beach. 

Astarion bobs his head. He smiles, thin, not unfriendly but without humour. "I understand perfectly. Only professional you'll find me from here on out—I apologize for taking it too far."

Karlach nods stiffly, turning to leave. But some sort of tension drains from her spine as though she'd been expecting him to dish out more; to keep peppering her with those curated insults as though a reward for her extended hand. For her leniency.

"I hope you know," he says, a little too light, "that I didn't mean any of it."

Karlach doesn't face him. "Sure, fangs."

She walks away. Leaves him alone with that new weight on his back. 

They give his tent a wide berth as they pack up; he can pick through the remaining spoils from the goblin camp and pick out a set of new vambraces without anyone being able to look over his shoulder. Combined with the elemental arrows he still hasn't given back, there is a fine bounty should he need it. 

He's still weak. Korrilla still had to save him. 

But for the moment, Astarion is still within the party, and that will have to be enough. 

-

To get to the crèche, they have to follow the same route again—where they had been going originally those seven days, driving on towards the distant west. At least now they can carve through the wilderness without the whips of transformation; for all Lae'zel refuses to allow them to forget the threat, it is relatively clear the tadpoles are dormant for the moment. This is just their final attempt to remove it before it has the chance to make good on its promise. 

And so they travel. 

This new sort of existence is… odd. Familiar in some ways, where he is still along the extremities of the party, but now freed from the center. He follows at their heels and plunges into battle alongside, and they stop trying to drag him into conversation beyond planning. No longer does Gale rack up soliloquies in his direction, nor does Wyll ask his opinion on their surroundings. Even Karlach keeps him further away. Lets him be. 

It is not freedom, this distance, but he can fool himself into thinking it is power. He wanted this. Wanted to stop pretending. And they've stopped as well—stopped clamming up to him like limpets awash in a brine. Still commanded, still kept, but a damn near trivial existence against what he knows. Just blanket travel. 

The crèche will heal them or it won't—Astarion swallows hope for the latter. It is not quite healing that awaits him should the tadpole leave his skull; it is the pain of sunlight and running water and Cazador. The commands he can neither separate from nor remake himself under. 

New commands now. But these are bearable. Are fine.

The crèche approaches. Astarion hunts at night, scrubs himself clean, and continues walking. It is, perhaps, all he knows how to do. 

Chapter Text

Astarion presses the tips of his fingers to his temple. 

The others fucked off to do more heroic things, irritable side adventures that will never earn back the energy spent. The singular upside to this new complete lack of rapport is that they no longer expect him to come with, asking with a polite performance before they disappear off to kiss orphans on the head or something similar. Only when they are actually packing up to move does he go with. And that is not today, so he is here, alone in the camp, pressing hands to his head, trying to learn. 

Beneath his touch, the wretched little thing scuttles, teeth and tendrils, gnawing on cerebral matter he still has need of. After the phantom in the artefact, it has been less… present, docile in the way of a beast kept in another room, not a threat but still there. 

And Astarion needs to be even more there. He needs to study it.

It is, to put it generously, not going well. 

He is operating off nothing. Less than nothing, even, considering he has two hundred years of expertise in the exact opposite—of making himself lesser, more piteous, more small. Pulling all of his limbs in to be a target harder to hit. And now he must learn to expand his mental space, to use it not as a shield but as a weapon, to sever a far-off chain before it reconnects. 

The crèche is approaching at worrying speeds. 

Astarion's no fool to hope that the githyanki will actually deign to heal them, but there is a chance, and he has come too far to let that chance become reality. Very difficult to use the tadpole to save himself if this miracle device yanks it out of his skull. 

"Work, damn you," Astarion snarls, and tries to draw it out again.

The bugger squirms, wriggling discontentment. Astarion grits his teeth—keeps pulling it out into a barb, an extension, something sharp instead of shielding. He can do this. He can fucking do this. 

The tadpole decides that no, he cannot, and rebounds into his skull hard enough to shatter. 

Astarion pulls his fingers away from his temples with a hiss. Twin drops of blood from the corner of his eyes, wiped away to join a stack of bandages already splotched over with fouled red—a headache announces its presence with a cheerful throb, somewhere perched behind his cranium. How wonderful. 

He's been able to do nothing but cause himself pain. Just malignant aches and a wearying sense around the bridge of his nose like something wants to break through, which is the fucking opposite of cutting out Cazador's commands like rust on metal. 

He just needs more time.

Could he sabotage the party somehow? Huck a poison in food supplies, hide their weapons, chip Gale's nails? To find any way to get more experimenting between now and the crèche?

Astarion sighs, deep and bone-weary. He could, is the trouble. Being left in camp on their outings is a silver platter for artifice, but that then comes hand-in-hand with getting caught. With inviting the question of whether he's more useful within the party or dead. 

It's, well. They aren't going to trust him anyway. But he cannot be so untrustworthy as to invite death. 

So it goes. 

He's done for the day, at least. Bleeding through both eyes is his habitual indicator to pull back lest he manage to trigger an actual transformation, given how Shadowheart and the artefact are away for the moment. Which means he hucks the bloody bandages into the fire to never be found and glares at everyone so he doesn't have to smile around a headache if they bother him. 

No hunting tonight, either. He's not exactly in prime physical form. 

Gods, but he's close, maybe. The tadpole responds more readily when he subjugates it, chewing on what sections he wants it to chew, and if only he had a test subject he could figure out whether this progress means anything. If it is working. But he doesn't. And he doesn't know where to get one. Thus he's stuck scrapping at the marrow of old ideas and relying on hope that one day they will work. 

Astarion sits around the ashes of a fire, staring at nothing, doing nothing of note, mostly just shivering under continued failure. He does this for long enough to feel a responding thrum, stirring along the edge of his awareness. Five minds, entering back within his cast net. 

Another wasted day. Opposite progress. 

Before long, the party emerges through the canopy, a chatter of voices and echoing exhaustion. Their weapons aren't drawn but they've been used, heavy in the air.

They… reek, actually. Terribly so. Everyone's boots are slick with mud up to the calves, hair rustled with humidity, general odorous malaise. Even king-of-prestidigitation Gale has a lingering aroma of rot. 

Hadn't Gandrel said his hag's adobe was a swamp?

Astarion sharpens without any visible response. His mind extends, brushing feather-light over the edges—victory, tempered through with exhaustion. A battle hard-fought and hard-won. Perhaps Gale will cook them all a feast in celebration and he can linger in the peripheries to discover what it is that they won. 

Surely not the hag. Surely they're too far away for that. And surely Astarion wouldn't have tuned out something so important as they discussed their plans for the day. 

But either way, they're back, something is dead, and that is another day gone and passed. 

Shadowheart heads back to her tent, chatting idly with Gale—Wyll and Lae'zel both immediately peel off to change into hunting garb, because they're masochistic like that. Astarion busies himself on his customary perch, an embroidery needle plucked from the hem of his shirt. A handy little trick, to look occupied. Particularly when this lot won't snatch it from him like his siblings. Presumably. 

"Astarion?"

Well, that's the first time in a blue moon he's been directly addressed. He hums, setting his ankle over his knee as though the picture of lackadaisical ease. "Hm?"

It's Karlach, walking over, her greataxe back at her tent and top half shucked off. A cut up by her neck; her blood is acidic, poignant. Mouthwatering. He is not thinking about that. 

"Lae found a trail to the créche," Karlach says. "We're close—should find it tomorrow, with any luck."

Ah. 

So it goes, as he said.

"And you all will be in peak condition?" He waves a hand in her vague direction. "That seems like a rather nasty fight you were in."

She huffs a little, shrugging. "Sure was. But we'll be up in the thick of it after a day of rest. No need to worry." 

Astarion smiles thin. He had been wanting them to be waylaid, actually. To scrounge another day of desperate attempts before the end comes crashing down. But that could piss them off, and he's rather too precarious to risk it. 

"Of course," he says, deliberate, unbothered. "I'll be ready, then."

-

"That's a monastery," Gale notes, hands laced beneath his chin. "Of… Lathander, I believe; see the sun embleming over the mosaics? No, the ones along the base of the tower—more to the left, my friend–"

"I'm not pointing at the mosaics," Shadowheart hisses back. "I'm pointing at the dragon."

Because there is a dragon. 

There is. A dragon.

It's a right and proper one, larger than a house, done up in glittering red scales and smoke through its teeth; it wraps around the tower of the apparent monastery, regarding its surroundings with pinprick black eyes. Too far to make out any actual expression—if Astarion could even read draconic features—but it's rather too enormous to be anything but a threat. 

Lae'zel, apparently, takes this as a marvelous fucking sign. 

"It is a monastery no longer," she breathes, eyes wide. "That is a red dragon of Vlaakith; it is home to a crèche. We are here."

Astarion peers over the cliff-edge they're hiding behind, which perches above the valley. The building is a proud one, large and sprawling, though difficult to properly admire with the serpentine form woven overtop. 

He didn't sign up to fight a dragon. Why is there a dragon? That seems like the opposite of healing. 

To his—and what should frankly be everyone's—horror, Karlach looks at the beast with something akin to consideration. "Huh," she says, and that word carries more information than Astarion ever wants to know about her battle prowess, before or after the tadpoles. "Alright, wasn't expecting that."

"I don't believe any of us were," Gale chimes in. 

For once Astarion agrees with him. All they were expecting were murderous squatters. This, surprisingly, doesn't make it better. 

"Do you know 'em?" Karlach asks, squinting at the sun-capped building. Even without the dragon it's imposing, studded with pillars like gnarled teeth. "Any chance for a red carpet welcome?"

"There will be no welcome, carpet or otherwise," Lae'zel says. Astarion catches how unease ripples over her tadpole, the very ends of her ears twitching. "We are bound under the same law as children of Gith, but it is a foreign crèche. I must discover how their customs differ."

Well, that sounds delightful. Gods if Astarion doesn't love having non-specific rules with great consequence should he not follow. 

Gale hums. "I'm curious for the chance to study githyanki culture, but you are not filling me with much hope for our adventurers here leaving us unscathed," he remarks. "If even you must discover what is expected of you from your kin, what chance do we have?"

"There is no chance here." Lae'zel fixes all of them with focused eyes, hackles up and pupils slits. "They will heal me, of this I know. It is our code, passed down from the adlishar many generations before."

Shadowheart tches. "And for us?"

For the first time since their lovely relationship of seeing how close they can get to tearing out the other's throat until the party stops them, Lae'zel doesn't snap at the bait. Just grits her teeth, ears flat. 

"They will heal you," she says. "I will demand it; it is my right. But that is not the difficult part. That is getting you safely inside a githyanki crèche without being taken prisoner." 

That's the difficult part?

"What'll they do if we just up 'n march through the front gate?"

Lae'zel glares at Karlach. "They will slaughter you, tearing your mind apart or bathing your bones in dragonfire. Githyanki crèches are forces of military, training homes for our people; there is no front gate you can march through and be allowed entry."

Karlach holds her palms up. "Got it," she says, softer than before. "Didn't mean anything by it, Lae. Just covering all options."

"I know you did not." Lae'zel doesn't allow softness easily, but she sighs here, gaze on the ground. "I am merely… concerned."

Astarion has heard her face a payload of gnolls with more confidence than that statement. Shit. 

Lae'zel clicks her tongue. Her tadpole writhes, incessant buzzing as though a boiling pot of oil, discomfort and unease and a malignant, lingering dread so at odds with her personality Astarion nearly does a double take. 

"But it is no matter. I will proclaim you my revrykal, and you will be healed."

Gale—the only one who pestered Lae'zel enough to dabble in her language—frowns. There is a darkening of his tadpole, ink poured over a page. "Slave."

"Servant," Lae'zel corrects, without her normal fervour. "I will say you belong to me, and that you are under my protection—this will bring you to the zaith'isk."

Ah. There's the tricky little question of it all; little wonder she didn't mention that all the way back when she was in the cage demanding to be freed. 

"Slaves?" Karlach clarifies, voice a touch flat. 

"It is the only way to bring you inside," Lae'zel says. "They must believe it, or you will be taken from me and made to speak your secrets. You cannot say otherwise."

Wonderful.  

Karlach glances at the rest of the party—Shadowheart is a prickled mess of nerves and disgust, Gale hesitant, Wyll a slow, algal resignation—and to Astarion. He shrugs. Two sets of chains doesn't much matter; it's still the same part to play. 

She presses a hand over the tattoos snaking down her shoulder; she squeezes the flesh there, the mottled edges of scar tissue and infernal ports. Her tadpole is thrashing enough Astarion can see a momentary image of her own face but dually horned, neither shattered, before it disappears under the sea of surrender. 

"Yeah," she says, dull. "Alright. If it'll get us healed. We can do that."

Lae'zel, despite having her decision be chosen, doesn't look pleased. Her ears are pressed flat, hand gripping her hilt as though a lifeline. Everything worn up and wrapped around. 

Astarion glances at the building again, at the suns carved into old stone. At the dragon nesting over some forgotten legacy. 

This is where she comes from, in a way. Not this exact place, but a reflection. Time to see what she's made of. 

-

He rather thought Lae'zel took herself too seriously, but she's a ray of fucking sunshine compared to the rest. 

The entrance of the crèche greets them with two guards who take one look at Lae'zel and immediately tense up, hands on longswords and a psionic ripple in the air. Much too far from the dragon, but Astarion fucking swears it moves, spined tail slithering over the roof. 

"Hold," one of them barks, voice caustic and nasal despite not having the nose to be so. "Go no further, kin. You are not of Crèche Y'liik."

She bares her teeth, shoulders bristling. "I am Lae'zel of Crèche K'liir," she snaps. "I will not be denied entry into a land of gith."

Gods, all of these names are horrendous to memorize. At least Lae'zel is the one leading the charge; for all Astarion needs to be useful in the manner of subterfuge, if she's getting this much suspicion as a githyanki, he'd likely be gutted on the spot. He tucks his shoulders a little further. 

The other guard frowns, head cocking like a bird. "You are far from home, kin."

"And I will not be delayed. Open the gate."

Perhaps it's customary to greet others by biting their proverbial heads off, but the guards exchange a glance and, in sync, knock the butts of their longswords against the door in some arbitrary pattern. 

There is a pause. An answering beat, three notes. Lae'zel's tadpole jerks to attention. 

Then the gate opens, and another githyanki steps out. 

He—Astarion is mostly sure—is silver-clad and riddled with keepsakes from past battles, more scar than person. His steps are calculated, deliberate; and when he crosses into the sunlight, the dragon overhead rumbles. It sounds like an avalanche. 

Fucking hells, Astarion did not agree to this shit. 

The githyanki stops before Lae'zel, regarding her with something cold. Pointed, impersonal. She begins to fold into a bow; not enough to look away from his eyes, but enough to show respect. It is so achingly wrong on her he almost asks her to stop. 

"Kin," Lae'zel begins, deferential. "I am–"

He holds up a hand. She falls utterly silent. 

"I will not be spoken to by kin whose tongue has been dulled by this pitiful world," he snaps. He has an odd way of speaking—a familiar accent on an unfamiliar tongue, as though he is a visitor to Faerûn so often it has rubbed off. "Speak to me as a gith or do not speak at all."

Lae'zel's ears flatten. She bares her teeth, rising from the half-bow. "I am Lae'zel of Crèche K'liir," she says, still subservient but fanged now, hand on her hilt. "You are to help me; I am here to be purified. This is my mission."

He pauses, gaze sharpening. "You require purification."

"My crèche attacked a gh'ath and I stayed to ensure its destruction; but I did not escape unscathed. I am here to be purified."

That gets his attention. And that of the guards behind him, a straightening of spines as though in the presence of battle. Something sharp in the air. 

"A gh'ath," he repeats. "You have seen it?"

"My time is limited, kith'rak," she says, but her mind rumbles over panic, not frustration. "I can answer questions after I am purified." A pause, calculating. "There are six of us infected. The world does not need any more ghaik."

The gith—Kith'rak? Is that his name?—sweeps his gaze over the lot of them; Astarion ducks and avoids contact, head bowed, mouth closed, shoulders hunched. 

The others are not quite so keen to play along. Karlach rocks on her heels, tail flicking and gaze inquisitive, Wyll examining the guards. Gale is unabashedly staring at the leader, hands twitching like he wants to take notes. Even Shadowheart has a palmful of light cupped at her sternum, wariness visible from a continent away, eyes hooded. 

Gods, they're all fucking terrible at this. 

Kith'rak watches them with some rancid comprehension. He knows. 

Astarion goes all tense, the same miserable strategy as though keeping his muscles taut will make it hurt less when his skin is pried from them. The dragon overhead moves again, enormous head curling around a tower. They're going to be incinerated. 

But Kith'rak just turns back to Lae'zel. "You bring five istik to our doors?"

"They are guides from this world," she says. "My revrykal. Disposable, but only once I know they will not transform. I will have them questioned first."

He makes a low, clicking noise in his throat. "Do they know of the weapon that fell from the gh'ath you slew?"

Surprise ripples through their shared mental space. That sounds like the artefact, the one protecting them. The very critical one they are not in the market to lose. The one that is currently sitting in Shadowheart's pack not four feet away. Why would the githyanki want it? 

But it is Gale that ponders it aloud: "The weapon?"

Kith'rak's eyes snap to him. 

Lae'zel blusters forward as cover. "Yes. They were on the ship; they will know. I have brought them here for this."

For a moment, silence. Then Kith'rak's face splits into a smile as though flesh ripping apart. 

"Then you have done well, vin'iisk. Your queen commands all to aid in search of this weapon; if you have found it, then you will be rewarded. Do not return to the Tears—report to the inquisitor within to tell of what you know, and then you will be purified." 

Astarion keeps his gaze on the dirt, but he feels twin pinpricks of heat against his scalp, focus that has nothing to do with kindness. 

"Your slaves will be purified as well. You are right that there is to be no further ghaik; bring them inside."

Lae'zel bows her head. "Thank you, kith'rak."

He turns away without response. The two guards do not so much open as tear the gate apart, doors slamming against the stone; Kith'rak marches through, proud silhouette eaten by the darkness on the other side. It is held open—waiting for them. 

Not yet. Not fucking yet or they're all dead. 

Astarion doesn't risk telepathy, not in this realm of psychic warriors. Not with the guards standing there, eyes meteoric, hands on hilts. Not with the party milling around, fluttering birds in wake of that announcement, as untrained and unscared as lemmings. The dragon is coiling overhead. 

He just stares at Lae'zel until she feels it, turning to him a moment before she starts to stride into the crèche. Her gaze is hackled, tense—and when it meets his, something floods over. Recognition. 

Not yet, he thinks, not telepathically but merely through his eyes. And then he drags them away, back up the ridge, away from the gate. A pointed suggestion. They need to talk. 

She hesitates—he can see it, the desire to follow her leader, her people, tied up in those she has spent the past month traveling with. It wars in her eyes. 

Then she turns to the side and gestures once, firmly, for the party to follow. "Away," she says, theatrically harsh. "First, we must talk. Then we enter."

More of that rippling surprise. But when Lae'zel begins to march back up the path towards the original cliff they'd hidden behind, Karlach heads after, and the rest fall in line. 

The guards watch but don't move from their positions, hands still on swords. They let the doors close with a shuddering boom.

The trek back up the mountain is silent. It's only when they crest over enough distance between them and the motherfucking dragon that Lae'zel finally stops, steering towards a hollow space beneath a sloping cypress. Maybe as a facsimile of cover from the dragon. Maybe nothing. Maybe just another attempt at being safe when they aren't.

Seemingly freed from watching eyes, the party spreads back out, rolling their shoulders and staring at Lae'zel. 

"Hells, that guy's a character," Karlach says, sounding vaguely impressed. "Think he'd let me have a go at the dragon? Bet that thing'd be a fucking feast to fight."

"It would kill you."

"I could at least make it sweat. Can dragons sweat? Gale?" He shakes his head. "Damn. I'd make it panic, then."

"You could not."

Karlach sighs. "Next time."

Then she looks at Lae'zel, and Astarion watches the realization hit; because the banter is all there, but something is wrong in Lae'zel's posture. Standing too stiff, like she never picked herself up from bowing to Kith'rak. Shaken. "Lae, what's wrong?"

Lae'zel is looking at him, instead. Directed attention. "Why did you call us here?"

The others turn to match her. The first time he's addressed this lot since that night; he hasn't missed the scrutiny. 

"We're never going to make it," Astarion says flatly. 

Lae'zel bristles, but her tadpole only sings agreement. "They have allowed us in," she says. "They would not deny me entry."

"Yes, because it will be easier to slaughter us in closed quarters. Not because any of you are convincing them of your role." He grits his teeth. "I suspect we'll be dead the moment they close the gate."

Four flavours of surprise greet him—though Shadowheart seems to realize what happened, a bolt of something familiar and unfamiliar in turn. A latent memory of knives and blood slicking over her hands. She squashes it. 

It's Karlach that faces him, brows up. "What?"

Astarion scoffs. "You're acting like fucking visitors to a carnival instead of slaves," he says. "The only reason we're alive is because we seem to look just dangerous enough Kith'rak elected to get us into controlled territory instead of attacking outright–"

"Kith'rak is a title, not a name," Gale corrects. 

"–thank you Gale, that's so bloody helpful, I'll be sure to commend his accolades when he's gutting us throat to taint."

Some feathers properly ruffled by that, it seems. "Lae'zel led the conversation—we were just there," Gale protests. "Surely githyanki have looser rules about slavery if we're going to be healed!"

"Did you see Kith'rak? Were we watching the same conversation?" Astarion gestures broadly at Lae'zel. "He nearly killed her, and she's gith. Maybe you can load up on more spices so the dragon gets a finer meal out of us."

Karlach licks her lips, shifting her weight back and forth. Her eyes are pale things. "What d'ya mean, fangs?"

"I mean that you lot are going to get us killed." He looks back to Lae'zel. "Kith'rak went in to gather reinforcements. Tell me I'm wrong."

She grimaces. "He is Kith'rak Voss, the Jhe'stil Kith'rak; he does not need reinforcements."

"Then he's going inside to wait for us by himself, how about that?"

She doesn't answer. That's answer enough. 

"Okay," Karlach says, quieter. She's watching him with an odd hesitance. "Then what do we do?"

Incredulity makes a home in him. 

She's serious. They all are. They're actually asking this?

"You start playing your role, you bloody idiots. This isn't some impossible quandary—you don't look, you don't speak, you hope they never so much as think about you as anything more than set dressing. Head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. Are you all amateurs?"

He glares at her, suddenly furious. "Why don't you know?"

Karlach doesn't respond. None of them do. The silence stretches.

Lae'zel waits for a while longer than conciliatory, then says, carefully, "You are not githyanki. How do you know our ways?"

Because every master comes up with the same fucking rules, he wants to spit, but doesn't, because so far the party has been the exception insofar as not actively commanding them, and he would much rather keep it that way. There are some firm lines he wants to know; there are others he would like forgotten. 

"Because I'm not an idiot," he settles on, bristling. "I'm here to infiltrate our enemies, and right now, the crèche counts as one. You lot are preventing me from doing my godsdamn job."

He's rather the fucking expert here. He's had plenty of experience.

Karlach is looking at him. 

Astarion lets a hair of his shield crack, just enough to peer beyond with a touch more precision; there's concern bleeding off her, unsubtle as poppies in a field. Genuine and sincere. 

That punches through his rage. Then he's just tired; just wishing it would go any other way than what it will. 

He smiles, but it hurts to do so. Everything is tangled up in his throat. "Like I said. We have to act better. Otherwise we'll be caught." He turns back to the cliff, the red stripe of a dragon over the building. Stops talking.

Someone wants to say something—he can feel that wordless query brushing up against their shared mental space, too potent to be an offhand thought. He ignores it. Plenty of experience for that, too. 

Gale, with the severity of the situation now firmly planted in his mind, takes a moment to scrawl out a teleportation circle, done up in chalk on a ridge just out of sight. It is ten minutes of exceptionally awkward silence, Astarion still hackled like a wet cat. 

When Lae'zel eventually begins to head back down, Astarion follows, searching for something that isn't quite there anymore. 

The monastery seems much the same, all jagged edges and guards and a dragon very much still present, smoke billowing from its nostrils. But when Lae'zel marches up to front the charge, the party doesn't so much as peep. Acting like they're supposed to, walking pieces of furniture, something lesser. Even Shadowheart bows her head, eyes downcast. Her tadpole writhes with malcontent, but it doesn't show on her face. 

When they are observed, it's only for a second before roving eyes move on. Not a threat. Barely even a consideration. 

There. It seems Astarion hasn't lost his touch with training. 

He isn't the second-oldest spawn for nothing. Cazador broke Aurelia too early, too cleanly; nothing more than a canvas. But Astarion? Oh, he was made to fester, never pushed past the point where he would become uninteresting. And it was up to him to ensure all the siblings that came after had the same treatment. That they could not escape into madness, which was too similar to freedom for Cazador's tastes. 

He only failed for Violet. That punishment was memorable.

The doors yawn open, malodorous apprehension, and Astarion's eyes bleed black-white-black with the lighting change—there are still the bones of a monastery here, now scavenged by a wolf pack to house their new owners. Doors off hinges, sutras splashed with blood. A picture of Vlaakith, so high overhead. Watching.

Kith'rak Voss is there, perched directly behind the entrance. Still those jagged edges, that grandiose menace. He's too sharp for where he is, even in the centre of a cesspit of githyanki. He looks dangerous. Deliberately so.

He is waiting for them. 

Only Lae'zel meets his gaze, hers sharp and chafed. He tilts his head to the side.

"Child," he says, low and soft. "Had you cause to waste the time of your queen?" 

"I was preparing my revrykal," Lae'zel says. "They were not ready for the majesty of a crèche. This has been corrected."

Voss hums, examining them. Astarion counts bricks. No one meets the githyanki's eyes. Not as good as commanded stillness, but acceptable for the moment. At least this is for a limited time frame instead of being expected to hold for a tenday lest risk breaking one of Cazador's precious decorations.

But Wyll's tail flicks, for all his head stays down. Unconscious nerves, maybe, a lingering holdover from a new limb. Voss' eyes track it like a predator. Attracted to movement. 

It's a risk, it's much too much a risk, but–

Astarion sinks into the edge of Wyll's mind, tertiary connection. Wrap your tail around your leg, he snaps. You're moving too much.

Wyll jerks, startled—but his instincts are honed to listen. The limb coils around his calf, tucking in as though another piece of clothing. Flat, still. Contained.

There. Just like Aurelia. She'd learned that little trick after having it cut off a number of times. At least until Cazador stopped using excuses and just did. 

Astarion pulls back, cementing his shield once more. Keeps his gaze firmly on the stone, Lae'zel's words only a murmur in his ears. 

At least until there is the rasp of movement, Voss stepping forward. His hands move and then his presence unfolds, mental, parabellum—a sweeping storm, a kaleidoscope of focus, spearing directly into Lae'zel's skull–

And then promptly batted away. 

Lae'zel bares her teeth, calamitous. "You dare?" 

Rather than take offense, Voss grins for the first time, eyes fever-bright. "Your training is acceptable," he remarks, letting his hands fall back to his side. "Report to the inquisitor. Go now." 

Lae'zel dips her head—not a full bow, never taking her eyes off him—and with that, with all of that, Voss just walks away. In another story, he'd be whistling a jaunty tune as he goes. He doesn't attack. The dragon stays blissfully outside. 

Now they're inside the crèche, alive. Exactly what they wanted. Wonderful. 

The second Voss leaves, Lae'zel shifts closer to Karlach, enough the ends of her braids begin to fray from heat. "I cannot go to the inquisitor alone," she hisses, tadpole reverberating with a hairline panic. "And we cannot be healed until I do."

"Need somewhere to talk," Karlach whispers. "Can you ask for a break before?"

Lae'zel hesitates. 

But when next a githyanki walks down the hall beside them, a shorter one with armour that looks decidedly less regal than Lae'zel's, she corners him with her head held high. 

"Kin," she says, imperious. "Lead me to a private room. I must rest."

The githyanki makes a face as though she just declared herself a pacifist. But whatever rank she holds over him stands, and he begins to head deeper into the monastery, past sutras painted over with githyanki art and splatters of dried blood. Gale's tadpole is actively biting him with how much he's holding back questions. 

Lae'zel flicks her hand when they approach a door, and their guide appropriately skitters back and heads back the way they came. She taps something under the knob, a runic circle. It flares and clicks open. 

"In," she mutters. "Quickly. This is not for istiks."

Astarion doesn't need to be told twice. He bustles in with the others, Karlach taking up the rear to avoid burning anyone, Lae'zel closing the door right on her heels. She waits for a long moment, ears pricked and holding the door closed. Then she sighs, turning away. "This is a resting dorm; do not break anything." A pause. "Do not touch anything, either. "

Gale promptly begins poking around every corner, eyes bright. 

Astarion gives it a glance himself—one bed, ascetic and looking thoroughly uncomfortable, barely enough floorspace for anything else. There are no less than four armour stands and the walls are littered in weapon mounts, a singular wall light guttering through a cantrip. Given the owners, he… genuinely can't tell if this is supposed to be a luxurious accommodation or something given to the most unsightly peons at the bottom.

Could be both. Maybe they crush everyone with equally horrid conditions. 

Either way, Astarion stretches, shaking out his arms and cracking his neck. Shadowheart has already retreated to the far corner for a hissed conversation with Gale, one hand held possessively over the lump in her bag where the artefact waits. Lae'zel doesn't move away from the door until Wyll stands alongside, mind underlit in the simmering blue of solace. Karlach joins them. 

"Alright," she says, gentle. "Tell me 'bout this inquisitor, yeah? We'll come up with a plan."

Astarion, almost immediately, tunes them out. He pads over to the bed, since no one else is claiming it, and sits down—hard as a fucking rock, gods—to begin sorting through his gear for something to do. Always better to ensure all his elemental arrows haven't lost any of their fletching. It's a monotonous task made familiar by this journey, something for clever hands that doesn't have the weight of an explosive trap or corrosive gas. Just practiced movements. He doesn't have to think, here. Doesn't have to think about how close they are to purification and what he will do to avoid it.

He's halfway through checking on one that hums with restrained lightning when he hears footsteps. It takes Astarion a moment too long to notice they're aimed at him—he has settled into the arm's length the party holds him at now, a familiar repulsion like magnets held together. But now he looks up to see Karlach approach, abandoning Wyll and Lae'zel to talk strategy.

Direct conversation initiated thrice in such quick succession. What a joy.

"Heya, fangs," Karlach says, low, gentle. "You good?"

What? He squints at her. "Beyond the fact we're in a wasp's den of murderous obsessives? Peachy keen, love. Ready to recommend it as a vacation spot."

She huffs a bit. If the disastrous party still hangs in her mind, it doesn't show, shoulders relaxed. "I've got a few folks I'd love to send here. But I wanted to check in; see if you were doing alright."

That's more of a surprise. Astarion scans himself on instinct; no visible injuries, nothing poking through his armour. His neck could crack from how low he keeps it if not for the many years of experience it has with the motion. Certainly not enough to call her over.

"I'm fine?" It comes out like a question. 

Karlach nods, though her face purses with reticence. Hesitating like he's some hapless infant that needs bad news disguised in metaphors. Astarion scowls. "Out with it, darling."

Across the room, Shadowheart and Gale regard him. Spoke a little too loud, which is also not loud at all, considering they're crammed ass-to-ass with how close the walls are. If Karlach sneezes, she'll burn through someone's armour. This is the opposite of being isolated. Fucking hells. He grits his teeth. 

Karlach winces. "Right, just." She pauses for a moment, choosing her words with deliberation. Which is very much the opposite of what she should be doing, considering a tenday ago he bit off her head and hacked at any weakness he'd seen. She should be ignoring him. Should be leaving him alone.

"Did you know," she settles on eventually, "that Zariel doesn't like backtalk?"

Astarion blinks.

"Down in Avernus—she's supreme there, rules out the ass, and I'm a mite loud when I get going. Learned to hold my tongue pretty quick, otherwise she'd take that, too. And I'm strong as fuck, but still mortal. Lotta bigger devils there that'd beat me bloody if I looked at 'em. Better to keep my head down."

Astarion stares at her with an odd befuddlement. He can't quite wrap his head around what she's telling him—a version of Karlach, bent, quiet, mute. The picture refuses to coalesce in his head. Can't make that final connection. Not after what he's seen. "Pardon?"

She doesn't offer any further specifics, just shrugs. "I've played my role, as you called it. Been who I was told to be." 

What?

Astarion bothers this whole conversation between his teeth. Is she… searching for someone to bitch to? A willing wall to complain against?

Damningly, his first insult is to rear back like a cobra to spit. To find some acid in the mix to haul out for corrosion. But that's what got him into this bloody fucking mess. She isn't his sibling. He can't treat her like it. He has to be smart.

"My sympathies," Astarion says carefully. "That sounds terrible."

Her tadpole flashes once, something wry, and then is gone. She huffs though, tongue between her teeth. "Yeah. It did. And does—because here I am, doing it all again." She takes a few steps closer, tail flicking; when Astarion doesn't rear back and claw like a cornered animal, she sits on the corner of the bed. It hisses a little, dry heat. "It fucking sucks. I hate this."

Well. At least in that they can agree.

He does hate it. Gods, he fucking hates it, because hate is simple. It has always been easier to be angry than to be honest, yet easier still to be honest about being angry. He's seething, in the fractal pieces of himself that are still here beyond the watery-thin cloak shaped like the façade of a person. 

To be in the crèche like this is to discard the protection of cloaks, of power, of pretending he is anything but what he does not want to be. Head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. Even in this resting dorm, he can feel the wider walls pressing in. 

Astarion watches her. "Yes," he says. "It's far from my favourite, I'll admit. The dècor could use some work."

She chuckles. "Don't let Lae'zel hear that."

A pause, where she seemingly watches the others, sat beside him. A mirror to a party, not so long ago. No wine in hand, no divine burns under his clothing. 

Karlach doesn't look over, but he can feel her attention shift. "Do you want to tell me anything, fangs?"

Does she want another apology? She isn't going to get one. He can only bow his head so many fucking times today. 

There is a heat in his eyes, in his fangs. Astarion lets it lick at his bones from the inside, smiling so thin it could cut. "Just that perhaps we can help lead the others to do better," he says. "With any luck, we can all play pretend well enough Kith'rak Voss fucks off to somewhere else."

A sympathy, in her tadpole. A pity. He wishes, for a moment, that Wyll had just staked him and been done with it.

"Sounds good," Karlach says. She looks at him, a little sad and trying not to be. Resigned. Knowing she can't get anything out of him. "We'll do our best, yeah?" 

They'll do better than their best, really. Because they're the kind of heroes who can't fail or else the story won't sell a hundred thousand copies to hopeless orphans. 

Their stories line up. Their stories go badly and then go well, after they're done the legwork to earn it. Astarion's story is a princely one, in contrast. He dies in an alley, only not quite, because death gets replaced with eternity and there can't be a happy ending when there is no ending at all. 

One day, he'll be free of himself.

-

"Hm," the githyanki says. She's squinting at them through the slit in a door frame, one eye hidden behind ringed panes of glass. Pale green, bound hair, what vaguely looks like robes. But despite all evidence to the contrary, she is apparently the famed doctor, the one Lae'zel has sought for so long.

Their plan is very simple: just go get purified. 

Voss seems the busy type and there are more githyanki milling about than actively hunting down disobedience, so the cards are in their favour to get in, get out, and then find a way to fuck off. Or give the artefact over, once their tadpoles are removed. Lae'zel certainly seems of that mind. 

There are many problems with this plan, but only in relation to Astarion. And, given he has no fucking argument for keeping his own tadpole until he can finally free himself, he is going along with it. Of course. Of bloody course. He's never been one for paralysis, not when the commands never allowed it—and in contrast, he has always been one to go along with what he is told to do. If the party is off to get purified, he's bloody well off to go along with them. 

"Kin," Lae'zel says, not deferential, but at least an injected note of calm. "I see purification. Let me in."

The doctor's eyes gleam brighter. Sensing blood.

"Yes, yes, come in," she decides, unlatching and opening the door in its entirety. Perhaps a little telling of githyanki society that their hospital has a lock. 

Lae'zel marches in first, head held high, the party following meekly at her heels. Astarion does his best to keep the spacing between them even, as though trained to move on beat. Old habit.

The room's a sprawling thing, filled with things more akin to torture devices than anything used for healing. Hooked blades, ritual circles, a singular roll of bandages so seldom used it's grey with dust—and, neatly in the center, what Astarion can only presume to be the titular zar'ith. Zaith'isk. Whatever it's called. 

Astarion keeps his head down, but he stares at the thing out of the corner of his eye. It looks… odd. Well, of course it looks fucking odd, considering githyanki engineering is a combination of metal struts and fleshy bits, with the lovely addition of what looks like crab pinchers up near the top, but there's something about the seat and shackles that doesn't feel right. Too long of limbs, too many around the head. It looks like it was built to hold mindflayers. 

The rest of the room certainly doesn't suggest githyanki are getting healed here, if anything is at all. A wavering scent of blood, dried and cleaned, and her desk is stacked high with what could be potions if not for everything else.

Oh.

There is a parasite in a jar on her desk. 

Astarion restrains himself with titular focus—just drags his submissive gaze over it, slow as everything else in the room. But every corner of his mind hones in. Sitting pretty, tucked amidst alchemical concoctions and various ingredients, simple glass with a solution inside. And within that, a wriggling little bastard akin to the one pulled from Gut's corpse.

It's like there's a voice inside his head, sibilant—take it. You can use it. 

Astarion's hands twitch at his side. 

The doctor frowns at the lot of them, one hand on her hip. "Istik," she says reproachfully. "Kin, why have you brought your revrykal to me?"

"We have been infected," Lae'zel says. "I seek purification. Are you the ghustil of the zaith'isk?"

If her question was heard, it is entirely ignored. The doctor goes still, pointed, like a weathervane angled into an approaching storm. One of the lenses before her eye flashes gold.

"Oh?" She steps forward, getting much too close to Lae'zel, by the fighter's startled hiss. "You are infected. You have been for many days, if I had to guess, considering when last we saw any ghaik in these parts—yet you are unchanged, unruined." She doesn't wait for a response, reaching out as though to prod at Lae'zel's eye.

Lae'zel catches her by the wrist. "Do not touch me."

The doctor scoffs, tearing her arm free. "If you want purification, mind your tongue, kin. I am still the ghustil."

But her ire is quickly tampered by interest, blade-sharp and quivering. "But you are infected, all six?"

Lae'zel's tadpole has a bite to it, not hesitance, but something uncomfortable. Still she nods. 

The doctor's eyes are so bright. "Fascinating. To keep your eyes and teeth without a loss after this time; and to say less of your cerebral functions. This is unprecedented. Have you any symptoms? No? Hm."

She marches forward, striding past Lae'zel, all focus. The party holds to their act and doesn't buckle, though everyone shifts when the doctor grabs Shadowheart's arm and lifts it, running a finger along the inside of her elbow, pinching over her bicep, inspecting the cut of her nails. Like property. Like meat. Shadowheart's tadpole bleeds fury into their shared mental space.

Astarion isn't breathing anymore. That's probably for the best. It's getting hard to think. 

Gale is next, the doctor sticking a hand into his bloody mouth, lifting lips to check his teeth. Wyll gets a curious once-over for his infernal and stone eye, as though she's debating which one the tadpole is under. Karlach's chest is homed in on, hands out.

A plume of smoke—the doctor hisses, pulling back, fingers black. Karlach keeps her eyes on the ground, but her lips quirk into something mean. 

Astarion doesn't look up. Doesn't move, really. When the doctor comes to him, for some fucking reason she takes offense to that and grabs him by the chin—slots her hand around her jaw and jerks up, grip unyielding. He's forced into eye contact, into awareness. She stares him down. 

I could kill you, he thinks as loudly as he dares, all vicious. I could kill you. It would be easy. I could tear out your fucking throat.

The doctor clicks her tongue, shaking her head. She lets his chin drop and walks away. 

"They are not changed either," she says, near giddy. "Six infections and none spread. This is perfect. Come, kin—the zaith'isk welcomes you. Purification will be yours."

As though invoked, the beast of a machine starts to shift, biologic parts clicking and extending. It looks incorrectly living, like a building weeping blood. Black and red and misery.

Even if he wasn't dependent on his tadpole for safety, Astarion doesn't particularly want to be purified, thanks. 

Lae'zel has no such reservations, facing it as though some messianic paragon. She moves forward.

Then the doctor pauses. Her lens flashes once, a shifting of the hue, pale. 

"Your revrykal," she says. "They are proper, no? Are they knowledgeable of your journey?"

Lae'zel is too composed to stiffen, but her tadpole goes white-hot. "They know nothing," she denies, stiff. "They are new to my control, useful only as warriors. There is nothing to be learned from questioning them."

The doctor frowns. Something wars between interest and obedience. 

"Then you must wait to be purified," she says. "You will speak to the inquisitor first."

The same thing Voss said. The same thing Lae'zel seemed to imply would be little more than blasphemy. 

She holds that opinion now, eyes narrowing to slits. "Will my answers not be better when they come from a purified tongue?" Lae'zel snaps. "I am here to be purified, ghustil. It is my right as a child of Gith; I will not be denied."

"And you will be purified," the doctor says. "Only after you report to the inquisitor. We cannot risk losing any information on the queen's artefact."

Astarion keeps his head down, but everything sharpens. There are a few too many implications in that sentence to be trustworthy. The others can feel it too, a plume of unease even through Lae'zel.

But it's Karlach that makes the move, tadpole and engine thrumming with the same intensity. Her eyes, ribboned through with black. 

"Heya, doc," she says, toothed. "Any reason why Lae here wouldn't be able to talk after getting purified?"

The doctor sneers. "Will you allow your revrykal to speak in your presence, kin?"

Lae'zel looks frankly gutted, torn between submission and companionship. It can sometimes be easy to forget when she goes crashing into enemies with a warcry loud enough to split eardrums or bitches about the lack of acceptable wrestling partners, but she is young. She's young and she's been devoted for all of that youth, only her time here something different than what she was. 

Before her, a doctor tells her to go to the inquisitor.

Behind her, Karlach asks whether it's safe.

In the end, perhaps it is the derision on the doctor's face or the protection on Karlach's, but Lae'zel sets her shoulders as though a bulwark. Narrowed, fierce. 

"What does the zaith'isk do, ghustil?"

"It is purification," the doctor snaps. "This you should know, kin. A tiring process, one ungentle, and the orders of your queen come above it."

"I am not weak. Purify me, and I will stand before the inquisitor unhindered."

An answering hiss. "You will go there first. Your queen will not tolerate hesitation. This is your mission."

Lae'zel wavers for a moment, as she always does when her queen is brought into the mix. As though if she bows her head and rolls over, shows her stomach, this will be the right choice. This will be the one she was made to do, destiny and fate intertwined. To serve is to be honourable.

This is about when Shadowheart, so casual, so collected, steps back to close the latch on the door.

The doctor's eyes snap to her.

Ah, so things are about to go tits-up. Noted.

The sensation is akin to electricity, how everyone's tadpoles flicker. Gestalt anticipation. Heads lift from their lowered positions, hands on weapons, arcane pressure. The knowledge of an approaching fight rises like the tides. 

For her part, the doctor seems remarkably unconcerned. 

Lae'zel just stands there, stiff. Torn. Astarion palms his daggers for comfort. 

"What I'm thinking is that your device isn't too nice," Karlach says, teeth ivory-white. There's a shadow behind her, growing larger. "Otherwise it'd be real easy for Lae to chat afterward, yeah?"

"You cannot comprehend the work I do," the doctor sneers. "Istik are not made for this, if they are made for anything at all. You will stand down."

"Don't think so," Karlach says, practically a chirp. But her voice softens after, gentle, soothing. "Lae. I'd hook you up in that thing myself if you asked—but something's not right, soldier. This is wrong."

"This is Vlaakith's will; will you deny her, kin?"

There is a note of panic in the doctor's voice.

Karlach ignores her, getting in close, hands out, palms up. "C'mon, Lae," she murmurs. "I'll stand by you for anything. It's your choice."

A moment, dense as a falling star. The doctor's face pulls back into something rictus, jagged edges, corralled with its back to the wall.

Then Lae'zel draws her longsword. 

"I declare you a traitor," she snarls, settling into a stance, power circulating her feet and hands. "Treasonous to Vlaakith, usurper of her reign—and you will be stopped."

Well. Right reaction, wrong reasoning. They'll work on that later, if they manage to survive. 

Astarion draws his daggers proper, too cramped for arrows, his first steeled breath after what feels like hours. The others kick up, Gale barking a summon to existence.

The doctor springs back and punches a hidden activation.

The zaith'isk roars, this tonal, subartificial sound—organic and mechanic parts writhe with jointed limbs, raising up, the claws narrowing to an arrow's point–

Chaos. 

And, more pressingly, distraction.

Astarion melts into the shadows. 

With Karlach cleaving up the wayside and Gale hurling bolt after bolt at the zaith'isk, shadows are endangered beasts, but Astarion finds one regardless; disappears to the far reaches, away from the center line. This is his typical approach to combat and won't be looked at with narrowed eyes; should he never show in the fight, it will be an annoyance instead of a suspicion. And considering Shadowheart latched the door, attention should be forward. 

Attention should not be pointed at him as Astarion slips to the back, hackles up, and grabs the jar on the desk. 

Its glass is smooth and cool, as though kissed by ice. Within, the parasite writhes, moving faster and faster in empty air. Its presence gnaws at him, singing in tune with its kindred. It wants this. It wants to be taken.

He shoves it into his pack. Buries it under clothes and supplies and bottles. Hides it until it cannot be found.

Then Astarion turns back to the fight and prepares for things to get messy.

-

"Right about now would be a bloody great time, Gale!"

Well, Astarion was right and wrong in equal parts. It did go tits-up, but then it graduated to cocks-up, and perhaps ass-up, or whatever is the higher rank in this metaphor. Because it turns out going to the inquisitor to declare a traitor in their midst while covered in githyanki blood and carrying the artefact they've been looking for is a bad idea. Who could've guessed.

"I am trying!" Gale hollers back, robes hiked and arms wheeling as he runs. "Give me a second, please!"

"Kinda running out of seconds, mate!" Karlach bellows, slamming her knee into the side wall—the momentum kicks back until she's cleaving through a githyanki's shield, shattered like wisps of light except the fucker teleports right into Astarion's godsdamn way and now they're all falling. 

Astarion yowls like a struck cat and kicks the bastard in the chest, bullying enough room to sink a blade into an exposed thigh. Karlach handily comes back and introduces the githyanki's teeth to the back of his cranium with a punch and then Astarion is hauling himself up, skittering on with every limb going an incorrect direction, mind galloping ahead of his feet. 

Shadowheart hucks a bolt of fire back and clears them a bit of room from the chasing horde, though every single fucker seems to save their limited teleportation for the most infuriating moment possible and this is not saving time. 

But Lae'zel is at the front, a whirling dervish with her tadpole electric, and Wyll helps her crash into the side gate like a nightmare incarnate until it blows off its hinges and sunlight streams through the gap. 

Astarion sheaths his blade in another gith's facial region and spins to press his back against Gale, who is panting and chanting and generally making himself a giant flashing target for everyone to concentrate their godsdamn attacks on. "Hurry it up, wizard," Astarion gasps, parrying another strike about the knees.

Gale doesn't respond, which is either because he's gritting his teeth around an insult or actively dying, but it doesn't much matter as Karlach bullrushes the entire party out the front gate with a scream like something is about to die. 

Then being outside is not actually the correct play because inside the monastery, they're cordoned off with hallways and passages and the tangential hope of making it out, whereas when they're out, they are confronted with the very large and very unavoidable fact that getting out does not make this any better. 

Because outside is the godsdamn dragon. 

Astarion is going to kill something if it's the last thing he fucking does. 

Karlach bellows pure rage and kowtows three giths into having fraught relations with their lower halves, shoulder-checking the door until the wood catches fire. "Everybody out!" She roars, larger than humanity. 

Sunlight scorches out his eyes as he staggers out, knocking another lunging gith with his elbow and feeling his side scream in protest. There is a roar overhead, earthshaking and monumental, beyond rationale, and a sudden cast of shadows from spread wings–

Then Gale's magic finally gets off its ass and coalesces into a portal, violet and violent in turn. Gale springs through, having a second wind now that there's an escape route, Shadowheart only a moment behind—Lae'zel blocks a strike with her longsword's guard, punches back, jumps—Wyll and Karlach both circle around to ensure everyone makes it.

Astarion leaps in, and for a moment the world is nothing more than streaks of purple-black and bitterness, and then he is spat out onto a chalk circle and promptly eats a mouthful of dirt. 

"I hate this motherfucking adventure," Astarion snarls into the ground.

"Not outta the woods yet, mate," Karlach manages as she lands beside him, near breathless. "Lae, Wyll—can one'a you grab Gale? Don't think he's up for running."

Aptly, the wizard is a soggy puddle that once resembled flesh, so Wyll crouches to get a hand under his arms and knees like a blushing bride. Lae'zel is staggering off her fall, Shadowheart pulsing quick heals into anyone actively in danger of bleeding out, but he can still hear the dragon roaring from here, so off the bloody well get.

Astarion picks himself up, every muscle shrieking disobedience, and then they all go sprinting into the forest like the hells are after them. 

-

It's anywhere from a year to a decade of running later, if Astarion is feeling charitable, by the time they finally stop. Gale has traded hands three times and no one has any stamina left, all but dead on arrival. 

And it is arrival, unfortunately. Because they're here. 

The entrance to the shadowlands. 

Not a terribly subtle place, all things considered. Still tucked in the outstretched arms of the mountains, but what scraps of forest are left are miserable things. The foliage is dark and greying, caught between death and undeath, wilted for all the sun is still overhead. Something malignant waits here, a predator poised too far for the pounce. Red eyes in the dark.

A place of such monumental hatred nothing is alive. That it has been cursed for so long it has forgotten what it means to be otherwise. It is, in a turn of phrase, a dead land that refuses to entirely die. An undead land, if you will. 

He doesn't know the finer details. He also doesn't want to learn the finer details. 

He doesn't get what he fucking wants. 

Astarion sags as the others grind to a stop, undead lungs attempting to punch out of his chest because he made the stupid mistake of trying to breathe through the run. Lae'zel sets Gale down in ungentle terms, the lucky bastard, and then goes and plants her back against a tree as though it's the only thing keeping her upright. Shadowheart plops right to the ground. 

"I hate this," Gale moans, embedding himself into the ground. Astarion can hear his heartbeat from here, but likely so can the rest of the party, considering how hard it's pounding. 

Karlach huffs, exhaling air so hot it steams. "Gotta agree with you there, mate," she says, more a croak than something audible. "Hells fuck me, haven't had to run like that in a while. And never from a dragon."

"We have not outrun it," Lae'zel says, bitter. She closes her eyes, knuckling into her sternum as though she can throw up all the doubt and fear and broken loyalties. "It chases us still. The Jhe'stil Kith'rak is not a hunter that stops."

Fucking lovely.

"Sounds about right," Karlach sighs, wane. She stretches, every vertebrae snapping, then pads forward to kick at the connection point between brown and grey soil—it's a little too well-defined to be natural, from the shitty angle Astarion has where he is crouched over and trying not to hurl. "Fuck. Guess we're going in, then."

Wyll, from where he's flitting around to the others with waterskins and other necessities like a doting mother, glances over with a pinch to his brow. "Should we wait for Halsin?"

Right, their little rendevous with the druid—apparently it didn't take getting chased by an entire fucking crèche of murderous githyanki into account. Shocking. 

"Not sure we have the time," Karlach says grimly. "Lae, how long 'til they muster up to find us?"

Lae'zel reopens her eyes, still pressed against the trunk. Her gaze shifts to aim behind them, as though the monastery is visible just past the leaves. 

"With Kith'rak Voss on dragon-back," she says eventually, too quiet, "it will be no time at all."

Karlach exhales like a punch to the gut. "Will they follow us inside?"

"I do not know."

"But it's a better chance than waiting here," Karlach finishes, earning a nod. "Right. Then we've just gotta go." She steels herself, turning to the others. "Half a minute's break, then kip on in, yeah? We've gathered enough supplies; shouldn't be a problem. Off to Moonrise. You heard what the artefact fucker said."

"I agree," Wyll says, tired. "A risk either way, but I fancy a goal to face rather than a dragon."

Shadowheart nods without saying anything. Gale is in no condition to either agree or disagree. Lae'zel stays silent.

No one is mentioning the crèche. No one is mentioning the lack of healing. No one is mentioning how their goal has changed from getting rid of tadpoles to being consigned for fighting a fucking god.

The Absolute is both a falsehood and something very real. She isn't a god, or isn't a god enough, but things have a funny way of becoming gods if they try. Considering how fervent her worshippers are, Astarion's a touch worried she's closer than they want her to be. 

And if they want to stop her from cresting into full divinity, they have to find Moonrise Towers, her base of operations. They have to brave the shadowlands and come out the other side with enough sanity intact to be the saviors for an undeserving world. 

Astarion bites his lip until it shreds.

Wyll, because he has the endurance of a godsdamn tarrasque, bandies about to check camp supplies, splitting food supplies and torch stacks. Enough for the journey, so long as the party stops going off on their habitual side tangents to slay wayward imps and redcaps. Enough to make it to Moonrise. 

Enough for them, at least. 

There are seven bottles in Astarion's pack of gathered blood. Seven is all he could fill, intermixed between attempting to train his tadpole and thinking he had more godsdamn time before they plunged into the darkness. 

Seven bottles. An untold amount of days in the shadowlands, striving for an impossible goal. 

Well. There are eight bottles, now. Only one of them holds a parasite stolen from a bitch of a doctor. The thing he must hide. The thing he rather needs isolation to study, if not outright separation. The thing he had been hoping to experiment on while the party went off to gather supplies and he got to curl up in camp and prise it apart. 

But then comes a dragon, and all his plans fall apart, if they can even be called plans in the first place.

Astarion continues breathing through tapped lungs. 

By the time Gale can wheeze a response to how many fingers Karlach is holding up and Lae'zel seems less inclined to stab herself, Wyll has already secured their bags and is glancing nervously at the canopy overhead. No wingbeats, but considering they're on a path, it won't take long for the githyanki to find the teleportation circle and follow their wake. So. Up they get. 

Astarion shoulders his pack, ignoring the trembling weakness in his limbs. Eight bottles. An unknown amount of time before his tadpole can be removed or negated. Enough to find the answer. He can do this. He can still do this. 

Wyll helps Shadowheart up, Gale peeling off the ground with a ragged sigh. Packs are put on, weapons secured. The last of the waterskins drained and refilled. Clothing adjusted or changed. 

Then there's no further preparation they can loiter with.

"Right," Karlach says, grim. "Stick together. Let's go."

She marches through the barricade, into a world turned grey. Wyll follows immediately, Lae'zel on his heels—Shadowheart stands at Gale's side, both helping each other as best they can. Their silhouettes turn hazy. 

Astarion lingers. 

Standing on the edge is like looking over a cliff. Rocks at the bottom, grasping tides, all manners of sirens and krakens and sea hags; to fall is to die. But the goal he grasps for says he must reach an island across the strait, and there is no other way to get there than to jump. 

He does not want to jump.

Astarion stares out at the darkness, then back—if he squints, he can see a faint orange glow ringing the treeline, the sun left in a kinder world. He could turn around now, if he ran. Live out his last days in the light before the tadpole consumes him. 

He follows the party into the shadowlands.

Chapter Text

It's possible Halsin understated the risk. 

Astarion wrenches his blade out of the bastard's throat, half-dissolving and all-vile, a poison primordial and senseless. Shadow-slick gore clings to him, pooling in the crevasses of armour and staining the memory of it. All this misery splashed across the landscape. 

Because the shadowlands are more than just teeth on the edge of their campfire, wailing without a recognizable source, all things Astarion rather prepared himself for. Its next preferred form is that of literal fucking humanoids with far more claws than rationale.

They get stabbed like mortals—get clawed like them, when they get too close—but they don't bleed, and they don't die, and it's only a matter of time before they stand back up and keep fighting. They keep fucking fighting. Everything here does. 

The shadowlands chokes and clusters and drags itself in shrieking arms over the party, clawing at their torch to snuff it out with ferver—and then gets real close a few too many times, targeted wind in a windless land. Because it wants to kill them. Wants to kill them rather severely, with a determination most would find admirable. It is a cloying thing of teeth and monstrosity and something beyond understanding. It reeks of sour madness. It broils.

The darkness is alive, here. Astarion is still dead. 

"Fucking hells," Karlach spits, kicking half a corpse off her greataxe. She's only wearing her chest strap so her engine can bleed orange over the path, another defense against the miasmal dark, but that also means she has to play it more safe against fights. Which is rather the opposite of what she likes to do. Not that anyone is particularly liking what's going on here.

"Injuries?" Shadowheart calls, pointed; she's got a palmful of divine fire clasped to her chest, readied with her tadpole bleeding remains of a frenzy. A streak of black ribbons her wrist.

Gale sighs. "Just more lost energy," he says morosely, closing his hand as though he can retract cast spells. "How many more of these attacks will there be per day? Our progress is still positive, but not nearly as much as I would wish."

"There's a lotta things I wish were different," Karlach says with a shrug. "But hey—d'ya prefer this or the dragon?"

Wyll snorts. "I would say neither are appealing." 

"Two shitty poisons to pick from," Karlach agrees. "Need any help, mate?"

Wyll shakes his head. He's at the front of the group, reclaiming the torches; their typical strategy once they sense tangible spectres instead of apparitions is to chuck down their torches to anchor a section of the path in light, then whip through the enemies before they can burn out. It's– well, it's worked thus far. Astarion isn't going to treat it with any more generosity than that.

He's bristling, in the back, away from all the others. Clinging to the shadows in combat doesn't work when the shadows are what he's fighting, when he can't see past his own arms to fire arrows; and so he falls further and further and further behind. Continues proving his own weakness. 

At the goblin camp, spinning a tale of eviscerating Gut like a ghost in the night. At the crèche, bowing everyone's head until they passed through. 

Here, only two dead by his feet. Far less than the others. Even Shadowheart, who flinches at each kill as though it is a direct attack against Shar, still blasts them to the abyss and back. 

Here, he is grasping on the façade of useful strength with failing fingers. 

Karlach waits until Wyll has both torches up and refilled with oil, one to Gale and one to himself, then stretches, adjusting her chest strap where it hisses over a metallic port. "Alright, everyone quash 'em—let's get on."

Ah. Time for the fun part. The dead won't bury themselves. 

Astarion crouches, reversing the grip on his left dagger, the one without the notch. Everyone else does roughly the same.

The corpse by his feet is humanoid through a child's eyes, limbs stretched to obscene proportions and face a cavernous hole of fangs. Missing most of its throat, though it can't be called flesh, just shadows switched together. Reanimated in some selfish manner. 

It smells like it's rotting, and gods, that's even worse, because if it actually was he could use that—could dig through skin and puckered flesh for what lay beneath. He knows how to pluck maggots from the bodies of rats, how to crush bloated bodies between the flats of his molars. Not blood, hemolymph, thick and coagulated. But something. Something instead of nothing. 

They're not rotting like he knows. They're just cursed, empty veins and empty hatred. There are no meals, no maggots. There is nothing.

Astarion doesn't think about that. He is not thinking about that rather aggressively. He has blood in bottles and a goal that, once completed, will lead the party out of the shadowlands. Get to Moonrise, find the power to save himself, and kill the Absolute if they get a spare minute. Then tramp back on up to the outer world so he can breathe again. 

Kill a god and win. Kill a god and survive. 

Prospects are bleak, to put it lightly. 

Astarion's hands are shaking. Still he reaches out to grasp the shadow and turn it over, flesh slick under his palms; it weighs nothing and everything, more memorial than reality. He sticks his dagger into its chest and rips downward. 

More gore spilling out, too foul for blood and without anything of sustenance; and within pitch-smoke ribs is a malformed, thumping oculus. Darker than its surroundings. A coalition. 

What powers these things. They get a heart, false as it is. Astarion has nothing inside his chest but dead tissue. 

Two cuts to each side—the arteries, kind of, because of fucking course Shar made these things damn near impossible to understand—and Astarion wrenches it out of its chest, shuddering in his grasp. They figured this little trick out on the second day, that if they didn't remove this then the shadow would coalesce back up within minutes of being downed. Rough fucking night, that first one. No one got any sleep.

Astarion regards it, for a moment. 

The size of his fist, oblong and quivering. A memory attached to it, brushing the edges of his shield, silver-white and mournful. What had been a woman once, a meadowview dress, hickory tea, painted lips. Smiling. She had been celebrating something.

Astarion forgoes sophistication and just crushes it in his fist, oozing through his fingers. The memory fades. Off to a happier fucking afterlife, somewhere far away.

The second goes about the same. He doesn't linger on it long enough to feel the memory.

The others have already cleared up their corpses, Gale with a collection of cantrips and Wyll with his head bowed as though giving funeral rites. Astarion stands slowly, keeping the movement controlled. Moving too fast makes his head lurch, the death spiral of something slow-approaching. Which is fine. It isn't like fighting literal fucking shadows requires being light on his feet to avoid evisceration. 

Eyes on his back. Twin pinpricks of heat. He focuses on cleaning his dagger and does not turn to face whoever it is.

"Everyone good?" Karlach asks, though they're all crammed close enough she could just look for herself. "Right. Wanna swap leads or keep the same?"

"The same," Wyll offers, lifting the torch in his hand a little higher. "If I have the map right, it should only be a few hours until we reach the westfold crossroads."

She grins at him. Deliberate levity. Their harmonious leader, always so determined to keep her head high. "First good news in days—lead on, soldier."

Astarion sheathes his dagger once more and picks his poison; Gale, this time, to stay close to the torchlight. The two bobbing fires in a world of hungry dark. 

These he must follow. These he must walk after, steady movement, foot-up foot-down.

That uses blood. Fighting also uses blood. There is very little here that does not use blood, and he has had two months of a damning familiarity with feeling full. Of sinking his fangs into beasts larger than rats and knowing he could do so again tomorrow. 

Starvation will come slowly. He has weathered its bite before and will do so again. This is not the end.

Astarion keeps fighting. 

-

Seven bottles become six become five.

-

The singular upside of a decrepit old man puffing up to the party as though they're around for a pleasure stroll instead of hellsdamned adventure is that in response of telling Gale to go off himself for a goddess who couldn't be arsed to show up herself, the entire party circles around to console him, and thus Astarion can slip back to his tent and try for anything at all.

His first chance in half a tenday. The unknown time from here to Moonrise shrivels up.

Astarion sits there, crosslegged, dug into his bedroll as though to ingrain himself in earth. His tent canvas is ragged, worn by long travel and not being of any exceptional quality from the beginning; but now that is a blessing instead of damnation, with the fabric thin enough he can close the flap entirely without fearing it will block the firelight. As it is, he can see the hazy shadows of the party outside, silhouettes backlit by the campfire. Their shared mental space simmers, golden-blue, both the cliff and the one they're trying to walk away from its edge. 

That is their problem. Once Gale wakes up to see the metaphorical sunlight, he'll realize that all the reasons to kill himself are years-old reasons, back when he found that bloody orb and decided it served better as a bouquet of roses. As though death is a bartering chip rather than a promise. 

Astarion has wanted to die before and likely will again. But it had nothing to do with forgiveness. 

Again. Their problem. For now, he is alone in his tent and alone in the world, and he holds the jar in his hands. 

It's still cold, more than the ambience. Smaller than a healing potion, sitting snug in his palms, the top triple-latched with githyanki design. He has no idea how to get it open, even if he even wanted to. Which he doesn't. 

Instead, he cups it before his eyes, mind white-hot beneath his shield. A prayer not to the uncaring gods but to the parasite within its prison.

Work, damn you, he thinks, as though he can conjure a paean through desperation. You will work.

Then, slowly, he unravels his tadpole like an eldritch beast, drawing it out into a cord; it spools in his grasp, gnawing and shivering to awareness, tugged from hibernation. Dry heat behind his eyes, under his tongue; its power must come from somewhere, and the only kindling is him. If he cannot rip apart other minds to gorge the tadpole on, it will be him it feeds from. 

But that is fine. So long as it works. So long as he can use it.

Gods, so long as he gets free, Astarion would sacrifice anything.

The tadpole wriggles once, stretching to the end of its tether; it reaches for its brethren, and its brethren reaches back. Interweaving. Coming together. 

Then it falls apart like old glass.

Something wrong. Likely his fault. The tadpole quakes, curling back up to sink its teeth into a different chunk of his brain, outer connection severed. Astarion blinks around a swell of blood, watery. It trails down his cheek, slipping over the curve of his lips. 

No time to practice and no blood to fuel it. Just the slow march towards saving the world and breaking himself.

The jar is still cold when he sets it down, cradled in the old clothing used to hide it. The tadpole continues swimming, celestial and cursed in turn. It has no escape, but it has no damnation, either. It will continue swimming until it is stopped. It doesn't fear a return to an entirely more inhospitable jar. 

Astarion lingers on the latch, claws pressing in. Feels a final stir within his skull.

Work, he begs one more time. Work. Please.

It doesn't.

Nothing does.

-

"You up for first or second watch?"

Astarion rubs a hand over the hollow of his wrist without quite meeting her eyes. "Second," he says, busying himself with adjusting his clothes, petting through the curls he hasn't been able to maintain in a tenday. What rivers they pass here are vile things, algal and necrotic; without Gale's ability to create water, the party would be dead ten times over. As it is, that water is better spent keeping them alive than personal grooming. He feels filthy. 

"Gotcha," Karlach says, nodding. She takes the customary perch by the fire, wood stacked on every side to feed into it once the shadows start nipping at loose tongues to snuff it out faster. It's truly remarkable what the mind can adjust to. Living shadows are just another element of this land. 

It isn't the only thing. 

Astarion lays back, flat against the bedroll—his tent canvas is still thin enough for him to see the silhouettes of others, for them to see him. That minor exposure should leave him crawling with nerves. It doesn't. He's out of room for nerves, at this point. A tenday in and he can feel himself withering. Some things speed up the process. 

Trance is not quite memory. Reverie is not quite reality. 

When Astarion closes his eyes, Wyll does not pull the sword from his gut; leaves him pinned to the ground like a moth upon the corkboard. He writhes there as the others move, talk, exit—as Cazador descends, wings spread to block the distant moon. Or the scene melts into one where the party shakes Gandrel's hand as Astarion is packaged off to his master; or where the powdered ironvine takes his mind from him entirely; or where his fangs fall out as tentacles erupt through his mouth–

Or others. He's grown quite the catalogue. The shadows are very kind in that regard.

He doesn't trance that night. He lets it wash him by, simmering on the edges of camp like stars in this starless land. By the time Karlach pads over to get him up, he goes without complaint.

-

Five bottles become four become three.

-

"Pet, you look miserable."

It turns out not only the shadows try to smother their fire. Mizora is enough of a bitch to do it too. 

Astarion slithers back a step, hackles drawn and up; she'd popped out of their meager blaze like a fucking gopher, ink-black and viscous. Wings spread wide, tail lashing. Mizora tilts her head to the side, smiling, all teeth. Flat teeth, humanoid; she gave Wyll fangs, and doesn't wear them herself. There's a metaphor in that, perhaps. 

Wyll stands before her. He's so still. 

"Mizora," Karlach snarls, eyes pitch-black. Her greataxe is across camp, too far to grab, and Astarion can see how much she's leaning towards it. But in its absence, her fists clench tight enough to sear. "You bloody cunt. Want to do us all a favour and fuck off?"

"This vacation hasn't taught you to mind your tongue," Mizora notes. "Zariel will delight in retraining you, Karlach."

She growls like a tarrasque. 

"And you, Wyll—you've minded your tongue too well, haven't you?" She hums, hand on her chin. "I've been very nice to allow you this break, but you still have a job to do; haven't you told your little possé about that? You should have known it was coming."

Wyll grits his teeth. "Just tell me, Mizora."

"And now you're getting your teeth back!" She smiles, all condescending. "You're going to need them for this, pet. This mission isn't like your last—try the same thing you did with Karlach, and you'll see just how well a lemure can burn." 

She glances at the party, all their various stages of rage and panic. Clicks her tongue. "And you won't be doing this one alone. All your strength, all their strength; it's even a fetch quest, to appeal to their delicate sensibilities. Just get it done. You know what happens if you don't."

Astarion twitches once, a full-body shudder; the last time this conniving bitch was here, he left, and that same urge crawls over him now. Grab a torch and trek out for some abandoned corner without a master, without anyone that holds a leash so openly.

He risks a look at Wyll. He's still unmoving, even as Mizora turns back to him. His tadpole is flat, vacant; tail limp over his ankles. Just standing there to take it. 

"What is it?" Wyll asks dully. 

"Freeing an asset trapped in Moonrise. You're already on your way there, aren't you? So gather all your little friends and do this first. They'll be going along with it."

Roping the party in like it isn't a choice. And it isn't, if what Astarion is reading on their faces is correct. A lifetime ago, Shadowheart asked if Wyll had ulterior motives for attacking the goblin camp; now she just stands frozen between Gale and Lae'zel, watching Mizora with shot-through eyes. 

Karlach is burning. She looks ready to detonate. 

Mizora looks at her and sighs, wings flaring. An undercurrent of something else. "Don't be stupid, Karlach. You're going to help him. You're too much of a brute to try anything else, and this is his only choice. So it isn't a question of whether you will. It's whether you'll visit poor, sad Wyll when he does it alone, and fails, and gets tossed down to the front lines of the war you keep thinking you've escaped."

Wyll flinches. Karlach flinches more. 

"You know what a lemure is, Karlach," Mizora says. She's smiling. Flat teeth. "Didn't Zariel train you on them? Very reliable experiment targets, lemures; easy to measure their burning time to know how hot your fires get. I believe a few of my more spirited warlocks were evaporated when you were in your teething days. I certainly hope none of them were important to anyone." She looks at Wyll. "Do you think anyone will miss you, pet?"

He meets her gaze blankly, nothing off his face or tadpole. Everyone else's minds are pale in shock, Karlach's anger like the gleam of a forgotten coin in the filth. Wyll is wiped clean. Empty. 

Mizora is still smiling. 

"So what will it be, pet? You'll have to carry this one out with more than your typical aplomb; chop-chop, really. No time to waste."

Wyll exhales something. Rejection, agreement; whatever it is, there isn't enough air to make it audible. 

She hums. "What was that? Speak up, you should know not to mutter—I can't abide such manners."

The muscles in Wyll's neck stand stark, as though scruffed by a larger creature. He has bitten his tongue bloody. Astarion can smell it.

"We're going to kill the Absolute," Wyll says dully. "Our current plan is to reach Moonrise as quickly as possible and stop her before she can conquer the world. Is this a mission I can complete after that?"

"Ah-ah," Mizora chides. "Good little pups get terms and conditions, and you haven't quite earned those back, have you? No, this is one you'll be doing first. Top priority, as it is."

A low tension rises in Wyll's mind, trying to surface through deep mud. It is pulled back under macabre calm. 

Astarion is really feeling the fucking urge to leave now, damn the shadowcurse. If Wyll can't say no, there's that, full stop, no reason for this abject cruelty. It's just performance. Whipping soles then forced to dance. If Wyll stands any more still, he will cease to exist. 

Maybe Astarion can slip away now. Maybe he can go into the shadowlands to shred wood with teeth and claws and pretend it is something else he is destroying. Maybe he can just leave.

Then, through shared mental face, skidding over the edge of his shield: Karlach straightens. A gleam in her eyes, a tilt to her head. Scenting blood. 

When she steps forward, the ground trembles. Titanic presence. 

Karlach comes to the edge of the campfire, a physical barricade before Wyll, every hackle drawn. The shadow crawls behind her, wrapping ungentle arms around hers, the thrum of her engine like the crash of tectonic plates. "What's so important down in Avernus, Mizora?"

The cambion laughs, a little too perfect. "Is that homesickness I hear? I'd be happy to take you back so you can explore it for yourself."

"Not what I said, you pathetic cunt," Karlach snaps. "I'm asking what's so important, because you aren't here."

What?

Astarion blinks, rabbit-drawn fear cut through just for a moment; because rather clearly Mizora is here. Standing so tall above the rest, teeth flat, eyes vicious. What is Karlach saying?

This is around when he breathes for the first time in minutes and smells nothing. No brimstone, no heartbeat, no acidic blood. Mizora looms overhead, cut edges and tyrannical wings, and she isn't here. 

It's an illusion. 

The revelation ripples through the others, slow and insidious. Gale's hands twitch as though to cast a diagnosis, eyes hooded, Shadowheart sparking with something divine. 

