#i don't think it's a phobia if its fuckin justified

[atsadi-shenanigans]

What Shall We Become 25 - Consumed

TW: Body horror

The rogue rolls a constitution check.

On AO3.

They walk. And walk. And walk some more. He rather thinks they ought to walk faster. But when he thinks that at her, she tosses back some bizarre mental scenario of a horse frothing at the mouth on a plain and a human walking steadily towards it.

…what in the hells is a “persistence predator?”

The scratch under his arm stings a bit. He’s not surprised; a weapon at the end of what they’ve learned was a total butchery of sentient fungi would have left all kinds of nasty things on that blade. That, however, is a concern for living creatures, who need things like food and air and clean blood. And anyway, he’s a vampire spawn (however leashed by the parasite) with a spawn’s healing. A dirty weapon won’t harm him.

His perplexing leader doesn’t speak much as they slog on and on. Likely saving her breath for all the walking. Even the few exchanges in thought, however, are gruff and muted.

She’s hiding.

It’s familiar.

He’s aware of more of her history now than he was the first time he pillaged her memories. He’s aware of the general shape of her past. But only now, in recent days, is he seeing a shade of his own experiences (watered down and altered form) within what he knows of her.

And finds himself more confused than ever.

He was so certain it was deliberate. A manipulation. A game. One he knew every intricacy of. She was changing the rules, but he still understood the goal.

Except she isn’t playing to that now, is she?

She’s shown helplessness to the others of their party in order to make them care for her. It’s the same thing children and pets do. And it was successful most of the time.

She’d cried out when that drow struck her. Which is perfectly normal. Being struck isn’t pleasant. He hadn’t liked hearing it (that same effect children and pets do, he assumes). But instead of milking it or playing it up, making him feel obliged or needed in a way that has nothing to do with sex (the sheer novelty!), she hid away.

She was ashamed. Deeply so.

And…he knows that. Intimately. Being completely unable to do anything. Kneeling in front of that bastard as he carved and carved and made his revisions, Astarion’s muscles trembling without end after a while as his body tried desperately to undo the damage. All for naught. The lines opened and reopened. The horrid sting as that bastard rubbed the gashes he was satisfied with, forcing something sharp and grainy, something that stung into Astarion’s skin.

He didn’t fight. Couldn’t. Literally.

A thought then occurs that makes him feel both filled with lead, and bubbling beer: what if it’s not a manipulation.

Then…he doesn’t know. He’s never encountered that before. It’s a trap. A trick. Always and forever. Ends with him sobbing and clawing his fingers bloody, begging for the master please, please he’ll be good.

Astarion rotates his left arm to try to dim the ache.

But he’s lashed out at her. Hurt her, even (it had to be manipulation to make him feel…he doesn’t even know). Yet she still hasn’t struck him. Hasn’t beaten him. Starved him. Set herself or another upon him with tools of pain. Hasn’t commanded him (no chains needed when a word will do the same) to the boudoir to entertain guests for days.

She’s guided him. Talked to him. Rescued (ugh) him from torture. And…

“Astarion?”

His name sounds foreign in her accent, though she gets the syllables right. Just twists them slightly. It really is a rather charming sound.

Gods below, that drow must have cut him deeper than he thought. He’s about to wave her off when his left foot suddenly goes weak. He stumbles. Catches himself on her staff.

Her heartbeat jumps. She says something.

He tries to shake it off. Must have been uneven ground. Only his right foot follows suit. He crashes hard to his knees as the pain cracks up his thighs.

“Astarion.”

Her footsteps rush over. The warmth of her hovers nearby, but she doesn’t grab him (hands on him, grabbing and clawing and taking, always taking). Because she’s shy (considerate).

“I…I don’t know what’s come over me, darling,” he says. Though she won’t have understood a word of that, would she?

His legs won’t work. Fear begins to claw low in his belly as he tries anyway and ends up flopping back down like some newborn farm beast.

“Fuck.”

He does recognize that one. Her favorite.

What in the sweet hells is wrong with him? He’d fed and rested. Far more than he’s ever been. He’s felt better the last few days (the confusion around his companion notwithstanding) than ever.

He rolls his aching shoulder again.

And something catches.

Oh.

Right as, in a much quieter yet more dread-filled tone, his leader says, “Fuck.”

She helps him strip off the chest armor. He has to lean in to do it, and she still smells of rich, dark blood, so he has to stop breathing to keep his aching fangs to himself. Then the chest piece slides off and he can lift a hand to touch—

He stills.

There’s something on his arm. Through the fabric of his tunic, he can feel it. It seems to have opened further. The skin is tender, but the closer he gets, the number his touch grows.

Shit. Shit.

It’s formed a deep crack in his flesh. A fissure with crusting edges that feel too large and…fleshy to be dried blood.

“Jesus fuck.” She makes a distressed hum. Says, “This here…”

She reaches across the tadpoles for him. Gives a polite knock (that will always be funny: a living being asking the vampire for permission to enter). So he opens and lets her in.

She’s more contained, this time. He still senses the dark entryway behind her she shields from them all, but she’s focused, now. And an Eleanor with a purpose is an Eleanor at her most dangerous.

He sees an image of the dead drow and riotously-colored pieces of mushrooms. Some of the drow had been slashed or clubbed, and among their wounds were…growths.

She wants to see his arm. And he suddenly very much doesn’t want her to. He doesn’t want to. He would rather force himself up and stagger on and forget about all of this. He’s an immortal vampire, by the hells. Nothing save a stake or a beheading ought to touch him.

But, as ever, he has very little choice in what happens to him. Can only sprawl there as his leader helps him tug his sleeve down and then she crawls partway over his lap (very, very carefully not touching him) to peer into his arm pit.

