Chapter Text
Time trickles by slowly as the reluctant group of four pick their way up the slopes, Shadowheart watching Gale and Dirge’s backs as they hike. The wizard appears to be incapable of shutting up for more than five minutes, starting out wary of their company at first but soon unable to control his mouth, constantly making remarks on their surroundings in an effort to fill the quiet.
This engages Dirge at least, the drow slowing enough to walk beside and half a step in front of Gale, still leading but with one ear co*cked toward Gale’s enthusiasm. It’s almost difficult to picture this wizard carrying such immense, bone-deep destructive potential as she’d sensed during those visions. It should make her more wary of him, but his chatter is somehow putting her at ease through sheer annoyance.
Shadowheart would much rather travel in the silence she is used to, to absorb everything that’s happened over the past day. The past hour, even, but she can’t afford to be picky at the moment.
Not with the parasite in her brain set to turn her into a mind flayer, giving her visions in which she cannot place any trust. Not with the bomb in the shape of a human in front of her, continuing a nearly one-sided conversation that has Dirge responding only with vague acknowledging noises. And not with the vampire tensely making his way beside her—forcing part of her attention to keep him in her periphery.
The sun is crawling past the apex in the sky, and Astarion seems to suffer no trouble from its rays beyond the same squinting expression Dirge carries even under their floppy hat.
Her attention must have lingered on him too long, for Astarion tips his chin down in order to look back at her through his lashes. The fine white of them doesn’t quite conceal the near-glow of the red in his eyes, despite the vampire’s best attempt at an nonchalant smile that carefully hides his predator’s teeth.
“Like what you see, dear? I’m rather afraid we got off on the wrong foot…” he starts in, voice rough with just an edge of rasp. The bile had done his throat no favors.
Shadowheart glances him up and down, taking in the worn soft-soled shoes meant for cobbled streets, the large hole in his fine clothing that culminates in a rusty stain all down his side where blood had dried, the sallow shade of his cheeks, and the bags under his eyes. She doesn’t snort at his flirtation, but it’s a near thing.
“I suspect I’d find just as much to appreciate in a day-old dishrag,” she says, and pointedly lays a hand on her mace when he moves closer.
Seeing him approach makes her recall all too well that vision filled by his ravening hunger, the kind of thirst that never faded into emptiness and acceptance the way deprivation should. Truly, vampirism was a curse, anathema even to Lady Shar’s dark embrace. At least her goddess offered something more than that unending cycle of hunger and revulsion-
Shadowheart is not prepared for the sudden lance of seething pain that chases up her arm like an unfurling whip. She wrenches her hand away from her mace with a hiss, curling it into a fist instinctively as if that would make her Lady’s reprimand any easier to bear.
The sound and movement draw the vampire’s gaze as surely as if she’d blown a war horn in his face.
“I’ll say, that purple glow didn’t look quite natural. Something your own dark master gave you, then?” he asks, one eyebrow hiking as Shadowheart’s head snaps toward him. She’s not sure what shows on her face, but it has the vampire eyeing her with a look of intent she truly does not care for. “Oh? Was that supposed to be a secret?”
Shadowheart purposefully doesn’t glance at the two walking in front of them, but it’s only not wanting to draw their attention that keeps her from cursing aloud.
In the messy tangle the worms had made of their heads, she’d been far too preoccupied with what she was receiving to pay mind to what the others gleaned from her —now she must pay the price for her lack of caution.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Shadowheart says stiffly, turning up her nose in an attempt to appear unaffected. The vampire tuts.
“Claim what you want, my dear-” he says, and seems about to continue needling her further when his head snaps away from her, looking further up the path past Gale and Dirge. Shadowheart follows his gaze, searches for whatever may have caught his attention. The noise starts out faint, but soon she can hear the crashing of undergrowth as something moves hurriedly through the sparse coastal trees.
With a thundering of hooves, a furry brown form comes lumbering through the brush, freezing when it sees the four of them just standing on the road. She manages to get a glance at long yellow tusks and a flat, wet nose before the boar snorts and tramples on. It continues to move perpendicular to their path, though Shadowheart braces herself in case it changes its mind and decides to wheel and charge.
