#Book 3 Chapter 8

[sgtbuster]

This is it folks, it has been a journey but we're finally at the end.

Also, quick warning. Some tags were mislabeled between chapters three and four. For example; some are tagged Chapter three and some were tagged Chapter 3. All the tags are on here but just be aware of that. If you want to see them in order you might have to go through the archive for those chapters.

I want to thank you all for being with me on this journey. I have seen your messages over the years and even though I have a hard time responding to you, I did see them and they do mean so much to me.

Working on this story had meant a lot to me too. I live with depression, anxiety and ADHD on top of living with chronic pain. So being able to escape for awhile and work on this comic meant a lot to me. But now I think I deserve a break, lol

I don't know what I am going to do next, I have a couple of ideas for another AU. One of them being a post-apocalyptic story that is a mix of horror and comedy. But I've seen a couple of those post-apocalyptic stories floating around so I'm not so sure about it.

Though I will say that the next project would not be as big, hopefully. Knowing me that might not be the case but I'll try. lol After all I have done over five hundred pages for this series so I think I need to try to for my sake.

Stay safe, and I hope to see you again for the next project! Thank you all again, you've been wonderful!

-Buster

[gethighdropacidneverdie]

clock it

[anonyanonymouse]

I don't know what to say. It was beautiful. It was everything I wanted out of the book and I am so happy. They went through with destroying his horn (just one!) and he is experiencing the long-term consequences of it. Lilia died and both Malleus and Silver brought him back with true love and a wish, because true love conquers all... Just what the original movie would have wanted 😭

And Malleus, Silver, and Sebek sobbing so much over him. He really got to find out just how much he means to them 😭😭😭 and I adore how after all this time, when Silver and Lilia finally got the chance to talk one on one, they were just talking casually about trivial things in their lives. Silver even said there was so much more they should have talked about... But that normalcy is just what they need after everything

The way Lilia still after all that time thinks so little about what he's done for Silver, asking him if he'd rather keep his blonde hair color. The way Silver was so happy to describe just how much he loves his hair and how important it is to him. Ohhhh,,,,,...,,.,,....

I really like that Silver gave away his armor. His reason for it is so him. He wouldn't want to keep a weapon that he just puts up on a wall and never uses, he wants it to be used for something important. It's such a nice way for him to give back to STYX and the island!!! He doesn't directly say it's because of the armor's association with KOD, and I think that's fine. He really made his peace with having KOD as his father, he's accepted it as part of his life now!

AND THE ADOPTION. IT'S EVERYTHING I COULD HAVE ASKED FOR!!!! Silver and Lilia are both so so. Oh my god. They mean the world to me. I can't believe Lilia's reasoning for not giving Silver his surname is the exact same reason Silver was afraid to ask for it. He didn't want to burdon his kid with the name of his "real parents" enemy. Lilia when I GET YOU. And Silver LAUGHS AT HIM FOR IT!!!! The only other time we ever see him laugh is when he's a kid!!!!! And his laugh is just as sweet now as it was back then 😭

Lilia Vanrouge's adoption of Silver Vanrouge is officially valid in the country of Briar Valley. Silver is now Lilia's true son. The game has been building us up to this moment for 5 years and I am so happy 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 Silver's profile now officially says Silver Vanrouge. I can stop tagging him as twst Silver / twisted wonderland Silver / ect and just tag him as Silver Vanrouge. I'm so happy

All the ghosts of the past got to come back to life and dance in peace with each other at last. Malleus got to meet his mother and Silver got to properly meet his parents, and we got to see Leah!!! Both Malleus and Silver got to thank their parents for protecting them so that they could live in a world with their loved ones, and got to tell them to rest in peace at last. It's sooooo sugary sweet oh my god. THIS GAME!!!!!!

[dindjarindiaries]

Pedro Pascal x Star Wars credits

[the-case-book-of-fanfiction]

On My Knees

Love Bites, Chapter 8 // Love Bites {Masterlist}

Ship: Astarion Ancunin x fem!vampire spawn!elf!Tav/reader

Summary: A betrayal so severe even centuries of love threaten to break beneath its weight. Yet you offer forgiveness, even if Astarion has not felt its kindness in two hundred years.

