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Centuries of darkness. Of soot and ash spewed into the sky to blanket the lands in thick, acidic shadow.
Lands coated in constant shadow at the command of the great mountains of fire he has constructed, a matter of dedication to his desire for power, his ambition to rule. Even diverting magma and sulfur from the Peaks of Flame was but a small step in his plans to darken Faerûn, to bring it to heel as he deserved.
These were the lands of the Ascendant, the lands made perfect for his rule, and the heart of his ever-reaching empire. Cities, empires, nations all fell before his strength, his armies of undead vast and allconsuming. Not even Lathander’s Blood or his Light or He himself could touch the forces and power of Lord Astarion. He was brutal, bloodthirsty, ruthless….
And always victorious.
His lands were a breeding ground of spawn and red dragons and other terrifying creatures of the dark. Legends recounted tales of blood and destruction and domination, that the Vampire Ascendant had a heartbeat but no beating heart.
The only one who knew that his heart really did once beat beneath his ribs was just brought to his dungeons, roaming in the shadows of his dark tower. As if he didn’t smell her, knowing that scent even after centuries. As if he didn’t know the dance of her pulse in moments of fear or determination or arousal…
Lord Astarion adjusted the clasps of his armor, for he knew better than to approach her unprotected and unarmed. Given the amount of weapons found on that still supple, lithe frame of hers, it was clear she had come behind enemy lines with one goal in mind.
To finish what she would have centuries before when she left his side.
Stepping into the barred cells and depths of darkness of his dungeons, his eyes fixed their gaze on her trembling in her chains. He let his feet fall loudly, let his breath sound a little louder than he was accustomed to in his own vampiric domain. But it was enough to draw her attention.
Enough to have her stare at him with all the vitriol and hate in her heart he remembered.
And it made him flash a toothsome smirk. “Come to kill me again, darling?”
She said nothing, her breathing just more ragged as he entered her cell, the rusting hinges shrieking as he pushed them open and shut them in his wake. Her nostrils flared, her arms jerked against the chains that hung her arms out wide from her shoulders.
“No warm words for your ancient lover?” he crooned, eyes glowing in the darkness as he rounded behind her. “Hardly like you to not use your tongue in my presence… for speaking or other things…” He ran his fingers lightly up her arm, the thin, dark material of her shift torn from the rough treatment she had already received just being thrown in here. His touch danced harder in the spots where her flesh poked through.
She held her mouth shut firmly, shuddering under his touch, eyes fixed on the cracks in the ceiling so as not to catch a glimpse of him.
“Afraid you’ll fall for me all over again, my dear, if you look at me?” he rasped just beside her pointed ear. A snarl in his throat, he pulled her by her chin, chains rattling as he forced that still beautiful face to meet his stare. She was fury incarnate, eyes dilated with hate, teeth grit to feel his touch on her skin, nostrils flaring with every enraged breath. Shaking herself free she sneered up at his smirk of victory. “Ah, that’s better, just like old times,”
“Unhand me,” she hissed with a snap of her teeth.
“And why would I do that?” Astarion purred, leaning closer to stroke her filthy cheek with the back of his knuckles. “I have you right where I want you, right where you always have been meant to be.”
“Your slave, your prisoner?” she spat, flinching again, eyes like coals burning with hate in the dungeon’s dark.
“At my side, under my touch, commanded by my control,” he looked at her, face lifting in an expression of pure sincerity.
“You mean trapped in the darkness you’ve brought over this beautiful realm…” she made herself reply.
He went silent for a moment, something in his crimson eyes hardened at her accusation. Something shifted in the way his fingers brushed her skin. The way they clamped onto her shoulder to pull her shaking body flush against his armored frame. “You left me in the dark, Tav, you took my sun, my stars and moon when you left me… I took the same from this precious realm you saved just to make it even.” His grip pinched harder, making a gasp unwillingly escape her chapped lips. “I’ve made this world almost as shadowed as your heart, darling.”
Summoning her strength, she resisted his clutch, making herself stand up all the taller despite his force. “You only remade the world in your own image, Astarion… Only doing what you most desire.”