She isn't here. She's an illusion. Why? What does this mean?

Mizora resettles her wings. "Wyll is my favourite pet but far from the most foundational element of the universe. I'm busy, Karlach. Far too busy to appear in person for something like this."

Karlach tilts her head to the side. All her teeth are on display. 

Wyll's tadpole lights up in whorls of purple-black—he clings on the edge of Karlach's mind, like digging his heels in to stop a charging bull. Karlach, please, let it go. She won't leave until I swear to complete this, and I can't refuse. 

"It's not fine," Karlach says. She doesn't take her eyes off Mizora. "'Cause you've told me two things and both can't be true. Is this mission so unimportant you're just a mirage, or important enough he dies in failing it?"

"He dies anyway," Mizora says sweetly, tension underneath. "I was being very nice when I only transformed him before. He fails again, and our contract says he goes to the hells. Simple as that."

Astarion watches her wings flare. She's matching Karlach's gaze, not stepping out of the campfire this time. Stuck there. An illusion. 

There is a hint of desperation in her eyes.

"Zariel fucking loved me," Karlach says. She's bristling, getting bolder for it. "I bet she was right pissed when I didn't get sent back down. What's more important than that?"

"You are also not the center of the world," Mizora says, sharp. She flicks her hair. "Avernus is a busy, busy place for more than the likes of you."

"You haven't answered my godsdamned question."

"And I'm not going to. Either he frees the asset, or he dies. That's all you need to know."

Karlach snarls—her tadpole is white-hot, too much fury to think around. She looks like she's debating how much damage she can inflict in the scant few seconds before Mizora is sucked back to the hells. 

In contrast, Wyll is just there. He isn't reacting. He's nothing but a statue amidst the fields, staring at Mizora, one eye of stone and one of infernal red. Motionless. Like he can stay still enough that she won't hurt him. 

Head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. 

In the four seconds before Astarion can bridge the gap between that thought and the follow-up of this is an actual fucking cambion from the hells, he's already stepping forward. 

"Mizora, was it?"

What the fuck is he doing.

Surprise undulates against his shield, five pairs of eyes. Six, as Mizora turns to him, the slow, methodical movement of a predator, because he just initiated contact with a godsdamned devil. 

But now he's in it. He's hurled open this door and jumped into the void beyond—there is no alternative but to learn how to swim very fucking fast. 

Mizora hums a little, brows raised. A patented amusement; he is not something she is avid in focus on, like Karlach or Wyll. An annoyance. "The spawn, was it?"

Touché. He smiles, empty and pleasing. "Yes, that's me—very interested in this mission, it sounds lovely. Would you terribly mind going more in detail?"

Wyll moves now into his mind, shattering past the outer walls, chafing panic. What are you doing?

Astarion doesn't respond, still smiling so prettily at Mizora. He doesn't fucking know what he's doing. But there is a thread to pull, woven through his eyeteeth, and the damning part of him from a hundred and twenty years ago that made him speak makes him do more. 

A hundred and twenty years ago is a particular time. A hundred and twenty years ago is when they were not seven but three; Dalyria, Astarion, Violet. A hundred and twenty years ago is when Cazador broke Violet. Shredded her apart until there was nothing left; went too far, too fast. Astarion could have stepped in and taken the blows on his back while she recovered. He was supposed to. Was commanded to never let any of his siblings escape into madness. 

He didn't then. He shouldn't now. But a part of him does not want Wyll broken like her.

"More detail?" Mizora asks with a click of her tongue. Eyes sharp. Teeth flat. "How odd, coming from you. I wouldn't call you the most selfless here."

"Maybe," he agrees mildly. "Self-serving, at the very least. Precisely the type not to go gallivanting after an asset you won't describe."

Mizora has a way of smiling like it should bleed. "You hardly seem the most important link of this brigade if you don't want to participate, spawn. Feel free to continue lounging back at camp, contributing nothing. You're very good at that, aren't you?"

Astarion hums with a deliberate reticence. Every nerve is lit up, sparking black. Has she been watching him? How much does she know?

Not the time. He has to focus. What he's doing isn't quite thinking, instinct piloted off shattered composure, but it's close enough to work.

"I'm a pessimist," Astarion says. "I hear asset, and I start getting discouraged. Particularly when it won't come giftwrapped, if we even make it to Moonrise; so what's in it for us? Because it sounds like it could be quite the risk."

"The reward is that you don't lose your swordsman," Mizora says, sharper now. "And from what I've seen in Moonrise, you'll end up crushed beneath the brick without him."

"Perhaps, but I'm a vile, black-hearted beast," Astarion says, smiling with teeth. "Wyll is lovely, don't get me wrong, yet this all sounds like a risk that doesn't stack well against saving the world. Rather the ask for a side adventure."

Mizora's eyes narrow, annoyed. Taut. 

He's saying actual mutiny. Like cheersing a lion as he settles within its jaws. Karlach and Wyll are on the corners of his mind, Lae'zel stirring across the campfire, all close enough to punish him for what he's doing; but his shield goes up and stays up. There is no time for distraction. He keeps smiling. 

"It's like you said—if Wyll goes alone, he fails," Astarion says brightly. "A dreadful sacrifice, yes, but the alternative is that we all die attempting to find this asset, and then where does that put us?" A pause. "And where does that put you?"

That gets her attention. Her head tilts, a predatory thing. 

Astarion continues blithely on. "For something so important you're threatening his life, I can't imagine it wouldn't spill back on you should Wyll fail."

"It isn't a threat, it's a promise. He signed the contract. He agreed to the rules." Her wings stretch, superimposed against the gnawing dark. "You would know a thing or two about that, hm?"

Deflection. Condemnation. If this was a perfectly rote mission, Astarion would be smeared across the floor in some homage to times long passed. Instead she is still engaging. Instead she is still parrying. 

This is stupid. This is beyond stupid. This is spitting on Cazador's boots in the kennel when Astarion is already chained and bowed and flensed. 

But Astarion did spit, then. He always spat. The singular spark of a fire Cazador could never quite snuff out. 

My darling rebel.

Astarion continues smiling up at her. Stays quiet. All this eloquence in service of something larger. 

Mizora is sneering now, drawn up. "You might abandon him," she says, barbarous, the hooks of her wings jagged. "But you are not the leader of this little group." 

"Far from it," Astarion agrees. "That isn't the point, however. The point is that this mission seems a little too important for you to risk us saying no."

Mizora stares at him. 

Her wings are still spread, caged within the campfire, horns cast back. A storybook silhouette, so large as to be remorseless. His game is bared before her. A fool's attempt at manipulation. 

"Do you think this is wise?" She asks. It is not really a question. 

He has always been recidivistic. This is not his final collapse, nor is it his first. He says nothing. 

She is silent for a moment too long. 

Wyll steps forward. 

Astarion is still riding the coattails of Wyll's connection with Karlach, three shades of the same colour; a rage and fear and determination reflected in both their eyes, psionic melding. Gestalt. 

"You're in danger," Wyll says. It's almost emotionless but for how his tail flicks. "Something about this mission involves the higher-ups; that's why you aren't here and haven't bothered me since entering this place. That's why it's so important. Because if it goes wrong, they'll kill you."

Oh. 

That's the missing piece—because she isn't scared of Wyll. She has never been scared of Wyll. Yet she is scared now, the malignant, festering kind of fear that creeps in under mourning veils and makes a home beneath composure. 

She's a cambion from a world very far below. Astarion wonders if this is the first time she's ever feared a true death. 

"And that is why," Mizora says, sweet in the way a rotting corpse is, "it is in your best interests to complete this fucking mission, pet."

Karlach's mind lights up like a forge, coalescing frenzy. It burns white-hot, tangling through the hero—soothing, urging, pushing. Please.

Wyll takes a single breath. Steadies himself. Astarion watches something fractured align into hope. 

"Then free me," Wyll says. "Free me from the pact. Break our contract."

"Do you really think you're in a position to bargain?" Mizora's eyes are incensed. "I own your soul, pup, you sold it to me; undoing the pact won't ever undo that choice. You did this. You are this."

"I did," Wyll agrees. "So I'm damned either way. If I succeed, I continue slaughtering at your behest until I die and become a lemure; or I fail and become a lemure anyway. What's the difference?"

"The difference," she snaps, "is that every single other warlock I have gets thrown to the hells alongside you." Then, seeing the startled flash, lunges for it. "Are you willing to do that, pet? To be the cause of their unmaking?"

Wyll wavers. Karlach clings to his mind, a tempest of panic. 

"Then you're offering him a perfect out," Astarion says. 

Everyone looks at him. He smiles, very sweetly. "You have other warlocks—you're still making more, aren't you? If Wyll lets you die, you won't be able to. No others will swear pacts with you. A sacrifice of few so the world is safer. That's a very heroic thing to do, isn't it?"

Astarion lowers his shield, slips through the cracks to the dual reverberation—I would suggest agreeing.

Karlach is white-hot, guttural. But Wyll is sharp. Wyll is made of all these fragile pieces that gleam as though the first sunrise after two hundred years. 

"I want to save people," Wyll says, quiet. "I will either save them as a hero, or I will save them by keeping them from your clutches. That's it."

Mizora bristles, silent and seething. But whatever she sees on Wyll's face must be enough. 

"Fine," she spits, waspish. "Succeed, and I'll break your contract."

"Devil's word," Karlach snarls. "Lock 'n bind it, you fucking bitch. When?"

"When he frees the asset," Mizora says. It is through gritted teeth. "Then I will break his contract in accordance with the contract. Not a moment before. So don't wait up."

She disappears in a puff of smoke and the campfire is left empty. 

Gale exhales like the air's been punched from his gut, Shadowheart's eyes wide. Even Lae'zel looks vaguely staggered and also like she wishes it could have ended with stabbing Mizora's corpse.

Wyll stands there. He still has a kicked-dog demeanor, but it seems more from shock instead of consequence. That fleeting hope keeps spreading within him, setting roots in territory untouched for what feels like a lifetime. 

"She agreed to it," he says, dumbstruck. 

"She fucking did," Karlach echoes, pressing in closer, eyes so bright. "Wyll. Wyll! It'll be broken!"

She laughs, cascading through the darkness—goes as if to grab him and pulls back at the last second, curling fingers over air instead. "No more bitch from the hells, no more nothing. You're free!"

"Well done!" Gale says, beaming; Lae'zel and Shadowheart come around to either of Wyll's side, hand on his shoulder, on his arm. Smiles. Eyes creased.

Astarion blinks twice. Resettles, though the ground is tilting beneath his feet. 

Well. That worked. He really hadn't expected it—he hadn't expected much of anything from when he'd hurled himself on the rack as though that was a perfectly normal fucking thing to do. 

Yet it worked. Yet the contract will be broken. Yet he stood there and spoke pretty things and helped sever years of misery. 

She was an illusion. She couldn't have touched him. Probably. 

Cazador, Mizora. Everything spiraling in and against itself. Astarion stretches his fingers, shifts weight between his feet; there's an odd haze in his thoughts, every conscious thought drained away to mind his tongue before her. The low after a frenzy, the wave falling once it crests. 

The party is still chattering, louder and louder. Enthusing as Wyll stands there, shockstill and just starting to smile, a twitch about the corners of his lips. Red eye, grey eye. Cast against the shadows behind, it seems as though a weight is being scraped off his shoulders. 

Astarion, a little faded, drifts. 

The campfire is muted but still intact after the illusion, pumping out enough light he can go to the perimeter of camp, setting up on one of the rot-veined boulders scattered like bones over the shadowlands. He arranges himself on instinct, ankle crooked over knee, elbows braced. 

Negotiations, litigations; finding actual leverage to hold over a master's head until they let go of the lead. How long has Wyll been under her heel? How many years has he dreamed of this night?

Astarion remembers Mizora from before, when she crooked her finger and laughed as Wyll choked upon the ground. When she smiled so prettily at Karlach and said Zariel was hunting her down. When she flensed Wyll apart. She'd been saccharine, sickening and effusive. Like she wanted Wyll to kiss the dirt below her talons and liked holding the command of that over his head, waiting for him to do it willingly. As though the punishment was purely for her pleasure. 

The way Wyll had stood there. As though it was better to be nothing at all. 

He wraps his tail around his ankle like Aurelia. He does more like her, too. 

And maybe now he doesn't have to.

Astarion sits there, doing nothing, replaying the conversation, everything he'd said, everything he hadn't. Worn and bound simplicities. Master to master.

"Mate?"

He glances up. Karlach's pushing past the scattered tents, leaving the others all clustered around Wyll. She's smiling, a crooked little thing, shoulders loose. The scene is familiar. 

It is also grounding. Astarion inhales, pushing his feet into the dirt; clutches onto his spine as though it will crawl away from him. Stabilizes. Thinks of nothing at all. 

"Don't let me distract you from the festivities," Astarion says. 

"No party today," Karlach says with a shrug. "I want him sleeping, a proper rest. Apparently Mizora hasn't been bothering him here, which means she did bother him topside and he never said, the little asshole."

That is unsurprising, considering everything Astarion knows of the Blade of Frontiers. He hums. "Then what?"

"Now is for Gale to whip up some banging feast and shove it in him 'til he chokes. Then I'll find a way to sit on him so he'll finally hibernate for once in his life." She laughs, then sobers, padding forward. Her engine warms the dead air between. "But I wanted to thank you."

Ah. Yes. Of course. A typical response for threatening to abandon Wyll to a cambion's claws. All his stupid words keep bouncing around his head—saying it would be such a shame to risk all their lives, how he needs something in return, bargains, deals, counteroffers. Distilled callousness. Avarice.

Karlach should be holding her greataxe up to his throat, right about now. Should be demanding to know why he played parlay against a fucking cambion with only Wyll's soul on the table. 

Instead, she sits beside him, tail flicking at dead grass. She's watching him out of the corner of her eyes, steam where tears of relief are melting away. No violence. No violence yet.

Astarion hums again. "You're welcome."

"Can't say it was a good plan," she says, and some humour bleeds away—Astarion doesn't tense but he does ready himself, unconscious categorizing what exposed parts are closest to her. 

Then Karlach sighs, head drooping. "Gods. But nothing could be good, huh? If there was an easy out, he'd have done it years ago." An exhalation, worn and war-wearied. "Just– don't play with devils like that. You won this time; you won't again. Mizora quaking in her fucking boots let us win, that's it. It's not worth it."

Astarion watches her closely. Her eyes are these wide, pale things, even studded through with relief for Wyll as they are. 

Mizora had mentioned Karlach training her engine against lemures. And Karlach hadn't exactly disagreed.

"I understand," he says, similarly quiet. "It was rather a once-off opportunity."

That earns a chuckle, though it can't be called levity. "You can say that again, mate. Been tricking with Mizora for years now; haven't ever seen her bend over like that. Whatever this asset is, it's fucking important." She lifts her head, unbraided hair drifting over the puckered scars of her shoulder. "So. Thank you. Was a right shit plan, but you helped Wyll. And I can't thank you enough for that."

Everything about this is wrong. It's cloying in his lungs, filling up his skull. Astarion tries for words with a too-dry tongue and elects to stay quiet. 

"Wyll says thank you too," Karlach adds. "And a couple more flowery phrases I forgot."

That's curious to pull him back. He finally turns to look at her, forcing his tongue to cooperate. "And he sent you over instead?"

Karlach shakes her head, shoulders shifting. "Nah—he wants to thank you, would give you the skin off his back and giftwrap the bloody thing. That's why I'm here."

Astarion blinks. "Why wouldn't he do it himself?"

"Because you're a prick, mate."

Ah. He scowls, mutters: "Piss off."

Cazador would have flayed him before the first syllable left his lips. Karlach just grunts. "It's right 'n true. And Wyll's nice enough to give you space, but I'm stubborn, so here I am."

Wyll is giving him space because Astarion bit him on the third night of traveling together, actually. Because there is a needle in the hero's pocket that points to Astarion's dead heart and can't be shaken. Because Astarion is a monster and Wyll is a hunter. 

Wyll, standing before Mizora, head down, mouth shut, shoulders in.

"You're confusing as all hells," Karlach says, quieter now. "One day you're calling us all fucking idiots, the next you're helping Wyll out of his pact. You don't even like him. Why'd you do it?"

Astarion stares at the distant shadows. 

"Can't stand masters," he mutters eventually. "Wyll shouldn't have one."

-

Wyll isn't flayed and broken, but the wake of this visit feels oddly similar to the first, all quiet, stilted. The difference is a sense of victory that threatens to peer through the shock like sunlight through muddied leaves. Not three days off but one, considering Karlach couldn't follow up on her threat to sit on him but gets close enough, and finally Wyll cracks and smiles and acquiesces to sitting around the campfire with his head held high. 

He's free. Or will be, once they complete the mission, and every time Astarion peeks past his shield he feels that hope, a sensation that seems as though it has been squashed too many times in the man's mind, flitting stubbornly back to life. 

Wyll talks a little about it, when the conversation drifts to that mine-studded ground. Just a few things he can snake around the contract that still holds his tongue, still garottes truth before it can reach the others; but there are cracks he can slip through, can imply a darker picture of the past seven years. 

He never says Mizora, is the odd thing. It's always sentences constructed to imply her, built up so her name hovers in the empty gap. But never the word. Never those syllables. 

When Astarion inhales, he can smell dry blood behind Wyll's stone eye.

The day, beyond horrifying stories both told and not-told, is relatively relaxed. Ample food, ample repairs, a languid spending of wood stocks that would likely be better used in the future. Orange heat, untainted with infernal black, crackles merrily in their hearth. Not a single cambion mucking it up. 

While cooking, Gale notes a fire resistance potion going missing from his stores. Wyll and Karlach make a truly terrible excuse for scouting and disappear. Everyone else politely says nothing. 

Astarion sits around the campfire, stitching meaningless shapes into the hem of his shirt. Familiar motions, familiar silence. The hunger sits behind him, a gnawing thing deep in his marrow, clouding thoughts. But a day of rest is little, in the grand scheme of things. Tomorrow, they'll head out. 

There are worse things to be than alone. 

-

Three bottles become two become one.

-

Astarion ties off the rope with his teeth. 

Setting up camp is something he has become unfortunately skilled in, palms thickening and knots coming easily. Every evening they push a little less far, tire a little more easily; and as his hands shake and stomach snarls, he can only thank the fragments of longer rest. 

He keeps fighting, on and on. The attacks never stop. They never fucking stop.

The others are milling about in their own corners, murmured conversations and mostly pressing silence. Shadowheart and Lae'zel are closer than they have been in days, Gale hunched over a book with his eyes drifting too far to be reading. Karlach wipes a palm over her brow, flicking off motes of fire. She's been getting hotter, engine acting up, though she never stops smiling and her mind buries any emotion over it. She still presses to Wyll's side, as close as she can get. Talks about future and sunlight and freedom. 

All clumped, all gathered. But so long as his tent is within the firelight, he's fine. Astarion checks the supports, notes the outer ring, and disappears inside. 

It's easier, when he's alone. Not having to hide. The cloak protects him, and it stifles as well; he has no need to breathe, to hold himself upright, when it is off. He does not need to pretend to be a person, and he is consequently not a person. A perfect opportunity of give and take. 

He peels off his armour, piece by piece, tacky with grime and gore. There's a detached cruelty in the motion, old apathy. To examine himself as though he is made of flesh instead of anything else. 

Astarion paints the handkerchief over his arm, mopping up the blackened viscera that had likely been a plant at one point. A stretch of raw skin, not flensed but sensitive to touch; he'll add another layer over it before putting his armour back. 

He checks on his legs; still twin marred lines on the back of his calves from a wretched little thing that had taken being split in half as an opportunity for low blows; they're healing slowly, flaps of skin sticking together, and he can hardly feel them anymore. Two hundred years has made him a connoisseur of pain; he knows every shade and flavour like wine on the back of his tongue. This note is merely a novelty. A fascinating little curio. Godey would sing its praises. 

Movement, low to the ground. The smell of old wounds seems to be a summoning call as something pads up to his tent, something with four legs and incorrigibility. 

"Go away," Astarion mutters. He can hear Scratch's tail thumping against the ground, the pants of the mutt directly outside. Perhaps there's a touch of corpse crawler under that white fur to explain away the interest. His fangs ache with the desire to bite.

But no, that's an innocent little puppy who deserves the world, or something similarly inane. Astarion is one who bites. A different story entirely. 

Sometimes, when Shadowheart pets him, her mind ricochets with divine pain. The mutt could be cursed. He can't write off the possibility.

But eventually Scratch leaves him to his wounds, and Astarion continues tending in the silence. Old habit, stitching himself up, though it's honestly a surprise to have as good of supplies as he does now. Cazador wasn't exactly one to give them anything, and filched fabric from a seamstress' shop doesn't have the same potential as actual bandages. Before long, he's done, aches soothed away. 

Or unsoothed, really. Astarion is, frankly, an expert at stitching himself up without complaint. Even with regeneration to speed up the process, Cazador never delayed gathering victims for such a foolish thing as mortal injuries. Here, without it, it's just an extension of a well-known pattern. 

There is a way to cut through it. 

Blood would help him heal. Blood would do a lot of things for him. 

Common doesn't have the proper phrasing for it. They mark it out like two extremes—starved and satiated. Hungry and hale. Like there's nothing between. 

Blood is… different, for vampires. It both fills him with energy and heals him and strengthens him and grounds his mind and softens his emotions. It keeps him functional. It makes him, in however mocking a mimicry, alive.

There is a single drink left, barely more than a discolouration on the glass. The smallest bottle, the last remaining. Untainted blood from the sunlit world.

If he drinks it, then he has nothing. So he doesn't.

Astarion leans back, resting his head on the tent support. He watches the shadows move past the canvas, how the party teems around the fire and chatters to each other. Even in the shadows, they're comfortable. Together. 

He's been able to live in the dead man's zone quite comfortably so long as the others keep their distance. And considering Gandrel ruined any chance he had of tricking them into fucking him for protection, that hasn't been a very difficult distance to maintain. And with the added permission of being a dick, he has a list of myriad things to make the passage of time a little easier, sharpening and cutting and biting and kicking others away before they get too close. Entertaining himself in the little snipped moments between death and certainty. 

And it means that now he sits within the closed canvas of his tent, entirely alone, watching the others, doing little more than waiting in a land where people come to die.

Well. There goes his singular moment of isolated calm, the rock in a coursing maelstrom. Astarion centers himself, deep breath. Finds the remainder of the wounds and pushes them down, down, down, seething under worn flesh. 

Until he is alone within a caged perimeter, and he pulls out the jarred tadpole once more.

It's colder, in a way. Or perhaps he is, the glass more greedily taking any battle-warmth from his fingers. The parasite continues its everlasting spiral within the jar, tendrils wrapping and lashing at nothing. Hungry. 

Four commands. Four chains. He just has to break them forever. 

Astarion closes his eyes and presses his forehead to the jar, cold against cold. His own writhes at the proximity, awareness sharpened like a knife; he grasps for that, liquid corporalism. Lets it rise as though venom through a wound, searing the other edges of his mind, budding behind his eyes. 

Cazador had engraved his commands onto Astarion's bones. Had made them a part of him, more than the poem on his back and the weight of a bowed head. There is something more there, wrought and materialized. He just has to find them. 

The tadpole gnaws. He guides it deeper, away from outer edges and into critical mass, the gravity of a sprawling universe. His eyes flutter once. A shiver from tail and throat. Then–

In a fractal, crystalline moment, Astarion sees them.

It's akin to seeing the fog retreat ere the sunrise, what had been hidden now clear; how all the artifice washes away. And Astarion realizes, all at once, how fucking wrong he's been going about this.

The commands aren't something he can go searching for. He doesn't have to. All he has to do is look down, because they are the ground on which his mind is constructed. 

They yawn beneath him, impossible and vast, curvature like a planet, indomitable; enclosed within his shield, what the dome is embedded upon, what his thoughts wrap and purr above. Foundational. Fundamental. They are everything. They are what he is.

Astarion falls out of the vision like a dying star.

He slams into the ground, collapsing back, jar slipping from clammy fingers; the crunch of something disconnecting, eyes blurry, a distant scream in his throat. The world remade in obscenity. Aberration.

Within the jar, the wretched thing spins, circling in on itself. Satiated. Filled.

Astarion gasps, shaking—his eyes want to bleed but can't, brain sloshing within his skull, every nerve white-hot. And yet all he can see is the vastness of the commands, not the marrow but the skeleton itself, the weight and solidity and remorseless immortality—fed to the parasite and fed back in return. His shield nothing more than a memory. A child's defense against the inevitability.

Fuck. Fuck. 

Astarion fumbles at his bag, clattering inelegance, weeping pus. He claws through the opening, past armour and rags and empty hopes—finds the last at the bottom, the singular red. The others are gone, filled with water and sloshed down just for a chance at any more; this is all there is left. Less than a finger's width at the bottom of a very narrow bottle. 

Still his shield trembles. Still the caged tadpole reaches out, wanting once more to feast upon him. Still he is too fucking weak to fend it off.

Astarion hurls caution to the wayside and wrenches the cork out, hands shaking so badly he nearly drops it. Then it's pressed to his lips and he drinks.

Deer, old, stale, watery. 

He isn't thinking as he shatters the glass in his grip, shards plucked to lick the inside, to lap up remains like a fucking dog. To feast on what has never been a mercy.

Cartilage crunches back into place. Pus oozes down his cheeks, slowed. An inhalation through a whole chest, and–

Nothing more. Not enough to heal any of his other wounds, any of the souvenirs he's picked up along this adventure. And the hunger shrieks ever-on, teased with this momentary lapse, louder in the absence. Begging. Pleading.

The last of the blood. The last of his fucking blood and now he has nothing.

Astarion sits there, panting, ratcheted, all fear and dread and terrible understanding; the tadpole must feed to function. And he has run out of blood to give it.

He tries, childish, to wake up. To make this failure into a mused-upon plan and not something that actually happened. 

"Astarion?"

It's Karlach, walking up to his tent, making a soft sound of worry. She nudges the flap aside, peering in. Her eyes are more sunk than he remembers, bags heavy. The shadowlands weigh on them all. 

Except it weighs more on him, because he doesn't have any more blood, and he needs blood to maintain his shield and search for how to break the commands and to keep fucking surviving.

He's staring up at her, frozen-stiff and feral, more pus trickling down his face and wetting his face. Everything hurts. Everything screams as the full weight of the future crashes into him like a meteor. Fangs out and bared like he can make himself too big to hurt. 

Karlach stops, eyes wide. Staring at him.

Astarion laughs on reflex. "Hells, I'm twitchy," he says, feather-light, unsteady. "I'd welcome conversation but not tonight; bother me some other time. Have fun. Go away."

Then he crawls forward, grabs the flap of his tent, and slams it closed. It isn't anything final, just fabric over empty space, because a tent is only the idea of closed walls and safety. 

Fuck. Fuck.

Astarion bites his pillow, teething into empty fabric. Feels the last of the blood pool in his gut, nothing more than a balm over an aching and terrible wound. It is just a contrast to show how empty the hollow is. 

Karlach waits outside his tent for a moment longer, and then steps away, movements slow. The rest of the party is quiet, tadpoles simmering with galvanized confusion. 

"Something's wrong," he hears, because she's never been able to whisper below vampiric senses. 

Astarion buries his head in his pillow and stops listening. 

-

One bottle becomes nothing. 

Chapter Text

"Can you stop," Astarion snarls, "for two fucking seconds?"

The shadow he is attacking doesn't reply, because he's tearing out its throat. 

Assaulted in their bloody base, this time. At least there's a campfire to stay within the perimeter of instead of a constantly-moving torch. Jerked upright at Lae'zel's shout, out of their armour and temporarily unarmed; but no one sleeps far from their weapons here, and soon the carnival of violence is provided by both sides. Someone is already bleeding. He can smell it.

He keeps stabbing until it doesn't have much of a throat left. It still doesn't go down—gods, these things refuse to learn when they should be dead. And there's no time to carve out the thumping hearts of the things in such a ruckus and thus they keep clawing their way back up. Never enough time for anything. 

That's the singular fucking upside to getting attacked. No time for levity or discussion or anything to do with how Karlach keeps looking at him whenever he emerges from his tent, searching for wounds or weakness or something equally miserable. She isn't going to find it. She isn't going to find anything because that is the very essence of who Astarion is, and he's godsdamn exemplary at pretending he isn't starving. 

Astarion sheathes his blade in some squalling thing's gut, rips out the curse-blackened viscera. It falls apart in ragged heaps of thorns and vines, less person than plant, and another rises from the dirt to take its place. Only this one is ruptured by an eldritch blast, lanced like a boil to splatter over the campsite. Third time since the beginning of combat. Gods below, Astarion could run starkers into the midst and Wyll would likely snipe away any enemies before they left a mark. It'd be endearing if Astarion could think.

Someone is bleeding. Someone is fucking bleeding and even fighting for his life can't distract him from that. 

He ducks under a feral swing from Lae'zel, the githyanki like a raging bolt of lightning in the din. She howls a warcry and beheads a slithering corpse; uses the lunge to hurl another at him, aimed to squelch upon his dagger. It writhes once before falling off. She's already gone to the next horde. 

Astarion skitters back—finds a smaller one, already half-split from a glancing blow. No blood. Just nothing. He rips another slash through their chest in lieu of thinking about that. The bastard eats it like nothing. He fumbles a parry with truly reprehensible inaptitude and wins a clout to the head—staggers, mind shrieking, agony weaving laurels around his throat. There should be blood but there isn't, other than what someone else is bleeding. Because someone else is bleeding.

He isn't starving. He isn't starving so much that when he leaps at the thing like a beast possessed and tears its fucking head from its shoulders, he manages to land on all fours like because it had been intentional. Someone reeks like a nicked artery and he is fighting perfectly fine. He staggers back up and keeps going. 

Wyll hurls indiscriminate blasts at the horde, carving enough room to regroup. The campfire splutters. A bolt of illusory magic tangles around a clustered horde but these fuckers don't operate off sight, just featureless maws—Shadowheart snarls and redoubles, slamming light instead. Lae'zel presses against Gale, hacking at a wall of thronging darkness. Karlach thumps herself on the chest, machinery shrieking, and promptly hucks another bastard skyward.

Then her tadpole ignites, echoing with the pulse of infernal drums. Shared awareness—her shifted attention bleeding outward, catching others up in the spiral. Incoming!

Lae'zel barks a curse and just punches a shadow away. "Shka'keth," she snarls, crunching the spasming body under her heel. "Turn face!"

No matter her forsaken queen, she's still from a military milieu; the party wheels at her shout, flanks covered and weapons up. Karlach curb-stomps something's scalp into their asshole and bares her teeth at the surroundings, eyes lit up like incandescent suns. Ready for more fight. 

But there isn't more fight. Even as Astarion batters himself against a brawned feast that hisses and chitters at him, it starts to melt back, features blank in the din. Wyll's bolts of arcane energy start punching holes through defenses that aren't replaced, Lae'zel making headway on those she decapitates. Until they aren't surrounded and the stragglers lope off. Leave, like that was an option they had the whole fucking time. Rats before something larger. 

Astarion breathes, heady and ragged, clutching his daggers so tightly they threaten to snap. He is thinking. He is still fucking thinking. 

The party huddles in, back-to-back, blades up to guard. In the absence of an active bloody ambush, they start breathing again, ragged pants deepening into something true. Heartbeats thrum and settle, pulses smoothing; getting their feet back underneath. Their minds are heavy with concentration. They know a second fight is soon to come. 

Astarion acknowledges this fact, if reluctantly. 

They don't have to wait for very long. Past the shadows, past the gloam—enemies. 

And these aren't from the curse; Astarion can feel blood and heartbeats, living flesh and bodies. Naught more than silhouettes and the bounce lighting of their own orange flames. The shadows slither away from their path. Two continents, a sea of black between, growing thin and only narrowing. 

Darkvision is not a gift here, where it is useless, but the presence of other torches makes it something. Swimming figures, moving closer and closer—a troop of hobgoblins, becloaked male drow, a smattering of goblins only clutching torches and looking terrified. A proper horde. Larger than theirs by an order of magnitude. 

At the helm, a leader.

She's tall and regal, in the way a queen is when calling for an execution. Drow with all teeth and bloody crimson eyes, slitted into a sneer. A mace hums in her hand, lit up with radiance, shadows yelping and fleeing from her feet. Familiar. Strangely so. 

The two groups size the other up, still a strait of darkness between their two sources of light. Karlach has a growl in the very base of her throat, mechanical. The battle-frenzy makes her eyes black. 

The leader bares her teeth; they aren't sharp, but in the moment, Astarion thinks they ought to be.

"You are the challengers," she says. Her voice is a gravel baritone, tinged with that lethal acrimony drow always seem to come proficient in. "You are the rebellion."

Challengers? That's an odd form of address considering she's the one prancing up to their campsite like she's got a fucking invitation. Astarion sneers. That's the godsdamn problem with all these assholes, to say less of how someone is chasing them all the way to the very acidic depths of the world. And why would a drow be–

Oh. 

Oh, Astarion thinks he knows why she looks familiar.

A childish drawing, so long ago, of three silhouettes. The hobgoblin and priestess are already dead; now all left is a tall figure, hair bound, armour severe. There had been a little smudge on the side that could have either been imbecilic inadequacy or a weapon. 

The drow before him is holding a very large, very sharp, very radiant mace.

Astarion slips into the minds of the others, cautious. I believe this may be the third leader of the goblin camp. What had Gut said? Minthara. 

That earns a ripple of unease, jagged from Shadowheart, back when she'd expressed the most hatred towards the fight with the hobgoblin. If Minthara is on either his or Gut's level, they're about to be in for something unpleasant.

Karlach sums it up best. Fuck.

Yes, that's the only way to put this. 

Perhaps correctly, Karlach deduces that diplomacy is not an option here. She flicks a tangle of knotted guts off her greataxe, flashing a grin that seems lazy if not for how her mind howls. "Hullo," she calls, plenty loud over the break in the shadows. "Fine day, yeah?"

Minthara's eyes flash. Moon-red, slitted. "There are no fine days here," she hisses. "Only a victory upon your corpses and a lesson taken from your blood."

Right. Fucking wonderful. 

No one was really expecting anything other than a fight, but, well, there's confirmation. Weapons are grabbed more firmly. Shadowheart cups a palmful of something seething. 

"Not sure what kinda lesson we can give you," Karlach continues, a lackadaisical shrug. "'Less you're here for getting your ass kicked."

"Your lack of transformation." Minthara shifts position to prowl at the edge of her firelight, a big cat from an ancient world. Her eyes reflect red. "Your freedom from the Absolute."

Astarion prods that like an old bruise. Not… quite the line expected, considering her previous employment was in active service. But today is already full of surprises. 

"Not for sale," Karlach calls back. "Try next tenday."

No response for that. 

Gale's tadpole wriggles, pointed at Karlach. She's casting a spell on the others, he says. Something powerful—I can't place it, but I doubt it's good, if someone could break her concentration.

What, by hitting her?

I meant if it could be broken before we reach the hitting-each-other stage.

Karlach seemingly muses over the idea for a moment before grinning. Wide, vicious; there is scarlet over her canines, dripping from her gums. Bloody-toothed and inciting. "Oh, that's who you are—took me a moment to give a shit enough to remember. You're the one leader of the goblin camp that ran like a bloody coward, yeah?"

Minthara stops. Tilts her head to the side. 

That's certainly a way to strike the kindling, Gale bemoans. Shadowheart peppers him with a cerebral shut up.

"I did not run," Minthara says, low. "I heeded the summons. If I had been there, your secrets would be mine and your guts to my beasts."

Karlach is still grinning. "But you weren't, were you? Maybe that's why you were summoned, if we're going with that excuse."

Minthara's hand goes lavender-white around her mace. Gods, Astarion hopes she's one that fights stupid when she's mad. 

"It is not a mistake I will make twice, iblith."

Karlach laughs, bright and a touch deranged. That shadow creeps back over her, eyes bleeding black. "But you did," she snorts. "You keep spouting how we should be dead, and we aren't. Guessing you're one of 'em second-daughter disappointments."

There is no need for hitting each other. Minthara shatters concentration on her own to hurl something sickly-green at Karlach. 

Gale swats it out of the air with a counterspell and the two forces clash like sweeping tides. 

The hobgoblins howl, crashing forward to engage Shadowheart and Lae'zel; Gale is instantaneously buried under a battering ram of spells from the male drow; the goblins mostly shriek and make nuisances of themselves. Karlach bellows something maniacal and lunges right for Minthara. 

Astarion staggers into the current, daggers up and already pounding with exhaustion; hunger shrieks that he doesn't have the energy, he doesn't have the strength, but the alternative is just fucking dying and so he fights. Find the weakest target in the horde. Go.

There's a drow wielding twin blades, short and on the offskirts of the pack. Astarion goes. 

Time watching Lae'zel pays off—he dances forward without blood for strength but fear doing its level best to match. Parrying blow to blow, ducking under the strike, muscle memory for something he's forgotten carrying his own dagger up to the bastard's nose. They stagger back blood-blind. Astarion runs. 

He can feel the others as they battle, currents overlapping and intersecting. Lae'zel craters a hobgoblin's face with the pommel of her longsword and turns the spin into a decapitating stroke to another, but it ducks and claws at her, forcing a misty-step otherwise losing her fucking head. Wyll dances upon a fissure still seething with eldritch magic, Gale and Shadowheart back-to-back in a maelstrom.

Karlach is an inferno against Minthara, too explosive to be mortal. She fights bloody and she fights primal, stone buckling and melting under her feet, every blow like a meteor. Astarion spits smoke as he sprints through her wake, a shadow looming behind. Getting bigger. She's the biggest thing on the field. 

Astarion is very small. There are no shadows to hide in and he scuttles in the absence, the flash of a blade as he grapples with goblins far below the eyeline of any others. Killing those underfeet. Blood pours black over his hands. He is still thinking. 

And he is still thinking when he realizes this isn't a normal fight. 

It comes to him like a staggered drunk, clawing for support along alley walls until it plummets at his feet; because every fight isn't normal for him, so weak, so far behind the others. Astarion scrabbles at victory like a distant sunrise more than he ever tastes it. 

But the others win. The others win and they win on repeat. Forces of nature. 

And yet Wyll chokes on a crunched throat as he careens back, a pommel to the neck by a hobgoblin that refuses to go down. Gale falls to a knee holding back the drow wizards' onslaught and though Shadowheart lunges in to shield him, she leaves their left flank open. 

Astarion ducks under a wild swing from a drow he'd already fucking fought, blood wiped from their eyes and teeth bared; earns a slash across the chest but kicks the bastard right in the crotch, watches them spasm, hurls them down. He's panting. Left flank open. Training. Things Lae'zel spoke of. He needs to move in.

Lae'zel roars like a wild beast and bashes her shield into a hobgoblin, puncturing its trachea in a spray of scarlet—and another rears overhead, morningstar falling. Astarion crashes into its side, blades up, scything through its shin. He's screaming, a little. Blind terror on the tip of his tongue. 

Everyone's mind lights up as something in their midst detonates—Gale's blow goes wide, thundering into the earth in an explosion of dirt. Karlach pivots the momentum and cleaves a vicious circle around, scaring back an opportunist hobgoblin. A moment of room from the back. 

This is about when Minthara misty-steps forward and slams her mace into Karlach's chest. It bounces off her engine with the screech of struck metal—Karlach skids back, hacking. Her eyes are pure black, ports billowing smoke and ash. The very air burns. 

She's bleeding. More than bleeding. It's arterial-dark, disgorging through her armour. This is not her first wound but it is the deepest. Astarion can feel pain in her mental current, a heat under the battle-frenzy. "You absolute fucker," she growls, hefting her greataxe. "C'mere, princess–"

Then a beam of something acidic spears through her thigh. 

The drow responsible goes down a second later, half his arm blown off by Wyll's onslaught—but Karlach staggers, roaring. Surprised. Eyes wide over rivers of fire. Astarion can see the understanding pass through; her greataxe takes two hands but the bolt in her thigh is spreading, leeching over her flesh with these glistening veins. If she doesn't pull it out, it'll take her. If she pulls it out, the battle does. 

Her battle-frenzy shrieks, ignited to a fever's pitch. Karlach puts all her weight on a buckling leg and cuts the hobgoblin closest in half. Pushes back—she's trying to carve a path to Shadowheart, to healing, to a left flank unguarded and vulnerable. 

Astarion slashes at the already broken nose of a drow fighter, scrambling for even a second to turn. Gale and Wyll cornered, a field erupting, Lae'zel on the back foot; and Minthara, mace lifted as though a comet. 

Karlach, staggering, sees it. Tries to get an arm up to block. 

Minthara hits her hard enough the ground shakes. 

She goes down in a spray of scarlet. Her engine screams, brimstone and sulphur—goes nuclear as its host fails, crashing to the ground. Stone molten under her fingers. Her greataxe clatters somewhere off in the shadows. A current of gore so hot it scalds. 

Not dead. Just fallen. Just clawing at the ground with blood-blind eyes and shattered arm, mind dizzy with panic—and Minthara, rearing overhead, mace raised to finish the job. Saying something. Mouth moving. 

Astarion isn't thinking. He's burning under a fraying connection, six lines of terror in one. There is no thinking as his hand lifts, as he takes a blow across the back just to stretch out for– something. Anything. 

As he feels, lost in the tangle, not six but seven. The answering hum of an unfamiliar mind. One sequestered in the drow's skull, the mark of a True Soul. 

Minthara has a tadpole. 

Astarion claws at it. 

They both stagger; she's a layered cacophony of sounds and nodes and multiplicity, tangling and devouring like an ouroboros, and Astarion digs through the azure agony. He scythes at her thoughts, at the dissonance of die-kill-die-kill; cuts her open with fumbling fury and desperation. Goes incendiary in the collapse. 

Minthara's arm spasms. Her mace falls to the ground. She stumbles back a step, choking on something caught higher than her throat. 

Then they are shredded apart. 

Astarion loses time. Falls right the fuck apart, careening back, punch-drunk and stupid. Doesn't crash to his knees but gets much too close. Everything hazes through his ears, white-hot. The world buckles. 

It hurt him more than it hurt her. Hurt him much more. Nothing to devour for fuel but himself. 

It's pure instinct that reopens his eyes, grips tightening on empty air and no coherency to find a target. All the pain runs together, smearing into something singular. Blades claw at his leg and are lost in the confusion. 

The battle rages, Shadowheart hacking her way over to Karlach, Gale crushing an approaching drow under a bolt of fire so bright it eviscerates—and Minthara stands in the eye of the storm, staring at the hands that betrayed her. The mace on the ground. 

Her eyes slide up and land on him, then sharpen. Animal instinct. 

Astarion is suddenly very fragile. The awareness of a rat realizing it is not too small to be eaten by a lion. 

Minthara's face splits and she moves. 

He fumbles back; finds footing and raises hands that once held daggers. That illithid pulse in his brain is a supernova, ravaging thought and consciousness, wailing to the wider world without a shield—a pulse of lily-black awareness, Wyll turning his way. 

Then he blinks, loses time, and opens them only when Minthara cracks him upside the head. 

The world shifts. Another blink. He's on the ground; a kick takes him between the ribs, skidding back, clawing at the dirt. Existence swims in red—burst vessels in his eyes, the only place left with blood to bleed. Cerebral seizure. 

Knees crunch over his arms, the left shattering as Minthara straddles him; digs the points of her nails into his wrists until he lets go of her arms. He rakes at her armour, barking, losing himself in the terror.

"My mind is mine," Minthara snarls, guttural. A black star of bloodlust. "It will not be taken from me again."

She grabs him, fists around ears, and slams his head against the flagstones. 

Everything goes white. 

Astarion comes to in a fragmented world. Shatters under something physical and psionic; cartilage grinds under fingers as Minthara raises him, electric in the dark. 

He hits the stone again. His skull cracks—a fractal relief of the growing pressure, tadpole shuddering, vision dark. Gelatinous ooze pours through his eyes. His ears ring. He can't see. 

Do you want to live forever?

His killer slams him down one final time.

It is a mercy that the world ends. 

-

Astarion resurfaces covered in hands. 

There isn't much of his forebrain remaining and his hindbrain is quick to step up to the plate—he flinches wildly, elbows up to protect his face. Claws with limbs unresponsive and buckles under the weight; lurches for balance and finds none. Touch and palms and ownership. Cold stone. 

–ster please stop master stop stop mas–

Hearing comes to him after speech: that is his own voice, watery and scared. He is both. He is clawing at the air and finding nothing. 

Another hand on his shoulder, pushing him down. He spins on whatever is beneath him, small of his back, more teeth. "Don't touch me," he croaks—too tactile for Cazador and his siblings should know better than to touch him from reverie, unless it's Godey, unless it's another patriar and shuttered windows–

The hand leaves. He pushes blindly away from that direction. 

A new voice. "Fangs? Astarion? Oi, just–" it softens, aimed elsewhere. "Everyone, back the fuck off, right now. Shads, up; Lae, you go over there; Gale, mind the torch–"

Names. Memory corrupted, but something about those is familiar; Shads, Lae, Gale. 

The rest of the hands drift away, touch lingering like pinpricks of sunlight through velvet curtains. Just stone underneath. Bone-deep instincts are throttled with the last scraps of his id; he pants at nothing, a binary between dead and present. And– he's breathing, which is odd, and the overthinking he's grown to greet like an old friend is gone, which is also odd. He's on the ground, which is familiar, whenever Cazador would leave him cut open in the hall for his siblings to step over in the week it took to regenerate, and the hunger cuts his thoughts into bloodless shriveled pieces, which is also familiar, but he's able to move, which is not. Most of this is. Unfamiliar and odd. 

This is not the kennel. 

He shifts. Categorizes. Dried blood flaked over his eyes. Lacerations throughout. Arm shattered. Head aches. Aches, despite the memory of its back concaving to release mounting pressure. He is stuck on that thought for longer than necessary. 

Astarion opens his eyes. 

He's on his back in the dirt, limbs askew and pooling. Something bunched under his head, another lifting his ankles, though he has no heartbeat that needs elevation. A horrendously scratchy coat under his back. Something herbal in his mouth. These are simple sensations. 

He is feeling altogether too detached for anything more complex. 

Astarion swivels; gets an eye on the others, ringing in against the darkness. Not his siblings. Not patriars. The party, instead. The party of the past however many months it has been. The party he is sworn to.

Karlach first, horizontal next to him, propped up on one elbow. She's got bits of monster stuck up in her hair. Laurels, maybe. She's also got bits of herself all over her chest and arm, white bandages under red blood. She smells minty. Like healing magic.

Wyll is closest to her, hovering overhead. The others are hazy figures. He's pretty sure there are two Gales. Which is rather more Gales than necessary.

"Fangs," Karlach says. Repeats. "You with us?"

"I don't think I'm anywhere else," Astarion says. His voice rasps; it makes his throat tingle pleasantly. "What happened?"

Karlach's tadpole bristles, shedding nerves like stray fur. "She hit your head, mate," she says, a touch too soft. "And you just– stopped moving."

"Ah," Astarion says, because he should be coming up with an explanation but his thoughts are still lingering in the crevasses. "She did."

He pats at his chest, runs fingers over unbroken arms. It's a novel sensation. 

"I think I attacked her." He prods at his tadpole; it doesn't twitch, dormant, exhausted. Perhaps he could overuse it enough that it dies without risk of transformation, but he has a vague recollection of brain tissue pouring through his eyes to suggest that's a bad idea. "Or something. Hm. Why?"

"She was about to attack us," Karlach says. 

He rubs his arms. "That doesn't sound like me. Are you sure?"

Figure-with-dark-hair opens what looks like her mouth, and Wyll moves, catching her. "Not now," he says, quiet, but Astarion has very pointy ears to catch it. "He isn't able to answer."

"I am," Astarion protests. He tries to wrestle his head up and groans, world swimming.

But it must knock loose something congealed because his airways open, stale air through his nose—and the scent of blood. Heavy and rich.

This is motivation enough to struggle to his knees, every bone trembling. The others are both very close and very far; he squints at each to see if they're the source. A few bandages, a couple of patches of raw skin. Karlach is the most torn apart, seemingly laying for a lack of ability to stand. Too minty. Not enough blood.

But a little past Gale number two lies a corpse. It's wearing armour that looks spiderwebbed, a mace beside. A pool of something spreading underneath. More names. "Oh, did you kill Minthara?"

The non-sequitur clutters the air with five different shades of confusion. Eventually, figure-with-green-skin nods. "She is dead." 

"Marvelous," Astarion says, and begins to crawl. 

It's an arduous process, tearing long lines through the exposed flesh of his stomach, over the hollow deep enough to count each notch in ribs underneath. He claws his way over to the dead drow, hair spilled loose from her braid and gauntleted hands clutching nothing. Killed via fire, it seems, if the lightly smoking cavern in her chest means anything. 

He opens his mouth and lets gravity plunge his fangs into her neck. 

Without a heartbeat, he has to fight for it, suckling as though a babe at the teat for what remains in her veins instead of spilled over the surrounding stone. No need for air to breathe and he laps at what greets his tongue—iron-rich and heady with flavour. Chilled past body heat but that is still so far above him. It is life and depth and dreams. 

Not quite elysium. He'd want her alive and struggling for that. But gods, it's enough. 

His injuries melt away, miasmal interpretation to nothing. Regeneration. The hunger leaves him slowly, leeching somewhere within to wait for when he will feel it again. Minthara's corpse, already cold, cools further as it empties. He holds her as though a lover. 

For a single moment, nothing hurts. 

Then, when the blood is gone, he lets go, fangs pulling sideways through her neck. Pulls out a decent chunk of her trachea. Sprawls back over the stone, limbs flopping, settling as though a beast curled around the spear impaling it. Blood languishes in his gut. 

Astarion hums, a little happy, mostly gone, and closes his eyes. Unconsciousness takes him with a gentleness he can hardly fathom.

-

When Astarion wakes again, he is in his tent. 

Tent, recognized; setting, noted—no more master coming pleading to his tongue nor bleary-eyed confusion at where his siblings are hiding. Just opening his eyes to thin fabric and knowing what it is. Back with the party, back in the shadowlands.

Mental facilities returned, it seems. He blinks and moves and checks himself in seconds, gathering the state of affairs. His tent flap is closed, a fire cherry-bright beyond, air fuzzy with extended misery. Foul. There are bandages wrapping around his limbs—being ambushed in the middle of the fucking night meant he hadn't been in armour and thusly far more accessible, letting the bandages reach up to his elbows and around the flats of his legs. White on white, dried in mottled patterns. Clothes still on. Nothing below that. 

The hunger is a pulse in his gut, like tides to be swept up in; but for now, he admires it from a distance. It has abated in the way only a predator can, forced out to stalk the perimeters, eyes in the dark. 

Minthara's death bought him time. It didn't buy him much else. The reverse, in a way. She took him down, rather handily, and then brutalized his corpse until he strayed closer to that second passing than anything else. The way her hands had wrapped around his head—how she'd crushed him against the ground. Crippled him. Cold stone. 

Astarion hums and detaches claws from his palms. They were just healed. 

Within his skull, his tadpole squirms, sluggish and stretched taut. Its teeth bore into the meat behind his eyes, neither chewing nor extending, back to dormancy. Back to that helpless moment where he can use it and damn himself or not and be damned regardless. 

Well. He'd succeeded, hadn't he? Managed to unravel his tadpole and hurl it as though a javelin at Minthara's mind until she dropped her weapon and fell back. Saved Karlach, probably, more than any telepathy or shield could. Something stronger. Something better.

There is more that happened. He is not thinking about it. He is not thinking about the fact that the party saw him fumble blind through the shadows to bite Minthara's neck and pass out afterward. He is not fucking thinking about it.

Instead, Astarion clicks his tongue, testing its give. Healed entirely, and so are the rest of his wounds, from those up his calves or across his back. Where the air isn't rank with distilled torment there's a faint whiff of herbs, as though Shadowheart had waved her magical hands over him as well. Marvelous. Tip-top shape, which is something he knows to be grateful for. Even his shield is up and intact, because his unconscious is not so much an idiot to leave his thoughts unguarded. That is not asking for death but inviting it inside. 

And then he's just sitting there, curled up within his tent, watching the fire backlight five silhouettes rummaging around the camp outside. All the party, equally awake. Waiting for him.

Time to face the music, as it is. 

Astarion runs a hand through his hair—curses, because Gale must have used prestidigitation for the worst of the grime and fucking butchered his curls—and stands. A touch unsteady, all the bandages wrapping him like something to be caged, but this is not exactly an unfamiliar situation. Quite revolutionary, how corsets can either be perfectly aesthetic or tight enough to strangle, depending on who tightens the cords. And Cazador would never have his spawn looking anything but their best. 

Astarion hums a little more vigorously. It is likely not a welcome sign how his mind slips into those metaphors rather than anything else. 

Five people outside his tent. All he has to do is go out to them, or else they will come in, and he does not want anyone inside what has been nominally protected space. What has a flap he can close, no matter how little it means. 

Astarion closes his eyes. Reopens. Steps outside. 

The campfire is a chipper thing, well-fed and managed, a stack of gathered wood alongside. The tents are unmoved, still hemmed in by cloying shadows, dirt smeared up the sides and clutching low to the ground. At the very least, the remnants of the ambush are cleared away from the center ring. The corpses are all moved somewhere else. 

That could be a bad thing, actually. He elects to ignore the implications and just walks forward. 

Five pulses of recognition; the party is arranged by the fire, chatting quietly, whatever topic drying like a riverbed as soon as he approaches. Fitting. Astarion twists his face into an agreeable smile and settles on the closest perch, every limb poised and head cocked generously into his palm. The picture of ease. "I see we're making plans?"

Perhaps if every invisible star is shining, they'll accept the given topic instead of anything else. 

Karlach holds his gaze first, across from him. "Hey, soldier," she says, waving with her non-dominant arm—the other is bound in a makeshift sling to her chest, straps charred around her shoulder. She isn't bleeding, all that crimson swept away from where it'd drowned her front, but there's still a tension in her movements. Her pulse jerks oddly. But she's alive and she's talking and she's not murdered in the dirt, so it seems everything worked out in the end. 

The rest of the party is much the same or better; cleaned up, prim. Some time has passed, then, enough to soften the rough edges. Everything has that subtle scent of healing, whether potion or Shadowheart. And everyone is looking at him.

He can feel an interest through Gale's tadpole, curiosity and unease combined; even Lae'zel prickles with a concern akin to ants crawling over his skull. 

Astarion smiles, first to Karlach and then to the entire party. Wide enough to be friendly, thin enough to hide his fangs. 

The last time he bit someone, things were both very different and exactly the same. Presumably the party is moderately less attached to Minthara than they are to Wyll, but it stands to reason that the parallels are established. At least there isn't Gandrel to sit around and be the driving guilt factor by weeping after long-dead children. 

It's funny, in a way, because he hasn't been thinking about Gandrel the man—he's been thinking about Gandrel the concept. The instigator for this whole mess of the past months. The ironvine was the fuse, yes, and Gandrel the one to bait the blackpowder. He caused this. And in causing it, he ceases to matter as anything more than the one holding the crossbow. 

Astarion needs to understand Cazador, his master, the one who owns him. He does not need to know the Gur who murdered him in a back alley as anything other than the ones that started it all.

He understands the party. Or at least he tries to—they don't exactly make it easy, when they butt up against every single thing he's learned from the past two centuries and then go make a nuisance of themselves inventing new things to follow. 

One of those things that he has now broken, no matter the circumstance. And yes, he saved Karlach, and yes, said person was already dead, but Cazador has given him enough impossible tasks to know that isn't really enough to save him. Good intentions don't hold against disobeying the command. 

Even if they healed him, which makes the opposite of sense against every reasoning he can pull up besides one. And he ignores that one. Aggressively. 

"Hello yourself," Astarion says, adjusting the sleeves of his shirt. Just underclothes, too tight and bland to ply his trade, but he'll do his best. Without the hunger, his thoughts are steady things, marching on towards the inexplorable end. A little more rationale. 

Astarion can't blame his broken-skull-self for biting Minthara, but he can curse him. He's made things much more difficult than they could have been. 

Karlach's eyes crease, just a little. "Glad to see you up, mate—you feeling okay? Need more rest?"

"Phenomenal, really. A new man." He stretches, just to show he can; the bandages pull taut and make the movement a little stiff but possible. His skull is freshly un-caved and the tadpole has settled to a more typical morose nibble on his cranium, which is really all he can ask for. "Entirely hoping we keep those kind of fights to a minimum in the future, however. I can't say that was enjoyable."

"Was a hells of one," she agrees, eyeing him. "Didn't see the closer myself, fangs; what happened to you?"

Astarion hums. "I attacked Minthara and was made to regret it, I believe. The details are a touch fuzzy. Who do I have to thank as my dauntless savior?"

Lae'zel clicks her tongue but doesn't speak. 

"I oughtta be thanking you," Karlach corrects. "Seems she was about to bash my skull in when she just up and dropped her weapon."

Ah. There it is. Biting Minthara is not the only revelation he has to fear. 

There's a reason he tried to wait until the party was out before experimenting with his tadpole, why he burned the bloody bandages and toothed into every problem rather than acknowledge it. There's a reason he hadn't exactly asked to practice on the others for how to wield his tadpole. Because little doubt this is not something they are particularly inclined to welcome him working on. 

Now they're asking what happened. Asking him. A grave waiting to be dug, and a shovel pushed helpfully into his hands. 

Astarion keeps smiling. "I may have thrown a dagger at her? That feels accurate, given the situation. Again—the finer details got lost when I had my entire fucking skull shattered against the ground, love. It's remarkable I'm in as few pieces as I am now."

"You aren't," Shadowheart says. Attention swings towards her. 

She's laced her fingers over her legs, back straight, stance squared. A cloister prodigy, if not for how a mutt curls at her feet and she's wearing cast-off rags in lieu of proper robes. 

"I'm not what?" Astarion prompts. 

"Not only a few pieces." Shadowheart scans him once, twice; magic shimmers on her fingers, either diagnostic or what will soon be a bolt of divine fire. Coin toss. "You were dead, Astarion, or damn near close. Everything I tried wasn't healing you."

"Curious," Astarion says. Flat, monotone. He shoves a spurious levity into the words. A hint of laughter. "It was a bastard of a fight, darling. I'm glad you spent your spells killing those cretins first, otherwise we wouldn't have been around to be healed at the end. Rather the better use."

Shadowheart doesn't bite. "I'm very good at saving my magic, Astarion. I know I had enough to heal you."

The others around the party simmer, sharpening focus. Five pairs of eyes. If the tension was thick before, it drowns now.

"Shadowheart," Gale says, going as if to grab her shoulder before stopping. A good choice, because she swings her gaze to both Wyll and Karlach, challenging. 

"I wanted to ask then," Shadowheart says, "and you didn't let me. So we're stuck doing it now." She turns back to him, poised, pretty green eyes cut to the bone. "Tell me, Astarion. Why couldn't I heal you?"

Ah.

"It's hardly something to worry about after the fact," Astarion says thinly. "All my grisly bits are returned, all yours kept safe. Do we have to do this?"

Karlach grits her teeth. Within the sling, her arm tenses. "Look," she says. "I get you don't want to do this with us, but we have to know. Let's just hack it out now, yeah?"

"You really don't," Astarion says, pointed. "The list of have-to-have conversations tend to revolve around the actual goddess we're challenging, or perhaps whose job it is to help with dinner. This is not that."

"This is us trying to keep our friend safe," Karlach tries, a pleading note. "C'mon, mate—just let us know so we can heal you later. That's it. Then you can kip on back to your tent and sleep."

Friend is laying it on thick. But her tadpole is an acidic cloud of worry, blue-black distillation. Karlach wants to know. So do most of the others. It's just that their version of wanting doesn't line up with his. 

Astarion meets Shadowheart's gaze. Her eyes are so green, mired against the surrounding dark. She knows. Of course she already knows. She tried to heal him, saw the tattered but bloodless stretch of his wounds, is familiar with undead. 

She knows. She's asking anyway. 

So he saves Karlach's life, gets himself torn to shreds for the trouble, and now they want to interrogate him? Fine. Fucking fine. He'll make them regret it. 

"But of course," he says, magnanimous. Sharp enough to hurt. "Ask away. I'll be an open book."

Karlach's tadpole goes glassy. Regret, dosed with an odd sediment of confusion. But Shadowheart takes this all in fucking stride and moves to center stage, stance braced. Performatively focused. 

"Minthara broke your neck," she says. "I was able to reconnect your vertebrae, but you didn't wake, and it took three healing potions before you even started to move. It should have been a quarter of that with how many healing spells I was casting. Why?"

The tadpole grants him sunlight and running water. The tadpole removes regeneration. But Astarion's healing patterns follow roughly the same convention—in lieu of flesh that seeks to remain hale by itself, he only heals when he has blood. When he has something to replace what a dead heart cannot pump.

Astarion hasn't bled for weeks. There are seven empty bottles, or the memories of them, just shattered glass now.  

"I wasn't healing because I had no blood, dear," he simpers, smiling wide. "It's rather a situation of cause and effect—I can't heal what I don't have. And here I thought clerics were supposed to be learnèd types."

A ripple of something across the plane of his shield. He ignores it. 

Shadowheart's lips purse. She takes needling far better now than she did at the beginning. "Vampires can't drink the blood of undead things."

"Of course we can't," Astarion snaps. "Otherwise we'd all hole up, feeding off each other, and how could we be monsters then?" He laughs a little like a drowning sparrow. "Although, I suppose we can—an acquired taste. It just does nothing."

The kennels were a gladiatorial arena, whenever Cazador was in the mood. Dalyria tastes like rat poison, clinical and chemical; Petras like regular bile. Violet is a fine vintage, fury making her a touch akin to drinking hellfire. Per the others' comments, Astarion tastes like rotting vegetation. They were ever so polite to describe it in detail. 

Her jaw tightens. "There is nothing here to feed you."

"Not at the moment, no." He says it blithe, rote. "Merely a miscalculation, on my part. I thought we'd be out of here faster."

Karlach's mind roils, stark-bright. "Why–"

She draws off. Astarion appreciates that. At least she doesn't do them both the dishonour of asking why he didn't say. 

He smiles at her. "Because it didn't matter, love. Vampires get prickly without a good draught, but we don't die. And I will die if we don't trot on off to kill the Absolute, so I thought that took precedence over mere appetite."

The strangest pain passes through everyone's mind. As though they had gotten so comfortable with hiding his monstrosity that they'd actually forgotten it. 

Astarion keeps smiling. "We were in a bit of a dry spell, as it was. Only hulking shadow-blights and the like instead of woodland critters. But now I'm topped up and ready for the road, good as new."

For some idiotic fucking reason, they don't fall over themselves switching to the far more important matter of pushing on before Minthara's blood leaves him. Just sit there, some crescendoing shame. Terribly self apologetic.

"You helped me," Wyll says, quiet. "You helped me free myself from her and I didn't–"

If Astarion was walking, he would have stumbled; Wyll's tadpole bleeds guilt, heavy as a current. Even though he has exactly nothing to be guilty over. Astarion's not– he'd be more insulted if they had noticed, honestly. He's a marvelous fucking liar, two hundred years to hone his trade, and they're all pithy mortals who wander around with their hearts on their sleeves. He didn't want them to weigh the cost of keeping a vampire spawn in the party if they knew. But their pity is not a simple thing to bear, either.

Bewilderment pushes a strange honesty to his tongue. "I didn't want you to see," he says. "Tried very hard to the contrary, actually, and I'm exemplary at my job. Don't take it personally."

Karlach exhales something wet and pained. "Hard not to, when a guy you're traveling with to save the world won't tell you he's starving."

"Not starving," Astarion corrects. "Just– peckish."

Starvation comes from the tomb; comes from the beginning of it, until starvation was lost to the first few months and he went much, much further beyond. But that is neither here nor there. This is hunger at best. 

Wyll, damn him, looks staggered under some invisible weight, eyes hazed. Tears against infernal fire look a touch out of place, but he's rather so unfairly handsome it does nothing. Astarion fixates on some inconsequential tongue of flame instead of the man's face. Time to get them back on the point. 

"And peckish I am no longer," Astarion reminds. "Hands on arrows, daggers, everything that could be necessary. We can continue our merry tramp on to Moonrise as soon as we quit wasting our time with this."

No one jerks to their feet, because they're all idiots. Because they'd rather languish around talking instead of solving these godsdamned problems.

It's very simple. The faster they get to Moonrise, the faster Astarion can get back to the surface. 

So long as he finds some way to sever the commands. So long as he finds a way to untether himself from the cerebral ground he is built upon; so long as he can unmoor himself into distant space instead of four phrases more engraved on his marrow than his own fucking name. 

That is not something to think about now. That is something to think about later and alone.

So Astarion shrugs. Splays his hands as though unbothered, open reasoning. Makes the mistake of glancing at Karlach. 

She's curled in on herself, pressed so taut her skin blanches pink where the straps of her sling cut in. Steam around her eyes, her ports.

"We didn't know," she says. It's hardly a whisper. "I swear it, fangs—we should've noticed, but we didn't. We didn't know."

"Again," he reiterates, stilted, "I did not want you to know. This is– just an indicator of how well I can lie. That's it."

Strangely, this doesn't seem to make her feel better. The mental air between them is a pit to throw loose shadows in. 

Astarion looks away before he has to think about that. 

And in doing so, he turns to Shadowheart, who is watching him. Her mind is curiously still, a bowl held steady so the water doesn't ripple. Focus. 

"I see," she says, a cautious note. As though she'd pried open a geode and found something sharper than simple crystal. "It wasn't meant to be an attack, Astarion. Just confirmation. Here."

Then she reaches behind the stump she's sat on and hands him a satchel. 

Leather, strapped, large-ish. Astarion takes it gingerly. Not particularly heavy, though not empty. In the part of his mind that tries to give a shit, it looks vaguely familiar. He holds it away from his chest.

The others are watching him. Hesitation. Anticipation. 

"It won't bite," Shadowheart says. "Though you're welcome to do so in return."

Okay. Okay?

Astarion undoes the latch and pulls the flap aside—judging by the plume of scents billowing out to greet him, this used to be Gale's spice satchel, because of course the wizard prioritized that in this mad jaunt to save the world. It has loops on the inside, stitched right to the leather, holding five glass bottles. They're full of some dark, viscous liquid. 

Blood. 

Astarion is holding five bottles of blood. 

He isn't breathing and something catches in his throat regardless.

From across the campfire, Gale perks up as though on cue. "We collected them as soon as we were able—two from the hobgoblins, three from the drow," he says, nodding at some meaningless point in the distance, entirely oblivious to Astarion's inbound strangulation. "They're spelled for preservation, though there's a chance we didn't gather it fast enough; terribly difficult to estimate when blood has gone sour without any experience in the matter." 

They gathered blood. They gathered blood from corpses. From people.

"Do tell me if I've missed the mark on any of the bottle enchantments," Gale continues. "I've layered some for anticoagulation and warming, but I will admit to never interviewing a vampire about their preferences. I'm hoping we can assemble a list of safe strategies and metering before we begin collecting rounds of blood ourselves."

Astarion doesn't move. But the hand holding the satchel is shaking. 

"Better to offer this as an excess to get you stable before bleeding ourselves," Shadowheart says. She's watching him. "We can spare a bottle in the morning, then another in the afternoon should we have kept out of fighting. Is that good?"

"We'll do more if you need it," Wyll corrects, holding his gaze steady. "You won't starve, Astarion. I swear it."

"Not by our watch, now that we know to watch for it," Gale says. 

They're saying words, but none of them connect. He can't comprehend what is happening. He is holding five bottles of blood, enough their weight drags at his arm, bound in a leather satchel and given. 

"Fangs," Karlach says, gentle. "Is that enough for you?"

"It is," he manages. He's more than a touch hysterical. This isn't distance. This isn't him lashing out and them backing up. He insulted and derided and spat at them less than a minute ago and now he's clutching bottles of blood in shaking hands. 

Is this– he saved Karlach when he attacked Minthara. Is this their… reminder to keep doing that? Even to him that doesn't make sense, not with the genuine nerves in Wyll's voice. A reward? A bribe? Is there some reason for them to do this?

He clutches for that last shred of understanding, after two months of hiding all his hunts in the distant woods and forgoing smiling too wide. They hate him. He knows that. He bit Wyll and crushed Karlach and made himself so great a frustration they'd focus on that instead of commanding him further—they hate him. They must. All masters hate, which he can see with Cazador and Zariel and Mizora and Mystra and Vlaakith and Shar; this is the indisputable fact of masters as much as it is for slaves. 

There are five bottles of blood in his hands. 

"What," he starts, swallows, continues, "do you want?"

Karlach jerks as though struck. Astarion backpedals, waving the hand that isn't clutching the satchel. "I mean what do you want to do next—plenty to do, plenty to travel. I'm deeply appreciative, yes, you lovely people you, but anxious to continue on–"

"Fangs," she says. Wilted, in a way. "Fangs. Astarion. We want you to be full. That's it."

It isn't. It can't be. Things can't be this simple. They never have before. 

He's missing the etiquette here. Something to tell them he's grateful, he wants this, though he cannot fathom what they want in return.

"Thank you," Astarion manages. It is a fumbling, graceless ineloquence. 

"Just–" Karlach sighs, bone-deep and weary. "Tell us, okay? We're here to help."

He stares at her. 

There was a rapier in his gut and now enough offered blood to heal it; a monster hunter traveling with their group and now a hand extended. The promise of blood that is more than a rotten rat upon silver cutlery. 

"I will," Astarion says, and cannot figure out, for the first time, whether he's lying or not. 

-

Nothing becomes five.

Chapter Text

When Astarion emerges from his tent the next morning, cautious and jumpy and fearing running into another party member more than any enemy, he finds it quiet. Another day set aside for healing, it seems. There's still a lingering aroma of stain and ruin in the air, bandages not yet burned and curse-blackened corpses slicking up the place. A grisly set for an amateur production. 

His ears flick, tadpole coiling. Three in their tents—Gale, Wyll, Shadowheart—and no noises otherwise. Perhaps sleeping? Is it night? Or what they've been using as night in this sunless land?

But he is here, and there is blood in his stomach, and there is blood in his tent, and there is the promise of more. 

He looks again at the fire, this time with purpose. Watches the orange tongues curl about each other, a dance of something the darkness cannot smother, though it tries. Feels his hands curl then settle. Feels his breath quicken then slow. 

His senses must be truly shot to the hells because Karlach manages to get within ten feet before he notices her, despite the abundance of thumping footsteps and general sky-blocking bulk she's hauling around. Astarion tries to keep his flinch at a minimum. 

"Looking good, mate," Karlach offers, flashing him a thumbs-up with her unslung arm. Astarion smiles back on instinct. He thinks his eyes are white-ringed and too wide, searching for something he can't see. 

But Karlach doesn't comment. Doesn't pull him down into another interrogation, where the ground is fissured beneath his feet and the commands made immaterial and moved. 

Okay. Is he– are they back to normal? Are they simply going to leave that dog to its grave and not talk about it? He's fine with that, he is, but gods he'd like to know for certain if they expect nothing to change. Something has changed, that's very fucking apparent, but– what has changed? In what ways must he bend?

"Looking better than good, actually," Karlach continues. She gives him an appreciative once-over; he drags himself back to the conversation. "Got more over your bones; did you drink one?" 

The bottles. The blood. He didn't drink in front of them—one remaining dignity—but he nods slightly. Cautious. 

She hums, head tilted. "Which didja have?"

Astarion blinks at the question—fumbles it, like something too hot to hold. "Er– one of the drow, I believe."

She nods as though he'd said something insightful. "Huh," she says. "What'd it taste like? Guessing… mushrooms, or some shit. Poison?"

What?

"Not quite," he manages. He could lie, she cannot compel truth from his tongue in the way of before, but still he tries to find the line between monster and gourmand. "An aftertaste of iron and hickory. They were some sort of fighter." 

Genuine shock. "You can taste that?"

"Flavours of it."

Her eyes crease when she smiles. "You'll havta tell us what we all taste like, then. I think Wyll volunteered first, practically cat-fought to get to the front of the line, but I'm right behind. Will just need to cool it down first so nobody gets scorched." A pause. "Well. After I'm healed. Shadowheart'd throw a fit if I bleed for you when I haven't finished shrugging off the battle first."

There are five bottles of blood in his tent and she's talking about more. There is a command not to bite people and she's talking about cutting open a vein. 

Karlach perks up. "Oh!" She turns to the habitual stack of items they gather after each fight to either be claimed or abandoned when next they move camp, padding over to shuffle through the pile. Her tail flicks back and forth. 