Word Count: 2,360 words

Warnings: return to chp. 1 timeline, in-game timeline, reader becomes a vampire spawn, brief flashback, captured by Mindflayers, Astarion is vulnerable but also honest, confessions, Sebastian's back

Note: My apologies, I'm a day late! I had some technical difficulties yesterday but now we're back and almost done with Love Bites.

☟ Continue below the fold ☟

“You screamed well into the morning. None of us slept. My siblings, they…offered me their blankets. It was the first time they had been kind to me in…a very long time.” Astarion fidgeted with his fingers, his voice thick with tears as he wrapped up his story. The spawn in the cage stayed quiet, listening intently, some wearing wicked, wicked smiles. “And we planned. They helped me sneak out when night fell so I could— So I could go to my grave.” He looked up at you for the first time in a very long time. “He buried you there. In my coffin.”

Bits and pieces of your memory came back to you. “Yes… Yes, he did, I remember— I remember so much. It was… Dark. Cold. Dirty. But I smelled…you.”

~❊~

The air was musty. It reeked of death, more strongly than the sickhouses during a plague. Your eyes burned when you opened them. You tried not to breathe, then realized after several moments of holding your breath, you didn’t need to. There was no pain in your lungs. You weren’t lightheaded from trying to hold your breath.

“What?” you whispered to yourself. Your lips tugged around two identical objects in your mouth, teeth that you knew had not been there all your life. 

Your eyes adjusted to the space slowly, but you knew from just a few experimental wiggles the place was cramped and tiny. It didn’t take long for you to recognize the smell of your lover or the appearance of your surroundings, lined in soft red velvet; you’d help pick the coffin yourself, all those years ago. It was Astarion’s.

You whimpered, the panic starting to set in. “Asty? Where are you?” You could smell him, all around you, even under the terrible scent of earth and bodily fluids and death and embalming fluids. 

You had no heartbeat, but you were sure you could hear it pounding in your ears, screaming, Out, out, out! You began scratching at the coffin lid and realized there were already claw marks there, ripping the velvet and gouging the wood beneath. You were not the first to have crawled out of here.

If Asty could do it, so can I, you told yourself and began kicking the lid. It didn’t take long for it to crack open, the latch already broken. You wedged it open slowly, clawing handfuls of dirt out of the way until you could make way for yourself. 

It was slow going, digging your way out of grave dirt. It was fresh and not packed down yet, which was your only advantage to get yourself out. It clung to you like summer heat, worming its way into your clothes, your ears, your mouth. You worked through the panic that built up inside you, getting worse the longer it took.

After what felt like hours—what probably was hours—your hand broke the surface. You nearly cried with relief and forced the hole to widen until you could pull yourself out, grappling with more loose dirt and very little for leverage. 

Your head came up through the hole and you took your first deep breath in ages, only to start coughing. You hacked up blood and dirt, your entire body heaving with the effort. You trembled more terribly than you had on the day you’d learned Astarion had died as you finally freed yourself from the grave. You turned to face the stone as you dry-heaved. Sure enough, Astarion’s name was carved into it. 

“You got out faster than he did,” a nasty voice said and you surged your feet, whirling and reaching for your knife. It wasn’t there. You stumbled forward, your body catching up to your exhaustion before your mind did. A black-haired elf stood before you and smiled sardonically. Cazador. “The only weapons you have now are in your mouth, dear child.”

Instinctively, you ran your tongue across your teeth and hissed as your new fangs sliced your tongue open. The tang of your own blood did nothing but make you aware of the pulsing, needy hunger curling in your gut. 

Memories came flooding back. Astarion, in your tavern, a vampire. Sleeping with him. Going back to Cazador with him. The pain of the bite that turned you. Attempting to run—being snatched up by Cazador and brought into the pit of the palace. Thousands upon thousands of spawn kept inside cages, jeering at you, watching you, giving you enough strength to try to fight back. Smiling defiantly at the vampire who promised you pain, even as you cried at the sound of Astarion’s sobs from so far above you. Darkness finally overtaking you as your body gave into the bite, the blood drained from your veins, your bones rearranging themselves, knitting together your new vampiric body.

