Chapter Text
The sun finally slipped behind the western horizon leading towards Baldur’s Gate, painting the sky in brilliant oranges that swirled into sweet candy pinks and deep crystalline purples. When the first stars of the night revealed themselves, Astarion turned away from the window nearest his pitched tent. He had witnessed a million nights over the last two hundred years, yet this was the first sunset he had seen in just as long. The novelty of it entranced him. Too badly for him, he couldn’t linger on it, not when he was acutely aware of the wriggling little abomination currently making home in his brain.
In a weak attempt to distract himself from the growing fear of transformation, he grabbed one of the half dozen books he had already pilfered in the short journey, cracking open the spine. This morning, Astarion and a mismatched group of luckless bastards had found themselves aboard a nautiloid ship, captives turned incubators to a random invasion of illithid mind flayers. Now, deep in the annals of a long forgotten temple, half-buried in stone and sand on the cliffside of what he was sure had to be the Chionthar River, they made camp for the night.
Their little four man group was spearheaded by a druid with manic eyes, convinced that a cure for their parasite was around the next corner. She pushed them forward, forward, forward until the wizard and cleric had all but collapsed from exhaustion. Only then did she acquiesce to their request for rest.
Sitting still long enough to fully comprehend the experience of their first night of infection, Astarion and his new companions should have been bleeding from every orifice, losing their teeth, and whatever other horrors of ceremorphosis the wizard had explained in rabid detail. But nothing of the like happened. Beyond the occasional flash of someone else’s thoughts or memories and the wiggling of their tadpole parasites, they had all remained unchanged.
That is, except for Astarion. Nearly two centuries as a vampire spawn, he long ago had been made to forgo his humanity along with the sun and its warmth. Yet, as he took his first steps into the late morning light after being ejected from the mind flayer pod, he was… fine. He should have burned to a crisp, turned to dust in a flash of blue holy fire, but as he opened his eyes, all he saw was the pale sunshine gleaming off of his pallid hands. Realizing he wasn’t going to die, not from the sun at least, he was struck dumb by the sheer silence of his thoughts. He could no longer hear the constant shriek of commands by his master, Cazador. Nothing swirled around in his head, and nothing clouded his reason and controlled his every action. He was free from enthrallment for the first time in two centuries.
The realization paralyzed him on the rocky cliffside above the crashed nautiloid, until barely an hour later, the cleric, wizard and druid found him. Wary of strangers as he was, Astarion was simply one man, and he needed help. Sure, there was a flash of a knife against the druid’s pretty neck, but one could never be too careful, especially not when she had run around that ship fighting alongside the mindflayers like a bloody thrall. It certainly didn’t help that those azure eyes of hers were filled to the brim with frenzied wildness, off putting in how much they drew him in.
After their minds melded and he saw flashes of verdant forests and sterile medicine halls, not tentacles and fleshy hallways, he realized his mistake and let her go quickly enough. Ultimately, she held no ill will towards him. She mused that she might have even done the same in his place. Nothing had been lost, and they had immediately proven the practicality of their alliance, slaughtering a band of bandits hiding out in the decrepit temple Astarion and his group now claimed as their own.
The druid, Kore, as much as she unsettled him, was useful to have around. If only for her drive to cure their parasite problem, she was an irreplaceable development in his newly gained opportunity for freedom; his first real step towards wielding any kind of power that might help him against Cazador.
How he was going to do that, Astarion wasn’t sure. He admittedly wasn’t much of a planner. All he knew was that he couldn’t be weak. Not now. Though he was reeling, walking on a precipice of insanity with nothing but ever greater peaks of death on either side of him, he made damned sure not to show it to any of the others. Keeping his shit together was proving to be quite the challenge, but the others were still unknowns. Useful insofar as to what they could do for him and what he could do for them , Astarion would get nowhere if all he managed to do was get himself abandoned or killed. He couldn’t be weak. Not now, not ever.
The same tired line of the book he pretended to read ran past his eyes. He should offer his services as the first watch of the night. That would go a ways to prove his worth and foster some kind of trust.
Time for a show.
He sighed, snapping the book shut. Like clockwork, the druid would come up and ask how he was faring, nosier than she had any right to be for a wood elf. But the seconds passed, and she didn’t come to him. Astarion chanced a look at her tent. She wasn’t there. His eyes shifted all across the small room they had set camp. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
The hair on the back of his neck stood stick straight. He didn’t like it. She had to be accounted for. If she wasn’t- she wouldn’t do anything, but he couldn’t be sure. He had to know where she was. Should all it give him be peace of mind, he would take feeling foolish over being stuck through, dead or worse in the morning in the case he had read her completely wrong.
