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Astarion wakes up, which is odd in and of itself for several reasons.

It's a slow, uncomfortable sort of process, pulling blearily out of a river; not the fast-twitch jump from reverie he’s used to. He didn't trance, it seems. What flickers of memories he should have aren't there. Just the pressing darkness behind closed eyes. Something entirely separate. 

Astarion shifts, the movement of a serpent unspooling onto a sun-warmed rock—but there's no elegance, no luxuriation, because it stops halfway through completion. 

His hands don't move from behind his back. Around his wrists, the scratch of hemp rope. 

He's restrained. 

Fear, familiar in its void-black depths, makes a home in him. Astarion inhales, little more than shallow comfort, something to inflate his chest off the ground and raise his head. His hair flutters out of his eyes, snowy curls, laden with dirt and dust—marred, like he'd scuffled on the ground, but he doesn't do that. He sprawls on his bedroll and trances peacefully into the night, now that they're out of the shadows-cursed lands and his stomach is full once more of boar and deer. He rests with actual meaning of the word, rather than fitful starvation-fed unconsciousness. 

But there are ropes around his wrists. 

Grass, scattered around like a prairie, the green dulled by approaching night; and within, boots. People.

He tilts his head back, curling in, shoulders hunched—travels up boiled leather and sheaths to Wyll, standing, armoured and cold. Scarlet weeps from his neck, two wounds. The rest of the party mirrored like spread wings, Gale's runes and Lae'zel's longsword and Karlach's fists and Shadowheart's moonlight, tall, prepared, while he lies in the dirt with his hands bound–

Wyll steps forward. Eldritch magic thrums through the air. There is no warmth in his eyes. His neck is bleeding. 

"Who did we first meet in the Last Light Inn?"

What in all hells? Astarion wrenches at his arms, testing the knots; they're wrapped thrice around his wrists and coiled back on themselves, secure as a noose, and the rasp of his skin says they've been there for some time. Pain elsewhere, tangled in his skull. He scrambles back, slithering like a worm, flat and petrified. Nothing to shelter beneath. Nowhere to run. 

"Wyll, darling," Astarion pleads, and can't keep the frantic edge from bleeding into his voice, panic simmering under the surface. "Are you– is this–"

Wyll doesn't move. "Answer the question."

Astarion twists again, clawing up to look at the others—there's this wretched grimace to their faces, their eyes. But he can't see magic, spells, curses; just standing overhead, assembled, him bound on the ground. "It– it was Jaheira, she tested our parasites and threatened to carve us open, that's all, what is going on–"

Silence.

Then Wyll sags, a puppet with cut strings—his heroic stance melts away and takes back the fear it was hiding, pooling oil-dark over the ground. Weary relief drapes his shoulders in its stead. "You're back," he says, near breathless. "Mother of mercies, Astarion, it's you."

"Yes," Astarion says, still fast, still feverish, gestating bewilderment laced with poison. "It's me, loves, you know me, there's no need for this–"

He must say something right—an answer for a question he doesn't know—because revelation ripples through everyone but him. 

Lae'zel's sword drops. She lets it fall harmlessly to the grass as she swears what seems a beautiful assembly of curses in githyanki, kicking at the ground hard enough it quakes. Gale's magic puffs away as he slumps back, dragging a hand over a face pale at the corners. Shadowheart's eyes, dark like Sharran nights, lose the acerbic nature of three months past. The moonlight retreats to only brighten the sky. 

Karlach fists at her hair, strands pulled until they shake, and there are tears in her eyes—genuine tears, drifting away as mist whenever they kiss her skin. "Fucking hells," she rasps, again and again, in what should be under her breath but rumbles through her chest instead. "Fucking hells, what was that–"

They're standing down. Putting away their weapons. Marching off the battlefield back to base, abandoning deployment, but they're standing and they're relaxing and he is still restrained on the ground.

Astarion shifts again, hips digging into the dirt. Wyll jerks like he's been struck. "Gods, I'm sorry," he rambles, heavy with shock—drops to his knees, flicking open a sheath on his side to tug out a carving knife. Astarion holds very still, animal instinct, but Wyll takes his wrists with this impossible care and saws through the rope, fibers shredding loose to pepper over his thighs. Another moment and he's free. The remains scatter in the dirt around him. Freed.

Surprise, mercurial, drifts in. Astarion knows, of course, that they are heroes, and he can trust them, and they are the rarest, most despicable breed of being genuinely decent folk—but that part of him and the two hundred years before it have a favoured battlefield in his mind, and by sheer experience, his past tends to win. 

But then Wyll cuts him free. Lets him go. 

His neck cracks as he straightens, as he takes Wyll's proffered hand to stand—still in his nightclothes, the ruffled top and embroidered chaps, preparing to settle down for the evening. He had been doing that, chatting about nothing as they lamented the days of travel left to reach Baldur's Gate, to end this all, and then–

Nothing. Then dirt. Then rope. 

Wyll pulls him up, incandescently warm under his skin. Mismatched eyes, wide and rattled. Just Wyll again. Not the Blade of Frontiers. Only the man.

"Thank you, love," Astarion manages. He rubs his wrists—they don't truly hurt, perhaps chafed from unconscious struggling, but he can't chase the fear for all he was released. It's odd in many ways to have the bandwidth of fear—to have enough space in his life to care about these trivialities, rather than just survival. 

To care about anything at all, really. 

"Don't thank me," Wyll says, shaking his head. In the approaching evening, his horns gleam like obsidian. "It's my fault for letting it get that far. We were– well. Trying to find a way to subdue you without causing harm, and it was our only idea at the time." The ghost of regret—grief, almost, though he tries to hide it under a lopsided smile. "Not our best plan."

"Of course," Astarion says, like he understands. He very much fucking doesn't. Terror is an ever-present beast, but confusion makes for a strong contender. "And what—exactly—happened?"

"I would like to know as well," Gale pipes in. "To the best of our knowledge, we were traveling on as normal, and only tonight were there any signs. We haven't encountered anyone beyond several groups of refugees—did one of them interact or cast something on you?"

"I– no?" Astarion racks his brain, padding around the black hole of the hour before—nothing but typical travel. They're still half a week out from Baldur's Gate, moving with cautious haste so as to not attract suspicion, considering there isn't a chance Gortash hasn't prepared for their arrival. He walked, complained, hunted last night; all his characteristic fastenings, layered over with enjoying the sunlight. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

Gale frowns, a hum building on his tongue. "Someone following us, perhaps? If the spell has a greater range of casting?"

There's still tension down his spine, the volcanic ash of inevitability, because they're talking and moving and generally being as they were but he woke up bound, and he cannot forget that. "Loves," Astarion says, sharper. "What in all hells happened?"

Shadowheart's lips thin, hair curtaining around her neck. "You weren't yourself," she says, and the normal acrimonious spirit he has grown to be uncomfortably fond of isn't there—just fatigue. "Possessed."

The others murmur various degrees of consensus. Karlach, still wrenching at her horn like she wants to break it off, finally lets her shoulders slump down, hope drowning the cracks of composure.

Astarion blinks. Hells. Possession. And a violent one, by the sounds of it—Wyll's neck is still bleeding, sluggish, like twin scarlet pearls. Something to rip him open, drain the blood inside. The intrinsic work of a vampire spawn. Of him. 

What deity did he piss off to have him the target, rather than any of these other wandering fools with bleeding hearts on their sleeve? At least they wouldn't have had his fear, when he looked up from the ground with his hands bound—memories overlapping with reality, how many times he's found himself in that position before. A malaise proven correct too many times to discount. 

But they didn't do anything. They let him go, and apologized all the while, and lathered him with the logical fallacies that led to this. Not monsters. Not masters. 

"Possessed," he echoes, brows climbing far past his forehead. "Shadowheart, dear, did I mishear you?"

She blows hair out of her face, reveals dark circles underneath—a wane huff of air, shaking her head. "I wish. But no. You attacked us."

Astarion wonders, with a brief murmur of desperation, if this is all a dream. "I attacked you?"

"Damn right you did," Karlach says, smoke belching from her shoulders. She's smiling, wide and a touch deranged, like she's torn between splitting some poor fucker's head for the distraction or swearing gentle pacifism for the rest of her days. She laughs, this booming thing heaving relief alongside. "You're a right fighter when the fire's in you, yeah? Nipped Wyll while we were having a proper panic, then went pouncing after Gale before Lae'zel tackled you—and kept tussling long after." 

Lae'zel nods. "I have wrestled myocrenic amphians with greater ease than you," she tells him, pride patterned throughout. Evidence of her training's success. "It was only our combined strength that successfully bound you."

"I suppose I'll take that as a compliment," Astarion drawls, all teeth. Then, because he has grown unbearably soft and forgiving– "And yes, I am not overly fond of being restrained. I'm quite surprised you escaped with as little maiming as you have."

Karlach snorts, twisting her hand around to bare four lines carved through the flesh of her forearm—across, Gale adjusts a shoulder already laced over with bandages to keep the air out. 

"Not for your lack of trying," Wyll says, eyes crinkled at the corners. He taps the twin punctures on his neck, his particular brimstone scent waving its enticing presence over the camp. "Hells, maybe you should fight with Karlach and Lae'zel on the front lines."

"I do apologize for that," Astarion says, with a particular prim splaying of his hands. "Normally I'm polite enough to ask beforehand."

Wyll huffs a laugh. "You're many words, Astarion, but I wouldn't call you polite."

It is three impossible months in the making but Astarion smiles in response, sharp and integrally him—playful, despite the situation, despite everything. "Terribly rude. I will remember this when you require someone to protect your fragile back from our next githyanki scout."

Even Shadowheart rolls her eyes at that, a grin tucked beneath the derision. Humour. Simple enjoyment.

The laughter is– nice. Helps soften the blow of reality creeping under the subgrade—he attacked them, enough they bound his hands and stood guard. But now they're laughing, bright-faced relief threaded through. Like nothing happened. 

Attacked is a strong word to taste. Three months ago, he'd be less than surprised, when every new face was a threat and life a ceaseless terror. When it was easier to mock, to be so haughty and cruel they wouldn't ever get close, wondering if he should lie about what he was—not to be harmless, but to be harmful. Pretend to be so dangerous they would never dare try to kill him. 

But they didn't. They still haven't. 

"We were talking," Shadowheart says, and points near the campfire—two stumps, withered by age, framed by twin abandoned wine glasses. He remembers that, bantering about one thing or the other—perhaps Gale's ceaseless murmurings over dinner or Lae'zel's unbridled excitement at finally having large game to hunt again. Something useless and enjoyable. "Then you just– lunged. We barely had enough time to react."

Hm. Astarion's no arcane prodigy, but that seems to check the boxes for typical possession, even without the normal setting of a warped battlefield and obvious castor. If they were any less efficient, perhaps his actions would have revealed whatever mission he'd been given—but he'll take this over that.

"What was I like?" Astarion asks, head tilted. The bite on Wyll's neck is well-placed, settled to the left of his jugular, and the scratches in Karlach's arms are those flexed to make the most of his claws; not a mindless rage, but instead coordinated assault. Using his strengths to their full extent. 

Wyll frowns, rocking back on his heels. They're all arranged in this positively cozy spread, half-circle, but the ground is littered with refuse of the scuffle—torn grass, clods of dirt. Trenches where the moss won't grow. Quick and brutal, a trickle of blood with the brimstone smell of Wyll's particular vintage. No others.

"Angry," Wyll settles on. "Just– snarling, rather than talking. Almost feral, in a way."

Astarion takes some pains not to react. 

A monster, it sounds like. What creature he's hidden under his bones, tucked amidst lies of a magistrate and a martyr and a mercenary out to save the world; the part of himself he's buried very, very far from the party. Three months to dig a grave. 

"Curious," he says, as if to the denouement of a half-interesting novel. "I don't suppose you know any spell that functions like this?"

"Definitively not," Gale says, butting in as is his preferred manner of communication. "Complete mental control, and counterspell had no effect. Neither did dispel magic, nor detect magic—whatever it was, it functioned like, hm, perhaps modify memory? A single-use curse, undetectable except for those who know what to look for." He sighs, sounding much too disappointed. "Which I suppose we never will."

Astarion rolls his eyes. "I'm ever so sorry to keep it a mystery," he says, dry as enamel. "You're welcome to volunteer if they come back."

"They won't," Wyll promises. "It won't happen again, Astarion, I swear that. We won't fail a second time."

Lae'zel bends down to pick up her longsword, frowning at the dirt smeared across the blade. "Chk. Not while I draw breath."

"I'm not much with the magic shit but I'll keep poking Gale's ass so he holds all night with counterspell, yeah?" Karlach says, all forked teeth and wide grin. "Not a godsdamn chance we're letting this mystery bastard try again."

"Counterspell didn't have any effect," Gale points out. 

"Yeah, 'cause you tried after the fact," she says, shrugging. "If you blast the fucker right when he casts it, maybe that'd work." A pause, contemplative. "Wouldn't be that hard to string up some nasty surprises, either. Snares and the like."

Shadowheart shakes her head again, but even she can't tuck away the faint smile. "Have a lovely time turning the camp into a death trap," she says, pushing back her hair. "But there's only a few hours of evening left, and unless you need help rescuing Karlach from her own invention, I'm off to more relaxing activities."

That's a bald-faced lie, unless she could somehow convince him that pouring endlessly over Sharran rhetoric and propaganda is the equivalent of a warm-water bath. The hunt for her parents has lit a new fire more than Shar ever did, and with silver hair and a gleaming spear, she looks ready to tear the cult down to the bricks holding it together. 

She could do it. If anyone, it would be her; for all the time Astarion's known her, from slit-eyed rancor to vicious mockery to teased bullying to a genuine friendship formed over glasses of shitty wine and no lack of fools to gossip on, she's only ever been strong. Shar doesn't stand a chance. 

"Oi," Karlach snorts, tail curling around her ankles. She reaches out to pluck the back of Gale's robes. "This-a-way, magic man."

"I had more questions," he complains, but goes docilely when Karlach drags him to the borders of camp—likely blowing through the last of his magical strength for the day, which tends to make him peckish and irritable in the morning, but, well. Astarion would say the situation calls for it. He isn't shaking, not anymore, but his hands stay wrapped around his wrists—just skin. No restraints. 

