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

1. A Nautiloid in Hell PT.1

The first thing I remember is panic rising in the back of my throat like burning bile as I lay immobile inside the flesh pod that holds me imprisoned. I can't move, can't speak. A powerful force of magic is holding me down, squeezing against me from all directions until I am completely paralyzed. I don't know where I am. I don't know how I got here. I don't know anything except that if I don't escape soon, I am going to meet my end.

I don't know how long I've been laying here... perhaps it has been minutes... maybe even hours... before IT finally makes its appearance. I almost sense its presence, like a foreboding phantom, before it even enters the room. Inside this strange, round chamber with walls that looks like flesh and viscera, like the innards of some gigantic beast, the feeling of isolation fleas as soon as it appears: The illithid. The Mind Flayer. The tall creature enters the chamber, levitating toward each of the other pods lining the circular room, before finally coming to a stop at mine.

I'd never seen a Mind Flayer up close before. At least... I don't think that I have. And looking upon it now, I wish for all the world that it would have stayed that way. The creature's large, thin frame towers above me, long tentacles protruding from its face where a mouth should have been. Small, beady, eyes regard me with surgical coldness, while the exposed parts of its brain tissue throb and palpitate unsettlingly.

It extends its long arm toward me, holding what looks like some kind of little grub pinched between its long, talon-like nails. Closer and closer, the Mind Flayer comes, placing the little grub-like creature on my cheek. It is wet, slimy, and shockingly cold. I would recoil in surprise and repulsion if I wasn't still paralyzed to the spot.

As the large illithid above me watches, I can feel the little grub-thing squirming its way along my face, leaving a sticky trail across my skin as it inches its way closer to my eye. I fight, and struggle against my paralysis but to no avail. I can't even shut my lids against the small creature as it opens its mouth, bearing rows and rows of tiny needle like teeth just above my eye. And for a moment, I am certain it is about to tear into my eye with those teeth, reducing it to minced jelly. But instead it anchors itself onto me with several long appendages that I hadn't noticed, and with a singular motion, it thrusts forward, burrowing itself into my eye socket, squeezing behind my eyeball. I grunt, unable to scream through the pain that rips through my head as the creature wriggles deeper and deeper, far beyond my eye, and into my brain. The center of my skull feels full to the bursting point. The sensory overload, and the new sensations of sharing the inside of my head with another creature, are all too much to bear.

My vision beings to grow dark as consciousness wanes. I fight against the edge of oblivion, but I am too weak. The last thing I see are the eyes of the Mind Flayer staring into mine. And then nothing....

***

A sudden, shuddering jolt startles me back to consciousness. I don't know how long I had been out, but when I finally come to, the scene before me is totally different than the one from before. I am still in the Mind Flayer pod, still in that strange, room. But I am no longer paralyzed. And the pod is now laying on its back, the front door knocked ajar. I can smell the stench of burning flesh, and smoke filling the air around me. Robotically, I shove the door open, and jump out of the pod, landing in the middle of a burning nightmare. All around me, the flesh room is on fire, like some kind of hell-scape. Like some kind of scene straight out of the apocalypse.

Just what in the nine hells is going on?

My attention is suddenly drawn to a pounding sensation inside my skull. Not just from the new Mind Flayer parasite that now resides within, but something else entirely. Something... arguably worse. The blood in my head thrums and pounds. That pounding blood obscures who I am. An overwhelming loss of memory. How I ended up amidst these hellish flames is just as hidden. I have nothing in my skull, besides the parasite, my name, and a headache. But I do know one thing for certain. I am in danger.