"A-ha," she declares, straightening up; a set of armor is pinched in her free hand, grasping only metal so the leather doesn't smoke. Interwoven, laced through with lingering enchantments, a whiff of iron. Minthara's. Alongside rather tacky spider decoration is a burnt hole over the breast and little scrapes from his claws as a delightful reminder of what transpired. 

"Eyeballed the size, but I think it'll fit," Karlach says. "Right hells of a time getting it off; this is the real shit."

She hands it to him. Astarion takes it in numb hands; runs a finger over the seams, how the lengths all come together. Too large for him in height and density, but garments are rarely a monolith to be worn in a single way—a feverish night or two and he can stitch this into something fitting of his size. Refashioned into more defense, better defense. A further protection against the big, grand world that is so very full of things that want to fucking kill him. 

Karlach gives him blood. Gives him armour. 

He drags his eyes up from it, slow, like he isn't sure what he'll see on the other side—but it's just her, staring back, eyes twin spokes of flame. The cast over her arm is bone-white, ports reflecting the firelight. She's smiling, hesitant but open. 

She stands there and he stands there and he should be shaking but isn't. 

"Nothing changed," Astarion says, and means it to be a statement but his voice cracks with nerves. "Nothing changed, right?"

Karlach's eyes soften. "Doesn't have to, fangs," she says, nodding at the wider camp. "It's just what you want it to be."

He wants it to be known. Gods, of anything and everything, he just wants to know what's expected of him so he can do it; the unknown is always worse than the known. He would have gladly followed Cazador into the kennels than be taken to the mausoleum; receive the flaying knife over the commanded blindness. 

Astarion watches the party with the growing, terrifying realization he does not understand what they want from him.

Oh, he knows the broad strokes, the ones all masters wear for all their methods differ; they want obedience. He gives it to them, whether through the fawning terror of the first tendays or the bitter asshole of those after—or the half-between fragile state he's in now, where he hackles like an alleycat but soothes the others when they look in need of it. Still he gives them obedience, and still they ask for him to be strong and capable and fighting their fights. 

Only now they give him blood. Only now they watch him bite a person and do nothing. Only now are they changing the rules, and he cannot understand what to do about that. 

Better not to think. Better not to acknowledge. Better to make it something simple instead of colossal; an alteration over a deviation. 

Astarion smiles at her; works to make it gentle instead of tense. "We're already a well-oiled machine," he says, half a shrug. "Why change a working thing?"

He can see the flash of regret—why didn't you tell us?—but she doesn't give voice to it, just nods. "You got it, fangs. Up to you."

Astarion clutches at Minthara's armour and the feeling of blood pooling in his gut. His tadpole curls unpleasantly behind his eye; waits to be used, to devour him once more. But he has the strength to hold it back. He has been given the strength to survive. 

Nothing changed?

Doesn't have to.

He can do this. He can still do this. 

-

When the others wake and return and meander back to camp, Astarion slips back to his tent—and leaves the flap open. He settles himself with Minthara's armour in his lap, all the world like a tailor with a deadline fast approaching, but his ears are pricked and his attention honed. 

The party talks. They talk about important things and meaningless things. They glance at him as they walk past, as though confirming his presence, and Shadowheart does haul him out for a round of healing diagnostics with a simmering thought that she can no longer trust him when he says he's fine, but then she lets him go after a few spells. His clothes stay on. Her touch is clinical, shallow. She never holds him hard enough he can't escape. 

He continues stitching, steady but slow. He is watching the party more than they are watching him. This is a curious revelation to ponder. 

As the others settle down for proper rest, discussions of heading out in the morning on their tongue, Wyll walks over. He doesn't declare anything, eyes soft. His tadpole still simmers with a malignant guilt, one absent from his face—like the fear from the beach, so long ago. Like a hero, only he seems more than one, now. Something altogether more human. More real. 

What had Karlach said? Wyll's nice enough to give you space.

Astarion blinks up at him, a smile on his lips, ready for anything. For a rapier or a needle or a condemnation. 

Instead, Wyll sets a bottle beside his tent. It is full of thick, dark blood. 

"I hope that's enough," he says, a fastidious little movement to make sure it doesn't fall over. "Karlach volunteered for the morning, so we can experiment with cooling it down. Gale hopes that a ray of frost will do the trick, if you're available to gauge temperature."

"Yes," Astarion says, not moving, as though Wyll will take the bottle back if spooked. "Yes. That's perfect. Thank you."

Wyll nods. "I'm glad," he says, then pauses, as though he wants to add more—but doesn't. Just nods again, still that warm little smile, and walks away. 

Astarion watches him, too. 

-

Eventually, the shadows fall away for silver. 

It's a garish fucking silver, near bleached, and against the darkness Astarion would love it enough to swear fealty. It crests over a distant hill, a monolith in the far reaches, a destination, a wayport—something to strive towards. And gods do they strive; it could have been years in the darkness, no way to tell passing time, and this seems a beacon for a way out. Even Gale manages to pick up the pace to a respectable trot. 

Astarion matches him; matches everyone, without his head swimming or thoughts congealing or body breaking down. There is blood in his stomach, lapping through his veins, filling him. Strength. A chance.

At his side, the satchel is pressed tight over Minthara's armour, hugged close as though a lover. There are bottles within that have blood. A tenday since the revelation and still the thought is a foreign beast, so unfamiliar as to be a curio. He cannot quite believe it, though he holds the truth of its existence in his hands. Cannot understand why.

He doesn't think about that. Just marches on with the others, striving for a goal unattainable and this shivering, ephemeral hope that he can still save himself. 

As they get closer, it just gets bigger; swallowing what horizon is visible in the grey, a perfect half-sphere with a rippling, mottled surface of grey-silver-grey. It's almost like Astarion's shield, if it was a thousand times larger and tangible and magical and also not like that at all. 

Near simultaneously, the party draws to a stop a little before the oh-so-approachable bridge, because want can batter up against paranoia but it isn't likely to win. 

"Alright," Karlach says. She's squinting at the thing, hand on the sheath of her greataxe. Healed enough her cast is gone, though she massages it when she thinks no one is looking. "Isn't more shadowy stuff, but looks too damn good to be true. What're you thinking?"

"I–" Gale hesitates, fingers lacing. "I don't know what that is," he admits, though it looks physically painful to do so. "Nothing arcane about it, not in the manner of the Weave—likely divine in nature, then. Shadowheart?"

She is glaring at the thing, hackles drawn and sneer in place. "Selûne's work."

Ah. There it goes. 

Wyll and Karlach glance at each other. 

"We could keep striking out," Karlach says casually. "But I'm thinking a place like that's gotta have a bed and some warm food, and I'd lie about damn near anything to get a load of that. Gods, a nice pint with a real meal—and a fire where one of us doesn't have to keep watch."

The manipulation is not so much hamfisted but force-fed, yet Shadowheart melts without a fight. "Maybe we could investigate," she concedes, staring at the globe with a vague want. "If nothing else, I would revel in stealing supplies from Selûnites."

"Atta girl," Karlach says, grinning. Shadowheart flushes ear to ear. 

There's a bridge, one clattered and interwoven with spikes and spear-pits; not a friendly welcoming in any regard. Tooth and trial, should it come to that. Astarion feels a tension spread, puddle-shallow, through six minds; hands put on hilts, palms sparking with light. 

They've been attacked a few too many times in their camp to trust what looks like civilization in this accursed land. 

"Keep ready," Karlach says, a low murmur. She hasn't drawn her greataxe, but that's only because she is a walking weapon herself, heat like a dragon's heart in her chest. In the darkness of the curse, the embers through her teeth are death. "No surprises, yeah?"

"With any luck," Wyll agrees mildly, considering he has both his rapier half-drawn and a swirling red-black making a home over his arm. He stands beside her, staring over the bridge with mismatched eyes and the stance of a warrior; even knowing his pact will be broken, he uses his powers with free abandon. Too strong to let fade. Too familiar, maybe, after however many years he's had to bend his neck to Mizora's claws. 

They cluster at the end of the bridge, which stretches over a dried gorge that had once housed a river and now lingers with bones. Karlach huffs and starts walking forward—she scorches little pockmarks over the wood even through boots, too bright against old timber. The others fan out to follow her, standard formation, Gale and Shadowheart protected in the center with Lae'zel covering the back, Astarion to the right and Wyll to the left. An arrowhead to pierce those that challenge them, which is fucking everything in this hellscape of a land, and as the glowing orb grows brighter and brighter, Astarion's hackles only rise. It is rare that something so seemingly genial matches its appearance. His ears prick, every sense on edge. Heartbeats, somewhere close but muffled. They are not alone. 

There's a gate, one tall and barricaded; a fall back for the bridge, though it's odd that it wasn't already set up for a siege with the shadowlings all around. Slits along the top for arrows, palistrades, the works—similar to the goblin camp, actually. Is this the Moonrise Tower they heard whispers of? The globe certainly matches the name. Astarion hopes it isn't, if only because he isn't up for picking a fight with cultists now. A night of rest first, if they could. He isn't thinking about the Absolute and her power. He isn't thinking about anything but stepping forward with hands on his daggers. 

Then he doesn't have to think, because the gates thunder open. 

Half a dozen archers peer warily out at them, all tucked behind the globe; their faces are warped by it, just hazy silhouettes. But one figure strides forward, stepping through—the light clings to her for a moment like smoke, streaming off her shoulders, until she clears it and is in the darkness with them. 

Half-elven, lean, with dusted green armour and twin scimitars over her back. She's got a wiry look about her aged face, eyes sharp enough to cut; Astarion knows in an instant she is not one to be trifled with. As though he was in any such mood to do the trifling. 

He cracks his shield, just for a moment; there's a faint presence from her, a stirring of similarity, but not… quite. It's a little off. Enough to be confusing. 

Then Astarion nearly flinches as a bolt of pure, unfiltered excitement explodes from Karlach. 

"Oh my gods," she whispers, tail kicking up a whirlwind with the speed it's wagging. "Bloody fucking hells, that's Jaheira."

The woman keeps walking forward to meet them, archers shuffling to keep her out of their line of sight. She's entirely fearless, which makes sense if she truly is the hero Karlach says she is. Astarion wouldn't know. He didn't exactly have much ability to check the daily news under Cazador, but the name is vaguely familiar. Missing an accolade or two, else an epithet. 

The hero—Jaheira—stops less than ten feet away, hands loose and posture unbothered. If their arrival bothers her, she doesn't show it, focus keen. And there is a touch of power that he can see now, more than a whisper; perhaps it is her greyed hair or creased eyes but Astarion can feel the seen years in the pulse of her heartbeat, a steady, unyielding thing. 

She doesn't seem as though of Moonrise Towers, nor of the Absolute. But this feeling equally does not seem like she will be a welcoming host. 

"Wyll," Karlach half-shrieks, looking as though she would cling to him like a limpet if only it wouldn't burn him alive. "Wyll that's Jaheira–"

"You know my name," the woman says dryly, accent thick and amusement thicker. "Though I believe an assassin should be more composed, no? Hard to strike fear into the hearts of victims when you are puppy-eyed and bright."

Karlach blinks. The echoes of her confusion ripple outward. "Assassin?"

"I would say I did not know that concept as well, if I were one," Jaheira notes. "But this is little matter. There have been too many lives lost because of should-not and why-not in these days."

Behind her, the archers shift anew. Bows creak, fletching vibrates. 

Something in Astarion's gut lurches, spilling around blood and bile. His relationship with dread is intimate—he knows when it is soon to come. It is now. 

His tadpole slips out, battering against the others: she's going to–

Jaheira crunches a heel into the stone. "Capietur!"

Vines erupt at her call. 

They surge up like snakes, fanged and ensaring—coil around each of them, biting through stone, through armour, dark as the shadows around. Through the line, one by one, fast– done. Captured. Chained. 

Astarion is only distantly aware of the others crying out, caught within their own briars; the world has shrunk to only that which weaves over his body. Minthara's armour holds strong but much like begging, it does not stop the torment, only postpones it. The vines hold him. He twists, writhes—tears at himself, gasping, shuddering movement, and cannot get free. 

Too long in its absence but now the fear-fear-fear builds to a wailing pitch inside him, battering against the inside of his shield; only the pretense catches him on the very edge of baring his fangs, of being a monster visible instead of a monster sheltered. The thorns near the base have wood growing over the stems. It would not be terribly hard for Jaheira to stake him. 

Astarion isn't breathing. But still his body makes him pant, airless and ragged, like a mutt with a too-tight collar. 

Jaheira hums, contemplating them. Her fist is lit up in chartreuse, crackling against the dark; she holds the spell effortlessly. The archers behind her need to do nothing. 

The party is less her and more him. "We're not fucking assassins," Karlach snarls, wrenching at her arms; the vines are already smoldering, entirely unable to combat the hells. Her eyes are orange-black, shadow spreading wings behind her horn, teeth bared; hero worship up until captured, and now she burns. "We're fighting the Absolute and looking for any fucking help at all!"

"Convenient," Jaheira says. "And what does fighting the Absolute have to do with this?"

She pads over, seemingly uncaring as Karlach tears her left arm free, and inspects her. One hand maintains the spell—the other reaches into a satchel slung over her shoulder, flipping it open and pulling out a smooth glass jar.

Within, a tadpole writhes. 

Oh. Something about that tugs Astarion back into cognizance, thoughts skittering at his heels like kicked hounds. His own tadpole twitches in interest, biting anew, and somewhere in his bag the third twists. Like to like. 

He still isn't breathing, no sense of the world beyond what tethers him to the ground, but he finds the headspace to glare at Jaheira. What in the bloody fucking hells does she have that for?

Jaheira, unbothered, lifts the jar alongside Karlach's head. The little bugger thrashes, pulled taut, tendrils whipping the interior of its glass prison. Jaheira hums. 

Then she goes to Wyll and repeats it—for a wizened elder hero, she doesn't seem that fucking ancient as she deftly moves through her own vines to incline the jar towards each of their heads. It always goes electric at the proximity, and Jaheira nods as though confirmation. She hardly seems surprised. Like she knew it from the moment they arrived. 

Astarion cleaves through his tongue as she steps over to him, the last to be checked. To the left, Karlach bellows something infuriated, wood splintering—a distant, mercurial sound. All he can see is Jaheira. 

The hero taps the edge of the jar. Its occupant stretches itself to the breaking in its attempt to reach him, battering on the glass; then angles down, towards his pack. He doesn't look away. Holds her eyes in his own like she's prey to be frozen upon observation. 

She just tilts her head to the side and slips the jar back into her bag. Clicks her tongue—a moment before tearing free, a new set of thorns wraps around Karlach, ashes already piled at her feet. She lets out a wordless roar, tadpole like a livewire; it spills her rage into the rest of them, scalding, incandescent. Astarion can't detangle himself from it fast enough. He's shaking. 

"As I suspected," Jaheira says. It shouldn't be possible for someone actively caging six adventurers in a cursed land to look bored, but she damn near yawns. "You are all True Souls. Do they truly lack the creativity to try again in a different matter? It is a pitiful effort."

Lae'zel snarls—she bucks against the thorns, heedless of blood spilling down her chest. "We are not followers of ghaik," she spits. "We have fought them from sunlight to shadow and back again to fight them—you will not stop us."

Shadowheart seemingly can't pick a target to glare at and just tries to work her arms free. Gale yanks heedlessly at those binding his fingers together. "We truly aren't," he tries, only a thin hitch to betray his unease. "We are infected, yes, but entirely not on their side; as much the opposite as can be, in fact." Something lurches across his tadpole before rolling over to go still. "If you will just let us talk this out, I'm sure it will all become clear!"

"Words are words," Jaheira says. "It is very easy to say them without any meaning; and I have found meaning enough in your parasites, I believe."

Gale grits his teeth. Wyll's tail lashes at the air. 

This is going from bad to worse. Astarion is normally the one who opens doors for them—but the doors he faces tend to be rather flimsy, goblin-protected things where a flexing of psionic power rips the bloody things off their hinges or a conquered monastery that just wants to see a collection of slaves. Not… this. Whatever the fuck this is. 

The thorns are digging into his arms. It's getting hard to think. 

A roar—Karlach rips her arms free, embers scattering and smoke pealing through her ports. She inhales sharply, like blood on her tongue, over her tadpole, but doesn't charge; just stands there, chest heaving, fists white-knuckled. 

"Don't fucking trap me again," she bites out. The shadow continues to grow in her eyes. "I'll stay. Just– don't."

Jaheira regards her. Something like consideration. 

"We are not True Souls," Wyll cuts in. He isn't fighting, just sagging, staring her dead in the eyes. "We were infected aboard a nautiloid, some tendays back, and we have been working to heal ourselves—then we discovered the machinations of the Absolute, and have instead been fighting her and her cult."

Only Wyll could use machinations in an attempt to convince an old bat of a hero for freedom. Gods, they're all dead. 

"Of course," Jaheira says dryly. "And it is merely favourable fortune that leads you to my doorstep? Perhaps you have brought a lucky star of your own to move through the dark without losing yourself?"

"A shitload of torches," Karlach says. Her voice is still a growl, baritone and heavy. "That and knowing if we didn't get to Moonrise, we'd all fucking die. Pretty good motivation."

Jaheira considers that. Scans them again—then her gaze flicks down, because they aren't six but seven. It seems the useless hound didn't amount to being giftwrapped in thorns, Scratch perfectly unharmed but for how his ears droop. 

He's whining, actually, tail between his legs. Jaheira barks something at him, because this day can't get any fucking worse, and Scratch responds in kind; she gestures for him to enter the moonsilver shield, but the mutt whines again, ears falling, and sits by Karlach's side. He paws pathetically at the ashes. 

This, for some fucking reason, gets Jaheira's attention more than anything they've said. She stares at the beast like he's got an entire mystery tied up in the pebble he uses for a brain. 

Then she looks at them, more curious than before. 

When she raises a hand, no more vines follow, only a light thumbing of her chin. Her smile is that of a panther, much too ancient for this world of swords and spears. 

"I have not made it as many years as I have without distrusting mysterious strangers," Jaheira says. "And your alibis are appreciatively mysterious, rest assured—but I have fought beside unexpected guests as well, and came out the other side. This, too, has allowed me my years."

A further curl of magic. Behind her, the globe thrums. 

"Thankfully for your secrets and my time, I am willing to hear out your little tale, and if you are lying you will be in little state to cause harm." She smiles, wry. "Unless you are wishing to forgo pretense and battle it out now? More entertaining for me."

The line of archers do not lower their bows. Arrows creak in the windless land. 

"We are happy to tell you our story in detail," Wyll says. "If you release us."

Jaheira looks at him. Then she waves her hand, palm facing the earth. The thorns slip away—Astarion twists as they unwrap from his arms, slipping begrudgingly away like rejected snakes. Blood to blood, raw-red skin; he has enough blood to bleed. It slithers down Minthara's armour, the sluggish path of rain in the dirt. There are more bottles in the satchel. There is equally another bottle with a tadpole. 

No longer captured. The druidic magic gone, thorns pulled from his undead heart; he starts breathing again, thin, reedy things he tucks beneath his lips and cradles. Enough to be visible. Enough to seem alive. 

Only then does he crack his shield back, just a hair. The party all seems pissed, Lae'zel in particular like a looming maelstrom. At least now they're on the same page. 

But Wyll is the one who nods to Jaheira, considering Karlach is kicking away lumps of scorched vines like they've murdered her family. "Thank you," he says, much too politely for Astarion's feelings on the matter. "Can we come inside?"

Jaheira clicks her tongue. She gestures to the moonlit globe behind, to say nothing of the archers. "This is the Last Light Inn, our little paradise in this neck of the woods. Very cheap property taxes. It is a home and a haven for all of us; to allow you inside is more than a roof and shelter. The shield is not merely a guard against nightmares; it will house no thoughts of violence for me or mine. Rather—it will house them, but not for very long, nor very cleanly. Do you understand?"

Gale perks right the fuck up as though it's a red carpet instead of a threat. "Is it a combination of abjuration and divination? To both sense intent and act upon it?"

"It is a thing I am not going to explain until you have passed through," Jaheira says dryly. "Prepare your questions all you like, wizard, but you are walking through it first. There is no other way."

Well. That's fucking cheerful. Astarion has a few violent thoughts kicking around for the blood that weeps down his front, but that is a dangerous thing to be thinking, and thus he stops. Washes it away like sand upon the shore, neither origin nor ending. Astarion is a blank sheet to be written on. To lap grime off his master's boots without ever tasting the filth.

This is an easy mantra to become. To erase anything else beneath the cool, glassy waters of a lake, where Cazador could ask questions and receive nothing but what he wanted in return. Astarion is very good at remaking himself. 

There is a skill to being less than a person, really. 

The others gather themselves up, packs hitched higher on shoulders and wary looks exchanged. Karlach is still breathing heavily, smoke through her teeth, but Wyll moves in close to her side with a murmur of something soft. His tadpole sings blue comfort. 

Jaheira steps to the side of the gate, inclining her hand as though entrance to a patriar's gala. "Come with me. Good thoughts only, now."

Not good thoughts, actually. Merely the absence of those of a more reprehensible flavour. This is an easier ask than the alternative.

Astarion peels himself apart, pulls the fear and the rage down to the abyss, shuddering under his shield like pinned rats. Only the hunger sits outside, though his stomach is sated; he could drink all he wants and still hunger. It is a part of him. This is what he thinks of as he steps forward, as the silver washes over his skin and slithers into the cracks of his armour. 

It feels– cold, but not in the manner of an absence of heat; more like the cold of something being invoked. Astarion twists his hand so it splashes over his palm, pooling between the cup of his fingers. 

The shadows flee from it, not the dampening of a torch but actively fleeing; he inhales in a chest unhindered and shoulders unburdened. No more the creeping paranoia in the back of his mind, all the ways something seems to be lurking just out of view until this light chases it away. 

Gods, that's a hell of a kick. There's something to be said of how heroes can be acceptable if they provide solutions like this. 

And then he's through, not eviscerated on the spot or torn apart in some vindictive bolt of lighting—moonlight? Do gods try to have thematic methods of murder? A question for when Shadowheart is pleasantly catty—and Astarion stares at a camp in the middle of a hellscape.

Not a place particularly dreamy of countenance, scavenged wood and peeling extremities, but it mills with life and people and supplies. A quartermaster stacks her wares under a tarp and a central building looms with a morose sort of attitude over it all, windows lit up with internal flames. A stable with oxen, a courtyard of rangers. 

And Harpers. Really quite a lot of Harpers. Frankly, in more numbers than Astarion ever saw in Baldur's Gate, though whether that's an insult to them or to the city, he can't tell. 

Jaheira watches them all enter; in the light, her eyes gleam all the brighter, tracking how each reacts. Gale, the little bastard, pauses halfway through to poke and prod at it, a pale cantrip flashing in his palm. Shadowheart's mind surges with a whipthin crack and he obligingly keeps moving, hands up in surrender. She glares at him. 

Then they're six on the other side—and Scratch as well, so the little mutt didn't spontaneously combust from all the evil pent up inside, that's another loss on the cursed theory—and breathing clean air for the first time in tendays. 

"You all survived," Jaheira notes. "Congratulations. Though I wonder if your Sharran friend had a way of thinking around her violence."

Shadowheart switches her glare over and says nothing, which probably has to do with how both Karlach and Wyll fly into her brain to pull her back. Even Gale flutters on the edges with his habitual creased-parchment tone. 

"Sure did," Karlach says in response to the first statement, adjusting her arms, cracking her neck. Being in proper light seems to do wonders for her, regaining an inch or two he hadn't noticed she'd lost in a hunch. Still the shadow, but her eyes are orange again instead of black. "What now?"

"Now is for talking," Jaheira says. She nods to the surrounding Harpers, the battalion spreading around her back. "Separate them. Far reaches—none within range. Go beyond if you must."

Astarion grips his daggers. 

Karlach stops shaking out tension, engine pulsing. A warning note in her face. "What's that mean?"

Jaheira raises a brow. "You want to tell me your story," she says. "I find it works better when you are not all whispering to yourselves and picking the one with the most silver tongue to do the talking. I will hear the story from all of you in pieces, and we will hope you all tell the same thing, no?"

Oh, that's not great. Could even be upgraded to bad, if Astarion's in the mood for abject pessimism. Which he always is. 

This is a problem, this whole telling-the-truth-thing, because Jaheira is a fucking hero. Astarion is rather one heroes don't take kindly to, if the first few days off the beach prove anything. From then, at least. 

Now, the party– might trust him. Certainly are in some dead man's land between blood at his side and a command over his head. He's… more to them, in a way. Something he hasn't been before. 

But Jaheira? Not in the slightest. And for all Astarion is adept at the finer details of perjury, his version of the truth tends to work best when the party is there to crack apart heads should he fail. 

Karlach exhales, fire-tinged and boiling. "Not going to hurt us, yeah?"

"I would have done so already," Jaheira notes mildly. "Do you think mere vines are where my skills end? There is no need to separate you for the fighting in your current state, shadow-wearied and haggard. This is only to talk."

A huff, either Wyll or Gale. Lae'zel has slit-thin eyes. 

But it's Karlach that scans Jaheira, a note of something acrid and wanting. Her tadpole is glassy; whatever she's thinking, it boils through too complex to pick apart. 

"Alright," she says eventually. "We'll talk."

"Wonderful. I had hoped you would be the reasonable type of villain," Jaheira says. "Then come quickly and quietly. There are six stories to hear, and we are all busy folk."

Efficiency is king here, it seems. With a snap of some cantrip, the Harpers sweep forward to pluck and divide up the party. Karlach is taken first, kicking off a last smoking chunk of thorn before being surrounded by no less than four warriors who are all a head shorter. Lae'zel and Gale are next, taken off to far reaches along the shield, Wyll to the central building and Shadowheart somewhere past. 

A woman approaches him, face hidden beneath a half-mask and dark curtains of hair. Astarion combs down his bristle, unthreads the coiled wire. He is still not thinking. It is very deliberate, this lack of thinking, because this is what he's here for, isn't it? He wants help and he wants care and the shadowlands have neither. There is blood in his gut and expectations he can't puzzle out. There are a lot of confusing things in his life, now. The kennels were never kind, but they were predictable. Only so many ways things within them could go, and only one outcome. He doesn't think of it. He doesn't think of anything. 

The woman clicks her fingers. Astarion's focus arrows back in on her. 

"This way," she says, a low, monotone voice. Hard to see her face, nor her expression. All tucked and hidden away. 

He smiles, a little disarmingly, out of practice but still poised. Jaheira has a tadpole. That is both a threat and an opportunity; to free himself from more than the command not to bite people. To save the party and to save himself. 

When the woman begins walking, Astarion follows.

-

The room she takes him to is a cramped thing on the far side of the dome, close enough to the water's edge to hear it lapping through the walls. A bland and upsetting sort of building, like a boulder crammed into the hillside. 

Stone foundation, wooden struts, though he can't imagine where they got the wood in this desiccated landscape. It doesn't exactly look of the highest quality. Or of any quality at all. He could picture a hammer and watch it crumple. 

No windows, no furniture, only one door. Enough room he can map it out with a half dozen strides, too similar to pacing for his tastes. 

"Stay here," the Harper says. 

Astarion smiles at her. It barely hides his fangs. "Of course."

She purses her lips but steps out, closes the door; in a moment he is alone in this enclosed box. He hears the latch click. Because of course there's a latch. Hard to imagine why the Harpers would need this singular abandoned room in the middle of a curse-wrought land, but of course it needs a latch. 

Unfortunately for them, the party isn't much caged by latches, nor solid walls. Jaheira can interrogate them all she wants, but Astarion won't be risking his own neck by not confirming stories with the others first. 

He cracks open his shield, reaching out, and– 

Nothing. He can't feel the others. 

Whatever distance they've been taken to is enough to separate their connection; there's still something there, because all of their tadpoles are bound by the Astral Prism and thus more interwoven than most, so he knows they're still alive—but he can't talk to them. Can only feel a thin, wavering cloud of what might be emotions through a morning fog. 

Now, that's a mighty curious thing for Jaheira to know. And also terrifying. No ability to confer stories. No ability to check on safety. 

He is in a closed room made of stone and locked doors, and he is entirely alone. 

Astarion paces. It is the raw, stretched steps of an animal, and he digs claws into his wrist and tries not to; keeps thinking in cyclical mantras about freedom and tadpoles and the daggers at his sides. This is nothing like before; there is wood, and fresh scents, and the sound of water through the wall. He inhales and moves his limbs with nothing to cage them in. 

Fucking hells. He's in the light, no chittering vegetation waiting by the wayside to sharpen their thorns on his marrow, and the room is made of wood and missing that pleasant aroma distilled from centuries of torture. This is, quite literally, nothing. 

Far off through the cloud, a shimmering pulse of tension—then it fades away. The four other nodes in the dark stir but stay quiet. 

Astarion watches blood drip from his wrist, watery over the floorboards. He can't tell if the wound is from the thorns or himself. 

Then– a heartbeat, approaching. Just one, cluttered outsides back towards the center of the base. Through the cracks in the doorframe comes the scent of blood, thinking-creature-rich. 

Astarion smiles, making sure it's tugged up in the right way, grounding his feet to stop pacing. Arranges one arm over the other, hips cocked. Perhaps a little purse to his lips? Fine. He's feeling particular today. 

It takes much too long to remember he's shaking, and longer still to stop it.

The door opens, and Jaheira walks through. She swings it closed behind. Only the pulse of light from an enchanted broach on her cloak. It lights the underside of her eyes like a smoked pipe. 

Up close, she's shorter than he expected, wiry instead of muscular and with enough grey to feather a swan. Still two scimitars. Still the build of a hero. 

Astarion smiles at her. He's woven from tension but that is when he is at his most disarming, most desperate for a victim to bring back. She is not one Cazador would allow him to hunt, but the principles remain the same.

"Hello, lovely," he says. 

Jaheira snorts. "I appreciate that. You are not going to pretend you are not a vampire spawn, no?"

Astarion goes very still. 

"I wasn't planning on it," he says, too strained to be honest. "Rather foolish to attempt, with how I look; little doubt you've planted many of my kin in the dirt, hm?"

She shrugs. "Enough years and they all blend together. You wouldn't be the first, if that is what you are asking." Then she frowns, patting over her pockets and sides with more than a healthy injection of theatrics. "No stake. Perhaps you will just have to wait."

"I am happily inclined to do so."

"Then we are in agreement." She leans against the door, arms crossed, brows up. The picture of lazy indifference, if not for how he can feel her pulse like a stallion pawing at the race gate. "Start at the beginning, if you will. Feel no need to be succinct."

"Well, it rather began on a beach," Astarion says, and drawls through the story—stays to the broad beats, offhand remarks, general sweeps. The defanging and changing of leads turns into there was an incident with powdered ironvine and a hunter, but after I apologized for biting and the hunter turned his tail, we were the best of chums—and he makes no mention of what others in the party don't know. Anything with Gut, Korrilla, Cazador, his past; just the same paths the others have followed. Simple. Easy. 

Jaheira hums as he finishes, mouth dry and wrists sore from how many times he's waved them about. Despite the length of time, her eyes never strayed nor dulled. Her pupils seem slitted.

"Hm," she says. "You are telling the truth."

Astarion doesn't let his smile show gritted teeth. "Why, thank you. You certainly provided enough incentive."

"Or at least as close to the truth as you believe you can get away with. Oh, don't be so precious," she scoffs, when he goes tense. "It is not an accusation to care about. I am merely a bint old enough to tell when the lies are told through teeth much sharper than yours."

Astarion swallows and stays quiet. He isn't precious, not quite, but she has a way of speaking as though an offered palm and a second driving a dagger through his ribs, and he cannot tell which she will choose to use. 

Damningly, she lets the silence stretch with far more ease than he can muster, humming an old bard's tune under her breath. 

He breaks first, because he always does. "I don't suppose you wasted this much time with the others? Because then we'll never get done and I do want to rest."

A quirk rises to her lips. "You are the last I am speaking with," she says. "And it is not time wasted but time spent thinking. Five times have I heard this story, some pieces altered, some pieces omitted; not from lies, but from different sets of eyes. I am deciding what differences are worthwhile and which are not."

"I would hate to deprive you of such conversation, if you wish to discuss it."

Jaheira laughs—a crone's laugh, creasing her eyes and braising the air. "Ha! No, your conversation is not one I will be deprived; you seem fine for pillow talk, but not for storytelling. You are chatty in a very empty way. Your story is fine, to hit the same beats, but there is little of you in it."

His smile, already thin, goes flat. He spurs it back up. "I would be happy to regale you with my internal monologue, but I've heard it's terribly rude to swear before a lady."

"A lady is something I could be conceived as," she says, amused. "And you a rake, which makes us quite the pair. Soften your tongue to the point of infants and tell me of the goblin camp; you were the one to gain them access there, and who stayed while they killed the hobgoblin. How?"

Astarion genuinely blinks at that. He'd– well. He'd expected more along the line of the bite, or the disastrous party, or any other variant of weakness. But the party hadn't exactly been in the camp within him; perhaps it's too great a hole in their interconnected stories for her to accept. The others have moved on, consumed with greater concerns. They have nothing to speak of on Korrilla. On a scalped corpse that laughed with divine fire and asked who gave him orders.

He has nothing to elaborate on that, either. 

"My tadpole," Astarion says, tapping alongside his temple. "I've rather made the most use of it, and those goblins were followers of this Absolute; just a little demonstration and they bowed over. Hardly a difficulty, really. Had I been more dramatic, they would have rolled out a king's welcome."

Jaheira hums at that, tapping a hand along her arm. "You use the parasite," she says, not quite an indictment. "Does it use you? What does it cost?"

"A spot of headache and general feelings of woe. Nothing remotely like transformation." He is still smiling. "The others are more clever than me; kept theirs under lock and key. We decided it would be better for us as a whole if only I continued with the risk."

That isn't true. But it's close enough to it—something to soothe ruffle feathers and open a door. 

Jaheira has a tadpole. Jaheira knows how far to separate them so they can't communicate. 

Maybe if he can convince her he is wielding it for good, she could tell him how to use it for severing the commands. 

She watches him. She watches him still with the smile of before, loose and sardonic, but her eyes are cut like a gem. 

"If I asked whether you would be fighting or aiding the Absolute had the cards been played differently," she says, "would you have an answer?"

Astarion balks. "What?"

"No, that is a stupid question," Jaheira decides, waving a hand. "Pay it no mind. The real answer is that I believe you, or at least am close enough to believing you that I will no longer keep this group isolated. Come with me."

Then she peels off the door, turning; if she notices how his breath withers in his throat, she does not mention it. Simply presses her hand to the knob with a muttered word for it to spring open, silver light flooding through its maw. The globe overhead, no shadows beneath. 

Out she trots, head held high and no botheration on her back. Just iron. 

Astarion stumbles once as he follows, her final question still bouncing through his mind. What had she meant by that? And why?

He stops thinking about it. Only falls in alongside her, padding back through the camp. Old instinct makes him look everywhere at everything—the quartermaster has some fine wares that could perchance go missing should she turn away for two fucking seconds—and then focus up on the central building they're approaching. It's a great hall, sort of, if one settled down and had a kid with a tavern; open pavilion, sloping upper walls, but also a bar right in the middle. 

Perhaps these are more his type of people than he thought. Cut out all the heroism, and there could be a shared interest under the idiocy. He thinks of wine and ale and honeymead and nothing else. 

Jaheira wasn't lying because the other five are already within, nursing warm drinks and basking in the firelight. The hearth seems to cradle them in particular, draped around the low table, eyes half-lidded. Without the shadows as a backdrop, they seem more… alive, in a way. Karlach's engine pulses like an addition instead of the final bastion against the crawling darkness. Shadowheart seems less pale, less bleached out. Even Gale has an energy previously missing. 

Karlach perks up. "Fangs!" She calls, waving a hand; she gestures for Wyll and Lae'zel to part, leaving him an empty seat at the table. "C'mere, get something sharp—we've been treated to this right 'n fine red."

Well. A good thing Jaheira already noticed what he is. Likely that nickname wouldn't slide under attention otherwise. 

Astarion pads over, losing Jaheira in the throng of milling Harpers. "My savior," he offers, perching atop the stool. It's rickety but also marvelous to take the weight off for a second, elbows on the table. It's too small, everyone hemming in, enough he could brush arms and shoulders if he doesn't tuck himself in. But this is the seat given and the seat he will take. 

He accepts the glass pressed into his hands. It's a sour sort of vinegar, the way wine always is, but it burns on the way down and clears marble dust out of his mouth, so there's that.

"Jaheira, mate," Karlach says, damn near dreamy. She seems to have recovered remarkably well from the bondage and now regrets it didn't progress to something more. By the amused glance flicked between Wyll and Shadowheart, Astarion is catching the tail end of a long session of marveling. "Never thought I'd actually get to meet her, y'know?"

"She did capture you," Astarion points out, which feels like he shouldn't have to.

Karlach shrugs. The shadow is gone, her eyes only orange once more. "And we tramped on up with worms in our heads," she counters. "Better to be cautious, if a bit rough—just like all the stories. The stories! Gods, I was a wee tyke last time I heard a bard but I haven't forgot a damn one. Think she'd tell me about the Bhaalspawn?"

"Here's your chance," Shadowheart says, nodding. 

Pushing through the crowd is Jaheira, from wherever she'd disappeared. She looks just as unbothered as before. Entirely unflappable. 

"You are not True Souls," Jaheira declares, and blithely elbows her way in to claim the seat next to Wyll. The man freezes as though he's not sure whether to offer her his own or simply pop out of existence so she has more room, but she has no qualms reaching around him for the bottleneck to fill her own glass. 

"We aren't," Karlach agrees. "Trying to crush those fuckers into the dirt, actually. Which is also your goal? Right?"

Her tail keeps wagging under the table, little plumes of soot kicking up whenever it brushes the wooden struts. If she bleeds any more hero worship, the whole tavern is going to burn down. 

"I have been trying since before you were a bedding in a haybale, yes," she says. "But I have only called them True Souls for the past few months. Cultists and undead, before, yet now they have psionic abilities and a god they call savior. This illithid touch is a new addition."

That roughly lines up with the nautiloid's kidnapping, then. But a shade worrying that the cult's been kicking up and around for longer than that. 

"New?" Wyll echoes. "New for being Absolustists, or new for being illithid?"

"Both," she says, downing a quarter of her glass in one go. 

"Then I must ask," Gale says, in the tone of voice that implies this question has been rotating in his mind for at least an hour, "how do you know so much about the parasites? We've been journeying for quite some time, and I still haven't found so exact a limit on our distance to communicate."

Jaheira cocks a brow. "Are you asking whether I house one of my own?"

"Perhaps?"

Jaheira hums, taking another drink in a manner that suggests she has a vendetta against this particular glass. "I have had time to experiment," she settles on, deliberately light. "Half a tenday, around. When you are as creaky in the bones as me, that is plenty to learn."

Karlach perks up at that. "Like Halsin?"

Jaheira tilts her head, bird-like. "Who?" 

"He's a druid investigating them; got attacked by a drow with one and took it from the corpse, was poking at it. Dunno how much he learned, though." Karlach gestures somewhere vaguely above. "Had it in a bottle like yours."

Jaheira reaches for her bag, tugging out the jar; she sets it on the center of the table. The tadpole within lunges first for Wyll, the closest, and then for Lae'zel across—it's swimming through a syrupy liquid, movements sullen and slowed. 

Astarion thinks the one he has is stored in air, or something else of githyanki nature. Not that he's going to pull the fucking thing out now to check. 

Bad idea, that.

"I have studied this one as best it will allow me," she says, tapping a nail on the wood outside. It wriggles from the vibrations, four tendrils trying to pierce through glass. "But that is unfortunately little, when I will not remove it from the jar and have no illithid willing to show me the finer workings. But I have another method."

That's an odd phrasing for it. Astarion takes a long draught, eyes barely over the rim. 

Jaheira scans them—no tadpole, Astarion knows this, and still it feels as though she is peeling them down to the marrow in investigation. "You are not the first infected I have encountered," she says, "and I doubt you will be the last. And you are still not the first to attempt access to the Inn, just the first under kinder motives."

Astarion blinks. By the mental feeling, the others do as well. 

It's Wyll that slides the pieces together for all to hear. "You've captured a True Soul?"

"I have," she hums. "He came to me, and I kept him. An unwilling study participant, though perhaps he is more willing to be in a prison than a grave."

Everyone digests that. Astarion takes another drink in lieu of thinking. 

"A prisoner," Shadowheart says, a touch slower. "Is he still alive?"

A hum. "For now. That depends on how badly he remains in my favour. Should he attempt to escape, he will not be so for long."

Karlach leans in, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. "You have a prison?"

"We are Harpers," Jaheira says dryly. "Back in Baldur's Gate, the parliament is not fond of those who kill first and question via speak with dead. So I keep prisons to pretend we do it the other way."

Gale frowns. "What about the shield? To guard against violent thoughts—wouldn't that prevent you from keeping prisoners that seek to cause you harm? How does that work?"

"Oh, that?" Jaheira shrugs. "That is a famed and ancient technique known as lying. I wished to see if you panicked; a method to crack the composure of those entering. It is only a shield against the shadows."

Gale's lips purse as though biting into something sour. "Ah."

"Do not sound so disappointed, wizard," Jaheira says, sounding the most pleased she has since the beginning of this debacle. "Such feats are not beyond me; had I wished to pry your mind apart and see what lay within, I would have done so. In that regard—how was your wine?"

The non-sequitur startles him. "A fine vintage? I enjoyed it very much."

"Of course you did. One from my own cellar," Jaheira agrees. "Old enough it could have hidden any other flavour underneath, no?"

There is silence in wake of that. Astarion freezes with it halfway to his lips. 

Quiet since the beginning, Lae'zel rises from her chair, hand wrapped around her hilt. Her ears are pinned back. "Speak openly," she hisses. "What do you mean?"

Jaheira seems entirely unphased. "Bor?"

Across the way, manning the counter, a human man in Harper garb lifts three fingers in a casual salute. In the other, he produces a bottle, thin enough to slip up a sleeve or hide in a cupped palm; one for assassins. 

"That is called klauthgrass," Jaheira says. "A simple alchemic solution—not poison, cub, put your blades away—one that eases truth from tongue. And I did not put it in the wine. No need. But I could have, no?"

Astarion still sets his glass down. 

Jaheira leans over and grabs it, pouring the remnants into her own, the bitch. He likes her a little more. And less. It settles into an equilibrium.

"You're making it kinda hard to keep up with you," Karlach says, a touch breathlessly. 

"That is very good to hear. Jackanapes should stay behind their elders' skirts. But six stories are enough to believe you, and I have had too few allies in this fight to wave at the backs of those who seek me out. This is my offered hand." She nods to Karlach, an inclination of her glass. "Let us compare information. What do you know about the threat?"

"Not that much," Karlach admits with a wince. "The most we've gotten out of True Souls has been gibbering when they're stabbed, which isn't helpful, really. Figured a bit 'bout how their goddess isn't actually one, and none of them seem to know about the worms, at least."

"Then I presume you have mostly fought underlings," Jaheira notes. "True Souls are, by the large, very aware of the parasite and its illithid origins; they just trust the powers that be to keep it at bay. The prisoner I keep fought quite viciously when I mused over removing his." She smiles a little. "Well, as much as he could fight."

Karlach hums, tail tapping out something unstructured. "He talks to you? Like, says things?"

Jaheira fixes her with a curious look. "I am not unpersuasive."

Shadowheart seems to pick up on the implication, pretty little eyes flashing. "Did you use klauthgrass?" She asks, because she's sharp enough to notice. 

"Yes." Jaheira thumbs at her scimitars. "Put him in a chatty mood, after the chains. But while he gave the truth, I do not think he was important enough to be told specifics. Only generalities." She shrugs. "He was never very intelligent."

It's Karlach that catches it this time, blinking twice. "You knew him?"

She stares at them for a moment. Deliberates something. 

"His name is Marcus," Jaheira says. "He is a Flaming Fist, or what was one; he came back to the Inn with a parasite, and I took offense to that." She smiles, sardonic. "Somehow he thought I would not notice. I do wonder how the parasite can survive without much brain to eat."

"A Flaming Fist?" Wyll repeats, something strangled in his voice. Right, Baldurian of some kind—perhaps the snippety kind that truly thinks the Fist are proper goodhearts and benevolent tyrants. Or. Not Wyll, actually, since Astarion has seen the man parlay with vicious little beasties without having such hypocritical puritan nonsense. He's not as naïve as Astarion thought at the beginning of their journey, when the foundation for his existence was folk hero and Astarion left it at that. He's rather more complex. Which is worrying. And also critical to Astarion's general survival. 

But either way, something about the mention of Fists seems to get at him, tugging a heartstring deep inside. 

"No longer," Jaheira corrects. "He lost that right. Now he is here to rot away the rest of his days, or until I grow bored of his blabber. He is quite useless."

Useless. The description of this Marcus doesn't sound inaccurate to that assessment, but something still claws at Astarion's awareness; there is a tadpole, somewhere within this Inn, and it is in the mind of someone trained. Of someone proficient.

And, most importantly, someone who can't fight back. 

Astarion glances at Karlach. Just the shade of it, more the implication than an actual connection of eyes, and then looks at Jaheira, meeting her eyes with a focus. She meets it unflinchingly.

Karlach blinks at him. "What're you thinking, fangs?"

"I'm thinking," he says, "whether I can meet with this prisoner of yours."

Jaheira's eyes sharpen. "Oh?"

"I believe I can get him to talk," he says, sweetly. Look at him, how helpful, how motivated. Entirely for their benefit. Back him up, Karlach. "Like I told you, Jaheira—my talents lie with convincing others to share parts of themselves they otherwise wouldn't, particularly when it comes to the tadpoles. If I'm given a chance, he'll tell us everything."

Jaheira's gaze sharpens, looking him over. "You can?"

"Astarion's a right little spy," Karlach says, nodding. Almost proud. "He's tricked followers of the Absolute all up the coast; Marcus'll be an open book."

"With any luck." Astarion stretches into a smile, polite. "Because if, say, I were to sneak in with a filched way to get past your magic trap and more information on the man than a stranger should know, particularly with a tadpole of my own, I think he'll sing like a bird." He pauses. "Though it will work best if he doesn't feel five more tadpoles clustered behind the door. But if I go alone and I ask questions as though his equal, there should be nothing he won't tell me." 

Jaheira assesses him. She has the eyes of a circling hawk, a stalking wolf; very little of her seems tame. Astarion can't remember when he stopped breathing. 

"Oh, what the hells." She shrugs. "I have had no luck with him the past day; perhaps he will be more willing to one that is a stranger. You have not been inappropriately addled?"

She drank the last of his wine. So no. 

"Not in the slightest," he says. "Though if you could tell me what you know so it better seems as though I'm a True Soul, that would be much appreciated."

She has a curious sort of expression on her face. Like appraisal, but through shallow water. "And then I take you to his cell."

Considering how they were kept, Astarion is quite curious how Harper prisons work. 

He keeps smiling. "If you wouldn't mind."

This is his chance. This is the most shining opportunity he has ever seen since waking on a golden beach with his master's voice muted in his skull. A proper True Soul below, one with knowledge of tadpoles and uses. One who could know how to sever commands not for the present but for eternity. One with, perhaps, the answer.

Astarion will not fail this.

Chapter Text

After the party is properly sent off to be fed and watered, Astarion sneaks into the prison. 

Or– sneaks, considering he's wearing an enchanted ring given by Jaheira and the guards let him pass with only a mention of his name, but it's easier to slip into the necessary skin if he's acting from the beginning. Skulking around corners is a key element. 

And he needs his skin today; needs all of the years he's built into what could be called expertise, interwoven in his core, into a persona of skill. Because in the prison is a True Soul, one with a tadpole, one with answers, and by all the fucking gods Astarion is going to take them. 

His ears prick as the door closes, the guards on the other side latching with a whispered spell. No torches, no light, but darkvision swims to his call as normal. Prison is a touch generous of a term; it's just repurposed rooms deep beneath the central building, like an inn dropped five floors down. The hallway is cramped, shallow, its only decorations a row of doors on each side. 

Fifth door on the left. Astarion pads forward, rolling his boots so the sound is muffled. The door isn't anything special, innocuous in its row, old pine and wearied hinges. A door. Just a door. He shouldn't exactly be bloody surprised by that. 

An arcane door, admittedly. Jaheira's ring sits on his index finger, nothing much to look at but a latent heat. Judging by the woman who gave it to him, Astarion half-expected either embedded grime or a long-lost treasure from an ancient fable. It's neither. Just tarnished silver. 

The knob rattles a little as he presses the ring to it, motes of grey-green light, and clicks open. Astarion starts breathing on timed exhalations and sweeps the cloak over his back, lets it fill him, a grasp stronger than anything else. 

Then he pushes in. 

Small, cramped, devoid of windows. There are bars, at least. It isn't missing everything. A proper room-split cage, iron bolted floor to ceiling, dividing the available space in half, just wide enough to peer through, though trying to shove a limb through would involve some degloving in the process. A table on this side of the room, pieces of parchment and quill, nothing written. 

Inside the bars is a man. 

He's sat atop a shitty excuse for a stool, head ducked, fists clenched. Grimy skin, reeking clothing. His hair is long and matted, tangled around his own neck like a noose, stuck through with viscera of some kind. A fight before landing here, it seems. 

He also has wings. 

He has wings. Jaheira certainly didn't mention wings. Why does he have wings?

They're not particularly nice wings, all things considered. The man is tall but these barely extend higher than his head, slumped, the feathers carrion-black and filthy. Astarion notes twin breaks right along the top, leaving them awkwardly extended even in the cramped cell. Purposely crippled, or at least grounded. As much as a man can be grounded, considering that is their base state of being. 

But Marcus, for some fucking reason, despite reeking in a way that handily removes him from the list of potential aasimar, has wings. 

If that is the power of the tadpoles, Astarion can see why so many were swayed. 

And the man does have a tadpole. He is a maimed, miserable thing, saying nothing and doing less, comatose in his prison—if not for the cesspool of bitterness heavy in the cerebral air. He is alive, and thinking, and there is an illithid parasite stuck behind those flat grey eyes. 

More of a shield than anyone else in the party, perhaps excepting Wyll, a filigree mesh keeping his thoughts inside instead of leaking all over the place. It doesn't protect his emotions, though. They beam like constellations through the gloom. 

Which is why, when Marcus hears the door open, Astarion feels a surge of bruised rage. 

Interesting. 

Astarion purposefully drags one of his boots over the ground, long enough to ring through the encased space. He is within a locked room without windows and only cold stone, but the act of being the tormentor instead of the tormented chases back the fear. Keeps him fierce, pointed. 

Marcus stays silent, but his fists—those clench. 

Astarion walks to the very edge of the cage, setting a casual hand on a horizontal bar. Cold to the touch, much like the air. Not a terribly comfortable imprisonment, to say less of the interrogation. Jaheira got information about distance, about psionic communication, about the Absolute. Not enough about the tadpoles. Astarion needs more. 

Marcus, the little bastard, keeps his head down and mouth shut. 

Astarion clears his throat. Prompts a response until Marcus finally deigns to look at him. Their eyes meet, his hooded and dark, a prickle of tension in Marcus' mind. Uncertainty. This is not a familiar situation, then. 

Maybe that's why he speaks, voice little more than a rasp. "Here to gloat, hero?"

"Hardly," Astarion purrs, setting his hands more firmly on the bars. He takes the thread and plucks it. "You and I are far from heroes, Marcus Falgor."

The man freezes. His head snaps fully up, no longer tethered in this facsimile of rebellion—now those grey eyes are wide, searching. 

And on the shoreline of their individual minds, Marcus brushes against Astarion's tadpole. He lets it, a brief shock of purpose, the heat from a campfire—then pulls back. Not a godsdamn chance is he letting this fucker into his shield. 

The moment is enough. Marcus sags, wings sprawling as though their broken bones have been removed. "You're a True Soul," he breathes. "The Absolute sent you."

I sent myself, Astarion thinks, though that isn't quite right. He nods instead.

A laugh, shaky and disbelieving. "You can get me out," Marcus says, near frantic. "The mission is still possible. I haven't failed."

He hasn't failed? In what world does this look like success?

"And what mission is that? Testing the strength of Harper prison cells?"

"My mission," Marcus repeats, like that's a fucking clarification. "Get me out."

"Perhaps you've noticed that we're in an enclave of Harpers," Astarion points out, like dragging through mud. "Which makes escape rather difficult, all things considered. It took a day to even find you."

Rather than being cowed, Marcus grits his teeth. Nerve struck. "I know," he snaps. "That bitch of a High Harper caught me. I was so close."

"Well, that bitch, as you so aptly put it, has someone in her service with the ability to charm people." Astarion runs a hand over the bars, loose and unbothered. He is watching Marcus very closely. "How she saw through your impeccable disguise, no doubt. If I cut you free and we run into them, then we'll both be in prison, which makes things even less likely."

Marcus glares, then. "Are you here just to tell me you can't do anything?"

Gods, this gibbering buffoon. Astarion has to ease into this conversation slowly or blow his cover wide open—he's already grinding on the bit to get to the actual important question. But it has to be believable. It has to be possible. 

"I am here," Astarion enunciates, "to ask if you know a way to utilize the tadpoles to prevent us from being charmed."

Marcus blinks. 

Shit, that is not the reaction Astarion wants. 

"I know there are ways," Marcus says. "I don't have it but– there are ways. Do you only have one? If you have a second, I know the commanders can crush the minds of their enemies. Maybe they could–"

Astarion's ears prick. He sharpens, cuts in: "The commanders?"

There is a pause. 

"At Moonrise," Marcus says, slower now. Sensing something wrong, still desperate in its absence. "Three of them—they train True Souls. They know how to break compulsions."

The words simmer through him. Three commanders. That number again, silhouetted. Those with tadpoles and knowledge and training. 

Astarion has to manually draw in breath to speak. "Who are they?"

Too far. 

Marcus' expression clears. Goes glassy and still, a hawk circling far overhead. 

"You haven't been to Moonrise," he says, a statement instead of a question. Something of a whine if it weren't so cold. 

One crack. But the cloak maintains. His cover has only been shifted; it has not been broken. 

"I have not," Astarion agrees, since there's not a fucking chance he could lie about the interior if pressed. He flares his tadpole again, lets a simmering frustration tangle in Marcus' probe. True Soul. I am a True Soul. "If I had, I wouldn't be asking this, Falgor. But I would like to go and serve the Absolute directly, instead of off in the shadows. Consider this my audition."

Marcus shifts. His wings broaden, straining at the edge. His voice is flat. "Audition."

Astarion smiles. It is a nasty sort of smile; one he's stolen from a patriar with a fondness for whips and barbed shackles. "Would aiding a lost True Soul back to the Absolute get me training with one of these commanders?"

Marcus doesn't answer. Because Marcus is looking at his mouth. 

A genuine bafflement fills the space between them. It snakes past the bars, fire-bound and vilicent, rising as Marcus lifts his head to stare at him. He blinks twice, recontextualizing. 

"Spawn," Marcus says. 

Astarion flinches. 

Marcus casts his gaze around the room, as though some other fucking imbecile is lurking in the corners. "True Soul—are you talking through the spawn? Where are you?"

"I'm here by myself," Astarion spits. His jaw locks around the need to snarl. 

That gets a reaction, cold-toothed. Derision bites at the air between. "The Absolute would not trust a spawn with a parasite," he says, then pauses. His lip curls. "Not without a handler."

Handler.  

Astarion's claws puncture his palms. Fouled blood drips to the stone floor. 

"She trusted you," Astarion bites out. "I can see that worked out marvelously."

His wings twitch, trying to flare as though intimidation, the broken bones only grinding against each other. What a fucking pity. 

"She does," Marcus snarls, infernous. "I was gifted this power, I didn't have to steal it. She–"

Then he goes quiet. He starts thinking, his tadpole lighting up. Scans the room again, quicksilver, a grasp at composure. He doesn't quite reach it.

Marcus stands now, dragging up from his stool, wings like a bridal veil of tar. But his eyes glint—that heat unspools, pulled away for something sharper. "You were told to come here," he says, pointed. "You were told to free me—that is your mission. Right?"

The cloak reverses. Still a True Soul, still someone else, but now it chains him in new purpose and new commands. Astarion goes cold. The urge to tear, to rip and bite and devour, wisps away in face of paralysis. Of keeping his head down and mouth shut and shoulders in. 

"You want this to be your audition," Marcus says. "To get free of your handler." He attempts to think, scrapping a depleted mine for anything overlooked. "If you get me back to Moonrise, I will speak to Ketheric Thorm on your behalf. A better handl–" he cuts off. "No handler. Just serving the Absolute. No compulsions."

His bargain hangs mercurial in the air. Astarion stares at it. Stays silent.

Marcus' voice gains a tremorous note. "You just have to free me. Do as you were told."

Three commanders. There is a ring upon his finger and daggers at his side—carve past the guards and run. Find some way to Moonrise and the salvation there. 

Does he trust that he will not be paraded into Moonrise as a spawn and enslaved again?

Does he trust Marcus to uphold his deal? 

Astarion lifts his head to stare at the man, at his flinty eyes. At the questions he needs to ask and the hope beginning to fester. 

Do as you were told.

Astarion turns to leave the room. 

That breaks Marcus' bloody wheedling, tadpole incandescent. "Spawn, you will not–"

The door slams shut like marble over a sarcophagus. 

There is nothing in the hallway, just more doors and the mysteries behind. He stumbles away to stop hearing muffled shouts through the wood and finds an empty section of wall, all dust and grime. Ancient. 

Astarion leans back; thunks his head against the wood, breath slow and insubstantial. Dim lighting makes the world sepia, part of a different plane than the one he knows his feet are grounded in. A flickering awareness through the bars of the room behind. 

Well. Not what he wanted. Pretty fucking far from it, actually. But he did get an answer. Got two, even—including one for a question he hadn't asked. 

He remembers Priestess Gut, the way she'd spoken to him—whose orders are you here for, spawn? Astarion had, naïvely, assumed that was just the manner of her in particular, rather than her in general. Vampires are monsters, after all, but the Absolute tends to employ those undreamy of continence; a vampire spawn is certainly above a hobgoblin.

Yet Marcus reacts the same. 

Perhaps all those under the Absolute do. 

So it goes. If it was a mystery, it isn't anymore. Just cold fact and consequence. 

Astarion has made it too far to bury himself here. 

The tadpole frees him. The tadpole damns him, yes, but in that damnation there is a chance for forever. He has bitten off a poisoned apple before and will do so again. Astarion can– can what? Kill the Absolute with the party but siphon off enough of her power to stay free himself? The plan made sense. Makes sense, because it is still all he has, even if things are more… complicated, now. 

The army of the Absolute sees him as one that requires a handler. The word tears at something fragile within him. It isn't master but there's a sweetness to it, a faffing about as if the relationship is something required. As though he would be just too fucking dangerous without someone to hold his leash. 

But there are three commanders and the promise that they can throw off compulsions. Marcus had been—moronic, repugnant, imbecilic—seemingly willing to entertain the thought of being trained under the commanders, when he had thought they were on even footing. 

Less than ten minutes to be discovered. Less than ten minutes to look past the drow's armour and the should-be sunlight and the cloak to see a spawn underneath. 

A thousand leagues away, a rapier sinks into Astarion's gut and isn't pulled out.

It's fine. He has his plan. He's made his choice. This is what is going to happen. The choice is between crawling into the kennel or trying to run, and Astarion can remember wind in his hair for the latter. If Moonrise never finds out he's a spawn, then he goes to the commanders and makes any fucking kind of bargain to learn their mastery. If he has to gouge out his eyes and fangs to get there, so be it. The alternative is not going to happen. 

He's shaking, against the wall. Haunted by a crow in a cage that could do nothing but talk. 

Fuck that. Fuck Marcus. Astarion shakes out his arms, laps at the blood on his palms so the wounds close faster, adjusts his hair. He takes the plan and drowns in under his shield; crushes it back into pottery shards and old blades. Nothing to see. Nothing to think about. It's his plan and he will think about it when he is alone.

So he pushes off the wall and begins to head back to the party. 

The guards blink when he comes through the door, steps leaden and eyes fixed forward. The silver glow wraps around him, soft and welcoming, like hands over shoulders that don't want to be touched. Last Light has less people out now, settling into the idea of night, and still the central building hums with inner lights. He heads there. 

The building is a low hum of action, crowded around and half-full. The table in the back has six heads on it, five with tadpoles, the last drinking yet another goblet of wine with the kind of apathetic whimsy few have ever managed. The party has changed out of their armour, rest clothing starched and stiffened by many tendays of not wearing it. There only had to be one night attack while in smallclothes before it became easier just to wear armour at every moment. Now they relax, open, loose, chatting. Happy. 

Astarion smiles. Softens his face. Goes.

Karlach sees him first, perking right up. "Fangs!" She calls, a mirror of before, waving her hand. "Did it go well?"

Sure. Let's go with that. 

Astarion settles into the seat beside her, resting his chin on his palm. "I can see why you caged him," he says to Jaheira, light. "He's a tetchy little prick, isn't he?"

Her lips quirk. "Entirely so."

"Sure fucking sounds like it," Karlach says, chipper. There seems to have been a good amount of wine that went around, by the bit-past-rosy shine in her cheeks. Then, in a horrifically loud whisper: "She did tell us about the Bhaalspawn."

"Yes she did," Jaheira hums. "And she is also quite curious what Marcus talked about."

"Talked is an unfortunately strong word, I'm afraid," Astarion says. He shrugs, clawing for nonchalance. "I was able to learn more about Moonrise—there are three commanders, as he put it, that help train True Souls with their tadpoles and lead the armies. All of them serve Ketheric Thorm but can be humbled down to help their underlings, it seems; or perhaps he was trying to seem more important to me than he was. He impressed the importance of his mission for them several times."

Jaheira nods. She's watching him over the rim of her glass, eyes sharp and clever. "Trying to get you to free him," she says. It is not a question. 

"Yes," he agrees easily. "I blathered on about how dreadfully frightening all you Harpers are and said I needed more time for a plan. He still thinks I am a True Soul," he says. It's not even a lie. Maybe that's why it hurts more. "But I don't believe he is particularly fond of me, now. I resorted to more insulting methods to get information out of him, to say less of leaving him there."

Think, think, think. "Ah! Another thing—he was quite insistent to complete his mission, important as it is. Seemed to think it was still possible."

A ripple of something over their shared tadpoles. Concern. 

Jaheira tilts her head to the side, bird-like. "It is… not impossible, in that regard," she says slowly. "Our guardian must remain here; they could still be taken, should Marcus make it out."

"Your guardian?" Karlach repeats. Her wine steams faintly within its goblet. 

"The one who protects our Inn. You understand that I will not speak much of them," Jaheira says. "Particularly to True Souls, no matter your allegiances—I will not risk them again."

She meets all of their eyes in turn. For a moment Astarion wishes she had a tadpole, just so he could know what she's feeling. There's nothing but focus in her face. 

The implication is still clear, however. "Shit," Karlach growls. "He's a kidnapper, then? Came here to take your guardian?" Then, when Jaheira nods: "Shit. You should've wrung his shitty neck instead. Can't fucking stand the type."

"Then you will not like the rest of Moonrise," Jaheira says, bitter. "All Absolutists seem to delight in taking others. Even now, the Fist rally here, attempting to reclaim their Duke; though we do not know whether he yet lives."

Astarion's mental facilities are still raw, stretched taut after dealing with Marcus—he is entirely unprepared for the detonation within Wyll's tadpole. 

The man sits up in his seat as though whipped. His face is surprised, intrigued, concerned—and his mind is a fucking wasteland of terror so potent it seems alien. Not even Mizora struck him as harshly as he seems struck now. 

Astarion blinks. He disentangles himself carefully, thread after thread. Pulls back. 

The party is staring at Wyll. He only has eyes for Jaheira. 

"The Duke?" Wyll rasps. "The Duke of Baldur's Gate?"

Jaheira turns her head as though scenting blood. "Yes," she says. "He was traveling back from Elturel, making his way to Baldur's Gate—but at Waukeen's Rest along the Risen Road, his company was attacked and he was taken prisoner. It's believed he was taken to Moonrise."

Wyll sags like all the air has been punched out of him. Wine sloshes red over his hands. 

Within his skull, the tadpole screams.

"You know the Duke," Jaheira says. It isn't a question. 

Astarion looks at him—looks at him much closer than before, really. Because Wyll is Baldurian, accent thick with it despite how seven years in the frontiers have tattered certain edges, and he carries with him a yearning for home no matter how he never seems to suggest returning. 

But his reaction isn't exactly that of a wayward cityman learning his municipal leader has been taken. And Astarion has heard Wyll disparage governmental officials too many times to know it is lamb-eyed optimism that those in power are naturally good. 

No, something here is personal. 

Astarion is not exactly up to snuff on intricate Baldurian politics, considering he poked his head into the wider world with his entire purpose being to avoid those of any standing, and his interactions with patriars was mostly being fucked by them. So even as he squints at Wyll, scours the man's features and tries to imagine him without horns or hellfire eye, he can only summon the same vague familiarity he has with all faces. 

Karlach, the only other Baldurian, has no such problem. 

"Wyll," Karlach breathes, eyes so wide they're wreathed in white. "Wyll. Bloody hells. No. What the fuck is your family name?"

For his part, Wyll only stares at her, eyes similarly wide. 

"Holy shit." Karlach seems a moment from combusting, chest flaring orange through her ragged shirt. "You're Wyll motherfucking Ravengard, aren't you?"

Ah. 

Astarion does recognize that name, actually. There's a niggling memory of the Duke having a son, and that son doing something unmentionable and leaving for the trouble, never again to reappear. Astarion had, unfavourably, because he is rarely favourable of nobility, assumed it was some hedonistic spending or rebellion. 

But Wyll has been pacted to Mizora for seven years. 

"The Grand Duke of Baldur's Gate," Gale murmurs, more for Shadowheart and Lae'zel's benefit. Karlach still can't pull her eyes away. 

"I–" Wyll swallows something, hands wrapped around the table. He neither confirms nor denies and just sways in his seat, punch-drunk. "We need to go to Moonrise," he manages, each word a struggle. "Now."

Jaheira taps the table before him. Her eyes are forest-canopy pure. Nothing beyond, nothing beneath. She holds his gaze as though he can rest his weight on it.

"You need to rest," she corrects. "You have ventured through the shadowlands, and a torch only staves off the worst of the bite; it does not free you from the jaws. You must sleep beneath our shield for at least three nights before you are safe to go into darkness again."

A strangled sound echoes in Wyll's throat, pulsating waves of ruby-red guilt crescending from his tadpole. "My father has been taken."

Fucking hells. Looks like Karlach is right. 

"And you need information before he is retaken," Jaheira says, gentler now. "The Fist are still regrouping here. Their leader is Councillor Florrick—is she known to you?"

If possible, Wyll stumbles more. 

"You will talk with her," Jaheira decides. "Understand what is happening, the full picture; only then will you make a decision, no? Better for all involved." A pause. "She is roomed on the second floor, left from the balcony."

Without a response, Wyll lurches up from the table. He casts a singular panicked look back at them—his mental shout sounds something like sorry—and then he's gone, taking the stairs three at a time. 

And they're all left sitting there in the wake of that disaster. 

"What," Karlach says eloquently, "the absolute fuck."

-

Deprived of their Blade, the party mills about with more menial tasks. Armour is cleaned, weapons re-sharpened, the Inn explored alongside glares to keep their voices down for those sleeping. Jaheira kicks out a guilty Harper who had claimed a room for himself and finds another from one fallen, each room with two beds apiece. Which is not six. Astarion doesn't mention it, because she is looking at him, but he thinks it very loudly. 

One of the rooms is closer to the stairs. Astarion shoulders his pack higher and marches towards it; keeps his head up, ears perked. "Mine," he declares, and simply refuses to look back to see if anyone else wants to lay claim. He's getting this room instead of the one too far from the stairway to hear anything, thank you.

Shadowheart grabs Gale and disappears into the other—after a moment, Lae'zel hauls up her stuff and follows. Well. Hilarious. Astarion guesses they'll be fucking the moment the wizard walks out of the room; their hate sex has devolved from something carnal to something approaching affection with a worrying speed, though they've done a marvelous job of keeping the rivalry alive and kicking. 

Astarion pushes his door open—the room is cramped, dusted, and altogether miserable. The beds are akin to rock cairns and a small population of cockroaches are attempting to learn mathematics in the corner. Wonderful. 

Then, as he selects the bed on the left and glares at the grime as though it will skitter away, the door opens again and Karlach walks in. 

"This okay?" She asks, hefting both her and Wyll's bag. 

They don't really have a choice, do they? Astarion shrugs with one shoulder and returns to primping his bed. It's distasteful. Not enough to continue sleeping in a tent, but enough to complain about.

Karlach sets a hand on the sheets—a moment of nothing, then smoke begins to curl through her fingers, blackening the air. She pulls back with a hiss. 

"Right," she says tiredly. "Floor it is." Wyll's bag is dumped on the bed and she unrolls her leather bedroll alongside it, made of something just hardy enough it doesn't burn against her skin. Her engine thrums in the quiet room. 

Then she's standing there, staring at the bed and the floor and the room, and Astarion isn't looking back but he can feel her attention. Her hesitance. 

Karlach taps fingers over her shoulders, nails on ports. It rings in the cramped space. An inhalation.

"Fangs, can I ask you something?"

Astarion hums and turns to her, arranging himself prettily on the bed. He isn't thinking about Marcus, about Moonrise, about anything. So he merely lifts a brow and scans her wane features. 

"I didn't know, if that's what it is," he tells her. "Believe me, I would have been extorting far more gold out of dear Wyll if I had known he was royalty." 

She laughs a little. The kind of laugh that conceals something else. "Fair," she says. "He'd've bought more ale, that's for certain. But no. About–"

Then she draws off again, like she's shy, which is rather the opposite of everything Astarion knows about her. He frowns. 

Karlach flops down to sit cross-legged on her bedroll, leaning back against the wall. She meets his gaze eventually. "When we were telling Jaheira our stories—she mentioned a coupla things the others said. More stuff at the start than I thought." She drums her fingers over the floorboards. "How'd you join with the party, fangs?"

He stares at her. "Excuse me?"

"Like, I know there was the hunter and the vine-thing, but what happened? Was it a part of–"

"Apologies," Astarion says, cutting in, because he is very fucking confused right now. "Why ask me?"

She blinks, owlish. "...because you were there and I wasn't?"

Right. She wasn't there. 

She wasn't there. Astarion ponders this fact for a moment too long—tooths into it, bites for the sheltered center. She wasn't, no. She came after, when he had already centered his position below the others; and now she's speaking as though she didn't know. 

But she knew he was a vampire—had called him the vamp when first approaching. Clearly Wyll told her some of it. Perhaps the crueler bits were tucked away, the better to save their reputation, and they just– never got around to filling in the full story. 

And now she's asking him. 

He doesn't know what to tell her. 

"It was– it was trying for all involved," Astarion starts, which is not quite diplomatic but is the best he can manage. "I'm rather unfond of being drugged and Wyll is rather unfond of being bit; and considering the hunter tramped about with a crossbow so large he must have been overcompensating and Lae'zel whipped us all into shape for the approaching transformation, none of those days were pleasant. I can guess that is why he hasn't mentioned it much."

Karlach nods, a little slowly. She has sharp eyes, no matter how often they're creased from smiling. She sees things he'd rather she didn't. 

"Right," she says. "That was– day two, three, yeah? You'd just met?"

"Yes," he echoes. "Why?"

Karlach pauses again. He's never seen her wait this much, as though weighing the words on her tongue before they are set loose. Her hands are wrapped around her knees, head bumped back against the wall. Staring at him. 

A knock on the door, soft and hesitant.

Oh thank fuck.

Astarion unfolds from the bed like the distraction actually interests him and crosses to the door, nudging it open, though the mind lurking outside is already familiar. Hard for the party to hide from another. 

Wyll blinks when the door opens in his face. Three hours gone and now coming back with a staggered, kicked sort of feeling to his mental space, like a carafe knocked over. Not broken, but everything within spilled out. "Hello?"

Karlach springs up and nearly flies to him, banging the door against the opposite wall. "Wyll!"

"Hello," he repeats. His eyes are misty, face creased. Astarion, despite all evidence to the contrary, is tactful enough not to mention it. Just steps aside so the man can enter, padding back to his bed. 