Lae'zel squints, ears flicking up. "Do not do that again," she says, very serious. Then she sheathes her longsword over her shoulder and marches off to the opposite end of camp, either for traps or hunting, whichever bloodies her frustration out more. 

"Only for you, dear," Astarion calls at her back. She ignores him. 

Wyll quirks his lips, rubbing unconsciously at his healing throat. Waiting for him. Unsurprising, really—their fearless leader, ever since Gale abdicated the role in the Grove when Wyll professed his desire to save the world, and found a merry band of murderers to aid him on that path. He checks in on them like a doting mother, only a step away from kissing their injuries better. 

Perhaps he should. Astarion would pay good coin to see Lae'zel's reaction. 

Even now, he's all doe-soft eyes and careful movements, light of the distant sunset settling on his cheekbones. Worried, because there isn't a world where he wouldn't be, but tempered with relief. "Are you okay?"

"As much as I can expect to be," Astarion admits. The laughter helped, the immediate forgiveness and apologies smoothing over the tremor in his bones—but he woke up restrained. That will stay with him for far longer than he wants it to, he knows. Another ghost to join the choir. He's collected quite the graveyard. 

"Did I hurt anyone?" He asks, surprising himself with it. A pause. "Besides you."

Wyll snorts, shaking his head. "A few minor scratches is all," he says. "You weren't fighting as well as I know you to—uncoordinated, I would call it."

"Hm," Astarion sniffs, head tilted back. "See if I ever pay compliment to your possessed fencing skills."

Wyll pokes his tongue through his teeth when he smiles. It is worryingly endearing. "With any luck, I'll never have to embarrass myself with them." Then, sobering– "But I am sorry."

Away from the others, his mismatched eyes burn with conviction. "If I had caught it before, none of this would have happened. To tie you up like– a wild animal, gods. You don't deserve that. Any of it."

"Yes, well–" Astarion sighs. "I'm not so much a liar as to say it was fine, but it was understandable, unfortunately. And you did apologize very sweetly." 

The tips of Wyll's ears flush a delightful dark shade. Astarion smiles, genuine and bizarre affection bubbling up within—of all the heroes, Wyll is, perhaps, one of the more admirable. A plucky do-gooder at first, when Astarion had watched him vault over the Grove's walls and posture with truly terrible witticisms. Easy to write off, easy to manipulate. 

And then he had spared Karlach, earning a body remade and reputation tarnished. Then he had fought the wretched Gur in the swamp under no pretense but protection. Then he had led them through the shadows-cursed lands without wavering to fight a god. 

A hero, yes. Impossible to untangle from his mess of a legend. 

But a person as well. And a good one at that. 

"Water under the bridge, love," Astarion says, and lets the smile of a cat stretched in a sunbeam cross his face. "However, if I were to leverage this against camp duties, how far would I get?"

Both eyebrows fly up. Wyll crosses his arms. "Give it a try. See how far."

Challenge accepted. "Gale already complains up a storm when I'm assigned to help cook," Astarion starts, ticking off in his fingers. "And the less said of assuming Lae'zel requires help with hunting the better. And there is no need for me to

-

Astarion wakes up in the dirt.

What was once a dull ache has spiraled up to a pounding pressure over his body, spidered around fingers and under skin; the side of his head, the flat of his back. Astarion grits his teeth to cage a pained groan, twitching once, neck to feet—nothing seems broken, though something on his arm is toeing the line. What in all hells?

Movement, overhead. The shuffle of footsteps. His ears flick forward. 

The party is assembled before him. Pale silver surrounds Shadowheart's palms, evocations over Gale's—Lae'zel has her longsword braced and though Karlach doesn't have her greataxe, her fists are clenched tight enough embers pop and drift between her knuckles. 

And, in the front, Wyll stands, his infernal rapier positioned half a foot from Astarion's head. 

He goes very still.

A single drop of blood slides down the length, scarlet-black, splashes from the tip. Astarion tracks it, can't help himself—that's his blood. He can't place the precise cut of a blade under the tidal wave, but it must be there. 

It happened again. It happened again. He was– possessed and attacked them, mindless rage, feral; not anymore. He's awake. But it happened again.

The last time, untying him the moment he spoke, apologizing all the while, explaining, laughing about injuries and routes to get them—now they're just watching him, wary, tensed. Still ready. Still not moving. 

He hurt them and they hurt him and it's him perfectly helpless. Just rope, not chains, but he knows it's only a matter of time.

No. Others, yes, but this is Wyll and Karlach and Gale and Shadowheart and Lae'zel, who have proven themselves to bleed mercy and pick him up when he falls. He attacked them—that's why he's on the ground. No other reason. He trusts them. 

The rope digs into his wrists.

"I'm going to guess," Astarion says, croaks, around a throat ragged from howling, "that it happened again."

Wyll's hands move—a flash of steel and his rapier is sheathed, not taking the time to clean off the blood. He exhales this ragged, half-delirious sound; the party mirrors him, dragging hands through hair and squeezing their eyes shut. Relief, tempered with wary apprehension. 

"Astarion," Karlach says, near breathless. "That's you, yeah? Back with us?"

"As if I'd rather be anywhere else," he says, a touch too fast. The ropes, tight and expert, the knotted mess of a beast captured. 

Beneath his stomach, cold dirt. Beneath that, stone. 

He's lying through his pointy fucking teeth but he can't stop, even when he knows it's pointless, it's useless, it doesn't matter– "Let me go," Astarion tries, smiling, bright, shaking. "It's worn off, loves, you can see that. I'm me. I'm back."

For just a moment, Wyll hesitates. 

But then he's kneeling alongside Astarion, knife coming free—it takes him longer to saw through the knots this time, more intricate patterns, double-bound and ratcheted around itself. Tighter. More inescapable. 

For a moment, Astarion imagines the scenario—how do you pin and bind a savage spawn? He categorizes his injuries, peels through the pain with clinical apathy. The side of his head was a flat blow, one to throw him to the ground; whatever landed on his back was heavier, braced to pin. There's a cut on his upper arm, shallow but long—a parrying strike, perhaps, as he clawed his way forward. The faint prickle and sting of burns, scattered up his spine. 

Wyll fought, Lae'zel struck, and Karlach wrestled him down. Coordinated. Whatever injuries he bullied upon them was little in face of what they were able to do to him, to tie his hands and keep him down. 

Astarion thinks on this. Buries it. He doesn't care. It's simple equations that five against one would not end with him as the victor; and of course they're harmonious in their efforts to capture a monster, it's practically all this adventure has been. Little more than what it is. He doesn't care. 

The ropes slough off and Wyll rocks back on his heels, offers a hand—Astarion takes it, delicate, and lets himself be pulled up. The world bucks once under his feet, the ache and thud of a head wavering through blunt force trauma, but he grits his teeth and ignores it. He's good at that. 

Sixth, standing. All eyes on him. 

 "Yes," Wyll says. There's something hollow in his face. "It happened again. We were just talking when you– attacked."

Astarion lets himself stop breathing to stave off going too fast. 

"Again," he says, flat, too flat– no. He pushes his lips to lilt up, the lazy stretch of an unbothered smile, paired with polished sotto voce like wine. "And here I thought the Weave enjoyed predictability. Perhaps twice is just to keep us on our toes."

The silence burns for a moment too long. 

"Only twice," Astarion says again, a manifestation. "Maybe I tripped into bad luck, loves, that's all—we can relax now. I'm back."

"Twice is still a coincidence," Wyll says, harrowingly slow. "Maybe it is over."

He doesn't sound convinced.

Gale's eyes flick to the scraps of rope left behind. 

Lae'zel pins her ears back, looking all the world like she hates this. But she's never been one to run, neither to lose her nerve as the others dither around difficult topics. "Weapons," she declares, brisk and brusque. "You will not be restrained, but I will not risk being attacked. Give me your weapons."

"Of course," he says. He's rambling. Stuffing words to fill the gap fear's carving wider and wider into his chest. "Wouldn't want things to go south, not again. Gods if this hasn't been enough of a misadventure."

It's a sordid distraction to unlace his twin sheaths, prying out the daggers he's carried for longer than their enchantment should have held. Lae'zel takes them gently, carefully. His crossbow is back at his tent and he's in his nightclothes; only a lockpick set wrapped in his shirt hem that takes half a moment to undo and one thin shiv tucked in his boot. 

At the beginning of their journey, he was more armed at night than he was in the day. Half of the spoils he took from less-deserving bodies became last defenses, waiting with paralyzed certainty for when the party discovered what he was—and then, after they did, for the moment when they determined it was no longer worth it to keep him alive. 

But they didn't. And slowly, he stopped making himself into an armoury. This is all he has.

Astarion hesitates, just for a second, as Lae'zel plucks the blade from his hand. His last protection, beyond fangs that require him to get close and words that mean nothing when death comes howling. Perfectly defenseless before five heroes that killed the avatar of a god.

But it's fine. He doesn't care. He just wants this to be over. He trusts them. 

The party relaxes when he's disarmed. It means nothing. 

"You seem rather convinced it will happen again," Astarion says, drumming fingers over empty sheaths. "I don't suppose that means you are closer to knowing what it is?"

Wyll grimaces. Answer enough. 

"I'm worried it isn't a spell," Gale says, hesitant. "I apologize for revealing I know more about magical compulsions than a kinder person would, but this is not how they function. A delayed response, yes, but not multiple, and certainly without releasing the commanded's mind in-between. If this is a spell, it is like nothing found in Faerûn."

Marvelous. It looks like Astarion is a magical fucking mystery. 

"Poison, maybe?" Karlach tries. "Some– I dunno, psychic shit? Like the tinmask spores?"

"But he's been around us the whole time," Wyll says, tugging at his vambraces like he needs to give his hands something to do. "There isn't a time he could have interacted without us noticing. Unless–"

Lae'zel's ears go flat against her skull. 

"Tsk'va," she mutters. Ice flashes through her eyes. "There is another problem we all face."

From within their shared connection, her tadpole twitches. 

Ah. That's… disconcerting. 

Astarion isn't so much a fool as to trust the soft-eyed man in his reverie that spoke of protection and safety, but it is difficult to ignore walking beneath the unburning sun and lack of Cazador's commands. He'd stayed quiet as the others harrumphed around the world trying to find ways to remove the pesky parasites, never quite sure if he would join them or not—and then that was rather removed as an option as the true spread of the war before them became apparent. Protection and persecution entwined. 

There is blood under his nails. 

Gale frowns. "Surely we would be affected as well," he says, hand braced on his chin. "I see no reason why it would happen to one instead of six."

"He's undead," Shadowheart says, brows furrowed. "Would that make him easier to transform?"

Astarion shifts weight between his feet. This is not an avenue of discussion he wishes to travel. 

"He isn't transforming," Wyll corrects. "Just– attacking. And he hasn't used any psionic abilities, only himself. If he were truly changing, we would have noticed other symptoms by now, even if just in appearance."

Wait.

Astarion runs through the past hour—waking up, bound, Wyll bleeding. But the daggers at his sides were sheathed and unmarred, despite how his fangs are vastly less effective; same for the blade in his boot. Why wouldn't he use them?

"How did I attack?" He asks, before he can stop himself. 

"Bit Wyll and clawed us up," Karlach says, tail tapping at the dirt. "Least you didn't drain us all the way down. Why?"

"You took my blades," Astarion points out, easily, because he doesn't care. He trusts them. "But I haven't used them. I've only attacked you directly."

Wyll blinks, considering. "You never reached for them," he hums, gaze flicking as he cycles through old memories. "Just– fangs and claws. Is there that great of a difference?"

Astarion rubs at his wrists, the prickled memories of ropes; there's something like bile in his mouth to talk so openly, discuss his weaknesses like traders hawking wares in marketplaces. But it's fine. He doesn't care. They're trying to help him, to solve this vicious mystery before the curtains close on a fouler scene. Hells know he would act the same if it were Shadowheart that tried to tear Gale a new asshole with her spear rather than words—she would be restrained and subdued, kept in stasis while they worked to solve her condition. Same for Wyll, for Lae'zel, for Karlach—everyone. This is the normal reaction. The way he is being treated is normal. He doesn't care. 

"In efficiency, yes," Astarion says. He gets halfway through holding up a claw as example before swallowing the potential threat, just adjusting the ruffle at his throat. "Rather short-ranged, being attached to me; and far more prone to dulling than steel. The weapons of a cornered animal rather than brawler."

"But why would you bite us?" Wyll points out, frowning. "If some part of your mind is still present to know the difference; that doesn't make sense."

His smile thins. "Love, I am wildly aware."

"If the parasite functions separately, perhaps it doesn't know what is outside your body," Gale muses. "Armour and weapons are not typically included in one's ideal of themself, after all."

There's a gleam of mysticism over his hands, extended palms-up. Light flickers over it, a muted glow as if through a streetlamp. "Imagine, if you will, that this is our mind—while we outside are able to see the back of my hand, the light cannot illuminate it. So there is a chance it never knows what would be

-

Astarion surfaces as if from the deep ocean. 

Tar, sinking into his limbs, congealed oblivion. The solipsistic part of him wants to claw back to the depths, to disappear in the unending black so he can better ignore the world—but the dread of unfamiliarity tugs him away, lurching from the void calling his name. It isn't trancing, isn't reverie, where at least he can dream of whatever dogs dream. Something else. 

But perhaps the endless would have been kinder than the world, when he awakens. Dirt, pressed to his face, aches lingering in crevasses, immobility as cause and causation. And–

Behind him, metal clicks and digs into his skin—proper chains, links and manacles. Not silver, not burning, but chains. Marble-cold and battered. Decay sits heavy on his tongue.

It's probable that Gale summoned them, prattled to the Weave as he is wont to do until it got sick of soliloquies and just gave him what he wanted, but– Astarion knows that's only one side of the coin. He knows that there is a chance, however small, that they already had these. That they were just waiting. 

Two hundred years grows a vintage fear.