“Oh, perhaps you’ve forgotten after all these centuries,” his touch suddenly wandered over her collarbone, caressing in its warmth as it stole around her neck. “If I allowed myself to do as I desire, you wouldn’t be in some dungeon dangling from chains, covered in grime or clothing even…”
That got her hissing in her breath and pulling at her chains. “You had your fun with my body before I realized how much you deceived me, Ast…” she shut her mouth, almost clipping her own tongue.
The Vampire cackled, low in his chest, a sound so foreign even to himself. “What’s the matter, Tav? Can’t bring yourself to mention my name?” He kept laughing at that low pitch and staccato tempo. He drew up behind her body instead, a fist in her hair to pull that gorgeous neck to the side so he could hiss right in her ear. “Afraid I’ll make you cry it from your lips again as you used to?”
She crammed her jaw shut, tugging her hardest to break from his ironclad hold. A warm, wet tongue lapped up the direction of her artery, and her body shivered, even as her face contorted with disgust. “You have power over the whole world now… all because you lost power over the one thing you wanted more.”
“And what was that, darling?” He hissed against her rapping pulse before dragging his fangs across that alabaster skin.
“Me,” she snipped her reply.
And it just made him give that low, staccato laugh of purest malice. Her words slammed against that darkness in his soul, but he ignored it. Yanking her head back, he made those piercing eyes look into his wicked smirk. “Oh, my delusional darling…” he tutted his tongue, chastising her like a naughty little schoolgirl. “Let me show you the extent of my power, and you tell me if you think it’s truly an equal replacement for you.”
A snap of his fingers, a spell muttered under his breath, and they vanished into thin air.
Winds raced around them, no more than mist, hot and cold, racing through light and dark until he stopped at the top of his grand tower. Tav gasped as her body reformed, freed of her shackles, but crouching on hands and knees as she tried to catch her breath. He stood over her, crowding her so closely, the edges of his scarlet cape fluttered in her face. The hot winds whipped around them both on the parapet, stinking of volcanic sulfur and blood… and she tried not to gag. Panting, it took all her effort to keep her stomach from hurling. And then, his hand slipped into view, offering her aid to get to her feet.
A breathless, disparaging laugh managed it way out from her burning lungs. A sound he did not take kindly to. That pale hand slipped almost invisibly into her hair, yanking her to her feet. “As much as I love the sight of you crumpled and kneeling at my feet, there is something I wish you to see…” he growled.
His other hand framed her chin, forcing her to survey his lands, the shroud of his darkness extending as far as the eye could see. And her eyes flared wide. Not one beam of sun pierced his cover of darkness, not one tree grew in the mud slicks and shadowed city that spanned his domain. All was black and scarlet and golden, refracting the fires of a million torches and bonfires and the fire mountains themselves that burned in the distance.
“Tell me it’s not awe inspiring, the magnitude of my power. Hordes of dragons at my command, legions of spawn and soldiers, an army worthy of the Ascendant…. There is no realm I cannot take, no land I cannot claim under my rule.”
He released her hair, her face, drawing back step to survey her reaction. “And it could have all been yours too…” he sneered. “ Tch , what a waste.” Those crimson eyes scanned her body, her frame shaking and weak, her skin dirtied and scratched from his warriors’ rough handling. “How far you have fallen, Hero of Baldur’s Gate. Instead of this.. weak being you are now, I would have made you my queen, my own vampiric bride, with all the right to rule and command at my side.”
“All I see is desperation, Astarion. A man so insistent on chasing power and domination he denied himself two things he loved most.” Tav leveled her clear and shining eyes at him. “Freedom… and sunlight.”
She heard his fangs snap, a growl in his throat.
She continued, “And why would I choose to be with someone so desperate for power, he turns his beautifully scarred back on burning that which made him… happy…” Breath froze in her lungs, she could feel it. That creeping, ancient longing that never quite disappeared over centuries. That haunting that still plagued her mind and heart of times that were simpler and loving.
Times brimming with freedom and sunlight.
He bristled, pulling her roughly to spin, to land against his chest. “I’ll just ignore the fact that you still think of the scars on my body…” he sniggered. “I’ll take it to heart you once cared for my happiness… and not that you probably still touch yourself to the memory of my skin on your skin, the feeling of those scars under your nails as I fucked you…”
Her muscles frame thrashed to be free, to loosen the bonds of his arms around her waist. “I do no such thing…” she hissed. “Don’t you dare accuse me of something so heinous.”
