#bard content but at what cost

[rollforfelicity]

Why Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Didn't Use D&D Combat Rules (And Why They Were Right Not To)

The D&D movie was really fun, and since at this point most of my friends play D&D (or at the very least other TTRPGs), almost everyone I talk to on a regular basis has also seen it and liked it. The consensus is that even though there's no "meta" that the characters are controlled by players sitting around a table, or jokes about the DM, the movie feels like D&D. The jokes feel like jokes people would make while playing. The constant pivoting from Plan A to Plan B to Plan C feels familiar to anyone who has spent an hour at a table deciding what to do, only to have a roll go sideways and screw things up. Before I get too far, I should say this post contains some mild spoilers for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

What didn't feel like D&D were the fight scenes. In one scene, a Paladin quickly dispatches a group of enemies before any of the rest of the party even acts, showcasing that even though he's kind of a square, he's an incredible fighter. In another scene, the Barbarian grabs and wears a helmet in the middle of a fight, using it creatively to get the upper hand. During a fight against a gargoyle, the Bard blinds an enemy by throwing a blanket over their head, but gets pulled along with them when a loose rope wraps around his leg. These are all pretty big moments in the movie, and Rules as Written, would never happen at a D&D table, because D&D combat doesn't work like that.

Here's what I think is interesting. The vast majority of the rules of D&D revolve around combat. It's not all of the rules, but most class abilities, spells, items, and rules have a combat focus. So why does a movie that functions partially as advertisement for the game spend so little effort to replicate the bulk of the content of the base game?

In my opinion, it's because, Rules As Written (or RAW), combat in D&D is not, generally speaking, narratively satisfying. Let's look at a few reasons why.

D&D is a game where, RAW, things either happen, or they don't. If someone misses an attack, nothing happens. If someone misses a skill check, nothing happens. DMs can work with this, but in the base game, there isn't a lot of guidance for what to do when a player fails at something they're trying to do. This may seem trivial, but compare that to something like Powered By The Apocalypse, which is much more narratively focused. In those games, a full miss means the Game Master changes things up. The enemy gets the upper hand. A new danger surfaces. An NPC is put into peril. Not only does the player fail at what they're trying to do, but something else, bad for the Player Character (PC) but good for the story, happens. On a mixed success, the PC might get what they're after, but at a cost, or with a complication they weren't expecting.

This calls to mind the example of the Bard throwing a tarp over the gargoyle in the final fight of the D&D movie. That's a classic example of a mixed success. He succeeds at temporarily blinding the creature, but in the process, he gets caught up in the gargoyle's rope and is dragged along for a ride. This is a dynamic thing to happen in combat, but wouldn't happen in actual D&D. Instead, a PC would either succeed at what they're doing, and blind the creature, or fail and not blind them. You could argue that the Bard's action was the result of a Natural 1, but that also doesn't fit RAW, because the Bard does succeed as what he's trying to do, and with a Natural 1, he would have failed and been pulled along.

D&D doesn't really reward player creativity. Something like throwing a tarp over a creature wouldn't be likely to happen in a session at all, because in the actual game, it would take a full action to do that, and depending on the Difficulty Challenge (DC) the DM sets, there's a good chance of a wasted turn. Creative actions end up a huge gamble, and when you're playing a game where it could be 20+ minutes before you get to take another turn (more like an hour if you're playing with a Wizard, amirite), you're disincentivized from "wasting" your turn to do something less than optimal. You can describe what you're doing to add to the narrative, whether you succeed or fail, but that brings me to my next point.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this question from Rise Up Comus since I read it a month ago. In D&D, a player can describe all kinds of flavor to what they're doing, and there's no change to the mechanics of the game. You could read this as saying "Oh, well that means you have the freedom to do what you want!" but if you look at game design through the lens of "what kind of play does this game encourage or discourage" the takeaway I have is that description just...doesn't matter to D&D. In my experience, that can lead to a few different unsatisfactory outcomes.

Both players and DM treat combat as purely rolling, and describing only what is required. A DM announces, "The enemy wizard casts fireball, roll dexterity save, take 25 damage. Turn passes to the Rogue." Sometimes players who describe what they're doing are seen as showboating or taking up too much time. Worst case scenario, the DM penalizes descriptive players.

Some players like describing what they do, others don't. This has no mechanical effect on the game. Players who aren't descriptive might be frustrated that an already slow process is slowed down even more. Descriptive players may become frustrated because there's no mechanical benefit to what they're describing, and spend time fruitlessly arguing with the DM that focusing on a weak point of the enemy should give them advantage. I think most tables fall into this category. It's not a bad game by any means, but not everyone is there for the same reason when it comes to combat.

Rule of Cool Table! Everyone describes whatever they want, the dice rolls don't really matter! Combat is generally pretty easy because fuck the rules, if it's cool for the dragon to die based on how the fighter described the attack, even if it's only the first round of combat, hell yeah let's do it! For players who like being more strategic and enjoy the confines of the rule structure because it makes things challenging, these tables can be frustrating. (If you're familiar with Dungeons & Daddies, this is essentially how they play D&D).

Because there's no guideline in the rules, people come to the table with different expectations. Some people want combat to feel like a strategy game, where following the rules in the most optimal way (or combining rules elements in an unexpected way) is mechanically rewarding (usually measured by damage output). Some people want to describe themselves doing cool stuff! Some people don't care about their characters looking cool, but want the story to be compelling. If everyone isn't on the same page, this can lead to players ending combat feeling unfulfilled, and when combat is the bulk of a rules set, it feels strange to me that there's no guidance for DMs or players as to how to incentivize the kind of combat your table is interested in.

This leads to a situation where combat in D&D is the part of D&D that takes the longest, that the majority of spells and abilities are focused on, but it is, narratively, the least satisfying part of the game, unless the table alters the base rules significantly.

If you're not familiar with other TTRPGs, you might be thinking "Okay, but that's why the DM is allowed to do whatever they want and make up new rules! My DM gives inspiration when we describe something cool, that solves this problem!" My critique isn't necessarily of individual tables. DMs and players come up with all kinds of mechanics that aren't in the rules. My critique is that D&D is a role-playing game that essentially has no incentives, and many disincentives, for role-playing during combat. For example, RAW, characters don't really have time to communicate during their turns, as each round takes about 6 seconds. There's no time for banter or negotiation between PCs and enemies. You can see this disconnect by the way people talk about D&D. How many times have you heard people say "I love D&D but I don't like combat?" How could this rift be rectified? Let's take a look at some other TTRPGs.

In 7th Sea, if you take the time to describe how your character is doing something, you get a bonus to your dice pool. In Thirsty Sword Lesbians, when you get a mixed success on a Fight roll, you and your opponent are given narrative prompts to build tension (like flirt with or provoke your opponent). In Kids on Bikes, you can fail or succeed rolls by different number ranks, which determines how significant the successes or failures are. In Wanderhome, you get a token when you "take a moment to bask in the grandeur of the world, and describe it to the table." In Good Society, each player gets a "monologue token" which they can spend to prompt another player to deliver their Main Character's internal monologue. I just played a bad-action-movie-themed game called Action 12 Cinema, where players can boost a roll if they call out the song that would be playing during this scene of the movie, and get an even FURTHER boost if anyone at the table sings it.

Each of those game mechanics gives you an instant understanding into the mood of the game, and the kind of stories its built for you to tell. Even if you've never heard of any of those games, I bet, based on the title and the move, that you could hazard a guess as to what playing the game is like. Dungeons & Dragons certainly has rules that add to the lore of the game, and prompt you to create characters that act a certain way. But when it comes to combat, players and DMs are left to their own devices. Some may see that as a strength of the game, but I see it as a source for a lot of disappointing play experiences.

And it seems as though, at the very least, the writers of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves thought the combat rules were narratively unsatisfying enough that they eschewed using any of them.

[thisisnotthenerd]

follow up to my previous thoughts about the Aguefort Adventuring Academy:

i got more right than i expected, though there's definitely a lot that's being filled in around what we knew from freshman year.

Faculty Updates:

Introduced/Mentioned during the Episode:

Interim Principal: Emergency Backup Principal Arcturus Grix

This is definitely a construct of Aguefort's that's been reprogrammed to focus on an exact impression of "adventuring order".

Interim Vice Principal: Jace Stardiamond, the sorcery professor

Artificer Professor: Henry Something? The original name on payroll was Grunding Tomblast. (mentioned only, since Porter wouldn't recommend Gorgug)

Barbarian Professor: Porter Cliffbreaker. Suspicious and rude.

Bard Professor: Lucilla Lullaby (changed from music professor). Fey/Eladrin

Bardic Dance Teacher: Terpsichore Skullcleaver. Tiniest half-orc you've ever seen, always says what you need to hear even if it isn't what you'd expect.

Cleric/Religious Studies: Yolanda Badgood. Air genasi who broke up with a deity to pursue faith.

Fighter Professor: Corsica Jones (mentioned only, though we met her in the Seven)

Wizard Professor: Tiberia Runestaff. Originated in the Mountains of Chaos, very traditional old wizard now teaching the wizards of the Aguefort Adventuring Academy. Adaine desperately wants to impress her, and she gets called out for predictions.

We've gotten more information about the other professors though we already knew their names. Eugenia Shadow is the supposed rogue professor that must be found in order to get an A for the year.

Class Content:

For the Barbarians, Porter is an asshole that focuses on the destructive parts of rage rather than the protective elements.

We had a reference to Fighter classes and learning different fighting styles with Ms. Jones, though we didn't see it in this episode.

Cleric classes center around individual connection with a deity, as well as some discussion of spreading faith and proselytizing. Kristen is a very talented cleric who doesn't do homework and is struggling on her faith journey.

Rogue classes are more independent study; finding the professor is the win condition. If the class is based on self-motivated investigative work and research, I can understand why all of the rogues we've seen at Aguefort (Riz Gukgak, Penny Luckstone, Kipperlilly Copperkettle) are the way they are.

Bard Classes can come in a couple of different types: obviously there's the traditional class that Fig attended for the first time, as well as smaller concentrations like Fabian's dance class. The dance course seems to be a smaller track, with fewer students but a more intensive schedule. Granted, we're getting Fabian's multiclassed view of it, so it's not entirely accurate to the experience of a typical bardic dance student.

Wizard classes revolve around studying and practicing spells, as expected, but aren't taught with school endowed material components as I would have expected. Aguefort cares about a robust Wizard's education, but doesn't have classroom material components? He's making it a class of only privileged students. We can't have a poor wizard around here, can we.

Sidenote to that: we know now that Hudol places a focus on theoretical magic while Aguefort focuses on practical workings--actually practicing the skills needed to bind, conjure, enchant, etc.

Sidenote to the sidenote: I started looking into higher level wizard spells with high cost items as material components:

5th level:

create spelljamming helm (5000 gp crystal rod, consumed)

dawn (100 gp sunburst pendant)

legend lore (250 gp of incense, 200 gp of ivory strips)

infernal calling (999 gp ruby)

planar binding (minimum 1000 gp jewel, consumed)

scrying (1000 gp focus, such as a crystal ball, silver mirror, or font of holy water)

summon draconic spirit (500 gp object with engraved dragon iconography)

teleportation circle (inks infused with gems worth 50 gp)

6th level:

circle of death (500 gp black pearl)

contingency (1500 gp gem encrusted statuette)

create homunculus (1000 gp jeweled dagger)

create undead (150 gp black onyx stone per corpse)

drawmij's instant summons (1000 gp sapphire)

magic jar (500 gp gem/crystal/reliquary)

7th level:

create magen (500 gp quicksilver and human sized doll)

draconic transformation (500 gp dragon statuette)

forcecage (1500 gp ruby dust)

mordenkainen's sword (250 gp platinum sword)

plane shift (250 gp rod attuned to plane of choice)

sequester (5000 gp of diamond, emerald, ruby & sapphire dust)

simulacrum (1500 gp ruby dust)

symbol (1000 gp of mercury, phosphorus, diamond dust and opal)

8th level:

clone (1000 gp diamond, 2000 gp coffin/urn, cubic inch of flesh)

mighty fortress (500 gp diamond)

9th level:

astral projection (1000 gp jacinth + 100 gp carved bar of silver, per person affected)

gate (5000 gp diamond)

imprisonment (500 gp component per hit die of the target, changes depending on spell type: mithral orb for burial, precious metal chain for chaining, miniature jade prison for hedged prison, gemstone of corundum or diamond for minimus containment)

invulnerability (500 gp adamantine)

shapechange (1500 gp jade circlet)

so the request for 10 barrels of diamonds tracks; they need enough material components to be able to repeat the spells and practice them and that doesn't run cheap.

personal theory: when aguefort went to war with fallinel he pulled on the school's supplies of material components in order to cast on that scale, and he couldn't maintain it, so even stuff that wouldn't be consumed by the casting probably got dumped somewhere in fallinel or given away as reparations.

I'm also going to guess that in the lower grades, the students wouldn't be paying for everything, but rather paying something like a lab fee that took care of material components on a smaller scale.

Multiclassing:

There's a few things that have that this episode clarified:

If a student wants to multiclass on their transcript, they must fill out a request to their current class' professor in order to request a change to their courseload. The student may be prevented from attending their secondary or tertiary courses if their current professor believes that they cannot keep up with the increase in rigor, or if the student is underperforming in their current class. As shown with Porter, a teacher can technically refuse for other reasons (thinking the student isn't suited to the new class, or determining a lack of class compatibility). This recommendation is easier for some classes than others; it is simple to combine most martial classes, especially those that have compatible traits such as fighters and barbarians. However, it is difficult to combine classes that are prohibitive of each other; the example we have is Gorgug, since his barbarian rage prevents him from casting and holding concentration spells from his artificer levels in battle.

If they get approval, they must take the MCAT, or Multiclass Achievement Test, in order to prove competency in their secondary class. This functions as a way of proving that the student can enter the class at their current level and keep up with their peers.

Upon passing the MCAT, the student's courseload changes; rather than taking 4 semesters of one class, they will take 3 semesters of each class, presumably with some leveling to fit their particular split in multiclass. This results in a 150% courseload as opposed to single-classed students, with a high level of rigor, especially heading into the upperclassmen years

Quest Theory:

We got tacit confirmation from Brennan that the Bad Kids, and even the Seven are unusual for saving the world, when most Aguefort students are doing local dungeon crawls and going to school. This fits with my overleveling theory, especially if they're going to be going back to a major progression cycle as they did during freshman year. I highly doubt it, given the content and themes of this season, but I think the overall structure fits.

This also fits with my theory about D-F class quests; students may only need to complete one or more of these to pass the yearly quest. Technically, retrieving the Crown of the Nightmare King could have been considered a fetch quest, but there ended up being more to it than that. The Bad Kids haven't done traditional dungeon crawls, at least not from what we've seen. There are qualified adventuring parties in Spyre, but the Aguefort Adventuring Academy produces the 'premier parties of teen heroes' that go around addressing world-class threats.

The examples that we have of Solisian adventurers come from the Bad Kids' parents, and the Seven's parents. Sandra Lynn works with the Solisian rangers; the Applebees' (ew) work as paladins, guarding against threats from the Mountains of Chaos, presumably in tandem with the rangers. Karl Cleaver stayed with his party for decades--they went on a dungeon crawl in the 888th and 889th layers of the Abyss during the events of the Seven. There are adult adventurers, but it's made clear that they are dealing with everyday threats, while the teen heroes are out in the world causing problems and solving them.

To add to my previous theory: the Seven were given two weeks to investigate the disappearance of Tectonya Karkovnya and go on their GED quest. The Bad Kids got an extra week of spring break. This allowed them to get their world-saving done, but may have led to the accusations of special treatment.

Theories on the Season:

I'd wager that Kipperlilly and the Ratgrinders are trying to make Aguefort more egalitarian by getting rid of the Bad Kids' quest progress i.e. the reason they're overleveled and getting special treatment. The Rogue Professor seekign Kipperlilly out as opposed to her actually doing the work? Sounds like funny business to me.

Next episode is probably going to be the rest of the day of classes and the start of extracurriculars, based on the mentions of the bloodrush team and student government candidacy.

Riz looks like he's going to be in the driver's seat for seeking out the Bad Kids' academic and greater interests, though Fig is leaning in on the investigation of the Ratgrinders, and they're all full force on the presidential campaign. I think Gorgug's work as an artificer is going to come into play with the main plot if they're facing down the reprogrammed Arcturus Grix.

[larsisfrommars]

The Light Won't Die (Part 4)

Halsin x Tav

Rating: T for Teen (Canon Typical Violence)

Chapter: 4/??? (<- Prev Chapter • Next Chapter ->)

Word Count: 787

Genre: Adventure, Hurt/Comfort

Content: Halsin x Male!Tav, Fighter!Tav, actually dealing with the shadow curse now!, aforementioned canon typical violence, Bloodweave if you squint, Everyone is Having A Bad Time, near death experience.

"Tav was falling, what little light could reach through his eyelids in this accursed place vanished into nothingness. Through the pounding blood, the last thing he could hear was a familiar, bellowing roar."

———————✨🌿✨———————

One by one the torches around their unoccupied tents went out with terrifying swiftness, only Halsin’s stayed alight. Bolstered by the mace Tav now always carried with him.

“Stay close to the fire!” Halsin called to the rest of their party.

Everyone scrambled for their weapons, shoulder to shoulder, battle ready, their shadows in the firelight forming a twisted crown of humanoid shapes on the ground as they armed themselves by torch and steel.

It was from this crown the shadows took full form, ready to feast upon their strength, and more floral enemies crept along the edge of what remained of the woods.

The shadows leered hungrily at them, but it was Tav who struck first, driving down The Blood of Lathander into what passed for the head of the Wraith before him. Praying that its radiance would do more than just blind their enemy.

All became blood, spells, steel and chaos. There were at least a dozen enemies sans the Wraith that Tav had been fortunate to destroy only a couple blows. They were outnumbered and unprotected, this would not be an easy fight.

The battle felt as though it had gone on for hours, the campsite nearly slick with blood. Tav prayed that if the Wraiths had blood, it would stain the ground with equal measure. But given the glances he was afforded, he wasn’t hopeful.

Shadowheart was using nearly all of her power just to keep the party alive let alone fighting. Karlach and Lae’zel had both long since gone into a near animalistic survival mode, shredding anything that came near them.

Halsin had been restrained by two Blights, tearing a gash across his armor. He burst from their entanglements. A snarling, wrathful bear in place of the hulking wood elf.

Astarion was desperately trying to rouse an unconscious Gale as Wyll was poised to defend them both. The Blade’s sword arm was shaking. The dark necrotic magic having sapped them all of their strength, Tav included.

Tav’s attempt at assessing the fight cost him dearly. Driven back to a cliff edge by their unwanted guests. The onslaught of the undying was overwhelming. He could only hope the others were holding out as he tore his eyes away from them. Facing death head on, if he could just take out one more! Then maybe they would be safe!

But no… Tav felt himself drop to his knees without warning, the pain from hitting the ground barely registered. All he could hear was the blood pumping in his ears.

This was it then, Gods what good was this bloody mace if he could hardly hold onto it? No divine favor, no holy weapon could save him now. It was his own fault, should have seen the invisible fuckers coming, cost him an eye after all. That stupid bard!

Crack

No time left to be bitter it seems, Tav could feel the ground starting to give underneath him. He was going to fall to his death then, good, better than being taken by these things. It would be like how the nautiloid was supposed to go. Tav closed his eyes.

He was falling, what little light could reach through his eyelids in this accursed place vanished into nothingness. Through the pounding blood, the last thing he could hear was a familiar, bellowing roar.

The Druid would not, could not let Tav die. Not when it was within his power to save him.

Halsin did everything he could to curl his massive ursine body around Tav as they tumbled down the cliff side. In hindsight he was grateful there was at least some angle to it rather than a death drop. He preferred not to endure the feeling of his back snapping in two, animal form or not.

It seemed such a tumble was still enough to best a wounded Cave Bear. He felt himself lose hold of the wildshape after hitting his head a particularly sharp rock. Better his wildshape than Tav. The wounds his true form bore bellowed in protest as he & Tav continued to roll. Adding deep seated bruises to the list of injuries this battle had done him.

The bottom of the steep slope came mercilessly quick. The impact knocking the wind out of the Druid’s body. Still, his vice-like grip around the smaller man did not ease. His vision blurred, the words of his healing incantation lost as he struggled to breathe. Finding himself unwillingly joining Tav in unconsciousness.

He prayed to the Oak Father it would be brief as he slipped away, this was no place to die. Not yet. Not when things had not yet been made right. Not when Thaniel was so close to being within reach. Please…

[xalygatorx]

Unbound | Chapter 17, "Get Up"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: Already weakened from their fight with the duergar and subsequently Glut as well to protect Spaw’s circle, the party encounters their most monstrous enemy yet in the Underdark while they seek a place to rest. On their last legs and fighting for their lives, Áine reawakens an old power within herself to save them all at a cost. Astarion, mortally wounded and terrified for Áine, scraps with his allies as they try to help him. The group finds a safe spot to make camp and focus on recovering. An old acquaintance returns to Áine.

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: Graphic fantasy violence (appropriate for canon, but described in detail); blood; descriptions of pain and injury (seeing it on others and feeling it); grief; trauma and descriptions of trauma, panic, and anxiety responses; angst; comfort/hurt; close calls for canon characters; no one dies but I do love to toe that line, besties; suggestive dialogue and content; lightly proofread

Word Count: 9.3k

Listening to: Destroyer - Of Monsters and Men

“I knew that fucking mushroom was going to be trouble!”