Astarion inhales, drags himself upright. The chains move with him. Not enough blood to swell but enough to sense their weight, the heft of metal tugging his wrists down. The party is moving, coming back to encircle him; grim, drawn. Still in their armour. 

"Chains, loves?" Astarion laughs, this glib, indifferent sound. "And here I thought we were all civilized. At least those in bedchambers know to pad the interiors."

Shadowheart looks away, face placid with forced composure. There's a fleck of scarlet under her left eye—his or someone else's, he can't tell. It wasn't there last time. "You fought harder," she says, without jokes of joining the front line or outcompeting Lae'zel. His strength is no longer an admiration but a fear. "We did what we could."

Astarion shifts upright, an unelegant twist to get his knees beneath him. Kneeling. Chains screech in his ears with the roar of a waterfall. "Well," he says, light-hearted desperation, a song that's lost its melodies. "I'll take that as another compliment of my ability, I suppose. But if you wouldn't mind removing them?"

Wyll doesn't take out his knife. He doesn't step forward.

Karlach squeezes her eyes shut, looking all the world like Zariel just ripped out her heart again. "Maybe– maybe not this time, yeah?" She's curling in, smoke drifting through her ports, edges turning grey. Hazy in the growing dark. "You don't go down without a fight, and– I don't want to keep hurting you."

Apathy. He cannot be anything but apathetic. He does not care that this is happening. He smiles at her instead, a considering bob of his head. "That does seem the more intelligent plan, unfortunately," he says, light, bland, blasé. "Though the least you could do is fetch me a bedroll."

They must take it as a jest, because none of them move. 

Astarion stays kneeling, just for the few feet above soil. Logical thinking. A grave calculation, to restrain the monster before it bites; nothing more than expected. The same would happen to Wyll, to Lae'zel. He sighs, unhurried. Nothing to make them doubt his serenity. "Then what is the plan?"

Silence, stretching. The prickling unease of words already said, only he wasn't there to hear them. 

It's war to stay still, to stay unbothered, stretched out like a rat beneath the trap. They've been talking about him, over him—threat changes and the movement of property, voices agitated and harsh. The fervour of something he doesn't know because he can't remember.

Astarion punctures his bottom lip, twisting around the manacles to dig claws into his arm. Calm. He can't start shaking. 

"I hope you know I'm here and willing," he says, shrugging like this is nothing, like this is fine. "Any questions you have—I'm quite invested in getting this sorted."

"We all are," Wyll says, impossibly gentle. On his neck, two half-healed punctures stand stark. "We're going to solve it, Astarion. Just a little longer."

A promise too saccharine to be true. 

For a terrible moment, Astarion considers, chains clattering over his thighs. His feet aren't bound. There is nothing but incoordination to stop him from running away, disappearing into the surrounding wilds until he is as much a ghost as his gravestone declares; fleeing from the party that says they are helping. That says they need just a little longer. 

They want to help. He believes that, he does, he does—but help is a fickle word. Actions even moreso. Despite their good intentions, they are hurting him. Despite their good intentions, they are controlling him, and they are not giving him a chance to fight back. Despite their good intentions, they are his captor, and he their prisoner. 

Astarion closes his eyes. Buries it. He doesn't care. They are kinder than Cazador. That is all that matters. Untuck his tail, shake off bristled hackles; he is fine. This is routine. 

He rises as they move, pulling back with taut shoulders. The situation is getting worse, building up as their solutions flutter away without any confirmation—gods if it wouldn't be easier if there was some vagabond's face to bloody and free concentration, a simple counterspell to flick away the danger. 

"We need to move," Wyll says, strung through with the uncertain finality of needing a decision but not knowing which to make. "We can't rule out the parasite but it's better to test if it's something in the area first, curse or person."

"But he is possessed more than he is present," Lae'zel points out, ears pinned flat. "Moving will risk him getting free."

Astarion, very carefully, doesn't react. 

Lost more than awake. Gone more than aware. The sun is tucked behind the trees, still lighting the sky in strands of purple-red but with an inevitability to its existence. How much time has passed? How long has he lost to the black voids between hours, the gaps where he knows nothing?

Is the party telling him everything?

They would, he trusts them, but- it is impossible to ignore that there is nothing to prove their truth or lies. They could have sat around for hours while he snapped and snarled in chains, discussing their strategies; could have left to gather supplies while he was caged; could have done– anything, really. 

Pain, sitting tense under the surface. 

"We'll have to try," Wyll says, grim. "I can't keep doing this without a plan."

Karlach nods. Smoke keeps her grey, trickling through the iron of her neck. "Anything's better than nothing. Right now we'll be caught in crimson if we stay sitting where they already know to find us."

Gale winces. By his side, Shadowheart mirrors the expression. "Unfortunately, I am rather waylaid in terms of magical strength," he admits, holding up a hand—only cantrips, fluttering over sallow skin. "Shadowheart as well, I believe. That will make transporting him all the more difficult, particularly if his undead nature strengthens him at night."

It doesn't. In the beginning, yes, when he winced away from sunlight's glare and fumbled around a world that moved instead of slept—no longer. He's adjusted. They should know that.

"Doesn't matter." Karlach grits her teeth. "I'll fucking– carry him the whole way, if that's what it takes. Not this constant attack and be attacked."

"Let him decide," Shadowheart says. "He'll know best for these things."

Astarion raises his head when they finally look back at him, smile in place and brows raised. "Well, loves?" He says, bright. "Are we pushing on or staying in?"

"Which d'you want?" Karlach says, crouching down to be on his level. She must mean it to be comforting; apprehension curdles in his gut instead. The difference of position, of form; him, kneeling. Her, choosing to come down. 

"Whichever you think is best," he says, delicate. "Any chance we have to get rid of this dastardly condition will be the 

-

Astarion wakes slowly, lashes fluttering against dirt. The world seeps through the cracks of his consciousness, rot-thick and necrotic; a ghost rattling through the hells. Festering violence. 

His arm burns—raw flesh exposed to open air, the twist and tangle of nerves sliced open, skin peeled back and removed. Chains, around his wrists, his ankles, his neck, his chest; caged. Broken. Cold stone against his face. The low thrum of agony existing and agony awaiting. 

In the distance, the clatter of bones. 

He's shaking. The chains are wound tight, expert—manacles on wrists and smaller threads woven through fingers, separating them, keeping him from dexterity, from escape, from anything. Astarion whines, a pale, fractured sound; bites his tongue hard enough to cleave the tip because Godey wants screams but Cazador wants pleading and he doesn't know which it is. Both. Both. 

Bared teeth for which he knows he'll be beaten but can't stop, thundering over the chasm he tried so fucking hard to escape; chained now but marble sarcophagi later, arms peeled apart so he feels it, unhealing without blood, for a year. A decade. A century of unending consciousness and battered bones and asphyxiation.

Movement overhead and he flinched, an animalistic twist away from the noise, curling in like that will stop anything even though it never has and never will–

Hands. 

Warm, thrumming with a heartbeat and life. Not dead. Not made of bones. Hands, that of a human, he can feel the difference. Alive. A person. They're clutching at his shoulders, trying to pull him up, facedown in cold stone—no, dirt. It's dirt. Not stone. Outside. Light from beyond closed eyes. 

"Breathe," someone begs, right against his side. "Breathe, Astarion, please–"

Cazador wouldn't say that. 

Astarion wrenches his eyes open, cowering back—but the face swimming before him is pale green, sienna spots freckling up cheekbones to pointed ears. Githyanki. Familiarity.

A feather-light touch, the din of metal. Another face, dark and red, obsidian horns curling and eye aglow—the raw desiccation of his arm throbs but the weight falls away, chains unlocked, manacles removed. Free. Unrestrained. Wyll.

"Help me," Lae'zel demands, crouching by his side. Her hands press on the back of his neck, before she seemingly remembers he doesn't have a pulse to check, and then she's hauling at his shoulders to tug him upright. He stumbles, feet unsteady and weak, but she's a bulwark at his side with Wyll only a moment behind. Touching. Holding. They're alive and he's a corpse in the gallows. 

It isn't Cazador. Isn't Godey. Just the party, wrapping around him, helping him up, removing the chains, apologizing. What he wanted, the past two times, but– not like this. Not with what they saw.

Fuck. Fuck. Three months of twisting words into the laughter of a free man and one fucking injury is all it takes to drag him back to a cur in the kennel, waiting for the whip. Water carves through the dust on his cheeks. He was crying. Blubbering like a fucking coward at nothing.

Astarion stops breathing. Stops shaking, grinds the desire under his heel; merely blinks and straightens up, pulling his hands from Lae'zel's steadying grip to stretch out, bleeding atrophy from their confined position. Looks at the party, assembled before him; looks at his arm. 

A gory mess, though only on his left. Something slashed a faltering line from wrist to elbow and peeled the skin back, delinquent taxidermy, to snap the twin bones underneath. One half is missing, which explains why moving hurts, why his nerves beg uselessly for mercy. Splinters left behind like tossed stones. Nothing to be concerned about; it isn't like dead bodies can get infections. He will dig through the flesh and marrow later to prepare it for healing. The rest of his body is much the same; no blood to stitch together minor injuries, lesser complaints, the casual interest of Cazador when his time is limited. A contemptible mutilation to make poor, inexperienced Leon scream while Astarion flourishes. 

He will always be ashen but there's something about his wrists, the stretch of white skin, rubbed raw—he looks and expects to see bone, to see flayed nerves, to see marbled flesh, bloodless and gored to match his arm. His legs look too pristine. He keeps waiting for more pain. It's hungering in his peripheries like a fell beast of old. 

Astarion digs his claws into that fish-pale flesh. 

This is nothing. This is fine. Godey would laugh at it, at this pitiful suffering made from brutes without any actual understanding of where the body gives and where it breaks; banal, simple. He's survived this and a thousand degrees more. An open arm, a bone sloppily broken loose. Even Dalyria, the most cowardly of the bunch, has done worse in squabbling over nonexistent comforts in the dorms. Gods. This is nothing. This is fine. He doesn't care. 

"My apologies," Astarion says, pretty as you please. He takes a delicate moment to brush the curls out of his face, adjusts the sit of his shirt so it hangs low over his collarbones, ruff feathering up his throat. A magistrate again, though he's bloodied and weakened and standing in the torn remains of a broken legacy—he's fine. He's fine. 

"Astarion," Karlach says, choked off. Pale under scarlet skin, eyes wide, arms tucked to her sides—she does that when she sees scared creatures, when a child toddles at the party's heels looking for comfort. Tries to tuck herself into the body of someone unfrightening. 

She's doing it for him. How weak they must believe him. 

Astarion laughs, the twitter of a bird. "Not my finest moment, I'm afraid," he says, loose and lazy. Something strangled underneath. "Though this is far from our finest situation for all. I hope I haven't hurt anyone this time?"

Lae'zel has bitten herself bloody, Gale standing stiff. Even Wyll's stance has been crippled, armour out of place on the scared man that wears it—weapons abandoned and readiness lost. A collection of bystanders, watching with hysterical anticipation for him to shatter. 

One moment of distress, not even fear; he wasn't screaming, wasn't begging, wasn't doing anything to incite such– panic. Gods, they seem more worried about him than even the injury; if he whimpers and whines about the pain, will that make them relax?

"Loves," Astarion says, brittle. He needs them to focus. To forget. "What happened?"

"You–" Wyll swallows, a bob in his throat. "The… restraints held, initially. We were trying to ask you questions, testing if you could answer. When you couldn't, we investigated the surroundings to see if someone was holding concentration, and–"

He trails off. Astarion shifts weight between his feet, flicking his gaze at the forest beyond. A bestial dread pools glacier-thick in his bones. The chains held him, kept them from needing to fight, but he's bleeding. Did they– was it sport? Another test? Why is he injured?

They won't meet his eyes.

"You tore open your arm," Wyll says finally. "Removed–"' the words seem to stick in his throat, dry and cracking. "You used one of your bones to pick the lock."

Ah. Fitting. Astarion learned that trick, hm, a decade in—although he learnt it with his fingers first, starved gaunt enough to prod fragile bones into tumblers. Cazador had found it funny, at first. Escaping chains just to be trapped in the kennel. 

He'd laughed. Then, he'd split Astarion's spine.

This injury comes from him, then. One of the myriad ways he tries to escape the inevitable. The paths carved through stone always circling back to where he is. A thrall that never lets him run. 

"I see," Astarion says, to fill the quiet. 

"You didn't hurt us," Wyll hastens, almost tripping over the platitudes to get them out. "Just– a scuffle, before we got the chains back on and secured your hands. That's all."

Astarion doesn't need two hundred years to see past that piteous deception. He flicks his attention around Wyll.

Deep in the grass, sinking teeth into his awareness, invisible in the darkness but scorching with potential—blood. Half his own, the tainted waste that collects like poison and drips black over its surroundings, but the other– well. Cloves and fire and brimstone. Blood of the others, freshly spilled.

Shadowheart stands quiet, glassy eyes under silver hair. She's not saying anything, lips pressed tight, but there's a strain of exhaustion in her gaze. The wax and wane of her power, even with Selûne as guide. No energy to heal, but armour covers their whole body; not difficult to hide bandages underneath. His gut ravages with hunger, claws and shredding talons. 

So Astarion did hurt them, and they aren't telling him. Likely from this farcical, benign reasoning to keep him from guilt, excusing it as him not being in control—but they aren't telling him everything. They're hiding things; perhaps worse, they're lying. What else could they be lying about?

Astarion looks away. He buries that thought, drinks the marrow, crushes the refuse between the flats of his teeth. They aren't telling him everything. They're keeping him chained and injured and pressed to the ground without weapons, and with each successive rise, they're learning how to better contain him. Learning from each revelation his other self sloughs off like chitinous armour.

Eventually, he won't be able to escape at all. 

"Well, that's a relief," he says, faux-bright, laughter boiled through a cauldron. "Gods, if nothing else, I was hoping for a more climactic reveal of that trick. Would you all do me a lovely favour and give me the accolades I deserve when I use it to free us from prison in Baldur's Gate?"

"What?" Wyll says, incredulous. "Astarion, you– that isn't a trick."

