so bury me as it pleases you, lover - sierramadre (2024)

Chapter 1: wretched thing

Chapter Text

The pleasant greens and cool shadows of the Emerald Grove are a stark contrast to the red-dark fields that envelop you near constantly, but a breath of spring and the sun on your face almost makes you feel like an entirely different being than the one whose carcass you’re trying to crawl out of.

The attempt of such an expulsion takes a toll on you, dragging your mind through a swamp of fish hooks, snagging on every scrap of memory your mind catches a glimpse of. Little of the world makes sense to you now as you follow a dark-haired woman along the beach. Shadow-something, you’d barely heard her say. The sun is abnormally bright, and relentlessly burns your already-alight mind, singeing the edges of each fleeting, paper memory.

The woman turns around and snaps her fingers at you. “Are you alright?” She asks snidely. “Did you hit your head on the way down?”

You do not bother to shake yourself of the ash that piles in your skull, for it will not so easily disperse.

“Apologies,” you mumble, returning to the physical world. You sink your feet deeper into the hot sand and let its broken shells scrape against your heels, enjoying the normality of mild discomfort. “Let’s find our way forward. We need to rest.”

You hope that's all you need.

Together, you and the dark-haired woman find a white-haired elf. Your sloughing mind stretches all around your head, striving to keep itself bound to your bone. You move your mouth around as if you’re chewing on a marble, puzzled on how to respond to the elf’s pleas for help— pleas accompanied by a creeping familiarity that overtakes all your other worries: that this was your occupation, in whatever past life you led, tearing such pleas from the throats of your victims. It brings a surge through you that you can scarcely conceal by twisting your tongue.

Steeped in such a haze, you are foolish enough to find a knife at your throat. Instinct comes barreling through you, and you headbutt the elf with the heavy ramhorns that adorn your skull. He’s sent reeling back, and he curses you. “You f*cking—”

Your minds meld together in a swirl of unguarded memories that surface at near random— of red eyes skulking through dark streets, and a darker red painting the walls of someone’s home, of corpses lining the sewers of Baldur’s Gate. You’re not certain which memories belong to whom, but you cling desperately to each of them, hoping one might reveal who you were— are— but all too quickly the swirling gives way to a drain, and the two of you are left staring one another down.

The elf looks at you with his face etched in irritation and confusion. “What was that? You’re in league with them, aren’t you? With those tentacled freaks! I saw you both traipsing about the nautiloid!”

The woman steps forward and answers for you. “We escaped, just as you did. We’re all infected.” She explains this to him with less snideness than she had presented to you on the beach. “The tadpoles— they connect us.”

The elf catches his breath, and steadily lowers the dagger he had held against the tender spot between your jaw and neck. A half-chuckle escapes his throat, and he eyes both you and Shadowheart with flickers of suspicion and amusem*nt, but then his red gaze affixes itself to you. “And to think I was ready to decorate the ground with your innards.”

A sentiment you feel not-so-oddly drawn to. You respond before you even think of the words, and can hardly believe that your voice is your own. “I was looking forward to yours.”

“Ah,” A creased smile appears on the elf’s pale face. “A kindred spirit.”

And a perfect, pretty corpse, your crumbling mind pictures. Your dry mouth pulls into a hardened, wicked grin, and you do not deny its passage across your face.

The next temptation presents itself as an open hand, one that protrudes from a sigil embedded in a rockface, accompanied by a man’s voice that you can hardly discern through the near-constant fog that clouds your mind. You occupy yourself with the idea of severing the hand from its arm, and playing with its broken fingers.

The man in the stone is lucky that the other two have come along with you. Shadowheart walks up beside you, her voice echoing through your mind-fog, leading you away, if only slightly, from your thoughts of mutilation.

“Help me get him out, will you?” She asks. You comply without any feeling in your body, and grab the hand that waves for aid.

The man comes tumbling out with a grunt and lands in a heap of purple, then gradually stands himself up. The wizard fixes his long hair and moves his hands a lot as he speaks. “Thank you for helping me. I’m Gale of Waterdeep. Apologies— I’m usually better at this.”

“At introductions?” Shadowheart quips.

“At magic.”

“Just be careful who you put your faith in.” Shadowheart warns you.

You refrain from rolling your eyes. Had there not been other tieflings nearby, and you had been in that cage, you’re not sure Shadowheart and the others would have let you down, either. Most people aren’t very trusting of tieflings, but you will not make the same assumptions about the Githyanki— at least not this one. This one, she had saved your life. You might have died on the nautiloid, if not for her. You know little in this half-state, but you know there are certain debts to be paid in this world.

Shadowheart may be displeased with your decision to release her, but she relents after your silence, and together she and the others all follow you toward where the pair of tieflings had said the grove was.

The goblins that ambush you at the gate aren’t happy, either, to find several of their kin embedded with arrows in such a short amount of time. You throw down your bow once exposed, and fly through them with daggers stolen from the corpses on the beach, cutting the goblins’ throats with carving knives, gutting their little bellies open like fish. Your only focus is how much flesh you can feel grate against your blades before the last of your playthings fall.

The fight is cut too short for your liking. You find yourself standing among still bodies, your overzealousness apparent to everyone but yourself— until you see the concerned looks on your newfound companions’ faces.

“Well, at least you’re decent in a fight.” Astarion teases. You squeeze the hilts of your bloodied knives before wiping the blades on your pants. Astarion watches you with mild interest, but you ignore him, and turn to follow an indifferent Shadowheart under an ivy-cloaked gate, into the heart of the grove.

Introductions fill the rest of your afternoon. You meet several, several other tadpoled individuals who decide to set up tents in a shabby little camp on the outskirts of the grove, near the Chionthar. You find an old, torn boatsail to use as a tent, and stack crates taken from the river shore to give yourself more coverage from the elements. The bedroll you were gifted is thin and uncomfortable, but you have little to live by to begin with, so you don’t complain.

Instead, you hunt. The others clocked you as a ranger the second you’d shown them what you can do with a bow. It is without obligation, but rather with a craving, that propels you through the forest now. The mind-fog that has plagued you since waking on the nautiloid fades as you bound through the woods, eyeing the ground for tracks, listening for the crack of a twig or the crunch of leaves underfoot. You long to feel the quick snap of a bowstring reverberate through your arms again— the anticipation of the hunt almost clears your mind. Almost.

It’s not long before you find a doe to sling over your shoulders. The others nearly cheer in relief as you come back to them with a bloody dinner dripping down your back. You’re all fed for this night, at least. Gale decides that he and the other wizard you’d found will make the bones and other leftovers into a soup tomorrow, if the lot of you haven’t turned into mindflayers come the dawn.

To your relief, you’ve not turned from one monster to another overnight, though you know your time is short— if not because of the tadpole that makes itself welcome in your mind like a worm through a hole-riddled apple, then because of something else that haunts you. But you are not the first to wake, you realize, as you go to stoke the camp’s nightlong fire.

Astarion is up, staring at a pink sun as it blossoms across the water, refracting with splendor as it chases the current. The elf stares as long as he can before the dawn burns his eyes. He turns to face you with a squint, questioning your presence.

You give him a quick nod, rather than any words. The elf hardly reacts before turning back to look over the river. You wonder what about the sun has him so captivated, but you don’t wonder for long.

“When’s the last time you had a morning like this?” He asks without turning to look at you. Does he think it’s peaceful, even with the parasites wriggling their way through your brains, or is he dreading the calm before the storm?

You try to think back to your last sunrise, but can find none in the net of your mind, your hands wringing it like a river fisherman in a drought. There is nothing, nothing before the nautiloid, aside from brief glimpses of guilt and viscera. This is your first sunrise, and you share it now with a golden-hued elf, and a warm fire.

“This one.” You say. Astarion scoffs at you, his shoulders jumping up in a half-hearted laugh, but he does not berate you further for it.

Your mind crawls back to the memories the two of you had shared yesterday. Had he recognized the blood on those walls?

Should you?

You suppose that you should be grateful to have someone else with a little blood on their hands in the camp. Should the others figure out what kind of monster you are, you just might have someone to escape with.

The two of you sit together for a while, until hunger drives you toward the Emerald Grove come mid-morning. You find a quaint spot on a rocky outcrop overlooking the inner hollow of the grove, where below the teal light of a druidic ritual is being nurtured. You watch the nature-keepers on their knees in prayer, enacting Kagha’s will in preparation to seal away the grove from the outside world. The vines and thorns that will engulf them all reach across your mind now, and drag you back to dark places, glimpsing memories you have tried to shun since awakening. You shake yourself violently of them, your head swimming, as you elect to make your way down from the cliffs, toward where you can see a crowd of tieflings forming against a wall of druids.

Curiosity leads you by the collar past the oxen pens, down a flight of old stairs, lined with moss that grows between each stone step. The refugee tieflings clamor together, calling for the druids to let them by, their yelling and jeering melding into the noise of your busy mind— but one voice stands out among them: the desperate cries of a mother asking for her child. A cry that almost viscerally haunts you— but a sudden, deep roar from a bear scatters the crowd and scatters the dread piling in your stomach.

You push past the rush of tieflings as they funnel up the steps in a hurry, and find your companions standing steadfast against the guard of druids, trying to talk their way inside the sanctum despite the shapeshifted bear growling at their collective presence.

“Zevlor asked me to speak with Kagha.” Fayeth, a high elven woman, says to a druid wearing a crown of twigs. Wyll, Shadowheart, and Velarissa are beside her. “Must you be so difficult?”

“Kagha said to only permit the green tiefling.” The druid says firmly, tapping the butt of her staff on the stone. She turns and points to you with it. “The one with the scar, behind you. He’s the only green one I’ve seen so far.”

You ignore the impulse to finger the lengthy scar along your throat, and ask, “Why me?”

“Kagha is the archdruid while Halsin is— away. I do not question her. If she asks for you, I suggest you go see her.”

Venturing alone into the middle of a spider’s web would be foolish of you. You gesture to Shadowheart. “Allow her to go with me. I’m sure even Kagha can understand my hesitation to proceed alone, given the circ*mstances.”

Fayeth’s eyes pin you down, burning with animosity, but she says nothing. Shadowheart makes her way beside you, standing firm, and the druid relents after a moment with a roll of her eyes.

“Fine,” She agrees. “Just one— but you both leave your weapons at the door, over there, with the others. All of your weapons.”

The two of you leave the druid without so much as a nod. The hospitality druids are known for is absent now; all of their eyes look upon the lot of you and your companions with scorn. You suppose you’ve seen the look before, being a tiefling, but you are not used to the feeling like your old self might have been.

Shadowheart places a hand on your upper arm and whispers, “Keep your mind open to me, while inside.”

She would not make such a request if she had glimpsed your mind already, like Astarion had, but you nod to her anyway, and follow her across the inner grove and give your weapons to a stout, sour-looking dwarf. Together you descend a flight of slick steps and delve into a circular, cave-like room. It’s a humid place, but cool on your skin, with condensation clinging to the moss-clad walls. An underground creek runs by your left, and to your right, the room exposes a wood-elf woman, a man, and a little tiefling girl, the latter of which trembles in her boots.

Before you can approach the three, a grey wolf comes bounding suddenly from the right of the stairs, and blocks your path with bared, yellowed teeth. Shadowheart catches her breath behind you, and your hand flies instinctively to your belt, but you find its sheath empty. The wolf raises its haunches as it sniffs you, staring you down, its yellow eyes not unlike your own.

“Silver, come. Let them pass.” The human calls to the wolf. It watches you a second longer before heeding the human’s command, and trots to the center of the room, where it stands guard behind the trio.

You glance at Shadowheart, and she nods at you to continue, urging you forward. You stop a few feet before the wood-elf, who looks upon the two of you with immediate, unwarranted resentment.

“You asked for me.” You say.

“Yes,” Her voice is sharp, demanding. “And I asked for you for good reason. You defended the grove from the goblins, I’ve heard. You’ve seen them firsthand. Do you think the tieflings here could fight the horde? Could they win in an onslaught set against them?”

“I think not,” You answer truthfully, glancing at the girl. She’s wide-eyed, terrified.

“Precisely.” Kagha continues. “And we in the grove cannot defend them— we are too few in number. The ritual we are undergoing is to protect us, not the tieflings. I need you to make Zevlor understand that the only way to survive is to leave the grove, before the ritual is finished.”

You look between Kagha and the tiefling girl, thinking back to the pleas of the mother you’d heard outside. “And you plan to keep this one here with you?”

Kagha scoffs. “She will remain imprisoned until the ritual nears its finish. Such is a fitting punishment for a thief. She is lucky I ask Teela to do nothing more than watch her.”

A hiss and the slithering of scales draws your attention to a snake, its head lined with horns, sliding its way over the stone table that the girl stands rigid against. Her shoulders shoot up near her head as she sees it, and she quickly, clumsily backs away from the serpent until she bumps into Kagha.

“Careful, devil.” She leers at the girl. “Teela is restless. Do not test her patience.”

“Kagha,” The human druid begins, “We have the idol back. There is no sense in keeping her here, much less in threatening her.”

Shadowheart’s thoughts dance on the edges of your mind, trying to subtly find their way in. You let your guard fall away, if just for a moment, and open the borders of your consciousness. You hear her voice ring inside you, like a faint call across a valley. ‘The child stole something from them, something important to their ritual. How trivial.’

You let her voice fade away, and then respond to Kagha. “You said you were too few to fight the goblins.”

Kagha nods. “Yes. We are not such a large circle.”

“Then why invoke the wrath of all the tieflings, who surely outnumber you, should your snake decide to strike this child? I doubt your circle would fare well then.”

“Is that a threat, devil?” Kagha steps forward, and the snake stands a little taller, its tongue disappearing between its red lips.

You watch it, almost transfixed, before boring your gaze down on the girl. You stare hard at her, glaring, your vision straining in an attempt to keep yourself from flicking your eyes to the door, lest she run for it and grant the snake an opportunity to strike. The girl’s death would let you hear her mother cry until you silenced her yourself.

‘Mazeiah,’ Shadowheart’s voice is soft in the back of your head, barely noticeable. The blood-call rings louder, reverberating through your skull, overtaking nearly all senses— but your vision clouds with the strain of self-control. Shadowheart tries again to reach you across the valley. ‘Mazeiah!’