“Yes… I am heinous, fucking me would be totally… heinous…” he snarled the word into her esr, the heat of his breath bathing her skin hotter than the volcanic blasts in the distance. “Fortunately, I still remember the heroine who once was more than willing to do such… heinous things… I wonder if those same things would make her skin crawl now.”
His lips caressed her neck, making her shudder in hatred and fight to breathe. “Let me go,” she hissed and thrashed. “Monster… villain…”
Fists locked around her upper arms like a vice. “Oh, you always knew just how to talk so sweetly to me, darling.” With that, he held her firm, like irons and tighter than chains. “You really do hate me, don’t you?” He hissed, gripping her chin and bringing her lips just to the precipice of his own. “And here I was, ready to offer you one more chance to be mine, my own consort… my right—“
Her lips pressed hard against his, all hatred and teeth and heat on her tongue as she closed that hair's width of a distance. Choking her with his tongue, Astarion couldn’t get enough of that taste. Centuries of deprivation, she clearly craved it too. Her hands struggled beneath his grip, a grip he eased once he realized she was removing his armor, piece by godsdamned piece. He would help if he wasn’t too suspicious.
But his need and desire considered those centuries of command and restraint. He pulled off plate after plate too until there were none left. Then, he took the rest of that feeble linen of her shirt in his fists and tore it full open.
Her flesh was bruised and scarred, centuries of fighting had hardened her, marking her with her own brand of dark obsession. Glancing down at Tav, he broke away from their kiss, both of them wild and panting. For an instant, she looked so soft in the glow of his domain. That dead ember in his core wavered with a hint of life, that longing and vulnerable need… but he snuffed it out. Shoving her hard and fast with all his vampiric speed until her back hit the outer wall of his grand tower.
That same softness was gone behind her eye too. Teeth bared, she gripped his cock painfully hard through his leathers. “Same old spawn. So easy to still reduce you to nothing but whimpering need,” she hissed.
“Enough,” he ordered, hands pulling her torn breeches to shreds until he sank his fingers inside her folds with a satisfied groan. If he closed his eyes, it could have been a tree in the middle of a secret grove that he shoved her against, but he kept his eyes wide open, watching the looks of hate and lust and agony bloom on her sullied face. He watched her head get thrown back against the wall of his fortress, watched her cheeks burst into a deep scarlet blush from desire and shame.
“Fuck… you,” she gave a feral hiss as he freed his cock and sank it inside her one last time. Her thighs wrapped tightly around his waist, and he showed no mercy, biting the air in his jaws as he fucked her.
Her head bangged against the stone walls, her back scratched against the rough black stone; it made her whimper, her voice such sweet music to his pointy ears as he rammed home deep inside her. Her hands clawed at his hair, yanking it at its roots to keep his fangs off her. It only made him chuckle low and villainous in his throat. As if she could stop him from biting. “Just couldn’t get enough of our late night trysts, could you, darling? Just couldn’t stay away from seeing my power? Now,” he hissed with venom in his voice, “now… I have… everything I wanted.” He gave a particularly brutal snap of his hips, making her clutch his body and scream in his ear. “Companionship and a little death…”
Tav laughed—laughed—-full throated and musical as he rode her into the wall. Astarion sneered, raising his head to look into those pricing determined eyes. “This is your everything… this?” she rasped, growing breathless with her own pleasure.
Strong, skilled fingers slipped between their bodies so he could claw and squeeze her breast. “Yes, this. My kingdom, my power, my enemy laid low… or just laid.”
She snared at the barb, every muscle in her body shuddering in consuming, blinding pleasure as she came. Her body had already given her away, though, she panted and moaned, her hands hugging at his neck instead of throttling or yanking.
If he only just closed his eyes… he could feel it again. Feel it too.
With a grunt, he shuddered, biting into his own arm so as not to pierce his skin, to give her that poison of his power and his venom to turn her into his. Not yet. Not until she was begging for more, for more of this, of him. Finally, his heart slowed, the pounding inside his head grew gentler. And he kissed her sooty cheek. “I’ve missed this…” he let the words that had reverberated in his mind since he laid eyes on her again out from his lips.