"We have frightful different definitions, then," Astarion says, rolling his eyes for good measure. "I'm a vampire spawn, dear. One fine sanguine meal and that helpful bone is securely back in its rightful place, better than before; and I rather think it's more useful to be gallivanting about the countryside instead of waiting for Enver Gortash as judge and executioner." A pause, recalculating. "And of course my possessed self is all the more violent. I'm quite selective when it comes to harming myself, you know that. There has been no need to do that with your protection."

Too much? Too far? He needs to find the right angle; the right weakness to prise apart and shove apathy in the wound. Astarion waves an indifferent hand. "A holdover from another time. It's nothing to worry your pretty heads over."

Karlach inhales something fragile. "Fangs, you were scared."

He isn't scared. He doesn't care. This is all routine, though they wouldn't know that. 

"At the risk of honesty, darling, I'd like to see you react any better," Astarion points out, brows raised. "We're rather a collective of fools with an outlook on life most would consider concerning. There's no need for this– coddling."

Wrong word. Wyll straightens, eyes wide. "Astarion–”

"I'm fine," Astarion cuts in, perfectly polite and painfully brittle. "I'm fine, loves. Truly."

Because he is. He is. At most, it's… unsettling that his arm continues to throb with this deep, pounding thunder like a mockery of a heartbeat. He feasted on a slain elk just the night before, a hunt joyous through the wild districts around their camp, and that should be blood enough to carry him past any injuries where all his limbs stay attached—perhaps another kill to regrow his bone, but enough to stop the discomfort. And that's without the bites he's landed on the party, the blood he's drained from them, though he can't remember it. 

His hands curl into rictus claws. He's fine. They can waste precious time faffing about worries and miseries and dreams of unending peace but his interest is squarely in the court of solving this; of burning it down until the only memory is the morning after. 

"Okay," Wyll says, achingly slow. "I believe you, Astarion. I'm sorry for pushing."

He sniffs. "Apology accepted."

They aren't bringing up his arm, nor mentions of healing it. Shadowheart is exhausted, yes, but despite blowing through nearly all their hoard of healing potions in Moonrise Towers after Z'rell nearly vivisected Karlach, he knows there should be a few more. Enough to smooth over the skin, if not regrow bone. 

But they aren't offering. Avoiding looking at it, actually. 

If he was healed, he would easier escape. He would easier fight them. He would easier force them to fight him. 

Simple deductions. Logical reasoning. He doesn't care. 

Then Wyll kneels, moving slow, pain carved deeper on his face than Mizora's laughter. Astarion helpfully steps back, and doesn't react when Wyll stands up with the chains in hand, because he doesn't care. 

For his part, Wyll holds them with white knuckles, like he wishes he could tear them apart. But he can't. Both of them know that. 

Karlach squeezes her eyes shut, jerking her head away. Her infernal engine rumbles like a threnody. "Can we–" she looks near tears. "Can we put them back on, fangs?"

"Of course," Astarion says, uncaring, unbothered. "All the better to be safe, loves. I want this to be over much the same as you."

He stretches out his wrists to Wyll, stays smiling, stays bright. "Perhaps there is a new path we could

-

When Astarion wakes, he is in the dirt, in the grey, and the wolves are howling. 

But it isn't wolves, just Shadowheart, stumbling over the unfamiliar chants of Selûne as she kneels. The rest of the party twisting, thrumming, boiling on the edges like a locust swarm—beyond the one in their center, unmoving. 

Perfect, picturesque Wyll, sprawled over the ground, arms out, eyes glassy. Blood splattered like a masterpiece. 

Throat torn open.

He killed Wyll. 

He killed Wyll.

This is it, then. 

Astarion sags, flat against the ground, chains wrapped and choking. Without breathing he's able to lay motionless, little more than the manner of his existence, though there isn't a gravestone above. The duplicitous, worthless part of him wonders if the party will give him one, carve his name onto a nearby boulder, if they even leave a corpse to be buried. He isn't counting on it. 

Wyll is the leader, and Astarion killed him. He knows how this ends. He always has, perhaps. It's near humorous how long he's lasted under the delusion—thinking that the party will denounce Mizora and Vlaakith and Ketheric Thorm but leave the monster in their midst alone. To clutch to that lie so rotten it reeks. A tamed monster, one belonging with heroes; the want to be more than the thing he knows he is. 

It isn't like they'll have to fight him, like he'll have any time to plead desperation. He's trapped and bound like a fucking dog. Of course. How fitting.

Shadowheart bellows a last unfamiliar word and moonlight pours over the camp, cascading through cracks and nooks like a tidal wave—in a thunderclap, Wyll jerks upright, electric green boiling beneath his sutured neck. It stitches together painfully slow, flap of skin by segment of vertebrae, as he croaks and Shadowheart forces more magic into the fatality. Everyone lurches to action, reaction; anything to tumble around as their fearless leader claws his way back to life. 

Alive again. Resurrected. Likely the last of Shadowheart's dwindling strength.

As Wyll vomits congealed blood, Astarion watches with eyes far above his own body, drifting away on unseen currents. He can remake himself a thousand times over, become what the party wants to see, but the charade is up. They know what he is underneath. 

Cazador's shadow, long enough to fill all of Baldur's Gate—but he plummets outside it, lays sprawled on the rocks half a tenday away. Never to be recollected. It's a kindness, almost. 

"Breathe," Lae'zel demands, a hand raised imperiously over Wyll's back—when he fails to do so, she thumps him, another glob of arterial-dark blood sludging through his lips. 

His eyes, mismatched, fire and stone, lock across the camp. 

"This isn't your fault, Astarion," Wyll croaks—he's shaking under his own rebirth, a corpse dragged back from the peace of its passing. Even moments in the beyond is enough to make his body crack and lurch, straining to escape its second chance. It wants to return to what it was. "This isn't your fault. It wasn't you."

The rest of the party moves—are they agreeing? Disagreeing? Waiting for Wyll to take the finishing blow, pulling back so he's uninterrupted? Astarion pants to the shallow backs of his teeth; two hundred fucking years he's wanted this but now he's tense, like he's scared, like he wants anything different. Here instead of home. This is better. 

He can't stop. Undead heart in his throat, he twists, ratcheting around so he can keep them all in sight. Some part of him is boiling, a storm, an earthquake; this inescapable prison of his own skin. 

Karlach blows fire at the sky, crackling smoke—then she crouches and gets Wyll's arm over her shoulders, enough heat dispelled to be safe, eyes wide and gentle. He coughs out thanks as she pulls him to his feet, faltering and unsteady. Her tail lashes the grass like a whip. 

Gale helps Shadowheart up, giving his shoulder for support and nearly crumpling when she heaves her entire weight over, legs trembling underneath. Selûne's silver moonlight, soft and pressing, but even divinity cannot remake mortality. There will be no more spells from her tonight, cantrips or otherwise. Hells, they'll be lucky if she can function tomorrow. He won't be here to see it. This is better. This is fine. 

Wyll wobbles, grounding his boots. Face twisted from white-hot concentration. Still staring, eyes like a distant plane's sun. 

"It wasn't you," Wyll repeats, through a throat torn open by a vampire spawn's fangs and only just restitched. Infernal fire, weeping from his eye like tears. "This isn't your fault."

Astarion swallows, fragile, and–

He swallows. Again. Ash and dust.

There's no blood in his mouth. 

Astarion shifts, curling in to see his shirt; it's splattered in scarlet, drying tacky against his skin, new layers from each successive rise like a collage of abject misery. Plenty over his chest, up to his throat—but when he swallows, there's no blood in his mouth. His injuries are unhealed. Something savage taking residence in the cracks of his mind. 

"I didn't drink," he says.

Karlach frowns, hovering beside Wyll, propping him up like a fainting noble. "Got your fangs proper in him, mate," she says, that light, trying-to-be-joking tone flitting about the air like a twice-caged pixie. She doesn't quite manage. Tension stretches taut over her shoulders. "And you're not one to miss."

"Yes," Astarion says. He's only half aware of what he's saying—his mind thunders on, digging ever downward to a pit he doesn't want to unearth. He knows what is beneath him. "But I was trained to bite without consuming the blood of thinking creatures—I bit him, and I didn't drink."

Gale tilts his head to the side, damningly contemplative. "You spat," he says, a lone pulse of magic sparking under the broadside of his face. Analysis of some variety. "Right after biting him—I didn't think much of it at the time, I'll admit, but that does line up."

In the air, a blood-scent wavers, calling out with a siren's lullaby to the pain digging termite burrows through his gut. The hunger, ever-there, ever-alive, and he peels into it, shredding his innards to see it better. Established, grown. The kind after long battles, the kind he is achingly familiar with, but– not refilled. Blood in the grass, blood on his shirt, but empty. 

There's something dried on the underside of his lip, enough to lick if he wanted, but revulsion lurches at the thought. Hunger and hatred entwined, prowling on the edges. He didn't drink.

Wyll inhales. "Were you resisting? Trying to protect me?"

Gods, wouldn't that be lovely? If after three months of this– this heroism, traveling alongside benevolent mercenaries and their rush to save the world, some of it would rub off on him. Chisel away his furies for leniency underneath. Find what two hundred years couldn't kill.

There is only one reason he would bite without drinking blood, and it is not kindness. 

Tears lap at his eyes. Astarion chokes them down. 

It's not fair. It's not fucking fair. He escaped, he made his way out of the darkness of two hundred years and found freedom in a parasite; commands should be nothing more than the stone he throws to the river. They shouldn't be here. They should be gone. 

But he lunges at those he fooled himself into thinking were his friends and he bites without drinking and he fights; the mindless, the mind-blank. A creature lifted by necromantic power to serve as a slave. A beast made as indestructible fodder, lost to the madness. 

A vampire spawn. A slave again, thrall hooked like a noose about his neck, tugging him blindly back to the one who damned him. 

Curse or spell or poison. It doesn't matter. 

What matters is that when Astarion disappears, the thrall returns. 

If he asks them– if he tells them, if he reveals what the root of this is, they'll cut him down. They're restraining him now from this farcical ideal of saving him, like another of their precious children and tieflings and gnomes and beasts crouched over dead courier's bodies—but that is for Astarion, presumed cursed. It isn't for Astarion, the spawn, the villain, the murderer. The one he becomes under the thrall. The one he becomes without the thrall, if only he wasn't terrified of their reactions.

But if he does not tell them, and they feel such pity for their time together that they release him instead of returning the favour for Wyll, then the next time the thrall takes over he will be racing to Szarr Palace and the hell he fooled himself into thinking he escaped. 

Astarion stares at them. 

What token resistance he'd plagued himself with, painted smiles and sugar-sweet words; he lets it fall, shattering like old glass on the courtstones. No sense in pretending he has any power here, any say—all he has is desperation. All he has is a damnation to avoid. 

If he wants to stay free of Cazador, he needs to cooperate. He needs to be willing. 

He needs to be caged.

It is his nature. Cazador always said he would never be free. 

Astarion settles himself, splayed flat and unmoving. The thrall pushes him to attack—but going after Gale and Wyll, rather than the others. If he wanted to kill the party, he'd go after Shadowheart first, but instead his claws lunge for differing throats. Whatever they're doing while he is unknowing is working in some regard; his thralled self sees them as a threat. Only his miserable luck they assume it to be a spell instead of himself. 

Perhaps they will need proof. 

"My eyes," Astarion says. "What colour were my eyes?"

Wyll blinks. He rubs unconsciously at his neck, enough Shadowheart half-stirs from her slumped stance against Gale. "Your eyes," he repeats, brows furrowed. "Red, I believe."

Astarion lifts his gaze, doesn't flinch when Wyll meets it. Bloodstone and infernal fire—twin red. Neither have their originals. 

Wyll understands a second later. He lurches up, hand pressed more firmly to his throat. "Glowing," he says, and ah, there it is; the grim determination, the hunter's assessment of the threat. The Blade of Frontiers, rather than the hero, rather than Wyll.

Astarion nods. "Glowing," he echoes, because he knows the answer. He always knew, he thinks. He just hid from it. Tried to shelter under any other possibility. To find a fictitious reality to house him until the foundations crumbled away. "My thrall."

It's a simple word. It means, perhaps, everything. 

They seem– surprised. Maybe they've forgotten what he is, when the only signs he shows are a taste for blood and twin fangs. Easy features to categorize and forget about. Pale skin and red eyes; the caveats of a vampire. 

But he is a spawn. He comes with darker shackles than appetite. 

"To rephrase this," Gale says, hesitant. It isn't difficult to sense the gravitas descending over the conversation, the locked tome threatening to expose its pages. His social graces come from long talks on sibilant nothings and widening Lae'zel's understanding of the Material Plane, but he pushes forward. "Your vampiric sire is commanding you again, despite the illithid parasite?"

He'll answer what they want. Why bother? It is his existence; an eternal helplessness but to do as he's told. Carve his fingers to bone trying to reach rats outside the palace—he still cannot drink until allowed. 

"Not actively, but the four commands I was originally given," Astarion says. They haven't asked for the name. He doesn't know what he'll say if they do. "I could not drink the blood of thinking creatures, leave his side, disobey him, or–" His words try to flee, try to claw him into pathetic fucking failure. He burns them with the rest. "And I had to know I was his."

His resolve cracks, splintering on wavering edge. Astarion bares psionic fangs and wrenches it back, slams it into the sarcophagus it deserves—if he whinged and pitied himself and fled from every moment of pain, he wouldn't have survived. He'd erode away like Violet, so long ago. A willing slave limp at Cazador's feet. 

"I believe I'm fighting you to escape," he says. It wants to come out ragged, acrid toxins melting through his throat, so he crushes it. Makes it flat and apathetic. "I am to stay at his side, and the thrall knows you would stop me. So I have to attack to get free."

Free. That's the wrong word. But it fits for simple truth, cold facts. Pragmatism. The world is very small, despite the forest, despite the camp. He needs to read their reactions, sculpt his words off their faces, their eyes. He needs to focus.

Aways in the grass, blood steams. Wasted. 

The hunger is not here. Not now, when he can't afford to feel it, when it is nothing but jagged claws in the soft tissue of his innards; the chains hold him down. He is fine. He doesn't care. He will not return. 

