Work Text:
"The gentle tap-tap-tap of a staff on stone sparked terror for all in Cazador's palace. It signalled an approaching storm, and all they could do was shrink into the background and pray its wrath would not fall on them."
– Description of Woe, Cazador Szarr's quarterstaff
1492 DR
Tap.
The staff slips from my hand.
It feels strange. I cannot explain why. Perhaps it is the first thing I have truly felt for two centuries.
My blade looks good in my boy’s hand, better yet buried in my body, plunging in and out, again, silver flashing wetly. Blood fills my mouth, and I cannot swallow it all. It feels like drowning in warm, sun-soaked waters. My body turns heavy, then weightless. Sinking like a stone. Then… Floating.
As the light narrows, there's a face. Long white hair, violet skin. I reach into the darkness and take his hand.
1492 | Six months earlier
Astarion is gone.
I am almost amused, at first. You always had a taste for theatre. No doubt hiding, arranging your face into a wounded expression, waiting to be found, hoping to be punished.
I am wrong.
Where are you? How have you done this? Who helped you? Who are you with?
Servants and spawn cower in corners and scurry from sight as the tap-tap-tap of my staff on stone signals the approaching storm. Let them. I come not for them.
Why should it matter? The boy is nothing. One pretty corpse among seven thousand. A means to an end.
1445 | 47 years earlier
It is not in my nature to lose my temper, but the little rat goads me once too many. The boy screams and cries like a babe as I scratch runes into its ungrateful back. The knife trembles in my hand as I press the point into pale flesh.
This is what you are made for, I tell myself, repeat it again after every cut.
For I do want him dead. Do I not? Just as I needed him dead.
There is no going back.
I grasp your accursed skull. See? See what I did? Are you proud of me?
1282 | 163 years earlier
When they drag the boy back from his attempt to flee with another man’s taste fresh on his lips, I wrestle my rage. Want to rip that stranger’s touch from his body with my bare hands. Stop myself. The boy is property. Nothing more. Misplaced and recovered.
I do not flay him; do not honour him with such a spectacle. I bury him, instead.
For is not solitude the greatest punishment of them all?
I cannot hear you, but I stand over the dusty tomb within which you lie. Does this hurt? It does, doesn’t it? I feel it, too.
1276 | 6 years earlier
My Master kneels. There is one hurt left sharp enough to find me. I have tried everything. Everything but this.
You smile when I draw the blade. Good boy, your eyes say. And then, for the second and last time, you tell me you love me. You laugh as I recite the words and slice your throat to the bone. Wrench your wretched head from your perfect body. I laugh too through my tears, crumbling into sobs.
Heat spills over my hands. The hollow inside me splits apart; floods with vicious, delicious grief.
Ah. I feel it.
There.
At last.
1274 | 2 years earlier
I yearn for the gentle tap-tap-tap of the cane against an upturned palm, pray your wrath will fall on me.
Now, I am just a ghost haunting my own corpse. I watch the blade sink in, imagine the hand guiding it is yours. Kiss the flames with my fingertips until my flesh chars black. Kneel on shattered glass and wait for sensation like a starving dog waits for scraps.
Tonight, at last, you come.
“You disappoint me,” you say as crimson pools beneath my knees.
“Please–”
You do not answer. Eventually, something else does. An evil crueller than even you.
1258 | 16 years earlier
The iron spine you have threaded for me suspends me in the chapel like butchered meat. Every twitch plunges me deeper.
For a while, you visit just to watch. Then less often. Then, eventually, not at all.
Rats nest beneath my feet, drawn to the rot and mould blooming in the filth beneath me. I learn to love the vermin. They, at least, come back. A little family of my own.
I close my eyes and remember the way you used to touch me. Tease me. Beat me like I mattered.
Eleven years is long enough to stop feeling anything.
1193 | 65 years earlier
I have never seen anybody more beautiful. Your eyes scream danger. Thrice my age, twice my size.
I flinch as a drop of molten wax falls onto my wrist.
I stay still. You like that better.
Submission is not weakness, you say, smiling like you already own me.
It’s a blur. A whirlwind. You beat me until my bones crack, crush my neck and kiss me deeply, fuck me into the cold ground and call me a whore. Tell me you love me. I tell you I do, too. One day, I will make you mine.
You keep your word.
1168 | 25 years earlier
Paper walls drink flame like wine and the village glows. Someone is laughing – or screaming? They often sound the same to me. I step over bodies I know by shape better than by name.
Sister sways gently from the tree, bathed in firelight. I stand there awhile, waiting to feel something.
Eventually, a new family gives me a new name, and I bury my old one with the ashes of the dead. They dress me in velvet. One of our own. I work desperately to deserve it.
There is a blessing in this family. Would you not like the gift?
1167 | 1 year earlier
I dread the gentle tap-tap-tap of those boots on wood. I pray they will not find me.
But they do. They find me cowering against walls painted with pretty flowers, clutching my sister's threadbare doll. His sole finds my chest, my skull finds the floor, and then his hands find my throat.
I stay still. He likes that better.
Besides, Mother's son is twice my age and thrice my size. And nobody would come, even if I screamed.
I hardly feel anything, anyway. He kisses me, after. And for one bright moment, I am the only thing in his world.