Pulling away, he gave a little smile, the kind where just his lips turn, equally and softly. The kind of smile he had given her centuries ago in his tent, on the road, before all… this. Turning his back, he looked out over his lands, tucking his cock back inside his trousers, savoring that scent of their coupling, faint as it was over the stench of volcanic air. He took a deep breath, that smile creeping across his face wider. “You know, darling, I—” He turned sharply, his hand twisting in a flourish….
Something long and sharp and metal sank into his chest. Tav’s eyes were wide, her hand firmly gripped on that long metal weapon. A stake. Summoned by magic, must have been.
“I…” she faltered, watching the lights in his eyes flicker, that haunting crimson glow starting to dim back to the dull and deep red she had once fallen in love with.
“You think I haven’t been staked before,” he gave an effort to laugh, that deep and sinister chuckle, but now it ended in a burst of coughing. Crumbling, he sank to the stone floor of the wall.
Two arms caught him, holding him on her knees as his body registered the pain in his chest. The numbness. Tav looked down at him, her face hard but not unfeeling.
Something warm and wet slipped from his lips. His fingers trembled as he touched it, pulling them away, their pale tips covered in blood. “You always knew how to make such grand gestures of love, darling, especially after such a rigorous… reunion.” He gave her body another long scan, her chest heaving and her skin blushing with emotion and exertion.
A bitter smile turned one corner of her mouth. “How else was I going to get you out of your armor, Astarion, aside from sex. You haven’t changed all that much.” She twisted the metal in his chest a bit deeper, blood soaking to the stones beneath them. “You may have burned the world, Astarion, but you burned my heart to ashes first. You called me unworthy, an ingrate, a waste and disappointment…” Her face leaned in closer to his. “You said I would regret leaving you more than anything I lived to regret when in reality… I only regret not coming for you sooner.”
“I said many things, including that the greatest crimes in this world are committed for love…” he tried to sweep in arm to gesture to his domain. But he hissed in agony. “I lied before, you know… I did this for you, to sate my hunger for you, to replace my lust for you with bloodlust for the world.”
“What…” Tav replied, taken aback. Her voice sounded eerily similar to words that still haunted her from their past. “Why? Why would you ever speak of… love?” she sneered.
“Because, I never stopped loving you… whatever version of love this dark and beating heart is capable of, that is…” he burst into another fit of coughing. His hand tried to grip the metal in his chest, even as his legs began to grow numb. He knew, as he brushed his fingers against it, this was no ordinary stake. But he was the Vampire Ascendant, even magic had its limits…. Surely.
He reached a hand for her trembling cheek. “Nothing is too late you know, not when a being like me… like you… can have eternity.” He sighed, feeling her warm, wet tears starting to leak from her clear eyes. Gently, he dried them with a soft sweep of his thumb as she leaned into his touch. The first time in centuries. Since his Ascension. “Stay. Be mine,” he whispered, voice thick with gravely need and wet with pain. Blood dripped from his chin.
“I’ll never be your spawn,” she looked down to the space between their bodies, both their chests heaving.
“Queen then,” his hand shook as she held her cheek tighter, trying to pull those quivering lips to his. “Think of how much fun it would be, darling. You can try to kill me every day…” he smirked weakly, “why not a little more death, everyday.”
She gave him a cold smile, watching as he noticed how his hand shook, the taste of blood thickening in his mouth. “I’m afraid I’ll only ever need this one attempt to kill you, Astarion.”
Those eyes forced themselves wider, the metal in his chest thrumming with magic.
“Infernal silver, a gift from our old friend Raphael,” Tav’s lips turned down, her eyes unable to meet his again, even as her tears flowed freely now.
He gave a laugh, a bit more blood coming down his chin. “That must have cost you more than a pretty piece of gold, darling.”
“My soul,” she jutted her chin out. “You’re not the only one to take a deal with a devil.”