"But it's only happening now," Gale says, brows furrowed. "Three months is time enough to trigger a response, but to be so delayed is bizarre. Are you sure?"

Astarion opens his mouth. Wyll beats him to it. 

"That's why you bit me," he says. His eyes are closed, still leaning on Karlach. "A vampire spawn's strength is its claws and fangs, but only when attacking from ambush. Because you were attacking outright, it wasn't effective. We're lucky it happened now, rather than at night."

Lucky. Astarion feels pretty fucking lucky right now. 

"Yes," he agrees, quiet, unassertive. His neck throbs from being craned but he doesn't move, doesn't try to push up to a sitting position—stay down. Stay docile. Not a threat. It is only the thrall attacking them, not him. They do not have to let him go. 

It would be better if nothing attacks them.

"I'm afraid it will only get worse," Astarion manages, honeying up the words like that will soften the blow, make it understandable. "I will… continue to try and escape. You will have to restrain me further."

There is no shelter now—he scours through memories, tearing up graves frantically dug and amnesia brutally enforced. Sinks his claws into cold stone to see what happened in the past. 

What miserable fucking irony is this? Him, long-dead, long-terrified, telling his bloody captors how to better keep him; what tips and tricks he's learned from two hundred years of torture. He's setting the knife in their hands and guiding them to the pressure points, showing where his skin is most sensitive and which ribs are easier to split. Gods. Gods.

He doesn't care. It doesn't matter. 

"A muzzle," Astarion says, and drags the fear off his tongue until it fucking dies. "I will bite my bones out if need be, or use my fangs to pick the locks. One that latches around the back of my head so I can't twist it off."

Wyll chokes on something. Deep in Karlach's chest, her infernal engine growls. 

He doesn't want this, he doesn't want this, he does not want this– "A collar and chains." Astarion stares at nothing. "Bolted into the ground, preferably two in opposite directions so I can't reach their attachments. Breaking my limbs won't keep me down, not with the thrall. I have to be pinned."

A moment to compose himself, to drag further memories from the kennel he could never bury in their entirety. "Feeding me will make me stronger; I don't require blood, not for life, and if this takes long enough I won't be able to–"

"Stop," Wyll demands, in– not quite a roar, but damning close. Astarion's jaw clicks closed. 

Wyll stands there, chest heaving around breath, eyes wild. The rest of the party is no better, raw horror spilling through the cracks—looking at him, seeing him, dug out of the hole he buried himself in like it was protection. Like it could ever hide what he is.

Okay. They don't want this. They don't want a mindless slave. Astarion grabs for that gore-slick heart and wrenches it out of his chest, lets it fall to the hells far below; he scrounges around for anything in between, softened from his usual bitter derision but still alive. The bones of someone agreeable, someone willing. Someone who makes them feel like heroes. 

He takes breathless appreciation and stitches it onto his macabre mockery of a corpse. Looks up at the assembled heroes, tries to personify some quiet gratitude. He is happy they're helping him. He will participate in whatever ways they need. 

He will not return to Cazador.

"We aren't doing that," Wyll says, breathing in these sharp, controlled bursts. His knuckles are white at his sides. "We aren't doing any of that, Astarion, why would you–"

Karlach's got her teeth bared, eyes slit like twin eclipses. "What the absolute fuck," she snarls, fire erupting under her feet. "You're a bloody person, not a godsdamn body to string up–"

Boom.

Light explodes, magma-bright and hissing; everyone topples back with various degrees of groans, Astarion pressing his forehead to the dirt, sniveling like a dog before the whip. A thunderclap echoes into the surrounding forest, pulsing fire—the shout of a wizard beyond mortal strength. 

Gale stands in the center, hands clasped—a simple light cantrip, but in the dark and powered by anger, it's plenty to blind. His mark burns violet, violent; the promise of more if they don't stop. Light as a precursor, if they care to interpret past the obvious. "Stop it," he barks, dragging Shadowheart alongside as he forces the circle back, makes them move further apart. "We're not here to fight."

Lae'zel's eyes are fully slitted from the light, doing nothing but accenting her scowl. "He is correct. Control yourself—all of you."

Astarion exhales. Wrenches trembling bones back under passivity. 

Too far. He went too far. He's overlaying their faces with a broken-jawed skull and hollow red eyes and he can't do that, he needs to remember who they are, what they are– "I'm sorry," Astarion rasps. A wince comes easily; spills over his face like morning dew. "That was grim—I'm just hoping to be prepared."

Wyll exhales sharp again. "Prepared," he repeats, straining at the line of fury. "Muzzling you is being prepared?"

There is no part of himself he will not break for survival. Astarion smiles, a touch sheepish, a touch confused. Light disapproval. "I'm rather dangerous," he says, looking away. "Better to play it safe, I feel."

"Not happening," Karlach barks, pacing in tight, narrow circles. Embers litter her wake. "Not a world where I'll do that, fangs, even this is fucked–"

They've already chained him, laid flat like a dog in dirt—what is so difficult about doing what he suggests? Why is their line in the sand drawn at muzzles rather than chains in the first place? 

Another spark of light travels up Gale's palm, pointed in its potential. Karlach shuts her mouth and looks away.

"What I was saying," Gale says, tightly, "is that we already know your parasite has protected you from certain regrettable natures of being a vampire spawn. If outside influence is removing those protections, then placing the Astral Prism in adjacent proximity could increase its effect."

A plan. Rough, ramshackle, constituted from ceaseless speculation rather than fact, but a plan. Astarion nods. 

"Any to the opposition?" Gale asks, and would likely sound the impartial judiciary if not for the magic crackling up his fingers. No one speaks out. 

Shadowheart's still listing from her impromptu revivification, so Lae'zel is the one sent, though not without a final growl under her breath. The campfire hisses and smokes as she walks past, fed by the anger, the rage; Astarion stays down, ears pinned. Tail between his legs. He can't bring himself to truly hope this is true, but– at least it's a plan. Something other than releasing him. Than letting him return. 

Lae'zel comes back, hand stuck as far from her body as she can manage, clawed fingers wrapped around the blackened iron. Faint red light, spilling through the cracks, a hum of psionic energy. 

She glares more fiercely. "I do not trust it," she says, then, begrudgingly– "but it has protected you before. We will see if it does so again."

Astarion bobs his head. Earnest agreement. 

The Astral Prism hums as Lae'zel sets it next to him, the wayward glimmer of arcane potential. Astarion shifts to nudge it, an answering pulse traveling up his side. Peculiar, though not unpleasant. His tadpole writhes in response, lashing out with tentacles and teeth, a biting flea he can't scratch away. The hunger gurgles. His arm aches. A million sensations and not one of them matters. 

The soft-eyed man, the face of a thousand taverns and flophouses before, promising power and retribution. Freedom. Astarion holds the concept of it, considering, though there isn't much to consider when he's already agreed and it's already happening—is this a temporary fix? How much will this work?

He is still chained. They've woven smaller links around his fingers so he can't use them as easily, but they've bound him like a mortal, one who flinches from injuries instead of pushing further. It's a temporary hold at best. The thrall will make him deglove himself, gnaw off his own arms, split himself in half. Anything he can think of, the commands will enforce. And Godey has spent two hundred years making sure Astarion is creative.

But for now, a waiting game. 

Gale stares at the Astral Prism, like it will pop up of its own accord and proclaim him cured, while Lae'zel is already sweeping wary eyes over their surroundings for ghaik interference. Shadowheart stumbles, palm pressed to her forehead, and Lae'zel immediately spins to guide her down, collapsing in the grass with a weary groan. Drained past the marrow, it seems. Karlach hovers nervously overhead. 

Astarion stays down, stays tame. There isn't much of an internal clock in the dark and the dirt but he imagines the thrall will soon take him over, claw its existence back up against his. Consume him like so many times in the past. 

"Is there anything you need?" Wyll asks, skittish with concern. The Blade of Frontiers isn't here, nor the hunter; just a man, a person, seemingly forgetting not an hour ago he was dead. "Anything we can do?"

They've been explicit about their unwillingness to cage him more, even if that's what he needs. Astarion settles on a huffed laugh, something wane but encouraging. The barest injection of worry, to show them he's alive, he's thinking. "Solving this, if you'd please," he says, shaking snowy curls out of his eyes. "Or perhaps silk sheets, but I would prefer the first."

The ghost of a smile, more habitual than true. 

"Won't be much longer," Karlach says, uncertain sincerity. "Just gotta see what this does, yeah? And we'll sleep like fucking stones for a week. For a

-

Astarion twitches back to the world with a shudder. 

Pain still finds tenancy in him, settles itself over his arm and down the curve of his ribcage. Nothing new but heightened old, the ache of no healing and twisted form; he's knotted himself into a tangled mess of limbs, contorting in an effort to pry free. He must have been stopped a moment before dislocating his thumbs. That's why they must do better; manacles are well and good for mortals, but he can lose anything but his head and claw back to undeath. They need to collar him. 

Astarion ignores that, ignores everything, and shifts again—tests his strength, tests the give. If they won't muzzle him or double the chain, he will need to make sure he cannot escape, that he will not return; anything to stay with them instead of Cazador. Still the burning in his forearm, marbled flesh feuding with air, and his head finds a new–

The back of his shirt is unlaced. 

Astarion goes very still. 

Not entirely, cords dangling down to brush at his thighs, but enough an evening breeze can slip its fingers underneath to run over his spine. Enough it would only take a twist of his shoulders to fall loose. 

Or enough it was a half-hearted attempt to redress him after being removed entirely. 

Astarion doesn't look at them, doesn't breathe. He'll give himself up if they ask, lavish over their performance and purr such saccharine things in their ears, but he– he didn't think they wanted it like that. That they would take. 

It doesn't matter. He doesn't care. This is better, actually, so he doesn't have to fake arching into wandering hands or moan on a counted rhythm. He prefers this. He burns the fear. 

"Astarion?"

Ah. They've noticed he's back. Astarion uncurls, opening his eyes—the sun has fully disappeared, sunset drifting past on gentle trajectory until the sky is velvet-black and peppered with stars. Beautiful. Familiar. What he will return to, if he fails. 

That is the worst part of the commands. He doesn't just have to obey; he has to succeed at obeying. He has to try.

"Hello, dears," Astarion croaks, straightening out. They're clustered around each other, breaking off midway through a conversation he couldn't overhear—Wyll walks over first and sits, wobbling under recent revivification, crosslegged in the grass. Karlach mirrors him, collapsing with the hiss of smoking foliage, Shadowheart staggering down with Lae'zel's steadying hand. Gale completes the perfect half-circle, spread like an elden council.

There's– they're staying away from him, a careful five feet. None of them have injuries, nothing more than last time, but they aren't getting close enough to touch. Aren't crossing this invisible boundary in the grass, coming down to his level. He didn't escape again, though it feels like he got close, and still they stay away.

"It appears it didn't work," Astarion says, blinking up at them. "Was anything different?"

"You were more cognizant," Gale says, tense. He's oddly hesitant. "Capable of conversing, not nearly so mindless as before."

Ice clusters up his spine. An Astarion under the thrall, determined to obey, willing to break anything for the commands—that is a very dangerous beast to be talking. "Oh?"

"It seemed you didn't know anything of our journey," Gale continues, fingers drumming over his thigh. "We introduced ourselves, tried to explain our history—from my best approximation, you only had memories up to your capture by the illithids, no further."

Wyll grimaces. "You seemed… distressed, and asked to be freed. Apologized for attacking us, so you could remember the previous possessions, and said it wouldn't happen again."

They're fools if they believe that. He'll lie before the god of truth if the thrall commands it. 

"Interesting," Astarion says. Still the five-foot gap between. "I do ask you keep any embarrassing secrets out of our blackmail pool, just to play fair. I have no idea what my other self will say."

A joke—a well-crafted one, by his standards—but it doesn't land flat so much as plummet. Gale's pale around the edges, Shadowheart stricken with a sickness he can't place. 

Astarion licks his lips. "If I told you the incident with the patriar of Exeltis, I stand by my declaration that his wine was pigswill."

Still no laughter. Still the anguish. What happened?

Karlach brushes Wyll's shoulder, clouded stars for eyes. Skittish, in a manner he's never seen from her before. "He'd want to know, mate," she says, bleak. "Not fair to keep it from him."

Astarion laughs, thin and reedy. It takes all he has to not shake so the chains won't rattle, so they won't hear anything but apathetic inquiry. "You're correct that I'm the curious type, love. What did I say?"

"You–" Wyll closes his eyes, draws in a breath. "You offered to sleep with us, if we would let you go."

Ah. Astarion exhales rot. 

At least it was offered rather than taken, though they didn't uphold their side of the bargain. Wry schadenfreude at the thought—he wonders how his thralled self reacted, when he lavished carnal masteries and still wasn't released at the end. Disappointed, or expected. If nothing else, there is the stained glass window of sentience to peer through, that the party knows the personhood he parades before them like truth; not like silk-enrobed nobles of Baldur's Gate, who wanted tamed fangs, a chained beast. Cry or laugh or lay flat, so long as the deed was done.

He flicks his gaze over the others, considering. Was it all of them together, or only a few? Lae'zel he thinks would say no; she views sex as purely transactional but is possessive with all hells over monogamy, and he can't see her separating from Shadowheart for any sort of fling. Wyll, perhaps, if his repression wins the bout against his chivalry—Gale if his thralled self was convincing enough–

The silence stretches. 

Wyll freezes. 

"We said no, Astarion." There's something frantic in his eyes. "We didn't– I would never–"

He flinches up to see their faces—not sheepish, not chagrined. Just scared. Raw horror, wound tight as rusted saws, a hand pressed to Gale's mouth and grey crawling the shadows of Lae'zel's face. Karlach's eyes are white-ringed, fire expunged. Wyll looks like he's about to vomit. 

They don't look like they did. They don't look like they accepted a dead man's plea. 

But he wouldn't know, would he? 

Time under the thrall is nothing but black, only gaping void. Hollow hours. They could have fucked him and cleaned the evidence, made a pact with each other to lie, and he would never know. 