Now it’s her turn to go very still. She clamps down tightly on her thoughts, but not before a wave of her tight fear washes over to him.

Mushrooms on his flesh. The same odd, colorful growths reaching out, waving tendrils.

Astarion is used to fighting for every, last drop of blood he can. Fighting for any scrap of anything. The first heave of his stomach he instinctively shoves against. He cannot afford to lose blood. Never. And certainly not now. But then his mind comes back to the flash of her sight and her own stomach-churning horror, and he claps a hand to his mouth but the stale fish blood still comes up, still sprays between his fingers. His leader scrambles out of the way, and then he’s folding over, gasping and gagging and still, always, trying to stop, trying to keep his hard-won prize, his only victory.

When it’s done, he sits empty and even more wretched than before. With something growing in the dead flesh of his arm.

Ah. Mushrooms do grow out of death, don’t they. Silly him.

SHADOWHEART.

The thought hits like a shock of thunder, stronger than what he’s even seen from their wizard. It storms across the bond to smash into the erstwhile cleric (so hard the woman stumbles into the gith, too busy hissing and clutching at her own head to snap back).

What in the hells—

Istik fool!

Mystra’s tits—

The images comes fast. As stripped of emotion as they can be. His leader is once again a blade. A sharp one. Lancing across the distances between them all to spear the cleric rather like a suckling pig (the cleric does not appreciate the thought). It isn’t until the gith steps in with a shove of her own that his leader catches herself enough to modulate anything. She still thrums through them all, however.

Collect yourself, the gith thinks (he knew it, knew she was more proficient in this than she ever let on) (and then he gets to feel the twinge of her disdain at that thought).

Mushrooms growing from the dead. Astarion’s arm, the cut in his pale flesh pushing out as things inside reach for the open air (oh, there was more blood in his stomach, a pity). The cleric’s worry flares before she absently smothers it. Slides a coolness over the top. Wonders what potions they have.

His leader dumps her bag at his feet. Bottles and packets spill everywhere. Among them are three lesser healing potions, another invisibility, something he can’t identify, and her language potions.

Slim pickings at the fish camp, then.

The healing potion. It’s designed for the living to close wounds and re-stitch flesh and fill up reserves of vitality. An antidote might work better, but the mushrooms aren’t a poison as much as an…invader.

The thought doesn’t even finish before his leader is wrenching the cork off a bottle and holding it to him. At least the burning flavor masks stale fish blood.

His fingertips start to tingle. He can lift his hand again, and wiggle his toes. His leader bends down again to check…

The potion did stitch his undead flesh back together. And trapped the growths inside.

Astarion is an elf and a vampire spawn. He’s been killed the once, been knocked unconscious and damaged so badly his thoughts scramble. But he doesn’t think he’s ever passed out. He hasn’t the physiology for it, either living or dead. But he thinks he might be near enough just now.

A knife.

Ah. Yes. He’d be rather familiar with that. Cut the things out.

The cleric considers that even more grimly than him. He would have to take more flesh than just the surface. Would have to dig deep, lest he leave any tendrils.

Godey would approve. A month or more from the nautiloid, and he’s still going to be carved up. Corrected. There’s no escaping that, he’ll always be a flawed thing, a mistake—

Fuck that.

The thought steals the air from his lungs. Not from him, not from the cleric or even the gith. It’s not even loud, like when she threw herself at their cleric in her panic.

Eleanor is calm and quiet and very, very certain.

No cutting. No hurting. Not unless it’s the last option. And even then, they do what they can, they find a way to shield him.

He nearly severs the connection then and there. Lest they see the way that thought quakes through him.

Shield him. Try to…try to lessen it. No one, no one has ever spared a thought like that for him. Not in two centuries. Perhaps not even before that.

“Blood?” his razorblade of a leader says in Chondathan.

“Pardon?” he says on reflex. Then registers what she says.

Healing potions work on him now, with the worm in his brain. Before that, they would have liquefied him from the inside out. Before that, the only balm to his hurts was blood.

A strange image flashes through all of them: a hand on a lever, pulling it back. A rumbling change in pitch. Engine. Throttling an engine. That’s what the tadpole is doing to him, yes. He should heal at a much faster rate than he currently does, especially as fed as he’s been.

(And then he wonders, briefly, if the worms are doing the same for their tiefling and what that might mean should their little band succeed in removing said parasites.)

And another image: a button with strange writing above it.

“Nitro,” his leader says aloud like that means anything.

A series of ideas he can’t quite track: a spray of liquid into a confined space, fire burning hotter, gears churning in a blur.

“Blood?” she says.

She means…to speed up his healing. To what it should be. Use blood to do it.

But the fish blood he has left (and that part is her fault, bleeding as she is, he has no choice but to try to drown the maddening scent in bottles and bottles of his provisions) won’t do it. No. The thing that really brings life to his dead flesh—color to his cheeks, warmth to his skin—is that of a warm creature. A thinking creature. Her—

He slams that thought into the ground. But not before she, the perceptive shit, catches it.

“Me,” she says in Chondathan.

And by the hells. He can feel her consider it. Rather like watching an exchange collector weighting what one absolutely knows is a counterfeit gem against magical weights. Only instead of it going badly and having to scarper up to the rooftops (or, disgustingly, the sewers), this time he’ll just…die.

He doesn’t think she hears that? (Feels a twitch from the cleric and of course that little wretch is listening.) But his leader comes to her decision almost immediately after that thought.

“Yes,” she says.

She pauses a moment. And then brings his still functioning arm up to tap his fingers against her neck.