Aysla wakes up on a beach. Immediately, she panics at the realization that she has no idea where she is, and therefore no idea where the next drink will come from.
Her head is pounding, but a glance at her hands tells her their trembling is still light enough that she should be able to make it another couple of hours before the situation becomes dire.
She sees the dark-haired woman from the ship, knocked out beside her, face-first in the sand. She hesitates for a moment on whether she should help her up, or if she would be better off going it alone. Would she assent to their first priority being Aysla's imperative to find something to imbibe?
She scans the beach, noticing some wreckage a few yards away.
First things first. Please, gods, let there be booze in there.
With her first lucky break since she can't remember, she finds a backpack with three cheap bottles of wine inside.
It's nowhere near as strong as her drink of choice. Her tolerance demands the closest thing to lighter fluid that's readily available for consumption in Baldur's Gate, so she more often opts for the potent and affordable Brass City Scrangle, an amber liquid better suited to wound-cleaning than being drunk straight - but she's making due. This will go down like water.
She polishes off the first bottle in several long pulls. She takes a few measured breaths. Glancing again at her hand, it still tremors.
She sighs, annoyed at the symptom that can blame no one for but herself, having kept her addiction far too well fed, for far too long. Even after the first bottle of wine settles, slushing in her stomach, her nerves demand more. She uncorks the second bottle, takes another deep breath, and drinks.
She stares at a spot of sand on the ground, giving herself several moments to adjust to the fullness of her stomach. Still nauseous and nerve-wracked, the tremor diminishes, but the wine simply isn't strong enough. She will need something more substantial, and soon. She tucks the third away to use as an emergency break-in-case-of-seizure backup if she fails to find anything else.
Turning back to the woman, she toys with the idea of leaving her there. Practically, though, she could be helpful in helping Aysla rid herself of the tadpole lodged behind her eye, and if Aysla survives the withdrawals, she supposes that might be something worth looking into.
She approaches the limp girl. Her long black braid and gunmetal-gray chainmail are sprinkled with sand. Aysla reaches a hand to her shoulder, giving it a firm jolt.
"Wake up, princess," she murmurs.
After a moment, the girl startles awake with a small gasp.
"You're alive - I'm alive," she wonders. Gathering her surroundings, she announces, "We'll need to find supplies, shelter, and a healer."
Yes, 'supplies'. Supplies first, I think.
"So we do! Buddy system?" Aysla suggests.
"Indeed - we'll need each other if we're to get rid of those little monsters in our heads. My name is Shadowheart," she states.
"Spooky - did you pick that out yourself?" she teases. "I'm Aysla. Though I like the sound of Darklung, if we're going for a theme."
Shadowheart scowls at her, without a shred of amusement. Tough crowd.
"Let's get moving then, Aysla," she retorts.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A shock of silvery white curls is the first thing they see peeking up above some tall grass, just up the path. The pair begin to approach a handsome elven man dressed in fine dark clothes.
"You, there!" he calls out. "I saw you on the ship. I've got one of those brain things cornered, just over there. You can kill it, can't you? Just like you killed the others?"
Aysla fakes a gasp. "A gentleman in distress? Worry not. We'll save you."
She steals a glance at Shadowheart, who still wears a look of light annoyance, despite the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
She walks past the elven stranger, failing to identify a "brain thing" anywhere.
She steps a bit further towards the grass, and before she has another chance to say something smart he knocks her legs from under her. They tumble to the ground, joggling Aysla's already addled cranium so hard she thinks she may be sent into a seizure prematurely, and when they land, he's holding a knife to her throat.
"Shh, not a sound," he says. To Shadowheart, he says, "And you - keep your distance. No need for this to get messy."
Through the pounding in her temples and white noise of her panic, she hears the muffled sound of Shadowheart protesting.
He turns back to her. "Now, I saw you on the ship, didn't I? Nod."
She looks at him with her face screwed up like she might mouth off and tell him to just do it before she jerks her head once in confirmation.
"Good. And now, you're going to tell me exactly what you and those tentacled freaks did to me," he demands.
"I didn't do a godsda-," she's cut off with a groan, and they both wince at the uncomfortable sensation of their minds probing each other, their tadpoles' greeting.
"What was that?! What's going on?" he asks.