Maybe they thought it was fine, and are only backpedaling after his reaction. They know his promiscuous ways, given he's lavished and flaunted and done his best to shove it in their faces in the early days—it would get them to like him, to permit him, if they only allowed him between their godsdamned legs. His thralled self offered it just as freely. 

Either they did or they didn't, he doesn't care, but Wyll seems about to spiral and proctored carelessness means a higher chance he can pick the locks to escape. He will not return.

"Of course I know," Astarion soothes, gentle. Cazador taught him well for this. Some nobles wanted the power of dominion; others wanted to believe it was willing on both sides. Best to play it submissive. Roll over to bare his stomach. "Merely distressing to hear my thrall would make me stoop so low, that's all. I know you wouldn't."

Tears, in the corners of Karlach's eyes. He has no reflection to show in them. "You shouldn't have to say that," she rasps. "Gods, you shouldn't– none of this should–"

She chokes off. All smoke, no fire, enough Lae'zel can splay a comforting hand on her back. They still don't cross the five feet. Still don't get close. 

"It's fine," Astarion tries again. He needs them capable, functional, not– wallowing about even a mention. Gods if they wouldn't take the knowledge of his past two hundred years very well. He has little room for it, but shame still finds a way to curl loving claws around his throat. "Just– just the thrall being unkind, dear. I would never believe you to do that."

It doesn't work. "But others have." She convulses around embers as her engine roars, sparking bright to pour through the cracks of her teeth. Clenches her fists. "You offered so fucking fast– that means it has to have worked–"

In every myriad way, yes. Astarion has found himself on his back more hours than most have been alive. A better choice than the alternative. 

He doesn't respond again. He only seems to make it worse. 

Wyll runs a shaky hand through his hair, curling around the base of his horns. "This has gone too far," he says, strangled. "We can't keep hoping for a solution. Jaheira said she would meet us at the Harper's base in Baldur's Gate—if we move quickly, we can try to catch her on the road or head straight there–"

Baldur's Gate. 

"No," Astarion says, and tries for a smile—is quite certain he doesn't succeed, considering Wyll's expression. "I'd rather we didn't, if you please."

Something flashes through Gale's eyes, but when he opens his mouth, Wyll is already wrapping fists around his vambraces, face dismal. Playing through the last conversation Astarion doesn't know, snippets they've shared that don't add up to the full story, cards he can't look at but they hold. Regret, peeled back over concern.

Wyll hesitates. Steels himself. "You said you needed to return to Baldur's Gate," he says. "Is that where your sire is?"

The silence stretches, insidious and creeping. 

Three months he's buried his past, let it dissolve through his fingers like the sands of the Chionthar. Now his thralled self talks freely, openly, revealing all the pain he'll feel again in the telling. Fitting. Fucking fitting. 

Survival or comfort. It isn't a choice. It has never been a choice. The question sinks claws into his tongue; he will answer regardless.

"Cazador Szarr," Astarion says, and can't inject life in his voice now. Barking when prompted. "One of the lords of Baldur's Gate."

Wyll must recognize the name, drawing back. Karlach worries her lip between her teeth, piecing together aristocratic nobility. Cazador was never one for grand gestures, preferring to keep his name with him in the shadows, but Szarr Palace is a name without subtlety. His soirèes as well.

Astarion keeps smiling. "While you are more than capable, I can be slippery when I must. I fear I could get loose on the road, particularly as we get closer and the thrall grows in strength. And if that happens–"

He will ruin me. "He will take me back," Astarion says, delicately. "And I will not enjoy it."

They digest that, for a moment. The mountains running under gentle sky. The valleys between what he says and what he won't. 

"Then we won't go," Wyll says, drawn. "We'll break it here."

It sounds so simple, said like that. Astarion bobs his head. "Thank you, love."

But now that means their previous failed attempts will have to turn into successes, and by-the-by they're still sitting around a blood-splattered camp, magic empty and exhaustion soaring, and ever the time ticks on until Astarion cannot pretty them up with coquettish words and offers his much-used body out instead. Courtesan, perhaps, but that implies an element of control, of precision. Whore is more apt. One of Cazador's preferred terms, when Astarion acted too much like a dog to make that comparison worthwhile. 

His claws dig back into his wrists. 

"The Astral Prism is doing something," Lae'zel says, to fill the silence only broken by infernal mechanisms and stray, shallow pants. "But we cannot rely on that alone. What else?"

"There is no limit to how many spawn a vampire lord can create," Gale says, frowning. "Could we try to outlast how long he will wait before making more, or is there a reason he is trying to reclaim you in particular?"

The kennel; the darkness. The songs he performed, Cazador as conductor, thousands of symphonies written to scream himself hoarse upon. Cold stone and coiled intestines. The reason his thralled self knew how quickly to remove bones. Silk sheets, body writhing for commanded pleasure. The collar. The door. 

You sing the sweetest.

"Perhaps," Astarion says, a latticework of composure to keep from crumbling. "Of his spawn, I was his– favourite. He preferred me to the others. He could be trying to find me for–"

"Stop," Wyll snaps, half-furious, half-pleading—then, when Astarion flinches back, he grimaces, fists clenched in his lap like a faint attempt to nurse contentment. The breath he draws is ragged. "My apologies, Gale, Astarion, but– you don't have to answer that. It isn't important. All that matters is keeping you separate."

Gale nods, pulling back, though his eyes stay confused, fever-bright. Hungry for knowledge, the hubris that tried to damn him. Wanting answers. 

It would be better to crack himself open now, when he can control the flow of information, rather than his thralled self vomiting up the depths of two hundred years if that will procure even a memory of mercy to free him. Astarion smiles, crushing his bristled hackles until they're flat, relaxed, undeserving of scrutiny. "It's no matter," he assures. "I believe it is his deal with Mephistopheles, the ritual of Profane Ascension. He needs me to complete it."

There are more reasons for why Cazador wants him. He burns them before they can settle. He doesn't care. It doesn't matter. 

"The commands are innate," Astarion says. Simple facts. Truth doesn't care about anything. "Even if he creates more spawn, unless he releases me from the commands, I will still follow them. And he would not release me."

Never Astarion, third-made and first-favoured. Never him, who watched his siblings shrink and quail and lose themselves, but harboured himself a flame to fan with fury; with the desperation to be free. A spark for Cazador to snuff out as his leisure. 

Violence, lurking in the peripheries. Memories never buried and never killed. Astarion shifts, chains gnawing back into his awareness. "Cazador likely wants me to return, and quickly. Three months is the longest he has gone without me." Beyond marble, beyond mausoleums. "Staying away will only prolong my

-

Astarion's breath hisses through his teeth. 

He's off-balance before he even moves, dirt dusting against his eyes and sticking wetly to his cheeks. Pain, always present, and now the ache of muscles atrophying—either by passage of time or the fact he's bled all from his veins, he can't tell. It hurts like death, like the end of all things. Most things. 

"That was fast," Astarion croaks, dragging in breath to lift his head. The others haven't moved, still in the half-circle, still five feet between. Are they staying in the same position to fool him into believing they did nothing? Tricking his sense of time? The sun is gone, only midnight creeping in; far more difficult to tell hours apart when he can't twist to see the moon. Anything could have happened. 

"Much faster," Gale says, grim. In the orange reflection of the campfire, the bags under his eyes are a noble's luxury. "Even with the Astral Prism, you can't have been present for more than five minutes."

His throat is dry as a cracked riverbed. Astarion nods, pulling up, not enough to be threatening but enough to look at the wizard directly. "Do you know why?"

Gale hesitates. It is enough to raise Astarion's hackles. 

"Conversing about the commands may have triggered them," he says finally, stitched remorse. "The invocation principle; even if a vampire's magic doesn't come from the Weave, words still hold power. We could have spoken them back into existence."

Just talking about Cazador brings the thrall back. To become a dog with bared teeth and patched fur, a dog who bites—who rips himself to shreds just to brutalize an open path. Indiscriminate terror. 

"That makes sense," Astarion says, or something does, using his voice like a sparrow's serenade. "I suppose we will leave them out of our nightly gossip, then. Was I still talking?"

"Yes," Wyll says, taking over now that the analytic truths are laid bare, the face to be comfort. An organized strategy. How long did they discuss what to do while he lay chained at their feet? "More than last time, actually. You remembered what we'd already talked about."

Karlach glances away for a second, the rest of the party no better; flighty eyes, nauseated expressions. Likely his thralled self made the same deal again, then. His shirt is no more unlaced than last time, but that means very little to an unknown infinity of involuntary possession. "I see," Astarion says, because he does. "Did you get any more information?"

"We revealed we know you're a vampire spawn," Wyll says. 

Astarion does blink at that, brows raising. "I'm going to imagine I did not react well."

"You were more… talkative, afterward," Wyll admits. That same self-loathing bubbles under the surface. Far from friendly chatter, it seems. "Still nothing before the nautiloid, but answers about vampirism, some going's-on of Baldur's Gate, other things we could confirm." He grits his teeth. "You kept asking to be released."

Pleading, begging, offering all manners of sex and servitude. Astarion is unfortunately aware of what the thrall would make him do to get back to his master. Anything for nothing. 

"Even when we said we know he hurts you," Wyll continues, faster, despairing. "When we said we would protect you– you kept asking. Over and over."

Ah. Astarion flicks his gaze around, looks to the softer members of the party—Karlach's curled her shoulders in, smoke as a crown around her shattered horn. Gale focuses on his hands. Even Shadowheart lets her hair curtain before her face. 

There is a reason the stories must write vampire spawn as mindless savages. The reality would not make their heroes seem so heroic. 

Wyll brushes his palms in the grass, a nervous tic. Brimming with unease. "Do the commands hurt?"

Barbed wire woven through ribs to embrace lungs. The silver-forged map in his skull, guiding him back to the feet of the one who bade him kneel. 

Astarion smiles. "Not now, no."

"But under the thrall, it does," Wyll deduces. From his expression, he doesn't need confirmation. "They hurt you."

Terribly so. But Astarion's definition of hurt stretches to the distant sun, looping back before its golden rays can kill him, and still has time for a relaxing stroll down the Chionthar. The pain of commands means nothing to the pain of the kennel. The pain of commands means nothing to the pain of failure. A hangnail to a missing limb. 

Wyll's face says otherwise.

So that's how it will be, then. Astarion in the here and now can swallow agony like fine-aged wine, burn it back, live in the truth that it doesn't matter and he doesn't care—but his thralled self weeps crocodile tears and huddles under weakness and now the party will let him go as if it is a mercy. Three months of blissful, ephemeral existence, of leaving, of living–

But all roads lead to the kennel. 

He wants freedom. Gods, how he does—sunlight or shadows, Faerûn or some deplorable corner of the Underdark, anything so long as Cazador isn't there. But the thrall is coming back faster and faster, even with the artefact, and it doesn't matter whether the party will release him directly. All it takes is a second of distraction and he will rend himself to pieces to escape. The thrall will make him. He will do it happily.

Freedom is a desire so violent it devours him. What's left when the desire dies is the visceral reality it will never happen. 

He will not return. 

Astarion draws himself up, slithering over the grass until his bound hands lurch for balance and he can kick to a sitting position. Just enough to be a threat—just enough to make them remember him tearing open Wyll's throat. 

"It will hurt more if I go back," Astarion says, and doesn't unearth his feelings at the thought. He tilts his head back, avoids their gazes, lets the moon wash silver over his ruptured corpse. "Decapitation."

Karlach's tail lashes the ground. Wyll's voice is a whisper. "What?"

Staking was Cazador's preferred threat, before death became not fear but hopeless dream. He's still had nightmares enough for purgatory. Astarion grits his teeth. "Decapitation," he repeats, poise dragged up to strangle the bitterness. "If our journey together has meant anything, at least kill me in the manner of my choosing."

The word sticks like rot in his mouth, something long dead and congealed. He spits it out regardless. "Please."

Lae'zel's ears go flat, pupils painfully thin. They're staring at him, horror not yet winning out over confusion; like they can't understand what he's saying. What he will beg for, if they make him. 

"We aren't going kill you, Astarion," Wyll says, impossible sincerity. He truly believes it. 

The beast in his dead chest, the fire of a soul before gravedirt stole the remnants. He can't keep breaking himself for this stupid, miserable hope of a cure; that they would ever keep a feral vampire spawn on a leash rather than let him run home. 

There is one of them who has stumbled down the same path—who saw eternity and looked away. Astarion stares until she meets his gaze, fire-bright, anguish carved between. "I refuse to go back," he says, soft, like they're mulling over wine, like they're listening to Dammon talk of Avernus and expectancy. "Please."

Her axe is behind her—he won't make it difficult. He'll smile and thank her and promise it's for the best. Take as much of the guilt away before he goes, just for her. 

"Fangs," Karlach croaks. She's crying. "Gods– I–"

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't mean it," he says, near-whispering. Locked in so it's just the two of them, the deal he made in the silence of her tent with the hiss of the shadows-cursed land all around. "Please, Karlach. I won't go back."

Wyll jerks forward. Cuts through the five foot gap. Startles Astarion back. 

"Give us another chance," he manages, fever-fast. He's twisting like he wants to pace, to wear circles through the dirt—but unwilling to stand, to leave Astarion's level. More scared than when an avatar of bones spread skeletal wings. "I didn't– I didn't want to suggest it, and it's not much of a plan, but it's something. Let us try it first. Before you decide. Before you–"

He can't finish the sentence. It could be endearing, if not for what it means. 

"The Astral Prism helped," Wyll says. "The tadpoles are protecting you, in some way. Maybe we can strengthen them directly, more than the artefact. If–" He steels himself, dismay engraved over his face. "If we could just examine yours."

It takes Astarion a moment to understand, to stitch together Wyll's frantic speech into the skeleton underneath. Mindflayer transformation aside, he's been walking under sunlight and jumping rivers with ease; it must be helping. Perhaps it could continue doing that, if they find the reason. 

A chance, so long as he allows Wyll into his mind. 

