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spacemonkeysalsa · 7 months ago

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Appetites

(Angst and fluff and smut)

It's been five years since the Vampire Ascendant Astarion helped save Baldur's Gate. He has everything he ever wanted, and he's miserable.

Isolde is nobody, and has nothing. When given the option to become a vampire spawn, her response gives Astarion a moment of pause; “No. Thank you. I think I’ll just die.”

Read Chapter One on Ao3

Read Chapter Two on Ao3

Read Chapter Three on Ao3

Read Chapter Four on Ao3

Read Chapter Five on Ao3

Read Chapter Six on Ao3

Read Chapter Seven on Ao3

Read Chapter Eight on Ao3

Read Chapter Nine on Ao3

Read Chapter Ten on Ao3

Read Chapter Eleven on Ao3

Read Chapter Twelve on Ao3

Read Chapter Thirteen on Ao3

Read Chapter Fourteen on Ao3

or read Chapter Fourteen below the cut

His progenitor’s old quarters were shrouded and left to rot, aside from the elevator. Astarion made sure that was maintained. It was too useful as a means of disposal. The only time he passed through these rooms was to get rid of bodies. The ancient metal floor of the elevator was scuffed and worn from the many bodies that had been dragged onto it—and most of them weren’t even Astarion’s work.

He’d been here just the other night to get rid of Horrold and his manservant. But, like always, he didn’t go far. Far enough into the cavernous corridors beneath the palace to toss the corpses into the nearest dark chasm that dove straight into the bowls of the underdark, and no farther.

Five years ago, he’d sent his first spawn down here to sweep what remained away, including, apparently, Isolde’s own family.

He shook himself, tried to muscle down the rising twist in his gut. He didn’t know that was what happened. It wasn’t as though Ulma had brought the entire tribe to stop him, had she?

And, he hadn’t tracked down the dregs—hadn’t fussed over it. They might’ve simply fled the city, after he killed… most of the tribe. He clenched his jaw as he circled the ancient elevator surveying the empty stone grandeur around him. Why did he even feel the need to soothe himself? Even ineffectively. There shouldn’t have been anything to soothe. The Gur had attacked him. Again. And after he’d done them quite the favor, killing seven thousand and seven vampires in one go—he’d probably saved dozens of monster hunters decades of work. They easily could have just thanked him and gone home.

He remembered, at the time, thinking he should feel more. It had been a group of Gur that brought about his destruction in the first place, so taking out anpther group of them, roughly the size of the one that attacked him should have felt cathartic, but at the time he hadn’t experienced anything resembling satisfaction. Perhaps, his revenge against his most hated tormentor was still all he was feeling.

That’s what he told himself. Now though, he wondered if it was some portentous glimpse of this moment. Standing here, looking at the sight of the slaughter and knowing that if Isolde knew what he’d done…

It didn’t matter. She didn’t know, and she never would. So, he didn’t have to think about what she’d think of him, or what she would feel.

She’d been a comfort to him. She’d been different, oddly acerbic and flippant about her own life, and about his wickedness, while still maintaining such tender, nearly shy regard and manners. He’d have those memories of her to horde. He’d remember how soft she was, and how earnest and unpretentious every little movement was, her enthusiasm and intensity more than making up for an overall lack of practice and artiface. Most of all though, he found himself thinking fondly of the moments he’d made her smile and laugh in spite of herself—in spite of him too. He’d actually liked talking to her, like hearing her talk.

He had enjoyed her, and she’d enjoyed him. And, though it was unfortunate that he’d had to learn such sad things about her, the kinds of truths that neither of them could recover from, perhaps it was for the best. In the moment she’d told him who she was, he’d abandoned all hopes, all plans of convincing her to stay and become his spawn.

Isolde had told him that she was going to leave him, and leave Baldur’s Gate itself, in all likelihood. He’d supported those plans, with the thoughts of steering her otherwise as she inevitably grew to need him.

But, she had been right all along. She should leave. Of course she should.

He’d make sure she did.

And even if she wasn’t connected to a group of people he’d personally wiped out, she was a little too clever and curious for him, too clever by half, and too clever for her own good. Maybe that was the real reason why her masters kept trying to kill her. She did make something of a nuisance of herself. What business did she have being able to read Infernal? Did the Gur just teach that to their children? What would be the need? He would assume they probably learned Gurri still, even living in a place like Baldur’s Gate. Maybe, some of them would learn to speak or read some Rashemi, but Infernal?

