#baldur's gate x vampire the masquerade

[m-for-musings]

WIP WATHEVER

(got my Wednesday all tangled up at work so I'm posting on Thursday fuck it)

Things are getting wild for the Baldur's Gate Kindred. Astarion, Wyll, Gale and Shadowheart just staked Minthara at her haven's parking lot after dealing with her Ghouls. But now, what to do with a staked Lasombra?

(Yes, I'm still working on a Baldur's Gate x Vampire The Masquerade crossover lol — excerpt below cut)

Minthara lay on the cold concrete floor, her body motionless, eyes wide open in frozen fury. The wooden stake protruding from her chest was grotesque, and Astarion couldn’t help but smirk as he nudged it with his foot. "Well, this escalated quickly," he said with mock innocence, glancing at the others.

Gale, however, was not taking it so lightly. His hands were shaking as he paced back and forth, running them through his already disheveled hair. "Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods," he muttered, wide-eyed and on the verge of a meltdown. "We just staked a Primogen. Not just any Primogen — a Lasombra Primogen! Do you understand the gravity of this? Allow me to paint you a vivid picture of exactly how this could lead to our demise. No, scratch that—our final demise. The kind where there’s no coming back. We’re as good as dead. Final death, do you hear me? This is how it ends for us. All of us. Gone. Staked, burned, left to see the dawn, dust in the wind! It’s over!"

"Calm down, Gale," Wyll said, trying and failing to sound confident. His posture was stiff, and he kept glancing at the elevator door as if expecting Mizora to burst out of it at any moment — even though she wouldn't quite have a reason to be there. "Panicking won't help us now."

"Won’t help? Won’t help? Wyll, if the other Primogen— if your sire finds out, she is going to murder us in our sleep!" Gale gestured frantically at Minthara’s paralyzed body. "We invaded a Primogen's have and staked her! How are you so calm right now?!"

"I’m not calm," Wyll shot back, his jaw tight. "I’m terrified. But we need to think this through before we make it worse."

Astarion let out a short, amused laugh. "Worse? I think we've already passed ‘worse,’ darling. We’re in ‘catastrophic’ territory." He crouched down next to Minthara and poked her cheek, delighting in her helplessness. "Still... I must admit, it’s nice to see her without all that arrogance for once. I could get used to this."

Shadowheart, leaning casually against the wall, rolled her eyes. "Alright, fun’s over. We need to figure out what to do with her before someone stumbles in."

"What if someone finds her?" Gale asked, pure panic etched on his face. It was unclear if the question was meant to the others or to himself.

Shadowheart shrugged, unfazed. "Better for us that she be found staked than dead. If they find her dead, then we’d have real problems."

Astarion raised an eyebrow. "I’m with Shadowheart on this. The work is done, can't we just leave her here? Let the Gangrel handle her."

Wyll shot him a look. "Too risky. We can’t just leave her here. What do you think will happen if someone finds her first and she’s un-staked?"

Astarion’s smirk widened. "Oh, that’s obvious. She’ll come for us, rip our hearts out one by one, and feast on them while we scream for mercy." He gave Wyll a playful nudge. "You first, naturally."

Gale paled, as if he hadn't put up the Blush of Life at all. "Oh gods."

"Focus," Wyll snapped, his frustration finally showing. "We need to move her somewhere. Somewhere discreet."

"I know a place," Shadowheart chimed in. Her voice was cool, almost detached. "It's off-limits, secluded, and nothing ties us to it. No one goes there. We can hide her until we figure out what to do."

[...]

Astarion tilted his head. "And if she’s found there?"

Shadowheart shrugged again. "So she’s found staked. Big deal. It’s not like we’re leaving a pile of ash or a corpse to rot. As I said, nothing ties us to that place."

"She ties us to that place!" Gale practically shouted, his voice rising in pitch. "Don’t you get it? The moment she’s free, she’s going to tell everyone! It’ll be the talk of the entire city. And then we’ll have a Blood Hunt on our heads! Do you know what that means? Every Kindred in this city will be after us, clawing for our throats! There’ll be nowhere to hide, no safe haven! We’ll be hunted like animals!"

"She’s probably too proud to admit four neonates bested a Primogen in her own haven." Shadowheart said, though there was the slightest hint of doubt in her voice. "Even if she does talk, the Lasombra may be part of the Camarilla now, but they’re still persona non grata. Her clan may hold a seat among the Primogen, but the title is mere nominal, just like the Banu Haqim. She’ll be left to handle it on her own, just like she was left now. But if we leave a body? Then we’re looking at a full-blown investigation. The Camarilla will be all over us for breaking their precious Traditions." She pointed at the stake in Minthara’s chest. "This? This buys us time. And if it comes to it, we can always blame the Gangrel."

A moment of tense silence followed as everyone considered the options. Gale looked like he was going to pass out, but he managed to nod. "I-I guess that makes sense. But... how do we even move her there without raising suspicion?"

[...]

"Right." Wyll sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Let's get this done already. Shadowheart, get the car in here. We’ll drag her. Astarion, grab her feet. I'll take her arms. Gale... just try not to hyperventilate."

Astarion shot Wyll a sly grin. "Oh, look at you, taking charge. How very heroic. Almost makes me want to listen."

Shadowheart groaned, turning to run upstairs. "Just shut up and grab her, Astarion."

Astarion let out a dramatic sigh but did as instructed. "You know, Wyll, I can’t help but feel this is all your fault. If you hadn’t insisted on—"

"My fault?!" Wyll shot him a sharp glare. "How exactly is this my fault? If I recall, you were the one who snuck up behind her and shoved the stake through her heart!"

Astarion’s grin returned. "Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re the one who started this whole mess by offering to help that bunch of savages—"

"Guys," Gale interrupted, his voice barely above a whisper. "I think I’m going to be sick."

Astarion just laughed, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "Oh, Gale. Welcome to the real world of Kindred politics. Isn’t it fun?"

[enarien]

my toxic trait: starting 20+ new characters for that perfect walktrough, not finishing the game ONCE

[ma1dmer]

hello, you can call me billy (18+)

welcome to my mind palace, i sometimes share headcanons about books, shows, games, movies, ttrpgs etc and sometimes i write about my own and my friends' original characters, stay and chat or request something! tag:(.writing , .oc talk , .love notes)

this is an 18+ blog sometimes with triggering or problematic media

[brawler1993]

The Entertainment Dome Episode 227 - 19 Inches of Venom

This week on The Entertainment Dome, James is thrilled to hear updates on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, we discuss the announcement of Final Fantasy XVI‘s DLC and various Final Fantasy rumours, and we mourn Saints Row developer Volition being shut down.

[aerynwrites]

Baldur’s Gate 3 Masterlist

Halsin

Longing || part 2 - NSFW. Reader has been pining after Halsin for a while now but has hesitated to make a move due to her inexperience, little does she know - a certain Druid might just feel the same and is more than willing to show her.

Remember - A drunken night leads to confessions and Halsin still being a gentleman.

Not alone - Reader is feeling overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being the defacto leader. Halsin tries to show them they don’t have to bear the weight alone. (Requested)

Scars - Reader hates the scars they bare, but Halsin shows them that there is nothing to be ashamed of.

Lover’s Embrace - NSFW. An alchemical mishap puts reader in a situation she’s not expecting, and as usual, Halsin is there to help. aka - reader accidentally creates an aphrodisiac potion and Halsin helps her through the after effects.

Dance The Night Away - Tav/reader gets a chance to finally show off a dress she acquired some time ago, something Halsin greatly appreciates as they dance.

Cherished - NSFW! A/B/O fic with omega!fem!reader. Reader has been on supressants for years only to be faced with the ordeal of an unexpected and intense heat when she loses her supply. Halsin is there to help.

Loss - reader mourns the loss of a beloved pet. Halsin is there to comfort them. (Based on a request)

Losing You - You get injured in battle and Halsin finally feels a fear he hasn’t felt in quite some time, a confession he makes to you as he nurses you back to health.

Reciprocation - NSFW! Reader notices that Halsin is usually the one to give during intimacy, this time, reader decides to return the favor.

Mistaken Identity - the reader meets a bear in the woods, unbeknownst to her this bear is the same Druid she has a crush on.

Desire - based on a request for breeding kink with Halsin

Whittle Mistakes - Reader injures themself while Halsin teaches them to Whittle.

Peaceful Moments - Reader and Halsin spend a quiet moment together.

It's About The Chase - NSFW! In a ritual to bring them closer, Halsin chases reader through the woods. I think we can all guess what happens when he catches her.

Send Me an Angel (Halsin x Fem!angle!Reader)

After witnessing an angel fall from the sky, Halsin takes it upon himself to nurse her back to health. But as the days go by, the shadow curse still prevails, and he starts to find out there’s more than meets the eye with his new Angel companion.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |

Gale Dekarios

Late Nights - Gale has slipped away from you in the middle of the night - again - so, it’s your duty to bring him back to your side.

Unexpected, but Not Unwelcome - Reader announces she’s pregnant to Gale, he reacts in the best way possible.

Perks of The City - NSFW! Gale and Reader take part in all the city has to offer. Aka: they fuck in a bathhouse

Make it Right - Durge!Reader is struggling with finding out their past and their part in the absolute plot, their companions turning away from them. They decide to do go after Orin to make it right.

Masquerade of Liars - Gale and Reader take their son out to celebrate a traditional Waterdeep holiday (aka the forgotten realms version of Halloween!)

Worthy - reader/tav feels like they aren’t worthy of Gale. He’s quick to tell them otherwise.

Lost for Words - reader tried on the Wavemother Robe and shows off the new item to Gale who, well…he’s lost for words.

Dreams Become Reality - NSFW! reader has a rather…debauched dream and wakes Gale up. Good thing he’s curious and willing to satiate your fantasies.

Astarion x Halsin

Worries and Doubts - On a quiet afternoon in the forest, Astarion starts to have doubts about the future. Halsin is there to comfort him.

Love Lost - Halsin was unable to sway Astarion from ascending and now…Now he’s left to try and reconcile his love for the man he knew and the vampire lord before him now.

Dammon

Emeralds - You’ve been pinning after Dammon for quite some time now, little do you know the blacksmith feels the same way.

Fear of Losing You - (part 2 of emeralds) Reader stumbles upon the tiefling massacre in the shadow cursed lands and assumes the worst.

Bound by The Heart (and other things) - you stumble upon one of Dammon’s more…lewd books, and find out something he’s wanted to try. You eagerly volunteer.

Rolan

Freckles - you spend the morning admiring Rolan as he sleeps.

Headcanons

Halsin and Gale with Reader who tries pheromone perfume

Love languages with Gale and Dammon (SFW and NSFW)

Physical Touch and Gift Giving w/ Gale, Halsin and Dammon

Halsin as a New Dad

Dammon with a plus size S/O

Halsin and Reader Post Game

[bardic-inspo]

Blood in the Mortar

Pairing: Ascended Astarion x Vampire Bride Tav

Rating: Explicit (Smut!!)

Key Tags: Vampire/Blood Bride Lore, Service Dom Astarion, Sexy Use of Telepathic Bond, Evil Power Couple, Torturing a Captive, Choking, Biting/Blood, Masquerade, PIV, Cunnilingus

Summary:

“I wanted to see you right where you belong,” Astarion whispers, the sound as sheer as the lace he wrecked. “So beautiful on your throne.” It started on Naomi’s knees, this new life of passion and pleasure unbridled. Astarion didn’t know he’d be hers, just as much as she’d be his, when he bit her thrice, bled her dry, and gave her just one drop of his ascended blood.

Cross-posting from my AO3 account. This is my first BG3 smut fic. If you like it, I'd love to know! Click here if you'd prefer to read on AO3.

“To whom can a vampire bare its soul and admit its fears? From whom can it receive consolation for the past, comfort for the present, and hope for the future?...The vampire is drawn emotionally to a mortal and decides, because of the strength of this emotion, to make her his bride…The happiness of the vampire becomes tied up with the prospective bride, and its well-being depends on hers.”

-Van Richten’s Monster Hunter’s Compendium, Vol 1

Astarion twists the stem of his wine glass, idly tilting the contents within. His assorted guests warp in the bulb of it, swaying between rosy red and clear crystal.

A gravelly voice interrupts his game. “Quite the menagerie you’ve gathered here, Lord Ancunín.”

Astarion doesn’t bother to stifle his sigh. There’s no mistaking him as the lord of the house, even masked as he is. Astarion’s ensemble this evening is pitch dark velvet swirled in crimson thread and snaking silver. His mask glimmers in the same shade of scaled metal, set to complement the curve of his cheekbones, with only miniscule, twinkling rubies encrusting the edges. Nothing meant to outshine the searing color of his eyes. The mask might be silver, but it’s a red dragon Astarion embodies for this particular masquerade.

This party’s for more monstrous company, after all.

No expense was spared for the ‘menagerie’. A grand piano, polished to an opalescent white, plays under spectral hands at the heart of the ballroom alongside a string quartet. A starlit Baldur’s Gate glistens outside the windowed east wall, framed in gold drapery to match the shimmering flecks in the white marble floor. Lavish wine and better blood pour freely; his guests have only to lift their empty glasses to have them brimming again.

Even with all the ornate masks, in the shapes of creatures exotic or fierce, none of the fangs in the room are fake. All the titles are, save for his and his consort’s. Astarion’s lip curls with distaste.

This masquerade was meant for nobility of a supernatural stature. Vampires, warlocks, lycanthropes. Those who lead them. But what his doors received were lowly spawn. Servants sent in their masters’ stead to get just a glimpse of the one and only vampire ascendant, and then to scurry back and tell tale of him. Cowards.

There’s only one human here who’s just human.

Astarion offers him a well-practiced shrug of a laugh. “I do hope you don’t feel out of place among us more…colorful sorts. Lord…? Forgive me, what was it again?”

“Isn’t the point of a masquerade not to bother with such trivialities?” The stranger chuckles hastily. “In any case, I am not lord. Only a humble apprentice to the most renowned wizard Waterdeep has to offer.”

Ah, yes. The invitation was sent for the newly named archmage, filling the god-shaped hole Gale left behind in the wake of his own ascension. Astarion’s eyes flit over the lanky, unkempt apprentice who addresses him instead.

