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mogwaei · 28 days

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There is so much more to you.

[~2700 word oneshot below the cut, Astarion's pov!]

There was never a dull moment with Zjinn (the name had stuck with most of the others, but Astarion was having too much fun to settle now). The dark elf simply never stopped, and if everyone else was occupied, Zjinn found ways to amuse herself which was a skill he admired but would not admit. Now, if he were a better man, he might even be a little concerned, but Wyll and Gale already had that covered. Karlach encouraged it. Lae'zel seemed to find it secretly entertaining, or more likely useful, in that if the rest of their party didn't require rest, she would have absconded with Zjinn to the nearest creche on day one.

Astarion instead assigned himself the task of watching and waiting with great anticipation for the day the chaos finally caught up with the guileful, fey elf. It would probably be disastrous, but also hilarious. Perhaps the others were too charmed (or even infatuated) with Zjinn's magnetic personality to realise that it was a glamour, a distraction to hide an internal struggle with a darker somethingness he'd seen slip free here and there.

After their encounter with dear Auntie Ethel, he was almost certain it existed. The entire group had descended into the hag's tree and things went from high confidence to ‘everything is very bad very quickly’. Out of their seven, it came down to the two of them becoming a bloody acrobatic act trying to avoid the crone's lethal spells. Thinking herself victorious, Ethel taunted him, plucking weaknesses and insecurities from his head like ripened fruit.

Slaver. Sadist. Descendant of monsters, child of the Gloaming! How dare you judge me?

Well. Whatever that meant.

He'd peeked out of cover in confusion at the other elf. Nothing they had encountered in their short time together seemed to ruffle Zjinn. She was as slippery as the tadpoles in their heads and annoyingly resilient. But right then, he saw something like doubt. Maybe a spark of fear.

It clearly struck a chord with the elven thaumaturge. Something snapped and suddenly Zjinn went completely feral. He'd seen her fight with broken chicken bones to stab into soft flesh and even a frying pan more than once—she was very resourceful and hands-on for what he expected of a burgeoning bard-druid-whatever. But this time, Zjinn picked up a short sword out of the filth and became a flurry of blade and strange, foul magic he'd not seen her wield before. The hag cackled with glee, I knew your kind was excitable, petal, but you're as weak as watered milk!

And yet, it was Zjinn who ended up covered in a thick soup of blood and grime, standing above the hag as she begged, then bargained for her life. Unexpectedly, Zjinn let the miserable creature go in exchange for power. I intend to be the strongest milk you’ve ever tasted, Astarion! Another thing to bite them in the arse down the road, but, she was right. He would happily help her hoard power if it meant they could eventually reduce any of their enemies to dust at the snap of their fingers—Cazador at the top of his list.

Nevertheless, after barely rousing their companions with carefully portioned potions and Zjinn's last healing spell, the elf traded her usual series of friendly quips to lighten the mood. Another distraction, for while the others conversed tiredly on the trek back to camp, Zjinn filtered to the rear and subsided into an inordinate silence. With that battle being their toughest to date, he chalked it up to exhaustion.

But Zjinn did not stop nor rest. He immediately recognised the vacant look in her eye: a lute enchanted to play without a musician still played its programmed notes, but to his knowledge, magic lacked the specific flavour and spirit only a living person could provide (despite what Gale would argue). In other words, no one was home except the tadpole.

Further driving his convictions, Zjinn disappeared for a bit into the darkening forest, returning with a burlap sack containing some sort of fungus that she made a brew from. Whatever it was kept her up all through the night—and no, he wasn't watching her every minute of the day. He was settling into a trance when she woke Wyll for his watch and sat with the warlock on the riverbank for the duration of his.

Whatever the man said to Zjinn that night was enough to return the eye-patch elf to her regular insufferable self the next morning. There was no sign of vulnerability for another couple of tendays—then again, Astarion forced himself to stop paying so close attention. For reasons.

That was up until a night or two before they planned to storm the goblin camp, finally deciding they were prepared to do so. Astarion had gone hunting since his usual donor had once again gone out for an evening forage. He took a meandering path not at all keeping an eye out for signs of a familiar moon-haired cretin getting high off spores with myconids or something equally absurd.

He wasn't far off the mark. There were no mushroom people, fortunately, but Zjinn was near an outcropping overlooking the river and the overcast heavens, her form almost entirely obscured by a cloud that was shifting colours like an aurora. Motes of light, like stars, were drifting through them. He moved closer with nary a sound, mouthing what the fuck?