“Seemed like a fun guy at first.”

“Karlach,” Wyll warned through a snicker at Gale’s joke, “he didn’t mean it.” More likely it was Wyll who didn’t mean what he was saying because Gale had gone all-in on that one.

Karlach was halfway between laughing and barbecuing their wizard. “Gods, I hate you both,” she seethed, her flames calming in time with her chuckling. “Affectionately.”

“Chk,” Lae’zel grumbled. “There is no overlap in love and rage.”

“There is when it comes to dealing with their puns, Lae,” Karlach noted, adjusting the straps of her pack. “Gods, I need a nap and away from these two… Áine!” Up ahead, the bard paused and glanced over her shoulder at the tiefling barbarian. “How long until we camp?!”

“Soon,” Áine called back, taking stock of their party while she was half-turned. They were all tired and battered—the duergar had proven a tough fight, especially when their plan to take them by surprise had failed and one of the slavers had raised a small army of zombified corpses to fight on their behalf. Gale had helped to minimize the damage by destroying the rope ladders connecting the wooden platforms and funneling them into a singular nearby path, but they’d still taken a beating. 

And then there was Glut. They’d no sooner finished one fight before another was started and they’d had to kill the clanless myconid, who’d attacked them as soon as Áine refused to betray Spaw’s confidence.

They’d meant to take a more straightforward path back to Spaw’s circle, but the path had led them in a more roundabout route than intended and they were now more fatigued than ever. At least the path forward was clear—the Selûnite outpost was just up ahead and with a couple of short climbs, they’d be back near its crumbling walls and able to retrace their familiar path from its gates, back to their old camp.

“What do we think?” Áine asked no one in particular. “Keep going until we’re back to the circle?”

“The outpost is just there,” Shadowheart pointed out, unable to keep the wrinkle from her nose when she gazed upon the outpost again. Áine resisted rolling her eyes. “I don’t recall the circle being too far from where we ran into those minotaurs, do you?”

Áine shook her head. “Not too far, no. And we are likely the safest there while we recover.”

“It sounds as though our best option is to make our way back in full,” Halsin supplied, supportive of their conjectures in his reaffirming way. He cast a glance across the others, his features a little grave as he took in the smattering of split lips, bruises, and limps. “Anyone opposed?”

Silence stretched and Áine drew in a deep breath and nodded to herself. She looked to her side, meeting Astarion’s eyes as she said, “We keep moving then.” He nodded once, equally roughed up but ready to settle down somewhere he felt safe enough to meditate and heal. He walked along just behind Áine as she approached a rocky incline and said, “If anyone starts to feel otherwise, please say something, alright?”

There was a collective murmur of agreement as the group fell into step behind her. Áine set her jaw and prepared for her body to protest as she scaled the craggy outcrop. It echoed its ongoing soreness with renewed fervor, but she made it to the top just fine. Her shoulder was even cooperating for once and it made her a little more optimistic about their journey back.

She was so focused on assessing her condition that she didn’t notice the statue she’d risen beside until it nearly scared her out of her skin. Áine hopped back, prepared for a fight until she realized it was merely stone. On closer inspection, she saw that it was a life-sized statue of a drow in mercenary garb. 

On even closer inspection, she realized it had once been a drow. It wasn’t stone-carved, it was a petrified elf. “What in the Hells…,” she murmured, her fingertips tracing along its arm.

“A statue?” Gale asked, stepping to the other side of the petrified drow and lightly knocking against its shoulder. 

“Not always, I don’t think,” Áine murmured, her eyes shifting further down the path and seeing more of the same. She raised her voice slightly as she ordered the party, “On your guard.”

“Always,” Lae’zel murmured in confirmation, her hand resting against the hilt of her sword as her reptilian eyes traced the eerie plateau.

Áine neared another of the petrified drow mercenaries, noting that this one was unmasked. The look of unbridled terror on his face, frozen into eternity, sent a chill down her spine. There was no telling when this had happened exactly, but every survival instinct she had urged her not to linger. “Let’s hurry up t—”

She was cut off by an unnatural rumble through the ground beneath her feet. Áine steadied herself, glancing toward her friends also struggling to keep their footing. “Another bulette?” Wyll wondered aloud. It did seem the most likely based on their experiences so far, but Áine’s urge to hasten away intensified nonetheless.

“I don’t want to find out, let’s go,” Áine said, turning around to step back down to the plateau and get to the break in the outpost wall. She didn’t manage more than the turn before she looked up and saw precisely what had created this purgatorial statue garden they stood amongst.

Spines rippling with every undulation of its ghastly tentacles, the monster that had upset the earth in its uprising lifted into the air and opened its singular, enormous yellow eye. Its pupil spasmed and adjusted, skittering between them for just seconds until its mouth opened on a scream, the expression splitting its nightmarish face in twain.

“RUN!” Karlach shouted, jarring them all from their varied states of panicked freezing. 

Bolts of light shot from the ends of the spectator’s appendages, barely missing Áine and Gale, but hitting Shadowheart and Halsin. The bolts paralyzed them, rooting them in place with only their eyes able to move. Any plan to retreat was shelved then and those still able to move turned to fight.

Gale was the quickest to react, unleashing a fireball at the creature and hitting it squarely in the eye. It screeched and flung an appendage at him, sending him sprawling against a nearby outcrop. He clutched his side, rivulets of blood weaving from beneath his hair and across his temple as he shot more fire at the creature. “Ardē!”

Arrows sliced the air from Astarion’s bow, finding purchase in the creature’s leathery skin and the jelly of its eye. Lae’zel surged forward, sword in hand, only pausing along the way to free Shadowheart from her paralysis. The cleric looked jarred but nodded to the githyanki in thanks as she quickly dredged up what healing magic she had left, spreading it across the group. 

After Halsin was also cured of his paralysis, Wyll concentrated his final dregs of power to unleash bolts of red eldrich energy upon the beast, unsheathing his rapier when he felt his strength draining from the effort to little avail. Nearby, Karlach screamed wrath into her veins, aflame as she took her battleaxe into the fray and hacked at one of the spectator’s tentacles.

Their confidence was momentary. Fleeting, even, as their preexisting injuries screamed back to life, worsened or accompanied by new ones with every bite, every hit, and every bolt the monster threw their way. They were reminded that they’d meant to retreat, only fighting out of necessity, when the spectator took a chunk from Halsin’s broad, blackened shoulder with its needly teeth and flung him into the dirt near Gale. 

The appendages ignited anew with bolts of what they first thought would be another paralysis spell but instead found purchase on the petrified drow. Reinvigorated from stasis, the mercenaries were propelled into the spectator’s defense and caught the party’s blades with their own. 

Astarion’s attention diverted to sinking arrows into the resurrected drow, finding his shots counting for more against the smaller enemies descending upon their companions. He was unloading an ice-imbued arrow into a mercenary nearing Áine’s flank when the spectator unleashed a new wave of paralysis that caught him in its turning tide. The arrow had found its target, loosed just before the light struck him. 

His crimson eyes froze wide as the spectator descended upon him, shredding his torso and right arm with its teeth. He was left unable to scream his agony as his blood poured from the gaping wounds, his undead body barred from beginning any sort of healing process until he could move again. 

Cold blood waterfalled from his slashes as the spectator ravaged their frozen, bloodied friends, only Karlach, Lae’zel, and Áine left mobile. He felt his body growing colder, his mind growing fuzzier and number, sending him back in time to when this was his normal state of mind, bloodless and barely alive. If he could have shuddered, his body would’ve made him. Instead, he remained frozen in time, his struggle against the enchantment rooting him in place weakening with every second he continued to bleed.

It occurred to him that only seconds had gone by, seconds that felt like eons, when he heard Áine scream his name. With effort, he focused on her. Unfortunately, so did their foe. As the creature turned on her, suddenly bleeding out in his paralysis wasn’t his worst fate. 

Watching this thing kill the woman he adored and being unable to save her was.

Áine had been working off adrenaline and horror ever since the monstrosity hovering over them had hurled Gale to the ground. Each time one of them was paralyzed, it was a race with just her battered legs and her swords to fend it off one of her defenseless friends before it killed them in their stasis. Suddenly it was just herself, Lae’zel, and Karlach left moving. The drow were all dispatched save two. Áine had rushed to help when she saw Karlach roll with one of the resurrected elves over the edge of their plateau and disappear, only stumbling to a stop when the one Lae’zel had been fighting threw the injured gith against a rock and came at her instead.

An arrow had sliced the air and punctured his side, a sweep of ice blossoming beneath the drow’s feet that immediately sent him down on his face. Áine’s mistake had been to assume that was enough in her desperation to get her blades back into the monster assaulting her friends, her vision tunneled into protecting her loved ones as she’d slid on the ice herself and fallen on the drow’s upturned blade. 

The possessed mercenary thrust up into her when she slipped and Áine gasped, muffling a low whine of pain as she stabbed her scimitar into his neck, effectively finishing him off. She looked down at the long, spindly dagger he’d plunged into her stomach and her fingers twitched, aching to pull it out despite knowing she shouldn’t. She felt a familiar tickle of drow poison spreading through her, but her resistance was such that pulling the dagger out and letting her wound bleed more freely was the larger danger. 

The keening of stripping metal and tearing of flesh broke her bemusement and she whirled, tracing the spectator and seeing amongst its multitudes of teeth—

“Astarion!”

Gods above, there was so much blood. All around her, but leaking without pause from his pale body, his armor shredded where he spurted red. This can’t be the end…

Her vision shifted as her wounds and her panic at seeing her lover and her friends so horrifically mangled sank into her mind. She didn’t see the spectator change course. She wasn’t even sure she would have cared if she had. Perhaps she would have felt relief that it turned its attention away from Astarion onto her. Maybe he could get away.

Áine’s eyes rose to meet the spectator’s gaze, her features taut with defiance as she stabbed both her scimitars into its dripping, lacerated sclera. It responded with an unearthly shriek and a hurl of its tentacles that slammed her like a ragdoll into a nearby stalagmite with a hard crack.

The scream in Astarion’s throat was half-loosed when the paralysis finally wore off, but the condition’s fade sent him immediately tumbling to the ground, into puddles of his own blood. Shaking, he raised himself on his elbows, his nails digging and scraping against the plateau gravel as he tried to drag himself forward. The sensation brutalized his mind with intrusive flashbacks—the scratching and clawing against a stone crypt lid, painstakingly picking dirt out of the ridges after seizing against the dungeon floor for hours after being whipped, beaten, and carved into. He ignored them, unwilling to let his last thoughts be those long wretched years. If anything would be his and his alone, it would be his death.

“No, you can’t die,” he gritted out, his voice barely managing above a murmur as he clawed the dirt in a daze, desperately trying to get to Áine. What would he even do when he got there? 

She was slumped in a heap on the ground next to the rock she’d hit, her shiny pearl locks bathed red and pooled around her face. A dagger he hadn’t even seen pierce her stomach was buried to the hilt and poked past her arm folded beside her. The spectator made a breathy noise that almost sounded like a laugh and the odious air flowing from its jaws stirred Áine’s hair. It was the only movement Astarion saw from her. 

He snarled, one of his palms slipping in blood and sending him to the ground again. “Get up, damn you!” he growled, but his voice cracked in desperation.

Áine, barely lucid, slowly tilted her head, looking through hair stained red at Astarion. Around them, the paralysis was slowly wearing off the few it affected, Shadowheart included, but the damage was so great and the situation so hopeless that the freed immediately collapsed beneath both. Áine’s vision blurred and she heard Astarion plead with her as if through a long, narrow hallway, his words clear but far away.

Subconsciously, she extended her arm, reaching for him despite knowing neither of them could make the crawl. She winced at the simple movement, her body rending around every injury. She could feel her pulse, an irregular burning around the dagger buried in her belly. Get up, she growled inwardly, her mind’s voice sounding a mix of hers, Astarion’s, and voices from her past, not all of them fond. 

Shaking, she withdrew her outstretched hand and planted it against the ground, her bicep straining as she tried to do as he asked. The hilt of the dagger clacked against the dirt, sending a new shock of pain through her body and she shuddered, a hiss escaping between clenched teeth. Áine managed to push herself up just enough to turn towards the lingering spectator, her body vibrating with the effort while her legs remained buckled beneath her. A cough wracked her body and a spatter of blood projected from her parted lips.

The spectator blinked slowly, its lids hitting the hilts of her blades still sheathed in its eye. It seemed undeterred, its gigantic, slobbering tongue slipping over the surface of its teeth as it stared at her and then began to advance again.

She heard her name croaked again from the vampire lying nearby, too weak to even sit up despite trying desperately to. She could hear his hands splashing against the gore he crawled through, too drained to find purchase on the slickened cave floor. 

Áine’s mind remained addled with her own urgent demands to her body, her memories surfacing in a mingling of voices. Astarion’s, Shadowheart’s, the illithids’, even her father’s. Was this what people meant when they spoke of one’s life flashing before their eyes? Was she dying? 

No. No, she wouldn’t die. None of them would. An old voice resonated in her, reminding her, and her mind traced the contours of that voice with recognition, finding within it a buried ancient power she’d long refused, ignored until it faded into ether and the bearer of that voice left her too. Áine, for the sake of her new family, would embrace them both now.

She shoved herself up once more on one shaking, bleeding arm and with the last of her might extended her other hand toward the looming creature, its bared teeth littered with scraps of their flesh and smears of their blood. Its maw split open, still hungry, still eager to strip every scrap of her skin, every ounce of her defiance off her bones. 

A deadly silence fell over them all until all that could be heard was the crackle of building power around Áine’s hand, a building flush of emerald light blaring from her fingertips and the slits of her half-hooded eyes as, in the quiet that also extinguished the vocal clamor in her mind, one final word caressed her conscience with a tone of recognition. 

“Oathbreaker.”

The crack that split the air was deafening and, for a second, scattered conscious members of the party feared that Gale’s orb had detonated. A blinding, sickly green light erupted from Áine’s hand. When the light cleared, the spectator lay in steaming slices of viscera across the cavern floor. 

When the ringing in Astarion’s ears faded, he heard Áine collapse, unmoving against the rocks. No, was the only word he could think with any clarity and it grew repetitious and feral as his terror and fading condition mingled. No no no no no no no no no no no—

Something touched him and he snarled, swiping backward with one blood-covered hand. He heard Shadowheart mutter at him to stop moving as she dodged around him and turned him over to assess his damage while looking half-dead herself. 

“Don’t touch me!” Astarion hissed, attempting to shove her hands away from his destroyed armor but finding himself too weak to win the battle of wills. The realization just made him further lose his composure.

“Hold still!” she snapped, prying apart what she could of his scrapped armor to get at the deep wounds beneath. Shadowheart caught Astarion’s wrists, drawing another angry snarl from the vampire spawn fighting against her aid. “Wyll, help me!”

Wyll’s face appeared in Astarion’s vision and the Blade took hold of his wrists from Shadowheart, pinning his arms above his head and away from her work. Astarion’s anger bordered on panic. There were too many hands on him and he was too weak to rid himself of any of them. He hissed and growled, still struggling despite knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that they were trying to help him. All he could think of was getting them off him and Ái—

“Go help her,” Astarion gritted, snapping at Wyll’s arm when it came within reach. The Blade held fast, avoiding his fangs and maintaining his bruising hold on the vampire’s arms. Seething, Astarion shouted at Shadowheart, “Go to Áine and get off me!”

“You are dying, Astarion,” Shadowheart finally snapped, near-black bruises under her eyes as she forced her remaining magic through her fingertips as they pressed into his torso. 

“So is she,” he tried to snarl back, but the words came out with a panicked whine. He twisted desperately to try and see past Wyll to where Áine had collapsed. He got a vantage point just as Halsin and Lae’zel stooped to peel her limp body off the floor. “Bleeding Hells, Áine!”

“Halsin will help her until I can, but you’re in more dire shape than she is and she will never forgive either of us if you die,” Shadowheart gritted, finding Astarion even harder to hold in place now that he’d seen Áine. 

“I don’t care!” Astarion spat, his eyes rolling back in his head as his vision blurred sideways again. “I don’t care, just help her—please—”

Shadowheart felt panic lance through her as Astarion started to lose his focus. At least when he was fighting her, she knew he was lucid, but he was drifting again and she could only assume the worst. “Shit,” she snapped, holding his face as his head started to roll sideways. “Stay with me. Astarion!”

Wyll looked at her, panic in his eyes that only flared further when she pulled one of Astarion’s daggers from his belt. “What are you doing?”

“He needs blood,” Shadowheart said under her breath, her features contorted in pain from her own injuries. 

“Let me,” Wyll quickly said, holding out his hand. Astarion was half-conscious and had stilled his struggle in his delirium. “I’m in more of a condition to do so.”

Shadowheart hesitated, but he was right and they both knew it. She hesitated, handing him the dagger and switching her hands down to Astarion’s wrists. Wyll sliced his palm with a quick wince and held his dripping hand over Astarion’s mouth, squeezing the wound. There was a moment of uneasy stillness before Astarion’s entire body seized, almost succeeding in bucking Shadowheart off him as he lunged up toward the source of the blood. Wyll jolted but held his ground as Shadowheart wrestled the drained vampire back down onto his back. 

“That’s enough,” Shadowheart said as she saw Astarion’s pupils begin to react more normally when shadows passed over them. “That will help and we’ll still be able to cart him to wherever we set up if he fusses again.”

Wyll retracted his hand, starting to scout a makeshift bandage when he felt Shadowheart’s fingertips against his, a gentle light cascading from the touch to knit his cut closed. Wyll looked up, meeting Shadowheart’s tired but grateful gaze. “Thank you.”

Realizing they were lingering, the two quickly retracted their hands and set back to work on getting Astarion into a stable enough state to move him. Astarion had grown slightly more aware with some fresh blood returned to his system, but he felt dissociated from himself. When his eyes did wander, they tried to follow Halsin’s hulking form as he struggled to find Áine again. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about the way her head had lolled on her neck when they’d picked her up, not an ounce of fight left in her. Furthest from his mind at that moment was what she’d done to save them all. He didn’t care as long as it meant she’d saved herself, too.

It made very little sense to Áine, when she awoke, that she was still alive. It simply didn’t add up. Not the way she felt her eyes open in such a familiar corporeal sense, not the warm hands she felt resting against her stomach, and not the way her persistent, stubborn heart still thudded in her chest. 

But her eyes did open. So who was she to argue?

Past the fringe of her lashes, she saw a blur of dancing blue light, a shimmer of iridescent motes. When her amber eyes focused, she saw the bioluminescent spores for what they were, aglow as they wove in through the flap of her tent from outside. Their song thrummed gently against her aching head and seemed to settle among her bruises and cuts, their faint warmth second to the touch against her waist.

Gingerly, Áine turned her head to regard the cleric hunched over her. Shadowheart’s focus was solely on the wound she was pulling together in Áine’s gut, the dagger that had made it set aside near her medical pouch. The pouch was dotted with blood as if the dagger, coated in the substance, had been thrown down in a hurry. The shadows under the cleric’s eyes were nearly black against her ashen skin and while her hands appeared still against Áine’s flesh, she could feel the faint tremble in them through the wound they covered.

Áine tried to speak but found her throat dry as a bone. Shadowheart heard the little sound she made at least and her eyes flickered to the bard under her care. “Welcome back,” Shadowheart murmured, an attempt at humor.

“Did you have to revive me?” Áine asked, managing to find her voice this time but just barely.

“No,” Shadowheart said, the glow fading from her palms as she removed her hands to reveal a fresh scar where the drow’s dagger had run Áine through. “But it was close. Not just for you.”

“Is everyone—?”

“Don’t stress yourself and undo my work,” Shadowheart scolded Áine as she tried to sit up too quickly. “Everyone is alive. We’re back in the circle. We’re safe…” She gave Áine a peculiar look. “Thanks to you.”

Áine let out a shaky sigh of relief to hear the others were all alright. She parsed back through what she could remember before blacking out, but it was scattered. More vividly than what she’d done specifically, she remembered that whisper in her mind, the familiar gravelly voice as vivid in memory as in life. “Oathbreaker.” 

At least it had worked.

Áine glanced at Shadowheart’s imploring eyes, feeling bare under the other woman’s scrutiny. She focused on the shadows beneath her eyes again and the bruises and cuts she could see scattered across her uncovered skin. “You should rest, too,” she informed the cleric. When Shadowheart grimaced, Áine insisted, “Seriously. You’ve done more than enough. Take care of yourself for a while. Please?”

“Fine, fine,” Shadowheart mumbled, waving Áine off as she gathered her things back into her pouch. She plucked up the bloodied dagger with a sneer of resentment. “I’m going to rid us of this unless you want it for some reason.”

“I’ve had enough of it, thanks,” Áine murmured.

Shadowheart nodded but didn’t yet budge from Áine’s side. She broke her troubled silence just as Áine was about to insist again that she go get some rest. “You know… Whatever you were before we met, before you were a bard, it’s okay,” she said, catching Áine off-guard. “It won’t change anything, even if you feel it might.”

Áine frowned. “I’m not so sure.”