“Get away from me,” you spat, stumbling away from him.

Cazador laughed. “Where will you go, little one? No one can save you now. Not now that you are this. You are mine.”

You heard a shout. Cazador stopped, turning to search for its origin. Another shout, this time your name, this time clearly Astarion’s voice.

“Do not meddle, boy,” Cazador warned, raising his voice in the direction of the shout.

A hand touched your shoulder. You looked, knowing you would see Astarion the moment you felt his touch. Cazador remained blissfully unaware that his spawn had already reached you. 

Astarion offered you his hand. You glanced back at your maker once, then slipped your hand into his. The two of you took off running. 

Cazador let out a shout, but neither of you heeded. You left the cemetery behind and began running through the streets of Baldur’s Gate.

“Where do we go?” you demanded, impressed by how much faster you were now, even without blood. 

“Anywhere,” Astarion said, glancing at you. “You wanted to run? Now we are. Just don’t stop until the city’s behind us.”

“How did you find me?” you asked.

He flashed you a fangy grin. “Dalyria. She helped me sneak past Godey.”

“She helped? Why?”

He shrugged. “She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

The sky above you opened up. You both stopped short, staring up at the massive ship that had come through the rip in the world. 

“Come back here!” Cazador’s shout rang through the street. He was still some distance away, but he was gaining on you.

You tugged on Astarion’s arm. “Honey, we have to go.”

Astarion was staring at something just ahead of you. “What in the gods’ names is that?”

You turned and something with tentacles for a face grabbed your head. You screamed as, once again, the world went dark.

~❊~

The rest was a blank, until you woke up on the beach with Astarion leaning over you, but the rest of your companions had filled you in. After you’d blacked out, you’d been put in a pod and a tadpole was forced into your head. Some part of you had always been glad you’d had no memory of that—but if you had remembered it, would you have also remembered everything else?

You looked up at Astarion, who was nervously chewing his lower lip, his fang peeking out. You felt your own fang with your tongue. He did this to me.

You took a step backward, putting distance between him and yourself. You saw his heart break in the way his eyes began to water. 

“It was you? You brought me to Cazador? You’re why I’m like this?” You felt short of breath, your chest tight, your head spinning: the beginnings of a panic attack your body remembered from its time alive—which was much more recent than Astarion had been telling you.

“Darling, I had to,” he whispered. “You told me to. You begged me to bring you to him so I wouldn’t get hurt!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you hissed. “You didn’t have to tell the others, you could have fed them the same story you told me about keeping me safe from Cazador for two hundred years. But why me? Why did you lie to me about how I was turned?”

Hurt flashed in his eyes. But there was more to it than that. He was afraid, afraid because he was vulnerable in front of too many people, afraid because you were slowly backing away from him. 

“I couldn’t tell you, darling, you wouldn’t have believed me—”

“No more lies, Astarion,” you snapped. “Tell me the truth! Why did you lie?”

His lower lip trembled. “Because I was scared, alright? I saw the fear on your face on the beach and it—it looked like the fear in your eyes when I brought you to Cazador. You were already afraid. Of me! I… I didn’t want to make it worse. I didn’t want you to hate me when you were all I had. I was—” His eyes dropped briefly to the floor. Then he looked back up at you, tears rolling down his cheeks. You knew they were real. “I was scared you’d stake me for what I did to you the first chance you got. Worse, I was scared you’d leave me.”