You barely manage to drag your shaky focus back to Kagha. You force Shadowheart out of your mind, and respond to the druid tartly. “An observation.”

“An idiotic one.” She snaps.

Pride takes ahold of you, and you do not back down from Kagha’s advances. You stand firm and spit out, “Keeping her imprisoned is useless— and I can move faster than your wolf or snake ever could.”

Kagha does not step back, either. She is seething. “I am almost compelled to see it.”

“Kagha—”

“Enough, Rath! I know you would see the child returned. I do not need to hear it again.”

Rath backs away and sits quietly, resigned to letting the fate of the girl rest in Kagha’s hands.

“Tell me, fiend.” She hisses at you. “Are you so eager to see your kin slaughtered? Convince Zevlor to lead them away before the goblins find them along the road. My mercy has its limits, and you are testing them much more than the little thief has.”

She does not await a response from you, but rather calls the snake back to her side in a language you don’t recognize. It slithers past the girl and startles her further, before resting around Kagha’s ankles in a heap of scales. “Go, girl.” She commands. “Be gone from my sight before I change my mind.”

The girl does as Kagha says, but not without a scared glance toward you. You ignore her, and keep your eyes pinned on the archdruid instead. You listen as the girl scurries up the steps behind you, and pushes aside the stone door that leads outside. The thud as it shuts behind her echoes throughout the cave-sanctum. You and Kagha stare each other down. She speaks first.

“You go, too. My message has been received.”

Pride still has its talons nestled deep in your shoulderblades. You lean down so that only Kagha can hear your voice over the running of the creek, your cheek nearly pressed against hers. You whisper to her, “I’ll bloodlet every goblin in the war camp, so that your mercy may know no bounds.”

Kagha’s eyes burn as she whispers, “Go.”

The fury of a viper bores into the back of your skull as you turn to leave; you bask in the radiance of her anger with each deliberately slow, uncaring step. Shadowheart turns in tandem with you as you head up the stairs, but you hear her pass off a quick cry of pain as a sigh. She clenches her right hand with her left, and tries to ignore the concerned look you give her.

‘Don’t worry about it.’ She says sternly within your mind, finding her way in through the cracks despite you having shut her out earlier. ‘It’s just something that pains me from time to time.’

You let your one-sided conversation fall away, unwilling to infringe on her privacy, unwilling to infringe on your own. You are thankful to find yourself outside again so soon. Kagha’s glare dissipates from the back of your head, from your shoulders, and Shadowheart’s voice no longer echoes in your mind.

The emerald swirl of magic that still engulfs the center of the inner sanctum is breathtaking, despite its danger. You consider it a reflection of yourself, that perhaps when the time comes, you might harm those around you immeasurably. You are a coin, one that veers on the edge of a beautiful grove and a red-hazed abyss.

A swift breath of music sweeps down the cliffside in front of you, faint but notable, soft and sweet and— in mourning. You find your companions still standing by the entrance to the inner grounds, below the cliff that obscures the singer from sight. The druids are steadfast before them, unwavering. Fayeth ignores how closely she brushes a guard’s shoulder, and as you approach, she asks, “What did Kagha say of the tiefling’s dilemma?”

You force away a prideful smirk and ignore her, aside from a quick glance, delighting in her infuriated glare. Instead, you ask Wyll, “Where did the tiefling girl run off to? Does she have a mother?”

“Ah, Arabella, you mean.” Wyll sighs in relief. “Yes, she reunited with her parents up the hill. I’m sure they’ll want to thank you.”

You’re not so sure. Perhaps you had scared Arabella as much as the viper, with the frightened look she’d given you, with the way your eyes had strained against hers.

Fayeth asks again what Kagha said to you, but you shake off the question as if it’s an annoyance, and perhaps it is. Your mind has only grown heavier the more you’ve tried to hide your inner conflict. The longer you hide it, you fear, the stronger it may yet grow— whatever it may be.

But you hear that song again, scattered by the wind, and suddenly the fog in your mind sharpens into a blade. You look to the twig-crowned druid and ask, “Are we allowed up the cliff?”

The druid parts slightly, enough to allow everyone inside the inner grounds one at a time. “The hill is permitted to outsiders— for now. An infernal bard is the one you hear singing. Do us a favor, and tell her to face the other side, so that we may not hear it.”

The druids relent their guard and allow you and your companions through the inner grove. They almost naturally fall in behind you, and follow you underneath a half-fallen archway that leads up the hillside. The singing that draws you in so easily is accompanied now by distracted lute-plucking. You first come upon a flat landing at the top of the hill, and then find a blue tiefling with violet hair singing faintly to herself, chastising each lyric that arises. You watch the apple of her throat move as she begins to force out the words to a half-formed song.

Fayeth slides past you and brushes hard against your shoulder in petty recompense. She steps up to the girl immediately with her hands held firmly behind her back, like a practiced noble. “Could I help you, dear bard?”

The girl nearly drops her lyre before adjusting herself. She sets down her instrument and eyes every one of you in surprise, and stutters out, “Oh, I’m, I’m sorry, I noticed none of you come up the hill.” She pushes her hair behind her ears. “I’m, um, I’m Alfira.”

“That’s quite alright, Alfira.” Fayeth reassures her. “I’m Fayeth.” She points to her companions, one-by-one. “This is Velarissa, Shadowheart, Wyll, and Mazeiah.”

Alfira’s eyes land on you last, hovering over you like twin suns in a vast blue sky. Your face grows warm, and your hands begin to sweat. Even the idea of Arabella’s death had not made you itch like this.

“We heard your singing and thought it was lovely. Are you writing something?” Fayeth asks her, inviting herself to sit beside the bard on a stone bench. “I play, too.”

“Well, yes, but I’m having trouble getting the words right. It’s— It’s not a particularly happy song, I’m afraid.”

“One of loss, perhaps? I know your people have suffered lately.”

“Yes,” Alfira glances at you again, you being the only other tiefling present. “I’m writing it for my teacher— for Lihala.”

The tiefling twists her face in an attempt to keep herself from crying in front of strangers, and clumsily wipes her tears with the back of her hands. “I’m sorry, I just…”

Fayeth carefully places a well-meaning hand on her back, and is even so bold as to play gently with the tiefling’s hair. “No need to be sorry, Alfira. I don’t mind to help you write it, if you have an hour or so to spare.”

Alfira laughs into her hands and says, “We’re practically sitting ducks here. I have all the time in the world. Lihala— Lihala didn’t. I just want a song to honor her by.”

Fayeth wraps an arm entirely around Alfira’s shoulders, and then a gust of wind comes and whips your hair against your face, and strikes you with the sweet scent of the bard.

You then find yourself with a sick smile across your face that the others might mistake for sympathy. This one you do not let stay; you wipe it away with the back of your hand, pressed to your mouth as if you might vomit. The bard is so novelly pure-hearted that it makes your stomach lurch. An intimate feeling crawls its way up your back and puts its hands on your shoulders again, taking control of your senses to a more severe degree than pride ever has. Your teeth clench together until it feels as if your jaw might unhinge from the pressure, exposing your tiefling fangs that so long to sink into flesh, like a wolf that has cornered a doe.

You back away with what little you can feel your feet, turning away from them all without a word. You make your way down the cliff, each hard step you take making you want to run— but running would assure you of your shame, of your guilt, and make it known to all.

Wretched thing, You hiss into the void of your half-formed mind. Pull yourself together.

The bard does not leave your thoughts, not that night, nor the next, nor while hunting through the Emerald Forest. The need for maiming inflames your very skin, manifesting in the quick, slick ways you skin the doe you catch, watching the animal’s blood fall thicker and thicker down your arms until you can see naught but a river of red. Under the water’s surface, the orange-light eyes of Alfira pass by, wide with the horror that your hands inflict upon her.

Who could you be, to want for a death so terrible? Such a desire wants to consume all of your being— it will never be just a part of you, you come to realize. With each night that passes, it grows harder and harder to conceal it from your companions, from the tieflings, from the grove. How you will hide it in Baldur’s Gate eludes you— how you will hide it from the world, you cannot fathom.

Chapter 2: the weight of revival

Chapter Text

There are some nights when sleep eludes you entirely. On those nights, you resort to going on moonlit walks to try and calm your ever-churning mind, but even so, you still do not tire. Your body was made to be restless, restless with anticipation for the next thing you might sink your blade into. And it seems that every night you wade through, barefoot in the mire of your mind, the dawn is upon you without warning.

The first saffron light filters through the canopy you stalk beneath, and glints into the corner of your eye, bringing your hunt to a halt as you admire the spots it sends across the ground: orange crescents that sway with the head of the trees, lulling you this way and that before you look upon the body of the dawn, rising altogether over the horizon. You hope a light such as this may one day burn away your half-revealed sins, but you know it will only ever expose them in full. Such revelation sends panic from your heart to your fingertips, but your eyes burn into the ground like the sunlight does, and the panic slowly dissipates.

The crescents disappear into the underbrush, and you are left studying the dew-wet ground. Your feet instinctively carry you to what your eyes quickly piece together: the tracks of a boar. You know you follow them as a distraction, but you follow them anyway, until they become fresher and fresher. You lower yourself, and lean into the security of early-morning shadows, surveying the slope beneath you. After a moment, you spot the boar, lying dead, tucked away underneath a bush. You realize now that a pulse has swelled in your ears, pushing your blood through you with the fervor of murder, even a murder as meager as an animal’s.

You try to shake away the blood-call and stomp down the slope, disappointed with yourself and with the state of the boar. You stoop down and pull the animal out by its legs from the shrubbery. It’s grey and stiff, with marks lining its sides, desperate, clawless fingers having dug into it in an attempt to hold it down. Most notably, there is no blood. You look closer, and find two little punctures in the fat of its neck. A fresh trail of humanoid boots, not your own, treks from the slaughter site, back to camp.

Your thoughts immediately fly to Astarion, whose barely-hidden fangs and pale-as-pearls complexion do him no favors in hiding his vampirism. If he had not taken the time to hunt an animal so far from camp, you would think that he wasn’t trying to hide it at all. He refrains from drinking from the others, you determine, so as to not expose himself to them, and invoke their collective wrath. His near-constant facade will only preserve him as long as he can convince the others that he’s no threat— revealing himself as a creature of the night will do quite the opposite.

You wonder how long Astarion can bear to resist drinking from someone, but as you stomp away tiredly through the forest, you consider that the vampire’s bite might just bring you the rest you’ve been so desperately seeking. Your skin prickles with a foreign sense of want, but you instinctively brush it away, and try to ignore the spring coiling in your shoulders. The barest touch from anyone will be the end of them, you’re sure, for your body is the tide, and night will always covet the waves.

You don’t manage to return with a doe until just a little after noon, after you’d found a field of deer resting in patches of scattered sunlight. The others are pleased, at least, in knowing they can trust you to find dinner every other day. You go to set down the beast within a makeshift skinning tent, and try not to eye Astarion along the way as you pass by him. Should he see your face, he will know right away that you’re aware of his secret, no matter how stoic you present yourself.

He is preoccupied with a book, to your relief. You duck underneath the tent’s entrance and slide the doe from your shoulders onto a stone table. It’s nasty business to most, but to you, the blood running over your hands as you set to work brings a familiar warmth through your veins. It pools under your fingernails, controlling your hands as you carefully dissect the poor animal, peeling away its coarse hide and submerging yourself in the allure of its innards.

An afternoon has suddenly gone by. The doe was cut and set hours ago, but somehow you still find yourself within the tent, smearing blood on your palms like a child with paint. You are only pulled away from your amazement when Gale’s voice is heard from outside.

“May I come in?”

You nod before realizing that the wizard cannot see you do so. You shake your head of the fog that obscures you from the hours unconsciously passed, and jump up from your seat as you bury your hands in the water basin and begin furiously scrubbing. “Yes.”

A purple haze seeps in from the corner of your vision, and you find yourself blurry with delirium as you twist your hands through the water, blood squelching between your palms as you lock your fingers together in a soft panic. You do not cease your grisly idling even as the wizard watches you closely, with equal parts curiosity and mild alarm.

“You’ve been at it for quite some time. Are you alright?”

You don’t care to explain what you don’t understand; you continue washing up as you stare blankly at the back of the tent, rather than at Gale. “I lost track of time. You can take it for dinner now.”

Gale eyes you for a moment, you can tell even as he’s standing behind you, but he apparently decides that your deflection is not enough of an issue for him. “Well, then, find the fire by dark, and I’ll have a bowl set out for you.”

“It’s chilled in the river, I think.” You unintentionally ignore his thoughtfulness as you pull your hands from the basin and flick the red water away. You don’t remember leaving the tent, but the bucket is not here, and you are not one to waste food by leaving it out somewhere you cannot find it.

Gale patiently awaits another comment as his eyes flit around the tent, but relents when he finds the conversation empty. He moves to leave with a quiet, “Thank you,” and exits in a hurry.

You turn and watch the tent flaps swing closed. You have half a mind to go after him, to assure him that you are not some kind of demented hemophiliac, but anyone in this camp, especially him, would see through such a lie.

You set out for the river, intending to wash yourself, but find Gale grabbing the bucket from its shallows, wading in with his trousers pulled up to his knees.

It’s only when a chill wind whips against you do you realize that you’re bare-chested and bloodied beyond just your hands— no wonder the wizard had felt awkward. Gale’s eyes drop to the jagged scars that underline your pectorals, and rake over them with curiosity tenfold than what he’d shown you a moment ago. He drops them further, sinking his vision to the river at his feet. You are close enough that he doesn’t have to talk very loudly over the bubbling of the shallows to be heard.

“I didn’t mean to, ah…” His voice fades into the rush of the river. You shake your head gently, and shrug.

“It’s no bother to me.” You do not mind that he has seen your scars, but the blood that cakes your hands and forearms you know concerns him.

He gives you a shrug back as he takes a step toward you, despite his furrowed face. He goes to step around you, but stops beside your shoulder. You almost think you feel his breath on your ear, but the whistling that tunnels into your mind tells you it’s the wind instead. “We’re all in the same situation, you know.” He says. “If you need to talk, I’ve been told I’m a good listener.”

You eye him up and down for a moment, letting the wind roll his words around in your skull. “Do you offer me consolation because of my scars, or because you found me so covered in blood?”