Shadowheart nodded, meeting Áine’s eyes. “I understand. And I can’t speak for everyone, of course. But I can relate in a way. I felt the same fear when I hadn’t yet told you I was a Sharran. And, for whatever that’s worth in relation to what you’re dealing with, that ended up okay.”

“It’s different. You’re not riddled with shame for it,” Áine said, trying to gentle her curt tone. “But I understand your meaning. And I’ll take it to heart.”

“That’s all I ask,” Shadowheart said, patting Áine’s hand. “That and for you to check on Astarion when you feel ready to get up and around again. Not that you wouldn’t regardless, but—”

“Is he alright?” Áine asked with renewed urgency. Memories of his torso slashed apart, his panicked frozen eyes, and how he’d tried to drag himself to her flashed through her mind.

“He is,” Shadowheart hastened to reassure her. “He wouldn’t be if you hadn’t done what you did. None of us would be, I don’t think. But he made it very difficult to save him and I’m worried I didn’t find all his injuries before he ran me off.”

“Ran you off?” Áine repeated.

“It took me and Wyll to stabilize him on that cliff so we could move him,” Shadowheart told her. “He was fighting us nearly the entire time and telling us not to touch him.” Áine’s heart stung. “And yelling at us to go help you instead. Then when we finally got back and I took you over from Halsin, we had to all but cram him into his tent for him to leave your side and actually rest. Succeeding that, he wouldn’t let anyone in to finish cleaning up his wounds and—”

Shadowheart was becoming more and more impassioned and blustering as she recounted it, only pausing when Áine rested her hand against the cleric’s arm. “I’ll go.” Shadowheart was frustrated and Áine could see it, but she only got this flustered when she was also worried.

“Right. Thank you,” Shadowheart said breathily through a sigh as she ran a hand across her forehead. Her palms and fingertips were speckled with blood she’d missed between patients and her nails were crusted with dirt and grime. She looked like she could pass out at any moment and it was finally that fatigue hitting that encouraged her to follow Áine’s advice. “I think I’ve said it before,” she said as she turned to leave, “but I can’t remember in my current headspace if I’ve said it aloud to you… I was wrong about him.”

Áine adjusted to her side so she could push herself into a seated position. “How so?”

“I told you a while back that I doubted his intentions with you,” Shadowheart explained. “And I still sort of did, even after he asked me about your shoulder. But I was wrong. He loves you. Dearly.”

Áine blushed and the color got mixed in with the bruises splotching her skin. “I wouldn’t go that far, but—”

“Oh, I would,” Shadowheart insisted. “You should see the way he looks at you, especially when he thinks no one’s paying him any mind. Then you wouldn’t be able to argue with me.”

“I’m sure I’d still find a way,” Áine mused, gathering her hair into a low side-ponytail and noting with some alarm how streaked with blood her hair was. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she supposed she’d just forgotten both how much she’d bled and how much blood she’d fallen into in general during the fight.

“Hm. Probably,” Shadowheart hummed. “Take it easy tonight.”

“I will,” Áine assured her, watching her leave before slowly staggering to her feet. She ducked through her tent door as well, her eyes finding the cleric and watching her progress back to her tent. 

Shadowheart started to deviate toward Halsin, who was working on closing a wound on Gale’s scalp. She hesitated and glanced furtively back as she felt Áine’s eyes on her. Áine gave her a scolding look that put Shadowheart back on a path to her tent, not satisfied until the cleric was in her tent with the bit of canvas falling back into place behind her. 

Satisfied, Áine scoped out the camp, noting Halsin and Gale again but not resting until she also scoped out Wyll, Karlach, and Lae’zel. The last she’d seen of Karlach, the tiefling had been scrapping with one of the drow mercenaries and it had taken both of them over a ledge, but at a glance, she seemed the most intact of all of them. 

Wyll looked more or less just a bit bruised with a few treated cuts to his name and he was assisting Karlach in checking a wound on Lae’zel’s head. Lae’zel had only agreed to Karlach evaluating her wounds, as she saw a sister-in-arms in the tiefling and felt less scrutinized by a fellow warrior. However, Karlach couldn’t touch Lae’zel without setting the young githyanki ablaze, so Wyll was permitted to be Karlach’s hands, carefully moving Lae’zel’s bloodied hair so they could check the damage.

From Áine’s vantage point, they looked like they were doing well to take care of each other, which meant she could feel zero qualms about going to see Astarion and likely staying there for the rest of the night thereafter if he let her. They’d been cohabitating since he’d confided in her just a couple of nights back, but she’d never seen him in such a state of injury and figured there was a chance he preferred to weather those conditions alone. 

Meeting her comrades’ gazes as she passed them to get to his tent door, she exchanged smiles and reassuring looks with each, her heart full and her head light with relief that everyone, somehow against their odds, had survived another night. As put-together as she seemed on the surface though, her mind hadn’t stopped racing along with her heart since she remembered how badly wounded Astarion was before she fainted. Neither slowed until she was able to peek through the door of his tent and confirm he was inside, alive and in a deep reverie.

Áine held a hand against her aching heart, a sigh easing from her chest and relaxing her frame. He was okay.

Astarion lay on his bedroll, his fingers curled into small circles for his meditation and his skin littered with cuts and bruises. Shadows bloomed as dark as Shadowheart’s under his closed eyes, standing out against his porcelain pallor, dark petals against snow. He was without a shirt, either of his choosing or something Shadowheart and Wyll had managed to do when they’d fought to stabilize him. His pants remained but they were tattered from the battle, slashed through in several places. 

To Áine’s relief, the wounds she remembered pouring blood to stone looked well on their way to healing. His chest rose and fell with even breaths despite not needing to breathe. She was glad he did anyway—it reassured her in times like this.

Her gaze shifted down to a small bowl of water and a cloth near the bedroll, the bowl half spilled across the dirt beside it. A relic of Shadowheart’s scrap with him, she supposed. Áine shook her head as she carefully sank to her knees beside him and submerged the cloth in the lukewarm water, wringing it over the basin. Didn’t he understand that whatever vigil he may have kept in or outside her tent would have done her no good at all if it hindered his healing? 

She smirked softly as she supposed he probably hadn’t thought that far at all. He rarely could think more than two steps ahead into a plan at any given time.

Áine started with his arms, carefully wiping away the remnants of blood Shadowheart had been unable to get to and Astarion had likely left in favor of tending to his pain and exhaustion. She took her time to be thorough, humming the melody to “Lilac & Gooseberries” under her breath while she worked, musing over how she could change more of the lyrics to suit his fine qualities. When she felt a sliver of her bardic abilities touch upon the tune, she allowed them to flow in, giving the strokes she made with the cloth a touch of magic to help along his recovery.  

She sighed again, soft and more sad this time. My poor boy, she thought, locating his essential oils near one of the pillows she’d brought from her tent and adding a couple of drops to the basin before she began cleaning the blood from his chest and neck. He was okay and she knew that. He’d go hunt and be better in a day’s time and he was already most assuredly more healed up than she was. She just kept thinking back to the look on his face after she’d gone down, and kept hearing that crack in his voice as he’d begged her to get back up. 

It was possible, she thought while she featherlight cleansed his neck, face, and ears, that she may not have found it within herself to reawaken that old, unexplored power had she not felt compelled to push through for him. She was giving up before hearing his voice. She’d felt herself buckle, delirious with pain and fatigue, and flood with despair at seeing her friends so broken. At seeing him so broken, too. She’d started to lose hope.

A star in the Underdark, indeed, she thought, thinking she was perhaps still a little delirious with pain when she noted the sappiness of her own musings. She felt herself smile even though it aggravated the split in her lip. Áine drew her lower lip between her teeth, fidgeting with the healing cut while she moved on to Astarion’s hair, meticulously smoothing the red tints from his silver strands.

She didn’t notice he was conscious until a few minutes after he first opened his eyes, too focused on tending to his curls. When her eyes met his, she found them already on her bearing a mix of emotions, some of which she couldn’t quite translate. One almost looked like anger.

Áine’s lips curled in the beginnings of a smile that fell away when he suddenly bolted upright. They stared at each other—Astarion agitated and Áine bewildered—until Áine’s gaze once more traced the dark shadows beneath his scarlet eyes and held out her wrist. Astarion looked between her confused expression and the vein she offered him before scowling as if insulted and swatting her arm away. 

More flummoxed than before, Áine’s eyes narrowed and she parted her lips to speak, but he lunged forward and swallowed her words, his hand catching around the back of her neck as he angled her head and kissed her hard. She made a small noise of complaint against his lips, bracing her hands against his chest when he crowded her with his body. 

Regardless of his reasoning, Áine was uncomfortable and her wounds were aching as he pulled her closer and she slapped his cheek with as much force as he’d swatted her wrist away. It was enough to jar him and he withdrew, looking at her with shock that had mirrored hers just moments ago. 

“Cut it out,” Áine mumbled once her mouth was free, the split on her lower lip feeling like it might bleed again. “Astarion, stop,” she said emphatically when he yanked her closer by her belt, slapping his hands away from the buckle.

His eyes, somehow far away and yet present enough to react, flashed with hurt. “I…,” he faltered, his empty hands hovering with nothing to touch as he tried to reroute his reactions. “Darling, I’m sorry, I just need to be close to you.”

“Then come here and be close to me, my love,” Áine suggested simply and with a patience beyond her years. She guided him to her and folded him in her arms, one of her hands moving to cradle his face as he buried his head against her chest. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” he murmured almost too softly for her to hear. She felt his tears trickle over her hand before she heard them in his voice. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Áine felt her faint frustration with him melt away along with the presentation of his poor coping mechanisms that had caused it in the first place. “You didn’t.”

Astarion craned his head back to look at her, his ear still pressed to her heart. His eyes were rimmed in red. “But I almost did,” he argued in a whisper, a quiet crack in his voice.

“And I almost lost you,” Áine murmured, sniffing against her own tears that threatened to come. “But I didn’t. We didn’t. We’re both alive and on the mend.”

“I don’t think you understand, dearheart,” he said, clearly very shaken. “I can never feel like that again.”

Áine frowned, smoothing her thumb against his tear-dappled cheekbone. “We will,” she told him honestly, not liking it any more than he did. “Probably several times before this is over.”

“Well, that’s…,” he paused, drawing a shaking breath. “That’s shit.”

The bard offered him a smile dipped in nothing but understanding and sympathy. “That’s life.”

Astarion scoffed. “There has to be something I can do,” he seemed to muse exclusively to himself. “If at the source of the tadpoles’ creation, we can sort what controls the cult, the parasites, even the Absolute, too, then—”

“Astarion,” Áine admonished him, her tone flat and unyielding. He stopped and looked at her, his expression pleading. “Power doesn’t make you safe. In fact, it often does the opposite.”

“Darling, I need the means to protect you,” he murmured through clenched teeth as he sat up from her arms, his hands moving to cradle her face. “To protect myself, to protect both of us.”

“I don’t need protecting,” she told him, her hands resting over his and holding them to her cheeks. Áine turned her head just enough to kiss the inside of his wrist. “This is the risk we take in—,” she sighed, kicking her anxiety aside, “in loving each other. Especially in our present circumstances.”

“Well, I hate it,” he snapped, his tone severe even as he stroked her face as carefully as if she were made of glass. 

Áine raised a brow at him. A mostly teasing challenge. “You want out?”

“No!” Astarion muttered, tensing with embarrassment at how quickly he’d shot down the notion.

Áine tried to contain her smile but failed utterly. “Good. I don’t either.”

Astarion finally smiled a little and the sight eased the tightness in Áine’s chest. “Good,” he echoed. “May I kiss you now?”

“Depends why you want to,” Áine said. “Is it still old motions?”

“No,” he assured her, still occasionally blown away by how much of him she truly saw. It was becoming less jarring every time. “I just want to kiss you.”

“Then please do,” Áine said with a smile, giggling when her face was immediately peppered with kisses. He relished the sound of her delight before pressing his lips to hers again, his fearful urgency gone and replaced with a gentle savoring that did perfectly well to coax them both back into their bed for the remainder of their rest. 

Áine fell asleep in Astarion’s arms, a thing that was now common practice for them but felt much more significant and rare when they’d even for a moment questioned the possibility that they’d ever have this again. 

She woke to a faint tugging on her ponytail and when her eyes fluttered open, she saw the cloth she’d been using to clean the blood off Astarion being used to gently wipe down her hair. Áine watched him work for a moment, admiring his hands, before she traced the line of his arm up to his face. He briefly met her eyes to smile at her before he focused back on his task of painstakingly smoothing every reddened layer from her white locks. 

“Good ‘morning’,” he said, using the term loosely as it was just as dark outside as when they’d finally settled in. 

“Hello, love,” Áine mumbled, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. She noticed the water in the basin had darkened, which told her he’d managed to sort through more of her hair than she first realized. “How did you manage to do all this without waking me sooner?”

Astarion smirked. “Roguish stealth and dexterity, my dear,” he answered simply. “I’m afraid though that because of the oils you added to the basin last night, you’ll smell like me now.”

Áine laughed. “I probably already did.”

“Because you’re mine,” he grumbled as he leaned in to kiss her temple, reaching over her to wet the cloth again and wring it out. 

The bard smirked. “Am I now? And what am I to you exactly?”

She’d never seen Astarion get so immediately flustered. His hand froze against the basin and nearly caught the edge and knocked it sideways until he steadied himself. He cleared his throat so hard he had to turn into his sleeve to cough. Were he not low on blood, she was sure he’d be a cherry red. “Well, I…,” he mumbled, realizing she was waiting for an answer. Astarion made an impatient noise in his throat, “Oh I don’t know! But isn’t it nice? Not to know?”

Áine snorted. “Is it?” She hadn’t expected this response, but it was an interesting one.

Astarion groaned and gestured vaguely when words didn’t immediately come to him. “Well, you’re not a victim. Not a target. Not just one-night-it’s-better-to-forget,” he listed off, seeming to find it difficult to look her in the eyes lest she see the vulnerability there. As if she hadn’t seen it before. “But then… Whatever in the world could you be?”

“Is this a test?” Áine asked, raising an eyebrow.

He sighed loudly as he brought the cloth back to her hair, working on the last few streaks so he could have a secondary reason to not look at her expression. “Well, what would you call this?”

“You mean what would I call us?” Áine bartered.

Astarion bit down a small, schoolboyish smile. “I do still like the sound of that,” he mumbled. Áine melted a little. What a silly man this was. She leaned up and kissed him, a smile curling her lips as she felt him melt into her. When they parted, he tenderly added, “And I do rather like that, you know.”

Áine smiled. “I know,” she murmured, nuzzling his cheek. “I do, too.”

He hummed, ducking his head to brush noses with her. “Thank you, by the way,” he murmured. Before she could ask what for, he bridged the gap and told her, “For snapping me out of my habits. For not taking advantage. For being patient with me.”

Áine’s gaze softened. “No need to thank me,” she told him, her voice a gentle lull. “Thank you for telling me what you needed and letting me help.”

Astarion’s stare became unfathomable and it was mesmerizing for Áine to simply watch the way his features shifted. He swallowed, but the motion looked difficult. “No need to thank me, dearest,” he murmured finally, nodding a little to himself after as he reaffirmed that this was something he could do, something reasonably expected. Something healthy. Something real.

“I would call us partners, for what it’s worth,” Áine answered him at last as he set the cloth back in its bowl. “And I’d also call us late to breakfast based on that aroma coming in.”

Astarion smirked. “You’re late to breakfast, dear,” he corrected her as he rolled the word “partners” around in his mind, testing it against his tongue without moving his mouth. Equal standing, level field, two halves of a whole. He snorted softly as Áine got up to get ready to leave their tent. Cute. He wasn’t entirely sure whether the word crossed his mind in response to her answer or to just watching her get up and around, but he supposed either could’ve been the case.

The couple ducked out of their tent and Áine’s eyes went straight for the campfire, smiling when she saw their friends gathering around to eat yet another hearty meal Gale had somehow scraped together from their supply bags. She was about to apologize for their tardiness when she heard Astarion ask over her shoulder, “Who is that?”

Áine faltered and looked up at him, following his gaze toward where Withers was set up. Her stomach dropped, but she also wasn’t sure why she was surprised. She’d reawakened the dormant powers of her broken oath, why wouldn’t he show up again?

Standing adjacent to Withers was an ornate phantasm of a knight, fully ensconced in spotless bronze armor cloaked in blackened patina. Fierce, fiery eyes of vibrant orange glowed through the slits in the helmet, plumes of necrotic energy flaking from the orange aura to lick at his plating as he leaned against his enormous greatsword. His angry eyes were already resting on Áine by the time she registered his presence.

Astarion expected her to gawk at least, as he was. Or be perturbed by the intruder in their camp space, even if Withers for whatever reason didn’t seem to be. What he didn’t expect was what she actually said. 

“An old friend, I suppose,” Áine said, sounding more exasperated than appropriately horrified. It reminded him of how she’d reacted to Withers showing up in their camp as well, excluding when he’d intentionally or unintentionally jumpscared her of course. “I’ll be back in a moment or two.”

Her tone told him well enough that she wanted to speak to him alone, but he felt the urge to insist he accompany her as that innate protectiveness swelled in his chest. Ah how the tables have turned from the original “plan,” he mused, glancing down at her as she walked toward the knight. She was half the strange apparition’s size and yet strode with all the confidence of someone who towered three feet above him. Not for the first time, Astarion found his nerves easing a little at the sight and thinking, That’s my girl.

Áine drew in a deep breath as she crossed the thatch in the myconids’ circle, offering the knight a half-smile as she stopped in front of him. “Hello again,” she greeted him almost sheepishly.

“I have been waiting for you,” the knight informed her, the familiar voice stirring memories that brought her both pain and comfort. Gravelly and thickly accented, but shockingly kind. In more than a few ways, the strange soul who’d saved her in that first year of freedom. Until he’d realized she wanted nothing to do with the power her broken oath granted her and needed to make his way elsewhere to souls who needed his guidance more. At least, that’s what she’d assumed when one day she’d found him gone. “I felt your call rise again. Your broken chains echoed as they shuddered.”

She nodded slowly, still hesitant to accept this part of herself. It felt like a trap, retaining any remnant of her past and the creed that bound it. Even the shattered pieces. “I have people to protect now. I did it for them,” she said softly.

“A noble cause,” he acknowledged. “Just like the first time. I trust you still remember why you abandoned your oath?”

“Every moment of every hour,” Áine said, her throat tightening as her mind shoved the memories back down where she always held them fast. “I… I’ll never forget.”

“Good,” the knight decreed. “To know the reason for your fall, to remember it, is to know the shape of things to come. Your undoing should remain a source of comfort. For all oathbroken who have realized they are far better to choose their own path…but especially for you, Áine Ts’sambra.”

“Forgo my bloodname,” she ordered on a shaken breath. “My kin lie with my oath.”

“Your kin are alive and continue to spread their ill at Moonrise Towers under order of their master,” the knight said. “But you already suspected that.”

Áine’s blood ran cold. She had, but it was something different to hear it. She felt bile burn her throat as she asked with a forced even tone, “And my father?”

“Aye,” the knight confirmed, inclining his incorporeal armored head. “No less would be expected.”

She gave a flippant shrug of one shoulder. “I dunno. Rather hoped he might’ve died, I suppose.”

“Are you sure?” he challenged her.

“Are you suggesting I miss him?” she hissed in an effort to keep her voice low. “That I would ever forgive him?”

“No such thing,” the knight said. “But even now, the shadows gather around you. They have been with you since you ran. They sense the cracks in your armor and they yearn to be used. To be inflicted. Your power reawakens reborn. It is your path to pave, lass.”

Áine pursed her lips and glanced toward her feet. She knew what he implied. And he wasn’t wrong. While her fractured heart and broken mind reeled in terror at returning to those sickly lands knowing that the ones she’d fled still lived, some part of her looked upon this and saw opportunity. Closure. She’d always sworn to kill him, any of them, if they came after her, and some dark part of her welcomed that possibility as it drew ever closer.

“Will you be with us again now?” she asked, turning her gaze back up to his flame-made eyes. “Or is this just my ‘welcome back’ party?”

“You were not ready when first we met,” the knight said, his tone almost gentle. “You accepted this power out of fear of your family, out of fear of your weakness. You now know your way, but we reunite so I may show you how you might reach it if you have need of my teachings.”

Áine nodded. “Well, you are welcome in our camp, if you care for my permission,” she said, drawing a breath. “And I feel as if I owe you an apology. Not for resisting my power, but for how I treated you for most of our time together. I wasn’t myself.”

The knight actually chuckled. “You were young. Tortured. And too kind for your own good. Still seem to be.”

Áine smirked, a guilty press to her lips. “I suppose that’s something I’ll never shake.”

“See that you don’t,” the knight advised. “It is a rare thing and you possess the strength to protect that kindness rather than be taken advantage of for it.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Áine said, adjusting her ponytail and tracing her fingertips over the wet strands Astarion had cleansed the blood from just earlier. She glanced at Withers. “Hope you don’t mind a roommate.”

“Thou art as ever far too keen to seem amusing,” Withers informed her.

“Did you just say I’m not funny?” Áine balked. “You know what, nevermind. I’m done with both of you for a while.” When she turned to walk to the fire, the two strange figures exchanged a glance behind her back.