His hair hangs in honey blonde waves past his shoulders, like the mane of the beast he seeks to imitate. It’s a lion’s mask the apprentice wears. Perhaps a poor attempt at humor. The effort would’ve been better paid towards penance, and a sheep’s head would’ve suited him far better than the guise of a predator. Anything would’ve been more fitting than the baggy business he calls a shirt.

Astarion clicks his tongue. “That still doesn’t give me a thing to call you.”

“I am Enrik, if it pleases you.”

“No surname?” Astarion asks with an arched brow.

“None of consequence, my lord,” he replies with the uneasy edge Astarion’s entitled to.

“Well, Enrik, I hope you find our masquerade pleasing.”

“It has certainly been enlightening thus far.”

“And how’s that?” Astarion asks brusquely. He never did like wizards.

He doesn’t like the look on this one’s face, either. The lion that should be a sheep surveys the room with a pitying expression, like he’s watching some petty amusement. A zoo. Gods, or a circus. And what would that make him, Astarion the Ascended, if not a clown? Astarion’s fingers tighten on the stem of his glass, an imperceptible change to any eyes not keen enough to catch it.

“Why, it’s been only a year since your ascension,” Enrik says. “You’ve accomplished much in short order. It’s quite remarkable.”

Astarion’s nose twitches. Praise. From cattle. How quaint, and ill-fitting.

His expression abruptly eases. A refined, familiar scent carries to him from across the crowd. A note of lavender, twined with his favored bergamot.

“And you’ve already enthralled some truly magnificent specimens,” Enrik carries on, oblivious. “Take this fine creature, for example. What a pretty thing to have strung along on your leash.”

Astarion feels her before he sees her. She wipes a palm down the sheath of her skirt, smoothing out some infinitesimal wrinkle. The music smooths, too. With that one simple motion, it bends and blends into something deeper, fuller. All of the lesser spawn of Astarion’s making straighten their slouched shoulders.

He feels the tug of her in his head, and then the cool stroke of her hand to his back, the soothing feel of her fingers combing through his hair, and the gentle scrape of her nails against his scalp. It takes a concerted effort to suppress the pleased groan that bubbles in the back of his throat. All this from across the room, without so much as a glance, let alone a touch.

Hello, darling, he thinks, and she hears it just as if he’d spoken aloud. Aren’t you ravishing?

Her skirt is snow-white crepe that clings taut to her shapely hips before fanning out at her feet. It’s the same lovely shade of ivory as her hair, twisted in a braid like a crown around her head, with the rest falling sleek down her back. A black lace bodice sets just off her lilac shoulders, with gloves to match. Floral stitching vees down from her waistline. The same embellishments decorate the skirt’s edges.

His dark consort, his Naomi once-Tavriel-now-Ancunín, weaves leisurely through the partygoers. The thorny prickle of Astarion’s irritation inspires a little lift at the corner of her mouth.

I’ve been called so much worse, she thinks. It sounds suspiciously like a laugh. I think you called me ‘creature’ just yesterday. Should I not have taken it as a compliment?

Astarion’s scowls. He should be grateful to have your name in his mouth. To even set foot in our home. Let alone speak to me like that. Or at all.

But think of how much fun he’s started, she answers, chipper. You were so bored before.

She’s not wrong.

If they’re not the guests you wanted, Naomi continues, cool and calm, then they’re intruders, aren’t they? Whatever should we do with them?

A slow smile steals its way onto his lips. Just when I thought I couldn’t love you more. Miracles never cease.

“Do you know what they call her?” Astarion says aloud, to worse company. “Other than mine, of course.”

“She was the hero of Baldur’s Gate.”

Astarion waves a manicured hand irritably, as if swatting away a stray fly. “One of them, true, but isn’t there another name that comes to mind?”

The man swallows thickly. “The Siren of the Sword Coast.”

"And yet here you are," Astarion sneers, "ready to dash yourself upon the rocks like a little ship blown astray. I can hardly blame you."

His eyes soften, just past the shoulder of Enrik’s gaudy doublet. In the low flutter of candlelight, he spies the sheen of amethysts set among delicate feathers wrought from silver. He'd had the mask made for Naomi with the likeness of a swan in mind.

Still, as pretty as it is, his favorite gleam is those eyes. She still kept the kiss of violet in them, even in death. It mingles with the red in her irises, like a rich, dark wine.

"She is captivating, isn’t she?" Astarion sighs, a faint smile grazing his lips. "My beautiful bride."

“Forgive me my lord, I meant no offense,” Enrik says, eyes down with deference. “I’m merely an admirer of fine things. And a messenger for my fine master.”

“Do your duty, then,” Astarion says tersely, his smile evaporating.

“My master understands that power is the only currency that holds any weight for men of your making. He has much of it to share, if you're likewise inclined.”

Astarion laughs coldly. “And what does your master wish for me to share with him, exactly? I don’t bite just anyone, after all.”

A swallow bobs in Enrik’s throat. “He only means to make mutual use of your shared arsenal. Like you mean to make of his, my lord. He could work wonders with even just one scream. He could bottle it--”

Astarion clenches the wine glass in a chokehold. He could kill this wretched cretin here, now, bare-handed. Or have him drawn and quartered. Or--

No one knows their manners these days, Naomi sighs inside his head. But if you want to play along and see what this archmage would pay, I’ll--

Astarion’s jaw clenches. You won’t be screaming for him, little love.

It earns him an eyeroll. It wouldn’t be like that--

It won’t be at all. Astarions sends his answer with the weight of a stone.

He sips his wine, boring into Enrik with a hard stare. “Don’t you know swans make the most achingly beautiful music?”

Enrik’s eyes dart anxiously over Astarion’s burning ones. “Only just before they die, so the stories go.”

“Before someone does,” Astarion drawls, as the vintage seeps sweetly down his throat. “You see, my beloved, oh, she’s a monster, too. She so does love the taste of blood in her mouth, now that she’s supped of mine.”

Enrik edges back, shoulders hunched small like the prey he is. “I-I’m just a messenger my lord. Killing me after you’ve so graciously offered your hospitality would be the same as breaking a mirror. It would only cast ill luck on you and your house.”

A gloved hand wraps Enrik’s shoulder. He shirks from that delicate grip like it's scalding. At long last, he finds the decency to shut up.

Naomi’s fangs gleam like the bottle in her hand. “More wine?”

The white marble of the ballroom shimmers like freshly fallen snow. All the curtains are drawn back, cinched aside for good measure. Shadow and sunlight slice the floor in slanted strips. Gritty ash piles where the light lies, coils of rope strewn among the gray dust of guests gone for good.

Only one remains.

Sprawled motionless across the floor, Enrik lies nose-to-nose with the knife edge of day and darkness. It’s only a silhouette that keeps him from being swallowed by the glow. Only Astarion’s grace shades him.

The vampire ascendant cuts a sharp shadow before the arched windowpane. Brightness clings, soft as clouds, to his curls, his lean edges, and his jaw. His velvet coat crumples at his heels as if it were nothing more precious than the ash heaped around him. He’s blessedly bare from the waist-up, resplendent in the sunlight while he surveys his domain awash with it.

It calls to mind the man who took Naomi out into the woods all those months and nights ago. What he looked like when she woke and found his back arched, chin tilted skyward. What she’d do, and what little she wouldn’t, to see Astarion slip into bliss every day as easily as slipping out of a coat.

It’s Naomi’s grace that finally rouses their disheveled company. A rolling melody, played on piano, pours from her fingertips and crests with the morning birdsong drifting in. Enrik groans against the grain of it.

At once, the music cuts to quiet. Naomi’s hands hover over the keys, knuckles twitching in faint longing. Then, she turns on the bench and turns her attention towards her restless audience.

“Good morning,” she says brightly.

Enrik squints up at her. His brown eyes leak with the light, even though he’s sheltered from it. They dart across the room, skimming like stones over water, before they sear into Naomi.

“You.”

“Who else were you expecting? You’re in my home.”

Rope binds Enrik’s hands and heels. He tugs at the ties, or tries to. He hasn’t yet figured out it’s all for not.

Naomi stands, her heels clicking staccato to the tile. As she goes, she paints a palm over the piano keys, stroking each octave from root to rise. Music flows freely again all on its own, even when her hand falls away.

She comes to loom over her captive, lips pursed. “I hear you said some very rude things to my husband.”

Enrik folds against the floor, panting for breath.

“You should be so grateful for our hospitality,” she says. “Should have been. That’s all behind us now, isn’t it?”

Feral noise rips from his throat. Like a dog, he lunges, snapping for her ankles. She side-steps into the light, not bothering to flee any farther than an inch. He freezes, ogling the shiny toe of her shoe now parallel to his nose.

“You don’t fear the sun?” he gasps, quivering.

“I need not fear anything.”

Naomi lifts her head, meeting a scarlet stare brimming in equal measures affection and amusement. Sunlights melts over the bare of Astarion’s chest, spurring her tongue to wet her lips. He leans against the glass, head angled back, eyes slitted in satisfaction. A slow smile unfurls on his face.

“You should be grateful, too,” Naomi says with a sneer, “to lay here and not just a little to the left.”

“W-What do you mean? What did you do to me?!” Enrik’s eyes bulge. He squirms in a sudden panic, to no avail.

Naomi tilts her neck to the side and taps at the scar Astarion’s teeth marked her with. Her fingers fan down on her own throat, savoring the shape of that succulent memory. Of the last bite he gave her in life. Of his lips swirling comfort into her skin before sucking her down to the last drop. Of the look on his face, the awe he had, when she next woke.

The faintest leak of breath, soft as down, passes from Astarion’s mouth.

“You--you--! You turned me!” Her hostage sputters. Naomi frowns darkly.

“Oh not me,” Naomi snaps, incredulous. “I’m only a weak little spawn puppet, according to you. According to you, the only good thing I can do is scream. How could I manage to turn you without choking on my own leash?”

She gags for good measure. He doesn’t get the joke. He hasn’t caught on to the other joke yet. Which means she’s safe as can be, even this close. So long as she stands on the other edge of Astarion’s shadow.

Astarion turns. His silhouette twists with his movement. Enrik shrieks like a swine.

“Oh, that wasn’t good at all. You can do better.” Naomi presses out a strained sigh, crouching down to fist a hand in his hair and yank his head upright.

Enrik bares his teeth as if they aren’t dull and flat. “Filthy bitch!”

The insult doesn’t so much as chip Naomi’s serene composure, but it puts a twang in her head, along the invisible string that links her and Astarion. His anger lashes in her mind like a restless tail.

“What a vile little ingrate,” Astarion snarls.

She lets her hostage’s head roll from her palm, cheek smacking the tile. Enrik writhes against his restraints. Naomi clicks her tongue in reproach. I’ve barely even touched you yet.

Green magic threads between her gloved fingers, glittering. She snaps them and says, “Scream.”

And he does. Loud enough to drown out the crescendo coursing from the grand piano. Inside of Enrik’s skull, the song isn’t nearly so sweet. His back jerks up and away from the floor, head bent back, eyes torn wide in terror.

His cries pitch with the slink of Astarion’s shadow stretching nearer. Sunlight clings close behind his heels. Naomi’s fingers flex and the spell recedes.

Her magic leaves Enrik sniveling, inching like a worm away from the slice of light between Astarion’s legs. Astarion huffs softly. With a wave of his hand, a ghostly one apparates behind him and snags the curtains closed.

Astarion’s scent sweeps with his sleeve -- the sweetness of brandy, mingled with the woodsy smell of rosemary. His knuckles gently brush the side of Naomi’s cheek. Instinctively, she leans towards the touch.

“Precious thing,” Astarion chides with a pout. “You’re being far too sweet to him. Here I thought you only had room in your heart for me.”

Naomi inclines her head, eyes narrowing by a hair. “My sire would see me be crueler?”

Astarion’s thumb grazes her lips. At once, she parts for him, teasing the pad of it with her tongue while he toys with the tip of a fang. He presses in, watching his skin bend to near-breaking, as if to test her sharpness. Before any blood’s drawn, he draws his hand down to cradle her chin. His voice is smooth as satin, though his stare is a hardened one.

“Your sire would see you spoken to with the respect you’re owed. And he needs you to kneel, dear one.”

The words are a weight to her shoulder, easing her down. But the heft is a comfort, not a compulsion. He could compel her, if he wanted to.

He hasn’t yet.

One day, she thinks, he will. And he’ll feel the weight of whatever chains he’d wrap her in through the bond that binds them tighter than the tadpole did. He won’t do it without good reason. Naomi doesn’t need a reason to kneel for her lover. That he wishes it is enough.

When her knees meet the ground, she feels the shape of Astarion’s smile pressed against their bond like it’s pressed, wet and wanting, against her mouth. She feels the dainty tug of his teeth coax her lips apart. Tastes the coppery tang of her own blood and the velvet undercurrent of his within her veins. The heat of him, still such a novel thing in his ascended body, bleeds from his skin to hers, fanning the newfound ache between her thighs.

In her mind, and his, his lips pour down her bare shoulders. His fingers fist in the fine fabric of her dress, ripping it to ruin. He leaves none of her untouched. To anyone else’s eye, they’re not even touching.

Naomi’s eyelids flutter. She downs a hard swallow. Good girl, he says, just for her.

To their captive audience, he spares no such kindness. Astarion raises his foot above Enrik’s ankles, letting it dangle for a moment. It drops like a hammer to an anvil. Enrik bucks with a fresh scream and a sickening crack.

“I’d never give a miserable little wretch like you the gift of immortality,” Astarion spits. “You wouldn’t know how to appreciate it.”

Confusion flits between the pain and panic in Enrik’s eyes.

“That’s right,” Astarion seethes. “You’re not a vampire. You aren’t worth my consort’s teeth. Or mine.”

Crunch. Another ankle shatters. Another shriek claws the air. Astarion strolls, leisurely, to Enrik's hands next. He grounds his heel into the pop of fingers breaking beneath his boots. Their hostage heaves a broken sob.

“Sh, sh, sh, oh, it’s all right,” Astarion croons. “I happen to have just the knife for you.”

Astarion crosses back to his coat piled near the window and draws a dagger from its folds. Rhapsody. Cazador’s blade. Naomi hasn’t seen it since they claimed the Crimson Palace for themselves.

Brightness glints off the twined edge, a match for the harsh and singular focus gleaming in Astarion’s gaze.

So that’s what Astarion was smiling about, as he basked by the window. What had him so peacefully quiet and content. Murder was on his mind, even then.