The cloud turned red spontaneously at the same time that the idiot dropped to the ground out of sight. When she didn't rise immediately, Astarion sighed and pushed through the bushes calling her name while hating the worry edging his voice. When he broke through, he nearly tripped over her body, batting fruitlessly at the cloud. Zjinn lay sprawled on her back staring up at the stars with the vacant expression that had been haunting the back of his mind for days. While her shirts and armour were usually left open to a dangerous degree to flaunt the myriad tattoos adorning her skin, it was the ink that caught his attention this time...and not in a horny way. They were shifting, the designs mixing and twisting nauseatingly.

He nudged her with a foot, not trusting his hands to do something foolish like touch her face.

"You're not even breathing—what the hells did you do now?" he muttered, kneeling beside her.

Then she blinked. And looked at him. They stared at each other in silence, neither breathing.

"It worked. The dose needs dilution, but—" Ziinn winked.

Astarion's face darkened. "You absolute buffoon. If Gale finds out you're sampling fungi again, we'll never hear the end of it! And so far from camp—what if—”

Zjinn started wheezing with laughter and Astarion shut his mouth indignantly, considering kicking her over the edge of the cliff. He was not worried. "Gale only finds out if one of us tells him." She pushed herself up, wild curls stuck with moss and grass. "Did you want some?"

He waited for her to latch onto the too-obvious concern rolling off of him to tease him mercilessly, but it never came. There was still time—probably tucking it away for later, the menace. It was what he would do.

"Even if I were interested in huffing dust off rocks like you, I doubt it would have an effect on me," he groused, watching her roll around, mumbling incoherently in another language. "Also, why aren't you breathing?"

He wasn’t sure why that unnerved him, of all the unhinged things she did, but he didn’t want to figure it out. He couldn't afford to.

She ignored him in favour of searching the ground for the fallen pouch, but Astarion grabbed it first and tucked it out of view. "It's merely a side effect, I'Il be fine! Tell Gale or Wyll to lead the parade for a day or two."

Unable to find her pouch, she let out a garbled sound of dismay.

"Sorry darling, if we're going to be fighting goblins and drow tomorrow, I'm not about to trust my back to a mushroom-addled bard."

Zjinn kicked out at his ankle, knocking him onto his ass. "Why not suck the poison out of my veins? Like ye olde healing leeches.”

“And risk getting me high? I think not.”

She narrowed her eye. "Would that work?"

"I am absolutely fucking not testing that out.'

"I promise they're harmless to outsiders.'

"'Outsiders'?"

She pursed her lips and he realised it must have been a slip. "I don't know. I..." Zjinn dug her hands into her hair, leaning between her peaked knees. "It must be the tadpole. Catching stray thoughts from others out of the air or something.” There, a fissure in the jester's mask. He needed only to chip away at it until there was an Astarion-shaped hole.

"That doesn't explain the sudden need for—" he gestured lazily to the starlike magic and the still-swimming ink on her skin. He wasn't sure if the particulates had affected him or if the tadpoles were skimming surface thoughts off their brains, but he felt something give in the air. The slightest incremental shift of time and space in her direction—oh gods below, he was beginning to think like Gale.

Zjinn sighed. "I've been getting terrible headaches since the crash," she confessed, though it did not come easy. It should have made him feel elated for the bit of give, but instead...he felt a little cold. Guilty. “It's like reality doesn't quite fit. I feel...untethered."

"Darling, I think it's the mushrooms—”

She raised her head, staring up at the red clouds and scattered constellations, still without breathing. "Somehow I thought you’d understand, being someone who needs a questionable substance to feel semi-stable.” The other was Gale, he knew, but she didn’t mention the wizard.

Astarion floundered for his script. "You’re right. Try me, darling. I’ll behave." Yes, that was choice, and delivered with the right amount of softness. She was looking at him now, likely because it was a tone she'd never heard him take. He cleared his throat and gently booped her on the shoulder with his finger. "It's not just headaches, is it?"

She was, for once, silent. And then that single red feline-pupiled eye turned to the crimson depths above. "No." Zjinn wiggled her fingers where they perched on her knee. "But something about these mushrooms and flowers...they make me feel more connected? Instead of hurtling blindly through wherever I'm bloody going, I suddenly am only a few tools short of being able to map the unknown. That's why I was trying to chart the stars from memory.”

It was Astarion's turn to stare into the distance, mind spinning. It explained the mess of ‘stars’ in the red cloud, but not the...mapping bit.

"There's far more to you than you let on." It was meant to be a genuine compliment—eugh—but as always, it came off frosted with mockery. Gale would probably be losing his collective shit if he were sitting in his place, happily hanging on every word of her reluctant vulnerability. Hells, figuring out what sort of magic she wielded had been something of a camp topic for weeks while Zjinn demonstrated signs of sorcery, druidic magic, and whatever it was bards did. He still didn't understand the others’ obsession—Zjinn could fight and kill and protect well, sometimes having fun with the violent bits! It was all he cared about after all.