He pivoted his cause, his act turning on a dime, now with an air of nonchalance about him.
“Hmm,” he said aloud to the human wizard and half-elf cleric, “I don’t see our druid friend anywhere. Did either of you happen to catch where she went off to?”
“What’s it to you?” asked the cleric, not bothering to open her eyes from her prayers to her “mystery” god, Shar. It was cute she thought her silence on the matter fooled anyone.
Astarion replied, “Only that I wish to make sure she’s nice and healthy. It wouldn’t do us any good to find out she’s gone and transformed while we prepared to sleep.”
“You’re an elf. You don’t need to sleep.”
He ignored her. “Well? Any clues, wizard?”
“My name is Gale of Waterdeep. You’d do well to remember that.” The human could give Astarion a run for his money on being an insufferable, arrogant twat, and he was a high elf. And a vampire.
He decided then that he hated the cleric and the wizard. Maybe, if the druid didn’t murder them in their sleep- she wouldn’t, he was being ridiculous- he could convince her to leave with him in the middle of the night. She might be insane, the jury was still out, but at least she wasn’t a cunt.
One day, he would never again have to stroke some fragile man’s inflated ego for his own gain. Until then, Astarion purred, “Of course, my apologies. But surely someone as smart as you must have noticed where our little friend has run off to?”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, but-”
“Oh, come now, you can’t seriously have fallen for that,” interrupted the cleric.
The wizard shot her a dirty look. “As I was saying, I’ve no clue where Kore is, but she did say she was going to wash the blood off of her clothes and out of her hair. That was half an hour ago. I’m sure she’ll be back before long.”
Astarion put down his book and stood. He had never heard of a druid that gave a damn about being clean. The knowledge did nothing to quell his growing panic. Nothing was wrong, Astarion knew this, but he had to be sure. He chuckled lightly while his undead heart pretended to race. “A druid bathing? Something must be terribly wrong. You know what, why don’t I go and search for her? Make sure everything is on the up and up.”
The wizard looked up at him, much like a puppy would while watching his owner put on his shoes, the mere possibility of going for walkies all-consuming. “Would you like company? On the slim chance our friend has succumbed to ceremorphosis while we remain unchanged, it might be beneficial to strike united.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. If she has turned, our chances are better if we run, not fight. I, at the very least, will give a shout for the both of you to turn tail and flee should that be the case,” said Astarion, running his hand over the pair of sheathed daggers clipped to the waistband of his trousers. Not like these two deserved that courtesy, but an alive ally was more practical than a dead one.
Pushed aside by his master while they slipped out the front door without so much as the jingle of a leash, Gale pouted, “Well, if your hubris ceases to impede your good sense, I will be here.”
“Paranoid arseholes,” muttered the cleric under her breath as he passed by.
And with that, Astarion was off.
Walking down the halls, his hearing was unimpeded by the crackling of the fire at their camp or by the breathing and rushing blood of his companions. The only thing that followed him here were the clicks of his heeled boots against the old stone.
It had been overwhelming, all of the noise that bombarded him since his abduction. For the last two hundred years, he had been smothered in silence, loud bursts of violence perforating the unending void of quiet. Though both were miserable, Astarion had come to prefer the silence. It meant reprieve… until it didn’t. Noise always meant pain. He only wished he could enjoy this one moment of silence since his abduction. Instead, it terrified him. He kept moving.
Reaching the end of the hallway, he heard retching. It echoed off the wet walls, consuming his senses as he walked deeper into the bowels of the temple, making it near impossible to pin down the location. He started searching room by room. The temple was only so big, and she was not inconspicuous with her bright yellow hair that looked like sunshine.
The sound of liquid splattering on stone echoed around him again. Astarion didn’t actually think the druid had gone off and transformed, but what if he had guessed correctly? He took one of the daggers out of its sheath, regretting not letting the wizard follow him.
In the secret room they discovered before setting camp, he finally found Kore, hunched over in the corner farthest from the door. The permeating smell of stomach acid and bile nearly knocked him over. Her shoulders convulsed violently through her cream colored linen shirt, and she vomited once more. One hand knotted in her long hair to keep it from being drenched in sick, she wiped her mouth on the back of the other, shuddering as she tried to stand up straight.