Between one moment and the next, a large white-blue spike flies through the air and pierces the boar’s leg at the thigh, glittering crystalline in the sun. Instead of icing the whole beast over, it seems to only have affected the back leg as the boar lets out a pained squeal and flees, still mobile enough to limp into the undergrowth.
"Time to break for food, it looks like,” Dirge announces, shaking frost off their hands. “Astarion."
The vampire jerks, ripping his attention away from where the boar had disappeared—trailing a spattering of red along behind it—to stare at Dirge. She and Gale follow suit, and Shadowheart isn’t the only one with a dawning incredulous expression as Dirge’s meaning sinks in.
"I’m sure that I don't have to tell you boars can rip open your guts very easily, even wounded. Take care with the tusks, and let me know when you're done so I can come butcher the carcass," Dirge advises, still flexing their hands for a moment before dropping their pack in the shade of a nearby tree.
A sound of protest escapes Gale.
"I don't exactly relish the idea of pre-eaten food! Especially when it’s already been in the mouth of a vampire."
The drow turns back to them with a frown. Even with their tadpoles quiescent, Shadowheart can sense their perplexed pause before they speak.
"We need supplies. And I don't know about you but I'd like to be eating more than day-old fish and forage when we make camp. Unless you've secretly got some spices and a chicken in your magical pockets, we'll have to accept pork, even pre-drained."
"This argument is pointless," Shadowheart cuts in, motioning to where the vampire has already soundlessly disappeared into the bush. She’d nearly missed him leaving, sure she would not have noticed him dart into the trees if he were any less starved and she any less alert.
Shadowheart is more than tempted to suggest moving on without him, but she doubts Dirge would be in favor of it, seeing how determined they’ve been to gather allies. Gale could perhaps be persuaded, but she cannot count on him staying by her side nor being very reliable, considering the predicament in which they’d found him. "Either eat it tonight or don't, but it seems we'll be forced to take a break one way or another."
"I'm sure we'll be eating much worse by the end of this journey," Dirge adds, in an affected attempt at being helpful, but she can see the grimace on their lips as they lift their waterskin to their mouth. “And it’s not like you can become a vampire from eating pork that a spawn licked, so I’m not sure what you’re worried about.”
Gale’s face twists into a moue of disgust.
“You’re making it sound less appetizing by the moment.” He pauses. “I may, in fact, have a selection of spices in my pockets, but most of them are for spell components. Yesterday’s plan did not take into account that I might be subdued and implanted with an illithid tadpole, or any of the fraught happenings after.” He makes a gesture between Shadowheart and Dirge, then off into the distance.
The moment is punctuated by a far away squeal that cuts off abruptly.
They pause, and she wonders if their ears are also straining for any sound that might indicate a vampire is feeding. She detects nothing but the calls of birds picking up again and the breeze blowing susurrus through the trees. She looks for her unease mirrored in the others, but Gale only appears vaguely put out, and Dirge seems more interested in digging around in their pockets than preoccupied with the—now fed, possibly no longer weak—vampire in their midst.
Shadowheart tries to recall just how much a vampire needs to feed in order to maintain themself, but the attempt brings to the fore a hand searching blindly in the dark and grasping nothing but empty air. The sensation is too familiar the last few days, a product of memories shrouded for the protection of her mission. Anything deemed irrelevant to Shadowheart’s operation had been excised.
Between those hazy, dark gaps, Mother Superior’s knife-sharp smile floats to the forefront, and Shadowheart clenches her wounded hand again. She would see a healer to get this blasted parasite out, then make all due haste for Baldur’s Gate. Mother Superior would look on her again with that rare approval as Shadowheart hands over the artifact, and her memories would be returned.
Shaking her head to clear it, she swallows water from the skin Dirge had given her earlier, fighting herself not to gulp it all down. Shadowheart must keep herself from being too distracted; she cannot afford to let her guard down around these people, not if they already suspect her of worshiping Lady Shar. Dirge seems to know more than they are telling, if their visions are anything to indicate a deeper knowledge… and Astarion had already indicated he knew something , if not exactly what.
A quiet descends.
Casting for a line, her eyes fall on the trail of blood the boar had left behind.