"C'mere," Karlach blusters, jabbing at the air in lieu of poking him. "Bloody hells, mate, come in, sit down, get off your godsdamn feet–" 

She badgers him all the way into stripping his more formal clothing for the overgrown top and worn trousers. Astarion takes his own time to settle himself, sitting on the edge of his bed with one leg crooked over the other and his embroidery abandoned off to the side. 

He lets Karlach's little inquisition drift under the wayside—while that or Marcus' fuckery should take precedence in his thoughts, Astarion's not exactly going to kid himself in saying he isn't curious about this revelation. Wyll, little goody two shoes, hero extraordinaire, is neither a bard nor a wayward traveler from an ignoble past. Lies through omission, yes, but lies nonetheless. From Wyll.  

Mentioning you're the son of the Grand Duke feels like something that should come up a mite earlier in a journey together. 

But eventually, Astarion and Wyll are both perched on their own beds, Karlach pacing between them. She's crackling with excess energy, smoke flitting in the corners of the room. They'll have to leave the door cracked tonight. Bad thing to focus on. Back on the conversation, now.

"So," Karlach says, genuinely the most awkward Astarion has ever heard her. Her previous hesitance has tripled. "Wyll Ravengard, huh?"

Wyll smiles weakly. "You can understand why I wasn't forthright with it," he says, fingers lacing for something to do. "It isn't– I haven't been to Baldur's Gate in seven years. I'm surprised you even remember me."

She squints at him. "You're the heir, mate. First in line for the Council of Four. Kinda a big fucking deal!"

Wyll winces. Astarion notes that. 

"I was," he corrects gently. "Now I'm the Blade of Frontiers. My father sent me away."

His tadpole whines, spilling orange-black into the room. His face stays composed, if tattered around the edges. 

"The Absolutists took him a tenday ago. Councillor Florick has been hunting the troop down with the Flaming Fist; they reached the Last Light Inn but a few days before us." A swallow, hands strangling each other in his lap. "She's convinced he's at Moonrise. That they wouldn't have taken him alive if they didn't intend to keep him that way."

"You know her too?" Karlach asks.

"Yes," Wyll admits, like it's some shameful secret. "She trained me, before Father became the Duke. Here, she recognized me, asked what had happened, and I–"

He opens his mouth and then closes it. A retch, swallowed down before it can hit the air. He is very familiar with the reaction. "I told her what I could," Wyll says quietly. 

"Told what you could," she echoes, "or what you were allowed?"

Wyll dips his head. Doesn't respond, but he doesn't have to—there's a caginess in how he eats his words, how his eyes stay forward and blank. His pact will be broken, and still it lingers long enough to hold his tongue. 

"Perhaps," Wyll says, very softly. "You should stop there."

"Mate," Karlach whispers, sounding fucking heartbroken. "Mizora needs you to do her mission. She needs that more than– this."

"I know." He looks at his lap. "Still."

Karlach is quiet for a long time. 

Then she says: "Gods, we're both right fucked up, aren't we?" 

Wyll blinks. Looks back up. 

Karlach laughs a little. A sad laugh, maybe. Then she pads to stand by Wyll, close as can be without touching. "Don't know about your pact," she says, deliberate. "But I know you're a good fucking guy and someone I trust to have my back. Whatever you made it for, I know it was good. That you're good. Okay?"

"I lied to you," Wyll says, because he can't help but remind her of his wrongdoings. 

"Yeah, you did," she says. "And you also saved my fucking life. You'll never guess which one I care more about."

Wyll stares up at her. His eyes are so wide. 

Astarion feels, suddenly, like he's intruding on something private. Why did Karlach want to room with him, dragging Wyll into the mix? Wyll who keeps a fragile distance between them like something protective, doesn't even like him, has Gandrel's needle?

And bled into a bottle for Astarion to drink, that same elysium from so long ago. Incongruous facts. But they must somehow all be true. 

Karlach bumps her knuckles against Wyll's leg, leather just thick enough to catch the heat before it burns. "C'mon to bed, soldier," she says gently. "Get some rest on a real blanket and pop up like a daisy—everything'll make more sense in the morning. Trust me."

Wyll looks like he's both about to kiss her stupid or burst into tears. 

Then Karlach mimes pushing him, repeatedly, so Wyll lays back and gets under the covers—and she hauls her stretch of leather over so it's right beside his bed and flops down herself. The conversation goes quiet and prepares to hibernate. 

Astarion takes that as an indicator and tucks under his blanket, which is a shitty balm against undead cold. Thin and frayed around the edges. A bit miserable, actually. Most everything about this situation is.

There's a lack of separation here that even the flimsy fabric of his tent provided; nothing to break the line of sight, the echo of sound. Karlach's engine rumbles like clockwork as she breathes, steam pulsing and hissing through her ports; Wyll's heart rate fluctuates and jolts, taut like a nightmare for all he doesn't move. 

Astarion stares at the ceiling. He counts the support struts seven times over. Then, when breathing goes soft and still, he gets up and leaves the room. 

They can sleep. They can continue their conversations he shouldn't be privy to. His reverie knows to defer when bade, too used to being lesser priority over panicking, and Astarion very much needs some fucking isolation to think.

A day he's curled under Marcus' words, like tossed planets in their magnitude, and since Jaheira isn't here to watch him with her hunter's eyes and the party isn't here to pick up on whatever slips out of his shield, Astarion is going to use this time like a drowning man to a raft. 

He pads down the stairs, one after another, rolling his heels to smother the sound. The central room is empty, only soft murmurs of Harpers on watch coming from beyond the front doors. Silver streams through the windows, over the abandoned tables, akin to dusk more than twilight. A familiar hunting ground. 

Perhaps too much of hunting, because there is a scent in the air. 

Astarion becomes aware of this, with Gandrel and powdered ironvine quick to his tongue after Karlach's words, but it isn't the acrid taste—no, this is rich, beautiful. A scent like prosperity distilled.

Oh. 

Astarion tilts his head to the side and inhales. 

Someone's bleeding. 

Not too terribly much. It doesn't fill the air but courses underneath it, a memory more than the real thing. Yet it is still blood. Yet someone is still bleeding.

There is blood upstairs and blood in his gut. Tomorrow, Shadowheart will toss him a bottle and make sure that meazel laceration over his neck has truly healed. So Astarion doesn't need the blood, no matter how it smells neck-rich and heavy. 

But it is, in a word, very fucking distracting. 

For no other reason than that, Astarion closes his eyes and follows his nose; prowls through the empty bar to one of the side halls, extending towards where the prison is. Some doors are open, some are closed, and he keeps every hackle raised as he crosses each yawning entrance, until–

One room is a cramped place, no furniture but a singular bed that can hardly be called so. There's a man supine upon it, so embedded he could be carved from the same material. Limp, unmoving. Hair peels from his scalp, thinned through dishevelment instead of age, clothes ragged and adventurer-esque. 

And a cat. 

It's curled up by his neck, grey-black with long, twitching ears; and front claws that are currently hooked around the meat of the man's neck, scarlet trails left where they'd been dragged. The source of the blood, slithering over pale flesh. A kneading gone wrong. 

It's just a cat. It's just a fucking cat, and here Astarion is, drawn up like a threat in the making. 

Astarion exhales, swiping snowy curls out of his eyes. Bloody hells, this is so stupid. To get coiled up for a fucking cat scratch. For a few drops of blood, sliding like rubies down the man's pale neck. Hardly a mouthful, if that. A quick treat before he thinks about the worst choice he's come to terms with in a while. Less than a rat, even. Less than a dead one. 

Just the blood of thinking creatures, open, unguarded. 

There is no one around. 

There is also a battalion of Harpers and Flaming Fist waiting in every room surrounding when the morning comes, and Astarion is a known vampire spawn with a history of getting mouthy in more than words. Jaheira, as she put it so succinctly, has put his kin to the dirt many times before. 

He jams a hand into his own gut. Coughs around it, shaking his head—drags his eyes away from the blood and to the offending bastard that caused it. The cat stares back. 

"Stop that," he says, and then feels very foolish. But there's no one around, and he would really like to just drink himself into a stupor without blood in his nose, so: "If you continue to claw him up, I am going to feed you to Scratch."

The cat just blinks at him, lazy. It yawns to show off sharp white teeth. 

Then, when he's seriously beginning to consider hauling the mutt in to do something good for once in his useless life, it slowly unlatches claws from the man's neck. A displeased mrow hits the air but it curls up on the opposite side, long ears flicking. 

Astarion exhales. The man is still bleeding, but without actively having little daggers in his godsdamn skin, it should congeal fast enough. He doesn't quite trust himself to stifle it manually. 

"Thank you," he says, sharp. The cat, expectedly, does nothing but fluff its tail over its nose and close those luminous eyes. 

Astarion stands there, feeling altogether stupid and hungry and furious and dead, then stalks out of the room. Fuck that. Fuck everything, actually. 

Karlach and Wyll sleep lightly, but tonight was full of enough revelations to keep them tuckered down for when he sneaks back in. So he has the night to get fabulously full of wine that cannot make him drunk and think, think, think about what Marcus said. 

He vaults over the bar, pawing through the stock on display—finds something old and red and nips out the cork with his teeth, spitting it to the side. Let one of the Harpers clean it up. He is, frankly, well past giving a fuck. 

He sets it to his lip, drags down enough to flood the fear from his mouth, and starts thinking. 

-

"Give me room," Jaheira declares, striding over. 

She's clutching an armful of charts and maps, yellowed with age and curling in on themselves; she dumps the batch over the table, prompting a horrified yelp from Gale as he springs up to try and corral them from rolling onto the dusty floor. 

If she slept, she either did so in her armour or managed to put it perfectly back on. There's only a faint whiff of pine and rain, but that could be druidic bullshit. Astarion tries to inhale discreetly and mostly succeeds. 

He isn't being very discreet today, nor yesterday. Karlach woke blearily as he fumbled his way back into the room, not drunk but seething, and even now she glances at him out of the corner of her eye as though wondering what he was up to. 

Vampire spawn don't have the lovely little excuse of needing a piss in the night. Yet another curse of their damned existence. So he keeps his trap shut and just focuses on the hero in their midst. 

"This is what we have gathered on Moonrise," Jaheira says as she sits alongside them, fingers lacing together to form a perch to better hold their gazes. "Old document, current maps. This is more of a hope than a plan, however. Do you know what you are to do?"

"Our goal is to get as close to the Absolute as I can manage," Gale says. He pushes a stray lock of hair behind his ear; that skeletal tattoo curls around his jawbone, shivering above his pulse. He taps one of the maps. 

Jaheira's head tilts. "Hm?"

Shadowheart cuts in. Her mind bleeds frustration. "And nothing. Then we find a soft spot and burn it from the inside out."

Gale's tadpole twitches. "And potentially all die for the sake of a victory uncertain," he says, gentle. "I have a purpose, Shadowheart. Please do not deprive me of it."

"I am depriving you of death."

"On this we disagree."

There is a pause, one that roils. They've been having this spat since Elminster puffed on up to the party with suicide cobaring, but this is the first time that they have an unfamiliar audience—Jaheira's eyes flick between the two of them, sharp. 

"I am missing something," Jaheira says. "Will you elaborate?"

Shadowheart glares at Gale enough he keeps his mouth shut. "It doesn't matter," she says. The tension there has nothing to do with being a Sharran in a Selûnite camp, which already seems to wrangle nothing of her acerbic nature but makes her tadpole sing with divine pain—this is only her and her friend. Which Gale seems to be comforting and confronting in turn. 

"It doesn't matter," Shadowheart repeats, when Jaheira looks the opposite of convinced. "We have to figure out how to get in first."

"Yes, that's more the problem," Gale jumps in, relieved. "How much is it a stronghold—better put, has it become a stronghold since the Absolute took it over, or was it one before?"

"It is one of many problems," Jaheira says, apparently willing to allow that conversation to continue at a later date. "It was a stronghold before and has become more of one now. I am also of the intention of gutting Ketheric Thorm for a second time, but there is a reason we are stuck here and not there."

"Moonrise is a fortress," Wyll guesses. "Somewhere you can't siege and can't get in?"

He's up and ready today, pointedly not looking at the wine despite how much his mind sings of wanting it. Still shaken from yesterday, but much akin to keeping his flesh ripped off and pestering the others to go raid a goblin camp three days later, he's adept at channeling nerves into energy. Astarion can admire that a little too enviously. 

"Yes," she acquiesces. "Sieging is not an option with the curse, and I in particular will not be welcomed should I knock upon the door. But the curse does more than limit our attack—it also limits our approach."

She taps one of the parchments; Astarion leans in despite himself. It's a roughshod outline of a castle, pillars and bridges, the surroundings only stenciled in. Yellow wearies the edge of the parchment.

"We have not seen Moonrise since the curse," Jaheira says. "All of our information comes from a century past, when this land was traversable; but now, the curse thickens around the Towers so that even torches are extinguished. We have not been able to get close to their base and have been stuck here."

Her jaw sets. "The Absolutists have a method for penetrating that grasping dark—we do not. We cannot get to them."

"No torches?" Karlach repeats, without hope. "They don't work at all?"

Jaheira shakes her head. "They barely work in the perimeters," she says. "You were very lucky to make it as far as you did—many good souls have been lost attempting to reach the Inn, and more still that had torches and cantrips on their side for light. The darkness is not darkness but a curse; it will not weary mere fire."

Wyll slumps back into his seat. Despair, just a shade, before he smooths his face back to mere interest. "Okay," he says. "How far away is it? Both on foot and as the raven flies?"

Jaheira shuffles around the maps—Gale helps her, unearthing a few from the bottom of the stack, Karlach leaning back so she doesn't even breathe on them—and more and more lines begin to cover the table. They're old, these maps, a century or more. Wyll pours over them, indecipherable mutters under his breath as he traces certain roads, Jaheira kipping in to guide his hand to different places. 

Astarion watches them with a faint bemusement. His world has been the Lower City for so long he's entirely map-blind, their words nothing to his ears, but he can feel Wyll and Gale's tadpoles begin to sing a song of low malcontent. Jaheira's face stays placid. She already knew there wasn't a path—she's just letting them reach the same conclusion. 

So there isn't a way to Moonrise, not through the curse. Three commanders and three chances. But Astarion hasn't known the party to give up for something as petty as insurmountable odds, so instead there must be another route. A journey more difficult and arduous but one that reaches the Towers.

It's nothing he can put into words. 

But there comes a moment where Astarion stills. When his awareness seeps out of his skull like something made manifest. When he is looking at the maps and the party but all he can feel is the room. Thou shalt not leave my side unless directed meant that Astarion thus had to be aware of Cazador's side, the cardinal north his undead chest revolved around, and this is achingly similar. Every wall looms in his subconscious. 

Something is here. Something is here and it is larger than him. 

Jaheira is still talking but her mouth opens and closes without sound; the edges of her face slip to muddied grey, Karlach a smear of red beyond. Astarion digs claws into the grain of the table, puncturing either it or himself. 

"Then," a voice says, low and melodious, "is it time for my arrival?"

Astarion jerks in his seat, every nerve already alight. Cerebral air fills with five identical pulses of shock. They turn like a singular organism.

In the doorway to the room is a man, human, handsome in the way a statue is and far too affluent for the setting. Hair slicked back, face angular, lips quirked as though at their expense. 

He doesn't look like he belongs, but he's here, past the gate like he'd been allowed in. Judging by how Astarion can hear Jaheira's heartbeat escalate like a thunderstorm, this is not the case. 

"Please, do not rise on my behalf," the man says, amused. He steps forward, heeled boots clicking over wood, arms spread. "I am but a benefactor for your quest, here to assist."

"I will take your name over your help, stranger," Jaheira says. She speaks flat and she speaks fast, coiled like an asp. One hand is set on the table, as though to cover the maps, while the other rests on her scimitars. The air wavers with pine-forest and ivy-leaf. 

"Raphael." He inclines a hand, as though offering it to be kissed. No one at the table moves. 

Astarion is very still. He is dead-still, corpse-still; the kind of still where he couldn't move if he wants to. Something about this is wrong. Something about this is very wrong. Everything is.

"Raphael," Jaheira repeats. She doesn't turn to the party but Astarion can feel her attention shift, trying to figure out if he is known to them. When no one moves, her jaw sets to iron. "Is there a reason you are here?"

"Like I said," he repeats, more a purr, "I am here to help."

Then he takes a step forward. 

Behind him, spectral wings lattice into existence, crimson-red and hooked; a plated tail swishes and arcing horns scrape at the ceiling, claws and bloody eyes and the pulse of a heat so vicious it does not burn but devour–

Then he finishes his movement, and he is a man again. Or what looks like a man.

Karlach chars two handprints into the table. "Cambion."

Cambion.

Astarion grounds himself with punctured hands. This situation is too familiar. It has always been a choice, to face a larger predator. And Raphael is very, very high above him on the food chain. 

"Yes," Raphael says, smiling. He has flat teeth too, like Mizora. "In all the ways that matter, I am. In all the ways that are powerful, I am moreso. And you do so need power, don't you?"

"Not from you we fucking don't," Karlach snarls. 

But before she can grab her greataxe to cut the bastard's head off, Jaheira steps forward, eyes like whips. "Devil," Jaheira snaps. "Out with the truth, before I cut it from you. What are you here for?"

Raphael hums, tapping a finger over his chin; a facsimile of thinking. He already knows what he's here to say. 

"I've been watching over you for some time," he says, attention entirely off of Jaheira. He is only looking at Karlach, an indulgent smile in place. "Terribly interesting, wherever you go—and you are fascinating yourselves. A story ripe to be plucked."

He scans the party as a whole. For a moment, his gaze flicks to Astarion and stays there. His smile widens. Familiar. Infernal magic and someone watching. 

Oh.

This is Korrilla's master, isn't he?

Astarion doesn't react, not outwardly. He is too well-trained for that. But the reminder is not a pleasant one, divine fire and scalped skulls—the ungentle hand upon the inner flesh of his lungs. Gut had died instantly. Korrilla hadn't done anything more than try.

Raphael continues smiling. If he notices, he does not show. 

"And I couldn't help but overhear that you're missing a way to Moonrise."

That punches through the party's collected paralysis. Wyll rises to his feet, Gale's hands glittering—but it's Karlach that stands with the hunched, dogged stance of someone about to kill. Her eyes are flat. 

"We aren't missing shit," she bites out. "And you don't know us."

"I know everything, little hero," Raphael purrs. "And if you spoke true, then why would I find you gathered here, pouring over ancient maps and singing with fear? The lands outside are not gentle, nor are they welcoming. If you truly are here to save the world, you've positioned yourself poorly."

Karlach doesn't bite, though Astarion can feel how much she wants to, tadpole writhing. "What do you mean by watching us?"

He laughs—it is a high, cruel laugh, pulled from somewhere deep underfoot. "My, you're the presumptuous one, aren't you? Questions beget questions, don't you know—I'm hardly here to offer anything for free. Only a deal."

A deal. Karlach's mind goes white-hot. "The fuck–"

Raphael speaks over her, though still with their eyes locked. "Your dreams of sieging Moonrise will never see the light of fruition, except for with my help." A lilt of his voice, of his finger, where a gentle flame gutters to life. Even under the shield, the shadows flee from it. "I have a way to get you to the Towers, if only you would ask."

Wyll moves; gets a palm over Karlach's side, knuckling into what patch of armour he can touch. She squeezes her eyes shut with a snarl, the deep, low sound of a beast in the arena. "And we're supposed to believe you're doing this outta the kindness of your fucking heart."

"It's a long-term investment," Raphael says, eyes half-lidded. "Yes, the Absolute will raze the world and damn a great many number of souls to the hells—and then those souls stop, because there aren't any more to replace them. No, I'm rather invested in keeping your mortal realm around for as long as I can. Much more valuable when it isn't a shriveled husk."

He tilts his head to the side. Flat teeth. 

"There isn't a way for you to stop this," he says. "You lit the fire, you upturned the stone—those parasites were placed in your heads, but you were the ones who carried them to where you are now. No, I'm afraid this road is only just beginning, and I don't think you would much enjoy the cliffs should you try to jump off now."

A chuckle, indulgent. "No offence meant, of course. I'm sure you wish things could have been different."

"They are different, you megalomaniac cunt," Karlach snaps. 

"Are you?" Raphael hums. His gaze sweeps, slow and satisfied, over the gathered party. "Because I have a route to Moonrise, while you don't. And that is something you have no other way of obtaining than through me."

Karlach's grin is all bared fangs. It has no levity. "Pretty sure I could hack off your head—pull the way outta your corpse instead."

He clicks his tongue. "I've done nothing to earn that."

"You're a fucking cambion."

"And you are choosing an oblique way of looking at it," he observes. "Instead of assuming I'm here for your souls, how about actually seeing what I'm presenting you with? A way to Moonrise, your singular hope to make it where you need to go. I am so very fond of hope."

Hope. It has never been hope. It has only been chance.

Astarion punctures his lip to swallow a curse—yes, he can understand why Karlach is stuck on this point of allying with a devil, but she is being oblique about it. They're rather out of fucking options, and he needs to get to Moonrise. He will either figure these tadpoles out before the Absolute is dead, or he will be dead himself—and Moonrise has three commanders. Moonrise has three chances. 

Marcus calls him spawn and asks for his handler. The tadpole devours and delivers. The hunter begs. 

Then Raphael sighs. 

"Oh, very well," he says, rolling his eyes. "I can see when there are skulls too thick for logic to break through. Then let me wish you the very best on finding your way through a land so cursed a goddess has kept it from life for a century without a deal from me. I'm sure you'll have the grandest time getting eaten like appetizers before the Absolute slaughters the world." 

Karlach hackles up to the ceiling, all fury. "Like I'd make a fucking deal–"

"What kind of deal?" Astarion asks. 

Silence. 

Astarion stands, pushing away from the table and the maps and the party, stepping forward. Raphael is taller than him, but he's well-versed in tilting his head back, in meeting red eyes. In standing before something larger. 

Other tadpoles batter against his shield, shouting without hesitancy, shrill in neon-bright red. And gods, he can hear fucking heartbeats, the rest of the party crowding in for all they haven't moved. Watching the cambion. Watching him.

Fuck them. He's got a plan. He has to have a plan. 

Raphael is smiling. He looks pleased. "My, that is a change," he notes. "An actually intelligent soul. Perhaps you've been hoping I'd reach out?"

Don't mention Korrilla, you miserable fucking bastard.

"Not in the slightest," Astarion says, and it is a wonder his voice stays stable. "But I'm an opportunist, and I'd like to make it to the Absolute before there isn't any world left to save. So what's your deal?"

"Fangs," Karlach hisses, caught like a tightrope between two cliffs. He doesn't look but he can feel her, how the heat in the room redoubles, how five other bodies move closer. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Raphael ignores her like she isn't there.

"Within Moonrise is something I want," he says. "An artefact, easy enough to collect—a fetch quest, if you've heard those words before. Whomever the lucky recipient of my deal is merely has to find it to bring to me."

Artefact is a pointedly obtuse name to use, anything from a rock off the ground to the corpse of the Absolute herself. Astarion doesn't bite the bait to ask what it is, not yet. That's putting too much power in Raphael's hands. "And what do I get?"

"Let's make it incidental, shall we? Nothing more than quid pro quo. I help you make it to Moonrise, and you pick something up for me. Simple. You get to make your little journey free of the shadows, just as you want."

Then the cambion hums, amused. "I suppose you haven't had a lover of the day to say what you should be asking me." He waves a deliberate hand. "No matter. But you should know it isn't a poem."

Astarion freezes. 

His back. He hasn't– of course he hasn't fucked anyone here, because he bit Wyll and fought Gandrel and marked himself as a monster long before he'd earned any of the ground he needed for tolerance instead of death. His back has stayed covered. His scars, twisted and welted and raised, the only ones he'd been allowed to keep beyond those on his neck. He hasn't seen them. Can't, not without a reflection, without another set of eyes to stagger beneath. Just a facet of his undeath. 

Cazador calls it his masterpiece.

"A poem?" Gale asks, quiet, as though he didn't realize he said it aloud. 

"It isn't a poem," Raphael corrects. "Didn't I just say that?"

"What?" Astarion manages. A tendril of fear-fear-fear fluctuates through a crack in his shield, and he slams it shut like a gavel from the past he can't remember. Still it burns. "I– what?"

Raphael tuts disprovingly. "Now, you can only have one thing for your help, Astarion. Do you want to know what it is, or do you want a way to Moonrise?"

Ah.

There it is. The choice he must make that has never been much of a choice at all. A passing mystery two centuries unsolved, or the only way to save himself. A dead man in an alley or eternity.

It's not anger, not really. He just didn't expect any better. 

Astarion closes his shield like the iron maw of a bear trap. The other tadpoles reel back, their stolen information gone, and it's hardly an effort to fall back on what he always does. This situation, at least, is familiar enough to get a hold on himself. 

Three commanders. Three chances. This is more than nothing. This is more than idle curiosity. 

Astarion tches. "And here you almost fooled me into thinking you have manners."

Raphael is still smiling. If Astarion's reaction provokes any emotion, he doesn't show it. "Manners have little to do with good negotiations," he says, flippant. "Your choice of deal, Astarion. Feel proud! I rarely find someone so interesting as to offer choices."

Of course he calls it a fucking choice.

"I'll take the route to Moonrise, if you will," he says, so prettily. "Old runes are of no interest to me."

"Infernal runes," Raphael corrects. Astarion twitches. 

What the fuck did Cazador carve into his back? What did he do?

"But of course—then it is a deal for your pessimistic sensibilities, where you get to Moonrise and I get my artefact, so you can be heroes and I can be the selfish creature in the history books, if that will smooth your ruffled feathers. Do you swear?"

Astarion goes to open his mouth. 

Karlach shoulder-checks him as she shoves her way to the front, finally freed from where Lae'zel had hooked arms to try and hold her back. The air burns around her, incandescent.

"No the fuck he does not," Karlach spits. She's got a fine tremor running over her chest like a bull in red-soaked sand. "Take your bloody deal and shove it up your ass, Raphael."

A derisive click of the tongue. "Are you speaking for him, Karlach? I can't force him into making the deal, but it seems as though you're content to force him not to make it. Hardly equality if you won't allow him his own choice, hm?"

Karlach snarls. 

Don't make us look desperate in front of the godsdamned cambion, Astarion wants to hiss, but settles for smiling, a little too tight. "It's not the worst plan," he says. "A deal for a fetch quest. Hardly asking for my soul, is he?"

The wrong thing to say. Karlach turns to him, eyes so wide, the shadow like a wasteland behind her horn. 

"Fangs, don't," she says, near a plea. "Don't trust this motherfucker. He's just gonna use this shit against you. We can find another way." The shadow thickens. "I'll gut him asshole to skull before I'll let him take your–"

"My, you are the brute I've heard of," Raphael muses, cutting in. "I suppose your temper must run hot when you have so little else to use."

The floorboards blacken under her feet. 

"But I would hate to be accused of such blatant manipulation as telling the truth," he says, theatrical. A laugh again, as though they're all on the same page and Karlach is merely being difficult. "Astarion, if you're still in the mood to save the world, I'll be back in three days." He smiles. Flat teeth. "I hope you're able to convince the rest of them how this is the only choice you have."

The air moves behind him, kicked up by intangible wings. The eyes that meet Astarion's are a deep, bloody red. 

"Three days," Raphael says again. Low, deliberate. "Wait for me, Astarion. I'll be there."

He clicks his fingers. There is a plume of smoke, and he's gone—gone but for the image of spread infernal wings, scarred like afterburn. The thought of something larger. 

Astarion has lived an unlife under the moniker of small. Smaller than Petras, than Violet, than Leon—and so, so much smaller than Cazador. For a moment he wore the cloak of a True Soul, something to disguise his size and make him seem larger, too large to hurt, until he was hurt again and it was torn from his shoulders. He knows size. 

Astarion knows Raphael is larger than anything in this adventure thus far. He knows this is not playing with fire but with immolation. 

Three commanders. Three chances. 

Raphael may be large. But he does not have Cazador's purpose. 

So it goes.

Astarion swallows. Exhales, plasters a smile over his face, something nonplussed. Taken from his sister, this time. She knew how to let nothing affect her. "Well," he says, turning back to the others. They're all staggered around the table, eyes wide, mouths agape. Each tadpole shrieks its own funeral dirge. He widens his smile. "I suppose that could have gone better." 

"What the absolute fuck," Karlach snarls. 

Then she rounds on Jaheira, which is frankly the most surprising thing of the day. 

"Thought this was a haven," Karlach barks, sparks through her teeth. "How is that kinda bastard getting in?"

Jaheira meets her gaze. Holds it steady. She's drawn both her scimitars, the air ripe like a forest untouched for a millenia. "He should not have been allowed," she says, sharp. "But our shield is against shadows, not devils. Our guardian cannot protect us from the world."

Her eyes sweep over the party. "I do not know how he found us. Do you know him?"

The question is directed at him. 

Astarion continues smiling and shakes his head. "Not at all, I'm afraid."

Not Raphael, anyways. Only one of his slaves. 

Something shifts along Jaheira's jaw and she moves, pulling out from the table. The maps are abandoned and her blades sheathed, though the magic never leaves. "Then I must check on our guardian. If he came through, there is a chance he is not alone, and this I will not risk."

When Karlach opens her mouth, Jaheira cuts through with so fierce an expression it would sear. "No. Stay here. Do not leave. We will discuss this when I return."

Then she's up the stairs, moving behind doors and passages until gone. The other Harpers are watching them and her wake, tension high. The room boils in wake of them both. 

Now it is only him and the party. Him and the party and the shadow of a devil and a deal. 

Astarion doesn't meet their eyes, for a moment. The verisimilitude of apathy clings to him. He studies the distant wood grain, the arrangement of bottles in the open-top bar. There are thirty-seven, all different. 

Then he sighs a little. "This is the second deal made with a cambion in the past tenday. Are they ever less annoying? Please tell me we'll eventually find one that doesn't speak in riddles."

That apparently kicks over a powderkeg. "You didn't make a deal," Karlach says, faster now, running like a supernova. "Fangs, you didn't. You can't. Raphael's a fucking bastard out for nothing but himself."

"Yet we need a way to Moonrise," Astarion cuts back, more waspish than wanted. "Rather badly, might I remind. If the Harpers have been trying here for tendays, I doubt our perfect solution will come marching down the path for us."

"A devil isn't our perfect solution, either," Wyll says. He's much too quiet. 

It isn't a devil. It's one deal that doesn't barter with souls, if Astarion even has one to offer. It's a way to stop the Absolute like they want—he's giving them heroism on a silver platter. Why won't they just say yes?  

"No, but it is a solution, and we haven't found any others. You do want to save the world, yes? That is something we're still trying to do?"

"You are being combative," Lae'zel interjects. "It is not helpful. Stop."

Astarion purses his lips. "Okay. Fine. Let's talk about the deal in perfectly fair, equivalent terms. He brings us to Moonrise and we find his artefact—all hells, he'll be doing his part first, even. Plenty of opportunity to swindle or cajole him once he's brought us there. What's the problem?"

"That is the problem," Wyll says, sharper now. "Devils never make deals where they don't come out on top—for him to offer that means there must be something in the punishment to scare you into obeying. And cambions have enough power to make consequences hurt."

"Yes, he's plenty terrifying, showing up in a tailored suit and shitty aphorisms. Isn't a devil's word binding? He has to get us there safely, and we've rather made a legacy of impossible tasks by this point. The artefact can't be that bad."

"The artefact could be," Karlach cuts in. She's got a hand on her chest, fingers splayed over the twisted flesh that houses an infernal engine. Smoke around her neck, wreathing her horn. "Could be pretty fucking bad, mate. And I don't trust Raphael one bloody bit. Cambions don't do generosity. Not for this."

"On that we can agree," Gale concedes. "But the way he phrased it—the way he approached us, even. Cambions are not those who tend to present themselves to anyone other than those in the very bottom of a barrel, and only those without enough time or sense to read the contract—my apologies, Wyll—yet he gave us three days before making a decision. That is far from typical." 

"Three days is so specific," Shadowheart adds. She's frowning. "There's nothing I can think of happening then, but that feels like way too much time to be arbitrary."

"And it's only a deal with Astarion," Wyll says quietly. "Not with us as a group."

Attention shifts back to him much too quickly. He batters down a glare into something conceivably amicable.

"It's just collecting an artefact," he counters. "That's hardly selling my soul, is it? And I rather think you all could help me in the endeavour and he would welcome that, considering he wants us to succeed to get his bloody shit back. I could demand he gets us all to Moonrise safely. Add it to the oath."

"It would be a devil's word, bound and binding," Gale says. "Yes, he couldn't lie, but–"

"But not lying doesn't mean the truth."

Wyll closes his eyes. He looks haggard, drawn thin. "Devils never offer something unless they plan to win," he says quietly. "What if Raphael says the artefact is something impossible? Or that the cost of failure is damnation?"

The cost of failure is eternity.  

Astarion waves a hand around like there's something to gesture at. "If you want to discuss what-ifs—what if we never find another way to Moonrise? What if the world ends while you all sit around, twiddling your thumbs, hoping for a miracle? Yes, he's a bloody cambion, but he has something we don't and he came to us. Surely that has to mean something."

Karlach rumbles something deep in her throat. "It means he's a hellsdamned bastard who's going to–"

"It means," Gale interrupts, stepping forward. His arcane scar hums. "It means he has more information, Astarion, more than we do, and that gives him more cards to hold in this deal." A pause, his gaze searching. "And he did seem to have information on you."

Ah. Astarion had rather wanted that part of the conversation to die its own death, as it were. Figures that the wizard is the one to latch onto it. 

"He did," Astarion says thinly. "Bully for him."

Gale laces his hands together. His eyes are much too sharp. "What did he mean by something that isn't a poem? Infernal runes are rarely benevolent."

Oh, Astarion well fucking knows that. Hard to call anything from Cazador benevolent.

He doesn't give it away that easily, but a roll of his shoulders presses fabric tight against raised welts, slight pockets of pain each time they're touched. The memories of a needle and a very, very long night. 

"A gift," Astarion settles on. He smiles, and knows it doesn't reach his eyes. "Not one I much wanted, but one I got. I never knew it was in infernal."

"You didn't have any supplies when we found you on the beach," Wyll says. His face is composed, but his tadpole darkens.

Yes, yes. Put the fucking pieces together. "I don't exactly have to carry it."

The implications hit them a little out of sync, but it's close enough to feel the reverberations. Likely Raphael's comment of lover of the day helps speed it up. How fucking nice of him. 

Karlach inhales something ragged. The maps are little more than cinders behind her, still scorching, but at least back in legible words than growls. She sets a hand on her shoulder, on the one that looks melted by acid, tattoos smearing in overlapping lines of grey. "You're wearing it?" 

That's a polite way of phrasing it. "I am."

"Your back," Shadowheart guesses, because she's always been terribly clever. "So you can't read it, not without a reflection."

"As I said," Astarion says, still so pretty, "I never knew it was infernal."

Karlach bites her lips. "But why the fuck would Raphael offer to tell you what it is?"

"I didn't know there was anything to tell," Astarion admits. "I thought it was just– pain, I suppose. Another layer to the humiliation." He scoffs. "Maybe I can ask him when we get to Baldur's Gate."

Karlach freezes. 

All of them do, actually—this quicksilver horror budding through their shared mental space, tadpoles leeching dread like poison into water. Wyll has fear building in his lovely mismatched eyes. 

Astarion hackles under the attention. "What?"

"Ask him?" Karlach repeats, shallow. "How would you ask him, fangs?"

"A poor attempt at humour," he corrects. "I am not planning on seeing even his shadow, if I can help it."

This does not appear to be the right answer. 

Karlach blanches, fire drying to pale-tongued spokes through her teeth. Her tadpole is bleeding this miasma of fear and anger and sadness, steaming into an anguish so potent it hurts to feel. 

"He's still alive," she whispers. "Fuck, fangs, he's still alive?"

What?

"He is," Astarion says, almost lilted to a question. "Of course he is. What?" 

This is equally wrong. Because Karlach flinches like she's been struck, and Wyll wraps a hand so tight around his horns the base begins to bleed, and Gale takes a clattered step back, and Shadowheart goes stiff and still and nothing, and Lae'zel has tensed until snapping. All of them choked up in this wasteland flooded to the edges of his tadpole. Shock and fear and despair. 

Astarion stares at them all. Nothing about this connects; just circuits skipping off the point, gears that never catch the teeth of another. "He is," he repeats, useless. "I– why would you think he was dead?"

"I–" Karlach casts around as though for an answer, table moaning as her claws scorch through its boards. Her eyes are so wide. "I just–"

"Because you were here," Wyll says haltingly.

Astarion turns to him. There must be something on his face, though he doesn't quite know what it could be. 

Wyll hesitates but pushes on. "I've never seen a vampire lord release their spawn before, not to the wilds, not without a compulsion to come back. Even if the nautiloid teleported you here, if you were still thralled, you would be running back to your sire."

"The tadpole," Astarion says, a little helplessly. "It removed my weakness to sunlight and water—it also removed my thrall. Surely you must have seen that."

 Wyll reaches up to brush a hand along his face, not before his stone eye but enough to make the point. "Even with the tadpole, I am still under my pact," he says quietly. "I had no reason to think it would be any different."

Astarion can't quite move. Can't pull his eyes away from Wyll, from Karlach, from everyone—everyone who had looked back on him and saw someone free. At those who thought he was a liberated spawn. That he had a master, past tense, no longer. That he was gallivanting through the wilds with nothing to run from.

Something within him snaps into uneven pieces. 

"Yes, the tadpoles didn't remove your bond and did for me. I've not a fucking clue why. Do we need to discuss this?"

Karlach twists her fists into the table. "Of course we fucking do," she says, nearly choking. "I didn't know he was alive!"

"He's not, actually," Astarion corrects, pedantic. "Vampire lords are undead."

This is the third wrong thing to say. Karlach's eyes steam, hands shuddering. She looks like she wants to reach out and hold him, to shelter him, to stand before. Astarion doesn't move to match. Just smiles, far too thin. He's shaking, the underwater pressure of a ship against a reef bed. Every single facet of this conversation is deeply unwelcome. In fact, if either of them say another fucking word, he's going to tear their throats open, damn the consequences. 

Astarion sucks in a shallow breath, knuckling deep into his sternum. Familiar pain grounds him. If he took a carving knife to his ribs, maybe he could finally think.

"I don't know," he settles on, bristled. "But yes. He is still alive. I will not return to him. But that's not exactly the question of the most pressing importance, is it?" 

Karlach and Wyll share a look like the bleeding fucking hearts they are. The part of Astarion made of teeth and collars wonders if they're thinking about this newfound competition for his allegiance; whether they have to fear him becoming the monster they swore to put down. 

But that doesn't matter. What matters is that he has one chance to learn how to protect himself before the Absolute is killed, and he's not about to lose it. 

He is, however, about to lose something else, and that is his temper.

"The most important thing," Astarion continues, descending over whatever apoplectic misery Karlach is about to spout, "is getting us to Moonrise and saving the world. Yes? We're all still on this march? Wonderful. Then what's going to happen is I'll take the deal to get us there, and you lot carve five fucking minutes out of your busy godsdamn schedules to help me find this artefact so we can all move on." A laugh, strangled. "Gods, I'm doing this shit for you, and you don't even have the decency to be grateful for it!"

A ripple of something. The colours of their shared mental space twist—go electric on the edges, jagged. Wyll holds his gaze with an impossible steadiness. "We'd never ask you to risk your soul, Astarion." 

"You aren't asking! You're stopping me from getting to Moonrise!" He bares his fangs at them all, eyes slitted. "Which goes every fucking thing you've told me to do!"

Movement, the others pressing in, drifting back. He's only looking at Wyll—at Karlach, who steps forward, mist wreathing her horn and face so miserable it burns. 

"You can't take his deal, fangs," Karlach pleads. "You can't."

Is that a command?

"Fine," Astarion snaps. "You can have three days before he gets back to find an alternative, and if you don't, then I'm taking his fucking deal. I'll go to Moonrise alone, if I have to."

He's shaking. He stands, jagged, would puncture through the floorboards were he as sharp as he feels. "I don't feel particularly cursed with infernal magic," he bites out. "You can wait around for Jaheira to go grab her secret guardian; I will not."

Then Astarion pushes away from the table and leaves the party behind.

He does not break his stride until their tadpoles are a mere murmur on the edges of his shield. Until he can only hear heartbeats through walls, the pulse of blood with sightlines hidden. 

Then he stops, and he stares at his hands, where tendons peek through his wrists like pale-bodied serpents. 

Fuck all of them. Fuck Marcus, fuck Jaheira, fuck Raphael, fuck the party for dredging up Cazador without the fucking decency of letting him pretend he was free. For stopping this one fucking chance at permanent freedom. 

He continues walking away. Continues prowling like a predator in a circus cage, nothing but the facsimile of power. Something larger always holds the whip. And he's met a lot of bloody whips recently. 

In the wretched little chance someone has managed to disguise their tadpole enough to follow him, Astarion reverses around the back of the Inn proper, trailing close to the silver shield. It butts up against a lake, one glossy and smooth. The shadowcurse swallows most of it, turns it dark as ink; he could disappear beneath it with nary a ripple. 

For not the first time, Astarion thinks about throwing himself into the water. But unlike all the previous, now there is no yoke around his neck to hurl him back, to keep him pinned and chained—because Cazador would have never allowed him the freedom of killing himself. That would have been far too much a mercy. 

He could do it now. It wouldn't be hard, not really; that intrinsic survival instinct has been washed clean from his mind centuries back. A true death a little later than when he first wanted it, but still an acceptable conclusion over a return. 

Astarion stares at the lake. 

There is no reflection to stare back. 

Time passes, slow. At some point he sits, ankles lapped by waves without the burn of running water, only the cold of something untouched by sun. He sits there and he isn't thinking at first, just seething, caught between the desire to disappear and the desire to rip everyone's throats out—and then he starts thinking about what happened. 

A deal with Raphael. Yes. This is the option most apparent to be seen, to be dealt; because Marcus's fabled three commanders are the best chance he has for utilizing the tadpoles, for being something powerful enough to free himself. He has to get to Moonrise for that. He has to make a deal with a devil in a party that couldn't be any fucking clearer about how they will command him not to. So much like how he both has to learn from the Absolute and kill her, he must make both of these opposites come together. Of course. Of fucking course. And they didn't even hear Marcus to know why he's doing this. 

Astarion pauses. He stares at the murky water. 

Marcus mentioned three commanders. 

Marcus mentioned something else as well. 

It's only now, with his fury running white-hot over his fear, that Astarion can taste the memory—can pluck apart the words for more than their existence as a blockade to stable answer. As something within themselves. 

Do you only have one?

He does. He does currently, at least. But that is not a fact that has to be true forever.

Three commanders. Four chances. Because up in his room, tucked in the pack full of stolen and gathered things, is a bottle with a githyanki lid and a parasite swimming inside. 

Astarion inhales, exhales. He's still staring at the water, liquid-dark and settled. 

Not far from here, he dug into Minthara's mind and felt, for a moment, multiple nodes staring back at him—an ouroboros of tadpoles, devouring each other and her in equal measure. When he attacked her, it shredded him. She had been more powerful. 

Maybe that wasn't just because of strength. 

In three days, Raphael returns. And maybe in three days, Raphael comes back to an Astarion that has no need to make a deal with a devil, because he has already severed the last of Cazador's grip on his soul. That the ground has fallen away from his feet so he can float in the ephemeral space without commands or chains or captors. 

Three days. Three commanders. Four chances. 

Astarion turns back to the building. 

Chapter Text

When Astarion slips back within the main building, every hackle up and ears pricked, silence greets him. Night, or whatever passes as it in this ceaselessly unchanging land, no tide nor moon to track cycles—but night regardless, as populations dim and sleep becomes shelter. Only a few guards, prodding the central fire, faces lit up in silver. They watch him, but it's the same wary, skeptical watch they give everyone, so Astarion keeps his head on straight. Much better to have everyone on edge. Easier to blend in. 

A few mingling crowds, the scattered masses of those deep in cups or finding moroseity in meals eaten too late. The central building looms in the dark, the faint buzz of magic so entrenched it makes his fangs itch. The globe overhead is divine in origin; maybe it would kill him, in another life. Unlife. Whatever. 

He's thinking about these useless things, because some part of him fears, no matter his shield, that if he thinks too much about the tadpole, the others will hear. That he will enter the shared room and they will be assembled there, jar in hand, stake in the other. 

But Raphael is coming in three days, heralding answers he won't give and threats he doesn't have to say, and Astarion would really fucking love to tell him to piss off instead of needing this deal, so up he heads to the room. 

The fourth stair creaks, as does the twelfth. Cazador never allowed anything in his palace to be less than perfect, but some things could not be repaired lest bring in sunlight or other unmentionables, or were left as reminders. There are divots in the stone of the kennel that Astarion's knees are molded to. His subconscious, far louder than his forebrain, lifts him over those stairs and pulls him to the left, head up. He pushes open the door to his room. 

To his shared room. Which is a fact he hadn't quite forgotten but is regrettably reminded of as both Karlach and Wyll look up at him. 

They're sitting on the floor, so close their knees nearly touch, a light cantrip gleaming from on top of their bed. Their tadpoles simmer with something he can't place—the echo of words lingering in the air, a conversation halted upon his arrival. Something about him, maybe. Or perhaps he's too conceited and they were discussing other secrets. 

Astarion freezes in the doorframe, because he wasn't suspicious enough. Goes all stiff and sculpted, neither breathing nor blinking. Because they're looking at him; Karlach has these wide, dismayed eyes like he's a puppy someone just punted off a cliff. Wyll looks torn. 

Then Astarion remembers himself, breathes, closes the door, and pads forward. 

Their positioning feels– deliberate. Waiting for him, in a way. They've left an opening in their little circle, the finishing touch to a triad, and the center holds an unopened bottle of wine. 

In the bed to the left is a jar within a bag, and within that a tadpole. Three commanders, one parasite. Four chances. The ground his consciousness is built upon to be stripped away. 

Karlach is looking at him. Her eyes are so big. 

"Don't say anything if you don't want," she says, all gentle. "But your master sounds like a massive fucking cunt."

Maybe it's the incredulity of it all, how much Astarion feels like he's burning without the relief of ash, but he laughs. He laughs deep and he laughs hard, something yearning to escape from his chest. Four chances. He's so fucking tired.

"You, my dear, are entirely correct," he says, and staggers over; Wyll scooches back obligingly and Astarion collapses more than sits to fill in the triumvirate. "He's a cunt and a bastard and perhaps even an asshole, if I were to be so bold."

No patriars to convince, no slaves to placate. Just the two others who might actually understand.

"Sounds right like it," Karlach says, smiling a little, something both less and more than her norm. She leans forward to tap the bottle of wine on its cork. "Want some?"

Astarion hums. He crosses his legs beneath him, neat and poised but for how he lists, a ship adrift. A part of him still hears Raphael's tar-slick voice, the violence of Marcus' derision—he is grasping as though a drowning man onto a plan falling apart in his grasp no matter how many choices lay before him, and yet he sits between a hunter and a hero and raises a brow at the wine. "Is this a bribe?"

"Only if it works," Karlach says with a shrug. "Otherwise it's a gift."

Another hum, considering. But fuck it. Today has been the fucking worst. 

He pops the cork off with his thumb and downs a swill—makes a truly indecent sound at something so rich even the ash has layers, like the finest grime a vineyard has to offer. Whale blubber and jaundice. Something instead of empty air. 

"Bribe accepted," he says, because he's nothing if not willing to continue prompting this behavior. Karlach's eyes crinkle at the corners. 

But she has never been particularly patient, nor subtle. She sits there, watching him, tail curling on the stretch of leather; looks at Wyll, her tadpole simmering, then at him. 

"Your–" her lips twist, as though fighting for another word but knowing there isn't one. There never has been, perhaps. "Your master. He's still alive." 

Astarion hums instead of saying anything. Because he hadn't thought there was anything to say, anything that wasn't already written upon the core of his being—but it had been a revelation, apparently. As though they assumed he was free. 

Does that make it better, or worse? That they had so quickly put him under their own commands? Astarion had thought it was the parallels; to see a slave and know it is no great difference to simply adjust where his chains lead. Hardly a loss, all things considered. 

Instead, they had seen a free man, and still condemned him. 

Karlach, looking at him. Wyll, shoulders curled in. 

Astarion continues drinking. 

"Yes," he answers, when it becomes apparent the silence is stretching for want of an answer. "Undead, but yes. Presumably still skulking over Baldur's Gate like the bat he is. Perhaps I could be so lucky that some other upstart hero has offed him in my absence."

It's a nice thought, but not a possible one. Cazador has survived for two centuries. A handful of months is not enough to undo that. 

Astarion, when he is particularly self-vicious and curled around nothing, wonders whether it could even happen. There is a reason he will use the Absolute's power to free himself, not to kill Cazador; because Cazador can't die, not really. A stake in his gut and a cleric upon his corpse and he would still find a way to escape. He always has before. 

Maybe the Absolute could conquer the world, just to kill him. Maybe that would be an acceptable cost. 

"Still alive," Karlach echoes. She holds Wyll's gaze for a moment—their tadpoles stay silent, but something crosses through their eyes regardless. A language he can't piece apart. "Does he want you back?"

Oh, they're asking the fun questions, aren't they? Perhaps damage assessment, figuring out whether it's worth it to drag him to Baldur's Gate or merely truss him up for the shadows to take. Whether having a monster who frolics with devils is an acceptable companion.

He wants to be angry. Wants to keep screaming like not an hour before, furious at them preventing him from being heroic no matter ulterior motives. They've cheersed him into risking his life before, silver-tonguing into the goblin camp or the crèche—then a devil comes bartering for something they very much fucking need, and it's all these poncey whinging refusals. 

He wants to be angry. 

He isn't, not quite. Just– smooth. Washed out. Like the lakeshore, water so dark there's nothing visible underneath. 

"Most assuredly," Astarion says, blithe, and makes no reaction when both Karlach and Wyll flinch. "Likely would be here himself if sunlight didn't pose a threat. High luck the Chionthar is between us." He lifts the bottle to laud some amorphous figure far beyond. "The tadpoles are very generous in that regard."

In other regards as well. But he would quarter his tongue before saying so. 

Karlach, damn her, looks weepy. Sorrow-backed and furious. 

But it's Wyll that lifts his head, mismatched eyes underlit. "Could the poem lead him to you?"

"Not a poem," Astarion corrects. Like he'd had any fucking clue before Raphael taunted him with it. 

Wyll just nods. Shoulders the amendment. "Do you know what it is?"

Ah.

Astarion doesn't. Very much doesn't. He hadn't before and he doesn't now, when simple pain was made purpose of something he was never privy to. Now it's just another shackle, another threat. Another rule he isn't told but is expected to follow. 

He wants to be angry. He also wants to lie. It would make sense, even—cutting under the truth with something banal or lecherous or any other vicious little telling to scare them off, discord in a bard's song. But he's already revealed too much, hasn't he? Already let Raphael crease insipid lips into a smile to say lover of the day.

It isn't a poem. Infernal runes, instead. More important. He doesn't know what. 

Astarion hums around another mouthful, marinating in the wretched taste. Seawater, gold mine runoff. Something pulled from the lower planes. 

"It's a carving," he says. "Inscribed by a loving hand, a master of his craft. Wonderful penmanship. He made it perfect by taking his time."

Wyll doesn't wince, just holds his gaze steady. Perhaps it's meant to be grounding instead of a challenge. At his side, Karlach digests this new information, quiet for a second. What she'd said before—you're wearing it—keeps rebounding through his head. Her shoulders bear Zariel's signature, redone so many times as to overlap. Wyll's face is marked by a cambion's claws.

"Scars," Karlach asks, "or tats?"

A fair question, honestly. Astarion inclines the neck of the bottle in her direction. "Scars."

This prompts another pause, like this conversation hasn't been empty enough. A week's worth of discussion could fit in these gaps, stretched like a noose preventing its corpse from succumbing to gravity. 

Wyll swallows. "I thought vampires aren't able to scar."

"We aren't," Astarion says. He takes another drink. "Not without extraneous effort."

It was a very long night. 

Karlach's tadpole has been lethargic, smothered under forced calm, but something about this makes it light up. Not white-hot, not electric, just– more. Smoke from embers that haven't yet kindled. 

She closes her eyes, draws in a ragged breath. "Why? Why did he do that?"

Astarion blinks at her. Why is she asking? Shouldn't she know?

One of her horns is shattered. In what memories bleed from her tadpole, she used to have two. 

"Because he could, darling. What other reason does he need?" Astarion waves a hand vaguely, then brings it up to run over his shoulder. He finds the ridges by touch alone. Even under leather, he knows where they are. "His masterpiece, he called it. I always thought it was something of ownership, a brand, the like. Meaningless and conciliatory." 

He's seen enough of his siblings' backs to know they have their own, though admittedly, Astarion has always been a tad focused on other things, considering his only time seeing them disrobed was when being made to rape the other or be their recipient. That situation doesn't lend itself to concentration very well. 

Perhaps he could have looked, and Raphael would have nothing to hold over his head now. But he didn't. Cazador always said he was better off mindless. 

"I suppose it is something more. Something more fucking important." His claws are digging in; he removes them, though unwillingly. "As though anything could be an explanation for it."

Astarion hums. "Maybe he just likes to hurt me. I scream very prettily, I've been told."

Gods, Karlach looks so sad. She doesn't look anything like him when he's sad. When Astarion is sad, he gets wet-eyed, tears sticking to his lashes in morning dew. Pulls himself taut, gaze wild, silvery curls to peer through like the bars of an oubliette. A poor, gorgeous little thing. So amendable to suffering. So willing.

Astarion isn't thinking straight, if he's thinking at all. 

He doesn't feel like he's thinking. Moreso than in the manner of telling himself not to—like his thoughts have been muffled, tucked away. Hidden in some corner where they cannot bother him, even those made to protect him. To hold his tongue from things better left unsaid. 

Oh. 

He regards the wine. 

It's drugged, isn't it? Klauthgrass, a backalley serum for those who can't afford proper elixirs of truth. Unfortunately familiar. Far too many patriars wanted answers on their mysterious benefactor and thought its more subtle workings would slip under the radar, but Cazador has never been lenient enough to allow such pithy things as being actually fucking drugged to allow secrets to escape the Crimson Palace. The commands would not allow it. 

And the commands are muted now. There are graves that can be unearthed. An opportunity to garner from a tongue so normally unwilling. 

He wants to be angry. 

Astarion is not quite able to feel something that strong. Just dark water.

He does set the bottle down, though. Sat between the triumvirate like a damning indictment—but Karlach doesn't look at it, still holding his gaze. Still pleading for something he doesn't know how to give. 

Wyll pulls attention again, nudging the conversation forward. It's appreciated. He's never been very good with silence. 

"Raphael said they were runes," Wyll says, half a mention, half a worry. As though his words will manifest the bastard back into this cramped room. "Infernal ones."

"Maybe they are," Astarion says, noncommittal. "I can't exactly see them, love."

Karlach leans forward, arms braced on her thighs. Soot smears over the floorboards. Her tadpole sings an old and crippled lament. 

"I can read infernal, fangs," she says. "So can Wyll. Don't need Raphael if you want us to take a look."

Astarion blinks. Regards her. 

He would have wanted her to take a look back when he thought it would mean something. When he could trip her into bed and fuck protection out of it, through fire resistance potions or simply biting his tongue. Plenty of options. Then he asked if she'd kill him like an imp and there went that plan, didn't it? Out the window. Out the top of Ramazith's Tower, splattering over Lower City like it has something to prove. 

Now she's offering. Now she's drugging answers out of him instead of commanding them, palm up, asking.

There is a tadpole less than five feet away from them all. There is a god he is willing to let rampage so long as he can find freedom in its power. There is a True Soul he would have helped escape without a second thought had there not been the mention of spawn. 

If they discover that, they kill him. If he fails, he kills himself. So it goes. 

It isn't sanity that has Astarion reach to his neck, untying the laces there. He works quickly, methodically—it's like hauling a boat upriver, keeping himself from slipping sleeves off with coy slowness or treating it as the unwrapping of a gift. There is no one to seduce here. He's already ruined that. Both of them are together, anyways. He's been the third too many times to think these two are the type. 

Astarion hesitates at the last moment, clothing still pressed over his chest, and then shucks it off. Sets it neatly on his lap, old instinct folding the sleeves in and making it small. Easier to protect, to ensure it can be reclaimed afterward. Cazador wasn't the type to replace clothing for anything but a patriar's soirée.

He doesn't meet their gazes—just turns before he can lose the ghosting nerve. He's stiff, drawn up, but there's nothing to bite and nothing to attack and nothing to look at but old wood as two heartbeats move behind him. 

They could push him to his stomach now. Not the normal position, considering he had a vested interest in hiding his back and so many of his customers wanted his mouth more readily accessible, but still enough he knows how to contort himself to fit. Two of them, both stronger, both more. It wouldn't be a fight. It has never been a fight. 

Instead, he just hears Karlach inhale, a hiss through clenched teeth. Wyll's tadpole oozes malaise. 

"That's fucked," she says, brittle. "Straight fucked, fangs. Bloody hells."

"Thank you," he says. It's less dry than he wants; more fragile. He shakes his head, petting a curl back and trying to have it seem idle. "Is it infernal, then?"

Movement, as though a nod, before she corrects. "Yeah. Sure fucking is. Old script, too. Real old."

Astarion nods like that means anything to him. "What does it say?"

"I mostly know battle commands and insults," Karlach admits. There's a soft sound with an accompanying aroma of smoke, her tail curling on the floorboards past her stretch of leather to sit upon. "This is. More than that. A lot more."

"It's legal tender," Wyll says slowly. Astarion can feel his tadpole whorl, stirring as more of the brain surrounding it picks up steam and starts working. "A circular contract, not a linear one. The lower planes still do deals this way; they describe it as better for grounding the oath, ensuring it holds. Or is chained."

Astarion smiles at nothing. Of course. 

Movement, as though Wyll is lifting a hand, though nothing touches him. "But it's not enough," he says, a note of bemusement. "Infernal contracts are as long as the hells they come from; one back would never be enough to write it all, and this is less than a few sentences. No clauses, no signatures. Barely enough to indicate it's a contract at all."

"What's it say?" Karlach prompts.

Wyll clears his throat. "First to mark and of mark, many; a whole beyond. To oath the fires below and remake of purpose; to complete." His tadpole shivers. "Then it loops back again. I think that's where the break is supposed to be, at least."

Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. Yet carved so carefully it's legible at a glance. 

Astarion sets his hands over his legs so he doesn't cut open his wrists again. They've barely congealed from the lake. "That's surprisingly eloquent," he says lightly. "I thought legalese was supposed to be boring."

"It is," Wyll admits. "I– dramatized it a bit."

Another nonsensical reaction but Astarion snorts, indelicate. "To think the Blade of Frontiers is a wordsmith? Impossible."

A huff, a pulse of orange-white from the man's tadpole. Concentration floats heavy on the air.

"That's first in the indicative form—meaning you're the first?" Another pause, a clicked tongue. Drummed fingers. "And mark is a rough translation; it can also mean brand or recognition, like a signature. Similarly, whole means both a collective and the entirety of a contract. A whole beyond—or, er, the direct translation is actually like more that is not this piece—ties in with this mentioned many; to oath is relatively clear, as is the fires below, though I don't understand what the dichotomy between purpose and complete is."

Astarion lets his head tilt back, shifting his gaze to the ceiling. "Infernal doesn't sound very concise."

That earns him a laugh, though startled. "It normally is," Wyll says. "But for contracts, it has around thrice the words than any other language, all with multiple meanings. Easier to slip in loopholes, that way. It's designed for one purpose."

"Two purposes," Karlach notes. He can hear the expression on her face, trying to shove a break into the tension. "The hells have the best insults out there. Common just can't compare."

"Hafv oftc afz xe dypfryw eiul," Wyll offers. 

"Qa wmuz afz vyye rujyrw," Karlach replies cheerily. "See? Wouldn't translate at all."

Oh, it translates well enough. Even with Wyll's politeness and Karlach's deliberate heart, the words sound like gargling carrion, tongues contorted into a myriad of unpleasant directions. Like attempting to spoonfeed a hairball made of gravel.

"Pardon?" 

Karlach shifts, engine rumbling beneath her breath. "Wyll said I'd– hm, fuck a lemure's pain in? Past? Something like that. And I told him to shit out one of the deep rivers, didn't specify which. More fun that way."

Astarion blinks at the ceiling. Does so again. 

"Wyll said you'd fuck a lemure's pain in," he repeats. "Wyll said that. Out loud. In front of other people."

The man's tadpole shines to a pearlescent hue. He coughs a little. "I wouldn't say it in common."

Astarion grabs his shirt and pulls it back on, drawing the lace around his throat tight enough it threatens to choke. Hides his back. Hides himself. He turns around and smiles, sharp, eyes purposefully bright. They aren't prickling. They are perfectly dry. "Were I to learn infernal, would I discover you've a vagrant's tongue?" An adjustment; more of his skin hidden under fabric, disguised as simple movement. "How vulgar are you, dear Wyll?"

Wyll laughs, eyes crinkled. "It's very difficult to be decorous in infernal," he says, which is as much an answer as an avoidance. 

Then he sobers, and there's something in his face, now that curses and obscenities have drifted away and left truth in their wake. "I'm sorry," he says, soft. "That's the translation, but I don't know what it means. It seems like it's a piece of a larger contract, written somewhere else—and if that's the case, then." He licks his lips; doesn't look hesitant, not quite, just resigned. Familiar with being the bearer of bad news, used to the ricochetted hurt. "The only reason I can think for doing this would be if you were involved in the contract."

Well. Astarion had expected that, ever since Raphael's saccharine little statement. It isn't like he has ownership over his own soul to reject a contract made on his behalf. 

There is a spiral waiting to fall into, trying to piece apart what Cazador did—more pain, more eternity, more anything—but Astarion just waves a hand. He isn't thinking about it. "It'd be disappointing to figure it out instantly after all these years, really. Better allowed to build into a mystery. I'll find the answer eventually."

Maybe that means Raphael. Maybe it doesn't. 

Karlach seems to get that, too.

"He'll take everything from you, fangs," she says, so quietly. "'Til there's nothing left to take."

"There really isn't much now," he tells her. "All I've ever had has already been taken. It's why I need to go to Moonrise. Do you understand that?"

Her tadpole goes blue-black. 

Astarion feels, for a moment, as though he's trying to show her something too important—as though this is one he needs to keep tucked to his chest, no matter the drug that catches his tongue. But his chest is a fragile thing, and hers is on fire, so there really aren't any chests liable to hold this. Just a coffin in gravedirt, so far away. 

No, that part of him whispers. Don't tell them.

Oh, very well, he says back. This is ours to keep.

"And now I'm tired," Astarion declares, because it's easier than anything else, and he really is—lethargy makes a home in him, curls up and kneads down ambition. There is a tadpole five feet away, but they're watching him much too closely for tonight. He still has four chances before he'll seek out death. 

"Gods, I fucking bet," Karlach sympathetizes, making some significant eye contact with Wyll. "Off to bed then, mate?"

Off to bed, to sleep, to waste away the hours like there is no better use than trancing. As though there is no timer they are yoked to.

In three days, Raphael arrives. In three days, if the party doesn't find their own solution, Astarion will go with his. 

Or– what is his solution, but isn't, not really. That's why he's considering the tadpole. Why he's wondering whether he can shove it through his eye and not have to make a deal with a devil after traveling under a party with two people who carry the scars of a similar price. 

So Astarion just shrugs and stands, a touch wobbly, like anger had been his skeleton and its absence leaves him broken. He grabs the bottle on his way up, a little under half full. 

Karlach and Wyll both rise to match. Astarion turns before he can say anything else damning and curls on the farthest side of his bed, back to the wall, head to his chest—tugs up the moth-riddled blanket to cover his legs, his back. Like a shield a child would believe in. 

Movement, from where he won't allow his eyes to drift. The scratch of leather across floorboards, the creak of old bed supports. Both of them, getting into their own slumber. Bedding down. 

When neither has moved for a minute, Astarion shifts—brings his legs up to form a protective wall, hiding his chest. Then he presses the opening of the bottle to his wrist and tilts it over; flips it back before it can slosh all over the bed, leaving just a circle of wine left on pale skin. The bruise left from fingerprints, from a ring on a grasping hand.

Then he lifts it to his nose and inhales. 

Wine, alcohol, something old and aged. Nothing herbal. Nothing of klauthgrass. 

He stares at the ring of red-purple. Laps it clean, tries to pick apart the taste—only ash and vinegar. Only wine. 

Astarion sets the bottle on the ground and pulls the blanket up to his chin. 

There is a tadpole in the bag under the bed. There is a chance there, something to shatter the seismic understanding of self, to break apart the commands and become a person in their absence—and there are two other people in the room to catch him in the act. Not tonight. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

Astarion stares at the ceiling struts and listens to Karlach's engine whine, the infernal pulse of iron and fire and heat. Wyll's heartbeat, steady and slow. 

Then he stops breathing, closes his eyes, and lets trancing carry him away. 

-

There are three days until Raphael returns. Three days in a safe haven, a shield of silver and moonlight, clustered people and supplies. Three days for the party to find another route to Moonrise—and to find a route alone, considering Astarion is going to do his level best to avoid seeing either hide or hair of them. 

Because bumping elbows with Karlach—the leader—and Wyll—the hunter—like a fucking romantic getaway is something that only needs to happen once. He can't even begin to trace back the line of justification that led to yesterday; the wine must have been drugged, no matter what his olfactory senses told him. There's just– there is no other possible reason beyond klauthgrass taking away the last of his diminishing mental capabilities.

Gods fuck him. Astarion nearly cried. Which is remarkably not the reaction for one to have when he is currently being pissed at them for fighting his only option for salvation. 

So. Astarion is going to make himself extremely, exceptionally, scarce. 

Karlach seemed to recognize that. As he slips out of his shitty bed, there is a bottle of blood laid on the ground beside her, though she is still snoring away—Astarion bites the cork out and downs hellfire and brimstone, hot enough to hurt, hot enough to feel alive—and sets it back. Steps away.

He won't risk pulling the tadpole out, not with how light he knows Wyll sleeps. Not with the possibility of the others outside, ready to catch him in the act. Not with four more chances before he allows that sordid conclusion.

Instead, Astarion slips out of the room. 

Avoiding the party is both easy and tricky. It was easier back when he was only the bitter asshole who shouted at Karlach and was just helpful enough to be kept around—trickier now with this vexing questioning that keeps taking place. So. He needs a plan.

Astarion is fucking shit at plans. 

The one constant is to stay under the silver shield, to let Selûne's sententious moonlight keep the shadows at bay, and that limits his options rather extremely. Hard to find a corner to skulk in when there are precious few other Harpers are not already filling, and doubly so when the party already knows to expect that behavior from him. 

So. Option two is to be where they least expect. Directly in the central hall. 

This plan has nothing to do with where Jaheira stores her wine, but it is an added benefit. 

Astarion marches down the stairs before anyone else can intercept him, though the other triad's door stays closed. It's early, or early enough, that only a few mill through the main room, all weaponed and armoured and grim-faced for a fight. 

The Harper—Bor, apparently—is still perched behind the bar, fresh-faced and bushy-tailed, looking like he'd chatter any drunkard's ears off until they wished they were hungover instead. Astarion avoids him, peering into the side storeroom off the main hall; out of direct sightline from those descending the stairs, but close enough to be in the aura. It's perfect.

Except someone is already there. 

Jaheira raises a silvered brow as she spots him, ears flicking up. In armour, as she always is, twin scimitars sheathed upon her back. She's lounging upon the back table, all the old maps in an orderly stack once more beyond the one spread beneath her hands. A goblet sits to the side, one arm braced, head cocked. 

She is in the room. She is the only person in the room, and it is technically a room that is large enough for multiple, but she is Jaheira, and she is in the room he wanted. 

Well. This was a terrible idea. Time to go hide in a shed. 

Before he can even begin the optics of a heroic retreat, Jaheira inclines her head at him, nudging the map aside. "Come," she says, and waves a hand. "Sit with me. I have been hoping to talk."

Astarion smiles thinly. "Of course."

He pads over, rolling his heels as though to keep the others from hearing; perhaps he can at least hide from the party here, if they will all knock foreheads together without looking for their wayward idol. Unlikely. But possible. 

Then Jaheira stands up, rolling out her shoulders, and switches stools; abandons what she had been sitting on for one opposite, lounging back on as though a throne. "You may have that one," she says lightly. "Shadowheart said you prefer your back to a wall."

Astarion goes very still.

"Did she," he says. It is not a question, low enough to be monotone. "How polite of her."

Jaheira hums. "I thought so," she says, taking a drink of whatever is in her goblet. Her eyes are cat-sharp as they watch him take the stool, drawn as though to be tar and feathered. Because he does like his back against a wall, able to see the room before him, having the only barrier to restrict his movement be behind instead of above or around. 

He just hasn't said so to anyone. Because of fucking course he hasn't. 

"How did that come up?" Astarion asks, lackadaisical in the way a prisoner is. "I can't imagine that is the most interesting thing to headline the rumours about me."

Jaheira snorts. "You spent much time with Marcus," she says. "We had to fill the silence with something, and though you told me the story, you did not of yourself. I am still curious."

Karlach had asked him about the start of their journey. 

Astarion's grip tightens on the edge of the table. 

"Oh?" He hums, light. "I am right here, you know. Hardly a reason to go squirreling about with the others when you could get it from the source."

"And I am sure you are an open book and not akin to pulling teeth for answers," she says, dry. "Because Shadowheart could only tell me that when I asked for more information; it seems she—and the others—know very little about you, cub."

Bloody hells. He should have hid in the motherfucking shed. 

"I believe saving the world has taken more priority than infantile slumber parties," Astarion says, a touch acerbic. "Did you expect us to braid daisy chains and wax poeticals about past romantic conquests?"

"Very few daisies for braiding in the shadowlands," she says with a shrug. "That did not stop your party from learning about each other. They chattered and twaddled openly, enough I felt no need to use klauthgrass. I asked each about the other and learned things both said and unsaid; and when I asked about you, I was given little but mannerisms. Only that you called yourself a magistrate before the reveal." She is watching him, eyes cut and ocean-deep. "It is curious, no? That all they could say is what they have seen, not what they have been told. Unless you have told them nothing at all?"

Oh.

She's watching him. She's watching him in a way he's been watched before—in a way he has grown to welcome, because at least it is not hatred, not fear. As though he is anything worth fearing.

Jaheira doesn't trust him. 

Inexplicably, this takes a weight off Astarion's shoulders, slipping like a nightgown to the floor. She's a hero, of course. He's a vile beastie sheltering under the revelation that those holding his leash barely know who he is. Perhaps they'd said to her that his previous master was dead. Perhaps she thinks that, too. 

Perhaps she looks at him and sees nothing beyond someone ready to be chained. 

Astarion smiles at her. "My apologies," he says, just cut enough to be meaningful. "But perhaps that says more about them than me? If they had asked, I would have told them."

He would have told them a lie, or a misdirection, or a seething list of insults until they decided to poke their nose into a less violent history. The point remains. 

Jaheira hums, attention sharpening. "Perhaps," she concedes, in the manner that says she does not. "Then surely I will be given answers upon questions, yes? I have one that has bothered me."

Astarion continues smiling. "Go ahead, love."

She drums buffed nails over the table, head tilting. Time drags out between them, a library parsed or a mine upturned. Or something else wasteful and tedious.

"I am trying to guess your age," she settles on. "You look too old to be young, but your mannerisms suggest a child."

What.

Astarion gapes at her. He genuinely can't tell which part to take more offense at and goes for a more general outrage. "Excuse me?"

"You look old and act childish," Jaheira repeats. She takes another drink. He hopes she chokes. "I cannot figure it out—nor can your party, when I mentioned it. They did not know either."

"Because it's terribly rude to ask," he says, strangled. "I would never– I am not old."

"There is nothing wrong with being old." Jaheira scratches her chin, looking all the world like a matron at a tea gathering. "I am old. Remarkably so. It is a good thing to have survived this long."

He flounders for an answer. "I don't look old," he corrects. "Nor am I childish. I am– I am going to leave, actually. I am going to fuck right off until you've learned manners."

Jaheira hums, amused. It is an empty threat, and they both know it. There is nowhere he can go that she will not find him, not under the shield, and his feeble strength is not one that will risk braving the world beyond. "Will you answer a question before you go?"

This is not an empty request, either. This is merely an acknowledgement of where the power lies. 

Astarion cleaves through his wrists. Tucks a snarl in his throat. "Fine." A twist of his hand, magnanimous, as if he is not a trap tightly wound. "Ask away."

