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britishassistant · 2 months

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The Letter Kills (Unless We Do First)

Astarion wakes to warmth and brightness for the first time in centuries.

The syrup slow lassitude of waking with the sun on his face transitions unkindly to panic once he remembers why he has not felt this sensation in so long.

He flinches, trying to find shadows, find cover, but.

But he isn’t burning.

But the sun feels as gentle as an unwary lover’s caress.

But he cannot feel his master.

The laugh that escapes him is a hideous combination of a cackle and a whoop. Something vicious and victorious that his master would never have allowed.

But Cazador isn’t here, he thinks gleefully. He has no way to tell Astarion what’s not allowed. No way to punish him for doing what he shouldn’t.

No way to ever make him go back.

As if on cue to dampen this marvelous revelation, there is a disgusting sensation of squirming along his optic nerve.

He shudders, resisting the growing urge to claw wildly at his face.

Ah. Right. That.

A twinge in his stomach reminds him that there is also the not inconsiderable matter of finding something to eat.

Well. One of these he can remedy much more easily than the other.

Astarion sets off down the beach, more than ready to select his first meal to celebrate freedom…

Only to hide behind a large rock when he spots the cleric he declined to save aboard the Nautiloid hammering on an ancient wood door.

She’s certainly looking no worse for wear despite being left for dead! …Though the way she’s just snapped that lockpick clean in two and thrown it to the floor to stomp on what remains of the poor tool suggests she may be feeling slightly frustrated.

He watches as the cleric points a finger at the glinting metal, and it bursts into too bright flames.

…He has decided to find another route inland.

One that steers clear of the young woman with lingering anger issues.

But it’s hardly his fault, he declares in the privacy of his own mind as he sneaks past several more of those brains on legs. There simply wasn’t time to begin picking through every last room to save stragglers, not when the ship could have gone down and killed them all anyway.

Besides, it won him points with that warrior to follow her orders and press ahead and given she was his only source of protection, who was he to jeopardize that?

Although, he considers as he emerges on the other side of the wreckage into fresh air, she’s nowhere to be found. Escaped, dead, who’s to say? Though it is a shame to lose such a convenient defender—if he’d fluttered his eyelashes, he could have had a convenient shield against Cazador for however long her interest held.

There’s another one of those pods further down the path, and a set of booted footprints making sticky pink tracks away from it.

Astarion smiles to himself. Perhaps his luck hasn’t run totally dry yet.

He straightens out of a crouch, makes sure gravel crunches slightly under his feet as he walks. This is one introduction where it may be better to announce his presence first.

Not that the pod’s occupant seems to be at all aware of the courtesy he’s extending for them.

The slight figure seems entirely absorbed in trying to scan the horizon from their position perched on a tree’s roots near the edge of a cliff, muttering something indistinct.

From behind, he spots the tips of a pair of horns jutting upwards. A tiefling then. But one without the tail that usually curls from their backsides.

Well, he can work with that. Astarion’s a dab hand at cooing over scars while reassuring their bearers that it doesn’t change how he thinks of them, not one bit. And in all honesty, it didn’t.

Not when they were going to be meals for Cazador by the end of the night regardless.

He begins picking his way through the undergrowth, putting on his most guileless expression. “Oh thank heavens—you are another survivor of the crash, aren’t you?”

The first thought he has on the tiefling whirling around to face him is that they’re young. A teenager, at most.

It’s the only way to explain those genuinely atrocious fashion choices.

The, to be charitable, mop of dark hair that hides most of their face is heavily contrasted against the jester-like costume they wear, ruff and brown patterned doublet and bright blue striped sleeves. He half expects to see small golden bells attached to the toes of their boots.

The only credit he can give them is the bright blue sleeves set off the bruise pink of their skin nicely.

And they’re holding a lyre! He’s traded a trained warrior for a wandering minstrel. And a poorly dressed one at that.

How splendid.

Their mouth twists into something wary, a hint of pomposity in the jaw that reminds him of the noble he’d tempted back to Cazador, gods, was it only yesterday?

“Who wants to know?”

He holds up his hands, the picture of innocence. “I swear I mean no harm—I was held captive on that ship, just like you.”

“…Except, that’s not quite true.” The teenager says, considering. “After all, I was kept locked in that pod for the entirety of that ill-fated flight, while you…I saw you. Running about the ship, unmonitored and unhindered.”

They tilt their head, corvid-like. Their eyes burn uncanny blue against black. “Odd, to say the least. Where’s your frie—nnghk?!”

There is a vicious twisting inside his skull, sharp and stabbing and—

Your hand aches with how tightly you grip the quill while the mercenary screams at you, sword a hairsbreadth from your face. Others leer at you over her shoulders, hunger in their eyes.

Your expression is placid. Your words are your only defense, so weild them. You will not show weakness. You will not die here. You refuse—!

He returns to himself with an throughly unpleasant jolt.

The teenager is slumped against the tree, one hand to their head. “What, what was…?”

“It’s the tadpoles.” He explains. “On the ship, when I was freed by that, that kind warrior, it happened with her too. I’ve been looking for her since I woke up among the wreckage, but you’re the first person I’ve come across.”