Astarion clenched and unclenched his jaw with an exhale so slow and lingering he almost could have fooled himself into believing he actually did need to breathe. That didn’t matter either. He’d learned one secret about her, and that was far more than he was prepared to handle. He didn’t want to know anything else.

The greenish tinge of the old cavern beamed back at him, too chilly to be properly illuminating. He almost imagined he could see ghostly faces in the dark, watching him, accusing him.

He realized that he hadn’t gone back to this place before—not really. He’d come down here to dump bodies, but there was a point at which he always turned around and left. The point right before he might connect with the sightlines of the innermost chamber, where he could see the cages.

Leaving the ceremony, after his ascension, he kept his head high and looked forward, rather than face the carnage. In the corner of his eye, he saw them glaring red and knew that what he’d witnessed happen to the others inside the ceremony must’ve happened to all of them. Bodies obliterated in bursts of gore and evaporating red mist. Men, women, children. Tragic victims, many of them. All of them, one might argue. But, they couldn’t be saved. Vampires were better off dead. Everyone knew that.

They would be empty now, even of fragments, he was sure, but he wanted to see for himself, so he walked through, towards the innermost part of the desecrated chapel.

Part of him hoped it would be gone—maybe the earthquakes and destruction of the absolute’s forces could have unsettled the platforms and sent them all crashing into the underdark, but everything still stood exactly where it had been. Exactly where he saw it all when he relived his ascension in meditation.

“Two of seven,” he hadn’t seen the other spawn’s scars up close, but he could guess now that they would probably look very similar, aside from that part that Isolde had read outloud; the blood he’d gorged himself on the last few days had chilled inside of him when he’d heard her speak. She couldn’t possibly know anything, so it confirmed for him what she’d said was true. She could read it.

He was the second of the seven spawn. The first, Aurelia, had only predated him by a few years, but she was already broken by the time Astarion joined the household. He remembered hating her for what he perceived as weakness. It was true that all of them gave up eventually, but he’d never even seen Aurelia try. He’d only ever seen her meekly acquiesced to every demand with the simpering air of a dog that didn’t understand that they would get kicked in any case.

But, eventually, he’d come to like Aurelia as much as he could like any of his ‘siblings.’ She was reliable, in that you always knew exactly what she was going to do—but with those big, apologetic red eyes wincing and weeping even as she drove needles under his fingernails.

She surrendered her body, and her mind, just like Astarion had, but there was one thing about her that had come to fascinate him. She never ceased to be repulsed by what she was doing.

Two centuries of cruelty had eventually taught Astarion to like violence, at first just enough that he could bring himself to act without retching, without falling apart like she did. Eventually, he took what reassurance he could in the knowledge that it wasn’t him suffering this time. And, later than that, he simply learned to take pleasure in the acts themselves.

Aurelia never liked it. She never developed a taste for cruelty. She spent two centuries being cruel because she didn’t have a choice, but out of all of them, Astarion suspected that she hung onto her true self, somewhere deep down.

Of course, this view of her was largely speculative. Their lives were compartmentalized as much as possible, if not by their own preference to suffer in solitude, then by compulsion. They weren’t to speak of who they were before they turned, they weren’t to discuss what was done to them, or what they were forced to do to each other, they weren’t to talk about any private conversation with the master. Competition was encouraged and so they rarely hunted together, unless there were exceptional circumstances.

Early on, before all of these rules had been established, Astarion had tried to talk to Aurelia, as the only other spawn, and he reasoned, the only person in the world who might understand what he was going through. But his attempts to bond with her had only gotten them both punished. He still remembered the questions he’d tried to pose; how had she been brought in? Did she blame herself? Did she hate the master, or was some of that deference out of real love for him? Or, had it ever been? Did she know what he really wanted with them, or was this it? Just toys to play with until he got bored?

When it had become clear that they would simply never have the opportunity to speak openly, he’d stopped trying to know her. The other spawn joined them, one by one, and he was already remade. Aurelia might well be the last person who had seen some version of him that still possessed any small part of himself, before he was turned. Before all of it was ripped out of him. And, maybe that was why he’d spent the last several decades of her life avoiding her in particular. Even though he liked her.