"Your name," she says. "Your full name, if you will. The party did not know this, either."

He blinks at that. He– he's had two centuries of experience in keeping details about himself private, yes, because too many missing strangers all swooning over the same name would draw the Fist's attention, but he hadn't realized he'd never told them. That feels odd. 

"Astarion Ancunín," he says.

Jaheira tilts her head to the side. Her gaze sharpens. "Say it again."

So she's mocking him. Or otherwise making fun. Marvelous. He smiles through gritted teeth. "Astarion Ancunín, dear."

She laces her hands together, map entirely ignored. "You speak Kozakuran?"

What?

The word is familiar, almost. He blinks. "Pardon?"

"Kozakuran," she repeats. "From Kozakura, in Kara-Tur. Very far from Baldur's Gate, cub."

A place, a language? He's heard it before in the way all countries are floated by in conversation, but– it feels different. He's heard it echo off stone walls, off stone floors. "I don't know it, no. But I remember hearing it before."

"You would remember crossing the Hordelands, no matter how ancient you are," she says. Her eyes are sharp. "Your accent is Baldurian, yes, but Ancunín should be said as Ancunín, were you only from here." Her tongue rolls when she says it, placing emphasis on different syllables. It is different. It doesn't sound right, but it is different.

"I think I would know how my own name is pronounced, lovey," Astarion says, pointedly. "I'm not walking around saying you should be called Ja-hair-a, am I?"

She inclines her head. She is still watching him. "Yes," she says. "But it is odd, no? Ancunín is not a Kozakuran name, yet you say it like one. There are precious few languages that use that style of speech."

"Perhaps you didn't hear me," Astarion says, "but I don't speak Kozakuran. This is just my name." 

Jaheira clicks her tongue. She promptly dissolves into a babble of words overlapping and staccato, bouncing around the enclosed room like little knives. Astarion stares at her, bewildered beyond any rationale, as she goes on and on and on and–

Then she says something sharp. Something that hits the air and lingers. 

Astarion's ears flick up—his back goes straight, subconscious, hands pressing flat to the table, feet shoulder width despite sitting, head up. Something ingrained and fundamental. 

"I know that one," he says. "What does it mean?" 

Jaheira tilts her head to the side. Her eyes have gone still, smooth—there is no tadpole behind them, no mind to latch onto. He wishes there was. He can't read her face. "It means obey," she says. "Both the act and the command for it."

Oh.

So that's where he's heard it from. 

It's more familiar now he's got a grasp on it, three syllables, quick and fast. Jagged as it bounced off the kennel stone. Where it had been one piece in a larger collection, floating over his sobbing form. A memory like many others. 

Kozakuran. He doesn't speak the language. But someone else does. 

Ancunín.

He doesn't mention his family name to anyone. He doesn't hear his family name from anyone.

Well. Except Cazador. 

Astarion has stayed constant, spoken too frequently and heard even moreso to be lost. His other words, maintained by steady use. But his family name? A name for the family he can't remember and the past locked beneath stone? That is only said by Cazador. His siblings likely wouldn't know it if asked. Only Cazador. 

Is it supposed to be pronounced like Jaheira said? Has he forgotten his own name?

"Interesting," Astarion says, light, as though a curious newsletter puzzle. He rolls his eyes to land it. "Are you attempting to prove something? Or merely rustling up conspiracy theories like I have any interest in them? It's as I said—this is just my name. I pronounce it as I will."

She says nothing. Just watches him. 

"There's your answered question," Astarion says. He stands, pushing away from the table; instinct still holds him upright, too tense, too perfect. He slouches enough to make his shoulders ache. Fruitless rebellion against a master whose shadow is enough to make him heel. "Shall I leave you to your map? I'd hate to take up any more of your precious time."

Jaheira glances down as though only now remembering its presence. "Hm," she says, tapping a finger along the outer edge. "Yes. Go play outside, cub. I will find you when I have more questions."

Astarion indulges in the dream of tearing her throat apart for a moment and then flees from the room. 

Time for the shed. And he isn't fucking leaving until Raphael shows up.

-

Astarion stays in the shed until wine is empty in its bottle and the lack of its distraction cannot hide him from enclosed walls any longer. Wood, not stone, and without the miasma of distilled agony in the air, but a little too close for comfort. So he downs the bottle and paces and hisses nothings and then leaves before he can fall too far apart. He skips past the main hall, the bar, the sideroom, and all but hurls himself into the shared room. 

It's empty, inside. No one else. Just his own shaky legs as he stalks over to his side. 

They aren't in the room. Maybe this is enough of a break to administer the bloody thing and get it over with before Raphael punctures this shaky truce with his unsightly gob. 

Astarion sits on the bed, not pulling the jar out, but his thoughts revolve around it. Around its wayward inhabitant and what that means. 

If he's shaking, it's very slight. He doesn't bother trying to stop it. Just sits and breathes through nothing. 

He hasn't– he hasn't been avoiding it. Been doing his damnedest to the opposite, actually, but it's a devilishly tricky thing to both avoid the party and return to the one spot they know to find him, being their shared room. And he doesn't know how to go about shoving another parasite into his eye that won't scream its presence loud and clear to the others, when everyone is trapped under this same silver shield, so he's… working on it. Thinking, planning. 

Three commanders. One parasite. Four chances. Two days left. 

He sits there and he works and he thinks and he plans and he does nothing until the fourth stair creaks, then the twelfth—and by the time Astarion has thrown himself flat and closed his eyes in the fallacy of unconsciousness, the door is creaking open. 

Not under the covers, but he's still enough to feign it. And both of them seem too distracted to notice. 

Karlach's tadpole is cold and dark and blue, so opposite the orange-yellow-gold he associates her with. Her breath is shallow, engine whining. Each step laborious. 

She isn't crying, not quite, but he thinks she might want to. 

Wyll, an electric current of worry, moves in tandem, seemingly guiding her towards the bed. Pressed close, enough Astarion can smell faint smoke. "Dammon's off to Baldur's Gate," he says, soft, gentle. "We have three bars of infernal iron, that's more than enough—he'll be able to help your engine there. We'll catch up to him. We will."

"Right," she whispers, so quiet, the most he's ever heard from her. "Okay."

Astarion cracks his eyes open. 

Karlach is standing, hunched, before the bed. She has leather armour in hand, a set they'd stolen from a hobgoblin so many nights ago—she's shredding the outer seams, peeling it wide enough to fit into. Wyll hovers nearby, helping where he can, gathering smaller pieces of leather from their collection of bags. 

Then Karlach swaddles herself in it, wrapping each bit of exposed skin, doubly thick around her chest and shoulders. She inhales, deep. Her tadpole is still so cold. 

When Wyll lies on the bed, Karlach curls up alongside him. 

The heat must be unbearable. But Wyll presses himself against the leather, a facsimile of touch. The first in ten long years. 

Her tadpole shivers. Goes still. A pulse of orange beneath the blue.

Astarion counts support struts. 

-

When Astarion slips downstairs before Wyll or Karlach wake up, arrowed on a path to the bar, Jaheira intercepts him. Maybe she heard him coming, like a bell on a dog's collar, or maybe he stepped on those two stairs, or maybe she's just got a sixth sense for when someone does not fucking want to speak to her. 

But he's barely gotten one arm over the bar to fish around for whatever bottles might be hidden under the ledge when she clicks her tongue, emerging from the storeroom. No followers, no coterie of guards, just her habitual raised brow. 

He stops moving. Her brow raises higher.

"You have been stealing all my wine," Jaheira says. "Do you know how difficult it is to get wine delivered to a land of inhumane evils? Do not take my last vice from me."

"I highly doubt this is your last vice," Astarion sniffs. He extracts himself from the bar as though it had only been a stretch. "A fine woman like you without a drumbox of silkroot or lesser opium? I'd need a fainting couch if I were to believe that."

"There is nothing lesser about my choice of medicament." Her eyes lilt when she smiles, like an arrow pulled back. "But to the public, I prefer saying haunspier, perhaps terazul. Makes me seem more a working-class heroine, no? Only battle-stimulants instead of something for pleasure."

"And the alcohol is merely good taste."

She inclines her head. "Why it is wine instead of spirits. The High Harper must only be cattily drunk."

"You are very catty," Astarion mutters. There isn't a point in slipping around her, in trying to crawl back up to his room to lay back and listen to Karlach breathe while the tadpole waits in sordid anticipation—instead he follows her as she pads back into the storeroom, aimed for the same table as before. He slips onto the stool opposite her, one with its back to the wall. The scene is much as he remembers, only the map gone but the goblet still in its place, already full. Does she even wash it? Is it ever empty enough to be washed?

He sets his wrists on the table, crosses them. "I would like to be catty myself, if you're in the sharing mood. Then it isn't stealing, is it? Merely sharing."

"I suppose I could be convinced," she acquiesces, reaching under the table to pull out the bottle. She fills her goblet to the brim and pushes it over, keeping the bottle for herself. Fair enough. Astarion prefers having a modecorum of decency in how he drinks. 

He isn't thinking about the night in the shared room and the lack of herbs in the wine. He isn't thinking about anything at all. 

Jaheira settles herself with the bottle, taking a long pull with a pleased hum. He mirrors her. Waits to see what will happen.

Because she called him here. She brought him over, and he didn't run, and now she's going to do something regrettable. She's going to start spitting things in Kozakuran and watching his reaction, perhaps asking whether he talks about himself, even dragging the party here to interrogate him in front of them. 

If she calls him old again, he's grabbing both the goblet and the bottle and fucking off. 

Jaheira clicks her tongue, watching him. "You are early to rise," she says, because apparently she's going to meander her way to what she wants to ask instead of just doing it. "I have mentioned the shadows are tied to you still, no? Better to rest than to adventure unhealed."

"I feel fine," Astarion says, and punctuates it with a drink. "More than fine, actually, since I can trance without waking up to serve nursemaid for the fire. Well rested."

"Your party would disagree," she says lightly. "They rise later and rest earlier, and still I have seen darkness that follows them. Unless you are less susceptible? I am quite curious as to how; I could use a trick like that."

Oh, something with how darkness was not darkness but all he knew. Moon-silver, tarrow candles. Horrors are not things that wait. "I am a creature of night, if you want to be poetic about it. Perhaps I could bite you to test this hypothesis."

She huffs into her wine. "All I would gain is a headache and concern for whether you had washed your mouth, little spawn. But no. You wake and you leave your room, never waiting, never pausing to hear the day's goals. As your party plans for Moonrise, you are absent. They have looked, and they have not found you." She pauses, letting the unsaid accusation marinate before she gives it breath. "You are avoiding them."

Astarion squints at her. "I am trying to get drunk, actually." 

"You are incapable," Jaheira points out, brows up. "And that does not erase how you are attempting that here instead of with them."

No. No it does not. He takes another drink. "Perhaps you're a better maudlin companion," he says, injected dryness. "Karlach is a happy drunk, and Lae'zel prefers wrestling when she has a go at things. Only Shadowheart likes to bitch, and she's much too distracted at the moment for it."

Jaheira hums, an idly curiosity. "Still. You always flee from them."

"I am not fleeing."

"My apologies. Running away with dignity." She pours more wine into his goblet, topping him up. "Because they have asked me about you, where you are—odd that you will not show your face to those you have traveled all these months alongside, no?"

"They have seen my face plenty," Astarion corrects. "I'm merely ensuring they don't grow more sick of it than they already are. And what could they possibly be asking you about?"

"Little things," she says, which is so blatant in its evasiveness he wants to throttle her. "Our conversations have not gone unnoticed. They are wondering why you will speak to me instead of them."

He blinks. Blinks again. 

Astarion takes another drink and pauses with the goblet on his lips, tilted up to hide half his face—he inhales, pulling deep. No herbs. No klauthgrass. 

Still she's asking things. Asking like she expects to get an answer; asking like the others want her to get them. 

Months he's traveled alongside the party, doing as bade, doing as commanded. And only now, after Minthara shattered his skull and vials of blood greeted him ere morning, are they starting to poke around—to see what jagged mess dogs at their heels. 

Why now? Just why? He's so fucking close. One day of distraction, one opportunity to use the tadpole—or one deal with a devil for three chances at Moonrise. Then he'll help kill the Absolute and fuck right off where he never has to darken their doorsteps any longer. They won't have to concern themselves with heroics while a monster lunges on its leash. 

They should want that. They should be happy.

"This is hardly a betrayal," Astarion settles on, after much too long a pause. "Just– you calling me old and me stealing your wine. That's all. We're only talking."

"I think you talk quite to excess," Jaheira hums. "I think you do not say."

"Maybe I have nothing to say."

She tilts her head to the side, bird-like. "If that was true, they would know your name."

Her eyes are little pinpricks of stars. Like a galaxy coalesced, only the idea that something is there, hidden beneath the black of space. She watches him. 

Astarion sets his goblet down. He isn't thirsty. He does want to be drunk, in the same ephemeral, wistful way he has been for two centuries, but the imitation of it does not overpower whatever the fuck this conversation is. 

"Ah," Jaheira says, noncommittal. "You are running from me as well, then. An honour to join the group."

Astarion doesn't bother with a response. She'll piece through it too—find what he'd thought he was so accomplished at hiding. At putting on a cloak, at hiding his fangs, at keeping his head down and shoulders in and mouth shut. 

He just flees. 

-

So. Neither their shared room nor Jaheira is safe. Astarion does not think of the shed with four closed walls and merely wanders instead, slipping around watchful eyes and never lingering long enough to be caught. Minthara's armour makes shadows a haven if they aren't an escape already, closing him off from all those waiting. And he is well-adept at ducking his head and keeping his eyes fixed on the floor.

Because Jaheira wants answers. The party wants answers. They're all starting to think of him as a thing that has secrets worth knowing, that he's hiding from them—and he is, and they are things that cannot be discovered. To know of the tadpole within its jar, his goal with the Absolute, with the enemy.

Gods fuck all of this. Astarion wants to kill something. 

One more day until Raphael gets here; one more day until four chances become three. He needs to do it now, as soon as he can filch an opportunity out of this scrutiny. As soon as he can fucking think.

Astarion hasn't been thinking for some time now. Too scared of it, too scared of what could emerge. It's a fear that lingers more than leaves. Damned to the end from the start. 

He had gone investigating this Dammon, though, and all their muffled secrecy about infernal iron. One of the tieflings that had sheltered here, he discovered, a blacksmith by trade. There are still the remains of a forge in the stable, embers caught in the culvert and pokers stabbed into piles of hay. Astarion kicked through it under the pretense of searching for gear. Scorched through the straw are two footprints from a familiar barbarian, the steady gait of Wyll beside. 

The tieflings left for Baldur's Gate a tenday ago. There are no repairs here. Her engine stays burning. She stays burning. 

He isn't thinking about that, either. He is winding through Last Light Inn like a serpent instead.

And he's already halfway through the central building, avoiding the low melancholy of a whispered conversation between Gale and Shadowheart as he slipped inside before they could see him, when something punches into the base of his consciousness. When some part of him screams like an animal dying. 

Because there is a familiar face in the crowd, intermixed through Harpers and heroes alike. She's leaning against the bar, thumbing at a pattern on her crimson robes. Eyes seem to drift over her, skipping past to the next figure. A perforation in the split sense. Nothing to pull attention but for the recognition his gut shrieks. 

She looks up as he stands there and meets his gaze with her own. Dark eyes, apathy. 

Korrilla.

Astarion stares at her. He can't pull his eyes away. There's something ruinous about having enough blood to show injury. To be more than pale skin stretched over a skeleton pretending to be a person; to bleed when he is cut, to bruise when he is struck. As though it is something that matters. As though it is something that lasts.

There are no divine burns on his arms. They did not leave scars. Perhaps that means it never happened. 

Somewhere far overhead, Priestess Gut becomes a feast for rats. 

I don't need you, he thinks, only marginally aware that he's thinking at all. 

And he doesn't, he doesn't, but his head turns and his feet follow and then he is approaching her. 

Korrilla watches him. Spins a dagger through her hand, the one she'd used to slit Gut's throat. There's a lean, hungry feel to her, like a predator in a land untried. No pulse of a tadpole, despite the one she'd collected. He wishes, very strongly, that he could read her mind. 

"I don't need you," Astarion tells her, more to remind himself. His voice flattens into a hiss.

She shrugs, as if the non-sequitor accusation was exactly what she thought he'd say. "You need Raphael."

And fucking hells if that isn't true.

"You're still interesting to him," she says. "The deal's there on the table, but he'll make another one, if you want to know about those runes." A little smile, the first break in apathy. "Unless you've found another way to decipher them."

He hasn't. She knows he hasn't. Maybe she was there as Wyll sounded out infernal, puzzling over the mystery, only more confused than at the start. Maybe she's always been there, and he has never seen her. 

The tadpole to free his mind. The Absolute to shatter the commands. 

And then it will just be him, alone and cold and marked with a piece of a contract he doesn't know. 

Korrilla has a notched dagger she used to carve Gut's skull open and pull out the treasure within. She is in the Last Light Inn and the heroes do not see her. She speaks of things she should not know and stories she was not there to witness. 

Another deal.

"What about one for only me?" Astarion asks, light enough to be untethered. "If it's about deciphering these runes, then there's hardly a reason to drag the others in, either for the process or the negotiations. I'm capable enough by myself."

"Hm. Maybe." She picks soot from under her nails with the flat side of her dagger. "You don't offer that much alone."

Oh, Astarion can offer plenty, if three months hasn't made him rusty. But little doubt Raphael has his own selection of infernal whores. This is just like the fucking party all over again. Asking for an unsaid mystery he doesn't know how to give. 

"I can do more than you think," he bites out, too sharp. "And I'm less pious than the others. All things are just currency to me. I'm sure your master understands that."

Korrilla tilts her head to the side. "Then what are you willing to give?"

More than he should. Gods, he would do damn near anything just to have an actual choice—to claw even a piece of understanding from the world. To make his torment mean something, anything, except for what it was. Is. 

He'll take everything from you, fangs. 'Til there's nothing left to take. 

"That isn't how this works," Astarion tries. It rasps instead of flows. "I'm not going to start listing things—isn't he supposed to give me options, instead of having me come up with them? That only feels fair."

Korrilla looks at him. Sees what he's actually saying—and what he isn't. 

She shrugs. "He'll wait. You're the one desperate for a deal; if you want it, you'll make an offer."

It's a dismissal as much as it is a condemnation. To set the power in his hands, as though this is a kindness; as though he should be happy about the chance to set his own stipulations instead of a devil. As though this is fair.

He knows what he should say. He knows what he wants to say.

The words, three months muffled, freeze in his throat. 

She doesn't leave. Just stands there, watching the room with an idle boredom. It is him that must choose to walk away, to turn his back on the only information that has ever been within his grasp. He does so slowly. 

He does so and hates himself. Does so and listens to that fragile, brittle part of himself that screams.

But still he puts one foot after the other, back to heroes that do not see who he was talking to. This is the right choice. He will not trade one eternity for another. He will not gamble on the hope that a devil is kinder than a lord, that the offer will be one he can fulfill instead of one he will fail. That this is better than a tadpole and three commanders. He will make only one. He will not think of anything else. He will not think.

In the midst of not thinking, Astarion bites clean through his lip. 

Everything is starting to fall apart. 

Stealing more wine from Jaheira is starting to sound real fucking necessary, even if he's lost the coordination needed to do so without detection. And even if she'll likely be waiting there, watching him, asking about his name or his accent or his past or all these other things he's worked so fucking hard to never say because they're better off dead.

Astarion makes it away from Korrilla, pushing through the throngs of Harpers, seething and shaking and needing a target to plant a dagger in. 

Then he folds right in half as his mind splits. 

The world disappears—goes white and amorphous, prowling on the edges like fanged beasts of old, like mists of the Feywild, like hunger. Nothing about the Inn is here beyond something beneath his feet, though his eyes say he should be plummeting through the endless void. Some part of him is bleeding. He can feel liquid coursing down his face. 

His shield is gone. Wiped clean.

Within its carcass is a voice. 

My chosen, it murmurs, maternal in the way of filicide. Come to me. The beginning is soon. You must be here. 

Astarion staggers; face on the ground as this weight presses him prone, hammering into his skull. He might be screaming. He can't hear anything but the voice. 

Come to me. Come to me, my chosen. Come quickly.

And then, as fast as it came, it leaves—and leaves Astarion facedown in the floor of the Last Light Inn, bleeding from his eyes. 

What the absolute fuck was that.  

He hisses for a lack of anything else to do, which surely must make him a very threatening beast; it is easier than being nothing, and he shifts to dig his claws into wood just for more. Movement around, the step of Harpers and distant heartbeats. If they're looking at him, which they certainly are, they're smart enough not to get too close. Astarion isn't exactly functioning at his best. Anything that happens should they touch him is their own godsdamn fault. 

The voice keeps echoing in his mind. It would be easier to compartmentalize if it was a booming, thundering thing—but it is sly, clever. Soothing. Cajoling. It murmurs instead of demands. That is a more dangerous thing entirely. 

He keeps hissing into the floor. 

"Astarion?" Someone calls, their tadpole—brimstone, deep woods—entering the shared mental space. Wyll. There's a shade of unease, buried under the certainty he greets life with. 

No time for thinking. No time for acknowledging anything that just happened. Astarion snarls through gritted teeth and pushes up to his feet, world buckling, but he's not fucking kneeling in front of them. Something like slick coats his cheeks; he scrubs away the blood, blinking the rest out of his lashes. Gods, what fucked up shit makes him bleed from his eyes? Even Minthara had just had his brain ooze out. Far less wasteful. 

Astarion turns, regrets it, wobbles, and manages to look marginally presentable when both halves of the party converge on the center building. No one else looks to be freshly bleeding from orifices that should not bleed. Just him. Great. 

He chances a look around the wider room. The space against the bar where Korrilla leaned is empty. He doesn't know if that means she is gone or merely invisible. He doesn't fucking know.

"Fangs," Karlach says, pure relief. She's padding up with the majority, even Jaheira at her side. The entire armada. The first time they've spoken to him since that night and the talking and the weeping. "Bloody hells, did you get that?"

"Yes," Astarion gruffs, scrubbing at his face, scarlet crusting under his nails. "And I did not fucking appreciate it."

Gale huffs something resembling a laugh. "No, neither did we," he says. "But it seems only we heard it. Jaheira was unaffected." 

Lae'zel nods, grimacing. Actually, she and Shadowheart came from the same direction, which is opposite where the others did. That is hilarious. That is not enough to distract from the fact he just bled from his eyes. 

"Worms," Karlach guesses. "Has to be. Did you hear the voice?"

There is blood drying over Astarion's eyes to say that he clearly fucking did. He bites his tongue instead. 

"We all did," Wyll says, grim. "That was the Absolute, calling for her troops. The attack is coming."

The attack? Has Astarion missed some important developments? Or, well—the voice had said the beginning is soon. Maybe they're just extrapolating. Sure. He'll go with that. He is going to tear out someone's throat and scream at their corpse. 

Then Wyll goes very still. Despair crescendoes to a misery within his mind, tail falling limp. "Oh," he says, a mountain in the weight of that word. "This is what Raphael meant. This is why he gave us three days."

Astarion, midway through scratching at his arms as though flensing will settle his thoughts, stops. 

Wyll looks up slowly. "Raphael knew this would happen. He knew that we wouldn't take his deal; and so he waited for this to make us…" 

He trails off. 

"To make us desperate," Karlach finishes. Her tadpole goes dark, not the blue of before but something equally bleak. "And we right and bloody are, aren't we?"

"Not entirely," Wyll says, but his heart isn't in it. "We can find another way."

Astarion stops listening, about then. Feels the party's words slip away to smoke and steam in an empty head. Just his body, his eyes. His knowledge.

There is a tadpole upstairs. There are two days that have come and gone, and the tadpole is still there. Unused. 

He hasn't done it because he's scared. There it is. There's the truth. Rip out the innards to stare at their patterns or some other soothsayer's fallacy—it's because he's been so scared, an infant again, cringing into gravedirt like fear has meant anything in face of what will happen. That's why he hasn't done it. Hasn't risked transformation despite being willing to take up the stake should things take a turn for the worse. 

Two centuries wishing to kill himself. Becoming a mindflayer is another kind of death. Perhaps if he's lucky, he won't remember to mourn himself. 

He's got to stop being so fucking scared.

Astarion turns like the crest of a boat against rocks. Attention snaps to him, conversation drying up. But he's only facing Jaheira, the hero, the captor. The one who plies him with undrugged wine and sees past what he tells her. The one he wants to avoid but can't, not now. 

"I'd like that ring again," he says, sickly. Then: "Please." 

She regards him. Those space-dark eyes. "Hm?"

"Your ring," Astarion repeats. It isn't a plan that spills to his lips, just lies, assembled and broken in the process. It is going to work because it has to. It is going to work because he does not have a choice. "If that was the Absolute calling out for her underlings, we aren't the only ones here. I imagine Marcus got an earful. I'm curious what he has to say about it."

"But you said he didn't know anything," Karlach points out. 

"I did," Astarion says, a little too thinly. "But perhaps this call has changed things."

It hasn't. Marcus doesn't know jackshit about getting through the shadows, not with his rotted wings. Yet Marcus said things about multiple tadpoles. About power. About freedom. 

Marcus said the Absolute wouldn't trust spawn without a handler. But Marcus is also a stupid piece of shit that got himself captured by Jaheira, and Astarion is choosing to believe his opinion is worthless. 

He does not particularly want to be disproven. He also does not particularly want to be consumed. 

Astarion has been scared. And being scared means huddling on the same command-laced ground he has stood upon for two centuries, and if he can't find a moment long enough to administer the tadpole with the party around, he can damn well do it in the prison under the guidance of one who knows the process. Maybe if it goes wrong and he dies in a cold stone box beneath the ground, they'll even blame the True Soul instead of desecrating what's left of his persona. 

So he smiles instead. "I might as well try again with this new information. It would be a shame to have a perfect opportunity walk us by when I could take but a moment to investigate."

Karlach's tadpole writhes as though punctured upon the hook. Her brows draw taut. "I guess," she says. "If you think it's for the best, fangs."

He continues smiling. "I do."

Jaheira is looking at him. She always has been, since asking whether he would lie about being a spawn to her; she isn't watching him like a threat, more a curiosity. Like a little gremlin slobbering on her nice wooden floors. Like something to be dissected. 

But then she reaches into her pocket and produces the charmed ring, extending her arm. She sets it in his palm. It weighs as much as a planet. 

"Wonderful," Astarion says, and slips it on. "I'll go dredge up whatever could be left in the idiocy-addled ruins of Marcus' mind—you lot talk logistics. I'll be back soon."

Then he marches away. 

Chapter Text

Astarion holds the jar as though it is trying to kill him. 

It might be, considering how much the tadpole within is thrashing, going around and around in its maddening circles. Tendrils out, toothed maw agape; is it something only for infection? Is it anything beyond a thing of hunger? Is it only capable of consuming?

Is it the thing he is about to willingly shove into his eye?

There are a lot of tetchy little questions like that tonight, either those avoided or those he can't when Korrilla leans against bars surrounded by unseeing heroes and the Absolute croons saccharine promises far overhead. It's beginning to end. Everything is. A stone kicked off a mountain, an avalanche waiting in the wings. 

Something is going to die. Something is going to be unmade, by choice or by consequence, and Astarion is willing to pay any cost so long as it is the commands that meet their death. 

Alone in the alley, alone in the cold. There is a very far reach that anything can extend when asked by the right master. 

His knuckles shake around the jar. 

Around the linen, actually. Because when he'd marched away from the party, coiled up and seething and shaking and wanting to fall apart, it'd been simple extrapolation that led him to their shared room instead of down below. An easy delay, explainable—better to be in armour, in Minthara's garb, to convince Marcus of his True Soul status. That was why he had gone to his room. Nothing to do with the jar palmed at his side. It's wrapped in spare cloth, at least; bringing his full bag would be too suspicious. Every fucking thing about this is too suspicious. But he doesn't have a choice.

He does have a choice. He's choosing this. He's choosing a chance instead of a return. Choosing the hope of freedom over the promise of eternity. 

Astarion stalks through Last Light Inn, fangs out and ears pinned. He's jittery; all this coiled frustration and resentment and still the fear-fear-fear battering against his shield until it trembles. Harpers and Fists bleed away from his path, what scant few are awake in the approaching gloam, leaving only silence and muffled voices to hammer through his skull. Outside isn't any better, the dark kissed by divinity. Cold instinct made him memorize the route to the prison, to the stone room beneath the floor; he goes now like a ghost, a serpent in the brush. Very rarely was he allowed to hunt in the manner of beast and animal, but his body knows how to perform. How to move slow and still, waiting for prey to look away. 

There is no prey but him, tonight. There is only the True Soul that holds the needed knowledge despite being trapped behind bars and the spawn that must convince him. There is only Raphael lurking in each corner like a ghoul of some despicable variety. There is only the voice that keeps crooning to him through echoes, though its presence has disappeared. My chosen. What a fucking joke. 

The guard has narrowed eyes, when Astarion approaches. But Jaheira's ring gleams on his finger, and his other is tucked at his side with the linen wrapped up and around, and Astarion himself is jagged with bared fangs, and there is nothing on this realm that could stop him from getting through the door. 

She moves aside before he has to fight for it. There's that, at least. A parody of success. 

Astarion enters the prison. 

The same hall, the same stretch of faceless doors. His shield is a fluctuating thing, impenetrable yet waiting with a sparrow's aspirations to fall apart, and he feels Marcus—this iron-red presence, like rust bleeding into water. Nothing like the rest of the party, acting… differently in the cerebral air. Even as he stalks in, Astarion observes it; lets the tadpole drift through the mental space to watch its ripples. Sharper, in a way. More aware. 

Three commanders, one tadpole. Four chances. 

If Marcus is trained even slightly in this parasite, then Astarion won't have to bother with Moonrise or commanders or Raphael. He'll just be safe. He'll just be free. 

He presses Jaheira's ring to the doorknob; it flares pale green, like new shoots after a forest fire, and clicks open. Old air, stale air. He ignores that and enters. 

Marcus goes still. 

He's standing right up against the wall, stool abandoned, one arm worked through the bars. Pale flesh catches on the iron, stretched as though to warp the bones beneath. Nails gnawed to the quick are frozen halfway through the act of pawing at the lock over the door, though he isn't starved enough to fit a finger into the opening. Amateur. 

His wings, still broken, drag behind him—gather up dust and refuse like fishing nets, the black smeared through. Rotted away. Rotten from the beginning, perhaps. Not that there was much left to rot. 

Astarion tilts his head to the side as he closes the door behind him. Another press of the ring to this side and the door latches, filling the air with the faint scent of pine and resin. Both trapped. Only one behind bars.

Marcus' hand falls from the lock—from the clearly fucking arcane lock, gods—and he bristles, drawing himself up. A sneer falls easily over his face as though meant to be there. 

"Did you not get the summons, spawn?" He spits. It doesn't quite come across as superior as he wants it to, exhaustion nipping over scorn. But it could be. If given another second, maybe it boils over into that grating fucking derision.

Astarion doesn't say anything. He doesn't have anything to say, maybe. Because the world boils down to four chances, three of which require a deal with a devil, and the fourth which requires a deal with the bastard in front of him. 

He holds Marcus' gaze for long enough the man shifts, apprehension bleeding over scorn, and then pulls the linen off the jar. 

Within, the tadpole whorls, picking up speed as though it can feel the eyes on it. One pair red, one pair black. The cloth is tossed mindlessly behind him, gone from his mind as soon as it leaves his hand. All he can focus on is the parasite. 

"The Absolute summons us," Astarion says. He's saying the words, but he isn't meaning them; ash, tar. The monster circles over his palm, held back by mere glass and varnish. 

This is a choice. This is his choice. 

Astarion lifts his head to meet Marcus' gaze—to hold it, insidious as a killer. The man is silent for once in his miserable fucking life. All his pithy ridicule drained in face of this prospect. 

"Jaheira still has her coterie," he says. "If I am to break you out of here, I'm going to need more strength to protect us. You will tell me how to–" he fumbles the word, swallows empty air "–how to administer it."

Astarion bares his teeth. It is not a smile. It is not pretending to be one. 

"Unless you'd rather try your luck with someone else," he hisses. "Unless helping a spawn is too beneath you, Falgor."

Something works around Marcus' jaw. His hand, free from the latch, tightens on the bars. White knuckles. 

"You will release me first," he says. "Then I will help you."

Like fuck he will. 

Anger makes him sharp, pointed; Astarion cuts through the man's flimsy defenses and grabs hold of his id—grabs hold and chokes. Marcus goes taut in a strangled shout, tendons bulging through his neck. 

It's simply an elevation of his trick with Minthara. Nothing refined, nothing deliberate. Just shoveling an emotion through the connection until both of their brains threaten to melt and using that to brutalize. Using that to hurt.

Gods, but it is a gift that Cazador never had this. 

When Astarion retreats, the man is twitching, gasping, slumped against the bars. His wings flutter, broken bones grinding within. He may have pissed himself. There's an acrid flavour in the air that's more than the ash and rivermud making up the man's blood-scent. 

It makes him proud, in a volcanic sense—to bring someone else low instead of being made prostrate himself. But mostly he burns. He's always burning. 

Astarion steps to the very edge of the bars, close enough to reach out and touch. His fangs are out, eyes slitted. "I have had an exceptionally shitty day," he says. "Count your lucky fucking stars I'm still considering your escape, Falgor, instead of taking the damn thing myself and leaving you to rot. Do not test me."

Somewhere overhead, Jaheira pronounces his own fucking name with an accent he can't remember. 

"You will instruct me from within your cage because then you have a modicum of interest in ensuring I survive the process, otherwise Jaheira is going to have choice words when she next comes down to feed you and finds my corpse. Are we clear?"

Mutually assured destruction. Astarion would never trust himself if he were the one in a cage and this upstart came offering to free him—no, they both need stakes. Marcus wants out. Astarion wants to be free. 

Marcus picks himself up, shuddering, but his tadpole bleeds fury. Those broken bones in his wings grind together. 

Oh, Astarion's upset some natural balance. Some ingrained code. Perhaps the Absolute sets every new recruit down for a speech on wretched spawn, or perhaps Marcus came made like that. It certainly runs in the Fist. 

Wyll keeps spiraling about how Councillor Florrick and the Fist are here in the Inn—Astarion hasn't seen them, because he has, frankly, put more effort into avoiding them than the party. There are precious few flophouses within the radius of Szarr Palace, and Astarion is too striking to be unrecognizable. 

Perhaps that is to his benefit. Some Fist knew his silver curls by look alone—how easily he could skive off consequence by falling to his knees in a back alleys, by leading them upstairs. The Fist could not be taken back to Cazador, but they still had to be managed. A tax for his continued existence. They would turn their head so long as they were paid, and it isn't like Cazador allowed him gold. 

Astarion looks at Marcus more closely. At his crow-black eyes, past the grease matting his hair together and the ichorous veins over his neck. His face, like all faces, is faintly familiar. Indistinct. Features upon features. 

Maybe that's why he was recognized, more than a glimpse of fangs. Maybe they've done this before. Maybe, in another time, Astarion would be staring through bars instead. 

Hard to know whether Jaheira or the Fist would be worse back in Baldur's Gate. If he could ever kid himself into thinking a mortal would be allowed his second death. 

Astarion curls his hand around the jar. It's colder than undead flesh, a faint sensation on skin unfeeling. There's a metaphor in that, perhaps. 

"I asked whether we understand each other, Falgor," Astarion repeats. 

"We do," Marcus growls, each word like swallowed knives with how they tear from his throat. His eyes are burning black, stars cast from orbit, shoulders shaking and fists white—and yet he says we do. Yet he bows his head.

Is this what Cazador saw, whenever he made Astarion grovel? For someone that thought themselves—or wished themselves—so high and mighty be made to submit? To obey?

Astarion isn't thinking about that. He is thinking of nothing but the jar in his hand.

"Wonderful," Astarion says, and almost means it. "Now. How do I go about doing this?"

Marcus' shoulders bristle, lips thinning, but he seems to be capable of playing his role. "It's taken through the eye," he says, because that wasn't obvious enough. "They made it– ritualistic, almost. Laying down, candles, prayers for the Absolute." 

Well. Astarion is only going to do one of those things, considering he isn't pious on the best of days and candles are an endangered beast in a prison. "And?"

"They covered their other eye," Marcus says. "With cloth, weapons, something other than their hand. A guard to make sure it goes through the correct one."

His tadpole shivers as he speaks, though whether that's the tadpole itself or his own memories of his own administration leaking free is unclear. Astarion doesn't care to figure it out. 

It sounds simple enough. It sounds like something he's spent three days fearing like a fucking child instead of just sitting up and doing it. 

No time like the present. He stares at the jar—the linen is already gone, just the glass left. Just the promise of what it is and what it could be. A lattice of golden sand and golden sunlight and freedom. 

Astarion fits a claw under the githyanki lid and pops it. 

Stale, rotten air slithers out through the crack, some viscous liquid beading on the edges of the glass—then spills down the side as the tadpole thrashes, electric in its fervour. Astarion has spotty memories of that night but he remembered it being docile in the mindflayer's few-fingered grasp, waiting until near a future domicile. Now it is not so. Now it tastes freedom, and it burns.

Burns in both the figurative and literal sense. Both Astarion and Marcus wince as its cerebral presence seems to explode outward once released from the mystery liquid, lurching upward. Its tendrils lash, clawing at the lip of the jar; its bloated body rises, putrid and cadaverous. 

Astarion tilts the jar so it falls onto his palm. Only then does the beastly thing settle, as though in familiar territory. It circles itself slowly, tendrils out, featureless but for the maw that gapes with its circular teeth. Waiting. Hungry. 

No need to rip apart Minthara's armour, at least. Keeping his hand steady, Astarion steps back until he finds the discarded linen. He folds it once, twice, then hesitates—opens and closes both his eyes, just to test if one is weaker. The first tadpole is nestled somewhere behind his left, and while he hadn't exactly had a tadpole-sized cavity waiting for it no matter how many times Cazador called him brainless, Astarion… doesn't know if a second is better in the same eye or alternating. 

Better to go blind in only one, if he has to. Perhaps he can find a way to return his regeneration, if this works. 

When this works. Because it's going to. Because it has to. 

Astarion sets the linen over his right eye, then meets Marcus' gaze—the man holds his. His tattered wings hunch like the curtain before a silent audience. 

"If this kills me," Astarion says, deliberately light, "I shudder to imagine what Jaheira will do to you."

Marcus flinches—good—but doesn't look away. "This is the power of the Absolute," he intones. "You are one of her chosen. This is not death. This is only power."

Is that what he was told, when those wings were grafted to his back? When he was given the sky and still didn't leave the shadowlands?

Marcus wanted power. Astarion is running. They aren't the same, and their stories aren't going to have the same endings. 

Astarion tilts his head to the left, keeping the linen pinned, and slides the parasite onto his cheek. 

He keeps his gaze locked on the dirt—traces shapes whirled up by time and footsteps, from himself and others. Picks apart the world for anything. 

The tadpole finds the corner of his nose. Its tendrils go up, searching, pawing over his cheekbones. It's– it's making noise, this shrill, incandescent shriek like sonar. Its body leaves a wet trail as it slithers, Astarion going taut as he waits there, as he holds in anticipation, as Godey sharpens his blades for the umpteenth time and the chains rattle around his ankles. 

It finds the corner of his eye. Then it activates. 

A tendril plunges around his eyeball, more joining, splitting the seam as it lashes out with the squall of a dying thing—he slams his eye shut but it's already there, body flattening as it slithers underneath. 

Astarion screams.

What scraps remain of his vision go red, blood boiling as its tail cuts over his sight, bone and flesh and muscle pushed apart. His socket cracks, Astarion thrashing, white-hot with panic, contorting into a vice—claws at his face, at his eyes, gouging at the flesh as the thing crawls deeper and deeper and deeper–

It breaches past his eye and gets into his skull. Astarion seizes, body locking, knees in the dirt and voiceless in the agony. All-encompassing. The wretched thing digs in, burrowing, brine and blood oozing down Astarion's cheek. 

It meets the other. There is a moment where they fight—a moment where Astarion loses himself entirely, where he dissolves , where his brain is naught but a battleground as two alien bastards tear at the other and shred the core of who he is—and then there is a moment where they pivot, sinking fangs into membranes instead. Where the newcomer struggles deeper in, forsaking the claimed territory. Where it sinks circular fangs into something untouched. 

Then it's over. Then Astarion pants, facedown in the dirt, stuck in a pile of sick and bile. His face is wet. Only half of it is tears. 

Then he's prone, pliant. Submission that begs to be taken. 

Astarion grits his teeth. He retches out a glob of something silver-white—blood, but it's not blood, it's certainly not blood no matter how much his tongue seems to think it is—and braces his hands on the dirt. The linen falls away from his eye but vision isn't there to replace it, swimming in and out. There's a cut line through the red, a scar over what should be clear. 

But fuck that. Astarion isn't going to kneel for anyone, not ever again. That's why he's doing all this. 

He fumbles out and gets a hand around the bars, damn the man on the other side that could reach him. Cold metal, the ice of something to give, but it's the singular stability this room has to offer. His claws dig into his palm as they wrap around. He tightens his grip. 

Blood oozes anew from his eye, catching on his lips as though to frame his face. He hauls himself up, inch by miserable inch, until he's hunched on shaking legs and a body wishing to be unmade. 

The world is more. Something is different. The new tadpole claws deeper, puncturing untouched sections of brainflesh. His nerves light up blue, red, sycamore, autumn; his shield ripples over like a cast stone, stronger and yet on unsure footing. It writhes, shoving aside brain matter to fit—his left arm thrashes as its nerves light up, white-hot, then goes cold as the tadpole moves on. A burst of sound like screeching metal when its tendrils latch onto something. 

And– more sound. A voice, wordless and suffocating, flavoured like iron-rust and poison. Marcus. Astarion can barely make out the bars he's holding onto yet Marcus yammers on: revulsion, derision, comments on everything and anything. He can't think around it. 

"Stop talking," Astarion hisses, tacky with phlegm and sick. "Keep your godsdamned mouth shut."

There is a rasp of leather over stone, feathers dragging through dust. "I didn't say anything."

Astarion's ears prick—and prick, because they hadn't been used before. Because they'd been pinned to his skull. 

Because Marcus' voice is quiet, cautious; yet overlapping it is the uninterrupted stream of Marcus, like there are two in the room talking. As he hears I didn't say anything, he also hears never let a spawn why would he throw is this wrong where did he get was it tampered serves him right this is no stop why is he listen should–

Deep within his skull, the second tadpole carves a path deeper into his brain. For a moment, it feels smug. 

"Oh," Astarion says, quiet. 

He peels claws out from where they are lacerating his wrists. 

Vision returns to him unwillingly but commanded—still the cut across his left field of sight but colours bleed back into swaths of white-grey, the prison reforming piece by fractured piece. Bile pools around his feet, that particular shade of fouled blood. He can feel more of it drip from his eye, from his lips. Not unscathed, because of fucking course he isn't. It isn't like mindflayers care about bodies as anything but hosts. 

And a host he now is to two parasites. A body that should transform but won't. A body changed. He can hear Marcus even through his shield, can feel how the man's mind curls in—the tadpole is chewing on as ever before, but somehow in the reflection, Astarion can sense the surroundings. Can feel himself in the cold liquid slick of the man's skull, all the grime of his thoughts. Can feel apprehension, nerves, fury. Tangled together and becoming one. 

He's stronger. The tadpole has made him stronger. 

Astarion lets go of the bars, stumbling for a second. He cleaves through his own tongue and jams heels into the dirt, stabilization, a force of nature—then closes his eyes and goes in. Searches for that same amorphous place as before. 

The world slips away, though he'd only just gotten a hold on it. The fog pulls in and away, retreats to reveal nothing underneath, both of Marcus' voices muffled as he falls within himself. Gravity of something larger pulls him down and down and down as nebulas and galaxies whirl by. 

And then his feet slam into cold stone, and his master's voice snares the dead flesh that had once been a heart. 

Astarion throws himself out before he has to hear the words. 

He staggers away, critical mass, spitting more silver-red blood. It splatters on the dirt, a constellation of misery, four commands that make up his skeleton and a play at personhood that is only bruised skin stretched overtop. 

They're still here. They're still here.

"–spawn," Marcus barks, the tail end of a longer sentence. He's pressed up against the bars, eyes crow-black, wings broken. "Spawn, tell me–"

Astarion wheezes around spittle. But he drags his head up, knowing whatever is on his face is inhuman enough to kill, and snarls: "It didn't work."

Marcus' breath hitches. No– it doesn't. Just a normal inhalation. But his mind contorts like it did, shedding chartreuse-green as his nerves spike. It's like the souring of a blood-scent, the pulse of an increased heartbeat. A new sensation. A new way to read those around him, so long as they bear the same cerebral weight. 

Within his skull, two tadpoles gnaw. 

Still he stands upon four commands. Still Cazador's voice murmurs in the back of his thoughts. 

He did this. He chose this. It's too easy to regret things after they're done. 

A hand coaxing mats out of curls. A palm tucked beneath a shaking jaw. Idiot boy. Did you really think this would work?

"It did," Marcus snaps. It's too sharp, too hostile. "Do not speak against the Absolute's power, spawn. It did work. It will. Let me out."

If it did, then Astarion would hear nothing but his own thoughts. If it did, if it would, then there would be something in his grasp to throw him off that foundational brokenness within him; to cast himself adrift in the grey, so long as there is nothing to chain him down. 

But there wasn't. There isn't. Just the same as before, only louder, only less controlled. 

Astarion lets his hands curl into fists, claws biting into the soft flesh of his palm. He's breathing now, ragged, just enough for speaking in the manner of rot and ruin. Marcus stares back at him, face still pale, but there's something hungry there, too. Something aware.

Was Astarion's shield intact during the process? Were all his thoughts hidden underneath the pain? 

Was he listening in?

Marcus' voice—his thoughts, his mind, his something that echoes like a struck gong underwater—all clutter and canter around themselves, too converged to piece apart. Maybe he's thinking about Cazador, about Godey, about any secrets plucked as Astarion writhed in the dirt. Maybe he knows.

"It didn't work," Astarion repeats. Maybe if he says it enough, it will mean something else. 

He sways in front of the bars; sets a hand on the lock, on its arcane workings. His fingers aren't thin enough to fit into the opening. If Cazador gets him back, he will never have the freedom to think about doing that again. There will be no lock, arcane or otherwise. There will only be eternity. The stone will rise until it is beneath and before and above and around him. Walls and ceiling and floor. 

Marcus is bristling, coiled up, primaries scrapping the ground. "Let me out," he snarls. "I did my part. You didn't die. Let me out, or I will never help you to reach Moonrise."

I did my part.

There are no parts under Cazador. There is only success and failure. There is only trancing upon cold kennel stone and knowing there will be new things he is made to do when he wakes, and there is nothing he can do to stop them. 

Three commanders. One tadpole. Four chances. 

His gaze rises, slow, to meet Marcus'. There must be something on his face because the man blanches, wings shuddering higher as though an infant puffed up before a larger predator. Astarion is shorter, smaller, a spawn; all things inconsequential. 

But Marcus' eyes are white-ringed. "Spawn, you will not–"

Astarion is first aware of his broken shoulder. 

He has stabbed his arm through the prison bars, shattering something in the process. Hot blood gushes over his wrist, oozing into the dirt. It weeps down his skin. Marcus' wings are twitching, caught up in the throes, the stool kicked over and sprawling. A scream, half-finished, echoes off the walls. It is half-finished because the vocal cords doing the screaming are no longer attached. Nor is the throat. Or much of the head, really. 

Reality greets him as though a cudgel. 

Marcus is dead. Okay. This is a fact that he cannot wish out of existence. Astarion killed him. This is also a fact, more damning than the first. A third: his shoulder is broken. This is a fact he can change. 

Don't bite, a part of him pleads. The command– don't bite–

Astarion twists his hand, more of Marcus' throat falling apart. One claw scrapes against spine. But it's enough leverage to drag the man over, limbs skidding and wings going wide. It's enough to work a stretch of open skin through the bar, an arm slumped and wrist limp. It's enough to sink his fangs in and drink. 

Blood fills him, hot and ethereal. It tastes odd. But it also tastes of something other than silver-plattered rats and so he devours, working the last of a heartbeat into pumping more and more through him. His shoulder lurches back into place with a bone-deep crunch. His mind spirals further. 

The new tadpole—the new fucking tadpole—shudders as blood reaches it, as the wounds it bored through his skull are replaced and filled in. It twists and writhes, trying to burrow deeper, but matter regenerates and the walls close in and it goes begrudgingly still, waiting for the movement to stop before it digs anew. Before it continues stripping away the essence of who he is to become the host it wants him to be. 

It's only when his eye stops bleeding that Astarion starts thinking again. 

Because he hadn't been thinking. It can't be thinking, what the part of him that killed Marcus was doing—but that part is survival more than fear. That part is the steady steps that lead him back to Szarr Palace come the morning, victim in tow or not. That part is the vapid smile and adorant praise to his murderer. That part is the willingness for suffering he had not thought possible.

That part says survive. And Astarion, when he can listen, when it allows him a chance to speak instead of grabbing his head and forcing it into the position it needs to be, says yes.

Three commanders. One tadpole. Four chances. 

But there is more than one tadpole here. 

Astarion runs his tongue over his teeth, just light enough not to cut. His arm isn't broken, his eye only throbs, the cut line fading. He is not hale but functional. He has only ever been functional. Blood drips down his face, bile in a puddle around his feet. Marcus dies and is dead and is gone. Not all of him is.

In for copper, in for gold. Astarion has made his choice. 

He still isn't thinking. But he doesn't have to think for this. 

Astarion hauls the man closer, wings crunching as they press against the bars. A hassle, working around the thin gaps, Marcus heavy and light in equal measure. His throat continues weeping scarlet, fouling the floor alongside the bile, an oil-slick shimmer. His arm, freshly adorned with twin punctures, flops to the ground. Astarion twists, ignoring the strain, and manages to flip the bastard over so his head lolls back, hair tangling against the bars.

Then he's holding the corpse. 

He regards it for a moment. 

Marcus wasn't pretty in life, yet death becomes him a little more. Red and black, gore-splattered and viscera-made, like a tapestry made for shock factor instead of art. Something long-suffering and pointless. A Flaming Fist sworn to the Absolute to try and steal the Inn's guardian, only to get captured by Jaheira, only to get killed by Astarion. Full circle. 

Flies will come for them all, one day. And it is unlikely Astarion's second death will mean anything more than Marcus' first. Perhaps less, even. There is always the chance that he dies right after breaking Cazador's commands to close the curtain on the tragedy he has been thus far. 

So long as it is after. So long as he gets a moment to taste freedom without the weight of knowing it is circumstantial. 

Well. Time to make that a reality. 

His daggers—Lae'zel's daggers, considering he doesn't know how he could possibly hide this and she'll likely take them back after this illithid betrayal, but he isn't thinking about that—are not identical to Korrilla's, but they're close enough. One notched, one flat. He'll use the flat one. 

Astarion shifts, digging his left hand into Marcus' scruff to hold him steady, the other drawing the blade. It gleams in the hazy air, thick with blood-scent and suffering. 

This is going to be difficult. It'd be a lot fucking easier if he was inside the cage instead of trying to stretch through the bars. 

Astarion glances up half-heartedly. He can recognize the lock in abstract; a sheet of engraved iron, a circular geometry with an indentation in the center. A ring, a carving, some magical equivalent to a key. 

He can do lockpicks and tripwires. He can do fine mechanisms and pressure plates so ancient their wires are more rust than substance. But he can't do anything in the arcane realm but set them off. 

For so long, he's been trying to make himself invaluable to the party. Tried to find the one niche they didn't already fill so that he could shelter under the delusion he was safe in their midst; that he could be a dick, not a bastard, and they would keep him around as another set of hands that they merely wished didn't come with the attached mouth instead of doing the detachment themselves. 

Only now they're past goblins and shrieking harpies. They're past roadside gnolls and bandit caravans. They're into a world where dangers are paramount and the threats are simply– more.

Astarion can't keep up. 

He cuts into the nape of Marcus' neck. 

Thick mats of hair slither off, pooling tacky in the puddling blood; Astarion works the edge of the blade around, a curved line like a second smile. He hacks off too much around the ear and has to cut back, puncturing through the top. Around halfway through, he grits his teeth against the realization it'd work much better had he started from the forehead then slices through the last remaining flap. 

Marcus' scalp falls to the ground with a splat, tangled up in greasy black strands. His brain gleams in the dim light, an oozing mess of pink-white flesh. It reeks, like all the rest of him, seeping down fractured skin. 

Korrilla had simply reached in. Bereft of other options, Astarion mirrors her and jams his hand into the flesh—it squelches up to his wrist, Marcus' limbs jerking as latent nerves are struck. Astarion ignores that. He ignores everything, actually, as he paws through the skull of a corpse until something wriggles against his fingertips. A loosed tendril, voracious confusion. He draws it as though poison from a wound. 

Then there is another tadpole splayed upon his palm.

Three will work. Minthara had two and she still threw him out of her mind hard enough to make him scream—he's trained himself this far with only one. What could he do with three?

The concept of eternity by his own hands instead of his master's.

It floats through him for a moment, hope draped in the cloak of apathy so he can pretend it isn't there. But it is. He's doing this to survive—he's doing this because he hopes, in his own nervous, sickening way, that perhaps there will be something past survival. That this suffering will happen, and then will crest and break over. Will fade away. 

Three will work. 

Astarion fumbles through the congealing blood and finds the linen, bloodstained, fouled, dripping with regret. He doesn't think about that and pins it over his eye—the left this time, in case that will keep them from fighting. More unclaimed territory. 

Then, quickly, because he isn't thinking, because his mind is nothing but cool, dark water, he holds the miserable fucking bastard up to his face. 

Work, he thinks, useless, stupid, pathetic. Work. Please.

This tadpole, freshly harvested, is less rapacious. Its tendrils slither over his nose, brushing the tattered edge of the linen. It pulls itself onto his cheek, a streak of gore, bloated body digging into the hollow. 

Then it finds his eye, and it is no longer curious but starved. 

Astarioin cannot fall out of his body, cannot go blind into fisted sheets and old rot, but there is no one to hear him scream. So he screams. He screams and contorts himself with the force of it, puncturing deep around his eye and clawing as though he can fish it out, feeling it slither deeper and deeper and deeper. 

Stupid, moronic, trying to stand—he crashes into the bars, legs twisting, choking on bile as he retches into the dirt; it finds a raw nerve behind his cranium and Astarion loses the fucking plot entirely. 

When it settles, when it stops devouring what little he has saved after two centuries, he's convulsing around nothing. Fangs in his tongue and chunks ripped through his cheeks, wrists dissolved as though by acid, something broken in his arm. Instinct to attack with only himself as a target. Fitting. Fucking fitting. 

Astarion spits out a strip of flesh, speckled white-red, and lurches to his knees; strength is a fleeting mistress and it fails him now, staggering back as bile pools over his thighs. His head aches, too full yet bored open, criss-crossing paths like a worm through an apple. 

For a moment, he wonders whether his brain tastes good. And then he laughs so hard he hacks out a tooth; one from the back, left side. Likely clenched his jaw so hard it snapped at the base. It'd take multiple rats to regenerate that. 

It will take one bottle of thinking blood, offered to him, its cost something he doesn't know and isn't told. 

Astarion's claws bite into his knees. 

He opens his eyes—one milky and wartorn, the other bleary after an extended dark. Sight returning doesn't grant him anything prettier; he's sagged against the bars, blood and tears and snot and bile and misery oozing from his mouth. Three, now. Three over one. 

He doesn't need to find that place between. Just has to inhale and taste the commands, sharp like swallowed blades, heavy on his tongue. Feel the chains woven through his ribs, the weight that guides his chin to his master's side. 

For a beautiful, impossible moment, Astarion closes his hands as though there will be something there; as though the third tadpole has unlocked whatever is necessary to save himself. He doesn't know what it is but it must be something, intangible or not, the power of the Absolute. Freedom. 

His hands hold nothing but empty air.

Three didn't work.

That's expected, isn't it? Astarion wanted this. But he doesn't get what he wants. He doesn't know why he's so fucking surprised. 

The newest addition tangles with the others, knifing into untouched crevasses of a mind that can hardly be called present. All three resonate off each other, simmering like a heartbeat he's long-since lost, overlapping echoes and neural euphoria. Perhaps if Marcus was alive, his thoughts would crescendo, louder than the spoken word and so great Astarion drowns underneath them. Perhaps three tadpoles means he'll fumble blind through the waking world, caught up in psionic feywild mists. Perhaps this means another kind of death. 

He leans against the bars, cool metal on cold flesh. Marcus is less than a foot away, discarded like an outgrown toy. That damnation comes to a corpse alone, no longer alive to feel the sting. Jaheira can take and break and destroy him, and it will mean nothing but a body easier to burn at the end of it all. There is no eternity he is running from. Marcus fought and tried and failed, and all he suffers is a door closed. All he earns is peace. 

Astarion's crying. 

It isn't blood, this time. Well—a part of it is, a drop here and there. So freshly drunk that it isn't fouled yet, beautiful instead of poison. Astarion could drink it down again, give Marcus another purpose after his useless death. 

But he's crying. 

It has been a long time since he's had enough hope to cry. 

Cazador would laugh at the memory. It had been him that prompted it, of course. Astarion had failed to bring back a target that night, had crept through the doors of Szarr Palace with sunlight slavering on his heels, yet he was greeted with clemency. Allowed to his bed instead of stone. 

Then, when he stirred from trance, he had–

Astarion closes his eyes. He isn't thinking about what came after. He won't think of that night, or any other night—it means nothing to him but the memory of when last tears slipped down his cheeks. When Cazador had smiled, indulgent, and called him shameful.

Cazador never used proper words in moments like that. Perhaps that would have been too much a generosity, allowing Astarion to hear the curl of vowels in otiose or faineant—to pretend, for even a moment, as though he was back in a magistrate's chair for a past he can't remember and a life he's forgotten. Back when he had been someone. Back when he had been a person.

But Cazador just said brainless, vapid, pathetic. Stupid. 

Somewhere along the years, Astarion started to listen. Hard not to, when he does things like this. When he reaches for ruination and calls it a miracle. 

Nothing seems miraculous, now. There is just him, huddled in his own bile, head ducking and weaving around its three inhabitants. Perhaps he truly is as stupid as he's always feared. 

Astarion allows that thought its moment, examines it as he does all the others, held in fragile hands. 

Then he sets the fucking thing on fire. 

Absolutely fuck this. 

There are three tadpoles in his skull. Marcus is dead in the dirt. But Astarion is still here. He's alive. He can do anything so long as he's alive. 

This prison will not be his second death. 

Astarion grabs the bars and hauls himself to his feet, knees knocking like a guileless youth. Blood continues seeping into the dirt, into his clothing. No way to hide the crime. Or is it even a crime? Marcus was in the cell only because there was the thought he could still provide value; once that ran out, so would his time. Astarion just… sped up the process, as it is. Made everything simpler. 

Nothing is simple. He has three tadpoles in his skull and four commands under his feet. He is in the exact same fucking position as he was an hour ago, still caught, still chained, but now he's actively betrayed the party and killed their singular source of information. 

But he's going to survive this. So Astarion twists and punches the bars. 

Then, knuckles burning and breath ragged in his throat, he snarls at nothing and pulls himself the fuck together—survival is what he does. He'll bow his head and soften his voice and kiss boots because that means surviving, and he has not survived two centuries to been slain by a band of plucky fucking heroes who don't know a thing about who he is. 

Okay. Think. Think.

The party is likely back in the central building, cluttered up and harping about the summons of the Absolute. They'll be at their most susceptible, their most desperate to push onwards—their most erratic. 

But Astarion has spent months following the shadows they make, eyes caged and smile thin to hide fangs. He reads people. He finds marks and motives. This is what he does.

For a moment, he regrets healing himself with Marcus' blood, if only so pain could settle him. Could ground his thoughts into something simple and sure. In that absence, he shreds his wrists and breathes through the familiarity. 

Okay. There are– there are two ways this can go. 

The first—someone comes down, either through suspicion at how long he's taking or by feeling the fluttering strength of his tadpoles, the fluctuations that break past his shield. They find the door and test the handle, see how it's locked—and either they grab Jaheira or are Jaheira, in which case the door opens, and they see two dead men with no explanation worthy. 

The second—Astarion goes up. Astarion brushes himself off. Astarion spins a tale about a Marcus just as obstinate and bullish as before, a Marcus that is once more left behind in the pursuit of more concrete answers. A Marcus that is alive. A Marcus that has no reason to be checked on. 

Astarion has never been a good liar. But he never stops lying, never quiets that part of himself, and he makes it work. It will work because it has to. It will work because he has no other choice. 

The last time he faced the party as though a man within a ring of gallows, he had hissed and spat and derided their pitiful optimism before running away—he had all but screamed his suspicion, made it so Karlach and Wyll waited for him to return and Karlach sought him out the next day. And before that, after Minthara, where all the levity in the world couldn't chase a bloodless wound back into its box. 

He has to be better. The threat now isn't secrets unspooled with his fingers broken in the process—the threat is a dead man and his dead killer, a crime too great to wish away. Even if the party has this incomprehensible curiosity about him, Jaheira is none so verecund. She'll—oh, how had she put it? Kill first and question via speak with dead.

Astarion killed her prisoner. 

Astarion also leaves tomorrow. 

Because tomorrow, Raphael comes. Tomorrow, the party goes to Moonrise and all the devastation there, and Astarion never returns to let the fallout of Marcus' discovered corpse strike his back. 

Then they save the world, and something as inconsequential as a dead bastard isn't thought about for more than a second. 

If Astarion had killed Cazador's prisoner, no amount of deicide would save him. But the party isn't Cazador. It is the single allowance he will offer them. 

Okay. This is a plan. This is salvation by a hook-nailed hand, and one he'll grasp greedily. Three tadpoles. Three commanders. Three days Raphael promised to wait. Three chances that will only come so long as he makes it to tomorrow.

So Astarion is going to go up with a smile and a story, and this is going to work. 

Another fact wriggles in to make a nuisance of itself: namely that there is, ah, a somewhat regrettable amount of blood. Difficult to lie about nothing happening when he seems a connoisseur of butchery. 

He hasn't spent as much time mopping thinking blood out of the silk sheets of the guest room for this to be a problem. 

Astarion picks up the jar that had once held what he thought was absolution, sniffing the mysterious liquid inside; it's– not great, but against the stale air permeating the prison, it's mostly scentless. Good enough. 

He dips his hand in and scrubs at his face, peeling away the bile flecked around his lips and the scarlet crusted over his cheeks, catching in his lashes. How fucking wonderful that he'd allowed the tadpoles into both eyes, one for each—now he gets to discover just how much eyes can bleed. It's almost impressive. Pink water froths on the dirt. 

No reflection but he's well-adept at using touch alone; his face clean, he moves onto his arm, still dripping from his hobbyist decapitation. At least Minthara's armour is dark and warped, better to hide silhouettes. And blood. 

It takes minutes, perhaps hours. But soon the jar is almost empty but for what slicks up the sides, and Astarion rocks back onto his heels in a passable state of composure. 

He's shaking, just a little. Animal instinct. 

So he smothers everything that was once him into the sheen of a deep halcyonian apathy. Something much too distant to hurt. In that absence, he can give the party what they need to hear, what will keep this prison untouched for at least a day longer. 

There are still three commanders at Moonrise. There is still a devil coming upon the morrow with a deal to make. Astarion can still be free. 

He sets the jar down, wringing the last of the mysterious liquid from his sleeve. There's a faint odor of something rotten about him, because Marcus has an aroma that lingers, but it'll have to be good enough. 

The door clicks when he presses the ring to it. Simple. It pushes open and lets fresh air in, carrying out the truth, before Astarion closes the door and leaves the corpse behind. 

Hallway, doors, stairs. He walks through without really seeing, tongue curling around constructed explanations and the sediment of a plan. This will work. 

Astarion's next step makes him buckle. 

He slams into the stairs, sparks kaleidoscoping behind his eyes. The world disappears in a smear of red-orange-blue-black-green—in concepts, forests and frustration and long days and a gripped sword and lightning in palms and bowed head and creased paper and and and– 

More tadpoles. Five of them, now that he's climbed enough to enter their shared cerebral sense—and instead of the faint, colour-splashed awareness of a person, this is a scream, ignited in vivace. They're so much, drowning him, filling him, cluttering up what had been thoughts and consciousness and focus. Astarion keens into the floorboards, arms wrapped around himself.

Around himself. 

It's akin to dragging himself up a mountain, but Astarion lifts his head, eyes hazy, grapples for his shield, and slams the fucking thing shut.

It doesn't make them disappear. They just muffle, as though echoing across a valley; they flutter and press against his shield as though they mean to slip through but haven't figured it out yet. He can taste each person in the mixture, what had been a vague familiarity now a core definition of themselves. 

Well. More tadpoles make him stronger. The confirmation is appreciated. 

Astarion picks himself up, bruises flush with Marcus' blood blossoming over his knees. Old habit shakes out his hands, primps his curls back into order; his shield will simply have to be more robust to keep the party out. This is fine. It isn't like he's lacking in firepower to throw at the problem; three worm-trails carve through his thoughts now, electric in their gravity. He can feel them. Maybe they'll jump at the chance to be used. 

More stairs. Astarion keeps climbing and does not think about it. 

The guard at the top meets his gaze with a flinty one of her own, hand on her hilt—but when she sees it's just him instead of an escapee, she scans him once, twice, and then nods. There is no blood to notice, no death hanging as a cloud over his shoulders. She sees Jaheira's ring and thinks him allowed.

Astarion smiles, thin, and strides under the silver glow. More walking. If asked, he could not recollect a single thing seen along the journey but for when he enters the central hall. 

The party is where he left them, though migrated to a table instead of standing in the midway. Remains of food are stacked up and around, properly fed and watered, now talking in quiet, hushed tones. 

Their minds burn so brightly—all the surrounding Harpers are dim in comparison, dead leaves against an autumn blaze. Astarion can practically feel Karlach's nerves pad around his ankles, the acrid scent of Gale's resignation billowing through his hands. Wyll feels like a forest on fire. Shadowheart is nothing but deep, dark regret. 

Fucking hells. Conversations are about to be hells in the making. 

Small mercy that Jaheira has fucked off to some other heroic corner, so at least she can't taunt him further with Kozakuran and pointed questions about fleeing. Wonderful. So it goes.

Astarion inhales enough air for talking. It coats his mouth, heavy with resentment, and bleeds away for a poised smile. It is the same smile he gave Gandrel when the hunter suggested they explore the abandoned village together. Perhaps if this party knows him at all, they'll recognize that. 

But they won't. They know his back and his hunger and how his master is still alive. That's it. They don't know him. They can't. 

"Hello," he says, not quite chipper but close enough, and settles into the open spot next to Lae'zel. 

The party jerks—perhaps his shield is too thick, if they didn't even sense him approaching—and Karlach leans over the table, scorching circles into the wood with her elbows. "Fangs!"

"Hello yourself," he repeats. "Apologies for the delay; I wanted to be sure I had gotten all out of him that I could." A sigh, theatric in its antipathy. "Not terribly succinct, Marcus."

Karlach snorts, then centers back. "You're fine though? Nothing happened?"

"If my ears could bleed from idiocy, they would," Astarion says blithely. "Perhaps that's how True Souls attack their enemies. We've been doing this all wrong."

The party rustles as a collective, faint amusement trickling through. Except for one. 

Astarion turns, keeping the movement casual. Shadowheart is watching him. Her eyes flash like a cat's in low light. 

"Nothing happened?" She echoes Karlach's question. 

"Nothing but a genuine question of how that man became a Fist in the first place."

Shadowheart hums something noncommittal. She doesn't pull her eyes away. "You have blood under your nails."

Ah.

Observant little bastard, isn't she?

Astarion smiles and flips his hands over to expose the underside of his wrists. They're tattered, more wound than flesh, tendons peering through like pale serpents. Lacerations curl around bone like a lover's embrace. 

"It wasn't a terribly pleasant conversation," he says, deliberately light. 

Karlach inhales sharply, more a hiss through her teeth. "Fuck, fangs," she says, as though the party hasn't tramped around with cavernous wounds through their guts or shrugged off literal impalements when the gnolls hadn't bothered to clip their nails. "I thought he was in a cage!"

Beside Shadowheart, Gale sucks in air over his teeth and Wyll's tadpole plunges as though floor removed from under feet, but her gaze stays locked. "That wasn't Marcus."

If anyone would know, it'd be her, apparently. Her and her patchwork memories. 

"It's an old habit," Astarion agrees. Vampire spawn don't scar from such meaningless things like this, so his wrists are torn anew each time. How lucky that his claws remember where to shred the same lines. 

Cazador had smiled, the first time he saw Astarion do it. Then, he split his skull. 

"I'll take a bottle of blood later, if you wouldn't mind," Astarion says, duthered up into politeness. "I'll be fine."

"The fuck you will," Karlach says, incredulous. The table continues to merrily blacken under her splayed palms. "Not leaving you like this, all hells–"

"What Karlach means," Shadowheart cuts in, "is that I'm right here, Astarion."

Ah. She is. Astarion is a little too familiar with an existence that could never conceptualize healing. 

He bobs his head, peeling away anything rictus left in his smile for something more human, and extends his arm. Shadowheart's tadpole bleeds that encompassing darkness still, ink spilled over the page—regret and shame and rage and surrender. It spills into her eyes, too; nothing underneath. Just winternight pools. 

And still she takes his arm and presses motes of black in, unspooling a tension he'd hardly noticed he was carrying. His wrists stitch together, a shiver as the muscles reconnect. Half a miracle he still had the motor function to administer the tadpole, really. Though he has an expertise in pushing past weakness of the flesh. 

Then his skin is smooth and untouched once more. Nothing to remember what had been. 

Shadowheart's hand stops moving. She's looking at his face, at his eyes, hers reflecting only an empty stool back at him. Something in her posture changes, as though a bulwark against the wider world. As though she would hide him if he starts bawling. 

Her voice is quiet. "Are you injured anywhere else?" 

Astarion is fine, actually. Astarion is doing his best to smother the urge to punch someone through the fucking wall. He smiles at her, blinking twice. "I was bleeding from my eyes not an hour ago," he reminds, because he's so lucky to have an excuse for any flecks of blood he might have left clinging to his lashes. "And I'm really very tired. That's it."

"Hm," Shadowheart says, the single syllable carrying dubiousness more clearly than any of Gale's monologues. Then she releases his arms and retreats back to her side of the table.

"Thank you," Astarion says prettily. He folds his hands over each other, turning back to the others. "Where was I?"

"Marcus," Karlach offers, like it had been a genuine question. She's perked up despite how her eyes keep drifting to his clasped wrists. Her tadpole has a sheen in it like a melody out of tune, missing notes of something he can't place. "Did he have anything for Moonrise?"

There's already an answer. She just wants him to say something else. 

He knows. She knows. The whole party knows, much in the same way as they butted heads over the past two days to search for another answer because impossibility is only ever one step further. But now the True Soul didn't know anything, they still don't have another option, the Absolute is harkening to some grand gathering, and they really have to go to Moonrise sooner instead of later. 

Tomorrow, Raphael returns. Tomorrow, the party will have to make the choice he's already made. 

"He did not," Astarion says. "He'd heard the summons and was appropriately tetchy about it, but couldn't offer anything other than demanding I let him out. Hardly our savior, I'm afraid."

"Fuck," Karlach groans, face meeting her palms. She doesn't dig claws into her face, but skin creases regardless. "Fuck."

"Fuck," Astarion agrees. Then, before he can stop himself: "Shall we discuss what happens when we get to Moonrise, then? Because we've rather a laundry list of items to complete. I'd hate to miss one."

Silence greets him, for a moment. Five tadpoles light up in sync. 

Well, so much for even-handedness. He's fucking this up. He could spit out broken teeth with more grace than this. 

"Raphael comes tomorrow," Astarion reminds, politely, to soften the blow. "Marcus had nothing, and though you've been looking for two days now, I'm not sure there is another way. We might as well move on with our plans."

Wyll, damn him, looks so fucking sad. "But that way isn't one I'm willing to take, Astarion."

It isn't him taking it, actually. Which is backwards in every possible sense. Somewhere in Moonrise is both Mizora and Ulder Ravengard. Somewhere in Moonrise is the breaking of his pact and the saving of his father. Wyll has imminently pressing desires to see him to the base of the Absolute, and still he doesn't want the bloody deal to be made. 