Yours is a serious question, but his reluctance is apparent, and you allow a grin to tug at the corners of your mouth in attempt to look as if you’re only joking.

The wizard sighs and chuckles in relief at your smile. “You had me worried for a moment.”

“A small jest.” You want to let your grin widen, but instead your lips tighten together, and you find a lump in your throat. You remember how you almost tore the wizard’s hand from his wrist just a few days ago. You push the memory down. “I didn’t realize that I was…”

“Like I said, we’re all in the same boat here. Same nautiloid, more like.” Gale waves away his attempt at humor, and then continues, “Find me come dinner, and you’ll be fed.”

“Thank you, Gale.” You say as you watch him depart.

You turn and sink your boots into the shallows, and wade around the bend until you are sure no one can see you anymore. You strip yourself, and set your clothes on the damp rocks that line the waterlogged bank. The river is ice-cold against your waist, and after you realize its chill is not something to become accustomed to, you set to cleaning the stains from your body.

It feels like the thousandth time you’ve scrubbed yourself so raw you can nearly see the pink beneath the green of your palms. Your skin adorns itself with unworthiness, with a renewed need to rid itself of the sins brewing at your fingertips. Your knife-hand twitches with the want to twist into the gut of something— someone— but it turns over in the water, empty, and then turns numb in the cold. All you do is distract yourself from your burdens— with hunting, fighting, skinning— but even distraction comes at a cost.

To waste hours of your day playing with your food, only to let yourself be caught with its blood bound to you— to let Gale witness you in such a state is surely a mistake. You cannot hide it forever, but telling your companions these half-truths will only isolate you, you’re sure. They’re an understanding bunch, but even so, you cannot envision them accepting a torturer— a murderer— within their company, not for overlong. If anyone is to piece you together, it will likely be Gale, or Astarion. The former will reveal your depravity to the others to keep them all safe; the latter will reveal you to save his own skin.

Unless you reveal yourself to them all first.

Your mind wanders back to the bard in the grove, and you know deep in your belly that she will be your downfall.

It’s dark by the time you dry off and return to camp. The fire beckons your soaked-cold bones, your damp clothes clinging to you in all the wrong places. Your despondent expression exposes you to the others. Shadowheart first reaches out to you on the fringes of your occupied mind, but you barely notice her presence lingering at the border before you open up and let her trickle in.

‘Are you alright? Tadpole getting to you?’

You huff in her direction without meeting her eyes, and sit down on an empty piece of driftwood between her and the druid Travenya, the latter of which who nods to you as you do.

You don’t care to entertain Shadowheart with a response; you close your mind to her. She raises a brow at you, but doesn’t say anything before she returns her focus to the various conversations around the fire.

Gale comes up from behind you with a hot bowl of stew. You’re suddenly struck with the impulse to knock it from his hands, tear apart his robe from the collar-down, and rip a blade through his stomach. Your knife-hand twitches in your lap, but this is the only obvious sign of your wickedness, and no one seems to notice as you hold it still between your knees.

You force the glaze in your eyes to dissolve as you take the bowl with your free hand. It’s hotter than the hells in your nearly-raw palm. You glance at Gale as you set the bowl in your lap. “Thank you.”

“You did the hard part, catching dinner.” Gale humbles himself. “I just put it together.”

“And it has yet to disappoint.” Chimes in Caelwin, another wizard, a diviner of sorts. Gale gives him a creased smile from across the fire.

“Well, I’m glad my cooking suffices.”

“More than,” Karlach says with a mouthful. “Do you know what the food’s like in Avernus? Not. Good.”

Travenya shakes away a shudder. “Gods, can I only imagine.”

“Unless I tell you about it in full detail! But maybe after dinner.”

“I would appreciate that.” Gale says as he walks around the fire to find his seat again, next to Caelwin.

You sip your soup in amusem*nt at the chain of conversation, and try to ignore the burning in your hands. Casualty like this is unfamiliar, but welcome. You could sit and listen to them for hours, so long as they kept your mind from spilling over and dousing the fire. Yet as you glance around the circle, you notice that someone is not among the rest of your companions. You find Astarion sitting near his tent, still reading his book. Perhaps the elf has already eaten, but you doubt it. You have not once seen him partake in the animals you’ve hunted the past few nights— aside from the sanguined boar.

Your eyes linger on him for too long, for now you’re staring at each other, and neither one of you drops your gaze. You’re bold enough to call him over with a subtle wave of your hand, but he rolls his eyes at the offer, closes his book, and heads into the privacy of his tent.

You set down your half-empty bowl in your lap as your eyes fall to the fire. Conversation is blurred to you now, as you stew in the reminder that your connection to others is folly at best— and murder, at worst. How useless it is to get to know the people you might soon kill, should this thing finally overtake you.

Boredom overtakes you first. The others depart for their tents soon after dinner is cleaned up, and you’re left with a buzzing in your head that even inebriation cannot replicate. Sleep has eluded you now for the past few nights, and tomorrow you’re meant to search for the goblin camp, with you leading the hunt. Even with a fight brewing, even with an expedition planned, you cannot force your eyes to stay closed, or your mind to stay quiet. You can’t determine if you’re kept awake by the shame your sharp, fleeting memories foist upon you, or if it’s because you can’t trust yourself to fall asleep without waking soaked in the blood of your companions.

You will stay awake regardless then, you decide, and keep watch over your own creeping shadow.

It’s hot out that night. You lie with your tent flaps open, on your side and with your shirt off. Your fingers trace the scar that lines your neck as you imagine who might have tried to kill you. You dance your way down to the scars that scatter across your chest, carved by a dagger wielded by your own hand— or so you assume. You pretend to hold the hilt of one now, and the way it rakes through your flesh confirms this much— that you are the artist who painted these erratic streaks of fireworks across your skin. You wonder who had healed you from such ghastly wounds, but the flicker of shadow catches your eye, and draws in a new memory.

The fire casts light against you, its source far enough away so that its heat does not add another layer to this already miserable weather. It displays your shadow on the back wall of the tent, shadow-puppets dancing along it. Hands upon hands bundle together, the hands of a family, a family that must have once been yours— for you find your green fists among them, casting depictions of dogs and crows and rabbits across that same blood-stained wall you had glimpsed with Astarion.

You wonder if you were the one to have killed them, but your face hardens in shame, already knowing the answer as it climbs up your back. The shadows grow darker, but you grow no less tired.

The hands fall away around you as you hear the slightest, faintest shuffling behind you. If you had not already been awake, you would not have heard it. You remain still and breathe steady, as if you’re asleep, and this thing inside you sharpens to a point.

It’s only when Astarion is on his hands and knees by your side does he finally notice your watchful eye, yellow as the moon. You sit up and turn around as quick as lightning, sending him reeling in shock. The elf lands flat on his ass, and his facade fully crumbles, if just for a moment. You delight in how much you scare him.

“sh*t.” He says with a practiced, steady voice that his panicked face betrays. He quickly recollects himself and gets back on his feet, crouched and ready to run if need be. You’re hardly as shaken. Instead, you sit wondering whose bloodlust is stronger, and try to keep yourself from springing to your feet.

“I— I wasn’t going to hurt you, I swear.”

You wave in dismissal, and imagine what the vampire’s bite might feel like, how it might still your body and your mind and finally put you to sleep. Astarion can drain your blood and suck the marrow from your bones like he had the boar— so long as your knife-hand is kept from twitching in your sleep, you don’t think you’d mind.

The vampire awaits a response, and forces his expression to relax. You tilt your head to one side, and try to find any truth in the swimming vermillion of his eyes; his vulnerability is masked, but ample.

“You’ve never done this before.” You determine.

His eyes widen just by a hair, just for a moment, before returning to an unfazed, sour droop. He allows himself a contradictory smirk in an attempt to look like he knows what he’s doing. “I’ve not crept up on someone feigning sleep, if that’s what you mean.”

Being nonchalant is a security to him, and you do not wish to pull the rug out from under his feet— not anymore than you already have— so you let him smirk and play his centuries-long game, but you will not reciprocate. You want to see his eyes wide again.

He asks you, “When did you… piece it all together?”

“I found your boar this morning while I was hunting.” You eye his throat. “You don’t hide the marks on your neck very well, besides.”

You can tell that he resists the impulse to pull his shirt collar higher. He tuts at himself. “I should have concealed it better. So is that why you’re awake tonight? To make sure I don’t come calling?”

If only you could turn your distrust for yourself onto others so easily; he does not worry you. You shake your head. “No. I’ve not slept for some nights now. Something else keeps me awake.”

“The little wriggler, I’m sure.”

You don’t intend to correct him. He kicks his feet out from under him, and leans into his fallen position now, resting an elbow on his knee and moving his hand as he talks. “Am I going to find myself with a stake through my heart, or is this something I can walk away from?”

“You would give up so easily after having been caught?”

His quiet laugh is shameless. “No, I intend to ask the favor of you, despite it.”

“Then ask.”

Astarion looks you up and down before leaning forward; his face changes into something deceptively soft. “Will you… let me drink from you, Mazeiah? I need only enough to get me through our adventure tomorrow. I’ll suffer the rest from goblins, if you’ll only give me a drop.”

You like your name on his tongue, and you think he knows it. His eyes must be as heavy as his hunger, with the way they hang at your throat. You ask him, “What will it feel like?”

His eyes flick back up to you, and all the softness in him dispels. “Like ice in your veins. You won’t have much of a will, if any.”

Good, you think to yourself, keeping your mind staunchly closed from him, as he does to you. Perhaps you hide your impulses better than you think, otherwise the vampire would have never chosen you to creep up on. You want to tell him how foolish this is of him, but refrain, hoping that a good night’s rest will come to you if you let it. You tilt your neck a little more and gesture him forward, but he stays perfectly still, even as his eyes take hold where you want them to.

“What do you gain from it? You seem a sympathetic sort when you’re not killing things, but even so…”

“I want to sleep.”

Astarion gives you a dumbfounded look before he recovers himself with a smile and a laugh too hearty to be real. You delight again and again in his subtle, quickly-changing expressions.

“You’re going to let me drink your very lifeblood, and all you want in return is a good night’s rest. Ha!”

“If you can manage it.”

“And you’re not going to stab me when you change your mind? When you realize halfway-through that all of your willpower is taken from you?”

You’ve little control of yourself even now; it will feel no different, you imagine. “Take all of it, then, lest I change my mind after all.”

“Hm,” He murmurs, his smirk all-encompassing now, his eyes heavy as they fall and rise along with your breathing body. “I knew you would be interesting.”

You’re grateful that he asks for no further explanation. He rebounds cheerfully with, “I’ll give you what you want, then.”

You hold up a hand. “Careful, Astarion.” You warn him quietly. You pick up your belt from your pile of belongings, with your daggers attached to it, and toss it outside of the tent before offering the vampire your hand. “You’re not the only one who’s sharp.”

Astarion chuckles at you, and takes your hand anyway. You pull him suddenly forward, and he doesn’t resist the momentum as he tumbles into your lap with a gasp. You resist the desire to kiss him then, to split his lip with your teeth. Instead, you lean your head to the side and brush away the hair at your neck. He takes his careful, cold fingers and pushes it further behind your ear. You shiver, and quell the urge to twist his fingers backwards, to hear him yelp in pain and see his eyes bulge.

You need him alive, you remind yourself in an attempt to resist your darker whims. You need to sleep.

The vampire is not keen to squander such an opportunity. He draws in close, closer than he’s ever been, and smiles against your neck. You await the sting of his bite, and barely stifle a groan when he finally sinks his pearlescent fangs into you. His venom storms through your veins like a blizzard, until you are as rigid as a corpse against him.

He pushes you to the ground, gently at first, then harder as he pries your frozen hands from the back of his shirt. He straddles himself across your middle, and presses deeper. You can feel the embers falling from your wound, flushed out by the ice lining your insides, giving way to the blood that bridges your bodies together— blood, you realize, that is never meant to be spilled. Such overwhelming dread is a warning, only recognizable now as you give away your ichor with abandon. You know not from where it stems.

The edge of your vision begins to fade away, and with each blink you can feel yourself slipping into unconsciousness. Your limbs are as heavy as lead, even as they twitch involuntarily against Astarion’s grasp, but you can move nothing. The vampire’s bite will grant you sleep, after all, even if it is to be a permanent one. You hardly resist, for if death-sleep is as lovely and as sharp as this, you’ll rest comfortably for all time, and never spill your blood again— nor anyone else’s.

The hands of your family reach up from the dirt now, and claw away at your bare skin, raking against your sides and taking hold of you so that you might join them. Astarion’s white hair turns dark as you face the all-encompassing oblivion of death, and you don’t notice when it’s pitch-blackness overtakes you entirely, and your mind finally, finally quiets from the chorus of insects and the thrumming of blood.

Nothing awaits you.

Yet come the morn, you find that even death-sleep does not last long for you.

You jerk awake to a blinding light and an unbearable itch in your chest, as your heart begins to beat again and the modicum of blood left in you trickles through it. You turn onto your side and hack out a violent, churning cough that rattles you thoroughly. You look up to the light, and see clearly the cornflower-blue bard standing before you. You go rigid, too exhausted to react, whether it be to reach out for her or to recoil.

You squeeze your eyes shut hard, burning from the severity of the sunlight, your head spinning, chest aching— but despite it all, the words of others begin to leak in, and eventually you open your eyes again, and find the blurry image of Shadowheart crouching beside you. She is dark-haired and glowering— and surely not blue.

“Awake, you,” She says sourly, crossing her arms. “Tell us what happened.”

“Give him time, Shadowheart. Look at him.” Fayeth is somewhere, barely audible.

You glance around with a blur surrounding the edges of your senses, and find the shapes of everyone else— the burning scarlet of Karlach, the amethyst of Gale— staring you down. The blur dissolves away slowly, but the savagery you’ve so peacefully slept through comes barreling down on you tenfold now, crashing against your skull like a tidal wave, like a bolt of lightning against the impenetrable depths of the ocean.

You mourn your fleeting respite with a crying heave from the very gallows of your stomach, and retch. The others back away from you in a hurry. Your arms are hardly strong enough to hold yourself up on your side as you dry-heave from the stench of viscera piling around you, torn from the stomachs of strangers and family and lovers alike. When you heave your last, and still nothing emerges, you fall onto your back and catch your dry, ragged breath.