They should have talked though. They should have kept trying.

Maybe they could have pieced together what was coming. At a minimum, they might have learned of the scars that they all possessed. Astarion had only understood that the other spawn had his same scars at the same time that he learned about the entirety of the contract with Mephistopheles.

Astarion scoffed, looking at the area of the platform where Aurelia had been when she exploded. What good would it have done?

It wasn’t as though there was any saving her.

The ritual only called for one ascendant, the rest would be consumed.

And it was done.

And it couldn’t be undone.

Slowly, Astarion became aware of a sunlit warmth against his chest.

The scrolls of true resurrection seemed to generate their own heat. Was it his imagination that they seemed warmer here? Was it the proximity of so much death?

He pulled one of the scrolls out and glared down at it.

It probably wouldn’t even work?

Aurelia hadn’t just died, she’d been sacrificed in an Infernal ritual. Astarion hadn’t spared much thought for her fate, but, realistically, she was a soul coin in some pit fiend’s pocket, or hanging enticingly in whatever Mephistopheles used as a larder for his souls, or, if she was very lucky, she was just lingering on the fugue plane, making her way to the city of judgment.

What would it mean for the ritual, for his ascendancy, if it did work? If it could be undone��even just one seven thousand and seventh of it?

Surely. It wasn’t possible.

He knew the rules. You either had to have their body, or you had to speak their name. He didn’t have a body—that had been obliterated, and he only knew the name ‘Aurelia’ no surname.

He approached the place where she’d spattered. The metal was still stained dark, but time and natural ware had reduced what was left of her to dark dust, nothing more.

It couldn’t work.

Astarion got down on one knee and set the scroll on the metal in front of him, one hand coming to rest against the stains. “Aurelia.”

The warmth he’d felt from the scroll when he’d held it intensified from where it glowed, painfully bright against his unprepared eyes. He tried to shield his face with both arms, but only one would move, the other felt tethered to the floor where it was connected to a rising swell. He felt the cold metal replaced by skin, his hands pressed into Aurelia’s back, where the nubs of her little vestigial wings wiggled against her shoulder blades.

He heard her first gasps of renewed life, but it wasn’t the relieved breath of a mortal being. She was still a vampire, her flesh still cold and her heart unbeating. She was only as alive as Astarion had ever known her. But, still, she breathed in, deep, filling her lungs, seemingly for the express purpose of screaming the air out again.

Astarion flinched and covered his ears as she wailed, drawing into herself as though burning. She was still stripped, as she’d been when Astarion killed her. She wore her leggings and chaps only, her shoes and her tunic taken from her. She wrapped herself up in her own arms, those angry scars on her back facing Astarion.

It had worked.

Perhaps, in more than one way. She wasn’t just alive again, something felt different. A chill had passed through him directly after the warmth of the scroll faded.

He took her by the shoulders and slowly turned her to face him. She kept her eyes averted downwards, her arms crossed over herself.

“Aurelia?”

“Why did you bring me back?” she asked, voice small and broken.

A scroll of true resurrection was a powerful thing, but it could not call upon an unwilling soul. “Why did you come back?”

At this declaration, Aurelia wailed again, her horned head falling to let her rigged brow rest against Astarion’s chest. She nearly took one of his eyes out with the tip of one horn, but he just awkwardly patted her shoulder. In life she’d always worn her hair in tight braids. The master liked it that way. For whatever reason, though her body and what clothing she’d had left had been restored to her, her hair was loose and down her trembling, red body. It wasn’t really enough to cover her. With a sigh, Astarion removed his waistcoat and put it over her shoulders as she wept.

“I shouldn’t have come back,” Aurelia whimpered, and pushed away from him, beginning a drunken crawl towards the edge of the platform.

“No, you don’t,” Astarion caught her by the ankle, ignoring an instinctive slap from the tip of her tail on the back of his hand, though it rather stung. “Now, why would you go and do a thing like that?”

“I’ll not be a part of any other designs, not by gods, nor devils, nor the master—and certainly not you, Astarion!” She ripped her foot out of his grip, but she was too weak and uncoordinated to make it more than a few stumbling feet. Astarion slipped in and out of his mist form in the space of a lunge and got between her and the chasm. At first she seemed shocked at seeing him employ such a casual use of power that admittedly, even their old master hadn’t shown off all that often.