Áine joined Astarion’s side and served herself a bowl of porridge from the pot hanging over the fire, plunking a dab of honey into it from a jar nearby. She was surprised there was any left given how fond Halsin was of the stuff. As she stirred the honey into her breakfast, she cast another glance back at the stalwart knight. It was so strange to see him again, but also strangely reassuring. As frightening as it was for aspects of her past to be coming full circle, it felt overdue. She only hoped she proved herself in the end.

“Áine, did you hear me?”

“Hm? What?” she piped up, following the source of the voice back to Gale. “Sorry.”

“No need!” he hastened to say. “I was just curious about our, uh, new guest.”

“Do you know them? Or it?” Wyll pressed warily.

Áine deliberated for a moment before she shrugged and went back to eating her food, relaxing when she felt Astarion’s hand trace up her back. He was starting to get a little too attuned to when she was stressed. Or perhaps that was okay. Perhaps that was something she needed like he needed certain things from her. 

“Just another member of the ‘Undead Peepaw Corner’,” she said, speaking a little more loudly so she could be sure Withers would hear her. “He’s fine.”

The group shared glances, save for Karlach who was fully focused on shoveling her breakfast into her mouth. Lae’zel also seemed generally unbothered, her trust in Áine enough for her to not push further.

“There has to be more to it than that,” Wyll asserted, earning surprised glances from Shadowheart and Gale for the suspicion in his tone. 

Áine glanced at Wyll and set her spoon in her bowl to scratch the owlbear cub’s head when it ambled over to her side. “I mean, you’re welcome to go ask him yourself.”

Wyll glanced toward Withers and the knight before pulling a face and thinking better of striking up that particular conversation.

Next chapter: Chapter 18, "Bard Dance"

[coquelicoq]

In talking about Chaucer (p. 74), I said that, in general, puns and verbal connections of sound were unimportant and not to be sought out; and now, you will say, I have been using them to explain cruces in Shakespeare. Alas, you have touched on a sore point; this is one of the less reputable aspects of our national poet. A quibble is to Shakespeare [Johnson could not but confess] what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind.... A quibble was for him the fatal Cleopatra for whom he lost the world, and was content to lose it. Nor can I hold out against the Doctor, beyond saying that life ran very high in those days, and that he does not seem to have lost the world so completely after all. It shows lack of decision and will-power, a feminine pleasure in yielding to the mesmerism of language, in getting one's way, if at all, by deceit and flattery, for a poet to be so fearfully susceptible to puns. Many of us could wish the Bard had been more manly in his literary habits, and I am afraid the Sitwells are just as bad.

William Empson, 7 Types of Ambiguity, ch 2 pp 100-101

i'm sorry this is so fucking funny. that pathetic loser shakespeare who loved puns so much it cost him everything, except of course his status as the most famous, most read, most immortal english-language author of all time. but everything else, he lost and it's all because of how weak he was to resist a pun :/ pouring one out for my sad little girly man who could have had it all if only he was better at writing, the thing he is the most famous guy in the world for.

even empson, who disagrees with johnson that shakespeare "lost the world", is like, too bad our favorite poet is susceptible to the thing that made him famous :/ really tragic that the guy whose wordplay we've been talking about for 300 years likes wordplay :///

also i can't get over writing a book about the types of ambiguity and NOT INCLUDING PUNS?? sorry but puns are ambiguous! that's where their juice comes from! imagine liking ambiguity so much you write a book about it but never mention puns except to dunk on them. imagine being a POET and POETRY CRITIC who looks down on sound-based ambiguity! could not be me!!

[wheretheharekissesthefox]

Tav's gift

Astarion was Tav's first lover before she entered a polyamorous relationship with him, Gale, Halsin, and Shadowheart. After killing Cazador and the seven thousand souls, Astarion didn't ascend, but stayed a vampire spawn instead. When they defeated the Netherbrain and the tadpoles were gone, so was Astarion's ability to walk in the sun. Tav wants to change that – no matter the cost.

(Trigger warning (18+): graphic description of sex, smut, anilingus, cunnilingus, fellatio, anal sex, pegging, biting, consensual blood drinking, consensual manhandling, fluff, the feels, slight angst, crack treated seriously)

Notes:

To avoid confusion: In one of my other fanfics,Halsin and Tav had named the owlbear cup Naïlo, which means 'night breeze' in the Elven language.

Another fic is mentioned.

If you’d like to read my nerdy ramblings regarding names and their meanings, including those of my Tav and OCs, go to my AO3 account :)

Tav closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The air was hot, the sun shone brightly, and the fresh breeze of the Lake of Steam, carrying the smell of dry grass, olive trees, and citrus trees. She had missed South Faerûn.

Her great-grandparents had moved from Baldur's Gate to Derlusk in the Border Kingdoms in the hopes of a better life. There, they'd worked for different vineyards, passing on their knowledge to the younger generations. Tav's parents had died young due to the plague and she'd become an orphan at age ten. The winemaker, for whom her parents had worked, had taken her in. At fourteen, Tav had pursued her musical training and career. Derlusk was the city of music after all. She'd still helped out her guardian, Korah, at the vineyard, lugging around baskets full of grapes and pouring them into the big wooden tubs in which the pretty girls trampled them to make juice before the wine-aging process. That's how Tav had gotten so muscular; by carrying around baskets and buckets all over the vineyard which was stretched out over multiple hundred metres. It had taken her almost ten minutes from one end of the vineyard to the building at the heart of the property. At the same time, Tav had moved from tavern to tavern, from inn to inn, and from drinking hole to drinking hole, until she'd earned enough money to buy trekking gear. And that's how she'd become a travelling bard.

She'd been heartbroken when she'd returned after her first trip across South Faerûn and had found out that Korah had died. He'd slipped while carrying a basket of grapes and had broken his neck when he'd crashed onto the stone treads. Tav remembered how she'd placed his favourite flowers and a glass of his best wine on his grave and had cried all night.

But she wasn't here to reminisce about the past, but to feel the road under her feet again – and hopefully finally find what she'd been looking for for the past two years. Innarlith was the city of possibilities after all. The city where the impossible was made possible. Tav hoped the rumours were true.

She entered the fifth magic shop, still not hopeless of finding what she's here for.

"Welcome to Ivan Boram's Magic Corner. How can I help you, my friend?"

Tav eyed the sleazy wizard up and down. He had black hair and wore a bright yellow robe that complimented his tan skin.

"I'm looking for a magic item that prevents me from burning in the sun," she explained.

"Ah, I see..." The wizard bore his eyes into hers and she felt a slight stabbing pain behind her eyeballs. Tav blinked and shook her head slightly. The pain was gone immediately.

"I think I sell what you're looking for," Ivan said and started rummaging through the drawers and hundreds of small boxes behind the counter.

"A-ha!"

With a sound of triumph, the wizard pulled out a tiny box and opened it to show its content to Tav. The latter leaned forward to spot a plain, inconspicuous iron ring with a blood-red ruby adorning it.

"This, my friend, is the Ring of the Sun-Walker, one of the rarest magical items. If worn by a vampire, it grants them the ability to withstand sunlight and therefore, they're able to walk in the sun. – This is what you desire, isn't it? Tell me; why are you so keen on getting it?"

Tav contemplated if she should tell the truth before she answered: "It'll be a gift for my lover."

"Ha, I knew it! How thoughtful. And they say romance is dead," the wizard snickered.

The bard glowered at him, barely able to keep herself from baring her teeth at him.

"Well, my friend, you can buy anything in Innarlith – for the right price," Ivan grinned, smugly.

Tav set her jaw.

"What do you want?"

"Excellent question. What could a travelling bard own that's worth said ring?"

"Coin," Tav replied sharply.

The wizard barked a laugh.

"Of course. What a boring answer. But this ring's worth more. Much more."

"What do you want, Ivan?" she replied, all on edge.

"Something... special. Something worthy that proves how much you love your vampiric lover. - Give me your voice."

"Excuse me?!" Tav shot daggers at him. "I'm a bard. I earn my living by singing. I need my voice."

"Yes, but do you need it more than your vampiric lover needs the ability to walk in the sun?" Ivan asked, acting all innocently.

"I - I can't do that. I need my voice. I give you anything else, but not my voice."

"I don't want anything else," the wizard replied, miffed. "But... I could be convinced to shorten the time of your muteness if... you give me one of your memories. I want something steamy. Something that proves your love and passion for your vampiric lover. You won't be able to remember said event though."

Tav raised an eyebrow and probed: "You want a smutty memory so that you can watch porn instead of reading it?"

"Exactly, my friend. Paying for such a leisure activity's rather costly. For some reason, people are very prude when it comes to letting someone watch them during sex," Ivan replied, nonchalantly and unashamed.

It made Tav chuckled.

"You filthy bastard. – Fine, I'll give you one of those memories, but tell me; how long do I have to stay mute?"

The wizard grinned like the cat that got the canary.

"Merely three years, my friend - if the memory's any good."

"Oh, it will be. Trust me," Tav smirked.

"So, we have a deal then?"

"Yes."

"Well..." Ivan stretched out his hand and Tav took it to seal the deal. "Let me get a memory sphere."

The wizard disappeared behind a curtain, rummaging around. Meanwhile, Tav pondered which memory of sex with Astarion she could let go off. All of them were hot, she concluded, and she was a bit sad that she had to forget one of them. Ivan came back and handed her a clear glass ball.

"Here. Focus on the memory you want to give me. Relive it. All of it with all its details. When you're done, speak the words 'Memory given, memory sealed'. Your memory will be encapsulated in the sphere and can be rewatched as many times as wished, but you won't remember it."

Tav nodded, closed her eyes and focused. Astarion and her in the bedroom, with the blinds almost shut, only a strip of sunlight falling onto the wooden floor. The swoosh of the sea, the screeching of seagulls, and the sound of the harbour's bells ringing through the open window. While making love on the soft mattress. Astarion leaning over her, moving in long, sensual thrusts, looking at her intensely with those ruby-red eyes, fangs glinting as he panted. She rolled them over, riding him until he came with a guttural moan. He encouraged her to sit on his face. 'Come here, darling. Let me taste you.' Crying out blissfully as he ate her out until she climaxed. Rolling off of him, smiling. Exchanging sloppy kisses. 'Take me, darling. Make me feel loved.' Astarion sitting in her lap, bouncing on her strap-on dildo. The way he threw his head back, exposing that long, elegant neck. Kissing him, biting him. Astarion moaned, scratching her shoulder blades bloody. She tilted her head to the side and he buried his teeth in her. Drinking her blood hungrily and coming with a wail. His seeds covering them both. Kissing him again and tasting her own blood on his tongue. 'I love you.' Soft eyes, full of adoration. 'I love you too.' Scooping some of his semen up and licking it off her fingers. Astarion groaned, sucking her middle finger into his cool mouth to taste himself. Another messy kiss. 'You're wonderful, darling.'

"Memory given, memory sealed," said Tav and opened her eyes.

She looked at the glass ball in which blurred pictures were floating. She handed the memory sphere to Ivan.

"Here. I hope it's to your liking."

"We'll see," he replied and gazed into the ball.

The longer he watched, the bigger his eyes grew - and the erection under his robe. The wizard's face blushed at the blissful noises he heard, and Tav smirked, smugly.

"It's - it's a rather good memory," Ivan remarked, flustered.

"I'm glad," Tav answered. She had no idea which one she’d left to him. "Now, give me the ring."

Dazed, the wizard nodded and walked behind the counter tentatively. It wasn't easy to walk with a hard-on. Carefully, Ivan set the memory sphere down on a cushion and handed Tav the magic item.

"It won't have an effect on you – except not getting a sunburn, maybe," the wizard explained. "But I can assure you that it'll work for your vampiric lover. - Now, about your voice... I won't actually take it from you, but put a spell on it instead. You'll technically still be able to speak, but if you do so, the spell will inform me about it and cause severe pain to you as punishment. Therefore, I advise you not to speak for the next three years. The spell will be lifted automatically and you'll be able to feel it. Trust me. When the time's up, you can continue your merry way as a bard. Any questions?"

"Can I communicate through writing, or do I get punished for it too?" Tav wanted to know.

"No, of course not. The spell only applies to your voice. No worries."

"Can I still hum?"

"As long as you don't sing and don't speak actual words, yes. Any more questions?"

Tav shook her head.

"Excellent. I'll put the spell on you now."

Ivan lifted his arms and recited magic words. Blue light flowed from his fingertips towards Tav's neck, wrapping around it like a choker necklace made of magic and light. It felt slightly warm and tingly. When the light went out, so did the tingling, and Tav touched her throat.

"Thers's nothing visible there," Ivan informed her. "But if you try to speak it'll constrict and give you a nasty shock."

Tav hummed understandingly. The magic didn't react and she sighed a breath of relief, relaxing a bit. Ivan looked at her, for the first time less coldly, and told her: "I am a hard-nosed businessman, but I'm not cruel. The spell will only punish you if you speak actual words, not simple sounds."

Smiling, Tav formed the words 'thank you' silently with her lips and the wizard nodded, smiling back.

"It was a pleasure to make business with you, Tav Thaura Sionnach."

Dumbfounded, the addressed stared at him with furrowed brows. Then, she made a questioning sound and moved her hands apart as if to ask for a length. Ivan snickered.

"I'm a wizard, my friend, and a brilliant one, to say at least. It was rather easy to pick up your full name in that surprisingly complex mind of yours."

Tav shot daggers at him, harrumphing. Ivan laughed delighted and she rolled her eyes.

"Farewell, my friend. Visit me again soon."

The bard hummed and bowed. Then, she left Ivan Boram's magic shop.

When Astarion opened the door, Tav's beaming smile almost blinded him. She quickly wiggled her way into their home and closed the door behind her to keep the sun out.

"Hello, darling, I missed you," Astarion smiled.

The bard kissed him and pulled him into a hug.

"Yes, yes. It has been a while," the vampire spawn chuckled. "How are you?"

The addressed drew back and shrugged nonchalantly.

"Seems like you didn't catch a sunburn down south."

Tav shook her head and Astarion frowned. Something was off.

"I really miss your poetic verbosity, you know? Talk to me, darling."

The joy in the bard's eyes dimmed and she shook her head.

"What's wrong? Did you catch a cold or did you lose your voice because you sang too much?"

Again, Tav shook her head, looking incredibly sad. Astarion was gripped by fear and grasped her arm.

"Is it another curse? Gods, please tell me it's not another curse, love!"

To his horror, the bard looked sheepish and moved her hand, with flicks of her wrist, from left to right in a 'more or less' motion. The vampire spawn would have paled if it would have been physically possible.

"Gale!" he shouted panicky. "Gale! I need your help! Hurry!"

"What is it?" the wizard yelled back from his study.

"Tav's cursed again!"

An uncharacteristically obscene swearword was uttered, books clattered to the floor as the wizard hit his knee against the table leg, another profane curse, and then, Gale appeared in the hallway.

"Tav, dear, why do you do this do us?!"

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"She can't talk," Astarion babbled. "Her voice is gone. Tav's a bard! How will she ever - Gods! Darling, who did you piss off this time?"

The addressed made an angry noise and waved about with her hands. The men just stared at her confused. Tav sighed, took off her boots and waltzed into Gale's study. Tara was perched on top of the desk.

"Cursed again, Miss Tav?" she tried to scold, but sounded too worried to make it sound that way.

Tav shook her head, grabbed a piece of paper and started scribbling. The wizard, the vampire spawn, and the tressym leaned forward to read it.

I went to Innarlith and finally found what I've been looking for since we've defeated the Netherbrain. But it came with a price. I lost my voice for three years, but then, I'll get it back.

"What was so important that you gave up your voice?" Astarion asked upset.

Smiling sadly, Tav pointed at him.

"Me? Are you kidding?"

She shook her head and continued to write.

I bought something called 'The Ring of the Sun-Walker'. It'll grant you the ability to walk in the sun.

The men gasped in union.

Astarion, I want you to be happy. I want you to be truly free of Cazador – and this includes being able to walk in the sun again. I saw how happy you were when you could because of the tadpole and how devastated you were afterwards. I want to give you this gift so that you'll be truly free and remember me, long after I'm dead. I love you so much and giving up my voice for three years is worth it. YOU are worth it.

"No..." The vampire spawn shook his head, tears shimmering in the corners of his eyes. "I'm not worth it. Tav... you're a bard. Your voice is everything to you."

Not everything.

Smiling, Tav pointed at him, Gale and Tara, and then made a sweeping hand gesture to include the entire house.

"You idiot," sniffed Astarion and fell around her neck. "You utter idiot."

The bard hummed and gently rubbed his back.

"Giving up your voice... Making a deal like that... Gods, Tav..." Gale sighed. "But I understand why you did it."

At those last words, the wizard gently ran his fingers through Astarion's hair. Tav smiled at him.

"Can't you make a counter-spell to lift the curse?" the vampire spawn muttered into the bard's shoulder.

"No. That would break the deal Tav had made and could cause severe damage. It could ruin her voice forever."

"Mhm," nodded the bard.

"You've gotten yourself into a fine mess again, Miss Tav. Well, at least you can still eat," Tara remarked, making the addressed snicker.

Gale sighed, arms akimbo, and announced: "Well, after this scare, I need a cup of tea. Come on, my dears, follow me."

Astarion, Tav, and Tara complied and trailed the wizard towards the kitchen. But when they passed the living room door, Scratch barked happily and Naïlo hooted excitedly. They came running like tornados, bowling Tav over, and showering her in slobbery kisses and headbutts. The bard laughed cheerfully and hugged the animals.

"At least, you can still laugh," Astarion muttered.

She looked at him and nodded, smiling.

He sighed deeply. The love of his life was incorrigible and it drove him up the wall. Sometimes.

After distributing an even amount of headpats and chin scratches, Tav got up, and waved them all towards the kitchen. Gale lit the fire in the stove with a flick of his wrist an started to brew tea. Meanwhile, Astarion took the sandwich tray out of the pantry and placed it on the table. Gale had enchanted the cupboard to ensure the food's freshness. Hungrily, Tav took a ham sandwich and wolfed it down in seconds.

"Easy, darling. Don't choke on the wrong kind of meat," the vampire spawn teased and Tav rolled her eyes at him.

"Next time, I'll give you a bag of holding with provisions that never go bad," the wizard muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

Tav looked at him lovingly, got up, walked over, and kissed him passionately.

"Don't mind me. I'm just enjoying the show," grinned Astarion.

The bard giggled and kissed him too. Then, she grabbed another sandwich. Gale handed her a teacup. She nodded thankfully and took a whiff.

"Lavender. Obviously," Gale deadpanned and she snickered.

"I'm home!" shouted Shadowheart and slammed the door shut.

"Hello!" greeted the men in unison.

Scratch barked and Naïlo hooted as they circled around the cleric to receive headpats. Shadowheart complied, kneeled down, and petted them as she cooed. Then, she stepped out of her shoes and put her staff away.

"Ugh, the temple was filled to the brim today. It seemed like all of Waterdeep wished to leave offerings to Selûne at the same time. I even had to – Tav!"

Laughing, Shadowheart fell around the bard's neck.

"I missed you," the cleric said and kissed her.

Tav hummed agreeingly.

"She got cursed again," Astarion informed the half-elf with a dramatic sigh. "She can't speak for three years."

"Are you kidding me?" Shadowheart looked angry and concerned at the same time. It was cute, thus, Tav had to kiss her again.

"Unfortunately not. She made a deal to get a gift for me."

The cleric groaned.

"Why, Tav?"

The addressed handed her the paper she'd written on earlier. Shadowheart read it and got really quiet.

"Oh," she whispered.

Tav made a face and shrugged. Then, she reached into the neckline of her shirt and pulled the ring out which hung around her neck on a strong leather string.

"Of course, there's where you store your precious goods," laughed Astarion and Tav shrugged again, grinning.

Then, she stepped closer to him and took his hand. The vampire spawn chuckled nervously.

"Are - uhm - are you proposing?" he tried to joke, but his voice cracked and revealed his nerves.

Tav slightly tilted her head to the side quickly in a 'kind of' motion. She carefully slid the Ring of the Sun-Walker onto his middle finger. It fit perfectly. She lifted his hand up to place a kiss on his knuckles before letting go of him. Astarion's eyes were wide, his chest heaving as he panted even though there was no need for him to breathe. His hands trembled lightly when he inspected the simple silvery band with the flatly inserted ruby.

"It's... beautiful. Thank you, Tav," he whispered close to tears again. "I'll never forget this generous gift for which you sacrificed so much."

The bard just looked at him with an incredible soft expression. Astarion wrapped his arms around her neck, pulled her closer, and kissed her. Trying to pour all his gratitude and feelings into it. They parted and before he let go of her, he rubbed their noses together. The vampire spawn took another look at the ring.

"I guess that means we're married," he joked, sounding a bit too close to tears.

"Mhm," Tav agreed, kissing him again contently.

"How about you test the ring's ability?" Gale said, eyes full of curiosity. "It would be a shame if Tav went through all this drudgery and it doesn't even work."

"If that's the case, I'll stab every mage in Innarlith until I get the right one," growled Shadowheart.

Tav snickered and gave her a quick peck before following Astarion and Gale into the living room. The late afternoon sun fell through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The vampire spawn swallowed thickly, took a deep breath, and squeezed his eyes shut. Then, he stepped into the light. Nothing happened. Astarion's ruby-red eyes flew open and he stared directly into the sunlight. Then, at his hands. In disbelief, he touched his face which wasn't burning or peeling off. He barked a laugh and stared at his hands again.