Kore didn’t turn around to speak to him, instead calling out, “I don’t- I don’t need an audience for this.”
“Don’t mind me, I’m only here to ensure you don’t ceremorph on us,” Astarion retorted.
“Gods, why him?” she muttered to herself. He wouldn’t have heard her if not for his heightened senses, so he pretended not to. He definitely pretended he wasn’t offended. The druid had no idea how wonderful his company could be to those in need of comfort. He had spent decades perfecting it.
“It’s not ceremorphosis,” she continued. “If it were, you and the others would be feeling symptoms, too. I-,” she gagged, “I’m fine. Just go, and I’ll be back at camp before you know it.”
Astarion weighed his options. This could be a chance to get on her good side; endear himself to her and ensure his safety later down the line. Alternatively, he could be trying to get on the good side of someone sickly and weak, which would be a complete waste of his time and efforts. But if he ignored her, did what she said, maybe that would work better? He didn’t have a good enough read on her yet to figure out what would be his best option.
Shit. He had to pick. He hoped against all reason it was the right one.
“I don’t feel right leaving you behind-,” he started.
She interrupted with a vitriol he hadn’t assumed her capable of producing. “Can we not pretend you give a shit? I’m not in the mood-”
Kore doubled over again, upper body wracked with heaving, while nothing but drool expelled from her mouth. She gasped for breath when the convulsions stopped, sharp whines piercing the damp air, amplifying how truly and utterly pathetic she was in this moment.
Doubling down and sheathing his dagger, Astarion walked over to her. He pulled her hair from her hand, gathering it gently at the nape of her neck and brushing out some of the larger knots with his fingers.
“Come on, love. Get it out,” he said.
Kore didn’t fight him. She resumed dry heaving; that she still stood despite the sheer magnitude of convulsions that ripped through her muscles impressed him. Tears and snot streamed down her face, choking her further, but nothing more left her system.
Eventually, the retching slowed and then stopped completely. Somehow, she produced a bottle of clear alcohol, if his sense of smell through her expelled bile could be trusted, taking a swig and aggressively rinsing out her mouth. The noise was almost as repulsive as her dry heaving. She spat it out, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then poured the rest of the bottle over her hands. In between it all, Kore had stopped panting but hadn’t elsewise improved.
The druid stood before she was ready, stumbling back. With his hands still at her back, Astarion steadied her, keeping her from falling onto him. She shimmied a bit, hands down at her side, before either of them felt confident enough to let her stand without support. When she was ready, his hands evaporated off of her, letting her hair drop down her back in loose waves. The light of the sparse few candles near the entrance reflected off of the strands, shining bright and warm and yellow, uncanny how alike sunlight it was.
Kore turned around, and he nearly winced on her behalf. Sweat beaded at her hair line, making her fringe stick to her forehead in some spots and stick out wildly in others. Her skin, normally bright with deliciously pink undertones, instead tinged a pallid, clammy grey. Even the prominent scar across her nose and the freckles that dotted her cheeks were near impossible to see in her illness, almost the same color white as the yggdrasil tattoo across her forehead and nose. Her eyes, strikingly blue and bloodshot, bore into him with the same manic intensity as when he held her at knife point, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of some strong emotion she was feeling or because her red eye makeup had smeared into the creases of her eyelids, making her appear fevered and feral.
Looking as she did now, like absolute shit, Kore was still very comely. It didn’t matter to him that she was, not really, but it never hurt to have something nice to look at.
To see her so disheveled was unsettling, though. The entire day, she led them with a crazed single mindedness that neither he, the wizard nor the cleric thought to question, like she knew exactly what it took to cure them of their affliction… like, when the light hit her just right,- by Corellon’s grace, this was embarrassing to admit even to himself- maybe the gods themselves whispered their will in her ear. Sick as she was at this moment, Kore looked fallible, abandoned almost.
Then, very curiously, her face hardened and her gaze softened, like she had slipped an invisible mask back over her features, and she was larger than life again.
“Thank you,” said Kore. “You didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it nonetheless.”
“What else are allies for? Though, perhaps don’t expect it a second time.”
She chuckled. “It won’t happen again.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Can’t kill someone for the first time more than once. Here, perhaps let’s stand elsewhere.”