“Come now. You know me better than that, Aurelia.”

Aurelia swept her eyes over the vacant platform, the scene of his great triumph, dirty and discarded and shameful where it rotted. “You planned this. You planned to ascend, that’s what I know of you.” she pointed out.

“I stole ascension,” Astarion corrected her. “And I stole the scroll of true resurrection, and I honestly don’t really know why I used it. I didn’t know what to do with it, I was rather nervous about keeping it around, and then I had a fleeting thought about whether or not it would even work and—” he giggled at the absurdity of it, “here you are!” He pushed aside the thought of the second one in the waistcoat that Aurelia was wearing, clutching closed around herself, even as her eyes strayed into the darkness of the chasm, contemplating a quick escape back into death.

“How long has it been?”

He hesitated to answer, only because he was trying to gauge just how likely she was to bolt for the edge of the platform again after successfully distracting him. “Five and a half years.”

She was still searching the area, eyes straying to the dark patches of deathstain, one by one. “The master?”

“Gone.” Of course.

“You succeeded? And the others?” Aurelia seemed to be wrestling with herself, and he thought he could find every emotion in her features. Some people found tiefling faces hard to read, especially when their eyes were rimmed in black rather than white. Astarion had never had that problem. He saw her fear, and her rage, and her confusion, and some wild traces of panic. But, no relief at all. She was so sure this couldn’t be real, or that it couldn’t possibly be good.

“Just you,” Astarion told her quietly.

“...Why me?”

“I suppose, you’re my favorite?” In fairness, it wasn’t much of a competition.

She was still looking at him like she didn’t believe or trust anything around her. He could see something warring in her, and was afraid he knew what it was. The stench of fear was so familiar, a particular kind of pathetic fragility. It reminded him, unbidden, of the moments he’d been trapped in that pod, expecting the rising sun to burn him—but it didn’t. She hadn’t seen the sun come up yet. She was just waiting for it.

There had been a moment, when he was fighting his way out of that damaged pod, when he realized it was too late. Even if he had broken out, he wouldn’t be able to run for cover before the sun cooked him. He’d almost been relieved, for a moment. The master had ordered them not to kill themselves, and he’d often speculated that he might have tried, if it weren’t for the compulsion. This was a way around it. But. Ultimately. He didn’t want to die, and he’d struggled on, fought on, until the creeping realization hit him that the sun was up.

The sun had been up for several minutes.

And he was fine.

Aurelia was far from that revelation. She regarded him with marked fear. “Order me to do something,” she whispered.

“Sorry?”

“Just do it.” She said through gritted teeth. He’d never heard her take such a tone, not in two hundred years.

“Give me my coat back.”

“No. Fuck you.”

Astarion rolled his eyes, but he was far too delighted by this new side of her to be annoyed, “I’m not him. I can’t compel you. No one can. Not anymore.”

Still, he didn’t see much more than a faint spark in her. She looked lost as ever, tail motionless on the ground behind her, black and red gaze weak as she simply watched him. “Why?” she asked again.

“I really don’t know. I haven’t been myself lately.”

“You wasted a scroll of true resurrection on me.”

He was allowed to think that, but something about hearing her say it irked him. “There’s another one in your pocket. You can do whatever you like with it.” He motioned around the platform, “maybe bring back your favorite sibling. Unless it’s Petras. Or Yousen.”

“Astarion,” Aurelia said flatly.

“Fine! Whomever you like then!”

“Astarion, why did you bring me back?!”

He genuinely didn’t know. He retraced his steps, and tried to recall his thoughts—but they escaped him so quickly. Why bring her back? Just because he could? “Come upstairs. We’ll get you something to eat—someone to eat, if you like. Anyone you like.”

For a moment she looked startled, then her features shifted to a stubborn kind of rage. “No.”

“You don’t want to stay down here in all this filth. You don’t want to die, again.” He hissed the last word.

“No.” But she said it softer this time, her shoulders falling a little and she pulled his coat tighter around her body.

“We can get you cleaned up. Find you something to wear. We’ll… talk. Later.”

“You won’t have answers for me later,” she predicted. But she approached him, head bowed slightly, tail dragging behind her and she let him put an arm across her shoulders and walk her out of the dark, desecrated temple where he’d murdered her.

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