Not the only thing on my mind, little love. She feels the slant of his smirk in her head, as if it ghosted past the hinge of her jaw. There’s no trace of it on Astarion’s stony exterior.

He plucks the crystal wine glass from the sill while he’s there, rotating the stem as he saunters back over. Blood flecks the fine leather of Astarion’s shoes. He plants them on either side of Enrik’s torso. He seizes Enrik’s collar, yanking harshly until he’s kneeling, too.

“Fuck you,” Enrik spits. “Fuck you both! My master will--”

“Darling,” Astarion trills, grip unwavering, “Would you..?”

Magic swirls sticky across Naomi’s tongue. “Ad Lapidē.”

Violet runes blaze to life beneath their captive’s knees, capturing him in perfect stillness. His mouth hangs agape with unspent vitriol. Astarion’s hands recoil, twisting the dagger in one, and the glass in the other.

“Your master,” Astarion sneers with a dark laugh. “Too much of a coward to show his face, so he sends you. His sacrificial lamb, sent to speak to me about sharing my dearest treasure, like he isn’t the scum beneath her shoes. He had to know I wouldn’t hear of it. But he didn’t care enough about you to even taint your blood. That’s right. My lesser spawn sampled you just like they would any cattle. But my beautiful bride hasn’t had one bite, not yet. Not until I was sure you were sweet enough for her palate.”

Astarion strokes Rhapsody down the man’s outstretched neck. The barest streak of blood leaks from the scrape. Astarion’s eyes skate over the ash piles around the room, wistful.

“All it took was a sleeping potion,” he muses. “Just a few drops. Now all of the spawnlings sent by all of my lessers are dust. You’ll wish to join them, before this is done. And you will. When I decide we’re done.”

Naomi’s eyes fasten to the blood beading down Enrik’s pallid throat. Astarion digs in ever-so-gently with Rhapsody’s tip, just enough to start a stream running. He presses the cup beneath it. Slowly, the crystal fills red to the brim. Her mouth waters.

Astarion looks up abruptly, eyes wide and soft as his malice dissolves to fondness. “Darling, you do look famished. Open up for me, dear.”

Naomi’s chin lifts, lips parted. Astarion tilts the glass to meet her with the utmost care.

“I won’t have your grime and sweat on her lips,” Astarion hisses in Enrik’s ear. “Only your blood. You don’t deserve that…” He sucks a sharp breath in. Naomi watches with rapt attention as it stutters through his chest. “...pretty little mouth.”

Blood, rich and smooth as cream, slips across her tongue. Her eyes slip shut with it. With each swallow, syrupy warmth spreads slowly through her chest, down her legs, through arms, to her every inch. Too soon, it’s taken from her. Naomi’s eyes flutter open. She’s taken all of it, already.

“More, my love?” Astarion hums happily. “You only have to ask.”

“More,” she says at once, lips still wet.

Astarion carves. The insolent apprentice bleeds without a sound. Again and again, the cup fills. He tips it to her lips, and Naomi drinks until her eyelids grow heavy.

Her body thrums like it remembers the pulse that used to play through her veins. She’s warmer than a dead woman should be. Even the air itself feels like the kiss of steam tingling against her skin.

It’s then that Naomi feels Astarion’s lips in her head again, sucking little marks down her throat that match the rosy flush heating her cheeks. She pants out of habit, out of instinct, and not of need. Out of want for him to watch what he does to her. As if he doesn’t already know.

One twist of Astarion’s wrist turns the little leak of blood from Enrik’s throat into a fountain. Naomi’s spell dissipates in violet sparks. His body slumps over, lifeless. Blood runs from him in little rivers, rushing to fill the grout lines between the tiles.

Astarion cradles one last glassful in a delicate grip. His face clears of any clouded rage as he gives the glass an experimental swirl. Wordlessly, he tilts the cup to her mouth once more.

Naomi gasps. Wetness paints her chin. It streams down her neck, drips down her sternum and between her breasts, still bound in lace. Astarion drips with it, down to his knees in fluid motion. Somewhere behind him, the wine glass shatters. In her periphery, she sees the shards glitter like frost.

“Oops,” he says, low and shameless.

Barely any blood made it to Naomi’s mouth this time, but she doesn’t mind one bit. Astarion crawls to her, catlike. She’s only spared a moment to admire the lithe muscle flexing through his naked chest before he leans into the hollow of her throat. Silver curls brush soft beneath her chin. And then, she feels the tip of that devilish tongue take a tentative lick of the mess he’s made.

And gods, what a mess she must be. Blood smears from her neck to her navel, near-black on her blue-gray skin. Dark like Astarion’s eyes, with pupils blown wide and hungry. A flare of heat twists low in Naomi’s stomach. Her thighs shift, wet with it.

Thread rips in her ears. Rhapsody drags delicately down her side, scratching faint like a quill. The lace of her gown splits without resistance. There's none to be had against that mouth of his, just as busy as his nimble hands.

Astarion laps, dainty, down the path of her swallow. His coy smile curves with a petal-soft laugh against her collar bone. Naomi laughs, too, breathless as his tongue chases lazily after the spill. Breathless as the day he took the last breath she needed.

Ever since, Astarion’s given her everything she could want, without leaving her wanting for more than a moment. Now, her knees will never grow numb, no matter how long they bend against the marble. The chill of it can’t phase her, either. Even if it could, Astarion’s drawn the curtains wide. When she kneels for him, it’s only ever on sun-soaked stone.

Astarion treasures her. Cherishes her. Lavishes her with love and pleasure and wealth and power. Preserves her like prized silver, polished with such devotion so she’ll never know the tarnish of time. She’s his spawn. His wife.

But above all else, she’s his pride. The very thing that rules him. The only thing that still does.

Naomi wants to be in ruins with him. To be the last pillars of a broken world already so far beyond repair before they were dragged through it. Aeterna amantes. Until the fall of everything.

Until then, this, the low groan he gives her while her fingers stroke red through the plush white of his hair, the heady hum in her blood, the bloom of someone else’s waking color in her cheeks, the way Astarion looks at her like there’s nothing else at all, the way he tears into a dress he paid a fortune for, the hand he knots through her braids to wreck them -- this is everything.

Astarion tosses Rhapsody over his shoulder to join the broken wine glass, just like any other worthless trinket. His deft hands curl into the tears in her bodice and tug. At once, it gives way to his grip. She would, too, were it not so binding. Naomi grounds out a gasp. Her skirt pools at her knees, leaving her bare but for the warmth of Astarion’s roaming hands and the daylight pouring over them both.

“Do you know why I wanted you down here, pet?” He asks softly.

Astarion’s eyes latch to hers while his teeth toy at the curve of her breast. His tongue slicks over to soothe where his fangs grazed her, and then it melts against a pert nipple, taking it in with a lewd suck.

Naomi paws for a coherent thought, but all she finds is a pleading hum. He nips her again, just enough to see her tit tremble from the pull when he draws away. He leaves her nipple glistening and the underside of her breast peppered in pink before moving on to the other.

“To torture me, clearly,” Naomi pants. Her hands still tangle in his hair. Amusement glimmers in his gaze as he plants a chaste kiss to the inside of one of her wrists and sets them both back at her sides.

“Oh no, my sweet. I would never,” he says, chin resting flat against her navel. He looks up at her with wide, doey eyes, full of faux innocence.

He slinks lower, laying a line with his tongue that ends in a kiss just above where her skirts still shield her. He shifts them aside, ripping where he needs, until it’s only one little piece of black lace covering her cunt. Astarion growls against it, nosing at its edges, his back bowed, stomach brushing the floor. His teeth find the waistband and tear that, too.

Hot breath fans across the other mess he made. Naomi wavers on her knees. From that minute motion alone, she can hear how he’s soaked her.

But Astarion doesn’t disprove her theory; he leans back abruptly, straightening up to his knees again. An arm loops slack around her waist as he circles around to her bare back. Naomi’s lips twitch. If this is the game he wants, it’s too soon to beg. The thought inspires another needy flex through her cunt. His other hand slides to cup the heat of it, and Naomi whines. Reflexively, her back arches. Astarion pulls her still.

He catches the side of her jaw, angling her back into a biting kiss. It’s over before she wants it to be, his lips red and glistening with what he stole from her. Without him, her mouth burns from the cut.

“I wanted to see you right where you belong,” he whispers, the sound as sheer as the lace he wrecked. “So beautiful on your throne.”

For a brief moment, he draws away entirely, leaving her with nothing but a lonely chill. And then, his back comes flush to the floor beneath her. His body splays behind her. The heat of his mouth crests against the heat of her cunt, his face fitted between her thighs, his lips hovering so close, but not close enough. His breath alone snags the one halfway through her throat.

“Oh,” her realization comes out quivering.

The tip of his nose nudges, just barely, against her clit, spurring her hips to roll. But all she gets from that mouth is mischief and a quiet snicker. He shifts his cheek, laving a long stroke of his tongue to the tender crux of her inner thigh before sealing it over with a tight suck. When he bites down, he draws out her blood with a rough moan.

Astarion pulls back, his smirk glazed in her, his eyes aflame. “Oh, darling, I’ve barely even touched you yet. And you’re so very wet for me.”

“Touch me, then,” she hisses between her teeth, raking her hands through his perfect curls and fisting them there.

His eyes spear into hers, hard like the way he clenches her ass and pulls her hips down. Even as it sets her on fire, his mouth gives her mercy. Astarion’s tongue melts hot across her cunt, swiping slow and dexterous. Not for the first time, Naomi thinks she might like to die like this.

It’s not so different from how she died. It started on her knees, this new life of passion and pleasure unbridled. Even then, Astarion already knew the shape of her body like he knew his own hands. Every curve, every intimate bend, how to make her speak in noise instead of words. The hidden language behind every whimper she makes, every shiver.

So he knows exactly what he’s doing while his tongue teases gentle circles around her clit. He knows, by the time his timid little laps blend into a needy suck, that she’s so, so sensitive. Astarion’s hungry groan seeps into her slickness. She feels him like a current and clenches again, just as hungry.

Every feeling he gives her gives him an echo back just as strong. Every thought in her head is in his head, too. He eats her cunt and feels fed by her pleasure curling in the tips of his toes. He didn’t know he’d be hers, just as much as she’d be his, when he bit her thrice, bled her dry, and gave her just one drop of blood back.

But Astarion knew her body before she was his bride. Now, he knows her mind. A part of him lives there, as she does in his. As he drags his pale, elegant fingers between her folds, he drags her head through a dozen depravities. Filling her with nothing but thoughts of how he’ll fill her properly.

He could have her against the arched windows lining the east wall, body pressed so pretty to the glass so he can see the imprint of it even after she peels away. She could feel the heat brimming off the sun outside, washing over their empire. He could taste her sunbathed shoulder while he fucks her senseless. His little love, dipped in honey. So what if someone else sees. Later, he’ll see to them not seeing anything ever again.

He could take her here, on the ballroom floor. Pull her down just as she surfaces from the pleasure he’s paid her, and roll her beneath him to bury her in it all over again. Make love on the marble streaked with the blood of their enemies, where hundreds of dignitaries have danced and dined on countless evenings before. But none of them were ever blessed with such a fine feast as he. The stone would be hard and unyielding against her back, and he would be just the same, driving into her, relentless. At least it’s far prettier than the dirt they used to fuck in.

Or--

A new picture snaps from Naomi’s mind to his, with the dip of his tongue to her entrance, a staggering spike of pleasure, and an unbidden whimper.

The piano. Pearly white with jet black keys, so pristine, so gorgeous with blood spilt red down the sides. Naomi poured over the side, ivory hair tinged with crimson, cascading over her bare, bent back. Astarion’s fingers buried in her hips, planting the promise of bruises, his body bucking wildly into her as he finally--

Naomi’s moan hits the high pitch of the ceiling. She grinds, needy, against the pair of fingers he crooks inside of her. His thumb spreads her slickness back and presses to the pucker of her ass.

So eager for me to fill you up. His voice in her head is a caress. Her hips roll with the sound. His thumb dips inside her ass with the motion, and Naomi gasps as she eases into that delicious stretch.

But darling, I haven’t fed all night, Astarion pouts, mouth moving with agonizing slowness as his eyes flutter shut beneath long black lashes. Naomi’s eyelids grow heavy, too, as she’s lost to that lovely, slick click of his lips. A meal like you is meant to be savored.

He fucks her holes leisurely, with the air of someone who knows he’ll be back for more before long. It brings to mind those long, lithe fingers, folded between the pages of a book to mark his place. All it takes is an effortless flex of them to keep her coaxed open like this. Her body draws taut as he leans her over the precipice of her own pleasure.

If you need more, my dear, by all means. Take it.

He growls into their bond like he’s the one devoured. Like he can plead ignorance to how he’s taking her apart with his hands, his mouth. Naomi catches a whine between her teeth. Astarion’s free hand cups her ass, urging her into the thrust her body bends towards. She parts a hand from his hair to brace flat to the floor beside his face, the other knotting anew in his silver curls.

Desperately, she rides against the flat of his tongue, against that long, refined nose, fucking herself back into the curve of his fingers. Every pull of them pulls her under, deeper into her own ecstasy. Her body grips him back like she means to drown him, too. The tip of his tongue flicks her clit in relentless rhythm, starting off a shudder she can’t stop.

“Don’t stop,” she begs within and without, the jerk of her hips growing frantic.

His mouth is mercy. When she comes for him, she’s wreathed in heat, slick with sweat, every nerve in her body alight with the most blissful burn. A strangled cry breaks in her chest. It buries the song now trembling from the piano. Naomi shivers out a sigh, and the keys shiver with her.

Astarion wraps his arms tight to her thighs, anchoring her through the aftershocks. When she stills again, her body throbs with a heady rush of blood, pleasure, want. Every part of her is limp with it, save the pulsing, rigid press in her mind and in his trousers. She’s putty in his hands even as his fingers leave her. Naomi twitches back towards the touch he takes away, body aching with his absence.

Naomi’s knuckles unfurl, stroking soft through the tangles she wrought. What a sight he is, his hair in utter disarray, his mouth a mess of blood and lust and her. An ease settles into his graceful features, not so different from that quiet contentment he wore while leaning into the light by the window. His eyes simmer with it, lips drawn in a soft smile.

Without warning, his grip tightens. Naomi stifles a huff of surprise as she’s taken down, marble kissing smooth to her spine. A pale hand cradles her head, cushioning her fall. In a blink, he’s hovering over her bare body and dipping down to catch her in a fever of a kiss. It’s a needy, sweltering latch of lips, tangy with her own sweetness as much as his.

