Like Starlight and Wine (A Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion x Tav Fanfic)

22. A Bond Shared Through Blood

My sleep is plagued by visions from the Dark Urge that night, just the same as every night.

Images of dozens of gutted corpses haunt the backs of my eyelids, their skins flayed brutally from their bodies. Their glistening, scarlet innards meet my eyes with such vivid color. Their perfume is even richer. It is the stench of death... of rot - the metallic scent of blood thick in the air around me.

That smell of blood -- it is the strongest of all, penetrating through my nightmares, pulling my senses up from the depths of sleep. My head feels thick as my lids open languidly, the disturbing images and sensations disappearing from my mind like smoke - all but one; one sense still remains... the smell of blood.

It takes me a moment to realize I'm not dreaming it. I really do smell blood!

Suddenly, I'm wide awake, shooting up out of my bedroll in a flash to investigate. My heart is pounding in my ears, adrenaline coursing through my veins. Something is wrong, but at first, nothing seems amiss.

My legs feel numb, but I will them to move, following the scent of blood. I see a trail of it, splattered droplets of crimson red clotting in the dirt, running in a straight line from the the edge of the forest all the way to Astarion's tent.

My heart stops, my stomach dropping through the ground like a millstone. Something must have happened to him... something terrible.

I rush toward his tent in a blur, but I don't know what I will be met with inside. His mutilated body? Like the corpses from my dreams; flesh torn, skin flayed open, innards and sinew strewn about in a gory display? Thanks to the images I receive regularly from my dreams, my imagination runs wild.

When I reach the tent, I try to prepare myself for anything, but at the same time I don't know if I'm ready at all. I fling the curtain over the entrance wide open, not even bothering to ask permission for entry. What I finally see inside causes my racing mind to come to a halt. There is Astarion, all in one piece, sitting on the edge of a lounger. He has his shirt lifted up just above the naval, applying some kind of crude bandage around his midsection. He's not a corpse, at least... but there is quite a lot of blood soaking through the wrappings, dripping down into the dirt below.

He's wounded.

Astarion looks up in surprise as I make my dramatic entrance, chest heaving, eyes wide, hair flying in all directions. His eyes fill with concern for a moment, but the rest of him does not react.

"Well hello, my dear. If you were so desperate to come to my bed tonight, you could have just asked."

In my frenzy, his flirtatious joke rubs me the wrong way.

"I was worried about you, idiot," I say harshly. "I saw all the blood... I thought- I thought you were-" I can't bring myself to finish the sentence.

"Oh, this?" He looks down at the blood-soaked bandage wrapped poorly around his waist. "Well, don't get your pretty little head in twist. It was just an owlbear."

"A what?!" I exclaim in disbelief. "What were you doing with an owlbear?! Those creatures are dangerous."

"If you must know, I was curious how it tasted. When those cultists we met on the road today told us they ran into an owlbear, it made me wonder... how much blood could I get from such a large creature? I couldn't stop thinking about it. So, I waited until nightfall to track it down."

"That's what you got out of our meeting today? And afterward you decided to take on the beast alone? You really are an idiot," I chastise him.

I am fed up. He goes and gets himself hurt yet again, and doesn't even bother asking for help. Instead, he tries to bandage the wound himself, and does a terrible job of it at that. Without invitation, I barge the rest of the way into his tent, walking straight up to him. "You can't even wrap a bandage correctly," I point out. "I'm not a professional healer and I still know this is terrible form."