"It works! Fucking Hells, Tav, it works!" Astarion laughed like a madman, almost choking on his own spit. "I can't believe it..."

"Fascinating," muttered Gale, already halfway lost in thoughts again, pondering about the type of magic that flowed through the ring.

Shadowheart put a hand onto her heart and said theatrically: "And so, the Moon Maiden, has lost another child to the Sun. Oh, woe is me."

Everyone laughed and Astarion twirled around in the sunlit spot again. He stopped his frolicking to look at Tav. 'Thank you' his eyes said and the bard smiled. 'You're welcome, love'.

That night, Astarion and Tav held their 'wedding night'. First, the vampire spawn went down on her and made love to her while losing himself in her eyes. Then, the human bard sucked him off and ate him out before hoisting him up on her hips and manhandling him against the wall. She took him this way and Astarion had never experienced anything more arousing. She let him drink her blood and he moaned as he filled his belly with her familiar, comforting taste again after months spent apart. Panting, the vampire spawn pointed at the shelf on their left.

"Need to grab something, darling. Could you?"

Tav hummed, held him tight and moved them over. Astarion groaned as the strap-on dildo jostled against his prostate. He fumbled around on the shelf blindly, until he felt the hilt of his favourite dagger under his fingers. He pulled the weapon carefully.

"Remember this one?" he asked. "You gave me two daggers; the one that was stuck in that suspicious-looking roast in the blighted village, and the other, you reinforced yourself in the abandoned smithy with the Sussur Tree bark. This one is -"

He squeaked when Tav pressed him against the wall again and pushed a knee under his buttocks to hold a hand up. She raised two fingers and nodded. Astarion giggled.

"Yes, this is the second one, darling."

The addressed looked pleased and hoisted him back up into both arms. The vampire spawn groaned, swallowing the saliva that was pooling in his mouth. Tav was so damn strong and godsdamn hot.

"This is my favourite one," he told his lover. "You put so much thought into it. Everything you give me is thoughtful; the daggers, the ring, your trust, your friendship, your love. No one ever looked out for me... you're the only one. And I love you more than anything. You're the love of my life - and I'm almost three hundred years old."

Tav snickered a bit, rubbing their noses together.

"You give me everything I need and now... I have one more request; Drink from me, darling. Bite me, drink me in, and make me yours."

Astarion raised the dagger to his neck and Tav's eyes went wide.

"This one slides through flesh like butter – including my own, much tougher, skin," the vampire spawn revealed and cut himself. The thin line of the clean slash started bleeding immediately. Hastily, Astarion dropped the dagger back onto the shelf.

"Feed from me quickly, before I heal."

Tav immediately leaned forward and licked the blood off. Astarion sighed. Then, the bard bit down as hard as she could. The vampire spawn wailed, bucking in her grip. Tav dug her blunt teeth deeper into his neck, right where Cazador had left his mark on Astarion. She felt more blood flowing from the wound and swallowed the first mouthful. Her lover moaned gutturally.

"Yes, Gods, darling... Devour me."

With a hum, Tav continued drinking his blood while she picked up her rhythm again, thrusting into him steadily and deeply. Astarion cried out in utter bliss, trembling like a sapling in a storm. He felt all-consumed, dizzy with pleasure. Now, he belonged to her fully. His hands threatened to lose their grip on her sweaty shoulders and he dug his nails into her until he could smell blood. They both didn't care.

"Tav," Astarion moaned and came so hard he blacked out.

When he awoke, she was wiping him down gently with a warm, wet cloth, humming a tune.

"I thought you can't talk?" Astarion slurred.

The bard fell silent and grabbed the notebook she'd placed on his bedside table.

I can't speak, but I can hum. No words allowed, only noises.

"I see... Come here, darling."

Tav collapsed into Astarion's outstretched arms and they kissed messily. He could still taste his own blood on her tongue.

"I'm sorry about your shoulder blades. It must hurt."

Tav shook her head, scribbling hastily onto the paper again.

It has already healed! I think your blood has healing properties?

"Huh, what?" Astarion stared at her wide-eyed. "Show me."

Willingly, Tav turned around to let the vampire spawn take a look. In disbelief, the latter ran his finger over her perfectly smooth, healed skin.

"Tsk, another thing Cazador didn't tell us about," Astarion spat. "That utter bastard!"

The bard hummed, turned around, and pulled him into her arms and halfway onto her chest. The vampire spawn sighed and kissed her collarbone.

"Thank you. For everything. I'll never forget your gifts. I love you."

Tav hummed again and kissed his crown.

The 'I love you too' stayed unspoken, but was heard nonetheless.

Two hundred years later, Astarion would still remember his beloved human bard every day. While he'd wander through the city by bright daylight, he'd fondly touch the Ring of the Sun-Walker and silently thank the love of his life for this priceless gift. He'd never meet anyone like her ever again. But he'd be content with that knowledge.

[carrotcouple]

Book Thoughts: Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones

*knock knock* I got it into my head that I wanted to talk about the books I read and how I felt about them and try not to spoil them so that if anyone reads this post they can pick up the book without knowing everything that happens in it.

So 'Cart and Cwidder' is from "The Dalemark Quartet". Publication wise it is the first book to have been published. Chronologically however, it is the third book in the series. I decided to read the series in publication order. For those of you who recognize the name, yes! It is the same author who wrote Howl's Moving Castle! I actually read the fourth book (chronologically and publication wise) randomly when I was a child cause I found it in a library and none of it's friends were around.

From my understanding each book in the Dalemark Quartet is about a different character's story and all these characters end up significant characters in the fourth and last book. With heavy Welsh Mythology and Celtic Mythology roots, the Dalemark Quartet is a fun vibe for those who liked Arthurian Mythology too!

Cart and Cwidder is about a family of Singers (consider them traveling bards). Moril, the youngest son of the family, is the main character. He's dreamy but level headed and rather detached from the world. He tends to go where the wind takes him. His family travels between the North and South of Dalemark often, singing songs and talking to people. The North and South have a horrible relationship and tensions are rising. War seems to be looming on the horizon.

Now that my brief summary is over, lemme talk about how I enjoyed the book, my overall impression of the characters and the themes that I gleaned from the story.

Moril was an incredibly fun character to read. His dreaminess and detachedness led to a very broad view of the story. The story was, of course, written in third person but it was through his point of view. He was fairly content to remain stagnant in that dreamy state at the beginning of the story, but when the ball starts rolling and the plot catches him, he has to learn to grow into his own person, realize that the stagnant dreaminess was his calling to pave his own path as a Singer and eventually lead him to play the blessed Cwidder. He grows in leaps and bounds in this story, hearing the music in the wind and letting it carry him.

Brid was fun! As the only daughter in the family, she was naturally closer to her mom, but she didn't quite have the same steadiness. In fact, it's mentioned on more than one occasion that she needed to be in performance mode in order to do anything in public. Yet despite being in performance mode, she had no qualms with integrating her personal emotions and her real personality into the story. It was incredibly endearing how halfway through the story, her siblings and Kialan let her take the reigns in familial stuff. She was cute and young and wore her heart on her sleeve, but she too grew by the end of the story.

Kialan, who is a boy the family takes in to travel with them briefly is prickly and annoying (to Moril and Brid) at first. He's a smart and no nonsense kind of person who is always looking over his shoulder and trying to keep himself safe. He has one goal and has been trying to achieve that goal for a long time, sometimes no matter what cost it comes at. However, by the end of the story he grows incredibly attached to Moril and Brid. Ready to trade in those self survival instincts and smarts, just for them.

There are other characters, but these three were the central ones, so I really will not talk about the others.

'Cart and Cwidder' is a children's adventure story, not unlike "The Dark Is Rising Sequence" and "The Chronicles of Narnia". So you can expect going into the story that the characters will behave like children, but will often have that beautiful view of the world that adults do not have. 'Cart and Cwidder' is actually fairly dark though, so keep that in mind going into the story.

Music was a central theme, since Moril plays a Cwidder and sings and Brid sings too. Music reaching people, telling people stories, news, about their loved ones, is something explored heavily. But music having power is explored too. How music can move mountains, stop wars, make the most alert soldier sleep, make the hardest heart melt.

It is somewhat of a coming of age or a self discovery story on Moril's end. Throughout the story he struggles with what kind of music he wants to make and what music means to him. The fact that his Cwidder holds power that deeply unsettles him adds flavor to his struggle. He learns to find himself, what he wants, acknowledges the power he holds as a person, a musician and a storyteller and also realizes what he wants to do with that.

Truth is an incredibly large part of the story that was not as obvious. But Moril has to learn to be truthful. True to himself, true to his Cwidder. He has to face the consequences of twisting the truth, the consequences of lying. With a constant opposite being shown in how his father only performs and his sister also does too and how his brother tries to share his truths, Moril has to understand what is actually truth.

And lastly, my favorite bit was a minor but nonetheless, the role of women in the story. Given the time period in the story, it is better for a woman to get married in order to be protected and safe. And we see the decisions that Moril and Brid's mother makes and how they're somewhat resentful of her at first but then they understand and realize she was just a person. And then we end up seeing it reflected in Brid as she learns and grows.

Cart and Cwidder was a super fun read with secretive bards, ancient legends, magic, songs that can move mountains, wars, conspiracy, discovery and freedom.

[dulcidyne]

Astarion x F! Redemption Dark Urge | Mature | Ch. 1 of ? | Words: 965

There is a name, the only one you can remember, but the feel of it is already nostalgic on your tongue. Sweet and sad, it is a half-faded keepsake… a name made for closeness, a name for someone’s daughter. There is love in it, you can feel that much—love and sunshine and bees humming in the late afternoon light while sunflowers sway in the breeze by the garden gate.   It is not a name for someone like you: a woman with teeth for thoughts. 

CW: Death, Mature themes If you could remember one thing, it should be this: they loved you very much, and it didn’t matter one bit. (Read on AO3)

Like the bard, it happens when the night is cold and still as corpses. You are in the kitchen standing over their bodies and the blood is already dry on the knife clutched in your tiny palms. The front of your cotton nightgown is stiff as old parchment, dusting rust-colored flecks onto the rough-hewn oak floorboards as you sway on unsteady feet.

Wisps of steam no longer rise from the earthenware rim of the mug on the kitchen table—lemon tea with a dollop of honey, to help you sleep through the nightmares.  They always brew it in this mug; your mug, you carved lopsided sunflowers into the clay before they fired it in the kiln. 

But now there will be no more lemon tea with a dollop of honey. No more shaping clay in the circle of their arms as the bees hum in the golden spill of late afternoon sunlight. No more bedtime stories or tickle fights full of breathless laughter or careful hands braiding plaits into your hair before pressing a cheek to the crown of your head over the neat part.

This gift you’ve given them—your final one—is the first with a price. It is not a hug or a kiss on the cheek or daisy chain bracelets, freely given and happily received. This is a gift that costs you everything. 

You are too young, much too young, to understand the full weight of ‘everything’. It is a concept that looms, vast and incomprehensible, over you like portentous thunderclouds and all you can do is snatch up tiny, dark fistfulls of understanding one at a time.  

The tea, the mug, the stories, the braids.

Only now do you begin to cry and these sobs are too big for you too. They shudder through you in violent spasms, wrenching your shoulders back, barrelling out of your chest so hard they knock against your fragile sternum like fists.

Already, you want to take it back. Ungive this gift, upay this price. You will do anything. You will go back into the cellar again, for days, for weeks. They can keep you there, in the dark, for as long as it takes, until the bad thing in your blood finally stiffles in the dust and impenetrable quiet. You won’t even cry, you won’t even say how much it scares you when they shut you up down there for your own good. You’ll say the prayers to Helm exactly like they taught you, bite your tongue when the bad thing makes you talk about plucking out their eyes, their hearts, their teeth. Bite it clean off if you have to.

Why didn’t you try harder? Why couldn’t you be better? 

It hurt them so much that you couldn’t. You saw their faces puffy with tears, their eyes rimmed red and swollen. You heard all their hushed conversations, the same mad ring-round-the-rosy circuits over and over and over again.

‘What do we do? She’s not getting better. I don’t know how long I can do this—I don’t know how much more of this I can take.’

‘You know what she is. We agreed we would try.’

‘I know.’ 

And then one of them would start to sob.

“Please,” you whisper now through your own sobs. But there’s no one to hear you. The bad thing in your blood is quiet, emanating rippling waves of elation through your veins, purring like a contented cat sunning in a windowsill. 

“Please!” you shriek and the current of your pulse tugs, shifting as your heart hammers in your heaving chest.

Beautiful it murmurs softly, reverently, between hitching thump-thumps, forcing your eyes back down to the only parents you have ever known.

And…it’s right. A grid of moonlight slants in from the kitchen window, rendering the scene in silver relief, like a holy relic. Your kitchen has transformed into a silent chapel and etched in pale glow, two serene faces rest in repose, wreathed in tangles of dark, like gifts on an altar. Their unblinking eyes are fixed above as if they are peering up into the dome of a cathedral invisible to you, whites round with shock so profound, it looks like awe.

It’s as if they are staring up at some exultant future. Whatever it holds, it looks peaceful. It looks like no more restless nights sobbing behind closed doors, no more faces lined with worry and fear, pinched and wan. 

A gift. The best you could have given them. The blessings of Bhaal: mercy.

You remember the burlap sack beside the well, mewling coming from inside. It took you what felt like ages to unknot the twine and release the kittens before the baker could come back and finish drowning them. 

“It’s not a kindness, what you did,” they explained to you after. “They won’t have enough to eat. No one will take care of them and they’ll only suffer.”

“Sometimes,” they’d said gently, “death is a mercy.”

Beautiful, beautiful mercy your contented blood says, soft as a sigh. 

See the smiles you’ve made for them. Look how happy you’ve made them. Happier than you’ve ever made them before. 

It’s right. They look more peaceful together in death, without you, than they ever were in life with you.  The tea, the mug, the stories, the braids.

Your sobs shut themselves up in your ribcage before bursting free into a shrill screech of rage that rattles the window panes. You seize the mug and hurl it to the floorboards; watch it shatter. 

They were good, they loved you, they deserve this. Deserve mercy and peace and blessings. Deserve to leave you here, all alone. 

And you deserve that too.

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

Tempted: A Mini-Muffin - a Malevolent fic

The things he'd do if he had the time...

AO3

-----------

He knew this was a trap.

It was absolutely a trap. He’d always loved creative mortals, from the first moment he saw one. Hastur still remembered his first—a little old man who'd called himself Cardis, which meant color, who’d been painting sunsets inside his cave home, using crushed insects and a judicious amount of mud. 

Oh. Oh. The yellow had drawn Hastur. The creativity had kept him (and he'd had a lovely time as long as Cardis lived). Hastur loved artists. Which, of course, was why this had to be a trap.

A trap for what, he couldn’t be sure. Maybe to distract him? Keep him from achieving his goal—from keeping everyone safe by the time his six (no, five now, it was only five) years were up.

Hastur hovered above his city, listening to the dulcet (yes, dulcet, shut up) tones of Odd the bard and his lovely violin. Late. That was the trick! He was being kept late. That was it! That was the purpose!

Hastur sighed. Obviously, that wasn’t the purpose. He just didn’t know what was.

He was wasting time thinking about this. He needed to go. Deal with Yag’thlip before that asshole signed that contract with the Fomorians and threw the balance of the Dreamlands completely off. 

Odd changed keys; it was minor now, sweet, an oddly soothing sound—something to mourn to, releasing sorrow like pus from a wound. A healing sound.

What a strange thought to have.

No. No, this was just… distraction. Yes. Nonsense to keep him overly busy, juggling too many balls.

He wished it hadn’t been this way. What he would have done to Odd if things had been normal…

It would start with a stage. The bard clearly didn’t want gifted honor or glory, didn't want to be carried around, lauded, waved at people like a banner. Hastur would provide the venue, so this demigod (who, amusingly, did not know that he was one) could perform, and sing, and charm everybody, guiding his audience through laughter and tears and tremendous stories. Odd would summon praise like the suns summoned flowers, and that was what he wanted.

Then, Hastur would give him security. Protections, allegiance, the ability to travel safely on the road without fears of enemies or bandits or what-have-you. He’d even clean up those few tiny little illnesses the Bard had picked up along the way—nothing major, just magical hangers-on as tended to cling to those on the Path.

Third, he would give Odd a soft, perfect place to lay his head when he wished. A place to land, to come home to, with all the luxury he could possibly want, where he could grow content and plump and happy, leaving when he wished (a golden cage lost its appeal if the door closed tight) to spread skill through the Dreamlands.

Then, Hastur would… well. He’d keep Odd very, very physically satisfied. That would be half the fun. He’d ruin him. Nobody else could ever compare. That’s right; no other touch, anywhere, in all the magical world could ever—

What was he doing? There was no time for this!

That kind of attention took a while. That kind of attention took focus. That kind of attention… was fully out of reach. Hastur had five years. Less than, now.

Funny, in a way; he’d considered fully conquering the Dreamlands so many times, but for whatever reason, he never had. Well. That choice was costing him now, and he was scrambling.

He listened a moment more, softly harmonizing under his breath. No; Odd was… free. He’d run off eventually, and never have any of those lovely things even though he deserved them. Maybe someone else would come along to provide. Hastur could not. He dared not. Dallying for his own sake and costing Faroe her future was simply not an option.

His sigh was heavy, and he drooped as he flew away, toward the Southern Sea. At least he could imagine. At least he could ensure Odd left with his pockets quite full of gold. Beyond that…

He had no time. There was no time. He had no time for that.

Such a pity he did have time for regret.

---------

Notes:

Boy, it’s been awful quiet around here lately. Positively introspective…

[m3rricat]

You Do Not Have To Be Good - Ch. 9

Story summary: Four months after the defeat of the Netherbrain, Astarion finds himself stuck in the mire of his past and all the anger and despair that comes with it. While wrestling with her traveling-companion-turned-lover’s misery, Cat makes an impulsive decision that sets off their first falling-out. This post-game short story is told alongside the full in-game story of the evolving relationship between Cat (the not-a-bard) and Astarion (needs no introduction) which varies from canon. Told from both POVs.

Chapter Masterlist

Chapter 9: finally getting to the graveyard bonk, y'all

Pairing: Astarion x female Tav

Chapter Content Warnings: explicit sexual content, menstruation

Word Count: 9485

Read on AO3

A/N: The second-to-last chapter and the finale of the in-game story. Doing something a bit different with the 7k spawn plotline because I want to. Enjoy the extra-long chapter!

__

Cat doesn’t know why she is suddenly drawn to this particular opening, yawning across from where they all decide to stop and regroup just outside of Cazador’s ritual chamber. There had been plenty of other doorways and egresses on either side of their path as the companions had rushed along. Some were original to these ancient green-lit dwarven ruins under the shabby palace, and others rough-hewn, like crude wounds, clearly made centuries later.

Cat gets up from where she sits after checking over her kit and walks away from where the group is strewn about doing last pre-battle preparations. Across this cavernous vestibule of the ritual chamber is a lofty entryway of dwarven-make, a few yards tall and twice as wide, with new crude iron bars set into it, running from top to bottom at narrow intervals. Conspicuously, there is no gate. No exit. As Cat looks at it, her stomach clenches in fear. Her instincts tell her to avoid, avoid at all costs. But her feet stay planted of their own accord.

She doesn’t hear if anyone has come over to see what she’s peering at so suddenly. She squints, disoriented by what she sees at first through the bars, down the smooth-stoned hallway. Until she realizes—she is seeing a narrow slot of something massive. The hallway, several yards down, abruptly opens up onto a much larger area. She is looking across a wide expanse and seeing it from a distance—steps. Steps angling down, like she was standing at one of many entrances onto a great, sickly-lit amphitheater. And it is silent.

But, it is not empty.

Cat steps closer. There are dark clumps of… something, uneven piles up and down the steps. To one side, there is a massive tumble of whatever jumbled mess the something is, as if it had been tossed down from above—and Cat inhales sharply as she realizes. Bones. Piles and piles of them, some clean with age, others with unfortunate flesh still clinging.

And then, in the distance, one of the corpses unfolds itself from the heap.

It raises its head. Casts about for a moment—and then its glowing red eyes snap to Cat. Immediately it sends up a screeching wail echoing through the chamber, the sound of which lodges permanently in Cat’s brain.

It is the start of an avalanche. Other bodies begin to emerge from the piles of refuse: crawling, stumbling, or running across the cascade of steps, making their way around to the bars where Cat stands. She jumps in surprise as the first ones burst into the passageway before she expected them to—it must have been the ones closer, the ones she could not see above and below the passage. She can hear the rumble of their coming. And she freezes as every fiber of her body tells her she is very much prey.

“Get back!” Astarion snaps, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her behind him as the tide of bodies hits the bars and rebounds in a howl, a magic barrier flashing at each point of their contact. Astarion’s fangs are bared, his eyes full of anger and confusion as he stares wildly at the mass of skeleton-thin bodies, all naked or near enough, all with eyes glowing red and slavering mouths filled with needle teeth.

After an eternity, Cat hears a choked whisper from Astarion. “Spawn… he made them spawn…”

And that is when she sees his façade of feverish confidence start to come apart at the seams.