“Here?” She purrs to the seal of his mouth.

She lets him feel the way the word alone makes her body tense. Waiting. Wanting. Their bond curls with it, crooked and beckoning in his head. The way his fingers bent a few moments before, buried in the heat of her.

A long breath passes out through his nose, his eyes sliding half shut. A smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth. But his cheek turns by just the barest hair, and Naomi’s attention follows after his.

Music flutters, breathy, off the black and white keys. The piano stays a pretty picture of perfection, among the deaths little and large they’ve littered throughout the ballroom.

His teeth trace the angled edge of her ear. Naomi keens with the sting of it as she’s swept from the floor.

“There.”

She’s caught in his kiss again as he carries her. One swipe of his tongue to where he bit her lip before has her quivering. Has her a world away from the one still around them. Vaguely, she’s aware he’s somehow rid her of her gloves and shoes. She hears a dull, wooden clatter, and then a resounding thud. The piano plays on, but it's muted.

Astarion doesn’t bend her over the way she mused. Instead, he seats her on the polished wood of the piano’s closed lid. His hands leave her back to push her knees apart, scoop beneath them, and pull her spread legs to the strain trapped in his trousers.

Naomi grins, her fangs snagging his lower lip as he tries to part from her. Astarion’s answering groan is rough like a scrape of sandpaper. It leaves her mouth raw, tingling, alive with a pulse that plays to the tune of his pleasure. She wants more of that noise. More of the happy purr it pours into her head from his. One drink of that sloppy, slap happy look on his face sates her more than blood ever could.

You’ve given me everything, he told her, once. But now, all she can think is more. Take more. Take everything.

Astarion grinds his hard length against her in answer. The sweet friction makes sweeter music in their mouths as Naomi moans with the motion, too. Still, there’s far too much fabric for her liking.

Astarion’s fingers make fast work of it. He unlaces his pants only enough to free his cock, parts from her only enough to push her back and clamber up after her. Then, he’s on her again like a second skin. Her cunt throbs with the press of his cock, the tip of it wet and seeping against her thigh. She tries to fit a hand between them, to wrap her palm around his girth and feel with her hands, not just her head, how badly he has to have her. Astarion doesn’t leave her space for it.

It’s not his hands that put her flat on her back, against the body of the piano. It’s the sudden swell of his adoration ballooning from his brain to hers. The weight of his affection pins her there beneath him, utterly paralyzed, as the music flows on under both of them. He’s brimming with it, and it washes over her in a wave, a cup overflowing.

His curls hang down in his eyes, wild with the look of a man starved. “You’re going to scream for me, little love,” he says with the slightest slur. The thought smears from him to her, burning in the back of her mind like a pull of liquor. He brushes her snarled hair back until it tumbles over the piano’s edge, white over white. “I’m going to make you. And I want to see that beautiful face when I do.”

“Please,” she starts to say.

But barely any of it makes it past her lips. Astarion never leaves her wanting for more than a moment.

“O-Oh,” she stammers instead, as her soaked cunt splays to his cock sliding home. Astarion pushes out a moan as he pushes into her. He hooks her legs with his arms, folding them up and back.

“That’s my girl,” he pants, forehead heavy against her own. His thumb circles her cheek, a feather-light counterweight to the thickness he seats inside her. He watches her intently, fixated. Hypnotized. “My good, good girl.”

Kisses and praise tumble from between his teeth, down her cheek, to her throat. Naomi’s head rolls back while she relishes the wet, smacking mantra that’s the mess of them. He’s not tender with his tempo. He doesn’t have to be. You could ruin me. I’d let you ruin me, she thinks again.

And how beautiful he is, in ruins with her. No more composure. No more restraint. Sweat streaks his brow as it bends beneath his focus. All there is is the blend of them, the slow rock of the piano underneath them, and the scattered, stranded pieces of a melody left in their wake.

It could break. The thought cracks through her, through them, with the wooden whine of the piano legs taking the shift of their weight. Astarion crushes her worry beneath the thrust of his hips, any notion of it lost to the head of his cock pressing just where it needs to make her see stars.

Naomi bites down on her own lip, grounding herself in fleeting pain and the tang of blood. He’s not even touching her clit; he doesn’t have to. He floods her with how it felt when he did, when his tongue rolled against the swell of it, just the tip of it teasing that sensitive little bud. How she felt to him, so silky and slick in his mouth. How amazing it feels to finally fuck her, to take what’s his and have her take him so, so tightly.

He could ruin her. Snap her like the creaking legs of this instrument, not long for this world. It would be almost as effortless as the way she spreads for him. But instead, Astarion fills her. Every shift prods the crown of his cock against the sweetest spot inside her cunt.

Naomi’s fingers claw into Astarion’s back as he bucks wildly. Tears sear in her eyes. The tell-tale pressure in her pelvis builds near-blinding.

“Scream for me, darling,” he growls against her neck, out loud this time.

Her cunt throbs with his command. But she doesn’t heed it. Astarion lets out a low, steaming hiss.

“I said scream, dear,” Astarion says, his velvet voice edged in warning. The sparks of his indignation spit flinty in her head alongside a flicker of excitement at her defiance.

He wants to feel the rush of her own power with the spasm of her cunt as she comes undone. He wants her magic to spill into him as he spills his seed inside of her. Wants to taste it with the rest of her. If Naomi was nothing to him, she’d still be the siren; it’s not a power Astarion gifted to her. It was hers without him. It is her. And she’s his.

“I might break the glass,” she whispers, wary of anything louder.

“Oh, my love,” Astarion says tenderly, a husk in his throat as his hand wraps loose around her neck. “You can break everything.”

Astarion kills her hesitation. She’s never felt more whole. She feels holy, feeling her own perfect squeeze around his cock, feeling herself fucked in his body and her own. Feeling what she does to the man who already has everything, but will never have enough of her.

When Naomi screams Astarion's name, it’s everything else in the room that shatters.

Glass crashes from the windows. They burst one after another in quick-fire succession. Astarion buckles against her body with the sudden, decisive snap beneath them. His hips jerk, rutting erratically. Warmth spurts into her with every shudder down his spine, every pulse of his cock.

He cuts her cry with his teeth buried in the crook of her neck. Naomi clings to him as her cunt convulses. It’s the bite that takes her apart, knowing he tastes his own name in her throat and thinks--

Mine, mine, mine.

Naomi’s head drops limp. Astarion’s grip on her neck gives way to soft circles stroked against her cheek again. Mine, she thinks, as his ruby eyes watch her keenly, awash in the soft glow only she knows.

Even after Astarion stills, the room spins dizzy from her upside-down view. She blinks it all back into place, but some pieces won’t fit together again so easily. They’re far closer to the floor than when he slipped inside of her. The piano legs splay at odd, splintered angles. The floor glitters with glass like crystalline teeth, ready to bite the heels of any who dare tread their hall.

Astarion slides out, and she shivers with the fade of his warmth. He sits up, his gaze sweeping the shattered windows, his smirk smug and wet with her. “Perhaps all of the Gate heard you. The gardener did for certain.”

Naomi sits up, too, leaning forward and letting his shoulder take her weight. Her forehead comes to rest against his collarbone. She finds an easy smile while relishing the way his heart still hammers his chest. She did that, in multiple senses. Absently, he tucks the hair sticking to her cheeks back behind her ears.

“I guess I’ll have to kill her,” he adds, chipper. “I suppose, for now, we can spare all the others.”

“She’s already dead enough, dear,” Naomi sighs.

A tiny, discordant note of sadness plucks in her chest, among the pleasant haze settling over her. Astarion stiffens against it, as if she reached out and pinched him. She doubts he’d be so eager to slay one of his spawn for the same crime of hearing her come for him.

The gardener is hers, of a sort. Not a vampire -- Naomi can’t make those. Before Naomi sang her awake again, the gardener was just a sad stack of bones collecting dust in a closet. Now, she rattles along to Naomi’s tune, keeping the flowers trimmed to her liking.

“I suppose you’re right,” Astarion murmurs. His expression softens with fondness, the sort that’s rare to surface unless they’re alone, but never fails to make her chest light and fluttery. “Are you tired now, pet?”

“We stayed up all night,” Naomi laughs faintly.

“Hm,” he nods with a pitying frown. “Let me see to you, my treasure. Don’t you move.” His lips curve, coy, as his eyes flicker back to the wrecked windows. “I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.”

He saunters back to where his coat lays, now tattered. He returns to settle it around her shoulders, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead.

“You’re such a staunch defender of my honor,” Naomi says dryly, even as the leftovers of their lovemaking start to seep down her thigh.

“Ha,” Astarion shakes with a rolling laugh. “I rather think I’m the thief of it. You were quite the heist. It wouldn’t do to have some debaucherous upstart happen by and think they can make off with what’s mine.”

“I wouldn’t let them live through it.”

“Aw,” he clicks his tongue, “you’re such a romantic.”

Astarion leaves her with her legs strewn over the broken piano, relacing his trousers as he goes. Glass crunches beneath his heels. He stops to ring the bell near the door. A few seconds later, it creaks open a hair. She catches his curt commands to the servant she can’t see on the other side.

“...yes, here, in the ballroom. My consort and I wish to take in the view, and see none of you.”

His lesser spawn are quick to make good on their orders. The door swings open once more a short time later, and in floats a claw-foot tub without another soul to be seen. Magic clings, cloudy, beneath the porcelain belly of it. A pleasant, floral scent curls with the steam from the water within. The tub drifts to the heart of the ballroom and settles with a soft thud before the yawning window panes.

Astarion returns to her as her toes touch the ground again. He frowns tightly, eyes narrowing.

“There’s debris scattered everywhere, my sweet,” he says, saccharine even in reproach. “I wouldn’t want to see you hurt.”

Naomi sniffs a laugh, picking her path carefully. “If I can’t handle a little sharpness here and there, it’s a wonder how I’ve managed to handle you.”

“Oh, it’s simple,” Astarion says, catching her wrist with an effortless flourish. “We were made for each other. By each other, really.”

And Astarion’s made up his stubborn mind that she’s not to take another step, it seems. With a soft huff, he sweeps her off her feet all over again, strides to the tub with her legs dangling over his arm, and delicately deposits her there.

Water laps at the tub’s edges, splashing as she situates herself. She shrugs from Astarion’s coat, shucking it away to join all the other debris they don’t have use for. Heat tingles across her skin, like little, loving nips of Astarion’s teeth. Naomi eases back into the burn of it as the sting settles sweetly.

Astarion rids himself of his shoes and trousers. He dips a foot into the tub, bidding her to make way for him with a gentle nudge. The water ripples as he settles in behind her. With a satisfied sigh, she sinks back against his chest and deeper into the furling warmth.

The ballroom overlooks the well-kept gardens behind the estate. The hedges are high enough, only a spyglass might have hope of spotting them both bare. Under Cazador’s reign, the garden was little more than a sprawl of weeds and webbed ivy. Now, fountains babble between the blooms of pink and blue and violet. If she strains, she can catch the weave of music in the trickling flow, like tinkling wind chimes.

A soft breeze tickles her ears, sending gritty glass and ash scattering over their floor. Astarion clenches a soft sponge in his grip, wrings it out, and starts to scrub her skin in slow, deliberate strokes. Naomi’s head tilts back beneath his tender care, every rub taking the tension from shoulders.

She turns after a time, and he starts to wash blood from her front, while she wets her hands and works the redness from the white of his hair. Her fingers linger along the slants of his ears, rubbing delicately, until she catches that satisfied hum in his throat that leaves her lifted, floating on the buoy of his happiness.

The water never cools or clouds; magic still swirls in the steam, even long after they’re free of blood and grime. Astarion rakes hand through her hair, his fingernails digging pleasantly against her scalp.

“You are divine as ever,” he rumbles. “Rest now, pet.”

And she does, slipping soundly into a trance, soaked in sunlight and lavender oil with her lover wrapped around her. Only Astarion sends her to the sort of rest that reaches her soul. His presence is sanctuary.

It’s his disquiet that wakes her suddenly. He still strokes her hair just as gently, but he levels a hard-cut stare out over the garden, his lips set with the same stoniness.

“No one will ever take you from me,” he murmurs, as if to himself.

“As if they ever could,” Naomi whispers back, reaching up to graze the edge of his jaw.

Heavens help the fool who tries. Any who dare to hatch such plots, to harbor such ill will in their Crimson Palace, will find themselves laid to rest with all the others. Their enemies’ gravestones are just bricks in their empire, every one of them laid with blood in the mortar.

Astarion dips his head down, the hint of a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “I suppose it might be fun to see them try. In the meantime, my love, I’m of a mind to keep you spread for me for the next tenday.”

Naomi laughs. The sound echoes around the otherwise vacant room.

Astarion’s grin only grows, the tips of his fangs sharpening his smile. “Did I say something funny, dear?”

His lips crush down against hers in a kiss consuming.

[theszarrpalace]

Acts Of Service - Masquerade

Summary: The dungeons underneath the Szarr palace had been bad but could this really be worse than being locked up in the dark?

Pairing: Cazador Szarr x afab!spawn!Reader x Sebastian

Word Count: -2.2k

Content Warnings: Dead Dove Do Not Eat 18+!, It’s Non-Con Central In Here, Intoxication, Drugging, Memory Loss, Explicit Mentions Of An Orgy, Emotional Coercion, Implied Unprotected P In V, Implied Unprotected Anal, Implied Oral (F Receiving And Giving), Fingering, Hurt/A Cheap Excuse Of Comfort, Descriptions Of Physical Discomfort Due To Aforementioned Abuse, Everybody Around Reader Is Kinda Really Disgusting

A/N: No, seriously, heed the content warnings. This one is just vile.

Tagging: @vampiric-hunger

A shallow, still halfway asleep sigh slipped past your lips as your consciousness lazily settled back into your body. Out of habit, you stretched your limbs and arched your back but unlike feeling the unforgiving, cold, and hard stone floor underneath you, you sensed your skin being caressed by a heavy velvet blanket. It boggled your dizzy mind, causing your eyebrows to furrow into a crinkly arch, expectations not suiting the reality of finding yourself curled against a thick, feathery pillow. You had no recollection of getting even remotely close to an actual bed and before better judgment set in, you genuinely thought to still be fast asleep, your brain allowing you to escape from your place of misery for a few hours again.