He can see their guard lowering, so he moves in closer, softens his tone. “I’ll be the first to admit I’ve no idea how we can get these parasites under control, let alone rid ourselves of them. But I suspect we’ll have far better chances finding answers together than either of us would apart. And I’ll admit, travelling in the company of someone like yourself…well. It certainly couldn’t be unpleasant.”

He gives them his coy grin, the one charming enough to inspire confidence in even the most curmudgeonly morsel.

He never had to consider the difference between sunlight and candlelight when employing it before.

The eerie blue eyes widen.

The tiefling immediately shifts back and away, holding up the lyre like they intend to hit him with it.

“How—What in the hells are you?!” They hiss. “What, is Szarr employing dhampir now?!”

If the blood still flowed in his veins, he would swear it would freeze at those words.

“How do you know that name.” His voice is slow, deliberate.

A counterpoint to his mind whirling, trying to figure out how quickly he can kill this tiefling or if it would be best to just run.

They scoff, lyre at the ready. “Oh don’t give me that. I had to get kidnapped by mind flayers to escape the last one he set to take me! You’d think a, a vampire would have better things to do than hunt down a scribe over some letters!”

It feels like time ought to grind to a halt. Birdsong stop, the wind fall dead, flames on the Nautiloid pause, that sort of thing.

In reality, all of these continue as usual even as two pieces click into place in his head.

“…Letters.” He says, his own voice sounding distant. “The ones with the wax raven seal? Holding keys in its talons?”

“…Yes?” The teenager actually lowers the instrument. “Wait, how do you know what it looks li—?”

Astarion punches them in the face.

They cry out, holding their cheek for a moment of glorious stupefaction.

Then, with a demonic howl, they lunge for his hair and yank.

What follows is an admittedly pathetic brawl, the pair of them tumbling to the ground in a flurry of wild, often severely mistimed blows. He tries to bite them, only for his fangs to snag on the folds of that stupid starched ruff around their throat. He then yells in outrage when their teeth close over his hand. A swift knee between their legs takes care of that issue, but it does mean he’s unprepared for the elbow to his nose.

He’s not sure how many minutes the two of them scuffle like that before they somehow roll apart, groaning and muffling curses.

He can smell where the blood has burst their veins under their skin. He is aching in ways that for the first time in centuries don’t come from lovemaking or torture.

He is resolutely ignoring the side of him that’s oddly satisfied.

“What,” The tiefling pants. “the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“Do you know,” He grits out. “What he would do to us, every, single, time, he got one of those fucking letters?!”

“No!” The teenager has the gall to sit up and glare at him. “Surprisingly enough, I have no gods-be-damned idea what you’re talking about, given that you forwent the convenient explanation and just hit me!”

Astarion leans forward, “Well, my darling, those letters made my all powerful vampiric master very cross whenever they darkened his desk these past four years. So cross in fact, he would forgo having me or the other spawn in his thrall go out to bring him meals. All the rage your letters inflicted on him, he would take out on us in ways you couldn’t even dream of.”

They’re looking discomforted.

Good.

“Have you ever been flensed? Slowly, mind you. Peeling off only the most delicate pieces of your flesh one. By. One. That was what he would do once the worst of his black mood had passed, and we would weep with the relief it gave us. Can you imagine what must have come before that? The kinds of unique torment I had to endure? And all because of those damned letters which you authored—!”

“I didn’t.” They interrupt.

He can’t help the hysterically angry laugh that escapes him. “I’m sorry, you just admitted that you—!”

“—No, I wrote them.” They claim with an odd amount of vehemence. “It was my employer who authored every last belittlement and affront and humiliation in those letters, and then read them over to ensure I’d transcribed his dictation correctly. Who’d cut what little I earned or make me work through the night if I ever tried to soften any blows, and who’d have me write out the whole thing again and again and again until he was bloody satisfied!”

Their laugh is almost as bitter as his own as they reminisce. “Oh, but he’d never fire me. No, he’s far too gracious a man for that. He’d just let the vampire patriar he pissed off hunt me down instead.”

Astarion blinks, frowning hard.

“That’s all very well, but it hardly makes much difference to me, does it?” He snaps. “Cazador still took it out on me and my ‘brothers and sisters’, regardless of who created them. And he’ll be trying to hunt me down with far more resources than he’d ever expend on you, so.”

They’re quiet for several moments.

Astarion almost wants to throw a fistful of soil at them, punch them again, just so they fucking say something.

“I am sorry.” They state. “That I couldn’t do anything. But I think that you did—you do have the right of it.”

“Oh?” He inserts as much mockery as he feels they deserve into the word. “I usually do darling, but you’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“If I tried to turn you over to him, I’d be dead before I open my mouth, if I’m very, very lucky.” Their creepy eyes meet his as they bluntly continue. “If you tried to turn me over to him, it sounds like what he’d do to you in return’s be worse than death.”

He chuckles without humor. “Such a very tame way of putting it.”