"If I knew, I'd tell you!" she says, her voice dripping with venom. "Let me go?"
He starts to slowly release her, and she yanks away from him with abruptness.
"I apologize," he says with little sincerity. "I suppose you're not one of them, then."
"Astute," she replies, dusting the sand and grit off her garments and readjusting the rapier she stole off the mind flayer's ship at her hip.
"And to think I was ready to decorate the ground with your innards," he says as if brushing off an innocuous faux pas. "I'm out of wine and flowers, so I hope an introduction will suffice."
Hold the flowers, she thinks.
"My name is Astarion. I was in Baldur's Gate when those beasts snatched me." He does a frilly half-bow.
A smile threatens to break her through her chilled stare. "Aysla, also of Baldur's Gate, also beast-snatched."
"Ah. We must move in different circles," he replies.
"I don't get out much."
It's an understatement - she had been holed up in her house for the last several months, only leaving for short, periodic trips to restock her poison. There had been a few times that she had purchased bulk orders, thinking that ought to have been enough alcohol to drink herself to death in a tenday or two. Despite her best efforts, however, she kept waking up. She was on such an outing, intending to replenish her supply for what should have been the final time, when she all of a sudden found herself here - her slow, ineffective suicide attempt foiled.
"That's a shame. You seem like a useful person to know." His eye has a devious twinkle.
"Depends on the use," she counters coyly, unable and unwilling to resist being an irredeemable flirt in addition to a degenerate alcoholic, even on death's door.
He seems to approve, rewarding her with a laugh. She'll be an easy mark, he thinks.
He did just hold a knife to her throat, but she recalls spreading her legs for men who had done far worse by her. Perhaps another time, if she somehow survives the night, avoiding death by withdrawals or illithid transformation.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The tadpoled trio stumble upon an unusual sigil swirling with purplish magic, with a hand reaching out sans body. A voice calls from the portal.
"A hand? Anyone?"
She gives a cursory glance between herself and her two new acquaintances, not wanting to be the one to have to touch the mystery hand. When they make no move, her impatience gets the best of her, and she stretches her fingers around the wrist, and yanks.
A man in violet wizard's robes stumbles out, looking grateful. "I'm Gale, of Waterdeep. Apologies for the dramatic entrance!"
As Aysla internally wishes for the sweet relief of death, their gang of not-yet-but-almost-squids continues to snowball.
Lae'zel, the grumpy gith woman whom Aysla remembers from the ship, is found shouting orders from a cage hanging from a tree. Aysla shoots her down, only to be inundated with demands to find a creche, to which she can do nothing but she close her aching eyes and assents, already trembling too weakly to find the energy to ask what a creche is. Thereafter, they stumble into a man who goes by Blade of Frontiers, somehow still attending to his business as usual despite similarly sporting a tadpole, before they invite him to tag along, too.
The rest of the day passes in a cold sweat for Aysla, nothing but a blur of meeting and greeting in a grove full of druids and tieflings. She thinks she might have agreed to something tedious, because Astarion rolls his eyes and some of the tiefling-folk beam at her, but she's hanging on by a thread. Her head feels like a swollen thumb and the sun is so blindingly bright that she thinks her ears may start to bleed.
Where, gods? she thinks. Where can I find a drink?
She prays that no one notices how her skin smells like the noxous fumes of a distillery under her perfume, and she holds her hands clasped behind her to disguise their trembling, but it only grows worse by the minute.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Exploring, the newly formed party finds themself in a dank underground crypt, where they swiftly dispatch a group of undead scribes.
Aysla barely notices how they crumble under her blade. She is dragging, quite badly, and her head pounds.
She dances with the blade in the literal sense, as she did not train for fighting, despite having a propensity for violence that would have likely found a healthier outlet if she did. Her high-elven mother had insisted on the more suitable hobby of performative dance, rending Aysla's ability to fight graceful and quick but overly flourish-y, due to her lack of ability to whip a sword without the fanciful punctuation she was taught to with ribbons and play-sabres.
She appears dexterous as she twirls, but her heart rate tells her she is in the eleventh hour, due to collapse soon. Her skin burns, feeling hot and cold and twitchy all at once.
With a swift slash to the nearest skeletal enemy, she ducks behind a pillar. Unlatching her satchel, hands shaking awfully, she uncorks her final, emergency bottle of weak wine, and gulps it down, as carefully as she can in her panic, to avoid spilling one drop.