"I didn't think you knew any spells other than fire bolt, Dirge," Shadowheart casually remarks, unwrapping and popping the last of the berries Dirge had given her hours earlier into her mouth.
"In the most technical sense, fire bolt is a cantrip," Gale butts in. Shadowheart purses her lips, wanting to claim such was obvious, but there’s that sensation again, emptiness where knowledge should be in her grasp.
"I… didn't know I knew anything else either. But cooking the boar alive would remove the blood, so…" Dirge shrugs, oblivious to her turmoil. “Ice seemed the safest bet to slow it down.”
"You mean to say you're just pulling spells out of pure Weave? That explains the lack of spread from the ice knife." Gale muses, tapping his chin. Even though he appears to be wearing nothing but the purple robes, he reaches into his—magical, she realizes when his hand sinks up to the elbow—pocket and pulls out a hand-sized pie that looks to be crumbling around the edges. Perhaps something he’d bought in Waterdeep and happened to have along when he was abducted. "Why didn't you know? Out of practice and forgot the words?" He turns a gimlet eye on Dirge, the pie still held in one hand.
There's a pause, Dirge’s gaze flickering between them, then off in the direction where the vampire had disappeared, clearly calculating what they want to say.
“I… did. I’ve forgotten a lot, I think.” Their chin drops as Dirge examines the bloody heel of their boot with a neutral expression that has to be an affectation. “I thought at first it could be a side-effect of the parasites, but I still remember some things?”
“Memory loss—one of the symptoms of ceremorphosis… How extensive are the holes in your recollection? How is your stomach? Are you feeling any fever, chills?” Gale takes the words right out of her mouth, and Shadowheart realizes how stiff she’s gone when her hand throbs where it’s wrapped around her mace’s handle again.
Dirge blinks several times before glancing back up at their wide-eyed gazes, quickly shaking their head.
“No, none of that. I have a headache, but that’s been there since I woke on the ship, and I got hit pretty hard at the helm, too. I don’t think I’m transforming, really-!”
“There can be plenty of causes for memory loss,” Shadowheart interjects, pulse picking up despite her best effort to remain calm. “Parasites, magic, and head injuries are all apparently in the cards.” She steps closer to Dirge, and those ruby eyes flick from Gale’s to hers. “You should have told me you were hurt that severely. I do still have some minor spells that might help. Getting dizzy at the wrong time could have bad consequences for all of us.”
Shadowheart doesn’t mean to sound so much like the Temple healer, especially not to this drow giving off such contradictory cues. For all their forthright kindness, she can still feel the grout of phantom coagulating blood under her nails from that first vision on the nautiloid.
Dirge’s face falls at her words.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m just not used to magic being an option for concussions, I didn’t think about it.” They raise one hand to pinch their brow, shifting wearily where they stand. “The headache doesn’t help.”
With a sigh that Shadowheart feels is the deserved amount of exasperated, she walks over to set a hand on their arm, the words for a healing spell falling off her tongue with a surge of her Lady’s will.
The magic sinks, and sinks. The spell ends, and Shadowheart can tell that whatever it had been healing internally, the work isn’t finished. She just barely bites back a curse in Lady Shar’s name.
"Why didn't you say anything about a concussion? I, at least, would have thought to heal you earlier," Shadowheart finds herself scolding again, harsher this time, still unsettled that she’d fought with such a liability at her back. Honestly, who doesn’t think of asking a cleric to treat their concussion? Combined with the way they seem so set on allowing a vampire who’s already attacked someone into their party, she has to wonder at Dirge’s intelligence after such a blow. She moves to lay her hand against the back of their head, where the magic had felt most centered, but they flinch hard when her hand gets near their face.
She pulls away in a show of backing off, and Dirge eyes them for a moment before gently touching their own temple, tracing over where gray skin is still mottled with bruising. All healing had been directed to the worst of the injury somewhere internal.
"I am used to enduring pain," Dirge murmurs in response to her words. They shake their head again and step pointedly away, though not without a solemn nod in her direction. “Thanks. Think I better go check on Astarion. I need to borrow a knife from him, anyway.”