“As far as I see it, we both share two goals. One,” A clawed finger goes up. “To negate these tadpoles by any means we can find before they eat us. Two,” A second joins the first. “To evade Cazador Szarr until he loses interest or we come by a means of permanently destroying him.”

Oh.

Now he’s interested.

“And I understand if you’d rather slit my throat than work with me,” The teenager says stiffly. “But I’d bet that alone we each last three days before we’re captured, and that’s if Tymora decides to weight the dice in our favor. The only way either of us are making it though this is together. After all, you’ve had to endure Szarr’s company for however long and I’ve worked for a guild that specializes in doing things that are morally grey at best. Together, we—“

There’s the crunching of gravel.

Astarion is up in a moment, hand of the hilt of his dagger. Next to him the tiefling stands, brandishing their retrieved lyre like it’s going to do anything.

He gives them an incredulous side eye.

They stick their tongue out at him.

“Is everything alright? I thought I heard…?” The cleric Astarion had been hoping to avoid crests the hill.

Her face falls into a glower. “Oh. It’s you.”

He forces his face into a relieved beam. “You’re—you’re alive! Oh thank all the gods above and below, I was so worried—!”

“Oh please,” She scoffs. “Don’t strain yourself. You left me to die up there quite happily with your little gith—augh!“

That horrendous squirming against the inside of his skull is as unwelcome as it is familiar.

Anger, beginning to simmer like bile in the pit of her stomach.

Bitterness, at herself, at that useless fop of an elf, but most of all at that damned toady gith bitch who is the entire reason she was left behind, to die alone and far from her Lady’s embrace, just like the rest of—!

The jerk as the connection is severed is considerably more painful than the previous two instances.

Well, he thinks as he shakes off the afterimages. It seems that little miss cleric here has some secrets in that head of hers she doesn’t want anyone seeing.

Now, how to—?

“It seems I must apologize for my older brother here.” Comes the voice of the tiefling at his side. “I wish I could say he’s usually better company, but that would be lying.”

what.

No, seriously.

What??

The cleric stares between the two of them, suspicion clear on her face. “Brother? But…you’re…?”

The teenager shrugs, slinging the lyre over their shoulder. “Mother dearest decided a deal with a devil was the best way to stave off crow’s feet. Of course, the jig was up when my horns started growing in. Father was furious, divorced her straight away, sent she and I back to her family in Elturel to avoid the scandal.”

There’s a nudge in his mind. A voice murmurs quietly. “Play along.”

He fakes a laugh so he can take a moment to goggle at the audacity of this child.

“I hardly think this poor woman needs to hear all of our sordid family history…”

Fuck. He doesn’t know their name. How is he meant to sell this if he doesn’t know their name. Fuck!

“For the last time, Brother, it’s Yuu now.” The tiefling groans, rolling their eyes. They mutter conspiratorially to the cleric. “It’s been a month, and he still hasn’t got it quite right yet.”

“Hah! As if you weren’t switching it every three days or so, saying ‘oh Brother Astarion, I can’t decide!’ in every letter.” He extemporizes, offense only partly feigned. “I’m not a mind reader, Yuu dear. I need to be kept abreast of changes to be aware of them.”

“Wh—I do not sound like that!” They squawk in affected outrage. “There! Do you see what I have to put up with?!”

To his surprise, the cleric’s mouth quirks into a smirk. “Hm. My condolence on your relations then.”

The tiefling huffs slightly, scuffing the dirt with their boot. “Well. He can be irritating, but he’s not entirely awful. I suppose.”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes. “Such high praise, how will I ever contain myself? See if I come after you next time you get kidnapped.”

“Well I—“

“As charming as this is.” The cleric cuts in. “We only have a limited period to deal with these parasites before they turn us into mind flayers. It would be better not to waste it bickering, wouldn’t you agree?”

Astarion takes it as his cue to duck his head sheepishly. “Of course—you are quite right.”

“Would it be alright if we travelled with you, lady?” The tiefling suggests. “It seems you’re more knowledgeable about this than we, and it might be easier to look for a healer if we’re able to support one another.”

The cleric frowns, but less severely than Astarion would have suspected. Considering, rather than an outright rejection.

He decides to try weighting the scales a bit.

“If it makes any difference at all, I would like you to know how deeply sorry I am.” He hangs his head as if in contrition, looking up at her through his lashes. “I was fixated on finding my fool of a sibling here, but that was hardly an excuse to ignore your suffering. I would dearly appreciate the chance to make up this wrong to you, in any way I can.”

Her breath catches. A slight flush rises to the cleric’s cheeks.

He knows he has her, even before she brusquely says. “Well, it’s only practical. We should get moving inland before nightfall. Work out where we are and if there are healers nearby, at the least.”

“Fantastic!” The teenager declares. “We’ll be in your care, miss…?”

“Shadowheart.”

It takes everything in Astarion’s power to not undo all his hard work by laughing at the name.

The cleric turns and begins walking at a brisk pace.

As the two of them follow, the tailless tiefling whispers, “A cleric will be good to have if we get the chance to kill Szarr, no?”

Astarion feels a smirk curling his lips, cruel and exhilarating.

“For once, my dear, we are perfectly in agreement.”

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