He laughed, much weaker now. “Then this is it… you did it, my darling. And I have one last chance to ask you for a chance to talk…” He smirked, pulling her lips against hers just to feel her breath. “I just feel… awful. Nothing about this was simple or easy or meant to be, but I wish it was with all that’s left of my heart.” He winced, a wrack of pain shaking his body as he laid on her lap. “All I had to do was forget just how deeply I had fallen for you…”
He groaned as the pain grew too much. Only to feel her hand on his face now, her warmth steadying him, focusing him. “Which is where your dark and sinister plan fell apart, hmm?” She placed a kiss on his lips as they grew pale. “Same for me… I… I wish I didn’t come. I wish you had told me of your love before I…”
She choked on the words, readying her fist to pull the stake out. But he stopped her. “No leave it,” he ordered. “It will buy us a few more precious moments so I don’t simply bleed out all over your beautiful legs.”
Tav wished she could laugh, wished she had done things differently. “Now I don’t deserve any of these words, Astarion…” she let a sob escape from her lungs. “I have given you nothing…”
“No,” Astarion interrupted with a sudden and frantic burst of strength. “I am nothing without you… I never have been, darling. Even with power and realms on their knees. I only ever… ever wanted you. You… complete me.” The smile on her face was balm to his mortally wounded soul—a soul that would soon end up in the hells for all he had done. But for now, he would bask in the heavens of her arms and sun himself in the light of her smile. “I would have been worthy of you… or at least tried harder to be.”
Tav watched as her tears fell on his own pale face, his skin growing corpse-cold slowly but surely the longer she held him. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” She began to choke on the slick of tears in her throat. “Why didn’t you say.. something when you first saw me?”
“Because all you saw… all you knew was the monster you believed me to be. And so… that’s what I was for you. You wouldn’t have listened to words of love from a monster. At best I thought you’d say no again. More likely…” he hissed, holding the silver stake in his chest, “you’d run… a stake through my ribs…”
Tav gave a single, tear-soaked laugh, “You… foolish vampire.”
“You leaving me was… the thing I regret… more than any other thing I lived to regret…” A piercing cry, from his slacked mouth and he pulled the stake from his chest, blood gushing and flesh rending, wet and gory. “Looks like… I won’t be living to regret it for much longer…”
The ground shook, the wavering orange light in the distance from the volcanos began to burst brighter. Erupting with blistering heat, rocks and ash spewed into the air. And yet, above them, the shadows parted, the faintest beams of light from the sun began to seep through the cover of darkness.
The power of the Ascendant faltered as his breathing grew shorter, as his heart began to slow.
“I can’t, Astarion,” Tav held him tighter. “I can’t live with this regret now either.” Her chin shuddered as she sobbed. “I shouldn’t have killed you.”
“You should have,” he smiled weakly. “You gave me back what I denied myself… freedom and sunshine…” He looked up into the streaks of pale blue and golden beams that crept through more and more. “And you gave me that feeling of love once more…”
He pulled her face against his, his hand and lips cold once more against her skin. “This is a gift, I won’t forget it.” He began to close his eyes.
“Wait,” she shook him, clinging tightly so as not to let go. As if she could keep his soul bound to his bones. “Take me too. Poison me. Bite me.”
“Why?” Was all he could manage to croak.
“I’m bound for the hells too.” That silver stake in the blood beside them was more than enough damnation for her, too.
He gave a single, feeble laugh. “I was going to go this alone… but…” he hissed as the pain began to take him. “Come here then, darling.”
She placed her neck against his lips, those ancient scars from his fangs still tangible against his tongue as he licked her first. As he always had done. With one final grunt, he bit, letting his poison fill her veins as he managed a mouthful of her blood.
Rich and intoxicating, familiar and simply the best. The stuff of his dreams and nightmares. His world dimmed, his body too numb to taste her anymore. He took one last breath, gave her one last smirk. “You’ve never tasted so sweet… darli—“
He was gone, limp in her arms.
Not that Tav noticed, her own body numb and limp as she lost herself to the poison in her veins.
The earth cracked open, the clouds dispersed, and centuries of darkness and blood turned to mist in the light of the sun once more.
Light and sun and wind felt good on his essence as Astarion’s soul bound for the hells, ready to pay its price of 7000 for centuries of empty power and loneliness. But as his spirit flew, it tingled with recognition… the touch of another soul tangling with it.
One that knew him, that reverberated with pain and loss, with affection and connection—soul to soul.
No longer left in darkness as embers.
A spark of love that had laid dormant between them flamed back tenfold, as these souls streaked across the sky to their fates. Together.