You studied his face. As you looked at him, your anger began to fade. Death scares him less than losing me. “Astarion…”

He dropped to his knees, clearly expecting more rage. He trembled as he kept explaining, “I had already been without you for long enough. I didn’t want to do it again, I was scared that you’d forget me the way I—the way I forgot you. I was selfish, darling, I was so selfish because I didn’t want to do what you had to do for two hundred years and remember and love and ache when it wasn’t returned. So I lied. And I lied well. I made up story after story and you believed them so much they were becoming your memories. Anything else was just a bad dream to you and I let you believe that! It was easier to dismiss your real memories as nightmares than confess what really happened. That’s why I did it. Because it was easy.” He sniffled and roughly wiped away his tears with his wrist. “You can hate me all you want, but I am going to be selfish even more and I am going to beg you to stay. Hate me for the next two hundred years but please, please don’t leave me.”

And Astarion remained kneeling on the ground, shaking, waiting for you to speak. No one—not the other spawn or your companions—dared speak or move.

Then you knelt in front of him and gently cupped his cheek in your hand, coaxing his head up. “Astarion… I don’t hate you, honey. I don’t. I…I understand. I’m not upset that you did what I asked you to do, I just…I wish you had told me the truth about it. I don’t like it, but I understand it. And I forgive you.”

The tension in the room shifted. Astarion stared at you with those wide, wet eyes of his, clearly caught off guard as much as, if not more than, your companions.

“Why?” he asked at last. “I let him turn you into a spawn! I let him make you the same abomination as me, as my siblings, as all these poor souls that had the misfortune of meeting me!”

You kissed the top of his head. “Meeting you was never misfortune,” you said to him. “Not in our lives. Not in your undeath. Not in mine.”

Astarion gripped your hand desperately. “Why?” he pleaded.

“Two hundred years are not easily shaken in six months,” you said softly, reminding him of a conversation you had already had about his instinctive need to seduce and manipulate you when he already had you. “I cannot blame you for any of your lies when I know why you have said them. You told me yourself, it’s instinctive. That you wanted protection. You couldn’t have known how I would have reacted if you told me the truth when I woke up, I’m not even sure of that. There was no promise that I would protect you then.” I squeezed his hand gently. “But I’m going to protect you now. I swear it.”

He shook his head, but he held your hand tightly as if he was still afraid of you leaving him, the bones in your fingers grinding from the pressure. “I’m… I’m not sure I’m worth protecting—”

“You are,” you said, cutting him off without a second thought. 

“Why protect me after what I did to you?”

Your heart broke. “Can’t you see? Oh, honey, it’s because I love you! I knew what I was getting myself into then, even if I didn’t remember it for so long. It’s not your fault I insisted, you even gave me several ways out.” You stood and pulled him up with you. “Come on, up you get. We’ve still got work to do, remember?”

Astarion dusted himself off as he got off the ground. He looked at you tenderly, his eyes soft. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

From the cage, Sebastian cleared his throat petulantly. The bubble that had kept your focus on Astarion popped. 

“Tender,” he drawled, “but foolish, trusting him again.”

“Speak for yourself,” you said, shrugging. “You’ll see, when we free you all.”

Astarion pulled a face. “Are you sure we can?”

You glanced back at Sebastian. “You said I fought back, right? And that was without a tadpole, when I was still a thrall.” You turned back to Astarion. “He can’t control either of us anymore. If anyone can kill him, it’s us.”

Slowly, Astarion nodded. “I… Yes. We can. Together.”

Sebastian drew closer to the cage’s bars. He held them as he murmured, “Maybe you will do it. Gods help us if you don’t, though.”

Astarion rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you learned the gods don’t listen to the likes of us?”

“Boys,” you chided, before Sebastian could snap back. You glanced at your other companions. “Is everybody ready?” They nodded and, at last, Astarion nodded, too.

You offered him your hand. “Now, let’s go kill our maker, shall we?”

☞ ❊ ☜

[Image Caption: I do not give permission to repost, translate, or publish my work on any other site or app by anyone except myself. I do not give permission for my work to be fed into AI (for audio, art, or writing).]