You try not to think of the bard, lest your throat constrict again, and send you into another bout of it. You feel the wind on your bare shoulders then, and realize that all the others have now seen your jagged chest— but your brief embarrassment is easily overtaken by the urge that burns up your spine.

They are lucky your limbs are too heavy to move.

“Up now, easy.” Shadowheart tries to coax you into sitting up, but you don’t make the attempt. You stare up blankly at the early-morning sky; streaks of peach and apricot criss-cross like leylines through thin clouds. You wallow in your stupor, and ignore their ceaseless, pitying observation of you.

“We’re supposed to scout for the war camp today,” Shadowheart reminds you. “I suppose it must wait until tomorrow.”

You don’t know how long you’ll feel like this, heavy-limbed and slow-minded. How long have you been asleep, how deeply?

You realize suddenly that you haven’t been sleeping at all.

“The vampire has inconvenienced us by stealing our day,” Lae’zel says from somewhere to your right. “And he has inconvenienced you by stealing your life. You should be the one to decide what to do with his.”

It’s then that you find the strength to finally sit up. Wyll puts a hand on your back to help steady you. You’re too weak to take his arm under your own and break it with your weight, but the burning feeling that compels such thoughts doesn’t dissipate as steadily as it usually does.

You redirect yourself by scanning the camp’s perimeter with blurry, eager eyes, and find Astarion on the edge of your vision, bound to a tree. Even though he is distorted enough to mistake for a white sheep, you can tell that he’s watching you; and you swear that you can feel your shared lifeblood beating between the two of you now.

You think back to last night, to his leering, carmine eyes, heavy and willing to bend under the weight of his centuries-long hunger. You find yourself incapable of placing blame on him, when you’re sure that your own hunger far outweighs his.

He bled you dry, but even still, you don’t find yourself caring. Your blood may boil at the act of giving itself away from the wineskin that is your body, but you’ll do it again, you know, and you’ll do it cold and breathless.

You force the words hoarsely from your dry throat. “Bring him here.”

You command no one in particular. They all send confused glances to one another before Wyll decides to stand up from behind you and make his way to Astarion. The monster hunter goes to untie the monster, and then makes him walk over to confront you, rather than slink away.

Wyll holds Astarion’s arms behind his back and pushes him forward. The vampire drags his feet through the dirt, likely believing that today will be his last. You look between the two of them, and try to shun the thought of cutting your blood from Astarion’s pretty neck; and as much as you try to resist it, the urge does not let go of you so easily this time.

Your arm springs up like broken clockwork, and your fist collides with his jaw. You fall down to your knees and pant, with what little breath you’ve held released in one go. Astarion stumbles back into Wyll, who stands unmoving, and unsympathetic toward the vampire. The latter groans, and snaps his eyes to you as you catch your decrepit breath.

“I—” Astarion rubs his jaw with his thumb. “I can’t say I blame you.”

You hold your fist against your lap with your other hand, and try to keep yourself from pouncing again like a tiger crouched in a field. You grit your teeth and command, “Let him go.”

Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say. Shadowheart gives you an incredulous look for it, with an eyebrow raised in confusion, her eyes narrowed by something just a shade darker than annoyance.

“You’re saying you’re okay with this? I used my only revivification scroll on you, you know. If you had been unwilling to come back, you wouldn’t be alive right now.”

Alive. You breathe in the word and find that your gaze has not once lifted from Astarion’s bemused face, his cheek already bruising with your ichor. The soft bliss of death is the only thing that has ever made you feel alive, the only thing aside from the rush of murder to make your heart race, even as it’s drained of any beat it might drum to. If Astarion can make you feel as such every night, you will hold nothing against him, you decide.

He watches you now with barely-obscured fear behind his eyes, the corners of his mouth twisted only slightly in a smile, all of it an act to conceal the panic building in him. You ignore Shadowheart’s inquiry and nod at Wyll, who nods back to you with apparent hesitation.

Astarion is amused, nearly laughing— perhaps in disbelief— as Wyll begrudgingly unties him. He rubs his sore wrists and shoots you a nervous, fanged grin. “You have a penchant for surprises, you know.”

You keep your wolf-eyes trained on him. Your mouth is welded shut, and your mind draws a blank. You should be angry. Anyone in their right mind would be. The light on the river-beach you’d awoken on had blinded you, but warmed you. The anticipation for maiming and flaying makes you feel alive, yes, but perhaps that feeling on the beach had come close. Perhaps that feeling would outshine your urges, one day.

You should be angry that he’d almost taken that chance away, but you know it’s not anger that sullies you. The only thing that rises is the urge, tempting you to sweep the legs out from the elf and pin him to the dirt. Not out of vengeance, or recompense, but out of an intrusive, morbid caprice.

You suppose it’s too much to ask of death, to remove this curse from you.

“Now,” Astarion lets go of his wrist, and pushes his sleeves up to his elbows. “I admit, I got quite… carried away last night. I didn’t mean to go so far. I want to… apologize.”

He even bows his head slightly for show, but you know he is not the least sorry.

“Don’t lie.” Something in your voice wipes the smirk off his face. “If you hadn’t, I would have killed you first.”

All precautions you’ve taken so far in concealing your nature have been too hastily spent, for now there is little barring the truth of your compulsions from spilling in front of everyone— just as their insides would spill across the ground if you were not so encumbered by the weight of revival.

Astarion’s smile creeps back steadily, but it doesn’t reach his dark eyes. “Then I’m glad to have made the right choice.”

“Gods, are you both mad.” Karlach interrupts. She stands behind Shadowheart, and leans over the both of you with her hands on her hips. “But if you two promise not to kill each other— not again, anyway— then maybe we can all finally eat some breakfast.”

Travenya laughs at Karlach from behind you, but Shadowheart scowls at Astarion.

“Someone’s already had their fill, it seems.” She says tartly. He rolls his eyes at her. “Don’t let it happen again.”

“Whether or not it happens again is none of your concern.” You retort. Your heart and its shallow blood are racing, the truth of the matter rising too quickly to the surface. Your shaky hands overturn in your lap. Shadowheart is infuriated.

“Maybe you should be a little more thankful to the person who just revived you!” She stands up and backs away a few feet, too angry to be close to you. You shudder in an attempt to ignore the thrashing in your skull. They all seem to notice, and a new line of worry adds to their faces.

“I’m— I’m sorry, Shadowheart.” You repent quietly to her. You should be more than grateful for the second chance she has given you.

“Thank you for bringing life into me.” You tell her. “And Astarion,” You tear your shaking eyes away from the half-elf and look upon him again. “Thank you for taking it.”

He is bewildered. He considers you for a moment, looking over you as if you’re someone new, someone shaking with the misfortune of rebirth. “Like I said, you’ve a penchant for it.”

Chapter 3: penance

Chapter Text

The others are altogether dissatisfied with how the morning unfolds. They shuffle around each other awkwardly in camp, keeping their conversations close and quiet, sending glances toward you and Astarion as the two of you sit together far away from the fire. He asks you, just once, about the true intention behind allowing yourself to be bitten, to be killed, but after your initial deflection he drops it, perhaps afraid of invoking your ire if he presses the issue further. He changes the subject to the matter at hand: finding the goblin camp.

A few hours of rest, with some food and water, has done you some good. Your body still feels as if it’s snapping out of rigor mortis, but overall you are less lead-infused than you were earlier. Gale suggests scouting for the war camp tomorrow, when you’re likely to feel better, but you want to get it done today. There is little time to waste before your limbs remember how swift they can be, and while your exhaustion may slow you down in a fight against goblins, you have no doubt that you will still be lethal. You need to rid yourself of this urge long before you fully recover, lest it exert itself wiping this camp of your companions.

Travenya offers to lead the hunt for you, but the others agree that bringing a druid along will only blow your cover. You all elect to split into two groups: one to investigate the inn along the Risen Road, and the other to infiltrate the war camp and rescue Halsin. Velarissa, the drow, will be your leader once you find the camp; Shadowheart, Astarion, Wyll, and yourself will follow her. Wyll had insisted on coming along with Astarion, in order to keep an eye on him, and you’d been too tired to argue.

You trudge through the forest now, and keep your eyes pinned to the dirt, foraging for signs in the mud. Your steps are heavy, and your brain pounds against the restriction that is your skull, but nevertheless you push on so that you do not give your urge time to recover.

Footprints appear to you sometime later, belonging neither to your group nor to goblins. Quicker and quicker you move now as you follow along the tracks. The same blood-rush that encompassed you as you’d hunted Astarion’s boar follows you now, pushing past your exhaustion and sharpening your mind as fast as the crack of a whip. The scent of ruin rushes down the hill you climb until you crest the top, the others panting behind you, only for you all to find the company of Aradin slaughtered in the mud of the road. They had been left to rot before the bridge that led them to their deaths.

The five of you collectively stop and stare down at the bodies, watching the flies come and go. The blood-rush pulses hard in your ears, but you try and ignore it for the sake of your companions, who have watched you steadily since your revival.

Astarion scouts a little ahead to observe what lay in wait inside the gate of a dilapidated village. Velarissa bows her head in silent prayer, while Shadowheart tries to ignore her, shooting an annoyed look from the cleric to you. Wyll paces back and forth and tries not to look upset over the death displayed before him.

You keep your eyes interlocked with Shadowheart’s, so that your mind does not delve into the cavity of the body below you. You wonder if Velarissa had prayed over you like that while you were dead last night.

To your relief, Astarion comes bounding back to you all. “Goblins ahead, of course.” He says. “We ought to find a way around.”

You find yourself waiting for Astarion to take the lead down the hill that wraps around the village, but no one moves. Velarissa’s eyes pin you down first as she looks up from her finished prayer.

“None of us are hunters, Mazeiah. You’re best fit to lead us further in these woods. On you go, dear ranger.”

A feeling settles in your stomach, as heavy as rocks sewn into your guts, one that will never erode. It tells you that you’ve left bodies in sh*t-stained roads before, just like this, many times— and you did it so easily and without remorse that you can likely do it in your sleep; while your hands are bound; with your hands.

You’re no ranger.

It’s perhaps another half-hour before you finally find the first signs of the war camp: the putrid smell of it gets to you first. It isn’t long after your nose is set burning do you find a wooden bridge. It will lead you over a chasm and to the main gate, if you follow it, but none of you do just yet. You settle yourselves in the bushes and trees along the edges of the road, near the base of a cliff, and watch the gate from afar.

“We could get Halsin now.” You suggest, watching the goblins as they shuffle around.

“There are a lot more of them than the five of us.” Wyll responds. “Perhaps we ought to gather the others first.”

“What, and march in with an army?” Astarion argues. “I’d rather we take a few people who know how to keep their mouths shut. Mazeiah and I can sneak around by ourselves, if we must.”

Hearing your name on someone’s tongue, especially his, is foreign to you. You heard it once last night, softer than you’d heard it just now; and if you had stayed dead, you would have never heard it again.

“I don’t think it would be very safe for Mazeiah to go running off with you again.” Wyll states as he sits crouched between you two, hanging back far enough for you all to glare at each other.

Velarissa sighs sharply. “I doubt the vampire will do any harm. It seemed like an accident in the first place. Drop it now, lest we blow our cover while inside.”

The three of you exchange equally dumbfounded glances with one another, surprised by the Selûnite’s leniency. Shadowheart is the only one who looks unamused by the drow’s comment.

“Really? A cleric of Selûne is content with a vampire running amok?” She questions with her arms crossed.

Astarion scoffs. “I don’t ‘run amok’ through camp, thank you. I’m rather well-behaved, all things considered.”

Shadowheart rolls her eyes at him, and he feigns offense. Velarissa ignores the vampire’s theatrics, and answers Shadowheart’s question. “I am not content with it. I simply believe that what was done was unintentional. If it happens again, he will die.” The drow turns to Astarion now, who tries to brush off her threat as if it’s nothing to him. “I’m sure you realize this, yes? I’m sure you’ll take greater caution from now on?”

He gives her the slyest of smiles. “Of course, darling. I don’t feel like being stabbed by any of you.”

“Well, I’m glad the word of a vampire settles it, then.” Wyll sneers at Astarion, but changes the subject despite his protest. He asks no one in particular, “How do we get in, then?”

“Velarissa,” You turn to her, “You can get us in. They’re following a drow already— they’d listen to you without question, I think.”

“You know what they say about assumption,” Shadowheart murmurs quietly near you. Your annoyance is obvious, but you hold your tongue, and refrain from chastising the person who brought you back to life not some hours ago. You watch her green eyes dart around as she observes goblins lazily patrolling the main gate. “But maybe you’re right. It looks like they’re celebrating.”

Astarion glances up at a slowly-darkening sky. “Night will cover us soon, should we need to leave in a hurry.”

You give Velarissa a simple nod when her eyes pull away from Shadowheart and fall on you. She nods back, and arises as your leader. The lot of you follow her across the bridge without any further discussion, the warm orange of the evening sun beaming against your backs. You find yourself somewhat afraid that it might be the last time you feel it.

You first approach a goblin with a toothy grin and a warg by his side. His face falls when he spots Velarissa, and he throws his drink to the ground in an attempt to look appeasing. “Commander!” He shouts. “Whatta pleasure!”

Velarissa plays her part flawlessly. She ignores the goblin entirely and walks right through the gate, with you, Astarion, Shadowheart, and Wyll in tow. There is no falter in her steps, and no hesitation in her eyes.

The goblin camp looks exactly like you had expected it to: food and drink strewn about, tattered tents and spikes stuck into the dirt, boxes torn into like animals, all of it accompanied by an overwhelming stink. The goblins run around either drunk out of their minds or playing games or both. You spot a poor juvenile owlbear being held down in a corner, corralled into a sort of makeshift maze, that you assume had been built for one of their games.

You force yourself to ignore them all, and follow Velarissa through two great oak doors that separate the ruined courtyard from the temple. You step inside to find a high ceiling with rafters, and steps leading down to an archway. The markings of the moon goddess are etched into the stone above you.

Velarissa breathes deeply at the sight of her goddess’ symbols. “A temple of Selûne. Look what they’ve done to it.”

“Fitting for the moon witch.” Shadowheart almost laughs at her. After having found a shrine to Selûne in a cave some days ago, the clerics had made it clear to one another who exactly they both worshipped. It was by coincidence that the groups had split up the way they did, otherwise the two would not have chosen to travel together again.