She corralled him with shaking hands back out to the main hall while he was inundated with unwelcome memories of his first kill. The majority of details had gone to the passage of time, but two hundred years ago, a woman with dark hair followed him back to the Szarr mansion so eagerly. Her screams as he handed her over to his master had haunted him for decades, and he had the vague impression that for days afterwards he was catatonic. The only thing he could remember with any clarity, though, were the beatings he received for an offense to Cazador he never was able to glean.
Killing another person had broken him once upon a time, but this woman, this wood elf , took a life for the first time, and simply found herself a little ill?
How… auspicious.
“The first one is the hardest. It gets easier,” he said.
At this, Kore stopped walking, inhaled, and furrowed her brows, her lips parted as if she wanted to say something. She must have thought better of it, closing her mouth with a sense of finality before pivoting to a different topic and resuming their trek back to camp. “The cleric, Shadowheart, I'm not surprised she's killed anyone. The god she follows, I know it's one of the violent ones. I'm not sure why a wizard or a… magistrate has killed what sounds like multiple people, but I'm glad we'll only need deal with my histrionics.”
At this, he did laugh. “You consider stalking off to be sick in solitude, not unlike a dying cat, to be histrionic? Have wood elves always been this stoic, and I just haven’t been paying attention the last two hundred years?”
Kore chuckled in return, a pretty sound that reverberated off of the wet walls like the tinkling of frozen rain. “You’ve to admit it was a little dramatic. I know many of my old compatriots would find themselves disappointed with my conduct tonight.”
“Were your past compatriots drow? Perhaps duergar? Made of stone?”
She laughed in earnest then. Despite himself, he smiled. He always liked making people laugh. It took more skill than simply being the most beautiful person to walk into a room.
“Yes, a number of them were drow and duergar,” she said, “but sorry to disappoint, I’ve yet to work with someone made of stone. It’ll have to be the first thing I do when we get this mess sorted out.”
“Please, don’t feel obligated to do so on my behalf. You sound as though you might benefit from working with a gnome or halfling or something else equally soft.”
“Have you ever actually spoken with a gnome? Suspicious little fanatics with a penchant for ruthlessness.”
The two of them had reached the doorway back to their shared campsite. They could end it now, but he was rather enjoying himself speaking to her. He didn’t have to lure her back to his master. She wasn’t expecting him to end up on his back at the end of their talk. There was no ulterior motive to their conversation. They were talking just to talk.
Today had been full of novelties.
Prolonging the inevitable, as their talk would have to end sometime, Astarion thought back to his brother, Yousen. The man wasn’t ruthless at all. He was, more than anything, a whinging little shit stain.
“I find myself well acquainted with a number of them, yes. ‘Ruthless’ tends not to be the word I use, but maybe we have different standards. What is it you do for work again?”
She took her time answering, lingering at the door frame. Looked like she didn’t want to stop talking to him either. He pushed just a little further and smirked at her. Kore rolled her eyes, but stayed put, the ghost of a smile on her lips.
“I’m a linguist who went treasure hunting sometimes.” She looked off to the right, her hand trailing off. It was rather obvious she wasn’t telling the truth, but he was just as sure she knew he lied about still being magistrate. For his own sake, he let the topic drop, instead speaking the first new thing to come to mind.
“The cleric-” he started.
“Shadowheart.”
“Yes, her, she follows Shar.”
“You know?”
“It’s rather obvious, isn’t it?”
“It’s not subtle, no.” Silence. “Why tell me?”
“In case you were unaware of the kind of company we find ourselves in.”
Her eyes furrowed and her head tilted in his direction. She said slowly, “Are you… attempting to look out for me?”
“Gods, no. I just know she’s been in your ear, attempting to sow distrust like she isn’t full of poorly kept secrets herself.”
“Oh!” and her mouth formed a perfect circle. She was annoyingly expressive, but he could only focus on the color coming back to her lips. “You’re trying to show off to me.”
“What? I am not!”
“Your secret is safe with me.” She winked at him - winked! - before slipping through the doorway. Kore walked backwards to her tent, still facing him, “But I’m going to get sick again if I don’t wash the blood and sweat off of me. I’ll talk to you in the morning!”
How dare she! He wasn’t showing off, if anything, he was- he was- she turned around, and he glared at her as she walked off, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet back to her tent.
Maybe he could convince the wizard to come with him instead.