With that pronouncement, the drow flees, steady on their feet as they slip quietly into the brush. Shadowheart sighs, eyes the pack and lute they’d left behind, and with the reassurance Dirge isn’t about to disappear she goes to sit at the base of the tree where she and Gale can eye each other in the shade.
She should enjoy the quiet while it lasts, she supposes.
Every inch of Astarion hurts in a manner both terribly familiar and yet foreign. His side is no longer a gaping wound, but still a deadening ache under his ribs and through his back. Only long experience with extensive injury had allowed him to move with it, and the healing potion he’d been so suspiciously gifted had done exactly as promised and focused on the worst of his injuries.
That same potion had healed Astarion’s fingers but not replaced the nails he’d lost to desperately clawing at the inside of that damned pod. He flexes his hands as he at last pulls away from the drained corpse of the boar, taking in the ruin of his once-maintained nail beds.
So much of him is covered all over in blood, now. Not an uncommon occurrence inside Cazador’s palace, but out here, in the dappled light as it shifts between the trees, it feels like a dream such as he must not have had since he was a small child, not yet able to Trance.
Everything about this is so strange, so wrong and yet… here he is, walking in the damned, blessed light.
Astarion had first woken on the nautiloid in a dimly lit, confined space, and even the noise of the gith attacking the ship had not been enough to wrench him free of the vice that immediately trapped his lungs. There’d been a visceral certainty within him that he was back in the tomb, trapped for another unending stretch of time despite his last clear memory being that of a fanged worm burrowing past his eye.
That panic—along with the bone-deep knowledge that Cazador ever-lingers over his shoulder—still has yet to abate, even under the full rays of the sun. Astarion blames that hysteria, and the fact that until this moment he’s been near the edge of bleeding to death and then starvation, for the full impact of the tadpole visions to dawn on him.
First, he’d woken having miraculously survived the crash. He’d risen to consciousness to the crack and groan of the fleshy structure giving way, barely had the wherewithal to fling himself out from under the bulk of it, but hadn’t been lucky enough to escape uninjured—shrapnel coming free from his side as he crawled right into the sun.
He had scrambled out on his hands and knees, realizing only that daylight bathed him and that he was not burning, but bleeding out without some source of healing at hand. Astarion also blames that lingering panic from the pod for not doing something sensible, like tearing his clothing into strips to staunch the bleeding. But any reason he’d had—what was not dulled by the loss of what little blood still lingered in his body—was sure that he must simply find the nearest warm animal to drain and all would be well.
Unfortunately, his luck was not nearly so good.
The sun stabbed at his eyes like their own personal scorching ray, rendering his already labored movements into a clumsiness that scared away any wildlife that may have lingered despite the crash. He’d made his stumbling way through the sand, up the shore in his search for something, anything to make this day in the sun last beyond the next hour.
A wizard trapped by circ*mstance with only a single helpless limb flailing in temptation had been one step beyond what Astarion could bear.
First, thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures.
Cazador’s words had been writ upon his mind as surely as his poetry was written on Astarion’s skin, two centuries of unending sh*t-shoveling enforcing the commandment as he took countless people to bed and did not so much as sup on a single drop.
But the last time Astarion had been this blood-starved had been his year in the tomb. The sensation of his limbs slowly losing their ability to move by his command, his vision going dark around the edges despite the bright sun, and the pain of nails ripped out at the roots were all too familiar companions. It pushed him into unthinking, animal desperation as he fell on the human like the starving dog Godey was so fond of comparing him to when he locked Astarion in the kennels.
Uncontrolled, ravaging bliss had taken him for that moment before the flavor of the blood actually registered.
Disgusting, even more than the tainted, rotten rats his master had thrown him—no, not his master, f*cking Cazador. How freeing, to even be able to think of him otherwise. But the wizard’s blood had been foul, such that even though he desperately needed nourishment he could not keep the vile substance down. He’d followed this by snapping and all but snarling at the two newest additions upon their approach, a display that should have done very little to endear the half-elf and a drow of all people to him.
Nothing could have prepared him for the possibility of the visions and what they would bring to light. That cleric, for one—who carries the symbols of what she is so openly that he’s sure he would have been able to pin her affiliations without further assistance, given time. The wizard’s affliction with that cursed magic in his chest was sure to have come up sooner or later—Gale Dekarios seems one very attached to his material comforts, if the fine make of his purple robes were any indication before Astarion tore into them like a rabid animal.