Astarion shrugs a little, as though unbothered. He's used to dancing on the wire of someone else's mercy. "I really do want us to go about saving the world," he says. "Hard to do that here. We'll talk about what I'm owed for this favour later."

"It isn't a favour," Karlach cuts in. "It's a deal with a fucking cambion."

At least his wrists have been forgotten. "A deal where he promises to keep us safe, love."

"We can't even trust him for that," Gale points out. "Magic from the hells is not that which particularly bests divine, even in fire against shadow."

Korrilla comes to and fro without struggling. Astarion keeps his trap shut on that regard and switches to contrarianism. "And you said a devil's word is bound and binding. If I get that clause in our contract, then we should be fine."

"And maybe that means we'll survive the shadows just long enough to die in the light," Wyll says. 

Carrion-black feathers, dissolving into ash. Astarion smiles on. "Or perhaps we end up on the other side and all the merrier for it."

Then, because Karlach looks a mite furious at the suggestion: "I'm far from a fan of devils and their woes," he says, holding his hands up placatingly. "But at least think of what happens if this works. If we take a negligible detour to fetch some lost toy and find ourselves in the Absolute's base, ready to slay her before this assault can begin. Isn't that worth it?"

It will be worth it. It has to. Moonrise has three commanders and three chances, and failing that, it has the Absolute herself to fleece for freedom. Moonrise has what he needs, and when he gets there, it will be given to him. 

Because Marcus is wrong, actually. Astarion has decided this. Marcus is a two-bit imbecile who didn't know an arcane lock from a mechanical one and thus is not one having opinions that deserve to be listened to. Spawn are watched with a healthy level of caution within the Absolute's ranks, as they are in all places, but nothing more. Just good sense. 

Marcus was wrong about the tadpoles. Marcus is wrong about spawn. That's all there is to it. His little scheme about stirring up brains with parasites has the hackneyed job of a moron, nothing more. Even if he had been right, Astarion would have–

Well. That's the frightening part. He doesn't know what he would've done. Get Marcus out? Kill him anyway? Leave him to seethe? Tell the party?

Perhaps it's for the best he never got to discover what instinct would lead him to do. 

Astarion shrugs offhandedly, threading conversation back to Karlach. "We could continue whinging about it," he says, "but that doesn't matter, does it? We have to get to Moonrise. Everything between is just results."

Karlach's eyes go flat. That may have been a touch too apathetic a rebuttal.

But she just knuckles deep into the table, a head taller than all the others even hunched over as she is. When she lifts her head, smoke wreathing her horn, the expression she wears could call a cadaver home.

"Do you want this, fangs?"

Well. 

That could, perhaps, be better summed up as asking if this is his choice. 

The others have a choice, and they've been trying their damnedest to make it so he doesn't have one. Depriving him of this infernal savior and the power of the Absolute, so far away. Astarion swallows to make sure his teeth aren't red and sighs. "Not in the slightest, love," he says. "But I also don't want to die. I'm hardly going to lie to your face and say this is all gallant heroism to save the world; I really am quite invested in surviving this adventure. If that comes at the behest of a devil, so be it. At least I'll be alive to free myself from the consequences."

There is a pause. It is a long, wavering pause.

"What if–" Karlach swallows. Smoke bleeds off her shoulders, but it isn't blistering—almost cold, in a way, compared to her normal. As though plunged into a tundra. "What if someone else makes the deal. Not you."

Astarion blinks at her. "I can hardly imagine anyone harebrained enough to do so."

Against his shield, the air flickers, a candle caught in a distant wind. Shadowheart's creased-paper-ink folds in on itself, Lae'zel like the flash of green ere sundown. Preparing. 

"I don't have much longer," Karlach says. 

At her side, Wyll flinches. 

She taps her engine, the ring of nail on metal. "Fucker's getting hotter every day—not sure when it'll snuff it, but I am sure it'll take me down when it does. So. I could make the deal with Raphael instead. S'not like he'll have much time to hurt me."

Oh. 

The thought of her beneath Raphael's heel—the thought of her as nothing at all, dust in the wind before she can settle down with Wyll and build a house and tend a farm and have enough time to go grey. 

A small, fragile part of him doesn't want that. 

"No," Astarion says, and is genuinely shocked to hear it come out gentle. A stranger's voice. "I– I appreciate the offer, love, I truly do, but– Raphael doesn't seem the type to change targets. He's focused on me."

Korrilla's eyes, black and impassive. You're still interesting to him.

"And I'm Zariel's lapdog." The shadow creeps over her shoulders like spilled oil. "A real fucking treat down in the hells, no matter who's biting. That'd be enough to sweeten the pot."

"But you–" he's floundering. "You just escaped Avernus, Karlach, why would– you can't mean to go back."

Wyll curls in like there's a dragon circling, head bowed. Karlach just exhales. "Not going back," she says quietly. "Kipping out before that happens. I'm hoping Raphael wasn't lying out of his ass when he said the deal didn't involve souls; not much he can punish a pile of ash."

"You can't make this deal on hope," Astarion says, incredulous. "What if it does involve souls, and then he has you for eternity? Why on all gods would you risk that?"

"Why would you?"

Astarion freezes. 

Karlach is breathing hard, heavy like a bull in the arena. She swipes a hand through her hair, smoke-grey patches wisping away. Something in her tadpole burns. "You keep saying you need to get to Moonrise, over and over, and you're willing to parlay with a fucking cambion to get there. You wouldn't if you knew what those bastards would do for one taste of a mortal soul. So fuck that, Astarion. And fuck you for thinking I'd sit back and watch it happen."

"I'm not asking for you to step in," Astarion says, sharper now. "I don't– I don't want you to make the deal. It's mine. Simple as that. So long as we pick up his useless artefact, we'll never have to worry about any sort of punishment."

She bares fangs of her own. "Devils don't play fair. Devils don't play. What if the artefact's something you can't get? Something you don't want to pay?"

Astarion's hand tightens around the table. I will do anything–

"Excuse me," Gale says politely. 

Something about his demure voice knifes through the growing tension—Karlach exhales smoke-blackened air and settles back on her stool, Astarion unclasping his grip. The shared cerebral air quiets. 

Gale, having made his opening like a kingfisher finding a break in the leaves, leans in. He laces his fingers. "I think you're both coming at this from the wrong angle," he says lightly. "My friends, we discussed this. Well, not exactly this—we certainly never asked anyone to volunteer, that's rather the entire point we are working to avoid—but the prospect of negotiating with Raphael."

He inclines his head to Karlach. "Devils don't play, as you put it, but I do hold to my belief that there is a reason Raphael came to us, rather than us coming to him. He wants this deal more than he is willing to say, and while we don't hold majority power in this exchange, we aren't completely bereft. Because I think the reason he suggested this to only one is because of the strength in numbers. Should, for example, Astarion take the deal and fail, then there are, in Raphael's eyes, five of us still capable of taking up the mantle to save the world. His punishment can be as devastating as he wants because he thinks the rest of us will carry on." Gale pauses for effect. "But if the deal is made with all six of us and he truly is interested in preserving the material realm, then the price must either be lessened or delayed. Neither are ideal, but both allow us the chance to find a workaround, or to cast it back until the Absolute is dealt with."

He casts a moderately reproachful look at Karlach. "That is what we discussed we would say, my friend. To explain our reasoning instead of attacking."

Karlach exhales. Heat wavers in front of her mouth. 

"Yeah," she says, something caught between gutted and breaking into fucking tears. "Yeah. Sorry. Gale's put it better. We'll all make the deal, fangs, not just you. Then the fucker's gotta choose between getting his jollies off or drying up his souls."

It–

It makes sense. That's maybe the worst part, that the past two days haven't been spent dithering about formalities and a master undead; that they've actually been thinking, actually been trying to figure this out instead of allowing him to take the deal unhindered. The deal that only benefits them when it falls upon his shoulders. Now they want in. 

He doesn't know why. 

Astarion swallows. Wets his lips. His voice is too small. "What if Raphael doesn't allow it?"

Karlach's tadpole shivers. 

"Then we ask him to explain," Gale says, as though a simple request. "If this truly is a fetch quest, as he put it, the more is all the merrier—while he is correct that we would all help even if the deal was made with only you, it should only be increased insurance for completion should we all shake fifths from the beginning. If he disagrees, then there's something else going on, which we will need to discover." He unlaces his hands to arrange on the table, poised. "Admittedly, this will need to come tomorrow, since things in the manner cannot be puzzled out without Raphael being here—but our limiting factor is resolve. An hour for negotiations is worth far more than an hour's headstart to Moonrise. Do you agree?"

Astarion stares at him. At them all. 

Two days that have come to this. Two days and a plan more than constructed desperation. 

Maybe the tadpoles did kill him. Maybe this is all just a dream. 

But when Astarion refocuses, Gale is still there, staring placidly back—and Karlach is still hunched over, Wyll stiff, Lae'zel tense, Shadowheart watchful. They're all here. They're all looking at him, waiting for his approval, as though they're worried he won't accept this inconceivable mercy. As though this makes any sense. 

A satchel with five bottles of blood after a broken command. A hand extended and thanks freely given. A translation of carved scars. 

He doesn't understand.

Somewhere beneath the stone, Marcus begins to rot. 

"I–" Astarion pauses, swallows down silver blood, continues "–I agree. This seems– better." 

He should continue—should lavish adoration for them willingly entering a coven they didn't have to—but the words fail to materialize. Just meeting their gazes, just holding onto his shield because he cannot bear to feel their thoughts more than he already is. 

"I agree," Astarion says again, as though it will mean something more. Like why or this won't work or you shouldn't be doing this.

Or thank you.

But all that comes out is "I agree."

Chapter Text

Astarion trances like shit, as is his due. Spends the entire night curled on the shitty bed under the shitty roof surrounded by shitty walls and doing his best to think of nothing at all. He fails, mostly. Reverie plays Marcus' gasping, twitching corpse behind his eyes with every passing moment, the feeling of teeth boring within his skull. 

They are still kinder memories than what they could be, so when his trancing breaks, Astarion gets up and gets moving. Today is the day, after all. They've languished in the Last Light Inn for too long; Raphael will come to collect what's due. Or to make a deal for things due, in this hamfisted metaphor. 

The devil is coming. And against the thought of yesterday, which he is not thinking of, against the crime and the consequences that will not come from it, nothing else matters. 

So Astarion drags himself from the pile of rocks masquerading as a cot and starts strapping on daggers and throwing blades and arrows and bow, dense as a thicket. Underneath, Minthara's armour grips him cold about the shoulders, the ribs. No matter how the charred crater in its chest reminds the outer world how its previous occupant is no longer living, it's still a piece made for the slaughter. 

And he likes it, to be frank. Likes how vicious it is, all jagged edges and blood-stained hems. Alas that he couldn't have a quick chat with the drow trying her level damnedest to remove Karlach's head to discover more about her personality, but she makes a fine armour. Perhaps that's enough to cover for her regrettable character defects. 

He moves slowly and quietly, the same not-quite consideration offered in the spawn room, but both Karlach and Wyll are already gone—too tense, too flighty, too war-made to last an entire night asleep with what hangs over their heads. Their side of the room is empty, even the scraps of leather used to keep Karlach from burning Wyll to a crisp gone. Half a wonder they managed without waking him, but Astarion had, to be very frank, more important things to be consumed by. 

Last night—not Marcus, he isn't thinking about that—and the party's plan. The idea of making a deal with Raphael together instead of alone. 

They had offered. Perhaps more surprisingly, he had agreed. 

The party had seemed similarly surprised by that. Even as they continued rehashing known points until the late hours, they had left pauses in the discussions as though openings for him to fight back. And he hadn't. 

Karlach will be watching him, Astarion knows. She likely won't stop, not now, not ever. The first time she had looked at him with something sharper than before was on the night after Wyll's transformation, where she had stood in the dying light of a fire and asked where he'd gone. That was the first. 

He'd been foolish enough to think it once-off. Now it's turned terminal. Now she doesn't look away. 

This scrutiny is inevitable, the lack of privacy mundane. No siblings to commiserate, which is both better and worse, but Astarion thinks his current captors are a fair deal more likely to cut him open and be done with it than get creative, which is preferable. Desired, almost. 

Astarion continues shoving things into his bag. The satchel gets lovingly tucked in amidst scraps and folded clothing, easy to access and protect, particularly now that he doesn't have to worry about another glass jar. Its contents are spilled somewhere far below, unseen. 

He isn't thinking about that. 

But he does pause in the doorway, glancing back—the circle in the center where he'd sat with Karlach and Wyll, vomiting up century-old secrets like something to share and barter. Where they'd read his back and told him it meant more than suffering. 

Perhaps it's for the best that he will never come back. 

Then he steps onto the landing and immediately has to swallow a wince. A flinch, really, because gods how their tadpoles scream—bouncing off each other, echoing, the clatter of stone beneath a rampaging bull. Five minds so tangled they seek to drown the others, pulled down into marine snow as they flounder on. One thought is a symphony; an emotion an avalanche. They're just so loud.

He'd once thought them like– like clouds in space, seas divided by landforms. He was dead fucking wrong. They're interwoven, the net of something larger draped over the cerebral air, holding them in. The artefact, maybe. Their protection, if it can be called that when Astarion bleeds through his eyes every other fucking day—what keeps them untransformed so long as they stay together, an intangible chain. He hadn't been able to see it before. 

Now he can. It seems tripling the amount of undesirables does make him stronger, rather than the placebo he's worn as though hope. What a marvelous fucking gift, considering three didn't work. 

It's a hair-trigger twitch, barely conscious. Somewhere within the inn, Jaheira has another tadpole trapped within a jar of her own. 

He isn't thinking about that. 

Astarion grits his teeth and pulls his hand off the doorframe, shutting it behind him. It rattles like a death knell. 

Cresting the stairs is easy. Everything is easy. He has never had any problems doing anything ever. And in return, fate smiles kindly on him, because the entire rest of the party is already awake. Wonderful. Astarion can think of few things worse than trying to stand stoic without something to distract from the thunderous presences trapped within his fucking skull. 

His shield must temper and maintain. He can't react to these heightened sensations, because that would reveal yesterday, and so he won't. Simple as that. 

Wyll stands at the front. Perhaps thoughts of his father are spiraling in his head now, but his tadpole only projects a malignant regret, the roar of a maelstrom. His face is cautiously blank in contrast. Too good at scrapping away anything that could be construed as negativity before it reaches the outer world. Karlach is at his side, her tail leaving little crescent-mark burns in the floorboards. Shadowheart and Gale are deliberately standing with Lae'zel between them. Another fight, maybe. It's a pot that is soon to boil over.

Jaheira is there, of course. Her armour is in perfect condition, hair braided back, jaw set. The slender neck of a wine bottle is exchanged for scimitars, strangling the hilts as though something to kill. She knows the plan, if enough generosity will be applied to call it one. 

She doesn't know about Marcus. She doesn't know about the corpse. 

Astarion licks the memory of blood off his soft palette and continues walking down the stairs. His head is high, his back squared. Proud like a warrior. 

Jaheira eyes him as he approaches, a drag of contact from heels to head. It is likely the same look she gave all the others, as though weakness will ooze from their pores to parade itself before her. It means nothing. It is nothing. 

Harpers are already spread around the edges and mailed to the teeth. Both a show of strength and a comfort, something to steel behind. If any of them raise a hand against Raphael, he doesn't fancy their chances, no matter how much iron they've garbed themselves in. Fools. 

Astarion hums a tone noncommittal. "I see the infantry is here," he says mildly, nodding at nothing in particular. "Are we expecting a fight?"

"Hope not," Karlach sighs, but her hand tightens on her greataxe enough it smokes. She hasn't drawn it, still slung over her back. Her tadpole sings with the desire to. "He's– coming to the material plane isn't easy, for devils. That means he's strong. It'd be a big risk to fight."

An eon ago, she stared down a dragon and wondered if she could make it sweat. 

Astarion clicks his tongue and walks closer, pushing a sway into his hips, a lilt to his head. Not ease, but not unease, either. As at home in this discomfort as he would be in its alternative. "I rather think all of this is a risk," he says. "But better a risk on our terms than his, no?"

"Kinda," she echoes. She still looks sad. But she's probably going to look sad until Raphael shows up with his remarkably punchable face and then she'll look angry instead, which is the more preferable of her expressions. 

The heat of yesterday, when she'd oscillated between offering herself up for the noose or demanding to know why he'd volunteered himself—she's too perceptive by half. It's easy, in a way, to get tripped up in how she coos over Scratch or giggles around campfire stories. To look at her and see the smile instead of the woman who slaughtered her way through the hells for ten years. 

Astarion won't let himself make that mistake, not with how she's watching him. A misstep, a scoffed word that ought to be swallowed, and his house of cards begins to fall. It's already falling, in a way. Already Jaheira pronounces his name softer than he's ever heard and Shadowheart offers a chair with its back to the wall.

But that doesn't matter. Because today they go to Moonrise, and there are three chances within to free himself, and they kill the Absolute, and then he fucks right off to never see them again. So it goes. 

Astarion settles within the half-circle of the party, all garbed for war with weapons braced. Whatever conversation was before dies an easy death with his arrival. In its absence, Jaheira takes the center stage, a representation of those with enough freedom to know not to make a deal with a devil. How lucky.

"You are sure of this," Jaheira says to the group at large. It is not quite a question, nor is it an indictment. Just hollow repetition. She knows they are. 

Gale doesn't meet her gaze and Wyll is still adrift in that floating, secondary state of his, so it falls to Karlach to sigh, bellows-deep and pained. "Yeah," she mutters. Then she cracks her neck, shakes out her arms: "Yeah. We are. Right?"

This is aided by a glance to the others. Shadowheart's tadpole—this thrashing, coalescing mass of black and tendrils and the gleam off the surface of the water while drowning underneath—snarls at the thought but she just nods, face placid. In turn, Lae'zel is a white-hot spoke of fury, neither hidden nor muffled. 

No one can hide from him now. Their emotions bleed like cast stones, bright through the eyes of a dog. How fucking lucky it comes after he bit Wyll and not before. 

"We are," Wyll echoes, nodding. Gale mirrors it. 

When attention swivels to Astarion, he smiles. A poignant sort of one, lips curled up, sardonic if it didn't come pre-cowed. "Yes," he agrees. "We are."

That's all there is, really. The answer he knew and the others bucked against for three days, no matter this miraculous alternative they've presented. He's always known the answer. It just took them a little longer to find their way to its inexplorable end. 

Because this choice, if it can be called so, is too much the same as frost fractaling over a back alley. It is the same as retching around blood to watch it smear in the snow. It is the same as collapsing to his knees and thinking: I don't want to die.

If he says no—if the party says no—then what? Are they trapped here with the Harpers who have tried for longer than them to get in and still failed? Does he wait for his chain to snap back after this temporary give? 

That's what would happen. But what will happen instead is Astarion litigates with a devil and comes out on top, because that is what needs to happen, and so it will. 

Jaheira clicks her tongue. Maybe it's a sort of code, with how often she does it. Then she pulls her gaze away to the wider Harpers and nods. She earns a nod back and some of them begin to bleed outward, taking position in tactical shadows or beneath overhangs. Not capable of hiding from a devil's eyes, though perhaps they wish to pretend. 

Then it's just a waiting game—to perch on the edge of a cliff, legs dangling over boiling water, and staring at a sunrise for when it will change to red. Or with a hand pressed to velvet curtains, testing if heat leeches through the thick fabric, if enough time has passed to guarantee it being safe to go outside. 

The first metaphor, instead. Astarion likes that one better. 

The party clusters and clumps, a locust horde with anxiety. Lae'zel's longsword must be sharpened enough to bite into the tang but she does it again, the low, grinding sound of stone on metal like a struck gong in the air. Gale paws through a stack of yellowed paper with Shadowheart, both tadpoles bleeding worry. Wyll has wrapped his hand in nine layers of leather to hold Karlach's, her eyes squeezed closed and engine grinding like torn bone. 

Astarion leans against one of the scattered tables, lackadaisical and unbothered. He toys with one of his daggers for something to do. Or, more accurately, for something to feign doing—because he is spending every single molecule to his name cramming three tadpoles back into their burrows. 

Being around the party– excites them, or makes them hungry, or stirs up a latent territorial instinct, or kickstarts the urge for some tentacle-aided orgy. Whatever the fuck the reason, it's like holding electricity to strengthen his shield so nothing slips out, pin the tadpoles so they don't get out, and smother any reaction to the party's presence that's so loud he may be going deaf. Mental-deaf. Cerebrally hard of hearing. 

It leads his limbs astray, when it catches him off-guard; a twitch down his calf when the newest tadpole gnaws on a fresh chunk, the second flicking its tail and making the scent of raspberries bloom over his tongue. Hard to remember whether the first did anything of the sort, when Lae'zel's berated reminders of seven days—and then Gandrel's whole fucking deal—were more than distraction enough. 

But Astarion isn't thinking about that, actually. So he leans against the table and he flips his dagger and he waits. 

Generously, they don't have to wait terribly long. Ungenerously, Raphael doesn't do them the service of appearing where their attention is directed, the empty center of the room. He just walks out from behind Wyll as though he had always been there. 

Emerges on the man's blind side, actually. Vile little fuck. 

Astarion's internal monologue takes it far more calmly than the rest of the party does—or how he himself does, swallowing a curse as he fumbles his dagger to plunge tip-first into the table, shivering where it stands. Karlach spits expletives in infernal as she drops into a three-point stance, lips peeled back from her teeth. Wyll wheels about to get Raphael in his sightlines, Gale's tadpole erupting into something miasmal and shredded. All the Harpers swivel like kicked hornets. 

Astarion pries his dagger free and shoves it into his sheath, because there's no point in pretending it would mean anything should a fight break out. He pads forward to stand alongside Karlach at the head of the party, head tilted back and face impassive. He's a foot shorter than the devil. He doesn't enjoy the familiarity of that difference.

For her part, Karlach seems eager to abdicate the new deal they'd spent agonizing over yesterday—her voice is pure snarl, eyes black. "You fucker."

"Hello to yourself," Raphael says, cheery bright. He sweeps his gaze about the room, human disguise draped over his shoulders and starching alongside his collar. His poise languishes. Flat teeth. "I do appreciate the welcoming committee—unless this is a mutiny? You hardly seem to be in an accommodating mood."

Karlach's knuckles bleed white around her greataxe. 

"Perhaps not," Raphael notes. If he recognizes the threat, it means less than a smear upon the bottom of his boot for all it affects him. "Too much to expect from you, I suppose. Very well. There's no use in mousing around our discussion, is there? Best sink our fangs in now."

So Raphael looks at him. 

Astarion doesn't need to breathe—hasn't for the longest time—and so he just stops. Easier, in a way. If he doesn't breathe, he has the hollow pain in his chest to distract from how Raphael watches him as though flensed upon the rack. 

Dead things are funny like that. It took his gullyworks a year or two to realize that pumping blood was not only unnecessary but a waste—that straining the muscles around a decaying heart would not make it beat again. He is dead, and so is the corpse he wears. This is his existence. 

Flowers bloom until they rot. He has rotted for quite some time now. 

Astarion smiles at Raphael. Thin lips, thin eyes. He stole this smile from a mark with a snaggletooth and the determination to have it never be seen. "Yes, dear?"

Behind him, he knows more than hears Jaheira unsheath her scimitars.

The cambion rolls his shoulders, wind shivering from something larger than a human form. His eyes never leave. Beneath the mortal auburn burns a deep, cruel red. 

"Well, Astarion?" Raphael asks, light. He drags out each syllable as though a luxury. "Do we have an accord?"

Karlach is staring at him. Wyll is staring at him. The whole godsdamn inn is staring at him, eyes prickling over skin. Damningly, it's familiar to be the centerpiece of a crowd—seen by those who can't meet his eyes or can't look away. Unnerving, arousing. Something caught between. 

But there are no hordes he must roll over and purr affiliations to. Just one. 

Astarion sugars his voice until it sings. "Am I expected to agree without even being told what my side of it is? I'd like to hear more of the specifics."

"But of course," Raphael says, genteel. "I'm hardly pushing a quill into your bloodsoaked hand—this is your deal as much as it is mine, after all. Ask your questions."

That's a sickening way of putting it. Somewhere in the foreground, Wyll's mind roars.

Astarion stays smiling. This is the plan. He's here to tease out anything malignant in the shadows before the others pounce. Simple logic. "Correct me if I misspeak," he says, "but the deal is as follows—you bring me to Moonrise, safe and unharmed by the shadows, and from there I trot on in to find your mysterious artefact. Have I gotten that right?"

Raphael flicks his wrist as though conducting an orchestra. "As much as can be summarized in a single sentence," he notes. "Come now—where is your magistrate's tongue? Don't tell me the years have made you succinct."

Astarion twitches. Ignores everything to do with that. 

"Only for situations like this," he says. "And with the facts established, now I can ask clarifications. What is the artefact?"

He hadn't asked before, too aware of how much power that was pushing into Raphael's hands by speaking as though it was a confirmed deal. Ignorance as a shield against a greater power. It isn't a shelter any longer. 

Raphael, the dick, seems to know that, by the way his lips quirk. "It is a jewel," he says. Something thrums over the simple word. "Amethyst, cut, a finger's length; extremely arcane in nature."

Well. That's– Astarion can't say nondescript, but less specific than he was hoping for. More like a map with a garish circle around the target. How many bloody gems is he going to have to sift through? Surely Moonrise is stuffed to the gills. 

"An amethyst," he repeats. "That's it?"

"Do trust you'll recognize when first you see it," Raphael continues, amused, "if you do not feel it from several rooms away. I will, however, harken a suggestion to keep your teleportation or dimensional travel away—it is not one to play fair or proper. Best delivered by hand." 

Ominous. Half their plan revolves around teleporting out when the deed is done. 

Astarion maintains his raised brows. "And delivered by when?"

That earns him a laugh, two-toned and mocking. "I am aware you have other things on your mind—or in it." He splays an open hand. "I'll be lenient on exact dates to allow you that. But I trust you'll make this a higher priority than other tasks."

A higher priority. Something with a price racketed up into the upper echelons, more cost than reward. But in the same breath, Raphael is smiling at him, speaking, laughing. The cards are firmly in his hands. These are all questions he expected to be asked; the answers that pour forth are in Leon's voice, practiced and sure. His face is Violet's as she watches Yousen take the punishment for her crime. 

And all he can think of is Karlach—the cold, undiluted nothing in her eyes. 

Known is better than unknown.

"And what if," Astarion says, "I get to Moonrise, so generously guided there by yourself, and find this gemstone not ripe for the taking—or don't find it at all, considering how you're forced to rely on us instead of getting it for yourself." 

The air simmers. Five tadpoles, spread like a battalion, grow teeth. 

Raphael tilts his head to the side. He is still smiling, still light, and yet interest lattices over nonchalance. "And why are you asking, little spawn?"

His moniker has changed. Telling. 

"Just curiosity," Astarion says. "It hardly behooves me to agree to a contract without knowing the finer details—and every magistrate worth the gavel in their hand knows punishment is what scares repeat offenders away. You said this deal wasn't about my soul; so what is it about?"

Raphael's eyes darken. For a moment, he has more than one face. 

Then he smiles. "Ah, I see what is going on here—you're belabouring under the assumption that I am out to get you, perhaps as a chromatic dragon or unstoppable force of nature, and you need to ensure a deal layered with caveats and loopholes," he says, light. "After your earlier exuberance, you didn't strike me as one to let the paranoid miseries of your party weigh you down, Astarion. I'm disappointed."

Disappointed. Foolish boy.

The outer shell of his shield ripples once. 

"Don't tell me you'll praise a magistrate's tongue until it's used against you," Astarion counters. "And this is hardly deserving of such scrutiny. I'm asking what happens if I fail, that's all. I want to know more."

"You want a reason to uphold your end of the bargain," Raphael corrects. "An explanation why you can't take my gift and rush on for your own goals, no matter how my aid is critical in you reaching them. You are asking, and being remarkably impolite in the process, if I have added something to prevent you from trotting through unhindered."

Astarion remains smiling. "Well, have you?"

Raphael hums. He's cat-poised like a blade at the throat, aristocratic, an ornate handle and steel beyond. He seems pleased by the questioning. An opportunity he'd hoped would present itself. 

"I had not," he says, faux maligned, "because this is mutually beneficial. You receive a way to save the world; I receive back a wayward prize of mine. I assumed we were cut from the same cloth in our approach to this—that you would do what you should out of the understanding it was the correct choice."

His gaze lingers on Karlach for a second.

"But very well. If you want a punishment, then a punishment I will provide, if you truly do require firmer chains than mutualism. I suppose I thought too highly of you."

Astarion's gorge rises, but he swallows it back. Remains smiling.

"In this hypothetical situation, let us assume you go your merry way through Moonrise, forfeiting the artefact and its retrieval. Perhaps this is on purpose; perhaps you merely let it lapse in your mind until the reckoning has come to pass. Perhaps you think yourself too clever to treat with a devil when he has already fulfilled his side of the deal."

Raphael is taller than him. For a moment, the difference doubles. 

"I offered you a separate deal," he says. "One for your poem, however lacking that sobriquet is—this is not a deal made lightly. I know what it is and what it means, and I know it is more than you can discover yourself. For now, I am content to wait for when you decide you are done living in willful ignorance—but if I watch you leave Moonrise without the amethyst, then I go to its author. Your master, as you call him."

Astarion freezes. 

Raphael continues blithely on. "I'll make a deal with him, one equally as generous as what I offer you. For a pittance, he will learn not only how to fix what he has done wrong with your poem, but how to use it. How to summon you back, perhaps, should he be clever enough."

There is a waved hand, casual. The cambion is smiling. Flat teeth. He is smiling like Astarion isn't falling back into gravedirt. The room blurs on the edge. Red noise. 

"I don't want to do this," Raphael says, as though meant to be soothing. "I'm quite interested in you, Astarion—rarely do I find those with stories I would follow through to the end, and you can certainly call yourself a page-turner. But I won't be taken advantage of. If this is what is required to make sure you complete your side of our bargain, then to him will I offer that information."

Astarion finds his voice. What postures as his voice, weak and cracking though it is. "Is this a punishment," he manages, "or a threat?"

Raphael laughs, melodious. "All good deals are threats between gentlemen. How else are we supposed to trust one another?" He leans in. "And I do trust you, Astarion—I trust you will do the right thing, when faced with the alternative. This is the art of the contract. It is only signed when both parties know what the outcome will be."

Astarion isn't going to sign anything. He isn't going to sign the contract of a man with red eyes and smile too familiar for the fangs within. He's never gone insane, per sé, because that wasn't allowed—but he has worn very close to the bone, and this is similar. This is seeing Raphael's face and watching it become overlapped; a cambion speaking and a vampire lord responding. 

A blade dragged shuddering over his spine, working into starvation under the pretense that skin stretched taut made for a better canvas. A blade whorled into patterns he could neither see nor compose his sapience enough to remember. 

How to summon you back.

Raphael could be lying. Raphael likely fucking is. But the implication is too much to be ignored. 

If he doesn't make this deal, will Raphael do it anyway? Will he go to Cazador and offer up this knowledge on a silver fucking platter for little more than revenge?

Something in Raphael's eyes sharpens. 

"I see," he hums, conspiratorial. "This is frightening, isn't it? The thought of selling your soul is but a distant concern, one that happens to other people in other stories. But this is tangible. This–"

Raphael's pupils expand. There are invisible horns pushing through his coiffed hair. 

"You fear this. You are so very, very afraid."

He isn't wrong. But he isn't right, either—because it doesn't matter. Fear isn't a created thing. It predates the sapient mind, a dream before dreams were real. Born from hunger, from absence, from a shadow cast by a larger thing in a forest so ancient it cannot even be remembered to be forgotten. Long before things were wanted, they were feared. 

So Astarion's fear-fear-fear is nothing unique. Its motivation is characteristic, its ingredients common. He could even call it mundane. 

Astarion bares his fangs. His daggers are in their sheaths so he goes for a bestial display instead, claws hooked around his thighs, snarl vibrating up his throat. If his fear is responsive, his stance is moreso. Animal to animal. Nothing more. "I am not afraid."

"Then make the deal," Raphael says. Pupils cover his eyes entirely. "If you are not afraid, this should be nothing."

It is nothing. It is exactly the same amount of nothing that fits in the awkward space in his skull and drags thrice-honed teeth through brain matter. Astarion remains there, staring up at Raphael, incriminating in his silence, in his lack of devotion.

Karlach's voice doesn't cut so much as shatter. "Hey."

Astarion punches back to reality. Grasps onto the plot with fever-pale hands, shaking his head—he's standing in the Last Light Inn, wood instead of stone, the party as his sides and Harpers beyond. Raphael has red eyes, but they're the wrong shade. 

From that party, Karlach steps forward. She's hackled up like a morningstar, throat ragged and eyes pure black. Smoke plumes through her teeth. Her tadpole rages. "What's your threat for us?"

If the cut in focus throws him off-kilter, he doesn't show it. Just turns to face Karlach, one brow raised. "Hm?"

"I said," she repeats, vicious, "what's your threat for us, you fucking cunt. 'Cause you're not making that deal with Astarion."

"I'm not?" He hums, amused. "And here I thought you were better than making choices for others, Karlach. Particularly when he seems so willing. If he says he isn't afraid, who are you to doubt him?"

Her fists pop, embers spawning through her fingers. "You aren't making it with him," she snaps. "You're making it with all of us."

For a brief, impossible second, Raphael seems confused. 

Then he laughs. 

It is not a kind laugh. It is a laugh woven from something deep and dilated, dragged up to this mortal coil and bound by despair. It laughs at them. It just laughs.

"My, that is a surprise," Raphael says, so fucking chipper. "You've certainly changed your tune—and so quickly! To think you were denigrating my name but three nights ago and now extending your hand."

When he smiles, it is coal-black. "Well done on convincing them, Astarion. Consider my expectations exceeded. Perhaps you are keen to make a deal, then."

I never said otherwise, Astarion wants to say, but his tongue sticks to his throat. He's shaking. The tadpoles melt colours from his mind. 

"I do suppose this changes the tune," Raphael muses, setting a finger along the cleft of his chin. "I trust Astarion to do what's right, but to bring five others in without shared punishment; no, that will have to be altered. A yoke for all to bear, as is right."

He laughs. "Oh, do settle your head, dear Karlach; I wasn't lying when I said I would not involve your souls. Little doubt you'd run screaming for the hills, no thought for the world that needs saving."

The floorboards begin to smoke and curl. 

Raphael lets his gaze drift to each of them in turn, light as a mockingjay. He's still smiling. Flat teeth. 

"This is my proposal—I deliver you to Moonrise as though a fair afternoon stroll, and you reclaim for me my artefact. I maintain what I told Astarion: no particular date for the retrieval, and you can be rest assured I will let you know when you dally too long. Plenty of warning before the consequence."

Karlach's got her teeth bared. "And what is the consequence?"

"Nothing worth drawing your blades over," Raphael notes, holding Lae'zel's gaze where she's pulled her longsword half out of its scabbard. "Remarkable how far you have made it if this is your response to the lightest of inconveniences; perhaps I should hope another group of adventurers will come along than rest the fate of the world in your hands."

"But it is as simple as this—six years of service to me. Less than your charge in Avernus, and this is a malleable amount; to be shared equally, separated, shouldered by only one. The choice is yours. All that matters is I have six years worth of servitude, and then we part ways ere the end."

Gale's tadpole simmers like moth-bored wood. That is… surprisingly benign.

Karlach's the one to say it, since Astarion is doing his best to disappear despite standing at the front. "Right," she scoffs, dubiousness so thick it could choke. "We're supposed to believe that."

"I am not here to be cruel, dear Karlach," Raphael says. He's smiling. "Think of this deal as a precursor; a showing of how an arrangement such as this is beneficial for both sides."

That's horseshit.

Gale put it aptly—this is too nice for the miserable motherfucker to offer up against his previous deal. Six years isn't nothing, but up against handing Cazador the instruction manual to whatever the fuck is on his back and the knowledge of how to tighten the noose, it's–

It is nothing, in face of that. Less than nothing. Less than a blink of an immortal's eye. 

So the game has changed. Raphael has altered his tune for a reason only he knows, and he's smiling at the party as though he cannot fathom why they are confused. 

It had always been the worst when something changed in Astarion's ever-static delirium. 

Six years, Wyll says. He's dual-layered, one part of his thoughts racing on too fast for the others to catch. Astarion feels the echoes of delirium and frustration battering on his shield. One for each of us; this is far from standard for devils. This is wrong.

But wrong in what way? Gale questions. In the outer world, he has a hand set to his chin, eyes fuzzy with thought. Is this supposed to be a slap on the wrist or a setting to something larger? 

It's not that light, Karlach snarls, guttural enough it nearly spills out to audible air. Her thoughts burn, molten-hot, supernova. I don't trust this bastard one fucking bit.

Neither do we, Gale says, and it is likely meant to be soothing, but he's too on edge to manage it. 

Shadowheart pulls herself to the forefront. Six years is manageable, she says, curt. We'll all do a year and then leave; or we'll just find the amethyst from the beginning. He has an ulterior motive for this deal, but it sounds like he's trying to soften us up for another one in the future. So make this one, and don't make the other. That's it.

It's cold pragmatism. Accurate, in Astarion's opinion, but perhaps too callous for the others. Lae'zel has a set to her jaw. A slave I have been, she says, her first cerebral word in days with how vehemently she avoids using the tadpoles. I will not be so again.

One year for each of us, Shadowheart counters. And that's only if we fail. Find the amethyst, and this doesn't happen.

A tapped foot. Behind them, Jaheira's eyes flash, attention pulled. 

Raphael steps forward, not butting into Karlach's space but getting much too close. 

"It is terribly rude to talk where others cannot hear," he says lightly. "Will you allow me a part in your discussions, or are you perhaps using your parasites as a special congregation where only the damned have access?"

"I'd be right fucking chuffed to find you a worm if you want in," Karlach bites out, eyes incendiary. "Maybe you'd go bow before the Absolute, yeah?" 

Somewhere in the far reaches, Korrilla pulls a tadpole out of Gut's corpse.

"I don't know," Raphael muses, smiling. "There is a potential in them, more than you have explored; to take one certainly seems to open doors once closed. Perhaps you will mourn their loss, upon saving the world. Perhaps you will even wish for their return—for the powers they are so keen to offer."

Oh, fuck this line of questioning.

Astarion clicks his tongue, one foot forward, stance braced. He tugs attention back as though a silver spool. "How would you get us through the shadowlands?"

Raphael turns back to him. His pupils have faded, a ring around the black once more. 

"An agent of mine," he says. "She is ready to depart from this lovely establishment. I told her to escort you, Astarion, but now it seems more will accompany—well, all the merrier! She adores company. A halfday of travel under her watchful eye will see you to the gates of Moonrise in the same condition you are now."

He holds up a hand, fingers curled around his palm. Even in the silver dome, the shadows flee further, scurrying back like kicked dogs. 

"The shadows are not what can threaten me nor mine," Raphael intones. "When under my protection, you will have no fear of them."

Shadowheart doesn't react outwardly. But her tadpole thrashes with divine pain. 

"And do recall that six years of service only comes upon failure—if you are successful in reclaiming the amethyst, it is nothing you need to worry your mind about. You will leave Moonrise as free men and women, only what you are."

He tilts his head. "And yet, if you must continue on with this flagellation, understand you can reject the deal," Raphael says easily. "I'm hardly going to force you into one, am I? It is entirely your choice."

Karlach's jaw is gritted so tight it creaks, tadpole thrashing. She soldiers admirably on. "What's your angle? Why are you doing this?"

"Nothing but the desire to help," Raphael says. It's light enough to lilt. "I have no need to threaten you, dear Karlach. Not when you have managed to worm your way into a trap so complete you cannot get out unless aided."

He laughs a little. An inside joke none of them are privy to. "This deal is only the beginning. You'll come limping to me soon enough; but for now, as I told Astarion, this is mutually beneficial. We will both find what we want from this."

This is also horseshit. Raphael is lying in some way or another. 

There is rarely a singular, objective truth. All hells, there is rarely a truth at all—just agendas masquerading as something pious. To say anything, someone has to want it, or have something they want that will be caused by the saying. Astarion's a godsdamn scholar of that principle. He knows how to push his tongue into thank you, master more than his own fucking name. 

He digs claws into his armour, because Shadowheart knows to check his wrists. 

Raphael is lying. But lies might be all he has to offer; and from those lies, maybe there's just enough of a chance to get what he wants from it. Six years of service is not eternity. Six years of service is not the threat of showing Cazador how to use those runes. 

He's lying, Karlach says unnecessarily. 

Gale's mental voice is quiet. Tinged blue. What other choice do we have?

There is a moment of silence in wake of that. 

Then Shadowheart steps forward. She could be cut from steel for how blank her face is, just carved features and deep black eyes. A picture of who she was back at the beginning of their journey, not the woman who bitches out the party for letting Scratch jump through the underbrush and painstakingly digs each burr out of his scruff. A mask, maybe. Who she has to be to survive. 

She meets Raphael's gaze steadily. "I accept."

Never one to leave her alone, Gale blusters up with his own bobbed head. "I as well."

Lae'zel nods tersely, knuckles white around her hilt. Wyll and Karlach hold each other's gazes, mind whirling, loud enough Astarion could hear what they're saying to the other but doesn't for a reason he can't comprehend—then they turn as one back to Raphael, teeth set and shoulders back. 

"Fine," Karlach bites out. "We'll do it."

"I accept," Astarion says, just a moment after them. An echo too long in the waiting. 

Raphael inhales, long and lurid, as though even a verbal contract carries a scent. His eyes, when he opens them, are reflecting red. Pupils gone for a magma-deep pit. 

"Marvelous," he says, drawing the word out. "I am so very glad to see you come to your senses, no matter the delay. You'll see this is the right choice. The only choice, as it is."

Astarion can hear the little pop-pop-pop of Karlach beginning to shred through the stitching of her armour, no matter how many times he tries to sew it closed. But she just exhales, air wavering before her lips. "Fuck you. Where's your agent?"

"She is already here," Raphael says, smiling. "She will find you."

Then he disappears in a plume of smoke. 

It goes down instead of up, seeping into the cracks and leaving red-grey in its wake. A hint of sulphur, of roasted meat, and gone. 

If Astarion blinks, he can see wings spread wide over the room, an afterburn through his vision. Sharper than reality. 

"Motherfucker," Karlach seethes, floorboards smoldering under her boots. "Gods, I fucking hate him."

Astarion is still looking at the empty space as though he'll see some evidence of a curse there. He finds the sense to respond: "That makes two of us, dear."

"Six, rather," Gale corrects. He drags a hand over his face, mussing up his beard. He hasn't had the wherewithal to shave and it parts oddly around his fingers, contours of weariness. He sighs. "But this is a success, I suppose. Or as close to one as we can manage against a cambion."

"This is not a victory," Lae'zel cuts in. "This is a bowing of our heads. This is saying we cannot find our own way to Moonrise." 

Because we can't, no one really has to say. They all know it.

It's an uncomfortable sort of revelation to marinate in. Punctured arteries and mindburn. 

In the silence, someone steps forward, having been ignored for the entirety of Raphael's visit. Jaheira has taken last time to heart, at least; instead of trying to get the devil's attention, she'd stayed on the hindfoot, just watching. Her eyes are tactile, aware. The mien of a panther. 

"Six years," Jaheira says, as though to taste the weight of it. She effortlessly pulls the party back into focus. "Service is not a phrase with a single definition; what would he have you do?"

"Dunno," Karlach says. She exhales, a deep, lowing sound. "But we're never gonna fucking find out. Just get the amethyst and shove it up his ass if we can. Right?"

"Right," Wyll says, a little wane. He shakes his head. "Let us focus on Moonrise, then. To make our plan before finding this agent."

His tadpole sings disagreement—he is focusing quite hard on the deal, actually, acidic in how it chokes out rationale, but still he faces the party with composure and iron will. A hero, as much as he has always been, even as Mizora pulls horns from his skull and curls her hand around his leash. 

Somewhere in Moonrise is the asset. Somewhere in Moonrise is his freedom; and still he opens his mouth and says: "How will we stop the Absolute?"

Karlach grimaces. "First problem's Ketheric, I think. He'll be guarding whatever she is, and if we don't figure out what's made him invulnerable, he'll be a real bitch to kill."

"He will be a real bitch to kill regardless," Jaheira says dryly. "It is only a matter of whether we make it possible or not." She steeples her fingers, interwoven; her scimitars left in their sheaths, weight even between her feet. "To stop the curse and the killer in one, though it will not be easy. I still do not understand how he intersects with the Absolute."

"Maybe because they're both bastards," Karlach offers. "That's alliance material for them."

"Getting to the Absolute is our goal," Gale says, to everyone except for Shadowheart. By how her tadpole surges, she knows damn well why he isn't looking at her. "But I do agree that we must stop Ketheric first, if only to unlock that door. Perhaps this coming assault will grant us an opportunity to blend in amidst the other True Souls, should they be moving in droves to Moonrise. To hide our origins, the artefact; then it will just become a matter of gaining access to Ketheric and the inner workings."

"Sounds like it," Karlach says. She sounds tired. Still she nods at Astarion, tail brushing Wyll's ankles. "Wanna do the regular route, then? You sweet-talk us in and keep 'em distracted while we go about bashing heads?"

"I don't think this is the place for bashing heads, no matter how gratifying," Gale says, oddly somber. He looks at Lae'zel. "I imagine we must treat this more like the crèche, though wearing the skins of True Souls instead of slaves, and only by acting accordingly will we find the Absolute."

"And Ketheric," Jaheira says, watching him.

Gale dips his head. "And Ketheric."

Astarion nods like he agrees, caught up in the weight of it all. He does agree, actually, there's just– not much room in his head for comprehending what he's hearing. All he can think is that there are three commanders inside Moonrise, and an amethyst, and an asset, and he'll get all of them and come out on top. To do that, he has to get inside. 

So it goes. 

And so it goes where their little tête-à-tête runs cold—when Jaheira's ears flick and she spins on her heel like a discus, hand to her hip. A ripple of surprise through the party, squeezing around the base of Astarion's shield—because through the swarm of Harpers, someone new is striding up to approach them. 

Astarion turns, but he doesn't really have to. He knows who it is.

It's Korrilla. 

Of course it's fucking Korrilla. 

She's dressed in the same crimson robes, infernal energy tucked in the corners of her eyes and down the length of her dagger. Gazes don't glance over her this time, a present element of the tavern. Meant to be seen. Being a dwarf means she has to get through all the Harpers before she can address them without obstacles, and the build-up hangs in the air like a thing waiting; flashes of her hair, her clothes, the way she holds herself. 

When she stands before the party, posture loose and unbothered, she's spinning her dagger through her fingers and seeming entirely unconcerned with where she is. Some three dozen Harpers, a party with legitimate reasons to hate who owns her, a hero coming from a bloody legacy—and still Korrilla just stands there, brow cocked. Waiting. The ball's in their court. 

She will find you, Raphael had said. But he hadn't mentioned how long she's already been doing so.

"You're the agent?" Karlach says eventually, bristled. But there's a regret there too, because Korrilla is as clearly a warlock as they come; and with Wyll in the party, those are more pitiful things than before. Something to lament. 

"In a manner of speaking." Her hands move and the dagger disappears into her robes, a pulse of smoke-red. "Raphael wants me to escort you to Moonrise."

There. Plain and simple. Refreshingly candid. 

Karlach doesn't let up. "Escort us fully, yeah? Not pick-'n-choose who'll make it and who won't?"

Korrilla shrugs. She scans the inn, eyes flat and apathetic. "I'll lead those who made a deal with Raphael," she says. "That's it."

Astarion's ears flick. An… interesting new addition to the deal, considering it was originally supposed to be with only him—though for what, he can't guess. If Raphael really does want them to save the fucking world, shouldn't they bring everyone?

Wyll works something around his jaw. "Only those who made the deal?"

"Only those," Korrilla repeats. She casts a lazy look about the party. "Just the lot of you. Anyone else can follow at their own risk; I won't protect them."

Behind the party, Jaheira's ears press back. She taps a finger over the hilt of her scimitar. Though the revelation is still rippling through the others, Astarion knows she sees it for what it is.

She has to stay. She can't travel with them to Moonrise; can't stand at their side as they plunge out into the shadows. She can't lend her expertise nor experience in slaying this particular villain. 

She's going to find the corpse.

Astarion regards her like something other than a person, just a moment. Fixes her with the stare of one across a strait, one with an ocean of crashing rocks between her blades and his throat. 

Because she's going to find the corpse, but by then, Astarion will be gone. He'll be at Moonrise, finding these mystical three commanders—and whinging sentiment about a dead True Soul won't mean anything in face of that. Maybe she does find a way to reach them, but Ketheric Thorm will be looming large overhead, and the Absolute mucking up in the coattails, and maybe a kidnapped Grand Duke just for additional flavour—and in that chaos, Astarion will find a sunlit stretch and he'll run. He'll leave.

She'll find the corpse. The party will witness his plan with the tadpoles. They will both know of his betrayal. 

And they'll learn that full story when he has already fucked off. 

Astarion shoots her a smile that’s more a baring of teeth than anything congenial. For a moment, he wishes to be a fly on the wall when she goes to Marcus—to see what crosses her face when it turns out he is the untrustworthy bastard she's thought of him as, no matter how much he bows his head and goes along with the others. The party has his lead in their hand, but she doesn't. She can say Kozakuran all she wants, but he won't be here for long. 

Thankfully, she doesn't see the smile, because her gaze is fixed on Korrilla. It is the lean, considering look of a predator meeting the eyes of another, testing the weight of territory over the threat of injury. She is more powerful, but she has gotten to that point by knowing when to stay her blades. She knows when to fight and when to turn face. 

"I cannot travel with you," Jaheira says, less clarification and more accusation. 

Korrilla smiles lazily. "You're welcome to try."

That's a no, then. 

Karlach's chest flares with that confirmation, fire in the back of her throat, but Jaheira just nods like that was expected and turns to the party. She gestures to Gale. "Wizard. Your hand."

Bemused, Gale extends his arm—when Jaheira grasps it, she presses her knuckles into his palm, eyes closed. There's a hiss of wind through trees, a crackle of a bushfire, and when she pulls back, a sigil is overlit on the man's skin. He blinks at it, then his expression clears. "A grounding line?"

"I will construct a teleportation circle here," she says. "When you have found a safe location within Moonrise, you will create the other side. Then I will join you, and we will all create merry ruins together, no? If I am not allowed to walk there myself."

Wyll seems more than a little relieved. Some weight off his shoulders. "Thank you, Jaheira."

"Do not thank me, cub," she says, waving a hand. "This is my fight against Ketheric; an answer to a wrong long-overdue. I am only doing what I should have done a century past."

"Still," he says, quieter. "Thank you."

Alright. So she's coming with, after a time. She'll have time alone in Last Light Inn, and then she'll be at their side. This isn't a concern about her finding Marcus' corpse. She'll focus on killing Ketheric first. This is fine. He isn't thinking about it. 

"I'm leaving now," Korrilla says, pointed. Her dagger reappears to spin through her hand, nicking the air like a solid thing. "Gather your supplies if you want, but I was only told to get you there today. If you delay, I'll leave you behind."

Shadowheart holds her gaze steady. "How long is it to Moonrise?"

Korrilla shrugs. "Half a day if we keep pace. Longer if you keep waiting."

That's a call to action. The rest of the Harpers, entirely caught unawares by the second infernal presence in under an hour, all parse back as the party cuts as one and moves. If nothing else said for their adventure, at least it has given them an admirable reaction time. 

Astarion is in his armour, bag by his feet. He's ready, in whatever definition of the word. Lae'zel stays as well, given she never sets up camp for longer than a heartbeat, always prepared to move. Both Gale and Shadowheart clamber up the stairs to their room, Karlach and Wyll going with Jaheira to grab more rations for however long they'll be in the shadows. 

It's just the two of them, surrounded by seething masses of Harpers and a warlock who seems as though nothing phases her. 

Well. That isn't quite right. Because as she waits, toying with her dagger, she glances at him. A quick thing, hidden away under the bustle of the room. 

Raphael's words: the deal's there on the table.

Is it still now? With the party making the deal instead of only Astarion—is Raphael still willing to shake fifths with him for information on his scars? What would the cost be, if not the amethyst?

It doesn't matter. Not now. His freedom will come from three chances in Moonrise; everything else comes after. 

When the rest of the party reappears, bags bound and sagging with new supplies, Gale tracing the runes on his palm and tadpole alight with melancholy, Korrilla slips her dagger back away. She casts a disinterested glance at Jaheira following alongside, as though nothing more noteworthy than someone faceless in a crowded street. 

If anything, Jaheira seems more intrigued. What kind of power does Raphael offer his warlocks if they can shrug off the presence of such a well-known hero?

Korrilla waits half a second to count the party and then turns—the inn parts like the tides before her, drawing back to a clear line. She walks through without hesitation, tracing a known path through the jumble of tables and closed doors. How many times has she been here unseen? How much does she know about this place?

How much does she know about their journey?

The Harpers amass in greater numbers outside, the quartermaster leaning against the gate and a squadron perched within the stables. Korrilla makes a single course correction to carve a wide circle around the central fire and otherwise doesn't react. Astarion can feel the rest of the party simmering on the edges, artfully wary. Like the focus offered a double-sided blade; to cut yourself and your enemy. 

Korrilla could cut them all, it seems. Even if she couldn't she reacts too much like she can. 

At Jaheira's jerked nod, the gate is wrenched open, enormous slabs of wood groaning under the ropes. Beyond, the inky maw of the shadowlands waits with a hunger, pressed right to the edge of the moonlight. The shield plunges into the dirt, kicked up to smear about the base, cloying outside. If it is a sapient thing, it does not like the inn; wants to destroy it, in kind terms. Likely it would not be so gentle. Something worse. 

Korrilla waits for them all to come even with her, hugging the edge of the shield past the gate. She seems at ease with the darkness as a backdrop, scarlet robes flaring around her ankles in an unfelt wind. Her dagger disappears again. He doesn't trust the absence. 

"Don't stray," she warns. A singular touch of amusement threads through her tone, something implied underneath. "I won't come to save you."

She slit Gut's throat. She's saved him before. 

Astarion grits his teeth. 

Korrilla cups her palms together and breathes into them; a flame sparks there, something low and guttering. It has crimson tongues but reflects blue against her fingers, fire and ice. Pure hellfire. 

When she pulls back, they continue burning. Even behind the shield, reaching shadows flinch. 

Divine and infernal. Water and oil. Though divine ought to conquer the other, it still retreats as though burned. 

"Could you do that?" Karlach whispers to Wyll, not nearly quiet enough. 

"He cannot," Korrilla answers. "Not unless his patron wills it." She smiles a little, cynical. "And Mizora is not powerful enough to fight Shar."

The alternative is clear—Raphael is. Or wants them to think so. Korrilla is under no oath not to lie.

She tilts her hands back, letting the fire dance higher up her fingers and curl around her wrists. It underlights her eyes like snake bites. 

"Last chance to turn around," Korrilla says, lilting. The cut of her smile across her face is merciless, dizzying. There is no sanity in agreeing, nor to make the deal in the first place. But there is no sanity in any of this. There never has been.

Astarion doesn't wait. There is no burning limbo that rots in his gut, holding his feet back. If he wanted to hesitate, to wait, that time was two centuries ago. He's too close now to give up. Three chances that are only chances if he gets there. 

When Korrilla raises her hand, bleeding red-blue light, and starts walking, Astarion follows her into the shadows. 

Chapter Text

The shadowlands are not pleasant. Korrilla does not help. 

She stays to the center of the party, one hand wrapped around red-blue flames and gaze staunchly forward, no hesitation nor malaise, as though this is not the first nor the fourteenth time she has done this. Merely another day in whatever can be called her existence. 

Astarion is significantly less calm. 

Korrilla isn't Gandrel, not quite. But the atmosphere feels like she is; he's tense in the same way, too keenly aware of how close she is, how the rest of the party drifts in her orbit. A tadpole disappeared into her grasp; Raphael watches overhead. If anyone in this room knows about the three lodged behind his eye, it's likely her. 

She hasn't said anything, not yet. But he can't hold onto the hope that she won't. 

Get to Moonrise. Break the commands. He can think about everything else afterward. 

The infernal branch is more a boon than anything Gandrel offered, at least. Its flames twine in the air, never burning despite the heat. He thought they were simple blue-red but that isn't quite right—there are tongues of each colour, battling and devouring the other in a constant battle of entropy. When he pricks his ears, he can hear a wailing that sounds too humanoid to be from fire. 

Wyll has despair written over his face. 

No matter its origin, the fire protects them. A globe where Korrilla walks, surrounding them when all else fails. Light until the barrier, then– nothing. Just black. 

Jaheira had said they were only on the outskirts of the curse, that it deepened the closer they got to the Towers, but it is a staunch difference to hear and then to see it for himself. He could stick his hand beyond the globe of firelight and not see his palm looking back—if it wasn't consumed immediately. 

The darkness is not hungry but starved. It howls like a beast contorted. Travel hurts. Everything about this fucking hurts. 

So it goes. 

Then, somewhere in the dark, when his feet go leadenly on and he forgets what it felt like to be under the Last Light Inn's shield, Astarion misses the next step. 

He doesn't fall so much as get cut off at the knees, thundering to the ground with a choked shout—his vision flashes white against the dark, gold underneath, shield vibrating. Alive. Aware.

"Fangs!" He can hear Karlach cry, but it comes through muffled, underwater. Something pops against his teeth. Blood foams over his tongue. His shield, held as a bulwark against the party but only them, shudders. Stretches taut. 

Pulls at him, tadpoles within lunging for the presence of their kin.

True Souls. 

He'd thought the party's presence was bad, and they are, but he was an admirable rank of stupidity to think they were the worst it could be. Even at some intangible distance, the True Souls are a symphony deep enough to drown in, rebounding and redoubling, finding neural synapses just to shred them. To destroy.

But his shield maintains. His shield fucking maintains. 

Teeth gritted, Astarion lurches to his feet, hackles up and ears pinned. The party clusters around him like starlings, words overlapping and tadpoles incandescent, but he isn't fucking thinking about anything but staggering back up. He injects iron into his legs. Cradles the burn as something to focus on instead of anything else. 

"Mate!" Karlach calls, finally breaking through the haze. She's not louder than the parasites but he grapples for her voice, buries the rest beneath ice. Present. Present instead of lost in his miserable fucking fantasies. 

Three tadpoles didn't free him. They've only made him more susceptible; more likely to be caught. He shouldn't have expected any better. 

"I'm fine," Astarion manages, sharp not in terms of aggression but in the manner of how blood pools under his tongue. "Just– resonance. We aren't alone."

Karlach blanches. Shadowheart's tadpole sears sycamore-white. 

At their center, Korrilla has stopped to keep him within the light, looking back. Entirely composed. All of this is rote. 

He smiles at her, thin and miserable. "I'm going to assume we're close?"

Korrilla tilts her head, jaw underlit by blue-red flames. She's watching him. But she doesn't have a tadpole; she has nothing that can sense what lays beneath his shield. Even if she knows about the three, she doesn't know why.

She takes a moment to answer, gaze cold and impassive. "Yes," she says. "And the summons to Moonrise were not only for you. As we approach, so too does the army."

The army. Well, that's not a concerning word to use there. 

For a moment, the mention is distraction enough to keep the party from pondering why only Astarion went down before they could even sense the approaching threat. He straightens as their gazes go to Korrilla, takes shelter in the blink between Karlach's worry and the lesser shadows he can still hide beneath. 

"True Souls, then," Gale says quietly. He has a hand to his chest, palm over the skeletal mark. "If you're able to sense them."

"Enemies," Lae'zel hisses, hackled like a wildcat. 

Korrilla nods without speaking. She turns to the side, staring out at the grey and the dark. "More than I thought," she says, like she can see them. 

Astarion has watched her appear to slit Gut's throat a second before he was killed, and this is still the most off-kilter he's seen from her. Which is fucking terrifying. 

"There goes the hope this'd be easy," Karlach says, a little too lethargic to be light. She squints at the surrounding black, hands white-knuckled around her greataxe. "Right. Let's keep on, then."

Wyll nods tiredly. Lae'zel has her ears pinned to her skull. 

Shadowheart, lips pursed, touches a finger to his forehead—a breath of ice flows through him, soft and consoling. Astarion swallows down the blood in his mouth so it doesn't coat his teeth and smiles at her, half-lidded as his headache is killed before it can put down roots. "My sincere appreciation, darling."

She nods. Lets him go.

But as the party reassembles, Korrilla doesn't move to lead. No forward progress, though it is her pace they must follow. 

Astarion slots his claws around the ridges of his armour. 

"Our deal was getting us to Moonrise safely," he says, curt in the way of a guillotine. "We're still in the shadows, if you haven't noticed."

Korrilla ignores him to reach into the pocket of her robes. Her hand goes too far in for what is visible on the outside; a mote of brimstone strikes the air. More magic. Her other hand holds the flames steady. 

What she pulls out is a branch, though one with every asterisk tacked onto the end of the definition. Dark, twisting, like offal petrified into wood—less branching and more thorns, sharpened to a rapier's point. It reeks of the hells. Wyll doesn't flinch back, but his tadpole flares. 

"Burn this," Korrilla says. "It will last you to the gates of Moonrise, where you will find moon lanterns strong enough to keep the shadows at bay."

Karlach's gaze sharpens. For a moment, black creeps over her eyes. "You aren't sticking through until the end, huh?"

"There isn't a point," Korrilla says, blank as ever. "You're conspicuous enough as is. If your plan is to get into the Towers without inciting a siege, you'll go alone."

"Doesn't seem like that's fulfilling our deal," Karlach says, all teeth.

Korrilla shrugs one of her shoulders. "I did as Raphael commanded." She extends the stick—Wyll takes it before Karlach's rising rage can burn it through, careful to hold it away from the thorns. "To complete the journey is on you."

Astarion fucking hates Raphael, actually. 

Wyll, his tadpole singing fury tempered with resignation, lights the very tip of the branch. It catches slowly with a rubbery, crackling flame, seven shades too dark and with smoke of pure black, fouling the air. His expression twists. His mind says he is familiar. 

Korrilla closes her hand. The fire snuffs out over her palm, the last tongues escaping upward; though the boundary lurches in, howling on the edges, the branch holds them at bay. Wyll keeps a death grip on the wood. 

"Don't linger," she says, blasé. "You won't make it to Moonrise if you dawdle, and I wasn't told to save you." 

A smile for which cruelty is the point. "And I think you'll find Shar has less hospitality than you'd want."

Shadowheart bares dog's teeth. Korrila is entirely unbothered. 

Expect that she glances at him. Just a flash. 

The deal's there on the table.

Somewhere within the Towers is the power needed to break the commands. Somewhere within is the answer to what is carved on his back. Somewhere within is an artefact Raphael wants and the chance of knowing what was done to him. 

Astarion doesn't think about that. 

Korrilla shrugs. Then she disappears in a plume of sulphur. 

Seemingly as one, the party lets out a breath—their position shifts, circling out now they no longer have to hide their backs from the one in the center. Wyll stands tall at the point, branch held at his chest; its height puts the foul smoke directly to his nose, but he doesn't complain. Just holds. 

"Fuck her," Karlach says. "Fuck all of this, actually."

"I don't believe I'm going to miss her presence," Gale says, exhaling. "Though, in fairness, anyone who must weather Raphael's presence will hardly be left cheery."

Lae'zel tches. She still hasn't removed her hand from her blade. 

But now they've got a fire of their own, no matter how dubious the claims. Wyll stares at the flames, a sheen in his eye that isn't quite hypnotic but something older. He blinks, looks up. Nods to Astarion.

"Can you hear the True Souls?" Wyll asks. "Are they that close?"

Well. They aren't asking him why he's the one able, at least. He can hold in this hope for as long as it survives. 

Astarion closes his eyes and goes to his shield, all three tadpoles thrust upon to keep it functional—he weakens the defense just a hair, leeching iron for something transparent. The voices redouble immediately, battering on the edges of his teeth, his eyes; voices by the dozens, a maelstrom out in the dark. 

Not specific words, just emotions. But they're enough he can start to piece apart the finer strokes, paint upon the canvas. 

He opens his eyes with gritted teeth. "Close."

The air punches out of Karlach's chest in a sigh. Shadowheart mirrors it with one of her own. 

They go. 

Scarcely half an hour passes and then, hidden until it grows close enough the shadows are forced to release it, something moves through the gloam. It doesn't break past the grey, not entering the aura of infernal flame, but its silhouette carves inside in their periphery. A person. Multiple people, all around in the shadows, heading towards that inevitable end. They're never close enough to break into the firelight and for that they are twisting silhouettes, impossible to gauge distance; a hand's breadth or a league away. Astarion's mind reverberates with emotions. None are his own. 

He digs heels into his shield like it'll do anything against what has already been done. They're already here. They've already made their choice. 

His choice. He did this. He needs this.

It isn't quite consolation how the thought wraps around him. Some form of defense or prevention. Like he can just think it loud enough that it'll be true.

Astarion is still not thinking about this when the darkness becomes silver. 

It bleeds through the black, veins across necrotized flesh. Lae'zel, leading the frontal charge, no longer has one shadow but instead two where light pierces the veil before them. It grows slowly, a whisper, and then Astarion blinks and the branch in Wyll's hand is no longer what keeps the shadows at bay. 

They're on a bridge of sorts. Old stone, rotted in a way stone shouldn't, wide enough to serve as a main entrance even if those days are long past. It moans under their feet like a thing gutted. Old lampposts sway in an unfelt bridge; new lanterns are hung from their crow-hooks, bleeding silver. Shadowheart grimaces. 

At the end of the bridge, still hazy in the dark, something looms overhead. 

They're here.

Wordlessly, Wyll hands the infernal branch over to Karlach. She pinches it between both hands and flames gutter down the full length, ash trickling through her fingers. In a moment, all evidence is gone. 

Now their only option to get out is making the teleportation circle with Jaheira or defeating the shadowcurse themselves. Neither are ideal. 

"C'mon," Karlach says, when they've stood frozen for a moment too long. "Let's go."

The silhouettes become figures become people; still too dark for features but Astarion can see humans stumbling through the grey, the glint of weapons and arcane sparks. The bridge rumbles with the weight upon it. He doesn't risk looking over the edge to see if it's a gorge or a moat they're crossing. 

Gale's mind is a ripcurrent, Shadowheart a mountain range of jagged teeth. No one in the party talks, not with how close their enemies are. 

Five minds amidst dozens. Astarion clings to their familiar emotions like a drowning man to a raft. If he weakens his shield for even a moment, he'll be overtaken. 

And still on they march. 

The shadows peel away slowly, beleaguered under more silvered lanterns. From the gloam emerges the front gate, monstrous where it sits above the entrance courtyard. Impenetrable is a lesser description, against the breath of its size and density; even Karlach, war-breaker that she is, seems small before it. Cold metal, ridged bars. The design is– familiar. Sharran, perhaps. But Astarion knows the flavour of her from Shadowheart, and this is darker. Historical.

If this had truly been a temple before, Astarion doesn't want to meet its priests. 

Then, as they continue moving, the shadows hiss a last promised threat and sluice away from the towers themselves. 

Despite himself, Astarion's steps falter. 

Moonrise shouldn't exist. That's the first thing he can think; it doesn't come from a disregard for architecture or formation or positioning, nothing so banal. It comes from how the remaining shadows wreath its arrow-spokes, how the gateway is cracked like a slit throat.

How something in his mind screams.

The understanding comes tangentially and unmistakably: this is a dangerous place. This is a place that weeps with misery, heaving beneath the stone. It is one that has felt death and been crowned under a red moon rising.

Things have died here. Things have died in bulk and in blood, and the land itself is scared of them. 

He's here. He's been trying to reach this place for months, though he didn't always know what the destination was. 

But he's here. 

He has to keep going.

The bridge is only so long—eventually, they reach the courtyard, where more True Souls wait. There comes a steady stream from the shadowlands, everyone with half a tadpole scrapping themselves off the ground to join with the assault, their minds singing righteous fury. They want this fight. They want whatever was promised to them. 

Astarion's boot squelches into something. He doesn't make the mistake of looking down. 

Because within the courtyard is a slaughter. Or something in the process of becoming one, at least. An array of corpses spans the vast breadth of degradation, from those with blood not yet congealing to those stuck for long enough to curl in on themselves in rigor mortis. The air beckons with rot and rancor, puddling up in the cracks between stone and under firelights. There is no dawn beneath the shadowed sky, but the Towers are painted red regardless. 

The crowd of True Souls just– stands off to the other side. Slaves with heads bowed and clothes tattered limp around from corpse to corpse, pushing them into one particular pile against a side wall. They aren't acknowledged. Every True Soul has their gaze fixed on the gate where it stands, vast and impenetrable. 

There must be a hundred of them, and more are still coming. 

The party presses closer together, a drop of water in a vat of prismatic oil. Karlach's tail lashes the ground, scorching black over the stone; her growl barely breathes above a whisper. "Don't see any other hellfire," she hisses. "How the fuck did they get here?"

I don't know, but I think it better if we keep our more mutinous discussion to telepathy, Gale thinks to them, and even his mental voice is tight and harried. This place is… unfriendly.

Gods, that's a fucking understatement. Astarion has an unfortunate expertise with places for the damned, and here even his skin prickles. The horde of True Souls, the slaves, the shadow-warped iron. All of this is wrong. 

Three commanders. Three chances. He's wearing Minthara's armour and tucking his fangs away. He looks the part of a half-breed drow instead of a spawn. He will not let Marcus be proven right. 

This will still work. This will still work.

One of the True Souls stumbles, pushing herself back up with a bloodied broadsword. She's clutching one arm around her stomach, armour glistening black—either dying or in the process of becoming so, and still she waits before the massive gate.

They are doing nothing, Gale says, a pulse of apprehension. Are they preparing for something?

Shadowheart hasn't drawn her weapons nor summoned any divine powers. She stands, straight-backed, sneer reflexively in place as though they are freshly met upon the beach, so many hundreds of leagues away. Within the party, she is the only one that looks as though she belongs, no matter how fathomless her mind is. Her thoughts are all drowned before they can breach. 

Still her tadpole whispers: they're waiting. We need to figure out for what.

Then she strides into the thick of the crowd. 

Fuck.

If this is some hangover from her days as a Sharran infiltrate, Astarion is not interested in participating—but unless they want to lose her, the party has no choice but to follow. She moves assuredly past the teeming groups, cluttered about for purpose or necessity. To stay opposite the pile of corpses means the room is limited, but Shadowheart has a destination; she leads them through like an arrow for a target. 

And her target is a solitary figure, pressed near the front and yet isolated. Another True Soul. 

Before they get close enough to be obvious, Shadowheart slips into their shared space. It isn't separate from the crowd, but something about the artefact keeps them closer, less likely to spill over. He can only hope it holds. 

Gale, will you lead? Shadowheart says, a mental prod at the lone figure. Use your friendly talk. Then, before he can duther up a protest: I can do intimidation, but now we need cordiality. I trust you, Gale. You won't be doing this alone.

Gale blinks. Then his face softens, a little sad, eyes distant. Thank you, Shadowheart.

She sends a forest-green emotion back and goes cold again.

The True Soul tries to glance surreptitiously out of the corner of their eyes as the party approaches and fails miserably. If they had turned, gasped, and pointed, it'd be less obvious. They're some sanctimonious dullard of sorts. Wide eyes, wide expression; if the splatter of blood across their armour was instead heroically dripping down a broadsword, they'd fit the cover of a fairytale. Half-elven, sword-wielding. Their tadpole hums a ceramic blue. 

Gale pushes through to land at their side. He's smiling, performative cheer, but something about him is quieter, an odd perturbance in the air. His robes look less elegant and more faded here, as though their enchantments are drained by the gloom. Only the dark lines creeping up his jawline are stark.

"Hello, my friend," he says, as though for an afternoon tea and not a courtyard of corpses. "We're rather new arrivals—we had to come quite far to answer the Absolute's call—and I was hoping to better understand the lay of the land; what's your name, if it isn't too much to pry?"

Shadowheart chose her victim like a godsdamn treat, really. Even this breath of amiability makes the stranger perk up, eyes growing wider and something like a smile hesitating on the corners of their lips. Perhaps they swore to the Absolute from a lack of anything else in their life. Or perhaps Astarion doesn't give a shit. 

Their mind thrums with a rhythmic, fragile sort of note, like the song from someone with a crushed throat. "I'm Anura," they say, and don't supply a surname. Fitting. There are likely few within the Absolute's retinue that hold much love for their pasts. 