It had all started that first night in sight of the Gate, almost a week ago now. Astarion had come to her all wide, sweeping gestures and pitched-up voice when he explicitly proposed, for the first time, that he take Cazador’s place as the Ascendant Vampire in his hellish ritual. He had veered wildly from seething sarcasm to almost manic glee as he went over his rehearsed points. The Astarion that Cat had come to know so deeply had retreated back into his old self, held tenuously together by performance after performance.

She had known this conversation would come. She had seen how very pensive Astarion had been after Raphael regaled them with the details of the ritual and its result. Cat had only spoken to Astarion about it neutrally, asking him about his thoughts on it far more than giving her own. Because she herself did not know quite how to feel about it. Or, at least, that is what she told herself back then.

But as Astarion grew more and more anxious and frayed as they moved through the city, Cat’s conviction had become more and more set as she stopped lying to herself out of fear of losing him. This ritual, this diabolic Rite of Profane Ascension—she would not agree to help him do it.

The cost of his fellow spawn’s lives and the Hellish origins of the ritual had given her pause from the start. But after she and Astarion had confronted Dalyria and Petras in the flophouse, Astarion’s words to her were what cemented Cat’s choice.

It was after that incident that Cat had first tentatively pushed back against Astarion’s desires. Asked if he was really prepared to kill them for it—his brothers and sisters. He had talked around and around: said he pitied them in one breath and then in the next spoke as if they were already doomed, and that rather than to elevate Cazador, wouldn’t it be better for them to serve a… higher purpose? He had gestured to himself as he said it with a disturbing smile. And that’s when all the bits underlying Cat’s uneasiness had clicked into place.

Because surely beyond the fact that Astarion would have to climb over the bodies of his siblings to complete the ritual, there had to be some other cost. And Cat thought she saw it in that moment, when she watched Astarion happily referring to himself as taking Cazador’s place on a pile of corpses. Inheriting his position—and what other of his master’s evils would come with that? It chilled Cat to the bone, like she was seeing a glimpse of the future. And it resolved her to her decision. She carried it in her stomach like a stone.

And the weight of Cat’s choice grows now as she watches the scene unfold between Astarion and the ravenous spawn, baying for her living blood. She learns from Astarion’s halting words that what she is looking at is the product of his and his siblings’ work over the centuries—the victims they had dragged back at Cazador’s command. They are all in there, even the thousands who were now no more than scattered bones. Gale is able to identify the barrier—a spell of infernal origin that can corral souls. Cat swears now she can see them like slight distortions, feels the press of them along with the bodies against the bars.

“Not seven….seven thousand souls, bound to the ritual,” Astarion breathes as he sees the brands on the spawn so much like his own. Cat can see that the revelation hits him like an earthquake. The pile of corpses he must climb has grown to a mountain. Surely, he must see that—

Astarion suddenly bolts, half scrabbling on his hands and feet, half running along the wall of the antechamber away from the howling churn of spawn. He collapses to his knees against a cold stone wall, bathed in the harsh green light from the sconce above. Cat goes to him.

“I—I did that,” he mutters as Cat bends down over him. “All of the ones I lured, they ended up in there. He didn’t just kill them the same night. They—they suffered, I cannot imagine—and some still suffer after centuries…”

“The ritual will kill them now, and damn all those souls to Hell,” Cat says as steadily as she can manage. Astarion’s eyes flick up to hers.

“Yes,” he breathes. “But—but it would be for the best. Can you imagine, hundreds of spawn like that, the terror they would cause? No, for the best…”

Cat looks at him hard. Her stomach is clenching. But she must. “You’d do that? Deny them the chance at freedom that you got?”

“I’m not like them!” Astarion snaps. “I’m not so—so wretched—”

“They were innocent victims.”

“Yes,” he hisses. “I can’t deny—”

“I could have been one of them, if we had met differently,” Cat says quietly, willing the blow to land.

Astarion stares up at her in horror. “Don’t—don’t say that! Please, I don’t want to think,” he stops, taking a shuddering breath. “I had thought—after what Cazador did to you, he would order me to—to bring you in… gods, I—” He drops her gaze.

Cat crouches down. Looks him in the eye. And she says, “please don’t do this. This isn’t… you.”

Astarion looks back at her, face full of fear. “But, it should be,” he whispers, voice quavering between question and statement, leaving it hanging uneasily between them.

But then the moment is gone before Cat can seize on it. He stands abruptly. “Come on—he’s close. We need to end him. Now.”

The battle with Cazador is brutal for how brief it is. The companions are a well-oiled machine by now, and the ability to prepare ahead of time for a fight with a powerful undead means that they are ready for his onslaught. He traps Astarion in the ritual briefly at the outset, but Astarion is freed just as quickly with a well-placed Dimension Door, allowing Cat to rescue him from his restraint, and for him to join the fight.

But as Astarion drags Cazador out of his healing trance to deliver the final blow, Cat feels that the real struggle is now beginning.

“Help me,” he begs her, voice husky and raw. He is bare-chested, breathing ragged, standing over a delirious Cazador. “If I carve my scars onto him, I can use him in my place—”

“Foolish boy,” Cazador suddenly splutters, coughs wracking his ravaged body. “Do you think I would have allowed such a thing to happen—”

“Silence!” Astarion bellows. He turns back to Cat, eyes pleading. “Cat, help me, show me the scars off my back…” his words die as he sees her face.

Cat braces herself. “No. I won’t help you do that.”

“But Cat—” Astarion hisses, tense. But after a moment he lets his shoulders slump. Tries another tack. “If I ascend, I’ll finally be free—truly free. I’ll be safe, from anything and everything. Isn’t that—isn’t that what you want, for me?”

Cat looks at him, her face carefully calm. “I won’t help you get a power that will just trap you, just like Ca—”

“Don’t you dare compare me to him!” Astarion snarls, unraveling in rage before her eyes.

Cat tries to breathe, tries to think. The smell of so much blood is nauseating. Astarion’s chest is heaving, sucking in great gulps of it. How much more intoxicating it must be to him, how the swirling power of the ritual on the verge of completion must be singing in him with infernal promise—

She has to get him away. Has to get him to a place where he can think—

Cat looks up at Astarion in apology. Her tadpole thrashes and reaches for his.

A blink and a searing stab of pain later, and Cat is alone with Astarion on a sharp blue winter morning amidst the sea of faded grass, rustling slightly in the cold-clean breeze. They stand on the path running along the dike toward the southern bounds of the Delta. Now and then a bird wings above, crying plaintively, but otherwise, there is nothing else in the world but them.

Astarion looks around wildly. “Cat, what in the hells—what did you do—”

“You need a clear head,” she begins, hands clenching and unclenching by her sides. “I need you to hear me out, and you can’t do that practically drowning in blood and hell-magic.”

“There is nothing to discuss! This ritual will give me the power to be free. Free from—from fear, from hunger. Cat,” he steps toward her, looking at her wide eyed. His voice drops to nearly a whisper. “I will keep you safe. I’d have the power to keep you safe from anything.”

Cat remains stock-still. “Astarion. This power—you’d damn thousands of souls to get it. That would mark you forever. You’d carry that with you, forever. And it would drive you mad.”

“Why—why are you talking like you know anything at all? You know no more than I do, and that certainly isn’t written in stone!” He snaps, his pleading turned to scorn in a blink.

“No, I don’t know. But this whole thing has tasted bad from the beginning. Anything that requires sacrifice of innocents like this cannot be good for your soul.” Her careful expression starts to slip, and she looks at him with resignation, but under it, a deep painful well of affection. “I can only do what I believe. And I will not help you do this.”

Astarion stares back at her. “Cat,” he says at last, a crack cutting through his voice. “You love me. Don’t you?”

Cat stiffens. But after a long pause, she answers with the truth. She couldn’t say anything different. “Of course I love you.”

“Then you’ll help me.”

Cat balls her fists at her sides. She looks him full-on, willing the tears not to fall. “I won’t. I won’t help you act in—in fear. This is all the fear in you coming out. You’ve known nothing else for so long. And I understand,” she inhales. Exhales trembling. “If this is the end for us, then—I’ll be devastated. I won't lie. But I’d rather that, than… than lie to you about what I feel, cling to you out of my own fear. We’d both be trapped, if I help you do this.” She squeezes her eyes shut as the sob rises in her throat. “And I love you too much to let that happen.”

They stand in silence for a long time under the cold, distant sun. Astarion looks up at it, at her memory of the sky that painfully clear day when she left home forever. “I’ll lose the light. Again.”

Cat wants to close the distance, wants hold him fast. But she forces herself to stay still. “I’ll get it for you again. I’ll stay with you—we’ll travel, we’ll find a way. I promise.”

As Astarion turns to her, his eyes meet hers, the light refracting through the red so beautifully—

—Cat stumbles as her mind whips back to the chamber full of blood and fear and the taste of Hell. Astarion is bent over Cazador as he tries to get his bearings back, panting as everything floods his senses again.

He doesn’t look up at Cat. He only has eyes for his master writhing at his feet. And then, without warning, he sets to work.

Over and over he stabs his blade into the screeching wretch. At first Astarion yells in unleashed anger in time with the plunging dagger, but as the flying blood coats him thicker and thicker, as Cazador’s convulsions fade into mere involuntary twitches, Astarion’s yells turn into cries. Of pain, of abject misery, flooding out of his body as surely as the blood pooling under his master’s corpse.

Astarion falls to his hands and knees. He is gasping for breath, but soon he is heaving, and the sobs wrench themselves from his body. He howls.

Cat’s instinct is to turn away, make everyone turn away—let Astarion spill his guts where no one can see him so raw, so vulnerable. No one should be allowed to see—but she can’t do that. So she stands sentinel over him. Witnesses his writhing, pain-filled transformation as he lets himself realize the one who tormented him for the whole of his life, who was his life, lies dead in front of him.

Astarion sits back as the sobs subside. The tears on his face trace tracks through the drying blood. Cat steps tentatively towards him, but he abruptly stands up before she gets close. Sways. “Let’s leave. I can’t stand it...” he mutters, turning for the stairs. Slowly he totters towards them. Cat and the rest follow in his wake like funeral mourners.

“Close your eyes, I’m going to wet your hair—” Cat murmurs, putting her hand carefully to Astarion’s forehead as she pours from the bucket of clean water over his blood-encrusted curls. He bows as the hot water washes over him, down his scarred back, into the murky depths of the tub. He still says nothing.

Astarion had gradually lost his words as they moved away from the ritual chamber earlier that night. There had still been a decision to make—a heavy one. The few hundred remaining unliving spawn stared at Astarion warily as he approached their bars with Cazador’s staff in hand. Cat had no idea what he was going to do—the staff held the power to free them from their cage, but it also could kill them. Which might have been a mercy, and a mercy on the city’s population given the ravenous, bottomless hunger in each of them.

Astarion had lifted the staff wordlessly. Then, the two children had emerged from the crowd.

They were spawn, like the rest, with their red eyes and shark teeth. Astarion faltered. You, he had said simply. And then the two children, a boy and a girl, started screaming.

He had abducted them, they shrieked. Taken them from the Gur at Cazador’s orders not long before he himself had been taken by the mindflayers. Astarion bowed under the weight of their wrath, their cries of hunger. Then—the spawn around the children put their hands on their shoulders gently, murmuring to them in a bid to comfort, such an unexpected warm gesture that it shocked Cat.

These spawn, who tore apart most every new arrival in their never-ending rage, their blind drive to feed on anything and everything, had spared these children. Cared for them in what meager ways they could. Despite their unending nightmare, a spark of compassion still remained in their desiccated bodies. Cat stepped forward. Looked sidelong at Astarion’s face. His teeth had been clenched, his eyes bloodshot, staring for a long time at the scene playing out before him. He then turned to his siblings who had been following at a distance.

And he had charged them to take the wretches down, down into the Underdark. Let them feed there, let them figure out how to live. His siblings, whether from their own shock or confusion or something more noble, agreed to be their escort. Without another word Astarion had flourished the staff, and Cat felt the magical barrier fall. Felt a sudden rush as the miasma of souls dissipated. The bars had remained, but Astarion still took Cat by the hand and led her away quickly from the hungry mouths behind them.

Despite her own hazy mind, Cat had still managed to order a bath to be drawn in one of the group’s rooms when they arrived back at the Elfsong. She looks now at Astarion with his soaked hair, realizing she had never seen it wet before, without any curl. His ears—they stand out so prominently that Cat feels a smile tug at her lips. No, not now. Not while he is so delicate, while his mind is still making sense of this new world.

Cat brushes a stray hair that escaped from the kerchief she had tied around her head when she stripped off her own armor and went to work on Astarion. She works the gentlest soap she could find into his hair, loosening the crusty blood. After a thorough massaging, she rinses it out before applying conditioning oil. She does not know whether to do it at only the ends or to the root. She should ask. But she is afraid to hear him speak.

She oils the ends. Begins to scrub the rest of him. Runs her cloth and her hands over the expanse of his skin, trying to be firm and businesslike. She does not want any part of her to ask anything of him. She hesitates at his back scars—but they are as coated with filth as the rest of him. So she holds her breath and works quickly, keeping on alert for any flinch, any freeze. But Astarion remains slumped where he sits, breathing shallowly every now and then.

His face. Cat needs to ask. So she gently pushes aside the hair that has plastered itself on his forehead. Holds up a clean cloth. “Should I? Or do you—?”

By way of answer, Astarion bows his head toward the cloth and closes his eyes. She gently wipes, first with water, and then with soap, then rinses it. This face she knows so well—every quirk, every expression it makes.

But she can’t tell what he’s feeling. She doesn’t know if he loves her or hates her or feels nothing for what she refused to do. All she knows is she wants to clean it off him, the filth and despair of that place. Gruffly she asks him to stand—the water is too dirty, she needs to wash the rest of him piecemeal as he steps out.

Cat finishes and immediately goes to wrap his drooping form in a towel. He clings at it with sudden movement, holding it around his shoulders with trembling hands. Without pausing, Cat takes another towel and tosses it over his dripping hair, massaging and scrunching to soak out the water, then ruffles it over his whole head. It will have to be good enough—Cat does not trust herself with prestidigitation to dry it in her emotional state; likely, she would explode the room instead.

She goes to lift the towel from where it lies over his face. His gorgeous eyes meet hers as she uncovers them. He looks at her, not through her, for the first time tonight. But that is all he gives; his only expression is bone-deep weariness. Cat tries on a tentative smile in place of her real desire to smother his face with kisses.

But she doesn’t even wait for a reaction from him. Fears it. She continues to dry him, then bustles over to grab the clean nightshirt and trousers she had bullied the others into scrounging up. Astarion takes them from her wordlessly without prompting. Once he has dressed, he heads over to sit on the bed while Cat goes back behind the screen to wash herself. The large tub is far too filthy, so she contents herself with a quick sponge bath with the remaining bucket of clean water. She rushes as if Astarion will flee at any moment, pulling on her shift as soon as she is barely dry enough and then dashing out from behind the screen.

But she freezes as uncertainty hits her again. Astarion sits on the edge of the bed, hands clenched around each other. He stares down at them. Cat takes one step and then another, carefully, until she stands in front of him.

“Do you—” her voice quivers at the edge of a whisper. “Do you want me… here? Or, should I…”

His head tilts up slightly. A pause, and then his hand reaches out, takes one of hers. Slowly he clambers back on the bed, pulling her with him.

In the end he lies on one side, Cat on the other, facing each other. He keeps his hand on hers, his eyes fluttering closed almost immediately into a true sleep. Cat isn’t surprised he wouldn’t want a reverie tonight. She watches him for what must be hours as the candles burn down—so wasteful, but she does not dare move. Barely dares to breathe, for fear of shattering the delicate image in front of her.

Cat is awakened by the sunbeam crawling across her face. It blinds her bleary eyes for a moment, and for that moment she sees the image that has been burned into her mind after last night—Astarion curled up peacefully across from her.

But she blinks, and he’s gone.

Cat snaps up, staring at the indentation where he had been as if she will find him somewhere in it. Her breathing slows as she realizes how silly she’s being—it’s normal, Cat, for people who wake up to get out of bed. But then the folded scrap of paper on his pillow catches her eye.

She snatches it, opens it. It reads, simply, “Don’t come after me. -A.”

Cat feels as if her heart is being strangled as her eyes rake over it again and again. What—what did he mean? Don’t come after me, because I’ll be back? Or did he mean—gods.

A gout of anger suddenly rises in her chest. Would it have killed him to write a few more words in his looping, beautiful script? Of course he wrote beautifully; now she would feel more shamed over her chicken-scratch letters.

Cat paces. Runs her hands down her face. Then in a flurry of activity she gets dressed, furiously combs and does up her hair, screams ‘fuck’ into a pillow, and walks as calmly to their common room as she can manage.

Everyone knows something is up. Cat’s unnaturally high-pitched announcement that Astarion had gone out and no, she didn’t quite know when he would be back fools no one, and Cat knows it. But she can’t bring herself to care. Thankfully, everyone seems content to let her keep pretending.

They have an odd assortment of tasks to choose from. Among other things, they could continue tracking down that Bhaalist cult murderer, or relatedly, they could collect more parts of that clown that had been one of the victims. The latter gets vetoed quickly without Astarion there to counter with “who doesn’t want to savor the horrid, painful death of Dribbles who, as a clown, deserved nothing less?”

Ultimately they decide to track down more of the Bhaalist murderer’s would-be victims in the hopes that he would show, reasoning that at least this venture might lead to Orin’s bolt-hole. By that afternoon, the companions find themselves rudely interrupting a wine tasting, blasting away at the shape-changing killer and, unfortunately, just missing him.

They are all sagging afterwards, still feeling the fatigue from the battle with Cazador the day before. The demoralization from their failure today also doesn’t help. Without any spoken agreement, they all start slowly walking back toward the Elfsong.

In the end it is Lae’zel who grabs Cat by the proverbial scruff to figure out what is going on. It is early evening and they are all sitting silently around a table on the main floor of the inn, sipping their drinks of choice, when Cat abruptly begs off and starts to head upstairs. Lae’zel outflanks her and stops her at the top landing.

Cat tries to stay matter-of-fact about it. Feels slightly gratified that Lae’zel rolls her eyes when she sees Astarion’s abrupt note. Fool, she mutters. And then she fixes Cat with her astounding stare. And you’re a fool, too, if you think he is not coming back.

Cat opens her mouth to reply, but Lae’zel shushes her in her way that is impatient yet not unkind. She then openly sniffs Cat. Demands to know if she washed—chk, no, a true bath. Stalks away from Cat before Cat is done talking and manages to summon a bath from the Elfsong staff in record time. She shoves Cat back into her room and forbids her to emerge until she has washed properly.

Cat would dearly like to wallow in the tantalizingly hot water. But unfortunately, her monthlies had decided to arrive the day before yesterday, so her flow was in full swing right now and would muddy the bath in minutes. Lovely.

Cat feels bloated and crampy and gross. She washes quickly, leaving aside her hair because she doesn’t have it in her to do it all, and she had miraculously avoided the copious blood spatters of yesterday and today. Looking longingly at the hot bath, Cat finds a middle ground to enjoy it, soaking a towel in the hot water and laying it on her stomach as she goes to work to at least run through her hair with a fine comb and clean what she can with that. It really is getting too long, she decides. She resolves for a moment to chop it tonight. But what if he comes, and—?

She repeats that stupid last line to herself in a high-pitched mocking voice as she continues to furiously comb out her hair. So what if? What if he comes back?

… Should he come back?

Her mind catches on a stray line Cazador sneered after he had snatched Astarion into the ritual, something about how Astarion can’t help himself—how Cazador and then Cat became the center of his world, the masters of his misery, and he would always come back to them like the pathetic animal he was.

The comparison that monster made between himself and her had roiled her stomach. Because an ugly part of her wondered if maybe he was right. If Astarion had held fast to her out of dependency more than anything. Maybe Astarion should just… go. Really start over, with people who did not know all about the horrors of his past, who wouldn’t look at him with any pity in their eyes. Maybe he would be happier, then. Maybe he would truly be free.

The sun is sinking. Cat has no intentions of leaving this room at all, actually, Lae’zel. She throws her hair into a messy braid. Pulls on a clean shift.

As the hour passes, Cat paces from window to window, looking out at the darkening city. The light is dying quickly. In the end she stands looking toward the west, watching the last line of it on the horizon shrink into nothing and disappear. She sighs, like the end of the light is the end of her watch for him.

“My hero, brooding in the dark?”

Cat spins wildly, sees the glint of his eyes before anything else as her sight adjusts. It is all she can do not to burst into tears on the spot. “You came back,” she chokes out at last.

“I did.”

Cat waits maddening moments for more. But it doesn’t come. The anger flares in her again. “Just tell me, damn it. I can’t take this—kiss me or kill me or—”

Astarion strides over and picks option one with a will. Cat clings to him through the kiss as her eyes start to well, as she starts sobbing into his mouth. He breaks off and rests his forehead on hers. Cat takes shaky breaths as her crying subsides.

 Astarion’s eyes shut suddenly. “Cat. Thank you,” he breathes, squeezing her shoulders.

Cat can see the emotion shuddering through him, overtaking his practiced façade. After a steadying moment, he moves his head from hers. His eyes flicker over her tear-stained face.

“Gods,” she blurts out. “I thought, I thought you weren’t…”

“Cat—” he says, looking at her so earnestly, “yesterday, in that chamber, I… I did hate you in that moment. When you stood your ground. Even though I knew you were right about the ritual. I hated that you saw me as I was. That you… wanted me as I was. Told myself you were trying to keep me weak. Even afterwards—I didn’t know how to feel.”

