#this one-shot 🤝 'House of Memories' by P!ATD 😌

[imagineitdearies]

~ A Flawed Eternity ~

(AKA drabbles set in the Perfect Slaughter universe. 🩵 Special thanks to @secretbraintwin for the ko-fi request! 🩵)

In which Chatterteeth considers Tyrus and Astarion’s relationship.

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“I never want to see these wretched little pieces of misery again.”

The undead woman, now called Chatterteeth, froze where she stood. She’d thought long and hard for the past year on how best to ensure her goal. She returned to the material plane for a very specific purpose after all—the Szarr reign’s end. And now it was so close.

Sentiment for these boys standing in front of her couldn’t color her judgment.

As much as she saw good in him still, thought of him nearly like a wayward son, she had been prepared to let Tyrus die. He showed enough signs to warrant concern, if not certainty, of continuing the monstrous Szarr legacy whether he became a true vampire or not. His sweet beloved, on the other hand, only seemed to want Cazador dead. 

Only after hearing these words from Astarion’s lips, however, did Chatterteeth realize she may just have spent less time around him.

A very long time ago, Donnela had promised at first to set the other spawn free under Gathwycke’s reign. She’d sworn, in the shadowed, intimate moments they stole away together, that she would only do what was necessary. And before she drank the vampire lord’s hideous blood, she likely meant it. 

But necessities quickly changed once power was gained. “Aenore,” she’d said over and over again after killing the others only a few weeks later. Sounding so justified in her explanation, “Aenore, they questioned me at every turn; they already whispered plans of my demise. They couldn’t be trusted like you. It was necessary. I only do what is necessary.” 

It must have been Chatterteeth’s first given name. Spoken so soft and entreating in the memory that a shudder traveled down her old bones even now.

Perhaps Astarion’s words lacked the coldness of Tyrus’s orders, but the justification and sheer loathing in them was much more extreme—and he hadn’t even reached true vampirism yet. He could well turn out worse than Donnela.

One of these two boys had to defeat Cazador, however. Chatterteeth glanced between them as they began to follow the group ahead, suddenly at a complete loss as to which.

Her mother had served Gathwycke all her life, raising “Aenore” in the Tumbledown estate. The young girl witnessed from an early age that any person was capable of doing horrible things. But often there were signs to indicate those most inclined. Which made it all the more disgraceful, how blinded she became once Gathwycke brought his beautiful young cousin to the estate for the family rites.

At the age of 142, Aenore had rarely left the estate except for her studies, too quiet in her classes to make a single friend. She’d never left the outskirts of Baldur’s Gate. Donnela brought novelty, beauty, and passion into Aenore’s life, sharing all her tales of traveling across Faerun, uncovering lost items and secrets of the past. And in her, Donnela seemed to have found a confidante, a support, an enthusiast to plan the next adventure with.

They fell in love rather quickly—meeting outside the estate on quiet nights to explore the city in ways Aenore never had before, kissing and then making love under the false protection of darkness.

But Gathwycke threatened that bond over the years. As he grew more controlling, he exercised cruel punishments on Donnela and forbade her to ever leave the estate. As he became more covetous and paranoid, he stunted Aenore’s arcane studies and even burned her spellbook. Eventually he forbade them ever speaking on pain of death.

With her beloved threatened, Aenore had been more than ready to kill him for it.

She saw some similarities in Tyrus and Astarion now. They fought for love and liberation; they trusted no one but each other. They were ready to make sacrifices, no matter how great, to ensure the other’s happiness.

But she’d seen how such sentiments could sour. How what was sacrificed in the “name” of love fell far from the actual thing, and could end up tainting such feelings forever. How trust could falter as priorities twisted to center around power and control. How liberation could turn into a new kind of enslavement.

Aenore helped Donnela kill Gathwycke. But she’d only given her master a new name.

Astarion helped Tyrus so willingly now, supporting his weakened form as they braved the first few stairs down into the grand chamber. And Tyrus kept moving, even knowing he was walking towards his own death, so that he might save Astarion’s life. The sight alone nearly cracked the fortitude of her reasoning.

But she and Donnela had once held each other just as gently. How long would either of their touches continue as caresses, their gazes keep soft, their love stay true, should she reveal another path? One that would not only help them survive together, but seize power?

Aenore, young and foolish as she’d still been, supported Donnela’s decision to drink from Gathwycke’s neck. It seemed like the only way to ensure they kept control of the Tumbledown Estate, and not fear when the other vampiric Szarr family members came to call. Even after the death of the other four spawn, even once Donnela started to Turn her own unwilling fledgelings, Aenore had refused to see what was happening. She only tried to steer her beloved towards other projects, like the Tourmaline Depths excavation and new palace construction.

She tried to control Donnela in return. And that is where she failed her. 

“They are only fodder now,” Astarion had just said of the victims around them. And if he ascended, how soon until Tyrus was as well?

“You were a step on my path to eminence,” Donnela had said with some measure of melancholy, right at the end of it all. Straddling a defeated Aenore on the crypt floor beneath the new palace they had built together, stroking a blade up and down her sternum. “An important one, my dearest. But I left you unruled, indulged your quiet rebellions too long. Even the bite would not tame the hissing, venemous little thing you've become. Would it?”

Aenore hadn’t fought, not once her own necromantic ability to command undead failed her against Donnela. “I did . . . only what was necessary,” she whispered, thinking of the much more quiet defiance she’d enacted against the woman she loved: creating one last soul cage, enchanted onto a simple folded parchment in the library along with instructions for whoever found it. A way to turn the enchantment against the vampire lady one day, and entrap her own soul within it for a long, cruel eternity.

With that last measure in place, she didn’t resist the soft kiss Donnela pressed against her lips with those same soft, petaled lips she knew so well, just before the blade pierced her heart.

Yet neither had she resisted the chance to return and ensure, this time, that the Szarr legacy was fully destroyed, the cycle of violence and bloodshed finished. That another Donnela wouldn’t walk into these halls and suffer the same fate as her own beloved.

Or so she’d thought.

Now the skeleton called Chatterteeth was at an impasse. If Tyrus killed so many, he would fall into darkness. Even if he didn’t kill them, giving him the mere knowledge on how to control Astarion could prove disastrous. But if Tyrus died—clearly Astarion would be lost all the same.

Donnela and Aenore’s fight for freedom turned into a quest for power that destroyed them both.

Was there any surety that these two could be different?

No, Chatterteeth realized as she hurried her old bones into motion and caught up with the boys’ descent down the stairwell. Her jaw clicked uncontrollably as she steeled herself for what she was about to do—for all she was about to risk.

“Tyrus,” she hissed as she caught up with them. “Tyrus.”

There was no surety they would make better decisions than she and her beloved. But perhaps there was a hope.