Velarissa’s voice is steady and low. “Save your jabs for later. We must keep up this facade, and bickering will do quite the opposite.”

“Then save your sermon for later. I need not be reminded just how much danger we’re in.”

“Quiet, elf, lest I wrench that tongue from you.” Velarissa’s voice booms all of a sudden as you pass by a guard of goblins that come patrolling up the long entryway. Velarissa stops them with a raised hand. “Where is the prisoner being kept?”

“Down the stairs and to the right, Commander. Two of us are down there interrogation’ him now.”

Without a word, Velarissa marches on. Shadowheart’s face shows pure hatred for the drow, but she says nothing, and with silence you all make your way through the ruins.

A goblin priestess is enacting some sort of ritual upon a group of her kind; her words are gibberish to you. Velarissa ignores them as she passes by, and so do the rest of you. You follow her until you hear a man yelling from a chamber that juts away from the main hall; Velarissa steers your group to him.

As you come upon the room, you find the man strapped to a rack as he’s tortured by two goblins, who poke at him with hot iron rods. The man suffers bruises, abrasions, and cuts that have been given little time to heal before being cut open again, leaving him prone to infection, to death.

You wonder if your hands have ever bent someone’s bones, if they’ve ever pushed an iron through someone’s cheek and into their teeth. The urge building inside you chips away at your exhaustion little by little.

“What are you doing?” Velarissa asks with a voice that makes the goblins spin around with slack jaws.

The fatter one stammers out, “W-We was just pokin’ him to make him talk!”

“Y-Yeah!” The other speaks up. “He knows where the grove is! Commander Minthara’s havin’ us torture it out of ‘im.”

You can smell the alcohol on them even from a few feet away.

“Leave.” Velarissa commands with ease, as if she’s practiced in this. The goblin pair puts down their iron rods in a nearby brazier, and briskly makes their way out of the room.

“Gods,” the man groans weakly, “Please.”

“Cut him loose,” Vel whispers quietly to you, and from under her dark parted bangs you can see her white-hot eyes burning. You take out your daggers and slice away the leathers binding the man’s wrists and ankles, not bothering to fool with the numerous locks on the mechanism. The man is lucky that you do not cut away his skin. Wyll comes to your side and helps the prisoner down from the rack onto his knees.

“Why… Why are you doing this?” His breath is shaky and parched. “You’re taking me to the other drow, aren’t you?”

“No.” Velarissa answers him quietly. “You’re not Halsin, then.”

The man shakes his head. “No… They took him farther into the ruins. I’m—I’m not sure where.”

Velarissa moves forward and drops to one knee, placing an elbow on the other. “You’re going to leave here and make your way back to the grove. Tell Zevlor that we’re here to rescue Halsin, and to await our return. If we don’t… Well, quickly now, yes? Go.”

The man breathes and shudders as if he cannot believe that he has survived his torture. “T-Thank you. Thank you.”

Wyll helps him rise, and with the last of his energy he runs off to the chasm that devours the right-half of the room, climbing desperately over cragged rock. He must have noticed the little bit of light streaming in through a deep crevice while he was stuck on the rack. You watch him slip past the rockface and disappear outside.

Astarion grabs your elbow with two fingers and directs you out of the room, following Velarissa as she quickly departs, lest the guards find you freeing prisoners. You look down at the vampire, who gives you an artfully crafted smile.

“I know you’re overcoming death-sleep, but try to keep up with us, hm? You insisted we do this today, after all.”

You admire his garnet eyes like a lapidarist who just cut them out of the rock. If you cut out his eyes, would the blood behind them be yours, too?

Velarissa leads you all past the next room over, where a robed man sits on his knees, facing the back wall. She does not slow initially, but Astarion leaves you to speed up to her. He jumps up to her ear and whispers, “We must ask someone where the druid is being kept, lest we wander aimlessly and blow our cover.”

“I know.” She says without looking at him, but she stops her march. She turns around and walks into the room where the man still sits, and calls to him with a harsh voice. “You. Where is the prisoner being kept?”

He looks over his shoulder at the drow before rising from the grimy floor. “Why, next door, of course. Though I’m sure he is in quite a gruesome state— these goblins hardly know how to torture a man. They’re too crude for my taste, Commander.”

Some kind of fire lights up in the back of your mind— you realize that yes, your hands know how to hold the tools of torture, they know how to slice and to sew, to set the bone and rend its flesh. You’ve done far more harm than this man could ever dream of doing— this worshipper of Loviatar, you assume from his whip-like caplet and the scars along his arms.

The fire in your mind sparks down your neck and sets your heavy shoulders burning. You wish to show him how to properly hurt someone. Self-flagellation is pathetic to you, you realize, for the sight of his scars sets your stomach roiling with aversion. Such feelings belong to the past, but you are not so keen to let go, apparently. You think of the urge bubbling within you, brewing in preparation for the right moment to make itself known. Perhaps the priest can beat it out of you, at least temporarily, if you will not do it yourself.

“Not that prisoner.” Velarissa tells the priest. “I mean the druid.”

“Oh, he is farther into the temple, near Commander Minthara, I believe. I have yet to pay him a visit myself.”

“I doubt you could stick anything deep enough in his bear-hide to make him talk, let alone squeal.” The words fly from your mouth without restraint, without thought, but you can hardly stop yourself. “Little can be done with such toys.”

The priest seems more amused than irritated. “Ha! Your tastes must turn to the exotic, if you would think my tools of worship to be mere toys.”

“Not exotic. Just practiced.” All of this admittance, and for what? For the slim hope that a beating might subdue your urge, when death could not? Whatever curse takes hold in your mind finds you pathetic. You can feel it searing into the back of your head, angry that it can hardly make you move in your current state. You let yourself smile at its frustration— at your frustration. The priest smiles in return, and you feel that shame is far from you now.

“Are you interested in experiencing my worship first-hand?”

“Self-flagellation is beneath me.”

“Then allow me to indulge you.”

You can see from the corner of your eye that Astarion is grinning from pointy ear to pointy ear, unabashedly showing his fangs, clearly amused by the exchange.

“Oh, I have to see this.” He declares with a hiss. “Don’t you dare say no.”

Shadowheart flares her nostrils at you with a frown. “I revived you just hours ago, and here you are wanting to get the life beat out of you. As entertaining as it would be, it would also be foolish of you.”

They think your submission to the priest’s flail is for pleasure, rather than penance. To wear yourself down to embers, to quell the fire burning up your insides— it is all to keep them safe.

But you do not tell them this. You play along with their assumptions, and let your smile widen. You ignore disapproving looks from Wyll and Velarissa as you strip yourself of your leather chest piece and undershirt. Shadowheart’s glare eventually relents with a roll of her eyes.

“Just don’t wear him out too much, priest. We may have use for him yet.”

“Please, dear lady, call me Abdirak. I promise, I will take no more from him than what Loviatar asks.”

The priest is delighted with you. He sighs as he takes in the sight of your bare back, malachite in the torchlight. “You are a canvas,” He breathes. “A painting in blood awaits our Lady Loviatar. Place your hands on the wall, dear one. Let our lady hear your cries!”

You will not let them hear a thing. This penance is for yourself. It is a struggle against your worst desires, a battle to keep them at bay. The blood you give to the vampire, to the priest, will never be equal to the blood you’ve spilled in the past— but you hope that it will outweigh what you’ll spill in the days to come.

The cut of a barbed whip opens up your back, and leaves traces of rubies dripping slowly from you. You make no sound, as you’ve promised yourself, for the hit had been purposefully light, a test of tolerance. The priest laughs.

“Don’t be shy, dear one. Let Loviatar hear you!”

You do not endure such things for gods. You loosen your shoulders, and another hit lands, cutting deeper this time. You can feel the blood pool in your wounds and cascade down your back now, warm and quick. Still no sound escapes your throat. You hold it back without much effort, the pain finding a familiar place to settle inside of you; a pain you’ve inflicted on others a thousand times over.

“Louder, tiefling! If I cannot hear you, then neither can my goddess!”

The whip had been put away. A mace thuds into your back now, ripping open skin that lets your precious blood fall to the floor, falling between the stones, filling the grout with red. Your nerves are on fire now, not just from the pain, but from the urge— it flares in retaliation to your maiming, coursing through you like a rush of flame, brighter than ever. Your nails scrape the stone you bare your palms against in an attempt to keep it at bay beneath your skin, but it bubbles and surges and threatens to spill from you.

You catch the soft drip, drip of your blood bounce against the floor— blood that has hardly ever been spilled. The sound of it now frightens you, snapping you back to the fear that first spawned when Astarion drank from you. This is a mistake.

You barely hear the vampire speak up over the heartbeat pounding in your ears. “I didn’t realize how much blood our friend had in him.”

“Honestly, isn’t this enough?” Wyll pleads.

“There is more to be seen,” Abdirak pants not from fatigue, but from anticipation, “and much more to be heard.”

The mace lands again, hard, and rakes across your upper shoulder all the way down to your spine; your tail flicks sharply in reflex. Misery sears itself across your flesh and into your very bone, leaving your wounds tender, fresh, and drenched in red. You bite your tongue so deeply to keep yourself from wailing that you taste it, and feel it drip over your lip.

Abdirak reels back his swinging arm and groans with a near-crazed smile. You glare at him from over your shoulder, and decide that you’re done. You remove your hands from the wall and turn to face the others.

“Dear one,” Abdirak pants, “You’ve performed so beautifully for Lady Loviatar. How graceful your pain was.”

The wounds across your back and shoulders ache as you move to don your shirt again. You leave your armor on the ground, its weight too heavy to burden yourself with.

“Loviatar herself has found your penance inspiring. Allow me to grant you her bl—”

You grab the priest’s wrist before he can summon the sign to bless you. You will not let him heal you to the point your urge finds its footing once again. You find it slowly subsiding now, lying in wait.

“You do not wish for her blessing, after all your penance?”

“I do not endure such penance for the gods.”

The gods have not once answered your sleepless nights, and you feel as though this week is not the first you have begged for an escape from your compulsions. If death could not rid you of them, then what gods would be willing to try?

Abdirak’s eyes glaze with admiration, and he does not fight the hold you have on him. “A bold choice, dear one. Please, I must say, on a personal note: thank you. That was divine.”

All the restraint you’ve shown during your penance has been too hastily spent, for now nothing bars you from leaning down and pinching Abdirak’s bottom lip with your teeth, quick and hard enough to draw out his blessed blood. What little you can sense through the mind-numbing both your desire and your urge envelop you in is just— just— enough to pull you away from the priest. Had your companions not been there to judge you, you might have overtaken him entirely.

You notice that Abdirak is hard against you; you let go of his wrist and take a step back, and your urge goes quietly with you.

He is nearly breathless. He swallows a lump in his throat before he speaks softly. “If— If after your business you find yourself wanting, dear one, may Loviatar lead you to me.”

You say nothing to the priest as you look him over once, and then push past your companions, refusing to meet their eyes. You hear them fall in behind you, but eventually you slow down so that Velarissa can lead again.

Astarion is the first to finally say something. “That’s going to bruise, I’m afraid.”

You refrain from a short laugh, but you think he hears it in your voice anyway. “I would imagine so.”

“Would you have joined up with him, Astarion, if you knew he was into such things?” Shadowheart asks the vampire, even though she’s eyeing you.

“I mean, I had my hopes.” He answers, and you know his gaze is pinned to the shades of wine that seep through the back of your shirt.

The ever-solemn drow turns over her shoulder and speaks with a venom in her voice. “You’re a fool for wasting so much of your blood, and our time— Halsin’s time. You just awoke from the dead this very morning, and here you are, hoping to die in a fight against such pathetic creatures.”

You stop in your tracks, the truth of Velarissa’s words thudding into you like the priest’s mace. She is right— you bleed yourself now with the buried hope that if the vampire cannot grant you true death, perhaps the horde will.

How pathetic, to want to die to these vermin. Moreso, to be read so easily by your companions. They know not with what you contend— they know not what watches them every night, waiting for a chance to awaken. If you are to die, then at least they will live, and do so without the shadow that haunts you.

If you had been unwilling to come back, you wouldn’t be alive right now. Even the Sharran had been willing to give you a second chance; why can’t you do the same for yourself?

You pick up the pace again when you feel Shadowheart’s hand press gently into the unmarred portion of your back.

Velarissa eventually stops another guard along the way, and demands to know where exactly the druid is being kept. The goblins tell her to go past Commander Minthara’s chambers, over a crumbling, ladder-saddled wall, and then descend a flight of stairs to the warg pens. Walking past the drow commander will only result in a fight, the five of you agree. It’s by luck that Astarion spots two goblins walking along a wooden outcropping that winds itself around a giant gap in the floor, likely leading to the warg pens. You all follow them.

The two goblins eventually notice your group approaching, and they back out of the way with a quick bow. Velarissa leads you through a small, dim chamber, past a wooden door, and into a larger room that smells worse than the camp as a whole, somehow. Down the stairs and to the left, the wargs are kept locked in iron cells. To the right, a giant grizzly roars at two goblin children who carelessly lob stones at it.

You all stand and wait at the top of the stairs as Velarissa turns over her shoulder to speak. “Once we’re down there, kill them all. Don’t let them out the door.”

“Finally,” Astarion breathes. The vampire fingers the hilt of his dagger with a grin, and you almost find yourself doing the same.

The goblin children scream with delight in infuriating the bear further as you approach them, pestering him into a fury. He throws himself against the cell door and rattles the bars with his might, and they shake with the threat of unhinging. The goblin overseeing the children stands in salute to Velarissa, who says nothing, but instead nods directly at you.

It is with no hesitation that you grab one of the children by its hair and press your blade across its throat. As the other child shrieks and goes to run up the stairs, the blood-call rings clear in your head. You sling out your bow and bring an arrow to its string, ignoring how your wounds scream at your movements. You fire one quick shot at the child, and watch as blood pools beneath its little body.

Astarion grabs the goblin overseer and takes his own daggers to her back; she fights pitifully against him. You don’t flinch as Halsin’s iron bars come crashing down just behind you, his deafening roar not nearly as loud as the beating of blood in your ears.