Cat looks into his eyes. She doesn’t have to know, is scared to know, but she still asks. “When you left this morning, did you know you were coming back?”

Astarion sighs. Drops her gaze. “Yes. And—no. I told myself first I was just going to clear my head. But then I kept remembering how angry I had been. It took a while. A long while to sort out how I really felt.”

Cat lets the tremor of her past fear move through her. It had not been wholly wrong. “I suppose it took you a short time, all things considered.”

He moves his hands from where they hold her shoulders to rest on her hands laying on his chest, rubbing absently over them with his thumbs. “I’m still… scared,” he says at last. “Scared of what’s to come with what little I have, but—I still have myself, after all that. And,” his eyes meet hers, “rather presumptuously, I thought I might also have you.”

He’s looking at her all shy, all bared hope—eyes wide, features soft. Like when she kissed his hand tenderly back in Moonrise. And like then, it pierces right through her. “Always,” she says, and means it from the bottom of her soul.

Finally, he lets a trembling smile ghost across his face. He bows his head, kissing her fingers. When he looks up, he is smiling fully, with a sudden spark of anticipation. “Would you mind—could I show you something? Out in the city. It’s not far.”

She tilts her head. “What is it?”

“Just… something I’ve never shown anyone before.”

They don’t say much on the walk there, some twenty minutes from the Elfsong. Cat had thrown on a skirt, stockings, shoes, and a jacket, but had foregone her stays in her impatience to see exactly what Astarion was being so cagey about. When she had turned for the door, Astarion had been there with a shawl and draped it on her shoulders, saying that it was rather chilly out, with the wind off the water. He had been right. Spring in Baldur’s Gate was a fickle thing. The day had been warm, but the nights had not caught up yet.

They wind their way through the quiet streets, heading west. Now and then one of them reaches for the other’s hand absently for a brief touch or grasp, renewing the connection that had tenuously been restored. Eventually Astarion leads them into the Lower City’s single cemetery—clearly for the higher-born of this lesser place. It was far too small to hold any significant percentage of the dead from here over the centuries.

Astarion stops in front of one overgrown headstone. Turns to Cat. “Did you ever see any memories of this?” He asks quietly. Cat shakes her head. Astarion nods. “Good. I’m glad you never felt how I felt, here.”

A moment later, Cat thinks she realizes what this is, and a prickle runs up her spine. “This grave—this is yours?”

Astarion gazes down at the tufts of long grass covering plot. The weeds growing up over the face of the headstone, obscuring the epitaph. “Yes. Where I was laid after I died. And… where I woke up. To my new nightmare.” He continues to stare, eyes seeing back two hundred years to that night. “He made me crawl out of it. Up through six feet of dirt, choking on it as I clawed my way up. Retching up congealed blood when I broke the surface. And he… he was there. Waiting for me. From that night on, I was his.”

Cat stands beside him, arms crossed and hands tucked in her shawl as her eyes crawl over the deceptively peaceful-looking grave. Green with life.

“How does it feel now,” Cat says suddenly, “now that you’re free?”

His lips twitch up in an unconscious smile like she had hoped as her words bring him back to his brand-new reality. “I don’t quite know yet,” he starts, wonderingly. “Overwhelming. And… rather terrifying, if I’m honest. So many possibilities. So many choices, now. It’s… exhilarating.” He looks up to where clouds scuttle across the waxing moon. “I get to… be a person now, don’t I? I get to decide who I am. What I want.”

Astarion is silvery-pale in the moonlight, but he looks more alive than Cat has ever seen him. So unsure, but so eager. “Hm. I should fix this,” he murmurs, glancing sidelong at Cat with a playful glint in his eyes before he crouches in front of the headstone. He cleans the growth off it carefully. And then he pulls his dagger out of the sheath on his belt and sets to work scraping something below the worn epitaph. Cat moves forward, kneels down next to him to see what he’s adding. It’s today’s date, written under his old date of death. A new beginning.

He sits back once he’s done. Turns to her. His face softens into something like apology. “My dear Cat,” he says, taking one of her hands in his. “I left you in the lurch rather, didn’t I?”

 “You mean—the note? Or, not talking to me last night? Or…”

“I goaded you into confessing your feelings, when we were in your head,” Astarion says, shifting his seat to face her fully.

Cat takes his hand in both of hers. Traces the veins on the back of it absently. She feels her heart pattering against her ribs. “It… wouldn’t have taken much goading. It’s been sitting on my tongue a while, now.”

She looks up at him to see his easy smile falter, and then he is pulling her into him and kissing her fervently and deep, leaving her gasping. He breaks off, holding her close and nuzzling into her hair.

“I suppose I should’ve realized, when you told me you wanted us to share your blood always,” he murmurs, a breath of laughter in his words.

Cat sighs smiling, her head cradled in the crook of his neck. “I suppose you should’ve.” On sudden hot impulse, she presses her lips to his beautiful neck, and then she is kissing upwards, letting her teeth graze the cool skin. Astarion shivers under her mouth as she noses under his jaw.

“Gods,” he breathes, “Cat—I can feel how hungry you are.”

Cat lifts her head away from his neck with effort. She is so full of him, fit to burst. But she wants more so much she cannot speak.

As he watches her watching him, his pupils widen, widen so far his ruby-red irises are thin rings. He looks bestial, black stare boring into her, and it makes her insides melt. He raises a trembling hand to cup her cheek. Brushes his thumb over her parted lips. “I feel like prey, when you look at me like that, darling. In the most exquisite way,” he whispers hoarsely. “But, I was thinking that I might devour you tonight, instead.”

Cat leans into his hand, lips brushing his thumb as she asks, “what do you mean, exactly?”

“I mean…” he trails off. His feral eyes flick down, then back up again. “You’ve been smelling more and more delicious these past couple days.”

“Wh—” she snaps her mouth shut as realization hits. She can feel the blood rising in her face. “Oh, of course you can smell it. And you want to… hells.”

“Very much,” he purrs, lips curling upwards.

“You know it’s… not all blood.”

He chuckles. “I am aware. But it smells mouth-watering, all the same.”

Cat can still feel herself blushing fiercely. “Um,” This was going to be such a stupid question. “Is this… just a feeding? Because, I remember what you said about sex, and—”

“Oh, my dear, I very much intend to make you come several times in the process.”

Cat bites back an undignified noise. Astarion is looking at her with utter adoration, tinged with amusement. He continues. “I appreciate how thoughtful you’re being, really. But… I want this here, with you.”

Cat pauses. Glances around. Astarion frowns. “What is it? I know it’s rather… open, but. I can’t imagine who else will come creeping around.”

Cat sighs dramatically. “Well, I suppose there’s enough dead bodies around here for us to—"

Astarion laughs and pulls her to him, kissing her again and grinning into it. “You minx. Maybe it doesn’t have quite the ambiance of that altar, and the bodies are less fresh, but…”

Cat smiles. Gives him another peck. “It’s perfect.”

Astarion starts to kiss her again lazily, his arm winding around her back as he moves on top of her. Cat lowers herself down beside the headstone, on top of the shawl that had fallen from her shoulders. Bracing on his hands above her, Astarion moves his mouth down her body; to her neck, her collarbones. As he gets to the edge of her shift just at the rise of her breasts, he raises his eyes up questioningly.

“Uh,” Cat laughs. “No, thank you. Not about to strip down out here.”

“Fair enough,” he says, smiling. He doesn’t seem to mind in the least, sitting back on his knees and beginning to run his hands up one of her stockinged legs to where her garters are tied, just below the knee. His hand hovers at the bow, set to untie it, but in the end he seems to cheekily decide to keep them on, slowly hiking up Cat’s skirts instead.

She shivers at the cool air brushes her thighs. But as Astarion noses against her knee and trails kisses upwards, she stiffens. Without warning, memories come flooding back of one of her first times, with another student at the music academy. Later, she had conformed to the expectation, but coming from where she did, Cat had had no notion of hair removal at the time, which was a trend in the more cosmopolitan areas. The girl she was with had made such a face when she pulled off her drawers—

“Darling, are you alright?” Astarion has stopped his attentions, looking at her over the jumble of her hiked-up skirts.

“Oh, um,” Cat mumbles. “Ah, I’m just not very neat down there. At the moment.”

“Do you mean your blood?”

“N—no.” Cat says, her face heating up. She lays back, staring up as she talks. “No, it’s just. I have a human-ish amount of hair down there. Don’t know if you mind.”

His expression softens into a heavy-lidded smile. “My love, there’s nothing dirty about that. And I do not mind in the least. May I… proceed?”

There is a pitch of lust in his voice that runs straight down to her center. She nods, hands clutching at the grass in anticipation.

Astarion kisses and nips her thigh before he gently opens the angle, and her skirts fall back, exposing her underwear. He looks up at her where she has now dared to crane her head up and watch, his pupils once again blown wide. He continues, pushing her skirt and shift higher, to her waist. He dips his head to her stomach, kissing at the trail of fine hair leading down from her navel. Cat can feel his breath, his breathing he does to smell her. “All this means,” he whispers hoarsely as he goes, the hem of her underwear getting dragged down by his mouth, his nose, “is that you are a grown woman. And I rather adore it.”

Cat exhales shakily as she feels him slide her underwear off. Astarion sits back momentarily to remove them along with the blood-spotted rag, but then he leans right back into his former position at the juncture of her thighs, nosing the dark curls there while one hand gently starts to part her folds.

“Gods, you smell heavenly,” Astarion groans as he nuzzles lower, sending a jolt through Cat as his mouth moves over her clit and down toward her entrance.

It is a delightful shock when he firsts uses his tongue without warning, taking a long, slow lick up within her folds and ending by just touching her clit, teasing things to come. It is slightly cool, and the temperature difference heightens the sensation. He sighs, head lolling against her inner thigh as he savors the first taste of her monthly blood. Cat can’t see his eyes from this angle, just the impossibly thick eyelashes, before he bends down toward her again and begins in earnest.

He eats at her entrance like a starving man. She is slick already with both menses and her growing arousal, and Astarion makes it clear he wants it all. His tongue delves into her greedily, laving around the walls of her pussy as deep as he can go. His mouth moves against her inner lips deliciously, and now and then she feels the slight touch of a fang. It reminds her exactly what is happening—a vampire is feeding on her, devouring her in such an utterly vulgar way it stutters her brain. She lays back again as the shudder of lust runs through her. She raises her legs more, exposes more of herself to him, lost in the sensation of Astarion’s complete and undivided desire for her.

Cat has never been able to come from penetration alone. Astarion’s current attentions would not bring her to climax, but she very happily rides the waves of sensation, feels his desperate swallows as he feeds on her, sending another burst of heat down below.

When Astarion moves upwards, when his slick tongue finally runs over her clit, Cat jolts, gasping. His tongue circles—“N—no, not right on it,” Cat stutters, and Astarion shifts to probe on the hood, on the side, and he hmms satisfactorily as Cat moans and melts.

Astarion pushes two fingers into her and hooks them, moving them as he continues tonguing her clit, experimenting with sucking on it throughout. It does not take long at all for Cat to come, not after all this, and her spine curves as she cries out, one hand grabbing at the grass, the other winding thoughtlessly into Astarion’s hair as he keeps his tongue indirectly on her clit, extending the orgasm as her legs twitch and her breath hitches raggedly.

As she comes down from her high, releasing his beautiful curls, Astarion levers himself up, his fingers sliding out of her with a lewd squelch that sends a final twitch through her. His face as he looks at her smiling is… covered with her. Her slick and her blood all over his mouth, his chin, his cheeks. And not breaking her gaze, he brings his two fingers up and sucks them clean, licking at the last vestiges of her on them, closing his eyes fervently at the taste of it.

“My dear,” he says roughly at last, his adoring face framed by her thighs, “I think I should like to spend the rest of my eternity between your legs.”

Cat feels the overpowering sensation of lust fade in the aftermath, and the natural awkwardness of the situation starts to sink back in. “Ha. Was it really that good?”

“The life force of it is so concentrated. It fades fast when it… leaves your lovely self, but. That’s not an issue, direct from the source.”

A laugh bursts out of Cat. “You did seem very attached to my… source.”

“It is the source of much happiness, after all,” Astarion purrs. “for me, perhaps, in more than one way.”

Cat feels a shiver at the suggestion of his cock inside her. Suddenly her desire kicks back in, awkwardness forgotten. “Do you want to… do that other way, now?”

Astarion’s grin turns lustful. “How coy. Do you mean that you wish to be fucked?”

Cat hesitates for a moment. Remembers all he said before about intimacy. About sex. But she can see that he is still fully here and fully eager. So she will trust him to know himself. “Yes,” she says flatly, staring boldly back into his glittering red eyes.

“The lady knows what she wants,” he says before planting a kiss on her thigh. “though, if she would indulge me, I would like to feast on her once more. Give her some time to contemplate just how she would like to be fucked.”

Cat matches his grin. “I’m no lady. And your attentions down there don’t allow for rational thinking.”

“Apologies,” Astarion says as he sinks back down, looking entirely unapologetic. “how dreadful of me.”

This time is more languid than the last as he laps at her, as she feels his moans and sighs against her entrance. When she comes again, it is softer but no less toe-curling as her orgasm expands in her like a sea.

Cat sits up as the last waves of it recede, sighing contentedly. She gazes at Astarion sitting across from her on his knees. The breeze plays with his hair. He still looks something of a lovely horror with his red-smeared face, his tongue swiping at the excess around his lips.

“Have you reached a verdict?” he asks after he rubs his hand over his mouth to clean it further, tilting his head playfully.

“I have.”

“And?”

“Well, I was thinking. As much as I was able.” A grin tugs at his lips at that. “I’ve gained a lot of things on our journey. Friends. A worm in my head. You. If I may say that.”

“You may,” he says without hesitation, smiling bemusedly as he matches her light tone.

“The other thing I’ve gotten—well, earned really, after walking and walking and walking all over this godsforsaken land, is rock-hard thighs,” Cat says, hiking up her skirt for emphasis.

Astarion glances at them in a mock-cursory way. “You have gotten some impressive legs, darling. I can attest from up close and very personal experience.”

Cat’s dignified expression breaks into a grin for a second. “Yes. So I was thinking I’d like to put them to use, and ride you ragged.”

Astarion’s face falters as her last words shiver through him. He looks at her, desire sparking in his eyes. “My, you did manage to do some thinking while I was down there. Am I losing my touch?”

“Oh no. It was… inspiring,” Cat says huskily. She can feel how wet she is between her legs. Tries not to think how much of a pain it will be to clean it off her shift later. Pushing it from her mind, she crawls forward on her hands and knees, and Astarion sits back, letting her clamber on top. With a shuddering exhale he undoes his trousers, releasing his erection.

Cat puts her hands on his as they try to move up. “Oh, no. I think you should probably shuck them off more than that. Because I’m about to make a whole mess,” she rasps, gazing down at him from where she sits on his thighs. He looks up at her with a hunger that makes her guts twist. And then he snakes his head upward in a flash, captures her lips at the same time he pushes his trousers further down his legs, then holds Cat on his lap as he shifts back off his knees and onto his rear, cradling her in front of his thighs.

Cat freezes for a moment at the lingering taste of her in his mouth. He had cleaned up quite a bit of it, not wanting to waste it, but it is still there. At first she’s not sure how she feels—then thinks it’s a bit silly to hesitate when she was eager enough for him coated in goblin blood. Tentatively she opens at his probing tongue, meeting him with hers, letting herself revel in his devouring mouth.

His hand moves to shift up the skirts bunched up between them. And all of a sudden she feels what they had been muffling, feels him pressed hard against her belly, and the want seizes her. She shifts up on her knees; reaches down to position him below her dripping entrance. He jerks at her touch, breath hitching. And then she lowers herself down on him, relishing the slight sting at the entrance as he perfectly fills her.

“Cat—” he gasps into her mouth, his hands grasping at her waist, at her back, as she starts to move languidly, up and down while also gyrating her hips. She cradles his head as he pulls himself off of her mouth and buries his face in the crook of her neck, sucking in breaths as he clings to her. She can feel the tension in his torso as his muscles work to keep him sitting upright, slightly awkward in this position with his legs bent in front of him.

“Lay back if you want,” she says, but he shakes his head immediately.

“No—no,” he breathes with intense sincerity. “I want to stay right here with you.”

He mouths lower on down her chest. Cat arches back as she continues to move, giving him access. He settles on the top of one of her breasts.

With a sudden recklessness, Cat starts to untie the jacket over her shift, then loosens the drawstring within the shift’s neckline. Astarion pulls it down hungrily, baring her breasts.

“Don’t worry, darling. I’ll keep you well-covered,” he says hoarsely, and is true to his word as he smothers one breast with his mouth and holds the other, thumbing the nipple and making Cat gasp and clench around him. She clutches around his shoulders, burying her face in his hair.

“How have I never noticed your perfect tits before?” he groans into one of them.

“We had—very chaste sex, last time,” Cat says, gasping at the end as she feels him drag his teeth over the nipple.

He cackles into her, and the tickling sensation makes her giggle. “Oh yes, we are very chaste, aren’t we?” he says as he suddenly grabs her by the hips and grinds her down on his cock.

Cat grinds down harder automatically, chasing the friction. She moans right in his ear.

“Gods, you make pretty sounds,” he breathes. “Keep grinding down, darling.”

Cat groans. “I’m liable to snap your cock in half if I do, sweetheart. Much as I want to grind down until my brain dribbles out my ears—”

“That I would love to see,” he smiles into her neck.

“Well, what I would like to see is you, completely undone,” she murmurs into his ear, relishing the shiver she feels running through him. She picks up her former rhythm, adding a circular grind to it on the downstroke, feeling the head of his cock rubbing the apex of her, in front of her cervix.

She wrings sounds from him that nearly make her come by themselves. Suddenly Astarion grabs around her waist, holding her on his cock while he shifts a leg under him. With the leverage, he starts meeting her with his own thrusts. They hunch into each other like beasts, tense and inelegant and utterly wrapped up in the other. Cat clings to Astarion, letting him pound up into her as his thrusts come faster and frantic. He seeks her mouth, moaning into it as he comes inside her, holding her hips down as he finishes. She flexes herself around him rhythmically through his release, drawing it out, and swallows his sweet cries greedily.

Astarion is loose and utterly sated as he lies back, pulling Cat to lie next to him in his arms. Her skirts cover them, cover the mess of her blood and his spend.

As he watches her face, his brow furrows suddenly. “You didn’t finish, did you, dearest?”

“Hm? No. That’s fine, though. I’ve come plenty tonight.”

“But you were close. Would you… allow me?”

Something about the closeness of him, his face not even an inch from hers, makes Cat suddenly shy. She nods. Smiling at her, Astarion reaches down under her skirts. He gently rubs around her clit. Cat sighs into it, still looking right at him. She feels like his wide-eyed gaze is holding her gently, so gently she almost can’t stand it. But she doesn’t look away. Only flutters her eyes shut as her orgasm washes over her. She feels his nose nuzzle hers. Feels his hand gently cup her face, tracing with his thumb.

She opens her eyes, and he is looking back at her with a deep ache. “Cat,” he whispers. “I want to tell you. But I’ve said those words so many times without meaning them—I don’t know if I can make them sound sincere.”

Cat places her hand on his, her heart fluttering even after all this. “I know you mean it. Tell me, however you want.”

Astarion hesitates. Then he leans over her, puts his mouth to her ear. And he pushes it out of his lungs; breathes it into her. Three words said with genuine, terrible feeling.

A/N:

Thank you for reading!! The last chapter, wrapping up the post-game story, will be up tomorrow.

If it's of any interest-- I changed up the conditions around the 7k spawn because it always struck me as weird that all of them are just... standing around docilely. Like you're telling me they're not tearing apart any new spawn dumped in there who probably still smell a bit like fresh blood? Who would be competition for whatever vermin they happen to get their hands on? Naw. (also, was not able to explain it in-story, but I imagine that they stay stock-still to preserve energy until they smell blood)

I also always thought that Tav convincing Astarion not to ascend and the aftermath needed more angst and needed to be more drawn-out before the reconciliation between them because Astarion would need time to sort out his feelings.

[tzipor-feather-blog]

Whats your opinion on Ai generated content? Do you condone using other people's writing or art in AI?

Uff, you actually went to slaughter me!! This is a really controversial issue. But I like being intellectually challenged, so let's answer this.

It's more complicated than a yes or no answer.

AI art used by people who don't have the money to pay an actual artist is fine by me, though I understand the struggle of being an artist dying to be commissioned, since I was there, and I know now it'll be more complicated for people to be commissioned if you can get what you want with the click of a button.

Same goes with writing, though unless you have dyslexia or ADHD, or anything else that makes it difficult to write, I deeply encourage people to write for themselves and not be assisted by a machine. If you learn to communicate well, you'll write well, and you'll write well if you take the time to read. People who don't know how to write well most of the time are the people who communicate poorly.

You should ask AI to teach you how to communicate (if you're so insistent of using it), not to write for you.

I do condone enterprises who use AI art and writing to not pay actual artists or writers, even though nowadays the AI doesn't always get it right. The thing is, they know one day it will.

I condone them because they don't care about their employees or the family behind them. But I also understand that in the end it will be more cost-effective, even if we don't like it.