No, something very vital was horrifically off. From the way you were barely able to open your eyes even if you really wanted to the looming soreness emitting from your lower abdomen, a sudden tinge of panic settling in your chest, forcing you to gasp for air. Eventually, you had to force your eyelids to open up. They felt terribly heavy and only revealed a set of eyes that were hardly able to recognize anything. With your vision only slowly coming back into focus, you blinked repeatedly to get rid of the milky sheen glazing over your retina.

“What…in the hells?” The voice whispering from between your lips sounded dry and raspy, words pressed from a sand-paper throat as you worked your upper body to rise from the mattress.

At first, the overworked and abused synapses in your brain refused to connect, however, as soon as the first spark flew, an entire wildfire followed accompanied by a silent cry that got stuck right behind your tongue causing a painful moment of muscle spasming. Random splinters of fogged memories clouded your thinking as they fought each other, each one of them trying to work its way to the forefront. You tried swallowing the lump that was threatening to gag you but it was a rather fruitless attempt. If at all possible, the inside of your mouth turned endlessly dry whilst burning eyes looked down at yourself, staring in horror and disbelief for they found clusters of bruises and bite marks painting a morbid work of gruesome art on your brutalized skin.

A gush of hot tears pricked and stung in the corners of your eyes as you started to remember; remember being passed around like a platter of appetizers for everybody to get their little piece. Men, women, spawn, high lords, and their ladies from all over Baldurs Gate feasting on your body until satisfied. In an absentminded gesture, your fingers snapped to your mouth, tracing dry and chapped lips in a moment of pure and utter shock. They’d used all of you, every orifice tainted with countless gushes of cum and discharge, leaving a salty aftertaste that threatened to make you gag. You’d cum, too, not only on bare cock but also on gently swirling, caressing tongues and fingers fucking into you for hours on end.

You wanted to cry out, you really -really- wanted to but every little sob got stuck in your gradually tightening throat, every cry making you choke on your own emotions. Every single thought led back to you hungrily raising a chalice to your lips. Gods, you drank that all up to the last drop of red with no second thought, not thinking that your Master would be monster enough to set you up like that, make you pliable with alchemistic powders and potions.

“Still tasting me on there, pet?” You turned your head with such vigor that it hurt, weary eyes darting at a pale face adorned by a vile grin.

You ached to leap right at the bastard, to scratch his fucking eyes out there and then but as your mind was busy murdering him your body froze.

“Oh.”, The Vampire lord cocked his head to the side, a shallow laugh escaping his lips, “You got fucked up good.”

You blinked. Nothing within was able to comprehend what was happening, neither the resurfacing memories of being the very centerpiece of an escalating orgy at the Szarr palace nor seeing him like that, black hair ruffled with the thick, velvet duvet covering him up to his hips…so disgustingly domestic and human.

“Cat got your tongue now, hm?” Cazador hummed, oh so well entertained by your display of misery.

“You drugged me.” Three words that felt like tearing your vocal cords out of your larynx.

“And then I fucked you. Your mouth, your ass, and lastly your cunt. Got you all to myself before everyone else did.” He filled you in, his glaring red eyes exploring your violated body with pleasure.

There was nothing adequate to respond to that with, no cuss nor swear loaded enough to really make a point so you just swallowed heavily in defeat.

“Get yourself cleaned up. I don’t like to play with dirty things.” He threw his demand at you before raising his voice to call for one of the other spawns, Sebastian.

You couldn’t help but flinch at the screeching volume of your captor's voice. It cut right through you, shushing you off the bed with your hands trying to cover yourself in a meager attempt.

“Master?” The spawn with beautifully long, white hair stepped into the bedroom moments later, his eyes jumping from your naked form to his superior.

“Get it washed, Sebastian.” The vampire lord barked at his servant.

“Of course.”, His gaze now rested upon you, nonverbally signing you to follow him, “Come on now.”

“Move!” Cazador pushed, effectively making you jump in Sebstians direction.

You didn’t utter a single word as you followed him down the corridor, golden-framed paintings adorning the walls, towering over you just like everything in this palace seemed to do. Everything was in pain, muscles, bones, joints, all of it hurting with every step you strode to keep up with the white-haired spawn. The pain prevailed even after the two of you reached your destination and Sebastian insisted on you sitting down in an oval wooden bathtub. Unlike you, the water was warm almost hot even and it stung as it touched your abused cunt.

“I’m sorry.”, Sebastian broke the heavy silence, he sounded sincere, “He does that to those he’s into.”

“What the hell…” It swapped out of your mouth just like a little gush of water over the brim of the tub after you’d sat down.

“I know. It’s…disgusting. He is.” The spawn lowered himself to find comfort in resting against the tub.

“Would you like me to help you?” He fished for the sopping wet sponge drifting afloat between pleasantly fragrant piles of bubbles.

For a moment you pondered, not wanting someone else to touch you yet again but being nearly incapacitated to do it yourself as well.

“Can’t you just drown me? I think I’d like that.” It shot from the tip of your tongue in dry cynicism.

“No can do. We both know I’d be next.” He was right about that and you sunk deeper into the water, allowing it to wash around the curves of your breasts, nipples pebbling up upon contact.

With slightly trembling fingertips, you pushed the soaked sponge towards Sebastian: “Please.”

“I’ll be gentle. I promise.” He fought with himself to manage a faint smile, trying to give you some sort of comfort at last.

“Not exactly that much left to mess up anyway.” Your own crude comment pulled the corners of your lips down.

For an instant it looked like Sebastian wanted to say something to counteract, however, his brows twitched in a way that told you that he silently agreed with you. Exhaling a low sigh, the spawn palmed the sponge, squishing it a few times with slender fingers, before getting to carefully work your bruised skin. He hadn’t been lying, his strokes and dabs came indeed gentle. Sebastian carefully wiped you clean, washing the assault from your skin but not from your thoughts. The shrapnels of broken memories cut through your mind like a butcher’s knife through bone; loud and gruesome.

You drifted off, eyes locked on the reflections sparkling back at you from the water’s surface, breaking light dancing, and jumping whilst being moved by Sebastian’s broad hand. Although you didn’t know much about him, you liked him. Compared to some of the other spawns, he appeared to you as rather calm and reasonable. The thirst inside hadn’t rendered him into an animal…yet.

“Sebastian?!” You snapped back into the reality of things as his fingers had crept amidst your thighs, the pad of this thumb unabashedly administering a languid stroke and a teasing flick.

“Does it hurt?” His gaze caught yours, he stared, and pinned you to the tub with flaming eyes.

“Stop.” You wanted to scoot back but you couldn’t, the curve of your spine already pressed against the wet planks of wood.

“I asked if it hurts.” Sebastian not only repeated the question but also the ministrations of this thumb, pulling an involuntary moan from your throat.

“No, now stop it!” You protested weakly, your body reacting to the gentle caresses on his own accord.

“Why stop when it obviously feels good, hm? I think you deserve it, to be washed and properly satisfied. It’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you.” Sebastian cooed in a tone that reminded you an awful lot of someone who had very much hurt you

“Just…let me do that for you, hm?” He started drawing circles, spoiling your sore clit with tender touches, drawing a slick wetness from you alongside a disarming, pathetic rush of arousal.

There was no way of denying that it felt good, pleasurable, a brief silver lining in this cesspit of a palace.

“See? There you go. Enjoy it.” With a sly smile that now came naturally, he leaned in to press a kiss to your forehead, eliciting a whimper as you arched your pelvis into his touch.

You let your eyes flutter shut, body awash not only with the soap on your skin but also wretched, wrong pleasure festering on the inside.

“Gods, you’re such a docile little thing. No wonder Master is all over you.” The spawn mouthed against your damp skin, thumb working your swollen clit whilst middle- and ring finger pushed inside, filling you up gingerly.

Your sense of reason wanted to scream out loud, to protest and to bite his hand right off, yet, those little moments of actual pleasure were all you had left in here. You’d be ripped apart by your very seams whether you wanted to or not, you’d get fucked, orgasms being pulled from you with violence again and again so why shouldn’t you… why not allow yourself to kill that very last bit of pride in your chest and enjoy what you were given without pain?

“Pretty thing. So wet and needy for someone to get you off properly. Can I tell you a little secret?” He curved his fingers, massaging you from the inside as you clenched around him gradually harder.

“I didn’t partake last night. Wouldn’t want to do you like that. But I watched and by the Gods did it make me blow a big fucking load,” His twisted words snaked into your mind, conjuring the image of him watching with hungry eyes.

It made you moan out aloud, nothing held back this time.

“Oh, that’s doing it for you, hm? Getting off on the thought of being watched. Such a dirty little vampling.”, Sebastian’s fingers pushed against your insides, eventually triggering you to go off, “Going to watch you fall apart just now, dear.”

The orgasm tore right through you. Your cunt spasmed around his fingers in heavy pumps, pulling them in a little further whilst your clit throbbed in unison. For a few fleeting seconds, you felt bliss. Brain and body-numbing pleasure that ascended you out of your body for the blink of an eye only to brutally slam you back into your cracked and bruised shell.

“Good girl.”, Sebastian hummed contently as he pulled out of you, fingers brushing through your labia to dissolve your slick with the bathwater, “Can’t tell on myself like that. Master wouldn’t approve.”

He raised his hand to shake the excess water off with a quick jerk of his wrist.

“Now you’re all good again. Rinse that pretty head of hair for me, would you?”You answered with a shy nod, face still flushed with the rush of your climax.

“How’d you like it if I taste you next time, hm?” Sebastian’s boldness got to you immediately.

“Next time?” The spawn nodded at that, laughing softly.

“You'll find me when you need someone to be gentle with you, dear.”

[inquisitornocturn]

⊱─ 𝕕𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕤𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕟: 𝕔𝕙.𝟛 - 𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕕 ─⊰

➺ 𝕡𝕒𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘: Ascended Astarion x f!reader

➺ 𝕥𝕒𝕘𝕤: no y/n is used, rating - T, (this chapter) pissed off Astarion, threatening, light choking, grinding

➺ 𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕪 𝕤𝕦𝕞𝕞𝕒𝕣𝕪: you're skilled, driven and most importantly - ambitious. but even as someone in your position, a trained assassin and a leader of your own Guild, you still lend yourself to jobs that are of importance. even if those jobs sometimes mean attending parties. tonight - it's a masquerade and you're bored out of your mind, until the man who hired you to protect him leaves you alone, at the mercy of a stranger who suddenly took a keen interest in you.

➺ 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕕 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥: 3,131

𝕒𝕦𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕣 𝕟𝕠𝕥𝕖: enjoy ♡~

➺ 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕥: [link]

Weeks pass but your mind is not much clearer about what happened with Astarion in the graveyard. As you shuffle through the papers on your desk your mind is elsewhere, at that moment when he sank his teeth into you, when he drank your blood with such greed it could’ve killed you, and you wonder - what is it that he wanted that night, your body or your blood?

You can’t focus on reports that you are trying to sort, reports of people tracked, killed or robbed. Not long ago you started a mass operation to tip power scale of Baldur’s Gate in your favor, but all you can think of is that vampire that chased after you just because you wounded his pride. Yes, men kill for their pride, is he that type of man?

You sigh and let the papers drop from your fingers onto the desk and rub your eyelids with a sigh. Yes, you heard the whispers. Hells, your own informants and assassins reported the rumors – Lord Astarion is looking for you. He sent his spawn, a small army of them, to look for any trace of you. Thankfully you’re careful enough and your men are tough enough to not let any leads slip, but you wonder why he’s so desperate to find you. You aren’t sure if it’s because he wants you or to feed on you and somehow you are beginning to think it’s the latter, considering how he tried to gorge himself on your vitae.

You suppose you will learn soon enough.

A day ago you made your best sneakthief bring a letter, an invitation, to Astarion’s mansion, asking him to come here, to your very own Guildhall. If he’s seeking for you so much then you want to know why. With any other person you would not expect them to show up the next day but with his spawn feverishly combing the city, it leaves you with impression that he won’t delay if he can afford it.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on your door and one of your men peak his head inside, his eyes meeting yours.

“He’s here.” the man cryptically says but you know exactly who he means and so you gather your wits, giving him a curt nod.

“Let him in.” you command and receive a nod in return.

The door closes and you quickly put the papers away, cleaning your desk from any sensitive or well, incriminating, information. You don’t need Astarion seeing any reports or contracts. He��s a vampire after all, he might use that knowledge against you and you don’t want him to have this kind of leverage.

Couple minutes later you see the door swing open without a knock and Astarion struts in with a wicked grin. He shoves the door close and pauses to inspect your office. His eyes take in the wooden panels of the walls, the paintings that would hang shamelessly in Duke’s home itself, the carpet leading from the door to your desk and another one underneath it. Astarion’s gaze scans over the cabinets and couple closets, the bookshelf, the rack with wine and then turns back to you and your heavy oak desk, the luxurious armchair you’re sitting on. Seems nothing slips past him while he inspects the room almost like a caged animal that knows he can break free any moment. There’s caution but also self-assurance.

With that same arrogance in his strut and smirk, Astarion begins walking to your desk. His long coat open and showing a silken shirt underneath that matches his pants perfectly. An expensive ensemble in white and blue, embroidered with real gems and you make a note that he seems to prefer this style although you don’t know why exactly you want to remember this, but sometimes small details like that become the downfall of your enemies, maybe it will be useful here too if Lord Ancunín is keen on making you an enemy of his own.

“So! This is where you have been hiding.” Astarion says and there’s venom in his voice that he doesn’t even try to hide. You lean back in your chair and clasp your fingers together, resting your hands on the desk while you observe him and his body language.

“I heard you wanted to talk to me.” you nod to the one of the two chairs on the other side of the desk and Astarion pauses, giving one of them a disgusted look, most likely imagining how many low-lifes sat there before him, but he sighs with almost dramatic flair and sits down, lounging as if the place belongs to him.

“Indeed I have. Tell me, little assassin, why have you waited so long to reach out if you heard I was searching?” Astarion’s slender fingers tap the armrests his arms are draped over and you raise an eyebrow at him, not amused by his subtle display of power.

He’s in your domain and he better be careful or he might not leave alive, because you are sure that even a Vampire Lord can’t survive an entire Guildhall of trained killers. Or, well, so you hope. Still, you’re confident and secure in your own small kingdom so you smile to him, making sure that he sees the mocking nature of such expression.

