On the Death of Stars

Act I, chapter 6: The Devil is in the Details

You hand him over the promised canteen of blood. He envelops your offering hands in his own, and shapes his voice into a soft breeze, almost secret:

"-Darling, I must admit that I am growing to appreciate the whole package of you.

-That is... the kindest thing you've said to me thus far. What do you have in mind?" you ask, genuinely surprised at this meticulous dance of his, unsure of it being anything more than half-true.

"-Well, I was thinking we could take an evening to ourselves, someplace far and isolated from the camp. Away from the others.

-Were you?" you wonder, an eyebrow raised in surprise. "You sound and act like this is something you want, but you do not smell like it." He leans into your ear, nibbling on your lobe as he purrs:

"And yet, your scent tells me everything I need to know about what you desire."

You blush more at the closeness of your bodies than the exactness of his remark. He is right: you have been fantasizing alone at night in your bedroll, about how his expert touch would feel, how practiced his tongue could be. But that is not the point. Your wet dreams are only that: fantasies. Making them into a reality would necessitate consensual yearning for each other.

"-I won't try and lie about it, but my desires are nothing but that: desires. They are natural. I refuse to act on them if it is not out of a common understanding.

-What makes you think you are not understood?" Astarion asks, giving a cold lick to your neck.

You steel your nerves and gently extract yourself from his grasp, pushing the container into his arms. He questions, genuinely surprised, almost pleading:

"Why would you even refuse such an offer? I owe you."

Shock and disapointment quickly disappear under bile and frustration:

"Am I not beautiful enough to your taste? Or maybe you think too highly of yourself to indulge in my gift? Rejecting me makes you feel powerful, doesn't it?" he hisses, clenching his teeth.

You learned just yesterday that he is only a little older than you, and yet, it feels like he is so much younger. Under his mask, he sincerely is just shy and frightened, like a man freshly entering adulthood. It finally clicks: he is a spawn, not a fully fledged vampire. Of course. He's been ripped away from his life near the end of his thirties and violently folded into the form of a perfect slave to the capricious whims of an extremely cruel and unforgiving madman. So young for an elf... He never even had a chance to mature fully.

You fight the Wild Magic surge growing inside of your heart as the wrath you feel in your guts at these realizations only gets harder to suppress. The tadpole isn't helping with its piercing squeals of pleasure, feeding off of your power. Astarion doesn't truly understand the sudden shift in your mood, but it scares him all the same. He staggers a few steps backwards. You want to reassure him, to tell him it is not about his charms, his appearance nor his feigned eagerness, but you cannot. Your innards are boiling and you do not want to risk your companions falling victim to the potentially dangerous effects of the surge. Your wolf companion comes to your aid, tugging at your boots with her fangs so you can regain a morsel of control over yourself to blindly follow her as she guides you to the nearby woods. As you walk away, you hear Gale and Shadowheart yelling at the spawn who is just as stumped as them over what just took place.

Wild Howl shows you the way to a nearby lake pooling at the feet of a small waterfall. You gratefully give her a quick scratch under the chin before diving into the water fully dressed. She lies down on a bed of mulch, keeping watch over you while you meditate.