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Anura," Gale says, still beaming. "I am Gale, a fellow True Soul, along with my party. Do you know what we're preparing for? I'm ever so eager to meet Ketheric Thorm, you see."

This seems a topic they're comfortable with, if how they straighten to their full height and wrap a hand around their sword hilt means anything. "We're waiting," they say, breathless, as though prostrating before a sermon or welcoming the liege of some grand dynasty. A cow to worship the butcher. "We aren't allowed in until she approves us—she'll be seeing us–"

Something quicksilver snakes through the party. Karlach, where she and Lae'zel are tucked in the back to not scare off their potential informant, clenches her fists. 

"She?" Gale repeats, much too cautious. "Are you saying the Absolute herself will come out to evaluate us?"

Anura blinks. "Disciple Z'rell," they say, like it should be obvious. "Right Hand of General Ketheric Thorm."

The part of Astarion too desperate for words perks its ears and starts listening. 

Marcus hadn't said any names, no recognizable features; just murk and fathomless depths. But the epitaph of Right Hand glares through. 

That sounds like a commander. 

"Z'rell," Gale repeats. Astarion can feel his tadpole whorl from here. 

"Disciple Z'rell," they say. There's something so worshipful in their eyes.

Astarion turns away. 

The conclusion isn't terribly hard to reach. Loyalty is easily bought through those with no one else to pledge to; to find those desperate for something to latch onto. Sometimes it's the promise of power, as with Marcus—sometimes it is just the promise of something, as with Anura. Eyes drawn to the copper glint of a coin, no matter the blood it is soaked in. 

If Astarion had been on the beach and the Absolute had come to him first, had lifted his head and said she would get rid of his commands forever, even if he had seen how she treated spawn and those undead–

Jaheira's question, a lifetime ago. If I asked whether you would be fighting or aiding the Absolute had the cards been played differently, would you have an answer?

He doesn't have an answer, even in the quiet of his own mind. Maybe that's answer enough. 

Then there comes a knock at the gates. 

Anura immediately drops silent as though their tongue was torn out, eyes death-bloom wide. The party tucks in closer, Karlach stooping like she can make a martyr's attempt at disguising her bulk. Their goal is to find Ketheric Thorm, but now isn't the time to draw attention yet. Nothing about this is right. 

With the groan of hinges that beg to rust away, the leftmost door thunders open, quadruple his height and five men abreast; dust billows out, tangling with the corpse-stench and blood hanging like crystallized mist through the air. 

Inside its maw is a woman.

When she steps forward, the crowd of True Souls, a formless, faceless mass, go still. The kaleidoscope of thoughts smear down to a singular wavering shade—focus. They look at her. They look as though they cannot look away. 

The woman is a half-orc in armour wrought from blood-silver, hair braided and jaw set. Her boots strike the stone, punching spokes as though softboard, echoing in the din. A slight limp, hardly more than misplaced weight. 

From the crowd comes nothing—silence as though voices are stolen, ripped away. Either their choice or the terrored obedience from their tadpoles. The bowed head before some greater predator. 

What Astarion gleaned from Marcus is clear—True Souls occupy a strange middle ground between powerful and powerless. To those lesser, those without tadpoles, they are aasimar deigning to touch the same stone as invalids; but to the Absolute, they are war dogs for the bit. Arrows to point at approaching armies. 

In comparison to the woman before him, they are less than arrows. She's strong. She's strong enough he can taste it, a buzz in the caps of his teeth; it bleeds into the others, furrowing Wyll's brow and setting Karlach's jaw, but Astarion goes taut like a harpsichord plucked to its fullest. He can't tell how many tadpoles are in her mind. It is a gestalt mass, more parasite than matter, an ouroboros with uncountable heads. 

This is one of the commanders. 

This is one of his chances. 

She—Z'rell, disciple, commander, commander—comes to a stop before the crowd of buzzing sycophants, head high and shoulders set. No weapons visible, not that she needs one. Her psionic abilities seem enough to level this crowd should she choose. 

Z'rell stares over them with something that is neither derision or disinterest. They aren't quite bugs beneath her heel, but those flying about her head—irritating but manageable. A swing of her palm and they are crushed upon the wall. Her presence before them is nothing but an indulgence. 

The kennel's stone bites into his knees.

But he needs this. He needs her. He needs to know how.

"You stand in the presence of the chosen of the Absolute." Each word is a thunderclap, sparking firestorms as she speaks. Every tadpole in attendance presses to the very front of their cranial cages, yearning to be with her. "You are True Souls, ordained and elevated—come now to the land of General Ketheric Thorm and serve Her."

Religious. Ritualistic. Though the crowd stays silent, Astarion can hear their thoughts bay. 

She has them by the throat. This is an army that would serve her for the sheer name of her deity, for the power she holds. They don't need to know who she is, just what ideal she champions. A leader. A commander. 

Astarion needs her to teach him. Familiar resignation bubbles up his throat when he looks at her, the thoughts that she won't, she'll just kill him, she'll never agree, she'll– all things he ignores. He isn't thinking about that.

Instead, he dredges through possibilities. Where he stands up now, shouting some worshipful phrase or blasting her with his illithid prowess; garish, bold, but perhaps it works. Perhaps she sees his potential and allows him into her retinue—even if the party sees it as betrayal, hopefully she'll take him far enough away the consequences won't have time to strike. Once he breaks the commands, he can figure everything else out. This is all that matters. 

Or maybe she sees it as treason and rips him apart on the spot. 

The coin is multi-sided, yet each outcome will lead to one of two results. He either is helped or slaughtered. The risk is one he is willing to accept, considering the alternative is a return; but she is only the first commander. There are two more. He won't lay down his head when the others could help him. 

But maybe it isn't him that draws her attention. 

She's still talking, something about loyalty and heresy, but Astarion's senses buzz out to cicada screams. Meaningless noise. He's watching her. Thinking. 

He isn't thinking, not really. That's too grandiose and generous a term for what he's doing. He's just– hoping. 

An aeon ago, he made Minthara drop her mace when he had only one tadpole and no blood in his system. Now, he's thrice as strong and full to a level that is hard to comprehend. He could make someone else prompt the question and gauge her reaction. Test the waters before jumping in.

And he knows of someone with a weak enough will. 

Consequences smear before his eyes. This is stupid, this is idiotic, this is nothing more than a child's intuition. There is no sane reason to be doing this. 

So Astarion does it. He slips into Anura's mind. 

It is depressingly roomy. He's fumbling with three tadpoles instead of one, a braid of thorns instead of a singular whip, and still there is enough space to limp behind their eyes without sparking a warning flare. Anura does blink twice, their nose wrinkling, but they are on a bridge outkeep covered in more corpses than stone—they seem to hand-wave away the odd reaction. They continue looking at Z'rell with a palpable awe and nothing resembling suspicion. 

Then Astarion lurks, half in his body and half in theirs, the world blurred into nonsense by his failing senses. He can feel Anura's consciousness like a tether, twisting this way and that as their basal instincts guide them; he has no corporeal form and yet some part of him can reach out, brushing sensation along the coiled line of thought. 

It can't be too specific. Can't be anything that will be ripped apart by Anura's subconscious, no matter how miniscule their sapience appears to be. Broad. Approachable. Something they could have thought of themselves. Something they want. 

Astarion grabs the tether. 

Blood vessels burst in his eyes, in his nose; he swallows strain and heaves, pushing Anura's thoughts away from veneration and into self-doubt. What if they aren't strong enough– what if they fail and are culled– what if they're banished back to where they were–

There is a deliberate break in Z'rell's speech. She stares over the crowd like a crouched predator, tail lashing, eyes like cut stone. Astarion digs his teeth in.

Anura lurches forward a step. Their eyes go wide, dismal with confusion and determination in turn, puppeted. A gorge rises in Astarion's throat, but he isn't enough in his own body to allow it to hurt. Just sensation. He continues. 

They meet Z'rell's gaze instead of the awed half-bow they'd done before. Their voice quivers as they break through what she had intended to be an echoing silence. 

"Will you train us?"

Z'rell goes still. Her head tilts to the side. 

Astarion drags on the tether until it threatens to shred, pieces ripping off as Anura's subconscious flares at the realization of this open questioning. Still they push on under his heel. "To use our gifts—will you show us how to serve the Absolute?"

Anura's voice crumbles away on the last word. 

Astarion holds his breath. He can feel the party shift—they don't know what, but they know something's wrong. Everyone does. Z'rell's speech was supposed to go uninterrupted until the end where the crowd presumably claps and cheers and pledges allegiance—now there is a break in the pattern. 

And yet Z'rell just stands there. Staring. Her eyes reveal nothing. 

It's involuntary. Reflexible. The way he peers past his shield every time the party does something he can't comprehend, trying to piece apart what their possible reasonings could be. He's still in Anura's mind, still tangled up in the knotted wire as they panic about why their mouth is saying what they would never dare, and he reaches out, and he extends a tendril, goes–

Astarion splatters against Z'rell's mind. 

If he calls his a shield, hers is a fortress. The galaxy against the graveyard. He rams into a steel wall and learns nothing. 

But Z'rell reacts. A pulse of something sparks over her hand, errant motes of light. Her eyes are still fixed on Anura but her attention isn't—something crawls amidst the crowd, less than a whisper. The rushes that move when something prowls through the stalks. 

She's searching. Hunting. 

Astarion tears himself out of Anura's mind. 

It isn't gentle—they stumble back with a gasp, pupils dilating to full, a wheeze in their lungs that wasn't there before. Horror crescendos as they snap back to their own sense of self, someone that could not even comprehend speaking out so challengingly, so openly. 

"Discipile Z'rell," they croak. They're shaking. He's seen this before. "I didn't– I–" 

Then Z'rell does– something. Her hand moves, lifts; a twitch in her brow. It is without comment and without warning. 

Anura's head explodes. 

Their corpse hits the ground a moment later, collapsing with strings cut. What's left of their mouth oozes foam and spittle, a gash where eyes had once sat. Gelatinous fluid streaks over the remains of a trachea. Blood arcs through the air. 

Some lands on his face, a splatter like paint upon a canvas. Astarion licks it off his lips. The blood hisses against his gums as though charged, anything natural scoured and lightning-burnt. Whatever they were before is gone.

Astarion got them killed. Okay. They wouldn't have survived anyway. No masters wants starry-eyed recruits for anything but something to break down—awe doesn't outweigh obedience. And their will was so weak, hardly enough of a backbone to stand. They would have died anyway. He just sped it up. Natural progression. 

He doesn't think about what that means. 

Z'rell flicks her hand. A droplet of scarlet falls off her finger. It lands somewhere in the crowd. No one breathes. 

"You serve the Absolute," she says to complete and utter silence. "If you are not strong enough to serve Her, then you are not deserving of Her gifts. There is no training. You will either succeed or fail."

Z'rell glances at what's left of Anura. With how they fell, their sword impaled their lower leg. Spinal fluid drips down their curled fingers. Her expression is impassive. Their death doesn't matter. She stopped who dared question her, and that is where the story ends. 

"Take this to Balthazar," she directs. It isn't pointed at anyone in particular, no choice of target—simply a command, one she knows will be carried out. "The rest, come with me."

So ends her speech. There is no applause, but her point is well-delievered. Every True Soul crackles with fear. 

Perhaps Astarion is one of them after all. 

Regroup, Shadowheart barks, more a snarl, as the crowd begins to move. Regroup. Do not follow. Get the corpse.

Astarion feels a pulse of confusion from Wyll but no one questions her, just follows. The other True Souls part around them like a dammed sea, either avoiding their eyes and staring unabashedly. Some make an awkward twitch as though they want to be the one to follow Z'rell's command to handle the corpse, but Shadowheart stalks forward to stake her claim, shoulders hackled. She crouches by the corpse, a faux focus she tugs Wyll down alongside. Between the two of them—which is to say Wyll picks up what she directs—they get Anura up, sagging in his arms. 

Astarion looks at his hands. Some of their blood sits there with how close he had been to them; he tilts his palms to the side so it slides off, scarlet rivulets in the creases. Their sword clatters to the ground when gravity pulls it out of their leg. It'll be cleaned and sent off to whatever other fresh-faced recruit is lacking. 

When the last True Soul follows Z'rell through the gate, the grand door groans, pulling in from some mechanism Astarion can't see. It clatters closed like the keel of a gong. Finality. 

Then they're alone in the courtyard with a corpse they have to deliver. 

I don't suppose anyone here knows who this Balthazar is, Gale says hesitantly. 

No, Shadowheart admits. Her tadpole bleeds a smothering cold, crushing whatever else she's feeling into something to wield as a weapon. But Z'rell is too dangerous. We can't stay with the crowd.

Understandable.

Wyll bows his head, murmuring funeral rites over Anura, because even the villains are offered something by his gracious hand. Astarion just thumbs over his daggers for the feeling. For the dream of being something dangerous, rather than that which has a mission of death to go on.

They aren't entirely alone, as it is. Because on the far side of the courtyard, hunched and bowed, a man drags the assembly of corpses into a manageable pile. One of the faceless slaves.

Perhaps he's thralled. Perhaps he is like those that served Cazador, fanatic for even a chance at becoming a vampire. Perhaps he is willing.

The man watches their approach with cagey, flinted eyes. There is no spark behind them, no answering presence. He isn't a True Soul, which likely explains why he's on his knees in the gore, heaving bodies into malodorous heaps any hag would be proud of. 

All of which are similarly empty—Anura has a froth emanating from their crushed skull, where their tadpole finds itself suddenly bereft of a living host, but these corpses don't. They're just people—therefore, disposable. Not worthy of being taken to this Balthazar, whoever that is. In a cult that offers power, men cost less than material. It's likely they have no short supply. 

Shadowheart stops before the man, nose raised imperiously. "We are to take this to Balthazar," she says, cold. "Who is he?"

The man stares at them, hesitant. Boney fingers interlock and squeeze. "Lord Balthazar serves the General," he croaks. The name is said with a sheen of admiration, though marred by being performed with a truly repulsive visage.

Astarion's awareness sharpens. That sounds like another commander. 

Another chance. 

Shadowheart clicks her tongue. "Where is he?"

"He is–" a pause, eyes flickering "–down two floors. To the west. The side door."

Side door. Since presumably they wouldn't waste the manpower to open the enormous gate for lowly serfs. 

Shadowheart nods and stalks off, evidently having decided there was no more information to be gathered. The party hurries after—which is odd, considering she and Gale are often those that set the slowest pace in their travels, a fact much-bemoaned when it was swamps underfoot—and follow the man's gesture to a wooden door set into the parapets, hinges with rust growing over the pockmarks. 

Entering this way we aren't being vetted, Shadowheart murmurs. A better chance for espionage.  

And to find a spot for me to lay the teleportation circle, Gale reminds, one hand knuckling into the lines twining up his neck. I would prefer Jaheira joins us sooner rather than later.

Karlach pulses with a red-orange weariness. But she doesn't object to any of it. 

Z'rell exploded Anura's head with blinking. Wyll is holding their corpse to take to a mysterious collector somewhere within these cursed walls. An undying tyrant and a false god wait for their arrival. 

And still the party wants to keep going. It's a suicidal business, saving the world. 

Gale presses the back of his hand to the door, purple light zipping across his eyes, before he declares it safe and opens it. 

Inside is an empty hall. Side door, side entrance. There are no watchful commanders or generals to notice them here; just the back routes that the slaves go. Safer. 

Shadowheart peers this way and that, gesturing the party in so she can close the door. Light bleeds from scattered torches, never close enough, but she summons a puff of grey-white to hover over her hand. It steals heat from the air like winter frost. 

Intimidation, Shadowheart says quietly. We don't want to be stopped.

Karlach exhales. She knew this was coming, and still Astarion feels the shame, the hurt. A flash of twin horns. 

Then she marches to their helm and bares her teeth, tail lashing like a whip. She sets the pace and she makes it demanding, excess fire belching through her ports, crackling against stone. The very air hums around her, wreathing a broken horn and wavering on the edges. Too much for a mortal form. A suitable deterrence for any who wish to question their presence. 

Because they can't be questioned, and they have to get in, and they have a thousand tasks to complete and none with any certainty. 

The party has a plan. He has a plan. They don't intersect but both must happen—and whereas the party is moving forward with theirs, Astarion trails blindly behind. Just waiting for what he needs to happen.

A lack of experience acts in him always, amassing into something that leaves him just a moment too slow on the uptake. Cazador always called him stupid. 

So he marches on through the keep. The stone beneath his feet isn't familiar, but it doesn't have to be. The imprint of the kennel is stuck to the back of his eyelids. Even the party's quiet breath and heartbeats aren't enough to beat those memories back. 

It isn't just the stone, either. The halls of the Towers are grim and forsaken, rot leeching through cracks in the mortar and mold painting prismatic hues under their feet. Other slaves hunch and skitter around, never making eye contact, fleeing from Karlach's presence like struck things. Her teeth stay bared, but her tadpole flinches. They continue on. 

Then Astarion smells the man before they arrive. 

There's a particular sort of scent, to undeath. Dead is easy—there's first the emptying of all things that belong inside organs but no longer are, which is foul in the way most mortal functions are. Then there is rot, the sick-sweet of it all, fermentation in a putrid cask. Something ripening until it cannot. After, bones. Those smell like nothing. 

Undeath is different. Undeath lingers. It never quite makes it into rot but similarly cannot escape life; it changes, gravedirt and fruits and offal. It stays. It burns like the heat of cremation that can never take it. 

Astarion wears bergamot and jasmine; breathes on timed intervals and gives himself constant tics; moves his head to look at things and never stays still for too long; he builds himself a facsimile of life, both for others and himself. Half was taught, half was desperation. It is all he knows. 

It smells like unearthing a mausoleum. Like peeling himself out of a splintered coffin. They approach this commander, and every hackle he has goes up. 

But this is his choice. Something easier than a disciple to a goddess he doesn't know. This is his decision.

This will work. It has to. 

The rest of the party can also sense something wrong, either through smell or something that hungers more than it arrives. A feeling in the air. Something fanged. 

Wyll adjusts his grip on Anura's body, their split head lolling back. Karlach's tail keeps lashing. Lae'zel doesn't release her blades. Gale holds pace with Shadowheart; she's grasping a palmful of divine fire, what might be a torch if not for how she could throw it at a moment's notice. Their tadpoles are livewires, cut through with something acidic. 

They round the corner. 

The first thing Astarion sees is the corpse. 

It isn't in one piece, but it's still enormous, towering within the cavernous room. The torso bulges over the stone, all mottled red skin, too vibrant for blood. Punctured wounds and long disease gnaw holes through the body, worm-trails and maggot-nests. What bones protrude are ichor-slick and putrid. The smell is hate. 

Karlach goes stiff. Her tadpole sends an unconscious flurry of battle and the thunk of sinking her axe into a similar fiend's face—and what it feels like to watch them laugh it off and instead strike retribution. Her engine flares. 

Orthon.

There is a dead devil in the belly of Moonrise. 

Astarion is vaguely aware of the room itself—something akin to a prison, cells stacked up with bars torn out and moved for a larger workable space, a pit yawning to one corner—but the orthon demands attention. It is an entirely beastly thing, too large for the mortal plane. Dismembered, split apart, ribs protruding through scarlet flesh. Its head is opposite this entrance, and Astarion will allow that. He doesn't want to see its face. 

There are more corpses, but they are almost disappointingly mundane. Dismemembered and torn apart as well. Wyll's tadpole punches fire through his skull. 

Karlach hisses between her teeth, smoke wreathing her horn. The sound echoes, bouncing off all the bloated cadavers, reverberating through this hell. A piece of infernality in a land already rotten. 

Something moves. 

Behind one of the orthon's legs, a figure straightens, turning towards them with an odd, jerking motion. He cuts for a memorable silhouette at a glance, tall and broad, wearing deep, dark robes with gold strung over their open front. Bare feet, geometric shapes carved through flesh. Deep orange eyes. 

This is another of the commanders. 

He is also undead. 

For one miserable fucking moment, Astarion's chest hitches—undead. Undead leader. Undead in a position of power. Maybe the Absolute is not as authoritative over vampire spawn as he feared—maybe he doesn't have to bend and prostrate and grovel like a dog–

Then the man looks at him, and Astarion knows what brand of undead this is. 

Necromancer. 

More damningly, this is not the type of necromancer that does so out of necessity; a lack of able-bodied men, an unwillingness to be on the front lines. No, this is one who relishes in it, judging by how the body he wears is dead itself; a bloated thing to whom rigor mortis has been denied, carved open and festering. Blood weeps down his chest—or what looks like blood but certainly isn't, going off the smell. Something thick and congealing, like rot bubbling through a volcanic spring. Heavy on the tongue. Skin purpled around the extremities, blue where blood cannot flow. 

He is the culmination of all things dead. Of things left for long enough to be considered dead, if they are not dying. A mélange of times past. 

He is all of these things, and they do not matter, because within his skull is only quiet. Nothing humming, nothing present. 

No tadpole. 

Astarion closes his eyes. A blink, no longer; a shock to the system as sure as any strike of the whip. He leaves his wrists untouched—both from Shadowheart's prying eyes and the malignant terror that Balthazar could smell the blood—and merely pictures it instead. Rocks back on his heels and strangles the revelation before it can strangle him.

Balthazar can't train him. Can't help him. Perhaps he can beg favour from Z'rell. Perhaps the third commander is available. Perhaps the Absolute herself will grant him understanding.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. 

The undead man—what should have been a chance but is merely a commander—walks around the orthon's leg, bare feet leaving smears of purple-red in his wake where they drag, hovering without his weight on the ground. He's taller than Karlach. Something about that feels significant. 

"New followers," Balthazar says. He has a deep voice, multilayered; like there is more than one of him speaking. Something arcane pulses on the timbre, because he isn't using air—his chest doesn't move. 

He is possessing his own body's vocal cords to speak through. Gods, but he is a wretched thing. 

"Do not dawdle like blithering idiots," the man—the thing—snaps. "Are you not in the presence of your commander? State your purpose or be culled with the rest."

Gale's tadpole twitches. Curiosity. Dread. 

The wizard tilts his head to the side, fingers lacing. "You're a far distance from Calimshan."

Balthazar pauses. He does so in the manner of undead; entirely still, no movement, a relic of a frozen era. For the first time, he looks interested. "Continue."

"Amkethran," Gale says. "Balthazar the monk, leader of the order there. You look rather spritely for three hundred."

His face cracks into a grin, more not-blood weeping from the runes carved into flesh. "You have a fine memory," Balthazar says. It does not sound like praise. "You're among the first to recognize it. He died in Tethyr, near Monrativi. His tomb had enough treasures for me to take alongside his ribs."

Balthazar sets a hand on the curve of them, over flesh frozen in a state of permanent decay. He has only three fingernails. All are black. 

"Though they only last for so long," he says dismissively. "Even the famed are no more than wheels to time. He'll outlive his purpose soon."

Corpse desecration. Corpse theft, or something similar. Gale maintains his curious expression, but his tadpole bleeds violet. 

"I can see you've used him well," Gale says. Several months together murmurs to Astarion that this is both false plaudits and very real. He is impressed. "I can't imagine what skill it takes to slay an orthon."

Balthazar's face splits once more. Half his teeth are from a predator, too sharp in his human mouth. "The devil isn't dead," he says, drawing it out. "If it was, it'd disappear back to the hells. It is only very close to death."

The orthon is in six separate pieces, scattered around the room, and apparently alive. Astarion is remarkably happy the head is on the other side. Who only knows what agony it's in, reanimated past its time. To be killed, and suffer still.

He was supposed to die at thirty-six. There are many things for which Cazador is unforgivable, but that is the one he will never forget. 

Astarion isn't thinking about this. 

Gale makes a soft sound of surprise. His eyes are wide. "Still alive?"

"For as long as I allow it to be," Balthazar says, clearly pleased. "I will ground its body in this plane and only then will I strip the spirit from its flesh; my current form has its advantages, but an orthon has more. The world will bend before me."

"The stories do you no justice," Gale says, reverent now. It is not quite blind fanaticism, too much caution in it, as Astarion can smell beads of blood where his nails are digging into the soft flesh of his palms. His face stays open, guileless. "To think I have come all the way through the shadowlands under the call of the Absolute's voice, and you are instead what I should have sought for!"

That's a little thick but Balthazar takes no note. His splintered face oozes necrosis around its runic circles, a ripple of something immaterial instead of flesh. "Hundreds have begged for my tutelage," he vaunts, "and thousands more have died for it. I am the one who bound the Nightsong, who caged the idol, who siphoned divinity—who gave General Thorm his army and his immortality. I have raised militias and crushed empires on a whim; indeed, the stories do not do me justice."

A glance of contact from one tadpole to the other, neither Wyll nor Karlach meeting eyes but connecting regardless. It seems Jaheira wasn't lying. Not that she necessarily seems a liar, but there is a difference between hearing about a tyrant pulling an arrow out of his punctured eye and hearing it from the man who claims to make it happen. 

Ketheric Thorm, unkillable. The Absolute, indomitable. 

Astarion thinks of one chance, one commander, somewhere else in the Towers. He doesn't think about anything else. 

"My word," Gale breathes, and it is only long months of travel that shows Astarion how he's put a little too much air into the sound than he would if he were actually awed. The aberration before him is not that deserves awe. "I cannot believe it, truly; to see a master such as yourself at work. To think of learning from your presence–"

Balthazar's eyes are suddenly backlit, one red, one grey. The light fades and he scowls, every muscle moving stiffly. "Bah– you study evocation. That is why you are only a follower."

"We are True Souls," Gale says, not quite a correction. He seems to sense the time for flattery and fluffed feathers is over; they've gotten what information can be pulled out in that method, and now it is time for another. Shadowheart simmers on the edge of his mind. "Disciple Z'rell sent us—we are to give you this."

He nods to Wyll. 

Balthazar tilts his head as though only now noticing the rest of the party. He moves closer, lifting further off the ground, and gods does the reek increase—Shadowheart's nostrils flare, Gale's throat bobbing. 

Only Wyll seems unperturbed, holding Balthazar's gaze with the same calculated nothing he gave Mizora. He hefts the corpse aloft, deferential. 

Anura is puppeted, limbs seizing and split skull lolling back. They spider their way out of Wyll's grasp as Balthazar tilts his hand, clattering forward, arm snapping as it catches on their sheath when they try to straighten. 

Then they stand there, shaking. Dead eyes, dead body. Upright through nothing more than commands. 

Bile pools in the cracks between Astarion's teeth. 

He isn't thinking about that. 

Balthazar clicks his tongue, subtonal, and flicks his hand—the corpse flies off to join the pile, a cratered mass of offal and limbs. "Another dead True Soul," he says dismissively. "Little surprise Z'rell has to keep killing them; pitiful cuts of flesh will never obey her as readily as those risen. To think she has been allowed to continue her methods when they have caused nothing but failure is beyond the ken."

Shadowheart's attention sharpens, but Gale is already moving. Astarion can practically feel the thread begging to be pulled, but he can't, because he's hardly there, anymore. Just waiting until they leave. The third commander. The third chance. 

"Z'rell is the one who commands us?" Gale puts on a masterpiece of concern, interwoven and hesitant on the edges. "Surely we are allowed to swear to only those who deserve it?"

"She is Disciple Z'rell, not Commander Z'rell," Balthazar says. It isn't a sneer, but it's closer than anything else. "She is undeserving of such a title. Blind, voracious; snapping at the heels of her betters. Even now she licks her wounds like a mutt."

A savage sort of glee fills his dead face; pools in the gaps of too-sharp teeth. "Her test with the drow lost us the drider and his troop—and until she comes crawling, I won't rebuild him for her. I am the Chief Advisor; my time is for the General alone."

Gale maintains intrigue. "The drow?"

"One of Z'rell's little games," Balthazar says, sneering. "Testing whether a body so clearly splintering could reswear to new authority. Instead, she shattered entirely, swore revenge, and fled to the shadowlands to die a coward's death. Now even her flesh is lost."

His multifaceted voice crackles, hyenic. It takes Astarion much too long to realize that's a laugh. "Only a shame she didn't finish the job on Z'rell before making it out. Betrayed by her own, lift limping like a cur; my creations are far more obedient. Flesh is better than minds in that regard—in all regards. Z'rell never learned."

Gale's tadpole spirals higher. Minthara, he says, like that isn't clear. A drow caught in the shadowlands, who'd hunted them down—and who had, in the moments before combat, asked them how they escaped the Absolute's control. 

He's wearing her armour. 

Balthazar continues to laugh. It is a sickly thing. "The General allows her failures for now," he says, "but not forever. With the third commander added to our ranks, she finds herself without abject security, and as her precious True Souls continue to die without completing the mission, she'll soon join their ranks." His smile weeps black. "Then I'll cut her open, wrench that refuse out of her skull, and give her a real purpose."

Lae'zel scorches a line like a slit throat through all their minds. Astarion doesn't risk looking over, but he can feel how her blood-scent fouls. 

"The mission?" Gale repeats. "Is it for Ketheric Thorm?"

"General Thorm," Balthazar snaps. "He deserves more respect from the likes of you."

That is a line in the sand best left untrodden. Gale bows his head, properly castigated. "My apologies," he murmurs.

Balthazar scowls. "Mind your tongue," he warns, "else I gift it to a body more deserving. You are only here to serve General Thorm, and for the moment, that is reclaiming his lost daughter. She is out in the shadowlands, sheltered under something we cannot penetrate. This is your mission."

Astarion can't help how his gaze flicks up. He stares into Balthazar's orange eyes as though the full story will be there, though he's picked up the pieces. Marcus said his mission could still be completed. Jaheira spoke of a guardian.

The question of how the daughter of Ketheric Thorm, the summoner of the shadowcurse, is able to hold said shadowcurse at bay remains unanswered. Unimportant. Astarion focuses on keeping still. He hasn't breathed in minutes. 

"And you will complete the mission," Balthazar says, vicious. One of his fists clench—across the room, a corpse contorts in on itself. "General Thorm will not proceed with the assault until his daughter is returned to him; the longer you imbeciles continue to waste, the longer we are delayed."

Gale licks his lips. He's the one who has to maintain face, to continue talking with the madman, even as his every thought burns to discuss what information they were just given. "We will not disappoint you."

Balthazar sneers. "You will. The living always do. But it is no matter. When you die, I will make something better of you."

The fury at Z'rell seems to fade away, tucked back under undeath. Already his gaze begins to skip over them, once more only seeing Gale as the one conversing and not the faceless others at his back. To be so high above the world is but shadows and ash. 

Balthazar waves an impassive hand. "Bleat elsewhere. You are to prepare. Give me my flesh and be on your way."

Karlach's tail flicks, barbed edge coiling around her ankles. The look she shoots Wyll is slanted. It wasn't quite the golden roped path they hoped for, but it is ample information—they can make a plan for this. 

Gale bows his head and turns to leave. The rest of the party follows, all too eager to get away from the bastard before them. 

Astarion takes one step. 

Then something bites into his ribs and pulls. 

For the smallest part of a second, he feels this and thinks: master, I'm sorry. Thinks: master, I didn't mean it. Thinks: please, please, don't hurt me. 

Then the world pierces back and Astarion slams into the ground. 

Not entirely—he doesn't fall—but half his body goes to turn and the other flinches in with inarticulate terror. He stumbles, a hiss hitched behind fangs, eyes wide. The tension redoubles. It spins him around, opposite the party. Away. Back to the man. 

Astarion punches heels into the ground and hands into the wall and grinds to a stop. Locks up. If he had control over his tongue, he'd be screaming. 

Balthazar frowns. It pulls at the geometric lines over his face, angles cut through eyelids. Black nothingness pools in the scars. Rot and ruin. 

He extends his hand. Green motes peel off his fingertips, drifting over his palm, and he twists. 

Whatever is stuck in Astarion's ribs goes taut. It forces him a shuddering step forward. He digs every sense of self he can muster into the command—not audible, not something he can think around, just a pull, just a summon, a pressure going one way against the desire to go the other—and freezes there, foot half-lifted. He can feel his eyes bulge. Something coats his tongue. 

Balthazar scowls now, hand still twisting. Astarion shakes like a winter leaf. "If you think to deny me my flesh," he thunders, tri-toned and furious, "you will serve as replacement, True Souls. Release it from your control."

Movement, sound, voices through a storm. Astarion can't concentrate. Can't do anything but dig his heels in and fight the chains dragging him forward to the thing that holds the end.

Vampires are undead. But vampires are a selfish undead, brought back to stave off death no matter the cost being drained life from those surrounding; necromancers are different. Necromancers are greedy undead. They're pioneered by the desire to make puppets. Husks. Things without minds to fill the hollows, only arcane compulsions. 

To a necromancer, a vampire is a doll with the curious ability to be more than its making. 

To a vampire, a necromancer is a slaver. 

"The fuck," Karlach roars. She skids forward, breaks the line of sight between them. "The fuck is this?"

Astarion falls back. Wheezes around nothing as the tension unknots from his ribs, pulled begrudgingly back to lay in wait for the next attempt. She's standing before him, a bulwark, and it isn't enough. He's still too close. He's still–

Balthazar's eyes crackle. The air grows heavy. He rises higher into the air—taller than her, wrong—and folds his arms, looming like a spectre for the slaughter. "You were told to bring me corpses from the gate," he bites out. "I am the master of all undead; all flesh within Moonrise is mine to raise General Thorm's army. Even precious pets."

Karlach takes a blistering step forward. The leather wrap of her greataxe smokes. "He's not flesh," she spits. "He's one of us!"

Her threat goes unacknowledged. Balthazar pauses instead, moving to the side—but instead of reapplying the summoning spell, he just looks. 

His eyes are deep, endless. Astarion shivers under the stare of a predator, who puppets corpses and has just laid eyes on one that talks back instead of needing strings. 

"A True Soul spawn," he says, and sounds curious.  

Astarion still isn't breathing, isn't moving, isn't thinking. He is frozen in the animal desperation that if he just stays still enough, he will not be hurt.

An insectoid twitch of the head. "I haven't seen its kind as one before. How did this happen? Have you studied it?"

Astarion curls in on himself, eyes fixed on the ground. Head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. And still the question waits in the air, voracious in the absence; does– is he supposed to speak? Is he allowed?

Balthazar's flesh contorts into a scowl. "Answer me, wizard. I am not so unimportant as to wait for responses." 

Gale jerks. "Ah– he was infected alongside us," he says, almost stumbling over the words. Their cover story falls like water through a sieve. "The parasi– the gift from the Absolute, further south on the Sword Coast. We travel together."

Balthazar doesn't move his head like a mortal would. He just stares, dead-eyed and hungry. 

He is their commander. He is the law here; what he wants, he receives. A singular True Soul is no great loss as Z'rell displayed, particularly not one with interest to be gleaned for its study. To be flensed apart to see what lurks within—and to be remade upon the end. 

There is a devil both alive and dead, spread out for eagles to pluck between the ribs of its back. There is a gleam in Balthazar's eyes that promises Astarion will not know himself enough to regret what he becomes. 

Commands woven through his bones. A chance deeper within Moonrise. 

He did it to Anura. He can do it again. 

Astarion claws his way into Gale's mind, shield fluctuating under the fervour. Every tadpole gores through sapience, coalescing into a single, fluctuating pike through the wizard's consciousness. There is no intelligence in how he thunders with an onslaught of information and images and pictographs of unlocked chests keys doors traps knives talking blades blood throats infiltration shields threats

Something connects. 

"It's useful for the mission," Gale says, then blanches, each word far more stilted than his normal aplomb. Still they pour out. "For reclaiming General Thorm's daughter—it will be used to sabotage their barrier so we can enter. This is our plan."

Surprise, alarm. The rest of the party makes various choked-off noises, tadpoles flaring. Astarion isn't in his own body anymore. Just the pressure on Gale's jaw and puppeted words he forces the man to say. 

Balthazar narrows his eyes. "A spawn is that critical to you?"

"This spawn," Gale corrects. Sound crackles in his throat. "It knows how to fight, how to obey. We can trust it will do as it is told." Not enough. Not enough. Balthazar's eyes are still too keen. "Afterward, it can be used for research, but allow us to complete the mission first."

Balthazar makes a low, diatonic sound. A hum, maybe. His gaze goes from Gale to Astarion. 

He pulls himself out of Gale's mind—not entirely, tendrils still hooking into brainmatter, too scared whether the man will react if he leaves entirely—and sinks back into his body. Agony erupts behind his eyes, dripping down his fangs. He holds still. 

The necromancer tilts his hand to the side.

Astarion shatters one of his back teeth with how hard he's biting down but keeps his face empty, docile. His atavistic fear is nothing. He discards it. He isn't thinking about anything. 

The silence stretches for long enough it echoes. 

"Very well," Balthazar says eventually, slow. Still thinking. "You will go to the third commander to be prepared, and then you will not fail. When you have returned General Thorm's daughter, you will bring the spawn to me. This is your task."

Gale's mouth opens. Astarion slams back in.

"We accept," Gale says. The words jump and skitter, loosed as though he means to choke on them. "Thank you for your lenience."

There is blood filling the back of Astarion's throat. 

The party shifts. He can hear Shadowheart's boots on stone, Wyll's shallow breaths, how Karlach's blood-scent burns within her veins. If they counter, try to argue, this all falls apart. They didn't stake their claim and now he has to do it himself, try to buy more time before his chains switch master again. He just needs to make it to the third commander. He just needs a chance.

Agree, Astarion snarls, though it only rebounds within his shield. Agree, you moralistic bastards, agree, please–

It isn't that they agree, not necessarily. But no one speaks up to counteract. 

Balthazar waves a dismissive hand and turns. He goes back to the orthon's corpse, laid within the room like shattered glass. Its torso rises as though in breath and goes still. 

Astarion drags all three tadpoles back within his skull. They writhe and snap at the bit, boring through untouched flesh, starved for further violence. He deprives them. It is the only thing he knows how to do. 

When he looks up, the entire party is looking at him. Gale in particular is an ashen shade of white. 

Astarion stays passive. Just lets his gaze move to the empty corridor they had come from. Makes it very fucking clear he won't be talking until they're out of range. 

That's indication enough for Wyll to push them out, almost tripping over himself. The stones ring with their footprints. His arms are wet with Anura's blood. The air reeks. 

They make it three halls away from Balthazar, no thralls scuttling underfoot, when Karlach drags them all into an alcove and finally snaps. 

"What the fuck?" She whispers, still loud enough it booms. "What the fuck was that?"

Astarion examines his hands instead of answering her. Pale flesh, veins underneath. His fingernails are white instead of black, because his form of undeath is one that is frozen, dragged back to the moment of death. He still isn't alive. He isn't fit for living. That's the truth of it. 

He'd thought, for a moment, that their shared nature meant that Moonrise would be different. That perhaps he could walk openly, unabashedly. That the hurdle would be to convince the commanders to train him, not to keep them from killing him. 

Well. Looks like Marcus is fucking right. Spawn have no place under the Absolute. 

He wishes he was surprised. That betrayal would hurt less than acceptance. 

"That was me avoiding getting killed," Astarion says. It comes out dull even to his ears. "Nothing more."

"Nothing more?" Karlach repeats, incredulous. "Mate, he just– he tried–"

She breaks off into a snarl. Her engine screams. 

Gale touches the blood weeping from his eye. It cuts a stark line down his cheek, the path of a wayward tear. Astarion has nothing. In attacking Minthara, she had two tadpoles, and he suffered. Here, he has three for Gale's one, and only Gale has blood on his face. 

"This was your doing," he says quietly. "Both to me and to Anura, if I had to presume."

Yes. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

He batters down the instinct to bare his teeth and just nods. 

Gale doesn't break eye contact. "We can't do that," he says. "We can only use ours for telepathy and to sense others; nothing on this scale." Something cracks in his expression. "I could– feel you taking over, controlling me. Your will against my own."

Familiar. 

He isn't thinking about that. 

"Because otherwise, he would have taken me," Astarion snaps. Then breathes, refocuses. "My apologies. I didn't know it would work like that. I merely panicked when I heard what he was saying, and thought my way around it. To necromancers, I imagine we're naught but skeletons—our particularities aren't important. I just convinced him I have more use elsewhere than a research project."

"He wanted to study you," Karlach snarls. She kneads at her chest, metal ports scoring under her claws. "Like you're not a godsdamn person."

At her side, Wyll pulses synthetic composure, a ripple of oceanic blue amidst their tangled cerebral space. "Balthazar won't," he promises, so assured, so confident. "We will never let him, Astarion. I swear it. You'll be safe."

It's nice. It's very touching. But it doesn't solve the fucking problem. 

Astarion bares his teeth. "Clearly I'm not."

Then he hisses, long and drawn out, and digs claws into his forearms; shreds around the muscles there until the pain echoes under his thoughts, stone solid beneath his feet. Fuck it being noticed. He's past that point. He's past every point.

Head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. 

Gods fuck him, he should know this by now. 

One commander left. One miserable fucking chance in a hell that is neither escapable nor immaterial. He's still in Minthara's armour, knuckles bled pale around the shattered façade as though he can remove the past ten minutes from existence. As though it matters.

Gut, Marcus, Balthazar. Everyone saw through his disguise within fucking seconds.  

So he'll be who he is, instead. 

Astarion reopens his eyes. The party is spread before him in a circle, their particular choice of position—that won't work. He'll trail at the back, keep his head down. Put his daggers into his bag so it doesn't appear as though they've armed their slave. Reinforce his shield until he can be assumed mindless beneath it. Empty his gaze and clamp his tongue. Simple. Easy.

He's survived what he has because of his apathy, the callous despair that never quite crescendoed into terror. How to walk into the inevitability. It's the singular protection he was able to manufacture. 

It will work again now. It has to. 

The party just has to do their godsdamn job.

"If you want me safe, you need to put some ownership on me," Astarion snaps. "No more of this– this leniency. A slave with loose chains is one free to be taken. Whoever this third commander is, they need to know I'm yours and no one else's."

Something bolts through the lot of them but he doesn't look at it. Doesn't try to read the emotion. Maybe they'll finally stop being so confusing when he lays it out before them so they can stop breaking every rule about masters he knows to fear. 

All that matters is getting to the final commander and his final chance. He'll– he'll figure out a way to beg for training. He just has to get there first. That's all he's thinking about. Nothing else.

Footsteps, down the hall. Likely just a thrall, another slave; but still one owning a set of eyes. Still one capable of seeing. Their alcove is not a shelter. 

It is a smooth motion that pulls his bag off his shoulders and tucks his blades—not even his, they're Lae'zel's, they've always been hers—inside. He swings it back on and hamstrings his posture, hunched and small. Curls his shoulders. Lowers his head enough to pile snowy curls before his eyes. 

The final step of the transformation is to step back, putting room between him and the party. In the crèche, he had been a slave within a larger collection, able to huddle for security. Now, he stands alone. Now he goes behind.

"Fangs," Karlach hisses. "Fangs. Astarion. What the fuck do you mean by that?"

He leaves his eyes fixed on the ground. 

When the thrall walks past, their gaze skips over him.

They're shouting things through their tadpoles, both words and emotions, but he pours all three of his tadpoles until his shield is a castle wall, impenetrable. Only their echoes reach, hazy and indistinct. He doesn't want to hear what they're saying. Can't, maybe. Otherwise this all falls apart. 

Wyll goes to touch his shoulder. Two centuries of experience means Astarion doesn't flinch, but he doesn't look up, either. If he looks up, he will have to see his face. He will have to see all of their faces. He will have to hear what they are saying and he cannot do that. 

Karlach makes a sound he doesn't decipher. Both Shadowheart and Lae'zel move—he adjusts his position accordingly, Wyll's hand slipping off his shoulder. Gale's eyes are on the back of his head. Both of them know he didn't answer the man's question about how he used his tadpole in ways the party can't. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

There is only one thing that matters, and it is deeper within Moonrise. To reach it, Astarion will survive anything. He has always done so before. He will do this. He will succeed. 

One more commander. One more chance. 

Chapter Text

Astarion pads through Moonrise like a ghost. 

He's there but he's not there, in the ways that matter. A body puppeted through the motions, mind too far gone to do anything but lead it. Maybe he notices that there's too much mold and grime than what Cazador would suffer, but he can see the kennel when his eyes unfocus, and thus he walks like he is within Szarr Palace once again. Pain and familiarity. He knows what to do here. He knows what is expected of him. 

That's the sort of thing, about control. Even though the tadpoles mute the commands, his brain still travels down those same pathways. It rots, and he rots, too used to someone else jerking the leash. 

So. He walks at the back of the party. He hides weapons and tadpoles and meager strength. He swallows down shards of teeth from those shattered by clenched jaws. He keeps his head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. 

He's less– lucid, like this. Dreaming on the borderline of a nightmare. Just enough apathy to soften the blow. The torpor promises to drown him and he welcomes that. Lets in the lassitude so he's harder to hurt. A thing in the shell of a person. 

The party tries, but they can't pierce that practiced haze. They've given up with audible words considering how many thralls are boiling up the place, just battering his shield with an unending storm of emotions he doesn't let himself feel. A gorge grows between them, built up and made impassable. They can't reach him. He won't let them. 

This isolation is one that exists within a paradox. Opposite his siblings, in a way. All caged in the same palace and no secrets to learn that another hadn't experienced. Rotten fur threaded through matching teeth. Reflections from what mirrors couldn't provide.

Violet, grinning with half lip and half bone, face stripped of flesh. Her eyes this liquid-bright luminosity where she lay slumped upon the stone, discarded like a toy from some great height. She'd snarled, but it was a laugh, in the only laugh she had anymore. Her way of saying welcome back, brother. Welcome back to the kennel. We both knew you'd never leave.

Now she's there, and he's out, and he still hasn't changed. Still sad, venomous, kneeling. He can ignore that the world's burning but that won't stop fire from lapping at his teeth. 

The fire waits for him, as it always does. Curls up at his heels and sings of moments under the river. Sings of days when Cazador would play at softness, when he would card hands through Astarion's blood-matted curls and say things in a language he doesn't know. Kozakuran, apparently. It sings of looking at hunters in taverns, those with expertise at fighting monsters, those who he could entrap back to Szarr Palace, and thinking: help will not save me.

It sings of days when Astarion fell apart, but when he survived. Used the pieces to remake the structure, no matter what slivers were lost in the process. Because he survives. He survives.

This will not be what ends him. 

So he walks. The party goes and he follows. Head down, mouth shut, shoulders in. 

Ahead, Karlach says something, tadpole shedding hoarfrost. It's nothing but rough noise. She sounds like she's talking underwater. Wyll's response is equally too quiet to make it through.

He could lower his shield, but underneath are three tadpoles marveling on how it felt to wrench Gale's tongue to their macabre tune, and Astarion just follows as Karlach switches course, stopping her plodding shuffle into something with a touch more purpose, head up and tail lashing. A plan.

She switches again when a new thrall rounds the corner, one of many. Far too many, really, choking up the entirety of Moonrise like they're all on a fucking pilgramage for a worse way to die. Ditches and cliffs and general methods to exchange interiors with exteriors all discarded for this deranged servitude, to bow their heads for those that see them as nothing but stepping stones. For what? Do they think they'll earn a tadpole, a rank? Can't they see how Wyll's arms are wet with Anura's blood, how the air screams with condensed misery? Don't they know?

This thrall is a quiet one, flinching as Karlach makes her way over. They peer up through curtains of pale hair, eyes watery, arms tense at their sides. Their face is peeled at the corners. Someone tested a flensing knife. 

Recognition curdles in Astarion's gorge. 

This really is the same, then. 

Karlach's tail beats the ground, mold spores incinerating in streaks of prismatic black. Not holding her greataxe but her knuckles are clenched like she is. Soot trickles through her teeth. 

"Hey," she says, too soft for her stance. Her voice comes through hazy, indistinct. "You know your way around here?" 

"True Souls," the thrall says, reverent in the way of a dog hoping to be too loyal to hurt. They keep their head bowed but stare through their hair. "I– do, your greatness."

Karlach swallows a wince. "Right. We're looking for this third commander, the one that's not Z'rell or Balthazar. And any sort of isolated room."

Iron rears its ugly head in Astaron's spine. Isolation. Interrogation. 

Not yet. Not yet. 

The thrall dithers, pale fingers lacing around each other. They're missing one on their left hand. Old wound. "The seventh floor has rooms for True Souls," they offer, meek, "but Lady Araj's chambers only have one door, if– if you're seeking to meet with her alone, your excellence."

Karlach flicks a look to Wyll, another to Shadowheart. A stirring of new emotions outside his shield. Astarion's still drawn too taut to listen, every function of his miniscule brain focused on the words. 

"Sounds perfect," Karlach says eventually. "Lead the way, if you would?"

The thrall dips their head, hair swept back over to hide their face. They send a single glance down the hall, through one of the identical yawning openings the party marched past. For all the time they've been walking away from Balthazar, they're still tucked in the underbelly. Moonrise is fucking enormous, it seems. Plenty large enough to tangle those unknowing in its vascular system beneath the main hall, doomed to wander. 

But the thrall just starts down one nondescript way. A guide to the third commander. To this Lady Araj, whatever hellspawn or monster she turns out to be—so long as she is someone Astarion can use. So long as she will either miss his fangs or he can offer enough she'll ignore them.

He just needs a chance. 

So he follows. 

They move quickly, keeping pace with the thrall who moves like they'll be whipped should their stride falter. It's not long before a rounded corner leaves them in a hall, lit with low-banked flames. There's– something in the air. It's not ironvine, because Astarion won't be pinned by that again, but it's herbal and bitter, sharp where it slithers against stone. A storeroom of potions, aroma and gravitas intertwined. Astarion has his gaze firmly fixed on the ground but he can hear Gale wrinkle his nose, Lae'zel tighten the grip on her longsword. 

At the far back is the only door. Its hinges are of iron so raw it has oxidation around the edges, seemingly growing from the wood itself. Stones around its frame are charred black, pockmarks gouged through their surfaces. 

Their guide doesn't get too close, hovering on the edges. "She is in here," they murmur. Their head stays bowed. 

That's true. Astarion can feel her—not like the party, where the artefact binds them tighter than other True Souls, but there's a presence behind the door more than a blood-scent or thump of a steady heart. Like pressing a hand to a wall and feeling the heat of the fire within. 

This fire doesn't sing. Just waits, a kaleidoscope through rot and ruin. 

Astarion dissects his spine so he stops being too upright. Keeps his gaze down. 

Karlach tilts her head like a hunting hawk. "What's she like?" She asks, casual. "This Lady Araj."

The thrall's gaze goes pallid. Though they don't move and though he isn't looking, Astarion feels them waver. Slaves aren't meant to be asked questions. The prospect of answering wrong drives like a knife. 

"Powerful," they say, slow, hesitant. "She is the chosen of both the Absolute and General Ketheric Thorm– she is a champion? Our leader?"

Their voice peters out. They hunch as if preparing to be struck. 

Karlach lets a sharp blast of air through her nose. Smoke wreathes miserable eyes. "Okay," she says, and there's no mistaking the softness now, too baritone but trying to be gentle. "Thanks for saying, yeah? Thanks. You did good."

The thrall doesn't believe her—why would they, why would any slave ever trust kindness from a master's tongue—but they want to appear like they do, glancing up with eyes too wide and wet for realism. A stuttered thanks is the glimpse into a portrait of another life. 

When they bow their head and drift backward, just this side of fleeing, Karlach watches them go with something gutted in her face. Astarion looks back at the ground. He isn't thinking about this. 

"Right," Karlach says, flat. "Let's go, then."

There's more in her tadpole, a portion of the conversation he's missing, but to hear it is to lower his shield, and he can't. So he doesn't. Just holds. 

Someone is looking at him, eyes puncturing shoulders, but nothing is said. 

Karlach raps against the door. Her knuckles leave little grey smears in their wake. 

Nothing, then movement. Footsteps. The answering voice is purred but rasps, as though more smoke than air fills its lungs. "Enter."

Karlach and Wyll exchange a glance. Then she twists the handle and pushes it open. 

The room reeks.

At first, it's enough to salivate, flooding the back of his throat and lapping at his tongue, because it reeks of blood—fresh, rich, raw. The blood of a wound carved and left to fester, edges teased and feathered until they can't close, gaping upon the side of its unfortunate bearer. 

The blood makes him want it, at first. But it is only a moment longer before the rot strikes, how the air seethes with this decaying hatred, chemical and caustic in turn. It's a bit alchemic in the way a volcano is a bit of heat, crowding out all rationality for this acrid stench. 

He can barely focus on the room past the smell, though it's full of things to notice. The shadows of the temple that was still cling here, motifs along the upper walls and carved alcoves that once held statues. Tables clutter the room, narrow passages carved amidst the teetering stacks of alchemic supplies and glass beakers, multicoloured smoke woven throughout. 

In the far back, standing before an array of desks and phials, a woman raises her head. 

Tall, slender, drow. Deep purple skin but the veins underneath are so dark they look black, snaking around the corners of her eyes and twining through her fingers. Her sclera are pitch, spokes of Lolth-sworn fire around her pupils. A feverish sheen lights their expanse. 

There's a scar on her cheek. It looks more like a gouge in a plank of wood, topographical and shallow. llithid-black veins whorling overtop. It is not like Gale's mark, where it leeches into his skin, makes him gaunt, hollow—this is a part of her. More her than the skin surrounding. 

Within her mind is the pulse of an answering tadpole. Tadpoles. Many of them. 

She makes a low, curious noise, less than a hum. Her hands lift off the table she'd been working on, where a vial full of scarlet waits, pluming more sickly-sweet rot into the air. Whatever she's doing, it isn't natural.

And still, if Astarion didn't have that morning's vial in his stomach, he'd be a feral thing. There's so much fucking blood. 

She isn't undead nor a necromancer. Not like Z'rell or Balthazar, that overwhelming presence like gravity itself, tadpoles a funeral gong. Almost… young. Not in age, but in ascension; the ambivalence from her tadpoles is a multiplicity, far more than one, but superficial. Newly burrowed in her skull. She hasn't been a commander for long. 

But she still is one. She still is a chance.

Astarion tightens his fists. 

The drow, Araj, Lady Araj, looks at them as though a visitor upon whom the appeal was lost, a queen in a pauper's land. Head tilted, eyes alight. "New True Souls." 

"Lady Araj," Gale says, diplomatic. His eyes flick to every table set up in the room, all their beakers and tubes and snarling fires. Whatever he's seeing isn't what he wants to, by the look on his face. "Are you the third commander of General Thorm?"

She makes the noise again, feather-soft. A laugh if not for the sharpness in her eyes. "I am," she says and splays her hands, fingertips black as though dipped in ink. "What brings you to me?"

"Balthazar sent us," Gale says. He steps forward, taking the helm of the party—another moment of finesse, rather than Shadowheart's serrated words or Karlach's intimidation, even if he is a man. "We are to be prepared for the mission, I believe?"

Araj smiles. 

It is not a nice smile. It is hardly a smile at all. 

Astarion has his eyes fixed on the ground, catching expressions through white lashes, and he sees Gale's jaw tighten. The wizard doesn't let that leak into his voice, staying polite. "What does it mean, preparation? Are you knowledgeable about the shadowlands?"

Araj laughs, throaty. "Nothing so trite. I am the matriarch of House Oblodra, resurrector of her glory—Ketheric Thorm sends True Souls to me to be strengthened." She runs a finger along the banquet of vials set before her. "It's rather my speciality, to shed the limitations of untested blood. You will emerge from this room enhanced."

Gale's tadpole—strangely quiet, strangely subdued, as though it is still crushed beneath the clawing weight of Astarion's triumvir—extends a wary thought. House Oblodra was slain a century ago for allying with illithids.

Wyll exhales sharply. 

"Enhanced," Gale repeats, nipping the silence off a moment before it stretches too long. Every member of the party is drawn, presences layered beyond Astarion's shield. Araj isn't the same terror as Balthazar, but she's clearly lost more than a handful of sanity. A trap without any easy disarm. "You are the key to the General's army?"

She isn't, not with how fresh her tadpoles are, but the praise still lands. A widening of her smile.

"More than the key," she says, a crooked sort of pleased. "His savior, his silver reckoning. Dozens of True Souls have fallen to the wastelands, and now they are only killed through their own incompetence. Even his disciple pet sups from my elixirs."

It's almost tangible, how the discomfort leeches through Gale's mind. Poison bloomed upon water. His smile tightens, though doesn't drop fully. He's practiced enough to pin it up. 

"One vial of blood, and they are made anew," she says, a hand splayed to nothing in particular, black fingertips. "Even divine-given powers need my touch before they can become what they were destined to be."

The party shifts weight between their feet. 

"I'm rewarded handsomely for it," she says, and now it's conversational, casual, but only on the surface. This is lordship. This is Araj cutting her teeth on targets she knows won't challenge back with her new position on the food chain. Bragging. "It only takes a drop or two of blood—the rest is for my experiments. They gifted me this room, these accolades, anything to ensure I stay. They need me."

When she lifts her hand, a droplet of black snakes down her wrist, wraps around her skin. "Ketheric Thorm needs me," she muses, "but I do not need him."

There are tadpoles behind her eyes. More than one. 

Gale swallows. "I see," he says, and his voice is flat, now. This is a far change from Z'rell or Balthazar. "You are a chosen of the Absolute, then? You don't seem like a cleric."

He phrases it like a question, but from both of their expressions, neither believes it is. She just smiles, eyes sharp. Dark eyes, crimson-red, Lolth-sworn. 

"The Absolute is but a delusion," Araj says, almost a purr. "I have my own goddess, and she is not one who needs the praise of goblins. But you are cleverer than most True Souls, to know what lays in your head. Transformation is not a risk to the likes of me. Neither is it to those who become what I make of them."

A tilted head. "But I don't believe I like your tone, boy. Do not think to question my role. I am here because I want to be—all I do for True Souls is to serve my own purpose, not this frivolous war. Ketheric Thorm knows I am only here for power."

"After all," Araj says, anticipatory, naked glee, "who wouldn't desire this?"

Then she attacks.

She doesn't move, is the thing. Stays rooted behind her table, one wrist cocked, the other wrapped around a vial. It is, in hindsight, a calculatedly unassuming posture. Noble, untouchable, for distant balconies and war-rooms instead of the front lines. Soft palms. No callouses. 

She doesn't move when she attacks, and for however much the party is on edge, they're trying to be diplomatic. They waver a shade too far on the border of leniency to maintain their cover. 

So no one is ready when her mind lunges. 

Astarion could sense she had more than one tadpole. It's a seethe in the air, molars burning, the skin under his tongue curling up. But he hadn't known how many. 

It's too many. Much too many. 

Gale topples first, Shadowheart staggering alongside—Karlach's engine lights up with a pained roar, chewing through iron and bone alike, sparks thrown across wood as she crashes to her knees. Wyll holds for a second but Araj's will, this teething madness, cuts through and he falls. Lae'zel is only a second behind. 

It's powerful. Immeasurably so. 

And yet it isn't refined. 

When it hits Astarion, it is the crest of a river, white-capped and frothing. Water. It thunders upon his shield but it isn't sharp—he buckles under its weight and rebalances. Bows in anticipation of a yoke. Locks his knees. 

He stays standing, though it's close. There is a shriek in the canals of his mind that says he does not want to kneel before this woman. 

Astarion trembles, blood coating his fangs, a bolt of pain locked somewhere under his fingernails. The party hacks and shivers, their minds ripped open and raw in the cerebral air. Smoke where Karlach is laid flat upon the wooden floorboards. He doesn't look over. Just keeps his eyes on the ground. 

Araj laughs, this mocking, deranged sound, lofty where it towers. The screech of nails on the table. "This is my strength," she calls. "The strength of House Oblodra, illithid blood at its distilled potential. The Absolute does not–"

She pauses. 

There is silence, afterward. Just the rasp of ragged voices where the party is trying to tear themselves back together, the gurgle of boiling potions. Too many noises for the kennel, too many heartbeats. 

And still Astarion can't help but look up. 

Araj is staring at him. 

"You've been trained," she remarks, curious. It isn't methodical curiosity but the hunger is the same, a predator scenting a challenger within its territory. Her head tilts. "You shouldn't have resisted that."

Then her eyes meet his, and she inhales. 

"Oh," Araj breathes. Her whole body turns to face him as though the sun. An invisible weight from overhead. "Oh."

She smiles. 

The party shivers as one. Astarion can smell blood from their eyes, their ears, the psionic reverberation still fierce in the air, but he only has eyes for Araj as she moves through the labyrinth of alchemic tables. 

Araj steps around Gale—who fell so harshly he's nearly motionless, two attacks in less than an hour, mind a maelstrom of jagged edges—and approaches. This is her domain and she is not wary, even as Karlach pushes off the ground snarling embers, Wyll fitting a shaking arm underneath his chest. 

She gets close enough to touch, a reaper over an unmoving battlefield. And Astarion realizes, with a vague, sinister disquiet, that he can smell her, even over the latticework of a room filled with alchemical solutions. She smells– rotten. Like ichor of a dead god, only not dead, just the shade of it; bilgewater from under a healing house, plaguebearers and sour sanitation. It knifes through his mind-blank terror just enough to cut his teeth. He flinches. 

But she still gets closer. Stops right before him, the thump of her heart thready and kindled higher.

"A vampire spawn," Araj says.

It doesn't sound like Marcus or Balthazar. It doesn't sound like anyone from their journey thus far. 

Astarion licks his lips—then wishes he hadn't, as Araj tracks the movement—and stays silent, rooting into the ground. Old rules and new rules collide for something fractal, neither guide nor guardian. He doesn't know what to do. 

Araj hums, watching him. A blizzard consumes the land and she is what gets left behind. Her eyes are so bright. 

She lifts a pale hand towards his face. 

"Oi!"

It's Karlach, heaving upright, blood streaming down her cheeks to splatter magma-hot on the stone. The shadow has spread wings behind her, filling the space, something terrible in the gaps between her teeth. 

"Back off," Karlach snarls. Heat crackles around her horn. "Don't touch him."

Araj's head moves, bird-like. Her gaze snaps from Karlach to the rest of the party, then back to him, still frozen before her. 

"Ah," she says, and envy curdles the words. "He is yours?"

Oh.

So that's what she reminds him of. 

Balthazar had only directed them to Araj after he'd learned one of their number was a spawn. Astarion thinks he now knows why. 

Karlach manages to stagger to her feet, punch-drunk and swaying. But the hells are no kinder than here and she's plenty aware to ball her fists, embers dripping through her ports. Her eyes are twin sockets of flame.

And, beneath the tattered mess of a mind so recently ripped apart, her tadpole keens like it's dying. 

"Yeah," she snarls out, too guttural. "Yeah. He's ours."

Astarion grits his teeth.

Well. Finally acknowledging it where it counts, even if she sounds so fucking gutted. All that does is tell Araj how she's a shit master with such an abysmal hold on her slave's leash that it'd be an easy challenge. 

But she said it. She finally said it. She finally stopped pretending.

Maybe they should have come to Moonrise earlier. Maybe the party should have been there for Priestess Gut, so long ago. Maybe then they could have done this from the start. 

Araj clicks her tongue, gaze drifting between Karlach and him. Weighing the cost. Her nails tap over the closest table. 

"Ours," Karlach repeats, voice plummeting an octave. The shadow grows behind her, bestial in the way it strips light from her eyes. "Not yours. Touch him and I'll gut you. Touch any of us and I'll rip off your fucking head."

That gets a reaction; rolled eyes with a chafed sigh. "That was nothing," she chides. "All True Souls are tested by me to confirm if they are deserving. If your minds melted from a single attack, then you weren't worthy." 

A laugh. Her eyes sharpen.

"Besides," Araj says, and this smile is new. "I wouldn't be touching him. I'd prefer him touching me."

Karlach draws short. Wyll stops around a half-aborted word. 

Araj steps away from the slowly-rising party so that Astarion is between her and them, so her eyes rake over his front to match those boring into his back. He keeps his own placid, unmoved, as though there is no one else in the room. There isn't, for a moment. The same trick as erasing every meaningless face until only his master was before him. 

Araj isn't Cazador. Not close. 

But there's something in her eyes that's similar. 

The part of Astarion that remembers this drags itself to the forefront. 

Araj tilts her head. It exposes the flat of her neck, where her jugular sits, unmarked where her heartbeat waits. It's a deliberate gesture. Almost playful. 

"The gift of a vampire's bite," she says. "Only a spawn, but that is more controllable, perhaps. The threat without the transformation. But still you have fangs. You can still bite."

Surprise punches through his silence before he can quash it. "You want to be bitten?" 

Araj laughs. It is tucked behind her palm, eyes curled, teeth in the smile. "Since I was a little girl," she purrs. "I study the sanguine arts, the bond between life and death—is there any expression of that more pure than a vampire? You would be a delicacy."

Want strips the performance from her words to leave them naked and hungry. She's smiling, but it isn't courtesy. Isn't anything but fanaticism. 

And that part of Astarion goes, oh.

Oh.

When she extends a hand, Astarion doesn't flinch. There's a sound behind him, the clink of metal on metal, footsteps, but he isn't looking. There is no party, no room, no Moonrise. There are only eyes too dark a shade of red and the promise of something. 

Her hand is unnaturally cold. Nails kiss his jaw as she cups it, thumb beneath his lips, fingers encircling. She tilts his head up to look at her. 

This close, no distance to soften edges, no smoke to hide beneath, Astarion sees more of who she is. All ugly hunger, teased apart to show nothing deserving of it. Some nauseous awareness that she's sharpened her teeth. Her gums are too pale, bloodless. He has no reflection, but their faces aren't dissimilar, he thinks.

But most of him is focused on how her breath hitches. How she traces a thumb over his fangs as though savouring the moment. 

Marcus knew nothing. Balthazar didn't have a tadpole. Z'rell would tear him apart. But Araj–

There is no way to misinterpret the half-lidded look in her eyes, nor the bloom of her pupils. How she grips his face like the disastrous beauty he was trained to become.

He wants a chance. The party wants a hero. Araj wants a vampire spawn. 

Only two can be compatible. And gods, but at least for her, he will understand what is being commanded. 

"A bite," Astarion says, and feels his voice change. Losing the monotonality for something coy, equally playful. His weight shifts, resting more in the palm of her hand as though she's holding him up. "Just one, darling? After so long spent wanting?"

Her grip tightens. A part of Astarion notes he has enough blood to bruise. But that part is swept away and drowned. 

"Don't be greedy," Araj murmurs, but her gaze is sharp where it pins him. "You will not be my death, spawn. A bite of blood is all you'll take."

"I would never be so presumptuous," Astarion assures. "Only that you deserve to have all you've dreamed of, and I am nothing if not willing. Surely a single bite would not fulfill your wish."

In his head, voices eviscerate themselves on the serrated edges of his shield. He doesn't think about it. The party isn't here. It is just him and the woman that has something he needs. 

Araj regards where her fingers hold his jaw, where fangs peek through his lips. Her gaze slides up. 

"What are you offering, spawn?"

"Why, whatever you want," he purrs. Lilts the end of the word like she's a noble Cazador needs a trade agreement from. "I'm drawn to power, love, and for but a hope of your training, I'd give you the world."

That makes her lips quirk. "Training," she says, and she sounds so fucking amused. 

Z'rell would have killed him. Balthazar would have broken him. Amusement is still a chance. This can still work. 

"Training," Astarion agrees, like his shield isn't seizing as though a death throe. "House Oblodra specializes in illithid powers, does it not? I find myself with a parasite and no sense in how to use it, and you have handedly demonstrated your prowess. As you put it—who wouldn't desire this? I want to do more."

Agree. You have to agree.

"Training," Araj repeats. Her other hand taps a funeral dirge over the table. "And what will you give in return, spawn?"

"Myself," Astarion says easily. "A loyal slave, to do as you will."

Loyal until he breaks the commands. Loyal until he is free, and then he slits her throat and escapes and runs and runs and runs.

This stays buried behind his shield. 

"I have no need of slaves," Araj says, and she isn't as good at this as she needs to be—her tone is dismissive, but her eyes aren't. "Ketheric Thorm supplies me all I could want in his efforts to keep me by his side; a click of my fingers and bodies fall at my feet. What more could you give?"

"Everything," he answers honestly. "Everything I have, and more beyond. My fangs, my blood, my body, my–" 

And then he hesitates, deliberate, a glance to the ground as if cowed. The flicker of pale eyelashes. 

Drow aren't common in Baldur's Gate, but their tastes align with Cazador's, and Astarion knows how to entertain. What she'll expect from him, where she'll allow him to pull and where she'll demand he roll over. Bare his stomach and expose his throat like a good mutt. 

She won't share. He'll have to kneel at her feet and beg her to take up the chain, tearing it out of the party's hands himself. But he can do that. He can leave them behind. It would be better if none of them thought about him. Maybe then he could do the same.

Because they were– gentle. Merciful. Kind. 

But kindness will not save him. He remembers this lesson above all others. 

Four months of the same masters. Now he'll change to another, one understandable. Raphael had been a chance but his threat was too much—all Araj wants is what he already knows how to give. A lifetime on his knees has prepared him for this. 

So Astarion swallows like he's preparing himself to endure. Submission, but not too quickly. A bit of visible fight so she can snuff it out. A head lowered, yet still raised just enough she can enjoy shoving it down the rest of the way by force. 

When he peers at her through a curtain of snowy curls, Araj makes a weird, unnerving little smile; indulgent, genuine, fascinated. Mildly affectionate. The tadpoles behind her eyes shiver. 

She's going to go too far. Whatever she'll do to him, it's too much. 

Maybe she'll kill him. Maybe she'll give him back to Cazador. Maybe she'll force the transformation. 

Or maybe she shows him how to break the commands and he has the freedom he's wanted for so long. 

He's got to stop being so fucking scared.

"My everything," Astarion finishes, less than a whisper. He can't move with her hand around his chin but he dips as best he can, an approximation of a bow. "I'll be yours to command forever. Only yours." 

Then, a thread, hoping: "Mistress."

Her pupils bloom, black over red. 

"Oh," she breathes. "Oh, you want this." She works her hand higher, brushing the base of his ear. Something is screaming, in his mind or the outer world, but he doesn't listen. "You'll give me the world for this chance."

She shouldn't know the true meaning of that word. He hasn't said it. But hearing it from her lips still makes him shiver. 

Araj smiles wider. Acceptance. "Now bite me, spawn."

Her blood smells rotten. Poison under skin. Something in the gleam of her eyes says that she knows. That this is part of her fun.

Well. He won. This is what he wanted. He has only himself to blame for transactional misery. 

Araj pulls her hand off his jaw and tilts her head further, a vast expanse of neck at the perfect angle as though practiced. Her eyes go half-lidded where they watch him, needle-sharp, arousal and suspense tangling at the outskirts of his mind. He steps forward. 

Blood sprays over Astarion's face. 

It blinds him instantly, staggering, arms up and eyes filled with red. It scorches fire-bright on his skin, eating holes through both composure and face, nauseatingly familiar. The world beyond rages. There's a noise, a clatter, the tearing of flesh—something thuds to the ground, footsteps, movement—a shriek cut off so it echoes, reverberating against stone.

He claws at his face, tearing strips of flesh and wiping blood away in equal amounts. Someone is roaring. His throat hurts. 

Astarion gets his sight back just in time to see Karlach's greataxe bite into Araj's throat. 

The sound that leaves his mouth is wordless. A scream from far away, tinny to his own ears. 

It doesn't stop Karlach from rearing back, every tooth bared, and slamming the blade home into the cut already opened. It doesn't stop Araj's last word—something shattered around the edges—from coming to a jagged end. It doesn't stop her fucking head from flying off.

It's almost a farce, how long her body stands there, gushing blood and locking up without a brain to direct. Her head rolls off the dais, hair pooling. A leg buckles. 

Then Araj falls, splattering on the ground, and Astarion hears her heart stop beating. Dead. Murdered. 

She's lifeless on the ground and his chance goes with her. 

Astarion screams again. He contorts with the force of it, all twisted, limbs like mantis claws where they perforate his chest. The vaulted ceiling echoes. Every member of the party flinches. 

Karlach takes a cautious step forward, gaze ragged. "Easy there," she soothes, like blood isn't cascading down her blade and a corpse isn't at her feet. "C'mon fangs, come back to us. She's gone."

That's kind of the fucking problem, actually. The thought is hysterical. He's hysterical. 

"No," Astarion babbles, going to take a step back but behind him is Lae'zel, is Shadowheart, and they've all stood up from Araj's attack when he wasn't looking and they're all crouched and they've killed Araj. "No, no, you can't, please, I can't–"

Something in Karlach's eyes cracks. "Fangs–"

"Karlach," Wyll says, cautionary, palms aimed at the corpse. "Let Gale try, please." 