“You didn’t appear on my priority list, I’m afraid. Tell me then, what is it that you want?” you ask, letting your grimace drop and Astarion’s vanishes too as his brows knit.

“You left without a word again.” he says in a tone that tells you clearly – this is something that upsets him greatly and he’s even more annoyed you don’t seem to realize it’s important enough to exactly why he’s here without asking first.

“Indeed I have. Did that bother you?” you try not to grin at him again and almost lose the battle, except a sudden outburst of Astarion’s anger makes you immediately become cautious as he jumps to his feet and slams a clenched fist on your desk, making inkwells and quills jump while his fiery crimson eyes burn into yours.

“Who do you think you are to walk away from me?!” he nearly yells but manages to control his voice last second while pure rage storms within him and you take a moment to look at him, utterly bemused by this outburst.

“Since when fucking you gives you any authority over what I do?” you ask and obviously Astarion didn’t expect that, because his expression freezes for just a moment, then switches to barely hidden shock. He straightens his back and lifts his chin, arrogant and proud, trying to assert himself.

“Everybody in this city is just waiting to be controlled.” he lifts his hand, beginning to gesture a plucking motion. “One by one, everyone will become my thrall either by bite or out of fear. I’m just giving you a choice when so many others won’t have such luxury.” he smirks and you catch a glimpse of his fangs, for a moment feeling ghostly sensation of them embedded in your neck again.

“Doesn’t sound like much of a choice, Astarion.” you comment and his eyes snap at you, vicious glee in them.

“Are you trying to be clever now, little assassin?” he mocks and leans over your desk, pressing his palms flat on the top of it as his eyes lock on yours. “You do have a choice. You can be mine or you can die.”

You pause at his words. This is not the first time you have heard such threats and from men scarier than him, so you laugh. Loudly. Your reaction makes Astarion’s face twist in a hateful scowl but he says nothing, waiting for you to stop laughing and speak. So when your amusement starts settling into a chuckle you smile at him, entertained by his words and what he wants them to mean.

“You must think you’re being merciful, don’t you? Presenting me with an impossible choice.” you comment but you can’t deny to yourself that his boldness is in a way endearing. He’s dangerous, you knew that already, but his confidence is quite charming in a twisted sort of allure. “Tell me, Lord Astarion Ancunín, how is it that I’m given a choice, hm?” you say with sarcasm dripping off each word and the vampire pauses then smirks to you, pushing himself from the desk and beginning to walk around it, towards you.

“I find you… unique. In your own pathetic, mortal way.” Astarion says in a pompous way and you watch him get closer until he’s by your side, leaning against the edge of the desk and looking down on you with a malicious grin. “You see, you intrigue me, little assassin. I want to play with you a little longer and it’s more enjoyable if you come along willingly.” his fingers tap the oak of your desk and you raise your eyebrows.

“Is that so? So which numbered slave of yours I would be? A hundredth? More?” you offer him a bitter grimace and Astarion chuckles, his eyes slipping from your face to your neck that’s not hidden by the light leather armor you’re wearing today.

When you’re not pretending to be a bodyguard to paranoid nobles, your dresses are forgotten in the closet and replaced with functional set of boots, pants and shirt. It looks like seeing you dressed in such attire amuses Astarion and he briefly pauses before responding.

“I’ll let you know that there’s nothing in this world I cannot have. I can take anything I want, be it treasures or people.” he smirks and his eyes meet yours again. “I should’ve made you a spawn just to teach you that.”

“And yet you didn’t. Why?” you turn your body in the chair just so that you can see his face better and Astarion sighs, his expression finally losing that malevolent edge although the smirk remains. He leans close to you, studying your eyes and rest of your features before he speaks.

“I prefer when they come willingly. Delicious as you were, I didn’t want to force you to be my spawn.” he whispers and there’s barely hidden desire in his tone, making you again wonder if it’s just the blood that he wants or your body too.

“Rest assured, I am not interested in becoming your spawn. So what now, will you kill me?” your eyes drift down his face, to Astarion’s lips, and you remember how scorching his kisses were, how his tongue tasted, it stirs desire in you once more, but you try to push these feelings away from both your mind and body.

“I could.” Astarion says with unwavering conviction. He leans away from you and sighs. “What, do you really think your darling playthings would be able to stop me in time if I decided to snap your neck here and now?” he sounds almost bored as he says it and you frown, insulted that he thinks he has even a chance to harm you, let alone kill you, especially while he’s in your dominion. With a frown you push back with the chair, making legs of it slide over the carpet silently and you stand up moving to the side, making sure that the corner of a desk is between you and him.

“Bold of you, to think you can take a Guild Leader like me without consequences or issues.” you say and tap the dagger at your side. You have more blades hidden on your person, but he doesn’t need to know about those, unless he forces you to show them.

Astarion laughs at your words and moves from the desk, walking towards you as if you’re a prey to a predator, and you give him a prideful look, making it clear that you won’t stand back. Suddenly his arm shoots up and by gripping your throat he forces you backwards to the wall. You react just as fast, drawing your blade and aiming it at the underside of his jaw with narrowed eyes and clenched teeth but Astarion only chuckles.

“Cut me, I dare you.” he leans to your lips, brushing his against them, his hooded eyes sweeping over your face, and your exhale slowly, letting him, moving your dagger with his body, not cutting him just yet but poising to do so if you sense actual danger from him. Yet you don’t, not now at least.

“I’m not going to be just another spawn among thousands to one exalted vampiric master.” you whisper and Astarion pauses, his eyes locking on yours but suddenly he chuckles.

“No, you won’t be. Of course you won’t. You will be my favorite spawn.” he falls silent for a moment then grins widely. “At least for a while.” and then the vampire kisses you, deeply and hungrily, not letting you turn away.

The kiss takes your breath away and for a moment you forget his words, the fire inside you roaring with the heat of nine hells and you let your dagger clatter to the floor before you grasp onto his shirt and pull his body against yours. Astarion smirks against your lips and swiftly pushes his tongue into your mouth, greedily tasting you once again. Oh how he missed the taste of you. His own desire that now borders on obsession takes a hold of him and vampire releases your throat, grabbing at your wrists and pinning them over your head just a second before he begins grinding his hips against you. You feel his hard cock even through the fabric of his pants and yours, and you gasp into the kiss, feeling your body respond with familiar wetness between your legs. You don’t resist, don’t even try to, as blood rushes to your face and the tip of your tongue traces his teeth, the fangs, the outline of his tongue.

Suddenly he pulls back from your lips and buries his face into your neck, greedily inhaling your scent, nudging the spot where your blood pulses the hardest with his nose.

“Tell me you will become mine.” Astarion demands with a raspy voice right before his teeth give your neck a bite, but this time without his fangs piercing you. “Tell me you want to be mine.”

Your eyes open at his words and you exhale with a choked gasp at his nibble but then smirk. If he thinks this is enough to make you foolish, then he sorely misunderstands who you are.

“No.” you whisper and Vampire Lord freezes, then lifts his face from your neck to look into your eyes. He looks confused, shocked even, like he cannot believe he really heard this upsetting little word come from your lips.

“No?!” Astarion asks in a strained whisper as if he really can’t comprehend that you’re refusing him. Again.

“No. Kill me, I dare you.” you smirk and his beautiful features immediately become twisted with hate but then a second later he collects himself, at least to a degree, and grins at you.

“Do you want to die so badly, little assassin?” he asks, the grip on your wrists becomes tighter and tighter, nearly cutting off circulation but you don’t even flinch while he continues. “Think of all the things I can offer you, darling. You’re not going to say no to that, surely? Immortality, power, eternal beauty, what there is not to want? I offer you a gift like no other.”

You nearly laugh but know better than to push his limits right now, so you just smile to him, politely and almost genuinely.

“You really think that a promise of immortality will make me want you more? To sign off my free will for eternity to a man I fucked twice?” you ask and watch Astarion consider your words for a moment, strangely not snapping at you right away, but then his smirk becomes vicious and animalistic, his fangs reminding you of a threat he really is.

“Very well, then I will take what I want by force.” Astarion’s voice is menacing as he says this and your heart skips a beat in a moment of fear when you watch him begin leaning his face back to your neck, but then you snap out of your frozen state and remind yourself who you are and more importantly - where.

“Herin! Varnel!” you call loudly and immediately two men enter the room. When your eyes move to them you see they look unphased. Good, you taught them well.

Astarion, on the other hand, freezes not at your shout as if he was expecting you to scream, but only when he hears people entering your office. He slowly turns his face to them and you can feel his grip on your wrists shake with barely contained rage, yet he laughs and releases you, stepping backwards before his eyes return to you.

“I see.” he comments and straightens his shirt with his palms while you rub your wrists with a smug expression on your face. You know you won this round, just like the previous two. And you know that you won’t be forgiven for it.

“Gentlemen, please make sure that Lord Ancunín finds his way out without issues.” you command your men while your eyes remain on Astarion’s and he doesn’t move until your assassins step closer. Only then he smiles a dangerous type of smile and bows his head to you.

“I see, my little assassin. I understand.” he says and then looks at the men meant to show him out. You can near sense his thoughts, that he could kill them both and you if he wished so, but can he slaughter the entire Guildhall? Probably not without issues.

Astarion’s shoulders straighten and he nods to the men.

“Show me the way.” he says with undisguised arrogance and begins walking, followed by your guards while you watch him leave the room, your wrists heavily throbbing with pain, a foretelling sign of bruises.

You sigh with relief when the door closes leaving you alone in your office and roll your eyes. You’ve met difficult men before, so Astarion’s behavior doesn’t surprise you. What does surprise you is your own yearning to have been able to spend more time with him, to feel his touch on your bare skin.

You exhale as if disappointed in yourself and frown, trying to chase these thoughts away while you walk back to your seat, trying to focus on things that still need to be done today.

You know that Astarion is a dangerous man. A very dangerous one.

And yet you can’t help but wonder what ruling Baldur’s Gate with him would be like, if only for a second.

A second that you should not have allowed yourself.

[ladyduellist]

Epistles of Saints & Sinners

Chapter Summary:

The morning after Tav and Astarion have sex brings up old memories and complicated concerns.

⸺⋘✤⋙⸺

Story Summary:

When Astarion meets the humble bard, Tav, he soon finds out he's the only one between them that knows they are bound as soulmates through their marks. Deciding it's more trouble than its worth, he refuses to tell her along the course of their journey across Faerûn.

But, unbeknownst to him and their companions, Tav is harboring a gruesome secret that she only thought was nothing more than a traumatized period in her life.

As they both come to face to face with their pasts and presents, will they choose to move forward or let it consume them?

Healing isn’t linear—after all.

⸺⋘✤⋙⸺

Chapter 10: After

Ao3

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Main Page & Chapter List

Word Count: 2.9k

Pairing: Astarion x female bard Tav

CW: Torture, Abuse, Mention of Torture Devices, Sexual References, Act 1 Spoilers

⸺⋘✤⋙⸺

The spawn will need rules—lessons—to follow by. Just as Vellioth handed to me, so shall I hand to my creations. My future, beautiful thrall. The time grows near to choose who will do my bidding, to usher in the rite. Ones that value their lives beyond mortality’s chains. Even to exchange it for an eternally damned life. It will take time. Centuries worth. But, they will do my bidding. My dark children. My slaves. My sacrifices.

Let my first lesson guide them:

First, thou shalt not drink of the blood of thinking creatures.

— Cazador Szarr ‘The Avid’, journal entry 1280

⸺⋘✤⋙⸺

Astarion Ancunín.

From the moment he was turned into a vampire, he was reminded by his sire that he had been chosen. Chosen for his rare picturesque appearance. Chosen for the allure of his social noblesse towards mankind. Chosen to masquerade as a courtesan.

Over and over again was it repeated, until the pale elf believed it to be a treasured gift from his master.

It had taken the better part of six years, forcing Astarion to learn how to control his hunger for thinking creatures. Cazador kept his spawn held captive within rooms—he affectionately referred to as ‘the kennels’—of cages and torture devices. A claustrophobic scent of blood and decayed animal fluids long having permeated into the floors like a sedative sitting beneath a tongue.

But, his creations had a role to play! Obedient mutts to play fetch for his fertile ghastly mechanisms. He trained them with bugs and rats to curb their appetites, whilst feasting on mortals in front of them. When the spawn would flinch or show their hunger towards a human, Cazador wasted no time in having his servant of bones ready a pair of red-hot pliers.

Twist, pull, burn. Twist, pull, burn.

Fingers. Nipples. Eyelids. Tongues. Cauterized and ripped open in the room that would be their confessional.

“I am your creator. Your father. The priest to hear your penitence. CONFESS! Hast thou lusted after the blood of thinking creatures?” Cazador would scrutinize.

Eventually, the vampire spawn learned. Oh, they always learned. Who they belonged to. Who held the leash that tightened around their mendicant necks. Always sniveling until they learned to smile and appreciate their master for the welfare he bequeathed upon them.

Astarion's fear and resilience drove him, unlike the other spawn. He would not relent to slip entirely into the madness of the night. And because of his choices to defy his master—when he was not around to compel him right away—the consequences for disobeying the coven’s lessons would result in a barbarity far worse than he could ever imagine.

Lacey and Wymonde were their names.

Two victims within the first decade of Astarion becoming a vampire spawn.

Two victims he became enamored with.

Two victims that would create two of the worst memories in his immortal life.

⸺⋘✤⋙⸺

Lacey. Good-humored, sunny, feisty, Lacey. An unmarried half-elf woman at the age of 42. A baker who inherited a pastry shop in Baldur’s Gate from her human mother.

During year eight of Astarion’s new unlife as a vampire, he noticed her for the first time on his way back to the Crimson Palace after a failed hunt for Cazador. Hauling poorly sealed bags of powdered sugar into her business from the alleyway, it looked like snow was falling in the middle of summer. She was covered in it—angelically so.

He stared at her from the shadows for far longer than anticipated, wondering if the wings of aasimars resembled such purity as the woman’s ringlets garnished in the soft confection. And then, she greeted him roughly, voice lively as a worker bee.

”Saer—are you going to just stand there drooling like a lout or are you going to volunteer to help?”

Astarion shouldn’t have helped her that night. Her bold humor in acknowledging his presence and asking for such a brainless task made him feel more human than nearly every evening he spent in his immortal life thus far. She never once addressed his handsome face, instead taking a genuine interest in him as a man.