The grizzly sets upon one of the loosed wargs and snaps his teeth into its neck, drawing a veil of red that sprays across the floor, across your boots. You lose yourself gazing at it as it reflects torchlight and battle alike.

Another warg comes barreling out from its cell— Velarissa punctures its side with a shining, steel glaive, and Shadowheart brings down her morningstar into its head. Astarion fires an arrow at a goblin across the room, and it goes down with a thud. You shoot another one without realizing it, and soon, all of your enemies are dead, and all of your weapons are no longer made of steel, but of carrion.

You can hardly look away, and find yourself wanting.

Halsin is just as bear-like even as a man. The giant wood-elf volunteers to fight alongside you all as you confront Minthara and the other leaders of the horde. You all agree that it is best for Halsin to wait in the next room over, poised at the ladder, to await the fight to come.

Velarissa approaches Commander Minthara now, who is relieved to find another drow among them all. “The Absolute blesses me today,” She says with a strong, notable voice. “You were sent to assist me in finding the grove, yes?”

“I know precisely where it is.” Velarissa tells her.

Minthara’s eyes widen. “Show me, true soul.”

Vel blocks her mind from the drow, whose eyebrows furrow in annoyance, with scrutiny. She demands, “Why deny me?”

“I know, and you may not. We were sent to protect the grove— from you.”

Halsin drops then onto two feet from the ladder-wall and near instantly transforms into his grizzlyself. He charges across the crevice bridge as Velarissa and the rest of you draw your weapons on Minthara and her nearby minions. Velarissa forces her glaive against the commander’s greatsword with a sharp clang, and together the two set to fighting.

You draw your bow again, and with Astarion the two of you fire arrows at the goblins spilling in from the room’s main entrance. Shadowheart’s dark spells go flying overhead and obliterate a goblin across the bridge, as Halsin slings another into the chasm with naught but his teeth. Wyll’s rapier finds its mark in the bellies of his enemies as he strangles them with hell-summoned tentacles. Your shoulders sear with heat, but you do not stop firing arrow after arrow.

Minthara’s sword chimes right next to your ear as you turn and shove your shortblade into her greatsword. The drow commander fights both you and Velarissa at once, spinning and deflecting your combined power until Vel’s glaive manages to cut Minthara in the leg, sending her onto one knee. Velarissa wheels around and hits the commander in the head with the butt of her polearm, knocking her into the stone table nearby, leaving her unconscious as she falls to the floor.

Velarissa spins around and goes after a goblin intending to alert the horde with a wardrum, but she manages to cut him down before he can reach it. You watch the end of the slaughter, and stand over the drow commander’s body, watching her lay slumped against the floor.

The room goes quickly still. Your enemies have all gone down nearly at once, and now those left alive are catching their breath. Halsin transforms back to himself, and groans before asking, “Is she dead?”

You bend down over Minthara’s body and place two fingers on the vein in her neck. She is warm, and her heart still beats. You can slit her throat, as your hands itch to do, as Halsin would command, but something tugs at you. Perhaps it’s the wisp of kindness that so often escapes your notice; perhaps it’s the subtle realization that if you do not abstain from the path your past has set you on, then you never will have the chance again. To indulge the urge is to give up your freedom; you know this in your bones.

You lean in close to her ear and whisper, “Sleep, drow. Today, I will grant rest to all who are wicked but myself.”

You search for any twitch of her face to confirm that she has heard you, but she remains perfectly unmoving.

You rise, and tell the bear druid that the goblin commander is dead. Satisfied, the group moves on to the rest of the temple, slaughtering goblins and hobgoblins and other vile beings alike. The clerics send down both light and shadow to obliterate and strangle their foes; the bear rips his fangs into the throats of anything that moves, and sinks his claws into their belly flesh; the warlock’s magic holds goblins in place as he rams his blade through their hearts; and the vampire uses twin daggers to slash at the ankles of some and the necks of others, bringing them to their knees either way.

But you, you do not fight. You kill. It is not so much an act of survival or necessity like the others might deem their own actions. It is a joy to you, whether you want it to be or not. You try not to consider this fight to be an indulgence— rather, you are restraining the urge with petty combat. It seethes and writhes within you, knowing it can kill those who fight alongside you as easily as it can this pathetic horde.

You fly through crowds of goblins and fell each one swiftly, with a flash of your shortsword in the torchlight and a sick gleam in your eyes. No smile graces your face, but those who catch a glimpse of you see that this is no chore, but rather a game, one that you have only ever won.

You take hold of a goblin by its face, the fire that has surged through you since your revival now kindling at your fingertips. The goblin’s skin melts away, slowly at first— and then your power comes to full realization, and sets him boiling with white-hot flame. Embers smolder in your hand as you take it away in surprise, but even this revelation does not pull your body away from the slaughter.

You have magic, and it is just as deadly as your blades. You fight from then on with both steel and flame, delighting shamelessly in their combined fury. The fight makes it way outside, bringing death to an ogre and its minions, to goblins and their kin. The stench of burning flesh sears your nostrils and riles your nerves. You cannot imagine yourself slowing down, but then things seem to come to a halt as the last creature burns in your grasp.

You swing upright, and catch your breath with an open mouth, your tiefling fangs bared to the nearly-gone sun, its golden fire not unlike your own. The taste of copper lines your tongue, and the stench of war fills your lungs. Your mind reels from the fight, numbed with leftover adrenaline. You can do nothing but breathe it away through your tightened throat. You are remorseful yet thrilled to find that your limbs are no longer lead.

The others finish their killings a few seconds after you, and you watch now as they fall back in exhaustion, weapons limp by their sides, their stances slack. They glance around the camp and silently count heads, but when their eyes land one-by-one onto you, they stick there.

You look down at yourself, and realize how drenched in blood you are. Its warmth runs along your face and neck, into your mouth, across your chest, down your legs. You look at the shortblade still clenched in your hand, and drop it as you catch your blazing eyes in its reflection, letting it fall into the blood-washed dirt.

They must find you appalling.

You find your feet marching forward, and do not care that they stomp through the open ribcages of a few goblins along the way. The others stare you down as you walk straight through the war camp, and you meet none of their eyes. You gaze ahead at the desecration laid before you and stumble through it almost in awe.

You hear a faint call from Shadowheart far behind you, but the flame smoldering in your mind keeps you from responding— yet you stop.

“Where are you going?” She asks. You hear her take a few steps forward, but then halt. You glance over your shoulder at her, but then a flash of violet pulls your attention away. The tiefling girl runs from pillar to pillar within the temple grounds, calling for you to run. You know she is an illusion cast by your sickening urge, but you follow her command anyway, and break out into a furious sprint. You keep your eyes locked on her so that you do not glance at Astarion on the way out— his red stare would stop you.

“Wait!” You hear the bear-druid call, but even his deep voice cannot command you like the bard’s singing does.

You chase her across the bridge that led you here, across the road and into the woods. You don’t know how long you pursue her as her hair whips through tree branches and leads you through a forest-maze. Your chest is afire and your legs splinter like fallen trees, but you don’t stop until you’re well ahead of the others, and even from there you keep running until your feet finally give out from underneath you.

You fall to one side of a giant tree trunk, your head narrowly missing the stump. You find yourself on your back, the canopy above you spinning relentlessly, your shoulders and their various wounds screaming in protest. Your breath eludes you for an eternity, and your mind is lost at sea.

You must be an abomination, to be capable of such a stupor— to stand beneath a ruby waterfall, and forget to breathe.

Chapter 4: as all things will

Chapter Text

The Chionthar river that runs past camp also winds its way near where you’ve fallen some hours ago. You find it by ear during the night, and trudge through the woods on sore legs until you fall to your knees by the water. The river is rough and foamy, but even in its ragged current you catch sight of your reflection, muddled and red, so covered in grime and guilt that you can hardly see the green of your skin.

The pain of your wounds daze you. The water whirlpools into a funnel of silver, and you are lucky that you manage not to drown as you wash yourself in its freezing embrace. Flakes of blood crust against your neck and across your shoulders. You sink your head under the water and pull your hands through your crusted hair, but even as you arise you can still smell copper clinging to you. The cold rushes through your open wounds and aches across your bones, and even with the soil scrubbed from you, you feel no more clean than before; sins like yours are not meant to be washed away.

You have no remorse for the death of the goblin horde. Why, then, are you wracked with such guilt?

The riverbank is clearer to you once you emerge from its shallows, chilled to the bone and shaking. It’s coddled on both sides by trees that bend over and hang low, low enough to almost touch the running surface. You hear the skittering of little creatures in the underbrush all around you, and the bellowing croaks of frogs farther upriver. The darkness is ample, but light cuts through it when the clouds give way to the moon.

It’s never for long that you can sleep. You wonder how close the dawn might be, but your busy mind enthralls you with the want to hunt. You forget your bloodied, torn shirt and leathers on the rocks, and sling your bow across your bare back, its string embedding itself in your wounds that still bleed. You ignore the singes of pain, and force yourself to fight through weeds and thickets along the riverbank. You need to feel the bow snap against your arm lest you lose yourself to the urge. You are weak, and it knows, but you forbid it to take over yet still.

You focus what little you can on the thought of finding an animal, something to sling across your ruined shoulders, to bring back to camp as some sort of apology. Hunting something might subdue the urge for the time being, and bringing food back to your companions might ease the weight of your return; you dread what they might have told the others by now.

You trek through the night despite having run yourself ragged. You had rightfully suspected that the dawn would be upon you soon, for now the beginnings of it seep between the leaves on the horizon, and blend the sky into a navy-orange blush. A herd of deer graze in a field that spreads out below you, down a rolling amber hillside that you gauge you can descend with relevant ease. The wind blows fiercely, whipping your hair against your face. You take out your bow and hold a breath as you draw back an arrow, aiming at the doe closest to you as it lay in the field.

Your breath and your shot release at once, and the arrow is sent whistling over barely-lit plains. The doe has no time to notice its approach before the arrow thuds into its neck. It lands on its side with a squeal, sending the rest of the herd rushing away in a panic. You take off sprinting to it.

Running so fast downhill almost makes you trip over your own feet, but you make it down without falling, and find your way to the doe through the tall grass. It cries and kicks it feet in a desperate attempt to keep itself alive. It’s only when you fall to your knees beside it do you realize that you have no blade to kill it quickly with, having left it behind in the war camp; even your dagger-sheathe is empty. You shudder, and put your hands on its writhing body, trying to hold it down to give it some amount of comfort— but in the end, you scare it more, and it dies loathing you, as all things will.

You bite down on your tongue hard, so that you taste your blood instead of the bile building in your throat. You swallow the breath you take, and slide your hands under the animal’s warm ribs. Your arms scream as you pick up the now-silent doe and shuffle it across your back, but you only last a few minutes before your shoulders unlock, and you clumsily drop it to the ground. The trek back up the hill looks daunting, but you pick the doe up anyway— only to drop it again a few seconds later. Your shoulders can hardly hold up your head, let alone the body of another animal. Exhaustion chases at your heels, but you cannot sleep.

You reach again for the doe, but cannot manage to get it off the ground this time. You let a frustrated yell escape you as it falls, the both of you limp and red-stained against the grass. You clench and unclench your fists, but even that sends a pain up the bones of your arms. You kick the doe’s hoof as you stand and stumble bitterly away, leaving the carcass behind to rot. Your hunt, and the animal’s fruitless, dying screams, have all been for naught.

You’re no ranger, you remember.

It’s hours before you find the first hint of camp. The smell of smoke in the air is what leads you there, as you keep the river to your left. You shuffle pitifully forward, and try to keep your mind from failing. Your entire body aches and threatens to collapse, but you keep going until you finally see the bustling of boots in the dust, and hear chatter by an early-morning fire. Everything in you burns.

You find yourself looking to catch a glimpse of Astarion’s white hair, but instead you find Karlach and Wyll sitting beside the fire. Just over Wyll’s shoulders you spot Fayeth by the riverbank, and next to her is the bard Alfira.

You crumble into yourself. Gods forbid you ever heal, for if you were not as beaten as you are now, you would be flying across the rivershore to her.

Wyll notices you first, folding into yourself on the ground, panting and numb. He and Karlach run to your side and pick you up by your arms, which flare in pain against their touch. You want to twist out of their grasp, but you only have enough vitality left to keep yourself sitting upright.

“Gods, Mazeiah,” Karlach is barely audible even while beside you. She calls across camp, “We need a healer!”

Both of the clerics, Gale, and Halsin come bounding up to the three of you. Karlach and Wyll set you down just inside of your tent, hiding you from the sun that bares down on your already-alight shoulders. You can’t feel your feet drag as they move you. Shadowheart approaches you first.

“I told you.” She breathes. “I told you that you’re a fool.”

You do not disagree. Karlach and Wyll move out of the way as Shadowheart sits on her knees and faces your back. With Wyll’s help she lifts your shirt over your head and looks over your mangled shoulders, and traces her gold-alight fingers down your spine. The searing pain across your back numbs; she places her hands on your wounds, and you cannot feel a thing as she knits them together with her magic. You want relief to wash over you, but being healed means that you’re a danger— yet you have little will to fight against her restoration. Your bones still ache, but your wounds no longer sting, and no longer bleed. You shake from exhaustion.

You do not notice as Shadowheart withdraws her hands from your back. She stands up behind you and gestures for the others to give you space. “Bring me the bard.” She says to someone. “She can sing him to sleep.”

“No.” You force the words out in a pitiful, quiet command. “She’s not safe here.”

“You don’t need to worry about anyone other than yourself right now.” Karlach says as Wyll departs for the riverbank. You hear Gale question someone about you outside of the tent, but you cannot discern his words.

Shadowheart pushes you back onto your elbows with another gentle, glowing hand. Your breathing steadies against her touch even as your heart races, beating fast with the fear that you might lash out in your sleep at the bard. You know she can feel it just beneath your chest, but she hides her awareness of it with ease.

Fayeth appears first, but naturally Alfira falls in behind her, and your numbed nerves sing in your eardrums. You feel paralyzed under Shadowheart’s touch. Fayeth’s face is soft for once, pitying the state you’re in. Alfira’s orange lights look you up and down before she positions herself comfortably next to the high elf. They both sit poised, ready to sing. Shadowheart looks over her shoulder and gives them a nod, before returning to work on you.