About using other's people writing or art in AI, I believe it's wrong unless they are compensated with money. A FAIR amount of money.

I once uploaded my own writing to Bard, because I'm good with prose and not with poems and I wanted it to turn my prose into a poem. It did. It wasn't a good poem. I didn't like it.

I never posted it but if I were to do it I would clarifiy that it was made by AI using my own writing as a source.

I wouldn't like other people using my writing on AI.

So I understand why people are mad that their writing was used directly or indirectly to make something they didn't agree upon. The same goes with art.

Last but not least, everyone has the right to disagree with me. Just remember to be respectful on the replies.

[bookwormscififan]

The Crimson Files, Chapter 2

Chapter 1

“Let me take you into my drawing room,” the man offered, stepping toward Chase with a polite smile. As he reached around Chase to turn the doorknob behind him, he waved his free hand in a mock bow.

“My name is Jameson Jackson. Allow me to fix you a drink.”

“My doorman tells me you have come to find your friend, Robert,” Jameson reclined in his chair, swirling a glass of wine in his hand.

“Y-yes, he sent me a letter to come here,” Chase stammered, the wine in his glass threatening to splash all over the wonderfully rich fabric of the couch he was sitting on. He watched as Jameson took a calm sip of his wine, hand moving gracefully as though he were a swan.

“Yes, this letter here, correct?” Jameson delicately pulled Robert’s letter from his pocket, showing it to Chase leisurely and smiling as Chase nodded. He took another sip from his glass before leaning forward and placing the letter on the small table between them.

“I do remember seeing your friend,” he started consideringly, “He had a lot of questions about the history of this castle.” Chase gulped, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Robert was interested in the history of the castle.

“That sounds like Robert,” Chase stated, deciding to place his glass down instead of risk it spilling, “He really likes learning about the past. It is almost an obsession of his.” He let out a nervously breathless chuckle, trying to make it sound like Robert was really interested in history and hoping not to allude to the fact that Robert probably wanted to know how many generations of vampires had inhabited the castle.

Jameson merely hummed, reclining back in his chair as though he were conducting a very boring business deal.

“I am very curious as to why he would request your presence,” he commented, finally putting his glass down on the crystal-topped table beside his chair. Chase hesitated before coming up with a relatively convincing lie.

“I build homes for people.” That was true. His business was building houses. “Robert thought I might be inspired by this castle’s design.” That was the lie. Chase hated castles; he knew that they all housed vampires at some point, and he was going to give Robert a good box around the ear when he finally saw him again.

“Inspired by the design of this castle?” Jameson’s tone was almost amused. “I can tell you this castle has been around since before the bard Shakespeare walked the ground outside.” He reached for his glass again, finishing its contents before leaning forward and resting his hands in his lap.

“I would be more than happy to give you a tour of the castle, if it would help to inspire you.” His face was all smiles, shining teeth and clever eyes, and Chase for some reason couldn’t seem to find the words to say no.

Instead, he gathered his items – Robert’s letter included – and stood to follow Jameson through the castle.

“The main dining hall used to be a ballroom, but I don’t care much for fancy parties,” Jameson said as he walked Chase through the large room, ceiling towering above his head and floor mostly taken up by what must be a twelve-seater dining table.

“You can still see traces of the ballroom in here,” his host continued, “For example, the curtains on the windows are far too heavy to be used for the everyday dining, rather for keeping dust off the polished floor. Also, the chandeliers above your head are genuine crystal, used for balls.”

“The design of the room is very nice,” Chase commented, taking in the number of rugs covering the once polished marble flooring. He had to keep up the lie somehow. “Has this marble floor always been here?”

“Oh, no, the floors were wooden when I was growing up. I changed the flooring when I came of age, then I realised I didn’t really like balls,” Jameson replied, looking at the marble with a slight scowl, the fangs Chase had noticed before gleaming.

“That must have cost a lot of money,” Chase stated, tapping his toe against the marble curiously. Jameson nodded, waving his hand to urge Chase forward.

“It did. Come now, there are many more rooms to see.”

--

In a small house a few streets away from the road to the castle, a young man stood by a small table. His face was covered by a canvas mask, dark hair falling over his eyes, and a large, heavy velvet cloak draped over his shoulders.

The table was almost like a workbench, a narrow wooden table with multiple stains and scuff marks on it, piled high with books and glass vials. In the centre of the table, emitting a faint green glow, a crystal ball projected an image of Jameson and Chase walking down the halls of the castle.

“You found another one,” the man muttered, eyes narrowing behind the mask as he watched Jameson and Chase. Turning swiftly, he walked toward the back of the house, passing a newspaper clipping depicting sketches of Jameson and another man, teeth sharp.

The man picked up another clipping, a drawing of a man similar to him on the page, with the words ‘Marvin the Magnificent’ written in cursive beneath the drawing. Flicking his hair over his shoulder, Marvin rolled up the paper and moved to another table, picking up various items before brushing his fingers across a small wooden frame.

“I will avenge you, my brother,” he whispered to the frame, then turned back to the workbench and waved his hand above the crystal ball, causing the image to disperse.

The item in the frame was a small painting of a man, dark hair tied back and arms folded across his chest. His bright eyes matched Marvin’s, and his jaw was set in a stern expression. His loose red shirt brought out the colour of his hair, and tacked to the frame was a small newspaper clipping.

The clipping was from the ‘recent disappearances’ section of the newspaper, announcing that the man in the painting had disappeared after being witnessed walking up the path to the castle, and that his likelihood of returning was slim.

Marvin pulled his hood over his head, glancing back once more to ensure everything was in place, then headed out of the door.

[just-a-geeky-therapist]

Noisome Dreams

Day 7 of FFXIV Write: Noisome

Noisome fumes stung Hythlodaeus' eyes as he sidestepped yet another fallen Amaurotine, grotesque swarms of insects seeming to guide his way towards the center of the city. He struggled to hold tears back as familiar visages littered the ground, grimacing in an all too telling fashion of the poor souls’ final seconds. Bricks were painted burgundy, as once crimson blood had dried to their surfaces, crunching under his boots despite futile attempts to avoid the carnage. 

The stench of death burned his nose, nearing the center plaza where the initial apocalypse had begun, piles of bodies with swarms of insects wafting about, taking advantage of the noisome feast. Some faces were familiar, others were unknown, while yet others remained a mystery behind miraculously intact masks. Those were the bodies which remained whole, however… Scattered limbs and sundered torsos also littered the once pristine streets, the sight nearly costing Hythlodaeus the meager contents of his stomach. Such devastation, he thought to himself, pulse sounding painfully in his ears. 

Nearly every fiber in his being willed him to collapse where he stood and give into the calling of the star… to relieve himself of the ghastly future reality had wrought upon him. In the wake of the shattering of the city, he’d yet to hear from any of his colleagues - his tardiness to his typical role having spared him the worst of the violence. He knew some had escaped, but they’d done so to lands that teamed with the same ferocious blasphemies that had already cost so many their lives. They ran from one warzone directly to the frontlines of another, he pondered, grimacing as he nearly tripped over the upper portion of what appeared to be a leg. 

Being more cautious of his step, he continued past the fountain, stagnant water deceitfully showcasing a deep burgundy wine, though one sip would rid any facade of pleasentry. Hythlodaeus bent at his waist, violently wrenched muscles burning as his body tried to rid of the noisome myriad of senses accosting him… yet naught had been left in his stomach - his appetite long surpassing him. 

‘Twas not with idle curiosity that he’d braved entering the city… the smell alone having warned him nearly a bell before he’d even reached its gates. I need to know, he’d told himself as he’d made the decision to venture in… where does he lay, he’d agonized in every moment that passed from the first report of all the living having been evacuated… yet the one face he sought for most was not among their numbers. Where did he fall? How did he fall? Was it protecting someone? Series of questions threatened to overwhelm the rest of his senses as he tried to push the worst of the images from his head. 

The sound of movement brought all of his senses to painful awareness as the low growl of some beast echoed through the deadened street. The grizzly maw of the beast emerged from the crumbled remains of one of the many ruined buildings, crimson eyes glowing through the dust that followed its movement. Those horrifying eyes were locked directly on Hythlodaeus, the beast's half-dozen legs beginning to move in quick strides, charging the bard. 

Hythlodaeus pulled his bow, making ready to notch an arrow, but realized that while the closeness of the beast would assure a direct hit, it also left no room for error as the single shot would see the beast upon him. Instead, he turned and ran, vaulting over several bodies strewn in his way as he made for the Convocation building. It stood at a slight angle, the foundation suffering damage from the various earthquakes that had ruptured the city. Doors stood askew, but with enough force allowed Hythlodaeus to gain entry. 

The immediate entryway was dark, crimson light showcasing minimal details as it poked through several broken panes of glass. He’d barely barely taken two strides before glancing back at the doors which were being forced open by the cryptid beast. The moment’s lapse in concentration was all it took for him to stumble over an object on the ground. In his half twisted form, he fell with his shoulder making contact with the ground - an agonizing ‘pop’ both sounding and being felt as the joint gave out. Initial shock saw him attempt to scramble to his feet until his gaze fell upon what had tripped him. 

Blonde hair, stained with one crimson blood lay before him, parted lips and blue-fogged eyes seemed to return his gaze, robes torn to rags buried in the horrific void that was now his torso… Emet!

Hythlodaeus’ lost ability to breath as he slammed his eyes shut to spare him the image of his lover’s ruined body. Hope, love, happiness… were immediately torn from him… the will to continue on ceasing to pulse through his veins as his mind imploded as the world around him had. 

He could scarcely hear the scratching of the beasts’ legs as it drew near his frozen form… numbness overtook him as his body shook of its own accord. His mouth flexed in agony as inhumane teeth dug into his thigh, a breathless scream escaping his lips as he felt the warmth of his lifeforce flood from him. The sound of bones being rendered elicited another scream, his lungs burning as air flooded from his being, threatening to never return. 

Hungry jaws released him with only a moment’s respite before latching along his throat, his screams falling silent…

…He bolted upright, the silent scream of his nightmare sounding off the walls of his bedroom. Tears streamed down his face and his lungs burned as though he’d walked through the smoke of a thousand volcanos. His body felt unlike his own, limbs refusing to properly move as he violently shook with each sob that escaped his lips. 

“Hyth! Hyth…” came a soothing voice, paired with soft strokes against his cheek as the weight of another shifted in the bed. “Shh… baby… it’s okay, I’m here,” his lover soothed, arms wrapping tightly about his vulnerable frame. 

It took a few moments for him to realize where he was and who spoke to him as loud sobs gave way to small hiccups. His eyes burned as tears began to dry along his face. Lavender hair stuck to his brow, the rest having been worked into a mass of sweat at tears. Most of all, his chest ached, as though he’d been kicked by some wild beast… it ached so much that he wondered if he was still dying. 

“Are you okay?” Emet softly asked, pulling back far enough only to wipe away the hair that clung to Hythlodaeus’ face. “Please talk to me,” he nearly begged. 

“I… I don’t know…” Hythlodaeus managed between large gasps for air. “It was so real… so real… the smell… the crunch… you!” his sobs renewed, earning concerned looks from Emet who began to understand. 

“‘Twas another dream…” he quietly said to himself. “What can I do, love?” he questioned, feeling helpless to ease Hythlodaeus’ distress. 

“Just… hold me…” Hythlodaeus sounded. “Tell me this is real,” he said as he finally regained movement in his arms to return the embrace. 

“I’m right here, you’re here… you’re safe,” Emet comforted. 

“You were…” tears streamed down his face as Hythlodaeus tried to release the noisome images from his head… “Your eyes were so… distant… your body. Hythlodaeus’ sobs continued as the grief felt in his dream continued to threaten his reality. 

“It’s alright… shh… shh…” Emet continued, averting his focus enough to will several candles in the room to burn, warm light enveloping the two forms. “My eyes are as they’ve always been,” he said as he gently took hold of Hythlodaeus’ chin, encouraging him to make eye contact.

Hythlodaeus felt newfound relief as he looked at eyes which shone like fresh honey, healthy tanned skin helping to replace the thoughts of deathly pallor which had tortured him. His hands flitted about Emet’s torso, feeling for where the void of space should have been, only to make contact with firm yet supple skin, the warmth further pushing the ice from his veins. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Emet asked carefully, leaning his forehead against Hythlodaeus as he held his lover’s hand to his chest. 

“N… no.. no,” Hythlodaeus answered, heart rate beginning to synchronize with Emet’s as his hand remained atop his chest. “Just don’t let me go,” he sighed.

“I’ll never let you go, Hyth,” Emet responded, offering a chaste kiss as he once again embraced his partner. “Would you like some tea?” he offered, knowing sleep was unlikely to be their reality for quite some time. 

“Can I help?” Hythlodaeus asked, knowing he wanted nothing less than to be alone.

“Of course, love.”

Emet stood and helped Hythlodaeus to his feet, holding onto him as he guided him out the door and towards the kitchen. Silence wrapped around them as Emet set to making tea, convincing Hythlodaeus to sit at the breakfast bar. Emet occasionally broke the silence with distracting statements, hoping to further distance his lover from the torment he’d experienced. 

In time, the tea was completed and biscuits set out in front of them both as the two sat and tried to ease their way towards morning. It was going to be a long day, but that was regardless of how either of them had slept as big decisions were being discussed by the convocation… 

[twili--link]

Info dump

Wahoo this is about my OC Evara / Evelynn (Fantasy world name vs modern world name). They/Her pronouns.

I won't go into any TW info, so it is safe to view! Just throwing it under a line to not clog up anyone's dash. Sorry if its rambley and not coherent, I'm a bit loopy from medicine lmao.

Evara

(Art above by krim-spyke)

General themes: Loss and hope, light in the dark, hopeful optimistic

Class: Bard/Ranger, with magic thrown in that ties into their barding (Based off of light magic but star-light instead of regular light magic that one might see a cleric use)

Familiar: Dog named Basil

Tropes: Hero's journey/epic journey, high stakes, save the world, tragic past, side-quests galore, ancient civilization, evil cult, and reincarnation.

Evara is the accumulation of multiple OCs I've had since 2009 + a bit of a fandom character I used to RP as. Placed into a world I am making (Look at my map I am proud of it) that has a loooot of stories going into it. Evara's story is actually multiple Hero's story...ies? But I need to commission their designs (I've got some pic crews of 'em but not mch else).

Prior to being the elf bard they are now, Evara was "Luna" and was a Naruto oc if you can believe it hehehe, who had like so many ships with anyone attractive. They went through some trials of redesigning and being left alone for a bit before I finally got to the above design.

Now they are a Bard on a mission to stop the pain they've felt at a young age from ever being felt by others. Having gone through some tragic circumstances that took their immediate family away, Evara swore that they'd never let anyone fall victim to the Cult that is the bad guy for the story. Taken in by their uncle and his husband, Evara did get help from what they went through, but their desire to stop the cult stayed strong until they were able to leave and set off on the journey they take.

Evara's music is what helps heal them, along with healing others as they are utilized not as a classic in-the-fray hero, but the one on the side who helps as thats what their whole character is about. A helping hand in the worst of times. The light of the north star in the darkest night, pulling you forward to home. They aren't meant to be the hero who takes charge but rather the one who lends a shoulder or hand. Evara does see/feel music, which can be a bit overwhelming at times, bu

They have another who joins the team who is their...not foil, but other half in a word? Evara represents Hope, the other will represent Kindness, but their design isn't complete yet.

Evara has a twin brother of which the design isn't complete yet and is alive but unaware Evara escaped as they did. It's apart of the story, so I'll keep it mostly secret but :3c

Despite having a perky and positive outward attitude, Evara struggles with depression and anxiety, along with an overwhelming desire to keep those around them safe which can cause points of contention as it can become overbearing. They fear losing more loved ones in the manner that they lost their family and can lose sleep overthinking things. Evara is also more likely to put themselves in danger in order to save someone, even if it costs them greatly to do so.

Their hatred towards the Cult does cause some problems along the way as well, as they have a secret side-mission of killing everyone of them mfers with deeeeeep hatred. It does create a crossroads for them at one point, but spoilers for story hehe.

If you'd like to know more or ask questions of this version, I'd love to answer them if you got this far <3

Evelynn

(art above done by ew041)

This version is named "Evelynn" for modern-sake.

Unlike the fantasy version, their family is actually still alive and they are in the same city as their twin brother.

The general themes and tropes depend on the Visual Novel she's being placed into, but other than visual novels they do have their own modern story that has them as a dhampir (I love vampires okay). In the visual novels they are placed into I do remove the elf ears (when i remember to ask the artist to draw human ears at least lmao)

The story away from VN's is as followed:

Created between the union of a witch and a vampire, the twins were born in the world's version of the late 1800's. (Based off my fantasy world but given modern stuffs). They grew up slower than most other children until they hit the age of twenty-three where they went through a rapid growth/change.

Because of their dhampir status they can walk in the sun but do burn easier than most (even tho they be white) others, and needs to wear sunglasses if they are going to be in the sun for long periods. They do not need to eat as frequently as their father, but do need to eat at least once every two to three weeks. They tend to find willing people very easily as vampires are not necessarily 'secret' to some underground types of people, but they do keep their status as a dhampir secret as best they can.

They do have some powers which includes shape-shifting, vampiric charm, heightened speed and strength (but not super as their father would have, but way above mortal status at least), and the ability to 'turn invisible' although it isn't easy and needs them to be well fed to use.

Evelynn has a double life in this version, during the day they are an online fashion-creator (has their own website) / works at an old diner and during the night they hunt down criminals of the 'supernatural' type, helping keep order in the large city they call home. (They will also help take care of mortal criminals but only if they are like the worst of the worst, they wont care if someones stealing stuff or the like.)

My brain is fizzling out thanks if you read this far I love my oc I hope you at least enjoy'd the info. If you have questions I'd love to answer them feel free to send them <3

[catierambles]

you talk about ffxiv a lot. any tips for new players?

don't be afraid to try new classes. you can be every class on 1 character in this game. I'm currently working on getting all classes to max. I started out as a Bard, but now I'm a Dancer/Summoner main. All you have to do for the ARR classes is your level 10 starting class quest and it opens up the ability to join new guilds (pick up new classes). For the other classes that aren't in the character creator, you just have to hit a certain level requirement for their starting quest to open up.

don't skip msq cutscenes. this story is the best I've ever played, so watch the main story cutscenes and get immersed.

it's a marathon, not a sprint. you don't have to get everything leveled absolutely right now and at the same time. it's okay if you're level 60 in one class, but level 9 in another. the game isn't going anywhere, take it at your own pace. I know someone who is trying to get all classes (battle/crafting/gathering) to the same level before continuing on with the msq and he's burning out. I didn't get my crafting and gathering classes max until well after I finished the main story, and I'm still working on getting my battle classes to max.

don't let anyone tell you how to enjoy the game. everyone has different goals in this game, whether it be crafting, raiding, housing, glamour, you name it. everyone has their own "end game". I've gotten shit because I don't raid. I don't enjoy it. but to some people that's what they do when they hit max and they just can't fathom anyone else not raiding or enjoying raiding. If you do a raid and you don't like it, then don't do it. No one is forcing you, it's not mandatory (okay, the Crystal Tower raids are mandatory, but that's just for story reasons). Do what you enjoy doing, don't let anyone tell you you're playing the game wrong just because you're not doing x content

finally, and this one is important

avoid the Novice Network at all costs. what's the Novice Network? It's like a newbie chat channel for new and returning players to ask questions and get advice from Mentors. Why would you avoid this? Because it's garbage. The Mentor crown means about as much as Burger King crown and is as hard to get. Now, as this is player run, it's server specific. The NN on one server might be fantastic, but by and large, the NN is a raging dumpster fire of bickering, name calling, and dick measuring. Am I saying all Mentors are trash? Absolutely not. Am I saying that there are no players in this game that want to help others? Absolutely not. But 8 or 9 times out of 10, they will not be wearing a Mentor crown. They'll be in your free company (what the game calls player run guilds, not to be confused with class guilds), they'll be on Reddit forums. If you have a question, use your search engine of choice, it'll be more helpful, and stay away from the Novice Network. In fact, if you do get invited, there's checkbox after you decline it and it asks you if you're sure, to auto decline all future invites to the Novice Network. Use it.

explore, experiment, and most of all, have fun

[daltongraham]

I used this to send a letter to heads of streaming services in support of the WGA strike. No idea if it will do any good. (This link came from this article from the Mary Sue, which in turn came from Dr Chuck Tingle, so hopefully it's reasonably legit.)

Here's what I said, if you want to steal language:

I am writing in support of the Writers Guild of America strike. I am appalled that your company makes billions, and your CEO makes millions, off the backs of writers, who are the people who create the shows I love.

Please negotiate in good faith and meet their demands, which are reasonable. The writers in the WGA strike are simply asking for fair pay and benefits. They are asking for the same things that other workers in the entertainment industry have, such as health insurance and retirement benefits. They are also asking for a fair share of the profits that their work generates.

Your company has a responsibility to pay its writers fairly. You have a responsibility to ensure that the writers who create your content are able to support themselves and their families.

I urge you to do the right thing and pay the writers in the WGA strike. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

[me]

(Note that I used Bard, an AI, to write some of this--I thought it did a great job! Ironic, since anti-AI writing is one of the WGA negotiating points. But I think it's fine for this sort of thing.)