Gods, how she wishes she were home. Endless bottles. A drunkard's paradise.
She doesn't even notice that Astarion is staring at her. He blinks once, then turns away without a word, moving through the shadows to dagger the last scribe in his vicinity.
All of their enemies slaughtered, the group rifles through the crypt, and discover the final addition to their troupe for the day - a talking mummy? Some kind of skeletal priest. They dub him Withers.
"What is the worth of a single mortal's life?" he asks, crepey skin around his eyes puckering in Aysla's direction.
Sweating beads of pure ethanol, the hellish flashes of delirium tremens eat her brain so disoriented that the words fly out unfiltered and desperate. "A drink. I would trade this single mortal life for a drink."
Withers is unreadable. He might look disappointed, or he might just always look that way. But onward they go, to finally find camp.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"No offense, but you look like shit," Astarion comments, saddling up next to her.
She means to shrug, but her shoulders just jolt unsettlingly.
"I also feel like shit." Her teeth chatter.
"We need to be ready to end her. She is turning," Lae'zel asserts.
"Thank you for your concern, however, I am not turning into a squid," Aysla replies, her voice as wobbly as her steps.
There's always shitty wine around when you don't need it. Who do I have to blow for a drop of quite literally anything? Rum, brandy, toilet-brewed moonshine, hand cleaner -
At that moment, her eyes fall upon a miracle just up the path. She squints at scattering of half-busted up crates.
Please, gods, celestial beings, devils, fucking anyone, please, don't be a mirage -
Making a beeline, she holds her violently shaking hands up by her head for the group to see as they trail behind her.
"Not transforming. Going through withdrawals," she says.
Ripping open the first crate like a feral animal, her heart sinks to find nothing but old clothes. In the second there are only potatoes. She says another silent prayer, then nearly faints dead away when she opens the third.
Lady Luck, I could fuck you silly.
Sitting there like jewels sit twelve full bottles of Brass City Scrangle, nestled in their case. She stares upon the familiar label with unabashed affection, briefly wondering how many of these bottles she has emptied in her lifetime. A sickly amount, to be sure. Enough to kill someone. Yet here they are, saving her life.
She opens a bottle and tears off the cork with her teeth. Feeling her companions' eyes on her but failing to care, she downs its contents entirely.
"Well. That was something," Gale comments, his eyes a bit wide.
"Right, well," she says, smiling as she wipes her lip with her hand, "The cat's out of the bag. So a little embarrassing, my daily ration is about ten of these per day," she says, gesturing to her Scrangle.
"It's a misunderstanding about alcoholism, but you can't actually just stop drinking cold turkey, unfortunately. Well - I suppose you can under the highly possible threat of death and the guarantee of two to three days of horror. You can avoid the worst of it by tapering. With this stroke of luck, I shall be weaned off in no time - no seizures, vomiting, or general misery necessary, gods willing," she waves off lightheartedly.
There is still alarm on her new companions' faces, however.
Astarion alone barks out a laugh. "Perhaps you're more fun than I gave you credit for!"
She raises the bottle in cheers. He's handsome when he laughs. She hazards a wink in his direction.
Warmth spreads from where the liquor sits in her stomach. Her hands finally feel steady. She feels strong - almost happy, even.
"Tchk, a drunk among us. She will be a liability," Lae'zel scolds.
"I won't slow anyone down, scouts honor," she says, rolling her eyes.
"Well, she looks stronger than she has all day. I noticed she was trembling earlier," Shadowheart adds. "If she can deal with it without causing issue, then I see no reason why we can't travel together."
"Right," Wyll agrees. "While I have to wonder, friend, what caused you to drink in such volume in the first place - looking at you now, you don't seem the slightest bit inebriated. If anything, you seem healthier than before!"
Aysla forces a smile, but it doesn't touch her eyes. She's already counting the moments until she can be alone with her bottles.
Astarion chimes in after a beat. "If we're quite finished, can we make camp? It sounds like we'll just have to keep our little lush sated and move on."
Then, almost imperceptibly, he repays her little wink.
Her mood brightened, and her eleven remaining bottles of life-essence in tow, she joins her group to settle down for the night.