Their voices seep softly out of their throats, quietly, harmoniously. It’s a warm melody that stills your twitching knife-hand and makes your eyelids droop closed. Was this all it took? You’ve fought against it so stubbornly, only to be lulled to sleep by a song, like a child. You think back to your long-gone family, and wonder, Was I sweet once? Sweet enough to sing to?

You dream then, reality swirling down the silver whirlpool you cleansed yourself in this morning, replaced by the familiar sight of the old gore that decays on the skinning tent’s floor. Before you lies the doe you could not carry, still alive and flailing against its binds, bleating helplessly for a freedom that it will never have again. You set your tools to its belly, flaying it senselessly with practiced hands, ignoring its desperate cries. The carnality that grips you in the bard’s presence does not subside even within your dream, and sometimes the doe looks less like a doe, and more like her.

The wind wakes you. A wisp of your raven hair is picked up in its embrace, and tickles your cheek. You swat it away and push your hair behind your ears, smoothing it down your neck, leaving your warm hands cradling your throat. You lay on your side, thoroughly sore and depleted, but find yourself overall better than you were; better than waking from cold death.

You smack apart your dry mouth and yawn. It is then that you hear the flaps of your tent open, and you crane your sore neck to find Shadowheart watching over you.

“Finally,” She says almost coldly. “Apparently you needed the sleep. You’ve been out for two days.”

You blink slowly and think back to Shadowheart’s golden hands upon your back, and reach uncomfortably for your wounds now, only to find ridges of fresh, pink scars. You turn over and look at her fully.

“Thank you, Shadowheart.” Your voice is quiet, and cracked. “Thank you for bringing me back in the first place.”

She gives you a half-hearted smirk, the anger in her eyes from days ago having calmed to the ghost of annoyance. “Just don’t squander it so easily in the future. I… I owed you, anyway. You opened my pod on the nautiloid. I’d have died if you didn’t.”

You wave it away and force back another yawn, speaking with clenched jaws. “You owe me nothing.”

“Not anymore.” Her eyes gleam with some sort of recognition. “What plagues you, to have been so careless with yourself?”

Your shoulder blades clench as you think of the heat searing through your back when you’d willingly let the priest beat you. “Like I said, my penance was not for the gods. You saw me afterwards. You know the look I must have had.”

“You’ve a taste for killing.” She says nonchalantly, and shrugs. “So does your pet vampire, it seems. So do many people. Why pay penance, even to yourself, for such a mundane thing?”

“You saw me.” You stress to her in a vain attempt to be surfacely understood. “You know better.”

She’s hesitant to respond. “You were… intense, but even so…”

You shake your head and lay back down, rubbing at the tiredness building in your eyes. The urge in you is subservient, quiet and unknown. You can hardly feel it, and even as your mind dares to reveal itself, it still does not stir. You stare at the ceiling of your makeshift tent and sigh. “Keep that bard away from me.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You mean Fayeth? Alfira?”

You nod. “Both. They travel together, apparently, and… I don’t want to sleep any longer.”

For a fraction of a second you believe that thanking the bards would be good of you; but is it good for a chick to look a fox in the eye? To look upon the animal that will kill it seconds later? You push the idea from your mind, knowing it to be another of your more gormless whims. Fayeth and the tiefling that follows in her shadow will be kept at arm’s length, lest that arm stretch out and cut their throats.

Shadowheart seems to sigh in relief. It was foolish of you to think you could tell her more, anyway. You turn onto your side and say, “Leave me, please.”

She gets up from her knees and departs wordlessly, leaving only the wind to caress your back.

When you eventually make your way outside your tent, you find Karlach headed your way. She stops in her tracks and waves. “Hey, you’re up! I was coming to get you, actually. Zevlor and the tieflings are here.”

Your face falls. “The tieflings? You mean all of them?”

“Yeah…” She confirms with a confused look. “For the party. Did no one tell you?” She determines from your slack jaw that no one did. “Oh, well, yeah! We’re having a party. They’re going to set it all up here in a bit, in time for tonight. To celebrate our win! Well, your win, really, from what I hear.”

You force your surprise away, and fiddle with the lattice that hangs untied from your shirt. “You had it right the first time.”

Karlach makes a noise that says she disagrees with you, but she shrugs and brushes it off. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Besides, Zevlor wants to speak with you. I’m sure he’ll tell you the same thing.”

You point to yourself like you hadn’t heard her. “Me? Why not Shadowheart, or Velarissa?”

She shrugs again. “I dunno. I’ll take you to him, if you want to find out.”

You nod and follow her lead, and soon enough come upon Zevlor directing a group of boy tieflings of where to set things up for the party. He turns when he hears Karlach’s call and smiles at the both of you. He gives Karlach an appreciative nod; she backs away and leaves. Zevlor sets his eyes on you.

“You,” He begins, “To you, I have thanks to give.”

“Give thanks to Halsin.” You immediately deflect his praise. “Without him, Kagha would have turned your people away.”

“Our people, I’m sure you mean— and at least if she had, we would have walked on safer roads, thanks to you.” Zevlor leans toward you with a grin. “And I’ve heard you probably killed more goblins than the others combined. That’s worthy of thanks, whether you want it or not. You’ve done a lot for us.”

He would not think it so worthy had he seen himself the bloodspill you wrought upon the war camp— but you’re unwilling to reveal your shame, and unwilling to argue any further for the sake of being humble.

“Of course,” You agree without expression. “Enjoy your party.”

You’re done with receiving thanks. How torturous, to be reminded of your release of self-control— but that is only a fraction of what plagues you. The commencing of the party means that Alfira will stay in the camp overnight, and while your urge slumbers now, you fear that the dark might awaken it; you fear that her orange eyes, burning through shadow, might invoke its fatal furor. You hope that she will blend in with the crowd of tieflings, but you know that she will always stand out to you, like a blue lamb in a herd of sheep— and you will be the wolf wearing their skin.

You find that Astarion is not sitting within the opening of his tent, hiding away his fair skin in its shade, as he usually does. The flaps to it are open, revealing its insides. A pretty but old-stained red carpet stolen from the locked temple on the beach, you remember. Astarion carried it rolled up all the way back to camp. On top of one of its corners sits a pile of books tall enough to rival Gale’s makeshift library. Other gold baubles like a spyglass and a trinket box are tucked away in the crevices— but there is no vampire to be found.

You glance around camp for him, but find him nowhere. You don’t wish to mingle with the others, to hear their sympathies for your recent plights, so you refrain from scouring the perimeter for any sign of Astarion.

You instead make your way to a solitary rock embedded between the camp and the beach and elect to perch there, from where you idly observe the tieflings setting up the party throughout the afternoon. Wine casks and beer barrels are placed on rocks and crates, and a day-long stew bubbles over the fire in a giant cast iron pot tended to intermittently by Gale and Caelwin. Various parts of deer roast on a spit above it. You wonder who went hunting in your stead, fairly certain that it was either Travenya or Halsin— but even the thought of hunting does not bring that familiar itch to your hands. You wonder how the urge is sleeping so peacefully, after you’ve healed for so long.

Those taking a break from the preparations have, naturally, begun to drink the wine they were tasked with setting up, sitting and talking under a calm, slowly-dimming sky. Zevlor comes by and orders a group of tiefling boys to start hanging out mugs and tankards and goblets. One of them stops in front of you and shoves a goblet into your hands with a half-drunk grin, before he stumbles off to the next person he sets his eyes on. You fiddle with the empty cup and consider not even drinking tonight. Getting drunk would either keep the urge at bay a little longer, or increase its hold on you even more; you are not so willing to find out for certain.

You spot a pair of tieflings with their eyes fixed on you as they push their way through the bustle of camp. They stop short a few feet away and timidly introduce themselves.

“You’re— You’re Mazeiah, right? You saved Arabella, from Kagha, but we never got to thank you.”

You try to rid your mind of the image of the viper, of its eyes and fangs poised to strike the little girl. You nod and look up at them from your rocky seat. Your voice is reserved as you try to humble yourself.

“Kagha had to be dealt with, one way or another. There was no point in letting her keep Arabella hostage.”

They would not be so thankful if they knew how close you had been to getting her killed yourself. The girl had been no safer in your presence than she had been in Kagha’s— but being none the wiser, they praise you anyway.

“You kept her from being imprisoned, or worse. You must take this,” The woman brings out a necklace with a round, brass medallion hanging from it. “We want you to have it.”

They would benefit more from selling it, but you are not one to deny someone the pleasure of gifting, if that is what they want. You take it gently from the woman’s hands, and try not to freeze when her skin grazes yours. The medallion is heavy in your palm, and catches the evening light brilliantly.

She watches you look over it, and explains softly, “It catches the light, so that it may keep the dark at bay. I’ve heard you all plan to travel to the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and, well… I’m sure it will be of more use to you than us.”

You scrunch your face in confusion. “Isn’t Zevlor leading you all the same way?”

They both nod, but her husband speaks up. “He is, but we’ll be in a much larger group than you lot. We’ll be careful.”

“And carry torches.” Arabella’s mother adds with a grin. You clench the medallion in your fist.

“Thank you.” You say to them sheepishly. “It’s very kind of you.” You feel they will need it much more than yourself, but to give it back would likely insult them.

“The thanks is all ours.” They both nod at you and back away, before turning and finding something to help with as the party is set up around you. You turn the medallion over once more before standing to leave for your tent, but you find that Halsin is approaching you next.

The bear-druid is as tall as a grizzly on its hind legs, even more so while you sit below him. His shadow nearly encompasses you, but his tattooed face is kind, his smile creasing the intricate swirl of acorn-red ink that adorns his cheek and brow.

“I’m glad to find you awake.” He says with a hearty, soft voice. “You ran off before I could thank you. If not for you and your companions, I would have never made it out of the war camp alive.”

You nearly shudder at the memory of flame in your hand, the way flesh melted against your palm, but you push it down, and hope that he cannot notice your tense shoulders. “Don’t thank me for that. I was senseless.”

“You were like a wolf.” Halsin states, almost with admiration— but the glimmer in his eyes tells you he saw what Shadowheart would not admit. “You were fierce. I could ask for no finer a companion in such times— but I saw a hunger in your eyes, and it was… it is steep.”

You cannot spell hunger without urge. Halsin is the first to truly acknowledge it, to not shy away from it. Even you have been incapable of looking it in the eye.

He gives you a firm look up and down, and you mourn that there is still light outside, for you know he can see the malachite blush building darkly on your cheeks. You are reluctant to confirm that what he says is true— you are like a wolf, and the disease that lies dormant within you might suddenly turn you rabid, even if you are careful.

You stumble in your words. “I… I am trying to— I am trying.” Your arms nearly shake you apart, but Halsin seems patient, and waits for you to steady. “I know not what plagues me, Halsin. Do you?”

He shakes his head. “No,” He admits, “But it’s not the first time I’ve seen it. Those with a strong will may overcome it yet. My priority is pursuing Moonrise, but know that I will help you as I can.”

“You’re not going to stay at the grove?” You wrap your arms across your chest to keep them still, and tuck the necklace out of sight.

“I dealt with Kagha when I returned. I selected another archdruid, one who will teach her our ways again. They will be fine without me.”

You believe Kagha to be lucky that Halsin didn’t cast her out. You think back to the little arguments you’ve heard cropping up around camp. “The others haven’t decided how we’re going to get there yet. You’ll come with us, even if we go through the Underdark?”

“If I must. I intend to remain at your side for a while yet.”

You wonder if it is to keep an eye on you, or to have companions to fight alongside in the Shadow-Cursed Lands; perhaps both. You elect not to ask, and instead drift back to his offer. “By helping me, do you mean… Do you mean to watch over me, when that hunger strikes again, and I don’t have a horde of goblins to feast on?”

“If that is what you need, then yes. All you have to do is give me swift warning.”

Your face burns hotter now, the revelation of such truths an embarrassment to you. You nod before flitting your eyes to the river behind him, its waves crashing against his shoulders as if he is the shore. Your voice is quiet. “I will. I promise, I will.”

You feel that it will prove to be an empty promise, as empty as the carcass of the bard once your urge is finished defiling her. You shudder harder this time. Halsin gently places a hand on your trembling shoulder, looking down at you. You tense further at his touch, but you don’t protest.

“Thank you, Halsin.” You cannot feel your voice in throat.

“There is no need for thanks, dear ranger.”

You give him a tense look before he leaves, but as he turns away from you, you glower, reminded again of what you are, and what you are not.

People begin to form a line to get their various cups filled with various drink, and soon the sun sets and the cups are raised. You hold yours tightly against your chest and hardly sip from it, and what little you have sipped only mildly sedates you. The vampire still has not returned to his tent, and with what feels like hundreds of tieflings bustling about camp, it is nearly impossible to spot him, even with his moon-white hair. You look sullenly at the beginnings of the party, until Zevlor’s deep voice draws your attention to the fire.

He begins a speech, one that gathers everyone in front of him, in the center of camp, the fire and the stew at his back. You hardly listen to him despite your staring, your mind entrenched in what may come when the fire is snuffed out, and the dark fully settles over you. It is only when you hear Zevlor call for a toast to the people who saved the refugees do you look up at him. All the tieflings turn to stare at you, and raise their cups in your name— your name on their lips, a name they will curse when they inevitably learn of what you’ll do to their poor, pretty bard.

You toast back to them, and try to convince yourself that the steady hand that grips your cup belongs to a tiefling, and not a wolf.

They all take turns toasting to your companions before their attention turns back to Zevlor for another few words, before he finally dismisses them to fully enjoy the party. The dark seeps in from the edges of camp, the long shadows of tieflings dancing across the ground. Music fills the air, lyres and drums and flutes bringing your head to ache as it has wanted to since you awoke. You try to keep your eyes from searching for the source of the music, for Alfira, but as you turn to isolate yourself by the river, you find Shadowheart in your way.

She sidles up to you and speaks quietly. “What if we achieved all of this, just to turn into mindflayers come the morn?”

“Fairly certain we’re far past that. We should have turned by now.” You say blankly. At least your monstrousness would be expected of you, if you were to turn into a mindflayer. What your urge pushes you to do is unprecedented.

“Which means that it can be any day now.” She sighs. “Tortuous, not knowing.”

She clicks her tongue and traces the pattern of her goblet with a ringed finger. Her skin flickers with shadow. “Would you kill me, if it happened?”