But he had to pretend he was invested, because it was Astarion she was telling now. Except…what did it mean for two seasoned liars? Did she expect him not to believe her and thus didn't care to hold her cards close? Why did that prospect suddenly bother him?

Push it a little further. You can secure her loyalty here, that fearful voice whispered.

"Why don't we try something?" he piped up, drawing her gaze again. "Remember when we discussed getting blood-drunk? As in, you drink to the brink of liver failure..." Astarion could get drunk on wine, but it usually took enough bottles to kill a mortal man or two. The theory they had some time ago—but tragically had yet to test—was for her to get piss drunk and for him to…partake of her blood shortly after, perhaps yielding a more potent result.

"Are you suggesting what I think you are, but with the spores?"

He shrugged nonchalantly as he leaned back on his hands, pasting on a little smirk. "It was your idea. Something about 'sucking out the poison'? I'm not usually one for details, dear. But, if it works, maybe it will help me to...better understand what has that wild little mind in such a bind lately."

Zjinn mirrored his posture, tilting her head slowly to the side in a way that exposed her inked neck. It drove him a little mad and made his fangs ache.

“When was the last time you looked at the stars?”

Every fucking night since the crash. He was absorbing every vibrant petal and shimmering ray of sun like any moment he'd be whisked away back to Cazador. But he pretended he wasn't one for details because that was weakness.

“Well, hardly tonight since they're playing coy.” The double entendre was not lost on her.

Zjinn gave a very Lae'zel-like tch and motioned toward her neck with those tapered fingernails. “We'll see about that. Have a taste.”

Astarion reined himself in so as not to appear as excited as he felt, taking his sweet time positioning himself behind her, deliberately brushing her thighs with his. Gently brushing the mass of curls over her other shoulder, he briefly inspected the shapeless ink on her neck. This close, it almost looked like something was alive and moving beneath her skin. He wasted no time drowning those lovely little thoughts in her blood.

As the hot liquid flooded his tongue, he noticed a new note to the conflicting essence that was uniquely Zjinn. It was…unexpected, yes, but not unpleasant. Yet, trying to put words to the taste only conjured an image of the Astral Sea, similar to where the Dream Visitor had taken up residence. Multi-hued puffs of stardust that looked tantalisingly tasty—Zjinn's words, not his—but what Lae'zel vehemently insisted was not. Regardless of what Lae'zel said, Zjinn's blood had some Astral Sea in it and it was quickly approaching ambrosial in quality.

He didn’t realise how far gone he was until Zjinn gave him a tiny zap on the nose. When he opened his eyes, they were surrounded by aurorean lights and an expanse of drifting stars.

“It's all right, you're not going to float away,” came the moonsmoke voice, all light with amusement. He was clinging to her. Mortifying. Astarion quickly put distance between them, but not far enough that he couldn't reach out…just in case.

“Fascinating darling, but how exactly does this help you at all? All I can see are…unicorn farts.”

“You haven't built up a tolerance, pumpkin. But now we know it works! Think of all the debauchery we can get up to now.”

Astarion opened his mouth to reflexively deliver something salacious, but his eyes caught once more on the tattoos. The designs were back, but gone were the usual mosaics of Feywild flora and fauna and monsters. Now, they were images of portals and arches filled with visions of other worlds, of voids containing stars, and stained glass windows framed by flowers and ivy…

All connected by the thin dendritic fingers of mushrooms.

He didn’t know what it meant and she was unlikely to grace him with a straightforward answer. Instead, he focused on her currently guiding a star across the sky.

“You're mapping them?” he recalled weakly, feeling in threat of losing his connection to the ground.

She nodded, placing a particularly sparkly orb at an acute angle above his head. “I've already done the prettiest part of the sky.”

Astarion scanned the area, about to say something incredibly snarky about her memory being shite until something she had said earlier about reality not quite ‘fitting’ had him faltering.

While it had been something like two hundred years since he'd had a proper look at the heavenly bodies, he'd been catching up enough on his stargazing to recognise something was off.

These were not the constellations of Faerûn.

But something deep down inside him said they were designs that existed in some realm.

It occurred to him that their peculiar dark elf had a very different perspective of the world. Or, perhaps, Zjinn was not Faerûnian at all.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion bg3 #astarion ancunin #dark urge #throwing in some of my own oc lore - this durge has a different backstory than 'canon' sue me #zjinn's a bard/sorc/druid...but not a spores druid. Mushrooms just happen to be a big part of their culture (even tho she can't remember)#also Zjinn is she/they but using “she” for the sake of clarity rn #if anyone is familiar with my Ouroboros' background...we tapping into that here :3 #also the art doesn't quite line up with the story oop #mogwaei arts #zjinn #astarion

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