Astarion swallows something like bile. "Of course," he says, loose and light, effortless agreement, but it isn't enough to hide beneath. And it certainly won't be enough once they're in his mind, once they're digging through two hundred years of terror that rears its colossal head whenever they look at him because three months of kindness is not enough to erase what he is–

But they'll try, and they'll fail, and he will convince Karlach to kill him. All it costs is the last privacy he maintained as his own ghost spilled secrets.

He doesn't want this. He does not want this. 

"Go right ahead, love," Astarion says, smiling, a veneer over anything else. "Perhaps not all at once, but anything to remove my thrall, really."

He changed directions too fast, too sharp a switch. Whiplash. Karlach is still crying. But Wyll is looking at him, desperate relief, this scorching need to help—to do anything but the inevitable. What would always happen when a monster loses its shell before the heroes it tried to profess it belonged to. 

He liked them not knowing. It's easy to confirm offhandedly he's a vampire spawn once Wyll pins him to the ground, rapier drawn, and extracts a promise to only drain those already targeted for the killing. It's even easier to do that, when their path meanders them before so many killable villains. And he spent a great deal of time bonding with Karlach over the sun, and commiserated with Shadowheart over the idiocy of their companions, and numerous other maladies that come with the territory. All of them have some coal-black center to their stories, but–

They didn't know his. And he liked that. Liked pretending to be something he isn't because that was how they saw him. 

Perhaps killing himself isn't right. But a winter-slick alley with splattered blood and a god with red eyes wasn't right either. Many things in the world aren't. He will take an ending over an eternity. The last of his fight drains away. 

"I'd only look at your tadpole, not your mind,” Wyll says, slow, but– concerned. None of them are True Souls, trained and mastered in the way of miserable illithid thieves, and for all he promises he cannot be sure it will happen. Astarion knows that. Wyll knows that. He says it regardless. 

"I would hope not,” Astarion sniffs. "Gods only know what things your puritan soul would suffer to see my thoughts.”

Wyll holds his gaze. "Do you want me to do this?" 

There's a strange deliberation in how it's asked—not for permission, which he already gave, but instead for want. It's offputting enough Astarion blinks, brows furrowed; of course he wants this to be over, whichever end he gets. Death or freedom. He wants that so badly it hurts. 

"I said yes," he points out, not unkindly. "Whoever is best suited, I'm open to all."

It would likely be Lae'zel, who knows most about the parasites for all she hates them, or perhaps Gale and his scholarly habits, but it's Wyll that moves forward, slow, telegraphing his movements as if to a skittish mutt. Astarion helpfully dips his head, stray curls curtaining around pointed ears. Bowed in prayer, almost. Waiting for divine intervention. 

Karlach's axe isn't far away. Perhaps he can convince her quickly enough he doesn't have to suffer Wyll's pity. 

Wyll leans in, setting the barest tips of his fingers around Astarion's forehead. They're warm, hellfire-licked and alive, heartbeat thumping under dark skin. The murmur of distant wind, the rest of the party picking up and settling down. His tadpole wriggles once. There is nothing but the doorway and its lock and its opening, and the presence that simmers with

-

Astarion lurches to consciousness. 

It's slow and it hurts, iron past its prime stuck back in the furnace to be beaten into unwilling shape. A hiss locks behind his fangs as he twists back into the world, tearing his eyes open, chains slithering down his back. Still night, the twilit calls of beasts beneath the canopy, the flutter of bats overhead, the quiet din each forest holds. 

No circle. No party.

Something calcifies in his lungs, old stone. The camp is just that; empty space dotted with tents, hemmed in by encroaching trees. Here, chained, helpless, the most he can do is scratch at those approaching with fragile desperation until they take him, kill him, until the thrall makes him rip his own spine in half to escape. Until he goes back to the hell and the hells after, when his soul gets bargained like a trinket and he falls to an ending he was never allowed to have for his own. Astarion raises his head, reeling with incoordination, and–

And catches himself. 

It's instinct that moves his hand for stability but it actually goes, digging fingers into the sod as support. His other thumps down to match it, settling on the earth. Both pristine. No injuries. Moving fast and sure. He freezes. 

The manacles are gone, fish-pale skin peering out from his wrists. It's been moved to his waist, expanded out to sit over his skin—magically summoned, then. Not already here. It pins his shirt to his sides, weighing less than he thought, and the end slithers off to a bolt tapped into the ground. Some swirl of magic sits over the head. 

Astarion stares at it. He could stand, move his arms, defend himself. Still chained, still restrained, but– different. He's never been bound like this before. 

"Astarion?"

Sound, from his left. He turns. 

Wyll is sitting there. There's a new scratch over his face, blood carefully brushed away but the edges red and raw. Exhaustion sets loose draperies under his eyes, some palace-worn decadence for the late hour. Alive. 

"Even faster,” Astarion says, curling his arms in with a strange fascination to the simple action. Dirt beneath his fingers. Moonlight. "Rather too much to hope my stowaway wouldn't bite back, then.”

Wyll nods. "It was near instant.”

Even a moment in the mind of his thralled self would be a lifetime, if stretched to its limits. 

Astarion peers behind him, ears pricked—no sounds other than the forest, the crackle of the campfire. "I don't suppose the others are nearby?"

"They're out," Wyll says, brushing a hand over the grass. "The– plan required another element." He pauses, teeth clicking together. "Would you like to know now, or when they return?"

Ah. Astarion hums, soft in a scratched throat, and looks around again; nothing but twilight and murmurs of a distant creek. Wyll could likely spin a lovely tale, parse out information in a perfect stream—but in a group, it's safer. They play off each other, balancing temperaments and hidden agendas. Better to watch all their reactions to know what the truth is. 

"When they return," Astarion says, half a shrug. "Why, I would be a terrible friend indeed to deprive Gale of solving the mystery."

Wyll's lips quirk. "He would be upset."

"That is a remarkable way of underselling it.”

His laughter is light and unharried, though his face isn't. Still the five feet between. 

Some part of him is achingly restless, ears pricked like the others are just crouching in nearby shadows. Too much a threat to stand but he does sit up, stretching his legs, adjusting the chain to snake off behind. The action is easy, simple. No restraints against, no injuries slowing. 

They healed him and left. Patched his wounds and disappeared. There must be a reason for it. He shifts again, looking around—what's changed from last time? Why is this miraculous plan they didn't mention until he begged Karlach to kill him taking them away from camp?

Deep in his skull, his parasite twitches, wriggling deeper into soft tissue and corded veins. The frayed nerves after a flaying. 

Astarion watches Wyll. The man seems at least more collected than any of their previous interactions, sitting crosslegged and still. He's recovered from the worst of his resurrection, throat still smeared with remnants of lifeblood but the shake in his arms gone. Content to exist with only midnight cicadas and the sorrow of what happened.

He isn't sure he wants the answer. He asks regardless.

"What did you see?"

"Enough," Wyll admits. "Do you want to talk about it?"

No. He would rather it die like him; buried and destroyed and ripped apart until there's nothing left to remember. A tree in a hurricane, every leaf stripped away; the bones after a wolf pack. Gravestones eroded down to dust. 

Astarion smiles very artfully. "If you wish to."

His apathy isn't crafted well enough. Wyll's eyes are sad. "We don't have to."

Pity. Sorrow. Something else. 

It would be– easier if Wyll hated him for whatever depraved snippets he saw. Lying on his back, purring sweet miseries to whichever drunkard fool could be entrapped by a slight pretty thing with no blood to bruise, clawing Yousen to ruin in the kennel. Easier to know where they stand, what Astarion will have to do. Dealing with hatred is better than the unknown. 

In asinine similarity, he almost wishes this was happening in a more hostile place. One with mold-choked corners and walls moaning with their inhabitants; somewhere festering and ancient. If outside, at least in the long dark of a primeval forest, ground heavy with starving roots. 

Not here. Not a quiet clearing, where the misery inside doesn't even have the decency to reflect outwards. 

"I suppose not,” Astarion says, after far too long a pause. Easy to slip into his usual dreary melodrama, to flick a hand at the encroaching trees. "But the alternative is doing nothing but waiting for whatever fell beasts wait in the shadows, dear. Do take that into consideration.” 

The hero now but the hunter still lurks underneath—Wyll has been scanning the horizon unconsciously since the first moment Astarion saw him and he hasn't stopped now, keeping the darkest patches in his peripheries. It would be admirable paranoia, if what killed him hadn't already been welcomed into the camp. 

Something must reflect on his face, the shriveled insides of a bug roasted under the sun, because Wyll moves, not enough to break the five foot gap, but enough to soften the boundary, enough to hold his gaze steadily. 

"I'll protect you," Wyll says. His eyes spark, not infernal, just flames. "I swear it."

That's a lovely sentiment. Astarion wants to huff, to laugh, to roll his eyes with silvertine placations; he settles on raising a brow instead, head tilted to the side. "Rather the point of you staying behind, dear," he says. "Who else would I trust to keep me safe but the Blade of Frontiers?"

Wyll grimaces. Not… quite the reaction Astarion expected, enough his hackles flex their habitual territory climb. 

"I will,” he says again, like he hadn't already not a heartbeat ago. "I will protect you, Astarion. I want you to know that.” 

Something cracks down his throat. Threads of a spider caught in the rain. "I do know."

Wyll looks tired, more than the late hour. He brushes a hand through the grass, bending the blades back—watches them ripple. "Gale called it a vessel belief," he says, soft. Sad, in a way. "That it doesn't matter what we say to convince you—you will always believe the opposite, because it has been proven true for so long that the reasons are meaningless and only the result is left."

Astarion doesn't say anything. 

"It's okay," Wyll says, soothing. The tone reserved for an injured bird, trying to flutter out of salvation's palm. "I'm still going to protect you. Nothing would make me stop."

A day ago, they were heroes saving the world. 

An hour ago, Astarion ripped out his throat. 

He swallows. Tucks his limbs further in for no reason but to cover weakness, hide soft flesh under thin fabric. The hunger, pooling ocean-deep in his chest, clawing through the detritus of a dead heart. He is not someone to protect. He is not someone a hero should swear to. He is not someone who knows those words.

Break by the hammer or ring like a bell. He keeps clawing after scraps. 

"I'm sorry," Astarion says. For one thing. For many. 

Wyll exhales. For a moment he looks young—not in the way of youth, but in the way of impossible age, a child bearing the mountain a king should be given. "I'm sorry," he says. "Sorry about all of this, Astarion. That we– that I was so blind."

They saw what he showed them; what carefully curated bitchiness and frustration and haughty superiority could be layered over the monster, shove the beast back in its cage. Anything to prolong his borrowed time. 

Astarion doesn't have an answer to that. Wyll doesn't seem to expect one. 

They sit together, quiet, just the rustle of leaves and distant creatures. The Astral Prism hums against his side, half-embedded in the dirt, and though the hunger aches and burns it isn't lashing him like a rat in a trap; they've cleaned away the blood, magicked it to some nameless plane so he won't have to smell it. Only the steady thrum of Wyll's heart. 

He isn't calm, but he is– still. Focused. It's what lets him feel the anachronistic lurch in his throat. 

Astarion tenses. "Wyll," he says, dragging the sound out like it will delay the inevitable. "I'm afraid it's happening again."

Wyll nods, expected. "Do you feel secure?"

The chain, wrapped around his waist instead of neck. The bolt presumably locked with magic. Wyll on standby. He'd prefer the whole party, but–

For now, it will do. 

"Yes," Astarion says. He wants to ramble, to stay awake, to keep clawing back these seconds that will never add up to two hundred years—but he's still looking at Wyll, at his quiet certainty. The promise of I will protect you. The way his manacle sits, waist only, able to move and talk and fight for all he can't run back to his master; the jackrabbit lurch to his breath yet to reappear with the vast chasm of five feet; the lifeblood spilled and magicked away and ignored because it didn't

-

Astarion wakes up to the murmur of voices. 

The manacle, secure around his waist. Chafed under his shirt, wherever he tore its limits as he clawed to the horizon—but it held. He can't feel any new injuries, nothing more than scrapes and light fractures. Dust digging into the soft points of his jaw. 

His parasite, twitching. Stirring in the presence of others. 

Astarion lets his eyes flutter open, inhaling to test the shift of his chest. Normal. The forest is quieter now, hiding from new presences, just the distant shriek of nightbirds and wind through the grass. With the chains around his waist, he's able to tilt his head back without making them rattle, staying silent. 

The party is back. All five, standing in half-crescent, talking low and quiet in the settled twilight. A light cantrip, muffled by palms, highlights the underside of their faces, drawing their exhaustion in stark detail. Shadowheart is leaning against Gale, eyes half-lidded and slumped, Lae'zel's ears pinned and Wyll murmuring something she seems to be trying to ignore.

He watches them for another moment; the first time he's had a chance to assess upon waking, when he doesn't fall into a whelp's panic or be greeted by their assembled front. The party of heroes; they're still here. 

For some reason, they're still here. 

"Welcome back," Astarion says, dragging himself up to his knees. The chain slithers behind like a broken limb. "I hope things went well?"

"Astarion!" Karlach exclaims, breaking from the group to run over—she stops with five feet between them, tail curling in. The only one not affected by the late hour. 

"Hello to you too, darling," he says, quirking an eyebrow. "Did you enjoy your midnight jaunt?"

Ivory teeth gleam sharp through a smile, but her eyes are clouded. "Hells did I ever."

Karlach's axe, braced over her shoulder. The blade is smeared in scarlet. 

She looks calmer, and ashamed of it. Free from the Blood War but not from the person she built herself into to survive it; a decade of cleaving through devils like butter as her only joy in dismal places. Even now, it's familiar habit to use it for centering herself. She hates that. 

They murdered someone and came back—was it a spell, then? Something that brought back his thrall, rather than his weakening parasite? Astarion tilts his head to the side, pressing a hand to the underside of his chin. "Did you find some bastard to blame for it all?"

"Not… quite," Wyll hedges, glancing over—Lae'zel hasn't stopped glaring but she does step forward, claws twitching around a fist. She's bristled up to a tarrasque's threat, no longsword needed to express her anger; like back in the crèche, when the zaith'isk failed. When her world devastated itself. 

"I do not like this," she declares, to him and to everyone, then– opens her hand. 