As for Dirge, well, the drow seemed to have much mystery to offer between bouts of suspicious altruism with the potion and the boar, and the visions of painful deaths he’d seen played out behind his eyes.
Astarion had recognized his own garments well enough. How could he not, when he labored for collective years in the near pitch dark of the barracks he shared with his siblings, keeping them patched and looking pristine? Still, just the flash he’d seen was not enough to drink in the face that twisted in terror even as he was shoved over a ledge into endless black. He’d only caught the widening of red eyes, high cheekbones, a fanged mouth open in a scream, before the sight was gone.
The first glimpse he’d gotten of his own face in two centuries, and it had been in a prophecy of his death. Death of the undead. How… quaint, almost reaching for ironic, if not for the subject matter.
The boar's now-cool body is enough to melt the ice dagger somewhat. Mouth still full of earthy blood, Astarion blinks sluggishly as his senses begin to come back one-by-one, blood returning to his brain and his creaking limbs ever-so-slowly. He eyes it sparkling in the dappled light and stiffens at the memory of the sharp, silent gesture the drow—Dirge—had made as they sent the ice dagger sailing.
How easily that could have been his own throat. Astarion, weakened as he was, may not have been able to dodge it.
As if his thoughts had called them to him, he hears the shuffling of undergrowth as it shifts. Considering it’s accompanied neither by the clank of armor or a wizard’s babble, he has to gather that the drow has deigned to join him. Astarion quickly takes stock of himself, still covered in flaking blood and not miraculously made presentable in the last several minutes he’s been kneeling on the sandy earth.
He fights down a grimace as black boots enter the edge of his vision, just barely refraining from running a hand through his hair when Astarion realizes it, too, is freshly stained. Blood and bits of fur where he clawed into the boar’s pelt and dug when taking it down still cling to his remaining nails.
“Looks like you didn’t have any trouble getting your drink,” Dirge says, peering down at the bulk of the carcass before turning that red gaze on him. Astarion can find it in himself to be grateful that the drow’s eyes, as close as they are to a vampire’s, are a few shades off and do not glow as they appraise him, taking in his ruined clothes and bloodied hands.
Astarion fights down the impulse to pick up sand and throw it in their eyes when a wrinkle appears on their brow and their mouth turns. The last thing he wants is their pity.
The gray hand Dirge offers to help him off the ground even in Astarion’s gives credence to the theory that the drow is well-versed in blood and viscera, themself. No surprise, for a denizen of the Underdark. Astarion hesitates, but takes it a moment later with a pasted-on smile that almost drops when he registers the pull of drying blood on his face. He just barely keeps the expression affixed as the drow hauls him to his feet with a delicate grip that releases him immediately as soon as he stands.
He may not want their pity, but it is useful. The other two are already looking to Dirge for direction, and if they are all to be stuck together by circ*mstance for any length of time, Astarion will need their protection. He wonders if he should say something about being grateful, make a real show of it, but before he can muster up something suitable, Dirge interrupts his thought process.
“Can I borrow a knife?”
The smile he’d put so much effort into drops.
“Can you- whatever for?” Astarion feels his brain still only working at half-capacity, but knows better than to shield the knives strapped to his sides under his shirt. He’d long trained himself to never give away any advantage, but the instinct is still there.
Dirge gestures with their chin at the cooling body beside him. “A fish knife alone won’t help me with that, and that’s all I have.”
“I’m not sure my knives are suited for such, either…” he starts slowly, not wanting to get on the drow’s bad side so soon, but also not wanting to dull his blade.
“But better suited than mine. And now you’ve eaten, the rest of us need food, too.” The words are very reasonable, the tone far, far too warm for a drow trying to relieve Astarion of a weapon. “I’ll sharpen it for you when I’m done.”
“I sharpen my own weapons, thank you,” Astarion snaps. The one and only time he’d ever allowed a sibling access to a blade of his for maintenance it had been promptly used against him. He crosses his arms, staring down the drow. Dirge only blinks at him placidly for a long moment, their white hair ruffling a little in the breeze.