Astarion spins, because the wizard is moving, staggering up and standing and there. The rest of the party fans out around him, weapons clutched, battle-ready. They locked the door. He notices it only now, though it can't have been now, they're all too far from it—when did they lock the door, how hadn't he noticed, the door is locked–

There's a whine in his throat, tonal and subhuman. He skitters back only for his hips to collide with a table, a vial shattering something glowing over the stone. It puddles near Araj's lifeless hand. Dead.

"No," he says again, always again, as meaningless as please, so often heard and so rarely listened to. "You didn't, you can't, what have you done–" 

Karlach's hand goes up. Her own kind of shield. "Calm down–"

Astarion cowers. Something within him is falling apart. 

"Fangs, please," Karlach tries, voice cracking. Red drips from her fingertips. "Just think, c'mon, it's only us. Gale'll get this shit right out of you. She's gone."

Gale. Moved hands. A flash of light. He flinches. Not fast enough. 

There's a sensation like cold water down his back, worming under his clothing. Astarion goes feral to scratch it off but it falls away before a second's passed, just magic, just blue-white from Gale's hands. The man's brows furrow. 

"I didn't feel anything," he says, dubious. There's blood tangled through his beard. Scarlet tears. "No curse, no compulsion."

"Because it should've stopped once she died," Karlach says. "Unless it's Balthazar we gotta go kill. Fuck, we should've done this the moment he started acting weird! How fast can we get there?"

"We shouldn't split up entirely," Wyll says, taking a step back, closer to the door. "We need to make sure no one else interferes—Shadowheart, would you come with me?"

Astarion isn't thinking and that isn't a conscious decision, nothing but animal instinct. Talk of leaving and healing and spells and all he can fucking see is the corpse that was going to save him.

But that name has sapience take a rare hold on his forebrain. 

Astarion snaps upright. His eyes move through the party. Shadowheart goes stiff when he lands on her, what must be a savage face indeed, primeval desperation. "Shadowheart," he says, a croak now, throat torn. "Revive her. Bring her back."

Karlach blanches. "Why would we do that?"

Because she's his only chance. Because she accepted his offer. Because she can finally set him free.

Astarion shreds his inner wrists. Blood bubbles up, fouled by his body, just as poisonous as what gushes from Araj's corpse. Because she's dead. Because they killed her. 

"Bring her back," he pleads, to them, to himself, to no one. "Please, please, you have to."

"What the fuck," Karlach manages. 

Then her expression goes dogged. Her hand flexes. "Look," she says, sharper now, as though she can cut through the noise. "Mate, there's something on you—spell, curse, something—so just let us get it off and we can go from there. This bitch isn't coming back. Not with what she said."

He wheezes around nothing. Alchemic air digs thorns into dead lungs. They don't understand.

Karlach shoots Wyll a wretched sort of look. "We gotta get him out of here," she says grimly. "Whatever this shit is, it's not leaving."

A hazy voice. Gale. "Get him to look away from it," he suggests. "If it's a long-exposure compulsion, perhaps she made it on sight."

It was going to be just a promise. Just loyalty bought through the expectation that he would give, something he would upload until he got what he wanted and then he would leave. Then he would be free. 

He's making these hysterical, asthmatic sounds. Clutching at broken hands as the chance dies without the ice of a frozen alley. 

Movement—the party—and Astarion refocuses to see Karlach take a hesitant step towards him, the others fanning out behind. Somewhere in the grey she set down her greataxe and now both hands are extended, palms up, an offering. Staring at him. 

"Hey, fangs, mate– you there? You know me? It's Karlach." Her words are soft, slow, as though to a frightened animal. "C'mere, away from the body. Look at me, yeah?"

Astarion does, but it's not by choice. He's never been able to run and he doesn't know how, just hyperventilating, eyes bulged, world abstract in the corners. Her face swims into place, a smear of red in the dark. Movement. The sound of her engine as she gets closer. 

It's instantaneous, when it happens. Like how the difference between standing and falling off a cliff is a single step. 

Karlach's hand touches Astarion's shoulder. 

His shield shatters. 

It's a detonation more than anything comprehendable. It throws every member of the party to the ground, mirroring in perfect one-two-three-four-five. Each tadpole goes white-hot, a trifecta as it breaks something apart that has been months standing. Cataclysmic. Someone screams—his throat burns—and two centuries of terror find their cage broken.

So. They fly. 

The world fades out. Erased. Wiped blank, because nothing in the room could be more important than what he collapses under. It isn't a thing, not really. Just–

Just himself. All the cloaks that he wears under cloaks that he wears under cloaks until they get stripped off him like all things are. And what sits naked and shivering at the core is fear. It always has been. 

Astarion swims in that, for a moment. Maybe longer. There was never time in the kennel and there isn't any here, just stone and rot and ruin. It's like he never left.

The outside world—the memories—aren't fake. Aren't mirages or dreams, because his mind couldn't have come up with something like this, not as the wreck he is. 

But here, engulfed in the familiar, they're beginning to feel less real.

The subsequent realization comes quiet, almost gentle. How his shield was hiding the worst of it from himself, too. 

Now it's gone. Now it's him and the fear-fear-fear. The only thing older than eternity. 

Astarion finds himself on the ground. Curled up, arms over the soft flesh of his stomach. Somewhere in the grey he crawled under a table like a child seeking protection. Its leg weeps residue where he's pressed his forehead against it. 

He looks up. 

Whatever he did was psionic and physical. The room is a shattered mess, tables toppled, beakers smashed, plumes of sickly colours twining through the air. The party dots through the wreckage like prismatic toys. Energy reverberates even now because his shield is gone and he can't put it up, can't patch the hole, can't seal off what's pouring out. 

He made his shield on the beach under golden sunlight and a dream. His first choice since collapsing in the sand and believing this was real. Now it's gone. 

Astarion stands slowly. Everything hurts. He's shaking. He fumbles back for the table he'd been crouched under and staggers around to lean against it, claws digging into the wood, a patch of skin sloughing off where he's carved through. He's panting, these thin, wheedling sounds torn from a hare in the hunter's trap. 

Alone with a corpse and a party. 

Karlach stirs first. A groan deep in her throat, wet like something's caught in her lungs. But she stirs and she moves and she sits up, and then she looks at him as though hooked.

She's bleeding anew through her eyes. He can feel her mind where it wraps around his—where it touches, no longer forced distance. Can feel the orange-black terror and confusion like something within his own chest. 

He can't think about what she's feeling. What any of them are. But he knows it's leaking out of him, muddying up the air as it gushes forth. Months spent tucked and folded and hidden and it takes to freedom like he wishes he could, unhindered as it runs. As it reaches all the others and curls like a stray dog to whine at their heels. 

Karlach stands up. 

In the moment between pushing off the ground and rising to her full height, time stops. Astarion sharpens. He's pressed against the table furthest from her. Shoulders in, claws curled. He knows his face is blank, impassive, because he has two godsdamn centuries of perfecting it but that doesn't matter without his shield. His fear can't hide. He can't hide. 

Karlach stands up and he blankets the room with enough terror to feel it in his teeth. 

She freezes. Goes so still she barely seems to be breathing but that doesn't help, not when all his monsters never bothered to breathe in the first place, not when he knows she's close enough to reach him before he could think about running away. 

The fear burns brighter. 

"I'm not going to hurt you," Karlach says. 

Astarion doesn't move. "I know."

That's a lie. And for the first time, he watches the party realize that—watches them feel what bleeds off his parasites without the disguise of a well-worn smile. Watches them know. 

Karlach's expression cracks. "Fangs," she whispers, tail limp against the ground. 

Astarion locks his teeth like he can bite back the fear, sweeping away all this useless fucking weakness, but he can't. She isn't even close but proximity doesn't matter, not when he fears both her and the fact she knows that, because she can feel his fear, all the twisting knives he's so used to swallowing whenever the party raises a hand or looks his way or just fucking breathes. 

Two centuries. Four months. 

Wyll stands next, moving slow, coming up alongside Karlach. Shadowheart helps Gale get his feet underneath him, Lae'zel examining the corpse with a slanted look. Ten feet between him and them. It's not enough. Too much movement. Too close. 

A pulse of something leeches out of Astarion's head and the party flinches as though struck. Araj's blood ripples. 

Karlach hunches. Drops her raised hands like they burn. "I'm not moving, I'm not moving," she says, helpless, words tripping over each other. Her tadpole is electric. He can barely feel it under his own terror. "We're staying over here, fangs, you're safe, you're fine—what can we do? What do you need?"

He hacks out what was meant to be a plea. Just rasps: "Bring her back."

Maybe it hasn't been a minute yet. Maybe her soul is still hovering overhead, waiting to be dragged through grey and dark to her body. Maybe he still has a chance.

Wyll makes a bewildered sound. Gale a cough. 

It's Karlach that just stares at him, eyes so wide, so confused. "She wanted to enslave you," she tries, like he'd missed that point. "That's not– gods, mate, no, you shouldn't want her back. Hells, you should've been the one to kill her after that shit. You don't need her."

She's sincere in a way that burns. Astarion chokes on something that might have been a laugh, starling-shrill and manic. 

Because he needs her. He needs her so godsdamn bad that if she doesn't come back, it means it was all for nothing. All the moments, all those attempts, everything he's bound and suffered and endured with the glimmer of a far-off horizon. 

Four months of training by himself. Four months of pressing a kerchief to his blood-streaked cheeks, wiping away the remnants of training, watching it be devoured in the smoke of a too-small campfire. Pulling out tendrils of illithid power in hopes of directing it, sending it out into the world, hoping for someone to practice on. Smiling when the party returns. Saying nothing. 

His thoughts lurch in that direction, pulling up each memory to watch in sickening order. The performance of his own failure. 

But it isn't only his own thoughts. He realizes this a moment too late. 

Because without his shield, those memories reach out to the party. 

Astarion punctures through his tongue as he bites down, fencing screams like it can muffle the reveal. But he's thinking and thinking more and they spill out and he can feel that the party is seeing them, that the party is getting what he's worked so fucking hard to hide, and he can't hold it back. 

"Stop," Astarion gasps, ragged, pitiful. "Stop it, stop looking–"

"You're doing it," Karlach says, just as frantic. "It's you, I don't know how to stop it–"

Another flash of shattering glass in his palms, licking at the shards for even the nostalgia of blood, trying to feed his tadpole before it consumes him, knowing he has to try again, knowing he's going to try again, knowing it doesn't matter, bleeding, trying–

No shield. But Astarion grapples for a memory of starvation and slams that over the gap. 

It's no specific time, just another of many where the world faded to amorphous shapes and he lost detail for swimming colours through the mist—agonizing but familiar. The party already knows he gets hungry. They can fucking drown in this memory instead of looking at anything else.

Karlach stifles something that makes Astarion's chest go tight. All the party's heartbeats patter on, a racetrack to nowhere. Maybe they have saliva pooling under their tongues, a hollow in their gut, all his reflected grief. 

But this is less tangible. Emotions without anything attached. A scene instead of the story. 

In that reduction, Karlach straightens, tail limp on the ground but mind starting to settle. Plumes of smoke twine around her neck. 

"Okay," she says, still this caution. "Okay. Not seeing anything, mate. It's gone. No more memories."

What miserable fucking mercies. 

But then, hesitant: "What was that?"

"Nothing," Astarion hisses. He's shaking again, one deep within his bones, through the teeth of the tadpoles. "Fucking nothing. Just stop it."

"It's not us, fangs, I swear," she says, like a confession, only she's saying it isn't. "We're just–"

But then she pauses. Casts a glance at the others. Realizes. 

"Not a curse." Karlach shifts weight between her feet unhappily. "That's just– that's your mind, isn't it? Nothing from Araj?"

It was supposed to be. 

Having this realization should mean nothing, but something goes raw in Astarion's chest, all gruesome hurt. He bares his teeth without meaning to.

"But that means you offered yourself to her willingly," Karlach pushes, and underneath the heavy cloak of fear-fear-fear her determination burns bright. An axe she hopes is enough for the problem. "That it was you."

Then Astarion just– snaps. 

"Because I could understand her," he snarls. "Because she'd be the kind of master I know how to deal with. The kind of master I can predict instead of–" he waves a furious hand at the party "–all your stupid fucking sentiment and heart and acting like you give a shit! Like you care!"

It's the dam that's held back his entire existence, the river he lets course by. But it all has to end up somewhere. And one day, it has to be released.

And now, standing over a corpse and a chance, it is.

"She would have owned me and I would be fine," Astarion snarls. He brandishes a rictus sneer, blood drooling from gums to coat his teeth. More projected memories, more silhouettes through tent fabric as he curled around starvation and the hollow roar in his gut. Newer. Not the old. Not the kennel. He clutches to a miasma of shattered terror and devours that instead of Cazador. "At least she would just hurt me instead of never telling me her fucking commands! At least she would be easier than you!"

Karlach's mouth opens. She wants to say something. But not this time. Not this fucking time. 

"Don't try to hide it, dear," Astarion spits. "You said it yourself. He's ours."

She bristles. Eyes go wide. 

"You told us to say that." Her tail lashes the ground. "To put some ownership on you—you said it would help! That other people wouldn't try anything!"

Astarion laughs. It's an ugly sound. He's an ugly thing. 

"And they wouldn't if you had just done it from the beginning." His nails bite into his legs, nothing left to shred on his wrists, blood sluggish where it tries to stitch him back together slower than he can tear himself apart. "If you had just owned me rather than acting like I was free!"

"You are free," Karlach says, brittle. "You aren't our slave."

There she fucking goes again.

"Stop this," Astarion snarls. "Just fucking stop it. You always do this! Always pretend like it's all companionship and love and maudlin heroism instead of control!"

He chokes on something. A sob, a scream. "I can't do this. I can't keep trying to figure out your rules when you won't tell me and nothing I do is ever right and I–" 

Karlach reaches. "Astarion–"

"Stop it!" He shrieks. "Stop playing coy, stop pretending, we both know! We both fucking know! Lying about it does nothing–"

The shield doesn't protect him now. Everything comes boiling up, memories so vivid he could touch them, racing behind his eyes: Gandrel, eyes dark in an abandoned cellar, the crossbow, I asked whether they would promise to put you down if you proved to be the monster I know you are—a rapier through dirt and stomach, pinned to the ground, claws digging into shoulders, spells cupped between palms—iron from a camp of six and its confirmation upon the morning—empty bottles and no questions asked—deals made—don't bite people–

Astarion screams. 

Every beaker shatters, a tidal storm of shards. One tadpole gets under his orbital socket and goes supernova, cartilage crunching, another tooth cracked with how hard he bites down. Hands over his ears but the sound is all cerebral, all mental. A mass grave before its inhabitants have become corpses yet. 

Then it drifts away, and the ambiance becomes the chime of falling glass. Harsh breathing. Five heartbeats. 

The dam breaks and the river flows. So it goes.

The party recovers faster, this time. By the time Astarion stirs to find his cheek pressed to stained floorboards, they're already sitting where they'd been knocked back. Not standing. Tensed like arrows to be loosed. 

Astarion sits up, rocking like a drunkard. He breathes through it but all his adrenaline has bled away, leaving ugly exhaustion in its wake. Nice while it lasts. Grief when it leaves.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows more than a minute has passed. Araj is too far gone for resurrection. She's dead. 

That's it. Four months of freedom, of trying, and it dies with her. A last chance gone like he should have known it would. To think he'd thought himself incapable of childish hopes and yet followed those chances like wayward stars, desperate at their heels. Cazador always called him brainless.

Astarion laughs wetly. It doesn't fucking matter anymore, does it? He isn't making it out of this room alive. 

So he just spits strips of flesh onto the ground, shards of tooth clattering out alongside. A grisly feast for whatever rats come afterward. Hazy eyes. 

Less destructive than the first time, only more potions shattered, multicoloured whorls over the stones. Galaxies on grey. He hadn't known he could do this; that the tadpoles were anything but mental. Even Z'rell and Araj had only attacked other parasites. 

Well. Maybe he's just fucking special. 

As if thinking about them is enough, there's a rush of heat in his eyes. Teeth gnaw deeper into flesh untouched, shield down, defenses ruined, just open passage. He whines, a soft, miserable sound, but still they snake out, flashes of divine fire as Priestess Gut promises she'll keep him well-fed, as Marcus asks where his handler is, as Balthazar sets a noose within his ribs. As Araj cups his jaw and asks what he'll give her.

He's always been a slave. He's always known this. And still they're asking. 

He fists at his hair. Tears out strands tacky with grime and blood, falling around his shoulders. The pain can't ground him, not anymore, not with tadpoles singing his every thought to the wider world at a volume impossible to ignore. 

He knows this is the end. He knows he's pushed too far, gone too deep, done everything possible to undo all these months of ducking his head. 

It's just–

He's so tired.

"I'm your slave," Astarion rasps. "You're my master. Stop pretending like it's any different."

There's a sound. A sob, almost—Karlach's, by the way her tadpole flutters. Her face keeps swimming in his eyes, blurry with mania. Astarion bares his fangs in the approximation of her direction. She ripples like seen through water. 

Oh. He's crying. 

The tears bead on his cheeks, stained where they mix with Araj's blood, where they drain dust from the hollows. He cried with Marcus, too. Tried to pretend it was just the pain of administrating tadpoles but he has no such avenue here, only his own hunched shoulders and hitched breath. Just the weakness that spreads feathered wings through his chest. 

He'd thought it was enough. Thought that maybe, just maybe, he could finally push through to see the other side. 

"I made it so far," Astarion says, more to the corpse than anyone else. Because she's a corpse that won't be coming back, that doesn't have gravedirt or a master to bow before. She was going to be his master. She was going to free him.

And now she's dead. 

He makes a whistling noise on this side of the tragedy. The room smears until it's just Araj's head where it sits against the dias, slumped in with hair curtaining over her face. Blood puddles underneath. Tears continue to fall. "I made it so far," he repeats, breathless, on the precipice of a laugh because gods, isn't this fucking fitting? That he makes it to the very end—that he gets close enough to picture it—and then it's stripped away. 

It's honestly a blessing Cazador never tried teasing him with freedom. Astarion can already feel himself begin to break. One more push and he'll shatter. 

"Fangs," Karlach says, so quiet, tadpole incandescent even as she tries to rein it back. "Astarion. You aren't our slave."

If it's meant to be a comfort, it's a poor one, considering how her hands shake in her lap. But Astarion doesn't think it was supposed to be a comfort. He thinks it was supposed to be the truth. 

He looks at her. No façade of humanity, now—his tears dry up and his breathing alongside, unnatural stillness, skin stretched over skeleton. 

"You aren't," Karlach says, half a plea. "You're your own person, fangs, that's it, that's it. No one owns you. Not anymore. You're free." 

This time, his laugh isn't wet. It's just hysterical. It screeches up his throat and stakes his tongue, livid as lashings, a violet pulse in the shared cerebral space. He laughs like he's dying. He laughs like he's dead. 

Karlach stiffens. What exudes from her mind is lily-pale, stricken through like sickness. She looks so sad. 

"I'm not free," Astarion rasps, nearly a hiss. "I never was. And now I can't be, since you killed her."

Something flashes over Karlach's eyes. "Araj? Why–" she breaks off, brows furrowing, glancing back at someone else he doesn't have enough focus to recognize. Just faceless faces. Only he doesn't have to take one of them home, because they'd never fuck a monster, and he's already proven himself there. The laugh keeps biting at the tip of his tongue. He wants to laugh until Cazador rips it out. 

Astarion gestures blindly at the body. "She was going to save me," he says, more a croak, layered nerves and resignation. "I needed her. And now she's dead."

Another glance at the party. Wyll, maybe. He doesn't try to look. 

"Araj wanted to enslave you," Karlach says carefully, like there are wires she needs to step over. She goes to lift her hand and freezes when another pulse of fear-fear-fear surges from Astarion's skull, because even knowing he's about to die doesn't mean he won't stop being scared of it. He's always scared. It's all he's ever had. 

Her expression cracks. But she pushes on. "She wasn't– that isn't saving, fangs. It isn't."

Astarion doesn't have the air to laugh so he just makes a dull, hoarse noise, a shade too much like water in lungs. He holds her gaze with the most steadiness he's had since the night of Wyll's transformation, when she'd slotted herself as the one holding his leash. Since he understood.

It seems she never did. Never wrapped her mind around what was actually happening. 

He'd envy her if he wasn't just so fucking tired.

"The tadpole only mutes my master's commands," Astarion says. Cazador's name doesn't come to his tongue. Too tangible. Too much. "I need someone to show me how to sever them completely before the Absolute's power is gone. Then I'd have been free."

Astarion looks down at Araj. At what's left of her, separated in twain, all splayed limbs and hollow eyes. He bares his teeth in a corpse's smile. Blood beads on the corners. "Three commanders. I had three chances. Now I have nothing."

Something gutted crosses the gulf between them all. Astarion's tadpoles are still an ouroborus, devouring each other as they fight to unearth memories, to expose what he's tucked so desperately underneath, every emotion released and left to rampage. This raging grief patters against his skull. His vision swims. Tears or irreparable damage. 

He thinks about Korrilla, about Raphael. About the sharp-eyed druid at the Grove that had asked them to step in the sunlight. About Gandrel. About waking up under golden sunlight and knowing: I do not belong here.

He's a show that's gone on too long. Curtains waiting to close on an actor that refuses to acknowledge his cue, that keeps saying lines from something lighthearted despite how the orchestra plays for a tragedy. There's no rose for him. Not for the dog that was never loyal enough to Cazador to matter, but was still made from too many of his pieces to survive. 

Maybe it would have been better to find his death on the beach, to settle into his deserved role without these months of hovering on the inhale that he has a chance. Maybe the party was their own kind of punishment.

Maybe they'll make it fast, when they kill him. 

Astarion opens his eyes, though he can't remember when he closed them, and regards Karlach blearily. His head lists. A fuzzy sort of submission, hearing the guillotine begin its rise to the final terminus. Down it falls. He's ready. 

Then, quietly: "Why the commanders?"

Astarion blinks. 

Karlach stays hunched over, not moving, but she's holding his gaze and her tadpole has sharpened to something focal. Burning this thought bright enough she doesn't have to look at any others. 

"Why the commanders?" She repeats, when he doesn't respond. "Was it– did they have something special? To train you?"

They were nothing special, not really. They were just there. 

He doesn't know why she's asking. 

"Jaheira said only the upper echelons of True Souls knew the truth about the Absolute," Astarion says eventually. "So only they would know how to use their tadpoles. Others wouldn't."

"But Balthazar didn't have one," she guesses. "And Z'rell wasn't willing."

"Araj would have," he rasps. "She would have trained me. She wanted a spawn."

Karlach closes her eyes. "Right," she whispers. "Okay. Okay, fangs. But did it have to be her? Could it be someone else?"

It could have been, in the same way Cazador could have chosen any other spawn to be his favourite but didn't. In how he knows the feeling of silk sheets more than the lines of his own face. 

He doesn't want to say it. Like speaking will weave it into existence, like it hasn't always been true. 

"No one else would accept me," Astarion says. Fouled blood pours down his throat. "Even under the Absolute spawn are to have handlers, and they aren't trained. But she would have. She would have trained me."

She was going to. She had accepted. She was his last chance. Now she's dead. 

"But did it have to be a commander?"

Astarion frowns. 

He– doesn't know what she means by that. 

"Because Araj didn't seem trained," Karlach says. "Not sure what it takes to break your commands but I know a brute when I see one, and the way she used her worm was all that. A warhammer."

What?

A face peels from the shadows. Wyll.

"She mentioned strengthening illithid powers," he says, and his voice is soft and quiet and he doesn't move towards Astarion at all. "And that she was newly made a commander; if that's true, then her tadpole is newly acquired."

"And I don't believe she had only one," Gale says, emerging somewhere from the side. Astarion's peripherals bleed out until the entire party is there, no longer faceless. He has more to concentrate on. "Not with the behavior of her attack, nor how she wasn't loyal to the Absolute. That speaks to me of a young arrival but quick climb through any means necessary, including an increase in the initial power."

Karlach blanches. "She willingly took more of those fuckers?"

Gale stays quiet, for a moment. His mind is a jagged mess of loose wounds, control torn from it too many times today, artillery through a castle wall. His hands lace together. Blood has smeared into the edge of his beard. 

He isn't looking at Astarion. 

"I think she did," Gale says. "I think that is the source of her strength, not training."

"She wasn't a good option," Wyll says, like that's definitive. "Even if she was trained—there was nothing in her that wanted to help, and she would have found ways around it." A tension in his jaw. "And to tell her about the commands or the goal of getting rid of them is to give her a weapon against yourself, one she'd use."

Astarion flexes his claws. She was going to train him. It was going to work. It had to. 

"She's best dead," Karlach says, a subtonal growl. "That's for fucking certain. But then who else? Because I don't trust that Z'rell bitch, either."

"Z'rell is a fanatic," Shadowheart says. She holds his gaze when he looks at her, perched upon the edge of the dias, legs crossed and eyes full of this silvered consideration. "There is nothing we can threaten her into obeying that she fears, and nothing we have that she wants. Maybe completing Ketheric's mission could be a bargaining chip, but that's putting too much power into her hands by telling her what we want."

Wyll's brow furrows. "Another True Soul?" He hedges. "Surely there are others powerful enough, or specialized in this field."

A pause as the others digest that. Astarion's head lists as though drowning. 

From where she's near the door—she locked it, maybe, maybe, the door is locked—Lae'zel frowns, ears pinned. "These are ghaik abilities," Lae'zel points out. She makes an odd clicking noise in the back of her throat. "Perhaps Kith'rak Voss would know. He has battled them for decades; he could know of a method of strength the ghaik use."

"There's merit to that," Gale agrees. "If not him, then other scholars; the study of vampirism has infatuated many in the past, and your situation is remarkably unique. Little doubt we could find someone with keen ideas to try, so long as they were properly vetted."

Karlach straightens, tail flicking near the shore of a spilled potion. "Maybe Jaheira? If she's worked on both the worms and vamps before?"

She turns to him and he doesn't flinch, too confused, clutching for understanding like fingertips off the edge of a cliff. "You said you need to break them before losing the Absolute's power," she says, still cautious, but some of that frenzy is scrapped away now that there's something to reach for. "So it's not happening now, right? Keep the Absolute up and they stay quiet?"

Astarion stares at her. At all of them. At the corpse in their midst and the confusion that fills where she used to be.

His voice is less than nothing. "What is this?"

What are you doing?

Karlach's expression breaks. The fervour of the moment bleeds out to raw wounds, intermixed with his own stringent terror. No shield. No separation. He feels her mirrored pain like a rapier to the gut. 

She inhales something thick. "Okay," she says, soft, as though to be too loud is to send him flying away. "Okay. I'm going to say some stuff, yeah? And you're going to listen."

Another command. He goes stiff. 

Karlach waits until he's looking at her, until their eyes are locked. Red against orange. 

"Astarion, you aren't our slave."

He goes to laugh again—because gods, are they really trying to argue that after these past four fucking months—but Karlach just shakes her head. A metallic drumbeat starts in her chest.

"No, you listen," she says, sharper now, "because this shit needs to be said no matter whether you believe me or not—you aren't our slave. We aren't your masters. You're just the asshole who watches our back and keeps us on our toes and makes me laugh. That's it. That's it, okay?"

She gestures to the rest of the party. "And this is us figuring out how we're going to keep you safe," Karlach says. "Either by nabbing a different True Soul or some other fucker who might know how. Hells, maybe stealing the Absolute's power direct. Whatever it takes. That's what we're doing, because you're our friend, and we're going to help." 

What?

He just asked them to stop lying. Their emotions only show these low-banked flames of pain and horror but they must be lying. It doesn't make sense.

"You wouldn't," Astarion says. "You're– you're all heroes, you wouldn't risk the Absolute. You need to save the world."

The air punches out of Karlach's lungs. "Saving the world includes you."

He falters. It isn't conscious, but something slips in his mind, falls out where it had once been stable. Broken glass. 

"You won't wait," he says, because he has to. Because they have to. Because this is how it works. "You're heroes. I'm a monster. You have to save the world."

"The fuck we are," Karlach says hotly. "You just told us you think you're our slave and the only way to save yourself is through the Absolute; we aren't doing shit until we have the full story, and we aren't getting it when you're terrified out of your mind."

She shakes her head, hackled and incredulous. "What we're doing is going back to Last Light Inn. Only question is whether we're nabbing a True Soul before leaving."

Karlach waits again until their eyes are locked. "If killing the Absolute means your master comes back, then we're not killing the Absolute. Not yet. That's it."

"She's threatening the entirety of the Sword Coast," Astarion says, not quite a shout, but close enough it hurts. "She's– got Wyll's father, and Raphael's deal, and enough power to attack Baldur's Gate. You have to stop her. You're heroes. That's what you do."

"I–" Karlach lets out a strangled sound. "Now you're arguing against us trying to help you," she whispers. "Gods, mate, I don't understand. What do you want?"

The room goes silent. Just the drip of spilled potions and shallow breath. 

Within Astarion's mind, the ground fissures. 

For the first time of this nightmare, his tadpoles falter—because there are no easy memories to shovel into the wider world. They fill the cerebral air with the feeling of holding Lae'zel's daggers for the first time, of wrapping bandages around meazel wounds and remembering to smile over the agony, of digging his face into boar bristles like they could drown out Wyll's screams. 

What do you want?

Then he trips, and his mind falls down, down, down.

The hand on his jaw is pale. The eyes are the right shade of red. The bricks in the walls are exactly as many as he knows there to be. The memory isn't clear enough to know which one but he knows the taste of it, in the same instinctual awareness that there is something stalking him in the dark. All the corners with their familiar ghosts. The sour stench of the expected. So it goes. 

For four months he has done everything in his power for one miserable purpose. It's not really a want. It never has been. It has only been the cutline between eternity and an ending. Why he survives and accepts death in equal measure. Because he survives here. He doesn't survive– there. 

I can't go back.

Astarion resurfaces. The room is still dark and cold, but it isn't the kennel. Isn't the bedroom. Is just the chasm where a woman used to breathe, now home to five strangers and the dead man who pretended like he knew them. 

Karlach chokes on something. She's crying, he realizes vaguely. Steam off her cheeks. 

"You won't," Karlach swears. "Gods, Astarion, you're never going back. I won't let it happen. I can't."

He's already off-kilter. But something of the raw horror in her voice throws him further.

It's not just her—the entire party is coiled up, tadpoles macabre where they stitch together, united for a singular whole that aches like snapped bone. Astarion keeps his looks light as he flicks between them all, trying to–

To understand. 

"You aren't going back," Karlach says, so quiet, but it's echoed through air and mind alike. Tadpole and tongue in conjecture. Her gaze burns. "If you don't trust us, trust that we don't do that. Wyll didn't kill me. Lae didn't give us to Vlaakith. Shads helped us with Shar. Gale worked around Raphael's deal. No masters. No going back. Not ever. Just–"

She closes her eyes. Reopens them. "Just let us take you to the Inn. Please." 

Astarion's hands are shaking. 

They are in a room with a slaughtered True Soul who was supposed to save him. He took hold of Gale's mind to puppet the man naught an hour prior. He tried to push his chains into another's hands directly in front of them. He called them owners. He called them masters. 

And Karlach is crying. And Karlach is pleading for the party to be allowed to risk themselves and their position and their lives and the world for the sake of a spawn who was never enough of a person to help himself. 

What do you want?

Astarion doesn't talk. If he opens his mouth, he doesn't know what will pour out—more attacks, more deflections, more arguments against what he can't understand. More of this all-encompassing terror of the unknown. A god in an alley speaking of forever. A woman from a war that asks to be listened to. 

None of this makes sense.

But when Karlach stands, Astarion stands too. 

Chapter Text

When Astarion stands, he's strangely positive he'll fall back down. 

His legs shake like reeds in the wind, drowned in the docks. Cutting away his shield cut away his pantomime of strength, leaving him as just a phantom where he had once been cloaked, psychosense rotten like an upturned grave. The part of him that remembers cowering more than resisting wants to fall. Says it'll be easier. It'll save the pain of the party grinding down that rebellion themselves. 

But Karlach keeps a careful distance. Just hovers as Astarion gets a hand onto the toppled table behind him, claws digging into the wood for stability, every angle hackled. Her eyes weigh on him. Everyone does. And still they allow him space. 

He doesn't understand anything that's going on. 

Standing helps, a little. Lets him pretend he's on his feet of his own accord instead of too great a terror to go back down and face the consequences there. 

Though the room is full of its own waiting consequences. Whatever Astarion did left cracks through the stone, snaking outward in fractals, claw marks, punctures. He can trace them to where he was curled up, the epicenter of a slaughter. They're mirrored on his cheeks. Lines like broken glass. 

They aren't bleeding. He doesn't know if that's because he's grown too strong or if he's losing something he needs more than blood. 

But he's standing and he's not fallen over and he's alive. All of these facts are incongruous but they are true; he's alive and Araj's last cut-off scream still echoes against the walls. 

Her corpse is still here, too. Karlach, midway through padding over to the rest of the party, pauses to look down. One of Araj's hands curls near her boot, fallen at such an angle her shoulder wrenched from its socket. She's splayed there as though in unwilling slumber, disregarding how her head is against the dais some fifteen feet away. 

"We should probably hide that," Karlach says. 

Wyll lets out a vague, half-strangled laugh hiding something underneath. "We should," he agrees, wane. "We should also lock the room and plant a trail and clean up as best we can, if we want to be smart about this."

A beleaguered nod, Shadowheart pushing a hand through loose strands of hair. "It will be discovered regardless," she says definitively. "All the commanders are too entrenched in Moonrise's hierarchy. But she seems… isolated, newly risen. She'll be found eventually, but if we play our cards right, we can keep it for a day or two."

Shadowheart scans the room. "Making it seem as though Araj left herself, maybe," she muses. "Pick up the clutter, prestidigitation the blood, turn off the alchemic flames. If the room seems undisturbed, anyone who comes to visit could think she's gone elsewhere of her own volition."

Karlach prods Araj's hand with her foot. "Then we either take her with us or shove her somewhere hard to see?" 

"Whichever is easier," Shadowheart agrees. "We have to keep them from noticing this if we want to be able to return."

Her words come out flawless, but without his shield, everything is more– bright. Condensed. Astarion can feel how Shadowheart is speaking perfectly fine but unease is cloying up the underside, antipathy too weighty for focus to temper back. 

The reasoning isn't hard to guess. They've slaughtered one of the commanders and are wanting to come back. Opening that door unlocks many more, few of which are friendly. Araj was easy to kill; others will not be. 

Balthazar's crooked finger, corpse-green. Black nails. Tilted head. 

Astarion is still standing, but he shakes against the table. 

Karlach exhales. "Dunno how long we'll be gone," she admits. "Maybe a day, if we're lucky. Then we'll just have to hope no one finds out."

Her words are firm, but her mind pales. Dark fire, a cambion's voice. She knows what was paid to get them here in the first place. 

And still she nods. Still she shakes out her arms and says, "Right. Shads, Lae, let's get this room cleaned up; Wyll, if you can find a corner to shove her in; and Gale–" she makes a vaguely arcane-esque gesture "–you want to whip up the teleport thing? Far away from the door."

Even in wake of all this, she's their leader, and the party moves to follow. The room comes together quickly under their ministrations, woven like an elegiac piece of something worse. Karlach leaves charred handprints in each table she rights but they aren't out of place amidst the alchemic fires, a farrago of skill and incompetence. Lae'zel kicks shattered pieces of glass into an alcove and Shadowheart whisks all potion remnants into some other plane of existence. Gale holes up in the far back, purple lighting the underside of his chin, air heavy with withheld power. 

Astarion stands in the center of the storm. No one touches the table he's got most of his weight braced upon. He appreciates that. Gets caught up in the spiral of appreciating it that somewhere in the midst, he blinks, loses time, and comes back as Gale straightens upright, hair brushing the nape of his neck. The wider room is a facsimile of what it was before they got there, fires dormant and torches a low, guttering presence. 

Gale presses his hands together. The rune Jaheira left on his palm glints like oil on water. A dark ichor drips from his fingertips, not quite blood but similar. The cost to pay when strength is worn through. 

"The runic circle is ready," Gale says, deliberately calm. "Are we?"

Karlach's breath whuffs out. She swipes a hand through the frayed ends of her braid—she isn't looking at Astarion directly, a flash from the corners, waiting for him to confirm. 

He should. It's what they're expecting from him. He shouldn't want to be in Moonrise even after vomiting up the guts of his plan to be trained, because this is corpses and dead things rising, and teleportation out is safe. Maybe they said more about the plan but Astarion hadn't really heard, given how he isn't thinking, how he is barely anything more than a body waiting for the other shoe he knows must fall.

And yet now he knows Gale is waiting, palms spread before an arcane gateway, for a route back to Last Light Inn. 

To Jaheira. 

Astarion's face stays calm, collected, stays perfectly fucking composed but the party still flinches as something jagged radiates outward. Those hidden lines on his cheeks flare, pulsating like a fire underneath, a drowning man's lunge to stay afloat. 

It isn't the specific memory of when it happened. He's still clutching too hard onto starvation for that one to slip out. But he thinks they can see the silhouette of it, blood smeared over old stone bricks. A relief they were leaving Last Light Inn and not going back. That he wouldn't have to see her again. 

But now they're going back. And with his shield shattered and mind a wasteland and not resembling sanity at his wherewithal, Astarion cannot stop them from finding out. From discovering four months of betrayal now gifted to the hero who has cut no secrets about being willing to put down threats and–

Snap.

Astarion flinches. Blinks.

It's Lae'zel. She has her hands together, palms cupped, the tailend of a clap. She's closer than he remembers her being, right against his side. The rest of the party ripples like ghosts in circular thinking but he can see her, her hands. The slits of her eyes. 

"Focus," she tells him. "Your ears alone. Listen."

She claps again. Astarion hisses something unconscious, hackling where the sound deafens in this enclosed space. It echoes. His claws curl. 

"Lae," Karlach says hesitantly. "I don't–"

"He is listening," Lae'zel corrects, nodding to him. "Listening through his ears instead of ours. See? He was beginning to meld until the sound pulled him back."

And just like that, Astarion focuses. She holds his gaze firmly.

"You are escaping your mind," Lae'zel says. "Existing through ours over your own. You do not know how to stay singular. You are melding."

Melding. The word isn't quite right—not violent enough, broken glass through his cheeks—but some part of Astarion nods. Acknowledges the facts of it. 

Shadowheart has an old injury that muffles things from her left side. He shouldn't know that unless he had heard the world through her head. 

Three tadpoles, no shield. Existence both opens in acceptance and doesn't keep him contained. A body without skin. 

The party ripples, tangential understanding. Astarion is still beaming out starvation with every passing second but everything else keeps slipping by as well, muddying up the air. They can see it happening. Hells, they've been on the other side. 

Gale is missing details in this alchemically-darkened room due to human eyes. Karlach's chest burns with every inhale. Wyll still struggles to control the instinctual movements of his tail. 

Gods, there's so much.

"He's… melding," Karlach says, as though tasting the concept. "How d'you know that?" 

"Githyanki ardents train for lifetimes to reach the minds of others," Lae'zel says. "That path was not for me, but still I know of its effects."

A blink. "But why now? Why not before?"

Lae'zel looks at him, then. Slitted pupils, narrowed eyes. As though asking for permission. 

Whatever is in his face must give it. "Because he had hidden himself," she says. "A deliberate protection. Minds are not invisible without effort. He raised that shield himself. It is only now we are seeing it fail."

That's a polite way of phrasing it. Astarion cleaves through his lips and says nothing. 

Lae'zel is still looking at him. He can't read what's in her eyes. 

"Those daggers are yours," she says, quieter now. "I did not give them with the intention of taking them back."

Ah. She saw that. Heard it, saw it. His hand falls to his hip, curls around the leather-bound hilt. 

Karlach exhales. He can feel how her mind is there, a smear of bright in the dark, but he tries to focus on his own arms, his own legs. Stay within his own body. 

"Okay," she says, not enough air to carry it out. "Okay. We'll– deal with that. Later. Let's just get back to the Inn."

Wyll nods, haggard. The party follows quietly to the back of the room, where Gale's runes are set.

It's strangely beautiful, despite the macabre canvas drawn upon. Multi-faceted layers of runes, interlocking and interlaced offset to form a spiral instead of concentric circles, all letters and characters he doesn't understand. A faint purple glow emanates from the lines. 

Gale kneels, pressing his hand to the knot at its center. The light redoubles to carve his features in stark contrast, deep shadows and pallid elsewhere, a corpse walking. Even a brief moment in his head showed Astarion how heavy the orb is where it sits within his chest. It's larger than he thought. He thinks it broke and regrew the wizard's ribs around it. 

A murmured word and the outer edges lift up like barbed wire. Gale's brow furrows, knuckling deeper, and then the light settles—thrums in a heady, anticipatory way. Ready. 

And not a moment too soon, as the stone beneath the line begins to fade for something cosmic. Not quite a portal, not yet, but a connection made. The lines on Gale's palms sing. 

Then–

"Gale?" 

It's Jaheira's voice, tinny and ethereal. She's not here, not present, but his emotions are still bleeding out. Astarion feels something bolt from his mind. Shadowheart's heels click on the ground. He bites through his lip again.

Gale keeps his hands above the rune without activating it fully. "It is us," he says. "We're returning to the Inn, if you please."

A pause. 

When Jaheira's voice returns, it's flat. "That is rather fast to have found the apotheosis of both Ketheric Thorm and your wayward deity."

Gale winces. "The Absolute is not our deity," he corrects. "And no, we haven't broken ground on those fronts, not yet. But we are coming back."

There is a low, rasping sound, like a blade drawn from sheath. A hum, considering. Gale's hand stills over the runes. 

Then Karlach pushes forward. Emotion of a type Astarion can't decipher makes her burn, embers spilling down her back, ports coughing out black smoke. She pads to the other side of the circle, leaning in like it's a physical opening. "Hey– we're coming through, no one else is with us, we've hidden the thing. But can you not be there?"

This pause goes long enough it echoes. 

More ambiance, like the click of boots or crease of leather. Jaheira's voice is perfectly flat. "I'm going to ask for clarification, cub."

Karlach glances back. Whatever Astarion had been going to say cuts off, jaw clicking closed. He doesn't know what to say. What could explain this? He had begged them to resurrect Araj and now cringes from even the mention of Jaheira. 

"When we teleport in," Karlach says. "Can everyone be somewhere else? Leave the room empty?"

Astarion can feel Jaheira lift her brows from here.

"You are asking whether you can teleport from the bowels of the Absolute into the last sanctuary against the shadowcurse, and you wish to have our defense of Harpers be elsewhere."

"When you say it like that it sounds bad," Karlach admits. "But. Yes."

Another moment passes. Astarion manages a furtive glance around the faces of the party—shadow-cast, considering. As though this is another obstacle akin to a goblin camp or sanctimonious grove. A hurdle to be stepped over.

"I do not suppose you will tell me why?" Jaheira asks flatly. 

Karlach's tail taps the runes, violet light over soot. "Hard to explain," she settles on. "Not the kind of shit I want to say while we're in Moonrise. But it's just us coming through, no one else. We're not a threat."

A lifetime ago, vines crawling up limbs, arrows shivering upon strings. Welcome, True Souls. 

Another sound of steel, as though a blade sheathed. Distant voices, a murmur against wood. 

Jaheira's tone remains steady. "I will be in the room, but there will be no others. This is the most I can offer you."

"Thank you," Karlach says. It is achingly relieved. 

Jaheira clicks her tongue and goes silent. 

Karlach nods to Gale. He does something and the connection deepens, thrumming as it switches from teleporting sound to preparing to teleport matter. Here, tucked away from the door in a barricade of tables and supplies, it buzzes like insectoid wings over a lake. 

This is it, then. A return to that he'd thought he'd never see again. Hibernating muscles perk up to shiver in anticipation. 

"I will go first," Lae'zel says. She unsheathes her longsword, not held outward but ready between her palms. A shifting of her stance. "To confirm if the heroine is there or not, and whether there are others."

"Me next," Karlach adds, looking at him. Her eyes are orange-yellow-black, each word big and deep and straight from where her heart used to be. "Because no one is fucking touching you. No one, fangs. We'll protect you."

He can't quite meet her gaze. 

Lae'zel disappears in a smear of violet, Karlach only a second behind and Wyll a second behind that. Their minds disappear from his cerebral tangle like a gutted wound, room losing half its voices and half its heartbeats, more like the kennel. 

Then those three are gone and it's his turn. His turn to go where he cannot return; to bring more than the party into this deathspiral. 

Astarion steps with some hesitance onto the circle—it feels like stone beneath his feet, only light and abstract heat to show it's anything else. The runes exhale shimmering motes of lavender around his ankles, spores in the deep night. It pulses like a thunderstorm. 

"Just breathe," Gale says, and drops his hand. 

There is a moment where Astarion knows. Where he stands on the circular runes and knows: this is going to hurt him. This is going to send him to Baldur's Gate. This is going to cut their pound of flesh for his betrayal. 

There is a moment where Gale's magic spirals around him, water and ice as it cuts through the shadow-dark miasma, and Astarion flinches, and he curls his claws, and he knows–

And there is a moment where Astarion opens his eyes to find himself within the Last Light Inn. 

It's an unfamiliar room, lacking windows and furniture, a single door embedded in the far wall. Wooden struts and flooring. The air hums with excess magic, drifting away in motes through air unburdened with alchemic poison or blood. No corpses here. No Araj. 

Karlach is stationed in the middle, Wyll right by her side, waiting on the precipice of a conversation but wanting everyone present for it. Their tadpoles slam back into his, emotions ripped raw and overwhelming—but the background noise is gone, no longer all the True Souls in Moonrise cluttering up the peripheries. He hadn't even noticed until they were gone. 

But they are a formless mass there, and here is just Jaheira. 

She is poised as though for battle, scimitars not drawn but hands set upon their hilts, stance upright and eyes flinty. Lae'zel has already taken up position within the enclosed room but Astarion thinks it wouldn't matter, should Jaheira decide they are to be culled. She hasn't made it this far into a hero's life by having a songbird's leniency. 

Druidic armour, a pale light around her fingers. The feeling of thorns so ancient they calcified into wood curling up his legs. Waiting for the party to strike so she can put them down with justification. Waiting for them to be the villains she believes. To defy her.

Cazador didn't like defiance. Astarion only knows how to bow his head. 

Well. That's not quite true. He knows how to run, too. How to cling to the beautiful, though incorrect, idea that if he just ran fast enough, he could leave it all behind. 

Marble dust and eternity. He doesn't run anymore. 

So Astarion goes docile as the circle flares again and Shadowheart comes through, breath punching out uncomfortably as though stolen by the journey. She categorizes the room quickly, noting the singular door, the insufficient torchlight. Her mace isn't drawn, but her hands glow. 

Gale comes through last, the circle thrumming as its master greets its other half. He scuffs his boot and the light quiets, simmering down to an imprint upon stone instead of an active thing. 

Then all seven of them are present, all seven within a room no larger than the chambers Astarion shared with Karlach and Wyll, and the door is closed, and they are looking at him. 

No protection. No shield. Only Jaheira cannot feel his emotions but she is the one watching him most closely, correctly noting the change in demeanor against the others—her eyes are bladed-sharp, face impassive but stance settled. A crackle of energy that has nothing to do with nature. 

The room is suffocating. He is suffocating. An odd affliction for one who doesn't need to breathe. 

Jaheira takes a step forward, pushing off the wall. Her hand stays on her scimitar. Her eyes pierce. 

Then Karlach thunders forward. 

She breaks the line of sight with her chest, bristling where she stands, and even from the back of her head Astarion can see how her jaw sets. Jaheira comes to a stop, brow lifting. He can't read her face. Can't decipher what she's thinking. 

Karlach has her own sort of guess, by the way her voice drops. "What'd you do to him?"

Jaheira's head tilts. "Hm?"

"He's fucking terrified of you," Karlach says, sharper now. "So what'd you do?"

Nothing. Nothing yet. It's the terror of what's planned. 

Jaheira pauses, at that. Goes quiet-still, contemplative, like the bowstring pulled taut by a hunter who debates whether the passing doe is worth risking an arrow. "Hm?"

She goes to say more but Wyll steps forward, shoulders curled. "Karlach," he murmurs. "I think he's always been scared."

Karlach's expression breaks. "I know, gods, he is, just–" she waves a desperate hand. "He's freaking out even more for her! Something's wrong!"

Jaheira's head tilts. Bird-like. 

"Freaking out," she repeats, eerily calm. "He appears passive to me."

Of course he appears passive. Statues and corpses dance at the same ballrooms in all the ways that matter. Astarion doesn't bare his fangs by a hair's thread. 

"On the outside," Karlach says. "But he's–" She casts a look to the rest of the party, something drawn in her face. "His worm gave him a– a wall, or something. Blocked all his thoughts off. Now it broke and I don't think we knew him at all."

Jaheira's expression doesn't change. Astarion doesn't know how to categorize it. 

"That's why we need to talk," Karlach says. "It's only us, no one else is coming through, we can close off the circle or whatever, but we need to talk to him. This shit needs to be cleared up."

"Talk all you wish," Jaheira says. "But I will be here."

Karlach stares at her. Embers spark between her teeth. 

"Look," she says, fisting her greataxe enough the wood smokes. "Lock us up in a fucking cell if you have to, but this is between us, not you. This is ours to fix."

"I am not leaving," Jaheira says simply. 

A half-strangled sound. "Gods, we'll answer any questions you have after, but this is about before we got here. Way before. It doesn't involve you." She grimaces, bravado going flat. "Maybe. Fuck, I don't know. Just– give us some time, that's it. Why do you even want to be here?"

"Because Marcus is dead." 

Astarion's mind goes white-hot. 

The entire party flinches as one, the memory of starvation ripped away in face of raw terror. Jaheira hums, moving between everyone's face—even as Lae'zel claps and Astarion shudders back into his own corpse with a gasp, the others only stagger and grit their teeth. 

Bereft of answers, she continues. "I found him within his cell, throat slit, scalped, dead for long enough to grow stiff. No others had time nor cause to visit him but Astarion." Her eyes glimmer, translucent. "There are few insights I can take from that, and none reflect favourably. There is only one of your number that can hope to dispel the idea you are all traitors seeking to destroy the Inn, and I am not keen to leave before I understand."

She found Marcus. She knows. 

There's a corpse, somewhere beneath their feet, one with a missing tadpole and an explanation that wasn't supposed to be given. 

Astarion already categorized the room. One entrance, one exit. Nowhere to run. 

"Fuck," Karlach says. 

"Fuck indeed," Jaheira says dryly, but her stance is far from joking. "So perhaps you understand why I am leery to allow you alone within my sanctuary."

Karlach closes her eyes. Reopens. Breathes. 

"We'll ask him," she says, and it comes out firm but her mind is a maelstrom of jagged spikes. "He'll decide, yeah? Let's– let him pick."

Then she turns to him, because apparently Astarion was the him in that equation. 

What threatens to come out is more of a cackle than a laugh, so Astarion strangles it down, just a huff of air through dead lungs to buy time. Without it, he's going to say something idiotic like uh or um or another blathering noise because there are few things he has been taught to fear more than silence. Always screaming, always singing, just so he wasn't alone beneath stone walls. 

The kennel is still there, every time he closes his eyes. This room is made of wood. That isn't enough of a difference to matter. 

Astarion's jaw clicks when it opens. Catches hesitation in the hinge. "Yes," he croaks, in what is so obvious a lie it is laughable. "Yes. She can stay."

Jaheira hums. Her head remains tilted. 

Karlach looks fucking gutted. "Okay," she says, almost a whisper. "Then– the room. Is it okay? Do you want somewhere else?"

Well. Yes, in truth. He'd like anywhere out of the shadowlands, to feel sunlight and running water and rooms entered without permission. But that isn't really an option, is it? He wants it. Therefore it is something he cannot have. 

This room presents precious few alternatives, and yet all his eyes can focus on is the door where it waits. Not a terribly impressive door, wood and weary. Not like the kennel. But everything is like the kennel to him. 

Astarion is in a room with six others, none of whom understand him, and they're asking what he wants.

He wants to lock the door, but then he can't get out. He wants to unlock the door, but then someone else can get in. Find some mystical way to enclose himself in stone so tightly he can't be touched and never see another wall again. 

Gods, he's so stupid. 

Some part of that bleeds out to the wider world, because Karlach looks crestfallen. "You aren't, fangs," she says, quiet. 

Her sentiment is nice, but he is stupid. You can't be told something for so long before it starts to be internalized, and he's clever enough to not just internalize but investigate. To wonder if it was true. 

It was. It is. Astarion could be reasonably intelligent, had to have been for a magistrate past he can't remember, but like so many others he called sibling, he is too fucked up and angry and obliquely terrified to be anything but stupid. All that potential made moot. 

"Lock the door," Astarion settles on, half a croak. "Then– heat. Light."

As opposite to the kennel as possible. 

"Right," Karlach says, nodding enough her braid frays where it brushes her chest. "Right. We can do that. Lae?"

Lae'zel casts a narrow sort of look at Jaheira, who matches it with one of her own, arms crossed. Six against one, and still she seems unbothered. Like this is all entirely rote, whether she leaves this room with six allies or six corpses. 

But when Lae'zel continues to stare at her, Jaheira steps away from the door. She makes it look as though it was entirely her own decision. 

Lae'zel clicks her tongue. Then grabs the door latch and just– squeezes. 

It crunches, because she is a githyanki warrior and it is mere metal, offering a sad little whine as a eulogy for its inner mechanisms. She twists for good measure and lets go, its casing thudding to the ground. A marred wound upon the wood.

"There was a lock," Jaheira says dryly. 

"And it was your lock," Lae'zel retorts. She shakes metal shavings off her hand. "You had the key. That is not a lock I can trust to stay closed if you betray us."

Jaheira tilts her head. Something considering in her eyes. 

Gale cups his palms, says mystical nothings, then releases—a dozen orbs of pale blue flit out, taking up residence in the corners of the room where they bob and sway in an unfelt breeze. Brighter than torchlight, and steadier alongside; multiple angles means the shadows can do nothing but dissolve, every angle lit up. Too cool a tone to be sunlight, but enough. 

Karlach strips off her armour, leather smoking as she starts to breathe faster, pulling more air through her ports. The room heats up slowly, the latent chill of magic beaten back for infernal warmth. Wyll offers a pulse of his own magic, just a flicker so the sulphur stays to the background, biting away the cold. 

Near the side, Shadowheart has her bag off, pawing through the opening with brows furrowed. She gets a hand in up to the elbow and emerges with a blanket. 

Then she nods at him. "This way," she says, an offer or request. 

Astarion goes. 

There isn't much room to maneuver but she finds an undisturbed back corner, one of Gale's lights drifting higher to avoid their heads. Her blanket—an odd, patchwork one likely picked up from some wayward ruined village, though he can't place it in his memories—gets laid out, edges crimped in like a creature's nest. She even folds it over so the prettier design is on top. He stares at it.

"You need healing," Shadowheart says, firm. "And so you're going to sit with your back to the wall, where you're able to see the entire room and the door is only half a dozen steps to your left, and you're going to be healed, Astarion. That's it."

Something shivering curls up in his chest. He can't place the emotion, nor its origin—nothing but this ramshackle confusion that would bleed from him if cut, so entirely does it consume him. 

So Astarion sits. Curls up like he had beneath Araj's desk, all those cracks in the stone radiating out from his eyes, only here there is worn fabric and a cleric knelt before him. 

Shadowheart pauses before reaching out, hand a fingerspan away. Her tadpole whines like a dog with a tucked tail. "Is touch okay?" She asks. 

There is nothing he can do but nod. 

Shadowheart closes her eyes. Light returns to her fingertips, twining around her wrists, and she sets her palm against his temple. 

It's distressingly immediate. The air stirs, minty and fresh, and Astarion sags before he can stop himself—her touch untangles tension so chronic he'd managed to ignore its presence. Acute lines drawn over his arms and back are dragged into something prowling the horizons, demonstrated through their absence. Pain fades. 

Astarion exhales, the first full capacity of air in what feels like days. His chest swells. He breathes. 

Shadowheart smiles a little. More tired than she was a minute ago, a pallid shade to her pretty green eyes. Astarion can barely categorize however many injuries he had, minor and lesser and greater and immovable, not past the haze of the day. There is skin over his wrists, again. His forearms are whole. 

"Hm," she says. Another pulse of light brackets her palm, hovering an inch above his head. "You're still injured, but… different. Mental, I think. I don't know how to reach them."

He can guess what that is, at least. The cracks carved through his cheeks, his skull. Were he alone, he could trace the journey where they needle under his skin. 

Astarion is not quite convinced those can be healed. That he hadn't pushed his parasites past the line of no return. 

Z'rell and Araj had only attacked other tadpoles. He turned that same power into something that devoured the very world around him, leeching through stone like tectonic fury. Evolution, maybe. Transformed it without transforming himself. 

It almost feels like there's a voice, tucked underneath his own thoughts. There are five presences from the party and the void where his subconscious wants another tadpole to fill in Jaheira's silhouette, but something murmurs beyond that he can't recognize. If they are anything at all, they're speaking to him. Trying to. 

Scars engrave across his face. 

Astarion doesn't try to listen to the mystery. Lets it murmur against the recesses of his consciousness and just focuses on Shadowheart, a shallow nod as response. 

Her lips purse. Deflected understanding, though Astarion doubts she knows much more than the fact he's lying again. "Wyll?"

From where he's helping the others shuck off the heaviest elements of their supplies, Wyll looks over. Whatever he sees in Shadowheart's face is enough to peel him off that group, digging through his own satchel. He heads over quickly.

Shadowheart stands, moving back, a rotation of cast. Only one standing before. It is a terrible thing, to be perceived. To know how they can feel the flux and roll of his terror when too many figures get too close, no matter how their tadpoles beam their intentions to him. 

When Shadowheart has gone to help Gale, Wyll crouches down to be on Astarion's level. He stays past the edge boundary of the blanket like a line in the sand. There is no rapier on his belt. 

"Here," he says, and offers his hand. 

Within is a vial of blood. 

Astarion isn't starving. But he's been clutching at a memory of starvation rather than let other memories slip out and even the sight of red lights up every sensory pattern he has, the world greyed out beyond the glass. 

Wyll keeps his hand open, palm up. Astarion takes it. Transactional. He doesn't know what the cost will be. 

The vial is warm under his hand. He can feel the residue of Gale's enchantment, keeping it at a palatable temperature no matter when it was taken. Latent eternity, depending on how long the magic would last. 

He's never drank in front of them before. He doesn't want to, one last defense, a final shield to hide his monstrosity from their heroic eyes. 

But one shield has already fallen and here, with the blood, he can't bring himself to hope they leave. 

Astarion pops the cap with his thumb, dangling against the neck where it's attached by mirrored hinges. The scent hits him like something tangible, hope made manifest, and he drinks. 

Glass clinks against his teeth. The room disappears. Any ploy at nonchalance evaporates as the heat overtakes him, coursing through long-dead veins and filling in the gaps Shadowheart's healing could only soften. It's a pathetic little noise that leaves him, dampened by the vial but still audible. He downs the rest of the contents. 

Then it's empty, and the heat fades, and he is within a corpse once more. Full. 

He can still feel the lines on his cheeks, the scars after an earthquake, but Wyll's gaze doesn't seem to linger on them. Maybe they're visible, maybe they aren't. It isn't like he has a reflection to check. 

A part of Astarion's fear settles to a buzz on the caps of his teeth. He is very good at being scared, but healing takes the bite away. The door is locked. The walls are warm and well-lit. Wyll is by him but with enough distance to pretend. 

Wyll is watching him, though. Not in the manner of a hunter who just watched a monster drink a bottle of blood but something more– sad, almost. Harder to read. He makes this sound Astarion can't decipher. 

"I'm sorry," Wyll says, quiet. "We thought we were helping you." 

The raw honesty of it makes Astarion blink. "You are," he rasps. "I–" I need it.

He draws off before he can voice that uncomfortable fact. 

Wyll shakes his head. "By doing it like this," he says, and gestures to the vial, empty now. "It would be easier if you just bit us, but we thought– we thought you'd appreciate the distance. That you could still feed without having to involve us."

Astarion's nails scrape against the glass. 

Of course it involves them. It's always going to involve them. His entire existence does, both what he shows and what he's afraid of. He's spent four months cringing and shrinking and cowering into his own skin, much too aware that the party will look at him and see a monster if he does not hide his nature. His hunts took place in darkness, scrapping his skin raw in passing rivers to ensure there were no traces left behind. Smiling thin around fangs. Trying to pretend as though sunlight is normal. And now here, with no prey or sun or ability to leave the firelight, just ducking his head and hoping the raging fury in his gut would stay smothered. That he would stay smothered. 

This he knew. This he understood.

And then Minthara cracked open his skull and in that wake, the party gave him blood. 

He hadn't understood that. He still doesn't, in truth. Every morning, someone presents him with a vial of blood and just– lets him drink. He pays nothing for it. They never miss a morning. They set up their own schedule so no one does it twice in a row to keep up their health. Just a vial and walking away. Gale collects it afterward to reapply the charms. Shadowheart supervises whoever bleeds to ensure it's done safely. They never watch. They never ask. It's just done. 

And now Wyll is saying that was on purpose.

Would he have preferred biting them? Astarion doesn't know. He doesn't know anything, right now. 

He should say something. The silence is stretching too long, too telling. 

Wyll makes another morose little sound. His tadpole sounds like an apology. But he just stands, pulling away, providing more distance past the line of the blanket. Disappears back to helping Karlach, to making sure the perimeter is checked, to building a bracket of space around Astarion. 

There's blood in his gut and a shivering confusion alongside. So he looks for more familiar things. 

Jaheira stands guarded at the door, as always. He watches her, for a moment. It isn't a surprise that she's watching him back. He is very used to being watched. It could be said that this is the first true memory he has. 

When Jaheira watches him, he knows she isn't Cazador nor Godey. He can't picture her flensing him apart to hear how he screams. She'd kill him, yes, because she is a hero and he is a monster, but she'd do it fast, efficient. If she decides he lies too much to give her answers, then all she needs to do is condense her questions and garner them from his second corpse. Simple. It would be easy. 

But Lae'zel has her own hand on her longsword, eyes narrowed. Gale has taken up perch over the teleportation circle, the runes passive where they wait for instruction, Shadowheart by his side with her own hands aglow. Karlach and Wyll take up the center, a barrier between him and Jaheira. 

Guards, almost. 

Astarion curls more upon the blanket. But he knows better than to hide, not now. There's too much at stake.

Begrudgingly, he lifts his head, smoothing his expression out as though he isn't strangled with relief for the blood in his mouth and magic softening his mind. As though he isn't curled up on the ground while they all stand around him, Karlach's face still smeared in Araj's blood. 

As though this is yesterday, and his shield was still up, and things were still normal.

"You're bleeding less," Karlach says.

Astarion blinks. After Shadowheart and Wyll's work, he shouldn't be bleeding at all. 

He checks his wrists as surreptitiously as he can manage with six pairs of locked eyes. Crease lines through fish-pale flesh, but he hasn't broken skin yet. Too paralyzed to do it, maybe. 

It's– odd. He's more used to having ragged wrists than he is having hale. They always heal back to how he was in the grave, when he dug himself out of nothing, and to recreate it is a type of pain he can control. Grounding. 

But he isn't bleeding now. 

"Less?" He asks. 

Karlach gestures vaguely at her head. "Your– worms. I can still feel you, but I'm not getting any memories."

Ah. Different type of bleeding. That's good, presumably. It's hard to cling to a memory of starvation with blood suffusing through his body but he's still wrapped his hands around one, keeping it at the forefront instead of anything specific—they can feel the ache in their gums instead of watching his tragedy play out. 

Not that it should matter. Because now, fed and swaddled and enclosed within a room of his request, he has to bare all those secrets himself. Now it's time to explain… all of this. 

Where does he start? What can he possibly say? It's out of place but conversation swirls behind his eyes, where Jaheira asked his age, his full name, because the party didn't know it. They don't know anything.

He'd told them he was a magistrate from Baldur's Gate. A few other innocuous lies as flavour text to match the amount of information they shared about themselves. Then Gandrel, then the bite, then–

Then he'd stopped saying anything at all, and they had stopped asking. 

He'd appreciated it. Fuck, he'd even enjoyed it—thinking himself more safe without the party getting inspiration from Cazador's past experiments, no competition to stake their ownership against. He'd played his part and held his tongue and bowed his head and scratched at anyone getting too close so he could play pretend that they wouldn't hurt him so long as he straddled the line of usefulness against unapproachability. To be a dick but not a bastard. He'd wanted that. 

Four months. It took four months before Karlach's eyes creased, a wild understanding beneath their glow. Fuck, fangs, he's still alive? 

A magistrate. Then a spawn. Then a slave. Then–

Something stills in his chest. Ice rises up his gorge. 

Do they even know Cazador's name?

His memory is a spotty, corrupted thing, but– Astarion doesn't think so. Can't remember saying Cazador, ever daring to let that name hit the air, not when others could hear. Too used to flophouses, brothels, dark alleys. Where he was merely a pretty young thing to ensnare others and make no mention of their final destination. 

The party doesn't know Cazador. They don't know what he does. They don't know his name.

And now Astarion has to explain everything. He has to tell his new masters about their matched opponent, though this isn't a battle they could win. He's Cazador's. He always has been. That's why he's done all that he has, in a fool's hope to shuck off what is ingrained beneath his feet. Dogged under these masters for the chance of escaping another whose mere shadow makes him heel. 

Lae'zel claps. 

A psionic black flashes before his eyes and Astarion resurfaces, terror clenched between fangs. His gasp is ragged—the empty vial shakes in his hand. He'd almost shattered it. 

Fuck. Fucking fuck. 

His tadpoles are probably slipping out again, by Karlach's face. He doesn't know what to do about that. He doesn't know what to do when he looks at her, this terminal realization, all pieces stripped bare. 

Astarion pushes starvation back out at them. It's a flimsy veneer over the pattern of stone beginning to creep over the wood. Karlach shudders faintly. Her tadpole burns with this incendiary horror. 

The rest of the party bares their own wounds from seeing whatever he showed them, gazes averted and shoulders pinched. Bereft of a tadpole, Jaheira watches them all, fingers drummed upon twin hilts. Her expression has changed. Not by much. Just a shade of focus where anticipation had once reigned, like parchment bled yellow in the sun. 

Karlach exhales. She looks like the floor hasn't shattered under her feet but has told her its plans to do so, waiting until the moment she needs it most. 

"Not that," she says quietly. "Maybe we ask questions, yeah? Instead of you trying to come up with things."

Yes. Yes, that's likely for the best. His silver tongue only shines for certain situations, not others, and this is well beyond what he knows. To demand answers makes them, however ironically, easier to say. No trying to think around what will happen anyway. 

Thou shalt speak only truth. Hands carding through his hair, a smile through thin lips. Do you want this? Then yes master, please master, I love you master turned into no, and Astarion stops following that memory before it gets shown to the party, too. He holds starvation tighter. Holds it enough he can feel the flutter of marble dust on his eyelashes. 

Astarion nods. 

Karlach holds Wyll's gaze for a moment. A language he can't decipher. The secondary question is more easy to parse apart, half from the multi-hued nodes of their interconnected minds and half from guesswork. 

What do they want to ask first? 

They can play detective here, if they want. Start with the leading questions, pieces of the puzzle, elements of a whole. Ease themselves into the picture before it confronts them. 

Or they can ask it outright. 

Karlach takes a steeling breath. A river-run of deep blue and mist roils against his mind, the gravitational pull of someone who both needs and hates what is to happen. 

"Why do you think you're our slave?"

Well. There is it, then. Astarion doesn't know if he would've preferred time to build up to it or not, but much as always, he doesn't get a choice in that regard. It just happens. So it goes. 

Astarion thinks on the answer, for a moment. He doesn't have to think for very long, because he has spent four months unable to think of anything else. 

"Gandrel," Astarion says. 

Without his shield, he feels what cuts jagged through Wyll, sharp enough to radiate against the others. Karlach flinches, turns—sees Wyll's face, paling around the edges. Understanding. Immediate, even. So immediate it doesn't make sense why Astarion has to spell this all out. 

Karlach turns back to him. Her face is bleak. 

"The hunter," she clarifies. Because she wasn't there. 

She wasn't there. She knows about it, though. A lifetime ago, the Inn room upstairs, asking him about what happened. Nervousness he hasn't come to expect from her, how soft the questions came out. How equally soft his answers, padding for an unpleasant dress.

It was trying for all involved.

He wasn't exactly lying. 

"The hunter," Astarion agrees, flat. The party had demanded answers, and Gandrel had given them. Two daughters slain and the pervasive implication of some thousands more in the bowels of Baldur's Gate. Confirmation that Wyll wasn't his first bite.

It all started with Gandrel. It would have been a mercy had it all ended there, too. 

"He was going to return me to my master," Astarion says. "You claimed me instead. So I had a choice of letting him take me or serving you. I chose you."

He wants to laugh even as the words leave his lips. Perhaps it's a fanciful attempt at deflection or protection or some other inane obscurity, how he uses the word choice. As if any of this was his doing rather than the same miserable shit he's always known. 

Astarion doesn't get choices. This party of masters is just another in a long line of repetition. He tried to choose more tadpoles and training under the commanders; where did that leave him? Exactly the same position, only worse. Consequences to laud as success. 

He chose the party, because it wasn't a choice. It was a glimpse of one day more away from Cazador, no matter the cost, and to that he turned like a flower to the uncaring sun. Because even that glimpse filled him with traitorous hope, as always. The party staked their claim on him. Said he wasn't Gandrel's to kill. If they merely wanted to kill him themselves, they would have just done so. Instead they gave him rules. They gave him commands. 

They should know what they gave him. They should just know.

"We claimed you?" Shadowheart repeats. Her brows pinch in, any weariness from her healing swept away in face of this. The back of her knuckles bleed white. "How?"

Astarion regards her. Regards the memories of that night and the four following, when their number was six but the last was not one who should have been there. The way she'd looked at him, pinned in the dirt, bloodless where he writhed. 

We can talk without weapons. He won't run.

And so he hadn't. The first of their commands. 

Something of that memory must leech out, because Shadowheart's face goes taut, lines of tension ringing her eyes. Flashes of cupped fire in Gale's palms and Lae'zel's hands digging into his shoulders. 

Astarion shrugs, because if he has to keep talking he's going to pretend it doesn't bother him, no matter how the truth must radiate from his mind. "You made your point clear, and it was enough to have Gandrel back down, particularly after your discussion with him. I simply elected to take it to heart."

"My only conversation with him was how he was not to threaten anyone within our party, no matter the circumstance," Wyll says, cautious. "We didn't discuss anything else."

Something mean bubbles up inside him. Astarion would go for a smile were he not positive it wouldn't land; settles for a twitch across his lips. "Gandrel told me what happened. There's no need to lie."

But Wyll's face doesn't clear. He shifts weight between his feet, mind rippling like cloth in the wind. 

"What did he say?"

The words are burned into his skull. Astarion recites them easily. "I asked whether they would promise to put you down if you proved to be the monster I know you are. And that he had instructed you on how to kill spawn, should he not be around when it happened. Rather explanatory."

Their reaction is immediate. 

"The fuck?" Karlach spits. "He said what?"

At the same time: "He didn't," Wyll cuts in, like he needs to race his words to the front of the pack. "He said nothing like that to us, I swear it. I swear."

"I heard nothing of the sort," Gale protests, Lae'zel shaking her head. Even Shadowheart is frowning anew. Even if their memories are as patchy as his, this feels like sort of shit someone would retain. 

Defensiveness bleeds to his tongue. "None of you contradicted anything of what he did. Perhaps he phrased it differently in your discussion, but the gist is still there. Stop lying."

"I don't think they're lying, fangs," Karlach says, a pleading note like she's trying to both convince him and urge the others to continue on. "How– did anyone else say anything about this? Did you ask?"

Astarion stares, genuinely incredulous. "Why would I ask?"

Her expression cracks. "Because then they could've told you otherwise! So you didn't have to think that shit was true!"

"What was I supposed to think?" Astarion snaps. He hackles within the blanket, bared teeth, curled claws. "Was I supposed to assume that a bunch of heroes were just playing along with the hunter here to capture me? That the rapier through my gut was a fucking joke?"

Wyll flinches like he'd been struck. 

Karlach goes to say something but she doesn't get the chance, his memory beaming out like a lance. How Astarion had celebrated wearing ragged clothing so that the wound was hidden, that he didn't have enough blood to visibly stain the front, never asking for help, for healing. Never being offered it.