Swirling above pale green skin, writhing in on itself with flying teeth, is another parasite. 

Less than the length of his smallest finger but it thrashes like a fell beast, coiled tendrils lashing at empty air—if nothing else, he sees why Jaheira kept her specimen in a jar. His own lurches in his skull, reaching out to its brethren, limited by bone and flesh. Still hungering. 

Astarion gives himself a moment to process. It does little but breed unease. 

"Hells," he finally says. "Where did you find that?”

"One less True Soul," Karlach says, grim. "She won't be missing it."

With the approaching army of the Absolute, it likely wasn't difficult to scrounge up some acceptable target. That makes sense. What makes less sense is why they're presenting it to him. 

Astarion continues staring at it. 

"I won't dissuade you from elaborating the plan now, Wyll,” he says, a little too tightly. 

Wyll grimaces, hand wrapping around the base of his horn. "If your tadpole is weakening, then maybe it needs– more. A second one to strengthen its protection over you, cutting off the thrall.”

The words land limply between them. 

Astarion can't help but stare blankly—this is their plan? To shove a godsdamn transforming parasite in his skull and hope it does one thing and not the other? Yes, they had seemed suspiciously benign— before. Not particularly so now. If it fractured once, why would it succeed afterward?

When this fails and Karlach is too kind to kill him, perhaps Astarion can flatter Cazador into leniency by saying his vampiric abilities are stronger than literal fucking mindflayers. 

Lae'zel bares her teeth. "I do not trust it,” she says, frustration lingering in the crevices of her voice. "But our alternative is going to Baldur's Gate for assistance.” 

Ah. He pulls back. Recalculates. Burns the thoughts cluttering uselessly about. 

Worrying, that his fast-twitch instinct was to waste time fretting about becoming a mindflayer when the thrall sings like a siren in the quiet corners of his awareness, when the ghost of his unmaking claws to the horizon of his master's feet. He doesn't care about the state of his corpse, fangs or tentacles, so long as it is laid to rest outside of his master's reach. 

Well. If nothing else, he can see why Wyll waited until the last moment to suggest it; why an Astarion still fouled by hope would say no. He is not that creature any longer; if this is what the party offers, he will try. 

Astarion pauses. 

The plan is– simple. Abhorrent, rotten, yes, but not complex. A last resort carved out of nothing, hunting through the wilderness for a chance at a fellow infected. It does not–

"You needed to read my mind," Astarion says, colder than he wants, "for this?"

Wyll doesn't break. Just holds his gaze.

 "There was a chance that your thrall was returning not from the tadpole's weakness, but from its strength," he says. "Eating through your innate defenses to prepare for the illithid hivemind. If that was true, another would damn you to near-immediate transformation." 

A crack in his composure– no, not a crack. Just open regret. He shows it willingly. 

"I am sorry,” Wyll says, quiet. "I wish I hadn't, and I wish there had been another way, but that was all I could think of. I can swear it will never happen again, but–” a shaky laugh, hand wrapping oddly around his wrist. "I didn't think this would happen. All I can do is promise to protect you.”

How much did he see? How much of this is apologies for breaching privacy, and how much is pity from secrets unveiled? Gods. Astarion can't even fucking ask him, because the others are here, are listening. 

Protection. Wyll keeps using that word in lieu of any others. Some small part of Astarion wonders how their definitions vary; why Wyll looks at him with this terribly human understanding, why this hatchfuck of a plan is the final instead of the first. Presumably it should have been, when Astarion revealed it was his thrall; if the parasites stopped the thrall, more should solve the situation. 

But no. Instead, Wyll tried. And kept trying. And asked if he wanted this plan before trying again.

Astarion stares at it, gnawing blindly at the air above Lae'zel's palm. Menace distilled. But there's– almost comfort in how mindless the menace is. Biting for biting's sake, a wild animal free to ravage the landscape; no deliberation in the motion. No choices made. On the mindflayer's side, yes, for inventing this misery of a creature, but–

Not it. Just hunger. It wants to hurt him because it wants to hurt everything. 

"My right eye, if you will," Astarion says finally. 

It's a draw where everyone loses. Even his acceptance brings only apprehension. They don't want this, he thinks. But it's fine. He doesn't care.

Wyll hesitates. "Do you want us to do it, or you?”

More polite than the mindflayer, at least. Astarion very delicately extends his hand. 

Lae'zel steps forward—whatever psionic energy keeps it elevating redoubles, lifting off her palm as its tendrils whip the air. Searching, scuttling in blind fervour for the mind it senses. His own tadpole is near incandescent to match, squirming like a leech in the riverbed. Astarion cups his palms and lets it float above them, digging his heels into the sod, shoulders tense. The clatter of the chains, haunting no one but him. 

Another. The soft-eyed man, the dream-walker, a thousand variations of power offered and cajoled. No mind paid to the transformation behind the shelter; the truth Lae'zel shared, the seven day timeframe they all avoided. The promise of further strength or further change. 

It isn't a dark alley, isn't the blood-soaked refuse of a fight that was not a fight but a slaughter, but it is similar. A choice that isn't a choice. He will choose it regardless. 

He hasn't been breathing for a minute now and it's the unsteady movement of an automaton that lifts his hands up, pressing a palm over his left eye to hide it. The tadpole wriggles again, lurching at its constraints, vacuous hunting. His eyelid flutters, instinct against obedience, as its putrid body brushes his cheek. As it squirms onto his face. 

Breathless anticipation. Astarion stares up, unmoving, bones slammed through iron poles. Scuttling over his nose, up the flat bridge between.

Its tendril touches the flesh of his eye.

It squalls, shrieking like a crushed rat, and he flinches back but its tendrils latch onto his eyelid, barbed hooks like thorns. What vision he has goes white-hot, burning, as it wriggles and pull, and pull, and he's writhing as it crawls in and in and in–

His eye gives. It slithers, burrowing past bone and into soft tissue, and he can fucking feel it, nerves alighting in harmonious dissonance as he gags around nothing, reeling back, but he can't escape the godsdamn beast joining the first in his skull. Forge-white recollection of a nautiloid and a grey-skinned monster. 

Now, on the grass, shaking, hands pressed to his face as if to pull it out. No blood to weep like tears—it went in cleanly, well-made for the process. What a fucking innovation.

Voices; still not crossing the five foot gap between, allowing him space, but dithering overhead as he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to imagine himself anywhere else. 

"Hey,” Karlach's saying, fast and tilted. "It's us, fangs, we're not coming closer– just making sure you're with us, yeah? You okay?”

He doesn't feel any different. But he didn't feel any different before it all came spiraling down, either. 

Astarion groans, sitting up; gods it if wasn't the smallest thing but it's like a weight has settled in his skull, blooming out with all the benevolence of a pit fiend. Still teeth, still lashing tendrils, but stationary. No more eating his brain than the first one. Spittle drips from his lips, vinegar fouling his thoughts; a prime tragedy of errors. Gods. It's too easy to regret things after he's made the choice. 

"M'here, love,” he croaks, then spews out a mouthful of saliva to drain over the grass. Wrangles eloquence back. "Hells, that was unpleasant.”

An understatement. A damningly obvious one, by the party's faces. A loving memory of pity to cherish forever. 

Wyll licks his lips. "How do you feel?”

Nothing illithid about him, no tentacles sprouting from unfortunate faces. Just blood in the wilds. Astarion pats his eye, sore enough to be bruised black if he had blood to spare. "Like I wish we had another way of administering these wretched things.”

Karlach gives a shallow laugh, at least.

"But I feel fine,” Astarion says, and stretches out, luxuriating in the simple motion. His mind is still here. Last time, when even a glance of Wyll peeking in was enough to trigger the thrall, now there is nothing but the night all around and the murmur of his own thoughts. "Rather myself again, I would think.”

Shadowheart exhales, rubbing at her face. Lae'zel, suspicion warring with relief, nods. 

Wyll pats his sides, unlatching the flap of his sheath. The paring knife that has seen far more use on things other than bodies, considering the infernal rapier that handles all the work for him. "Do you feel stable enough to stand? Or stay down?” He glances around the party. "Gale, can you release the lock on the stake?”

The stake; the rod bolted through the ground and securing his chain. The tether keeping him in this clearing instead of anywhere else. 

Astarion raises a single eyebrow. "And why would he do that?”

"I think you need to rest,” Wyll says, more firmly. "You need to recover, to heal, and when you wake we'll have hunted half the forest for you. Better by the fire than anywhere else.”

The fire, which is currently a continent away when measured by the length of the chain. What he has already proven to claw himself to ruin upon, the forest that will not hide the kennel from him. The thrall tells him where Cazador is. 

"While I do appreciate the imagery, I would also prefer not returning to Baldur's Gate,” Astarion drawls, hackles prickling. Still the hope, clutching to his spine like a life raft in an impossible sea—maybe this worked, maybe the thrall is gone—but he will not risk freedom for such meaningless, stupid comforts. "Staying chained is rather the best method.”

A revelation flashes over Wyll's face, stark and terrible. The skin peeled back for bones underneath. 

"Do you want that," Wyll asks, wane, "or do you want to stay here?"

Astarion smiles bitterly. "Those are the same things, love."

"They don't have to be.”

It is a perfectly innocuous phrase. Something about it still makes Astarion stop breathing. 

"We'll leave them on if that's what you want.” As if agreeing, he splays his hands out, stops going for his knife. "But nine times we've caught you, and we'll catch you again, Astarion. You won't return to him. And you don't have to be restrained if you don't want to.”

Astarion swallows. Digs his fingers into the soil, lets the earth pulse cool nothings to his hands. 

A chance over comforts. Over nonsensical blather about chains after two hundred years of them, not a choice, barely an offering at all; Astarion hesitates regardless. Feels the metal press sharp against his hip bones. 

It is very hard to not care, sometimes. 

"I would prefer to be safe,” he says, finally. Half truth, half lie. It has just never mattered what his choice was before. 

Wyll nods. Accepts it. Doesn't push. "Then at least let us make you comfortable.”

Astarion smiles. "I won't say no to that.”

Lae'zel, fist clenched like she can squash the memory of the parasite, immediately marches to the firepit to dump half a dozen logs in, flooding the air with sparks; the shadows retreat, yelping, before its orange glow. Gale helps guide Shadowheart to her tent, conjuring a mage hand to pull an ancient tome from his; an alchemy collection, searching for one to brew. A potion of vitality, maybe, to keep Shadowheart from keeling over. 

"Here goes, fangs,” Karlach calls, kicking a bedroll over—and there's something about the motion, something about the way she keeps her limbs tucked in, that makes Astarion stare at the five foot gap between them. The distance they've been so careful to maintain, like lines carved into the grass. 

He thought it was for them; enough room to get back when he attacks, to not risk him setting his fangs in their neck. Logical decisions when faced with a chained spawn in your camp. 

But Karlach moves slowly, moves deliberately, in a way more than that. For his sake instead of theirs. 

They started it only after his thralled self could talk. What did he say? What did they learn?

Because it helps. He didn't notice in the terror of before, when all effort went into fortifying an apathetic appearance splintering in his hands, but now he can watch them and breathe through it. Even the fastest among them would take half a second to reach him; enough time to react. Enough time to prepare, rather than living on the wire's blade of never knowing what could happen. The magical darkness in the kennel, threats all around.

Just the clearing. Just the party. 

"Thank you, love,” Astarion says, instead of anything else. The chain grumbles as he nudges it away but it's simple to spread out the bedroll, lay it above marred dirt and settle himself overtop, soft edges and cushion. He could be the courtesan again, splayed beneath five others. 

Karlach flashes him a smile and walks away. 

All of them do; defensive positions around the camp, each within eyesight, covering every corner. Gods if they aren't more exhausted than him, with the majority as those who need a full night's rest to be functional and haven't gotten one, but still they situate themselves to stand guard. 

The last to head out is Wyll, adjusting his infernal rapier within his sheath. In the darkness, his horns gleam moonlight-silver, curled around his head like a crown. 

"Rest, Astarion," Wyll says, gentle. "I will protect you."

As he curls on the bedroll, he finds he almost believes it.

-

Astarion opens his eyes beneath a moonlit sky. 

He tranced. A full four hours, mind reset, body reconfigured. Actual rest. What regeneration happened is slight, considering he's bled all his blood, but it still lurks in the corners with insistence. The bedroll, soft under his back. No dirt. No stone. 

Movement comes easily, sitting up—the chain grumbles disappointment and trails off behind him, still attached, still restrained. Astarion lets his arms stretch out, fills the space like expanding air, ears pricked and mind awake. 

No blood under his nails, no new pains scoured over old. His thoughts rustle with memories, the reverie of unconsciousness, and there is no taste in his mouth but habitual unease. Unuse. A night and nothing more. 

The chain is loud enough Wyll raises his head. 

He's sitting across from him, further back to watch the edge of camp, rapier sheathed but waiting at the ready. Heavier bags under his eyes, the faint scent of a fire-cooked meal drifting over the air. A long night in more ways than one. 

Uninjured. 

Astarion meets his gaze, a thousand questions written over his face. 

"It didn't happen,” Wyll says, this kind of feather-light relief floating down from on high. A smile creases his face, the infernal fire from his eye a mere spark. "You just tranced, Astarion. That was it.”

Another chance at freedom. Karlach will not have to kill him. 

Astarion sags back, inhaling from something deeper than lungs; he lets it trickle up and throughout, filling him, fire-warmed breath. "Wonderful,” he says, and doesn't have to conjure up relief. "Gods if this hasn't gone on for too long.”

Wyll nods, rueful. "It's over,” he says, with a confidence the situation does not warrant. "Do you feel okay?”

Does he?

He sits on the ground before a hunter. One sixth of a group he cannot understand any more than he can control them. Three months away and two centuries within. All of his time swallowed in the heat of the sun. 

Astarion presses a hand to the flat of the chains, fabric bunching under his fingers. No warmth, no blood. The metal of the manacle underneath, magically summoned. Protection in its own way, keeping him from clawing back to his master. 

He cares about not returning. 

He cares about more things, too. 

"I want to remove this,” Astarion says. 

And Wyll sets him free.