His slow mind starts working a little quicker as the boar’s blood permeates through his ill-used body, weighing the advantage of another gesture that will soften this drow to him versus the possibility this is a ruse to murder him alone, away from the others.
But no one there would have protested if Astarion had been cut down back there by the cliff until the visions had taken hold. The wizard had been prepared to do so himself.
“Fine!” he snips out, making a gesture with one hand to draw Dirge’s eye while the other slips one dagger free. “Give it back when you’re finished, and it better not be ruined.” He proffers the handle.
“Noted, I’ll be careful,” Dirge confirms, taking it from him with a delicate grip. Then they hum, looking back down at the boar. With their free hand, they take off their dark arm brace, then switch the knife the other other hand to hold while taking off their second. Once both are removed and they’ve rolled up their sleeves, Dirge turns to kneel on the sandy ground.
They don’t seem to show visible discomfort at turning their back to him, and Astarion eyes them, wondering what magical tricks they might have at their disposal that makes them so certain in putting their back to a vampire.
Still, they start with the fish knife.
“Why are you still using that when you just wrested my perfectly good blade away?” he snaps before he can hold the words back.
“The first cut dulls the sh*t out of it, and that’s no way to work on the rest of the carcass,” Dirge says in response, not turning back to him. The cut to the pelt is made with only momentary hesitation before Dirge readjusts the knife in their grip and cuts more confidently this time, splitting open skin and fur to reveal nearly dry meat underneath. “Nice, that’s handy,” they mutter, and continue to work.
Astarion will admit, with his suddenly full belly and the way his joints ache less moment by moment, that he falls into a bit of a haze, watching the crouching drow finally use the knife they’d borrowed split open the boar’s belly and stick their arm in up to the elbow to drag guts forward and out before discarding the offal to the side.
Dirge starts to hum, an unrecognizable tune low in their throat, and from there they cut away the pelt with patience, laying it fur-side down on the ground and finally take to carving meat from the bones. It all goes on to the inner side of the pelt in a pile. Astarion blinks, coming to full awareness with his eyes pinned on the nape of Dirge’s neck showing between the white hair and stitched collar, just the right angle that it would be so easy for him to sneak up and just bite, should he so choose.
“Should be enough to last us for a bit. Shame to leave the rest of it, but there are enough scavengers around here I don’t think it’ll have time to rot,” the drow says, before looking up at him. Astarion quickly wipes his expression of any hunger, but it must not be fast enough to fool even this naive drow, for Dirge frowns.
“Did you get enough to drink?”
“I am more than full, no need to worry about me,” Astarion quickly speaks, not about to court disaster by admitting he wants nothing more than to sink his fangs into something standing on two legs again. “If need be, I can always hunt for myself.”
Dirge shrugs, easy and still unconcerned with the possibility of a hungry vampire at their throat, perhaps not even registering the threat. Instead, they wipe his dagger on the boar pelt, then give it a final pass against their black trousers. Astarion eyes the fine, dark fabric with its tight red stitching around the hems and wonders how deep the drow’s pockets might go, that they show such unconcern for their richly made clothing.
“Thank you for lending me your blade,” Dirge murmurs, reeking sincerity. He blinks as one gray hand tucks under their elbow as they present the dagger to him hilt-first on the other with an open palm. The move is practiced, smooth enough that Astarion eyes the drow for a moment, wondering how often they have to make a show of harmlessness while handling a weapon.
A demonstration of harmlessness and manners to the grubby, ill-tempered vampire spawn. How he hates the picture they must make.
“Don’t thank me,” Astarion says, snatching the dagger with only just enough care not to cut them. He eyes the nicks in the blade with a growing sneer. “Look at this damage! See if I let you borrow my dagger ever again.” The last is thrown over his shoulder, Astarion moving away into the trees before Dirge can say something else that sets his skin crawling with discomfort.
Without another word he flounces off, back to where the other two are waiting. Perhaps he can ingratiate himself somewhat with Dekarios, now that the wizard seems less likely to fry him with lightning for daring to be hungry in his vicinity.
Back in the clearing, Dirge looks down at the result of their efforts and sighs.
“Not like he was going to help me carry this back, anyway.”