For a moment, the sand beneath your feet spirals; you realize a second later than she is not questioning the hunger sleeping in your belly, but rather what the tadpole might do to you once this otherworldly protection wanes.

You consider her for a moment with a quick glance. “I wouldn’t want to. Maybe I would… Maybe I’d tie you up, and try to find a cure. Something like that.”

“Oh, that’s disappointing. I would just put you out of your misery.”

You laugh into your cup as you take another sip of cheap ale, finding a modicum of humor in your bones for the first time in days. “Oh, too bad. We could’ve gone around eating brains together.”

“Still can,” A corner of her mouth lifts, and she raises her wine cup as she chuckles. You notice the blush in her cheeks; perhaps she had begun drinking a little before Zevlor had made his speech. She deserved to, after having dealt with the war camp, after having seen what you turned into during the fight. She gives you a small wave with her free hand and says, “Well, I’m going to make my rounds. Try not to dream about tying me up.”

You would much rather dream of her than of dying animals and dying bards. She waltzes away, and you watch her disappear into a crowd of tieflings dancing and singing and swearing.

You back away from the party, and set your cup on a table on the way to the riverside. The rush of the water stings your head much less than the sharp plucking of strings and the pounding of drums. You crawl over the embankment and find a flat rock to perch on, and dip your bare feet into the water, watching the party from afar. You are content with the idea of being alone, but when confronted with solace as you are now, you realize just how busy your mind is. Your eyes search constantly for a hint of blue among the crowd, your obsession deteriorating what little solace you’ve attained. If anything, the muffled quiet of the edge of camp draws you closer to what you hide away from.

You are almost thankful to finally find Astarion creeping his way through camp, to distract you from the music you know Alfira is playing. The elf shuffles out from his tent with a goblet in hand, holding it close to his chest as he squeezes his way through the whirling crowd. Maybe Astarion feels your eyes on him, for he looks up to find you watching him, and grins.

He nicks a bottle of wine from a table he passes by, and makes his way nonchalantly toward the river. You cannot help but admire how low his shirt is loosed, exposing his collarbone and a portion of his chest. The moonlight is as blue as it can be, giving his usual quartz self a shimmering outline of sapphire.

He brandishes the cherry-red bottle with a fanged smile. “Unfortunately,” He begins as he draws close, “the wine here is noticeably cheap. But, given our circ*mstances, I more than welcome it.”

He offers it to you, and you take a quick sip and grimace at its sour, dry taste. You hand it back to him.

“Quite unfortunate.”

Astarion makes a noise that sounds almost like a laugh. He goes to sit down beside you before he stops himself and asks, “May I?”

You nod, and he sits, while the river rushes over your heels and laps against your stone seat.

“If I didn’t know any better, I would think that you’re keeping secrets.” Astarion says with his familiar drawl. “I’m speaking of your ability to cast fire, in particular.”

You slightly co*ck your head to one side. “I would think the same of you— I feel as though you’ve been avoiding me all day.”

“I didn’t know you’d awakened. I found that I needed some solace by the creek a little into the woods. It’s a nice place.”

“Hm,” You ponder the picture of a babbling brook dappled by evening light. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”

“Perhaps. If you promise not to burn me.” A laugh tries to wind itself through his words, but falls flat as his smile does. “If you can summon fire so easily, why did you not burn me the night I— the night you died?”

The resurgence of your death still does not anger you as it would most others.

“I remember little before the nautiloid.” You answer him. “I didn’t know that I could cast such a flame.”

“I suppose I’m lucky, then.” He smirks.

You give him a blank look. “If that’s what you want to call it. Apparently your instincts aren’t as honed as I’d expected for a two-hundred-year-old vampire, otherwise you wouldn’t have chosen me.”

He scoffs, as if your words are completely laughable. You wait for him to insult you in return, but he hardly defends himself.

“I’ll blame the tadpole for all I can. For bleeding you dry, for the ability to all of sudden walk in the sun. Without the threat of the little worm turning me into some other kind of monster, it would be almost… perfect.”

You lean back far enough to look at the moon as it sits almost directly above you, before you turn to meet Astarion’s gaze. His eyes are blossoms of pale-pink as the moon’s reflection floats in them; he has the eyes of someone not quite as monstrous as he claims to be.

“What made you come to me?” The hairs on your neck stand up when you ask him this, as if asking will give him reason to lose what respect he might hold for you; as if you should already know the answer.

Astarion’s head tilts to one side in consideration, and a smile threads itself through his deflection. “You have an air of desperation about you. It’s in your breath, your eyes… In the way you slaughter goblins.”

“Oh, please,” You sigh away a budding laugh. His grin grows wider, showing off his fangs, pleased with the lapse in your usual stoicism. He takes a tart sip from the bottle and steadily eyes you up and down.

“Did you mean it?” He asks quietly. “When you said that it might happen again. That I might drink from you again.”

It is not a question one answers lightly, you realize, but it’s a simple answer for you regardless. “Yes,” You admit, “Yes, you… You help me control myself. That thing you saw killing goblins, it… It comes and goes. Your bite severs its hold on me.”

“Hm,” He mulls over his words before responding. “I doubt Shadowheart will bother reviving you a second time, yes? I’ll try to keep the bloodspill to a minimum, then.”

“You’re not cautious enough.” You scold.

He looks taken aback. “In controlling myself, or in trusting your control?”

“Both.” You allow a small grin to form, and he returns it by handing you the bottle. You take another resentful sip from it, and follow his eyes as they move over you. You wonder if he really will kill you again, if he’ll exercise any amount of self-control over himself tonight. You suppose if you cared, you wouldn’t be talking to him now.

It is then that you notice the music has passed to other players. You wonder if it was even Alfira you’ve been listening to all evening, or if it was her playing the lyre now. Astarion notices your pondering.

“Enjoying the bards? It seems they gave you the sleep you needed, after all. Though, not as heavy as the one I gave you.”

“Feeling jealous?” You tease. A dead look creeps into Astarion’s eyes, contrasting his everlasting smile. He is practiced in his mannerisms, mannerisms so crucial to his survival that he cannot afford to depict them as such. You’re sure you are no more insightful than the rest of your companions, for you had all pinned Astarion for the charlatan that he is within the first day of meeting him. What you have gleaned more than the others, however, is that he is willing to please you the most. You wonder if it is in recompense for having killed you, and wonder further what he hopes to gain by doing so.

“Not in the least.” He whispers his answer to you.

From the corner of your eye, you spot two figures with their backs against the fire. You turn and find Alfira and Fayeth looking at you with half-drunk, toothy grins that make your own disappear. Astarion notices you tense.

“Not a fan of bards, after all?” He sneers, realizing only then that you are incapable of finding humor any longer. You’ve not given him enough credit for how quick-witted he is, for how swiftly he pieces things together.

“Look at me.” He says low. You’re barely capable of dragging your sight back to him, but you manage it, and find a crease on his face you haven’t seen before. “I’ve seen the way you look at her, you know. This thing that takes hold of you, it… You dream of killing her.”

Your eyes are as wide as the moon. You stare hard at him, so that you do not stare at the girl. Your words are a breath caught in your chest. “Yes,” You admit to him like the wind’s been knocked out of you. Your urge is silent, and somehow that scares you more. “Even when I’m awake.”

You hear the sand shift as the pair finally approaches you. Fayeth holds Alfira’s hand in hers, and even in the dark her cheeks are flushed red. Alfira’s magenta hair is plum in the light of the moon, and her skin washed grey, akin to the corpse you’ll turn her into. Your senses are frozen, and your mind is too dumbfounded to speak, even though your impulses finally slumber beneath your veins.

Alfira waves shyly to you.

“I hope we’re not interrupting,” Fayeth says, glancing between you and Astarion. “Alfira wouldn’t speak with you on her own. She insisted I introduce her to you properly.”

“I didn’t insist, I— Well, it doesn’t matter.” She’s nervously sweet, frequently looking between your green, putrid face and the sandy gravel at her feet. “I didn’t really get a chance to speak with you after we met in the grove. I just— I wanted to say thank you. For saving the grove, for saving all of us. I know you’ve heard it likely a hundred times tonight, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”

Your silence would deter less kind people altogether, but she tries again to reach past your blank stare, and find something stirring in your eyes. “Did… Did you rest well? I hope our song gave you some comfort.”

Astarion gives you little time to embarrass yourself further. He interjects, and quickly steers the conversation away from you. “I believe I heard you two playing earlier, didn’t I? You’re much better than the ghastly trio playing now— and I don’t compliment musicians often.”

Alfira laughs and flashes you a smile that almost sends you spiraling more than you already are. You grip your knees until the bones of your knuckles bare white, and all of your extremities numb themselves with the effort of keeping you from sprinting away, into the woods. How thankful you are that the urge sleeps now, otherwise you’d run your hands right through her.

“Thank you!” Alfira says to Astarion. “How sweet.”

Fayeth is apparently more aware of your tensity than Alfira is, but she does not mention it, and instead tries to move herself and the tiefling away from the two of you. “Yes,” She says with her hands on Alfira’s shoulders. “But it seems we’ve interrupted after all. Thank you for indulging us.”

She begins to walk away with a confused tiefling in tow. Fayeth looks over her shoulder and calls to the pair of you, “Enjoy yourselves tonight!”

“Oh, we plan on it.” Astarion says loudly so that she may hear him over the music. The fear that paralyzes you slowly subsides, only because Astarion is beside you, only because you find some amount of comfort in his voice. He snaps his fingers at you.

“Need I corral you elsewhere?” He asks.

You uncurl your fingers from your knees, and let your breath release in short increments that set your shoulders shaking with leftover adrenaline. If simple fear does this to you, you dread imagining what your maniacal urges will do to the bard once they elect to resurface.

“Gods,” Astarion breathes, “Does it really have such a hold of you?”

You stare down at the river as it laps onto a rocky shore. “I feel quite unfortunate.”

“You seem as unfortunate as a starving, newly-turned vampire. I would know.”

“I’m sorry,” You hear yourself say with a shaky breath. “I’m sorry you know what this feels like.”

“Breathe it away. Steady yourself.” He tries to comfort you. You don’t want comfort; you want the sharp of his teeth in your neck again, and his hand down your pants. Adrenaline is only good for two things, after all. You take your hand and drag the back of your knuckles along his outer thigh; he gives you a heavy look.

“If you’re ready for it,” He drawls with lidded eyes, “Let’s take an evening for ourselves, near the creek.”

“Please,” You hate sounding so desperate, but the air is already about you, as he’d said. “I want to be at a mercy other than this curse.”

You draw close together, close enough to smell the wine on each other’s breath. With little reluctance you press your lips into his, interlocking in a dance you cannot remember sharing with anyone else. Astarion leans into you quite readily despite your shaking, and steadies you by holding tightly to your arms. You nearly pull him onto you with how closely you hold him, pinching the corner of his jaw with your thumb and finger, scratching at his neck with impatient claws and biting his lip with sharp, overeager teeth. He sighs into your mouth when you shove your knee between his legs in an attempt to pull him onto your lap, but he pushes back, and says, “Could we find somewhere more private, first?”

You run into his jaw and bite down hard as he lets loose a quick, pleasured sigh. You cannot remember the last time you’ve been touched, or done the touching, but your hands find purchase easily on his body, knowing instinctively where to go.

Together you stand and find your way through the woods, stumbling into each other as your hands move faster than your legs can carry you. Eventually you find the place by the creek, so far removed from camp that no one can see you; you can only hear the music ever so faintly. You find that it’s decorated with a bedroll and unlit candles.

Despite how pleased you are to know Astarion set this all up for you, it is a miracle that you have not torn him asunder thus far— but you have tried. Bite marks stain his neck and jaw, pin-pricked by the smallest drops of old, black blood. It’s been days since he’s drank from you, since he’s killed you.

He seems to be thinking about your death, as you are. He pulls partially back from your kiss and asks, “How do you trust me?”

“Trust is of no concern here,” You answer honestly. The two of you hardly know each other, but you would give him all your blood again, if only he would take it. “It’s a willingness I’ve had for no one else.”

You don’t waste a breath in reassuring him further. You wind your hand up the back of his head and take hold of his hair, biting hard on his bottom lip again before lowering the two of you to the ground. His hands snake up your back and pull your shirt over your shoulders, and he scrapes his nails along your fresh scars. The sudden burn makes you curl into him, and he squirms beneath you with impatience, tugging at your pants; but you move to take his off first, uncertain of how he might react to discovering that you are not exactly a traditional man.

He is rigid against you, and as he goes to cup your crotch, he feels that you are not. He winds his way around the hem of your underwear and slips underneath, only to find his hand wet when he partially withdraws it in surprise.

He pulls away from your kiss with a deep breath and smiles up at you. “You’ve still a penchant for it, you know. For surprises.”

He slips his fingers back inside your pants, and this time, he does not pull away until he hears you ask him to. Within a half-hour, he’s squirming beneath you in his silent, shaking resolution, and you find yourself remembering then what a perfect, pretty corpse he might make.

“Gods,” He exhales before letting his head fall back in exhaustion. He chuckles breathlessly. “I don’t know what I expected from you, but… It was not that.”

You peel yourself from him and lay down in the soft grass, listening to the little creek churn as it winds its way through the woods. Astarion watches you, as he unnecessarily catches his breath. Corpses don’t breathe, but this one pants for you anyway. He turns over, and places an arm on either side of you before gracing your lips with a long, gentle kiss.

Your eagerness has not yet subsided. You pull him off your mouth and shove him into the crevice of your neck. He is just as eager, it seems; he poises his fangs at the breaking point of your skin, and awaits your permission, even after such intimacy. His lips graze your throat as he asks, “Are you sure?”

“Hm,” You hum, so that he might feel your voice on his mouth. “You feel like bliss.”

You give him the permission he waits for with a simple push to his head. His fangs sink into you with a fury like ice, and you leave your fate to him again. The blizzard that stormed through you the first time returns, and freezes you in place, paralyzing you against all desire, so that even if the urge inside you truly wanted to grant Astarion a second death, it could not.

You let the vampire’s bite overtake your senses then, unwilling to fight it, unwilling to concentrate on anyone other than the man that holds you down. You wonder if he might drain you dry again, but you do not wonder for long, for the world around you quickly falls darker, and darker, until you cannot feel anything anymore.