Lacey rendered him speechless with her intellect. She belonged in a college as a professor, teaching the youths of their age! Yet, this life was the one that she chose. Perhaps for her it wasn’t ideal, but he admired how she made the most of her situation. There was a degree of strength Astarion tore from it, like a bandit running off with fortunes in his pockets, until he realized he had become genuinely attracted to her. She retained care behind her shining eyes he wanted to own, to sequester beneath the soils of his spirit.

Five nights in a row he visited her. Conversations often leading into topics the vampire slowly started to forget about from his previous life, but she managed to temporarily unearth them for him to relish. Everything she spoke about was wrapped in her warm positivity. She had unintentionally given him hope.

It was the beginning of a relationship. A forbidden intimacy only they knew about. One to possess as his alone; one to nourish.

On the fifth night, he brought her a bouquet of fresh flowers: an invitation for romance. After she closed up for the day, he slept with her in the back room of her shop. Propped up on the edge of a table, corset haphazardly unlaced, Astarion thrust into her slowly. They kissed each other in a display that seesawed into a fit of inferred emotions until dawn.

The next evening, she disappeared.

And he knew.

The following night, Cazador shackled Astarion to the prayer cross torture device. His limbs were not allowed to straighten; he was sleep deprived for several more evenings. Punishment for allowing himself to belong to another aside from his master.

Until she finally appeared.

His angel of hope: Lacey.

Brought secretly to the palace by his siblings. A reparation for his sins.

Cazador drained Lacey wholly of her blood, compelling the spawn to watch as his lover died before his eyes. Then, he flung her body to the creatures in the foul sewers of the undercity to consume.

Through Astarion’s exhaustion, his screams became hoarse recollections. Those that were attached forever to the brief season of possible love, now belonging to the destitute plane he started to feel within his oppressed consciousness.

⸺⋘✤⋙⸺

Wymonde. Loyal, persevering, darling, Wymonde. With paladin oaths scarred upon his hands and a wondrous sense of courage. A young human man with a naivety typically carried over into the early stage of adulthood.

Ah, was he ever beautiful. Skin smooth, unblemished, with the faint trickling of rosiness upon his cheeks. Tall and muscular. His virginity—not yet taken. The perfect victim for the master the spawn were enslaved to serve.

It was at the end of Astarion’s first decade as an undead, that he bumped into the man—quite literally. Wymonde had been sitting on steps leading down to the docks, gawking at the stars above, when the vampire tripped over him in the dark. Instead of offering a wayward apology to him, the human conceded with his knowledge of astrology—a strange bid given Wymonde’s nature as a country yokel from some distant farmland.

With the stars as their guide, the man extrapolated upon his preferred constellations and what they meant to the denizens of Faerûn. Astarion mostly sat in silence, listening to legends of the pictorials in the back-lit canopy beyond their reach. The paladin expressed the weight of his loneliness he carried with him since he entered into duty with the blade. They squeezed one another’s hands, knowing of their shared sentiment resulting from their hardships.

In the moment, they were just allowed to be.

This would be the last time Astarion felt a sense of connection to the living.

Impulsively, he kissed Wymonde tenderly. He had not attempted to jeopardize himself with the fanciful whims of indulging in an affair since Lacey’s death. The act scared him in such a way, that he ran in lieu of delivering the unsuspecting man to his demise.

But, he belonged to Cazador. There would be no escape.

And as the djinn of malevolence danced on his master’s back—aiding him with instructions of scourge—it was decided Astarion would be sealed, unfed and alone, inside of an ancient tomb for a year.

Buried alive. The vessel of his body, raw out of desperation to scratch his way out. Silence. Wishing for death. Months of nightmares. Starvation.

There would be no heroes to rescue him. No mercy granted. No gods that would answer his prayers. Sadistically imprisoned for the contrition of his conscience.

Astarion would never disobey again.

⸺⋘✤⋙⸺

The sun’s fountain on his skin had become a verb for Astarion.

It would not mend his centuries of torture, but it was the harbinger of a freedom he thought no longer existed. His hope disintegrated in that impenetrable tomb all those years ago; he didn’t understand the meaning of the word anymore. Not fully. Astarion’s story was no longer about hope: it was about self-preservation.

So, he stood beneath the kindling sphere of flame to soak up the authority and knowledge that predated mankind, that the sun was the only natural force in the universe he would allow himself to trust. No longer was it gods he made his supplications, but it was this daystar he could worship above all else. Should he decide to fly towards its rays of luminescence with wings made of wax, he would gladly allow them to melt for one final grace of its burst of gold upon his flesh.

With dusted flakes of gold printed into his hands, Beneath the watchful gaze of the fiery star, He finds respite in its rusted hues. The realms aglow, kissed by its streams. A catharsis found, until the shadows do rage.

“Good morning,” Tav yawned from behind him.

With his arms outstretched, eyes closed, he continued to bask in the lustrous beams. “And here I was thinking you’d sleep longer after last night’s activities.”

“I mean, I did pass out as soon as I—we were done,” she laughed.

Astarion could hear her heart speeding up. She was most likely blushing, perhaps remembering their passionate evening together.

“Yes, well, when you’ve had a lover such as me, it’s only natural you’d overexert yourself,” he boasted.

The bard shuffled on the ground, leaves crunching from her movements. Her breathing seemed changed, as if she were deciding on her next move in a game of lanceboard.

“Astarion? Maybe I was mistaken, but you didn’t seem fully there during the act. The first night we fooled around in your tent, I thought I saw the same distance in your eyes,” she hesitated with her voice considerately. “And gods—I’m embarrassed to even bring this up—but you also didn’t…you know…finish. Which is fine and there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever, it’s just—”

Bedding a bard was a rarity for him. They were able to spellbind with their lyrical flattery, even better than he at times, acutely aware of his trickery with his soothing tongue. A troublesome group better left in the dust.

Except, for her.

She was far too intuitive for her own sake, lacking the ignorant tact to have less perception about the world around her. The explorer with a fine-tooth comb, running it through the varied remnants of him.

He craned his neck to acknowledge her, eyes indifferent. “You wish to talk? As in, having a conversation about sex? Adorable. Darling, there is nothing to say, except that, yes, I held back intentionally to focus on your pleasure before I lost control. Need I remind you that during your orgasmic relief, it was my name you cried from your lips. So, apparently, it must not have been too much of a concern.”

“It is a concern to me though. Your thoughts and emotions mean something. To put it more plainly: If I’m not what you want or if this isn’t what you’re interested in after all, we can end it right now,” she replied firmly.

Astarion sighed heavily, moving further into the sunlight. “See, this is exactly why your little meddlesome ploys seats us in the predicaments they do. There is no need to ruin our little ventures into each other's portfolios. We’ve already stated what this is meant to be—let us leave it at that.”

“But, ‘Starion—” the songstress started before he interrupted.

“Tsk. Now, none of that. Shall we get on soon? I’d like to depart before those dreadful tieflings come back to my tent again to thank me for saving their tails.”

Suddenly, he felt her looming near him. He knew by that stuttering heart drum of hers, that she was not done with her interrogations. That she had seen in full view the raised scars etched on his back, like a crest he carried for the Szarr family. Damn her all to hell!

Tav studied him, lightly stepping nearer. “This—this is what I felt last night?”

“A poem from my old master. He fancied himself as quite the artist and carved it with a lot of revisions over the span of a night,” he told her hollowly, trying to restrain the anguish in his tone.

“Have you ever seen it? The script looks familiar…Inferno maybe?”

The vampire sharply turned to face her. She looked disheveled—a sloven mess. Hair wild. Dried blood smeared on her cheeks and neck. The fluids of their lust, still preserved on her inner thighs. It was unlike him to leave a tryst in such a state. Providing thorough aftercare had been an essential rule to follow when it came to seducing his conquests.

Yet, he was prepared to leave her alone in the forest, naked and dirtied. Why?

The answer was transparent. So much so, it consumed him, making his blood run colder than chilled bones. People didn’t see him—not really. But, Tav, she wanted to see him. See beyond the fog of his existence that lurked in passing witching hours. And it bothered him. Enough to leave her there to turn tail and put as many miles between them as he could muster.

“Inferno? Gods. The bastard was demented, so who knows. Oh, but I’m sure grabbing a mirror to look at it will solve all my problems!”

The bard bit at her lips—as she was wont to do—acclimating to a serious matter. “Maybe if I took another look at it, I could help you somehow.”

“I think not. You’ve seen enough already,” he snapped.

But, she was the Bathsheba tempting him with her bathes to wipe parts of him onto her and behold his burdens. It nearly forced a piece of him to crack.

“No one is going to harm you here,” she softly reassured him.

Rich scarlet flooded his vision as it orbited around her. She waited patiently in front of him with that same pitiful kindness behind her eyes that she extended to nearly everyone. He turned his head away, uninterested in bearing the weight of her concern for him.

Then, their worms were twisting together, forcing a psionic connection without their permission.

“No! Do not try to dredge up the past, Tav,” Astarion absconded as he severed the link.

Disoriented, she shook her head. “The tadpoles must have done so of their own volition. I wouldn’t have ever tried to pry into your past without your consent, Astarion. I swear it.”

“You seem to have misplaced your accountability, my sweet, or have you already chosen to shoo away our other recent incident when you tried to connect during our pleasant encounter with Raphael?” he snarled defensively, throwing up his hands.

“That was different. I was trying to protect you,” Tav urged, inching closer.

Astarion backed away from her. He didn’t know how to communicate to her what was coursing rabidly through his mind. But, there was the trickling of his body feeling an unknown he could not recall ever harboring. A reclamation of his autonomy he was straining to identify.

“Well, nothing to sate your entertainment like the tragic backstory of the beautiful vampire. How blatantly cliché,” he deflected sarcastically. “Perhaps you can write about it in an upcoming song! Please do remember to give me some credit.”

Her face was covered in splotches of reddish pink. A mist wettening over her sight. Remorse filled the fine lines around her mouth, but she also seemed… frustrated.

Did he really mean to widen this chasm between them while trying to maintain his security with her?

“I’m sorry about the incident with Raphael; it will never happen again,” she admitted coolly, avoiding his gaze.

Tav dressed herself quietly, doing what she could for her appearance. Astarion watched her intently. She was a fool to linger around him. He was a fool to allow her to probe to the extent she had.

“We should head back to camp.”

She nodded, smoothing down the last parts of her skirts. But, before she turned to leave, she stood before him in her observing stillness. Her empathetic valor crashing against him with the tremoring cadence of her cardiac organ. An unparalleled flicker in their time together.

Astarion blinked several times, processing what he had just witnessed. Yes, he could be a crude and brusque man—he was aware of his derisive tendencies. Yet, while she stared at him, he saw his sorrow eclipsing her eyes like the ashes from palm leaves. And for a second, he could have sworn his hunger for blood was replaced with a longing for affection he had locked away in that burial chamber, along with his memories of Lacey and Wymonde.

[flappervcmp]

KYLEE'S 𝑪𝑶𝑴𝑭𝑶𝑹𝑻 𝑳𝑰𝑺𝑻! 🦇👻🧛‍♀️🌙

comfort food(s) :   chicken nuggies, cookies (specifically triple choco chip chips ahoy), salt & vinegar chips, fruit gushers

comfort drink(s) :   tea (any kind), hot choco, ginger ale

comfort movie(s) :   avatar & avatar: way of water, twilight (all of them), pride & prejudice (2005), howls moving castle, labyrinth, crazy rich asians, lord of the rings trilogy (extended edition), beauty and the beast (cartoon)

comfort show(s) :    the vampire diaries, the walking dead, game of thrones (excluding s7-s8), gilded age, downton abbey, chilling adventures of sabrina, buffy the vampire slayer, interview with the vampire (if u havent watch it, u should bc its amazing)

comfort clothing :   a skort and a crop top for at home, or my pjs

comfort song(s) :  espresso - sabrina carpenter, better than revenge - taylor swift, endwalker (footfalls) - masayoshi soken, roses of may - nobuo uematsu, canned heat - jamiroquai, we didn't start the fire - fall out boy cover vers., phantom of the opera - ramin karimloo & sierra boggess, masquerade - phantom of the opera (25th anniversary show vers.), ain't no love in oklahoma - luke combs, 8 dates (demo version) - cast of why am i so single, long face - lestat de lioncourt (played by sam reid)

honestly my music taste is all over the place generally so its a mix of some of my fave songs, along with stuff that im listening to on repeat lately

comfort book(s) :   twilight - smeyer , the vampire diaries -lj smith, the forbidden game series - lj smith, acotar - sarah j maas, ruinous love trilogy (3rd one isnt out yet but i know ill love it) - brynne weaver , phantom of the opera - gaston leroux, vampire academy - richelle mead, lights out - navessa allen, the princess and the grilled cheese sandwich - deya muniz, ice planet barbarians series - ruby dixon

comfort game(s) :   oblivion (the superior elder scrolls), any legend of zelda game (tho OoT is my favourite overall), final fantasy x, final fantasy xiv, final fantasy ix, final fantasy x-2, final fantasy xiii-2, baldur's gate 3, stardew valley, the sims, dragon age inquisition, final fantasy 7 remake (part 1 & 2), vampire the masquerade bloodlines, animal crossing, assassins creed

tagged by the lovely @dopplgaenger 🥰

tagging (ofc feel free to skip if you're not comfortable sharing!) - @broknfeed, @little-miss-buffy, @burninq, @insanislupus, @vervainlacedveins, @wiredcapability, @twiicetheheart

[c-n-i-d-a-r-i-a-n]

Thing!!

Got tagged by the lovely @crownedinmarigolds and it's been a while since I done one of these 👀

SO here are my submissions for this 9 People You'd Like To Get To Know Better situation!!

If y'all wanna play I'll throw lassos at these folks! 🤠 @dragomirthewizard @tweltchy @zoominalong @renaissancebadboy @redratt @mrfrunky @dabblingindissent @its-sixxers @shaydh

3 ships: I haven't engaged with "Canon" content for so long that I can barely summon up any concept of canon character x canon character. What media do I even like?? It is a mystery to me… After some very diligent digging into my past and present interests I have these raw uncut gems to present for you ✨

▫ Fallout 4: Danse X Hancock | A shit game that gave us some alright characters but couldn't give them good arcs. We live for good intimate tension and it could have been real between these two with their respective storylines if only the envelope had been pushed 140% farther.