Baldur's Gate 3 // Astarion Ancunin

Taglist: {comment and let me know if you'd like to be added to the Astarion taglist!} @wayward-hel @cheeslyy @ofmyth-andmagicart @neetheslayer @whispering-depths @freesidexjunkie @lightsinmycity @the0ldmann @gobbodoggo @oooof-ifellforyou @beeblisss @fangboner @aquaarietes @fiercest-eigengrau-skies @niqhtfell @call-me-nyxx @lueji-m @ceres-xiv @tricksy-trinity @graynstairs @rosa-rubus @ynisthatyou @thegoodwitchs-blog @catching-fire-in-the-wind @kiyastrf94 @vincemachina @silverfangmarks @ravenswritingroom @hinata7346 @hellethil @caramel-hufflepuff @beemiilk @mypainischronicbutmyassisiconic @starwatch77 @julianmarie @sadexistentialism @supernaturallover15 @writinghound @frankie-mercury @kindadolly @infernalrusalka

[vani-ash]

The Journey Book Photos from Space Shuttle No.8 Album ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 ) Album my photos

[blep-23]

I want Dale carnally. It’s not even funny. I just wanna chew on him like a dog toy.

[just-a-lonelypenguin]

a tiny little zine inspired by @koddlet’s how-to! (i love your zines, they’re so fun and inspiring!) i first just folded it out of a sticky note for fun and put it in my pocket thinking “i’ll fill this in later when i have an idea” and then i looked outside and it was so. fucken dark. and here we are :) i really loved treating it as an exercise in “draw whatever comes to mind, let it be as shitty as possible, just try something” — drawing isn’t something i think of as my strong suit but little doodles sure are fun!

[samthepotterhead]

what I really love about lotr so far is that it can be so epic but in the next scene there can be two slightly high hobbits chilling, smoking, everyone bickering (gimli making death threats and the king of the mark being like "oh you must be good friends"), gandalf constantly roasting them… it's really something.

[masked-alien-lesbian]

Don't know why but the cocky attitude works for Grey Morrison in The Ghost of Us but is annoying on Cai in Along Came Treble.

[sgtbuster]

Posting a day early because it's my dog's birthday... also I'm going to be like, super busy all weekend too. So...

Oof, Murdoc's going to feel that in the morning. What a way to end chapter eight! Lol

Though I have a feeling that Ace is not going to be very happy when he eventually wakes up from his little nap. Noodle doesn't seem to be having a very good day either, poor thing. Hopefully the Powerpuff Girls can save the day because Murdoc is starting to... crumble under pressure. Lol

Stay safe and I'll see you next week!

[gethighdropacidneverdie]

Everyone say happy birthday to peepaw jigsaw Tobin Bell!

[kathrynalexao3]

Finally! My brain got 2 solid hours of writing in last night till 1am--let's be real that's when all the best writing happens. And then a couple hours today to do the re-write. 😁

Thank you again @evilphrog for the boost from your fanfic post! 🤩 It helped my brain yank itself out of the darker place it was in. (Ironic given how much angst is in this one! 😆 I'm feeling much better now! 😂)

[cassiusharlowlover]

[titsthedamnseason]

this is the longest book i’ve ever read omfg. this battle has been going on forever and there’s no sign of it ending and IM. SO. BORED. i genuinely do not care if ANY of these people live or die i don’t care what the outcome will be (we all know they’ll win 🙄) the action is written so poorly i have been forcing myself to read it every day for weeks now but i swear it puts me to sleep every time i pick it up. i have to keep reading it because i want it to be over already but it’s so difficult omfg

[neuxue]

started listening to the mo du audiodrama to catch back up to where I left off with the novel (somewhere at the start of book 3) and the episode-end song???

okay okay okay give me a minute I'm fine I just

it's so lovely what the fuck

I See What You Did There with that little "孤舟随烟波渡我" at the end

but also then you get LWZ's "你去那远方没有黎明不见曙光 / 也无悔深渊同往" and first of all ouch second of all man you really can't have a priest story without an abyss can you and third of all in combination with lines like

Fei Du's "默念恶魔的名册 / 奄奄一息是我" I suddenly cannot help but look very very closely at him through the lens of the few other priest novels I know and the first 2 books of this one and ask hey Fei Du quick question where exactly are you planning for this story to go