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#EVERYONE SAY IT WITH ME
blackjackkent · 27 days
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Past Cazador's prison cells and through a door labeled "Crypt Gate", we find... this.
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"Holy hells," Hector mumbles as they proceed down the enormous stairway leading through the crypt. The room is enormous, a giant cavern of a place, full of hanging cages and ornate gilded stonework. It would have taken decades, centuries, to build such a place. And to make use of all these cages...
At the middle of the room, suspended with abyss both above and below, stands an equally enormous platform. Seven alcoves marked with obsidian columns line its edges; six of them are filled, each with a vampire spawn suspended in midair. Several of the same werewolf creatures they fought in the ballroom pace the platform with agitation...
...and Cazador stands at the center of it all.
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Hector feels a strange sort of cold hate prickle through him. Everything about this situation is terrible, particularly the tangled, twisted complexities surrounding the fate of the spawn in those jail cells. But Cazador's fate is the sharp clear line that he can follow with ease. Whatever else will happen, that man cannot be allowed to live. That, at least, is certainty.
He looks back towards Astarion, gestures the other man to walk forward with him.
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Cazador rounds on them as they approach. He completely ignores Hector, his eyes locking onto Astarion at once with a hunger that has nothing to do with blood and everything to do with power.
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"Who stands before us?" he cries. His voice is high, keening, like a wolf's howl. "Is this truly our prodigal son."
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Astarion is looking at him with abject hatred - but involuntarily, from habit or from fear, his shoulders hunch up, his head ducking so he is looking up at the vampire lord from under hooded brows. Hector remembers him taking the same involuntary stance before Oblodra back at Moonrise Towers - the automatic submission born of centuries of torment.
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Cazador recognizes it too, and smirks. "Do not slouch before me, boy!" he snaps mockingly. "Have you no respect for yourself?"
His fingers tap restlessly along the shaft of the ornate staff he holds in one hand. "Look at you," he goes on, disdainful. "Crawling back after abandoning your family. You should be begging our forgiveness."
The cold cruelty inherent in these words - when Cazador is responsible for all the misery Astarion and so many others have gone through - stings Hector like a slap. How dare you, he thinks with disgust.
But he remains still. As with so many other confrontations that he has witnessed in their journeys... this is not his fight to direct. And this is, perhaps, more important than it was with any of the others, even Shadowheart -- because Astarion has been taught for so long that he had no control. For Hector to deny him that now would be the height of hypocrisy.
Keep back. Do not intervene.
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"Forgiveness?" Astarion cries. "You've never forgiven anything. Every mistake, every slip, was punished!"
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"I strove for perfection in all things," Cazador returns primly. "Even those as imperfect as you. A pity you amounted to so little, despite my efforts."
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"No." Astarion's voice goes hard. His fists are clenched and his eyes unblinking. "No. Fuck you. And fuck everything you've ever done to me."
Damn right, Hector thinks. Slowly, casually, he shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet. It's only a matter of time before this comes to violence.
Say nothing.
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Cazador laughs sharply. "I suspected you would return to me changed," he taunts. "Never did I imagine you would be so wretched." He takes a step towards Astarion, spreading his arms in a mocking welcome. "Oh, thankless child. Did I not bless you with our immortal gift? Did I not make you what you are?!"
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Every word is stabbing into Astarion like a knife, and the rage is building in him until finally it can't be contained. "You son of a bitch!" he howls, and hurls himself at Cazador, one fist coming up, ready to strike--
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Red light bursts from the base of Cazador's staff, enveloping the two of them, and Astarion cries out as he is frozen into place, his movement arrested into stillness in the space of a blink.
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"You truly forgot my power." Cazador clicks his tongue scornfully. "You truly thought our bond as creator and creation was all that stopped you from killing me!" He steps closer, his face only a few inches from Astarion's. "You are weak, my child. You are a small, pathetic little boy who never amounted to anything!"
Astarion whimpers with pain and fury. Cazador ignores him, jerks the staff in a sudden wide arc. "But today, you will finally do something worthwhile. You will burn, and I will ascend!"
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Instantly, Astarion is lifted into the air and hurled bodily across the platform and into the last remaining niche waiting for him. A blaze of blood and magical energy bursts around him, shattering his equipment aside and leaving him bare-chested and bathed in red. A deeply scored and elaborate scar on his back begins to glow as if flame is bursting from within his skin.
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"NO!" Astarion screams, and there is nothing left of his usual confidence-- the word is heavy with terror. "STOP HIM! AND GET ME OUT OF THIS!"
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Hector is already moving, his fists coming up, ready to strike-- but Cazador shows no fear, just a gleeful, triumphant grin. He raises his arms, crying out to the heavens, to whatever dark god he serves.
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"Witness the birth of the Vampire Ascendant!" he bellows. "ECCE DOMINUS!"
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bandomgay · 3 months
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I just have to get through it
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Claude is too much like a worse William. I wish they had made him more unique.
^
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writersmorgue · 2 years
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JEART JEART JEART JEART
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chriss-club · 7 months
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daily affirmations:
I am beautiful.
I am smart.
Charles Leclerc is the winner of the 2023 Monza Grand Prix.
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grieving4theliving · 9 months
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i LOVEEEE forming my own opinions before i immerse myself in extreme one-sided discourse online 😁😁😁
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gar-trek · 2 years
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Guys …. Now that sams back let’s uh. Let’s just pretend I don’t care for weyoun alright ?
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twogyuu · 1 year
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Don't do that to the one and only baby girl. He deserves a happy ending, the man did all he could.
BUT DID HE REALLY????
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gavinopricey · 2 years
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When I tell y’all I was two episodes away from being fully caught up on critical role but I forgot to mute critrolestats
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midnightsmadi · 2 years
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“all your favorite streamers” George Lore Confirmation?
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inkskinned · 3 months
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i got rickrolled today but it didn't work because i have adblocker installed, so youtube just told me i violated the terms of service. yesterday i was trying to edit a picture as a joke for my girlfriend, and google made me check a box to prove i'm human because i wasn't "searching normally".
it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.
do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.
but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.
do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).
you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.
walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.
no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.
do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."
you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.
there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.
i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.
he didn't know the answer. just shrugged at me. "you know," he said. "these days, everything costs money."
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spyglassrealms · 1 year
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had a fucking hilarious dream that tumblr replaced the "block" function with the far funnier "glock" function, which did the exact same thing except whenever anyone blocked you a random bullet hole, like a png of a bullet hole, would appear on your blog. discourse blogs were unreadable bc you'd go to the page and the sheer amount of bullet hole pngs stacked over the blogs obscured everything. I woke myself up laughing
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dogdayafternoon1975 · 4 months
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the first indication this is fake is the commentary included in the quadrilogy boxset is just the commentary he did for the 20th anniversary in 1999, the second is there is zero evidence for this outside this website and this specific reblog, however im insufferable and must know the truth so im currently watching the ridley scott “quadrilogy boxset” commentary right now . see u in 2 hours maybe
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adriles · 5 months
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when we’re done with our overwhelming grief we’ll eat i guess
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ot3 · 1 month
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i can't believe that we're doing 'i use bro/dude in a gender neutral way' discourse in 2024 because even without the blatant transmisogyny of being unwilling to make incredibly minor linguistic concessions for the sake of not casually misgendering trans women, 'dont call people things that will upset them' is a concept literal kindergartners are capable of grasping. if someone says 'don't use these words to refer to me, i don't like it' and your response is anything but 'sorry, i won't do it again' then the kindest possible interpretation of your behavior is that you are a huge asshole that nobody should want to hang out with.
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homefryboy · 10 months
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finally, I have them all
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