▫ Destiny: Ikora Rey X Eris Morn | I've missed a lot of the recent content but I can dig it. It's one of the more reasonable ones.

▫ Warhammer 40k: The Emperor of Mankind X Malcador The Sigilite | That monster knew love exactly once and no one can convince me otherwise.

first ship: The Matrix: Neo X Trinity X Morpheus | My parents loved these films so I saw them maybe once a month growing up. I'm probably the person who's watched the Matrix the Most. Anyway these three are poly af.

last song:

last film: Guardians of Gahoole - the war-owls movie | We watched it on Christmas because I forgot we owned it and I also forgot how hard that movie fucks, like it pulls no punches for a "If Tolkien wrote Owls" narrative.

currently reading: Priests of Mars | Graham McNeill

currently craving: My second coffee of the morning ☕☕☕☕

fav color: I like oranges and yellows, and blues and greens!

relationship status: Happily married!

last google search: "Dark Souls death screen generator" Most of the jokes I make on Discord hinge upon this macro creator

current obsessions: ▫ Baldur's Gate 3 ▫ Vampire: the Masquerade ▫ TTRPGs with the crew (💋💋💋 y'all are awesome and I love you alll) ▫ If you can count "being stressed about tax filing" then I am also obsessed with tax filing 🤙

[m-for-musings]

About the Vampire The Masquerade x Baldur's Gate crossover AU:

Minthara: Just because I'm a Lasombra you think I want to coup the Prince?

Wyll: Do you?

Minthara: Well, yes. But it's just a coincidence.

[astaricn]

@necromanticdancer cont. from (x)

THE VAMPIRE LORD HAD FELT IT WAS ONLY RIGHT to host a lavish party after Baldur's Gate was saved. It was a perfect way to celebrate AND introduce the world to the new and improved Astarion. Never again would he bow down to another. He'd dressed himself to the nines, adorned with jewellery that he'd picked up during their adventures.

He was hardly new to the elite of the city, often dragged to parties by Cazador and essentially told to stand still and look pretty. Now here he was, hosting his own masquerade and looking down on those who likely once did the same to him. Never again.

He'd invited the entirety of the party to the event, as well as some other special guests which of course included Evoka. He was especially curious how the druid would handle it, having no doubt that this was entirely new territory for him. Once he had spotted the half drow, Astarion hadn't hesitated to stride over and greet him.

Sweet little Evoka, already looking incredibly out of place amongst the elites of society. Well, he'd be sure to keep him safe from the dangers around them, just like always. Reaching out to grasp his wrist, stopping the druid from stepping into the lion's den. Their sarcastic remark causes the Lord to smirk, and with his free hand he reached out to stroke his chin.

"You say it as if that isn't what you WANT to do, dear." He purrs, releasing his wrist and instead bringing his hands up so he could smooth down his jacket for him. "My perfect partner, no doubt everyone will SEETHE with jealousy when they see you with me."

[jasminethetransvampire]

Fanfic Writer Questions

Alright so, @optiwashere tagged me in this question thingy, how fun! I was looking for an excuse to discuss this stuff. Oh, and I will be tagging @zawazawanightmares, @modusoperand1 and @trygrievousbutgirl-blog, though ya'll are under no obligation to participate if you don't want to.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Twelve, though that number is a bit misleading because one of those has 15 chapters and has been getting sporadic updates since December of last year.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

115,036. Which seems about right, I tend to get wordy.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I started with Baldur's Gate 3 but pretty quickly expanded to Chainsaw Man, which is mostly where I hang my hat these days. I'm also planning on writing for Kakegurui eventually, and maybe Dead by Daylight and Warhammer if the mood strikes me. Oh and I wrote one fic for Werewolf: The Apocalypse that wasn't very good, but I'm probably not returning to that universe anytime soon.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

In descending order: Stress Relief, In Lust and In Leaf (E-rated Karlach/Shadowheart/Tav feat. recreational drug use) Through You (E-rated Power/Kobeni, chapter-based longfic) A Matron's Mercy (E-rated Minthara/Tav with lots of gender affirmation) Underdark, Under Pressure (M-rated Shadowheart/Tav, the first fic I ever published!) Waning Moon, Not A Moment Too Soon (E-rated Shadowheart/Tav, ball-slapping sex in a broom closet)

5. Do you respond to comments?

All of them! Though it occasionally takes me a while because of things like time zones and me needing time to think of decent responses. I love getting comments!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't really do angsty endings, I keep that stuff to the beginning and middle when it comes up at all, but by default this one probably goes to Would You Still Love Me if I Was Several Worms? because the ending is only very hopeful that things will work out alright instead of outright confirming it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oh, hm... It's kinda hard to rank them, but I guess probably Hearts of Fire and Darkness, Eye Enough for Both, though there's no fic of mind that'd refer to as having an "unhappy" ending per se.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope! Not yet at least. I'm sure there's at least one person out there who hates my guts and thinks my work is trash, but so far they've been cordial enough to keep it to themselves.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yup! I like to think of it as pretty character driven, I always try to keep track of the characters' emotions and mental state during the intense gay sex.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

None yet, but I definitely want to write one for BG3 and Chainsaw Man eventually (as in, some time before the heat death of the universe). Both fandoms have a basically immortal lesbian and they deserve to meet eachother.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Again, not to my knowledge.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've definitely had writer friends of mine look over sections of fics I'm working on to provide feedback and criticism, but nothing quite so involved.

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

This is going to sound so stupid, but it's actually an OC x OC ship. See, once upon a time I joined a Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition roleplay server on discord. I played a terrifying, gay monster woman with way too much shit on her shoulders, and she ended up becoming the girlfriend of a blood-curdling, bisexual monster woman with a machete and a vicious streak. The scenes we wrote together there were beautiful and romantic and did wonders for my mental health. I am never going to forget those characters. Valerie and Jelena forever.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I wanted to write a novel that was basically just me throwing a bunch of mine and my friends' OCs into an angsty high school AU. It was going to be an attempt at a complex exploration of queerness, mental health and being born into a privileged but deeply abusive household. I gave up after chapter 2 because barely any of the people I showed it to for feedback got back to me, and I got demoralised. Now I write fanfiction and get feedback all the time.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Apparently, transfem rep and hurt/comfort. Which I guess I can kinda see, I'm good at hurting characters but I can never stand to see them in pain for long, hence copious amounts of comfort to compensate.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm bad at writing male characters and just flat out can't write hetero romance. Also, I'm slow as fuck.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I just don't do it, unless using Japanese honorifics when writing in English counts. If I need to have a character speak in Russian or Infernal or whatever, I just write "they said in X language" or something like that.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Technically there's a very shitty, unfinished, first-draft, collaborative Hotline Miami fic sitting somewhere in my google docs that's probably the first if I were to check the dates. It's never going to get published or finished, but one OC I made up for it still keeps cropping up in the stories I come up with in my mind, and if I ever go professional they'll see the light of day eventually.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

I technically answered this question here! But the TL;DR version is: Through You and Another Way share the top spot, passion projects that make me a little emotional to think about.

[osatokun]

I'd love to know more about Glinda and her relationship with Gale!

she is a character,an npc from the vampire the masquerade ttrpg I'm playing. Lover (and now wife) of my OC. I just love her so much, a perfect woman. So I took her and started to play BG as Glinda. I'm lucky too meet another Glinda near Baldur's Gate, this name doesn't sound that weird when there are another Glindas around..

Gale is very, very similar to my OC in character ( but much younger) so naturally Glinda the tiefling fell for him. Just her type, a soft loving soul yearning for comfort.

Glinda-Sophia Dequir, the tiefling, has a very silly lore, because..why not,she's gonna be a saviour of the Baldur's Gate. She is a strong sorcerer with..not a food ability to control her powers, wild magic is making wild stuff. She was born near Baldur's gate in a small village for sure. Her parents died when she was maybe 11 or so, and she almost burned down the entire village unable to control her emotions, probably accidently summoned a fire creature of some sorts. Elemental or even a young tiny dragon (silly, yes, I'm bad at dnd lore.but her original vtm lore connected to the dragon, thats where she got her big scar on the chest originally. Plus I only played in Chult campaign and I have absolutely bo idea what's happening here on that sword coast)

Anyway,she ran away, but Elminster found her and, well, raised her. I told you I have stupid story?I do, yes. He mostly taught her how to control her emotions better, her magic better, how to look deeper in things and seek for the truth. Most of the time he had no idea who he is, he was jurs El, a funny old man, cheese lover. She knows a lot about cheese, yes. In the end, he is so freakin old, he could have a few spare years to raise a wild kid. But the most important thing, he helped her to steel her will. She is a determined iron villing disaster now.

Having this story in mind, I find it satisfying to be grumpy to Elminster. She is like, wtf dad, Mystra hurts people, all the time , and she wants to hurt the man I love, Im gonna fight her with my bare fists.

At the time she was stolen by ilithids she ..probably had a little business of her own, a tiny potions shop or something, having pretty calm life.

What else can I get from my vision of the character.

She has zero shame, she is still very curious, sometimes its for the bad. She is studying necromancy (a bit..necromancy of Thay was very calling for her) . When Gale is trying to catch the whole picture, see all the situation, she points to the smaller things. Sometimes it helps her not to get lost, sometimes it helps him.

She is extremely monogamous, and not ready to share her love and bed with strangers, she need to trust person frist to get them into her life. But she fell very quick for Gale because ..well, in the horrors they all were dropped in, first thing he promised is to make a good meal. In the very beginning. Local man falls from the sky and offers you a home made food? He is my husband now.

Plus he differs a lot from other companions. All of them used to the fights, even she herself fought creatures in the local woods. And he is just a wizard in distress, wanting to go back to his cat and cozy tower. A lot of knowledge in his head, not that much blood on his hands. He brought her some comfort she needed to stay strong and believe in finding a way to cure.

For the relationships they have.. mostly comforting and loving? that's pretty generic, he is a very comforting character after all. She keeps him closer to the earth, becoming a God sounds like a destruction of one already so perfect adorkable human being. I picture him as a person who keeps his personal encounters very private, doesn't like to show even too much skin to the others and generally liking to share time alone with his lover, be it a talk or a date. Better go to the Weave and talk to eachother without anyone's hearing, or more x) it's hard to get personal space while traveling..

Glinda on other hand is absolutely fine with disturbing personal spaces, but she is doing her best to hold herself in her hands. She is..imagine a person who acts like a cat sometimes. I'm sure even her tail is twitching and wagging when she's angry. But she is being very respective for his comfort. Thats why Im happy they got to Baldurs gate and finally got a room for themselves x.x

What else can I say.. hm..

She is 30 something years old,maybe 34 or so. Likes stupid books a bit too much. Oh she laughed so hard when they found "Elminster library" and the erotic books about Volo,El and faeries.

she adores his level of awkwardness just as he adores hers. And she'll punch in the face everyone who hurts her man (respectfully acknowledging aloud that he can take care of himself, but she also want to take care herself.)

She probably has fur on tips of her ears and loves head scratches. Not the inside ones tho..

[sakialumei]

about me / links

Hello! My name is Sakia. I'm a multi-fandom artist, writer, and general crazy lady. 28 / fem / she/her

Ask Box is Open

Tags and Links

General Art Tag

General Fic Tag

Archive of Our Own

Featured Fandoms / Works

Astarion x Lilith Tag

Solo Astarion Tag

Aria of Echoing Shadows: E (ARCHIVE WARNINGS APPLY) - High-born, impressionable, and the descendant of infamous necromancers — she is the perfect target for Astarion. They grow close, but between the manipulations, long battles, and literal haunting of their campgrounds, they discover that their pasts intertwine and their lifelong tormentors are close allies. A vampire lord and a master necromancer make for a terrible combination. Now, it is up to Astarion and Lilith to uncover the secrets obscured by their abusers and put an end to whatever diabolic scheme they hatched... whatever that could be. An expansion on the Astarion romance and story line combined with an original story line for Noble Tav. IN PROGRESS

A Charlatan's Masquerade: E (ARCHIVE WARNINGS APPLY) After escaping the tyrannical household of her father, runaway Lilith and her mother Taisia settle in the remote arcadia that is the barony of Rosefair, far from Baldur's Gate. Peace is disrupted when the once-abandoned Castle Rosefair suddenly is occupied by a new, mysterious lord: Astarion Ancunin. After she discovers his terrifying secret, Astarion extorts the runaway to assist him in his lordly duties and perhaps even help him rise to the power he always coveted. Meanwhile, Lilith vows to uncover the secrets of the Ascended Vampire and possibly even find a way to defeat him. That is, if he doesn't devour her body and soul first. IN PROGRESS

Hunting the Sun: E (ARCHIVE WARNINGS APPLY) - For centuries, Cazador Szarr coveted the secrets of disabling his most debilitating weakness: the sun. The answer lied in a magical flower dubbed the Corona Lily. Cazador discovered that the flower's magic had passed onto a newborn girl, so he burned the baby's home, killed her parents, and assumed the title of her father. After two decades, his flower managed to escape, so he is forced to send his spawn, Astarion, to bring her back. As the two journey back to Baldur's Gate, the secrets of the flower unravel and weave about a new fate for them both. Tangled-Inspired AU COMPLETE

Quiche x Ichigo Tag

Just a Drop of Magic: G - The Mews and their new co-workers take a day trip to a famous theme park and everyone seems to be in high spirits. And yet, Ichigo cannot help but feel bittersweet about the experience when it comes to broken dreams. She won't stay sad for long, not if Quiche has anything to say about it. COMPLETE

Don the Wings That I'll Become: T - Chosen by the Planet, Ichigo Momomiya and her friends are turned into Reyvateils, beings that can transform their powerful feelings into Song Magic using a mysterious and ancient language called Hymmnos. As Ichigo and the others grow more powerful and deepen their understanding of Hymmnos and Song Magic, they soon learn that there is more to the aliens' invasion than meets the eye. Who decides which side Earth belongs to? IN PROGRESS

Xander x Mozu Tag

Leo x Sakura Tag

The Princess and the Pauper: T - To prevent all out war between Nohr and Hoshido, a peace treaty will be sealed with the arranged marriage of Prince Xander and Princess Sakura. The shy Hoshidan princess asks her handmaiden, Mozu, to switch places with her out of fear and curiosity for her new fiance. To complicate matters more, the two princes are falling for maidens who are not their betrothed. It’s a romance of false identities that would make Shakespeare proud. COMPLETE